Doktora gittim, yine.

"I went to the doctor, again."

Last week I was sitting at my desk, oh, I don't know, thinking about the torrid love triangle involving Brad, Jennifer and Angelina - Angelina who, as we speak, is preparing to adopt YOUR baby - when I began to feel like a mongoose was trying to escape from the corner of my eye. I decided to go into the third floor men's room (which reeks, at all times, like Calcutta in July of human effluvia) to check it out. As I held my breath for fear of internalizing what can only be described as an unimaginable pall of man-stench, I poked my eyelid open and gasped. There, in the corner of my eye, under the lid, was a tiny, lustrous pearl I'd produced from a wee bit of dust.

Well, if by "pearl" I mean "a hideous fire-engine-red lesion which pulsed with my every heartbeat as if it was attempting to leap forth from my skull ", then yeah, that's what it was.

Now I know you feed a fever but starve a cold and douche for cholera, but what does one do when a feverish lump the size of a chickpea erupts forth from your inner eyelid? Barium enema? Chinese herbal teas stewed from the hooves of endangerd ungulates? A compress made from the sweat of an ascetic and corn-silk? I grabbed a Ziploc baggie and filled it with ice and was reclining in my chair, moaning like a whore, when my boss Chris walked by. He poked his head in and asked if I was OK. When I peeled back my eyelid to reveal The Sore Whose Name Is Not Spoken, defiant and putrid, he deftly suppressed his gag reflex and then let everyone know he was taking me to the doctor. Oh yes, the doctor.

After a wait which caused several key vertebrae to telescope, I was ushered into a diagnostics area, whereupon I was met with a young woman whose charms could best be described as "Josef Mengele with less fashion-sense." She administered the blood pressure check, a pulse check, and an eye exam that included a special injection of blue dye "to see if [I] could look a little bit Aryan, for Christ's sake." She concluded the exam by telling me that I had 20/15 vision, which she told me would "help me spot vermin." Whatever "vermin" means.

So there I was, in a tiny antiseptic room decorated with enchanting diagrams of reproductive anatomy, reading a year-old Reader's Digest's Humor In Uniform section when a man entered and introduced himself.

Squirrely Weird Intern Dude: Hello! I'm interning here and I am going to be helping you today.

[begins to put on gloves; one of his eyes began to wander so that it looked at me independently from the other like a gecko]

SWID: So, what seems to be the problem?
Me: Well, there's a red bump inside my eyelid the size of a grape.
SWID: *nods and hmmms* Can I see it?
Me: No. Where's the real doctor?
SWID: Just give me your damn eyelid, mothertoucher.

He pries open my eyelid and, while I wasn't paying attention, squirts dishwashing detergent in my eye.

SWID: Is that uncomfortable?
Me: *swiping at my eye like a rabid badger* Yes, yes it is.
SWID: Interesting. Well, that should numb your eye for The Procedure. Now: can you tell me how this came to be?
Me: I don't have the first idea.
SWID: Well, have you been eating anything unusual?
Me: Like what?
SWID: Like human flesh.
Me: Nope. Gave it up for Lent and now I can't afford it.
SWID: I see. Well, how about your bathing habits? You do bathe, right?
Me: Well, when it rains.
SWID: Umm-hmm. Well, have you been orally pleasuring the homeless?
Me: Who told you that? Those charges were dropped and expunged from my record.
SWID: Ok. Well, you seem to have contracted a tropical parasite known only from a few autopsied corpses in the Congo. Any idea as to how you could have come in contact with that?
Me: Can I see the real doctor now?

He leaves and returns ten minutes later with a man in a nice white coat. Squirrely Weird Intern Dude has a needle in his sweaty palm and looks like a well-to-do child on Christmas morn in his post-present-opening-orgiastic bliss.

SWID: Can I pop it? Can I, can I?
Doctorman: No! Down, Jim, down!

[Doctorman takes out a squirt bottle and sprays Jim in the face with two controlled blasts; Jim whimpers and cowers in the corner]

Doctorman: OK, sir, there's an infection in one of the goo-producing glands in your eye. Jim here wanted to lance it, but I think some $400 an ounce medication should clear it up.

Jim looks down at the sterile needle he'd brought and looks back at me like I'd raped his new puppy. I arch my back and hiss at him. It's the best I could do.

The medicine, indeed, was $65 and contains about 40 drops of what I have to imagine are the tears of an uncanonized saint. As the orange-sized swelling in my eye weakened and began to perish, I could faintly hear Vatican records being opened to mark the miracle that was the salvation of my left eye. That, and the lesion began speaking to me in halting, strange tongues as it succumbed. It was like shaking the Burr Woman off my back but without the fifty-pound greyish hominid following me around, begging for some Tang.

*****

I've been getting emails like "I will disembowel you with a grapefruit spoon if you don't post pictures of the cat soon!" lately, so here he is (see above). So yeah, that's Balthazar, but lately we've been calling him The Wee One. Here are his stats!

Name: Balthazar Anatole Romulus Potorti
Nickname(s): Wee One, Bat, "Jesusgetbackoverhere"
Residence: One of the weird squishy blue pillows on my bed, in a nest he's hewn from it.
Favorite Color: Brownish-orange, like the forty reeking dumps he takes every day.
Doesn't Know How To: Clean his ass with his tongue. Yet. We're holding out hope.
Favorite Activity: Mewing like he's been poked with hatpins.
Second Favorite Activity: Hallucinating.
Third Favorite Activity: Defecating.
Special Talent: Sees dead people.
Favorite Song: Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Speaks: Mewlish and Portugese.
Hobbies: Hiding; biting things.

He's so damn cute I can't even bear it. He seems to have adopted me as his surrogate mother because he will not stop trying to suckle from any piece of my exposed skin.

All of you bastards who chortled at that will soon be crisping in Hell in your own liquid fat.

I will keep you abreast of his development. For example, I am now attempting to teach him to indentify by taste the regional cuisines of China and Keith, how to play the sitar.

I am off to peddle immigration documents to the confused and international.

Until next time, I remain,

Dom