Shrub nodded, emerging from his daze. His father had made a humiliating gaffe once, in referring to the anniversary of that infamous attack, which had brought Murica into Double-U Double-U Eye-Eye; it would be good to supplant the event in the public memory. “But how do we get Juhpan to bomb us again? They sells us so many flying carpets these days.”

Pink refrained from calling the monarch a moron; after all, secret society or no, the King is the King. A year of his home world’s planetary product had been invested in training him and his failed father, from birth, to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Pink’s own sister had been sold into sexual slavery to Sirian Satyrs to help finance the infiltration. If Earth were invaded, Centuri would no longer be the grimiest toilet in the quadrant. This planet was already half ruined; finishing the job would turn it to a crushed dusty pulp in just a few stardates.

“Nobody is going to bomb Murica. Who could be so stupid? So, we arrange to have it done ourselves. That way, we can blame it on whomever we choose.” He paused. “I was thinking of Assume Ibeen Plottin’, but we can throw some blame at good old Madman Insane, too, if we need to. Why not? Two enemies for the price of one. The beauty of it is, they’ve both been making so much anti-Murica noise that no one will believe them even if they deny it, which they can’t because they’ll lose face. Hell, we can pin it on every Towelhead in Sandland.”

The King frowned. “Does it have to be Oyster Bay, though? I was planning on retiring in Ha-wow-ee, and I don’t want the beaches all tore up when I get there.”

“No, you id-idyllic, uh, ruler. I merely meant that the attack, the outrages it inspires, will be on the same scale. The target will be the Marketplace in New Yoke City, which according to a survey of one hundred randomly selected households, was the site of the most popular terrorist strike of the past decade. We strike right at the heart of the Murican people, which is most readily accessed through its wallet.” Mr. Pink rubbed his palms together gleefully; he had no more malice against Shrub’s Kingdom than any other, but he was a very mean man (or alien!) and enjoyed causing suffering in general.

The King hesitated. “But aren’t those, you know, our people? I mean, the Marketplace! Won’t a lot of rich people die?”

Pink shrugged. “The place will be cleared out of Gull and Crones members that day, you can be sure, except for those we decide to purge from our ranks by not warning them. As to the others-well, they’re not with us, so they must be against us. Would you rather stage an attack on a military fort, and risk destroying valuable equipment?”

So it was settled. Mr. Pink departed for Rug Country, and there contacted the top leadership of the venerable Hash-fiends, who agreed to provide some of their members for the attack. Secret society professional courtesy kept the fee to a nominal level, as the Hash-fiends enjoyed sending their less desirable members on periodic suicide missions anyway, just for kicks. Large bets were placed on which kamikazes would lose nerve and need to be executed by their fellows. It was a source of great amusement.

And so a promising trading day in the early harvest season was rudely interrupted, just as it was getting underway, by two flying commercial transport dragons crashing into each of the Pair of Pavilions of the Marketplace. The hearts of transport dragons pump explosive jet fuel instead of blood, and the damage was total. Thousands perished, including of course the hijackers, and what’s more, some extremely valuable real estate was destroyed. A bona fide tragedy.

Two additional dragons were commandeered at the same time, directed not at New Yoke but the Kingdom’s capital; one crashed into a fortuitously underinhabited section of the Pentacle, Murica’s military headquarters, while the other missed by just several hundred miles its intended target: King Shrub II’s Beige Palace. The immediate comparison was indeed with Oyster Bay-the current disaster far outshadowed that naval ambush-and even the most cynical were shocked.

“You need a war,” Mr. Pink stated, sinking comfortably into the red- cushioned plushness of the Throne.

Of course. From time immemorial, monarchs had instigated conquest to consolidate power. Shrub the First had finessed foreign conflict within the first year of his reign, initiating a hate campaign against a former Murican puppet named Madman Insane, dictator of I’mcracked, who had the planned misfortune to invade his tiny but wealthy neighbor, Heywait, right when the elder Shrub sought an international demon to crucify.

The timing of this hostile action was no coincidence; Insane had innocently made his move with false assurance, from clandestine Murican authorities, that they would not interfere with Insane if he took Heywait. Naturally, there was no one to complain to when King Shrub welshed on Madman and used the incident as an excuse to begin the prolonged and expensive Golf War, the centerpiece of his brief reign.

At first, this strategy was successful; the Muricans, always needing someone to hate, took immediately to Madman Insane, with his swarthy desert features and alien-sounding moniker. King Shrub was suddenly quite popular.

But as the Golf War approached the eighteenth Hole, it was obvious that most Muricans were dissatisfied. Sure, Madman had been driven from Heywait, but he still held power in I’mcracked and looked to do so for some time to come. The Murican people, robbed of their bloodlust, felt vaguely duped and subsequently dumped King Shrub, for the Lord Horny Hick from Ark and Saw, who ruled reasonably well and kept the people entertained with his sexual antics.

The economy, which had seemed so hopeless under King Shrub, was miraculously restored without special measures, and grew steadily until Horny Hick was forced by statute from the Throne. Weapons contractors screamed bloody murder at the draft-dodger’s cutbacks, but most Muricans were out shopping and ignored the missile-mongerers’ moans.

The fact was, the Murican people were disillusioned with foreign war, particularly when their massive armies displayed an embarrassing reluctance to win. Too often they found themselves peeling off bumper stickers and lowering flags with gritted teeth, as once again their vastly superior military effected an equivocal withdrawal from a much smaller territory where the enemy would continue to rule as before.

