October 23, 2002
Humiliating Events Part 4
(Note to faithful readers: the following will be the last maudlin childhood reminiscence on brokentype for a little while. I know it is tedious reading, but times are tough. The next few posts should be mostly fiction, involving characters who have little if nothing to do with me, and featuring funny situations that you will all have no problem relating to. But for the time being this is all I got. The Editors.)
Humiliating Events Part 4 - The Chronicle Begins
I was cleaning my room the other day and I came across this document - it is, I believe, the earliest known Brokentype entry, written over the course of three days in 1986. I was eleven years old, terrible at penmanship, spelling, and grammar, and prone, even then, to sarcasm and bitterness. The document recounts three days I spent with my mother at the River Front Hilton Inn in North Little Rock, Arkansas. We were there to attend a ceremony where I was to receive a check for $300 dollars; my reward for drawing a picture based on the theme: "Freedom, What it Means to Me."
Anyone with any interpretive sense will, upon reading the document, recognize immediately that your frail, bespectacled narrator in his too-small cords and Izod knock-off shirt was hiding something shameful. This was my first attempt at chronicling a disaster while it took place. Lacking religion, and consequently, any of the ceremonies of impending manhood, I fashioned for myself, quite accidentally, a rite of passage by humiliation.
I entered the contest in the sixth grade (yes - that is the penmanship of a sixth grader from Denver Public School and yes, public education is a disaster but no, privatized funding isn't the answer; graduated income taxes are, and yes, even in New York City) My drawing was done on a piece of 17 by 25 paper in pen and ink over pencil. It depicted the Statue of Liberty and at the base of the statue, running around on the little island, there were hundreds of people of every color and creed then available in marker. They were walking dogs and throwing Frisbees and dancing. They were having picnics and kissing and cuddling their children. They were playing violins and flying kites and holding hands. And on the left hand side of the page, next to the line of conga girls and the nannies changing diapers there was a little boy wearing glasses. He was sitting on the grass smiling and doing a rubix cube. (Remember him. He will be important later.) What freedom meant to me was a park.
The following is a close reading of the document
Day One
The first day was uneventful. I complained about the airport in Saint Lewis. I mention that the elevators were out of order. The most interesting piece of information on that first day was that we had cable in the hotel, which meant that while my mother was in the shower I had exactly five minutes to explore myself while watching MTV - something I was doing with increasing frequency, and which, I'll admit, has yet to abate. Fortunately my mother was unaware of all the self abuse going on to Madonna's Open Your Heart To Me video- or if she was, she was smart enough to know that confronting me about it would have been a psychological disaster for an already nearly unhinged little boy. I was spared that humiliation at least.
Day Two
"Their were booth from all over the country and a Robot" (sic)
When we were shown to the exhibit hall I had my first real sense of fear. My picture was hanging in a room with all the runners-up for my age group. They had framed it and hung it under a lamp and tweedy looking scholars were milling around stroking their chins and commenting on our work. I was horrified that one of them would look closely at the picture and discover what I had done.
Fortunately, everyone was distracted by a giant talking robot. It wheeled up to children and engaged them in conversation. I wasn't fooled by it. I could see the man with the pipe operating the machine at a safe distance (or so I claim, though it's hard to imagine a man with a pipe wandering around at such an event.)
There is a page missing here. It is the page where I write about the dream I had that night.
That night I dreamt that the giant talking robot wheeled through the crowd at the base of the stature of liberty. He was approaching the kid with the rubix cube - and I had to stop him. No, it wasn't him I needed to stop, he would be too powerful for me, I needed to stop the man with the pipe. I scanned the crowd; nothing but babies and cheerleaders and people throwing footballs and all the races under the sun living in harmony. Where was he? Then, over a pyramid of Chinese tumblers I spotted a whiff off smoke - I smelled the distinctive cherry of pipe tobacco. I ran towards the smell and saw him. From behind he looked exactly like my dad.
Day Three
"We went to Some Boring Hot Tour of some boring Historic place, then we went back to the exibet" (sic)
It was hot -- hotter than hammered-on hinges. On the tour they handed out paper fans, and while I was loath to appear fey on this trip I used one anyway. I was nervous and sweating -- this was the first time I had ever experienced humidity -- and I thought that perhaps this was the god-I-didn't-believe-ins way of showing me what hell had in store for boys like me.
To Get to the Excelscior Hotel You have to walk across a super long bridge."
I still remember the bridge we had to walk across to get to the convention center. It was long indeed, and it spanned the thick and muddy Arkansas River. I remember hoping that the bridge would collapse before we got to the other side. The sun was beating down on me and my mother was walking proudly at my side and I was overcome with shame. The kid with Rubix cube laughed at me from somewhere beneath the bridge.
"The cerimony was long and boring. Then We were all called on stage to receive our award. Then we left."
The line above is disingenuous. The ceremony wasn't boring -- it was horrifying. I was convinced as they called my name and I walked up to accept my check --more money than I had ever seen -- that I had been found out.
I would stand at the stage edge underneath a single spotlight and a famous art critic would emerge from the audience in a black turtleneck. She would say "Stop this farce. This boy is a thief!"
She would jump up on the stage and grab the microphone from the emcee.
"Look! Turn the houselights down." A giant slide of my drawing would be projected onto the wall. Freddy, can we zoom in on the left there... yes... no... a little to the left ... There! Yes. Now can you magnify thirty percent?"
By now I would be crying.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please look closely at the boy with rubix cube on the lawn."
And there he was. The little kid in the striped shirt and the rubix cube that, when magnified to this size, bore a striking resemblance to your narrator in his Izod and corduroy. The kid with the rubix cube who was the first of the hundreds of little people I had drawn, and who was, therefore, the most carefully rendered of the multitude. The kid who I had seen in an illustration in the borders of the comic book Groo the Wanderere; illustrated by my then idol, Sergio Aragones.
"Mr Aragones, could you come forward."
And there he was, the man with pipe, my hero, shrouded in darkness but unmistakably him. I could tell by the cherry tobacco smoke. The same stuff my father used to smoke.
"Mr Argones, can you identify this boy?"
"Why yes," he would say "That's from a little drawing printed in the margin of Groo the Wanderer number 5. I remember it distinctly, right down to the markings on the cube. It was a picture of my son."
They would take my money. My mother would be shamed. I would be kicked out of school. My father would turn back to his crossword puzzle.
None of this came to pass. I got the money, a chocolate statue of liberty and a box of pencils. My parents cashed the money and put most of it away for "college." I spent my share on comic books.
For years I lived in fear. I still do today. Since then I've lied and cajoled and cheated more times than I can remember. I don't remember what my crime was anymore. I don't remember if any of the above is true. I just know that I am perpetually in danger of being found out. And so are you.
----
If you made it all the way through this, please note that there is now a guestbook under the TOC on your right. So leave me note to tell me you were around.
