What I'd Say to the Martians (12 page)

I
never know when the voices in my head are going to start talking to me. I might be coming out of my apartment and I’ll look up at the clouds. Suddenly, the voices in my head will tell me to go back inside and get an umbrella, because it might rain. Sometimes I’ll obey the voices and go get the umbrella. But sometimes I muster my strength and refuse to get the umbrella. Still, the voices don’t let you forget that you disobeyed them, especially if it rains. They’ll say, “I knew you should have gotten the umbrella. Why didn’t you?”

I don’t expect you to understand what it’s like to have voices in your head telling you what to do. But it is a nightmare I live with all the time. Right now, for instance, the voices are telling me to go back and change the word “nightmare” to “living hell.”

The voices torment me from the time I wake up. They’ll say, “Get up and go to the bathroom to urinate.” Throughout the day, they never let up: “Go get something to eat,” “Go take a nap,” “Go to the bathroom again,” “Get ready for bed.” On and on. Sometimes the voices even talk to me in my sleep, telling me to get up and urinate. My fear is that the voices will tell me to do something crazy, like go look for a job.

I used to think that drinking alcohol would calm the voices, but it usually makes them worse. They’ll say things like “Go tell that person what you really think of him” or “Get up on that table and do your funny cowboy dance.”

The voices used to talk to me about the Beatles. When I was young, they’d tell me to go buy a certain Beatles album. “But I don’t have any money,” I’d say. Then the voices would suggest I mow some lawns to earn some money. “But that’s a lot of work,” I’d say. “Well,” the voices would say, “do you want the album or not?” (Wait. That might have been my father.)

Sometimes I go for relatively long periods without the voices talking to me, such as when I’m watching TV, or watching ants, or lying on the floor and trying to blow lint balls into one big herd of lint. Or seeing which one of my cats is most afraid of “pillowcase head.” But these golden moments are fleeting, and soon the voices return.

I just wish the voices would tell me something useful once in a while, like how to say things in French or where my gloves went. But they hardly ever do. In fact, many times the voices like to taunt me, telling me, for instance, to turn left at an intersection when, it turns out later, I clearly should have turned right. Or telling me to wear a tie that obviously looks ridiculous.

Even worse, sometimes the voices themselves don’t know what they want. They’ll tell me to go up and talk to a pretty woman, then they’ll say, “No, wait, she’s too pretty for you,” then they’ll say, “Oh, go ahead,” then they’ll say, “What if your wife finds out?” (Man, make up your mind!)

When you tell people you have voices in your head, they think you’re crazy. But when you don’t say anything at all, and you just sit there and stare at them, they also think you’re crazy. So you can’t win.

I thought about going to a psychiatrist to get rid of the voices, but the voices said it would be expensive, and would probably take a long time, and that I’d have to put my pants on and go to the subway, then come all the way back on the subway, then take my pants off, and who knows if it would even work? Sometimes the voices have a point.

One day, I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore, and I decided to silence the voices in my head once and for all. But I couldn’t figure out how to do that, so I never did.

Maybe the answer is not to try to get rid of the voices, but to learn to live with them. (I don’t really think that; I’m just saying it for the voices.)

Will I ever be able to fully control the voices in my head? Probably not. But will I at least be able to adjust my lifestyle so that the voices are not a threat to me or others? Again, the answer is no.

But I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet, because one thing I have learned is this: the voices may be bossy, but they’re really stupid.

I
t’s not that much to look at. The nubs are completely worn off in some spots, the wooden prongs are swollen and warped, and the springs are so loose they can barely pull the magnets apart. And yet, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Every time I slip it out of its flannel tote bag, oil it up, and fasten down the straps, I feel like a king.

Like many of the best things, it’s old. And rare—only a few thousand were ever made. Most of them, of course, went down with the
Titanic
. A few were mistakenly turned into bird feeders. And the rest have been avidly sought by museums, collectors, and “sportsmen.”

I found mine many years ago in a run-down little shop in Asbestos, Colorado. The white-haired proprietor was bent over a table repairing it. Even with the rubber tubing, French grommets, and other parts scattered all over, I knew I had to have it. The old man sensed the light in my eyes and told me to come back in a week. I came back in two weeks, because, I don’t know, I was busy or something, and paid the then princely sum of $58,000, plus my watch.

Since then, the shop has been bulldozed down, the old man has died (from a bulldozer), and Asbestos, Colorado, has changed its name to Aspen. But I still have my prize.

People ask me if it still works. That’s like asking a Canadian if he likes puppets. It works like a dream, and not the kind where you wake up screaming.

Nowadays you can buy a modern, mass-produced version. And I admit, they’re stronger, lighter, and much, much easier to turn off. But there’s something about the originals that makes you want to hang on to them, at least until somebody makes you an offer of no less than $45,000.

I
would like to take this opportunity to urge conservation-minded people everywhere to pressure the government for the reintroduction of me to my native habitat.

My native habitat, of course, is the desert Southwest, where I used to roam wild and free. But, sadly, I no longer exist there. For several years, I have been largely confined to a small two-bedroom apartment in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

It is clear that I do not belong here, as my neighbors will tell you. I am still frightened by car horns, and the fancy Eastern food I am fed is at odds with my natural diet of enchiladas and ginger snaps. Often I can be found pacing mindlessly back and forth in my cramped office, which I am told is a sign that I am insane.

Occasionally, there are scattered sightings of me in my old habitat—shooting a wet straw wrapper at someone’s kid in a restaurant in Santa Fe, then denying it; doing my funny cowboy dance at a party in Silver City until people make me stop—but these cannot be confirmed.

