|
CounterPunch
September
21, 2002
Concerned Citizen:
a novel
by
ANTHONY GANCARSKI
Episode 1: Friendly Games.
Script and Summative Comments ['70s cop
drama, 30 min, color.]
Opens with standard montage of sedans, blue and
brown, tailfinned and otherwise, gliding over federally-funded
blacktop. Then the obligatory shots of people having evenings
out; white folks speaking, each to each, in bistros with virgin
white tablecloths and deferential brown waitpeople. The opening
theme, the jazz-fusion "Horehound's Groove", chikka-chikkaing
mid-tempo and mid-range as the familiar deadpan voice of Grant
Cameron [Concerned Citizen's Brock Horehound] intones gravelly,
secure in his poses as omniscient oracular figure, director,
and producer of the series.
Horehound: This
is the city. Los Angeles, California.
Abstract close shots of concrete, of
branches of trees indigenous to southern California. An inexplicable
close shot of an adobe house. As is typical of most episodes
in this series, as well as in most of the oeuvre of Grant Cameron,
there is an attempt to provide a documentary feel through employment
of this slide show effect.
Of course, the attempt rarely succeeds.
Too much imposition of opinion, of conjecture. One of the aims
of this scholarship I've undertaken here a transcription
of the show, with helpful editorial or clarifying comments italicized
after each burst of dialogue is to puncture the balloon
that houses this dead air that is Concerned Citizen, in the hopes
of demonstrating to hiring committees and whoever else might
read this that I, Malcolm Couture, PH.D, am a scholar who understands
keenly the interplay between cultural artifacts and how people
live in the culture.
Horehound: A
city on the move. A city that grows by tens of thousands of people
yearly.
In a "deadpan" touch, we are
treated to boxes being moved into the adobe house, by burly,
brownshirted movers. Presumably, a representation of the city's
growth, as Grant Cameron would have it be. A safe growth, participated
in by safe people. People who will boost the tax rolls. People
who won't tax civic resources.
Horehound: In
Los Angeles, there is room for diversity of opinion, to be sure.
Caucasoid housewives in sensible skirts
picketing an anonymous building in a manner so peaceful that
the purported film might as well be a still life. Here, we see
the parameters of "acceptable dissent".
Horehound: In
Los Angeles, new and exciting things are always happening. Things
are changing. Los Angeles is a city on the move.
The refrain "city on the move"
repeated here. Things are always changing. You can't fight City
Hall. Bad weather's like rape, you might as well just sit back
and enjoy it. Would you like to super size that? Due to budget
cuts, I regret to inform you that the Committee will not be able
to hire a new Cultural Studies Instructor for the upcoming school
year.
A thousand points of light. A thousand
lies fake and transparent as genuine diamelles, perpetuated even
here, in this "summer replacement" series that ran
six turbulent, low-rated episodes.
Horehound: I
worked here. I carried a badge.
Note the ironic inversion of the catchphrase
I work here, I carry a badge from Grant Cameron's
long-running earlier series Badge and Gun. For reasons which
will be seen as the show progresses, the choice to invert said
catchphrase is deliberate, given that this program as well
as many things beyond this program is based on a series
of inversions.
After Horehound finishes his opening
voiceover, we are treated to a shot of his soon-to-be-familiar
1966 Ford Fairlane, which obeys the speed limit as it makes its
way down an unassuming residential street.
Horehound: It
was a Saturday afternoon in September, the date doesn't matter,
not anymore. The air was cool in Los Angeles, and I had been
invited to visit my former LAPD partner, Ray Linger.
Horehound pulls up to a modest one story
home. Red brick exterior. 1000 Square Feet, give or take. The
home of an enlisted man, a cop too straight to be on the take,
to shoot for opulence through graft.
At least, that's the implication. In
all fields, there is graft. Treachery. Betrayal, screwjobs, and
resultant isolation.
Horehound: Linger
and I had been partners for seven years. It was a rocky run,
at first, as I was charged with reining the fiery rookie in.
With showing him the ropes, so to speak.
Horehound's voice drips false humility
in a manner reminiscent of grease dropping from steakhouse Texas
Toast, or oil dropping ponderous from the grill of a beater car.
Horehound: As
Linger developed his skills as a peace officer, laurels followed.
He began to receive commendations. Still, it was understood that
I was the senior member of the team.
