Petit Mal

The Body Says No - The New Pornographers (mp3)
Until I Wake Up - Dishwalla (mp3)

The modern phrase is "absence seizures." They are very brief seizures that often resemble "spacing out." They usually last a matter of seconds, but in more extreme cases can hit closer to a minute. Often these seizures have no outward sign, but sometimes they include a few ticks, like the shaking of a shoulder or stuttered blinking. Often this illness limits itself to childhood and early teen years.

One of the girls on my daughter's soccer team had an absence seizure in the middle of the game. A teammate passed it to her, and Sylvia (not her name) just stood there. Ball rolled right past her. It was totally weird.

So of course myself and a couple of other parents made some quick initial comment like, "Hellooo! Wakey wakey!" And then Sylvia's parents shoved the cold and calm dagger into our consciences with that little reply: "Actually she was having an absence seizure, but she's OK now."

My wife had just bought me a new pair of North Face sandals a couple of weeks ago, and I hadn't yet had the opportunity to savor their taste, so that was my moment to learn they taste kinda tart and sandy.

Sylvia's parents were totally cool about it, which helped. And naturally I tried making up for my ignorant insensitivity by engaging them in a too-long interrogation about it. How long has she suffered with it? (4 years) Will it last? (They hope and expect it to pass by the early teen years) What's the average duration? (About 15 seconds, sometimes as much as 30, and rarely as long as a minute) Is it genetic? (In this case, not from the parents directly) If it doesn't go away...? (Lots of potential problems but nothing they're not prepared to deal with. No driver's license was the quickest response)

The experience haunted me the rest of the day and as I lay in the hotel bed on Saturday night. I got up and read up on it while my girls slept. Having recalled "Bridge of Sighs" main character Lucy struggling with something between a long-form absence seizure and a fugue state, I went back and listened to an NPR interview with Richard Russo and read another interview looking for information.

We all have moments that remind us of our blessings and help put our own problems in perspective.

"Petit mal" means "little illness." This is anything but a small problem. Milk and peanut and grass allergies, or mild vision issues, or other issues with which my family wrestles, suddenly seemed palatable.

When I woke up at 4 a.m., still a little freaked out by it, I wondered if some people have petit mal phases where they just kind of zone out for a fraction of their lives rather than a fraction of a minute. Maybe an inexplicable day or week of behavior that goes counter to everything normal about them.

My mom started smoking cigarettes to cope with the death of my father and the unthinkable stress of having to raise her little son-creature. Maybe those three or four years -- years she has trouble remembering with any clarity -- were her life's own little absence seizure.

Henry Hyde had an affair when he was 41. Maybe his "youthful indiscretion" was his own little absence seizure.

No, I don't really believe that. But isn't it pretty to think so.

In recent days, every time I've found myself gazing into the distance, distracted from the world around me by a thought or a feeling, I wonder what it must be like to have no choice in the matter. To have something outside of yourself push your pause button while the world continues moving, and you merely disappear from time for a short span.

I'm not a control freak about much in this chaotic life, but that thought frightens me half to death.

Rumors, Details, and Sex on a Picnic Table

Clumsy - Our Lady Peace (mp3)
Deny All - Bettie Serveert (mp3)

I'm in a dentist's office. The faux-leather chair is reclined, and the blood is slowly pooling in my skull, and that light, brighter than a thousand suns, burns into my mouth.

My dentist is a highly-intelligent and beautiful wife and mother who has somehow managed to hold onto every ounce of her attractiveness as she approaches 40. Her skin seems a little less soft, her face a bit more wizened, but she got that young fire in her eyes, with a mighty impressive figure and modest but sharp taste in clothing. And oh yeah, she's a kick-ass dentist.

Yet, try as I might, here's the image that inevitably flashes into my mind: her, 17 years of age and a junior in high school, lying back on a wooden picnic table at a popular local Chattanooga park, her knees dangling off the edge, her feet hovering in open space above the dirt and grass, her skirt up around her waist and spread across the planks like a disheveled too-small tablecloth. And a senior at my school, a year older than us, a popular and athletic king of the hill, pushing himself into her.

In most of my recreations of this moment, the senior boy is looking around in some twisted hope that someone can be a witness to this moment, so that when he brags about this moment over and over for friends and classmates, he can talk about the person or people who saw it with their own eyes. I imagine him, on the verge of orgasm, holding up a Joe Namath finger of victory, stoking the imagined enthralled fans surrounding the table in his moment of sexual triumph.

Of all the rumors and tales of sexual escapades from my high school years, this one is easily the most salient. We didn't have tales of group sex or fantasy blowjob drafts back in the late '80s, when getting a mere one blow job in a night was plenty impresive, so having sex on a picnic table in lingering daylight with one of our sister school's most stunning students was an otherworldly tale of studliness.

I once overheard the senior in question regaling his friends with the details. I then heard it a dozen or so more times as the story became hallway legend, gaining additional details, reaching new heights of the fantastical.

