Watching Billy scowling, silent, scrubbing the residue from his face, armpits and hair, I knew things were going to be different going forward. The social dynamic had turned, as mayonnaise would in the sun. Treating Billy like a pet monkey was too funny, too easy and too addictive… Once you’re high on controlling people, every other way of relating to them flies out the window. It only makes sense for a couple of high school seniors to abuse this sort of power. At 17 or 18, you’ve never been in charge of anything. Abusing a weaker peer for amusement is constructive – a cautionary lesson of sorts… something you can look back on in guilt a decade later when it’s happening to you.¹

* * *

Every morning Dennis came into my office my throat would tighten. He’d start off friendly enough, a little chit chat about something in the news. Slowly he’d segue into a case I’d been assigned. If we were talking the economy, he’d slide into a cross examination about my preparation for the deposition of some stockbroker. If we were talking literature, he’d mention how writing a brief was similar to creative writing and ask whether I’d begun one I was supposed to be working on but he knew I hadn’t started. Sometimes he wouldn’t even bother bridging the subjects. He’d just walk in with a brief he received from an opponent – something I hadn’t even seen yet – and start quizzing me about its contents, as though I should have been prepared to address the arguments.
“I didn’t know the thing had been filed until you brought it in here.” I’d protest.
“It’s not raising issues you didn’t already know about. The question is ‘How are you going to address them?’ We’re going to need affidavits from the client, aren’t we? How much time do we have to respond under the rules?”
I knew after working under Dennis for three months that I was his monkey. There are two types of people in the work world: Those Who Just Want the Money and Those Who Want Power. The former can be a serious pain in the ass and usually make sullen, angry, moody bosses. But they’re often decent people at heart who made the mistake you did – thinking they could extract the filthy lucre without marrying themselves to the field. And most of their annoyance accrues from their having to share space with the latter. People who are in it for power want Control. Money’s secondary. The fundamental difference in the two schools of living is a simple matter of self-actualization. One group punches a clock in the Matrix, the other never leaves.

(more…)

Idioms are cheap, but there’s truth in “Idle hands [being] the devil’s tools.” It was a normal dead July afternoon when we started torturing Billy.

“Get me a drink, Billy. A vodka and cranberry, or orange juice.” Charles barked from his deck chair.

“Get it yourself.”

“Ooooh. Big balls on Billy.” Nolan laughed.

“Get me a drink.” Charles snapped back.

“Get it yourself.” Billy grinned over his beer, safely across the pool from Charles. He was semi-buzzed, and his ethanol courage was peaking. There was no other explanation for it. The kid had fetched cocktails for Charles all summer, but now, suddenly, he was balking at the job. I figured he’d had enough of us, that he was sick of being treated as joke or a non-person. Billy tended to say a lot of dumb things – not technically stupid, but misplaced, naïve or a second behind the conversation – what you’d expect someone hanging around people two and three years his senior to offer. I’d ignore it, as it was my general rule to ignore Billy altogether. To me he was a plug, Nolan’s goofy man-servant. His voice was filler, carrying dead spaces between people who had something to say.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like him. Billy was a good kid. He was just so obsequious toward Nolan that I couldn’t respect him. I’d wince when Nolan slapped him across the back of the head for making a dim comment in the same fashion as Moe would Curly. Nolan was a disaster. He was so disheveled – his clothes, hair and even his posture so sloppy – that he appeared permanently drunk. And he had an instinctual knack for finding trouble where none existed. He’d drunk-drive his car into a ditch and flatten the tire on a well lit, wide open, dead straight road leaving a party. He’d write up a cheat sheet for an exam only to realize when the test was handed out he’d copied notes from the wrong chapter. If there was somebody passed out face down out in the grass at a party, I could be sure that when I nudged the body over with my foot, I’d see Nolan’s face. There are only so many people who manage in the twilight hours of the morning after prom night to park their mother’s Lincoln Town Car sideways in the driveway, with the peak of the front quarter panel sheared off – shredded fiberglass hanging over the right front headlight – and the trunk open and filled with empty and broken liquor bottles. Nolan had a death wish, and it was death by idiocy. He was chasing the sort of ignominious obituary people forward to each other from the “Oddities” sections of news websites. A “Darwin Award” in the making. The sort of person who’d be browbeaten and slapped like a gimp by Nolan had nothing to say to me.

I knew Billy was in for major pain the minute I saw Charles amble up from his deck chair. “You going to make me come over there?” He gave Billy the stink-eye across the pool. Billy laughed and flipped Charles the bird. I went inside for a drink.

