date night

The way I saw it, if it could work for the Chinese, it could work for me.

Yep, that was my solution all right: wearing a vise on my head. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea in the world, but the clock was ticking, and I was as short on ideas as I was on time.

Truth is, it really wasn’t that bad once I got used to it. I didn’t have to screw it too tight, just enough so it hurt. The hope was, constant pressure would keep me from thinking about anything but the pain itself.

It was a few minutes before six and while I waited for the sedative to kick in, I started thinking about my big date to come. My Big Date. God, I hoped this one went better than the last. Truth be told, I was so nervous, so about to shit my pants, the thought of a massive diarrhea attack sounded kind of good about now. Dare to dream.

In my dream-date scenario, there we are at this fancy French restaurant, me in my monkey suit, Fanny in her flowery sundress, eating of all things: fried chicken. That’s right. While the French may be fancy, they love their down-home cooking too, everything from sheep’s balls to pig’s tails to slimy little snails. Fried chicken is, believe it or not, one of the most popular foods in France. Almost as popular as frog’s legs.

“You know,” says dream-date Fanny to me, “I’ve had my eye on you for quite some time.”

Really?

“Yes. Ever since that first day I brushed by you in the hall.”

Ah, I thought. Dolce & Gabbana.

“You were wearing Le Male, by Jean Paul Gaultier.”

Brut by Faberge, actually; but thanks.

“I watched you when you rode off on your bike in the mornings.”

Watched me?

“I always wondered where you were going. Somewhere important, I always imagined.”

Unfortunately, not.

“Maybe you were a Hollywood screenwriter, I thought. Or a composer. Something in showbiz, but not on the glamorous side. More like the brains of the operation.”

I could write movies, I thought. Or songs. Why not?

“Do you know where I first saw you?”

I couldn’t imagine.

“The first time I saw you was on the beach. You swam ashore from a motor boat driven by that little French girl.”

Huh?

Then Fanny hands me a beer and offers me some chicken. “Do you want a leg or a breast?’” she says.

Everyone knows I’m a breast man.

The whole thing plays out like some Hollywood movie, dining and dancing, wine and song, all the while engaging in the cleverest of conversation: like Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. So clever, in fact, that it just couldn’t be real. It wasn’t.

It was just one minute to seven when I woke up, realizing I had dozed off with the TV on again. To Catch a Thief. Another great Hitchcock romance. See, I told you: an old softy.

I jumped up and into action. In any other circumstance, I would have been late. Lucky for me, however, I had only to go right across the hall.

I picked up Fanny at 7:00 sharp. She was still wearing her scrubs. I suppose that’s normal, for a nurse. And anyway, who was I to complain? The only suit I had once belonged to my father (God rest his soul), and it was two sizes too big. I looked like David Moscow in the movie Big.

So, if you’re wondering how I walked Fanny from her apartment all the way out of the building with a vise screwed on my head, and her not notice at all, that’s where my ten-gallon solution comes in.

To cover the vise, I wore a hat. Yes, the same ten-gallon hat the Professor was wearing that day: the Hoss Cartwright hat. I found it in a box down in the basement labeled Tex Ritter, along with a lasso, some props, and a whole cowboy ensemble including boots, chaps and spurs. I thought, maybe it was held over from the Hacienda Palm’s golden age; but Wang, the Chinese maintenance man, said one of the tenants left it behind back in the 1980s.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is that no one really knows for sure. There is no definitive answer on how the ten-gallon hat really got its name; but one thing is for sure: it cannot actually hold ten gallons. One popular theory is that its name comes from the Spanish phrase “tan galán,” meaning “so gallant.” Works for me.

“Nice hat,” said Fanny. I told her it once belonged to Tex Ritter. She nodded her head, but I could tell by the look on her face, she couldn’t have cared less who Tex Ritter was.

“Looks more like a Hoss Cartwright hat to me,” said Fanny.

I couldn’t believe it: she knew who Hoss Cartwright was.

“Of course I know who Hoss Cartwright is. Adam, Pa, Little Joe too.”

And Hop Sing?

“Of course, Hop Sing. My dad was a huge Bonanza fan.”

Wow. Hop Sing was my favorite.

“Right. He was always threatening to quit.”

