Letting Go

     "You know, her instinct is probably telling her that it's time to go out and find somewhere to die in peace," Nancy whispered compassionately.  "She has to leave us behind in order to do that." 

     Rich looked down at the frail tortoise-shell cat that had been so much a part of their life since they had adopted her and her litter mate during their first year of marriage.  Josephine was sitting at the deck door, looking intently outside after having mewed softly to get their attention.  For seventeen and a half years she had bestowed her love and companionship upon the humans that had adopted her, but during the last couple of months her health had visibly deteriorated.  The vivid orange blaze that streaked across her face at an impudent angle had faded, its loss of color reminiscent of a maple leaf that had clung too long to autumn and had felt the deadly touch of winter's frost.  She no longer had the strength to leap onto the bed or to jump from the piano bench to the piano in the dining room, and then make her way to the kitchen bar, her favorite vantage point.  From there she could keep tabs on the activity in both rooms.  She seemed to derive a lot of pleasure out of studying her family.

     If her humans went outside she would be with them as well, an omniscient being who'd watch them kneel next to the plants in their gardens or from the safety of the deck as Rich pushed that noisy thing that clipped the grass.  What a waste of time.  Any cat knows that long grass makes for better hunting.  Nancy had read that cats are estimated to spend up to three quarters of their life sleeping.  Not Josephine though.  If Nancy had a reason to go to the attic, a seldom visited recess of the house that Josephine had repeatedly demonstrated a yearning desire to explore, she would first check of "the Cat."  She'd find her asleep in the privacy of the spare bedroom or gazing out the living room window from the top of the couch.  No matter.  As soon as the attic door creaked open, that inquisitive face with the askew orange blaze would be alerting Nancy or Rich of her intent to accompany them up the stairs.  Her white-tipped tail would be waving like a battle flag beckoning them to follow her as she trotted ahead of them to lead the way up the stairs.

     Many superstitious people have a dislike or fear of cats, having through the ages bought into the tales that attribute to them psychic powers, some that even assign to them the sinister roles of familiars to witches.  Rich and Nancy soon became converts to the belief in a cat's mystical powers.  Josephine had convinced them.  Cats tend to bond closely to one person (probably the basis for the "familiar" wives' tale) and Josephine was no exception.  Rich was her "human."  Nancy often related her account of the night that Rich was due to return home after he had been out of town on an assignment for nine weeks.  Josephine "knew" somehow that her friend would be returning home, and she took up a position at the top of the stairs leading down to the foyer and the front door.  There she waited.  At his return she was the first to welcome him home.  Josephine's awareness extended to family vacations as well.  The cats were always well taken care of by an obliging neighbor, and the other three felines usually seemed unruffled or oblivious to signs of departure.  Josephine however would intuit what was to occur from the moment that Rich would bring the suitcases down from the attic.  As her family would be leaving she could be seen  sulking near the kitchen, her back toward them, her white tipped tail vigorously thumping her disapproval. 

     Josephine wasn't pleased as well when we brought our newborn son, Dylan, home from the hospital.  We had our son's bassinet with him in it on the living room floor so that he could begin to assimilate the sights and sounds of his home.  Josie made her way cautiously over to him, sat down, processed the information for awhile, then backed away as she hissed at him. A cat's hostile reaction to change, or perhaps her way of trying to tell the squalling child that "I'm in charge here.  Don't you forget it."  Despite that rocky beginning, she soon adopted Dylan with the same protective loyalty that she gave to us.  He would lug her around as though she was a sack of potatoes.  Even a drop in the bathtub didn't seem to loosen the bond they developed.  We still marvel at the day that a neighbor's German Shepherd, a friendly old dog, came bounding into our yard, joyfully frolicking in his freedom.   Our five year old son was playing in the front yard.  Our two cats were near him.  When the dog approached Dylan the two cats each fluffed up to about double their size and marched hissing toward the puzzled pooch.  They literally intimidated their perceived foe into leaving their yard and their "friend" alone.

     It was impossible to forget the night that Josephine had been hit by a car.  That determined little being had crawled home with a broken pelvis, and had actually clawed her way up three of the deck stairs  before she began to howl to attract our attention.  It was as if she knew that if she could make it home her family would find a way to take her hurt away.

     Rich thought of the night a few days later, when the vet allowed them to take her home.  Rich had fixed up a box in the foyer for her with food and litter nearby so that she wouldn't have to go downstairs to use the litter boxes in the basement.

    She  had wanted none of that.  On the first night of her return home, she struggled up the stairs and pulled her way up the bedspread to be able to lay next to the warmth of her friends.  Now she was leaving them.  All the determination that she had been able to muster hadn't been able to defeat the tumor that was growing inside her, a parasitical growth that had sapped her of her vitality and strength, even of her will to live.

     "You may as well let her out," Rich's wife urged gently.  "She knows what she has to do.  Help her to let go of us and find a quiet place to let go of her life...her pain."

     Josephine meowed painfully, as though to give voice to her need to leave them took more strength than she had left to give.  She continued to gaze yearningly through the glass of the deck door towards the outdoors, he place of refuge, her release.  It was the same yearning look she'd given the sardines that Rich had brought home two days before to attempt to coax her appetite back.  Once an eagerly devoured treat, they had been looked at, almost wistfully, but at most just licked a bit before she turned and hobbled weakly away.  Rich guessed that it was during those moments that he had finally realized  they would be losing her.

     Josephine gave forth another weak meow, continuing to look fixedly at the door.  Rich reached down to touch her one last time.  Her fur was still soft, silky as satin and beautiful in the way that it shimmered in the light.  But her bones almost protruded though it; she had so little flesh left to draw strength from.  Tears began to course down Rich's face.  He suddenly pulled his hand from her, reached for the door, and pulled it open.

     Josephine never looked back.  She moved as deliberately as she could hobble across the deck, then down the steps, one feeble jump at a time, until all they saw was the white tip of her tail following her down the last step.  Then she was gone.

     "You did the right thing," Nancy assured Rich, putting her arm around him to console him.  "Remember Graydon?"

     "Yeah," Rich signed forlornly.  How could he forget him.  Graydon had died five years earlier; that proud, muscular Russian blue that they'd taken in as a stray after his family had moved and left him behind to fend for himself.  He'd quickly become a very loving pet, a lap cat who would home in on either Nancy or Rich like a missle  if they sat down.  "He's just a big baby who wants love, nothing more," Nancy had observed on more than once occasion.   One evening they had discovered him huddled under their son's bed.  His kidneys had failed him and the poisons were accumulating in his body.  With an animal's sure instinct, he knew that he was dying and he had accepted it;  he'd gone so far as to seek out his private place to withdraw into to let go of his life.

     In their superior human wisdom though, his two human friends bundled him up and took him to the vet.  They watched their beloved pet suffer the indignity of spending his final moments being probed and poked by a stranger while laid out on a cold, cruel stainless-steel table.  Graydon went into shock, and while being held for observation,  later died in a wire cage, his fur matted with his own urine.  He'd chosen a place to let go of his life in privacy, with dignity and peace and they had wrested him from it.  Rich and Nancy came to the conclusion afterwards that Graydon in his instinct had demonstrated more wisdom than they had in their ineffectual attempt to help him.  At least his death had taught them something.  Never again would they put another one of their pets through such a final humiliation.  They would let them "choose their own moment," as Nancy had put it.  Now Josephine was choosing hers.

     "I don't understand it," Rich sobbed bitterly.  "Josephine was my friend.  Why couldn't have she chosen to die with us holding her rather than to seek out some dark, cold, secret place."  He felt betrayed, and the anguished look on his face was as much hurt at what he perceived as her forsaking him as grief at her impending death.

     Please don't mourn her," Nancy urged softly as she wiped tears from her face.  "The love that she gave us was greater than the pain of losing her now."

     Rich remained silent.  He just peered intently at the deck window, as though still hopeful that he would see Josephine's blazed face coming back up the stairs again.  All Nancy could hear for what seemed to be an interminable time was the ticking of the kitchen cuckoo clock and an occasional disconsolate sigh from Rich as he stood looking out the deck door window.

     Their silver tabby, Maggie, who was one of the two kittens that they'd rescued after having been abandoned at the dump four years ago, came up to Rich and nudged his leg with her head.  She seemingly could sense his discomfort and was trying to console him.  Rich reached down to stroke her, more automatically than with any feeling of affection.  He was still gazing forlornly out the deck door window, hoping for a miracle.

     After about an hour Nancy broke the silence, whispering "do you think that you should go out and look for her yet?"
    
