The Time I Cured My Canker Sores

All right, it’s Public Service Announcement time here on Angry Penguins. Be warned, I’m about to give some medical advice without having any medical training whatsoever. If you end up maiming yourself using the method described below, I cannot be held responsible.

Anyway, I’ve suffered from canker sores all my life. When I was younger, I used to get monster ones on my gums that would persist for weeks and even months. The pain was so intense that I’d go to a dentist to have a laser beam pointed at my mouth for $50 a pop. The laser would burn right through the canker sore, and that spot on my gum would turn a smudgy black. But eventually I’d heal up, and in the meantime my mouth would be sore free.

But that kind of procedure is not something that can be done on a regular basis, and I still get tons of canker sores. I have a terrible habit of chewing on my lips and cheeks, which means the inside of my mouth is often a ragged mess. I chew gum obsessively to try and keep myself from gnawing at my own body, but it’s not always successful. Canker sores frolic and multiply like bugs in a spring meadow.

I’ve tried a lot of different things, but nothing was ideal. I used Kanka, which is a goopy brown medicine that numbs your sore, sure, but also your tongue, lips, and everything else within moments. The effects are short-lived, the taste is awful, and it stings like a motherfucker.

I tried dental waxes to cover the area, but I’d usually just end up eating the wax. I tried Canker Covers, which I’m convinced are the way canker sores are treated in the 7th circle of Hell. The cover latched itself onto my sore and simply would NOT let go. I couldn’t talk or eat with a massive cover flapping on my lip, but it was impossible to remove the damn thing, even after I waited several hours. I finally just ripped it off, which tore off a bunch of skin and only made my canker sore worse.

But I have finally figured out how to beat canker sores once and for all! Some may think it an extreme method, but when you’ve had a sore the size of a Skittle for two weeks, I find you’ll do just about anything to reduce the pain. Even chemically burning the thing off. Yup, that’s right.

First, you need to get yourself some silver nitrate sticks. I bought mine off Amazon, though the shipping took about five days. You might be able to find these in your local pharmacy, but the laws regarding distribution vary by state. You’ll get a black tube filled with 100 applicators, which seems like a lot, but they last a long time and can be stored for future canker sore emergencies. You just have to keep them in the tube since exposure to light will reduce the efficacy of these little buggers.

Next, rinse out your mouth well, and swirl some hydrogen peroxide on the sore for good measure. You want the wound to be as clean as possible.

Now, dip the grey end of one of the sticks into some distilled water, if you have it. I used tap because I’m a Philistine, but I hear that you should really use distilled if possible. Don’t just run the stick under the tap, or you’ll activate an awful lot of the product. A quick dip is all you need.

Then you just brace yourself and briefly touch the wet tip to your canker sore. Yes, this will hurt! But the sting is honestly not even as bad as Kanka, so don’t worry, you’ll survive. Touch the sore once or twice more if you didn’t cover it all the first time. Try and keep the area dry for maybe a minute or so, then rinse your mouth with salt water. The salt should help stop the compound from working.

Congratulations! Your sore now resembles the surface of the moon! Seriously, the skin will turn gray and cratered, but it’s only temporary! What you’ve just done is cauterize the sore. Silver nitrate sticks are often used in hospitals and veterinary clinics to stop acute bleeding, much like a Styptic pen. But while a Styptic pen acts as an astringent to contract tissue and seal the wound, silver nitrate is a true cauterizing agent. So yes, you are burning yourself with this technique, but in a controlled manner! Well, unless you go nuts with the stick and get it all over the damn place.

If you end up applying the silver nitrate to healthy skin, it’ll also turn gray, but in my case, that damaged top layer sloughed off the following day. My skin was normal underneath, but it’s still wise to avoid the healthy skin in your mouth. Some people use Vaseline or other substances to protect the healthy skin surrounding the canker sore BEFORE applying the silver nitrate.

After a day or two, the gray color will fade from your sore, and it will be covered by a new layer of tissue as it heals completely. The pain stops as soon as you apply the silver nitrate, so this is an instant fix. But I urge you to BE CAREFUL with this stuff. Silver nitrate is usually applied by a medical professional such as a doctor, nurse, or dentist, so you could be playing with fire if you mess around with it.

Each stick can probably be used up to five times or so, so wrap up the end in tin foil and store it for your next sore. This means that a single tube of 100 sticks could treat up to 500 canker sores! But try not to get the stuff on your hands. Though the caustic properties of the medicine only work on mucosa, it will still stain the skin on your hands a deep black color.

