SEPTEMBER 13, 1967
Because, though his name was not then, not up to that point, “Will Robinson,” that was the only name he would acknowledge in later years, in what can be said to exist of his adult life. Thus, “Will Robinson” sat in the living room of the ranch-style home of his parents, Dwayne and Jeanine, who were themselves engaged in a certain fait de l’amour in the rear of the house, where the ranch’s bedrooms were, existing each to a side of the narrow hallway that connected the house from stem to stern, the more or less dumbbell floor plan dividing living and dining rooms, and similarly two bedrooms, the TV volume being kept low—as was the wish of “Will Robinson”’s dear, sweet mother—as in extremely low, as in the knob was barely even one click to the right from the On position, and what with the pterodactyl screams and the sort of primordial grunts of his parents’ intromission (which, for “Will Robinson,” subconsciously developed into a squidlike image, as would emerge thirteen or so years later as the aptest description of it in a therapy session between “Will Robinson” and his therapist (the elegantly long-fingered and androgynous Archnover Randall), which session ultimately terminated the therapy altogether with a certain uncomfortable admission being made by “Will Robinson” having to do with the sexual sounds of his parents (which filled the home on a more or less daily basis throughout “Will Robinson”’s pre- and then even postpubescence), his mother’s sounds in particular, which admission “WR” thought was perhaps a real Getting Somewhere moment (as in, the type of moment (smaller versions of which had occurred during their therapy to this point) that elicited from Archnover an “Ah-now-I-feel-we’re-really-Getting-Somewhere”), but which admission ended up terminating the therapy due to the discomfort it clearly brought about in Archnover, whose face unconsciously betrayed what a therapist is never to betray, emotions or any type of response other than Professional Care, which in this face, this emotion, was something that was pretty clearly disgust/confusion and maybe a touch of good old judgmental othering, a kind of visual maxillofacial Oh dear God), “Will Robinson” had to sit very close to the TV and with his whole figure sort of contorted to one side, his head angled in with left ear lowered toward the TV’s screen and speakers (which were settled into a sort of cabinet beneath the glass screen), his eyes almost closed they were focused so hard on taking in the action and understanding with the near-muted sound and its counterpoint (the high-pitch and bass-driven fugue from the bedroom (rounded out by the orchestral squeaking of the bedsprings and the tympanic rhythm of the headboard-on-wall’s percussion)) what precisely was happening at just that moment, in what had been revealed to be not 1997, as might have been hoped/expected, but was instead evidently 1947 (this episode of Lost in Space (season 3, episode 2) was entitled Visit to a Hostile Planet, though of course that “hostile planet” was dear old earth), the Jupiter 2 had this week gotten caught in a vicious “space warp,” which had seemed bad enough, until the Robinsons emerged and saw there in its blue aura planet earth itself, some promised land, some sort of Arcadia, paradise gained, except they couldn’t make contact with Alpha Control—which seemed pretty weird, kind of a first bad sign maybe—but they decided to land anyway except the Jupiter 2 let them out not onto the present-day earth they are so homesickly happy to finally see again, but instead into a small town in Michigan, which is weirdly deserted, and the people of the small Michigan town believe the ship and its occupants (understandably) to be an alien invasion (sort of like the aural terror of many real small towns post Welles’ 10/30/38 War of the Worlds), and just as Dr. Smith (who has, during the episode already, begun a campaign to get rich by introducing technology to the historically backward but good people of the Michigan town) disguises himself as the fire chief and makes his move, leading a “vigilante force” against the Jupiter 2, its aim to take the Robinsons prisoner, that was pretty much the moment when the extended simultaneous orgasm going on thirteen or so feet away overtook the small house, making the house itself feel hostile, though of course it was still “home,” “Will Robinson” knew, and “Will Robinson” turned his head in the direction of the sounds as though, almost, expecting to see some great slouching beast approaching (the sound itself made manifest, corporeal), and he stared distantly right at it, the sound, where he envisioned its advance to be—and it was at that moment, looking at the dim hall and the imaginary creature that is the sounds of two bodies in the absolute pitch of orgasmic throes, two throats giving simultaneous though dissonant voice to the passion of the moment, the fantasy of the squidlike and more or less amorphous blob (indefinitely purple in color) bearing down on him was given a new element, that of the Robot, who was suddenly there beside him and, with the general affect of a parrot who knows but the one line, pronounced, “Danger, Will Robinson” in that stentorian and mechanical voice, and so right then he chose his name, though it would be eight years before he introduced himself to anyone as “Will Robinson.”
