by Terry Fallis
Not so much. Viral, it wasn’t. But it was early days. Eventually, the tagging I’d done on each post would attract at least a few readers. It was inevitable. The power of search engine optimization. But it would take some time. The more pressing question was when readers found my blog, would they stay? Would they read my offerings? Would they point people toward it? Would they think differently about the issues? Would they wonder who actually wrote the pieces?
I used my newly minted EofE Twitter account to tweet links to a few of the EofE posts, including the Mason Bennington piece. It was time to start spreading the word.
As I walked downstairs to the street later that morning, what I didn’t hear was any construction noise. The din of power tools and generators and arguments had slackened in the previous few days and become more sporadic. Now it seemed to have stopped altogether. As I left the building, I noticed there still wasn’t a sign installed on the front of the building that might yield some idea of what would soon open. In fact, I saw no indication that a sign was even planned. The gleaming wooden doors, still accessorized by the green garbage bags covering the handles, gave the only suggestion that a business might soon be operating in that space. Strange.
“Hello, Everett,” Yolanda greeted me.
“Hi, Yolanda. How’s the patient this morning?” I asked.
“You’re just in time for the fun, honey. I looked in a minute ago and our star physios are about to tag-team your father. I don’t think he’s quite used to it yet. Come to think of it, I doubt Mike and Liz are used to your father, either.”
I seemed to have arrived in time to witness my father in physiotherapy. I kind of wished I’d arrived a little later. Mike and Liz, the two young physios on duty that day, were working him over. And work it was. I watched from the doorway as they stretched out his left leg at various angles while Dad did his part by grimacing and groaning. Then Liz moved down to work on his lower leg, kneading his calf, ankle, and foot in what I would describe as a turbocharged massage. At the same time, Mike moved up to work Dad’s upper thigh, digging in deep on his quadriceps, glutes, and groin. I’m not sure whether the expression on Dad’s face reflected physical pain or the garden-variety homophobe’s discomfort at having another man’s hands anywhere near his groin.
“Hey, Mikey, great job there, but you did such nice work on my ankle yesterday, let’s not mess with success, eh?” said Dad. “Howzabout switching up with Liz?”
“My groin is just fine, Mr. Kane,” Liz cut in. “It’s your groin that needs the attention.”
“You’re a laugh riot, Liz, but you know that’s not what I meant by ‘switching up.’ ”
“Nice try, Mr. Kane, but your groin is all mine this morning,” Mike replied.
“Yeah, I can see that, and feel that.” Dad sighed. “Why don’t we let the beautiful and talented Liz decide what part of my body she’d like to be working on?”
Just then Dad yelped as Liz pushed his ankle in a direction ankles generally aren’t designed to go.
“Oh, gee, I’m so sorry, Mr. Kane,” Liz said in mock surprise. “Did you feel a little twinge there?”
“Okay, okay, you two. Have it your way. Just don’t enjoy yourself too much down there, eh Mike?”
“I won’t if you won’t,” he replied.
“I guess I could be squeezing my balls while you’re doing that,” Dad said straight-faced but carefully enunciating and emphasizing the wrong words in the sentence.
“Good idea, Mr. Kane,” Mike replied. “That’ll save you some time this afternoon. Physio multi-tasking. I like it.”
“All right, all right. But I’m so bored with squeezing my balls.” Dad reached with his right hand for the two black rubber balls resting on the tray mounted on the physio table. “But I know my day is not complete without spending at least a couple hours squeezing my balls.”
Thanks for that, Dad. Neither Mike nor Liz reacted in any way to my father’s juvenile comments. No eye-rolling, no looking at one another, no deep sighing. They just kept their magic hands working on his inert left leg. I guess context is everything.
It probably goes without saying that my father’s sense of humour stopped developing in adolescence. It was trapped in high school like an insect in amber. He pushed the two black balls into his compromised left hand and did a fair impersonation of the human squeezing action.
