Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [2]
Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot. I inserted the enema and squeezed the bulb. I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses.
Hold for Five Minutes,read the instruction on the dispenser.Screw that, was my thought. That milquetoast civilian who had failed his clean out had probably blown his load at the first contraction. I would hold my enema for fifteen minutes. I would hold it until it migrated into my esophagus. I clamped my sphincter closed, gritted my teeth, and endured bowel contraction after bowel contraction until I thought I would black out. Finally, I blasted the colonic into the toilet. I repeated the process a second time.
Do not repeat more than twice,the label warned. Yeah, right. With the title of astronaut on the line, the warning could have read,Do not repeat more than twice, death may result, and I would still have ignored it. I grabbed a third enema and then a fourth. The waste of my last purge was as clear as gin.
I walked from the proctologist like a first grader carrying a gold star on a homework assignment. He had commented several times he had never seen a colon so well prepared. That I didn’t shit for the next two weeks was a price I was willing to pay. (And, no, the civilian who had failed his prep wasn’t selected.)
Next up was the interview by a NASA psychiatrist. I wondered about this. I had never spoken to a psych in my life. Was there a pass-fail criterion? I considered myself mentally well balanced. (A strange self-assessment given I had just set a world record for holding an enema in a paranoid quest to secure a job.) But how did a psych measure mental stability? Would he be watching my body language? Would a twitch of my eye, a pulsating neck vein, or a bead of sweat mean something? Something bad? In desperation I searched my memory for whatThe Right Stuff had revealed about theMercury 7 astronaut psych evaluations. All I could recall was that they had been given a completely blank piece of paper to “interpret” and that one astronaut had answered, “It’s upside down.” Was such humor good? I didn’t have a clue. I was flying blind.
My first surprise, which added to my fear, was to find out there were to be two psych evaluations by different doctors, each about an hour long. I walked into my first meeting. The doctor rose from behind a desk and introduced himself, shaking hands with a very weak, moist grip. I hadn’t been in the room for fifteen seconds and already I was in a panic. Was the grip some type of test? If I echoed it in its limpness, was I indicating I had some latent sexual identity problems? I decided to be firm…not crushing, but firm. I watched his face but it was an enigma. I couldn’t read anything. I could have been shaking hands with Yoda. His voice was low; low enough I wondered if this was some sneaky hearing test. He motioned me to a chair. Thank God there was no couch. That novelty would have further rattled me.
He held a clipboard and pencil at the ready. I swallowed hard and waited for what I was certain would be a question like, “How many times a week do you masturbate?” But instead he ordered, “Please count backward from 100 by 7s as fast as you can.” I heard the click of a stopwatch and the gathering seconds…tick…tick…tick. My chances of becoming an astronaut were racing away with those seconds!
Only because of my plebe training at West Point, where I had learned to instantly obey any order, was I able to respond with lightning reflexes. If he wanted me to count backward by 7s from 100, then I’d do it. At least I didn’t have to answer the masturbation question. I began the litany, 100, 93, 86, 79, 72…, then I got off by a digit or two, tried to restart at my last known correct number, stumbled again, and ended in the 60s in a blurring babble of digits. I finally stopped and said, “I think I’m off track.” My