Then I told her that Dan Blocker, the man who played Hoss Cartwright, came from the same hometown as my dad: De Kalb, Texas. Mary Blocker, Dan Blocker’s mom, and my grandmother were best friends, walking buddies, and even lived on the same street.

“That’s amazing,” she said. “My dad said Dan Blocker lived in Downey when he first came to LA. He used to bag groceries at the Safeway there. Before he became Hoss Cartwright, of course.”

What a coincidence.

“Did you ever meet him?” she asked.

I told her I did, when I was young. It wasn’t a lie. Even though I don’t remember actually meeting him, my grandmother told me he did come over with his mother once when I was just a baby, and nearly ate her out of house and home.

Fanny and I hit it off from the very start. The hat was working like a charm; and while I was hoping the whole vise treatment would go down without a hitch, I will admit that from the beginning it was a considerable challenge. I was maintaining, however, as much as one could be expected to maintain with a vise clamped down on their head.

But I could see results already. She was wearing flip-flops and I didn’t even once think about how ingrown toenails can often puncture the skin and lead to bacterial infections of the feet. Nor did I remember that Onychomycosis, or Tinea unguium, are common fungi of the toe that can literally eat away at the nail itself.

It was a nice night, so we walked. My experiences riding in cars have not been very pleasant ones, as you may recall.

She must have really liked my hat because she commented on it again.

“You don’t see many hats like that these days,” she said. “In fact, you don’t see many hats at all.”

I told her hats were coming back into style. Just as John F. Kennedy single-handedly killed off the hat industry, Bruce Willis, Garth Brooks, and Charlie Sheen were helping to bring it back.

For some reason, she thought I was funny. Charming, was the word. It was one of those situations where I simply could do no wrong. I’ve been called a lot of things in my day, but charming is not one of them.

“True,” she said, “but still, you won’t see them wearing a hat like that. Ten-gallon hats are for men, not boys.”

Agreed.

“Tom Mix, Gary Cooper, John Wayne. Now those were real men. And they all wore ten-gallon hats.”

Double agreed.

“Although I did see this funny-looking fellow out on Santa Monica Boulevard wearing a hat that looked a lot like yours.”

Whoops.

“In fact,” she said, “it looked exactly like yours.”

Enough about hats.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe hats are coming back into style.”

The restaurant was crowded and the hostess said the wait would be at least an hour. When she asked if she could take my hat, Fanny whispered something in her ear. She showed us to our table right away.

I asked Fanny what she said to her.

“I told her, if John Wayne never had to take his hat off, neither did you.”

Bravo.

“Not really,” said Fanny. “What I really told her was that you were my patient, and that you were being treated for brain cancer.”

Right. Because I looked like some kind of lunatic. And because she was wearing scrubs. Because she was a nurse. Right? Because she was a nurse.

I told her Good One, both lines, although in reality the Duke always took his hat off when in the company of a lady. I should know; I’ve seen every one of his 171 films.

“Right you are,” she said. “Even so, I think more men should wear hats. Women, too. There’s way too much emphasis being placed on hair these days.”

Did she just call me bald?

Then I asked her what was up with the hostess’s voice? It sounded like she had a frog stuck in her throat.

“That was no frog,” said Fanny. “That was the hostess from Shallow Hal.”

You mean? Right.

I have a confession to make. With all the talk of trans these days, I had never actually met one in real life.

“Yes you have;” said Fanny, “you just don’t know it.”

I never thought about it like that before.

“You’re such a dope,” said Fanny, and she smiled at me. “In fact, there are three trans living in our building right now?”

Really? Like who?

“Like Tatiana,” said Fanny, “in 9F.”

TNT? I asked her how she could tell.

“Just look for the apple in her throat,” she said.

I’d never looked at Tatiana’s throat before. I don’t think I’d ever looked at anybody’s throat before.

“Or the nim-nim in her lap.”

I’ll stick with the apple, thank you.

“You know,” said Fanny, “when I was twelve, I transitioned my brother’s GI Joe.”

GI Joe?

“It was a Frogman Joe.”

Sat it isn’t so, Joe.

“Well, to be fair, Joe was androgynous to begin with. Remember?”

That’s right. Joe had no, how to put it delicately: missile to launch.

“So there was no snipping involved.”

Thank God for that.

