Since long before I was a soldier in the World Entertainment War, I have loved to dream. Every night I feel a thrill as my head impacts the pillow, knowing there's a good chance I'll live through at least one story that will be far more interesting to me than any Hollywood movie.

This has been true as far back as I remember. My love affair with adventures on the other side of the veil began early. I still have the three pages of three-holed, blue-lined, loose-leaf paper on which I wrote down my dream of a trip to the planet Venus when I was eight years old. (It was a successful journey; I was greeted by thirteen girls who covered me with kisses and fed me chocolate candy and gave me magic baseball cards.)

As I muse now upon this innocent passion, I can't help but think I was born to be what other cultures have called a shaman. It's immaterial whether I explain it as a genetic predisposition or the result of past-life karma: Without stimuli or encouragement from my family or teachers or anyone else in my early environment, I was drawn to explore a world beyond the one my senses perceived. My quest was naive and self-taught. Though I managed when I was in fourth grade to find a few scientific books on dreams in the local library (the New Age had not yet sprouted), all I had to go on was instinct.

At age seventeen I discovered psychedelic drugs. They offered me a different entry into the realm I'd previously accessed exclusively through dreams. Powered by this new tool, my attraction to the other side of the veil leaped to a higher octave, and I became even more committed to recording my sleeptime excursions. Beginning then and continuing till the present, I have kept a notebook and pen next to me virtually every single night of my life, even while crashing on the floors of friends' crowded apartments. At a conservative estimate, I've remembered and recorded thousands of dreams. Bookshelves full of old dream journals prove it.

Upon leaving my parents' home and arriving in college, I confirmed my growing suspicion that the educational system had tried to conceal a secret of great magnitude. Readings of Eliade and La Barre and Joseph Campbell introduced me to the paper trail documenting the existence of other realities besides the narrow little niche most people regard as All There Is. Their work in turn led me to the literature of Western occultism, whose intriguing material was written not by academics but by experimenters who had actually traveled into the great beyond.

The myriad reports were not in complete agreement, but many of their descriptions overlapped. The consensus was that the other side of the veil is not a single territory but teems with variety, some relatively hellish and some heavenly. Among its many names: the Dreamtime, Fourth Dimension, Underworld, Astral Plane, Collective Unconscious, Afterdeath State, Eternity, Bardo, Hades, and Realm of the Archetypes--to name a few.

There was another issue on which all the explorers agreed: Events in those "invisible" realms are the root cause of everything that happens down here below. Shamans visit the spirit world to cure their sick patients because the origins of illness lie there. For Qabalists, the visible Earth is a tiny outcropping at the end of a long chain of creation that originates at a point which is both inconceivably far away and yet right here right now. Even psychotherapists believe in a materialistic version of the ancient idea: that how we behave today is irrevocably shaped by events that happened in a distant time and place.

As I researched the testimonials about the treasure land, I registered the fact that dreams and drugs were not the only points of entry. Meditation could give access, as could specialized forms of drumming and chanting and singing and dancing. The tantric tradition taught that certain kinds of sexual communion can lead there. As does, of course, physical death.

I wanted to try all those other doors except the last one. Pot, hashish, and LSD were very good to me (never a single bad trip), but their revelations were too damn hard to hold onto. As I came down from a psychedelic high, I could barely translate the truths about the Fourth Dimension into a usable form back in normal waking awareness. At least in my work with dreams I had seen a steady growth of both my unconscious mind's ability to produce meaningful stories and my conscious mind's skill at interpreting them. But my progress was almost nil in the work of retrieving booty from the holy places where drugs took me.

The big problem was that unlike the other techniques on the list, the psychedelic substances bypassed my willpower. Their chemical battering ram simply smashed through the doors of perception. No adroitness was involved on my part, no craft. One of my meditation teachers referred to drug use, no matter how responsible, as "storming the kingdom of heaven through violence."

Gradually, then, I ended my relationship with the illegal magic that had given me so much pleasure. Instead I affirmed my desire to build mastery through hard work. Dreamwork, meditation, and tantric exploration became the cornerstones of my practice. In time, I learned to slip into the suburbs of the mysterium via song and dance as well.

I must confess, however, that in the many years since I swallowed my last tab of acid, my plans have not borne the fruit I hoped they would. Even my most ecstatic lucid dreams and illuminated meditations, I'm afraid, do not bring me to dwell on the other side of the veil with the same heart-melting vividness once provided by my psychedelic allies. Even my deepest tantric love-making and music-induced trances fail to provide the same boost.

