Gilbert and his Body

           He was heavyset in size and had been his whole life.  Rotund at the belly and flabby at the calves.  He couldn’t see himself and what he was doing at the urinals.  Ashamedly, he’d be fumbling around with his eyes frantically on the search for on-lookers and jeers.  As well, envy rose in his blood, of those men skinny enough to have their member be able to stick out.  Instead, his was lost among folds and folds of dirty flesh.  Once he had vowed to stop using urinals.  But he soon grew too large for the stalls, which had cramped him and ignited in him a newfound sense of claustrophobia in the public bathrooms.  So back to the urinals it was, with sweat beads at his temples.

          He was one of those people whose body shape effected his daily decisions.  Because, at the end of the day, it was always only him with his body.

          Eating had a lot to do with his weight.  Eating and sitting, and vice-versa.  And he was eating all the wrong things.  Hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries, ice cream.  Anything with fat and flavor attracted his attention like flies to a light.  He knew he shouldn’t have been eating foods like this because number one, his metabolism was as slow as a sloth, and number two, hadn’t his doctor told him numerous times that his cholesterol was dangerously high?  “Gilbert.  I’m telling you as both your doctor and your friend (he was Gilbert’s physician for seventeen-plus years; something of that timeframe must amount to a type of level.  If not platinum, silver, or gold, must be, by protocol, a friendship.  Superficial at most.) you really should consider exercising.  And stop skipping your pills.  And eating those foods!”

          But still, he ate and ate.  And sit and sit he did.  The sitting itself wasn’t particularly bad, but it was that he was sitting and thinking.  And the thinking often made him worry.  And the worrying added stress to his heart, which was desperately trying to maintain a clear highway for blood.

          At five-thirty in the morning, his alarm clock frizzled his mind.  He had just dreamed of his ex-wife who left behind for Gilbert her biggest legacy: an indentation on his left ring finger where his wedding ring used to be, partially cutting off circulation to the finger as he grew fatter.  The ring was gone, but the indentation was still there.  It had the weight of the ring on the finger.  It was like some sort of phantom feeling, the same as that felt by people who had a body part amputated.  It’s also that same feeling you get when a large piece of furniture from a room you frequent was suddenly gone.

          Something was missing, and therefore wrong and haunting.  That kind of feeling.

          He had dreamed of the divorce papers.  She had worn red fingernails when she signed it because she was about to go on a date with her new boyfriend.  It was Valentine’s Day, and his ex-wife and her boy toy had made a reservation at some fancy restaurant, conveniently located near his apartment.  When his ex-wife went to sign the papers, Gilbert kept his eyes on her quick, red fingernails.  And then when he went to sign the papers, he saw that his fingernails were falling off, and in their place was a different hue of red paint: blood.

          But that wasn’t the strange part, no.  The strange part was that as his fingernails bled, he kept on thinking of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in bed together.  He kept on thinking of the blood stains she had left on his mattress, and how now she’ll be leaving blood stains on her boyfriend’s mattress, if they make it that far. 

          For Gilbert, marriage was always bloody, one way or another.

          Gilbert still signed the papers, blood and all, and even included a period at the end of his signature.  He figured a punctuation mark was, indeed, in need.

           But this was all his dream.  In actuality, the signing of their divorce papers was nothing at all like his dream.  In fact, the whole divorce papers episode was banal, and there was a lawyer involved.  They had used his pen, which wasn’t red as blood, but really a simple black.  And she didn’t even have painted nails.

          With his frizzled, awakened mind, Gilbert still wasn’t ready to abandon his bed; to give himself up to the new day, which wasn’t really new, as far as Gilbert knew, because most of his days were the same.  Repetition and ingrained tiredness isn’t quite the definition of new.  New implies freshness.  Excitement.  Movement and something shiny.

          But Gilbert was as stagnant as a softening log, wedged between rocks in an un-visited rivulet, lost in a bushy forest.

          After pressing the snooze button, he began to cry.  He cried like a loud baby.  His whines were high-pitched and he snorted every so often to catch his breath in between sobs.

          Once he calmed down, he turned his head and faced the window, his body flat on the bed.  It was still dark outside, and a couple of stars were courageous enough—just enough—to shine its light piercing the darkness of the sky.  Gilbert stared at one of them so hard that he could have sworn it started moving.  Shifting to the left.  Stopping, then shifting.  His eyes burned, so he blinked a few times, and continued staring at the star.  Which then started shifting in the opposite direction.