“All I had to do was add a wig and some breasts. The wig was easy, the breasts I modeled from silly putty.”

Creative.

“To make it permanent, I attached the wig and the silly putty with Super Glue. Boy, was my brother pissed”

I bet.

“I used to do all kinds of crazy shit with my brother’s dolls,” said Fanny. “I threw his GI Joe Action Pilot off the Vincent Thomas Bridge to see if it could fly; I sent his GI Joe Deep-Sea Diver to the bottom of Laguna Lake to see if it could swim; I even doused his GI Joe Firefighter (code-named Barbeque) with gasoline and set it ablaze to see if it was fireproof.”

And?

“Negatory on all counts.”

And you?

“Me?” said Fanny, “Myself, I had the GI Joe Action Nurse.”

GI Joe Nurse?

“Yeah, they actually had a GI Joe Nurse.”

You mean a Barbie doll?

“Hell no,” said Fanny. “It wasn’t a Barbie; it was an actual GI Joe, female nurse.”

Now that I thought about it, it made sense. I guess if Barbie had her Ken, then GI Joe needed someone too. See, even Joe gets lonely.

“Yep,” she said, “it came complete with stethoscope, crutches, even its own little blood-red IV.”

It guess it made sense. They’ll make a doll for most anything. They’ve had tampon dolls, childbirth dolls (complete with placenta), even serial killer dolls, including such classics as Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, and Albert Fish.

Even Barbie has gone off the rails now and again. There was Streetwalker Barbie, Handicap Barbie, even C-section Barbie. That’s right, just remove Barbie’s dress and Wah Lah, right there inside the open hole in her belly was a newborn baby ripe for delivery. What will they think of next?

“I wasn’t much into Barbie,” said Fanny. “Not my cup of tea.”

I’m a coffee man, myself.

“What about you? Did you have any dolls when you were growing up?”

I told her boys don’t call them dolls.

“My bad,” she said. “Action figures.”

I told her I had a huge collection when I was growing up: Captain Kirk from Star Trek, Colonel Steve Austin (the Six-Million Dollar Man), Shazam (the Saturday morning, TV superhero), but my all-time favorite was Big Jim.

“Big Jim?”

Yes. Big Jim was this muscle-bound, surfer dude that when you bent his arm up made his biceps bulge. Problem was, I always grabbed him by the hands and eventually they all snapped off at the wrist, so I had all these Big Jim action figures with no hands.

There was also Big Jack and Big Jeff. Big Josh, too. They all met the same fate. Problem was, without hands, they weren’t much good anymore.

“Sorry,” she said, “I don’t remember any of those.”

Enough with the dolls. I asked her where she was from.

“I grew up in Downey,” she said. “You ever been to Downey?”

Downey. Downey. No. Can’t say as I have.

“You sure?”

The only thing I knew about Downey was that it was down in the middle of nowhere, a barren region between Beverly Hills and Anaheim. Hell, it might as well be La Habra.

“There’s a lot more to it than that,” said Fanny.

I’m sure there is, but Downey is an hour from here on a good day. In LA, being an hour away, you might as well be on the Moon.

“It’s the home of the world oldest McDonald’s.”

I’m lovin’ it.

“And the first ever Taco Bell.”

Think outside the bun.

“It’s where Weird Al Yankovic was born.”

Why didn’t you say so. Another one rides the bus.

“It’s also the professional wrestling capital of the world. At least, it was when I was growing up. Nothing like those TV extravaganzas today, however. Back then, pro wrestlers traveled from town to town, held their matches in cattle corrals. Those were the days.”

Indeed. And your family?

“My family was all in law enforcement,” said Fanny. “My dad, my granddad, my uncle, my cousins, my brothers, all cops.”

I was starting to get the picture.

“It was just me and five brothers. So, when it came time for conflict resolution at my house, it was more like Jerry Springer than Judge Judy. Seriously. When my family aired its grievances, there were black eyes, bloody noses, and walls like Swiss cheese. Good thing we knew a thing or two about drywalling.

“And it didn’t matter one bit that I was a girl. In our house, there were no such things as girls and boys, just cheap shots and payback.

“All the men were cops, all the women: nurses.”

Makes sense.

“My mother was a nurse.”

Apple and the tree.

