Juice on the Rocks One day Michael decides to get really pumped. He sets himself up a shot of Anabolic Steroids, then smokes some Methedrine to get into the right mood. In bartender's terms he thinks of this combo of Roids and Ice as 'Juice Over'. He uses up the last of his stash of both substances. When his heart gets to pounding he goes downstairs, cranks Tammy Wynette on the stereo, and starts lifting. First some light lunges and squats to get warmed up. Then on to the upper body and some serious iron. A few sets of heavy dumb bell rows for the lats. He's getting into a fairly frenetic rhythm. Trying to keep his concentration and balance so he doesn't rip some piece of his body from its sockets. He sets up for the bench presses, start out heavy and drop the weights until you can't do any more. Halfway through the first set the Chihuahua next door starts barking. Then the big Lab on the other side picks up the refrain. Michael's focus is blown. "Those God Damn Fucking Piece Of Shit dogs!" he screams. "Who set them up to this anyway? I gotta fucking fix em, GDFPOS crap!" He begins swearing in shorthand to fit more expletives into a smaller space-time continuum. "Which little POS is it this time?" He's lost the desire to finish the bench sets. "Those Bastards are out to kill me." He muses for a moment about strangling the dogs, then he hears the sound of tennis balls being batted back and forth on the public courts across the street. "That's who's making the GDF SOBs go off their nuts. I can fix that, pretty clear!" Michael storms upstairs to get his pump 12 gauge, a full choke, and some upland shells. He wrestles a step ladder underneath the attic trap door and hoists the gun and himself into the dusty space above the house. There is a dormer window at the front that has a good clear view of all the offending tennis players. He prys the window open, mumbling more mnemonics under his breath, and props the gun on the sill. There are two singles matches in heated play on adjoining courts about 20 yards away. The balls are making those repeated Ping-Thwok sounds that have annoyed Michael and the Chihuahua. Michael takes aim. Bob has been playing pretty well. His concentration is good and he's up one set in this match with his friend Raymond. "Add In!" he says, and tosses the ball into the air for his soon- to-be-patented power serve. The ball suddenly disappears, and a fraction of a second later he hears a loud explosion. Bob isn't sure, but it sounded like a car backfiring. His concentration wavers, "Where'd it go? Must have bounced behind me," he thinks as he automatically starts to pull a second ball from his pocket. Michael squeezed the trigger smoothly, heard the explosion, and a fraction of a second later saw the ball disintegrate. He feels pretty good about the momentary look of bewilderment on the tennis player's face. "That'll show him, heh". He shifts his attention to the other court where a man and a woman have just stopped playing a point. Susan thought what she heard was a backfire, but doesn't see the offending car. The sound had caused her to hit the last shot low and the ball is rolling back towards her from the net. She takes a step forward and reaches for it with her racket. Inexplicably, the ball skitters off to the left and her racket is is yanked out of her hand to follow it. A split second later she hears another backfire like explosion. She yelps in surprise and looks at the racket. Then screams when she sees that the top is missing, and the strings are flapping in the breeze. Michael got off another good shot, heard the pleasant blast and a split second later noticed the satisfying results. He turns back to the first court. Bob hears another backfire and then the woman on the next court screams. He looks to see what the problem is. Raymond starts yelling something at the same time, and waving towards a house across the street. Bob looks at the house and sees what may be a gun barrel in an upper window. He drops the ball he was going to serve and begins running as fast as he can. Raymond is right behind him yelling, "Get behind that tree, keep down!" Michael sees the ball bouncing across the court and takes it out. Direct hit. "Nothing but squiggly bits of rubber left of that sucker," he congratulates himself. Susan's partner, Jim, hears the third shot, sees the players from the other court running towards him, and puts two and two together. He leaps over the net, grabs Susan, and pushes her in front of him towards, and then behind the concrete backstop wall. Michael, having completed his task, takes off his shirt and sets about cleaning the gun. The dogs are still barking but he doesn't care too much now. He is half done when he hears a siren in the distance. It gets louder and louder and eventually stops to one side of his house. He looks out the window to see what is going on. A cop gets out of the car, looks towards the tennis courts and then over to a large tree where one of the ex-tennis players is gesticulating wildly and pointing towards Michael. The cop suddenly jumps behind his car door and