Bubblegum, page 102
What was going on? I hadn’t forgotten I was on this new drug, but still: What the fuck was going on? I knew our kitchen was plain, ugly even, dirty—dirtier than usual since Clyde had gone to Europe—and I knew that none of the aforementioned inans would, if they were anything like any of the other inans I’d ever conversed with, possess so positive an outlook on themselves, yet the whole kitchen—the whole world—really did appear beautiful to me, beautiful and right, and right with itself, everything in its place, and although I’d be lying if I said I felt stupid about that—I felt nothing less than wonderful—I did think to myself, “You are becoming stupid. That is what is going on. This drug is making you stupid.”
And yet, at the same time, I felt more than capable of finishing this memoir. I felt like I could finish it in just a few days. I could go upstairs, sit down, and just…do it.
* * *
—
So I went upstairs, and I sat down to do it. To get started, I read over the last of the scenes that I’d written—the one in which the boys (one of whom, I knew now, was a cousin of the author Adam Levin) made fun of my Street Machine—and it was…brilliant. Belt, that poor kid, what a fully rendered character. What a whole and complicated and observant and weird and unsuspectingly cool human being. I wished me nothing but the best.
I scrolled up in the document and read another, earlier scene. Belt and Lotta at Arcades. Once again: brilliant. It really captured the experience: the slow, tenuous climb toward hope; the sudden drop toward disappointment; the accompanying relief; desire’s terrible misalignment with reality. How could I have ever felt disconnected from this book? I was so connected.
Maybe, in fact, I was too connected. The sense I’d had in the kitchen, the sense of being able to just sit myself down and make the memoir magic happen—it was gone. Not that this worried me. I wasn’t worried at all. It seemed that what I needed to do was relax and just reread the whole thing. That’s definitely what I wanted to do. So I started to do it. Scrolled all the way up, read the first couple lines.
Growing up, I’d heard, “Shut your piehole, cakeface,” a couple or three times a week from my father. The piehole thats shutting he’d demand was rarely mine, though.
What a start! What rhythm. What voice. And there, right there in the second line of the book: my great, lasting contribution to English as it’s written—what I imagined would be my great, lasting contribution; one of my great and lasting contributions: that seemingly humble, yet revolutionary innovation that is the word thats. Over the last couple months, I’d completely forgotten about my thatses. How could I have forgotten? Would thats not be, for English, what fisting (according to Trip’s account) had been for sex? Well, maybe I was getting a little carried away. But still.
Thats was a word that every speaker of English made use of. Whenever it came time to attribute the possession of something to nonliving things (or even, for that matter, nonhuman animals), whose had always sounded wrong; whose had never sounded right to anyone; and formulations involving of which were often too clumsy, inefficient, even a little (or a lot) pretentious-sounding. That’s the reason why people said thats. So why had no one before me thought to write it down? Because of the word that’s? Maybe. Yet there was it’s and there was also its. That’s was no reason to forgo thats. Nor was that ever pluralized into thats; that became those. So there was no reason not to formally recognize thats as a word, no reason whatsoever not to teach thats in school. No good reason, anyway. And yet how could it be? How could it be that after so many years of so many millions of people speaking English, I, Belt Magnet, 1975–, would be the one to provide the OED with its first citation for thats? I couldn’t see how it could be, yet it was. Perhaps I was missing something? Maybe I was crazy?
I typed up alternates of this memoir’s second sentence to try to get a better sense of whether I was crazy.
The piehole whose shutting he’d demand was rarely mine, though.
The piehole the shutting of which he’d demand was rarely mine, though.
However, of the pieholes he’d demand be shut, mine was rarely one.
I was not crazy. Thats was superior. Thats was a winner. I would be in the canon. All I had to do was finish writing the memoir.
But writing could wait. First I wanted to continue reading what I had. And before I did that, I wanted to enjoy the moment. To bask in my accomplishment. To enjoy the feeling that I’d done something important, that I might be important, the coiner of thats.
I set my elbows on the desk, rested my head on the heels of my palms, closed my eyes. And what did I see? What did I, head in hands at my desk, see there on the backs of my maybe-important eyelids while trying better to feel my feeling of being maybe-important?
All I saw at first was the usual: a dark, horizontally ridged glow, almost fingerprint-like, some bright slashes that moved when I moved my eyeballs, and a brighter, peachier glow in the periphery…gorgeous, yes. What I saw, though everyday, was nonetheless gorgeous, but what I saw, reader, was nothing compared with what I felt. And I don’t mean my “feeling” of having done something important (though that was lovely, too). I mean a physical sensation. I felt a hum.
A subsonic hum.
Not a hum then—a vibration. Subsonic, but definitely there, just above my right eye, inside my skull.
Actually, no, not a vibration, in fact, so much as a pressure. A light pressure. A presence. A something. A something of substance.
