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November 30, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 6.4
The first couple hours were a hellish slog through blinding rain. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open and the nose of the car pointed south; every time I passed a semi my windshield was pummeled by a curtain of water and for a few long seconds I was sure I was going to die.
But I didn't, and just as "Cry Baby Cry" started for the second time, I came out of the rain. It was the first moment of real peace I'd had in ages. Before long the sky was completely clear, and some last reserve of energy that I didn't know I had kicked in. The rest of the drive was effortless, and I found my way without even having to think about it, although I couldn't have explained how to get to Lee's place if my life depended on it.
Later, a crescent moon climbed over the horizon to my left as I listened to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." I'd always been dubious about that song—"I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping," is that really the best rhyme you could come up with, George? But at that moment, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I decided I could forgive Eric Clapton all his many sins for these few minutes of transcendence.
Driving through the desert with "Helter Skelter" blasting, I remembered that the Manson Family had once lived not far from here. I've always thought it was one of life's great ironies that a Paul song became the theme song for Charlie and company's murderous rampage. Must have made John furious.
I was heading into the home stretch, doing my best to sing along with "Long Long Long," when the fuel light went on. I wasn't worried, though; I felt totally confident that I would get where I was going.
The light went off for a while, then came back on again, and was glowing bright orange as I pulled into the gas station. I was reaching to turn off the engine when it sputtered and died of its own accord, just as the last notes of "Good Night" were fading out. And then I fell asleep.
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November 29, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 6.3
I wish that I had stayed with Lee then, quit my job and gotten cleaned up; it would have saved me a lot of time. But I only spent one night there, during which we went for a long, tiring walk with no visits from mysterious entities. We discussed what the presence might have been, but all we agreed on was that the two obvious answers—God and aliens—didn’t satisfy us. God, we thought, would have made himself heard more clearly; and it just didn’t seem like extraterrestrial behavior. There was no abduction, no anal probe, no “take me to your leader.” And how would Martians know about bongo drums?
Shortly after dawn I got back in my car, popped a couple pills, and went back to my speedy, shallow, pointless life. Which was how I ended up in the phone booth, in the rain, if you can remember back that far.
I got out my calling card, picked up the receiver, and punched in Lee’s number. The phone rang a few times, and then rang some more, and kept on ringing. Lee’s not an answering machine kind of guy. I was on the verge of hanging up several times, but since I didn’t have much of a plan B, I stayed on the line. Finally, after what must have been a hundred and fifty rings, Lee picked up. Our conversation was short.
“Hello?”
“Lee, it’s Hector. Can I come stay with you for a while?”
“Sure.”
“OK. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
After hanging up, I took a deep breath and made a dash for the car. Once I was inside, I started rummaging through the cassettes in the glove compartment. Music was going to be crucial for this journey; my body was in total shutdown mode, but I was stubbornly convinced that I needed to get to Lee’s before I crashed. After rejecting Bauhaus (too dark) and T. Rex (too light), I came across a beat-up copy of the White Album, which was the ideal choice. I started up the car, hoping that the tape would still play.
I was momentarily elated when the airplane sound, followed by the first bars of “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” blared from the speakers. This feeling was soon replaced, however, by the realization that I had an extremely difficult ordeal ahead of me. The rain was still coming down hard, and it was starting to get dark, making visibility very poor. And I wasn’t feeling well, not at all.
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November 26, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 6.2
I must have looked askance, because Lee was moved to comment, “Just for the record, Hector, I was stone cold sober at the time.”
“Hey,” I responded, waving my hands to ward off the suggestion that I’d ever thought otherwise. “I didn’t say anything. Tell me about the light.”
“It was orange-yellow, round, like a little sun. As I walked it seemed to move with me, lighting up the ground around me, like I was in a spotlight. I felt a presence…a consciousness…and then it started talking to me.”
Lee paused and sipped thoughtfully at his tea. I tried to be patient and wait for him to continue, but that didn’t last long. The suspense was killing me.
“So what did it say?”
Lee took one more slow sip before answering. “Well, it was kind of garbled.”
“What do you mean garbled? Like a bad connection?”
“No, it was more that the voice was mumbly. Like somebody who’s drunk, or Bob Dylan. I mean, I understood a lot of it. There was a bit about seeking knowledge, that was pretty clear. And there was a whole thing about love, how powerful, how sublime, all that. But the last thing it said, well….” He shook his head. “I keep thinking I must have heard it wrong.”
“Why? What did it say?”
He looked rueful. “It sounded like, ‘Play the bongo drums.’ I was getting ready to ask for a clarification, and then it just turned off, like somebody flipped a switch. The light was gone, the warmth was gone, the presence was gone, and I was back in the desert by myself.
“So after that I quit my job. Actually, I didn’t quit so much as just stop showing up. I took my savings and bought this place, and now I go out walking every night. I keep hoping it’ll come back, but nothing so far.”
After taking some time to process this strange tale, I asked what seemed like the most logical question. “Have you tried playing the bongos?”
Lee pointed to where a set of bongos sat on an end table. “I play every day. It’s fun, but it doesn’t seem to accomplish much.”
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The Documents of Hector Maze: 6.1
Lee’s house was much nicer inside than it appeared from the outside, although his housekeeping left something to be desired. Dirty dishes and used teacups were everywhere, as were stacks of books on subjects ranging from hard science to Eastern mysticism to the Kennedy assassination. There was also a wide selection of Classic Literature, from The Brothers Karamazov to Moby-Dick to Gravity’s Rainbow. An old, lopsided gray cat eyed me cautiously from a corner.
“Sorry, I don’t do much entertaining,” he said as he cleared some papers off a chair to make a place for me to sit. There was something new in the way he carried himself, but I didn’t know what to call it. There was a grace to it, but then he had always been graceful; this was something different.
