Saturday, 06 October 2012

• Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll

  I was going to write about all the great sex, drugs and rock and roll I had during my weekend. But, well, ahh, well, shucks...That`s about all I can say about that. I`ll get back to it later. (Suspense builder.) On to more important matters.

  Recently I`ve been reading horror stories at bedtime. I`m talking about those paperbacks with names like "The Bloodsucker", full of scenes like this.:

  "As Kaitlyn (@psycocrazypony )stepped through the doorway into the darkening mansion, she felt a sense of foreboding, caused, perhaps, by the moaning of wind, or the creaking of the door, or possibly the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket of eyeballs."

  Of course, if  Kaitlyn had the intelligence of paint, she`d stop right there. "Wait a minute," she would say. "I`m getting the hell out of this novel." Then she would leap off the page, sprint across my bedspread, out the door, into the room of the kid next door and become a character in a safe book like "Horton Hears A Who."

  
  But  Kaitlyn, in the hallowed horror-novel-character tradition, barges straight ahead, down the gloomy corridors where she has to cut through the foreboding with a machete, despite the fact that something hideous is about to happen, probably involving the forced evacuation of her skull cavity by a demonic being with the underworld Roto-Rooter franchise. So I`m flinching as I turn each page, thinking, "`What a moron this women is!" And  is t Kaitlyn is thinking, Well, I may be a moron, but at least I`m not stupid enough to be reading this."

  Of course Kaitlyn is right, I should know better than to read horror books. Or watch horror movies-because-this is not easy for me to say-But I believe them. As a child, I was routinely terrified by late night TV movies, even the comically inept ones where, when Lon Chaney turned into werewolf, you could actually see the makeup persons hand darting into the picture to attach more fake fur to his face.

  They still have a drive inn movie here in Amarillo, that shows really great old classics and then a B grade double feature. When I was 17, I had to explain to my dad one Sunday morning that the reason our car was missing was that the night before, I had taken my date to see "Psycho," and afterward I had explained to her that it made more sense for her to drive me home, because of the strong possibility I would be stabbed to death by Anthony Perkins.

  Though I`m not even Catholic, for years after I saw "The Exorcist," I felt this need to be around priests. Friends would say, "What do you want to do tonight." And I`d say, "Let`s take in a Mass!"

  I`m still this way, even though I, a grown up person, I keep telling myself, after a few hours of reading, that there aren`t any vampires in the bathroom. Part of my brain-the rational part-the part that took the SAT test-actually believes this, but a much more powerful part, the Fear Lobe, takes the possibility of bathroom vampires far more seriously than it takes, for example, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

  And so late at night, when I finish my horror novel, and turn out the light, it becomes very dark, and I become highly alert. I hear a noise outside...I have to go outside to look around...My brain`s SAT sector, trying to be cool, is saying, "Ha, this is merely your yard" But the Fear Lobe is saying, "Oh yes, this is exactly the place that would attract The Brainsucker. For the Brainsucker this is Walt Disney world. "

  And so I start sauntering back toward the house, trying to look casual as possible considering that every few feet I suddenly whirl around to see if anything`s behind me. Soon I am sauntering at upwards of 35 miles per hour, and the Fear Lobe is screaming "IT`S COMING" and even the SAT Sector has soaked its mental armpits and now I`m openly sprinting through the darkness, almost to my house. Where I slip in a strategically placed cache of valuable dog poo, deposited on my lawn, my the neighbors dog.

  Thus the spell is broken, and my SAT Sector reasserts control and has a good laugh at what a silly goose I was, and I walk calmly back inside my house and close the door, just seconds before the tentacle reaches it.

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