Oh, did I tell you about the time I got slipped a micky? No, I'm serious, it really happened. Ask Howard (you know him, I introduced you last week, at Cindy's party. Yes, I did. The one with the lambchops. Yeah, him), he'll tell you. No, he wasn't there. If he was there, you think he'd've let some stranger do that to me? Ok, maybe he would. Look, do you want to hear the story or not?

You know those shakes they have in Zanzibar? The strawberry ones they make with real strawberries while you watch? You know how I like to have one after work, right? I mean, the place is quiet, they got newspapers, there's not too many creeps, usually mostly students and couples eating dinner, at least when I go there. I hear it gets a bit rowdier around 10ish, but I'm usually asleep by then, you know that, so I've never seen it myself. Yeah, those shakes they have there cost a lot, but once you get hooked, there ain't no way you're going to stop drinking them. Hey, I exercise enough. I gotta enjoy it somehow. If anyone thinks I'm too fat, fuck them, ok? You should hear my nana: "You so skinny. I make you some nice lasagna. You like my lasagna. Come now, munca! Munca!" Well, I was almost through my shake, when this guy sits next to me.

No, he wasn't cute. He was old. And fat. And bald. With this nasty, ratty beard. And I think he was married. You know how people get tan-lines around their rings? He had one, in just the wrong place. I mean, he's at least twice my age. Let me put it this way, he was wearing McGregor tennis shoes, you know those $5 ones from K-Mart, those. A grown man, presumably a professional, and those are the shoes he wears.

So this guy sitting next to me, he turned to me and says,

"You know, in nature, there is no hierarchy."

Now, I'm trying hard not to laugh, you know this, but this is the most original pick-up line I've ever heard, even at Zanzibar's. And you do get some odd ones there. Like the one about the dog and the aunt. Did I ever tell you about that? Alright, not again, ok.

Anyway, I say, "Really." I can't help it. I gotta smile, so I gotta listen more.

"Really," he goes, "It's all humanity's doing. Our patriarchical culture fucking with our heads."

He's saying this real smooth, like a late night DJ. Later Howard tells me he does the Sunday morning jazz for WEMU, but I don't know this then.

All I know is this guy is soft-sell Alpha-male if I ever did see one. He's got that whole sensitive professor look going on, you know, like he'll educate you (you know he'd like to). He's even wearing a camel-hair jacket, elbow patches and everything.

So he goes on, and I'm sitting there, drinking my shake, and he's getting weirder. He's laying out this whole theory, which he bases on this frog critic, and he says it like he's said it a thousand times before, pausing in just the right places for me to say "Right" and "Uh-huh," which I don't, I'm trying too hard not to laugh (I mean, he has to chose the only botanist in the whole room to tell this to, doesn't he?), but he doesn't notice.

I guess that line's worked before for him. I mean, this is Zanzibar, right? Believe it or not, people there actually take the Village Voice seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if one of those fuckbunnies hadn't banged him based on that little spiel alone.

"You want another of those?" he asks, and before I can do anything, he gets me another one. I don't even get a chance to try and pay for it. I mean I was going to say no, but you know, he was too quick. Ok, you're right, it takes a while to make, but have you ever had one of those shakes? Then you don't understand, do you? Anyways, I'm thinking, he's harmless, right? What's he going to do, we're in a crowded bar (well, ok, Zanzibar is more of a restaurant, but we were at the bar part, you think I'm waiting for a table, for just a shake?) and it isn't even that late. After all, it was still light out, the sun had just set.

Before the bartender can give me the shake, this guy (I find out his name is Arwulf) takes it from him and makes a great show of presenting it to me, with flourishes and everything, like it's from God on high. This is when I find out his name, he says, get this, he says "The humble Arwulf presents you with the ambrosia of Olympus." God, what a pompous git.

So I drink the shake. It's good, of course (not that there was any doubt) and he's trying to talk me up, but I'm doing my best to blow him off. I mean, I don't think I even looked his way once while I was drinking it. I mean, I even drank it all through the straw, not once did I use the spoon, just to keep my mouth busy, and those shakes can get mighty thick, let me tell you.

So I finished, and then I got up to go, but I'm not feeling my feet, and I think to myself maybe I was sitting funny, maybe my legs fell asleep, and Arwulf is grabbing my arm and helping me up. I try to tell him not to, to go away, but he didn't pay any attention and my arms are falling asleep too.

