Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation Read online

  Making matters worse, my mind started drifting to all the things in life I was grateful for—my wife and daughter, having a roof over my head, easy access to food and potable water. To my abject horror, I was counting my blessings. Of all the fucked-up timing.

  I looked up at the Scientologists apologetically, assuring them I had a vast capacity for rage and negativity and just needed a few more seconds to get my shit together. They had chosen this venue, not me. If their mission was to hawk bootleg copies of the new Ludacris CD, I’d understand, but how did they expect people to self-reflect in a setting that felt like the cutting floor in the Hormel factory?

  But there was no turning back. I was committed to getting a stress test, and it was time to close my eyes and seal the deal. Technically, it may have been cheating, but I started thinking about folks like Joseph McCarthy, Pol Pot, and Henry Ford. I even threw in Lansford Hastings, the douche bag who sold the Donner Party on a shortcut to California, but still, I couldn’t get my dander up; my mind was a slave to the calypso man and a new guy playing “Big Noise From Winnetka” on a cardboard box.

  Meanwhile, Randy, the game apprentice, the bright, eager, puppy-dog life force who epitomized the future of the church, was starting to lose confidence. It was heartbreaking to witness. Tony quickly stepped in and took control of the audit, bringing with him an I’m-not-here-to-fuck-around level of intensity.

  “You’re fighting it, Adam! You need to block out the environment! You need to focus!”

  I was sweating.

  “Were you ever molested?! Were you ever abused?! Did an adult ever harm you as a child?!”

  Just as I managed to dredge up the faint image of a friendly old man who used to live next door to my grandmother, Tony seemed to throw in the towel. In a dramatic Hail Mary play, he took hold of my hand, picked up a copy of Dianetics, and forcefully pressed it into my palm. “Adam, you need this book!” he bellowed as he knelt before me. But the big moment was interrupted by a gaggle of lively teenagers who scampered by and accidently bumped into the table, knocking the stack of Scientology books to the ground. One of them caught a glimpse of Tony as he flashed a reflexive look of irritation, dismay, and—I’m just postulating here—seething bigotry. The young man—a smidge large for his age—doubled back and slapped the E-Meter off the table. “You want somethin’, motherfucker?” he inquired of the Scientologist, who was still holding my hand.

  I can’t speak for Tony, but I’m fairly certain I’ve never been called a faggot that many times before in my life. All the variants were offered: “What up, faggots?” “You wanna fuck with me, faggots?” “Y’all gonna fuck each other in the ass, faggots?” He was a fountain of curiosity, this young man. And it suddenly occurred to me: here was the perfect candidate for the E-Meter. The stress in his voice was unmistakable. He obviously had deep-rooted anger issues that I assumed harkened back to well before the Civil War. I was about to suggest he take my place at the table, but circumstances prevented it.

  After extending numerous (and clearly insincere) invitations to Tony and myself to suck his dick, the kid kicked the E-Meter, which went sailing like a hockey puck and disappeared beneath a shoeshine stand. Then he ran off with his colleagues amid gales of laughter that reverberated through the tiled canyons of the subway station.

  From somewhere down on the express track I heard “Roy! Roy! Over here! Roy!”

  It was just me and the Scientologists again. Tony, justifiably flustered, silently rose to his feet. He removed the book from my hand and tossed it back on the table. Then he retrieved the E-Meter, which thankfully looked no worse for wear. Randy joined him as they collected stray books scattered about the station floor. No one said much of anything. I helped pick up a few copies, but neither seemed to notice. The boys were down in the dumps, and I was looking for a clean getaway. “Hey, guys,” I offered cheerfully, “maybe I’ll stop by the church one day and we can try this again in a quieter setting. You’re over there in the mid-Forties, right?”

  Tony, who was straightening a bent corner on one of the books, gave me a lifeless “Yeah, whatever.” He probably sensed I was full of shit.

  With the enthusiasm for my presence officially depleted, I slowly crept away. Part of me felt guilty for making things so hard for the Scientologists, yet another part thought, Fuck these guys. I did the best I could.

  Or did I? At the end of the day, isn’t everything my fault? Hasn’t it always been that way?

