by Ted Neill
BURT looks outside his window. It is raining. A single girl remains. She is holding a sign that says “Eat Me,” the colors running from the rain.
NARRATOR
But still BURT saw his own face everywhere.
CUT TO TOY AISLE AT TOY STORE
BURT walks down an aisle, incognito with sunglasses, fake mustache, and a baseball cap. He looks at an action figure of himself with a spring-action jaw.
NARRATOR
There were Burt action figures,
CUT TO GROCERY STORE, CEREAL AISLE
BURT walks down an aisle and sees his face on a box of Wheaties on the clearance shelf. At the end of the aisle there are costumes of him, including garish masks with oversized moving mouths, marked for discount.
NARRATOR
Burt costumes,
BURT’S HOUSE, OUTSIDE
BURT walks up his steps with his groceries. There is still the GIRL with the “Eat Me,” sign. He motions for her to follow him inside. She does.
NARRATOR
And yet, as long as he was not creating his compositions, the public interest continued to diminish.
CUT TO BOOKSTORE
BURT walks by the Free-Books bin, now with his girlfriend, the EAT ME GIRL. He looks down and sees the biographies about him in the bin.
CUT TO GROCERY STORE
BURT walks by the Wheaties boxes, but they all show someone else.
NARRATOR
Burt was miserable. He felt like he was in a sea of people, and yet, all alone. Yet, he had run out of ideas, out of inspiration.
BURT’S BEDROOM, EARLY MORNING
BURT lies in bed, as if he has not slept all night. Piles of self-help books, including James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, sit on the bedside table, their spines marred with teeth marks. BURT’S GIRLFRIEND is sound asleep beside him. He gets up carefully, so as not to wake her, and walks down the hallway.
NARRATOR
BURT stopped sleeping. He stopped eating. Life just held no more joy for him any longer.
As BURT goes down the hallway, he picks up packages of BURT figurines; there are dozens. The hallway is also filled with magazines and expired Wheaties boxes with BURT’S face, as well as hardback and paperback biographies. There are even cartridges of BURT video games and racks of his clothing line—each piece of clothing with faux bite marks integrated into the distressed design.
NARRATOR
But as he walked down the hallway to the bathroom, stepping over the dozens of Burt Vousch action figures, biographies, magazine articles, and Wheaties boxes that his girlfriend had bought—often before they were thrown away by retailers trying to clear inventory—it occurred to Burt that he had become quite a piece of work himself.
BURT goes into the closet and pulls out one of his most colorful outfits from his own clothing line. He dresses before the mirror. He puts on an outlandish pair of glasses, as well as his signature beret. He stares at himself a long time, a smile slowly forming on his face. His eyes brighten. Finally, he puts his fingers in his mouth.
NARRATOR
Standing before the mirror and gazing at himself, he thought he was more than a piece of work. He was a piece of art. He was artwork. Then an epiphany: the dark clouds of gloom parted and a ray of inspiration shone down on him. Burt suddenly knew what his last and greatest piece would be. It would revive his career, and as he contemplated it, all sadness, emptiness, and loneliness melted away. Even if he tried, he could not have even remembered what they were; it was as if he had not even the faintest memory of sadness, loneliness, or loss. He knew he must set to work right then and there, before the inspiration left him. It would be amazing. It would make his legacy a lasting one, one that would be hailed as bold, courageous, and of course, ingenious. So that morning, before his girlfriend awoke, Burt Vousch ate himself.
CUT TO INT. BURT’S ROOM, LATER
BURT’S GIRLFRIEND wakes up, rubs her eyes, and opens the shades. The camera follows her down the hallway to the bathroom, where we see her enter. Framed by the bathroom door, she makes the horrifying discovery of BURT’S body (OFF SCREEN) and screams.
NARRATOR
But when the police and coroners found him, they decided to leave the body alone. For they knew it was not just a body at a suicide scene; it was art. They knew the inevitable art critics, the collectors, and the paparazzi would want to come and view Burt as he had left himself.
