Chapter 4: Stalking the FMZ Olney Garkle had put himself at the mercy of the world for nearly a decade, only to float through unscathed. How was it possible to be penniless in alien, horde-ridden countries and not be scathed? To his credit, he'd tried to organize a few sure-death scenarios in hopes of relieving the burden of ghostliness that plagued him; indeed, the death he wanted--the kind that led to rebirth--seemed to flourish in those places. Yet he was frustrated each time by last minute do-gooders from the householder sects who rescued him and fed him wondrous meals and stuffed his pockets with local currency. Nothing gelled. Others had found realization at the drop of an Evans-Wentz paperback, but not Olney. In truth, his quest for enlightenment meant dropping his dhoti for a few minutes of nirvana with small-boned Himachali girls in Delhi's G. B. Road. He was tired of it all. Tired of catching busses at ungodly hours in strange longitudes, of sleeping with barnyard animals in third class trains, of religious ecstasies brought on by acute dysentery, of the ubiquitous Lata Mangeshkar ululating from every bazaar radio within two million square miles, of being asked: "From which country do you come?" by every Mahmet, Ranjit and Kumar who caught his eye, and of catching only the eyes of the chadried and saried, of being accosted by fellow North Americans stiff with fear and incipient hepatitis, of border crossings complicated beyond the wildest of bureaucratic dreams, of days on end in ferry boats, mini-busses, trains, lorries, taxis, tongas and rickshaws, of realizing the only thing he could do well any more was travel. Olney didn't like thinking about it. Because once he got those travelling irritations off his chest, the rest of the world and its penchant for simple Isness would hit him in his yearning heart, laying to ruin any plans of resuming citizenship in the Momland. Yet Olney was determined to bury the hatchet with America. Joining the ranks of the bonded and taxed was a goal he wanted to achieve. It was so much easier than getting up at four every morning to gaze cross-eyed at his nose in order to slip through that diamond-reflecting mirror and down the golden road to nihilsville, where, of course, his essential mind was known to reside. Wandering the planet in search of slant-eyed gods, pop-eyed thrills, and that all-seeing dope has done nothing for Olney's job history, either. Suspicion flickers in the eyes of would-be employers when they scan his make-believe résumé. A few wanted to call the police upon reading his claims to have spent three months working in a Turkish halvah factory, or his stint as associate goatherd in Northern India, or his bicycle tour of the vineyards of France and the fictitious article he never wrote for a fabricated gourmet magazine that paid a mythical two thousand dollars. He lied about payment for the other jobs too, which netted him, respectively, three dollars a day and a small cloth bag containing little black balls of hashish. Olney was aware of the outrage burning into his spine as he left their offices. He couldn't blame them. He felt like a figment of his own imagination, and a résumé like his in a country like America called for life in the penitentiary. Time to lay off the wanderlust. Stability, if not stasis, will do him wonders. He wants to drop back in, to be debt-paid and dog tired, to worship at the altar of Apodicte, goddess of Certainty. He wants a brand new toaster in the sunfilled kitchen of a studio apartment, peace of mind in his own digs, with letters in the mailbox and a long list of girlfriends. He wants to rest, take the odd glance within and try to understand the meaning of all those years and the encounters they brought. Routine is the modest kindling he needs to fire his spent imagination, but will getting a job provide the best source of heat? And if so, can he convince the wet blanket behind the desk? Or will it all end in a self-inflicted noyade, no fire at all after a decade's investment in self-discovery. The daily stoking of waterlogged illusion is attacking his nerves, and those two hands wringing together at the feet of his arms are steaming with muggy sweat. Crawling on his belly from Dacca to Mecca might have been easier, after all ... §§§ Despite these and other obstacles, Olney Garkle has been on the streets of his latest city-called-home all morning. Mission: Get that job, today. As usual, nothing happened. Those a.m. cups with Mr. Coffee and a few bleary-eyed work mates are still eluding him. And with each passing day his resolve gets weaker. Why doesn't he just give up and take his rightful place in this colossal land of fragmented souls? Why waste the valuable time of America's morgue-faced employers when he can step--frayed but free of responsibility--from a downtown hotel room to join the welfare hordes at dawn as they descend like horror-film extras upon the city's one, immense dolerium to await their chits of pittance? A farce. And the employers he's been calling on! What spirit busting jobs they've had to offer. Olney wants a purple heart for this morning's efforts. A few more wereworld interviews like these and he may as well throw in the towel and run for the nation's highest office. Being president is a position he's certain is at the bottom of a list that's still lifetimes long. After sifting through the classifieds every morning, through a beckoning glut of vacant chairs in hair dressing salons or manic exhortations to solicit rug cleaner over the telephone, Olney's beginning to wonder if maybe he should have taken dad's advice and become a lifer in the armed services. By now, years and years of patriotic work-ethic benefits would have compounded and accrued for that glorious retirement where cutbacks and rising taxes meant poverty-line subsistence, the government eventually taking it all back anyway to finance the end of the world. But Olney never did listen to dad. Or anyone else whose idols were Spade Cooley, Lawrence Welk, and Richard Nixon. Yet, in spite of his deaf ears to the cult of the self-made individual and its derision of the wretched of Earth, and in spite of all burned if not dynamited bridges over which he can never return, Olney Garkle is still a sane man, a terminally seminal hero with a conscience. And in spite of that, he is ready to take his place among the voluntarily mad: paycheck people will stoop to anything. Olney wants to be a paycheck person too. All the friends he's borrowed money from are steadfast wage earners, and he wants to fill the emptiness of his alarm clock life with the same things money has bought them. They've been great with their loans, but as Olney's efforts dwindle down on the streets of the town, their waiting game is turning to an anxious "phew." Doubts have arisen. Insinuations from his closest friends--and therefore his greatest