In the summer of 1967, swarms of young people
converged on
Three runaways from
Here Eddie uses an accessible analogy to
counsel Kevin on right and wrong. Mike is out of the picture, having stormed
off after belittling Eddie’s lack of manly respect for a gorgeous
Corvette. Kevin secretly agrees with Mike, but doesn’t dare side against
Eddie.
Eddie
sighed. “You mean you still
don’t see why it’s wrong to take the real world seriously? You
can’t see what’s wrong
with having a cushy career and a bank account? Or why it’s such a bummer
to be all turned-on by a bunch of shiny stuff everybody else is drooling over,
or the reason it’s a hang-up to have wants in the first place? And
doesn’t it bug you knowing what you’ll have to sacrifice for the
sake of all that prestige you’re trying to accumulate? You’re gonna
buy self-respect? Can’t you see that dignity, even though
it doesn’t have a price tag on it, is worth more than all the
materialistic bullshit in the world put together?”
Kevin
struggled to come up with a succinct response, sensitive enough to
Eddie’s commitment to know the boy’s challenge was in earnest, but
uncomfortable with the way it seemed to be blinding him to everything else in
life. “Wrong?” he muttered. He looked at the car—futuristic,
sexy, powerful, poised…the thing was reflecting the sun so dynamically it
appeared ready to burst into flames. There wasn’t a human being alive who
could fail to appreciate it, and, since Eddie was human, Kevin felt he
wasn’t getting the whole picture here; that he’d missed something
simple but vital in Eddie’s argument. Either that or the grass…but,
ever since that damp November night of their first meeting, the friendship had
proved an uneasy alliance when conversation got into the deep end. Eddie could
turn the simplest issue inside-out.
“Wrong?”
Kevin sputtered. Abstracta had always eluded him. He had a sneaking
suspicion that any query regarding that which was intangible—such as
whether something was wrong or right—had to be a trick
question, a verbal ambush designed to confuse the listener by making him think.
This whole jive thing about values was just some phony Government head
trip contrived to keep people bored and in line, and the fact that Eddie had
been seduced so thoroughly sometimes made Kevin wonder just what kind of stuff
his friend was made of. So for a moment he found himself entertaining a
vindictive-but-constructive urge to tell Eddie to grow up, or to put him in his
place by coolly countering with the one macho response any red-blooded,
All-American Guy would make; namely, a half-attentive look of utter disdain,
followed by a pointed turning of the head to proclaim complete dissociation.
Because the All-American Guy doesn’t require intelligence. What he
utilizes is far more valuable in the real world than something as ineffectual
as a mind. It’s a license to bluff; unspoken, unchallenged—but
understood, by every gonad in every garage from puberty on, to be the prime
postulate of the streetwise: what’s
wrong is what I don’t like, and what’s right is what
turns me on. And if I can’t spend it, drive it, flaunt it, or fuck it,
then hey, what good is it? Men killed for the sake of principles like that.
But knowledge existed, Kevin was sure, just to make ordinary people feel
really dumb about all the things they didn’t know; in exactly the way
churches existed solely to make people feel guilty about…everything.
Yet Kevin genuinely liked Eddie, even though Eddie had a dangerous habit
of asking useless questions, and of caring about things that didn’t
matter to anybody who did matter. Intelligence was obviously the boy’s
Achilles’ heel; a prissy quality which probably came from being short and
indifferent to football, or from wasting his time at school burying his nose in
books instead of checking out the babes. He was hopelessly out of touch. And
now Kevin found that having to defend the self-evident could be a real test of
friendship.
“Wrong?”
he repeated. “Eddie, what’s wrong with wanting to own good
things? What’s wrong with wanting to be somebody? I mean, I know
it’s uncool to be greedy and selfish and all that, and to make money into
some kind of god or something, but how can it be bad to want lots of money and
all the neat stuff you can get with it, and then honestly do your thing to earn
it? What’s so great about having nothing?”
“Because
it’s not your thing you’re doing. It’s their
thing. Don’t you get it?”
“No,
Eddie. I really, honestly, totally, truly,
absolutely-positively-super-seriously don’t. If I’m
earning it, why’s it their thing?”
Eddie
puffed out his cheeks and stared at the gas pumps. He squinted and grimaced,
rolled his eyes heavenward. Finally he exhaled.
