Johnny Wraith Stories

No matter how long I tilted my head back, no matter how much toilet paper I shoved up my nose, the bleeding wouldn't stop. At best I could block the blood from flowing out my nostrils so it went down my throat instead.  As I child I'd had nosebleeds every morning, or any time I broke an altitude of 5000' or more, but luckily, as an adult, I only got them a few times a year, and this was one of them. Sometimes, when you are having a bad nosebleed, and your nose is plugged with toilet paper, and the blood is flowing down your throat, you get a terrible tickle and have to sneeze.  I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror when the sneeze came. Trying to hold it back just built up the pressure. Finally, I let it go without bothering to cover my mouth, though I pinched my nostrils tight to keep them plugged. A cone of bloody mist spewed from the depths of my belly, up my throat, out my gaping mouth, and coated the mirror. A number of the tiny crimson droplets joined together into larger beads, and then streaked downward in little rivulets. Only a few of them made it over the mirror's steel-edged bottom lip to splash against the sink's white porcelain. My reflection was pinkish and distorted by the mess I'd made, but I could see my eyes were watering. I could see my nostrils were swollen with the toilet paper that was shoved into them to stifle the bleeding. I could see I was now only bleeding from one nostril. The toilet paper in the right nostril was still white, though the plug in the left was crimson and soaked through, ready to drip. Just as I saw this, a large drop of blood fell from my nose and splattered on the top of my bare, left foot. I leaned over the open toilet, pulled out my nose plugs and replaced the bloody one with a fresh wad. Then I wiped up the mess: blood on the mirror, my foot, under my fingernails, the toilet lid, the linoleum, between my teeth... 

Just as I finally settled into the living room, the phone broke the silence. I got up from the couch and picked it up at the 3^rd ring.

"Hello?"

"Johnny?"

"Yeah, that you Bob?"

"Yeah, you have a cold?"

"No, a nosebleed."

"A nosebleed?"

"Yeah, it's been pouring down my throat for more than an hour."

"Down your throat?"

"Yeah, I plugged my nostrils with toilet paper, so that's where it flows."

"Jesus, you going to be alright?"

"Yeah."

"Why aren't you gagging?"

"I'm used to it."

"Lean your head back."

"I am. I'm sitting on the couch and tilting my head back, right now."

"Shouldn't you go to the hospital?"

"No."

"What if you bleed to death?"

"Naw, I been through this a million times."

"Are you sure you can talk?"

"Yeah."

"Shit. Ok. If you say so. So, what's up?" asked Bob.

"Same old shit. Going to school, getting fucked up on the weekends. Lifting weights."

"That sounds cool. Wish I were there. But, how about pussy? You getting any of that?"

"Not since the nurse - the one you met when you were last here - the blonde with the big truck."

"Yeah, she was cool. I remember I met you guys at 9^th East for beers. She played all my favorite hard rock songs from the 80s on the jukebox."

"Yeah."

"That was like 6 months ago. So, what happened to her?"

"She dumped me."

"Why? You two got along pretty good, I thought."

"At first we did, but she started saying I was strange."

"That's true Johnny, you are. So, how did she find you strange?"

"At first it was my being a lawyer, but living in a little, shitty old house, sleeping on a futon, the fact I didn't have anything on the walls, cardboard dresser drawers with plastic knobs. But then she started saying I was wacko because I duct taped air filters to the vents and coated my futon with plastic."

"What did you do that for?"

"I was waking up with allergies and didn't know why. Then I read an article about toxic mold or fungus in the ventilation systems of old houses, so to be safe, I went to Home Depot and bought some air filters and duct tape and fixed the problem."

"So, what's wrong with that?"

"For her, I think it looked funny, the big, square air filters just duct taped right up over the wall vents, high up on the walls above the doors. An Eyesore."

"Well, so? Who cares? She shouldn't."

"I guess it just wasn't high class enough for her."

"And that's it? For Christ's sake, you're living on student loans! She knew that. You gotta live cheap until you're out of school."

"I think it may also have been the plastic on my futon. Whenever we were on it, the plastic crinkled every time we moved."

"You were right on top of the plastic?"

"No, I had a sheet over the top of it."

"Why the hell did you have plastic on your bed?" 

"After I'd taped the filters over the ducts, my allergies didn't go away."

