Day

7:00 A.M. Wake up. The night prior I had complained vociferously about not being able to use the car to go to work on the grounds that I'd be exhausted. Granted S takes the metro every day and wakes up at 6:30, but she doesn't need her beauty sleep like I do. I go to hell in hand basket real quick. Actually I have to go in something much larger, it's really more like a large scale laundry basket and even then I'm a bit cramped on the journey.

I just think generally speaking that men are more selfish. It doesn't occur to me when I'm making myself a sandwich at 2 on a Saturday that S might be hungry as well. I mean, I know that I'm hungry how the hell should I know what's going on with her? Apparently you are supposed to ask though.

7:30 A.M. Proceed to doc's office. The trees and bushes are no longer in full bloom. They look like an emptying house when the main guests at the party have left town and everyone is a little too drunk. Sure they've got a few more blossoms to toss onto the street, but they've already had their best times.

After much debating it is decided that S will not wait for me to finish my appt. and that I will ride the metro one stop to Tenleytown, which I'm not sure who it is named after, nor does it in any way shape or form approach being a town. And I secretly wish that the name made more sense like the Presidio or Pacific Heights in San Francisco, instead of being Tenleytown, named after the proprietor of a tavern.

The building is a monolith, rising sleek and grey, vaguely reminding me of both NASA and every large office dwelling in every major downtown of the United States. The doors are twenty feet high and made of reinforced glass, which the sun doesn't really reflect off, so much as melt into. Though perhaps it's different at midday.

The elevators at the building are sleek and fast. They shoot from floor to floor in a manner that would make the Jetson's proud. When I board the elevator there are three of us. On the way up to the tenth floor, the man to my right begins knocking his fist against the side of the elevator tapping out a beat that he compliments with subtle noises that he both creates and bobs his head to. I have one of those moments when you are trying to decide if it is incredibly annoying that someone is tapping out a beat in a public location where we all just desire anonymity in some insanely strong way. Though, by the time we reach the tenth floor and are on the way to the thirteenth, he doesn't tap out a beat at all. And I find myself disappointed that he doesn't, and wishing, as I often do, that I was the sort of person who would start making a beat in the elevator because he didn't give a crap what others say or thought but just really enjoyed the sound.

"Have a good day sir," he says to me as I exit.

8:00 A.M. Stand in line at the doc's. Become uncomfortable standing next to another woman waiting for it to open and go hide myself around a corner and in order to help the disguise I stare for an inordinate amount of time at a fire extinguisher as though I've never seen one before. As if the fire extinguisher was a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or I'm trying to learn to read English. The lady notices nothing. In the mean time another patient arrives and when the door opens he dutifully logs himself in as arriving second. And I can't, (though I secretly wish that I could) tell him that I was there first because I was standing around the corner by the elevators admiring the fine white lettering on the glass case around the fire extinguisher. I'm only mildly annoyed at him.

The nurses speak to one another with a little bit of slang, complaining about the ups and downs of being in what sound like needy families. Then, when they turn to talk with the patients, the grammar is clean and precise and the intense voice modulations are manicured down to a pretty fair monotone of whiteness that Dave Chapelle mocked so well.

The first two patients, including the guy who unwittingly cut, are in and out of the office in the amount of time that jiffy lube promises a crappy oil change. I exchange smiles with them as if we have somehow shared in something, this slight inconvenience to our morning.

When I am called back the nurse tells me to take a seat in room 1. I sit dutifully down in the patients chair, I've learned after twenty some odd years of appointments that it makes them uncomfortable when you sit in one of those more comfortable chairs that are reserved for parents of children. They like you to be sitting on the construction paper, uncomfortable, trying not to shift too much for fear that people in the hallway will hear you shifting about and know that you are there. It's entirely illogical re: the fear that someone will hear. If you actually fear that they won't know your physical body is present you've probably got some deeper issues.

The room smells exactly like every other sort of medical office, dental, optometrist et al, something that according to my father-in-law, a doctor, probably has something to do with the disinfectants that they use at night. And it's strange, but when I worked a few months in a hospital years ago, this smell was wholly absent, replaced by a slight stench that accompanied so many bodies in various states of decay that even that disinfectant couldn't cover.

For a while the nurses talk to one another, and then they come in to let me know that they're not sure if their office does the test or if it is the other office up the street. And I smile and nod, at the woman, who is friendly, with a large smile, and dreadlocks died blond, roots still dark. This, even though I know that S has confirmed the appointment the day before and that they do in fact give the test and that my time is just being wasted. I smile not out of any altruistic leanings or understanding that the world is a tough place to be for those in any kind of service industry but because I am often incredibly passive in social situations, deferring and smiling away in a manner that always suggests that I'm a pretty laid back guy and that I can understand that things aren't always as easy as they seem. A fact which leads some people who know me very well to be surprised at what a royal impatient dick I can, and usually am, if I know you well enough to be comfortable. That is not exactly a sparkling attribute.

The nurse and I exchange a couple more items in the next half hour. I give her the information as best as I can making sure to mention that I am getting the same test as my pregnant wife, so that she will work harder to make sure that this happens and perhaps imagine me and my pregnant wife cuddling with a baby. Without explanation the first nurse, no dyed blond hair arrives and takes my blood. I can't really understand her, so when she asks me to make a fist I just hold my arm out dumbly, and when she tells me to stop making a fist I initially just make the fist tighter until she says it again, more audibly, "stop making a fist."

And as I get ready to leave I say something like, "I'm sorry this was so hard to sort out," but she interrupts me after "I'm sorry this" to ask me some relatively innocuous, though business related question. A question that makes it clear to me that this is not the morning where I have managed to charm the nurses, but that I am just one more patient who needs to move along so that she can get to the next one.

The clouds are still low and grey, but the rain seems like a memory and the capacious distance between earth and sky is filled with a kind of viscous warmth that you know is just going to be hell by afternoon.