Eponym

10/31 I know youve read the ending first, Future Reader, theres no denying it. Please transmit it through time and space as soon as possible. I know it will all end soon. Spoon, loon, tomb. My transmissions travel at the speed of thought, which is everywhere at once. Thats the difference between me and them, pencils and pens, forks and knives, cakes and pies, truth and lies. Its the difference between running for your health and running for your life. The lyrics to my life are words moving at light speed to you through electrical and digital devices. Lots of them moving at the speed of thought. The notches on the ladder up and down and through the abyss of human emotions. I want to kill the demon in control of this body for sweating in such a piggish, narcissistic manner. How dare he! Doesnt he know what a great artist I am? I suppose he doesnt see the wires and the recording devices and the psychic beings at my beck and call. I suppose some fools would refuse to see God if He walked among us. Very well. If this is the punishment my behavior dictates, fine. But genius is genius. The Marquis de Sade was treated like a mad man and he was just trying to write feverishly and fuck at a rabid rabbits pace. Charles Manson just wanted to be singer and when he couldnt make it he went crazy. Watch the unconscious, its a beautiful thing. Ananyaannay wory worry wrorrrms warts farts smarts karts k-marts. Devils melvins nirvana shamalamma salami jewelry and loans, koans, moans. Martini special steven perry joe frankenmuller bueller, bueller, bueller. Wait till they get a
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load of bees. Killer bees killer bees beeswax. Clak clak clak clak clak. I know my genius will be recognized after my time is up and that is fine. I imagine that you are in your special reading chair picking up this masterpiece from a century ago that your English professor recommended but that you never thought to read until your significant other said the words crazy, brilliant and alien in the same sentence and your subconscious immediately thought of my name. Then I imagine you sprinted to a bookstore, or to an online computer, or telepathically sent an order to the books-on-whatever-media-there-is-in-the-future. Its in the previously banned books section of your superhighway of information. Words are costly, inspiration is more. What you paid for is a good price because what you get is infinitely precious. Oh please, you say, save the boring, grandiose language for less experienced readers. Oh really! Well how about this: I am from another planet, and life on Earth gets tough for a young alien. Observe: Ive told future publishers of this novel to include full color photographs of my arms with particular detail to my freckles. On split pages you will notice the constellations Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Big Dipper and Orion. There, on the right arm, right where Orions penis should be, there is a bright red birthmark. Or there would be if birthmarks didnt fade. Anyway, trust me, when I was a kid, a red birth mark stuck out just down and to the left of Orions belt and there you would see a red mark, indicating the location of my home planet. The geniuses my people are, they provided me with maps to find my way home. But what they didnt realize was that the people of Earth are not advanced enough in many respects: one, you all lack the sophisticated telescopes, crafts and satellites to observe planetary systems that are so far away; two, your cheeseburgers, fries and other tasty foods shorten human life to the degree that these things will not be achieved in my lifetime; and three, you lock up anyone intelligent enough to realize his situation!

November 1

Dr. Hornblower Director of Psychiatric Counseling Midville Psychiatric Hospital West Main Street Midville Dear Dr. Hornblower, I am writing in regards to my incarceration at this facility. I would like to make it clear that I will do everything in my power to cooperate with the custodians of this facility, the counselors, and any other authorities who may be involved with our case. My willingness to cooperate was exhibited in the past when I agreed to have our lawyer plead us insane. By writing you I acknowledge that this incarceration is a proper reaction to the deeds performed by an opposing party or parties. While I do not condone the actions of such a party or parties, I fully understand the ramifications of their actions. I would like to become an assistant or colleague in bringing forth the responsible party or parties. Please do not hesitate to call upon me for any information. I, for one, have remained clearheaded through all of this nonsense. It is in all of our interests to have this end quickly and efficiently. Sincerely,