Only then did Dad look over and see me standing in the doorway.
“Ev! Hey son, thanks for coming.”
“Dad, I come every day. You don’t have to thank me. It’s what sons do when their fathers are in sick bay.”
“I know. But, well, thanks anyway,” he said before nodding to his two physios. “I get this every morning. I feel like a NASCAR stock car in for an hour-long pit stop.”
“Except in a NASCAR pit stop, there’s no flirting with the pit crew, or keeping up an endless stream of off-colour banter,” I replied.
“Well, if you’re going to be like that, you’ll have to excuse me, as I must squeeze my balls for a while longer.”
“On behalf of the patients, family, and staff of this hospital, that line is getting very tired, Dad.”
“Bullshit, it’s a classic. It never seems old to me.”
“Clearly.”
We’d just “enjoyed” lunch in Dad’s room when she arrived. I didn’t mind the food at the rehab hospital, but Dad was sick of it by then. He was propped up in his funky, multi-positional, Swiss Army knife of a bed that seemed to have a mind of its own. I’m no expert, but I suspect it could do everything from folding Dad in half to catapulting him across the room, depending on the mood – the bed’s mood, not Dad’s. Fortunately, at that moment, its mood was sedate.
“Hello, boys.”
We both looked up from our lime-green Jell-O to see her standing in the doorway. She looked amazing, dressed to the nines, not for a night on the town, but for an executive suite boardroom. Business chic all the way. Now I’m not sure about the terminology here, but my mother was standing there wearing what I think is called a power suit, in a striking shade of blue. Her stiletto heels added another four inches of altitude to her already above-average height. She was accompanied by a young nervous-looking man in a business suit who carried what I assumed was my mother’s purse and a shiny metallic briefcase. She turned to him.
“Nathan, you can wait for me down the hall in the reception area.”
He nodded, turned on his heel, and headed back down the corridor.
Through all of this, my father was staring at her, slack-jawed. One of the black balls escaped his grip, hit the floor, and bounced over to Mom. She caught it on the second hop and handed it back to him.
“I think this belongs to you.”
“Christ, Evelyn, will you look at you!” Dad exclaimed. “It’s like you just stepped out of some magazine.”
“Hello, Billy,” she replied. “It’s just another day at the office. But it’s Florida, so I thought azure was the right shade.”
“You got that right! Zowie,” Dad said, still staring her up and down. “Did you drop a few pounds?”
“I might have lost a bit of weight. Who knows? I just don’t have time to check.”
“Well, maybe your little bag-carrier, Nathan, can schedule a weigh-in,” Dad replied.
She leaned down toward Dad and whispered. “I’m not sure he could handle that yet. I’m still working him in.”
For the first time, she turned to me.
“Ev dear. You look good.”
“Hi, Mom. You look great. When did you get in?” I stood up to hug her.
“I arrived a couple of days ago but have been locked in meetings till now. We’ve got a big sod-turning with the mayor and a bunch of other hotshots tomorrow at the building site, so it’s been a little crazy,” she explained. “You can’t imagine the petty politics wrapped up in a stupid little groundbreaking ceremony. They drive me insane. If everyone doesn’t get a goddamn shovel to hold while they preen for the photo op, their noses
are out of joint. Well, I’ll friggin’ give them a shovel and put more than their noses out of joint. It’s so infuriating. I just can’t believe …”
“Helloooo!” Dad cut in. “It’s okay, honey, I’m fine here flat on my back in a rehab hospital, you know, major stroke and all. But don’t worry, I’m going to be okay …”
She stopped her tirade and reached for his hand.
“I’m sorry, Billy, I’ve just a few things going on right now. I’m a bit preoccupied.”
“Really! You don’t say,” he replied. “Well, I can sure see what is not preoccupying you.”
“Billy, don’t be like that. I’m here. And things should calm down a bit after tomorrow,” she soothed. “Hey, you look great. In fact, you look just the same.”
