My Health Problem

By Allen Smith

I ooze colors.

I realized this over burgers with my friend Kat. She was having one of those double burger things, just to show off the fact that she can eat constantly and never gain a pound. So, she'd ordered it matter-of-factly with "everything."

Mine was a single. I'd ordered mine just as matter-of-factly with "nothing," but that hadn't translated, so I had to explain that a naked patty was all I wanted.

Kat snickered. "Gone starkers, haven't you?" she asked when I sat down, as she crammed what quite possibly once was an entire herd into her mouth. I bit into my burger, then tried to wipe the mustard off, but it wouldn't come off. You would think I would have realized something fishy was going on--that it was a yellow stain, not mustard, as I assumed.

"Fuck. I told them I just wanted a burger," I blurted, standing up to go to the front to complain. But on the way I got distracted by the yellow in the arches on the sign outside. And the yellow attire of the statue of the clown at the door. And I thought, hell, how many extra calories could mustard really have?

I sat back down with a sheepish expression, taking Kat's cackling lather of teasing good-naturedly. But when I bit back into my burger and tried wiping the mustard off my hands, it wouldn't come off.

That's when it hit me: I ooze colors. I immediately knew this would be the kind of thing I couldn't share with anyone--like constantly having a dancer for a twin, forever performing ballet beside me though I may seem to just be plodding down the street away from Kat, who had to get back to work, as I made my way to the bus stop.

Which no longer had a warped wooden bench, but a green one--vivid lime green that looked like something you'd find only in a rich person's lawn. I didn't sit on it because the paint looked fresh and I didn't want a stain on my jeans, not that shade of green anyway, even if my jeans probably were older than the bus stop. And so tight I really had no business jamming myself into them anymore, I thought, as I absent-mindedly sat on the bench, then bolted up with a loud, "Shit!"

But my pants weren't stained. And neither was the bench. I'd just somehow managed to ooze green all over it, I guess since I'd noticed the green pine tree in the parking lot back at the burger joint, and the green on the billboard of a bus for the wrong line rushing by. And I'd also been thinking just last night about walking around the Carl Sandburg residence up to where they keep all the goats, spending almost their whole lives grazing on that green pasture, even as a bear chased some unlucky tourist up a tree and had him for dinner.

About this time, my twin dancer got on the bus, so I knew it was time to board. We couldn't find a seat together, which was just as well, since he's always getting up and down to pirouette or stretch.

How could I have not noticed for so long that I oozed colors? Was it just a transient thing, like when I dropped my pencil in an economics class freshman year in college and turned around and looked up, and some jock, bored out of his gourd, winked at me? Or was it permanent, like me phoning that guy from that point on and the way he never answered?

Which reminded me I hadn't yet called him. I'd forgotten my cell, so I had to borrow my twin's. Luckily, I knew my classmate's new number by heart.

"Hey, Reggie, it's Billy. I'm on the bus headed home. Just realized I ooze colors. Strange, huh? Listen, call me when you get a chance."

I hung up, wondering if I'd finally piqued his interest enough for him to call. Maybe I'd sounded too cool. But when I'd written him that long note explaining how I'd always love him, that didn't work either.

Probably I shouldn't have shared my recent discovery, because it wasn't the kind of thing most people would understand. Plus, I already knew he must think I was strange. But I didn't want to start keeping secrets from Reggie now. Maybe that was where I'd messed up with him. That or ever looking at him.

The bus jerks to a stop and my twin hops out and motions for me to follow. I do, a little distractedly. Outside, the sky is shockingly blue, exactly like Reggie's eyes, as if he's still watching me, just before and after that wink.

My twin motions for me to hurry up, and I run after him up the hill. He's about as silly as they come, and breaks into this really embarrassing little jig all the way back to my apartment, and insists I do the same. So I oblige, vaguely wondering why Reggie never indulged me in a little dance of any kind, not even the back and forth of conversation.

I don't join hands with my twin though. It's not that I didn't enjoy the way my odd twin and I used to dance together. It's just that now that I know I ooze colors I don't want to risk staining his.

That's one thing that really sucks about this discovery. One of my favorite things had been every now and then taking my twin's hand and doing a little country waltz back behind our place when we both were feeling blue. Him because he never went to college and has felt obligated to follow me around for years on end even though he might have really made it big some day if he'd just been able to strike out on his own.

And me because I went to college. I guess that's something I really need to have a serious talk with him about, only he restricts conversation exclusively to the language of dance, and I don't know a single serious one, aside from a country waltz, which he's rarely in the mood for, particularly when I've indulged him like I did tonight by dancing all the way home. And now that I won't be able to even hold him, he probably won't be interested in country waltzes at all.

I know it sounds far-fetched and, in fact, is far-fetched, but that doesn't keep me from wondering if there's any way Reggie might ever country dance with me, even with this color oozing problem. Maybe when we're both really old, and I'm the only one left calling him. Maybe then he'll finally decide he doesn't mind my calls so much, and even likes them. And me.
Or maybe if we both wind up in purgatory, and the only way for him to get to heaven is by doing one country waltz with me, he'll change his mind, even if it has to be a really slow one. That lasts a few centuries.

Opening the door to my apartment with the dull little bronze key, I drop the keys on the rainbow patterned E-Z boy, and go back to the front to let my twin in. (I'd accidentally locked him out.) I sit down and watch him dance around and around and around the place the way he always does. I guess some might be amused that he hasn't been able to lose weight either in spite of all of his exercise, but we are, after all, twins, so it isn't really that surprising.

As he circles around, I realize he also oozes colors. From each of his fingers, a different color spurts out. Pink from one. Yellow from another. He starts using the colors to scrawl words in the air. Not a whole sentence or anything, but just a few random words.

"Skywriting," is the first, which seems a propos. And "smog" the second, but in turquoise, so it leaves me wondering if he knows what he's writing. Maybe he's just glommed onto language as another dance to perform. But he's surprisingly conversant at it.

"Trapeze" starts out purple, swinging gradually into chartreuse. That's followed by "Topaz," which is aquamarine, and "Uvula," which is green, like the view before Sandburg's goats. S, T, U; it's as though the alphabet of the language gradually is unfolding before him, or between him and me. It is oozing between us.

How will I ever explain it so Reggie understands?




Allen Smith's work has appeared in SWELL, Off the Rocks, The Urban Hiker and Crucible, among other publications.