Annie Black and N.L. Black Widow Survivor Stories - By N.L. Belardes and Annie Black

latrodectus....

Bakersfield is the land of black widows. Some say they evolved in the Southern San Joaquin. They're everywhere around Bakersfield... in the millions.

Halloween, 1998...

I've never totally recovered from my 6 days of hell in a hospital after being bit that night. I get sweats, and then there's the phantom pain in my feet.

I dream about spiders a lot.

Hint: when bit by a black widow, don't play an intense game of hockey. Neurotoxins injected from a latrodectous are not good for the blood.

No, I didn't know I was bit. I was visiting Bakersfield while living in Vegas. I played hockey while in town. I was a hockey whore.

Sure, hours later I was on Phenobarbitol, valium, morphine, and god know what else. And I lay in a hospital bed, wide awake saying, "Can you give me something for this pain??"

I begged my girlfriend to kill me.

She wouldn't. I'm still mad at her.

Dr. Strategos was about to give me the anti-venom. "We only give that to patients who we fear are not going to make it," he said.

That's reassuring.

I wrote some creepy spider poems while junked up:

Spider Dreams and Realities

1.
I began reading Cain’s Book again…
Trocchi, lying on his bunk, “under the influence of heroin, inviolable.”
The golden mountains we ascend towards the desert, inviolable;
Under patches of light and low lying rainclouds from a Pacific storm.
Having bedraggled over the coastal range, in their beauty, leaving the system.
On Phenobarb and Valium, head spinning.
Perhaps the black widow toxin is inviolable, creeping still,
Along the scows in my veins.

2.
I’m out of the hospital.
Me and my morphine, leaving the system.
We head under a bulging grey cloud to the mountains.
Shadows move over golden burnt foxtails.
Darkness over the freeway.
Cars like venom. Did I almost really die?
I asked to.
Thrashing on the gurney.
Toxin exploding in mad blood moments.
A boxer on the side of the road.
Autumn says, “He’s going to get killed.”
And then gone…
we pass vineyards where rattlesnake hunters sneak for dens
…and citrus groves, where sunlight and the grey cloud hover.
And up towards the desert, where poison lurks.

3.
Central Valley California evolved a gift for the world.
The Lower San Joaquin’s exquisite black spindler.
With hourglass to let you know it’s your time.
To sit and just think, “She’s sunk herself into me.”
To develop toxic symptoms.
And to want to imprison yourself…
That’s enough!
We’re in Tehachapi.
Let’s go buy apples.

4.
What kind of Halloween luck is this:
Spray painting demonic faces in my brother’s garage.
Hanging branches of dust-glo leaves.
Inhale aerosol and stain fingers.
Then off to a hockey game.
Unknown black widow bite.
Fighting breaks out.
Muscles tense and spasm.
The widow casts her spell on her perfect eve moment.

5.
Hospital spider dream sweats: I was in North Africa, part of a team from the CDC, white coats, disease specialists. We found a woman on the dusty cracked African plain, part of a tribe, standing, showing us her bald head, red and black face paint, her six eyes, staring. Mostly nude, she looked beautiful in her dangling jewelry, and though she didn't seem pregnant, was. Suddenly we held her down on the dirty earth under a cloud of dust and screams and gave her an abortion, pulling a stark white animal-looking fetus out of her. We held it under an orange sky, showed it to her, then laid it on her chest while it wriggled and died. There was nothing on the horizon but the glow of the dream. Not even a tree. Transition to a theatre, in a big American city—pornography showed on the big screen—a woman licking *…., while I laid nude under a blanket with the six-eyed girl from Africa who tried to get me *…. I was afraid because men from my work were there and I didn't want them to see. But suddenly the movie was over and everyone was up and walking around. The girl was different in America. Now she had long beaded hair and American clothes: torn jean shorts and top, both exposing her lovely skin. Her many eyes were multi-colored: greens, hazel-flecked variants, blues. Following her out of a theatre she begged me to cook something for her and I was seduced. I told her I would cook her Indian food. I watched her walk to a sidewalk—she was beautiful, with her long hair in dark beaded braids. We got into a white car. This guy from work was driving and she wouldn't sit next to me. There were toys on the road and I threw little toys out of the window and watched them smash on the ground. One toy I threw out the window fell onto our car’s hood. We passed a group of black men huddled on the street. They looked Jamaican. Suddenly there were some strange twisting brown clouds wrapped around a big white building that I noticed after passing through a tunnel. The tunnel was curved, tiled, white and shot through a building. There were many colorful tall and old buildings pushed next to each other. Behind the big white building we could see a tornado; big and brown—thin and twisting, and it was going away from us as it threw a giant tree across the city...

6.
I sit as the sun spasms into day.
Autumn, asleep, is covered in white sheets,
lacks sleep from a Halloween week.
There, through the window, over my heplocked wrist, pencil and paper,
lies the Bakersfield haze;
Over greens upon greens, it swells up into the brush where I can see a few houses,
bushes and palms.
The haze—blankets upon its own thickness.
A shroud at other times; its a pestilence gently moaning.
You can see it while ta-doodling over 58.
See it saturate golden hills in bands of itself.
Morning breaks free this day!
Even through such a haze—a bluebellied sky!
I’m up, alive, wandering this small corner-room with windows looking out at the city,
at the bluffs, and towards where the river lurks.
I’m up, alive, awaiting Dr. Strategos to smile and say, “Go home.”
Yes. Go home.
Wherever that is.


******
Why am I writing all of this? I was reminded by Annie Black who wrote a blog titled, "I hate you Black Orb of Death" and dedicated it to me. It's about black widows:

I wasn't afraid of them (spiders) until 2004.
It was summer in the Land of the Lords...I received a phone call, waking me from a deep sleep at two in the a.m. I was informed that my crush at the time had run out of gas. He asked me to go out to his shed and grab his gas can, drive less than two miles down the road and save him from what would certainly be death on the downtown Bakersfield streets. I didn't want him to be stranded...so I donned my sandals and headed out. "I have to save him!" Little did I know; someone would need to save me.

As I stepped outside, the humidity hit me like a wave of warm, dirty bath water. I waded through it and made my way to his storage shed. I grabbed the knob on the warped, peeling door and opened the pathway to my worst nightmare.

I reached to my left and flipped on the lightswitch. The bulb flickered a time or two before becoming steady. I took a step inside, spotted the gas can and stepped further into the seventh realm of Hell.

To the immediate right of me, I caught a glimpse of the largest, most intricately spun web I had ever come across in my entire life. Right smack dab in the middle was a shiny, pulsating, black ball of death. Her eight legs were stretched out as an eagle spreads its wings mid flight. I gasped what I was sure to be my last breath and stared, not moving, not speaking, and not remembering a single prayer that had been drilled into my brain for years as a Catholic school girl...

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This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Thursday, October 12, 2006. You can leave your response.