Here we get a flashback sequence. The
two men ride together in a sedan not dissimilar to the Ford Fairlane
Grant Cameron's character is driving in the so-called present.
Horehound here is driving Linger around. There is no conversation;
just the squawk of the radio, just the sadness etched on the
cops' faces.
Horehound: But
now, there is no team. But now, I have no badge. I have been,
so to speak, forced off the force.
Back to what passes for real time. Horehound,
alone in the Fairlane. He checks his appearance in the rearview
mirror. Out of the car, walking toward the front door without
moving his arms the slightest bit. He rings the doorbell, muttering....
Horehound: This...
is the city.
Horehound gets a few seconds to "reflect"
on that statement, while waiting for the front door to be opened
by a short, slight white man with black hair, wearing a khaki
polo shirt and matching pants. The man nods in the direction
of our protagonist.
Horehound: Linger.
Horehound nods back. There's no extension
of the hand for a hearty shake. If you look closely, though,
you can see Horehound's lips turn downward and his eyes skitter
away from the doorway, as if he'd just developed a shrubbery
fetish.
Linger: Horehound.
A curt nod in return, as if the men are
locked in some interpretative dance of repressed feelings, resentments,
hatreds, and so forth.
Horehound: Game
started yet? I came as quickly as traffic would allow.
Horehound manages a smile here, however
guarded and wan it might have been. Both men remain rooted in
their positions: Horehound outside the house; Linger in the doorway.
You can assume that these positions will
bear a significance later in the episode.
Linger: The
TV set is warming up right now. Come in, already I'm not
air conditioning Los Angeles, you know.
Linger and Horehound share a moment of
staccato laughter, before the "junior officer" shows
Horehound into his living room. All beige, all the time, here.
Beige. The color of non-commitment. The color of adjunct office
walls, of government building lobbies. Beige, the color of loss
and regret.
Horehound: You're
the one who was supposed to let me in, friend.
A more genial smile this time. A suggestion
of conviviality finally breaks through the tension, as Horehound
follows Linger through the living room toward the kitchen.
Cabinets of dark wood. Floral paper on
the walls. A flouride-white countertop, hosting a loaf of bread,
a jar of pickles, and a jar of mayonnaise on its surface. On
a serving platter, six sandwiches are stacked in a 3-2-1 pyramid
arrangement.
Linger:
I figured you might want to check out the spread I'm laying out
right here.
Linger gestures toward the counter like
a cross between Mae West and a Subway Sandwich Artist. The effect
is momentarily appalling.
Horehound: Spread,
buddy?
Horehound shows us his "quizzical"
look, momentarily.
Linger: This
on the counter, Brock. Do you need me to spell everything out
for you?
Linger's voice cracks in exasperation.
Though the implication is that the two are old friends having
a friendly spat, it is clear to anyone who has ever left an employment
situation that former co-workers don't make reliable friends.
I can speak to that point at some length.
Horehound: No,
no, I can see it. What are you making? Should I ask?
The camera focuses on the unlabeled jar
of mayonnaise, if only for an instant.
Linger: An
old Linger specialty! Mayonnaise and pickle sandwiches!
Linger fixes a smile on Horehound as
he knifes mayonnaise from the jar and smears it on a slice of
bread.
Horehound: Mayonnaise
and pickle? Wow, your palate certainly hasn't changed. This is
as bad as your tackle box full of pickles and olives.
With a series of flourishes, Linger finishes
spreading white on white, before placing slice atop slice.
Linger: You're
just not a gourmet, Brock. You don't understand the appeal of
al fresco dining.
Another piece of bread. Another slather
of mayonnaise.
Horehound: Well,
I guess that's the difference between us.
Horehound grins, amused, self-satisfied.
This scene, like so many in Cameron's earlier, more popular series
Badge and Gun, allows us to identify with the central character
Brock Horehound in the most innocuous way imaginable.
The message is unassailably clear: that if we share in his laughter,
we'll feel a kinship when the supercop gets over on the bad guys,
whoever they may be.
Linger: Well,
say what you will.
Linger screws the lid back on the jar
with more force than the job actually requires as Horehound lights
a cigarette.
Horehound: Remember
that time you were eating some garbage a sardine and olive
sandwich in the car, and we got wind of a racial incident
in East LA. I was weaving in and out of traffic, and it was all
you could do to stuff that mess down your throat. Remember?
