"Strange Currencies"
"Hello, scholars!"
Mr. Doaker croaked, walking through the door,
stooped over, arms swinging with purpose. Something of a caricature from an unintentionally "campy", yet hilarious film short from the 1950's-- corporate
mental hygiene propaganda, perhaps-- taken out of a dusty film can and shown
through a flickering projector to our open hooting and a hail of flung popcorn.
After-all, it was "The Mr. Doaker Show" when he was "on", lecturing in yelling monologues, hollering out rhetorical questions which he wouldn't possibly let the class of startled 10th graders answer, staring on with mouths agape. You could say that retirement wasn't a far off prospect for the old bird, working only two-and-a-half days a week, coasting through easy tenure with the 30 years he'd put in as the longest-serving member on the faculty. His formerly red hair was a wild nimbus, like a bale of cotton with three hoops off, like crab grass sprouting from his sallow, liver-spotted skull of spacey professorship. He looked like a blinking turtle through his thick plastic glasses, stretching out a vulnerable, wattled neck from it's shell in his rare moments when he would sit back and listen.
You either loved him, spellbound
by this veteran "song & dance man", or hated the old performer's guts--
revved up like a hot-wired Mel Brooks. The more literal-minded couldn't stand him, maddened and exasperated
with his outrageous, circuitous antics
that kept going back to the same strand of knowledge to make a point-- like a
kooky oracle with a turban on its head, or a Magic 8-Ball of cryptic
Shakespearean irony whose meaning wasn't immediately obvious, but grew more so
with
repetition and finger-wagging volume.
Always asking if "you have any questions", after one of his volcanic torrents, he took any positive response as a shining index of our scholarly potentials. Since I was something of an "apple-polisher" with a ranging curiosity, I became his star pupil overnight.
"Brilliant, Brilliant!"
It was rather easy to massage the old man's ego in the sloppy cartoon landscape in which he lived like a hokey, Korean-war era vortex. And I was his loyal #1 student!
Anthony was a fellow
oddball in my history class-- pale, quirky, and weird-- who wore a black British
pea-coat with big, shiny buttons; the kind of article that George Orwell would
have worn as an Eton youth in 1917 as a thoughtful lad of leisure. "The Mr. Doaker Show"
made Anthony snigger with a snort, loudly making suppositions for everyone to hear, the only time he said much at all
like a sly, rotten Tuna-Fish alley-cat coughin' at the bangin' & rustlin'.
You see, beneath this "kooky old professor" act, it was whispered that Mr. Doaker was a notorious slum lord who spent much of his time-- in the history department, on the phone-- telling his property lawyer to bludgeon the neighboring townships' zoning offices with motions, technicalities, red tape, and other delaying tactics. It jibed well with the other rumors and outright legends that surrounded this terminally-unreliable professor, like a cloudburst of medicinal marijuana smoke for his glaucoma, of how he couldn't be bothered to grade papers but put them out in a pile on his desk and lobbed a dart at the mass to determine who out of the randomly-undeserving would get a better grade, since they saw him as "a silly old bastard" anyhow.
Cut corners, loose ends left untied, and leaving the office early to "tee-off" with "golden golf club" conceit summed up a lot of the buddy-buddy culture in this town. You had the mayor, the chief of police, the judges, the prosecutors, the aldermen, and the business types who all understood "what was what" as they putted at the country clubs, rubbed elbows at the finest restaurants, and had their traffic tickets "torn up" in court as "the law" looked the other way in this local "mutual admiration society", where disorder was pulled over and investigated as surely as a carload of black pimps with white teenaged girls snapping gum and "acting bad".
It was tolerated-- for the sake of good appearance-- but the police came charging in with their flashing rooftop lights when it got more serious down at the local mall, the young perp's legs spread and hands up against the wall over shoplifting or drugs. Then the book was really thrown at them, and what happened next-- no one could say for certain. Inevitably, it came down to that "rottenness", the black sucking undertow that destroyed lives because somebody was "looking for a shortcut" across a high-wire and took a nasty spill.
