s$ $$ .d""b. .d""b. HOE E'ZINE #1106 [-- $$""b. $$ $$ $$ $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --] $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ss$$ "The Nurse" $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ by, Kreid $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ 6/28/00 [-- $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --] $$ $$ "TssT" "TssT" --(1)-- I became a nurse so that I could heal. That's not too unusual, right? "Hi, George, is it? All right. This here is morphine. I'm just going to give you a shot of this to dull the pain. Is that okay?" "Yes, yes. And you are--?" "My name's Doug. Here." I plunge the morphine in and get a huge smile. I make so many friends in this business. "L-listen... D-doug... I'm gonna need a little more of this stuff. I've got a little... tolerance... for this kind of s-stuff... a h-habit... understand?" I give George a big smile in return. "I more than understand, buddy. Just give me a second." Driving the needle into his other arm reminds me a little too much of myself. I take a coffee break to shoot up in the supply closet, very sanitary. It's not like old times. I use cotton and alcohol and a real tourniquet, and I throw away the needle when I'm finished. I became a nurse so that I could heal. That's not too unusual. I'm not too unusual. There must be guys like me all over this country. When I went to college, I had no direction. It was a small school. Nursing was a popular major. I became a nurse so that I could heal, for lack of any higher ambition. --(2)-- Around quitting time, Phyllis showed up in my ward. She was the newest and prettiest nurse at the hospital. Yeah, that's the other reason I became a nurse. Phyllis and I had a dinner date tonight at her apartment; she was cooking. I do this a lot because I got off work too late to eat out and I can't cook for shit. "So, how are all your patients doing?" she asked. "If any of them could talk, I'd ask." I laughed a little. Phyllis didn't. She's still new to the job. "Now here's a real tragedy. This guy wrote a suicide note three pages long and then parked his car on the train tracks. You'd think that'd be a pretty certain death, huh?" "I guess so..." she mumbled. "Yeah, well now look at him! All burned to a crisp and crippled. It's amazing, you know, the resilience of life. The guy gave up on life, but his body wouldn't; at least not in time. Now we've got him on all these so-called life machines, so I guess his body couldn't give up even if it wanted to." "Dave, I think you need to calm down..." "Nah. I'm okay. I don't care. Let's go." --(3)-- I woke up the next morning around 6:30. "Ah, what a beautiful morning," I said to her. "The sun is shining; I feel alive! Of all the euphoria in my life, nothing compares to a sunny day. Don't you agree, Phyllis?" She woke up and looked at me with dread and ten-pound bags under her eyes. "Dave..." she moaned, "...you are one twisted motherfucker." "Hahahaha!" I beamed at her. "What do you know, you stupid bitch?" My smile grew wider and wider still as the sunlight blazed through my window. Phyllis was livid. "How can you act like this after two hours of sleep? Aren't you hung over? Strung out? Dehydrated?" "No. Well, maybe a little bit." "What the fuck is wrong with you?" "Nothing!" I was grinning from ear to ear. I kissed her on the forehead. "Listen, baby. I woke you up early so that you could shower before I took you to work. I'm sorry I kept you up so late last night. I guess I'm a bad influence on you, I'm sorry. I'm a bad, bad man." Now she was beaming; a typical woman. She walked silently to the bathroom. Thank god! Every muscle in my body was in pain. I downed a few morphine pills and everything was pleasant. The sun was pleasant. I rolled a joint; not because I needed it, but because Phyllis did -- to take the edge off before work. Phyllis came out of the shower, naked and clean as the new day. She got back into the sweaty outfit she wore yesterday and we hopped in the car. I lit the joint as we pulled out of the driveway. Tomorrow, she would be with me again, only with a change of clothes. With any luck, she'll be making breakfast by the end of the week. I'll wake up to see the hollow shell of her beauty, making breakfast for her corruptor, held up only by the sustaining glow of the sun and by the sustenance of morphine and the prettiness of a breakfast that we couldn't eat if we tried. Damn it all. She does not deserve this. I do not deserve her. At least we'll be happy together. We'll be so happy with this life. This horror! I'm a bad, bad man. Why won't she listen to me? By the end of the week, she'll be on a downward spiral, hooked on drugs, hooked on my love, sleepless, hungry and lifeless. I am so fucking horrible. On the way to work that morning, she is stoned out of her mind and I am crying silently. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO MY READERS: Dave (AKA kreid) here. I'm sure these sentiments are commonplace and implicit without me saying so... but I want you all to know -- I love you all; by reading my words, you fill my heart; you make me feel as if my life were worth living. Oh boy, this is sappy. Please forgive me for my uncharacteristically blatant display of emotion, but I want you all to know how I feel. It doesn't make me sad, now that h0e is dead. I'm glad to have been part of this clique. I consider the text files that we all have written together the greatest artistic movement of my life thus far. The scene was critical of me from the start, but never alienating ... like a father to me. Anyway, now that h0e is dead, the 'zine scene will continue on, I hope, as it always has, in spite of the death of the written word. I will continue to write because it is my passion and there is nothing that I can do better. On that note, I want to thank the 'zine scene for giving me that passion. It was not Hemingway or Bukowski or Dostoyevsky or Vonnegut or Hunter S. Thompson or Burroughs or Irvine Welsh or Ray Bradbury or Robert Anton Wilson or Carlos Castaneda or any of those guys that got me into writing. In fact, those guys are barely worth mentioning. No, it was Mogel, Eerie, Styx, Jamesy, Jason F., Trip, Phorce, Black Francis, Belial, Edicius, Hooch... well, the list is very very long. Anyway, it was these people who made a writer out of me. The "scene" is often what makes an artist, and what drives him. History can only inspire an artist, and while the classics touch his soul in incomparable, divine ways, the classics can never move a man's life -- can never drive a man the way his contemporaries and his loyal readers do. Anyway, I feel like I'm going overboard here. It's late and I'm getting really drunk as usual. Let me conclude: To my readers and my contemporaries: I love you and my writing will (obviously) continue on. Look for further chapters of my current works, and new work, it'll be around somewhere; I just haven't figured out where my future lies just yet. And fucking e-mail me, okay? negleyd@hartwick.edu -- d. [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu HOE #1106, BY KREID - 6/28/00 ]