Ping! By Scott Baxter
My ears burn as I enter the dimly lit hallway of the apartment. Before I even have my jacket off he hands me a vodka and coke. “It’s all I’ve got,” he says by way of welcome. I accept the tall cold glass and follow him into the glaringly bright kitchen. I see now he is naked apart from an unbuttoned short-sleeved bright blue shirt. It’s not his colour. We chat. As he speaks I focus on his scar. It travels from his sternum between sagging tits, then down and to the side over a bloated medicine ball sized belly. It’s not a modest hairline shadow of a scar but a wide, thin-skinned, rippled, miscoloured trench. I’m told it’s from diverticulitis. Twice in fact. He has no muscles holding in his bowel. It moves independently within his taut skinned torso. I gulp my drink and crunch through ice attempting to wake myself from macabre thoughts. He suggests we move through to the bedroom. The room does have a bed but this is not a room for sleeping in. The modest room is part junk-store, part fuck-room, part drug-den. My eyes take time to adjust to the chaos in order to interpret the items within. Crate upon crate, object upon object, their prior purpose lost in overlaid combinations of colour and form. In the centre of the room a sofa bed has exploded into shape and is covered in the remnants of stained sheets and blankets. To one side a television streams porn. Disaffected ‘yoof’ in glossy sports apparel clumsily nudge and grope, egging one another on to perform more explicit sexual acts in a faux masculine dare or double-dare scenario. But this I only speculate - the sound is off and the film’s greater narrative is lost to me. In front of the TV sits an altar. Upon it is laid an iPad open at Grindr, two lines of powder on a
mouse mat, a variety of colourful cut-down drinking straws and a Tesco Clubcard. One of the card’s edges is considerably ground. A laminate sheet on one side is peeling away exposing its loyalty core. Ping! He has a message. I decide to undress in the hallway. My eyes burn as I re-enter the bedroom. He’s been smoking. Through smarting eyes, I find him on his knees finishing one of the lines through a straw. “I’m not an addict” he blurts as he gets up. My mask must have slipped, surprised at discovering him mid-task. To reinforce my honesty and re-establish his trust I take my place on the floor, pick up a clean-ish looking bright blue straw and inhale the other line. Then air. Then exhale. Sitting back on my heels I wait. “Gie it time. You might need another line”. He can tell what I’m thinking. He can see my disappointment. I roll off my heels and lie on the sofa bed’s mattress. He sits by the window smoking. I hadn’t noticed a chair before. We chat again. This is unexpected, but I didn’t think about what we’d be doing in the silent spaces of the evening. He joins me on the sofa bed, gets to work with the loyalty card and does another line. After I take my second he tells me what he used to do. Not so much tells me as shows me. He makes me guess though charades. Throughout the display he keeps his eye fixed on me. Both our stares, I imagine, are emotionless. I’d never really paid much attention to these routines but this time I am an audience of one. He demonstrates the seatbelt, points to the emergency exits and indicates the floor-lighting. His act, now a performance, steps up once he illustrates the use of oxygen mask and life-jacket. The mask becomes a hood or gag restricting and releasing the supply of oxygen to his writhing, suffocating body. The jacket and straps are a bondage suit wrapping and constraining his movements, holding his arms tight against his torso. His weak tyrannosaurus arms eventually take hold of
the dual red toggles which he yanks down and to the side to inflate the vest. His head lolls forward nudging the red tube with his chin, licking its end, teasing it with possibilities of further inflation. Standing before me his masked face and constrained body is for my visual pleasure. Ping! The over-head reading light jars me from my vision and I realise I’m having trouble processing the information. The unexpectedness of his performance and the second line creates a blockage in my thoughts. I realise I need to let this happen, let my brain change, let the experience take over. We chat some more. He tells me about his old job, where he went, who he met. We do a few more lines then I realise we haven’t had sex. We haven’t even touched each other. But the moment I grasp this he is already asleep, next to me on the sofabed. My eyes move between his quiet naked body and the silent pornography. I decide to finish my third or fourth drink and call a taxi. My nose burns and continues to bleed. Not a cinematic trickle of blood that emerges elegantly from an actor’s nose alerting the audience to hidden disease or trauma. No, this is an unwanted scarlet gift left in tissue. A Rorschach of viscous symbolism, its meaning I cannot extract through my fear and guilt. I toss the sodden paper into the toilet and watch the blood and phlegm infuse with water, seeping and leaking their colours. Sinewy tendrils feel their way in a new environment; exploring first, then taking root. While I fill the kettle I think about my father. He used to tell me stories about when he worked at a hospital. A patient on his ward had surgery to correct a crooked nose. After the operation the nose was packed with cotton wadding leaving two thin Tampon Strings of fabric dangling below the nostrils. The wadding was left for a number of days allowing the cartilage to be protected and the residual bleeding to be absorbed. Once the nose had healed it was routine for the hospital
staff to pay the patient a surprise, but well-rehearsed, visit. Barging through the regulation bright blue curtains one nurse would grip the patient in a head-lock while, simultaneously, two other nurses would pin the patient to the bed by the shoulders. A doctor would now grab hold of the cotton protrusions and sharply yank them down and to the side. The entirety of the wadding from the nasal cavity would be removed in one swift tug. The patient’s body in shock would arch violently from the bed as a rush of air filled the sinuses and lungs. A confused suffocating combination of painful inhalation and vocal exhalation. Once the patient had settled the nurses would retreat from the scene with the soiled cotton rags. Ping! The kettle has boiled.