crotch rocket

Right around week 12 of the Crocs job I started to feel lightning bolts striking my balls whenever I would exert myself to a certain degree. That weekend when I flew home from Orlando after being terrified of Disney World, I went and paid a visit to my doctor. After turning and coughing about 3,000 times I was diagnosed with a subtle inguinal (in-gwin-ullllllllll) hernia on my right side. This was going to need some attention-- and by attention I mean that I was going to need to step away from this life on the road business and get my midsection sawed open.

Awesome.

Yesterday morning, June 19, I woke up at 5:15 am to make my way with my Mom and Dad to Crittenton Hospital in Rochester. I was in good spirits and fully prepared to be in and out of that operating room. Hernia surgery seemed like the pre-school of anything involving a scalpel. The night before I even made a Mettalica playlist that I was going to listen to as I was wheeled away on the surgery board. If candy bars could be a measure of my preparedness then I was a King Size Snickers bar. The one's that are roughly the size of a machine gun.

As we pulled in to the parking area G at the hospital I approached the counter and got everything ready—told the woman my vertical leap, stated my preference for Subway sandwiches, etc. I sat in the waiting room reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone. I about shit my pants when I noticed that the Fleet Foxes were featured with a little mini-article. Waiting. Waiting. At that point all I could think about was getting home and being able to sit on my ass for a few days while I had an unlimited supply of mother-made Turkey/Ham sandwiches. Ohhh god, Mom makes the best sandwiches. For what its worth, I would have her creations over a Subway version any day. And Dad does OK with sandwich creation as well, his are just 8 times the size of Mom’s and big enough to feed a full grown-male thoroughbred horse.

I practically moon-walked to the waiting room where I stripped down and donned the hospital gown— wearing those things are kind of like fitting a curtain on yourself as an evening dress. I was having some extreme difficulty tying the back and so I requested the help of the nurse. As I turned around to get her help I could feel my ass just hanging out the back, but I figure it wasn’t the first time she had to deal with such a spectacle. I flexed to compensate for what is undoubtedly one of the world’s flattest rear ends. Afterwards, I sat there still reading my magazine when another nurse came in asking me a few questions. Before I knew it she had the buzzers out and instructed me that I was going to need a shave. My beard was quite ragged looking so I assumed she was referring to my face.

Oh no.

She was going to need to shave the “surgical region.” And not fully understanding that the surgical region was my entire abdomen and lower pelvic region, I was in for something of a little surprise. I didn’t realize I was going to get a full shaving that involved making me look like a pre-pubescent 4 year old boy. I jokingly asked her if she would shave my initials in my chest hair. I didn’t really get a response other than her thanking me for being a “good sport.” I gave a good laugh instructing her I didn’t have a choice in the matter. She proceeded to give me some interesting stories about typical responses from the average male when the nurse wants to stake a claim on his entire pubis region. This was arguably the most entertaining portion of the pre-op procedure. As I continued to talk about it with the nurse you could tell she was kind of appalled at how much of a joke I thought it was.

My parents came back in and I was quick to tell them that the nurse had just removed all my pubic hair. Mom looked like she was going to vomit on me and Dad just kind of giggled and asked many more questions like “really, ALL of it? We sat there and talked for about 30 more minutes until another barrage of nurses came in asking questions and reporting the happenings of the morning to me. I got an IV popped in my paw and was told that was how I would get the “twilight drug” later when it was time to get my abdomen sawed open. Awesome. This was getting more and more exciting. I was envisioning Amsterdam and the red light district when she said twilight drug.

Soon the surgeon came in and he carved an X in to the right side of my pelvis, just above the weiner, so that it was pretty clear which side would be hernia-free in an hour or so. As I pulled my curtain dress up so that he could draw on me I was reminded once again of my Kindergarten crotch. Meanwhile, my Mom who had been sitting next to me on the surgical bed completely turned around in her chair and faced the wall covering her eyes.

I had my death metal playlist cued up when I was instructed there would be no iPod coming in to surgery with me. According to nurse Kevin it would not matter “what in the frick” was going to be playing because I would not be hearing it. Ohhhhhkay. I threw my iPod over to my Mom and gave them the ceremonial kiss goodbye as I was wheeled away to the butcher’s block. If there was one moment where theme music would be kind of cool, I am guessing it would be best when being wheeled in for surgery—get some dramatic bass lines with a little synth thrown in there. Nothing like a little jive step in to the cutting room. Come to think of it, if I could choose my getting-wheeled-in-to-surgery musical theme song it would be Kool & the Gang’s “Get Down On It.” Either that or Def Leppard’s “Make Love Like a Man.”

