Category Archives: THE BIG BLEEP

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WORLD AS MYTH

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World As Myth

The Number of The Beast, by Robert Heinlein is a series of diary entries by each of the four main characters who describe their travels through time and parallel universes to The Land of Oz, and to Barsoom, the fictional planet (Mars) created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  In the novel, the Biblical number of the beast turns out to be, not 666, but (6^6)^6, or 10,314,424,798,490,535,546,171,949,056, which is the initial number of parallel universes accessible through the continua device. It is later theorized by the character Jacob that the number may be merely the instantly accessible universes from a given location, and there is a larger structure that implies an infinite number of universes.  As in many of his later works, Heinlein refers to the idea of solipsism, but in this book develops it into an idea he called “World as Myth” —the idea that universes are created by the act of imagining them, so that all fictional worlds are in fact real.

Sherlock Holmes: My Life, by Lawrence R. Spencer is based on the same concept.  In my book, Sherlock Holmes is a REAL person, who lived and breathed.  The stories of his real-life detective investigations were published, without his knowledge or permission, in a conspiracy to defraud and deface the greatest detective who ever lived!  With the very able assistance of his brother, Mycroft Holmes — the most powerful man in the British government — a conspiracy between Dr. Watson, the authors of Peter Pan, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and powerful financial interests, is discovered and foiled!

I wrote the book long before I read The Number of The Beast.  However, I am pleased to discover the “great minds” a like-minded!  Why can’t there be a nearly infinite number of parallel universes?  If one can imagine a universe, you have created it.  It exists, at least for you, subjectively.  Is it possible that Sherlock Holmes and Robert Heinlein could be enjoying an adventure together right in this moment, in a parallel universe of their own design?  Now, THAT would be a really interesting universe!

Another book, The Big Bleep: The Mystery of A Different Universe, by Lawrence R. Spencer explores a similar theme.  It is a universe concocted from the universes of hardboiled “film noir” crime novel by Raymond Chandler, a convention of plants who decide to collectively “hold their breath” to prevent new oxygen from being created in order kill off all the evil humans on Earth, and a conglomeration of pulp comic Superheroes, fighting to help the “heroes” of the story Peter, The Potted Plant (a stand-up comic) and a “Public Dick” named Sam Shovel, owner of the Unexistential Detective Agency of America, to solve the mystery of the murder of Carmel Underwood and rescue humankind from extinction!  Simply stated, The Big Bleep is sort of like a Pulp Fiction version of Columbo riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle through the movies The Maltese Falcon, Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, with a Elvis and bunch of comic book super heroes bouncing back and forth between an X-Rated Universal Studios Botanical Garden Theme Park and a convoluted Las Vegas strip mall in a 5th Dimensional time warp!

The idea that universes are created by the act of imagining them is not new. Every history book in every library on Earth is a fictional universe filled with imagined events created by the conquerors of vanquished nations and extinct species in an imaginary time-line of undocumented fantasy!

READING MATTER, THE BIG BLEEP

THE BIG BLEEP, Chapter 3

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(Read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, if you haven’t already)

A.E.I.O.U. — TREES HAVE DEFERENTIAL FEELINGS TOO!

One of the basic rules of being a detective I learned early on in a class I took at the Academy of Existential Investigations Of Understanding (A.E.I.O.U.) was this:  If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.  So far, I didn’t have a workable theory about where Carmel Wormwood went.  I didn’t have a workable theory about where I was or how I got here either.  So, in true academic fashion, I decided to ignore the facts for the time being while I came up with a theory that would explain how I got from an acupuncture table in Anytown, USA into a Plant Convention in a totally different universe.

I stood in the middle of the main convention hall looking around for the Director of Plant Security, so I could ask him some questions to help me figure out where I was.  His secretary said his name was Cactus, but I hadn’t seen a single cactus since I’d been there.  As I continued wandering around the hall, I was reminded of my metaphysics professor back at my alma mater, A.E.I.O.U..  He had a big map of the world hung up on the wall in the front of the classroom.  It had ‘You Are Here’ written all over it.  That map seemed an appropriate description of my current location.

