Nosebleed

I had just moved to New Jersey, from Kentucky (from bad to worse). I did, however, manage to go from being unemployed to having a sweet-ass full time job (which explains the move). To top it off, I was working with people my age, who seemed to like partying as much as I did. I’d been employed by this firm for a little under a year and the wear of partying, which sometimes took place in the office after hours, had just begun to take its grizzly toll on me. I’d just kicked my booger-sugar habit into third gear a week or so earlier so the sleepless nights and sudden mood changes had become little more than an annoying itch. I had, however, hit a nice stride with my c0-workers. I was funnier than a naked Richard Pryor stuck in a giant blender. I was sitting pretty on top of the world, so when my nose began bleeding like a faucet while I was sitting at my desk one could imagine my…surprise.
I actually remember that I was about to start picking my nose. Back then, in the old office, Paul and I sat not five feet from each other and harvesting chunky and long nasal-melons then showing them off to one another had become a bit of a sport for us, however un-Olympic. I felt a nice nugget loaded deep within my nasal cavity and had begun cracking my knuckles in preparation for the dive. I gave a preliminary snort to blow free any loose booger-age which might act as a decoy for my prey…when it happened.
It came as a strong “pop” and I first thought that I’d blown free my enemy. But a quick glance down at the three BIG red dots which sat on my shirt told me quite a different story. Thank god I wore two shirts that day. I was lame enough to have a t-shirt on top of another long sleeve t-shirt (skater garb) and I whipped the top t-shirt off faster than if my name was Barry Allen (The Flash, for you non-comic-book-reading plebians). I jumped up from my chair and made a hasty b-line for our kitchen area where also, conveniently, our bathrooms were located. I slammed the door behind me.
I was able to tilt my head back and get it over the sink just in time for the show to begin. And what a show it was. I didn’t really know that my head could hold so much blood and it didn’t look like it was going to stop anytime soon. I used my foot to put a good spin on the toilet paper and kept it going until I could reach some of it with my hand. Why is it that whenever someone has a nosebleed, drug induced or not, we pucker our lips like Mick Jagger? Well it’s probably to keep for getting the blood into our teeth and by the time I soaked those first 8 or so squares of toilet paper in my own life fluid, mine were covered.
The blood kept flowing and someone turned up the nightmare music that was banging in my head and filling the bathroom (as opposed to the elevator music which I was sure was playing throughout the rest of the office). For a while I began to think that I was going to bleed to death right there in the bathroom and I could see the headlines of the Courier-News “Evil, Comedic-Mastermind Honkey Bleeds To Death After Picking One Hell Of A Fucking Booger” and that’s when I lost it. Temporary insanity kicked in as I was staring at myself in the mirror, bloody teeth and all and I actually started to laugh. From somewhere in the recess of my subconscious I found the lyrics to that “Bubbles-song” that they sometimes sang on Looney Tunes and began murmuring it aloud.

“I’m forever blowing bubbles, blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub…”

After the first run of that line of blubs, blood-bubbles started forming on my lips and after a second I was able to form some with my lips that were so big that they took flight and floated to the ground. Utter hilarity. I sang louder and louder and the bubbles got bigger and bigger and soon I was in the middle of a bastardized Wonka-Fizzy-Lifting-Drink-Bubble-Chomper-Deleted-Scene. Someone came knocking on the door and the Bubble-Song-Nightmare-Music screeched to a halt as the record needle was ripped to one side. …The knock came again and panic shot through me. I didn’t have the slightest idea who was on the other side of that door doing the crap-trap-tango but all I could mutter out was “Somebody’s in here” in a weak pansy voice similar to that of a frightened Homer Simpson. I watched the shadow underneath the door move away and exhaled. The bleeding had stopped. The bathroom was an absolute mess and looked like I’d started menstruating through my face as there was tissue all over the place. I slowly gathered it all and flushed it. I stood there for another five minutes or so washing my face to remove any clue of what had happened. I rolled up my blood-dripped t-shirt, tucked it under my arm and lurched back to my desk, exhausted.
Again, Paul and I sat not five feet from each other in the old office. After almost a year of sitting that close to someone day in and day out you begin to develop a bit of non-verbal communication. We called ours Instant Message. I didn’t have the balls to say aloud what had just transpired in the bathroom so once I gathered my courage I typed out the sentence “I’ve spent the last ten minutes in the bathroom battling my first "one of those" nose bleeds.” I watched him as my message lit up at the bottom of his monitor and held my breath as he clicked on it and read. He tilted his head back, tapped his fingertips together for a moment (while they still sat atop his keyboard) and then did that thing that George Clooney does when he turns the corners of his mouth down for a second in a bit of a half frown/half smile. He glanced over to me and…with a grin my boss typed back:

“These things happen…”