Antacids
In the week after she left, I had my first case, albeit self-diagnosed, of heartburn. I came home to an empty apartment on a Monday afternoon, the only noise to displace the sound of my own footsteps being that of my pet rabbit, scurrying about in her cage, and being the not-yet-spayed female that she was, compulsively making nests which would inevitably spread onto the carpet. I dropped my bag on the floor and greeted with a not-quite-sad face the thud sound that I expected, along with a clinging noise that I did not expect – I had forgotten that I had a glass mixing bowl in my overnight bag, for reasons which eluded me at that moment.
The week passed without incident: we talked daily, ending each conversation with the truth that we missed each other, that we loved each other. I kept up my training in martial arts and in running to prevent myself from having any free time to think about my lot. Overall, it was a wise strategy. The bed, as I looked at it each evening after turning on the bedroom lights, too large for just me, sat there, also wondering where the second person was. It had been over a year that it had supported the weight of two people, with the exception of my somewhat frequent business travel.
And then, on Thursday evening towards eleven o’ clock, friends began arriving. A college buddy, one of the best, a housemate my senior year, was to be married. Weddings in the years since graduation, proved to be one of the large unifiers for a geographically dispersed group of friends, and this one proved to be no exception. I had fallen asleep in the living room / dining room space in my apartment while reading a book when I received a phone call that the foursome, two married couples, three of which had graduated from Middlebury with me and all four of which I had known for years, had arrived safely, had parked, and were shuttling their air mattresses, and bags towards the apartment. I welcomed them in; we gave each other the 5 minute catch up, discussed logistics for the weekend, and turned in.
On Friday, two other friends, also housemates during that fourth year of our undergraduate tennure, arrived, and on Saturday, three more ended up taking up space in the apartment, bringing the total number to ten, including myself, who, for the wedding weekend, called this small space home. At the evening dance after the wedding, the bride came up to me and thanked me for hosting what amounted to more than ten percent of all the wedding attendees.
It was at that dance, once the bride and groom had hours prior successfully completed the several month regimen of preparing for and executing their wedding, that I, on a phone call with my lover, now reduced to a voice on the phone, a picture on my wall, and a daydream at my job, first noticed the burning in my chest. I noted this out loud. She sounded concerned.
“I think it’s because I haven’t drunk since you left,” I offered, thumping my chest with a closed fist as an acidy wave rose up. We said good night, the burning continued, and I decided to dance it off to a funk band that during their breaks were replaced by a computer.
The next day, my friends had left and in the middle of a long run, I again began to experience the burning. When I returned home to the once again empty apartment, I tried pushing back the pain with water and Gatorade as I stretched. On the phone with her soon after, she began reading the possible causes of acid reflux, which included increased consumption of alcohol, and increased consumption of food, both of which had occurred over the weekend. I thought about it, about the fact that I had a condition whose miracle cures were heavily advertised in magazines and on televisions, a frowning father at the dinner table, a woman touching her chest, clearly distraught, and a large, a improbably large purple pill splashing onto the screen, or a total eclipse of the sun followed by the trade name of another tablet which promised relief.
After a quick shower, having spoken to her, and as a team having diagnosed what I suspected to be heartburn, I set off to the supermarket in search of antacids. It was Sunday evening and the supermarket was mostly empty aisles fully stocked. A few shoppers frantically searched for an item without which dinner could not occur and a few college-aged students scanned the prices on butter and eggs, working out which was the best deal. I stood in the aisle which housed the pharmaceuticals, hemming and hawing about how many tablets I needed, especially given that it was my hope that this new condition would be temporal. Economies of scale triumphed, however, and I got a thin cardboard box of thirty generic pills.
I paid and walked home. In the kitchen, as evening began hinting that it was on its way, I popped the beige colored tablet out of its foil, swallowed it down, and marveled at the fact that I was aging, that I was alone, and that that was probably a good thing, because honestly, who wants to love a twenty something with heartburn.
