Rubber Balls and Liquor (22 page)

I should mention here that I had previously experienced enough success in show business that I could afford to move out of my mother's apartment and into a place of my own. It was at this point I realized I was no longer a stupid, immature little boy. I was now a stupid, immature adult. This happened some years before the onset of my terrible sickness, mind you, but much later than you might think. I had only experienced some modest success, minding you again, which meant I could only afford a modest apartment. I still slept on the couch in front of the television in the living room, but at least it was my own couch in my own living room. It wasn't a particularly nice couch, or a particularly nice living room, but it was mine.

Regrettably, I now had to make my own snacks.

The reason I should mention this is because I was alone. A nice Jewish boy like me, in the middle of such a terrible sickness, is used to having his mother tell him what to do, but my mother was in a different apartment, so for a few days I didn't know what to do. Finally, I went to see the doctor.

This was a smart decision, it turned out, although I followed it with a not-so-smart decision. As soon as I got to the doctor's office, I asked to use the bathroom. It didn't occur to me that the doctor might need a urine sample until I was standing over the toilet, finishing my business. I felt like such an idiot I could have slapped my palm against my forehead, like in one of those V-8 vegetable juice commercials, but in order to do that I would have had to let go of my dick and I might have peed all over the wall. Plus, I usually don't like to let go of my dick unless I absolutely have to, so it struck me just then as an unnecessary gesture.

So what did I do? I went back to the waiting room and hoped there'd be enough time for me to produce another few drops of urine before the doctor was ready to see me. It was one of the few times in recorded medical history when a patient was hoping there'd be a long wait—but, as it turned out, it wasn't quite long enough. I went in to see the doctor and he started examining me. He asked me a bunch of questions. Most of these questions I'd already answered on the pages and pages of paperwork I had to fill out in the waiting room, but he asked them anyway. In medical school, they call this being thorough. Then he took some blood samples—also, thorough. Then he handed me a cup and asked for a urine sample.

Like a good patient, I went to the bathroom to see if I could come up with anything. I tried and tried, with no luck. I must have been taking a long time, or making a dreadful commotion, because after a while one of the nurses started pounding on the bathroom door.

“Mr. Gottfried!” she said, excitedly. “Mr. Gottfried, are you all right in there?”

I put my dick back in my pants and opened the bathroom door a crack and explained the problem.

The nurse said, “Run the sink. Sometimes that helps.”

So I closed the door and ran the sink. This time, it didn't help, so I went out to see the nurse for some more of her professional advice.

She said, “Drink some water. Sometimes that helps.”

So I drank some water and waited to see if it would help. It didn't, so I went back out to the reception area to see if they had any magazines. You know, maybe some firefighter magazines, with centerfolds of rushing water or open hydrants to inspire me. The great fountains of Europe. Dolphins splashing around in the ocean. Something. A time like this, an establishment like that, you'd think there'd be some urine porn to help a fellow out … but there was nothing. Not even an old
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue, where I could have at least gotten off on all those pictures of beaches.

I never felt so all alone.

Or, dry.

Then, to make matters worse, I got the chills. All of a sudden, I was shaking, shivering … you might even say I was
shuddering
. Whatever you call it, there was quite a lot of unsettling movement going on, and on one of my trips out to the nurse for some urine sample advice she became concerned.

Soon, the doctor was concerned as well. He said, “Gilbert, we need to get you to the hospital.”

Next thing I knew, I was racing through traffic in a cab. This was a sign that something was horribly wrong, because I never take cabs. Another person might have been troubled by being sent to the emergency room, but the money on the meter was a much bigger concern to me just then. Also, I didn't know how much I was supposed to tip the driver.

For the next three days, I lay in a hospital bed with a high fever and chills. My mother visited. My sisters visited. At first, the doctors didn't know what was wrong with me. It wasn't just that I seemed a little odd or eccentric. They decided I had a burst appendix, which seemed to me like something they should have seen right away. I mean, I'm no doctor, but you'd think a thing like a burst appendix should be easy to diagnose. But it wasn't the diagnosis that was giving these medical professionals trouble, it turned out. It was wondering how much damage had been done by the bursting.

Happily, I had some experience in this area. Usually, when one of my organs bursts, there's quite a lot of noise and fuss, only here there was no way to know the result of all that noise and fuss, or the reasons behind it. (Also, there can sometimes be a small mess, requiring a damp cloth or some tissues.)

As long as I was stable, the doctors said they wanted to determine what was going on with my insides before cutting me open. I guess this was important, and thorough, because of course they wanted to know where to cut, so we waited and waited while they determined and determined. I remember feeling incredibly anxious in the middle of all this waiting and waiting, which was a whole lot more tension-filled than my usual state of being just regular anxious. My doctors didn't exactly have the best bedside manner. They knew what they were doing, apparently, but setting me at ease wasn't too high on their list of priorities. At one point, one of my doctors said, “We've got no idea what the extent of the damage was, Gilbert. We might have to cut out some of your intestine when we open you up, and you'll have to wear a colostomy bag.”

He said this like wearing a colostomy bag was a casual, everyday thing, like he was telling me I might have to wear my hair a bit shorter on one side of my head—although, now that I've made this comparison I'm realizing it wasn't like that at all. I've been to barbershops where I've been told just that with a great deal more feeling than I got from this doctor about having to wear a colostomy bag.

My first thought was about the stand-up comic I used to know when I was just starting out, the guy whose colostomy bag burst while he was banging some girl on the stage at the Comic Strip. I thought,
I don't want to be like that guy
.

(Of course, one of the reasons I didn't want to be like that guy was because his career was in the toilet, which I could only assume he still carried around with him at the side of his leg.)

