Ceiling Fan Attacks Twin

As a dutiful homo-ner (translation: gay owner of a home), I recognize and perform according to my duty to work on my abode. And so with Head Chef laboring over the power tools, I do the more menial tasks that must be done even though they require a bit more patience and perhaps a little less emotional return for the effort.

And despite the fact that it was he, not I, who operated the power tools, I still found my way to the hospital with a gushing head wound.

See, the ceiling fan attacked me in cold blood. I was innocently patching pukas in the ceiling and the wicked thing reached out and lacerated the back of my head. The impact resonated with a huge “WHAM!” through my head. I fell to the bed I stood on, and heard Head Chef turn off the power tools outside in the garage.

“Are you OK?” he called in. I got up from the bed and put my hand to the back of my head for the blood check. Sure enough, my hand was covered in beautiful red.

“I’m bleeding,” I responded as he came into the house and I went out into the hallway. Although the pain was subsiding quickly, he reported that the cut was an inch or more long, apparently deep, and covered in dust bunnies that had collected on the fan blades since their last cleaning.

So after some convincing, he took me to Kuakini hospital for cleaning, stitches, and a fashionable bandage.

And it was there that it happened again. The admitting nurse asked me my name. She asked me my occupation. She wanted to know if I had any other injury or had fallen to the floor. And she wondered if Head Chef and I were twins.

No? Perhaps brothers? Cousins? Step in-laws thrice removed? I held a cool, damp rag to my head with my right hand, and it was significantly streaked with blood. I looked over at Head Chef and rolled my eyes. Clearly, all bearded, bald men are related.

It was the first time I had ever been irritated by the question. Up to this point over the past nine years, I was fine with it. It even amused me. “Brothers! Ha! More like kissing cousins,” I always wanted to answer. But in this context, the nurse’s question wasn’t amusing at all. It was tedious.

And it was stupid and obvious that we are not brothers. I’m taller, more fair, with narrow shoulders and a gigantic head. I look English/French. Head Chef is shorter, darker, with broad shoulders and a decidedly Czech look to him, and yet again, “Are you brothers?” You should see the family get-togethers.

The bad news was that I needed stitches and a tetanus booster. I braved both, and brother Chef smirked at my discomfort and embarrassment. I was stoic in the face of hypodermics and self-effacing for foolishly standing up into a ceiling fan on high.

My twin (he has teeth and a spinal column) and I left the hospital and returned home to find the fan still spinning. With my head dressed in bandages, I stood there menacing it from the room’s doorway, “spin all you want, but I’ll get you in the end.”