This one’s a spooky one, my basementals. Spooky scary Kult Klassic. I’ve been in some undergrounds in my time; I’ve seen my share of more dead than alive. A punk’s night out is nothing if not Nosferatu in 3-D. The lips all too real and the skin hardly there. But today my Show & Tell is just the opposite. Today, it’s not the deathy revelry of the sick and abandoned, my usual hang (o, these fragments I have shored against my ruin). Instead, I’ve got the desiccated fossil of a person who should still be alive.
Justice! [wave award] Justice! [wait, applause]
And great ratings, too. [wait, laughter]
The story was a natural, wasn’t it? A public building scandal in Massachusetts — fascinating. Heroic stuff, [pause, reflect] Do you remember the scene where the bad guys had me down in the mud, tangled in twine? Do you remember? I was down and shivering and they stood up there, pointing a gun.
[pause, suspense]
A fearful moment, yes. Fearful — and heroic. [pause]
My point — aside from bragging on myself — [wait, laughter] is that we in this room understand, as professionals, the power of story. We know High Concept and how to fit it on the small screen. [smile] But outside this room [gesture, doors] remain the unprofessional. The proles — outside the media. And when I was down in that muck, tangled and exposed and scared, then I too was outside the media.
An actual long-dead, my Sandinistas. The lips turned to tree bark and the clothes hardly there. And yet the corpse is contemporary. The fossil is us.
The cutting edge, in this case, cuts backward: it’s archaeologists who’ve been hep. Dig-sters, get it? They found the guy down in the soon-to-be T, the station under excavation. Only, some Head Guy somewhere declared the find, uh, sensitive. Uh, requires further study. Uh, needs protection from public scrutiny.
Ah, but they didn’t count on our kind, did they, my compañeros? Cellars by starlight means celestial navigation, and a little razor wire and security can’t hold back the likes of us. I was in a hot minute after nightfall. Into the “lower site,” hee hee. And as for the stranger on the floor — barkeep, I’ll have whatever he had.
I could have been anybody, tangled and exposed and scared. I couldn’t have been further from a hero. [wave award]
But now [lean into mike, intimate] I’m in. I’m up here.
[pause for emphasis, & CHECK TRUSTEES. okay to keep talking?]
Now what made the difference, you ask? I went from a naked nobody in the muck to a one-man judge and jury in a silver suit. [smile] What did it? [wait] Well, my colleagues — I had to get arrested, [wait, laughter]
The police had to come and cuff me, yes. They had to hold me — actually put me in a cell. [gesture, bars] You all remember the scene, I’m sure. My heroic call to my lawyer, you remember, [gesture, telephone]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nonetheless, this one’s a weird one. It’s this year’s model, and also the last millennium’s fossil. It’s our leather, also leather-y. Like, what sort of a story have we got here? Like, a historical novel about the present?
Chapter One: In the Grid. Why, what’s that strange grid, down there? That grid or graph or sumpin, laid over the stinking earth? Why, it is a graph! A sorta 3-D graph, sticks and string! And good Lord, what’s that under square A-3 …
Chapter Two: Criticism/Self-criticism. Man, oh man, what am I doing here?
Chapter Three: All Alone by the Skele-tone. Judging from the dimensions of the pelvis (squares H-2 through H-5), and the.
Popkin had, as before, his own vocabulary. When Kit at last reached him from the phone in the police station: “Finding other counsel seems indicated.” And when Kit explained why he’d missed their appointment: “Not a useful development, certainly.”
I had to get arrested, yes. I had to make that humiliating call to my attorney. That’s what it took to become a hero.
[CHECK TRUSTEES — if no okay to go on, cut to last graphs]
Or that’s part of it, at least. [IF okay TO GO ON:]
You see, all I knew was verbal. [head down] That was my problem, before I joined the media. Everything was verbal. I was muttering, I was dreamy.
I was a loser. [wait, laughter] In order to join the winners, [smile, ESP. AT TRUSTEES] to break the grip of my word-based mucking around — word-based and low-paid [wait, laughter] — well I needed more than my lawyer. I needed the cold, stony city itself. Only when I got back out into the city did I at last realize that, nowadays, winners don’t bother with words.
[no joke, no smile]
Chapter Three: All Alone by the Skele-tone. Judging from the dimensions of the pelvis (squares H-2 through H-5), and the proportions of shoulders to head (3:1, see illustration), as well as the overall size of the remains (est. height, alive: 6’ 2”; est. weight: 180), we would conclude that the subject was a mature male of Scandinavian type, not yet 30 at the time of death. The ID we found helps too.
Chapter Four: He Died With His Boots On. L.L. Beans, in fact.
Chapter Five: He Died With His Boots On, Part II. Look there! The pockets of his disgusting coat are bulging! Your coat pocket of today is constructed so as to contain a variety of materiél, such as sammiches and weaponry and folding cash, and these yield an illuminating fossil record.
The attorney arranged to have a paralegal run over to the waterfront station. Popkin himself had no time till after five. Kit, nursing fresh aches and pains, a deep new remorse — Kit was just as happy to put off seeing the man.
I needed this cold stony city. I needed the city to show me — nowadays words get in the way, if you want to be a winner.
[no joke, no smile]
I was heading for the MTA, for my office. [upright at mike, a talking head] I had a list of the Monsod contractors in my office, a list my lawyer needed to see. And I had other reasons for heading that way, instead of for instance heading home, but I won’t go into them here.
[shake head, smile] If I went into every last little reason I did anything, you see, I’d go back to being a loser. If I wasted my time with every last shadow of motive and personality, I’d still be caught up in words words words.
[shake head] No, never mind my grubby little handful of motives. What matters is — then I saw the record store.
Your coat pocket of today is constructed so as to contain even sammiches, hero sammiches. It yields an illuminating fossil record. Why, look there — a stupid Press card! “Alternative” Press! And there — a worm on his back! Not your ordinary worm, either, just a-lookin’ for a home; rather a creature far more insidious — the worm of doubt! Good Lord, I know who this is.
Oh, my old moles. There were secrets to be gleaned here, dark secrets. But if you jump to conclusions — well, don’t. The darkest secret here turned out to be Madame Z’s. My own. A dark spell, cast by the dirty dead.
I knew the guy, my guerrilleros. I mean, for starters