Call Off The Birds

Having taken their time to diagnose the lymphoma, the doctors wasted no time making the terminal prognosis.

“You have six months to live.”

The news did not cause Steve to take stock or adjust his priorities. The news didn’t springboard him into acceptance or contemplative enlightenment. He wasn’t brave or afraid or angry. He did not spend time cherishing what little time he had left.

Instead, Steve reacted with a good old fashion, pre-psych lingo, nervous breakdown.

The breakdown brought with it total paranoia, but not of people. No conspiracies. No people out to get him. No people whispering behind his back.

If you aren't going to be paranoid about people, then paranoia will settle on the next best thing, birds. Ubiquitous, lizard-like, chattery, birds. Steve thought they were watching him, following him, dancing on the telephone wires in open mockery as he walked. And unlike secret agents, busy-body neighbors, employers, most voyeurs, and government, birds have balls. They have the audacity to go about their spying out in the open. Birds bring the madness of open espionage, the confirmation that you aren't being paranoid. “No, you aren’t crazy. Four crows, three pigeons, a hummingbird and a blue jay, actually have been following you for the last mile. Worse yet, they are enjoying themselves.”

As any citizen might, Steve took his problem to the cops. And He took it to them as Sandy, dressed in full drag. She white shirt dress with a thick black belt, hooker red nails and heels. He hair was long and black like Cher. Sandy's nails were always real, and, until the chemo took her hair, she never wore wigs. To a tranny, being able to grow your own nails and wear your own hair is the only justice you get.

“I know what you are doing, you tell those birds to stop following me,” Sandy said wagging a finger at the cops in vague judgment, red lacquered nail polish catching the light.

Call off the birds. Simple enough.

Unfortunately, the birds kept following. “Call off the birds,” along with such perennial favorites as “please stop my husband from beating the crap out of me,” or “catch that gay basher,” tops a shortlist of things cops actually can’t do for you.

And eventually, the complete meltdown.

Steve was driving east on the 134, when he just couldn't go any further. He hit the breaks and stopped his yellow VW bug in the fast lane. Not registering the traffic danger or the horns, Steve clutched his wheel white knuckled and stared up out his windshield at a dozen circling birds.

It was the early seventies and so it happened that a nice couple actually stopped to help Steve. Steve, the tranny spending his last six months on earth running from birds. Steve the Mexican teenager who was once called a nigger by a whit kid on the play ground in first grade by a white boy. He had watched mortified as his mother, after making Steve identify the brat, marched across the playground in her skin tight lemon yellow pants, cork wedges, white blouse, and Jackie O sunglasses. When she reached the kid, she yanked him off the swing by his collar and in front of the other parents and teachers. She shook him as she yelled in her accented voice, “Don’t ever call anyone that name ever again. Do you understand? If you do, I’ll come find you.” She had dropped him like a bag of trash and walked off rubbing her hands together like they were covered in dirt. Then she yelled at Steve for not punching the brat in the face in the first place.

The couple pulled their car over to the side of the freeway, and played a real time game of frogger across four lanes of traffic. All to bring a stranger and his car out of danger. Then, as risking life and limb for a stranger wasn't enough, they then drove him forty-five minutes to UCLA, where he was involuntarily committed to the mental ward and given medicine to make him stop thinking about the birds.

During his stay, he avoided the arboretum and all windows near trees or telephone poles.

A few days later, Steve decided he would rather be at home. So he walked out. As he left he somehow found a black wig (his hair had been shaved), some make up, and some mismatched heels, one black and one blue, and both different lengths; proving once and for all that “when a bitch has got to go, a bitch has got to go.”

He rode the number 2 bus down Sunset Blvd. that morning wearing a backless hospital gown, matching patient ID bracelets, lipstick, eye shadow, black wig, and mismatched heels. He arrived without incident.

However, there were multiple unconfirmed reports that morning to the Hollywood police department, of a bus on Sunset that morning that was being chased by hundreds of birds.