  I stopped at the newsstand to buy an Aquafina and a pack of Orbit. I screwed off the cap and—WHAM!—just as easy as you please, every prick who’s ever distressed, wounded, or fucked me over came flooding back to my head. Some were guilty as charged, while others, perhaps, had been unjustly indicted. I couldn’t decide whether to run back to Randy and Tony or to add them to the list. Christ, what the hell was wrong with me?

  As I mounted the steps leading to Forty-first Street, I glanced back and saw a lady sitting at the Scientology table.

  She was gripping the E-Meter and sobbing.

  The Panther

  My brief flirtation with the occult began harmlessly, driven in equal parts by my interest in all things macabre and a compulsive habit of sending away for stuff. By the age of ten, I’d outgrown the callow days of rubber chocolates and exploding cigarette loads and was now searching for something with a little more gravitas. The ball got rolling when I discovered a witchcraft supply catalog laying around my older brother Mark’s room—just another piece of 1970s head shop clutter among the Zap Comix and crushed boxes of banana E-Z Widers.

  The company, Oracle and Pendulum, was located out west in a mysterious place called Toluca Lake, which I imagined to be a black, gurgling body of water cloaked in a dark forest lousy with imps and naked hags. At the time, the farthest I’d been from Harrisburg was Ocean City, Maryland, so the rest of the country, I presumed, was untamed and barbaric.

  My maiden purchase was a bag of magnetic sand. I wanted to ease into this thing. According to the catalog, magnetic sand would bring its recipient happiness and good fortune. It delivered neither and, quite frankly, was a bit of a mess. In the end, it only managed to cast a spell on my mother’s vacuum cleaner. (“Adam! What is this crap?”) I was equally disappointed with the ineffectual Mystic Wealth and Riches Spray, which smelled suspiciously like Desenex, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather skip the embarrassing particulars of Madam Lastlonger’s Emotion Lotion, which required a visit to the dermatologist. Nonetheless, I continued paging through the catalog, looking for that one special item that might change my life, or at least distract me for a few seconds.

  Despite its provocative title, The Satanic Bible, I’m sad to say, is about as foreboding as a jar of mayonnaise. But that’s not what I thought when I sent the money order off to Toluca Lake; no, I was purchasing a book brimming with possibility, a virtual instruction manual on how to attain dark powers that would, once and for all, keep my fucking brothers at bay. Unfortunately, any fantasies I had of putting into practice the kind of scenarios so neatly dramatized on shows like Night Gallery and Dr. Shock’s Scream-In were quickly doused. Instead of simple, easy-to-do wizardry, the book’s path to evil was overly complicated and would require buying a bunch of stuff like gongs and shit. Who has the money for that? What the book did have going for it, however, was its author, the founder of the Church of Satan himself: Anton Szandor LaVey. First of all, it was the coolest fucking name in the world—something that’s still not up for debate. But it was his picture on the back cover that delighted me beyond reason: that ghoulishly shaved head, the sinister-looking watchband, and those evil, all-pervading eyes that seemed to say, “Thanks for buying my book, Adam. If there’s ever anything I can do for you . . .” I felt somehow, through telepathy perhaps, that I was now on Mr. LaVey’s good side—that is to say, his good bad side. I didn’t have to read the book for it to be useful; all I had to do was prop it up on my dresser. Those thieving brothers would get the message. It actually seemed to work f
or a while until one day I noticed it was gone, along with three packs of Juicy Fruit and a roll of dimes I had stashed in my pillowcase.

  Christmas vacation came and went and my interest in the occult began to wane, replaced by the notion of raising rats and training them to attack people (my brothers), as I’d recently seen in the movie Willard. It was a new year and I felt like I needed a change. But the reality of amassing a bunch of rats that would obey my every command swiftly set in, so I never seriously acted on the idea. All I was looking for was a little control. But for me, a kid living at that time, in that town, in that house, I was as powerless as a bag of magnetic sand.

  If The Satanic Bible bored me to tears, Robinson Crusoe caused me to leak spinal fluid. This was a book of such paralyzing dullness that I cursed destiny for allowing Daniel Defoe to survive the Great Plague and all the other crap he lived through back in sixteen-whatever-the-fuck-it-was. Robinson Crusoe, in my opinion, remains the ultimate screw job to any living creature with the ability to read or a mere desire for “something to do.” And this is coming straight from a guy who read only a few pages of it.

