THESE KIDS THAT slashed the top on the Saab (ain’t it a shame, twelve hundred miles on it, a black ragtop, turbocharger, five-disc sound system!), these kids call me Chop-a-Leg, which is what I had done to me. They chop a leg when the foot turns gangrene. I had diabetes twelve years and wouldn’t quit smokin’. My podiatrist warned me the day was drawing near, but I didn’t listen. I was still out there trying to get my kicks. Now I traded the five-speed in for an automatic since when you been chop-a-legged, your prosthetic foot don’t rightly feel the clutch and that can mean smash your ass!
I got a hardtop with a V-6 and these kids calling me Chop-a-Leg raked up the paint job with a blade, so now I don’t have to take care parking it or lay in bed and worry about no ragtop. See, I’m new to the neighborhood and they don’t know who I am. All that shit—“I got a new car, what if it gets nicked?”—is over. I got the problem defused. Those kids did me a favor. I mean I got friends, okay, who could see to it that I could park that car anywhere in the city and nobody but nobody would get near ’cause I’m a stand-up con with connections, but in my old age I find I really do abhor violence, squalor, and ugliness. And I was a kid once. I did stuff like that. So I let it slide and had a talk with those boys. It was a highly effective conversation. There won’t be no more fuck fuck with that car.
The doctors gave me the first diabetes lecture more than a decade ago. They fine-tuned the spiel over the years. There were updates. In one ear, out the other. I figured, You’re gonna die, no matter. But they were right. I got hit with the shortness of breath, blurred vision, borderline kidney function, a limp dick, and armpits so raw I got to use Tussy Cream Deodorant or go aroun’ with B.O. Is that Tussy like fussy or Tussy like pussy? Heh heh.
One night after I got proficient with my new foot, I hobbled down to the basement: Peg-leg Pete. I like to go down there at night and listen to Captain Berg’s Stamp Hour on the shortwave. Comes on at 2:00 A.M. I always know the time, right on the money, bro. Serious. I bought a German clock with a radio transmitter in it that computes with the real atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado, and from that I set my watches. I got a solid gold Rolex President—your Captain of Industry watch. I got a two-tone Sea Dweller with a Neptune green bezel, a platinum Daytona, a Patek Philippe, and so on. They all right on time. Believe it. You might think, “Why is he worried about time? ’Cause he got so little left? What is the man’s problem? Like God going to cheat him out of a second or something?” When you are fascinated with clocks, it’s because you’re an existential person. Some guy wears a plain watch with just a slash at the noon, three, six, and nine o’clock positions, you can put your money on that man. If the watch is plain with Roman numerals, he’s also a straight guy. Non-neurotic. Trust that individual. That watch is your “tell”; it’s a Rorschach. If you see someone with a railroad face—same deal. Arabic numerals on a railroad face, trust him a little less. A watch with extraneous dials and buttons, don’t trust ’em at all, especially if they wearing a jogging watch and they ain’t in shape. This is just a general rule of thumb—your man may be wearing a watch that goes against type since his father give it to him. Wealthy people buy forty-thousand-dollar timepieces that look worse than a Timex ’cause they don’t want to get taken off. The people they want to know how much their watch cost will know, but no pipehead or take-off artist will know. As they say, if it doesn’t tick, it ain’t shit. You wanna know if your woman cheats? There’s a certain watch style and nine times out of ten, if she’s wearing it, she’s guilty. I swear.
A good pickpocket is very careful. I did very little time in the joint, relatively speaking, and I made incredible income. Never hurt a soul. Didn’t like jail. You know, joint chow is conducive to arterial occlusions. It’s all starch and fat. It’s garbage and then you lay around eating all that commissary candy. Smoking. I hate dead time in the joint. Idleness truly is the devil’s workshop. I was goin’ nuts watching fucking Jeopardy! up in my living room, no cigarettes, no action—just waiting for my stump to heal. Reading medical books. When doctors Banting and Best was up in Toronto processing insulin in 1922 they give what little they had to a vice president of Eastman Kodak’s kid, James Havens, and it brought James around and saved his life. Meanwhile everybody is going to Toronto where they are trying to make bathtub insulin as fast as possible. They can only produce just a couple of units a day and they give it to this one and that one while a thousand diabetics are dying each day. One thousand a day. The treatment then in vogue was a semistarvation diet which might give you a year, a couple of months, a few days. When you are a diabetic out of control and you get hungry, it ain’t like ordinary hunger. It’s a sick hunger—polyphagia. Put such a person in the hospital and they’ll eat toothpaste. Birdseed. I mean, I said I got connections and I could have gotten some of that 1922 insulin. After that there would come a phone call one day and somebody would want a favor and I would have to say yes to that favor, no matter what. That’s part of the life.
