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I stared into the mirror and saw the artery in my neck
throb. Whatever that artery is told me how my heart was doing. I could actually visualize the blood pumping from
the upper chambers (atria) to the lower chambers (ventricles). Cool! But all I had to do was look down at the scar
that ran from my chest to my stomach to remember how my fixation started. I had a hole in my heart that required
open heart surgery. They cut me open like a turkey. I used to tell people that I'd prefer a hole in the heart to
a hole in the head. That would not have left a pretty scar.
"You're not normal, Peter Wellesley. You're just a damn freak!"
The nurse pulled the plug on me, including the IV in my right arm where she'd blown two veins, and shoved a pillow
over my face. She was doing it symbolically for all mankind. This I imagined.
A life of abnormality was mine. Never fitting in, thinking strange thoughts, jerking off one too many times, playing
with cats who were spies for the Catnip Society, espousing my theories of insubstantiality to wives of slovenly
dressed executive golfers.
It took years for me to get it. Things just weren't right. Then my heart started doing tricks on me. There were
so many close calls where I saw death as a cartoon character using an inflatable hammer to bop me on the head.
"Freak!" he uttered before falling through the hole in the ceiling.
"Let me play the game and I'll be a good boy," I promised, but only I heard.
I thought I'd played the game: college educated, a respectable work history, volunteerism, and involvement in other
things. But I was kidding myself.
"You are a most affable, potent and egregiously laughable man, Peter," an employer told me once as he
escorted me to the elevator.
"However, I think your skills could be better utilized in a higher yet lower capacity. Have you ever considered
government service?"
The artery in my neck began to throb which caught the man's attention.
"My, that sucker is really vividly pronounced. Do you know that if you put your finger here," applying
his right index finger to my throbbing necktal artery, "and apply pressure as such…"
I came to shortly in a dumpster a few blocks away. If he wanted me to leave a quaint get the hell out would've
worked.
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