Finally You Have Found Yourself...With Me

On Friday morning, as I was packing up to leave for the test, I realized that I didn't have a pencil. I asked Joe if I could borrow one, and as he pulled one out of his bag, he said, "You know, the last time I let Mike borrow a pencil, the clip was gone in two seconds."

"Well," I countered, "I prefer for the clip to stay on. I promise I will return your pencil whole."

After lunch, I plodded back into the auditorium and plopped back into my seat, slumping down, preparing to be owned. I pulled the pencil out of my pocket. I put my finger at the end of the clip, and--with no warning, no SNAP or any other onomatopoeic sound--the clip just flopped off of the pencil. Stunned, I simply stared at my hands. The proctor announced "The testing session has now begun."

"This can't be good," I thought. After Joe came and picked me up, I returned his pencil. "I've never broken a promise to you," I said, after explaining the bizarre circumstances of the detachment of the clip. "I hate that this is the first one. I was stunned... devastated, almost."

I'm sure there's an allegory there somewhere.

After the test and a nap on the Fetal Couch, I drove home to see the boy. We had one of our wonderful spectacular weekends of NOTHING. We had both had hard weeks, and all we wanted to do was lie in bed or play on the computer or watch tv. We slept and snuggled and slept and then ate and then slept some more. After sleeping in on Saturday and eating lunch with his parents, we disappeared back into his bedroom. He played Warcraft and I read a play and then started rereading a book I love. Occasionally, one of us would stop what he or she was doing, look at the other, and mumble a quick "I love you," or "You're so cute."

These are the moments when we are best, the times when I can see our future so clearly. The moments when "togetherness" means more than doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.

In the winding minutes before I had to get in my car and drive away, he let me abuse him like I sometimes do, lying on his back when he was lying on his stomach, the back of my head pushed perfectly into the space between his shoulder blades, the curve of my lower back arching over his ass. Although that's a place where I can comfortably sleep, it's fairly uncomfortable for him, so before long we shifted, and I laid halfway down the bed, my head on his inner thigh [I've fallen asleep there, too]. He put his hands in my hair. I didn't want to leave, of course. But, as always, I must play the "This is what you've always wanted to do, isn't it?" card.

There are sometimes when it all seems so unfair. When I say all, I mean all. I mean the 900 dollars in taxes I just paid. I mean the insurance denial [number two, same bill]. My illness and all the shit it cost me, the beautiful ring hidden in a closet, the certainty of love and the future. The distance between my hair and his hands.

As he walked me to my car, he asked about my classes, "Will it get easier?"

"No," I said. "It won't." Which is maybe the first time I have admitted this to myself. The entire time I've been in medical school, I've thought, "The next test block will be easier." Or the next semester, or the next year. But it won't--it will always be a challenge. And in the end, isn't that what brought me to medicine, to medical research? The idea that it won't always be the same, that things will change, that there will always be a challenge.

Well, to say it that way, yes. Even if reminding myself of that does, sometimes, get old, it remains--and rings--true.