Iceman

    When I was a young kid and I still took baths all of the time because the idea of a shower just seemed far too grown up to me, I would always pretend before I drained the water from the tub that I was some frozen and long-preserved caveman waking up at the end of his thawing process.  I would put my head under the water and hold my breath before I started the water-draining process, and then I would imagine waking up immersed in water and opening my eyes to see a strange new world unveil itself from behind a screen of liquid.  I would lie there still and imagine that I did not yet have full function of my body and that I would slowly be able to move...first with my fingers and toes and eventually my arms and legs would begin to move sluggishly. 

    I would lie there staring up at the ceiling, afraid to stand up past the walls of this strange container for fear of what might await me.  When I finally arose from the tub, I would look around bewildered at all the strange things before me and fumble around with various objects in the bathroom.  The frozen caveman is not ashamed of his nakedness.  He has no concept of nakedness much less any idea what the hell any of these things in the room are.  He doesnt even know what a room is anyway.  What's a rug?  What the holy fuck is linoleum?  That paper shit was ok...very filling but now my mouth is dry...I think I'll drink from this small puddle.  A toilet, you say?  No fool, this is a puddle and I will now QUENCH MY CAVEMAN THIRST.  I would scare the shit out of myself when I turned on the blow dryer -- dropping it to the floor.  I would go cross-eyed looking at a purple, plastic toothbrush.  Eventually I came to the conclusion that I was not imitating a freshly awoken caveman accurately enough as this guy would most likely be thrashing about and pissed off and traumatized.  Also it occurred to me that this fucker would be long dead and the whole thing is a stupid fucking dream so then I just put some clothes on and played some more videogames and got a little fatter.

    Now I have become the ice man.  I am constantly waking from a frozen state and everything I see causes bewilderment.  I look at all the things man has made and i just think.  "Wow, how strange this all is."  All of these foreign things have become our very nature.  Of course you know what a room is...You've spent most of your life in one.

  The caveman took one look at the room and went mad.  He destroyed it.  People tried to calm him down and prescribe to him a set of names and rules with which to cope.  He rejected them, so they placed him in a different type of room.  This type was similar to others in that it was composed of four walls, a floor and a ceiling.  It even had a tiny window which with much effort he could pull himself up to look outside at the sky...the only thing that seemed to stay consistent between his world and the new one.  The main thing that was different with this room was that one of its walls was composed of strong metal bars.  The puddle was still there; this time metal as well.