Godammit, I’m Mad!

I finally decided to see the doctor today, when my terrible sore throat turned into a fever with body aches and a rattling bronchial cough. Since I didn’t already have an appointment, I was told I could be a walk-in patient but I’d have to wait.

After an hour of waiting in a nearly empty waiting room, I was joined by a teenager who’d been stung by a bee. Her father was an asshole. They took the bee-sting girl and left me to wait, coughing my guts out. I asked why the girl got to be seen before me, and that seemed to elevate the hostility from behind the window.

I lay down across some chairs, and tried to stop coughing. Patients arrived and were led behind the door to see their doctors. They were all fat. The women behind the glass window were fat as well, and spoke in proud pidgin English or whatever it’s called when you’re Latina and refuse to use proper grammar.

A father arrived with four kids under the age of ten. I was entranced by how gently he brushed his son’s hair behind an ear stuffed with cotton. The youngest child walked over to me to look at the fish tank. We talked about the stuff in the tank and she called the sponge a “ponge.”  I was brokenhearted when her father took her away to see their doctor.

Three hours passed. I decided that the office women were punishing me for not being fat. I wanted to stick my head through the window and scream, “It’s not my fault I’m not fat.”

Meanwhile, I brought a book with me that I’ve meant to read for years: The Afterlife, by Donald Antrim. It turned out to be a memoir about a crazy mother. The writing is amazing. The kind of writing that hits the exact right spot, like sex. It was so intense that I had to keep putting it down to recover from it.

Finally, I pretended to have to use the restroom, and I went behind the door. I sat on a chair in the hall where no one could ignore me, and coughed dramatically.

A doctor I’ve never met before asked me what the problem was. I told her that one problem was the 3 1/2 hour wait. I confided that it was punitive because the office women hated me. She reacted badly to this so I apologized and told her my symptoms.

She gave me some antibiotics, some cough syrup with codeine, and a ridiculous lecture about my attitude. She told me that there was a time to be stoic and a time to be vulnerable. Except she said “vunerable” without the L. That was the last straw. I felt a visceral* repugnance for this doctor, who then went on to ask “What are you doing for yourself?” I am always disgusted by that question and I  don’t like to lower myself to answer it. I told her, Well, I write.

She said, “That doesn’t count. I mean, like music.”

*The word for this week is visceral.

After Jill and Braindance shared their childhood memories of  douche bags, I recalled my own uneasy feelings about those rubber things hanging over the bathtub when I was a kid.

They were certainly a fixture in our bathroom, along with an enema bag and maybe even some other scary medical-looking crap. Wow, our mothers and grandmas were so weird!

Try a Google image search for an actual douche bag, and most of what you’ll find are sickening guys and joke products that refer to the sickening guys. In other words, the old fashioned douche bag is a relic of another time, and its namesake is here to stay.

Who the hell invented the douche bag? What a maniac. In fact, what a douche! I am thankful to my mom for neglecting to give me any instructions on “feminine hygiene” or anything else. I learned everything I know from my sister, dirty books, and The Hite Report.

But I feel kind of bad about depriving my own kids of the douche bag experience. They never got to feel queasy about their mother’s weird rubber crap in the bathroom. They never knew the frisson of squeamish curiosity that is such a touchstone of childhood. God, I’m a failure.

Perhaps the shit on my dresser will make it up to them.  It seems like it might have that Mom Mystique that could haunt them for the rest of their lives. I’ll have to ask them. Take a look and tell me what you think.

I just stupidly clicked on an ad that asked “Why so angry?” and ended up here. UGH, now I’m even angrier! Fuck you, happier.com! If I wanted a bowl of flowers, I’d go get one.

That’s the anger part.
~

Death has been a topic of debate, in the news and over here, regarding the right of parents to withhold medical treatment from their children. Jump in, if you have strong feelings about this.

Also, I am finally getting some feedback on something I wrote about euthanasia nearly three years ago. How come now? I don’t get it! But I’m still interested in it, and in hearing other opinions.

Actually, I believe it is known as antinatalism.  I had no idea there were so many people passionately opposed to procreation, on the grounds that it morally indefensible to bring a child into the world when we know with certainty that it will lead to suffering and death.

Do you feel this is a crock of shit? I do, and here’s why. I believe that if I invited every antinatalist to commit suicide, I would get no takers. Why? Because they fucking want to live, that’s why! Even though life means suffering, THEY WANT MORE OF IT. But they don’t want to subject this thing they want more of, to any future beings.

I believe these avowed antinatalists are acting in bad faith by refusing to kill themselves. Shit or get off the pot, know what I mean?

Life is certainly filled with tragedy but as Woody Allen complained about a restaurant with bad food, the portions are so small!

By the way, I came upon this topic via Chip Smith, a provocateur (and antinatalist) whose website wants to make you mad, or at least ruffle your feathers.