Authors: Joe Putignano
When my attacks got that bad, I would close the bathroom door, run a hot shower, and sit by the steam to loosen the thick phlegm’s black grip around my lungs. I would sit there for hours with the shower door cracked open, tilt my head back, and suck in the white mist. The steam and repeated shots of my inhaler weren’t making a difference that night. Each minute the tightness worsened, and I could feel my airway closing.
As my breath slowly waned, I saw the appearance of Death for the first time. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, but it was exquisite, commanding, radiant, tranquil, and genuine. We sat face-to-face at a dinner table, and I looked deep into its bottomless eye sockets. Death, handsome, gorgeous, and composed, was dressed in a suit, and I wore a hospital gown. The room was empty except for us, but there was background chatter, as though we were dining in a crowded, fancy restaurant. A piano played in the background, a familiar song I couldn’t recall. I put my hand to my mouth and noticed it was gone. I tried to feel the outlines of my lips and teeth, but they had vanished, and all that remained was a smooth, gruesome patch of skin. I began to panic.
I looked down at the silverware that sparkled like stars in the sky, and the tablecloth resembled a giant galaxy. Death gestured with its hands, as if to say, “Bon appétit,” but there was nothing to eat on
my side of the table. I looked across to see a large, sterling silver lid covering a platter. Death’s bony fingers reached down to grab the handle, and it said pleasantly, “You know how badly you’ve wanted me to come.” Its voice was ecstasy echoing through my life. It spoke graciously. “There are so many people imprisoned by their bodies, and I am the peace that lets them escape it. I know you’ve been waiting for me. I know about the teasing, the sleepless nights, the terrorizing dream you have of being an Olympian. I can make it all go away; I can help you become a star in the sky and you will eternally shine your light down on your family.”
Just then its bony fingers pulled back the silver lid, exposing a grisly set of raw lungs—my lungs. They were sitting on a bloody plate and still breathing, like two captured fish about to die. I looked down at my hospital gown and touched my chest, and there was a huge, open hole where my lungs used to be. I was empty, and if I stood naked, one could see right through me. Death grabbed the shiny silverware and began cutting into my lungs, slowly and evenly, and I felt the gnawing pain beneath my skin even though they were no longer in my body. I wanted to scream, to yell in pain, but I had no mouth, breath, or voice. Blood oozed out of my lungs as Death mindlessly cut into each slice, raised the piece to its mouth, and began to chew. I felt a sensation more agonizing than the cutting. I felt Death consuming my lungs, and the torture was unbearable. My blood dripped from the corners of its mouth, and still, Death looked attractive. It leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. I wiped the stain of the bloody kiss off my skin. Its seduction was paralyzing, and for a moment I had no pain. I felt free, sacred, and complete.
I woke up on the couch with sweat stinging my eyes and fear closing my throat. All the agony on Earth was concentrated in the center of my chest. My small, clasped hands turned to fists, fighting and drawing breath from beneath the Earth. I gasped and struggled, but nothing happened. Eventually that intense pain would become unbearable as Death waited patiently for me to beg. It wasn’t going to take my life unless I willingly gave it away. However, along with that discomfort came the greatest desire to hold on and fight to keep breathing with every fiber of my being. I should have called an ambulance, but I
waited for my mom to come home. The hours fell into the night and the sun would come up again, releasing her from the underworld. She would help me breathe again, ridding Death from my body, but morning was far away and I was losing the battle.
I couldn’t hold on much longer. As I went in and out of consciousness, Death spoke to me, whispering its quiet intentions. It told me I could lie down and surrender as it naturally plucked me from the Earth the way I thoughtlessly picked flowers. It told me the transformation would be quick and all my struggles would be over. I wanted to give in; I wanted to lie down and relinquish, but I couldn’t. To this day I don’t know what kept me going. My life force refused to hear the solemn sounds of Death, and fought every second for survival. This was proof that the body, of its own accord, wants to live; but Death wasn’t leaving without a fight, tempting me with heaven and its sweet, watery bliss—a place where I could go to avoid all conflict that preceded that moment.