For all intents and purposes, I have been eliminated from my former range, the Rio Grande Valley. I used to be found from El Paso and Juárez in the south all the way up to Taos and sometimes beyond (if I missed the turnoff to Taos).

Once, I filled a vital role in the ecosystem. I would prey primarily on the weak and the old, who were usually the only ones who would hire me. Then, when their businesses went under, they were removed from the system, as nature intended.

My world was in harmony. But, as often happens, man intervened. Ranchers would drive me from their lands when they caught me throwing a keg-party barbecue, maybe using one of their cows. Divorce and job dismissals took their toll. I found I could not coexist with my creditors. At one point, public sentiment against me was so strong that I was considered “vermin” and a “pest.”

But now, I think, attitudes are changing. People don’t automatically want to shoot me, like they used to. This is mainly because of my reeducation efforts and because they haven’t seen me for a long time.

The truth about me is finally starting to emerge. For instance, there is no record of me ever attacking a human, unless he was much, much smaller than me. The old myths are starting to die off, such as the one that if you leave your campsite unattended, I will sneak in and steal beer and food from your cooler and maybe knock down your tent.

The time to act is now. I am not getting any younger, and my rent here in New York could go up at any time. Also, I could be wiped out by the stock market.

I have been conducting a captive-breeding program with my wife, but so far it has yielded no offspring. (The reason, I found out, is that my wife uses contraceptives, which I guess I knew.)

All of these factors make it imperative that you write the government and tell them to reintroduce me, via first-class airfare, to my old habitat. With a generous per diem and a late-model car, I think I could once again fill my old niche. I would probably try to mate with females of my species, unless my wife found out. And I would be willing to keep a journal of what I eat and what TV shows I watch, so that more may be learned about my ways.

I will, if necessary, wear a radio collar.

I am willing to do these things because I believe that until people can sit around a desert campfire and go “Shhh, hear that?” and then listen for the plaintive howl of me, we as a society have lost something.

R
ecently, I got a sex change on a whim. I was out drinking with some friends, got really drunk, and went in for the surgery. The doctors suggested I wait until I was sober, but I said no, give me the sex change.

Well, to make a long story short (so to speak), I woke up with breasts, a vagina, and a splitting headache. Also, I had a tattoo. I don’t remember where I got it, but there it was.

I was a woman for several weeks. The people at work were nice about it, but, to tell you the truth, I didn’t really have time to enjoy being a woman—I was swamped with projects. Finally, I decided to go back to being a man. For one thing, I hadn’t thought about how you need to change your whole wardrobe.

When I went in for the second surgery, I asked the doctor if he could also remove the tattoo while he was at it. He said, “But since you’re going to be a man again, wouldn’t you like to keep the tattoo?” I said no, man or woman, I didn’t want the tattoo.

I woke up from the operation, and I was a man again. But get this: I still had the tattoo! I thought, Am I crazy? I confronted the surgeon, and he said he thought we had left the tattoo part undecided. Now that I was a man, I felt like punching him, but I didn’t. Instead, I just made an appointment to come back and get the tattoo removed.

I should have been suspicious when I went back for the tattoo removal and they put me under full anesthesia, because when I woke up I was a woman again but
the tattoo was still there
! They said it had been a mistake, and to make up for it they would do my next surgery for free.

I didn’t know what to do. I became depressed. I started getting hounded by my insurance company. They had covered my sex-change operations in full, but they said they didn’t cover tattoo removal. But I didn’t have a tattoo removed, I told them. They said they had already paid my doctor for one by mistake, and now I had to reimburse them. I called my doctor, and he said he hadn’t received any payment for tattoo removal.

I was so mad, I felt like suing someone. But who? My drinking buddies didn’t have any money, and I had no luck tracking down the tattoo parlor.

I gave up. I started hitting the bars and sleeping around. I don’t even remember if I was a man or a woman at that point. I felt a little cheap, so maybe I was a woman.

Then one night, after some meaningless sex, I noticed a photo on my wall. It was Godzilla. And I thought, That was a pretty good movie, I should watch that again sometime. Then I saw another photo. It was me, without the tattoo. I looked so, so incomplete. Something clicked in my head, and in my gut or maybe my uterus. I hadn’t realized it, but I liked the tattoo. I was a tattoo person!

I called my doctor and told him the news: I wanted to get another sex-change operation, but I was going to keep the tattoo. He said I was crazy. “Yeah,” I said with a smirk, “crazy like Godzilla.”

M
y dream job would be professional corrector. I would go around correcting people and things. For instance, if I saw you skiing down a mountain and I didn’t think you were skiing very well, I would yell out a correction, like, “Hey, man, ski better!” Or, if you were fishing, I might call out, “Hey, don’t just stand there, catch a fish!”

For yelling out a correction to someone, I would get five hundred dollars. For just shaking my head derisively and rolling my eyes, that would be only a hundred dollars. (So whoever’s paying me for this dream job, you’re getting a bargain right there.) I would also offer more detailed corrections, although I wouldn’t actually do those myself. I would farm them out to a subcorrector. I would be only a general contractor.

But I wouldn’t be in it for the money. In fact, I would do this job for free.
*
My main joy would be in helping people. Let’s say you’re at the beach and you call out to a surfer: “Next time, try standing up the whole way, instead of falling over, like you just did.” Imagine the satisfaction of seeing the guy do just that. Or imagine the pride you would feel when the winner of the Tour de France publicly thanked you for his victory, because you told him to “Pedal faster!”

I know I said earlier that I would not only correct people, but also “things.” But I’m not sure how you could do that. How could you move a mountain a little more to the left, or make flowers redder, or frogs hop-pier? Talk to God? Good luck with that. In my experience, that guy is always trying to correct
you
.