The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (33 page)

Raymond Boyce MD, ChB (Edin) addresses a group of senior medical students at the University of Edinburgh.

WHEN ONE HAS
made the study of medical science one’s vocation and life’s work, to encounter a new phenomenon is one of the most exciting things one can hope to experience. But it can also be among the most horrifying. In the case of Brian, a young Edinburgh man I have been treating, this is such a unique circumstance.

Let me recap: Brian is a young man who has an unclassified degenerative disease, which has attacked many of his main organs, but principally his liver. We know the crucial importance of this organ. A healthy liver cleans almost 100 per cent of the bacteria and toxins from our bodies. A liver overburdened and undernourished is thought to be the root cause of many diseases; now we acknowledge the probability that the majority of cancers derive from a liver operating poorly. And with the toxic chemicals in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe; with the alcohol, smoke, and the preponderance of prescription drugs, the liver’s detox system is more overloaded and under greater pressure than ever.

We know that the liver is the one organ in the body that can completely regenerate itself when damaged. In fact, we have known this since ancient Greece. Prometheus, a character in Greek mythology, was condemned to be tied to a rock and have his liver pecked out by the eagles during the day. At night his liver would grow back, only for day to come, when he
would undergo partial resection by the birds. This is early evidence of our intuitive knowledge of the liver’s ability to regrow. As far we know it was not until the late nineteenth century that Canalis undertook the first scientific liver resection. Over a century later, we are still unclear as to the exact mechanism involved in initiating this regeneration process.

In the case of Brian, this becomes of secondary, academic interest. There is chronic scarring of the liver; advanced cirrhosis. Thus his liver has now deteriorated to such an extent that a transplant is necessary in order to save his life.

Only in the case of extreme and prolonged alcohol abuse have I witnessed such extensive liver damage. And this in a young man who is a non-drinker, and has hardly ever tasted alcohol. I must say that I was as cynical as the next person regarding the voracity of this claim, initially believing the youth to be in the extreme state of denial common to many who suffer from the affliction of alcoholism.

But I have monitored his behaviour under controlled conditions and am in a position to attest to his utter sobriety. At the same time I remain a reluctant witness to his saddening and mysterious physical deterioration during this period. Therefore, I can also vouch for the terrible emotional cost of this disease on Brian and his family. So we have largely discounted alcohol abuse as a source of Brian’s degeneration.

Viral disease is an another common cause of liver dysfunction in Western society. Viral hepatitis, as students know, kills the liver cells. However, we have no evidence of any strain of this in Brian. This, too, can be ruled out.

There is a category of disease called autoimmune liver disease, where, broadly speaking, the white blood cells, instead of, or as well as, attacking bacteria and viruses, for some reason suffer a biological confusion and attack the liver. Many more tests have and are being done around this area.

As is always the case in medicine, or in any discipline where our knowledge is incomplete, we have a ‘dustbin’ category. This
is the non-specific designation we refer to as cryptogenic cirrhosis. Sadly, this group is only recognisable by its effect – liver degeneration – and there is little in terms of a cure that can be afforded to sufferers.

What our tests have shown is that particularly during the hours of darkness, Brian’s body experiences a great trauma, as if it is rallying to cope with a massive infusion of toxins. These seizures are fascinating, if highly disturbing, and our multitude of tests in this area will continue as long as the patient is able to bear them.

However, the degeneration of Brian’s liver has now forced us to intervene surgically. The immediate danger is highly serious; as I have said, a transplant is now necessary in order to save his life. As soon as we have a donor for the liver the procedure will take place.

As I have stated, Brian’s other organs are under attack from this condition. How long his kidneys can continue to function normally is open to speculation and we are trying to match new organs of this kind to him and we obviously have dialysis standing by.

One ray of light is that since his admission to the hospital his condition has stabilised somewhat. We can only hope, for Brian’s sake, that this is the case.

FOR THE FIRST
time, as he contemplated his predicament, Brian Kibby was feeling real fear: stark and unremitting. The extent of his trembling panic was such that he almost felt as if his essence would shake free from his body. At first he had been too depressed at his condition to be really scared. Danny Skinner, this irrational dislike he had of him, it had been a distraction. Now he was alone, contemplating little other than his immediate fate, as his hair stabbed the back of his neck like needles.

