Jer

Note to subscribers: This is a piece about a little work I do with a neighbor. I just wrote to be writing, before I get my next book All My Cults -A Drunken Stumble Toward Enlightenment up and going. Thank you for your continued interest and welcome to all the new peeps who came here through Jeff Norman and Scott Ritter’s cool podcast, Ask the Inspector. LOVE that you’re here.




I’m working for this guy now, Jerry O'Malley, a tough, little guy. I hang out with him a few days a week.

Hey, Siri put on Two and a Half Men. That's Jerry. He is in bed unable to use half his body and brain.

I've got to get stronger after stroke. He says that about 50 times a day.

"You've got the grit of Rocky Balboa, Jer," I tell him.

Sometimes I sing the theme song to that movie when we're doing the feeble march around the kitchen with the walker. It's more for me than him. I have to keep generating enthusiasm.

Cock-sucking mother-fucker he says, apropos of nothing. I wonder if we all have an anger loop in our brains.

What do the Marines say about navigating adversity, Jer?

Adapt, improvise, and overcome. -That’s one of his favorites. When he's in a good mood he says Grace of God, grace of God

I read aloud to him from My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, the brain scientist. She's all grace and mercy, an aloof observer of her own stroke, fascinated like a child by the incapacity. She says ‘Be happy with baby steps.’ Jerry isn’t.

"You should write a book about recovering from your stroke with wonder and aplomb, Jer" I suggest.

Yeah, fuck that. That makes me chuckle.

He does not celebrate the little things. He probably never has. Jerry and his brother, Matt, were developers. They lived large, with projects in Turks and Caicos one minute, and the next, this.

I guess a stroke will force a soul to learn things they weren't going to otherwise. Like patience and acceptance. Whether they like it or not. Just staying un-depressed is a major triumph. I wish he could use my superpower, which is being delightfully funny, but he’s not interested in me.

I ask about his favorite memories.

His eyes brighten when he tells me about standing naked for some reason on the ledge of a building in Germantown with his buddies, also nude. His mother walked by and almost caught them. Even with a stroke, people like it when you ask them to access old memories.

We zone out to TV again. We have watched Two and a Half Men every day for a week. I look at the clock.

"Hey, when's Matt coming back home?"

He's a fucking creep. Fucking jerk off. Stone motherfucking creep. Jerry again. He's always mad at Matt. I think it is some family/money thing.

Stone ass-cheap mother fucker.

"You want a grilled cheese?"

Get me a popsicle.

"Matt said no popsicles."

Stone ass loser.

I get him the popsicle anyway.

Ralph's coming. We're going to work hard. I have to get stronger after stroke. Ralph's a badass. Man of honor. Total gentleman. He's a beast. I need Ralph.

Jerry tells me Ralph's a childhood friend from South Philly. Jerry has an odd loyalty, a brotherliness.

Ralph's a beast.

A big body fills the doorway.

I meet Ralph, a formidable ex-con from some kind of Polish-German stock you mostly find on the right half of America. There are men here whose relatives recently pulled plows, men who are no strangers to quarries and unions and beer. Ralph has legs like carved posts and an animal sexiness. He's my age, 60-something.

It comes up that I'm a comedian. He pretends it's interesting for 3 seconds then parlays the factoid into an opportunity to tell a joke, the only joke he knows.

It is a formulaic, naughty thing involving apple taffy. Ralph is suddenly less sexy to me.

He motions for me to come outside for a minute and I am happy for the break from Jer. Ralph lights a menthol American Spirit and tells me he also had a stroke once.

He flirts in that awkward way a man who spent many years with only men might. He leans into my personal space and gives me some gossip on the low-down about Jerry's kids, who never visit. It's all conspiratorial like we're tight now.

I ask about prison.

"Well, first of all," he rolls up his sweatshirt sleeves "No tattoos. You know what that means in the joint?"

“Uh uh.”

"I never affiliated myself with any gang but the psychos." Now he's sexy again. Just kidding.

He tells me Jerry used to have a crush on this girl named Michelle.

I tell him 'Michelle is waiting for you in a red dress' to motivate him. I could tell he yearns for approval.

"Ah, smart," I say. There's something so 1950s about waiting for a man in a red dress. Probably an image that spent some time with Ralph behind bars.

Ralph is a great trainer. He makes Jerry do things he'd never do for me. With me, he demands his cane. Ralph won't let him use the cane. Jerry rallies with Ralph.

The two men walk. I am reminded of the psychiatrist-turned-guru Ram Dass. who He said that one of the gifts of his stroke was experiencing the kindness from his caretakers.

I watch them, one giant, one diminutive, hobbled each in their own way, helping each other. I am touched.

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