HOLD…THIS

Lee B. Weaver © 2014

Twenty-nine years ago this month, I had cosmetic surgery on my ears. For as long as I could remember I had been self-conscious about the way they stuck out – at different angles, no less – from my head, so I asked my parents to pay for the surgery to have them altered.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I did ask both parents about it, but it was my mom who signed off on the procedure. My dad was vehemently opposed to it. He said something about how I was born that way and I should be content with how I looked and blah fucking blah and whatever and, hey Dad, maybe if you hadn’t said super-sensitive stuff like “you look like a car going down the street with its doors open” this wouldn’t even be an issue.

 But anyway.

Of course, leave it to my parents to ensure that neither one could rightly claim the title of Most Sensitive Parent. (yeah, yeah…I know it’s just two people so I should say “More” instead of “Most” but that sounds just awkward as hell so… no.) Anyway, it turned out my mom’s decision to pay the $2000 for the un-insured surgery didn’t come so much from a place of “helping soothe Lee’s battered self-image,” but rather was more of an “I’m about to divorce Lee’s dad, and paying for this surgery against his wishes will make for an excellent ‘final fuck you’ ” kind of thing.

So…Yay, mom…?

To my disappointment, the surgery did not produce the hoped-for effect of making me irresistible to all women overnight. In fact, many of my closest friends said they’d never even noticed anything unusual about my ears and thought the whole thing was kinda silly and vain. But the surgery itself did result in a number of mostly-humorous moments.

 ·      I walked around the house for a week following the surgery with my long, Bono-worshipping hair sprouting from a 4-inch wrap of gauze encompassing my entire head and my Dad pretended not to notice. No bullshit. I sat next to him at the dinner table seven nights in row looking like Jack Nicholson in the final scene of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and all he could say was “pass the salt.”  To this day, he has never acknowledged my surgery and will leave the room if the subject is brought up.

  ·         The day I took off the gauze in front of the bathroom mirror– a mid-80’s pre-cursor to the “reveals” popularized later by reality TV shows – I nearly choked, vomited, passed out, choked again, then died because my “fixed” ears were two misshapen blobs of purple and swollen tissue protruding at even more grotesque angles than before. Seriously, my earlobes alone were the size and color of fully mature plums. That was the moment I was introduced to the concept of “buyer’s remorse.”   

 ·         A few days later, after the swelling had subsided, I was out on the drag hanging out with friends and this guy I hardly knew – and what little I did know was that he was a dangerously unstable and violent person – decided to walk up behind me and grab either side of my head with his enormous, beefy, hands in an attempt to lift me off the ground as he were a pathological, human arcade claw and I was a squealing, human teddy bear.

Because he approached from behind me, I had no idea who was torturing me so. As a result, I was terrified to learn, after kicking and clawing and basically going Full Wildcat on the person attacking me, just who my assailant was.  Likewise, because he barely knew me at all, he had no idea he was actively mauling fresh stitches in my head. As such, he was baffled as to why this little guy was so bent out of shape by what he considered to be harmless guy-on-guy tomfoolery.

He was actually trying to bond with me, yet here I was scratching his eyes out.

For a moment, I thought I was going to be murdered. Fortunately, a mutual friend stepped in and explained my situation. The other guy was apologetic to the point we almost felt sorry for him. Or so I’m told, as I was still pretty busy with the whole wondering-if-my-ears-were-still-attached-to-my-head thing.

·         Some weeks later, back at school in Austin, a friend of mine – I’ll call him “Gib,” because that’s his actual name and he deserves to be called out for this – walked up to me, staring intently at one ear and then the other. He went back and for like that for a while, with an increasingly troubled look on his face. Finally, he looked me in the eye, with great concern, and said.

“They’re going back.”

Ass.

·         But the funniest story, by far, happened the day after my surgery. The surgical center was in Oklahoma City, so I stayed the night afterward at a friend’s apartment. Naturally, I was heavily medicated. In fact, I was enjoying my first-ever taste of Demerol and had taken an immediate liking to it. The next morning, still doped up and now starving – I hadn’t eaten since the night before the surgery, some 36 hours before – I rode back to Duncan with my younger brother, Ray.

By the time we got to Duncan it was almost noon and 36 hours was now closer to 40. I was starving, dehydrated, and completely wacked out on Demerol. So it’s only fitting that we went through the McDonald’s drive-thru.

As we pulled up to the window, I suddenly became fly-on-my-own-wall aware of how outrageous I looked. For starters, I could not have pretended to not look stoned. On top of that, my head was wrapped in fresh gauze and my fabulous, wannabe-rock-star hair was still shining with gel and spiking some six inches above my head. (The gel was a pre-surgery compromise to spare my precious locks while still keeping them away from the cutting zone)

At the same moment I realized my resemblance to a methadone patient, the McDonald’s cashier leaned out of her window to hand Ray part of our order, giving her a clear view of my impaired condition. Seeing her look of surprise and confusion, I decided to double down on my appearance and began to smack my lips and blink my eyes in an exaggerated manner, like a drunk person giving serious thought to throwing up. I added just a touch of palsy (yes, I know that’s awful, but we’re almost through this, so bear with me) and managed to make my eyes appear even less focused than they already were.

Mission accomplished. The clerk’s expression changed from surprise to pity.

That poor kid. Maybe someday there will be a cure. For whatever it is he’s got.

My brother took the bag of food from her and placed it on the seat between us. In doing so, he caught a glimpse of my act and made the completely unrehearsed decision to join in on it. So, when he took the next item from her – a 32-ounce Styrofoam cup filled with Dr. Pepper – he turned, extended the cup toward me, and said in a loud, slow, explaining-simple-tasks-to-a-toddler-or-possibly-extremely-old-person voice, “HOLD….THIS!”

I shot out my left arm, cradled the drink in the crook of my elbow, and smashed it against my chest, sending a quart of precious Dr. Pepper exploding in every direction.

The cashier gasped.

Ray did not blink.

Instead, he took the second cup from her waiting hands, turned to me again, and repeated: HOLD….THIS!

I took that cup in my right arm and smashed it against my chest. There was now a half-gallon of soda product on me.

With that, Ray pulled away from the window, as though nothing unusual at all had happened. We drove as far as we could before falling apart laughing, which was about 15 feet. He put the car in park right there in the driveway, so that I could clean up and he could go get replacement drinks.

I’ve told this story, verbally, about a thousand times, but I’ve never come up with an ending for it, mostly because the listener and I are both laughing so hard it doesn’t need one. So, I’m gonna assume you’re laughing too and sign off.

See you tomorrow.

© 2014 Lee B. Weaver