Articles Of Impeachment

One day in the spring of 1974 I found that I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt a shooting pain down my leg, and my back was killing me. I just lay there. I finally moved and slowly got up from the foam mattress that rested on the wooden platform bed that “M” had built for us when we first moved into the loft. The pain in my left leg caused by sciatica almost took my breath away and I could barely straighten up. I made my way to the bookstore in the village where I worked and suffered through the day. I had just broken up with “M” for the first time and was living alone. It was spring in New York I was single, 27 and I felt like shit. The pain didn’t diminish so I started the doctor journey which lasted from the spring until early fall with me finally spending two weeks in August in traction at Lenox Hill Hospital. I hated it there and they hated me there. I was a terrible patient, cranky and and always complaining. Of course to my mind I had every reason to bitch and moan. I was in a ward, which was ok, but they moved a terminal patient on a life support machine right next to me, and I didn’t sleep a wink for the nearly two weeks I was there. “Move him somewhere else” I pleaded. The noise from one of those giant tin cans was unrelenting and brutal. “Move me somewhere else” I pleaded. I actually told them to pull the plug on him, that’s what pain can make one do and say. I carried on so, that at night they would move me to any available space just to shut me up and this included bedding me down in a storage closet. At least I slept. The nurses all bitched me behind my back, and you know that the 1st rule when in a hospital is never complain and always be good because those in control will get revenge for sure. They ignored my calls and rings and pleadings for more painkillers. They gave me Tylenol. I had an orthopedic surgeon and and neurologist. The orthopedic guy, said I would always have back problems, nothing to be done. They had more tests to run including the dreaded Mylogram sometimes known as a spinal tap. “Don’t you let them doctors do no mylogram on you” warned the young African American male who was in the bed next to mine when I arrived. I had a visit from my parents. My father as usual was his miserable self telling me There’s nothing wrong with you” “No Dad, I’m only doing this because I have nothing better to do.” Being a man of 27 I finally felt free to tell him where to go. “Get him out of here I told my mother, and they both left. “M” came bringing a copy of his latest book that I did the drawings for and yellow lined pads and markers for me to drawn on. I must have asked for them I mean why else would anyone bring me yellow lined pads to drawn on. He was leaving for a trip to Japan and I felt so alone and depressed. We still loved each other, but his alcoholism had finally driven a wedge in our relationship and we had separated earlier that spring. Now on to the mylogram. Please see the drawings posted to get a visual idea of what one of those things is like. First they only drugged me somewhat, as you have to be conscious during it, why I don’t know. Then they tie you to a rigmarole and flip you upside down, and inject dye into your spinal column. I screamed all the way through it. I have never felt such pain, and the bitch nurses to get even, didn’t tell me not to lift my head up off the pillow because if I did I have would the worst headaches imaginable. They were right about those headaches. The results came back and they could find no damage to my spine.Was it psychosomatic, a hysterical reaction to my breaking up with “M”? Anyway I would be going home. I was fragile and weak, but I slowly began to walk down the hospital corridor to get used to walking again. My mother took me back to the loft in a cab, and I got back into bed where I would stay off and on until September. I ate, read and watched on tv the House Judiciary Committee show vote for articles of impeachment against Nixon. I had spent the whole spring and summer in bed and now the fall was approaching and I had to get better. I was on my own and I just had to get better. I needed help though and friends would drop by to cook for me and keep me company. Vincent came to New York for one of his whirlwind trips of men, Broadway shows and booze and he slept on the spare bed in the living room. He wasn’t there much, a smile here, a joke there, a cooked dinner of pasta and he was off to see the wizard. My mother came quite a bit, and one morning as she cooked breakfast for me, Vincent trotted in after a night God knows where without his shoes. My mother tried not to notice. “Vincent I asked what happened to your shoes?” “Oh I guess there somewhere else where I’m not .” And that was that.