These young turks at work have been calling me Doctor Piss lately, but I’m no doctor.
Not anymore.
It’s enough that Jorge’s on my ass about filing my performance reviews. As if I’m not up and down and back to the store room trying to find the right fit for some old lady’s dried up bunion hoof a hundred times a day, only for her to tell me she’ll “think it over.” My ass she will. She’ll go buy the same pair down at those undercutting fucks at Shoe Warehouse up the block for 25 percent off.
Now this Doctor Piss business, again? Fuck me.
Not that I let ‘em know their bullshit is getting to me. No way would I give those punks the satisfaction. No how. I just play dumb, pretend I don’t hear nothing, and wouldn’t know what they’re talking about in the first place even if I had. But it bugs the shit outta me. What do these kids know about life? What do they know about killing their dreams?
Zip, zilch, zero. Nada, motherfucker.
After punching out, I grab myself a bite, stock my Corolla with water bottles and tic-tacs. Then I spend the evening driving yuppies and tourists around. Smiling and nodding and hoping for five stars. If this driving gig had medical insurance, I’d do it all day and all night. Beats the hell outta the shoe game, but we’re on our own out here. Any of the fares call me anything, it’s under their breath or after I drop ‘em off. And so long as they don’t fuck my rating too hard, I don’t give a shit.
Guess it was only a matter of time before the punks at the shoe store clued in. Everything’s on the internet these days. I don’t even use my real name at work. Not my full name, anyway. So how they got wise is beyond me.
Paging Doctor Piss, I heard them joking around the other day. Paging Doctor Piss? These fucks think that’s funny. I’ll show them funny.
I was never a doctor, anyway. Not for real. But I did play one for a while on TV. I wasn’t no big star. No Clooney, no Doogie Howser or House. This was in Canada, but it was prime time, for the market. For three seasons, I was there, my face and name in the credits, and life was fuckin good, baby. No sizing old grannies for orthopedics or chauffeuring douchebags around the valley.
When the doctor show got canned, agent convinced me to fly south. Wasn’t a big deal, dual citizenship and all. She got me some decent walk-on roles on some network shows. Well, cable anyhow. Couple lines in a film here and there. Felt like things were happening when I landed a supporting role in a summer buddy comedy that was supposed to be a blockbuster, which ended up being a bit of a dud. Still, the agent was getting calls for bigger parts and I was feeling fine.
That same time I got mixed up with some crackpots out in the desert, and that’s when things started going sideways. I’d always been, like, spiritual, and as soon as I was back in La La Land, away from the smothering drab gray overcoat of Toronto, I followed whatever path I came across. Crystals, reiki, past life regression. Mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca. I embraced it all, hook line and sinker … so long as I felt it could get me closer to that star I felt was rightfully mine, hanging just over the horizon there.
It was all bullshit, anyway. All of it. But I didn’t know that at the time. Or I didn’t care. Same difference, right?
Agent, she landed me a prime spot – supporting, but still – in one of those superhero movies that were just starting to take off back then. And get this: I was playing a doctor again, telling the hero I’d never seen anything like his blood in all my days of blood doctoring. Telling the hero he was something special.
After that, phone was ringing off the hook. Bigger parts, potentially recurring roles. Didn’t land ‘em all, but I got my share and boy the sky felt like the limit.
Following the premiere of that superhero flick, I headed out to Joshua Tree for a weekend retreat that promised a harnessing of one’s true potential, a manifestation of one’s destiny. Ended up huddled inside a canvas tent in the dirt under the scorching sun, high out of our minds, drinking some self-proclaimed guru’s piss.
It’s easy to see where I got carried away now. Where we all got carried away. Clear as day, 20/20 in hindsight. But it wasn’t so easy back then. By all rights, it shoulda been. But it wasn’t. Life’s like that. Those kids at the shoe store might not understand. Not yet. But one day, they will.