Charles wasn’t cruel or sadistic by any stretch. But he drank like few I’ve met. He’s the only person I knew who took four bottles of Everclear grain alcohol to the beach for senior week.

“Why that?”

“It’s easier than fucking around with fake IDs or carrying beer and it’s twice as strong as anything else. I’d have to carry twice as much otherwise. I don’t feel like having to worry about liquor.”

Charles was loaded, and he was strong as an ox. I’d played him in pickup basketball games and eaten many of his Bill Laimbeer elbows. If he had to hoist his drunken carriage around that pool until he caught Billy, Billy was going to pay.
I was savoring the first gulps of my frigid 16 ounce Busch can, waiting for a microwave pizza to finish when Nolan came barreling through the back door. He didn’t say a word, darting for the corner of the kitchen counter closest to the refrigerator and grabbing a tub of peanut butter. On his way back out he stopped at the last drawer in the cabinets, yanked it open, pulled out a knife and ran back out the door. The pizza took another 20 seconds or so to finish cooking.

I grabbed the paper plate from the oven and bolted out the back door.

“This isn’t working.” Nolan turned to Charles and threw the knife in the grass.

“You’re doing it wrong.” Charles leaned over, picked it up and grabbed the peanut butter from Nolan.

“Fine. You try. You always know everything.” Nolan huffed.

“The problem is there’s nothing for it to stick to.” Charles grabbed a towel from a chair and handed it to Billy. “Dry yourself. Get rid of all that sweat.” Billy followed the order without a sound.

For the next five minutes, Billy stood still as a statue, in a crucifixion pose, while Charles troweled layers of Jif into his armpits. When he’d spackled Billy from the tops of his rib cage to the underside of biceps, Charles ordered him to start running laps around the pool. It was at least 90, and it was humid.

“Faster, and keep your arms in the air!” Nolan hollered as Billy rounded the pool over and over, his arms held out like a small child mimicking an airplane or a bird. He must have done 15 laps before they ordered him to stop. Billy was a naturally athletic sort of kid, the kind who’d probably have made a good offensive back or wrestler, but at that time he was clearly in terrible shape – panting, wheezing, sweat pouring down his face and running out of his armpits, mixed with peanut butter in long brown streams down the sides of his torso.

“Fuck, Billy… Haven’t you heard of deodorant?” Nolan held the knife, covered in a blob of sloppy tan goo in front of Billy’s face.

“Don’t relax your arms.” Charles barked at Billy.

“Eat it. Open up.” Nolan snarled.

Billy struggled to keep his mouth shut for a few moments, but he knew resistance was futile. Charles and Nolan would only pin him and force it down his throat. Still, that seemed more dignified than standing prone, like some hopeless wretch on the scaffold in a medieval carving. First he had a small bite, then a bigger one, then Nolan was heaping the lumpy fetid slurry from his armpits into his face. Billy stared daggers, but he gulped it down, face straining as he struggled to get the paste through his dehydrated gullet.

“Why?” I asked Charles after they finished.

“He didn’t listen.”

“Not that – the peanut butter thing.”

“I don’t know. It just came to me.”

This made sense. I’ve known Charles for over 20 years, but I might as well have met him yesterday. What he’s thinking, doing, studying or interested in at any given moment varies so wildly from day to day there’s really no way to exactly describe him. He’s one of those personalities that seems to fit into just about any situation while simultaneously remaining just detached enough to never be stereotyped along with whoever he happened to be hanging around for any given period of time. We all take on some of the vestiges of what we’re around. You’re going to wind up acting a little like the rest of the people with whom you work or go to school. Charles was sui generis. If personalities are wheels where interests and experiences branch out from the hub, most people are five or six spoked. Charles had about forty, like one of those ornate varieties you’d see on an old Jaguar convertible. Low brow and high brow all in the same moment, oblivious to any of subtle social strictures that groups of people observe to differentiate themselves from one another.

Where most of the kids we hung out with, including me, were cultivating what’s today known as snarkiness, to signal to others where we saw ourselves and where we expected them to see us, Charles walked his own path. He was in the circle but never felt any need to act to an expectation. He’d talk Broadway with a drunkard playwright/actor in front of him at the bar, volley vapid gossip and self-impressed quips with a few prep school girls to his left and argue whether “Black Peter” and “Wharf Rat” were about the same figure with a couple hippies to his right. Seamlessly, with actual knowledge. Where a lot of people would scan a scene and decide who to talk to based on the person’s clothes, age or attractiveness, Charles would talk to anyone. He didn’t like everyone; in fact, he disliked most people. He was just curious, and appeared to consider life a series of interviews with the goal to absorb as much disparate information from as many angles as possible. Where as we aged most of us aimed to consort tribally, narrowly and generally socially upward, Charles broadened the scope, figuring a bar back might have better stories than the average orthopedist’s kid. His musical tastes were even impossible to pinpoint. The mix tapes he’d throw in Nolan’s stereo jumped from Slick Rick to Moby Grape to Frank Sinatra. I couldn’t argue with his “Eclectic Sponge” approach to life. No one would ever accuse Charles of being a bore. We were sitting in a friend’s home, maybe a decade ago, drinking, wasting a day. Charles picked up a guitar, fiddled with the tuning, coughed and ripped off a perfect “Redemption Song.”

