Planet Fever (7 page)

ONCE AGAIN
, I woke up not knowing where I was.

The place looked like a hospital room, or maybe a prison cell. Everything was immaculate and white, including the padded steel door. I was on a soft cot-like bed. My mind in a cloudy haze, thoughts formed into something tangible only to disperse into a formless nebula.

A lady’s voice similar to one over the loudspeaker at an airport cut into the room, thwarting me from my daydream. “Welcome back to the A-to-Z Research and Clinical Trials Center. To ensure a somewhat pleasant stay, we recommend you follow our instructions. Be dutiful, please. Thank you.”

She instructed me to sit in a chair and face a video screen, which had appeared on a wall from behind automated receding doors. I was told to relax, which I knew was going to be tough because the chair was of the metallic fold-out variety specifically designed to be uncomfortable. But I’d give it my best shot.

A woman’s face came up onto the screen, the type of face that could be seen in a car commercial or behind the reception desk at a large Wall Street firm—at least how I imagined the reception desk. Plain but pretty, in a business-like fashion.

“Edward P. Bikaver,” the face on the screen addressed me. “Do you have any questions?”

“What’s going on? Why am I here? Who the hell are you?”

She smiled. “We are going to do some psychic exercises and subconscious rehabilitation in order for you to go back into the world and operate as a functional human being.”

It was clear I wasn’t going to get any solid answers from this lady.

“During this program, please do not direct your attention away from the screen,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled.

Intricate patterns and fractal geometric designs twirled on the screen. I watched with my mouth agape. When I sensed drool cross the threshold of the lip, I figured I was then hypnotized.

My thoughts converged upon the form of a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl. A yearning swelled up within me: to be with her … to touch her … to kiss her … etc.

The screen lit up: right there on the screen was the blonde of my thoughts and a swarthy-looking gentleman. The guy was a suave, embellished romantic caricature of me: his hair slicked back and gelled into a pompadour and his silken shirt open at the top, revealing an absurdly hairy chest. The two stood on a veranda on a cliff overlooking an oceanic sunset. They gazed into each another’s eyes, their faces drawing toward each other.

I thought about kissing the girl; as I did so, the caricature on screen drew the girl into himself and embellished an exaggerated kiss of her. After the seemingly eternal smooch, he leered into her eyes and said (with a quasi-French accent): “Your eyes are the ocean of the universe … and I, standing atop the cliff of loneliness and despair … plunge into your eyeballs to be rescued by your heart….”

Bile rose from the pit of my gut due to the overwhelming sense of loathing and nausea at what my eyes beheld on the screen. Picture a sleazy romance novel adapted to a cheap soap-operatic version for the screen and you would be peering into my alleged soul. The source of the cheese? Apparently, my own thoughts.

I tried not to think. As I did so, another caricatured version of myself came on-screen. This one a blithering dolt, eyes closed, who sat in a meditative, lotus position and repeated to himself, “Just don’t think … just don’t think … just don’t think….”

I thought: “This is torture.”

Another scene came up: yet another caricature (also resembling me, but dressed up in 1910 prison garb) having cigars extinguished on various part of his anatomy and his nose-hairs plucked, getting slap-jacked, cattle-prodded, tickled, racked in the nuts, pinched, kicked, and head-butted by a bevy of military-clad men resembling high-ranking SS officers. The scene—though violent—had the feel of a slapstick-styled farce a la
The Three Stooges
. My portrayer twisted, agonized and yelled with a vaudevillian/silent film embellishment and the only thing missing from the torturers were curled, villainous pencil mustaches. I watched with complete disgust.

Every thought of mine turned into an exaggerated caricature on the screen. All my thoughts were subject to a diligent mockery, one that I could not escape.

Perhaps to think of myself as a member of an audience who might be watching my thoughts display themselves on a screen—yes, that would work.

This attempt was in vain, for before me I viewed an image of myself staring at an image of myself staring at an image of myself ad infinitum….

I gave up.

After bearing witness to a number of z-grade movie scenes derived from aspirations, yearnings, past, present, dreams, fantasies and whatever else my brain could muster up, I hit upon one of the greatest sanctuaries the human being was capable of—I fell asleep.

The psycho-cinematic screening had finally come to an end.

IN SURREAL
flight, I (or at least my sub-consciousness) floated through clouds of fractal geometric designs. I glided downward toward a building. Rather than crashing into it, I passed through the roof and hovered into an office, where I recall catching a quick glimpse of myself seated in a recliner, and someone sitting in a chair next to me jotting down notes.