"You were allergic to your futon?"

"Yep. As soon as I covered it with plastic, I started waking up with clear sinuses."

"I don't know if I can believe that. That does sound crazy."

"Crazy, but true. I was allergic to my futon."

"Alright, if you say so, but how did you figure out you were allergic to it?"

"I read a scientific article about how a lot of people are allergic to the shit they make beds with these days."

"Oh. O.k. Come to think of it, I remember Grandma had trouble with a new bed one time. She broke out in hives even."

"Jesus. I just had a little sinus trouble. No hives."

"So, why was your bed a big issue for the nurse? She should know about these things, being in the health profession."

"Maybe she thought I was a bed wetter. Maybe that was her professional opinion?"

"Oh yeah! I can see how she could have thought that. That's crazy! Crazy, but funny!"

"It didn't help that the room kind of smelled funny to her, almost like urine. But really, it smells more like mold. I think the carpet is about 20 years old."

"Gotta put plastic over that too!"

"Shit. I hadn't thought of that. The fucking shag carpet."

"Yeah, you're the only guy I know who has shag carpet anymore. It can really soak up the piss! Shag fucking carpet...You are a bum! Only bums have shag carpet these days! And you piss in bed!"

"Honestly, Bob, I only pissed in bed once as an adult, and that was after a night of mixing beer with speeders. I still remember waking up in a pool of piss thinking ‘this can't be,' this can't be.' I was splashing around in it in disbelief."

"See? Now the truth of your incontinence is coming out!"

"I'm poor and incontinent. I have no money and I piss in bed. So, things can only start looking up. That's the good news."

"Yeah, Johnny, and if things never get any better, you're alright just the way you are."

"Thanks."

"But back to the nurse. The plastic and the filter were just too much for her?"

"I guess."

"What was her name again? I forgot."

"Ava."

"So, she just like said ‘Johnny, I'm breaking up with you because you are a bed wetter?"

"No, not exactly. One day I called her and she never called back."

"What happened to her?"

"Not sure. She's a traveling nurse, and was staying with her cousin in Phoenix at the time. Don't you remember?"

"Yeah, kind of."

"We met on the Yahoo Personals when she was in Montana and planning to come to Phoenix - to stay if she decided she liked it."

"I remember that part. But why didn't you call her a second time? Maybe she never got the first message? She was hot. Not a lot of girls are skinny like her anymore."

"We were over."

"So, let me make this clear: she never said you were over, so she really never said why. You couldn't really know why, unless during your last conversation she said something like, ‘Sorry dude, I'm out of here because of the cheap duct tape and filters and because you piss in bed." Right?

"I knew those were issues she had. There may have been other reasons to add."

"Like what?"

"Like, when we screwed, she made me keep my shirt on unless the lights were out."

"Why?"

"She didn't like the hair on my back or chest."

"That's bullshit. But you could have just Naired it off, dude."

"I did. But I did it the day after the last night I saw her. The last time I called her - the call she never returned, I even left a message saying my chest and back were smooth as a baby's bottom."

"Shit man. That's awful. All that for nothing."

"Yeah."

Bob paused.

"Bob, you still there?"

"Yeah, just thinking. What happened the last time you saw Ava, exactly?"

A light went on in my head at that question. "You know what? I think I know what happened now. Why she never called me back. It always has been amazing to me how what we do when we're drunk we don't remember until much later. Now I remember! Your questions brought it back."

"O.k. This I got to hear."

"The last night we were together, we shared a whole fifth of whiskey and got really drunk, then we ended up fucking on my futon. When I woke up the next morning, I couldn't remember anything. Ava was gone."

"But why? You just remembered?"

"Yes. You see. Dried blood was all over the sheets and the pillows the next morning, and all over me. I didn't think anything of it. I've been getting nosebleeds in the middle of the night all my life. It's just now that I remember - because I was really drunk on whiskey at the time - that when I was stabbing it into her from behind, doggie-style, blood was dripping from my nose and splattering all over her back and ass. The lights were out and I was bleeding all over her. She even looked back a few times and asked, ‘are you sweating?' and I said, ‘yes' each time. I couldn't say I was bleeding before I came."

"Shit man! Unbelieveable! That's gnarly!"

"Yeah, crimson and gnarly."