Living in such a state          taTestaTesTaTe           etats a hcus ni gniviL
of mind in which time         sTATEsTAtEsTaTeStA          emit hcihw ni dnim of
does not pass, space         STateSTaTeSTaTeStAtE          ecaps ,ssap ton seod
does not exist, and         sTATeSt        oFOfOfo          dna ,tsixe ton seod
idea is not there.         STatEst          ofoFOFo          .ereht ton si aedi
Stuck in a place          staTEsT            OfOFofo           ecalp a ni kcutS
where movements           TATeSTa            foFofoF            stnemevom erehw
are impossible                              fOFoFOf              elbissopmi era
in all forms,                             UfOFofO                 ,smrof lla ni
physical and                            nbEifof                    dna lacisyhp
or mental -                           uNBeInO                       - latnem ro
your mind is                         UNbeinG                       si dnim rouy
focusing on a                       unBEING                       a no gnisucof
lone thing, or                      NBeINgu                      ro ,gniht enol
a lone nothing.                     bEinGUn                     .gnihton enol a
You are numb and                    EiNguNB                    dna bmun era ouY
unaware to events                                             stneve ot erawanu
taking place - not                   iSSUE                   ton - ecalp gnikat
knowing how or what                 7/31/98                 tahw ro who gniwonk
to think. You are in              FORTY-EiGHT              ni era uoY .kniht ot
a state of unbeing....                                   ....gniebnu fo etats a

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

                            CONTENTS OF THiS iSSUE
                           =----------------------=

EDiTORiAL                                                         Kilgore Trout

LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR

STAFF LiSTiNGS


                               [=- ARTiCLES -=]


CLASS:  MARXiST AND AMERiCAN                                        Crux Ansata

NO PARiS TO FORGET                                                    Clockwork

THE BRAVE, KINDA NEW WORLD OF PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY                       Morrigan

VERNA CARRiGAN                                                     Sweater Girl

PAGES FROM A DiARY                                                  Crux Ansata



                              [=- POETASTRiE -=]


FOR GRANTED                         Radioactive Mutant in Search of Antibiotics

TiTAN                               Radioactive Mutant in Search of Antibiotics


                               [=- FiCTiON -=]


VERONiCA                                                          Kilgore Trout

AN EVENiNG AT STiNKY PETE'S                                        Rich Logsdon

REiNCARNATED HiTLER, WHAT?,
or A PAiR OF BLUE SHOES, A STORY                                  Kilgore Trout

YOU TOOK THE WORDS                                                Sophie Random

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     EDiTORiAL
     by Kilgore Trout

     In less than 24 hours, hopefully I will be sitting in one of the two
local arthouse theaters at a screening of the movie _Pi._  This makes me
extremely happy.  I don't think I've looked forward to a movie this much
since, oh, _I Shot Andy Warhol._  Of course, I'm MORE looking forward to this
because Valarie Solanis wasn't a damn kabbalist.  If she was, that would have
been really interesting.  I wonder what the gematria for SCUM is?

     Do I have too much time on my hands?  Some might think so.  Jewish
mystics would say that doing stuff like gematria leads to enlightenment
because you find connections from everything to everything, thereby
obliterating it all.  Kinda like an active western path as opposed to
silencing the mind like they like to do in the east.  Which one works better?
Different strokes for different folks.  Kabbalists have cool diagrams, but I
really like those stone gardens too.

     After paying way too much money for some books this past weekend, I have
come to the conclusion that I should give up my quest to get paid to write
fiction and write cheesy occult books.  The books I bought were good enough to
justify (haha) the price I paid for them, as compared to other books on the
shelves that were the same price and complete crap.  Yeah, I don't mind paying
15 bucks for a compilation of selected excerpts from John Dee's diaries and
notes because I'm not going to be heading over to England to see the original
Sloane manuscripts anytime soon, but I just wonder who pays $17 for a book
about the lost teachings of Atlantis as channeled by Mystic Joe Schmoe in his
Hollywood home.

     But maybe I'm just a biased bastard.  Maybe I'm a big skeptic who just
can't keep an open mind about everything.  Maybe I make sure to really examine
the contents of a book I'm considering buying if I see that it's published by
Llewellyn (one of the books I bought WAS from them, so nyah).  I mean, I guess
people buy these things, although I've never seen them being bought or on
anybody's shelves.  Who out there owns a copy of _Practical Egyptian Magic_ or
_Invoking the Goddess in 10 Easy Steps?_  I mean, Clockwork (sorry to drag you
into this) had a grand ole time laughing at a bunch of books that we thought
were, quite frankly, preposterous.

     And speaking of preposterous, yeah, it's nice that Crowley's all the big
vogue now that Hollywood's getting into the kabbalah thing, but jeez...  it'd
be nice if someone locally would publish his fictional works and poetry so you
don't have to pay 40 dollars for an import of 100 pages.  Not that his poetry
is all that great (although my heart heaves everytime I hear "Leah Sublime"
recited), but some stuff I'd like to at least have access to.

     But I'll stop there.  Not like you need another rant about the woeful
lack of quality publications in the occult community.  You hear those all the
time, and then it devolves into two factions where one side says these authors
are full of shit and the other side says the authors probably are but we like
em anyway.  

     So blah.  The point is, I'm gonna write my own crappy occult book about,
oh, faery angel candle crystal tree charm love magic.  it's my ticket to the
bigtime.

     Blessed beast or whatever, let's really stop this crap.  On with the
issue, puh-leaze.  One of our older poets has returned after an absensce, and
Sophie Random, who just joined the mailing list a few weeks ago, has already
become a writer.  That I like to see.  And her piece is really good, too.
Plus there's the usual crew of misfits and miscreants at your disposal.

     As you may or may not have noticed, the web site has changed to
http://www.eden.com/~kilgore/sob.html ... we'd like to thank Hagbard profusely
for housing the website since 1995 and for giving us advance warning that the
website was going down.  So, if you run across any pages which have links to
the old page, kinda email them and tell em to change.

     I guess that's it.  See you in August.  Can you believe it?  An August
issue?  Will it actually happen?  The suspense is killing me, I have to go
bite my nails.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR

        Let me say something about this story.  Of everything I have ever
read, "Alex..." is one of the most depraved pieces of writing that I
have encounterd.  Not one character has a redeeming characteristic. Not
Alex, not Nicky, not Lisa.  Further, you glorify the very worst
elements of a culture given over to excesses in sex and violence.  Your
story verges on pornography.  In short, I loved "Alex the Wolf-God."
Please keep it up.
                Lew Sipher, Aspen, CO

[i think that letter speaks for itself.]


                                   --SoB--

To: kilgoret@geocities.com
From: Diocletian
Subject: Crazy Assed Party on undernet?

Ave!  I've jsut discovered your web page a yesterday, and was quite
interested in your publication.  Reading it I found it interesting.  I even
downloaded MIRC to check out your channel.  Here is the problem - I log into
Undernet, go to channel #unbeing, but there's no one there.  Am I coming at
the wrond times, or am I leaving out something as regards the channel address?

Cheers!

Diocletian

[heh.  well, the "crazy assed party has kinda died out in recent times with a
 bunch of us having to get jobs or change or schedules that don't facilitate
 staying up in the wee hours of the night around a computer.  i try to be on
 whenever i'm online, so if you just keep checking in, i'm sure someone will
 show up.  maybe we'll even have another "see who can do the most impressive
 textual impersonations of as many obscure gods as possible" night.  that's
 always fun.]


                                   --SoB--


From: "Hades" <hades@netdoor.com>
To: <kilgore@eden.com>
Subject: Greetings

I would like to subscribe to SoB.  A friend of mine sent me an issue
and i loved it.  I currently read the zines, Devil Shat and Captial of
Nasty. I am always looking for something that makes me think.
Thanks
Ivy

[of course, maybe you're just trying to plug those OTHER e-zines in my zine to
 steal a bunch of my readers.  i wouldn't put it past you.  i mean, with a
 name like ivy, c'mon.  wasn't there some military thing a while back?
 operation ivy?  sound familiar?  yeah, okay.  had to do with something bad,
 i'm sure, as reported by some big conglomerate news network.  we'll be
 keeping an eye on you, ivy.  oh, yes.  and don't think i'm paranoid.  cuz i'm
 not.  oh, yes.  oh, uh-huh.  not paranoid.  not a chance.]


                                   --SoB--


>Clock,
>
>Many thanks for letting me know the status of the tape!!!  I appreciate
>very much your diligence and kindness.
>
>I'll be mailing from this address from now on...as I took the link to 
>hotmail and now have a more secure email address.
>
>I've been sending as many people as I can in my wanderings on the net 
to 
>the SoB page.  I'm hoping that this will encourage kilgore not to kill 
>himself off again.
>
>Again, muchos gracias!
>
>Trish

[i can't kill myself off again.  that would be so trite.  i'd have to find a
 new way to grub up some sympathy.  perhaps severing an arm or leg or possibly
 carving large mayan glyphs into my forehead with a sharp rock as a
 performance art piece entitled "grassroots movement ain't got no endtime"
 would do the trick.  hope you liked the tape.]

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

                                 STAFF LiSTiNG

                                    EDiTOR
                                 Kilgore Trout

                                 CONTRiBUTORS
                                  Clockwork
                                 Crux Ansata
                                   Morrigan
                 Radioactive Mutant in Search of Antibiotics
                                 Rich Logsdon
                                Sophie Random
                                 Sweater Girl


                                GUESSED STARS
                                  Diocletian
                                     Ivy
                                  Lew Sipher
                                    Trish


                            SoB OFFiCiAL GROUPiES
                                 crackmonkey
                               Oxyde de Carbone


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


                               [=- ARTiCLES -=]


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     CLASS:  MARXiST AND AMERiCAN
     by Crux Ansata

     The simplest answer to the question "What would a Communist society look 
like?" is this:  A Communist society would be one without classes.

     This answer does not have a lot of meaning for Americans, brought up as 
they have been with the loose, almost meaningless American concept of economic 
classes.  I cannot speak for the rest of the world, so when I speak of 
American I mean as against Marxist, but my comments on the American 
understanding of classes is, to the best of my experience, relevant to the 
United States in general.  It is hoped this article will give people at least 
the vocabulary to understand what is meant when a Marxist speaks of a "class" 
and of a "class interest."

     The typical use of the word "class" tends to refer to any grouping, and 
economic classes to be a strictly relative grouping.  The use of the term 
"middle class" is especially sloppy.  One typically considers a person to be a 
member of the "middle class" if he is neither very rich nor very poor.  This 
deprives the term "middle class" of any intrinsic meaning, and causes an 
amazing lack of comprehension among those who do happen to try to understand 
Marxist discourse.

     To take one example:  Marxism predicts an increasing proportion of the 
population will become members of the proletarian class.  When Marxism is 
discussed, it is not uncommon to find someone who knows just enough about 
Marxism to believe they can disprove it cite that, observe the "health" of the 
American middle class, and relegate Marx to the rubbish bin of history.

     This could be addressed a number of ways.  The most relevant just now is 
the linguistic.  When this person has heard "proletarian," he believes he has 
heard "lower class."  The "middle class" is quite strong; there are still 
relatively more people between rich and poor than there are at either extreme.  
Because, to him, the expression "middle class" has only a relative meaning, he 
cannot imagine it diminishing.

     When a Marxist speaks of the proletarianization of the population, he 
means something a little different.  He does not mean more people will fall 
into a relative "lower class"; he means a larger proportion of the population 
will end up holding the class interests of the proletariat; but more on that 
later.

     (A third, incidental way to address this situation would be to point out 
the middle class is not at all economically healthy.  Indeed, we approach a 
third world rich-poor gap in the United States, far in excess of any in the 
other Western, industrial nations.  Much has already been written on this, 
however, and I pass over it now.)

     Another effect that may be highlighted comes from the fact when an 
American hears "bourgeoisie" he tends to hear "middle class."  Historically, 
in Europe, this is true.  The United States were born without an historically 
European upper class -- that is to say, without a feudal aristocracy -- and so
this does not hold here.

     One may perhaps see here why this concept of the class structure is the 
ruling one here in the States.  Most people like to think they are middle 
class, at least among the educated persons.  They may invent concepts like 
"lower middle class" -- which cannot translate into Marxist terms -- to 
express the emotionally satisfying idea that if they save a bit more or are a 
little fortunate at the next round of pay raises they too can slip into the 
middle class, which they pretend to be a synonym for "bourgeoisie."

     The effect of this delusion is obvious.  If I am, or may become, a member 
of the middle class, I will not want to bring about a system that would 
expropriate me.  I -- if I suffer from this delusion -- become what is called 
"reactionary"; I seek to preserve the status quo at any cost.  This is a cheap 
way for the ruling class to ensure the majority of the people will believe it 
is in their best interests to preserve the rule of the ruling class.  And it 
all rests upon a simple linguistic delusion!

     But if, to a Marxist, the middle class does not mean the same thing as 
the "bourgeoisie," what does it mean?  What is a Marxist social class?

     In Marxist analysis, a "class" refers to a group of people who are united 
in their socio-economic interests, and act in those interests.  Because both 
of these are important, one cannot refer to classes in the nonchalant way that 
tends to be done.  A group of people who do not act in the interests of their 
class -- or who simply do not have class interests -- is not a class in the 
terms of Marxist class conflict analysis.  Similarly, an individual who acts 
in the interest of a class does not join that class thereby.  If a rich person 
acts in such a way as to benefit the working class, he does not thereby become 
a worker.  Indeed, he will likely come to act in the interests of his own 
class, despite his momentary lapse.

     These two requirements -- grouping and active interest -- are the reason 
why Marx saw the classes tending towards polarization, and towards the 
creation of, effectively, two social classes.

     One of these, of course, is the bourgeoisie.  If the bourgeoisie is not 
the middle class, what are they?  In the United States, the bourgeoisie tends 
to be the ruling class.  This is not a helpful definition, though.  The 
bourgeoisie, who were also referred to as the "capitalist" class before 
"capitalist" came to refer to someone who held an ideological position, are 
those who own the means of production.

     A member of the bourgeoisie has accumulated wealth.  He can live off his 
wealth, and no longer needs to work.  The bourgeoisie is the employing class, 
because they are the ones who own the big businesses, as well as the wealth of 
the society.  Because they have more than they need to survive, they are in a 
position to own the buisnesses, and to employ those who need to be employed to 
survive.

     Throughout most of its history, the bourgeoisie has tended to be a or the 
revolutionary class, in opposition to the feudal class structure.  It is to 
the revolutionary fervor of the bourgeoisie that we owe many of the rights we 
take as standard today.  This is not to say a proletarian society would do 
away with those rights; it is merely to say the bourgeoisie was the class in a
position to take power away from the feudal lords and establish the capitalist 
society we inhabit today.

     Now, however, the bourgeoisie has degenerated into a reactionary class.  
It is now in the interests of the bourgeoisie, as a class, to prevent 
fundamental change to the society we live in, which would challenge the ruling 
position the bourgeoisie now enjoys.

     Dynamically opposed to the bourgeoisie, the current class which has the 
potential for revolution is the proletariat.  Like "bourgeoisie," 
"proletariat" is a seldom understood term.  If proletarians are hard to see 
today, though, it is due to their familiarity.  The proletarian is the person 
who has to sell his labor power in order to live.  While some members of the 
proletariat could accumulate enough wealth -- which is to say capital -- to 
live without working for a time, this time is typically understood as between 
jobs or at the end of one's life.  These savings will seldom be enough to live 
off the interest, and without being able to do that it is merely a matter of 
time before the accumulated wealth is gone, and the person is reduced to 
selling himself once more into wage slavery.

     This, in the most simple terms, is the difference between the classes:  
The bourgeoisie can live without working, on investments and the "private 
property," the means of production, belonging to them.  The proletariat must 
sell his labor -- must sell his life -- to another in order to eat.

