by Jay Begler
Ignoring the hisses of the reporters, the man guided Goodwin to his door, arm over his shoulder as if protecting him. When they entered the foyer of Goodwin’s house, Goodwin said, “I don’t know who you are, but I really appreciate the help. By the way how’d you get to me so quickly?”
“Max Schnell’s the name. I actually heard about your wife from a client in Mongolia. I forgot about her, but then my Mental Note App went off and here I am. I think you can use my help. I’m a professional licensing agent and manager. I manage the press, manage interviews, negotiate license deals, public relations and stuff like that. When I heard the story about your poor wife, I said to myself this is a guy who needs a loyal friend, one who can help him with situations like this. And, for a 10 percent licensing agent’s fee, I can be that loyal friend. Look, I know this is abrupt, but your wife is becoming famous very quickly, so it’s really important for you to remember what Andy Warhol said.”
“Everyone is famous for 15 minutes?”
“Most people make the same mistake as you do. That’s only the first half of his saying. The second part is, ‘And it doesn’t mean a thing, if you don’t cash in on it.’ Look, here is my card. Call me the next day or so and we can work out a program for you and your wife. Believe me, she will be much more than a person now. She’ll be a brand. Remember, make hay while the sun, or should I say, bright light shines. One word of free advice: don’t answer your phone because the calls will be either members of the press seeking to harass you or solicitations.” As Schnell walked out the door, Goodwin could hear the reporters booing and Schnell’s rejoinder, “Shoo, shoo.”
Schnell, looked a little bit like the original Yoda from Star Wars, though he was taller and had capped teeth. He ultimately turned out to be a real professional and a good and loyal friend to Goodwin. Goodwin learned later that Schnell ran a one-man licensing and talent agency called, “Schnell, Schnell, Schnell & Schnell World Wide” despite the fact that there was only one Schnell. Schnell admitted that his company name was a bit deceptive, but explained, “I developed it while I was having a bout with schizophrenia, multiple personalities, and never bothered to change it back.” Actually, Schnell’s business really prospered during his multiple personality period because the third Schnell was a financial genius.
The phone messages awaiting Goodwin were mostly from worried friends, his parents, Sheila’s parents and, just as Schnell had predicted, solicitations. The strangest of these was a hard sell from the Cremation Society, which offered a free subscription to Cremation Magazine. Goodwin wondered about the content of a magazine devoted to cremation. Endorsements from satisfied customers? Recipes? Designer Urns? Do it yourself cremation kits? He imagined that the last of these would carry a sales pitch like, “And when you are done your home made cremation device converts into a pizza oven. Just reheat your loved one’s ashes.”
The manager of Vogue left a message in which he said that he hoped that Sheila would recover within 20 days because after that, she would not be entitled to return the dress she was trying on at the time of her accident. An aggressive escort service left the most tasteless message, “Now that your wife is out of the picture, our girls will put you in a coma.” The service followed up with an email, but with what Goodwin perceived to be a typo, “Our girls will put you in a comma.”
When Goodwin read the service’s email message, he replied, “I don’t use escort services and in any event would never go to one that didn’t know the difference between a coma and a comma.” The escort service responded immediately: “Your comment simply reflects your sexual naiveté. Just for the record, a ‘comma’ within the context of a sexual reference is the newest position for certain sexual acts. Go to www.comma-sutra.cum.” Goodwin reluctantly admitted to himself that the web’s address was rather clever. Yielding to his curiosity, he entered the site and found photographs of couples in various comma positions. Had his next moment been depicted in animation there would have been an image of Goodwin with his eyes bulging and his jaw dropping 18 inches to the table.
The final message was from Sophie. “I’m so sorry about Sheila. I hope she comes out of this okay and that you’re okay, too. Oh yes, one more thing, I know it’s very early, but I think I’m pregnant and I know that you are the father. I still love you. Call me at...” The message ended with Goodwin saying plaintively, as if Sophie was with him, “No. Don’t go. Please don’t go.” Any hope that he harbored that he was over her was destroyed as soon as he heard Sophie’s voice.
