The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan

by Eckhard Gerdes

  The whole fucking bar starting singing the song, and then, on cue, they all turned to me like zombies and when they sang "800 Bucks," they held their hands out and started walking towards me.

  "I’ll be your friend," said one. "Give me 800 bucks." "I’ll be your friend," said another. "Give me 800 bucks." I didn’t know these people at all, but I had once loaned

  Lubjec 800 dollars for a demo he was going to cut with a band. Ironically, he used it, instead, to cut his unborn son out of his girlfriend’s womb. Just like the song. And then the band broke up, and he never repaid me. He wouldn’t even return my calls. Nor did he continue to pursue my friendship.

  When he saw me walking in, he must have told these zombies I was an easy mark. If you’re ever in Macon, be careful. The zombies live in the sewers, and Lubjec’s people are the gatekeepers. Don’t plumb to their depths.

  Now that I think about it, I wish I had given them all 800 bucks so that they could have eliminated an entire generation of themselves. Someone needs to break the chain of two-faced back-stabbing thieving conniving sneaky manipulating weasels most of them are, spewing, "Oh, ain’t you just so nice" in your face while they hold their pointed tails and pitchforks behind their backs where you can’t see. Lubjec’s their new hope, or was at least. They killed off Otis Redding and Duane Allman and Berry Oakley. They ran Little Richard out on a rail. They threw James Brown in jail. And then, all of a sudden, booming international music metropolis Macon, who’d hosted Cher and Iron Butterfly and Martin Mull and dozens of other internationally known artists, given them homes and recording contracts and made them stars, was suddenly empty. Real estate tycoons brought in cherry trees and paid for huge birthday parties for themselves in the city streets, but ruses and rubes couldn’t replace what had been lost. Macon lost rock and roll and became a city of beasts that fuck themselves. And they have barbed pricks like raccoons, so you can hear them scream. And the screaming sounds like 5000 Chuckie dolls all singing in unison, "Whatcha gonna be, either a redneck or a deadneck? Yew got no other option round here. You gonna be a redneck or a flyspeck? If yer the ladder, stay out of my beer."

  Twang twang twang twang. Scream!

  You’d think they’d go through a ton of Excedrin in Macon—I did—but apparently they have no actual use for it there.

  Amid the exhaustingly sweet-glazed billboards between there and here are interjected proclamations of transcendence: Biblical warnings, certainly, but others much subtler: "The last umbrella you’ll ever own," for example.

  Why? Will the rain cease to fall? Will I drop dead when I open it? Unwilling to broadcast my ignorance. I try to avoid what I can. I imagine these transcendent proclamations a type of alien creature sent to disrupt our freeways. The proclamations begin to address this concern: Remove the feathers from your eyes! Use these coins instead. They grow into enormous unstable currencies. Don’t end it with humor, no matter how the highway howls. The rain falls only on the highway. Climb the hills. Look out on the land. When it looks back, you’ve reached your destination. Don’t be late for the time-share presentation! Employment is shifting away from the highway and heading for the caves. Blast ’em open! Why not? Your head is your leader. The leader wants more coins!

  Chevy Chase picked up the beers and Dan Aykroyd Tim Robbins brought the weed. We drove to the lake, got drunk and stoned, sat in the trees, threw rocks into the water, and did nothing. They, of course, knew each other better than they knew me, though I’d become a good friend recently.

  Chevy’d pick me up and always had beers for the drive and then we’d get Dan Tim. Dan Tim would roll a bomber one-handed and we’d smoke it in the car on the way to the lake. We found a service shack and stored more beer in there.

  They’d jab at each other a little. Chevy would make fun of the time Dan Tim was married to Farrah Fawcett. Or maybe it was Dan Tim making fun of Chevy. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t serious. No coins were blasted here.

  During the cocaine era, Edwin used to call himself "L.T." for "Lubjec Thoth" but also in homage to his favorite cocaine-snorting linebacker. Briefly L.T. was big in celebrity circles and was even Bill Murray’s ex-roommate. L.T. and I were living and working in an enormous space inside a mall. The space was filled with what we thought was a mall. The space was filled with what we thought was a Flavors shop, and our selection was only slightly more extensive. Mostly we sold bestsellers on discount.

