Open Letters (Mike)

This is a piece I wrote for the webzine Open Letters which was rejected. I thought I'd post it here instead.

Dear Mike:

Well, after four days of the stomach flu, I'm finally feeling up to sitting in front of my computer and writing a letter. The flu in general, I think, has got to be one of the most insidious calamities ever to befall the human race - a sudden, dire attack on one's health, but lasting just short enough of a time that you're considered a wimp for seeking medical treatment. The conventional wisdom, throughout history, has always seemed to be: "get in bed, moan and groan, drink your 7-Up, and lump it up, you big baby."

But the stomach flu…well, that's a whole different monster altogether. Upon my 96th consecutive hour of painful and immediate reflection on the subject, I am sincerely under the belief that there is no greater awareness of pure terror and one's own mortality than while in the process of vomiting. Your body just...locks up, kind of like when you have an orgasm but in a much more alarming and certainly less fun way. Your muscles do things that you have no control over. Bending over that toilet, you are allowed one final moment of sickeningly rational thought - "Oh God, I think I'm gonna..." before finally going off the deep end and simply praying to whatever non-existent god you can think of. "I want to DIE!" Splash! "Kill me NOW!" Splash! "Shit shit shit!" Splash!

Yet the act of vomiting is also a great catharsis, as I've been reminded of this week. Not just because of the physical act of removing what your body perceives as toxic substances from your system (graham crackers and ginger ale) but also from the emotional boost it gives. After an entire day of laying in your bed, your energy level so low that you can't even lift your arms, throwing up makes you feel like you've actually accomplished something. You slump your wretched, now-aching torso off to the side of the commode, resting your feverish head against the cool porcelain, and immediately you start feeling better. Whether or not it's true, your body is at least tricked into thinking it's done something positive towards making you a better, healthier person. Your eyeballs no longer jaggedly take a few seconds to catch up with the turns of your head. You feel...refreshed. Well, not exactly, but at least for the next hour you don't feel like your stomach is going to burst open like a bad science-fiction movie.

I don't like getting sick in Chicago. I mean, I never especially liked it even when I was a kid, but at least someone was around to take care of me. I am a baby, an absolute godforsaken little child, when I become sick. I do NOT want to be tough. I do NOT want to continue to go to work. I don't even want to go to the convenience store myself, for Chrissakes. There is no worse feeling in the world than to stand in a florescent-lit Kwikee Mart in the middle of a large urban area at three in the afternoon while feverish, shaky, in bad need of a shave and stinking of sweat and shit and vomit. It is the most immediate and painful reminder you can have that you are alone in this world - no loved one to take care of you, to take your temperature and put their hand on your forehead and furrow their brows in worry, to gently force you into a sitting position to get a little more juice in you.

It's the job of these people to make sure you do the things you're supposed to do when you're sick, in order to get better. You don't want to be responsible and rational - you just want to die. That's all I was able to think about for three days straight - "I want to die, I want to die, I want to die. Why won't someone come into my apartment and put me out of my misery?" But then I'd think, "Shit, well, I've got to get some of this liquid down if I want any chance at all of getting better." And then I'd think, "I thought that's what a girlfriend was for, to force me to drink this liquid because I'm too busy wanting to die." And then I'd remember that I don't have a girlfriend. And then I'd get depressed all over again. And then I'd run to the bathroom and throw up some more.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and visiting me the other night while I was in the depths of my fever-induced hallucinations. It is a true friend who will deal with someone in that state and not run in abject terror. By the way, the pot was just what the doctor ordered.

Jason.

Copyright 2000, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.