The Day My Brain Exploded Page 11

  Trying to regain my composure after relaxing on the red seat, I stumbled when I stood up to shake his hand.

  “Heya man! Cool to meet you buddy!” I exclaimed.

  This was the way I greeted the person who would be my senior boss.

  Looking surprised, he smiled and walked me to his huge “work area.” I was enraptured by the silkiness in his feathery voice. It was welcoming and relaxing. After some casual talk about the weather and VH1, he asked for my résumé.

  I didn’t pay attention to whatever he said after he perused my one-sheet. I just kept nodding my head, and when it seemed I was supposed to say something, I said variations of “I’m a work in progress” and “public relations is my life.”

  Embarrassed by my drunkenness, I felt horrible as I looked into his kind eyes. I was betraying and fooling an innocent person, so rather than focusing on the conversation, I was concentrating on whether or not he knew of my self-saturation.

  Before I knew it, the interview was over.

  He hired me on the spot.

  Only at Lennox for a week before my brother’s wedding, I was barely introduced to my coworkers and received no paycheck before taking the plane to Washington, D.C.

  Big Apple Core: 2000–2001

  Oy Vey!

  While I was hospitalized, Prakash had been having weekly phone talks with the CFO of Lennox. The CFO had decided that when I returned to the firm, my workload would be drastically changed. Before my surgery, I was working from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. On my return, my workday was shifted from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

  But that didn’t matter. I was just fucking thrilled to be able to come back to work at all. It had been four months since my hospitalization.

  Although my apartment was gone, my city wasn’t, and I wanted to be back there, in the center of the world, living alone, living without the parents, living life.

  But was it safe to leave home? Mom and I decided to check with my medical gurus. We asked one of my neurologists.

  “Ashok has done enough therapy. He is perfectly fine to live on his own,” he said.

  His reassurance satisfied Mom, and I was given permission to move to the city, leaving my parents with a nest as empty as the one I had abandoned years before, when I had first zoomed out of Illinois.

  The hunt was now on to find myself a home in New York. I had to find a place in Chelsea. Since I had lived there right before the bleed, it would be easier for me to make sense of the city; my reassimilation into urbanity wouldn’t be as difficult as if moving to an entirely different locale.

  Plus, Lennox’s offices were in the heart of the neighborhood.

  My fury at my father for giving up my apartment had intensified. Why must I even deal with this, I thought. My home should still be there, I should be concerned only with regaining my health, not regaining real estate!

  And so began my daily, relentless reading of the Times’s classified section, as my parents and I looked for names of realtors offering rental apartments.

  Finally, after our fingers were bleeding black ink from constantly scouring the newspaper ads, we discovered the apartment of my dreams. The realty company name alone sold us: Oy Vey Realty.

  That was definitely the right name. Nothing else came close.

  CHELSEA: Small one-bedroom apartment. Freshly painted and sparkling. Great closets and storage. Lovely tree-lined setting. Walking distance to subway stations. Immediate occupancy. One-month security, one-month fee. No pets. Unbelievable price.

  Dad called the number listed with the ad, spoke to a charming lady, and made an appointment for the three of us to visit the company’s office, located in midtown Manhattan.

  When the door opened, we were surprised. Instead of the harried Jewish spinster we expected to meet at a realty company called Oy Vey, we saw a cheery Indian woman. She was under five feet tall and adorably plump. She greeted us with her tiny thick hand, adorned with pricey gold bling.

  “Hi, my name is Oviya. Oviya Raman.”

  Dad recognized the voice from the phone.

  She began laughing. “I’m the owner of Oy Vey. Get it? Oviya . . . Oy Vey . . . same sound, no?” She was laughing. “Get it?”

  Dad and I politely smiled. The four of us left her office and cabbed it to the apartment, which, sure enough, was on a lovely tree-lined street in West Chelsea.

  There, in front of the small four-story walk-up, we met the landlord, Isa, a rather short, solidly built, olive-skinned middle-aged man, with an epic mustache.

  “I’m Isa, the landlord here,” he said. He was wearing a T-shirt that said I HONK FOR HOOTERS.

