by Jarett Kobek
The only thing that keeps America from fascism is our laws, our courts, our checks and balances. Everything good about American life, and everything bad, is the product of the federal government. In 1787, the world’s staunchest adherents of liberty wrote a Constitution that did not afford the citizenry any protection against being owned by other citizens. In 1860, four million people lived in the shackles of slavery. In 1865, the addition of thirty-two words to the Constitution released those slaves from bondage. The myth of the lone individualist is full-spectrum bullshit permeating all strata of society. It’s a way of disguising personal complicity in the descent of our public life into trifles and nonsense, an excuse for what we’ve let ourselves become. Historically, the enemy has been evil rich people and stupid people. The latter are used by the former, trapping society within a death cycle of pretense, the great myth of an America that flourishes in spite of, rather than because of, her laws. A world in which the zombified corpse of Ronald Reagan embraces profound and systemic industry deregulation and is followed into the presidency by Bill Clinton, a back-slapping Southern politician who never saw a civil protection that he didn’t detest. Both men abandoned probity, abandoned good thought, abandoned rational thinking, inhaled the jargon-saturated monocultures of Hollywood and Wall Street. Both men well aware that the ability to sparkle on camera could blind an entire nation. Who cared if these rabid animals destroyed the fabric of society? Who cared if the weak and the idiotic were left vulnerable to predators and parasites? A cowboy actor with a chimpanzee sidekick and a philanderer playing his saxophone on late-night talk shows. I’d grown into an adult at the exact moment when society had abandoned adulthood. I’d become a man after everyone had agreed that manhood was a thing without use. Far better to destroy the government. Far better to eradicate the girders of American life while chasing ephemeral dreams of maximum profits and self-regulating free markets. Far better to pretend that Ayn Rand was a prescient genius, that her psychopathic doctrines possessed an actual connection with reality. Far better to shoot enormous wads of jism into dog-eared copies of Atlas Shrugged, an orgasmal cri de coeur for John Galt and Howard Roark. Far better to disguise every ignoble goal in catchphrases, buzzwords, and pop culturalisms that appeal to a mix of the greediest and the least educated. Far better to bamboozle the very people who need protection from the world’s bad actors, those simpletons who always vote and buy against their own self-interest in exchange for whispers about which showbiz phantasm vaginally penetrated other showbiz phantasms. Far better to pander to the Business Community, a self-appointed circlejerk of low IQs in thrall to every bogus investment, who conceive of their fellow citizens as open mouths hungry for nothing but rank diarrhea and runoff, who see every vacant lot and every charming warehouse as an opportunity for miserable low-quality condominiums disguised as luxury living, who are themselves so dazzled by their own bullshit that they gladly eat the same poisons, convinced that their horrors are medicines. The spectacle reflects itself, our lives grow ever more hollow, there is no longer quality or value in modern life. The populace is so badly educated that it doesn’t complain when sold toxic plastics, when goods break four days after purchase, when nothing works. The goat of the woods produces a thousand new monsters who suckle upon her and stalk into the world, their bellies filled with treacherous milk, repeating the process, producing their own young, each generation nourished on less and less substance until the edifice collapses beneath nature’s gentle breeze. Everything ends when the government abandons all responsibility, when lust for power and money replaces the desire to serve one’s fellow citizens. There are no natural rights, no universal and inalienable human liberties. Rights are protections granted to a citizenry by its government. A right comes into existence at the exact moment that its violation is illegal. Not a moment sooner. Laws are reality. When a nation has bad laws, its citizens live in a bad reality. We allow the worst of all creatures to position themselves as our leaders. The kind of men who swindle us, convince us that the word bureaucracy is a pejorative. Bureaucracy is the only thing that saves us from ourselves! Americans can’t see a difference between the government and the state. The government is comprised of the corrupt scum who rule you. The state is the bureaucratic functionary that protects you until it is corrupted by the government. Without a well-functioning state, our rights are bought and sold with as much ease as a new computer. And those rights can be taken away with as little effort, particularly if the people are bewildered away from self-protection. Welcome to an economic cycle of perpetual bust and boom. Welcome to a world where education is devalued and underfunded, leaving the country with a population too stupid to remember the last catastrophe. Welcome to a world where no one can recall the taste of shit. Welcome to an America where McDonald’s is an investment opportunity and a quick buck is of greater value than the people’s health. Civil rights are only another product that is debased and copied and deleted and relayed until nothing remains but a blank piece of paper. Philip K. Dick was wrong. The Empire always ends. Nero’s fiddling is the soundtrack of our collapse. America dies when the integration between her government and her entertainment becomes absolute, when politicians pander without shame to the famous and the few, basing public policy on the opinions of degenerate CEOs and shit-eating rock stars. When powerful men believe that conferred power is less important than naked fame, when they see their elected positions as venues for mindless self-glorification. It all comes back to clubland. America really is a club, and everyone wants to be in the VIP room. Everyone wants to be fabulous. Andy, take my picture.