Even Horny Hick-who was much more interested in domestic affairs- had tried his hand at the meddling game, agitating against the genocidal Sloppy Don Lousysonofabitch in Yourup, the latest in the procession of demons promenaded before the Muricans’ Magic Mirrors for hate purposes, but, finding little interest in the intervention at home, he allowed the issue to quietly drop. Ratings were not good, even though the headlines screamed, “Systematic Rape” and “Ethnic Cleansing”. Halfway around the world, who gives a damn? Besides, there’s plenty of sex and violence in the local news, thank you fearless leader.

A war? Yes, certainly! But what foe? They were running out of bloodthirsty foreign lords with funny names. The senior Shrub had won the Throne originally in a contest against the hideously named Duke Cockkiss, which sounds like shit in any language, while summoning up equally disturbing images of fellatio. And the King had learned from his father the vital importance of having an enemy with a funnier name than yours.

Mr. Pink was waiting impatiently for the glassy look to leave the King’s eyes, tapping his fingers on the armrest of the Throne. “We need another Oyster Bay,” he said carefully. The King needed his explanations in slow, short words. “Something to whip up a frenzy. A war even long- haired radicals would be ashamed to protest.”

“I call this ‘Murican Pie’.” He drains another voice-cracking tendril of phlegm from his gullet.

“The King was distraught. He paced anxiously about the Elliptical Chambers.The latest Royal popularity ratings lay crumpled in an angry ball on the floor beside the Throne. Something needed to be done! Frustrated, the Liege tore down an ancient draft of the Guarantee of Rights from its hallowed enshrinement on the wall, and this made him feel much better. Still, his Reign was off to a dismal start; and time was slipping away.

“Sire? The man from your, uh, ‘college athletic club’ is here.”“So why are you talking to me about it? Send him in, instantaneously!”

Muttering subvocally about his Monarch’s manners and malapropism, the squire went to the reception and signaled the visitor’s admittance. The man brushed by with a huff, vowing to see the squire hang, or at least lose his federal pension, for detaining him from his audience for nearly a full minute.

“Mr. Pink!” the King exclaimed. “What a pleasure!”

The Chamber door securely shut, the two exchanged secret recognition symbols, a mere formality; the two knew each other quite well. Then the King kneeled and kissed the ring on the other’s finger, for Pink was superior in the hierarchy that they both observed above the formal government of the land.

For the “athletic club” they owed allegiance to was Gull and Crones, a secret society dedicated to mysterious goals and evil conspiracies. Not even the most steadfast members knew much more than that their hidden leaders required world domination. Pink, who hailed from the slums of Alpha Centuri, had not even met the group’s leaders, but took coded instructions from a highly placed aide to the Grand Muck-a-Muck, whose face was never seen. Mr. Pink’s function was to transmit guidance to King Shrub II from the Sirian High Command, who was following the liege’s career very closely, determined that this opportunity to colonize system Sol not be fucked up like the last.

King Shrub I, the current ruler’s sire, had also been a member, a fact which had been rather too well publicized at the time. Murica was a constitutional monarchy; not only was royal power restricted by an elected council, but the Throne itself was subject to jeopardy every four years, subject to the whims of every blacksmith and midwife, uneducated brutes without the slightest concept of the Crown’s responsibility. Shrub the First had lost his Seat to a smooth-talking, lascivious peasant from a backwater province who seemed like a whole lot more fun than the moralistic, cliche - spouting incumbent, who had reversed his most passionate promises and brought the economy to rapid ruin. Vengeance had been vowed.

The two former Princes-Gorge and Yep-consolidated their power, biding the day that the Shrub name would rule again. They each gained regency of a large province-Gorge taking Dad’s old region of Tax Ass, while Yep carpetbagged over to For-I-Duh.

The brothers whooped it up, ordering executions the way drunken salesmen with expense accounts and a pair of prostitutes order room service. Tax Ass and For-I-Duh led the kingdom in application of the death penalty. This sat quite well with their older-than-average constituencies, who resented those with more years of life remaining than they could hope for, and were moderately cheered by outliving anybody.

But controlling two mere provinces could not satisfy the genetic powerlust that flowed in every Shrub’s veins. Gorge knew that he had no chance against the horndog who had toppled his Dad, but made his plans to avenge his father against the designated successor. Victory was imminent.

The elder Shrub had had entirely too much confidence in his popularity, and did not tamper with ballots or their tally when his reelection occurred, or, rather, failed to. This mistake had not been repeated by his son; Junior’s election had been almost openly rigged, the victory margin emerging, by odd happenstance, from errors in For-I-Duh.

There had been some grumbling about this, but not enough to overturn the results. The opponent-a bland golem named All Blood-was not that popular, either, and in any event it seemed the majority of Muricans didn’t believe that election fraud was involved in the contest for the highest office.

These people, known within the advertising guild as “suckers,” also tended to believe that the evening news via Magic Mirror routinely reports facts as opposed to propaganda, and that only criminals wound up in Dungeons. Some of them even believed they themselves would be protected from Royal abuse by the Guarantee of Rights. A tiny minority were delusional enough to imagine that their paying taxes was somehow for their own good, or that tithes sent to MM priests would be put to God’s work, or that expensive kits could make them landed lords with no money down.

