Shelf Monkey

by Corey Redekop

  ENTER MUNROE PURVIS

  Munroe: Good afternoon, everyone, how’s every little thing?

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: We have a terrific show today, as I’m sure you are all aware. Today is the latest meeting of my fabulous Munroe Purvis Book Club!

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: Thank you, thank you, please, if you applaud all day, we’ll never get to the book!

  LAUGHTER

  Munroe: If you’ll all look beneath your seats, you’ll find a copy of this month’s book, so that you can follow along. It’s an absolute pearl of a novel, it’s called Diamonds out ofDiapers, and you are going to love it, guaranteed, if you haven’t already read it. I don’t see how you couldn’t have, it’s been number one for what, three weeks now? Still, there may be one of you out there who never got around to reading it. ‘Fess up, did someone here not do their homework? Don’t be afraid, raise your hands.

  LAUGHTER

  Munroe: Everyone? Everyone here read it? Well, that is just . . . wait a moment, I do see a hand up there. Mark, can we get that gentleman mike? What’s your name, Sir?

  Audience Mem: Carl.

  Munroe: Well, Carl, what’s your excuse? It better be a good one, we’re holding up the show for you.

  LAUGHTER

  Audience Mem: The bookstore was out of copies.

  LAUGHTER

  Munroe: Perfect answer, A plus, Sir, well done.

  Well, I’m sure you’ll catch up if you pay attention.

  Audience Mem: I promise, I’ll get the next one.

  Munroe: That’s all I ask. In fact, so you’ll have no excuses, I’m giving you a copy of next month’s book right now, how about that, folks?

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: You know, I’m feeling generous today. Maybe it’s just because I’m so excited about today’s book, but everyone gets a copy of my next book when you leave today!

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: I’ll tell you all about it at the end of the show, but in case anyone watching today has to leave early, it’s called TouringDepression, by a wonderful, fabulous writer I’ve discovered named Carole Immen, who I am positive you will be reading great things about very soon.

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: But before we get started and bring today’s author out, I’d like to start on a serious note, if I may. My book club is proving to be astoundingly popular, thanks to good people like yourselves, and I couldn’t be happier.

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: Yes, go ahead, you deserve to applaud yourselves. Thank you. But. When something becomes popular, there are some who automatically strive to tear it down. The club is so popular that the naysayers, well, they’ve been crawling out like lice. There has been a lot of talk in so-called serious newspapers about the supposed quality of the books I have personally published for your enjoyment. These quote unquote critics have attacked my choices, they have attacked me, and yes, I am afraid, sadly, they have attacked you. Attacks on myself, I can abide. It is part of the price of being famous and successful in this troubled world of ours. But to extend the attacks to you, my viewers, that, I’m sorry, that is unforgivable. Words such as vile, banal, poor, tragic, and nauseating have been bandied about in the press. “Lacking in any sort of artistic merit whatsoever, lowering the IQ of anyone within eyesight, leaving the reader just that much dumber as a result.” That’s a direct quote from the “New York Times Review of Books,” by the way. J.M. Coetzee, I believe the reviewer’s name is. Exactly, who’s that, some nobody with nothing better to do than complain! These insufferable literati, they are sitting in their ivory towers, sipping champagne, and spitting it out from on high onto the heads of regular folks like me and you, and they expect us to lap it all up and ask for seconds! I am furious! The gall of these people! To suggest that you have somehow been lessened as a person by reading my picks, that is disgusting. This really gets my goat. Something must be done to curb these malicious assaults. I am sending out a plea to all my viewers, please, do not purchase these publications. Boycott these magazines. Do not watch these television programs. If they recommend a book, shun it! Ignore their rants on supposed good taste and quality. What do they know, am I right? They are just mean, petty little men and women who couldn’t get dates in high school!

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: Thank you. I knew I could count on you, the real people, the best people in this country, in this world.

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: Now that that’s out of the way, let’s bring out today’s author, what do you say?

  APPLAUSE

  Munroe: He has written a simply marvellous novel about the perils of single fatherhood, after the mother of his child has selfishly left the family to join a lesbian feminist commune. Please welcome, everybody, Gerry Ewes!

