The CEO of the Sofa (O'Rourke, P. J.)

by P. J. O'Rourke

  LINDA: Willy?

  There is no answer. LINDA waits. BIFF gets up off his bed and stands listening. He is still in his clothes.

  LINDA (with real fear): Willy, answer me! Willy!

  There is the sound of a car starting up.

  LINDA: No!

  BIFF (rushing down the stairs): Pop!

  BIFF jumps in the car beside WILLY. Images of moving scenery are projected on the scrim.

  WILLY: Get out of here, Biff! I’m going to drive off the road and kill myself so you can have the insurance money.

  BIFF: No, Pop! No! BIFF reaches beneath the seat and pulls out two fencing foils. I bought these at Mr. Oliver’s sporting goods store…all right, okay, I stole them. Anyway, I know you always wanted me to be a football star, but fencing is what I really like. Let’s stop somewhere and I’ll kill you in a sword fight.

  WILLY: Too late, boy, we’re already being chased by a cop.

  KRAMER VS. KRAMER

  Directed by Robert Benton

  Int: Courtroom

  TED takes BILLY by the arm and pulls him into the aisle.

  TED: Fuck! I mean, fooey on…this, Billy. We’re getting out of here.

  CUT TO:

  Ext: Street, Day

  TED, still holding BILLY by the arm, hails a taxi.

  CUT TO:

  Int: Taxi, Ted’s POV

  TED (to taxi driver): Drive like the dickens, cabbie. We’re feeling the conventions of American parenthood!

  CABBIE: You bet!

  BILLY: Mom’s weepy all the time, like Meryl Streep or somethin’.

  CUT TO:

  Ext: Courthouse steps

  JOANNA waves frantically for a cab. Her LAWYER stands beside her.

  JOANNA: Help! I’m losing emotional contact with my child!

  CUT TO:

  Ext: Day, a winding cliffside road, an interstate, a multistory parking garage, the face of Mt. Baldy, under the L tracks on Queens Boulevard, a dusty road on the West Texas plains. TED and BILLY’s taxicab drives the wrong way against traffic, is chased by airplanes, plows through a storefront, corners on two wheels, beats a speeding freight train to a railroad crossing, makes screechy sounds, goes underwater, loses hubcaps, fenders, roof. JOANNA and LAWYER follow in second taxi. Both cabs leap the Grand Canyon.

  CUT TO:

  Close-up: Open taxi door

  BILLY’s lifeless form spills to the ground. BILLY’s lifeless form spills to the ground.

  LAWYER: Well, there goes the custody case.

  JOANNA: Let’s sue for neglect.

  THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN

  Directed by Sergei Eisenstein

  Sailors grimace…

  Sailors shake fists…

  Empty bread dishes…

  Title Card

  EMPTY BREAD DISHES

  Sailors run around decks…

  Sailors shout defiance…

  Brooding shot of the sea…

  Sailors gesticulate…

  Sailors exhort one another…

  Officers jump into automobiles and head for the stern…

  Title Card

  COMRADES! ARE AUTOMOBILES INVENTED AS YET?

  Title Card

  PERHAPS NO. BUT SOON THEY WILL BE WHEN WE ACHIEVE VICTORIOUS SOCIALIST BROTHERHOOD.

  Sailors jump into other automobiles and chase officers around the decks…

  Title Card

  COMRADES! IF ONLY WE CAN MAKE THE AUDIENCE STAY UNTIL THE CZARIST TROOPS MASSACRE EVERYONE ON THE ODESSA STEPS, WE WILL NOT NEED THIS FOOLISH AUTO PURSUIT.

  DAY FOR NIGHT

  Directed by François Truffaut

  There actually is a car chase in Day for Night. It’s part of the movie-within-the-movie called “Meet Pamela.” The chase scene lasts only about three seconds; a Triumph Herald goes over a cliff. It isn’t much, but it does prove that when it came to the canons of art François Truffaut was cool.

  Brilliant! I said.

