|
02
29 04. 1437.
03
01 04. 0131. Keep thinking about that story on this Henry Rollins spoken word record where he tells the story of a homeless guy he and Ian Mackaye used to hang out with when they were in high school in DC. Crazy Paul the Skyking. He burst into a beauty salon full of middle-aged woman and let drop that awesome line. Donate your bodies to science, you fools! So I check into the research facility tomorrow morning. I got some books to read and my laptop and a few of the things that I always said I'd get into if I had time and nothing else to do. I have to admit that the whole thing appeals to me in a weird, Hunter S. Thompson sort of way. I am twenty-three years old and there is nothing that seems more right than donating -- okay, renting -- my body to science like a fool. Because I am indestructible, and any side effects will be massively entertaining. Perhaps I will grow a little Dan on my shoulder. He will be the Flavor Flav to my Chuck D. Yeah, boyee.
03
01 04. 1359. Been here since ten o'clock this morning. Met the group, got the orientation, did the searches, had blood drawn, all the good stuff. I've been making my plans for what to do with the money all week -- how many months' rent it's going to pay for, if I'm going to try to set up a small tour in April, all of the things I need money to do. During orientation, matter of factly, a surprise announcement is made. My study calls for four people. There are five people in my group. One of us goes home tomorrow. No harm, no foul. No ingesting of any test-drugs. At eight AM tomorrow morning, four of us go forward and one of us gets seventy-five bucks for our trouble and if it's me -- this is a very scary time. The determination will be -- does everyone in the group have the same vital signs they did when they screened for the study a week and a half ago, has anyone got any trace amounts of nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine in their system, do we all still qualify – One of the guys in the group ate "eight to ten" Chips Ahoy cookies last night. The caffeine cut-off was Friday. That included chocolate. His name is Brian and he looks like Mark Kozelek and we were talking about Hunter Thompson earlier at lunch and I am desperately hoping that he is disqualified and sent home two-thousand dollars shy of his expected compensation. Sorry, Brian. If I manage to stay, things here look pretty cool. The computer room is nearly silent, they have televisions and I have books. The other people in my group, minus whoever gets kicked out, are all pretty cool. I talked to one of the guys who does this sort of thing pretty regularly about other studies he had participated in and seen. He's about fifty and wears a mustache and because when dealing with large numbers of strangers at once it is easiest to compare them to people you know or famous people he reminds me of Harvey Keitel but his name is also Brian. What does our study need two Brians for? The older Brian told me about a study he saw last time he was here. Normally, when screening, they require that you have no nicotine, caffeine, or alcohol in your system. For the study Brian saw, they actually required alcohol. They were testing reactions to a drug for alcoholism. They offered free drinks to everyone in the study, in addition to the compensation. People got very excited at the prospect of free booze and a thousand bucks for a week's stay in a research facility. So excited, in fact, that they agreed to participate even though the drug was specifically designed to make people who ingested alcohol after taking it violently ill. The point was to try and give people who took the drug such a negative reaction to alcohol that they would choose not to drink to overcome their addiction. How else are you going to make a thousand bucks in a week? It ain't sellin' screenplays, baby, I'll tell you that for nothing. All I got to do for my cash is ingest four nuclear horsepills tomorrow morning, piss in a jug until I got the radiation level low enough that it looks like the drug is out of my system, and then stroll home irradiated. They expect ten days. It could be as many as thirteen. If it is, I get an extra five hundred bucks. It could be as few as seven. If it is, I keep the same amount and laugh all the way to the bank. But all of this is contingent on one of the other four very nice men who are also counting on this money being disqualified. Four men who need the money so badly that they have also agreed to be dosed with an experimental drug, irradiated, and pissing in a jug. Nature of the game, I guess. These are desperate times. It's a cutthroat world and I am a cold bastard.
