UNKNOWN MAN by Willie Smith

Dayno first died that afternoon in October
of 1983, at age twenty-nine, down in the belly of a container ship. He grew
dizzy, extremities chilled, felt his heart pounding around “like a sack of wet
cement inside a Maytag,” as he put it when I visited him two days later at
University Hospital, after the triple bypass and the diagnosis.

I’d never heard of Marfans. Neither
had Dayno. He shrugged, well, at least it meant no more shipscaling; and he had
time in with the union to get enough disability to stay drunk for a while.

They prescribed blood thinners,
dietary restrictions; plenty of rest; light and infrequent exercise.

Dayno stayed home lifting bottles,
watching TV, eating prime rib, barbecue, ice cream, greasy greens. Now and then
sniffed coke; jetted around on a friend’s Harley.

Then the night he hurled the TV out
his fourth storey window. Made a satisfying crash down on University. Made us
all for a moment a little less pissed off at life; a lot less pissed off at TV.

Last saw him at a reading at the
bookstore just up the street from his apartment. He was sober, tall, handsome,
lean – every bit his old bull self. Made me listen to the tick the bypass
created in his chest. Allowed the reading was not bad, I was improving,
especially that one “Spider Fuck.” But was I drinking enough? I looked a little
pale around the gills, kinda skinny, insufficient pee in my happy.

Said, out of the blue, over my
shoulder to a wall between shelves, “I’m not gonna live to be thirty.” Then
grinned, nodded at the blonde in the front row, “I’d sure like to drink HER
bathwater!”

The second time Dayno died was in
January of 1984. Waiting for champagne brunch in a restaurant just around the
block from his place. Fell forward in the chair. Eyes open, dead before
forehead banged formica. Aorta, just
above the bypass, exploded.

At the funeral I was extremely
careful to drink enough. Psychotically hungover next day penned a nice piece
about the death of my childhood hamster.

The third time Dayno died was a couple
years later. I was at a lawn party chatting with a thirty year old fresh-made
doctor. “Doctor of Internal Pocketbooks” I called Miller behind his back.

Miller was a nice guy. Probably
nicer than me. I just don’t much like doctors – agents of money and death, symbols
of society’s answer to the individual’s plight.

Marfans came up. Mentioned I had a
buddy die of the syndrome. Hadn’t even known he had it till four months before
the curse struck him dead. Miller went serious, gloomy over his third drink,
hunched in a lawn chair.

“Well,” I smiled into my own gloomy
drink, “nothing could’ve been done.”

The dark-stubbled hatchet-faced
young practitioner glared up, “He could’ve had the bypass at age thirteen. Been
made to take it easy. Avoid stress. For goodness sake never do anything like
sandblasting the holds of container ships. Could’ve lived a normal life for at
least another thirty or forty years.”

I refrained from tossing the
bathwater of my gin fizz into Miller’s professional face. Held myself to
grumbling, “And never lived to be Dayno.”

Careful not to add: Dayno my buddy,
a duke in the yards, a high school dropout with a flair for reciting poetry and
sending the one-night-stands home starry-eyed with the knowledge they had
tasted – for better and for worse – a bonafide male of the species.

Gulped my fizz, thinking of Dayno’s
huge hands and bottomless baritone – only in retrospect symptoms of Marfans.
Ambled off to piss on the buttercups beside the compost; knowing I’m not all
that much of a man, but once knew one.

He’s dead now. I’m not now. Not yet
not now. Everything worked out fine.

By the time I finished feeding the
pretty little weeds – shook it off, flopped it back, zipped it up – I was once
again able to like Miller.

Even though the poor dumb medical
fuck religiously avoided attending any of my readings. Certainly why Miller and
Dayno never met. I met Miller because I’m a poet, and poets tend to crawl
around all sorts of other people’s lives. Just another kind of death sentence.
But not so much worth writing about.

BIO: Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. His work celebrates this horror. He
saw BLACK SUNDAY in 1960 and Barbara Steele ruined his life. You can
eyeball what's left by visiting youtube.com and there searching under "wmsith49". His novel OEDIPUS CADET is at amazon.com.