A Changed Man

by Francine Prose

  American freedoms? If Americans think they’re free, let them try breaking any of the undemocratic laws that the Jewdicial system has passed. If they think they’re allowed to own property, let them try not paying property taxes. If they think they’re free to defend themselves in their own homes, let them face down the FBI and the ATF like Randy Weaver, David Koresh, and those poor dead babies at Waco. And now this guy whose ancestors came over here in slave ships owned by Jews is telling them about American freedoms? What America does he have in mind? The America where white citizens like Raymond hide in the bathroom where some stranger is taking a shit while a fruitcake like Chandler has private facilities and a white butler wiping his ass?

  “Today,” says Chandler, “a brave young man named Vincent Nolan is going to show us how the way to start changing the world is to change your own heart. First.”

  For some reason the crowd applauds. Fortunately, not for long.

  “Meyer Maslow needs no introduction. All of you know that he is one of our most beloved and respected Holocaust survivors and writers, one of my personal heroes—”

  The Holo-hoax. But what can you expect? It’s in the Negro’s interest to buy into the Holocaust myth. Then the blacks and Jews can compare sob stories, the Holocaust versus the slave trade, I had it worse, no, I had it worse, and then the Irish can get in there with their fucking potato famine, and the so-called Native Americans.…They’ll all get reparations at the taxpayer’s expense, with a kick-back in it somewhere for the Infernal Revenue Service.

  “He is also the founder and director of World Brotherhood Watch, a foundation dedicated to human rights, to making sure that people all over the globe have food and medical care and the liberty to enjoy it. Dr. Maslow is the author of a new book, One Heart at a Time, in which he tells us how we can change the world by turning just one heart at a time toward the path of goodness and love.”

  The chatter inside Raymond’s head has ratcheted up to a shriek. He needs to see a pharmacist—now!

  “And the really strange part”—Chandler zeroes in on this for drama—“is that Dr. Maslow wrote the book before Vincent Nolan came along and put his life on the line to prove Dr. Maslow’s theory. What we’ll see today is…a chay-yanged man.”

  The applause is nearly unbearable, but things are about to get worse. Because it’s time for Chandler’s trademark moment. Just before bringing out the guests, he makes major eye contact with the crowd. His eyes are practically jittering in their sockets as he gives you the guest’s whole life story in his super-intense fag shorthand.

  “At thirteen, he had a loving family. A comfortable house in Budapest. By the time he was fourteen, his entire family was dead. He slept in haylofts, in cellars and pigpens, constantly on the run. He was almost killed five times until he was caught and sent to Auschwitz and survived.”

  Chandler’s run out of oxygen. “Brothers and sisters, how many of you could live through that and not want to make someone pay? How many of us would want revenge? But Meyer Maslow has dedicated his life to making sure that no one else ever suffers as he did, and that we forgive and forget.”

  Forgive, my ass, thinks Raymond.

  The crowd applauds insanely as Meyer Maslow comes out nodding and strutting like a prizefighter during the walk-on, looking like some upmarket Hollywood rabbi to the stars.

  “It’s a pleasure to be here.” Meyer shakes Chandler’s hand. “And excuse me, but I feel I have to point out that I have never believed in forgiving and forgetting. I’ve written about the importance of forgiving but not forgetting.”

  The Jew knows more than you do. The Jew wants you to know that.

  “Of course we can’t forget.” Chandler’s so fast on his feet, he could have had a career in basketball. “None of us can forget. Nor should we.”

  Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo. The Holocaust. The Middle Passage. Chandler points toward one of the Chandler chairs. Whether the rabbi likes it or not, it’s time for him to heel and sit so Chandler can bring out the other puppy.

  Chandler begins again. “His childhood could not have been more unlike that of Meyer Maslow. Born to a mom on welfare and a dad whose life was straight out of Les Miz, hounded to his death because of an income tax mistake. A troubled youth, a run of bad luck, an unfortunate meeting with men like himself who’d found a way to blame their bad luck on disadvantaged minorities who are struggling to feed their children just like everyone else.”