My first class of the day was “Achieving Oneness”, but my favorite class, which was not listed on the official course curriculum, was “Achieving Twoness”, which I studied between classes and between the sheets with my girlfriend a the time.

The ultimate truth was that I flunked out of A.E.I.O.U..  I failed the final exam in metaphysical sciences.  I arranged with my girlfriend to give me the answers to the test during the exam, telepathically.  Our spiritual connection was perfect, but we both spent so much time together “Achieving Twoness” that she hadn’t studied for the exam either, so we both flunked the course.

Fortunately, my lack of a university degree is more than compensated for by my keenly developed lack of interest in people who care about whether or not I have a university  degree.  Nonetheless, that un-existential map taught me a very valuable lesson.  Right now, all I had to do was figure out where “here” was. My problem was that “here” didn’t seem to exist in the physical universe.

I had been in some pretty bizarre places in my life, but this was too weird, even for a highly trained and disciplined professional like myself.  I really didn’t have any real clues about what was happening.  Anyway, I had to stay calm…use my investigative training to figure out what had happened.  There had to be a logical explanation.

OK, so there were a few hundred billion possibilities.  But, first, I needed to come up with a few theories that might explain my situation — keep it simple.  Then, I would compare the evidence I had to see which theory would explain the facts.  I tested each theory, one at a time:

Theory #1)

I must be dreaming!  Using my highly developed sense of scientific methodology, I decided to start out testing my first theory first.  Was I dreaming?  I tried all of my usually reliable tricks for waking myself up:  I rolled out of bed and hit the floor.  Nothing.

I told myself, “OK, you’re just dreaming, so wake up, get out of bed, have a nice hot cup of coffee…”  Nothing changed:  I still had limbs and roots.  So, I slapped myself around.  It hurt.  But nothing happened.  Finally, I tried to just stop dreaming.  I gritted my bark and willed myself to stop dreaming until my leaves shook.  No good.  I was still a tree.

Theory #2)

I had transmigrated spiritually into the body of a tree.  But if that were true, where did I leave my other body?  I didn’t see it lying around anywhere.  I felt like my normal self, but my complexion was a lot rougher than usual.  I smelled quite a bit nicer than usual though.  But, that didn’t explain the Plant Convention….

Theory #3)

I had finally just totally (bleeping) freaked out!  This seemed like a very likely possibility.  However, insanity, although it might be normal for human beings, the plants I’d met at the convention all seemed to be pretty sane.  So, since I was a plant at the moment, I ruled out the possibility of insanity on the basis of my current state of vegetation.

Theory #4)

I had been abducted by aliens.  No, the last time I was abducted by aliens it was nothing like this.  Although, it could be different aliens.  Anyway, I didn’t see any aliens around here, except for myself, of course.

Theory #5)

I had slipped through a crack in space and landed in a different universe.  No, that was too weird — even for me.

Theory #6)

I was re-experiencing one of my past lifetimes when I was a plant.  Yeah, I believe in past lives.  Actually, I don’t believe I’ve lived before, I know I’ve lived before because I can remember some of the lives I lived.  Most of the lives I remember were the ones I’d rather forget about — the ones that turned into total (bleep), like this lifetime.  On the other hand, my memories about happy past lives all sort of blended together into a big, blissful nothingness.

Of course, inthe United States it’s against the law to believe in past lives.  Insurance companies are afraid that if you live more than once, you’ll come back and want to collect on your life insurance policy.  If everybody did that, they’d go out of business.  The government is afraid it’ll get gypped out of all the estate taxes they steal from your family when you die.

