FROM ‘HOW’M I DOIN’?’
TO ‘GIULIANI TIME’
AND BACK AGAIN
“It is both a reality and a bad dream, but its deepest reality lies, strangely enough, in its manifestation as a dream,” wise man George Kennan once said about another nightmare.
When the elevator door opened, I stepped into the dreamscape of a large, empty, unlit floor. Distant lights at the far end of the room illuminated a table. People were seated around it. As I approached my heart started fibrillating. I recognized Amy, the only kitten among a bunch of old toms. She saw me before I could reach the table.
“I’ve pieced things together,” I confessed.
An elderly man leaning on a golden, lion-headed cane rose from his chair and began a presentation in a strange accent: “The Whitlock Corporation was founded in England in the mid-eighteenth century, 1752 to be exact. Slowly, in the late-nineteenth century, it invested more and more in America. Finally it was rechartered here in New York. Now, economic domination has slowly been revolving eastward. Young man, this is not some petty frat prank. We don’t deal in vengeance.”
“Since the late-’60s,” a guy with a Van Dyke beard took the ball, “the Whitlock Corporation has made heavy investments in the Japanese economic infrastructure. Now the principal problem, as you must know, is that there have been many restrictions forbidding foreign investors in Japan, especially back then.”
“So?” I asked him. All eyes looked to one man who had been sitting in darkness the entire time. He suddenly flipped on a lamp. I walked over in disbelief and touched his face to see if he was real.
“Mr. Ngm, what are you doing here?”
“Am I not your father? Can’t you address me as such?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ngm, it’s just that…”
“The Japanese government,” he began, “was particularly worried about the future holders of this stock.”
“But what do you have to do with all this?”
“You must understand,” interjected the Van Dyke beard, “this money is locked in Japan. They won’t let us take it out. All we can really do with it is reinvest it and wait.”
“I am a member of this board,” Mr. Ngm replied.
“This isn’t going to end with a lion and a chicken is it? I know that story.”
“Whitlock is on his way here. He should be the one…”
“He’s my father, isn’t he?” I asked Mr. Ngm.
The group of men looked at each other strangely and silently. Finally Ngm spoke: “A secret clause was built into the 1962 trade agreement between the Japanese government and the CEO of Whitlock Inc. It stated that among Whitlock’s trustees, he had to accept a Japanese citizen. That’s when I was voted a member of the board.”
“What does all this mean?”
“The agreement also stated that a future trustee with quite a few powers would come to the board on his twenty-first birthday.” I was twenty-three, so I couldn’t be the Anti-Christ.
“Am I on Candid Camera?”
“The board of trustees, as you can imagine, crosses a lot of borders. National feelings at times run deep. We have an ex-U.S. president and a former prime minister on our board.
“So Whitlock, to appease many of the Americans on the board, agreed to have his son born in Japan and thereby be a citizen, but he counter-stipulated that you must be raised here…”
“America’s Wackiest Videos?”
“I assure you we did everything for a reason. The result was that you were from the sperm of Whitlock.”
“Am I going to be a patsy for some assassination?”
“I have a meeting in Geneva at 3:00 and no time left for this Oliver Twist crap,” said the dick with the Van Dyke beard.
“Mr. Ngm very graciously gave us permission on behalf of the Japanese government to delay your awakening,” the double-headed cane said.
“We were trying to let you grow up a bit more,” said the Van Dyke dick. “After all, we’re not insensitive. It must be somewhat traumatic to learn that you were manufactured as a stipulation, a voucher to a corporate agreement.”
“You’re not being entirely honest,” a new bow-tied figure added, staring at a distant figure behind him. Turning around, I could see him through the smoke and shadows. Whitlock had arrived.
“There was a force on this board,” the double-headed eagle added, “that did not want you to assume your seat, who felt you were mentis incompetence.”
“Incompetent!”
“This board decided that you had to pass a series of character tests,” Whitlock explained.
“Tests?” I asked.
“Character assessment tests,” said the double-headed cane. “We wanted to see several things. Among them, we were curious if you would fight for Amy, and stay with her.”
“We were also interested in seeing if you could handle wealth,” Whitlock said. “That money I gave you was in fact the last test.”
“The money? You mean the half-million?”
“How did you handle it? Anything that happens here will be incumbent upon its full return.”
“I still got it. I mean, I spent a couple of hundred, but I can make it back.”
“Return what you have. You can make up the rest later.”
