Mordant Ballyhoo

I remember the first time I did coacaine.  I was probably 19 or 20, in college and a total fucking mess of a human.  Somehow I perservered enough to graduate to a sophisticated level of drug use by sheer accident.  Doing coke in college was the equivalent of dancing with the pretty girl, getting invited to the good party, sitting at a certain lunch table.  At one college soiree I remember getting the “nod” from some derelict.  Getting the”nod” was the nonverbal equivalent of “Hey, you can come with us because you are cool enough.”  I was giddy with pride.  I looked over my shoulder of all of the people that did not receive the nod, and I felt bad for them. 

So, I got really high, maybe tried it seven or eight more times, and gave it up…for good.  As a matter of fact, I thinbk I’ve given up all drugs, except the last legal one, of course, but cocaine is definitely a thing of the past.

Visiting Pinkberry for the first time the other day brought back scorching memories related to my college days.  I step into the ultra-modern, uber-hip dessert product establishment.  It is an atmosphere in which not even the hippest of the hip feel totally, one hundred percent comfortbale.  The minimalist decor is unsettling to say the least.  I almost knock over one of the fancy relics they have for sale on a shelf.  There is fancy techno or electronica music blaring overhead.  They even have their own song…it is amazing.  The guy at the counter eyes me up and down.  He beckons me forward as I approach the front of the queue.  This is, in effect, some form of the “nod” I mentioned earlier.  I approached the counter close enough to hear the girl ahead of me order her treat.

I also remember watching the derelict roll up a twenty to use to inhale a massive line of white powder.  I watched him closely bcause even though drug use is rampant in popular culture and multi-media formats, I was still a virgin.  “Don’t blow it all over the floor,” he told me.  I tried as best as I could, but alas, I did scatter a vast majority of the powder over a threadbare, college bedroom apartment carpet.  I felt awkward, ashamed, powerless.  I watched in awe as the derelict got on his hands and knees to salvage what remained of the potion.  My first time snorting coke I also snorted most of, but not limited to:  lint, pubic hair, beer, dander, dust and sand.  I finished what was left of the substance in silence. 

All of the sudden they start asking questions in a rapid fire suggestive manner, until I see my Pinkberry crammed with all sorts of goodies.  I’m just trying to go with the flow, act cool like I’ve been here before.  I smile at a young girl next to me.  She rolls here eyes.  I don’t even know what the fuck mochi is, but it tasted alright, king of like sweetened boogers.  When I try to reach for the prize over the counter, two attendants in chorus snap at me to wait until the end of the counter where there is a small receiving deck for all orders.  Each agent is wearing a uniform, and they dare not make any sudden movements.  The girl reaches for a silver canister and sprinkles a pale, green powder over her dessert.  I try the same, but the powder goes everywhere, and I’m forced to brush the counter off with the palm of my hand.  The only thing I have to use as a recepticle is my dessert, so I add the various unseen elements to my treat.  I am completely shamed.

A coke dealer wears a uniform.  He is bathed in sweat, smokes heavily and is genrally figety about several things, all unrelated, all at once.  He snaps at you.  “Don’t!  That’s not yours!  Here, take this!” and so on and so forth.  He doesn’t give his name, just a pager number.  And of course, the “nod”.

Pinkberry does not allow photos in their ubiquitous establishment.  Thei canisters for refilling the machine are blank, white cartons.  The employees must sign a blood pact with the devil.  Much like my first time ingesting large amounts of cocaine, doing Pinkberry got me exceptionally high.  It felt good, made me feel superhuman.  I just couldn’t stand to know whether or not I would ever get that “nod” again, the one that is so powerful the first time.  One can only wait and see.  It appears this will be a lengthy addiction.  I smile at the girl again, and she giggles at what appears to be a green powder on the tip of my nose. 

3.  Penelope Bloom

2.  Yorick

1.  Sancho Pança

An award of honorable mention must go to the character of:

     Lieutenant Mamiya

3.  “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.”  Camus, L’etranger

2.  “Here we are, alone again.”  Celine, Death on the Installment Plan

1.  “THIS IS THE FUCKIN CLASH!”  Welsh, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

Let Remainder be a reminder that black cats falling from an orange-tiled roof can be funny.  I laughed at many points in this eerie, monomaniacal tale of a nameless narrator who loses his memory in a freak accident “[involving] something falling from the sky.”  We never do discover what happened to our bewildered protagonist, but it is as trivial as his name.  Instead, we creep into the mind of a man who becomes increasingly hell-bent on re-enacting scenes from his former life, or instances that the narrator would have us believe occured before the accident. 

     The author dispells any notion of conventionality by dismissing his mates and love interests.  He says of Catherine after she leaves from a short stay at his apartment, “[She] had already begun to annoy me.  I preferred her absence, her sceptre.”  There is to be no “shagging” in this novel, although the author does invoke the more ribald “fucking” despite the fact he is English.  It is a pleasant break from the monotony of modern literature, especially genre literature, and he breaks early enough to avoid that sexual tension.  Thus begins a series of bizarre memories the drive the character to re-enact tidbits from what are the shattered remains of memory.  Along with the cats, he employs a massive staff of nearly a thousand people, and a brave confidant, Naz, to recreate his hallucinations.  The blue, aqueous matter on the cover is another of the narrators fixations. 

     The result is a laborious look at the power of memory, and the impetus to control and reconstruct time for greedy and sometime nefarious means.  What eventually happens at the end is as much as the reader expects.  The Palahnuikian collapse into madness is a fitting end to the narrator.  He is selfish, uncaring and maniacal, and I loved him for it!  McCarthy succeds in blurring the lines between genre and fiction, creating world in which a small crack in the plaster of a run-down bathroom symbolizes the struggle between control and recreation.  It leaves a pleasant taste in the mouth as the narrator re-enacts his turn toward madness, and an unidentifyable odor in our noses.  Could it be…cordite?