Free Happy Mutant Baby Pills by Jerry Stahl Page B

kiss-ass Nazi chemists seeking cheap, synthetic morphine for wounded Wehrmact.
    I would argue, if I were the type who argued, that pharmaceuticals provide the secret history of Western civilization; and, pharma-copy, my default niche, will someday be recognized as the representational literature of the twenty-first century. Future archaeologists (assuming there’s a future) will dig through our detritus and find more pill bottles than books, iPads, or Kindles—life, in America, now being something you treat, not something you live.
    What are we now, but our symptoms?
    I once had to meet a connection at an all-night poetry slam at Bergen Community College. I had to sit through his “set” before I could cop. Freestyle. That was edgy, too. I know, because he snapped his fingers between lines. The dealer’s name was Bondo and he spoke with a questionable Nuyorican accent. Questionable, because I happen to know he came from Akron. I still remember his highlights.
    Is the definition of literature “nothing I actually read”?
    SNAP!
    Would the Bible still be holy if it had been written in bum dandruff?
    DOUBLE SNAP!
    Hemingway on Twitter. @BIGPAPA. Roof of mouth itches. Loading shotgun. Like I told Fitzgerald, always keep Mama Twelve-gauge cleaned and oiled!
    SNAP-SNAP-BOOM!
    The next day I wrote a campaign for Prostex that began: If Jesus had lived to be sixty, even He would have needed prostate relief. It went nowhere. But did failure mean you couldn’t be proud?

TWELVE
    Bad Houdini
    Union Station had a bang-up ending. I won’t ruin it for you. Union Station itself (the train and bus station, not the movie) also starred in Collateral , (Tom Cruise’s greatest role! He’s great when he plays dark!) and some odd bits of Star Trek: First Contact , which I saw in a motel room in Tulsa when I had to stay out of the Christian Swingles Office and away from my apartment, for reasons that have long since escaped me . . .
    I had no luggage, and neither did my new friend and confidante, the runaway greeting card innovator. She nudged me when the man with the shiny glasses got off behind us. “He’s going to follow us,” she said. “The man who screwed me owns a lot of companies. He’s powerful. He doesn’t like trouble. That’s why.”
    â€œWhy what?”
    â€œWhy he sent this freak to assassinate me.”
    We stood and watched the man who’d steepled his fingers at me walk our way. He kept walking, right past us. But Nora only sneered. “He knows what he’s doing.”
    â€œSo do I. I’m going to the little bus riders’ room. Try not to get assassinated till I’m done, okay?”
    â€œYou think that’s funny?”
    She went wide-eyed. In all our hours together, I’d seen nothing like this. Since Tulsa she’d been a mask of brunette disdain. Now she was clutching my wrist with two clammy hands. (And they were both hers.)
    â€œDon’t go.”
    â€œI have to go,” I said. Then I quoted myself. Well, my “work.” Listen: Still ashamed to wear a diaper? Imagine the shame if you don’t. (I won’t lie, I still love that.) “Seriously,” I said, “I have to, you know . . . know .”
    â€œThe man is in there . . .” she whispered, and made a steeple with her tiny, nail-picked fingers. I turned in time to see the big man disappear into the men’s room. “Please, Lloyd.”
    It was the first time she used my name. I grabbed her and kissed her and she whispered, “Do him. For me.”
    I quickly let her go. This is the kind of line you hear in movies. The kind that stops you, makes you wonder if it’s just a line.
    I could tell by the way he was walk-running that Steeple Man really had to go. You don’t walk that way unless you’ve hit the urgent stage. Bad enough to pop sweat. When every step is organ-churning torture. In which case