Time Lapse. The POLICE, the ART CRITICS, the COLLECTORS, the PAPARAZZI come and go, framed in the bathroom door taking photos of BURT (OFF SCREEN) in the bathroom. Camera pans back, moving down the hall, fixed on BURT’S GIRLFRIEND, who remains catatonic but shrinking in the growing screen, crowded with people.
NARRATOR
And when they did come, all agreed, that it was the greatest, most breathtaking, most marvelous, and most ingenious work of his entire life; his greatest and most lasting Oral Composition.
FADE TO BLACK
8.
When We Talk About Fights
My friend Sidney is a very handsome man. Women always smile at him when they walk by. When he is in downtown DC, if he is around the National Mall where all the tourists hang out, foreigners will ask to be in pictures with him, as if he is some strapping specimen of pure American virility.
The other notable thing about Sidney is that he wears an eye patch. It’s custom made so that it fits snugly in his eye socket, not over it. His brother shot his eye out with a pellet gun in an argument. But Sidney doesn’t talk about that; no one in his family does, except to joke that women love the patch. Sidney’s brother Mitch calls it the “sex magnet.” I had a friend, a psych major, who met Sidney. She said that women liked the patch because it made Sidney seem dangerous, but also wounded and vulnerable at the same time.
I don’t know if he’d like the wounded and vulnerable bit. Dangerous, yes.
Sidney is seven years older than I am. He is like a big brother, and he even used to beat up my big brother, Rick, when he was too hard on me. I loved him for it. Sidney came to visit me while I was home from college at Christmastime. We went out to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. It used to be a pizza place. I’m comfortable in restaurants because I work in one, but that’s only because Sidney got me my first job waiting tables. Sidney was practically born in a restaurant, and now works at his parents’ café, which I guess he will be taking over someday.
The waiter sat us down at a booth beside a window. The curtains had green cacti and yellow sagebrush on them. Sidney arranged himself on his side behind his menu.
“Are sanchos like a soft taco?” I asked.
“Yeah, like a burrito really,” Sidney said.
“Then I’m having the bean and cheese one. You think one will be enough?”
“I don’t know man . . . so many choices.”
The waiter came. I ordered the bean and cheese sancho with a side of nachos. Sidney ordered the same with an additional soft taco, as well as two waters and two lemonades. He said lunch was on him.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it.”
Sidney looked around at the new décor and shook his head. It looked nothing like the old pizza place. The red-and-white-checkered tablecloths were gone, as well as the jukebox and Ms. Pac-Man machine—where they had been now stood a miniature covered wagon that rocked and swayed children on a journey along the “Oregon Trail” for seventy-five cents. “I remember the last time I was here, six—no, seven years ago. Man, that was a long time ago,” Sidney said.
“The halcyon days of your youth.”
“Halcyon. That sounds like a good word. What’s it mean?”
“Calm. Peaceful. Untroubled. It’s from a Latin word that, in turn, is derived from a Greek one for a type of bird. I was being ironic.”
“Yeah. Actually, the last time I was here, I got into a fight.”
“Really?”
“I was here with Kurt. It was stupid.”
Sidney leaned forward with his elbows on the table. His right hand played aimlessly with his fork, standing it up, then letting it fall, then standing it up again. “We had just finished dinner and were walking along the sidewalk out there, and these two guys were coming right at us. It was one of those things where neither party really changed direction, so we just kind of stepped around each other at the last minute. The guy on my side was this muscle-bound guy with a shaved head and a bunch of earrings. I’m moving around him, and he just smacks me with his shoulder. He was bigger than me, so I kind of flew off to the side and had to catch myself. When they were gone, Kurt is standing there laughing at me and goes, ‘Pussy.’
“Then I darted off, just like that, not thinking, right after the muscle-head with the earrings. I ran up behind him and punched him right here in the back of the neck.” Sidney made a fist and put it to the base of his skull. The waiter brought us our drinks.
“That’s right on the cerebellum,” I said and stuck my straw in my mouth.
“Yeah. He fell flat on his face. He was stunned or something. He tried to get up but just waved his arms like a dying animal or something.”
“Oh, man.”
