Rectification

I had no illusions about how difficult it was going to be to not eat for a whole day. Extreme measures were taken. There was the assortment of movies I watched with a good friend, who decided that there was no better time to sit me down and twist my hair since I’d be grounded like a punishable child.

“It might take you three or four hours given the number of times I’ll have to run to the bathroom,” I advised.

When I called a nurse about this colonoscopy, she was anxious to tell me about the sour preparation. And somewhere during “The September Issue,” I had finished the second bottle of laxative-spiked Gatorade. Lord knows that because the instructions I half read forbade red and orange liquids, those bottles would have to sit comfy in the fridge next to the egg-nog that tortured me with its sumptuousness.

And really, the egg nog would have done the same thing as this questionable ectoplasmic looking concoction.

But that’s why you have friends. To give you mordant looks of shade when you think you’re gonna do wrong and ruin this one and only opportunity you have to get the procedure that you desperately need.

Of course leave it to the supervising friend to decide you’re going to have the equivalent of major surgery. I had to get cursed out in technicolor for not mentioning it earlier, for not discussing the trips I made to the doctor before, for considering it an imposition to ask him to play chauffeur on his day off (he wanted to be there just in case). The admonishing was on behalf of anyone who echoes his resentment of information neglect (feel free to feel represented). Another friend warned that I would have to work my way up slowly to solid food instead of have the much desired full meal I craved.

"I'm sorry as soon as I get out of the rectum clinic I'm going to stuff my face."

“The gas could kill you.”

“I’ll die a happy death then.”

When we got to the center, I filled out paperwork and then got in my gown. A nurse grabbed the plastic bag with my clothes, sat me in a cushy chair and asked me questions. Soon a woman with district attorney age and demeanor came in and gathered a few needles.

“This is Phyllis, and she’ll be doing your anesthesia," the seated woman said.

“Oh cool. Fentanyl or ativan?”

“Propophyl,” Phyllis said.

Wasn’t this the Michael Jackson drug of choice? I was excited and nervous at once. After the nurse gave me a needle prep for the anesthesia, and then preset the plastic U-tubing for the breathing apparatus, she rolled me into another area. The journey on the gurney felt surreal. Is this what it’s like when the gun shot wound in the ribcage goes to numb and your eyes concentrate on the people pushing your horizontal body? Hm.

Anyway, I hoped that this is was as close as I would get to finding out.

When I got into the procedure room, Dr. Kwok was quite personable. He talked to me asked how the show has been going. I didn’t remember this guy at all, a stretch from the remote curmudgeon I met in the consultation.

“Turn over on your left.”

I did so, for sure it was to make my insides more accessible to the instrument that wold soon violate me. The expensive monitors and other fancy equipment let me know for sure.

Then I realized they were playing music.

“Yeah, we like Pandora in here,” Phyllis said, plugging the propophyl needle into the holster taped to my arm.

“Me too. I love it.” But I was confused about them pushing the gurney out of the room. “Wait, I thought this was going to happen in the room where Dr. Kwok and the monitors were a moment ago. There’s a third room?”

“No it’s over, sweetie.”

“I’m sorry?”

Yes the entire forty minute procedure, complete with a biopsy was complete. I didn’t remember the coma. And then I didn't want to get up out of the gurney. I wanted to pay rent or something so that they could leave me there to get what would surely be the best sleep of my entire 2009. With grudge-ment, I dragged out of the comfy arrangement the propophyl put me in and ambled to what I thought would be the getaway car.

Since sleep wasn't an option, I had two breakfasts.

And no, nothing is wrong. Thankfully, I did not die from gas behind solid foods consumed same day. Nor did the biopsy reveal anything. No cancer, no pollops, no hemmorhoids, nothing. Dr. Kwok (that name still gets me every time) could not explain why there were symptoms in the first place so I simply walk alongside the gift horse instead of look in its mouth. Amen.

I do have a better understanding of Michael Jackson's plight.

Red Need


Sheer impulse. When women get it they do sensible things like go to Sephora or get their nails done.

But you know with us there has to be much more opportunity for disaster.

And I succumbed to ambition.

I would paint my bathroom.

Yes, yes, I ran to the Home Depot before fears of skillessness, laziness, or maybe common sense could distract me. The wall needed to be all the stereotypes - bold, brave, daring , red.

It became even more clear over eggs and bacon. Yes, of course. I would switch out the decor of the master bathroom with the hallway half-bath, this because two weeks home was insufficient to knock down the dividing wall and combine them into one huge masterpiece of slate-surrounded tub/shower to match the floating sink...

Maybe I should just paint. So the black and white sketch of the brickhouse sister in leather pants could join the Egyptian aluminum piece framed in red and maybe sit on the wall across from the scroll I bought in Zurick that has black Mandarin characters that spelled over red some wonderful verse of wisdom I can't remember the translation for. This was exciting!

By the time I got the last plate in the dishwasher the Tuscan burnt sienna wall with orange undertones and melted butter door frames needed consideration. To look beyond that and see a red bathroom could be jarring. Dismal. Disastrous. I would have to seek therapy.

