by Megan Boyle
1:16am: almost at mom’s. Forgot about broken earphones, driving to 24-hour rite aid. Have been extra swervy, answering ask.fm questions while driving, have seen over ten cop cars. Tonight: a hot night for inattentive cops. Pigs looking elsewhere tonight. Hot sizzly inattentive bacon. Little hot bacon oil spurts doing all kinds of repelling off my swervy ass Honda. Bypassing the bacon bigtime.
1:30am: an m83 song I initially felt averse to played on shuffle. It’s excited/inspiring-sounding music playing behind a little girl talking about a frog you can touch and then it ‘changes your vision, it makes blue look red, and your mom looks like your dad, and everything looks like a big cupcake and you’re just laughing and laughing, and then you become a frog too,’ or something like that, then something about how ‘everyone would be friends, it would be the biggest group of friends ever.’ Have been listening to it on repeat, think I’m buying earphones mostly to prolong car ride listening to this, then to continue listening when I get home. Seems kind of embarrassing, like something people would call ‘twee’ in a negative way, but fuck that I think people just say that shit because they’re jealous they didn’t think of it first. Like they’re pissed because they initially like it, then they’re like, ‘that’s so obvious but it’s so unusual at the same time, how come I didn’t think of it?’ I think. That’s what I’ve felt anyway. I think. I can’t remember. Actually I did just…I remember ‘hating’ this song when I first heard it, but I don’t remember the reason behind the hating, I just skipped over it.
1:47am: heard something like a motorcycle entering rite-aid and stopping near the back of the store. Thought ‘that’s how they do deliveries now.’ There was a problem with ringing up my earphones and I started walking away. The cashier said ‘it’s almost ready’ and I said ‘no, I forgot something, sorry.’ Walked to the cold medicine aisle and quietly said ‘ex-cuuuu-se me’ to female cop as I passed her to kneel and look at nasal congestion sprays. Thought ‘she thinks I’m buying cough syrup to get high. No, she just knows I’m buying nose spray so I can funnel more drugs into my stuffed-up nose’ (knowing I am not planning to do that). The cashier continued to have problems ringing up the earphones. I said ‘sorry’ and ‘oh no’ as she walked to find a scannable/non-defective package of the same earphones. The motorcycle noise was coming from a man pushing a floor polisher. Thought ‘I want to do that.’ Cashier said ‘your total comes to twenty-two seventy-eight,’ I think, but I heard ‘it all comes to seventy-seven.’ Thought ‘it all comes to seventy-seven, that’s what it all comes down to’ and something about the demeanor of the cashier, who had one earphone in her ear and one hanging on her sweatshirt, and didn’t seem to be wearing a name tag or anything indicating she worked at rite aid. Checked the card reader scanning device thing and saw ‘$22.78,’ not ‘.77.’ Continued thinking ‘it all comes down to seventy-seven,’ like, dazedly obsessed with ‘it all comes down to…,’ while she bagged my things and told me to have a nice night.
2:06am: typed above thing sitting in parking space. Left nostril is so clogged I don’t know how the spray could’ve gotten in. It’s running down my nose a little, I am tilting head typing this trying to reverse gravity and funnel spray liquid up there. Man is loading something into a white van. I think he is the floor polishing man. Van is driving away.
2:09am: gravity working, nose less obstructed. Reversed car just in time to inconvenience white van, now directly behind me.
2:13am: prolonging car ride to finish cigarette/avoid productivity. I’m only allowed this one cigarette. Drive your diddly ass around all you want Boyle, you’re just getting this one cigarette, and you know you have to pee, so. Enjoy this. Enjoy this dilly-dallying you diddly peehead. Oh look, the moon. Soak up that moon, you diddly. Yeah that’s right you know how to auto-correct whatever I typed to ‘diddly,’ you sexy telepathic iPhone, sensing my desire to type ‘diddly’ somehow, but oh no you remain mysterious, why did you want to auto-correct ‘sensing’ to ‘sending,’ I didn’t even misspell it, you irresistible minx, keeping me guessing the way you do, will we ever understand each other?
2:22am: pulled into mom’s. Would be interesting if I forgot vyvanse.