Shrub II had tried to garner some instant popularity by leading a tariff rebate through Council, which had hurt his enemies, the Free- spenders, while helping the large merchant interests that had helped him get elected. But as with his father, the financial health of the kingdom proved allergic to the Shrub, who no sooner moved in to the Palace than he began to issue self-fulfilling prophecies of economic doom.

The economy itself wasn’t the problem; part of Gull and Crones’s master plan demanded the Murican people be financially strained, producing a labor surplus which would be available to serve the new alien order. But this could make the public ill-tempered in the meantime, and some malcontents might even blame King Shrub II for their difficulties. So a distraction was necessary.

The program, brainchild of Warden Cleevenhoff, is the only one of its kind, as my course is the sole offering of Sunny Oak’s continuing education curriculum, and is not attached to any attempt at a degree.

Cleevenhoff, as it happens, is a lifelong devotee of true crime novels, which led quite naturally to his vocation as a jailor. A fan of true crime journalism would have had to be a cop or criminal. Throughout his career as bibliophile/guard, he had coveted most the tomes authored by the scumbag perps themselves.

Unfortunately, many of the most interesting stories belonged to those who could barely spell, let alone construct a scene or sketch a character. A great deal of work “by” prisoners was necessarily ghostwritten, compromising authenticity.

The Warden has a vision: reams of passable prose produced on yellow legal pads, propped on prisoner’s knees, in every cellblock in America. Let the monsters spell out, in painstaking detail, just how sick and vicious their troubled souls really are, for the world to see and know how vital correction work is.

Cleevenhoff himself has the soul of an editor; the two professions are not as diverse as one might first imagine. Both are in the business of taming the wild and free, making oddballs acceptable to society.

He certainly acted like he worked for a publisher when we met, pumping my hand as if he thereby expected to extract water, claiming to have read and enjoyed my book. He probably had. The Warden struck me as the sort of Top 40 reader that does his novel shopping in airports and grocery stores.

I had just hit number three on the New York Times list.

“I want you to feel totally at ease with my boys. There’s a Stephen King in there, and your job is to bring him out. I mean, real, untapped talent. And nothing but time to write, write, write! Incarceration is an author’s dream, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said stiffly. “I still have nightmares.”

The smile fades. “Well, indeed. I suppose I meant a developing writer. So as to be free of distractions while learning how to spin a yarn. There are a few I want you to keep an eye on. Encourage. The one they call Trombone-”

He owed his unusual moniker, not to the jazz/brass band instrument of the same name, but to a much more recent invention: the cellular phone. Trombone’s father had been using a very early analog model when the phone call came in from the hospital, informing him of his new status as a child-support provider and requesting suggestions for naming his son. “It ain’t my kid,” he’d bellowed into the mouthpiece. “Call Tyrone!”

The cold basement is silent, and I realize my mistake. Although he is by far the best of my student authors, Trombone is plagued with a fierce stage fright which cripples him when called on to read. But if I change my mind and call on someone else, he’ll look bad to his homies. That could have bad long-term consequences back on the block. The inside is no place to lose respect.

Trombone’s brown face turns crimson, and his knees wobble. He clears his throat as he shuffles through his papers, obviously regretting opening his damnfool mouth. His voice crackles as he begins, but picks up strength as he realizes we are rapt.

~ )))0((( ~

“Hi, Class!” I say, striving to sound cheerful yet cool.

“Hi, Victor!” the class chants back at me.

“Okay, this week I’d like to discuss some techniques.” A moth flits in and out of the flickering light cast by one of the dim fluorescent tube bulbs ruining our eyesight in the dank dayroom. “Can anyone tell me what an ‘objective correlative’ is?”

Just as I was about to start gibbering with fear and urinating all over my freshly pressed court-date suit, the judge bared his teeth, a predator’s grin. He is, after all, a lawyer. “Or…” he drawled.

The light bulb goes out. “We discussed this when we were reading Updike,” I prod. “He’s very skillful at it.” I write the words on the whiteboard. “Think about the words separately,” I plead. “Objective, as in something an outside, or objective, observer would notice. Correlative. Like correlate. Relates directly to.” I hesitate, having run out of hints. Repetition, that old standby of the incompetent, seems my only recourse. “Objectiiiive. Corrrrelatiiiive,” I drawl, hoping against hope that condescension will bring comprehension.

Mercifully, Trombone, my star student, raises a cautious hand. “Is it, like, when the description of the scene includes carefully placed parallels to some theme or the silent monologue of a character? In order to reinforce semiconsciously the deeper meaning? Like, they’re thinking about the Trinity, and there’s three of everything around.” The light clicks back on.

I almost rush to hug him, but of course that’s stringently prohibited. Kids like Trombone make me almost glad to teach this course. “That’s exactly right, Trombone! As a reward, why don’t you read first today?”

“I’ll need to discuss this with my client,” my lawyer said, hope creeping into his voice. Indeed he did.

“Certainly,” the judge said, smirking. “Go ahead. You have until the foreman tells me the jury’s come to a decision. After Clarence Darrow’s little performance, it shouldn’t be too long now at all.”

“I can’t plead,” I plead. “This is a test case. The underlying law’s on our side.”

