Inktober 10: #Fortune
In which I encounter a real character and learn a few things about the military-medical-industrial complex
I was in the library checking my email on the public computers. Next to me, a white-haired, paunchy old boy was managing his account at an online dating site. Every half-minute or so, he chuckled at something some dating prospect or other had written in her profile, wagging his head each time and cutting his eyes over toward me. Clearly he hoped I would engage him in conversation. I was in a bit of a hurry–just trying to check my email and get out of there–and I wasn’t up to it anyway.
Soon my neighbor wandered away from the dating site to a medical self-diagnosis site. He stopped chuckling and instead made little murmurs of interest–or maybe concern. I didn’t take the bait. At last the man nudged me with his elbow. He pointed at his screen. “How would you pronounce that word?” he asked.
I looked at his screen. “Splanchnoptosis, I guess.” I went back to my email.
“Splanchnoptosis,” he repeated. “Prolapse or backward displacement of an organ in the abdomen.” He rubbed his ample belly. “I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve got.” I glanced in his direction and gave a sympathetic nod, then looked off, hoping he would get the message.
The man turned his chair to face me. “You probably didn’t know that you can cure cancer with baking soda, did you?”
It finally occurred to me that whatever my email said, it wasn’t going to be nearly as interesting as the things this old boy had to say. I turned my chair too, and we were face to face.
“That’s right,” he said. “Some doctors in Italy taped pouches of baking soda under the armpits of women with breast cancer. Six weeks later, the tumors were gone. No surgery. No chemo. No radiation. I saw it on YouTube.” He crossed his arms triumphantly, as if he had been one of the Italian doctors who made the discovery. “It’s all about the pH levels.”
He extended a thick right hand in my direction. “I’m David,” he said. I shook his hand.
“But there’s no #fortune to be made in baking soda, is there? Where would the medical-industrial complex be if everybody was controlling their pH levels with baking soda and wasn’t getting cancer? What would the doctors do? You can’t make the mortgage on one of those doctor houses by selling baking powder, can you?”
David looked behind him as if to be sure nobody was eavesdropping, though he was speaking so excitedly now that I suppose everybody in the computer room could hear every word, unless they were wearing foam earplugs. He leaned in close. “You know who built all the hospitals, don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“The Rockerfellers. That’s who. The same Rockerfellers that are in charge of everything else. You think that’s a coincidence, that the Rockerfellers built all those hospitals and the Rockerfellers are in charge of our health policy? You want to know why you didn’t know baking soda is the cure for cancer?” He snorted disdainfully. “Ask the Rockerfellers. Only they won’t tell you.”
David gestured toward the people who were lined up outside the computer room for early voting. “It’s like I told one of the women out there,” he said. “I said, ‘Do you really think you’re smart enough to vote? Do you think you can outwit the military-medical-industrial complex? Because that’s who runs things around here. Do you think you’re smarter than the Rockerfellers?'”
To think my natural inclination was to ignore this guy.
“But there’s no telling what women want, is there?” David said, changing the subject. I wasn’t sure if that was a rhetorical question. “I know what women want,” he said, “and I know how to give it to them.” He leaned in even closer than before and assumed a confidential tone. “They just want somebody who will listen.” #inktober2023