Rancho Tarzanadu: "Waking Nightmare"

     As Miss Linda awoke from Dreamland into the waking world at 5:30 AM on a Tuesday morning, she realized that all of these “baby steps” to reopening Los Angeles were just a way to placate the public, the Collective Unconscious,  into believing that this whole Coronavirus thing was not as bad as it actually was. This past weekend Mayor Eric Garcetti had let some retail stores reopen for curbside pick-up only; places like flower shops (it was Mother’s Day weekend), music stores, book stores, etc. Basically reopening entertainment avenues for the masses so they could occupy themselves like rats in cages, but now with new, stimulating toys provided. He had also allowed the reopening of golf courses, beaches (but not parking lots at beaches), parks, and hiking trails so the lab rats could get their exercise, too. All of this “reopening” was contingent on people wearing face masks in public, and staying six feet away from each other. No physical contact outside of households was allowed. And if the virus surged back strong after these measures, things would be shut down again – back to your cages!

     Of course, some people were breaking these rules, but Miss Linda thought that these people were idiots. As she awoke, she realized that these people were “Sheeple”, and living in a herd-mentality opposite to the one the Conspiracy Theorists were touting. These Sheeple wanted to race back outside to what was “Normal”, but “Normal” didn’t exist anymore. For some people, this was too much to bear, so the Mayor had to reel them out on a tight fishing line into the world, to give them some kind of illusion of personal freedom to calm them the fu*k down. One of Miss Linda’s friends, an artist, told her at their weekly online Crafting meeting that there was a term for what the conspiracy theorists were going through emotionally right now; it was called “Trauma-Bonding”. This gave them a false sense of security that they could make sense of what was going on around them, so clinging to conspiracy theories made them feel safer in the world, poor things. Miss Linda’s own sister would say: “Poor little dummies!”

     Meanwhile, in reality, the death toll was rising. Miss Linda glanced at her phone to see the latest statistics, as she took her morning dose of CBD/THC organic avocado-oil tincture (the main thing keeping her sane): as of this morning, there were 80,681 deaths in the United States, and a “second wave” was predicted even as things reopened. The Sheeple needed their Starbucks coffee, after all. The Orange County bros needed to slap each other on the back in person at the country club and get their In-n-Out burgers afterward.

     Even the White House was teeming with the virus; Overlord L’Orange surrounded on all sides with aides and press secretaries and personal assistants and valets all testing positive for it. The Overlord seemed immune, somehow. Why, oh why was he not getting it and dying?! She knew his flock would say it was because he was the “Chosen One” (Miss Linda threw up a little inside her mouth as she contemplated this). Some conspiracy theorists would theorize that he was a “Lizard Person”, therefore immune to a human virus. Although it originated from bats (so “they” said), so if he was indeed a Lizard Person, he might be susceptible to it after all. One of Miss Linda’s house-mate’s (the filmmaker) suggested that maybe, just maybe, the Overlord had already been vaccinated with something to prevent him from catching it. Theories were swirling all over the place like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz.

     Miss Linda had just received an email from her most recent “Boss” at work, letting the staff know that they would not be reopening on May 15^th as they had originally hoped. Miss Linda breathed a huge sigh of relief. She had been teaching Swedish and Deep Tissue massage to a classroom of between forty and fifty people, which had seemed like a really bad idea even before this whole Pandemic thing happened. The thought of going back to that seemed…unlikely. She personally did not see the massage industry opening back up for quite some time, and even when it did, it would be so highly sanitized and full of fear that it would be difficult to give it or receive it. She imagined herself advising her massage clients: “Just relax…you may contract a deadly disease from this massage session, or you may not…enjoy your massage!” She had grown tired of rubbing other people’s feet, anyway, in more ways than one.

     As Miss Linda looked up the current death tolls on her iPhone, she saw that Dr. Anthony Fauci was going to testify to the Senate today, regarding the mishandling of the Coronavirus and suppression of information to the people by Overlord L’Orange. She hoped something came of it, but she was doubtful. The Overlord got away with bloody murder every f*cking day. The virus made this more generally obvious, but it didn’t seem to change anything. Money was still the very most important thing in the world, even though it seemed that was just an illusion itself, from what she gleaned in her Witches’ online group; money, and the world as a whole, was just an illusion. On a subconscious level, all human beings understand this, beneath the societal layers of casual attire, designer coffee, and all the other myriad of things people consume to forget.

     Miss Linda reminisced as she awoke: She had been to Notre Dame once or twice, a long time ago when it was safe to be in the world. She went to Europe several times, on three-week paid vacations. That was when she worked for an Advertising agency in West Hollywood, in the Creative Development department, and got paid sick leave, full medical benefits, and a 401K plan. That was before the recession, before the financial crisis (the original one), before Overlord L’Orange, before the Pandemic.

     She was free to roam the world, go where she wanted, drink mulled wine for breakfast in the Czech Republic, wander about strange cities late at night exchanging early-morning greetings with the transsexual prostitutes, go to Italian dance clubs, have affairs with strangers in Venice, stay up all night, sleep in all morning, ger her passport stamped, spend money frivolously on Italian high-heeled leather boots, drink champagne at 4:00 in the afternoon in Paris.

     She found herself once or twice at the back of Notre Dame.

     Miss Linda decided to get up, at 5:30 AM (her sleep cycle was all over the place). She had a loss of these freedoms, it’s true, but she felt a deeper sense of freedom brewing inside her and all around her. Things were definitely changing. And no sense of Trauma-Bonding or denying-what-was-happening was going to change that.

     So Miss Linda put on a floral-print kimono, made a pot of organic coffee, and picked some fresh oranges off her tree for breakfast, lingering to hear the birds cheerily chirping away amidst the latest cooling trend in temperature. She had time to think. She had time to dream. She had time. Some might call that Paradise. It all depended on how you looked at it.

     As she walked back inside, she could hear a group of men, loudly arguing about something on the nearby golf course.