My second thought was about the girl he was banging. I wondered if there was some way to get in touch with her, but then I thought,
Nah … she's probably old, or married, or covered with shit
.

Then I thought,
Hey, I wonder if she has a younger sister
.

Anyway, they did the surgery. As a result of all that determining, they determined that I had peritonitis, which is an inflammation of the peritoneum. All this time, I didn't even know I had one of those, and now it was inflamed. If I'd waited another day or two before going to the doctor, I could have died. At least, this is what the doctors told me, with their wonderful bedside manner—and, naturally, this was what I started telling women, under the impression that it would entitle me to sympathy sex.

So now the doctors knew where to cut, and what to cut, which was a good and welcome thing. They fixed me up. Another good and welcome thing: I didn't have to wear a colostomy bag, but it was still pretty disgusting. I lay there for days and days with my stomach hanging open, because they were worried about an infection. Once again, I'm no doctor, but you'd think with an open wound like that, you might want to close it if you're so worried about an infection, or cover it with a giant Band-Aid. But what the hell did I know?

I ended up staying in the intensive care unit for almost a month. A few of my friends came to visit after the surgery—and by
a few
I mean the one or two I'd managed to collect to that point in my life. (Okay, maybe it was three or four … but who's counting?) Howard Stern, the King of All Media, came to visit. He didn't want to be noticed, coming in and out of the hospital, so he put on sunglasses and a baseball cap, which even in the middle of my pain and suffering struck me as the stupidest fucking thing I'd ever seen. After all, he's a ridiculously tall person, with a ridiculously wild head of hair, so it's not like a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap are much of a disguise. It reminded me of those old movies where someone puts on a pair of glasses to change his appearance, like Clark Kent used to do when he didn't want to be mistaken for Superman.

At eight-feet tall, with that great big nose, it looked like the number 7 was visiting me, but I recognized Howard right away. It helped, I guess, that I knew he'd be coming, because Robin Quivers had visited a day or two before, and they needed something new to talk about on the air. This way, at least, they could compare notes and fill a couple segments.

I don't think Howard particularly wanted to be there. He didn't say much, and he didn't stay long. He took one look at my open stomach and turned red. Or blue. Or white. Some color he wasn't supposed to turn. He said, “Gilbert, that's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. You expect people to visit you, looking like that?”

Right before he left, Howard asked if there was anything he could bring me. My eyes filled up with tears, the way they do whenever I think I'll be receiving some free shit. I ran through a long list of things I thought I could use, and I kept updating that list from week-to-week, until finally Howard just sent me a two-dollar pair of slippers and called it quits, and he never again made the mistake of asking me if I needed anything.

Richard Belzer came to visit, almost every day. This was back before he was a serious actor, so he had some time on his hands. He'd come in, say hello, and sit down at the foot of my bed. Then he'd read the newspaper. He wouldn't even talk to me. After a while, he'd set the paper down and looked around the room to see if I had any magazines, only he was never all that interested in my firefighter or great fountains of Europe magazines so he'd usually just leave.

Penn Jillette came to see me, which surprised me because we didn't really know each other back then. He'd yelled at me a time or two, for trying to get Teller to talk. (I kept thinking if I squeezed him in just the right way, the guy would have to say
something
 … eventually.) Mostly, I think Penn was curious about what had happened to me. He's got a sick, perverted mind, which is saying a lot coming from a sick, perverted guy like me. Penn was the only person who didn't recoil in shock when he looked at my stomach. He just stood over my bed like he was at a museum and I was the exhibit. He looked me over carefully, from every angle. Then he said, “You survived what killed Houdini.” Like it was a badge of honor.

One of my favorite parts of the hospital routine was the way a nurse or doctor would come in every day to ask if I'd broken wind. I'd always ask, “Why, have the other patients been complaining?”

After I was there for a while, I learned that the reason they kept asking was to determine my overall health, which means that if farting is a sign of health I'll probably live forever.

One thing about spending all that time in the intensive care unit: there's no such thing as shame. Or maybe there is, but nobody cares. There were all these people coming by—doctors, nurses, perverted magicians—and I was hanging out there for all the world to see, at all hours, day and night. People were poking me, examining me, trying not to laugh or cringe or puke. But I didn't care. Everybody had seen everything by this point, in some cases far more than they cared to see. Once, a big black nurse came into my room and took one look at me lying on the bed, with my sheets thrown every which way, and said, “Cover yourself up, young man. I can see your jingle bells.”

No one had ever called them that before. I secretly hoped it would catch on.

Another time, a priest came by to see how I was doing. At first I thought it was Stern, dressed for a bit, or maybe trying out a new disguise, but it was a real priest. I know this because he fondled my jingle bells—and, when I reached to fondle his, he didn't shoo my hand away, as so often happens.

The priest told me a story that made no sense, in a high-pitched Irish accent. It's like he was sent from Central Casting, but only after the more reasonable-looking priests had been sent out on other calls. Then I told him that I was Jewish, in a high-pitched Brooklyn accent, which to him must have sounded like a story that made no sense.

After I was released, I continued to visit my primary doctor on a regular basis. He'd check my wound and change my dressing and tell me how I was doing, but I didn't need him to tell me how I was doing. I could tell just by looking in the mirror. I looked like the Octomom, and this was long before we even knew about the Octomom. (We could only imagine.) My stomach was pushed all the way out into the middle of the room. When I walked, I waddled—which I suppose was good practice for my future role as the Aflac duck. The only good or encouraging thing about my appearance was that if things didn't work out for me in stand-up comedy, I could always find work in a circus sideshow.

Finally, I had to ask if I could expect any improvement. I said, “Doc, will my stomach go down? It's hanging out into the middle of the room.”

He looked me over and shrugged his shoulders as if he couldn't have cared less and said, “It's gone down as much as it's going to.”