See! The Tattooed Man!

from '100,000 Years in Detention'

“Did it hurt?”

My left arm is outstretched, the shirt sleeve rolled up and sitting on my shoulder, artwork showcased on my inner bicep. It’s all in black ink, approximately 7 inches wide, and took 90 minutes to permanently draw on my arm.

“A little. More so towards the shoulder; that area’s really sensitive.”

Since I met my fiancé in 2007, I’ve been telling her about the next tattoo I wanted. I’ve spent my life writing and playing video games, and Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series has been a staple in my life since I was a baby. Its fourth major edition, The Ocarina of Time, is hailed as the best game ever made. I’ve wanted to get an insignia from Ocarina, the Triforce, tattooed on me for several years.

The idea came to me when I was 20 and my friend Kenny and I were driving around suburban Atlanta. He wanted a sleeve – a tattoo that starts at the shoulder and goes to the elbow or wrist – of Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid movies on one arm, and a ring around his other bicep of the Elven inscription of the One Ring from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series.

Other ideas we’d discussed were Master Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the words “Surf’s Up!” in the font used for Chinese food to-go boxes and a “Do Not Enter” sign on the smalls of our backs. Years later, he settled on an original piece of zombies tearing their way out of his calf and I stuck with the Triforce.

In early August, Kristy and I walked into The Body Gallery in downtown Leesburg to inquire about getting an appointment. While we were waiting to be helped, we browsed through the portfolios by each artist sitting on the coffee table in the lounge. There must have been ten books, but after the second artist’s I knew I didn’t have to look any further.

Jedediah Von Horror has some of the most intricate, detailed work I’ve ever seen and I demanded he book me. Unfortunately, the rest of Leesburg had done the same before I could, so his schedule was full for the next month. We spoke briefly, and his attitude and professionalism reinforced my decision. He gave me a reminder card for the date and, after seeing a print-out of my Triforce, said he was really looking forward to it. The card read “You’ve got an appointment to get ZAPPED! on Sept. 3 “ and Kristy clipped it to our refrigerator.

Four weeks crawled by, during which time I Googled some of my favorite American sideshow oddities - Jojo the Dog-Faced Boy, John Merrick (The Elephant Man) and so on. During my research I found that a hundred years ago, extensively-tattooed people held a very different stigma than they do today. Rather than be seen as just motorcycle owners or sailors or prostitutes or heavy metal disciples, folks like Conundrum (whose entire body is tattooed like a jigsaw puzzle) were placed in cages and given live chickens to eat, and for just a nickel, or, later, a quarter, people could walk through a tent where they could point and laugh at amputees, conjoined twins, little people and those with full-body skin conditions.

My appointment came and I met Jedediah in the parlor, where he spent a quick minute setting up an iPod to a speaker set so we could enjoy music while we talked and he worked. Following this, he spent a few more minutes – with a surgeon’s precision – cleaning and sterilizing his equipment, opening a fresh unused needle and carefully placing it into his gun.

He pristinely traced the edges of the print-out I’d given him the month prior with a purple marker onto what looked like wax paper and placed it on my arm, where I’d told him.

“Go over and look at it in that mirror so you can get a general idea of how it’s gonna be. Does that look ok? Little bigger, little smaller maybe?”

“No no; it’s perfect.” I couldn’t contain a big, asinine grin.

“Are you sure? It’s no problem to resize or retrace it if you want.”

I was already on my way back to the raised bed – not unlike the one you lay on in the doctor’s office – without another word. Jedediah had put on surgical gloves by this point and placed a few sanitized paper towels where my arm should rest while he worked. He lathered and shaved my arm with a new straight razor. Bad Brains came out of the stereo and I breathed deeply.

“Alright man, you ready?”

“Yep.”

“Ok; here we go.”

Then I heard the buzz, and felt the needle of the gun, and shut my eyes and relaxed.

The trick is to keep your body limp. If you tense up, tattoos hurt like Hell. I don’t know why; it’s something about nerves or your skin or muscles bunching up, but you have to keep limber. As we talked, my mind wandered, to my other tattoos and my circus freaks.

My first tattoos have been on my back since 2001. I’d just started college and wanted to get inked to symbolize such a monumental occasion, and with something universal. Some people have a yin-yang, others the Christian cross; I chose two empty circles.

Circles are atoms, planets, vinyls and cd’s, and geometrically represent the equalized nature of the give-and-take of most relationships. Much like Fibonacci’s Golden Ratio/Rectangle/Spiral, circles constitute most of the universe. For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, as well.

