A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

  Frank Morris, 29, and Frank Smolinov, 29

  founders, Organize or Emigrate!

  These two comprise the brains behind the politically neutral but

  politically influential Organize or Emigrate! Claiming “somewhere

  around 130 million members,” the organization, in just two years,

  has managed to produce three pamphlets and a button. But they’re not resting on their laurels. “We won’t sit down to an hour-and-half-long meal, or even read our fraternity newsletter, until every man and woman in Generation X has seen our picture in a major magazine,” says Smolinov. So what’s next? “What we’re looking for is a Cabinet appointment,” Morris says. “But it looks like Perot isn’t going to run in ‘96.”

  Zev, with a gesture that says “Who, me?” poses as Kevin Hillman, whose entry strikes eerily close to home:

  Kevin Hillman, 26, Author

  “Slacker? Not me,” laughs Hillman. He can afford to laugh, too. His book, Slacker? Not Me! has been perched atop the Times bestseller list since early January and shows no signs of slipping. The book is simply the transcribed recordings of a week’s worth of conversations between Hillman and his friends, captured by accident on a tape recorder. “I just forgot the thing was recording, and when I listened to it, it was just so, so; so damned real!” Next month Hillman guest VJ’s with Kennedy on MTV’s Alternative Alternative Nation Weekend Rock and Jock Tribute Water Polo Weekend.

  Shalini poses serenely, in Indian garb, as electric lutist Nadia Sadique—“equally adept at classical lute, country lute, and bottleneck-slide lute.” Two weeks later we get a call from a producer of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? an educational show on PBS.

  They absolutely must have Nadia on the show.

  We promise to forward the message to Nadia’s manager. After a brief discussion, we decide that Nadia’s manager will be Paul. We hook up the phone to a tape recorder, and Paul returns the call of the producer.

  PAUL: Hello, Mr. Meath, this is Nadia Sadique’s agent, Paul Wood-Prince.

  [It is my understanding that Paul came up with that, Wood-Prince, on the spot.

  producer: Hello! Yes, I was just given your number. How did we find you?

  PAUL: Might magazine.

  producer: Yeah, we saw the thing in Might magazine. Are you familiar with our show?

  paul: Yes.

  producer: Oh good. Nadia seems to be exactly the kind of person that we might use for a walk-on on the show, or to illustrate some musical clue. And of course the other thing we love about it is that she plays the lute.

  PAUL: [Silence}

  producer: That’s sort of an inside joke on our show. Every day we steal something that’s called “The Loot.”

  paul: Uh-huh. Right. “The Loot.”

  producer: And so if we could have her playing the lute, it would be great. It’s just our kind of joke.

  PAUL: She’s also from Bangladesh.

  producer: Oh yeah, we love that multicultural stuff.

  Paul hardballs Meath over dates and fees, and finally books the fictional Nadia on the show for the following month. (We beg her, but Shalini will not go. Nadia is a no-show.)

  The cover of the issue features five of the twentysomethings to watch, all looking off the page to some brighter tomorrow, over which are the words:

  The Future: Here to Stay!

  Just before the issue goes to press, the owner of our building finally catches on that we’re still there. We’re given a week to get out.

  We move our offices from the condemned warehouse to the fifth floor of a glassy office box in the middle of the city. The Chronicle promotions department, wanting us closer so Moodie and I can provide lightning-quick service, have let us move in with them—along with Shalini and Hum, Carla and bOING bOING— giving us about 800 square feet, with floor-to-ceiling windows, for $ 1,000 a month—which Moodie and I easily pay by overcharging them for our design work.

  But the grind has begun. The windows don’t open, and even the availability of near-constant jokes about Jews and Mormons fails to stem the tide of frustration, decay. We’ve reached the end of pure inspiration, and are now somewhere else, something implying routine, or doing something because people expect us to do it, going somewhere each day because we went there the day before, saying things because we have said them before, and this seems like the work of a different sort of animal, contrary to our plan, and this is very very bad.

