It's coming on 10 years since I had my last surgery (if we don't include the minor surgery reattaching the small intestine with the J-pouch and removing the colostomy bag). Margarita and I celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary on the 10th of July. It's 2:49am, do you know where your children are? and I just remembered where I left off in the writing... Tom Cruise's character and his new found life, newly adopted humility or humiliation... I don't suffer insomnia for at least 13 years. One more time I didn't awaken on time for preventing the accident... Should a sexy and virilent 32-year-old sleep in Depends? At the age of 42, I am almost elderly. God knows I'm experiencing Alzheimers; I'm having difficulty remembering all the exciting events and people I wish to share with you. Too bad I haven't forgotten about what just occurred.
I don't remember how it was living with a rectum 10 years ago. I try remembering how it was shitting normally when I was 12-years-old, the experience of giving birth out my ass, that pain. The pushing, the occasional stretching of the anus... Such vague memories it feels as if I am inventing. But I don't remember how it was 10 years ago, before having the J-pouch. I just remembered now. Should I wear diapers to sleep? toddler's rubber pants?
Should I not be writing about this? First the ejaculation problem. Now the incontenency... My enemies are celebrating now, so happy to read this. Enemies? the young souls? But why must an old soul be subjected to this shit?
During family reunions Beth, my cousin Seth and I would sit at one end of the dinner table. Someone would start with the shit jokes, causing an uproar at our end and much irritation from my mother's end. The three of us living with the risk of random shitting. Nothing is more soothing of the consciousness than encountering a fellow shitter in your midst and being able to apreciate the other person's experience.
Beth, how about the time I walked in on you and YA SEE I FORGOT HIS DUMB ASS NAME having sex on the family room carpet. You screamed, jumped up, the two of you ran to your room... In the middle of your panic, you left a pile of shit on the carpet...
We laughed until we cried. My mother yelling at us to can it with the shit, causing us to break out in another uproar... Nothing is better than talking about shit while eating, Mom, could you pass me a bit more of that shit? Maybe I should give Beth a call and share with her what just happened, because I'm not seeing the humor in this at the moment.
If you don't see the tree fall in the forrest, did it really fall?
I can't see the forrest for the woods... all I see is trees... One of the last things my thesis committee chairwoman, Penina Glazer, told me before graduating from Hampshire College was, Ross, you're pretty neurotic... Like the word agnostic, that was the first time I had heard the word neurotic used in the same sentence as my name. But she and I didn't have time for all the explaining away, explaining away, explaining away. She had much more important things to do than understand my life. I didn't say anything, just looked at Randi sad and embarrassed...
Why did I remove 120 "friends" from my Facebook friendslist when I was planning upon writing these memoirs? Because there is too much reading and understanding for them to be my friends... because this shit isn't easy. You can't just flush it down the toilet. I live with the risk every day. As long as the onset of Alzheimers is slow, I also live with the difficult memories, the concerns. The person who asked me to write my memoirs can't handle reading this and doesn't say a word. Then why ask?
I shit in my bed. I've shat on Margarita. The colostomy bag "exploded" on Joey while having sex. I don't ejaculate and I'm not cutting my wrists for this stuff. What would you do in this situation?
I sleep well now. The psychological stress has lifted over the years. Sometimes I don't hear the call and awaken... Which is worse, insomnia or shitting yourself? Should I wear Depends?
One of my psychologists somewhere between 1985 and 1999 said to me, "You've got too many plates in the air Ross. We've gotta figure a way of removing some of them." Some plates you just can't remove. They removed my large intestine. They removed my Rectum. They removed those plates and in the process, replaced them with others..." They removed my father. And there was nothing I could do. They removed compassion and understanding from the modern all business, no nonsense social eticate world and there is little you wish I share with you for you to understand where I'm coming from... You don't shit in your bed my son...
