by Brent Runyon
When I was in fourth grade, when I was just starting with the acting classes, I used to tell people that I wanted to be a writer and an actor and that I'd write stories and then act them out, but I'm not really sure what I meant by that.
Anyway, it's about time for this fucking therapy session to be over. Jesus, what do I have to do to get out of here?
“Are we done yet?”
“Yes, we're done. Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, likewise.” God, I hate psychologists. I hope I don't have to see him again.
Mom and Dad and I are driving in to Children's for a meeting with my old plastic surgeon, Dr. Boyagen. I like him. He's the one that did my hands.
I turn on the radio and go to Howard Stern. Mom and Dad think he's too crude, but I think he's funny.
He says, “So, what kind of shoes are you wearing?”
The woman he's talking to is a stripper. She says, “Black pumps.”
“Oh, very nice. And you're wearing a little tube top. Stand up so I can see, and a little black miniskirt. Very nice. So have you done women?”
A bunch of people laugh.
“I've experimented.”
“Oh, very nice, tell me about your first lesbian experience.”
“I was fourteen, at a boarding school.”
“Oh?”
Mom says, “Brent, this is terrible. Turn this off.”
“Come on, Mom, it was just getting good.”
My dad says, “Brent, listen to your mother.” I think this is the first time they've yelled at me since I was in the hospital. I turn it off.
We're getting off the highway. “God, this is far.”
“Yup.”
“You drove this every day to come see me?”
“Yup.”
There it is. I recognize the building. We park, and Mom says, “Okay, you guys, you go up to see Dr. Boyagen, I'm going to go give platelets. I'll meet you on the Burn Unit, okay?”
“Okay.” Mom started giving platelets when I went into the hospital. She said she wanted to do something for the kids that have cancer.
Dad and I get in the elevators and head up to the fourth floor. It's weird being back here. It seems like a few years since I was in here, but it's not, it's only been a few months. We follow the signs to Plastic Surgery and Dad signs us in at the desk. There's a TV with CNN on, but no sound.
“Mr. Runyon? Dr. Boyagen will see you now.”
Dad and I go into the examining room. The walls are painted yellow. And there are a bunch of paintings of lions and tigers and other jungle animals on the wall. I sit up on the examining table and Dad sits in a chair right next to me. Dad brought a magazine with him. That was smart, I wish I'd thought of that.
Dr. Boyagen comes through the door with two young doctors in white coats. Dad and I stand up and shake his hand.
“Hello, Mr. Runyon, good to see you.”
“Hello.”
“Hello, Brent. You're looking much better than the last time I saw you.”
“Thanks.” When was that?
“Good. So today, let's just talk about our options for scar reduction, scar excision, and scar management.”
Dad says, “Great.” He takes a yellow legal pad out of his briefcase. Dr. Boyagen looks at me. “But what I first need to know is, how much do you want to have done? What are the areas that you find most problematic in your everyday life, and what do you want to do about them?”
I say, “Um, well, I guess I really don't like this scar on my left thigh. This one here.” I unzip the Jobst garment on that side and show him and the young doctors. “I really don't like this one. This is the one that really bothers me.”
Dr. Boyagen says, “Well, unfortunately, Brent, we don't have any recourse in that area. Mostly what we do here in plastic surgery is work with facial reconstruction, scar excision around the face especially.”
“Oh.”
“Why don't I tell you about your options.”
“Okay.” These paintings look like a kid could have done them because they're so simple, but the way the animals look, maybe an adult did them. The lion's eyes in the painting are so big and green.
Dad says, “That would be helpful.”
“Well, the first thing we have to consider is the availability of donor sites for scar revision. This is different than what you've gone through before, where we removed sections of skin, meshed them out, and applied them to the open wounds. What we'll be doing now is using full-thickness grafts, excising the existing scar tissue and placing the full-thickness normal skin in its place. Now, the problem, obviously, is how much skin are we going to be able to use, and in Brent's case, in your case, we don't have a lot to work with.”
