Donate your bodies to science, you fools!

Keep thinking about that story on this Henry Rollins spoken word record where he tells the story of a homeless guy he and Ian Mackaye used to hang out with when they were in high school in DC. Crazy Paul the Skyking. He burst into a beauty salon full of middle-aged woman and let drop that awesome line.

Donate your bodies to science, you fools!

So I check into the research facility tomorrow morning. I got some books to read and my laptop and a few of the things that I always said I'd get into if I had time and nothing else to do. I have to admit that the whole thing appeals to me in a weird, Hunter S. Thompson sort of way. I am twenty-three years old and there is nothing that seems more right than donating -- okay, renting -- my body to science like a fool. Because I am indestructible, and any side effects will be massively entertaining. Perhaps I will grow a little Dan on my shoulder. He will be the Flavor Flav to my Chuck D.

Yeah, boyee.

All arrangements made, except the ones I forgot and will remember days from now. As per usual. I have a fish-sitter in place. A fridge full of eggs that will be rotten by the time I get out. A gaping hole in my bank account soon to be stuffed with my ill-gotten gains. It's a good life, honey. We ain't gotta be in a rush.

Checking in from PPD Pharmaco.

Been here since ten o'clock this morning. Met the group, got the orientation, did the searches, had blood drawn, all the good stuff. I've been making my plans for what to do with the money all week -- how many months' rent it's going to pay for, if I'm going to try to set up a small tour in April, all of the things I need money to do. During orientation, matter of factly, a surprise announcement is made.

My study calls for four people.

There are five people in my group.

One of us goes home tomorrow. No harm, no foul. No ingesting of any test-drugs. At eight AM tomorrow morning, four of us go forward and one of us gets seventy-five bucks for our trouble and if it's me -- this is a very scary time. The determination will be -- does everyone in the group have the same vital signs they did when they screened for the study a week and a half ago, has anyone got any trace amounts of nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine in their system, do we all still qualify --

One of the guys in the group ate "eight to ten" Chips Ahoy cookies last night. The caffeine cut-off was Friday. That included chocolate. His name is Brian and he looks like Mark Kozelek and we were talking about Hunter Thompson earlier at lunch and I am desperately hoping that he is disqualified and sent home two-thousand dollars shy of his expected compensation.

Sorry, Brian.

If I manage to stay, things here look pretty cool. The computer room is nearly silent, they have televisions and I have books. The other people in my group, minus whoever gets kicked out, are all pretty cool. I talked to one of the guys who does this sort of thing pretty regularly about other studies he had participated in and seen. He's about fifty and wears a mustache and because when dealing with large numbers of strangers at once it is easiest to compare them to people you know or famous people he reminds me of Harvey Keitel but his name is also Brian.

What does our study need two Brians for?

The older Brian told me about a study he saw last time he was here. Normally, when screening, they require that you have no nicotine, caffeine, or alcohol in your system. For the study Brian saw, they actually required alcohol. They were testing reactions to a drug for alcoholism. They offered free drinks to everyone in the study, in addition to the compensation.

People got very excited at the prospect of free booze and a thousand bucks for a week's stay in a research facility. So excited, in fact, that they agreed to participate even though the drug was specifically designed to make people who ingested alcohol after taking it violently ill.

The point was to try and give people who took the drug such a negative reaction to alcohol that they would choose not to drink to overcome their addiction.

How else are you going to make a thousand bucks in a week?

It ain't sellin' screenplays, baby, I'll tell you that for nothing. All I got to do for my cash is ingest four nuclear horsepills tomorrow morning, piss in a jug until I got the radiation level is low enough that it looks like the drug is out of my system, and then stroll home irradiated. They expect ten days. It could be as many as thirteen. If it is, I get an extra five hundred bucks. It could be as few as seven. If it is, I keep the same amount and laugh all the way to the bank.

But all of this is contingent on one of the other four very nice men who are also counting on this money being disqualified. Four men who need the money so badly that they have also agreed to be dosed with an experimental drug, irradiated, and pissing in a jug. Nature of the game, I guess. These are desperate times. Last night I dreamed of an old roommate who I never -- frankly -- who I never got along with all that well. We were in our old apartment and there was about a foot and a half of water on the ground and there was an alligator there, attacking all of us. The gator bit me and drew blood. I climbed furniture. Just out of the reach of the beast and a few drops landed in the water and the gator smelled them and lunged. I got away and it ate poor James, the old roommate. I woke up feeling indebted to the young man.