     These are, as I say, the dynamic classes in contemporary society.  The 
bourgeoisie is the ruling class; the proletariat is the heir to the throne.  
Their interests -- when understood -- are in opposition.  This is not an 
exhaustive list of the classes, potential or existent.  I will briefly mention 
a few of these other classes.

     In feudal society, based on the ownership of land rather than the 
ownership of businesses and factories, there were a number of classes who are 
no longer dynamic in the United States.  There is no real aristocracy in the 
United States, and never has been.  (I mean this, of course, in the sense of 
feudal ruling families, not the reflections Americans have from time to time 
set up for themselves.)  The peasant class is of more importance.  These 
people are members of a class from a former age who have nonetheless played a 
role in our world.  Peasants are those who own enough land or control enough 
land to survive and perhaps produce enough in excess to trade.  They have been 
squeezed out by commodity farmers -- so-called agribusiness.  The members of 
this class become, slowly or quickly, in all societies, proletarian, persons 
who have to sell their labor to another.  Their class interests in today's 
society thus lie with the proletariat.

     Another remnant class that still pretends to survive is that of the 
petite-bourgeoisie.  This class is what is left of the independent craftsman.  
In former times, an artisan could exist on his own, in his own employ.  This 
continues to be in our society.  Some people still exist in self-employ, 
without employees of their own.  It is rare, however.  The petite-bourgeoisie, 
thinking themselves to be bourgeois or embryonic bourgeois, believe their 
interests lay in the reactionary direction of the bourgeoisie.  They are 
wrong.  The petite-bourgeois will tend more to end up as proletarians than as 
bourgeoisie.

     There are some groups who exist but who have no real class interests.  
One of these in the so-called "lumpenproletariat."  This is a long way of 
saying, more or less, underclass.  This is the class of people who have 
stopped playing the game, including petty criminals, persons perpetually on 
welfare, and so on.  This class has a potential for revolution when steered by 
a class with revolutionary interests, but has no interests of its own.  
Similarly, the intelligentsia, while it can have interests of its own, seldom 
operates as a class.  It is the obligation of the intellectual to articulate 
the interests of the revolutionary class of its time; its other option is to 
become coopted as propagandists for the ruling class.

     Having examined the classes, it is clear that while American discourse 
tends to pin the term "class" on relative standard of living, Marxism pins it 
on something else.  A proletarian cannot live for long without selling his 
life force.  But there is one last reason for the tendency to reaction in 
America, and that is the belief classes are not "set" in America, the fantasy 
that someone can leave the exploited class and enter the upper class.  The 
moral fact that a free man will no more want to exploit than to be exploited 
is not the issue under consideration.  I will merely point out that this 
fantasy can only hold up when one believes class to be based on standard of 
living.

     A proletarian cannot leave his social class by saving.  In order to leave 
the proletarian class, an individual would have to save enough and invest 
enough to live off the interest alone.  While possible in theory, this is not 
nearly as likely as people pretend to believe.  No one will be able to set 
aside enough from his salary to enter the ruling class; bourgeois life is not 
open to everyone.

     This does not exhaust the Marxist concept of class, obviously.  It does 
however hopefully provide a basic vocabulary so that, in reading Marxist 
writing, even someone with a standard American background will be able to 
understand what is being discussed.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


     "Everyone in this room is wearing a uniform.  And don't kid yourself."
                                                                  --Frank Zappa


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     NO PARiS TO FORGET
     by Clockwork

     I gather my consciousness before dawn, now, and it has some finer points,
as in fresh unmuddied air dancing with hints of the sun coming over a sphere,
silent spoken morning people, but it still does not jive with my being --
crazy dimlit coffee spill traffic flops, drudge and cringe along to some
office building along with the other patrons, some of which no longer kiss
their wives goodbye or see their kids off to school, no longer pilot blue
hazed steamboats upriver to find golden ambrosia pots, socialization occurs
with scowls and grunts, cutting off your fellow upright with six ton jacked up
cornfed trucks.

     I'd much rather wake in the late morning early afternoon, allowing my
eyes to wander between the stars many hours later, rather than locking them
beneath the closet doors, hiding them from the secret bigfoot wonders the
sleepless nights carry under whipping funhouse curtains.  The people about
relaxed and free under darkened moons, creative paint splat thoughts and
shunty dance mechanics all set free to seek out a concrete existence.

     Instead, I'm left with high talking families of radio hosts, here to make
the commuters smile and hop over any 4x10 collisions on highways, byways, and
tucked away suburban dirt.  Slipping home with enough time to toss the 8-hour
shoes around, sigh and sit, flip together some ornamental food, and think of
things to fill the swiss-cheese soul as I drift into early hour somberness.
The dreams of arms to hold you when you drip through the doors each evening
only come natural, with the only human contact day to day is cold marketed
Bugle Boy chatter in plastic vinyl walls and doors only the special people are
allowed to pass through.  The small salvation is the car stereo between point
A and point B, with usually enough time to begin to groove and drum and
unbuckle your voice when you pull up to the curb -- buy a new album and listen
to tracks one through six during the next four days, because that's all you
can fit into your ziploc timescape.  And it's sad to hear him ask millions of
people if they can tell him one thing they will remember about him.

     I want the beatnik swing jam surprise again, dark polyester slim fit
dance slacks and buckle e buckle to belt e belt.  Slipjacked wondermaid
costumes topped in fuh-door-uhs -- it just came a-flooding back when an
oversized _On The Bus_ hopped into my hands and turned its own pages.  Grey
and kilter grain photos of Kesey and crew in daft paint buses with Leary in
his pre-health life, Ginsberg from juicy young to mint-shattering stringy man,
Mr. Grateful Dead himself stepping lively with mad smiles, and Kerouac always
looking the same.  The bus drove by my house with ice cream jangles whining,
passing up the kids on the corner, and me swimming in maltese ovaries.  They
passed me up the first time, and maybe the second, but I shuffled on
eventually, and got dropped off several state lines down the road.  And now I
need to get on again.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


     "So she takes her pills, careful and round..."
                                          --Adam Duritz


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     THE BRAVE, KINDA NEW WORLD OF PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
     by Morrigan

     "Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images... It bleeds
relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self-respect, the
inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion,
the night terrors, the day terrors.  There is nothing good to be said for it
except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old
and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish, and
coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the
pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music, or the ability to make yourself
and others laugh." (Jamison, 217)


     Severe depression is a disease that affects about one in eight Americans
during the course of their lives.  Some people are affected for purely
biological reasons, stemming from a chemical imbalance in their brains.
Others slip into depression's dark grasp due to a close experience with trauma
or tragedy.  Whatever the cause, though, depression has an unmistakable and
significant cost.  It not only causes unmeasurable emotional pain, but claims
a steep financial price as well.  In a 1986 study, the annual cost of
depression in America was estimated at $16 billion.  This figure covered the
cost of treatment (including doctor visits, therapy, and hospitalization),
cost due to lost productivity, and the morbidity cost associated with those
whom the disease killed (Dept. of Health, 9).  Clearly, depression is a force
with which to be reckoned.

     Though books such as the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) offer a definition of
depression, it it lengthy and vague and most psychiatrists agree that it's not
even very accurate, because depression can take many different forms.  An
oversimplified description would mention overwhelming grief, anguish, despair,
coupled with terror and panic in many cases.  Often these emotions are strong
enough that they lead to self-destructive thoughts which lead to roughly 11
suicides per 100,000 people each year in the United States (Stone, 304).  It
can include physical symptoms such as insomnia or, conversely, the need to
sleep constantly.  The one thing that all mental health care practitioners
agree on is the point at which treatment is appropriate:  as soon as the
depression is so great that the afflicted person cannot function in their
normal everyday lives.  Of course, even this description is vague, because the
term "cannot function" is very open to interpretation.  A more specific and
still accurate description is almost impossible, though, due to depression's
great spread of causes and symptoms.

     Yet, even in light of its crushing weight and the bleak view of the world
that accompanies it, "one need not sound the false or inspirational note to
stress the truth that depression is not the soul's annihilation; men and women
who have recovered from the disease -- and they are countless -- bear witness
to what is probably its only saving grace:  it is conquerable." (Styron, 84)
Though it can be an extremely debilitating disease, depression is quite
treatable in our modern society.  I am chiefly interested in the various
methods available for said treatment.

     Since the mid 18th century, depression has been treated fairly
competently and reliably using the art of psychotherapy (Stone, 52).
Psychotherapy consists of either individual or group sessions with a
psychologist in which discussion is used to facilitate resolution of the
emotional and psychological conflicts that both cause and accompany
depression.  However, the problem with this method is that much of the
melancholia that plagues mankind stems not from external emotional trauma of
the sort that responds best to psychotherapy, but instead from chemical
imbalances within the human brain.  For some people, the neurochemical balance
is disrupted for biological reasons, probably related to genetics.  In those
patients who become severely depressed as a result of an identifiable tragedy
or trauma that initial imbalance is not present, but as a result of their
emotional distress, the balance is disrupted in the same way as for those with
a biological imbalance. These imbalances were the reason that for many years
depression could conquer souls with relative ease; once the ideal balance is
disturbed, it is very hard to reverse this disruption naturally.
 
     In the early 1950s, though, a new discovery drastically and permanently
changed the way we view depression:  drugs could reverse the disorder. These
drugs were the basis for a new branch of psychology called psychopharmacology.
This field deals with the effects of all the psychoactive drugs -- drugs that
affect the mind and its processes. Today, these medications are commonplace.
Almost everyone knows the name of at least one:  Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Xanax.
They have become an instrumental and widespread method of treatment,
completely replacing therapy for many patients.  The appropriate balance
between the two is an extremely important issue -- one that often makes the
difference in length of necessary treatment, expense, and potential for
relapse in the future.

     The psychotropics' current status as "miracle drugs" means that their use
should be examined more carefully than when they were highly controlled
substances affecting only a small number of extremely ill people.  As we
develop ever more effective drugs that have fewer negative side effects, their
availability will continue to increase. Also, as we become more comfortable
with their use, they will be prescribed increasingly often.  Already,
medications that were once only for depression are being prescribed for a
diverse range of maladies, including obsessive compulsive disorder,
kleptomania, and bulemia.  This tendency towards more medication seems to
point towards a dystopic society where our every mood would be controlled by
medication -- where any sort of emotion outside of the accepted social norms
would be quickly taken care of with a pill.  Our current society is in theory
far from such a state.  However, it will be easy to slip into this
homogenizing mode of thought unless we more carefully evaluate our motivations
for and the results of medicating moods.

     There are four families of antidepressants on the market today:  the
Tricyclics, the Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs), the Selective Serotonin
Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), and a group containing the unique
antidepressants.

     The first antidepressant discovered was Iproniazid, which is a member of
the MAOI family.  Its discovery in 1952 was mostly accident: Iproniazid was
initially a drug given to tuberculosis patients for its abilities to kill
tubercule bacilli, though doctors soon noticed that it seemed to increase
patients' feelings of well-being as well as helping to cure their disease.  In
1952, Nathan Kline released a report that supported the theory of its
potential for use as an antidepressant (Kramer, 47-48  and Stone, 189).
However, despite its early promise, Iproniazid had so many side effects that
it never truly caught on. Instead, it was imipramine, a member of the
tricyclic family, that took that honor.   In 1957 Roland Kuhn announced the
results of his experiments with the drug, and even though the initial response
to it was rather skeptical, "worldwide studies quickly confirmed the value of
imipramine for the treatment of depression." (Barondes, 104)  Imipramine
remains one of the major medications in use today.

     All of the antidepressants available today function by manipulating
neurotransmitter levels in the neural synapses in the brain.  We think that
emotions are regulated and influenced primarily by the levels of several key
neurotransmitters:  the catecholamines (which include dopamine,
norepinephrine, and epinephrine), serotonin, and acetylcholine.  Different
antidepressants function by inhibiting the normal cycle of neurotransmitter
release and re-uptake at different steps in order to change the overall level.
In the synapses of those with depression, the levels of these
neurotransmitters are usually below normal levels, so the intended effect is
to increase their numbers to a more acceptable level (Restak, 183).

     Iproniazid, as a member of the MAOI family, acts upon the monoamines in
the synapse.  Normally, the function of the monoamines is to chemically break
down the dopamine once it has been used.  The MAOIs block this process, so
that dopamine is no longer being broken down and removed from the cycle, thus
increasing its concentration.  Imipramine, a tricyclic, functions at the other
end of the cycle, affecting the re-uptake of the dopamine.  In the normal
cycle, a neurotransmitter is released from one neuron and travels through the
synaptic cleft to another neuron, where a specialized transporter captures it
and returns it to the synapse, ready to be rereleased so that it can restart
its cycle.  The tricyclics block the transporter so that the dopamine remains
in the synaptic cleft, where it is needed (Restak, 183).

     While these early drugs were quite effective at the job they were
intended for, they complicated matters by affecting too wide of a range of
neurotransmitters, which seems to be behind the sometimes extreme side effects
of their usage.  With effective medications safely in use, doctors began to
look for drugs that would target only one of the neurotransmitters, instead of
all of them.  Because serotonin seemed to be one of the most powerful and
important neurotransmitters, they focused their efforts there.  In 1974, the
research efforts of David Wong and Bryan Molloy were rewarded by the discovery
of fluoxetine hydrochloride -- brand name Prozac, the first of the SSRIs.
Their discovery was extremely important, because the SSRIs strongly affect
serotonin levels while leaving the rest of the neurotransmitters essentially
unaffected (Kramer, 60-63).  This has the effect of reducing many side
effects, which is a very important factor in drugs that can so strongly affect
both mind and body.
	
     The success stories of patients on medication are striking.  "I no longer
experienced an ever present panic, which I had for years.  I had often felt
worried, panicked, all of the time.  As if there was some impending doom. I
realized, [approximately] 3 weeks after taking [Paxil], that this was gone,"
one young woman explained (Luckman). Another patient, taking Prozac, observed:
"I just feel strong.  I feel resilient.  I feel confident.  I can get
bombarded and still feel in one piece.  I no longer lack resolve when it comes
to the children.  This is who I am." (Kramer, 219)  Most patients emphasize
that it's not just the medication that helps them move on from their
depression, though.  There are a scattered few for whom depression is purely
chemical, so that once they are on medication they truly are completely
capable of functioning normally without additional help.  However, for most
the chemical depression is tied in with personal emotional troubles as well.
"Even if one's symptoms are greatly alleviated with the appropriate drug,
there are usually residual issues that should be addressed," warns one
psychiatrist (Travis).  It is for this second category, the majority of those
who suffer from depression, that the balance between psychotherapy and
medication become a crucial issue.

     Since the goal of all treatment for depression is the soothing and
repairing of the troubled mind, it seems that psychotherapy, which translates
literally as "the science of healing the mind," has to be a part of any mental
treatment (Stone, 319).  Almost all psychiatrists are adamant that their
patients experience some level of therapy while on medication.  This therapy
can range from monthly checkups that are more accurately described as
medication reviews than therapy to hour long sessions several times a week.
The more expanded version of therapy is regularly chosen in several types of
cases.  First, when the patient was in therapy prior to beginning medication,
that therapy is almost always continued.  The rest of the guidelines are
somewhat more vague, since they must be tempered to individual needs.
However, the US Government has put together a set of conditions for which
combination treatment is suggested:  "The prior course of illness is chronic
or characterized by poor interepisode recovery.  Either treatment alone has
been only partially effective.  The patient has a history of chronic
psychosocial problems, both in and out of episodes of major depression."
(Dept. of Health, 87-88)

     Besides the obvious case of those who don't respond well to only one type
of treatment, the federal recommendations cover two main groups of people:
those dealing with psychosocial difficulties such as "pessimism, low
self-esteem, or marital difficulties" (Dept. of Health, 89) and patients who
suffer from recurring depression.  In theory, these patients return to their
depressed states once they stop taking medication because of some underlying
cause that is perhaps psychological rather than chemical.  In these cases the
depression almost always resurfaces immediately once it is not being actively
blocked by the medications.  Hopefully, by blocking these patients' immediate
symptoms with medication and then adding therapy, the root cause of the
depression can be discovered and solved.