debtors--that their salaries aren't so high he can just leave town, a write-off to be escorted to the city limits with fond choruses of "see you later Olney, glad we could help; by all means have another good time in remote places, hell, money means nothing to us," are making him think that if he does, he'll have to mine another bridge. Is he hooked on global stimulation? Ah, but every new country and every new city was so good for those bursts of optimistic self-repair; anything was possible! And now that he's been everywhere since leaving America (not counting the week spent in culture shock before escaping to Canada where he met whatshername, Maggie?), well, then, coming back here should be like visiting a new country, right? In no time, he'd be in the groove, his exhilaration at the thought of becoming a workplace insect knowing no bounds. Olney had been so sure that most employers would be thrilled at having a seasoned ex-traveler whose every intention was to settle down and build a useful, sedentary life. Who better to count on than a man who hadn't held a steady job in nine years? Surely they would sense his strength of dedication, his heartwarming need to find solace in daily obedience, his longing for the eight hour day, the forty-hour week, the eagle that flies on Friday, the two week vacation per annum, the office or factory party at Christmas ... surely they would sense his need to achieve by wasting year after year of his life at a job whose description on employment agency whirlboards took only two sentences. Alas, the challenge is going down to defeat. Money and the things it can buy may be all he wants, but getting his hands on a paycheck is proving no less difficult than bobbing for truth in the bucket of ego. Olney Garkle is facing denial in the world's largest free market zone. Maybe he'll wind up in that hotel room, after all. Just to get rid of him for awhile, his friends would surely fork over enough to pay a few months rent and buy him a used black and white TV he can watch night in and night out and half the days too, rancid of body and stubble-ridden. Television took the edge off things for the nation's unemployed. Slunk back on their ripped couches, they guffawed hoarsely at the humorous antics of cookie-jar families who never smoked generic cigarettes or fell into oblivion from crude booze straight out of the bottle. By day it was the same story. Bloodshot eyes watched old kinescopes of I Love Lucy while the world outside, where the jobs were, was ... every bit as bleak. A vast concentration camp with kapos for bosses who paid insulting wages. The sitcom fairy tales faded quickly out there. And when you came home, exhausted from a humiliating day of self-sell and supplication, you never called to your spouse: "Hi, honey! Gosh, I had loads of fun today. You should've seen me at the mercy of the three-piece suit who had things to do and places to go and couldn't be bothered with my filthy résumé and why didn't I quit starving and get a job? He even threw up in my face. It was a scream, really ..." Nothing could be funnier, Olney agrees. And the joke is on the millions of people wearing out their shoes with anxiety in the "land of the free," ready to take any job in support of a system that turns enormous potential into slavery, the miracle of life itself used in arbitrary subservience. Screw it, judges O. He doesn't have a spouse anyway. And no more family either, for mom and dad had expired together in a moment of handgun psychosis at their local American Legion. An argument had arisen over dad's insistence that Oral Roberts' nine-hundred foot Jesus was more real than the questionable patriot he, dad, was talking to at the moment. To prove his point, dad whipped out the gun he always carried to bluff weaker folks into seeing things his way. The questionable patriot, in turn, proved his own point by whipping out a deadlier caliber of the American way to close debate, and blew dad's head off, and mother's too, because she wouldn't stop braying. Olney had received the news in Nepal. The telegram, brought to the door of his candle-lit hut one evening as he was applying himself to a borrowed Evans-Wentz paperback, caught him in mid-chortle over the slapstick pranks of Tibet's legendary nettle-fiend. So where does Olney Garkle fit in this fifty-state nuthouse? Outside, as usual. The fringes. Nowhere. An insulting situation needing to be changed. It's time to do something ... but what? Should he remove himself from even the fringes, go back to those "remote places" and leave all this mass blasphemy behind? It's a decision that needs to be made soon--today! Thing is, Olney doesn't really want a job, he just wants the money. A monthly check from he-doesn't-care-who, with plenty of substance and no strings attached. And never late. A free-floating sinecure, a guaranteed annual income just for being alive. Indeed, it's a crime against nature that Olney wasn't born with a silver spoon poised over life's bowl of cherries (preserved in cognac, to be sure). If he were suddenly to get his hands on several million (without making any effort in the getting), the first thing he'd do is buy that dollars-umpteen bottle of Louis XIII cognac, use the first milliliter to clean the briar pipes recently donated by former smoker and chief benefactor, Denzil Hent, and then settle back for the rest of that 699 ml ride to glory. Next he'd buy a Lear Jet and comb the world again, this time to ravish the little flowers he'd missed owing to his perpetual presentation as a globetrotting bum. And oh, with such Tantric patience would he meditate o'er their slim Buddha bodies, no hurry no more, not-searching with no-mind for the source of Godhead. And doesn't snickery Olney know just where the Godhead is and just what happens when its little button gets pushed. And then he would pay off his friends. After closing those accounts, he might have enough left to live on for the rest of his life ... in a goat shed in the Pyrenees. So the truth is out. Olney Garkle hasn't the least desire to earn the millions that should be coming his way. Screw the "work ethic" and the horse it rode in on. He wants to pursue his own ends, unimpeded by the jerks he normally wouldn't speak to if suddenly they weren't his boss or co-worker. Yet, Olney's no snob. He simply knows where he belongs. And it isn't among the overalled of industry, their lunch buckets clunking noses with bolted down steel tables in black-hearted cafeterias of the deepest FMZ. It isn't on lunch break in sunny courtyards of mazey malls, the paperwork multiplying in the office as if there were no rhyme or reason for the human brain. It isn't in the service of corporate Molochs who eat the living for phantom profit. It isn't anywhere. Olney Garkle is so out of it, he can't even be called an Enemy of the State. §§§ Chapter 5: The Eighth Dwarf |