The Secret of Life

“When you got home you tried to build a model of it with your Erector set,” put in Conrad.

“Yeah. Another Larsen debacle.” He shook his head in a familiar self-deprecating way, and then looked at Audrey. “So you’re Conrad’s girlfriend? You’re making a noble sacrifice for mankind.”

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” laughed Audrey. “If he’s not stoned or drunk.”

“Stoned,” said Hank. “Tsk-tsk. I remember when Conrad read about Benzedrine inhalers in some beatnik anthology—I think it was an excerpt fromJunkie —and he ran out and bought all these inhalers and ate the shit in them. Despite the fact that they stopped putting Benzedrine in them about ten years ago.”

“Well, it was worth a try,” said Conrad, a little embarrassed. “You shouldn’t let the sixties pass you by, Hank. Especially at Columbia. I keep reading about all the student activists and—”

“Bunch of pears,” spat Hank. He sketched a pear shape in the air. “I refer to the body envelope. Don’t tell me you’re a student radical, Conrad?”

“Well ... no, not actually. Not in any organized fashion.”

“They won’t let you join the Party, eh?” Hank started laughing again and began imitating a pear.“We don’t want Bunger at our demonstration, he’s liable to show up drunk!”

“Conrad wants to find the secret of life,” put in Audrey.

“We were just talking about it when you showed up, Hank. Remember that time we were in Skelton’s pasture talking about the life-force?”

“Sure. I remember thinking that stuff up. I even wrote a paper on it for my twelfth-grade humanities course.”

“Youdidn’t think it up,” cried Conrad. “Idid.You’re the one who said pantheism is ‘a bunch of dumb shits kneeling in front of a rock.’ ” “That’s true too.” Hank gri

“Don’t I know it,” sighed Hank. “I’m even in a fraternity.” He refilled his beer glass from the pitcher. “So what are you majoring in, Conrad? You haven’t written me since freshman year.” “You were the one who stopped writing. I guess I’m in math.”

“Math?” exclaimed Audrey. “I thought you were majoring in physics.”

“Well, I didn’t get a chance to tell you yet. My physics teacher really hates me. And on the way up here, I realized that I’ll have enough math credits if I just take two math courses each semester next year.”

“But what about antigravity?” clamored Audrey.

Hank started to laugh, but Conrad cut him off. “I really was able to fly, man. Audrey saw me.”

“That’s right. Conrad flew us both down from the Eiffel Tower. Didn’t you see the picture? It was in all the papers.” “Oh, yeah ...” said Hank, slowly smiling. “I remember seeing that picture on the news. It was supposed to be a hoax, but ...”

“That was me and Audrey,” said Conrad. “It was a very special day.”

“So you jumped off the Eiffel Tower!” exulted Hank. “Remember in high school, when I said you should jump off the Heyburn Building?”

“Yeah, I was scared. I wasn’t quite sure it would work.”

“But you say you can’t fly anymore? You’ve lost the knack?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why. Recently, I’ve beenshrinking instead. Right, Audrey?”

Audrey blushed and giggled.

Hank took a long pull from his beer. “I almost believe you, Conrad. Remember how your family used to have the TV down in that musty basement room?”

“Caldwell’s apartment.”

“Right. And in the summer, you and me’d watchTwilight Zone down there ... sometimes it would get kind of scary ... and after the show we’d go outside and lie in the grass, looking at the stars and making up our own stories.”

“Yeah.”

“And you had this story about how a flying saucer had beamed you down and changed your family’s

memories to think you’d been born in the normal way. You claimed you couldn’t remember anything before your tenth birthday. When your family moved to Louisville.”

“Yeah.” Conrad shrugged. “For some reason that story’s always appealed to me.”

“The year your family moved in was the year of all the big saucer scares,” Hank mused. “Nineteen fifty-six. I remember when old man Skelton saw a saucer and found that crystal in his hog pen. Just before you showed up, Conrad. You were supposed to be ten. Maybe the saucer set you down at Skelton’s the day theBungers moved to Louisville. Their memories got doctored, and old Conrad walked up from the pasture and joined the gang.”

“And ever since,” said Conrad, “I’ve been trying to be a regular guy.”

“Is he a regular guy, Audrey?”

“Forget it! Is that true, Conrad, that you can’t remember anything from your early childhood?”

“Oh, I have a few memories. There was this dream I used to always have. A kind of nightmare ... but a fun nightmare. I’d be at a circus, except all the people and all the acrobats were made of light. They were like flames, swinging around way up in the air. Neon lights. Eventually they’d come after me and push me down through a trapdoor.”

“The aliens!” cried Hank. “Your original race. The door in the bottom of the saucer! Do you know why they sent you here?”

“Isn’t this getting a little too ...” began Audrey.

“No, no,” said Conrad, refilling his glass. “Hank and I always used to do this.Why the flame-people sent me here. To find out what humans are like. Our saucers have been monitoring Earth ever since the forties. We have amassed untold amounts of data. Yet a final understanding of the human condition has eluded us. What makes you people tick? Why do you behave as you do? What are your highest goals, and what can we learn from you?” Conrad was spieling all this out in a flat, robot voice. It was a science-fiction rap, a comedy routine. “It became evident that one of us would have to undergo incarnation as a fleshapoid. I was the one.”

“ ‘I was the one,’ ”sang Audrey,“ ‘who taught her to kiss ...’ ”

Hank joined in for the rest of the verse. It was the old Elvis song, “I Was the One.” Conrad joined in with off-key enthusiasm on the song’s refrain,“ ‘Well, I taught her how.’ ”

“My mission,” said Conrad, resuming his rap, “is to sample what is noblest in the human intellect. I was, in short, sent here to learn what humans believe to be ...” He nodded encouragingly to Hank and Audrey.

The three of them shouted out the catch phrase in unison: “THE SECRET OF LIFE!”

It was a gas, making up such a crazy lie; it was a way to get past the dull, false consensus reality of the straights; it was a way of getting down into the fluid, archetypal flow of subconscious reality.

That summer, Conrad would find out that most of his story was true.

Part III

The strangest thing is that I am not at all inclined to call myself insane, I clearly see that I am not: All these changes concern objects. At least, that is what I’d like to be sure of.

—Jean-Paul Sartre,Nausea