RandomCha

Joey is more or less the same: still unconscious, heavily sedated, on a respirator, in critical condition. We were able to talk briefly with one of his doctors. They’ve determined that it is not an infection. The closest they can get at a diagnosis is to say that it is definitely a toxin of some kind that he was exposed to or somehow ingested. But they don’t know what it could be, or how it got into his system. They’ve contacted other hospitals and even the CDC, but haven’t gotten any helpful information about any other possibly-related cases elsewhere. The tests have been inconclusive. For several days he has essentially been alternating between slight upward trends and slight downward trends. His doc said that for the past six hours it’s been downward. His body is quite swollen, but that’s not unusual for someone who’s been on a drip and motionless for several days. His skin color is not good at all. It’s because this toxin, whatever it is, is still going after his liver. And it’s the strain on his liver that has caused his lung problems, and the onset of pneumonia.

There’s nothing that can be done, at the moment, except to support his body as much as they can and hope that his system can purify itself. The things in his favor: he’s young, his organs and system were pretty healthy beforehand, and the illness was caught early (he was admitted seven days ago). The bad things: overall it seems like a very slow but steady decline, and they don’t know what’s causing it and therefore can’t initiate focused treatment.

Jeremy & I are going over to the hospital at 3.45, and I will post an update on Joey’s condition later this evening. Thanks everyone for all your kind comments and thoughts.

Today I visited Joey twice. I ‘m thinking about Joey. He’s my second-oldest Chicago friend. I met him ten years ago at a place that no longer exists, The Halsted Street Cafe. It was where Circuit is now. I ended up there one evening because it was the last stop on a solo pilgrimage I was making of all the coffeehouses in Boystown. You do that kind of thing when you’re 20 years old, and alone, and bored.

I was already wired to the gills with caffeine when I got to the cafe. It was a big open room with a beverage counter, racks of used CDs for sale, and a few bookshelves. There were tables and chairs here and there and a few couches I think. I bought my coffee and sat down, scoped out the place. Joey was somewhere across the room, sitting with a few people. I was immediately attracted to him but I kept my distance. Just kept my eye on him. I had a mini-book that Penguin was putting out that year in conjunction with their anniversary, and it was a novella by Paul Theroux called The Greenest Island. I had to do something with myself, so I sat there and read the whole thing. Cover-to-cover. Joey was still there with his friends, I don’t know what they were doing. Just hanging out, goofing off I guess.

Finally I finished the book, then I set it aside and got out my spiral notebook. I started writing a poem I guess, a poem about Joey ostensibly, kind of watching him across the room. And then when it was finished I tore the page out of the notebook and walked over to Joey and said, “I wrote this about you.” We must have chatted for awhile, him sitting and me standing, and then he came over to my table. And we wrote things back and forth.

It was getting late. I wanted to go home with him, or to take him home, but his friends were still hanging around and someone suggested The Melrose. So we all walked to the diner and sat in a booth together. I was so annoyed that his friends weren’t getting the clue to leave us alone, and sort of annoyed that Joey wasn’t sending them away. I sat across from him and the stupid conversation among everyone else seemed endless, I wasn’t paying any attention. Joey and I played footsie. Finally after awhile his friends caught on. It was really late. I began to make not-so-subtle comments. We kept smiling at each other from across the table, flirting.

He took me to his tiny shoebox apartment on Oakdale. It was so small that we slept on the floor. The sex was odd, but oddly comfortable. Actually I don’t remember the sex itself; I remember how it made me feel. I didn’t want to leave afterwards. I wanted to be close together. I spent the night.

I’m sure we got hardly any sleep, and there was more sex in the morning. There was no coffee. We had orange juice. He turned on his computer and we logged onto the internet at 28K. It was thrilling. We literally spent hours on a BBS he was familiar with, and then he showed me irc. Internet relay chat: the first chatrooms online. You had to log in with a screen name. I thought about it and chose randomchance. Joey typed it in, but when we got into the room I noticed that it had cut off part of the end. There was a 9-character limit. So, for the first time ever, I was randomcha.

I fell for Joey; at that time in my life I fell for everyone. And he was so ahead of me. He’d already had a boyfriend, had already tried a long-distance relationship, had already broken up. I didn’t know the first thing about what it was like to be in love. He liked me too but he really just wanted to be friends with me. A bit later I realized that’s what I wanted too. I caught up with him Back then, I got over things as quickly as I fell into them. So we were friends.

There have been periods where we’ve been completely out of touch with each other, and periods where we’ve been quite close. But what means the most to me is that there is a real continuity between us. We’ve known each other so long that we can’t help but read between each other’s lines. Somehow, I know, there are moments when we’ve both felt each other for who we really are: the invisible ghosts of our pasts that are visible when you’re face to face with someone you’ve known over time.

Like a time machine of the flesh, holding his hand as I stood by the bed today. The same hand and different. We carry ourselves through space and time. I held his hand, and though he was unconscious and I could not feel him move, he carried me back ten years. I saw him both ways. I wish it didn’t have to take something like this.

I am waging a war to get “Downtown” by Mrs. Miller unstuck from my head. I’m trying to get it replaced with “Smooth Operator” by Sade. I think I could live with Sade for a few days. Mrs. Miller has not taken kindly to eviction. Her voice has invaded my dreams for the past few nights. When I worked out on Monday, I listened to “Smooth Operator” three times in a row. Anything to get “Downtown” out of my head.

Interestingly, both songs are implicitly urban.

