Exquisite, Exemplary

We know we live in a time dominated by great fascination with and hope for the physical human body. We know this. We get it. We know everyone responds positively to a great chest, for example. And we know it’s time to pony up. We know it’s time to kick it. We can have our stouts and porters, we can have our beefsteaks and biscuits, but we all know the real deal. If we’re going to be taken seriously in these our precious few minutes on this planet, we need a body that’s exquisite and exemplary. And here’s the sweet news as far as my body is concerned: exemplary, just exquisite.

Were it not true, I wouldn’t bring it up. I wouldn’t dwell on it. I’m not of that school. But you can’t overlook me. No one can—not today, not in America, at least not in my experience. And that’s the sweetest news. That’s the sweetest news that never quits.

The bad news is that my mother’s news on this matter is not so sweet, and her depressing news has been on the increase. The bad news is my mother frequently can’t take care of her own body, and neither can my father, and this sort of shit is just ruinous. No one responds positively to their own failed or failing body. That’s just truth. It’s even worse when you have to legitimately confront someone else’s failed or failing body.

Moreover, I don’t see my role in this life as the son who chats with his mother about her medical needs and/or the needs of her husband, and I certainly don’t see my role as the son who chats with his mother’s doctors and pharmacists about her medication choices. Everyone has a role. That’s not my role. Everyone’s role is hard. Who has time or energy to take on additional roles?

Apparently the pharmacist, because this wispy little man in his ridiculous, oversize white lab blazer feels it’s important to point out what the other pharmacists long ago stopped pointing out here at this hospital: that my mother’s prescription has expired and is non-renewable without the consent of her doctor, but also that this particular form of birth control is so dated, so out of touch with newer product lines, I’m lucky I don’t “have to have my legs up in stirrups right then and there.”

Then he laughs.

I laugh, too. Who has the time for violence?

Then I just stand there and look at him.

“Anyway,” he says, “I guess you get it.”

“Definitely.”

He certainly gets it, as everyone at this pharmacy—and everywhere I go—gets it: Why would a guy this exquisite and with such an exemplary and textured laugh request something so ridiculously inappropriate, indeed illegal? How could a man who so clearly has things managed physically allow his mother, at the age of sixty-eight, to mistakenly or fraudulently request dated contraception?

It’s preposterous, when you think about it.

And all it takes—all it ever takes in my life it seems—is one good look at me, my physical self, for all the officious and petty professional curiosity, and all of the federal legal regulations, to slip away as quickly and easily as this little tiny man in his lab coat can quickly and easily staple shut the small paper pouch with my mother’s little disk of Ortho Tri-Cyclen inside.

“Anyway, it’s like a miracle we still have these in stock.” He winks at me as he hands me the little pouch. “Consult?”

I take the little bag from him.

“Enjoy the weather,” he says as I’m walking out.

I look out the large windows I’m approaching. The sun is in fact brilliant and alien. I shield my eyes, and then I walk out of the room—as one must take leave if one is to be successful in life and American economics—without saying anything to the wispy man...