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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. YOU COULD PROBABL Y DO BETTER
By
Ryan Davidson
Submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
of American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Fine Arts
In
Creative Writing
Chair:
E.J. Levy
/ j/lA — L John Liderkin
Dean ot the college or Arts and Sciences
Date
2007
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. YOU COULD PROBABLY DO BETTER
BY
Ryan Davidson
ABSTRACT
You Could Probably Do Better is an original collection of fiction and non-fiction
that investigates the world of dull, not especially attractive, and tragically unhip white
males. They are the young men that you don’t notice in subway cars, or the guys that
can’t think of anything clever to say at the bar The) are a generation of men reaching
adulthood, and learning that the image of white middle-class America they were raised on
is quickly going bankrupt at the start of the twenty-first century. They struggle with
shifting gender roles, economic stratification, and social pressure to “succeed,” as they
attempt to shape meaningful identities for themselves, but more often find themselves
clinging to the past, and facing their future with a shrug and some thinly veiled self-
criticism. Finally, the collection’s title in no way reflects the author’s opinion of the
work.
ii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First, a monstrous thank you to John Elderkin and E.J. Levy, together you are the
Cadillac of thesis committees. Second, thank you to my family, you all get four stars.
Third, if there were to be a zombie apocalypse 1 would want these people in a bunker
with me: Sara Richmond, Steve Nantier, Op, Hulk Hogan, and although he has already
been thanked once, my brother.
Here is a long list of other people and organizations that merit thanks: Pedro
Arrupe, Arrape Revenge, Curb, Nobou Uematsu, Karen Fish, Evan Pickering, Michael
McDonald, Robert Heinlein, McSweeny's, Seth Miller, Peter Molyneux, Patchy, Guapo’s,
SUNY Stony Brook, George Gonzalez, Mike Buitrago (you can’t kill a zombie with a
coffee table), Peter Gallagher, Apple Retail R068, Rocky Kooney, Madhavi Menon. Erik
Dussere, Twisting Nether - Alliance (ftw), Lee K. Abbott, Blizzard Entertainment (for
teaching me how to write an overly verbose acknowledgement page), Greg Kasavin,
Richard McCann, Andrew Holleran, Myra Sklarew, and all the children that had their
birthday cakes stolen by Gene.
Finally, there are no zombies in this thesis, but only because I did not want to
encourage the undead. As much as I love speculating about a zombie apocalypse. 1 dearly
hope we never see one.
iii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...... ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... iii
Stories
EL NINO WALKS INTO A BAR...... 1
HOW TO STAY LONG, HOW TO STAY STRONG...... 3
SWEAT...... 16
MEN FOR HIRE...... 29
THERE AND BACK ...... 49
HOW TO PRETEND PEOPLE IN PORN AREN’T FAKING ...... 57
MARK FINNEY MUST DIE ...... 75
iv
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EL NINO WALKS INTO A BAR
El Nino walks into a bar and orders a scotch and soda.
The bar is mostly empty. A priest, a nun, and a rabbi are sitting at a table near the
back. The priest is counting in a low voice, “sevenhundredandseventeen-
sevenhundredandeighteen.”
Above the bar an old Sony Trinitron is tuned to the Weather Channel. A lady
reporter with well-articulated cheekbones is indicating how El Nino is likely to cause a
slight, almost imperceptible shift in ocean temperatures between San Diego and Fresno.
The time in the comer is 11:46 AM. El Nino is developing a nasty habit of getting drunk
before noon.
The bartender picks up the TV remote. He has an eye patch and a nametag that
reads: Louis. The remote makes a sticky sound as it tears free from the dark walnut bar.
The priest is still counting. Louis changes the channel from weather to football.
“Wait,” says El Nino. “That was the good part.”
“The good part of the weather?”
El Nino feels a little embarrassed. “El Nino is much more dramatic in the
Southern hemisphere,” he explains.
Louis looks unconvinced.
1
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“El Nino is not even real,” says a man with a small dog sitting further down the
bar. “A1 Gore made it up.”
El Nino takes a long swill of his scotch, cradles his chin in his hands, and stares
miserably at himself in the mirror behind the bar.
“Eighthundredandthirtytwo-eighthundredandthirtythree.”
“What’s his story?” El Nino asks, gesturing to the counting priest.
Without turning from the game Louis says, “He comes in every Sunday. He is
searching for God in prime numbers.”
“Has he ever found him?”
Louis nods, “Twice.”
“What happens then?”
“Mostly high-fives,” Louis says.
“That’s a fellow with concrete goals,” says the man down the bar.
On TV the crowd erupts as the announcer calls #17, the quarterback.
“Must be nice,” El Nino says, and then he orders another drink. He is waiting for
weather news at halftime. He is waiting for someone to notice him. He is waiting to be
appreciated.
And that’s the joke.
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When your buddy says, “I’ve got a killer penny stock,” try to remind yourself that
he is a cokehead. Act interested, but not too interested. Listen to him ramble on about
“inverted teacups,” “margin,” and “mass marketers.” Nod your head and pretend like
these terms actually mean something. When he pulls you across his apartment, boots up
his old nicotine-stained iMac, and calls up a graph from Forbes, look at it closely. Make
dramatic motions with your eyebrows. Tell him that the graph certainly looks promising.
Go home. Fire up your web browser and head for Yahoo! Finance. Type in the
stock’s symbol and press the button marked “Get Quote.” Note that the stock has made a
twenty percent gain in the last three days. Don’t be jealous when you realize that your
buddy made one thousand dollars last week for sitting on his ass and playing XBox.
Remind yourself that you have no money to invest. When your stomach starts doing
nervous flip-flops, go eat the leftover Domino’s in the fridge.
Spend the rest of the night researching online brokerage firms. Just in case.
When your buddy Instant Messages you on Monday morning asking if you are
“in,” act nonchalant. You are still thinking about it. You have your money tied up in
other places: mostly your underwear drawer and a cup of change in the kitchen. Pretend
that you are a financially responsible adult and that your entire paycheck doesn’t go to
3
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credit card debt and punishing your liver. Wonder why the hell you care what your
cokehead friend thinks about your personal finances,
When he writes back, “John got in this morning on the dip,” resist the urge to
respond “Good for fuckin’ John.” Instead think about asking him whether or not it is still
a good time to buy in. Don’t actually ask. It will make you look like a lemming. Instead
just let the cursor blink on the screen. Wait for him to write, “Get in soon man. This thing
is going to the mooooooooon!” Note that some of the “O’s” have been replaced with
yellow smiley faces.
Launch your web browser and head back to Yahoo! Finance. The stock will be up
again, thirty percent, just today. In your head calculate how much money you could have
already made. Remind yourself that you don’t really have any money to invest. Read and
reread all of the company’s press releases. Check their website. Think about buyingThe
Wall Street Journal. Stop. Why would The Wall Street Journal ever have any information
on an upstart, over-the-counter, pink sheet stock like this one? Calculate how much
money you could have already made if you had invested one thousand dollars this
morning.
What about five thousand?
What about ten?
Who the fuck has ten thousand dollars to invest?
Remind yourself that your buddy’s ideas always go to shit. Like the time he
promised you five hundred dollars to edit the amateur porno he shot in the back of his
van. Tell yourself that this stock is a bad idea too. Try hard to believe it. Just out of
curiosity check the price again. It will, of course, be up.
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Call your old roommate, the finance major, the one who bends over for TD
Waterhouse now. Say, “What’s up!” and “It’s been a long time!” Ask him what he thinks
about the stock.
He will say, “A hot tip, eh? If I had a nickel for every time—.” And you will think,
please, don’t finish that sentence. But he will anyway. Wait to hear his fingers clickity-
clacking on a keyboard. Spend a few minutes listening to words like “Huh” and “Ok.”
Wait for him to say, “Let me check the Level Two stuff.” Wonder what the hell Level
Two is. Wait quietly. Rearrange the alphabet magnets on your refrigerator to spell
“duschbag.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he will say in a voice that sounds like your father’s, “I
wouldn’t do it. 1 have seen these penny stocks go belly up too many times.”
Explain how the stock has already made terrific gains. Regurgitate all of the fancy
rhetoric that your buddy threw at you. Tell him about the inverted teacup and the graph
on Forbes.
He will laugh and say, “Listen, I didn’t say don’t do it. I am just saying that penny
stocks are a gamble and, honestly, I think this one has already had its day.”
Nod your head. Why are you nodding over the phone? Make deep throaty noises
so he can hear how hard you are thinking. Bite your lower lip. After an awkward pause,
say, “you’re probably right, but hey man, let’s just say I hypothetically did want to buy
this stock. Could I buy it through you?”
“We don’t usually deal with personal accounts,” he will say.
Say, “Right-o.”
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Listen to him ramble about his life, his apartment, and his fiancee for another five
minutes. Remember that you brought this on yourself. Try to egress by limiting your
responses to monosyllables and grunts. Close with, “Well, thanks for the info man.” And
“I’ll check you out soon. Maybe I will see you at so-and-so!”
Hang up the phone. You are not buying this stock. Right? Right.
Take one cleansing breath: in through your nose and out through your mouth.
You’re out. You just saved yourself from a huge potential loss. As a reward, order
from the expensive delivery place, the one that makes brickoven pizza. No Domino’s
tonight. Get some exotic topping like caramelized onions or porcini. Walk to the comer
and buy a six-pack. Lager or pale ale? Watch baseball or a kung-fu DVD. Enjoy yourself
now that you have escaped the noose of Wall Street.
The next morning you will want to check the stock’s price. Don’t. Don’t think
about buying a plasma TV. Don’t think about paying off your college loans in one lump
sum. Don’t think about a new apartment. Don’t think about European cars, Caribbean
islands, bikini-clad women on yachts, or Italian leather furniture. Try not to look at your
nasty brown carpet, your raggedy old college t-shirts, or the busted stereo that you got for
your thirteenth birthday. Ignore your credit card statements, rent, and electric bill.
Most importantly, when your buddy’s number shows up on Caller ID, don’t
answer the phone.
But if you do, he will say, “I sure hope you are in now man. When the market
closes on Friday shit’s really gonna get crazy. Think about it man! All those poor
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bastards who didn’t know, just sitting on their hands all weekend listening to the hype.
They’re gonna go fuckin’ bananas on Monday morning. And then... to the moon!”
Tell yourself that this makes too much sense. In the back of your mind you might
start to feel a little apprehension again. You might just start to think that, maybe, you are
the poor bastard who will be sitting on his hands all weekend.
When he repeats, “So are you in?”
Say, “Yeah, I’m in.”
He will say, “Fuck yeah! What are you in at?”
Explain that you are not in yet. You are getting in. Soon. Real soon. Right after
you get off the phone.
He will say, “Hurry up man. I’ve already doubled my money.”
Hang up the phone. Try and figure out how to buy a stock. It must be easy
because eighty-year-old dyslexic grandmothers can do it in commercials. Head back to
whatever online brokerage firm last grabbed your attention. Don’t bother shopping
around. You don’t have time. Commissions? Fuck it! You’re going to make thousands.
What is a thirty-dollar commission? You might make tens of thousands, or even
hundreds. This thing is going to the moon.
Breeze through all the important legal notices that you should probably be
reading. If the broker asks you whether or not you want to apply for margin, just say no.
You can figure out what that is later. You probably don’t need it now anyway. Just keep
clicking “Accept” until you see something that looks important. Just keep clicking
“Accept” until you see dollar signs.
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Scrape up all the money that might be lying around, birthday checks, loose
change, unrecycled beer cans, get it all. Get a total. That is X. Now figure out what is
clinging to life in your checking account. That is Y. Add X and Y. Divide by three to get
the amount of money you should invest. Add five hundred dollars because this is a sure
thing. The total is Z. When your online broker asks you for an initial deposit enter Z.
Buy in high during Amateur Hour, when all of the institutional sellers are letting
people like you drive the price up before the eleven o’clock sell off and inevitable retrace.
Fifteen minutes later you will be the proud owner of a few thousand sheets of paper
locked away in a safety deposit box somewhere in Colorado.
Call your buddy back. Tell him, “I’m in.”
He will say, “Fuck yeah! What are you in at?”
Tell him what price you got in at.
He will laugh and say, “Not bad, but I bet you wish you’d gotten in on day one.”
Admit that this is true.
He will say, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter man. This thing is like a rocket ship!”
Say, “Fuck yeah!”
Spend the rest of the day jamming the refresh button on your web browser as you
watch the stock’s price cruise upwards on a beautiful jagged graph. Look at all the fancy
statistics and abbreviations posted next to the price like, Market Cap, P/E, and EPS,
Wonder what the hell they mean. Make a mental note to learn. Assume for now that they
are probably good.
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For dinner get expensive take-out again. You can afford it since you have already
made fifteen percent on your money. Get it from the fancy Chinese place that has the
gold seal no-cat-in-our-food guarantee. This is how adults eat. Class all the way.
No DVD tonight. You have to work.
At work migrate back and forth between the manager’s office and the security
monitors. Let the floor run itself tonight. You have earned a few of these lazy shifts as
night manager by busting your ass every summer of your college career here in the retail
world.
Midway through the night, your security guy will call you over to the monitors
and say, “Check out the blond in Entertainment.”
She is not your type. Ask him if he has any brunettes on the radar. Watch him flip
through the available cameras until he stops on a girl making her way through Home
Goods and Bedding.
“Seven,” he will ask?
“Nine.”
“There is no way that she is a nine.”
Ignore him. He has no taste. That blond he was checking out was fifty percent
after market parts.
Wait for your security guy to say, “Well I’m gonna go cheek out that blond. I’ll
leave you two alone.”
Watch the brunette pause to look at throw pillows and duvet covers. She keeps
looking at the cheap ones. The ones that belong in dorms. She is still an undergraduate,
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probably at some small liberal arts school where she takes literature classes and sings in a
female a cappella group. Wonder what she is doing shopping in the middle of the night.
Is she here alone? Probably not. With friends? A boyfriend?
She looks like the kind of girl you would like to meet someday. Someday when
your first five minutes of conversation don’t have to include “I’m the night manager at...
and the predictable lack of interest that always follows. Imagine what it would be like
to say, “I’m self employed,” and when she presses for details flashing a devil-may-care
smile, and saying, “I play the market.” She is the kind of girl you would like to meet
when you make it big. You wouldn’t have to be Ferrari-big, just Lexus-big, hell, you
would take Acura-big.
Watch as she makes her way down to the dust ruffles, running her hand along the
shelves, wrist limp, not really looking at anything. Her hair is just long enough to swing
side-to-side when she walks. It is kind of hypnotizing.
When she reaches the end of the aisle a big barrel-chested guy walks up behind
her, puts his arm around her waist, and escorts her off the camera.
Switch the security cameras back to their regular rotation.