My lawyer stared at me stonily. “The fat bald little fuck wearing the graduation robe, that’s the ‘underlying law’. Did you hear what he said? He wants to cornhole you with a two-by-four. He can do it, too. Think he’s scared of being overturned? By a panel of constipated marionettes just like him? Be grateful he’s giving you a way out, enter the plea before he changes his mind, and let’s get the hell out of here. I’m starving, and, besides, I’m absolutely dying for a line of good coke. Do you know where I can hook up a teener or so?”

“But I promised myself and a lot of others I’d never put it on record that I was guilty. I didn’t commit any crime.” I wonder who I’m trying to convince. My attorney’s opinion is kind of irrelevant at this stage.

“For chrissakes, it’s a misdemeanor, like a parking ticket. If you want to spend tonight lubricating your asshole, that’s your business. Myself, I’m going to get wired, drunk, and laid-by a female-in that order, no matter what you decide. Make up your mind: party, or prison? Dancing till all hours of the night in a club with beautiful women, or an hour of exercise in a chained courtyard under rifle guard with a guy named Junkyard? Fucking, or getting fucked?”

In the end, I wound up copping a nolo contendere, something my genius lawyer would have thought of earlier, had he not directed his meditations so single-mindedly on the evening’s blow and blowjobs, highballs and high times. I was given a sneezable thousand-dollar fine and 100 hours of community service, to be performed during my year’s probation.

That was how I ended up teaching a weekly creative writing class at Sunny Oaks Correctional Institution for Men. I might have had better luck, not to mention more fun, in a women’s pokey; but I have nothing to complain about. In two hours I’d be leaving; in two hours and two minutes I’d be sparking the doobie under my dash, driving away in perfect freedom in my own overpriced status machine.

~ )))0((( ~

The prevalence of crack in Washington, D.C. shows that not only is the Pentagon actively importing cocaine, but that they are also too lazy to ship it much further than Capitol Hill.

I spoke for two hours, and sent the jury out with a final reminder of the precedents that authorized them to render verdict as they saw fit.

Twelve ordinary taxpayers sat raptly as I urged them to criminalize tyranny in the United States. To restore meaning to the Bill of Rights. To free millions of harmless people whose only crime was preferring an ancient herb to imbibing disinfectant solvents or prescription poison.

I had barely taken my seat before the judge called my attorney and myself to accompany the D.A. and himself into chambers, no doubt to get an early start on the champagne celebration.

“Well, Bill,” the judge told my lawyer, “we’ve got a real serious problem. Solzhenitsyn here has got the jury full of civil liberties and making the world a better place and all that hippie shit, ready to bring back a not guilty verdict. That’s going to interfere with billions of dollars worth of law enforcement and correctional institution budgets, not to mention some highly placed unmentionable concerns that I’d better not mention.”

I knew better, but the intoxicating flurry of laying my rhetoric on the courtroom, every word entered on the permanent record for future legalists to pore over, overrode my caution. “So?” I blurted. “It’ll be nice to live in a free country.”

The judge’s hairless head turned purple as he stood, pointing an angry forefinger my way. “YOU! Shut up! You think you’re so smart. You think you’re going to undo seventy years of law, without spending a single hour in a law library. Change the world. You cocky sonofabitch. Well, I’m sure you know what a mistrial is?”

I did and do, but I barely nodded. “Well, I’m going to be goddamned if I’m going to let my name be on the case that legalized marijuana. So it doesn’t matter how well you charmed that jury. I’m dismissing them. Your closing statement advised them to ignore the law.”

“You can’t do that,” my lawyer protested quietly. “We’ll appeal.”

The judge shrugs. “Do that. Meanwhile, Tom’s free to press charges again, and I’ll refuse to grant bail. Your client can rot while we go through this all over again.” The prosecutor nods. His cooperation in this plot can be taken for granted.

My lawyer and I looked at each other helplessly. Disaster, so close to total triumph! I never dreamed of being so utterly fucked. Appeals take years.

Years. Of my life.

Because some judge with a bug up his ass about me doesn’t want his friends to think he’s a wuss.

We reach the end of the hall. A key is fitted in the lock. I am ushered inside. The door crashes shut behind me with a terrifying, final-sounding boom.

A gang of thirty convicts glance up at me, popping bubbles of chewing gum, rapping tables with pencils. A hush falls as I stride into the room, hulking my shoulders to provide the illusion of breadth, puffing out my chest to appear manlier than I am.

Trying, in other words, to look like a badass.

~ )))0((( ~

Unbeknownst to me (though it was a predictable enough fuck-up), as I prated on about Socrates and his death sentence for corrupting the youth, among my unwilling audience sat the vengeance-oriented father of the school’s biggest and most incorrigible dealer, a sloppy, juvenile operator unconcerned with consequences because he knew he’d never truly face them.

Unfortunately for me, this man’s day job was as a high- level narcotics agent, humiliated by his inability to control the drug problem in his own home. My photograph was pinned to his dartboard, and it was only a matter of time before my greenhouse was surrounded. I was caught green-thumbed and carted off to the stockade to await my Inquisition.

Like several of my heroes, I found myself in a courtroom, trying to transmit the truth to a jury most definitely not composed of my peers: that it is bizarre, immoral, and unconstitutional for a government to legislate against a plant.

I flash effortlessly between the present and past tense, being there and here, now and then, getting the whole picture. Back to where it all began.

