SCRIBNER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by Chris Bachelder
All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of
Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by
Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.
http://www.SimonSays.com
ISBN 0-7432-2370-5
For my mother, Linda Wilson
For my father, Allen Bachelder
and
For my sister, Lisa Bachelder
Acknowledgments
Hearty thanks to Gillian Blake and Rachel Sussman at Scribner for their expertise and enthusiasm, and to Lisa Bankoff for getting the book in the right hands.
Thanks to extraordinary teachers: Michael Parker, Greg Meyerson, and especially Padgett Powell, who talked big and backed it up.
Many thanks to my talented and generous peers in the UF writing workshop, and in particular to Emily Miller, a remarkable friend.
Deluxe thanks to Rob Seals, an inspiration. A bear hug to Cynthia Nearman, big-hearted comrade.
Thanks to Florrie for her warm hospitality, to Joyce for her kindness and her faith in good things, to Ron for the big idea.
Special thanks to Kate Moulder for all that she gave.
And most of all, thanks to my parents and sister for their love, trust, and support. I shut up and took it all.
Lord Clifford says, “The smallest worm will turn being trodden upon.”
— King Henry VI, Part III
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. says, “This is meant to be optimistic, I think, but I have to tell you that a worm can be stepped on in such a way that it can’t possibly turn after you remove your foot.”
— Address to graduating class at
Bennington College
Bear v. Shark: The Preface
Bear v. Shark: The Novel is based on a true story.
Or, rather: It is based on a true story.
Imagine a true story. Imagine this true story in a solid, middle-class neighborhood, modest and truthful. Imagine its joists, its beams, the steady, cautious slope of its shingled roof. Imagine its crisp, righteous corners, those near-perfect 90-degree angles, knowing as you do that a perfect 90-degree angle — like a perfect circle or a perfect butt — doesn’t really exist in the Real World, but knowing that these angles have aspired to perfection, nonetheless (or else what’s a heaven for?). Imagine the clean closets, the sensible floor plan, the utter lack of luxury or flourish. Imagine that the materials are first-rate, chosen and guaranteed by men who care about doing a job right dammit. Imagine that everything checks out, yes the basement is unfinished and dank, but it’s the truth, take it or leave it.
Good.
Now, imagine, based atop this monument to forthrightness and plain dealing, imagine a ramshackle unit constructed willy-nilly, catch-as-catch-can, higgledy-piggledy, all pastiched together with hyphens and the thin, colorful threads of ideas, a motley edifice, part bungalow, part high-rise, part rambler, there’s stucco and brick and wood and vinyl siding, not unplanned, not unplanned, charming or interesting being the absolute best way to describe this place if you’re standing on the bushwhacked front lawn of Truth, not unstable in its own right but perched upon, based on, the cautious, steady slope of the shingled roof of Truth and teetering, teetering, the whole damn situation fixing to collapse into tainted wreckage, in which wreckage lie nearly equal parts Truth and Lie, Irony and That Which Is Not Irony, such that context and purity are forever lost, and the pieces are indistinguishable.
How shall I regard that naily 2 by 4? Is it a metaplank, a superplank, a plank self-referential? A complex and ambiguous plank, and all the more so for it’s apparent simplicity, its garish honesty regarding its own dimensions? Has anyone even bothered to measure the 2 by 4? In short: Is this a postmodern stick?
Say, are we to look through or at that cracked window?
Linoleum: Authenticity or the death of authenticity?
Imagine that.
and now this . . .
Part One
The Broad, Flapping
American Ear
1
Parlor Game
So it’s kind of like a parlor game, then? In essence?
I guess so.
Well that sounds fun. Bear against Shark.
It’s Bear v. Shark. What’s a parlor?
Oh . . . You know, a parlor. A parlour.
. . . ?
Um, like a salon.
What?
A lounge, essentially.
A lounge game?
Well, you know, it’s like where you play it.
What’s a parlor?
Like a living room. Technically.
Parlor?
Yes.
In a building?
In a home.
How big a TV you put in there?
2
Whiteout
The Television, the couch, the main character (Mr. Norman) asleep, twitching in the strobe glow.
The Television says don’t you go away, we’ll be right back.
Mr. Norman is all twitch and mutter. He doesn’t go away.
There’s American-style shag carpet and there’s wood paneling wallpaper, I couldn’t tell the difference, you fooled me, where’s the seam?
It’s morning, rise and shine.
And then from dreams grainy and edge-blurry, cold-sizzling with synaptic crack and static, Mr. Norman opens his eyes into the titillating snow-white throb of a cordless vibrating pillow, the Vibra-Dream Plus, not available in stores, order today.
This blindingly white pillow, for which operators are standing by, cradles Mr. Norman’s face and curves seductively, ergonomically, up to his ears, into which it purrs and coos like a lover.
The pillow-lover says, “Three easy payments.”
She says, “For a limited time only, void where prohibited, ergonomically designed.”
She says, “Check the cordless pillow aisle at your local grocer.”