“His friend shoved me, and I took him by his arms and swung him around. We must’ve looked a little ridiculous, like square dancers or something. We spun twice before he tripped over his friend and fell between the curb and the tire of this parked car. I got in one punch on the side of his head before Kurt came and pulled me away. He couldn’t talk he was laughing so hard.”
“Did the guy get up?”
“Which one?”
“The one that was convulsing.”
“Must have. No cops showed up at my door with a warrant for my arrest as a murderer.”
“Lucky. Can you pass me the dessert menu?”
Sidney reached over to the napkin dispenser where the dessert menu was propped, then slid it to me. I looked at it: fried ice cream, Mucho Choco Brownie with ice cream, vanilla ice cream with caramel and nuts. I hated nuts.
“Can I see that when you’re done?” Sidney asked.
I handed it to him. “Nothing good.”
He studied it, his eyebrow over his good eye lowered. He flipped the menu over and set it flat on the table. “I remember this other time, when I was living in Charlottesville. It was that same year, but it was December. Anyway, there was snow on the ground, but it was old snow. It had hardened into that really gritty, crusty stuff. I was coming out of my house—”
“Your apartment or the house with the frat boys?”
“The frat boys. I’ve got stories about them too. But we were coming out of the house—this was when I was dating Corina. It was me, Corina, and my friend Mohamad. We were walking to the car, when these three guys pop up from behind this pile of snow and start pegging us with these ice balls. At first, it was funny and all. ‘Oh no, we’re being attacked, real funny.’ Then one of them flings this flat piece of ice like a Frisbee.” Sidney waved the menu as if he was about to demonstrate by flinging it across the restaurant. “And it hits Corina right in the face. She crumples. I look down and see she’s bleeding.”
“Did they mean to hit her in the face?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t care; it’s not like they gave any thought to it. If they had, they would have realized ‘hey this could really hurt someone.’ Anyway, I flew, man. They had already started to run. There was this fat one, and he was trailing after the others. I think he was the one who hit her. It’s always the fat ones; they’re bitter cause they got made fun of when they were little.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. I know a thing about being teased. Think about it. No one was probably sensitive to them when they were the little pudgy kids on the playground, so why should they be sensitive to others when they get older? They’ve got all sorts of resentments built up. Anyway, I couldn’t catch up with him. Then again, I could have if I wanted—he was a lard ass—but instead I just threw my arms up and dove into his back. He fell down. Now, he still thought this whole thing was a joke, and he was laughing when I rolled him over. I was like, ‘You think that’s funny?’ And I cocked my arm back, but Mohamad was behind me and held my arm, saying, ‘No man, no man, chill, chill.’ I tried getting my arm free, but couldn’t, so with my other arm I just took a fistful of the fat guy’s hair and started knocking his head against the pavement.”
“Pretty ridiculous. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
“I don’t know if I would even call it fighting. It was scrapping. It’s not like I learned; you just had to fight to survive in my house. Five brothers, you’re going to have some rumbles, and I think my family was extra competitive, Mitch especially. Like he was always trying to test me.” He paused for a moment, as if his thoughts had gone off into a different direction.
“Earth to Sidney.”
“Sorry. Where was I?”
“Brothers?”
“Yeah. Anyway, that doesn’t mean we didn’t stick up for each other. I remember when Mitch got his ass whupped by these trailer-trash kids. Chris and Brent just got in the car, went right to their trailer park, and beat them up in front of their mother.”
“Their mom?”
“Hey, it’s the rules of engagement, man. You mess with someone, and they’ve got family, you better be ready for the retaliation. She understood that. It wasn’t that bad anyway. They just gave the kids something to think about. Actually, they said the mother didn’t even seem to care. Then again, I wouldn’t have put up a fight if Chris and Brent had shown up at my door. Maybe if I had a baseball bat or a shotgun.”
I took a deep drink of my lemonade through my straw. The waiter brought out my nachos. He was an old guy and had spoken with a Latino accent when he took our orders. He seemed friendly. Sidney thanked him.
“I got in a lot of fights in Charlottesville,” Sidney said, reflective. “It was just a crazy atmosphere.”