  Hold on! That’s Raymond he’s talking about. That’s Raymond and his buddies gasping for air under that shit heap of lies. The Jew and the black man are struggling, all right, struggling to take over America. And winning, by the looks of it. They’re the ones onstage. The only white citizens in the room are up in the peanut gallery.

  “White men,” Chandler says, like it’s something to be ashamed of. “White men and women who channel their frustrations and disappointments into anger and hate. And Vincent Nolan falls in with these men, and almost slips under their spell. Until one day on a visit to, of all things, a greenhouse—a visit meant to destroy and hurt, to cause its Korean owner pain—he sees the light. He sees how all God’s children and all the beauties of God’s earth are one.”

  What the hell are they talking about? That time he and Vincent went to check out the Korean greenhouse and maybe do some damage? It didn’t happen like that at all. Vincent would have been down with it if they’d torched that popsicle shack just to see the special effects when all that plastic went up in flames. But they’d decided against it. He and Raymond decided against it. They didn’t want to think about it being traced to them. Detectives, cops, lawyers, the whole nine yards. What do you get for arson? Fifteen, twenty years? For what? Flash-frying some plants? They’d gone home and got drunk in front of the tube instead.

  Lately Raymond has given the subject of Vincent plenty of thought. And he’s concluded that Vincent made up his mind, if you could call it a mind, to become a race traitor somewhere around the time he took all that Ex at the rave. After that he started acting weird. Raymond thought his cousin had just punctured another hole in his Swiss-cheese brain, that eventually it would heal over and he would get back to his old self. So what they’re trying to pass off as a heavy-duty spiritual conversion inspired by the beauty of nature was in fact a drug OD and the sort of pathetic revelation a kid might have the first time he got high. Don’t they know that? Why don’t they admit it? How can they spout this crap on TV as if it were the truth? Raymond knows better than to be surprised, but he still can’t help it. It’s his job to correct these lies. It’s his duty as a white American patriot to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  Chandler can’t seem to wrap this one up. There’s so much to say about Vincent. “After just a few weeks of working with Meyer Maslow, the sort of person he’d never met before—and who has met someone like Meyer Maslow and not been changed?—sure enough, Vincent began to. Change. Day by day, thought by thought. Like Dr. Maslow writes in his book. To turn himself around so completely that at the charity fund-raising dinner for Dr. Maslow’s foundation Vincent proved his courage and his resolve. He nearly died. My man nearly died from an allergic reaction, but he kept on pushing, pushing, putting his life on the line, testing himself to the limit, until he said what he had to say, until the brother testified about how he turned his life around and how we can, too.”

  You’d think it was a Rolling Stones concert, that’s how berserk the crowd goes. They’re nearly high-fiving each other as they put their hands together and welcome the traitor, the liar, the thief, the truck thief, the prescription medication thief, the drug addict, a guy who is definitely not the hero they think.

  If Raymond’s blood has been simmering since he saw Vincent getting made up, it comes to a rolling boil the instant Vincent walks onstage. Because this time he’s not sitting down under a sheet, being fluffed and powdered like some pervert poofter. He’s walking on like he owns the joint, taking Chandler’s hand and…shaking a black man’s hand. The s
hock nearly knocks Raymond off his seat. He never thought he would live to see this. Well, jeez, why shouldn’t he shake his hand? Vincent and Chandler are on the same page. Vincent’s suit is almost as good as Chandler’s. They could be two CEOs meeting in a five-star hotel for a power breakfast.

  If this were a different kind of show—the old Geraldo, or Jerry Springer—they’d dress Vincent in the storm trooper clothes he never actually wore. They’d make him wear sleeves short enough to flash his tats at Mom and Pop Middle America. But this is Chandler, and if Vincent wants to market himself as a middle-class middle-management white sellout, Chandler’s happy to go that route. Bring out Mr. Changed Man.

  “It’s great to meet you,” Vincent says. “I’m a big fan. I’ve seen your show a million times.”

