Sometimes you just have to vent.

So I’ve been sitting in this coffee shop for about two hours. I mean, as far as I’m concerned I’ve been in this damn place for all of purgatory, i.e. the past year. Today though in particular I’ve downed one French press, which is about three cups of coffee and then I decided to follow that with one “regular” cup of joe. It’s rocketing through my veins. Needless to say, I have the jitters. It’s a toss up from the sensation of falling ten stories down and insomnia. I’ve been listening to Wilco, The War On Drugs and Slyvan Esso. So it’s been a fine mixture of folk and electro pop, basically the most common type of music that I’ve been blasting as of late. It’s been a year since I fractured my pelvis jumping a rain soaked fence at Skyridge hospital in Cleveland Tennessee after the birth of Bonnie Leigh Cotton. Since that day I’ve heard in multiple ways, “Brady, thank God you’re a dumb ass... I’m so glad you’re retarded... being stupid just saved your life...” and so on. But I’m currently at a stale mate, how do I look back upon the last year? Should I still be thanking my stupidity or start reflecting on my victories? If my stupidity is truly the unsung hero, then was it in fact a dumb move or a divine act of God that I ignored my typical statement, “I don’t do dangerous things.” And as for my victories, are they really my victories? Being a cancer patient I’ve been at the whim of blood tests and doctoral prognosis’, I never once leaned over during a procedure and said, “You should do this differently” or told them the proper medication to give. I was a mouse in a laboratory and now everyone hails my courage and stubbornness as if I had saved my self. The most courageous act that I’ve done is lean on others who are much stronger than I.

Bone marrow biopsy.

I’ve been through heavy radiation, blood and steroid treatments. I’ve had chemotherapy, bone marrow biopsies, skeletal surveys, radiated scans and stem cell transfusions. I’ve survived it all. Each time I’ve “gone under” I’ve made sure to make my nurses laugh, my doctors smile and have even tried to wipe away the tears of family and friends. Some nurses would tell me, “Even though I hope you never have to come back, I hope to see you again... You’re a great man” while others would scoff at my candor, tattooed body or sailors mouth. I once even got one of my oncologists to “cut up” with me after a series of hesitated laughter about how long I have to live. He said to me, “Ha ha, yeah... you did get knocked on your fucking ass.” We laughed; he shook my hand and told me to be back next week. But there have also been other doctors who’ve brushed me off. One in particular, during the first week of my battle walked into my hospital room, put his hands into his hair as if he just watched a child fall from a high chair and exclaimed, “I...I can’t do this...” But at least he was nicer than the one who scolded me and angrily said, “what you have is not life compatible...” as if this were my fault.

Even after all of this my little sister Kelly still hugs me, loves me and sometimes even purposefully annoys me like nothing has happened. My closest of friends still continuously rip me apart; get me drunk and debate the ridiculous nature of women -- like nothing has happened. We’ve kept our game faces and held our heads high. When I reflect on these memories I am reminded that I am truly blessed, cancer or no cancer.

When I was released from the hospital back in July I grabbed my computer one evening and tried to accurately describe how “it all went down.” The end result isn’t completely factual but it reflects inner turmoil that I had experienced. I ended up writing a weird short story where I inhabit two different forms of my self. The first “self” is the young and reckless buffoon that only cares for the shimmer of the moon, the size of a girl’s rack and beer in his gullet; I named him Matthew. As for the other, the narrator, me -- well I’m just a kid that looking for the sincerity in love, the open ticket to move forward and move on. I was searching for any sunrise that would brush my windshield and paint a smile on my face.

Before the accident, well I guess we can call it that; I was researching jobs on the west coast while passing the time as a key holder at the GameStop in Cleveland. I was considering Los Angeles, Seattle and even my old stomping grounds of Oakdale California. In Los Angeles I had my old roommate and co-conspirator Jordan Duke who at the time had been begging me to move out there with him. Then there was Scott, another old roommate of mine who would always say, “Bro! Seattle was made for someone like you” and after much research I found him to be right. There was even a moment where I asked my boss at GameStop what it would look like to transfer out there and he told me one drunk night at a bachelor party, “oh, very doable.”

Jimmy & I.

I was living in a two-bedroom apartment with my friend Jimmy. That apartment was my favorite that I’ve ever had. We had a tiny kitchen with large wooden cabinets and in the adjacent trash room lurked a stolen portrait from Lee University with two young girls smiling brightly at the camera, it was ill fitting for Jimmy. He would often grimace each time he went to dispose of an empty Miller Lite box. But our living room was my favorite part of the apartment. It was neatly decorated. It looked like the poor hipsters version of a Crate and Barrel add; old paintings and aged knick-knacks from Michigan were nailed to the wall. The best part of the living room though was the “dad chair” that sat next to the record player. Between the two of us we had a probably 70 records. Jimmy and I, after a long day would put on a record, open the balcony windows and let the sound carry outside out on to porch. We’d enjoy the cool Tennessee air; a smoke and a chilled can of Miller Lite. We were living simply and took everything a day at the time. If there was ever any drama it was the simple and good kind, the sort of drama that breaks a dark comedy with a touch of light. 

