DALE BRISSON & PAUL VESS
A few days later I was back on the road with BG. I picked her up at her apartment, around the corner from Craig’s, which she shared with her husband. I hadn’t met her husband; he worked full-time at the college. I didn’t even know his name, though I knew his last name probably wasn’t Goddess.
BG certainly fit her name. She was in control. I simply drove where she told me to drive and the doors to the community opened. We drove, stopping for cups of ice and coffee along the way, across the state to a little town called Granite Quarry where we dropped in on Dale Brisson and his family. I had seen Dale at the air show posing with Chuck Yeager, and I couldn’t get the image of Dale the jet pilot out of my mind. He was in his 40s and had two sons and a brand new daughter. Manny was severe factor IX deficient and miraculously had escaped the bug. That’s when he started having kids—after the threat had passed. He had one of those very attractive wives. His daughter was a carrier of the hemophilic gene and his sons were healthy. That’s the way it works in a man with hemophilia, if there are sons they escape the gene, if there are daughters they are automatically carriers. If the mother is a carrier, the odds are 50-50 for both hemophiliac sons and carrier daughters. We took Dale to an ice cream parlor in a nearby town after making a few U-turns on the main drag.
“I need money,” I said.
“Will that improve your driving?” BG interjected.
Dale admitted to a drug problem in his younger days due to the pain of hemophilia and very liberal prescriptions, but that was all behind him. He was a family man now. Factor IX deficiency, also known as Christmas disease, was the other type of hemophilia besides factor VIII. Other blood disorders and blood clotting factor deficiencies weren’t officially called hemophilia. Dale and I drank coffee and ate sandwiches while BG chomped coolly.
“The community really needs this film,” Dale said.
“You think so?”
“Nobody knows the truth. The public believes that we’re freakish louts,” he said.
“You’re more invisible than that,” I said. “So how do y’all get these great women with your bum legs?” I asked.
“Great minds and good teeth,” he said.
“Oh,” I answered despondently reflecting on my own shattered smile. “But your daughter’s a carrier.”
“Uh-huh,” he answered, “of a great mind, good teeth and hopefully by the time she has kids there will be a cure for the other stuff.”
“You sound like an announcer.” I said.
“That’s right, and I’m a good writer too,” he said. “I have a problem with my tennis game though.”
“Tennis game—that’s a joke, right?” I asked. “They keep telling me about this great sense of humor.”
All the while people were coming and going at the ice cream parlor as I pursued my continuing education.
“You see these wheels,” he said acknowledging his deformed legs, “I can’t run away from a problem.”
“You mean if somebody gives you a hard time you tell a joke?” I asked.
“No, I hit them with my cane and then I laugh at them and say I have hemophilia. They usually run away because they think I have AIDS and I’ll bleed all over them.”
“That’s not funny.” I said.
“It’s not?” he said. “Maybe I’ve been around this stuff for too long. It was all because of sitting on that toilet seat before I wiped it off.”
“Huh?” I answered.
“That’s how I caught hemophilia, from a dirty toilet seat,” he said.
“BG, help,” I pleaded.
“What can I say,” she said, “he loves his mother. He doesn’t want her to feel guilty because of her bad gene.”
I was floored. BG walked away and got some ice to go. We left the ice cream parlor and dropped Dale back at his house. Then we went off to meet Paul Vess at a steak house at the other end of town. We waited for a half hour after the time we were supposed to meet before he finally showed up.
“Like I told you,” BG said, “always late, you better get used to it.”
“As long as I’m on time,” I answered.
Paul dragged his large frame with his crutches to a table. We ordered some steaks, extra rare, and salads and ice. BG was beginning to pay for her own, and I picked up Paul’s check. It was part of the deal, I thought, putting your money where your mouth is. I often thought that if I’d put my money in my mouth instead of spending it on research and development of a film that might never get off the ground and got my teeth fixed it would at least improve my likability because I’d feel better smiling again.
“How do y’all get these great women with your bum legs?” I asked Paul.
“Great minds and good teeth,” he said.
That was it. His wife was several years younger than he was and another specimen of the species to ponder. I wasn’t exactly gumming my steak but I could store a day’s ration of food in the holes and gaps in my smile. It had gotten to the point where a woman would be afraid of cutting her tongue to shreds if she stuck it in my mouth. And I was renting cars and buying lunch and hunting down bleeders with a crazed woman who crunched ice cubes incessantly, instead of getting my teeth fixed. For Art’s sake?
I learned a little bit more about inhibitors in a hemophiliac. The body rejected the factor concentrate that was normally used to stop a bleed, so other methods, some more costly and others more extreme, had to be used to stop the bleed. Hence his joint damage was more extensive than some who used the normal methods of the day. Moe spoke of a great service he was performing for the community. Well, I thought it was great though at that point I understood what he was doing as much as I understood inhibitors. He was the moderator of an on-line information service about hemophilia. Every day on the Internet he searched for relevant hemophilia and AIDS and healthcare news items and channeled them to his on-line subscribers worldwide for free. I had an old 286 computer and that whole deal was inaccessible to me. I knew I needed a new computer, and maybe I could get one—I still had a few thousand bucks or so coming from the fascist water man. But I also needed to get laid—my lousy teeth were gnawing away at my priorities.
After the meeting with Paul, BG and I drove back to Carey where we visited Craig for a time, and then I headed back to Wilmington where I read Joseph Campbell and tried to improve my mind (knowing that I wouldn’t be improving my teeth any time soon). I figured if I worked on my spiritual side enough I may be able to raise my consciousness up above my belt to another one of them there chakras that Campbell spoke about. I thought I was getting there. I believed I was following a path of the heart. That was really the important thing, what I felt was the proper path with the proper motive, stumbling toward an acceptance of fate with open arms.