> SOUTHERN INDIANA — I’m better now, but last month I was in rough shape. The strange, misshapen dreams first started at some point after I “came out” as a tragically misplaced European, but before Miller Lite began bragging aloud about the three whole hop cones used to flavor every 10,000 barrels of carbonated dish water.

Accordingly, it seemed that my altered nocturnal condition owed neither to the personal milestone of continental insight, nor the watery millstone of under-hopped Lite.

So, what was the subconscious source of my disturbing nightmares? What induced the hazy allegories invoking the myth of Sisyphus, metaphorical depictions of needles buried in urban haystacks, incoherent pontifications of pretend-professorial hacks, and always — always! — that oversized crow with the guitar wandering the slopes of Sugar Mountain, half-Hitchcock, half-Poe, carrying a Mayberry RFD novelty lighter to brighten his futile search for nickels and dimes the size of manhole covers, and all the while invariably, horribly, endlessly cawing the same word: “No!”

It finally got so bad that I decided to see my sawbones, Dr. Oakengruber.

“Hi, I’d like to make an appointment to see Dr. Oakengruber, please.”

“I’m sorry. Dr. Oakengruber isn’t in the office today.”

“That figures. What is it this time?”

“He’s on vacation with his friend Michael.”

“Michael Steele?”

“How’d you know?”

“Déjà vu, maybe. Is this another house call to Baron Hill’s place?”

“No, they went camping in the chairman's Hummer. It’s autographed by Glenn Beck, you know.”

“Well, I suppose you can’t put a price tag on class.”

“Actually, they’re driving it all around this great land, from tea to shining tea party, and taking our country back.”

“That’s ambitious. Back to where?”

“I’m not sure. Some town called Antebellum.”

“Hmm. Do you know when the traveling show gets back to town?”

“I suppose when they run out of sugar.”

“Huh? I didn’t know Hummers run on sugar.”    

“They don’t — it's an old joke. What’s a tea partier say when he runs out of sugar?”

“I give up.”

“Man, this tea party really sucks.”

•••

So much for Dr. Oakengruber. It wasn't his tea fetish; I support psychotropic delusion every bit as much as the next misguided patriot. Rather, it was his newfound tendency to mumble aloud about socialists, liberals, commies and Obamiacs, to the exclusion of Hippocrates. What do any of them have to do with the practice of medicine?

My search for a replacement medic began, preferably a fellow neo-foreigner with no premeditated notions about America (and a taste for coffee, not tea), but suddenly, before I was able to find someone sane, the dreams abruptly stopped. Straight to the bathroom mirror I went, in search of self-knowledge.

“Tell me, Publican, what are you doing different? Has a variable changed that might account for newfound serenity in your subconscious?”

Perhaps there had been unnoticed changes in personal regimen, the sort that might reduce stress.

Let's see … even heavier drinking of heavy ale, lamentably battered ‘n’ fried nutrition, endless work-related turmoil, the vicissitudes of being an Oakland A's fan, and all those crack-addled, tattooed, DUI dullards riding their bicycles the wrong way toward my Cadillac of beercycles on New Albany’s one-way streets?

Nope, all still were there, and in spades.

What about the anonymous spitwad arsonists on the trog blogs, the wannabeen political retirees out in their yards weed-eating shirtless, the illiterates and the bumpkins and the refugees from Appalachia taking advantage of New Albany’s Slumlord Enablement statutes?

Regrettably, all remained extant, thank you very much (for nothing), and when I had just about given up trying to determine why the pain had evacuated my dreams, the answer came in a blinding flash of phosphorescent luminosity — actually, in the form of a Twitter tweet gone aflutter: A dear friend of mine accused me of foregoing my membership in the Gang of Pour, i.e., those progressives who come together twice monthly to watch the same old political song and dance in the New Albany city council chamber of horrors, before retiring afterwards for a drink, or eight.  

•••

Eureka!

It dawned on me: For the first time in five years, I’d been refraining from those twice monthly council performances, and obviously my absences were why the abscesses healed, the gnarly dreams dissipated, my knee abruptly stopped aching, the acne cleared up, and I experienced a boost in intellectual potency approaching that achieved at the “express” chain hotel down the street, because as a lawyer friend once observed, “When the council is in session and I step into that room, my IQ goes down 20 points.”

In truth, we need neither Oakengruber nor Steele to tell us that stepping out of the room would have the opposite effect. Who could have guessed that my own prurient rubbernecking, and their massed congenital dysfunction, might combine to create such a toxic morass of cognitive dissonance in my soul?

I’m not looking back in anger. Right now, I’m merely trying to get on with my life. I don't know when, or even if, I'll ever attend again. The free shows have ended for me; they cost too much, psychologically. There’ll be no more of Cappuccino's self-serving, nonsensical claims to advanced professional certification. Nor will it be quite the same without Li’l Stevie’s loving descriptions of grandmaw's cookie jar.   

Lacking entertainment, I might have to begin attending tea parties. Is there a doctor in the house?

Anywhere?