Old and Cold

by Jim Nisbet

  You’ve got it memorized, you marvel. Just imagining, says the smart money, hearing that from the horse’s mouth. Any horse’s mouth, you agree. Kaczynski knows the work of Jacques Ellul, too. Who’s that. “Organized sports pave the road to fascism.” That guy? Guilt by association. It’s cold there, too, in winter. Where? Florence, Colorado. Not to mention, maybe Mr. Kaczynski has better things to do than to discuss philosophy with a mere… What is you are, anyway. Who are you, exactly? Whence come you? Whither goest? Hither, ghost. A man who likes a martini, now and again and, knowing that, all the rest is to-ing, fro-ing, and planetary pass-pass. Yes. Well, maybe we should terminate the jerkoff. So we may continue? Nobody will miss him. Except you. And how does that work. You both thrive on adversarial encounters. In other words, it’s exactly like work. In other words, you’ll miss each other. But, in so many words, how can you miss me when I’ve blown you away. You are taking the trouble to raise mighty paradigms of consciousness, when all you seek are efficacious paragons of oblivion. A.k.a. Martiniville. So long as your liver, kidneys and metabolism hold out. For god’s sakes, they’ve lasted this long… Snap. You didn’t. His back was turned. You can’t just… I did just. You didn’t even take up a collection. That’ll spread the blame evenly, until it covers the level places one molecule thick, a wax indiscernible. When’s the last time you talked to a cop. The last time one talked to me. And the charge was…? Jaywalking in filth. Pretty serious. To the manner born. That’s manor. Away from the manor borne. In a litter, one suspects. In filthy litter. And is it true love, in filthy litter? Another excellent question. Can’t you just feel it, when you’ve run out your string? Oh, yes. Is it not a queasy sensation? It is indeed. Fear inducing? You wouldn’t go that far. How far would you go? Just as goddamn far as I can. It’s the human instinct. Animals, too. With or without Jesus? Does Jesus want to come along? Some would say he already came along, and then some. Some say almost anything. We were talking about string. Yes, string. Or twine. Made from recycled incunabula. Sting in pupation. That was a long time ago, butterfly. You’ve had your fun. Ah yes, fun. How long do you think this can go on, under the bridge? As long as they don’t get television, under the bridge. Then what? Then out in a blaze of counterintuitive behavior. But on a day like today? I’m with Upside, on a day like today. I thought Upside was sleeping with the angels. Hah. Hey angel, put a hinge on it. That’s him. See? You miss him already. Actually, you didn’t miss him until his name came up. It’s the ravine without the road down the middle of it, that I miss. Listen, my friend. What’s that? If you were to find yourself in the midst of that ravine without the road down the middle of it, you’d quickly starve or freeze to death, or find yourself consumed by some large animal, rather than your cheesy drama of alcohol deprivation. Precisely. My protein would serve a higher purpose. Without a doubt. One entertains not a glimmer of doubt, not a gleam, that you could do some carnivore a world of good, the very contrapositive of the proposition that you’re doing nobody, not even yourself, no good whatsoever, as mere entity assaying itself, pillar to post, in a feckless haze of alcohol deprivation. A travesty of humanity. Precisely. And what about that woman to whom I returned her dropped purse? Must you insist? A cop was watching from across the street. You admit it was brilliant. And if she hadn’t proffered you a twenty? I might have clocked her. Despite the police officer? To spite the police officer. That makes you the very brother of Upside. A man of commodious jacket. It’s true, his record is yards long, a veritable Golgolian overcoat. Was. Was. And there’s the rub. How to make myth of misery? Like Gogol. Not precisely. You were speaking personally. That’s true. Your personal myth. Again, I say. And what’s to mythologize? You’re the envy of the first world, with your independence. My independence would frighten most, and terrify others. Except Upside. If he weren’t so frightened, perhaps he’d behave. How to calm him? We already took care of that. If only the small cottage, in which to be comforted by warmth, a little stove, a nine-inch television. Make it twelve. You get the point. I’d blow out my brains. I’m a son of a bitch. At last, we’ve nothing to argue. No, no—that twenty! What about it. It’s here, in the pocket. How did you know. Numismatic anthropology. It’s barely marked by filth. Perhaps it was fresh from her Automatic Teller Machine. At any rate, now all we need is a bar with extremely inexpensive vodka, ice, olives. We perhaps might dispense with martininess, which