Music At Knife Point: NIN .:. Headdown (May 11th)

Click here to listen to “Head Down”
Artist: Nine Inch Nails
Album: The Slip (2k8)
4:55

400 milligrams of Dramamine:

They’re there, in the tube.  They are waiting; waiting for somebody like me to pop the top and palm them down my throat, swallow.  I palm them and pretend to swallow.  I laugh because I am drunk and funny.  People laugh with me.

“I think you’re a narc, Sharp” T-Bone joshes.

I laugh with him, and then I swallow.

“How much do you need for this to work?” I ask Dickles.

“Six to eight tablets, I think” he says.

I’ve swallowed three tablets.  Jennie swallows three tablets.

“I guess we need more,” I knock two more tablets into my hand, two more into Iris’.

“There’s only one left,” she says.

“We can split it,” I say, breaking the tablet with my two front teeth, handing her half, and swallowing mine.

“I have some Gravol,”

Jamie says, passing Iris a silver card that has four bubbles to encapsulate pills in, each hugging a little pink tablet.

We wait 25 minutes, sitting across from each other on chairs in T-Bone’s living room.  Wynd comes in through the front door and takes up the chair beside me.  Somewhere in the conversation we bring up doing the rest of the Dramamine.  I palm one more and swallow it.

“Wait, are you actually doing Dramamine, or are you just joking?” Wynd asks, looking at me in disbelief.

I flash my Cheshire cat grin back at him, and swallow the final tablet.  Iris follows suit.  Wynd nods his head side-to-side and laughs.

I am cold.  It is cold in the room.  It is cold, and my limbs are feeling heavy.  Somebody has turned up the gravity, I’m having problems moving,

“The corner of that wall is tripping me out,” Iris says.

I don’t see anything.

“I metabolize quickly,” she adds.

Time passes.  Iris and I are on the couch, watching the television, sharing a small blanket.  Jennie suggested music videos.  Kardinal Offishall and Akon sing about a dangerous woman, the camera backs out from them, becoming globular – like being so close to a Christmas ornament that you’re convinced it’s flat, zooming out to discover it’s round shape – entering into another scene.

Reality doesn’t do that, I reaffirm.  I’m unsure of whether this is the direction of the music video, the weed and wine, or the Dramamine.  Other effects on screen perplex me, we watch for hours.  Iris suggests we watch a movie.  Dickles looks around in an attempt to find a movie for us to watch, but he gives up after a quick scan of T-Bone’s dining room.

My mouth becomes a cotton farm, plantation negros pick what they can from my saliva and carry it back to their masters.  Jennie’s head is on my shoulder, my head is on Iris’ head.

Nodding out.

I wake up.  I am in a dream.  The dreamscape looked like this:

I’m on T-Bone’s couch, watching television with Iris – we are on Dramamine – Wynd and Dickles are railing Ritalin off of T-Bone’s table.  Something about this is not real.

Iris starts talking about a desert, she’s slurring, perhaps talking to somebody else – it’s not coherent in any sense.  Wynd looks at her, letting his face laugh for his belly.  She lies across the couch, bending her knees in the middle cushion.  I lie across the other side and do the same thing.  Our legs are touching in the middle.  There’s not much space on the couch.

I wake up.

T-Bone’s couch, television with Iris, Dramamine, Wynd and Dickles railing Ritalin.  Not real.

I wake up.

Couch, Iris, Dramamine, Wynd and Dickles not real.

Dickles is talking to me between his lines.  He’s not real.  What’s he looking at?

I wake up.

A set of Russian dolls.  I remove the top doll and there is another doll within that.

I wake up.

There is another doll inside that doll.

I

Within that one another.

Wake

So on and so forth.

Up

Eventually, I have to get to the middle doll.  That one will be real.

Dickles says something between lines.  Bewildering.  Not real.  Neither of them are real.  Ignore them.

Head down.  There’s a ripple in reality, as if somebody has touched a calm gelatin pool with their fingers.

I wake up.

Yin and Yang on a couch, night slowing to a crawl, glowing in the unreal television.

Not.