Kibby looked across at the other men on his ward. They weren’t like him. They were old, many of them so obviously chronic alcoholics. They generally came in two packages: either painfully thin and wizened, resembling outsize stick insects, or all bloated like jaundiced whales. And he was in here with them. Why had he, a previously fit, wholesome young man, who had led a blameless life, been singled out for this curse? Kibby lamented in sorry bitterness.

Why? And it was a curse, that mad old woman was right! But who would put a curse on me? Why would anybody want to put a curse on me?

His desperate thoughts were interrupted as Mr Boyce came round to explain the procedure for his proposed surgery. Raw despair got the better of Brian Kibby and his discoloured hand fastened on to the surgeon’s cuff as he pleaded, — Why, Doctor, why me?

Raymond Boyce touched the back of Kibby’s hand lightly, but even that was enough to shame him into withdrawing his grip. — Brian, you must try to be strong, he said firmly. —
For the sake of your mother and sister, Boyce added, more irritated than he let on at being referred to as a doctor. As a senior surgeon, he was technically a ‘mister’.

— How? How can I be strong? I’ve done nowt, Brian Kibby moaned in abject misery. — I’m twenty-one years old and my life’s over already. I’m a virgin, Doctor, a virgin at twenty-one! Even before all this I was very shy with girls . . .

Shaking off a tingle in his cheeks, the surgeon puffed himself up and said, — One can never say what’s around the corner in this life. You can’t give up!

As Boyce departed Kibby thought of Lucy and specifically pulling the straps of that green dress from her shoulders.

Fuck Elder Clinton and Elder Allen and their stupid pamphlet . . . I’m dying here, I’m fucking dying! I don’t want to die a virgin . . . that old crone, I should have given her it . . . but there’s somebody else who should have got it . . .

And in the febrile but vivid eye of his mind, there was just Lucy and him, walking through the hills, her wearing that green dress and heels and carrying a large backpack, which she was struggling with . . .

The racking, bludgeoning cough of an old drunk cut through the stale, recycled air of the ward.

Shut up, you old cunt, shut up and die, it’s just me and Lucy on the hills . . .

. . . and she was sweating with the effort in the sun. Beads of perspiration stuck on her forehead. Heatherhill was –

No.

Not Heatherhill.

—
Fuck off, Angus, take a hyp hike somewhere else, Kibby sneered arrogantly, dispatching Heatherhill, who skulked off like a beaten dog, vanishing over the horizon. He turned to the sweating Lucy. — Two’s company, eh, bitch?

— Brian . . . Lucy started.

— But they tell me you like the conveyor-belt stuff. Maybe after I’ve finished Heatherhill and Radden and Fat Gerald can
come and get their fill. That’s what you want, isn’t it? A line-up for the boys?

Her eyes and mouth went wide again as Kibby’s hand reached out to the straps of the dress, which conveniently sat outside the ones of her backpack. He pulled them down, and as she was wearing no bra, her tits sprang out towards him. Kibby grabbed them roughly for a bit before shifting his weight and pushing into her, at the same time sticking his leg behind her. Gravity and the rucksack did the rest, and she fell backwards on to the damp grass. Her long legs kicked out, but that only helped ride her dress up. She wasn’t wearing any knickers.

— And as I go, I love to sing, my rucksack on my back, Kibby smiled as he unbuttoned his trousers and –

Ooooohhhh . . . oooooohhhhhhhh . . .

He felt his sticky waste pump into his pyjamas, seeping through into the hospital sheets and the mattress.

Fuck the hospital sheets.

AN ASTHMATIC EAST
European clerk, moving ponderously, shows me to my room. As the door opens it confirms my suspicions that this is a big mistake and I won’t last a few days without drink or drugs down here. It’s ten foot by ten, with a pish-smelling threadbare carpet, a sink, a set of sloping drawers and a bed with a wafer-thin mattress that creaks on urine-rusted bedsprings.

But this minging, rat-infested dive is the cheapest hotel I can find. It’s on 6th Street just off Market, so at least it’s central, albeit in an area full of flophouses and cheap liquor stores.

