I don’t know who’s right tonight, folks. I just know this: the saddest salesman since Willy Loman is watching his myth deconstruct right before his ears.
I don’t know what to tell you, G.T. I’m just the voice in the box, the ghost in the machine. I’ve got no more answers than you do and I’m not even half the salesman. ’Cause I could never believe the way you always could. I still can’t force that kind of surety on myself. My brain won’t allow it. Maybe it’s a genetic problem. Who knows?
All I can do is pass on information. And there’s really no gauging what that’s worth. You be the judge: the eternal agent of enforced order has finally made his way to our fair city. And he’s classic madman material, G.T. Grade A nut case. His name is Speer, he’s leaking paranoia juice everywhere he walks, and he’s got the rage levels of a career speed-head. Hair-trigger temper. Sadistic imagination that would make Sade envious. But that’s not the big news, Mr. F. The latest intelligence is that the psycho is also a fraud. He was retired from the Federates over eighteen months ago. They gave this demon a fifty percent pension and told him to walk. Which is just what you want to do with an agent who’s got twenty-five years of shooting bunker and interrogation skills and now faces the gates of hell every morning and prays to Genghis Khan.
I wish I could give you better news, my CFP/CLU hombre. But better warned than happy. No one on-line seems to know where Mr. S is tonight. But he’s a pro when it comes to tailing a wanted man. And you fit that description for him. He seems to think you’re the endall and be-all of the jamming movement. The messiah of microphone mischief. The glue that holds the communication anarchists together. We may know better, but sometimes there’s no talking with a delusional fascist. All night, I’ve been chewing on the question of why he didn’t come after James and me. And I think I’ve got a possible answer. We’re not of his world. He can’t even see us. But you, Mr. F, you dress the part. You walk and talk and function like an integrated citizen, a franchised model of belonging. And I don’t think he can live with the fact, the paradox, that you turn your back on the franchise every night and strike pranksterish little blows against the order. The order you seem to embrace by day, the order that seems to be set up to make it easy for someone like you. We’re not here to slag you, G.T., but I guess I’ve got to say, I’m sort of forced here to say, that I see how the agent’s mind works. He sees the picture of you, granted it’s all external, but it’s an external world, G.T. We make judgments and carry out the consequences every freaking day based on nothing more than what our eyes flash on. And that first flash says you’re a white, upper-middle-class, attractive, educated, assimilated, nonhandicapped, hail-fellow-well-met. If the system we’ve been calling Quinsigamond, or hell, even America, is set up for anyone, honey, it’s set up for you. What the agent can’t see is that, obviously, something inside is different or broken. It has to be. Why else Wireless and the sound-effects clowns? Why else bite the hand that feeds you? So, what’s the internal difference, G.T.? If it were just anger, from whatever longago reasons of powerlessness, I think you’d have been with Hazel tonight, singing that old Drifters tune. We can’t help thinking it’s more a need than anything else. A Want with a capital W. That inside the Armani suits, you’re as hollow as the St. Louis banker in his green face paint.
What are you thinking right now, G.T.? Are you thinking — none of this two-bit pop analysis is helping me any right now? You are correct, G.T. So maybe it’s time for us to fade out. You have our last message. This Agent Speer is on his way. Anyone with half a brain would know where you could be found. So, forewarned is forearmed, I guess. And to some extent, the rest of this story is up to you. You’re not the only one listening tonight. There might even be a radio professional or two tuned in. Maybe a woman of grace and wit and humor and strength. Maybe someone like that could save your yuppie ass. I dunno.
See, the trick is, you’ve got to place faith in someone like that. You’ve got to go outside of yourself. And experience tells all of us that when you do that, nine out of ten times, you get screwed in a way that lingers. But the alternative is absolute self-reliance, and with some apologies to Mr. Emerson, that’s a system that, taken to the limit, has its own kind of side effects. You don’t have to be a lawyer to know the law of diminishing returns and being completely alone can suck every bit as much as betrayal. I think, anyway.
So, dig in, G.T. You’ve got some advantages. You know the lay of the land. You’re on home court, so to speak. Remember the Jimi Hendrix theorem: Feedback can be an art, too. We’d love to stay and see the credits roll, but time is short and windows narrow. If you walk away intact, drop us a line by Tristero. And if you happen to dharma-bum it out onto the road with a lascivious navigator, listen for our signal. Here’s a big hint: grab a copy of Ti Jean’s Flashes of Moriarty and read close when you get near the end — just after where the Saint places a bet on Blue Foam … Who knows, G.T., we could meet again. I’m outta here. And brother James wants to say goodbye.
I’ll make it short and semisweet. No man’s a prophet in his own town. And in Quinsigamond, he’s a regular outlaw. I can’t blame the men in blue or the station owners. They were just playing their parts. But you guys, the so-called faithful, you let me down. You needed a voiceprint to believe in O’ZBON. And that takes all of the magic out of it. I guess doubt is like a belclass="underline" once you’ve rung it, you can’t call back the chime. It runs off, vibrates outward, touches more than it should.
So, now the heat is on. And as soon as I finish changing the plugs and oil, we’re gone again. I guess maybe we were more than a little naive to think we could come back to the plains of former glory. It’s just a bitch that our last night in the old hometown had to be such a family feud. Personally, I disagree with John-boy. I think Hazel’s heart was in the right place, even if her planning was a little shortsighted. If I know anything, Hazel, it’s that you’ve got to sink your pilings deeper into the ground if you want your house to stand for the long haul. But who am I to judge? My brother and I are coasting on discount gas and prayers to Marconi. Like all parties in bohemia, this one was swell while it lasted. Unfortunately, I’ve got a feeling the big broom is being taken from the utility closet as we speak. And we want to be mobile before the janitor spots our debris.
Remember this, gang. There’ll be other parties. The pendulum will swing back one of these days. In the meantime, play the blues and prop each other up. And to you, G.T., I guess you’re going to have to go for the balls. Sometimes you’re left with no other option. That’s the thing about this life. Your options almost always narrow down.
When you’re young, there’s always someone warning don’t burn your bridges. What they fail to tell you is that those bridges are going to catch the spark anyway, spontaneously combust, and the light that inferno throws off will only illuminate your failures and dead dreams. And you go on kidding yourself there’ll be other ways back home, other ways to start again. For Christ sake, we live in the land of the remake. Head west. Change your name. Find the frontier and a new life. It’s supposed to be a metaphysical Homestead Act. But at some point you come to understand, in one of those blinding flashes of satori, that there just is no way back. That the landscape has changed and warped and eroded so much that not only are there no bridges but there are no goddamn roads, there’s not even a way to turn around and have a clear vision, to get a fix on where it was you came from.