Planet Fever (8 page)

This wasn’t going as anticipated. She was
supposed
to come back with the food, appreciate the bottle of Chilean wine, feel a deep connection with my artistic spirit, be impressed with the fact that I liked Mozart and the day was going to get real romantic and legendary.

That was how my pathetic and delusional mind had envisioned it going.

Back at the place (apparently, my place), we weren’t saying much to one another. She sat on the couch and flipped through a red spiral notebook, either doodling or jotting stuff down with a partially worn down pencil.

I went to take a piss.

As I was pissing, I figured I’d take care of a shit that had been culminating. I finished my business and reached for the toilet paper. On the spool was a dry cardboard cylinder; no wiping paper existed on the roll whatsoever. I leaned over and opened up the sink cupboard: the only tenants therein were a mini plunger, a bottle of sodium hydroxide, a daddy-long legs spider and a small pile of magazines.

“That answers the question whether or not the Blonde lives with me.” I figured she didn’t, because if she did, there would definitely be spare toilet paper.

I grabbed one of the magazines—a
Penthouse
—ripped out a couple of pages and folded then rubbed them into softness. I wiped, flushed and walked out of the bathroom.

She watched me as I walked toward the table. About a quarter of the vodka was left. I sat down, took the bottle and drank right out of it, then leaned back to analyze this scenario.

“You know, if I didn’t feel you had some sort of potential, I wouldn’t even care to waste my time on you.” She shook her head.

I finished the bottle and put the cap back on.

“We’re out of fuel,” I stated.

“What do you want?” She stood up.

“I want something to drink.”

“Of course you want something to drink. That’s your character defect. You’re supposed to want something to drink. Don’t you get it?!”

Actually, I didn’t. I didn’t get one damn thing.

She approached and sat down across from me at the table. Her eyes would not lock off mine. What to say to her? What was transpiring with me? I was staring at a math equation everyone else seemed to know the answer to but I couldn’t figure it out. I was an exemplary profile of an amnesiac: tiny shards of memory and identifications would surface to my consciousness only to fade back into an abyss of forgetfulness.

“All right. I know that I want a drink. Right now, that’s about all I can think of. One thing, though: what is it exactly that
you
want?”

She took her eyes off me and looked down at the table. After moments of deliberation, she said, “I just want you to understand … to be okay….”

She was compassionate, that’s for sure.

My mind was restless. Disorientation and lack of awareness will do that…. If I couldn’t figure out who I was, who she was, and what was going on, how could I formulate the means by which
to be okay?
All there was to work with were the fragmented slivers of tangible memories.

And far too many drunken stupors.

“I don’t know if I know you…. I can’t remember your name and you act as if we were a deal … I’m not quite sure … if I am making—or can make—any sense….”

“Of course.” She touched my cheek sweetly and somehow I think I felt okay.

THE BLONDE
grabbed the red notebook she had been reading and doodling in earlier, opened it and handed it to me. I recognized the writing as my own short hand.

The following is an excerpt from a work-in-progress entitled “Planet Fever.” Handwriting matches that of Edward Bikaver

The American Standard is a Toilet. But that is not part of the story. This is:

In a dark and ominous room, seated around a large heavy oak table are serious and stern men wearing stiff black three-piece suits. At the head of the table is seated the NEW NARRATOR/DICTATOR (aka PHOS ATOMOS PARADOSI)

The NEW NARRATOR/DICTATOR (aka PHOS ATOMOS PARADOSI) grips either side of the table and leans forward. “Ahem—the commission has concluded that this planet is, in fact vulnerable to electronic/psychotronic warfare from within and without. ‘Twould be a relatively simple venture: computer attacks could shut down communications as well as major power grids. This means all televisions, radios, electronic credit, on-line services, gas pumps, scanner machines, RADAR units, video game machines, automated tellers, microwave ovens, GPS systems, computers, plug-in sex toys, missile tracking systems, Las Vegas—in other words, the very essence of their civilization and culture—could verily be shut down and then “rescued” then monopolized….”

The rest of the men at the table nod in agreement.

The NEW NARRATOR/DICTATOR (aka PHOS ATOMOS PARADOSI) slams his fist on the table. “But there is a rogue element hiding out, a RAT who can usurp our plans. Find him and use him for devious purposes then discard him like a used rubber on the outskirts of Tijuana. That’ll be all.”

The story CUTS TO:

The interior of a cheap one-room apartment in a rather run-down part of Hollywood, California.