03
01 04. 1943. The culture of this place is wild. I need more time to get a better feel for it but this place is amazing. There are people who do nothing but drive around the country, volunteering for research studies in different facilities, year in and year out. There are two RVs in the parking lot right now, ostensibly belonging to some of them. I met one of them today. Everyone involved in your particular study is part of the same group. There are maybe a dozen studies going on at any time. Every group is classified according to the color t-shirt that they are assigned to wear. The four intrepid souls remaining to test our particular irradiated substance are the Black Shirts. Fucking cool, right? I thought so. Our gang of four is the smallest of all groups in the facility right now. I am sitting in the computer room right now and am surrounded by seven Teal Blues. They are an ornery bunch who have been in here since the twenty-fifth of February and do not get to check out until the thirteen of March. You'd be ornery too, sister. Most fascinating about the way the culture here works is that people in your group are immediately Befriended, whereas people in other groups are automatically Distrusted. The Teal Blues talk to the Teal Blues. The Sage Greens and the Hunter Greens do not interact. We Black Shirts had best get along well. We have no choice. We distrust the others same as anyone else. Tribalism is alive and well. Trust those who look like you, who wear the same color shirt as you, who eat meals at the same time and suffer the same side effects. It occured to me at dinner that this could be a valuable experience for reasons other than the filling of my coffers -- the experience of being here, of observing a subculture -- of participating in the subculture -- and having no choice but to go through with it -- is one that could be valuable on its own. I am nearly finished with the first book I brought with me. I was already nearly halfway into it when I checked in this morning but I definitely feel less ridiculous about the monster-sized stack I kept in my duffel bag. Almost done -- Better Than Sex by Hunter S. Thompson. Next up -- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by the same gonzo journalist. I decided against bringing in too much of Thompson's work because it could lead to a potentially bizarre experience, given that I am irraditating my body to help a research facility determine what manner, precisely, the drug I am about to ingest leaves the body, but I kind of wish I had taken in the rest of the man's books that I've not read. Ah, well. I have many things that I had always intended to do before that I can do now. It remains to be seen whether or not I can write anything worth a damn in here, but I have eleven days to try.
03
01 04. 2338. I will have twelve disciples and they will all be shorter than me and I will be betrayed by Dennis Kucinich when the cock crows three times. The NYPD will cold-smoke my ass one night and I'll go down in a flurry of buckshot. Lemmy and Danzig will continue on with my good works and then eventually my tale will be reborn as some fucked-up torture-porn epic conceived as a multi-media experience by some confused, empty-headed actor who thinks that he's bearing his own cross by making a movie about me in the land where I am considered by the vast majority of the population to be their number one homeboy. I am your messiah. I am going to take radioactive drugs in eight hours. I am being paid handsomely for this. I WOULD DO IT FOR FREE.
03
02 04. 1252. I lie. I have not been assaulted even once today. Yes. Welcome to day two. Subject 5104 reporting. I type mostly with my right hand but not for the reasons you think, you fucking perverts. My left hand is slower to move and harder to control because I have had blood taken out of it eight times in the past four hours. I have been poked and stuck and analyzed -- how many ECG readings did you have today? -- and measured and quantified. Some of the lab technicians refer to me specifically as "5104". In truth, that's how I've always thought of myself. Life in here revolves around food and blood. In forty-five minutes it is lunch. Taco salad. First meal of the day. Makes the blood draws harder to take without food. Today is supposed to be the worst of it for blood. Eleven draws today. Two tomorrow. One a day for the five after that. Then it's just waiting for all of the radioactivity to drop out of our systems. They say to expect for it as early as the eighth. Hopefully the righteous bruise on my arm as a result of the blood draws will still be there. It will make me look tough. Women will flock to me. SWOON FOR YOUR HARDCORE JESUS. Tonight for dinner is lasagne. This is all, really, that there is to base anything around in here. I have a blood draw in twenty minutes. Food. And blood.
03
02 04. 1454. I have decided that if I survive these days and John Edwards survives Super Tuesday that I will work for his Austin campaign. They need me. I am very smart. I have been given smart pills. Radioactive smart pills. I will get John Edwards elected President and then I will fight crime. There will be many ceremonies at the White House honoring my achievements but no one will know it is me. I will wear a mask. But not today. Today I am wearing no mask -- I should have brought one! -- but instead a black t-shirt while everyone else in this godforsaken room is stuck in teal blue. I have on green scrub pants and socks. It has a neat air about it. Like being in a mental institution. I am not taking anything today very seriously. They have taken very much blood. Everything is a little bit ridiculous. I am sleepy and they will take more blood from me in forty minutes. They want to analyze what the blood of a fucking genius looks like, it's fine with me.