The Time I Ate School Lunch in Japan

For almost a year, I ate a Japanese school lunch Monday through Thursday while working as an English teacher in Kyoto-fu.

To understand why the food was such a shock to me, let me share what I used to eat as my school lunch in middle school and high school. I was notorious for my poor food choices, and a typical meal would consist of french fries with cheese sauce, Ho Hos, sugar cookies, sour cream and onion potato chips, and an orange soda. Sometimes I would mix all these foods together in one dish, then get people to pay me money to eat it. Basically, I’m a disgusting human being.

In Japan, school lunches for elementary and junior high school students are pretty regimented. Everyone eats the same meal at a given school, barring a food allergy or other medical condition. Students serve the food to other students, and are in charge of clean-up as well. Students typically eat in their own classrooms, and a rotating cast of teachers eats with them.

The lunches are fresh-made with no frozen components, and often incorporate seasonal ingredients. At my schools, which were locally famous for their school lunches, a meal usually included a bowl of white rice, some sort of miso soup, a protein dish, two varieties of vegetables, and a half-pint of whole milk. This was a healthy but high-calorie meal that was to be consumed in a 20-minute time frame. I often struggled to finish my lunch within the time limit, but your plate had to be cleaned to avoid the shame of your fellow teachers and students. When I eventually began to habitually leave food behind, I was removed from eating with students and ate alone with the lunch ladies instead. The other teachers were worried my “bad eating habits” would spread to the children and corrupt them.

I also had a tough time with the lunches since I don’t like fish. Yes, I know, Japan was the wrong country for me to try and live, but left to my own devices I could usually manage a fairly fish-free lifestyle. But school lunches were required, and so eyeballs were on my plate most every day. Even the rice, which was usually safe, sometimes contained tiny silvery fish that would get wedged between my teeth for the rest of the day. Large salted or baked fish featured prominently, and maneuvering around a fish skeleton with chopsticks is not an easy feat.

One of the marks of being truly skilled with chopsticks in Japan is how cleanly you leave a fish skeleton. Mine were always left caked with meat and scales as I stabbed desperately at its ribs, but other teachers would present a carcass that looked like it had been dipped in acid. Every muscle, organ, and vein had been removed and carefully ingested, leaving only glistening bones on a perfectly white plate. I’d ham up my incompetence for the kids, spinning a whole fish on my chopstick like a pinwheel. This did not amuse my fellow teachers, but it made the whole lunch torture a little more bearable for me.

Some days, lunch was awesome and I happily guzzled down my fish-free soup and veggies. Other days it was a slog, such as the time lunch included 12 whole crispy fish that smelled like death. Even most of the kids were intimidated by that one, with several attempting to hide their fish in their desks for later disposal. Another tough day was when I was expected to eat the steaming entrails of a large fish. I grabbed the intestine with my chopsticks, brought it to my mouth, then immediately though I was going to be ill. I got a pass that day from the sympathetic school nurse, and the guts remained on my plate. But fins, tails, teeth, and eyeballs were all fair game. I was told that the fins and tails in particular would be great for strengthening my fingernails. All I know is that they tasted terribly bitter.

I also ended up having an ongoing battle with the daily milk ration. I hate drinking plain milk, and usually even eat my cereal dry. To be forced to drink a carton of whole milk on a daily basis was akin to drinking a cup of lard. At first, I asked to simply not get the milk with my meal. This was a no go since everyone had to eat AND drink the same thing. So I just grabbed the carton at the end of lunch, and poured it down the sink while I was supposed to be rinsing it clean. But the kids caught me and ratted me out, and I was told not to waste the milk. I began taking the milk home with me each day, but my dorm-sized fridge was soon filled with nothing but cartons upon cartons of whole milk that I would never use. I emptied them and took the cartons out for recycling, but my neighbors saw the massive bag full of milk and ratted me out (again!) to the school. I wasn’t supposed to be taking the milk home for personal consumption, either. I eventually ended up taking the milk home, then waiting until I visited a friend in a neighboring town and throwing them out there.

But on the whole, Japanese school lunches are fantastic compared to their American counterparts. It is not uncommon for the students to grow their own vegetables on school property, then harvest them and deliver them to the lunch ladies for that day’s meal. I found myself high in the hills of my town on multiple occasions, picking delicate fiddle-head ferns or red rhubarb-like vegetables alongside my students. It was a fun change from the norm, and the next day the food was served up, sauteed and covered with an unfortunately half-inch of dried bonito fish flakes. But I ate it anyway, ignoring the fishy taste and enjoying eating a dish I myself had raised and picked.

