ABlog the Author

I am late to the party on this one, but if you’re looking for a “Get out of the business” great novel….

….crack open THE ART OF FIELDING by Chad Harbach. I finally started this monster and it is as phenomenal as the people who call stuff phenomenal as frequently as they go to the crapper say it is. Crazy good. If Bernard Malamud and John Irving had a kid, it would be this guy. Completely accessible prose and wonderful rhythm. And this is me after only 150 pages. He doesn’t need any help selling this book, but on this blog, we fight evil and promote goodness wherever we see it. Whew. Stop the clock.

While we’re waiting for the news, here’s the one chapter I had to cut from EVERYTHING HURTS….

(It hit the trash just before we sent the book out in February 2008. I liked it, but it was reminiscent of other scenes in the book and the ms was too long. As always, hope you think this is something….)

(September, 2007)

10

     Phil arrived at the monthly gathering of the Samuel Abrun Graduates Panel a half hour early. You had to if you wanted a seat on the left aisle of the small lecture room. Most APS sufferers had pain on their left side, so the chance to give that bad leg some room to spasm freely was like getting upgraded to business class.

     He had come from the gym, where he had finished running in the lap pool for an hour. Pool-running was the only consistent exercise he had been able to do in the last ten months. Three times a week, he would limp to Fifty-fifth and Fifth and take the elevator to the twenty-first floor of the Peninsula Hotel and into the Peninsula Spa. He would try to get there around three in the afternoon, and ideally have the 45x10 pool to himself, surrounded by a couple of old ladies in terrycloth robes, regulars, sending food back, and a couple of young women in robes, clearly on day spa passes, reading while they waited for their reflexology appointments. That was the ideal. The reality was that the young women would rather talk too loud than read and the old ladies would realize they hadn’t eaten and still had time to grab a kick board or foam rubber noodle and join him for a little pickup aquaerobics. That’s what had happened today.

      He stayed too long in the steam room reading Maureen Dowd and coming to grips with the fact that they no longer had the same occupation. That caused him to miss any chance at a regular cab downtown. So, Phil had let a black Town Car driver rob him, twenty bucks for twenty blocks, and he Walter Brennaned into the small lecture room at New York Hospital in time to grab the last seat in business class. Hair wet, beard-dropletted, chlorine-demiglazed, bone weary, allergy-filled and whatever other emotions could fit in a space too small to let him alone.  

     The Samuel Abrun Graduates Panel was a revival meeting that didn’t wait to happen. For two hours, three former patients of Dr. Abrun would offer detailed testimonials of their triumph over APS, answer questions, and in a perfect world, coax further testimonials out of those facing them in the audience. And, unlike the pool at the Peninsula, it was always a perfect world.

     Keith Ryder, the creator of the panel, moderated the session. Each week, he would invite two APS recoverees to share their success stories. Both times Phil had been to the panel, Keith opened the session by telling the one hundred or so in the small lecture hall, “Your goal should be to be on the other side of this table, telling your story. Because that means you will be pain-free.”

     Before turning it over to his guests, Keith would share his story, “which I need to hear as much as you.”  He rose, Hawaiian shirt first, a large yet unimposing, undistinguished gently receding hairline of a man. Unimposing, undistinguished and gently receding until he opened his mouth. The bobbing heads of his identifying audience worked as a metronome. 

      For six years, I was in excruciating pain. It was located in the region that is classically diagnosed as “sciatica,” and it radiated down my left leg. I could not do my  work sitting down, I could not sleep lying down. I had to live my life in slippers and sweat pants because any other clothing was too difficult to put on.  I saw three different orthopedists, who all made the same diagnosis: I had a herniated L-5 disc that was pressing against my sciatic nerve. That was causing my pain. Surgery would fix it. I did not want surgery. Someone in my family had had disc surgery, had left the hospital in a wheelchair and was still in the wheelchair. So, I opted for alternative medicine. I saw chiropractors, massage therapists, aromatherapists, physical therapists. I did three difference kinds of yoga. I had a guy glue leaves to my back. I had seven shots of cortisone into my spine. Felt great…for about 24 hours. So then, I flew to Canada and had a guy inject papaya extract into my discs. It’s outlawed in this country, and it didn’t even work long enough to get me back through customs. I went to one guy who gave me a contraption where I hung from my door like a bat. Another chiropractor strapped my arms and legs to a moveable table and pulled in four different directions. You may know this as The Rack. I was on four kinds of narcotic painkillers. They did nothing, except prompt requests from my junkie friends to fill prescriptions for them. Six years. I tried everything. I’m sure I’m leaving out some things, but believe me, I tried everything. I was at my wit’s end. I was about to call my orthopedist and agree to the surgery, when I remembered a book someone had given me at the beginning of all this. Some psychobabble crap called The Power of “ Ow!”

