A yoga teacher discusses a failed relationship that left him feeling poked, prodded, boo-boos’ untended and left holding the cup.
I like to think I am a man of distinction and sophistication. My passions are plentiful, but if forced to whittle them down they would be yoga, molecular gastronomy prepared in the nude, Jonas Brother’s cover bands, my collection of armpit photography smuggled out of East Germany, antique waffle irons and flours, Joel Peter Witkin, audio erotica in Sanskrit and Nurses.
That’s correct, don’t be so shocked, there was no hesitation as I typed, NURSES!
It may seem surreal in this renaissance period of Nursing and its positive depiction on screen to imagine, but when I was a young boy, a pudgy pimply lad in a small village in Southern India obsessed with soft white shoes, pinafore aprons, tiny paper cups, stethoscopes and Michael Caine (or as I dubbed him – “The Punisher of Female Misdeeds and Wanton Sin in White”) would have been considered “odd.” Back before the ascendancy of male nursing as a legitimate profession - thank you, Ben Stiller and Meet the Parents – men who dreamed of administering thermometers, taking temperatures, changing bed pans and wearing extremely comfortable footwear without shame was as pipedream. Don’t even get me started on the stigma attached to a boy blossoming into a man who asks ever so nicely for a date to come dressed as Florence Nightengale.
My Duhkha (suffering, pain or sorrow) at my growing predicament and very personal pain (Where was the Nurse to salve my wounds!) is best captured in this famous scene from The Verdict. It is, to this very day, known better to me and spoken more than the Gayatri Mantra.
After, after the operation, when
that poor girl, she went in a coma.
Dr. Towler called me in. He told
me he had five difficult deliveries
in a row and he was tired, and he
never looked at the admittance
form. (beat) And he told me to
change the form. He told me to
change the one to a nine. (beat)
Or else, or else, he said...(beat;
starts to cry) He said he'd fire
me. He said I'd never work
again....Who were these men...?
Who were these men...? I wanted
to be a nurse...
Yes, who were these men I ask again and again!
My desire to become a nurse, to both inhabit the form, conjoin with a real nurse in sexual congress and to be united in a symbiotic soul coupling has evaded me my entire life. "I wanted to be a nurse!" My film fantasies became a horrid reality, when an unfortunate “snafu” at the Rutgers School of Nursing involving immigration, the FBI, David Mamet and a “woman” who came to be known in the court documents as “Bobbi,” forced me to vacate (through a court order) the State of New Jersey for a period of 45 years.
My dream to roam the halls of hospitals aborted, I became a rabid reader of any tome, magazine, book or audiotape I could find on Nurses, just as long as they weren’t bogged down with medical jargon and lots of blood – that stuff is just plain icky. I did everything I could to stay connected to this magnificent world, even becoming the editor of the now defunct Nursing journal, Nurse Love - circulation 2500 at its peak in Port Washington in 1989. I found myself attending the graduation of every Nursing class in the greater Tri-State (Garden State, why can't I come back to your lush gardens?) area throughout most of the 1990’s trying to find a mate over cheap wine and crackers. My love of Nurses and Nursing had become ekagrata (one-pointedness of mind) in the most destructive way. I wanted, needed, longed for, sought and was constantly denied my desire. I had become an HMO paramour in a PPO club. “Angel in white, come to my bed and give me a sedative for my mad fever.”
Recently, however, I thought I had achieved Samyoga (a perfect union). After serving as the personal teacher for a very famous Nurse on a hugely successful show, decorum prevents me from saying exactly who, but it is on a cable network that you pay money to see that is on Mondays and follows a comedy starring a famous woman about something you smoke, we became lovers. I thought I was surrounded by everything I had ever desired - gowns, IV drips, defibrillator machines, pills, agents, name dropping, fake illness, an endless supply of adhesive wraps, tubing, no chance for real illness or death – but I was soon to be proven wrong. Trouble was etched on this person’s apron from the beginning – they were beautiful, self-absorbed, possessed poor patient and people skills, rabid insensitivity and a love of golf, my dream Nurse was nothing of the kind, instead they were a Doctor, masquerading as an RN.
In yoga, the student cannot take class unless they become a member of the studio or pay my hefty personal private fee, but I had let this person become a donation based lover in my life, the co-pay getting smaller and smaller with each passing week. Our relationship, a sick dance of illegal prescriptions of passion mixed with narcissism soon brought me to a personal OD culminating in my discovery of my lover in a supply closet with a Key Grip and the Set-Medic. Not long after, I realized we weren’t monogamous. The thought of losing this person, their connection to Vicodin and Percasit, their access to the most extensive collection of Nursing uniforms on earth and the ability to tell all my friends and friends of friends and strangers that I had seen them naked was overwhelming. When they dumped me, I had gone from Sloan-Kettering to Medicare.
I tried to renounce my love for Nursing. I placed my uniforms in storage, packed away my needles, beakers and drips, got real sheets on my bed, started even wearing penny-loafers, I banished all the reminders of that magnificent world.
I even started dating again, a movie production accountant, to be specific. Recently, I was in the middle of taking their temperature and kissing them with wild abandon, when a promotional ad came on my TV for my ex-lover’s show - odd how that happened at 9 p.m. on Monday on the station their show normally appeared. Weird coincidence, huh. My sweet accountant was almost skewered by my flailing arms as I was forced to watch the demon Nurse engaged in histrionic dramaturgy. A visit to the ER was only averted because of a firm backside developed over years of Utkatasana practice. Blessed be the Yoga!
Soren Kierkegaard has spoken of his sickness unto death, but my life-long sickness led not to finality, but to a new world of money markets, 401K’s, IRA’s, leveraged buying and detailed analysis of celebrity finances. My Nurse, in all their infidelity, mockery, lying, falseness and fame had taught me that my happiness is not contingent on their attention, but rather on my ability to transfer my obsession for all things white and soft blue, liquids in jars and vials, pills of all colors and shapes, paddles, mechanical beds, pans and biohazard receptacles into a safer and more controlled field – money. No one steals from Bobbi!
Please consult Love Bitten & Drained Dry: My Ex-Boyfriend, the Vampire ~ via Kathryn Budig.
