Caught Stealing - Charlie Huston [3]
You never graduate. You go to college for six years and study a bit of everything and do well at all of it, but you never graduate. You’re not sure what to do and then you meet a girl. She’s an actress.
You show up in New York with your girl and the two of you stay on the couch at her friend’s place. Two weeks after you get to the city, she gets a job on the road and leaves. The friend tells you that you have to move out.
New York has great public transportation. You never have to drive. You decide to stay. You find an apartment the size of your folks’ kitchen. You get a job tending bar. For the first time in your life you start drinking. You’re good at it.
You live in New York, but you always act like a guy from a small town in California. You help winos out of the gutter, you call an ambulance when you see someone hurt, you loan money to friends who need it and don’t ask for it back, you let folks flop at your pad and you help the blind across the street. One night you go to break up a fight in the bar and get knocked around pretty good, so the next day you start taking boxing classes. You drink too much, but your parents don’t know that.
You’re a good guy, you’re tough and you have a reputation in your neighborhood for helping people out. It’s nice. It’s not the life you expected, but it’s nice enough for you. You feel useful, you have friends and your parents love you. Ten years pass.
One day the guy who lives across the hall from you knocks on your door. He needs a big favor. That’s when life really changes.
When I wake up, the first thing I think about is the fucking cat. I’m looking after this guy’s cat for a couple weeks. God knows how long I’ve been out and if the thing is even alive. Fuck! I knew this would happen. I told the guy I wasn’t good with animals, that I can barely take care of myself, but he was really up against it, so I took the damn cat. Then I see I’m in the hospital and figure out I may have more important things to worry about.
A joke: Guy is born with three testicles and spends his whole life feeling like a freak. Boys make fun of him in gym class, girls laugh at him. Finally, he can’t take it and goes to have one of them lopped off. The doctor takes one look and tells the guy no way, it’s too dangerous, might kill him or something, but he sends him to a shrink who might help out. This counselor or whatever he is tells the guy to take it easy, he should be proud of this third ball, he’s special. I mean, how many guys have three testicles, right? So the guy feels great after that. He leaves the doc’s office, walks into the street, goes up to the first man he sees and says, “Did you know, between you and me we’ve got five balls?” This dude looks at him funny and says, “You mean you only have one?”
First guy I see when I walk out of the hospital I go up to and start talking.
—Did you know, between you and me we only have three kidneys?
He doesn’t say anything, just walks around me like I’m not there.
New York, baby, New York.
I’ve been in the hospital for six days: one unconscious and five conscious. The doctors removed the kidney, which had been nearly ruptured by the two big guys with four small hands and further damaged by my negligence and massive consumption of diuretic liquids. Booze. The kidney was at “four plus” when they took it out. At “five,” they simply explode and kill you. I have been told that I should never again consume alcohol in any amount for the rest of my life on pain of death. Likewise no smoking or caffeine. I don’t smoke and, like I said, caffeine makes me jittery.
After I blacked out, Dr. Bob called the EMTs and had them take me to Beth Israel. He rode with me in the ambulance and when we arrived he got me past all the emergency room crap and directly into an operating room. He saved my life. One of the doctors