European Jewry didn’t need Steven Spielberg’s vision of an American individualist dressed in Weimar drag. They needed the same thing that everyone has always needed.
A good government.
I went back to the Strand and bought a copy of Anne Frank’s diary. It wasn’t my first go-round with Annelies. My English teacher had assigned the book during my sophomore year of high school, but I’d been a dopey adolescent preoccupied with his athletics. I didn’t pay attention.
With total clarity that came from having read the other books, I entered the Diary. The tortured cultural history was stripped away. The book made dull by bad teachers, by social piety, by shitty Hollywood adaptations. That was gone. Now the words burned with gunpowder. Her soul reached through the page. That funny voice, that wiseacre girl trapped behind a bookcase in Amsterdam, the fear of it. And all I wanted was to save her.
*
I called Parker and told him that I’d abandoned my crime novel. I couldn’t do a book about an American who’d gone to the Pacific and came home. That wasn’t the story. The only story was the Holocaust.
He tried talking me out of writing a different book.
—I admire the ambition, he said, but it’s a freaking headache that neither of us needs. You know I’ve got hemorrhoids. They give me pain and complicated shits. I don’t need you mucking about with social issues. You saw what happened to Bret Easton Ellis with American Psycho. People are calling in death threats to Dennis Cooper. Death threats, kid. The country’s changing. No book is worth dying over. I want ambition dripping out of your scrotal sac, sure, but not like this. Have a little scale.
—If I do the book, I asked, will you stand behind me?
—I’ll stand behind you whatever you choose, he said. But it’s a terrible idea. It’ll fuck your whole life.
—It’ll be tasteful, I said. Don’t worry. No one will take offense.
—This is America, you dopey fuck, said Parker. People take offense at a paper bag.
FEBRUARY 1994
Karen Spencer
Cecil introduced me to his best friend, an artist named Karen Spencer. They’d been at NYU together, both enrolled in drama at the School of the Arts. Upon graduation, Cecil descended into the mire of the publishing industry and Karen Spencer fell in with the dissolute louts of the East Village and SoHo art scenes. Her own paintings never had much success, but
she’d made fabulous friends and dabbled in selling their work.
Cecil convinced me to visit Karen’s loft on Spring Street. I heard Adeline in my head.
—Baby, why ever would you visit an artist’s loft? Haven’t you spent enough time with those dreadful people? All they do is cover the walls with their own work. Whatever will you say? You’ll have to fake enthusiasm. Can you do that, Baby? Can you fake enthusiasm?
But Karen’s walls were blank. She’d left her space unreconstructed in its industrial chic, not touching the exposed beams and ancient windows. As it was the dead of winter, her loft ran about the same temperature as a Frost Giant’s cavern.
—Come and sit by the heat, she said.
