A revised excerpt from my upcoming (or uncoming?) novel Normal Tastes.
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“I remember this song,” Dr. Kip says.
“Me too,” Alan says.
“You know you’re old when the music you listened to in high school is now classic rock, ha ha ha.”
“Ha ha.”
Alan’s lying face-down, in his customary polo shirt and khakis, on the examination table, his face inside a donut-shaped pleather headrest, his head gently clasped between Dr. Kip’s hands, in the year Two Thousand and Seventeen. The doctor’s actually named Kip Molina-Alvarez, but he tells all his patients just to call him Dr. Kip. His thick gray hair has not a strand out of place, probably due to several layers of industrial-strength lacquer, judging from the extreme shininess. His glasses feature round tinted lenses and sparkly brown frames. His floral long-sleeved shirt has the first few buttons unbuttoned, revealing a gold-colored—maybe actual gold—necklace hanging above a hairless—maybe shaved or lasered—chest. And his tight black jeans show off his, you gotta admit, impressive rear, firm and compact, no noticeable droop. He looks like a geriatric gigolo in Alan’s opinion. Geriatric gigolo—a pretty good line, also in Alan’s opinion. “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” from the British progressive rock band Yes, plays on the Eighties Hits channel on a laptop next to the table, the song encouraging you to overcome your loneliness by getting out on the market and actually making an effort to get laid, advice that works well for successful rock stars and probably almost as well for successful chiropractors with great asses.
“So did you like this song in high school?” Dr. Kip asks.
“Uh-huh,” Alan replies.
“Me too, but it took a while. I was a huge Yes fan, a Yes-man so to speak. I owned all their albums, I loved all the stuff they did, but I absolutely hated this song when I first heard it on the radio. I thought they’d sold out just so they could have something I considered far worse than the bubonic plague: a hit record. You don’t want too many people to like what you like, right? But the more I listened, the more that song grew on me. I loved its drum loop most of all. Buh buh buh buh buh, buh-buh-buh-buh-buh! Having normal tastes for a change made me feel, I dunno, transgressive? Ha ha ha.” His fingers press down with increased pressure. “Take a deep breath. Exhale.” He sharply twists Alan’s head to the left with a loud crack. “Again, take a deep breath. Exhale.” He sharply twists Alan’s head to the right with a louder crack. “You all right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
●
Two weeks earlier, Alan’s wife Nikki asked him to accompany her on her daily power-walk around the neighborhood. She’d never asked him this before. He’d never power-walked before, either, and certainly didn’t want to start in twenty-degree weather. But she insisted, grabbing one of his love handles and saying “You’ve grown a little squishy, no offense.” He almost grabbed one of her tits and said “Well, you’ve grown a little droopy, no offense,” but she, the fitness fanatic, might have gotten so angry, she might have once again done something he had always dreaded as long as he’d known her—namely, close up shop for a couple days or longer. Cyberporn has its charms, ha ha, but—call him old-school—he prefers real-life access. Plus, though her tits had started drooping a little, he still actually greatly valued them, to say the least. So he put on his coat, cap, scarf, boots, and gloves and walked out the door with her.
Half a minute later, he was flat on his back. He’d slipped on an icy spot on the sidewalk in front of his house. Lying there, every pain-receptor going full-tilt, he regretted not having poured salt on that area himself earlier that day. Instead, he’d ordered his seventeen-year-old son Zach to do it, and Zach must have done a half-assed job, the same way he does everything else. When will I ever learn? Alan thought. When will that fucking kid ever learn?
That night, Alan and Nikki walked into their son’s bedroom. Zach lay on his bed, playing on his widescreen TV the videogame Gunner II: Shock and Awesome, in which the cyborg mercenary Gunner—just Gunner—blows away reptilian humanoid terrorists in the fictitious Middle-Eastern country of Bluddistan.
“We need to talk,” Nikki said.
Zach pressed pause on his controller.
“Sure, Mom, what about?” he asked.
“What do you think?” Alan said.
“Oh yeah.” Pause. “So how are you feeling, Dad?”
“Nice of you to ask. Well, I’m pretty banged up, though I don’t think I fractured anything. Oops, I mean, I don’t think you caused me to fracture anything. Plus you didn’t cause me to break my neck and die, so, hooray.”
“Sorry. I’ll be more careful next time.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I will, Dad.”
“I believe you,” Nikki said. “But you still need to face the consequences of your actions. That’s why your dad and I have decided that you’re grounded for a week, starting now. That means no driving. You can’t go anywhere except to and from school, on the school bus. And no allowance, either. And no videogames. Do you understand?”
Zach sighed. “Yes, Mom.”
“Good. You know, your dad and I don’t like punishing you for this, but—”
“Actually, I do,” Alan said. “I love punishing you for this. I wanted to punish you much more severely. Hell, I wanted to tie you to a post and give you a good flogging.”
“Okay, dear,” Nikki said.