On Friday set an alarm so you can wake up and check the stock’s price at 9:30
when the market opens. Around lunch fire off an e-mail to your buddy. Write,
Hey Man- How sick is this run. I am already up seventy-five percent! This morning’s press release was HOT! Thanks again for letting me know about this! Later.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fifteen minutes later get his reply. Try to ignore the first sentence.
I pulled my original investment out this morning. IT’S ALL PROFIT RIDING NOW!!! That PR is gonna drive it all day. John wants to go to Vegas after this thing finishes blowing up!! Wait for Monday. TO TFIE MOOOOON!
You have never had any interest in going to Vegas, but what the hell. Maybe you
just weren’t interested because you never had any money.
You will be up one hundred percent when the market closes for the weekend.
Watch the last after hours’ trades trickle in and push the stock higher. Wonder about who
is allowed to trade after hours. Probably not you.
When your parents call on Saturday and your mom asks if you are “okay for
money,” tell her that you are doing great. You have started investing in the stock market
and already doubled your investment.
Your mom will say, “Terrific! Can you show me how to do it?”
Your dad will say, “Count your money and run. Penny stocks always die.”
Don’t bother contradicting him. Just say, “Hey, I had to ask Mom one more thing,
is she still there?”
When she gets back on the phone say, “I am thinking about taking a trip to
Vegas.”
On Sunday you will find yourself anxious for Monday. You will realize how
much you have been thinking about the stock and how much time you spent tracking it
during the week. While the market is on hiatus try thinking about what you will do with
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your money. Some of it will go towards expenses. Some you will spend frivolously. But
what really entices you is the idea of calling back your old shithead roommate and
saying, “You know, I was going to take your advice, but then my gut just said to go for it.
I guess I was lucky, because I really made a killing. Anyway, 1 am over here sleeping on
pillows stuffed with one hundred dollar bills, and just thought that you might want to
know that I was right... you were wrong.”
With your old solar-powered calculator figure out how much you have earned.
Run through hypothetical situations for Monday. What will your earnings be if the
stock’s value increases ten percent? Twenty? Fifty? Hey, it could happen. Tomorrow is
Moonday!
When the stock is down on Monday morning you will get an e-mail from your
buddy addressed to you and seven other people. You will only know one of them. It will
say,
HELLO CLASS! Now pay attention because the professor is lecturing. This is a perfectly healthy retrace. The big shots on Wall Street are trying to drive the price as low as it will go before they turn around and start pumping millions into this thing! Hold tight gang, because on Friday we’re going to be heading to the MOOOOON! Stay LONG. Stay STRONG!
Tell yourself that this makes sense. As you watch your profits slip from one
hundred percent down to fifty, keep telling yourself that this is a “healthy retrace.” Before
you really start worrying you will get a phone call from your buddy.
He will say, “Hey man! I hope you didn’t sell out today like that pussy John.”
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Say, “No way man. I’m long. I’m strong.”
“Good because we start TV advertisements in two weeks and then this thing is
gonna blow wide open!”
Reply, “Are you serious?” And for effect add, “Fuck yeah!”
When you get off the phone turn on the TV, crack open a beer, and maybe check
some flights to Vegas. Vegas, baby!
Wonder when the commercials will air. Will they be on network stations or cable?
Imagine them airing during Monday Night Football. There will be so many people
watching. This thing is going to explode.
On Tuesday morning the stock will be down again. All day long your buddy will
send out his mass e-mails and talk about “finding a bottom” and “meeting resistance.” At
the end of the day your profits will be cut to thirty-five percent.
That night your buddy will IM you. He will write, “The commercials are on the
website man! So investors can get a preview.”
Head for the company’s website and follow the ambiguous links until you find the
commercials. They play in tiny windows. They look kind of cheap. Not local commercial
cheap, but they certainly don’t look like something that would air on network television.
Message your buddy back and tell him that the commercials look “good.”
He will say, “Fuck yeah!”
On Wednesday you will just break even.
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What does it mean to buy a stock? Buying a stock is buying into a company. It
means that however abstractly, however minusculey, you are financially responsible for
that company’s survival and continued operation. Unlike the consumer who buys their
products at a premium, you are supplying the company with no-holds-barred capital.
What’s more, buying a stock is taking a stand. It is saying, “in this I believe,” in this
company, in this market, in this economy, in these United States of America. Buying a
stock is so much more than putting your money into a long-term, high-yield, high-risk
bank account. It is one of life’s defining moments, like climbing behind the wheel of a
car, or losing your virginity.
And that is why you will hold on Thursday, even after you have taken a thirty
percent loss.
Later your buddy will call you. He will say, “The damn mass marketers are really
dragging us down, huh?”
Say, “Yeah.”
“Well anyway you got you initial investment out at the high on Friday, right? It’s
all profit riding now, right?”
Lie. “Yeah.”
“Fuck yeah! So it’s all just profit riding now. Let the big shots kick the shit out of
this thing for a while. When those commercials come out... to the moon!”
When you get off the phone try not to think about why the stupid cokehead didn’t
tell you to pull your money on Friday. Take a cleansing breath. When you go to grab a
beer for your nerves, you will see that you are all out.
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On Friday morning you will receive one last mass e-mail. In it your cokehead
friend will attempt to patch all of the holes in his — in your — sinking ship. Somewhere in
between his discussion of “wide audience e-mail marketing” and “stronger company-
investor information pipelines,” you will admit defeat. This thing is in the basement and
it is never climbing back out.
The stock is going nowhere. Admit it, and in that moment realize that there is
nothing you can do about it. You could pull your money, but that would be a joke now,
like cracking open a five hundred dollar piggy bank to retrieve a quarter. All you can do
now is wait and hope that things will get better.
When your parents call on Saturday, your mom will ask you how your stock is
doing.
Tell her that it is doing well. Tell her that that you have decided to let your money
sit for a little while to see what happens. Tell her you are expecting big things in a few
weeks. Tell her anything but the truth. Because, even though the money is gone, you can
still at least pretend to know what you’re doing.
She will, in a very supportive way, say, “Well that seems like a reasonable idea.
Your father thinks you are throwing your money away, but I keep telling him that you
can make your own decisions.”
Laugh.
Out of habit she will ask, “Are you eating enough?”
Lie, “Sure. I just ordered Domino’s,”
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When I get called out of homeroom and directed down to Coach’s office I already
know what it is about. I am over weight. I am three pounds overweight and I have a jones
for a turkey sandwich like you wouldn’t believe. On the whole goddamn team I am the
only guy who didn’t make weight.
Coach is in his old leather chair, his paunch hanging over his crotch, chewing on
an eraser when I get there. As usual the top two buttons of his shirt are undone and the
knot of his tie is hanging halfway down his chest. I have never seen a shirt that fit
Coach’s neck properly. Coach used to be pretty jacked in college, but now he is just fat,
and his shirt shows off way too much chest hair. Seriously, the guy is an ape.
“I’m not wrestling you in the one-thirty spot,” Coach says.
“I don’t want to wrestle the one-thirty spot Coach.” This is true for two reasons.
One, one-thirty is not my spot, and you don’t bump up to another guy’s weight class,
even if you are a better wrestler; that is just how it is. Guys get pissed about that. Two,
we are wrestling Chaminade today, and Jennings wrestles one-twenty-five for them.
Last year I quick-pinned Jennings in the first round of the League Tournament.
While he was flailing away beneath me, he jammed his little finger up my nose and
popped a blood vessel. I had to finish the tournament with eight inches of gauze shoved
up my left nostril. After my last match the trainer had to pull it all out with tweezers. It
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took twenty minutes. I have been looking forward to breaking Jennings across his own
ass for almost a year now. Besides, beating Jennings basically guarantees me first seed in
the tournament this year, and if I have first seed, I have a good shot at winning.
“Is your mom home?” Coach asks.
I shrug. My mom split six months ago; Coach knows this but he’s not exactly the
kind of guy who remembers.
“What about your dad?”
Fifteen minutes later my dad is on his way from work to pick me up.
Have you ever dropped three pounds in one day? It is possible. You probably
think that it can’t be done, but I have done it before. You have to sweat it out. It is only
water weight, but you can lose three pounds in one day. Think about it. If you weighed
everything you had to drink in a day, how much would it weigh? Five pounds? Ten?
Three pounds is nothing. No OJ at breakfast. No water fountain after practice. Your body
is mostly water.
Guys do all kinds of sick shit to suck weight. Scott Vargas (155 lbs.) once spit in
a cup for an entire day. By seventh period he almost had the thing full. Disgusting, but it
bought him a few ounces. Sam Dachille (189 lbs.) shaved himself bald before a meet, but
that didn’t help. Hair doesn’t weigh that much, and wrestlers don’t usually have that
much hair anyway. Tim Button (160 lbs.) earned near legendary status when he took a
six-pound dump before a tournament and dropped two weight classes. He took third, but
stopped wrestling after sophomore year.
That’s all gimmicky stuff though.
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Nothing beats sweating it out. When you are a freshman guys will tell you to try
sleeping with no blanket and the windows open so you shiver and bum calories in your
sleep. Bullshit. Or they will tell you to sleep with five blankets and the heat all the way
up, so you sweat while you sleep. That doesn’t work. You can’t sleep like that. Then
there is Billy Connors (92 lbs). Freshman year, some seniors got him to take laxatives
before a meet. Connors wound up on the wrong side of a fireman’s carry and when his
back hit the mat, he shit all over himself. Automatic forfeit.
Dad’s car is like a sauna by the time we get home. It must be miserable for him. I
can see his shirt sticking to his chest, but it helps me start a sweat. Dad gets it. He
wrestled. Only wrestlers understand wrestlers. Mom used to hate when I came home to
suck weight, but then maybe that was just because it interrupted her fuck-time with her
boyfriends while I was at school and Dad was at work.
“Revenge,” Dad says pointing to the nostril Jennings mauled.
“Revenge,” I say getting out of the car.
It’s not really revenge because Jennings is just a little bitch that got pinned in the
first period. Still it helps to have motivation.
When I was a freshman, this senior Roz (165 lbs.) used to ride me nonstop. He
wasn’t that good, but he was this huge Iranian kid, like the damn Iron Sheik from WWF.
Whenever he was losing a match he would just break the other guy’s nose. I once saw
him crossface a guy from Trinity so hard that the blood squirted all the way to the scoring
table. So one time in practice he knees me in the nuts while I am in referee’s position.
Not like a sack-whack either, I mean he was trying to crush me. After I picked my head
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up out of the puke bucket I charged him. He tossed me and was about to smash my face
in when some other guys pulled him off.
Okay, but then next year Roz comes back with a big college beer gut, and I’ve put
on fifteen pounds of muscle. So Roz is sparring with us and thinks he’s going to roll me
like old times. Wrong. I take a shot at his legs, but he won’t go down. So I drive him into
the wall. When he hits I feel the air leaving his stomach like it’s an untied balloon.
Afterwards he just lay on the mats like a big stupid fish. I hit that wall so damn hard that I
broke my hand. The doctor called it a boxer’s fracture. I didn’t even notice until practice
ended.
“God damn son,” Coach said when he saw my hand all puffed up. My pinky was
like ninety degrees from where it should have been, no joke.
That’s revenge.
In the house I grab a garbage bag and a pair of scissors from the kitchen. I head
up to my room and pile my school clothes in the comer. Then 1 go to work on the garbage
bag. I cut a head hole along the top, and an armhole on each side. You don’t want to
make the holes too big because you don’t want the heat to slip out, but at the same time
you don’t want to kill yourself.
I slip the trash bag over my head, and a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt on top of it. I pull
some longjohns out of my underwear drawer and put them on below a pair of nylon wind
pants. I tuck the pants into big wool socks, the kind you wear skiing. Then I grab Dad’s
old winter hat from his room. The hat is important because a lot of heat escapes from
your head, especially when you have short hair, but the trash bag is what really seals the
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deal. You can’t wear one at practice. Hell, you can’t even wear a wet suit at practice
anymore, and those things breathe way better than trash bags, which don’t breathe at all.
Coach lets us wear them on the bus sometimes. You’d be surprised how much weight you
can lose running the bus aisles on the way to another school. Not pounds, but you can
definitely lose ounces.
My mom’s old exercise bike is in the basement. She never used it, so she didn’t
take it with her. One day while I was at school she moved all her crap out of the house. I
guess her boyfriend must have helped her or something because there was this whole pile
of junk left by the curb, and there was no way she could have earned it all herself. The
bike was just sitting there with all the other stuff she didn’t want. I dragged it back in
because I use it sometimes to suck weight. The stupid thing is that she knew that, and she
tossed it anyway.
I remember carrying the bike back inside, and it was like the whole house was
different. She took all kinds of stuff. There used to be this bookshelf in the front hallway,
but that was gone and there was this huge clean spot on the carpet where it used to be. I
brought the bike back down to the basement where it had been since forever. There was
all kinds of stuff missing there too, like just old boxes of records and crap, but when stuff
just disappears like that it makes the room feel different, you know? 1 probably rode that
bike for like two hours that night, just pumping it and pumping it until I thought my
calves were going to explode. It’s not some fancy computerized thing, it is that old kind,
like from the seventies, and I thought it was going to fall apart because it was rattling so
bad, but it’s still in one piece.
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Dad said I could keep as long as he didn’t have to look at it. That’s fine. The
basement is the perfect place for sweat anyway. I keep an old stereo down there too, and
that is all I need. The basement is small and I can really make it cook down there. I can
make it rain from the ceiling pipes.
Even when she was still around, my mom rarely came to my meets, and when she
did she never watched. “They’re so rough,” she would say. “I hate seeing other boys hurt
you.” All the other moms watch. They are big, fat women, and they sit in the stands and
yell stuff like “Throw the half!” and “Bar arm! Bar arm!” so loud that sometimes you
can’t even hear Coach. My mom used to sit at the top the bleachers in a short skirt and
black boots, hiding her face while Dad videotaped eight rows down from her. She always
got real dressed up to come to the meets, and it was kind of embarrassing when everyone
else’s mom was wearing a sweatsuit and Nikes. When I was a freshman guys used to give
me a hard time about her. Like in a spladle, or some other really gay pin, they’d be like,
“This is what I want to do to Moran’s mom!” Of course, that was when I was a freshman.
I have a pretty good sweat going now, but it’s not a three-pound sweat, not yet.
Maybe you think I’m a slacker, like I should have lost this weight a while ago. That’s not
it at all. I have been eating nothing but bananas, NutriGrain bars, and soup for a week
now. When you only have four-percent body fat, your weight can shift ten pounds in a
week easy, and ever since they started testing body fat at the beginning of the season you
can’t lose the extra pounds for insurance. You have to stay at the “minimum target
weight.”
They have the school nurse test you now before the season begins. She takes
measurements all over your body with these things that look like plastic scissors. If she
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measures less than seven percent body fat you can’t lose any more weight for the rest of
the season. Obviously, people really suck weight for this test because if you weigh too
much it can screw your whole season. What’s tough is that you have to be hydrated. The
nurse makes you piss in a cup before she will pass you. If you are not hydrated your
weigh-in doesn’t count. If you can’t pee, you fail. If she tests the pee, and her little plastic
wand thing doesn’t change color, you fail.
