BODY PARTS:Chapter 7

The Shooting Pains
Late one night Al, our local harmless nut, stood on the street below my window shouting: “Sciatica! Sciatica!” for a full, solid hour. I willingly put up with Al. I generally don't mind his outbursts but this was unusual even for him. We often chat during the day when he is tired and docile. He sometimes offers insights into my own unsightly world, especially when I crank him up by handing him coffee and a Cinnabun and say: “1-2-3-GO, AL!” He likes to be revved up. His shouting all night though wasn’t what kept me up. I’d stretched after an evening run. I’d stood for longer than usual in a hot shower. I'd even taken Advil before turning in but the shooting pains running down the backs of my legs persisted and made it next to impossible for me to sleep. When I awoke I climbed straight into a big mug of black coffee to jump start my day.
Walking to the train I passed a call to my conscience: “Save Darfur!.Org.” What, I asked myself, had I ever done for Darfur? Nothing as far as I could recall. Voices of Public Radio pledge drives echoed within: “For the price of one cup of coffee a day...”
Need. Sacrifice. Luxury. Choice. Selflessness. Focus. Decisiveness. Principals. The option to crawl under a rock.
On the train my legs started shouting again. They wanted my full attention but then my lower back chimed in, and my neck, my upper arms, my spinal chord. I was confronted by a full scale assault, a cacophony of disgruntlement that I was used to solving with pain killers. A tiny voice could barely be detected saying: “Let me help.” I’d never heard it before and even now didn’t care to listen. I’d enough on my plate without taking on another health care provider. I wanted to lock myself in my office but didn’t have one. Just then there was nothing between me and my body. I needed more sustenance. Clearly I was hungry. Surely then my body would quiet down.
Instead of heading immediately to work, I veered off in the direction of a Diner I’d always wondered about, to have another breakfast.
What followed was the direct result of an Internal Revolution. Okay so I brushed my teeth hurriedly. I didn't stretch every day. I admit it. I considered working out and exercise a total drag and my body was mad. Like the French Revolution what began with such high ideals devolved into mayhem. My aches just wouldn’t leave me alone. I wasn’t having any of it. I was in charge. I was the king. I’d stifle the voices that sprung from my meat and bones with a plate full of fried food. I was feeling foolishly vengeful. I would hurl double shots of espresso at the unbearable, persistent hammering. I’d pour it on like hot oil from the battlements until they went away. I stretched! I usually ate pretty well! I wasn’t a smoker! My drinking was moderate for goodness sake! What? WHAT?
A man sat at the counter still wearing his Day-Glo green hard hat, a beacon in the dim light of the Diner. I stared at his back and saw how straight it was compared to mine. “You constantly hunch. You hunch over everything,” said my back. “You embarrass me. You have no respect for us. Why are are you so physically disdainful? You stare at a computer all the time. Your eyes are in pain. They are tired, so tired. You’ve elevated the intellect to an absurd position in your pantheon of importance, your hierarchy of attention worthiness. Your brain doesn’t like it you know. We talk about it all the time—your complete arrogance.”
In their own high pitched way the backs of my legs continued: “Tiger balm, analgesics, sure they help. But what about your hands for crissake? They want to help! They are offering to help! Use you hands! Apply massage. Rub us! We love to be rubbed! Make the effort! Support your own infrastructure you —!”
With that my legs gave out from under me. They’d had enough and I crumpled to the floor. A couple of businessmen leapt from their seats to help but it was really no use. I couldn’t shut out the crescendo of voices. I was tuned in and couldn’t tune out. I couldn’t barricade the doors, couldn’t block them with refrigerators or safes to stop them coming in. The escape hatch I’d always imagined under the carpet wasn’t in any of my rooms just then. Run about the house as I might there was no escape. My imagination had fled and I was alone stuck in a bandwidth of bodily furies. I could clearly hear the knees of my helpers cracking as they tried to sit me back in my chair. I could hear their skin crawling, their teeth demanding immediate attention, and in back a burgeoning root canal quietly whistling a sinister tune, and I fell to the floor again.
When I came to I found myself staring into the dead eyes of one of the businessmen. The waitress sat at a table sobbing as she tried to staunch heavy bleeding at her wrist with a paper towel. The construction worker still sat at the counter but was dead, apparently shot through the neck. People throughout the Diner were screaming in pain, in a mess of blood and smoke. Louder though than all the hysteria was the the furious yelling of the disenfranchised—the feet, the ankles, the toes, the veins, the skin, the bones, the nervous system, hair follicles, scalp, nasal passages, all yelling, yelling, yelling finally, finally we got you all to listen. I heard them all succinctly, if briefly, before passing out from the pain of the bullet wound to my thigh. At last we got you all to listen. My legs cocked their automatics and walked away.