by Ian Frazier
Soon, however, my gloom was dispersed in the whirlwind of events preceding our takeoff, which was only a month away. First, there was a picnic to meet the other future space colonists, at the beautiful home of an Air Force colonel in McLean, Virginia. I met many people of amazing intellect whose contributions to mankind had won them fame the world over, and I also met many whose fame was limited to only a small circle. Without exception, every single one was just as nice and friendly as anybody you’d ever want to talk to. We compared values and life styles in very stimulating exchanges as we helped ourselves to the sumptuous barbecue. At one point, I was standing around playing Jarts with a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, and a famous international photojournalist. I turned to the chemist and said, “Pinch me, will you? I can’t believe this is real!”
The next weeks passed in a frantic rush of orientation sessions, group discussions, weightlessness training (the space station has artificial gravity, but this was just in case), packing, final details, and goodbyes to loved ones. At last came the morning when we were standing with our suitcases on the concrete apron next to the space-shuttle launch pad at Cape Canaveral. There were too many of us to go all at once, so the shuttle had to make two trips. The bunch I went with had a ball. It was really something to watch the older fellows, whose gray hairs bespoke their eminence, as they anticipated liftoff with eyes dancing like those of a young boy on his first roller-coaster ride. The flight was the thrill of a lifetime for everybody. We arrived at the space station with spirits as high as our actual altitude in miles, if not higher.
I know that some of my literary colleagues back on the ground enviously imagine that we’re luxuriating in plush surroundings up here, with nothing to do but work and enjoy. Well, I hate to shatter their illusions, but our quarters on the space station are no more ritzy than your average family motel room. Our needs are well provided for, but we don’t live like millionaires, either. The room assigned to me is actually one of the smaller ones. (NASA gave everybody rooms on the basis of a system that I’m sure was fair, even though some people have rooms twice the size of mine.) I have a small radio, but no television. I don’t mind that, because television, with its tendency to turn all human emotions into cup custard, is an aspect of modern culture which I abhor. Besides, we have our own fifty-seat movie theater—the only feature of our space station which I guess you might call luxurious. Sometimes we get to see first-run movies, and that suits me just fine, because I am a movie nut. Of course, life here is not without its annoying little technical problems, or “glitches,” as we call them. The day we arrived, one of the station’s outside thrust-reversers was screwed up, and everything kept tilting back and forth. I was in the midst of unpacking, putting pencils in my pencil holder, when suddenly things started to tilt, and the pencil holder toppled and all my pencils went scattering on the floor. Then, for some strange reason the water they brought up to use for drinking and showering turned out to be hard water; that is, water with high mineral content. I don’t know why they didn’t get regular water—some bureaucratic snafu, most likely. The water tasted O.K., but when you shampooed with it, no matter how hot you turned it up, it would not rinse your hair completely. After a few weeks of this kind of shampooing, all of us were walking around with hair that hung in lifeless strands. We were a pretty droopy-looking group, and morale began to suffer. Then NASA took the problem in hand and announced that they were adding another member to the Space Community. The new member was a serviceman from one of the leading water-softener companies. (I don’t have to tell you which one—they have already blown their own horn loud enough, with their “Water Softener to America’s Space Program” ad campaign.) The shuttle made a special trip to bring this guy up, and, after some initial awkwardness, he fit in fine.
Writers on earth may envy me, but I wonder if they know how I envy them. How I would love a little of their privacy, their anonymity, their freedom to foster their creations away from the bright lights of national and world attention! Whenever the space station passes over Houston, there’s a knock on my door. “Jerry—it’s Mission Control on the phone. They want to talk to you.” I know that this is just part of the routine. I know that the Houston boys have a flight schedule with a list of all our names with little boxes alongside, and all they want to do is put a little check in the box by my name indicating that they’ve talked to me, that I sound fine, etc. They ask me how the book is going, and I give them vague answers, and that satisfies them. They always mention the “great view.” They’ve got the idea that a person looking at the “great view” from up here would naturally be inspired to write as nobody in history has ever written before. “Oh, what a view!” I always answer.
Let me tell you a few facts about this supposed “great view.” In the first place, there is one window in this space station. One window for the entire space station. And it’s not even that big a window—it’s about the size of a picture window in an ordinary house. In the second place, most of the time the space station is rotated around in a direction where all you can see out the window is blackness and a couple of stars. Maybe if you stood there and waited for a few hours, you might see a meteor. And then during those times when the space station is rotated around toward earth, the window is always packed with people, and all you can see is the back of everybody’s head.
Now, say I burst from my room one afternoon, my brain teeming with half-formed plots and characterizations, and I decide to take a short stroll. What I’m hoping for is the catalyst, the spark that will set the whole structure aglow from within. I walk to the window; earth is visible, if only I could see it through the crowd. The conversation goes like this:
“See that bump there? That’s Long Island.”
“Long Island isn’t a bump. It’s more like a line.”
“O.K., then what is that bump?”
“Which one, the first bump or the second bump?”