Until recently, that is. Two nights after Rapunzel eased herself in through the window of my upstairs bedroom and delivered her crushing invitation, I had the "superdream" she promised me.

"Super" isn't a strong enough modifier, really, to describe how far beyond a dream it was. Though my long practice of cultivating my dreams has made them strikingly rich and detailed, not one has ever achieved such resplendence as this thing, which Rapunzel apparently delivered to me through some telepathic means I can't fathom. It was of a far higher order. A previously unknown species.

The first miracle was that it satisfied my deepest fantasies. By that I mean I experienced something like the metaphysical version of an orgasm. When I awoke I felt utterly at peace, more at home in the world than I can ever remember.

The second miracle was that the texture of the dream was way beyond the flamboyant palpability of even my best lucid dreams. The things I perceived there seemed more solid and fully realized than any of the props of the physical world. It's as if I were able to revel in a symbiotic blend of the highest, finest awareness I've ever achieved in normal waking consciousness and the deepest, most elemental awareness I've had in drugs or dreams.

The best part: I remembered it all. Every detail of this excursion remains with me now.

As the superdream began, it was late afternoon. I was lying down with my face in the grass. The engulfing sexual fragrance of the earth was so intoxicating I couldn't pull myself away for a while. Then I felt a tickle below my navel. Upon investigation, I saw that a short, scrubby weed had pricked me. There was no pain, but a little blood.

I raised my head to look around. The air and light were -- and I know this sounds crazy -- drinkable. As I inhaled, I felt I was supping a delicious azure nourishment, sweet and filling.

I became curious about where in the world I was. Nearby I saw a garden where enormous pumpkins and tomatoes were growing. Behind it was a three-story pyramid composed entirely of smoked bronze-colored glass. I could also see two thick reddish towers, each four stories tall. My attention was drawn by a large green envelope hanging from the branch of a birch tree next to the garden. I pulled it off and opened it. It read as follows:

MENSTRUAL LINGERIE FASHION SHOW

Dear Janitor,

You're hereby invited to come be our sovereign shaman!

A sumptuous sanctuary has been specially reserved for you at the

world-famous Moon Lodge on the grounds of the Menstrual Temple of the Funky

Grail -- all expenses paid!

All the cranberries you can eat! (And plums and eggplants and cherries and

pomegranates and fish eggs! Yum!)

Use of a full-service sweatlodge and the ecstatic meditation technology

known as the Televisionary Oracle! (Ten years of uproarious discipline

earned in one short week!?)

Lectures on fucking in the Fourth Dimension from the renowned

menstruating shamanatrixes of Dreamtime University! (Guaranteed to improve

your physical appearance, not to mention your soul's smell!)

Hundreds of sacred toys and games to mess around with in the Dragon's

Playhouse! (And be assured that you will not find your foreskin hidden away

inside a pagan dollhouse wrapped in quetzalcoatl feathers and the fat of a

wild dog!)

Your fortune told and told and told till you probably won't want it told

any more! (Your past prophesied, your future corrected, your relationship

with death sweetened to an almost sugary sheen!)

Bonus! As a free introductory gift you'll receive tips on how to kill the

apocalypse -- designed with your unique, spiritually sexy needs in mind!

(Guaranteed to make you famous with the Goddess, too!)

Don't dawdle! Come as soon as you can! Dangerously compassionate luxury

is calling to you!

Directions to the Moon Lodge: Cruise over to the metal stairway that

looks like a fire escape, and ascend to the door on the fourth story. Knock

three times, pause, knock three more times, pause, knock three times, and

when someone answers, say this: "I am a holy cabbage-head! I have more

supernatural powers in my whole body than you have in your little finger!

You must give me something valuable in return for all the pain I have crafted for myself!"

Feeling most delighted, I followed the directions on the invitation. When the door opened, I was greeted by an androgynous person. Her thick flaxen hair, which looked like a helmet, evoked the aura of a tomboyish Norse goddess. Witchy yet elfin, extravagant yet tricky, her face was loud. She was wearing a baggy, V-neck, black silk blouse and black silk pants.

Actually, I recognized her. She was the woman who had jumped up on stage with Rapunzel during World Entertainment War's show at the Catalyst -- the prankster who got down on all fours behind me so that Rapunzel could easily push me over.

After I delivered my cabbage-head rap, this leprechaun warrior placed her left foot on top of my right. She lifted up my shirt and pulled down the waistband of my shorts a little. I saw the same thing she did: A red ooze was still trickling from the wound below my navel. She swiped her finger down to capture a daub and then brought it to her mouth for a lick.