I had them done at a parlor in the Rondout, on the Hudson River in upstate New York, on a fall afternoon. The owners of the shop had a two-year-old son who I talked to the whole time his mother committed my circles to me. They both eased the tension and I’m glad I got to meet them. I remember telling the girl I was with, “Every tattoo I get, I wanna come back here.” It was hard to reach back and rub the lotion on them to keep them from drying out – scent-free, dye-free lotion, they always told me – but in the end they came out fine.

As Jedediah traced the Triforce outline – this time forever, on my arm, with steady hands – I noticed the alternating black-and-white stripes of the wing-like structures on either side of it. Naturally, then, my train of thought led to Ota Benga and the time he spent living at the Bronx Zoo.

An Mbuti tribesman of meager stature, Benga found many of his people killed by soldiers of Belgian King Leopold II in the 1890s. Discovered by two Americans – a businessman and scientist seeking evidence for an exhibit detailing inequalities of ethnicity – he was brought first to St. Louis. There he and some of his other clan were displayed alongside Geronimo and others as a sort of live museum exhibit where people marveled at Benga’s size, teeth – which he had filed down to sharp points – and behavior.

Ota Benga’s living conditions worsened when he was brought to the Bronx Zoo in 1904 and displayed in the Monkey House alongside orangutans and chimpanzees. After meeting much protest from African-American clergymen James H. Gordon, the zookeepers allowed Benga to roam around the zoo freely until he was finally released into the care of Gordon, then to an orphanage under Gordon’s supervision and finally to a home of his own in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The world did what it could to mask Ota Benga’s misfortune – dressing him in suits and capping his customized teeth. As he was finally acclimated to American culture, the way he’d hoped for at his initial meeting with the men who brought him to St. Louis, he started a normal American life. He attended school for many years and then worked on a tobacco farm as he saved money and planned his return to the Congo. As international relations worsened in the 1910s, his trip back to Africa slipped from his grasp. All that he had left of his early life were his stories, which he told his co-workers in exchange for food and drink, and the permanent work to his teeth, which were now “corrected.”

I relayed this story to Jedediah as he worked on me. “I could never get my teeth filed down like that though,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, his arm completely covered in tattoos, drawing with the needle on mine. “Some people are just lookin’ for pain.”

We shook our heads; he reached the end of a line and pointed at my arm. “Hey man, you wanna take a break?”

“Nah, not yet.”

My third tattoo I got the summer after my first two. This was in July 2002, on the way to a Weezer concert. Their fourth album, Maladroit, had just hit shelves and despite not finding as big a place in my heart as their sophomore release, Pinkerton, two friends and I found ourselves hauling ass to Atlanta’s Hi-Fi Buys Amphitheater (at the time, Lakewood Amphitheater) anyway to catch Rivers Cuomo and the gang spit out “Buddy Holly” and some other favorites.

I’d been obsessed with Tool’s fourth album, Lateralus, since its release in 2001, and spent more time than I should have poring over Alex Grey’s artwork for it. An unmistakable mixture of anatomical and spiritual subjects (think med-school diagrams with chakras, but cool) dominated his portfolio, and his work for Tool was no different.

It was five or six transparent pages for the liner notes, each page displaying a different layer of the male human anatomy from head to chest. The muscular system, nervous system, skeletal system – all were represented with varying coiled spirals and flaming eyes politely floating about.

Tool’s lyrics have always been open to interpretation – lyrics sheets are never printed in their albums, and the band have openly expressed their disdain for telling their audience what meaning to take from their music. One song contains the symbol of the “third eye” to better perceive the world, and I feel like aiming to improve oneself is as good a practice as any.

In my own search for manual evolution, I went to a tattoo parlor on the way to Weezer.

I’d just started taking some college classes, working full-time to pay for them and weaning myself away from living off my parents, after a bout of mono that took me out of college for a semester. I committed to independence, wrote the first pieces for my first novel and booked my appointment with my flaming eye in hand.

I don’t remember exactly what the guy looked like who put Alex Grey’s piece on my hip, but in my head I remember him as a caricature, a mixture of Zach Galiafinakis and W.C. Fields. I dropped my pants down and the buddies I was with, Nick and Brian, poked fun at my pale ass sticking out for most of the time I was under the gun. The guy inking me was worse.

“Tool fucking sucks; why don’t you get something that’s important to you?” the artist said.

“Uh…I like ‘em ok, and this is pretty important to me.” I was nervous to start an argument with someone holding a pen that wrote on me for the rest of my life.

“Psh. Whatever. You should get something cool instead. Check this shit out.”

He picked up the legs of his shorts and on one shin he had an 18” tattoo of Darth Vader with a lightsaber, and on the other he had Gene Simmons in his KISS attire, tongue sticking out, playing his bass.