Lee offered me a cup of tea and I accepted without stopping to think that hot tea was the last thing I wanted in this climate. It was even hotter inside than out and I could feel the sweat gleaming on my forehead, but Lee looked cool and comfortable. I found this highly annoying. Heat makes me cranky.
Nothing was said as Lee heated the water and put the tea in to steep. I was trying to think of a polite way to ask what the hell he was doing here, but fortunately he saved me the trouble.
“I bet you’re wondering what I’m doing here.”
I nodded. “The thought had crossed my mind.”
“I sometimes wonder myself. Well, the first part is easy to explain. Last Thanksgiving I decided to come out to the desert, get away from everybody and everything, just do some thinking. I was hating my job. Hating it. That place was just money, money, money…the share prices, the stockholders, the competition. Nobody cared about what we were actually doing.
“It was my own fault, really. I had no business there in the first place. But after all the wandering, I wanted some stability, some security….
“Anyway, I drove out on Thanksgiving Day and set up camp at a spot just a couple of miles from here.” He gestured vaguely toward the window. “It was great. Peaceful. By Saturday I had forgotten most of what was bothering me, but I was dreading having to go back. That night I went for a walk.”
He paused to locate two clean teacups and fill them. “I haven’t told anybody else this story and I know it’s going to sound weird. I’m still not really sure what happened. Promise you won’t think I’m nuts?”
This was very unlike Lee. He had always been totally sure of himself; if you disagreed with him, you were wrong, and that was that. I recognized now what was new in his manner: a sense of humility.
“I promise.”
“OK,” he said, smiling and sipping his tea. I watched his eyes roll up and to the left as he accessed his memory. “I went out for a walk. There was no moon, and I’d never seen the stars look so clear. But it was cold, and getting colder. I was just starting to think about turning back when I felt this…warmth.”
There was a catch in his voice as he said the last word, and I tried to meet his eyes but he was far away now, completely in the moment.
“It was like being gathered up in your mother’s arms. Or like walking through a door into a warm house, hearing a fire crackling inside, smelling soup in the kitchen. I just suddenly felt completely safe.
“Then I looked up and there was a light in the sky.”
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November 19, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 5.4
Next thing I knew I was being ushered into an oddly-shaped room with mirrors on every wall. The mirrors made the room look infinitely large and made the 30 or so people in the room look like thousands. All of us stood around awkwardly for a minute waiting for something to happen.
Then it did. The lights went out and some strange, Middle Eastern-sounding music was piped in. A moment later the floor started sinking. If I wanted to have my mind blown, I’d certainly come to the right place; this was much better than the Pink Floyd laser show.
When the floor stopped moving, a door popped open on one side, revealing a distant circle of light that appeared to be at the other end of a long tunnel. The music stopped and suddenly it was disconcertingly quiet. The only thing I could hear was what sounded like water dripping somewhere far away, amplified by an echo effect.
The crowd was quiet too, until someone finally said, “Well, what do we do now?”
There was no answer, so after a minute I was moved to share my opinion. “Obviously, we head for the light.”
A woman’s voice piped up. “But it’s, like, totally dark in there.”
She was right—it was, like, totally dark. Or at least it had been; my eyes had adjusted to the darkness now, and as I squinted into the tunnel, I saw a very faint glow emanating from the walls at regular intervals. I stepped through the door for a better look. It wasn’t enough light to make you feel comfortable, but it was enough to work with. “No point just hanging around,” I said, and started walking. Everybody else fell in behind me, which I guess made me de facto leader of this little expedition. I’m not much of a natural leader, but when there’s a vacuum I’ll step into it; I’m not totally useless.
For a while we marched along in silence, except for our footsteps crunching on the ground.
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November 18, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 5.3
I woke up in a state of confusion. The sun was punishing my eyes and I couldn't seem to remember where I was.
I sat up and put on my sunglasses. That helped with the sun, and as my eyes adjusted I made out the rollercoaster in the distance. It all came flooding back: the phone call, the job, the theme park. Right. Everything's under control.
I had a hard time standing up for some reason. After a moment I steadied myself and started walking, but I felt unusual. Almost as if...
Then I remembered: The last time I'd quit smoking loco weed, I'd baked everything I had left—which was quite a bit—into these cookies and put them in the freezer for an emergency.
This was going to be an interesting afternoon.
I felt a little panicky. Unfamiliar surroundings + drug paranoia = a bad situation. But I reminded myself of the wise words of Douglas Adams: "Don't panic."
My first instinct was to get back to the car and get out as soon as possible. But if this was just the leading edge of a heavy-duty high, I wasn't going to want to deal with extricating myself from the parking structure and then driving home. So I reminded myself of the wise words of Hunter S. Thompson: "Buy the ticket, take the ride."
I was here now and I was going to have to deal with it. It wasn't like I'd never been in this type of situation before. The best strategy is to find something to do, keep from getting sucked up into your mind. I took a couple of deep breaths and started walking again.
I found a path that led into a short tunnel and when I came out the other side, I was looking down at a silver, pyramid-shaped building with a long line of people in front of it, and I seemed to be looking down at it from a great height. Was it the dope that made me think so, I wondered, or was this really true? Given that we were at sea level, it seemed unlikely; but after what I'd already seen, I was ready to think anything was possible.
Stairs were cut into the hillside in front of me, and several people were already on their way down. For lack of a better plan, I decided to join them. The steps were on the narrow side, but I was suddenly feeling absurdly confident and light on my feet. I knew from experience, though, that this is exactly when you're in the most danger, so I resisted the temptation to take the steps two at a time.
At the bottom I attached myself to the end of the line and tried to act normal. This is not easy for me under the best of circumstances, and doubly difficult with my mind running in circles as it was. But I figured if I kept my mouth shut and didn't make any sudden moves I'd be OK.
Over my left shoulder I caught sight of a flashy blonde in a flesh-baring black top, and just behind her a cute brunette in glasses, playing with her hair. This led to a reverie the details of which I prefer to keep private. Let's just say it distracted me long enough that I was almost to the front of the line by the time I realized I had no idea what I was waiting in line for.