At this point I was not nervous really in the least. I was thinking more about my barren crotch and the lack of Metttalica blaring through my ears as the wheels turned in to the operating room. I entered the swinging doors and the place felt abnormally cold. Kevin, the nurse, was standing around fiddling with what looked like a set of pruning shears that could easily sever the entire lower half of my body. Within 40 seconds I noticed that Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” was playing on the stereo inside the operating room. To say that this pumped me up is an understatement. To say that it was twenty times harder to knock me out with the twilight drug because I wanted to finish the song is more accurate. I was, however, ecstatic about getting my abdomen hacked in to. Tom Petty, the American legend that he is, would be the artist I would choose to usher my troops in to battle should I ever become a war general. I would undoubtedly choose “Running Down a Dream” as the specific song choice. So next thing I know, Kevin was administering the happy drug to me. All the while I was mouthing the lyrics to “Won’t Back Down” as I became consistently more and more incoherent—but feeling fucking fantastic. My surgeon was going through formalities as I asked him if his son had fun at Bonnaroo (we had established this fact at my diagnosis visit). I don’t remember his reply. The last thing I remember is telling the surgical staff that the happy drug was really working well because I felt like I was playing soccer on Mars with a bunch of people that looked like they were in the formation of clouds. Yep. I am curious if you can get the twilight drug on the black market for recreational use. My guess is that this stuff could potentially take over the methamphetamine problems we have in the US.

Time flies on the happy drug and next thing I knew I was being wheeled out of the operating room and served graham crackers and cranberry juice. I got put in to a new room with about 5 other people that looked infinitely more fucked up than I felt. My mouth was on auto-pilot, I couldn’t control it. I was talking to everyone in that room and had no control over what I was saying. I was making sure that everyone in the room was OK, asking if anyone wanted some of my cranberry juice. I asked the elderly woman next to me if she wanted to go dancing. I think she was terrified. But seriously, I couldn’t stop talking. I got in to a very in depth conversation about vegetation in the Pacific Northwest with the nurse. How we even got close to talking about Portland and surrounding areas is beyond me.

My crotch was feeling good, although I could sense a little bit of tenderoni down there. I downed a couple of Tylenol III and hoped for the best. Within about 30 minutes I told the staff I was ready to go home and that was pretty much the end of it. I crawled in to the car and Mom and Dad hauled me off. I think by the time we pulled in to the driveway the Mr. Twilight Drug Happy Pants days were over. It now felt as if someone was stabbing me with a blunt metal pole just north of my weiner over and over. The pain was creeping to my side as well.

I almost immediately went to the couch to sit down. Walking was nearly impossible. Rotating my torso was in fact impossible. I got up to take a piss and staggered to the bathroom. As I stood there I began to see every color in the rainbow. I was reasonably sure I was hallucinating and questioned if maybe I got some PCP instead of Tylenol III. I remember closing my eyes to try and make it go away but that was about the end of me staying on my feet. BOOM! Down to the floor. Mom and Dad heard the thump of my 190 pound frame hit the deck. I don’t remember falling or the impact I just remember not having a fucking clue what was going on as they were both crouched over me in the bathroom. Yep. My first words to them as I awoke from my mysterious slumber was “I pissed all over myself.” Turns out I did actually piss all over myself, too. Awesome. So that was great. One hour in to recovery I am passing out and excreting urine all over my split open torso.

I went back to the couch and ended up having some form of a back spasm. My parents at this point are putting on award winning performances and could easily pass as paramedics, but I was just a flailing ball of randomness— shooting pains coming from every corner of my body, spasms, irregular breathing, explosions of sweat—EXPLOSIONS, my face would go white from time to time. My mom whipped out an electronic blood pressure meter from somewhere and apparently my blood pressure had plummeted. I felt like a helpless little pile of shit laying there on the floor. Yep, the floor. The couch was causing me to go in to said convulsions because of an irregularly soft cushion that apparently wasn’t supportive enough for my back.

Awesome.

Hours later, still feeling like the Incredible Hulk was punching me in the abdomen every 5 seconds, it became obvious that this was a little more serious than I had planned for. I stood up to try and go take another piss and the started seeing explosions of purple all over the room. I had to sit down and my mom had me breathing in a paper bag. The bag smelled like cinnamon and for whatever reason this made me want to throw up even more. My face turned the color of cotton balls and I had a waterfall of sweat bursting out of my forehead. This was really working out well.