I dealt with his flak just long enough to finish up and not tip him. It remains the only tattoo I have that didn’t heal right and needs touching up, but since I’m the only one who sees my naked hip a lot, I’m holding off until I just find the spare $20 or $40 in the street it will cost to get it redone.

“OK, now I’m ready for a break,” I told Jedediah. He’d outlined my Triforce and used a broader needle to fill it in, and as he neared my armpit the skin became more and more sensitive.

“No problem man; you’re doing great. I’m gonna stretch out a bit, you take your time and we’ll get back to it when you’re ready.”

I went out back and sat in a wire frame black metal chair, one of four around a matching table on Body Gallery’s back porch, the golden and beige leaves falling from their trees around me, blanketing the brick porch. I sent a few text messages – for some reason I didn’t get service in the shop – and after ten minutes or so, came back in to let him finish the job. My skin was pink and tender, the tattoo was half-filled (or half-empty) and I craved completion.

The Feejee Mermaid was sought by P.T. Barnum (along with the decomposing body of outlaw Jesse James) for his Greatest Show on Earth. A creature born half-human and half-fish, it was claimed, swam in the waters of Fiji and was caught by sailors just before their return to these great United States for the viewing pleasure of you, a fine and lovely audience.

If you want to make a Feejee Mermaid, you need a monkey, a fish, glue and a bone saw.

You may guess where this is headed.

Saw the first two in half. Throw out the bottom half of the monkey and the top half of the fish, unless you can find something else to do with them. Affix, with the glue, the top half of the monkey onto the bottom half of the fish. You may, in this day and age, want to use Nair to get all the hair off that monkey torso. Then, you just have to let the glue dry.

They came by the hundreds to see Barnum’s Mermaid. There are no mermaids, of course, or at least none that mankind has discovered, so what P.T. yearned for – knowingly or unknowingly – was a nightmare of taxidermy and shop class. Even still, it became so popular that a half-dozen sources have stepped forward so far claiming to have the original Feejee, another of God’s creations born half-finished, half-spectacular to be seen by the eye, alongside Ota Benga and the Conundrum, Geronimo and John Merrick and Jojo.

“Alright man; you’re all set.”

My wedding and birth of our first child are within a six-month period of each other, and I got the Triforce on my arm in dedication and celebration.

I talked to Jedediah and we discussed all the after-care instructions. These include washing my hands with unscented antibacterial soap before touching the tattoo and washing the tattoo gently with the same and applying unscented, dye-free lotion to the tattooed skin and letting nature take its course.

When getting tattooed, the skin is penetrated by the ink gun and a dab of blood occasionally fights its way to the surface. The man or woman with the gun politely wipes away the blood with a moist towelette or wet-nap held by a latex glove on a clean hand and continues his or her work. After a few days, the tattoo scabs over, as bleeding wounds do, and if you pick and peel and pull at the scabs they mess up your tattoo. If you continue to moisturize and leave it alone, however, eventually the scabs fall away and your tattoo is forever a part of your body, as the glue dries on the Feejee Mermaid and she is forever made a creature of mythos.

So what’s the end result? John Merrick died in a hospital, riddled with tumors and physical disfigurations. Ota Benga chipped all of his teeth’s caps, returning to his dentally-tattooed self before cashing his check early with a stolen revolver in front of a bonfire. People beg oddities obsessives to come and stare at one half of a fish and another half of a monkey in their garage, glued together and collecting dust, pieces of it rotting off under the same watchful eye people reserve for magicians.

We, with tattoos, wash, moisturize and repeat until the old skin falls away like autumn leaves off a tree and our new, customized flesh lays vibrant and commemorative underneath.

Celebrating the Life and Death of Osirus.

from '100,000 Years in Detention'

The following took place in 2005.


The Hard Rock Live venue is almost too nice. A motorcycle is parked on a raised dais in the middle of the bar, and the stage has a large red velvet curtain draped over it to hide any crew setting up or bands wishing to make an already on-stage appearance at the beginning of a set. The balcony looks ancient beyond possibility and pillars and large double doors litter the lobby.


A large electronic marquee outside read “Tonight Only” followed by “The Wu-Tang Clan” followed by “SOLD OUT!,” repeated over and over again. On the way in, two large men gave out promo posters for a new album, Fishscale, released March 28th on Def Jam Records.


Fishscale is the latest solo effort by Wu emcee Ghostface Killah, his fifth in a decade, and features one rap verse by the band’s self-described “fallen soldier.”


The late Osirus is related to RZA, the band’s leader and beat guru. RZA told a story about the two of them and several of their friends walking down the sidewalks of New York City one day. A van came up and slowed down next to them. A window near them rolled down and a shotgun poked out. Everyone froze except Osirus, who instantly grabbed the shotgun out of the van and turned it around on the owner. The van sped off.