  At home it’s returning library books late, and getting posterboard for Toph’s map of Africa, and grocery shopping at the place where they know us and know that we don’t need a cart to carry the bags to the car, not us, because two men can carry six bags four for me and two for Toph, we love carrying the stuff, side by side, and thus insist upon it. And one night after the grocery store and immediately after a bookstore visit, from the north of Shattuck Avenue, right in the left-middle of Berkeley’s downtown there comes a moving, gurgling volcano of lights. White lights popping from motorcycles, police cars yelling in red and blue, and then a slow river of shiny black. A procession. Too late for a funeral—it’s already dark—but then, what—

  They drive past, and about when we think they’ll be out of sight, they stop.

  A man walks toward us, from the direction of the caravan.

  “It’s Clinton,” he says. “He’s eating at Chez Panisse.”

  We run.

  Toph and I are among the first there. I am wild with excitement. (This was, remember, around ‘93-‘94.) I explain to Toph how thrilling this is, that inside this building is the president, and not just any president—though admittedly that probably would not have mattered—but this is a president that, fuck, we have some sort of crush on this man. He speaks like a president, not always authoritative or anything but he can form sentences, complex sentences with beginnings and ends, subordinate clauses—you can hear his semicolons! He knows the answers to questions. He knows acronyms and the names of foreign leaders, their deputies. It is heartening, it makes our country look smart, and this is an important thing, something we have too long been without. Oh many were the times when Toph and I lay on my bed, my legs on his back, watching Clinton talk, points a and b and c, Jesus, how does he do it? Toph, I would say, Toph, this man is actually bright, could be brilliant. This man still reads books; encyclopedic and charming and so seemingly real—he is real, yes, certainly more real than the last few, who were too old to know—never did we know people that old so they were something else, unintelligible—and though we hope that he is real even if he is not entirely real he is more real, and smart enough to seem real, and wins both ways— And now he is here, mere feet away, eating the fresh and adventurous food stylings of California Cuisine!

  We decide that we’re staying until he comes out. I run to a phone to call Kirsten. She’s in bed but says she’ll be there. Toph runs to the convenience store to get provisions—Fig Newtons and root beer and caramel.

  “No comic books,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Really. I’m timing you. This is the president, little man.”

  “Okay, okay,” he says.

  While he’s gone more people arrive. There is a commotion, a civic bustle just as Frank Capra would have imagined it:

  “Charlie, what’s all the hullabaloo about?

  “Word is the president’s inside!”

  “The president? Well, I’ll be...”

  When Toph gets back there are about twenty people, gathered on either side of the restaurant’s door. Across the street the cars and vans of the slow caravan stand still, doors open. Agents walk and squint and whisper, doing their agent things, wishing their friends could see them now.

  Kirsten arrives, in her pajamas. It’s been about twenty minutes, and there are now about fifty people around the door, some across the street, camped near the limos.

  We are standing at the very front, to the right side of the door, no more than twenty feet away. We eat the snacks and Toph drinks his root
beer, which he’s set on the ground, holding it steady with his feet. He is careful about the things he loves.

  Another half hour passes and a hundred more gather. There are people ten deep behind us, a throng across Shattuck Avenue. We cannot fathom why people would stand across the street, easily a hundred feet away, when they could be so close, near us.

  “Suckers.” I tell Toph, thumbing toward those watching from so far away. It is important, I feel, that the boy knows what suckers look like.

  To pass the time, we bounce on our toes. We trip each other. We play the game where you’re not supposed to look at the (show), and when you do, you are punched on the arm. We stop when given a sidelong look from one of the Secret Service people. Do we look menacing, or just pathetic?

  Any minute now.

  Something occurs to me, though. How much time will Clinton have to mingle? Surely not much at all. So then, how will he decide where in the crowd to plunge? No way will he have time to shake the hands of us all, or even a portion of us, however doting. He will have to choose an area, a slice of us most deserving and representative.