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November 15, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 5.2
I’ll say that again in case you missed it: The track ended abruptly, in midair. It didn’t start again until about a hundred yards ahead and twenty yards below, as if we were meant to fly through the air and pick up the track again on the other side.
I wasn’t afraid, though. No, I was terrified. My heart turned inside-out and the screaming around me reached a deafening crescendo as we leapt off the tracks and started flying.
Ot at least that was what it felt like. In my rational mind I was sure that we were still on a track that had somehow been erased from visual reality—I mean, no one would build a rollercoaster that flies through the air, would they? That’s insane. But my eyes were telling a different story, and maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but I certainly felt like we were gliding frictionless through the air.
Time stopped for a long, peculiar moment of exhilarating freedom mixed with a sense of impending doom. And then it was over as we hit the track on the other side with a jolt. The jolt should have bothered me, because it went against my invisible-track theory; but I was so happy to still be alive that I didn’t care.
I had a scant moment to catch my breath before we dove into another set of sharp curves that soon brought us back down to ground level and the end of the ride. My legs were wobbly as I stepped out of the car, but my body was pulsing with adrenaline and I couldn’t help but smile at still being in one piece. I looked around at my fellow passengers, who were similarly elated, and felt a pleasing sense of connection. Were I a different kind of guy, I might have started going around shaking hands.
Instead I decided to find a shady spot and have lunch. After a few minutes of recon I found a suitable location and had a seat. Feeling good about having made it through the rollercoaster experience without soiling myself, I unzipped my backpack and got out an apple which I dispatched with haste. I followed it down with the bread and cheese, which were pleasantly crusty and not as bad as it looked, respectively. To top it off I busted open the Tupperware and started in on the cookies, which were slightly soggy and tasted a little off somehow, but…they were cookies. I scarfed them eagerly and lay back on the grass to digest.
It had been an unusually eventful day already, and it was barely noon. I felt quite content for the moment just laying there, and it wasn’t long before I drifted off into an unplanned slumber.
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The Documents of Hector Maze: 5.1
Near where I came out of the ferris wheel thingie there was a sign that said "WARNING: MOVING WALKWAY." As people passed it they started gliding away at a steady rate, just like at the airport. What was odd was that the ground beneath them didn't appear to be moving; it looked like an ordinary field of grass. This aroused my inner technophobe, who likes to feel that he has at least some idea of how things work. In this case the illusion was so seamless that I felt like a superstitious native suddenly confronted with a 747.
I decided to go in another direction, so I found a path that led off through a canopy of trees. Birds were singing overhead and the air was cool and loamy; within 50 yards I might just have well have been in a park somewhere, so cut off was I from the surrounding environment. But a minute later I emerged from the trees and in front of me a towering rollercoaster gleamed orange in the sun.
It was a wild labyrinth of twists and turns going up, down, left, and right, and underneath it was a long line of people waiting to get on. I debated whether to join them. On the one hand, I'm not that crazy about rollercoasters, and I'm not a big fan of long lines either. On the other hand, there I was. What did I have to lose, except my lunch—which was still in my backpack, so as long as I held onto it carefully, I figured I'd be OK.
I got in line behind a couple of teenagers who were so excited that they were vibrating visibly. From their conversation I gleaned that this was their third time on the ride today.
The line moved surprisingly quickly and it wasn't much more than 10 minutes before I was strapped into my seat. The teenagers were in the car ahead of me and a college-age couple was behind me, so I was sitting alone, which was a good thing. I didn't want anyone to witness the abject terror that it was quite possible I was going to experience.
The rollercoaster started off slowly but then, as it began climbing a slight grade, accelerated abruptly. Then it shot straight up into the air, quickly turned left, made a half-circle to its right, climbed some more and then plunged abruptly almost to ground level. Everyone around me was screaming but I was silent, though inwardly I was cursing myself for deciding to do this.
I saw a twist in the track ahead and suddenly we were upside-down, rolling along just a couple feet off the ground. We started climbing, still upside-down, and went through a dizzying series of loops and banks before finally turning right-side-up. We were very high up now and had a good view of Elasticland all around us and the water off to our left. There was long stretch of straight track ahead of us, so I relaxed into my seat for a moment.
My back was sore from being slammed back into the car so many times, but I forgot all about that when I saw that the track ended abruptly in midair just ahead.
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November 14, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 4.4
It was a short walk from the park to the local tavern. We ordered whiskeys and I tried to get Lee to tell me where he’d been for the last three years. He was evasive. He’d been around the world, he said. Spent some time at sea. Been to Africa and the Arctic. Now he was working a high-powered job for an aeronautics company down south.
Which was an odd thing for him to be doing. But by the time we got to that part of the story, I was two drinks to the good and not in the mood for an interrogation. I was happy just to see him, and we soon got into one of our usual conversations about aliens, the nature of existence, and Jimi Hendrix. We kept on drinking till closing time, then wandered off into the cool, surprisingly starry night. There was no teary goodbye, just a handshake and a manly half-hug. I turned to walk home, and Lee strode off in the opposite direction.
In the morning I had a hard time believing that the encounter had ever happened. For a minute I thought I’d dreamed the whole thing, but my hangover said otherwise. Plus Lee had given me his sunglasses after I said I liked them; they were sitting on the bureau in my bedroom. I realized to my chagrin that I’d never found out where he was staying or gotten an address or phone number, and so that was the last I heard of him until a year and a half later, when I went down to L.A. on business. I decided to try to find Lee while I was down there, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. His phone number was unlisted, naturally. I couldn’t remember the name of the company he worked for, but in the end I was able to get an address through the Department of Motor Vehicles.