I remember when I was back in Egypt. The Pharaohs got away with keeping all their gold and furniture and stuff after they died by telling everybody they needed to take their stuff with them because they were going to live forever, somewhere else, like in a tomb under the ground which would magically transport them up into the stars. The peasants all bought the idea until one day somebody wised up and figured out that it would be better if the Pharaohs just died when they were dead and just stayed dead!  That way, you could steal all of the stuff from their tombs and not have to worry about getting caught by the dead guy.

But, that was then and this was…well, this was some other time.  Anyway, most of what I had learned about being a public dick I didn’t learn in classrooms. I learned it from listening to detective shows on the radio as a kid and reading the autobiographies of famous spiritual masters as an adult.

I always remember the scenes where Johnny Dollar, or Sam Spade or some other private dick, got knocked out by somebody — about three times in every episode — usually because they hadn’t kept their dick private around somebody else’s wife or girlfriend.

Detectives always get knocked out by someone from behind, spin out of reality and go “thud” into a foggy haze of semi-consciousness.  Later, they wake up in an alley or some other strange place, with a huge bump on his head, but no clue about what happened. The same thing usually happened to the great spiritual masters in the history of planet Earth I studied at A.E.I.O.U..  Well, none of that was happening to me. I was pretty sure I’d been conscious the whole time  — I just can’t prove it yet.

The facts were that one second I was lying on Dr. Alice’s table, with needles stuck in my butt and the next thing I knew, I’m talking to Peter The Potted Plant!  And, as far as I could tell, I didn’t have a head…or a butt either…just branches, bark and roots. Anyway, I guess that’s what I get for listening to detective stories and spiritual masters.  Besides, they’re too impractical to be of much use in the real world of dinosaurs and talking plants.

Nonetheless, I still had to figure out how to get back.  But first I had to figure out where “back” was…right after I figured out where “here” was.  My first move was to go back across the convention floor to see if the head of Plant Security had come back to his office.  Maybe he could give me some directions about getting “back” from “here”.  Besides, it gave me a great excuse to check out the peaches on his secretary again.

Peaches were my favorite fruit.  I’d loved peaches for a lot of lifetimes — I just couldn’t remember which ones.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from living a lot of lifetimes, it’s this:  when at first you don’t succeed, give up and try something else.  Anyway, I forgot what I was thinking about a few minutes ago…oh, yeah…figuring out where “here” is, so I can figure out how to get “back” from “here”.

I decided to test one of my other theories.  I figured I must be in a different place now than the one I was in when I got stuck in the butt on the acupuncture table.  But, right now I needed to get my butt over to The Plant Land Security Office and get some answers: no if, ands, or butts about it!

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THE BIG BLEEP: THE MYSTERY OF A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE, by Lawrence R. Spencer

 

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AS TIME GOES BY

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Couple in Bathtub

“The world will always welcome lovers….. As Time Goes By …..”.  (click to play the song while you read the story)

A  sad and sensuous melody wafts in from the Really Old Oldies Station playing on the radio in the bedroom.  The classic melody melts into the candlelight and steam above my sunken penthouse bathtub hidden in the clouds of a Big City Skyline.

Amber tendrils of her dripping hair draw arabesques on golden skin along the supple curves of her torso.  Eyes half-closed, pouting mouth, she tosses her head toward me with a gaze that would light wet firewood. There is nothing in the world but her and me.

Lifting a leg above the water, she rests her foot on my shoulder, stroking my hair and neck, tickling my ear with her pinkly painted toes.  She makes me smile idiotically, yes, please-do-it-ically. I tilt my head to meet her foot with a submissive animal twitch that lets her know she’s my master.bigbleep_NEW-front_cover

Her leg bends slightly.  A rivulet runs down her leg, melting into the canyon between her thighs.  Her heel nestles next to my throat as she massages my temple with her toe. I lift my hand out of the suds to blow her a bubbly kiss. My eyes follow the ruffled waves as they ripple on the shores of her ample, island breasts. Tiny bubbles swirl and burst beneath her nipples like a tiny, iridescent fireworks show.