Goodwin’s mumbled assumption that “It can’t get any worse than this” was dispelled immediately when he put on the news. Sydney Maxine, dressed somewhat androgynously, was holding a press conference. Behind him was a phalanx of angry looking attorneys, some of whom seemed to be actually growling. Maxine was speaking from his living room. “Of course my main concern is for Sheila. I have been praying for her. There is nothing more important to me than her well being. I just wish I could be at her side, but I cannot leave the house. Tragically, I’ve been diagnosed with a severe case of agoraphobia brought on by an uncontrollable fear of dying a horrible death by having the life sucked out of me, as Mr. Goodwin had wished in his despicable email.”
A young lawyer handed Maxine a tissue to wipe away a tear. The lawyer reminded himself to bill Maxine one dollar as a disbursement for the tissue and to add to his billing for attending the conference, “pulling out tissue box, selecting an appropriate tissue, handing the tissue to client, and putting tissue box away, six minutes, subsequent memo to file regarding handing client a tissue, ten minutes.” The associate’s boss billed: “Review of Memo to File re: Tissue extraction and delivery to client, six minutes.” In total, Maxine’s tears cost him $186.00 in legal fees and disbursements.
Maxine continued, “So here I am, alone, stuck in my house with only my glass figurines to keep me company and to console me.” He was going to cry hysterically at this point, but held back because he couldn’t afford the legal fees.
A stern looking man, a senior attorney, stepped up to the microphone. “In view of the outrageous and genuinely malicious behavior of Goodwin, we are exploring our legal options against Goodwin as well as the possibility of filing a criminal complaint against Goodwin.” The omission of “Mister,” Goodwin thought, probably had its intended effect of portraying him as both culpable and less of a person.
“While I don’t know the legalities involved in this,” Maxine piped in, “I do have a message for Philip Goodwin. Mr. Goodwin you have totally ruined my life. I hope you’re satisfied.”
A reporter asked, “Mr. Maxine, besides your understandable fear brought on by such a horrible and vicious death wish, how exactly has Philip Goodwin ruined your life?”
“For the short time that we were together, Sheila and I had a deep and loving relationship. As you all know by now, Sheila and I suffer from a rare condition called Hypo-Humoresque. People afflicted with this heartbreaking malady, whose only symptom is not having any sense of humor, often feel terribly alone. That was certainly true for Sheila. For most of her marriage Sheila felt isolated and in ways humiliated by Mr. Goodwin’s unrelenting daily barrage of jokes, puns, and wisecracks all at her expense. Think about how a person with a sense of humor would feel in a world inhabited only by HH people. When we found each other, it was quite wonderful. We realized that we could live our lives within our humorless cocoon. We would never have to go to a comedy again. It was perfect. She was perfect. Our life together was perfect.”
“Then we received the email from Mr. Goodwin with his vicious death wish for me. I tried to ignore it, but couldn’t. His cruel message festered in my consciousness and my psyche began to unravel. That horrible email had a profound psychological impact on me and I finally reached the breaking point. I cracked. I did something absolutely uncharacteristic, something I never did before.”
“Sheila was sitting next to me knitting “Thank You For Not Joking” pillows for a future HH swap meet. I turned to Sheila and said, ‘
Sheila, here’s a question for you. What did one pre-cancerous cell say to the other pre-cancerous cell?’ Sheila had no idea of what I was talking about and replied in all seriousness that she didn’t know cells could communicate and did not know the answer. I replied, ‘You’re an oxidant waiting to happen.’ Then I began to laugh at my joke. I followed up with ‘Of course they can communicate with each other. They use cell phones. Get it?’ I could see that Sheila was horrified. My God! I was joking! I tried not to speak, but I couldn’t stop myself. An instant later and before Sheila could say anything, I said laughing in anticipation of my next joke, ‘Did you hear about the man who brought a homemade coffin to the funeral home to save money for his wife’s funeral? When the funeral home charged him extra and he asked why, they explained that they had a corkage policy.’