FEBRUARY 2, 1984
Dimley chose this particular convenience store, Mr. Z’s Food Mart, because its magazine rack—as pretty much everyone knew—was discreetly placed along the opposite wall from the counter, and with no convex mirror overhanging it, no way really for the old woman chain-smoking at the counter to know what precisely any given customer was looking at, magazine-wise, and so here one could discreetly pull a plastic-sheathed copy off the top shelf, and—if one was careful enough—tuck it into the back waistband of one’s Sansabelt pants and, in order to avoid suspicion, purchase an innocuous cover magazine, something like Time or People or Newsweek or even Life. However, in such a situation (and especially with regard to the eyepatch), Dimley figured, it was best to not linger, not dillydally at the magazine rack, but to move assertively, confidently, to quickly stuff the plastic-wrapped nudie down one’s pants, and move—not hurriedly, but without hesitation—to the counter with the cover purchase, giving off as much as was possible an affected effortless cool and a sense that yes-indeed-this-is-the-magazine-I-knew-I-wanted-to-buy-when-I-entered-and-so-I-had-no-reason-to-linger-or-look-suspiciously-around-back-there-thanks! But the problem he immediately encountered was, among the short list of available magazines and among the shorter list that accorded with his tastes and interests, there were two copies of Playboy, one of which, that in front, was the newest, the February issue, which boasted the almost impossible hourglass figure of a perky blonde flanking whom were the twin tags
A POTENT
PICTORIAL
Sexy Women
Who Are
Tougher
Than You Are
and
HEEEEERE’S CAROL!
JOHNNY CARSON’S
“MATINEE LADY”
SHOWS ALL
which all seemed totally adequate, really, except that as he reached to remove it from the shelf, he revealed the last of the last month’s issues, the January 1984, aka the thirtieth-anniversary issue, 292 pages elegantly dressed all in black with simply a rectangle bearing the Playboy colophon, the cartoonish bunny head, in the eye of which were the small white numbers 3-0, and, but more importantly, along the upper margin, he read quote the last nude photos of Marilyn Monroe unquote, which as anyone knows is a significant spread to behold, not just for, you know, salacious reasons, clearly, but also for its historical importance: namely re the very first issue of Playboy—as in ever—which unforgettably likewise listed on its simple front cover quote
first time in any magazine
FULL COLOR
the famous
MARILYN MONROE NUDE
unquote, and so there he was, the most recent Playboy in his hand, not wan
ting to linger, not wanting to dillydally, fearing getting caught, running a rapid logarithm of options available to him here, ratiocinating furiously between the two covers partially obscured by plastic wrapping—HEEEEERE’S CAROL! or Marilyn?—and finally making a quick switch, replacing the February issue and now almost sweating as he pushed the purloined Playboy into the elastic band of his pants and grabbed a copy of Time and headed nearly running to the counter, spilling loose change onto the lineoleum as he pulled a wadded tissue and a crumpled fiver from his right front pocket—terrified the Playboy would slide lower in his pants, forcing a waddled and unmistakable retreat—hardly hearing when she told him how much the Time cost.
It was not until later, as he caught his breath near a woven-metal wastebasket on the sidewalk several blocks away, that he had the chance to readjust the magazine pressed against his now sweat-sticky lower back and that he noticed the Time he’d bought, the cover of which was a kind of off-putting back-to-back painted portrait of Time’s Men of the Year, Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov, Yuri-quote-the-struggle-for-human-rights-was-a-part-of-a-wide-ranging-imperialist-plot-to-undermine-the-foundation-of-the-Soviet-state-unquote-Andropov, who—unbeknownst to Dimley at the time—would be dead in a week.
Dimley threw the Time away.
