So, NASA’s paying someone to lay down for three months.
As fun as remaining in a catatonic torpor may sound, I invite you all to think about the reality of how bad this’d suck if you actually did it. Remember that scene in the movie Se7en? No, not the memorable one with the bound up fatty (who totally could’a broken those restraints and eaten his captor to escape). And not the one with the knife dildo, either. I mean the guy who gets strapped to the bed and kept barely alive. Remember what happens to him? Aside from nomming off his own tongue? He’s like liquid muscle by the time they find him.
And that’s exactly what NASA’s aiming to do with this dude Andrew Iwanicki.
So far, he’s been in that bed for about five weeks – and unlike the Se7en sloth – he’ll be out within the next couple months with his tongue intact (one hopes). But in the meantime – since it’s the only muscle that’s getting much action (insert deferred random sex reference here) he’s using it to share his tale online. And that story’s basically of a dude who’s been running Ironmans and just got laid off from his job as an artist manager. He’d applied to be a NASA lab rat, but figured that with 25,000 other applicants, his chances were about as good as mine of getting into Harvard and inventing Facebook, after inventing the time machine that would allow all of that. Then, the stars NASA so diligently studies all aligned one day. Homie got pink slipped from his gig and suddenly the cosmonauts were calling him about being the climactic finale to their outer-space study on how astronauts rot away while they’re still alive.
What wowed me was some of the other people doing this. There were the sorts you’d expect (a novelist trying to make ends meet, a dad-to-be saving up cash). But then there was a veteran who was on his third adventure in bed rest – and riddled with IV marks from where they’d stuck him so much.
Three times three months?
That Third Eye Blind song “Losing a whole year” is suddenly coming to mind…
(Then again, he’s a war vet. That’s an explanache in itself. Do what you need to, bud.)
As for Iwanicki, he was about to find out for himself what all his fellow test subjects were going through firsthand. While he was pretty stoic about the prep work of mri scans and breathing poison, he couldn’t have expected how miserably painful on the back muscles and spine laying supine would be. Though his piece on Vice indicates a hopeful outlook (balanced by spending equal amounts of time binging House of Cards seasons, re-centering with spiritual literature, and studying for LSATS), he does concede what rock bottom looks like. And it has a lot to do with the rocks that come outta your bottom while you lay as still as a rock:
When I finally called for a bedpan, I decided I had hit rock bottom. It’s impossible to maintain even the slightest bit of dignity while crapping in a horizontal position; doing so simply defies the human anatomical design. As I struggled on my little plastic shit pot, I couldn’t help but reflect upon the fact that my new bathroom was also my dining room, living room, and bedroom for the next two months.
No sex? No morning yoga or jogging? No upright shitting?
What hell is this? Suddenly, it’s not sounding as exciting for a three month plan so much as a “something I’d like to spend just the remainder of rainy today doing” kinda thing. Maybe I should retract my volunteer offer after all. How much is this poor bastard getting paid anyway?
$18,000.00
Oh. Right. Wait…
“I VOLUNTEER!!!!!1”
Hell yes, I’ll spend a quarter year morphing into a living corpse and getting NASA ass.
Espesh if it’ll have that much cash coming outta it when I get home.
Where do I sign?