Peter Harrison Patient

11/2 This situation is dire. They have me in the smallest room this boy ever contemplated. The Kid. The alien. The genius. Me. How I came to be here is simple and complicated. Simply, I stole my neighbors recliner and when the police came to settle the confusion I put on quite a show for them. The ensuing melee fiasco circus in the courtroom was too much and I cracked up again. Or so they said. I simply spoke the truth and like all great geniuses, the public couldnt accept it. My cockface lawyer pleaded insanity on my behalf, and I suppose a demon in charge of my body agreed with him. I dont object to being here necessarily, just the necessity of the word insane. If I had supreme sovereignty over my psyche I would have objected. Objection, your Honor, my non-lawyer is sucking the marrow from my bank account and the taxpayers dowry. Let these fools fool us no more. I am not crazy. If the court will allow, please admit the recliner as exhibit A and have the members of the jury, my esteemed peers, sit in the chair and recline, recline, recline like the wind and nap. I submit to the court that any human could sit down, pull the escape lever and retreat into a blissful dreamy never-neverland for hours. I know this because my neighbor slept in it between the hours of five and eight oclock in the evenings and his snoring interrupted my great work. Let him stand trial for criminal sonic destruction or chronic septum deviance. Your Honor, deviance, septum or social, shall not be tolerated in this republic. Blah Blah Blah. Habeas corpus. Corpus Christi Texas. Jesus Horatio Christos. Horatio Alger Tangiers beers, blast, furnace, curtains, curtis, Jane Curtain, Dan Akroyd, Phil Hartman, Samson, Delilah, diarrhea, portrait of the artist as a young anarchist. I rest my case. Thus the case could have been thrown out like week-old cabbage, but my pissant lawyer of the State of Confusion pleads me looney. Picture me, the Kid, going coocoo for barcaloungers. Have I slept unlawfully at Recliners-R-Us? Have I hung around black market alleys and purchased the devices from shady truck drivers selling off their cargoes? Do I hide out under the cover of darkness in Sofas n More showrooms? Am I a criminal? No! I am action incarnate. I hear a problem and I deal with it the way an American would. Steal his thunder. Rip his legs out from under him. Take the chair he sleeps in. The complicated answer is that I was born an alien to two very
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normal parents and have no one in this goddamned world to relate to. Cocoon, cocaines, canes, brains, stains, claims, clams, sams, frans, freidas, cloes, suzannes, samanthas, dalenes, tammys, jolenes, tamaras and tomorrows. The beast doesnt cease. I would like to continue talking but the body wants the thing more. I am bouncing up and down on a rubber trampoline and off the walls staring at slots. What comes through is no surprise. I just wish theyd give it to me already. MMM. MM. My my my my music and my brain are on hold until that thing comes. Give it to me, you bastards. You made me an addict and now give the addict what it wants. Feed the addict for the addict is in me and runs my body. And therefore my brain. How unfair. George Orwell taught them how to take a mind and when they found a challenge in me, the Kid, they took the body. I cant function too long without them. I could never run away for too long. My stupid body has decided to crawl across the floor and look through the little doggie door at their white shoes, white pant legs, white tshirts, white whistles, white clipboards, white ceilings fans. No blood anywhere, proving that it isnt human. The beast that the body and I are incarcerated in is not human. Now my body is crying and pleading and embarrassing itself. No respect. None given and none wanted. I feel the biceps twitching and the stomach grumbling and the legs giving out. On all fours sucking at the little chute in the door like a calf at an udder. The brute. The cart is coming down the hall but it cant come fast enough. At once I am disgusted with the bodys behavior and I support it. Bring him his treat so that the little doggie can go to sleep and I can reign supreme on my rightful throne. Ah, the plastic cup is set on a little flip down plate and he sucks down the contents, plastic cup and all. He can relax and I can go freestyle crazy. All I can do is dream of the past with this slovenly pig whispering snores in my ear. A vision of me with green face paint, a headband with two springs sticking straight up in the air and bouncing around two silver Styrofoam balls over my head. This is my first memory. Kindergarten class, Halloween. I sucked down every piece of candy like the body sucks down
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pills. I remember this because it was my first time being myself as I am. A Martian. I had the right attitude, but the incorrect planet. Clean up your act. Thats what the first grade teacher said to this kid. Yours Truly was drawing pictures of the retard in class. A nice brilliant work of the retard shitting and throwing it on the walls of his room. My target cowering under a desk, afraid of my wrath, me with construction paper and those old Number 1 pencils that make dark black coal lines. He hid from my cartooning, caricaturing, my brilliance, and he had the right impulse. I would skewer the less than socially correct with my perceptive wit and nimble mind. You will see. I bounced around on busses for hours as they careened through a dense wilderness similar to Sherwood Forrest in the spring with a fog and the beasts agog at the yellow monster bearing down on them. Mitchell, the senile bus driver, was undead-vampire-style and had no qualms about deadening all furry varmints in his way. It gave a child an appreciation for crosswalks, which is a benefit in my opinion. Mitchells eyes didnt close like normal people, but stayed perpetually at half-mast, much like Clint Eastwoods. In spite of such a terrible force of mechanized menace, the bus was my means of access to the world at that age, being the only child in a neighborhood infused with geriatric thugs with powder blue Cadillacs who could not see much over the steering wheel. Dont play in front yard, said mother. Mr. Clarke cant see anything under five feet tall. Shuntles buggles expediles crocodiles white kitchen tiles frightening lighting alrighty then pigpen Sasquatch soda pop quartz watch frigging ligging water ticking clock inclement judgment canopy moody mole frole parole snollepy soliloquy calliope. The thing that gets me is that the whole time I was growing up I never thought my genius would bring me down. Bring me up, I thought. Up, up and away to the clouds and stars where my real parents awaited. Not like Superman. No physical powers. The physical side was marred; send it to Mars for all I care. Look at it now! Lying in a pool of piss and vomit waiting for the guards to clean it. It is a faulty car, damaged goods. Dont subscribe to the body. Move into the limbo of the mind and soul and you shall never want. Contemplate this: the big city regurgitates its unwanted masses and sends them jettisoning out of the metropolis via the bridges and tunnels to
