Chapter 1: In The Flesh Part 1

Chapter 1: In The Flesh Part 1 

It had been three years since that experience and I had forgotten about it. By the way, I am S. Mentria. “S” stands for Serge, these are the journals of a strange thing that happened to me a long time ago. Serge is the main character in this book. It seemed for a while I had no personality. I felt as if I was a nobody. People had adjectives for me like ‘bookworm’ or ‘brain’ and so on. One day, I decided to lift some weights at a friend’s house, and a strange thought came to me. Since I didn’t have a personality, why didn’t I just create one? I thought about it. I heard a few notes on a bass from a song playing on the radio and it made a symbol like a heartbeat, only more triangular in structure. Then, a name popped into my head. “Mutant.” I said aloud. “Gee, that sounds good.” 

My friend Cajun, who was spotting me, said, “What?” 

I snapped out of my daydream and said, “Oh, nothing.” 

“You better stop talking to yourself. People will start to think you’re nuts.” he quipped, looking at me strangely. 

I chuckled and said, “Come on, let’s finish this set.” It seemed strange, but everywhere I went, that path of thought just regenerated itself like procreation. I wrote an alphabet and a whole conception of some place called the Arganian forest 4th Sector. Pfft... I’m so sure, like, totally rad, dude. I said to myself, “Maybe I could write a book on this, it’s different.” Then, an antagonizing thought occurred to me. “Nah, it’s too cerebral. People wouldn’t catch on.” Day after day it went on... those thoughts getting stronger and stronger. I started to dream about it. I started having obscure dreams about me living somewhere else before and I was some kind of prince of an ancient tribe that existed years ago. Only, they would be intermixed with modern implements and some future machines would be seen. I’d wake up in cold sweats because one thing that kept happening in the dreams was that I was pursued by an unknown force. Every time it caught me, I’d wake up shaking and panting. My mom thought I was having problems, so she sent me to psychiatric treatment. 

That was pretty comical. I would come in and the doctor looked wackier than I did. He’d come in to the session tiptoeing, closing the door behind him quietly saying, “Hello, I’m Dr. Oreolitsky.” He was a tall man, shaped like a bowling pin, with hair on top of his head, but none on the sides. His eyes protruded like golf balls and would look at you maniacally. “Sit down, young man.” he would say. 

“I am, sir.” I would reply. 

“Oh well, let’s get on with it, shall we? How do you feel?” 

“With my hands and feet.” I would answer. 

He would write everything down in his legal pad. “Do you hear voices?” 

“Yes.” 

“What do they say?” 

“Well,” I said, “I hear in my head, ‘I am the Mutant.’” 

He would look at me and say, “Uh huh, anything else?” 

Then I would go on telling him about those peculiar dreams I was having and the blackouts and my lack of personality. An hour later, he had concluded that I was okay and he put me on downers to ‘relax me’. I’d wind up going to high school all drugged up and the teachers thought I was some kind of addict. They would accuse me of ‘popping pills for cheap thrills’ without letting me explain myself. After awhile, I started to believe I was one and was sent for drug counseling. That was lovely, simply lovely. Well, I became so frustrated with the system that I never went. I was sick of the institutions, what died they know? Besides, my thoughts were clouded by the valium and those strange thoughts of the Mutant character. 

One day, I was on my way to the lunchroom when I found out I was out of change. I had dough, so I went to ‘The New China’ cafeteria across the street. There were Rockers all over the place. Everyone was wearing blue jeans in a monochrome spectrum of faded denim. These lovely articles went with standard Converse All-Star canvas (spring/summer wear) and leather (fall/winter wear) sneakers. Some of the older dropouts had jobs and were able to buy MC Boots or goot boots (construction boots) with steel tips (they do more damage.) Most sported black T-shirts with their favorite Rock bands silk screened onto the front. Some wore leather or denim vests with either Harley Davidson or Rock pins (bought at the local Head Shop called East West on 48th Street between Bergenline and New York Ave.) that were displayed like Army medals. 

So, I went in and bought me a sub sandwich and a Coke. I sat down and met six girls- Chubbo, Rebel 222 ½, L.A.Y., Shorty, Buddha, and Lindy. Very soon I became friends with the guys. They all partied, so I got into it. “Tripping at Rock and Roll High School!” Some of the Boyz from The Projects (they also called themselves the Apaches) would come by with some goodies. They were stuck in the Plastic Age and junked themselves up with all kinds of pills, pink ladies, pink footballs, black beauties, red bennies, white mollies, yellow jackets, christmas trees, valiums and Quaaludes. Some would barter with me because I had a high Rx on my valiums- you know, drug economics. I was considered ‘cool’ because I had my own Rx. Everyone else had to steal the Rx’s from their parents who were addicted to pills and alcohol (leftovers from the fifties). It finally felt good to belong. No one called me a nerd. We were all black sheep that came from dysfunctional families. We made up our own family structure. We rebelled against our families by distancing our emotions from them and expressing our feelings to each other. I let my hair grow. Pretty soon, my hair was a  Jimmy Page Trip. Trip was this dog, a black one, that ran sideways and barked silently. He had three legs. He was an omen. 

Then Serge started to go into his own world. He started to draw pictures of obscure and distorted configurations. One day, he was looking through his chiffonier and he ran across some old scroll tucked away deep in the drawer. He picked it up and opened it. It showed two trees separated by absolutely nothing and connected from the branches. Over it, there was writing. It said, “Entrance of the Arganian Forest.” At the bottom, it was dated 7/14/79. He was thinking, ‘where did this come from? Who did this?’ He asked his brother and two sisters and they all denied doing it, so he went to the cemetery to bury the scroll by a tree. He thought it might have come from a ghost. He carved his name into the tree: Serge 714. Suddenly, his hair got static and he heard a chorus and a lightning bolt surrounds him in the darkness. A light spoke to him and said, “You and him are now one!” 

The next thing he knew, he woke up in some girl’s house all burnt out of his face. “Good afternoon.” She said. “It’s been three days, I thought you were gonna die. You ought to  stop partying.” He explained to her that he wasn’t partying and he remembered the light and what it said. She just smiled at him and said, “You’re just having a relapse, babe. By the way, I’m Bonnie. Nice to meet you.” 

“Nice to meet you too. Well, I gotta leave, see you later.” He left, went home, showered up and went back out