      Is Dr. Abrun laughing? Good.

     The first time I read his book, I immediately dismissed it. This may be okay for crackpots, but I have a Masters degree in psychology. I know real pain. I’m in it! There’s something physically wrong with me, and I have the MRI to prove it.

     But something made me pick up the book again. It was lying in the corner of my bedroom, where I had thrown it years ago. Strangely, this time it made sense. The perfectionism, the need for approval, the problems with my father, the stress of my current job and my relationships. It was all there. I figured I would give this one last try before surgery.

     I’d like to tell you it happened overnight, but I had to do the work. I read the book until I could memorize passages like people do with the Bible. I saw Dr. Abrun and immediately accepted his diagnosis of APS. I agreed to do the reading and writing I needed to do. I went to the lectures. I went to the small groups. But I also needed the extra help. I’ll talk about that in a second.

    The pain you all have is real. You don’t have to tell me. I know it. But the source of the pain is the mind. You need to change your relationship with the pain. Stop taking it personally! The situation is harmless. If you still have pain, you’re still choosing the pain. Your mind still prefers the pain, as opposed to looking at what’s behind it. And if the pain is moving around, that’s good news. It means you’ve got it on the run.

     So, let me say this. If you’re read the book a few times and you’ve done the homework and attended the lectures and you still have pain, you need to see a psychotherapist. And, this is just my opinion, you need to see one of Dr. Abrun’s psychotherapists. This is my opinion, but it is also a strong recommendation. Because they work with Dr. Abrun, his therapists can make the connection quicker than a regular therapist. So, do that. You all deserve to be pain-free, but it’s not enough for me to say it. You have to believe it.

     Like Dr. Abrun says, this is a gift. We are all here on the cutting edge. This man is a visionary. Instead of being threatened and dismissing his theories, the medical profession should have parades for him. Goddamn parades!

      Keith had not planned to finish on that line, but the applause from the small lecture room was so great, he had no choice but to say “That’s it for me. Thank you!” He sat down, and Samuel Abrun, with a deadpan comic’s timing, waited to for the room to quiet before he said, “Boy, this guy Abrun sounds very impressive. Is he still alive?” The room exploded with laughter. Even Phil, who didn’t normally give it up in public, especially when his response wouldn’t be missed, found himself letting loose with a thumb-forefinger trucker whistle.

     For now, the goddamn parade Keith Ryder wanted and Samuel Abrun deserved would be a two-person procession of  the like-minded seconding his keynote address. This was Phil’s third trip to the Graduates Panel, and the format with Keith’s guests was unwavering in its delivery and deliverance. Each catalogue of symptoms was more horrific then the account which preceded it. Each search for relief got more desperate and Byzantine. But every tale had the same turning point, “And then I picked up this book,” and the same ecstatic denouement: “I have been pain-free for (two, three, five, friggin’ 18) years.”  The idea was that no one was alone, no one was the worst off. APS was an equal opportunity afflicter. And (cue voice of Rod Serling) the only ticket needed for admission was an active unconscious mind. 

     The first speaker was Helen, a sweetly bookish woman who worked in a lab and for years had to do all her research lying on a board on the floor. Had to hire two assistants to input the data because she couldn’t sit at a computer. Had to hire a driver for her five-mile commute and lie across the back seat of his minivan. Had to hire two nannies because she couldn’t take care of her children. (She couldn’t take care of her husband, either, and ended up having to fire one of the nannies). All x-rays and MRIs revealed was a little arthritis, and as enraging as that was, as a woman of science, she had to believe that her redemption would come from science.

      One day, while reading a British study on back surgery “just for laughs,” she stumbled upon a line about the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex and how it could be stimulated by the conscious mind “whether the pain is real, simulated or hypnotically induced.” She followed the footnote, a half-page of nine-point type, which ended with the words, “Talk to your brain.”  Abrun, Samuel The Power of Ow (1991), P. 117.