     The final group of people that most psychiatrists like to keep in
combination treatment are those who are actively suicidal.  Their motivation
in these cases is twofold.  First, it takes a while for the medications to
begin to take effect and attention at that time is critical in terms of
keeping the patient alive.  Second, depression extended to the point of
suicide more often than not has serious non-chemical roots which need to be
addressed.
  
     Even beyond these specific categories, many psychiatrists are most
comfortable with continuing therapy unless there is a compelling reason not
to.  Their main line of reasoning for this is that the medications, more than
fixing all the problems of the patient, give them relief from the acute
symptoms of depression.  Once the immediate torture of the disorder is eased,
many patients find that they have the relative clarity and peace of mind to
work with a therapist to find and work on the issues that triggered the
depression in the first place.  The particularly notable part of this is that
the majority of such patients have little or no success in therapy before they
begin medication.  "It wasn't until I was on medication that I could start
dealing with the emotional issues," explains one woman.  "Psychotherapy has
helped me tremendously, but had the therapy preceded the medication, I'd have
been on the couch for the rest of my life." (Whybrow, 195)  Another young
woman put it this way:  "I firmly believe that my panic and my worst
depression [were] alleviated by Paxil.  However, I am of the equally firm
belief that even if I no longer panicked or was no longer overwhelmingly
depressed, without therapy, I would [have continued] 'thinking wrong' and I
wouldn't have really gotten better." (Luckman) Hopefully, through therapy,
this pattern of "thinking wrong" can be reversed, leading to complete healing.

     Of course, while people like Liane are completely willing to undergo
therapy even when their noticeable symptoms fade, not all depressed people
feel the same way.  There are an almost disturbing number of people who, once
they feel that the medication has returned them to "normal," decide that their
problems are over and that they therefore have nothing to talk about with a
therapist.  This is the more worrisome trend.  One doctor warns:  "If [a]
woman has anxiety or depression based on hidden wounds, we might conceivably
worry about medication as a form of collusion with her traumatic history:  we
would want to help her gain awareness of her past." (Whybrow, 261)  The issue
in this sort of case is that the woman may go on medication, and since the
causes are "hidden," once the surface symptoms disappear, no one may be aware
that her depression sprang from a deep internal wound.  As soon as she stops
taking medication, though, the depression will immediately reemerge, because
rather than being healed it was merely covered up.  There is always the
possibility that she will choose to stay on medication for the rest of her
life and remain happy on it, never realizing that rather than being purely
chemical, her depression had legitimate roots.  This is one of the great
debates surrounding the use of medications:  if people are happy on them, why
bother to force them into therapy, where they will have to address traumatic
issues, when they were content with leaving such issues alone?

     The opinion of our society seems increasingly to favor not forcing anyone
to really deal with their troubles, but to take the quick fix that medication
offers.  A good measure of our change in attitude towards these medications is
found in the number of people who take them.  Prozac -- "the world's most
often prescribed branded antidepressant" -- is currently being taken as a
daily medication by over 28 million patients (Eli Lilly & Co).  When we
consider that in 1975, about 20 million prescriptions were written for all
antidepressants combined (Schrag, 35) and that Prozac is estimated to make up
about 35% of the market, it is immediately obvious that in the past twenty
years the number of pills consumed has grown tremendously.
  
     There are several facets to this growth in the consumption of
psychotropic medications.  One is the issue of who is filling out the
prescriptions for their use.  When the drugs were first released, they were
highly controlled substances used only on patients in mental hospitals.
However, by 1987 only 20% or fewer depressed patients were treated in mental
health facilities (Dept. of Health, 10).  Only about 50% of the prescriptions
are even handled by mental health care professionals such as psychiatrists.
The rest of the prescriptions are handled by family physicians and general
health care practitioners who do not need to have any psychiatric training in
order to distribute these medications (Cervantes).  Since people don't have to
go to the trouble and expense of making a separate appointment with a new
doctor, but can instead ask their regular doctor for medications, more people
are willing to seek such treatment.  This change also influences the therapy
issue, since the majority of the patients who receive medications from their
family doctor are not required or even encouraged to seek therapy in most
cases, which means that most of them don't.

     Another significant growth factor involves the changes in the medications
themselves.  The tricyclic antidepressants, such as Imipramine, Elavil, and
Anafranil, have always had a fairly long list of side effects, including dry
mouth, constipation, sedation, low blood pressure, and weight gain.  The
MAOIs, such as Nardil and Parnate, have a more serious roster of side effects,
such as significant rise in blood pressure and nausea.  There is also a long
list of foods and drugs that can be fatal while on MAOIs, such as cheese,
chocolate, and simple cold medicines (Whybrow, 262-265).  This range of
complications meant that taking antidepressants was less desirable and doctors
were less inclined to prescribe it, reserving their use for more extreme
cases.  One psychoanalyst even refrained almost completely from such
prescriptions, because "merely listing the side effect of the tricyclics
interfered too much with the analysis.  Patients would accuse [me] of
hostility, of unconsciously wanting to poison them." (Kramer, 65)  However,
the SSRIs, such as Prozac and Paxil, because they operate only on one
neurotransmitter instead of affecting a wide range of them, are considered
"clean drugs" and have relatively minimal side effects.  This is a very
positive feature for many patients and doctors.  "Because both patients and
doctors [are] comfortable with Prozac's side effect profile, the medication
[has come] to be prescribed... for less ill patients -- those heretofore
treated with psychotherapy alone... Prozac turned out to be remarkably
effective for certain 'penumbral' patients,... who are not densely depressed."
(Kramer, 66)  The lack of side effects is one of the major factors in the
dramatic spread of antidepressant use.  One problem with this factor is that
it encourages a more lackadaisical attitude towards taking medication -- "it
can't hurt me, it can only help, so why not?"

     Further evidence that such a carefree attitude is, on the surface at
least, warranted is that there are almost no reports of anyone whose
depressive condition has suffered as a result of taking a SSRI.  The only
reported problems with medications involve the side effects, though even those
are fairly minimal, as discussed above.  Doctor John Cervantes confirms this
trend with his experience:  "Only very rarely [is] a patient's condition
worsened by medication.  Usually side effects are the limiting factors in a
patient's response to meds." (Cervantes)

     The first problem with casual use of these medications is that they are
extremely powerful, possessing the ability not only to chase away shadows, but
to completely change basic personalities.  At first, stories of patients who
feel "like new people" sound like wonderful optimistic and inspirational
stories telling of the successful curing of a debilitating disorder.  But when
patients are truly and permanently transformed, it is somewhat unsettling.
Prozac has been known to provoke a quick alteration in otherwise intractable
problems of personality and social functioning, that allows patients to
completely diverge from a lifetime of shyness or social insecurity to a
completely self-confident and socially competent personality (Kramer, Chapter
4). Again, at first glance, this seems like a wholly positive transformation.
Yet if that shyness was a central part of the person that defined who they
are, it is not quite so positive.  Is it possible that medication can "[iron]
out too many character-giving wrinkles, like overly aggressive plastic
surgery?" (Kramer, 239)   By taking away every detail that doesn't fit with
the social norm, is too much of the person, disturbed though they may be,
removed as well?  Some patients define their entire lives around their
medication.  One woman, after a few months on Prozac, casually announced to
her therapist:  "I've changed my name, you know... I call myself Ms. Prozac."
(Kramer 11-13)  Many prospective takers of medication over the years have
worried about precisely this loss or change of self -- even if it's a change
for the better -- because it seems very possible to lose the essence of who
you are when the basic functioning of your brain is being changed.

     Despite all of these worrisome factors, though, increasing dependence on
antidepressants is a set fact in our society today.  While once medication was
a source for social stigmatization, today it is commonplace and almost
unremarkable.  Everyone can name someone in their immediate circle of family
and friends who is taking Prozac or some other antidepressant.  Their use has
become part of pop culture -- bumper stickers read "Mean People Need Prozac,"
as if Prozac should be handed out by the bushel to anyone who doesn't fit the
societal "happy, friendly person" standards.

     At first glance, there is no agenda being propagated by our government to
put Prozac in the water system, as some extreme conspiracy theorists have
suggested.  Yet the concept of a fully medicated society is not as far fetched
as we might think.  Even as far back as the late 60s, leaders at the National
Institute for Mental Health, a government supported and run organization,
discussed plans and hopes for "whole communities" that would be treated with
medication, where the system "would treat the society... and not merely the
individual citizens." (Schrag, 43)  Though at the moment the figure for the
number of Americans taking Prozac daily is only equivalent to the entire
population of Orange County, that number is growing every day.

     As long as we continue our current trend of moving away from interactive
combination treatment to a more drive-through style of prescription, a future
similar to Aldous Huxley's _Brave New World_ is not terribly unlikely.  In his
world, a drug that instantly makes a person happy and relaxed, known as
_soma,_ has been invented.  This drug is standard issue for all citizens.
While we'd like to think that the platitudes that his characters murmur while
knocking back pill after pill -- "One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy
sentiments" or "A gramme is always better than a damn" -- are ridiculous to
us, they are not far removed from our current mentality, where antidepressants
are marketed in magazines, next to cigarette and liquor ads.  At the moment,
antidepressants still have a degree of separation from easy access for all,
with some requirements for conjunctive therapy, but those requirements fade
away more with each passing day.  As one psychiatrist observes:  "I feel that
we are at risk of diminishing the impulse to delve inward and gain insights
that help us lead the kinds of lives that we aspire to.  Instead, we pop a
pill and avoid the challenge." (Travis)


     "I take
      one, one, one
      cuz you left me and
      two, two, two
      for my family and
      three, three, three
      for my heartache and
      four, four, four
      for my headache and
      five, five, five
      for my loneliness and
      six, six, six
      for my sorrow and
      seven, seven
      for no tomorrow and
      eight, eight
      i forget what eight was for and
      nine, nine, nine
      for a lost god and
      ten, ten, ten, ten
      for everything, everything, everything, everything....
      (Violent Femmes)


Works Cited

1.  Barondes, Samuel H.  _Molecules and Mental Illness._  New York:
Scientific American Library, 1993.

2.  Cervantes, John D.  M.D.  Interview given May 4, 1998. 

3.  Eli Lilly & Company.  _Patient Information About Prozac._ 1997.

4.  Hausenfluke, Kevin.  Interview given April 27, 1998.

5.  Huxley, Aldous.  _Brave New World._  New York: Harper Perennial, 1932.

6.  Jamison, Kay Redfield.  _An Unquiet Mind._  New York: Vintage Books,
1995.

7.  Jarvik, Murray E.  "The Psychopharmacological Revolution."  _Readings
in Psychology Today._  Del Mar, CA:  CRM Books, 1967.

8.  Kramer, Peter D.  _Listening to Prozac._  New York: Viking, 1993.

9.  Luckman, Liane Rae.  Interview given May 2, 1998.

10.  Menninger, Karl.  _The Vital Balance._  New York: The Viking Press,
1963.

11.  Project Inform.  "Psychoactive Drugs."  The HIV Drug Book, 1995.
Online.  Available WWW: http://www.thebody.com/pinf/drugbkix.html.

12.  Restak, Richard M.  _The Mind._  London:  Bantam Books, 1988.

13.  Sandow, Neil.  RxList - The Internet Drug Index, 1997.  Online.  
Available WWW: http://www.rxlist.com.

14.  Schrag, Peter.  _Mind Control._  New York:  Pantheon Books, 1978.

15.  Snyder, Soloman H.  _Treating Mental Illness._  New York:  Chelsea
House Publishers, 1986.

16.  Stone, Michael H.  _Healing the Mind._  New York:  W. W. Norton &
Company, 1997.

17.  Styron, William.  _Darkness Visible._  New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

18.  Travis, Alison.  Interview given May 3, 1998. 

19.  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  _Depression in
Primary Care:  Volume 2.  Treatment of Major Depression._  Washington,
D.C.:  U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993.

20.  Whybrow, Peter C.  _A Mood Apart._  New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, Inc., 1997.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


     Homer:  No TV and no beer make Homer something something...
     Marge:  ...go crazy?
     Homer:  Don't mind if I do!
                                         --The Simpsons, "The Shinning"


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     VERNA CARRiGAN
     by Sweater Girl

     An ancient house, set atop a large hill, came into view as my mother
drove slowly up the steep gravel road.  Our destination was jealously guarded
on all sides by some rugged maple trees, staggered about, with a few
rhododendron bushes nearby.  A picturesce picket fence with yellow, peeling
paint enclosed all in and watched over the frail countance who inhabited the
house.  Inside, antiques filled the old house and kept the woman whom lived
there company.  This was not because the woman bought the elite items, but
she'd simply owned them long enough for them to become such.  I suppose that
made her an antique, also.

     The surroundings of her house seemed like the cemetary at times.  The
dark green grass grew thickly, and its moist scent was heavy in the air. An
unnatural stillness clung there, like the house and everything surrounding it
was trapped in a picture, unable to change.  The rotting stairwell to her door
sank gently, slanting into the soft, moist ground. If not for the huge brick
retaining wall beyond her yard, the entire hillside that the neighborhood
resided upon would slide away into the streets below.

     A darkened sky spit down on us as we approached and its noise filled the
car, effectively squelching any conversation.  Each raindrop slammed itself
against the hood of the car, louder than I had ever heard it.  My mother
pulled carefully into the driveway, and turned the car off.  Her arms loaded
with groceries, she walked dutifully up the cement path and into the house
through the front door, leaving me to follow.  I sat and waited in the car
until I couldn't anymore.  I should have went with her immediately.  It wasn't
like this visit was uncommon; It was actually a weekly occurance.  There
shouldn't have been any fuss.  So I slammed the car door and walked up to the
gate, opened it, and paused there, in front of that house.

     I usually felt uncomfortable in the old woman's company because of her
refinement.  I unconsiously avoided these meetings, too ashamed of myself to
see her.  Her manners, her dignity, her grace contrasted sharply with my
boyish composure and failed attempts at mimicking her delicate poise, her
distinct carrige of herself.  She effortlessly exuded an aura of warmth and
sweetness.  But while my uneasiness alienated me, it had no such affect on
her.  Every visit, she showered me with gracious smiles and politely genuine
questions about my life.

     I watched the rain fall, wishing to drown in the onslaught.  I remember
getting cold and ignoring the discomfort and I remember getting wet and
forgetting how dryness felt so the wetness wouldn't matter.  The rain pounded
against me, in big drops, beading on my skin and running towards the earth.
Frozen in place, I imagined it to be a few endless seconds, though it was
truely hours.  I suppose I must have been gripped by fear of her, for some
reason unknown to me.  Immobolized by some unrecognized force.  All I was only
aware of her presence inside that house, welcoming, as always.

     It was me, not her, who made me uncomfortable, and I was vaguely aware of
this at the time.  For that I will never forgive myself.  I allowed myself to
weakly indulge in my fears, missing something in the process. She had a wealth
of experinces and lessons, from which, years ago, I would have benefitted
greatly.  She loved the theatre, art, music, and because of that, her life was
filled with meaning.  Like a great oracle, her varied life lent her the
ability to discern what was important, what knowledge she should impart on
those around her.  A ready teacher, but sadly without pupils.  She rarely saw
her own children; they had long grown up and forgotten her.  No one to listen
except her cats, and my mother and I on our weekly visits.  So it was that my
mother and I came to bring her the groceries she was too weak to shop for.
But this time I didn't go inside.

