adam one

I was the first man on The Moon.

I used to have this reoccurring dream, that I'm back in high school and its the last day of final exams. I grab my books and start out the front door and the whole high school is out on my parent's lawn. Students. Faculty. Even a janitor is there, resting against our mailbox. They all turn to me about face.

I realize, I haven't been to class in months.

I don't know western civics and I couldn't pass my calculus exam. What happened? The Moon. Where have I been? The Moon. My visual spectrum is reduced to reds, greens and blues, and I falter for a second, dropping my books on to stringless sneakers. Everything: The Moon.

I usually wake up from this into a blind rage, gritting my teeth and clenching my fists. Once, I awoke so furiously, my spinal column clenched into a locked twist, stuck inside this memory. Armored they call it. I thrashed around in a pile of the previous day's newspapers, partially paralyzed. The fear of losing control was causing me to lose more control.

Now, before I go to sleep I put a cigarette out on the web between the middle and index fingers of my left hand. This reminder adheres even into the depths of the most uncomfortable of street sleeps. Some people call this "lucid dreaming", where you can control the reality within your subconscious mind.

The Moon is 384,400 kilometers from Earth. The diameter of The Moon is 3,476 kilometers at its equator. The Moon's gravity is 0.165 to Earth’s 1. I only weigh 24.75 pounds there.

For all his bravado and brass, Buzz Aldrin never admits to what really happened there. He was a cardboard cut out, the cheapest prop on a B movie set. If he had just knelt down and rapped his padded knuckles against one of those bigger, shinier moonstones, he would have heard the hollow thump of paper maché, even through that fish bowl on his head.

They communicate to me two dimensionally through billboards. Their favorite is this massive ad above the train station. For weeks I was convinced it was a cable television provider, or a phone service. That horrible little orange blot kept mouthing off to me, "We believe, that given a chance, human expression can change the world..."

It's all very lunar, see? It's just like them to use this subconscious little sigil to warp my head. It's representative of four different archetypes. Orange and standing out with its arms spread, it's an individual. But it's also a drop, one drop from potentially billions of other drops of this sprawling liquid organic mass. The thing is decapitated. No neck equals...equals what? No ethnicity? I don't know. Does detaching your head somehow make you more of an individual?

It's always mocking me. Cyclopean condescension spinning out of buses and taxis, hovering over my head at three hundred feet.

“What do you have to say?”

“Express yourself on the go.”

“National and regional.”

When I go there, everything here becomes less acute. I feel claustrophobic, like the clouds in the sky are pressing down, ready to choke me. I was indoors the last time it happened, noticing the imperfections in the ceiling tiles of a local bagel shop. I've noticed this everywhere, not just bagel shops. Posh hotels. Fast-food restaurants. Skyscrapers. All of these structures have entirely random ceiling tiles. They're an interior designer's smudged fingerprints, left behind like a circle of urine to mark territory. Why, when we have the ability to factory make anything to near replication, would we continue to produce ceiling tiles that have variables in their curves, punctures and indents? We could easily make every ceiling tile the same! Flat and white. Hell they could even have little waves in them! We've got the technology. Is it some kind of subliminal message from the corporate textiles manufacturers out there? Convincing us that we're not just another drop in the sea because just mere feet above our heads are tantamount examples of human frailty and identity? Or is it a cry for help, from single mothers and ex-convincts who work on some ceiling tile assembly line, purposely disfiguring the tiles for the sake of leaving something behind, just one thing that is distinctively their little creative burst?

Badda-bing. I'm on The Moon.

For some reason they keep sending me back here, to Earth. I live in a pile of cardboard behind a restaurant on the river. Why would they do that to me? Why would they knot my hair into waffled dread locks, caked with the trappings of the great unwashed? My scarf trails behind me in tatters, gathering scum and trash in its mouth. Sometimes grey snow soaks it damp in the colder months.

Try memorizing physics equations while lifting weights. The only way I can remember my life on The Moon during my life on the earth is through action. Aristotle called this the "peripatetic,” having his students perform physical activities while they engaged in a dialectical learning process. The mind and the body learn together, so to they must remember together. Is it possible that only my body is stolen to The Moon, leaving my mind in some limbo, drifting between worlds and realities?