The Time I Was Terrified of Roller Coasters

When I was young, few things could reduce me to pants-wetting terror like the prospect of a roller coaster. I had an irrational, animalistic fear towards the things, and thus my childhood passed with me watching from the other side of the fence while my friends whipped around in loops.

When I was still pretty little, perhaps seven years old, I went with my best friend at the time to King’s Island, Cincinnati’s premier (and pretty much only) amusement park. It’s apparently the largest one in the Midwest, and is best known for it’s fake Eiffel Tower and the world’s longest wooden roller coaster (“The Beast,” with a ride through the woods that lasts over four minutes).

In the children’s section of the park, there is miniature wooden roller coaster called “The Beastie” (now the Peanuts-themed “Woodstock Express”). This is not a large coaster by any means, and is designed for little kids. It’s highest drop is only 38 feet or so, and it never goes above 35 mph. However, I was terrified of it, and imagined that a ride on the rickety structure would result in multiple limb amputation. Somehow.

However, my friend this day wanted to ride it, and his older sister (or perhaps his aunt?) decided she was tired of my fearful antics. She said I’d get over this fear and ride the damn thing, come hell or high water. I begged desperately for a way out of this. She couldn’t really force me on it, could she? Finally, she gave me an out – if I could eat an entire Smurf cone while in the short line, I would be exempt from riding.

Now, Smurf cones were these blue and white swirled soft-serve monstrosities that they sold at the park. Each cone was topped with an ice cream tower that was about a foot tall, which meant that unless immediately inhaled, you’d be sporting dessert on your sneakers within minutes. Eating one in a line that lasted only a minute or two was a formidable challenge, but I was willing to take the risk.

She bought cones for me and my friend, and I set upon the ice cream with a ferocity usually reserved for lions bringing down antelope. Only halfway though, my stomach was beginning to protest loudly, and my hands were covered in moist sugar. But I kept on going, determined to not ride the accursed Beastie. Moments before we were to board the cars, I triumphantly held up my empty hands.

My friend and his sister got on the train, and I happily waved them goodbye. My face and chin were smeared with blue syrup up to my eyes, but I was happy and proud. I had done it! I had avoided the roller coaster!

Seconds later, I projectile vomited pale blue slurry all over the waiting area and track. But the cars had already left, so I was safe! The vomiting was totally worth it.

The Time My Hair Was Confiscated

The time? 5th grade, 1994.

The place? Mrs. Honesty’s history class, Cincinnati, OH. And yes, that was her real name.

I had a habit back then of playing with things in class that were, apparently, inappropriate. Only earlier that same year, I had had my shoelaces taken by Mr. Hilliker, my science teacher. I was attempting to play Cat’s Cradle with a friend, using my bright pink shoelaces, when the ominous shadow of my teacher loomed over us. In a flash, my shoelaces were gone, and placed into a large filing cabinet with a rather ostentatious lock. In here were the other items stolen from unruly students, including innumerable paper airplanes and wind-up toys. I ended up concocting a crazy story once I arrived home, claiming that I had simply managed to “lose” my shoelaces during the course of the day. Luckily we had a spare pair, but I never saw the pink ones again.

During this particular history lesson, Mrs. Honesty had decided to take a much needed break from the children and show us a video instead. I can’t remember what the video was about, but the room was dark, and in such an environment I felt free to act with reckless abandon.

An acquaitance of mine asked if she could make a tiny braid in my hair, and I agreed. She set to work with impressive focus, managing to braid several feet of hair in what seemed like moments. The braid itself was extremely narrow, and no wider than a pencil. I kept it in for a while, then decided I should unravel it before my next class.

But my efforts were in vain. The braid was so small and intricate that any attempt to undo it resulted in a massive knot. I asked the girl to unbraid it herself, which only made the knot larger. I now had something resembling a tumbleweed hanging off my head, and I figured the best course of action was to simply cut it off. Someone grabbed their colorful elementary school scissors, and made the chop. The ball of hair was handed to me with an air of apology and awe, since not many girls at that age would submit to a fair chunk of hair being lost to the cosmos.

I palmed the hair, enjoying its springy texture, and began to toss it from hand to hand. As the dull video lumbered on, I continued to manipulate the hairball, seeing if I could maybe shape it into an animal or something. Perhaps a hedgehog?