On Television it’s the same thing.
Ergonomically: from the Latin ergo (therefore) and the French nom (name).
Into the soft white fleece of his virgin lover Mr. Norman says, “Therefore name?”
She (the pillow) doesn’t care whether Mr. Norman used Visa or MasterCard, or whether he ordered by toll-free number or via the Internet or even through the painfully and deliciously slow U.S. Postal Service. She (the pillow) just wants Mr. Norman to rest easy after a long day at the office. She understands. She cares. She grazes his earlobes when she speaks.
With her thrumming tongue, her tingling lips, the pillow-lover says, “Therefore name.” It makes sense.
Her design? Well, her design combines Old World Comfort with Space Age Materials. She is the official cordless pillow of Bear v. Shark II.
Mr. Norman’s neck hurts, but she (the revolutionary pillow of tomorrow) says, “You be still, big boy.”
She says, “Stain resistant, lab tested, stylish durability.”
Mr. Norman, penis erect and warranty expired, remains facedown on the couch in the big Television room of his suburban home, his eyes squinting into a whiteout of sexy sleep technology, a hot blizzard of affordable comfort and Yankee can-do know-how.
In a manner of speaking: Mr. Nor
man wakes up.
3
Ohms and Amperes
A wife (Mrs. Norman) and two boys all asleep upstairs.
We got ourselves a quiet house. This suburban house is completely and blessedly silent.
One thinks of wind-kissed meadows. One thinks of bomb shelters.
The house is completely silent, except only for those trifling noises against which we recognize and understand the very idea of silence, the rustle and pulse that we might say define silence, yes, bring it into existence and lock it into a paired opposition that confers meaning and context.
The silent house: silent, that is, except for the chemical hum of the central air-conditioning, except for the hiss of dehumidifiers, except for the Babelic chatter of Televisions.
Silent but for the synthetic pulse of coaxial cables, converters, underground fiber-optic lines. The crackle and pop of electricity, currency, frequency — the ohms and amperes, watts and volts.
All silent except for the thud of the Land Swaps & Divorces against vinyl siding, except for the clicking of the hard drive, the murmuring of Web site authors — Charles Lindbergh deniers, child pornographers, auctioneers, insomniacs, quilters, Captains of Industry, professors of Canadian Literature.
Except for the gunshots, the sirens, the gunshots, the choppers.
Except for bear banter, shark schlock.
Except for the inexorable grind of continental plates miles below the earth’s surface.
Miles?
Silent except for the utopian drone of the Vibra-Dream Plus and the sweet, sweet morning songs of electric birds installed in the imitation dogwoods in the backyard of Mr. Norman’s suburban cable-ready home.
Fax, scanner, cell phone.
You shoot a bear so many times and it still doesn’t die.
The house is completely silent when Mr. Norman awakes.
4
Lady v. Cake
On the Television, on a Television, a lady lawyer in a low-cut silk blouse is cross-examining a chocolate cake.
The lady lawyer, pacing like TV lawyers will, has great calves, a nice thin waist, full-bodied hair, no panty lines. All of the lady lawyer’s unwanted hair is offscreen somewhere, removed and hidden in bloody wastepaper baskets, unwanted. She looks fantastic, but a little crazy in the eyes, a little sharp in the nose and chin, a little too aggressive, a little too skeptical of modern dessert technology.
The chocolate cake — seated up at the witness stand in front of a microphone and next to a stern, fair-minded, balding, middle-aged white male TV commercial judge (the other two types of TV commercial judges being [1] a stern, fair-minded, middle-aged, gray-haired white woman and [2] a stern, fair-minded black woman, any age) — the cake, I say, looks every bit as hot as the lady lawyer, and innocent to boot. This chocolate cake appears utterly incapable of the smallest misdemeanor.
The cake is rich, luscious, moist, exotically frosted. From the courtroom scene cut to a close-up of the nude cake being sliced open, its moistness revealed in pornographic slow motion. This cake is begging to be frosted. She (this cake) is both vixen and virgin. She is perfect: women want to identify with her, create her and thus re-create themselves, mix her and bake her at 375°, fill the kitchen with her sweet perfume.
Men want to devour her.
Cut back to the courtroom scene.
The lady lawyer says, “If it is indeed true that you are from a mix, would you mind telling the jury just how you got to be so creamy?”
There’s a little boy in the Normans’ front yard. The front yards around here are paved and painted green. The grass doesn’t do so well.
Facedown in the Vibra-Dream Plus, Mr. Norman does not know: Was Grizzly Adams the name of the bearded guy or the bear?
5
The Old Televisions, Part I
The old Televisions had an off switch.
6
Ten Myths about Babbling
Man on a couch, beached and chatty.
He (Mr. Norman) says, “That’s probably not going to be enough for a first down.”
He says, “Plantigrade gait, liquidation sale, murder-suicide.”
An expert says, “We believe that it is generally most severe in the mornings.”
Four out of five experts say, “We recommend Babble Blocker, a prescription drug.”
