AK-ULTRA

GERMS: The Warfare

“Swallow,” my psychologist said. “Swallow your spit.”

I turned the sheet of paper and held up my writing. I had scrawled a small memo on a notepad. I can’t. There’s bacteria in there.

“Just gulp it down. It’s easy.”

I worked my throat, rolling my tongue on the roof of my teeth, and felt the balmy nature of saliva filling my mouth, swishing, but I still couldn’t stand the thought of these millions of microbes and parasites riding down my esophagus like a water-slide.

“You can do it,” my counselor urged.

I turned my head side to side unable to imagine the unspeakable actions she asked of me. Swallow my own spit? I didn’t want my own germs. How could I swallow my own spit knowing I could die by ingesting the wrong kinds of spit?

I can’t, I wrote.

“Yes, you can. It’s all in your head here,” she said, tapping her forehead with a clickable pen. “Everyone else does it.”

That was the problem. I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I wanted to be me. And I told her drinking my own saliva was the dirtiest, unhealthiest action one could carry out. It made me sick to my stomach thinking that the woman sitting on the leather couch had already swallowed half a pint a day, which came out to two liters of day for the entire day.

“You can do it. Why aren’t you doing it?”

Saliva dribbled out from the corner of my mouth. My therapist offered a clean tissue which I stretched to grab a hold of. She pulled back at the last minute and clicked her tongue.

“Swallow it first.”

No.

“Do it,” she repeated. “You can do it.”

I wanted to cry. Whenever it came to this point, I would spit out gallons of fluid out on the sidewalk, in the trash barrel, or in a super-sized cup which I’d pour out later. Now, I had nowhere to turn. Splashing my psychologist wasn’t an option. Trembling, I braced myself for the watery fluid going down my throat, and I swallowed. All the spit I had in my mouth funneled inward like a mouthwash, and I almost passed out. The taste was horrendous. The feeling was even worse. The unimaginable had happened.

I swallowed my own spit.

Deep down, I accomplished the very thing which I deemed impossible with the aid of my counselor. I felt a sense of triumph.

“Thank you,” I said.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked, smiling.

“No, not at all.”

It was short-lived, because history repeated itself; I began to feel my cheeks become wet and my mouth filling up with saliva again. Here we go again, I thought.