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From: mithryl@walrus.com (Mithryl)
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Subject: CODY: FROSH Part 2, Chp. 5, Big One
Date: 17 Nov 1996 02:03:17 GMT
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FROSH
By CODY ANN MICHAELS
c. All rights reserved
PART 2
STACKS AND BOXES
Note: I know that what follows borders on incoherency. But the
world is beginning to shape shift so fast and so violently there is not
enough will left to hold any vision for very long. Also, as it is in
response to a letter, it must be posted. -- Cody.
Chapter 5
The Big One
"I decided to go into politics." -- A. Hitler
"I met Michael Moore a few weeks ago. He says that the problem
with America is that our name is boring. "The United States of America"
is a description, not a name - it has no marketability, unlike "Great
Britain"... Michael Moore decided the U.S. s hould change its name to
"The Big One." When you're travelling in East Lumpur or The People's
Republic of Sweden or wherever, you can tell folks you're from The Big
One. That made me realize America is the Texas of the world. We're much
too big, much t oo powerful, quite arrogant, utterly full of ourselves,
not nearly as cute and charming as we like to think, and much stupider
than we hope people realize. And everyone else hates us." -- Letter from
P.
Including ourselvses.
However, Great Britain and The Big One are also descriptions,
neither of which is particularly -- or even remotely -- correct, or cute.
T.s. Elliot says that every cat has three names: the one by which it is
known, Tom; the one by which it knows itself, me; and its real name.
Since we already know about The United States of America and Asshole of
the Western World, the question is, what is America's real name?
However, I am a bit off the name game for now. As you noted in
your letter, Clinton is not really Clinton; Ford was not really a theatre
and Statin's birth name was pronounced "Jew Gosh Villi"; all very
significant clues to solving the mystery of God's plan on earth. But you
neglected to take into account that both Stalin and the Kaiser had
withered arms; Hitler had one ball, and Roosevelt lived out his declining
years in a wheelchair.
It makes you wonder. Was there an intelligence behind all this; a
sort of demiurge who went about collecting the essence of body parts from
those who had done so much to shape the first half of the century? And to
what end? Perhaps to stitch together a sort of golem who -- or which --
might preside over the fin de Sheik of the second; a kind of living
holocaust whose very existence would make the victims of the prototype
seem like they had won the lottery.
I know there is something to be said about not taking one's
history off the telly. But then, why are we to assume that what we see on
tv is any less reliable than what we read in books? Anyone who has
managed to wind his way through the tortuous passag es of getting a book
published by a major publishing house knows that the process has made him
a liar. So am I any more ignorant for having learned about "the great
war" on television rather than my first grade spelling class? The second
world war, whic h was even bigger than the great war, is even worse. You
can't channel surf these days without ending up in a fox hole on Iwo Jima
or a tank on the road to Stalingrad. (I loved that movie. Bing Crosby
was hilarious as an s.s. captain down on his luck.) I don't know why they
call it the great war. It didn't look so hot to me. On the other hand,
it made what happened afterward look sick. The movies of Wilson were
interesting. It makes you realize, the movies have been around for a long
time. T.R. e ven took a film crew with him to Cuba. And a ten piece
band. But they had to leave their horses in Florida. There wasn't room
on the boat. That's one of the things they never told you in books. That
except for Teddy, the Rough Riders had to walk, not ride, up San Juan
Hill. Teddy, on the other hand, not only had a horse, but he was all over
the place, having a fucking ball. There's a story that one of the r.r.'s
had bought the farm, so to speak, and was lying in a ditch dying, and
Roosevelt gallope d up, jumped off his horse, shook his hand, and said,
"Tough luck, old chap. But isn't it bully!" It sure was. That's another
thing I never read in a book. But then, I don't read books. So maybe I'm
not being fair.
On the other hand, there was no sound. You could watch people
becoming body parts, and you weren't distracted by sound effects. There
might be a piano. But no explosions or screaming or any other background
noises. This sort of concentrated the actio n into one organ. The eyes.
And left the rest to the imagination -- except for the piano. Of course,
now we can add sound effects. The way we think it might have sounded back
then. We can even put in background music. And a piano. But it's not
the same. It doesn't really go with those grainy black and white vistas
of moral dispair that you see on the faces of men like Clemenceau and
Lloyd George; or Wilson, knowing he... What did Wilson know? He had half
a brain, you know? Ever since the 1880s, minor strokes had been slowly
eating away at the inside of his head. Wilson...