“Where’d you learn that?”

“I don’t know… Taught myself a little while ago. I’ve done open mic nights in a few bars. I can’t read music yet or anything.”

I didn’t know he could play. He’d never mentioned it. That wasn’t a surprise; things just came to him. I’d no doubt the peanut butter in the armpits torture just popped into his head – a collection of random images from the day snapped together by the creative powers of vodka. It was hot. There was a massive tub of peanut butter in the kitchen. Billy was a sweaty fat kid. In hindsight it all makes sense.

To Be Continued…

[Enter Trooper Farva, carrying a tray of coffees for his fellow troopers, Rookie Trooper "Rabbit's" containing a large, visible bar of soap]
Rabbit: [dryly] Oh, look, a bar of soap.
Farva: Oh, shit, I got you good, you fucker!
Trooper Mac: *Awesome* prank, Farva.
- Super Troopers (2001)
“I want you to read the Rules in your off time.” Dennis dropped the Civil Procedure book on my desk… Hundreds of pages of endless descriptions of when certain legal papers may be filed, the form in which they should be filed, where they should be filed and how much it costs to file them. Below each is two or three pages of commentary on when the particular rule was first written, each time it was amended, how it was amended and why it was amended.
“What?” I liked Dennis. He was erudite and darkly sarcastic. We’d talk pop culture, political candidates, traffic records and college basketball. He was interesting and engaging, and such a perfectionist (the man would take a week to draft the simplest papers, and agonize over every line of text, knowing full well a clerk would never read it) that it was clear law, or any field demanding churning of hours on commoditized tasks, wasn’t his chosen field. There were a million better things for a mind like his to do.
I couldn’t help thinking as I listened to him speak, with his Plimpton-like delivery, affected as it was, “What a shame – this mothefucker’d be a solid Classics professor, or Ambassador to a minor protectorate.” Dennis had too many interests and curiosities to be a lawyer, even if most were repressed, and I think he knew it.
But he was stuck – 55 and a partner, his dreams buried before Reagan left office. Or maybe they never existed. Maybe he was a zero who was only amusing because I was sitting in a grey box, reading printouts of cases about contracts between corporations and insurance companies and banks. The only context I knew him in was one where watching a fly circle an overhead lamp qualified as a five minute distraction. Fuck it…. How Dennis came to where he was isn’t important. What’s important was how he handled it. Though he seemed to loathe what he did and only work when forced by a deadline, Dennis was intent on excelling at it. What he did he did perfectly, no matter how painful the act of getting there. Dennis never submitted anything to the Court that wasn’t grammatically and stylistically perfect, yet constructed simply enough not to overwhelm a clerk. From a logical standpoint, his pleadings were as waterproof as arguments got in business litigation. He could have half-assed it and gotten exactly the same results, but he had a sad pride in what he did. Dennis knew it was just paper, and in the larger picture, it held no significance save the invoiced payable it justified. But it was what he did, and if he wasn’t recalled for anything else he’d done in this life – if the talents that might have made him memorable had been wasted – he’d at least be thought a fine Philadelphia Lawyer.
Still, I respected Dennis and his work, and I think respected me. I also think he knew I wasn’t really interested in the job, and it drove him a little nuts to have someone whose attitude tested and reminded him of his own forced commitment to the field roaming the floor every day. The less I seemed to care, as manifested in my mistakes – little typos I’d shrug off here and there; a response to a motion submitted a day late; forgetting to put a document’s page numbers in the same font as the text – the more he had to wonder why he did. “Law is a jealous mistress” many like to say. If Dennis believed that, then what did my blowing her off say about the last 30 years of his existence?