  We needed the rest of the space for our elaborate living quarters, with its wine cellar and separate suites. We had a large communal living room across a small false hall from the store’s false back door. Here we’d relax and entertain while one of us minded the shop.

  L.T. was a tall, balding classical guitarist with great talent but an insufficient sense of vocation to go anywhere with his music. His gawky awkwardness gave him a fragility on stage that would have translated into great success had he used it. Women saw this in him and surrounded him eagerly, hoping to be the ones to loose his potential. None of them did, and he never to my knowledge took unfair advantage of their enamorations.

  The store was ostensibly owned by St. Izzy’s High School, but was ignored by it for the most part, except when semesters were beginning. A trade bookstore in a mall receives substantially higher discounts on books than a text bookstore does, so the school was able to profit sufficiently from the discount difference.

  That all these women would come in to see L.T. and he wouldn’t do anything about it would bother me. The prettiest of them, Angie, was always hanging around. I liked Angie, but her sister was more interesting. Whereas Angie was perfect in every regard except she was somewhat shortchanged in the thinking department, Amelia was funny-looking, with a big nose, goofy hair, and Mick Jagger lips, but she was smart. She read William Gass and could hold conversations about real writers.

  Unfortunately, Amelia was dating a low-life named Vlad, whose greatest ambition was to take apart a carburetor and reassemble it, and who treated Amelia terribly. But he took her attentions, and I was left pretty much unnoticed. Which meant I stayed at the register more than L.T.

  Well, one day, while L.T. was in back with Angie, probably just talking, the fool, Duggan came in the store, right when it was really busy and I had a long line. Duggan was a bad boy legend from St. Izzy’s. As a senior he had set off a pipe bomb in a bathroom and had blown off half of the face of some freshman. But Duggan’s dad was a congressman, so nothing ever happened to Duggan.

  It’d always been my instinct to hate him. This time, he picked up seven or so books, piled them on the counter and said to me he had a faculty discount. I almost choked. I knew there was no way in Christendom that the school had hired him as a teacher. I couldn’t imagine Duggan ever even finishing high school.

  "No," I said to him, staring him in the eye. "You’re not on faculty."

  He was about to argue, but the line of customers was so long I took the next one over him and rang her up. Duggan picked up his books and backed away to make room for her.

  Two customers later, I realized Duggan and the books were both gone. I told my customer and the line to excuse me, and I went back to get L.T. to cover for me so I could comb the mall for Duggan.

  L.T. went out front, sniffing about it, but, just as I was about to leave, Amelia came into the back area. I thought she wanted to see Angie, but Amelia pushed me right back into my suite. She started telling me about how she knew I’d always liked her, and she took my head in her hands and tried to kiss me. I had no idea what had come over her, but the idea of Duggan's getting away crowded her out. "I have to go," I told her. "I’ve got to catch a shoplifter. Wait here." I headed out toward the exit, hoping to find him, and there was Duggan, detained in conversation. Just then, I saw another St. Izzy’s alumnus coming into the mall, none other than L.T.’s old roommate and Duggan’s old classmate, movie star Bill Murray. "Bill!" I yelled. "Get Duggan! He hasn’t paid!"

  Murray looked around and saw Duggan. Duggan was trying to weasel his way out of there, but
Murray and I were upon him in an instant. "Duggan," I said, "you have two choices. You pay for these books or you can go to jail right now."

  Duggan paid and was on his way. Murray and I went out of the mall and sat on the lawn for a while and decompressed.

  I asked him about his years at St. Izzy’s and told him about mine, about how I got a job on the radio station so I could get out of Latin and how I’d go up on the roof and smoke pot and listen to old Genesis and Martin Mull and Allman Brothers records. I told him about my novels, and he asked me which my worst was.

  I told him about A Million-Year Centipede, my first, which was about my visit to the Morrison Hotel in L.A. on the seventh anniversary of Jim Morrison’s "death." I figured Morrison had thought of L.A. as "the land of the fair and the strong and the wise."

