The crowd burst into applause. Tom Rodgers held up his hand.
“Now, what about you folks?” he said softly. “Is now the time for you to win? Are you ready to screen off your metaphorical oatmeal and identify your own personal Gene? Who is it that’s screwing you up? Who’s keeping you from getting what you want? Somebody is! God doesn’t make junk. If you’re losing, somebody’s doing it to you. Today I’ll be guiding you through my Three Essential Steps: Identification, Screening, Confrontation. First, we’ll Identify your personal Gene. Second, we’ll help you mentally install a metaphorical Screen over your symbolic oatmeal. Finally, we’ll show you how to Confront your personal Gene and make it clear to him or her that your oatmeal is henceforth off-limits.”
Tom Rodgers looked intensely out into the crowd.
“So what do you think, guys?” he asked, very softly. “Are you up for it?”
From the crowd came a nervous murmur of assent.
“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s line up. Let’s line up for a change. A dramatic change.”
He crisply left the stage, and a spotlight panned across five Personal Change Centers, small white tents set up in a row near the fire door.
Neil Yaniky rose with the rest and checked his Line Assignment and joined his Assigned Line. He was a tiny man, nearly thirty, balding on top and balding on the sides, and was still chewing on his mustache and wondering if anyone or everyone else at the Seminar could tell that he was a big stupid faker, because he had no career, really, and no business, but only soldered little triangular things in his basement, for forty-seven cents a little triangular thing, for CompuParts, although he had high hopes for something better, which was why he was here.
The flap of Personal Change Center 4 flew open and in he went, bending low.
Inside were Tom Rodgers and several assistants, and a dummy in a smock sitting in a chair.
“Welcome, Neil,” said Tom Rodgers, glancing at Yaniky’s name tag. “I’m honored to have you in my Seminar, Neil. Now. The way we’ll start, Neil, is for you to please write across the chest of this dummy the name of your real-life personal Gene. That is, the name of the person you perceive to be crapping in your oatmeal. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” said Yaniky.
Tom Rodgers was talking very fast, as if he had hundreds of people to change in a single day, which of course he did. Yaniky had no problem with that. He was just happy to be one of them.
“Do you need help determining who that person is?” said Tom Rodgers. “Your oatmeal-crapper?”
“No,” said Yaniky.
“Excellent,” said Tom Rodgers. “Now write the name and under it write the major way in which you perceive this person to be crapping in your oatmeal. Be frank. This is just between you and me.”
On an erasable markerboard permanently mounted in the dummy’s chest Yaniky wrote, “Winky: Crazy-looking and too religious and needs her own place.”
“Super!” said Tom Rodgers. “A great start. Now watch what I do. Let’s fine-tune. Can we cut ‘crazy-looking’? If this person, this Winky, were to get her own place, would the fact that she looks crazy still be an issue? Less of an issue?”
Yaniky pictured his sister looking crazy but in her own apartment.
“Less of an issue,” he said.
“All right!” said Tom Rodgers, erasing “crazy-looking.” “It’s important to simplify so that we can hone in on exactly what we’re trying to change. Okay. At this point, we’ve determined that if we can get her out of your house, the crazy-looking can be lived with. A big step forward. But why stop there? Let me propose something: if she’s out of your hair, what the heck do you care if she’s religious?”
Yaniky pictured Winky looking crazy and talking crazy about God but in her own apartment.
“It would definitely be better,” he said.
“Yes, it would,” said Tom Rodgers, and erased until the dummy was labeled “Winky: needs her own place.”
“See?” said Tom Rodgers. “See how we’ve simplified? We’ve got it down to one issue. Can you live with this simple, direct statement of the problem?”
“Yes,” Yaniky said. “Yes, I can.”
Yaniky saw now what it was about Winky that got on his nerves. It wasn’t her formerly red curls, which had gone white, so it looked like she had soaked the top of her head in glue and dipped it in a vat of cotton balls; it wasn’t the bald spot that every morning she painted with some kind of white substance; it wasn’t her shiny-pink face that was always getting weird joyful looks on it at bad times, like during his dinner date with Beverly Amstel, when he’d made his special meatballs to no avail, because Bev kept glancing over at Winky in panic; it wasn’t the way she came click-click-clicking in from teaching church school and hugged him for too long a time while smelling like flower water, all pumped up from spreading the word of damn Christ; it was simply that they were too old to be living together and he had things he wanted to accomplish and she was too needy and blurred his focus.
“Have you told this person, this Winky, that her living with you is a stumbling block for your personal development?” said Tom Rodgers.
“No I haven’t,” Yaniky said.
“I thought not,” said Tom Rodgers. “You’re kind-hearted. You don’t want to hurt her. That’s nice, but guess what? You are hurting her. You’re hurting her by not telling her the truth. Am I saying that you, by your silence, are crapping in her oatmeal? Yes, I am. I’m saying that there’s a sort of reciprocal crapping going on here. How can Winky grow on a diet of lies? Isn’t it true that the truth will set you free? Didn’t someone once say that? Wasn’t it God or Christ, which would be ironic, because of her being so religious?”
Tom Rodgers gestured to an assistant, who took a wig out of a box and put it on the dummy’s head.
“What we’re going to do now is act this out symbolically,” Tom Rodgers said. “Primitive cultures do this all the time. They might throw Fertility a big party, say, or paint their kids white and let them whack Sickness with palm fronds and so forth. Are we somehow smarter than primitive cultures? I doubt it. I think maybe we’re dumber. Do we have fewer hemorrhoids? Were Incas killed on freeways? Here, take this.”
He handed Yaniky a baseball bat.
“What time is it, Neil?” said Tom Rodgers.
“Time to win?” said Yaniky. “Time for me to win?”
“Now is the time for you to win,” said Tom Rodgers, clarifying, and pointed to the dummy.
Yaniky swung the bat and the dummy toppled over and the wig flew off and the assistant retrieved the wig and tossed it back into the box of wigs, and Tom Rodgers gave Yaniky a big hug.
“What you have just symbolically said,” Tom Rodgers said, “is: ‘No more, Winky. Grow wings, Winky. I love you, but you’re killing me, and I am a good person, a child of God, and don’t deserve to die. I deserve to live, I demand to live, and therefore, get your own place, girl! Fly, and someday thank me!’ This is to be your submantra, Neil, okay? Out you go! On your way home today, I want you to be muttering, not angrily muttering but sort of joyfully muttering, to center yourself, the following words: ‘Now Is the Time for Me to Win! Out you go! Out you go!’ Will you do that for me?”