Handwashing Hooligans at Bioscience

            Last Monday, I participated in a Bioscience study where you wash your hands in bacteria and then in medicated soap on and off for 6 hours. The strangest part of this gig wasn’t my fingers yellowing like the petals of a wilting flower, nor was it the fondling of “melon balls” that ensued to determine the efficacy of the medicated soap (the fruit would later be tested for bacteria). It was the sitting around a plastic table with 4 strangers for 20-minute intervals between washings.

            To avoid contamination, we weren’t allowed to touch anything during the entire study.  So there we sat with our hands in the air like hooligans at gunpoint.  But, while we waited, the only person paying us any attention was an intern on standby to scratch our itches.  The scientist had introduced the intern at the beginning of the study as “Donald” and said he’d be taking care of us (as if he were a waiter). “You have an itch,” the scientist, “You tell Donald.” Donald had acne and the slouch of a young man who, as a teenager, had spent too many hours looking through a microscope in a mock lab in his garage. During his inauguration, I watched the intern insert a finger into his left ear and then examine his buried treasure. My stomach ached and not just because I was already hungry.

            Would this be worth the $115? 

            Well of course there was that one study participant with the beard who made a joke like his balls itched and too bad they weren’t melon balls if we knew what he meant. He leaned in and became the first to start the trend of resting our elbows on the table. “But,” he added, “I wouldn’t want my balls to be small like those melons because that’d mean I’m taking steroids.”

            It was like losing electricity in the middle of a bad movie, but you at least wanted to see how the villain dies.

            Only one guy laughed at the bearded man’s anti-climactic “itchy-melon-ball” joke. He was the Dungeons and Dragons Master who slinks out of his dungeon only for special occasions such as Bioscience studies, funerals, and movies. Once, while out of his magical cave, he got arrested for loitering. For 43 seconds, the kid’s dialogue distracted me from watching the clock on the wall –– its cruel, cruel hands moving unacceptably slow. Still, I was jealous; at least it could use its hands . . .

            I resumed my study of the clock when the Dungeons and Dragons Master started the game: “Has anyone seen the movie [insert sci–fi/ thriller that never made it into theaters]?”

            No. Screw you. Shut up. But, instead of taking cues (eye-rolling), the kid asked about another movie and then another (and another) when no one but him had seen the first or second (or thirtieth). Now distracting myself from the crazy–making clock on purpose, I imagined my hands disassembling the kid’s big face and leaving off the mouth as if he were Mr. Potato Head. I’m a nice girl. I do, however, have an inner bitch that slinks out of its own dungeon in such company. (And once a month and during hypoglycemic episodes).  

            Unable to use my hands, I used my imagination. I closed my eyes. With the same focus as a child building a sand castle, I constructed fantastical scenarios. For example, I became a nomad and participated in tea ceremonies around the world.  I learned how to arrange flowers like the Japanese, which has nothing to do with being a nomad or tea but that’s just how it goes. I knew it was time to quit when I joined the Army and, later, started dancing with elephants (I don’t even like dancing). So I turned to the large, bra-less older woman beside me (I don’t know when or why in a woman’s life she decides to stop wearing a bra in public, but it happens. Go to Walmart; you’ll see what I mean).

            “So what do you do in town?” I asked.

            “Demos at Walmart,” she says.

            “You like working at Walmart?”

            “I like it okay.”

            I turned to the guy on my other side. He hadn’t said boo since we sat. He’s wearing sunglasses and a purple bandana and a Harley Davidson t-shirt. “And what about you? What do you do?”

            “I buy and sell.”

            “Buy and sell what?”

            “Stuff people want to buy. Like equipment and stuff.”

            “Oh.”

            And that’s it. Ker-plunk. Like a contaminated melon dropped in the dumpster. I was hungry and thirsty and my left breast itched. Donald might have been able to take care of that for me, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. And then the scientist called my name. They’d taught me in Hebrew School that we Jews are the chosen people, but I’d never felt as chosen and special as I did in that moment –– summoned to wash my hands in bacteria and fondle melon balls for the tenth and final time.