It’s not just about the right to get high, I explained to the panel of baffled straights. It’s about freedom of thought.

It’s not a war on drugs. It’s a war on people who use certain drugs. And lives are being lost. Youthful lives. Promising lives.

Wasted. In moldy cells all over this great land. For no reason.

What is the purpose of the law under which I am charged? Is it to curb a dangerous substance, as the prosecutor claims? This can’t be, for the constitutional right to own projectile weapons has been repeatedly upheld. Remember, these are devices, which, when used as directed, cause death. Ask any gun instructor. They will invariably advise you to never produce a firearm, unless you plan to shoot to kill. Mercy will cost you your life. Winging an assailant will just piss them off. Yet instruments of instant, distant death remain revealingly sanctioned, on sale in every Wal-Mart and pawn shop.

Cannabis, on the other hand, is only fatal as fifty-ton bales dropped from high altitudes.

So, safety cannot be the real rationale. Not with strychnine and alcohol for sale in every pharmacy and hardware store. People are considered intelligent enough to use those lethal products safely enough, in spite of the many fatalities attributable to misuse of each. But not, apparently, a mild nonaddictive medicinal herb, whose use is a part of every history.

These oppressive laws seek to fix the state of mind within arbitrary parameters, to bar those interested in doing so from experiencing planes of existence that may be accessible only in this fashion.

They have been enacted to control our minds, in blatant disregard of the Constitution. They do this so as to make martyrs of malcontents. To surreptitiously criminalize ideas. A classic witchhunt, with no more justice in it than the Puritan Inquisition which created that hateful compound word in the first place.

The victims of that purge were not very different from myself. I feel very akin to those midwifes and healers who were torched alive because they healed or did magic with strange herbs that reactionaries, fearing any power they could not control, claimed were of the devil. I’m in much the same fix.

I’m not necessarily what you’d call a believer in the Bible. But I’ve certainly read it and damned if can remember any stories about Satan creating plants. My Christian theology might be rusty, but I’m pretty sure only God is supposed to be able to do that; although, I understand Dow Chemical is making considerable progress in genetic engineering.

If you’re any sort of environmentalist, you may wonder why our government, with its voluminous regulations to protect wildlife, entertains this fanatical, though hopeless, effort to eradicate-to make extinct-one of the most useful, ecologically friendly species the Earth has yet yielded.

I could go on for hours about the virtues of this repressed crop. The valuable products to be derived from hemp fibers can save the forests by replacing trees for paper. Hemp seeds are second only to soybean in plant protein content, and could feed the planet’s starving.

Not to mention hemp flowers, which could calm the overamped nerves of the neurotic masses. It is the paleface’s buffalo for the New Age, a gracious offering from the Mother with no extra parts. Typical of Western ingratitude to reject it.

One of the gifts of the cannabis plant is the Declaration of Independence, that radical manifesto of sedition that marks the founding of these United States. As you may know, the historic document was drafted on hemp paper, made from fibers of the very same plant I was enjoying on the night half a dozen officers threatened my life with guns, deprived me of my liberty, and charged me with the pursuit of happiness.

If you happen to be politically conservative, you ought to resent the intrusion of privacy implicit in the “war on drugs.” The Bill of Rights has been rendered meaningless by the abuses of the anti-drug Gestapos.

If you’re politically liberal-well, to be honest, I’m not sure what liberals believe these days. You should probably be against anything Ronald Reagan was for.

Speaking of our esteemed former President, do you suppose it’s any coincidence that the hand caught in the cookie jar using cocaine revenues to finance black ops was the very same one that signed the declaration of “war” to begin with?

I smell a conspiracy.

~ )))0((( ~

Round 2

“And the Judge said, ‘What’s that mean, anyway, that you’re an anarchist?’

And Amon said, ‘Why, an anarchist is anybody who doesn’t need a cop to tell him what to do.’

‘But you broke the law, Amon! What about that?’

‘Oh, Judge, your damn laws…the good people don’t need ‘em, and the bad people don’t obey ‘em, so what use are they, anyway?”
-Utah Phillips, “Anarchy,” The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, c. 1996 Righteous Babe Music/bmi.

I am ushered gruffly into the prison. The guard accompanying me signals to the one at the controls, on the other side of the wired glass window. I wince as the massive, highly secured door is released to the tune of a loud, grating buzz, and again as it clamps shut behind me on its gnarled hinges with an irrevocable, booming click. The unpleasantly resonant sound reminds me of factories.

Assembly lines.

Slaughterhouses.

Processing plants.

As we stride silently, monklike, into the facility’s innards, I reflect on the long, strange trip which brought me to this pass, lessons in futility and humility. My heart harbors no hatred for the civil servants conducting me down the corridors of gaol; they are merely unwitting agents of their own dharma, like those who sent me here.

In fact, I have surprised myself by swallowing my sentence with uncharacteristic equanimity, though I’ve broken no sane law. It could have been much, much worse. And, strictly speaking, I had committed the offense for which I had been sentenced. Shamelessly. Seditiously.

Photographs published by pot magazines portrayed my proudly, provocatively and publicly produced ‘ponic Chronic. I told tall tales of toking tyrants to tell-all tabloids, to trivialize the thumping: they took THC, too.

Prove it didn’t happen.

I had even written extensively and boastingly about my own illegal exploits, making my guerrilla garden a major player in my blockbuster book. That was how I got to be so famous that they just had to nail me.

