Our Arrival in Oxford

“What do you mean, you don’t know where we are?” asked The Drunkard.

I snapped awake, wiped the drool off my face, and looked around. We were in the middle of the city, surrounded by the sort of buildings that looked at you and said, “Yes, this is Oxford, and you’re probably not smart enough to even visit this place.” The majority of them were big and made of yellowish-brown stone (apparently called Headington and Burford stone—named after quarry sites). It was a beautiful city—one that I hope to visit again—but at that moment, seeing The Drunkard leaning forward into the front seat, the veins in his forehead popping out, and his face turning red took up all my attention. “You don’t have a map?”

“Now,” said The Student, “Drunkard, you should really calm down.”

The Drunkard contorted his body like a snake, turned back to The Student and said, “No, God damn it, this guy is called The Traveler. For fuck’s sake, you’d think that he’d remember where to go. Hell, I can tell you where every bar is in a ten-mile radius, and I haven’t even gotten out of the car yet.”

The Traveler, suddenly playing the annoyed father to The Drunkard’s upset mother on a car trip (which, I guess, made myself and The Student the children), tapped the steering wheel and said, “She said her place was by the campus.”

“There is no campus, you schmuck,” said The Drunkard. “Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, these places don’t have campuses. They’re sprawled around the city. A child would know that.”

I glanced in the rear-view mirror on my side of the car and saw The Student cringing and trying very, very hard to sink into the back of his seat.

For my part, I’d learned long ago not to get involved when such an altercation was brewing. Once, when a few friends and I were driving to Panama City Beach, the fight escalated to the point where one man pulled a knife. It was used to peel an apple, but, initially, we were all frightened.

The Traveler took a deep breath and pulled the car into a spot near what turned out to be the High Street. His voice hit a low register, and he said, “Out.” He opened his door and stepped onto the sidewalk, where he cracked his knuckles, back, legs, and neck. Then he hopped up and down and stretched.

“Oh,” said The Drunkard. “You wanna go, motherfucker?” As The Traveler was in the process of his bone-cracking, I imagine The Drunkard was doing this to psych himself up. “We can go. I haven’t been in a fight in a long time. Break your fuckin neck,” he said. The Drunkard opened up his door, stepped into the road—nearly getting run over by a car in the process—and stepped opposite The Traveler on the sidewalk.

The Traveler and The Drunkard stared at each other for a few moments. “Five quid on The Traveler,” I said.

“You’re kidding,” The Student said.

I shook my head. “Nope. The guy’s so together, he must be a complete nutcase. No one is that calm without harboring some sort of mental deficiency. In fact, I bet he rips out The Drunkard’s heart.”

The Student turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “You okay? You know, in the head.”

“Yeah.” I thought about it. “Maybe. Might watch a few too many kung fu movies.”

The Traveler bowed and then, in a movement so fluid it was almost slow motion, did a complete flip into a handstand, parted his legs in the air and rotated three hundred and sixty degrees. The Drunkard backed away. The Traveler flipped up again, this time landing closer to The Drunkard. He shifted from one foot to the other, moving in time to some unheard rhythm, and sailed out a kick that connected with The Drunkard’s left rib. The Drunkard sailed into the city wall next to him and The Student laughed. “Holy crap, he knows capoeira.”

“What? It looks like he’s dancing.”

“Yeah. It’s a Brazilian thing. I’ve never seen anyone actually use it in a fight. This is nuts.”

Apparently The Drunkard thought so as well, because shielded his head with his arms and scooted up against the wall.

Undeterred, The Traveler advanced in the almost bird-like fashion, flipped onto his hands again, and spun, his right foot landing on the back of The Drunkard’s head. The Drunkard flopped to the ground, a rag doll. The Traveler hopped back on to his feet and helped the Drunkard up, moved him against the car, and put his hands on his shoulders. The Student and I rushed out of the rented car. I shouted, “Don’t rip out his throat! I was just kidding! No one has to die!”