It was somewhere around Barstow, out on the edge of the desert. I took off from my hotel at 10 in the morning on Saturday and by 1:30 I’d left civilization far behind. My map proved to be less than useful, so I finally pulled into a gas station—the only sign of human habitation for miles around—to ask directions. It was an old, rundown station with the old mechanical pumps; behind it was a junkyard of sorts covered with rusty machinery, in the middle of which stood a brown wooden house that could just as well have been called a shack. Behind that was a vast expanse of nothing.
I parked beside one of the pumps and got out. There was not a single sound to be heard, though I could have sworn I heard rust working away all around me. It was dusty and hot and although there were no actual tumbleweeds, in my mind’s eye a dry wind was blowing balls of dead plant matter through this Godforsaken place.
I waited a minute to see if anyone would appear, then leaned on the horn to scare up some action. A few seconds later a figure in a white robe materialized out the junkyard and came toward me. There was something familiar about the way it moved, and…well, you’ve probably figured it out already. His black hair was long now and his face had a considerably browner hue, but it was Lee.
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November 11, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 4.3
Then Lee began to change. Toward the end of the year, he gave up all of his bad habits, gifting me with an assortment of drug paraphernalia and a big bag of mushrooms he’d squirreled away under his bed. He stopped going to class and began disappearing altogether for longer and longer periods of time. One day during finals week, I saw him for the first time in ten days and asked him what was going on. There was a fire in his eyes I’d never seen before. It scared me a little.
“I have to leave this place, Hector,” he said. (His speech got pretty biblical-sounding sometimes.)
“Why?” I asked.
“I’ve seen the end.”
“The end of what?”
“The end of myself. The universe. Everything. I don’t have time to explain right now.” He looked at his watch. “I need to go.”
“Lee…”
He put his hand on my shoulder, fixing me with a stare just this side of madness. “I’ll find you, Hector.”
That was the last time I saw Lee for more than three years. In the meantime I tapered off the hallucinogens—Lee’s breakdown, or revelation, or whatever it was, had really thrown me—and started doing some actual studying. My grades improved and despite the shaky start I managed to get my degree fairly easily. One day not long after graduation I was at the park down the street shooting free throws. I spent about an hour shooting free throws every day that summer; it helped relieve the anxiety I was feeling about my future.
I hadn’t forgotten about Lee, nor did I think about him very often. But I wasn’t at all surprised to see him come walking into the park that day. It was late afternoon and his thin frame was silhouetted against the setting sun. His head was shaved and he was wearing sunglasses, but I knew immediately that it was him.
He nodded at me. “Hector.”
“Lee. Good to see you again. What’s new?”
One side of his mouth twisted up into a smile. “There is no new thing under the sun, Hector. You know that.”
“Just a figure of speech, man.”
“I know. Let’s go get a drink.”
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November 10, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 4.2
When I got outside, it had of course started pouring rain. How perfect. Hard, cold drops landed all over my body and I felt soaked almost immediately. My car was blocks away and the only shelter in sight was a phone booth on the corner, so I made for it with haste.
Once inside, I closed the door behind me and slumped against it. So there I was: wet, exhausted, disheveled, unemployed, huddled in a phone booth with raindrops beating loudly on the glass. I had absolutely no idea what my next move was. And then I thought of Lee.
That would be Lee J. Lee, hands down the most unusual human being I've ever known. We met during my freshman year in college; he was a junior who lived in a single room down the hall from me. He kept pretty much to himself, and while I'd seen him a number of times, we never exchanged a word until about a month into the school year. That was when I happened one evening to be listening to Another Green World by Brian Eno with my door open. Lee, walking by, froze in his tracks. It was his favorite album.
We started talking and quickly discovered that we liked the same music and shared a fondness for recreational mind-bending. Lee went to his room for a minute and returned with a pile of CDs and two hits of acid adorned with the likeness of Ms. Pac-Man. That was the beginning of a long night of conversation and music appreciation interrupted by a five-hour hike around the campus.
Lee was a heavy-duty thinker with a double major in physics and philosophy. I didn't understand a lot of what he said, his references were maddeningly esoteric, and at times he seemed to contradict himself within the space of a sentence. But it was exciting to be in the presence of a mind so different than any I'd previously been familiar with. His thought process was at once strictly scientific and oddly mystical. He was also wildly funny, spoke with a poetic flair, and could be soulfully quiet for long stretches of time.
After that we spent a lot of time together, expanding our consciousnesses and exploring the mysteries of the universe. The workings of Lee's mind continued to confound me, but after awhile I was able to decode all but his most cryptic utterances. He was secretive about his background, but after mentioning that he had a trace of a southern drawl, I learned that he was from Georgia. His mother was a native southerner and novelist; his father was a Baptist minister from Korea; and they both had perverse senses of humor, hence his name. Lee was also generous, fearless, and partied harder than anyone I knew while effortlessly maintaining a 4.0 GPA.
I tried to keep up with him, but it was all I could do to keep from flunking out. I didn't care. I was having the time of my life.
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November 9, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 4.1
If you’ve never gone six months or so without a good night’s sleep, I doubt I can adequately describe to you how deeply tired I was toward the end of the speed era. Sex, food, money, fame—all these were as nothing to me compared to the prospect of a nap. But I kept taking the pills, so there was no sleep for me.
Finally, one morning, my body served notice that it was not going to take this anymore. It was going to sleep right now, and I could go to hell. So I stayed in bed throughout the morning and into the early afternoon. The phone rang; I ignored it and let the machine handle it. The phone rang again; I ignored it again. The third time around, I forced myself to roll over and pick up.
It was my boss. I told him I wasn’t feeling well, which was the truth. With a cold edge in his voice, he said, “Hector, I need you to come into the office right now.” So I willed myself to a vertical position, shocked myself with scalding hot water, and drove downtown.
It was a gray and gloomy day. When I walked into the office, it seemed abandoned. Nobody was around and there was an unsettling absence of noise. The buzzing of the flourescent lights was audible, but the light felt dimmer than usual. I walked down the hallway, turned one corner, then another.
