F IC T IO N & N O N F IC T IO N
HEAD IN THE CLOUDS, HEAD IN THE OVEN J.E. Tankersley
I’ve always been afraid of going insane. Even as a child I had an inherent fear, a paranoia eating at the back of my skull, telling me that something was off, that my brain wasn’t working quite right, that I needed help. When I would climb into the worn leather seats of our old Volvo, I’d play through the questions that I wanted to ask to my mother, figure out the best, the most normal approach. I would watch the trees blur past, stare at the flat piles of what used to be animal flesh in the center of the road, inhale the second hand smoke of a Misty Light 120, and I’d look up at her. When I couldn’t figure out the right words, I’d just lay it on the table. “Am I crazy?” I would ask. She would blink a few times, glance over at me, take another drag. “No, you’re not,” she’d say. “Why do you think that?” I could almost see her words forming in the pluming smoke. “Just making sure,” I’d reply, hardly above a whisper. But it was the truth. I wanted confirmation about my well-being, like an engineer going through a nuclear power plant and making sure the levels were right, that the reactors weren’t overheating—I didn’t want to explode. But when she’d made it clear that I wasn’t insane, I’d worry about other things. I’d ask if I had cancer, or a brain tumor, or if I would grow up to be paralyzed. But when I’d exhausted every medical term that I’d heard on the television, I’d move on to more obscure things, create my own cancers that could be infesting me. I remember once asking her if I was a robot. I convinced myself that I could have been created in a lab somewhere, created for some unknown purpose, but was being raised by a normal family to teach me emotions and social norms, like a regular little boy. I imagined that I saw everything in a grid, with statistics and levels and a targeting system, and that if I listened closely enough, if I pressed my ear against my arm, I could hear the gears grinding where I bent it at the elbow. Maybe I was already crazy. My mother dismissed all of that, obviously. She complimented me on my imagination. Now I’m older and fears have changed. I’m no longer scared of being a cyborg, having a mysterious disease or realizing that my body is riddled with cancer—I can go to the doctor if I need these fears calmed. Now I’m fearful of my wife finding me like Ernest Hemingway, a bottle of whiskey in my hand and a shotgun in my mouth. I’m afraid of my parents coming over for Thanksgiving only to discover me with my head stuffed in the back of the oven, my lungs full of gas and my eyes glazed over like Sylvia Plath (Devlin). I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid of being remembered for a suicide note, like Hunter S. Thompson. His read, “No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 More than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always.... No Fun—for anybody. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax—This won’t hurt (Devlin).” These fears, these quaking thoughts that keep my eyes locked to the ceiling in the dark of night, they aren’t the same as the worries I had as child. This paranoia is warranted, it’s earned, it’s scientifically rooted. Turns out, lucky us, that creative types
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