Good Night

For someone who has mood swings, there's nothing like swinging altogether out of Mood Land into something else. And the human body provides a splendid other world, particularly for those of us who tend to be lost in our heads, a.k.a., feelings. That's why God invented bodyworkers. The job description once focused on the pounding out of dents in one's Ford. Now it has to do with loosening up your brachial radialis. Our great nation has given up manufacturing, embraced spilkes, and where does all this lead except a Great Letting Go? Which brings me on a regular basis to Ross. Not the clothing discounter, the body guy. One thing I like about Ross: he is a manufacturer. The guy cranks out home electronics software on an impressively regular basis, then cranks up his massage table in the evenings. It all makes for a grounded experience. I don't expect Ross to fine-tune my astral body. I expect him to loosen up my neck. That's all I can hope for, or anyone should hope for, and that's a lot. Two hours of Ross may sound like a lot, and it probably is. But on this particular Sunday, even after much painful kneading of bodily components, even mild and eminently professional Ross could only lament the sorry state of my muscular tension. He suggested another session. Why, I asked, didn't he do what he usually does, working my neck back and forth to provide more side action. He shook his head. Too much tension. Way too much. Kind of a conversation stopper, if you ask me. Ross followed me silently up his hallway to the door. I couldn't think of what to say except next time. I needed a next time. And maybe next time we would get to the neck. Before the neck got to me. Which it has a way of doing, which was why I had made this appointment with Ross. And so, here we were, at his front door, Ross helping me into my wheelchair. And goodnight. And it was a good night. South Palo Alto in the globally warmed autumn, the street quiet, my white Ford van still illegally parked facing the wrong way. And me in my loosened and substantially improved body, fumbling for the electronic key that operates the lift. I ascended. The lift turned, as it always does, and dropped me onto the blue Ford carpet. Well, not quite. Thing is, my wheelchair is just a little too big for the lift. Nothing new about this. And no big deal, really, but sometimes inconvenient. Such as now, with the small front wheels of my chair trying to swivel their way to freedom, but not quite managing. Usually, by steering hard to the left and advancing a few inches on the lift, then backing at an angle, I get my wheelchair free of the obstacles and back into the lockdown, the electronic clamp that holds the thing in place while I drive. And surely that was about to happen now. Forward, hard left, back. But, no, not quite enough room to maneuver. And it was late. And I was old. And fuck this shit. I jammed the wheelchair control stick down hard. There's a safety bar extending across the front of the hydraulic lift. It is there to prevent me from rocketing forward and into thin air. Problem is, it also constitutes an obstacle. That's what this hard left, reverse back, is all about. Trying to curve around the base of the safety bar, slipping the joystick under it...and getting my aching body home. And I was beginning to feel it. Ross had placed his fingers deep into my neck, shoulders and lower back. And the zones were starting to ache. I knew this would not last long, but it was happening now, and I wanted to be in bed. Instead, I was rolling back and forth, on a small metal platform, making no progress, and making myself crazy. Only one thing to do, testosterone-wise, and that's put wheelchair pedal to metal, bending Mr. Joystick down very hard, and forcing the whole wheelchair-versus-obstacle problem to resolve itself by dint of sheer battery muscle. And damned if the control stick didn't shoot back under the safety-bar base -- and stop. It was stuck. The joystick couldn't be jammed anywhere, because it couldn't be moved. But the chair was moving. The wheelchair would zip backwards, bending the joystick forward, which would cause the chair to zip forward, bending the joystick backward. The chair would reverse again, bend the joystick forward. Slamming itself backwards, forwards. And there was no prying the joystick loose, such was the state of things, both mechanical and neuromuscular. These wild oscillations had to stop, so I hit the switch. Creating another situation. For to restart, the wheelchair has to go into a self-test mode, requiring that the joystick stand straight as a flagpole. And it was bent under the bar. Wunderbar. But maybe if I lowered the entire assemblage of wheelchair lift and wheelchair-with-jammed-joystick to the ground.... Why not? I hit 'up' on the lift's control and heard the safety flap behind me rise and hook itself under the anti-tip wheelets of the wheelchair. And it is simply impossible to have so many things mechanical go wrong all at the same time. Jammed or not, I decided it was better to lower the whole mess to the ground. I sat there in my knotted steel and felt the night. It was mild, still warm. And I was still here. I yelled 'Ross.' This was futile. He was across the street, and his house was behind a garden, and no one could hear. And 40 years earlier, I'd been lying on the pavement and yelling for help, and no one could hear then, except for the someone who did. And this time the someone was Ross, who wandered out of his house, fresh from a shower. He eyed the situation with an engineer's detachment. And so, more or less, did I. He lifted the back wheels, I dropped the safety gate. He shoved the wheelchair backwards, and the joystick broke off. Well, slipped off. I jammed it back in place. Everything was working. We said goodnight for a second time. And for a second time it was what it was, good and night.