"Pure menstrual stigmata! Hooray!" she exclaimed. "Consecration by the Goddess!" I felt an inexplicable burst of pride.

"From now on your home must be everywhere," she said as she patted me sympathetically on the shoulder. "Your names must be legion. Your dates of birth must change daily, and your horoscope must be a fluctuating medley impossible to interpret by anyone but a well-integrated owner of multiple personalities. Your body must be a five-dimensional hologram telepathically in touch with all sentient beings simultaneously, as it was before the Big Bang bonged."

As she gave me this strange pep talk, she led me down one hall, passing several closed doors, then another, at the end of which was a room with an open door. We went in.

The floor was black and rubbery. The walls and high ceiling were dark red. Hundreds of lit red and black candles lined the periphery of a room maybe seventy feet square. There were several pomegranate trees in big pots, and next to one was a seven-foot-tall scarecrow with many arms. She was composed of a metal skeleton and a skin consisting of vines. I knew it was a "she" because pendulous eggplant breasts hung down from an armature composed of branches woven together. Lodged in her belly was a TV that was animated by two fetuses, as in a sonogram. Her face was a jet-black mask with blinking red lights for pupils. Her hair was a tangle of electrical wire, knotted shreds of fabric, and tree roots.

As we passed it, a crackly voice emanated from the creature.

"What did the scarecrow say?" I asked my host.

"'Come be our sovereign janitor shaman.'"

She escorted me to an area in a corner enclosed by three huge, free-standing TV screens. Here there were five beds, each swathed in a red comforter and topped with copper-colored pillows. Tapestries hung on the walls. They depicted an eight-armed, blue-skinned goddess with long red hair. A round lapis lazuli table stood in the horseshoe space formed by the beds. It was piled with hot food on silver trays.

"Help yourself," my host said.

I filled two plates and a bowl. There were grilled sweet potatoes, a thick orange soup, broiled salmon, wild rice, corn on the cob, Greek salad, and pecan pie. I was thrilled.

"While you eat," she said, "maybe you'd like a story."

From under a clutch of pillows on one of the beds she slid out a thick black loose-leaf notebook and handed it to me. Then she turned and walked away, leaving me alone. I got comfortable on one of the beds and opened the notebook. It had a long title. The Heroine with a Thousand Ruses: The Autohagiography of a Close Personal Friend of the Sly Universal Virus with No Fucking Opinion. Its author was Rapunzel Blavatsky.

"Dear Rockstar," read a note paperclipped to the first page. "Feel free to plagiarize this story of mine for your next art project. If you do, though, try not to take too many liberties with it, please. Remember, good writers borrow; great writers steal. Love, Rapunzel."

The food was delectable -- I can think of no comparable taste treat in my repertoire of memories from waking life -- and the manuscript was so vivid that it became like a dream within the dream. It told the tale of Rapunzel's birth, and how she was the avatar of an ancient mystical order.

Was it a true story? I hoped so. But even if it weren't, this intimate view of how her mind worked made me feel close to her. I felt I'd broken through to see the real, personal Rapunzel for the first time. Not my glamorous projection. Not my mythic wish-fulfillments.

Just before finishing the third chapter, I was interrupted by the arrival of a small crowd of women, including Rapunzel herself and the leprechaun warrior from before. They were dressed in a bizarre melange of goofy costumes, as if they'd raided a costume store right before Halloween. Rapunzel, for instance, was wearing a mauve silk sari that was lovely except for the fact that it had several large rips in it, baring patches of skin. She was also sporting an orange mohair vest and a bright blue cowboy hat.

"We want you to be our menstrual king," Rapunzel said as she sat down beside me on the bed and slapped me playfully on the face with light strokes. "We want to give you the key to slipping into Crazyland at will."

"Get the key to Crazyland, get the key to Crazyland," the other women chanted together like a chorus. They were hopping up and down, bouncing randomly around the space.

Rapunzel lifted my shirt and pulled down my shorts as the leprechaun warrior had done. The trickle of red was still there. She swiped her index finger over it and brought the blood to her mouth.

"Holy communion! It is the real thing," she exulted. "Menstrual stigmata! Who'd've thunk it? Our very first recruit and he just happens to be bleeding one hundred percent genuine menstrual blood. Like no man has bled in more than six thousand years! Who else wants a taste?"