BIKAVER sits on his futon couch reading the newspaper and drinking cheap beer. A knock on the door. BIKAVER sips his beer then sets it on the coffee table in front of him. “It’s open!”

The door swings open and standing at the threshold is the BLONDE—no make-up, blue eyes, soft lips: simplistic beauty.

“Hi, Mr. Bikaver, you’ve been expecting me, no doubt….” she says.

She walks toward ME (I mean BIKAVER), sits next to him and crosses her legs. She takes out a cigarette, lights it and begins to smoke.

“I missed you after you ran out of the bar last time,” she says.

It must be noted that BIKAVER is tense and in slight shock, elucidated by the nervous tapping upon his knee of a stubby pencil he has grabbed off the coffee table.

“How the hell did you find me? I thought after I switched stories, themes, genre … I mean hell—this is a story within a story; I figured that would definitely toss you off my scent.”

The BLONDE exhales cigarette smoke. “Eddie, you are not in control here. I’m not in control. It is, in fact the fate of this plot-line—no matter the story, theme, genre or format—that we be together. They want us together, don’t you see? Relax and be a content character. I’m here to help you.”

“That’s a lie. You’ve been sent here as a spy to infiltrate and sabotage my—I mean this—story.”

The BLONDE stuffs her cigarette into the half-empty can of beer that Eddie had yet to finish. “This is not your story, Mr. Bikaver. Don’t you understand the big picture? You’re not the only one living here—there are other characters here besides you to help evolve and accomplish this tale. Your place is crucial—both as author and character—to the outcome, but this universe does not revolve around you. You revolve within it.”

Eddie’s consciousness suddenly drifts out of his body, out of his apartment, above the city, upward, off the planet, out of the solar-system, out of the Milky Way, out of the known Universe.

“I remember writing that. I can at times remember you. But chronology of time is … hazy and scattered at best….” I rubbed my head.

“Just take it easy, Eddie … you have enough intelligence to over-come this mental oppression. Remember, I am here to help you. You will have to trust me.”

I thought about the word
trust
.

Trust, at this point seemed irrelevant. Whether I trusted anyone or not, the world, the powers that be, this gal, the doctor, or whoever the hell was running the show were going to do what they wanted with respect to me. All I could do was ride along and try to guess what was coming up next. The company of the Blonde was greatly appreciated, that I knew.

She sensed my appreciation and returned it with a smile.

FOR TWO
and a half months the Blonde (who had “reminded” me her name was Mona on more than a few occasions) and I spent “quality” time together: going out, hanging out, making out and simply enjoying each other’s company. I liked her, and she liked me.

Day by day the loose shards of memory and fragments of my identity re-interconnected, little by little, making the picture of my life’s jigsaw puzzle more lucid.

Mona and I had met in a bar a few years back. She had found our conversation to be strange and fascinating, but abruptly cut short by her jealous boyfriend’s beer mug thumping my head, which rendered me unconscious.

That’s right. He wore a black three-piece suit. I never thought I had a chance with her; maybe that’s why I seemed comfortable talking to her, because I wasn’t even trying to pick up on her. But he figured otherwise. That’s why he cold-cocked me with the beer mug. What was a guy in a suit doing in a dive bar anyway?

“He had issues.” That was the extent of Mona’s assessment of her former beau. After the knockout, Mona broke it off with him and decided to take a chance on me for reasons I still can’t comprehend.

Anyway, the trauma of that blow later induced randomly recurring blackouts and hallucinations. That’s what was wrong with me: the hallucinations and delusions were so vivid, my mind was convinced they were valid aspects of lived reality, as though dreams and waking life were integrated. My time with Moroni. My drunken stupors. My work-in-progress. And of course, Mona.

When the mind cannot decipher between “reality” and “non-reality,” the human being winds up in very lame circumstances. If everything is real, then nothing is real (because nothing is included with everything). Such trivial paradoxes are rather amusing philosophically; to actually place a living, breathing, thinking, shitting, eating, rationalizing, linear time-oriented critter into such a circumstance causes great discomfort to that critter.

Simply put: it ain’t fun.

My notebooks were journals of both physical and psychological aspects of my life. They were, in a sense part of my “therapy,” allowing me to document my everyday existence. When read (by myself or someone else) as an objective log of my daily life’s events, my own shift from “reality” to “fictional reality” became apparent. The goal, obviously, was to grasp and maintain awareness of the difference between these “realities” and “fictional realities.”