“It’s not okay. He nearly killed me.” Alan looked him right in the eyes. His mother’s eyes. “You’re grounded for a month with no allowance. And not only do you lose your videogames, but you lose the rest of your electronic devices as well.” Alan started waving his hand. “Goodbye, phone. Goodbye, TV. Goodbye, computer.”
“I need my computer for school,” Zach said.
“For porn, you mean.”
“Dear,” Nikki said.
“Don’t ‘dear’ me. He’s gotten away with his shit for far too long.”
“Look, I know you’re angry, but—”
“But what? He said he was sorry for nearly killing me?”
“I really am sorry, Dad,” Zach said.
“Liar. You’re grounded for two months.”
“Dad—”
“No, you’re grounded forever. I’ll chain you up in the basement. I’ll feed you nothing but bread and water, and not gluten-free bread, either.”
“We need to discuss this in private,” Nikki said.
“Oh, don’t bother, Mom,” Zach said.
They looked accusingly at Alan. Two against one. How familiar.
He agreed to the lenient punishment. He was pussy-whipped, goddammit—the same reason he didn’t say a word two days later, when he walked past Zach’s room and saw the videogames had returned. And not a word the following day, either, when the kid asked Nikki if he could borrow her car so he could drive to the mall, or so he said. She owned a larger and nicer car than Alan did. Of course she said yes, the kid could borrow the car, the goddamn car, the goddamn fucking pro-environment, save the fucking ozone layer 2016 Lexus ES Hybrid, giving him the keys right in front of Alan. “Thank you, Mom,” the kid said so politely, you wanted to puke. At least he didn’t ask for money, though that could have meant she’d unilaterally resumed paying his allowance. Who cares, as long as that kid didn’t ask him for money. Let her support that leech for a change.
●
Dr. Kip presses his palms between Alan’s shoulder blades. “Deep breath. Exhale.”
A push forward. Crack.
Since the accident, Alan’s back has hurt like hell. It doesn’t matter if his wife withholds sex or not, since he’s in no condition to fuck her or anyone else, plus he’s had slightly fewer Internet jerk-off sessions. The electric heating pad and Extra-Strength Tylenol haven’t helped much, and he didn’t want to see his primary care physician, who’d probably prescribe Vicodin or some other opioid, causing Alan to get addicted and lose everything and turn into one of those ope-fiends who lived in the white-trashy part of town. So Alan thought he might as well try a chiropractor. At least his health plan covered it.
●
The doctor’s hands rest diagonally on Alan’s lower back in opposite directions, the right hand atop the left. “Deep breath. Exhale.”
He pushes forward. CRACK.
“Relax right here for me,” he says.
Alan does. For the first time in weeks, his back has stopped hurting. Okay, mostly stopped hurting. Another session or two, and he could start having sex again, either with his wife or his hand or both. No, on second thought, maybe this is temporary. Maybe all that cracking just released endorphins, and after those wear off, he’ll once again feel like a goddamn—
“Owner of the Kwik-E-Mart / Much better than the Homer and the Marge and Bart.”
“Why’d you decide to become a chiropractor?” Alan asks, not that he cares. He just wants the doctor to quit singing along to that Yes song.
“Well, when I was seventeen, I injured my back playing killerball with the guys.”
“Really? I used to play that myself.”
“Then you know what it’s like.” Killerball’s like American football, only with enhanced physical contact. Anything goes, short of actual killing. You keep playing either until you get bored, or until no one’s ambulatory. “So—it’s, what, the ninth quarter? We’d stopped keeping track long ago. My team’s behind, seventy-seven to nothing. Hey, we can still win this. I’m a tackler, you could say a tackling dummy considering how well I’ve played, ha ha ha. But this time, I somehow have the ball, and I’m running across the field, an empty lot, avoiding my opponents, getting closer and closer to the end zone, just a few feet away—until Lonnie Devin, this pituitary giant I barely know from high school, rams into me, knocking me down. Not a scratch on him, but my back’s totally messed up. Bent forward. I’m literally turned into a knuckle-dragger. I can’t walk more than two steps without excruciating pain. This goes on for weeks. The doctors think I’ll need surgery on my spine, and even then they think I’ll have limited movement for the rest of my life. So as a last resort, my parents take me to a chiropractor named Dr. Cal. They’d heard good things about him, they told me. The second I saw him, I knew he was a top-notch medical professional, ’cause he had one heck of a permatan. Ha ha ha. Anyway, that first appointment, Dr. Cal fiddles with my spine—CRACK! CRACK! CRRAAACK! And long story a little longer, ha ha ha, I can move my back again, with the pain mostly gone. A few more sessions, and I’m not hurting at all. And I’m standing ramrod straight, something I’d never done before as your typical slouchy teenager. So you can guess my experience with Dr. Cal had a significant influence on my choice of career. Relieving pain, fixing postures—I was hooked at seventeen.”
Dr. Kip pauses.
“And that’s my origin story,” he says.
Copyright © 2024 by David V. Matthews
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 