03
02 04. 2112. At that point I was torn between trying to sleep through all of them and getting up and soldiering on. It is strange to realize that you won't see your friends, or your apartment, or your fish, or eat pizza, or read your comicbooks, for over a week. I am only two days in. You think things have been weird on this end so far? They're only gonna get worse, jefe. Without this badass god complex I would be hard-pressed to keep myself entertained. With it, I get to replay every event that happens as it will appear in the new Bible, to be written by Hunter S. Thompson when they pump the old bastard full of so many drugs that even his system is shocked to alertness and he hammers out some nonsense that can be used to start a new religion. "Once I read the Truth in the good book and learned of the time our savior told a group of phlebotomists to 'choke and die on the glorious radioactive semen of the messiah!' I knew that I'd been saved." My jokes do not get old to me. They mustn't. I have nine days to go. I played video games about half an hour ago before I was stuck with the eleventh needle of the day and freely offered up the four-hundredth milliliters of blood to make its way out of my system. I lost because I do not play video games. It was a scrimmage match -- I played against James and the younger Brian, two of my fellow Black Shirts. I would not have risked our reputation by picking up a controller against the despised Teal Blues. I will win other competitions. The jugs into which we urinate are marked with the total amount that we have thus far eliminated from our bodies. An hour ago I was in second place. Not anymore, baby. I am doing my part for mankind. My holy urine can cure the blind. Be careful with it! You can sell that shit on the streets for a fortune! The next study to pass through here is going to analyze the mystical powers contained within it. Flash! I must away now! To the cafeteria -- it's snack time! I must eat my entire allocated snack, whatever it may be, under penalty of eviction from the study. In the new books of the bible due to appear at any moment, the stations of the cross that the devout perform every March will include on this day the eating of vienna sandwich cookies. MARK MY WORDS.
03
03 04. 1017. I think the Teal Blues were released today. They've vacated the computer room. I miss them already. I couldn't get to sleep last night. I'm not used to trying to be asleep at midnight. I lie awake for a few hours wishing I was allowed to be out of bed. I ran through a series of mantras in my head, repeating each one over and over in the hope that it would lull me into a state of alpha-level hypnosis. mind awake - body asleep is the one I've been using since I was a young teenager. It wore out after an hour or so so I switched to one my mom suggested -- rest is as good as sleep. No dice, jefe. I pretended to meditate because it seemed like a good idea, like something that someone who knew how these things worked would do so I went with that Saul Williams line from "Timely Meditations" -- no man is an island but i often feel alone - so i find peace through 'ohm'. Nothing. Eventually passed out at about two-thirty by my best guess by settling on fuck y'all - all y'all - y'all don't like me - blow me, Dr. Dre's mantra from "Forgot About Dre". It had an immediately empowering effect. Been up since about seven forty-five this morning. Only had one blood draw so far. Another one tonight. And an ECG. The rest of my responsibilities for the day are to eat meals and drink water. It is ten AM. I fully expect to tear through a good chunk of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. I finished Better Than Sex yesterday, which was great. Right now I am taking advantage of the DSL connection here to download huge numbers of mp3s. I am listening to the new Modest Mouse album now. It is great. I am radioactive and sleepy. Everything is great. The people I feel worst for here are the technicians in the urine lab. They make something like eight dollars an hour for playing with the radioactive piss of people who are making thousands of dollars for doing nothing. What kind of bullshit job is that? Every time I go in to ask them for the jug I feel guilty. The rest of the people in my group and I have formally started a competition to see who can fill the jug the most. Before we had, I tried to hold it when I had to go so the urine techs wouldn't have to see the same faces too often. Now that the ol' competitive instinct has kicked in, I got no choice. Hey, how much of a fucking dolt would you feel like if you had to put "urine tech" as your job description when you filed your taxes? Probably about half as dumb as "professional lab rat" but nowhere near as badass as "radioactive messiah". There's a happy medium, kids, and it ain't me, babe.
