An honorable mention in the Summer of Love Contest.
What Would Teddy Do?
5064 Words | August 21 2016 | Rate This |
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Dawn was naked and sweating, trying to hold an Amazon warrior pose. I was sketching her, my pencil like a wisp of wind following the curls of her hair, the gold light dancing on her round belly, the curve of her toes. This was all I'd ever need, a beauty that blocked out the rude noises of the real world.
"Peter!" she shouted.
I jumped. My eraser bounced across my lap, followed by my pencils. I tried to grab them but instead smeared the drawing. Ruined.
"You really don't hear a thing I say!"
I was about to get mad, but then my bones started to ache. I could feel when she was going to cry the way an old mariner senses rain. If I said anything contrary, the tears would pour down.
"I just told you I quit my job!"
"Oh, heck." I said, gathering up my pencils "Why'd you do that?" If it wasn't for her job slinging Kombucha at Cafe Bliss, we'd never make the rent. My comic, 'What Would Teddy Do?' about a time-traveling Teddy Roosevelt was a hit on Tumblr, but it brought precious little income.
She dropped the pose and slid into her silk kimono. "One of my customers is Damian Grout." I blinked. "You must have heard of him. From Flake Magazine."
Flake was a lifestyle rag with verticals up the wazoo. Grout had gotten rich with clickbait articles like "I went on a steady diet of cocaine and donuts for a month and this is what happened." (Spoiler alert, they nearly died). Many of his writers had wound up in the hospital, so many that my friend Greg postulated that Grout was part of a baby-boom conspiracy to thin the herd of Millennials.
To be fair, Greg is a paranoid who lines his Chullo hat with tinfoil, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
"Grout told me to write an article about my coffee and cigarette diet."
"How original." I said.
"That's not what I would call an appropriate response."
"Grout's an opportunistic douche."
"You are so not-affirming!" She stormed into our micro-kitchen and grabbed a bag of potato chips.
"How do you know he'll publish it?"
Between munches of chips she said "It was published today. You read it!"
I made a mental listicle of my clickthroughs on 'Flake'. One, about a perpetually dieting barista and her tall, geeky artist boyfriend struck a real chord. Funny because it was true. "Shit. I'm 'Rocky'?"
She nodded.
"You told the entire world wide web that Junior is ... bent!?"
She wrapped the bag shut, wiped her face with the back of her hand and said. "We gave you a fake name."
"My friends will know! If the guys at the comic book store see it ..."
"Like they've never seen Junior." she sat on the windowsill. The short kimono hiked up, her bare ass pressed against the glass. The perv across the street, as usual, took notice.
I shut the curtains. "No, they haven't seen Junior. I don't randomly pull my pants down like some people."
"I can't help it, I'm an extrovert." she said. "Privacy is dead, Peter, you know that. The minute you go online, you give it all away."
I slouched into the couch. "I expect Facebook to spill my secrets, but not you. "
She sat beside me and softly put a hand to my cheek. "You draw me all the time. Why can't I write about you?"
"I draw your inner beauty."
She jumped back, as if my skin was suddenly leaking acid. "Inner beauty? Are you saying I have a great personality?"
"You do."
"You think I'm fat!"
"What? When did I say that?"
"Do you think I'm fat?"
The ultimate relationship paradox. I shouldn't lie, but I couldn't tell the truth either. I started an a-z mental listicle of every possible euphemism for fat, and was at my favorite, 'buxom', when she said. "You're pausing!"
"Umm... you're not TAFT fat, but ..."
"Oh my God!" she covered her ears, ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.
"I love the way you look!" I shouted to the door. She started to snuffle. This was a major derp, something our relationship might never recover from. My mind raced - what would Teddy say? What any red-blooded male would in this moment of desperation.
"I can change."
The snuffling stopped. She opened the door.
"Will you stop saying mean things about my boss?"
"Do you really want to do this?"
"Yes!" she said.
"Then -- Dare to be great!"
Her kimono fell to the floor.
****
You might have noticed that we fight a lot. And she wins.