The women lined up, tittering excitedly. I was nearly paralyzed with excitement and bewilderment. Though I was a bit concerned about the continued bleeding, I decided it was worth it if it garnered this much attention.

Rapunzel held open my shorts while the first petitioner, a pretty, young, big-boned blonde with wild blue eyes and a bikini made out of the yellow plastic streamers that police put around crime scenes, reached in and partook.

"You'll help us out, won't you?" she told me while she licked her finger with a dreamy, slit-eyed look that I couldn't help but interpret as seductive. "You know how much we need you, right? Come live with us. Make us all very, very happy. Please?"

I nodded, though I wasn't sure what I was agreeing to.

The next woman in line reminded me of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo: dark, bushy eyebrows joined in the middle and a face like a beautiful ocelot. She sipped her share of my scarlet flow, then addressed me. Her piercing brown eyes were just inches from mine. "The pandemic muzzling of the female libido has got to stop," she said. "It has turned the tender, poignant penis into a berserk cosmodemonic doomsday machine. Do something about it, Mr. Janitor Shaman. OK? Starting here. Starting now."

She bent in closer and gave me a juicy kiss on the lips. "Lust globally, make love locally," she added before stepping away.

The next supplicant, a petite and very attractive black woman with glasses and lots of nervous energy, wanted to lick directly from the source.

"Pull 'em down farther," she told Rapunzel, pointing to my shorts. Rapunzel peeled the waistband down to my crotch, and the woman pressed her lips against my small but seemingly inexhaustible wound. I relaxed as best I could as she puckered and sucked.

"You can sleep with her most of the time," she said to me as she finished, pointing at Rapunzel, "but save something for the rest of us, OK? She deserves your best, but we deserve your second-best." With this she laughed.

Before turning to make way for the next in line, she pointed at her belly and breathed, "Not going to trust anyone but the menstrual king to fertilize this womb. You know what they say: One spoonful contains enough sperm to populate the entire planet."

The next woman in line looked familiar. Where had I seen her before? On the one hand, her body was that of a well-wrought thirty-five-year-old. She had relatively broad shoulders on a petite form, with narrow hips, low body fat, and sinewy muscles. On the other hand, I guessed her to be in her sixties -- possibly older. Besides the grey hair, she had major forehead wrinkles and crow's feet.

Then I remembered where I had seen her before -- twice. The first time was in the picture book titled the Menstrual Lingerie Fashion Show. There her name was Vimala. The second time was on a strange TV at the gallery where I heard the Rapunzel lookalike deliver a rap about practicing the art of death.

Now, like the previous supplicant, this curiously young-looking crone bent down to drink directly from what I had finally come around to believe was my "menstrual stigmata."

"Mmmmm," she sighed in the direction of Rapunzel. "I love the virgin ooze of a menstrual king. It's been so long. Too long. I am proud of you, dear. You have conjured up the perfect male consort. Well, maybe not the perfect one. But the best that could be expected under the circumstances."

"Thanks, Vimala," Rapunzel replied with a chuckle. "Had to start somewhere, I guess, huh?"

As Vimala left, the Norse leprechaun sat down on the bed, taking the side opposite Rapunzel. "Mind if I have seconds?" she asked expectantly.

"He'd be honored, Jumbler," Rapunzel answered for me.

Jumbler partook of my gift, then snuggled close to me as Rapunzel did the same on my other side. Both had their arms around my shoulder.

"You can have your cake and eat it too," Jumbler whispered in my ear. "We'll give you the hand of the queen and the hands of all her court as well."

"Not to mention the key to slipping into Crazyland at will," Rapunzel breathed into my other ear. "All you have to do is place your creative skills in the service of the Menstrual Temple. What do you say?"

I could feel the soft contour of both their breasts on my upper arms. To my right, Rapunzel's thigh and navel showed through big holes in her sari. The smell of her smoky velvet musk penetrated me to the bone. To my left, Jumbler's small but perky breasts were clearly visible as her baggy, low-cut blouse gaped open. I felt my imagination attuning itself to her fragrance of orchids.

I became aware of an emotion trying to form itself in the space between my heart and throat. It was an unfamiliar one, maybe what emptiness would feel like if emptiness were a good and happy thing. I could almost sense the texture of a word echoing out of its midst: vacate or vacancy or vacation or vacuum or evacuate or the Spanish vamanos.

Barrenness but buoyancy. An exhilarating desert. Vacation in the void.

