SF

Megan was into the SF scene now. She got up in the morning, smoked her dope, and read for hours. Clifford Simak and Marion Zimmer Bradley. She had never read these writers in her youth. She had been too snobbish. She had read the classics; the only SF writer she had read was Ursula K. Le Guin, because feminists recommended her work. She was never too impressed with Le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness: people going into kemmer, changing into male or female depending on the sex of the person they were with. Very cute, she supposed.

Just a way to promote homosexuality, she used to sigh.

Megan hated issue novels. She had no patience with them. If she wanted to read about issues, she would read the newspaper.

Now something had happened. Had her brain changed? Too many years of smoking dope? That was how she looked at it. She would not have been caught dead reading SF in the ‘60s. Her favorite SF classic was Anna Kavan’s Ice, an apocalyptic novel about a man who chases an ice queen of a woman all over the planet. Kavan had been a heroin addict: God knows what the novel was supposed to mean. But as SF, it was very good. She was even more blown away by Bradley, a much simpler writer, though a better storyteller. Megan read a very sweet early Darkover novella by Bradley, copyright 1960. The ethical characters met with humanoids who lived in a forest society. They needed t to battle a plague that periodically arose among human beings. The protagonist/narrator was a severe and ascetic doctor with multiple personalities, one of which was called forth by a psychologist so the doctor would venture into danger to save the human race on Darkover.

Megan was alone for days, reading. She didn’t mind it. She turned on music when she got lonely. She sang along to old Grateful Dead albums when she did housework: something she rarely did. She washed her dishes every few days, cleaned the floors once a week, and did laundry every two weeks. She had been wearing a bathrobe over her jeans for days because she hadn’t gotten around to cleaning her sweaters. It was sweater weather, or barring that, warm bathrobe weather. The forties and fifites in early January. Global warming: the single biggest problem. Nobody talked about it. Not even on CNN.

One day her friend Bird, a psychiatric nurse, came over. She liked to smoke marijuana with him. Sometimes she provided it, other times he did. They were sitting at a picnic table in the back yard. Nobody was home in the neighborhood. That’s why they dared to smoke outside.

You’re not dressed, Bird said. He was called Bird because he kept parakeets and had a hummingbird garden in the summer.

Yeah, well, she said absently. My pajamas help me think. I garden in this in the spring.

It’s weird to see you loose like this. You were the most buttoned-up person at the hospital.

Buttoned-up? Me?

You were frosty to my patients. They told me.

Oh, your patients. They needed some of this. She inhaled. The drugs you give them are no damned good. They were gaining weight as a side effect of psychotropic drugs. What could I do?

The drugs are better than nothing. You should take your Prozac.

Legalize marijuana.

Bird laughed.

They finished their joint. They gossiped about people at the hospital. Things were hopping in the psych ward. A new head honcho had banned sugar as well as caffeine from the patients’ diets.

Not popular, as you can imagine.

God, no sugar. Speaking of which. She went inside and came back with some cookies.

Bird told her his favorite SF writer was Brian Aldiss.

How do you spell Aldiss? I’ll look for him.

Actually she wouldn’t look for him. She would call her son. He would check out books from the library for her.

That night Rose called. Megan was delighted. She loved talking to her sister so long as she didn’t have to see her.

I’m reading lots of science fiction.

Ursula K. Le Guin?

Everybody except her.

By the way, Rose said. My therapist wants me to sue Ms. Bottle. She claims I could sue and win.

Sue her. Sue the bitch.

Do you really think I should? I’m tempted because it makes me very angry when I think of her all these years later. What she put me through should never have been done to a girl my age.

I agree. The bitch should pay. You’d never have to work again.

That’s hardly the point. The point is to stand up and say she was wrong. She was a teacher who committed crimes.

Stand up for your rights! I couldn’t agree more. But God knows what hits she would put on you.

You mean...hits?

Yes, dummy. Rich people pay people to hit people like you and me.

So win a lawsuit and I’m dead within a year?

Or something. But you should still do it.