Ball Thumper

Ball Thumper was just fired. Mrs. Remo caught him thumping my balls. But now, my sheets and diapers are fresh and clean. I’m sure in the next bed, my friend’s diaper’s and sheets are also clean. For a so-called “vegetable”, my story will not be believed, but it goes like this:
My friend and I exist in beds for “wet brains”. In diapers and hospital gowns we reside in this V.A. death-watch ward next to the morgue. When a nearby door is open, we hear the metallic clank of instruments and the “whump” of what can only be cooler doors sealing in bodies.
While we cannot talk, my friend and I have learned to communicate. It began quite by accident. One evening, late in Ball Thumper’s shift, shortly before the start of graveyard, I dirtied my diapers and fresh sheets. In the position with a single leg bent up to the chest, the diaper leaked. I’d tried to avoid this, but this evening I couldn’t help it. Ball Thumper discovered the mess as he was emptying Foley bags and taking out trash.
He said, “You son of a bitch. You’re trying to ruin my shift again.”
He tore off my diaper and thumped my balls. I jerked and groaned with each thump. Replacing the diaper without washing me, he left the sheets dirty.
When he was done, the man in the next bed must’ve dirtied his diapers.
Ball Thumper swore again and slammed something against the bed frame. From the sound of it, he thumped the man’s balls because the man groaned and his bed frame rattled as he jerked.
After Ball Thumper left I groaned once. My neighbor groaned once. I jerked once. He jerked once. After a few minutes, he groaned. I groaned. He passed gas and I reciprocated.
Over the weeks, we refined this primitive communication and collaborated to rid ourselves of Ball Thumper.
On Ball Thumper’s weekly five shifts, we harassed him. We held our bowels until near the end of his shift. If it seemed someone else was nearby while he tended us, we would thrash, jerk and moan. Eventually, Ball Thumper caught on. So, it became a battle of wills.
For weeks we warred. After any bowel movement, he thumped our balls. Our first victory came one evening after we’d been left dirty for the graveyard shift to clean. It began politely enough.
A voice said, “Artemus, Last night, Mr. Oldham’s and Mr. Butler’s diapers and bed were left dirty for the graveyard shift to clean.”
Mr. Butler. I’d learned my friend’s name.
Artemus or Ball Thumper said, “Those two are messing with me.”
Mr. Butler and I jerked, groaned and thrashed.
Two nights later the voice said, “Artemus, I’m reporting you to Mrs. Remo for improper attention to these patients.”
Swearing, Ball Thumper said, “I told you those two guys are conscious and deliberately shit their beds at the end of my shift.”
Mr. Butler thrashed and I groaned.
“Artemus, something about you agitates these patients. No other patient reacts this way,” the voice said.
After that, Ball Thumper cleaned and changed us as needed. But he threw us around. The pain of my bedsore shot through me as I was dragged across the bare mattress. He then wadded the sheepskin into a knot against the sore.
At the end of each shift, Mr. Butler and I signaled “goodnight” and remained silent until Ball Thumper returned. In those long, boring periods, I slipped into my own reverie and private hell.
I’d sensed my life ending because it was becoming difficult to climb the hills in Seattle. I was sleeping on the wharf and relying on friends to bring me alcohol. I didn’t care about food.
So one night, desperate, I wrote my will and instructions on a brown paper sack. I inserted contact information in my wallet and visited my friend in the Wells Fargo building. Knowing I was close to death, but before I went through detox-hell, I said, “I’m dying. You’ve got complete authority over all my affairs.”
I signed a power of attorney and gave him my debit card. I said, “All I’ve got are my writings. Please place them in a trust for my ex-wife and kids. After your costs and charges, should there ever be income, please split it equally.”
He said, “You can’t afford me, but I’ll do it anyway.”
I gave him the password to my e-mail where my writings reside.
He said, “Keep writing, I‘ll get them together for you. I got you a motel room.”
With twenty-five dollars, I left to buy alcohol. When it was gone, without medication, I started to detox yet again. Because I’d suffered seizures, without medicine, it was medically unsafe to detox but I didn’t care.
I began to sweat. Alcohol and toxins flushed from pores smell like stale, sour cheese. The room reeked of that smell and the rot of my body. My clothes were saturated and filthy and my underwear was streaked. I threw it in the trash. Stripped of my clothes, I lay in the sheets until they were soaked. Chilling, I put the soiled, putrid clothes back on and alternated between chills and sweats. Even water would not stay down. I heaved on an empty stomach. My sides were raw and my throat burned with the gastric juices. My stomach cramped.
Dante said again and again, “I come to ferry thee hence across the bar to fierce fires, endless nights and shramming cold.”
Worse, I could not sleep. Bombing my psyche were agonizing thoughts. Quaking my fragile sanity, the thoughts crashed in and tumbled over each other without ceasing or warning. I relived the pain my marriage. I cried for my little children for when they must have curled up wondering if their Daddy was dead. I cursed my neglect of them. I banged my head with my fists. Lying in the womb of sweaty sheets I endured.
There was no relief. I wanted death. I feared death. I cried for my soul and was disgusted at my pathetic late, late cry. I screamed. I condemned myself to hell and trembled that I might go. Finding no forgiveness I begged for it. Sleep terrorized me because I might drown in my vomit but craved oblivion to escape the cauldron of my mind.
Dante tormented me without reprieve.
Late on the third night, I must have had a seizure. I regained consciousness in this ward next to the morgue. Finally, although I cannot see or speak, the horror is gone and I am at peace in my diapers.
My sister visited me and said, “Dale, Mom died. Dad just stares. I don’t hear from your kids. You look so peaceful there. I miss our long talks, because you were the only person I could talk to.” Patting the bone protruding just beneath the skin of my hip, she then left.
Now, weeks later, Ball Thumper is gone. After he left, Mrs. Remo said to Mr. Butler and me, “I really get the sense that you two guys know what you’re doing. Just so you know, I think you two veterans represent the best of the human spirit. You are good soldiers. Thank you for your service.”
It is the graveyard shift. In our way, Mr. Butler and I just said “goodnight”. He jerked and thrashed and passed gas longer than usual, so it might have been “goodbye”. His breathing is shallow, so I feel he is letting go.
We’ve done a good thing for this ward. I’ll miss Mr. Butler, but believe I’ll hang around for a few days and pick up any staff gossip about Ball Thumper.