“Fine.” A McDonald’s binge, a tourist night in New York, donations on a subway, and the purchase of an illegal handgun up in Harlem couldn’t have destroyed more than five hundred bucks. I could get that much back selling my collector’s issues of Screw Magazine.
Whitlock vanished off to a distant room that I suspected was a toilet.
“How could you do this to me?” I asked Mr Ngm.
“If I told you the truth, it could have jeopardized your status on this board.”
“I don’t mean that!” I yelled back. What was the point of trying to explain what it was like never having a father? How could I articulate the lifelong ache of rootlessness? It was apparent that he felt uncomfortable. Besides, I had already reached overload. I rose and walked through the darkness of this empty void. Behind me I felt a perfumed presence—Amy.
“I can’t believe this,” I muttered. “This is unbelievable.”
“That’s why you were paranoid all your life,” Amy replied, and quickly added, “It’s also why you suffer from certain character ailments.”
“What character ailments?”
“Low self-esteem, manifesting itself in your selfish and sleazy nature. You don’t trust anyone.”
Suddenly it all fit together; she was getting even. “Amy, I’m sorry about our night of love and pain, but I don’t deserve this!”
“That wasn’t me. We never had conjugal relations,” she said.
“Deny if you must…”
“Remember that middle-aged lady in the waiting area?”
“What waiting area?”
“Of the optometrist’s office.”
“No.”
“Well, there was one there. Didn’t you wonder why I insisted you had to get an eye operation just as I was coincidentally coming down with laryngitis?”
“What about it?”
“That case of laryngitis left me completely mute two days ago, remember?”
“So?”
“Do I sound like I have laryngitis now!?” she hollered.
“No, but you could have gotten over it.”
“You couldn’t see me, and I didn’t have to speak to you. A body-double made love to you.”
“But why did Whitlock…”
“You’re Whitlock!” she hollered.
“You’re confusing him!” Whitlock yelled from across the sea of darkness. Members of the board were parting now; others roamed absently, perhaps senilely, around the darkened floor.
“My parents were a trade agreement,” I reckoned aloud.
“You were not neglected,” Amy interjected.
“Everyone in this room had some hand in your upbringing,” said the Ngm trustee affectionately. “We all had real concern for you. We would meet on a regular basis and review your life to try and find ways to generate and funnel love to you.”
“We reviewed video tapes of you,” said another misshapen slab of humanity. “We tried to get the right meals into your body.”
“Flintstone over here,” the Van Dyke pointed to the bow tie, “worried about your sex life. He tried to engineer a romance. He gave you a choice of girls.”
“What? When?”
“At a bar near Herald Square shortly after that phony-operation escapade,” Flintstone replied. I guess no one had ever told him about the children’s cartoon of the same name.
“You mean those three girls who weren’t Charlie’s Angels?”
“Yes, and you rejected all three.”
“They were paid for?”
“Actually,” Van Dyke snickered, “I commend the boy’s instincts.”
“Instincts?”
“In fact, you could resolve a small wager. How did you know they were all transvestites?”
“I refuse to believe this!” I yelled. “You’re all a cartel of out-of-work actors.”
“But I was your legal father, was I not?” Ngm approached.
“You ran a failing bonsai plant company.”
“That was a front. You never saw where I really worked.”
“Yes I did, I saw the warehouse—on Seventh Avenue.”
“We rented that space just to substantiate the lie.”
“Where’s Mother?” I asked anxiously.
“There, I had some problems. It’s difficult hiring a woman for a lifetime role. The woman who played your mother till the age of seven moved to Baltimore. The second lady who played your mother felt the entire idea of deceiving you was disgusting, and quit just as you reached puberty. The last person who played your mother died suddenly.”
“Ma died?” I asked. I had liked the last mother most of all.
“No, actually, she quit. Her name was,” he opened a notebook and checked a page, “Laura Burrell. She died shortly afterwards.”
“Amy, I beg you, tell me how much Whitlock paid you to make you all do this.”
“Not a cent, he didn’t have to.” There was a strange mixture of sadness and panic in those soft, moist eyes. Quietly she explained, “No one outside this room knows this, but my real name is Amy Whitlock. Dad and I…well, I am your older sister.”
“But, but…I love you.”
“I love you, too, brother.” I should have recognized it before; it made complete sense. After all, all love is merely a narcissistic projection. It was inevitable that I would fall in love with her. What else was Amy but me in a dress? Admittedly, the operation had brought out the beauty that was hidden within me. As I reckoned with the thought that she was my sister, I tried to neutralize the sexual feelings I had, but it was confusing.