From day one, I doubted this story. One of my closest friends in high school helped out in our athletic training room in the afternoons, and she was constantly the subject of sex tales. She gave blow jobs in the closet. She would jerk you off while she wrapped your ankle. Tales that I knew to be untrue, but they got shared and passed around as factual as if they'd been etched into a chapter of the Bible.

That's what boys do. We talk. We sit round proverbial campfires and tell each other tales of the epic conquering sexual hero. It's as old as Beowulf.

Even when she was 17 and a rumored slut, my dentist wanted to be a dentist. Hell, I wrote it down in my journal. We had a conversation one time -- and all conversations with females of her caliber were recorded and immortalized in my journals for posterity -- where she talked about how much she valued clean, straight teeth. She'd known early in her life that she was going to be a dentist, she said. I remember keeping my mouth closed and smiling, hoping to hide the five dozen fillings in my mouth, suffering painful regret from so insufficiently and inconsistently brushing my teeth in my youth, knowing those cavities were a guaranteed barrier to her falling in love with me. (As if that was the singular preventing factor...)

So of course, when I found out she had moved back to Chattanooga and opened an office with her dentist husband (natch), I signed up as her patient. She'd always been brilliant; she'd always known what she wanted to do as a profession; she was hot. That, my friends, is a perfect combination of motivations for picking your dentist. It's a nice reward of convenience that her husband is a swell guy and a great dentist as well, since he attends to patients 80% of the time, now that she mostly stays home with their daughter.

I remember finding out she was pregnant. During my cleaning, the hygienist said, "It's really brave of her, having this baby." I shrugged and made what limited sounds I could with her fist in my mouth.

"You know, with her having Cystic Fibrosis and all." My brow furrowed and I made more gutteral sounds.

"She said she never even expected to see 20, much less get married and have a career. They didn't even think she could get pregnant in the first place." (More gutteral acknowledgments.) "So, you know, when they did, it just seemed like life was giving her a chance she couldn't pass up."

I don't know whether my dentist got laid on a picnic table when she was 17. But I do know this. If I was 17 years old, and I'd already accepted that I might never see 20, and I knew what kind of potential I might see if only I wasn't saddled with a debilitating and often-fatal hereditary disease, I think I might well be inclined to fuck just about anything I could get my hands on. I might be inclined to drink, smoke, bungee jump, skydive, ski jump... anything and everything risky and life-affirming I could find. Because my dentist was cool and attractive, she just so happened to date cool and attractive studs.

And if -- IF -- they found themselves in flagrante delicto, horizontal or vertical or diagonal on a picnic table, the event takes a different meaning. Suddenly that moment becomes about her, not him, about savoring a precious (if scandalous) opportunity, not about a boy getting a story to tell the school.

I love my dentist because she provides me just one more reminder that the details we don't know about the people we encounter every day create such a complex and wondrous story, and even just a glimpse of those secret details can alter our perceptions and opinions, can engender sympathy and understanding, bring us closer together.

It's a shame we need those details. It's a shame we can't just know those details are out there, none of our business, but ready to explain so much about so many people.

Billy & the Doc-In-The-Box

Hello Time Bomb - Matthew Good Band (mp3)
Kiss the Dirt - The Brent Flood (mp3)

Herein lies the true story of my experience on Saturday, August 22, 2009. But first, some background. [NOTE: This entry is of a TMI medical nature and may not be suitable for young children or those with weak stomachs.]

Last Tuesday I emerged from my morning shower to notice an annoying zit-looking thing halfway between my belly button and my, well, junk. Because I seem to attract biting insects and arachnids of all stripes, I kind of assumed it was a spider bite. Wouldn't be the first time.

Because I'm a moron, I decided to treat it like a normal zit, and I tried popping it. When it didn't pop, I went on with my day and forgot about it.

On Wednesday morning, I emerged from my morning shower to notice that what had once been a spider bite-looking thing had spread. I mentioned it in passing to the wife and a nurse pal, and they suggested hydrocortizone and a bandage. Mmkay.

By Thursday night it was worse, and the wife thought it looked like a poison ivy thing. But because I'm a moron, I didn't think long enough to realize that the damn things didn't itch. So we just dumped some Calamine lotion on it, and I tried to go to sleep in spite of the fact that the lotion burned like the fires of eighteen hells.

By Saturday, I was honestly worried. It burned and hurt and looked downright ugly. (Yes, it took me 36 hours after the Calamine Lotion Incident to get past my stubborn hatred of acknowledging my vulnerability to the medical mysteries that plague mere humans.) I decided I couldn't wait 'til Tuesday or Wednesday -- school started Monday, so there wasn't a snowball's chance I could go Monday -- so I decided to go to a Doc-In-The-Box.

At 1:40 p.m. on Saturday, I entered the CVS. At 1:48 I finally managed to find the damn Minute Clinic that's inside the CVS. I signed up and was third in line. At 3:17 I got called in. At this point, the Minute Clinic had sucked away 89 minutes.

