CHAPTER VII THE RETURN OF REALITY # FARGO IN MY MIND Dr Horton, the psychiatrist, explained what had happened to me while I was in Fargo for emergency surgery on my left foot. Mangled, twisted, bones sticking out at funny angles. I was lying in an orthopedic bed, barely able to move w/ a disc dislocated in my back; there was a monkey bar overhead which I was becoming more & more deft at using. "Mania--that was the 1st storm: a mani- a-generating amphetamine-like substance put into the water by Empire spy missiles: Next a phage which absorbs norepinephrine was released, creating depression--manic-depression, the cycle of day & night--the shadows seem to scatter...excuse me, I am rambling schizophrenically...." "Isn't that fairly easy to treat w/ lithium?" I asked. "I understand there's lithium in the water now...why should I have gone off onto a year long schizo-depression?" The psychiatrist, Dr Bruce Horton, said, "A lot of reasons: For 1 thing, your father was dying of Alzheimer's disease--do you remember that?" I thought. I thought of Daddy Doder Doodyman, of Pops w/ his silly schizophrenic eccentricities, the carrot that was his tooth- brush, the glass of warm powdered milk--a Union leader. I thought of the Burnout in the Dog-Yummy Factory; of Captain Strange & I rescuing Pops from the dread strikebreakers...I thought of all this & my tears flowed: Daddy Doder Doodyman was gone to the great Union meeting in the sky. Dr Horton asked, "Does this mean that you remember?" "Only that I feel loss." Flow my tears, the insane science fiction author said.... "You're repressing his death," Dr Horton said. "In time it will all come back to you...you rest now. I'm putting you on Desyrel. It's an interesting substance: resembles the phen- othiazines, but it's not an antipsychotic, it's an anti- depressant. Can't make you manic...that's 1 reason it's so widely used today...& puts you to sleep better than any sleeping pill known to man." I was Lead again now. A developmental lock is always searching for new solutions, for the next click-stop in a series of problem-solving heuristics, but if you can't find that solution...you regress to the last previous steady state. Lead. Like reverse alchemy: God to Lead. The psychiatrist exited, leaving me alone w/ Dr Cliff. He looked at my swollen feet, in traction--I would need surgery. "Could you get me the Chaplain?" I asked Dr Cliff as he pried & prodded, w/ an occasional ouch on my part. "What religion?" the foot Dr asked. "The right foot--does it hurt when I do this?" "Ouch goddamnit! Hell yes it hurts!" "Funny...there's no obvious sign of a break...You realize that since the mindstorms have created sociological instability that there's been a diversification on the part of religions...in other words, there's hundreds of cults out there to choose from--personally, I'm an atheist...." "Catholic," I said. "Redeemed thru pain & not thru joy, eh?" he said. "...old Jim Carrol." "You zoc?" "Saturday night I'm down in the disco dungeon boogeying w/ all the slimchicks. Redeemed thru pain & not thru joy....Alright, I'll have Father Schowalter come up to see you." # REDEEMED THRU PAIN & NOT THRU JOY "Call me Joe," Father said. "Father Joe Schowalter." Father Schowalter was a man in his 50s, salt & pepper hair graying around the temples; he had a keen & lively sense of humor. I wondered if he was married. Vatican III had allowed priests to marry, but some of the hardline Catholics rejected the Ecumenical Council on the grounds that the Pope was insane when he dispensed priests from their vows. Insane like everybody else. "You better not be slow," I said. "Because this all depends on your being intellectual. Ever hear of the gnostics?" "I'm familiar w/ their teaching," Father Schowalter said. "They believed that God was evil." "Or actually, that the Creator was evil." I said. "There was supposed to be a good God beyond God, a Goddess who lived in the Heaven Pleroma." "Pleroma isn't Heaven, it means `Fullness'." Father said. "Then you are familiar w/ them! I...I just got out of a gnostic fantasy. I...I ate the Fruit of the tree of Knowledge & turned into God. But God was evil & I redeemed myself by becoming woman...I want to confess to the sin of gnosis." Father Schowalter looked doubtful. "What sin? You were stormed. I've heard stranger things from my parishioners. Oh