We Have Discovered Life on Mars and It is Us

So where do I begin? Or do I begin? Wasn't it a scene best left to fade beyond memory? This is what it felt like: bits of Drugstore Cowboy, Midnight Cowboy, Lost Highway, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Requiem for a Dream and High Fidelity. Perhaps Chuck McCann yelling, loud and lazily, "Sal!" in, what they call out here, an east coast accent (it was New York). And why not Hubert Selby as "Sal", but with his head bandaged, only a sallow eye and chattering mouth showing.

Sal at the counter, the thin pale record store clerks, caught in a vacuum of full blast psycho-surrealism, verbalized.

"Who invented the radio?" he asks (what's a 'questioning yell' called?). No answer, so he asks again, not because he hadn't received an answer, but because it was his time to ask the question again.

A few murmurs and uncomfortable chuckles emitted from the counter, but no guesss; it was almost as if avoiding the answer would equal avoiding the whole situation. Like real gone gossamer, it would hush into the autumn night.

"Marconi! I read it in a book at the library!" he told us.

Then another deceptively simple question, which because of it's obviousness, didn't receive an answer.

The third question (and final one before he took his crazy to the other end of the store) was:

"Who invented electricity?"

I sensed everyone in the store knew Sal was looking for the answer "Thomas Edison" (although "God" was probably on everyone's lips). So the clerks offered neither.

"Come on! Everybody knows who invented electricity!" His tone expressed incredulity.

He was finished and met up with Chuck by Rock/Pop.

I huddled against the As-Is vinyl lps, feeling the momentary silence was just the eye of the awkward storm above us. I couldn't raise my head beyond the musty frayed record sleeves, but I was concerned the duo were drifting toward Jim, an outsider magnet. Luckily, no encounter occurred.

When I met up Jim , he looked a bit glazed in the eyes, like his blood-sugar had plunged. So we paid for our albums (I found Nikki Sudden's "Red Brocade," and a 50 cent copy of "Poems, Prayers & Promises" by John Denver).

Returning to our car, which included a brief glance of a surreal diorama of our lead actors staring out the windshield of their pick-up, engine off, the night holding its breath), Jimmy confessed to a possible panic attack over the incident, and not a plunge in sugar levels.

"I'm so glad you witnessed that whole thing with me. I thought I might have been losing my mind. That was very strange, right? Or is it us?"

I pondered a moment: It could have been us, a shared psychotic incident; a symbiotic break with real time. But no, I recorded the reactions of the other customers, and I think we all saw the same thing.

While it sure crapped out our anticipated peaceful evening of record browsing (a formidable therapy; a socially anti-social balm), I feel slightly enriched by the experience.

If it even happened...