  “And in When Harry Met Sally,” said Nick, “Harry can just jump on Sally’s bones in the orgasm scene. I mean, depending on your definition of sword fight. The lady at the next table can still say, ‘I’ll have what she’s having.’ But I’ve got a problem with Thelma and Louise. There has to be a way to keep the happy ending without wrecking the T-Bird.”

  “Hi, Nick,” said my young assistant, Max, bringing in the day’s mail.

  “You on spring break?”

  “I wish,” said Nick. “I’m grounded until I’m thirty. My dad says I have to spend spring break doing community service—reseeding the lawn.”

  “Too bad,” said Max. “When I was at school, spring break was—”

  Max, I said, you went to the London School of Economics. What did you guys do for spring break? Go to Brussels, cozy up to the EU demand curve, and cop a feel?

  Ah, spring break—the very words send me into a sort of reverie.

  “A little Madness in the spring/Is wholesome,” said the poet Emily Dickinson, who had no idea what she was talking about. Spring break was not a feature at her alma mater, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Emily lived with her dad her whole life, never bumped monkeys, and went outdoors about once, in 1851. Still, students everywhere take her point. The vernal equinox is crossed. Day lengthens, or at least the part of the day spent in Comparative Lit class seems to. Secondary sexual characteristics peek from unzipped folds of Polar Fleece in the student union. The hibernating animals of Business Administration 102 begin to stir. Watery fluid containing nutrients rises, bringing plants to bud and messes to bedsheets. Lush verdure bursts forth from ATM machines. The call of the open road is heard: FINES DOUBLED IN WORK ZONES, SEAT BELTS ARE MANDATORY IN NORTH CAROLINA. It is time for spring break.

  It’s time to go on campus leg bail, get grade-point parole. Time to take a powder—and, what the heck, some pills. Time to yank the pull tabs on the six-pack of life. Screech to the beach. Helio hallelujah, wave worship, ab and pec genuflection. Zing go the string bikinis of the heart. It’s time to drop laptop and give lap dance a chance. Turn the love thermostat up to Ouch. Chill down the micro-brew breakfast in the motel toilet tank. Bend over and show the world your vertical smile. It’s time to freak. It’s time to frolic. It’s time to…

  It’s time to remove the snow tires, fertilize the grass, and make sure the camcorder batteries are charged for the Montessori Easter pageant. Muffin plays a purple egg.

  That last part was spoken to you, Nick and Max, from across the abyss of the Great Midlife Fun Divide, on the other side of which I firmly stand or, rather, sit. There comes a time in every life when the definition of pleasure makes a sudden and cataclysmic shift. One morning you awake thinking, Puking in my buddy’s Timberlands, drinking flaming Bacardi jiggers, striking out with Mt. Holyoke poetry majors, getting up at 4 P.M. and eating a Taco Supreme that somebody sat on last night, falling off hotel balconies, going through the roof of the Tiki Bar, being hauled away in an ambulance—when did that stop being fun? Then you attempt to figure out why. Was it the first hemorrhoid operation? The second wife? The fifteenth glass of warm domestic champagne at nephew Arnie’s wedding reception? But one thing you do know, nothing will put you back into a spring break frame of mind.

  Of course I could try to create an adult version of a South Padre Island blowout—Concorde to Paris, suite at the Ritz, dinner at Le Grand Rôti de Cheval, and shopping with the Mrs. on the Champs-Élysées. What this will get me is spring broke.

  Or I could endeavor to relive the past. I suppose I might, with a great deal of wheedling and child-care juggling, get sixteen or eighteen of my buddies to share a Daytona Beach Ramada room. We’d be up all night just like we used to be, except this time it would be because of sciatica and poor lumbar support in lumpy hotel mattresses. And what kind of sexual encounters would we be able to generate? (“Show us your dentures!”) Then there’d be the spectacle of venerable and well-seasoned alcoholics attempting to get actually drunk on beer without making their prostate-impaired bladders explode. Plus the endl
ess chirps and beeps of cell phones and pagers as management problems arise, homework meltdowns occur, and spousal ire reaches critical mass. Our drug of choice would be Pepcid AC. And the only thing that would get us climbing over balcony railings would be if the Dow Jones dropped a thousand points.