     Wordlessly, Rich took a flashlight out of a drawer and went out in search of his beloved tortoise shell.  She hadn't taken refuge in any of the obvious places; she wasn't under the car, in the garage or beneath the bushes that hugged the house.  She wasn't in the garden.  Rich widened his range and searched the neighbor's yard.  No luck.  Then he crossed the street.

     The beam of the flashlight caught a glimpse of something out of place on the leaf-covered ground.  Rich walked over to the row of hedge that served as a fence, giving his neighbor across the street some privacy from the sidewalk and the street.  There she was.  The light had caught the white tip of her tail.  She had curled up in a small depression, almost a nest, just under a bush of the hedgerow.  It was secluded enough to give her the longed for final moments of privacy, yet was a place that could be found with a diligent search.  She probably sensed that her friend would be looking for her.

     Her body was still warm when he found her, and for a moment her green eyes glistened with a luminescent glow.  But it was an artificial light,  a cruel deception, an illusion that quivered in the beam of the flashlight, but departed as soon as it was pulled away.  She was gone.  Josephine had finally found her quiet place where she could let go of her life.

Eschaton: "We'll All Go Together When We Go" An Essay

 

The simulation of mutual nuclear destruction, “Eschaton.” occupies a central position in the body of Infinite Jest.  Even more space when one figures in the “fall-out’ that ensued because of the injuries that occurred because of the game.  In this presentation I would like to attempt to address how David Foster Wallace might have chosen the name for the game, how he might have come up with his inspiration for it, and then attempt to apply the metaphor of “eschaton” to the worlds of the Enfield Tennis Academy, the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery Facility, and to the Quebecois Separatist Group; a collection of barely credible characters, including wheelchair assassins, who are searching for their own weapon of mass destruction, the film “Infinite Jest;” so captivating a movie to watch that the viewer becomes so engrossed in it that his will to live abandons him.  The movie totally takes hold of (vaporizes) the mind to the point that the viewer neglects all physical needs, including the need to eat and sleep.  Death eventually ensues; a numbing mind-rot in front of a television.  Each of the aforementioned worlds has its levels of mutual assistance, diplomacy, distrust, deceit and hostility that are simulated in the game (or final judgement) of Eschaton.  I will be addressing a number of books and movies that most of us and I believe David Foster Wallace as well was familiar with, that perhaps might have led to his creation of the game.

Freedictionary.com defines Eschaton as the end of time following Armageddon when God will decree the fates of all individual humans according to the good and evil of their earthly lives.”  In order to arrive at this point in time, we must look to divine inspiration, or mankind must acquire technology destructive enough to invoke that day of reckoning upon itself.  When the Manhattan Project Scientists tapped the power of the atom, they lit the path that has led to a point in history where we now have that ability.  One can’t help but note the irony in the fact that the Eschaton game at the Enfield Academy is scheduled for “Interdependence Day.”

Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocked the psyches of not only David Foster Wallace’s parent’s generation, but have left their scars on succeeding generations as well.  Young David’s TV viewing, according to D. T. Max in his biography of Wallace, was “intense and extensive enough to worry his parents,”  and in later years DFW would reflect that television was a major influence in his childhood, “the key factor in this schizophrenic experience that I had growing up.”

David was born the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so he would have been spared the potential trauma of those tense days, but one only has to run through the litany of nuclear destruction themes addressed in the movies and literature that he would have been likely to view to understand how these fears could imbed themselves in the author’s mind.  A young boy would have certainly been fascinated with reruns of Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone.”   Wallace once stated that he enjoyed Serling’s later offerings in “Night Gallery.”  A number of Serling’s plots were crafted out of fear of nuclear war.  As Wallace grew older and immersed himself in contemporary culture, it is safe to guess that he watched Stanley Kubrick’s satire, “Dr. Strangelove.”  The “Planet of the Apes” movies as well as Mel Gibson’s “Mad Max” productions were both premised in the chaos and devastation left after a nuclear holocaust.  Novels such as “Fail-Safe,” “A Canticle for Liebowitz.”  Even “Dune” with its use of “Family Atomics” and a harsh forbidding habitat that compared to a post nuclear war world could be considered part of the genre.  Then there were (and still are in a number of old buildings) fall-out shelters constructed during the height of the nuclear war scare.  One thinks of Henry Bemis, the book-loving bank teller in a Twilight Zone episode, who takes refuge in a bank vault to hide and read and becomes the only survivor when the bomb hits.  For a time Civil Defense authorities (does anyone remember the “Civil Defense’ squads?) were urging that families build fall-out shelters in their basements as well.  You might emerge into a shattered world only to starve to death, but at least you’ve survived.  David Foster Wallace, as we all did, absorbed much of the fear and paranoia predicated by fear of the Bomb.  The image of nuclear devastation even appears in a metaphor about suicide, which he refers to as removing oneself from the map.

There is a body of thought, which D. T. Max addresses in a footnote on page 317 in his biography of Wallace, that mentions that David contacted the novelist Don Delillo to discuss with him his concerns that Delillo might think that he’d taken the idea for Eschaton from Don’s novel  “End Zone,”  due to some similarity with Delillo’s work.  Delillo graciously responded that he didn’t view his novel as being Wallace’s source.  Personally, I don’t think it was either.  There were so many movies and games out there that Wallace could have run into and used as a springboard for his own creation.  The most obvious one would be the movie “Wargames,” which starred Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman and Ally Sheedy.  This movie came out when David was twenty one years old.  The plot revolves around a young computer nerd by the name of “David,” who is looking to hack into games to play on his computer and inadvertently connects to a computer in NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain facility.  David, who thinks he’s found such a game, engages in a computer simulation of “Global Thermonuclear War” against a computer, Joshua, that had been programmed to run the nuclear weapons control system by  military men who in their infinite wisdom, entrusted a computer to take charge because they feared that a flesh and blood human being might be too squeamish to make the murderous decisions that could lead to victory in a nuclear exchange.  “David” (Mathew Broderick) chooses to play the USSR, and all hell breaks loose.  Eventually, David realizes that he’s activated a real computer.  He gets hold of the computer’s original programmer, and together they come up with a scheme to teach the computer tic-tac-toe.  With two competent players these games will end in draws.  The computer, as it has been programmed to do, adapts and changes its strategy to no avail.  Having accustomed the computer to recognizing the futility of “no win” situations, they then let the computer run through its list of nuclear war scenarios.  The computer can come up with no winning strategy in this competition either, finally reaching the conclusion that “the only winning move is not to play.”

In 1965 Flying Buffalo Games published their “Nuclear War” card game.  This game, another one that often “nobody wins,” soon became a popular offering at game conventions and could be seen being played on many college campuses.  The object is to be the last leader with any population left.  Often the country you’ve just nuked into oblivion will return the favor with their final strike.  The game is done tongue in cheek, with a spinner dictating results once a missile is launched.  A dud can ruin your day.  There are cards portraying peaceniks that can thwart one missile launch, or the dreaded “Supergerm,” which can devastate a population center.  This game has continued to evolve (or devolve, depending on your mind set) for over 50 years, and is still popular.  For countries on the brink of annihilation there’s always the hope that you’ll hit an opponent’s nuclear stockpile with a hundred megaton payload.  This triggers a chain reaction that will destroy the planet, and usually a round of the players singing Tom Lehrer’s “We’ll All Go Together When We Go.”   No winner.  But great satisfaction to those who would have lost anyway.

Other games in this genre include Yaquinto’s  “Ultimatum” and Game World’s “Apocalypse: the Game of Nuclear Devastation,”  not to mention post –nuclear holocaust scenarios too numerous to mention.  Wallace could have taken inspiration for Eschaton from a book, movie or game.  David Foster Wallace fans have taken his creation and have carried it further as well.  In his on-line article, “Eschaton: the World’s Most Popular Game?”  Scott Rosenfield writes about Keith Pille, an avid fan of the author’s works, has simplified the rules into something he calls “Eschaton Lite,” and has posted the rulebook on his website (http://nowhereband.org).  The game hasn’t developed much of a following yet, but perhaps its day will come.  My suggestion that DFW may have encountered such games is supported by a flyer put together by  J.T.Jackson, a longtime-friend of the author, who mentions in the flyer that he and Wallace attended the World Fantasy Convention in Tucson in 1985.  He could have seen some of the games mentioned above being played there.

So, why does Eschaton occupy some twenty pages in “Infinite Jest,” not to mention the fall-out from the debacle that the game turned into that is chronicled later in the novel? 