The lion looks so lonely in the painting. He's just sitting there staring right at me.
“So, I can do a few things. Probably the most effective is to insert what's called an expander, which basically is a balloon, and what we do is we insert the expander underneath a viable graft area and fill it slowly over a period of, say, two to three months, and so at the end of the process, we have two to three times the amount of skin as we did at the beginning.”
I'm looking right into the lion's eyes and he's looking back. We're having a staring contest. I always win in staring contests because I don't care if my eyes get dry and start hurting. I can keep my eyes open with my willpower.
He goes on, “The other option we have is something called a Z-plasty, which is a fairly straightforward procedure. What we do”—he takes a ballpoint pen out of his pocket—“is excise the scar tissue in a Z shape, which is why it's called a Z-plasty.” He draws what feels like a Z on my right cheek, like Zorro. “And what that allows us to do is release whatever banding might have accumulated in the area.”
My eyes are starting to hurt. They itch and they're getting dry, but I'm not going to look away. I'm going to keep staring at the lion in the painting.
Dad asks a question. “So does the Z-plasty procedure include the expanders?” He always picks up the vocabulary quick.
“No. The Z-shaped excision takes the place of the expanders.”
He grabs a big section of my right cheek between his thumb and forefinger and pinches it. “Now, unfortunately, we don't have a heck of a lot of play in here, so if you decide to go with the Z-plasty, we'll wind up with, probably, a series of three to five procedures over a number of years.”
The lion isn't going to blink. I know that. But I don't care. It doesn't matter. I'm not giving up.
Now he grabs a big chunk of my left cheek, squeezes it hard, and draws another line across it. He outlines my scars with the pen. “But on the other hand, we can probably excise this side in one or two surgeries and really get rid of a lot of this ugly scar tissue.”
I blinked. Shit. The lion won. I tried. I did pretty well. The lion was better, but I did pretty well. The lion looks a little nicer now than he did when I came in here. I wonder if he feels sorry for me having to go through all of this. Probably not, because he knows it's all my fault.
“So, as you wish, we can go ahead with the first surgery, sometime in the next year, not quite yet, just so we can see how the scarring matures and diminishes over time. How's that sound?”
Is the doctor talking to me? I don't know what to say. I wish the lion would help me.
Mom meets us in the waiting room. Now we're going down to the Burn Unit to see everybody. I wonder who's working. I'd love to see Tina, and Barbara, and the other Barbara, and Lisa. I'd love to see everybody.
We walk past my old room. Who's in there now? Some baby in a crib. I don't see any nurses or anybody I recognize. My dad asks at the nurses' station if we can go back into Intensive Care and say hello. They say it's okay.
We go back through the double doors. All that alcohol and cleaning solution, it makes me feel like I just got a shot of morphine.
“Hey, Brent!”
It's Tina, she's wearing scrubs and her hair is back in a ponytail. She's so beautiful. “Hi, Tina!”
She gives me a big hug.
“How are you?” I'd forgotten how high pitched her voice was.
“Great.”
“God, you look great. You got so strong.”
“I did?”
“How's everything? Are you back in school?”
“No, not yet.”
“Oh, how's your skin?” She reaches out and touches the scar on my cheek.
“All right, it itches.”
“Yeah, well, it's supposed to, but is it healing properly?”
“I guess.”
“Jeez, if we had our way, we'd bring you into one of these rooms and strip you down naked.”
I laugh. “Well, maybe some other time.”
“It's so good to see you, Brent. I'm glad you're doing so well. Okay, keep up the good work and come back and see us more often.” She hugs me.
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.”
She turns away, puts on a nurse's smock, and goes into someone else's room.
I don't belong here. It's not the same. I don't think I will be coming back.
