Fake Air

I know I overdid it. There were lots of warnings. I thought about them, but did nothing to change. Instead, I rocked even harder. Blew the doors off my car. Blasted my headphones on the plane from Calgary to Houston. The air buzzed with my Dad’s high school vinyl: AC/DC, Black Sabbath. Old style noise. Cranked.

But I didn’t notice the effect till I was top down on the scenic byway past Kyger Creek when the cassette tape snapped and the last bars of Working Man rushed past my head. So I palmed into a Sunoco to take a look, but when the engine stopped the wind didn’t. It swirled in my ears and kept hissing in my head.

The specialists had a name for it, said it was permanent damage, said it would never go away. The best thing to do was to practice ignoring it. Pretend it wasn’t there.

After that, the sound of air rushed in my skull wherever I went and a dentist drill never stopped whining in my ears.  I couldn’t shake it off so in the end I had to do what the they said. I ignored it