Chump Change

by David Eddie

  8

  Levin

  I started hanging around the Monocle. Wouldn’t you? Jonathan Griffin introduced me to all and sundry as a “brilliant young writer,” his “discovery,” all that. I was sort of a house mascot, a museum display: the starving writer. People bought me drinks, or if not I sat around ostentatiously drinking water until someone did. Sometimes someone offered to buy me dinner, but I drew the line at food. That seemed too much like charity.

  Meanwhile, living under the same roof with the legendary Leslie Lawson was slowly driving me out of my fucking mind. We’re “friends,” now, she feels comfortable around me, therefore she hangs around the apartment in nothing but her nightgown or baggy T-shirt and panty combo, and the woman seems to do nothing but bend over to pick things up or stand on her tiptoes to reach things off the top shelves.

  I always seem to have an erection around her. Even her voice on the phone, even her handwriting gives me an erection.

  It reminds me of high school, another time in my life when I always seemed to have an erection. The girls back then made out with all my friends, but never with me. Me they treated like a big, cuddly teddy bear, wiggling around in my lap, rubbing themselves all over me like a cat, generally sending me into a white-hot frenzy of lust it’ll probably take me a lifetime to work off.

  Every night, as I drift off, I’m haunted by the same scenario: Les appears in the doorway, her body a dark shape in her nightgown, against the hall light. “Dave, I can’t keep up this charade any more,” she whispers into the darkness of my room. “I’m going crazy, I…can I join you?”

  In the mornings, after Les goes to work — it’s part of my morning routine — I slip into her room, lie face-down on her bed, and inhale the fragrance on her pillow. I’ve got it bad.

  And if I’d always been sober around Les, I would have been able to keep my little crush on her a secret. But I’m not always sober, as you know. I don’t know what it is with me and booze: the booze molecules instantly bond with the confession-centres of my brain, creating an almost unstoppable blurt-urge. I don’t puke when I drink, but I do tend to spill my guts.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m very grateful to booze, I’m very thankful for everything that booze has done for me over the years. If it weren’t for booze I’d be a virgin today. Every relationship I’ve ever had began with a drunken lunge. But in this case my combination of chemicals wasn’t working. Not once but several times, drunk, late at night, I would blurt out “the truth” to Les. She’d just laugh and scamper off to bed. And I’d sit up and drink and think: what am I doing wrong?

  I wasn’t used to all this courtship business. For the last two years, with Ruth, the only courtship I had to perform was to roll over in bed and nibble her neck in a way I knew she liked. Now I had to develop schemes, pick my way through the maze of defences every beautiful woman must construct around her heart, find the door to the secret cave, attempt to cross the rickety bridge over the giant gulf separating human beings, answer the troll’s riddle and if I say the wrong words, plunge screaming to my doom.

  * * *

  It’s a measure of how fucked up and freaked out I must have been that I actually considered a disastrous piece of advice from

  Max.

  Max dropped by a lot. Sam’s apartment was just down the hall from Les. Les had, in fact, gotten her the apartment. Cheap, charming, right downtown, the apartments in Howland Court were highly sought-after, with a waiting list hundreds of names long. But the resourceful Les, a great favourite with her landlord for her responsible ways, had gotten her friend on the top-secret, special private list — in practice, the only list on which there was any motion. Sam paid $540 a month for her two-bedroom apartment. Les’s slightly smaller pad was an even better deal, $440 a month for a two-bedroom.

  Max was just back from work, still in his Cosmodemonic get-up, jeans and a sweater, his briefcase on the floor by the door.

  “I can’t seem to find the key, Max,” I complained. “I need the magic words that say Open Sesame to Les’s affections.”

  “Dave, Dave, Dave, how many times do I have to tell you? She’s somatatonic. You have to find some way to touch her. Your approach is too literary.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I know you, Blurt Boy. I assume you’ve laid several drunken confessions on her already?”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “Words, words, words, Dave. I’ve been thinking about your case a lot lately, actually,” he continued, sounding like some kind of concerned country doctor. “And I believe I’ve come up with a plan.”

