My Skinned Knees

I’m standing next to the trash can. My left hand is over my right, pressing down. Blood drips more slowly now into the trash that consists mostly of used mulch and snake skins. Vince is to my right, staring at the python that glares up at him through the lid of the container. Lucas is in front of me, also staring at the snake.
“Can you pass me some paper towel,” I say in my normal quite voice. Neither of them hears me though. I try again this time louder and directed at Vince. Lucas still doesn’t move, Vince goes into the incubation room and returns with a square piece of paper towel that he’s folding. He holds it out.
I always forget how sticky blood is. My hand was slick when I first grabbed it, but not I pull it away and it’s like flesh on couch that has one of those clear plastic protecting covers on it. I take the paper towel. The veins now free of the pressure for an instant resume their bleeding; the blood again starts to swell beneath the skin of my hand. I clamp the paper towel down and push hard.
“Do you guys think you can handle it from here?” I ask Lucas.
Lucas laughs finally, “I think Vince can handle it from here.”
“Okay, I’m going to go clean this up.” I wave my hands.

I know a lot of people that get jittery around blood, or open wounds, or pain. I’ve never really had that problem. When I learned to ride a bike I did it on a steep hill in front of my house. We lived at the foot of the mountains in West Virginia at the time. I got used to bleeding after awhile. My mom would dress the scrapes, disinfect the cuts, kiss the bruises. It was part of learning. I accepted it. It didn’t faze me.
West Virginia was a dangerous time for me. I was in first grade and out to prove that I was man enough to take on the world.
I caught every animal I could get my hands on. I raced every kid during recess. I went toe-to-toe with the fat kids on the seesaws, and to this day wonder what genius and bitter femme-Nazi ever invented such a dangerous playground apparatus. I jumped into a wall once and tore an inch long gash in my elbow on the dull side of a nail and forwent stitches because I wanted to go ride my bike. You learn early on that part of life, part of living, is getting hurt to remember what feeling is.

I’m back in Manhattan, Kansas for the weekend. I work at a local pet store that deals with exotic reptiles, or herps as they are called in the hobby. Rachel is working there with me. She’s our newest employee, she still comes to me with every question she has, but she’s learning, and she’s interested so I don’t mind. Lucas doesn’t work with us, but he’s over at the breeding facility spraying the snake racks down for mites. When I say breeding facility I’m talking about an office space that used to be a nursery for preschoolers. There’s still a badly done welcome sign painted in purple on the front door. Across the hallway is a property management office whose owners aren’t exactly thrilled about their new neighbors and the smells that come with a couple thousand reptiles and the additional insects and rodents that are raised to feed them. The snake racks are basically a series of plastic drawers slid into a metal frame and they range in size similar to that which you’d keep your socks in to ones that morgues use to keep bodies cool. I have a couple of snakes over in the facility. Lucas comes into the pet store which is only a two minute walk away from the breeding facility.
“Is your snake nice?” Lucas asks me.
“I’ve never had a problem with her, she did bite this one guy, but not hard.” My snake that he’s talking about is an eight foot carpet python. It is a beautiful snake, slender for her length, with a head the size of a fist. Her body is black with yellow spots and stripes. I picked her up from a kid in Virginia, when he shipped them he made three mistakes. First he used USPS, which forbids live snakes to be shipped through their services. Second, he didn’t package them correctly, no insulation. Third, he used very old packaging material; he tied the snakes up in old frayed pillow cases and put them in an old box. The snakes escaped in Topeka, and he’s lucky the office people who recaptured them didn’t decide to pursue legal action. When I went to get the snakes they made me pose with them holding it while they took pictures with us.
“Well, I’m cleaning them down for mites,” says Lucas, “if you get a free second I’d appreciate some help taking her out.”
“Sure, no problem.”

I was a freshman in high school and new to Corbin, Kentucky. My neighbor was a senior in ROTC and an avid fisherman. He invited me to come trout fishing with him and a retired army colonel. I was having no lucky in my first freshwater fishing experience, and starting to get bored of watching David and the colonel real in fish after fish.
It was a sudden jerk that yanked my head forward, David stood in front of me looking confused at the lack of a lure at the end of his line.
It was a rooster tail. It’s a small metal lure with a feather at the base with a three pronged hook, a metal shaft with a spinner on it that sparkles as it encounters drag through the water. David wandered my direction while casting into the current, he wandered too close.
I was wearing a hat, which of course the hood went straight through, the barb is pronged so that it is nearly impossible to remove without tearing a chunk of flesh out with it and it is as deep as it can go in the small space between my skin and skull.
The colonel is playing with the hook in the back of my head.
“Well, Matt…I can’t pull it out without creating a much larger hole,” he tells me.
I raise my eyebrows, but he can’t see the gesture. “Just yank it out.”
He first asks if any of us are carrying a knife. None of us are, ironically, our knives are on the other side of the river, which was fordable an hour ago, but we are trapped on the other side because we are beneath a dam and the dam is letting water out raising the icy water level. The colonel offers another option. “Well Matt, I can cut a small incision with another fish hook where the barb is, it will hurt, but it will minimize the damage.”
“Go for it.”
None of us have lighters, so we have to pick the hook that looks the most sterile, and he carefully slices down till he finds the barb and slowly pulls it out. I don’t make a sound.
I start the next school year with two people who respect me.