Horehound's tone here suffused with the
giddiness of reminiscence, so often the flipside of sadness,
current as oil change coupons in a mailbox, eternal like loss,
like every solitary loss.
Linger: Right.
Linger's tone and face here are entirely
impassive, as he returns the mayonnaise to the refrigerator and
the bread to the box that holds it, even as Horehound's face
crinkles in mirth.
Horehound: But
I guess that's just the difference between us, right, buddy?
Horehound's expression a bit more serious
here, as if aware that he hurt the feelings of his erstwhile
junior partner, who turns around and faces him with a sharecropper-grave
expression on his face.
Linger: That's
where you're wrong, buddy. The difference between us is that
you are unemployed and that I am still on the force. The difference
between us
The visual cuts to Horehound's lower
lip, trembling like the proverbial leaf with a raindrop weighing
it down.
Horehound: Look,
Ray, I was just kidding around.
Horehound's eyes brim with contrition,
and in his response, Linger lowers his voice. But he doesn't
lower it so much that his intent isn't as clear as the glare
from his eyes.
Linger: The
difference between us is that you need to show me a bit more
respect, now. Hear?
Horehound nods, in a way that connotes
a subservience and acquiescence unfamiliar to viewers of Grant
Cameron's previous series, Badge and Gun. A reviewer of the time
found the first episode to be "regrettable... in its failure
to give the audience a hero in whom they can believe... especially
in these times of festering social unrests."
People who would look back from the distance
of years or even decades found Cameron's choice to not simply
make this series but to stake his entire future (or legacy, if
you prefer) on the success or failure of a show about an unemployed
policeman. I can certainly see how one could subscribe to this
read of the show, given that so many of our society's problems
political, spiritual, and, as I know from personal experience,
educational stem from the failure of our culture to forge
models of heroism.
Horehound: We
returned to the living room, where the game was just beginning.
I ceded the "easy" chair to Linger, partly in deference
to what I deemed to be a physical fraility, and partly because
I understand a man's need to be comfortable in his own home.
You certainly don't need an extended
description of how the men sat down in front of the television,
but it might bear mentioning that both men are clad here in gray
pants, white oxford shirts, and black loafers.
It also bears mentioning and here
I feel compelled to apologize for this digression that
I don't feel we can find heroes in the sordid, rotten husks that
pass for government agencies. Our heroes should be artists and
revolutionaries! Men as disparate as hiphopper Tupac Shakur and
firebrand Al Sharpton and actresses and actors who use their
positions for the general good! These are my heroes.
Television Announcer: Looks like a great game today between the Dodgers
and Giants! This certainly has pennant implications!
Horehound and Linger are settled in by
now, of course, each armed with a generic can of beer and genial
smiles on their faces.
Horehound: Who
do you think's going to win today, Ray?
Deadpan delivery, right before sipping from the can. Scenes
like this led syndicated columnist Buxton Reilly to term Concerned
Citizen "the first action show where there's no actual action."
In the same vein, the program was utterly despised by focus groups,
testing lower than any show of that era, with the arguable exceptions
of Bachelor Houseboy and the Mod Redecorators.
Linger: Depends. The Dodgers have the pitching.... Hey,
buddy?
Linger looks at Horehound with a beseeching look in his eyes,
which comes off as the closest thing to real tenderness in this
entire episode up until this point. This line, like every line
of dialogue in the show so far, is delivered with a eulogistic
deliberateness.
Even with my credentials and my dedication to studying this
and similar programs, I have trouble reconciling the languor
of the show so far with the other work in the Grant Cameron oeuvre,
which relied on noiresque blasts of dialogue. The most profound
conundrum, at least to me, is why Cameron chose such staticness
in the pilot of all things.
Perhaps he felt the show was set up to fail. Perhaps he felt
himself to be a failure, as most people do, as I sometimes do
myself.
Television Announcer: The 3-2 is on its way, as Murphy digs in here,
asking nor giving quarter. Reynolds has been working him inside
the entire count!
Horehound, transfixed by the television,
finally looks over at Linger, whose eyes are still locked in
the aforementioned posture of beseechment.
Horehound: Yeah,
Ray?
Like in so many scenes in the first few
episodes of the series though less as the series works
toward the final Horehound is shown with an almost comically
wide-eyed look on his face. It is rumored that focus groups found
Horehound's "look" to be too "mature" for
a leading man role. In that light, perhaps we can see the widening
of the eyes, so to speak, as an attempt to transcend physicality,
to stave off the inevitable rejection of age and fraility by
our culture.
