"Let's Pretend This Never Happened"

"Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir)"という本を読んだ。Jenny Lawsonという女性ブロガーが２０１２年４月に出した本です。

J.A. Konrathの小説のユーモアが好きでもっと読んでみたいと思うのですが、この人の小説はユーモアかつグロなところがあるので、あんまり沢山読むものでもありません。そこで何かユーモアだけの本はないものかと思って、ファミリーガイで有名なSeth MacFarlanの小説を読んでみたりもしたのですが、なんかイマイチな感じでありました。そんなことを考えているころ、出張で出かけたとある地方空港の本屋さんで「読んだことがある本が置いてあるかなぁ」なんてぶらぶらしていたら、"Humor"をいうコーナーがあるのを見つけました。なるほど、"Humor"でひとつのジャンルになっているのか。

そんなわけでアマゾンで"Humor"と検索してみたら、一番上に出てきたのがこの本でした。４０００件近くもレビューがついているので、よく売れた本なのでしょう。で、読んでみました。かなり面白かったです。

内容を説明するのは難しいので、第１章の冒頭部分をそのまま引用します。

Call me Ishmael. I won't answer to it, because it's not my name, but it's much more agreeable than most of the things I've been called. "Call me 'that-weird-chick-who-says-"fuck"-a-lot'" is probably more accurate, but "Ismael" seems classier, and it makes a way more respectable beginning than the sentence I'd originally written, which was about how I'd just run into my gynecologist at Starbucks and she totally looked right past me like she didn't even know me. And so I stood there wondering whether that's something she does on purpose to make her clients feel less uncomfortable, or whether she just genuinely didn't recognize me without my vagina. Either way, it's very disconcerting when people who've been inside your vagina don't acknowledge your existence. Also, I just want to clarify that I don't mean "without my vagina" like I didn't have it with me at the time. I just meant that I wasn't, you know... displaying it while I was at Starbucks. That's probably understood, but I thought I should clarify, since it's the first chapter and you don't know that much about me. it's like my American Express card. (In that I don't leave home without it. Not that I use it to buy stuff with.)

何を言っているんでしょうかね、この人は。

とまぁ、こんな風に、ついついおかしなことばかり考えてしまうローソンさんの妄想日記みたいな趣の本です。
なので、学ぶべきこととか、そういうものはありません。ただ、若い頃にＬＳＤを使ったときのエピソードとかは面白かったです。

A guy I knew had a house on the outskirts of town and offered to host a small LSD party for me and several other people in our group who'd never done acid before either. So we called Travis and asked him to bring over enough acid for six of us that night. Travis arrived and told us the drugs were on their way, and about fifteen minutes later a pizza delivery car pulled up. The delivery guy came to the door with a mushroom pizza and an uncut sheet of acid. The delivery guy was in his late teens, about two feet shorter than me, and very, very white, but he did have a piercing and a pager (which was very impressive, because this was still back in the early nineties, although probably the pager was just used for pizza orders). His name was Jacob. Travis told me later that anyone could by acid from Jacob if they knew the "secret code" to use when you called the pizza place. At the time I thought it was probably something all cloak-and dagger, like "One pepperoni pizza, hold the crust," or "A large cheesy bread and the bird flies at midnight," but in reality it was probably just "And tell Jacob to bring some acid," because honestly neither of them was very imaginative.

Jacob sold Travis the acid for four dollars a hit, and then Travis turned around and sold it to us for five dollars a hit, which was awkward and also a poor profit margin. We each took a hit and Travis said that for another ten bucks he'd stay and babysit us to make sure we didn't cut our hand off. This wasn't something I was actually worried about at all until he mentioned it, but now that the thought was implanted in our heads I became convinced that we would all cut our hands off as soon as he left, so I handed him a ten. Travis cautioned us that if we thought the house cats next door were sending us threatening messages, they probably weren't. And he warned us not to stare at the sun because we'd go blind (which might have been great advice if it hadn't been ten o'clock at night). "Ride the beast... don't let the beast ride you," our wise sage advised us.

このあと、実際にＬＳＤを使ってみて、なんだかんだとバタバタとした展開があります。

ローソンさんのことですから、全部が全部本当というわけじゃないと思いますけど、こんな感じの軽いトーンでドラッグパーティーが開かれるもんなんだなという点が興味深い。知り合いの知り合いみたいな距離感の交友関係から、ドラッグを使うことを目的としたパーティーを開くというお誘いがあって、ちょっと不安だななんて思いながらも、値段もそんなに高くないし、友達もやるっていうし、ちゃんとした「保護者役」もいてくれるというから、ちょっと使ってみようかっていうノリですね。

米国では薬物依存が大きな問題になっているわけですが、今の若者の間でもこんな雰囲気のパーティーが開かれているのだとすれば、好奇心の方が勝ってしまうというのも分からんでもないです。ローソンさんはことのきのＬＳＤでみた幻覚から醒めた後で、幻覚中に自分がとった行動を知って、もうＬＳＤはやらないと思ったそうです。だからまぁ実際の話、一度使えば絶対に後戻りできないというものでもないんじゃないかとも思います。もちろん「ダメ、絶対」ですけどね。最初のＬＳＤの経験が良い記憶として残ってしまえば、常習化していくでしょうし、常習化すれば依存にもつながるのでしょう。でも、「ダメ、絶対」にも関わらず、「ダメ、絶対」になっていない事情の裏には、こんな雰囲気があるんだなということです。

いや「ダメ、絶対」ですからね。ダメですよ、本当に。