A VISIT FROM THE CREEP DOCTOR

(NOTE: This is not part of “Snakeland”. This is a short piece I wrote a few minutes ago based on a Guided by Voices song and a dream I had last night.)

The creep doctor wears another man’s face. It changes from time to time – those of us who have seen the creep doctor more than once have seen the face change over time. One wonders about those of us who have been allowed to see the creep doctor more than once. Why they have. Been allowed.

You see him. He walks into a restaurant next door. The restaurant is a fast-food type, colorful and bright. The windows are bubbled amber – you can’t see inside but the light penetrates. The person you are with says –There’s the creep doctor. He has another face on.- You look at this person who has been allowed to see the creep doctor more than once but there are no giveaways in the face. The person merely raises their eyebrows when the screaming starts. You look back at the restaurant. The screams continue. The creep doctor leaves the fast-food restaurant smiling. The smile is not perfectly aligned with the face. The stitching is loose around the mouth. Blood is caked around the lips as well as the eyes and the holes in the ears. His long white coat is stained with different blood, new blood.

He starts to come towards where you are, where the person you are with is. He laughs like this –He he he.- When he comes toward where you are he makes these little exaggeratedly mincing steps, as if he is trying not to be heard, to surprise you. He moves like a badman in an old silent movie. He makes you very, very afraid. The person you are with just sighs, as if the creep doctor was just another minor irritation. The creep doctor laughs like this –He he he.- He is closer now. You want to run but the person you are with just sighs.

Then you are in his doctor room, where the creep doctor does his doctor things. You are in his chair but you are watching from another angle at the same time, standing up by the side. You watch the creep doctor mince up to you and pull out the gas mask, to give you the gas. Then there isn’t any more.

When you awaken, you are still in the creep doctor’s doctor room, where the creep doctor does his doctor things. You are in his chair but you are watching from another angle at the same time, standing by the side. The creep doctor is gone. You are sitting in the chair but now there is dried blood caked around the lips as well as the eyes and the holes in the ears. You hear the sound of the person you were with who was allowed to see the creep doctor more than once. The person says –The creep doctor didn’t like how your face fit.- The person’s voice comes out of your mouth. Then the creep doctor laughs like this -He he he.- Then there isn’t anymore.

RETURN TO SNAKELAND - Twelfth Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. – JG *

So when I begin to look back all kinds of weird wounds open up, bloody little flowers blossoming on the undersides of my arms when I wasn’t looking, scratching an itch that doesn’t exist anymore. It was all so close to the surface, too – it didn’t take long for it to all come back, the Fear and the Excitement and the Sex and the Death, all dropped squarely into my lap. Literally: I got a massive adolescent hard-on ten minutes into my reverie and it pulsed with lust and anxiety in the same teenage mating rhythm I remembered so well. Bizarre to consider now: perhaps all the non-stop thinking about fucking was a hedge against Death, a heaping spoonful of Eros to help the Thanatos go down. Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together – a glib joke, but truer than it sounds.

So now, of course, your adult sex is more loving, more proficient, more satisfying and certainly more leisurely than in high school, but in high school – specifically Kenton North Senior High School – every furtive groping had an observer, every rushed coupling was an exhibition, every Menage was a Menage a Trois with that sick skinny bone-thing skull-grinning in the corner, watching and waiting for the space between breaths to slip in just a little finger of Death.

RETURN TO SNAKELAND - Eleventh Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. – JG *

The original reason I started hanging out on the roof of my parents’ house was actually pretty traditional. Alienated kid adoption fantasy with early 1980s “E.T.” fillip: I was waiting for the spacemen to come and take me home, back where I was supposed to be, where I would make sense. By the time I got to high school (1984) this had turned into just plain physical escape from the family and the de facto hassles to the teenage scheme provided by even the mellowest of households.

But then, staring into the sunset night after night, the feeling started taking over that this would be a great spot from which to watch the end of the world. It had become clear over time that we would be the last generation, that there would be no more after us, that we were the ones who would bear witness to the End. The War was in the offing, the Plague was already here, the Fire would fall from the sky and nothing but Death would remain. The "Day After" taught us this, AIDS taught us this, the Challenger explosion taught us this, and "I've outlawed Russia forever - we begin bombing in 5 minutes" - that taught us this, too.

The list goes on: the McMartin Preschool case, Jordan, Minnesota, backward masking, the "doomsday clock", the Judas Priest/Ozzy Osbourne suicides, the "Star Wars" Defense, Chernobyl, Mutually Assured Destruction, crack. Everywhere you looked in the 1980s, the screaming skull of Satan laughed back at you. It was the end, and we were born for it, born into it. In the words of the poet, we were Made for the Plague. We would Mourn, and Fear, and Wait. It's what we were good at - we weren't taught to do anything else.

Either way, I wanted a front row seat at the apocalypse. I wanted to be above it, above the fault line, above the blood tide, up on my parents' roof. In my mind's eye, I am there, standing, facing the West, facing Snakeland. My arms are wide open, my eyes closed. I am ready for my embrace.

It comes, then, winds out in a spiral, advances like a wave, a huge tide of destruction that floods up and over me in everlasting bliss. In the words of another poet, I felt bad, baby, and I was looking for a kiss.

Never got it, though. You would’ve known.