  The real enemy, of course, was not Daniel Defoe, but Mr. Ulsh, my fifth-grade English teacher. With his foul demeanor and slicked-back, tar-colored hair, he was practically a dead ringer for Jerry Lewis, and his every waking moment was the nineteenth hour of the telethon. The classroom was his stage, yet he had nothing but contempt for his audience. Those fatigued eyes seemed perpetually cast out the window, allowing him to admire his yellow Datsun 240Z in the parking lot. It was the car of an asshole, magnified a million times when the asshole happens to be a teacher. Yet for all its horsepower, it was never quite fast enough to outrun the hushed, gossipy voices behind his back, the ones who knew his career as a feeder of young minds had only come about as a way to avoid the draft. He was always dour, and the sole kindness he ever displayed was for Sue Carson, a pretty little hick girl he liked to bounce on his lap while the rest of us sweated over some pointless busywork he churned out to avoid teaching. He affectionately called her Pebbles, I suppose for the rusty ponytail she wore high on her head or the slight tatter to her one and only blouse. Even at age ten I knew his interest in the young Miss Flintstone was, to use a kind, nonlitigious term, “unprofessional.” Of all the kids in his class, Ulsh seemed to take a particular disliking toward me. I’m sure my atrocious work habits had something to do with it, but more so, I think he sensed I considered him a stooge. It was a bill inevitably to come due.

  The assignment was pure Ulsh: we were to read Robinson Crusoe and write a five-page book report over Christmas break. What a sweetheart, this fucking draft dodger, spoiling everyone’s vacation while he likely jetted off to the Bahamas with Pebbles. The other kids were justifiably dismayed, but I didn’t break a sweat. When it came to schoolwork, I was Mr. Bare Minimum—a superhero who could not be defeated, because I strove for nothing.

  I skimmed perhaps half a dozen pages of the book, all out of sequence, but ultimately relied on the handy synopsis on the back cover. From this I fashioned five pages of large handwritten text consisting of double-talk, repetitive horseshit, and roll-the-dice conjecture gleaned from my vague perception that it was a story about a guy stuck on an island. Then I capped it off with a meandering concluding paragraph that ended with the sentence “Robinson Crusoe lived on the island and struggled with his adventures there and then he died there!” The exclamation mark was my way of feigning passion for my work. All I was shooting for was a C-minus and I felt pretty confident. After all, this was Susquehanna Township. We got off every year for the first day of deer season.

  The circled red F on the cover page was so fierce that part of it sliced through the paper, and the histrionic all-caps SEE ME!!, underlined three times, was, quite honestly, a bit of a surprise. My misstep had been as simple as it was fatal: apparently Robinson Crusoe did not die on the island—or anywhere else for that matter. He remained alive and well to the very last period on the last page. In my defense, this was not something I could’ve possibly known, having read only one-fiftieth of the book.

  Pursuant to Mr. Ulsh’s instructions, I SAW HIM!! after class. He made me sweat it out for a few minutes before bucking Pebbles off his lap and sending her to lunch. Then he closed the door, which I found a little over-the-top. “So tell me,” he said, perching himself regally on the corner of his lopsided tank desk, “how did Robinson Crusoe die on the island?” I kept my head down and stared at his shoes. They swung lazily, like some rich Southern belle on a porch swing who thinks the whole world wants to fuck her. He repeated the question, this time adding a dash of unnecessary ball-busting: “How did Robinson Crusoe die on the island? Did he get hit on the head by a coconut? Did he get run over by a bus? Enlighten me.” I just shrugged, refusing to look up. Several more queries were machine-gunned in my direction, ending with the supremely patronizing “What day of the week did Robinson Crusoe name Friday after?” Fearful it was a trick question, I didn’t respond. It was news to me there even was a character with that name. Thank God, he didn’t know what I was thinking—that Friday was most likely a baby gorilla. Through toying with his prey, it was time to eat. His eyes seemed to milk over and his acne scars reddened as he imposed his sentence: I was to read the entire (!) book, cover to cover, and write a fifteen-page report, due by the end of the month. Fifteen pages! Was he mad? There were only so many words in the English language. I suddenly felt dopey, and the bones in my feet melted. I had to sit down.

  “And listen carefully,” he pronounced, “if I read one word of bullshit, one syllable, your ass is grass.” It was an expression I didn’t understand then and don’t understand now, but I was sufficiently terrified. The tears I was trying to avoid pulled into the station. Finally, I had pleased my teacher.