is, after all, but an affectation. For you, and you draw yourself up to your full altitude above the gutter, it is a way of life. For twenty dollars you could consume vodka on the rocks, with perhaps even a twist, for the better part of a forenoon. You don’t say. You do say. Lead the way. And voilà, it wasn’t a hundred yards. A lot of televisions, though. Yes, but the sound is mostly down. Yes, but it’s entirely sport. Sport paves the way to multiple televisions. So it would seem. Vodka from the well and on the rocks, my good fellow. Look at that, he handed it to you at arm’s length. Must have lost track of his tongs. Trade is trade, you always say. And that is some serious rotgut. It you had a charcoal filter, you could make it taste like upper-case V & G Vodka of the Gods. One must sip judiciously, so as to subscribe to the woman’s breast theory of martini—that is to say, straight vodka—drinking. And what is that, the smart money asks tiredly, for the smart money has heard it all. One is not enough, three is too many. Unless you’re a dog, the smart money points out, in which case, even if Romulus and Remus are splitting the dugs between them, four is the answer. Arf, you reply happily. Bartender again, if you please. Up until this point, only your leg has been showing the jactitations of a serious philosopher. The first sip of the second drink, however, and you start rocking on your stool. Somebody plays the jukebox. It’s “Nesun Dorma”. And the beast is soothèd, sighs the smart money. Only in San Francisco do meet the happy conjunction of Puccini and homelessness. What the hell kind of jukebox is that, you ask. It’s a Heavenly Jukebox, the smart money rejoins. Where’s your sense of humour. And who is singing? Beniamino Gigli. When the Caliphate reigns, you scowl, this music is going to mean nothing to nobody. You’ll be a bag of bones in a culvert by then, declares the smart money. Their kitharas will fall on deaf ears. And the call to prayer? Ditto. Five times a day, I hear. So? says the smart money, show them an alternative. Something to shoot for. The bare arms of a woman? Unacceptable, apparently. Disneyland? Please. Two hundred fifty-five sports channels? The tentacles of the mind, having embraced the western hemisphere, begin to wither. Salt on a slug, you suggest. Dust to a sinus, the smart money counters. The mores of the future, you put up. Are the rays of wireless technology, the smart money replies. The IP address, you stipulate. Is the only address, the smart money castigates. The marriage of heaven and hell, you dredge desperately. Looks like Detroit, the smart money suggests. Don’t distract me, you beg. Have another sip. Right after the one I just had? The very one. Two guys come in. We’re down to ten bucks. They look like they can afford to be anywhere. To tip or not to tip? But they had to come in here. Not if you want a fourth drink. Cadge ‘em for a drink. You don’t have those kind of social skills. Tell you what. What. We get a round off one or both those guys? Yeah? We leave a tip. Now that, allowed the smart money, is transactionalism. That guy went oh for six, one guy is saying, in post-season. Who the hell cares about post-season? you jump in. Yeah, says the second guy, tell it like it is. It’s pre-season that counts, you insist. They both look at you. Right? you declare, am I right? You got to get to post-season, the first guy says. That’s a long way. What are you, nuts? you say. Are telling me the fucking journey is the fucking reward? you say. Some spiritual shit like that? Yeah, the second guy grins, elbowing the first guy. What are you drinking, buddy? The clear, you say. I’ll have a screwdriver, the guy says, he’ll have whatever pilsner you got, and let me get a glass of clear—he leans down over the bar, to look past his friend—clear what? he asks. Vodka from the well, the bartender fills in the blank tiredly. Some people just got a natural knack for curtailing humanity. What I want curtailed is defensive hittin
g, says the first guy, solid, defensive, hitting. I don’t care how they do it. Well I—you begin. Can it, the smart money suggests. What’s that, lil’ buddy? the second guy says. Nothing, you mutter into your drink. I just love getting drunk in the morning. It doesn’t really help that much, the first guy says. Help what, you say. The Giants, the first guy says. I thought we were talking about the ‘Niners, you say. They just don’t play that much better when I’m drunk. Me neither, the second guy says morosely. Me three, you say into your glass, totally at a loss. Every time you float one of these sports gambits, you say to yourself, you quickly find yourself all at sea. Sailing is a sport, the smart money observes. Is it ever, you smile dreamily, holding up your half-empty glass. Some days, for some people, life is some good.