Then, somehow, we got to the Arb, I think the entrance on Geddes was the one we used, but I'm not sure. No, wait, it has to be, because there were cars going by fast and that's the only one that has parking anyway. So, I'm at the Arb, and it's not too late yet, and I think the sun didn't set more than half an hour before, and you know how it gets right at dusk, right after the streetlights turn on but before they can do any good, and you're not using your night vision yet, but your normal vision just isn't working, well, that's how it was, everything just kind of grey, and I wasn't feeling anything anywhere. So he guides me into the Arb, more like he was dragging me, but I can't move my own self. He was talking, I think saying something about getting back to nature or some bullshit like this. And we go down the road, but no one else is there to see him taking me around like this, and you know that hill, the one at the bend in the tender's road, the one where all the chronics get together on late at night, that's where we stopped. He was still talking, I don't think he ever stopped, well, not while he was conscious.

I look at him, and he's all I can see. The rest of the place is just, well, not quite a blur, but more like just not there. My eyes just kind of slip over it, you know? And I look at him, and well, he's got this smile, no, it wasn't really a smile, but more like a skull's grin, yeah, a rictus, that's it. Anyways, I'm looking at him, and I gotta lean on him, because I can't stand anymore, and he's the only thing I can see or feel and I think if I fall I won't stop, I'll just fall through the road forever.

He grabs me, I don't know where, and I think he sat me down. I'm not sure about that, but my legs weren't under me anymore, that's for sure. He leaned into me, like he wanted a kiss. Well, you know there was no way in hell I was going to kiss him. Even if he didn't have that nasty beard (I don't think he ever washed it. It smelled like eggs and cheese.), I wouldn't have, so I pull back, but I can't, cause like I can't see or feel or anything.

He grabs the back of my head, and I try to hit him, but my hand is going so slow, it's like I'm looking at it frame by frame, and I don't know what I'm doing or he's doing but his head hits mine, and get this, you'll never believe it, but I swear to you this is what happened, at least this is what I remember happening.

Instead of kissing me, it's like his head, it went into mine, it went through mine. You know how matter­ is mostly space, right? You know if the waveforms are just a little bit, just a smidgen, in the wrong way, two chunks can occupy, not the same space, but closer than we're used to dealing with. Well that's what it felt like, like his head and mine were in the same space, or close enough. No, no shit. Go ahead, don't believe me, but I tell you, that's what it felt like. Yeah, like a neutron star, that's right.

And then, when we were in each others heads, well, I guess we ended up sharing thoughts, neurons firing too close to each other and the chemicals mixing up, I guess, or at least, enough to make this next bit even weirder.

Up on a hill he was, something made of clouds that wrapped around both of us, and me buried up to my waist in it. My arms were trapped behind me. Clouds can be strong, if you think of them that way. Now, at first I was a bit shocked by this, and I didn't move at all while he was growing bigger and bigger while I looked at him.

And then the cloud (which I think was as much part of him as anything else), that cloud swelled and became not just a hill, but a floating fortress, with a moat of open air around it, with my head hanging in it and my arms and legs in the wall. It really felt like my hair was wet, I swear. He was just standing there, looking at me, and my head felt like it was emptying. You know how you feel just between dreams, if you wake up for a little bit from the REM and then slip back in? Exactly not like that is how I felt, and for the first time, I could look at him (before, he'd been behind a cloud, covering his form, more like blurring it just enough) but it parted, and he reached forward for me.

But then I saw that he had hair, here, and he was a lot slimmer, so I knew that it had to be a fantasy, and God knows it wasn't mine, not yet. And if it was a fantasy, no reason I can't put my own spin on things. So I think, and I think hard, but nothing happens, at least not so I can see. And I remember, when I was young and I tried and tried not to have nightmares, but they would be worse the more I tried, kind of like trying not to think of something will guarantee that you dwell on it for hours.

And then I relax, but not too much, because I still want to be aware of the fact that I hate his guts and I have to get out of his dreams. And when I do that, I start thinking of work, how that bitch Shelley is getting away with murder because she's sleeping with our supervisor, which is always a good way to get me good and mad. (I didn't tell you about that? Oh, later, but you know, she hasn't been in the field since the weather got nasty? Yeah, and she completely contaminated our samples last week, but what does he do, just smiles at her and blames me. It's all real 50's, let me tell you.) By the time I get back around to thinking about what's happening now (I mean then in the cloud, but you knew that), the cloud has pulled back enough where even my feet are free. It was kind of comfy, once I wasn't trapped. Hey, it is like sleeping on a cloud, just like those commercials say, and they must of worked on me at least.