My boss’s door was open; his overhead light was off, but a lamp glowed orange in the corner. He was sitting behind his desk and looked up as I entered. “Have a seat, Hector,” he said, grimacing.
I sat.
“I’ll cut to the chase. We’re gonna have to let you go, Hector. Your work’s been slipping, your attitude sucks, and you never seem to be around when I look for you.”
I nodded. What was there to say? I deserved to be fired. The only surprising thing was that it had taken this long. A complex mix of emotions washed over me, but the one that welled up from underneath and came to dominate the others was an immense sense of relief. I was, I realized, free to go.
I stood up and turned toward the door.
“And Hector? Get some rest. You look like shit.”
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November 8, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 3.4
I blinked, and my surroundings transformed. Whereas a moment before I had been spinning upward into a pale blue sky, now I found myself and the ferris wheel in near-darkness. It appeared that we were in a large underground cave, the walls of which I could faintly discern at a distance of several hundred yards.
I was nonplussed. This was an unexpected development, and a part of me wanted to freak out, particularly when I thought I saw something move and thought of bats. Yet I felt oddly calm. In any case, there wasn’t much I could do about the situation at the moment, so I decided to relax and see what happened next.
I tried to look around at my fellow passengers to gauge their reactions to this turn of events, but the lack of light prevented me. Their voices merged into a low murmur from which I could glean nothing intelligible; something about the setting discouraged loud speech. So I slumped back in my seat and tried to concentrate on my breathing.
The wheel continued to turn at the same measured pace. As the minutes ticked by and my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I began to be able to make out a mottled pattern on the distant walls, and then what seemed to be pictograms of some kind.
I squinted my eyes to try to make out more, and suddenly a shaft of light fell on the top of my head. At first it was just a narrow band, but gradually it widened into a five-foot-wide column of light that the movement of the ferris wheel carried me out of. I looked up; the light seemed to be emanating from the ceiling of the chamber, or whatever it was that we were in.
Then, in addition to the wheel’s spinning motion, the wheel in its entirety began to move upward toward the light. As we approached the ceiling, I could make out a circle of sky above. Just as I once again reached the top of the wheel, the rotation stopped and I was popped through the hole into the sunlight.
Next thing I knew, I was being helped out of my seat by a new guy in a silver jumpsuit. I was back at ground level but the path in front of me looked completely unfamiliar. As I tried to get my bearings, my fellow passengers were one by one rotated into the opening and liberated from their confinement. We all stood there for a minute trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
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The Documents of Hector Maze: 3.3
I nearly choked when the attendant told me how much it cost to get in. I had just enough in my wallet to cover it. I kept the receipt, making a mental note to try to write it off. The attendant handed me what appeared to be a small medallion which I was to wear around my neck—it contained an embedded microchip that would identify me as a paying customer.
About 20 yards past the entrance, there was a crossroads where signs with arrows on them indicated the locations of various attractions. I scanned them briefly and then, realizing that I had no data on which to base a decision, decided to just turn right. When all else fails, I turn right to get into something, left to get out. This rule of thumb usually works out well enough, not that I'd recommend it for general usage.
The first ride I came to looked like a plain, old-fashioned ferris wheel. This seemed like a reasonable place to start. The line wasn't bad, and in maybe five minutes I was being strapped into my seat by an employee in a silver jumpsuit.
The wheel began to rotate, lifting me into the air. It struck me that the day was really quite lovely. The sun was shining and a cool, soothing breeze was blowing, accentuated by the motion of the wheel.
As I neared the apex of the wheel's rotation, looking down at the smallish people walking back and forth below, I experienced a moment of great peace. "Kaya" by Bob Marley and the Wailers, always a favorite of mine, began to play in my head. I found myself wondering what sort of problems a place like this could have, and how serious they could possibly be.
And then the strangest thing happened.
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The Documents of Hector Maze: 3.2
This whole process had gotten a little adrenaline going, and I thought to myself, Use this momentum. Move. Do something.
But what? Laundry? Shopping? Dull. I thought about just going for a walk or a drive. Then it hit me: Elasticland. Go down there and have a look around before they know who I am. Get a feel for the place. Ride some rides.
I headed into the kitchen to look for some food I could take with me. Pickings were slim: a quarter-loaf of French bread, some suspicious-looking cheese, a couple apples. I tossed them into a backpack. There was a Tupperware container in the freezer that, upon further inspection, contained some chocolate chip cookies. This was a little odd, but I grabbed them anyway; they’d be thawed by the time I was ready for them.
I put my boots on and headed for the car before my impetus could dissipate. Progress was slowed momentarily by the fact that I couldn’t quite remember where I’d parked, but in a few minutes I had it all sorted out and was heading down Broadway. It was a lovely sunny day, I got some Captain Beefheart going on the stereo, and by the time I hit the onramp, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I may even have whistled a little.
I love to drive. It’s one of the few times in life that I really, truly feel in control. The car makes you part of a community but also serves as a nice buffer zone between you and everyone else. I know it’s environmentally unsound and all, but they’ll take my car away when they pry my cold, dead hands off the wheel.
The directions were in the passenger seat but I did not need to consult them; the secretary’s sultry voice had burned them into my memory. As I began to descend the cloverleaf offramp, I saw Elasticland, its giant sign clearly readable even from a distance, and behind it the glittering sea.
I took one wrong turn that led me into a little detour, but before long I was winding my way up inside Elasticland’s gigantic parking structure. It was pretty close to full, but I finally found a spot on the top floor and took an elevator back down to ground level. The elevator had an attendant, if you can believe that—a fortyish, heavyset woman who looked none too happy to be cooped up in this fluorescent-lit box.
I emerged from the parking structure onto an expanse of asphalt, blinking in the sunlight. A hundred yards or so ahead was a gate dotted by a series of booths; people were lined up a dozen deep at each one. I stood for a minute having second thoughts about this whole enterprise. The crowd, the noise, the screaming children…I briefly considered going home and spending the rest of the day in a state of repose, but having come this far, the smart play seemed to be to go ahead and see it through. I started walking toward the entrance.