If I told you that at that moment there was no girl in my life, I’d be lying. There’s always a girl and her name was Maggie. We “met” in April even though at this juncture I had never seen her face-to-face. Everything about Maggie was stunningly loud. I knew she was something special when she told me my “Mustafar joke was hilarious...” Her very voice was eye-catching and alluring. It was as if Ross from friends was screaming “Pivot! Pivot! Pivot!” 

I called her the “unicorn” to co-workers and friends because how else could you explain a girl like her? Eventually people became accustom to asking, “How’s the unicorn?” then I'd weave a tale out of our most recent two-plus hour conversation and how important it was. We never had a dull conversation.  We’d talk on the phone for hours and even Skype for the same amount of time. Maggie would go on and on about life in Florida, skateboarding, Super Smash Bros, Star Wars and or Star Trek. In fact the very first conversation we had on the phone was right after I saw the latest Star Trek installment. Maggie called late that evening with a nerdy intensity that I’ve never experience before. She explained the nuances of that sci-fi series for what seemed like days. To this day I have never let anyone ever talk to me about Star Trek that long. Every time someone mentioned her name it was as if it was a password to my heart. I’d open like a locket and read aloud a memoire written in red.  To this day I’ve never met a girl like Maggie and I’m afraid that I never will again. Eventually we met, face-to-face. All my premonitions and forecasts of what she was like in real life were true. And on that day, the day I got discharged from the hospital, it was the happiest that I had been in years... but that’s another story for later.

So, here I a still am. Sitting on the stool at Mean Mug, the coffee shop off of Market St., reflecting on everything. I am brimming with anger, but I’m also thankful for what has happened to me. I have become separated from my old life and have had to let those old dreams die. Over the next several weeks I am going to make it a point to document and write down what I’ve been going through this year and share them with you. I have had a head start on the source material because one of my best friends, Robert or better known as “Pookie”, gave me a journal in July when I was still in the hospital. It’s full now. Every page is soaked with prayers, unsent letters, anger as thick as pavement, sadness as permanent as the scar on my chest from open heart surgery and lists upon lists of what to do next; distracting tomes of stories of old that still makes me chuckle. I am a stronger person today than I was a year ago. But to quote a close friend of mine, “Brady, this is a man maker... at the end of this, you’ll be a man.”

I think the best way for me to process this is to share with you the short story/narrative that I penned. We’ll start with the beginning of it all. But I’d rather let a professional have the last word...

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

I saw Matthew in the reflection of the puddle on the pavement, that blonde bearded bastard. The night was a cool whisper on my face and the moon wore a skimpy layer of white-laced clouds. “I can see her legs.” Matthew said looking up at the moon giving me a naughty wink. It was late July, tomorrow is my older sisters birthday. I feel terrible; I haven’t bought her a thing yet. So many things on my mind, the rents due soon and I had barely gathered enough cash to afford a road trip to Florida. My apartments so dirty too. My roommate will be pissed if I don’t clean the apartment before I leave.

I looked up to see Matthew skipping along on the glimmering pavement waving my keys around. He looked a drunken penguin with an old police baton and it’s a safe bet that his “Look Mexico” shirt was still a little wet from the beer he had spilled earlier.

“Look Mexico...*burp* they’re just like, like Built to Spill but... but then again, they are so not. No one’s like Doug Martsh.” That’s something Matthew would say defending his shirt and why no one has heard of the band. I was at the town bar; a watering hole that housed cave trolls for patrons when I got the call. “She’s having the baby!” then John hung up as fast as he said the words. Matthew spilt his brew and I grabbed the keys and we bolted for the hospital. After an awkward and tipsy conversation with John’s relatives by the vending machine John’s baby girl was born. I only got to see her for a second before the nurses whisked her off to the intensive care unit for infants. “You don’t have to stay man,” John said as he placed his sweaty palm on my back.

Johns face was glowing. He was now a daddy and you tell by the wholeness in his voice. We were keen to get home and drink some celebratory beers in due honor of John’s baby girl, Bonnie Lee. John and I had been looking forward to her birth for months now, obviously. I was to be an “uncle” and John, finally a daddy. Ms. Lee had some of the biggest cheeks I had ever seen on a baby, and oddly when I looked into her eyes I felt… paternal. As we walked, the hospital was at my back, the heavy grey car garage looming straight ahead in the horizon and a tiny fence on my left that forced people leaving the hospital this late to walk through that creepy grey box.