Eyes still closed, I tried looking upward to see what it was, but there was nothing to see that I hadn’t seen, or I couldn’t roll my eyes back far enough to see it—I rolled them back til they hurt, didn’t see it, let them rest.
But this presence, this something—it was as though I’d discovered a muscle or a tendon I hadn’t known I had; a muscle or tendon I’d never deliberately used before. No, not a muscle or tendon: a limb. A limb I’d never used before. A limb that had, til that moment, been numb.
What was it, this limb, this substance, this presence? Who was I asking? Me? The presence? How could I use it? What did it do? I tried to picture its shape. What was its shape?
As soon as I tried to, I was able to picture it. I pictured a gear.
Not a gear—a spindle.
A glowing gray spindle above my right eye. A glowing gray spindle, smaller and thinner than a first-class postage stamp. Much thinner. How thin? The width of a photon? Perhaps the width of a photon, whatever that meant. It was as thin as possible, this glowing gray spindle, as thin as a glowing shape could possibly be, and it was inside the upper-right quadrant of my skull, an inch or so back from the exterior of my forehead.
I pictured the spindle turning clockwise because—well, what else was there to picture a spindle you were picturing doing inside your head?—and as I was picturing the spindle turning clockwise, I slowly drew the tip of my tongue along the roof of my mouth (from my teeth toward my throat) and, after the spindle had turned about a quarter-revolution, I felt something move: another presence.
And I pictured that: a black, square-shaped presence even smaller than the spindle, just in front of the spindle; directly in front of it; equidistant from the spindle and the exterior of my forehead, and…strangely familiar. Had I pictured this before? This tiny black square? It reminded me of something. I didn’t know what. The square was at a tilt, though. A very slight tilt. The top of the square was tilting toward the spindle, and the bottom of the square was tilting toward my forehead, and along both the top and bottom of the square was a line of white light; more a bracket, really, turned ninety degrees. A [ of light turned ninety degrees right, at the top of the tilted square; and another [ of light turned ninety degrees left at the bottom of the tilted square. So two sideways [s of white light, hugging a slightly tilted square at the top and the bottom. Where had I seen this? I knew I’d seen it.
Again I slowly drew my tongue along the roof of my mouth while picturing the spindle turning clockwise another quarter-revolution, which caused me to picture a sharpening of the angle of the tilt of the square, which tilting both thickened the [s of white light along the square’s top and bottom and lengthened the arms (i.e. of the [s).
Then I drew my tongue quickly along the roof of my mouth, and pictured the spindle turning and turning, rapidly turning, rapidly spinning—six revolutions, seven revolutions—which caused the black square to tilt more and more, and, soon enough, the spindle came to a halt, and the square had all but disappeared; the square was perpendicular to the position it had originally occupied, barely discernible as a thin black line horizontally bisecting the glowing white light, which was no longer two [s, but was itself a square.
||Hey, you. Well, I’ll be! It’s been forever,|| said my desk.
“Did I just—” I thought.
||What? Didn’t catch that. You gotta speak up.||
“Hello,” I said. “Did I just—”
||That’s more like it,|| the desk said. ||I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a mighty long time. It’s been hard for me lately. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the way I’ve been splintering under the drawer—have you noticed? It’s really unpleasant. Started out small, nothing a little sandpaper probably couldn’t have taken care of, but the splinters are developing into cracks, and I think it’s time you—||
The desk’s voice cut out. The split second before its voice had cut out, I, in order to confirm my suspicions, had drawn my tongue top speed along the roof of my mouth in the direction opposite that which I’d previously drawn it, and, in doing so, had rapidly spun the spindle counterclockwise til it halted, which had tilted the square back to its original position—beyond its original position, in fact; it covered all the light, now.
Suspicions confirmed, then! Not only had I, in the square, discovered my gate, but I’d also, in the spindle, found the mechanism by which I could control my gate.
Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I’d discovered the workable representations or operable metaphorical images of my gate and the mechanism by which I could control it. I think that would be more accurate. I certainly don’t think—nor did I think at the time—that I had an actual, physical glowing-gray-spindle-and-black-tilting-square-set inside the upper-right quadrant of my skull.
But whatever’s exactly the best way to phrase what they were, I had access to them, now: my gate and the mechanism by which I could—if I pictured the latter spinning and the former tilting while I dragged my tongue along the roof of my mouth—open and close it.
I’d found my volume knob.
* * *
Except: no.
Or rather, if I’m being entirely honest: maybe. Almost certainly not. No, certainly not.
That is: I was never able to replicate my success. Not even ten seconds later, reader. I tried. Saw the glowing gray spindle, the small black square, drew my tongue back and spun the spindle, which tilted the square, letting in all the light, and the desk said nothing, and I said, “Desk. Hello. Desk!”
And the desk said nothing.
After another few failed attempts, I, unshaken, assumed that the desk was angry at me for my having shut my gate on it; assumed it was willfully ignoring me. But then I picked up my lighter, tried my volume knob out on it, and: nothing.