     “I got better within a month,” she said. “And even, now, eight years later, when I feel the APS coming on, I just talk to my anterior cingulate cortex.” She paused, perhaps finished, but no. She smiled. “And my husband and I are back to having wild sex.”

      Phil pulled the small notebook he always carried out of the inside pocket of his teal herringbone jacket and wrote down “wild sex.” He slipped the notebook back in his pocket, thought better, took it back out, and put a giant check next to “wild sex.”

     Keith’s other panel participant was a gleaming man in his early fifties who looked like he was supposed to be delivering the 6:00 news on TV but had walked into the wrong studio. He jumped fully coiffed out of his seat, showed some teeth and opened with an absolute grabber: “Hi, I’m Dave Pepper and I am your worst nightmare.”

     In the space of five years, Dave Pepper had had both his hips replaced and a spinal fusion, and came out of all three surgeries the same hunched over, tentative, Frankenstein-walking mess of a man who had Frankenstein-walked in. Well, not completely the same. Somewhere along the way, he had also developed acid reflux.

     “I had the unnecessary surgeries so you don’t have to!!” Dave Pepper rah-rahed at the end. “Don’t be me!”

     Don’t worry, Phil thought. I couldn’t be you unless I converted, then got an Amway franchise. He was about to get even more cranky when he realized he’d made it to the halftime break without having to go to the john. What Abrun-cribbed line did Keith Ryder say at the beginning of each panel? “Celebrate every victory, no matter how small.” Phil hadn’t gone since the end of the pool run. Over two hours without a piss. And over three hours since he’d been in a bathroom. Ice the friggin’ champagne.

     Oh wait. Abrun says no ice….

     Back from the break, Keith opened the floor to the room for the last 50 minutes. The still suffering in attendance could either ask the panel to elaborate on their stories, or could share their own progress (and progress only) and celebrate every small victory with their APS brethren. They could not ask the Samuel Abrun Graduates Panel for advice. They were not doctors. And the only doctor in the room, Samuel Abrun, would not answer any questions other than, “Can I call you tomorrow?” 

     Up went the hands. Up went the hope.

     “Helen, is it? Halfway through your story, I crossed my right leg for the first time in four months!”  To which the “wild sex” labwoman said, “Let’s see it!”

     “The book is great, but all I really need to read now is Page 86. Of course, I have to read it three times a day.”  “Don’t forget  Page117,” said Keith.

    “I went to Mexico for the papaya injections. All I got was dysentery.”  Big laugh.

    “I am one numb left pinky away from being on the other side of that table.”  Phil recognized the voice, and the symptom. It was the housewife from his second Abrun lecture last month.

     “My family doesn’t understand why I don’t get the surgery. Fuck ‘em!”  Fist pump from Dave Pepper.    

      “Helen, can you talk to my wife?” Bigger laugh.   

     “I left my walker at home!” Standing ovation from those who could.

     “I’m not where I want to be, but I’m sure as hell not where I was. I’m 55. I figure it took me fifty-four and a half years to walk into the woods, it might take me a little while to get out.”  Another future panelist, Phil thought.

     “Why do you only have this once a month? The only other relief I get is from ice.”  Keith smiled. “Maybe that might change. But the real work is done in between the panels. This is dessert. Right, Dr. Abrun?”

     Samuel Abrun sat just to the right of the panel. In the last two hours, after the giant laugh he got on “Is he still alive?” he might have spoken three times: “Denial of the syndrome is part of the syndrome.” Or “The brain will not be denied!” Things everyone in the room had heard or read him say before. But they bore repeating and they bore repeating and they bore repeating at that moment and at that moment they bore repeating,

     “Once a month is fine,” he twinkled. “These people have lives. And so do you. I’m grateful Keith does this at all. He doesn’t get paid. And I don’t have to talk. I’m tired of talking. I just say what’s in the book. Same old stuff. The only new stuff comes from you. You know what to do. And cut it out with the ice. No ice!” Another big laugh.

     “Are you sure you aren’t actors? I feel like I heard my story tonight.”

     “This is embarrassing. I’ve had it all backward! I was furious I had APS. That’s all I let myself be angry about. Now, I realize it’s there to get my attention.”  The panel chimed in backhanded unison, “It’s a gift!”