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The Documents of Hector Maze: 3.1
I hesitated for a moment, knowing that to make this phone call would be to set in motion a process that might last months, or more. Just then I heard a loud meow and looked down to see the cat poised beside her bowl, fixing me with an irritable stare. I stroked her head and went to grab some food, happy for this momentary respite from the decision.
Did I really want to go back to work? On the other hand, did I really have any choice? I took a good, hard look at the squalor around me, then reached for the phone and punched in the number.
The phone rang only twice before a voice answered: a female voice, and quite a lovely one at that. I began to picture this Rubelcaba as an old-fashioned type who would have a statuesque, probably blond secretary with whom he might or might not be sleeping.
“Mr. Rubelcaba’s office,” said the voice, dutifully and efficiently.
I put on my best simulation of a professional demeanor. “This is Hector Maze. Mr. Rubelcaba left me a message this morning.”
“Yes, Mr. Maze, he’s been expecting your call. Please hold for a moment.”
It was about ten seconds before he came on the line. “Mr. Maze?”
“That’s me.”
“I’m so glad you called back.” He sounded like he meant it; his voice rose slightly in pitch. This was just as standard as the slight discomfort he’d evinced in his message. My clients are typically irritated that they’ve had to call on me and simultaneously relieved to find someone with whom they can share their weirdest and most persistent problems.
Then there was an awkward pause. I wished to end it, but the best I could come up with was “So what can I do for you?”
He hemmed and hawed for a few seconds, working out how he was going to phrase it. “Ah. Well…as I mentioned in my message, we’ve been having some difficulties of late.”
“What sort of difficulties?”
“Frankly, Mr. Maze, these matters are very sensitive and I don’t feel comfortable discussing them over the phone. Could you come into the office?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess.” I generally prefer to get as much info as I can over the phone. More than half the time, after a brief conversation, it becomes apparent that either the client doesn’t want to hire me or I don’t want the job. Handling this by phone saves me a lot of unnecessary traipsing around. But I could tell that Rubelcaba was on edge, and I was already developing a bit of sympathy for him, so I went along. “When?”
“As soon as possible.”
“I can’t do it today.” This was only partly true. I didn’t have anything else to do, really, but I felt that I needed some time to mentally prepare myself.
“Tomorrow, then? Nine A.M.?” he countered.
This is earlier than I usually like to be up, but I felt that to say so would have been unsporting. “Fine. Nine o’clock.”
“You know how to find us?”
I knew exactly where the place was, but I asked for directions anyway. I figured they’d know the best way to go, and besides, I just like to get directions. I don’t know why.
Rubelcaba put me back on with his secretary, who outlined a series of highways followed by surface streets, then told me where to park. I dragged out the process as long as possible, enjoying the mellifluous sound of her voice. When I hung up, it suddenly seemed very quiet in the apartment.
Posted by bill at 12:43 AM
November 7, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 2.4
The rest of this story writes itself: Once that initial whoosh wore off, I had to start increasing the dosage; but you can keep that up for only so long—the human being is simply not designed to go without sleep.
At first, sleep deprivation produces a state of of euphoria, but in the long run it begins to transmute—slowly and almost imperceptibly—into a kind of insanity. Exhilaration gives way to anxiety, paranoia, and a deep, fatiguing unease.
Even so, you can keep functioning for a surprisingly long time. But not indefinitely. Sooner or later, things start to slip. Unfortunately, by then you’ve fucked your mind so badly that you don’t notice.
I was so busy just trying to maintain that it escaped my attention when I started to fall apart. My body became incapable of experiencing any sensation other than exhaustion. My mind began to have difficulty processing information and to make increasingly unreliable, even self-contradictory, decisions. And my soul* began to rot away from the inside.
*I�m reluctant to use the word “soul” because it opens a whole can of worms that I don’t want to get into, but there just isn’t another word that will do.
Having experienced this, I have a much better appreciation of how people become corrupted. It’s not a matter of making a conscious decision to do wrong; it’s more of a slow drift. You kind of float away from yourself until one day you don’t know who the hell you are anymore.
During this dark period of my life, I did some things that I’d prefer to forget. And I did quite a few things that I don’t remember, because there are long stretches of time where my memory is a formless blur punctuated by images that are silent, distorted, and dismal.
I was not a well man. On the surface I was jittery; underneath I was weary beyond comprehension. I became short-tempered, inconsiderate, nihilistic. I pissed off my friends. I lost touch with my family. I started missing work. I was headed for the breaking point.
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November 6, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 2.3
There’s a reason, I think, that the idea of making a deal with the devil retains such currency, that it’s such an eternal theme. It’s a story that can be told over and over again because, no matter how many times you’ve been warned, and no matter how much your rational mind is aware that it’s a bad idea, the temptation to make a deal with the devil is always there.
Why? It’s just a question of time. When you sell your soul to get what you want—a million dollars,* a mansion on the hill, the power to cloud men’s (or women’s) minds—you get the reward now. The bill doesn’t come due until later, and the person who has to pay it won’t be you, it will be some future version of you. The main thing is that you get what you want and get it right away; dealing with the consequences is future version’s problem.
*Not many people would sell their souls for a million dollars these days. Inflation has driven the cash price of a soul sky-high.
This is one of those things in life that you just have to learn yourself. Your parents, friends, teachers, and clergyman can explain it to you a thousand damn times, but you just can’t understand until you experience it personally. Not literally selling your soul, of course, but trading away the future for the present.
The best metaphor I can think of for this is the credit card. You get yourself a credit card and you can go out and have a ball. You can travel around, buy whatever you want, stand drinks for all of your friends, or for people who will become your friends if you buy them enough drinks. True, money can’t buy you love, but it can get you a severe (if temporary) case of like. You can keep this up for thirty days, and then the bill arrives.