I try to replicate peripatetic as best I can by jogging in place on the busiest of city street corners shouting: “There are actually three hundred and thirty-three letters in our alphabet! Try using the letter quadruple U in a sentence! It directly seizes human bowels causing extreme nausea and pain!”

It rarely works.

Wilhem Reich believed the link between the mind/body was juxtaposed, so that we were capable of generating a form of regulated bioenergy referred to as “orgone.” He postulated an orgasm formula pinpointing the energy process as having four beats: (1) mechanical tension, (2) bioelectrical charge, (3) bioelectrical discharge, and (4) relaxation. Maybe if I masturbate enough, in public even, to gather more orgone from moving crowds, then I can send myself to The Moon? The resulting energy burst would thrust my body away from my bound mind, replacing every cell on Earth with an astral replica on The Moon. No more waiting for those lunar bastards to drag me up, like some velveteen toy, waiting to be played with again.

All these finks. I treat them with the worst kind of respect. In a local convenience store a group of sorostitutes gets my cock eyed glare. They fumble with their leather hand bags trying to get out of my way as I sway and waddle my way towards the counter. I let a sound out in their direction. A cross between an alcoholic, deep grunt and a dying farm animal's last gasp, "Henggghhhh!!!".

They think I'm defecating.

This is all peripatetic. I manage to coral them into a corner when I notice one of the city’s fine young professionals staring my way. I snap backwards hissing at him like a cobra. He's unimpressed, probably too busy imagining one of two things: a) fucking those sorostitutes blind or b) having the audacity to behave like me in this most public of public places. The convenience store is America's last town hall, and there's one on every block. Mister young pro and I talked about traveling. I lied, said I'd just gotten into town from Texas. Forgot about The Moon. Forgot about sleeping in the trash.

“The great thing about Texas is that you can be drunk at anytime of the day. Free falling down in the street. That's good see? I've been on a bender since '74.”

He chats back, guarded, about his family in the lone star heap. Then, after he purchases a $1.69 orange juice, he's gone. Flashy. Flashy fink.

The Moon is a mean distance of drifting away from Earth. It’s mass comes from Earth, since it’s diameter rotates on it’s own axis. It is very close to the horizon. 1.5 inches close to the horizon. Each year on The Moon has four days. This is because it rotates on the net. Where possible, The Earth. That is mail me. It’s all zoom astronomy, the reason why period.

I woke up on the bus today. With a lingerie catalog in my lap. Must have been in the lower Triesnecker crater again. This catalog? It's a disgrace to any vestige of remaining humanity. Or it's a document of it. The models, they look like the goddamn living dead . This girl -- did someone take a baseball bat to her face five minutes before the photo shoot? Please, give me oh so fashionable domestic abuse panties this year. With blood stains and band aids. Scented with isopropyl alcohol. I rub my piss-damp pant leg with the thing before giving it the toss.

I was raised on The Moon. I was married on The Moon. I remember this much. Every time they take me back there, my internal memory drive kicks in and it all comes rushing back. But here? I can barely remember my wife's name. Alia? Aminyla? "A" something. It doesn't matter, I'll see her soon. We have a baby boy together. I think his name begins with a C.

Tonight I fall asleep in front of an electronic appliance store in the shopping district. I've got a canvas tarp someone left me. I curl up, back against layered brick, head against the smooth reflective glass. I'm fading in and out, the burn between my fingers still aching. Around three in the morning, I open my eyes into the pane and notice the snowing.

Groggy, I lift my head, clasping my hands between my crotch, fetal style. The snow is twisted, leaving the darkness of the night in blotchy patches. It's comforting somehow, and I ball up. Warm with my own company, I fall back asleep, not rationalizing until the sun rises that it's still July. Behind me, in the store windows, a wall of static and white noise rises, all the local stations down, all the displayed televisions still on.

I'm on The Moon. This is the second full me.