Technically speaking, you shouldn't call your business the Minute Clinic if it takes a dude 90 of the damn things just to get in the door.

Also, technically speaking, this Minute Clinic wasn't a "doc in the box." It's a "nurse practitioner in the box." The NP at this particular Minute Clinic looked -- I shit you not -- like Famke Janssen with a pinch of Jennifer Garner.

At this point, I had this inevitable flashback to that Friends episode where Joey and Chandler spend too much time watching porn? And then they go out into the real world where normal people have normal non-sexual encounters? And they can't believe they're not getting jumped and humped by all these random women? (No, I've never been propositioned by, nor have I ever propositioned, anyone in any such situations. For the record. But that doesn't keep me from having random pop-culture references or acknowledging the Famke-ness of a hot NP.)

"So how can I help you today?" Famke asked. At which point I began to unbutton my pants.

Now let me explain. I was already mighty nervous about this rash thing. Sitting in the middle of a CV-f*#kin'-S and finding yourself so bored you actually read the ingredients of Axe Body Spray only makes the nerves more fragile. At one point I had these weird flashes where some Devil Mosquito had injected me with bubonic plague or gonorrhea, as if I were being tested like Job... or maybe I was bein' PUNK'D! Where are you, Ashton, you motherf*#ker?!?!

So by the time I got into her "office," which is roughly the size of a high school locker, I was practically shitting myself with all these wickedly irrational fears. I wanted to get out of there ASAP, and the best way to do that was to get right to the point by showing her my rash.

I hadn't even undone my belt all the way when she was, like, "Whoa whoa whoa there!"

And I was, like, "Oh. Um. I swear I wasn't dropping trou. My rash is right here." And I gesticulated with my hands in the area where my World Wrestling Federation belt buckle might be.

"So, I can see this without... you know..."

"Oh... Ohh! No! I mean, yeah! Of course! I would've warned you! Totally!"

Nurse Famke relaxed a little at that point but kept her distance. Which, in her office, was maybe four inches away from me. "OK, let's take a look."

I basically drop my shorts so that I look "hip hop" and gain "street cred," which is to say the shorts are clinging desperately to the last curve of my butt lest gravity pull them to the floor. Somehow she feels more at ease with this look -- maybe because I'm keepin' it real, yo -- so she bends down to inspect these strange mega-zits along my waistline.

We talk like this for a few minutes. She's staring down at my crotch and asking me all these detailed questions, and I'm looking around at the pretty fluorescent lights and pretty little ear scope thingies.

Finally, she says, "blah blah blah Folliculitis."

And, I'm sorry, really I am, but I had to ask her to repeat it because I thought she said something vulgar. Something along the lines of "I'd like to f*#k you like this."

So she repeats the word and says, "It's an infection of the hair follicles. Bacterial infection."

Of course that's what I have! "Um, how does, uh, someone get, um, Fuglyitis?"

"Full-LICK-u-LIE-tiss. It's pretty common, actually. It's not that big a deal, really. I'll prescribe you some antibiotics, and it should clear up in 48 hours give or take."

After 30 minutes of paperwork and a few calls, I'm out the door of the Minute Clinic $65 poorer and having lost far more than one minute of my life. One hundred thirty-two minutes, to be exact.

As I'm driving home with my diagnosis, I call my former roommate Don, who's a doctor of pharmacy in Atlanta. Don quickly calms me some more by saying a lot of what Nurse Famke said. Folliculitis is fairly common. Sweat and dirt and a small open cut or hair follicle is all you need. Yada yada.

But then, because he's my former roommate with a twisted sense of humor, he has to take it one step further. "Still, you need to take it seriously if it's anywhere near your crotch," he says.

Gulp. "Why?"

"Because if it spreads it can turn into Fournier Gangrene."

"Fornicate... wha?"

"Gangrene of the scrotum."

At this point I almost wrecked our minivan. It's saying shit like "gangrene of the scrotum" into the receiver that people simply can't afford to hear as they're driving at high speeds on public roads.

While I'm swerving and instinctively reaching for my junk, as if a single human palm covering it could protect it from words like "Fournier gangrene," Don's still talking. "The smell can be pretty unbearable, because it's basically dead flesh, and it smells like a corpse. You can smell it all the way down the hall in a hospital. And the surgery... well that's the kind of surgery doctors talk about all the time 'cuz it's so extreme. They have to remove the necrotic flesh on your ball sac, and if it's run up your shaft at all it just gets worse."

I didn't say anything. I was wondering whether a grisly wreck might not be a less painful fate than Fournier gangrene. I imagined having my balls forced to live inside some fake plastic scrotum (no, that's not a Radiohead song), like they were hamsters or something.

But Don wasn't through.

"By the way, I'd love it if you'd be one of my groomsmen."

"Don, if I'm still a man with a scrotum by the spring, I'd be totally honored."

The Brent Flood offered their song gratis for promotion, so please consider taking a listen to them! The Matthew Good Band -- now just Matthew Good -- is from Canada, so they have to rock.