But it’s easy to get around the test. It’s not like she watches you or anything. Last
year I squeezed out as much as I could, and then just filled the rest with water from the
toilet. She never knew.
The rumor is that Russian guys cut off their toes to make weight. That sounds
fucked up, but sometimes I think it would be worth it if I could just drink a toe’s worth of
a McDonald’s chocolate shake.
Around the time I am supposed to be in fifth period English I run upstairs to get a
new CD. It’s dangerous to be upstairs by the kitchen. Dad has the fridge stocked pretty
low, but even grated parmesan cheese starts to look pretty good when all you have eaten
for a week is fruit and energy bars.
The phone rings.
“Matt? Why are you home?” It is Kim from the pay phone at school. We’re kind
of together. She hasn’t been around long enough to see this before.
“I didn’t make weight.”
“T hey send you home for that?”
“Coach sets it up.”
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“Did you tell Edison I gave you a blow job?”
“What?” I have to think about this, but yes, I did.
“Did you tell Mike Edison that I gave you a blow job?” Mike Edison (170 lbs.) is
a super-senior who favors Greco-Roman, upper-body style, probably because his arms
are all amped up from steroids. Two days ago in practice Edison cross-faced me, worked
it into a front headlock, and flipped me, at which point he said, “Stop being a fish,
Moran.”
I was going to tell him he might find it more challenging to wrestle someone in
his own weight class, but then I would look like a little bitch. So instead I just said,
“Sorry, I was still busy thinking about that blow job 1 got last night.” That got a big dumb
chuckle out of him.
“Well, if I did,” I say into the phone, “it’s not like it’s not true.”
“So you did tell him?” In the background I hear another girl’s voice say “fucking
asshole.”
“N o.”
“Fuck you.”
Fuck her. I don’t even care enough to slam the phone when she hangs up. It’s not
like you can just go around sucking dick and then pretend it didn’t happen. I just head
back down to the bike.
My mom prepped me all day before I met her boyfriend, Mr. Pike, for the first
time. “You two are a lot alike actually,” she said.
Flow?
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“You are both athletes. He ran track in high school and college.”
Track. Track is for pussies.
I thought I was going to hate Mr. Pike, but he was just kind of a bitch.
He showed up and was nervous. His eyes didn’t focus. His voice was too high.
When guys meet for the first time they use their low voice. “Hey,” the first guy says. To
beat him the next guy has to talk even lower. Hey buddy. In a match when you see that
the other guy is nervous, it gives you confidence. When you grab his shoulders in the first
period and they are shaking, you relax. You know you can beat this guy.
I could beat Mr. Pike. He wasn’t the problem.
The problem was my mom living in a fucking fantasyland. It was like she had
always been with this guy, like Dad didn’t even exist. What did she want me to do, sign
on with this guy too? Did Mr. Pike bring me Gatorade after matches? Did he sweat his
balls off with me on the drive home so I could make weight? No. Dad did those things.
Dad. The guy you fucking married. You don’t just pretend shit never happened.
I have the room raining now, and it is amazing. The moisture runs along the pipes
and then falls down to the floor, or runs coolly down my neck. You probably think I am
exaggerating, but I can make that room rain. At practice he can get the room so hot that
we make mist. It runs along the floor and creeps out from underneath the door. You will
see it forming in the comers, just a small swirl, and then before you know we have the
mats covered. When the mist rolls in you know that every guy in that room is busting his
ass one hundred percent. It sounds disgusting, bodies producing all that moisture, but it’s
not. There comes a point when it is not sweat anymore. There comes a point where you
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are just leaking right out of yourself, and when that happens it is like you are not even
there anymore. It is like you are not even you. You are not thinking, you’re not feeling
anything. Your body has a job to do and it is just doing it, perfectly.
Clean sweat, Coach calls it. “You boys had a nice clean sweat going today.” By
the time he says that we are leaving the room, heading to the showers, the mist is gone
and your body feels it again. You’ve got to walk past that water fountain, and no matter
how bad you want it, you can’t drink. It will only undo all the work you just did. Get
dressed. Go home. The whole time your body just won’t let you forget that an hour ago,
two hours ago, you were absolutely fucking flying. You feel it in your legs. You feel it in
your right knee; it feels just about busted from taking shot after shot. Your whole body
feels like you just rolled off a cliff, and the sick thing is that you can’t wait to do it again
the next day. You can’t wait to get back in that room where you don’t feel anything.
Because ten minutes into practice, fifteen, you forget about all that shit that was hurting
the night before.
That is the rain. That is the mist.
The trash bag is stuck to my skin. I can feel it sliding along my stomach as I get
off the bike. 1 can feel the water that has gathered at the bottom slide around just above
my waistband, and slowly leak down my thighs. My whole body is flushed. I start peeling
clothes off right there because I want to get this trashbag off. I want the plastic off my
body. The last few drops of water are falling from the ceiling.
It is a point of pride to make the wrestling room rain. Wrestling is not like other
sports, nobody watches us practice. A reporter from the school paper came into the room
to interview us once, and I actually thought that Coach was going to murder him. People
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watch the football team practice like it’s some kind of gay parade. Sometimes the football
guys will practice twice a day, two-a-days they call them. If you have to practice twice in
the same day, you are not working hard enough. You couldn’t survive two wrestling
practices in one day. We work harder than any other team at our school. Period. When we
are in that room we are going absolutely fucking crazy. If you stop, you’re a pussy. We
don’t do it to put on a show for the college scouts in the stands, or the girls along the
fence. When we make the room rain it is only for us.
I am going to kill Jennings today. Remember when I said it wasn’t a big deal?
Well, I lied.
I don’t care about Jennings, but I want first seed at the Leagues this year. I want it
bad because this year I am winning that tournament. When my Mom sits down to
breakfast she is going to see my name in the paper: Matt Moran Captures 1251b. Title. Hi
Mom. It’s me your son, hurting people. When my Dad was in high school he caused four
different concussions, two on the same guy from Long River. This is what men in our
family do.
At weigh-ins both teams line up single file, in weight order, heavyweights in the
back, and everybody tries to look tough, which most people can’t do in underwear. So
everyone basically just flexes and tries to make his dick look bigger than everyone else’s.
1 am standing in behind of Shinjo Chang (1201b.) who is munching away on a rice
ball wrapped in seaweed. His dad makes them. He eats those things before every meet.
He says they taste disgusting, but I don’t know. There is something about the way he eats
them. I know he is lying.
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“You make weight?” Shinjo asks. He is still chewing when he says this and I can
see the rice inside his mouth. 1 can hear him swallow.
I tell him 1 don’t know, because honestly, 1 don’t have a clue. I was okay on the
bathroom scale at home, but that thing is so inaccurate that I could be five pounds over
and still have no idea. So I just have to wait my turn and see.
The school scale is a big digital thing that displays your weight in red numbers,
like the kind on an alarm clock. A lot of guys will tell you that you can cheat the scale if
you hang one toe off or something, but that’s not true. That's not how a scale works.
Some wrestlers are stupid. Like Edison. Anyway, you can’t cheat the scale, and if you try
the other team’s coach will call you on it, and then you’re in deep shit. So when it’s my
turn to weigh-in, 1 just step onto the scale, because there is nothing you can do. There is
no way to cheat the scale. It takes a few seconds for your weight to register, and it takes a
few more seconds for the scale to settle. It fluctuates up and down.
When it settles I am three ounces over weight.
Coach looks over my shoulder at the numbers and then says, “Try it.”
Ok, so if you wrestle varsity you are going to see somebody get naked on the
scale. The first time you see it it’s pretty funny in a “that poor bastard” kind of way, but
after a while you just get numb to it. The first timeyou have to get naked on the scale it’s
a different story. It’s not the naked part that is hard; you get over that phobia in the
showers. It’s the getting naked part. The hardest thing is standing there with your thumbs
looped over an elastic band, and willing yourself to get naked in front of not just Coach
and the team, but the other team, and all their coaches, and anyone else that might be
walking through the locker room. That is hard, not just the first time, every time.
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So if you are getting naked it better count. Underwear is good for an ounce,
maybe two at the most, not three. Still, you hope. Maybe this is like double reinforced or
something. So I drop my underwear. Yeah, I hear laughs behind me. Yeah, I move my
hands to cover my crotch. I keep my legs together, head down, and bunch my shoulders.
So there I am, my bare ass on display, and I am still three ounces over.
You might say, big deal, it’s an ounce. Well it might as well be a fucking ton,
because the difference between one ounce and a ton amounts to the same thing right now.
In the end Coach bumped Shinjo up to my weight class, and Shinjo took care of
Jennings in the second round, dropping him to mats so hard that I swear I heard the Earth
crack open. So in the end everything is okay right? Wrong.
When I get home Dad has a deli-wrapped turkey sandwich waiting for me.
“You must be hungry,” he says.
I am hungry, and so thirsty that I feel like my eyes are going to dry out and turn
into dust, but there is no way I am touching that sandwich. I want it, yeah, but eating that
thing would be like saying that this whole day was okay, like today didn’t matter. So I
leave the sandwich alone. I tell Dad I am going to get some rest, but instead I head back
down to the basement, and I get back on the bike.
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Three times I hear the familiar sound of metal colliding with wood as my cousin
Jeff brings his staple-hammer down against the side of the garage. A staple-hammer is a
four-pound hammer that releases half-inch staples on impact. The force required to drive
one of these three-quarter inch plywood is roughly equivalent to strong forehand tennis
swing. They do not produce the same satisfying boom that a normal hammer does when
driving a ten-penny nail into a couple of two-bys, but they still give a satisfying crunch.
We use staple hammers to put up tar paper, the material that goes underneath
shake shingle and prevents water from leaking into a house or, in this case, a garage.
Because the tar paper is usually put on in long five to ten foot strips, it requires you to
hold it very close to the point of the staple hammer’s impact to keep it from bubbling out
or angling down.
Jeffs fourth hit is muffled. “Fuck,” he shouts from the other side of an outdoor
shower. “I just put a god damn staple through my finger.”
I drop my side of the tar paper and come around to look. Jeff did not put the staple
“through” his finger as much as the staple took a good chunk of Jeffs left index finger
along with it. The top of his finger flaps open and closed like a fish mouth.
29
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We are both home on Long Island for Spring Break and we have both been roped
into working for Singco, the family construction business. Neither one of us is really
happy about it, but we also weren’t given a lot of say in the matter. I had planned on
spending break in D.C., but when my uncle, Jeffs father — referred to on site as Boss
Man -- called, that plan quickly fell by the wayside, the victim of an anemic wallet and
family pressure. Jeffs story was similar.
Holding his wrecked finger in his other hand, Jeff heads over to Boss Man’s
truck. I follow mostly out of curiosity, but also because my uncle is not around to see me
gawking.
“Boss Man used to have a first aid kit in here,’’ Jeff says.
I watch as Jeff digs through old sweatshirts, Styrofoam Dunkin’ Donuts coffee
cups, and half-eaten sandwiches on the floor of the truck. The blood on his hand is
mixing with the dirt in the truck to form a sort of reddish-brown paste. I do my best to be
stoic, but I feel the overwhelming need to find him a tube of Neosporin.
Jeffs injury isn’t the worst that Singco has seen. The previous summer my
brother, Eric, put a four inch gash in his arm while cutting lathe, a metal material covered
in plaster that served as the precursor to sheet rock, out of the wall of an old home. The
laceration exposed enough flesh to make Eric’s arm look like a cut of beef at the butcher.
At the same job a few weeks later, Jeff and my brother watched as I fell from
twelve feet of scaffolding to a granite patio, each of them yelling “whoa,” and “okay,”
back and forth like players in a ping-pong match as my hands tried to find purchase on
the way down. I finally grabbed a crossbeam. It stopped my head-first plummet, spun me
one-hundred-and-eighty vertical degrees, and sent my torso crashing into the aluminum
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brace on the next tier down. The impact bent the brace. I fell the rest of the way, landed
on my knees, but had only a lightly bruised rib to show for it. Above me Eric and Jeff
kept up their ping-pong exchange, as if constantly saying that I was okay would make it
true.
Jeff and 1 search through the truck twice but can’t turn up a first aid kit. Jeff
pauses. “Actually,” he says, “he may have gotten rid of it after I made fun of it over
Christmas. It was just this tiny thing.”
Five minutes later Jeffs finger is wrapped up in duct tape and we are back at
work.
There is a modem notion that manual labor is somehow romantic.
Two days before I left D.C. to head home for what would later be termed “Singco
Spring Break,” I met my old college roommate, Bill, now First Lieutenant William Dorr,
who had just returned from a thirteen-month tour at Camp Wolverine on the Iraq-Kuwait
border. He was in town for the weekend and asked me what my plans were. I told him
about Singco.
“Contracting,” he said. “That is mercenary work.”
Pretty much everything I know about soldiers-for-hire comes from a Tish Durkin
essay called Heavy Metal Mercenary. In it, devil-may-care security meres, border
hopping between different Middle Eastern nations, carry around “fully automatic
machine guns capable of firing 700 rounds per minute,” and describe themselves as
“locked, cocked, and ready to rock.” They take the security jobs that the Army doesn’t
want. I don’t think of myself as an especially violent person, but I like the analogy. When
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you spend most of your time in Master of Fine Arts Program, and you are continually
introduced as the son who “studies English,” being compared by an Army officer to men
that just stepped out of the movie Road Warrior is a nice boost to your masculinity; it is
this masculine aura that lends construction a sense of romance.
Construction is one of the last major male-dominated professions. The U.S.
Department of Labor lists it as a “non-traditional occupation for women.” It shares this
distinction with other careers like private detectives, barbers, fire fighters, aircraft pilots,
and small-engine mechanics. A “non-traditional occupation for women” is one in which
“women comprise twenty-five percent or less of total employment.” However, in the case
of construction twenty-five percent is being far too generous. The Boston Business
Journal, in 2002, found that women made up between two and three percent of all
construction workers surveyed, but once again that number is misleading. The survey
looked primarily at large, union-run, construction crews working on government and
federal contracts, projects like highway construction, power plants, and jails. It made no
concession for private contractors whose typically all-male crews, made up mostly of
immigrant workers, are paid off the books and therefore go totally undocumented. In
years of working with different privately run crews all over New York, Boss Man tells
me that he has never seen a woman working on the job site.
Perhaps it is America’s desire to cling to the image of the nuclear family that
lends construction its sense of romance and nostalgia. It seem s to recall an era when men
were the breadwinners, and women stayed at home. Maybe this is why construction work
gamers respect from other men who work in more gender-integrated fields. When you
say, “I work construction,” the office workers and service professionals of the world are
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somehow cowed, as if, by letting women into their fields, they have emasculated
themselves and their careers. Construction, on the other hand, remains ontologically pure,
unchanged in its objectives since the dawn of humanity, and still crewed almost entirely
by men.