“So,” said Fanny. “Enough about me. Tell me about yourself.

I told her I was from the area.

“Santa Monica?”

No, but close by. I didn’t want to tell her I was some spoiled brat from the OC.

“And what is it that you do?”

Do?

“Yes, for a living.”

See what I mean?

I told her I work at the UCLA Medical Center.

“Oh,” she said, “are you a doctor?”

Not exactly, I said. I told her I work with doctors, at the Infectious Disease Center.

“Nice,” she said.

Usually, that scares people off.

I told her I majored in microbiology at UCLA.

“Impressive,” she said.

See how that works?

“So,” she said, “you must have some interesting war stories.”

Could be. No one ever asked me about my work before.

I started thinking about Madam Maui in 9J and all those poor cats. Strange as it may seem, maybe Madam Maui wasn’t really so bad after all. Perhaps Maui was instead a madam on a mission. What am I talking about? Why, cat-scratch fever, of course.

No, not the Ted Nugent song. It’s called cat-scratch fever, or cat-scratch disease, and it’s spreading faster than you think. We’ve seen several cases down at the IDC already, and the number is growing at an alarming rate.

Cat-scratch disease, or Subacute Regional Lymphadenitis, is brought on by the bacterium Bartonella henselae, and is transmitted to cats by fleas. Just like the name implies, humans can then get it from being scratched by a cat. Or bitten.

More than twelve thousand Americans are afflicted by the disease every year, and that number is growing, especially in Los Angeles. It’s not information readily available to the public at large.

Symptoms of cat-scratch disease include papules at the point of infection, enlarged nymph nodes, and fever. Side effects include fatigue and a general malaise, but if not treated, the disease can lead to heart infections and swelling of the brain. In some cases, it can even be fatal, I told her.

“Fatal?” she said.

It’s possible, I told, though highly improbable.

“Oh well,” she said, “I’m not too worried about it. Not much of a cat person, myself.”

Truth was, she didn’t have anything to worry about, not with Madam Maui on the prowl.

I told her about two Riverside kids who just came down leprosy.

“Leprosy?” she said. “That still exists?”

Indeed. In fact, there are more than six thousand people in the US with leprosy right now.

“I never would have guessed,” she said.

I told her about a new outbreak of malaria, shingella, and not to forget, even with all the talk about Zika, West Nile Virus was still flying around out there.

“What about Ebola?” she said.

I told her it never really caught on.

To top it off, I told her about the time one of my co-workers got a tear in his hazmat suit and thought he’d been infected with Pyelonephritis. Fanny thought that was hilarious. The funniest part was, some strains of pyelonephritis are now resistant to antibiotics.

Luckily for my co-worker, his test results came back negative. The next day, all the staff presented him with a cake in the shape of a human kidney. Everybody got a big laugh out of it, including him. What I didn’t tell her, of course, was that I watched the whole thing from the other side of the glass. Bagman.

What did matter was that none of my stories seemed to be bothering her in the slightest. In fact, if anything, she appeared to be enjoying them. She was, after all, a nurse. I think.

Your turn, I told her.

“Okay,” she said.

But first, I had to know: was she a nurse? So I just came out and asked her.

“Well,” she said, “I work right around the corner, at St. John’s Medical Center. I went to the UCLA School of Nursing.”

I knew it!

“Before that,” she said, “I worked in Palmdale, Anaheim and Alhambra. Downey too, of course. In the ER. The Trauma Center. So, as you can imagine, I’ve got a few war stories of my own.”

Do tell.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t usually talk shop, but here goes.”

Turnabout is fair play.

“So,” she said. “Woman shows up at the ER complaining of a bad stomach ache. Turns out, a stomach ache is the least of her problems. Bitch is pregnant.

“Now, the ER might be a great place for gunshot wounds and massive cerebral hemorrhaging, but it’s no place for a newborn. We have to get that woman out of there and to the baby hospital, stat.

“So we load her into the ambulance and off she goes, only on this night in particular we’re short-staffed, so guess who gets to do the ride-along? Yep, yours truly.

“If I think I haven’t been blessed enough already, turns out this really is my lucky day. This little ball of slime decides it’s not waiting to get to the baby hospital. It’s coming now.