As my spirit began to dim, the lights from my mother’s car rolled across the ceiling like a chariot of horses from the stars. I immediately ran to the door, and when she saw me, she knew I was in bad shape. She seemed angry, not with me or herself, but with my asthma and how frequently I kept getting sick. She couldn’t understand why the hospital kept discharging me when I kept having attacks. I wasn’t embarrassed, as my pride had left and all that remained was my fight for breath. All things mundane and usual were drowned out by the seriousness of my sickness. My mom put me in the car and drove me to my primary care physician. When we got in the examination room he took one look at me and called an ambulance.
I don’t remember what happened next, but when I woke up I was in a room surrounded by machines and nurses. The nurse at my right had a warm smile for me, but had a large needle in her hand; she said she was going to draw blood. I wasn’t afraid of needles, but she was going to draw blood from an artery near my wrist for a blood gas test, an extremely painful procedure where the blood is taken from the radial artery to check the oxygen levels. It felt like a hot poker plunged into my bloodstream. There were multiple injections
of medications, oxygen tubes up my nose, and a heparin lock. Still, I couldn’t breathe and wasn’t in a safe zone yet, as the constrictions in my lungs continued.
A week went by, but it felt like a month. Separately, my parents came to visit, and my mom brought my teddy bear Oatmeal to keep me company. I was still very weak. For an athlete, being sick or injured is one of the worst things that can happen. We work so hard to be strong and healthy that when we are not at our optimum level we feel “less than.” Even though I was dreadfully sick, I still had the compulsion to exercise. I knew the other athletes on the team weren’t taking this week off. I kept thinking,
What if they learn a harder trick while I’m stuck in this hospital bed?
Just thinking about it made my breathing worse, but I had to figure out a way to exercise in bed. Several tests continued to check my lung functions, and the results weren’t good. Every other day I was wheeled down to a room to breathe into a huge fish tank-like machine to check my lung capacity. The oxygen levels in my blood were still below average, and the tests showed lung damage and scar tissue from my asthma.
Another week went by and I was still lying in a hospital bed. The eggshell-white walls and hospital gowns began to drive me crazy. I attempted to do some leg lifts, but got caught by a nurse who yelled at me, saying I was sick in a hospital bed and shouldn’t exercise. I believed exercise would heal me quicker, so I continued the leg lifts after she left the room.
Tara brought me all my missed schoolwork and I did as much as I could, but it was difficult to concentrate. Instead I lay in bed watching daytime TV. Yet another week went by, and I slowly began to recover. The doctors tapered off my nebulizer treatments and promised I could go home in a few days. I was on a chemist’s cocktail of powerful medications when they finally released me from the hospital.
As soon as I got home, I returned to gymnastics. Every move was a struggle; I was extremely out of shape, and I thought my body would never get back to the condition I had previously achieved. To rekindle the fire, I tried to remember the warrior I once was. I thought about all my hard work over the years, trying to reconnect
to the boy inside me, the boy who would never quit or give up, and the spark reignited—something telepathically demanded me to keep going. I doubled my workouts and conditioned my body as often as I could. My physical return was much slower than I anticipated, but my soul wouldn’t allow me to quit the fight.
After I was back in competition shape, I thought about Death. I thought about its beauty and power, and knew that beyond the stars and beyond the clouds, it was there, waiting for the end of our fleeting lives.
T
ODAY WE KNOW THAT FOLLICLES AT THE BASE OF HUMAN HAIRS, FINGERNAILS, AND TOENAILS CONTAIN CELLULAR MATERIAL RICH IN
DNA,
WHICH CAN BE USED TO DETERMINE THE IDENTITY OF AN INDIVIDUAL.
P
ERHAPS IT’S NO COINCIDENCE THAT ANCIENT VOODOO DOLLS WERE PREPARED USING BITS OF HUMAN HAIR AND NAILS, BECAUSE THEY WERE BELIEVED TO COMPRISE ELEMENTS OF A PERSON’S IDENTITY
. T
HE DOLLS WERE OFTEN USED IN VOODOO RITUALS DESIGNED TO CONTROL, REWARD, OR PUNISH INDIVIDUALS.
