Proverbs 26, Verse 4-5
"When arguing with a rebel, don't use foolish arguments as he does,
or you become as foolish as he is!
Prick his conceit with silly replies!"
---
CHIPPED WISDOM:
As I was driving to work this morning, I was treated to a story about botched young adult circumcisions in South Africa. Not just bungled procedures, but inept aftercare by "very young, inexperienced female nurses." Call me what you will, but, if I were a young adult who had just been circumcised, I'm not sure having my mutilated genitals and my wounded pride tended to by a nurse of that description would necessarily be unenviable.
Of course, I suppose it would be if said nurse wrapped the bandage so tight that it ceased all blood-flow to my penis, resulting in tissue death, gangrene, and, yeah, amputation.
In 2013, these incorrectly-performed and dubiously cared for circumcisions resulted in 43 deaths, and countless disfigurements and irregularities. Out of how many, I don't know, but that seems to be a pretty significant failure rate for a procedure that was executed on my son by an octogenarian on my parents' dining room table in front of a not wholly insignificant audience, many of whom, I hasten to add, were armed with iPhones. No photographs were permitted by the mohel during the actual procedure, and I cringed when he said that, because I'd like to think that nobody in the room, at least nobody who was related to me by blood, would need such an admonition but, sadly, I knew that probably wasn't the case. I wish he'd said "no eating", too.
And as I turned the wheel of my Volvo this way and that way, as I do on my automatically adhered-to meandering route to work, best performed when 75% asleep, I couldn't help but think about medicine-- how far we've come, how slow we've rolled, how much we know and how much we don't. I was thinking about what would happen if a victim of one of these Dr. Tremblefingers operations stumbled somehow into a state-of-the-art American hospital. He'd be all septic and infected and they'd administer drugs to stabilize all his functions and they'd drain puss and they'd save whatever inches they could so that, when they guy recovered and felt like hitting the clubs again, he might, one fortuitous night, end up taking a cab headed straight to Poundtown.
Because, when your dick's infected, and you take an antibiotic, you can pretty much tell if that's working. Your pee-hole stops frothing, I mean, it's pretty obvious. If you've cut your goddamn arm off with a grapefruit knife and somebody applies a tourniquet, the bleeding will stop, and you can pretty much see that, and that's good.
I've been on Viibryd for a good few months now, and, when the psychiatrist or the therapist asks me if I'm working, I always feel slightly exasperated. I want to say, "What? You mean you can't you see my dick isn't throwing up anymore?"
But, of course, it's not like that, is it? There's nothing really to see. It's just me, cross-legged in that chair, staring absently at the carpet, or my therapist's knee, or at a pile of paperclips on the desk. Or the guacamole stain on my trousers. (Thanks, son.) And I'm supposed to talk about how I've been doing for the last two weeks, or the last month. Like I know. I want to bring in supporting testimony from friends, family, and coworkers. I want it to be a trial, and I want the medical professional to make a ruling.
I don't want to be the judge.
Besides-- I can't see anything. I mean, seriously: what the fuck is this?
Is that what Viibryd's doing inside my brain-- spinning the Christ around like that? When the ads say "The way in which Viibryd works is not entirely understood," are they really saying, "We don't know why Viibryd does pirouettes in your stupid dysthymic head"?
So, when they ask me, I usually say, "I don't know." But I suppose one thing I have noticed lately is more sillies. More prancing and dancing around the house. More goofery with the children, and with my wife. More lightness of being. More pirouettes
And so I told my therapist that. He doesn't take notes during session so, afterwards, in between me and the next guy, as he sips Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee and bites a piece of a Nutrigrain bar, I don't know if he checked off a box that said, "Eurythmic", or if he scribbled "more sillies" or what, and I know it's not an empirically valid estimation of, well, much of anything. And I still think about death and brood about my shortcomings and I am terrified of the future and there's the hopeless insecurity of tomorrow and the dismal, petty failures of yesterday, and the incompetence of today that I haven't even processed because I'm far too entertained watching that blue and gray and white and red Viibryd spinning and twirling in the glow of my computer screen, too busy thinking about you and what you're thinking about me and what we're thinking about each other and I just spent ten minutes clutching my sweet, tear-stained son because he was crying in his crib in the dark and if I have passed on this little monster to him I will be very sad indeed, but at least his circumcision was a success so, you know, we've got that.
And that's something to dance and be silly about.