Nobody says, “Isn’t the pharmaceutical company part of the same conglomerate as the Television networks?”
The Babble Blocker pamphlet, “Ten Myths about Babbling,” says:
Myth No. 3: People who babble are “nutbags.” (Fact: Logorrhea has nothing to do with sanity or intelligence. The institutionalization of babblers is generally no longer accepted as the best method of treatment. Most babblers can lead productive lives, and some even achieve greatness.)
Mr. Norman says, “Liquor? I hardly know her.”
Myth No. 5: I must be the only person in the world who babbles. (Fact: You are not alone. Over 10 million Americans have been diagnosed with logorrhea.)
The evil sexy lady lawyer badgers the cake. She’s a real bitch. She says, “You sit there all sweet and scrumptious, and you expect us to believe that you are fat free?”
Mr. Norman says not all antifungal ointments are the same.
Myth No. 8: Babble Blocker turns you into a “zombie” and also slowly erodes your kidneys. (Fact: Although BB tends to induce lethargy, glassy-eyed compliance, and kidney erosion in laboratory rats and monkeys, recent longitudinal studies suggest that humans do not suffer these same side effects to nearly the same extent. Side effects include: dry mouth, headaches, ennui, vomiting, ejaculatory failure, sweating, irritability, color blindness, and memory loss.)
Someone, maybe in the kitchen or the small Television room, says now take a look at the stain on the right.
Myth No. 10: There’s no cure for babbling.
The cross-examined cake, of course, is polite, demure, sheepish, nonconfrontational, sexy as all get-out. She (the chocolate cake) says, “Yes, ma’am.”
Yes, ma’am: The phrase has caught on with the kids. Hipsters in Chicago, Wheeling (West Virginia), and Beijing go around imitating that cake: Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. It means the same thing as, say, “cool” or “right on” or “you’re shittin’ me.” There is a Web site devoted to Lady v. Cake, fifteen thousand hits per day. There are Internet chat rooms, where people from all nations meet to discuss the finer points of law and food porn.
The cake is on a book-signing tour.
7
Mile Marker No. 68
All this silence is getting to Mr. Norman.
His neck hurts, he feels restless. He lifts his face out of the warm lap of the Vibra-Dream Plus, despite her protestations, her seductive offers and money-back guarantees.
On TV a man in a tuxedo is sprinting through a sunny neighborhood with an ice cream cone.
Mr. Norman works in an office, but not today. He works on a team that designs fake electronic equipment for model apartments and town homes, but not today. Today is a vacation day.
Mr. Norman feels like running a ten-kilometer race. That is how far? Ten kilometers is roughly 10,000 meters, a meter is roughly a yard, a yard is roughly three feet, a mile is . . . What the hell is a country mile? What about a nautical mile? How would a crow fly under water?
League, stadium, fathom.
No, a marathon, or an ultramarathon, one of those 100-mile races through the desert. Mr. Norman saw that once on the Outrageous Accomplishments Network, these people running 100 miles, running from something or toward something, who knows, just running for days and drinking literally pints and pints of fluids. These gaunt fellows: what have they figured out?
The design team doesn’t do fake plants. That’s another office. They just do fake electronic equipment. For model apartments and town homes. Well, it started out for model apartments and town homes, but lately regular folks have been buying the fake equipment because it looks better than the real equipment and it is competitively priced.
; Mr. Norman imagines himself in the white-hot sands, covered with the crusty white residue of his sweat, the vultures circling in the high white heat above. His eyes are fixed, his face is placid, serene. He has found something, he has reached some sort of enlightenment, out there in the desert at Mile Marker No. 68. He has passed through pain and he has found something sublime, the IT, the NOW, it’s like buying a Lexus or getting drunk, only better, more Eastern. It’s Extreme Zen. In this moment of transcendence, Mr. Norman’s shorts and singlet and shoes would be sporty, yet durable and functional. They would breathe. The logo would be recognized internationally.
The design team knows nothing about electronic equipment except the way it looks. Team members scour gadget catalogs like porno mags. They have to keep up with technology. They have to keep up with the way technology looks. Team members e-mail each other when they have new ideas about how to make a fake piece of equipment look more real than a real piece of equipment.
Oh, and then the choice that every Ultra Athlete faces at one time or another: Should I break my rhythm and my concentration for a short bathroom break or just piss on myself? Mr. Norman wonders if pissing on himself would impress his sponsors or just turn them off. You could really see it both ways. He supposes it could be edited out if they didn’t like it. Fake Televisions, fake VCRs, fake CD players, fake laptops. Mr. Norman wants to suck down a tube of Dr. Endurance Energy Goo and throw it in the sand.
Mr. Norman can’t remember the last time he ran, even a few steps.
He says, “Ninety days, same as cash.”
He says, “How many meters in an odometer?”
A TV Personality in the spare Television room says, “Did you know, Gloria, that the origin of the teddy bear comes more or less from Franklin Delanor Roosevelt?”
Bear v. Shark: The Novel Page 1