  I try to get Toph to take his hat off. He’s always wearing the goddamn Cal hat with the smell of urine. He wears it to school, between classes, every moment until bedtime. He is trying to resist the onset of the curly hair—already his hair is thickening—and the hat straightens it out but now the hat is ruining our chances. The hat makes us look disrespectful. We’re a young hoodlum and his ... drug dealer.

  “Off with the hat.”

  “No.”

  “Off with the hat.”

  “No.”

  Good God, the door opens. A few randoms pour out and then this huge grey-haired man. Jesus Christ, he’s a big man. His face is so pink. What happened to his face that it’s so pink? I ask Toph why his face is so pink. Toph thinks for a second but does not know.

  Flashbulbs of course, and the screaming of things, mostly things like We Love You Bill, because everyone does love him now, because he is in the Bay Area, and he is our man, he says things we believe and is so thrillingly articulate, and he knows we love him and has come here to bask, in Berkeley even, at Chez Panisse, our town, our restuarant, and here he is, to be adored and received and thanked and urged on. Because we are in Berkeley and the president is here we are, Toph and Kirsten and I—at the white-hot center of the entire world and history to date.

  But Toph can’t see, because suddenly some ugly rat bastard has shoved himself in front of us. It’s unbelievable. I want to push this guy over, want to throw him to one side. How could we wait for so long and be so devoted and ready, only to have this round-backed asshole devour our chance for an audience with Bill?

  This will not stand. I will toss him aside if need be. But will the president come our way? Will he know that we have been chosen? Surely he will know. If anyone will know, he will.

  After waving to the throng for a minute, Bill heads.... toward us. Of course! Of course! Here he comes! Here he comes! Good lord his face is huge! Why so pink? Why so weirdly pink? Toph is being crushed, his face pressed against the back of this roundbacked bastard-man, and so I grab Toph and lift him, and his hat falls off, and Clinton is making his way from our left, where our side began, to us, in the middle. Hands reach toward him, grasping for his flesh, and he reaches into the anemone of fingers and as he reaches toward us I lunge and take Toph’s hand and thrust it toward the president’s, because close will not do here, chance is not good enough, and just as I throw Toph’s little soft hand forward, Bill’s fat pink hand is there—perfect timing—and the president grabs and squeezes the little hand of my brother, and I feel the jolt through me because we have completed the moment, have destroyed and begun a new world at this moment when we did all that was necessary.

  Toph touched his hand! Oh if only there were a picture. Then, decades from now, when Toph was running for president himself, there would be the shot of he and Clinton touching, like God’s finger lazily extended toward Adam’s, like the photograph of Clinton shaking the hand of Kennedy.

  And who will Toph thank, during his own inauguration? Oh yes, we know who he will thank. He will thank me. He will be there, in his blue suit, so tall and filled out and finally not wearing his urine-smelling hat, and he will say:

  “I’ll never forget when my brother, who tried so hard and suffered so long, lifted me over the heads of the throng to meet my destiny.” Destiny spoken in a whisper, accent on first syllable.

  Toph is better at it than I am. Half the time, mine go behind me, which is funny on its own, but is not the effect we’ve been going for. We are doing the thing where we pretend to throw the baseball as hard as possible, with a huge windup, leg-kick and everything and then, at the last minute, instead of actually gunning it, we let it slip off our fingers, suddenly in slow motion, the ball let go with a high, looping arc, the trajectory slow and sorry, a one-winged pelican. Then we catch it and send it back the same way. We’ve been doing this for half an hour.

  Passersby, in their cars, are hating it. They are slowing down, almost to a stop, exasperated that we are playing catch in the street. In a way that indicates that they have never before seen people throwing a baseball in the street, have perhaps heard of such a thing, but never thought that, in this day and age, a parent would not only condone but sponsor, would participate in, such a practice.

  These people, these precious Berkeley people. The man in his Volvo gaping at us like we’re skinning babies.