  APPLAUSE

  ENTER GERRY EWES

  Munroe: Thank you for being here, Gerry.

  Gerry: No, thank you, Munroe. It’s because of you I’m here.

  Munroe: How so, Gerry?

  Gerry: Before your book club started, I don’t think I’d ever read a complete book in my life. I honestly had trouble reading more than a chapter of the Bible a day, and even that was a pain. Oh gosh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —

  Munroe: That’s fine, Gerry. I don’t think I’ll get in too much trouble if I say that even the Bible could have used a good editor at times.

  LAUGHTER

  Gerry: Good book, though.

  Munroe: The best.

  Gerry: So, anyway, on your advice, I picked up a copy of Trading Blankets at Wal-Mart —

  Munroe: One of my picks, for those of you who don’t remember, by Eric Brun, I think.

  Gerry: Yes, that’s the one. So I bought a copy, and I couldn’t believe it, not only did I finish it, I realized, hey, I could write a book as well. It didn’t look that hard.

  Munroe: Fabulous! You see, this is what I was talking about, people. Regular folk! We’ve got to break for a commercial, but when we return, we’ll be talking more to author Gerry Ewes about his astounding novel. Stay tuned.

  APPLAUSE

  CUT TO COMMERCIAL

  TO: ermccorm@yahoo.ca

  FROM: iamashelfmonkey@gmail.com

  SUBJECT: A very grateful Shelf Monkey

  Dear Mr. McCormack,

  Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Now, where to begin? This isn’t going to be easy. I’m accustomed to pencil and pad, the classic tools of the trade, but that’s not an option. I can’t take the chance of that pesky postmark pinpointing my hiding place. My handwriting is illegible, anyway.

  Writing on a computer is frustrating, isn’t it? There is a pleasing physicality to writing by hand, something so supremely gratifying about watching the paper pile up on the corner of your desk as you complete page after page. Computers mute the satisfaction. They have annihilated the earthiness of the process, even as they placate you with toolbars replete with handy thesaurus and dictionary (lexicon! vocabulary! wordbook!), symbols, automatic tab and margin functions, spellcheck, layout, and your choice of font. But it’s all just magic, shards of Dumbledore wizardry forming sentences on glass, transitory, impermanent. Sure, we don’t have to suffer the stigma of writer’s callus anymore, and thank God for that, I never thought I’d live to see WC go the way of polio, but are you telling me all this typing doesn’t cause some physical ailment? And forget the carpal, I mean 21st century writer’s callus; big ugly warts sitting atop the tip of each finger, deadening tactile sensation until our hands ultimately evolve into clumsy, fleshy oven mitts. Besides all that, computers are vulnerable in a way that paper never was. There is something infinitely demoralizing at the prospect of having one’s work at the mercy of a decorative fridge magnet. Plus, I get screen sick after twenty minutes or thereabouts.

  I don’t have the luxury of complete isolation. My computer has no wi-fi, so I must endanger myself with public appearances, saving this correspondence to my USB and using a public terminal to send it to you. The internet wai
ter (waiternet? Internet service personnel? waitress of the Web?) keeps bothering me, asking if I want more black sludge that is somehow but not quite completely unlike coffee. And this terminal costs seven dollars per. And that ain’t prorated per minute, that’s seven bucks whether I use it for the entire hour, or the three minutes it takes me to upload this as an attachment and send it to you. It’s not like I have a lot of money right now. I don’t suppose you could Western Express me some running-from-the-law money? No, I suppose not.

  I am not cut out for this life. Not at all. I’m weak. Book reading has left me soft.

  I was a lawyer, did you know that?

  Of course you do, who doesn’t? FALLEN LAWYER, that’s what the headlines say. Sells more papers that way. Everyone loves to see lawyers taken down a peg, even when they’re invaluable. People would rather lose a case than win, if it meant their lawyer looked bad as a result. Sure, I got fucked over in the divorce, but my lawyer’ll never work again. Boo-yah!

