George's Air Supply

I first met George the weekend my mother came to visit me for a shoe shopping, um, I mean, business trip right after I had moved to Baltimore. We were eating at a restaurant called Mt. Washington Tavern, on the outskirts of the city. The restaurants claim to fame, among other things, is that the chandeliers date back to 1889. That used to be impressive until I bought my house, built in 1890.

Anyway, we were at the bar waiting for a table when my mother was assaulted by this red headed Irish guy named George. He tried to buy her a drink, hit on her, etc. He was there with some colleagues who were all reporters for Fox news. He dropped that fact on me as if I would find it impressive. He didn't believe me when I told him I didn't have a TV and didn't know what Fox was (I thought it was a sitcom, which, it sort of is, except some people don't realize that because it doesn't have a laugh track). His colleagues eventually dragged him out of the bar and then my mother and I were seated at our table.

We were seated in a booth right against a window so we could see the main thoroughfare, and were just about to start on our salads when we heard a loud thunk. We both looked over to the window to see George with his face smashed against the glass, speaking incomprehensibly, partially because of the glass and partially because of the booze. His friends pulled him off the side of the building, and our window, so he proceeded to make an ass of himself on the sidewalk. At one point when I went to the ladies room my mom made contact with George and said something along the lines of "although I'm not interested my daughter is single and just moved here - maybe you should take her out sometime".

I wasn't George's type but he did make a few obligatory calls, which I didn't return, until the day he called and said he had free tickets to see Cats but didn't want to go and did I want the free tickets? I accepted the tickets, as well as others to see Beethoven's Fidelo and Ninth, Cabaret, Chicago, and a string of other shows. He got the tickets free for his job but never went because he found shows boring. I decided I at least owed him dinner and we went to dinner at a restaurant called An Poitin where his twin brother worked. Free tickets and free food - George was turning out to be one of the best friends my mother has ever found for me.

George's twin brother had a kidney removed in an attempt to save George's dad. George's dad lived for a few years after getting the new kidney before succumbing to whatever illness it was that he had (I didn't pry to find out). Whenever George and his brother were fighting George's brother would grab the side where the kidney was removed and say "it's hurting".

The kidney was a weird issue between the brothers. They both got tested to see if they were an acceptable tissue type for the transplant. If you volunteer to do this, just for future reference, and you are the right type, you can still say you don't want to be a donor and the doctor tells your family you weren't a match. So George's brother always suspected George was too much of a wimp to get his kidney taken out and told the doctor to say he wasn't a match. The fact that George and his brother were almost identical twins did cast a shadow of doubt on George's story, but seeing how much it hurt George to even joke about it, I know he would have given anything to help his father.

So, the point of this story: one night I met George and his brother out at An Poitin for my free Friday dinner. George was in pain and said his stomach was killing him. He was sure he had an ulcer. As I plowed through my dinner George's pain got worse and worse. The owner of the bar brought George back to a private room to lie down. An hour later he said the pain was excruciating, so I agreed to take him to the hospital.

If you know nothing about downtown Baltimore you have no idea what I was signing up for. Special Forces train in UM Baltimore because it's one of the few places in the US where they will experience gun shot wounds similar to what they will experience in Iraq.

We waited for hours to see a doctor. I cradled George's head in my lap and tried to wipe the spit off his mouth before it landed on my jeans. We finally were brought back to see a doctor 6 hours after arrival. He put George on a gurney and whisked him off for tests. The whole time I kept reminding myself how many free tickets he had given me, because the last place I wanted to be on a Friday was the emergency room of a city hospital. As the hours crept on the population of the hospital was slowly getting scarier.

Finally they brought George into this room that had 20 beds separated by blue curtains hanging from the ceiling. There were women crying because their boyfriends were shot. Women crying because their boyfriends beat them. Men crying because their friends were dying of overdoses. And then me and George, the whitest white people ever. But George swore his pain was as bad as the gunshot victims' pain, and I believed him.

The doctor strolled in around 230 in the morning. "What have we got here?" he asked. George, with tears welling in his eyes, explained his pain. The doc looked at the blood tests, scans, and x-rays. He could find nothing wrong. Wondering if it might be some early stage appendicitis he told George to lie flat while the doctor pushed on his stomach trying to pinpoint the spot where the pain was coming from. As the doctor put his hands on the lower right side of George's abdomen and pushed, George emitted the fart to end all farts. It rang through the entire emergency room and seem to last as long as a fire drill. If the walls of Jericho had still been standing, this fart would have knocked them down. It even silenced the gang bangers in the room with us.

George felt instantly better, and was released from the hospital. I was not allowed to tease him about saying he was going to die due to a fart. I tried to stay friends with him but couldn't face him without laughing, especially at inappropriate moments. He stopped calling me and offering me free tickets and then I started school and that was that...