(more…)

Oh won’t you take me home tonight?
Oh down beside your red firelight,
Oh and you give it all you got
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin’ world go round
- “Fat Bottomed Girls,” May/Queen (1978)
A month or so later I was in ___________________, a bar in the center of ___________, outside Philadelphia, drinking rum and ginger ales with Karen, her boyfriend, Tim, and Martin. It started at 5:00 as a quick run for a burger and beer. At 10:00, Tim was tutoring me on basketball betting, and why I had to meet his bookie. Simultaneously, Karen was lecturing Martin about why Martin and I weren’t getting laid, smashing in and out of my conversation with Tim:
“I made $5,000.00 with my guy. I’m telling you, you have to do this.” Tim slapped his hand on the bar.
“So, you pay him for tips and he’s your boo–”
Karen’s advice to Martin clipped through our conversation. “You realize why you’re not getting laid is ’cause you never try. You’re spoiled from college. You guys never had to lay rap. Well, now you do.”
“I try. But its sooo much work. Tell her how much work it is, ________.” Martin grabbed my shoulder.
“Gimme one second.” I turned to Tim. “So how much do I have to pay for the ‘tips’?”
“Well, it’s usually–”
Karen leaned over Tim’s shoulder and pointed at me. “Your problem is you expect them to come to you. You’ve always been like that.”
“Karen, can I finish?” Tim snapped.
“Sorrrreee.”
Tim barely took a breath before Martin jumped in on a 30 second time delay, entirely unaware Tim and I were even talking. “I don’t want to play the ‘game.’ I’m just a regular guy. I don’t want to put on the act. I’m not ‘Hollywooded’ up like _________. I used to get high with hippy chicks in college and have a good time. Now its all bullshit. I want a chick in torn jeans shorts, wearing one of those tapestry looking shirts. I just want a laid back, normal chick.” I noticed Martin had an odd, angry lilt in his voice. I paid it no mind. Tim was paying for our drinks and food with $100 bills. I wanted to hear how I could make $5,000.00 with his bookie.
“Yeeeaah, well that doesn’t work anymore,” Karen drew deeply on a cigarette, chasing it with the end of whatever was in her martini glass. Another round of drinks arrived. “Girls are on a different page now.”

(more…)

All I remember about the last two months is giving a guest lecture at Villanova… or maybe it was a street corner.
- Barney Gumble
“Jezzzuzz… fuhhh… blurry… blurry… You. Take the… wheel.” Harris’s head was nodding forward, his pupils rolling north, staring into the sun visor. His mind was on a five second delay. He had no idea I already had the wheel. “Keep your foot on the gas,” I whispered in a Mr. Rogers tone. No use exciting him. If he moved his foot six inches to the left… If he spasmed and slammed the brake down… If he jerked his arm and thrust the car into reverse, we were Done. The nose would lurch to one side, we’d fishtail for moment, then we’d go end over end, sprayed across the highway – a comet of metal, glass and tan leather upholstery.
Interstate 95 outside New York is no place to lose control at 80 miles per hour. The road’s as wide as a football field and straight as a runway, but around you, barreling through the four or five lanes of traffic at any given moment on a Saturday afternoon are hundreds of four wheeled projectiles. Gel-headed Jersey hipsters headed for the clubs; yuppies with sushi reservations; pimps in low riding, gold-package Lexi; buses packed with geriatrics headed for a dog show at the Javits Center – all screaming down the artery, racing to be first to wait in line outside the Tunnels.
I watched Harris’ foot. Where he’d be in the next 20 seconds was anyone’s guess. The reaction’s wildly unpredictable. I’d seen people go limp, seize and shake like epileptics. I’d seen them drop cigarettes in their laps and pour drinks over themselves. Sometimes their eyes roll back and their mouths open, a near agonal death convulsion in their chest. Harris looked alright. He was conscious, communicating… Infantile, slurring gibberish, but tethered to the moment, processing the stimulae. He’d be fine. We’d be fine. He was stuttering back to life. “Ohhh… the lines… so blurry…” Harris was right; the middle lane was terrible under the circumstances. An 18 wheel truck roared by on the left. A bread truck eclipsed the view of Manhattan coming up on the right. We were in a tunnel of industrial machinery – walls of gears and wheels passing on either side. To Harris, in that moment, it was probably a poor man’s version of the canyons the fighters roared through at the end of Star Wars. “Exactly, but we’re here already. Just stay steady.” I’d had my elbow cocked in front of his neck, to choke him if he lurched suddenly. It wasn’t necessary. Just standard risk management.
I stared at my hands on the wheel, framed by the hulk of the passing tractor trailer in the background. I was juiced on a fight or flight high, but I was calm. The moment had a sense of déjà vu to it. Another weekend afternoon…
The year was 1996, and Harris, Martin and I were each in a drought. I’d just stumbled out of law school; Harris worked in a bank (when he worked) and Martin shook down debtors for a credit card operation in town. Harris had recently been dumped out of the blue by a spectacularly hot girlfriend, Martin had broken up with his and I’d been degraded to chasing an ex-fuck buddy, Candace, who was now screwing a senior associate at the law firm where she worked. We were still friends, and I knew she wanted to fuck me more than him. She said so several times. She also said I had no goals. He had crisp white shirts and George Will’s hair.
I’d have drinks with Candace from time to time. She’d stare at me, running her teeth over her lower lip. We’d pause outside the bar. I’d grin and shake my head. She’d drive off to Senior Associate’s house. I’d take the train to my place in ____________, just off a block of high end chotchky shops where Suburban mommies whittled away Prozac afternoons. I’d saunter through a maze of leased Range Rovers in the parking lot and walk into ___________________, a local Williams-Sonoma knock-off. The white haired biddies in $300 scarves behind the counter knew me well. I’d slap the briefcase on the counter, smile and order. “One box of N2O cartridges please.” Whitebread suburbs are wonderful. They’d never think to ask what a young man in perfectly tailored suit, carrying a leather monogrammed briefcase would want with a box of nitrous cartridges. Asking such a thing’s insulting. I was wearing a suit. I had Episcopalian features. It was None. Of. Their. Business.

