With my apartment taken care of, and tuition covered, I only needed pocket money, so I went out and got a part-time job where every intelligent, self-hating person works—a bookstore, in particular the Strand Bookstore.
On weekends, I’d putz around doing shit work. By weekdays, I played the role of the esteemed Whitlock scholar. Much of that role consisted of evening tête-à-têtes with teetotaling professors who assigned difficult-to-find books, often lent to me off their own shelves. Exams were oral. Papers were only accepted if they were published in one of sixteen academic publications in fields related to the course. It was a challenge at first. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still had faith that through knowledge all answers could be reached. I would learn or stumble upon some clue of nothing short of my very identity. But after an adolescence of reading histories, and then another year of this program, moving minutely across the same old ground, I started losing it. I wanted to join the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie. A thankless, hands-on job, like firefighting was just the thing. By the final semester of the program, I actually considered dropping out and taking the civil service test. But before my decision was solidified, something odious happened.
On an overcast day, more than a million years ago, at the start of my ice age—it was the final term in the program—I was called into Professor Flesh’s office. He said, “Reaganomics are still the gladiator games of our age.”
“Huh?”
“That’s how historians will see this.”
“What?”
“The rich have made a contest out of cuts; the lower tiers are again in the cold. I’m sorry, young Josef, call it Reagamortis.”
He informed me that my award, the Whitlock Memorial Fellowship, which had sustained me through a year and a half in the costly program, had, without rhyme or reason, been rescinded. Unless I could find some other way of financing myself, I was out of the ball game.
“This is my last term!” I appealed. “All I have to do is hand in my thesis, and then I’ll get a quick appointment in some Catholic girls college in some economically depressed area, and I’m set for life.”
“Sorry, Joey, but it’s out of my hands.”
“Who cancelled my award? Why? I was good.”
“Only the Lord and perhaps Dean Sovereign can say.”
“Dean Sovereign? Where is he?”
“In Butler.” Butler, the building behind the seated statuess, has the biggest front stoop anywhere. Up I went and in through the halls that Mark Rudd, student activist and campus leader of the S.D.S., had seized over twenty years ago.
“Halt!” groaned a security guard. I explained that I was trying to find out who had left me out in the cold, and that I was hoping Sovereign could assist. The security guard asked to see my ID. I showed it to him. He asked if I had an appointment. No. He pointed toward the door and said, “Out.”
I asked to see his superior. A button-bursting, seam-stressing sergeant informed me that Sovereign only saw celebrities, the filthy rich, or, at the very least, people with appointments. Proper channels had to be observed. As he walked me out past the Alma Mater statue, he said, “Try calling first.”
I raced to the nearest pay phone and called. A secretary answered, “Dean’s office. Can I help you?”
“May I ask your name, dear?”
“Veronica,” she replied, “Why?”
“Hi, Veronica,” I started, and then, releasing the hostility slated for the security guard: “I’m trying to find out what motherfucking organization is behind the severing of my fellowship. Now you could tell me, Veronica, or I could go through the Freedom of Information Act and sue the shit out of this cocksucking university, capisce?”
After a gasp, she laughed.
“Oh, you think this is funny?”
“What is your fellowship?”
“What are you going to do? Tell me that I can only find out that sort of information through the mail? Fuck that! I have my rights! What’s your nationality?”
“Calm down,” she replied, “What program are you in?”
“Fine, we’ll go through this little farce, this charade. My name is Joseph Aeiou and I’m…
“Aeillo…”
“No, Aeiou, and I’m in the contemporary…”
“How-’r-ya?”
“No, Joseph Aeiou, in the masters program in hist…”
“Yagoda??” she asked.
“No, asshole, Aeiou, like the fucking vowels, A-E-I-O-U! Got it?”
“Put a cap on the foul language. I’m trying to help you.”
“Spell it back to me, just to assure me you got it.” She did.
“Good, now this was my last semester, see…”
“What was the program?”
“I was in the division of contemporary history. And all I had to do was hand in my butt-fucking thesis, and some fascist…”
“One second,” she said, but I had already given her too many seconds; I just kept talking: “Some fascist elitist organization cuts me and laughs it off, lady….” She came back on the line.
“Hello, Joseph.”
“…What you’re doing is ripping my nuts off, veins, arteries, and all. Do you want to do that, lady? Do you really want to know what’s inside those soft little sacs, lady? Do you want my oozy balls on your conscience?” Although she couldn’t see it, I grabbed my nuts to bring the point home.
“Have them messengered in,” she giggled.
“You’re pushing it, lady!”
She was laughing at my expense! “All right, I’m really not supposed to give out this information.”
“Please, I swear I won’t tell that you’re the one who betrayed them.”
“Say please.”
“Please,” I said.
“Say, ‘I’m sorry for being such a gutless asshole, but I’m just a scared little faggot.’”
I couldn’t believe she was asking such a thing, but what could I do? I was too beaten down for any pride. I repeated what she’d told me to say.
“All right,” she said very matter-of-factly. “Mr. Andrew Whitlock, fifty-three years old, is your benefactor. He made the decision to cut the award.”