“College is a weird place.”
“But I wasn’t in college. I had transferred from community college and had deferred another year to earn some money for school. I was working. That made it worse. I was an outsider. So I was always being tested. After a while of that, you start to develop this mentality. You don’t walk into a party looking for your friends. The first thing you look for is the biggest guy there. And if you go in like that, you give off this vibe, and the biggest guy ends up finding you.”
“Frats are stupid. You’re paying money so you can have friends.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it. I remember one time my roommate Wells had three freshman pledges at the house vacuuming and doing dishes for us. See, Wells was a senior member of the frat, so for hazing week these guys had to be his maids.”
“Did they have to dress in French maid outfits?”
“As a matter of fact, they did.”
I laughed and so did Sidney.
“It was something, seeing this bunch of eighteen-year-old guys walking around in fishnets and lacy frills. I mean, it was not pretty, with their hairy legs and stuff.”
“I can imagine, but I don’t want to.”
“Anyway, I came in from work and sat down with a beer to watch Star Trek. I was dead tired and these little pledges, in these maid outfits, were whining about how ‘hard’ hazing was on them. At a commercial, I turned to them and said ‘I don’t know why you subject yourself to that. If anyone tried to haze me, I’d come after them with a gun.’ They got all flustered.”
“Flabbergasted.”
“Flabberwhat?”
“Flabbergasted means flustered, shocked. Like, gob-smacked.”
“Flabbergasted. Gob-smacked.”
“Or if you really want to up your nerd credentials, you could go with ‘flummoxed.’”
“Flummoxed. I like that one. I’ll learn something from you, if nothing else, Brainiac,” Sidney laughed. He’d always called me Brainiac, but in a good way. He had always wanted me to do well in school. Always told me not to wo
rry about the other, bigger, athletic kids who picked on me. He told me I’d do better in the long run because I liked to read, even when I didn’t have to. He’d often ask to borrow my books, or ask me to tell him about them when he couldn’t find time to read them. Sometimes, at the end of the day, his eye was just too tired. For Christmas I had bought him a bunch of books on tape.
He kept talking.
“Anyway, the pledges are all like, ‘No man, you don’t get a chance to fight back when your frat brothers haze you. They come in while you’re sleeping, wrap you up in your own blankets, and carry you out.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t care. I’d fight back, man.’ They were silent a while. They obviously thought I was just full of myself. Then I said, ‘No offense, but the whole thing is kind of stupid. All that inconvenience just so you can pay a certain amount of money each month, so you can point to a drunk undergrad in a bar and call him ‘brother.’ I’ve got four brothers, and they’re my brothers because they came out between the same two legs as I did. Not because I pay them.’ That was the nail in my coffin, I think.”
“Why? Did they do something?”
“Not then. But that night there was a party at the frat house. They got together with some of their friends, had a few drinks, got their courage up, and thought, ‘That guy Sidney is an asshole; let’s haze him.’ So I’m lying in bed, and I wake up as they’re lifting me up to their shoulders. They were still in their French maid outfits, too. They were required to keep them on.”
He shook his head. “Man, embarrassing. But I have to admit, they did a good job wrapping me in my blankets: I couldn’t move. I was like, ‘Okay. Really cool, I’m being hazed, yeah, this is really cool. Put me down.’ Then one of them punched me right in my back, and then they started punching me all over. I guess it was part of the ritual or something. We were all on the steps now, there was about six of them—they had brought friends—and I started flailing my arms and going nuts. Then we all just tumbled down the steps. It was a mess. Legs, arms, feet everywhere. I started crawling my way back. All I had on were my boxer shorts, and someone grabs them. I didn’t want to be naked on top of being hazed, so I turned around and decked the guy in the face. Then it was like king-of-the-hill meets Wrestlemania. It was a race to get to the top of the steps. I stepped on shoulders, heads, anything to get back up there. I was punching guys, boxing ears, scraping necks, grabbing them by their bra straps and fishnets. I got to the top and ran for my room. I could hear them tromping down the hall after me.”
