Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

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Floating | Feb 14 2002

At the first office, Paul is given a piece of paper and told to deliver this to a person in a second office. At the second office, the process is repeated. At the third office, which is smaller than the others, a bald man at a table takes his paper and asks him to sit across. On the table rests a device with a meter and two metal tubes attached to it by wires. The man explains how the device works. Paul is to hold a metal tube in each hand. When his “reactive mind” is triggered, the meter will register this fact and the man will report it to Paul. Does he understand? He understands.

In truth, Paul has zero interest in Scientology. However, the sex with Eve is great, and in his experience the sex isn’t always so great, or else there’s some other problem or collection of problems that make it unworkable, so in the end he told Eve he would try this one thing, this one time, knowing how important it was to her.

Afterwards, the process with the offices is reversed. The bald man gives him a paper to bring to the second office, and there he’s given a paper to bring to the first office.

Eve is waiting for him in her car when it’s over. He gets in and puts on his seat belt. She asks how it went, so he tells her about the bit with the offices.

“No, I mean the session,” she says.

“Well, it was fine,” he says. “I even enjoyed myself now and then, if that’s allowed.”

She smiles. “It is.”

“The only thing weird part was the part with the needle.”

“Um, which part with the needle?”

“You know, the part where he says that your needle is floating. On the meter.”

“Why did that seem weird?”

“I don’t know, it just seemed to be floating a lot.”

“Well, I’m not surprised because—” She looks at him. “Wait, he explained this to you, right?”

“What, the needle? Yeah, he explained it first thing. But it was weird because every time he said that my needle was floating, I felt fine. We’d be talking about my penis or something, my childhood, I don’t know, and he’d say that my needle was floating, so I’d be thinking, Damn, why it is floating again? Because I thought I was over that, whatever it was.”

Suddenly Eve is livid. “He was telling you that you’re okay! When your needle is floating, that means that you’re okay!” She slams her hand on the dashboard. “Fuck!”

Unable to stop himself, Paul roars with laughter. It’s the end, he can see that, she wants him to be a Scientologist and he’s no Scientologist, nor ever will be, which is crushing, because he really thought it could work with her, but this is too goddamn funny.