Most of us spend much of our lives learning to interact in, get by in, and ideally, flourish and grow in work, school or community factions as unique as the groups of people thrown together in the tennis academy, the recovery house or the cabal of Quebecoise separatists, the parallel worlds that intersect with each other in the narrative of “Infinite Jest.”  Like countries or regions do, individuals thrown together because they share a particular talent, character defect or goal distrust , envy, befriend or begin to harbor out-and –out antipathy toward each other.  Like alliances formed in the play of Eschaton, being part of any group of individuals necessitates taking stock of one’s own standing in it; assessing whom to befriend (ally with) and recognizing those who are a threat to your standing in the group either by their having the talent to outshine you, envy of your talent or a personal antipathy toward you, or even sociopathic tendencies that could lead to them doing you harm.  As early as kindergarten we divide into cliques and begin to learn how to assess, evaluate and interact with each other.  We learn life diplomacy.

It is no accident that at the Enfield Tennis Academy the Eschaton participants that represent political factions are made up of the younger  members of the academy; twelve to fourteen year old teens.  One immediately thinks of the real life parallel; youth being sent to war while the elders who have goaded them into it write the rules that determine the strategy and set the game in motion.  So it is with life in Enfield.  Students there are brought together because they share the common goal of honing their tennis skills to the point where they can compete and win at the professional level.  They learn to assess each other’s skills and how to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses if they have any.

 John Wayne is conceded to be the best player in the academy.  As such he’s cut a lot of slack and granted favors that include sexual access to Avril Incandenza.  His pressure comes from his father, who suffers from a serious work-related illness, and is anxious to see his son graduate into the big money of professional tennis to lift some of the financial burden from him.  Hal Incandenza would be perhaps the best player in the academy if Wayne were not there.  Finding personal relationships difficult, he has learned to cope by slipping into the tunnels beneath the academy to lose himself in a haze of marijuana smoke.  As the novel progresses, Hal isolates himself more and more from his family and his friends in the academy, almost becoming like Melville’s Bartleby in his efforts to distance himself from others, ending in a spectacular failure to express himself that one tends to lose track of since it occurs at the beginning of the novel, that’s reminiscent of yet another one of Melville’s characters…Billy Budd.  Perhaps his best friend at Enfield, other than his brother Mario, is Michael Pemulis.  Pemulis is vulnerable because of his drug dealing, he’s sensitive about his working class background, and he’s coming to grips with the realization, much to his chagrin, that his tennis game isn’t good enough to take him to the professional level.  Like the old men that Bob Dylan sings about in “Masters of War,” Pemulis has come up with the concept of the game of Eschaton, has crafted the rules for it, and is the final arbiter when it comes to rule interpretations.  Pemulis constructed the game in order to highlight his tennis game’s best feature; an ability to serve precise lobs just as cynically as diplomats push policies that enable the implementation of their country’s strengths and takes this same cynical approach to his drug dealing.  His sales have created a need for clean urine samples, so in the classic entrepreneurial spirit, he makes them available as well.  Having created the need, he offers the solution.  That’s marketing savvy.  Then there’s the story of Eric Clipperton, who aspires to a number one junior ranking despite not having the talent to propel himself to that point.  He plays the guilt/sympathy card before every match by bringing a gun with him and making it shockingly clear that he will do away with himself if he loses.  Finally achieving the top ranking that he so aspired to, he did kill himself.  He had achieved his goal and perhaps didn’t know how to proceed from that point. 

In the refuge of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery facility, those unfortunates who have glutted their appetites on pleasure or escape substances to the point where they can no longer function is society.  ( one immediately calls to mind the ultimate pleasure fix…the movie, Infinite Jest) gather to attempt to de-toxify in order to work towards rehabilitation.  Pat Montesian, the counselor, serves as the arbiter who determines which of these flawed souls have made enough progress to accept greater responsibilities.  Dan Gately, a muscular man who once aspired to play professional football (again, Wallace’s nod toward entertainment) is making progress, thanks to a group of elderly recovering alcoholics (the Crocodiles) who are there to offer him support.  Dan is fascinated with Joelle, a disfigured young woman who is referred to Ennet House after a failed suicide attempt.  Formerly the “Prettiest Girl of All Time,” or “P-Goat”, as she was referred to by Hal Incandeza’s brother Orrin, who used to date her, she wears a veil to hide her acid-ravaged face.  She was “Madame Psychosis” in a late night radio program that Hal’s brother Mario enjoyed listening to.  I would imagine her to be something like the present radio persona of “Delilah,” whom you can turn into to hear pathetically lonely listeners call to discuss their problems with.  Other members of this cluster of recovering addicts are the sad case of Kate Gompert, who turned to drugs out of despair and revulsion  after witnessing her father molest her comatose sister;  Bruce Green, Geoffrey Day, Ruth Van Cleve and Randy Lenz, a despicable creature who gets his jollies from killing animals.  He’s a rogue state if there ever was one.  All are in various stages  of rehab, and with the exception of Lenz, aspiring toward clean and sober.  These disparate individuals coalesce into a fighting unit when a group of Canadians come storming onto the Ennet House grounds, hell-bent on taking revenge on Randy Lenz, who had killed a pet dog of theirs.  No matter what their individual problems, they came together as though they were citizens of a country that had just been invaded.

Then there’s the Quebecois Separatist group, Les Assassins des fauteuils,” another group working like a rogue state outside the norms of acceptable behavior.  Disgusted with the Organization of North American Nations, (yes, O.N.A.N.) and at the seemingly supine tendency of the Canadian government to accede to demands by their neighbor to the south, including the recent decision by the Canadian leaders to accept the gift of Maine (the state had been turned into a toxic waste dumping ground now rumored to harbor packs of ravenous feral hamsters as well as other terrifying bio-hazards) the “Assassins” are working to acquire the leverage that will help them to achieve their goal of Quebec independence.  The “Assassins” have tentacles that extend into many places.  They may have infiltrated the tennis academy.  It’s founder, James Incandeza, Hal’s father, directed the legendary movie “Infinite Jest,” which featured Joelle Van Dyne before her disfigurement.  This movie has such power that it will captivate a viewer to the point where he lives for nothing else than to watch the movie over and over again, rewinding it to review as quickly as possible.  Death comes as the body shuts down while the mind is held in thrall in a state of catatonic bliss.  This movie is eagerly sought by the group, which has visions of using it as blackmail against the United States to ensure that they pressure Canada to grant Quebec its independence.  It would have as devastating an effect as a nuclear strike…instead of radiation poisoning; the victims would perish of a surfeit of pleasure.   Their tentacles also reach into the Ennet House, where an operative (Maranthe) is sent to search for information about the movie’s location as well.  All is not single minded discipline and mission focus among the assassins, however.  They are opposed by a U.S. Government agency that is determined to discover the movie themselves and keep it out of the separatist  group’s hands, and they can’t be certain as to which of their agents can be totally trusted or which might be double-agents.

Yes, it’s a complicated plot.  Note that I’m barely touching upon the Incandenza family history, which included Hal discovering his father’s suicide, his head splattered in a microwave after he’d stuck it inside it and zapped himself to eternity. Don’t waste time pondering the physics of how to close the door with one’s head inside in order to turn the microwave on.  I did, and I can’t come up with an answer.    You wonder why Hal is messed up?  Society is as well.  Wallace pens a vision of a time where pursuit of pleasure and rampant consumerism has replaced patriotic fervor, a society that elects as its President, Johnny Gentle,  a former Vegas Lounge singer.  Picture Wayne Newton leading our Nation.  Or Donald Trump giving his inauguration speech wearing an Air filtration mask while promising us a tidier nation.  It’s a society where everything is peddled crassly.  Even Lady Liberty is called upon to pimp consumer goods.  The naming right for each upcoming  year is bid on by corporations.  The winning bid becomes the nomenclature for the year as well as the product that Lady Liberty holds in the crook of her arm for the length of that anointed time span.  The Year of the Whopper becomes the Year of the Glad which becomes the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.  You get the sad, tacky picture.