“Look,
let me explain it with an analogy. You know what I mean by analogy?”
Now
Kevin was getting pissed. “Eddie, who the heck’s gonna be allergic
to money?”
“No,
Kevin, not an allergy. Analogy. A way to explain a certain quality using an
example where it’s obvious.”
“You
mean like a story or picture where you use different stuff to show what
you’re trying to get across?”
“That’s
close enough. In this analogy I’ll use dogs, okay? Okay. So here
we’ve all these dogs in this house, and the dogs’ master comes up
like he does every day, with a big box of Liver Snaps in his hand. And he says
to the first dog, ‘Speak!’ The first dog goes ‘yap! yap!
yap!’ and his master gives him a Liver Snap. The master says to the next
dog, ‘Play dead!’ Down goes the second dog like he’s been
shot. Then he jumps back up to get his goodie. The master moves down the line
of dogs, going, ‘Fetch! Heel! Roll over!’ and each dog obeys and
gets a Liver Snap. Finally he comes to the last dog and he says, ‘Shake
hands!’ But this dog just looks at him as if to say, ‘Go shake your
own fucking hand.’ The master freaks out. ‘Bad dog!’ he says.
‘Bad, bad, ba-a-a-ad dog! No Liver Snaps for you until you
behave!’ And he walks away shaking his head and wondering just what the
heck’s wrong with that dog anyway, and trying to figure out some
kind of punishment that’ll straighten him out. Now, all the other dogs
are tripping on this dog who won’t behave, and laughing at him. They
think he’s too stupid to perform simple tricks. Anyways, they’re
all fat and happy, and have more important things to think about, like when the
next Liver Snap’s coming. So time goes by and the good dogs get better at
their tricks, and hang around snoozing on their cozy circumstances, knowing how
choice it can be for a good dog, and how the meaning of life is just a Liver
Snap away. But the bad dog refuses to perform, and he gets scrawny and
isolated. Eventually he dies, with only his dignity for company, and the house
breathes a sigh of relief. More time passes. The good dogs have puppies, and
the puppies grow up learning the same tricks by imitating their parents, who
are now slow and clumsy and can’t compete with the young dogs. But the
master doesn’t care about the old dogs anymore. The old dogs are bad dogs
because they don’t perform with the enthusiasm of the young ones, and
anyway Liver Snaps don’t grow on trees. The old dogs begin to feel the
pinch. So what do they do? They tell the young dogs a story about this wise old
dog who wasn’t greedy, but instead had the self-respect to not jump up
and down making a fool out of himself on account of a lousy Liver Snap, for
Christ’s sake. The young dogs are made to feel guilty, so out of a kind
of peer pressure they try to not make a big thing out of performing, but
secretly they dream of pigging out on Liver Snaps, and wish the old dogs would
just hurry up and die.” Eddie paused, all the frustration gone from his
expression now, his winsome features made even more so by that rare
gratification that can only come from giving the priceless gift of insight.
“So now do you see what I mean about dignity, and about not taking
the real world seriously?”
Kevin,
chewing his lip sadly, tried to not sound condescending. “I…guess
so, Eddie. You’re trying to tell me I should feel sorry for skinny dogs,
shake hands instead of being a real prick, and never listen to my parents if I
don’t wanna die on an empty stomach.”
Eddie’s
jaw fell.
Kevin
had to look down, feeling he’d overextended himself by encapsulating in
one breath what Eddie found moving enough to spin into some weird speech about
dreaming dogs. And, goddamn it, that was precisely why smart people
always ended up looking like such fools, and why they had to be ditched in
public if you didn’t want your reputation ruined: they always alienated themselves by
talking about things that would bring down the happiest party in no time flat.
Like rapping about if we were justified in going to war, one of Eddie’s
favorite sermons. Now, it’s no big secret that war can be a real bummer,
and the kind of trip any happening cat doesn’t want to get into if he
doesn’t have to. But…when somebody’s fucking with your
country and all that, it’s like what’s the use of talking? The guy
you’re up against is rowdy because his country’s rowdy, and if he
doesn’t dig apple pie nobody’s saying he has to open his big mouth
in the first place. If you love peace, if you care about your fellow man, then
you gotta be ready to kick his ass to prove it. Everybody knows that, whether
they want to make speeches about it or not. Sitting on your thumb discussing
your differences is like John Wayne playing Confucius to Genghis Khan. A couple
of pithy maxims and slash: no
more John Wayne. Or like babes:
what the hell good are books and speeches when you’re dealing with
a hefty pair of knockers in a fuzzy pink sweater? The very thought caused
Kevin’s palms to perspire, and he wondered if Eddie, finding himself
alone with a hot and long-legged bunny, would respond with a sermon about sex
being wrong. All real men know intelligence is a turn-off to
chicks, and like a total insult to what it means to be a Guy in the first
place. And that’s why the smart kids in school hang out in the library
instead of joining the crowd:
it’s a way to avoid getting your ass kicked for being intelligent.