Any music fan talking about a band he or she respects to a large extent can come across esoterically, but the Wu-Tang Clan are, to say the least, pioneers in the field of rap music.


Formed in 1992, cutting their first album for $50 per member, they were the first music group in history to mix martial arts film samples (and traditional Asian culture) with rap beats and the first rap act to make the transition from the stiff 1980’s sound associated with Run DMC and Public Enemy to the smooth, internal rhyming of today’s rap. Wu-Tang are almost rap’s Beatles in the way they changed popular music so completely.


Wu-Tang signed a record deal that put all of their group albums under one label, but only on the condition that each rapper could release his solo albums on any record label to which he chose to sign himself, with a portion of the proceeds returning to the entire Wu-Tang Clan. This way, with one rapper signed to Tommy Boy Records and another signed to Elektra, their successes would reap money for all nine members and record labels would compete with each other’s rapper, all the while doing the band’s work for them. In addition to this, each emcee could search for unknown talent and sign them to the labels to which they were signed, earning royalties from those albums as well. By 1997 these nine men controlled over 1/3 of all the money in the American rap industry, coming in from hundreds of rappers on different labels.


A screwdriver is between 1/3 and ½ vodka, depending on who pours it, and the rest is good ol’ Florida orange juice. So in Orlando, at one of the most important concerts of my life, I had high expectations for this drink to kick off the night ahead. Both the quality of the orange juice in Florida and the much-needed relaxation one drink would give me surrounded by 700 audience members who dwarfed me in size and ethnicity were of the utmost importance.


Surrounded by giants, I felt the same feeling I used to wear like a coat when I tried to hang out with my older brother’s friends. I went to the show to cover it for the local school paper, The Spectator, and wore this like a badge in case anyone asked what in God’s name I was doing there. I slowly understood why my friends warned me about this before the drive to Florida. Elizabeth said, “I’ll pray for you.”


Most concerts I can take or leave. I’ve seen Nine Inch Nails live three out of the five possible times I could have, and I own somewhere between 20 and 30 of their albums, singles, imports, bootlegs, demos and movie soundtracks containing their contributions. My parents’ philosophy seeps in whenever concert tickets go on sale. You can see that anytime; bands tour every year or two anyway. This was different. This was a reunion show after three years off-stage and a death in the band, quite possibly the last tour of one of rap’s milestone acts. My biggest hope was that the experience would stay with me longer than most concerts, which tend to fade away with the ringing in my ears.


The doors opened at 7. The opening act played through an uninspiring set. The audience checked their watches like leaves blowing on a tree. A half hour after the opening act finished, Ghostface’s first video from Fishscale played and pacified us for a further 20 minutes. Then, while waiting for Wu-Tang to get drunk and high before they played, jeers and middle fingers surfaced and grew in number.


“Raekwon better be back there chokin’ on a goddamn chicken wing or somethin’!”



“If Meth ain’t back there rollin’ up joints for everybody, I’m gonna be pissed!”


It was almost 11:30pm by the time the show started.


Just two emcees occupied the stage at the beginning: U-God and Cappadonna, arguably the two least popular of the group. Cappadonna is merely a guest star on a handful of the Clan’s tracks and most of the crowd couldn’t be bothered with his presence. As much as the crowd had surged with the initial dimming of the lights, everyone seemed to be looking around and thinking, Alright, alright, when are the real emcee’s gonna come out?


A song at a time, one Wu rapper came out to perform until all of them showed. U-God and Cappadonna were followed by Masta Killa, whose first solo album hit shelves in late 2004. Inspectah Deck was next, followed by Raekwon the Chef. It’s said that you should never trust a skinny chef. If that’s true, Rae is one of the most trustworthy men on Earth. A companion shouted in my ear over the din, “One thing’s for sure: The Chef is fucking enormous!” His shirt size is, at minimum, a double-XL, if not triple.


Ghostface came on next, and got the crowd going. He’s a very agreeable lyricist and signified that the big guns were about to appear. He was followed by Genius, or GZA, who launched into “4th Chamber”, the most infamous of his solo singles. GZA is Osirus’s cousin as well as RZA’s.
After GZA performed “4th Chamber,” the RZA eased onto the stage and performed. RZA is often described as The Abbott of the clan, the mastermind who got all nine original rappers their own record deals and helped them control over 1/3 of the cash flow in the rap industry by the mid-late ‘90s. He bobbed and weaved more than he actually danced, holding a champagne bottle in his hand and sliding through tracks effortlessly. RZA scored both Ghost Dog and Kill Bill and based Wu’s career around Chinese mythology and Zen philosophy.