Margarita, José Francisco, Gabriel, Nicolas, Rafael and I arrived in Mexico City for a 17 day crafts event in the center of the city July 2007. For political reasons, we weren't able to install our coffee bar that day. We hadn't found a place to stay and had to sleep in the pick-ups that were loaded. There weren't any public bathrooms nearby and I was having digestive problems, if you can call it that. We were parked in the streets. Margarita was asleep in the back seat and I was trying to sleep in the front seat, concerned about being harrassed by the local police... Since, we weren't in a hotel room or an apartment, I was "sleeping" in my shorts. I dozed off and awakened suddenly to the problem. At 3am I had to find a bathroom. I turned on the engine and set off for the local gas stations... The problem repeated itself at 5am. Now I needed a change of clothing and a shower. The problem was, at that time in our journey around the country with the coffee bar, we didn't have the money for paying for hotels the moment we arrived at a city. And, at that moment, we had much less money. We had just bought a new pick-up for transporting our business and were paying $2,000 USD in car payments per month... You may ask, "Who pays that much?" and I will respond, "We're in Mexico my friend."
It's coming on 10 years with this problem. Granted, it has improved over time... It's coming on 30 years since I had my large intestine removed. The colon is a reservoir for extracting excess water from your feces... I have lived much of my life in a constant state of semi-dehydration. Thankfully, I drink much more water here in Mexico than I had in the U.S. Before having my rectum removed my daily shitting experience was your diarhea... After having my rectum removed... I had never shit in my bed in childhood. Yes, I wet my bed until the age of 12. Read the child psychology literature... look under the subject heading of abuse and neglect... young sons losing their fathers... I don't make this shit up. Kill me and the reality still exists...
David, Marlena, Kathy, Neil, Jimmy, John, Sabrena and how many more people asked me, "Ross, why don't you return to the U.S. with Margarita? Mexico seems horribly frightening now..." and James said, "Ross, I just stumbled across your blog Pinche Gringo in Xalapa (2005, my wonderful cupcake interview... Would you believe that I had totally forgotten about that?) Why don't you write your memoirs Hey Pinche Gringo, Why Don't You Just Come Home?" And I ask, "James, why were you looking for me on the internet when we are connected on Facebook? Why are you looking for my writings?" How many more people asked me, How and why did (I) come to Mexico? But why don't I return to the U.S.? Why isn't it so easy? What is life like in Mexico? I can't explain this without explaining the other stuff...
It's 4:16am. The screetch of a cat... Soft knocking on the front door. I ignore it. My brother-in-laws are sleeping in the front bedroom... One of them will open the door. If it's one of them, they will go around the house and enter through the back. The soft knocking continues. I get up from the computer and enter the front room. Maybe it's Scooby scratching himself, banging his knees on the cement floor outside... But, before I turn on the light, I see the form of a person cross the window of the door towards the side of the house. And I think, damn it, I arrived too late... I open the door and no one's there. Standing behind me is my father-in-law Roberto and his sister Aucelia asking "what's happening?" I tell them and they walk outside to see if anyone was there... It had rained heavily that evening. So, Roberto was looking for footprints in the dirt. None... Maybe it was one of Alba's, Iris' or Erika's boyfriends... Who knows? Soft knocking on the door. Now someone is playing.... But now there is sudden explosion of dogs barking. But, as quickly as it began, it stopped...
Someone is outside. I heard the shuffling of their feet. One of the dogs is barking. Someone just left the house to check... Nothing. Silence. It's 4:45am. The roosters are crowing, "Cock-a-doodle-doo". But in Mexico, they are really saying, "Ki-kit-a-ki, Ki-kit-a-ki".
Here, instead of a man in the moon, it's a rabbit, a hare.
It's 5:03am. The chirping of small lizards. They sound like crickets. The roosters say, "Ki-kit-a-ki, Ki-kit-a-ki". What you may not know, rooster's crow is a call and response... It has nothing to do with the sun about to rise. They crow at all times of the day. It's a beautiful sound.
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