  Just then, we heard a helicopter overhead. Murray’s mom, a helicopter pilot, was hovering over us. She lowered a rope ladder to us, and we climbed it up to the helicopter. This helicopter had a truck bed and auxiliary wings for emergency gliding, and it was to these auxiliary wings that we strapped ourselves.

  She took off and spun the chopper. I was amused for a while, but then I noticed my straps were loose. I climbed out of my straps and up into the truck bed. Murray’s mom stopped spinning and took us back to the house/store/mall.

  Some time passed, and I was in the living room with Amelia, holding her on the couch while we watched a movie on TV. L.T. and Angie were there, too. The store had closed for the night.

  Murray was in the hallway, and we could see him. He showed us a blue steel plate picture he had of a dancing girl in a grass skirt. He began nailing the plate to the store’s false front. As we was hanging it, he began singing, "Oh, she’s come home, for she’s an evil sculpture! Ah, hah! Oh, she’s come home..."

  Credits roll. The end.

  Thoth is a bare-assed baboon whose name, ironically, means "the learned one." He’s learned how to show off his red ass, that’s all.

  He was playing on our church-league soccer team once when he drew two yellow cards, both for smarting off at the referee. Of course, with the second card he earned a red card as well and was ejected. He pulled down his shorts and gave the ref his own red calling card. He was suspended for the season for that.

  I wondered how he got it so red. Did he use sandpaper to wipe with? Was he still being spanked? He deserved a nail-studded two-by-four across the head, not a little paddling of the bum.

  That little pudding of a brain that stirs around in Lubjec congeals itself around the topic of betrayal of a friend. Betrayal is his raison d’être. His sins are not important. They are ubiquitous. Whatever he said was too good for us. He tried so very hard to get us to see the truth. He endured us, we whose writing is merely means to an end.

  Yes! His end! If you see this base turd on the road, squash him with your oxfords. How erudite he will seem then, Mr. I-Was-Too-Smart-to-Waste-My-Time-at-CollegeBecause-I-Had-Already-Been-Offered-a-Six-Figure-Job-Holding-My-Thumb-Down-on-the-Boss’s-Chair-so-He-CouldSit-on-It-Whenever-He-Pleased, Mr. I-Love-Big-BusinessEspecially-the-Big-Oil-Companies-Because-I-Suck-Too, Mr. I-Spread-Mayonnaise-on-the-Chrome-of-My-Car’s-RearBumper.

  His biography will be entitled To Please the Boss. You’ve heard of people who don’t know up from down? I tell you Lubjec actually thought "the Netherlands" was a reference to Hell. As a Frisian, I have problem with that. And I presume his God is something like Ned Beatty in the movie Network. What seemed like impossibly strange prophecy then is our current commonplace reality now. The corporations control the nations, the media makes the news, and the corporations own all media. Everything is a commodity.

  Lubjec worked as an advertising photographer for years. He created images on command, images designed to hoodwink the unalert. And who can remain alert for long in this world? Televisions, billboards, magazines, radios all thumping us, bashing our heads in until we submit, knocking us unconscious so we can be fed subliminally. And the controllers have us thanking them for having pounded us into oblivion: We foolishly believe the oblivion to be freedom, a release from their control, but even there they have lined the streets with their billboards. Dante is nothing more than a brand name now. Didn’t Dante write all the Archies’ songs? Ah, ha!

  Maybe Lubjec is right. Perhaps there’s no real joy in life. Life is nothing but people hurting each other until they die. The only truly free person is the person who is free of hope. We are misery. Only the insane and deluded could think otherwise.

  Should I cast my lot with the insane and deluded? Should I hold onto the iron life-raft that is hope? Or should I wake up and realize that the abuse that is heaped on me is more than richly deserved? I deserve worse. I am the miserable cretin. Lubjec is merely a realist. I resent his honesty. It interferes with my fantasy of a life that is worth living. I’m a chump.

  I am the em-bare-assed baboon. Do I now hold sufficient wisdom to survive this world? Or am I just another cracked vessel? A crack pot, as folks used to say before they meant different things by "crack" and "pot." Or did they? Thoth is truth. Thought is not. Blind obeisance and total resignation to the will of our corporate leaders is the only permissible response. Look around yourself— commodities are facing you right now! Rush out and buy whatever it is that’s being advertised! Now!