This interpretation is bolstered, as
you'd expect, by other things in this episode. The reference
to Linger's fraility above, for example.
Linger: I
need a favor from you, buddy.
The same look on Linger's face, the look
that people so often use when negotiating so-called favors. Even
at your weakest moment, when you've been fired from your job
unjustly, you'll have these "favors" asked of you.
On your way out, can you turn off the
light? Before your heart finally stops, can you sign over this
property please pretty please pretty please with sugar on top?
Can you sign a non-disclosure agreement? Won't you please stop
calling, begging for just one more chance, one more shitty little
adjunct class?
Horehound: Say
the word.
What else could he say in that situation?
Consider the complete inversion of the traditional power structure
here: Horehound, the former "leader" of the team, bumped
from the team. Not only is there no longer a power struggle,
there's not even the pretense of debate.
Say the word. Because you have to be
a "team player". Because you have to "show you're
still committed to being a good guy." Because you don't
know any better.
Linger: My
back's giving me a bit of trouble, and I was wondering if you'd
be a good guy and go to the kitchen to get the sandwiches.
Linger punctuates the request with a
thumbjab in the direction of the kitchen. That in and of itself
doesn't shock. What is shocking, however, is Horehound's reaction.
The way he reached his feet as if jacked
up by cords in a Hong Kong movie. The way he smiled while doing
it. The way he performed the task with, as they say, alacrity.
It shocks me, but it shouldn't. I like
to think of myself as a strong person, but I too have acted similarly
obsequious.
And I can see myself doing it again,
under the right circumstances, for the right payoff. Whatever
those are, whatever that is.
Horehound: I
walked to the kitchen a bit more quickly than I should have,
perhaps. I needed some time to myself. Linger had promised me
on the phone before I came over that we'd talk about getting
me back on the force, but so far all I've done is two things:
step and fetch.
The camera shows Horehound walking to
the counter, grabbing a sandwich, biting into it, and spitting
out the bite as these words are said. A deeply symbolic action,
played, as so many things in the Cameron oeuvre, for comic relief.
I know all about deeply symbolic actions.
The voiceover continues.
Horehound: Linger
owed me. Owes me. I broke Linger in, when he was a raw recruit.
Steered him clear of the cops on the take, the ones who lifted
reefer from suspects, the ones who took favors from the local
prosties. And here he is, feeding me mayonnaise and pickles and
calling it lunch. Things were going to change. God help me.
Horehound takes the sandwich he bit out
of and throws it in the trash as the screen fades to black. The
commercial interregnum is well-placed here, as it affords me
the opportunity to hold forth, if only briefly, about some of
the stepping and fetching I myself have done, in order to fit
into a community that rejected me.
Shortly after the termination of my employment,
I found myself besieged by well-wishers, with their cheery e-mails
and their invitations to bleak dinners in bleaker bistros. Against
my better judgment, I accepted one of these invitations. It wasn't
like anything else was going well, given that I had no job outside
of the retail sector, and no hope of further academic employment
in the immediate future.
I had maintained a certain distance from
my co-workers, and if you'd ever met them, you wouldn't blame
me. There were two of them who actually showed for this so-called
get-together. Two. Another composition adjunct from Thailand,
a slight man who walked as if racked by arthritis, and a visiting
lecturer, a rotund gentleman who taught for, as he put it, "shits
and giggles."
We agreed to meet at a local "brewing
company" where the burgers were greasy, the waitresses were
slatternly, and the ambiance was disastrous. Some Eric Clapton
live CD was playing, and it seemed to have played on continuous
loop since the establishment opened, Clapton forever warbling
about his dead son or his affinity for domestic pisswater beer,
or whatever.
But I wasn't there for heart disease,
venereal disease, or aural lobotomy. I was there to talk business.
Nothing personal, just business.
I gamely struggled through the small
talk the men tried to engage in with me. Well, yes, of course
pedagogy is important, but there's more than one way to skin
a cat, and of course the students are primary and gee, whiz,
I'm sorry your wife died, friend, buddy, brother, pal. All that
ancillary blather, when all I wanted was key information.
It was my theory that the fix was in.
