Eventually you might ask yourself why you even decided to come along on this journey. What enjoyment can there be had in the face of doom? Who knows and who cares. This who could be you.
Might be time to get a loan, little donkey. This is how I talk to the mummyship. Sometimes I imagine it's a stubborn crocodile. The immummiable crust is thick, covered with ectomummy, dusty cruk. Getting beard jet? "Check to see if there's a squirrel in the manifold." Spiral vector noble gas plasma hotfoot.
I search the converging lines of past and future, the treelike chunks of time (rings and branches-- spirals and brokeback hierarchies.) Ask me: why am I both alive and dead? What foot of fate stomped my will to climb imaginary ladders of success? The International Classification of Diseases, Volume 9 (ICD9, or "I see denying" if you lack healthcare, as I do.) lists a condition known as "failure to thrive." How did I slip into that state? How does it differ from the surges of perfect contentment and hypnotic dramahdi that I now enjoy? How did I get out? I don't want to be accused of dereliction of my past.
So perhaps I should tell you the story of how my life changed one night as I was attacked by a very confused, drunk and angry skinhead in Austin, Texas, while I was high on the hallucinogen LSD. (This might provide a little insight.) I was in a city where I knew noone except a girl who hitchhiked in with me. During the artificial and accidental madness, we had become separated.
You see, we had met a street punk named Giuseppe who showed us around. Giuseppe was about the same build as me. The skinheads, for some reason, hated him. In one incident, we had ran and hailed a truck that gave us a ride to get away from the skins once.
So that night this particular skinhead was past the point of caring whether I was really the punk who hocked his girlfriend's jacket. Giuseppe was not foolish enough to show his face at the party. I was the only skinny, nervous guy with a mohawk within reach. Besides, King Skin was pissed that the cops had arrived at his party and confiscated all the stolen beer. (They had walked into a 7-11 and walked out with stacks of 12 packs.) Nobody had gotten busted, so what was he so pissed about?
He attacked me with my arms full of snacks. I intended to bribe my hosts at this random party we had crashed. What was I doing at a skinhead party on acid? Just passing through.
My friend had gone on to another party without telling me where she read "some really cool magazines."
"You brought the cops in!" the skinhead, who was named after a bodypart, yelled at me. Elbo was his name. There was another guy called Nick the Dick. I wouldn't be surprised if there was another bald guy named Nuts, or Alien Brains.
"No, I didn't. Here, have a chip." He slapped the bag out of my hand. Wham, he hit me in the face. I went down. Then I got up and ran away.
"Come back, you pussy!"
"Fuck you!"
"Come back and say that!"
"Ok!" And I did. Bam, he hit me again. Then, in some daze, I fought back. After a few more blows to the head, I regained some sanity and ran away. You got to understand something about this larval, pre-Mummy self-- I'm a redhead, a Firehorse, a quadruple Aries, and angry as hell. I could never stand down, even if my chances of survival looked bad. A dead tooth attests to this. I'm lucky I never had a severe concussion, because I can't fight worth a shit either.
So I finally ran. Maybe it was the acid, doing its magic, changing my mind. I hid against a garage, one that had an entrance onto an alley. I couldn't see in the dark, but I felt that there was something sticky all over my face. Was it blood? Could my head be all busted open and gushing? I had no idea. All I could see was explosions of color coming from my hands. Fuck, I could die here. Just then, a car pulled up just behind the garage. The radio was playing "Dancing with Myself" by Billy Idol. Holee shitr. That was too much. It struck my irony bone, which was almost certainly cracked.
I got up and decided that it would be better to die on my feet than in some Texas garbage can. I was leaving a leather jacket behind back at the party. I had $20.00 in my shoe which hadn't been confiscated by the Kansas cops who nabbed me and my ashmatic friend for dine and dash five days previous. This was emergency money for the hitchhike home.
So I wandered around Austin that night, hoping that I would run into somebody cool, maybe find my friend. If all else failed, I could find the abandoned sorority house that I had slept in a couple days ago. I walked straight up to the University of Texas Tower where the guy had gone nuts with a rifle and shot some folks. I stood there looking up at it, trying to decide what to do, where to go once I had reached this landmark. I turned toward Guadalupe St. where I knew I could, at least, find someone to talk to.
Three police cars showed up and the officers walked my way. What the fuck! Four officers in all, just to harass this skinny squirrel of a punk trying to align both brain cells in an effort to navigate the sidewalk.
"What you looking at, son?"
"The Tower. Just checking it out." Sounded reasonable to me. Actually, it sounded more like was said by someone else. Like someone was squeezing a water bottle under a sofa. I just had no idea.
They shined lights in my eyes. "You look like Hell, there. You find some kind of trouble? You been drinking or taking any drugs?"
Fuck yes. "Yes, I drank several beers and smoked marijuana." I figured I should fess up to something that would cause my pupils to fluctuate wildly. "I got jumped by some guys." I lied about the skinhead because I didn't want to commit to any kind of story.
"Let's see some ID."
"It's in a jacket that was stolen." That sounded good too. I looked everywhere but their direction. They had these lights in my eyes. I shuffled around and basically felt like a cornered raccoon.
"We're going to have to take you in."
"What? What did I do?" I imagined enjoying the rest of my bad acid trip behind bars.
"You match the description of a runaway."
"But I'm 19 years old."
"You got no proof of that."
Just then I rememered my ID number. It was a memorable set of 3 letters and 3 numbers. I blurted it out.
"Run a check on the that." One officer walked off to radio the number. I started to feel a little hope. These cops seemed suddenly very reasonable.
The cop came back. "The number checks out, matches the description." He asked me which town I was from and it also matched. "You can go."
I couldn't believe my luck. I shook each of their hands, then head off, with purpose, so that no one stop me again for vagrant dodginess.
Unfortunately, there was hardly a soul out on the street. Even the drug dealers, the Drag Worms, as they were called, were gone.