The Old Disorder

an excerpt from

Anecdotes from the Western Bubble

by  Thoreau Lovell

“Where am I?” I wonder, when I read the words “Tuberculosis Test” in an email—like a line from a letter written in 19th-century London or Berlin and then accidentally mailed to me in 20th-century San Francisco.   When I get off the bus, memories and past lives greet each other like ghosts of dead friends.   I think I hear a calliope played by a band of lab monkeys squatting in an unsold condominium.   But it’s only the hospital’s steam plant spewing white smoke over dirty brick buildings.   I push open the wooden door of the TB Clinic and enter the waiting room.   Lou Reed’s voice warbles through a plastic radio left on the empty counter.

Posters tacked to the wall inform me that millions die from this disease every year.   Now I’m scared!   A middle-aged nurse sticks me with a needle.   When her back is turned, I take pictures of a 12x12 matrix of blue, yellow, and green ampoules—beautiful, small abstractions of light and color.   I’m woozy when I try to stand up, so I sit back down and look at a photo I took of old shoes on a wooden stairway at someone else’s 50th birthday.   I look at a series of photos of my 95-year-old grandmother and daughter posing in rocking chairs on the front porch of an antebellum mansion.   I look at a dog we had cremated last year, laying on the round, red carpet in our living room.

When my strength returns, I walk up 24th Street to York and stop at a bar called “Pops.”   The sexy bartender, sucking a chocolate shake through a straw, ignores me.   I have a conversation with her anyway.

“I used to live on this street,” I say, to establish myself.   “My daughter was born on this street,” I add, to impress her.   “I bought tortillas and lightbulbs around the corner!”   The bartender sets a beer in front of me, does a half-spin, and floats to the other end of the room.

“Two percent less testosterone every year!” I hear a man behind me complain to the sound of pool balls breaking.   “Two percent less per year!” he repeats.

I decide to call the malady in my head Echo Location Disorder.   Van Halen, Buck Owens, Earth Wind and Fire, loudly confirm the diagnosis.

Leaving the							Compound
	The Old Resurrection
					Kitsch
Memory Midget
			The Old Checkmate

[ photos by the author ]

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