“You are a full trustee member of Whitlock Incorporated,” Whitlock said. “Just sign some documents and then you can go.”
“You’ll be given an appropriate income, based on dividends, and a portfolio we’ve been keeping for you. Its worth is comparable to that of any other member, save my own, of course.”
“Why the job as a refrigerator repairman?” I asked, still trying to tear holes in their conspiracy.
“You needed a livelihood,” Ngm said.
“And you are hostile to corporate America. That’s the great irony. We truly tried to prep you for a place here. Hell, we tried to prep you for the presidency of the company…”
“Right!” I whooped. “And Whitlock yanked me out of the graduate program.”
“Yes,” Whitlock replied, “because we discovered you were about to drop out. We were hoping to create a frustration, to renew your drive to finish school.”
“How about Veronica, the Dean’s secretary? Why’d you…”
“Oh, we had reason to suspect that she was a member of the MOSAD, so we had to disengage you. We bought her off.”
“The MOSAD? The Israeli secret service, MOSAD?”
“If not them, then the Israeli lobby. We have reason to suspect they stumbled over the secret of your true identity while you were in Israel.”
“That’s insane!”
“Operation Turkish Delight was a strategy designed to defeat the Armenian Memorial Day Bill introduced by Senator Bob Dole,” Whitlock said. “I don’t know who Veronica was with, but once I agreed to use my political clout to kill the bill, she entirely lost interest in you.”
“The operations then! How about the corrective surgery?”
“There were no operations,” Amy replied, repressing a smirk.
“What?”
“Since birth, you had this self-concept of being small and ugly.”
“But look, the scars!” I showed her my wrist and ankles.
“Those are only scars. Your height hasn’t changed, nothing really changed. You were given a facial and haircut.”
“How about the weight loss?”
“The weight loss was due to the so-called rehabilitative workouts afterwards, and the special diet.”
“We tried to make you healthy!” Whitlock appealed.
“Be real,” Amy said. “Do you really think I would force you to have an operation, or, for that matter, that doctors would operate on a non-consenting patient? It disappointed me that you were so gullible to this whole scheme. I actually thought it was quite amateur.”
“I found out about the Bismarck operations,” I shot back.
“What Bismarck operations?” Amy asked.
“You’re from Bismarck, deny it!”
“I am, so what?”
“I found out all about the operation to take nerds of the ’70s and turn them into corporate execs of the ’90s.”
“That’s insane,” Whitlock replied, rolling his eyes.
“But the Merlin Corporation is doing a clean up there!”
“What do you know of Merlin?” Ngm looked to Whitlock.
“I know it’s a division of Whitlock Incorporated,” I replied. They looked nervously back and forth.
“Hey, if I’m a trustee, I’m entitled to know what’s going on!”
“It’s nothing, just a nuclear waste clean-up unit,” Ngm said.
“Are all these fuck-ups just an accident?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Everything from Vietnam and the Savings and Loan bankruptcy to nuclear waste clean-up.”
“What are you talking about?” Whitlock asked.
“He’s a trustee,” Ngm replied, “and he’s also your son.”
Whitlock sighed and said, “Government debacles are America’s chief booming industry, son. Learn that first and foremost.”
“It’s essentially what we do here,” Ngm replied.
“That’s great,” I said, admiring the stench of it. It had finally sunk in. After a lifetime of despising these people, these modern day destroyers of Rome, it turned out I wasn’t just one of them, I was a general of the Visigoths.
“It’s only a fraction of what we made with the Reagan deficit,” muttered Whitlock to Ngm.
“What?” I asked.
“In the words of Augustine,” said Ngm, “do not seek to know more than is appropriate.” I didn’t think it appropriate to reveal that I had heard that same quote on Jeopardy the night before.
“This is only the executive committee of the board of trustees. The full board is meeting next Monday at 10:00 a.m. to vote on several strategies regarding the President’s new national health insurance proposal. Try to come on time and look sharp,” Whitlock called.
“But Dad, you still have to finish the last detail of the test, remember?” said Amy.
“What’s that?” I inquired.
“The return of the money.”
“Oh, gee, it’s late,” Whitlock said, checking his costly wristwatch.
“Now Andrew, it’s imperative that you see this thing to its end,” said the holder of the double-headed eagle cane.
“We are very particular about the rules here,” Ngm added.
“Very well, son. Let us seal the final bonds of this contract.”
“So be it,” said Amy.