  Dad shook his hand and beamed, enjoying the man’s thick foreign accent. He was always delighted to find another soul who bludgeoned the English language as much as he did.

  “Isa, are you from India?” he said. “We are too, we came from Mumbai.”

  “No, sir, I am from Cairo, been in States for nearly five years.”

  Dad smiled. He liked this Isa fella.

  “Let me show you the place,” he said.

  His tour consisted of him waving his arm toward the living room and bedroom, much as the models do when showing prizes on “The Price Is Right.” There wasn’t much to show, obviously, as it was a tiny place as advertised. But wow, was it sparkly, clean and freshly painted! The ad was telling the truth! I couldn’t help but feel pride as I looked at the shiny coral walls. So clean, so fresh, and soon to be all mine. True, the place had a minifridge in lieu of a kitchen, a wee bathroom and a bedroom smaller than an office cubicle, but this was to be expected.

  The price was great, affordable enough for Dad, who was going to foot the bill until I got back on my feet. Most important, it was located just blocks away from my work.

  Without hesitation we snapped it up, and offered to sign for it immediately.

  Unexpectedly, Mom exclaimed, “It’s too soon! He’s not recovered!”

  Dad was calm. “You heard what his doctor said; he is in perfect shape. We have to let him go.”

  We bid Oviya au revoir, went back to Jersey, and signed the necessary documents over the next few days.

  My meager possessions, which had been removed from the cardboard boxes, were now stuffed back in. Movers took them from Jersey to my new apartment. The cartons didn’t bother me now: I had officially forgiven Dad.

  I finally moved in three weeks later, giddy to be independent again. Barely five months after brain surgery, and I was moved into my new apartment in the city. I had just turned twenty-six, and this was the best birthday gift imaginable. Content, I began to immerse myself in the new environment. As I unpacked my books, CDs, clothes, and the filthy-cheap futon, I started to make my house a home, to paraphrase that lovely song.

  Unfortunately, it took just a couple of weeks for the sparkle and shine to dull. I found mice, I lost heat, and had to bathe in frigid water.

  This was my new home, though, and I didn’t care how irritating the conditions were. So what if I had a few problems? Happens all the time. I would get accustomed to wearing coats in the living room, and as for my furry friends, it was nice not to be so alone.

  Now that I was back in my homeland, I began to question my existence, and my resurrection. Being a former Baby Buddha, I recalled the Buddhist concept of Nirvana—the ecstatic, final liberation and annihilation of body, self, and ego. My legendary namesake, Ashoka, the famed Indian emperor, was responsible for the largest global propagation of the faith, spreading its teachings throughout India and Asia.

  I wondered if he’d be proud of me. After all, I had been annihilated . . . or at least my body had.

  Perhaps I had already reached Nirvana, if only for a teeny moment.

  Not really, of course, unless Nirvana meant unwanted vermin and an arctic apartment with freezing water. Baby Buddha still had a long way to go.

  Accidents Do Happen

  “Watch where you’re going, asshole!”

  “Ouch muthafucka!”

  “Jerk! Why’d you just knock
into my friend?”

  My ears ached with every nasty comment. I was far from the safety of Jersey; I was now back in New York City, which meant weaving through the crowded streets, tasting the rank core of the Big Apple.

  In addition to being able to live on my own again, I was thrilled to have another welcomed revelation: my lust for alcohol was over.

  When I first left the hospital, I was terrified my liquor addiction would return. In New Jersey, I would tell myself, let’s try to stay sober this week, and then go from there. I needn’t have worried. As the days passed, my love affair with booze faded. The intense desire that once consumed me was gone, and as days went on, I stopped thinking about the sauce. Soon, my ex-lover didn’t even enter my mind.

  After three months of nondrinking, I was finally unchained from the monster.

  Looking at my reflection in my new flat, I spoke out loud:

  “Ashok,” I said, “it’s over.”

  My reflection looked doubtful. Skeptical bastard.

  “Ashok, you’re free. No more Smirnoff, no more Absolut, no more Jack Daniel’s. They are out of your life.”