     I waited outside until my mother returned. I must have been an odd sight.
Me, soaking wet, standing part way up the path.  I didn't even realize she was
there when she walked past me and to the car.  She had to call out to get my
attention.  So then I climbed back in the car, without explanations given and
was driven off, the rain again filling our ears and consuming us.  I was glad
for that.

     In the weeks to follow, my mother never again asked me to go with her to
visit the woman.  Such was the style of my mother:  she accepted change
quietly and without justification.  I gradually forgot that my mother even did
this chore.  In the months afterwards, it was only upon occasion that I
remembered and a shameful guilt enwrapped me.  It was always and easy feeling
to push away though.  A year or so later, the lady died before I saw her
again.  Her children didn't want her belongings and auctioned them off, and
donated the money to the local arts.  A few days before the funeral, my mother
told me where it was to take place.  I didn't go.  I wish I had.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


     "The shell is the most active contribution to the formation of character.
      A tough hide.  Grow it early."
                                                                    --Anais Nin


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     PAGES FROM A DiARY
     by Crux Ansata

0505 071698

     Again, I start too late.  By this time of the morning, I'm usually 
getting ready for bed.  The activity of the morning is going on around me, as 
Moonlight and Dad are getting ready for work.  But a few lines, and then I 
will go off to bed, too.

     First, I suppose some readers will wonder if I am pretending to have a 
social life.  Well, two days after seeing Am., I suppose the book would say it 
was time to get into contact.  So, this evening, I called, and she was out, so 
no one picked up the phone.  As she is playing by the same rulebook, when she 
got home, she called me, so after we had established we had both tried to call 
each other, we could see that we were both on the same figurative page.  So, 
that is dealt with.

     Still no plans.  I guess I should flip ahead and see if it is my 
obligation to proffer the next invitation.  I have the excuse, since I already 
mentioned to her the show this weekend Hagbard is in.  It is also playing the 
weekend after, but I intentionally did not mention that; we are now a week 
from when A. will be here, and I don't want to risk any overlapping plans at 
this point.

     Despite the unusual expanse of two whole paragraphs, this is not a matter 
of too much interest.  In other social events, I am also waiting for R.'s 
letter, and exchanging email with her, and waiting for A., so it is not as if 
there is any real emotional stake in the Am. thing.  But, for record keeping 
purposes and the voyeuristic eyes of the thirtieth century crabs...

     In more intellectual news -- if not too upbeat -- I made an effort to 
write an article for the special Gopher issue on religion, explaining why I am 
a Catholic.  It makes sense to me, but whenever I begin writing, I get very 
depressed and generally can't go on.  If I hadn't made extensive outlines over 
and over, I would probably have never finished the class article for the next 
State of unBeing.  This one petered out after a page and a half.

     And, as we drag ourselves further and further up the slope in our 
pathetic effort to make ourselves look like intellectuals, even if only to 
ourselves, we turn to what I have spent some time thinking about today.  I'm 
afraid it wouldn't achieve the aforementioned purpose.  For that, I should 
probably talk about the three or so pages in the newspaper about the crumbling 
infrastructure resulting in inadequate water and sewage just a county away 
from me, or talk about the reading I've been doing on the rich-poor gap and 
income tax reform in the eighties.  Instead, I have been thinking about looks.

     Rather, looksism.  I internalized quite properly the sensitivity I was 
taught.  You can't judge someone by their appearance, and so on.  However, I 
am a bit less convinced.  I suspect one can indeed tell things about people 
from their appearance.  In some, relatively conscious ways, that is clear.  
People dress in cliquish ways, and so on.  I have previously discussed this.
I mean something more fundamental.

     I think this was triggered by that book on Narcissism.  [Narcissism, by 
Alexander Lowen]  (Incidentally, until I read that book I hadn't known 
"seduce" had a negative moral tag to it.  Having read the book, I gather an 
element of fraud is involved in seduction.  I had always considered fraud to 
prevent an individual from being able to make an adequate judgment, therefore 
being incapable of consent, and therefore what he appeared to be saying is 
meant by "seduction" was simply "rape" in my apparently inadequate vocabulary.  
But this is far from what I was going to write about.)  This book -- as is to 
be expected, having been written by a student of Reich -- spent a bit on the 
body.  Through stance and body form, for example, he could gain some 
diagnostic information.  This was not the immediate trigger, but looking back, 
reading this certainly set the stage for what I was considering today.

     More relevant was my thoughts on body form.  Or rather stance.  It is 
hard for me to tell which.  I had noticed that some people reminded me of 
others.  No great breakthrough there.  But then I would look closer, and try 
to tell why.  It seemed that I could observe in people not just one thing that 
would remind me of another, but a cluster that would be repeated.  Some of it 
was intentional -- hair style, for example, and dress style.  Some of it I 
presume was subconscious, being especially the way they would sit, walk, and 
carry themselves.  This is what I mean by "stance."

     If these elements were equally distributed -- if I would see people who 
held themselves in one way, but didn't dress according to expectations, for 
example, or if they would hold themselves in one way but contradict it in 
their facial features, by which I of course mean the way they hold their face 
-- I could dismiss it.  Or if it was just a hint, rather than a clear feeling 
that these people were appearing in the same way, it could be mere 
coincidence.  I didn't get that feeling, though.  When I would look at them, I 
could see very well they were not the same people, and I would even think they 
shared little physically in common.  When I looked at the whole picture, 
though, and took my impressions without trying to find specific details, 
though, I would see it, and the features that made it up would achieve a 
feeling more than the sum of their analytic parts.

     This seemed to contradict what I spoke of before.  "You can't judge a 
book by its cover" and similar cliches are very much a part of my mindset.  I 
rebel against the idea of determining things about a person based on their 
appearance, and would rather be disliked because of my appearance than liked 
because of it, because I feel that any good in my appearance is nothing I can 
take credit for, while I consider it less unfair to be punished for something 
I didn't do.  I can alleve some of my moral resistance by saying I am looking 
at trends, at tendencies, rather than at determinants.  African Americans tend 
to vote Democrat, for example.  That is a statistical trend, and not a 
judgment call; it allows for the Shelby Steeles.  But even so, I hesitate.

     I am not saying I hesitate, though, because I think it is not true.  The 
data seem to indicate that it is, and it does make sense within Reichian 
assumptions.  (Some of which I believe; enough of which I believe to make this 
trend believable.)  I keep emphasizing my resistance because I experience it.  
It is my experience, and therefore valid.  I accept it, and I think I 
understand it, and I acknowledge it.  Having done so, I try to move past it.

     Because I think there is something here.  But I don't know what.  I am 
grasping at straws.  Body stance might be because of neuromuscular tensions.  
That makes a lot of objective sense, and is testable.  It does not require 
looking for some kind of aura or psychic fields, and seems to explain the 
available data.  Why then do I have such trouble emotionally accepting it?  
That is a question I can't answer.

     Anyway, there is another thing I think is holding me up.  I seem to see 
some trends as being not due to individual choice, or even individual 
experience.  It makes perfect sense that one's sexual pattern will be visible; 
I really doubt very many people can deny that.  And so it makes sense that 
people who have had certain traumatic sexual experiences will also have 
similar body stances.  (Again, not a determinant, but a trend, and it 
certainly makes sense to believe that emotional healing would be reflected 
also.)  This is individual, and I have less trouble accepting that this shows 
on the outside.

     It seems less acceptable, though, that socioeconomic background and 
racial make up would effect one's body stance -- because I consider body 
stance to be probably a result of neuromuscular tensions.  Well, I suppose 
that isn't quite true, either.  Certain socioeconomic conditions would I 
presume result in certain similar emotional stresses, which would then be 
reflected as similar neuromuscular tensions.  I suppose certain racial groups 
would also have similar social and emotional tensions as a result of our 
society, and one would have to examine other societies to determine what was 
racially determined and what was socially determined -- and a great deal more 
research would have to be engaged in to determine what was a result of the 
interaction between the two.

     This specific concern is because of a girl in my class.  I don't know her 
to be a Jewess, but I noticed that she had a similar stance to many Jewesses I 
have known, and which I do not recall seeing in people I knew to be of other 
racial types.  Despite my efforts to be able to move in and out of racial 
prejudice at will -- or rather to overcome the anti-racist prejudice -- I 
still have an emotional resistance to things that smack of racism and 
anti-Semitism.  I suppose that has resulted in another emotional resistance to 
accepting this as a possible fact.  Then again, I don't know that it should, 
since the two distinct body types I noticed before the Jewess one were both 
White in all the examples I know the racial make up of.

     Looking back, I suppose this will say more about me than anything about 
neuromuscular tensions.  Spending more than two pages on this probably makes 
me look rather neurotic.  But I have been thinking about it for some time now, 
and suppose I felt the need to get some of the thoughts out.  Which I have 
done.  I guess I'll do some reading and then go to bed.  I do, after all, have 
class today.

0539 071698

0244 072798

     I am too old.  I don't mean too old for anything, of course.  I could 
still write the great American novel, or become an Italian fashion designer, 
or the heavyweight champion of the world, or maybe even Queen of Brazil, with 
a little surgery and some political upheaval.  When I tell people I'm too old
they brush it aside because that is what they think of:  There are still 
things I can do.

     I am too old for another reason, one which has more to do with being.  I 
happen to think I am too old to be happy.  The things I can think of that 
might make me happy tend to be things I consider behind me.

     I suppose what this comes down to is I think I might be happy with a 
girl, but I think I'm too old to have a love relationship of the kind I mean, 
the kind I used to think about and write about but no longer do -- because I 
am too old.

     It seems to me high schoolers, that age range, love, or experience what 
they consider love, in a very different way from the old people I'm around.  I 
imagine there are a lot of old people in high school, too, and more every day.  
But I don't seem to see the young people past that age.  I don't consider it 
possible or acceptable to try to have a relationship with someone in that 
emotional range, but when I think about it, I think that could have made me 
happy.  Once.  When I was younger.

     I went to sleep this afternoon, and I was awoken for supper.  That was 
about three hours of sleep.  After supper I tried to sleep again.  That was 
hell.  I wasn't exhausted enough to just nod off.  I tossed and turned in a 
feverish delirium, asleep and awake at the same time, tormented by violent and 
sexual dreams or fantasies, which I was in and observing and separate from all 
at the same time.  I couldn't take it.  My eyes still burning and my mind 
still bleary I dragged myself up and started reading again.  Now I feel 
completely refreshed, but I imagine it must be some kind of illusion.

     I was trying to read --

     No, I left something out.  Above.  It seemed a little stupid.  It still 
does, but only for those of you who have to experience me in words.  I don't 
like to admit it, but I can experience me -- fleetingly, painfully -- in other 
ways.  There is a taste, that I associate with happiness.  The taste of a 
girl.  The taste I think of as a girl in love.  But, and this might not seem 
to make sense, I am not being obscene.  It is a powder, a cosmetic, I think.  
This is not a dehumanizing denial of the natural woman by forcing her to paint 
her face, because this is a *taste*.  A taste.  It has nothing to do with make 
up.  There is a smell, too.  I know what I am doing.  I am synesthetically 
accessing memory-experiences of times when I was happy, and these have become 
associated with uncommon sensory triggers, in this case the taste and 
presumably the smell of cosmetics in close quarters.  But, you know what?  
This is one of those times when knowing doesn't make a damn bit of difference 
-- the experience remains the same.

     Now, I will go on.

     I was trying to read The Epic of Gilgamesh.  I borrowed a copy from 
Moonlight.  It is a half-century old translation.  It translates all the 
"naughty bits" into Latin.  This is not too much of an inconvenience, since I 
expect I will be able to follow the story missing the occasional line of 
verse, but I found it very funny.  I had read about this before, that the 
prudishness of former ages led translators to be so embarrassed about the 
subject matter that they translated portions into Latin.  But I don't recall
ever experiencing it before.  Anyway, I left it off, and I've been reading 
about shamanism since.  That involves lengthy passages in French -- and 
occasional in German -- but apparently nothing vital.

     And now I suppose I'll go back to it.  Later.

     Incidentally, not a word from A.  When she told me when she would be in 
town, she said August.  Every time.  But I am informationally quick, and I 
chatted with her about her program, and so knew she was going to be in the 
state July 23.  She knew I knew, because I pointed out that I knew the last 
time she tried to tell me August.  I suppose, though, she is in Dallas, and 
didn't want to tell me July 23 because she knew she would not be in town and I 
would be thinking about her if I knew she was in the state.  Well, as the 
scholars say, "fuck it.  I'm going to go study."

0258 072798

0646 072798

     Why can't I sleep?  It isn't that I'm not tired.  My eyes are burning.  
I've been up about twelve hours since my three hour nap, and I'd been up all 
night the night before.  I feel tired.  Not exhausted, but tired.  But I can't 
sleep.

     I've been laying in bed for two hours, staring at the ceiling.  Haven't 
been plagued with visions or anything, like the nightmares the day before, the 
last time I tried to sleep.  Just laying there.  I can only do that so long; I 
keep remembering and thinking, and that never leads to good.

     Tried reading brain candy.  I'm reading another Sweet Valley High book 
[number 59:  In Love Again], when I'm trying to relax.  I like reading about 
happy people.  I like the thought that somewhere there are happy people.  I 
guess it makes me think that someday perhaps I, too, could be happy, or at 
least that there are people in the world who aren't in agony.

     Sometimes the books do get irritating.  They are not dark at all, and 
they seem a little campy in their naivete.  But part of reading is the 
suspension of disbelief.  I can accept the premise that somewhere there are 
people like this, or perhaps that there used to be.  And they do hit 
resonances of people I did know, even if the people I knew were darker, 
dirtier, realer.

     And then there is another level.  I know this probably sounds crazy, but 
I spend a lot of time on another level of my mind, one of the ones that are 
not needed to follow the complexities of plot, following the sociopolitical 
landscape of Sweet Valley.  They have a class conscious society, of sorts, but 
it is entirely bourgeois.  In tone, of course.  By profession, I suppose the 
parents of the twins are petite-bourgeois.  But not only can they afford nice 
cars and to buy clothes whenever they like, in this particular volume the 
choice between going to the exclusive private school or the public school -- 
or even going to private school in Europe -- rests with the children, not the 
bank book.  I know there are people in the town that are not wealthy, and they 
are generally shown in a quite unsympathetic light, when they are shown at 
all.  In the strata of texts I'm reading now, it is between the upper middle 
class and the lower upper class.

     This dynamic I find believable, since I know there are communities like 
this.  A couple of years back I might not have, but today I do.  The squeaky 
clean atmosphere, however, is a little less believable.  The upper class tends 
to have less morality than the bourgeois -- but even this is reflected, come 
to think of it.  Concentrating on the twins gives a rather skewed, bourgeois 
view of the world.  (Suitable, incidentally, to children's books; it's a very 
reactionary worldview.)

     I remember when I started this book, they were talking about the problems 
of large class size in public schools.  Since this is a pop culture text, I 
could be sure it was thus not a futurist view of the world, but they were 
commenting on a banality.  I remember thinking, "Ah, I suppose this book is 
from the late eighties."  Sure enough, it is copyright 1989.

     Man, that's a lot about brain candy.  I think I intellectually engage 
Sweet Valley High more than I intellectually engage some of the more scholarly 
works I read.  I suppose that's good; I get some relaxation without utter 
waste of time.  I suppose it would be more useful if I was reading current 
texts instead of decade old brain candy.  That's a good way to make yourself 
sick.  But one deals; I got this book very cheap.

     And anyway, I felt by about sunrise I deserved a break from trying to 
read French translations of Arabic books.

