Typical by Padgett Powell

Author:Padgett Powell [Powell, Padgett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-4158-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-08-14T20:01:00+00:00

Dr. Ordinary

DR. ORDINARY FOUND SOLACE in nothing. He found his shoes untied during surgery. He found his mother once, when she was in her sixties, naked in the bathtub calling for a fresh martini. He found bluebirds too far south. He found pies too sweet to eat. He found God with no difficulty, but locating his belief another matter.

He found it curious that he should have gone to medical school in the first place. He found a human head in the car trunk of his anatomy-class partner. He found, after his certain initial horror, that it was not the head of the cadaver he shared with his ghoulish roommate.

He found Tuesday the most trying day of the week, by far. He found a stray dog. He found a wallet full of cash. He found a lost child on the edge of a huge mall parking lot. He found it difficult to turn her in without coming under the suspicion of authority. He found telling them he was a doctor to be of no help.

He found beautiful—as beautiful as crystals and snowflakes and precious gems—the cysts and stones and lumps he took from human bodies. He found dry cleaning to be tantamount to not cleaning. He found he had no objection to staples in clothes, but he could not abide them in paper.

He found whiners offensive. He found a rare buffalo nickel in his pant cuff. He found blues-singers-in-Angola shows on TV totally absorbing. He found the behavior of mature people unpredictable. He found the doctrine of Christian charity at once commendable and absurd.

He found women close to tears at all times. He found old-fashioned foundation ads such as those in the Sears catalogue more titillating than modern-day pictures of nudes. He found relief in tension and none in release. He found certain sentimental poems, of the sort found on greeting cards, salacious. He found that if, as he gave a woman a physical examination of any intimate region, she spoke to him loudly, he was attracted to her strongly. He found impossible the notion of taking sexual advantage of a patient.

He found color-gradient charts at paint stores the most engaging art he had ever seen, and he had the world’s largest, if not only, collection of them. He found mules and other sterile hybrids, excepting sterile hybrid plants, most sympathetic. He found vegetarians everywhere.

He found Campbell’s soups odious in the extreme, more risky to consume than a Coke with a rat in the bottle. He found himself sometimes longing for the fine and light linen of yesteryear—white suits and handmade doilies. He found his relatives no more boring a lot than anyone else finds his. He found salvation in loss. He found cheer in the lugubrious carrying-on of patients who thought themselves incorrectly to be dying.

He found photographs of landscape pretentious. He found altar architecture rude. He found fresh-faced waitresses the most likely to spit in food about to be served. He found no difficulty, in principle, in pederasty, though he found no impulse for it in himself.

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