The Traveler turned to me and said, “What?”

“Er, nothing.”

He shrugged and returned to The Drunkard. “Count to ten.”

The Drunkard groaned. I got a look at his face. Blood cascaded down from his nose.

“Jesus,” I said. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah, just stunned,” said The Traveler. “I could have done worse, but there was no reason.” To The Drunkard: “Hey, listen. Count to ten.” He snapped his fingers in the man’s face, and The Drunkard made eye contact. He then counted to ten.

“Good,” said The Traveler. “Now, I know it’s infuriating that we don’t know where we are, but Lena is in class until five. So we’re kind of on our own until then, yeah?”

“Yeah,” muttered The Drunkard. “You got a napkin or something?”

The Student dashed into the car and pulled out a packet of Kleenex. He handed it to The Drunkard, who then stuffed a bunch into his nostrils.

“Good,” said The Traveler. “Don’t swallow too much blood. Now here’s what I’m thinking.” He checked his watch—it also occurred to me then that he was the only one of us who owned a watch. “It is three o’clock now. We take a nice little wander around Oxford’s center until fiveish, at which point, I give her a call and we can figure out where to go. How’s that sound?”

The Student and I agreed. The Drunkard nodded and said, “Sure. Just don’t go Apeshit Bird Man again.”

The Traveler patted The Drunkard on his shoulders again and said, “Excellent. Now, judging from the pedestrians right there,” he gestured to my left, where there were a lot of people walking down the street, “I’m guessing that way is the High Street. Shall we?”

We then walked down the street. The Student and I walking alongside The Traveler, asking where he learned capoeira (turns out he took classes in undergrad), and The Drunkard trailing behind, clutching the Kleenex and snorting every once in a while.

The High Street, like everything else in Oxford, was much larger and filled with more of the trappings of a city than Canterbury. Until now, my experiences of England were limited to Canterbury and London, and now I realized just how much of a country town Canterbury was. That, of course, didn’t mean that I liked it any less. It was just that now I realized that there was an alternative.

It’s a tricky business, thinking of a British city and attempting to come up with an American counterpart. Suffice it to say that Oxford has the shopping that Canterbury lacks; has different neighborhoods that are quite distinct from one another—some of which reminded me of Nashboro Village back home; has even more history; and, most important for me, has several multi-story bookstores. (The sort of bookstores in which you can spend five hours without getting through the fiction section.)

Walking down the High Street, we were surrounded by buildings that I describe as Gothic architecture—but that might, in fact, be completely wrong. Clearly, I was in a new league of city. “Posh” would be the word. “Man, you can just smell the wealth, can’t you?” asked The Drunkard.

The Student shook his head. “No, this is beyond class distinctions. This is a city of history, of learning, of culture. My friends, this is where I should have gone for a Master’s.”

We passed a group of chavs. They wore the track suits, gold chains, and gelled hair typical of their species, and, like the rest of their ilk, spoke entirely too loudly. “No, Reg,” one of them—wearing a red track suit and holding a lead on a bulldog, “you’re wrong. The cost-benefit analysis of selling ganja to selling cocaine brings the equation leaning heavily towards marijuana.”

Reg, wearing a green track suit and pulling along a lady chav—frantically texting on her slender mobile phone, her hair pulled back so tight I thought I could see her scalp cracking—said, “What are you on about? With my connections, the profit I can make on cocaine far surpasses marijuana.”

By this time, our two groups had passed each other, but I caught a little more. “Ah, but consider the repercussions of getting caught with cocaine compared with those of getting caught with marijuana…” And then they trailed off, having entered a McDonald’s.

“You see?” asked The Student. “Even the idiots are smart!”

The Drunkard shrugged. “Yeah, sure, cool. Hey, a pub.” He shot off and walked into a place called The Eagle and Child. The colors featured, you guessed it, an eagle carrying a diaper-clad baby through the sky. What this meant for families with children, I had no idea. “Think we should follow him?” I asked.