          Gilbert’s disbelief of what he was seeing caused him to jump out of bed in only his white briefs.  He ran up to the window, his heavy footsteps mimicking a stampede of black Friday shoppers.  He continued to stare at the star, watching it shift left, then right.  How could this possibly be?  He thought.  Stars don’t move.  Especially not individually.  To make sure, he looked at neighboring stars in comparison to his star under investigation.  All other stars were staying in place, except his star.

          His eyes burned more intensely, and he began to get a pulsing headache.  Maybe it’s all in my head.  Maybe I’m running a fever, and I’m imagining things.  For God’s sake, Gilbert, stars don’t move.

          On his nightstand were his pills.  He took one with the full glass of water, also on his nightstand.

          He didn’t always need pills.  Well, technically yes.  Since childhood.  But he stopped taking them once he got married.  Then he continued taking them when his marriage began to fail.  Some days – on days he felt rebellious and stubborn – he wouldn’t take his pills.  I could live without them.  I don’t need them.  But when things got weird – when things tested him –his ego more than likely would let up, and the pills would pop in.

          They popped in a lot during the signing of the divorce papers.

          After the last gulp of water, Gilbert grabbed the phone, also on the nightstand, and rolled back in bed.

          He dialed his work.

          “Yes, hi Jerry.  Can I speak to Mr. Coen?  It’s Gilbert Sac.”

          They put him on hold, and put on elevator music.  It caused Gilbert excruciating pain, the music, because once when he was a young boy, he was trapped in an elevator, with its repetitive tunes.  It had made him vomit, and its wreaking smell, in addition to the elevator music, caused Gilbert to pass out in his own puke.

          Gilbert hung up the phone.

          “Shit.”

          Again, Gilbert dialed his work.

          “Yes, I’m sorry about that Jerry, it was a little mishap.  Is Mr. Coen available?”

          “This is he.”

          “Oh, Mr. Coen!  Thought you were Jerry for a moment.  Mr. Coen, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to work today.”

          “Is that so?”

          “Yes, see, I’m running a fever, and I’m waiting for my sister to come over and take me to the doctor’s office.  I don’t think I’m able to travel.  Just feel really sick.”

          “Oh Gilbert, that’s really sad to hear.  Maybe you should take the day off.”

          “Yes, I really think that’s best.”

          “Maybe you should take the week off.”

          “Well now . . . Mr. Coen, I –”

          “Hell, take the month off.  No, two months!”

          “Why, I don’t think—”

          “Gilbert, this is the seventh time you’ve called out in the past two weeks.  Either tell me what’s going on with you, or you’re fired.  Tell me this isn’t a fever again.  God, Gilbert, you don’t even sound sick.  Just desperate.”

          Gilbert panicked.  “Mr. Coen . . . I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

          “Ok, ok.  Gilbert, just tell me: what’s going on?”

          “I mean, you have to understand, Mr. Coen, I just got through a divorce.”

          “Yeah, Gilbert, that was a year ago.  You must move on.  I’ll tell you what.  Take the day off.  Regroup.  Gather yourself.  Come again tomorrow, and no more calling out, ok?”

          “Oh my God.  Thank you.  Thank you, Mr. Coen.  Can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

          “Just get better Gilbert.  Because if you don’t, I already have a couple of people fighting for your position.”

          “Oh dear Lord, for my position?  You’re pulling my leg, surely.”

          “I mean it, Gilbert.  So you get better now, ok?  Can you do that for me, Gilbert?”

          “Will do, Mr. Coen, will do.  I’m sorry again.  You have a wonderful heart.”

          “Ok, yes.  Thank you.  Have a good day, Gilbert.  I’ll see you tomorrow morning.  Make sure of that.”

          “Yes sir, yes sir.  Will do.  I will make sure of that.”

          They hung up the phone.

          Gilbert’s hands began to tremble.  He hadn’t realized he had called out seven times already.  The days have been passing before his eyes, and while he was previously sure he was awake the past two weeks, he was now very much in doubt that he was.

          The sky outside his window started lighting up, but only just a tad.  His star continued to shift left and right as his hands quavered still.