03 03
04. 1455. When
every day is entirely the same as the day before it except for maybe
the number of times you have blood drawn and the only changes in your
environment are on a screen, when you only see yourself in the mirror
under harsh yellow lights and you are referred to as Black-5104 as
often as you are by your first name, when you realize that you're
only a quarter of the way done with it, when you spend all day
reading about Richard Nixon, when you eat mostly bland cafeteria
food, when you wear the same exact thing every day, when everyone you
see is either living under similar conditions or being paid to create
those conditions, it is very easy to lose track of the fact that
there is a world outside. This is not a serious thing. I am a volunteer and I could leave anytime I wanted to if I decided I did not need the money; regardless I will be released in eight days. This isn't a serious thing and I'm not trying to pretend that I get it like a prisoner of war gets it but I do at least understand more of that mindset. The bland cafeteria food really is the most exciting thing around which your days can revolve in here. We had cheeseburgers for lunch. Cheese enchiladas for dinner tonight. When you're on a long drive time moves much more quickly than on a short one. You settle in for the ride and can drive all day once you know you have to; when you're trying to get home from work in bad traffic it feels much worse. I'm just waiting to settle in. In the meantime, I've got some bitchin' Lou Reed-style trackmarks. Let's see the old fuckers at Denny's show that off.
03
04 04. 1952. It makes a guy feel like Chuck Berry. And I mean that in the worst possible way. Day four now. The Teal Blues remain; yesterday they had some procedures done and came back, all of them with IV bags. Apparently these studies can be much worse. For a lot of them, boredom is the least of their worries. Blood loss is the least of their worries. I talked to a woman yesterday who did a study once for a drug designed to treat methadone addiction. Guess what they have to do to you first to see if it's working? A new group came in yesterday; another one today. The Violets and the Dark Browns. Violets are a large group. Don't know what they're testing. Dark Browns moved into our room -- now we're even more outnumbered. Just the male half of the Dark Browns; unlike most PPD studies, it is a mixed-gender group. Most studies require either men or post-menopausal or surgically sterile women. The gender balance ratio in here is roughly four-to-one. It is much easier to find a dopey, trashy twenty-something guy than it is a dopey, trashy post-menopausal woman. Dopey, trashy people make up the lion's share of the inpatients at this facility. I'm aware of the insinuation there and either the hypocrisy or self-flagellation involved in making it. Fuck you. I am Holy and Chosen. So you've got this building filled almost entirely with guys. The only women in sight are either post-menopausal or sticking you with needles. The men are made to wear shirts all day, Violet and Teal Blue and Pink -- oh, those rough fuckers in the Pink Shirts, there are seven of them and they are full of pure hatred, do not fuck with the Pink Shirts, a man's gotta be mean to get up every morning and put on a Pink Shirt for nine days -- And they regulate your heartbeat. You are not allowed to do any activity that increases your heart rate. Seventy or eighty men in ridiculously colored t-shirts. Few women. Nothing that can make your heartbeat increase. Experimental drugs. You have a building full of guys who haven't jerked off, who can't go home, who don't get to talk to any girls that aren't trying to take blood away from them or who haven't got twenty-five years on 'em – I am amazed that there is not more violence in here. Take a guy who's been wearing a pink shirt for two weeks and who hasn't touched his cock in as long except when he's unloading it into a jug and toss him in a room with a bunch of other guys under similar conditions -- they're all waiting for their turn at the pool tables -- I expect to see some fists flying. That there haven't been is a credit either to the restraint of my gender when acting out would cost them thousands of dollars in study compensation or to the effect of constant, severe blood loss. Either way. I am amazed. Yesterday in the computer room two guys were trading disks full of porn. It's against the rules but I certainly wasn't going to stop them. I heard a story of a mixed-gender study that happened once. A woman checked in. She was not pregnant. Two weeks later she checked out. You and me and the baby makes three. The study sponsor -- the pharmaceutical company that made the drug -- kept tabs on her all throughout the pregnancy. There were liability concerns, but ultimately they were pretty enthused. They got a whole bunch of information on their drug that they hadn't expected for nothing. The couple did not stay together, get married, raise the poor hooved, horned child, or otherwise take their place in society as defenders of family values. "The way your daddy looked in that pink shirt, honey -- if only I hadn't been so fucked up on experimental, radioactive anti-depressants, I might be able to remember what it was that attracted me to him." And that, children, is why they require that nearly all studies consist of either men or sturgically sterile or post-menopausal women. I've been in here for four days. The world is getting strange. I've begun to forget how time moves when it is not static and constant and unchanging, when there is some degree of difference between eight AM and six PM and five AM. I am glad I am here. I'm wondering exactly how a person who does this regularly has to see the world.