The Dancer

The flashing red signs beckoned David and punctuated his return to West Texas. After hours of driving across the charred desert, he approached El Paso from the east. Blinded by the sun as it slipped below the deep red western horizon, the darkening sky and lights brought him back from long miles of reminiscence of his recent African service.
The assignment in West Africa was welcome after Virginia amputated his dreams. In fact, time and the Dark Continent had helped bridge and heal the pain of her rejection. But now, approaching the city of their goodbye, his two years of solitude seemed crushing. Dreading the inevitable encounter with her, he drove the car under the bright lights and parked near a sign which said “Dancers - Nude.”
In the narrow, dimly lit entrance, a poster read, “Personal, Intimate Dancing - $30.00. Absolutely NO touching.” In the back of the room were ceiling to floor red velvet drapes. David took a cushioned chair near the drapes. Bump and grind music vibrated and pulsated the room. Through the heavy smoke and reek of cigars, mirrors reflected a woman gyrating with a smudged brass pole near the edge of a stage. A patron put his face between the woman’s legs and howled. His two companions moaned and brayed. She clutched one, five and ten dollar bills in her fist. The patrons draped three fives over the g-string that secured a silver patch of cloth between her legs. She moved across the stage to perform for a man in paint-stained denim overalls.
In the stench of spilled beer and cheap perfume, a Latina stepped through the haze and approached David. She wore skimpy, lace-fringed lingerie, black like her shiny hair and dark eyes. Tinted a shade of purple, her eyelids matched her finger and toe nails. Wearing open-toed black patent high heels, she swayed like a Mende tribeswoman walking to market and balancing a heavy pot or log on her head. In Africa, the tribeswomen wore only wrap around cloths from the waist down as they walked on the tarmac roads.
Barely audible above the ear-splitting music, the Latina asked, “Would you like a table dance?”
David was silent and the dancer began a slow dance at half beat. She turned her back to him and indicated that he undo the lingerie’s clasp at the nape of her neck. He did so and in a fluid motion, she draped the garment around David’s neck. Picking up the pace, her dance matched the pounding rhythm as she undulated and contorted. In time, the woman, now nude invited David to return her subtle, private touch. He noticed that around the room, patrons grasped women’s buttocks. Every sexual gesture and movement was performed except for the act of sex.
The touch of the dancer’s silken skin aroused David’s desire. From the pores of her skin, the lingering, pungent smell of her garlic diet overpowered her strong lavender perfume. David’s excitement flagged. He remembered that Mende tribeswomen also glided to market, oblivious to rotting fruit and the smoke from roasting monkeys.
David laughed. Near tears she snarled, “Look, asshole. I got two kids, right?” His fifty-dollar bill mollified her. Continuing to dance to the music, with a single movement, she snatched her garment from David’s neck and stepped through the red-velvet drapery.
David remembered the poster and reflected that, save for undoing the clasp at her neck, he was in total compliance.
Alone, he drove to the distant lights of El Paso.