I only have fragments of my homosexual card left (I've had too many typical male moments deny me access and limit my swipes). Realizing my HGTV limitations, I phoned a friend.

"You want to paint the bathroom red?" my Niecy Nash friend suggested.

"Well just one wall. What I figure is, I can paint directly opposite the hallway. This way you won't see the red unless you're in the bathroom with the door closed."

"Still, do you know how hard it is to paint red? You have to do a lot of coats. Maybe you should go with..."

And from this point on I humored him. Why lie? He was not giving me what I was after. I needed him to corroborate the madness, not discourage it. What kind of friend was he anyway?

So I went on ahead and bought the red semi-gloss from Home Depot. Yeah-yeah, the other walls visible from the dining room had to be some other neutral (boring) color but I needed the paint the red for my very soul.

Behr makes a paint/primer in one, and even though I didn't even know how to pronounce primer (wtf??), I stretched tight upper body muscles to their max to get my palm to my back in self-congratulation.

Then another friend, this one a bona fide interior designer whom I'd called before my lunacy gained momentum, called back. He's the real deal, remembered my house from when he'd stayed there in '08 and could visualize details.

"You know you'll be able to see the red reflected in the vanity over the sink," he said.

"If you're walking by the bathroom?"

"No, if you're sitting down at the table."

Womp, womp, womp. He might be right. I'd have to sit down at the table and see.

He suggested I try to get a gray that would match the gray on the floor (which I despise) and be sure to "add more light in the end if you go with a darker gray because it will suck up what's in there."

So supportive. So reasonable. Such a good friend. With great, free advice.

"So, a half gallon of semi-gloss?" I asked.

"Eggshell. Semi-gloss will be too shiny in the bathroom. But you can still wipe dirt off of eggshell."

Oops. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that I'd already bought red semi-gloss. I could not get my money back. we are in a recession. In New York extra closet space to store paint doesn't exist. Enough reason for me to gloss the bathroom.

Then I cheated a little. I dispatched my little brother Kyle to engage his paint sensibilities after I'd blue-taped the borders. He finished the first coat minutes before midnight, at which point we went to the club to celebrate.

The next day I threw on a house CD, tipped around the apartment, did a step or two down my hallway and shook my behind, all in preamble for the painting I was about to undertake. I went to town on the second coat of red, tipping, stepping and shaking in between on breaks.

When I finished, I had a stroke of genius: rather than busy myself with other activity while the red got comfortable, why not begin work on the opposite wall? I obviously couldn't deal with the adjacent side walls because of the tape demands, but I could certainly get busy on the other side.

Great plan. So I got going and for about twenty minutes I was fine. Some no-doubt heavy woman was screaming gospel remixed into a fierce bass line. But then I started to feel a little light headed. My breathing suffered. Legs and booty were moving just a tad too far behind the downbeat hurling from my speakers in the front room.

Dummy, I told myself, perhaps you need to get out of the tiny space consumed with paint fumes.

Later that night, pleased with myself for having saved my loved ones the trauma of a "Final Destination" occasion, I walked in to see the work. The red was brilliant but a little too bright. That supportive, good, no-charging friend was beyond right. Fortunately, I'd had the good sense to run back to Home Depot to buy a quart of red eggshell to do the third coat!

By the next morning I was ready to pull the blue tape off so that I could see my red wall in all its glory. Like professional bikini waxers in slow mo, I unrolled the only thing standing between me and my design genius (???).

But to my horror, the tape would not let go of some of the paint. The gorgeous border, sectioned off with painstaking effort at the top of this HGTV excursion, turned into the jagged edge before my eyes, exposing bites of white that looked crazy. I would deploy little brother Kyle later, with a wave of hand and hurried words, to fix it.

In the meantime, I had painted the other two walls as well, relocated the red, black and white accoutrements into the newly painted bathroom.

After errands in the city, I came home and needed to pee. I went in and closed the door (none of which is really necessary when you are the only person in the house), I turned to face the red ecstacy and noticed that there was a two-inch margin of space between the door frame and the wall that could be seen reflected in the vanity mirror. A saunter down the hallway would still reveal the scarlet shock designed to take your breath away or fill it with fire, passion, etc. And I couldn't stand the haphazard lengthwise strokes of the brush that didn't match the even roller action I'd perfected.

So I pulled out the gray paint and the tape and I got to fixing. Because at the very least, I needed to be able to tell my decor advisor that I did succeed in making sure that the red did not jump into the dining room as he suspected it would.

Then there was the issue of the wooden toilet seat that was now in the back bathroom but got split in the center as if to harmonize with booty cracks that visit. I'd exhausted resources so running all over creation to find a replacement wouldn't work.

This is when the around-the-corner hardware store comes in handy, you know, the place where people will charge ten dollars and do it while you wait. I squeezed the sides of the toilet seat together and the handyman screwed in a thin metal bar. A blemish. And Dana would boycott the bathroom for fears that an alloy-specific form of rust-flavored salmonella would besiege her behind should she sit close to the quick fix.

Whatever, I got my Sephora fix. In RED.