  The ideal Easter vacation for old guys is eight hours of sleep, a boss with the flu, and, in our wildest fantasy, a perky, buff, and willing young person who would…reseed the lawn for less than $20 an hour.

  But youth is not the only requirement for a true spring break. Also needed are the problems of youth. These are temporary and therefore you can temporize about them. It may hearten you two to know that time, gravity—and divorce—will cure your romantic perplexities. Max has already discovered that leaving school solves school difficulties. And years of work in pointless and unrewarding jobs, like the one he’s got now, will end all worries about finding a career. On the other hand, middle-age problems—kids, indigestion, baldness—stop only in the Alzheimer’s care facility or the cardiac ward. You can’t get away from things that won’t go away.

  “Such as,” said Max, “the fact that you’ve signed contracts with your publisher for three different books, and you haven’t started any of them, and you’ve spent the advances.”

  Good example, I said. Although Kid Pro Quo: The Management Secrets of Mothers with Toddlers is practically finished—in my mind. But my publisher is an old friend. He understands the artistic temperament and the sensitivities to which writers are prey.

  “He sure does,” said Max, “to judge by the letter you got from him today.”

  Dear P.J.,

  I need a quick introduction for a book, The Manly Life. You’re about the worst person I can imagine to write this, but, on the other hand, you owe me a ton of money. Give my love to the family. I’ll be over for dinner on Friday.

  Yours,

  Morgan Entrekin

  Publisher, Grove/Atlantic Inc.

  P.S. Manuscript enclosed.

  THE MANLY LIFE

  Introduction by P. J. O’Rourke

  This book is too much for me. The “Ice Climbing” chapter, for example. I’ve been ice climbing for years, and there’s no overestimating the skill and courage required to get the car up my driveway when I’ve forgotten to put on the snow tires. But here is someone ice climbing on slopes even steeper than those of the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood where I live in Washington, D.C., and doing it without the benefit of driveway salt, or even a driveway, and instead of being inside a car he’s dangling from a rope. I am amazed. Also perplexed. What is a “crampon”? Has anyone thought to register it as a trademark? It’s an excellent name for a feminine hygiene product to provide relief during the difficult time of the month, which, it occurs to me, the target audience for this book never has. Nor do I. I’m past menopause. Plus I’m a guy.

  Being a postmenopausal guy, this book isn’t targeted at me either. Men my age are not much for wielding ice axes unless the automatic cube dispenser on the Frigidaire jams. And we aren’t interested in kayaking Niagara Falls, magma boarding in active volcano cones, taking unicycle tours of the Andes, or butt-skiing the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Not that we’re averse to facing danger in the outdoors. Just last year a friend of mine dropped dead of a heart attack while mowing the lawn. But what’s the point of my risking life and limb when both will be useless soon? It’s more fun to risk money. Preferably other people’s. You, the reader of this book, want to fly an airplane. I, the writer of this introduction, want to raise venture capital for a start-up pharmaceutical company—principal asset, the Crampon trademark—and buy a Gulfstream jet.

  That G-5 I’m getting is another reason this book is too much for me. Look at the chapter “How to Survive a Small Plane Crash.” The information is sound, the advice is intelligent, but none of it applies in my case. Once a fellow is into the colorectal-cancer-exam years, the way to deal with plane crashes is by making a list: back taxes owed, alimony due, yard chores outstanding, amount of school tuition to be paid next year, net loss when Crampon Inc. went into Chapter 11, date of next scheduled colonoscopy, etc. Then, if the plane gets into trouble, I pull out this piece of paper and die smiling. What’s with this Adventure Travel anyway? You want excitement and risk on your vacation? Go anywhere with a beach or pool and tell your wife she looks fat in her bathing suit.