You might also think I need to acquire more social skills. If you think I'm bad now, you should have seen me when I first got to New York. I was the hick from Durango, in a place where 'cowboy' is just another word for psychopath. Everything I said or did was wrong. My social life consisted of getting drunk every night at the dive bar downstairs. Dawn literally dragged me out of the gutter, got me out of my shell - she even gave me the idea for my comic.
Teddy said "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
I believe that 100%, but in this day and age, you just can't say things like that out loud. Half of your audience will say tl: dl (too long, didn't listen). The rest will tell you to check your white male cis gender privilege. Hence, my comic. When Teddy shouts "Charge!", his Rough Riders bravely follow, slashing
Venusian lizard creatures, renegade Greek Gods and charging Mastodons.
Dawn and Teddy - my only escape from the grey twilight of Hipsterdom.
****
When Dawn started working for Grout, all of my bad guys took on a suspicious resemblance to him. This outlet for my 'macho aggression' kept me from complaining when he told her to write about living on nothing but Nutella for a month. Or the dark and sweaty details about her past relationships. But when he gave the assignment to write about Meth and she wound up in the hospital, I lost it.
She said. "Don't use angry words, tell me how you feel."
"I'm feeling anger!" I slammed a fist onto her bedside table. The jello flopped onto her IV'd arm.
She almost didn't take me to the office Christmas party after that. The #flakegala was one of those A-list things New Yorkers will pay thousands of dollars to get into, a kitschy artisanal bash in an abandoned Brooklyn warehouse. She was willing to take me but only if I promised not to hit Grout.
This year's theme was 'White Trash'. New Yorkers love to make fun of rednecks. We're the only group that hasn't jumped on the identity politics bandwagon yet. Half the crowd showed up in cowboy hats, just like the ones we wore in Durango. We use them to keep the sun off our necks, but here it was oh-so ironic. All the food was white, fiercely bland and covered in crumbled cornflakes; Mac and cheese, white sausages and a cauliflower dip that tasted like sour liver. The punch was moonshine-spiked, served in jelly jars.
Dawn wanted to introduce me to Grout, but we couldn't get near him. Paparazzi were swarming, pushing us out of the way, saying 'move it, we want him'. So we sipped punch and watched him holding court.
I could see why he'd become a lifestyle Guru. The guy had started writing for magazines back in the '60's, he must have been old enough to retire, but his face had no wrinkles.
A huge hipster beard hung from his lips like a sleeping black 'possum. Not a touch of grey. The only sign of age was his skin, so pale it was almost blue. He'd tried to color it up with a dusting of rosy powder.
"He wears makeup." I laughed.
"Hush." Dawn said. "Don't be transphobic."
Grout clanged his fork against a punch jar and called the room to attention. For such a short guy he had a booming voice. The crowd immediately quieted, listened.
"Tonight we celebrate the fortune that can be made from entertainment, reaching out to the Zombies of the internet and bringing excitement to their dull little lives." Everyone politely clapped. "We do that by telling the unvarnished truth. Confession is good for the soul. That was the philosophy that made my family's fortune, in the Sanitarium founded by Dr John Kellogg. He believed purity of the body brings purity of the soul." Grout raised his artisanal jar and said "Now open up your brains and let the contents spill out!"
Dawn grabbed my hand and squeezed hard (an extra warning not to misbehave) then stood next to Grout.
"Ah! Our first confessional will be from Dawn, one of my best writers. 90% clickthrough!"
More applause.
"I couldn't have done it without my boyfriend, Peter."
"Oh, yes, Rocky Raccoon." Grout shouted "Enjoying the party, boy? Just like back home in Doo-ran-go."
So he gave me that name. Figured. I toasted him and said "Yippie Kay yay"
"In honor of Peter, I want to tell you about our first date." Dawn said. She then went on to describe, in detail, about how I threw up all over her and peed the bed, stuff I barely remembered and had since tried hard to forget. I turned away, face burning, trying to ignore the live-streaming laughter around me. I grabbed a cornflake-bran canape and crushed it in my hand.
Finally the story was finished. Grout put a paw around Dawn, squeezed her shoulders and roared. "Hey, Rocky boy - Did you know that cornflakes and graham crackers, these foundations of the American diet, were all created to stop us from self-pollution...?"
I turned towards him, literally seeing red.
"Self pollution. You know, pocket pool, cleaning your rifle, polishing the banister..."
