Harvey my squeezy log partner

I'm pretty good with the safe sex, but you still never know. I mean, microscopic condom holes, breakage, leakage, the one in a million chance you get to be the girl who gets AIDS from another girl, etc. Those are still concerns. You never really worry about getting abducted by a thrill kill cult and murdered, but broken condoms, yes. It's a concern.

To assuage my fears, I booked myself an appointment with the intention of getting cultured, Pitried, swabbed, poked, drained and tested for anything I could. I wanted to be checked for everything. Guinea worm if they had the equipment. I spent the better part of last Monday morning doing this, with great trepidation of course.

I'm squeaky clean, thank you very much, so that's not why I bring all this up. I do it so that you can get to know Harvey, my Syphillis room squeezy log partner.

You see, when you go to the Syphillis room at the particular clinic I go to--and I go there because its in West Hollywood and NO bugs are going undetected in Weho--they seat you in these old leather chairs, like the ones you sit in at the dentist's office. They're grouped into twos throughout the room, and between them are little tables with blood-taking accoutrements, those little needle tubies they shove into your vein, and if you have no blood pressure like me, they tap at the end of it to fill it. Wow that tapping is not cool. Before they do all this draining and the awful tapping, they give you the squeezy log, a big dowel covered in duct tape that you're supposed to squeeze. It makes the vein pop out, or the blood flow, or whatever. Harvey was in the chair next to me. He was my sqeezy log partner.

Harvey was astoundingly attractive. There's something about natural red hair that really seizes me right up. Its something primal, probably. I am mostly Irish. I once stumbled into a red haired girl at Whole Foods, and legitimately stammered. I made incoherent babbling. It was as if a chorus of angels, wind machines and eucalyptus had been released into the air simultaneously. Or, you know the 'Allegory of the Cave?' It was like I had been chained up to a cave wall all my life and all I knew or could perceive of reality was a few shadow puppets, and then somebody whipped the cave away and my senses were met with glorious nature in the shock of daylight for the first time. It was like this:

"Wower...um...I...uhrrrrrrr." That's what I said, and I'm not kidding. I said, "Wow." She thought I was a crackhead.

So Harvey had red hair, and real red hair, not the chemical kind. He was tall and lanky like a runner or a swimmer, and he paid no attention to fashion trends of any kind. He seemed sort of laid back about getting a syphilis test. I said hello.

"Hi there. You like apples?"

Why I do love apples. I'm particularly elated by the current peaking of the Granny Smith, but...how did Harvey know this? Perhaps he's psychic. "Yes, how'd you know?"

"I saw your computer bag sitting in your car when I came in. Hi, I'm Harvey."

That's not psychic. "Erm. Nice to meet you."

Harvey had freckles on his arms from the sun. The tech attending him knew him by name, and Harvey enjoyed it when she teased him about getting "yet another test," and needing to "wear a fucking condom." My tech was a little more somber. Harvey said, "Oh that's Paul. He's just pissed because he's gay."

After the squeezy log passed between us, and the blood had been sucked and it was time to go wait in the hall for the next room, Harvey and I met up by the Dasani machine in the hallway. He didn't have any change so I bought him a bottle of water, and we sat and talked for a little bit. Harvey said I was a nervous person, so I must be a type A personality, a banker, or a lawyer or something like that.

"I'm a writer."

"Oh. Fucked that up." He gulped some water and tossed the blue bottle cap across the hallway into the can on the other side. "I'm a musician."

"Really? That's cool."

"Yeah, guitar. I like it. What do you write?"

I explained to Harvey that I was new to it, and that I wrote a blog, and that I had a crush on James Ellroy and yada yada. He seemed to think that was pretty funny since Ellroy is an old fart.

"I read 'The Black Dahlia.'"

"You did? Good book? I haven't read it yet."

"It was alright. Not enough blood and guts."

"I know this guy who's about to write a book about the correlation between a Marcel Duchamp sculpture and the Black Dahlia crime scene. Its really a fascinating thing, the consistencies. Apparently...haven't really studied the two."

And then, with the most pensive, staring off into the sunset look, Harvey uttered, "Yeah. There's so much thrill killing going on in LA."

"Wha...huh? Thrill killing?"

"Yeah. You know. Thrill kill cults. Gotta be careful who you hang out with you know. [wink wink]"

Harvey smiled and nudged me in the ribs. He finished his water and threw the empty bottle in the trash. I was suddenly very uncomfortable and it wasn't the sting in the crook of my arm, or the gooey bandaid adhesive caught in my arm hairs making me so. I very badly wanted angry, gay Paul to call me into a room and away from Harvey.

"But...if you ever get into trouble, you know, you can just say that you know Harvey and you'll be fine, all right?"

"If I ever get abducted by a thrill kill cult I can say 'I know Harvey' and they won't kill me?"

"Yep."

I left as soon as the rest of my tests were through. Harvey was smoking a cigarette outside the clinic in front of his car, and I when I passed by he said, "Bye blogger girl!" He said it sweetly, but I said nothing back. This is probably because Harvey's car was a big, white window-tinted rape van.

I will say, LA is never boring. Should you ever be abducted by a thrill kill cult here, just tell them you know Harvey. Don't say I never did anything for you.

Comments

Posted by: Kelsness at October 12, 2006 12:02 PM

Posted by: She-Kapo at October 22, 2006 09:42 AM

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