then i would sit on that red shag carpet or lie on the bear rug spread eagle on my stomach with my chin resting on the head of that poor dead bear’s and i would watch the zenith. the thing that i remember about star trek (tos, now) on that tv is that dr mccoy was crabby-compassion and had that polaroid camera looking thing and could detect disease from the outside, scan people and then with fancy sonogram laser unnamed beam and through their clothes, cutless, germless, would heal them, and no matter how bad the diagnosis, no matter the nature of the injury or the freaky composition of the poison, bones who was left with nothing but his skeleton after his divorce could treat almost every broken and after a few hours or days all would be well. or well enough. kirk still had the blue eye shadow problem but that was small in comparison to the severe cases mccoy was able to cure. now i picture i am standing in my kitchen with fabulous hair wearing too much blue eye shadow and a zippy black catsuit and with command i call into the retro modern brooch high at my shoulder, urgently but calm: McCoy! Quickly! The Kitchen! and then bones is transported from the enterprise or the unknown territories right in to my house despite mistrust of the whole transporter contraption and runs to me with his migrating geese eyebrows and starts to take out scanner c or something and i turn to him and put aside my jigger and look at him and say: just fix me here. here is where it hurts. and i point to my weakly fluttering wings and he grimaces a bit and with his hair loosened flailing mahogany like a white inferno he ministers to me with his gun of medicine and i wake up in some sickbay. scarless. with an edelweiss engraved brass cowbell on my chest and a terse mccoy patting my hand tenderly reluctantly understandingly and saying: i'm stepping back now. just ring this if you need me. but i won't need him any more.