Why am I thinking about this? Fuck Wilson. Get out of my head.
Oh, now I remember? Channelling. I forgot. No way. That is the asshole
end of the world. Oh, now I understand. The movies open doors, and...
No, I don't. I was watching old movies on television. Old newsreels.
Which meant for every old newsreel, there had to be someone out there,
wherever it was, winding a camera. They didn't have motors. Totally
oblivious to whatever was happening around him. There was a procession of
the Tza r's daughters. The tzar and his wife were there, too. But I'm
obsessed with the daughters. There were a lot of pictures, and I taped
the whole section so I could... Could what> Fuck you. Will you stop?
IU'm not getting into that again.
tzar's daguhterst.s
politics is what you do to avoid the truth. I just figured it
out. Whenever I'm about to face the truth, to actually remember
something, I go political. Anbd that makes it go away.
What did I want to say today?
Most of the creative, i.e. positive, energy of the century's
second half has gone to shore up the lie that Hitler and Germany were
solely responsible for the second world war. It has drained us. Taken
everything away.
This is like the tobacco companies claiming that cancer causes
cancer in the lungs, not smoking cigarettes. Get it through your heads,
kids, Hitler was a symptom, not a cause. And World War 2 grew out of the
irritant from maintaining an earlier fiction , that the allies were non
mea culpa as far as the first one went.
Yeah. Yeah. But something's not working here. What are you
groping for? The guerre between two betweens. Why am I groping around
the first half of the twentieth century as though it's my grandmother's
attic. <My grandmother spent the war in Berlin. The second one. The
first one, she spent in Ireland. But for some reason she never told, she
moved to Germany in the early thirties.
Her first husbanbd was killed in the war.
I don't know his name.
The heresy of our age is that Germany was entirely justified in
what it did -- the justification of a hysterical madman driven wild by
cigarette burns and having its fingernails torn off. It's the same thing.
Those war criminals who forced the Germans to sign a treaty ... But I
don't know that. I mean, that's what they said on tv. That all that
misery in Germany was a result of the blockade and the settlement
agreement, and the mean old French and British, etc. But isn't that
blaming others. Surel y the Germans don't need the English and the French
to be miserable. It's sort of a national talent.
Maybe Hitler was going to happen anyway. No matter what anyone
did. It's an interesting fact that Hitler, unlike Eichman, died thinking
he was a nice guy. Sure, the war was lost but that wasn't his fault; his
generals fucked up. What could he do? He 'd done his best. He'd
probably be pretty surprised to come back and discover in how many
people's eyes, he's become a schmuck. He's also the man of the century.
The absolute ground zero focal point. I defy anyone to try to not think
of Hitler for fiv e minutes straight. It can't be done.
I hate thinking about Hitler. And yet, I feel like he's always
there. I know that it's not really him. It's the golem. That they made
out of his left ball. And Wilson's half brain; and Stalin's arm; Stalin
and the Kaiser both had the same withered a rm. So now the Golem has two
left hands. That's one way to spot him. And he's also got Roosevelt's
legs -- Franklin's, and one of Teddy's eyes. T.R. lost his eye in a
boxing match -- this was while he was president, but they kept it a
secret.
Of course, there was a trade for these things. You've heard the
phrase, "I'd give my right arm for..." some such thing. Well, be careful
what you wish for. You might get it. Then again, there might be a total
screw up in the shipping. Stalin wanted to make musical comedies.
Hitler asked to be able to paint like Miro.
Mussolini. Truman. Butch Cassidy. Truman's second term began in
the first half and ended in the second. This is because four does not go
evenly into fifty. There's a rumor around that Strom once ran for
president. It turned out to be true. Strom, in fact, is the last person
still alive who lost to Truman. Dewey, Wallace, Gus Hall. All dead.
Strom's the only one still functioning on a macrobiotic level. Even
Truman is dead.
Truman is the president that all losers invoke as an icon as their
ship goes down, seeing themselves standing on the balcony of the
presidential mansion holding up the Chicago Tribune to redicule. The
trouble is though, Truman was no loser. You could h ave pounded old Harry
into the mud of Belle Woods and he would still have walked home a winner.
I don't know much about him, but he must have been some dude to go up
against Strom Thurmand and those other guys in a fight. They showed his
picture when he was in the army. Round glasses. Round face. Round
helmet. Middle-aged. His eye sight had kept him out of West Point, so
when the war came along, he memorized the eye chart to trick his way into
the army.
