Stay Woke

I heard a UFC podcast once, the host said coming out of a chokehold-induced blackout is something like euphoria. These fighters, they get caught in a triangle or rear naked and wake up thinking they were at the disco.

Wondering where the party’s at.

A good chokehold can put a person out in just 7 seconds. You can kill someone with a chokehold in under a minute.

Me, I’ve been gulping oxygen for 30 years now. Storing it up just in case.

The first time it happened to me, I was in Sunday School. Watt was the Sunday School teacher, Watt the drummer, Watt who always referred to his wife as ‘the beautiful Miz Russell’. We were learning about Jesus’ blood, how it washes us clean, and Watt the drummer, the police detective, he ran out of lesson early.

Twenty-five unruly sixth-graders cooped up in a tight room, you’ll do anything to keep the peace.

Watt with the laughing eyes, Watt the time-killer, he says, “Why don’t you kids tell me about a time when you bled?”

Hearing that UFC podcast, I’m reminded of the scene in The Prestige where Michael Caine tells someone he’d heard of a sailor who was swept overboard, nearly drowned. The man had said it was like going home. Later, though, Michael Caine gets pressed and admits, yeah, that was a lie. Actually, the man had said it was agony.

You have to wonder how long the party lasts for those UFC guys.

Watt found out that day that the only thing worse than twenty-five unruly sixth-graders cooped up in a tight room is twenty-four wide-eyed sixth-graders all staring at one sixth-grader passed out cold in the next row of chairs.

That sixth-grader was me.

I wasn’t the first to go out cold at my church. We were a recovering Charismatic congregation, you still had a few holdovers who’d get slain when things started moving. For modesty’s sake, you draped a blanket over them, like you do with a dead body.

I was the first to pass out from a weak stomach, though. The Lord moves in mysterious ways.

Nowadays, at dinner parties, I’m always thinking two steps ahead of the conversation, steering away from gruesome topics before they even come up. The rest of the dinner guests are pawns in my little game called Keep Conscious. Stay Woke.

I’m better than I was but I’m still not perfect. I’ve passed out in front of restaurants, along the sides of highways. Almost got run over by an 18-wheeler on Route 85 because some girl in the car I was driving wouldn’t shut up about her tourist friend who said the wrong thing in Spanish while studying abroad in Peru and got stabbed in the neck with a shard from a wine bottle. Dark red blood flowing like a good Cabernet.

Could have been my blood if I hadn’t been able to stagger a few steps off the white line.

You read the news these days, it makes you want to stab yourself in the neck. Killer cops, Proud Boys jamming dildos up their butts. Our country getting 150 years older overnight.

The pounding in my head when I pull up Vox, it’s like when I flip the channel and catch a war movie. Limbs in the air like flying saucers, guys holding their guts in.

It always starts for me with pounding in the head. Then comes the tingly fingers, the chills, the panic. If I’m lucky I can get to an empty bathroom, lay down on the grody-ass tile of a Carrabba’s. Stick my legs up in the air like I’m training to be a Proud Boy myself, coax the blood back down. I was in and out of the john so often one company dinner I had to tell everyone I’d been born without a prostate.

Back at home that night, I realized I’d maybe fucked up a little. Sure, I hadn’t hit the deck in front of my team, but I’d already seen Lee from Accounting snapping an imaginary doctor’s glove over his hand. Index finger jammed out at me like a ramrod.

Staggering out at church that day, I’d hidden my head under a coat. It was the dead of summer, but I hadn’t wanted anyone to notice that my pallid face. It worked. Everyone just noticed the dumbass kid who didn’t know how to put on a coat.

Makes you wonder if maybe you should just grin and bear it, you know. Drop the sloppy icing of lies and own up to the fear, the redlining, the corruption. Own up that some of us never got invited to the party.

Watt the poster child, Watt the Fountain of Youth, he owned up. Called me up on the phone that afternoon to apologize. Thrust all the candy he’d gotten for the class into my hands as I staggered out.

I had my own private party that night, the way God does every few years on Election Night, depending on who you ask. Purple mountain majesty, purple wine spritzing from the carotid, the ragged gash separating the red blood from blue.

Enough unruly people cooped up in a tight country, you’ll do anything to keep the peace, keep the lights on.

And so I store up oxygen with each breath, my stomach distended like a starving child’s.