That the decision to let me go was part of a concerted plan,
a twisted, sordid plot brought forth by people threatened by
Mal Couture. It was my theory that there was a loop who
knows if it was loose enough to include these two hangers-on
made of rough cord and designed to fit snugly around my
masculine neck.
I asked my erstwhile colleagues if they'd
seen anything, if they'd heard anything. But according to them,
there was nothing to see and nothing to hear. No smoking gun
emails. No deep throat voice mail messages. Just stagnant puddles
outside the door of the English Department that these two lapped
up and called Moet. Under the pretense of going to the bathroom
bad bowels, I told them I left the dinner before
dessert wasn't even served. Though the Thai left a number of
messages for me under the pretense of me "paying my share",
I felt that it was best for me to maintain a distance from him
for purposes of reclaiming my personal space, and I ignored calls
from his home and work numbers until finally activating call
block days later.
And with that, the first episode of Concerned
Citizen resumes, with a shot of a Kindergarten-aged albino female
riding a training-wheeled bicycle on a deserted residential street.
As well, there's a voiceover from an unseen Horehound.
Horehound:
Friends! Not all of us have children, but all of us have concern
for the safety of youngsters from Walla Walla to Hialeah, and
all points in-between!
A shot of the child's bicycle wobbling
down the street, in spite of the training wheels theoretically
ensuring its balance. Any number of components of this scene
have metaphoric implications.
The child, practically translucent, representing
youth unsullied by countercultural pressures. The bicycle, an
unmotorized vehicle, a stand-in for the sort of simpler time
subdivision planners allude to when trying to sell homes and
plots in their latest planned communities.
The training wheels, wobbly in themselves,
perhaps an allusion to our world itself. Spinning forever out
of control, as I am spinning out of control. Jobless, friendless,
bereft.
Horehound: You
can't control other people's children, but you can control your
own actions. Be careful when on any roadway, as you never know
who may be out there!
The wobbling bicycle turns into a white
driveway, which turns into an implacable wall of black. Then
the scene shifts, as expected, back to Linger's living room.
Linger is asleep in the easy chair, as Horehound takes the platter
with three remaining sandwiches back to the kitchen. As the bumper
music light, frilly jazz comes to an end, we hear
a human voice.
Television Announcer: A great game we've just seen! Dodgers win 4-3
in ten innings....
The voice of the announcer fades as Horehound
enters the kitchen. He stands with the platter of sandwiches
next to the trash can for a moment, trying but failing to commit
to discarding the leftovers. Lingering, in a manner of speaking,
before his voiceover starts.
Horehound: Linger
had been out since the fifth inning. I, of course, had stayed
up for the entire game. The moon was starting to rise outside
of the kitchen window, and I thought of what night might bring.
Horehound covers the plate of sandwiches
with tinfoil. One is reminded of Eliot's Prufrock here, in that
Horehound is "deferential... glad to be of use."
Horehound: I
considered calling some old flames, though I knew that some of
the flames no longer burned. It occurred to me that this city
perhaps wasn't my own anymore. That I might as well be a stranger
in town.
Horehound strips the tinfoil from the
plate and begins to wrap each sandwich in foil instead. On a
somewhat tangential note, "Stranger in Town" was the
lead track from Grant Cameron's 1957 self-titled album. The disc
received uniformly bad reviews and sold less than ten thousand
copies.
Horehound: As
I wrapped the last sandwich, I heard a chair creak in the living
room. Linger was finally roused from his slumber, and my opportunity
to find a date for the evening had slipped away, at least momentarily.
Jazz so cool it's frostbitten plays.
Just as Linger enters the kitchen, Horehound has his head buried
in the refrigerator.
Linger: Digging
for something to eat, eh?
An edge of sarcasm in Linger's voice.
The tone of a father upbraiding an overweight son, perhaps.
Horehound: No,
just putting this stuff away. Figured that there was no reason
to keep it out any longer.
Leaving aside the problems implicit in
leaving mayonnaise at room-temperature in the open air, we can
notice an essential contradiction between the edge in Horehound's
voice and the slightly overdone smile on his face. The melding
of thevoice and the smile creates an effect akin to that of a
wolf baring teeth.
Linger: No
reason? Poppycock!
Horehound raises his eyebrows in reaction
to the stridency in Linger's voice. Central to the scene is the
tension mounting in response to the reorganization of the power
structure.
