In Persuasion Nation (11 page)

Keep
your damn, I said. Keep your goddam kids from—

Then
I needed some air, so I walked around the block, but still it wasn't
sitting right. Because now it begins, you know? Adams over there all
pissed off, saying false things about me to those kids, which, due to
what they had seen (the wonking) and what they had not seen (him in
his underwear, facing my kids' room), they were probably swallowing
every mistruth, and I was like, Great, now they hate me, like
I'm
the bad guy in this, and all summer it's going to be pranks, my hose
slit and syrup in my gas tank, or all of a sudden our dog has a burn
mark on her belly.

So
I type up these like handbills, saying, Just So You Know, Your Dad
Was Standing Naked in My Kitchen, Facing My Kids' Room. And I tape
one inside their screen door so they'll be sure and see it when they
go to softball later, then I stuff like nine in their mailbox, and on
the rest I cross out "Your Dad" and put in "Frank
Adams" and distribute them in mailboxes around the block.

All
night it's call after call from the neighbors, saying, you know, Call
the cops, Adams needs help, he's a goof, I've always hated him, maybe
a few of us should go over there, let us work with you on this, do
not lose your cool. That sort of thing. Which was all well and good,
but then I go out for a smoke around midnight and what is he looking
at, all hateful? Their houses? Don't kid yourself. He is looking at
my house, with that smoldering look, and I am like, What are you
looking at?

I
am what I am, he says.

You
fuck, I say, and rush over to wonk him, but he runs inside.

And,
as far as cops, my feeling was: What am I supposed to do, wait until
he's back in my house, then call the cops and hope he stays facing my
kids' room, in his shorts, until they arrive?

No,
sorry, that is not my way.

The
next day my little guy, Brian, is standing at the back door, with his
kite, and I like reach over and pop the door shut, going, Nope, nope,
you know very well why not, Champ.

So
there's my poor kid, kite in lap all afternoon, watching some dumb
art guy on PBS saying, Shading Is One Way We Make Depth, How About
Trying It Relevant to This Stump Here?

Then
Monday morning I see Adams walking toward his car and again he gives
me that smoldering look! Never have I received such a hateful look.
And flips me the bird! As if he is the one who is right! So I rush
over to wonk him, only he gets in the car and pulls away.

All
day that look was in my mind, that look of hate.

And
I thought, If that was me, if I had that hate level, what would I do?
Well, one thing I would do is hold it in and hold it in and then one
night it would overflow and I would sneak into the house of my enemy
and stab him and his family in their sleep. Or shoot them. I would.
You would have to. It is human nature. I am not blaming anybody.

I
thought, I have to be cautious and protect my family or their blood
will be on my hands.

So
I came home early and went over to Adams's house when I knew nobody
was home, and gathered up his rifle from the basement and their steak
knives and also the butter knives, which could be sharpened, and also
their knife sharpener, and also two letter openers and a heavy
paperweight, which, if I was him and had lost all my guns and knives,
I would definitely use that to bash in the head of my enemy in his
sleep, as well as the heads of his family.

That
night I slept better until I woke in a sweat, asking myself what I
would do if someone came in and, after shoving down my wife and one
of my kids, stole my guns and knives and knife sharpener as well as
my paperweight. And I answered myself: What I would do is look around
my house in a frenzy for something else dangerous, such as paint,
such as thinner, such as household chemicals, and then either ring
the house of my enemy with the toxics and set them on fire or pour
some into the pool of my enemy, which would (1) rot the liner and (2)
sicken the children of my enemy when they went swimming.

Then
I looked in on my sleeping kids and, oh my God, nowhere are there
kids as sweet as my kids, and standing there in my pajamas, thinking
of Adams standing there in his underwear, then imagining my kids
choking and vomiting as they struggled to get out of the pool, I
thought, No, no way, I am not living like this.