Finally the Method Man came out, to a musical cue of a song named after him that appeared on the first Wu-Tang album. In the middle of the song, an audience member threw onstage a blunt, or cigar stuffed with marijuana, and without missing a beat Meth grabbed it and smoked while he rapped. Once all nine emcees were out, it was already nearly 20 minutes into the show and the crowd’s energy surged.


They played for a total of an hour and a half, including a tribute to the only original member who couldn’t be there, the one who succumbed to drug abuse and died of a cocaine-induced heart attack in November of 2004.


Every group of friends, every platoon in the Army, every office in a company, has one frequenter who is, in the best of ways, a Fuck-Up. RZA, his cousin, wrote a book about the Wu-Tang Clan and described him as “the dirty rat; somebody who, no matter what he does, does wrong. Even when he does right, his intent is to do wrong…he’s a true American free spirit. He scares some people, but other people love him because he’ll do what they wish they would do but are scared.” This is the way of the aptly named Ol’ Dirty Bastard, alias Osirus. He’s the one who’s such a bad person, he’s almost good. His history is so diabolical, you can’t help but laugh along.


Case in point: Ol’ Dirty once cashed his welfare check on MTV. Millions of people (including myself) watched live, on repeat, or on the computer from downloaded video files as he rode up to the office with his family and a camera crew, in a limo he’d rented with his own money. In the middle of corralling illegitimate children, he told the workers in the drab government building that he needed the money to support his kids because he couldn’t afford to feed them. They gave him his $400 and he complained and demanded more, until his kids got so rowdy he told them he wasn’t taking them out to the Burger King because they were being too loud. MTV still hails it as their most notorious moment, but to Dirty it was business as usual.


To commemorate the Ol’ Dirty Bastard, alias Osirus, alias Big Baby Jesus, two of his younger brothers got onstage and rapped two of his songs in his honor. A silent vigil was held, the kind of silence impossible for 700 people to achieve in a crowded venue.


As I left I couldn’t help but wonder if all of the remaining members would be seen together again. I returned to Georgia, to Valdosta, to Centennial Hall, to my normal life, and the ghosts of the experience and of a man too wild to live weighed down on my shoulders and breathed down my neck like a cold, thick mist.

To Be Taken Orally with Vodka.

from '100,000 Years in Detention'

I have a friend and his name is Jeff Bowman. The following is the culmination of hours of research by and recorded interviews with Jeff detailing his experiences with the world of pharmaceuticals and their by-products, side effects and consequences. It is compiled, written and edited by myself.

When I was growing up, learning my times tables and watching the dated video about sex education, you had to fight me to take a children’s chewable Acetaminophen. They were purple and tasted like purple – not grape, like the bottle said – and I reached the point of needing eight or 10 before I learned how to swallow pills.

It’s easy, my mother said, to take the pills. Just stick your tongue out, Jeffrey. Just place the pill on the center of your tongue. Just retract your tongue and take a sip or two of water until you felt the little medicinal cylindrical magical Acetaminophen slide past your throat and down your esophagus. Then, she said, your headache will go away.

It’s that simple.

It’s 500 miligrams of Acetaminophen per pill and just one will cure a headache when you’re 13 years old. Just two will cure a headache when you’re 17 years old, and just four will cure a headache before you’re 30.

Acetaminophen is used to treat aches and pains and to break fevers. Side effects include mild fever (I had to read it a second time myself), dark urine, clay-colored stools and jaundice.

It was my first step into the larger world of little oblong pills and might as well have had training wheels on it.

I suffered an ungodly sunburn after a short beach vacation with the family. Once the smelly-but-relieving aloe vera had been rubbed all over my body and the burning was disappearing, once the skin faded from crimson to pink, the nerve endings, deadened from their overexposure to Sol, began to awake.

By this time, in which they awaken, we have already seen the disgusting yellow the shoulders and upper back turn as they are filled with aqueous blisters, and I can think of nothing more vile than backpacking postules of unwanted skin and skin-healing-whatever around on one’s shoulders throughout the path that leads back to normality. The pain and itching were so unbearable I had to chew an antihistamine tablet so as to break through the outer coating of the pill and release its active ingredients to my body faster lest I scream or go insane from the sensation.

Antihistamines generally treat allergy symptoms by blocking the H1 Histamine receptor throughout the body. Its neighbor, the H2 Histamine receptor would, in years to come, cause me a significant amount of trouble in its relation to peptic ulcers and stomach acids.

The antihistamine I took to help with my sunburn was diphenhydramine. Side effects include sleepiness, fatigue, dizziness, headache, dry mouth and difficulty urinating.

