Maladjusted
Updated: May 31
On the morning I finally acknowledged my back pain, I’d already been waking up stiff for months. Now look at me, almost forty and lying face up on a massage table for all the wrong reasons.
The harness that strangles my waist is roped to a pulley above me. When the assistant finishes buckling me in, she pulls at the loose end of the rope so my hips elevate and the rest of me hangs like a towel.
“How’s that feel?” She turns to face me and dyed curls bounce off her cheeks.
“It hurts but I like it,” I say. She chuckles and sets the timer for eight minutes. I stare at her lower body as she turns away.
My eyes are closed when doctor Dan walks by moments later. He checks the tension on the rope by flicking his fingers against it. The vibration makes my body feel like a bowl of alphabet soup; my bones are the letters swimming around.
“Anthony! Comfy?” He talks like he’s running an auction.
“Sure am.” I notice I've been clenching my teeth.
“Five more minutes!” He tells me. He walks away and I hear him greet someone else coming in, “There he is!”
After the first session with doctor Dan I walk home hoping to get some rest. I haven’t been sleeping all that great and that’s being generous. Yes, it’s my lower back but it’s also my new upstairs neighbor. She wakes me between four and five in the morning when she gets in; a woman of the night, no doubt. No judgement from me, except she’s fucking up my sleep harder than she’s fucking her clientele.
In our hundred year old building there’s an ache to every movement. The creaking of the stairs, the tossing of her shoes, the thud of her weight collapsing into the bed above me. All of it is enough for me to want to lose my shit on her, but that’s not even the worst of it. That would be her dogs, a German Shepherd and a Rottweiler that spend their nights stomping above me and accosting the passersby from their window.
Tonight the SUV picks her up at six thirty, clogging our narrow one way street. It looks like it came from the future compared to the crap parked on our block. From my window I see her walk out of our building in a long coat. A driver in a suit exits the vehicle, greets her with a kiss on the cheek, and opens the rear door for her. It’s the only angle I’ve seen of her so far and I’m not impressed, but she’s high end to someone, I suppose.
The second she’s gone the concerto begins. The dogs howl like they know someone else is about to hump her. It gets so loud I even see the drunks that loiter at our corner give up their real estate.
I go to sit on the side of my couch that still has both of its legs and try to drown the noise in a glass of whiskey. This shit’s been going on for a week now. I’ve thought about calling the landlord but I know I’m gonna need a break on rent soon, so I just sit there while they bark my fucking brains out.
***
My second visit to doctor Dan is a sleepless week later. He lays me on his table and twists my hips and shoulders in opposite directions so my joints explode.
“You’re wound tight, tiger!” Next, he takes my chin in his gorilla hands and cracks my neck before he can say “relax”.
“How many people have you killed doing that?” I joke.
“Today?” He fires back. His squared jaw barely moves. He works on me for half the time as last week, then calls on his assistant to come grab me.
“This is the part I’ve been looking forward to,” I tell her. She lays me down and checks my file before buckling me in.
“Well good! Today we’ll hang you for ten minutes,” she says. I notice her long acrylics are red this week.
“I love your nails by the way,” I tell her. It’s a line I’ve workshopped.
“Aw thank you!” She looks at them surprised as if they’d just grown in, then pulls the rope to lift me at a higher angle than last week. “Enjoy,” she smiles.
“Hey tiger, you ever try exercising? Doctor Dan walks by moments later.
“Yeah, of course,” I respond, kinda offended. It’s been a few years but I know my body retains a remnant or two from my gym days.
“Oh. Good.” He smirks as if it’s the most surprising thing he’s ever heard. “When I get injured I stick to the Peloton myself,” he continues, “I did 5 miles this morning. I got this hot German instructor just beating the shit out of me… Lord she’s sexy…” He squeezes the rope as he fantasizes. “Anyway, three more minutes then the pulse treatment.”