As I said, it was a quick glimpse, for the next thing I knew I jettisoned into a surge of electrical combustion, into the body (my body) on the recliner whereupon my (or his) consciousness and sub-consciousness collided at a threshold of awareness.

A man’s voice counted down from ten to one. When he reached one, my eyes opened.

Sitting across from me, a guy with a bushy white Mark Twain mustache peered into my eyes. We were in an office, the one I had just glimpsed. His gaze bore through my skull. He grinned.

“Vell, Meester Beekavfer, dat vas ein gut und produkteev session. I feel dat vee are progreseeng very vell,” he said in a heavy German, or Austrian, or perhaps Swiss accent.

I blinked. He perceived my lack of knowing what the hell was going on and winked.

“You vill be deesoriented for avile. Dee combeenation of dee peels und dee heepnosees go so far eento your psychee dat your own brain forgets dee aktual reealeetee ven you avake. Soh don’t vorry, you veel bee up und runneeng een no time…. Do you have anee qvestions?”

I blinked again. I thought of quite a few questions. Questions, at this point, were futile.

“Veree vell…. Heer ist your preescreeption, und don’t forget to take zhem.” He handed me the slip of paper as we walked to the door. He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t vorry. Everyteeng veel be A-OK. Ahh yes, een kase you run eentoo eemergencee again, here ist mein kard.”

He handed me the card and we shook hands.

“I veel kall upon you venn you must come too ouwer next session.” He winked again.

I gave him my thanks.

I walked out of the building in a state of confusion. The sky was overcast and I could smell impending rain. As I staggered down the walkway, a blond-haired girl—her gaze intent upon me—approached.

“Well, how’d it go?”

I had no clue who this person was, though her demeanor suggested that we were well acquainted, if not intimate. I thought I was out of my mind.

“Dr. Götzefalsch told me you’d be disoriented for awhile. How do you feel?”

I was at a thorough loss of answering her question. I had nothing to compare anything to as far as feeling. At that particular moment in time, I didn’t know what
feeling
meant.

“C’mon, let’s go get something to eat.” She grabbed me by the arm and led me to a parking lot. We climbed into a Toyota pick-up truck. She put the key in and turned. The engine purred. She ground the clutch into first gear. As she let off the gas, the vehicle sprang into motion. Completely mistiming the next shift, she forced it into second. Though I was oblivious to everything that was going on with me, I knew one thing: this woman had no clue how to drive a stick.

“Easy, you’re gonna ruin the clutch!”

“I told you I can’t drive these things. Why couldn’t you own an automatic?”

I SAT
in the truck—my truck—as the Blonde walked into the cheap burger joint to get us some food. I pulled out my wallet and examined my driver’s license. The bloated, drained man in the photograph bared little resemblance to the thin, sort-of healthy looking face in the mirror. The two looked similar only in the eyes, hair color and a slight look of sad confusion on their faces. The license had been issued a few years prior. Must’ve been going through some rough times, I thought.

I tucked the license back and noticed a crisp twenty-dollar bill sleeping in the billfold. A liquor store across the street happened to catch my eye.

I came out with a 750 ml bottle of Smirnoff, a bottle of Chilean red wine, and a corkscrew; maybe the girl might like the wine.

Back in the truck, the cap to the vodka came off with ease and the liquid went right down my throat. A warm, mild shudder passed over me. I opened the glove box and a pile of cassette tapes careened out. On one was a label that read “The Thought Police: Art B. Well’s Take on Real Reality.” It got tossed back into the glove box. Johnny Cash’s
The Mystery of Life
, Neil Diamond’s
Solitary Man
,
Nevermind
by Nirvana, as well as some others that had no labels, went back into the glove box as well. Mozart’s
Magic Flute
slid into the old tape deck. Through one clean speaker and one blown one, Mozart’s genius flowed out.

That was nice. I felt at ease.

“YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DRINK WHILE YOU’RE ON THOSE PILLS!”

The abruptness of her statement thwarted me from my flute intoxication bliss. I took another pull from the bottle and dialed the volume on the deck up. She reached over and turned the music off.

“You son-of-a-bitch! What the hell are you trying to do, kill yourself?!” She got in and tossed the burgers onto the seat next to me.

I stared at the dashboard, completely silent.

What the hell
was
I trying to do? Hard to know that when you don’t know who the hell you are or what the hell’s going on….

“You’re something else. You think this is some sort of story where you are the tortured character! You believe you’re a tormented soul writing your own life’s misgivings to the world, as though your own anguish negates your mess-ups. You don’t give a shit: you’re so self-absorbed in your own situation you don’t even care what goes on around you or who is affected … I try to get you some help and you piss it all on booze!” She started the vehicle.