Slowly her caresses shift, her slick skin slithers on mine, the tip of her toe traces my chin, the contour of my lips.  My eyes loose focus as I submerge myself in sensuousness.  I nibble at her perfect toes, tickling with my tongue. She giggles, then laughs out loud. That sound!  If it was food, I’d gain a hundred pounds!

“Oh, baby…” My voice is a horse whisper. She whinnies and lets her arching foot slide down my pecs.  Her toes dig into my skin, her sole rests on the wild pounding in my chest — she can feel it!  Very still, she listens to my heart with her delicious toes. It’s pumping!  Out of control, like some menacing machine!  We both know where the blood is going now…Shadow, I love you.  Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

She bites her lower lip. Her breathing quickens.  Like a female Captain Ahab, she lowers her boat urgently into the bubble bath scented waves to hunt for the great, white sperm whale.

“Oh yeah, baby. Lower away!”, I say, urging her on.

As the keel of Shadow’s boat rides on the waves of our passion, I hear, in the back of my mind, the voice of Gregory Peck intoning Herman Melville’s immortal words:

“The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close!  Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now!”

The perfumed waves mount into a frothing tempest and splash onto the bathroom floor.  My Moby Dick rams and hoists the shuddering bow of her sensuous ship until her timbers creak and moan, and then explode, giving way to screams!…the same, impassioned screams that have summoned the wandering souls of humanity into the next generation of baby bodies since the Omniscient Creator orchestrated the first primordial conception of homo sapiens in the dim mists of…

“Bbrrrrriiiing!  Bbrrrrriiiing!”

I opened one eye slowly and carefully lurched my aching head up off my desk.  Oh, (Bleep)! I was dreaming again!  A very moist dream.  For the third time this week I’d fallen asleep in front of my computer monitor. I felt like “Johnny Dollar, PI”, in the old radio program I used to listen to when I was a kid, except for the fact that he had an expense account because he worked as a claims investigator for some big insurance company.

I have a lot of expenses, but I didn’t have any accounts.  Every time Johnny walked around a corner somebody hit him on the back of the head and knocked him out.  He spent all of his time trying to figure out who did it and why.  Usually, it was because of some women he was mixed up with. You think he would have learned to stay away from corners.

“Bbrrrrriiiing!  Bbrrrrriiiing!”

The (bleeping) phone was still ringing!  My answering machine picked up the call.  I heard my cleverly conceived marketing message start to play as I looked foggily at the sign painted on the opaque glass of my office door:

The Un-existential Detective Agency of America  (T.U.D.A.A.) !

“We dig up the truth for you”

SAM SHOVEL – Proprietor and Public Dick”

____________________________

Excerpt from Chapter One of  THE BIG BLEEP, a novel by Lawrence R. Spencer

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...and other stuff, INSIDE THE BOOK, READING MATTER, THE BIG BLEEP

THE BIG BLEEP, Chapter 4

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(In you haven’t read Chapter 3 yet, CLICK)

CHAPTER 4 – SLEEPING WITH PREFERENTIAL SHADOWS

I knocked on the door to the office of the Head of Plant Land Security.  The sign on the door said, “CRAIG  T. CACTUS  –  HEAD OF PLANT SECURITY“.  The small print underneath the title read:

“Ring The Bell. If No One Answers Go Away. — C. Cactus”

I searched all around the door for a bell to ring.  The bell had been ripped out of the door frame where bare wires were hanging.   My guess was that Mr. Cactus didn’t enjoy visitors much.  I didn’t care.  I was desperate.  So, I scratched on the door with one of my branches. Fortunately Mr. Cactus hadn’t returned from his rounds on the convention floor yet.  Instead, Miss Peach, the bouncy secretary, opened the door for me. Miss Peach was definitely the friendliest tree I’d ever met.  She didn’t waste any time making me comfortable while I waited for him to get back.