“Very shrewd!” I complimented her on her cruel tact.
“What are you talking about?”
“Trying to give me the brush-off with just the name. What’s a name? I can’t do shit with a name. You must think I’m abysmally stupid. You must hate me with a personal vengeance. What country are your people from?”
“Do you have a pen or pencil?”
“Don’t give me that false concern, bogus-hospitality shit! You despise me just as much as I despise you.”
She hung up the phone on me. I called her back. “Please don’t hang up. I’m sorry.”
“I hear street noises in the background. Are you calling from a pay phone?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I replied, “and my quarter’s going to run out soon, so please just give me the number.”
“I’ll give you his business address if you yell at the top of your lungs, ‘I’m a fucking asshole!’”
“Haven’t you scarred me enough?” I appealed. She hung up.
I called her back. She said hello, and I yelled, “I’M A FUCKING ASSHOLE! Now give me the fucking number.” She read me a business number.
“Have a good day, sir.”
“If I ever see you, I’ll scoop your ovaries out.” I hung up the phone on the bitch.
Cutting a young man’s grant money was like fooling with his inalienable rights or the reagan between his legs. No one fools with my inalienable Jeffersonian rights—or my reagan. America had survived nine wars—not including Panama, the Gulf, and a combative catering task (Somalia)—all so I could go to school. I dialed this Whitlock’s business number. A secretary answered.
“Where the fuck is your office? I’m gonna Unibomb your Somali warlord and toss his body parts into Jeff Dahmer’s cage…”
She hung up on me. I called her back about eleven minutes later and, pi
nching my nose to achieve a nasal falsetto, told her that I was a bike messenger. In order for them to get a very valuable tubular document, I needed to know the firm’s location. She gave me a Wall Street address.
Stepping off the train at the Wall Street stop, I knew I was entering very dangerous territory: an office building during business hours.
As I walked into the militarized zone, I realized that my only chance was to get him out in the open, away from the other suits. I located a vast rhombus of a building loaded with security and elevators. The dynastic firm was Whitlock Incorporated, and I later learned that Whitlock was the last of his inbred line. Like the plot of some low-budget horror film, he had to reproduce or, after two hundred years, the name of the firm would change.
I took the elevator up, swallowing a couple of times to relieve the ear pressure as the altitude increased. Where were they when you needed them: feces-flinging rocker G.G. Allin, mad bomber George Metesky, still-bald Sinead O’Connor, sinfully censorious Rev. Don Wildmon, and other friends of the enemies of the powers that be?
The elevator opened into a large reception area. I asked a horse-eyed secretary if Mr. Whitlock were available. She looked at my stumpy body, read my unclean T-shirt, “GOD SAVE THE QUEEN, SHE AIN’T A HUMAN BEING,” and asked if I had an appointment. I don’t make mistakes twice. Damn right I did. I assumed a Benny Hill-like accent and introduced myself as Wilbur Whitlock, a distant cousin in town for the infamous San Gennaro festival.
She told me to have a seat and got on the horn. Since the seating area was out of sight and adjacent to a large, open space, filled with secretaries, computers, and stenography machines, I disappeared into this clerical quagmire, and watched, and waited. Overworked, the horse-eyed receptionist was completely unaware that I had disappeared.
In a moment, a tornado of people swirled into the reception area. Aides, subordinates, and secretaries flanked the dashing, late, late middle-aged rajah, Whitlock. Every moment of his existence had to be transformed into minutes, records, and notes, enough to assemble a pyramid of documentation. Through the nebulous mass of sidekicks, I caught glimpses of Whitlock. He resembled pieces of Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger, and Jack Nicholson—all fused together under a sunlamp.
Apparently, he had made this trip to the reception area to meet his distant cousin in person. I assumed this after he conducted an extensive interview with the horse-eyed receptionist, presumably concerning my whereabouts. He looked around and waited a moment. I watched her shrug ignorantly. About fifty thousand dollars later—time was money—he slipped back into his carpeted snakehole. An elevator suddenly whipped open its mirrored doors; I raced in past the receptionist.
“Sir!” Horse-eyes neighed after me. The elevator closed, dropped, and let me loose. Around pillar and post I lingered. Five o’clock released them: those-who-had-traded-their-shots-at-immortality-for-a-suit. I scoured through them. Identical suits in slightly different shades of gray gushed out of the elevators in life-raft-sized crews streaming homeward.
The clock ticked on. No sign of him; the living Reactor who transformed lives into money. I bided my time with wonder. Should I go right to violence: a knee-capping, Red Brigade-style abduction, a bit of bondage, and assassination a la Bader-Meinhof? Maybe something less dramatic, a Beirut kidnapping in which I’d just sedate him for the remainder of his natural life with tranquilizers. Or dared I try to reason with the beast?
