body to look like a 24-year-old starlet.”
Mother laughed so hard she choked.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
I wrote in my journal: It’s official. I’ve seriously decided to freeze my brain.
Why?
—Because my name is Willow, like a bad joke. I’m fat but not obese, chunky but not gross. I don’t yet require two stools at a lunch counter.
—Because I’m thirty-one years old and was home-schooled in communes. I excel at playing in the woods and making God’s Eyes out of wool and sticks. Try putting that on a resume.
—Because the best job I can get is for minimum wage at Video Madness. My supervisor’s a seventeen-year-old drug dealer named Conner who specializes in Rave drugs, the speedy chemicals, buying empty gelatin capsules and filling them in the bathroom during his shifts. His pair of mongrels go everywhere with him. They’re called Crystal and Meth.
—Because I live with a forty-year-old auto body repairman named Walter who’s idea of enlightenment is watching plane crash marathons on TV. If only he could repair this body of mine.
—Because marijuana gives me anxiety attacks and meditation makes my nose bleed.
—Because I’ve searched for my bliss and found it was sleep.
—Because when I try to plump up my sagging self-esteem like it was a satin cushion there’s nothing there to plump. My body may be thick but my inner life is as thin as a cracker.
—Because Mother says, “Call me Rayna!” her new name based on numerological principles. Before that she was Rose, then Athena, then Starshine. Names based on something else, mythology, the zodiac, TV commercials.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
So it’s official. I’ve seriously decided to freeze my brain.
Mother’s dying wish is to be stoned for the trip to the “Big Beyond.” She says, “I want to go out like Aldous Huxley and be injected with acid. I don’t want to face death with only this puny consciousness for company.”
My dying wish is to get another life and avoid death altogether.
Mother says her final trip will be a mind fuck. I say fucking with my mind will be the least of it. It’s my brain in a new body that I’m after. A new body meaning a new me. Don’t believe the other hype. It really is the package that counts. Our brains will adapt. It’ll be the ultimate makeover, a technological morph spanning centuries. Packed along with my frozen head will be a “before” picture of the ancient, flabby Willow which I’ll look at from my fabulous new body for exactly ten seconds before ripping it to shreds.
Two hundred years from now the world will still go berserk over a beautiful woman. I’m counting on it. I want to be that woman. I have an internet lover who thinks I’m that woman, now. His name is Donald Thomas and he’s into freezing brains big time. Even though he says he’s got a body like the star of Tarzan, even though he says he sells insurance and is obscenely rich, he’s a dedicated man. He spends his free time fighting off the pessimists and trying to start a Movement.
Walter spends his free time lying on the couch in his boxer shorts and wife-beater T-shirt drinking beer and watching disaster shows. “Wilma!”—he calls me Wilma, like he was Fred and we’re the Flintstones.
“Wilma, come see this!” And I’ll go running and it’ll be another boring killer tornado wrecking a trailer park.
Things are livelier with Donald. He believes my name is Kimmie. Cybernetic Kimmie is the first step towards the flesh and blood model existing somewhere down the road to Eternity.
Donald and me have what he calls “brain sex.” That’s the incredible thrill you get from the true linking of minds. So far he’s been the only one getting the thrills because I don’t understand half of what he says. But that’s okay. I just play along being the blonde, willowy Slimmy Kimmie with the showgirl legs and the theoretically eye-popping breasts.
Dear Donnie,
Thanks to you, it’s official. I’ve seriously decided to freeze my brain. But are you sure it will work?
X0 Your Blonde Bomber
Doll,
Thawing your brain out will be as easy as using a 23rd century kid’s chemistry set. And you know what? All those people waiting for a revival before they join the Movement will just have to die. Too bad.
Best and long, long life,
Donald
About freezing my brain, Mother said, “Why don’t you freeze part of it now as a test run? The frontal lobes, for starters. We could use a hypo full of freezing compound and see what happens.”
That’s Mother. Always there for me with a bucket of ice water.
“You don’t understand,” I hollered. “You’re a hopeless old hippie. Your time is past. Over. Finito. Everyone’s doing pharmaceuticals now and watching videos and saving up for 52-inch TV screens. Peace and love is a joke. High-tech is what’s cool. And speed, and fashion, and being young and cutting edge. Which is what freezing brains is all about. Being cutting edge. Not old and mouldy like this commune.”
“You don’t know dick,” Mother said, putting on her kind Buddhist voice, cozy as a homespun monk’s robe.
She suggested I calm down and take her dog Smack for a walk. “Check out the new landscaping,” she said. “It’s done after Cormac McCarthy. I’ve always liked his writing. His reality’s so sharp it cuts the skin.”
“If you want your reality sharp,” I said, “try surfing the Net and reading up on freezing brains. Freezing brains will leave Cormac McCarthy spitting dust.”
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