I was so engrossed in this activity that I failed to realized that Mrs. Honesty had in fact STOPPED the video, and was approaching my desk. Too late, I saw her formidable figure, dressed in a muumuu, stop before me.

“Give it here,” she said, her hand outstretched. I was helpless with fear, and obeyed automatically. I played the wad of hair in her hand, cringing as the fibers left my fingertips.

Apparently, Mrs. Honesty had thought my bundle was just a ball of yarn, or something equally innocuous. When she discovered that the culprit was a surprisingly large hairball, she began to scream.

And scream.

The day lived in infamy for a few weeks among our 5th grade class. Comics were drawn about the incident, and distributed amongst the student body. But I still mourned the loss of my hair. Mrs. Honesty had prompty thrown the ball into the garbage can, and forbid any of us from retrieving it.

A sad day for my hair. A worse day for Mrs. Honesty.

The Time I Ate PowerBars for a Week

Many years ago, my parents headed out to Arizona for some sort of pharmaceutical-sponsored conference.

Back before legislation was passed that made this sort of spending illegal, pharma companies would lavish attention and dollars attracting doctors to their events, all in the hopes that the MDs would think of their little pill in the future. Though obviously very ethically questionable, my dad, and by extension his family, got to do some pretty sweet shit.

Riverboat cruises, special fireworks viewing areas, free dinners – the list goes on.

Anyway, at some point, he and my mom ventured into the desert to learn about some new inhaler, and hang out at a resort free of charge. We children were left behind to sulk and whine. My sister and I were assigned a babysitter we had never met before. Eerily thin with a slightly manic grin, she looked like a jogger who had taken a wrong turn and had thus been running for eternity. She was perky to the point of annoyance, and lived life as if she were hosting a children’s show.

My parents waved goodbye, and almost immediately, this woman’s dog made an appearance. Now, she had been forbidden to bring her dog since my brother was deathly allergic, but her corgi made itself at home. Though my brother didn’t live with us at the time, he couldn’t stay in any house where a dog had been in the past five years or so. The dog pranced around and terrorized the cat (who later melted), slobbering on all our furniture and gnawing on our shoes.

The woman then revealed that she sustained herself on a diet of PowerBars, and expected us to do the same. The tar-like bar was jam-packed with protein, and lord only knows what else. Possibly laxatives given its effect on my digestive system. Our new babysitter placed a single bar on a plate, then handed my sister and I each a fork and knife. Our first sullen meal was eaten in silence, and I cut up my bar into tiny chunks before swirling them around the plate. I pointedly made sure they never came near my mouth. But I eventually succumbed, and choked it down piece by piece. The taste was horrid, and the bar did nothing to sate my hunger. But I did have to admit that after dinner clean-up was considerably easier.

PowerBars became our breakfasts and dinners, and I gorged myself in the school cafeteria for lunch. The woman taking care of us apparently sustained herself just fine on PowerBars, though I would not be surprised to hear she used cocaine as an appetizer. After a few days of this, there was a Fire Sale going on in my ass. Signs must have been posted on my butt cheeks, declaring that, “Everything! Must! Go!” My sphincter had never been so void of contents, before or since.

By the time my parents finally returned, our house had been ransacked by the dog, and my sister and I had the pallor of nutritional deficiency. The woman was fired, never to be seen again, but I have not been able to eat an energy bar since that day. The thought alone is enough to turn my stomach.

The Time I Threw Up on Myself for Years

So this story is going to get a little gross, but don’t let that stop you from reading. It’s no second asshole, but it’ll do.

I have quite possibly the strongest gag reflex known to man, much to the dismay of past and potential boyfriends. The list of things that make me gag is endless, and includes things like strong wind, cold air, and even exercise. I still can’t take a shot of alcohol to this day because as soon as it hits my throat, I shoot it violently right back up.

Anyway, when I was little, from about the ages of 4-9, I was sick with a cold on a regular basis. Sinus infections were my constant companions, and when I’d lie down to sleep at night, the snot from my nose would begin to trickle down the back of my throat.

A normal person might just cough a bit, but not me. In the dead of night, I would vomit everywhere while still asleep. I wouldn’t wake up until I eventually rolled into the now cold pile of vomit covering my pillow. In horror, I’d turn on the light and survey the damage. One side of my head would be completely caked in puke the consistency of oatmeal, and my clothes were crusty and stiff with pale pink grits. My waist-length hair would be sopping wet, and my sheets and comforter looked like they had been hit with a spew-filled grenade.