  “What?”

  “First, you write her a poem.”

  “Isn’t that just words, words, words?”

  “No. Poetry is only the start. Write a poem, a love poem, leave it on her kitchen table. Then go for a walk. That’ll give her a chance to read it. Then wait till she’s doing the dishes.”

  “How do you know I don’t do the dishes?”

  “Please, Dave. I’m trying to construct a realistic scenario here. Anyway, wait till she’s doing the dishes, then sneak up behind her and start to massage her breasts. Her hands will be soapy, so she won’t know what to do. By the time she figures out what’s happening, she’s yours. Or else,” here he laughed, “she’ll hit you on the head with a soapy pot. It’s a make-it-or-break-it plan.”

  He sat back and took a drag off his cigarette with a self-satisfied air, as if he’d just laid a strategy of Napoleonic genius on me. And it’s a testimonial to Max’s powers of persuasion that I actually thought his scheme over for about five seconds before saying: “Max, that is the single worst piece of advice anyone has ever seriously offered me.”

  Max could be right on about certain things. He could also be way off. Either way, he sounded exactly the same. It paid to remember that.

  I hung around the Monocle so much they finally gave me my own office. Actually, it was more of a closet, really, that I shared with the postage machine. But for the first time in my life I had the honour of a door I could shut on the world.

  From there I wrote — letters, mostly. I wrote to everyone under the sun: my old college roommate, ex-girlfriends, even a one-night-stand ex from a drunken wedding. And they were long, long letters, 10, 20, 30 pages a pop. I had a mania for self-explication, I guess. The only person I couldn’t bring myself to write was Ruth. “Ruth, I am guilty before you.” That idiotic refrain kept going through my mind, but I found I couldn’t write her a letter. Sometimes we spoke on the phone, but they were strange, cross-purposed phone calls; the question “why?” hung over them like a cumulonimbus cloud. Now there was a new why. Why don’t I ever call her? I told her I didn’t want to rack up a long-distance phone bill, I had no money to pay it with. She thought that was just an excuse. In 20th-century North American society, no one accepts “no money” as an excuse for anything, not even from me.

  I also wrote numerous letters to editors, not forgetting to include a photocopy of “Letter From New York” and the galley proofs to “Fish Stories,” as my Minimalist review was now titled. It embarrasses me a bit, now, when I think of those letters I wrote to various and sundry editors, the grandiose claims I made in them. “I want to write a series of articles for you,” I remember writing in one, “that will make us both so famous that crowds will wait on the docks for fresh installments. Then, after they’ve read them, we will be carried through the streets of Toronto on their shoulders.”

  My only stipulation was I didn’t want to write about politics or pop culture; I didn’t want to interview anyone or do any research. I wanted to write essays, not articles, on topics of an interpersonal nature, mostly centring around me, my exploits, my growth as a human being, etc. I especially didn’t want to do any celebrities. “I’m tired of hearing celebrities’ thoughts on everything,” I wrote in one letter. “Let’s hear some thoughts from people who actually think!”

  Not many editors even bothered to get back to me. Those who did politely refused my s
ervices, though a couple of fashion magazines encouraged me to send in more ideas.

  I did get one gig. To write the captions for a photo spread in a magazine called Fashion File. I went in, looked at the photos of various outfits, then went home to write something. It took me nearly a week to write the first draft; they rejected it. I wrote the second in three days with a blinding headache the whole time; they rejected it. I wrote the last in one 48-hour, teeth-grinding frenzy; they rejected it.

  I handed the third draft in in person. The editor, a young gay man (the only man who worked at the magazine), re-wrote the whole thing in front of me in 15 minutes. One of the lines, I remember, was: “This year’s party dress is an invitation to shine: the golds are a-glitter, the silver’s a-twitter, the reds r-r-r-RSVP, and the little black dress sends its regrets.”

  “I don’t get the r-r-r-RSVP,” I said.

  He showed me, growling like a lion. “R-r-r-r-r-RSVP. Get it?”