2:40am: peed, ate two Tylenol for headache, saw package from Austin (payment for doing spacedads spreecast reading) on my bed. Package was expertly packed, like the most intricate packaging I’ve ever unpackaged.
Also was expecting just one or two pills, he sent me 16, wide variety. What to do.
2:53AM: ate 60mg vyvanse. i’m not going to do the thing where i type what i remember of yesterday here, i’m either going to fill in with as much detail in order, or leave things blank.
10:37AM: pretty convincing fake 2:53AM update, huh? as you can see i was trying to cover my tracks in a way that…would lead to…i don’t know. i was setting a scene for you. trying to make that one easy for you. it’s probably true, i was thinking things like 2:53AM all night. i got in a vyvanse hole bigtime.
a little earlier the gyno office called to see if i could come in early, at 12:20PM. thought ‘i don’t want to go earlier but if i agree to then maybe she won’t find cancer in me.’ i told laura i could come in at 12:20. doorbell rang a few minutes later. it was a package from UPS. watched the truck drive away. something mom had ordered from HSN. walked up stairs and thought ‘mom will be the saddest if i have cancer, sadder than me, ‘don’t have cancer’ just for mom, i don’t want to have it either, the thing the gyno wanted to re-do to me is a scam, it planted the idea in my head and cancer grows from ideas maybe, i don’t want health to be bad i just got other stuff a little good shit shit shit.’
10:48AM: i’m on the balcony. it’s very sunny and 58 degrees but i’m wearing hot pink winter coat anyway. mom’s downstairs neighbor (old man who i can sometimes hear singing operatically) stood on the sidewalk maybe 30’ from me and mumbled something, staring in the same direction i’m facing. he walked on the sidewalk until he was under me, then walked to the edge of the woods, staring upwards. heard him say ‘schtoopy’ but no other words. he seemed to be directly addressing a tree. nodded/acknowledged each other at different times as he walked in the direction he came.
12:00pm: removed necklaces to look ‘less likely to have cancer.’ brushed teeth and hair and washed face. Swapped hot pink coat for Mira’s black coat. A ‘no less unseasonable, but much less unsavory coat.’ Took pill box for ‘just in case it’s bad news.’ feel that bringing the pills is ‘dooming me.’ mom pulled into driveway as I walked to my car. She stopped and rolled down window and I said ‘I’m off to see Abrams, she wants me early.’ mom made scrunchy nosed face and said ‘oh no, it’ll be fine,’ then did Abrams voice (we both see her) to say ‘jasht remember to cuff.’ I said ‘jasht a teensy cuff, and then you vill feel a little peench.’ waved goodbye.
12:10pm: did risky ponytail-tying hands-free driving maneuver going 74mph. Imagined accident. Thought ‘no, that would be too predictably ‘like me’ to do, so it won’t happen, I’m safe.’
12:12pm: imagined quiet intense Freddie mercury voice singing ‘when the gyno sees it in your eyes-ah / that you’ve been up all night-ah’ right before the song ‘really starts rockin’
12:17pm: it’s going to be really stupid after the appointment when she tells me I have cancer and I will have been listening to this innocent inspiring m83 song on repeat this entire time. There’s no way to stop it now. Oh well. What if I’m pregnant again, it’s not even possible but who knows. It’s anyone’s game right now. Who knows. Oh well.
12:24pm: what if she gives me an orgasm. Anyone’s game.
12:31pm: in waiting room, there is a new section on the medical update form at the bottom that says ‘date of last colposcopy’ why is it a routine now
1:06pm: interesting dynamic. Laura took my blood pressure and I said it would be higher because I had been smoking. I like Laura and dr. Abrams, for the record. Feel like I disappoint them. Laura said ‘oh no, it is a little higher’ and didn’t scold me for smoking but I said ‘I
gotta stop.’ I said ‘also I’m a little nervous.’ Laura smiled and said ‘oh why, you know it’s just us.’ I said ‘I know, I don’t know though, you never know.’ she said ‘I always get nervous before I sit up there too.’ wondered if dr. Abrams is her doctor. She said ‘okay meg, everything off, gown open in the front, I’ll leave you to get dressed’ and kind of winked at me. Thought ‘Laura…no…my friend.’
