The IQ Test

I get the email telling me that I’m a Creative Theorist. It says, ‘Creative Theorists are highly imaginative and excel at being innovative and conjuring up notions of what could be.’ The email asks, ‘Want to learn more about the way you think?’ ‘Want to find out how you can boost your brainpower?’ I’m not quite sure that I do- heavy-set, walking across thin ice, I can almost hear rushing water underneath me… The pitch: email lets me know, special, limited time only, discount offer, 9.95 and I get my very own, personalized, tailor cut and fit, custom designed Super IQ Report that’ll teach me more about my thinking style, help me to discover the logic behind my subconscious reasoning, find the career path that’s right for me, reveal the sources of stimuli for my unconscious mind, increase my penis size by 2-5 inches, expose the weaknesses in my personality and instruct me on exercises that will strengthen everything from short-term memory to my rectal fortitude. 9.95. But I don’t go for it.

I had answered the 58 questions some time last week. My sister told me about it. She took the test and scored pretty well, 137. Only 1 person out of every 100 scores a 137. I pulled 126, I’m 1 out of 19, I’m in the top 5.2 percent and that’s fine by me, hell, Lincoln was just above 150, Einstein 160, and past that, well, past that we’re talking Shakespeare, Goethe, Newton…only 1 in a 1,000,000…not a John in the crowd. 9.95? Not out of my pocket. Hell, I’m a college educated Creative Theorist with pharmaceutical inclinations, social anxiety disorders and an outstanding bar tab… qualifications! I should be able to figure it out on my own. Plus, I’m more than content with my penis; it’s proportional to the rest of my body, has a fine looking face with an admirably placed eye, a well outlined urethra, can spit over 4 feet when manipulated correctly, solves Samsonian-like riddles of the vagina with ease, is capable of computing the toughest of pubic algorithms in a matter of a few, toe scrunching, pre-ejaculate seconds, can detect a teenager in heat across a distance of 4 city blocks…a veritable divining rod of a cod if there ever was one... 9.95? Good luck WebIq!

So now I consider myself to be a Creative Theorist! Sure. 126. Fine! It means that I’m smart enough to know that there’s something seriously wrong with the big picture. That there’s something out of whack, a chink in the chain, a gear with chipped teeth, a frayed belt, a loose roller, a distinguished monkey conductor, asleep in the orchestra pit, dreaming of bananas while the crowd masturbates in the theater, ‘We brought our tickets! We expect our entertainment!’ The cock-struck young usher shuffling between rows, flashlight, hand lotion and a hidden camera taped to the inside of his coat sleeve… A Creative Theorist knows. A Creative Theorist can foretell the potential outcome of small ripples making their way across the face of a lake. He can pinpoint boulders along the shoreline that will eventually be eroded by those small ripples. A Creative Theorist looks at those boulders and can’t help but see their skipping stone eventuality…damned Creative Theorist, poor, confounded, spider web bound Creative Theorist…guy will always see the skipping stone, but never a way to rescue the boulder, never a final solution, for a Creative Theorist, there’s only the temporary fix…cheaply patched tires, cracked chair legs bound in duct tape, bubble gum used to plug a small leak in the wall of a great dam…aaaghhh, guy will mend a broken arm with aspirin and an ACE bandage-great!

A Creative Theorist falls into the Catch-22 category of mental classifications. With all that insight and imagination, with all that intellectual disposition, a Creative Theorist can surely discern what the problem is, but is limited- restricted, held back, kept under cerebral wraps, is logically fucked over- by the limitations of his own acumen. The Creative Theorist’s brain never allows him to reach a final solution; it only grants him enough vision to see the problem…Creative Theorists, upstairs, those guys are all screwed.

The Creative Theorist asks, “So what’s left? Where’s salvation? Does the island in the distance with the dancing girls in grass skirts and coconut cups that continually slide off of their tits really exist? Will there ever be ripe pineapples falling at my feet from trees that stretch towards the sun? Will there be fresh lobster, caught daily and served up next to molded balls of rice in the style of the native Indians that inhabit the island Kuanidup?” I doubt it. What’s left is a pile of unanswerable questions, a never-ending list of unresolved issues, some huge and cosmic bucket of stripped screws, rusty cogs, bent cotter-pins and not a tap and die set, let alone a working set of pliers or a can of WD-40 in sight. Salvation? For a Creative Theorist? Escape? Anything short of the crematorium, a yawning burial site, the frenzied beeping of hospital monitoring equipment, a good length of rope and a sturdy roof beam, or a ten point swan dive off the tallest building in Manhattan won’t cut it. And as for the island, well, I’ve been to Kuanidup.

I ate the fresh lobster and the molded rice balls. I drank white Secco rum from a gallon jug with the Indians and felt up my girlfriend for an hour before falling asleep in a thatched hut alongside translucent ghost crabs and fleet footed green geckos. I even woke up at 5 in the morning, hung over and retching onto the immaculate white sand, to watch the sun rise. I saw flocks of pelicans, 7-foot wingspan tearing hell out of the morning sky, settle onto the turquoise water, fill their beaks with small squid, fish and shrimp, then return to perch atop those stretching trees that I only dreamed would exist somewhere out in the distance. And for a minute there, surrounded by all that water, white sand, proud standing trees and prettily perching animals, just for a minute, I thought that I had beaten the system, Creative Theorist that I am, Mr. 126, Mr. 1 out of 19, Mr. look at my Rubix Cubic; it’s got all the colors lined up…! Amazing. I actually believed that somehow, in some roundabout and back assed way, that I had stumbled onto the final solution. Maybe during one of my blackout sessions (they come now, with increasing, a somewhat alarming, frequency)… And then one of the Indians, he was called Bee-Bee and I had played lots of beach volleyball with him, wearing a sun faded t-shirt that showed the smiling face of Winnie the Pooh, started loading the dugout canoe that would take all us tourists, weekenders, get awayers, Creative Theorists, sure, back to the mainland that afternoon.