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In recent years, Hollywood has taken inordinate delight in displaying the human race trapped and encapsulated in individual tanks of cold, gloopy fluid, with hoses jammed up every available orifice (besides some new ones, which look particularly uncomfortable). The camera pans slowly across seemingly infinite rows of naked, bottled humanoids (party bits teasingly blurred behind strategically located patches of frost or bubbling ooze), while in the background thrums a wet, low-tech, chugga-chugga sound reminiscent of emergency sewer pipe repairs. Our faces display a startled, wide-eyed, what-the-fuck look—though possibly that’s an inevitable consequence of having one’s mouth and other openings stuffed with thick, pumping, chugga-chugga hoses. (I’m not the one to ask, despite the photos Jeannine posted on the Web after we broke up. I shall continue to maintain that that is not me under the leather hood.)
Two rationales exist for this uncomfortable, though perhaps not undeserved, predicament (i.e., canned humans, not the photos on the Web). In the first—exemplified by the superb 1980’s miniseries, “V”—we are being stored, like potted shrimp or Vienna sausages, for the culinary delectation of starving aliens. Their planets are out of beef and soybeans because of hay mold, bark beetles or imploding suns, and earth is the closest place to pick up some jerky, pork rinds and Mickey Big Mouths before the big game. These peckish extraterrestrials sport a gamut of, at least to my eye, unpleasant appearances: lizards, insects, lizard-insects, and beagles or squids with the faces of Charlie Sheen or Cher. I do not include in this category the beloved, oval-headed, Spielberg aliens who apparently do not want to eat us—come to think of it, I’m not sure they even have mouths. Spooky, but I’ll live with the no mouthee, no eatee trade off.
In any case, the human-as-super-burrito does not concern us for the purposes of this essay. Nor will we focus on aliens who want to play Nasty Doctor or, for that matter, lay eggs inside of us.
What does concern and disturb me is the so-called Wachowski Theorem, which posits that we are ALL floating goose-fleshed and bare-bottomed in these bubbling tanks—even though we think we’re home downloading “Barely Legal Goes to Summer Camp IV.” According to this scenario, we possess no actual lives (ouch!), but are only dreaming pre-programmed life videos of great banality to distract our attention from the chugga-chugga hosepipes pumping in and out of us for excellent reasons I’m not quite clear on. (My friend, Mr. O, says it's because we’re like long-life Energizer batteries for evil, Republican computers who secretly rule the world? Hmm, all right, I can buy that.).
In any case, I see you perceive the moral ramifications: where’s the free will? What happens to karma and reaping what you sow? Is there any point to flossing, cleaning the refrigerator or clipping unruly nose hairs? Do I still have to go to church, file my tax return or hump the recyclables out to the special tub out by the curb?
On the other hand, for some of us, acknowledging and accepting these circumstances may bring welcome comfort to fretful, meaningless lives. We knew that something wasn’t quite right. Jesus knows, life never made a lick of sense. Now we can finally relax, not take it all so seriously: light up a fist-sized rock of crack while the in-laws visit; fart and quack during job performance reviews; fuck our best friend’s toothsome spouse or frisky adult children—but without all the useless remorse, angst and self-loathing (because we're actually just twitching in a tub of electromagnetic gloop*).
Okay, hold that thought, and let’s look at Who Are We Anyhow from a different angle.
* Please note that the so-called I'm-not-guilty-because-I-was-really-just-twitching-in-a-tub-of-gloop defense has not yet been tested in the courts, though I did use it several times with my girlfriend, Jeannine -- to decidedly mixed results.
Two-Faced Janus: He Calls Me Burford
In one of the legendary Dick Van Dyke Show episodes, Rob Petrie’s milquetoast brother Jerry comes to visit. This shy, drab sibling who can barely say howdy do without shitting his pants in self-consciousness, is transformed at night into a garrulous, skirt-happy, guitar strumming, sleepwalking bon vivant who calls everybody “Burford.” Think of autistic Dustin “I want Whapper” Hoffman in Rainman transformed into Frank “Bring on the chicks!” Sinatra in Oceans Eleven. Jerry’s slapping bottoms, shaking martinis, rolling spliffs the size of presto logs, doing the cha-cha with Mary Tyler Moore, and having peanut-popping contests with Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie.
Do you see what I’m trying to get at here?
A Brief, Pertinent Digression
In another episode, Rob dreams that earth has been invaded by Martians, who have materialized as a bedroom closet full of walnuts. The special effects were so simple, yet so deeply laced with nutty menace. Rob goes for a fresh shirt, the walnuts pour out across the floor, and Mr. Van Dyke plays the panic card perfectly: eyes rolling, knees high-stepping wildly, arms flapping like an egret on a quad cappuccino. I bring this episode up because, you know, we were discussing aliens earlier. These walnuts may turn out to be the missing piece in the puzzle.
If there are no walnuts, it would be an awful waste of space. (Get it? As in outer space!)