*****

          Putting on his pants was a difficult feat, mostly because he couldn’t bend over.  His belly prevented him.  It was best that he lay on his back on the mattress, and bend his legs to his chest.  From there, he could commence putting on his pants, two legs at a time.  It was better for him this way because lying on his back caused his stomach to flatten.  Much more efficient this way than sitting and bending over to pull up the pants, or standing up, and bringing his knees up, one at a time.

          By six-thirty, he was ready to trek the snowy streets in search of breakfast.  The place he had in mind was the café, which was located a few miles from his house, on a main street.  To his knowledge and from past experience, the café opened, regularly, at five in the morning.

          Once out of the door, he walked to his car, being careful not to slip on ice.  Black ice was what he feared the most.  It was deceiving, like a masterful magician with ill-intentions for his audience.  You’d be surprised how agile Gilbert looked as he chose each step of his driveway carefully.  He only stepped on spots that he deemed safe to walk on, until he reached his car.

          Which, of course, was covered in at least one foot of snow.  He hadn’t thought of that; he hadn’t thought about the fact that he’d have to use his energy to dig his car out of the snow before he’d be able to get breakfast.  It was just his luck, he thought.  The breakfast better be worth it.  While scraping the windows, he was thinking of which meals he would order from the café menu.

          His doctor had told him to eat healthy foods.  Gilbert was making sure to keep that into his consideration.  So he did.  Briefly.  He decided he would get something smothered in butter because he used a lot of energy scraping snow off the car.  A compromise should be all right once in a while.  And he was craving butter anyway.

          The shoveling tired his lungs and he began to wheeze.  Still, he thought of the café and his food.

          As soon as he got in the car, he had to catch his breath from all his efforts.  He turned on the radio.  There was a station that he liked listening to, and that morning, the radio talk show hosts were talking to a caller who was seeking revenge on her husband, who had cheated on her.

          “I want to cause him pain because of all the pain he put me through,” said the woman.

          Why is it that people always want revenge? Thought Gilbert.  Must be a kind of release.  But a release from what?  Vengefulness is an angry state of being.  The release, while done in anger, is one done in order to feel happy.  To feel that you’ve been brought to justice.  Equality is what it is all about: the Founding Fathers’ dragged-out intentions.

          This feeling of vengeance must have been founded in the human heart a great while back.  Gilbert thought, so that’s why I take my pills.  I must be controlling my vengeance.  Best to control it before it controls me.  I should share some of my pills with that lady caller.

*****

          Gilbert decided not to go to the café because after reconsidering his doctor’s orders, he said to himself the best way to eliminate temptation is to not enable yourself to indulge in temptation.  The snow – the weather – was a sign that he should stay in and make himself a healthy breakfast.  All he had to do was listen to what nature was telling him.

          Also, his car had gotten stuck despite all his shoveling.  And Gilbert felt a little dizzy after all the wheezing he’d done.

          He went back inside his house and sat down at his kitchen table, drumming his fingers.  He was thinking of what to cook.

          But then he decided he was too lazy to cook.  So he stood up, sighed, and made his way to the door.  But then he changed his mind again.

          “Oh this is just absurd!  Deciding whether or not I should make breakfast or go out for breakfast shouldn’t have to be so damn difficult!”

          At that, he stammered out of the door, got the shovel, and began shoveling out the snow from around his tires.  As he threw the snow over his shoulder, he caught something off the corner of his eye.

          The star.

          And it was shifting.

          He stopped his shoveling, and looked at the star.  Its light was growing fainter through the gray clouds, and with some imagination (which Gilbert had a lot of,) he could still see it.

          “Well, aren’t you an odd one,” he said, unaware that he was actually talking to the star.  Gilbert remained focused on it as if he fell into a staring contest with it.  but was the star really staring back at him?  Gilbert certainly believed so.  To him, the star was mocking him, making him believe in something that wouldn’t ordinarily be caught in the realm of truth: stars don’t move.  And what better way to mock Gilbert than to shift back and forth right before his eyes.

          Gilbert became transfixed on the star.  But just when his eyes got used to the back-and-forth movement of it, it started only shifting forward.

          “Oh!”

