I roll up in bed and lean over the side, feet on the floor. There’s a steamboat in my head. That’s right, a rattling, howling dragon of a steamboat. It’s one of those big, side-wheeled monsters that prowled the Mississippi in the 1800’s. The giant paddle-wheels churn muddy, greasy river water. The decks creak, wood and metal bound together by rusting bolts grind with every push upriver. The smokestacks jut upward, towering above the hurricane deck, sporting those lace adornments where metal is made to look delicate but feels sharp and abrasive, especially where they jab into my skull. They belch black smoke into my cranium. The smoke is in my skin, which is sweaty and hot. Dots of pain pollute my attempt to gain some perspective. I hold my temples, but I can’t diminish the heat of the boilers. Sweaty, filth-encrusted men shovel coal into the bellies of these twin giant behemoths. The pressure guages brush the red zone. Heat radiates off them in palpable, feverish waves. Stop it, stop it, stop it. We’re only dreaming. I try to cool them off. I try to ease back on the throttle and reduce the mad, upriver charge that has me hacking and wheezing in the dead of night. I try and distract myself. This is the Mississippi, after all. It’s a beautiful river, expecially now, in 1886. I look to the riverbank. The trees are barren and gray. Gaunt figures stride among the dead groves, gazing at my boat with yellowjack eyes and bared pale teeth. One side to the next and then back, rolling from side to side, just as one shifts while reading a book. A book. It was that book that did this to me. I push myself unsteadily to my feet to find water. My mouth is dry with caked-on river mud. I weave through the darkness into the bathroom. I hesitate to turn on the light, because the way my head feels, I’m certain I’ll see the bulges and the bony ridges and the necrotic stains. But I hit the switch anyway. No, my face is there. Normal as always, perhaps a bit pale and gaunt, but exhibiting none of the outward signs of the river-bound nightmare that’s going on inside my head. I switch off the light and pace the living room, cooling off and breathing deep. I settle on the couch in the semi-darkness, and it’s hours later, when the sounds and images of the River begin to die away, that I’m able to get some sleep.

This is what a virus-induced fever is for me. I’m on the mend, taking antibiotics, but last night is rough. I happen to be doing research on Mississippi riverboats for a script I’m working on, and the last thing I’m looking at before switching off the light is a splendid picture book of Natchez during the heydey of the Riverboat Era.

Incidentally, the image above is a rendition of the Sultana. On April 27, 1865, The Sultana, having just picked up an absurd number of passengers (most of them Union soliders heading home after the Civil War) blew up. The boat burned to the water. Some 1500 people died in the disaster. Read more about it here.

I’d been meaning to do this for about a year and a half. Today is Day Eight. Here’s a quick recap:

DAY ONE

I stock up on maple syrup, organic lemons and cayenne pepper. This is all I will be consuming for the next fourteen days. I’d been meaning to tackle the Master Cleanse for some time. The idea is simple. Stop eating everything. Obtain all nutrients you need to get through the day by drinking a “tea” made of the ingredients pictured above. Purify and detox as a result. Events and business keep me from getting arond to it. But lately, I’m feeling especially toxic. Los Angeles is a fun playground and everything, but it comes with exhaust, cigarette smoke, chemicals and ennui. And there’s delicious Mexican food everywhere. I have all kinds of buildup to expel.

So I assemble three 32 oz. Nalgene bottles and fill ’em up (a third cup maple syrup, a third cup lemon juice and a quarter teaspoon cayenne pepper.) Day one goes swimmingly.

DAY TWO

I feel somewhat light and floaty. Hunger’s not really an issue. The headache is. My body aches all over the place, including my mouth, where a burr of pain has begun to blossom beneath the filling I got a few weeks ago.

DAY THREE

I have strange, painful dreams. I wake up with a serious toothache. Since that rear left quadrant of my mouth has always been problematic, I swing by Rite Aid and pick up a Waterpik. I flush lots of blood and some food (I think it was a medium caesar salad and a package of Oreos) out of the problem gap. The pain increases. By five o’clock that evening I have to call my dentist at the Eastport Dental Centre. They’ll see me tomorrow, they say. And here’s some Vic0din.

But you’re gonna have to eat something.

So leave Amoeba and pick up the pills. Then I swing by Whole Foods and pick out the most innocuous soup I can find, along with a little bread. Returning home, I prepare the soup, heat up the bread. I’m only three days into the plan and here I am about to drop some solids and some toxins into my system. This fast is going really well.

As tasty as the soup and bread is, I can barely eat it around the giant fuzzball of fire in the side of my mouth. I drop the Vic0din, switch on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and settle onto the couch. It takes three pills over the course of the evening to quell the pain.

DAY FOUR

I awake without pain. I traipse over to the dentist. He takes an X-Ray and tells me everything looks great. Our guess is that a gap in the recent filling was trapping food that the Waterpik flushed out. The residual pain probably came from my own incessant worrying of the tooth with my tongue. That’s good news. I can continue with my fast.

That night my neighbors throw an apartment-warming party. The food spread is incredible. There are chips. There is dip. There are egg-rolls and vegetables and Spam. Yes, Spam. But it looks incredible, because I’m really starting to miss food. After a while I excuse myself and head home to distract myself by watching Munich, except that in Munich, Eric Bana plays the leader of a black ops assassin group who happens to know how to cook. All of their important mission planning meetings take place over a very well-photographed meal of divine inspiration. There’s wine and meat and bread and cheese and soup. It’s really tough to watch Munich.

DAY FIVE

Another full day. On the radio, Lisa Mullins interviews a woman who obsesses over chocolate. She describes the process of tasting chocolate, where the best chocolate can be found, the best chocolate she’s ever tasted. I’m drooling on the keyboard. Even the word “chocolate” sounds good to me.

Everyone at work starts bugging me for my extra Vicod!n.

DAY SIX

I’m still doing okay. I miss food, but I’m still not especially hungry. But Saturdays are snack days at Amoeba. All the various stations get their snack bowls refilled on Saturdays. So my coworkers nosh on such delicacies as Pop-Tarts, Rice Krispy treats, cookies and candy. I remind myself that this is one of the reasons I’m fasting in the first place. I need to recalibrate my perception of food. There’s too much of it that’s too available to us middle-class working types.

People think it’s funny that I keep sticking my nose into the Doritos bag and inhaling.

DAY SEVEN

Oddly out of sorts today. Sundays are when I like to arrive to work early, wander through the Farmer’s Market with a cup of coffee and pick up a bag of oranges and a couple of blue corn tamales. But not today! No, no.

Energy levels are low, but it’s only because I’m not drinking enough of the Master Elixir. I didn’t brew enough because I’d run out of lemons. That night I return home and write and then watch Batman Begins. It’s a fine film. Very little eating in it.

TODAY

I awake with a bit of congestion in the lungs. I’ve decided to terminate the fast on Day Ten, which is the standard short-end length of the Master Cleanse. By the time I ease back into a regular diet, it’ll be Sunday, which is Day Fourteen anyway. I have plenty of energy. I’m not hungry.

But I wouldn’t mind a bagel.

As is often the case with me, I decide it’d be nice to go on a vacation, then in order to do so, I have to work extra hours and scramble to get shifts covered and run around like a maniac to make sure everything’s tied down, finished up and otherwise handled, so when the time finally comes I actually NEED a vacation.

After five days of solid work, I’m off in paradise until Sunday night. Enjoy my absence.