Dr. Abrams knocked and entered and without saying hi (I like that about her) started saying a thing about how there was no sense ‘putting me through misery’ with another pap smear since it wasn’t likely that my body would’ve changed much in six months, but ‘let me tell you why I still want to do it—so we can have a complete record.’ thought she would be pushing the colposcopy on me big time, like last time. She said she hoped my body had taken care of it and that I should take 1mg folic acid every day. We talked about juicing and smoothies. She recommended blending, not juicing, which Tao also recommended. She said she makes an almond milk, Greek yogurt, kale, raspberry drink that is ‘supposed to energize, but I don’t know,’ while feeling my breasts. She motioned for me to lie back with my hands behind my head and I did. She handled my right arm and I remembered upside-down cross tattoo on my side that she maybe somehow didn’t know about and her envisioning me as ‘the devil.’ she said ‘now are these real, or are they the ones you peel off?’ I said they were real. Thought she was maybe indirectly alluding to my aversion to colposcopy pain/refusal to endure pain she probably views as minor. She said ‘what happens when you know, you don’t want to see it there anymore? When you want to take one off?’ I said ‘you know, I don’t like how some of them look anymore but it’s still nice to see them and be like, ‘I was there in that moment.” she made a face like she understood and told me to scoot down and put my feet in the stirrups. She said she was friends with a girl who was in the Olympics and had an Olympics tattoo on her back that ‘actually looked very nice.’ I asked her if the girl placed. She said she did, she would’ve gotten a bronze medal but since the girl from China ahead of her lied about her age she was disqualified and she got the silver medal instead. Thought ‘there is no way…no wait doctors are the same level as people in the Olympics, they could know each other somehow.’ Felt conscious of my potential crotch smell and watched her looking at my crotch and saying things about the Olympics, trying to discern if her face meant I smelled or looked bad. She inserted speculum and I felt something widen and my knees reflexively draw together but I remembered to keep them far apart. I asked about the Chinese girl who was disqualified. She said ‘and you know how they found out? Facebook.’ felt afraid, like she knew about my Facebook and was maybe inventing this entire thing as some kind of obscure warning-parable about how I shouldn’t talk about this on the internet. She inserted two q-tip swab things and I felt ‘the tickle’ and squirmed a little while trying to look ‘normal’/attentive about a tangential story about how that year they figured out they had mis-measured the uneven bars, and the bronze girl’s coach was so upset he walked out before the Olympics were over. I said ‘whoa, he just walked out.’ She made a face and said ‘yah. At the Olympics, he walked out.’ one of her hands had two fingers in my vagina and the other hand was gently feeling around my lower abdomen. I said ‘well, that’s the Olympics.’ She nodded and said ‘now I’m going to do your rectal,’ and tried to insert a finger, then made a face looking down like ‘technical difficulties’ and said ‘oop.’ Then it went in. I said ‘that’s a funny moment, ‘that’s the Olympics.” she smiled like ‘I’m maybe not supposed to smile’ and I wanted to ‘egg her on.’ Remembered my first visit when I was 18 when I said ‘I bet you feel like you’re doing muppets all day, like, you’re Jim Henson and I’m Kermit’ and she reacted similarly.
She told me to sit up and get dressed and meet her in her office. She said something about how she figured I was out of my birth control and needed a refill, without mentioning how she wouldn’t authorize a refill without me sending the letter I wrote authorizing her to not perform the colposcopy. No mention. Seemed ‘suspect’ or…like a family secret, no one mentions that one uncle’s drinking problem, they just let him do it and pretend it’s not happening. Felt shitty about me, being the drunk uncle, doing things people want to pretend I’m not doing. Refusing…erroneous…painful medical procedures…but still. I don’t know.