I'm playing Super Mario in the basement. I warped to level eight because I wanted to try and beat the guy, but I didn't get enough lives on the earlier levels to beat him. So now I'm screwed. Mom calls from the top of the stairs, “Brent, your tutor is here.” Oh shit, I completely forgot that the tutor was coming today. I was hoping I was going to get out of school for the rest of my life, but apparently not.
I come up the stairs. She's a nice-enough-looking woman, wearing a red coat and a funny little red beret. She says, “Hi, Brent, nice to meet you. My name's Maureen.”
“Hi. Nice to meet you.”
Mom says, “Is the living room okay for you, Maureen?”
“Yes, that's great, thanks.”
“Okay. I'll leave you two alone, then.”
Last year I had to go to a tutor's house to help me with algebra, right after I got caught for stealing school supplies. He had a lot of cats and his house always smelled like Indian food or something.
“So, Brent, we've got a lot of things to work on to get you caught up with your studies. I see that you've completed the eighth grade at, was it, the duPont Institute?”
“Yes.”
“All right, so we've got the normal array of ninth-grade classes. Earth science, history, English, and algebra.”
“I hate algebra.”
“Hate is a strong word.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So, I'm assuming that you would like to begin with something other than algebra? Is that a correct assumption?”
“Well, you know what they say about assumptions?”
“No, what do they say about assumptions?”
“They make an ass out of you and umptions.” I laugh at my stupid joke. She doesn't laugh.
“So, how does history sound?”
“Sounds like history.” I'm cracking myself up.
“Let's read the first chapter in the history book and then talk about it.”
“All right.” We both read from our matching history books. It's about how the Greeks created democracy.
When we're done reading, she quizzes me with a bunch of questions and I get them all right. I wish regular school was this easy. If I got to do homeschooling all of the time, I'd get straight A's. I liked it better when I didn't have to do any schoolwork. Now I have to sit here with Maureen for a couple of hours three times a week. This sucks.
I'm naked, lying on the massage table at Children's, with a little towel covering my penis. There's a curtain pulled around me, but I can hear all the noises of the kids being worked over on the other side. Today's my first day with my new PT, her name's Nancy. She peeks her head through the curtain.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. How are you?” She comes in and closes the curtain.
“Fine.” She opens a jar of Eucerin cream. She's got big wide thumbs that look like she smashed them with a hammer about a million times. She starts down at my feet.
I don't have much to say. I just stare up at the ceiling and wonder why I did this. I can't even really remember anymore. I know I was sad or something, but what was I so sad about? School and girls? Megan and Stephen? Setting fire to that locker? None of it seems like a big deal anymore.
She's up to my thigh. When she rubs the top of my thigh, her hand goes in between my legs and rubs the inside of my leg. God, that feels good. Jesus. God, I'm getting a giant boner. I hope the towel isn't sticking straight up. Is it sticking straight up? Jesus, it is.
Nancy says, “You all right?”
“Yup.” Is she trying to rub my balls? It really feels like it. It really feels like it. It feels like she's trying to rub my balls. Jesus.
“You can roll over now.”
“Okay.” I roll over with my hand over my penis so she can't see what a big boner I have. Now my butt is completely exposed. Now she's rubbing my butt. That feels good too. God, everything feels so good.
I'm going to ask her if she'll rub the inside of my thigh. I'm going to say that the skin is really tight between my legs, which it is, and I'm going to ask her if she'll rub it. That's what I'm going to do, and she's going to start rubbing it and maybe she'll see my big boner and she'll want to start rubbing it and touching it. Jesus.
“Okay, Brent, I'm done. Put on your Jobst and your clothes and we'll do some exercises.” I sit up. I'm going to ask her, I really am.
“Um, Nancy?”
“Yes.”
“I've got this really tight band that I was wondering if you could work on?”
“Where is it?”
“Um, it's sort of between my legs.”
“Where?”
“Right here.” She looks down and sort of raises an eyebrow.