“Oh, hello again, er, Mr.…?  Please come in!  Can I offer you a nice bucket of water?”, she asked, as I squeezed my branches through the door.  “Oh, yeah, sure… ah, that’s, uh…Mr. Peach, but you can call me Sam”, I said, cleverly inventing a name for myself that would disguise my true identity so she wouldn’t catch on that I wasn’t really a tree.

“OK, Mr. Peach, or Sam…”, she said.  “Please make yourself comfortable.  Would you care for some mulch?  Or we have some very nice nitrogen candy sticks left over from the banquet last night.  Please, help yourself”, she said motioning to a table in the corner of the room.  I swished over to check it out.

I was a little hungry, now that she mentioned it.  I was alone in the office for a moment while she went into the back to get my water.  I sprinkled some mulch and a few Nitro candies on my roots. I noticed that Miss Peach had a few framed photos of trees and saplings on her desk: “family pictures”, I thought.

Miss Peach came back in no time.  Her peaches bobbed gently as she brought the bucket and poured the cool water over my roots.  There was a moment of silence while I sucked the water up into my leaves.

“Better?”  Miss Peach said, not-so-shyly, “If you don’t mind my saying so Sam, I couldn’t help noticing what nice limbs you have when you were here before”.

I could feel my leaves turning red.  I stammered, “Well, thanks. I have to admit, you’ve got a pretty nice set of peaches yourself”.  (My professional policy was “never pass up a chance to cross-pollinate”.)

“Why, thank you Sam.  I’m flattered that you think so”, she said seductively, moving closer.  Her jiggling fruit was more than I could resist.  “Why Sam, do your blossoms always sprout like this, or are you just happy to see me?”

I thought to myself, “It must be the candy…”.

We were passionately mingling our fruit and fuzz on the table when the door swung open.  A plant lumbered into the office that I presumed, judging by the fact that he had only two limbs and was completely covered in very neat rows of very sharp looking spines, must be Mr. Cactus.  We quickly slid off the table.  Miss Peach smoothed her leaves and excused herself to go to the ladies room.  I instantly offered a cover story to cover up for her with her boss.  I didn’t want her to loose her job because I couldn’t keep my branches to myself.

“Sorry you caught us with our roots up in the air like that”, I said, as apologetically as I could under the circumstances.  “It was all my fault…really, well, uh… you know how Peach trees are…so much fruit, so little time…uh, by the way, you and her aren’t…uh… involved, are you?”, I stammered with embarrassment.

“Of course not!  Do I look like the kind of plant that would pollinate outside my own species?  That may not bother you, but some of us have a sense of integrity about such things”, he said, bristling his needles in disgust.  Mr. Cactus twisted his trunk around behind his desk to inspect a small pile of messages sitting next to the phone

“Some trees will graft branches with just about any plant who comes along.  I just wish she would wait till she got off work to do it”, he muttered gruffly to himself, though not seeming to really care one way or another.  Without looking up at me he said,  “Anyway, does your visit to my office involve an actual security issue?  Or did you just stop by to squeeze some fruit?”

Craig Cactus had the personality of really rough sandpaper and the charisma of a plant who could light up a room just by flipping a light switch.  I stood, rooted in front of his desk for a minute, trying to figure out the best way to explain my situation in such a way as not to give away my true identity.

“So, is there something we can actually do for you, uh, Mr. Peach, is it?  Or will you be leaving now that you’ve tasted the fruit?” he asked impatiently, without looking up from reading his messages.  “Oh, yes, Peach.  Sam Peach.  Anyway, yes, maybe you can help me. You see, I seem to be lost…”.

Then it occurred to me that telling Mr. Cactus that I was really a human being — an Oxygen Breather — who had somehow accidentally turned into a tree and stumbled into a plant convention, might be a very poor strategy and a diplomatically incorrect move on my part, considering that all the plants in the universe seemed to be plotting the imminent demise of all Oxygen Breathers everywhere.  So, I decided, based on my training in the art and science of un-existential detective methodology, that I’d have to be very clever about getting Mr. Cactus to give me the directions “back” from “here”, that is, if he even knew anything about maps.