I decided to sit in a chair in the living room and just not move at all. This worked out really well. Couple this with the fact that I graduated to Vicodin instead of Tylenol III and things started to take a calmer turn. I spoke with my medical guru genius Mr. Bryan Sack who has mysteriously transformed from being my global travel partner to a full-on physician. He instructed me that the twilight drug—the anesthetic that was used while the doc was sawing my midsection—was making me loopy and causing the fainting. OK, so that was good news. I wasn’t going completely crazy. Things were on the up and up.

If I was responsible for distributing the golden statue at any sort of awards academy I would present my mother and father with bronzed statues of a male herniatic midsection. Yep. All of this in recognition of the impeccable care they have been providing me through this little ailment. At one point, I was convinced that the Vicodin was giving me the munchies because I think I ate somewhere in the neighborhood of three dozen turkey sandwiches. And sure enough, they had the sandwiches out to me in a jiffy as I lay comatose in the living room like a little baby forlorn calf unable to take his first steps. It has become blatantly obvious how much your core strength is necessary in this lifetime. I mean honestly, I try to scratch my head and it hurts. Need to change the channel on the TV? Well, when I reach for the remote it feels like Godzilla is pouncing on my stomach. Want to roll over? Just forget it, not happening.

Bryan Sack, the legend I went globetrotting with this last time around, came over on Saturday to say hello and get a haircut. That’s right, Bryan needed a tune-up on his mullet. Lord knows I could barely clutch the scissors in my right hand, let alone stand on two feet, but the old boy got his haircut. There was no chance of me backing out of that one. Cutting his hair was actually the first time I saw a ray of sunshine pierce my eyeballs since the doctor sliced me open. It felt pretty good, I have to tell you. The mullet turned out pretty awesome if I do say so myself. Bryan came to the house with a withered ball of fluff hair shaped in to what appeared to be a bouffant haircut. He left, however, with a chiseled work of perfection— razor cut sides with specific attention to the fade up to the top and delicate tail flowing in the back. Perfection.

Later that day I was able to stand in the mirror and look at the creation that the nurse had given me. I had shorn features, or the lack of any sort of surface hair, from my balls right on up to my belly button. This was sort of alarming when I could actually look at it. I assessed the situation as code orange-- nearing a state of emergency and in need of immediate attention. This was one thing I could actually probably take care of. So I took the old buzzers and went clear on up to my neckline to even everything out and officially make myself feel like a 7 year old boy. Two weeks later I am still praying I get some chest hair back. Oddly enough, three weeks ago I was cursing the new arrivals that were peeking through my v-neck t-shirt line. Now, all I want is my chest hair back. Please. Just a few of them.

Later on Saturday afternoon I called my doctor to request more Vicodin. Yep. I think he was actually quite appalled as he called me back after being paged by the hospital. As I spoke with him on the phone it became clear he was under the impression that I had gone through 30 tablets of Vicodin in less than two days and suspected a little bit of “patient abuse.” Well, I went through 18 in two days—just as directed by the instructions on the side of my pill container. I did some explaining and ended up getting the re-fill on my prescription. Phew.

After 2 days of Vicodin splendor and about 6 total days of relative non-movement (and a hell of a lot of sandwiches), it was time to enter the real world again. Unfortunately. Sometimes it can almost be fun getting your midsection dissected—if only for the tender, love and care that comes from it. I mean really, short of that day when I lay motionless on the floor feeling like 14 different varieties of dog shit, being home for those days was kind of nice and not THAT bad. So anyway, I had to get back to the Crocs gig and join up with the tour again. I caught a flight to the great city of Chicago, Illinois where my new coworker Mike Sack was going to pick me up and take me to the lake house we had rented on Lake Okauchee for the time we would be spending up in Milwaukee for Summerfest—a 12 day music festival.

As I said goodbye to my Mom at the terminal and began walking with my old Detroit Tigers tote bag I quickly realized that the cumulative amount of steps I was taking to get to the Northwest Airlines check-in counter was more than I had taken in the past week combined. Awesome. As I rounded the corner through security to my gate I felt like my midsection was on fire. Hmmm. I swallowed a handful of Ibuprophen and kept on walking. Of course my gate was on the other side of the McNamara terminal and of course I am too stubborn to ride the tram to get there. So I walked—at a snail’s pace mind you. I felt like I was moving at about 1/20 the speed of the rest of the universe.

Baby steps.