One morning in high school, I collapsed on the concrete, clutching my stomach and screaming at the top of my lungs. I thought I’d been shot. I buried my face against the cold cement and soaked it with my tears, immobile, until two of my friends picked me up and carried me to the nurse’s office.

After an upper GI and a couple endoscopies I was diagnosed with my first peptic ulcer and prescribed Cimetidine, a third antihistamine. It blocks the H2 Histamine receptor to slow the production of acids in the body and over the course of its 30-day prescription, its bottle fades from smelling like a vanilla milkshake to an old corpse.

So I finished high school and returned to the South. Not the landmark South, of Atlanta or Birmingham or Memphis, but the forgotten South, the anonymous small towns and villages three hours from anywhere you’ve ever heard of, and it was there I was introduced to my new friend: Loratadine, another antihistamine meant to relieve sneezy or running noses, itching, watery eyes and itchy noses and throats. Loratadine remains a staple in my diet alongside fruits and veggies, pasta and meat.

Its major side effects include a fast or uneven heart rate, lightheadedness, jaundice or seizures. Its minor side effects are headache, nervousness, fatigue, stomach pain, diarrhea, dry mouth, sore throat, eye redness, blurred vision, nosebleed and skin rash.

So I suppose whenever I have allergies, I take Loratadine to relieve their symptoms, which in turn occasionally gives me stomach pain and headache which I nullify with Cimetidine and Acetaminophen.

Next in line in the Bowman Family Pharmacy is Isotretinoin. We were sitting around one night my first year of college and I confided in someone that I was sick to death of my acne. I’d had it since I was 10 or 11 and my face and I both felt like shit. He told me he’d had horrible acne on his back and had to go on medication to take it off. Given my luck with antacids and antihistamines, I decided one more trip to the doctor wouldn’t hurt.

The doctor I went to was near my parents’ house, as I was home for a visit from college. She asked me about eight times if I were suicidal. I said no each time and she gave me the slip with the signature and explained the new pill.

Isotretinoin is a vitamin A derivative and works by reducing the size of the body’s oil glands by over 50%. It also slows skin cell production, preventing clogged pores, has anti-inflammatory properties and slows the body’s natural oil production by almost 90%.

Most interesting side effects include permanent thin skin, hair thinning and cheilitis. Cheilitis is what it’s called when your lips get inflamed from a vitamin B deficiency.

“Cheilitis?” I asked her. “What’s that?”

“Just call it ‘Nigger Lip Syndrome,’” she said.

“Can I call it Cheilitis instead?”

Also, while you’re on Isotretinoin, you get depressed and see an increase in suicidal thoughts and tendencies. And your lips dry out like beef jerky and you have to apply industrial-strength lip balm every hour or two to keep them nice and lubricated. If you, hypothetically, forget it and go to class in college all day, you’ll look like you’re wearing lipstick and crimson lip-liner by the time you get back to your dorm to apply it.

So after a month or two my acne cleared up. For the first time in 10 years I saw my face again and it brought me to tears. I went back for my monthly appointment with the local dermatologist by my school and he noticed my improvement.

“Hey! Lookin’ good, sonny!”

“Thanks doc. Just here for my check-up and refill.” I always sound phony when I’m going through the motions of a conversation, but he didn’t mind.

“Sounds good to me!

So…gettin’ any pussy yet? Y’know…that young college stuff?”

Maybe it’s just part of the MCATs. Question 148 is “Are you planning on going into dermatology?” Question 149 is “Are you a vulgar bastard?”

Shortly thereafter, after suffering a long bout with the common cold, I reached my wits’ end with sickness. I’d been sick for over a week and, afraid of overdosing, cautiously took one type of pill a day to cure what ailed me most on that particular day.

Day 1: Acetaminophen.

Day 2: Loratadine.

Day 3: ______ (a multi-symptom cold medication)

This last resort, ______, was supposed to be the combo hoagie of cold and flu pills. Its active ingredients are Acetaminophen (the common headache/pain/fever alleviator), Dextromethorphan and Doxylamine Succinate.

Dextromethorphan, or Dex as the kids call it, is also found in cough syrup, which these same kids drink like beer to get high, producing a euphoric feeling. Unfortunately for Dex, and its addicts, by taking it one can come down with body rash, itching, vomiting, hypertension, nausea, blurred vision, shallow breathing, drowsiness, dilated pupils, diarrhea (AGAIN?!), dizziness, sweating, urinary retention and fever.

Doxylamine Succinate is a sedative that simply causes drowsiness.

I repeated this systematic self-medicating for the better part of a week, throwing in cough syrup (active ingredients Dex and Pseudoephedrine, same side effects as ______) on occasion for a sore throat I had as well.