“Mr. Peach”, said Mr. Cactus, “are you, by any chance, one of those beings who have accidentally become a tree and stumbled into a plant convention and don’t have any idea how you got here or how to get back to where you came from?”

I gathered that Mr. Cactus took my stunned silence as a “yes”.  Without hiding his obvious aggravation for the inconvenience of having to actually do something to justify his paycheck, he pulled open the bottom left-limb drawer of his desk, shuffled through some papers for a moment, cursed under his breath, pulled out a couple of bottles, dragged out a piece of paper, shoved one of the bottles back in the drawer and slammed it closed.  He shoved a worn and crinkled sheet of paper across the desk at me.

“Here. Read this. Care for a shot of “Old Nitro?”, said Mr. Cactus, making no attempt to offer me a glass or the bottle.

I shook my boughs, “No, thanks. Go ahead.  Uh, none for me, thanks. I’m trying to cut back”, I said, accepting the paper, but turning down the drink, although he hadn’t actually offered me a drink.

“OK, whatever shoots your roots,” said Craig, prying the cork out of the bottle with a cactus needle and pouring a couple of shots on his roots.  “I always keep a bottle of spirits handy, just in case I get stuck with a cactus needle — which I also keep handy.”

“OK then, so, when Little Miss Frisky Peaches gets back here have her run you off a copy of those rules on the copy machine so you can take it with you.  And don’t forget to close the door on your way out!”, he said, taking another swig from his bottle and returning to his pile of messages…and his bottle.

Miss Peach came back from the ladies room, refreshed.  She quickly made a copy of the “rules” and handed them too me with a shy smile.  I read the sheet of instructions:

RULES FOR A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE

All beings who care to share in the creation or experience of a Different Universe must agree to a few basic rules as a matter of courtesy to others who may accidentally enter in to it:

1) There is No Time.

2) Reality is whatever you can create that can be perceived.  When you stop creating, it doesn’t exist.

3) You don’t have to agree with someone else’s creation to perceive it.

4) The purpose of the universe is to continue being.

5) Space is a matter of opinion.

6) Communication can be accomplished by whatever means necessary.

7) “Multiple Factor Zones” (MFZ ) will be posted and enforced at random in shared spaces by the Universe Police. Each MFZ must be observed by all others entering into these Zones, i.e. everything created within these Zones must use the specified number and types of Factors designated for that Zone, e.g., a 3 Factor Zone may include quantities and qualities, such as: good/bad/ugly OR positive/negative/stupid  OR  big/small/bashful, and so forth. NOTE: a FIVE Factor Zone may contain qualities with NO quantities e.g., horrible / lovely / tender / rapturous / sound  OR pearlescent / gratuitous / passionate / tremulous / light.  etceteras, etceteras, ad infinitum. (Violators will be abruptly expelled from the universe without prior notification or recourse.)

8)  A being may enter and/or exit the universe at will, but must stop creating whatever is being created by them before exiting.

9)  Dreams count.  That is, if you or any other being have a dream, anything created within the dream has the same effect as any other creation.

10)  There are no other rules except those you make up and get others to agree with.

NOTICE:

A Different Universe and creations produced herein may or may not be effected by or

have an effect upon or be perceived in other universes, accept as the beings

involved agree that they do or do not as stipulated in the above rules.

“(Bleep!) These so called ‘rules’ you gave me are about as much help as a glass of water to an amoebae.  How am I supposed to get back to where I came from?”,

I protested to Mr. Cactus.

“Well, I suppose I could have my security officers turn you over to the other plants out there on the convention floor, Mr. Oxygen Breather”,  Mr. Cactus in a menacing tone.  “Or you can use the door right now, and save me the trouble”.