          Gilbert was surprised at this by a large fraction.  It made him drop the shovel.  But the clang of its hitting the asphalt of his driveway rattled him out of his trance.  He shook his head, cursed out loud in a mumbling kind of voice and picked up the shovel.  He continued shoveling.

          Shoveling, shoveling, shoveling for forty minutes straight.  Gilbert began to feel dizzy.  He looked up at the sky.  The star had stopped shifting forward, and started shifting back and forth again.

          Suddenly, Gilbert noticed something about the air he was breathing: it was substantially cold and dry; so much so that it constricted something in his chest to the point where he had to let out an ugly cough.  The clouds that formed out of his mouth and in front of his face reminded him of a crystal ball he saw once at a fair when he was a child.  He began to treat the clouds as such, and pretended to see visions in them.  Visions of what his ex-wife was doing at that particular point in time.  He smirked at the thought of his being an undercover clairvoyant.  A secret spy for himself.  Though more of a selfish clairvoyant.

          He imagined his ex-wife in valleys and vibrant, white mountains of comforters, heating up the earth that was her.  And hiding within those natural wonders was the goat-man.  The excessively hairy new boyfriend of hers whose arm was wrapped around her as they spooned.  The goat-man smartly grazed her squashed breasts.

          Her cleavage, as she lay on her side, was what Gilbert loved waking up to the most in the mornings after their intimate, adventurous nights.  They were both hikers.  The cleavage represented for Gilbert his courage, only felt in the dark, under the covers.  He was shy for the most part, after all.  His timidness was just as instinctive as his urges.

          But courage was a wonderful thing.  What had he done with it?  It had vanished.  He knew he didn’t simply give it away.  Transfer it to another person, another lover, like transferring money to different accounts at the bank.

          Perhaps it rolled under his bed.  Yes, he lost it, he figured.  It was probably among a bunch of other things he lost under the bed; things he wasn’t using any more.

          He let out one more cough and continued, as if he’d find his courage deep inside the snow – if it happened not to be under his bed.  But he severely doubted it’d be in the snow. 

*****

          Finally Gilbert gave up on his car, and the shoveling.  He was tired, hungry, and dizzy.

          He collapsed.

*****

            The hospital bed on which Gilbert woke up suffocated him.  It compressed his body like a killer boa.  Gasping for breath and pulsing with panic and fear, he yanked away the blanket, and with it, a tube that was half in his nose.

          “Mr. Sac, Mr. Sac!   Relax!  What is it?!”

          “It’s too hot.  I need air!”  In his yelling, he felt as if he were fighting for his life.  His worrisome life that he was still working on.

          Gilbert pushed the nurse out of his way, ran toward the window.  His foot got stuck in his bed pan, which he accidently stepped on when he jumped from the bed.

          Once he opened the window, he stuck his head out, and closed his eyes.  He inhaled the crisp air, and instead of constricting his lungs with its coldness, the air filled him up like a balloon.  He suddenly forgot all about his massive weight, and felt as light as the air he was breathing.  Something above his chin squiggled into a ‘u’ shape.  It was his lips, and he was smiling.

          But when he opened his eyes, he felt his dead weight: he had seen the star again.  And it had continued to shift.

          “Mr. Sac?  Are you ok?  You need to lie down.  You’re not yet well.”

          The smile ran away like a balloon, floating away in the sky, unattached to the string.  What was left was a disappointed child.  “I beg your pardon.  Excuse my actions,” he said in a monotone voice.  He added, “Please tell me what time it is.”

          “Mr. Sac, you’re not well.”

          Gilbert walked back to his bed.  Suddenly he was aware of his surroundings.  Of the fact that he was in a hospital.  Of the fact that he had a bedpan stuck to his foot.  And of the fact that he was wearing nothing but a hospital gown with his bare back and bottom open for view.  He looked around him, frantically.  Going from elation to disappointment to confusion was too much for him.

          “What do you mean by not well?  What happened to me?  Why am I here?  What is going on?  The star!”

          “Lie down, Mr. Sac.  I’ll page your doctor.  He’ll do all the explaining.” 

          “The star!”

          “I will page the doctor.”

          He began to mumble and curse as he lay down.  The nurse took off the bedpan from his foot.  She began to tuck him in.

          “Not too tight, not too tight!”

          “Like this?”

          “Much better.”