As I bobbed and floated in this desolate yet welcoming white sky, I passed through the ghost of a memory from when I was very young, well before I could talk, maybe just a couple of months old. I was in the lap of a person, my grandmother I think, who over and over again was hiding her face behind her hands and then suddenly peeking out. I was sure of it: This was the moment in my life when I first laughed. Unable to use the sculpting power of language to create my world, barely able even to perceive the boundary between a face and the air around it, I found something funny; I invoked a gift of pure amusement ex nihilo.

The next thought that sprouted from the emptiness had no obvious connection to the previous impression. I found myself mulling over the fantasy of writing a story about the adventures I'd had since meeting Rapunzel -- possibly borrowing from the manuscript I'd read earlier. The first scene would take place in the Catalyst bathroom. The second would be the vision I had while sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the Catalyst. Maybe. I didn't know the sequence exactly. The story was shaping itself in me; I could feel it. I imagined that my work would be like that of an amanuensis, a transcriptionist.

Would I really do such a thing as I was imagining? In many ways it went against my artistic instincts. If there has been one constant in my highly miscellaneous career as a creator, it's my allergy to the personal and the emotional and the intimate. Narcissism and egocentricity have been my taboos. Confessionalism repels me. I've been secretly proud of how steadfastly I've avoided mining even the most interesting events of my idiosyncratic history. Instead, politics and myth and dream have fueled my art. I've been like a surrealist anthropologist from Mars throwing out jokey analyses about the weird customs I observe.

And now this: an inspiration to indulge in the most excruciatingly personal narrative imaginable. I was embarrassed even to contemplate the shameless images that were already welling up. And that was exactly what was so exciting about it.

The superdream ended there. Long after I awoke, I lay in bed reliving every detail. Eventually my thoughts turned to a meditation on whether Rapunzel was really responsible for delivering this wonder to me, and by what mechanism she could have done it. That's a crucial question, after all, in deciding how to respond to the deals she proposed during her invasion of my home.

This I know for certain: The superdream was the Grail I've been stalking all these years. It allowed me to inhabit the other side of the veil with a piercing lucidity that I have not been able to muster since I gave up drugs.

There is also another delightful prospect the superdream has inspired me to fantasize about: What if it is a prophecy, or at least a foreshadowing, of an encounter with the Menstrual Temple that will actually happen in my waking life? What if Rapunzel transmitted or incited this scenario as a way to dramatize what awaits me when I receive the "menarche for men" she promised?

When I finally ended my ruminations on the dream and got out of bed, it was to find William Blake's A Vision of the Last Judgment on my bookshelf and reread one of my favorite passages.

This world of Imagination is the world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom into which we shall go after the death of the Vegetated body. This World of Imagination is Infinite and Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or Vegetation, is Finite and Temporal. There exists in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature. All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity, the Human Imagination.

In the wake of my landmark incursion into the paradisiacal enclave of the Dreamtime, greedy fantasies have been welling up in me. Do I dare imagine it's possible to drench myself in this deliverance at will? That I might gorge on this orgiastic catechism nightly? Could it be Rapunzel has established some telepathic link to my subconscious mind -- a link that will allow me to drink deep draughts of this rapture again and again?

I am achingly tempted to do the unthinkable -- if that's what it would take to earn this gift. Not to sell my soul, which is too expensive even for the devil to buy, but to sell my ego. To unload a big chunk of my megalomania. To dissolve my band World Entertainment War and quit the rock music business.

The joyous feast of the superdream, after all, is not the only offer on the table. How did Rapunzel put it when she made her visitation to my abode? She implied that my romance with World Entertainment War would seem like a crush in kindergarten compared to the mysterious love that awaits me if I renounce my precious band. "It would not be a lie," were her exact words as she shimmered like a vestal virgin next to my Wailing Wall, "to say that you have been freshly delivered into the presence of a watered-down version of the majestic gift." What else could that mean besides a relationship with Rapunzel herself, which was also strongly implied in the superdream? At the moment she spoke those words, nothing new besides her auroral splendor and its cathartic effect on me had freshly penetrated my sanctuary.

Take the promise of regular dips in the enchanted precincts of the Dreamtime, and add to it the hope of becoming betrothed to the embodiment of beauty and truth who has already broken my heart open with scary blessings, and there's a temptation so blindingly irresistible that I can't possibly indulge any fears that it would destroy me.

That last thing I said is oozing so much childlike idealism and romantic bombast -- typical, typical -- that I'm blushing. If I ever stage another "Lousy Poetry Reading," as I did once in my bad-boy days as a performance artist, it'll be statements like that which will deserve the spotlight.