When I’m done with everything I limp to the receptionist to settle the co-pay. She rings me up for the standard thirty, plus an additional sixty. When I ask why, she says it’s for the pulse session, which had been free the first week. Money is tight, but I just pay and let it slide.
On the walk home my phone is buzzing non-stop. I try to guess which bill collector it is before looking, but it's my mother. I should’ve known since Thanksgiving is around the corner. I haven’t answered her calls since the layoffs and I let it go to voicemail once again. She and her husband, the pastor, have enough ammo against me; no wife, no kids, no mortgage, and I’m supposed to just hand them another bullet over dinner? “Hey dear, could you pass the salt and a 9 millimeter?” No thanks.
Besides, what am I supposed to say? That after ten years of going along with every bullshit office trend from the secret Santa’s to the pronouns, I got shown the door? And for what? So an investor somewhere can afford dick surgery? I’m sure that would go over well. They’ll be fine without me. They’ll have the pastor’s kids there, all with their perfectly straight and healthy backs.
By the time I get home my neighbor’s already gone, and the dogs are going ape-shit chasing after a squeaky toy. I pour myself a drink in the kitchen and I'm able to ignore them until they get into a tug-of-war over it. At one point it sounds like they're taking turns body slamming one another off a table.
After a few more somersaults I lose it and end up throwing my phone at the ceiling. I grab the broom next to me and pound the handle against the roof like I'm stabbing a piñata. That really gets them going and now we're at war; they bark, and I strike. But in the middle of battle I knock over my glass and it shatters on the floor. "Fuck!" I yell as I storm up the flight of stairs to their door.
They sense me and run over. At first I just stand there, hoping my presence is enough to somehow impart reason, but they just don't know when to fucking stop. I kick the bottom of their door then kneel to taunt them through the pinewood. "What are you gonna do, stupid? What the fuck you gonna do?"
They scratch their nails against the floor, desperate to dig a hole in the tiles to come snatch my neck on the other side. We go bark for bark. I’m not proud of it, but it’s cathartic. After a minute my throat shreds so I have to stop, but they keep going. On my hands and knees, it dawns on me that of the three of us I'm the only one looking like a bitch. I stand and walk back down, defeated. They don't relent for another couple hours, and when they finally settle, I manage to doze off in my living room.
At five, I'm awakened to the cavalry marching down the stairs for their pre-dawn walk. When they return, I'm in the bathroom hurrying a piss so I can put an end to all of this, but before I'm done I hear water running, then the sound of feet stepping into the tub above.
For a moment I think she's singing, and I get heated at how oblivious she is to the ulcer they're all causing me, but when the faucet shuts off I realize she's sobbing. I decide to fill my own tub and let it be for now. It sounds like we both got fucked hard enough today.
***
By week three I’ve picked up on the pattern. My back feels fine for twenty-four hours after a session with doctor Dan, but then it’s back to business.
“There he is!” He shouts the moment I’m through the door. Today he looks sharper than ever with his brown hair combed to the side, and a fresh shave. He shakes my hand and his calluses scratch against my palms. “How ya feeling?” He asks, but when I tell him about my observation he laughs it off. “It’s a process, tiger. You gotta hang in there!” He assures me, then shakes his head in disappointment when I don’t react to his dumb joke.
I lie on his table and he folds my arms across my chest. “Hey tiger, your insurance called. They want to charge the next four sessions at once to save on processing fees. Breathe in for me.” He drives my folded elbows into my torso and the knots on my back pop. “They’ve all been doing that lately,” he says.
Before I have time to respond he calls his assistant over and I’m being led down the production line. Today her nails are purple and I decide to throw out some bait.
“Those are a nice color on you.” I tell her, pointing to her hands.
“Aw! Thank you.” She straps me in and grabs my bare thigh to place a cushion under my legs. “Seeing family for the holiday?”
“No, I just wanna relax,” I say.