Monday, the first day of Singco Spring Break, started at 6:30 AM with a pair of
borrowed boots. Boss Man had started requiring boots a few months ago, although the
edict only affected him (he wore boots anyway) and my brother Eric, who is Singco’s
only other year-round employee. We had worked the whole previous summer in sneakers,
occasionally going barefoot when conditions allowed and the temperature got over one
hundred degrees. There hadn’t been any catastrophe to inspire Boss Man’s decision, but
then, this job was also going to be the first one we would be working with insurance.
Until now we had just been working with our fingers crossed. It seemed kind of odd that
we only began taking security precautionsafter we were insured.
Since I did not own boots of my own yet, I had to borrow my brother’s. Eric
would not be working with us until Wednesday because, in addition to working Singco,
he also went to school full-time at Nassau Community College. We had both started
working for Singco at the same time, but Eric’s year-round employment made him much
more experienced than me. He framed almost an entire garage by himself, while the
biggest thing 1 had ever built was a three-by-five overhang above a stoop.
When Eric heard that Jeff and I were coming to work over Spring Break, he
suggested to Boss Man that he start us off with the “pea shooter,” a tiny hammer, the kind
you would use to hang a picture frame, left over from a kid, Tommy, that Boss Man had
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hired a while back (Tommy quit after three days). Eric also left a special message for me:
“don’t use my belt.” He had finally gotten his tool belt rigged with all his equipment.
“His boots are outside the backdoor,” my mother informed me. “They are covered
in mud so put them on out there.”
“Covered?” 1 asked.
“Well, just the outsides.”
That turned out to be true, but my brother’s boots were also about three sizes too
big for me. Because I had spent the last two years in graduate school, the metaphorical
power of the situation was not lost on me.
We had been hired to reshingle and replace the windows on an eighty-six year old
home in Bright Waters, a quintessential South Shore Long Island neighborhood. Two
blocks over a tree-lined canal cut in between the houses which all faced out onto the
water. Park benches and gazebos were everywhere.
When I got to the site Boss Man’s truck, a big black Ford F-150 with a huge
stainless rack system, was already parked in front the house. He had Jeff over on the side
of the garage and was pointing vaguely up at its peak. He does that a lot, mapping out
projects that are easily weeks down the pipeline as if we were getting to them later that
afternoon.
Boss Man is big. At 6’3” he is easily four inches bigger than me or Jeff, and about
fifty pounds heavier. He has super light blue eyes that are easy and inviting when he talks
to customers, but they get real nasty when his temper flares. As the son of his older sister
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I am usually spared those eyes, but I have seen them just about cut Jeff- his oldest son -
in half.
Looking at Jeff you wouldn’t guess that he is Boss Man’s son. He got his
mother’s dark Italian skin, and Jeffs hair is long and straw-like, while his father’s is
cropped short and wiry. The only obvious trait that Jeff and Boss Man share is their
temper.
Jeff has on an old sweatshirt over a thermal, jeans, and boots that also look
borrowed. “Welcome back to Hell,” he says, coming over to shake my hand.
Boss Man has laid out the morning’s jobs. Jeff and I are to tear the old shingles
off the garage and then put up new tar paper. There is just one caveat. The home-owners
have an autistic child and don’t want us leaving any nails around that he could find. Boss
Man instructs us to put all the nails we pull into our belts.
I grab Eric’s belt out of Boss Man’s trailer and secure it around my waist figuring
that what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I am already wearing his boots anyway.
Jeff and I go to work on the garage. Until you pull shingles you can’t really
appreciate how many nails go into the side of a house. Each shingle can have as many as
four nails in it, more if the people putting them up are doing sloppy work. We try to
follow Boss Man’s order to keep the old nails in our belts, but only for a few minutes
before the prospect of accounting for tens of thousands of nails overwhelms us. After
that the nails fly everywhere. An hour later Jeff puts the staple through his finger. Singco
Spring Break has begun.
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Construction has a reputation for being decent honest work, and it is true that
sometimes, sitting in the back of Boss Man’s truck during lunch on a nice day in spring,
feeling the muscles in you back relax, eating an overstuffed deli sandwich, it does feel
that way. There is something intrinsically pleasing about going home at the end of the
day, showering, but never quite being able to get all the grit out from underneath your
fingernails. There are not many other jobs in which, at the end of the day, you can step
back and actually see, in concrete, and compressed wood, and metal, what your labor has
accomplished. Sometimes the job does feel romantic, but mostly it is repetitious.
On a ladder seven feet away from me Jeff asks, “ Would you rather some one cut
your throat with the saws-all, or shot three roofing nails into your knee?”
Would-You-Rather is a game we created last summer to pass the time. The rules
are simple. One player comes up with the most horrific action he can think of with the
tools on hand, the next player tries to one-up him. We used to play the Kevin Bacon
game, but started running out of celebrity connections to make.
“I would take the knee,” I reply. I don’t respond with a new scenario right away. I
take my time to develop something really horrific.
We are pulling shingles now and the old cedar shake on the house is so decayed
from the salty air that it often breaks off in our hands. This makes tearing an easy job. We
go at it with crowbars and the claw-end of hammers, but soon we have to slow down
because the shingles are disintegrating as we pull them, all the dust makes it hard to
breathe, and Boss Man does not have any masks. Like the boots, masks will probably be
required eventually, but they are not yet. As each shingle gets pulled, pill bugs,
centipedes, and spiders, suddenly exposed to daylight, scramble to find new cover. I used
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to hate spiders, but you learn real fast to just crush beneath whatever tool you have in
hand and move on.
On the ground below us Boss Man has his big DeWalt boombox tuned to WPLJ -
Long Island’s Classic Rock Station. Listeners are calling in to discuss last night’s episode
of The Sopranos. Their Long Island accents make them sound like characters from the
show.
“That show is ova,” says one disgruntled caller. “FuhgedabouditH
“Would you rather take the saws-all to the neck or the table saw to the chest,” I
finally ask Jeff. We have a power saws-all and a battery powered one. We often speculate
on which one would be worse to get cut by. On the one hand the power saws-all
(commonly called a reciprocating saw) would cut much deeper and much faster, but the
battery powered one would leave a big, dull, messy gouge; it would probably tear more
than cut. I have left Jeffs choice of saws-all purposefully vague.
“Is the table saw going to be up and down,” he asks, “or across?”
At lunchtime the home-owner comes outside and asks us if we know where to go
for lunch. Her name is Maggie. Blake the autistic oldest son is in the backyard. Maggie
has one year-old Robert in her arms. She is pregnant with a third. One of the strange
things about contracting is that, while it is a male dominated profession, you very rarely
deal with male clients. You are at a house from eight to five everyday which means that
you are usually talking to stay-at-home moms or disembodied voices on the other end of
a cell phone.
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Maggie recommends Chilango’s for lunch, which she describes as a “hole-in-the-
wall place, in the hole-in-the-wall part of town.” She then tells us “if you can get past the
surroundings, they make great subs. It is dirty... but not like roaches dirty.”
We tell her that we brought lunch.
Maggie seems like a nice lady. She says that she likes, “down to Earth people.” I
hope that she doesn’t notice the nails everywhere.
By the time my brother joins us on Wednesday, I have gotten used to wearing his
belt and boots, but I have to give them up. The night before he started working I grabbed
a new pair of boots from PayLess for $25. The new boots fit much better, and there is no
mud on them, but they are stiff and I find myself missing the comfortable old boots
anyway.
Most of the time my brother and Boss Man are Singco’s only employees. Boss
Man frequently says that he is going to hire a Mexican crew, but he never does. Only Eric
keeps showing up. This has earned him the nickname, “El Mexicano Blanco.”
“Dos?” Jeff chides my brother as he carries two stacks of shingles around the
house. “Why not tres El Mexicano Blanco?”
That morning we get a delivery from Riverhead Construction, They are dropping
off more shingles, Azec (just like white wood, but it’s plastic and lasts forever), and most
of the windows. Keith, the delivery guy, istall, skinny,and deceptivelystrong. He hands
a sixty-four inch window down to me from the truck bed with ease. He makes it look so
easy that when the window’s weight transfers to me I almost drop it, but i manage to
recover and shoot a quick look to see if he noticed. He didn’t.
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I always feel like a fake around people like Keith. The familiar way he moves
around the truck, the way his eyes seem to appraise the job site when he first arrives, it all
suggests a life that revolves around working with his hands and old fashioned labor. It
feeds into the mercenary image of the manual laborer, and I want to be identified with
that image. I constantly worry about looking like a graduate student who is working to
make a few dollars over Spring Break, which is, of course, exactly what I am.
Keith must buy my deception because as we unload the truck he starts telling me
about some of his idiot customers. Mocking others is a sure sign of camaraderie. “I had to
help these two old guys lift this bay window yesterday in the wind,” he tells me. It has
been unusually windy lately. “I was like, no fucking way. I thought they were both gonna
break their backs.”
I laugh as I take some Azec from him.
“Careful that stuff is not heavy, but it’s flimsy,” Keith warns.
Azec is one material I have worked with a lot, and I am pretty confident that I
understand its qualities. Cut short it is solid, but it is shipped in long twelve-foot strips
that tend to bend in the middle. “I have it,” I tell him.
But I don’t. I picked it up too far forward and the back sags and hits the ground
forcing me to set it back down and reposition myself. I am mortified, but Keith does not
seem to notice.
After the truck is unloaded and Keith has left, we break for lunch. Boss Man and
Eric stay to finish up a window. Jeff and I go out to get sandwiches for everyone. We
decide to try Chilango’s, the “hole-in-the-wall” place.
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On the drive over Jeff begins to show some of the temper he inheri ted from Boss
Man. “If you have any clue in this business,” he says, “you can be a millionaire. Even if
you don’t have a clue, you can just sub-contract everything and still be a millionaire.
But,” he adds, “who the fuck wants to work in this business?”
Like me, Jeff has no illusions of making construction work his career. A
sophomore at Marist College, he is studying economics and is already considering law
school. My brother talks about “going career.” and so does Jeffs younger brother
Stephen who is still too young to work unless it is a small project at the home of a friend
or family. I think Jeff likes complaining to me because he also knows that neither of us
really fits into the contracting culture.
Chilango’s Mexican Deli is not actually in the “hole-in-the-wall” part of town;
instead it is one town over in Bay Shore. Unlike Bright Waters, which is really just a
collection of Cape Cod style homes, Bay Shore is an old port town that still serves as a
major ferry point between Long Island and Fire Island. The town center is filled with
single-story shops, mostly delis and pizza places, a few selling souvenirs to Fire Island
tourists, and a lot more that are out of business. The street lights are the only sign that
Bay Shore is trying to keep up with its more fashionable neighbor. They are imitation oil-
buming lamps and look completely out of place next to the boarded up shop windows.
Since not many people are traveling to Fire Island in the middle of March, the town is
pretty quiet.
Chilango’s really is a hole-in-the-wall. Inside the tiny space there is a self-service
coffee pot, a counter displaying four sad examples of lunch meat, and a single table that
also serves as a display for cases of Diet Coke. Four Latino men sit around the table and
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look Jeff and me up and down when we walk in. There is no sign of any employees, so
we just wait at the counter.
The men at the table speak in Spanish. I have always taken French, so the
conversation is lost on me.
Waiting there I can not help thinking about the Mexican crews that Boss Man
always says he is going to hire. The fact is, Boss Man can’t really afford to run a full-time
crew. There are a lot of contractors that will take advantage of immigrant crews,
promising them pay at the end of the week and then just never showing up again.
Because these crews are promised cash-in-hand, there is no record of their employment
and no way for them to challenge the contractor.
Last year the median salary for residential construction workers was $12.18/hour.
For union workers on large projects, it was slightly higher at $13.55/hour. Boss Man pays
us $ 10.00/hour, but usually caps our earnings at $80.00/'day no matter how much
overtime we put in. We don’t complain because we are family, but he could not get away
with it running a different crew. The money is not great, but at the end of the day you
have the cash in your hand. There are no checks, no direct deposits, no cuts for social
security or state tax, like the results of your labor, you can actually see the money you
have made at the end of the day.
For one stupid moment 1 think that the men at the table might recognize us as
contractors from our boots, the wood splinters clinging to our clothes, and the smell of
cedar from all the shingles we have cut, and ask us for work. A lot of the time suppliers
will see me on the site, a twenty-something white guy, and assume that Singco is my
business. It occurs to me that these men might think the same thing about me and Jeff. I
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don’t want them to ask, because I don’t want to admit that I am not in charge, that I am
just a grad student who only works the job because it is easy to sign on with his uncle for
a few dollars. In their eyes, I want to appear part of the fraternity of men who run this
business, the real soldiers-of-fortune, not just a tourist.
Of course they never ask. Eventually a forty-something Mexican woman appears
from a swinging door in the back and takes our orders. As Jeff reads everyone’s
sandwiches off a scrap piece of shake shingle, I look past the woman and notice the
single-pack condoms, toe nail clippers, and hand mirrors for sale on the back wall. At the
table the men are eating out of Styrofoam containers and laughing.
When we get back to the site Maggie, the home-owner, is picking through a stack
of scrap shingles piled next to the thirty-yard dumpster in the driveway. “I am going to
take them to my father’s place in the Hamptons,” she explained. “He likes to bum them
in the fireplace. He loves the cedar smell.”
The shingles she has picked are soaking wet from sitting on the ground. I jump
the side of the dumpster, pull some drier ones out of the middle, and help her load them
into a black lawn bag. She thanks me. “Did you go to Chilango’s?” she asks. “Tell me
how you like it.”
The sandwiches are really good.
By Friday, St. Patrick’s Day, the unusually strong winds have become a major
problem. It is unseasonably cold out, forcing us all to work in three layers of clothes, and
the winds, which were just unusual before, are now gusting up to forty-five miles per
hour. It rains on us off-and-on all morning, but never enough to stop working. Everyone
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is cold and on edge. At one point the wind catches a roll of tar paper and sends all four
hundred thirty-two square feet of it unraveling down the street. By the time we recover it,
the paper is a tangled and tom up useless mess. Scrapped shingles blow out of the
dumpster. Anything that is not made of metal or tied down is gone. Up on the ladders we
drive ten-penny nails into the walls on either side of us to hold the ladders and keep them
from blowing over. The radio reports that the wind chill is ten degrees.
At four o’clock, just before quitting time, Boss Man is starting to put in a new
window. He tells us that we are working an extra hour, It has been a long day and no one
is happy to hear this, especially since we won’t see the overtime pay.
“That is bullshit,” Jeff says well out of Boss Man’s hearing range. “This fucking
job has been my life all break.” I agree, although I keep quiet. Only my brother seems
unphased. He will work right up until it gets dark when it is just him and Boss Man.
Sometimes, after an especially long day, he will call me down at school to tell me that he
just worked twelve hours. He makes it seem like he is complaining, but unlike Jeff, there
is considerable pride in his voice.
