A System Of Checks And Checks, by Paul Shirley

23 Oct 2012

I’m hurtling up Doheny when it hits me, when some section of my cortex screams:

Do it!

“It” defined as jerking the shiny silver automobile I’m driving into the line of cars under the street lamps on my right.

Why the hell not? says my brain. You won’t get hurt, not that badly, anyway. Just see what it’d be like, c’mon.

And anyway,

You’re gonna die, motherfucker.

So why not?

Which makes my brain sound like a sadistic sonofabitch. But really, my brain is a pal, an old friend, because he’s there to periodically remind me that nothing matters, really. That, relax, because you aren’t getting out alive. That, calm the fuck down already.

But he is a tricky bastard, this brain of mine – he’s like that friend who, sometimes, you can’t believe you don’t hang out with all the time because good god is he funny, especially when he’s doing his Steve Martin routine after a couple of Coronas. But, other times, he’s the guy who forgets to call back or tells you he’ll go to the Crystal Castles show but then bails out an hour beforehand.

He’s not always to be trusted, is what I’m saying.

***

I don’t, of course. Crash the car. Because this isn’t that sort of story. And I’m not Lindsay Lohan.

No, I keep the tires between the lines, and I arrive at Dan Tana’s, where I’m meeting a pretty girl for a drink before we watch a rock band at The Troubadour.

The girl and I have the drink – rye and ginger for me; Scotch and ice cubes for her – and we walk into the show and we get beers and we find a corner. It’s quiet, because a windowsill shields the sound from the opener, so she jumps up on that windowsill and we’re face to face and it would probably be useful at this point to know that this girl and me, we haven’t kissed yet, so my brain goes to it again:

Do it! Kiss her! See what it’s like!

Because, anyway,

You’re gonna die, motherfucker.

And this time, I take his advice.

***

Some part of my brain thought it would be interesting to jerk the wheel into a nearby Hyundai. The same part of my brain thought it would be interesting to kiss the girl.

I didn’t act on the first. I acted on the second.

Had I reversed those decisions, my version of Sanity would have lost its hold on your version of Sanity, and I would be writing this on a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom stall at a mental hospital.

But I didn’t, did I? And I never would have, right?

Because of social constructs and societal norms and what we, as humans, call Sanity. And anyway, I’ve shown no prior sign of schizophrenic or extreme anti-social behavior, so why would I have started tonight? Normally, I have my shit together, so I’ll always have my shit together.

Or so we like to think.

Because here’s the thing: the same brain that stopped the crazy is the same brain that started the crazy is the same brain that sometimes has mildly crazy ideas that turn out just fine.

***

My brain, your brain, all of our brains: they bombard us with these messages, these crazy, crazy messages, like pop-ups on a porn site. And sometimes we’re going to do what those messages tell us to do, and sometimes we’re not and the reason you’re called “sane” or I’m called “sane” isn’t because you are or you aren’t. It’s because you got lucky. Again.

Because your crazy happens to line up with human crazy.

Still.

Because when it came to your bizarre impulses, your brain let the Right ones in, and kept the Wrong ones out.

One more time.

Because you know right from wrong, bad from good, drunk from sober, bonkers from pyschologically stable.

Today.

***

We’re all dancing on sanity’s tightrope, that much we’ve heard before.

The tightrope, though: it isn’t a regular tightrope; this thing is held up on one end by a stack of Weebles and on the other by a schizophrenic Serbian man who’s ninety-two years old. It’s about as stable as a failing actress on mushrooms for the first time.

And what that means is that you, or I, or anyone, can stay On the tightrope and still fall Off. Your brain – the one you think so highly of, the one that keeps you from doing anything nuts – it’s the same brain that gave you the idea to do the thing that was nuts in the first place.

Or maybe Off is On, and maybe the tightrope is the abyss below, and maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re crazy or sane or somewhere in between because either way,

You’re gonna die, motherfucker.

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