Fool's Move

Fool’s Move®

I worked as a security guard for a while, in a gated community. What I really wanted to do was write songs, and someone recommended the job to me: “You let in a few cars, you call the residents. Plenty of time to write.”

One day after work, I drank a cup of Smooth Move®. Of course, nothing happened. “Well, what’s going to happen?” I thought. “It’s just some hot water with a little tea in it.” When the whole evening passed by—without anything else passing—I thought, “If I want results, I better have more tea, ‘cause nothing’s going on here.” “Maybe something will happen tomorrow morning, but I’m not counting on it. It’s just herbal tea, anyway.” I brewed another cup, gulped it like water, and went to bed.

I awoke in the middle of the night. Something was pinching my intestine. I had dreamt it was a lobster that wouldn’t let go. Now I tried to go back to sleep but no. I turned over on my left side. I turned to my right. I lay on my stomach. I curled up into the fetal position. No relief. What was this? My cramps made me feel like a water balloon in a vise. I got up and tried sitting in “rock pose”—so named because you’re supposed to be able to digest anything—even rocks—after sitting in that asana. No luck.

Maybe I should sit on the toilet. Maybe something needs to come out. As I walked to the bathroom, I began to sweat and shake, as if I had a fever. Something was very wrong. “Is this what appendicitis feels like?” I wondered. I sat down, but nothing happened. The pressure increased. I felt like some huge hands were trying to wring me out like a dishrag.

Then my mind kicked into high gear—inexplicably churning out a stream of delusional nonsense—as if refusing to be outdone by the inexplicable churning going on in my lower forty: My fever became the “Red Menace.” I didn’t have the “trots,” I had the “Leon Trotskys.” “Hey, quit Stalin and lemme use the bathroom.” “I’m tryin’ to let loose a pile of Bolshevik in here.” Welcome to my inner world.

Sitting just made the pain worse, so I lay down on the terrazzo floor of the bathroom. I gazed up through bulging, tear-filled eyes at the toilet paper roll I was unable to use. My body writhed in pain. My mind continued to writhe its way through the Russian revolution. I sweated, and prayed for relief. After only God-knows-how-long, my agony reached its natural conclusion—a tingling in my feet that signaled I was about to merge with the urge to significantly purge. It was a Stalinist purge. The toilet became a Soviet launch pad. My body fired retro rockets, ICBMs, Sputniks. The sheer volume recalled Khrushchev promising Kennedy, “We will bury you.”

The next morning, my wife asked, as she always does, “did you sleep OK?” I told her the story of the Leon Trotskys.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

I’m never able to answer that one.

“What did you eat yesterday?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” I told her.

“Did you take any Smooth Move® tea?”

“Yeah.” So what, I thought. What does that have to do with anything?

“How much?”

“Just two cups.”

“TWO CUPS? What the hell? Are you crazy? What were you thinking?” (Another unanswerable question.) “That’s just crazy. You overdo everything. You’re supposed to drink one cup and let it work overnight. Especially a skinny guy like you. I can’t believe you did that. From now on, you’re not allowed to take any medications except what I give you directly from my hands. You might kill yourself otherwise.”
* * *

This morning I was drinking a glass of water. Out the back window, some motion caught the corner of my eye. I turned my head to confirm my peripheral vision and, sure enough, there was a squirrel, leaping from branch to branch. “Boy, am I glad my instruments of perception are in such good working order,” I thought. Then the water went down the wrong pipe and I choked until I cried.

guard shack photo courtesy of Sure Security