“Malcolm was such a sweetie, always biting his hand, yelling like that. I still think of him,” my dad said, when I listed whom I remembered. “Roderick always dressed like a gentleman, his dad was from some like royal lineage. He’d always do these crazy like ballet spins, super fast—”

“Pirouettes.”

“Pirouettes. But it was like they were spiritual. Like he was tryna tap into a higher level.”

“Tryna spin his ass to God!”

“And Michael Gallagher, he was a sweetie but he’d get violent. When he kicked that chair at dinner, snapped the leg off and sent it flying across the room. Coulda hit one of you guys. I remember I grabbed him by the shoulder, took him outside, sorta pinched the nerve real hard. Looked him in the eye and said If you EVER do anything like that again, you’re fkn out. Fkng gone.”

“For real. What he say.”

“Oh he went Sorry, sorry Edick, never again.”

“Damn.”

“He was out of line.”

“When someone outta line, you gotta snap on em,” I said. “Expect the same respect from others that you give them. No matter who.”

“Gotta.”

2

NURSE DADDY

January 2019: Philly

The first nurse, the first night in there.

Flamboyant dude Roberto.

While still in the first-floor ER, after initially hitting the Urgent Care up in Manayunk and the Urgent Care doc there having no clue what to do and so sending me over.

Autonomous bae and roomie bae doing the soccer-player shoulder-carry outta autonomous bae’s car, before a nurse rushed over to receive me with a wheelchair.

Me going I mean I’m good, I can walk, but thanks, but I mean I’m probably good. Autonomous bae and roomie bae going Sh sh sh, you’re fine, we got you.

Then posting up in the ER with me all that night, nibbling on snacks roomie bae’s boo biked over with like a champ. I don’t even know how, how icy out it was.

Roberto turning everything into a joke, in a way I didn’t know how I felt about but had no way/means of resisting. Making everyone leave the room when he turned me on my side, held me down, and penetrated me rectally with a thermometer. Which he needed to, there was no way around it, to get an accurate reading.

One oh four.

The Sunday before flying back, I hit the park and hopped into a full-court 5-on-5 game since it was Sunday and folks were balling full court.

‘Taking it easy’ bc all the internal roids I’d been on, and internal roids weakened the bones.

Only we won. So played another.

Had to.

The second game I took it to the rack, took the contact, only when I hit the defender mid-air we jackknifed each other and my feet swung out from under me.

Landed like thwack on the edge of the court, where it switched to gravel, on my spine.