  SIX

  THE HEAD IS A LEGACY CODEBASE, AND YOU’RE THE ONLY PERSON getting paid to maintain it. Your head got off a troop ship from Korea at Pier 21 in 1954, you took your head into the first bar you saw on the waterfront, the first bar you’d seen in two years, you had a nice chat with the guy on the stool next to yours while the two of you ate a dynamite one-dollar lunch, and, after the guy bought you a round and left, the bartender told you the guy was Mayor Lapham. Your head got off the long-gone Fell Street off-ramp with two dollars and a dog in 1973, within two weeks you had a job, and apartment, a girl, and it’s still going on like that. Your lesbian band broke up in San Francisco while on tour in 1991, it’s 2004 and your housecleaning business is bringing down $300,000 year, you still don’t know what you really want to do, but you like not knowing it in San Francisco. The town is full of these kinds of people. You, you could have been homeless in the Big Apple, gotten a real taste of the big time, freezing in abandoned train tunnels with rats the size of capybaras—the works; but no, you’d rather be homeless in San Francisco. There’s just something about this city. There’s a lot about this city. You get tired of being homeless, for example, I mean, everybody gets tired of who they are every once in a while, no? You get tired of being homeless? You get tired of sitting on a milk carton, leaning against the chain link fence that surrounds the symphony musician’s parking lot on Hayes between Octavia and Gough, an otherwise excellent location you’ve held down for twenty-five or thirty years, on account the rich pedestrian traffic, and the traffic in rich pedestrians, opera swells, symphony patrons, ballet mavens, and city hall regulars, they all eat around there, park around there, get loaded around there, and it’s not too tough to get three squares a day and enough 40 oz. malt liquors to stay comfortable, not to mention the excellent southern exposure, which will last until the city decides what to do with the their vacant lot across the street. San Francisco is an easy city to be homeless in, but—you get tired of your routine? Stash your gear under the steps of the lawyer’s offices at the corner of Ivy and Octavia, and head out. Take a bus part of the way if you want to, after all, you qualify for the senior discount, if you have the sixty cents, out Geary to Arguello, say. Jog over to Clement Street, which is forty blocks of Asia redolent of ginger, garlic, chicken, duck, cardamom, sage, sausage, steamed rice, coffee houses, tea houses, bars, restaurants, grocery and produce stores, and walk it to the Pacific. There you’ll find big swells arriving all the way from Japan smashing into rocks and cliff faces that have somehow been putting up with it since the end of the ice age, where they atomize heaving brine into a salty mist, and where you can harvest miner’s lettuce in the stream that drained through the Sutro Baths one hundred years ago, or marvel at the way sea lions can get the gnarliest swell to neatly deposit them high up Seal Rock, just beyond Point Lobos, where the sign says Danger: People Have Been Swept From These Rocks And Drowned, and ne’er true words have been incised by pity and pitted by pitilessness. In fact, if you’re really tired of being homeless, you can let this happen to you. And it’s got that loneliness, too, out there. Rain or shine, wind or no, couples holding hands or a pair of seagulls fighting over a fully dressed hot dog, there are fewer lonelier places inn the world than Land’s End, the far western edge of the civilized world, whence you know if you journey to the next inhabited piece of land, Hawaii, or Japan, say, or China or Australia, or various archipelagos, say, whereever you go after this, you’re going to have to start all over, and that won’t do, you’re too old to start over. And it’s cold there, at Land’s End. There are a coffee joint, a hot-dog stand, a restaurant and a parking lot, and tourists, dogs on the beach—and what a beach, it’s called Ocean Beach, and it goes for miles. And it’s lonely as hell out there, lonely and staggeringly beautiful. That’s the pincers. That’s the threat to the codebase, that’s the net content of the codebase. But you, yes, you, even there, you’re not alone. Being alone’s overrated, observes the smart money, as you watch a surfer get boiled. Fifty-three degree water, and this guy manages to get boiled. He loves it. He must. If you’d taken up surfing while your code-base was still tender and malleable, the smart money starts in, you’d be a very happy real estate dealer by now. That seems an inherent contradiction, you say. Wife, three kids, big house overlooking this very beach, the smart money persists, five or six surfboards per each surfing member of the family taking up all the space in the garage, maybe, so everybody could surf every morning before they take the bus to school and you drive your electric car down to the office. Could I work from home? you say, tentatively hopeful. For the tax write-off, the smart money recognizes. Didn’t know I was that smart, did you. In a word, no. Besides, where might it have gotten me, if I’d been forced to lead a normal life? I’d have ended up killing the entire family and myself too. That maddening? Sans doute. Sure. Just the hint of a television, let alone its pervasive presence, would one day send you right over the edge. Naturally, your demesne would be bristling with weapons because