We hit a slow spot at the store so I leave Rachel and go to the breeding facility. We have large plastic bins out, and I pull my snake out without a problem. There is a second snake in the tub though; nine foot carpet python, who I’ve handled before without any problems.
I truly believe that snakes and other animals can sense confidence. There is a small snake at the pet store that I’ve sold twice now, and it has been brought back both times. The snake was always a little feisty, striking at the glass whenever you passed in front of it. I was bored last spring though so I pulled it out, and started to handle it whenever I was bored. The snake calmed down, for me at least. I never had a problem with her. I took her to my French class and gave a presentation about keeping snakes as pets to the class. The last people to bring her back was a young couple. The wife said that she loved the snake, and the snake never gave her problems. They guy said that he was a little nervous of her and that she always acted like she would strike him. I pulled the snake out. She curled up on my hand. I looked at them. The wife just rolled her eyes, the husband stammered and insisted on the viciousness of the snake. When he opened his mouth she struck in his direction.

I reached in and grabbed the python. He was fine as I began to pull him out. Then I watched as he moved his head and started to smell the back of my right hand. I knew what was going to happen next. He opened his mouth, I twisted my hand away from the gaping maw. I was able to keep him from getting my whole hand, but he got six teeth into the back of my hand. His top and bottom jaw lined up almost perfectly with two of the largest veins that run across my hand. He drew his body around my wrist and started to squeeze. My hand swelled. I grabbed his head with my other hand. Lucas grabbed his body. I twisted the head and the teeth out of my hand, and we stowed the snake into the bin. I felt something drip onto my toe. Blood ran down my hand and dripped from my finger tips. I grabbed it with my left hand and pressed hard, blood squirted and spilled everywhere. I walked to the trash can.

Rachel look a little freaked out when I walked into the store with red hands.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, I got tagged.”
I went to the sink and washed my hand off with cool water. I doused it with alcohol. The bleeding still hadn’t stopped. Two veins had been punctured. I found the med kit above the sink while blood slowly dripped into the sink and splashed in bright red patterns. I used a combination of adhesive bandage stitches and some super glue to close the puncture points. I covered them all with band aids.

It is something you learn when you learn to ride your bike, when you fall out of your first tree, when you catch your first bumblebee. You are going to get hurt. Part of living is painful, and if you know what to look for then you can anticipate what’s going to happen. I know that I will occasionally get bitten handling large snakes. I knew that that carpet python was hungry as soon as he pressed his nose against my skin. I knew I was going to get bitten. I didn’t have to go help Lucas do his job, but that’s what we do when friends ask us for help. And we’ll get hurt sometimes. For a long time I’ve not been the one to step in and take the hit, because I never understood how to value relationships. It took a long time for me to recognize I was wrong.

I know it’s a crappy metaphor: comparing emotional investment with getting bitten by a nine foot snake and bleeding similes into a trashcan while I apply pressure and deeper meaning to stem the flow of blood.

When we can see something is going to hurt we prepare ourselves. And then we can handle it without completely losing it. Some people are just good at thinking on their toes. I can lose a pint of blood and not bat an eye as long as I now how to keep it from getting worse. I can tear my ACL and just shrug and say, yeah, I need some help to my car. I don’t consider these things to be strengths, merely the ability to function with focus in an emotionally detached state.

I cried every day for two weeks last month. I still tear up occasionally. The first thing I think about when I wake up is always Yuuki. The last thought I have before I fall asleep is her as well. I’ve never felt so strong.

It is a topsy-turvy world that I’ve discovered. And I struggle against years of floating adrift, to stay anchored to this idea of an adventure and trial that I’ve already made my mind to pursue. So I forgo the snakes now, they’ve never scared me, they hardly raise my pulse, but terrified I still struggle to grasp the terms of my new convictions.

I watched a show where a scientist was trying to catch every species of crocodile in the world, 23 different species. Deep in Borneo he found one of the rarest in the world hiding under some roots that had extended into the water. He tried to use his noose pole, but the vines were too thick. Without hesitating he got out of his boat, slipped between the vines and grabbed the animal barehanded. When you know what you want you forgo even your life, leave the boat, roll up your sleeves, and hold on hard.