In the office she said ‘now Laura got your pee and you’re negative,’ I said ‘for everything?’ she said ‘that’s a good question. Now that’s a good question, let me answer, I just have to click some things to update you in the computer.’ I waited. She took a breath and said ‘now—I’m just sending this as a pap smear, but usually we stop recommending the other tests to women older than twenty-six and that’s! Because. Women tend to become involved in monogamous relationships. You come in and you’ve been with Eddie for three years and we say ‘no reason to do this, now we stop.’ But then! Say you’re with Eddie for a year and then, who knows, maybe Ted—no wait they’re the same thing,’ I didn’t get it right away, ‘so maybe then you’re with, John? So we say it’s good to send a check for everything once a year, if you’re an unmarried woman, no children, you want to do what you want.’ I was nodding the entire time and wanting to hurry it along. I said ‘yes, yeah that would be good to check’ maybe too eagerly. She said ‘okay well we’re going to check you this time, but since I’ve put it in as a pap smear it takes a little longer, so you’re going to have to give me two weeks.’ Her face was like ‘we’re so glad you came uncle Ted, please be careful on those stairs.’
Something printed out and she said ‘oh! I thought I had sent your refill to the pharmacy but it printed instead.’ I said ‘that’s okay, I can just give them the paper.’ she signed it without hesitation and said ‘yes you’ll just have to give them this.’
We talked a little about what I was doing. She remembered truck driving. I told her about New York. Felt like drunk uncle Ted big time. Had labored conversation about hurricane Sandy and megabus. Labored for me, only seemed to belabor her in that I think she was re-adjusting to act around a belabored person. Remembered my last visit when she asked me if there were complications in my abortion in a medical conversational protocol way, and I described fainting and the blood loss and she asked why I didn’t go to the hospital and I started crying unexpectedly and had to stop talking for a moment, then said ‘oh god I’m so sorry I don’t know why I’m like this.’ She seemed befuddled and refused my apology in a kind goal-oriented way. Her face listening to me talk about New York looked similar to how it looked then. She asked me if I was taking the bus to New York and I said I drove. Her face lit up a little. She said ‘have you tried megabus?’ I lied and said ‘bolt…bus. Megabus just drops you off in white marsh, right?’ she told me about how she and her family saved money booking in advance on the megabus. Felt comforted to hear this, for some reason, I kept asking her questions. I’ve taken the megabus probably over 50 times. It felt good to hear her talk about what the bus was like and how it surpassed her expectations. She said she didn’t care about luxury, she just wanted to be comfortable. I thought ‘how long can we keep this up, I want to know more about her riding the bus, where she was going,’ but then it seemed like I was asking too many bus questions and she was aware of talking a lot. Somehow the conversation wound down. Have an image of my face looking like it’s about to say something it’s thought about, then the conversation taking an abrupt ‘winding down’ turn. She started to say goodbye. I said, ‘oh, wait, so before I go, can you say how does it look? Compared to last time?’ She closed her eyes and did a single nod and said ‘to me, from what I saw today, from this medical examination, you are completely normal. There are no lesions, you look perfect. But we will have to see in a year.’ She wished me a good year. I said ‘you too, dr. Abrams,’ feeling weird about hearing myself say her name in that context, then doing something loud to the door as I closed it.
Laura was smiling big at me, like Christmas style, a li
ttle sad, and said ‘bye bye Meg.’ I felt ‘caught’ by her smile like I felt ‘caught’ about the megabus, wanted to prolong. I said something about my co-pay. Laura said ‘we’ll just run it through the insurance company like normal,’ still smiling, seeming ‘onto me,’ my swindling her into a co-pay response to prolong her smiling at me. My awareness of the ‘swindling’ as I was doing it seemed limited to a vague feeling that I was doing something automatically. Now seems obvious, what I was doing and why.
2:50pm: have been sitting in parked car in macmedics parking lot typing into phone. Kids came out of somewhere for a minute, like a day care thing.
3:00pm: I am being serviced by the macmedics employee who I have always wanted to be serviced by. Ever since I saw that mom lady talking to him about his tattoos. Really chatting him into a corner, grilling him about ‘healing times.’ He kind of seemed to like it, in an ‘I enjoy sharing perfunctory information to those who ask it from me, I am happy to help’ way. I’m making that up, he probably liked hot interrogator mom attention for normal reasons. Still tried to exude ‘don’t you worry baby, I would never ask you to tell me what your sleeve means, plus I know how to treat you nice’ at him.
He is in the back room checking the trade-in value of busted computer.
He is checking prices in the back.
How else can I say this…
When will he return, it has been minutes since I have known how tall he is
Maybe he doesn’t really have the little face mole/freckle cluster thingy I thought I saw, I hope it’s still there when he comes back