“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen me on the walking paths out back. I look like the goddamned elephant man.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” she said.
Dad just looked at me. Then Mom looked at me.
“Well, the elephant man is a little harsh. I’d say he gives off more of a Quasimodo vibe, but not as scary.”
“There, you see, Billy,” Mom chirped.
Surprisingly, we had quite a nice visit. It was strange seeing them together. They were civil to one another, and Dad was clearly pleased that she’d come. I suggested the three of us tackle a walk on the grounds, but Dad begged off saying he’d rather do it on his own later on. I think he just didn’t want to put his full disability on display in front his ex-wife. I understood. So we just talked for a while. After a few minutes, Mom seemed to stop obsessing about her job, at least for a while. But about an hour later, she suddenly turned antsy and started looking at her watch. She summoned Nathan the purse-bearer, and the two of them left shortly thereafter. He trailed a few steps behind her. She promised to come back.
Before leaving, she leaned down and gave Dad a big hug and kissed his cheek. He was caught a little off-guard, but recovered to hug her back. I got the same treatment and she was out the door.
“Well, what the goddamn hell was that?” Dad asked when she had gone.
“That was your ex-wife coming to check in on her ex-husband. It’s what families do, Dad,” I replied.
“She looks amazing. Doesn’t she look amazing?” he asked.
“She does, Dad. She really does.”
“Shit, I’m late,” Dad said, checking his watch.
“Late for what?”
“Late for scoring a few more points for Ford against that evil upstart Chevrolet.”
I watched from just inside the doors. Dad parked his walker off to the side, next to the wheelchair of Kenny Jenkins. They nodded to one another in grudging acceptance of their mutual existence. Kenny lifted his good hand to signal he was ready to go. Then Dad, gripping the handles of the wheelchair, started pushing Kenny down the path. I took in the strange scene for a while. They were both talking and gesturing. Well, Kenny was gesticulating wildly, undoubtedly extolling the virtues of General Motors products. Whenever Dad took his right hand off the handgrip to return fire on Ford’s behalf, the wheelchair drifted to the right and threatened to collide with one of the benches stationed along the path. Dad almost always got it back under control before hitting the bench. I felt someone standing next to me. It was Yolanda.
“He’s done a good thing, your father,” she said. “Kenny hasn’t moved from that spot out there or said boo to anyone since he arrived. Now look at them out there talking up a storm.”
“Let’s hope the storm isn’t too violent,” I replied.
She smiled and patted my back.
I headed back to my apartment. Three burly workers seemed to be putting the final touches on the front door. It was a little hard to see, but they seemed to be buffing the door handles with some fluffy cloths. Another guy was working very hard at sweeping the sidewalk, as if he planned to eat his dinner off the concrete. There were plenty of cars parked around the building but two new Valet Parking signs ensured an open space right in front of the doors. Something was up. When I made it upstairs, I surveyed the scene in the alley below my kitchen. Three trucks were lined up waiting their turn while a team of muscle-bound guys was hand-bombing boxes from a fourth truck backed up to the loading dock. Something was definitely up.
I sat down at my kitchen table to see what activity there might have been on the blog in my absence and then to start drafting my next post. I planned to write about the steady growth in women enrolled in medical school and law school, to the extent that they now equalled, and sometimes surpassed, the number of men students. But the news was not all good. The number of women enrolled in university engineering programs still lagged. Two steps forward, one step back. But progress nevertheless. I was eager to get to work on another post. I had to feed the beast, as they say.
I turned on my laptop and first checked my personal email account. There was another email from my cosmetic mag client asking about my profile piece and when she could see it. I ignored it and was about to check the blog when my cellphone rang.
“Hello?”
“Thank Christ you picked up!” snapped the youngish man’s voice. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour. Don’t you answer your phone?”