And it was only much later, at home, paging through the Playboy at leisure, that Dimley discovered the hidden gem of Ray Bradbury’s “The Toynbee Convector,” a short story telling basically of a nearly ruined civilization, much like his own, which is saved by a man named Craig Bennett Stiles, who claims to have invented a time machine, traveled to a utopian future, and who provides films and other evidence of this future to the citizens, inspiring them to work to achieve it, to make the future the present as soon as possible, and who, on his deathbed many years later, after the utopian world he foresaw has become a reality, grants an interview to a man named Roger Shumway, wherein he reveals he’d made the whole thing up (quote I lied unquote)—no time machine, no utopia—he’d conned them all in order to give his stagnant society something to hope for, to believe in, asking the reporter to tell everyone the truth, to let them know they saved themselves, that they were capable of the utopia the whole time. Shumway believes he must carry on the legacy of the great inventor, himself wishing to travel to the future, and so protects the illusion, and destroys the evidence Stiles had left behind for him to reveal.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1987
The first occurrence in Scranton (viz., August 11, 1987) was broadcast in what was to become uncharacteristically quiet fashion: scrawled in block-letter graffiti on a police car that had been parked, vacant, overnight. At first the single word “Toynbee” was assumed to be no more than a graffiti tag, and without any suspects the incident went largely unremarked. However, the second occurrence was more in the mode of the later graffiti: On the morning of September 13, three separate occurrences were graffitied on local buildings and storefronts, including in thirty-foot-high letters across the old army ammunition plant (as well as smothering the fronts of both Poor Richard’s Pub and Mr. Z’s Food Mart), each consisting of three separate lines of text, to wit:
TOYNBEE A LIAR
I HAD NOT THOUGHT DEATH
UNDONE SO MANY
TOYNBEE WAS RIGHT
THE HANGED MAN
FEAR DEATH BY WATER
I WAS NEITHER LIVING NOR DEAD
AND I KNEW NOTHING
LOOKING INTO THE HEART OF LIGHT THE SILENCE
The connection between the word “Toynbee” in these three occurrences and that of the police vehicle drew some attention—as did simply the audacity of the act. However, the connection was also made between these acts of vandalism and the “Toynbee Tiles” that had been spotted in Philadelphia, as well as elsewhere, and that similarly contained a cryptic message involving both Toynbee and death:
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK’S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER
Though arguably this was nothing more than an act of vandalism, the scale of the graffiti—smothering three storefronts—seemed to suggest some purpose, some message. Police were concerned there was some sort of political group behind the vandalism, some sort of gang, perhaps, or even a guerrilla or terrorist sect. But then, what was it supposed to mean? Whatever the cipher, the text as it was made no sense.
As a junior officer and given the momentary high profile of the vandalism, it was both a blessing and a bane when Dimley Scarton was assigned the case. He’d joined the force only seventeen months ago, and had had very little to investigate. He recognized the name Toynbee, knew he knew it from somewhere, though he could not place exactly where. Though really no one expected much from him, Dimley poured himself into the case, heading to the library after the assignment, curious about the word “Toynbee” in particular, as it just stuck in his head. A quick search revealed Toynbee to be the name of a dead historian who’d written about metahistory and the four stages of a civilization’s rise and decline. The rest of it he spent hours trying to make some sense of. The librarian was literally calling softly to him that the library was closing when he saw a reference in a work on whatever precisely metahistory really was (he thought he knew, and then didn’t) to the lines from The Waste Land describing the tarot reading “Fear death by water.”
That night he barely slept, instead got stoned and drank his way through a six-pack of Miller, reading and rereading The Waste Land, deeply lost.