you never know when the government is going to take away your weapons, and then they’re going to come after you. And then one day, if only for a moment, you wake up to the fact that they are you, and, vice versa, you is they. Now we’re talking number agreement, as expressed by singular and plural verbs and nouns. But wait, you were on to something. I’m always onto something. You is they and they are you. Oh yes. One day for some reason the television stays off just long enough for you to realize that the thing you fear most is yourself, not the outside world, but the inside world, and that, even though you live in San Francisco, your life is meaningless. It’s true that a bracing immersion in the Pacific, a very stroke or two off the beach and you’re fighting for your life, everything’s changed, of course you want to live, you were just kidding and you have to take a deep breath, submerge beneath the rollers and the tide you’d failed to notice is ebbing to the tune of something like five knots, and drag yourself along the bottom, clawing up great fistfuls of sand and hopefully the odd rock and some well-anchored bull kelp, until your lungs are fixing to prolapse like the guts out of the mouth of that fish from Hawaii, blow inside out, so you blast to the surface gasping for breath, the surface is further up than you thought, but you make it, the air is thick with airborne foam, you get a good lung full of scud, you inhale it anyway, and while you’re choking and realizing that you’ve just lost the five yards you’d gained toward the beach, your head, that codebase you and you only you have been spending a great deal of time maintaining, has become part of the very machine that has become the only machine, the total machine, the machine whose mission is to cultivate efficiency from all within its realm, which is everywhere, which is now and forever, and that to be inefficient is to court death, not injury, not unemployment, but death, abrupt and final, and that some anachronism of sentiment, of some burp in finality, is the only thing between that the living death you have managed to assay for yourself and the sleep of eternity. Just listen to the television: The press secretary announced today that the President’s has ordered his staff to undertake a strict review of all options as regards the terrorist threat. The situation is perceived as cautiously calm, or orange. If you see the color orange, however, walk, do not run, to the nearest 911 haven. Do not worry about yo
ur spelling. Despite everything, try not to be late for work. If you are late for work, however, carry your group number with you at all times. We’re going to give shut-ins, crippled people, people with special needs, and the elderly an extra month to sign up for digital television. Remember, this is not an option, it is a necessity. Congress has voted an allowance for special income collectives. While commercials are changing the outer landscape, while the human body was the romantic landscape of the twentieth century, the little screen located in the blind spot on the left lens of your sunglasses has become the romantic landscape of the twenty-first century, and if the various big internet companies don’t start buying up newspapers, the internet will become a sewer, and the government will be able to do anything it wants. The television didn’t really say that—did it? Not all of it. Some of it’s too obvious to restate, and therefore progressive. Why don’t we just get this job over with? I’ll bet they got a terrific martini up there in the Cliff House. What am I supposed to do, just wade out there and pop the guy? I don’t know. Get creative. It’s cold out here. That part about the television is making me sick. Everything about television makes you sick. No no, the part about it and radio and the internet seamlessly blending into a fishless sewage. Fish being the metaphor for verifiable information? That would be correct. There’s a lot to fear, once you start thinking about his shit. That’s the operative term. Fear? Shit.

  Misoscaticism. Misocatechism was bad enough. Much as the Catholic Church used to get those kids young, and I mean young, so they could bend their little minds to the Pope’s will, the same shape as the Pope’s nose, so, equally, mass media, which include the internet of course, can be used to twist the awareness of the general public. Soon, public opinion, as shaped by whomever has the biggest megaphone, or the busiest thumbs, or the loudest mouth, will become just that, opinion, with not a fact to trouble it, for the simple reason that the facts will not be available. Here he comes. This is rather a public place to be killing people, don’t you think? Yes, I would, but it’s our luck that he surfed till dark, and conditions are too rough for all but the most hardy, it’s a Tuesday, everybody else has a so-called real job to be real for, this guy’s self-employed or something, got it all going on, wife, three kids, big house overlooking his favorite surf break, which just happens to be in his favorite city, and oh no, here comes his goddamn wife. Who could plan these things? So the question is, do you want to kill somebody for free today? It’s been a long time since you killed somebody for free. She’s messing up a perfectly good plan. Did the brief say anything about a time frame? Not that you can recall; but, on the other hand, you’re thirsty. She’s got a towel. Does she know she’s messing with his private space? That he