The fact is, though, when you take into consideration the disenfranchised part of myself the Jungians call the "shadow," I'm too complex a schemer to actually live up to my childlike idealism and romantic bombast. That's why I've decided to be realistic in my response to Rapunzel's challenge.

I've concocted a covert strategy that I believe will allow me to gobble up my cake and maybe possibly hopefully have it too.

At the very least, it's such an evocative prank that it'll no doubt inspire an entire album's worth of songs.

It wasn't easy to convince the band we should risk my scheme. In fact, when I called them all together at my house last night, they were initially aghast. They gave me the same kind of mushy resistance I've met in the past when I've proposed other radical experiments designed to mutate our course. But in the end they bought it. Did they have a choice? My mind was made up. And besides, they've seen ample examples of the successful outcome of other loony inspirations of mine.

This is what I proposed. We'll carry out an extended performance art experiment which will appear to signal the demise of World Entertainment War, but which will ultimately multiply our mystique a thousand-fold -- and pave the way for an explosive rebirth.

The first step is for the five of them to send a press release to all the newspapers.

"World Entertainment War's lead singer and conceptual mastermind," the blurb'll say, "has announced he's leaving the band in order to devote himself full-time to his role as a member of a radical feminist religious cult.

"Though he has indicated he's not at liberty to reveal the complete picture of his new mission, he has allowed us to divulge these facts: 1) The name of the cult is the Yo Mama Brigade. 2) His work there will consist of mastering the arts of the 'Lesbian Man' through ascetic service to the neo-matriarchy and by pursuing a hands-on study of the tantric version of chaos theory. 3) His 'ascetic service' will consist mostly of cleaning the toilets and washing the dishes of Goddess-worshipers, as well as a host of other janitorial tasks. 4) He has renounced all further contact with the media, which he dismisses as 'universally infected by the entertainment criminals' conspiracy to genocide the global imagination.'

"We regret that this transition means," the press release will go on to say, "we must abandon World Entertainment War's good fight. As of today, the band is no more. Its founder's departure breaks our hearts too badly to try to salvage a wounded version of our former selves.

"Perhaps when the dust clears and the rest of us have had some time to think, we'll formulate a new cadre of musical freedom fighters and return to the battle. But for now we must grieve the decision of our inspirational leader, and hope that this difficult and courageous move brings him closer to the core of his quest to become the ultimate prayer warrior. It has always been his unflinching devotion to his soul's truth that has fueled World Entertainment War's mission, and we can only admire him for upholding his tradition, even if in the short run it derails our highest ambitions.

"On the other hand, having whispered all those sweet nothings, we now have to be honest and confess the rest of what we feel. Goddamn him. Goddamn that moody, whimsical narcissist. How dare he fling himself off our muscular young stallion in mid-race? Is there something we're missing here? Some essential fact he's not telling us? Far be it from us to question His Worshipfulness' inscrutable fate, but what the hell is he thinking? We can't believe his new friends are so eager to psychically castrate a masculine role model who does so much good for the world. And we cannot fathom how this proudly independent thinker could have been so utterly brainwashed as to go along with their program for his life.

"To our fans -- our extended family -- we apologize with the biggest shit-eating mournful frown we can summon. We hope to hold a wake for World Entertainment War in the near future. Stay tuned for an announcement."

In my heart of hearts, of course, I have no intention of euthanizing my beautiful offspring, World Entertainment War. Just the opposite. I intend for this maneuver to up the ante of our fans' emotional investment in our fate, and to seduce thousands of new melodrama addicts into our sphere. A couple of months down the line, when I come out of retirement and reconvene the band, newly invigorated by my sojourn with the Menstrual Temple, World Entertainment War's Mythic Quotient will have skyrocketed. If I know the way my creative process works, I'll also have conjured a whole rock opera's worth of new material based on the twisty tales I've just lived through. We'll go into the studio and record an irresistible new CD.

Granted, it's not as grandiose a publicity stunt as blowing my brains out with a shotgun like some rock stars I've known; nor is it as titillating (if hackneyed) as punching out a journalist or overdosing on heroin or romancing a naughty supermodel. What it lacks in predigested gossip-worthiness, however, is compensated for by its stark originality. No rock star, not even a semi-famous one like me, has ever abdicated the throne to take on the monastic life -- let alone a radical feminist monastic life. If I do say so myself, it has fair potential as a storyline for a Hollywood movie.