     I think I like these books because I like kids.  I read other books about 
them, but realistic books, of course, show them in pain.  These books show 
them in melodramas, where one can pretend they are in pain, and pretend they 
get out of the situation, and everyone is amused.  It allows me the emotional 
charge of hanging out with kids without the legal charge.  I suppose.

     But I am still tense.  I still can't sleep.  And I am still depressed -- 
or I would be if I was feeling anything.  I suppose I'll go back to pretending 
to sleep.  I want to get some sleep before class.  Sleeping three hours over 
the weekend cannot be good for the grades, and if I don't pass this, I don't 
graduate.  So, I sign off, yet again.

0701 072798

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


                              [=- POETASTRiE -=]

"The poets?  They stink.  They write badly.  They're idiots you see, because
 the strong people don't write poetry....  They become hitmen for the Mafia.
 The good people do the serious jobs."
                                                             --Charles Bukowski


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     FOR GRANTED
     by Radioactive Mutant in Search of Antibiotics

         Life is everything you to take for granted
       Between orgasms. Life is everything
       You feel while sleeping. Life is everything
       You take from your mother and father and take
       From your friends. Life is everything
       Your teachers do not tell you. Life is every-
       Thing you fear and lust for. Life is wearing
       Red, the blood red of human charity.
       Life is waking to find everyone is still
       Asleep,
               beside you,
                           for ever.

         Life is dawn noon and dusk; ephemeral
       And sleeping.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


     "Though I sang in my chains like the sea."
                              --Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill"


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     TiTAN
     by Radioactive Mutant in Search of Antibiotics

       He shrugs the cannon
          down towards the sand

       The tides are
          receding as
          the moon

               a barren darkening moon

          rises and casts
          reflecting light on sands
          and waters no longer swelling beneath its cast

       Look what rifts
          the cannon in its wake leaves!

       Look what timeless chasms!
           (Though they close in, though they close in)

       The earth, this beach, would bleed
           beneath its weight but it can't!

       It never could.
           I don't think it ever could......

       And what blind flagging strength the Titan turns
       Left shiftless as the dwindling ocean it can no longer see.
       The light is failing, failing, my friends,
       And so is He.

     And so night has fallen
     And what darkness visible
       in blindness or death
     Is left for the moon or for he?

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


                                [=- FiCTiON -=]


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     VERONiCA
     by Kilgore Trout

     "I think most men like shiny cars, shiny knives, and shiny girls,"
Veronica explained to me as I stared boredly at the end of my unlit cigarette.
"If you've got an eye-candy body and a few toys to play with, you can have any
man in the world."

     Veronica was sixteen and lived with her parents two blocks away from my
house.  We had met earlier that summer when she was looking for lawns to mow.
Being thirty-five and single, I couldn't resist having a young girl in a
tanktop and shorts getting sweaty in my lawn.  She was strictly hands off, of
course, but I paid her double her asking price.

     "Flash isn't everything a man wants," I replied, lighting my cigarette
and inhaling.  "Find a guy who'll have curbside chats like this and you'll
have it made."

     She leaned back, putting her hands in the freshly mowed grass, and
stretched her tanned legs into the street.  I offered to get her another glass
of water, but she declined.

     "You seem to know an awful lot about this type of thing," Veronica said.
"How come there isn't a Mrs. Mitchum?"

     "Because I'm destined to be alone," I answered.

     "Come on, that's so negative.  You're a swell guy, you make good money,
and you're not bad looking.  Aside from your smoking, you've got lots of good
qualities."

     "It's not as simple as that, Veronica."

     "Why not?"

     "For me, the issues are different.  I'm not sure I really ever wanted
love."

     I took a final drag off of the cigarette and flicked it into the street.
Veronica stared at me quizically as I exhaled.

     "How could you not want love?" she asked.

     "It didn't work for me in the past.  Love isn't always enough for some
people, and it took me a long time to realize that."

     "That soulds like a pretty dysfunctional attitude to me."

     "You're probably right."

     Veronica stood up and said that she had to get home.  I paid her and
watched her walk down the street.  The sun was barely above the treetops, and
after a few moments a shiny car drove past, catching my reflection on its
door.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


     "The world will go out like a roman candle.  Not even a blade of gras
      will grow again.  A lethal dose from which no awakening.  Peace and
      night, with no moan or whisper stirring.  A soft, brooding darkness, an
      inaudible flapping of wings."
                                                 --Henry Miller, _Black Spring_

 
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     AN EVENiNG AT STiNKY PETE'S
     by Rich Logsdon

(Note to the reader:  This story is the 141st in the famous but now defunct
"Alex the Werewolf" series.--XL, Editor-in-chief)

     Nicky the ghoul felt like howling for joy.  The scent of blood hung like
a thick cloud in the air about him as he, Alex, and Lisa drove hell-bent for
leather through the Southern California desert towards Las Vegas.  The
blood-scent clung to them all like some wild animal perfume, intoxicating
Nicky.  Having just participated in the most spectacular thrill-kill of his
life, Nicky felt as if he would never die.

     It was a full-moon night, around three am late in August of '92. They
were traveling in Alex's '86 blue Ford convertible on the I-5 just east of
Baker, California.  Lisa,  Nicky's gorgeous stacked blonde girlfriend who made
her money performing in nude bars in the Southwest, sat in the middle between
the two men.  She had placed her hand, with its beautiful blood-red
fingernails, between Nicky's leg, gently massaging Nicky's manhood into
ecstatic hardness.  Life was good for Nicky the ghoul, and Vegas was only an
hour away.

     As Alex drove, Nicky gazed upward, watching the meteors lighting up the
clear night sky in glorious reds, yellows, greens, and blues.  For Nicky, this
was a blood-sacred moment, partially spoiled only by the '40's swing music
which Alex insisted on playing on his stereo.  Nicky could still taste the
flesh and blood from the recent carnage.  He put his arm around his girlfriend
Lisa, who had not yet become a world famous porn queen.
 
     On this particular meteor-filled night, responding as well to the thrill
of the kill, Lisa had removed her top so that she could feel the night air
moving against her wonderful breasts.  Over her right breast, she bore the
tattoo of a dark rose that Alex had given her last Christmas.  Both nipples
bore the simple golden rings that Nicky had bought for her when the two of
them had started living together in Vegas five years ago.

     Nicky smacked his lips in crude, bestial satisfaction and looked over at
Alex, his best friend.  Unbelievably, Alex was a werewolf.  In a normal
situation, when he wasn't giving in to the blood-call of the full moon, Alex
did not look very imposing.  Right now, in fact, Alex was snapping his fingers
to Benny Goodman, and Nicky was reminded of how much he disliked his friend's
taste in music.  Inspite of Nicky's protestations, Alex would never play Rush,
Aerosmith, or Van Halen. Alex, Nicky thought to himself, has always been your
basic nerd.

     Nicky thought back to high school graduation.  Since graduating from high
school eight years before, Alex had steadily worn wire-rimmed glasses, still
had a slight anemic build (the kind that invited people to kick sand in his
face, in fact), loved to discuss Conrad, Pynchon, and Nabakov with anyone who
would listen, and if left to his own devices would select totally mismatching
clothes to wear, like bright yellow socks, blue slacks, and a pink shirt.
Nicky cringed as he examined his friend:  tonight, Alex wore a red California
Angels T-shirt, green shorts, and blue socks.  "Ya look like a fuckin'
Christmas tree light," Nicky had said earlier.  Alex's choice of clothes,
colors and music occasionally so outraged Nicky (who incidentally tried to
dress in the style of a Las Vegas mobster, long an extinct breed) that Nicky
was sometimes tempted not to be seen with his friend.

     On this night, Alex, Lisa and Nicky had driven from Malibu where, four
hours ago, they had watched Lisa perform wildly, beautifully, exotically with
her pet snake Leopold on the stage at Stinky Pete's nude bar, her last
performance in a fantastic engagement that had lasted for two weeks.  Though
she had received a glowing write-up in the most recent issue of _Boobs_
magazine, Lisa had made only a few insignificant appearances in some adult
films.

     Nicky remembered the evening with excitement.  At around 9:30, when Lisa
was going into the final part of her routine, Alex and Nicky were sitting at a
table way in the back of Stinky Pete's.  Both men smoked incessantly, a kind
of preparation for an eternity to be spent in the fiery pit, and smoke swirled
continually in a blue cloud around their table.  Alex was working on his third
or fourth Bloody Mary, and Alex had drunk about eight Tequila Sunrises.  Two
of Stinky Pete's strippers, Magic and Amber, were sitting with them, drinking
and smoking as well.  Nicky had bought them drinks throughout the evening as
he and Alex waited for and then watched Lisa's routine.

     As they sat drinking at table in the back of Stinky Pete's, Nicky watched
Alex and still couldn't reconcile his friend's present mild demeanor with the
savage, insane ferocity Alex displayed when he turned into a werewolf.  (Nicky
wondered if therapy would help merge his friend's disparate and obviously
alternate personalities.)  Alex sat, almost timidly nursing his drink, talking
to the raven-haired Amber about Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Joseph Conrad --
after all, Alex had gotten his masters in English literature from Princeton --
and Amber sat there, her face two inches from Alex's, her hand on his lap,
saying things like, "That's fascinating" and "Wow" and "I didn't know that."
Even when Amber did a lap dance for him, Alex talked nothing but literature.
"Oh, the horror, the horror," Alex said over and over again, waxing Conradian,
as Amber rode his bone.  Amber just chuckled and just said, "Alex, you sure
are darned smart."

     Nicky could have puked at this remark, but he remembered that Lisa was
very fond of Amber, who was studying color design at a local community
college, so he kept his mouth shut.  Instead, as Lisa went through her routine
on the stage, Alex turned to Magic, a former cheerleader who had gone to high
school with him and Alex and whom Nicky had known for years, and asked her to
give him another lap dance.  Because she still had a crush on him, Magic gave
the horny ghoul a great, great performance; as Alex commented to Nicky later,
it was like watching the two of them having intercourse right out there in
front of everybody in the place.
 
     But Nicky didn't care if Lisa didn't care.  Sometimes, in the middle of
her act (tonight, for instance), she hopped down off the stage, not a stitch
on, walked over to some overweight, balding, middle aged business type wearing
a suit and a tie, opened up his fly, took out his pecker, and, if the guy was
hard, whacked him off for five to fifteen minutes, depending on how the guy
acted.

     When Lisa got to the final part of her act where she worked with the her
snake Rosebud, almost every man in the place was on his feet, panting,
shouting, howling, asking for more.  It was something most of them had never
seen, only dreamt about.  "The things this girl can make her snake do," one
lady at an adjacent table had commented to her boyfriend,  "are delightfully
obscene."  But Nicky had seen the snake part hundreds of times, and even
enjoyed it:  he liked to imagine that he was the snake, crawling up inside
this beautiful blonde dancer in front of one to two hundred horny and drunk
men.  Something of a purist to the end, however, Alex didn't like the
snake-act.

     This night, in fact, Alex had stood up, walked over to Nicky so that he
was inches away from his friend's ear, and said, "Nicky, I just don't get it."

     Clapping and whistling for his baby, just like everyone else, Nicky
asked, "What dontcha get, Alex?"  Nicky knew that he and Alex had had this
conversation at least a dozen times before.

     "Well," Alex began cautiously, "I have considered this matter before and,
well, how do you and Lisa do it, you know, Othello's "beast with two backs,"
the camel with two humps, after you've seen her do all those tricks with
Leopold?"

     "I don't follow ya, pal," the ghoul said, wishing Alex would sit down and
shut up so he could enjoy the final part of his girl's act.  "Like do what?"
Nicky asked, annoyed but trying not to show it.  He knew exactly what Alex was
getting at.

     "OK," Alex began, "after she actually has had our jungle friend inside
her, how can you and Lisa make love?"  No one, thought Nicky to himself, ever
said "make love" any more except morons.  Sometimes he wondered about Alex.

     "I don't think about it," Nicky said abruptly, looking at Alex, getting a
bit pissed, "Why the fuck should I?  If anything, I'm thinkin' about how good
it feels to be inside Lisa is all.  Anyway, the snake's an act, Alex.  It
don't mean shit.  It's like when she used to do that shit with a mule in
Mexico."  Alex recalled the stories Lisa told about the six months she had
danced down in Tijuana, her accompaniment on stage a mule.  It was in that bar
that Nicky had met and fallen in love with Lisa, in fact.  "It was a job,"
Lisa had commented.  "I kinda enjoyed it at times."

     "Well, I'm with Alex on this one," Amber piped up in a loud voice from
behind the men.  She and Magic were still sitting down.  "I think you're
totally screwed up, Nicky.  Nothin' against you an' Lisa...."

     "Who asked you, anyway?" Nicky growled at Amber.  He looked for approval
from Magic, who was glaring at him too.  Fuck both of these bitches, Nicky
thought to himself.  I'll never figure women out.  Nicky knew what was right.

     When Lisa's act finished, every male in the house must have remained
standing for at least ten minutes, demanding an encore, which Nicky knew would
never come.  Lisa's attitude was that you never give anyone anything extra
because, if you do, you're really setting yourself up to be fucked royally.
Lisa got paid $500 for the show, and that was it, over and done with, let's
head for home.

     When Lisa left the stage and everyone sat down, Alex, Nicky, and the two
dancers sat in silence, waiting for Lisa to come out and join them.  Nicky
worked on another drink, and as Alex and the two girls started mumbling
together he looked over at the next table right next where five or six young
men from a local church softball team, each with a dancer on his lap, were
talking and laughing about Lisa's act. They were saying some pretty wicked
things.

     "I wonder what else ole pussy wonder does?" the big one, with short red
hair and bushy sideburns and a huge belly asked everyone at the table.  "Maybe
a horse?  A bull?  A hippo?" Nicky figured this guy must be the catcher.

     "I think that's all she can get," laughed the man right next to Red. This
one was taller though not built so heavy.  He had dark, slick backed hair, was
dressed immaculately, and from the tone in his voice, obviously considered
himself the leader.  His jersey read "Captain Hank" on the back.  "Who'd want
to go to bed with something like the Snake Woman?"  All the men laughed.
Nicky registered to himself:  they are calling my girl the snake woman.
Brooding, Nicky slouched in his chair and slurped his drink.

     "I think she needs a lot more tattoos," chimed in Red, taking a gigantic
swig from his bottle of ale.  "Wouldn't hurt that bitch.  Only help."  The
other men laughed loudly but their girls, obviously some of the club's
dancers, squirmed uncomfortably and hoped this would pass.

     "That's her boyfriend right over there," said the dancer on Red's lap,
pointing at Nicky, who was glaring at the big man.  In a fight, Nicky knew,
these young softball studs hadn't a chance in hell.  Nicky honestly hoped it
wouldn't have to come to that.

     "Huh, huh, huh," said Red, trying to be the tough one, gazing at Nicky,
"do you fuck her before or after the snake?  Or do you even got a snake?"  At
this, Red grabbed his crotch and the other men laughed.  Red picked up his ale
from the table in front of him and guzzled.  Nicky had counted about twenty
empty bottles on the table.

     Teeth clenched, Nicky had just risen from his chair when Lisa suddenly
came running up, dressed in an orange T-shirt that read "Stinky Pete's" and
baggy blue jeans.  "Oooooh, Sweetcakes," she exclaimed, throwing her arms
around Nicky and kissing him on the cheek, "how was it?  Was I good?"

     "You were great, baby, real fuckin' great," Nicky calmly assured her,
keeping his eyes on the men at the next table.  "You were the best, baby, the
best."

     A belligerent drunk, Red couldn't resist and putting his bottle of ale on
his table grabbed the tall man sitting next to him and said, trying to imitate
Lisa, "Oooooh Sweetcakes, can I kiss you, too?"  Then, turning to Nicky, he
asked, "What does it feel to be kissed by the Snake Lady, fella?  Slimy and
scaly??"