I lie down and sleep takes me off. It’s trippy but in a nasty way: loads of crap, mundane dreams of missing buses, trying to find toilets and decipher sports results from newspapers written in hieroglyphic scroll.

But the next day I’m brighter and up early out of this grothole, walking the streets of San Francisco. Loads of alkies, junkies and crazy people are hanging out around here, desperate to make eye contact, to drag you into their dramas, no doubt with a view of levying an extrication fee.
Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.
Fuck that parade; I’ve enough of my own shit going on to countenance interest in jakey affairs.

I head down to the Mission district for breakfast in a crêperie. Then it’s along to Castro, then up to Haight-Ashbury, before going back down Lower Haight, where I stop at a British-style pub for some pasty and chips. Then, mindful of Kibby’s needs, I leave it and head over to an American diner where I eat some grilled chicken with salad minus the dressing.

I’m browsing in a second-hand bookstore where I find a rare pamphlet copy of Arnulf Overlands’ early poems in English. I’d lap this stuff up in Edinburgh; spend loads of moribund evenings with a bottle of whisky reading the bastards, reciting them over and over until I propelled myself out into the night, the clubs, with big plans for every fucker. Here, though, in the Californian sun, I see them for what they are: quite stirring,
völkisch
verses, pro-German in a post-Versailles, ‘we wuz robbed’ kind of way. Strange to think of poor Overlands ending up in a Nazi concentration camp. It may not make much sense here, but it will do back home where some other depressive will pay big bucks for it. The dingul sells it to me for three dollars: it could do a wee turn on eBay.

Enlivened by my decent fortune, I find an Internet café-restaurant called the Click Ass. It’s a Japanese place and although the Scot in me craves the tempura because of its deep-fried qualities, I settle for the protein hit of the sashimi. The girl serving looks tranquil with collar-length black hair and glasses, her body long and slender. Guys always go on about lassies’ curves, and they do rule, but what I like is good lines on a girl; a straight back, like an old-school amateur boxer. Going with a Japanese lassie, how good would that be? I smile at her and her face is as beautiful as a painting but unfortunately as immobile.

When I check my email it’s all spam and disconcertingly I realise that it’s hardly any time since I left Edinburgh although with the flight and time zones it feels like ages. I look up the San Francisco AA meetings online. There are pages of them, going on all over town, every day! I select one from the Marina, because it seemed a posh neighbourhood, and set off down there. I just couldn’t face hearing the stories of the Tenderloin jakeys. I could get that shite back in Junction Street.

At least my wanderings have given me some sense of the city and its people. San Franciscans seem to fall roughly into three categories. There’s the rich (practically always white) with their leisure time, nice diets, gym memberships and personal
trainers, who are generally slim and fit. Then you’ve got the poor (usually Latino or black) who tend to be grossly fat as they can only afford to buy the cheap, highly addictive and calorie-rich TV dinners and fast food from the chains. The third bunch are the homeless, mostly black but with some whites and Latinos (though not too many), who, again, are usually very thin, because they can’t even afford the shit that the poor eat.

The meeting is taking place in what looks like an old public building, like it should be a library but there are no books. It’s some kind of community centre. It’s older than most constructions in the area but looks well maintained. I head along what feels like a concrete-floored hall, unusual for San Fran as the buildings are generally wooden for the earthquakes. It’s lined on either side with potted plants. Going through two swing doors I come into a wood-panelled hall full of people with their chairs in a semicircle. One guy, who looks Middle Eastern, with dark hair and eyes and a noon shadow, nods at me and to some of the free seats. The others barely register my presence.

The place is full of obviously well-to-do types, younger executives and the like, all Waspish. The chairman guy is the most ethnic-looking person there. I take a seat in between this suited gadge and this lassie, who’s about my age. I notice that she’s wearing a red-and-white T-shirt without a bra. It has the word GALVANIZE emblazoned on it. She has a prominent nose, which pokes out from this long, black, curly hair. On closer inspection she looks sort of Mediterranean, or maybe even Latin. The guy is a nondescript yuppie; short hair, dark-blue suit, glasses, polished black shoes. I would be phenomenally shocked if he and I ever exchanged a meaningful word in our lifetimes.