I don't regard this as being deceitful towards our fans. For one thing, I really am suspending the band's operations for a while. For another, I sincerely want to hook up with Rapunzel and her crowd, and the truth is that she has made the dissolution of the band and a job as janitor conditions for accepting me.

Beyond that, I have for a long time regarded my art as consisting in part of translating the themes of my complex inner life into a relatively accurate, if simplified, public image. My job, in other words, has definitely NOT been to let my public image be sculpted by the one-size-fits-all machinery of the rock business; NOT to leech off a fake version of myself by fitting into the generic archetype of the famous rock star.

Rather, I've wanted to lend my creativity and spiritual awareness to the task of revolutionizing the whole act of persona-making. My hypothesis has been that maybe a celebrity's public image can be more than a hyped pack of pretty lies; that maybe I could shape, through artistry, an outer package that quite precisely reflects the spiritual intentions that lie inside.

One upshot of this line of thought is that I've concluded I sometimes have to fudge a little on the specific details in order to tell the bigger truth. Another implication is that my life really is, essentially, a story. It is not an assemblage of objective, incontrovertible data. It is a swarming fiction composed of endlessly permuting levels of truth (often contradictory), any one of which I can choose to highlight or downplay at any moment to create an entirely novel version of my history. There's no difference between my life and the story I proclaim to be my life. In the end, I am a performance art project.

I'm reminded of the children's picture book that consists of three groups of pages assembled vertically. The top group of pages has thirty different heads, the middle has thirty different bodies, and the lower has thirty different legs. At any one time the mongrel personage you have before you can be built from, say, the clown face on page one of the top group plus the soldier body on page eleven of the middle group plus the ballet dancer's legs from page twenty-seven of the bottom group.

The story -- or rather the stories -- of my life resemble that children's book.

So I've rationalized with exquisitely lyrical logic why our performance art experiment is not deceitful towards our fans. Can I manage the same feat in relation to Rapunzel?

Well, she specifically said I didn't have to leave the music business forever. And she did not say exactly how long it might take for me to, quote, untangle my divine motivations for singing from the diseased motivations, unquote. Two months might be enough, for all I or she knows. And I figure I want to let the first part of my prank simmer at least two months before launching it into its next phase. Besides, I really do want to be free of the day-to-day demands of the band for now so I can make myself abundantly available for whatever Rapunzel and company have in store for me. I can't imagine any feistier fun. And after having had to reconnoiter the music accountants' and music bureaucrats' sections of hell in the last few months, I richly deserve to indulge in such feisty fun. An artist needs regular doses of fertile chaos.

Best of all, it's one hundred percent guaranteed that my imminent adventures with the gorgeous sphinx trickster will generate a spate of killer works of art.

I am as sure of that as I am of the solidity of the bedraggled mop and bucket full of slopwater I am gazing at here in the kitchen of India Joze restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz at 1:30 in the morning.

It's my third night on the job as a janitor. Shreds of moldy tomatoes dangle from my hair. Dirty cake frosting clings to the sleeve of my khaki Sears work shirt, as well as rotting eggplant pulp blended with the pulverized fragments of a dead insect. My matching khaki pants, new just a few days ago, have already absorbed so much grunge that the cuffs have permanently turned the color of crud.

I'm ecstatic. Maybe I won't be in a week, but for now, I'm awash in infatuation with my role as a total nonentity. I'm living the dream of any egomaniac who has ever loved the Buddha: to be as empty as the moment between the ticks of the clock; to be stone-cold, dead-dumb, flat-out unimportant, the biggest nobody in a world full of nobodies.

For years I've allowed my ego to sway and groove to the rhythm of its cute hallucinations of grandiosity. I am, after all, the spiritually savvy rockstar fueled by feminist lust, right? I am a hip philosopher for the proletariat of geniuses, the postmodern bard who channels the most entertaining brand of crazy wisdom that's ever held down a regular spot on the periphery of the mass media.

And oh the crushing weight of it all. To be chronically teetering with top-heavy self-importance yet pretend that I'm naught but a humble seeker. What sublime guilt! What messianic sneakiness! What ineffable tomfoolery! What lousy stinkin' graceful fragrant logic!

Now, though, for going-on-three nirvana-crammed nights, I have been scoured of all such bullpuckie. With each used tampon I've had to fish out of the clogged toilet with my mini-roto rooter, my innate hubris shrinks. With each crop of shattered drinking glass fragments I gingerly harvest from the sink, my treasured invisibility grows.