Two and a half months after I committed to it, I finished Infinite Jest.  My wife asked me what I thought of it.  I told her that I consider my favorite novel, Moby Dick, to be a magnificent tale of rebellion against God.  Melville’s “wicked book,” as he referred to it in a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The feeling Infinite Jest leaves me with is that it’s a guttural cry of despair.  Most everyone is doomed to fail; fail to reach their goals of becoming a tennis pro, fail to come out of rehab cured, fail in their relationships, even fail in their pursuit of pleasure to dull the pain, finding it empty, or in the case of coming across a copy of James Incandenza’s movie, ending up consumed by it.  Personal relationships lead too often to betrayal, disappointment, or explode with devastating results.  A father’s love leads to a character being  disfigured by acid; a psycho kills a pet and war breaks out between “us” (the Ennet House) and “them, (the Canadians).  You’re scarred by a father’s assault on your sister, a father’s suicide  or a wife’s unfaithfulness. There’s no telling when events in one’s life will degenerate into chaos.  Hal Incandenza’s solution:  Flee to the tunnels.  Isolate yourself, numb yourself, refuse to participate.  In the end, what Hal tells the young boys given to his charge at the tennis academy is all too true, and so very disheartening.

  “We’re each deeply alone here.  It’s what we have in common.  This aloneness.”

 If I were to end this essay with a musical accompaniment, I would be playing the woeful refrain from “All Apologies,”   the song that Kurt Cobain wrote and performed with his band, Nirvana.  

            “All alone is all we are.”

David Foster Wallace would agree.

Springer Detail

Yeah, I was on the road again. The name "Vanderbilt" had come up on the detail roster. Unlike the usual  sentencing to Turkey Ridge, that hemorrhoid on the ass of the universe, I'd actually been sent to a decent location.  Not that many postings were decent in Western Illinois.  Certainly the town wasn't.  Dutchman's Knoll was a little town of less than a thousand people.  It had a couple bars though, and a grocery store, and a clean little motel, so it was livable for a week.   What made this posting desirable was the fact that I was going to be working in an egg plant.

Egg Inspection is a gravy job.  it's usually a one inspector plant, so you don't have office politics or the one or two intolerable co-workers that any office has to contend with.  You don't have a supervisor either.  It's easy work too.  You go out a few times during the day and monitor the process, observe the company's inspectors to make certain that they're doing a good job, check some gauges, cooler temperatures, and occasionally put a USDA seal on a truck.  Most of the day one can spend in the tiny USDA Office, watching television, reading or occasionally, sneaking a nap in.  There's an opportunity for a good chunk of overtime too, since most egg plants run ten to twelve hours a day and law mandates that a USDA inspector be on premises during hours of operation.

It  was Thursday afternoon, and I was waiting for my replacement, who would arrive at 3:30.  The sole window in the Government office faced the parking lot, so Lloyd would be easy to spot as he pulled in.  I was already dressed in his street clothes and looking forward to a couple beers after my shift was done.   It had been a productive week.  I had read an interesting  biography of Daniel Boone. Jennifer Dubois' A Brief History of Lost Causes, and had just about finished galloping through Sarah Vowell's enjoyable Assassination Vacation. I enjoyed the luxury of leisurely watching Sports Center in the morning and having the time to turn on the Jerry Springer show to watch less than stellar representatives of redneck America air their dirty laundry.

As I sat looking out the window waiting for Lloyd's black SUV to arrive, a battered tan Ford Taurus careened into the parking lot and pulled to a stop just inches from the office window.  I had sprang from my chair and stepped back, fearing at first that the car would hit the building.  Out of the car lunged an obese young woman with  wiry uncombed blonde hair and a look on her face that clearly said that "someone is going to die."  She pulled open the front door of the plant, and shoving her way past the plant Manager, who had risen from his desk to greet the visitor,  she strode up to one of the gals who had just arrived to work the second shift, another obese honey, about 5'2'' and pushing 250 lbs. 

"Stay away from my husband, you goddamned slut," she bellowed, "or I'll rip your crappy dye-job hair right off your scalp, you fuckin  skank."

"Then tell your whore-dog of a husband to quit calling me, you stupid cow," she snarled back.

The two of them glared at each other for a few moments, like WWE wrestlers strutting their machismo before the bell rings, but then the aggrieved party backed off, another thought forming in her agitated mind.

She ran up the stairs and began pounding on the door of the transfer room, where eggs cartons are stacked on to pallets in preparation to being shipped to grocery warehouses.  That's where her philandering husband worked.

By this time the plant manager realized that he had a problem to address.  He grabbed the woman by a shoulder, turned her toward him and said, in a voice that he was striving to but noticeably failing to keep calm.

"If you don't leave the premises immediately, I'm going to call the police."

She stepped back and glared at him for a few moments, her right leg back and taut as though she was considering kicking him.  The word "Police" though, had evidently permeated her consciousness.  She snarled "Fuck You!" and turned and flounced out the door.

I saw Lloyd coming in, so I grabbed my book and jacket, exited the office, and moved toward the front door to leave.  Behind me were some of the plant's employees who had finished their shift as well.   One of them must have been her husband, because next view I had was of the pissed off wife coming at me looking like an NFL lineman wanting to take off my head.  Yeah, I admit it.  I panicked.  I whipped out my government badge as though it were a cross held up to ward off the fury of a vampire, and said,

"I'm USDA.  If you touch me you'll go to jail forever."  Looking back on it, it comes across as a pretty stupid and cowardly thing to say, but it actually worked.  She backed off, but crouched in an attack mode looking like a tiger waiting to pounce on its prey.

The prey was her husband.  As I passed her and headed to my car, he came out.  She gave out a banshee yell and launched a ferocious assault upon him, her fists balled and her arms flailing.  This guy was close to six feet tall, and weighed about 160 lbs, but the ferocity of her attack had knocked him down.  For a time had all he could do to fend her off as she did her best to wallop the cheating devil out of him. 

By this time all of the first shift employees who hadn't left yet, and a good share of the second had stepped outside to enjoy the show.  Her husband eventually fought his way back to his feet, then hit her one...two...three times in the face as hard as he could.  Shaking off his punches, like a boxer used to absorbing punishment, turned, ran toward her car, got in and locked the door.  She had outmaneuvered him, and he was not at all happy about it.

"Let me in, you fucking bitch," he yelled, pounding on the door.  "Let me in.  NOW!"

I know it probably wasn't the most professional thing to do, but there are times when professionalism is overrated.  This was one of those times.  The scene was so reminiscent of one of Springer's productions.    I couldn't resist.  I tossed any pretense of  professionalism out the window and began to loudly chant "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!"

A number of the plant employees immediately joined in on the  raucous "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!"refrain as well.  Yeah, I'd nailed it.

His old lady listened to him bellow as he pulled futilely on the door handle for awhile, then finally stepped on the gas, fishtailed away, and sped out of the driveway and down the road, leaving her husband standing in the parking lot.  Frustrated, he shot me and his chanting co-workers a furious look, then ran to his car to take off after her, leaving a laughing and cheering parking lot behind him.

I heard the following morning that his old lady was waiting for him with a baseball bat when he got home.  He must have been able to wrest it away from her though, because he was at work the next morning.  He must have not used it on her, because she wasn't in jail.  Who knows.  Maybe they each realized what a prize they have in each other, and reconciled.  For a while, anyway.

At any rate, just a couple days before I had been telling Lloyd what a boring job he had.  Not anymore.  Not in Dutchman's Knoll at least.  Not here in Springerville.

No Corporation Left Behind

     It was morning break and the Boy had brought in the local newspaper.  Like most rural newspapers it did little justice to world or national news.  This one was so countrified that it still had elderly women correspondents who published weekly filler pieces like News from Johnson’s Crossroads, Goings on in Gossamer Springs, or Tales from Titmouse Prairie, all little communities that once were self-sufficient enough to boast a church, a few businesses and a school.  Consolidation has closed the country schools though, Sprawl-Mart has suffocated the businesses, and church attendance is dwindling as the elderly parishoners who took pride in their ties to their little country church take permanent residences in the cemeteries behind  them.  No one has the heart to tell the blue-hairs that their contributions aren’t needed anymore, so every week one still gets to read about who had coffee with whom, who had out of town company, and whose granddaughter managed to graduate from high school, college, or a cosmetology program.  The people referenced in these columns were always white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.   The elderly correspondents wanted nothing to do with and were somewhat frightened by the immigrants that Canterbury Meats had brought into the community.  The people who still subscribed to the local newspaper did so out of habit, or to access the obituaries or Matter of Record.  After a weekend, the Matter of Record was usually perused with avid eagerness by Canterbury Meat employees, as more than likely it would be discovered that one or more of the hard–working/hard-partying packing house wage slaves had had a Saturday night run in with the law. 

     The Boy, who had brought in the pathetic excuse for a paper, looked up at Vanderbilt and said, “I see that the locals have voted down a tax increase for the schools again.” 

     Vanderbilt snorted dismissively, and said “what the fuck did you expect”

     “I’d expect the locals to support a good education for their kids, at least,” he said.  We had no trouble passing one in Lutefisk Hollow.”