A limo was waiting for us downstairs. Dad, sis, and I got in.
“Actually,” I said, “this really does make complete sense.”
“It does?” asked Dad.
“Sure, this is what was missing from my life all along. A strong, supportive father. We could be one of the great father-son teams in history, joining the ranks of Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the Great; William Frederick I and Frederick the Great.”
“How come the fathers are never great?” he responded.
As we drove, Dad and Amy discussed details of my ascendancy to the throne. While they talked about where I should live, who my support team would consist of, and a possible news conference announcing my mighty elevation, tears started coming to my eyes. Amy must have noticed the watering, because she commented, “You know those blue pupils you’ve got? They’re actually extra-fine, extra-soft contact filters. You can take them out.”
“Contact filters?!” I replied aghast.
“I’m sorry, but I was terrified at the thought of being mauled by my own brother,” she replied meekly.
“I’m ashamed of how I acted before.”
“Actually, the sex surrogate said you were wonderful,” Amy replied.
“Did she really?”
“She absolutely did.”
“God, I feel almost ashamed when I think about it.”
“Well, all is forgiven.” At that point, I noticed Dad gritting his teeth while staring out the window.
“Any problemo, Pop?”
“It just disgusts me that you have to go back to that shit-hole another night. Ngm should have provided you with better living conditions. Amy, I want you to get Joe a room at the Waldorf tonight.”
“Will do.” She was on the phone immediately.
“Joe, after a lifetime of stress and strain, I have one question to ask you.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Are you happy?”
“Truth?”
“Truth, son.”
“I’m still in disbelief. I just can’t digest all this.”
“Well I wish there was something I could do.”
“Well there is,” I replied.
“Just say it.”
“Do you have any money on you?”
“Well, not much on me,” he replied, and opening his wallet, he offered ten freshly minted twenty dollar bills. Taking them out, he asked, “What do you want to get?”
“Nothing.” I took the money and flipped down the window.
“What are you doing, son?”
“Something I always wanted to be able to do,” I replied, and as we slowed down at an intersection, I looked around for homeless, but could only spot middle-class swine.
“Hey!” I yelled out to the bourgeoisie, “Grovel, you pigs!” I tossed the money out the window. It swirled in about a million different directions, and they didn’t seem to notice at first, but finally one noticed and then the next. Looking through the rear window as we headed north, I watched a crowd scrambling and scratching.
“Now I believe it,” I replied. Whitlock’s bloated and bloodless face was fixed in comic horror.
“Relax,” I counselled.
“Well, anything for you, hon,” Amy replied. “After a life of destitution, I would have done the same thing.”
“Hey, I don’t care about the cash,” Whitlock replied. “If you want, you can take the suitcase of money we’re getting and toss it off the top of the Empire State Building.”
“I’d like that,” I replied gleefully.
“Fine, we’ll do it,” he ratified.
The limo pulled up in front of my place, and out we zipped. It was strange as I climbed the steps, six at a time, thinking, I left here a pauper and I’m returning a prince. My gal, or sis, and pal, or pop, were fast on my heels.
“Hurry, and let’s get out of here. Go somewhere and celebrate,” Dad said.
Racing into the bathroom, I pushed the toilet aside to reveal the sacred hiding place. As I pulled out the cash-filled briefcase, I noticed Sis and Pop standing in the bathroom doorway, staring at me.
“So it was here all along,” Dad said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“God, we searched the place looking for it. Who would have thought of a movable toilet?”
“Yeah, well. Here is most of it,” I replied. “Let’s go hurl it off the observation deck of the Empire State Building.” Grabbing the suitcase, Pop punched me in the solar plexus. I went down hard.
“Sorry, my friend, this is where it all ends.”
“Ba…da…da…”
“Don’t be absurd, you little shit.” Whitlock hit me again, a chop to my neck. I heard something inside snap like a rubber band.
“All right, we got the money. Let’s get out of here,” Amy appealed to him.
“No, after what he did to you, I want you to hit him, too!” Whitlock barked, and grabbing both arms behind my back, he shoved my head forward, a punching bag for free slaps.
“I’m not hitting anyone.”
“Sis! Pa! Wuh?”
Grabbing me by my hair, Whitlock pulled me up. When I tried to turn to take a swing at him, he tripped me backwards into a bunch of boxes.
“You promised you wouldn’t hurt him,” Amy pleaded.