In his first years on the force, Dimley continued to get high, often enough with G.P., though even this early their different paths in life had started to move distinctly parallax and apart and separately. He hadn’t heard from G.P. in some weeks, despite observing their usual routine: Dimley tended to park his cruiser outside G.P.’s house on slow days and wait for G.P. to head out, going wherever, and Dimley would throw the lights on, pull him over. He considered calling G.P., the one person who would undoubtedly be up and likely to engage with this graffiti poetry thing, but instead, unmuting the TV’s replaying of Them! and lighting another joint, he read the lines “I can connect / Nothing with nothing. / The broken fingernails of dirty hands. / My people humble people who expect / Nothing. / la la” over and over, unable to move past them. (Later in life, about a decade or more, while high, he often found himself drawn back to thoughts about the movie—as he remembered it—Donnie Brasco, which he had indeed watched high and in which Johnny Depp plays a cop who plays a Mafia guy and who maybe does become the Mafia guy and whose loyalties and true intentions seem to get pretty muddled, as Dimley understood it. For Dimley, this movie poses really difficult questions, once it gets going, in that Depp is, well, yes, for one thing he himself changes or challenges one’s perception of the film and the character and everything in that he seems always to be there, always making you aware of his presence, and to Dimley he, as an actor, seemed not particularly trustworthy, the type of actor—if there could be said to be a type—who always ironically undercut whatever role he was in, like with his own smirk and affectations always seemed to be indicating he could not just be a straight cop, a good guy, acting the part of a bad guy, but instead that he reveled not only in the bad guyness but in the ambiguity, in his very Eddie Haskell qualities, the nature of his good/bad and self being obfuscated—but apart from Depp, Dimley recalled the movie’s plot as treating of this cop who goes undercover, but deep undercover, and starts to form connections in his other life, the life he is performing as this Mafia guy, and gets into drugs and crime and so on, and all the while, the supposedly real him is being challenged as others maybe start worrying where did the
real him go, they can’t see it anymore, but instead only the criminal Mafia-guy part, which even when he is not performing that now, the real guy, the good guy, seems the performance, so in other words he is a cop playing a criminal who then people think is really a criminal sometimes playing—and maybe has been, like, for a long while playing—a good guy, and in this, then, Dimley would start to think what if it is not just how he acts and what others see but what if truly he was all along an unexpressed bad guy playing a good guy, Depp, that is, who then plays a bad guy and people can sense he is only playing when he tries to show he really is a good guy. And of course around this time Dimley would realize his own place in this, the fear that he himself was not just a good guy, a cop, but was some sort of criminal playing a cop and maybe for motives he himself did not yet know, and then he would start to worry and wonder: Could there even be such a thing as being or was it only performing, acting, behaving? Like if he acted like a cop, was that all there was to being a cop? Was there nothing definite in him, nothing that he truly was and that his actions followed from, but was it instead that his actions determined any meaningful statement about what he truly was? When he was high, smoking with G.P. as a younger kid, when he used to here and there pilfer small goods from convenience stores and whatnot, was that more truly who he was inside? Did he become a cop not out of any sense of civic duty or moral rectitude but rather as a sort of undercover bad guy, the way Depp performs Brasco performing the Mafia character? Was he all the time in disguise, walking around, playing a cop, while really deep down being something darker, undiscovered, other? Did he even really remember the movie right? His version was all about Depp’s character’s deep commitment to the role actually becoming a real and meaningful challenge to the “true” nature of Depp’s character, as in even the character starts to lose hold on who he is—is he a cop playing bad or is he really the bad guy playing the cop playing bad, etc.—and his life starts to fall apart. The movie, as Dimley recalls, ultimately navigates away from this terrible incursion and returns Depp to normal life, albeit somewhat changed, and thus the movie can end. But what about if the movie didn’t just end, if it wasn’t trying to console the viewer by simply answering who Depp/Brasco really was, but instead only showed how the nature of our identity is maybe truly relational, conditional, contextual, or—or—that there is a true self and it may very well be inconsistent with our performances of a self—note how Depp seems to pose a constant question by his very smirkiness of what exactly we are even to believe here, regarding who is performing whom—and that possibly we cannot control this truth, as in, simply by acting like a cop we can’t change the fact that we are really a drug-consuming, petty-thieving bad guy. Again, though, which was worse? To be a thing you thought you weren’t, or to know there is no thing you are, that everything about you is simply what you are performing, acting as, behaving like at that given, specific time. It was long incursive thoughts like these that ultimately forced Dimley to quit smoking.)
Conjunctions 65: Sleights of Hand Page 27