Off World Blues
3
Blaxis Nebulae
GYnxXST Memorial Hospital
by Jason Nunes
So, I've stumbled onto another Universal
Constant recently. Oh, there's a few. Truths and ideas that seem to apply
wherever I ramble and roam across this crazy wide universe. Stuff like:
Everybody got religion! Amen Brotah! Whether it's the nameless, all-powerful,
never-to- be-comprehended, unfathomable, invisible, everywhere- but-nowhere
Godhead, or the great mindless jelly mold progenitor whose stupidly crapping
out universes like a fat man O.D.in' on nanoFiber™. We all need to
know from whence we came … hallelujah!
Another is: Everybody needs love. Can
you dig it? (Tryin' for my best Barry White voice here) Oh sure, sometimes
that love means getting a hole punched in your carapace and having your
guts sucked out to supply your dalin' sweetie with enough nourishment
to make it through the final weeks of her 7 year pregnancy, but really,
who hasn't had their hearts broken, their insides ripped out, their heads
split open and throbbing over love? Ain't that what the Blues is all about?
Ain't that why I got a job in the first place? Even out here?
Oh there's simpler ones too … Everybody
gotta eat, everybody gotta shit, everybody gotta breath … Well, something,
anyway.
Just recently I've stumbled onto another
one. It's kinda special when that happens you know? More evidence that
underneath our skin, chitin, silicate shells that there's stuff that ties
us all together … from the N'TC0mB3 mass hive mind, to the nameless
hydrogen amoebas who live in the Barsis Gas Giant … We are all BROTHAS
N' SISTAHS n' … errrrr, all the rest of the crazy sexes that are
out there.
So, here's the latest one I've stumbled
onto, due to my reaquantence with another Earthling flung far out into
this harsh galaxy, admittedly not one I was super keen to ever see again
(I got a freekin' cold you dig? Nasty one too. Musta been lonely way out
here in the left-hand corner of the universe with no one to infect. It's
hanging on to me like a bum on a baloney sandwich, like white on rice,
like my crazy freeloading uncle Paul whose "just gonna stay for a week
or two then I'll hit the road" … yeah right! A week or two my ass!)
anyway because of my new little friend I discovered a new universal constant.
As fundamental as sex. As universal as bathroom breaks. You ready? You
sitting down? (Drum roll please)
AHEM
HOSPITAL EMERGENCY WAITING ROOMS SUCK!
(surprised?)
There's some crazy trick of quantum physics
in waiting rooms. Time moves at a different rate. It slides by at 1X10100
longer than on the outside world, where it's still whipping by,
and you end up missing YEARS of you life (not to mention appointments,
gigs, etc)
Your fellow denizens are some strange
subset of the worst of the dregs, and, for the time that you sit there,
you join them. You morph into the screaming vidgame junky, fakin' it so
you can get the docs to write you up a SEGA fix. You become the scabby
crazy old herpies X infected street person bag lady with the open sores,
the glowing gums, and the muttering. You suddenly can't speak the language,
and stand there screaming for help as snot dribbles down your face and
you can't stop hacking and hacking gray-yellow phlegm all over the inplexglass
divider ...
Meanwhile everyone ignores you (well,
at least the doctors, nurses, and staff anyway).
They go about their incomprehensible
business … pushing rolling carts of strangely shaped equipment. Yelling
into intercoms and phones. Streaking by at speeds that come close to breaking
the sound barrier. Or best of all, and my personal favorite, leaning up
against the wall in tight little groups talking about the new FREAKIN'
hovercycle they just bought or their last mother fuckin' off world fishing
safari!
Can't they see I'm in pain here? Or at
least get the old biddy down the hall whose screaming "OHHHH ixpha i manujat
dor SUMAT IX!!!! OHHHHHHH I KASSUMAN MIX NAT MAAAANNNUUUUJAAAAAT!!!!!!!!"
to shut the hell up?!?
Yes brothers and sisters. It's the truth
from Newbury Connecticut to the twelth moon of Z'CHCHt'k'tCHH'NA …
there is nothing worse than being in a hospital waiting room. I'm guessing
that that Dante fellow didn't so much get a glimpse into hell when he
wrote that Inferno thing … Nope, he stumbled into a little time hole
dig? And landed flat in St. Mary's Diving Healing Hand Memorial Municipal
Hospital … butt first into the Emergency Ward's hard chaired, loud,
smelly, bus station wanna be, waiting room! BOO YA! Cause, lemme tell
you, the 7th plane of hell ain't got nothin' on that! No siree!
So you know what? Can't tell if it's
causea the fact that I can't stand being neck deep in this morass of misery
anymore, or if I'm suddenly feeling a strange, ill advised bout of sympathy
for a fellow expat. (This cold's from Earth too you know? Couldn't infect
me otherwise. It's a looooooong way from home too. All alone in a big
ol' galaxy. Well, all alone except for me.) But I think I'm gonna keep
it. (Yeah ma, I'll clean up after it … I'll feed it … I'll take
it for walks) Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (even with the hot
n' achy n' shivery on the out.) I'll be these little suckers: Israel.
Their promised land! The little biosphere that could!
Somehow each sneeze, each sniffle, makes
me feel a little less lonely out here. Makes me feel like I got me a friend.
Most important of all of course … I can get the HELL out of this
goddamned, mother grabbing, cork sucking, mad house of an expletive
deleted WAITING ROOM!
© Jason Nunes
2001
|