  I didn’t, but I had a premonition freelancing was going to be trickier than I thought.

  It’s not what you know, though, as they say; it’s whom. One day, an old high school acquaintance, David Levin, joined our merry crew at the Monocle.

  David Levin was one of those guys with SUCCESS stamped all over him from an early age. He graduated from our egghead high school with the highest grade-point average in the school’s history. He was president of The Debating Society, the Film Club, the Young Conservatives, the Pi Reciting Club (you had to recite Pi to 500 digits just to join this club), the Chess Club, the Drama Club, the Poetry Club — what wasn’t he president of, at one time or another? Eventually, of the school itself. After high school, he went on to Yale, then Harvard Law. Not that he wanted to become a lawyer, he was one of those who studied the law out of intellectual interest, also as a possible “fallback position,” in case some other career didn’t work out. Now, though he was only one year older than I, Levin was the managing editor of This Land of Ours, Canada’s premier cultural/ political / literary magazine. That came as no real surprise. The only surprise was that he stooped to conquer the world of journalism, that he wasn’t a presidential or prime ministerial adviser, at this point, or high up in some East-Coast think tank.

  My own high school career was considerably more chequered. I was in trouble almost from the moment I stepped into the place. Remember streaking? I’ll never forget the first time I caught wind of that incomparable phenomenon. I was twelve, watching a college football game on TV with the old man. Suddenly a guy wearing nothing but tennis shoes and a ski mask darts onto the field. He runs around in crazy circles, pumping a triumphant fist in the air. The footballers stand stock-still, staring. Despite the fact that all they’ve been doing all afternoon is chasing and tackling each other, they have no idea what to do when confronted with a situation where chasing and tackling someone might actually come in handy.

  Finally walkie-talkie-toting security guards converged on him from the four corners of the field, grabbed him, threw a blanket around him, and frog-marched him off the field.

  I was electrified. Wow, I remember thinking. That guy is my hero. I felt honoured to be born into an era that had concocted such an excellent divertissement. The ancient Greeks had art, culture, philosophy. But no one had ever thought of running through the coliseum in their birthday suit.

  The next day, after gym class, I talked Max into giving it a try.

  “Hey,” I said to Max. “Let’s streak.”

  “What if we get caught?”

  “No one will recognize us. We’ll use our underwear as masks. Like this.”

  I demonstrated, putting my undies over my head, looking out of the leghole. To his credit, Max’s “internal cop” wasn’t too well-developed in those days, and the next thing you knew we were out in the familiar hallway, whooping and jumping around like kangaroos, peering at our peers through the leg-holes of our jockey shorts, our hairless genitals bobbing in the breeze. (An odd sensation, if you’ve never had it.) Then it was into the cafeteria, where pandemonium erupted. Everyone went berserk — except the cafeteria ladies, who stared at us stunned, frozen like hairnetted statues, spoons full of mashed potatoes and peas poised in mid-air.

  We were caught, of course. Not physically apprehended but ratted out. Word that it was us spread like a brush-fire through the school: it was Max and David Henry! Did you hear? It was Max and David Henry! And may I say our social stock went through the roof. We became like Godfathers, people from as high as grade ten came to pay us tributes: “I really, really respect you guys for what you did,” they would say. Thank you, you may go, my son. Word eventually got to this rat, this little stool pigeon, a weedy, spotty grade eight who was in love with the sexy French teacher, Mlle. Collier. He told her all about it after school one day, hoping, I suppose, she would take pity on his wretched masturbatorial existence and, I don’t know, bestow a kiss on his pimply brow — who knows what the fuck he was thinking? Anyway, she didn’t, but she did pass the information along to the principal.

  He was livid. Red-faced, he told us he would be well within his rights to have us arrested. Only when our parents interceded — Mom and Dad dashed to school from home and office to make their pleas — did he agree to let us off with a two-week suspension.