  The reflection gave me a reassuring smile, but he remained doubtful.

  More time passed. I had absolutely no longing for the hard stuff—straight or on ice. My white-trash side no longer craved vodka mixed with Snapple Lemonade. I had absolutely no hunger for the excitement or, more important, the sadness, alcohol gave me.

  When I confronted the mirror again, my reflection was no longer doubtful. I was free.

  Because of this excitement in being completely sober, having my own Manhattan apartment again, and being independent and back in my hometown, I forgot Walton’s training. Funny, one would think I’d never forget the holy lessons of the Dalai Walton, who taught me the art of handling half-blindness. But how could I remember, when I was listening to my iPod and bopping down the street to the latest Coldplay download? So yes, I began bumping into people. Even though half the world was missing, I thought I saw everything.

  The verbal assaults, though, were nothing compared to the physical bumps. Well, more than bumps. Two cars hit me. The first time was at Union Square, when I was following a group of New Yorkers walking against the DON’T WALK sign. I thought I was safe in the group, but I was at the back of the pack. A man in a blue Mercedes was fed up with the jaywalkers and hit his accelerator. I didn’t see him, but I felt his car slam into my left leg. When I turned my head to see what happened, all the way around, swiveling like an oscillating fan, I saw a spot of red welling up under the denim on my left leg. The driver looked at me angrily, believing that I stood there intentionally—that I wanted to get hit. It was my first run-in with an automobile, and a valuable lesson: never walk carelessly through Manhattan, half-blind, humming a pop tune.

  The second time it happened, I was crossing Fifth Avenue with the permission of the green walk sign. But I didn’t count on New York cabbies. I felt a bump. Then I heard two folks scream loudly from the sidewalk, “Holy shit! That dude just got hit!”

  They were talking about me. I looked down and once again saw blood on my jeans. Then I looked up. It must have been a hard collision since the cab’s headlights had been broken. I was frozen with fear.

  Out came the cabdriver, short and rotund. Sepia-toned with a pencil-thin mustache, he shouted, “Leyyet me take you to the hyospitayll! Pleayaz I will get you help!”

  Jeez. He’s Indian. Figures.

  The man spoke pitch-perfect South Indian English. He begged to take me to the hospital. Maybe he was afraid of a lawsuit. Or maybe he was just a decent guy noticing that he had hit a brutha.

  I told him that I was all right and walked away. But when I got to the sidewalk, I started weeping.

  An even worse incident happened days later. I woke up from deep sleep with an upset stomach and urgently needed relief, so at 3 a.m. I sped off to a nearby Rite Aid to get crackers and ginger ale. Chelsea was oddly quiet, with relatively few pedestrians. As I swiftly ran through an empty, random street, I smashed into a tall metal post firmly planted at a sidewalk.

  I was thrown back to the unclean concrete from the sheer force of the collision. Getting up, I didn’t think anything of it, and speedily tried to walk home, even though my head throbbed.

  But my face felt wet, and I tentatively touched it, fearing the worst. The fear was validated. My hand was covered in blood.

  I held my forehead with my hands and ran blindly for help. A deli clerk directed me to an emergency hospital up the street. I got there in a couple of minutes, shoved my credit card into the nurse’s face, and was eventually sitting in an examination room with a kind doctor.

  After carefully inspecting my blood-dripping forehead, he asked me a question.

  “What drugs were you on?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all,” I said. “I was just running and didn’t see the pole.” I could tell he wasn’t convinced.

  “Well, you have a massive, massive cut. Looks like I’ll be giving you stitches, probably around twelve. But don’t worry, they’ll be in your eyebrow area, so your handsome face won’t be scarred.”

  I blushed. “Thanks for the compliment.”

  Then, as if the Pope himself had just entered the room, he whispered to me conspiratorially.

  “Seriously, what drugs were you on?”

  The Comeback Kid; or, Any Publicity Is Blind Publicity; or, I Still Don’t Remember Walton

  Beyond dodging maniac cabs and murderous street-light poles, I faced a more terrifying challenge: going back to Lennox PR.