     Nicky knew he had to ignore the insult and began escorting Lisa to the
door.  "Bye, girls," Nicky said over his shoulder to Amber and Magic, "it's
been nice.  C'mon, Alex."  Nicky, Lisa, and Alex slowly made their way through
the crowded room to the door, which was only twenty feet away from where they
had been sitting.

     "Hey!!" bellowed Red, staggering to his feet and following the three.
"You ignoring me, you freaks?"  Red began pushing his way through the crowd
towards Nicky.  Anger building, Nicky was close to losing it, to giving the
spectators a bloody treat they'd remember to their dying days.

     At that moment, always the gentleman and mediator, Alex stood his ground
between Red and Nicky, put his hand on Red's chest, and in quick breaths that
probably gave Red and his friends the impression Alex was afraid said, "Look,
I am terribly, terribly sorry if there has been some sort of misunderstanding
here.  Terribly, terribly sorry.  Now couldn't we just forget this and call it
an evening.  We don't want a fight.  You don't want to fight.  I mean, you
guys represent our local church softball league, for goodness sakes.  No
fights, please.  We were just...."  The way Alex talked in these situations
always embarrassed Nicky.

     "Outa my way, queer," Red slurred loudly, giving Alex a push and then
bringing his fist around straight towards Alex, who easily ducked the blow.
Red's fist caught Lisa square in the mouth; and, her mouth now bloodied, Lisa
began screaming.
  
     "Outside, you red fuck," Nicky stopped and said coldly to the big man,
who stood about six and a half feet tall.  At six feet one inch tall, Nicky
stared the big man in the eyes and Red wavered.  Staring into the eyes of a
ghoul was like staring straight into the pit of hell, and different people
always saw their own worst fears as they looked into the eyes of a ghoul.
Whatever Red saw, it temporarily scared him.

     Red paused for an instant, long enough for Nicky to grab him by the
shoulder and escort him easily to the door.  As a ghoul, Nicky's strength was
probably ten times that of Red or his friends.  Red tried to take his arm
back, but found he couldn't move in Nicky's vice like grip, which sent
incredible pain coursing through the body like a million electrical
pin-pricks.

     "No, no, no, Nicky," Lisa blubbered, blood frothing from her mouth.  She
had a badly cut lip and was dabbing the blood with a napkin while trying to
talk.  "Remember two years ago, Nick, in Dallas?"  Indeed he did. Nicky had
gotten his man down and then, in front of all his friends and anyone else who
cared to watch had literally torn his adversary's head from his trunk with his
bare hands.  Nicky had been forced to run from the law for a year and Lisa
couldn't get a job dancing anywhere for one year.

     So Nicky tried to relax as he looked away from Red and his friends and
headed for the door.  Seeing his girl bloodied, he wanted to kill Red and his
buddies and then eat their flesh.  Just as Nicky and his two friends were
almost to the door, Red came up behind Alex, spun him around, and,
administered a series of blows.  Alex fell to the ground, obviously hurt.

     When Alex picked himself up off the floor, bleeding profusely from the
nose and sporting a huge gash over the right temple, Nicky could see the now
insane fury in his friend's eyes.  It was beginning.  Nicky had to get them
all outside, so he said, "All right, Red, outside now."

     With a roar of approval, Red and his friends followed Nicky, Alex, and
Lisa out the door and around to the side parking lot, which was protected from
the freeway by a surrounding eight foot concrete wall that prevented anyone
from seeing in.

     In the "hole," as it was termed inside the club, Nicky turned and looked
at Red, who had already removed his jacket and shirt.  Red's fists were up,
and possibly attempting to imitate Muhammed Ali he began dancing, bobbing, and
weaving toward Nicky.  Red's friends formed a circle behind him, almost as if
they were daring anyone to leave.  The only others to come outside were Amber
and Magic, who had already made hundreds that night off Alex and Nicky.

     "Uh, excuse me, you dumb fucking idiot," Nicky said to the pugilistic
Red, holding up a hand, "it's not me you gonna fight.  Nicky wanted this to be
good.  This big man and his friends needed to be taught a lesson they'd never
forget.  "It's him."  And Nicky pointed next to where Alex stood, bleeding,
saying nothing, panting feverishly, his eyes glowing red, his head forward,
his arms and hands changing shape even as he stood.  Blind to signals that
were by now obvious to Lisa and Nicky, Red stepped forward and, with all of
his might, hit Alex in the jaw.  Alex was literally lifted off his feet and
flew backwards for ten feet, crashing into some garbage cans before he hit the
earth.  Because some other garbage cans blocked the view, Alex was no longer
visible.

     "That'll teach you to fuck with me, kid!!" bellowed Red in the direction
of the garbage cans.  Red knew he'd won, a champion among the men at Stinky
Pete's. Red's friends laughed uproariously, some patting the behemoth on the
back.  Then Red turned to Nicky, who had already thought out how he was going
to get Red in a hammer-lock and then, quickly, pop this lumberjack's head off
for his friends to see.  Should be easy and fun, thought Nicky to himself.
  
     Nicky approached the belligerent Red when he heard a trash can tip over.
Nicky looked to the side, knew Alex was conscious, and heard the low guttural
growl that spelled the beginning of the end for Red and his buddies.

     "What the fuck is that?" whimpered Red, his voice quivering, unaware that
he had about five minutes to live.  "Is that you, little man?" he stupidly
asked, looking toward the garbage can, expecting the bespectacled Alex to
emerge.

     When no answer came, Red relaxed a bit, probably imagining he had heard
things.
 
     "Well," challenged Red, laughing in the direction of the cans, trying to
dispel the fear that had temporarily seized him, "I can't wait forever, you
little pussy.  Either come on out from behind those cans and take your licks
or I put your friend here" -- he motioned towards Nicky with these words --
"in the fucking hospital."  Red felt brave again.

     You certainly had to admire this bozo's spunk, Nicky thought to himself.

     Suddenly, a tremendous guttural scream shattered the night, seeming to
come from somewhere above or below.  Nicky could see the lurking shadow moving
in the darkness between the walls and the garbage cans.  He knew it was Alex,
the Alex that most people never got a chance to know. Again, the thing
screamed in rage, its deafening call rending the night.

     In seconds, the beast-thing emerged slowly from the shadows, a huge wolf
with silver and black fur, crouching sideways, creeping almost, watching its
prey, the doomed Red.  Saliva dripped from the snarling thing's jaws, and its
huge razor-sharp teeth glistened in the moonlight. A low steady growl, like an
engine, rumbled from its throat.

     "Oh, my sweet, sweet Jesus," squeaked Red, visibly intimidated, "who
brought the dog?  That is a dog, isn't it."

     Standing slightly behind Nicky, Lisa laughed.  "That's no dog, you dodo,"
said Lisa in her curtsey voice.  "That's Alex, the guy you just thought you
knocked out.  Alex, honey," Lisa said in a sing-song voice, approaching the
beast-thing as you would a mangy and potentially dangerous dog, "come out,
come out, come out to play."  Having been witness to these terrifying
spectacles before, Lisa was reasonably confident that the beast thing would
not turn on her.

     "What th-th-th-the hell is this?" wheezed Red, shaken, visibly trembling.
Red sounded as if he were on the verge of an asthma attack. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus. He'p me, he'p me, he'p me, Lord.  I wanna go home, boys," sobbed the
man.  At this, Red's partners began to back away, looking for the exit, which
Nicky ran to and blocked.  When the men looked into Nicky's flashing zombie
eyes, they froze.

     "What the hell this is," said Lisa, glad to have more than a few words to
say, "is dinner-time for Alex.  And us."  Lisa pointed to the wolf. "Uh, by
the way, big fella," she said, still giggling, as she looked back at Red and
his friends, "you better run.  Prayin' won't save your skin now."

     Red turned to begin his sprint to freedom when the beast-thing sprang,
grabbing one of the man's fat legs and, tearing the trousers, easily pulling
the big man down and dragging him backwards.  Red was screaming like a little
child.

     In an instant, the tall man Hank sprang forward, stupid and brave,
withdrew a huge hunting knife, and positioned himself in front of the snarling
thing.  The beast dropped Red's now bloodied and separated leg, circled
quickly to the left, to the right, crouched, and then sprang quick as dark
light, grabbing the man's neck in its powerful jaws and flipping Hank's
severed head backwards and over the wall of the "hole." The captain of the
church softball team never had a chance, Nicky chuckled to himself, never even
saw the thing spring.  Nicky watched the tall man, now headless, stagger about
for a second or two before falling forward in an explosion of dust, a crimson
geyser shooting from the hole of his neck.

     One of the other men, a small man with glasses and close cropped black
hair (Guy looks like the fuckin' preacher, Nicky thought to himself), began
bawling and fled toward the exit where he met Nicky.  As the little man tried
to get by Nicky, the ghoul grabbed the man by the throat and squeezed.  Bone
and gristle cracked and blood trickled from the little man's mouth as Nicky
held his victim, a rat caught in a trap, dangling before him before dropping
him to the ground with a dusty thud.

     Another man, this one almost as tall as Red but much fatter, put his bald
head down like a bull and charged Nicky.  Quick as lightening, Nicky stepped
aside, tripped the  man, who fell squealing to his knees.  In an instant,
Nicky had the man's head in a hammer lock and, in one quick twist, had popped
the man's head off his body cavity.  Blood gushed everywhere, like a broken
city fire hydrant.  Quickly looking over at Lisa, who couldn't help admiring
her boyfriend's prowess, the bloodied Nicky commented, "Honey, I been waitin'
to do that all fuckin' night."

     "Oooohhh, Nicky," Lisa cooed, "I love you, sweetcheeks."

     "Christ," breathed Nicky to himself, looking away and dropping his
victim's head to the ground.  "I hate that name."

     With a cry that pierced that Southern California night, the beast thing
again went to work again, seizing Red's head in its massive jaws, easily
squashing the head like a ripe tomato, blood and brains spurting everywhere.
In an instant, the beast was on the three remaining men, who scampered about
like hypnotized rabbits, not sure where to turn.  It was almost funny, thought
Nicky, like watching an old Warner Brothers cartoon.  The Beast Alex sprang
from one man to another, seizing the next man's neck or head in its powerful
jaws, and then biting and tearing.  In minutes, the ground of the pit was
covered with blood and littered with bloodied decapitated corpses.

     Not sure what she had just seen, Amber stepped forward from the shadows
and towards the wolf and said, "Alex?"  The wolf remained hunched over Red's
corpse, thunderous growls coming from its throat, ready to begin the feast.

     Amber looked back at Magic.  "This has been pretty cool, huh?" was all
Amber managed to say.  "Better than Fright Night, that's for sure."

     "Cool," returned Magic, nonchalant.  "Now let's get back inside.  I wanna
make some more money."

     As Amber and Magic walked out of the pit, Nicky stepped aside and let
them pass.

     "Call me up next time you’re in town, big boy," Magic said with a Mae
West wink to Nicky, brushing up against him with her huge tits as she passed.
Patting Magic on the ass, Nicky whispered, "Sure, babe," confident Lisa hadn't
heard the exchange.

     Now alone in the pit with six corpses and a friend who had turned into a
snarling, blood-thirsty beast, Nicky and Lisa didn't know where to begin.
There was almost too much to devour in one sitting and they knew that they
would have to leave one or two of the corpses untouched. Taking the corpses
home in Alex's trunk, once Alex regained his humanity, was out of the question
since Alex kept his car clean and immaculate.

     In silent agreement, Nicky and Lisa looked at each other, looked at the
beast-thing noisily devouring Red, looked back at each other and smiled
hugely.

     "By the way, baby," said Nicky, ready to begin, "please don't call me
Sweetcheeks ever again."

     "Sorry, Punkin'," Lisa responded, anxious to eat but respectful of her
boyfriend's wishes.  Nicky rolled his eyes and winced but was too hungry to
give his new label another thought.
 
     Then, each one kneeling over a different corpse, Nicky and Lisa had
dinner.
  
                                  * * * * *

     Meteors continued to streak overhead in a tremendous celestial show as
the memory of the evening swam like blood in Nicky's brain.  It had been a
glorious evening, splendid really, the best killing any of them had yet taken
part in, but the three were tired and anxious to get home before the sunrise.
Nicky knew Alex was cutting it a bit short but didn't worry.  He worried more
about Alex's wardrobe, in fact.

     "Those guys back at Stinky Pete's thought you were a fuckin' queer.  You
know that," Nicky yelled into the wind, loud enough so Alex could hear.

     "All right, then," Alex responded, petulantly, throwing one hand into the
air, "why don't you buy my clothes from now on?  It's quite painfully obvious
that I haven't a clue."  Alex emphasized "clue," and Nicky cringed:  Alex even
talked like a queer.  "I'd rather spend my time shopping looking for good
books to read anyway," Alex added with a flip of his hand.

     "You got yourself a deal," Nicky responded, not welcoming the task of
preparing a wardrobe for a friend who preferred Shakespeare to Seinfeld but
responding nevertheless to a task that had to be done.

     At the rate Alex was driving, Nicky knew they'd be home and inside dark
rooms at least a half hour before sun-up.  It would feel good to sleep on such
full stomachs, the odor of blood and flesh fresh in their nostrils.  He would
worry about Alex's clothes next week.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


     "There are problems in these times,
      but, WHOO, none of them are mine.
      And I'm beginning to see the light."
                             --Velvet Underground, "Beginning to See the Light"

 
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     REiNCARNATED HiTLER, WHAT?,
     or A PAiR OF BLUE SHOES, A STORY
     by Kilgore Trout

     The pair of blue shoes were tied together by their shoelaces and draped
over the telephone cable outside my house.  The were blue shoes, maybe Keds,
and I had no idea who put them up there.  The shoes had been there for about
four months, and I eyed them suspiciously every time I left my house.  It just
wasn't natural, even for a pair of shoes.

     She was an Arab, my wife, and I had met her in a dream on a Sunday night
while she was holding our son.  Her name was Ouarda, which means "a rose."
The last place you want to be when you find out you're a father is in bed
asleep because you can't even react.  No joy, no fear, no questions about why
you've never even met your wife before and how she could be the mother of your
son when you've only screwed yuppie alternachicks in Portland.  Sometimes
marriage just hits you like a cat in heat.

     "Are they still up there?" Ouarda asked, switching Gustav from her left
breast to her right.

     "Of course they are," I said, lighting a cigarette and sitting down in
the recliner.  "Those damn things are going to be up there forever."

     "You shouldn't smoke around your son.  It'll stunt his growth."

     "Right."  I took another drag.

     "Why don't you take them down?  Knock 'em off with a rock or something?"

     "See, what you don't get is that you're a fucking construct of my
imagination.  You don't exist, our son -- our, hah, like I should remember his
birth -- doesn't exist, and those shoes are probably not real, either."

     "I wonder if the shoes have been causing our bad telephone connections."

     "They're blue.  Red shoes would do that, but not blue ones."

     "Where's the logic in that?"

     "I don't have a need for logic anymore.  Probably why I'm married to
you."

     Gustav leaned back, wiped his mouth with a forearm, and ran into his room
to play with his computer.  His newest obsession was devising encryption
routines.

     "Jesus, when the hell are you gonna ween that kid?" I asked.

     Ouarda rose off the couch and kneeled down beside the recliner.  "You
still miss your -- what is it -- your 'fridge, don't you, dear?"  I detected
worry in her eyes.  We had gone through this a thousand times before, and it
never ended prettily.

     "Damn right I do," I replied, sniffing.  "What kind of house doesn't have
a fridge?  It's always there for you, especially for a midnight snack.  Even
was one of the best prank phone call jokes.  'Is your refridgerator running?
Well, you better catch it then!'  Guffaw, guffaw.  And the best ones were
designed for the anal-retentives, with a bunch of compartments and separate
temperature knobs."