well, I will give you absolution." He pronounced the mystic words & I felt my soul being cleansed. "Go, & sin no more." I was free now--at least until the next storm...! # SHOULD WE TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER? SHOULD WE TALK ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT? ...I asked Soiuxsie, a cute blond sitting in the smoking room of the Deaconess, the Hospital where my feet had been operated on. The inevitable cigarette slinked forth toward hands that were no longer those of a reptilian Id. I guess that that had been just another cosmic comic book fantasy. But the monad was real. As soon as I got my computer from home I was going to cure my busted feet by changing IDs. I had casts on both feet now: a CAT-scan had revealed micro-fractures in my right heel. Besides the incredible cuteness of Soiuxsie there was a fat lady whose name I forget; & a young Hutterite in his 19th Century farmer clothes. There was a colony of them around here; they dressed primitive like the Amish & sold garden vegetables in town. Future primitive. Conversation on psych wards tends to get a little barbled sometimes. I was myself more than a little schizophrenic; my thoughts were atypical, tending toward fragmentation: I couldn't think in a straight line, my mind meandered just like Oedipus on the road to Harlem right before Oedipus wrecks: There. I'd done it again. & this was strange, as I was getting 750 mgs of thorazine & 15 mgs of stelazine.... Nancy, the cute little mousey blond, was talking about her pop. My Pop was dead--I remembered a snatch of the funeral; flow my tears, the insane science fiction author said: I liked Dick. Nancy had been raped a year before; it had split her mind, made her schizophrenic; now, a year later, the rapist had been released--& she'd run into him. Strange days had found her. I relaxed to smoke my cigarette; they didn't call me Nicotine Jim for nothing. The menthol was cool in my throat. Just then a nurse came into the smoking room & said, "Put out your cigarette--you're going home!" "Shit," I cursed under my breath. She pushed the wheelchair. Even though it was motorized, she insisted on pushing. I thought of activating the little electric motors, skidding out of her hands--her hands were supple..... Thoughts fragmented, I looked in a mirror & saw the Savage Id, but the Id was no intensely slimy reptile; the Id was just another insane man & a devouring hunger that lived at the heart of him. It had been a long, fearsome, loathsome journey to the heart of the Savage Id & I still hadn't given up my comic books: Savage Id was going up for a rematch w/ Superego, & this time I'd learn how he escaped! (Mainly because I was writing it.) The ambulance was a sleek aircar. I marveled at a monstrosity of fins like some Batmobile--it was a superclass galactic cruiser as I boarded, slimchick nurse right behind me, hair natty in the sunshine--so strange to find a black chick in the wilds of North Dakota. "I'm the vice-president of the Black Panthers," I said, caught in my steeply-sided unreality. "I know," she said, & I think there was a tear in her eye. The eye is the window of the soul; I looked deep & saw a soul not unlike my own. The aircar jetted out of the parking lot. We rose into the noon sun, the barely-traveled landscapes of rattlesnakes & tumbleweed beneath us left to the lumbering trucks & the truckdrivin' men. Was it really true that I had assassinated the head of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama? I voiced these fears w/ the androgynous little nurse. She sighed & said, "A life is a terrible thing to waste." It was not as I expected: I thought she was going to tell me Right on! for the horror I had committed--by sheer accident. "Whose life? & who's wasted? I used to be the Bozo King on prescription pot--now I trust to drugs like P6E1, carbechol, to control my pressures--the pot did nothing for me but burn me out...." She squeezed my hand. "Everybody is a little Bozo--in their own way. Now that we're in the mindwarp era; now that Saklas is bombing us w/ m-amphetamines & de-phages from space. Not to mention the schiz-virus." "I used to think it was VADIS which was driving me insane. VADIS was a satellite system. Drive me crazy to an early grave, just another crazy guy: I'm already another Dick; my goal now is to be another