peeks over it at the house. Michael says, "Oh crap, now what", and leans out the window, still holding the barrel of the shotgun, to see better. The cop ducks down and crawls onto the seat of his car. Michael pulls back in to finish cleaning the gun. More sirens can be heard and soon many cars pull up into the street at odd angles. Bull horns come out, and people rush in funny squating positions from one vehicle to another. Others mill around on the periphery a block to either side. Michael gets the feeling that he is being watched. "Put down the weapon", an electronicly enhanced voice says, "and come out slowly with your hands on top of your head". He picks up the empty shells, wraps them in his shirt and dumps them down a crack between the chimney and a wall. Then he peeks out of the window and finds all these people hiding behind things and looking towards his house. He wants them to go away so he can go back to his bench presses. He really wants to get back into his body building after wasting his rush dealing with all the annoying animals in his neighborhood. "Go away!" he yells to them. His phone begins to ring. "Shit, I'm busy now", he ignores the phone, which is in the room below anyway. The answering machine picks it up. "The quote of the moment is from Levi-Strauss 'Digestion offers an anticipatory organic model of Culture'. Please leave a message. Beep". A voice says, "We know you're there. We don't want anyone to get hurt. Please talk to us. Call us at 555-8572". Beep. Michael thinks, "How do they know I'm here? I'm not even sure I'm here." He goes back to the window and yells, "I'm not really here. I don't want anyone to get hurt either, just leave me alone!" The bullhorn voice repeats, "Come out of the house slowly with your hands on top of your head". He sees someone run up and hide behind the tree directly in front of the house. "Shit, if I don't do something they'll probably break in and screw up the door frame". He picks up the gun and holds it out the window. "Look, just go away, OK". He stands there for a second and then realizes, "They might have sharpshooters out there. I should get out of the window!" As he steps back he is thrown to the floor by a sudden force that hits his left shoulder. He hears an explosion in the distance. "What the fuck?" he thinks as he falls. He looks at the offending shoulder and sees blood trickling out. It begins to hurt. "Oh crap, those bastards." There is a pounding downstairs. As they break down the door Michael thinks, "This can't happen. I'm just imagining it." The pain is getting worse and blood is running down his chest. "I'm just an awareness, I don't have to believe this is going on. I'm somewhere else". The harder he trys to be somewhere else the more it hurts. He hears voices in the rooms below, feels dizzy. Faces look down at him. An IV is put in his arm. He is picked up, lowered through the trap door, and put on a stretcher. Michael says, "Ideals". Someone says, "Try to be quiet, you're going to be OK." "Two of them. Awareness. The first. All I know." They are carrying the stretcher down to a waiting ambulance. People are milling everywhere. Cops are stringing up yellow bunting from pillar to post. Guys are wandering though Michael's house picking up things. Looking at them. Writing in notebooks. "Reality. Energy. The Other. I don't know". "Can't you keep him quiet?" someone says. "Yeah, must be crazy". They give him a shot. The Morphine begins to fight the Methedrine, starting in Michael's body. The EMTs don't know what condition his mind is in. "Goddamn Duality. GDFPOS." "Must belong to some wierd political group. Jeez, too bad we gotta try to save him", one of the attendants says. "At least we can get something to eat soon," the other replies. "Vacillating between Ideals." The ambulance is roaring down the highway to the county hospital, siren wailing. Lights flashing. "Tightrope strung between two nothings." The drugs are at a standoff. "Phenomenology". Michael can't feel anything but he can't stop thinking either. "So how's your boy friend these days? Haven't seen him in a while." "No proof though", Michael wheezes. "He's OK I guess. I think he's been screwing . . . " "The pendulum swings from pain to ennui!" Michael screams and starts coughing. One of the EMTs looks at Michael, "Shit what'll you bet we gotta ventilate him before we get there." They both look disgusted. "Wish I had some of whatever he's on", the other one says. The ambulance arrives at the hospital. Michael is rushed into surgery where an Anesthesiologist quickly recognizes this particular drug cocktail and pumps him full of stuff to shut him down cleanly. They pull the rifle slug, which has managed to miss most of the vital portions of his anatomy by millimeters, sew him up, and wheel him into the ICU. There he sits in a daze connected up to various beeping, wheezing, and clicking machines. A detective comes in and reads Michael his Miranda Rights. Then he asks for a statement. Michael has a great deal of difficulty remembering how he got here but is awake enough to ask for a lawyer. Then he mumbles something about an epistemological crisis. Eventually he is moved to a prison ward. A sequence of officials come to visit. He asks the doctors to give him more drugs. They refuse. He sidesteps the police by claiming that he doesn't remember anything. He tells the lawyer that he got pissed off at the dogs and that's all he remembers. He explains to the shrinks about his realization that life is indeed Schopenhauer's pendulum swing, strung between two unrealizable Ideals of Awareness and Energy. And that the string is Phenomenology. One of the shrinks tells the lawyer that there may be a case for insanity. The arraignment comes up. Michael is charged with: 1. Three counts of Attempted Murder. 