So, entering through a window I had forced earlier that afternoon,
I gathered up all the household chemicals, and, believe me, he
had a lot, more than I did, more than he needed, thinner, paint, lye,
gas, solvents, etc. I got it all in like nine Hefty bags and was just
starting up the stairs with the first bag when here comes the whole
damn family, falling upon me, even his kids, whipping me with coat
hangers and hitting me with sharp-edged books and spraying hair spray
in my eyes, the dog also nipping at me, and rolling down the stairs
of their basement I thought, They are trying to kill me. Hitting
my head on the concrete floor, I saw stars, and thought, No, really,
they are going to kill me, and if they kill me no more little Melanie
and me eating from the same popcorn bowl, no more little Brian doing
that wrinkled-brow thing we do back and forth when one of us makes a
bad joke, never again Karen and me lying side by side afterward,
looking out the window, discussing our future plans as those
yellow-beaked birds come and go on the power line. And I struggled to
my feet thinking, Forget how I got here, I am here, I must get out of
here, I have to live. And I began to wonk and wonk, and once they had
fallen back, with Adams and his teenage boy huddled over the littlest
one, who had unfortunately flown relatively far due to a bit of
a kick I had given her, I took out my lighter and fired up the bag,
the bag of toxics, and made for the light at the top of the stairs,
where I knew the door was, and the night was, and my freedom, and my
home.

Our enemies will set among us individuals whose primary function is
to object, to dissent, to find fault with our traditional mode of
living, until that which we know to be right, begins to feel suspect,
and we are reduced to a state of perpetual uncertainty, a situation
our enemies will be only too happy to exploit. Who are these
individuals, really, and what makes them so vociferous in their
criticism of our ways? They are, if we examine them closely:
outcasts, chronic complainers, individuals incapable of thriving
within a perfectly viable, truly generous system, a system vastly
superior to all other known ways of organizing effort and providing
value.

—
Bernard
"Ed" Alton,

Taskbook for the New Nation,

Chapter 5. "The Tyranny
of the Negative: Procedural

Methodology and the Pathology
of Dissent"

A ten-day acute
toxicity study was conducted using twenty male cynomolgous monkeys
ranging in weight from 25 to 40 kg. These animals were divided into
four groups of five monkeys each. Each of the four groups received a
daily intravenous dose of Borazidine, delivered at a concentration of
either 100, 250, 500, or 10,000 mg/kg/day.

Within the high-dose
group (10,000 mg/kg/day) effects were immediate and catastrophic,
resulting in death within 20 mins of dosing for all but one of the
five animals. Animals 93445 and 93557, pre-death, exhibited vomiting
and disorientation. These two animals almost immediately entered a
catatonic state and were sacrificed moribund. Animals 93001 and 93458
exhibited vomiting, anxiety, disorientation, and digging at their
abdomens. These animals also quickly entered a catatonic state and
were sacrificed moribund.

Only one animal within
this high-dose group, animal 93990, a diminutive 26 kg male, appeared
unaffected.

All of the animals that
had succumbed were removed from the enclosure and necropsied. Cause
of death was seen, in all cases, to be renal failure.

No effects were seen on
Day 1 in any of the three lower-dose groups (i.e., 100, 250, or 500
mg/kg/day).

On Day 2, after the
second round of dosing, animals in the 500 mg/kg/day group began to
exhibit vomiting, and, in some cases, aggressive behavior. This
aggressive behavior most often consisted of a directed shrieking,
with or without feigned biting. Some animals in the two lowest-dose
groups (100 and 250 mg/kg/day) were observed to vomit, and one in the
250 mg/kg/day group (animal 93002) appeared to exhibit
self-scratching behaviors similar to those seen earlier in the
high-dose group (i.e., probing and scratching at abdomen, with
limited writhing).