My routine went thusly: Pad out of bed, creep upstairs, sloooowly open the door to my parents’ bedroom, then stand there, petrified with fear. I hated waking up my parents every time I threw up, but there wasn’t a good alternative. They would never get mad about it, but I could tell they were exhausted and annoyed by my repeated performances. So I would stand there in the dark, my vomit-filled hair beginning to dry and crack, and wring my hands for close to 30 minutes. I’d shift anxiously from foot to foot, trying to decide who I should wake up.

My mom was usually the less annoyed of the two, but she was nearly impossible to drag into consciousness. I could poke her, call her name, shake her, even jump on her with no result. My dad was typically more upset by seeing me covered in my own digestive juices, but he could be woken up with a whisper, so he got the brunt of clean-up duty.

I would touch his arm lightly, and his eyes would fly open, confused yet alert. He’d take in my watery eyes and vomit-covered face, and let out a long, low sigh through his nostrils that set his mustache aflutter. He’d push me into his bathroom so that I could shower and clean myself up, and he would slowly drift downstairs and collect all my soiled bedding and stuffed animals. He’d sleepily run a load of laundry, nodding off periodically until I emerged warm and clean. The process of picking chunks of food out of my hair was painstaking, so these showers lasted a long time while I scrubbed.

Fresh sheets would go over the rubber mattress cover that I slept with every night, and I would fall back into an uneasy sleep. I never puked twice in the same night, so my dad would go back to bed as well. My first beloved stuffed animal, Piggy, sadly became a casualty of my overactive gag reflex. He was placed into the dryer after a puking session, and his fur melted together until he was a solid lump of fibrous plastic with a snout and two black button eyes. He was replaced by an identical pig that I called “Piggy Mach II,” unaware that mach was a unit of speed rather than a fancy way of saying “version.”

My gag reflex also prevented me from taking pills until I was a teenager. I suffered from frequent migraines when I was young, and the pain was unbelievable. The pounding would be so intense that I would start to cry, which in turn would make the pain worse, which would then make me cry harder, etc., etc. This vicious cycle would continue until the stabbing in my head would make me (of course) throw up. This would release some endorphins that would make me feel a little better, at least for a brief period of time.

A doctor put me on the beta-blocker Inderal, which was thought at that time to reduce the incidence of migraines. The tiny blue pill had to be taken whole, and could not be crushed. But my attempts to swallow the pill resulted in it shooting from my mouth and skittering across the floor. So every morning, I would dissolve the pill by swishing it around with a mouthful of water. This process took a good 30 minutes or so, and since I held the water in my mouth the whole time, I became effectively mute each day. My parents got very good at interpreting my grunts and squeaks, and I rarely had to resort to using a pen and paper.

Thankfully, I can take pills just fine these days, though I still have the digestive constitution of a finicky cat. I live a good portion of my life in constant nausea, but haven’t thrown up in my sleep since I was a child.

The Time I Did Community Service – The Flower Show

This story is a lot less traumatic than the other ones, but it was still something of a wake-up call in high school.

I had signed up to do a pretty cushy community service job at the Cincinnati Flower Show. This is an annual event with a gala fundraiser one of the nights, and I was to attend and help however I could.

They told me to “dress up nicely,” so I went with my friend Daniella (of Coolsculpt fame) and arrived at the show in a dress and heels. I figured we might be helping with check-in, coat-check, or hors d’oeuvres. Whatever it would be, I knew that at least this time, I wouldn’t come away with permanent psychological scars.

However, it became clear that we were to perform none of these activities. Rather, we were to just stand around and “look pretty.” Daniella and I wandered around awkwardly, being ogled and and hit on by men old enough to be our fathers. In front of their wives. We were both 17, and as the night wore on, we got gifts of flowers and candy from countless lecherous men.

Apparently the gala was in sore need of some eye candy, and so the organizers contacted our local high school for some nubile young women. Lovely.

I still remember a similar incident when I realized I was too old to Trick-or-Treat anymore. When the men passing out candy give your ass a little grab as you turn to go, apparently you’re too old. I loved Trick-or-Treating, too.

The Time I Did Community Service – Planting Carrots

A short time after my reading to the blind fiasco, my mom got a packet in the mail from the United Way.

Inside were phone numbers for various volunteer organizations, though when we began to dial, we discovered the packet was woefully out of date. Most calls went to disconnected numbers, or completely unrelated companies. Many had gone out of business, never to be heard from again. So it was exciting to finally find a human being at the end of the line, even if it sounded like we had woken her up. At 3 pm.

