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By Root 326 0

assigned place. The furniture was arranged just so. Seven yellow candles, no electric lights. I sat dead center on the big couch in my sheet, which was the most they had been able to get me to go along with by way of clothing for some time, Simon on my right, Sankara on my left. Sy and André had the seats on either side of the couch. The tea consisted of one huge mug placed in front of me. After a bit of ceremonial rambling I’d gulp down the tea and spit back the last swallow, which was then passed around and theoretically drunk by the others.

That the tea tasted a bit strange wasn’t wholly attributable to my disordered perceptions. It was loaded with vitamins, protein concentrate, brewer’s yeast, and anything else they could think of. My sense of taste was as badly screwed up as all my other senses, which had a lot to do with my giving up food in the first place and is also why so many schizies think they’re being poisoned. I don’t care how much you trust the people around you, you trust your own senses more. It sure don’t taste like tomato juice.

I was very grateful that they were poisoning me. As usual, I was looking at things in more than one way, but I couldn’t see anything but good coming from it. First, I had reached the point where whenever I could think straight enough to want anything, I wanted to die. They were putting me out of my misery.

Second (a bit more complicated), at each tea party they concocted a new and yet more deadly poison. Each segment of humanity mixed up what to them was “poison” and flew it into Vancouver. If I drank it and survived they’d come over to our side, they’d believe that pain and fear were unnecessary, that nothing was poisonous. Some of the poisons were of the pedestrian sort, like cyanide and arsenic, but more often I was drinking distilled hatred and guilt, racism, greed, and the like. My body might be useless in terms of the things I wanted to do with it, but it had been transformed into a filter through which all the poisons of the Earth could pass and come out sweet and pure as spring water.

This of course was all beside the point to my friends. They were just grateful to have stumbled on a way to get some nutrients into a starving friend.

FATHER. “Good night, sweet prince, whoever you were or thought you were. Please let me go, Mark.” Dad.

Of all the awful news I was dealing with, Virge’s death in the earthquake, impending nuclear holocaust, my father’s suicide hit me hardest. None of my friends came right out and told me. Things hadn’t exactly been going my way and it looked like I’d pretty much had my quota of news. But I knew.

From as early as I was old enough to worry about such things I had worried about his either drinking himself to death or blowing his brains out. He had hinted at it fairly broadly from time to time. Sometimes I thought the only thing holding him back was fear of how it would affect me. “Sons of suicides find life lacking…”—Rosewater.

Being still able to talk with him took some of the sting away. He actually seemed pretty cheerful. Maybe he had somehow driven me nuts just so he could say good-by and explain a lot of things he hadn’t been able to before.

“I’m sorry about this, Mark, but think how hard it would be for me to resist this sort of thing. I just wanted to dance with you once before I left.”

How can it be true

That I’m talking to you

In a way so like never before

It’s a trick

It’s a snap

Someone saw through the crap

We’re in a whole nother ball game

I’m calling on you

With a Jewish Hindu

I forgot to use the phone

There’s nothing to do

The shit’s hit the fan

Would you rather waltz or cancan?

I don’t understand

How I’m holding your hand

But it sure beats being alone

I cheated I lied

Found what’s inside

I broke all the rules

Used illegal tools

It should have been done long before

I was always convinced

That my words should be minced

But now it seems things have changed

The thought that it matters

Gives my heart patters

Who’s trying to tell me it’s so?

That there’s something to gain?

From this ass-busting