The Traveler grunted. “If we don’t then we may lose him for good.” He checked his watch. “Fuck it, we’ve got a few hours.”

A Proper Road Trip

I imagine that, on the day we left—a Friday—those of us who went on the trip went a bit mad. The Drunkard—who, despite always carrying a whiskey flask and being slightly wobbly half of the day, was normally the most sensible out of us—didn’t say that renting a car would be a bad idea. Why should it be? We were going to be going for a pleasant drive to just north of London and we had each prepared a CD or two for the trip.

I am not one to make a claim out of habit. I believe that every time I form an opinion, it is built upon experience and fact. I can now say that you should never rent a car unless unless you are in a country with a very clearly marked highway system, or you are driving with a native of that country. I am sure that there will be some Brits reading this who will knock their tea and crumpets over in shock at that statement. “What?” they will ask. “It is the clearest thing in the world! Why, to get to London, one simple must go up the A-1, meet the A-123, then get back on the A-1 at Cheltsbuckworth, follow the roundabout until the poppy field, then get on the M-1, at which point there will be another roundabout and you’ll take the third exit to get on the M-2. Simple!”

For the English, it may very well be. However, I say to the Englishman: Drive in the United States. We have straight lines that you follow for the length of England before you have to make a connection with another straight line at a slightly different angle going across the country. The inherent difference between the Briton and the American is that, in the U.S., roundabouts are something out of a Monty Python sketch.

Do I blame The Traveler for our journey of four hours—when it should only have taken two and a half? No. I blame society.

We left Canterbury at eleven o’clock and started on the labyrinth of roads and highways around eleven thirty. Everything started well, aside from The Drunkard’s musical fare of hardcore punk. (This wasn’t a big deal, though, as the 60-track CD only lasted twenty-five minutes.) It was around the time that we found ourselves in Dover that I realized that something was wrong.

I drummed the Ford’s dashboard and glared out at the sunlight reflecting off of the ferries at the port. “Traveler,” I said.

“Mmm?” he asked. He, like everyone else, was staring in disbelief at the ferries. He dug a map out of the sideboard.

“We seem to be in Dover. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t London in England, and not France?”

I heard the unmistakable snap-hiss of a can being opened from the back seat, turned around, and started saying, “You are putting that Guinness away right now,” and stopped at “putting.”

“What?” asked The Drunkard. He took a sip from a Coke can. “If you’re going to blame me, forget it. You’re shotgun, you’re the navigator.”

I grumbled. The CD started playing again. The first track—from a L.A. band called Rancid Sinkhole, the track was called “Fuckfuckfuck”—screeched into existence, bounced around the car for ten seconds, and stopped. Seagulls flew around outside. “Why a red Ford Fiesta?” I wondered. “We should have gotten a Toyota. Toyotas have good gas mileage. Petrol mileage. Do they just say ‘mileage’ over here? ‘Petrol’ is too many syllables.”

“Right,” said The Traveler, balling up the map and chucking it at The Student, who had fallen asleep right as the engine started. The map bounced off his forehead, his eyes fluttered, and he began snoring again. “I know what we did wrong,” said The Traveler.

“Went to Dover?” asked The Drunkard.

“Yep. Keep your eyes on the lookout for signs reading ‘North’ this time. Can’t be hard.”

He started the car again, the second song (“Rage, Death, and Pancakes,” a thirty-second magnum opus by the same band) soared out of the speakers, and we pulled out from the port’s car park.

Around the time when we hit a medium-sized town after leaving Canterbury for the second time, we came across the utter, utter Hell of trying to decipher a roundabout exit sign for the first time. Imagine, if you will, an interstate sign that shows the upcoming exits. A roundabout sign is about the same size, except white and with a diagram of the roundabout in the center. The diagram shows exits in the form of lines jutting out of the center circle. The trick of figuring one of these things out lies in understanding which line you’re coming from and which line you’re going to. The first time you come upon one of these, driving in a circle at twenty-five miles an hour, it is a very confusing concept. We circled the roundabout five times before we finally figured out which way we needed to go.