“Making things even worse, I get no help from the paramedic whatsoever. He wants as much to do with it as the plague, and when I ask him for assistance, all he does is hand me an OB Kit. What the F’ am I supposed to do with an OB Kit? Doesn’t matter, this baby isn’t waiting on me or fancy equipment or anything else. It’s coming now.

“I tell the medic just to give me a freaking blanket and a bulb syringe. All of a sudden the EMT hits the gas, throwing us to the back of the bus. We’re off to the races.

“On top of everything else, this whole time I’m trying to maintain control of the situation. The woman is not helping either, wanting to push her baby out while I’m screaming at her, ‘Stop pushing. You don’t want to have your baby in an ambulance, do you?’ Turns out she doesn’t speak a lick of English. Wouldn’t matter even if she did. When a baby’s ready to come, it’s ready to come.

“Finally, we pull up to the hospital with the NICU unit scrambling and we’re so close. I take one look at the woman and that’s when I realize: close, but no cigar. I give her a look like, Let Her Rip, and she does. It was a bouncing baby girl.

“Guess what, too? That’s right, that bulb syringe came in mighty handy, clasping onto that baby’s nose and mouth and sucking her right out like some kind of octopus. By the time the NICU unit finally arrived, that little baby girl was all wrapped up in a blanket in her mama’s arms.

“When I got back to the ER, all the nurses gave me a standing ovation. They were very appreciative that I was the one, not them, who wound up taking that ride. They knew I hadn’t eaten yet, so to show their appreciation they gave me a lunch box filled with, you guessed it, the placenta. How they got hold of the placenta, I’ll never know.”

Cool, I thought. What an awesome story.

It was at this time it finally dawned on me: Fanny wasn’t sweet and petite, she was short and strong. She wasn’t any kind of girly girl, either. She was rugged, tough as nails.

So you work in the Trauma Canter, I asked her?

“Not anymore,” she said. “Now I work in Pediatrics. The children’s wing.”

Tough as nails, and a lover of children. The perfect combination.

“I know we just met,” said Fanny, “but it feels like we’ve known each other much longer.”

You don’t know the half of it.

“You sure you never been to Downey?”

Pretty sure, unless I went as an infant.

“No, that’s not it. Where did you say you were from?”

I told her again: the area.

“What area?”

Orange County, I finally had to admit.

“Right. The OC. I used to work in Fullerton. Cosa Mesa, too. Maybe that’s it?”

I told her I doubt it. I hadn’t been home in thirty years. In fact, there was no home anymore as both my parents were dead and gone.

“Mine, too,” said Fanny. “Funny how that works.”

How so?

“Well, there you are and life seems like it’s never going to change. Then, one day you look back and your life is completely different. You wonder: how did this happen?”

Exactly.

“For me, it’s like I was just in Downey living with my parents and fighting with my brothers over who gets to use the bathroom next.”

Like the Brady Bunch.

“Sort of,” she said, “if Jan and Cindy had been boys, and if the way the Brady’s settled bathroom privileges was Greco-Roman wrestling.”

Then you must be Marsha Brady. I knew it!

“Not exactly,” said Fanny. “If you recall, Marsha got all the boys.”

And you?

“The only thing I ever got from boys were bare knuckles and elbows.”

Your brothers?

“Yes, my brothers. Believe me, when you have five brothers, potential suitors are hard to find.”

I wouldn’t know; I was an only child.

“What about you?”

What about me?

“Well, you must have been a real lady killer back in the day.”

Not hardly?

I wasn’t about to go into the extent of my failures with the opposite sex.

“What about when you were in high school?”

Grandpop’s tasty little chocolates.

“College?”

I hardly got off the couch.

“Hard to believe,” she said. “I noticed you the first day I moved in.”

In the hall!

“From that very first day I got the feeling: this is someone I need to get to know.”

Then, there was one of those awkward pauses. Hey! Our first awkward pause.

“I’ve got a joke for you,” said Fanny. Fanny was on a roll.

Okay.

“How do you know you’re a nurse?”

I don’t know.

“When you’re basting your Thanksgiving turkey with a Toomey syringe.”

Funny.

“Oh,” she said, “I’ve got another one.”

Shoot.

“You know you’re a nurse when eating microwave popcorn out of a bedpan is perfectly normal, as long as you wipe it down first.”

