One time in an 11 p.m. meeting about taglines for some failing makeup company’s TV spot, an account person assaulted everyone with their excruciating team bonding joke and I saw two people implode.
They puckered in at the mouths until skin was sucked from bone. With a pop they finally went. And in the hallway on the way back to his desk, Billy Ficca up and vaporized completely. First it was his feet, then his torso went along with the tubes inside, and last, just before he was nothing, he was only a head rolling by the windows facing Madison Square Park. I looked out those windows that night and saw a bum masturbating under the sodium vapor lamp behind the Shake Shack. It was an image I’ll never forget. The red and orange and the mad bull huffing beyond Billy’s rolling head. The bum was really going at it.
Of all the people I’ve seen disappear from this city since then, every one had something in common. They had enough. You can only stomach shiny happy neo-hippies running the HR departments for so long. At a certain point, nature takes course.
When enough is truly enough, death seems easier than the alternative. Some cosmic force out there sends you everything necessary to leave this place. Failure. Derision. Drugs, many times. As we’ve established earlier, death is far too expensive for most living in Flatbush and Brownsville and Alphabet City. So where exactly have all these people vaporized to? I never had a good lead on it, until now.
This morning I’m sitting in the McDonald’s on Church Ave. and King’s Highway waiting for my meeting to begin. Some cop who’s been assigned to the recent burst of missing junkies in Brooklyn says he wants to float a theory out to me. He says no one else will take his idea seriously. This is a good sign.
“Hey, sorry I’m late,” a voice comes from behind my shoulder.
When I turn around I see the cop has arrived. The golden light from outside squeezes through the ripped holes in the decal of golden arches on the window and hits his pockmarked face. He’s got a thin mustache that almost vibrates over his purple lips. He looks strikingly similar to John Waters.
“No, uh, big deal,” I say getting out the crinkled piece of paper I’ve been using to take notes for all my stories these past few weeks. It’s good to appear like a professional around the law.
He sits down and smiles and starts right into it. “I have a problem,” he says itching at his track-marked arm.
“I see,” I say looking the scabs over. Some of the holes are still gaping and they’re breathing in and out like little drowning mouths. My God, I think. I’ve taken far too big a dose of Mescasergic Bromide for breakfast. I’ll have to speak with my doctor about it later.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll kick it. I wanted to meet with ya, because I know I have something here.” He proceeds to take out a kit with a big shiny needle. He sets it up right there on the table then stands. “I just need something in my stomach first. You want anything?”
I look over at the man behind the fryer with his grizzly manes of arm hair. He’s laughing maniacally as he dunks hash brown pucks into a brown bubbling hell. “No,” I say waving my hand and getting trails, “I’ll be alright.”
When the cop gets back he says, “With landlords testing dog shit to match the DNA to see if it’s you leaving steaming piles, man—sometimes it’s just too much. People need to find a way out. Vaporization is preferred.”
“Yes, we agreed to that part on the phone already. The theory is there. But what hard proof do you have?”
He lets out a breath. “OK, look. After searching for these missing addicts for over a month, I wasn’t comin’ up with shit. I needed a new angle. Gotta live like a roach if you wanna catch one, ya know?”
“Sure, sure,” I say.
“So, I started using. Got real into it you could say. And one day I found a way to the other side of the vaporization. You can’t just think your way there. Gotta shoot the stuff. There’s only so much Sartre a man can take before he just needs to shed his uniform and have a good old fashioned rut. Amongst the mud people is where you find the clues. Most of them don’t really vaporize, they just find the path to make it out. Pass over into the fabled Interzone.”
I can feel my eyes grow. “So el hombre invisible was right all this time?”
“Fraid so.”
He passes me the loaded needle across the table and nods. I usually try my best to stay away from heroin, which keeps me off it 32% of the time. But this is professional research.
“Is it OK to do right here?” I ask.
“I’m a cop. Anywhere is OK.”
“Well, then.” I take the thing and stick it in and immediately feel sick. And then there’s a pink door right behind the cop. It’s appeared there.
The cop nods again like he knows exactly what I’m seeing. It’s possible the Mescasergic Bromide is having a concomitant interaction.
I look at the door a bit uneasily. There’s little miniature women climbing the jambs. Floating up them with this strange hip thrust. Humping up them almost. They go round and round like a horny Ferris wheel.
It might be true most good things in Brooklyn and Manhattan have vaporized behind this door. The Voidoids. Lou Reed. Porn shops that once dutifully washed out anything too sparkly from Times Square. If they have all gone through this door here, I have no choice.
I stand up and walk through it.
Right away, I feel a warm gel-like liquid fill up my lungs. Then it’s black and I’m shooting through a jet of gel until it’s not black and I’m plopped down wet in some hallway. I wipe my face and get up. I start to walk through what looks like an office. A wombic office that is warm and calming on all fronts.
“Come on in here, boy,” a voice calls from one of the doors open a jar.
I go in and sit down and there is a dimensional being there behind the desk smoking a blue cigar. It’s like it has been waiting for me. Its skin is clear and its head is worm-like but it still has managed to pull off a suit and tie.
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask it.
“Just sit right there and watch. You’re new here, right?” It reaches into the desk drawer and gets out a little ball of string and a giant pair of scissors. It takes the scissors and cuts straight into the Gordian tangle. One way to do it, I think.
And now I see. In the middle of the tangle, I see a scene play out. In the first layer, a career Chickenhawk—possibly the most dangerous creature alive—is sending out memos. Inside that layer, or beyond, is this place. The place where ideas come from. Here every idea has free reign. It’s a living amoeba of a bazaar. Sweatshops and alleys and people smoking all manner of drug out of giant bubbling hookahs. Here the clear-skinned beings with their long worm-like heads get high and take meetings with the writers who’ve made it through the vaporization doorway. Here they tell them what to insert into the memos upon final edit. I know now that in every politician’s speech, and in every commercial, there are imbedded clues for people sensitive enough to make them out. You have to squint. If you see clues and figure out how to get here, I highly recommend it. Because here it’s lovely. There’s brothels and dirty toilets and bars that never close.
Another moment of the vision and the gel jet sucks me back out. I feel like I’ve been resuscitated and I’m gasping for breath.
“How was it?” the cop asks. We’re still sitting in the McDonald’s.
I look at the menu above the cashiers’ heads and see it has been rotated. It’s lunchtime now and I’m starving.