Horehound: Come
on, buddy, talk some sense and cut the drawing-room talk. What's
going on? You got us some girls coming over?
Horehound puts the sandwiches away, a
beatific glow on his face. The "gonna get laid" glow,
indigenous to all men, white-collar or blue, employed or not,
broken or not.
Linger:
Something better, brother. Something that'll be the cure for
what ails you! Poker!
Horehound looks at Linger skeptically.
Horehound: Poker?
Come on, Ray. We are I was a Vice Cop. Who in their
right minds are going to play poker with us?
Linger returns the skeptical glance with
a stare that borders on baleful, as the screen fades to the perfect
pitch black of narratorial reminiscence.
Despite the disaster-plagued dinner with
my former colleagues, I couldn't shake my feeling of having "unfinished
business" with certain students I had taught. I'm not a
fool. I understand, really, how disgraceful my firing was. That
I undoubtedly was a running joke with certain students who weren't
getting A's in my class as well as with certain in the faculty
and administration.
Academia is a closed society. That's
the nature of the beast. That said, even in my limited role,
I saw and see myself as a gatekeeper between an oft-inhospitable
educational establishment with its rules and its obligations
and its students. The young souls entrusted to us, with their
brave hearts, with their kind souls.
With their sweet asses. I thought to
myself that there was no reason now to maintain a barrier between
myself and certain of my charges, those who had smiled and flipped
their hair in my direction when I smiled back. No reason at all.
Linger: Some
of them you know, some of them you don't yet.
The air was damp and chill on the evening
I decided to make the first call to a former student. She wasn't
exactly dynamite, or even a bottle rocket, but she was a safe
bet, I thought. The type of student who isn't as "smart"
as others in the class, but whose proclivity for making her teachers
father figures made her, if not a favorite, then at least a subject
of conjecture and conversation.
We agreed to meet at a bar near [University
Name Withheld]. After we ended the conversation, I wondered if
perhaps this wasn't the wisest course of action. I had been fired,
after all. I could only imagine the possible embarrassments if
another student or God forbid, a colleague saw me
on their turf after I had been forcibly removed.
But I visited with Jim Beam for a bit,
and concluded that I was better off kicking against the pricks,
as they say. Fuck it. Let the bastards know that Mal Couture
was still a force to be reckoned with. I even showed up a few
minutes early, symbolizing my deep, steadfast commitment to my
stand.
Horehound: You're
being very coy. Is there something you're hiding?
I was a few drinks into my tab already
when Meg walked in. A skinny thing, sure, but with blowjob lips
and a can-do attitude. Her dress was thin, black, and clingy,
and I felt her eyes pulse toward me even as I pretended not to
notice her outside the window, saying her hellos to regulars,
preparing to impart hopefully more singular greetings unto me.
When she entered, she came up behind
me and left the hint of vanilla on the back of my neck with the
aforementioned lips. I felt a stirring someplace inside of me,
and I wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or something more primal.
Linger: Brock,
what exactly would I have to hide? It's a weekend game of cards,
for Pete's sake.
At first, small talk that merits barely more than summary. Good
to see you. You're looking great. None of those things they said
were true, were they. Of course not, you know how things get
blown out of proportion. In the midst of life, we are in debt,
et cetera.
This went on for some minutes, or some drinks, whichever you
prefer. I preferred drinks, and found myself toddling and wobbling
to the men's room as the evening went on, feeling Meg's gaze
warm me from behind each time. Even at my most alcohol-impaired,
however, she was nothing if not kind to me, even telling me once
that I had beautiful eyes.
I couldn't remember the last time anyone had told me anything
on me was beautiful. I kissed her on the cheek and thanked her,
and began to wonder if Meg was my reward for the tribulations
alluded to elsewhere in this document. Despite the wrinkles on
her face 30 years on her would be like 40 on someone who
didn't quite "live" as much she was a catch.
A girl to do Sunday crosswords with, to cook breakfast with,
to hold and to say I Love You to when she's having bad dreams.
But here, as there, I'm saying too much.
Horehound: Ray,
I don't know. I'm just not myself right now. Maybe I should raincheck
the card game and go home, huh?
Brock's apprehension mirrors my own,
as I struggle with the idea of imposing my own experience on
what purports to be a dispassionate analysis of Concerned Citizen.