“Not the first bump. I’m talking about the smaller bump. The first bump is New Brunswick.”
My question is: Was it in measures such as these that the Muses sang to Virgil and, later, Dante? I, for one, doubt it very much.
The guys at Mission Control are put off easily enough, but once a month the President calls, and that’s a whole different situation. It’s quite a bit harder to kid him along. He knows all our names and he even recognizes our voices, and while he’s talking I’m sure he’s got a file on each one of us sitting on his desk in front of him. I never know for sure what he’s going to say. He’s a man who digs deeper; he didn’t get to be President by accepting pat answers. The last couple of times we’ve talked, he’s been getting curious about my work, and I really don’t want to go into it. I could say to him, “Look, writing is a process that takes place far back in the dim recesses of the mind, where words emerge and then go away again in a manner that even the most skillful of authors cannot easily explain in person, let alone over long-distance radiophone.” But I don’t tell him that—I try to cooperate. Our last conversation, however, was a nightmare.
“Hi, Jerry, how’s the writing going?” he says.
“Pretty good,” I say.
“How many chapters so far?”
“Almost ten.”
“Wow! That’s great! That’s really a lot! How many pages would that be?”
“Oh, about a hundred and fifty,” I say.
“A hundred and fifty! Wow!”
“Well, I triple-space.”
“Still …” he says. Then he says, “Tell me, Jerry, do you mind my asking? I was wondering about the angle you’re taking on your material.”
“Well … it’s, uh … you might say it’s kind of darkly comic,” I stammer.
There is a long pause, while my muscles begin to knot up and my forehead grows as clammy as the bottom of a vegetable compartment in a refrigerator. “Well, I’m sure you’re doing a terrific job, and I just want you to know how proud I and all other Americans are of you, and I know that you’ll sho
w the world that our country has writers who are second to none!” he says.
I rushed back to my room and threw myself face down on my bed. Darkly comic! That’s not the half of it! That doesn’t begin to describe it! The truth is that from page 1 right up to the very last page I’ve written so far my book is deeply, profoundly disturbing! Or, to be more exact, Chapter 1 is profoundly disturbing; Chapter 2 is both profoundly disturbing and upsetting; Chapter 3 is disturbing, upsetting, and alarming; in Chapter 4, I let up a little, and that one is merely disconcerting; Chapter 5 provides another short breather, and it is just troubling; but Chapter 6 goes right back to profoundly disturbing again, and I continue like that without any break at all from then on. When the President finds out what a sweeping indictment of our civilization I’m writing up here (and on the government’s nickel, no less), he’s likely to go through the roof. I wouldn’t want to be around the Oval Office to watch, I can tell you that.
YOUR NUTRITION & YOU
This week’s column is by way of apology to the many readers (too many, I’m afraid) whose unanswered letters sit in heaps in my study. Seems like ever since I published If You Don’t Like It, Don’t Eat It I’ve been fighting a losing battle to keep up my correspondence with thousands of people around the country who appreciate my plain-speaking approach to diet and health and who want to discuss their individual dietary plans with me. I wish I could answer every letter personally. I know all too well what it’s like to wander alone in a wilderness of nutritional dogma. To those of you who find yourselves hopelessly confused by all the television diet gurus and esoteric health-food treatises, I say, Don’t give up! Keep searching for the eating program that’s right for you—keep experimenting on yourselves and your families—and don’t be afraid to buck the experts and their conventional wisdom! The following is only a small sampling from my mailbag, but I hope all my readers will see a little bit of themselves in the questions, and learn from my answers.
Q; For the past ten years, my husband and I have been lactovegetarians, and we believe it is the diet God intended man to follow. It gives us great vitality and alertness, as well as a feeling of inner calm. I can honestly say that I no longer feel even the slightest desire to eat meat of any kind—in fact, the thought actually makes me a bit ill. Nowadays, the only time I ever stray from my diet is when I get the urge for some polyvinyl chloride. I don’t know why it is, but those little plasticized fibers have a flavor that I absolutely adore. Once a week or so, I’ll go out to the waste disposal bins at the local electronics plant and come home with laundry bags full. Then I’ll sprinkle the fibers on salads, main dishes, even desserts. When my husband teases me about this, I tell him that everybody is entitled to one delightfully sinful treat. Don’t you agree?
A: Often many of us forget that our appetites are a natural extension of the needs of our biochemistries. When we feel a strong craving for one substance or another, it usually means that our bodies lack that substance, and we should replenish our supplies. In your case, your body is telling you that you have electronic circuitry with dangerously exposed wiring somewhere inside you, and it’s time to coat those wires with a reliable industrial insulator—like polyvinyl chloride fibers. Had you let yourself be ruled by your conscience, and denied yourself this “sinful treat,” chances are you would now be suffering from debilitating electrical shorts. So go ahead, eat up, and bon appétit!