It's a cutthroat world and I am a cold bastard.

Another transmission from PPD. One of what will likely be many -- a fresh-faced young man named Heath was eliminated from the screening for failing to metabolize quickly enough the alcohol he consumed on Saturday night. He ate dinner with the group in order to get the free meal and then went off into the night a free man.

Not like me.

The culture of this place is wild. I need more time to get a better feel for it but this place is amazing. There are people who do nothing but drive around the country, volunteering for research studies in different facilities, year in and year out. There are two RVs in the parking lot right now, ostensibly belonging to some of them. I met one of them today.

Everyone involved in your particular study is part of the same group. There are maybe a dozen studies going on at any time. Every group is classified according to the color t-shirt that they are assigned to wear. The four intrepid souls remaining to test our particular irradiated substance are the Black Shirts. Fucking cool, right? I thought so. Our gang of four is the smallest of all groups in the facility right now. I am sitting in the computer room right now and am surrounded by seven Teal Blues. They are an ornery bunch who have been in here since the twenty-fifth of February and do not get to check out until the thirteen of March. You'd be ornery too, sister.

Most fascinating about the way the culture here works is that people in your group are immediately Befriended, whereas people in other groups are automatically Distrusted. The Teal Blues talk to the Teal Blues. The Sage Greens and the Hunter Greens do not interact. We Black Shirts had best get along well. We have no choice. We distrust the others same as anyone else. Tribalism is alive and well. Trust those who look like you, who wear the same color shirt as you, who eat meals at the same time and suffer the same side effects.

It occured to me at dinner that this could be a valuable experience for reasons other than the filling of my coffers -- the experience of being here, of observing a subculture -- of participating in the subculture -- and having no choice but to go through with it -- is one that could be valuable on its own.

I am nearly finished with the first book I brought with me. I was already nearly halfway into it when I checked in this morning but I definitely feel less ridiculous about the monster-sized stack I kept in my duffel bag. Almost done -- Better Than Sex by Hunter S. Thompson. Next up -- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by the same gonzo journalist. I decided against bringing in too much of Thompson's work because it could lead to a potentially bizarre experience, given that I am irraditating my body to help a research facility determine what manner, precisely, the drug I am about to ingest leaves the body, but I kind of wish I had taken in the rest of the man's books that I've not read. Ah, well. I have many things that I had always intended to do before that I can do now. It remains to be seen whether or not I can write anything worth a damn in here, but I have eleven days to try.

Hey all of this talk about that Mel Gibson movie about Jesus is giving me a wicked messianic complex. I am your son of god birthed to one catholic and one jewish parent in the absolute middle of the North American land mass. You can stop waiting. Your messiah is here. And he is listening to Guns 'n Roses. He is donating his body to science. When my holy powers manifest I will go to AA meetings and turn the water in the cooler into wine and force them all to repent in my name. Suckers! I will campaign on behalf of legalizing gay marriage and when all the over-65s in the polls who bring it down raise their voices in protest I will call forth a good, hard winter to thin the fuckers out. I will install Wyclef Jean as the president-for-life of Haiti. DO IT WYCLEF YOUR PEOPLE NEED YOU. I will feed the people of Iraq with a loaf of Wonder Bread and a never-ending can of Chicken of the Sea tuna. I will be your savior.

I will have twelve disciples and they will all be shorter than me and I will be betrayed by Dennis Kucinich when the cock crows three times. The NYPD will cold-smoke my ass one night and I'll go down in a flurry of buckshot. Lemmy and Danzig will continue on with my good works and then eventually my tale will be reborn as some fucked-up torture-porn epic conceived as a multi-media experience by some confused, empty-headed actor who thinks that he's bearing his own cross by making a movie about me in the land where I am considered by the vast majority of the population to be their number one homeboy.

I am your messiah. I am going to take radioactive drugs in eight hours. I am being paid handsomely for this. I WOULD DO IT FOR FREE.