  Lies, lies! Does anybody really think they’re meeting for the first time? Who doesn’t know that Vincent and Chandler have been hanging out backstage, enjoying the Big Rock Candy Mountain with all the babes and free champagne? And sure, Vincent’s seen the show a million times. Raymond can testify to that. Vincent used to watch it with him and the guys, calling Chandler every name in the book and talking about how the black man and his Jewish backers are sabotaging the country.

  “Well, thanks,” Chandler says. “It’s good to meet you, too.” Chandler pulls himself away from the crowd and Velcros onto Vincent so everyone can watch Vincent practically get hard from the warmth of Chandler’s attention. A flush comes to Vincent’s cheeks. Can the home audience see this, see the white man blushing? Do they know it’s the only race that gets blood rising into its face, which proves that the white race is the only race with a conscience? But what is Vincent blushing about? Heavy eye contact with a Negro? In another minute, they’re going to fall down on the studio floor and start sucking each other off.

  “Have a seat,” says Chandler.

  Have my seat, thinks Raymond.

  Vincent sits, after giving his pant cuffs a tiny tug, as if he’s been doing that all his life. Chandler sits, same pant-tug. Where do these guys learn this? And who could have imagined Vincent would be an A student? Raymond remembers him being a troublemaker at school. Vincent’s poor mother put in her time in the principal’s office.

  Chandler sits in his Chandler chair and turns toward Maslow and Vincent, who are sitting close enough to hold hands if they want to.

  “How amazing,” Chandler says, “to see you two guys together. Not only together, but…anyone could tell just by looking at you how much you like and respect each other. You know…” Chandler’s acting as if he’s not reading from the prompt screen, as if he’s making it up on the spot. “I’m sure our viewers would love to know what it was like for you two gentlemen to meet. Can either of you reconstruct for me what was going through your minds?”

  “Well, it’s strange,” says Meyer Maslow. “On the day that Vincent showed up at our office, my staff and I had been exploring new ways to dramatize our cause. Because the sad thing is, Chandler, that while we are known all over the world, by the refugees and dissidents we have worked to free—”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Maslow,” says Chandler. “Let’s see some of their faces.”

  The monitor lights up, and the audience watches glam shots—young and old, men, women, children, families, everyone happy and smiling, flashing more expensive dental work than Raymond can begin to afford for his kids.

  “Tell us. Whose faces are we seeing?” Chandler asks.

  Maslow doesn’t miss a beat. “Dissidents we have freed from Communist bloc prisons. Bosnians, Serbs, and Kosovars, torture victims, prisoners of conscience who dared to criticize their governments. Hunger strikers we rescued on the brink of starvation.”

  Their faces flash at Raymond, who is probably the only one in the crowd who knows that this is another elaborate scam to line the Hollywood rabbi’s pockets. They could take photos of anyone and make them look like refugees. Those makeup queens can work wonders. And what about the people the government killed in this country? Or the white refugees driven by poverty to live in inner-city ghettos?

  “All these people,” Meyer is saying, “owe their lives to Brotherhood Watch. But here at home we tend to become more involved with our own families, our own borders. I suppose it’s human nature to see only what’s under our noses.”

  “I guess so.” Chandler doesn’t want to admit that he does nothing all day but sit around and think about other people’s problems—that is, how he can pimp them to make big bucks.

  “So my staff and I were considering new ways to publicize our cause…. And Vincent appears out of nowhere.”

  “That’s amazing. That’s beautiful. Would you say…God sent him?”

  “I would,” Meyer says. “Others might have another explanation.” He curls his lip to show what he thinks of those other explanations. “I have learned over and over that God sends you what you need.”

  Here’s where the logic breaks down. Did God send Maslow’s family, the ones supposedly killed in the Holocaust—did God send them what they needed? No. Which proves you can’t have it both ways: God and the Holocaust. Proof that the Holo-hoax never happened. Because there definitely is a God. A god who believes in justice, in Vincent getting what he’s got coming.

  “Only later,” Maslow goes on, “did I realize that Vincent would not only become an important part of our Brotherhood family, but also that he was the living proof of the ideas that I had just written about in my new book, One Heart at a Time.”