Once the last window is in, Boss Man reviews the plan for tomorrow, Gene is
coming. Gene is the actual incarnation of the contractor-as-mercenary metaphor, and he
is a high priced one at that. Boss Man met him working the big crews out in the
Hamptons, and now he hires him, one day at a time, when there is a lot of work to be
done. Gene makes $500 a day, but you can. make that day last as long as you want. Even
on big union crews, the top one percent of laborers, the electricians, the plumbers, the
specialists, make just about $25/hour. Even if you plan for a twelve hour day, which the
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union would never allow, that is only $300, barely half of what Gene makes. For my
uncle to shell out that kind of cash the day needs to last a long time.
“We are here at six tomorrow guys,” Boss Man says.
That news finally pushes Jeff past the point where he can keep quiet. “Six? Are
you kidding me?”
“Jeff,” Boss Man replies, “if you don’t want to work you can stay home.” When
both their tempers flare they can feed off each other until they appear ready to combust.
“But then don’t look for work in the summer either. That goes for you two also,” he says
turning his icy blue eyes toward my brother and me. “I don’t need this shit.” He gets in
the truck and slams the door behind him. A minute later Jeff gets in the passenger side
slamming his door as well.
As the truck drives away my brother turns and looks at me. “Would you rather
take a saws-all to the neck, or be in that truck right now,” he asks.
The next day, the last day of Singco Spring Break, we leave the house at 5:30
AM. I have been wearing the same jeans for the last four days and the knees are so dirty
that they are black. My boots are finally starting to break in. I am tired and looking
forward to passing out on the long train ride back to D.C. tomorrow. My brother drives
with one hand and happily eats an egg-bacon-cheese bagel sandwich with the other. I
have never been able to eat in the morning. Sometimes getting up before 7 AM m akes m e
physically nauseated.
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I am in bad shape when we get to the site, but Jeff is worse. His St. Patrick’s Day
celebration ended just three hours ago. He got two hours of sleep. “There is a seventy-
five percent chance that I am going to puke in the dumpster,” he tells me.
Gene has already set himself up on the scaffolding and is pulling the white wood
around a second story window. When I shake his hand he crushes mine, but he does not
look me in the eye. That is because two years ago a metallic splinter from a nail-pull
lodged itself in Gene’s eye giving him permanent vision damage. His eyes focus slightly
off center now.
Gene is an absolute monster.
“The circus is not the circus anymore,” Gene says to Boss Man while hauling a
sixty-four inch window up a ladder by himself in winds that are still hitting thirty to forty
miles per hour. An ever-present cigarette dangles from his lips. “My kids were
disappointed. The animals consisted of elephants, dogs, cats, and birds.”
“No midgets?” Boss Man asks.
1 have only met Gene a handful of times before, but I have heard plenty of stories
about him from Boss Man and my brother. Once, out in the Hamptons, Boss Man had
gone with Gene, and an Ecuadorian worker named Mosh, to do some interior work. The
house was empty for the winter and locked up, so they sent Gene to break in through one
of the windows. Gene broke in and proceeded to stumble through the house cursing Boss
Man and Mosh for having sent him. Unknown to any of them, the old couplethat ow ned
the home was still in it, and watched as Gene, dressed in a flannel jacket and a black ski
mask which was standard gear out East in the winter, climbed through their front
windows cursing a blue streak.
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By the time Gene had let Boss Man and Mosh into the house, the home-owner
had grabbed a pistol and confronted them all at the backdoor. Gene, thinking the old man
meant to rob them was ready to tear him apart. Mosh pulled out a machete he had been
concealing in a sheath that ran down his back. Boss Man jumped in the middle at the last
moment, shouted that they were contractors and must be in the wrong home, and very
narrowly avoided a multiple homicide.
On the other side of the house Jeff tells me, “Gene is a pretty nice guy, but his
position in my life right now is just fucking things up. I just want to be done with this shit
and he is keeping me here.” Then he curls up below some bushes and lies down. “My
head still feels heavy.”
I am squaring shingles on the table saw nearby and agree to wake him up if I see
anyone coming.
We eat lunch in my brother’s car to get out of the wind. Boss Man left for Home
Depot to buy more two-by-fours so we could finish framing the windows. Across the
street Gene sits in his truck. For lunch he eats a thermos of Campbell’s Chunky Chicken
Soup, an entire Entenmann’s pound cake, and a one-liter thermos of. what must by now,
be semi-warmish coffee.
“I have seen Gene eat half a birthday cake,” my brother says. “I bet he steals
them from children.” Gene isn’t especially huge, but he is solid. He has a high school
gym teacher’s mustache.
“This is the worst day of my life,” Jeff says.
That reminds me of his fight with Boss Man yesterday. I ask him what happened
after he got in the truck. Jeff considers my question for a minute - he knows that I am
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recording his answer — and then says, “I bitched him out. I got in the truck and was like,
‘what are you so mad about?’ And he was like, ‘nothing do whatever you need to do.’
And I was like, ‘no. That is fucking bullshit.’ I told him that I hate coming home because
I always know that I am just going to have to work everyday. So he was like, ‘whatever
don’t come or take your truck and come in at eight then.’ And I was like, ‘no, that’s not
the point.’”
There was no way that Jeff “bitched” Boss Man out. Boss Man would have
thrown him through a wall before that ever happened. But just like the facade I put up in
front of Keith, the delivery guy, or the men in Chilango’s, Jeff needs me to believe in his
version of the truth, so I don’t question it. It is part of the mercenary myth, the myth of
masculine professions. You never back down; you never let the other guy know that you
are not what you might seem to be. For the two of us, a grad student and a future lawyer,
home for a week and looking to make money that we will only blow at the bars, our
image is all we have.
But why keep the image at all? As the masculine workspace erodes, the last few
male-dominated professions linger on like a species bordering extinction. Construction
is one place where the past has taken a stand. Like a crumbling museum showpiece, it is
hard not to be fascinated by the fading culture it represents, to glorify it, and to revere it.
People say that you only remember the good things when a person passes away,
that all the bad memories slowly fade, the same may be true for labor. The all male crews
might have once stood in opposition to women’s rights, but now they seem more like the
shadow of the larger gender-integrated workforce. Construction’s culture has become a
curiosity. We look at it the same way we might gaze with wonder at the artifacts in a
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whaling museum, or run our hands over the old wheels of a steam locomotive. We know
that there was more to it than the romance, but the hardships seem less relevant when
distanced by time. Construction now stands as our proxy to the era of white male-
dominated labor, and as that world continues to disappear, construction’s mythology
continues to build.
Outside Gene is already back to work cutting the beams around the old windows
to make room for the new bigger ones with the saws-all. We finish the rest of our lunch
in a hurry. There are still ten minutes before lunch is over, but it would not look right for
us to be lounging in the car when Boss Man gets back.
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Jack is driving drunk, which he knows is dangerous, and worse, selfish, but he is
doing it anyway, so there it is. He is on the Pennsylvania Turnpike headed to Long Island
to see an ex-girlfriend who he hopes will soon stop being an ex, and moreover, be his
fiancee. The engagement ring is riding shotgun. There are two tickets to Vegas and a
bottle of Georgi in the glove box. He hasn’t touched the bottle in an hour, and believes,
with what he does not recognize as drunken optimism, that he is sobering up.
For the first time in a long time, Jack feels good, and it is all because of Kim. Two
months ago Jack broke a polite, comfortable, year-long silence when he called her. Jack
and Kim had dated all during college, but had broken up so many times that there hadn’t
been anything especially traumatic about their final break. Jack had been accepted to the
Carnegie Mellon MBA program; Kim did not want to leave Long Island; neither of them
liked long distance relationships. Splitting up seemed like the only choice.
Carnegie Mellon was everything he wanted: a scholarship, an internship with
Northrop-Grumman, basically guaranteeing six figures right after his degree. It was
everything he had been planning on since high school, since college applications, and the
SAT. Jack had been bred for collegiate success. His father had started a college savings
account for him before he was even bom. Leaving Long Island, leaving Kim, wasn’t
49
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really a choice. It was just the next stage in a plan hatched twenty years prior that only
now, after years of hard work, was beginning to reward him.
But that didn’t help Jack when he was sitting alone in his apartment, in a city
where he knew no one. It didn’t mitigate his sense of self-loathing when he found himself
a little too eagerly looking forward to Conan O’Brien, because at least when Conan
talked into the camera Jack could pretend he was having a conversation.
“Relax,” Jack’s seniors told him at work, “you are about three years away from all
the party and pussy you can handle.”
Only, three years seemed far off in the middle of a dark, grey, inland
Pennsylvania winter. So, shortly after Jack bought a UV lamp to try combating what he
hoped was just Seasonal Affective Disorder, he called Kim.
They had talked about how he was doing in school. Fine. She said that she was
living with her parents in West Islip, but only until she found a job that paid more than
ten dollars an hour. She had just gotten a puppy. A poodle and labrador mix. A
labradoodle.
“That sounds labra-dorable,” he had said, then cringed.
Kim had laughed.
The conversation had gone so well that Jack called her again the next night, and
then the one after that, until their late-night conversations started spilling over to all
different times of day. Kim was always great. She never wanted to talk about when they
had been together, or why Jack had left. There was never a hint that she was secretly
loving Jack’s misery, and maybe thought that it served him right. It all just reaffirmed
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what Jack already knew, she was a really great girl, the kind of girl you don’t let get
away.
He bought the ring at a flea market, just a half-carat set in a skinny gold band. It
was an insurance policy, a use-only-in-case-of-emergency kind of thing. Only once he
bought it, it started seeming less like an insurance policy, and more like an ultimatum.
You always want a return on your investments that was the first thing they taught
in freshman macroeconomics. He wasn’t getting any return on the ring with it sitting in
his apartment, but there was a huge potential return on Long Island. So, after two months
of phone calls, moments before the start of Conan O’Brien, and already a few drinks in,
Jack got in his car and began driving back to Long Island.
Jack is about one hundred miles outside Philadelphia when two jagged points of
light appear in his rearview mirror. The tailgating car trails him for another minute, and
the twin headlights feel like they are piercing his brain. The other car pulls into the left
lane beside him, and a young blond man in the passenger seat with the thick neck of a
college athlete holds up a sign that reads: “Pick a lane asshole!” The driver, an equally
large man, just gives him the finger. The car accelerates past Jack, cuts him off, and drops
to fifty miles an hour.
Jack slows down and then accelerates to give the other car what he hopes will be a
light bump, but it is not so light. In fact, it is quite hard. As the two cars come together
Jack’s windshield goes red from the glow of the other car’s brake lights. He can hear his
own engine revving and continuing to propel the two cars forward. Jack is so focused on
the other car that he doesn’t notice when they come to a turn; he doesn’t notice that he is
driving both cars directly into a streetlight until everything stops, and the nylon band of
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his seatbelt cuts into his neck, stealing his breath for one choked second. There is the
sound of bending metal, then just the gentle vibration of his car’s engine still running.
Jack begins to pray, “Holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck.”
The quiet lasts the space of one more breath and then it is broken by the sound of
a car door being closed. In front of him Jack can see the blond man standing in the pool
of light being cast by the now misshapen streetlight. He is holding something that might
be a baseball bat. Jack can’t see the other man, the one in the driver’s seat.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” the blond man yells starting towards Jack’s car,
and it is only the fact that Jack one hundred percent believes the blonde man that allows
him to get his car in reverse so quickly.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says as he backs up and then throws his car into gear. There is
no way the blonde man heard this, but saying it makes Jack feel better. The road is
empty. In the rearview mirror the blond man pursues Jack’s car on foot, quickly
disappearing into the night.
No one saw it. It never happened. Jack tries to slow his breathing and focuses on
the broken white lines taking him to New York.
From the driver seat Jack watches Kim cross the lawn. She is still wearing her
pajamas beneath a long winter coat. Her bare feat leave momentary shimmering tracks in
the wet morning grass. She opens the passenger door, climbs in, andhe can see that there
are still sleep lines zigzagging her face,
“What happened to your car?” she asks. It is the first thing they have said face-to-
face in over a year. That is how long ago Jack left.
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“Some one hit me in the parking lot,” Jack says.
“Looks like they really nailed you.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it.”
“It’s good to see you,” Kim says leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Unexpected, but
good.”
It is more than good, Jack thinks. Just a few hours ago he had been driving,
screaming, pounding the steering wheel with his fist, shaking, putting as much distance
between himself and the angry blond man as he could, and what had even happened to
the driver? Was he okay? But now here is Kim in her flannel pajamas, her hair gathered
on top of her head, eyes still not quite completely open, and it is like that part of his life -
the accident part - never happened. It is like someone really did hit him in that parking
lot. What a jerk, but not to worry, it’s just a headlight and a few dings. It’s an old car
anyway.
“Are you okay,” Kim asks. “You look kind of pale.”
“Well, it’s not a short drive,” Jack says, doing his best to laugh off the comment.
“That’s true,” Kim says, and she doesn’t say anything, and that is what Jack loves
about her. There is no grand inquisition, no asking why he needed to drive to her parent’s
house in the middle of the night.
“Kim, will you marry me?” Jack reaches for the glove box and removes the ring
and the two tickets. “We can fly to Vegas tonight.”
“I don’t even like Vegas.”
“But you will marry me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not right now anyway.”
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“Not right now?”
“You’re sweet. This is all so sweet.”
Yes, it is sweet, Jack thinks. What a grand romantic gesture to drive across three
states, drunk, in the middle of the night, have his life threatened by a man with a bat, and
to have maybe injured or even killed another, all so he could arrive on Long Island and
have his proposal rejected. It is the stuff of fairy tales.
“Do you want to come in,” Kim asks? “I could make us some breakfast.” She
reaches for the door handle. This is what Kim does, Jack thinks. She doesn’t bitch him
out after he disappears for a year, she doesn’t question him about his messed up car, and
she doesn’t act mortified after his crazy all-night drive and 5 AM proposal.
So he decides to tell her the truth.
“I didn’t get in an accident,” he says. “Well, I did, but not in a parking.”
“Oh,” Kim looks confused. Her hand is still on the door. He imagines her
thoughts are still on eggs and coffee.
“I hit some one on the way here. Their car got pretty messed up.”
“W ere they okay?”
“I don’t know. The passenger definitely was.”
Kim is still seated, but she is poised by the door like she is ready to escape, and
Jack realizes how bad he wants her to stay in the car. He wants her to keep talking and
absolve him of this also. He thinks, don’t cry you big pussy. But he is not sure if he can
stop himself. He can feel it in his throat. “Kim, will you please marry me,” he finally
manages. “Not in Vegas, anywhere you want,”
“No, Jack,” but she let’s go of the door.
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“My life is shit,” Jack says.
No one says anything. Outside one light comes on in Kim’s house, and then
another. Inside her father is putting on the coffee. Her mother is waking her sister up for
school. One room at a time the house comes alive, following the same routine that it
follows every morning. It is a process perfected by years of repetition. Soon her father
will leave for work. Her sister will leave for school. They will come home, eat dinner, go
to bed knowing that they will do the same thing again the next day, and the day after that.
