Professor Sven invented a board game, “Methamphedia,” kind of Trivial Pursuit meets Risk, with dice and timer and a board he had had drawn—just the prototype—on the back of a window-blind, and kept rolled up like a minor Impressionist smuggled out of the Louvre under a raincoat. “See, you pick a card. And that’s you.” Somehow the explanation never got beyond the Speed-Riddled Icon pictures. “Okay. Great. This is—Bob Fosse—inventor of new semiotics of dance, Oscar-winning director. Star 80, the greatest metaphoric chronicle of America’s obsession with fame. Fifty points. Cultural Impact. Ten for being just a pill-popper. Jacobsen sold him pills which he carried around in his attaché case that his writer pals, Paddy Chayefsky and Neil Simon, called The Pharmacy.

And now—slapping down another card, a photo taped to the back of a cardboard square: a languid blonde in pants. “Marlene Dietrich! You know why she wore pants? For the same reason she ‘wanted to be alone.’ She had welts on her legs. She was a speed-scratcher. Tweaker-nits. So Dr. Max mixed her a custom blend of steroids, opiates, and human placenta, for smoother, silkier skin. Secret Knowledge Points: Twenty-Seven.” He could go on like that. Holding up the card—Hank Williams black-and-white backseat corpse, under the title ULTIMATE ROADKILL—and babbling: “Hank Williams. Dead in the backseat with a speed-clench on his heart. Seventy points for being the first Ampheta Saint…” Scratching his own arms as he speed-raps. “There’s enough celebrities to start a religion. It’s like how L. Ron Hubbard packs ‘em into the Scientology Celebrity, with methedrine instead of E-meters, and Tennessee Williams, Yul Brynner, and Cecil B. DeMille, Truman Capote, the avant garde voodoo dancer and filmmaker Maya Deren, Mother Theresa, and JFK instead of John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and Tom Cruise. Imagine the parties! My idea? Lock everybody in a room with mirrored walls and shoot them up. You see where I’m going? Mirror walls? Eyeballs-as-cameras. I Am a Camera—original name of Cabaret, from Isherwood, directed by—who? Bob Fosse! A fellow Jacobsen Client. You see where I’m going? Cabaret starred Liza Minnelli. Whose mother, Judy Garland, was the first speed starlet. Keep up! Little Judy was already an amphetamine goddess at nine, budding breasts taped down, fed uppers by the pedophile-adjacent, decency-loving Studio Executives at WARNER BROTHERS so she could look happy during The Wizard of Oz. Those songs! Those hot lights! Stay awake, Little Judy! Stay awake! Grown-up Judy was the Joan of Arc of Amphetamine. Yes! Booze-fueled bug-eyed speed diva as sanctified, twitching ampheta-martyr! Americans like their icons on pills. Glamorous damage. Even if they take different pills they’re never that different. Marilyn ended from downers, but she only did downers because she did uppers. Judy started out on speed. You see? You see? If you do a lot of uppers you need downers to come down. That’s the world of Jacobsen abusers. Remember Fosse in All That Jazz? Popping fistfuls of Dexies, staring at his own haunted face in the mirror through eyes so burned out they’re scorched, then launching into Mammy-smile strip club emcee, “It’s showtime! It’s showtime!” You know where he got that? At the Jacobsen Orgies. It’s what Truman Capote used to say every time Mother Theresa pulled down his pants to change his diaper on the dining room table. You think Mother Theresa didn’t like to fly? She said Truman made her feel like she was powdering a baby. Truman lost control of his sphincter from TMM (Too Much Morphine). He had to wear plastic baby-pants. The living saint, Mother Theresa, used to ministering to the infirm, loved to put Tru-Tru buns up and diaper him up after MJ delivered his energy shots. You think it’s a picnic ministering to the dregs of Calcutta? She didn’t just come to New York to raise money. She partied.