  It’s an overstatement anyway. I never passed the bar. I articled a few months, then quit. Or had unemployment of a medical nature thrust upon on me. Whichever you prefer.

  You know what? Fuck it all anyway. I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t need to talk about it. After all, Newhire’s been whoring himself out to the public airwaves, waving my psychiatric assessments about to anyone who’ll listen. Playing up the suicide attempt like it actually means something. Oh, hell, maybe it does. If it weren’t for the “cry for help,” I’d never have ended up like this, but that’s more of a direct linear line of progression through time, not the Newhire-approved psychological cause-and-effect relationship. I hear he’s working on a book deal, the definitive exposé into the sordid world of the Purvis conspiracy. So much for doctor/patient privilege, but hey, who am I to complain?

  But, let that lie for now. Peruse his article in Psychiatry Weekly if you’re interested, or Peopleif you just want the bullet points. For me, I lived it, it’s the past.

  But every story must start somewhere, and as I am the narrator of my life, it’s my prerogative to start my tale immediately afterward. No reason why, except a stone has to start rolling downhill somewhere.

  “Now, Thomas, no one thinks you’re crazy.”

  Is it just me, or should a psychiatrist never use the word “crazy,” even in a positive context?

  It floated there before me. Crazy. Crazy. I watched the letters gather strength in his mouth, roll about the tongue, before finally escaping on the back of an exhalation. They bobbled in front of me, swaying slightly in the oscillating breeze of the office fan.

  It had been three weeks since I had forcibly acquainted myself with the bumper of a 1992 Chevrolet Cavalier. Dr. Newhire sat in his leather swivel chair, making notes on an official-looking yellow pad. A bit premature, I thought, as I hadn’t yet made a sound. My jaw was still wired, the only part of me truly damaged from the “accident.” While coherent speech was possible, the harmonizing throbbing ache kept me mute to answering all but the most pertinent questions. “Do you have to use the bedpan?” and “More morphine?” were about the only queries I deemed deserving of a response. Perhaps conversation wasn’t required, Dr. Newhire’s pad displaying a list of preset syndromes from which he could choose a diagnosis.

  Newhire, as I’m sure you’re aware, Mr. McCormack, from all the free publicity he’s milked from our relationship, has teeth the colour of old urinals, and a beard consisting of five pockets of sparse fur separated by four vast empty acne-scarred plains. I kept myself busy as he prattled on by counting his moustache hairs.

  “I want to assure you, Thomas, you don’t have anything to worry about,” he said.

  “I don’t?” It came out through the wirework, Uh don?“No, depression is a fairly common condition. You’re perfectly normal.”

  “I am?” Uh eh?

  “Yes. It’s simply a medical condition, an imbalance of chemicals that helped shape your response to workplace stress. Many people in your profession suffer from the same condition. Mind you, not all of them take matters to such, uh, extremes, but still, you’re alive and safe, that’s what counts now.”

  “Great.” Grut.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Grut.”

  “Good, that’s good.” He jotted something down on the pad, no doubt an incisive exploration into my psyche based upon the combined total of six unintelligible words I had said. I only saw him for a few months, and he’s parading about on daytime television, charging a five-figure fee for speaking engagements and making a mockery of the doctor/patient relationship. Pill-pushing asshole.

  On Newhire’s recommendation, I started feasting on anti-depressants, morning and evening doses, enhanced by emergency pill snacks to quell the shakes and crying jags. I went through them very quickly. Crying became second nature. I cried all night. I bawled all day. I sobbed on the phone to my parents. I wept to Newhire. I blubbered to my boss as I quit. I swore off anything that reminded me of law. Law & Order left me weak and dehydrated. Reruns of Perry Mason made me vomit. I cried for two weeks. Then off and on for what seems like forever. I sat in my little apartment for months, permanent ass dents forming in the couch, gorging myself on video games and nachos. I lost all interest in anything beyond my next serving of anti-depressants and the tribulations of Victor Newman on Y & R.