     “This isn’t Lutefisk Hollow.  This is a packing house town.”

     “So what,” the boy countered.  “Packing house employees have kids too.”

     Vanderbilt stood up, waved his arm toward the town, and said "that’s the point.  Take a look over there.  It’s an old town.  A town of retirees.  A town of I never got any, or I got mine, fuck you.  Your village passes tax increases for schools, because they are passing them for their kids or grandkids.  You’re from a farm community, where people have put down roots for generations, and farm profits have been able to purchase good education for those who know they’ll have an opportunity to pursue their promise beyond high school.  You come from a school district that has had to deal with little change demographically.  Do you think Lutefisk Hollow would be as apt to vote for better schools for Nigerian, Chin or Mexican children?  I doubt it."  

    “So,” the boy challenged him.  “You’re saying that you live in a community of racists then, and that’s why they voted the school funding down.”

     “That’s part of it,” Vanderbilt admitted.  You’ve got the same assholes who posted shit like Jesus Christ carrying an overnight bag above a caption that said “Christ is Welcome in the White House Again,” after Obama’s two terms were done.  Those kind of people wouldn’t vote anything for a child of color other than for the right to be born, then suffer.  You know what I mean.  Pro-lifers until the colored kids are born.  Then to hell with them.  Yeah, we have some of those. “

     “I guess where I’m going with this,” Vanderbilt mused, trying to muster his thoughts in a way to send them marching out in a formation that could be readily understood, "is that there’s a lot of people in this community that feel threatened by the influx of foreigners that Canterbury is bringing in to work at the plant.  They believe that these kids are taking jobs away from their kids or grandkids.  They won’t accept the fact that maybe their blood is too lazy to take a job there or maybe they can’t pass the drug test.  Someone owes their kids a living.  Canterbury’s the biggest game in town.  Why shouldn’t it be Canterbury?   And if Canterbury isn’t giving it to them, it must be the damn foreigners fault for coming over here to take their place.”

     “That’s all they see,”  Vanderbilt continued.  “They don’t see Canterbury Corporate sending emissaries all over the world to reach into areas devastated by turmoil and poverty in order to recruit wage slaves to work in the golden streets of the U. S. of A.  They don’t care that they bring in these kids to keep union sentiment at bay and to beat the wages down.  They just see “niggers” or “spics” or “gooks” as they call them, working where their kids ought to be.  They’re angry.  They can’t take on Canterbury, so they’ll get their licks in when they can.  I’ve heard them….."

     “Why should my taxes be increased to educate packing house family kids?’  

     "That’s a polite wording of it.  It’s usually filled with a smattering of racial slurs as well.  They’d vote for education for their own kids, but they won’t for the immigrants.  And admittedly, it’s not all motivated by hate.  There are a lot of elderly long-time residents of this town, who dislike the changes it’s brought to the community, who feel threatened by diversity, change, or people whose ways are different than theirs.  These are good people who can change, but fear to, and have a tendency to vote against it.  I’ve heard some of them saying, for instance, "if the packing houses bring all their workers' kids here, can’t they help pay toward educating them?”  What they don't realize, is that the kids who come here from overseas to work are good kids; the best of the lot.  They're willing to vote with their feet to move to a strange new country in order to improve their lot.  They're the ambitious ones.  The ones they leave behind are like the kids here who choose to remain in Johnson's Crossroad or Gossamer Springs because they fear to leave their families and home, then whine because there's no opportunities for them."

     Vanderbilt took a breath, then reached for a bottle of water.  The Boy took the opportunity to wrest the conversation from him.  

     “Have the company contribute toward funding the schools.   That’s actually a pretty good idea.  If they bring these people in, they should be helping the schools out financially”

     “Yeah.  Like that’s going to happen.  This corporation is just like 99% of their cohorts.  It’s just take, take, take.  Look at what the city spends on infrastructure to keep this place running.  Look at the burdens on social services.  Look at the burdens placed on the schools.  You’ve got kids being dropped on them that don’t speak a word of English.  You need translators for Chin, Spanish, Swahili, French and who knows what else.  In the cash-strapped school systems we have now, the money for that kind of help only can come from cutting other programs.  When little Susie’s art classes or Johnnie’s music programs are being cut to buy special help for the foreign kids who arrive unprepared, their parents get the blame.  Not the corporation that brings them in.  And corporate loves it.”

     “How can you say that,” the Boy wondered. 

     “Simple,”  Vanderbilt said with a sigh, as though discouraged at the prospect of having to explain his reasoning.  “if the community is scapegoating the immigrants, nobody’s subjecting them to any sort of scrutiny.  It’s the immigrants who are ruining the community.  Not the corporation that’s sticking it to it.  Canterbury had record profits last year.  Certainly they could afford to help out the community some.  Instead, they ask for tax abatements, tax free loans, improvements in the infrastructure, anything they can get.  And they don’t give a damn thing back.  God forbid their CEO doesn’t make his millions a year, the higher-ups cut back on their bonuses a bit, or their stockholders give up a little for the good of the community.  Like the Second Coming…it’s just not gonna happen.  Hell, these people probably wouldn’t pay health care for their employees if they weren’t under federal obligation to.

    “Rely on you to work your atheism in,” the Boy laughed.  “So, alright.  What’s the solution?  You’re so full of talk.  What do you suggest we do about it?”

     “I’d love to see corporations that import labor assume some of the expense that the community now incurs.  And of course I’d like to see the employees unionize, to be able to take on corporate in a battle for fair wages, benefits and treatment without fear of reprisal.  I’d like to see a work environment where the races aren’t being played against each other.  No more of the “you Mexicans aren’t worth a shit.  The Chin are working circles around you.”  Stuff like that.  They must learn that in Foreman 101, along with classic lines such as “we might be running a couple trucks short today.  If you work hard, you might get done early.”  But none of this will ever happen, of course.  Corporations own the legislators that write the labor laws,  that write the bargaining agreements and that regulate the industries.  Our elected officials don’t care about the public schools.  They send their kids to private ones.  They’re paid handsomely by lobbyists to make certain that no corporation is left behind.”

    “Then, what you’re saying, is that the schools are fucked then,” the Boy sighed.

     ”Yeah, probably.  At least here.  In a packing house town.

     And we’re fucked too.”

    “Yeah, probably.  At least here.   In a packing house town.

  

 

 

 

Food Science a Standout Course for Former Poet Laureate

FOOD SCIENCE A STANDOUT COURSE FOR FORMER POET LAUREATE

By Rich Hanson

     In June I went to Knox College in Galesburg Illinois to attend their graduation ceremonies.  The impetus was an opportunity to hear the Nation’s 19^th Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey, give the commencement address.  I’ve admired Ms. Trethewey’s work since reading her Native Guard, a book of poetry that tells the story of the Louisiana State Guards, an all-black Union regiment that was made up mostly of former slaves.  Ironically, they were given the assignment of guarding Confederate prisoners of war.  This book, Ms. Trethewey’s third, earned her critical acclaim and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.  In 2012 she was chosen as the Poet Laureate of the United States.  She is also Mississippi’s Poet Laureate.  In choosing her to represent the Nation as its poet, James Billington, the Librarian of Congress said that “he was immediately struck by a kind of classic quality with a richness and variety of structures with which she presents her poetry…she intermixes her story with the historical story in a way that takes you deep into the human tragedy of it.”

     Her life is tied to history in so many ways, from the fact that she was born on Confederate Memorial Day, to the fact that her parents were married illegally at the time of her birth (the state laws that forbade such marriages weren’t struck down until a year after her birth,) to the fact that the War in Viet-Nam left her mother’s second husband a deeply troubled man, whose war-induced post-traumatic stress issues eventually caused him to snap and kill her mother while young Natasha had just entered her freshman year in college.  Ms. Tretheway said that that incident was the impetus that turned her to poetry, as she attempted to analyze and understand the emotions and underlying causes that led to such a horrible event.

     She envied her classmates who entered college certain of what their career path would be.  She was still searching, and although she chose to major in English, she sampled a number of courses in other areas.  One of two courses that she credited as standing out in her memory was a history course, in which the instructor took each student’s hometown, and by recounting events that happened in it, tied them to history by making them aware of how much history had helped to mold and shape them into the individuals that they are now.  Her choice of that course wasn’t surprising given the way she weaves history into her work.  The second course that she mentioned during her address at Knox was….

