"Kainotophobia"

            I need help.  This occurs to me on one of my late-night excursions to the kitchen faucet.  Spring may be on its way and all, but the apartment needs a major airing out.  Too dry, and I wake up nights with a burning, scratchy, phlegmy throat.  But that’s not what I need help with.  No, the realization that comes midway through a sumptuous swallowing of cold tap water is far more existential than a case of pharyngitis. 

I collect Transformers.  And I frankly have too many.  Like all habits and eccentricities and perversions one develops, my passion for these little rubixesque vehicles of death started in grade school.  Maybe our family’s Nissan Sentra wasn’t cool enough, or maybe the nigh-religious repetition of Saturday morning cartoons predisposed me towards it.  To me there was simply nothing cooler than a car that could unfold into a giant metal warrior, ready to do battle for the sake of the universe et cetera.

            Not that there’s anything wrong with that!  Likewise, it’s not so much a bother that a thirty-something year old bachelor might still have his boyhood collection stashed somewhere, to maybe bust out once in a while for nostalgia’s sake.  No, the problem lies more in the continued growth of this collection, which has gone exponential since I started my programming job five years ago.  Not only the quantity, but its extensive and quite public display in my living room warrants some concern, I now realize.  Paying around $800 online for a vintage Optimus Prime… blasphemous to say, but perhaps the phrase ‘disposable income’ has finally found its most sincere epitomization.  Food for thought in any case, as I lumber back to bed.

            I’m still thinking about it in the morning, long after my eggs and toast are nothing more than scattered crumbs and a film of slime on my plate.  I’ve been working on the daily crossword for an hour, to no real effect; mostly I sit and stare at the black bars and empty, occasionally numbered white boxes as I slurp up my fourth, fifth, sixth cup of coffee.  I need help.  {I need help?}  I need help.  Five thousand dollars in the past month.  {Help help help}

            I decide to take a short break and begin flipping back through the paper; same old stories, both of the imported and domestic varieties.  And as I’m glancing over the classifieds my eye catches the word ‘Transformers’ like a junkie spots a dealer, a glutton a cake, or a lech the slightest trace of nipple.  It’s a simple advert, not very descriptive.  But the name has me hooked, like a sign from above:  Transformers Anonymous.  “First meeting, Friday at the Civic Center, 7pm.”  Like a sign from above, it all fits in so perfectly.

            I’m in the Civic Center parking lot at a quarter-to, the day-of.  I’ve got sort of a queasy stomach, to tell the truth; the drab mid-seventies brown pebbled façade of the place makes me feel uncomfortably young again.  As though I’m on my way to a PTA meeting to discuss failing grades or a 'poor attitude,' like the time I got into a fight with Lars Ferman after he broke my Ransack figure.  The building only has three meeting rooms, and the one closest to the lobby has a conspicuous piece of yellow paper taped to its door, “Transformers Anonymous” block-printed across it with a black magic marker. 

There’s nobody milling about in the hall, and with a strong sense of foreboding I enter to find but two people inside.  A pot of coffee and cookies on the table sit beside a sheet of round stickers and a sharpie I take to be name tags.  They’re the soft-adhesive kind, like you’d find keeping measurements on garments at a clothing store.  I nod to the balding mellow yellow-sweatered fellow with the clipboard I can only assume is the moderator.  Person Two is a plumpish woman in her forties who looks back in a friendly but short manner that makes me feel self-conscious.  There is a circle of a dozen chairs set up in the middle of the room, the hard-backed plastic molded things that again remind me of grade school.  I take a seat somewhat equidistant from the others, making us into a sort of Mexican self-help standoff.

We sit in uncomfortable, expectant silence.  A few more sweatered folk venture in with the same friendly, furtive air I must’ve cut on entry.  By seven o’clock there are six of us in all.  Clipboard ‘Steve’ kicks it off with a welcome.  Steve speaks in a mild, buttery baritone that matches the softness of his sweater.  The effect it makes is insidious; within five minutes I feel torn between a need to sleep and the scrote-twistening fear that I’ll have to speak in front of these strangers.  Oddly enough, I can’t imagine a one of them having ever owned a Transformer.

A bit old, to begin with.  With the exception of the checked-sweater faux-hawk boy sitting next to Steve, I’m the youngest in the room by at least a decade.  Every sentence Steve churns out breeds further misgivings.  “We’re here to discuss Change,” he says.  “Specifically our fear of Change.”  He pauses a bit for effect and I can see everyone eyeballing each other with marked discomfort.  By now I’m quite sure this is the wrong seminar, and struggle to think of a way out before I’m up to share. 

Steve motions towards Tony to get the ball rolling; poor bastard, he’s about gone white in the face, and keeps shooting glances towards the door.  But there’s no escape.  With a bit of a falter he rises and introduces himself, “My n-n-name is T-t-tony, and I-ai-ai… I am a tiger.”  Death pallor turns to hot blush as he flumps back down into his seat, the tiger remark not elaborated further. 

Where in the hell am I?  Plumpish Person Two is next, a woman named Ruth who sometimes “transforms into a shrieking monster.”  “I mean that metaphorically,” she adds with an inquisitive glance at Tony. 

Next is Eric the Transvestite of Eight Years, who seems rather at ease opening up to the group at length about his nightly transformations.  He finds the whole thing quite funny, and to tell the truth I suppose it is.  It all seems a comic cock-up, the stuff of bad vaudeville and worse vaudeville homages.  But then it's on me, and I haven’t the faintest what to say.   

“My name is Jason,” I tell them simply.  “And I still collect Tran-" - and here I waver just a tisch; this whole evening is so bizarre - "Transformers.  Not even collect.  More like hoard.”  And as I sit down to the group’s even further confused silence, a spiritual weight feels dropped from about me.  Maybe my collection isn’t so odd, after all!  Thinking critically, I’m not a transvestite or an overbearing cow or a lame self-help moderator.  Or a tiger {whatever that entails}.  Just sort of a dork.  Hell, even I can live with that.  Ruminating along these lines, I sort of miss what the last guy has to share, and even his name.  It doesn’t matter though!  I’m elated at my newfound sense of relative normalcy and dignitas. 

At a lull in the conversation I sneak off to the restroom, ostensibly to wash up and dispose of my sticker before I make good my escape.  Yes, the dork in the mirror is me, but I can’t help but smile back at him.  Because really, it’s all about happiness, isn’t it?  I dry my hands on a coarse brown paper towel from the dispenser, again transported to my elementary days, and hopefully for the last time this evening.  I once found a bit of brown paper in the middle of my cafeterial Spanish rice.  Traumatizing, in its own little way.  I discard that crumpled memory into the bin and exit to the hallway with a bounce in my step, nearly bumping into Tony as he heads in. 

“Jesus,” he mutters as he passes.  “That would’ve been a lot easier to say in my fursuit.” 

And with that I make my way out to the car, keys well in hand...