It is a beautiful cycle.
“Do you think the people in that car are okay?” Kim finally asks.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Didn’t you check?”
Jack shakes his head. “All I could think about was getting to you,” he says.
“That’s kind of weird Jack,” she says, and he can see her body tensing again. He
can see her getting ready to leave.
He thinks, is it weird? She doesn’t know that he left fleeing a man with a baseball
bat. She doesn’t know about the drinking. Can she smell it on him? She doesn’t know
that he hit the other car on purpose. If she knew all that, he thinks, then she would realize
that she is the only good thing he has. She is the only reason that he didn’t just stay there
and take his beating from the man with baseball bat.
“Kim, I love you,” he says. She doesn’t say anything. She is not even looking at
him now. Any minute now, he thinks, she will step out of the car, and it will just be,
“Poor Jack, and those poor men.” Then she will lose herself in her everyday business and
this whole thing will just be a sad memory that she thinks of from time to time.
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“Can we just forget this whole thing?” Jack asks. “Can we just forget this whole
thing happened? Let’s get breakfast. Let’s go to a diner and get breakfast.”
“I don’t think I can,” Kim says. “They are probably wondering where I am inside.
Are you going to be around for a while?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” she says, and then pauses, “call me when you get back to Pittsburgh. So I
know you are okay. Okay?” Kim gives his hand a squeeze and then she is out the door a
little to quickly.
Jack starts his drive back. He takes different roads. He gets halfway before he
calls Kim.
“That was quick,” she says. Her voice sounds lighter than it did in the car. She is
already forgetting the whole thing, he thinks.
“Yeah, I made good time,” and as he says it Jack realizes that Kim has no idea
how far it is from Pittsburgh to Long Island, because there is no way he could have made
it back yet. She has never even thought about all the space between them, or even where
in the world he is.
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My wife, Enid, loads the DVD and then snuggles down next to me on the couch.
“This is my favorite time of the week,” she says kissing my five o’clock shadow. It is
Friday night, pom night.
After a while pom becomes just like any other movie genre, and you start to
recognize what makes an adult film especially good, or especially bad.
Good: professional lighting, tastefully minimal story, and — although you would
think this is a no-brainer — attractive actors.
Bad: Too much “money shot,” unbalanced audio levels, big hair.
After a year of Friday night pom, my wife and 1 have become experts at
discerning what is hot, and what is cheaply produced schlock for frat houses. You begin
to know the names of not just the actors, but also the crews. In pom, the producer is more
important than the director. Enid, for instance, likes films produced by Abby Winters
because the girls sound like they are actually cumming, and not just being brutalized.
Pom is just like anything else, the more you see, the more critical you become. Over time
you get bored more easily, and your drive becomes not just to find something hot, but
something that is different, new, better.
As the opening credits roll tonight Enid slides her head down from my shoulder.
She moves slowly kissing my chest and stomach. Her long brown hair is tumbling quietly
57
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down behind her as she goes. She rests her head on my lap and I can feel myself getting
hard beneath her.
“You are my fucking hot little slut,” I say leaning down and biting her ear.
She smiles up at me - she has big, blue blowjob eyes — then she spins her head
around to kiss my cock through my jeans. I put my hand on her ass and begin massaging
it slow, rough circles. She grinds her hips into the couch along with the motion.
On screen, a guy with a much bigger cock than me is getting a super sloppy
hummer. An important part of watching pom is acknowledging that the penises you see
are freaks of nature. Like NBA players. They are not normal.
Enid unzips my pants and places her hand inside. She is just teasing. Neither one
of us wants to start yet. We are both still curious if we’ve picked a good one. “I like his
hips,” Enid says allowing her fingers to comb the top of my boxers.
“His hips?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, “I like how you can see the points of his hip bones.” Enid
reaches around inside my pants searching for the same points on my hips, but they are
hidden beneath a modest beer gut. I can feel her digging around in the flesh trying to
locate them.
“Leave that,” I say.
She searches for a few more seconds.
The real buzz kill in pom comes when you realize that it’s all an act. In high
school you can fool yourself into thinking that all the panting, and screaming, and
moaning is what sex is really like, or should be like, but by college, once you have some
experience under your belt, it all starts to seem ridiculous. Once you realize that the
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Double-D blonde bouncing up and down on that guy’s dick is probably thinking about a
McDonald’s fish filet sandwich, or what her hair looks like, or thinking “I hope this guy
doesn’t have funky splooge,” it is almost impossible to imagine the romance back into
pom, and without some illusion of intimacy, the whole thing just starts to feel like two
people shaking hands. When you get to that point, you start to find yourself more
interested in women whose faces get flushed easily, who can make their legs convulse
convincingly, and understand that some moaning pads a man’s ego, but too much feels
like over compensating. 1 have reached a point in my life where I would rather watch a
chubby chick take a slow ride than see some silicon starlet thrill to every touch.
This is our quest, Enid and mine, to find pom so close to real thing that is
completely indistinguishable.
On screen two women are going at it with a double dildo, while a dude watches
through the window and jerks off.
“I love you,” Enid says reaching into my boxers.
At the restaurant Enid slides her foot up-and-down my calf during our mini
college reunion.
“I am serious,” David says across the table. “Sometimes I do wish I’d just joined
the Army.” David has the kind of guileless smile and blond farmboy looks that let him
carry off statements like this without seeming to be a total asshole. When he first split up
with Amy, David felt the need to get back into some kind of co-dependant relationship as
quickly as possible, and investigated such diverse, open-arms organizations as the French
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Foreign Legion, the Peace Corp, and Scientology. Joining the Army is his latest get-over-
Amy fantasy.
“David that is ridiculous,” Janice says from the next seat over. “You have a
college degree, and you are just going to enlist as a grunt soldier?”
“It’s not like that,” David says. “You can specialize.”
Janice arches one dark eyebrow and looks at me across the table. I just shrug. She
lifts her wine glass and takes a long drink. She lets the glass tug at her bottom lip as she
lowers it and then excuses herself.
“I think it’s hot,” Enid says. “Soldier’s are hot. Why don’t you go off to war
James?” she asks turning to me.
“Aside from my political objections?”
Enid makes a face and sticks out her tongue.
“Don’t you ever just feel a sense of civic duty though?” David asks.
“I’ve served jury duty twice. That’s enough, thanks.”
“He’s just afraid,” Enid says moving her foot higher up my leg. “James doesn’t
like violence. Once at a bar, this guy grabbed my ass, and he didn’t do a thing about it.”
“There’s a difference between being afraid and not being a hyper-defensive
prick.”
“I say nuke ‘em all,” Enid says giving up on her foot and finally just landing her
hand in my lap. “Nuke ‘em all and let Allah sort them out.”
“ Amen,” David says across the table.
“Jesus, you two,” I say, “that is fucked.” Two tables over there is a woman
wearing a hijab, I hope she is not hearing this.
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Enid is really working her hand in my lap now. David has to see this.
“Wah. Wah. My name James and I am a liberal pussy. I like flowers and
rainbows.” Enid says, miming a crying motion with her free hand.
“You know,” David says. “I bet I would be pretty good at killing people.”
The woman in the hijab is killing me. I know she has to be hearing this. Her face
is serious as a heart attack. She would never get that they are only joking. “If you two are
going to be assholes at least keep your voices down.”
David makes a motion like he is holding a rifle. He fires an invisible bullet across
the table at Enid who grabs her chest with both hands, releasing her hold on my pants,
and freeing me from my chair. “I’m going to get another drink,” I say standing up.
“While I am gone, try to stop being ignorant fucks.”
David unloads his rifle on Enid again, As I walk away I can see her violent death
throes.
I walk into the next room, past the bar, and down the wood paneled hallway to the
men’s room. Janice is wiping off the last of her lipstick in the mirror. I lock the door
behind me. “Those two,” I say walking behind Janice and sliding my hand up underneath
her shirt.
‘Why don’t they just fuck and get it over with,” Janice says turning around with a
half smile.
I have been fucking Janice pretty much the entire time I have been married. The
first time was one year ago at the wedding. That was also in a bathroom. Janice is long
and dark. She would make a beautiful pianist because her fingers are so graceful. When
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we have sex her lips turn the deepest red, like blood. She is smooth everywhere that Enid
is soft. In almost every regard, Janice is the perfect stereotype of the mistress.
At first Janice had just been one last screw before my big sign off. Some guys do
it with strippers. I did it with my wife’s college roommate. Only we did it again at my
office two weeks later, and then again at one of those motels that charge by the hour.
Over and over, we have hit every spot you can possibly conduct an affair: in the car, at
Janice’s apartment when Enid was away, and in the park when 1 was supposed to be
jogging. It is all cliche, but in a way that is the appeal. My affair with Janice abides by a
clear cut set of rules. It can be scheduled in like a dentist’s appointment. There is no need
to spice up the sex, because the circumstance of being in an affair is already cranking the
sex up to ridiculously hot levels. The nerves, the no-nonsense orgasms, the stolen
moments, my affair with Janice is everything I ever imagined an affair to be.
I boost Janice up onto the sink and start working her skirt up. No surprise that
there are no panties underneath it.
“Not like this,” Janice says. She drops down from the sink and undoes my pants.
She turns around to face the mirror and pulls me into her. “Like this, so I can see.”
In the mirror, we fuck our brains out.
“I want you to dress up like a soldier,” Enid says in bed that night.
“I am not doing that,” I say. “You and David were being assholes tonight.”
Enid pulls herself up against my back and drapes an arm over me. “Don’t be mad.
You know I was only joking.”
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“Well, what if that woman at the other table had heard you, do you think she
would have known you were only joking?”
“I don’t care what other people think,” Enid purrs into my ear. She slides her hand
back and forth across my chest, catching little hairs between her fingers. “So will you?”
I roll over. “What will you do for me?”
Enid climbs on top of me and keeps rubbing my chest. “Oh, Daddy!” she says.
“Stop, you know I hate that.”
“What do you want me to do?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
On the next pom night Enid is late to the couch. In the kitchen I can hear her
banging dishes around and cursing. When I go over to see what she is doing, she has half
her hand shoved into the drain of the sink. A plate is smashed to pieces on the ground at
her feet. Little pieces of spaghetti are still stuck to it.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask.
Sill facing away from me Enid runs her hand across her face. “I lost my ring,” she
says. “I think it fell down the drain.”
“Are you crying?” I ask coming right up behind her.
“No,” she says. I spin her around and see that she definitely is. “Yes,” she says. “I
am just PMSing. It isn’t cool to lose your wedding ring when you are PMSing.”
“Aw, my little wife. I’ll buy you a bigger one.” She puts her arms around me.
“You know,” 1 say, “I could go grab a wrench. Hello ma’am, I’m here to fix that sink.
Any other pipes need adjustment?”
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She laughs a little against my chest.
“Come on,” I say pulling her into the living room. “I have the DVD ready to go.”
“Do you think that would really work?” she asks.
“W hat?”
“A wrench,” she says, “do you think we could get it with a wrench?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “We don’t even own a wrench.”
The next time I see Janice it is at her place one evening while Enid is at the
doctor. I have her reverse cowgirl on a reclining chair. Afterwards, she leans back into
me and we lay with our naked skin against the leather. Janice’s breasts stay perky and in
place even when she is lying down.
“So, I saw David the other day,” she says, “He is still talking about enlisting.”
“Christ,” I say.
“I think he has a little bit of a crush on me,” she says.
“David has a crush on everyone since Amy left him. He was practically drooling
on Enid at dinner last week.” 1 respond.
“Well, anyway, I fucked him.”
“Really?” I ask. I can feel myself getting hard again.
“What do you think?”
“You fucking tramp,” I say pulling her against me with one hand while 1 run the
other one excitedly through her pubes. I push my cock into the small of her back. “How
was he?”
“David?”
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“Yeah.”
“He was like gangbusters.”
“Is that good?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really fuck him. I just wanted to see what you would say.”
“Oh.” I say letting my hold on her go a little slack.
“But I’ll fuck him if you want,” she says.
I think about it for a moment. The idea of Janice sliding all over some other dude
is strangely appealing. How many times watching pom have I seen two people going at it
and wished I could step in at the last minute to finish the job. “Not David,” I say, “but
maybe somebody else.”
“Like a stranger?”
“Sure,” I say, “maybe I’ll watch.”
“Ok,” she says eventually.
“You are so fucking hot,” I say turning her over and kissing her hard on the lips.
She kisses back and releases the recliner so that she slides down to the floor with her
head between my legs.
When I get home Enid is on kitchen floor. She has a giant monkey wrench in one
hand, and what I can only assume is part of the kitchen plumbing in the other. She is
sweating through her shirt and her hair is stuck to her head. If Janice hadn’t just sucked
me dry, 1 would probably find this very hot.
“I can’t find it,” she says when I walk in.
“Can’t find what?”
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“James, my ring. Remember my ring?” She thrusts her head back under the sink. I
can hear pipes shaking inside the walls.
“Baby, I told you. I will get you a new one.”
“I don’t want a fucking new one,” she says. I hear the pipes rattle more violently,
then the sound of the wrench slamming against the wall. “I don’t want a fucking new
one,” she sobs. “1 want my fucking ring.”
For a minute I think about calling Janice. I am not equipped to handle this kind of
breakdown. Enid pulls her head out from under the sink and sits on the floor with her
shoulders hunched. She is sobbing and snotting. It’s not pretty, but 1 do feel some sort of
weird primal pull to comfort her.
1 sit down and put my arm around her. She lays her head against my chest and
keeps crying. It is so intense that I can already feel it soaking through my shirt. I rub her
back a little.
“I’m pregnant,” Enid says.
I stop rubbing her back.
“I’m pregnant,” Enid repeats between her sobs. “The doctor told me, and I didn’t
have my wedding ring, and she thought I was a slut. I told her I lost it, and she said she
believed me, but she didn’t really believe me.”
“Weren’t you just PMSing?” I ask like this forgotten piece of information could
change everything.
She shakes her head.
I put my other arm around Enid and pull her to me, which is weird because all I
want to do is leave. But my legs won’t work. It is like one of those dreams where you are
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running away from something, but you are moving super slow, and it is moving super
fast, and it’s always right behind you. Squeezing her is the only thing that is keeping me
from screaming. I am a little angry because Enid probably thinks that I am doing this for
her, when I really want to shake her and say, you dumb hitch, how did you let yourself
get pregnant? How? But it is like the slow motion dream - nothing works - and all I can
do is sit there with tears and snot all over my shirt, willing my legs to move.
I am working damage control on Enid, and that means spending some extra time
with her. At the grocery store we split the list in half and meet in the middle. Each of us
has a basket filled to the top.
“Did you get eggs,” Enid asks.
“Yes,” I say, “did you get Sweet’N Low?”