Even now insulin isn’t cheap. It ain’t no giveaway. Shoot up four times a day. Syringes, test strips. They cost as much as three packs a day! Heh heh. But each day I get is a gift, okay? I should be dead. Before 1922, I am dead. The shortwave is an old fart’s pleasure, but then I am sixty-seven years old. Most criminals don’t live that long outside or in.
Anyhow, I was down there in the basement when I blew a breaker with all my radio gear going, so I went into the little power shed and snapped on the light and seen a pack of Kool Filter Kings layin’ in there that I had forgotten all about. I didn’t want to smoke a cigarette. Didn’t need to. But you know, human nature is strange, so I fired up. I didn’t inhale. Face it, it’s scary the first time after you’ve been off. When you’re standing there on an artificial leg thinking about the ambiguity of life. Tomes have been written, I know. I’m just standing there when I spotted a skinny-ass spider hanging in its web. There was dust on the cobwebs. I blew smoke on it and the spider didn’t move. Looked like a shell. Dead, I figure. It’s the middle of winter. I mashed out the cigarette, snapped the breaker, and went back to the radio. Three nights later, I really get this craving for a cigarette. I had forgotten the spider, and I went back into the power shed and smoked a Kool all the way down to the filter. It was the greatest goddamn cigarette I ever smoked in my whole fuckin’ life! The one I had two nights later was almost as good. I torched up, took a big drag, and blew it all out, and the spider in the web moved like greased lightning. Jesus fuck! I seen a little red hourglass on its belly and Christ—Jesus fuck! Yow! Whew, man. But what the hell, it’s just a fucking spider, black widow or no. Still it gave me a thrill and I could identify with this little motherfucker. Your black widow is your outlaw.
After I run through that pack of Kools I find that I’m still going into the room to check on the spider. It was always in the same spot. What is it eating? I wonder. It’s the middle of winter. There isn’t another bug in sight. That night in bed I am so worried the spider is going to starve that I get up, strap on my leg, take a little ball of hamburger out of the refrigerator, hobble down to the basement like old man Moses, and squeeze the hamburger around a web tentacle and give the string a little twing, like it was a guitar. The spider don’t move. Starved to death. I was too late. One day too late, like with my atomic clock transmissions and everything, I’m late. Chop-a-leg and all that shit. Always a day late and a fucking dollar short.
Actually, the spider was planning her attack. I believe she had the sick hunger. When she smelled that meat, she made her move and then I seen the red hourglass flash on her belly again. Seeing that hourglass was like walking into a bank with a nine-millimeter. What a rush! The spider pounced on that hamburger and gave it a poison injection. I wiggled the web a little, so the spider would think she had a live one, you know. Then I realized that the light was on and conditions weren’t right for dinner. She was used to permanent dark. I shut off the light and closed the door. After Captain Berg’s Stamp Hour, I returned and the ball of hamburger was gone. Not only that, the spider seemed to intuit a message to me. The spider was used to having me come in there and blow smoke on her and I think, Aha! I get it, you got a cigarette jones. Fuckin’ A! Maybe you would like a cup of coffee, too, you nasty little cocksucker. Piece of chocolate cake with ice cream and some hot fudge. I would like some too. Heh heh.