But Kevin liked Eddie, and respected him despite his flaws. In the end,
Kevin realized, you simply can not argue with intelligent people! You
can only feel sorry for them. Furthermore, Kevin was painfully dependent on a
reciprocal relationship with Eddie, the only friend he’d ever had. So, in
the name of friendship, he now compromised himself, blushed credibly and said,
“Am
I warm?”
Eddie
stared straight ahead without replying. After a minute he said,
“You’re cooking, Kevin. But maybe I shouldn’t have been so
elaborate. Too many images. Look, what I was trying to say is…a good pet
isn’t a good dog. A good pet is a dog who’s sold out. And when I
say wrong I don’t mean unprofitable or stupid. A
‘winner’ is a man who’s sold out. And the Mephistopheles in
this picture is appetite. Anybody whose motivation in life is profit, or
pleasure, or any kind of gratification not stemming from the heart, will do or
say anything to get what he or she wants. It’s their
instinct. They’ve totally fucked up the whole world since Day One, and
they’re the enemy. Because they want they take.
That’s all the justification they need. It’s not, you’ll
notice, in their nature to contribute. But at least they’re not hard to
spot. In fact, they’re impossible to miss, because they want you
to notice them. They wear their appetites like badges. So listen, Kevin. Any
time you see somebody wearing expensive clothes, or driving a sharp car, or
displaying any signs of prosperity, that guy’s telling you what
his priorities are, and if he says anything like he cares about the Movement,
or about people or positive values, well, you know he’s just handing you
a line of bullshit. He wants to impress you about how wealthy and successful he
is, and in the same way he wants to convince you he’s basically a really
deep person. See? Since he wants you to believe him, there’s
nothing wrong with lying to you, and to him you’ll be wrong
if you tell him he’s a liar, because that’s not what he wants!
So you’ve got to mean it when you believe in something, and use
your life to help make this world a better place for everybody who lives on it.
Otherwise you’d might as well walk around wearing a sign that reads: ME NO KNOW. ME DUMB FUCKING HIPPIE. And
you don’t want to be a public creep, do you? Of course you don’t.
You see, Kevin, human beings are hung up on being mammals. That means they
instinctively join the crowd and imitate everybody else. And that’s why
almost all the people in this story are caricatures. They don’t, for the
most part, have the balls to develop independent identities, because it pays to
be a clone among clones. What really blows me away is that it works! I mean,
it’s okay for monkeys to see and do. They’re just monkeys. But what
about this marvelous advance, this human brain we’re all so proud of?
Nobody uses it. Instead our heroes are…what? Athletes? Why? Are we trying
to outjump kangaroos, outrun horses, outswing chimpanzees…run and catch
the ball, little human! Attaboy! Good human! And let’s not forget…actors.
Yeah! Let’s all worship some dink for pretending to be somebody he
isn’t: somebody with
character. And just look how big he is up there on the screen! Boy, am I
impressed! And on and on—Homo sapiens: Man of Wisdom. Ha! Try taking wisdom to
the bank!”
“But
Eddie,” Kevin interjected, “if what you say’s true, then what
are we but a bunch of monkeys for joining the Movement? We’re just a
different brand of clone.”
“Uh-uh,
Kevin. You’re being over-literal. We’re not taking the Movement to
the bank. A guy can be a head and still be an individual, still have merit. You
can use your mind to be a follower, if what you’re following is worthy of
being followed. That requires judgment with a proper bias, which is a requisite
of wisdom. Anyway,” Eddie closed, watching a pair of apparent twins
coasting exhausted to one of the gas islands on their bicycles,
“I’ve got lotsa faith in you, Kevin. I’m pretty good at
gauging people, and I can tell you’ve got what it takes to be a totally
together flower child.”