“No,” she says. “I don’t want that in the apartment with the baby.”
“You don’t use it,” I say. “I do.”
“Still. You should give it up.”
“Jesus, you’re the one having the baby,” I say. “It’s not like 1 am asking you to
breathe second-hand smoke. I just want some sweetener for my coffee.”
“Fine,” Enid says. “Go get it.”
“I will.”
Enid acts like we already decided to keep this thing. That is in no way a foregone
conclusion. I have wanted to bring it up, but I am trying to avoid another meltdown. I
have nothing against kids, but I always thought they would come later.
There is no Sweet’N Low with the coffee products. The clerk says they are out.
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I hate supermarkets. I hate looking for things in them. I hate the old people in
them. I hate winding my way through the aisles with dozens of other people like a human
assembly line — everyone pulled forward by hunger. The fluorescent lighting, the
flashing coupons, the endless shelves, the creamed com; it all wreaks of instinctual
camaraderie, an entire tribe of people just looking to fill there stomachs. Of all the
shopping experiences our culture has created, the supermarket has to be the most
dehumanizing.
“Did you get it?” Enid asks when I return.
“No,” I say. “Fuck it. I’ll use sugar.”
Enid stands on her tiptoes and kisses me. “Thank you,” she says.
“I need to see you,” I tell Janice over the phone.
When I arrive at her apartment, Janice is wearing black lingerie that looks like it
must have taken a very long time to put on, but would be very quick to get off.
“I like this,” I say.
“I thought you might need a little extra incentive with the baby on the way,”
Janice says.
So Enid did tell her.
“The opposite actually,” I say.
Janice walks over and undoes my belt. Her hair smells like expensive shampoo, 1
kiss her neck, and she puts her hands down my pants. I feel like a tremendous weight has
been lifted off of my shoulders. Now Janice’s fingers are up underneath my shirt. She
drags her nails down my back. I don’t even care if she leaves marks. I am in this moment.
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“I love you,” she says.
I just keep kissing her neck. Sometimes people say things they don’t mean in the
heat of the moment. I have said some tucked up stuff in my time to get off. Swallow it
down. Take that cock. And that is just the stuff I say to my wife. So if Janice needs to
hear herself say I love you to get hot, I can deal with that.
Except I don’t think Janice is just saying it to get hot. Her hands have stopped.
Her body is rigid. She means it.
“I mean it,” she says.
“Okay.”
“I just wanted you to know.”
“Okay.”
Now Janice resumes her work. She has one hand around my dick, and the other
one behind my back pulling me towards the bed. Two minutes ago all I could think about
was pounding Janice against the wall, her legs wrapped around my stomach, the two of
us rattling dishes, and all of it climaxing in a screaming, pull-your-hair-out orgasm. I
wanted to lose myself in fucking Janice, and now she has ruined it.
On the bed, I queasily strip the lingerie from Janice’s body. She climbs on top of
me — grinding me like she has an itch to scratch — but nothing. I look up at her, her eyes
are closed, she is pursing her lips, and I can tell she is really invested in getting off.
“You want to shoot it on my tits?” she whispers.
I don’t answer, because I don’t think I will be able to shoot it anywhere. I feel like
she is suffocating me. I am overheating. I just want her to get the fuck off me.
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“I love you,” Janice moans thrusting herself up and down on top of me. “I love
you. I love you.”
I can’t take it. I throw her off me with one arm. Janice tumbles over the side of the
bed, clutching the sheets to save herself, and pulling them all with her as she goes. I hear
her land on the floor with a thud just loud enough to make me wince.
Everything looks fucked up. Her bed is a mess, I know she is going to be a mess
down there on the floor. The lingerie, thrown across one bedpost, looks like an animal
harness. I am willing Janice to stand up, because 1 don’t want to climb over to that side of
the bed and see her looking pathetic and rejected on the floor. But I know she is not going
to stand.
“I am getting some water,” I finally say just to say something.
From the other side of the bed I hear something that might be, “okay.”
But instead of getting water, I get my pants. And then I get out of there.
Before the next pom night I buy something to surprise Enid: an Army uniform
from the local surplus store. I have the boots shined and everything. It is authentic right
down to the nameplate across the chest, which has been stripped away.
While Enid gets the DVD ready, I slip off into the bathroom to put it on. I am
surprised how good it feels on me. I can’t remember why I objected to wearing it earlier.
1 feel like a different person it. In the mirror I look like a different person. The uniform
has a cap and everything. I try spinning that cap around backward; I try it askew, and
finally settle on just letting it face forward. If I am going to do this, 1 really want it to look
right. The material for the shirt and pants is heavy. 1 feel bigger in it. Weightier 1 feel the
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gravity in every step. The shirt buttons up the front, and I imagine Enid’s eager fingers
tearing them apart, popping each of the black chunky buttons.
I walk into the living room. “Well, hello soldier,” Enid says when she sees me.
“You know it was awfully lonely out there in the trenches,” 1 say.
“Maybe I can help with that.”
“Wait,” I say when she starts towards me. “You said you would also do
something for me.”
“What do you want?” Enid asks looping her thumbs over the top of her pants and
pulling them down just far enough for me to see the plunging V of her thong.
“I want to film us.”
We set the camera up in the bedroom. It is not the most exotic location, but the
four-post canopy bed allows for some interesting positions, and the lighting is good in
there. 1 am a little disappointed that 1 didn’t think to pick up an external mic or something
to get the sound, but it’s too late now. This is it. This is the real thing. This is pom where
the actors aren’t faking it, and every moan is real. I have been watching porn for such a
long time, looking for something real. I don’t know why this never occurred to me
before.
Enid is in the other room “preparing.” When she comes back in she is wearing a
matching red set of bra and panties. Her face is caked in make-up for the camera.
“Do you think this is too much eye-liner,” she asks. She has borderline raccoon
eyes.
“No,” I say. “It will look perfect.”
“How do we start?” she asks.
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With the camera rolling, we begin with a blowjob scene. I am still wearing the
army uniform and kneeling on the edge of the bed. Enid kneels on the floor. I wish we
had a second camera to get a close up shot on her. All that eyeliner is going to waste with
the wide-angle shot we are getting. Fuck, I wish the camera could see how hot she looks.
“Come up here,” I say pulling her onto the bed. “We are too far away for a
blowjob shot like that.”
I strip off my shirt and start going at her from behind. I still have the army pants
on and the zipper is totally chafing my dick, but I think it is going to show up really well
on film. While I am thinking about it, I grab the cap, which fell off earlier. If am going to
wear this uniform I might as well make it look worthwhile.
“Can you, like, roll your abs more?” I ask Enid. She is just rocking front to back
like some kind of machine.
“Like this,” she says, thrusting her stomach out.
“Kind of, but more sexy. Make them like a wave.”
Enid thrusts her stomach out again. It doesn’t look right, and she can’t keep in
rhythm with me. I keep falling out, which is going to look really bad on tape. Enid’s head
collides with the footboard. The entire doggy-style scene is falling apart. I run through
my mental list of other good wide-angle positions.
“Cowgirl,” I say lying down and pulling off the army pants.
Enid climbs on top o f me and I unhook her bra, finally getting her tits on screen.
This is it. This is a classic shot.
“Put your hands in you hair,” I tell her. “Hold it up like you want to rip it off your
head.”
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Enid lifts her hair up, but it makes her tits look weird. Her left nipple is pointing
off into space.
“Put it down,” I tell her. “Hands on my chest, lean forward.” 1 am going to take
matters into my own hands. I wrap my hands around her ass, pulling myself deeper into
her. I thrust up, lifting everything except my shoulders and feet off the bed.
“Ow,” Enid says.
“This is going to look so hot,” I tell her.
Again. Again. Again. Enid slides her hands up to my shoulders. I think she is just
trying to hold on. You have to over exaggerate everything in pom, otherwise it looks like
you are just sleep walking through it. Enid is gritting her teeth. Good. That is a good
look.
“Ow, fuck James. Ow. Calm the fuck down.”
“Almost there,” I tell her. “I am going to shoot it on your face, ok?”
Enid and I are crashing to together. There is a leathery smacking sound of skin
hitting skin. I hope the camera is getting it. I knew I should have picked up a mic. Enid
smacks me across the face. I’m not usually into getting that violent, but I am too in the
zone to give her direction now. She smacks me again, and again.
“Get off me,” she shouts. “Get the fuck off me. I’m pregnant. I’m fucking
pregnant. Our baby shouldn’t be part of this. What if you hurt the baby?” Enid pulls
herself free and falls down on the bed beside me. She buries herface in the pillow. “I am
going to have a baby,” she keeps saying.
I can hear the camera motor running. Everything is still being captured on tape.
The army uniform and Enid’s red underwear are mixed across the bed and the floor; it
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looks like a couple of strangers had a party in our room. Next to me Enid’s make up is
running and smudged across her face like a mask.
“Who are we?” she asks.
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I meet Mark Finney on a Tuesday morning at an outdoor cafe on Potomac Street
in Georgetown. Finney is already seated when I get there, drinking a cafe au lait from a
monstrous mug cradled between his hands. One thing that may surprise people about
Mark Finney is that he seems just like everyone else, if everyone else wore custom
tailored Calvin Klein suits, four hundred dollar organic hemp Birkenstocks, and ivory
framed Gucci sunglasses. However there is no security around, no entourage, and most of
the cafe patrons leave him alone.
If Finney’s lack of an escort is surprising, it is for a good a reason. Mark Finney is
marked for death. Two months ago Mr. Finney received a fortune cookie containing an
ominous, and ultimately life-changing message: You will die.
“I was shocked,” Finney tells me over poached eggs and scones. “You expect
fortune cookies to be upbeat. Usually, they say something like, you will have a
prosperous new year, or stay the course. But the message I received was decidedly
different.” The fortune was so different in fact that it propelled Mark Finney to national
icon status, spawned two reality television shows, a book deal, a benefit concert series
featuring U2, and after a tremendous public outcry, a new government agency: The
Department of Impending Death, dedicated to predicting the exact time, place, and nature
of Mr. Finney’s forthcoming demise.
75
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“As far as I know nothing like this has ever happened before.” Finney says
running a hand through his jet black wavy hair. To the naked eye Finney is the picture of
health. His skin his a healthy tanned color, and his smile positively glows (Finney has
been the spokesman for Crest White Strips for the last year). He maintains an athletic
physique from a running program that he began well before he received the prophetic
fortune cookie. “I won’t say that the whole thing isn’t a little unsettling,” he continues,
“but I am just trying to enjoy the time that I have left.”
And how much time is left? That is the question that has become a national
obsession. From the running clock in Times Square, to the multitude of Finney-dedicated
blogs, it seems that you can’t turn around any longer without seeing the exact amount of
time that Mark Finney has been alive. It has been over six months now since the New
York Times added their Finney Counter to the top right comer of the front page. Today it
reads fifty-two years, one hundred and eighteen days.
We drive back to Finney’s house in Bethesda, Maryland, in his custom-built
Hummer H2. “This particular truck is modified with nitrous tanks,” he informs me. When
I ask if that improves his miles-to-the-gallon highway performance, Finney just shakes
his head. He says that the nitrous is “extra hot sauce.” Street racers frequently use nitrous
to improve acceleration, but at first its purpose in a two-ton truck is lost on me. “Hang
on,” Finney says as we approach R Street. Climbing up the hill in Georgetown by Book
Hill Park, I have to agree that it makes a perceptible difference in the trucks performance.
“When you are working with a limited timetable you want to make every second count,”
says Finney.
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Finney’s home rests atop a hill and was occupied by Michael Jordan while he was
partial-owner of the W ashington Wizards. George Washington is also said to have slept
there, although the home was not constructed until 1986. The scene outside of the 9000-
square foot mansion has become a common one for Finney. At any given time there are
dozens of wellwishers, scores of flowers, support posters, and yellow buses depositing
students on field trips. Today fourteen Buddhist monks are meditating on the sidewalk;
beyond them I can see the vending trucks selling unlicensed Mark Finney apparel. The
entire spectacle recalls the funerals of state luminaries like of Princess Diana, or John F.
Kennedy. As we approach, an obese woman is standing in front of Finney’s gated
driveway with a sign reading: “Only the good die young. Goodbye. Mark.” Finney gives
her a friendly wave and she steps aside.
“I’m not even that young,” Finney says as we pass through the gate. “Fifty-two, is
that young?”
Before Mark Finney bit into the fortune cookie that changed his life - and foretold
his death he lived in a humble one-bedroom apartment overlooking Washington Circle,
near George Washington University where he taught microeconomics. A perpetual
bachelor, Finney says that he never envisioned himself needing more space, “once I
learned that 1 was going to die though, I thought, fuck it. I might as well live life right.”
For Finney that meant laying out an initial payment of seven-and-a-half million dollars
for his Bethesda home, money that Finney easily and quickly acquired by touring the
talkshow circuit, and cutting some smart deals on his television contracts. “No one wants
to give a dying man a loan,” he jokes, “but they are more than happy to offer him front-
loaded contracts that leave the estate with full franchising rights and brand control.”
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Finney’s front door leads into a three-story antechamber painted entirely white.
The only color in the room comes from seven gargantuan tapestries hanging on the walls.
“Those are the Unicom Tapestries,” Finney says, “the actual Unicom Tapestries. I am
going to be buried with them.” The Flunt of the Unicom is a series of seven tapestries
woven during the fifteenth century. Previous owners include Louis XIV, J.D.
Rockefeller, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Considered to be the greatest artistic
achievement in their field, they are priceless, and a global treasure said to rival the
Sphinx and Michelangelo’s David.
While most of the world accepts, and even applauds, Finney’s over-the-top
lifestyle, a small vocal minority wishes that he would hurry up and die. Mischa Petriello
is the president and founder of HUFF, the Hurry Up Finney Foundation. “When Mr.
Finney first received his death sentence my heart went out to him just like everyone
else’s,” she tells me over lunch one day. Petriello is slender and dark, with something of a
gaunt look to her, like a plant that needs water. “But it has been two years now, and he is
still around. The stance of HUFF is that Mark Finney must die so that the rest of us can
move on with our lives.”
Headquartered in Foxborough, Massachusetts, HUFF has fifteen full-time
employees and also retains two D.C. lobbyists with full support staffs. An international
organization, less than ten percent of HUFF’s quarter million members live in the United
States. Despite its small American demographic, HUFF has made a lot of noise on
Capital Hill. Perhaps their most dramatic victory came last year when they successfully
lobbied against a Congressional bill that would have provided the Department of
Impending Death with an additional half-billion dollars in funding.
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Recently though, HUFF has come under scrutiny due to some sensational
comments made by Petriello on CNN’s Crossfire regarding Mark Finney’s situation.
“What I suggested on Crossfire,” Petriello tells me, “is that perhaps Mark Finney planted
that fortune himself. I mean nothing like this has ever happened before. Are we to believe
that Mr. Finney was just singled out by the cosmos? He is not going to die. It is my
personal opinion — and not the opinion of HUFF — that Mark Finney is the perpetrator of
the most elaborate hoax in human history.”