She’d installed several wooden chairs around an oversized space heater. I pulled as close as I could. How the hell had I gotten so sensitive to cold? What happened to that farm boy hardened by Lake Superior?
Karen and Cecil talked. I couldn’t follow what they said. Partly work, partly gossip about old friends, partly nonsense refined through a decade of friendship.
—Cecil says you’re working on a new book, said Karen.
—Yes, I said.
—And you write science fiction?
—Not this time, said Cecil. He’s writing a noir.
I hadn’t informed Cecil of the new direction. I let him tell people about a book that I’d abandoned. Correcting him seemed too much effort. What did it matter, anyway? Easier to agree with whatever he said.
—I love crime novels, said Karen Spencer. Do you like David Goodis?
—Goodis is great, I said. What’s your favorite?
—The Blonde on the Street Corner.
—I haven’t read that, I said.
—It’s barely a novel, she said. Mostly it’s broke people who fuck and then fight and then fuck again. You’ll love it.
Karen went to her kitchen and put on a kettle. She poured us cups of tea. The heat thawed my hands, the liquid warmed my innards.
—Baby, asked Karen, have you ever watched The Bold and the Beautiful?
—No, I said.
One thing about a life without Adeline. I’d purchased a television. A big color one. A real television. I’d watched more boob tube in my first six months of ownership than in the previous seven years. Several interesting programs had premiered on the networks. NYPD Blue, The X-Files, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
Generally, though, I kept the thing on Channel 13, on PBS. I stayed as far from The Bold and the Beautiful as I could. A soap opera! My god, no!
—And you, Cecil? asked Karen.
—I work an office job, he said. I’d have to tape it, which I don’t.
—You can see that I don’t own a television, said Karen, which makes it a rare experience. A couple of weeks ago, I was in the waiting room at my doctor’s, and because you can’t go anywhere without there being a blaring television, I was sitting directly beneath the noise. I ignored it, trying to read Entertainment Weekly, but I kept hearing my name. Karen, Karen, Karen, Karen. If you have a name like Karen, you get used to hearing it, so I ignored it. But then the television was saying my full name. Karen Spencer, Karen Spencer, Karen Spencer, and for a second, I thought that I’d lost my marbles, that I’d gone schizo and was hearing voices. I stand up and look at the television and there’s a plotline about this character, Karen Spencer. I ask the receptionist what show we’re watching. She says it’s The Bold and the Beautiful. I ask her if she knows this Karen Spencer character. She has no idea who I’m talking about, so I point to the actress on the screen, and the receptionist says, oh, her, she’s been on for a while. This called for investigation. I went to a newsstand and bought Soap Opera Digest, and it’s full of plotlines about Karen Spencer! I went to the library and looked at old issues. Months and months of Karen Spencer.
She lit a cigarette. Her smoke hung at eye level, an evil cloud wafting around us.
—Then I started thinking, what if the other Karen Spencer is the real one? What if I’m the fictional Karen Spencer, and the one who appears five times weekly is the genuine article? What if my life is bogus? What if I don’t exist and she does? Maybe that Karen Spencer is the one that matters. Maybe I’m a shadow projected against her wall. Maybe that other Karen Spencer is the one watching me.
When we left Karen’s loft, Cecil walked me the long way to my apartment. He suggested taking a cab, but I loved New York in the winter, especially after Christmas. Even if it was freezing.
—You aren’t quite there yet, he said, but when you end up in your thirties, life is different than you ever imagined. Movie stars visibly age but you feel the same. You ask yourself, how can I be getting older? I don’t know anything! And your friends start changing in ways that you couldn’t expect. Everyone has one or two friends who end up in the exact place for which they seemed destined, but most people go places that would have been unthinkable.
—Like Karen? I asked.
—Oddly, he said, no. Karen ended up exactly where I thought she might.