     “I got rid of the APS in my lower back with Dr. Abrun’s help five years ago.  Now I have tendonitis that won’t go away. I called and he suggested I come here.  I don’t get it. Nothing has happened. My life is great, especially since my daughter got engaged.” Mumble-giggle-mumble through the room. “Oh…maybe I better look at that.”

     “Aren’t you angry you had all that unnecessary surgery?”  “Of course I am,” said Dave Pepper. “I am en-RAGED,” he bogus-yelled to a big laugh. Maybe they were actors. “But,” he quickly added, “I get angrier at the people I plead with to read The Power of “Ow!” before they go in for surgery and they say, ‘Nah. That worked for you. It’s different with me.’

      “This was my journey,” Dave added, with a lot of teeth. “Now I have to work on why I get so furious when people don’t listen to me.”

     “I’m gonna be on the other side of that table by the end of the summer!”

     “You’ll have to beat me there first!”

     “Me too!”

     “Yeah!”

     “Don’t worry,” beamed Keith. “We’ll just get more chairs.” Applause.

     It was empowering. It was exhilarating. It was empathetic. It was all of that. It was exempapowerthilerating. But by then it was e-fucking-nough for Phil.

      “We have time for just a couple more,” Keith said. “Yes, sir. On the aisle.”

      Phil nodded at the panel, and then at his feet. He tried to look back up. “It’s been ten months for me. If I have accepted the diagnosis – ”

     “What do you mean ‘if’?”

     Phil heard a noise like metal on linoleum, and looked up to see Samuel Abrun standing. The doctor walked toward the aisle, staring at him.

      “Go on, son,” he said.

      “Thanks,” said Phil. “If I have accepted the diagnosis of APS – ”

      “Again,” Abrun interrupted, “what do you mean ‘if’? You either accept the diagnosis or you don’t. This is not conditional. Where there is doubt….”

      Keith mimed a conductor to the audience “….THERE IS PAIN!”

      Phil tried to be light. “Sorry. Wrong word. I should know better. I sounded, uh,  unclear.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, HAVING accepted YOUR diagnosis of APS – ”

     “You have done nothing of the sort.”

     “Dr. Abrun, can I finish?”

     “Of course.”

     “Thanks. My question is – ”

     “Stand up… Son.” Abrun hit “son” hard. His voice a gavel, the word the sentence. Suddenly, the small lecture room got very small.

     “Heh-heh,” Phil managed. “In the time it would take for me to stand, the panel could take three more questions.” That seemed to break the tension back.

     “Very well.”     

     “My question is for Keith. Earlier you said you needed – ”

     “I thought your question was for me.” Samuel Abrun was smiling, but no longer twinkling. The rest of the small lecture room did not bother to make that distinction, so everyone felt it was safe to laugh. Except Phil. Who felt himself smiled through.     

     “Yes, right. How foolish. My question for you, Dr. Abrun is this….” Phil did the only two things available to him in this decidedly one-sided scrap. He stood up. Or shall we say he began to undergo the standing process, squeaking every foot as he rose like an unoiled dumbwaiter. It took about five seconds, or an hour. Once up, he pulled on the lone line left, “My question is…Can I call you tomorrow?”

     “No.”

     “No?”

     “No.” Samuel Abrun detonated his full twinkle. “Call me Thursday. Come back to the fold. Paul, is it?”

     “Phil.”

     “Hey, give Paul a hand for being such a good sport!”

     The audience went nuts, thrilled to be let in on this little comic-drama staredown that had obviously been set up before the meeting. Keith rushed over and threw his arm around Abrun as if not to miss a photo op. “That’s all the time we have! You guys have been dynamite! My thanks to Helen and Dave. And this guy, the Little Big Man, Dr. Samuel Abrun! See you next month at the next Graduates Panel! See you on the other side of the table!” 

To the woman who asked if The Truants do anything by Paul Revere and the Raiders….

Attention, the ten of you who still read this….

Potential monster monster monster news coming for EVERYTHING HURTS. When I can tell you, I will. But every writer should have the lunch I had today just once.

The Truants give their 5th(!) bass player, Al Sklar, the spotlight….

Absolute classic….

Unaccustomed as I am to cross-promotion, feeling a little chest-puffy about this one coughed up around noon on the Twitter machine….

@billscheft Bill Scheft