The place where hopes go to die.

Date: December 29th, 2006
Location: Seal Harbor (Mount Desert Island), Maine
Purpose of trip: Hypothermia and, ultimately, death.

I'm not entirely sure why it is that I, two years ago while home in Maine over a portion of my winter break, decided that I would be flinging myself into the unforgiving North Atlantic at the completion of each calendar year. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The first year I swam it was a very cleansing ritual of momentary, symbolic death from a dismal and heartbreaking year previous and rebirth into the hope of what was, even at that point, shaping up to be a good year following.

What a load. I did it because it was weird and I wanted to see if I would survive.

When I awoke on December 29th, I knew that 2006 - and several layers of skin - would be sacrificed to the churlish sea. However, there was a little bit of a tickle in the back of my throat and I, momentarily fearing for my own mortality, regrouped and reconsidered. I wasn't flinging my pallid carcass into the midwinter ocean to prove anything to anyone, least of all myself. I knew that the shock of bathing in seawater that had dropped below freezing would compromise my immune system and, in a particularly special development, I'd not gotten my flu shot this past year.

And yet, as I found myself later striding briskly into the brine, I felt compelled by a force that was greater than me. Was it the lure of the deep itself calling me back to my ancestral mer-homeland? Was it a selkie beckoning me to an aquatic demise? Or was it the half a can of Pam I'd huffed earlier in the day?

I was submerged for four seconds, tops, when I began to feel my life slipping away. As I raced onto the beach for the succor of a dry towel, my chest began to hitch a little. This can't be good, I thought. I stopped screaming long enough to evaluate my physical condition and dress myself in clothing that wasn't going to freeze.

Yep. Still there with that chest thing.

Awesome.

31 Hours Later

It's insanely difficult to pen your memoirs while simultaneously creating a durable will that adequately expresses how each of my 80+ masks would be given to the people in my life who a) don't bite it and b) wouldn't recoil in horror from the gift. The bucket beside my bed was nearly half full of a substance that resembled, in consistency and color, pistachio pudding, which I had been hacking up all day and night long. To make matters worse, I began to lose the hearing in my right ear and my right eye began to swim lazily in the socket in a lake of my own eye-brine, unbidden and coal-hot.

Maybe, I thought, I ought to see a physician.

By the time I arrived at the PromptCare facility, I had begun to speak directly to Guanyin, the Chinese goddess of mercy.

Me: Deng tian fan guo fan xiao ting, Guan Yin xiao shen ma?

Guanyin: What the hell? Is that s'posed to be Chinese?

Me: I was trying to meet you halfway so that you would intercede on my behalf while I battle a dread illness that I believe will verily take my sweet, young life. Apparently I didn't need to. Do I detect a Bronx accent?

Guanyin: Mmmm girl, you know it, a'ight? [giggles] Wat'choo want, foo'?

Me: I'd like to live.

Guanyin: That it?

Me. Yes.

[Guanyin's cellphone rings; the ringtone is Destiny's Child's 'Survivor']

Guanyin: [attempting to whisper] Girl, I ain' playin', I got this white boy who wants to survive his ches' cold. Bitch no, I ain' playin'! Here, you wanna talk to the foo'?

My doctor set upon me, probing me with his fleshless little fingers for swollen glands and inserting a splintery caber into my throat to check for strep beasties, who are apparently wont to throw their unspeakable block parties on ones uvula. Once he was finished, be began to write prescriptions with a pen I have to assume was fashioned out of the melted golden teeth of death squad victims. He told me what I was to take and when and began to leave the room before turning to me.

"Um, you also have a highly infectuous flareup in your conjunctiva."

My mind's medical Rolodex spun quickly. Conjunctiva, conjunctiva... yes, filed under "conjunctivitis."

As he was halfway out the door, I put two and two together and shrieked at his retreating white labcoat.

"You mean I have pinkeye?"

"Um, duh", he said. I vowed then and there to speak with some of my more shadowy relatives to arrange for a very special little activity for Mr. Rich Bony Doctor-Man; this activity would likely involve a liter of Sambuca, a lawn dart and intense amounts of sweat.

In the meantime: pinkeye? Apparently it's not just for the kiddies anymore, and there it was, clouding my vision and nearly palpably spreading vile contagion.

Did I mention that this happened the day after Spring Orientation for all of our newly-arrived precious ones had begun? Indeedy-o.