MARCH 1994
Baby Adopts the King of France
Then there was the time when Franklin came over and said that I needed to adopt a cat. I didn’t want a cat, thinking that owning another pet would be a betrayal of the Captain, but Franklin wouldn’t stop talking about one particular tabby kitten at the ASPCA on 92nd Street, where he volunteered.
—They found the little guy with his brothers and sisters in a garbage can. We think their mother left them to find food and never came back. Some guy was throwing away a can of soda and heard the kittens crying. They were only about a week old. But this kitten, the one you have to adopt, he was the runt, a little guy. They put all the kittens in the same cage and his brothers and sisters wouldn’t stop trying to nurse on his dick, so they had to separate him and put him in another cage with a bunch of other orphans. Anyway, he’s about three months old. I played with him yesterday. He’s the best, but I can’t have a cat in my apartment. My landlord would shit a brick. I thought of you. This guy is the sweetest fucking thing. He’s got his shots. He’s fixed. He’s made for you, Baby.
—Why not give him to Michael? I asked.
—C’mon, be serious. Michael’s got a cat. Plus it’d be fucking criminal letting this little guy live in a drug den. You’re different than most club people. You’re normal. You’re stable.
We never know how others see us. I felt on the verge of men in white coats throwing me into Bellevue. Tormented by writing, hollowed out by words. One of literature’s few salves has been the veneer of respectability it casts over its practitioners, an undue conference of reputation and status. Consider the personal history of that fat little fuck Norman Mailer, who inaugurated the 1960s by stabbing his wife and ended the decade by running for mayor of New York.
—Oh, fine, fuck it, I said. Let’s go look at this cat.
We took the 6 uptown, getting off at 86th and walking to 92nd and First. The ASPCA was in a squat building near the river. A housing project loomed across the street. Franklin led me inside the building and through its minor labyrinth.
I’d only seen Franklin inside clubs, at the Kiev and in our apartments. My idea of him was as this trashy slutty drug fiend burning away his mid-twenties. At the ASPCA, he conversed with a wide range of society. Everyone liked him, seemed to value his conversation. He brought nothing but smiles. Only then did I wonder, for the first time, what the hell he did for his money. I had never bothered to ask.
The cats were kept behind bars in a room with rows of cages. Some were sullen and withdrawn. Others terrified. Many rubbed against the metal, pushing their faces between the gaps, pleading with pathetic meows. At least they weren’t in abusive homes or starving in the street. I couldn’t avoid thinking of my research. Humanity never stops building cages.
The kittens didn’t break my heart. Kittens always find homes. The older cats
killed me. Each offered a depressing story, adding to a collective weight that no person could bear. The eleven-year-old orange tabby that stank of tragedy. The death of an owner, an accidental escape, the indifference of a cruel host.
Franklin took out the kitten in question, this cock-eyed mewling thing. His head and back were gray with brown highlights. His side had swirling markings. His stomach was pure white. His legs striped with beige fur. I held him in my palm, upside down on his back, and saw that his paw pads were alternating black and pink.
—Fine, I said. Fine. You win. I’ll take him.
—I knew you would, said Franklin.
I filled out an astounding amount of paperwork. I showed two forms of identification. I forked over serious cash.
The people working at the ASPCA kept telling me that I was doing a great thing and how happy life is with a pet. They put the kitten in a cardboard box. I carried him outside.
We found a cab and had it take us to the pet store near my apartment. I bought the four essential ingredients of cat ownership. Food, receptacle for food, litter, receptacle for litter.
Back at home, I freed the mewling thing from its box. It ran around my apartment in circles, climbing on every surface, sniffing, knocking things over. I tried catching him but failed until the beast realized that I only wanted to touch him. He ran to the rug and flopped on his back, displaying that dazzling stomach.
I lifted the creature.
—What the hell am I going to call you?
There was nothing in his green saucer eyes but psychosis. I hadn’t adopted a cat. I’d adopted a bag of emotional problems tied with a string of lunacy. He let out a tiny little meow in his squeaky kitten voice.