Her “organization” was called something like “Fighting for Animal Welfare,” but it soon became clear that the group had disbanded several years before. But she was old, and had an overrun garden, so would I mind terribly coming over and tending to her carrots?

I argued with my mom that this was not actually community service – this was just helping a single woman. Wasn’t my service supposed to benefit the whole community at large? But I was overruled, and my mom arranged for me to show up that weekend.

I was still too young to drive, so my mom shuttled me over to the opposite end of town, passing by projects and burnt out churches on our way to this lady’s house. “Just be nice and SMILE, for Christ’s sake,” my mom urged, hoping that I wouldn’t run screaming from this opportunity, at least.

She dropped me off in a nondescript driveway, then sped off, promising to be back in two hours or so. Alone, I hesitantly rapped at the woman’s screen door. I heard a violent burst of coughing come from within the dim house, followed by a guttural spitting noise. An ancient-looking woman emerged from the darkness, supporting herself on a cane and covered in at least three layers of clothing.

“Come on in,” she croaked, “and don’t let the cats out.” Each cat was named after a different racial slur, which was charming. I pet “Wetback” uneasily as she settled back into an armchair that had shaped itself to her sagging body.

“I got a pretty overgrown garden back there, so there’s a lot of work to do. You might be wondering about all these clothes I’m wearing.” I nodded warily, eyeing the exit in case she decided to start stripping. “I’ve got all this on since I’m deathly allergic to bees, and they are just EVERYWHERE back there. I think there’s a hive, but I’m not sure…” She trailed off into another prolonged hacking session, which she wrapped up by spitting into a bowl she kept by her armchair. “Do you know what an EpiPen is?”

Indeed I did, if only because my brother is allergic to everything on earth. Essentially, it’s a compact spring-loaded syringe that injects epinephrine straight into a patient suffering from a severe allergic reaction. Remember that scene from Pulp Fiction where Uma Thurman’s character is overdosing, and they stab adrenaline straight into her heart? It’s kind of like that.

She gestured to her thigh with hands that were covered in 3+ pairs of gloves. “This is where you’ll need to aim if I get stung, okay?” And without further ado, she hobbled off to the back door, nudging “Kike” out of the way with her foot. I meekly followed, wondering if one of her neighbors would take me in if I started pounding on their door.

In moments, we had arrived at the garden. It was surrounded by a rusty chainlink fence, and calling it “overgrown” was an understatement. Briars tangled everywhere, choking the tiny rose bush that must have been planted well over a decade ago. She pointed to various plants, giving me their scientific names, then finally shuffled over to the carrot patch. Which looked just like the rest of the garden, and had bees buzzing angrily in the vicinity.

“Yeah, this is where I want to put them. You’ll have to clear out all these other plants, though.”

The other plants in question were thick, thorny vines that had inexplicably been coated in six inches of manure. The stench on a hot summer’s day was overpowering, and I wrinkled my nose with distaste. The woman caught my expression, and warned me not to be so “uppity.” She told me to set to work, but mentioned that she couldn’t spare a pair of gloves. “I need them all to protect myself from the bees.”

She had me set up a lawn chair so she could watch me work, and I began to dig amongst the manure with my bare hands. The thorns pricked my skin every time I grabbed for a briar, but without gloves, I had no choice. Soon my hands were covered in blood and cow shit, and sweat was pouring down my face. The woman began asking me questions about my eating habits. I revealed that I ate meat, and her face became so red and puffy that I thought maybe she had been stung by a bee without me noticing.

“How could you eat poor defenseless animals?!” She wrenched herself from her seat, and huffed back into the house. I kept digging, hoping against hope that somehow two hours had already passed. She came back a few minutes later, and thrust into my face graphic pictures of animals being tortured and butchered. “This is what your diet has caused! All this suffering!” She rambled on like this for the next hour or so, comparing me to Hitler during the Holocaust. I wondered how “Kike” the cat would react to all of this, but he was safe within the confines of the house.

I finally cleared away all the brambles and weeds, and she handed me a tiny packet of carrot seeds. I was to plant them into shallow troughs, then water them. That seemed simple enough, and I was starting to get hopeful that I would soon be out of the hot sun. I dropped the seeds into the furrows, but then realized that there was no hose. Or a watering can. Or even a bucket. How was I supposed to water these?