     “The other course was a food science course I took in my senior year.  It was only a two credit course, but it was one of the most memorable of my college experience.  We studied everything from the FDA and the USDA guidelines about the various grades of meat, food processing, labelling and safety, to food-borne illnesses.  In one assignment, in order to learn how to recognize which bacteria had caused a particular illness, we had to solve cases in which we were like detectives, following the clues as a sleuth does in a mystery novel.

     Until then I had not known how much I could be drawn to a kind of scientific research, to investigation, to puzzling out using primary evidence the answer to some practical question affecting our lives.  Nor did I realize there were connections between a course like this one and my shock and disgust and pleasure upon reading in high school Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle, that details some of the early horrors of the meat packing industry in Chicago and the regulations that it spurred.  Nor could I see that taken altogether, these courses and my English major were preparing me for the moment that I’d recognize what it was that I had been meant to do, that it involved literature, not only reading it, but writing it and that the writing of it would involve an engagement with history, society, and culture, a curiosity that fostered a desire to do research, to go beyond disciplinary boundaries, to make my way in the world, not just in spite of certain setbacks, but building upon them.  These lessons that hardships and limitations, no matter what they are, can teach us.”

     What can history teach us?  It would not be right to end an article about Natasha Trethewey without getting a chance to hear how she crafts her life, history and culture into a poem.  Let’s finish with her reflection on Southern History.

Southern History

Before the war they were happy, he said,

Quoting our textbook (This was Senior-year

History class.) The slaves were clothed, fed

And better off under a master’s care. 

I watched the words blur on the page.  No one

raised a hand, disagreed.  Not even me.

It was late; we still had Reconstruction

To cover before the test, and –luckily –

Three hours of watching Gone with the Wind.

History, the teacher said, of the old South –

A true account of how things were back then.

On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth,

Bucked eyes, our textbook’s grinning proof – a lie

My teacher guarded.  Silent, so did I.

     Ms Trethewey was kind enough to autograph three of her books for me and to thank me for coming to hear her commencement speech.  She’s a gifted writer and a gracious and inspiring individual.  She will be coming to Knox College to give a reading this coming April.  I will be there.  I urge any of you who have an opportunity to hear her read at a venue near you to take advantage of the opportunity.  You won’t be disappointed.

 

A Eulogy for My Mother

Vera Itana (Phillips) Anderson Hanson   1930 to 2014

     The poet William Wordsworth, wrote that "the child is father to the man."  One might just as easily say 'mother to the woman."  Few of you know of the heartache of my mother's early years; the longing for love and stability that shaped her psyche.  To have been handed over to foster care by a mother who was not yet ready to accept maternal responsibility, to anticipate the joy of an eagerly-awaited visit from her mother, knowing that it would be followed by the knife-wrenching hurt of her leaving again; these are emotional trade-offs that no youngster should have to endure.  I can imagine young Vera waving goodbye to her mother as she drives away yet again.  She had to begin to wonder if she had done something terribly wrong, or if there was some fundamental flaws in her character that everyone but her seemed to be aware of.  That's how Vera lived the first eight years of her life; on the tether hooks of uncertainty and abandonment before her mother married a second time, and Reynold Anderson was kind enough to adopt her, and treat her as his own.

     Vera had been given a family, and soon a brother (Aaron) and a sister (Rosemary).  Vera's resentment though at being shuttled through foster homes was a hurt that festered throughout her life.  It was a topic that she reflected bitterly upon during my last visit with her.  I can't help but wonder if she assumed I was going to be speaking at her funeral and wanted me to remember and chronicle this formative time of her life.  I have.  Now let's set the resentment aside.  Let's look at the young woman who loved music; whose passion for it even led her to attend music college for a year.  Then she met Swede and married him, despite her mother's opposition, who at this time of her life didn't want to give her up, the talented daughter who had even cut a demo recording of "The Indian Love Call."  My aunt recalls how Swede used to laugh and tease Vera when he heard the operatic warbling being played by her proud mother.  When Vera married she set her dreams of a singing career aside, but never her love of music.  She joined a local chapter of the Eastern Star, and for years served as their organist.  She did her best to pass her love of music on to her children as well, and succeeded to a great extent, despite my aversion to the discipline of piano lessons or her reluctance to recognize Bob Dylan's efforts as "music."

     My mother strove to give us the good home that she so wanted as a child.  The security of place and the bond of family was so important to her, as was coloring within the lines, adhering to a familiar routine and following the rules.  A foster child didn't dare to display a streak of rebellion.  Our family vacations took us regularly to Shallow Lake.  I often wondered, with some frustration, why with so many other parks and campgrounds to explore, my parents seemed so drawn to this one.  I believe now that it was the family aspect of the cabins up near Warba that my mother loved.  Not so much the destination as the people who would be there; Bill and Mabel, Jack and Shirley and the rest of the Rakowsky clan.  There was gossip, relaxation, convivial imbibing, and the friendly competition of the marathon 31 competition.  Perhaps my mother's love of casino gambling can be traced back to the Shallow Lake card games.

     My mother was taught to work hard by both Rey and Gen.  I cling to my own mental images of her bulldozing through her chores, be they vacuuming, mowing the lawn, picking berries, canning or cooking, attacking them with energy and resolve.  My wife Nancy would often marvel that "I've never seen anyone work like your mother."  And how she did!  I believe that both my parents instilled a solid work ethic in their children.  They were capable of sacrifice as well.  My premature birth caught my father, a construction worker, at the end of a long winter with no work and no insurance.  My six weeks in the hospital before I was released to accompany them home ran up a tremendous debt, yet they worked and paid it off.  Their first house, on Lindahl Road, later their two car garage, lacked indoor plumbing.  I vaguely remember the outhouse year and going to bathe with my father at the communal showers at The Cabins, and my mother stepping out of the house clanging two pans together to scare a bear away from the garbage cans outside the door.  I can still hear her yelling "Get out of here you son of a bitch!"  Despite such rustic beginnings, my parents persevered and soon had the home of their dreams on the hill just beyond the garage.

     My parents aged well, neither getting sick until late in their lives.  They were able to afford to travel together, accumulating a wealth of shared experiences that they both enjoyed remembering.  Their sixty four year marriage grew stronger and more stable over the years as well, becoming a mighty oak that we all could take refuge under.  As the years progressed and the kids left home, they lavished their love on their pets.  Swede and Vera always had their cat.  I remember when they went to the animal shelter to bring home their last cat.  Samatha picked them out, getting their attention by swatting a ball out of her cage at them.  My parents were so moved by the hopeless plight of the animals awaiting adoption, and the futility of finding them all homes, that they both agreed that they would ever go back there again.  It was just too heartbreaking.  The last day I had the chance to visit with my mother, she talked of her readiness to go through rehab in the hope of getting strong enough to return home to Sam, the beautiful long haired friend that she pampered by brushing, then giving her a bath every day with a spray bottle of coconut oil and water.  There's no better life for a pet than to be a Hanson house cat.

     Vera's gone.  But she's left a treasure trove of memories and a legacy of love, hard work and accomplishment behind her.  Those of you who know me well know that I parted ways with the church a long time ago.  I can remember how angry my mother got at me when she noticed that I'd replaced the picture of Jesus that hung in my room with Lord Byron.  Still, there's a part of me that would like to believe, that would hope that Swede and Vera's spirits have re-united in some wonderful way that we haven't the understanding to comprehend, or that the good people that they were in  this life has accumulated them enough Karma credit to aspire to a better life in their next go round with existence.

     The truest affirmation of whether a life has been lived well, is that you will be missed by those you've left behind when you leave it.  Vera (and Swede), my mother and father, you both are, and definitely will be as long as you dwell in the memories of your family and friends.

    

    

    

    

    

Cassie Cream Cheese and the Birthday Poem

 It was unusual to see Brenda coming into the USDA Office.  She usually spent her break in the lunchroom with her good friends Margot and Cassie.  All three of them were good looking women.  Much to the regret of the male population in the slaughter plant, all three of them were happily married.  This avowal on their part was punctuated by rueful stories told by self-styled Casanovas in the plant who’d put the moves on one, sometimes both, and in Wilbur the Weasel’s case all three women only to be shot down in ways ranging from an almost apologetic  (“You’re a nice guy, but I’m already married to a nice guy of my own” ) turn down of an earnest “new hire” who had obviously made the mistake of not asking somebody first about Cassie’s marital status before he made his move, to the scathing insult (“Fuck off, asshole.  Every woman with any more than shit for brains in this town knows that you’re a selfish, conceited dickwad”) that Cassie had hurled at The Weasel when he made his move on her.   In defense of the new hire, it is always hard to gauge the marital status of anyone who works on a production line, since no jewelry is allowed to be worn, both for safety and cleanliness reasons.  Wilbur the Weasel though, had been the “gentleman” responsible for lavishing Cassie with her “Cream Cheese” nickname.  Before start up one morning he was sitting with some of his fellow degenerates in the lunch room when Cassie walked in.  He gave her the piercing laser stare that he was so infamous for, a leering look that was almost a physical violation in itself, then looked at the bagel that he held in his hand, then back at her.