likes being wet and cold and alone two or three days out of the week? Of course she knows it. But she has a feeling. What feeling is that. That you’re out here somewhere. Somewhere? I’m right here. Ready to snap her husband. That’s right. Primed, you might say. Feeling those—how many was it? One thousand, if you get them for five bucks apiece and don’t leave a tip. One thousand martinis, that’s right. Although you always leave a tip. Okay, and you tip generously. Do the math. It’s not math, it’s arithmetic. Say you tip at the rate of twenty per cent. Fair enough. So twenty percent of five thousand dollars is one thousand dollars. That much. So what you’re really spending on actual martinis is five thousand less one thousand equals four thousand dollars. Are you following me? Huh? No. I’m following that young woman with the towel. That’s right, keep your eye on the ball while I parse the strategy, which is as much as to say you are applying all the art and science at your disposal in order to bring maximum efficiency to your decision. Four thousand dollars divided by five dollars per martini is eight hundred martinis. At five martinis per night that makes for some twenty-two weeks of uninterrupted blind drunkenness. I’m amazed we haven’t done this calculation before. We have done it before. He sees her. Winsome lass. And three kids at home. First marriage? That information is not available. But at the rate of five martinis per night you’re looking at one hundred and sixty days between jobs. That’s if you spend the money on nothing but martinis. An SRO hotel in this town is four hundred a week. Sooner or later you have to deal with food, and food costs something. One month, that’s two thousand dollars right there. Say another hundred a week for food. Go about it that way. Back fourteen hundred out of the five thousand for roof and rashers. Thirty-six hundred. Correct. Now back out twenty percent in tips from that. Um, I might have to scratch that one out in the sand. Help yourself. Three six oh oh times point two. Pull a line under that, zero, zero, twelve, put down the two, carry the one plus two times six is seven, voilà, seventy-two hundred. You forgot the decimal. Oh. Seven hundred and twenty. Now. Back the seven-twenty out of the thirty-six hundred. Thirty-six hundred, less seven twenty, pull a line under that, zero, two from borrowed ten equals eight, now seven from six becomes seven from five, borrow ten becomes seven from fifteen which is eight and bring down the three which became a two which makes an answer of twenty-eight hundred and eighty—dollars, right? Right. Now divide that by five. Five dollars per martini? That would be the presumption. Okay. Five into twenty-eight would be five, times five is twenty-five, twenty-eight less twenty-five leaves three, bring down the eight, so five into thirty-eight gives a cold forefinger and an aching back seven, seven, seven, my mind is locking up, keep going, perseverance furthers, seven, seven times five is thirty-five, thirty-eight less thirty-five is three, bring down the zero, five into thirty is six, nice, five hundred and seventy six martinis and not a dime left over. Divide by five martinis per night, yeah, and voilà, one hundred and fifteen nights. Well over three months. Now what you got to do, ideally, is establish an expression that will precisely match the amount of time you can afford to stay in an SRO hotel with the exact number of martinis you can swill and still have a place to crash. Let’s call gamma—hey. Gamma… Hey! What the—? HEY!! Who the—. You’re stepping on my calculations! Get the fuck off my calculations, motherfucker! Yes you! And her! Get her off! No, this is my part of the beach. You? You? You? You got the whole goddamn ocean to fuck around in. Go away! Away! See all that work—this, I’m dragging my foot around you mess—this was the culmination of all those figures. Those! These! Son of a bitch! The guy just broke his board over my head! The nerve! All he and his stupid wife had to do was walk around these calculations and everything would have been fine. He didn’t have to die today. He could have died tomorrow—and his wife would have been saved! She could have raised the children in his memory! But no. No! The guy has to ask, he has to invite—no, he practically has to beg me to re-arbitrate his goddamn fate. Maybe he really is sick of watching television. Maybe she really did intrude upon his little bit of private space, in which he communes with mother ocean. Maybe his is a bad mood and he really feels like laying off some of the action onto this ostensible hapless ostensible homeless ostensible guy on his beach, the only other person that’s out here in this blistering cold and now that the fog is in completely dark night. My figures. All that work. So now they both had to die. That’s all there was to it. It’s a done deal. Get paid, get one free. More orphans in the world. Like I give a fuck. We’ll wing that bit about the martinis. We’ll find out how many martinis there are to be had for five grand in a world that expects twenty percent tips for tending bar and four hundred dollars a week for flea-raddled SRO hotels and a hundred a week for a can of soup per day and one of those snack packs with twelve orange crackers and six slices each of baloney and white cheese, although one prefers the yellow cheese and olive loaf but those are harder to find and more expensive when you do find them… What a world. What a world. What a world…