The See You Tomorrow Fortune Cookie factory is tucked away in scenic Ithaca,
New York. Known for its slogan “Ithaca is gorges,” the town is the perfect location for a
fortune cookie factory, says company president Ernest Cho. “Because of the sensitive
nature of our business,” says Cho, “we wanted a location that was both urban-industrial,
but also a geographical nightmare to reach. In both regards Ithaca is perfect.”
Fortune cookies were first made on the highest peaks of the Himalayan Mountains
by monks during the Western Han dynasty. The cookies had to be baked in inaccessible
areas to avoid brigands who might tamper with the fortunes contained inside them.
Although Ithaca is only eight hundred and fourteen feet above sea level, a far cry from
the Himalayas, its knotty, vexing, interweaving network of gorges makes it a land
surveyor’s personal hell. “Ithaca provides suitable geographic deterrent to those who
might be inclined to tamper with the future,” Cho tells me.
The See You Tomorrow factory is modeled after the inverted smile-shape of a
fortune cookie. As Mr. Cho escorts me into the main lobby 1 get the sense that I am
Charlie about to enter Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and the lobby does not
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disappoint. The walls are covered with LCD screens from ceiling to floor. Fortunes scroll
along the walls in every direction like Wonka’s glass elevator. It seems like the walls
themselves are moving. The whole room is illuminated by the dull blue glow of text. “It
feels like I am swimming in a sea of fortunes,” I tell Mr. Cho.
“Actually,” he says, “you are swimming in a sea of time.”
For centuries people have been relying on fortune cookies to provide clear,
unbiased advice about the future. “Protecting the integrity of our fortunes is our number
one concern,” Cho tells me once we are seated in his office. “There are theories that Mark
Finney tampered with his own fortune, or that he was the target of some sick practical
joke. I can assure that is not the case.” When I pressed Mr. Cho to explain why he was so
certain he refused to comment, saying only that he was not at liberty to explain the
ancient process by which fortunes are decreed and placed inside cookies.
“I can say this,” Cho offered. “If the cookie said he is going to die, then Mark
Finney is going to die.’"
On my second day with Finney, he is giving a public address at the Kennedy
Center. We wait in the green room snacking on smoked salmon and whitefish. All around
Finney the Washington elite clamor to shake his hand. Some of them take pictures.
Finney is frequently asked to pose as if he is waving goodbye to the camera. Through it
all Finney maintains the same high spirits and pluck that have endeared him to the
American public for the last two years. Around the room the same little bits of
conversation can be caught over and over again. Words like “bravery” and “a true
American” get exchanged more often than handshakes. Women give Finney longing
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sideways glances. Men clap him on the back like an old friend, eager to be associated
with him. It would have seemed impossible two years ago, but the obsession with
Finney’s coming death has only heightened over time, and it shows no sign of slowing
down.
Finney delivers his lecture to a packed concert hall. He speaks with poise and tact.
“I have been given a burden that no one should bare,” Finney says toward the end of his
speech, “but I have worked hard to make the best of it. I do not view my fortune as a
misfortune, but as an opportunity. An opportunity to be the face of death, not just for
America, but for the entire world. An opportunity to bring dignity to death.”
After the lecture, 1 wait with Finney in a receiving room where he meets with
reporters, admirers, and just before we leave, Ms. Karen Brooks’ second grade class.
After a few star struck moments the children open up and barrage Finney with questions.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not at all,” Finney replies, flexing one bicep to show that he feels great.
“Do you get to meet famous people?”
“Some. I met the president.”
The children continue their questions, but as Ms, Brooks gathers them up to leave,
seven year-old Carla Nunez approaches Finney. She is carrying an enormous pink
backpack and has her hair tied back in a braid. She has lost most of her baby teeth, but
only a few new ones have grown in to replace them. She looks at Finney with the same
mixture of fear and admiration that children usually reserve for a shopping mall Santa
Clauses. “You are my favorite famous person,” she tells Finney while rummaging
through her backpack. After a moment she finds what she was looking for, a crayon-
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drawn picture on a piece of orange construction paper, which she presents to Finney. The
picture shows trees, a glowing yellow sun, and two graves, The first one reads: Mark
Finney. The second smaller one reads: Carla.
“When I grow up, I am going to die too,” she says.
The United States Department of Impending Death was established six months
after Mark Finney opened his fortune cookie. Special Agent Jack Anderson gives me a
quick tour of their spartan facilities before leading me into his small antiseptic office.
“The greatest misconception that the American people have about the DID,”
Anderson tells me, “is that we exist for the sole purpose of determining how Mark Finney
will die, I won’t deny that Finney-oriented research is a large part of what we do here, but
it A just one part.” Anderson loosens his tie and reclines back in his chair. “The actual
mission of the DID is to prevent future Mark Finneys. In other words, this agency exists
to ensure that no American will ever again have to come face-to-face with death.”
While its mission is well intentioned, the methods by which the DID carries out
its agenda have not always been popular. The agency’s initial plan for government
regulation of all fortune cookies was narrowly struck down as a breach of First
Amendment rights. “If the government controlled the fortune cookie business, along with
other prophetic industries, such as 1-900 number psychics, we could offer a much higher
level of security to the American public,” Anderson tells me. “But as long as divination
remains the province of the private sector, we just can’t guarantee one hundred percent
safety.” In place of government regulation, the DID developed the Mark Finney Act,
which allows for random government search and seizure of fortune cookies. The act
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passed last July, and as of this writing the government has seized over one million
cookies.
As I prepare to leave the Department of Impending Death, I ask Special Agent
Anderson how he thinks Mark Finney will be remembered once he is gone. “I think that
Mr. Finney will be remembered as a good man, a patriot, but also as a cautionary tale,”
Anderson tells me. “If we can take only one message from Mark Finney’s story, it should
be that it does not pay to look into the future,”
After the Kennedy Center we return to Finney’s lavish home. In the great room
Finney reclines in a glass-tiled circular hot tub. Submerged to his chin, he flips through
channels on a wall mounted 108’ plasma television. Lacking swimwear, I choose one of
the five ample leather recliners that also inhabit the room. Everywhere you go inside
Mark Finney’s home you find the best of everything. The shower in the master bedroom
has five different showerheads, capable of pumping out thirty gallons of water per
minute. The walnut moldings in his office are as thick as logs, and look like they were
taken from an English estate. Fie keeps peacocks in the backyard because he finds them
relaxing to look at. All of the extravagance is part of Finney’s mantra to live life while he
still has it. “Some people might think that it is wasteful to use thirty gallons of water a
minute in the shower,” Finney tells me, “but they have their whole life to waste water. I
could be gone tomorrow. If I don’t take advantage of the resources I have now, I may
never get a chance.”
Finney’s laissez-faire attitude towards materialism has garnered him some harsh
criticism, especially from Mischa Petriello and HUFF, but it has earned him even more
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admirers. During his first reality TV stint, viewers described Finney as “knowing how to
enjoy life,” and described watching him go through the posh, but ultimately trivial rigors
of his day as “soothing,” and having a “Bob Ross-like effect,” a reference to the infamous
PBS painter with the singsong baritone voice.
“I wouldn’t say that people want to be me exactly,” Finney says when asked
about the public’s perception of him, “but maybe they wish that they could live the type
of concentrated life I do. What I mean is: I pack a month’s worth of living into a single
day. I have to. Most people are lucky if they get a day’s worth of living in an entire
month.” Fie pauses for a moment, and then adds, “of course, they have that luxury.”
Finney finally selects a channel showing Monty Python and the Holy Grail. On
the larger-than-life screen Eric Idle parades through a mud-covered medieval town
shouting, “Bring out your dead.”
“I’m not dead yet,” says a sickly looking peasant about to be loaded onto a pile of
corpses.
Finney cavorts with laughter in the hot tub, kicking his legs and splashing water
on the floor. “I’m not dead yet,” he crows in a terrible English accent. “I’m not dead yet.”
Aside from myself, only the expensive furniture, and perhaps a nearby peacock bare
witness to his declaration.
The next day 1 make a detour before heading to MarkFinney’s house. Finney is
hosting a black tie fundraiser to benefit Times Winged Chariot, a lobbyist group that
provides most of the DID’s private funding. I have a few hours before the event begins,
and I make a stop off at the Eldbrooke Methodist Cemetery in nearby Friendship Heights.
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Established in 1855, the cemetery is attached to the Eldbrooke Methodist Church,
although the two entities are no longer associated with each other. The cemetery is also
bordered by a parking lot to the east, and an abandoned townhouse to the west. Only a
small rusted iron gate and a crumbling wall announce its presence on 42nd Street. The
Eldbrooke Cemetery has not been in use since 1979 when the mortal remains of Lillian
Riley Thomas, bom 1898, were laid to rest there. Because it is no longer attached to the
church, the responsibility of maintaining the cemetery has fallen on the city, and on
individual mourners. From what I can see, at least a token effort has been made to keep it
neat. Leaves are raked clear of the plots, and the grass is reasonably short. Elowever most
of the headstones are in disrepair, some have actually fallen over, and I find several cans
of Miller Lite littered throughout.
I ask a passing jogger if he ever notices anybody visiting the cemetery. He pauses
for a moment, glances at the cemetery quickly, and then tells me that he has “actually
never noticed it before.” He then hastily resumes his run, turning down the next street.
Having spent the last two days with Mark Finney, I have had to get used to the
idea of death, it is not that I have come to terms with it, but at the very least 1 have been
able to steel myself with the knowledge that it is not me who is dying. Nonetheless, I find
the Eldbrooke Cemetery unnerving. I understand why no one comes here, and why
headstones are left covered in creeping moss, or flat against the ground. Like the jogger I
feel an instinctual knot in my stomach begging me to turn and run away. I stay only
because 1 know that this is what Mark Finney lives with every day, the knowledge that
one day soon he will be lying in a place like Eldbrooke. It is a terrible, terrible truth to
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live. I imagine that it must be like staring into Sun, everything else is obscured in its
searing, constant light.
Near the back of the cemetery, pressed almost right against the church, 1 find the
grave of Elizabeth Chappell, bom 1871, died 1876.1 can’t help but think of Carla Nunez,
the second grader who in her innocent idol-worship of Finney fantasized about her own
death. What must death mean to her? Can she even begin to understand that tomorrow, in
a week, or a month, her “favorite famous person” could be gone forever, leaving behind
only a legacy of keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of all our collective fear? Is it only
childish logic that allows Carla to blur the line between reality and abstraction?
Unable to reconcile Carla’s comment, I leave Eldbrooke cemetery, eager to rejoin the
living.
The street outside of Finney’s house has an atmosphere that is one part carnival,
and one part red carpet event. Onlookers press themselves against the fence that lines his
property hoping to glimpse one of the many pro athletes, movie stars, politicians, or
musicians in attendance. Security ushers the tremendous line of limousines, town cars,
and novelty sports cars through the gate. As I wait in the queue, I notice the obese woman
who stood in front of Finney’s gate two days ago. She is still carrying here “Only the
good die young” sign.
I motion her over to my car, which is crawling at a snails pace towards the gate.
“Can you get me in?” is the first thing she asks.
I tell her that 1 don’t think so.
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Her name is Louise Earle, a waitress from Columbus, Ohio. She is here on
vacation.
1 ask her what made her want to visit Washington.
“I am not here to see Washington,” she says. “1 am vacationing outside of Mark
Finney’s house. Are you sure you can’t get me in?”
She tells me that Finney-based tourism is a big market. There are websites
dedicated to it. She has been camped outside Finney’s house for three days, and every
day she sees mostly the same people over and over again. They are all here on a sort of
pilgrimage. When they are not carrying signs, or investigating the perimeter of the house,
they sit together telling stories of their mutual admiration for Finney, their hometowns,
and their lives. A man from San Francisco has organized a nightly potluck dinner.
“I have met all sorts of people that 1 would have never meet in Columbus here,”
Earle tells me. “It feels like we are all one big family, because we are all here for the
same thing,” She is already planning to come back next year, provided that Mark Finney
is still alive.
“Are you sure that you can’t get me in?” she ask again.
I tell her that I cannot one last time before my car lurches forward a few feet past
the onlookers, the flash bulbs, the television crews, the security guards and Maryland
police, and the t-shirt venders. I slide alongside velvet rope, red carpet, and gothic fence
posts carefully wrapped in tiny white lights, underneath looming maples, beeches, and
stars being outshined be searchlights, streetlights, and the warm yellow glow emanating
through the windows of Finney’s home, at the epicenter of it all.
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Inside the spectacle is grander still, and everywhere you look there is Mark
Finney, entertaining foreign dignitaries, making a fool of him self by the ice sculpture, or
dancing a tango with a senator’s wife. The dying man is the life of the party.
“Are those the actual Unicom Tapestries?” I hear one low-cut black dressed
partygoer ask.
“Yes,” I say. “He is going to be buried with them.
“Magnificent,” she breaths.
The party surges forward into the small hours of the night. There are toasts, and
speeches. The crystal chandeliers, the champagne, the swirl of humanity between rooms;
it is a bubbling, dizzying celebration of life. Everyone is laughing. It seems like it will
never end, but finally it must. By four in the morning the last guests trickle out of
Finney’s home, climbing into long black cars, and speeding home towards beds and a
return to the daily grind tomorrow.
There is a deflated feeling to Finney’s home once the guests have departed. Out
the windows you can still see the tent city that Louise Earle occupies, and suddenly
Finney’s house begins to feel terribly isolated. All around me hired help clean up confetti,
and gather table clothes. They mop floors, and replace the furniture that had been pushed
to the walls. Soon the house will be restored to its usual, lavish, stately condition, and it
will be like this whole party never happened.
1 find Finney sitting alone in his kitchen. His bow tie is undone, as are the top two
buttons of his shirt. He looks exhausted, and understandably so. For last six hours he has
been the center of a celebration. Now he nurses a cup of black coffee and rests his elbows
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on the thick butcherblock table in the comer. His shoes have been kicked of and I can see
him flexing and unflexing his toes underneath his thin black socks.
Love him, or hate him, Mark Finney is going to die. How he will be remembered
is yet to be seen, but as I see him sitting alone in the kitchen a different question bothers
me. Here is Mark Finney who, for the last two years, has lived a rockstar life, has
traveled the world, and been an inspiration to millions. Yet, seeing him now, red eyed,
and nursing his coffee, there is nothing of the socialite, playboy Mark Finney in him. It
leaves me wondering if that Mark Finney is just a straw man, and if so, who have I been
following around for the last three days? And why?
Finney is holding a handful of confetti. The shiny metallic and pastel papers have
a worn and dirty look to them, and I am guessing that he scooped them up off the floor.
He lets them slowly slip out between his fingers, and they land gingerly on the table.
“Sometimes,” he says watching them fall, “1 wish that I didn’t have to die.”
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