Chapter I: Sunday

I glance at the time display on my desktop monitor. 9:10 pm. Three weeks in a row now I’ve gone in to work on a Sunday morning and stayed past nine at night. The first two times it was because of crunch time: the company just shipped ship a new game. This time it’s because the company’s switching over to a new mark-up language for its internal wiki, and I want to make sure that the translation of my pages into the new language go smoothly.

As I scan for errors in one of the pages, I smile to myself. It’s chock-full of the kind of bullshit jargon that executives love to hear from their “Six Sigma Black Belts.” I find the title—black belt—to be just as ridiculous as the jargon it authorizes me to use, but at least my manager convinced the higher-ups to pay for the certification examinations after they told him they wanted each of the eight members of our QA Standards and Planning team to obtain Six Sigma certification. We were given a month to prepare for the test, but I had trouble feeling inspired. I finally studied the history and methodology of Six Sigma over the weekend before the test. I aced the exam, prompting a $5,000 raise which, this being Boston, brought my salary up to the almost-livable total of $35,000.

I finish the edits and decide that it’s high time to reward myself. After all, neither Ben nor Calvin, the two coworkers who share my office, have come in today. I reach down and unzip the side pocket of my black man-satchel, where I keep my less scrupulous belongings: today it contains an eighth of marijuana, my bowl, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, my flask (filled with Captain Morgan), and my Adderall prescription. I twist off the child-proof lid, remove one of the 20-mg peach-colored pills, and put it on my desk. Then, using my left hand, I place the lid cover-down over the pill, make a fist with my right hand, and come down on it hard. I feel it crumble under the force of the blow. Taking a pen from a cup on my desk, I roll over the grains of amphetamine salts until they constitute a fine powder. I reach into my back pocket, pull out my wallet, and remove my old Tufts University student ID card, which I use to shepherd the powder into a fine line. I peel a sheet off of my sticky-note pad and roll it into a tube, adhering it to itself. Leaning over the powder, I put the tube of paper in my right nostril and track the line as I snort the powder. It tickles and itches like maggots in an open wound. The buzz is instantaneous.

I wouldn’t recommend insufflation for everyone, but it’s always worked for me.

There is still a film of powder on the desk, which I collect with my index finger and place inside my bottom lip.

I put the pill bottle back in my man-satchel and then remove the bowl, the lighter, and the bag of marijuana. I open the door to avoid hot-boxing the office and setting off the smoke detector. Then I pack a generous bowl composed of fluffy, high-end weed--$60 an eighth. It’s worth it; I take a single hit and can immediately feel it. I take another, pulling deep and holding it a long time, tilt my head back, and do “The Dragon,” exhaling two streams of smoke through my nostrils. Enough for now. I put the still-smoking bowl down on my desk and it slowly extinguishes.

I decide to check my favorite blogs for updates. I open a new browser and go to Google Reader. Scanning my subscription list, I see that there are a few new neuroscience articles: Prozac and neurogenesis, space-time synesthesia, and a story on attempts to give goddamn Jesus H. Christ a Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality profile.

I pack another bowl, wondering to myself whether Jesus was a pot head—I bet he was—and take a few hits before returning to my blog list. I read an article on the heightened pain tolerance in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and another on Joshua Norton, the mad “Emperor of the United States and Defender of Mexico.”

As the weed continues to kick in, I realize that I’ve lost track of the time. I check the display on my monitor: 10:25. I’ve got to make the eleven pm train to avoid having to walk the three miles home. I finish the bowl and put it, the lighter, and the bag of weed back into my black satchel. I read two more articles: one about quantum entanglement and the fifth dimension, and another about the similarities between psychosis and mystical visions.

For reasons not quite forthcoming I feel the impulse to create a blog, and even as the thought coagulates in my brain, I hypothesize that I’m not motivated enough to reliably maintain and update it.

I’m well aware, in fact, that lack of motivation is quite possibly my most inhibiting weakness if, of course, you discount the substance abuse, which I do. I have almost boundless potential, I’m sure of it, but my results are almost always disappointing, especially to my parents. Two years ago, I graduated college early with a respectable 3.36 GPA, but my parents knew how little work I’d done, how little time I’d left myself to write papers before their deadlines, and that I spent more time drunk or high than I did on my studies. I only started taking Prozac for my OCD as a sophomore, and my Adderall prescription for the ADHD was not, ironically, started until after college. But, I think, even if I’d been on both from the beginning, I’d still have been eccentric, and I’d still have done drugs, and I’d still have the nagging feeling that I’m not quite alright.