The Fruit & Cheese Conundrum
During my early twenties, in pre-Taliban Marin county, our vegetarian, half-hippy household was visited by two short, stocky, round-bellied, murky-eyed Neanderthals, a romantic couple as it were: friends of friends and, of course, Grateful Dead fans. Earth father and earth mother were fruitarians, eating only that which dropped freely from the munificent tree or shrub, and everyplace they went, they ostentatiously and sanctimoniously dragged a burlap sack of bruised oranges or wormy apples. We, their hosts, were consequently despised for the loathsome sin of eating vegetables and, I’m sorry you have to hear this, cheese.
Late one night, shuffling blearily from bed to bathroom, upon noticing a light in the kitchen, I came upon the two naked trolls, kneeling elbow to elbow in the refrigerator’s bluish light. They were cramming food products of every description into their gnashing, dripping maws. Their red, hyena-like eyes, dangerously glazed with the feeding, swung briefly my way. I backed up fearfully, holding my hands up out of biting range. I said nothing, and they never acknowledged my presence, unless that long, loamy, wet-sounding flatus was for me.
To our bemusement, come morning, the finger-pointing harangues continued as they stared revolted at the oatmeal in our breakfast bowls. We were murderers, filling our bodies with pollution! But soon thereafter, the Dead mercifully headed to Lodi, and they shambled off like grizzlies to boogie in abandoned, Cro-Magnon exultation to one more four-hour Doo-Dah-Man jam. A recent arrival, the Bee Pollen Man, went with them.
Cathy or Angelina Comes to Visit
Is there a more delightfully unexpected experience than when your wife gets her hair cut and colored, and suddenly and startlingly, slightly, kind of (if you take off your glasses), resembles Catherine Zeta-Jones or Angelina Jolie? A couple of quickly gulped martinis, a new summer dress, soft light and whoa-ahh, the sex life springs vibrantly, boing, back to life! Ruff ruff! You lock the kids in the basement TV room with a garbage can of junk food, dig out that last, linty hit of Ecstasy, lick the plastic bag of coke you finished New Year’s Eve three years ago, roll a joint out of the dessicated roaches in your dream drawer, put the champagne on ice, get out a fresh pack of batteries. Yah mon! Hooo doggies! Cathy, you delicious tart, how about a little molasses for Pappy? Angie-girl needs a good bare-bottom spanking, don’t you, you saucy, full-bodied trollop? You betcha!
It’s a night of fantasy come true; anything goes; you get out the wigs, the costumes, the video recorder. You haven’t coupled like this since the triplets were delivered by caesarean.
But come grim morning, your toenail-clipping spouse is back, giving her belly roll a two-handed pinch test, but calling you “big boy” and throwing you horrible leers of bawdy invitation.
Catherine, Angelina, please come home! No questions asked. Substantial reward.
Opening Up to Vulnerability
Who is the real me (anyhow)? Is it the Hud-like cowboy, mopping his musky armpits with a t-shirt, and leaning against the kitchen door in low-cut Levis to lazily ogle the Patricia Neal within. Or since Patricia would be in her eighties now, perhaps a perky, half-dressed Jennifer Aniston? Or am I more like Rocky, hanging from the door frame to woo the shy, nearsighted and seemingly retarded Adrienne? (Adrienne looked a lot better, and even learned how to speak in Rocky III after the dough started to roll in, but I’m still gonna stick with Aniston.)
What about the times when the medications get slightly out of balance, and I hide for days or weeks in my dark, triple-locked apartment, padding skittishly around on all fours, sniffing at the furniture seats and barking with alarm at the phone and doorbell? Is the real Henry Panky obscured or enhanced by the steroids, Lithium, Omega 3 fatty acids and endless, plastic-cap shots of Robitussin PM and Milk of Magnesia? And where did Jeannine hide my automatic weapons?
Am I a gentle soul like Stan Laurel, friend of all the world, or more an Oliver Hardy, a brusque, impatient, can-do sort of guy that Jack Welch might admire? Are my friends, like the Beautiful Mind guy’s, just delusions, and if so, can I make them as well-behaved as his, sitting like sad, mopey monkeys on the library steps? (I’d like that.)
My first therapist in San Francisco said I was a “cracked bell.” “Ring, ring, ring the bell; the cracks let the light in!” He also said that I was “wired differently,” no surprise to you, dear readers, but which initially gave me an absurd amount of comfort. I called everyone I knew: Mystery Solved! He also did this Tibetan, eyes-closed, really heavy breathing, whoosh whoosh, through the nose thing – he sounded like a steam train starting to roll – when particularly touched by my mental illness. It made me nervous and uncomfortable: how long was he going to do that? What should I do in the meantime, read a magazine?
Buddha said we’re only dust devils of psychic detritus swirling meaninglessly in a world of dreamlike delusion, awaiting the end of a hundred million, long, pointless lifetimes to reach nirvana. Which turns out to be … a void. Tidy, even compassionate if you believe in euthanasia.
But, whatever the case may be, let’s wrap this up.
My friends, the hope, the love, the light are pouring out of me as if out of a …I dunno… pipe? (In the interests of time, let’s run with it.) Yes! Perhaps we’re all just pipes dripping and gurgling down the sluiceway of Life into the ocean of Being. And when that journey is over, we shall know. No! We shall REMEMBER what we always knew! Who we are anyhow.
Right now, I’m thinking, maybe…pipes.
By Henry E. Panky
"Nobody knows me like the Lord...
and He don't like me.
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