“OK, I’m going, I’m going.  Have a nice day or night or whatever the (bleep) time it is here…or not”, I said as I let myself out.

I seemed like I wasn’t going to get out of this so-called “universe” any time soon, so I decided to make the best of a really bizarre situation.  I slipped a note under the door of Craig’s office asking Miss Peach to meet me after she got off work.  I wanted to take her out for a night on “the orchard”, so we could pick up where we left off before old Nitro-breath barged into his office and interrupted our moment of mingling bliss.

Back outside in the convention hall, I sat down on a pile of fresh topsoil to re-read the “rules”.  It was beginning to look like my fifth theory might be true.  I still didn’t know where “here” was, or where “back” was either.  What I really needed was a map that showed both of them at the same time — except that, according to the “rules”, there wasn’t any time in a Different Universe.  I decided to check it out just to make sure.

I wasn’t wearing a watch, and I couldn’t see any clocks hanging on the walls.  So, I asked the palm tree rooting next to me if he could tell me what time it was. He just laughed and said, “Hey, buddy, what universe are you from?”   I figured I’d better shut up before the other plants started to wonder if I really wasn’t who I appeared to be.  In no time, I was beginning to wonder about who I appeared to be myself.

As I sat on my pile of compost, I grew increasingly despondent about my situation.  I began to reminisce about times when there was time — in the past of my physical universe existence.  I recalled the time when Shadow told me about how she moved to South Florida with a kitten she named Angel.  That was after she got burned out on the Disco Scene in San Diego.  She decided to take one of those courses you used to see advertised on TV infomercials about how to buy real estate with no money down.

Nobody told her she couldn’t do it, so she went ahead and did it.  Within two years she was millionaire.  Times were good till the bottom fell out of the real estate market.  After the money was gone, times weren’t so good anymore, so she moved to Tampa Bay where I was living at the time.

I remember the first time I ever heard her voice: I was instantly in love.  The first time I saw her I was addicted to her forever.

Unfortunately, that was two weeks before I had to report to Federal Prison Camp in Georgia to serve a twenty-two month sentence over a disagreement I had with the IRS while trying to defend the rights of one of my clients.

I went to prison because I got stuck between the pages of the IRS code book, so to speak.  One of my first cases as a private dick was trying to help a company that sold rare coins to collectors and investors.  Mostly, they sold an unlimited supply of “rare, limited edition” gold and silver coins that were minted by the Chinese government.

The company had a “disagreement” with the Infernal Revenue Service over the privacy of client financial transactions.  It didn’t take long to figure out that you can’t really “disagree” with the IRS, especially when it has to do with financial privacy.  For the IRS, there is nothing private about your money. Your money is their money, and your privates are theirs too.

Of course, my clients didn’t actually commit any crime that normal people would think of as a crime, such as theft, murder, lying, cheating, mayhem, or living more than one lifetime.  Like most governments throughout history, the real criminals run the government.  The government makes the laws that tell the rest of us who the criminals are and who they aren’t.  Of course, “we” are the criminals and “they” aren’t.  Criminals, like most governments, are usually “they” with the most guns and the fewest number of reasons not to use them to take what they want from “we”.

The IRS didn’t appreciate my efforts to help protect the rights of the company to keep the personal business of its clients personal and private.  But, they did give me the consolation prize for losing the courtroom battle against them: an all-expenses-paid vacation for two years at a “Club Fed” in Georgia.

While I was “down”, there wasn’t a second that went by that I didn’t think about going to see Shadow after I “graduated” from the “country club”.  I didn’t see her again for over two years.  Anyway, when I got out of prison, I looked up Shadow again. When you’re sent away to prison you find out who all of your friends are in about 10 minutes — but mostly you find out who your friends used to be.