I spent the better part of four days waiting to die, waiting to live, waiting for a nostril to free itself so that I could take a decent nap before I began to choke to death on my own effluent. The eyedrops cost $90 and came in a bottle the size of a coke addict's pinkie-nail and I got to take an antibiotic so strong that it is used routinely, in conjunction with shots, for the treatment of The Big S. As I lay in bed, my face half-paralyzed, my chest filled with what I must assume is Satan's toe-jams, and with my eye slowly cooking in the crockpot that had become my eyesocket, I had a great many hallucinations. I won't go into detail here, but suffice it to say that I no longer have to wonder where Jimmy Hoffa is interred.

It was also then that the question of whether all of this had resulted from my ill-advised splashabout in the drink. In the spirit of a particularly American model of assigning blame to anyone other than oneself, I assured myself that, while I may not have HELPED an incipient condition, one does not get a cold from being cold. It's medical fact.

Lathing ones tongue over an airplane pillow, though . . .

***

Keith and I recently entered our home after each enduring a harrowing day of work that makes one pine for a handful of Xanax to find that, of course, nothing even remotely edible existed in our home. Upon brief consultation, we agreed upon a local restaurant to patronize. This establishment shall remain nameless [doowneerg ni s'yelrahc'o] to protect the innocent and those who, until proven otherwise, are presumed so.

We settle in with drinks and begin to notice that our server - a thirtyish creature - is whipping around in our section like a child's toy that had been wound one click more than it should have been. The primary focus of the activity was a nearby booth where a really nasty, cruel and porcine family of four had crammed themselves in for a nice dinner out. She would stop there, apologize for some perceived slight, and scuttle like a hermit crab on crystal back to the kitchen. By the time we were ready to order, I'd come to understand that this particular evening would be replete with the unspeakable.

Keith ordered a burger and I ordered a bowl of soup and, in a moment of desperate insanity, a plate of some chicken fingers that were to be tossed in a Thai chili-peanut sauce. She teleported away after our order was complete and kept repeatedly fecking over the people in the booth behind us. At one point, she whipped away from their booth with a part of an incorrect order - a bowl of soup - and saw me alone (Keith was 'washing his hands' in the bathroom). She drops the soup in front of me and asks if I "want a free bowl of soup." Considering that soup had, uh, already been a part of my order, I grunted a bewildered "yes" and consumed it with gusto. Five minutes later, our food arrived. Keith's burger was exactly like he'd wanted, but my Thai chicken tasted and smelled as if it had been coated in diaper-dump. I choked down as much of it as I could before my throat began to clamp shut in protest; my gorge rose merrily and I began to cramp. After the spasms died down, I began to reckon that I'd made a bad decision, but hey: that's life. I took a gamble and would come out of the experience none the worse for the wear - well, except that I would have to pay for the meal, and by "pay" I mean "with money, and, uh, with precious time astride a porcelain receptacle."

It was at this time that the manager slithers over to our booth and sidles up to me.

Untidy Manager Man: So, how was your meal tonight?

Me: [lying] It was fine, just fine.

UMM: Well, we've got a new cook and whatever happened tonight wasn't your server's fault. We're really sorry that it took so long for your food to come out.

[Keith and Dom exchange glances]

UMM: I'll be taking care of your dinner tonight. Again, we apologize for how delayed your food was.

He departs to draw the contents of a sooty Erlenmeyer flask filled with Greenwood's finest methamphetamine into his lungs behind the Dumpster out back. In our booth, Keith and I stare at each other. A free dinner. For no reason whatsoever. What the hell? Should we say something? Should we protest and pay? What, exactly, was going on? We got our check - a formality, considering that it was a balance of $0.00 - and sat, numb, wondering why on earth our $25 dinner was on the house. As the incessantly bitchy manatees at the booth next to ours prepared to compensate the establishment for their ghastly fried meals, I thought: hey. Were these the people who should have gotten a free meal? On the tail of that thought: Feck that. How often does this kind of thing happen? And, uh, aren't we pretty motherhumpin' poor?

It was at this moment - faced with paying nothing for a meal in a fairly nice restaurant - that we realized that we had no cash. Nothing to tip the waitress. I had to ask the manager - fresh from his Dumpster excursion - to charge us for a dinner roll (24 cents) so that I could charge and leave my tip on my credit card. Again, he apologized for any inconvenience that we might have experienced and, still completely baffled, we left in great haste.

That evening, as I gave great thanks that I didn't have to pay for the meal that was going to keep me awake all night, I wondered again what had transpired. Did we look famous? Did he mistake the tables, giving us the free ride that the dugongs across the way should have gotten? Or, as I surmise, was I the first to try their new secret recipe Thai Baby's Undercarriage Chicken Strips?

Until later, I remain,

Domonic (mydinnercamewithnapkinfoldedlikePampers) Potorti