Falling Over, Seizures, Faints, and other Hilarious Things

The Pure Form of Human Failure

Picture someone falling over. Funny, isn’t it? That spasticated loss of control, that bizarre movement of limbs you are treated to in a falling over situation, it makes you laugh. And those bastards who don’t laugh are liars of the worst kind. Everyone laughs at a man down, it’s an archetype, it’s the pure form of human failure they had no ability to prevent, which can only be hilarious. And you rinse it, kids especially will be mimicking the fall of a friend for hours, regardless of the huge and bloody split on his lip, the grit and dirt worked under the skin in his hands, milking every last drip of funny out of it.

Even if it’s an old lady, like really old, about eighty, slowly shuffling back from the ten-meter walk to the shop, the one she makes once a week to convince herself she’s still alive, and whoosh! Her slipper slips and there she goes, her deathly brown mac waving in the wind like some super hero cloak, maybe she’ll take off and save the world? Don’t be stupid, her muscles can barely take the weight of her bones. It’s made even funnier of course by her utterly useless flailing arms – signifying nothing - that will do naught to stop her land hard and shoulder first, the impact separating the scapula and the humerus – you’ve got to laugh – and then the fake commotion of anyone in eyeshot trying to look like they’re rushing to help unless someone else gets there first, which they’re all hoping will happen, and then someone eventually breaks and they know their afternoon’s ruined, while everyone else can breathe a sigh of relief and get on with their life, fuck the old lady, it will give her something to talk about to everyone forever.

Picture a little boy, a smile twice the size of his face as he plays with his new toy, paying it too much attention to notice the slippery, flat, cardboard box. He’s so happy but it’s too late, an under-skid on the heel, a classic falling over manoeuvre that’s so complex and almost balletic, it may in fact be an unconscious display of the poetics of learning: You’re five years old, son, don’t get used to sustained periods of happiness, it will only fuel the bitterest losses later.

Then there’s seizures, spasms, fits, convulsions, strokes – even heart-attacks usually end up with the vertical body losing control and whack, you’ve face-planted the table, left two teeth there, and then on to the floor for a follow up thud in the vertical, the ‘has fallen’ position. All funny.

Now you might think that’s taking it a step to far. But I’ve seen seizures that have been comedy gold. One such event happened in a rehab when a bloke called Simon took a tumble while we played table tennis. I noticed his hand shaking, then his arm, and slam, he just fell forward on the table and it collapsed around him as he spasmed and flailed what limbs he had left that weren’t restricted by the table. ‘Nurse!’ I shouted, trying not to laugh as his eyes rolled back in his head that was poking out the side of the table. Admittedly the foaming at the mouth took a fair amount of humour from the situation, but watching the nurses trying to untangle his thrashing body from the metal legs of the table while saying things like ‘Try and breathe’ and ‘Relax, Simon’. Good work! Thorough training on display there. I’m sure the whole thing was just Simon not relaxing and holding his breath. A fall a fit, a seizure – they all show humans at their least efficient, That’s the comedy. Even the nurses got absorbed into the vortex of the pathetic human.

He came back from the doctors with the diagnosis ‘Pseudoseizure’ which is a bit of a kick in the balls after you’ve collapsed on the table tennis table, causing it to fold in half on you like a giant wooden sandwich as you went down a-wobbling, mouth a-frothing, eyes a-spiraling. But none of that was the real comedy gold. You see, Simon wasn’t happy with the diagnosis, and was making quite the performance in front of a gaggle of nurses, patients and other staff. ‘Pseudoseizure?’ He said ‘Fucking pseudoseizure?’ He started waving his arms around and dancing like an idiot. ‘This is a pseudoseizure, oh, look at me, I’m having a seizure’ He said, and then fell down, crashing into two coffee tables, smashing one in half, glass splintering everywhere, having a seizure. The nurses acted quickly, one rushed off to get the sedative suppository, one shouted at the rest of us to go to our dorms, which, of course we didn’t and then Simon let out the most God-awful fart, the kind of fart that not only had everyone laughing, but hinted at – no, strongly suggested – no, confessed to the fact - it was accompanied by a fair amount of product. Imagine having to negotiate your way through all that shit to find the anus, then push the wax pellet all the way in, holding it there for some time, giving it time to dissolve before the body expels it, that is, shit it out.

We were shepherded into our dorms, and there was no worry, no concern, just laughter, funny comments, and the recalling of details. And that’s the point I’m making throughout these stories, laughing in such circumstances is the celebration of humans doing life, terribly, and the utter powerlessness you have to do anything about it.