But right now that beer had my name on it, it had Bonnies name on it, Johns name on it and if I didn’t beat Matthew to the car he’d beat me to the beer. If I didn’t beat him to the beer then he’d beat me to “drunk” and last time Matthew beat me to drunk I ended up having to talk his ex girlfriend out of from coming over to stab him. If you’ve ever met Maddie, the ex, then you’ve seen the reason why the biker bar stopped doing “ladies night”. 

Matthews blonde fo-hawk bobbed up and down like the arm of an old teddy bear as we neared the entrance to the car garage. I could see my car; it was below us parked all alone in the lot. As I investigated the lay out of how to get to my car it dawned on me how pointless it was to have walk all the way through this dungeon.  I heard Matthew, as if he was in my head “You know man, I kind of want to be a da…” but his sentence suddenly became unintelligible due to sound of branches breaking and bushes wobbling. He was poking around where the fence had connected to garage in the bushes.

"Wha...what did you say? Mathew?” I couldn’t see him anywhere. The bushes were moving to the flow of the night breeze and apparently Matthew trudging around at their roots.

Matthew poked his head from behind the fence; apparently he had the same idea as me, just jump the fence. “I saaaaaid! It kind of made me want to be a Dad,” he sang in his “jazz” voice as he plucked twigs and leafs from his perfectly disheveled hawk. I couldn’t disagree with him; I kind of wanted to be a Dad too. “What are you doing back there man? You know we could just walk along through the car garage?”

He just shook his finger at me. “You’re such a lame-ass Brady.”
We were now walking side by side, separated by a two foot thick, three foot high and twelve-foot long “ego” walk to the chain link fence ahead of me. I leaned over and punched him in the shoulder. “You can’t do that! Stay on your side,” he scoffed, “If you don’t jump that fence, the Wild Things and Max are going to cry alone tonight... jerking it.”

I had to laugh at that one, but still…way to far.
That’s totally my favorite ‘pretend’ childhood book.

"Ok!, what do you want me to do now, stroke face?" I retorted. He hated that name. I didn’t even have to look at him to feel his vile and strikingly similar Steven Seagal angry face pungently thinking of comebacks. Matthew pointed at the fence and mouthed at me, “Global Guts!” then sprinted off past the fence towards the car. He was always so impatient. I never understood it either; he was like a child with ADHD that got bored after “AD…”

"Hey man!" I screamed, "Wait up dude. It’s not like we are in a hurry…" But his only response was "Mike O’Malley here introducing the lime pink pussssssssys!!!" and it was on repeat. Fuck it.

I started to climb the fence. As I got higher I couldn’t see him anywhere. I saw my car, but no Matthew. It was silent, narrator was gone and I was all-alone at the top of the fence. I tried yelling his name again, but still nothing.

"Matthew?"

He must have gotten distract by some bird or a puddle. So I started to climb down. I was never meant to be an urban ninja. I sucked at climbing. I placed one foot on what felt like a open link on the fence but it was still wet from the rain. My sneaker slipped and it let out a rubbery squeak. For a spilt second I lost my footing and my whole body went numb I was probably only four feet off the ground, but it felt like a mile.
My rubber sneakers skirted over the metal rung like wet jellyfish over an even wetter jellyfish. My fingers wrapped between two chain rungs and pop, my shoe caught on the fence.
I caught my self about three feet before I hit the bottom. 

"Matthew!!"

"Matthew! Did you see tha…"

But before my words had finished their meal my foot slipped again and I fell. My right heel slipped into a hole in the dirt with what seemed to be full of twigs and mud. Something cracked as my foot entered the hole and my side went fuzzy like a freshly shaved head. My body flopped onto the wet dirt; palms in the mud, ass wet and leaves were in the folded cuffs of my jeans. As I looked down at the hole, there should have been twigs that snapped or branches that would have cracked, but there were none and my side was still numb. I leaned back, just a few inches further and saw the moon. I saw my friends’ faces and I cried out in pain...

"John?"

"Blake?"

"Ryan?"

"Rob?"

            “Dad...?”

The next day the doctor came into my room. I was lying on a sterile bed with several needles imbedded into my flesh, two in the forearms and one deep torn in the neck that was gurgling morphine into my system. She asked sternly what I was doing leaping over a fence. I told her I got bored chasing my shadow, that I was kind of tipsy and just wanted to get home after a long day. “Well Mr Effler, there’s no real easy way to tell you this...” She closed the curtain behind her, peered over her glasses and held my hand. “Can I call you Brady, is that okay?” My hand had never been held like this before. She shook like the change in my pocket on a roller coaster.

“You... You fractured your pelvis...

And there’s a growth... about the size of a soft ball that has been eating away at the bone...

You have cancer Brady"

My thoughts clipped like an old reel of film.

I called all their names one by one. Hours later each name that I called looked at me through damp eyes and held my hand.