“Guys,” said The Drunkard, “for the love of God, you need to figure this out.”

This was on the third orbit. “If,” said The Traveler, “you have any hints as to how we can do this, then please let us know. Otherwise, shut up.”

“That’s the one!” I shouted, leaning forward and jabbing my finger at an arrow-shaped sign that read ‘London.’

We drove past it that time, but, by God, on the next orbital, we made it. The three of us who were conscious cheered and briefly woke up The Student, who shouted, “Gah. What? Pen—” and fell back to sleep.

After this, we hit the M-25. The M-25 is a giant, roughly circle-shaped ring that runs around London. It’s eight lanes of traffic, with signs every hundred yards warning drivers that they are being recorded by CCTV cameras—for their safety. During the day, it looks like every interstate in the United States. During the night, the CCTV warnings illuminate the drive with red neon lights. The day we drove into it from the South, the M-25 was in its usual state of immobile traffic. The British, it seemed, loved queuing so much that they decided to queue on their motorways for no reason.

We pulled onto the M-25, drove ten feet, and stopped. “Fuck,” said The Traveler.

I grunted and put my feet up onto the dashboard. “Wouldn’t be a road trip without a traffic jam.” And then, the gray skies opened up and torrential rain attacked the M-25. “And it wouldn’t be England without rain.”

The Traveler took The Drunkard’s CD out of the drive (The Drunkard didn’t complain, as after we left the roundabout, he, too, fell asleep) and replaced it with his roots rock album, put it on shuffle, and the opening licks of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “I Put A Spell On You” came on. “I spy,” I said, “with my little eye—”

“No,” said The Traveler.

“Aw.”

“There are some things that should not be spoken over. Creedence is one of those things.” He reached over, turned up the volume, and let the music wash over him. I watched the wipers move back and forth over the windshield.

Traffic moved a few feet. I noticed the distinct lack of honking in the traffic jam. I shuddered. Lately, I’d been feeling homesick. Hearing Creedence come from car speakers did it, but the absence of any sign of driving aggression did it even more. “This isn’t the way people behave,” I thought. “Drivers should be leaning out of their windows and screaming obscenities. They should at least be honking. What kind of civilized country doesn’t have road rage?” The song ended and I leapt at the silence. “So where are we staying?”

“Rickard—the guy from Munich—has a friend going to Oxford. She’s letting us crash at her and her roommates’ apartment. Shh, I think I kno—yeah, it’s Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band.” He turned up the music. This one sounded like some meth-fueled shine-stillers had picked up some instruments and formed a band. Still. Pretty good.

The traffic crawled along the M25 and we passed by places that looked a lot more interesting than sitting in a car. As we passed Super Fun Land—a place that looked like a castle, but was crawling with children, I thought back to my childhood and remembered a place not unlike that in Tennessee. Of course, the difference was that this was England, and there was torrential rainfall, and still the children continued to play. You had to give it to the English: they were resilient. “Traveler,” I said. “Why don’t the English just leave this country en masse, get away from the rain, and go to, say, Marseille.”

“Ah,” responded my companion. “Well, in order to find the proper answer to that question, we must turn briefly to genetics. There is a rare gene. So rare, in fact, that it really only appears in people whose roots in this country go back two hundred years. This gene, which forms as a result of generations of people drinking hard water and legitimately enjoying black pudding, is responsible for hating the French. And, if the English were to leave England, they’d find that the closest land is France. And that, to them, is unbearable.”

“Fascinating,” I said.

The traffic moved on, my head nodded forward, and when I woke up we were in Oxford City Center.

In Which I Jew Out

I’ve been keeping things from you, Dear Reader. Many things. Some interesting, some not so interesting, some juicy, some, in fact, quite dry—for example, I’ve been conducting experiments as to figuring out how much Yiddish one can introduce into a conversation with a Brit without them losing all understanding of a conversation. Quite dry in my opinion, but there you have it.