03
05 04. 2312. Today I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. If things progress as they have, by the time I get out, I will be feeling like Bill Murray in What About Bob? Today one of my study-mates -- a fellow Black Shirt, naturally, I seldom talk to others -- tried to teach me how to meditate. I haven't got the attention span for it, but I thought it was a nice gesture. I tried to help him find the eighth castle in The Legend of Zelda to return the favor. Neither of us were very helpful in our respective capacities. Two new groups checked in today. The Maroons and Red Shirts. The Maroons are a mixed group, all ages. It got me thinking. Yesterday I was writing about what it's like to be a guy in one of these studies, where it's just you and a bunch of other guys with few exceptions. What must it be like to be a young woman in a study here? How many times must you be hit on by the exact same guys -- none of whom have, you know, jobs or particularly active social lives since they're in here. Yet she is likely spoken to like they think she entered the study with the primary intention of finding a mate. It's why I endorse, whenever possible, a strict "no interacting with anyone" policy in here. Filth and degenerates, all of them. Us. Whichever. When I first checked in I felt like Bill Murray in Where the Buffalo Roam. Does that one count since he's just playing Hunter Thompson? Today I watched a lot of television. It is making me stupid. I am finding myself actively involved in the lives, hopes, and dreams of characters on television programs. When Angel and Buffy did not get to stay together I'll admit it -- I was moved. This is a terrifying development. It's downright fortunate that I don't get any channels on The Outside, lest I take it with me and kill all productivity. I've long maintained that it's not a work ethic that keeps me getting things done -- it's just that I don't watch television, play video games, or get fucked up. This week -- guess what? -- I haven't gotten a goddamn thing accomplished. Which is funny, when you think about it. Because I am here to get nothing accomplished. Anything I do get done is incidental. I am being paid to lose time. I signed up because my usual options were cut off to me and I needed to do something out of character to get it back together. Much like Bill Murray in Stripes. Without the mud wrestling. There was mud wrestling in Stripes, wasn't there? There's no goddamn mud wrestling going on in here, I'll tell you that for sure. Although I think one of the Teal Blues propositioned one of the Maroon girls with the suggestion, so maybe there's a hidden facility somewhere in one of the other wings. "Blood Draws / Dosing Labs / Mud Wrestling Arena - Second Door". Hit it up, baby! That's an offer that won't come around again in your next nine days in here! Everybody wants some!
03
06 04. 1044. She
worked at the mall near my apartment. I used to go in there for
pizza. She worked in the smoothie stand. "Oh, Smoothie Girl,
why dost thou torment me so?" was my anguished cry as I
would leave after walking past her, sometimes twice in one visit, too
afraid to even look up at her or offer a vague
half-smile. "Hi," I said to her. "I figured you must be tired of smoothies. I got you some coffee." And
she was flattered; she told me I did a good job of hitting on her,
which embarrassed me, but she wanted the caffeine and something hot
so she was grateful. She introduced herself as Nikketa. I walked away from the smoothie stand with her phone number, no desire to ever call it, and a lesson under my belt to not base too much on physical attraction since it can lead a person seriously astray. I didn't call her. I bought my pizza somewhere else for a while. It was a very small drop in the bucket of genuine disappointments, not funny enough to be re-told and not sad enough to be dwelled on. Just a dollar-fifty lost on coffee and fifteen minutes lost on painful conversation. Another day or two lost to my roommate making "but officer, she didn't look seventeen!" jokes, and the whole thing pretty much disappeared from memory. Until today, cuz I just saw Nikketa in the cafeteria of the research clinic wearing a Maroon Shirt. No, I didn't talk to her. What would I have said? "Hey, still slingin' rock?" If she remembered me at all, she would probably remember that she gave me her phone number and I didn't call it. Maybe it would impress the Teal Blues, but I am not desperate for the respect of those fuckers. They'll get theirs whether or not they know that I once almost picked up a seventeen year old who, if she had not dropped out to become a drug dealer, would have been in school while I was at the mall buying lunch. Both of the men in my group who are named Brian -- one of them twenty-eight, one of them fifty-four -- have Master's degrees in philosophy. They both discovered this over breakfast. Take two men, each with an MA in philosophy, and lock them in the same building with nothing to do for many days. Conversation goes from very, very interesting to very, very hard to put up with in short time. I just check up on them now. Waiting to see if they're agreeing or arguing. "Look! I'm not saying Descartes wasn't important, okay, but you have to admit that his ontological maxim degenerates into solipsistic redundancy!" "You
misunderstand me. I said, 'it stinks, therefore it's spam'." Guess they've been scanning the classifieds for "philosopher wanted" ads and coming up empty. Well. Here we are, more than halfway done now by the sound of it. Philosophers. Drug dealers. And me.