     "And all that is necessary to store food?  It seems like so much trouble.
Besides, breasts aren't removable."

     "In the real world, people don't sustain themselves by sucking on tits.
They kill animals and harvest crops -- shit like that.  What I wouldn't give
for a turkey and mayo sandwich."

     "Has Dr. Simmons come up with anything new to explain these delusions of
yours?"

     I scoffed.  "He thinks I should be committed."

     "Not on your life."  Ouarda put her arms around me.  "I don't think
you're crazy, just imaginative and a bit hostile at times.  You should write
sci-fi or something.  And you know I love you no matter what happens."


     Moscow (AP) -- A group of protesting students at the University of Moscow
     overturned police cars and firebombed florist shops to denounce the visit
     of Graham Garibaldi, noted psychic warrior and winner of the 1999
     International Card Matching Tournament, when he set a new record of
     successfully completing 2,133 pairs before missing.  He is in Moscow to
     consult the president about a new foreign policy strategy with China in
     an attempt to bolster psychic Chinese-Russians' waning morale.


     I woke up and glanced over at Ouarda, who was still asleep.  My dreams
always come in the format of news wire reports now, mostly from Reuters and
the Associated Press, but sometimes from Knight-Ridder as well.  I used to
have such vivid and lifelike dreams, and now I'm delegated to watching a
teletype spew out words.  Making sure I didn't disturb my wife, I got out of
bed, slid into a bathrobe and slippers, and ventured outside.

     Pat Krieg, my next door neighbor, was standing in his driveway.  Pat was
fat and conservative, but he kept his lawn well-manicured.  His attire at
three in the morning consisted of a fluffy white pirate shirt and Tazmanian
Devil boxer shorts.  He had once confied to me that he thought he had been a
pirate in one of his past lives, which provided a great bedroom fantasy for
him and his wife Mathilda.  They even had a cargo net on one of the walls.

     "Can't sleep, Jim?" Pat asked, walking across his freshly cut grass.

     "Kind of.  Had a bad dream and figured some fresh air would do me some
good."

     "Ayup.  That'll help."

     "What do you think of those shoes, Pat?" I asked, pointing up.

     He squinted at the shoes.  "Dunno.  Wacky kids'll do anything for kicks
these days."

     "Don't they bother you?"

     "Not really."

     "But they're blue."

     "Now I know they're totally benign.  If they were red, whoo-boy, that
might cause telephone trouble, but blue shoes ain't nothing to get your
panties in a wad."

     "I'm not so sure.  They seem fishy."

     "How's the shrink business coming along, Jim?"

     "Huh?  Oh.  He spends more time flipping through his DSM-IV book than he
does talking to me.  He throws around terms like 'bipolar' and 'flattening of
affect' and 'cognitive dissonance' without actually knowing what they mean.  I
figure he thinks if he repeats the technical terms enough, he'll understand
them sooner or later."

     "Never trusted psychologists myself," Pat said.  "I mean, who exactly had
the gall to define normality?  Besides the Bible, of course,  *Sola
scriptura,* that's my motto.  Ain't nothing you need to knwo that isn't in
that book.  Now, if you'll excuse me, Mattie should have that peg-leg dildo
contraption put on, so I've got to go.  Take care, Jim."

     "You too, Pat.  Have fun."

     "I will, matey.  Arrr."

     I silently thanked God that I didn't have a pirate fetish as I lit a
cigarette and went back inside.


     Little Rock (Reuters) -- A band of alcoholic preachers' wives have been
     dressing up as depressed clowns and drive up and down the interstate
     screaming slogans such as "I am a crazy German motorist" and "My other
     car is a Fokker!"  Arkansas state troopers have clocked them at speeds in
     excess of 120mph, and sixteen have been arrested for recless driving.
     The women belong to the Scientific Imbibing Baptist Church, a schism
     group which believes that since Jesus turned water into wine and since
     95% of the human body is water, salvation can be achieved by excessive
     drinking.


     "Daddy, wake up.  You promised me you'd take me to the library today so
I could check out books on Kasparov's strategies."

     I opened my eyes and looked up at Gustav, who was dressed in shorts and a
cypherpunk t-shirt.  He was a cute kid, really, even though he bore no
resemblance to me whatsoever, and he had a brain on him that would probably be
able to bend space-time in twenty years.  Course, all the kids are
superintelligent now.  Probably something in the water.  Or a solar flare.
One of the two.

     "Yeah, okay, son," I said, rubbing my eyes.  "Gimme a few minutes to get
dressed.  Where's your mother?"

     "Out back pruning trees.  You know, Dad, no offense, but inactivity is
possibly one of the worst states you can be in with your mental configuration
as it is."

     "I do stuff."

     "Like what?"

     "Like taking you to the library."

     "Touche.  Although I was thinking more along the lines of getting a job.
You haven't worked since, well, since I was born."

     "Someone has to take care of you.  And your mother makes good money."

     "I'm eight.  I can take care of myself."

     "You don't think I've ben a good father?"

     "No, it's just that sometimes you seem like you're in your own little
sphere, distant from everybody else.  I know you're getting help, but it's
hard to relate to you on that plane of existence."

     "Son, did your mother ever tell you that you were adopted?"

     Gustav drew in a short breath.  "No.  I'm... adopted?"

     "No," I said, smiling.  "Just curious, that's all."

     "See, Dad, you're going funky-like on me again."

     "Okay, then I'll stop going 'funky-like' and take you to the library.
Hungry?"

                                  * * * * *

     I left thirty Egyptian pounds on the table as the waitresses sanitized
their breasts for their next customers, and Gustav and I left the diner and
began the four block walk to the library.  No one had, to my knowledge, ever
ascertained why males couldn't produce food.  Gustav had his theory that it
was because semen tastes too salty.  If you think that's strange, you should
read his trip diaries.

     This condition would have, I thought, invariably led to some sort of
breeding program of women like cattle, but this never has happened in recorded
history.  Or maybe the history books lie.  Whatever.  The situation has
produced, however, a nifty mental disorder where men who feel inferior to
women due to their lack of food production have a tendency to rip holes in
their chest and try to get people to suckle on them while they bleed to death.
I forget the clinical term, but on the street people refer to it as "fucking
gross."

     When we arrived at the library, Gustav ran straight for the chess books
while I wandered into the religion section.  For the past few months I had
been devouring books on quantum phsyics in an attempt to figure out if I could
have been placed here by a wormhole or some similar theory.  With those
exhausted (or at least as far as I could understand them), I had turned to
religion.  As much as I liked the idea of everything being inside my head, I
hadn't yet been able to make everything go away with a thought.  As Philip K.
Dick once said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, is
still there."

     Today I was looking for books on Bishop Berkeley's ideas about reality.
He postulated that everything was imaginary and it was all in the mind of God.
It was a bad model, I knew, since Locke had subsequently disproven this with
the innate qualities of matter, but science already had quite a few strikes
against it already in my book.  My belief in God was also quite negligible,
but hwat the hell, right?  Gotta try everything sooner or later.

     There was a tap on my shoulder and I turned, facing a young woman with
straight brown hair down to her waist.

     "Berkeley's in the philosophy section," she said, pointing.

     "Excuse me?" I stammered.

     "They keep Berkeley in the philosophy stacks," the girl explained, her
hair now braided.  "That way."

     "How do you know that I'm looking for Berkeley?"

     "I know the type."  Her hair was now in some prom queen do.  "You want to
know why God does bad things to good people.  You're hurt, you're confused,
you want answers, and until you get satisfactory ones, you're gonna keep
looking."

     "How the hell does your hair do that?"

     "It's magic.  Don't you want to know why God lets bad things happed to
good people?"

     "Sure."

     "Nobody knows why."

     "That's it?"

     "That's it.  Pretty simple, huh?"

     "Malarky," I expertly retorted.  "That's no answer.  How do you reconcile
that with your belief in a loving God?"

     "I don't believe in God.  Duh.  Did you really think some college girl in
the library would miraculously have all the answers to life?  Sounds like a
bad plot device to me.  Maybe you oughta try clicking your ruby slippers three
times and wait for Glenda to give you a blowjob."

     I took a step back.  "You are one fucked up chick," I said.

     "Not any more than you, dearie.  Why don't you just enjoy what you have?
You've got a decent family, you don't work, and the only one who thinks things
are miserable is you."

     "Why do you know so much about me?  Who are you?"

     She flashed a badge.  "Madalaine Justice, Justice Department.  We've been
watching you for a while now.  Do yourself a favor and stop being a
troublemaker."

     "Troublemaker?  That's preposterous.  What have I done wrong?"

     "That's for me to know and for you to find out.  Since you seem
unrepentent, I'm afraid I'm going to have to arrest you."

     "For what?"

     "Treason.  Crimes against humanity.  Being the Zodiac killer.  Death camp
connissuer.  Escaped prison warden.  A reincarnated Hitler.  I could go on for
days."

     "This is absurd.  I've done nothing."

     "We've got videos, tapped phone conversations, secret love letters,
assassination contracts.  The whole shebang."

     "Gustav!" I yelled.  "Come here quick!"

     "Now you've done it," Agent Justice said.  "Violating noise levels is a
capital offense, punishable by death."

     Gustav ran around the corner.  "What's going on?"

     "Your daddy is scum," she said, "and I hate scum."

     I stood still as Agent Justice handcuffed me and patted me down.  She
then led me outside, where a whole SWAT team issued a collective sigh of
relief that I had been apprehended peacefully.


     Calcutta (Knight-Ridder) -- Over the past seventy-two hours, people have
     been spotting the apparition of Mother Teresa floating in the sky holding
     what appears to be a headless baby.  In a loud sonic-booming voice, the
     ghost of the saintly caretaker wails, "Where is this boy's head?  Look in
     a hole."  Windows in a three block radius of the sightings then proceed
     to blow out.  One motorist exclaimed, "I was tooling along, minding my
     own business, when Mother Teresa screamed and the next thing I knew, my
     face was given an implant of my windshield."  The search for a small
     boy's head is underway in an attempt to stop this haunting.


     Gustav was poking me in the ribs.  "Dad, you need to stay awake during
the proceedings," he explained, "or it makes you look uncaring to the jury."

     The trial had been going on for eight days, and the whole time was spent
by the prosecution lumping charge after charge upon me for crimes that I could
not have committed.  But they had evidence, boy-howdy, did they ever.  A young
girl dressed in peasant clothes from a low-budget renaissance festival accused
me of killing the Cathars in France.  Alan Greenspan described my effect on
the economy as "horrendous" right before four Navy Seals testified that I was
personally responible for the sabotage of what would have been the largest
cake ever baked by reknown Italian chef Santino Mazza.  The list went on and
on with mocked up photographs, reconstructed phone conversations, and oodles
of witnesses.

     My big question:  why?  I was just questioning the authenticity of
reality, not banging little Timmy from two doors down behind the the
neighborhood playground (although I was being charged for that, too.) Gustav
was my legal counsel.  No one else would defend me, and he was doing a fairly
decent job under the circumstances.  His only objection that wasn't overruled
was one concerning a statement mde by the D.A. which implied that I was a
blue-skinned alien trying to take over the world.  I'm not sure if it made
much difference, though, because the next day's papers had a picture of me in
blue skin crushing a globe.  I should also note that the jury, while
sequestered, received the morning paper with only the sports section removed.

     The prosecution rested on the tenth day after a full reenactment of the
library episode and proof that I was a reincarnated Hitler.

     "Hitler as an evil man, and this man is evil," assistant district
attorney Hans Goldstein argued, "so therefore, this man is Hitler
reincarnate.  Kill him before he kills you."

     During the recess, Gustav informed me that our chances didn't look good.
Always leave it to the children, even really smart ones, to state the obvious.
Ouarda had been pouring through legal books for days, looking for a precedent
or technicality to get me off, but she had no luck.  Besides my family, I
didn't have any witnesses.  Even Pat Krieg wouldn't testify on my behalf,
worried that his pirate fetish would make headlines and cause him to lose
business.

     My wife and son did their best to paint me in the best light possible.
It was especially amusing to watch Gustav questioning himself, running in and
out of the witness stand.  That lasted for about an hour and a half.  While
this was going on, I was trying to imagine what it would feel like to have an
axe imbedded in my neck.

     After the prosecution finished cross-examining my son, Gustav said he had
a surprise witness.  Ouarda and I looked at each other in puzzlement,
wondering who it could be.  Gustav removed his shoes and placed them on the
railing around the witness stand.  They were the blue Keds.  The judge had to
pound his gavel repeatedly to quell the laughter.

     "Exactly what is the meaning of this?" the judge asked.

     "If you will indlge me for a moment, your honor," Gustav replied, turning
around towards me and smiling.  All I could do was shrug.

     "Shoes, identify yourself to the court," Gustav ordered.

     "We have no name speakable in your tongue," the shoes said in unison, the
front of their soles flapping up and down, mimicing mouth movements.  "For
simplicity's sake, you may call us 'Horus.'"

     "And is there any particular reason you chose the name of an Egyptian
God?"

     "It is aesthetically pleasing."

     "And where do you come from?"

     "Our first memories are of dangling from a telephone cable outside the
defendant's house.  We resided there for four months util you brought us down
this morning with a rock.  You have much to learn about subtlety."

     "And you exactly did you obtain consciousness?"

     Horus sighed.  "That is still a mystery, one we have been pondering from
our first waking moments.  We are quite confident that we have souls, although
the jury -- ha ha -- is still out on whether or not God likes bad puns."

     "Counselor," the judge groaned, "as strange as this is, would you please
get to the point?"

     "Horus, what have you been doing for these past four months?" Gustav
asked.

     "Aside from asking the usual existential questions that baffle every new
sentient species, we have been watching the defendant's house."

     "And what have you observed?"

     "Absolutely nothing."  The shoes made a gagging sound.  "We mean, the
defendant leads the most boring life imaginable.  Oh, look, there he is again,
smoking a cigarette on the porch.  Hey, he's giving us nasty looks again
before getting into his car.  He's so mundane.  And when he talks to that fat
neighbor of his, it makes you want to die.  'How's the weather?  How's the
wife and kids?  Repair that cargo net yet?'  Frankly, it would probably end
his misery if you did sentence him to death.  But all of these charges are
ludicrous since we've seen everything that goes on at his house, and that is
absolutely zilcho.  Not even a dinner party."

     "Objection!" the prosecutor yelled, finally recovering from shock at
seeing a pair of talking shoes.  "This testimony should be stricken from the
record.  Shoes aren't credible witnesses.  Where are their eyes?"

     "Hey ho, good question," said the judge.  "Counsel?"

     "Of course shoes have eyes," Gustav laughed.  "Where else would you
string the shoelaces?"

     "Objection overruled."

     The jury gasped at the turn of events.  The judge had to call for order
as people began taking off their shoes and talking to them.

     "Is there anything else you'd like to say, Horus?"

     "Well, after we're through here, we'd like to be placed somewhere a bit
more exciting, perhaps in a sorority house during rush week or in an amusement
park.  Maybe somebody would even be kind enough to wear us.  Just get us away
from the defendant."

     "No further questions, your honor."

                                  * * * * *

     I was, of course, acquitted.  An internal investigation of the Justice
Department by Agent Justice revealed a history of incompetence and gross
negligence, for which she was promoted.  I happily returned to my boring
suburbian existence, still trying to figure out how I had gotten here, but
Ouarda and Gustav kept me distracted enough that it didn't worry me too much
anymore.  After all, when a pair of talking shoes saves your life, you tend to
just take things in stride.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


     "You want your empty words heard and everybody's ready,
      I want to know your secrets but you are not telling--
      You're just gesturing, saying
      'Open up your arms & hearts and let me in.'
      You must be out of your brilliant mind."
                                               --Furniture, "Brilliant Mind"


--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

     YOU TOOK THE WORDS
     by Sophie Random

     She had nothing to say that was of particular interest to anyone, and if
she did, they most likely disagreed with it.  This troubled her. She furrowed
her brows and sighed over it as she walked from A to B.