  Doing the required work was never a consideration; put a gun to my head and I freeze like a rabbit. That’s one thing those teachers never got over the years—I can’t be won over with sanctions and pleas for improvement. Still, I was in a bad spot with this Ulsh business. I staggered home that afternoon, anxiety surging, and more than once contemplated stepping into traffic. That familiar little snowball in my brain had begun its steady roll downhill.

  Then, two fortuitous incidents happened within a few days of each other. The Satanic Bible mysteriously reappeared in my bedroom—a little grungier and reeking of pot, but Mr. LaVey’s villainous face still looked like a million bucks. I never knew which brother took it, or why it was returned, but it didn’t matter. I had my man back. Later that week, an unassuming envelope arrived in the mail. The rubber-stamped return address identified the sender simply as M.M.E. and included a post-office box number from the curious town of Hercules, California. Inside, I found a single mimeographed sheet of paper that contained a list of “Hex and Spell Aids.” There were no illustrations, no aerosol get-rich sprays, just a tidy menu of voodoo-related merchandise printed in small typeface. The no-frills nature of it screamed integrity; it felt clandestine, unlike the splashier Oracle and Pendulum catalog with its Spencer Gifts pomp and ballyhoo. Having yet to know about such worldly concepts as getting on a mailing list, I read a great deal into how the envelope magically found its way to my doorstep. And what was M.M.E.? An anagram? Had there only been a Y, I could’ve rearranged it to spell MEMY, but what would that have gotten me? My mind was racing. Then it hit me like a two-ton crystal ball to the crotch—E is the fourth letter in the last name of Anton Szandor LaVey! Did that rascal have something to do with this? Not only that, but I received the F on my book report on a Tuesday, the fourth day of the week (assuming you start the week on a Saturday), and the number four is only four numbers away from eight, my lucky number. It was all adding up—the cryptic return of The Satanic Bible, the hex list from Hercules, and the dozen or so other illogical thoughts bouncing around my head. Help had arrived.

  I doubt I was the first kid to consider penetrating his teacher’s subconscious until he’s overcome with fear and confusion and develops
a lockjaw-like condition that reduces his speech to the squeals of a dolphin, but give me credit, at least I moved on the idea. According to the description, the “100% genuine African Black Panther Eye” would bring about the above-described conditions to your enemy if you recited a simple incantation and placed the eye among his possessions for a period of forty-eight hours (another four!). I quickly recalled the fifth declaration of the Nine Satanic Statements found in The Satanic Bible: “Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek.” What more did I need? Ulsh was fucked as far as I was concerned. He’d brought this on himself, and I would execute the hex not only for me but also for every human being whose life had been adversely affected by this piece of shit—from the countless students and a duped Pebbles to the fallen heroes in Southeast Asia who might have been pulled from harm’s way had there only been an extra pair of arms to save them.

  The eye was fifteen dollars, not a small amount of money, but I could only imagine the expense and sweat equity that went into prying it out of the panther’s face and shipping it from Africa to Hercules. I had about forty bucks stashed inside a globe I’d dissembled and modified for storage purposes, one of several makeshift hiding places I was forced to devise due to the endless crime wave in the upstairs hallway. This could very well be the most important purchase of my life.

  And so, I waited for a parcel to arrive from the Golden State. As I lay in bed at night, I tried to imagine its journey east. Had it made it to North Dakota yet? Utah? The Panhandle? Like book reports, geography wasn’t exactly my thing. And what would the package look like? I envisioned a zombie-eyed mailman requesting my mother’s signature for a small wooden box fastened shut with frayed twine and a rusty hook lock. Curiosity getting the best of her, she’d open it, removing handfuls of straw before discovering a little glass vial containing a strange object floating in black liquid. Her eye would meet the panther’s. She’d scream and pass out. The vile would shatter, the eye sliding across the kitchen floor. I could see the dog running in and giving the eye an inquisitive sniff before eating it. Soon old Sarge would be acting out of sorts, leaping in the air and trilling like a porpoise. One of my brothers, speculating that our beloved pet might be worth something, would sell him to a carnival, where he’d be abused and beaten like Buck in The Call of the Wild, a book I actually read and liked quite a bit before it was stolen from my room. Those fucking brothers. They were next on my to-do list.