“Me too. Just you and the misses?” She asks. When I tell her I’m single, she takes her shot. “Need company?”
And that’s the thing I like about the older women I’ve had; If they want it, there’s not much dancing around it. She’s got a few years on me that she covers with eyeliner, but I don’t mind, she’s a handsome woman with a plump, post-yoga body. I leave the clinic with her card and a cell phone number written on the back; Ivette Sark - Licensed Masseuse, Integrative Treatment.
After the session I walk home feeling better. My back is loose and it seems that maybe, just maybe, there’s still something redeemable in me. Something a woman might notice. Back in the day I used to always get my pick of the litter but nowadays I’m lucky to catch a stray. It’s fucked up really, how quickly I went from getting looks to getting called sir.
Now back at my building, I’m in the mailroom cycling through dozens of card offers when I hear heavy stomps approaching from the outside. She enters the foyer with her oversized headphones clamped over her ears. The dogs catch my scent before she sees me and they erupt – barking, snarling, baring their teeth.
“Hey there,” I say, keeping a distance. She makes sense of me when she sees the wad of mail in my hands. “I live downstairs. Anthony.”
“Shush!” She’s struggling with the demons, but one good pull makes them settle. "Sorry.” She slides off her headphones and parts the dark curtain of Aztec hair that covers her face, “Amanda,” she says.
She’s so beautiful it hurts. Her face is like a well thought-out garden; every detail working to complement the others. Harmony. She has deep brown eyes a few shades darker than her olive skin. Her eyebrows are plush and black as her hair. Her pink lips are generous, and they match the God-given blush on her cheeks. I think of my bank account and doubt that I could afford her.
“Nice to meet you, and these must be my buddies from upstairs.” I force a smile at them.
“Blue and Ebony,” she introduces them, smiling in admiration like they came out of her womb. She nods at me then down towards them as if inviting me to join in. I take one step forward and they bark.
“Hey, I’ve actually been meaning to introduce myself,” I say, remembering the mission at hand. “Um…please don’t take it the wrong way but while you’re gone they can be a little loud.”
“I mean… they’re just puppies…you know that right?” She stares at me.
“For sure! And they’re adorable… I was just wondering if maybe you could keep them in their crates while you’re gone? They stomp around a lot, it’s been hard to sleep.”
“These are my children!” Her eyebrows shoot up into pyramids then plummet into a frown. “You want me to torture them!?” she continues, and for a second I’m convinced I’m the one being unreasonable.
I want to de-escalate, I look for her nails but she’s wearing gloves. “I didn’t mean to offend you, I just…” but before I can plead my case any further she’s holding the door open for the dogs to walk out.
“You want quiet? How about you move to the fucking suburbs!” She slams the door but I can still hear her call me an asshole from outside.
I turn back towards the mailboxes. It’s a row of three mounted onto the wall. The landlord never left keys for them so when you pull on one, they all slide open. I go through her slot and grab a stash. Upstairs, I start to piece her together; Amanda Gomez. Twenty-nine. Blood donor. Size C breast cups. Vitamin D deficiency, and allergic to penicillin. I daydream that we’ll start seeing each other. In my mind we hit it off, and escape somewhere south of the border where I could make peace with the dogs, and even learn to like avocados.
For the following week I trace her movements. She wakes at eleven but stays in bed until she poops at noon. She showers and I follow suit below, then we have tethered coffee dates in our kitchens. After lunch, she takes the dogs out, then hangs around playing music until she gets picked up. It’s not the world's most intimate relationship, but it’s what we’ve got for now.
***
I spend Thanksgiving day-drinking wine at Ivette’s tiny apartment. She’s one of those women who keeps crystals, incense, and an old mutt around, but we don’t discuss any of them, and for that, I’m grateful.