I could see that Sheila was horrified and disgusted. I know she felt betrayed in a way. She did not say a word, but merely turned and walked out of our living room, down the hall to our bedroom, and slammed the door. A few minutes later, she walked out with her garment bag. I tried to make amends and begged her to stay. I remember saying, ‘Look, I’m very sorry. I don’t what happened. I don’t even know where that came from. It was spontaneous.’ But, it was too late. She turned to me, and through a heavy veil of tears said, ‘I’m going back to Philip. If I’m going to live with someone who jokes, it might as well be him.’ With that, she walked out the door, looked back, and said: ‘My divorce is off.’”
A reporter interrupted. ‘You mean that Sheila was on the way back to Mr. Goodwin when she was struck by lightning.
“Absolutely. She just stopped off at Vogue en-route to her house.”
“And if Sheila comes out of her coma, do you think she will return to Mr. Goodwin?”
“No doubt about it. She’ll be home for good, forever and ever.”
The decibel level of Goodwin’s howling, “Noooooooooo!” could be heard well beyond his front lawn.
“Got that all,” a voice said behind Goodwin. Startled, Goodwin spun around towards the source of the statement. It was a cameraman and a reporter. They had placed the newest model of an iPhone flush against the window.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Goodwin demanded.
The reporter’s response was nonchalant, as if his actions were perfectly normal and acceptable. “Just picking up everything you said and did with Apple’s new spyPhone. It’s amazing; we can probe inside your house without even entering. In a couple of years these phones will be able to read your mind. Isn’t technology great?”
“Hey, you can’t do that. This is my house. I have rights.” Goodwin’s plaintive, “No it’s not that way,” was ignored. “This is a nightmare. Can it get any worse?”
Goodwin answered his question with a mumbled, “Yes, and big time.” Goodwin’s television screen revealed a reporter standing in front of Goodwin’s house. “Breaking news. We have it on good authority that as soon as Mr. Goodwin came home, while his wife was clinging to life by a thread, he began corresponding immediately with an escort service and downloading porn from the web. Through the website, www.privacyisextinct.com which, like many other sites, tracks your very move on the web, we found that Mr. Goodwin was surfing that salacious website, www.commasutra.cum Within seconds Goodwin’s activities were broadcast all over the country. Immediately after this announcement, over 5000 men entered the site. That night there were more “commas” than in the Constitution.
Depicted on the television screen was a blurred, pixilated, photograph of someone watching pornography on a computer. While there was, for a half of a nano-second, an imprint on the screen of “file footage,” Goodwin realized that all who watched would think the person depicted was him. As if to confirm his conclusion, the continuously moving news tape at the bottom of the screen said: “An unidentified, but highly reliable source has said that “Philip Goodwin is now deeply into internet porn.” Goodwin pressed the off button on his now obsolete Super RX Digital 2 remote control.
It was Goodwin’s very bad luck that the Sheila Bolt and its immediate aftermath occurred during what media experts were calling a “news drought.” In order of importance, there were no celebrity trials, celebrity scandals, celebrity break ups, celebrity gossip, or to a lesser newsworthy extent, no wars, at least new wars, major hurricanes, pestilence, famine, conflicts or new weight loss products that really worked. To the great sorrow of the news media, all of the prior bad boys and girls of Hollywood were behaving themselves and living normal decent lives. Sheila, by default, became the principal story and person of the moment. Not only could the public now root for a new comatose heroine, they could also root against a man who had the makings of a villain.
The following morning, Goodwin looked as his PPR and found that it had been temporarily removed. “Under Repair” was the notation next to his name. Two days later his PPR was restored:
Philip Goodwin, Age: 54
Married to Sheila Goodwin –Now separated.
Grace Harbor, New York
CEO: Threads Inc. New York City
S L p A H
18 18 18 18 16
Once a high-flyer, Goodwin has disappointed most everyone by his destructive and cruel behavior. We are seeing him in a different light. “I can’t believe this is the same guy I voted for earlier.” Perhaps Goodwin’s great aunt Hilda, “Hillie” summed it up best, “he was a bum when he was a kid and he’s still a bum.”
