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    Now, suddenly, I'm calling all that into question. I'm remembering that, christ, I'm almost fucking twenty-fve! That was the year that I swore to myself I would make my mark in the world or die. All the wrongs would be righted. All the truths would be told.

    It seemed so important.

    Why doesn't it now?

    Or maybe it does, and I'm just in denial. Or I just don't remember. Or maybe I do. When I write about this, it sure yanks me back hard.

    When I think about Gene, it yanks even harder.

    Gene and I met on the Internet, in the banner year 2000: a couple of wacky e-mail freaks and part-time online 'zinesters. His 'zine was called Exploding Clown Experiment. Mine was called Wait My Ass. Both of them were intensely frst-personal accounts of whatever the fuck happened to pop into our heads.

    The point was that we were both compulsive. Anything that happened, and anything that didn't happen—in our minds, in our lives, in the greater World Outside—was totally fair game for our poisoned word processors. It was a trait we shared in common with just about every other lunatic both driven and alienated enough to go to all that trouble; but for some reason, we cracked each other up. Became fans of each other. And, very quickly, became electronic friends, bonded by our written words.

    The fact that we were both Lost Angelenos made it easy for us to meet, though we put it off for a very long time, mostly through sheer inertia. The clincher was a tribute to Little Jimmy Scott at the Wiltern Theatre, in the spring of 2002. The fact that Gene was a fan of Jimmy Scott's music—loved it as much as I did, and maybe even more—was all I needed to know.

     We went to the show. Had a blast. Hung out some more. Got high and fucked around a little. Snapped out of it. Went "whoa." And laughed: the best possible response. Came out the other side of that, not as boyfriend and girlfriend, but with total affection and appreciation for each other.

    I love Gene a whole big bunch.

    But we are all mirrors to each other; and what Gene refects back—in my mind, right now—is the urge to catch up and just get it all down. To leave a record of my cranial trail, regardless of what happens to us, it, or me.

    Of late, I have been lax in chronicling: a whole lot more do than tell.

    Gene makes me remember how much I love to get it all in writing.

    I size myself up in the Old Faithful Mirror: that gorgeous magick object I have mounted on the wall. It sees through souls, and tells no lies. It has no bias of its own. The too-big eyes refected there, the too-large lips, are the ones I've always had. The body is my body. Perhaps I haven't changed a bit. Between the pink and blue lights of the foating piggels and the multifaceted frelight ficker, I feel like I'm back at a plug-in party: alone in my room, locked in cybercast transmission, desperately throwing myself at some weird projected abstraction of happiness. Like a dope. Not even fooling myself.

    But this is the thing. I am not in the world. I'm in Oz. I'm in Oz. And I'm not even stoned. It's not like I'm sitting around in a room, dreaming dreamy dreamdreams that are just veiled excuses. It's not like I didn't make love to that dragon. It's not like I haven't been getting around. Every second I've spent here, awash in walking symbols—learning warrior tech from the Winkie King, conversing with the dinner plate, repainting Scarecrow's head—has been magick in action. Astonishing action. I mean, I always wanted to talk with the trees. Now I talk with the trees all the time.

    Gene has never had that conversation, much as he's always wanted one. Back in the world, that shit just doesn't happen. Back in the world, it's banal as all hell. The magick is stunted. There is no belief. It's as gray as the day that cyclone scooped up Dorothy Gale.

    But now I'm in a place where imagination matters. Where magick is a given, and its fruits are everywhere. And while I don't have any new, improved powers—I can't fap my arms and fy, I can't shoot freballs out my ass—the magick I always knew I had is appreciated here, and that is SO GRATIFYING. Every day, I can hardly believe it.

    I mean, sure, I work in a Mexican restaurant; and sure, I sometimes have to moonlight as an artist's model. But there's never BEEN a restaurant like the Emerald Burrito; and you haven't LIVED till you've posed nekkid for a roomful of sweaty munchkin artistes.