When I struggled to my feet, he punched me in the face. He seemed to be holding some kind of tube in his fist to intensify the blow. When I collapsed backwards on my bed, I realized it was all a fraud. He wasn’t my father, she wasn’t my sister. Then I felt it: the cheap handgun under the pillow. When I pulled it out and pointed it at my pseudo-Dad, his face turned white.
“It isn’t real,” Whitlock uttered.
“Please, let’s avoid that cliché. It’s real, and I’ll use it if I have to.” Amy and Whitlock stared at me.
“Get on your fucking fascist knees,” I commanded both of them.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
My nose was bleeding. Many little things were shattered and in pain. I ached as I walked. I was penniless, title-less. And things made little sense.
“How did you get Ngm to participate?” I asked, bewildered.
“People will do anything for the right sum of money,” Whitlock replied.
“That’s not true. It’s not what you think,” Amy cried out.
“If you hurt me, I’ll have you killed,” Whitlock swore.
“Then I better kill you.”
“If you kill me, there are people who have instructions to torture you for the rest of your natural life.”
“I have nothing,” I replied. “I had it all, then lost it in a matter of minutes. My life matters little.”
“Let it all end here,” Amy appealed. “Let us leave with the money, and you’ll never see us again.”
“I plan to kill him, and rape and kill you,” I revealed, and added as an afterthought, “Maybe I should rape him, too. Then I’ll leave you alone and never see you again.”
“All right, just listen,” Whitlock said, rising to his feet.
“STAY DOWN!” I screamed. He fell nervously to all fours and talked out of the side of his mouth. I walked over and put the nose of the pistol to the back of his skull. Leisurely, I cocked the trigger. “Pray!”
“Oh my God!” Whitlock started weeping. I saw that I was standing in a puddle of piss; the man had urinated on the floor. The man was worth in excess of a billion, and I had him on the floor in his own urine. Holding the power to end his life in my hand, I felt good. But I couldn’t murder him. It wasn’t a question of morality (killing certain people is moral), but I wasn’t prepared to end my life there. As poor as I was and as rich as he was, I still wasn’t prepared to make that trade. (Besides, at that moment I remembered that the gun didn’t work.)
“Get the fuck out!” I yelled at him. He rose, thanked me, and scrambled out the door, curiously mumbling, “Keep the tramp.”
“Out! It’s all over now,” I said to the tramp.
“Let me just explain what happened here,” she replied nervously.
“I killed my father and raped my mother. Spare me the bullshit. Just leave.”
“Fine, neither of us have anything to gain or lose. I just want you to know we did fuck that night. You were supposed to fuck the body double, but…”
“Bullshit.”
“Whitlock planned all this long ago. He wanted to drag you along much further. He wanted to get deep inside your head. He had a screenplay writer working on this. Planting clues and stuff. He wanted to string you along for years.”
“Bullshit.”
“What he didn’t anticipate was that he’d fall in love with me, and even more, he didn’t anticipate that I’d fall for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“Hey, I don’t give a shit. But all that despair he went through for me, that was real. And that night you and I fucked, that was real.”
“More bullshit.”
Without a word she unbuttoned her shirt and pulled down the upper part of her right bra cup. There it was, my rodent-tooth brand, the love-hickey I implanted in a passionate frenzy.
“Do you want me to tell you what else you did to me? Do you want me to tell you why you repulsed me and why I’ll never be interested in you anymore?”
“Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to…”
“I liked you. I fell for you. And you took advantage of me.”
“I didn’t meant to, I just thought humiliation and pain were necessary parts of truly great lovemaking,” I replied, slowly seduced into her crap.
“Bullshit,” she replied. “Anyway, that body double told him that you fucked me instead, and he went nuts. That’s when he paid to get me back. Then when he ransacked your place and couldn’t find the cash, he realized he had to pull the plug on this early. He was planning to continue this delusional torture for years.”
“He’s worth billions!”
“He’s worth millions, not billions. He lost a lot by the end of the ’80s. Hell, he can’t afford to just throw away a million. Besides, the rich are misers. Didn’t you see his face when you threw his two hundred bucks out the window? He was prepared to jump out after it.”
“How did he get to Veronica?”
“He didn’t. She just got sick of you.”
“How about Mr. Ngm?” He couldn’t have gotten to him.
“He half-bribed and half-extorted him. Don’t be hard on that poor guy. He was very worried about you. Whitlock really worked on him. He made him all these promises: he’d free your transcripts, not have you arrested for larceny, and so on.”
