February 19, 2004

12:43 a.m.

It Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Lady Sings

Do you remember Dave Foley, from Kids in the Hall and later from News Radio? I had the biggest crush on him during KitH days; he was the cutest twentysomething guy I'd ever seen (and not least because he looked great in drag). I had a dream last night that he came over for dinner, and I missed the whole thing. It was at my sister's, though the house was different, and we sat down to eat but I soon excused myself to attend something else -- maybe it was my computer, since I spent four hours last night dealing with yet another problem which may indicate a failing hard drive -- and by the time I was done with that, the table had been cleared, including my uneaten food, and everyone had gone into the other room. I wondered if he thought I was rude to disappear, though I hadn't meant to be gone so long. I was disappointed to have missed him, but for some reason became very shy and decided to just stay gone rather than try to explain myself.

So Will visited me last week, and he was late so we only had an hour or so; but he brought fruit and sour cream and two of his favorite poetry books, which was coincidental because I was on the point of offering him some of my Hamlin oranges from Florida, and I'd put out a big stack of my favorite books so we could read aloud. We ate sitting on the floor, and talked, and he played something for me from a project he's been producing, and he looked at my bass and pronounced it good. It was lovely. We were both complaining about the shortness of these visits, so I invited him to Rose's house for dinner and we chose Friday, March 5th. I said he could come earlier in the day if he wanted, so we'd have time to really visit, and then we could go over to her house. It seemed like a relief to have set that up.

Then yesterday I called him to confirm that the date was good for Rose, and got his machine. He called back five minutes later, breathless, saying he hadn't been able to get to the phone in time. I knew something was wrong.

He'd run out of one of his meds on Sunday, but assumed he'd get it refilled on Monday and all would be well; he'd only be skipping one day. But he forgot Monday was a holiday, and wherever it is that he gets his prescriptions was closed.

The med in question was a diuretic. For those of you unfamiliar with cardiomyopathy, when the heart isn't strong enough to pump the blood adequately, the body can't process the normal amount of liquid. So he has to really limit his intake, or else he retains water -- and if he retains too much, the heart labors, he gets critically fatigued, has trouble breathing, and basically can't function. The diuretic prevents this from happening. He has to weigh himself every morning and evening and stay within a narrow window.

So by Monday he was at the hospital, dozing in the waiting room and listening to his pounding heart, and eventually they were able to find him something to tide him over until he could get his prescription Tuesday. When I talked to him last night he'd been in bed since noon. He'd try to get up and do something, and then have to lie down, and then he'd fall asleep. Even as we spoke, he was dropping off again. I thought he might not even hang up the phone. In short breaths he said it was his own fault for not staying on top of the refills, and that it was a wakeup call to him, to make sure that didn't happen again.

It was a wakeup call for me, too. Here I am hoping in my secret heart that, after all, some little thing will stir between us; that, after all the pain and waiting and woe, and watching him go through agony with Girlfriend from Hell, and not know what it was like to be really loved and respected, maybe I'D get a chance to make it all better for him -- and every day he's just trying to stay alive, and if he didn't have the time or the energy to be close with one woman, what would make me think he'd have time for me? It's not a matter of whether I'd be good for him, or to him. It's a matter of seeing whether, on a given day, he can put one foot in front of the other. There is very little space between one step and the next. That is not enough room for intimacy.

Between that, and the computer problems which loom huge and stress me, and the misery of this uninvited stranger called pms, I was feeling pretty awful last night. Dar wasn't around so I called my band and talked to them for a while. Later Dar called back and I told him about my talk with Will, and I said I knew he could turn back around, and he'll probably rebound a lot more times before he goes down, but -- then suddenly I just burst out sarcastically, "It's like the Fat Lady is WARMING UP!" and then I had a meltdown.

Last December, at my birthday party, I made a silent wish on the candles of my beautiful fruit-filled birthday cake: "Give us one good year."

I hope it didn't go up in smoke.

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I'm running a long-ass diagnostic on my computer tomorrow to see if the hard drive is corrupted. If I don't make entries for a while, it may just be because I'm finding solutions. Also we're travelling the next week and a half. We'll certainly meet up down the road.