If you want, you can pay the minimum and party on. But then the interest starts to snowball and you end up looking at a big nasty debt. You can ignore it for a long time if you try, years even, but eventually—unless you die, disappear, or declare bankruptcy, possibilities which, for the sake of this metaphor, we will ignore—you have to bite the bullet and pay it all back. And that, my friends, is one manifestation of hell on Earth: the long, painful process of paying for pleasure you’ve already had.
Speed is like that. By borrowing against the future, you get more life now. But sooner or later it’s going to have to be paid back, with interest. Serious interest.
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The Documents of Hector Maze: 2.2
And then there was the speed.
It started with a deadline. Like a lot the pseudo-creative, I was a terrible procrastinator—by which I mean that procrastination was something I was terribly good at—and somewhere around junior high I'd gotten into the habit of leaving every project until the very last minute, then relying on a fear-stoked burst of adrenaline to bail me out.
So one time I had a major deadline on an important account, and I'd had too much to drink and not enough to sleep the night before, and I sat at my desk in front of a blank screen as the day and then the night wore on, and I had nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'd had some close calls of this type before, both in school and on the job, but this was the worst ever. At the end of my rope, and my wits, and anything else of which you can metaphorically be at the end, I wandered down the hall to see a friend of mine. I knew that he would be in his office because he was a workhorse who seemed to keep at it all day and all night.
I confided my plight to him, and he confided in me that his productivity was boosted by regular doses of amphetamines. He offered to share a little, and that was the beginning of a long, complicated romance between speed and me.
Even now, knowing the disastrous outcome of this affair, I must admit that the beginning was beautiful. I worked till dawn, feeling tireless, unusually clever, and downright mighty. I finished everything I needed to meet my deadline, then polished off every lingering task I'd left undone over the past few months, the came up with half a dozen ideas for new projects to start. After dawn, I raced home to shower, then back to the office. When my colleague came in, I troubled him for a little pick-me-up, then headed to the meeting with the client. At the meeting I was more focused and persuasive than ever before; the client was overjoyed, and my boss was positively beaming. I felt magnificent, like I was riding a perfect wave that would roll onward and upward forever.
And in the halcyon days that followed, it appeared that I was right. I'd always struggled with my energy level, and after somehow having missed out on speed in college, to discover it now was like meeting my soulmate. It made me feel like a whole different person, one who got more done before breakfast than the old me had all day. Actually, I didn't eat breakfast, but you get the point. For some months I felt more alive than I ever had before.
That's the seductive and dangerous thing about dope: It works—for a while.
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November 5, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 2.1
You’d like some background at this point. “Who is this guy?”, you may be saying, or perhaps, “Who does this guy think he is?” Two very different questions, if you think about it—but I digress.
Like most people, I was born. I’m sure that it was vastly traumatic to be evicted from the amniotic peace of the womb into the light and turmoil of the phenomenal world, but I can’t say that I have any particular memory of it.
At first, I was a child. This was difficult at times because I was smaller than other people and ignorant of many things. But on the whole, it wasn’t bad. I don’t remember too much of it, to be honest with you. I think I watched a lot of TV.
I recall somewhat more of my teenage years, during which I discovered sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, though not in that order. My favorite album was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie; my favorite drug was marijuana; my favorite kind of sex was with girls, although this was much harder to come by than the kind you do by yourself.
It seems to me that I was pretty smart in those days, smarter than I am now. Or at least I was surer about what I knew. I did well in school, where they forced into my head an immense number of facts, almost all of which have long since dissolved and been secreted in some form or other.
I went to college, where I spent four years in an agreeable haze of literal, intellectual, and sexual intoxication. When it was over, I was awarded a diploma that I never bothered to pick up.
After school, I drifted around for awhile (cut to mental image of Dustin Hoffmann floating in a swimming pool). Eventually, economic realities dictated that I should get a job. I was none too happy about it, and undermined my early attempts to gain employment with sloppy resumes, incoherent interviews, and general apathy. But as time wore on and debts mounted, desperation led me to actually land a job with an advertising agency.
This was a colossal mistake, but that was not apparent at first. I was good at the job; it was fun, even. Advertising is the ultimate medium for pure creativity unmoored from moral and ethical considerations. All that matters is whether it sells; everything else is secondary, or indeed tertiary.
As long as you don’t think past the job at hand to its context and implications, everything’s cool. And I managed it for quite some time. Keeping busy helps. Between working, going to concerts, eating expensive meals, drinking and smoking, chasing girls, and all the driving in between, if I had any nagging doubts, there wasn’t much time to dwell on them.
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November 4, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 1.4
This had to be considered good news. For me, that is. I hadn't had any work for a while, and consequently was broke and restless. This sounded like a good prospect and I was glad of it, but also a bit apprehensive. Work is always such a hassle. It means I have to go places I'd never normally go, deal with people I'd usually avoid, experience their many unique varieties of bullshit. Not that I have anything against people, at least in theory. But being around them is hard. It sucks energy, and I don't have any to spare.
I made another half-cup and attempted to adjust my attitude. I needed this job and I knew it. I reminded myself that once I get into the work, there's always something interesting or instructive, or at least profitable, about it. The hard part is getting over the initial inertia, the almost physical dread of the effort that's going to be required.
I finished the coffee and replayed the message. The mystery intrigued me, as did the voice. What was going on with this guy? What peculiar brand of crisis was bedeviling him? What the hell kind of accent was that anyway?
I wrote down the number, picked up the phone. Decision time.
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November 3, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 1.3
Do you believe that one day, the phone will ring, and it will be fate on the other end, calling you forth to your destiny? Of course you don't. It's a ridiculous thing to believe. I certainly didn't believe it then, and I can't really say that I do now. But in hindsight, it's hard to deny that this was just such a phone call.
It was a man's voice. Husky, low-pitched, accented, authoritative, but with a note of some kind of contradiction—confidence subtly undermined.