Q; As the mother of a large family, I see to it that we get three well-balanced meals each day, with plenty of meats and fish, fresh vegetables from our garden, and big, heaping bowlfuls of pure powdered Kepone (that stuff farmers used to spray on their crops sometimes from airplanes). Now if we could only get rid of this doggone twitching of the neck muscles which causes our heads to jerk violently at unpredictable intervals, everything would be perfect. Any suggestions?
A: Like all responsible members of the medical profession, I am often forced to admit that we do not yet have all the answers. I would need more details about your diet and overall health picture before I could make any definite statements about the symptom you describe. Could it be that you are getting too much vitamin D? If you are taking a D supplement and eating foods (such as dairy products) which have D added, that may be causing a buildup. Vitamin D is fat soluble and thus remains in the system, and it can be toxic in large amounts. Also, you may have a case of what we call “innocent” or “whimsical” twitching—a muscle contraction that the body performs every so often, apparently just for the fun of it. If your symptoms persist, you might try the following:
1. Lift with your legs, not your back, in order to distribute the strain more evenly.
2. Don’t hesitate to ask for help with precision tasks such as passing a truck on the freeway or trimming the kids’ hair.
3. Wear loose-fitting clothing.
These guidelines may not cure the condition, but they will at least make it easier to bear.
Q: Last year I decided to quit drinking, and I began to sample various nonalcoholic beverages looking for one I liked. Tomato juice with Tabasco, herb tea, carbon tetrachloride, soft drinks, Perrier and lime, reactor coolant, tonic water, hexachlorocyclopentadiene (C-56) on shaved ice, lemonade—I tried them all, but none seemed quite right. Then one evening I was at the home of a dry cleaner friend of mine and he offered me some chlorobenzene. Wow! I’d never tasted anything like it! It had a delicious, almondy flavor combined with a bracing, almost overpowering astringency that could make a man forget blended malt whiskies forever. Right then and there, it became my beverage of choice.
Since I’ve been on the wagon, I feel much better (aside from a pesky red rash on the backs of my legs, along with weight loss, dizziness, and this darn second row of teeth I’ve started to grow), but if it weren’t for chlorobenzene, I’d probably have gone back to the bottle long ago. I’m wondering—why isn’t this wonderful product on the shelves at my supermarket or beverage store? I am forced to purchase it from dry-cleaning supply houses.
A: Don’t ask me—ask the high panjandrums at the Food and Drug Administration! They’re the ones who have chlorobenzene trussed up in red tape that limits it to commercial use only. Notoriously finicky eaters themselves, these career bureaucrats delight in dictating the menu for all America. And of course, it is you and I, the consumer, who must suffer. We can only hope that one day our government will come to its senses and stop treating its citizens as if they were all still in short pants, incapable of making the simplest decision about their lives. As for that second row of teeth you’ve developed—remember that twice as many teeth means you should be brushing twice as long. Recent studies have shown a clear link between oral health and the health of the body as a whole.
Q; I love lead—have ever since I was a youngster. I was raised on crunchy lead-based paint flakes, bite-sized toy soldiers made of lead, and good old-fashioned lead pencils. Today my kids and grandkids live in a completely different world. When they want something to chew on, they reach for the modern acrylic-based paint flakes, or plastic army men, or ersatz fruit-flavored marking pens. I tell them they don’t know what they’re missing. They call me an old dinosaur. Then they say that they’ve heard lead is bad for you. This gravels me, because I’ve been eating lead for years and am in perfect shape, except for some minor central nervous system damage which causes me to walk in tight circles. I’m all the time trying to get them to try a little lead, and they’re always trying to get me to cut down. Neither of us will budge an inch. Who’s right, them or me?
A: If lead is harmful to human beings, this is the first I’ve heard of it. I suppose if you ate enough of it, it might be, but you’d have to eat a tremendous amount, much more than any one person is likely to want. You might ask your young relatives: If lead is so harmful, why did the Romans, rulers of a vast empire, install drinking fountains made of lead in every entrance to their Coliseum? Most people today are unaware of that fact, as they are of lead’s other benefits. Today, as always, lead’s worst enemy is public ignorance.
You might also remind the skeptical younger folks that fifty years ago, central nervous system damage was as common as hiccups—and taken about as seriously. Back then, if you had central nervous system damage, you didn’t go looking for scapegoats among the heavy metals. You just changed into some loose-fitting clothing and went about your business—a prescription I am sure we would all find every bit as valid today.
Readers wishing a transcript of this column should sit down and copy it out in a firm hand on sheets of ruled paper. Then mail a check or money order for $12.99 to Hooker Publishing, 2,4,5-T Street, Niagara Falls, New York 13870.
MORRIS SMITH: THE MAN AND THE MYTH
With a graceful tug, Dr. Morris Smith opens the venetian blinds. Light glints on his faceted forehead, on his metal-rimmed glasses, on the silvery medical instruments in the pocket of his white lab coat. Beyond his office door, he knows, is a waiting room filled with patients who all too soon will begin their ceaseless round of demands upon him. This will be the only time he has to himself for the rest of the day.