Back in 2012, I was dead for 12 hours in Tampa, at Tampa General. Not dead really. If you’re alive now you were never actually dead. Unresponsive and with no ID, they cut my only pants off. I was minutes from not waking up. I woke with a foley coming out of me and an urge to urinate. I pulled at the tube.
“No, you don’t want to pull that out.”
“Where are my pants?”
“They had to cut them off. Don’t pull that out. I promise you’re not going to like it.” I pull it out. He’s right. Fire shoots up and down my penis with every breath. Still no urine.
“I need pants.”
“What?”
“What day is it?”
“Tuesday. You came on Sunday.”
“Fuck. I need pants.” Breathe. It’s only time. It’s supposed to go by. “I need pants.”
“You can’t leave.”
“I’m leaving. I need pants.”
“You’ll be leaving AMA.”
“I don’t care what I am. I don’t know where I am. I need pants.”
And this is how I ended up in New Port Richey. I suppose I should have been scared of alligators or snakes, even wandering, hungry pumas existed in the vicinity. But I grabbed some half-length blue scrubs, took an actual piss, walked to Target and bought some sweatpants and a bottle of wine (no vodka at Target in Florida), then crawled into the woods.
The weird part is that this actually happened. Florida incites the crazy, and at this point of my life I didn’t need incitation.
The whole point of this story is not my past insanity or the consequences of mainlining fifths of vodka straight to your esophagus after missing your Greyhound to Sarasota. My point was, in my customary roundabout way, about death, or near-death. For me, there was no white light. There was nothing. And then there was the monitor’s beeping representation of my tachycardic heartbeat as my eyes opened. I’m super convinced when you’re gone that’s it. This experience convinced me. It wasn’t sad. I didn’t feel sad. It was nothing. Like the 14 billion years or so before my third birthday and conscious memory. It was just nothing.
My mom hates stories like this.