  Or: reject the unwelcome guest who comes to occupy your head.

  Endgames

  Edwin became a filmmaker for a year when he received an unexpected, jokingly-applied-for federal grant. In return, he was to produce three short propaganda films for the political party in power. The films were to depict attempted assassinations of the party leader. The propaganda was designed to depict resistance to despotism as traitorous. Each film depicted one of the three largest minority groups organizing in armed resistance. The minorities, one would assume, were building an unholy triumvirate and would carve up the body of the leader and feed him to their dogs.

  These films would instill enough fear in the commoner that the commoner would embrace the leader again and despise instead the plotting minorities. The films were successful, and violence against these minorities doubled in the cities. The leader retained his hold on his office.

  When Thoth is dead, we’ll peel the film from his eyes. That way we can see what he saw. Various federal agents have been by, looking for Thoth. When the President himself came by, some stupid redneck song, "Drown in the Chattahoochee," came on the radio. I smiled at the coincidence.

  I told them all, "I hope you get him."

  The last two agents seemed particularly bright and good-natured. They returned later to tell me they’d gotten Thoth.

  "Good," I said. "It was inevitable." I watched the three of them, Thoth in shackles, walk away through the tall grass, back up to the locked gate by the highway. Too bad they wouldn’t be able to hold him, I thought. Drown him in my pond, Pause Lake. Hecho en USA. I’d have to sell the property of course, now that everyone knew where it was and connected it to good o’ Chattahoochee Edwin. Oh, well.

  I was free of him for a while immediately thereafter. I moved, got a job as a night watchman at a resort, and was left alone. I had a radio, books to read, and a putt-putt course. My first night, I remember, I scored a 58 for 18 holes. Take that, Edwin! His golf obsession was legendary. Here I was practicing my putting game every night and getting paid for it! That made me a professional, right? It was the perfect job for an insomniac isolationist like me. My gasping for air because of my sleep apnea would no longer disturb my wife’s sleep. Nor would my snoring.

  Dad wouldn’t be grumpy in the morning when my kids woke up because by then I’d be home and have had a couple of beers already, and then I’d be asleep. I’d still have afternoon time and supper with my wife and kids. But what was attractive was I’d never have to deal with Lubjec, who was certainly diurnal.

  I asked him if he’d golf with me once, years ago. He laughed and said, "You’re just a beginner. Why would I waste my time golfing with a beginner? Take some classes or som
ething and tell me when you break 80." I assume he meant for 18. What an ass. What a bare-assed baboon! I already had a 58! And a 62 later that night! That’s 120 for 36 holes! In one night! I don’t want to hear about breaking 80 ever again!

  My second night at the resort I brought several crossword puzzles. I had completed the Sunday Los Angeles Times puzzle the night before, and I enjoyed it. The second night I tried the New York Times Sunday puzzle, but it was much more heavily drawn from pop culture than the L.A. one. The L.A. paper had more history and geography questions, which I’m better at. I don’t know much about Broadway stars or TV divas. I shot a 57 at 1:30 in the morning. Those poor suckers who wake up at 5:30 only to shoot an 80—what slobs! What rank amateurs!

  My second round that night I shot a 59, but I had a 25 on the front nine. Fifteen hung me up—I started getting back spasms and double-bogeyed the hold and then bogeyed sixteen. I had to forego the third round that I’d been planning on. Normally, 54 holes shouldn’t be a problem.

  Meanwhile, Lubjec had kept himself busy. I saw him on the news. Daniel Noriega was giving a press conference, and there, right behind Noriega’s left shoulder, stood a bespectacled, bearded Lubjec. Whether he was working toward Noriega’s overthrow or against, I have no idea. Lubjec may not even have known himself. When I was an industrial operative with Lubjec, that’s the way it was— after a while we had no idea if we were working for or against our employer. I suppose you could say we did both. Lubjec, especially. He’d volunteer to birth a cow and then deliver a stillborn. He’d help roofers carry squares up a ladder, but then he’d kick the ladder away.