Why am I talking about this? It's gotten cold. I need a sweater.
The heat's off. It's like I'm surrounded by ghosts. Not politicians.
You saw them there in the movies. Old men who were dividing up Europe;
men who would be dead by the time all hell broke loose. But what do I
care? What am I trying to figure out? How much they sound like arrogant
bastards who are in charge today. Is that it? That we're setting another
bomb? Is there something evil moving underneath us, like those worms in
the movie moving under the dessert, pushing up the ground, about to break
free again. Wasn't that. Not quite. I realized those four old men in
the movie, Clemenceau, et. al., were only the doormen; that there was
something else behind them, in the darkness inside the doorway.
Things were awkward. Clumsy. Something was fighting me. It
isn't that. It's this. Now. Here. That we've got to be afraid of.
Something is making us sleep. Rosa Luxembourg. I want to be like her.
Emma Goldman used to live in my neighborhood. T rotsky printed a paper in
the next block. We've got to open our eyes and wak u;p
This holocaust thing and anti-anti-semitism is eating us alive.
Don't you know that one breeds the other. Like in a reactor. We don't
know where to get rid of the waste. We're drouwnding in our own shit
the mud rose higher
stop it
have you ever mud wrestled with a pig when 59 tons of amunition is coming
in on your head
There ain't no athiests in fox holes. Get it?
stop it
it's breeding we've got to break it down. Kill it
God Amndit
the budda came back to the cntterwtewrtw
weldhs breigade
coming through
sixth infantry
zero
Buirtha was a pg
the whole French calvary had her
it was a matter of honor
they gave it to their sons
one war after another
where's mine?
that was no war.
that was nam
fuck you
she made a good transmitter. She was comingt in perfectly out there in no
man's land and then it rolled, that great mud slide of history we know as
the Persian Gulf
come back one
get it over with
we take you to the proving rougndsfs
is this an investigation or isn't it?
His contacts in Washinton were imppecable
we don't know how close we came at that point
do we?
the beast roams these hallways late at night, prowling up and down the
corridor for Rita Sanchez. I was betrayed. He'd get even. Track her
down through the corridors of power from the inside out.
what if I take off this grate?
Use a screwdriver
I know what to do.
Child support
it's all over but the counting
count down
I think I've mentioned, time is interwovular. You go in one whole, you
come out another.
Let us go back and recapitulate. There was an elction. I came to
WAshinton. Hi. Let me in. I'm Cody. The doorman opened the door.
That's how yu know you've been let in. Come in, Woodrow, we have beeen
waitigt g for you Woodrow was born in the middle of the Civil War. He
knew what fighting meant. And he knew what war was. And he got what he
wanted. Anyone who had ever gotten into the White House with half a brain
could do anything he damned pleased. So he skillfully wove a deal with
the ignorant Europeans to go home. They begged him to stay. He left
House in charge. They never spoke to each other again.
I think I got lost somewhere?> What about Belle Woods? She was in
one of Chaplin's films. Gradually we forgot, because we had never known.
We only read the newspapers and watched it on tv. And then there were the
mutees de guerre for whom it was req uired to surrender the seat if one
was not already a mutinee de guerre, and then it was a matter of comparing
war wounds to see who got to sit down. I skip over the grisley detail,
especially the part about asking the other passengers to decide who was f
it to stand and who was not. It could take hours, and then the victor was
only going two blocks. Then someone else would get on and they'd have to
decide all over again. Was having a leg off at the knee as bad as missing
a nose and half one's testicles. The other was no doubt even now fueling
the 20th Century Limited on it's way to the stars.
I'm totally lost. I don't know what I'm babbling about anymore.
Only if I stop, I know they will get me. Thereyre all out there, staring
in, even the ones with no faces. No eyes. But they're still looking at
me. Or through me. Yes. That's it. I' m like a hallway, a corrdidor
for them to come through. On the way out. Abel Ganz, abel ganz abel
gansssss.. Made a movie like this, while the war wwas going on, the dead
rising up from the battle field, and he used real soldiers, men on leave,
not act ors, who were later killed in battle. The dead in the film were
dead men walking. See, that's all it is. Just something I saw on
television. They are using the holocaust to butcher us. It's a setup.
They'll lock me up for this. Something that happened in the rain.