The woman had an answer. She disappeared outside the chainlink fence for a time, and I began to worry that she was going to make me pee on the carrots or something. But I eventually heard a shout, and the next thing I knew, I was completely soaked with freezing cold water. She had gotten hold of a hose that was attached to the side of the house, then had turned the thing on full blast and aimed the stream so it would go over the 6-foot fence and into the garden. The water had hit right on top of my head, and I could hear her screaming at me to tell her when the water hit the carrots. I directed her over to the patch, and my troughs were instantly overflowing with water, with seeds floating away towards the bees. I yelled at her to stop, but decided to keep the escape of the seeds to myself.

By the time she came back into the garden, the water had soaked into the earth, and everything appeared fine. I was ushered inside, but told not to sit on anything since I was still dripping with water.

She was trying to convince me to play the keyboard during an animal rights parade when I heard a car finally pull into the driveway. I lept over a meowing “Spic” in my eagerness to climb into the car, and that’s how my mom found me. Soaking wet, my hands covered in blood and shit, and an unmistakable look of fear and desperation in my eyes.

She thanked the woman from the rolled-down car window, then screeched off. “What in God’s name happened to you?” I relayed the story, and it was decided that we would no longer use the United Way packet for volunteer opportunities.

The Time I Lived in the Worst Apartment in New York

Let’s just say that as a naive little Ohio girl moving to the big city, I got royally screwed when it came to real estate.

Brokers spotted my starry eyes from miles away, and wasted no time ushering me towards the worst properties in Manhattan. Now, was the apartment I lived in the worst in all of NYC? I highly doubt it, but it certainly wasn’t good.

Mice were a constant problem in our Harlem apartment, no matter how clean we kept the kitchen. There was a cat-sized rat that lived in the basement, and peeped its head out whenever you came to throw away fresh garbage. While doing my laundry in a tiny room with three washers but only one working dryer, I’d hear the rat rustling through all the bags. I once saw it face off against a cat, and the cat lost.

Bedbugs appeared almost immediately, most likely from one of the other apartments in the building. We spent months battling them since none of us could afford to hire an exterminator, and the management company was deaf to our complaints, even when I brought them a Ziploc bag full of dead bedbugs that I had collected.

My dad sent me a bedbug extermination kit that he had found on the internet, which contained chemicals both terrifying and foul. There were sprays for floors and the walls, sprays for furniture, sprays for items you may one day wish to touch again, and a desiccant powder in a gallon jug. Many of sprays you had to mix yourself in bottles, then apply on a daily basis. The powder came with a tiny bellows that you would use to coat most of your living area. The power was insidious, getting into every nook and cranny, including those on your body. Even while wearing thick rubber gloves and a mask, the powder caused skin to peel off my fingers in strips, and gave me a terrible cough for weeks. I have the sneaking suspicion that I am now sterile from that damn powder. We repeated this extermination routine twice a week for months, which included throwing away most of our worldly possessions, doing laundry obsessively, and dismantling, cleaning, then reassembling our beds on a regular basis.

We eventually defeated the scourge, but it left us all with psychological scars. I would frequently wake up in the middle of the night, convinced I was being bitten. I’d search my entire room at three in the morning with a flashlight, panicky and short of breath.

Cockroaches were of course present, as they always are in any New York apartment. We set out traps and poison gel, which actually seemed to control the problem pretty well. The mice continued to elude us, stealing the bait for the traps, but never being caught. I finally found some modest success with glue traps (inhumane, but effective), but for every mouse we trapped, there were 20 more waiting in the wings. I was the de facto mouse killer/disposer of the apartment, which means that there’s a lot of mouse blood on my hands.

We were never able to get anything fixed in the apartment. Our super lived in the basement, but refused to do any work without a substantial bribe, which we couldn’t afford. He was the stereotypical slumlord super, always decked out in a stained wife beater, a cigar clenched between his teeth while a gold chain nestled amongst his copious chest hair. The only time he was tolerable was when he was high, was fortunately was often. He had two huge rottweilers that barked day and night, and after a day of drinking, the whole building would hear him loudly screaming at and beating his live-in girlfriend.

We soon became fairly good at fixing our own issues in the apartment. The toilet ran at all times with brown water, but we could sometimes get it to stop for a while by futzing inside the tank. The shower also ran 24/7, but we eventually grew desensitized to the sound. The bathroom ceiling was covered in a layer of black, dangerous-looking mold that we sprayed every so often with Tilex. Every time we attempted this, however, we would nearly pass out since there was little to no ventilation in the bathroom. The tiny window opened up into an alley with only two feet of clearance between buildings. Natural light in the apartment was a rare occurrence, and since light bulbs frequently burnt out in out-of-reach places, light of any sort soon became a distant memory. I’ve showered by flashlight and candle light more times than I care to mention.