By day eight I’d lost all patience and my temper went to shit, so I figured fuck it and took three Acetaminophen, two Loratadine, two ______, double the recommended dosage of cough syrup, my Cimetidine and washed them down with a screwdriver, heavy on the Grey Goose.

It may not have been my best idea.

It was Tuesday. Then suddenly it was Friday and I walked around my apartment like a detective trying to piece together a crime scene. My roommates said I held better conversation than I ever had in my life and apparently had downloaded instrumental tracks by Raekwon the Chef from Wu-Tang Clan and a cappella tracks from Gorillaz and mixed together the better part of a mash-up album similar to Danger Mouse’s mash-up of The Beatles and Jay-Z. I still have it; it sounds great.

When I got my wisdom teeth taken out, they prescribed me that extra-strength-industrial-grade Acetaminophen and a corticosteroid, Prednisone, used for anti-inflammation. The idea was that my cheeks wouldn’t swell up like a chipmunk’s post-surgery since they were going to saw bone out of my mouth and stitch it up.

The first side effect listed for Prednisone is facial swelling. Not even buried in the back, it’s right on top, as though the pharmacist has the same sense of humor I do. The rest read like a recipe for an elderly serial killer: increased blood sugar, weight gain, infections, mental confusion, blurred vision, peptic ulcer, painful hips, osteoporosis, joint pain, cataracts, mouth sores, avascular necrosis, depression, mania, anxiety, insomnia and long-term migraines.

My father drove me to the operation. I inhaled the gas and went under and woke up six hours later on my bed and ran to the sink and spat a mouthful of blood and cotton balls. Dad heard me moaning and came downstairs with water and my Prednisone and super-Acetaminophen. Unable to use mouthwash, or even the mouthwash motion of swishing water around and sucking my cheeks in and out, I resorted to tilting my head back, filling it like a cup with water, rolling my neck around and tilting forward, spilling pink out of it and down the drain. Once I regained my senses I looked at dad and he was shaking his head and said he couldn’t believe my post-op bedside manner. He regaled the story with equal joy and terror.

Dad told me that while he was waiting for me to be done with the operation, he read a magazine and helped a woman comfort her teenage daughter, who was the appointment following mine.

“It’s ok Nicole; everybody gets their wisdom teeth out! You’ll be just fine, sweetie!”

“Yeah, my kid’s in there gettin’ his done now and you’ll see when he comes out, they give you a bunch of painkillers so it doesn’t hurt at all. You’re just really sleepy; thank God you didn’t do it when I was your age and they kept you awake through the whole thing.”

Dad and Mrs. Nicole’s Mom spent the better part of an hour calming her down before the nurse called dad and said I was finished.

So I was so doped up they rolled me out in a god-damn wheelchair. I kept scratching my cheeks where, inside, the stitches itched like ants were crawling in my jaw. The nurse was afraid by scratching my cheeks, the inside of my cheeks would rub a stitch loose and they’d have to start over, so she kept pulling my hands away from my face. In turn, I tried to say to her “I understand your concern, ma’am, but my face is itching like crazy and when I got my tattoo I found that by scratching the itchy skin with the BACK of my fingernail instead of the cuticle, I could relieve the itching without causing any problems. Shouldn’t a similar principle apply here? Please, leave me be.”

What came out was me slapping her hands and saying “Qu-fugn-touch-me-fuckin bitch! Goddam face!”

By the time I got to dad, he tried introducing me to Nicole. She squeaked out a nervous, awkward hello and I lifted up my head and smiled, at which point a couple ounces of blood came pouring out my mouth, down my face and onto my shirt. She screamed and we left.

I tried to talk to dad on the way home and he held me up and walked me to bed. I insisted on going down the stairs backwards, and when we got to my room I told him I had to pee by grabbing my crotch and going “Fsssssshhhh.” He was peeling back the covers on my bed and told me to go ahead and try to walk to the bathroom.

So I guess I pulled it out and tried to go on the floor, but before I could he again came to my rescue and walked me to the toilet. I couldn’t go, thank you Diphenhydramine and Dextromethorphan, and we walked to my computer next to my bed so I could start a playlist of music to listen to when I woke up stuck in bed. I couldn’t click the “Play” button to save my life, so dad took care of it but I kept trying to click things anyway. Eventually he lost his patience and gently pushed me backwards and I fell into bed and passed out, not before asking why my shirt was covered in blood.

The night of the operation I was on a strict tomato soup diet and by the morning after I knew something was wrong. I’d taken my Prednisone and hyper-Acetaminophen and I felt like every time I ate, I was swallowing hot coals. By the third day, a Friday, I couldn’t get through a meal without crying and we called the doctor. He said to come in Monday and he’d take a look.

