American Histories by John Edgar Wideman

Author:John Edgar Wideman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

EXAMINATION

* * *

Democracy is a form of government that permits anyone/everyone, man, woman, child to play loud music you don’t wish to hear. Or play quiet music you don’t wish to hear in places you don’t want to be.

* * *

Democracy permits unprotected sex, and I enjoy it so I let it happen and here I am, I said to the medical person—not a doctor obviously—who seems to be listening. A technician, not a doctor, since the person in a white lab coat with the facility’s name in neat blue stitching above the breast pocket appeared genuinely interested in what I was saying. Doctors pay only minimal attention to a patient’s description of his or her ailments. Doctors know that showing too much interest in a patient’s monologue might suggest that the doctor has not heard similar stories many times before and this lack of familiarity with a patient’s case diminishes in patients’ eyes the physician’s authority. Subverts the purpose of a consultation. Who’s the expert. Who’s in charge here. Who gets paid.

* * *

I say barely any of the above out loud, then say either to myself or to the woman in the lab coat—One thing you learn walking along the edge of the sea as I often walk—there’s no edge. There are many, many edges. Countless. Sea and land are separate and not. Always changing. Never the same edge twice. Endless edges. A paradox, a mystery you might consider, if such puzzles tickle your curiosity.

* * *

I listen to voices inside myself in the manner I think doctors (some technicians, too) listen to patients’ voices. Though doctors get paid for sitting, nodding, and doing nothing while a patient rattles on, the real work doesn’t start until a patient shuts up. So why do patients narrate long-winded versions of their stories. A patient a novel from a bookstore rack the doctor samples. No obligation. When patients talk too much, doctors ring the receptionist to send in the next person or call time-out for a toilet break or lunch or two weeks of family holiday in the Bahamas.

* * *

Democracy promised similar autonomy to ordinary citizens like you and me. The choice to pay attention or not. Respond or not. To ration our compassion, our identification with other people according to whatever public or private reasons we choose. The right to steer clear of ambiguous edges of other lives and harbor no secret motivation nor temptation to slip beyond our actual life. Beyond a single self. A sort of slippage clearly impossible anyway.

* * *

As if to shut me up and get real work started, a needle interrupts the conversation. Sorry, the technician says when I flinch. She had positioned my left arm—shirtsleeve rolled up, elbow bent, forearm resting on her desk—then tied an elastic band above my biceps, palpated my flesh to choose a vein, and promised, Just a little pinch. Cool swipe of alcohol my last awareness of her presence before I had closed my eyes to drift outside myself or deeper inside and avoid the little pinch she had warned I would receive.

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