“Calm down. I’ve been at a hospital and they like us to switch to airplane mode when we’re there. Who is this, anyway?” I asked.
“First things, first. Do you manage the, what the hell’s it called again, oh yeah, the Eve of Equality blog?”
Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good.
“Well, um, maybe. Why? What’s going on? Who is this?”
“It’s Aaron from your ISP. We’re hosting your blog.”
“Well, I wouldn’t necessarily call it my blog. I’m just, um, peripherally involved, you know, in the back-end technical stuff.”
“What you do with your back end is totally up to you, but when your fucking blog crashes our system, that’s when I get upset. So what the hell is up with your blog?”
“What are you talking about? My fucking blog, er, I mean the fucking blog is fine, I think. At least it was fine this morning when I last checked it. What’s going on?”
“Well, exactly sixty-seven minutes ago, your blog’s big-ass traffic crashed our servers and knocked us completely offline!”
In an instant, I clicked the shortcut on my desktop to take me to Eve of Equality. Error. Grey screen. Nothing.
“Hey, no site,” I said.
“Hey, no shit,” he said.
“That makes no sense! I only have about two readers and I’m one of them. What do you mean, my blog crashed your servers? I don’t get it.”
“I promise you, you’ve got more than two readers, now. Never seen a spike in hits like that in such a short time. I don’t know what triggered it, but at 2:56 this afternoon, the tsunami started. We crashed out at 3:39. No one noticed around here until we went dark.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. There must be some mistake. It must be someone else’s blog. I just went live yesterday. I don’t have traffic. I have a trickle.”
“Look, you’re not listening. It’s your fucking blog, all right,” he snapped. “I’m looking at the analytics right now. They’re off the charts. At 2:56, you hit the big time. Shit, I would never have agreed to host you if I’d known you were going to pull this many clicks. You said you expected light to moderate traffic at best. You were wrong by a pretty fucking big margin and we were down for twenty minutes. Twenty fucking minutes is a lifetime when you’re a hosting service.”
“I’ve got nothing for you. I’m stumped. I have no idea what happened. Must be some kind of coding error,” I said. “Hey, if you were only down for twenty minutes, why isn’t my blog back up?”
“If I’d put you back up, we’d have crashed out again. I’ve put everyone else back up except you. And I’m done with you. You’re way too much for my shop. I don’t have near the capacity to carry you. You’re out.”
“So what do I have to do get back up?”
“I’ll have to migrate you to a big-boy hosting service. The sooner the better. Like right now.”
At that stage, I still didn’t know what the hell had happened, but I focused on getting the blog back up as it might hold the answer. It took two hours on a three-way call with my disgruntled mom-and-pop-shop ISP and the largest web-hosting operation in the southern U.S. I took great pains to preserve my anonymity. That was critical. I never once gave my name, and I constantly referred to my specific role as just an intermediary between the ISP and the actual blogger. Had it been possible, I would have done the call from a pay phone. But even if I could have found an aging and forgotten phone booth somewhere in Orlando, it certainly would not have provided Wi-Fi or even a flat surface on which to rest my laptop, and both were necessary as we managed the migration of the blog from one hosting service to another. So I used my cellphone for the lengthy three-way call. I had no other option.
Just after eleven that night, Eve of Equality flickered to life again on my laptop, supported by a much more robust network of servers. Five minutes later, I knew what had happened. I could hardly believe it, but I could see the entire chronology playing out online before my eyes, as I surfed among Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, several other social media platforms, and my own blog. Holy shit. Holy shit. And thrice times, holy shit. My hand was trembling as it worked my mouse.
I don’t know where or how to begin to explain it. I’d been so certain the guy hosting my blog had been wrong. He had to have been wrong. I was convinced there was another explanation. There had to be. What he’d claimed had happened that afternoon seemed utterly impossible. But he was right. He’d been right all along. It had unfolded just as he had reported. It took me a while to restore normal respiration and manage the nausea.