03
06 04. 2233. I looked in the mirror today in the room that has normal lighting. The bathroom that my group uses has harsh, yellow, flourescent lights. No one looks normal under those conditions. My eyes looked sunken. My complexion was bad. Man! What a drag those yellow lights can be, I thought. It ain't the yellow lights. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm not sleeping and I ain't seen the sunshine since -- I don't know when. It might be that I'm still low on blood -- and that is not a sentence that a human being in America in 2004 should be typing very often unless they are playing a video game -- but I was a little bit surprised to see the face staring back at me in the mirror. I have been in here for six days. We are the only group not permitted to go outside under supervision. We are radioactive. We might escape. We might urinate on the lawn and cause a meltdown. It is a valid concern. If I went outside and saw a cat, I would grab the fucker with both hands and try to irradiate it just by staring at it hard. And I would succeed. I'd let the doomed creature loose to wreak havoc upon the innocent city of Austin, my nuclear pawn out to destroy the city simply for having days like today while I am locked indoors. "I thought you were here to save us, messiah!" "That's the other one. I'm the one for bad people." One of the lab techs who usually works monitoring heart rates told me a story today. Some of the studies require the subjects to wear a heart monitor at all times. They can get readings on the monitors no matter where in the building the subjects are. The entire place is wired for it, receptors up on the ceiling to pick up the signals. The tech was working the monitor room for one study. There was a woman who would have a normal heart rate all throughout the day. Except when she went to the bathroom. For some reason every night when she went into the bathroom she got very excited. Do
I need to fill in the blanks for you, class, or have you deduced what
she was doing in there? Eventually they had to call her on it because
it was fucking with the results. I didn't ask the man what precisely
their admonishment was. Something to the effect of, "ma'am,
could you please stop jerking off,", I'd wager. But if you stayed over the expected release date you got an extra two hundred and fifty dollars a day. Homeboy held out for four days, withstanding some serious gastrointestinal pressure, to score an extra thousand bucks for his efforts. Yeah, it's another Saturday night at Camp PPD.
03
07 04. 2347. Well. It's Sunday night now. We haven't heard back from the supervisor. I'm not making any plans just yet. The
way we get released early is the levels of radioactivity in our blood
and urine show that we are safe, the drug leaves the body in X amount
of days, the city of Austin need not fear a meltdown, and there is no
reason to keep us here. No word yet. The
Teal Blues have been in here since February 25. They are to be
released in six days. I was hoping that when they are released I
would have my first batch of disciples. No dice. The
building is divided into quads. There are two quads. Ask me how that
works and I will kick you in the stomach and then shout "I don't
know!" while you are doubled-over. I am communicating less and
less effectively these days. When I get out of here anyone who sees
me will have to spend the first several hours re-teaching me how to
interact with actual people who are not either wearing the wrong
color t-shirt and therefore immediately my enemy or trying to stick
me with needles and extract blood. It is not going to be pretty.
