Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, Found Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts

by David Shields

  Yet despite our faithfulness to the scientific method, we must not ignore the personal factor in these experiments—the human side of instrumental transcommunication. For the personal relevance of the message, when it finally comes, is often what establishes the message’s authenticity. Those of you who have already received such messages report that the sender will often use, as a kind of password, a phrase or nickname or piece of information that only he and you, the recipient, could know. Who can forget the message our esteemed colleagues Meek and O’Neil received on their Spiricom device, in the unmistakable voice of the deceased electronics specialist with whom they had worked for years: “The problem is an impedance mismatch into the third resistor—try a 150-ohm half-watt resistor in parallel with a .0047 micro-farad ceramic capacitor.” Or Dr. Raudive’s own unexpected message from the other side, which came through one night at home on the clock radio of the researcher who had been tirelessly advancing Raudive’s cause after his untimely death: “This is Konstantin Raudive. Stay on the station, tune in correctly. Here it is summer, always summer! Soon it will work everywhere!” It almost seems that the deceased senders of these messages answered the calls of the living, rather than vice versa, as is usually assumed.

  In light of these considerations, I strongly contend that my wife and I were justified in our choice not to fake the maid’s voice on Nathan’s tape. We could not have known what was about to occur.

  For those of you not familiar with my story, which was reprinted in last month’s newsletter, the paramedics who so heroically attempted to revive my son gave his cause of death as “generalized childhood seizure,” meaning he had stopped breathing before he went under-water, rather than afterward. My wife, who was swimming not far away at the time, agrees; otherwise, she says, he would certainly have splashed or kicked, or cried out for help. She maintains she certainly would have heard him. We did recover the tape recorder in a Ziploc bag that he was carrying so he could record underwater sounds, but he hadn’t sealed the bag properly, the whole thing was water-logged, and the cassette yielded nothing.

  It might have been restored, of course, but my wife allowed the bag and its contents to be thrown away at the hospital—an oversight which some of us might find difficult to comprehend, but again, how could she have known? At that time, I myself knew nothing about instrumental transcommunication, not even that it existed. I knew nothing of the hours of research already completed, the extraordinary messages already received, the elaborate devices created by scientists and by ordinary men, like myself.

  It was later that evening that the first seeds, as they say, were planted. To get back to our hotel we had to go through St. Augustine’s cobblestoned side streets, past the crowded displays of artisans; one fellow dressed as a blacksmith called out to us, “Smile! It can’t be that bad!” The very quality of the day’s light seemed different, smoky, like a film stuck on one frame, the edges burning and closing in. When we got back, my wife went into the bathroom and shut the door. Our room still smelled cheerfully of bananas and Sea & Ski. The TV was on, for some reason, muted and tuned to the closed-circuit bulletin board. A message was running across the bottom of the screen: If you like what you are hearing, tune in 24 hours a day . . . If you like what you are hearing, tune in 24 hours a day . . .

  That’s when I noticed the recorder on the dresser, the one Nathan had left for the maid. It was black and silver and shining in the TV’s cold blue light. But there was something off about it, I thought, as if it had been touched or moved by someone. Not the way he’d left it. Then, like a punch in the stomach: Of course! The maid’s message! She would have done it this time. Of course. I saw it all at once, in simple, clear progression, our lives laid out as in a comic strip, with everything—not just each day of our vacation, each day the maid had not responded, but each day of Nathan’s life, our lives, our parents’ lives before ours—leading up to this, this final square, this joke.

  I had to hear it anyway. I pressed play and held my breath because it suddenly seemed too noisy, not right, and with my breath stopped I felt the air around me stop, the molecules stop popping, everything stop moving, so I could hear this awful answer, this stupid woman speak the words my son had written for her, too late. Instead, there was silence. Then, ever so faintly, something else, something so small, so familiar it seemed to come from my own body—but it could not have. It was breathing—Nathan, breathing. I waited for him to speak, to begin one of his stories, but he just went on breathing, as if he were just sitting there, reading his Sesame Street book, or lying on the floor, battling with his action figures. But breathing.

  My wife was in the bathroom with the door closed. And my son, my son who I knew was dead, was breathing in my ear.

  Like a DJ, God plays the impossible for us. I cannot speak for others, but that was how it began for me, founder of the Instrumental Transcommunication Network. I did not mistake the sound on the tape that night for the aspirations of a ghost, a message from the other side—but when I heard it, I knew such things were possible.