So I think to myself, lying there in that pocket in the clouds, get back to nature, he said. Ok, not exactly, you're right. Close enough, ok? Anyways, I deal with nature every day, that's my job. Kill, eat, shit, fuck, and die, that's nature. I figure he wants to see what nature thinks of hierarchy, I'll show him.

So I make some trees. No, I don't know how, I just think them there, and they grow in the middle of his clouds, and when the clouds hit the trunks, the clouds shatter like they were ice hit just so. I think not thinking about them is what made them, just wanting something there, and the trees popped up. And boy, did they ever pop up. They broke through his clouds like crazy. Their roots got together and made a rather nice road between them. The more his clouds broke, the faster and farther the trees grew.

A whole city grew up, with little squirrels in suit-coats driving acorn cars. No, I'm not shitting you. That's what I remember. Ok, I might have some odd thoughts some times. You know the squirrels are plotting to take over the world. Might as well use them for myself before they do, right?

Soon enough, his clouds are gone, and what the trees don't break, the squirrels eat, and the pieces are falling like hail. He's on his knees in front of me, on that root street, and his hair is falling back out, and he's getting fatter, and all around him are little squirrel children in knickers (Yes, knickers. Let me tell the damn story, ok? Ok.), eating any cloud he tried to summon, like it was cotton candy.

So, from this city of trees, vines sprout, and cover him, and shove their way down his throat and through his eyes, and it doesn't look like he's happy about this, at least as much as I can see his face under those weeds that are crawling into him. He must have gotten full, because while he was swallowing the vines and they started growing back out through his skin.

They carried up above me, just where he wanted to be, and the vines twisted so he was upside down and I could look at him right in the eyesockets full of my weeds. I think he could see me. It was a fantasy, wasn't it? No reason why it had to follow any rules, or make any sense to anyone but me and him. And him I wasn't too concerned with.

So he's hanging up there, way high up, and his hair becomes vines and then the rest of his body, and he was just a part of the forest. He stopped moving, but I don't think he was dead, just tired and unoriginal. I mean, this was just in our mind. I know I would have imagined maybe a chainsaw or a machete or maybe some weedkiller to get me free. But he doesn't think that way, I think. And all he was was a great, big, fat, clump of weeds like a knot in a shoelace way up high.

Then the vines withered, green, yellow, brown, then grey and crumbling into dust, blowing away in the light wind whirling through the city streets, spiraling as the dust fell and scattered, coating everything beneath and even me (no, I didn't think of an umbrella, at least not fast enough) with a fine layer of ash.

And then I pulled back from the soul kiss. It wasn't too hard, I just had to decide I wanted too, I suppose. I think I took a bit of him with me, cause I had a bit of a headache, but that could just be from having our heads together. I think I gave him a serious mindfuck, in the Discordian sense, cause he wasn't as kosher as he was when he started raping my head, and that's saying something.

So there he is, sitting next to me, gasping for breath, his eyes are huge, like they're going to come right out onto his face. And the pupils. Two, three centimeters wide, at least. About an inch. Laymen. Use real measurements, ok? Fucking British shit. And get this, he has drool all over his chin. This is not something which I want to see. I smack him. I mean, he did drug me. I have every right. He doesn't do anything, his head doesn't even move. So, I punch him, right in the solar plexus, like my mother taught me. He just falls down, sideways, and lies there. And I'm pissed. Can you imagine? And he's not reacting at all and I don't like that one bit. After what he put me through, I deserve at least an "I'm sorry," you know? So I get up, and I kick him and I kick him and I kick him some more (hey, my legs are strong. All that running is good for something), but he doesn't do anything, not even yell. I keep it up and I don't get tired for a long time. But not one word from that fucker. No, he wasn't dead. He was breathing the whole time. I think. He might have been a vegetable, though. He'd have had to be, what with me kicking him and all.

So I sat back down, and I watched him while I regained my breath. Kicking someone like that can wind you, let me tell you. Makes you kind of hungry. No, it didn't make me horny. Freak. So you know what I did next? You'll never guess. No, I didn't take his wallet. He was a philosophy professor. What would be in it? Though I did look for more of the drug, and I found it, and I opened his mouth, and I dumped it all down that asshole's throat, and I stood back and watched myself shove his head through the cement.

© 1997 Joseph Cadotte

Return from whence you came.