More laughter, phones recording all of it.
"Well, Rocky, stay away from the cornflakes. You need to self-pollute more often, straighten out your Junior there."
I couldn't hold it back any more. Security was fast, but I'm light-speed when I've got a full head of steam. My fist landed flat on Grout's powdered cheek as his rent-a-cops piled on top of me.
As he plopped on his ass, Grout shouted "Kill him!" They kneed me in kidney, knocked the wind out of me, punched and kicked but stopped short of inflicting actual death
"You promised to be good!" Dawn wailed as they put on the cuffs. As they radioed for the real cops to come, she knelt beside me and whispered. "That pure animal rage - it was mega - hot! Wait until I get you home." Her crying eyes switched to passion in a millisecond, like she was flipping a switch. I may be a rube, but I know when I'm being played.
"Fuck you, Dawn."
"W..what are you saying?"
As security dragged me away, I said "Darlin', I'm saying goodbye"
*****
I probably should have gone to jail for that punch, but the hive mind is our judge and jury these days. It collectively concluded that it was high time someone took a swing at Grout. Grout didn't agree, but every time he slammed me, his numbers went down and mine went up. So he dropped the charges, saying "I don't respect you, but I do respect a good hit count."
Have to admit, he was right about that. With hundreds of new followers I launched a Kickstarter and earned enough to move out of Greg's place.
Sitting at Cafe Bliss, putting the finishing touches on that month's comic, I got a phone call from Dawn. She'd been calling for months and I'd been sending them all to voicemail, but a full bank account, like a full stomach, has a knack for putting you in a good mood. I decided to take it.
"I called to tell you why I broke up with you."
"I broke up with you."
"That's not how I see it."
"Teddy said, "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."
That got her quiet. All I heard was flies buzzing. Something was mooing.
"Where are you?"
"Grout's hometown, in the New Jersey Pinelands. They have a Summer Festival. I'm covering it."
"The Sanitarium?"
"Yeah. It's so rural. Everyone is quiet, even the kids. Is that normal for small towns?"
"Yeah." It was so noisy in Cafe Bliss that I had to turn the phone's volume to the max. On the table next to me, a Park Slope mom diapered her screaming baby. I turned my chair to try to block out the smell of milky poop. "Count your blessings."
"Quiet gives me a headache."
"You're used to the City. Remember last Christmas when you came to Durango?" Two blocks away from the airport, she had a panic attack, grabbed my arm and said "Where are the taxis?" She didn't let go of me until we got back on the plane. I smiled, remembering how nice it was to hold her close.
"I liked your Mom." she said warmly.
"She liked you." More buzzing and moos. "Why are you calling?"
"I told you."
"No, really."
She sighed. "I'm scared. When Grout gave me this assignment, I did a little research. He sends a writer out here every year. After the festival, they all disappeared."
"Grout chews up reporters like he chews that crappy dip."
"They weren't fired, they just - disappeared."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm a journalist, of course I'm sure. You know how he's so pale - well, everyone here is like that. And they hiss."
"Hiss?"
"I think they're vampires!"
I wanted to laugh, but my bones had a familiar ache. Yeah, she's an ex, but I still couldn't stand to hear her cry, so I tried to be serious. "Do they come out during the day?"
"Yes."
"Then they're not vampires."
"Listen, I went to the Commissary to pick up some Advil. All they had was aspirin and some stuff called Dr. Black's Ear Powder. The boxes were so old the labels faded into grey."
"Maybe nobody likes that store."
"It's the only store in town. I don't think people here eat. Food."
"They call it the Commissary?" I was an Army brat. Commissaries are only on military bases. I Googled 'commissary military cornflakes'.
There was only one link, to a copy of a book that had gone out of print in the sixties. The book was titled 'Extended life: CU109 Project: MID'. MID was the Military Intelligence division, the early version of the CIA.
I clicked on the next page. Everything was redacted except the title: "Cornflake Utopia"
She screamed so loud I nearly dropped my phone. "What?"
"Flies!"
"Jeez, I nearly had a heart attack. What is it with girls and bugs?"
"There's millions of them! Literally! I have to get out of here."
"Don't hang up -"
She hung up.
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