Simon came back from the doctors with strict instructions not to pretend to have a seizure, as it might bring on a pseudoseizure, which is a pretend seizure. Medicine, eh?

In Totnes, Devon, there used to be an annual party in a field somewhere, tactically scheduled right in the middle of magic mushroom season, and you went there, took as many mushrooms as you could and giggled yourself stupid at all the face-painting, fire-breathing, juggling, and other hippy shit you mercifully grew out of years ago.

Me and my best friend had about a hundred, and at some point, inevitably we needed a piss, so tripping balls, we joined a small queue at the Portaloo, grinning our teeth loose and trying not to laugh ourselves dead due to the simple fact we were standing near other humans and they might try something hideous like try to engage us in conversation.

Finally, we get in there and it’s just the two urinals, and just the two of us. Once we’d both managed to tackle the not easy job of opening our flies while tripping, and in a rare moment of silence between us I asked ‘Do you ever think about your dad when you’re tripping?’ and down he went, cock still in hand, piss spraying everywhere, and splat, star-shaped on the floor in the overspill of a thousand tripper’s piss. I was laughing so much I was fighting to catch a breath. Even when he finally came round and got a grip of the situation he started laughing. I never got an answer though, but I’m guessing it’s a ‘no’.

Our largely vulgar culture promotes control, success, aspiration, ambition, and all of that in a kind of timeless sense, a stasis where we don’t age and are void of decay. It’s almost as if we are no longer human, no longer what we are. So, when we fall, seizure, stroke, take a tumble or whatever, it’s like a release valve where we get a small moment of equality, where we’re all the same. It’s particularly powerful with celebrities, who we all hate anyway. Their robot-like and perfect lives alienate us from ourselves, make us feel at the bottom of the food chain. But when a celebrity does a tendon-ripping, genital splitting, leg-lunge down a flight of stairs, it’s wonderful, it’s a moment of celebration and I’d suggest it’s the social function of the contemporary celebrity, to present us an illusion, then shatter it by face-planting on a dirty, wet pavement outside a club where the rest of us mere mortals aren’t even welcome.

No one’s going to get through life without a catalog of humiliating experiences that demonstrate their mortality to strangers in public spaces, and as I age I’m sure they’ll come with increasing idiocy, frequency, ferocity and at least for anyone watching, hilarity. It’s part of life. We all spaz out here and there. I’ve had loads, I can think of about half a dozen off the top of my head.

One such story started when I managed to pick up a genital wart. For years I thought it was a scar. I’d been doing a lot of amphetamine sulphate, aka The Pervert Powder, and inevitably doing a lot of four-day wanking sessions. So, I wasn’t too surprised to have a little lump appear on one of the many friction-burns on my cock. But the longer I stayed in denial the bigger it got, until a friend showed me a book he’d bought full of photos of sexual diseases. This was pre-internet and back then, that kind of thing was entertainment. And when I read ‘Genital warts have a cauliflower texture’ I knew my scar was not a scar, or if it was, it had a cauliflower texture.

So, I finally broke and made an appointment at the GUM clinic, the Genito-Urinary Medicine dept at my local hospital, where it was nice to see plenty of familiar faces in the waiting room, local people, all with something vulgar and all too human growing in their pants. After an unpleasantly long wait my name was called out and I went through into a room with a bed, the stirrups, the lot. I didn’t have much time to nose around or steal anything as a six-foot-tall and about four-foot-wide black man came in wearing a white laboratory coat that looked like he’d picked it up from a pound-shop. It was so tight it restricted his movements which added a surreal edge to proceedings I could have done without.

‘Pull down your underpants and trousers and sit on the bed please with your legs slightly open.’ Oh, you silver tongued devil. ‘Pull your penis and sack (sack!) out so I have easy access.’ After taking a few notes ‘Patient removed trousers in some style, but his underwear has seen better days’, that sort of thing, he made his way to the offending article. He lifted up my cock and had what seemed an unnecessary little rub of my balls, ‘All good there’ he said, ‘and here’s the wart.’ He turned round and took more notes ‘Massive member, great potential in the more than generously sized balls, could populate a small country with those’, that sort of thing no doubt. He turned round. ‘It’s no problem. We use a plant extract on them, it’s quite amazing, totally organic.’ Sweet, I thought, I’ll go some plant extract. ‘But this one has gone far too long and got too big for that’ He said, adjusting the venetian blind, before sniffing the dust he acquired on his no longer sterile glove. ‘Then we use acid, and after three or four visits it’s gone.’ He smiled, looked me right in the eyes. He had a kind face, gentle and trustworthy, and I started to feel quite relaxed sitting there, junk on display. If he was a she and she was a petite Thai nurse, things would have been far more problematic, wart or not. ‘But this one has gone too far for the acid.’ The relaxed feeling passed. If it had gone too far for acid, what’s the step up from that, an angle grinder, Piranhas? ‘So, I am going to have to get the liquid nitrogen and freeze it.’