Though I do feel that my experience matters here, as it sheds
insight into my identity and my perspective, I think it might
be best for all parties concerned if I just go ahead and complete
this entire story here rather than do an injustice to the serious
work at hand:
As the tab mounted and the drinks became
easier to swallow with practice and the repetition that implies,
Meg began to sway a bit. Something of a feat, given that we were
both sitting down. Curiously, her swaying found her moving ever
closer to me.
I didn't think I was a fool. I didn't
think it was foolish to ask her if I could walk her home. I didn't
think of a lot of things.
The curiosity of her making an animated
cell call before staggering to her apartment with her arm locked
in mine. The ease with which I maneuvered her to her futon
in a room where candles were already lit and divested her
of her raiments. Stripped naked, it was too easy for me to work
my tongue into her folds and to taste of life and youth for what
seemed like the first time.
She was a dead lay, as it went, but that
didn't occur to me either. All I heard was fuck me, fuck me,
fuck me daddy. All I heard was the crashing of her words against
the alcohol and the rocks in my head. I went in unprotected and
found myself declaring love to her, though for all I knew she
was checking her watch. She was quiet, too quiet to be surging
toward orgasm. I came and there was blackness. When I came to,
a note, a short message.
"I gave you AIDS, motherfucker.
You false-teeth, toupeed, potbellied ratbastard. Die."
As I said earlier, she wasn't a smart
girl in the academic sense. Note the myriad mechanical problems
in her message. That said, she stung me pretty good, didn't she?
Linger: Nonsense,
friend. You've got to play through the pain. Like the pros.
Linger pats Horehound on his shoulder
as bumper music plays. The scene then cuts to Horehound and Linger
sitting at a table with three other men.
Horehound Voiceover: The men came over as scheduled. All were neighbors
of Linger, who assured me that none were apprised of my employment
situation. As far as they knew, I managed a hardware store in
the valley. That was the cover Linger had created for me, even
before I asked for it.
A shot of each of the three heretofore
unseen men at the table. An elderly cottonhaired caucasian, long
and gaunt as an alley cat. A short Chinaman, in the dark blue
jacket and dusky workshirt legendary among repairers of appliances
and public telephones. An Italian, squat but not as short as
the Asian, his deep tan offset by his white t-shirt.
Music plays as Horehound speaks. A jazz
arrangement, curiously somber for poker, more approprate for
me. When I grabbed my clothes which had been sprayed by a dog
or other creature fond of "marking its territory".
Or a bit later, on the way home, when I felt for my wallet and
noticed it had been divested of its paper money. Or after that,
perhaps, when I noticed a swastika had been shaved into the hair
on my ass.
Horehound Voiceover: Linger likewise assured me that these men weren't
particularly adept card players. He said they could be taken,
but not to take them too far. When pressed as to his exact meaning
of that phrase, he declined to answer and I didn't press.
The camera pans around the table as each
men is dealt his hand, and as the music swirls into a percussive,
propulsive frenzy. None of Linger's guests bear cryptic poker
faces, and it strikes me that this scene bears a metaphorical
relationship with citizenry in general and the poker faces they
must bear or prepare for their watchdogs with badges
and guns.
More facial shots. The bemusement of
the Italian whose supply of change has depleted. The Chinaman
with rage bubbling like heated lamp oil, the old man whose wrinkles
pucker with sorrow, as if he had been counting to turn a profit
on the handling of cards in this "friendly game".
The guests were jobbing hard. Linger's
pile was holding steady, which was a complete work given his
bunco experience. The money had to be flowing somewhere, and
a shot of Horehound's face obviated any need to show his pile
of coins.
Horehound's grin was that of a man vindicated,
who just spent his rent check on scratch-off tickets and actually
saw them pay off. As the background tune rat-a-tat-tatted on
past the players folding and cutting out one by one, walking
by the plate of untouched sandwiches, we get shots of the departing
Linger friends nodding curtly as they depart.
The implication is as clear as a Final
Notice. There will be no follow-up games in Linger's quiet home,
with lights dim and cans of beer frosty-cold from the icebox.
One by one, the boys file out, sacrificing Linger to the company,
alone, of his former partner, Judas superimposed on John the
Baptist, left with the evening, domestic beer, and a plate of
sandwiches whose mayonnaise has turned never to turn again.
After the last man has left, the music
stops dead on a horn hit, and Linger turns to his partner, eyes
blazing, jaw slacked in disbelief.
Linger: Brock,
tell me what that was about before I throw you out.