What should I call this blog? I wonder. I think about my favorite fictional characters. They are frequently anti-heroes: Han Solo; Holden Caulfield; Raoul Duke; Sam Spade; Stephen Dedalus; The Man with No Name. That’s it, I think—The Blog with No Name. I enter the title and save the blog’s formatting.

I check the monitor display: 10:50 pm. Time to get going. I shut down the computer, pick up my bag, put my black hipster fedora on my head, switch off the light to my office, and walk down the corridor to the 14^th floor’s atrium. I ride the elevator down to the ground floor and nod to the night shift security guard at the front desk on my way out.

Outside, I take my coiled ear buds out of my left pocket and plug them into the little red IPod Shuffle clasped onto one of my belt loops with my left hand, putting the ear buds in with my right. I hit play, and Neighborhood # 2 (Laika), by Arcade Fire picks up with the line, “Our mother should have just name you Laika!” I hit skip back to start over from the beginning. The song affects me on a personal level—it’s the idea of a mutt sent up in space in an experiment for the furthering of mankind. There’s something of me in it, something of my life, but it’s something I can’t explain.

I walk down the stairs to the underground subway platform.

I hear the low rattling creaking of an approaching subway car. As it groans into the station, I gaze through the nearly empty and decreasingly blurry cars. I think of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

The train comes to a halt and the doors open. I enter the nearest ones and sit in the nearest seat on the left, across from a young couple and a few seats down from a homeless man sleeping with his chin on his chest. The couple looks at me and then they look away. As the doors shut and the train begins to roll, I become aware of a pungent odor in the car. It smells like urine, and it seems to originate at the homeless man. Making a valiant effort to ignore the smell, I open the main compartment of my man-satchel and pull out my copy of Hesse’s Siddhartha. I open to the bookmarked page and begin reading, but before long start to feel drowsy. The amphetamines are still in my system, I can feel them, but the weed is taking over. Before the first stop, I’m already asleep.

***

I come to when a station worker gently nudges my shoulder. I glance around the car. The couple is gone. The homeless man is gone, too, but he’s left behind the smell of piss. He must not have heard the PA system’s reminder not to forget your belongings.

I thank the employee for waking me and, realizing I’m at the end of the line, ask when the next inbound train leaves. The employee shakes his head and says that the last train has already left. It’s Sunday, he says, so the trains run on an abbreviated schedule.

I thank him and exit the car. I take the escalator up to ground level and study the map on a wall to get my bearings. Then I leave the station.

A heavy mist shrouds the streets outside. I can’t see more than twenty feet. My ears begin to ring softly but constantly. I wonder if maybe it has something to do with the weather. I start down the street that looks about right on the map. But soon it curves around to the right. I turn left on a street that feels right. I look up and, seeing that the night sky is completely obscured by dark and heavy haze, I realize that I won’t be able to count on the stars as reference points. And weed is not a navigational boon. Who knew?

The road I’m on leads not to more roads, but veers to the left and into a small wooded area. There is mown grass on both sides of the road. There is then tall brush, beyond which grow rows of trees—maple, oak, and birch.

Just ahead, a white rabbit untangles itself from the brush on the right side of the road, turns its head sideways, and freezes, staring at me. I start to wonder whether I might be seeing things that aren’t there: I’m hallucinating a goddamn white rabbit—how clich�. I stop walking, my intuition telling me that there’s something peculiar about this rabbit.

Its stomach. I see what looks like a bulge of fat protruding from its belly. It reminds me of a goat I’d once seen on a bus ride to Girona when I was studying in Spain, although the goat’s bulge had been bigger. A few other students had wondered out loud whether the goat was pregnant. I hadn’t felt like informing them that a pregnant goat was an anatomical impossibility.

My mind races. There is something else uncanny about this rabbit. It is curious and observant, not even remotely anxious or fearful. Aren’t rabbits supposed to be afraid of people? I walk over to it, and even then it doesn’t seem afraid. Is it just sick? Injured? I nudge it with my foot, and only then does it saunter back across the grass and disappear into the brush. I continue down the road, puzzled. Rabbits aren’t supposed to act this way. Does it have rabies? What the hell was with that bulge?

Around a bend, the road opens up into a large, empty parking lot surrounded by big, square buildings. At the top of the largest building, a neon blue sign reads “Pfizer.” I’ve wandered into a pharmaceutical industrial park.

I cross the parking lot, thinking that I just might be able to find a main road on the other side. But I have no such luck. Standing next to a pine tree, I look up at the sky. But the haze is too thick to even see to the top of the tree.