This was nowhere greater in evidence than at the
local Bally's gym where fitness enthusiasts
(-- and non-
But Tom
"Viva", the personal trainer with a kid's smile, could cause a little cool rain to fall in this gym of boiling sulfur and red-hot brimstone. There he'd greet you on the "killing floor", arms extended out in gracious magnanimity, the fun-loving genie who made you feel better with the magic of his infectious attitude. What you noticed about him was that his hands were always moving, chopping up and down in emphasis as he held your eyes intently like a high-octane snake charmer and you stared back with a smile working along your face like you were talking to the world's greatest batting coach.Anything seemed possible in his presence, there with his sunglasses and black leather jacket with an American flag stitched on the back. All he needed was a motorcycle to complete the effect, the well-muscled archetype of "American Freedom" riding down the highway with both hands gripping the handlebars like a better-humored version of "Top Gun".
But outside his spell, it's just we sorry bunch of grunts clanking around in useless circles on the basement level like peasants in rusty armor. In the locker room, the elderly men are like old hunting dogs, arthritic and tired. Whatever our age, we grunt out small talk back and forth. Lawnmowers. Sports. The military. About the most exciting thing that ever happened was when an escort had somebody post flyers on every single locker, even above the leaking urinals.
"Hi, guys!". It then proceeded to chirp out her Playmate-style measurements and phone number in short-form.
Among we men, it was the sour knowledge that such women didn't just sashay into our lives, attracted to our sullen, lump-like personalities. . . . . . unless it was for a steep price, then they were gone with our hard-earned money as soon as we rolled over. We cursed her for intruding on our space, for reminding us just how futile existence really was, and those flyers were never seen again.
But Tom could make you believe in something so simple as "the hop, skip, and jump" of fortuitous chance. Life was a party, and he was the winsome toastmaster.
There was the time he threw a 4th of July party and invited a bunch of his friends and clients. He was a dervish of charming energy, giving the women hugs and kissing them on the cheek, the high-octane winner among assorted meatheads, lunking "Creatine" enthusiasts, the I.Q-less "Speedo n' Spandex" crowd panting around robotically in dance-step aerobics class, and my favorite-- a bleary-eyed hoosier who sat in a lawn chair all evening, verily singing the praises of his Budweiser beer. There he sat-- 36 years old, hair thinning, a brown mustache, having so little to say that he waxed poetic about his can or 3 for two hours.
"This is my beer. I like my beer. This is good beer".
Where Tom had found him, God only knew but there he sat like the outer core of simple manly aspiration. Stroke mags, a cardboard Elvira "Mistress of the Dark" stand-up, a foam cowboy hat, and the anthem from "Top Gun" playing on the cassette player as he knocked back shot after shot of "Jack Daniels" and ate salted peanuts with a croaking voice.
But sometimes, the average man could be enlivened by the allure for the gladiatorial, like the time we brought the struggling Rams to St. Louis and built an extravagant football stadium with public money, despite the crows of the sensible. The facilities were state-of-the-art, "brand-spanking new", with rows of slick, attractive public relations people working the phones as I called the office as a junior cub reporter for the high school newspaper, perhaps foolishly seeking their "conflict-of-interest" sentiment for the team's chances that season.
"Oh yeah, we're gonna make it all the way to the Super Bowl!".
But the Rams came in dead last that year. In protest, fans stormed into the box office to furiously shove the remainder of their season's tickets through the box office window to the embarrassed blurts of bimbo attendants in high heels, but it made no difference because there were no refunds!
Everything required "money-down" risk and it always seemed like we poor mortals would be left holding a sorry sack of shit. See the woeful expression on our faces, pinching our noses in disgust with a bad investment, but that was the law of the unforgiving universe. . . . .