    Fact is, everybody in Oz has got some kind of job, even if it means farming goomer cream (yeesh). I could even live with that, as long as I had wildness in my life. You get a spark that's called a soul, you wanna believe that it's worth something. And it is. It truly is. At least in Oz.

    And here I am.

    So I guess I'll just stop agonizing, and wait for Gene to come. Maybe he'll like what I'm writing enough to think it's worth smuggling back. It doesn't have to be Jack Kerouak, Jr.'s On the Yello
w
Brick Road; I'll just call 'em as I sees 'em, and let posterity sort i
t out.

    At the very least, we're gonna have some fun. This is one vacation he'll never forget.

    (Okay, Quilla. That's it for tonight. I'm gonna blow out the candles.)

    And, piggels?

    GOOD NIGHT!!!

That guy was right about the laptop.

    Shut the fuck up, will you, I'm trying to write! I swear to God, I'll turn you off.

    I'm typing this by the glow of the screen, down at the bottom of a sea of stars, the only sounds an occasional pop! from the crimson embers of the dying campfre, and the strange fanged chirping of the local crickets. There's a heady scent in the air, some strange local herbal melange, and multicolored frefies are practicing fgureeights off in the deep, dark Ozian night.

    I should be asleep, but I'm still a little wound up. A drink would help, but nobody around here seems to have any booze, and I neglected to pack another bottle. Figures Ralph is in a twelve-step program, and I get the feeling Nick doesn't drink. Wine. Probably kill him. A little would go a long way, that's for sure.

    But I'm getting ahead of myself.

    Maybe committing the day's events to hard-drive will help. I guess I should start at the beginning:

Stop it, please.

     At seven-ffteen this morning, in Salina, on another planet far far away, I said goodbye to my Galaxie, socking it away in a gargantuan long-term parking lot. I grabbed my backpack out of the trunk, and walked away. The rule is, if you don't come back for the car in a year and a half, it belongs to the government. Simple. Otherwise, the rates

are pretty reasonable.

    Next I wandered over to the U.S. Customs building, which was not hard to fnd; it was a monstrous construct easily as big as the rest of the town.

    I walked up a long marble stairway leading to a single tall door in the center of the building. Pushing the door open, I found myself in a claustrophobic little waiting room, like in a dentist's offce. It seemed a strange thing to fnd inside this huge building, like Dr. Who's phonebooth in reverse.

    A plump little woman with glasses sat behind a little window with a door next to it. "May I help you?" she asked, without looking up from her paperwork.

    "Yes," I said, "My acceptance letter says to show up here—today!" I smiled, but no return smile was forthcoming as she reached for my papers.

    "Have a seat over there," the lady said, indicating a row of uncomfortable-looking chairs against the wall.

    I sighed and sat down, plunking down the knapsack next to me. There were some eight-month-old, dog-eared magazines on a table next to the chairs. I picked one up at random and leafed through it, agitated.

    Finally, ffteen or twenty minutes later, the portly lady called my name. Then she handed me a stack of documents as thick as a phonebook, and for the next hour and a half, I performed my dronely chores.

    There was a form from the IRS, to verify that my taxes were all paid up. By signing another form, an "Offcial Record of Exoneration," I held blameless The United States of America and any or all of its agents in the event of "any unseemly and/or unusual transformation as a result of use of the Salina Gate."

    There were the usual things, like asking for next-of-kin, DNA scan permission in case of death, and three or four things the ACLU will eventually be having a feld day with, such as "allocation of any discoveries and/or scientifc breakthroughs, blah blah blah, to the United States, in order to safeguard national security."

    Right. So if, while in Oz, I stumble upon a magic berry that turns water into gasoline, and by some miracle, it works when I bring it back (something that has never happened), I'm supposed to turn it over to Uncle Sam rather than make a kazillion dollars? I don't think so.

    I signed the damned paper anyway. I signed everything. I wasn't going to throw away the whole trip on a technicality.

    The guard at the front desk gave everything the once-over, then, satisfed, sent me through yet another door, which led into a covered walkway across a parking lot, and into the bowels of the Gate Building itself.