Turning my attention forward, I see a man in a black blazer and a black fedora walking down the sidewalk that crosses my path. He’s my classier-dressed doppelganger—he looks just like me. As I approach the sidewalk, I realize that we’re on a collision course; I slow down to let the man pass. He turns and eyes me, not looking away until I reciprocate with eye contact. His resemblance to me really is striking. My doppelganger covers his mouth and coughs. As he lowers his arm to his side, he points forward with his index finger. Is he giving me directions? I wonder. He is, he’s telling me where to go.

I reach the sidewalk and look in each direction. Only two choices: left, and the sidewalk goes around a bend and disappears into the woods; right, and the sidewalk goes straight—in the distance, I see the florescent glow of streetlamps and the man’s tall silhouette. I choose right, following the man in black. As I approach the streetlamps, a road beyond them comes into view—a road that bisects and cuts across the walking path.

At the intersection, the man in black turns right and walks down the sidewalk on the near side of the street. As I walk under the streetlamps, I hear them make the whirring sound they sometimes do and I feel the sensation of being watched. Directly under the lamps the noise is loud—louder than I remember having heard on such an occasion, and my hairs shoot up on end.

I turn right, following the man in black. I hear a car changing gears, and the sound of the engine grows louder. I look back and see a black Mercedes coupe coming around a corner, its headlights shining brightly, throwing its light across a sign: a capital “T” surrounded by a circle, and the words “Alewife Station” printed underneath. I’m relieved to see the familiar “T” symbol—soon I’ll be someplace recognizable. The coupe slows down as it passes me. I turn, curious as to who might be out cruising this late on a Sunday. But I see only black tinted glass and my reflection in it, my earring shimmering in under the light of a streetlamp.

The Mercedes pulls up alongside the man in black. The right rear door opens, and, without a word, the man in black climbs in. Even before he can pull the door closed, the coupe begins to speed away. I’m not sure what to make of it. The whole thing seems a little uncanny. But I continue on down the road, glad to be back on track.

After about ten minutes I see another sign for Alewife Station. Shortly thereafter, I see a sign for the bike path between Alewife and Davis Stations. I look at my watch. 2:00 am. Damn, it’s late. But it’s too early too. I’ll have to wait four hours for the first train to Davis, but I can be there within half an hour if I take the bike path.

I’ve made the walk a few times before, so getting lost isn’t a particular concern at this point. I have some steam left—thanks to the Adderall—and decide to walk it. Arriving at Alewife, I follow the signs to the winding bike path just behind the parking lot. The path is flanked by fields of high grass held in by chain-linked fences on both sides. It reminds me a little of the corn “maizes” back in Vermont—they’re tourist traps, to be sure, but there’s a certain appeal to those labyrinths, and I’ve returned to one in particular every few years since childhood. They change the pattern every year, but there’s always a bell tower near the middle, providing a reference point for travelers, much as a lighthouse provides one for seafarers. There’s usually a very simple, efficient route to the end of the maze, but it almost never becomes evident until after you’ve made it through to the other side and picked up a map to trace your travails.

Soon, the chain-linked fences and grass give way to suburban Cambridge. The path crosses a road, and then another—they’re busy roads by day; but tonight there is only a single car idling with its headlights on. The path dips into a narrow, wooded area. As I continue, I look into the back yards of the nearest inhabitants. I wonder whether my glimpses into their lives provide any relevant insight about their neuroses and quirks. Here, for example, I see a back porch with its back vertical panel remove; the consequent opening is filled with tires—maybe fifty or sixty—and the tires are surrounded by a ring of traffic cones. I wonder, what do the details of their lives say about them? They probably have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Obviously, they’re hoarders. But why the tires and the traffic cones? Noticing a rocking chair on the back porch, I wonder, who sits there? I slowly pass the yard, speculating about the people who live there.

Before long I reach Davis Square. From there, my apartment is only a four-minute walk. But thinking about how close I am only makes me feel more tired.

***

When I take off my carabineer key chain and unlock the back door, I can feel my eyelids beginning to droop. I push open the door and walk into the dark entryway. I close the door and the last remnants of light disappear. I lock the door. Hands outstretched, I feel around for the banister and then, finding it, stumble up the stairs to the second floor landing. For a moment I feel the urge to go back and check that the door is locked, but the urge passes. Fuck you, OCD. I know it’s locked.

I look down the hall. My roommates’ lights are off and their doors close. Alex and Hank must be sleeping, I think. My door is open. I reach around the frame and flick on the switch, casting light on the clothes, half-empty vitamin water bottles, DVDs, half-unpacked boxes, and unquantifiable quantities of cigarette and marijuana ash. I take off my satchel, kick off my shoes, and pack one last bowl before bed. I only manage two hits before passing out with my bowl on my chest.