I sat at gate A29 and the flight was delayed. I cracked open “Killing Yourself to Live” by Chuck Klosterman and began to read it for the third time. There was a large group of what appeared to be some “business travelers” around me. They talked at volumes rivaling the blast of a circular saw so I was really trying hard to focus on my book. There was one particular woman, I concluded her name was Diane. Diane was a rather interesting gal—I am guessing about 33 years old. Once she got to talking I was no longer reading my book, but rather just keeping my eyes fixated on the words and listening to this crazy mammal speak. She was going on and on about how she had just hotboxed the handicap stall in the women’s bathroom and simultaneously dropped a couple of Percoset to “ease the pain” as she put it. That phrase “ease the pain” was repeated probably 140 times while I was sitting here. I was thinking maybe she had just gotten in an awful car accident where she endured some traumatic injuries. Nope. Turns out the “pain” was battling flight related anxiety. I mean it seemed a little ridiculous seeing as how we were a whopping 250 miles away from our destination and the total flight time was going to be in the neighborhood of 45 minutes, but hey. As I looked over to see these events unfolding, I noticed that Diane and her fellow travelers were all donning their “Kaplan Test Prep” tote bags. Jesus. These people were instructors for those SAT prep courses.

So I boarded the plane feeling pretty good. I knocked out about 50 pages more in the book and had a good playlist playing. It apparently wasn’t playing loud enough, however, because I could still hear Diane shouting about 5 rows back inside the airplane. She was asking her coworkers if they wanted anything out of her “bag of tricks.” This, of course, was referring exclusively to the bag of narcotics she now had with her in her tote bag. I was fulling expecting her to pull out a water bong and have a pull right there in row 10 of the plane. If this were to have happened I would have 1) seriously questioned the legitimacy of airport security and 2) requested a hit, only so that I could say I took a hit off a water bong, in an airplane, from a complete stranger, hopped up on Percoset, named Diane, who also happened to teach High School kids how to do well on their SAT. Those kinds of things just don’t happen everyday.

Meanwhile, the pilot was speaking over the PA and said “Uhhh” 42 times (this I can proclaim with a margin of error of +/- 3. This is one of the many advantages of always carrying a pen. I was able to mark dots on my boarding pass as he spoke marking the exact number of times he said “uhhh”) in a span of roughly 4 minutes while he announced to the cabin crew that the in-flight black box had failed on the previous flight and was needing a bit of repair. The standard chorus of groans erupted from all around me. I just kind of sat back and clutched my groin. Looks like we wouldn’t be taking off any time soon. Chuck Klosterman to the rescue.

The guy sitting next to me on the plane looked exactly like Sean Astin playing Rudy in the movie “Rudy” – so much so that I took it upon myself to whistle the theme song to see if he would awkwardly mention the movie and tell me that he was in fact Sean Astin who played the main character. If that were the case I would have undoubtedly asked him about the scenes in the movie where he got pummeled on a daily basis playing scout team defense at practice—especially the day where the guys from the O-line finally stuck up for him and I had goosebumps in every corner of my body. Oh, the days of competitive sports. So the guy never fessed up to being Sean Astin. He instead played with his iPhone for nearly all of the 1.5 hours we sat on the tarmac waiting to take off while the black box was being fixed. I thought about Diane. She was probably asleep having hallucinogenic dreams. Rudy was talking to a coworker about rolling out some new “strategic efforts.” This put my memory blocks right back to sitting in the bullpen front and center in Corporate America. Goooood lord. I am feeling very, very, very much so OK with the decision to exit gracefully from that scene.

So we took off at a certain point unbeknownst to me because I was too busy reading the chapter about when Klosterman goes to a Cracker Barrel and has conversations with a teenage Kafka-reading waitress in North Carolina. The best part is when Klosto declares that he had fallen in love with the woman in 18 minutes—see that’s the sort of precision I can appreciate. ANYWAY, the plane eventually landed in Chicago and I made it the arrivals pickup area—about 30 minutes later. Mike Sack was waiting for me. We caught up on the 2 hour ride from Chicago to the Lake House up near Milwaukee. We stopped at a service station to fill up on diesel and I picked up my favorite truck stop snack combo— Chex Mix (original flavor) and a cold 20 oz Coca Cola.

All of the sudden with crumbs covering my lap sitting passenger side, a ¾ empty Coca Classic after 8 minutes of swigging, My Morning Jacket blaring through the stereo, windows down, and a sensation that there was a forrest fire in my crotch, I realized one simple thing: I was back in the wicka-wicka-wicka-wicka mothafuckin’ game.

Time to be back… ON THE ROAD.