Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2004 6:14 am
<b>The first bit of an old tale. I'd felt like I'd panted myself into a corner with this one for a long time, and then I read Fight Club. I've known Jones for years. It's just that now I've found a way to tell his story.</b><br><br><br><br><br>Theres no creative license like amnesia.<br>Im a new man-- a clean slate.<br>Im ready to start all over. I can be whoever I rant to be, At least from my point of view. To everyone else, Im still the same old fuckup Ive always been; only I dont have the benefit of fuckup experience. This is a great setup for drama. Too bad everyones done it before. I prefer comedy.<br>You can call me Ishmael. Im partial to Jones.<br>People always ask me what the last thing I remember is. I say, right now. The last thing anyone remembers is what just happened. I dont know what the first thing I remember is.<br>Thing is, I cant tell what I remember anymore.<br>I think it has to do with the crack on my ceiling.<br>When the lowest bid is a negative sum, you cant expect stellar performance.<br>Its midnight.<br>Actually, I have no way of knowing the time, but it ought to be midnight.<br>Im lying there and Im not moving. I cant move and I wouldnt if I could.<br>These kind of mattresses, you can just hose them down. Great when you expect things to get messy. Thing is, plastic sticks to skin. You stay still and youre warm. Move and youre freezing.<br>This isnt the Hilton.<br>My chest is heavy. Its like Im wearing that lead vest the dentist gives you so you think you wont get cancer, even though youve got a bugs bunny x-ray gun pointed at your head.<br>Drool too much, or bite his finger, and he makes sure you never have kids.<br>Ive got that dentist taste in my mouth, too. Its the rotten shit that comes out when they drill a cavity. All the food youve eaten for years, its in there. Garlic and pepper and liverwurst and coffee. Rotted eggs. Cattle that died four years ago. French fries from the Clinton administration. Mummified baloney.<br>When its so vile and awful and all you want to do is scream but you cant do anything because youre lying there in the dark and you cant wiggle your toes.<br>This is a clerical error.<br>I should be on drugs. The kind they dilute in your IV bag and you dont feel a thing. You might as well be dead for all the brainpower youre using. Horse tranquilizers. Antidepressants. Antipsychotics. Happy juice.<br>But someone forgets to top off my tank and now theyre stuck with me.<br>Sometimes the best thing to do with something you dont understand is ignore it. Eyes shut, and the world is gone.<br>So I go to sleep.<br>And this is the first thing I remember.<br><br>***<br><br>When you wake up in the morning, the last thing you want is to run.<br>The next thing I remember, Im staring at that shitty masonry again. I know the whole building is going to fall down on me, and Ill still be too bored to care. Rescue dogs will sniff me out in the rubble, and I wont bother to let anyone know Im alive.<br>This is what it means to be brainwashed.<br>I open my eyes, and I start working before I can think. I get out of bed and brush my teeth and shave. Shaving your face does more than make you look clean. It actually helps keep you clean. So long as you dont cut yourself, shaving keeps you healthy.<br>My head is clean, and I put on my clothes. Its just black running shoes, blue trousers, white T-shirt, and a blue jacket. Machine-washable durable sensible clothes. It makes sense to wear this stuff. Thats why everyone here does it.<br>Now theres a green light over my door, and it lights up.<br>Theres a buzzer.<br>No surprise.<br>I stand in my open doorway.<br>This guy in gray clothes just like mine comes up and looks at my eyes with a flashlight. He takes my pulse. He sticks his rubber gloves in my mouth and explores my cheeks a bit. He writes something on a notepad, and he goes to the next door over. Theres another joker in a blue suit there, and another next to him, and another again. I never counted, but there must have been 50 doors just like mine leading to cells just like mine with green lights just like mine and rusty sinks and sticky mattresses and crumbling walls just like mine.<br>Theres a bell, and we all get out of our little abodes and follow each other two-by-two down the hall and out the end doors. We form up into a little block, and hear what were doing today.<br>So were digging a trench.<br>Well get tools.<br>Im standing there, and Im thinking.<br>Thats just it, Im thinking. Im thinking why the hell is this so familiar if I havent done it before. Im thinking how do I know that I have a sewn-on nametag when I dont know what it says. Im thinking holy shit, I hope no one notices me thinking.<br>Thing about manual labor you dont know if you havent done it is, it sucks. The guy in front of me is breaking up the dirt with a grubbing hoe, and Im scooping it up and throwing it into a pile outside the stakes we have set up. Im here wishing I was in front doing the glamorous stuff rather than cleaning up after this clown. Im having to dig rather than just scoop because hes no good at his job and he doesnt know what hes doing. He just hacks randomly at the dirt for a while, then moves forward. If I were doing it, itd be art. People would stop and watch my deft moves.<br>Then again, maybe its best I dont do anything impressive. No one else seems too concerned with the quality of their work. I dont know why Im digging, but I know why Im not digging too fast.<br>There are no go-getters in a gulag.<br>