  After that, I was more or less always in trouble. I became the class clown, also a druggie. Once in English class I fell out of my chair, I was so stoned and laughing so hard. I had to stand in the hall a lot, and held the school record for detentions, both overall and for a single day. I got up to all kinds of trouble in high school. The last straw came when I was in my senior year in art. All grades took art class together in one big room. A little grade seven vixen, a budding Lolita named Sandra Shalimar who heard I had a great vocabulary, came up to me and asked me the meaning of the word “pederasty.” As I was explaining the meaning of the word to her, the zeig-heil art teacher came over.

  “Vot are you doink?”

  “I was just explaining the meaning of the word pederasty to this young lady,” I told him.

  Wrong answer. Go to the principal’s office: do not pass Go, do not collect $200. The principal basically tossed me out. Since graduation was so near, I could come in to hand in papers and take tests, but otherwise I was “no longer welcome in the halls of this school.”

  That month I loafed around the house in my bathrobe, reading, listening to music, making myself elaborate breakfasts, then quickly dressing before the ’rents came home from work. It gave me a taste for leisure I’ve never been able to shake.

  “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

  That’s what I was thinking now, looking at Levin. To look at us, you’d hardly know we were even part of the same generation. In his natty pinstripe suit, tortoiseshell specs, and snap-lock briefcase, he looked every inch the successful young burgermeister. While I, on the other hand, with my long hair, two-week stubble, earring, and thrift-store clothes, looked like what in fact I was, and shall be forevermore: a teenager.

  “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Levin had sown the seeds of leadership, studiousness, and dressing neatly, now he was managing editor of a major monthly, on his way up. Me, I’d sowed the seeds of streaking, skipping classes, doing drugs, having long hair, being the first to get my ear pierced — and look how I wound up: a young quasi-bum, no cash, no prospects, crashing at a friend-of-a-friend’s.

  He seemed happy to see me, however.

  “Dave! How are you doing?”

  That was the final, most devastating and disgusting thing of all about Levin, that even with all his gifts and accomplishments, he was also a nice guy. I liked him.

  “Not so great,” I told him honestly.

  “Why? What’s the problem?”

  “Levin, I’ve got problems you wouldn’t believe. I’ve got problems you wouldn’t even understand, even if I spent half an hour trying to explain them to you, all of them financial. Although I’m also living under the same roof with a woman I’m in love with, who hangs around in her u
nderwear all day. It’s driving me crazy.”

  Levin chuckled.

  “Well, I don’t know if I can help you with that, but I might be able to help with your financial problems.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve seen some of your writing, and I really like it. ‘Letter From New York’ was great. How would you like to write for This Land of Ours?”

  “Are you kidding? I thought only retired judges and cabinet ministers ever wrote for you guys.”

  “We’ve got a new editor, Ken Woodruff. He wants to appeal to a hipper audience. He wants fresh voices, younger writers.”

  “I’m your man. Did I say man? I’m still practically a boy. What should I do? Write him a letter, or something?”

  “No,” Levin said, matter-of-factly. “He gets about twenty queries a day, he’ll take months to answer it. What you have to do is come in early one morning, before everything piles up. Come in before 9:00 and I’ll make sure you get in to see him.”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow morning at 8:30.”

  So it happens I’m sitting in The Great Editor’s office, 8:45 a.m. the next morning, sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette. I’ve got a jacket and tie on — which was a good call, as it turns out, since it’s more like IBM in here than a magazine office. Levin greeted me at the door in grey slacks and a serge jacket, and the Great Editor is wearing a pinstripe suit.

  He’s standing in front of the picture window in his vast, leather-and-mahogany appointed office, staring at the wind-up businessmen in the financial district far, far below. He’s thinking. I’ve pitched a couple of ideas at him: 1) a bull in B.C. whose sperm was ounce for ounce the most expensive fluid on earth; 2) a Montreal-based, mail-order Satan-worshipping outfit named the Canadian Association for Satan’s Hope. They send you brochures on how to “Neutralize Your Enemies Using the Infernal Power of Satan,” all you have to do is send a cheque to their P.O. box, payable to C.A.S.H.