Shadow was living in a beautiful condo overlooking the inter-coastal waterway across the beach from the Gulf of Mexico that she “inherited” from another one of her ex-lovers after the guy moved out.   We’d lay in bed in the morning and watch the dolphins swim past under the glass balcony doors.  If heaven was a condo in Florida, I’d died and gone there — except I wasn’t dead yet.  Every time I looked at Shadow or touched her, all I wanted was to live forever in that moment.

I don’t believe in Heaven, but being in bed with Shadow was close enough for me.  She had long, naturally curly, auburn hair.  When she woke up in the morning she looked like she’d just stepped off the cover of Vogue magazine. Not a hair out of place, even though, most nights, we drank a half gallon of White Zinfandel and ran a marathon on the sheets.  We usually kept running right on into the wee hours of exhausted bliss.

Shadow took lots of snapshots of me.  She had cardboard boxes full of pictures of all the men she’d ever been with. I listened to her tell the stories that went with the pictures for hours.  I felt like I gained a very large family of new relatives — all men.  I learned the whole time track of her sexual adventures, including the names, occupations, circumstances, statistics and favorite positions of all the other runners in her race.  She had no favorites among them. They we all her favorites.

We did everything in bed.  We ate, we slept, we made love.  The primordial essence of food and sex seemed to blend together.  Since Shadow’s idea of a cookbook was the Restaurant Section of the Yellow Pages, I was happy to dial up whatever she wanted, especially if it kept her in the bedroom.  Food was my form of supplication to her, like burnt sacrificial offerings to a goddess.

While we were together, Shadow gained about 75 lbs.  Her plumpness didn’t bother me.  I’ve always thought women are supposed to be fundamentally round.  I don’t think chicks are supposed to look like 10 year old boys, in spite of gay hairdressers, fashion designers and ballet choreographers who tell women they’re supposed to look like a cocktail swizzle stick.  However, Shadow became disenchanted with her spherical perfection about the time she ran out of clothes that fit her.

During two years of being in prison, my only sexual encounters had been with the “five fingered lady” in the shower.  You hear all kinds of rumors about prison sex life.  Most of them aren’t true, but then, I wasn’t looking for that kind of truth either.  When I finally got out, it was like crawling out of a parched and burning desert.  Shadow was an oasis of pure, cool water.  Nothing had ever tasted as pure and refreshing to me before.  Like most men who’ve been stuck in the desert for two years, the only thing I could think about was water. I really had nothing of value to give her except my undying thanks for quenching my thirst.  But, after a few months of wallowing in the Puddle of Love, the water started to taste more and more like mud.

After six months, she threw me out, partly in self-defense.  I knew I wasn’t perfect.  Also, I figured, judging from the prodigious size of her sexual trophy case, that when the passion of the honeymoon ran out, so did Shadow.  Later, I realized she threw everybody out after six months, except for the occasional guy whose wife threw her out first.  It was like a little six month egg timer went “ding”  in her head and whichever guy was boiling on her stove that day was done: “OK, you’re cooked! See ‘ya!”

She said I shouldn’t take it personally.  I took it personally anyway.  For awhile, I’d call her every chance I could to tell her I loved her.  I did love her.  Like an alcoholic loves booze.  Long after I stopped drinking, I still couldn’t forget those days of drunken bliss.  What I thought was happiness at the time became an empty canteen of beautiful sadness.  I still carry it around my neck to remind myself that you can drown in too much water.

Like most people, I do my best daydreaming while I’m asleep.  When I’m awake, I forget that most of life is a dream — a bad dream or a boring dream.  But that’s another story — in another universe.

So far, my investigation of life has revealed that the whole universe seems to run on the idea that the best thing to do is to try not to get bored.  People will do just about anything to keep themselves from getting bored, no matter how stupid or self-destructive: like disagreeing with the IRS or looking for lost items belonging to demented war-mongers or sleeping with Shadows.

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THE BIG BLEEP: THE MYSTERY OF A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE, by Lawrence R. Spencer