“There?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that's a very sensitive area, maybe you could work on it when you're at home.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Get dressed and come out, okay?”
“Yeah.”
She leaves. What's wrong with me? I feel stupid.
Mom and Dad and I are going to go see Dennis Miller at George Washington University. Since Dad works there, we've got really good seats. I'm so psyched. Ever since Dennis Miller left Saturday Night Live last season, I've been wondering what he'd do next. He's the funniest guy who ever did Weekend Update. Some people think Chevy Chase is the funniest, but they're wrong.
He walks on the stage like such a normal guy. How can he be so smart and so funny and still be so relaxed? I mean, he doesn't even look like he knows where he is. He says he's tired because he just flew in from Paris. I wonder what he was doing in Paris.
It's not just the things he says that are funny, it's the way he says them. The rhythm. I could be funny like that if I really tried. Life would be easier if I was funny. It's easier to get through life.
The whole drive home I keep thinking about how funny he was. God, that was funny. Wasn't that funny? He's such a funny guy. Dad says, “I'm sorry I couldn't get us backstage to meet Dennis.”
I say, “That's okay, Dad. It's no big deal.”
When we get home, there are two messages on the answering machine. I press play.
The weird computer voice says, “Message received at 10:21 P.M.”
Then somebody's voice I kind of recognize, but not really. “Brent! Hey, what's up, babe, listen, I'm sorry I couldn't meet you after the show, but I was totally vamped from the flight in from Paris. Anyway, maybe I could meet you tomorrow, I've got some time to kill before my plane leaves. I could come out to your house, or school, or whatever. Anyway, catch you later, cat. Uh, call me at the Four Seasons, room . . . Christ, what is the room . . . room 402. All right, hope you liked the show. Bye-bye.”
Jesus. Was that who I think it was? Was that fucking Dennis Miller on my fucking answering machine? I look at my parents, they're smiling with their eyes open really wide.
I say, “Was that Dennis Miller
?”
“I think it was.”
“Did you give him our number?”
“We gave someone our number at the show, but we didn't know if he'd call.”
“Wait, there's another message.”
“Message received at 10:31 P.M.”
“Brento! It's Dennis, where are you, cat? It's like ten-thirty, and I'm totally vamped, so call me soon, babe, as soon as you get home. All right.”
Jesus, that really is Dennis Miller. I'm feeling a little light-headed. My dad runs and gets the phone book, finds the number, and brings it with the phone over to me in the comfy chair.
Out of habit, I turn on the TV. It's Comedy Central, and there is Dennis Miller doing Weekend Update.
I'm dialing the number.
“Four Seasons, how may I direct your call?”
“Room 402, please.” Jesus, I'm so nervous.
“Just a moment.”
It's ringing. It's fucking ringing.
“Yeah?”
“Um, Dennis?”
“Yeah, who's this?”
“It's, um, Brent, um, Runyon. You called me?”
“Brento! Hey, babe, what's happening?”
“Nothing. Um, you were really funny tonight.”
“Thanks. Hey, so where do you live?”
“Uh, northern Virginia. Falls Church.”
“Where's that.”
“On the Orange Line.”
“Okay, can you give me directions so I can come out and meet you tomorrow? Would that be cool?”
“Yeah, that would be great. Hey, you're on TV right now.”
“What, SNL?”
“Yeah.”
“What episode, do you know?”
“I think it's, like, really early. Damon Wayans is on with you.”
“Oh yeah? God, that's like my second show.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, so, can I get those directions from you?”
“Yeah, I'll get my dad. Dad, he wants directions to come out and meet me tomorrow.”
Dad takes the phone and starts explaining how to get here.
Dennis Miller is coming over to my house. He's going to be here in five minutes. Dad's at work and Mom went out to get some groceries so he and I could have the house to ourselves. Christ, what will I talk about? What am I going to say? I've got to be funny. I've got to be funny. I've got to find a way to make him laugh.