by Arjun Basu
With the addition of helicopters, the noise of the street reached something incredible, an endless commotion, a crowd noise that was the loudest murmur I’d ever heard: just talk, constant talk, and above that the police whistles and the noise of the security apparatus and above that the helicopters. The major networks lined up for interviews. The prime-time newsmagazines jostled for rights. The morning shows were demanding access. Dan mentioned money again.
“Ka-ching,” he said, in the smarmy tone of a strip club announcer.
“I’m not talking to anyone,” I said. “Not for cash. And not the stupid newsmagazines.” The newsmagazines mixed stories about global warming with celebrity interviews and, somehow, I had always found it offensive. The blurring of news and entertainment is the saddest expression of media oversaturation. Because people still watch the news to believe. There are no disclaimers on news shows, on the screaming talking heads, the guys who will say anything for the sheer entertainment value of the string of words they put together. The cynicism used to be checked when the red light went on. But now it went into overdrive after the red light went on. It was the point. It was dangerous and irresponsible and making a lot of people very rich. Even as the country got poorer for it. The blurring of news and entertainment is base. It points to a media culture that no longer cares. About anything.
“This is a principle that surprises me,” Dan said.
“It surprises me, too,” I admitted.
“You can make money off this,” he told me. “One day this is going to end and you’ll have nothing to show for it. You live in a place that feels the need to reward people for being palatably freakish. For sharing their secrets. For exposing themselves. This is the new currency. Take advantage of it. Sell your story. This is easy money. People dream about falling into easy money. There’s something remarkably and reassuringly American about all of this. It’s like the lottery. Take away the hard work and it’s a sped up version of the American Dream.”
“I hated my job,” I said, thinking about my career in the past tense for the first time.
“So what then?” he asked.
“Maybe after I’ve stopped being sideshow of the month, I’ll make some decisions. Maybe I’ll sell my story then.” It saddened me to say this. I looked at Dan. “Maybe I’ll let you write the whole damned thing.”
Dan’s eyes widened. “You’re too kind,” he said.
The thought had occurred to me as the words left my mouth. I wanted to feel bitter, just a little, but I couldn’t rouse the passion. “Maybe,” I said.
The TV news all had the same angle on the story. They presented me as another in a long line of New York eccentrics, another worm from the Big Apple. Look, America, look how weird this place is, lucky you don’t have to live here. Since 9/11 that sort of line also included an ominous subtext: the place is just too dangerous. If it’s not bombs, it’s kooks. The threat of airplanes falling from the sky has replaced the more pedestrian gun battles, murder, and petty crime as the clear and present danger inherent in living here. And then we became the people that almost bankrupted the nation. We were greedy and self-important and too concerned with our own navels. The media are based here and they feed this to the nation. Because the media is the most self-important of all of us.
Spalding Gray called Manhattan “an island off the coast of America,” implying a difference that clearly has more meaning for my fellow countrymen than for foreigners.
Various well-dressed, well-coiffed reporters stood ten feet from me, filed their reports, and left in a rush. Very few of them asked me to hold the pizza. They didn’t care. And it probably made for a poor visual.
The Post decided to help me out by picking up the mortgage payments on my apartment. In exchange I allowed Dan access to write up his stories. My living room became his office. Two burly union men came and installed his computer and then two larger men from Verizon came to install an extra line and then Dan had a suitcase of clothes and toiletries sent over. “You’ve moved into my house,” I said, flabbergasted.
Print journalists came by at all hours now, national, foreign. It seemed funny, if not incredible, that my face was being seen by millions of people around the world for no other reason than a strange and ill-conceived decision to do nothing, to listen to a voice in my head. If this indeed was in the Man’s plans, I was willing to concede to him the brilliance of it all. Perhaps he would use me to attract media and disseminate the message. If so, I had to admire his sense of humor in choosing someone who wrote ads for a living. I could feel him laughing. His laughter came and went as well now.