(more…)

Ne mangez pas l’acide marron.

Ne mangez pas l’acide marron.

Ne mangez pas l’acide marron.

Ne mangez pas l’acide marron.

“Movies bore me. Especially my own.”
- Robert Mitchum
Don’t get videotaped naked. You’ll realize three things. One, you’re fat. Two, you need a tan. Three, your penis is not part of your body. It’s an alien device affixed to you by a God with a mean sense of humor.
Let’s go in order… You’re fat. Even if you’re not fat, you’re fat on camera. At the time Loren and I made the video, I was in perhaps the best physical condition of my life. I went to the gym daily and followed a strict protein diet. I wasn’t cut, ripped, buff or shredded like some freak in one of those creepy late night ads for ephedrine-laced supplements, but I thought I looked pretty good.
…Until I saw the “test” video. Nobody goes straight to the fucking when they’re on tape. You need the warm up – the get-acquainted-with-the-camera time – where you learn what looks good, what angles to shoot. And more importantly, what angles not to shoot.
“Jesus, I’m a slob. I have tits.”
“That’s just shadowing,” Loren laughed.
“I look translucent.” The second thing you realize with video is the devil’s in the lighting. The lamps in Loren’s apartment were soft white, complimentary when seeing a person in the flesh. But on video, the rosiest light may as well be a Halogen high beam. Manute Bol would have looked like a Hispanic Shawn Bradley in that video. George Hamilton would’ve come off grey. I was day-glo porcelain white, with scattered patches of hair and a whiffle bat sized member jutting out of my form.
Yes, there is the one benefit of video – the “John Holmes Effect.” Video ads twenty pounds everywhere. The widening effect that bloats your face into that of a “Family Circus” character does the same to your conveniently horizontally positioned member.¹ The only problem is, this magnification highlights a seldom recognized quirk in the human form – your penis is a slightly darker shade than your body (all the more so when it’s stiff as a lamp post). Before you run to the mirror, let me explain. The basis for the term “pink shot” in porn isn’t exclusive to women. You’re probably sporting a similar color scheme. Under normal sexual circumstances, your tan, red or purple engorged package is hidden, far from view, preferably slapping against something equally flushed. But on video, it’s huge, and its subtle color difference from rest of you is amplified exponentially. I was a white guy sporting a Latin man’s penis.²
“My dick is… its like kind of dark… Is that a circulatory thing?”
“Looks fine. You’re just baked… I love this part.”
“You kept that? Erase it. It’s fucking awful.”
Don’t masturbate on camera.
“I want to have it to jerk off to,” she laughed back.
“Don’t say ‘jerk off’. Chicks don’t ‘jerk off’.”
“I hate ‘masturbate’.”
“Come up with a different term. You can’t ‘jerk’ anything.”
Loren smiled at the video. “Why did you bite your lip like that? Does it hurt?”
“Erase it.”
“What? I’m not going to blackmail you. You don’t have a political career anyway.”
“That’s not the issue. It’s a piss poor performance.”
There’s no way to look smooth masturbating for a camera. I’d only done it because there’s nothing else a man standing around with an erection can do for the camera. You smile. You walk around. You suck your gut in and wish you had a cigarette, a beer, anything to occupy your hands. Then you look down… For a moment I contemplated doing “dick tricks.” Then I realized, showing her “Flying Squirrel” or “Cabbage” probably would have turned her off badly enough to render the evening a loss.

(more…)