Linger begins to shuffle the deck of
cards, but botches his move in mid-cut and leaves the cards to
lay on the table, as if abandoning them like legless Gypsy children
in the desert.
And I too have been left abandoned. Despite
the very grave message Meg left me with, there was still the
feeling of having been special enough to at least be thought
of. My other attempts to secure interludes with girls I had taught
bore no fruit, and I was forced to consider other means of letting
amor balm my wounded psyche.
Horehound: Buddy,
I thought your boys could handle themselves just a little bit.
Besides, it's penny-ante anyway. What's the big deal?
Horehound's eyes, cut downward, suggest
that he knows exactly what the big deal is. I recognize the shame
as that I bore in my own, when I did what they euphemistically
dub "tomcatting around", "playing the field",
or "shacking and shagging".
At least, my intent was to successfully
philander. At my heart, however, I was a failure on that front.
My charms were transparent and undesired, trinkets from a gumball
and bauble dispenser in front of some grim piece of Big Botch
Targetechture.
But I digress, and I realize that. Just
a moment, though, to reflect on the myriad failings that came
when I began to date or attempt to women from the
"outside". Bagel shop doyennes with their craggy smiles
and seabreeze breath. Waitresses whose teeth lie black and dead
like exhausted bulbs on motel vacancy signs. The single mothers,
with houses smelling over microwave popcorn and urchinshit of
death itself, who implore you to hold them for just an hour.
For just another fucking hour.
And I have heard these stories and lived
through these scenes, and there is very little salvation or solace
in the experience or the insight I've gained from it.
Linger: You
know what the big deal is, Brock. You're a screw-up. I covered
for you and carried you for ten years, brother, and that time
is done. And tonight proves why.
The camera holds on Horehound, whose
face trembles as his jitter-jat hand reaches for a smoke. Horehound
lights the stick with alacrity, as if hoping the rich, smooth
taste of Chesterfield 120s will afford some scant solace for
the degradation his character has endured. A loss of status,
of purpose, of structure. A loss all too much like my own.
Horehound: I
played the game to win, Ray. You understand I always play
to win. I always play my way!
Horehound's voice shaky like said Chesterfield,
like his future, like my present. I know that this project isn't
"about me", as the kids say. But even as I type those
words, I know it is about me. Concerned Citizen could be to me
what Professional Wrestling was to Barthes or the Panopticon
to Derrida. I wish there were some way to apologize for that
it would be simpler if one could simply cleave the researcher
from what he researches, as simply as yolk and white by a master
chef.
But it's never that simple. I am destined
to be defined by this, my most ambitious work of all, twinning
my fate with that of a fictional cop. Such irony. But not nearly
as ironic as me having to do this kind of work, just for the
chance of perhaps getting back in the academic game, of overcoming
the blotches on my resume, and so forth.
Linger: Shut
your trap!
Linger's face is contorted in rage. His
fists are balled up and he is in a fighting stance, and we see
here that Concerned Citizen, in certain respects, isn't quite
as simple as Badge and Gun.
Which is not an endorsement of the politics
or "lifestyle choices" of either program.
Horehound: Not
my fault your friends couldn't take the heat! It was a friendly
game, Ray, and damned if I was going to throw-
Horehound matches the fighting stance
with one of his own, but the former partners are only jawing
at this point.
Linger: I
am telling you now, shut your mouth, brother!
A long shot here of both men, circling
around the Linger livingroom until Horehound's back is at the
door. Martial rhythms play as two men in matching gray suits
sneak silently into the front door of the Linger home, a sneaking
to which Horehound is oblivious, as he is to the secreting of
a needle from an interior pocket of one of the men's suits, as
he is also oblivious to the needle entering his arm just before
the screen fades to black.
The men in the suits, like all demons,
resurface again, and will be the death of Horehound. Eventually.
Today's Features
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- Hunting Commie Perverts:
The Scarlet Professor
- DC's Best Political
Mind; DC's Most Dangerous Man;
- Dershowitz the Torturer:
Guess Why He Wants Clean Needles;
- Lese Majeste: That's
Against the Law Too;
- The Greatest Endorsement
AAA Will Ever Get;
- Merle Haggard on Civil
Liberties;
- Dullness Hailed: The Press on the Defeat of McKinney,
Traficant and Barr;
- National Review Puffs
into Town.
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|