The first thing he noticed was that my holes hadn’t healed correctly. They were four giant open wounds like craters in my jaw that kept bleeding and so he took a sharp metal rod with a hole at the end, put a pea-sized gob of what looked like fish paste on it and crammed it into one of the holes. It was one of the most excruciating feelings of my life.

Then he did it to the other three holes and agreed to look at my throat.

Apparently the steroids were causing an extreme acid reflux reaction. One week and another bottle of vanilla milkshake-smelling antacids later, I could eat again.

As I got older, my medicine cabinet filled out. What once contained only a toothbrush and a shaver was, by college, home to those and four over-the-counter medications and growing. As I look at it now, it’s doubled again and I see all my new little orange bottles standing like soldiers in a row.

The label cuddling the orange plastic of the first little orange bottle says “JEFFREY BOWMAN.” Underneath that it says “Famotodine,” followed by its dosage (20mg) and its instructions: TAKE 1 TABLET BY MOUTH TWICE A DAY. It treats my peptic ulcer disease, since my H2 Histamine receptor built up a resistance to Cimetidine, which was a predecessor to Famotodine. As it turns out, one or both can cause gynecomastia in men. Gynecomastia is generally referred to as “man boobs.” I do like breasts on women, but I’m not sure I’m ready to have a pair of my own.

These antihistamines can also cause headache, dizziness, constipation or diarrhea (again).

The next bottle says “Hydrochlorothiazide.” Underneath that it describes its dosage (50 mg) and its instructions follow (Take 1 Tablet Every Day). Hydrochlorothiazide is used to treat high blood pressure (150/90). Adverse effects felt subsequently are more complicated than others.

First is that it inhibits the kidneys’ ability to retain water. It is a diuretic, which is like a sponge but instead of staying in the sponge, water just gets pissed out all the time. Finally, some entrapment: I’ve got antihistamines that cause difficulty urinating and one pill to make it fly out of me like a broken fire hydrant.

Next is a wild rollercoaster thrill ride of levels of various elements in my body: Hypokalmeia, Hypomagnesemia, Hyperuricemia, Hyperlipidemia and Hypercalcaemia; which are low potassium, low magnesium, high uric acid, high lipids and high calcium.

That last one, Hypercalcaemia, is detected by doctors from the groans, moans, bones and stones. Groans are from constipation, meaning you sit on the toilet and groan all day. The moans are psychotic noise you make from MORE side effects (including depression, confusion and anorexia)…I think that means they’re side effects of a side effect of a side effect. Bone pain and kidney stones round out the list of hypercalcaemic adverse effects.

From that point, Hydrochlorothiazide’s side effects diminish in interest, providing us only with photosensitivity to keep us from getting bored and skimming the rest of the package. So if you see me in the streets and I’ve got a bad case of borderline-vampirism and I’m shouting insane gibberish and I look like my body is low on potassium, we all know who to blame. Blood pressure meds, I’m looking in your direction…

Hydrochlorothiazide is the second soldier in line.

The third bottle says “Sertraline.” Underneath that it describes its dosage (50mg) and its instructions follow (Take 1 Tablet Every Day). These are my little blue ovular friends who help with my depression and anxiety.

Though it may be hard to stay chipper and calm as Sertraline may cause nausea, ejaculation failure, insomnia, diarrhea (and again) and decreased libido. Apparently it’s up to you whether potentially losing the ability to chase women and ejaculate will make you less depressed than whatever was bothering you with a healthily-operating sex drive.

Finally in my platoon of little orange sense-makers is Alprazolam, bringing in the rear at 0.50mg apiece to be taken in doses of 1 or 2 pills every day (“You can do 3 or 4 if you want though,” the doctor told me) as needed for panic attacks and anxiety.

Alprazolam may cause me to feel euphoric and disinhibited accompanied with hallucinations. At long last, side effects I can live with. Sadly, this peak may be watered down by suicidal ideation, urinary retention (son of a bitch, will I ever crack the porcelain again?), decreased libido, increase in appetite and anterograde amnesia. That last one is what the guy in Christopher Nolan’s breakthough film Memento had where he couldn’t remember anything after contracting it. Alprazolam is the final soldier on the frontlines between who I am off medication who I am on medication.

The ultimate irony, then, is how healthy I was as a child and how sick I felt, as opposed to how sick I could make myself now just to feel better from other sicknesses I already have. I used to jump out of bed and go outside and play all day, and now it takes 12 pills a morning to cure a hangover, make my heart stop beating like a drum, kill my panic attacks and make my hands stop shaking.

But at least I have insurance.