          Gilbert was able to squeeze in a question before the nurse exited the door into a noisy hallway with its beeping monitors and shouts from other patients.  “I’m sorry, Nurse?”

          “Yes, Mr. Sac?”

          “What time is it?”

          “Just about 2:45 in the afternoon.”

          “Ok.  Thank you, Nurse.”

*****

Dr. Galer approached Gilbert.  He wasn’t wearing a white coat.  Simply dress pants, a white collared shirt and a tie that looked like it used to be part of a carpet.  “Ok, Mr. Sac.  Hi, I’m Dr. Galer.  How are you feeling?” 

            “My boss had told me that I had called out of work seven times in the past week.”

            “Oh?”

            “Yeah.  But see, doctor, I don’t remember that at all.  I feel like I’m here, but I’m not.”

            “Do you know precisely why you’re here, at the hospital?”

            “Actually no.”  Gilbert gave a perplexed look.

            “Your doctor –”

            “I thought you’re my doctor?”

            “Oh.  Oh no.  I’m Dr. Galer, the psychologist.  Your doctor – the one who admitted you – sent for me.”

            “Oh!”

            “Nothing to be ashamed of.”  Dr. Galer waved it off.  “Mr. Sac, your ex-wife found you lying on the ground of your driveway, out in the cold.  She told me you must have been shoveling the snow when suddenly you passed out.  Does that sound correct?”

            “My ex-wife?”

            “Yes, Miss Josie Conklins?”

            “My ex-wife!  She found me on the ground?  Is she here?  Where is she?”

            “She left you in our care.  She had something to tend to.”

            “Why would she be around my house?  Was she with a man?”

            “I don’t believe so.  Mr. Sac, calm down.  Please, let’s get through the questions first.”

            “Yes, yes,” said Gilbert, whose mind was now racing with images of his ex-wife coming, laughing at him as he lay on the ground hopeless.  And then, out of pure pity, bringing him to a hospital.

            “So does Miss. Josie Conklins’s account of what she told us sound correct?”

            “Yes.  Yes, I guess that is true.”  But in his heart’s honesty, all Gilbert recalled of the passing day was the shifting star.  So tantalizing it was.  It arrested Gilbert’s every thought.

            “So, Mr. Sac.  You said you called out of work, or something?”

            “Nevermind that, Dr. Galer. You said you’re a psychologist?”

            “Yes.  That’s correct, Mr. Sac.”

            “Ok, good.  Because there’s something that’s been bothering me.”  The thought of his ex-wife bringing him to the hospital had now become old news.  After resigning to the belief that she had done the deed in a somewhat sadistic matter, he wanted to get back onto the case of the shifting the star.

            “Oh?”

            “Yes.  There’s a star, right there, in the sky.  Look out the window.” Gilbert pointed at his shifting star.  Although the sky was now bright at almost three o’clock in the afternoon, Gilbert’s star was still presenting itself.

            “What star might you be talking about, Mr. Sac?”

            “Right there.  Look.  You don’t see it?”

            “There is no star, Mr. Sac.”

            Gilbert’s face turned a bloody red.  At any moment it looked as if it were going to explode like an over-heated tomato, suddenly splattering in the microwave. 

            He threw the blankets off like he did before, and dashed for the window.  He opened it and stuck half his bod y out of it, his bare behind visible to the psychologist who looked at him in earnest interest.

            Gilbert began to reach for the star with all his might.  “It’s right there, doc!  You don’t see it?  I’m going to get it and show you, myself!”

            His room was seven stories high, and at that height, winds blew powerfully: they blew off Gilbert’s hospital gown.  As he reached for the star, he saw, floating in the direction of it, one such gown.

            Then he realized it was his, and that he was naked.

            From head to toe, Gilbert was almost all fat.  His stretched skin as laid out in folds, sagging like bent branches with snow weighing them down.

            And there it was: his tiny member.  It looked like a second belly button that would have been an outtie. 

            Gilbert looked down. “Oh dear God.”

            “Uh . . . Nurse,” said Dr. Galer.  “Nurse, a blanket.  Quick!”

            Gilbert began to cry, and his cry pierced the halls of the hospital floor.

            Before the nurses and Dr. Galer could cover Gilbert in a blanket and bring him back to his bed, Gilbert climbed over the window’s edge.

            “The star!”

            He jumped.