When night falls we eat pasta and end up in her bedroom. Her dog pants outside her door while we’re going at it, but I’m more distracted by Amanda. I could take care of her, at least as soon as I’m back on my feet. She wouldn’t have to put out any more. I know she doesn’t like to because I’ve heard her crying a couple more times when she gets home.
I’ve been doing my part to start over on the right foot. Last week I left multiple notes on her door. Hey neighbor, my apologies for the other day, would love to chat. Hi Amanda, coffee? Hi friend, here’s my number. But I’ve gotten nothing back. I know she’s seen them because they’re missing when I’ve gone to leave the next.
Two days ago, I followed her into the laundry room in the basement to try and work things out in person, but she just put her palm up and I couldn’t tell if it was a hello or a stop. Either way, she didn’t take her headphones off when I was talking, then she rushed out, even left the dryer half loaded.
Later that day I heard her come back down with the hounds to grab her clothes, and now she always brings them there with her. So out of everyone she sees, I’m who she feels unsafe around? I’m only a threat because I can’t afford her and that’s bullshit.
I bring my focus back to Ivette. The sex is decent, but the way she moans “please” and “thank you” makes me feel like I’m doing charity work. When we’re done I accept her invitation to spend the night, but regret it when she starts going on about the sacred geometry tattoos on her back. I do, however, get a full night’s sleep for the first time all month.
The next morning my back is resentful of the extracurricular activity and Ivette catches me trying to stretch in her living room.
“Think you can hang me today?”
“Oh, Anthony…” she says, and lets the sentence trail. When I get home she texts me a link to an online video series about back pain.
In Back Pain, Volume One, I learn how sleeping face down on a soft bed can curve your spine. After my mother married the pastor, I had to spend my teenage years sleeping on a kid’s mattress laid out on the floor of my new stepbrother’s room. “Don’t ruin this,” she said when I protested. Ruin what? I always wondered, now I know she meant my spine.
When I moved out I didn’t do myself any favors either. I bought a hundred-dollar mattress from a store that also sold discounted fruit and I’ve been passing out face down on it ever since. You’d think the least ol’ Danny boy could’ve done was have the decency to teach me the basics of proper sleep, but no, a charlatan’s favorite tool is deceit.
For the rest of the holiday weekend, I go through the videos and I start getting bombarded with online ads for mattresses. There’s one from a local company promoting their Cyber Monday sale, and after a quick look at their reviews I put two thousand dollars that I can’t afford on my credit card. The next day, a box truck shows up at my apartment as Amanda and company are making their way in.
“Oh hey neighbor,” I say. She doesn’t have headphones on to ignore me.
“Anthony, right?” she asks, and the whole street seems to go silent, even the dogs shut up for once. “Listen, please leave me alone. I’m good, okay?” I stand there quiet, hoping I misheard, but she doubles down. “Got it?” she presses me, and actually waits until I nod before walking away.
The movers take my old mattresses downstairs and set up the new one. They’re joking around in Spanish, which I don’t understand, but I do know what it sounds like when you’re the ass of a joke.
I lie on the new bed and it feels great but I can hardly enjoy it. All I’ve done is be nice and considerate, why can’t she see that? The other day I went through her mail again and scored passport photos that I’ve been carrying in my wallet. I take them out to look at her. She has such a kind face. I doubt that any of the men she sees know this side of her like I do. It’s something I’m proud of.
***
It’s a week later and now that I’m the big four-oh, I’ve decided to be a bit bolder. I have to if I’m gonna get what I deserve during my second act in life. “Happy birthday,” the Indian man at the car rental says, handing me back my ID from behind the counter.
I turn my phone on to plenty of demands and not one congratulations. My mother texted, still pissed about the holiday dinner, is this what I deserve? There’s a voicemail from doctor Dan; “Tiger! We billed you for the missed session this week, you’re not a quitter are you?” Plus a message from my landlord asking for rent.
“Excuse me sir, your card declined.” The man breaks my rumination. I end up having to split the payment between two cards before I leave in a sedan and park at the end of my block and wait for Amanda to come down.