  My quick reentry into the workforce—mere months after my skull had been opened—was approved by my crack team of medical professionals, the same experts who had already given me the go-ahead to be a lone citydweller.

  At this point, my home life was becoming fantastic. Isa was actually taking care of the problems in my new apartment, and I was in perfectly livable conditions. No more mice, no more winter coats indoors.

  Arriving on my first day back to work, I spotted my boss at the lobby elevator. “Hello!” I shouted, too loudly. I hugged him tightly; I had become overemotional since the surgery. He gave me a salute and an awkward smile.

  We shared the elevator ride in unnerving silence, and when the doors opened on our floor, everything looked different. I barely remembered the faces that greeted me, but, because of the brain bleed, I had no shame in hugging everybody as I had Jon, since, after all, I had become basically a slobbering puppy.

  Although I was excited to come back to the offices, I hadn’t anticipated how my half-blindness would affect work. But during one cold week in February, I found out.

  On Monday, my coworker Rosa asked, “Ashok, is something wrong?”

  I was cheery, and had no idea why she was looking at me odd. The next day, another coworker, Blaine, also spoke to me quizzically: “Your face . . . Is everything okay?”

  I ran to the bathroom. Didn’t have snot running down my nose. No zit under my eye. What’s he talking about? I thought. For the remainder of the week, I kept hearing the same chorus from my coworkers, all confused by my appearance. Days after, I would scream at my assistant, Helen. She was a lovely Cuban-American girl who smiled at all the employees. Why would I be yelling at sweet Helen? I wasn’t drinking anymore.

  But I displayed a growing frustration with her. One specific incident proved it. One day, I was checking a random spreadsheet. “You missed the addresses, Helen. This is the third time! What’s wrong with you?”

  “What are you talking about?” she said, her patented smile fading for the first time. “Everything has been done.”

  “Why were you even hired? You are incompetent!”

  Helen walked away, furious.

  A couple weeks later, while visiting my parents in New Jersey, I went to a Sharper Image store in a mall. I wanted to treat myself to an expensive high-tech gadget, to celebrate my return to the workforce. Maybe one of those massage chairs. Or a nifty cell-phone holder, I thought. Instead, I found a
three-angle mirror, the kind found in clothing store dressing rooms, except this wasn’t a full-body version.

  I purchased it. When I reached my apartment, I ran to the bathroom and set up the mirror on the sink.

  I screamed.

  The morning’s shave had left one side of my face covered in cuts. My sideburns were completely uneven. One sideburn reached mid-ear, the other just scraped my chin. One half of my face was blotched with blood.

  I had unknowingly become both monster and victim of a slasher film.

  There and then, I understood.

  All this time, I hadn’t been able to see that part of my face. I wasn’t aware I was demolishing that half every morning. Now I understood Blaine and Rosa’s comments, their horror, and why they were staying away from me.

  I must have been a living cartoon—probably working the half-moustache look, too. For the short time I had been back in Manhattan, no one had been close enough to me to be honest about my appearance. My parents were no longer right there with me. I had no roommate, and after the hemorrhage, I had lost contact with the handful of close friends I once could claim. Even the good stitch doctor had said nothing, perhaps thinking the marks were simply a result from the pole injury.

  I also figured out that smiling Helen had not screwed up; I just couldn’t see the far left portion of the spreadsheets.

  In the end, I realized this was all my fault. Just because I wasn’t walking into people on the streets didn’t mean my sight had returned. Once again, I had forgotten Walton’s teachings.

  Still, nothing, nothing at all, could completely dry the tears that fell every time I peered into my three-angle mirror.

  White Editor Likes Her Magazine Color-Free

  Before work every day, I looked closely into the dreaded three-sided mirror. Multiple times, if I had to, to ensure that I was clean-shaven all the way around, no half-and-half. To make life easier, I no longer maintained sideburns.

  It worked; coworkers stopped staring at me. And now I scanned the entire spreadsheet to confirm Helen’s work. Her perma-smile soon returned.