  My wife was not there to receive the message. Was that only a fluke? Had she not been in the bathroom at that moment, I wonder, would she have heard it, too? Or did she leave the room on purpose, following some premonition, practicing a kind of willful deafness, the selective hearing of parents? It is impossible to say. Later, I brought home books for her—Phone Calls From the Dead, The Inaudible Made Audible in the original German, every seminal text in the field—but she refused to look at any of them. I might as well have handed her a stack of Playboys.

  At the time of our divorce, we catalogued Nathan’s tapes and stored them in a safe-deposit box so that I could continue my research, and so that she could listen to them for what her lawyer called “sentimental reasons”—an accusation, apparently. I am not the sentimental one, is the implication, not human, she has said. Yet it is she who refuses to take her own son’s call, a call I have no doubt he will make, is perhaps preparing to make this very moment. I am ready. Upstairs in my room in this hotel the most sensitive and sophisticated equipment available at this time—thanks to many of you here today—is in operation even as we speak, poised and ready to receive and safeguard the most tentative inquiry, the faintest nudge of sound.

  We are not spoon-benders, I tell my wife, and others like her, not flim-flammers, but scientists and engineers, scholars and teachers and builders, fathers, many of us, and mothers. We wait like any line of people at a pay phone: impatient, hopeful, polite. What will he say when he calls? We can only imagine. It may not sound like English—it may not be English. We still have much work to do in the areas of clarity and amplification. On a typical recording, “soulmate” sounds like “sailboat,” “father” may be indistinguishable from “bother,” “Nathan” might come through as “nothing.”

  Still, we wait. We listen like safecrackers, we listen like sleuths. We remember the words of those listeners who came before us, the brave ones who started this whole thing. Stay on the station, tune in correctly. Here it is summer, always summer! Soon it will work everywhere!

  TED MECHAM may be the first member of the Class of ’66 to retire. I met him and his beautiful wife Kathy at a Buccaneers game in Tampa Bay in October. His investments in sugar refining and South American cattle have paid off handsomely. Any secret? “Yes,” says Ted. “In and out, that is the key.” Also in Florida, I saw JIM HASLEK and BILL STEBBINS. They left their families behind in Columbus and Decatur, respectively, to tune up a 1300-hp open-class, ocean racing boat, Miss Ohio, for trial runs near Miami. The racing season is set to open there in December, and Jim and Bill (famous for their Indy 500 pilgrimages) are among the favorites. JOHN PESKIN writes to say, sad to relay, that he has been sued by BILL TESKER. Bill, general manager at the Dayton office of TelDyne Industries, claims he gave John the idea for a sitcom episode that John subsequently sold to NBC. It all took place more than a decade ago and is more than I can believe.

  RALPH FENTIL, handling the case for Bill,
made it clearer. Ralph is director of Penalty, Inc., a franchised California paralegal service, which helps clients develop lawsuits. “This is a growing and legitimate consumer-interest area. We encourage people to come in, we go over their past. It’s a potential source of income for the client. We let the courts decide who’s right and wrong.” Hmmm. RICHARD ENDERGEL phoned a few weeks ago from Houston, under arrest for possession of cocaine—third time since 1974. Richard thinks this is it. Unless a miracle happens he is looking at 15 years or more for dealing in a controlled substance.

  STANFORD CRIBBS, mangled practically beyond recognition in an automobile accident in 1979, took his own life on March 19, according to a clipping from the Kansas City Star. His former roommate, BRISTOL LANSFORD, has fared no better. Bristol was shot in the head by his wife’s lover at the Lansfords’ vacation home outside Traverse City. ROBERT DARKO of Palo Alto (where else?) sends word he is moving up very quickly at Mastuch Electronics, and to thank DAVID WHITMAN. David, of Shoremann, Polcher & Edders, Los Angeles, specializes in celebrity and personality contracts. Bob Darko is the sixth middle-management executive hired in David’s Free Corporate Agent draft. “Corporate loyalty is something from the fifties,” says David. “I want to market people on a competitively-bid, short-term contract basis, with incentive and bonus clauses.”

