ON MEETING YOURSELF IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE

The best way to do this is to get mixed up in a deity’s laundry. Get pegged to their colossal washing-line. Then simply wait. At around 4 o'clock they swing their socks into the sunshine of a distant galaxy (they do this by hand, sans miracle).  

Dupe a deity, that’s one way. Perhaps you’re better acquainted with a scientific method. You and science are friends.  Or maybe you’ve left your body in Tibet for a few days. But you’re doing it- you’re doing it right now. That’s the main thing. On your stomach, you move through time and space (black and sticky).  Actually, it's hard to say whether you're moving.  Hey, you've got a cape. It's either that you're moving at the speed of light, or you're catatonically still and the eons are helter-skeltering past you. Tomato/ tomato.  Ok, but it’s quite a bit faster than a Beatles record.

You land on planet earth look-alike but of course it's called something else. Back home there are no signposts marked "Earth" for other-worldly travellers and there aren’t any here, either.  Huge, embarrassing, intergalactic oversight.  A giant thumb and forefinger let you down to the ground next to a beige Sedan. Normal pavement smell. A woman promenades towards you, an ex-ex-blonde.  You don’t recognise her. And so what? You don’t know everyone.

She's wearing green suede pumps... peep-toes with white floral detail...from Zoom? No way! I have those, you realise. I share the same taste in shoes with this alien.  You thought it was all so vast and complicated and yet the universe is tied up with a single intergalactical stitch: your trite pair of shoes. Zoom zoom, they race towards you.

Help, they are so incredibly trite! you whine.  How could they possibly sustain the weight of the universe? You cannot look at these shoes any longer.  You feel the intergalactical stitch weaken in your brain. You need them to go away.  Instead, you go away; you flee.  You whoosh into the sedan and tell the lady at the wheel eating the twin of a magnum ice-cream, an almost magnum but you know the difference, to please take you to hospital; you're having a sort of panic attack. She obeys. At the hospital you make it to the reception desk.  A blonde ponytailed head turns around to face you and it's you.

You turn around to face her and it's you. She turns around to face you and it's her. Well, whatever it is, it's hard to tell which of you is more knocked out by this. At that point, you forget about your panic attack; it goes away. You realise

I am a receptionist on this goddamn planet. 

Of all the cool things you imagined yourself doing while flying through the eons, this is it.  And there was time to come up with some great occupations (#77 drug dealer to the stars, literally the stars, not celebrities but bright burning balls of gas with their own personalities and addictions). Even though you were a jazz musician back home, and in reality never made any money, at least a few people wanted to sleep with you because of it. Never mind, you decide anyway that you’re going to reach out and touch the loose lock of hair that runs by her ear.  She faints.  You get out of there.

Three days later you're back to see if she's okay (you're feeling kind of queasy yourself and you wonder if your blood pressure levels operate in synthesis, and, have they always?). She is saying reprimanding things to you in your own voice.

I'm not giving you any money if you're my twin sister, forget it.
I'm not your sister! I'm quite something else. I'm you and you're me and I'm from a parallel universe, and I know it's crazy but I really just wanted to meet me. You. Me.
You have to do better than that to convince me I'm not insane right now. I'm going to book myself in.
Look please, these things happen; no need to book yourself in. But really, aren't you glad I'm here?
(Silence)
Not glad. Oh. I see.
I am glad! Of course I'm glad you're here. Wait, what am I saying, I don't have to be nice.
I understand, we feel like we have to be nice to everybody, don't we? Especially strangers.
How do you know that!
I know plenty! Look, this is our chance. Everybody wants it.
You're right I guess. What should we do?
Everything.

You watch each other eat, sleep, drink, and talk on the telephone. You see whether you really stick to tucking in your stomach when you're around people (which you don't, except every now and then when you realise you ought to be tucking it in, and then there's an obvious switch between fatty-before and skinny-after looks which anybody could perceive). You check out your clothing style from a distance, and then way up close. You tell yourself not to slouch; you're representing both of you here.

On the last night you decide to make out with yourself.  Just a little bit. And that just can't be described in words, sorry to disappoint the audience.  At least it's all over now; your frantic screaming expectations may die here, in the graveyard paragraph. 

What can be said is that you find that you find yourselves getting the same ideas at the same time.  Lifting a right arm, squeezing an ass, that sort of thing.  It's a game of Simon Says played from beginning to end.  It’s a synchronised swimming dream, admittedly.  To you it’s just plain coitus interruptus.

You get angry. It feels like you're mocking yourself, so you get up off the couch and go make a sandwich in the all-too-identical-to-yours-minus-the-tacky-red-appliances-kitchen. At least you have style. The bad moves in bed are all your other self's problem and are probably rolled up in other problems which have in turn caused you to become a receptionist with an ugly red toaster, but not you on earth, see.

The next morning, God calls you on the telephone and demands you to get in the next wash-load homeward bound.

You leave yourself a note saying that you forgive yourself for the bad bed moves, the kitchen appliances, and the job. And a multitude of other stuff. Suddenly this makes you feel great because you're so much better than yourself.  And you go home with this secret.