Truth is, I went through with the whole ceremony. Piss and all. But the next day, as I’m driving back into the city, sun rising in the rearview, doubt crept in. When I got home, I canceled payment on my credit card for the retreat. That was a pretty penny, mind you, even with the bigger roles rolling in. Five figures. Felt good for a minute there, pulling the rug out on the guru.
As I figured it, guru would get all up at me and threaten legal action and I’d call bullshit, have my agent send over something on a baloney legal letterhead, and that would be that. But I figured wrong. Wasn’t the guru’s first rodeo, see. He knew the score. Had us Hollywood types pegged. You bet your ass he did.
Guru, he says if I don’t make things right, plus interest or whatever, he’s gonna and I quote “ruin my ass in Hollywood for good.” I laughed, hung up, went about my day. But the guru wasn’t bullshitting. The bastard had cameras going out in that tent in the desert. Whoever heard of cameras at a sacred ceremony? Not that there was anything sacred about his racket. After putting the gears to me for a couple weeks, guru sends a tape of me slurping back a cup full of his piss to the tabloids. Next thing I know, fuckin TMZ and shit are all over the vid, calling me Doctor Piss, cutting this hokey piss guzzling footage with my line from the superhero movie, about never seeing nothing like this in all my days of doctoring.
Once you get stuck with a handle like Doctor Piss, buddy, it ain’t going nowhere. Ditto your career.
As if that shit weren’t enough, I’d knocked up my girlfriend right around then. I suggested we could do without bringing a baby into the world, but she was a God’s will type of gal. Real spiritual. Still is. At any rate, Frannie was born, happy and mostly healthy, just before all the shit hit the fan.
We stayed together for a while, baby mama and me, trying to make it work. But it didn’t. I was there in the delivery room, though, and I’m still putting in my time today. Why do you think I’m working at the shoe store, spending my nights driving fuckers around the valley? For kicks?
Hell no.
Once Frannie was old enough for nursery school and dealing with the first of a series of mostly inconsequential but expensive health issues, mostly related to digestion, her mom soured on Hollywood and made the move back to Cathedral City so her mom and sisters could help with Fran here and there. I was done in the biz by then, whether I wanted to admit it or not. Guru’d made good on his promise, ruined my ass and then some. Half the parts I’d booked got kiboshed, a few I’d already shot even got cut in post. Had trouble landing fuck all for a while there, and what I did wasn’t worth writing home about. Even tried dinner theater, after my agent finally dropped me. But it was all for nothing.
They say sometimes the best thing you can do for a dream is let it die. I’ve found that to be true.
Do I miss it? Like hell.
In the end, I put my dream to bed, sold my Echo Park condo and followed Frannie and her mom to the desert. Sure, I’ve thought about packing it in and moving back up to Canada – many times – if only for the health care. But Fran’s mom won’t have any of it. Guess it’s for the best. Anywhere worth living up there’s too damn expensive anyhow, and I’d rather kill myself than call Calgary home again. So Cathedral City it is, at least until Frannie graduates and then we’ll see where the road takes us.
Up until these young punks at work started up with it, nobody’d pulled Doctor Piss on me for probably ten years. Maybe more. I’d thought the good Doctor was long dead and gone. I was wrong. November rain might not last forever, buddy, but the internet sure as shit does.
The Doctor, though, he learned a thing or two from that guru. Learned ‘em the hard way. Just this afternoon, went out for In-N-Out, brought back burgers and fries for Jorge and Raj and Alex and myself. The whole gang. My treat. Drinks included. Course, I pulled off into the alley out back of the strip mall, dumped a splash outta each of their large pink lemonade. Topped ‘em up with a thick splash of piss.
Paging Doctor Piss? You got it, partner.
Drink up, I told ‘em with a grin, the same grin the doctor in that old Canadian network drama used to give when he was about to save some poor son of a bitch’s life. Against all the odds. Doctor’s orders.
***
Sheldon Birnie is a writer, reporter, and beer league hockey player from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Find him online @badguybirnie
***
image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 