I peg-legged it over to a deli and bought a package of cigarettes and when I get back, I’m standing there enjoying the smoke and watching the spider—you know, chop-a-leg can’t be that bad when you got eight legs—that’s when I get the cold, dead feeling in my good leg, the right one. My chest gets tight. My jaw hurts. My left arm hurts. I stagger upstairs and take an aspirin and two of my peptoglycerine tablets or whatever. Heart pills. Nitropep whatever. Put two under your tongue and they make your asshole tickle. Make it turn inside out.
I laid in my bed consumed with fear. My heart was Cuban Pete and it was rumbling to the Congo beat. It took a long time to calm down. When I was finally calm, I said, “Okay, God, I’m ready. Take me out now. I’ve had it with this whole no-leg motherfucker.”
The next thing you know the sun is up and fuckin’ birds are cheepin’. Comin’ on happy at six in the morning for Chrissakes. I pursued a life of crime because I hate daylight. It’s just about that simple. When you hate daylight, when you hate anything, you will develop a certain ambiguity about life and you get reckless in your habits. You overeat. You take dope. You fall in love with a bad person. You take a job you hate. You declare war against society. You do any number of things that don’t cut any ice when you try to explain your motivation in a court of law or to a doctor, to a dentist, or to the kids on your block who hate you for having a new car. God didn’t take me out when I was ready. I was ready but the next thing birds are cheepin’ and somehow you find that you just have to go on.
I didn’t even think I was listening at the time but after chop-a-leg I was at the clinic. I heard this doctor say, yeah, yeah, he knew this intern who had high cholesterol. A young guy with a 344. So what this guy does is eats oatmeal three times a day. He puts some skim milk on it to make a complete protein and in three months his cholesterol drops down to 25. Twenty-five! I didn’t think I was listening but it registered later. Come back to me.
I drove to the store and bought a large box of Old Fashioned Quaker Oats. I started eating oatmeal morning, noon, and night. I like looking at the Pilgrim on the box. What a happy guy, huh? I discovered that if you like your oatmeal to taste “beefy,” you only need to pour some hot water over it. You don’t boil it for five minutes. I mean you can, but nobody is going to come in and arrest you if you don’t. For a while I liked it beefy. I also liked it regular. Once I forgot and bought Quick Quaker Oats and discovered I liked them even better. Skim milk and oatmeal. Three times a day. My leg started feeling better. I lost that shortness-of-breath thing. How simple. How easy. On the night before Christmas I sat alone in my apartment and ate my oatmeal with a mashed banana in it. What more could a person want out of life, huh? I felt so good I put on a dark Brooks Brothers suit, a cashmere topcoat, and went to the shopping mall where I lifted three thousand in green. Just wanted to see if I still had the touch. Hah! Back in the saddle again. I even boosted a home cholesterol kit. You stick your finger and put a drop of blood on a strip. Fifteen minutes later I get a reading of 42. Can you believe? I can. I sincerely believe that the regression of arterial plaque is possible even in a brittle diabetic such as myself. When they autopsied Pritikin, his coronary vessels were cleaner than a whistle. Already I have lost thirty pounds over and above the amputated leg. I take righteous dumps twice a day. I sleep like a baby. I’m a happy guy. I’m lifted from my deathbed and restored to acute good health. Sex might even be a possibility. I already tol’ you, I’m sixty-seven years old but now I’m feeling horny again for the first time in years.
Every night after Captain Berg’s Stamp Hour I continued to go into the power shed and feed the spider. She’s my pal, see. I stacked all my empty oatmeal cartons in her direction with the Pilgrim smiling at her. It adds a little color to an otherwise drab decor. Heh heh.
I come out of retirement. I go out and boost on a regular basis now. I don’t need the bread but I like being active. Ain’t you glad to hear of my comeback? I bet you are rightly delighted. I plan on living to be a hundred. For insulin discovery, they gave Dr. Fred Banting the Nobel Prize. To keep guys like me going. Heh heh.
The spider, what it wants more than hamburger is that I should light a cigarette and blow smoke at her so she can suck it in through her spiracles and get some nicotine on her brain. Gets this look like, “Come on, baby, drive me crazy!” It’s just a tiny spider brain. Say, “Jes’ a little puff would do it, mah man.”
But I look at the spider and say, “Suffer, darlin’! It’s for ya own good. Take it from a man who knows.”