The New Meaning of "Hook Up"

Strange how the term "hook up" has taken on a whole new meaning lately. In modern parlance, it is a rather crude way of saying that one has quite literally hooked up, put one's genitalia into another human being or vice versa. Dogs clamped together in the sex act.

I am now hooked up every night. But not with a sex partner. With my dialysis machine. It pumps fluid in and out of my body for 10 hours every night. Can any man do that? Hmmmm...I doubt it.

And it is not a casual hook-up. No, indeed. It is a life-and-death embrace, the stuff of true passion. At least as I've always envisioned it. Intense passion for me--and I haven't had any intense passion for almost a decade--entails a little hint of death, a bringing of two bodies to the abyss coupled with an explosion of light. The play of darkness and light, death and life, pain and pleasure. This is the stuff of the kind of hook-up that few people, I'm sad to say, have known. This is also the stuff of what I am experiencing, hooked up to a machine that pumps clean fluids in and extracts toxins, but also takes its toll as it robs my body of protein and electrolytes.

I don't have a valentine this Valentine's Day, as I have not had one for almost 30 years. Yes, 30 years without VD flowers and affection from a man with whom I am romantically entangled. None of that this year either, unless some miracle crosses my path. But I will be hooked up. You can bet on that.