Gross. Funny, but gross.

Oh, my Fanny. She always said the sweetest little things. She was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Next thing I know, our waiter brings over an order of escargot. “Compliments of the house,” he says. Wow. That cancer bit sure did go a long way.

Did you know that of all the bacteria hot spots in a restaurant, it’s not the salt and pepper shakers, the sugar cube tin, or even the ketchup bottle that’s the most germ-infested? It’s not the bathroom, either. It’s the chairs. I knew this, and it didn’t bother me one bit.

But as I sat there staring at all those slimy little slugs, and even worse as I watched Fanny slurp up one after another, I couldn’t help but remember that snails are teeming with a parasite known as Angiostrongylus cantonensis, and if not cooked properly can cause nausea, vomiting, even diarrhea. It was time for a hat adjustment.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Fanny, and then she went into her purse. It was the chance I’d been waiting for. I reached under my hat and gave the vise a good turn. My ears started ringing. I smiled, and started to sweat.

“Here,” she said. “Give me your hands.”

She then proceeded to dab hand sanitizer into the palms of my hands. “Restaurants are just crawling with germs,” she said. “You have no idea.”

It was official: I was in love.

There’s only one thing in a restaurant with as many germs as a chair, and that’s the menu. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. But it didn’t matter to me. It didn’t matter to me that menus have the types of bacteria that cause staph infections, sometimes strep throat. I was feeling so happy and free, I could have licked the entire menu right then and there.

Fanny ordered Fruits de Mer, which sounds quite lovely, but in reality consists of just about every disgusting shell fish and sea urchin there is. I had the Cuisses de Grenouille. I didn’t know what it was until they brought it out. It was frog legs.

Did you know? Frogs aren’t just for dinner anymore. That’s right. It seems nowadays people have taken to smoking the little slimy guys. Toads, to be exact. They’ve been licking them for years for the hallucinogenic properties in their skin, Bufotenine, a poison that acts much like a fungus; but now, it seems, the trend is to smoke them as well. The recipe is as follows:

 

First, get a frog, preferably a Colorado River or Sonoran Desert toad.

Next, place the frog in a Pyrex dish, or any other glass or smooth baking surface.

Then, rub the parotoid glands behind the frog’s eyes. (This will make the frog angry, thereby secreting a milky venomous fluid known as Bufotenine.)

After the frog is plenty mad, collect the liquid venom and spread onto the baking dish. Cook in the oven at 425 degrees for 5 minutes, or until the liquid substance has evaporated. You will know it’s ready when you see only crystals.

*BE SURE TO REMOVE FROG FROM DISH BEFORE BAKING.

Finally, scrape up the crystals and place them in a pipe. Smoke for your enjoyment.

Repeat process every four to six weeks, or as long as it takes for the frog to replenish venom.

 

The venom in the frog has a trippy effect, much like that of LSD. The poison in the bufotenine itself is actually burned off while smoking, leaving just 5-MeO-DMT, the chemical substance of choice.

Many frogs indigenous to Central and South America called Dendrobatidaes, or Dart Frogs, are also utilized for their toxic secretions. The natives there dip the tips of their arrows or blow darts in the poison to incapacitate or even kill their foe or prey.

As dizzy as I was, I was half expecting those little guys to get up and dance right across my plate.

I pushed my plate away.

“Everything OK?” asked Fanny.

Everything was just fine, I told her; it’s just that my head was hurting again.

By the time they brought the hot towels, I’d turned the screws three, four, maybe six or seven times more. I lost count. But I was sweating something awful, talking in gibberish, and Fanny said my face was turning beet red. That’s exactly the term she used, “beet red.” We decided to skip dessert.

She held onto my arm all the way home. I wish it was because she was feeling romantic, but I knew it was so I wouldn’t fall down. We said good night, and she told me to take a few aspirin, get some rest, and call her if I didn’t get to feeling any better.

“It must have something to do with you hitting your head,” she said.

After I got that damn vise off my head, I did indeed start feeling better.

Lying there that night thinking about it, I realized things could have gone a lot worse. I made it through the entire dinner, and even though she returned me home a mental cripple, in her mind I was simply suffering the after-effects of a bad fall. All in all, I’d say date night had been a great success.