I’m laying amongst the wild flowers on a summer’s day, when a beautiful bare-footed, girl with her long blonde hair flowing in the breeze, skips slowly towards me. She’s smiling, and holding some flowers in both hands in front of her naked and pert breasts. She lays down next to me putting an arm across my chest and a knee up across my thighs. We lay there, both looking at the clear, blue sky and listening to the sounds of the birds singing. ‘It freezes the top layer, forms a blister and in ten to fifteen visits it’s usually gone.’ I turn to the girl, her eyes are hollow black holes and her now toothless grin hisses ‘Welcome to the death-prize.’

Well, it had to go, so it had to be done. I expected him to bring out some space-age, modern, hand-held device and BEEP! Job done. No. He left the room and came back in wheeling a 15kg tank with a pressure gauge and some dirty tubes hanging out of it. ‘Sit back and get comfortable’ he said. I think it’s fair to say when you know someone is going to spray your cock with liquid nitrogen, which is minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, ‘comfortable’ is a bit much to expect. ‘Is this going to hurt?’ I asked, feeling somewhat pathetic, but was instantly assured I wouldn’t feel a thing. And I didn’t. Marvelous, I don’t know what all the worry was for, funny things, humans. He gave it quite the spray though. Well, a few sprays the truth be told.

‘Go to reception and hand them this’ he stretched out his arm, the tight cloth of his lab coat clearly causing him pain as it strangled his armpit. I took the brown folder containing a couple of sheets of paper, ‘and make an appointment for the same time next week’ he said, pulling off his rubber gloves and making quite a scene of throwing them away as if my cock was particularly unpleasant. But that was probably projection since I thought my cock was particularly unpleasant, especially when he added ‘A blister will form, do not attempt to pop it, it will go on its own’. Lovely.

I said thank you, and left the room, walking past the half a dozen or so sexually diseased folk staring into magazines to avoid making any eye contact. I saw quite a hot girl that I used to see walking near where my mum lived a year or so before. Imagine making a play in a GUM center, ‘Fancy coming out for a drink later, we can compare blisters and stuff back at yours, although anything that smells is out of the question, a gentleman has to maintain some level of decorum.’

I stood at reception, and waited for the lady. She didn’t take long to finish reading her article in TV Weekly, put her coffee down and come over to take my file. ‘The doctor said I had to make an appointment for the same time….’ And that’s when it hit me. That’s when the liquid nitrogen defrosted or was at least defrosting, and I’m sure skin isn’t meant to be frozen, let alone defrost, especially that most sensitive of all skins, the penis.

Holy shit, it was brutal. I could feel my mouth producing saliva like never before, enough to suggest to me, that the nurse and waiting room were about to see the partially digested Greggs Chicken Tikka Masala roll I had on the way to the clinic. Then the tunnel vision, and then a sixth sense glimpse of the underworld as the debilitating and terrifying sensation of your body meaning nothing and your mind dissolving overwhelms you. You feel it in your stomach - absolute vulnerability - as God turns the lights out and you might as well be dead.

The white plimsolls of two nurses, inches from my eyes. It felt like some kind of strongman had a pair of white-hot pliers on my cock and was squeezing with everything he had. If an ice cube touches my lips when I’m enjoying a Gin Sling at the Foreign Correspondents Club it’s an unpleasant feeling. Now times that by near infinity and the exposed glans of my, well, you get the picture. I’m not circumcised, it’s usually got a thick, real human leather hat on.  And it had just been exposed to a coldness that makes bananas shatter. You’ve all seen the experiment, a man in a white coat holds a banana in a pair of tongs and dips it into a pot of liquid nitrogen for a few seconds, he then lifts it out, drops it on the floor and the crowd ‘oohs’ as it shatters on the floor like glass. I wonder how small the difference between a treatment dose of liquid nitrogen and having a shattered penis is? Imagine when I finally stand up, small bits of slowly defrosting penis fall out the bottom of my jeans, followed by a tidal wave of blood and we go through the whole fainting thing again but this time never to wake up, my unconscious brain deciding it’s better to die than have them staple the end of my cock together, leaving me to spend the rest of my life pissing in six directions, and having to take a daily dose of the opposite of Viagra since an erection could cause the thing to explode.