     “Man. I’d like to be licking the cream cheese off of that bagel instead of this one,” he suggested crudely, motioning toward Cassie as he licked his lips with his tongue.

     The nickname stuck.  Cassie had been curious enough to inquire as to its origins.  No doubt that led to her contemptuous dismissal of the Weasel when he decided to make his move on her.  Or maybe she’d just heard the stories.  After all, the guy was notorious for being a world-class pig.

    "Where's Vanderbilt?"  Brenda asked.  This was an odd request as well.  Vanderbilt would often take his lunch and a book into the locker room, where he could read undisturbed.  In the cacophony of a packing house, Vanderbilt was very possessive of and quite desirous of quiet time.  Often it was just longed for time to relax with a book that he’d been longing to read.  Sort of like the nearsighted guy on The Twilight Zone, Mr. Stanley Bemis,  who would secret himself in the bank vault during lunch to spend time with a favorite author.  This was one of those times.  Vanderbilt was believed to be happily married as well and had no reputation as a "whore-dog."  So, what was up?  What business did Brenda want with him of all people?

      "He's in the locker room.  Probably whacking off," the Boy, the youngest inspector in the Office, said contemptuously, more to see if he could elicit a reaction out of Brenda than out of any ill will towards Vanderbilt.  "Why don't you go in and see what he's up to," he suggested lewdly. 

      "Why don't you surprise everyone and act grown up for once," Brenda responded, putting the Boy firmly in his place.  Then she turned to the door to the locker room, knocked hard a couple of times and yelled "Hey Vanderbilt!  Come out here for a minute, will you?"

     About a minute later Vanderbilt came out of the locker room, still holding the book that he'd been reading, David Rhodes' "The Last Fair Deal Going Down."  He looked with puzzlement at the diminutive little brunette who was looking at him expectantly.  It was hard to step out of Rhode's bizarre alternative world back into reality.  Brenda stepped forward, put her arm around him in a friendly manner, and said sweetly, "I need a favor from you."

     "I'll oblige if I can," Vanderbilt responded.

     "We all know that you like to write," Brenda said. "I've seen your articles in the paper.  I can't say that I've read them, because the Civil War doesn't interest me, but I know that you've helped some people here at the plant with job applications and some other writing stuff.  What I need from you is a birthday poem."

     "Crap," Vanderbilt thought to himself.  "A god-damned sappy birthday poem.  Just what I want to do with my spare time."  That's what he thought to himself.  How he responded was a somewhat less negative and more non-committal, "For whom?"

     "Cassie," she said.  "It's her birthday tomorrow."

      "That doesn't give me much time," Vanderbilt muttered doubtful.  His unenthusiasm for the project must have been evident even to Brenda, as she put her arm around him and said in an entreating voice, "come on, Vanderbilt.  It's for Cassie.  We really want to do things up for her birthday."

      "Well, alright," Vanderbilt finally agreed.  "I'll see what I can whip up.  How long do you want it?"

       "That's up to you," Brenda said.  "Just one more thing though."  Vanderbilt thought it was funny that she was using Lieutenant Columbo's signature line, but noticed she was grinning wickedly.  He readied himself for some caustic or disparaging comment about his writing skills.

      "I want you to write a raunchy poem," Brenda said, grinning broadly now.  "I want it so raunchy that she'll turn every shade of red in the spectrum when I read it to her.  I mean, I want it crude.  I’m not just talking crude.  I’m talking disgustingly Hustler crude.  And I want her to have the starring role on it."

     "Christ, I can't do that!" Vanderbilt protested, panicked now by what he envisioned having gotten himself into.

      "Yes you can," the Boy interjected.  "You've got a warped enough mind."  He was joined in this chorus of affirmation by the other inspectors in the office, and urged on further by Brenda's very persuasive "Pllleeaseee, Vanderbilt."

      "Alright," he sighed.  "I'll do it.  But make sure that my name is kept out of this whole deal.  Understand?”  He looked at her sternly.  “I don't want to get my ass in a wringer or hauled in to get written up for sexual harassment, unprofessional conduct or anything like that."

     "Cassie will never know who wrote it," Brenda assured him.  "Now, be a good boy and start writing.  And use your imagination.  The more perverted the better.  I mean, Margot and me, we both want something really wicked."  She bestowed on him a flirtatious "thank you" smile, and then reminded him, "I'll be in to pick it up tomorrow morning," as she turned to leave the office.

      One thing about working as a line inspector in a packing plant; one has plenty of time for reflection.  One's mind becomes a kite.  As long as one can keep it somewhat tethered to the mundane and monotonous task of inspecting the hogs as they move by, looking for signs of contamination or pathology that merits being railed out for the USDA vet to look at, one can let one's mind take flight and soar far away from the stink of the plant.  When Vanderbilt returned to the line he let his thoughts turn to the task of writing Cassie's birthday poem and how he would go about it.  Yeah, he had fantasized about Cassie.  What guy on the Kill Floor hadn’t?  Still, sexual fantasies are best kept secreted in some hidden compartment in one’s mind, not laid out for an audience of Cassie and her friends to pass around and guffaw at.  Yeah, he’d have to make this poem so over the top and outlandish that it could never be construed as an insight into his innermost desires.

      It had to be a parody of some existing poem.  That was obvious.  It would make his assignment a lot easier if he could squeeze Cassie's birthday poem into an existing poem's structure, preferably one that might even ring a distant memory bell in the minds of some of the packing house workers who had encountered it in school.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow soon came to mind.

     “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.”  Yeah, that would be a fun one to parody.  Damn near everyone knows it.  Hmmm.   Let’s change the title to The Midnight Ride on Cassie Dear.  Yes.  That would work.  The foundation was laid.  Now it was time to make sure that Cassie was.  Soon it was break time and he began to write.  The words came quickly.

     Listen my pussies and you shall hear

     Of the midnight ride on Cassie dear,

     That cock-raising tale of a lusty young maid

     Whose sole ambition in life was to go out and get laid.

     Vanderbilt grinned to himself.  The poem was damn near writing itself.  Sure, the meter didn’t scan, but he was writing for a slaughter plant audience, not the North American Review.  Who’d notice if the lines scanned or not?

     It was early evening on a Saturday night

     When women look for sex and men long to fight.

     Cassie squeezed into her tightest jeans with a bellow.

     Now she was set to search out Mr. Long-fellow.

     Vanderbilt was on a roll now.  It was time to go back to the line, but he knew where he wanted to go with the next three verses.  This was beginning to be more fun than he’d ever imagined it would be.  He couldn’t wait to take the poem home and play with it some more.

     “Hey Bev,” Cassie said.  “You’re quite the horny chick.

     “Let’s both of us go out and find us some ‘dick’.”

     “I’d love to,” Bev sighed with a low throaty moan,

     “But I’ve got to stay home.  You’ll have to go it alone.”

     “But do me a favor, and please don’t forget.

     Let me know what kind of action you get.

     In your big bedroom window you’ve got room for a candle.

     Signal me as to what type of action you’ll handle.

     One candle if by pussy; light two if in mouth

     Light three if he enters you from the South,

     For we both know, Cassie, that you ain’t got much class

     Cause you like the feel of a bone in your ass.”

     “Maybe I’m going a bit overboard with this,” a part of Vanderbilt’s mind was cautioning him.  His libido had taken control by now though and he decided to throw any inhibitions that he had to the winds.  “What the hell, I’ll let Brenda decide whether or not she wants to use it.  If she doesn’t like it she can just wad it up into a paper ball and throw it away.  It’s not like I’m depriving the world of a literary masterpiece or anything like that.”  Having thrown that sop of rationale to his conscience, he continued with the raunchy birthday poem.

     Cassie parked herself in Danny’s and downed quite a few beer

     She kept getting more nervous as midnight drew near.

     She was waiting for Mr. Right, you all know whom I mean,

     That pile-driving cocksman known as “The Sex Machine.”

     Just then he came in and sauntered up to Cassie

     And said “I’ve got the means to rock your world, Lassie.”

     I’ve heard you’re the best, so blast my Scottish hide,

     I’m here to take you home for a midnight ride.”