Ferry...." "I know." & again she squeezed my hand, & there was no love in it. Or perhaps love but no sex. The conversation meandered on like the road, which rolled over North Dakota hills where once Indians had dwelt. Part of an ecological reclamation project, the buffalo were making a come- back; the noble savages hunted them again in the only life- style that made sense in a world gone insane. My tears fell like silent raindrops; echoed in a world of withdrawal: I was home again, home in a faraway land. Toni met me coming off the air-ambulance. I was delighted to see her; it meant being close to a friend while I would be in this strange place, strange days: "Hiya, Lead: I heard you tried to kill yourself. Well, what in the hell did you do that for?" "Somebody was trying to kill me--the dreaded Height Park Hitman. I killed myself to escape from him; or perhaps I killed myself so I could get a blow job from a batwinged demon. I fled out here to North Dakota; I disguised myself--he has X-ray vision: It was he who pushed me from the precipice...." "Boy howdy, are you ever stormed! We're going to get you to Dr Rose; get you some good antidepressants...now you don't chase too many nurses!" Dr Rose's office was a marvel of superheroes: There were comic books in the waiting room. I searched in vain for an issue of Slime-thing; I searched in vain, finally settled on an Incredible Hulk. The Hulk was almost as keen as Spiderman. Spiderman was so much more kool than Batman. They both climbed buildings, but Spidey--Batman was just getting a little old. & the Batmobile was nothing compared to the Fratmobile. Even though Batman could afford a better aircar than that.... A beautiful redhead stood in the door, calling out my name. She introduced herself as Amber Rose, then as soon as we were alone propositioned me. Young lust from a middle-aged woman. Heat/night right here in Invisible City. I gasped in astonishment. She was a tow-headed she-bop w/ crimson lipstick & makeup that made her eyes violet w/ sparkles. Yet in depression I was impotent; I could do nothing while she did her striptease: She hovered over me like some cosmic fury, poking & prodding--still I was impotent. De-phages had colonized my brain, bacteria like immune cells creating colonies in my brain where silence grew like a cancer. "I'm sorry, Dr--I can't. Worms eat my brains; there is a great, soft jelly thing in my head & the jelly thing is my brain...." She saw my frustration yet didn't put her clothes back on. She spent a minute toying w/ my dong, then finally stopped when she saw that I was, indeed, impotent. It was every man's dream--fucking his psychiatrist. & yet it was a dream like insanity, something Beyond like an alien God. We spoke of that same impotence, we discussed why, for the last 3 years, years that I couldn't remember, I hadn't had a girlfriend. Been living at home w/ Mama. I didn't know. I guessed that I didn't know: Haldol, be the death of me! The conversation meandered on like the mighty Missouri, the great river of this God-forsaken state; & the state was my mind; then when it was all over & I was trucking back down the halls like an insane Hoppy Harrington my sperm-worm finally began to rise. I breathed air full of m-amphetamine, drugz like the PCBs of Barefoot in the Head; I was finally capable of sex as they overwhelmed the de-phages; I was hypersexual--but the interview w/ Dr Amber Rose was over; I could do nothing....except chase the other nurses.... Yet I would keep trying: The monad was still a program in my computer; I could always change IDs--but I wanted to stay as close to PHENOTYPE as possible; I didn't want these psychiatrists & nurses to know I had a device capable of altering me to any new form I desired. Melanie came to give me my shower: She was a dishy blond, like an Invisible Rachel. She had to tie garbage bags around my legs to keep the casts from getting moist, then together w/ another girl lifted me into the shower chair, a plastic contraption w/ holes in the seat to allow the water to drain. As I looked on her beauteous form I was hypnotized, hypomanic & hypersexual--so I pinched her on the ass. She flung the towel at me, screaming. All I'd done was tell her I wanted to screw her buns off.... But for a saner this was the greatest of insults.... # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.