My Left Foot
by John B. Rosenman
No, no, I’m not talking about the sensational movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis in his first Oscar-winning role. I’m talking about my left foot, which until six weeks ago was strictly dependable, except for a weak ankle that necessitated wearing an ankle brace if I engaged in physical exercise. One day I noticed that my left foot hurt. Then it hurt a lot more. Then it got better and lulled me into a false sense of security, because just when it had almost returned to normal, it started to hurt again. The swelling returned, and each day the painful areas shifted. Now it was my toes, now it was the top of my foot, and now the bottom.
Finally, after two weeks of fluctuating discomfort, I went to a clinic. They X-rayed it and the doctor prescribed a pain killer. His best guess: gout, something that had occurred to me. He referred me to a podiatrist, and I went.
About this time, you’re probably wondering if I’m blogging on the wrong site. What does any of this have to do with writing or creativity? To which I say . . . patience.
I hobbled to the podiatrist’s office, had my foot X-rayed, and was led to a room with a padded chair where I waited, my throbbing foot extended like an offering to some sadistic god. After a few minutes, I heard someone in the hall and moments later, footsteps approached. I sighed, expecting a stereotype in a white coat – that is, a middle-aged podiatrist in a rumpled white coat who looked like Edward G. Robinson.
I was wrong.
Beautifully wrong.
Into the room walked a Vision of Loveliness, a Goddess Who Must Be Obeyed. Let me be plain here: to say that MY podiatrist was attractive is like saying Venus is photogenic. Folks, we’re talking Drop-Dead Gorgeous. I swear that within the first few seconds, I actually started to salivate, like Pavlov’s dog.
Then my writer’s brain kicked in. Mixed with my heterosexual proclivities, the result was bizarre or unusual, as it often is with writers, who have a tendency sometimes to see trivial experiences as dramatic or fictional events in which they are the main character or leading actor. Examining my X-rays, my doctor informed me I had Hammer-toe, not gout, and that a dislocated joint explained why one toe was partly looped over the other. She also said that she had received an operation just five days before for that same condition. Here she showed me a delectable bandaged LEFT foot as proof.
Gazing at her exquisite instep, I realized that I’d had a foot fetish all my life and had never known it. What’s more, the fact that she and I shared the same affliction on the same foot, created an instant we-are-made-for-each-other soulmates aura I could not ignore. Never mind that it was completely one-sided and unreciprocated. When, after all, has any writer worth his or her salt let reality derail a satisfying romantic fantasy? When she advised me that my condition would only become worse with time and that I needed to have it fixed, I promptly said, without thinking, “Well, why don’t we do it right now?”
Turns out, a patient had cancelled his procedure and she could work me right in. I lurched up, limped to a phone at the front desk and called my wife, telling her to bring lunch (it was two o’clock and I hadn’t eaten), and to give me a ride home.
I then limped to a back room and climbed onto a padded couch. A nurse told me the only “real” pain I’d feel would be when she numbed my foot. She asked me if I was ready.
I gave her a John Wayne grin and said you betcha.
She sprayed some icy solution on my left foot and then gave it four needles. And let me tell you, those needles came from all directions and went in deep. Then my goddess materialized with an angelic smile. She suggested I might want to avert my eyes and perhaps contemplate the ceiling, but there was no way I was going to remove my gaze from her. Besides, I felt that a potentially heroic, semi-preposterous scene was imminent, and part of me wanted to play my creative part so I could dramatize it to others later.
SHE asked me if I was ready.
Repressing the urge to ask for a shot of bourbon and a hunk of rawhide to clench between my teeth, I gave her a fearless look and nodded.
She smiled and then broke the second largest toe on my left foot. I watched her proceed to the smaller toe adjacent to it and crack the knuckle out of that one. She then sliced my toes open, gutting and filleting them like little fish. I gazed down at the bloody ruins of my toes and thought, “Wait’ll I tell folks about this.” Next came the black stitches and a two-inch long pin, which she inserted horizontally to the hilt in the broken toe. In the month since this operation, I’ve had some pain and a little pleasure from this wicked pin, making up all kinds of inane jokes which probably amuse me only. You know, how the pin has improved my TV reception remarkably, and its only drawbacks are that I sometimes get stopped at the airport or pick up a cheap porn station from Seattle.
Well, I won’t belabor this chapter in my life any more, except to say that just after the slice and dice was completed, Jane arrived with a cup of chili (with cheese) from Wendy’s. In tales I tell of this saga, I usually mention the chili as a humorous example of my courage while they bandaged me up and gave me a prescription for enough Oxycodone to stop a charging rhino in his tracks.
Since the operation, I’ve gone back once more to have the stitches out, and I’m frankly ambivalent about my next and possibly last visit, when the divine doctor pulls the pin on our relationship and I can wear a regulation shoe on my left foot. But part of me foresees a continuation of this cosmic drama, with the toesies on my right foot misbehaving. Again and again I go back to her, but after she has cracked and repaired all my toes, what possible excuse will I have left to see her? Hmm, damned if I can’t think of some truly sick and morbid possibilities.
At any rate, like the ham I am, I continue to narrate and dramatize this experience. Sometimes I tell colleagues I was so enraptured by this celestial creature that if she had said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we have no other choice but to amputate your left leg,” that I would have given her a he-man shrug and said, “Well, Doc, if you really think it’s necessary . . .”
Okay, here’s the point of the whole thing, and the question(s) I want to ask those reading this blog. Are we creative types more likely to see even trivial experiences in our lives as momentous events in which we play a vital role – sometimes as an action hero, other times, as a watered down protagonist or Everyman? Is there a detached writer or editor sitting on our shoulders, weighing the possibilities? Do we dramatize our lives and ourselves more than others? I really want to know. Seems to me I’ve heard this discussed before and the general consensus is yes. But surely ordinary people do it too. There’s Thurber’s Walter Mitty, for example, who spiced up his humdrum life with heroic fantasies. But then, what was Mitty but a writer who hadn’t found himself? I’m also reminded of The Truman Show. Are we more likely to imagine we’re the star of a lifelong sitcom or dramatic series with smash ratings? Are we so narcissistic and vain, so enraptured by the image in our psychic mirrors, that we suspect that everyone we pass is an adoring fan?
Please tell me what you think. Am I nuts, or perversely normal? Really, I can take it.
In the meantime, I’m getting ready for a trip to the Dentist next week. Though he’s in his fifties and does look like Edward G. Robinson, I feel my muse stirring. After all, his assistant’s from Sweden and she’s one hell of a looker. . . .
