FALLING, FAILING TO FIND (2009-11-04)

Noah believed he dying, incidentally. He was no doctor but even slipping into unconsciousness, he was aware of something. Something wrong and there was nothing jumping out at him, assuring him that everything was under control and it would be taking a turn for the better very soon. It wouldn't or if it did it wouldn't be the kind of better he had hoped for. It might be one of those "better for everybody in his life but him" scenes that were popular in movies and made for a pretty good movie of the week but weren't going to be much comfort to him. He was dying and that couldn't be good for him. Not in the state things stood right now. Not as they'd stood when he'd leaned against the wall and drawn his breath, practicing the lines he was going to wow the young girl with when she walked out of the toilet and right into his love trap.

And the biggest part of his love trap was the huge erection he'd been packing since his vacation on the new girl's thigh. He had an active imagination. So active, in fact, that thinking about her pussy had pretty much the same effect as actually getting to touch her. In the ill-measured combination of alcohol intoxication and cocaine buzz, he'd lost touch with the relativity of a man his age thinking things a man half his age couldn't actually carry to fruition. Not in the real world, Chuck. Not where the single state of doing and saying leaps headlong into "what the hell" and sometimes re-emerges holding Cristal and a cookie, sometimes a smoking gun. And what we've got here, by god, is a gun alright. His blood rushing to his privates had to be routed from somewhere and in this instance, it was something he was using a whole lot less than any other part; his brain. How funny to be feeling so incredibly lucid as he was drifting into a coma. There is a message there somewhere but it might take a while for this fellow to figure out.

He was causing quite a stir as they dropped him out of the ambulance and started rolling him into the ER nurses, waiting. They'd heard of this before but this was the first any of them had seen it. The condition is known as priapism. If Noah or anyone else on the first floor of St. Thomas' that early evening had studied somewhere other than public school, they might have been exposed to this dude, one of the 'lessor' gods of Greek mythology. He was born to Aphrodite. Nobody argues with that but here is where his path starts getting just a bit more murky. He told people, almost anybody who would listen, that his father was Zeus but the fact was, Momma was a rolling stone and even she, herself, couldn't say who of the many gods actually sired the lad. Her own money was on Dionysus because she always had a spot for him. Whoever it was, he lived to be a ripe old age without gathering much of a cult following like many of the other less endowed gods of Olympus. A lot of people kept statues of him in their gardens, hoping to make the wheat and grapes get hot and heavy for one more growing season but nothing ever really caught on from there. He was roaming the country horny (Hey! Much as Noah had been rambling.) setting his sights on a hot young nymph he thought he might like to throw down on the grown and go pagan on before being stopped by some of his pals. Messing around the way guys will, they hung great big pair of wooden heuvos on him, replacing the rather immaculate natural equipment he'd come supplied with and he was forever erect but never able to do anything about it.

Even a blind mule would be struck by the congruence between Priapus and Noah, right? As plain as the little tent he was pitching on the rolling bed and somewhat more obvious than the nose on his face, which nobody was looking at right now, anyway. As he was being rolled back into the private portion of the wing, there would be an uncounted number of medical professionals, their friends and cleaning staff who would be examining the activity taking place between his legs. A shame he wasn't present to be cut in on the action. Something he might have enjoyed. Who knows?

The condition is something dreamed of by almost all teen-aged boys and only feared by older men (near Noah's age) and lawyers for major drug companies who were promoting such "life enhancers" as Viagra and Cialis. Any erection drawing enough blood to put a big man on the floor and then hanging on long after his own grasp of the near and real had given up and turned in for the night could be considered a medical emergency and this was. Two urologists were leaving the golf course before finishing the back nine, in hopes of getting in on some of this action. Abby hung around even when the transfer was complete and all the paperwork had changed hands, partially to see that the patient was alright, sure. Still, there was a part of the curiosity that wanted to see what would happen if he wasn't. It's the same phenomenon drawing a bigger part of the crowd into the stands at a NASCAR event than would ever admit it; those guys who've never seen a car doing over one hundred miles an hour go into a roll and wipe four cars before and after it along in the mischief. Yeah. Hell yeah. They wanted to see somebody die doing something they'd done plenty, themselves. Everybody drives, right? And, by the same token, most everybody has felt a stiffy spring up and slap them in the face to get their attention. Nobody had one throw them down and lay them out of the count. It was something to take home, tonight whichever way it went. That's for sure.