‘You hit your head on the bench on the way down’ said one of the nurses, finally showing some interest in the man who just fainted. Maybe a cushion under my head, maybe some water, I don’t know, a sugary tea, a new penis. Maybe one of them could have really put themselves out and asked me if I was alright.

I wasn’t. My cock was so far from being in any way back to normal I really just wanted to stay there and sleep it off. I wouldn’t have cared if they’d just nudged me up against the wall and let me sleep it off, and it was at that moment I realized I was expected to stand up, causing the little man to push against my pants. My blistered half-frozen cock against the rough material of my pants. So, with no assistance from anyone, since at the first sign of my awakening the nurses disappeared, I lifted myself up, pushing hard on the cushioned bench that probably prevented a broken nose, a concussion, a death etc., I finally stood up, making sure my back end was pushed out as much as possible to prevent unnecessary contact round the front.

It was at this point I noticed the five or six people waiting for their treatment having the gall to be smiling, making fake attempts to control their laughter at the man who fainted and who was now standing like someone with spina bifida (whatever that is) or an upside-down pelvis, (which speaks for itself). Oh, very funny, laugh at me, go on, don’t bother trying to hold it in, it’s your turn next, and you might not be so lucky, and be saved by the bench, by the looks of your grotesque faces and clothes from twenty years back, luck doesn’t seem to be your strong point’ I said, in my mind.

For anyone concerned, like most things that seem like catastrophes when they’re happening, the old fella made a full recovery, and apart from a threesome I had a few weeks later where I had to tactically place my thumb over the scab during certain sexual acts, it never affected my life after that. For the next few treatments, I went prepared with my own Peruvian anaesthetic which I applied liberally to the area to be treated - between treatment and reception in the clinic toilet, hoofing one up the snout too for good measure.

I’ll finish this allegorical yarn, this tale of woe and wonder, with something more uplifting, where the human spirit is presented in a positive way, where you may as a reader find solace, some offering of comfort amidst what has admittedly been like a pie made from the greasy sweat of the human underbelly. It seems only fair.

I had washed-up back at my mother’s house with my girlfriend. It happens about every four years with junkies when all other bridges have been burned again and the only person who will give you the time of day is she who birthed you. Bless my mum. Once she’d made us a cup of tea and threw a packet of Rich Tea biscuits on my lap (mothers, amazing), I explained the deal. There’s always a deal – even with a loving - if emotionally absent one like mine - who took me back countless times, knowing the police busts, the dealers, the needles, the squirts of blood on the toilet ceiling, the rattling, the dramas, the whole damn mess would almost certainly come as part of the package, some leverage seemed required. And even when in truth it isn’t required, you want to give something, and when a hollow, loose, empty, almost ghostly promise is all you have left, that’s what it’s going to be.

‘We’re going to do a home detox’ I said, the words meaning less than if I’d said nothing at all. A home detox, as every junkie knows is where you make loads of plans, demonstrate enthusiasm and urgency, involve your mother as much as possible, just so she knows this time, you’re serious, like the last ten times, and then don’t stop using. Because addiction is a choice, not a disease, not a condition, nothing even vaguely medical, just plain behavioral, you don’t want to get clean, you want to keep using, that’s your choice. So, the only part of a home detox that actually happens is the ‘home’ part. A more realistic term would be a home lie, or a home pretend. Because now you’ve got a roof over your head, food slapped on your lap, clothes being washed, the things that mothers do. Why would you stop? You’ve just landed on your feet. Your addiction – that is your choice to use drugs – just got easier. There’s even the odd bit of money. In fact, the most realistic term would be ‘home using’. We got there in the end.

So, we’re a week into our home using and it’s going really well. I tell my mother how far we’ve tapered down our using and in about three weeks we’ll do the cold turkey. What we’re going to do in three weeks, I really don’t know, but that’s a world away, as long as I’ve got junk in my veins, I really could give a shit, because junkies, all addicts, are selfish, lazy, lying, bastards. If you want to use drugs, fine, but don’t rely on other people, don’t ruin their lives just because you don’t care about yours.