My dope-laden epic was a raspberry in the Establishment’s face, as were my flamboyant forays into the sacred places of Babylon, temples such as the Whites-only House and the World Fraud Center, for the sole purpose of sparking a fatty of the kindest dank, while horrified tourists covered their Osh-koshed toddlers’ eyes, ears, and mouths.

So the push was on within the flanks of the humorless to crucify this irreverent unrepentant, who had somehow achieved success in spite of my distinct dissidence. I said little that was new, but my voice rang louder than similar throats had in the previous, more crowded generation of counterculture loudmouths and Pranksters that made the news fun during the 1960’s.

The climax, for me, was the ferocious stink raised by parents when a local high school’s literary group invited me to speak to them on form and structure. In an ironic twist of fate, I attended my first and (Goddess willing!) last meeting of a Parent Teacher’s Association. The PTA, it appeared, took issue with my unconventional viewpoint and had voted to ban me from the premises.

By the end of that fiasco, I’d penned a vicious essay claiming that the acronym actually stood for Prudish Tight Asses. I held up their own literary cannons and forced them to confront the flaw of their arguments. I belonged to a great literary tradition of deviance, I smugly pointed out, listing my company in contrariety comfortably installed on the curriculum, assuming, in my arrogance, that even my enemies would surely concede my status among the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

No one told me there’d been a coup, and now TV studios pretty much ran things.

My roster of fellow thought-criminals included such high school English fixtures as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and Aldous Huxley. Their work, but not lifestyles, were obviously considered salutary by the government’s Federal Branch of Indoctrination, also known as the public “education” system, whose agents cravenly used the superior prose and verse of outlaw virtuosos to train a new generation of technical-manual authors and speechwriters, while the Partnership for a Fun Free America aired commercials about the diminished mental faculties of marijuana users. Can you spell, “hypocrisy?” Probably not, if you actually relied on school for your learning.

~ )))0((( ~

Well, it’s not a disaster. Obviously the Order, enhanced by my large “offering,” moved to more spacious and luxurious quarters. Maybe Melvin knows where they moved. I knock.

There is no answer, and I am about to turn away, go back down to the Row and find a glass bottle to break, when I hear the faint rustlings of a magazine and zipper being closed. The door opens to reveal the sweaty beady face of a small, older man with ridiculously anachronistic spectacles and thin white hair. His white clerk’s shirt has a pocketful of pens, complete with plastic inkguard, and a shirttail is hanging loose from his trousers.

“Come in, come in,” he implores with an intensity that makes me reconsider being on the same side of the door as him, but I can take the little pervert, if it comes to that; I probably outweigh him. Besides, he looks
pathetically harmless.

“Well,” he says, “I have to say, you don’t look like a very good bet to me. What are you, twenty? But maybe you know something I don’t know.”

I know a whole world of things you don’t, I think; but ask, reasonably, since I haven’t got the most fucked-up idea what he means: “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, family history of premature demise. Deadly genetic diseases that turn up early in life that you currently don’t show signs of. Someone out to kill you. I’ll take out two policies on you if you can show proof that you’re the target of a mob hit.”

“Well, I just escaped from a mental hospital, and I have a lot of thoughts about suicide,” I offer. “My, uh, friend killed herself.” No need for this creep to know I’m a lesbian. It might turn him on.

He shakes his head. “Suicide’s no good; everybody knows they don’t pay on that. But perhaps you could make it look like an accident? Some policies pay double for an accident.”

“Say, how did you get a lease here, anyway, selling insurance? I thought you had to be non-prof.”

He chuckles. “I am non-profit. Haven’t made a dime yet. Anyway, I don’t sell insurance; I buy it. I take out policies on my clients, and they take out policies on me, and whoever doesn’t die first wins.” He winks. “I come from a long line of old people. No heart disease, cancer, diabetes, nothing. I can retire by the time I’m fifty, for sure, as soon as I can cash in someone’s policy. I plan to live at least until I’m ninety.”

“You’d better get on it, then,” I say irrelevantly. “Not much time.” This is probably insensitive, but I’m surprised to hear him talk about his fiftieth birthday as if it lay in the future. He looks at least sixty.

“What do you mean? I’ve plenty of time. I’m only thirty-seven.”

Something else bothers me. “Isn’t it dangerous, letting random strangers take out life insurance on you? Aren’t you afraid something might, ah, happen to you?”

He looks thoughtful. “I’d never considered that. I suppose it would be a problem, if I had any clients.”

“Look,” I say, getting to the point, exasperated by this ludicrous exchange, “I’m not here to buy insurance, or have you buy some, or whatever the hell you do. I came looking for the prior occupants of this suite. The Institute for Genetic Notification.”

Melvin draws a blank. How am I going to find a secret society without giving up the secret? But maybe they’ve gone public by now. I try again. “The Order of the Wheel.”

He brightens. “Oh, yes. Some sort of hoax, wasn’t it? I recall a scandal, fifteen years back or so. Promising people they could help them carry their memories into the next incarnation, or some such swill for the gullible. What are you, doing some kind of research paper on metaphysical fraud?”

I glare at him. “I’m a member,” I say tersely. “I’ve recovered my memories.”

Melvin mulls on this paradox for a moment. “Well, Carmen Reece was involved in that, but I don’t know if she’ll talk to you about it. The whole thing is a bit of a sore spot with her. She testified against the others at the trial.”

