Visit to the Circus of Fools

Stumbling and disoriented, Newt and I left Scientific Land and entered Psychiatry Land. The Psychiatry building consisted of dark-tinted glass grafted together by straight stainless steel lines. Innocent of any hidden mental significance, I told Newt that with its geometric lines and darkened windows, the building resembled a nightmare on graph paper.
“Careful,” Newt said. “Don’t use metaphors, analogies, similies, or any other comparative descriptive speech. In that building all such figures of speech are taken seriously. Words you use do not mean what you think they mean; they never do. They mean what you don’t want them to mean. They mean what you’re trying to hide, not from others but from yourself. A slip of the tongue will supply these people with sufficient material to construct numerous different contradictory books all revealing your real self, whom you didn’t even know. In these books you’ll find yourself as a bizarre self, a sexual-deviant self, a person you don’t recognize but in reality is more you than you are. But not only that, the words you don’t speak are more revealing about your hidden self than words you speak. Unspoken words you can’t hear are words that will frighten and scare you. Always remember, spoken words don’t mean what you think they mean and words you do not say tell everything about you.”
“Ah yes, very complicated,” I said.
Newt’s last words were, “Be forewarned,” as he introduced me to my new guide, Dr. Fruit. Newt left us to return to Scientific Land, giggling to himself as he waved goodbye.
Dr. Fruit was a small, bearded gentleman with a cigar planted in his mouth and ashes falling on his vest. I asked him who we were to visit first. He didn’t answer and appeared not to have heard me, but I know he did. I believed he was wordlessly telling me he was immersed in his great mind’s thoughts, which were too deep and opaque for my words to penetrate.
Passing a large secretarial area where numerous women were typing, sorting, and folding, but mostly gossiping amid stacks of paper, journals, and books all carelessly tossed atop every horizontal plane, we entered a large room cut into cubes. Some cubes housed male college students watching pornographic films, pressing a buzzer whenever they felt aroused. It sounded like a stockbroker’s office on a very high-volume buy day. With pride, Fruit mentioned they were all selfless, payless, eager volunteers advancing the frontiers of psychology.
In other cubes, females were trying to guess the shape on hidden cards, crying in despair at their lack of ESP. In some cubes, strange, unintelligible inkblots were being analyzed in depth for hidden meanings, usually very ugly sexual meanings. In one large cube several individuals were trying to bend various cutleries using mind power. Every spoon, knife and fork appeared straight, so either there had been no success or they had been successful in restoring the pieces to their original shape.
In the next laboratory, a dark candle-lit room, in a circle, several women were holding hands and looking to the ceiling, to the floor, and to the corners, all asking in guarded, hopeful whispers, “Is that you, Daddy? Have you come back? Where is the jewelry? Are you happy? I can’t find the will.”
Suddenly someone yelling, “I see Elvis, a young Elvis,” brought numerous questions: “Is he singing?” “How is he dressed?” “What’s he saying?” It all ended with some middle-aged woman shouting, “He just kissed me! I felt his lips, his hot breath on me! Someone hold me; I’m going to faint.”