But Tom "Viva" seemed to escape those ironclad rules that weighted us down like concrete galoshes down at the bottom of the brown, muddy Mississippi
where your only comment came from the burbling mouth of a bottom-feeding catfish that didn't pay much attention to the absurdity of your plight. Maybe it was breezy charm, maybe it was slickness that maneuvered its way out of the tight spots, maybe it was his easygoing good looks. But 'ole "Viva" never had "a bad day". Not that I could tell, at least. His dream was to open up a "haunted house", a Halloween attraction because he was always a big kid at heart. Decked in a sharp suit, he gave a whirlwind presentation before countless banks, seeking a $10,000 loan. But banks have a way of lending money to people who don't need it, and to very conservative ventures at best.But Tom was going to get that money one way or another, even as we patted him on the back and wished him the best as his sympathetic friends and associates that continued to grind around in circles like oxen wearing a path in the earth. Months passed, then the truth came out-- like an ape shot out of tree. It began when one day he simply wasn't there on the floor like he always was. No calls, no explanations to his stranded clients.
Vanished.
Then the news filtered down the grapevine: Tom had been embezzling money from the gym-- skimming from the receipts of his clients' sessions and shuffling around the papers so Bally's wouldn't catch on. The gym had gotten wind of it and he was banned from the premises for life, on threat of prosecution. Like a con man who had been unmasked, he was too ashamed to look anyone in the eye and simply hurried off as the oxen stopped for a second, and pawed their hooves against the ground in shock and sadness before picking up the load once more.
As it turned out, the haunted house went up that Halloween but it thundered for three days and no one showed up in the pouring rain as his white-knuckled investment went irretrievably soggy. I could see him holding his head in his hands,
a broken man.It was stories like what was just recounted that made teenagers like me very cynical and fearful, that keeps us from risking anything whatsoever with the nauseous lurch of things. In life, one becomes obsessed with death and carnage and failure and views mankind as not much more than slime sucking for sustenance on a rock and splashed with acid. Life is cheapened in our materialist age, and this tends to be "the worst of all worlds" everywhere from the furthest star to our local neighborhood where we peek out of our blinds but don't live with boldness as the zeitgeist became more sexed-up, the rewards more furtive, the greed all-consuming, the dubiety of our stars and elite and Newsweek personalities legion, and the fear of obliteration final.
Whether it was our legal system getting out-of-control with million-dollar lawsuits, or rampaging O.J. Simpson's who blotted out people so meek and Jewish and small as a news-chopper "zeroed-in" on the freeway with the grotesque slowness of big events seen from far away, or that you may say the wrong thing and have your career cut short in politics "so you could spend more time with your family" as the media tut-tutted about politically-correct subjects and "the little guy"-- no matter how supposedly white & privileged he may be-- was given the shaft by the expediency of a multicultural "sacrifice victim" who had his heart torn out on the temple steps of public contrition that no one with intelligence particularly believed, but done so for the benefit of appearance so "those in the cheap seats" would be satisfied, the kind of wild men who rushed the ring after Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear like a time-out on the pitcher's mound but only with "The Nation of Islam" as the crowd screamed murder on its feet like the howling back alleys of Uganda where stray Europeans were caught, butchered, cooked, and eaten.
God help you if you were a woman. . . . . especially with cornflower blonde hair of the "Trophy Goddess", torn to pieces in one primitive orgy of jungle rape like a gorilla "hit squad" coursing through less-evolved human veins and unquenchable rhythm with the drums and moon.
Anthony was cued into that feeling, more aware than most about that level of "rottenness" that existed just underneath the placid surface in our well-off community, when crime and ooze and outright criminality was barely held in check by police walking around with their hands touching the butt of their service revolver, talking into their radios.
He watched a lot of cop shows and wanted to be a police detective. And once he saw me looking around with wide, scared eyes the day I arrived at school, and saw an opportunity to pull the spotlight off of his own wretchedness when he nicknamed me "The Unabomber" and caused the buzz to spread with a murmur through the hallways like hip-hoppity juvenile laughter.
The day before, someone had called in a bomb threat and emptied out the school.
And with me standing around with a crew-cut, an orange nylon sack to carry my books (-- at the last school some mischief-makers had broken into my locker and stolen my classy leather satchel), and a jumpy, self-conscious expression from being expelled but not a week before, Anthony had made a goofy, sniggering connection. Ted Kazcinsky, that crazy survivalist-- loner, terrorist, and who looked like a drowned rat pulled from the sewer in his booking photo-- who would compound the horror of this crazy, fun-house mirror of our sensationalistic media age by trying to hang himself with his underwear in jail with a cornered hatred of life. . . . .