One of these hidden cards—somewhere between interesting and Why-Are-You-Telling-Me-This,-It-Is-Dull—is that I fell in with a couple of Brits and started a drinking/screaming club around two weeks after I arrived in Canterbury. The screaming aspect of the club comes from one of them being a fan of both Bon Jovi and the Confederacy—two institutions for which I hold no love. So, inevitably, I’d go out with Dixie (as I called the man) and Chuckles (who had a tendency to launch into spiels that seemed ripped from the pages of either H.P. Lovecraft or Ayn Rand, depending on how he felt that day) and we’d get to talking. Generally, we’d start talking about music and Dixie would bring up Jon Bon Fucking Jovi, and it would all devolve into mayhem.

Now, you see, Dixie was a good guy. Really, he was—except for Jon Bon Jovi and the Confederacy. I’m sure that you, dear reader, have friends who consistently surprise you with their ideas. I have several. I, in fact, have a history of these sorts of friendships. Once, a long time ago, I was friends with a neo-Nazi. In my defense: I never claimed to be a smart man.

At any rate, Dixie was in the Musical Theatre Society. I am, at best, lukewarm towards musicals. Yes, one might say, “How does every one know the dance that starts up out of no where?” and follow it with a hearty “Hurr hurr.” I try to convince myself that my reasons are more intellectual. I find that, most of the time, the song and dance routines break up a perfectly good narrative. However, Dixie was a friend, and I decided to support him in his endeavor—at the time, I viewed it as if I were helping a friend go through withdrawals. (Besides, it was in the building right next to my flat, so I didn’t have an excuse not to go.)

The Society put on a showcase consisting of songs from The Blues Brothers, Avenue Q, The Producers and a bunch of others which I’d never heard of before. By and large, it was very well done, especially considering how they were performing on a lecture stage in an academic building. Now, the reason I bring all of this up, aside from my goal of giving a proper account of my time abroad, is that afterwards, Dixie mentioned that the Society was putting on Fiddler on the Roof and would begin casting in a few weeks.

My brain went into hyperdrive. This was no ordinary musical—this was Fiddler on the Roof. The musical every Jew is forced to watch at birth.[1] And I would be Tevye! I stared at Dixie, still wearing his Hitler outfit (they’d finished the show with “Springtime for Hitler,” complete with a terrifying Aryan-looking man in a flawless SS uniform) grabbed him by the shoulders, and said, “What?”

“Casting’s in a few weeks. Starts on Thanksgiving, actually.”

He then started talking about the American Society, which was going to have a Thanksgiving dinner. I may have told him that myself and the other five were coming, but I’m not sure. I was too excited.

In fact, I ran out of the building, to my flat, knocked over Zaf along the way, and blared the soundtrack sixteen times. It should be noted that this is the extent to which I Jew out. Yes, I could go to synagogue on Shabbat. Yes, I could keep kosher. Yes, I could volunteer and fulfill some mitzvot, but, honestly, that’s a lot of work and I like bacon.

---

[1] And thou shalt view Fiddler on the Roof, and seek to be like Topol. –The Book of Culture, 3:12

Bonfire Night

After the meal, we walked out of the college into the bitter, cold night and made our way down Tyler Hill to see what this Bonfire Night was all about. I learned that most of the British holidays involved a low-grade pyromania—whether it involved attempting to blow each other up with low-yield explosives and inevitably failing (Christmas), making a fruitcake and setting it on fire (also Christmas), or building a gigantic fire and then setting off fireworks (Bonfire Night). I attribute this to some sort of primordial urge to be entertained in the desolation that is Britain in the winter.