I was finally in high school, and naively believed it would be a new start for me with other kids my age. It was a regional school that combined two towns: Norton and Easton. Our small-town group of Easton students did not know the Norton students, and so none of them knew our past. I believed we all secretly wanted to hide our former selves. The girls who were chubby and made fun of, the boys who had peed their pants in second grade, and those caught picking their noses—all wanted their stories to die in the past along with our preteen years and last year’s clothing styles.
This was not a school of higher learning, but an alliance of fallen souls. It was an experiment in socialism and power play executed on a group of same-aged beings desperately trying to find themselves in a culture of unforgiving greed and dominance. Those of us from the Easton schools wanted a new start more than anything—geeks and losers getting a chance to become popular and cool.
Every day I woke up at 6:00 a.m., moments after the sun rose, and prepared for war. We marched into the school building like bloodthirsty zombies out to get tortured—not by our teachers, but by each other—as we tore one another apart, flesh from bone. As the blood and goodness bled out, nothing remained but anguish and despair. The teenage mind and social system is an atom bomb wrapped in denim and designer clothes, drenched in perfume and cologne, and steered by an intellect that thinks it knows everything.
I decided not to tell the new students about my gymnastics. I was already filled with self-hatred that simmered daily to a boil, and I couldn’t stand to add to that. I couldn’t allow the teasing to grow, and I had to strategically reinvent myself. I strived to conceal the passion and love for the art that gave purpose to my life. I tried other sports to fit in, but they just didn’t feel right. I was good at soccer, but my deep romance with movement wouldn’t let me go. Like two star-crossed lovers, gymnastics and I were going to die together.
The new kids in school from Norton were more socially advanced than us in every way. We were the good kids suddenly introduced to a pool of new people who smoked weed, drank beer, and had sex. It seemed like heaven and hell were colliding. Sure, we were teenagers, but I think we were more like angels and demons creating a social nightmare while having to learn irrelevant and untenable things for a future that was permanently held above our heads. As much as we tried to study and become good students, curses and evil intentions won over our minds, and the difference between right and wrong became impossible to tell. In our teenage years we were completely powerless over all of that, but I was determined not to fall victim to peer pressure. I had firsthand experiences at home of the destructive and insidious nature of drinking and smoking, and I knew those temptations would pull me away from my Olympic dreams.
High school is an exaggerated microcosm of the world in which we live, and despite my attempts at disguising myself, I could not hide who I was. Everyone knew I was a gymnast. The sides between towns crossed, and the pasts we secretly swore to keep were told. The ridicule I heard made it excruciating to love what I did. The
teasing got worse than it had been in middle and junior high school, and everyone at my new school seemed to believe gymnastics was not a real sport. I didn’t bother fighting that perception, and instead drew closer to the invisible world I had created for myself, a thin line between fantasy and reality.
Tara defended me like a Valkyrie against the tormenting monsters, but when teenagers believe something, they cling to it as if all of creation depends upon it. Faith and ignorance are the complete workings of a teenage mind. In addition to that, kids whispered “fag” as I walked past them in the hallways. Hearing that word set me on fire, and all the rage in the world burned through my body. It was the one word that immediately shattered all that I was into tiny, meaningless fragments. It was the one word that took my masculinity and vaporized it. I couldn’t understand their attacks, since I was physically stronger than most kids in my class. How could they call me that? To me, the word
fag
represented femininity, weakness, frailty, and I had none of those things. Yes, I was short, with a squeaky voice, but this was my first year of high school and most of the other guys my age hadn’t completely matured physically either.
How could they call me “fag” when I felt attracted to girls? I heard the voices in exactly the same pitch and volume in which they were spoken. I got nauseated every time “fag” wormed its way into my ear, and the person I thought I was began to evaporate. The thought of ending my life popped up again. I wanted to rid myself of the torment and teasing. That thought flickered, sharp and smooth, impossible to imagine for real, but still I found it wildly entertaining. Something stubborn inside me carried that idea away, something pure and sacred. If life got bad enough, death would still be an option, but movement owned me and it wouldn’t let me go until it had used my body as its vessel.