“You better leave,” I replied. “I can’t bear hearing any more of this.” When Amy started to leave, I spotted the briefcase of cash. “Hey, take that. He’s just going to send his thugs to get it. You might as well give it to him.”
Amy picked up the briefcase and was about to walk out the door when she stopped and put it down. Taking out her checkbook, she scribbled something. She handed me a check for ten thousand dollars.
“What’s this?”
“That is some of what I made on this assignment. You have my work number, you can call me if you have any further problem with Whitlock.”
“What are you, a private detective or something?”
“Hell no. In fact, you picked me on this one. You picked everything.”
“I picked what?!”
“When Whitlock saw you had a crush on me, he brought me in on this. Then he developed a crush on me, then I went for you, but now I’m back with him.”
“More bullshit.”
“We weren’t supposed to screw. That’s why you became blind and I was mute, but things don’t always turn out as they’re supposed to, do they? Anyway, you picked everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“All the bullshit that this was built on was bullshit we heard you say. Bullshit that we knew you’d have a weakness for.”
“What bullshit do I have a weakness for?”
“Like the tendency to believe in complex and ridiculous conspiracies. Also, your belief that beneath all the iconoclastic garnish, you are a chosen son, waiting for some powerful person to pull you out of your rut in life. Do something with yourself. No one’s going to rescue you but you.”
Without reply, I saw the only woman I ever loved take the briefcase, which held the only thing I ever loved, and head downstairs to join the only person and thing I ever truly hated.
For a long time, I sat amongst the ruined and renovated, and felt an incredible sense of loss. So I really did make it with her; that was small consolation to losing possession of the world.
Suddenly I heard someone scrambling up the stairs. I feared the worst—Whitlock or one of his infernal agents coming to extract final revenge. With broken-gun in hand, I ducked behind the door. Mr. Ngm entered.
“Mr. Ngm, freeze!” I said, still regarding him more as an enemy than a friend. Mr. Ngm ignored my command and grabbed me, giving me an angry shake.
“Are you insane!” he screamed.
“Fuck you!” I punched him in the face. He kicked and punched, and I kicked and punched back.
“You’re an inscrutable idiot!” he yelled.
“You’re a fucking cold-hearted reptile!” And on the insults flew, back and forth, as blows were exchanged.
When we were both exhausted, we each crawled away, like two fought-out alley cats just sitting, panting on the floor.
“How did you meet a madman like that?” Ngm finally asked.
“At least he wasn’t dead inside like you.”
“Look, I gave what I had.”
“How the fuck could you do that? How could you play along with him?” We both went to the kitchen sink and washed and bandaged ourselves among the dirty dishes.
“This Whitlock man approached me quite suddenly and said that my son was in deep trouble. He said you stole a large sum of money from him. He said that his attorney was pursuing a warrant for your arrest. He implied that he was going to do something terrifying to you. I tried to call you, but your phone was disconnected. Your mother was worried sick.”
“So she wasn’t dead? She didn’t get sick and wasn’t replaced?”
“Of course not! In fact, I kept trying to say things that were deliberately outlandish so you would eventually see the ridiculousness of it all and come to your senses! But you didn’t! You just kept believing that nonsense! How could you be so gullible?!”
“Everything you said was something I had doubts about.”
“That explains it,” he said.”Whitlock gave me a list of ten lies that I was to repeat and play a role in.”
“He did that?”
“We actually rehearsed it several times. He had a theatrical director, and I had an acting coach. They were unemployed, non-union actors.”
“I can’t hear this anymore. I’m getting vertigo.”
“Joe, I had no idea that you felt that way about me. I mean, I thought the whole thing was so absurd that you would never believe it. Did I really raise such a susceptible child?”
“YOU DIDN’T RAISE ME! YOU TREATED ME LIKE A GODDAMNED PLANT.”
“But I’ve treated plants very well. They’ve been the very center of my existence.”
“You weren’t a Dad! I never saw you!”
“I tried teaching you self-reliance!”
“Do I seem self-reliant? The very first memory I have was you and mom saying that you adopted me to fill a parenting urge. What the hell was I supposed to think? Who were my real parents?”
“I have the file at home.”
“You what?!”
“They were a young couple from the midwest somewhere. They were killed in an auto accident.”
“They were?!”
“You weren’t in the vehicle,” he explained.
“Why didn’t you tell me this long ago?”
“You didn’t ask. If you like, you can have the file. You can check it out.”
“I believe you.” I paused, letting it all sink in.
“Joe, what will you be doing now?” he finally asked.