One day, I told Dan I would speak to print journalists for five minutes each. Just to piss off the TV people. The foreign print journalists turned out to be very entertaining. A heavily accented blond woman from Finland asked, “Do you believe it is God who has spoken to you?” and followed that up by asking, “Did you know that the Finnish people don’t really believe in God anymore?”
A well-dressed, extremely fit, middle-aged Brazilian man asked me, “What do you expect that your man will bring you?” His accent was vaguely British.
A fat but charming Irish reporter asked, “If you do not consider the Man to be of a divine nature, how do you explain his apparent omniscience?” I answered him by saying I would like to take him to my neighborhood bar for a pint when this was done. Flummoxed, he proceeded to ask questions of such an elevated theological bent I no longer understood him and I retracted the invitation.
A Japanese woman who had overdone the Chanel No. 5 but who had the most beautiful hands I had ever seen up close asked, “Do you think this man is an American or maybe he is from somewhere else?”
A reporter from India announced, “It is very possible that you are waiting for an incarnation of Vishnu. The white horse proves it. In time, I guarantee, there will be Hindus in India praying to you, sir. Not for you, but to you.”
“But I’m waiting for an answer myself,” I replied. “I don’t have any to give.”
The American reporters, especially, asked my opinion on all sorts of matters — on politics, world events, baseball. I complained about the Mets a lot. I deflected political questions. I tried to sell the idea that I was a simple guy doing a stupid thing, but that wasn’t the story they were after.
And I felt the laughter some more.
Dan’s role had shifted from reporter to press liaison to producer. “My brother’s business is up three hundred percent,” he told me. “Some of the newspeople file their stories from there. For authenticity’s sake. He’s getting tourists! Diane Sawyer stopped by! His front window is plastered with photos of you eating his pizza,” he said. This was an individual delirious with the idea that his master plan was working. Because perhaps nothing in Dan’s past had worked out the way he had hoped. And then I happened.
At night, the crowds thinned out, people going to the comfort of their beds. The children returned home. But then the hipsters showed up, the barflies, the cocktailians, the well-dressed girls in impossible heels on their way to a rooftop lounge. There was a lot more smoking at night. And people were bolder. They would come up to me. Some would speak. Others would ask for an autograph as if the cover of darkness allowed them to do what they had truly wanted to do all along. I signed everything I was asked to sign.
A pale thin man with huge hair and bigger glasses sat next to me and said he was the president of the local chapter of the Foreskin Restoration Club for Men. I wondered why the organization felt the need to add “for Men” to its name. He told me about using a system of weights to regain the semblance of a foreskin. “I’ve got them on right now,” he whispered proudly. “I’m letting gravity restore what the medical establishment so callously lopped off.” He told me his movement was attracting a lot of attention, that men everywhere were now questioning the validity of circumcision, that Europeans had, for the most part, abandoned the practice, and that the medical establishment was finally
admitting that the procedure was a social one and not based on any health issues. I brought up the AIDS issue and what doctors were trying to do in Africa. He waved it off. That was the establishment’s propaganda, he said. I looked for Dan but he was inside my apartment. The foreskin guy talked about himself for what felt like hours. I heard the word “foreskin” more times than anyone really needs to and then, finally, thankfully, he stood up, wiped the fake tears from his eyes, and thanked me for listening.
Women flashed their breasts at night. It was a thing. Flashes of skin at random moments, almost always in my direction. And then I closed my eyes and hoped the Man would appear and tell me what to do or where to go or what not to do. But he was silent. And when I opened my eyes, I saw a woman sitting beside me, staring at me, her gaze boring holes into me. “Hi,” I said.
“Do you mind if I sit here with you?” she asked. She spoke with an accent I couldn’t place. It wasn’t American. Her voice verged on squeaky. Her eyes were the deep blue of cold water. She had the kind of mouth and full lips that make men think impure thoughts. There was something about her that made her seem like a really good-looking boy. And when I thought that, I realized I would never have admitted that to myself before this whole sordid thing started. I found her beautiful and attractive.
