* * *
The homeless man cleaned up so nice, just as William had suspected. It was fun to show him the apartment. “This is Justin’s mother’s couch, but it’s mine now. It’s ours,” he said to include the homeless man. “It’s yours,” he said to be generous. “It pulls out.” Together, they pulled out the bed. It was nice to come home and find the man deep in reading the cookbook and the anatomy book. By now, he claimed to have memorized the anatomy book.
Class was all review for final exams. William leaned back in his chair. Looking at the boys’ bodies, he pretended they were corpses and he was to dissect them and re-sect them to form the perfect man. That was the Final Exam. Then he would put the creature back to life like in Rocky Horror and have to blow the creation to get an A. If the penis hadn’t been correctly re-attached then an erection would be impossible. It would have Anthony’s hair, Jake’s full lips, Phil’s arms, and Jennifer’s eyes, if that were allowed, if he could take one thing from her. Maybe her eyes would mix everything up. The teacher scrawled study questions on the board. William had once heard someone describe a coma as the best rest of her life. Sign me up, he said to himself.
Once, after his wisdom teeth had been taken out, William had taken OxyContin and briefly gone into daydreams. The dreams were convincing. They’d have him in a scene with someone he knew and then someone would tell a joke or share an idea or nothing, then suddenly switch to a new scene. That was how William wanted to live life anyway, a little bit of this, a little bit of something totally different. He didn’t want to be one person the whole time.
* * *
Sitting cozily in their living room, the homeless man quizzed William for the exam. William could only recall 3 of the 11 facial nerves. He thought that lumber puncture was when the spinal canal narrows and compresses the spinal cord, but that was spinal stenosis, said the homeless man. William didn’t remember anything about the medial branches of the posterior divisions of the upper six thoracic nerves. “I haven’t been having an easy time studying. The internet is soo distracting.” He mixed up mentencephalon and myelencephalon. Whenever he heard pancreas he thought about pancakes. “I’ve been dizzy. Studying makes me dizzy.” William took a cigarette from the man’s pack and got up. He took a piss in the bathroom, cultivate moods, ripped down the poster, and went back to the living room.
“Your turn,” he took the anatomy book and quizzed the homeless man. The endocrine system was communication within the body using hormones made by the hypothalamus, pituary, pineal body, thyroid, parathyroids, and adrenal glands. A sacrum consisted of five bones that were separate at birth, but later fused together into a solid structure. William wiped some sweat from his neck and smelled his hand. “Are you looking at the answer sheet over there?” William looked for a lighter.
“Answer sheet? This is my job application,” he flashed the answer sheet at William. William looked up from his cigarette. He could see the homeless man looking flattering in slim-fit scrubs. The homeless man starring in Grey’s Anatomy. He could see the ‘Homeless to Famous’ story being churned out of newspaper-making machines.
* * *
The homeless man scored William some painkillers like he’d wanted. He stood in William’s doorway and tossed William the bottle. He scratched one arm with the other arm. One of these days, William was going to lend him money to get another tattoo. The three-legged dog would look great with something completely different underneath it. Like a name with a date or something.
William signed onto the dating website as his fake name, Skyler. A boy had sent him a message. Bored, William scrolled down the boy's profile. His pictures showed him drunk on two different holidays, then once playing devil sticks in his living room. William took one of the Percocets, then went back to the computer. He looked at profiles, “I was a computer science major at Temple, although I think I'm ultimately going to become a shaman of some sort,” but then his eyes didn't want to do that anymore. He pushed his burning Powerbook from his lap. Running windows on a Mac made him love the anonymity of windows. The gay dating site wasn't up to par. Like it left this aftertaste of disgust. Was that how dating sites worked? Was there a way around that?
William felt for his cell phone because there was a noise it had to make. For tomorrow, if he was going to wake for the exam, then there was an important noise for the phone. A girl stuck her gum to a sign post and then walked down the street. William watched and realized she was part of the drug. In a car, it was him and the homeless guy. The trees passed. The street passed. Totally random. William was happy the drug was good at being a drug. Like what if the drug was only good at looking good in a bottle? Justin sat down, “You see I got this haircut, but it’s making me hate myself.” “I don’t want you to hate yourself,” William said, giggling. For some reason computers always asked if they should save files, when the files hadn’t even been changed. It was a nervous habit of computers.
William sat with his uncle in a church. “I wanted to see a bunch of little scenes. I wanted life to move fast, but I think it’s moving slow.” His uncle nodded and said, “I mean that’s why I moved away. It wasn’t a right fit. Everyone looked at me strange because I was tall.” William waited in line in a restaurant, “I thought it would be scenes.” Wind blew each leaf on a tree. The clouds looked nothing like animals. The drug was making scenes. His “Illness as Interesting” paper had made sense in the computer. All the letters were straight next to other letters. There was a lot to celebrate about having a body. Justin said, “Now we can talk about Skyler.” William said, “Who?” William’s Dad said, “Who?” In the dark, it was obvious again that William would not transform into a doctor, “That’s alright, guys. We don’t have to talk about me. We should talk about something important. We should talk about the election.”
If the blood, for instance, got mixed up with some dirt, then the body would start a war with the dirt, forming a pus wall to block the virus. The virus wants to live and then there’s this conflict taking place within the body. William imagined an infection as a fly stuck in an egg yolk, as a bad smell traveling through a car window. A thing clinging on that didn’t belong. Justin infecting the New York gay/queer/trans social scene. William infecting UPenn Med School.
The body can start sending out bad messages. The body can make things you don’t want it to make. The paper must’ve been in the completely utterly totally incorrect font. Many eyes wouldn’t have been able to comprehend the font, maybe. Possibly, it was just a wrong font.
Then it changed back to William and the homeless man in the car. The homeless man drove quickly wavering in and out of the lines. From the passenger seat, William looked out his window, then at the beautiful face of the homeless man. The homeless man was swerving. His eyes looked like he hadn’t gone to sleep for most of his life. The homeless man turned and said, “If you want me to drive, I could just drive instead.” William didn’t understand. The homeless man drove on, gripping the wheel. He missed another line. He looked at William and said, “Man, your eyes look like you bought them used.” The car drove half on the grass. A stick got stuck in the tire, then snapped. The homeless man looked at William, “You don’t have to drive the whole way. I know you, you get tired.”