2. Reckless Endangerment. 3. Resisting Arrest. 4. Discharging a Firearm Within City Limits. 5. Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. 6. Conduct in Violation of Community Standards. The last is a typical Berkeley local ordinance which carries a manditory community service penalty, and a minimum of 4 hours of group therapy. The others could be serious. The lawyer indicates that he will try for a temporary insanity plea but after a hearing, the judge doesn't buy it. Then the lawyer gets a change of venue because of pre-trial publicity. The trial commences in El Dorado County, in the California foothills. A jury of the local peers is selected and the prosecution begins to dissect Michael's behavior of late. First, it is established that drug paraphernalia were found on the premises. A syringe and a small metal pipe, with traces of anabolic steriods and meth-amphetamines respectively. Then possesion of a shotgun and shells is established. The shells contain similar shot to that found at the other end of the scene. Ballistics, with about a 50% accuracy, indicates that the shots were fired from Michael's window. The gun has Michael's fingerprints on it. The tennis players are called as witnesses, but none of them actually saw Michael, or the gun being fired. The officers at the scene testify to the order of events after they arrived. They swear that Michael waved the gun threateningly and refused to come out of the house. The prosecution presents evidence of Michael's unstable character, the contents of his house. A naked Barbie Doll, surrounded by plastic animals and photo equipment. Pieces of crushed metal on book shelves. A poster of a woman, seemingly in bondage, painted over with strange, possibly demonic, scrawls. Lots of books. "Libra" by Don Delilo, about the Kennedy assassination. A shelf of historical studies of the Manhatten Project. Nihilist philosophy. Scrap books of unrelated newspaper clippings. A medival mace with a happy face at the business end. In the course of testimony, one of Michael's acquaintances says, "We weren't too surprised. Most of us thought, 'He finally did it, eh?'". Experts testify that someone could easily have been killed. The Recycling Commissioner testifies that all of Michael's garbage was sorted by color rather than material. After a brief consultation at the bench the prosecution agrees to drop the Community Standards charge. The defense takes over. All the evidence that Michael actually fired the gun is circumstantial. No empty cartridges were found, and since the gun was clean, it can not be proved that it was fired at that time. He has had no previous arrests for possesion of drugs, nor any other brushes with the Law. In fact he has had only one parking ticket in the last five years. Michael is called to the stand and explains, first, that the noise in the neighborhood had angered him and that's why he was up in the attic. And second, he refused to vacate his lawful residence when confronted with an angry mob, because he was frightened. He didn't mean harm to anyone, and in fact no one was hurt. He may have threatened them with the shotgun because he felt threatened himself. He tries to explain the philosophical reasoning behind his state of mind at that time, but the lawyer keeps it short and to the point. They jury deliberates for a day. Then two. They ask the judge for clarification of certain points of law. They return. The Bailif reads the verdict. "We find the defendant not guilty of Attempted Murder and Reckless Endangerment. We could find no evidence that was not circumstantial. We find the defendant not guilty of Discharging a Firearm Within City Limits. Again due to lack of evidence, but everybody around here takes an occasional potshot out their window anyway. We find the defendant not guilty of Resisting Arrest, but guilty of the lesser crime of Failure To Obey an Officer of the Law. We find the defendant guilty of Possession of Drug Paraphernalia." Michael's lawyer laughs out loud and shakes Michael's hand. Michael smiles wanly and rests his head in his hands. He gets a suspended sentence and a fairly stiff fine, in hopes of preventing any future diversions of this type. Back home, he wonders, "Now, if I had been killed, that would be proof that something else exists outside of my own consciousness." The Chihuahua starts barking. XXX (c) 1991 M. I. Smith