“You may,” I said.
The Man was whistling. It was annoying.
“No one sits with you,” she said. “I think that’s weird.”
“I think they’re afraid of me,” I said. “Except the kids. And the strange ones. Strange people will always talk to you.”
“I’m so tired,” she said, sitting beside me. “I just got off the bus.”
“From where?” I asked.
“Montreal,” she said. That explained the accent.
“And what are you doing here?” I asked dumbly. I knew the answer. How could I not?
“I saw you on TV,” she said. “I saw you last night and I got on the bus this morning. And you know, here I am.”
She smiled. Her teeth were a teeth-whitened white and I could smell the cigarette smoke on her. And the perfume she had sprayed to mask the smoke. But her smile sucked the life out of me. It was a smile so perfect it could have come out of an elaborately designed box. “You’re kind of what I imagined French girls smelled like,” I said.
“I’m Sophie,” she said, offering her hand. “I feel a connection.”
And so I felt stupidly defensive. “What kind of connection?” I asked, taking her hand.
“I saw what you were doing, on TV, and I heard your story. I got on the internet and I read more about you. And I had a feeling. I don’t know. Like I needed to meet you. Like we’re similar. You know?”
I decided to concentrate on her smell. I had a strong desire to touch her short hair.
“I’m sorry if I’m scaring you,” she said.
“I’m just surprised,” I said, waking up a bit. “I can’t imagine what I’m doing would make sense to anyone.” I said this despite the presence of thousands of strangers on my street every day, craving the moment when my understanding would be revealed.
“I saw you and something went poof! In my head,” she said. She laughed. Her laugh was that of a girl’s. It was vaguely innocent. Or free. “And last night I couldn’t sleep. I turned and turned in my bed. So I went to the bus station and got the first bus to New York. None of my friends know I’m here.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a blanket. “This is all I brought with me,” she said. “Can you believe it?”
Sophie lit up a cigarette and spread the blanket across her lap and told me about her life in Montreal. She told me about her job in a department store in the suburbs, about how she worked a perfume counter and spent her days looking at her watch, about spraying samples onto the limp wrists of faceless women, about the intricacies of perfume and beauty and smelling beautiful. She told me she felt like a robot dispensing beauty tips to women who had no right to consider themselves beautiful, who had no idea what true beauty was. “They can be aggressive and rude and pushy and act like they know more about perfume than I do,” she said. The ones who knew beauty didn’t need her help. She felt dishonest.
“I’m Joe,” I said.
Put your pants on, the Man said, oddly enough.
She laughed again. “I know who you are,” she said. “You’re on TV!”
The newspeople loved Sophie. Perhaps adore would be the correct word. She was a new angle. And she was far more attractive than I was. Dan wrote a long piece the next day and Dick’s photo of us made the front of the Post. Sophie added a dose of sex appeal that had been lacking. It helped that her smile was gold, no doubt. She was photogenic and the camera guys ate her up.
Sophie started doing TV interviews. She did the morning show rounds. She left and toured all the morning show studios and returned three hours later. “Fun!” she squealed. Dan complained that he had become Sophie’s press agent, which was a bit disingenuous of him. Her smoking became an issue with the parents of the kids who still hung out with me. They spoke of the example I should be setting, that Sophie was smoking too much, that she was always seen in the papers and on the television with a cigarette in her hand. They said she was making smoking seem cool.
Sophie said she would quit. “This is a good excuse,” she said. So when the owner of the corner store came by with a carton of Camels, Sophie said no, reluctantly. “But I love Camels,” she told the man as she begged off. Microphones picked that up.