“Unknown White Male”: pretty amazing documentary about Doug, a handsome, charming 30something Brit living in NYC who suddenly experiences amnesia one day and complete forgets who he is. He can still function, i.e. walk, talk, but has no memory whatsoever of who he was or what his life was like. His friend begins filming him, and the documentary covers the two years after the amnesia begins. Well, a riveting story. To see him change and also experience things for the first time all over again is enchanting. Also somehow scary. It’s only the fact that IT’S REAL that prevents it from feeling totally contrived; I mean, it sounds like the plot of a terrible movie right? But it isn’t (or at least not yet, since no doubt Hollywood will try and option the story). It’s fascinating, and the Q & A after the film with the director afterwards was too. Absolutely recommended. This is definitely a film that will have no trouble finding an audience. Though, to be a bit grumpy, I thought it was a bit too flashy at times, and there were aspects of his amnesia that I would have liked to learn more about. Still a great film. Rating: 4/5

“In Memory of My Father”: saw this today with a free pass. THIS MOVIE WAS TERRIBLE. A has-been film producer is dying, and his three annoying sons and their equally annoying friends/lovers gather around to talk, talk, talk endlessly without being interesting (oh, and they’re all played by lame actors who are doing really poor improv). Plus it’s all shot on video, so it looks like crap. To see a film like this is realize what geniuses Cassavetes and Altman can be. This has to be the worst sort of film in this genre I have seen since “Timecode” … and at least that movie has Kyle Maclachlan and Julian Sands in it. Ugh, I thought this movie would never end. I wanted to get up and smack every character at least once. Pretty much the whole movie is whining or screaming. The director was there for for Q & A, but I left as quickly as I could once the credits came up. Rating: 2/5 (I laughed twice).

DVD NIGHT on WEDNESDAY
7.30 pm
@ Rob/Andy’s

What a way to start a Monday. I arrive to discover that (1) the printers here are not working YET AGAIN, (2) our delivery driver has called in sick with the flu, and (3) I may have to go to a ‘sales training’ conference way the hell out by O’Hare Tuesday and Wednesday from 8.30 to 5.00. Anyone still curious why I’m beginning to burn out?

P.S. Since yesterday I have had Mrs. Miller’s recording of “Downtown” stuck in my head.

I have seen the best film of the year. That film is “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.”

Andy & I saw it last night at the Film Festival. We’d had a terrible evening. I realized early yesterday morning that I had a terrible cold, and felt like crap. We were supposed to go to dinner, but I didn’t feel up to it. Instead Andy made dinner, and through a series of events I won’t go into we didn’t have time to eat. We weren’t really talking to each other at this point. Then we waited forever for the bus to come, I almost thought we’d be late, and then once at the theatre we were stuck in the ticket holders’ line in front of the two most annoying people on the planet. Sample dialogue:

HER: I’ve never done this film festival thing because it’s a crap shoot. I mean you can read the capsule reviews but they don’t mean anything. You can get stuck … like I went to this Russian movie and it was some weird sci fi thing …

Finally we were seated comfortably, and as the lights went down and the film started I had my clutch of Kleenex on my lap to stem the bottomless tide flowing from my nose.

All this background colored my experience of the film.

“The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” unfolds in near-real time, composed entirely of long takes. A 62-year old man who lives by himself in a sad apartment on the outskirts of Bucarest feeds his cats one evening, and then he calls for an ambulance. He’s been throwing up since morning and has a headache. The ambulance takes upwards of 30 minutes to arrive, and in the meanwhile he gets an earful from his next-door neighbors. Everyone nags him about drinking too much and no one seems to want to take his ailments seriously. Not even as he is shuttled around from hospital to hospital, his condition steadily deteriorating, most of the medical personnel seemed more concerned with their own problems and maintaining their social status among the other staff.

I was sick last night, and Joey being in the hospital was still very much on my mind, and this made the film all the more vivid for me. I have plenty of experience of my own when it comes to hospitals. The film precisely duplicates many moments I remember from my time as a patient: moments when you’re so out of it and incoherent and weak that you can’t speak, you can’t move, yet you never lose awareness of what’s going on around you, the doctors and nurses speaking of you in the third person as they hover over your bed. Doctor after doctor asking the same questions, running the same tests, putting you through the limitless moments of waiting.

The style of the film is a lot like a Frederick Wiseman documentary. There is no flashy editing, it’s all straight cuts, and there is no music except over the credits. The action just unfolds. The ambient sound puts the viewer directly in the scene and you absorb the entire environment, even when it’s offscreen.

The icing on the cake is the dark humor that’s present in every scene. It reminded me somewhat of “The Hospital,” the great Paddy Chayefsky satire that turned medical incompetence into farce. Only in “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” director Cristi Puiu plays every scene bone dry. All the actors are flawless.

I was stunned and exhilarated when it was over. I don’t know if this film will get national distribution, but keep your eyes peeled. It’s an amazing experience.

Congrats to Harold Pinter for winning the Nobel Prize!

sumsinnow was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital this afternoon at 2 o’clock. As many of you probably know, he hasn’t been feeling at all well since Sunday, and after seeing his doctor again today it was decided that it was finally time to check him in. He had a high fever, no appetite, and his skin was turning yellow. I just talked to him on the phone; he’s not exactly happy about the whole thing but definitely seemed relieved to be under care and able to rest. They’re putting him under a fast for a few days so they can do some tests and make a soid diagnosis. They’re saying he could be there until Friday. In the meantime, he’s staying in room # 1143. Visiting hours are until 8:30 daily, and you can call him at 773.665.3000. (Keep in mind he needs to get lots of rest so don’t bother him too much!)