It was the rottenest thing I had ever been called.
Kids yelled it in the cafeteria, hollered it from moving cars. The more you froze up, the more that encouraged them. And I was not a well-oiled social creature. . . . . as the more I resisted, the more I hid, the more that I became like this hated, grotesque caricature like a man waving in a "Pink Panther" costume at a theme park. It had me taken aback, the day Anthony invited me over to his house on Friday night. Because he was oftentimes the ring-leader of my public suffering, I thought Anthony hated me. Is that how you treat your friends?! But apparently Anthony had no friends on account of his weirdness, and figured that I could hardly be so "high-handed" in my own misfit way of life.
The ritzy suburban neighborhood was hushed and dark that Friday night, because it could be assumed that all the normal teenagers were attending keggers and swilling beer, living on wasted "C-" below-average lives and pumping their hands up in the air to "gangsta rap" while their parents put a clueless hand on their hip at the empty space in the driveway and went back to watching t.v.
At the house, it was almost as if Anthony had made extensive, nervous preparations--straightening out the couch pillows, leaving out precisely two cans of Dr. Pepper, and having the channel preset to a movie about the man who pioneered breast implants on HBO to smooth over any awkwardness or homoerotic misunderstanding. Just guys watching a movie in the basement. No problems, no double entendrès, no suspicions, in case there would be any.
I didn't notice it at first, but a television glowed in every room. Cable programming that ran practically 24/7 as if there was no life outside this sheltered cocoon of corporate consumption.
His sister was caught up in the celebrity hype with bugged eyes, the constant trickle of digital information suggesting more "buzz" than "substance" as she scurried around like an 8th grader high from cotton candy. You were afraid that if the television was shut off, she would go into a deep depression. In the coming weeks, I would see the family sitting down to what passed for a "family meal"-- twisted in their chairs, lifting forks to their mouths without ever letting their eyes drop from the screen like a nest of raccoons staring back at a flashlight.
His mother was a gawky stick of a woman who seemed to be something like a long-lost contestant from a 1970's game show. I could see her excitedly pushing around a shopping cart full of prizes, throwing up her arms and laughing in the ecstasy of pure camp because she didn't know a life outside of the world of hollow television studios.
She was obviously pleased and over-relieved that Anthony had a friend, and went far out of her way to make me "feel at home". There would always be brand-name soda, Hostess powdered doughnuts, and this overly-friendly patter so I would come back. I would eat the proffered goods, having the good sense to pretend like there was no deep dysfunction here, that we could at least masquerade that his family-- and Anthony in particular-- were normal just like anybody else.
Appearances, dear reader. Appearances. It was "how the game was played", holding your cards in a poker match where things are not as they seem
as the dealer in a green eyeshade constantly throws out more. This was the basis of our economy during the reign of "tech stocks", the Dow skyrocketing past 10,000, and everyone was making money. How it worked, where it would stop, no one could say as the pin-wheel turned 'round and 'round and 'round and we young people spiraled our necks around like pups, not really "understanding why".The consumption of luxury goods was in full roar, and perhaps the craziest example of "this irrational exuberance" was on Father's Day when the family bought their big, clueless, office-park Dad a device that slipped over the back of his neck and misted out a subtle spray of water to cool one down in the summer, presumably out at the country club with a caddie dressed rather like Anthony carrying the golf bag. Retail price: $90 at your local mall. It was crazy, it was harebrained, but you asked no questions and broke the precious picture that was making everyone rich.
At least one that gave us hope for a prosperous future in which we could find a niche for ourselves, struggling along like wretches at this pathetic, basement level that was propped up by our parents.
Both being socially-awkward creeps, keyed into old television and movies,
perhaps only
Anthony and myself could tune in to what was unintelligible to the rest. Brenda didn't understand it, certainly, the dumb,
cow-eyed slut who tried to get me to sleep with her after art class on a dare
from her friends. What merriment, because at the time I felt like the lamest social conservative on earth.