I couldn't explain. I looked down and I wasn't there. Where's
the rest of me? Now I knew. The golem had taken it. I had seen it in
the movies. Something in the dark background. Like, if you enhanced the
shot, it might even look like St. Nicholas. But it still smelled like a
nigger. Take me down that road, Sam. My office is on the sixth floor of
the Longworth Building behind an elevator. Okay. It is the elevator.
But it's an old service one that isn't used much. And I can only use it
when it 's on the sixth floor. The rest of the time I have a refrigerator
box in the hall. The guy in the box next to mine is from the district in
Arizona that has female slave gangs. He can hardly fit. I wouldn't mind,
but he's there all the time. If I come in at four a.m., he's there. The
only time he leaves is to go to the bathroom down the hall. I think he
sleeps there. What a hunk.
Mr. Smith goes to WAshington.
Mr. Smith is the golem of many faces. And two left hands. Why am
I here?
I think because they elected you.
Oh yeah. What district are you from?
The third. Look, do you mind? I'm trying to get some work done.
What kind of work?
Paperwork.
Why?
Look, shut up. I'm writing.
Suddenly I sensed it there in the shadows behind me. It wasn't
Willie Smith anymore. Who was it? I tried to remember. Don't be
anti-semitic. Was that it? Always shoving it in our face. Why? What's
anti-cemitism.
Where you don't like Jews.
I hate Jews.
I know. You've told me.
Stinking perverts.
Look, Joe. I'm trying to work. Okay?
Fine. I\ hate niggers, too.
Yes, yes. We know. You've been very subtle about concealing your
higher self.
Huh?
Shut up!
I knew he did it to make me mad. A kind of sexual hararssment.
But I also knew something was making him do it, and that was what worried
me. Stanley didn't have the brains to hate Jews. Tommy was like a
steamroller rolling through the Argyle Forest. Anything that stood in his
way died. But there was something else out there that very much wanted us
to hate the Jews. What was it?
A Dark Satanic Presence Baldrick would say. Private Baldrick,
dogsbody in the trench. After four or five months, anything would look
good. Even a dead cow. I feel like I'm in a rocking boat where various
decaying parts float to the surface, like, ... Get thee hence vipers of
the western world. Avaunt. Get your hands off me, Dennis. We weren't
allowed to have sex with upperclassmen. Denny was a sophomore. Which
meant he got to discipline the troops. His hand fastened around me like
King Kong. Picked me up and threw me at the elevator. Fortunately, the
doors were closed. Like, why am I here?
They voted for me. Remember? We were just getting to know each
other. y yYse wayne. I won't forget.
he was my d.i. Now I understood the significance of those
letters. All right, Shithead, move. You want favors. You give favors.
It was a curious dichotomy that there were now in the army those who were
permitted to go back on their word, and those w ho would not under any
circumstances betray a confidential trust. Both sides had their
adherents, and their methods of operation. Each understood the other. So
when a breakdown in operations occurred, there were unwritten rules for
restoring it. Women threw those equations into disarray. Good men were
suddenly being transformed into criminals. No one was safe. Soon morale
plummeted among the men. Each waited for the day when friendly fire would
once again become a tactical option. Like, watch you r back, honey. The
women moved up the structure like a hyatal hernia, strangling the services
at their corps. Women were even allowed to fire off rocket ships at
Saddam Hussein. There was no doubt they were taking over, but how long
would it take? Who knew?
Cody. Where are you?
I don't know.
Do you want to stop?
I missed it.
What?
Something big. She looked at her hands. I always miss it.
What do you think you're trying to say?
That there's no separation between what's happening now and what
they did then. I mean its like one of those buildings when there's an
earthquake, one floor goes right down on top of another, with everything
in between it. I've been getting messages. I don't know what they mean.
Someone is dead. For fifty dollars the whole world could go up. The
businessmen think they can do anything. How close are we to the final
solution?
You said that Hitler was a symptom.
Yes.
But what about Newt? Doesn't the same thing apply to him? They
are all symptoms. If someone like Woodrow Wilson couldn't save the world,
why would you expect it from Clinton?Aren't you asking too much of
history? Look at your friend from Maricopa. Is this the kind of bozo
with the smarts to stop the next big one?
Okay, but people could be nicer to each other. They could make an
active choice between hurting people and not hurting them.
Who?
These guys. The ones in the boxes up and down the hall.