Whoever first sees me will have to deal with my sunken eyes,
sun-deprived complexion, Lou Reed-style track marks, lack of ability
to -- um -- talk good, overwhelming need for chocolate, my
fleshy-from-lack-of-exercise frame, and perhaps even my newfound and
-- let's face it -- completely charming Jesus-complex. Pity whichever
poor soul is sitting next to me on the bus if he happens to be
wearing a teal blue shirt that day. More on the Teal Blues. They've been in here since the 25 of February. Today is March 7. Twelve days. They have six to go. Eighteen days. I was watching television today in a room with some of them this morning. There was a scene in a movie where the characters were eating ribs. They stared at and talked about the ribs for fifteen minutes or more like they were staring at and talking about Janet Jackson's nipples. Janet Jackson's nipples circa 1990. A bunch of men, twelve days into lock-up, horny for pork products. It's cool. I felt the same way when I looked out the window today and saw how amazing it was outside. We all got our vices. I spent an hour this afternoon walking. My course was probably three hundred feet. Over and over again. The same ground. I usually walk about five miles a day. Yeah, cracking just a little. This is after a week. I would be useless in prison.
03
08 04. 1328. James is the other member of my four-person study who hasn't got a degree. This is his first study, same as it is mine and the younger of the two Brians with the MAs in philosophy. He is twenty-five and an undergraduate at the University of Texas who had been taking this semester off. And next semester. And the semester after that. James is turning pro. Last night one of the Teal Blues, a pretty nice guy by all reasonable standards -- name of Deuce -- conducted a large conversation with about a dozen of us in the dorm about the life of a professional, full-time lab rat. We were all curious so we all asked questions. Deuce has been doing studies non-stop since last May. James apparently liked the answers he heard more than the rest of us because he put his plans together almost immediately. The
way the full-time, professional lab rat circuit works is you use
Austin as a homebase because PPD doesn't pay travel expenses and it's
far enough away from the other facilities that there is no staff
overlap. This is important because to work as a professional lab rat,
you have to lie about what drugs you've been testing, how many tests
you've done, and where else you've been staying. In other cities
where there are several facilities oftentimes the staff will work at
both to get more hours. Philadelphia has two research facilities; there are two more in Jersey. They all pay travel expenses so you just have to show up, get reimbursed for your gas, do a screening to make sure that the drug won't kill you, get put up in a hostel, and then wait to check in. Do
a study in a Philly facility. Check in and stay two weeks. Take home
$4000. Drive forty-five minutes across state lines and do a Jersey
study. Stay three weeks and clear $5000. Bounce back to Philly and
stay another week for $1800 in the other facility. Round out your
trip with a stay in the second Jersey facility and take home $2200
for ten days. Deuce
takes the money to Atlantic City when he's done. James
is checking out this week, same as all of us in the Black Shirts.
He's going to GNC, then to Half-Price Books to get a Spanish/English
dictionary. By the time he's done with the circuit, he plans to own
property in Panama and have a basic enough understanding of the
language to make a go of it for a year or two before coming back to
hit the circuit up again. Hell, I figured after he went through his whole plan, so excited to be telling us, to be telling someone, now that he had it figured out, that's a more specific outline than I got.
03
09 04. 0941. Just got word from the study supervisor. Four more hours then we're out. Three of us, anyway. The way a radioactive study works, you're only released when you're not radioactive anymore. That's me, James-who-turned-pro, and Brian-the-elder. The younger Brian, the one who looks like Mark Kozelek, is still glowing. It's a little bit like Black Hawk Down, maybe -- one of 'em is left behind. It is actually a little bit sad; if I were the one left behind I would be sad because I was stuck in the facility when others were set free and I would be sad because I'd be alone. But, well, it's not me. I think this is one of those "see ya, wouldn't want to be ya" situations. Which is cool, because I haven't had an excuse to use that phrase since I was about ten years old. No reflections. No "what I learned on the inside" or "everything I ever really needed to know I learned while glowing radioactive, suffering from messianic delusions, locked into a research facility with a bunch of unbelievable bastards in Teal Blue t-shirts". There's a lesson here, but it's the obvious, entry-level one that doesn't bear repeating. What bears repeating. The sun's shining. Looks great outside. I've damn sure missed it. My coffers are filled, or will be when the check arrives. This was a ridiculous week, but certainly not a bad one. And I shall be released.
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