a series of good things, by Jordan Matelsky

Somehow, “free-thinkers” always get it in the end.

I’m not talking about the Objectivists, whose over-analysis of novella in the past always seems to return with a vengeance, destroying any remnants of respect society has for them centuries after their philosophy is borne from the quiet womb of some revolutionary’s brain.

Nor am I talking about the democracy-seeking rioters whose actions in the Middle-East always seem to get things blown up.

No — I speak on a far more profound level: the level of high school biology class.

As is common knowledge, high-school science class (or college, as the case may be) often includes what professors and teachers have lovingly termed ‘sexing’ fruit-flies.  To those of you who never took such a class; sexing a fly is when you look at a fly under a high-power magnification, and see whether its hindquarters are boy-shaped or girl-shaped.  Additionally, you check to see if its front legs have hairs — hairs used to latch on to an unsuspecting female during the  mating process.

For those who have yet to take this course; do not (and I repeat: DO NOT) develop a crush on someone in your biology class during the fly-sex year.  Because somehow, Kafka-style, you’ll always wind up dreaming about being sedated, and then having passionate sex with them — as a fly.  It’s both revolting and revolting (yes yes: Revolting squared!).  Additionally; both my mother and I had dreams following this laboratory in which giant-ass flies take over the earth (or at least, eat stuff, smash stuff, and, overall, make bad things happen).  Few things are as disturbing as a giant fly.  Trust me.

I admit, I’ve not had that exact sensual dreaming experience; though I do have numerous (that is, more than three) friends that have reported such an occurrence in their dreaming experience.  Nothing like compound-eyes over a watering proboscis to get you in the mood.

Anyhow, in order to get these flies to lay still as you examine their naughty bits, a chemical similar to chloroform is used (bonus pickup line: “Does this smell like chloroform to you?”).  In my class, we use a proprietary “Fly-Nap”, although any sedative can be used.  And it always bothered me how these flies thought they were just having a great time when, in reality, we were about to prod them and slide them across what seems to them to be miles of notecards, under a tremendous microscope.  (From which they’ve got a great view of our eye.)

I always wondered if there was one fly, all the way on the opposite side of the test-tube from the sedative, that realized that all of his peers were getting high (and subsequently passing out) as the Fly-Nap wand grew closer to them.

They’d all be shouting, “hey, Harvey!  You gotta try this stuff, it’s fuckin’ trippy as hell, bro!”, as Harvey, always the observational intellectual, stood, shaking his oblong head, holding his miniature breath.  As they, one by one, fell, sighing in happiness, to the effects of the powerful chemical toxin that raped their nostril-counterparts and soon decimated all brain-function, they’d be under the complete impression that their subservience to the human experimenters would be well-rewarded with another Fly-Nap trip, which they’ve lovingly come to call “fnapps” (it’s slightly more pronounceable when you’ve got a segmented mouth).  And Harvey, gripped by fear, shrinking to the back of the bottle, feigning unconsciousness, breathing through the next of his t-shirt stretched over his face, would watch in horror as his mates were flung onto a slide — grip as hard as he could as the bottle was shaken — and finally lose his grasp as the fnapps riddled his neurons, falling into his own subconsciousness — and onto the lab desk.

The fresh air likely soon would revitalize him… But as he awoke from his fnapps-induced coma, his friends were still mercifully passed out.  And, as Harvey would turn to crawl away — an ill-placed notebook would prematurely end his life.

And his subservient, conformist contemporaries would go on to the next stage of the experiment.  After their drug trip, they’d be put in a coed orgy-bottle.

That, unknowingly, was the choice Harvey The Fly made when he chose freedom over conformity.  He chose death over massive orgy.

Explain the justice in that one.

Incidentally, that entire train of thought was comprised entirely during a fly-lab procedure during school and during an hour-long conversation with my mom.  Both instances ended with me saying, “Geez, I should blog about this.” (Shortly afterward, I realized how pitiful that sounded — but I didn’t care.  So there you go — The unabridged Fly-Nap stream-of-consciousness blog post.  Sorry if it sucked — it’s late at night and I didn’t remember all of my cleverer bits).