"Mr. Maze," it said, "my name is Kaspar Rubelcaba. Martin Andersen gave me your name." And then there was a pause.
This is pretty standard. When people call me for business purposes, they're usually not happy about it, and I can understand why. Generally they're people who aren't accustomed to asking for help, but circumstances have forced them to ask for mine. Half the time they don't believe that I can help them anyway; they're only calling because they've exhausted all other options. They don't know me and know very little about me, but they're going to have to trust me with their secrets. Of course they're uncomfortable.
This guy had heard about me from Martin, my attorney (and old friend), who always keeps an ear to the ground for people who might require my services. The kind of work I do, you can't exactly put an ad in the paper. Although if you could, I know what it would say:
Perception is my business. When all other avenues have failed you, call on Hector Maze. All the insight you want—and then some. Confidentiality guaranteed, sliding scale, fully licensed and bonded by the appropriate mystical authorities. Call now and get a free gift.
Anyway, after a couple of seconds, the voice went on: "I'm the chief operations officer down here at Elasticland." I knew the place—a big theme park down by the water. I'd never been there. I'm not much for your theme parks.
"Mr. Maze, we've been experiencing some...difficulties. Unusual ones. I was hoping that your unique expertise might be brought to bear on the situation. Please call me as soon as possible." He gave a number and then hung up. The answering machine piped up, "End of messages," providing a nice sense of closure.
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November 2, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 1.2
I wake up very slowly. In fact, some days I do not accomplish it at all. Some days I come to around dusk, somewhat startled, realizing that I’ve gone about the day’s affairs on automatic pilot, and wondering what if anything they consisted of.
But this is relatively rare. More often I manage to achieve an acceptable level of sentience about halfway through my first cup of coffee, as the little caffeine demons race around waking up the various parts of my brain like a camp cook rousing men in a bunkhouse.
It often feels as if my personality must be created anew each day, or more accurately pieced together from whatever bits of debris are floating closest to the surface. It seems like a lot of trouble, or downright Sisyphean, if I might use an expensive-sounding word. But what can you do?
And in fact, on the morning in question, by the time I’d finished a big cup and had some cereal, I wasn’t feeling half bad. I stood up and looked around, and that was when I saw the red light blinking on the answering machine. It stirred vague memories of the phone ringing at some ungodly hour, which caused an involuntary shudder; but braced with coffee-and-breakfast strength, I was able to summon the will to walk over to the machine and hit the Play button.
“Message one,” said the mechanically feminine voice, halting between words. “Six-oh-three A.M.”
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November 1, 2005
The Documents of Hector Maze: 1.1
The call had come at six in the morning. I am not awake then, of course, even on a particularly good morning. And I was not having a particularly good morning.
I woke up around 9:45, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I dreamt of water, specifically of the time I ran full-tilt into an oncoming wave and got hit harder than I thought possible, spilled end over end into the ice-cold surf to come up spitting salt and gasping for air, shocked to still be alive. And on that appropriate note I finally opened my eyes and looked around.
I had been sleeping on an ancient and flattened feather bed, so my eyes were right at ground level. The first thing I saw was the carpet: cheap, thin, torn and ratted by cat claws. A layer of hair, mine and the cat’s, over everything. Then the whiskey bottle, brown, overturned, a small stain on the carpet next to it where the last few drops had dripped. Ash tray next to that, with a big pile of ash and cigar butts no longer in it but adjacent to it, a result of my having tripped over it on my way to the bathroom. CDs scattered hither and yon, some in their cases, some not.
This is not good, I thought. Not in so many words; my thoughts were scattered, preverbal. It was morning, as I say. But the sense that things had gone off the rails a bit, which had been building for some time, was especially acute on this particular morning. My head didn’t feel so great, and this had to be related to the whiskey bottle, though it wasn’t like I’d been on a bender. It was just regular life.
I needed to piss, too, and this was what finally got me up, endeavoring mostly successfully to avoid the stains and ashes on the way to the bathroom. The bathroom would horrify some but I am accustomed to it.
After that, my primary imperative was, as always, to make coffee. The desire for coffee is the only thing that gives shape and direction to my early waking moments. From the first thought of it I can feel the ghost of caffeine racing through my veins, generating a tiny swell of optimism that keeps me motivated through the actual brewing process. I make a good, strong, tall cup and wait. It takes a few minutes to cool to the desired temperature, painful and delicious minutes which I while away by retrieving the newspaper and scanning the sports section. Very comforting, the sports; it occupies the mind but has no real significance, so you avoid the stress that accompanies actual news. If you miss something, so what? There�ll be more games tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and so on, all different in their details but essentially the same, until this world at last ceases.
And also, for some reason, it delights me to follow the doings of athletes: their triumphs, their struggles, their rivalries, their contract negotiations. Their egos. I especially love it when they refer to themselves in the third person: “Vonteego has a lot of confidence,” Golden State Warriors guard Vonteego Cummings once said, apropos of himself, “and the Warriors are starting to have a lot of confidence in Vonteego.”
What can you say to that? I am envious of the ability to step outside one’s self and be so unconditionally pleased with what one sees.
Which reminds me, a few years back, another hoops player, J.R. Rider—a brash rookie at the time—predicted on draft day that he would win the slam-dunk competition at that year’s All-Star Game. And indeed he did, with a whirlwind concoction he called the East Bay Funk Dunk. “I said I was going to win it, and I won it,” said J.R. “I have to love myself for that.”
I have to love myself for that. This phrase has become one of my mantras. Power of positive thinking and all that. You should give it a try. Anytime you do something you said you were going to do, however small—could be making toast, whatever—say to yourself, “I have to love myself for that.”
Try not to say it too loud if there are other people around. Chances are they don’t want to hear it.
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The Plan
This November, like several Novembers in recent years, is National Novel Writing Month. With that in mind, I have decided to dust off my long-dormant Great Work of Fiction, post the first few chapters here, and see if I can’t get some momentum going. Your comments will of course be much appreciated.
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