     She marveled at those who had so much boiling over everyday, who managed
to flood the pages every night or at least thrice a week.  She, she took years
even to simmer and then it pushed out.  She vomited it up, reluctantly,
remembering that it made her nauseous and bloated otherwise.

     She never knew quite what to do with them, her thoughts.  She tried to
arrange them smartly, accentuating their positives, drawing attention from
their negatives.  But she never could accessorize well and they only wound up
looking as if she tried too hard, gaining her patronizing pity rather than the
sought-for admiration.

     Like any well-meaning pseudo-intellectual, she tried to read her way into
depth.  But no one ever told her that the mind without some degree of
mysticism keeps its head above water, whether it be afraid of drowning or
ruining a good hair day.  No one told her much of anything, not in clear-cut
terms.  She deciphered and analyzed and often felt as if they didn't want her
to get it.  This bonded her with many real-life modern-day intellectuals who
were very chic with their conspiracy fixations.  But they had each other,
which is something that they failed to admit, or chose to ignore, and this she
noted.  She wasn't fooled any longer:  Where there was one, there were many.
They traveled in packs.

     There is a secret world out there.  There is, out there, a secret pact, a
secret secret, an ineffable secret that surrounds a pack of wolves, a pack of
lions.  They travel in secret with hints wrapped in pages of nonchalant books.
They travel sometimes alone, as a trick. But they're never alone, they're
bound together by The Secret and they do not separate.  Among them there are
factions, little special interest groups with their little special causes like
Computer Science and English and Anthropology and Philosophy.   They will cut
your flow to test your energy levels, unnerve you to test your impulses.  They
will break you to put you back together again, to make a new one in their
style, they have their own genome project.  She was scared of them, with their
knowledge of her secret code, of The Secret Code.  God is dead and they have
deconstructed him to test his energy, his impulses, to put him back together
the way they'd like him to be.  She was afraid of these new gods, who had
traveled farther than her in their minds.  She did not want to be redirected,
she did not want them to recode her, she did not want to lose focus on her
path -- her path which did not lead to them.  She did not want to be rerouted,
she did not need a guide.  She hated The Secret, she couldn't break its code,
she did not know it.  It is Sanskrit, it is Greek, it is a summer session of
Latin.  She speaks with a fiery tongue of hate, she does not speak with idle
wisdom, she does not speak with an activist's heart.  She speaks in the dead
language of her past that is not worth learning.

     She struggled much with Desire and what the philosophers call
"inauthentic existence."  Her problem, primarily, was that she was equipped
enough to recognize it but not quite enough to do anything about it.  This
nagged her, naturally, and she bit her nails and anxiously fiddled with her
barrette while mulling it over.  So bothered was she by her lack of sufficient
spirituality that she found a book on the lives of the saints, which she
promptly sat and read.  Or more accurately, she sat, skimmed, and skipped.
Saints, she remembered, were known for their mystical experiences.  She read
through various visions, ecstasies (she assumed they were different than those
that she had, for she would be a saint many times over and quite an important
one at that), and premonitions.  These did not touch her.

     What did touch her was the story of some saintess, her name very
saint-like:  Ann, or Elizabeth, or Colette, she did not make note of it.  The
saintess worked as a housemaid.  Everyday the poor people of the neighborhood
would come to the door and she would give all the leftover food to them
instead of to the pigs.  So compassionate was this young saintess that she
even sacrificed her own dinner.

     She paused after finishing this part of the story, for she had a vision.
A remarkable, enlightening vision.  She saw a frail young girl in simple
clothes, with tiger eyes and sunken cheeks, approaching a door with leftover
stew and bread, including her own untouched meal.  But then she saw behind the
closed door, to the outside, where toothless, pocked, old, ugly beggars were
snickering.  Snickering, guffawing, mocking that dumb broad who had actually
stopped eating and was giving them her dinner every night.

     She had a revelation:  Most saints were stupid.  She slammed the book
closed.

                                  * * * * *

     She did not simply listen to the words that came from people's mouths or
fingers.  She read behind them.  This is not to be conflated with "reading
between the lines."  The techniques are quite different.  The latter entails
searching for intimations, hints.  This is not what she did, for what she
needed to know lay in the lines themselves.  Most of it, however, lay behind
the words.  And behind these meanings (which were themselves more words,
really) lay the only god she could still believe in:  The Author.

     Her faith evidenced itself in her role as The Reader.  Of course, at
first she had tried to be The Muse.  She began working for one or two of The
Poets, but they were just starting out and she wasn't very good at it.  They
were dissatisfied with her work, for the poems often rhymed and were full of
cliches.  Then once, under the spell of an incredible lie, The Poet tranced
over to her, the one he knew best.  Yet she too was changed in the spell, and
had become a butterfly who whispered songs that took flight in the wind.  He
did not know what she said but it sounded like a kiss.  Excited, he ran to The
Question with An Answer in his hand, and presented it before all of Wisdom.
But Wisdom only laughed at his naive youth and calmly sent him back to Before,
where he was chained again in Truth.  The butterfly became only her mediocre
self, and her whispers -- only words of reality that hit his ear with a thud.
That was the last she worked for any of The Poets.  She auditioned for The
Author anyway, as it was her dream to have at least one prose piece of The
Author's to boast.  But she was rejected for this position, being told that
her demeanor was too earthly, her body too uninspiring, and her mind simply
too real to ignore.  So she devoted herself as The Reader, feeling the
position to be at least as essential.  She soon believed it to be The Most
Essential Position, and thought herself to be a central figure (and a more
respected one) in The Author's life.

     She believed in The Author completely, wholly, unconditionally.  She
would not listen to reason, or what it is commonly called in these times,
Postmodernism.  She shook her head, she rolled her eyes, she even stuck out her
tongue.  She did not listen to those people who accused him of being a phony,
who called for his death, who invited him to his execution.  It never occurred
to her that The Author himself did not believe in his existence, that he had
accepted the invitation.  She had gone through many gods and many inane
rituals before she had found him and she thought herself an expert; however,
it never came to her mind that she and her new god had ideological
differences.  She had experienced such differences with believers, whom she
inevitably would consider an insipid bunch lacking in substance and beauty.
She would grow angry with gods for not punishing such stupidity, or at least
correcting it, and then she would terminate their agreement.  But she had
never disagreed with a god's own idea of himself.  She chose her gods
cautiously, taking much into account.  Those with ideological differences
should have been eliminated in the screening process.

     There was nothing that infuriated her more than ignorance.  It was such a
lurking evil in her mind that she capitalized it:  Ignorance.  It took many
forms.  Its worst form was Ignorance of Power.  She had little respect for
those who did not make themselves aware of how their actions influenced other
people.  Nor did she respect those who did not use their actions to their
advantage or even simply to reach others.  Another form of Ignorance was
Ignorance of How People Will React or Understand Your Actions.  Perhaps this
is a form of Power Ignorance, and upon further reflection, it may be far more
repulsive.

     But The Author was a bit of a dolt.  He was really quite a disappointing
figure, if one were using her criteria.  He authored but then claimed he did
not.  This was both ridiculous and Ignorant.  He seemed to have a propensity
for adopting titles while disbelieving in what they denoted.  In short, he was
a living walking breathing cognitive dissonance.  Moreover, he denied the
existence of what he authored, commonly referred to as the text.  When she saw
TEXT in her mind, there were no quotes around it.  But The Author was always
seeing things in quotes, as he had a hard time believing in anything and was
hesitant to state conclusively that anything existed.  This was somewhat
charming in print, but quite infuriating when one had to converse with him. It
was like dealing with Descartes in his Meditations:  Yes, you exist.  No, you
are not dreaming.  No, there is no evil demon making things appear this way.
The first two he usually conceded, the last, never.  A modern translation of
Descartes would no doubt translate 'evil demon' as The Government.  The Author
put no quotes around The Government and there was no convincing him that it
was he not them who was fucking up his life.

     The truths that realize themselves after certain events in one's life may
destroy Ideals and Dreams, shattering certain pieces of one's world-view.
This shattering which results is commonly referred as an "intrapsychic loss."
She dreaded this none too little and often put it off at least until she had
done the laundry, taken a shower, and made the obligatory weekly phone calls.
She could feel an intrapsychic loss coming ahead of time, like many sufferers
of arthritis felt the next day's rain in their knees.  It entered her through
the mouth and sat at the back of her head.  She found this quite bothersome
and usually went to the salon in a futile attempt to take her mind off of it,
or it off from her mind.

                                  * * * * *

     It was a good day.  She finally had gotten a haircut that enabled her
barrette to stay fastened securely in its place, instead of dangling
perilously on her head.  Although it was a warm summer's afternoon, people
weren't being obnoxious about the good weather.  The happiness that invades
people in response to good weather (and manifests itself most strongly during
the first week of true Spring) killed her mood.  She felt compelled to rebel
against such ubiquitous saturnalia on principle.

     However, she did have a gnawing headache.

     She was walking aimlessly.   Quite honestly, it was more of a
people-watching meander.  But this gnawing headache, this distinct uneasiness,
finally got the better of her and she stopped abruptly.  She wanted to know
where it was.  Where that thing was, whatever it was, that was the cause of
this general nausea. She never liked hide-and-seek as a child as she was far
too impatient.  She just wanted to know where the person was and then go about
chasing them, the hiding seemed superfluous.  She would shout for the person
to come out so that they could get on to the good part.  This is how she felt
now, impatient, wanting to get on with it.  She wished she could shout out,
demand that it show itself, so the real game could begin.  She looked
suspiciously around but saw nothing.  She continued her stroll and began to
brood, causing her to fidget with her barrette. This of course nudged it out
of place and the whole day was simply ruined.  The sun became too hot, the
people were too loud, she needed to get out.  She ran into a bookstore.  There
she saw Him, The Author, on the cover of some trashy literary magazine.  It
was an old photo, quite a bad likeness, as most photos are.

     She became very conscious of her inner thighs.  They seemed to press
together as she stood there staring at the picture.  She felt that they had
grown at least an inch since last week and she chastised herself for laxing on
her thigh work.  She grabbed the magazine and walked over to the cashier,
feeling her thighs hit each other, swearing that she could hear the rubbing of
flesh.  She went back to her apartment and did the laundry.  She took a
shower, applied an avocado-oatmeal mask to her face (for toning), and did her
thigh work as it dried.  She called her mother and listened to her bemoan her
sad state of affairs and unsympathetically told her it was her own fault and
she should deal with it.  She called a friend and repeated this, her universal
advice.  She made herself some citrus spice tea, finally took some Advil, and
got into bed.  She reached over and grabbed the magazine that she had bought
that afternoon and flipped to His interview.

     He spoke without using bothersome metaphors or trite imagery.  He stated
calmly, removedly, and simply that He didn't "exist," at least not in the way
everyone has accused of Him.  Furthermore, He explained that the "text" was
not concrete, it was a product of The Reader's biases.  The whole enterprise
of writing was just an exercise for Him, at the very most, an experiment.  The
by-product, the "text" -- it was not a manifestation of His Self, His
Anything.  It was the product of that everpresent "What would happen if..." in
His mind as He sat and sipped, stood and smoked.  He admitted that to say that
He wrote for Himself wasn't an accurate description.  But to say that He wrote
for Her, The Reader, this He disdainfully and patronizingly denied.  No, He
was, if anything, writing for the sake of Writing, for the sake of these
arbitrary images that sat in His head, but weren't connected to His Desires,
His Consciousness, His Beliefs.  In fact, this, too, was incorrect.  More
appropriately, He wrote from these images, these images so disassociated and
unrelated to His Self; but to whom and for whom, wasn't that irrelevant?  He
created to create, as that is what gods do.  The Reader wasn't a consideration.
The Reader was an incidental warehouse of these arbitrary images manifested in
prose, giving meaning where there was none.

     The words hit her instantaneously and she hadn't time to defend herself.
At such a vulnerable moment, her first reaction was to sob violently.  She was
aware of a familiar tug, it reminded her of when she was 15 and she found out
that the brooding boy she had been in love with was interested in her Mind
only, and the real cause of his sadness was his yearning to sleep with some
slutty friend of hers.

     But despair always made her feel weak and stupid, and she soon grew sick
of it.  She became Furious.  Angry, Injured, Offended, Livid that He had used
her mind, like all of the men in her life, used it because it was a fine
curious mind, with plenty of storage space.  He threw His Junk there,
haphazardly, unappreciatively.  It held only a small interest for him.  He
used it because it fit His experiment, because He was amused that The Reader
processed and decorated it with Meaning.

     Her respect for Him lessened as she saw that He took no responsibility
for His damned by-product.  He didn't own up to it, He didn't admit to it, He
didn't acknowledge any reality of it.  He was simply too Ignorant to realize
its inevitable effect.

     And layer by layer of emotion exploded from her until all that was left
was the blush of foolishness.  Embarrassment, naked embarrassment, because she
had thought that she meant something to Him.  But she never occupied a space
in His Consciousness, sub- over- or un-.  And nothing was inside of her.  She
was hollowed.  She felt her solitude resentfully, and was confused to find
that she had a hole inside.

     She began to realize that throughout her life, all of the Emptiness, and
the Pain which stemmed from it, had the same source.  Because more than
anything else, she needed to be needed.  She needed someone to need her to
understand, she needed someone to need her to love them, she needed Need more
than anything.  Beyond love, beyond respect, behind these words, there lied
Need.

     She had thought, erroneously, that The Author needed to communicate.
That He sat up every night or at least thrice a week needing to tell the story
of Himself to her.  Needing her to understand.  Needing her, The Reader, to
soak Him up, to store Him inside, and most importantly, to process Him because
otherwise He couldn't exist.  She had thought that she clarified and guided
Him with her presence, that He needed her in order to explain Himself.

      If He didn't need her, then her head was full of lies.  They weren't
even lies, for lies are substantial.  She had empty words.  Like empty
calories.  Her whole head was full of Twizzlers and Starbursts.

     She hadn't realized that gods are by nature selfish creatures who do not
Need.  They fill their voids with themselves, they don't need to find others
to fill spaces.  That is why they are gods.

     She became vengeful and petty.  She wanted to invade Him -- but how to
get inside?  How to penetrate, how to disarm?  He knew her, was wary of her
actions, He would not let her in -- no matter how many pretty words she threw
at His feet.  But what if she tricked him?  What if she made it so that she
was Him and He was her?  From where He stands, He cannot see Himself.  He can
only see out to the words.  But she saw behind His words to Him.  If they were
to switch, would He see her then?  Would she get in His head just long enough
to claim some territory for herself?  Perhaps.  But how, how do you trick your
god into switching places?

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

State  of  unBeing  is  copyrighted (c) 1998 by Kilgore  Trout  and Apocalypse
Culture Publications.   All rights are reserved to cover,  format, editorials,
and all incidental material.   All individual items are copyrighted (c) 1998
by the individual author, unless  otherwise stated.  This file may be
disseminated without restriction for  nonprofit purposes so long as it is
preserved complete and  unmodified.   Quotes and  ideas not  already in  the
public domain may be freely used  so  long  as  due recognition is provided.
State  of  unBeing is available at the following places:

                World Wide Web   http://www.eden.com/~kilgore/sob.html
                           irc   the #unbeing channel on UnderNet


Submissions may also be sent to Kilgore Trout at <kilgoret@geocities.com>.
The SoB distribution list may also be joined by sending email to Kilgore
Trout.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--


