Homesick for Another World(10)

“I don’t like anybody right now,” I told him over the phone. I was looking in the mirror over the bathroom sink, doing some one-handed picking.

“But women are good,” he said. “They’re like a good meal.”

“I can’t afford a good meal,” I said back to him. “Anyway, I go for quantity over quality.”

He told me to go ask if Sears or T.J.Maxx was hiring, or Burger King. For someone else, maybe that was fine advice. He himself didn’t need to work. He was on disability for having a gimp leg. Also, he had a colostomy bag he didn’t care for properly. He used a lot of peach-scented air freshener around the house to cover the smell. He rarely left the living room and liked to order in large Mexican dinners or whole pizzas. He was always eating something and dumping out the colostomy bag right afterward.

“I don’t feel very well,” I told him. “I’m too sick to find a job.”

“Go to a doctor,” he said. “Look in the phone book. Don’t be a fool. You need to care for your health.”

“Can I borrow some money?” I asked him.

“No.”

? ? ?

I found a cheap doctor in a Korean shopping mall on Wilshire.

The mall was basically empty, just a lot of fake brass and cloudy windows and orange fake-marble floors. I looked up into the galleria. The glass ceiling was cracked all over. A pigeon soared around, then rested on a strand of unlit Christmas lights. Someone had spread newspapers around the floor. There was a luggage store, a place to get your photo taken, a hair salon. That was it—all the other stalls were empty. A homeless Korean lady padded by me in dirty, quilted long underwear, pushing a baby carriage full of trash. I took a long whiff.

I found the clinic down a dim hallway of unmarked offices. On the door there was a poster of all the services the doctor offered. I found my symptoms: weight gain, hair loss, rash. I went inside. A fat lady stood at the counter in front of the receptionist.

“This prescription is for the yellow kind and I need the pink kind. The Percodan,” she was saying.

I had a thing about fat people. It was the same thing I had about skinny people: I hated their guts. After a few minutes, a nurse told me to follow her through the office. We passed an unframed poster of hot rods and another poster of kittens inside a top hat. The nurse pointed to a man in a flannel shirt holding a yellow legal pad. He resembled a retired WWF wrestler. His eyes hid behind folds of skin and raised moles and eyebrows badly in need of plucking. He needed a shave too. Most men have no idea how to groom themselves. From where his shirt puckered between the buttons, I could tell he wasn’t wearing anything under the flannel. Wiry black hairs lay across his gut. He smelled like old food.

“Are you a real doctor?” I asked him.

He steered me onto a greasy examination table.

“So you’ve got something wrong with you,” he said, looking at the form.

“I try to throw up all the food I eat, but I’m still fat,” I said. “And the rash.” I pulled up my sleeve.

The doctor took a step back. “You ever wash your sheets?”

“Yes,” I lied. “So what’s wrong with me?”

“I’m not one to judge,” he said, placing his hand over his heart.

? ? ?

As good-looking as I was, I was scared nobody would ever marry me. I had small hands. They were like a girl’s hands, but with hair. Nobody marries men with hands like that. When I fit my fingers down my throat, it’s easy. My fingers are thin, soft. When I put them down there, it’s like a cool breeze. That’s the best way I can explain it.

“Uncle,” I said on the phone. “Can I do some laundry at your place?”

“Sure,” he replied. “Come on over. But bring your own laundry detergent. And some Diet Coke!”

My uncle lived off the 101. I stopped at Albertsons for the detergent and Diet Coke. I also bought a cheesecake and a carrot cake. I used my EBT card. I never had any shame about that damn EBT card. I got a large coffee and some cigarettes from the gas station next door, too. I didn’t really smoke. I just lit the cigarettes and carried them around my uncle’s house. It covered the smell decently.

“Look at my boy,” hollered my uncle, wobbling up out of his recliner. He had a pair of spruce green leather recliners about a foot away from a gigantic television. It was the kind of television they put in hotel lobbies. All he did was watch TV or talk on the phone or eat. He loved game shows and cooking shows. I’m not saying he was an idiot. He was just like me: anything good made him want to die. That’s a characteristic some smart people have.

“Hi,” I said.

My uncle’s robe was hanging open. I could see that damn colostomy bag.

“Tell me,” he said as I took out the cakes. “You seeing anybody these days?”

“Maybe, but I don’t want to jinx it,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You always let me down.”

We sat in the recliners. I ate the cheesecake and my uncle ate the carrot cake. We watched the end of a movie called While You Were Sleeping. My uncle emptied his colostomy bag, and then I sent that cheesecake down the toilet. I put the laundry in. I drank some coffee and went back to the toilet to throw up some more. When I was done, I picked up my uncle’s razor and shaved the hair off my knuckles. I showed them to my uncle.