What makes you think they have that power?
The only real offices are in the elevators. But you can't tell
that back home. So every day, each congressman gets to use a furnished
elevator for fifteen minutes to an hour, depending on seniority, to
entertain visiting constituents and make himself look important. Then
they get off and the elevator goes to the next floor. We put you down for
nine-thirty to nine-forty five, Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Have your
people lined up and ready to get on. We try to keep a tight schedule.
You can also hav e it for an hour on Saturday if you want.
What if I have to vote?
If you vote, you lose your turn.
People with nowhere to go could also use the elevators at night
when the other members went home.
At Cannon and Rayburn I think they had similar arrangments. These
buildings had been named after the great speakers of their generations.
Longworth had been T.R.'s son-in-law. Stacked above each member's box are
those of his staff. Some have many peo ple working for them. Above the
staff are other boxes; like for filing, a kitchen, his own toilet if he is
really powerful, and has been here for a long time. Some of these guys
have been here since the Incas. They came here from Macchu Picchu. They
a re like cliff dwellers, ladders connecting the different levels.
Members of congress used to be added as each state joined the union. But
that became unweilding when it got above seven thousand. So now there is
a fixed total, and each delegation is bas ed on population. Still, 7,572
makes a lot of boxes. They have warehouses out in the slums where
Congressmen are stacked up like railroad cars. Here, they line the dark
halls; the only illumination is from bulbs that hang on cords from the
ceilings at intervals, with chipped glass shades. The place could use a
paint job and some fixing up. I don't think it's been rennovated since
Alice dedicated it. Alice was Longworth's wife and T.R.'s daughter. The
name is familiar. Each member sits in his box w ith his word processor,
and his staff stacked above him. The only time he comes out is to go to
the bathroom or vote. But Newt is said to be working on a hookup that
will make it possible for members to vote from their cubicles. They are
yawning black squares like caves. The only sounds are the fork lifts as
they move the pallettes on which the boxes are stacked, the members
constantly in a search for better location -- it's very fluid -- nearer an
airshaft or a window, or closer to a toilet. That's especially important
to the older ones with prostate problems.
The poor congressmen are afraid to raise taxes to fix up their
miserable quarters. Somehow, it is not as glamorous as I envisioned.
Like many, I came here innocently expecting to be greeted by hordes of
rich, handsome lobbyists who would offer me milli ons for my vote. What a
laugh. The rich lobbyists turned out to be another el Dorado, an
illusion. Some of those guys are so threadbare they can barely afford to
buy themselves a ham sandwich and weak tea in the basement cafeteria. The
most pathetic a re tobacco company people. They come in here with weak
smiles and hand me little sample packs and plastic lighters made in nam,
and a grubby printed card asking me not to hurt them. They remind me of
men who want me to sleep with them because they're su pposed to be writers
or something special, like it's an entitlement. No way. Like Aquirre,
the conquistador in Herzog's film, we came to this jungle seeking glory
and riches but the myth is turning into a fever dream of madness as our
raft spins in the current of the rushing river. At night, the stench from
the cooking fires can be disconcerting, especially as there is no
ventilation. No one will share food with the others.
Cannon sits in his cubicle mouthing cliches and throwing gnawed
buffalo wings into the corridor. He weighs 320 pounds. His box bulges.
He's proud to have voted to trash welfare. Make the niggers work; the
international Jewish conspiracy, social security, etc. Old people should
die. Save the taxpayers money./ Fuck affirmative action. If women don't
want to get fucked, why do they join the army? What do they think it is,
a club?
The trouble with trying to tell the truth is the bigots who
believe the right thing for the wrong reason.
What are you saying?
I can't handle this material. No one knows what to do.
Maybe you should rest.
Yeah. I'm dead, aren't I?
We'll see.
*
"People spoke softly at the funeral: 'Someone else might choose
another way.' Everyone knew what that meant. It was clear to everyone
what 'another way' could be. They were nuclear scientists, after all.
Didn't Moscow understand, they asked, how dan gerous it is to drive people
who held the nuclear arsenal in their hands to this state?" -- Grigory A.
Yavlinsky, NY Times, 11/15/96, pA33, on the suicide November 1, of
Vladimir Nechai, director of Chelyabinsk-70 nuclear complex. Nechai wrote
in his suicide letter that he could no longer face his staff, which had
not been paid since May, a month's pay being 250,000 rubles per worker,
about $50.