One morning and she asks my girlfriend how she’s feeling. Her performance of someone tapering, the slight shivers, the jerky movements, almost had me convinced. But I’d just seen her shoot a twenty bag so in truth I was just watching her deceive my mum. Three weeks came and we locked ourselves in my room for a few days. Using loads and having the most comfortable cold turkey ever. A warm turkey, not even a turkey. We were just doing a ‘warm’, a heroin warm. And that was that. A few days later we came down stairs clean (dirty) and cured (high as fuck). And then my mother says ‘I’ve found this clinic in Plumstead, they do acupuncture in your ear for recovering addicts. Apparently, it helps with the withdrawals, cravings, and sleeping. I thought that might help you’ I wanted to cry. But emotions, feelings, all that kind of stuff is scant on heroin so I just sat there in silence wondering what the fuck to say about that little waste of time. ‘OK, that sounds like a really good idea, do you have to book or is it a drop-in center?’ is the last thing I would say, and the first thing my girlfriend said. In fairness she had a lot smaller habit than me. I paid for the damn stuff, I scored it, I used some before I got home and I had a stash in the toilet light I could dip into when having a piss in the middle of the night. And she was so sensitive to the stuff, I’d get the needles out and her eyes would start flickering shut. In fact, she could have probably done a cold turkey with very little pain or problems that very day.

A few days later and we’re driving up to Plumstead, my girlfriend out cold and me lost in a maze of confusion concerning my relationship with my mother. We arrive at this clinic from another era and are directed through the eye-watering smell of cleaning fluid to the acupuncture room. There’s some grotesque hippy music playing, nothing authentic, just the mix and match of all things hippy, some whale sounds, some tabla, jungle noises, disgusting and trite. There are joss sticks burning, which is always nice. These had a fruity car exhaust scent.

There’s about 6 other people in the small room all with little needles sticking out of their ears and all seemingly asleep, skipping the light fandango, or whatever else having needles jabbed in your ears is supposed to do. And then I saw a sign, a big poster on the opposite wall written in bold block capital letters: “Do not have Auricular Acupuncture if you’re using.” Pfff, what do they know? I can’t see a few spikes in my ears doing me any damage. And she gently wiped my ears with some sort of alcohol by the smell of it, picked a few needles out of a box and in about 3 seconds had popped them all in my ear, before moving onto my girlfriend. No dramas. I felt nothing, there was no transcendental goings on, just me sitting in a room. My mum one side of me, my girlfriend the other.

But just like the cock clinic it was all about the delayed reaction. I started getting hot, really hot. I had a woolen jumper on and the room was stuffy, Jossy, hot, and hippy, enough to make anyone with a whiff of awareness not feel too clever. And then the sweat, pouring out of me, running down my face. ‘Can I take my jumper off?’ I slurred, ‘Can you do it mum?’ but as she tried to get my jumper off. I had this horrible thought it might get snagged on the spikes in my ear, and yank them about a bit, and that put me over the edge. ‘I’m just going to get some fresh air’ I said in slow motion, if at all. I stood up, took two steps towards the door and…WHUMP! Man down. Two minutes, five, could have been days for all I knew, but more white plimsolls inches from my eyes, and the chatter of voices in the near distance. No water, no pillow.

The commotion had woken everyone from their slumber and of course they were laughing, whispering little jokes to each other. One bloke even said out loud ‘Oi mate, do us a ten bag?’ much to everyone’s amusement, including mine, weirdly.

Once they’d got me sitting upright the witch removed the needles. ‘Are you using?’ she asked, ‘No, I’ve recently got clean though, maybe that’s it.’ She took a little light to my eyes and felt my pulse. She turned to my mother. ‘Your son is using’ was all she said, then walked back in the acupuncture room and shut the door on the three of us.

The drive home was unpleasant to say the least. No one said a word. I think my mum knew we hadn’t got clean, or even tried. There’d been no change in our behavior and she’d seen me climbing the walls, puking, crying, shitting, begging for money, making threats - what an actual detox looks like many times before. She just wanted to believe. But when a woman in a white coat and a name tag tells her I’m using, she can’t suspend her belief any more. And the worst bit about it all is the lying. I think she’d have preferred me to say I’m using, I’m not ready to get clean, can I stay here. The deception is the darkness.

About three miles from home mum slammed her brakes at a zebra crossing as some bloke just stepped out into the road, far too late for a regular, slow stop. He had it all going on. This was Electric Boogaloo all over, a black man, L.L. Cool J Troop Jacket, Spike Lee Cazal Sunglasses, one red trouser leg rolled up to the knee, bifta in mouth, and one shoulder tilted half way down to his waist. Then just as he got about half way across the zebra crossing something in his style got confused, his ankles got all in a spin and one step, two step, smash, face in the grit. Even my mum was laughing as she opted to drive around him and continue our journey home. ‘Looking like that, he deserved to fall over, twat!’ said my mum. And life goes on.

The End

Chris Dangerfield

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