I grab Melvin by the knot of his tie and bring his pallid, wrinkled face close to my own in a gesture no one but a dom-and-sub freak would mistake for amorousness. His sallow eyes bug with fear.

“Where is she?” I growl, practically asphyxiating him before remembering that the poor old twerp is trying to be helpful. I let him go and take a deep breath.

He steps back, pulling his shirt straight and adjusting his tie, eying me nervously as if I’m a rabid dog.

Mental hospital, I’d said. Escaped, I’d said. I can read his mind.

Maybe the insurance business is too dangerous after all. Deciding that telling me is the surest way to be rid of me, he stammers, “She’s the editor of the Snake-Oil Chronicle. They have offices down at the other end of the Row, on Objective Blvd. She’s not very popular with the most of the locals; they’ve done a series of exposes on nearly all the groups here, at one time or another. Even ran a piece on me, which is one of the reasons I don’t have any clients. You’re going to blow her head wide open.”

When Melvin says this, it doesn’t even sound like attempted slang. It sounds like a suggestion to be taken literally.

Apparently he’s not a fan either.

I take the address and realize Carmen’s new racket is directly across from Cafe Ennui, the last commercial enterprise before the realm of Crazy Bear and his nutty non-profits begins. A border, of sorts. The boundary between Babylon and bohemian heaven. Right back to where I started.

I storm back down Religion Row, building a nice head of steam and bile for Carmen Reece. Boy, has that bitch got some explaining to do!

* * * * * * *

~ )))0((( ~

The chapel/dance floor is mostly deserted, as the action/services here are a strictly nighttime affair, but the Holy DJ is installed behind the Eternal Turntables, spinning the electronic hymns of the faith, and five or six psychedelic dervishes are still furiously contorting their way to dance enlightenment, with and without glowsticks, before him. Holoprojectors cast animated abstractions on every crevice of every wall, and multicolored lasers pierce the thick cloud of haze emitting from what I presume is the Sacred Smoke Machine.

A dozen or so sleeping kids are scattered across the room, passed out on various couches, mattresses, bean bags, and each other, in spite of the deafening beat. Well, devoted religious vigils can be exhausting, and the extremely pious are in no condition to move after a long night of partying/worship…

The dancers are in worlds of their own, oblivious, and it seems both futile and bad form to disturb the clergyman in the midst of administering the rites, no matter how small his flock. I play tourist, this being my maiden visit to the sanctuary. At night they have to check ID, to qualify for the noise permit, but no law bars me from entering now. It’s just there’s normally no point in showing up during daylight.

Fortunately, the church part of it is set up like a museum, with placards giving the lofty designation for each item, as well as a brief description for the uninitiated like me, or perhaps merely for the author’s own amusement.

A variety of capricious idols span the rear perimeter, sculpted in cartoonish, drug-induced gaudiness that reminds me vaguely of ventriloquist dummies: Discowood, the gay patron god of funky beats and sparkly clothes; Vibia, the holy goddess of group energy; Emceemion, the dusky god of hip-hop; Euphorias and Expansia, god and goddess of being high, portrayed as intertwined, blissful mates charged by their followers with providing heavenly intervention to ensure highest quality for the lowest price.

And in a pantheon equally diverse, but populated by grim, hideous figures instead of plastic-jeweled, friendly caricatures of the ravers themselves, lay the demons of the cult, perhaps not honored as greatly, but acknowledged equally in all their bare evil: Addictica, with a monkey’s face and bearing a chain; Policius, tapping a baton against his gloved hand; Avaricius, symbolizing the greed that ruins a party from within; and Skankhoe, the hated succubus of sexually transmitted disease.

Between the two rival camps, and directly opposite the actual set currently in use, sit the Turntables of Truth. On the left pad, closest to the gods and goddesses, is a white vinyl record which reads, “PLEASURE”. Its counterpart is black and reads, somewhat predictably, “PAIN”. I lift the near disc to peek beneath it-mostly to see if this relic is an example of the fabled Technic 1200-and discover to my somewhat enlightening surprise that the flipside is black and marked “PAIN” as well. These kids aren’t as dumb as they look.

Intrigued, I lift the icon and inspect it closely, wondering momentarily if I’m not committing some kind of blasphemy by handling it, and deciding it will be all right as long as I’m careful not to scratch. After all, if the record weren’t meant to be removed, it wouldn’t have an instructional message on the other side.

The grooves begin at no particular point that can be discerned close to the edge; or I should say groove, since as I understand it there is only one on each side. I have, of course, seen a vinyl record before, but not for a very, very long time, since before I had evolved from taker to giver. This transformation changes the way you think about everything. For instance, as a man I had only the most peripheral awareness of the monthly period and chiefly regarded it as a bloody inconvenient hiatus from sex, or, occasionally, with relief, subsequent to some careless unprotected implantation. My world has doubled since then.The blood flows from my source as the world within me mirrors the moon as she grows and diminshes. The universe has subtler, lusher layers of meaning now.

So with feminine fingers I caress the vinyl with fresh wonder, and see in its parallel lines a truth I have been struggling to comprehend: my relationship to Victor. We are different tracks on the same album.

And the ego, the “I” of self-awareness-that is the needle, moving ever forward in time despite staying in the same place. Wherever metal meets vinyl is the only song that matters. What’s playing right now is Amanda, and what I do is the melody.