“Piecing together my shattered life.”
“I didn’t know you…I had no idea you had lost your grant to graduate school. Would you like to finish your education?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Well all you had to do was tell me. You’re my only son, you know. A child’s education is his parent’s final responsibility.”
“I appreciate that.” And then I tried to explain my mindset of the moment: “After all the histories I read, I came to realize that fate picks a handful of men who guide and decide for all others. Tonight, for about twenty minutes or so, I really thought I was one of those men—Bane Whitlock. I really thought I was someone consequential, truly corrupt.”
“Yes, and so you were rich for that short time, and that’s a feeling few people can know, even under deception. It should carry some value, some wisdom.” He started walking around Amy’s half of the apartment.
“But…”
“This apartment is nice,” he called from Amy’s room, “but why did you only have it half-renovated? And how could you afford it?”
“Amy lived in there. It’s a long story.”
“Come on, let’s go get a cup of coffee; you can tell me all about it.” So we went to an all-night coffee shop, and I told him the whole enchillada, about how Whitlock cut my grant and how I ended up scaring the hell out of him; how we then became best buddies and later sworn enemies. I explained how I got work as a proofreader and met the high-strung Amy, who became my psycho roommate; the court battles that ensued; the faux enhancement operations; and finally, how I actually deduced I was Whitlock’s lost son, something we both laughed at. I also told him how I first thought I had made love to Amy and then I thought I hadn’t, and then I learned I did, but I still wasn’t sure.
“A regular loverboy, aren’t you?” he joked as the sun rose, and the waiter finally brought over the check. He paid it, I left the tip, and we stepped outside. We silently, tiredly meandered south down Lexington Avenue as the city slowly awoke before us.
“I’m truly sorry, Joe,” Ngm said out of the blue.
“No big deal.”
“I don’t mean that; I mean I’m sorry for failing you as a father. The truth of the matter is, I lost faith in humans long ago. I suppose that’s the reason I turned to flora.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I replied, searching for a quick and unsentimental departure.
“Joey, can you come over for dinner tonight?” he asked in a woebegone tone.
“I’d like to,” I replied in a devil-may-care manner. “But I really fell behind ‘cause of Whitlock and all, and I really do have to catch up on my history tonight.”
He got the message and nodded a bit, looking off. I started receding, like one of night’s shadows.
“Did you know that in 1581,” he called out, “Ivan the Terrible accidentally killed his son and spent the last of his days in severe depression.” I could see his sadness rising like steam through his grating attempts at reconciliation.
It was olive branch time: “Well, if you put it that way, Mr. Ngm, what time’s dinner?”
“I’m not the great Whitlock, but I’d be honored if you called me Dad.”
I did so and offered the man a handshake. He grabbed me and gave me a hug. For a minute I panicked, but then I hugged him back. And, for the first time ever, he kissed me on the cheek. A desperately unoccupied cabby screeched to a halt, unsummoned, compelling us to unhug. Dad smiled, I nodded, and Dad got in.
From out of the rolled-down car window in the backseat, before the cabby could zoom madly away, he pondered aloud, “Maybe all this wasn’t so bad, son.”
And poof! Dad was….
“All I asked was ‘Did you make love with her?’” interrupted the fiftyish-year-old scion I was explaining all this to some sixty years later.
“All I told you was the answer,” I replied, scanning the cherry-wood paneling that lined his private library.
“No one could remember all those tiresome details. Your senility must have embellished.” Although I was old, my memory was still Viagra-erect.
A butler had just entered and stood behind me, alongside two brutish bodyguards. The rich prick, who resembled someone I couldn’t place, waved him forward. The servant handed him an envelope.
“What is that?” I asked.
As the rich prick read its contents, he enlightened, “The only reason I let you ramble on like that was to hold you here for the results of your blood test.”
I recalled having a pin-prick of blood extracted from me hours earlier, when his two thugs snatched me off the street and brought me to this castle in Long Island.
Looking up from the document, he uttered, “You could have just said yes.”
“Yes to what?” I asked.
“My father died forty years ago,” he elucidated. “My mother was killed in a plane crash about thirty years ago.”
“Who were they?”
“Amy and Andrew Whitlock. After she left you, she married my father.” I would have thought this was a final twist of mind-fuckery, but it was true. I had read it in all the newspapers as it happened.
“What does this have to do with me?”