  I didn’t mind the drugs, truth be told. I had a momentary spasm of horror, yes, worried that such medication was sure to bring about the loss of identity on a par with Finney’s pod people. Am I still me, or am I now a more passive, society-adjusted, Paxil-approximated replicant?

  But the after-me seemed to enjoy itself, particularly as the lovely little pharmaceuticals cautiously adapted themselves to my biorhythms and began altering my DNA at a sub-nucleic level. The world recycled itself anew as I watched, becoming both a deep placid lake and its wavering reflection of the earth above as my brain-split strived to mend its synapses. It’s not that I couldn’t tell that the world was real and solid; it was more like I became intensely focused on the minutiae of life, as if there were a mirrorverse behind every action that I could observe if only I concentrated hard enough.

  It suited me, this almost reality. It fit in with the pattern of my life, almost being something. I was almost a lawyer. Almost successful. Almost deceased. As I lay in bed each day — as I did almost constantly, a side-effect of the exquisitely crafted bliss capsules being lethargy of a near-incapacitating nature — I could see that being almost was what I was destined to be. In school, almost invisible. In law school, almost on the dean’s list. By girlfriends, almost loved. I was almost. Winnipeg was the perfect location for me. Almost the longitudinal centre of the country. Almost big. Almost important. Almost more than a punchline on The Simpsons. And Manitoba, almost a power. Almost a real province. Almost a place to stop on your way from Alberta to Ontario, but you were almost there, so why bother? Almost something. (More than Saskatchewan, though.) Was it because of me, this almost state of being? Had I caused the almost, was I doomed to spread almost about the world as I travelled, infecting the innocent with lethal doses, leaving them bereft and always wondering why they were almost something themselves?

  After eleven weeks of such musings, my savings now a fraction of their former numeral, my rent due and bills piled high, I took stock of myself.

  Face

  • Lumpy. Unshaved. Slovenly. Nice eyes, and a captivatingly off-kilter smile when I could manage it. Not without promise, but a definite fixer-upper.

  Body

  • Oh good Christ that’s horrible. Move on.

  Beard

  • Jesus. Where did that come from? Kind of scraggly and patchy, yet modestly decorative in a brooding bohemian poet sort of way. Perhaps a beret would be in order?

  Belongings

  • One laptop computer, old but serviceable.

  • Various legal textbooks and treatises, soon to be put in the recycling bin, a final fuck you to the law and all who practise its arcane rites
.

  • Clothes, unwashed but not beyond repair.

  • One television, thirteen inches, an enviable size for a man to have, but not in his choice of entertainment centre.

  • One DVD player.

  • Several DVDS, all widescreen format. Have you ever watched Lawrence of Arabia in widescreen format on a thirteen-inch television screen? It loses its grandeur somehow.

  • Shelves and shelves, and shelves, and shelves, and under the bed, and above the fridge, and behind the couch, and on the couch, and next to the table, and correcting the wobble in the kitchen table, of books.

  Clearly, something had to change. Not wanting to modify my lifestyle so much that I’d have to physically leave the apartment, I began to look into more innovative approaches to fill my life. Aromatherapy filled three days of Internet research into the healing power of smells. I began to feng shui my furniture to improve my chi, or some such bullshit. Boy, I really feel like slitting my wrists. Perhaps if I move the couch thusly . . . ah, now life is worth living again!

  Obviously, I wasn’t in a tremendously clear mindset. “What should I do now?” I asked Newhire.

  “Get a job.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Do you have my cheque?”

  “Here.”

  “Thanks.”

  So easy, the concept: find employment. People do it all the time, you hear about such cases on the streets. “Why, my uncle had a job once!” Problem was, law school had taken its toll. I had three years of arcane legal memoranda and legislative trivia brainwashed into me, effectively tearing down the soft-shelled ordinary citizen and replacing it with the Armani-armoured warrior. The “real” world was alien, obscure, something to be discussed with similarly attired workmates and adversaries over triple espressos, only referred to in obscure Latin phraseology so as to emphasize the vast difference between our world and ‘the other.’ I couldn’t function in a society where people actually talked to each other. Where words spoken mirrored emotions felt.