    Once there, I presented my passport to seven different dead-ass functionaries, who each scrutinized it past the point of absurdity, then poked through my backpack, frisked me. Maybe there's some counterpart to them in Oz, the Redunderheads or somebody, endlessly repeating the same meaningless task, banished to their own little happy gulag (for their own good of course) by Glinda. Luckily, I did not qualify for a cavity search. I really got the feeling that the government is not happy about allowing this whole thing to go on. But it's not like they can do a hell of a lot about it.

    I mean, since the shake-up and everything.

    Who knew? Who would have ever guessed what the truth was? People were smelling the vapors since the forties, but everybody was dead wrong about the particulars. The most canny theorist was dead wrong. The most bug-shit lunatic could not come close to the truth. Forget the Philadelphia Experiment, forget Area 54, the Hollow Earth.

    Who the hell could have predicted that Kennedy was offed because he was going to inform the world that Oz was real and we'd been closely involved there since before the end of World War Two?

    Not even Blitzheimer knew that.

    Good old Noel Blitzheimer.

    A CIA operative for thirty years, Blitzheimer, risking life and limb, called a press conference on April Fools Day, 2002, to announced to the world the address of a web site. Here he'd assembled top secret documents, photos, video and sound fles chronicling the U.S. presence in Oz since the forties.

    Blitzheimer said, "The Cold War is over. There is no reason to hide the existence of this magical place any longer. I accept responsibility for this breach of National Security, and am willing to face the consequences."

    Some say that Noel was having a breach of mental security right around the time that he let that particular cat out of the bag, but that's another story. Suffce it to say that he never faced any charges, and is now something of a national hero. But even Blitzheimer didn't know everything, and the snowball effect he created was truly astounding. Once started, there was no stopping it.

    Gore got on himself with a live feed to come clean, and the rest was history, as they say. Although anyone old enough to have been directly involved in the whole conspiracy and the subsequent coverup has done a good job of evading history thus far. Funny how that works.

    I was nearing the end of the gauntlet.

    Finally, the last guy, a skinny bug-eyed creep, stamped my passport and handed it back to me. "Behave yourself," he said as I cleared the last metal detector and hefted my knapsack back up onto my shoulders. "Oh—by the way," he added, sniffing, looking more and more each moment like Barney Fife on speed, "you might have some problems with that laptop." He pointed to the x-ray outline of my little Superbook. I gave him a quizzical look, hoping he might elaborate, but he just fashed a goofy smile, and turned back to the next customer, a long-haired, leather jacketed dude who he waved right through.

    The long-haired guy had what I guess you'd call a swashbuckling manner about him. Sculpted dark blond beard-and-moustache combo. Kind of rakish and buff, with a twinkle in his eye. I was inclined to dislike him on sight, but he smiled at me, too, as he passed. I was still adjusting the straps, trying to get my shit together. It didn't look like he had any luggage at all.

    I made my way down a hallway that rivaled any architectural monstrosity of Soviet excess, a way-too-huge walkway to—what? I still hadn't seen the Gate, didn't actually know what it looked like, or what the actual apparatus of movement from one realm to another was.

    I had some ideas, but no one I'd ever spoken to who had frsthand experience of the process had ever told me anything useful. Evidently, it was different for everyone.

    Aurora told me she'd had "Body and Soul"—jazz saxophone genius Coleman Hawkins' masterpiece version—on a disc in her Walkman, and when she came into the room, she hit play, closed her eyes, and started dancing. And when she opened her eyes again, she was in Oz.

    Now, here I was, about to fnd out for myself. I'm a Hawkins fan, but Aurie's style is not exactly my style. I'm more of a "Hail Mary" kind of guy when undergoing great stress. I haven't gone to church for about ten years, but I still invoke the "St. Anthony" algorithm while looking for lost keys.

    The anxiety I thought I'd shaken in the morning was back with a vengeance. I was terrifed. I started saying what I could remember of the rosary.