     Ouch.  “Cassie” and “Lassie.”  The rhymes don’t come much more blatantly forced than that, Vanderbilt winced, ashamed of the couplet.  Again he consoled himself with the thought that he wasn’t creating anything lasting, anything to be proud of.  He was just attempting to comply with a request from a friend and was having a lot of fun doing it.

     Cassie led him home to her kinky bedroom where

     Hung whips, straps and a trapeze in the air.

      She slammed shut the bedroom door and fastened the lock.

     Licking her lips, she moaned “I’m ready for cock.”

     Bev took a look out her window to gaze at Cassie’s place

     And a look of penis envy soon occupied her face.

     Two candles were set in the window that Bev could see.

     She sighed and lustfully said “I wish it was me.”

     Then excitement enveloped her, her pussy was wet,

     So she ran outside, the neighbors’ attention to get.

     “The Sex Machine’s coming, the Sex Machine’s coming,” she cried.

     “He’s over at Cassie’s.  She’s giving him a ride!”

     Vanderbilt was astonished at how easy the poem was falling into place.  “Maybe I’ve missed my calling,” he mused wryly. “Maybe I should be writing parodies for Penthouse or maybe Larry Flynt can use a writer with some style.”  He was being facetious, of course, but he was also somewhat surprised at how much fun this little project had become.  He was home now, and would have the poem wrapped up within the next half hour.  He knew it would sound a bit sick to admit, but he was rather proud of it.

     In front of Cassie’s window her neighbors gathered in awe,

     Because now three candles in the window they saw.

     Soon there were six, then seven, then ten

    “Look!” the crowd gasped.  “They must be going at it again.”

     Eleven, thirteen, and finally fifteen.  No more.

     Anxiously the crowd murmured outside Cassie’s door.

     “Oh my God,” someone gasped.  “She’s taken one away.”

     “She’s penalized him for something,” I heard someone say.

     “No, not Cassie,” someone argued, “She’ll let anything pass.

     I mean, we’re talking about one perverted young lass.”

     “She’s fucked him to death!” someone said with a frown.

     “You’re right!  the crowd shouted.  “Let’s break the door down!”

     “If I haven’t gotten their attention by this time and have held it, I’ll never pick up a pen again.” Vanderbilt thought as he pondered for awhile how to bring the saga of Cassie to an end.  He looked over some of the details that he’d already added to the poem.  The trapeze, the candles… Yeah.  He had it.  He could just about hear the drumrolls in his mind as they rose to a crescendo.  He’d end it with a line that would punctuate it with a finality that would resound as emphatically as a clash of cymbals.  Yes, he had it.

     The “Sex Machine” lay on the floor moaning and choking

     While Cassie lay nude on the bed, just calmly smoking.

     “The ‘Sex Machine’ was good," she laughed. “He sure tries hard to please.

     “But the poor guy doesn’t know how to ride a trapeze.”

     “We made love a few times, and he fucks like a bear,”

     “But I said ‘You ain’t balled til you’ve screwed in the air.

     He was game.  We climbed up and he inserted his wang

     But when I started buckin, he hit the floor with a bang!.

     There he is, his leg broken, his back needing traction

     And I’m here on the bed, still craving more action.

     But don’t worry,” Cassie laughed, “I’ve still got all I can handle.

     “You never lack a lover when you’ve got a foot-long candle!”

     “Mission accomplished!” Vanderbilt exulted to himself, borrowing the phrase that George Dubya Bush made sound so ridiculously insipid.  He couldn’t wait to show the poem to Brenda when she’d come to the office for it in the morning.  In a perverse way, he’d become very proud of it.

     Brenda didn’t disappoint him.  She was waiting in the office when he got to work.  He grinned, handed it to her, and said “I’m going into the locker room to change.  Read it, and when I come out let me know whether it works for you or not.”

     When he had changed and come back into the office, Brenda was holding the poem.  She looked at him quizzically and asked “Did you write this?”

     “Yes,” Vanderbilt assured her. "I polished it off last night.  I hope it’s what you wanted.”

     “Really,” Brenda asked him again.  “Did you really write this?  I mean, I would’ve never expected something quite like this coming from you.”

     Vanderbilt wasn’t sure whether to take her comment as a compliment or a gauge of disappointment.  His uncertainty must have shown on his face because the next thing he knew Brenda had grabbed his arm, pulled him toward her and kissed him on the cheek.

     “It’s perfect!’ she squealed. “In fact, it’s more than perfect.  It’s even raunchier than I could have imagined.  I love it!” 

     “I told you Vanderbilt was a pervert,” the Boy grinned.

     “I don’t know how you came up with this stuff,” Brenda said, her face beaming with elation, but Cassie is going to be so embarrassed when I read this in the lunchroom.  I can’t wait to see the look on her face!’

     “You’re not really going to read that in the lunchroom, in front of everyone, are you?” Vanderbilt asked warily.  “I don’t know if that’s a really good idea.”

     “Don’t worry about it you big chicken.  I’ll keep your authorship a secret.  Although really Vanderbilt,” she grinned.  “You ought to be proud of this one.  I didn’t know you had a side like this to your personality.    You’ve suddenly become more interesting.’  Then she hugged him and said, Thanks again.  I really appreciate it.  So will Cassie.”

      Vanderbilt opted to stay away from the lunchroom during lunch and the reading of the poem.  Discretion is the better part of valor, he reasoned.  Or maybe Brenda was right.  Maybe he was just a big chicken.  From the reports that the Boy, Growly and a couple of the other line inspectors brought back, the reading had been a huge success.  Kiss-Ass Chris, the normally devious Kill floor foreman,  was laughing so hard he was almost crying, and Jennie Hodges, the mannish little girl who slit the throats of the hogs to bleed them out, was laughing so hard that her laugh had become more of an obscene screech spelled by occasional gasps for air until she could resume laughing again.  And Cassie was red.  Yes, it was a beet-red.  It was a Sherwin-Williams ‘cover the earth’ shade of red.  But she was game though.  Everyone said so.  She laughed as hard as everyone else, except for maybe Jennie.  For at least one half hour lunch period a raunchy birthday poem had forged camaraderie among the unfortunates forced to work as wage slaves in packing house hell.  At least one half hour of the day had actually been fun.  And Vanderbilt had chosen to remain aloof from it.

     It was a couple days later that Vanderbilt spotted Cassie heading down the hall to the lunchroom.  Just to be safe, he figured he’d duck into the hallway that led to the infirmary.  He didn’t know if he could look at her without turning red himself, or saying or doing something stupid to betray his role as the author of her birthday poem.

     “Hold on, Vanderbilt.  I want to talk to you,” Cassie yelled.

      “Damn.  Busted,” Vanderbilt thought to himself.  He immediately began to wonder which of his co-workers could have ratted him out.  He wouldn’t put it past the Boy.   The Boy owed Vanderbilt for a few put downs.  “But, hell,” Vanderbilt thought.  “It could have been anyone who knew.

      “I heard that you had something to do with the birthday poem that Brenda read the other day.” Cassie said in a sweet, rather flirtatious voice, but in a manner that suggested that he wouldn’t be able to offer a believable denial. 

       Vanderbilt began to ransack through his thoughts to determine how to proceed.  Pleading ignorance was always safe.  As Bart Simpson used to say….in fact, Vanderbilt decided to grab it and use it as his own.

      “I didn’t write it.  Nobody saw me write it.  You can’t prove anything.  Bart Simpson used to say that, and it worked for him.”

     Cassie laughed, then said “You’ve got one weird imagination.  You know that?  Don’t you?”

     “I guess.  I hope the poem didn’t piss you off.  It was commissioned by your friends, and meant to be fun.”

       “You big doofuss,” she grinned.  “I thought the poem was sort of cute in a warped sort of way, and I really appreciate the work you put into it for the girls.  Thank you.”  Then before he had a chance to react or to stammer out another stupid rejoinder like the Bart Simpson line, she grabbed him and kissed him.  No, it wasn’t a passionate kiss.  That was too much to ever hope for.  It was strictly a “thank you” kiss.  But that was enough.  Many were the articles or poems that he’d labored on with no reward but publication and the pride of authorship.  This poem had netted him a kiss from Cassie and a kiss and a hug from Brenda, two lovely ladies.  Pretty good wages for something that he had fun writing anyway. 

    “Hmmm,” Vanderbilt thought a few moments later as he began to make his way back to the Kill Floor.    “Cassie kissed me.  Cassie actually kissed me.  Eat your heart out, Wilbur.”