  Tell that to STEVEN PARKMAN. He has been living on unemployment benefits and his wife’s income from a hairdressing concern since April of last year—with four kids. FRANK VESTA is certainly glad his job (in aerospace planning with General Dynamics of St. Louis) is holding up—he and wife Shirley had their ninth—a boy—in July. GREG OUTKIRK has grim news—daughter Michelle rode her thoroughbred Arabian, Botell III, off the boat dock in front of their Waukegan home in an effort to make the animal swim. It drowned almost immediately. DENNIS MITFORD, owner of a well-known Nevada wh---house (no class discounts, he jokes), reports an unruly customer was shot on the premises in October by his bodyguard, LAWRENCE ADENSON. Larry, who served in Vietnam, says the publicity is awful. He may go back to New York—after Denny officially fires him for the violence. Violence is no stranger to BILL NAST. His wife turned up in terrible shape at Detroit General Hospital two months ago, the victim of Bill’s hot temper. Four hours in surgery?

  JACK ZIMMERMAN’s second wife and two children by his first wife visited over Easter. Sue ZIMMERMAN was a 1978 Penthouse Pet. Jack is managing her modeling career, his entertainment career, and raising the kids. Kudos, Jack. TIM GRAYBULL is dead (of alcohol abuse) in Vermillion, South Dakota, where he taught English at the university. (Please let the editor of Alumnus know you want to see Tim’s poems in a future issue.) ALEX ROBINSON won’t say what films he distributes, but hints broadly that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” even in that area. The profit margin, he claims, is not to be believed. I’m reminded of KEVIN MITCHELL, who embezzled $3.2 million from Sperry Tool in 1971. He periodically calls from I-know-not-where. Kevin was home free in 1982, with the expiration of the case. DONALD OVERBROOK—more bad news—is in trouble with the police again for unrequited interest in young ladies, this time in Seattle. JAMES COLEMAN called to say so. Jim and his wife Nancy are quitting their jobs to sail around the world in their 32’ ferroconcrete boat. Nancy’s parents died and left them well-off. “We were smart not to have kids,” Jim commented.

  HAROLD DECKER writes from Arkansas that he is angry about Alumni Association fund-raising letters that follow him everywhere he goes. “I haven’t got s---, and wouldn’t give it if I did.” Wow. NORMAN BELLOWS has been named managing editor of Attitude. He says the magazine’s 380,000 readers will see a different magazine under his tutelage—“aimed at aggressive, professional people. No tedious essays.” Norm’s erstwhile literary companion in New York, GEORGE PHILMAN BELLOWS (Betsy BELLOWS and George are living together, sorely testing that close friendship from Spectator days) reports Pounce is doing very well. George’s “funny but vicious” anecdotes about celebrities appear bi-weekly in the fledgling, nationally-syndicated column. “At first the humor went right by everyone,” says George, feigning disbelief. “George is an a--h---,” was GLEN GREEN’s observation when I phoned. Glen opens a five-week show in Reno in January (and he will see to it that you get a free drink and best seats in the house). Another class celebrity, actor BOYD DAVIDSON, has entered Mt. Sinai, Los Angeles, for treatment of cocaine and Percodan addiction.

  Dr. CARNEY OLIN, who broke a morphine habit at Mt. Sinai in 1979, thinks it’s the best program in the country. Carney says he’s fully recovered and back in surgery in the Phoenix area. THOMAS GREENVILLE’s business brochure arrived in the mail last week. He has opened his fifteenth Total Review salon. Tom combines a revitalizing physical-fitness program with various types of modern therapy, like est, to provide clients with brand-new life paths. Some sort of survival prize should go to DEAN FRANCIS. MBA Harvard 1968. Stanford Law 1970. Elected to the California State Assembly in 1974, after managing Sen. Edward Eaton’s successful ’72 election campaign. In 1978, elected to Congress from California’s 43rd District. It all but collapsed like a house of cards last fall. A jealous brother-in-law, and heir to the Greer fortune, instigated a series of nasty suits, publicly denounced Dean as a fraud, and allegedly paid a woman to sexually embarrass him. Dean won re-election, but the word is his marriage is over—and Phyllis Greer FRANCIS will go to court to recover damages from her brother. A sadder story came to light when I met DOUGLAS BRAND for drinks after the Oklahoma game last fall. Doug’s wife Linda went berserk in August and killed their three children. She’s in prison. Doug says he used to bait her to a fury with tales of his adulteries and feels great remorse.