Sri Lakshmi, Goddess of Fortune, be my DJ now.

I promise myself I will return at a less hectic juncture to explore the electronic mysteries of the techno-music cult; but I am several years late for a vital appointment, and am eager for my rendezvous with the only group of people that won’t think my head is cracked. I have things to figure out.

The church has an exit-only side door toward the back (actually, a disabled fire-alarm door), and I avail myself of it without arousing the claxons of hell. Frankly, I doubt it would be heard over the music, anyway; the kids would just think it was something on the next cut.

As my eyes adjust painfully to the midday glare, I note with gratitude that the cops have vanished, and with mixed feelings that the boy I owe a kiss to has gone as well. Of course, he didn’t fulfill his end of the bargain, and I had been viewing the payoff with trepidation and revulsion in any case; but I am somehow miffed that he had found something else to so easily distract him, demonstrating how transient and superficial, perfunctory, even, his interest had been. I had puffed myself up quite a bit on his shallow display of lust.

Here. Now. Focus! I command myself. This is no time to get distracted by ambiguous emotions like a silly, sexually confused schoolgirl. I have to rise above what I am.

I am about three blocks from the Institute for Genetic Notification- also known, but only to members, as the Order of the Wheel. Quite possibly the only legitimate institution left on the strip.

Triskaidekaphobia Anonymous, at 1313 Illustration, seems deserted; but the Arthur J. Fonzerelli Teleddiction Recovery Center, which consumes the entire rest of the block, is packed, the line of tube junkies seeking help curling off into the street.

As is the Chris Farley Memorial Center for Compounding Corpulence, a fatties’ club that takes up the complete fifteen hundred block of Illustration. The banner overhead the specially widened doorway
proudly announces, “Working ÔRound the Clock to Make the World a Fatter Place” above, “all- you-can-eat, 24-7. (Members Only!) The bigger you are, the smaller we look!”

The Row appears to have become a thriving venue since my last visit before I was born, and it strikes the old capitalist in me as somewhat sad that no profit is permitted to be reaped from all this traffic.

Then again, maybe old C.B. isn’t keeping a proper tab on his tenants these days, after all, and black-market trade in currency is rampant under the guise of altruism. How else to explain the hawker outside of something called the Cult of the Day Cafe, mimicking his sleazy forebears from evangelical revival tents, vaudeville and burlesque productions, practically kidnapping wandering pedestrians and inducting them, bewildered, into today’s special: The Moonies, according to the chalkboard easel.

Tomorrow’s feature: Narcotics Anonymous.

The better portion of the first floor of 1620 Illustration Avenue is, as I remembered, home to the Radical Front of Shiva’s Sword, a nuclear-war advocacy group remotely related to Hinduism. They rent the space primarily because it includes what was originally the basement and is now, of course, an impressively stocked bomb shelter. I peer inside the giant ballroom-originally intended to be a J.C. Penny’s-and spot the poster proclaiming, superimposed on a dramatic image of Ground Zero’s ballooning mushroom cloud, the common-sense slogan, “WHY NOT JUST GET IT OVER WITH?”

Why not, indeed. Images of pale, skeletal girls with acne on their faces and razor slashes on their forearms and rope burns about their necks.

Join us. Why cling so hard to life, when, as Buddha say, existence is suffering? If, as Sarah insisted, we are tied to the world by only a crass addiction to flesh, why not…kick the habit?

Just why was I in such a big hurry to come back here, anyway? She’s gone. That pretty much makes this spin around the Wheel a write-off. If I want to be anywhere near her age in the next life, it’s time to clip my thread short. Isn’t the duty of a lover to follow, like Orpheus, into Hell itself to recover a lost soul mate? And the worst that might happen to me is New Jersey.

No, the worst would be growing up right next door to each other and never knowing who we’d been. Flying off randomly onto the Wheel will only ensure losing each other again.

But the Order can tell me, I realize. They can tell me where she’s gone and where I’ll go, just like before, and this time I’ll do it for love not money and maybe it will it work better this time. The karma will be cleaner.

I bound up the stairs with renewed enthusiasm. Sarah! You silly bitch, if you’d just waited, we could have done this together. When I finally catch up to you, I’m gonna smack your shit upside your head for leaving me like that.

But that won’t be for at least another fifteen years.

I check the office directory in the lobby for nostalgia’s sake. The owner, who in addition to his other virtues is a superstitious numerology- conscious kook, lets the tenants choose whatever suite number pleases them, without any reference to floor or order. “Significance,” he would pant in a tone which dripped with an amplified sense of it. “Only the significance of the number should matter…”

Suite 42 is still the headquarters for the Children of Dent, a Douglas Adams fanatic club; suite 49 is occupied by the offices of the Tristero Postal Conspiracy, while suite 23 is now rented by something called the Bavarian Illuminati, since the Discordians have moved into the Robert Anton Wilson Conspiracy Complex. Must have something to do with donuts. But they can’t be a donut company, because how could that be non-profit? Maybe something to do with the historical preservation of donuts.

There’s a problem, however, when I reach number 18 at the end of the familiar lonely hall. The door reads, to my extreme dismay, Melvin P. Utz, Mutual Life.

If you’ve been following, that’s not what I expect to see.

~ )))0((( ~