My stomach

I shed my clothes and get into bed.

It begins with the urge to burp and an off-hand thought, must be that scotch and soda. And then a little pressure in the tummy and a reminder, I ate too much of Judy’s leg of lamb for dinner. I feel the rush of air hit the top of my throat and think, oh it’s silly, this just happened two nights ago. And my stomach gurgles and then I fart – oh, that’s all it was, a little gas from the oversteamed broccoli.

But the urge to burp gets heavier, the pressure in my tummy expands, the air on the top of my throat comes too frequently, and the stomach gurgles one too many times. I put my shorts back on, afraid that a fart will turn into a shart. Ten minutes pass, another twenty, and then an hour. It continues in five-minute waves. My heart races into the cardio zone, but it comes back and then goes up again. I put the plastic waste basket, I lift the sheets off my tummy, too sensitive for even a light cotton sheet.

And then Camille comes into the bedroom, turns off the lights and turns up the air conditioning, just like she’s done every night since I moved home from San Francisco.

I get up and take the waste basket into the den, lie down on the sofa, look out the hallway at the bathroom. I flush the toilet because I don’t want to throw up into urine. I want it to come, I want to purge myself of this two-hour anticipation of bile and acid.

But it does not come until 5:30 when the sun begins its rise over the ocean. And then I crawl into bed next to Camille, certain not to disturb her because she yells at me if I wake her up. I catch two hours of sleep before I rise for work. And then I perform some mathematics, adding one to the endless count of nausea nights that have occurred since I moved home from San Francisco.