There was no Aunt Hilly. She was a fraud, possibly a creation of the media. When Goodwin attempted to contact Pragat through email (phone calls were no longer accepted) to protest it was ignored. Hilly’s observation was never removed. On the contrary, she became a frequent contributor to Goodwin’s PPR and later a minor celebrity in her own right.
The Poster Girl For Green Technology
Within 48 hours of the Sheila Bolt, nearly every television station in the world carried the news of the mysterious “Sheila” light. There were no less than 200 Sheila related web sites, including Sheilaslight.com, Shellascocoon.com, and Sheilalite.com which promoted a light beer for women. Sheila related blogs and Facebook entries filled the Internet. If someone had placed “Sheila Goodwin” in any Internet search engine prior to the Sheila Bolt it would have generated six hits and three of them would have been for a woman of the same name who lived in Pasadena. One week after the Sheila Bolt, her name generated over four million hits. Goodwin as the pilot fish on Sheila’s rise to stardom also had a growing number of Internet sites such as philipgoodwinsucks.com and Ihatephilipgoodwin.com. Soon to follow were various Sheila related Apps as well as a Sheila video game named “Lightning Dodger” where a Sheila-like person had to dodge lightning strikes of ever increasing frequency.
Two weeks after the Sheila Bolt, photography and lighting experts placed a special complex of light filters around Sheila. Cannon Camera generously donated expensive and ultra-sophisticated light filters on the proviso that they carried Cannon’s corporate name and logo in a conspicuous place. Once the filters were in place, they subdued most of the cocoon’s light and viewers were able to see Sheila more clearly. The filtered image people saw was that of a woman lying serenely in a coma and smiling. That image quickly made it to the cover of virtually every major magazine and soon became iconic. The filters, however, distorted some of the light slightly giving the impression that there was a halo surrounding Sheila’s head. Her haloed appearance, seen on a daily basis by tens of millions of television viewers, coupled with unsubstantiated reports about the miraculous healing powers of the light comprising Sheila’s cocoon, referred to in the press as “Sheila’s Light,” began to support the growing view of Sheila in some quarters as a religious icon, the patron saint of the comatose or more accurately, “the smiling and sometimes laughing patron saint of the comatose,” or in Meditainment lingo, “the patron saint of the beyond Remites.”
All of the morning news programs opened the same way: a shot of Sheila within her cocoon of light and a corresponding line such as, “Da
y 24 of Sheila Goodwin’s Beyond Rem state and counting.” Self described Sheila experts, lightning experts, orb of light experts and anomaly experts opined daily for the vast television audience.
Even the evening quiz shows featured Sheila. Jeopardy, for example, contained the following colloquy:
“Modern icons for $2000.”
“Her present house is a cocoon of light.”
“Who is Sheila Goodwin?”
“Correct!”
“I’ll take sexual positions for $900 dollars.”
“This sexual position is also used to set off nonrestrictive clauses in a sentence.”
“What is a comma?”
“Correct!”
Sheila’s and Goodwin’s PPRs soon made it to the PPR “most active” list, with Sheila’s rating escalating to a 26 and Goodwin’s tumbling to a 16. What he found amazing was the close correlation between the drop in his ratings and the attitude towards him by most people. With the exception of his three close friends, Ricques, Kass and Graves, club members who just weeks before had admired Goodwin and sought his company now regarded him with a degree of askance. This shift in attitude, Goodwin correctly observed, had nothing to do with his email to Sheila or anything he did, or more accurately, things that he was alleged to have done. Rather, it was solely a reflection of his lowered PPR. Goodwin thought that these people should judge him as they used to, by his own good and bad points. They should make their own assessment, rather than have a rating system developed by a corporate entity do it for them. He knew, however, that that this was just wishful thinking. It was just too easy to use a designated number as opposed to independent thinking.