The owner of the corner store returned with a case of Coke. A man who claimed to represent Coke wanted us to appear in an ad. Dan’s brother, finally, stopped by for some photos. He shook my hand and thanked me until I had to tell him to leave. I told him his calzones were a disgrace and he promised to look into the recipe.
That night, Sophie put her head on my shoulder. And then, ending an annoyingly powerful Paul Anka loop running through my head, she laid her head on my lap, adjusted her blanket, and fell asleep.
I didn’t sleep that night. I was afraid to close my eyes. And so I stared at the sleeping beauty that was Sophie instead.
Something about Sophie’s presence made me fear the world. I expected it to explode in front of me, the way it had when the sky fell and everyone channeled Chicken Little. Except on that day, no one was making anything up. I saw visions of the apocalypse, something a Bible thumper hanging out on the street was preaching, though I doubt his end of the world involved an endless basket of fruit, a herd of white horses, and the Man swatting it all away with a floppy hat the size of the sun. And with the reality of a beautiful woman lying here, on me, a strange thought occurred: profound regret. I looked at Sophie and regretted taking her from her depressing job in the suburbs of Montreal. I regretted leaving my job even, but more than that, I regretted starting something that had no finish. No end. The inanity of it. I would never have started it had I known where it might lead. I felt Sophie hold my hand. “This is a zoo!” she said.
“I know,” I said. “And it’s all my fault.”
I saw society before me on the street and I was concerned and even ashamed. I saw society as a heavyset brute trying to balance itself on the head of a pin, threatening to tip over but always managing not to. “What do these people do?” Sophie asked, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. I wasn’t sure she was talking to me.
“They shop,” I offered.
“I really need a cigarette,” she said.
“It just gets bigger and bigger,” I said. “I don’t know how much longer the cops will allow this. I think they’re getting mighty pissed off with me.”
“Cops are always pissed off,” Sophie said. “That’s the same everywhere.”
I put my arm around her. I heard a few cameras go off. The strobe of the flashes danced in my vision.
I leaned my head on Sophie’s. Her hair smelled surprisingly clean, something I was definitely not.
One of the morning shows must have given her a shampoo. I must have smelled something fierce. The deodorant companies would soon show up to sponsor this. Hadn’t my agency handled a deodorant account? I wanted a beer. I wanted to watch a ball game. I wanted a bed. I wanted to stop being so afraid of everything surrounding me. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath of Sophie’s sweet smell.
Under Pressure
“I saw you on TV.” This from one of the dishwashers, a Blackfoot named Keith. He’s got that silent Indian thing happening, too, except he’s quick with the smile. We’re behind the kitchen, smoking. He’s never spoken to me before. “You went on that made-for-TV vision quest special thing,” he says.
That sounds about right. And whatever I did, it’s landed me here, smoking a cigarette in the shadow of the Rockies. With an Indian named Keith. “That was me,” I say. “Yes.”
Keith takes a drag off his cigarette. “Well, you didn’t end up in some totally lame-ass game show,” he says. He smiles. “You know. Like Hollywood Squares or something.”
“I didn’t make it that far,” I say. Instead, I’m here, and I’m peeling fruit and I’m about to become a consultant for this mixed-up place, where we serve steak and French patisserie to stockbrokers and Japanese executives and men who own mysterious businesses in far off lands. I’m in a place where even at the foot of the mountains the boundaries of infinity are unknowable.
I’m inside a world. A story. I’m inside a story, of me, standing beside it. A bystander. I’m in a place that permits freedom. Where the air is clear. Where the wind is pure and unbroken.
Keith puts out his smoke. “That was some vision quest,” he says, before opening the door. “Usually, the TV doesn’t care about things like that. It’s too deep or something.” He enters the kitchen.
Every religion and ideology has claimed my actions as their own. My actions were never, really, mine. I never owned them. In many ways, Dan can claim ownership of the whole thing. And being here, however I managed to find this place, I’m reclaiming my life, making things normal again, not feeling the world revolving around me. Making me dizzy.