  We’re actually only stalling. We have an appointment.

  We go inside.

  “You have the listings?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have the paper?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  We get in the car and go.

  After a year and a half of on-again, off-again, Kirsten and I have finally broken up for good, which was mutually agreed-upon, acceptable to all concerned, but which quickly set off a chain reaction too horrible to even menti—

  So first we broke up, then Kirsten decided she’d move into San Francisco, which was wonderful with me, we needing distance, and so I would be less tempted to spy on her when curdled with sudden jealousy at one in the morning on a Saturday, convinced that she was at home, on her couch, with someone much more masculine than myself. And all was perfect until Beth, who has just finished her second year in law school, decided that, see, what she’d like to do is, well, she’d like to move, from Berkeley, from a few blocks from us, where she is always handy, within reach, able to provide whatever help we might need when we needed it, to the city, over the Bay, all that water, the bridge, all those miles away, to San Francisco, where she will live with.. .Kirsten!

  Kirsten even called.

  “Isn’t this great?” she asked.

  Then Beth called.

  “Isn’t this great?” she asked.

  It was not great. Toph and I were alone. All was lost. Left to do everything by myself, I would lose whatever grip I still had on anything, and then would take it out on Toph, who would silently absorb my stress, then my rage and the resulting unhappiness of our household, then would insist on going to military school, where he would excel, and would grow up to collect animal skulls and write letters to prisoners. In the end, it wasn’t so bad—Beth drove back to Berkeley just about every day—but still to ease the tension, with a few months left on our lease, and middle school over and junior high coming up, we had little choice but to follow. We looked for a place in San Francisco. We are still looking.

  We had no idea where to start. Again, I entertained the notion of a loft, a huge loft South of Market, with roof access, endless storage space, a skylight, and walls we can paint on, grace with elaborate murals that will eventually be worth millions, will be preserved and carefully removed and trucked to the MOMA for permanent display. But when we look at the neighborhood, from the Bay Bridge to the Mission, it’s all wrong. No trees, too much cement, leather. And once we rule out South of Market, no one s
eems to be able to agree on an appropriate neighborhood for us.

  The Haight? No, no, says Marny. Drugs, homeless people, all those terrible hippie teenagers from Marin begging for change.

  The Mission? No, I wouldn’t, not with Toph, says Moodie. Drugs, prostitutes, gangs.

  And almost everything else is too far from his new school. We answer an ad for a two-bedroom just off Dolores Park, even though Paul says a good percentage of the city’s drug traffickers call its rolling green home, and where, only weeks before, a young couple was shot, both killed without motive, in the middle of the day, while lying in the sun.

  The rental is owned by an older gay couple who live in the other half of the building. It’s big, high-ceilinged, affordable, painted mauve and periwinkle but otherwise perfect. I fill out a form, give them all my information, lie about our income—I have learned that much—and later that night, I write a long letter to them, begging them to grant us the place, reiterating that we were first, that we are quiet and nice, tragic and desperate, chosen to live and suffer and educate. I want to and almost tell them about the dream I had the night before, a semi-conscious dream where I entered Toph’s bloodstream—I was some kind of microscopic particle, like in Fantastic Voyage maybe, and I entered his bloodstream, and saw the layers of flesh, and the reds and mauves and violets, the muds and blacks, and I was blowing around at thrilling speeds, things shooting to and fro, in the capillaries and out, but then suddenly I was going through the sky—I am not sure at this point if I was still inside Toph or not; could Toph’s frame also encompass a sky—and there were the usual stages of blue then atmosphere-white and then soundlessly into ebony space, seeing the world, with roundness, below. I somehow think this story, this kind of thing, will endear us to them, but then worry if it’ll be a case of, you know, too much information.

  I drive to the twenty-four-hour Kinko’s to fax it so they’ll have it in the morning, will read it when the sun arrives and will love us and cease to entertain other offers. In the morning he calls.

  “David?”

  To gay men I am David.

  “Yes,” I say.