  Huh? I’m getting a little deaf in this ear. Old draft-dodging injury. What’s that? Ah, it’s the Voice of Youth saying, if I’m not mistaken, Shut up. Yes. Good point. Who wants to hear one more ex-spliff-sucker in pinstripes choke on his Gelusil over what’s the matter with kids today? I shall mock no more the generation of

  Cubicle workspace, calf tattoos,

  Itty-bitty phones, and great big shoes.

  Especially since you with the ore freighters on your feet are supposed to purchase this book—thereby making ex-spliff-suckers a bunch of money. Which reminds me of another business opportunity idea. (My publisher claims that book buyers in your age cohort often have a billion dollars from founding web sites. Can you keep that much as personal property when you file for bankruptcy? Anyway, perhaps you are looking to diversify your investment portfolio.) It’s a national franchise chain of mall-based cosmetic surgeons specializing in laser tat removal and invisible closure of body piercing holes. The retired bookkeeper who runs the bake sale at my church has a tongue stud and a four-inch-wide American Indian thingy permanently inked around her bicep, so the hip phase of this trend is over.

  But where was I? I think I was saying that this book contains too much stuff about achieving physical fitness and improving sexual performance and not enough about raising money to fight Alzheimer’s. I envision a dramatic national campaign. Slogan: ALZHEIMER’S—FERGEDABOUDIT!

  Come to think of it, I wasn’t saying anything about Alzheimer’s. Of course a fund-raising campaign would accomplish tremendous good. Although a little late for me. Actually, I was saying that I have to stop making fun of your generation for fear of hurting book sales, getting my own book contracts canceled, and so on. But it’s not just that. Consider what The Manly Life would be if it were, indeed, written for my generation instead of yours. Imagine the chapter headings:

  PLAID SHORTS, PLAID SHIRTS, BLACK SOCKS, AND WING TIPS

  Not just for Dress-down Fridays anymore?

  HOW TO OPEN THOSE PESKY CD CASES

  When the Grand Funk Railroad LP is hopelessly scratched

  THREE-DAY SOLO SURVIVAL COURSE

  Finding food, clothing, and the TV remote while your wife visits her sister in Atlanta

  I BET I DIE

  Everything that’s ever been printed or said about life insurance

  Plus the artwork would be color photographs of Christie Todd Whitman in her underwear and other age-appropriate illustrations.

  No, this is a better book, even if it is full of advice on sit-ups instead of excuses to sit down. You have no business sitting down anyhow. You’re not tired yet. Plus a workout will add zipper noises to your private life because you can still get bulges in your clothing that interest women—other than the bulge in the right hip pocket.

  The bulge that pops the top two buttons on my cardigan sweater doesn’t seem as effective, although the vagaries of fashion may bring pudge into style. Perhaps one day I’ll be walking down the street and major babes will holler, “Yo, Budweiser Balcony, you’re looking…” Looking, no doubt, like this book makes me feel—superannuated, out of shape, and green with envy.

  Not that I haven’t enjoyed every page of The Manly Life. And envy is the key. I hate you for being young and fit, of course. But don’t mind me. Read everything in here and take it to heart. I’ll be home beside the lava lamp, listening to Grand Funk Railroad and smiling with the secret knowledge that—if your generation actually goes on every adventure listed in this book, plays each of the sports, does the whole program of exercises, and practices all the recommended sexual techniques—you’re going to kill yourselves.

  8


  APRIL 2001

  Waaaaah!” cried Muffin. “I want Mommy!” [Advice to parents whose children love the story of the dinosaurs: Don’t give away the surprise ending.]

  “I’ll put her to bed,” said my wife. “You go downstairs and be nice to the neighbors—please.”

  Refresh my memory, I said. Why?

  “Because,” said my wife, “the neighbors’ daughter, the single mom, has moved back home, and the single mom has a girl who’s fifteen, and fifteen-year-old girls baby-sit.”