A FINE CROWD

The Red Cross building where I go for dialysis looks like one of those old, solid European hospitals you see in movies about World War II, but the actual dialysis room is very nice, ample, airy, with light green walls and huge windows through which you can see the street, a mountain in the distance, etc... The lobby is not so ample, but it is still very clean and it doesn´t really drive it home to you that you are a sick guy. Before going in for the blood cleansing, all the patiens sit around waiting for the anaesthetic cream to sip into their skin, or just looking at each other, or hiding their eyes in a book or magazine. Most of them are old and don´t say much except the run of the mill comments about the lousy weather we are having, although it never is that lousy, really. I happen to be the youngest one of the lot, and I know they are curious about me. The last thing I want to do is get familiar with them, because I´m still pretending that my case of kidney failure is somehow different from theirs, more mystical, something that makes me lees hopeless, less pathetic. There is a sixty or so years old lady with red hair and a bird-like face whose legs and arms are swollen and purple because the blood vessels break as soon as she bumps into anything, however lightly. She smiled the other day and said, to everybody: " We´re like a family here who get together three times a week" Another patient, a little older tan the lady and who looks a lot like Graham Sutherland´s portrait of Somerset Maugham at his bitchiest, replied: " No, thank you. I don´t think we are family. I choose not to be family. We have been thrown together by misfortune and I don´t mind if I say that I hate you all". The lady was too tough to weep, but made a clear gesture of disdain. Another old man was cutting an apple with a knife and sticking the pieces into his mouth in the way peasants do, holding the blade of the knife against his thumb. He swallowed the piece of fruit and then, spittle coming out of his mouth, he said something brilliant: " we couldn´t be family here, because there are two black people who come for dialysis, and the rest are white" I hate racists so I couldn´t restrain myself: " you´re yellow, that´s what you are. And stupid to boot" He looked at me in what I thought was disbelief. In the European hinterlands it is not understood how a comment like the one he had made could be considered racist. This part of Spain, at the tail end of the Pyrenees, looks like Transylvania, and there are so many hillbillies, so many cross eyes and harelips in tne mountain towns, you could be in the middle of the Ozarcs. In the small cities around here, because of recent immigration from Africa and Latin America, people think they´re becoming cosmopolitan.
At any rate, what I mean to say is that in a dialysis facility you can find the nastiest people in the world. It is understandable, in a way. Anyone who has to experience a bee sting every other day and then be tied to a bed for four hours is bound to become a real bad ass in time. I can only hope it doesn´t happen to me, but it may already have begun to happen. I fee very irritable sometimes, and don´t have as much patience with people as used to. I must try to remain level headed, though, because one can live a very long time on dialysis, and I wouldn´t want to be an asshole for the rest of my life. Will I be able to avoid it? The other day I was sitting in a bar having a glass of wine in honour of an old friend of mine, an Englishman whom I met in Canada and who died around this time last year. Funnily enough, as I lifted the glass to my mouth, the radio began to play Amazing Graze, a thousand fucken pipes wailing, and I had the feeling my old friend had actually sat on the stool next to me to have a drink together, as in the old days. (There are ghosts all over the place, for crying outloud). Well, I wanted to know what time it was so I turned around to a couple of girls nearby and asked them. One of them looked at me as if she thought I was making up an excuse to talk to them because I wanted to pick them up. I bellowed: " don´t you even think I have any interest in you, you vain little peacock!!!!!" The girls looked at me in surprise and left the bar right away. I felt awful. I could have cried in shame. Anyway: I will make an effort to remain the person I used to be, polite and considerate. I have begun to take a big piece of apple pie with me every time I go to dialysis. I eat it before going in and it makes me feel good and calm. Last time, one of the other patients who was sitting in the chair across from me wearing the blue pajamas they make us put on, saw me pull the pie out of a paper bag and said: " What the fuck is that you got there? Do you think we´re in a fucken cafeteria?" I thought about throwing the pie right at his face. But that would have been a waste. I just looked him straight in the eyes and said: " I heard the nurses say they were going to make you do an extra half hour because your last test results were lousy, you prick"