Tonight I wept with unironic joy as I scraped away years-old gunk with a putty knife from a corner behind the bread table. "I am nothing!" I laughed aloud as I marveled at the perfect gnosis. Not a single soul will ever know I carried out this secret act! And even if they did, they wouldn't be in the least impressed by it! I did it, indeed, because there was absolutely no reason to do it. And in that moment, as the gummy green-black slag responded to my earnest ministrations, a liquid thunderbolt of love blasted through me--I mean a tangible elixir of blessing from the Grandmother of Us All. The Goddess saw! And rewarded me! I felt it! I swear I sensed Her nectared presence! Her fiercely sweet touch! And hallelujah I deserved it! Because for once in my life I was wildly free of all lust for results. I had lived, if only for an instant, outside of karma.

Here's the best part: I'm not even being paid for busting my ass six hours a night. In fact, I'm spending money to earn the privilege. In carrying out Rapunzel's assignment to get a job as a janitor, I wanted to be as free of attachments as possible. I didn't want to give anyone the false impression I was interested in a long-term commitment. Nor did I particularly want to call attention to my new role from someone who might know someone who knew me.

My solution was to stroll over to my favorite restaurant in the wee hours a few nights ago. When the janitor came out to the street at about 2:45 to hose down the rubber mats in the gutter, I engaged him in conversation.

"How'd you like a little paid vacation?" I offered.

"Huh?"

"I've got a proposition for you."

"Listen, I ain't into gay sex."

"It's nothing like that. What's your name?"

"Dave."

"Well, Dave, my friends call me Rockstar. And there's a little performance art project I want to try which involves doing exactly the kind of work you're doing. Thing of it is, it's important that I do the job completely off the books."

"You're fuckin' crazy."

"No, Dave, I assure you I've never felt more lucid in my life. Here's what I propose. Do you work here every night?"

"Five nights a week."

"Here's what I propose. You let me do your job every night for, I don't know, let's say your next fifteen nights. And in return I will pay you five dollars an hour for every hour I work. So in other words you'll get to collect your regular salary from India Joze plus what I provide."

"I still think you're fuckin' nuts. But I'd think about it if maybe I knew you better. I mean, what's to stop you from stealing stuff from the restaurant and then my boss'll blame me?"

"I'm perfectly willing to make you feel totally comfortable about that, Dave. If you want, you can hang around during my entire shift and monitor me as I work. You can sit back and watch TV or read while I slave away."

"Well. I don't know. I mean I guess so. You want to start now?"

"Perfect. You can show me everything you do so I can take over full-time tomorrow."

I became Dave's apprentice for the next four hours, and as we parted at dawn I handed him twenty dollars. I met him here last night and gave him his thirty dollars right away. He hung around for an hour before giving me the keys and taking off. Tonight before I came to work I got a call from him saying to start without him, that he'd come by at dawn to pick up his nightly wage. So here I am alone, blissing out on the stench of the fermenting meat littering the stove I'll be cleaning next.

Or should I stack the chairs on the tables in the dining areas and sweep and mop the floor? Or maybe ply my craft on the sinks and urinals in the men's bathroom? There are so many thrilling acts of self-abnegation, I'm almost paralyzed with my freedom of choice.

For now I think I'll just kick back, chill out, and meditate on how pleased I am with my fascinating life. All is proceeding with sweet synchronicity. The band's press releases should be arriving en masse at media outlets later today. No doubt there'll be a flurry of inquiries on the World Entertainment War hotline by nightfall. Despite the bit in the press release about me refusing all further contact with the media, I just might get back to a couple of journalists if I think they're capable of helping me promote the mythic angle of this experiment.

Suddenly I'm overwhelmed with the urge to bellow out "I Know Nothing," one of the last tunes World Entertainment War and I wrote before my "retirement." It's actually more of a rap than a song.

A continuous peekaboo game inherent in nature

The big bang began in an upside-down mirror

The universe has a condition resembling dyslexia

But as quantum physics demonstrates

There's nothing to fear

I know nothing

I agree with everything

I love everyone

I am not myself

Are we really nothing more than antimatter holograms anyway

Do we communicate via telepathy with our future selves

Are there mini-black holes even now invading our bodies

Is it true there's too much energy and we'll all go to hell

I know nothing

I agree with everything

I love everyone

I am not myself

I feel the editor's scissors closing in on these thoughts

I feel the editor's scissors closing in on these thoughts

I feel the editor's scissors closing in on these thoughts I feel the editor's scissors closing in on these thoughts