The Shōji Experiment

My father was an experimenter.

No one knows that better than I.

Because he experimented on me.

He worked in laboratories.

At USC. At UCLA.

The certificates hung on the wall.

But the experiments I remember were not written up.

Needles red-hot, pressed into his arm to show he could endure it.

Black stitches cut open in his wound.

He sat with me and his penis in the bathtub. Wore a Buddha face.

Bought me ice cream. After one bite pushed it into the sand.

I watched.

Played along.

Mute.

Close to him.

Was that love?

He thought he was a coward for as long as I knew.

In the Big War he did not volunteer.

Uncle did.

He evaded the war with orphans —

By imagining amputation. By imagining Canada.

Days before he died, his heart failed.

Was found in the bathroom.

He thought he was dying.

Told me about it.

His voice was calm. A doctor’s voice.

He said it wasn’t bad.

Nothing to fear.

Then he took the pills and went up the trail in Altadena.

He passed through again.

I did not understand.

I could not.

I knelt for decades.

And I sat.

Until I saw:

He was repeating the experiment.

What happens when you go through Shōji twice?

What happens if you do not turn back?

I am telling you now because I was there.

And I lived the long tail of the experiments.

I’m telling you because we’re still asking questions:

What happens when you split the atom?

What happens when you give a machine everything ever written?

What happens to curiosity severed from love?

I am telling you now —

Watch out.