April 8, 2013
Cousin Manny’s words came back to me, as strange masks looked-me-over. I found a bench to rest my wobbly knees and commenced viewing Egyptian antiquities from circa 1500BC from a seated position…“Only eat one-third of this brownie,” he had said. But given that I was on Day 10 of The Cold from Hell – my hearing wasn’t so good – and besides, the brownie tasted quite good after a 10-day, loss-of-appetite.
Cousin Manny wanted to get me a pick-me-up — as he had been suffering from the exact same cold and knew what I was going through! Plus, I think he was a bit jealous that Brother-in-law Nasser had me on the cognac. So Cousin Manny stopped at a Long Island shop that sold magic brownies and got one for me. The salesgirl told him: “Only eat one-third of this”; which Cousin Manny did relay to me – but You already know what happened…
I felt the brownie kicking in about 30 minutes after eating it in 2 quick bites. Upon reaching the 3000BC Egyptian block (which is right by the entrance to the New York Metropolitan Museum), I knew I might be in-a-little-bit-of-trouble (since I remembered brownies taking over-an-hour to start doing their mellow thang) – but this one was already tripping me out! Some pharaoh’s tomb was there and I could already feel myself being embalmed. By-the-time I traversed about 1500 years – I knew I was destined for complete mummification.
The New York Metropolitan Museum is a massive place and it seemed like everyone there was “on the make.” By this I intimate that they not only wished to look at the exhibits – but that they also hoped to meet someone new – perhaps that conscience in resonance that we all look for? Perhaps they were all vampires – searching for the blood of an innocent like me? Fortunately for me, I had de-evolved into a lumbering, gasping Cro Magnon – who simply wished to be absorbed by a mummy casket and gaze upon the human stream passing me by (no one seemed too interested in making small talk [which I was physically incapable of anyway]). I decided that I needed to stay in contact with Giti via texting (and everyone knows I hate texting) – but by then, she was my only link to the world I knew before…
I definitely didn’t take much in from the Metro in a cognitive sense…god knows what dream stuff attached itself to me, however…
And then there was that one room out of the Italian Renaissance that I must have traversed 20-or-so-times. It’s not that the room was interesting – it was simply my safe house; replete with iron gates – like a prison! My continual entrée and exiting from this room was tantamount to “Nightmare on Elm Street” – where those doomed teens keep looping through the same scenario. Is this where I was meant to spend eternity?
I’m sure the security cameras had the guards asking: “What’s that guy up to?” And on the high scale of 1-to-10 – I would have had to say that I was up to a 10+. I would have to go all-the-way-back to a mushroom night at Kalamazoo College to recall anything like what was happening to me in the Metro.
I thought about “Night in the Museum”; hoping that this brownie would lose its potency – like daybreak broke that museum’s spell. No such luck, and, coupled with the effects of The Cold from Hell – eternity in the Metro seemed increasingly more likely.
Finally Giti was able to-reel-me-in by giving me a landmark close to the Italian jail. We agreed that my formaldehyded behavior would be ascribed to The Cold from Hell, so that no one (besides Cousin Manny) would say that Uncle Steve was tripping out.
Later, when Cousin Manny got home – he asked my prostate body if I’d tried the brownie – to which I replied: “Oh my…” Cousin Manny asked how much of it I had consumed and I replied, “The whole thing.”
“But I told you that the girl at the store said to have only one-third of it.”
“I know,” I replied, “I feel very, very, very old; and that’s just from re-living the 70s!”