The microwave worked, but its display didn’t, so you never knew how much time remained during the cooking process. The oven worked, but had no numbers left on the dial, so you just turned it a bit and hoped it would eventually reach 350 degrees. Every time you turned on the oven, you would soon hear frantic squeaks as mice fled the slowly warming broiler drawer. The fridge was, surprisingly, quite nice and never gave us problems. It even had an ice maker!

The heat was oppressive in both winter and summer. We had no A/C except for one lonely unit in the living room that cost us a crazy amount to run. In the winter, the pipes and radiators would put out so much heat that we’d open the windows and hope nobody tried to rob us from the fire escape.

The management company was a horrorshow that had a reputation for buying buildings with lots of rent-stabilized tenants, then harassing them until they moved out. They would then “renovate” the units (as far as I can tell, they just put in a nicer fridge) and rent them at market rates. I didn’t know it when I rented the apartment, but the company was notorious as being one of the worst in NYC, and is currently the defendant in several law suits brought by current and former tenants.

But for all its faults, the building WAS cheap, had laundry (even if it rarely worked), an elevator (ditto), was right next to a park (that occasionally harbored fugitives and drug dealers), and was located reasonably near an express subway stop. There are plenty of nice, lovely properties in Harlem, but this wasn’t one of them. And yet I lived there for three years.

Sigh.

The Time My Brother Grew a Second Asshole

The entry today is so gross and horrifying that I’ve decided to use a picture of a cute puppy here. If you start feeling ill, just scroll back up and check out this little guy. Aww.

Things were going swimmingly for my brother up until the day his ass started to burn with the fury of a thousand suns.

A loving wife, a beautiful daughter, and a steady, well-paying acting job – all of these things were no match for an anal fistula.

Basically, if you strain too much while pooping, your anus can start to bulge where it’s not supposed to go. Given enough time, this extra pathway from your anus will reach all the way through your muscle until it reaches the outside. Suddenly, one day you wake up with an extra asshole that is inflamed, infected, and never heals since it’s constantly getting shit in it. Literal shit.

So not only do you have a painful second asshole, but because this little tract lacks the muscle control of your original sphincter, it leaks uncontrollably all the time. Every pair of underwear you own will become skid mark city, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. My brother can now fart through two separate holes.

He went to see a surgeon in Las Vegas, and was scheduled for a procedure that involves essentially coring the fistula like an apple. By removing the infected tissue, it’s hoped that the body will actually start to heal itself. The day of the surgery, my brother started weeping copiously at the thought of being violated so thoroughly. He faints at the sight of blood, so the thought of being impaled anally like a puppet was just too much to take. His heart rate spiked so high that a sedative was immediately pumped into his IV, and he remembers no more.

He woke up with his ass packed so tight with gauze that it looked like he’d been reamed by a torpedo. Everything was still numb, and my brother sucked down one of the opiate pills he had been given for pain, so all was well. But later that night began a grueling two-week span of unimaginable pain. Pissing and shitting could only be accomplished while squatting in warm water, which meant essentially bathing in your own waste after crapping in the tub.

When the gauze finally emerged, well, I’ll let my brother explain in his own words:

Turns out, it was a rolled up sheet of something gelatinous, the size of a Kleenex that unfurled into the water like a shit and blood-stained surrender flag. I got out of the tub, walked to the bedroom and passed out on the carpet.

Things weren’t getting any better, so my brother went back to the surgeon, and it was revealed that the doctor was too “conservative,” and didn’t cut the fistula all away. A cauterization (ie. sticking a hot poker up someone’s asshole) was recommended. The area was numbed slightly, then a white-hot probe was jammed up there. The room filled with the stench of burning flesh and shit. My brother begged for more anesthetic, but unfortunately, the doctor was fresh out.

The pain didn’t recede at all, and two weeks later, he was back in the surgeon’s office. This time, the doctor tried to pour acid into his anus. I’m starting to believe this guy wasn’t a doctor at all, but rather some dude with a foreign-body anal fetish. After the acid treatment, my brother was declared “cured” and shoved out into the hallway.

He still has two anuses. Doctors have said he will always have two anuses. This is just his life now.