Another "Bout" with Unconsciousness

It started so innocent and blissful: At IHOP downing cakes and eggs and coffee with C.G., talking poetry (of all things . . .christ help us). Few places I’d rather be. But the cakes and eggs and coffee were just a precursor to the main event (heh, heh): “The Wrestler,” starring the ever trashy Mickey Rourke.

We took one car to the movie, which later proved to my benefit. All is well about 45 minutes in when the movie went from a little graphic and bloody to mind-wrenchingly graphic and bloody. Rourke’s character, Randy “The Ram” Ramdeeslamdeedam (or something like that) is a washed up, decrepit, hard scrabble pro wrestler forced to compete in low budget wrestling events in high school gymnasiums. The scene is a match between The Ram and some scrawny Hillbilly Jim-esque feller whose schtick is giving and taking sadistic punishment, using staple guns on one another, body slamming onto piles of barbed wire and smashing windows over heads. The fact that these cartoonish matches occur in real life (with real staples, windows and barbed wire . . .and real pain and real blood) coupled with the film’s gritty realism became too much for me. I don’t know exactly what triggered it, but I went unconscious (I seem to recall an especially graphic gash over an eye). It was sudden but I felt it coming for about three seconds before nodding off.

I have a history of this sort of thing (as documented here), so I’m sadly accustomed to it. But each time it happens, I get a little more aware in the midst of unconsciousness. In the moments before passing out, my eyes are still open but I can’t see anything, like a nighttime power outage where you are suddenly sitting in the dark. And then I shut down, asleep against my will. I had my head planted on my hand, which was supported by my arm and elbow, which was supported by the arm rest. I don’t know how long I was out – estimates put it at 5-10 minutes.

When approaching the surface of consciousness, I remember posing myself a series of questions. Not the “Who are you?” or “Where are you?” types, but more like disjointed forms of questions like “Is there truth in friendship?” and “Do dogs smell in color?” I would dwell on the question for a half second, decide it was too difficult and then pose another. I remember my eyes darting around frantically for information. When I regained semi-consciousness, I had tears in my eyes, sweat on my forehead, drool on my chin, which I tried to wipe away about four times. I also began choking on saliva that had inadvisably run down my throat, to which C.G. would later say “I was wondering what all that coughing was about.”

Gripped with vomitous nausea, I wobbled out of the theater, thinking a bit of fresh air would make things right. About 20 minutes later, C.G. found me sitting woozily on a lobby bench with my head in my hands, eyes the color the blood that got me into this mess.

He admitted that he could take or leave the movie at this point and we left. I needed a milkshake, something of a routine for me now after fits of unconsciousness or particularly nasty roller coasters.

I was still a bit punch drunk and C.G. drove my car home, having taken one of my spells, as C.G. put it, for me to finally let him drive my car.