I Love You More Than You Know: Essays by Jonathan Ames

Author:Jonathan Ames [Ames, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American, Literary Criticism, General
ISBN: 9781555845926
Google: GvaaBPVGwGMC
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2007-12-01T20:55:08+00:00

November 9

In the morning, I did something unusual: I made an appointment at this place called Koan Float, where I could go into a sensory deprivation tank. I’d always wanted to try one of those and the place was right next to my hotel.

Here’s how it worked: I got my own room with a shower and a tank, the attendant gave me instructions to put Vaseline over any open cuts, and I was left alone in the room.

I showered off and climbed naked into the powder-blue tank, which looked like the backside of an extinct AMC Pacer, a doomed car which I always admired for its fat ass. The tank was filled with about two feet of warm salt water. I then pulled the hatch down and was in complete darkness. There were buttons along the wall of the tank for lights, music, intercom—in case you started to panic you could contact the girl at the front desk—but I preferred to be in darkness without musical accompaniment.

I lay on my back and the salt water buoyed me up. Immediately, there was a terrible stinging in my ass, which has been itchy for about fifteen years now. I don’t know what the hell the problem is down there.

My ass was probably stinging in the salt water because I’m always irritating it by scratching it. I have two very bad habits—I scratch my ass and I pick my nose. The worst is when I pick my nose after I scratch my ass, having forgotten that I’ve scratched my ass, and I wonder why my finger smells like I’ve changed a diaper, and then I remember and I sort of wish in those moments that somebody would just come along and shoot me, and then I wonder if other people have fingers laced with feces, other people like chefs and waiters. Anyway, I really shouldn’t be let out of the house, let alone sent all the way to civilized Europe.

Well, after about ten minutes in the tank my ass stopped stinging and I went into a profound meditative state. These deprivation tanks are real meditation shortcuts. I was counting my breaths as I floated, and I traveled back in time to when I used to do Zen meditation twenty years ago at Princeton as a freshman, inspired by Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and my desire to have a Beat experience, despite being at Princeton, a preppy way station and not exactly the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

After forty minutes I came out of the tank—the girl informed me over the intercom that my time was up—and I was blissfully happy. I walked along the gorgeous Amsterdam canals and wondered why I ever have worries in life. All anxiety and persistent feelings of doom had been leeched out of me by that tank. I was euphoric. It was beautiful!

Well, the gods were observing me, because right at the zenith of my happiness I stepped in a huge wet pile of diarrhea dog shit, which is such a cliché, but it actually happened.

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