Before I could decide, he beamed down. I instantly recognized him on an upper balcony. A Mussolini without a downward-draping flag. He paused regally as he surveyed his small army returning to its bivouac for the night. Each worker was a brush stroke on the master’s canvas. Exiting the building, he carried the thinnest briefcase I had ever seen. He moved in quick lines, like a back-row chess piece. I followed at a distance. He tried to hail a cab, but there were none. Why no car was waiting for him, I couldn’t fathom. He finally gave up and just walked. As we pressed through TriBeCa and up through a section of Chinatown, the streets became mysteriously empty. An opportunity was slowly unveiling itself. Soon, the two of us had the streets to ourselves. It was a study in contrast: he had billions, I had only bills.
The hour of vengeance was upon him. I increased my pace, closing in for the kill. Street sounds faded with the daylight. As we walked on those antique cobblestones of SoHo, only the hollow echo of our footsteps could be heard. Gradually, he sensed that he was being followed. He took casual detours and caught glimpses of me, a distorted figure in storefront windows. I watched him trying to remain calm; panicking might hasten his abduction. Soon, he started picking up his pace.
Like a master hunter, I could feel his heart slamming around in his chest, trying to get out. Like the gnu stalked by the lioness, he knew that wherever I finally intersected with him would be his death. Anxiety was having a field day: STAB OUT MY EYES, CRUNCH THE BONES IN MY LIMBS, RIP OUT MY TONGUE, BUT END THE TORTURE! Stripped of office rank and the brigades of subordinates, divested of communicative services and computer hookups, estranged, unplugged, deprived, and cut off from all his engines, generators, resources, strategies, and foot soldiers, the emperor wasn’t merely naked, he was nude.
Faster he walked. His body lurched and jerked. He tried to run but the leash of reason held tight. Just walk faster, faster! It was like watching a silent film. I slapped my shoes hard on the pavement, giving the impression I was finally swooping down on the trembling bunny. Finally, he threw down the paper-thin briefcase and broke into a run. But suddenly, the pavement rose and tripped him into a muddy puddle.
He floundered a moment, but his large arms hoisted him from the ground. It was then that I realized that he was truly big, no, large, no, towering. When he slipped back into the puddle, falling sideways, he resembled a collapsed crane. Twice my size, pillowed in muscles: If he had ever turned to face his rock-slinging David, he’d have seen that there was nothing to fear but fear itself. I walked away discreetly yet triumphantly.
“Hey,” I heard a thunderous bellow. Springing to his feet, he had finally mustered the courage to face the enemy. Yikes!
I raced, he chased. I dashed to West Broadway and skedaddled into some artsy-fartsy gallery. I ducked behind a postmodern, primitive expressionist piece. He soon loomed from behind a neoclassical sculpture. I raced back outside, into the Rizzoli Bookstore, and up the long flight of steps, squealing, “Help! Help!”
At the top step, I grabbed a huge, hundred dollar art book and held it above my head like a mighty boulder. He stood at the base of the steps below.
“He chased me,” Whitlock explained to the security guard who was holding him at the base of the stairs. “He tried to steal my wallet or something.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, still holding the book menacingly.
“Just don’t hurt the book,” the security guard appealed. Whitlock turned and stormed out. After a moment, I put the art book down and left. I had scored one for the little people. Thankless and un-laureled, I returned home. It had been a long day.
CHAPTER TWO
ONLY FART
WHEN EXITING
The next afternoon, I went to Professor Flesh and pleaded for some minuscule-interest, ceaselessly long-term payment arrangement for my last semester registration fees. He said he was the wrong person to appeal to; however, my presence was required in the place where such decisions and revisions were made—Butler Hall.
“Why? Who knows about me?” I asked.
“I just got a phone call requesting the presence of the Whitlock Fellowship recipient, and you were the last dinosaur of that species.”
“Do you think it might be an eleventh-hour reprieve?”
“I’ll cross my fingers.” He illustrated the point and told me the room in which I was to report.
Eagerly, I went back to Butler, past the angst-filled security guard, who confirmed my appointment. I located the room. A pretty secretary kept vigil out front. I noticed a Hadassah calendar on the wall behind her, a fellow tribesman.
“Aeiou is the name,” I said suavely, “reinstatement of the Whitlock Award is the game.”
“You’re the creep I spoke to yesterday,” she started in.
“I spoke to you? What’s your name?”
She held up a name plaque—Veronica. Young, chipper, smartly dressed, she looked like a personals ad from the Christian Herald Trombone.
“I kind of lost myself yesterday. That was my telephone persona,” I said amorously. “I hope you didn’t take anything I said to heart.”
“Actually, I was quite amused.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, I never heard anyone use insults so creatively. I was particularly touched by your attempt to try and find out my nationality.”
I explained that I was a bit of a historian and that I had the dirt on every nationality. “No people are free from some kind of guilt.”
“I’m a history major here, too.” She explained that she was on foreign exchange from Israel.
“No kidding,” I said, nodding my head Michael-J.-Foxishly, “maybe we can get together. Interpret the Talmud.”
“I’d like that,” she replied, and then notified the Dean that I was there. She listened for instructions, then hung up and told me to enter.
I opened the door. Two men were standing very quietly before large windows in a darkly-lit room filled with polished-walnut furniture. Sunlight was pouring in behind them.
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