  BENJAMIN TROPPE has been named vice president for marketing for Temple Industries in Philadelphia. BERNARD HANNAH is new corporate counsel in Conrad Communications, Atlantic City. HENRY CHURCH was killed by police in Newark for unspecified reasons. Well-known painter DAVID WHITCOMB moved to Guatemala and left no forwarding address. (Dave?) FREDERICK MANDELL weeps uncontrollably in his crowded apartment in Miami Beach. JOEL REEDE lives in self-destructive hatred in Rye, New York. JAY LOGAN has joined insurgency forces in Angola. ADRIAN BYRD travels to the Netherlands in the spring to cover proceedings against the Federal Government at The Hague for Dispatch.

  GORDON HASKINS has quit the priesthood in Serape, a violent New Mexico border town, to seek political office. ANTHONY CREST succeeds father Luther (Class of ’36) as chairman of Fabre. DANIEL REDDLEMAN continues to compose classical music for the cello in Hesterman, Tennessee. ODELL MASTERS cries out in his dreams for love of his wife and children. PAUL GREEN, who never married, farms 1200 acres in eastern Oregon with his father. ROGER BOLTON, who played professional baseball for nine years, lost his family in flooding outside New Orleans and has entered a Benedictine monastery. (Paul Jeffries, 1340 North Michigan, Chicago, IL 60602)

  27

  Dear Stephen Hawking

  Samantha Hunt

  Dear Stephen Hawking,

  Tell me I can forget the laws of gravity, not be coy with you.

  It’s true. I am expanding every night when the stars come out. I am expanding across the United States because I’m hungry Stephen. I’ll call you Stephen or Stephana or chou-chou, and the night sky is rising in my stomach like yeast.

  This expansion is the nestled way Africa and South America once slept as spoons, the uncleaved slate that was your rocky body and my sandy self. Because, as you, lapin, told us, if the universe is expanding then for one brief moment there was a singularity, you a cell of me, me a cell of cellulose or quartz or hydrogen or Chicago or you.

  Describe all space and time sweetly, generally, relatively. I await your words in packets, in waves. Because I dreamed, petit, of a black hole which vacuumed all we said. Each, “Umm Mr. Hawking, umm,” or, “Speak up!” or “Can you repeat the question?” every word sucked clean like a bone. They fall into the densest space and are thought lost forever but emerge, emitted as energy shouting, “Love. Love. Love,” or “E=mc
2.”

  Bear this out even to the un-edge of your imaginary time and slowly, even love’s O and the V, even energy’s M and the C will find themselves at distances the postal system hasn’t traveled in an entire lifetime, greater than the distances starlight has spanned since Kepler was a boy.

  In the beginning there was a oneness. If time ends, it will end because the oneness became a twoness. So remain distant, ma coeur, and resonate singularity in the space between you and me, down illimitable corridors that without wrinkle, without waste are only the second of a synapse. Whisper, “I,” or whisper, “You,” or “envelope” or “the news at 10” and expand.

  Tonight, in our briefer history, I am a woman on a Minnesota porch spilling out onto a sheet of airmail. Every word and letter I get secured to paper or allow from my mouth, opens up, distributes me more evenly in the universe so that eventually, randomly, generally, relatively one letter, an A or a T from me will gently brush the downy skin of your cheek.

  Yours truly,

  28

  National Treasures

  Charles McLeod

  * * *

  In which the Seller commodifies his dissent, listing for the first time this previously uncollected compendium of National Treasures, the delimited choices most chiefly informed by the Seller’s belief that each person is a country unto themselves, and possesses a record of conflict and treaty, has customs and boundaries and scandals and ways—that every small piece of the self is worth something, and too that the Seller is broke, and can no longer afford the small storage unit off the Queens Midtown Expressway, Exit 15, and for nearly two months has been receiving, per voicemail, threats from said storage unit’s owner, a Sikh, one Mr. S. Bedi who has promised to heave all of the Seller’s belongings out into the street, and so then this cyber-boutique sui generis, its governing tenets lying ultimately between Organic Nationalism and Dynastic Hegemony, between amour de soi and amour-propre, an emporium that’s sought to accommodate too much, and whose ruler now seeks to sell off part and parcel. These items are priced to move.