One time, a girl called and asked me out to "The Sadie Hawkins" dance
before calling back five minutes later and giggling hysterically, telling me
that she "had changed her mind". For obvious reasons, they didn't even bother with Anthony, walking around like a cagey Frankenstein's monster.
So we felt privileged, when Mr. Doaker led us into his confidence. We were "the chosen", you see. Ourselves too hokey and bewildered to make a home for ourselves in the late '90s. Perhaps our best friends were the old men who ran their classic-style businesses in downtown proper, who felt much the same way about the modern age. Dressed up in suspenders, snappy shirt, and dress shoes, shining the shoes and cutting the hair of the same customers for well-nigh fifty years.
They saw something wide-eyed and naive in us--
FUCK this "age of irony" that bewildered and cheapened and
confused. . . . .
"Boys, boys, boys. I have a special offer just for the two of you", Mr. Doaker offered with winsome charm, his voice like croaky satin. We blinked, knowing exactly what of our paltry, misbegotten attributes qualified us for "The Order of Doaker", practically awarded like "the iron cross". Why didn't he go to a slat-eyed, piss-ant soccer player in a designer white cap?!
So it was, raking leaves outside a upper middle-class property that would eventually go up for sale to test our character and resolve, to weigh our sincerity for $8/hour. The job was massive, a four-hour slog, but Mr. Doaker paid us our $32/apiece.
"Go buy yourself a history book, or even a girl an ice cream soda!".
At the
bottom of it, Anthony and I knew we would be laughed out of town if we tried. Kate was long
since gone, the girl a couple of grades older who in her cynical teenaged grace found me
mildly amusing. At the sound of Mr. Doaker's advice, I was about ready to pick up a rake handle and crush Anthony's eye-socket with it
because
he started the wild-fire that destroyed my confidence in this
"new land"
and left me picking through the burnt-out foundation.
And now there was no Kate-- just Anthony. Bizarre, godforsaken Anthony standing there, having all the Hugh Hefner suaveness of socks on a rooster, who I at least had the decorum to pretend was "normal". But Mr. Doaker seemed oblivious to all of this, off on "Planet THC".
But Shane two grades up knew exactly what was going on, having done work for "the old man" before as the sly president of the high school business club and young Ayn Rand society who liked to draw up plans for running hotdog stands that charged $50 extra for buns and ketchup. He asked us if we had caddyshacked for Mr. Doaker yet, which was yet to come-- the old man going putting on the green in a white golfing cap. Giving us broad advice about life as we rode around in golf carts, the "students" in silence like altar boys. Or if he took us out to lunch.
What was the price of one's soul, beguiled by the "buddy-buddy" system to go along with the program? Window-dressing, teenagers dressed up in suits to lend an air of respectability, clients falling for it because the old croaker kept along such "charming young men" as pages. It was how the game was played. . . . . and we young men flattered to be pawns in $500,000 deals.
"How do we get to your station in life, Mr. Doaker?
"Study your history".
But that clearly wasn't enough, not for the overworked and exasperated teacher's assistants who were all chipmunk perk and were too sincere for their own good. All and all they were more in love with the idea of ideas when they had a few token minutes to teach, and were just not connecting with the students-- their original gust of enthusiasm gnashed between the unrelenting gears of "the killing floor"-- and mostly sat in the corner with the dead, angry eyes of a crack-whore who hated life. They would never work in our top-line community as tenured professors, home of the cavalier belt buckle and Jack Lemmon golfing shorts as Mr. Doaker's hollering monologues rose to new levels of stratospheric looniness, going on about "Star Wars" Pentagon defense systems and "lasers".
Would Anthony and I have a home in this brave new world of the ultra modern-age? Only if we continued to be drawn into Mr. Doaker's Korean war-era vortex. God help us all.
Click
here
for the sequel,
"Moon Cult" Gutter (Even Stranger Currencies)
*******************
"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(Rheeee of Crickets)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
("I heard that, Missy!")
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