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suburbs where these wretches can play in Gods breadbasket. They mix with the good country folk and you have what? A utopia of different cultures mixing and learning from each other, a true melting pot, right? No such luck, duck. You get twisted Midville nowhere land, my home on Earth. Midville, at once innocent and yet so corrupt. A spot between two bigger and brighter stars in the universe. So there I was, a place between two places. The shortest prospect from here to there is a straight welfare line. And when I was growing up they said give us your fired, your bleak, your sore muddled masses of those asses. No Lady Liberty, but a Liberty Bus tour to the stop that became home. Was it so wrong for them to come to Midville? My Earth parents had done so many years before. Chore, lore, kilgore, shoreline, grapevine, grave line, shaving time, wind chime, beeline. The last thing my Earth grandmother said to me before she died was: Dont masturbate. God sees you when you masturbate. I will go to Heaven soon and I will see you, too. You dont want God or me to see you, do you? Dont be like that Pee-wee Herman. Not knowing what to say I said, I dont know what to say. I was always an honest child, even before I gave myself the gift. And no, the gift is not masturbation, although I do that in spite of God and my grandmother. She died and I was extremely sad. I didnt know very much about her besides the fact that she smoked and she died of lung cancer. Lung cancer had not been associate with smoking at that time, but when the two were linked we were able to retroactively assign blame on the cancer sticks and do a little revisionist history by claiming that grandma didnt know about the risks involved, as if when she was coughing up black soot every night she thought it was the pot roasts doing. Not much later I discovered that I was an alien. I didnt tell anyone because they couldnt speak my language. If I would say I was an alien they would say I was crazy. Talk about dodging the issue! What I did say was that I wanted a telescope for Christmas. I would like a telescope for Christmas. Oh, I suppose you want to put it in that big window of yours and look out at little Tina changing her clothes. Well, you might get one from Santa but youll be aiming at the sky only, mister. Mother, youre being completely irrational. I do not believe in
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Santa, nor am I interested in Tina. Earth father said, Good boy. Stay away from those I-talians. Again, missing the point. Any fear I had of them discovering my secret was nullified in this conversation. The biggest thing I found in the sky was Saturn and its wondrous rings. Later in adolescence I discovered two big things on Tinas chest that were wondrous. But that was when the body began to take over and I was beginning to move to a dark corner of the mind. Hapahaph blue shoes dancing in the rain, singing laughing and puddling the mud in pools of blood I sing these words to the girls in the back row and under the snow or down below. I feel its necessary to relate to you the idea that not all outer shells can be judged easily. I learned this very early. I had a baby sitter, an African American Black Woman of Color named Jill. The slit-eyed Mitchell in the yellow monster would drop me off at the end of our street. Jill met me there every day and walked me up the street to the house. The bus wouldnt come by the house because no other kid lived down the street, thus it wasnt time efficient to make a special stop for the Kid, the genius. So Jill, with her sore feet from years of chasing after little brats like me, hobbled down the street to make sure that I was safe. Jill, can I eat spaghetti for lunch? Jill said, I dont know. Do you promise to take a nap? I cant promise anything, but I will try to the utmost of my abilities. Then thats my answer to your question as well. Jill! I whined. Whiners and criers never get what they want. Doers do. What does that mean? I think youll see what I mean when you grow a little older. I couldnt tell Jill my secret, even though I loved her as much as my Earth parents. If I told her she might not have believed me. She seemed to know things. Things I didnt know. Maybe she would prove the nonexistence of such extraterrestrial beings with complex charts and theorems from books she checked out of the adult section of the library,
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which I was not allowed into. I mean, I was a genius, but how could I expect to compete with the adult world? Im bored, Jill. Cant we leave the library? I read all the childrens books. Bored people are lazy people, honey. Read this one again. Jill was the person who taught me how to tell time. The Earth parents had a chestnut brown clock with a little brass pendulum in the kitchen. It had Roman numerals and a hexagonal face. I remember staring at the clock for hours trying to make out the time from these archaic symbols. One day my Earth parents fired Jill. I never got to say goodbye. That same day they threw out the kitchen clock because they said the color didnt match the new wallpaper for the kitchen. You may be a little weirded out by my constant joggling of time and I apologize for the lack of context clues, but this is a book for expert readers. Arent you glad? Finally you are asked to participate in the creation of meaning. It starts small but it will grow. I want experts, but I dont want you Star Wars geeks. I dont want the types who examine the details to find inconsistencies. In this complex story, inconsistencies abound. Rely on the notion that temporal and spatial realities do not bind me. I am a doer and unlike you whiners and criers, I get what I want in my life. I was six when I discovered I was from another planet.