Her chauffeur arrives shortly after and I follow them on the highway for twelve miles, until we pull into a residential neighborhood where each home looks like it was built to outdo the other. From a distance I see her being dropped off at a two-story house. I wait until it gets dark to creep up to the living room window. Inside, I see an old man in a wheelchair. The bags under his eyes seep into the loose skin flapping beneath his chin. He looks like he’s melting.
Amanda’s beside him stirring the contents of a bowl that she feeds him from. A big logo sits on her breast. Things are hazy but I make out At-Home Hospice. I was wrong about her. Now I’m optimistic about us as I knock on the front door. She opens right away like she was expecting someone. At first, she checks her surroundings to reassess where she is, but then instead of saying hi she yells “What the fuck?!” and runs.
“Could we talk for a minute?” I shout as I hear a door slam in another room.
“Delivery for Gomez?” Someone scares the living shit out of me from the sidewalk.
“Sure,” I tell the guy, and grab a bag of food from him.
I’m inside the house now. I take a look around the living room where there’s no family photos on the walls and no holiday decorations, just expensive furniture sitting in front of an empty fireplace. The man in the wheelchair is oblivious as I walk up to him. He just sits there waiting for his next spoonful.
“Hey Amanda… guess what… today’s my birthday!” I say, hoping to score some sympathy points. I hear her muffled voice and even though I’m an expert at it, I can’t make out what she’s saying, but it could be congratulations.
I sit on a couch next to the old man. He doesn’t seem to mind that puree is drooling from his mouth. Is this the best-case scenario? Becoming a rotting sack of skin? I wonder if in his younger days he also had something he fought for, something he held tight to keep from running away. I wonder if his friends wished him happy birthday, if he had a wife and some kids to love. I wonder if he enjoyed his time, or just sat around until there was no more of it to enjoy.
“I’m sorry I complained about your dogs,” I call out to Amanda. I think now I understand her better. Everyone she cares for dies. “By the way, your dinner is here.” I turn around to grab her delivery, and that’s when I notice the blue and red rotating outside.
Next thing I know, I am slammed against the floor. I see a shake and some fries splattered around me like a solar system; then my head hits the rug and I feel a knee pressing against it. “Hey it’s ok,” I say before the lights go out, “I’m her neighbor!”
When I come to, I’m handcuffed in the back of a patrol car. It’s swerving in and out of traffic and I hear the cop telling someone on the radio about a perpetrator. I listen as he describes how they got a distress call from a woman taken hostage at her job site, and it’s only then that I put two and two together.
At the police station, I wait for hours till a detective shows up and asks about my whereabouts for every night of the current week. When I say I can’t remember, he pulls out stills from a security-cam video. The photos are dated from three nights ago and show a man standing outside a clinic. There’s an oversized image of a doctor in a white coat printed on the glass exterior. In the next couple of stills, the man is shown throwing a brick through the doctor’s perfect smile.
The detective shows me a pamphlet from the clinic and asks me if I’m a patient. On the cover, the doctor is grinning, “Those are new” I say, pointing at the glasses perched on doctor Dan’s nose. I wonder if he needs them or just uses them because he thinks they suit him, which they do.
I want to explain how the dogs were being downright maniacal that night. I want to tell him that I was about to pour bleach into their water bowls, but decided to blow off some steam instead. I want to tell him that the real criminal is the doctor, how he’s been ripping me off for weeks while I’m about to get evicted. How I should sue him for malpractice. Instead, I lock eyes with the detective and say nothing.
They book me for home invasion, destruction of property, assault, resisting arrest, and attempted kidnapping. Quite the resume. I’m taken to a cell where there’s a sheet of drywall for a bed and that’s when I start to panic, worrying about how my back is gonna hold up, stressing about the late fee on the rental, and wondering if it’s gonna be awkward the next time I run into Amanda.