By the end of Day 3,
three of five animals in the 500 mg/kg/day group had entered a
catatonic state and the other two animals in this dose group were
exhibiting extreme writhing punctuated with attempted biting and
pinching of their fellows, often with shrieking. Some hair loss,
ranging from slight to extreme, was observed, as was some "playing"
with the resulting hair bundles. This "playing" behavior
ranged from mild to quite energetic. This "playing"
behavior was adjudged to be typical of the type of "play"
such an animal might initiate with a smaller animal such as a rodent,
i.e., out of a curiosity impulse, i.e., may have been indicative of
hallucinogenic effects. Several animals were observed to repeatedly
grimace at the hair bundles, as if trying to elicit a fear behavior
from the hair bundles. Animal 93110 of the 500 mg/kg/day group was
observed to sit in one corner of the cage gazing at its own vomit
while an unaffected animal (93222) appeared to attempt to rouse the
interest of 93110 via backpatting, followed by vigorous backpatting.
Interestingly, the sole remaining high-dose animal (93990, the
diminutive male), even after the second day's dosage, still showed no
symptoms. Even though this animal was the smallest in weight within
the highest-dose group, it showed no symptoms. It showed no vomiting,
disinterest, self-scratching, anxiety, or aggression. Also no hair
loss was observed. Although no hair bundles were present (because no
hair loss occurred), this animal was not seen to "play"
with inanimate objects present in the enclosure, such as its food
bowl or stool or bits of rope, etc. This animal, rather, was seen
only to stare fixedly at the handlers through the bars of the cage
and/or to retreat rapidly when the handlers entered the enclosure
with the long poking sticks to check under certain items (chairs,
recreational tire) for hair bundles and or deposits of runny stool.

By the middle of Day 3,
all of the animals in the 500 mg/kg/day group had succumbed.
Pre-death, these showed, in addition to the effects noted above,
symptoms ranging from whimpering to performing a rolling
dementia-type motion on the cage floor, sometimes accompanied by
shrieking or frothing. After succumbing, all five animals were
removed from the enclosure and necropsied. Renal failure was seen to
be the cause of death in all cases. Interestingly, these animals did
not enter a catatonic state pre-death, but instead appeared to be
quite alert, manifesting labored breathing and, in some cases, bursts
of energetic rope-climbing. Coordination was adjudged to be adversely
affected, based on the higher-than-normal frequency of falls from the
rope. Post-fall reactions ranged from no reaction to frustration
reactions, with or without self-punishment behaviors (i.e.,
self-hitting, self-hair-pulling, rapid shakes of head).

Toward the end of Day
3, all animals in the two lowest dose groups (250 and 100 mg/kg/day)
were observed to be in some form of distress. Some of these had
lapsed into a catatonic state; some refused to take food; many had
runny brightly colored stools; some sat eating their stool while
intermittently shrieking.

Animals 93852, 93881,
and 93777, of the 250 mg/kg/day group, in the last hours before
death, appeared to experience a brief period of invigoration and
renewed activity, exhibiting symptoms of anxiety, as well as
lurching, confusion, and scratching at the eyes with the fingers.
These animals were seen to repeatedly walk or run into the cage bars,
after which they would become agitated. Blindness or partial
blindness was indicated. When brightly colored flags were waved in
front of these animals, some failed to respond, while others
responded by flinging stool at the handlers.

By noon on Day 4,
all of the animals in the 250 mg/kg/day group had succumbed, been
removed from the enclosure, and necropsied. In every case the cause
of death was seen to be renal failure.

By the end of Day 4,
only the five 100 mg/kg/day animals remained, along with the
aforementioned very resilient diminutive male in the highest dose
group (93990), who continued to manifest no symptoms whatsoever. This
animal continued to show no vomiting, retching, nausea,
disorientation, loss of motor skills, or any of the other symptoms
described above. This animal continued to move about the enclosure
normally and ingest normal amounts of food and water and in fact was
seen to have experienced a slight weight gain and climbed the rope
repeatedly with good authority.

On Day 5, animal 93444
of the 100 mg/kg/day group was observed to have entered the moribund
state. Because of its greatly weakened condition, this animal was not
redosed in the morning. Instead, it was removed from the enclosure,
sacrificed moribund, and necropsied. Renal failure was seen to be the
cause of death. Animal 93887 (100 mg/kg/day group) was seen to
repeatedly keel over on one side while wincing. This animal succumbed
at 1300 hrs on Day 5, was removed from the enclosure, and necropsied.
Renal failure was seen to be the cause of death. Between 1500 hrs on
Day 5 and 2000 hrs on Day 5, animals 93254 and 93006 of the 100
mg/kg/day dose group succumbed in rapid succession while huddled in
the NW cornet of the large enclosure. Both animals exhibited wheezing
and rapid clutching and release of the genitals. These two animals
were removed from the enclosure and necropsied. In both cases the
cause of death was seen to be renal failure.