Dr. Bovasa Will See You Now (100% Orgasmic)

No one told you Bovasa was a typo, a Freudian slip, a hallucination. The S is sitting beside the D in the waiting room with no windows and no clocks. That’s how they get you. Six hundred simoleans on the Lakers and the Bucks, then one finger slips sideways and you’ve bought an organ transplant from Dr. Bovasa for forty-three cents.

They said “Bovasa” but they meant Bovada. I keep forgetting that.

I know it’s Bovada. I know my own mother, too, approximately, but neither fact is available when I need it. What I can retrieve instantly is the missed extra point that cost me $280 in November. I could draw the fucking kicker’s corns from memory. Put him in a lineup, make an incision and open up the chest, crank him open with the retractors and let me have a look: I know him by heart.

Dr. Bovasa has been expecting me. Just look at his eyes above that mask. That isn’t bedside manner. That’s a man listening to something still alive in the last patient he operated on.

Beside him hangs the apparatus: heart, beehive, scrotum of a cathedral. Bovasa has threaded a metal rod through it. A spit. Of course there’s a handle. Whatever happened to this organ, a nurse is paid to stand beside it and crank another quarter-turn whenever the heat drops below factory specifications.

Bovasa makes love easy. Forty-three cents is all it takes. My grandfather bought it. My grandfather bought anything advertised beside a diagram of a troublesome organ. He died believing there were twelve pounds of undigested steak inside him. We buried him with enough horseradish for six.

Now his finger is inside my finger, pressing DEPOSIT. I don’t remember that button being on the advertisement. I don’t remember the button being wet.

The doctor’s three vertical qualification marks have become tally marks. There used to be four. I check my teeth with my tongue and find the missing one, a thin black stroke growing between two molars. It tastes of Bovasa, of the spoon they leave in communal instant oatmeal. It tastes 100% Orgasmic.

A guarantee like that will attract attention and we don’t want that. But the regulator is here already, trouserless beside the operating table, massaging the heart, muttering Bovasa, cigarette ashes falling into the chest cavity. He drops the heart when he gives me a thumbs-up. There’s a word tattooed on the tip of his thumb, I wipe the blood from the words. Bovasa is the word. In the beginning was Bovasa. All I wanted was the late game. I got the end game instead.

The teams come out with surgical incisions. I mean surgical precision. Jacksonville receives. The ball is warm and wet and knows something about me. I’ve taken the under, so I sit here hoping nothing happens, the purest expression of how I’ve chosen to spend my remaining time on earth.

Nothing happens for eleven beautiful minutes. Then a safety. Somewhere a little door opens into the Bovada lobby. I should cash out. The offer is forty-three cents and a photograph of my mother taken from the Thanksgiving turkey’s perspective inside the oven. I zoom in. There I am at studying alternate totals. The charts are all printed on corporate Bovasa letterhead. Behind me, my wife has been replaced by the bookmaker. I’m nodding while she explains the wagering requirement. We’ve had this conversation before. Apparently she’d like us to go somewhere quiet so she can rollover.

The ribbed heart begins turning on its spit. The gas sputters to life. A flame ignites. The lobby gets hotter.

Each burner contains a Sunday I cannot account for. Chicken wing bones. A charging cable. My daughter asking whether I’m watching her or Bovasa. Yes, sweetheart. Absolutely. Daddy’s watching a man in another state decide whether a catch occurred. The doctor lowers his mask.

Underneath is another advertisement, smaller, offering the same procedure for thirty-nine cents. I’ve been overcharged. Even here. Even after everything.

I reach into his mouth to complain and find the D, loose among the coupons. There you are, you bastard. I drag it back across the keyboard. Cover the S with it. The little spinning circle stops. Bovasa becomes Bovada. A message asks me to prove I’m human. Nine photographs. Select every square containing your grandfather. He’s in the lobby now, turning on the spit. They’re making it harder to prove I’m human. I should have known when they said “Bovasa” that what they always mean is Bovada.

Bovasa FAQs