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November 3

Dr. Hornblower Director of Psychiatric Counseling Midville Psychiatric Hospital West Main Street Midville Dear Dr. Hornblower, I hope you are well after our previous session. I understand that the stains will come out with a bit of bleach and elbow grease, just like mother used to say. I send my apologies to you, sir, for the behavior of my peers. Though I have confined myself to my quarters of the mind, I do feel that we are being misrepresented to some degree by the one who fancies himself a writer. Though I have no interest in writing myself-- one Good Book is all the world needs, mother says -- I do feel the need to tell my side of a complicated story. In short, the basic facts are right but the details are wrong. Midville is a nice suburban town where we grew up, and if it has become a den for hooligans and tomfoolery, then he would know more about it than me. Jill was our caretaker for a time. She was-- and Ill be sure to use the proper term mother used --a colored. We had a connection with her, I suppose. I could not use her to replace what I felt for mother. Jill was an employee and I never forgot that and I hope she did not either. I was the one who led to her dismissal. On occasion, a few of her grandchildren were brought to our house, to accompany me in my playtime I suppose. Their tribal ritualistic play included pricking their fingers to draw blood and touching hands, thus making themselves blood brothers and blood sisters. When they approached me with their knife I was horrified. I felt like a European explorer in the heart of darkest Africa encountering a tribe of cannibals. I ran under my bed and hid until mother returned. She had a similar reaction when I told her about the events of the day. I do not know if this early action means that, prima facie, I am the
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original persona. That would make me the creator of all these others, a notion that causes me great discomfort. But I digress. To be certain, Jill was dismissed abruptly and mother was finally returned to my side. One disgusting comment I must address is in regards to our beloved grandmother, Nanny Harrison. The gall to highlight one errant comment uttered in the twilight of her years when her mental faculties were in question is inexcusable. I cite her pound cake, generous gifts, kind smile and charm as her best characteristics. And she was a God-fearing woman. Hopefully this has set matters straight. I look forward to our next meeting and the eventual healing that needs to take place.

Regards,

Peter Harrison Patient

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