The lighter, however, had been on my desk, and it was possible, I thought—however unlikely—it was possible the lighter was allied with the desk, felt some affinity with it, some resentment toward me for having upset the desk. Possible, too, the lighter just didn’t like me, had no interest in talking.
So I went downstairs and made contact with inans that hadn’t ever been on or near my desk or my lighter, tried turning the volume knob up with each of them. More nothing. More failure.
Perhaps turning up the volume was more intricate an operation than I’d realized?
Maybe, I thought, it could only work if my eyes were closed? or if my eyes were closed while my head was at rest on the heels of my palms? if my elbows were at rest on a hard, flat surface while my eyes were closed and my head was at rest on the heels of my palms? None of that worked, and after none of that had worked—I’d spent hours trying, adjusting positions, changing locations—I thought maybe the trouble was that I was picturing the spindle or the square incorrectly: maybe the spindle I was picturing was actually a little bit larger than it had been when I’d opened my gate to the desk; or maybe the square was a little bit smaller. I adjusted the sizes, met with more failure. So maybe, I thought, I had the mouth part wrong: perhaps the pressure I applied to my palate with my tongue had to be lighter, or heavier, or…
I won’t bother detailing all the thousands of tiny adjustments I made toward the cause of opening my gate a second time. Suffice it to say that all attempts failed. They failed over and over, hundreds of times per day, every day for over two weeks before I began to accept the possibility that the opening of my gate at my desk had nothing to do with any volume knob; nothing to do with picturing spindles and squares and making movements with my tongue; that it had all just been a random and meaningless coincidence; that my gate had only just happened to open and close while I was vividly picturing tilting a square by spinning a spindle by moving my tongue. And then it took another week of failed attempts—fewer per day, from hundreds down to scores—before I finally did accept the meaninglessness of the coincidence, and gave up entirely.
Almost entirely. Once in a while—earlier today, for example, while I was right in the middle of writing the description of the square, this happened—a little glimmer of hope that my volume knob is real will catch me by surprise, and I’ll make an attempt. I’ll picture the spindle and picture the square, and I’ll lick at my palate, and picture the resultant movement and light, and nothing else will happen. I’ll fail every time. I’ve failed every time.
And every time I fail, now, I feel like a fool, and I’m ashamed of myself. And that isn’t a complaint. When you act like a fool, you should feel like a fool and be ashamed of yourself.
In fact, the reason I ultimately quit Panacea (though I didn’t understand it this way at the time) was that it denied me the capacity to feel like a fool and be ashamed of myself: the most important capacity for a writer to have. And, sure, yes—or maybe, at least—that’s an overstatement, the most important capacity for a writer to have. But during the three-plus weeks I was taking the stuff and foolishly failing over and again to use my nonexistent volume knob (and yet not feeling foolish or ashamed of myself for continuing to try), I was so very blinded by all my own brilliance and assured success (citation in the OED, etc.) that, apart from those alternative second lines of this book that are copied out in the section above, I didn’t write even a single sentence. And although I never stopped enjoying the Panacea-induced “increased acumen and sense of well-being,” once I’d started to suspect I might not really have a volume knob, I did enjoy it less. Or maybe I enjoyed it just as much, but just as much was no longer enough. Or perhaps there’s no difference.
A person, I suppose, can get used to anything, can grow tired of anything, even borderline-manic shameless enjoyment. In any case, I did. I grew tired of it. I grew tired of walking around full of hope, believing in a volume knob I couldn’t use; grew tired of believing that the next time I tried might prove successful. And I grew tired of believing that I was a genius; grew tired of believing that wasn’t in contention.
In other words—and despite not really understanding this yet—I’d grown tired of my incapacity to feel like a fool and be ashamed of myself. So I quit the drug.
Before I quit it, however, the Panacea and the shamelessness the Panacea allowed for did help me get something not-minor done.
* * *
About two weeks after my initial dosage, I received another letter from my father, postmarked ___________, Spain, containing a check for $3,300. I think that when he wrote the letter, he may have been feeling awkward about the confessional quality of his previous two letters. This one was all-business.
Dear Belt,
I found a bank here with branches in ________ and Paris where I can deposit American checks without getting my ass raped too roughly on fees, so I’d like you to start sending me your SSDI checks to Sal’s address (the one on the envelope) as they come, and then I’ll send you a check from my American account as I receive the ones you send to me. I decided that since I’ve got all this settlement dough now, I’m going to stop deducting rent and utilities and food and etc., and just give you the whole $550 a week instead of just $300 a week. That’s why the check that comes with this letter is $3300 instead of $1800. If that makes you feel weird or something, say so, and we’ll talk about it. Seems right to me, though. Along with the SSDI checks, please mail me the utility and mortgage bills too so I can pay them. I hope you’ll write soon or call.
