The public grand-mal seizure on the Gray Line

pivotal · 14 Nov YDAU

• When: 14 Nov YDAU, a Gray Line train from Watertown toward Inman Square, Cambridge (the second syrupless afternoon)
• What: Out of even cough-syrup money and now Withdrawing from the Codinex alcohol as well as heroin, Poor Tony lights out for the Antitois and has a grand-mal seizure on the crowded train — "a synaptic firefight in Poor Tony's desiccated temporal lobes," caused by abrupt grain-alcohol Withdrawal after ~sixteen 80-proof Codinex bottles a day for eight days. The set-piece: the respectables drifting away from his puddles and stench, the fecal incontinence, the violet aura and phosphene shower, his heels drumming "Zuckung Zuckung Zuckung" on the soiled floor, the crowd's studious non-attention, and the terminal hallucination fusing his own convulsion with his obstetrician father delivering a baby (himself) — the crowd yelling "PUSH," the swallowed tongue, the father's fingers bitten off. He is left abandoned mid-seizure by the car of "respectables."