“About ten years ago, I learned that my presumed father had been left sterile due to a childhood bout of Mumps. I spent the last few years trying to figure out who my sperm provider was. I had corpses exhumed and gave work to teams of private investigators. Finally, while perusing the privately printed memoirs of Andrew Whitlock’s manservant, Wylie Mandrylle, I stumbled upon this sordid little tale of a negligible sub-subordinate—you.” He held up the letter. “The DNA test confirms it—Dad!”
Never had the word been said with such haunting sarcasm. The rich prick truly resembled a healthy, younger me in an Amyish sort of way.
“I refuse to believe any of it!” I said automatically. “It’s part of that one great lie!”
“What lie?”
“The lie that compelled two Republican House Speakers to resign for the same sin they were impeaching a president for in the old millenium. The lie which stretches like an invisible wall that separates the rich from the poor. The lie that the ‘religious wrong’ lord over the rest of this country until they get caught with their robes up and beg for forgiveness into TV cameras. The lie that the old Soviet Union…”
“What the hell are you rambling on about?” He pushed my pause button.
“The lie of propriety! The lie of sanctimony! The lie of hypocrisy!”
“This is more of your paronoid pablum that my mother tried to keep in check, isn’t it? Think about it. Since you’re old and penniless, and I am one of the world’s wealthiest men, this mess only splatters upon me, you senile numbskull”—spoken like a true son.
The boy was absolutely right. My Alzheimerish rebuttal had gotten the best of me. Absorbing the wealth that surrounded us, I realized that being his father—even if it wasn’t true—was a good thing.
He sighed the sigh of kings, and asked, “You finally got the great Whitlock back. How does it feel?”
I shrugged gleelessly; it was all another lifetime ago. But for a moment an old feeling struck. I was finally rich. My son, the unwitting chip off my unworthy block, had usurped the monster and now he was welcoming me up to the throne—the start of a new dynasty. Crappy, freebee meals at senior citizen centers with tattooed and pierced, geriatric rock and rollers—gone. Waiting in foul-smelling lines with other octogenarian orphans for mediocre hospital services—done. All the discomforts of an impoverished old age were over.
“Sonny boy, what’s mine is yours, and the opposite!” I said, trying to hug my heir.
“Let me ask you something, Papa: Did you ever finish your grad-school education?”
“Not in the traditional sense, but…”
“What exactly did you do with your long life, Dad?” The rich man, my son, my savior, was asking me to open my files.
“Proofreading, TV, fun stuff like that.” I assumed that he wanted to spend some quality time together, hang out.
“So you did nothing with your life.” Like so many, he moved to premature judgement.
“Well that depends on how…”
“Boys, take out the trash,” he said to the two apes that brought me in hours earlier.
They lifted me silently, carried me out the door, and tossed me into the backseat of their luxury sedan. After a fidgety hour and a half in which I speculated upon bringing a backward paternity suit—an infanity suit?—the car slowed down. One large paw opened my door, the other shoved me out. I rolled to a stop as they sped off.
I staggered to my feet and inspected myself for injury. My frail and wrinkly body was like a shriveled penis that would never know another erection. Of all the pranks played on me, old age was the greatest. My muscles and bones had dehydrated. My flesh and mind had lost their grip and luster. Even my veins were squirming away like earthworms on a rainy day.
The toss left me scratched and bruised. Passing between abandoned brownstones and the skeletal remains of vandalized cars, I recalled the old days—fin de millenial New York. The quality of life, 100 percent-rented, Starbucks-on-every-corner city was all but gone.
We had bad neighborhoods again: turnstile jumpers, sidewalk drug dealers, hostile panhandlers, funky junkies, hectic ethnics of all shapes and sizes. People didn’t even scoop the poop anymore, and porn theaters blistered like herpes sores around Times Square once again.
As I walked, my son’s question echoed in my hairy ears: What exactly did you do with your long life, Dad? I had fought for an apartment no one would now want, and had stored in it a lot of multifarious memories. I didn’t leave behind any sandcastles of money or art. But is it so wrong to just live life and enjoy it? Between fun and function why must we choose the latter?
What else had I done with my life? I had slipped a changeling into a gilded cradle. One of the great American dynasties of wealth and power was headed by my offspring. The boy looked just like me, and even if he held me in contempt and claimed to be Whitlock pedigree, he was my DNA. A fart by any other name smells as foul.
And now, long after solitude, after need, long after anguish, and finally love, there was still endurance. I entered my musty, rent-controlled apartment—half-dilapidated, half-renovated by Amy all those years ago—and locked the door behind me.