[UA] Hateboxing

[Eric Bertish]

Because sometimes, you just want to forget....

I've lost track of how much money I've spent trying to deal with the 
shit I've seen. It's been ten years since Poughkeepsie, and I still 
can't eat spaghetti. Sometimes I wake up screaming, the taste of blood 
thick in my mouth like tomato sauce.

Did I mention I'm Italian? Shit. I can't even eat Sunday dinner with my 
mama without having shakes.

Anyway. I see an ad in the paper one day, says "Eliminate harmful dreams 
and memories using only common household tools -- $100 for initial 
session and startup kit." Address is some third-floor walk-up in Queens. 
I figure, what the hell, worth a look, right? Considering how much I've 
flushed on goddamn therapy, a hundred is just another sheet of toilet 
paper at this rate.

So I get over there, find the brownstone's been converted to some kinda 
artists' commune. The entire place reeks, but its not weed, it's machine 
oil. They're all industrial types, making statues outta scrap metal with 
power tools. And this godawful German shit is playing, like they're 
hammering a goat on an anvil or something.

I manage to make it upstairs without getting tetanus, find apartment 33, 
bang on the door. This little tweedy guy opens it, and I swear to God he 
can't be more than twenty-five but he dressed like my goddamn 
grandfather, with the suede patches on his jacket and a think black tie 
and a pair of birth-control glasses like they had in the fifties. 
Except, of course, he's listening to the anvil-fuck chorus or whatever.

So he introduces himself as Trent, has me sit, makes me coffee. Now let 
me tell you, guys like this I expect to be twitchy as chihuahuas, but 
this bastard was relaxed. Smooth, even, like he had a 38 D blonde 
girlfriend tied up in his bedroom.

So I drink his almond-flavored coffee and we talk for a bit. No, not 
about my problems, he doesn't give a shit about those. He asks to see my 
hands, seems pleased to see that I have callouses. He asks me if I've 
ever worked with machines before, and I say yeah, I tune my car's 
engine, change the oil, yadda yadda. He smiles this freaky-calm smile 
and says good, you have what it takes to build a hatebox.

About this time I think maybe, just maybe, I've stumbled into a fetish 
shop by mistake, and start to get up. No no, he says, I know what you're 
thinking, and it's not like that. He says, You know that sense of peace 
and satisfaction you get when you tune your car? and I say Yeah. So he 
says, Hateboxing is like that, but instead of working on a car, you're 
building a box to hold your emotions. Doesn't have to be hate, can be 
pain or fear or whatever, but he thinks hateboxing sounds best.

So I go, Okay, I sorta get you, but I've been working on my car for ten 
years, and it hasn't helped me sleep any better. He says, The trick is 
in the training. He points to a milk crate full of greasy parts and 
says, that's going to be your hatebox, and I'm going to help you build 
the frame.

There are rules to hateboxing, he says as he's taking off his jacket and 
rolling up his sleeves. The first rule, he says, is that we can't use 
any tools that use electricity or hydraulics, it's all gotta be hand 
power. It's the sweat and effort, he says.

The second rule is that it's gotta be metal and wood. No plastic.

The third rule is that when I'm hateboxing, I can't think of the box. I 
have to think about the memory I want to get rid of. Because we aren't 
really trying to build anything, it's just something for our hands to do 
       so that our minds can fall into, get it, a meditative state.

So I say, Wait a goddamn minute. This is meditation? Like clearing the 
mind, chanting, all that happy horseshit?

He says, Close. Chanting is for mystics, this is for practical people 
like him and me. This is Transcendental Mechanization. And he gives me 
that freaky calm smile.

So what the hell, I think, and he and I, we start the hatebox, there on 
his apartment floor. I dunno how long we work at it, because the time 
just seems to slip away. When we're done, it's dark outside, and I've 
got this three-foot square box that looks like a reject from a high 
school metal shop. but for the first time in my life I don't feel like 
there's something breathing rotten anchovies down the back of my neck.

He says, That's your hatebox. Put all your negative emotions in it. 
Build on it, add stuff to it, expand on it. Then he gives me a strange 
look and says, Got a garage?

Got a garage? I live in fuckin' Brooklyn.

You'll need one, he says. And then I get this weird idea that maybe this 
entire building is *his* hatebox. And then I really fucking want to 
leave right then.

Whatever, I say. So I ask how much I owe, and he says, A hundred bucks 
for the materials. And any time I need more, I can come see him.

So, yeah. Anyway, I'm gonna go home, and work on this fucking thing, and 
maybe when I'm done I'm gonna have a big bowl of spaghetti.

-----------------

Game rules:

It's mechanomancy.

Only without the realization that something is being built. If you're a 
rules freak, I suppose you could say that a hateboxer is building a 
device that acts as a psychoanalyst and helps to remove failed notches 
in accordance with the madness rules. But really, the entire point of 
hateboxing is turning the charging structure of mechanomancy into a tool 
for eliminating memories.

(For some strange reason, I have an image of Dexter, from the Dexter's 
Lab cartoon, and his continuous tightening of the same nut-and-bolt 
assembly, as a kind of hateboxing.)

Trent assumes that most hateboxers will break taboo enough times to keep 
anything truly scary from being built. But eventually, a hateboxer will 
find a way to infuse his box with a major charge. The results of a 
Major-Effect Clockwork, infused with negative emotions, should be as 
spectacular as they are destructive.