  Raymond checks the monitor, on which Maslow’s book appears. If this were less important, if he were relaxing in his living room, Raymond would count the number of times they plug the book during today’s show. He misses his ARM buddies. He wishes he were home with them, watching Chandler and cursing.

  “And you, Vincent? Did you suspect that you were the living fulfillment of an idea that Meyer Maslow had written about in his new book?”

  “Actually,” says Vincent, “I’d read the book.”

  “You did?” says Chandler.

  You did? thinks Raymond. When the hell was that? On the truck—the stolen truck—ride from Raymond’s house to the city? It was physically impossible for Vincent to have read those books while he was living at Raymond’s. The idea that someone could do such a thing totally rocks Raymond’s world. Though, come to think of it, there were days when Vincent would disappear at lunch or take a long time getting home from the tire shop. Raymond had hoped that Vincent was secretly getting laid, or even copping a drink. It’s sickening to imagine that he might have been reading Zionist propaganda. There was that one day Vincent’s car broke down in a vacant lot, and Raymond went to get him. Vincent claimed he’d been taking a piss. Could he have been parked, reading Maslow’s lies? Raymond won’t let himself go there.

  “I’d read all of Meyer Maslow’s books,” says Vincent. “And I was impressed. I’d never read anything like them. In fact the people I got mixed up with—” He lowers his eyes. Overwhelmed.

  “We understand,” says Chandler. “Take a minute if you have to. Have your feelings, Vincent.”

  Vincent works the silence, then says, “But I never imagined I could be saved the way Meyer Maslow describes saving people. I never imagined that my life could change.”

  “But you wanted to try—” Chandler suggests.

  “I wanted to try,” agrees Vincent. The crowd applauds spontaneously, loving how the black man puts words in the white man’s mouth.

  “And what made you able to do it?” Chandler says. “Able to change.”

  If Raymond thought he could do it without attracting unwanted attention, he’d put his hands over his ears so as not to have to hear that doo-doo about the Korean greenhouse. Raymond tries to sing a song in his head to drown out Vincent’s voice. But the only songs that come to mind are the ones they played at Homeland Encampment. The trouble with German military marches is they’re not singable, exactly.

  Apparently Vincent has reached the end of his routine. Chandler waits a few second
s. Then, as if he’s listening to the voice of his inner self instead of the million dollars’ worth of audio equipment plugged into his ear, he tilts his head and says, “You know, Vincent, Dr. Maslow, I heard a story. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “What’s that?” asks Maslow.

  Dr. Maslow, I heard what you really get off on is sucking black men’s cocks. But Chandler’s not going to say that. There’s no point even hoping.

  Chandler says, “I heard that the first time Meyer and Vincent met, the two of you compared tattoos. You, Dr. Maslow, asked to see Vincent’s swastika, and you showed him the numbers on your arm from the Nazi camp.”

  Vincent is trying to disappear. What healthy white man wouldn’t? The alternative is to sit there while the audience imagines him involved in some macho standoff with one of those Jews who tattoo themselves. To say nothing of the fact that Vincent doesn’t have a swastika. That would have been way too ballsy for him. Waffen-SS bolts are kid stuff. It’s Raymond who’s got the swastika. Would Chandler like to see it?

  Chandler seems to have stepped on somebody’s toes. Maslow is glaring at him.

  “Do you think you could show our audience?” Chandler prods.

  “Absolutely not,” Maslow says. “We are not primitives. We are not Amazonian tribesmen, displaying our tribal markings. We are two men who have suffered and have come here with a message that we refuse to contaminate by indulging in tawdry theatrics. I refuse to cheapen the Holocaust for anyone’s entertainment.”

  “All rightee.” Chandler doesn’t blink. If Maslow won’t flash his tats, fuck him, let’s move on. “Let’s turn this over to the audience. Any questions for our guests?”

  The lights come up. No one wants to go first. Certainly not Raymond. Let the ball get rolling. Then he’ll raise his hand and start off as if he means to ask a normal question. Of course, Vincent will know it’s him. That will be half the fun. Meanwhile Raymond’s got his hands jammed in his pockets so his tats don’t set off any alarm bells. He turns his face whenever Vincent looks his way.