The historical basis for Bonfire Night runs as follows: A while back, a few guys from the minority Christianity got fed up with being oppressed by the majority Christianity. Being English and thus obsessed with fire, they decided to blow up Parliament. Doing so, they hoped, would kill every Parliament member of the opposing sect of Christianity (as well as the King), and thus open the way for their sect to take the reins until the other sect got their shit together and did the same right back at them. Their plot was discovered, and, being the barbarians the English are, the King ordered the leader of the plot—Guy Fawkes—to be tortured and killed six ways to Sunday.

In the modern era, they mimic this brutal slaying by building a wooden effigy and tossing it in the middle of a gigantic bonfire. And then, being English, they stand around in relative silence and murmur, “My, lovely fire this year. The Council have done a smashing job of it. Let’s go queue for a potato” and so on and so forth. After the fire dies, there is a fireworks display. In some towns, where the locals are more adventurous, the custom is to chuck flaming kegs down a hill; because, hey, why not?

It was quite a schlep from campus to the bonfire field. Such a distance that we found it took us over an hour. Though, that isn’t indicative of the distance so much as it is indicative of The Writer refusing to move faster than a light saunter while complaining through the entire journey. (It is a proven, scientific fact that the rate at which one complains is identical to the rate at which a group is slowed in their travel. Thus, The Writer’s constant complaining made us walk roughly half as fast as we would have otherwise.) However, we finally made it to the Bonfire festivities after weaving through neighborhoods and side streets.

The makeup of the field was as follows: At the far side, about one hundred yards away from the entrance, there was the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. It was one of those train rides for children—you know the sort, they’re built in every state fair across the States—except it was called The Rio Grande Railway and was laden with American flags. To the left of the train, and a few yards closer to the entrance was a carousel. Across from that, to the right of the train and about seventy yards away from the entrance, were a line of food and game booths that stretched to the entrance. The main fare of these booths were potatoes and various sausages. Near the carousel, there was a place selling cotton candy.

On the other side of the field, nearer the bonfire but opposite the entrance, were a few lawn-type games. From what I could tell, it looked like there were horseshoes being thrown. I didn’t hear any screams of pain and anguish, so I assume that lawn darts were not part of the festivities. And then, as I believe I’ve covered everything but the mass of people, there was the bonfire.

The bonfire was massive. Before this, the largest one I’ve seen was about five feet tall; and the largest one I’ve built was half a foot tall. (I never had an aptitude for building things. Lego blocks eluded me in their complexity.) This flaming behemoth stood about twenty feet in the air and forty feet in diameter. By the time we arrived, it hadn’t yet been lit, but there was a palpable sense of impatience—British impatience, that is: the sense that, if something didn’t get started soon, someone might start grumbling under their breath. Carnival music, sailed through the air, making me feel perilously close to madness. I looked to my right and saw The Stalker twitching. “Hey,” I said. “It’s cool, man. It’s just music.”

“No,” The Stalker said. “That’s not it.”

“Then wh—”

He pushed me aside and into The Drunkard, who knocked over The Student.

“Cotton candy!” The Stalker yelled, throwing his arms into the air like an Olympian who just broke a world record. “Cotton candy!” He bolted into the crowd and made a beeline for the cotton candy booth, knocking over elderly folk and children in the process.

“What in blue hell was that?” asked The Drunkard.

The Student groaned from the ground and said, “Would ‘the strangest thing I’ve ever seen’ suffice?”

The Traveler helped him up. “Maybe. I’d be more tempted to call it batshit insane and leave it at that—for this is England, and you may very well see stranger things before the night is out.”

Mericfully, the carnival music cut out and was replaced by a relatively melodic, high-pitched squeal from the speakers around the grounds. “Let the fire,” someone announced, “be lit.”

Four men holding torches[1] walked to the bonfire and touched their flames to the base of the construct. The fire caught and roared upwards. It was at this time that I noticed the effigy of Guy Fawkes. As the flames licked up, they caught engulfed the avatar and the fire increased threefold. My guess is that there were two things that could have caused this: The first, and this is my preferred explanation, is that the centuries of English hatred of this man made the effigy especially vulnerable to fire. The more plausible, and therefore more boring, explanation is the thing was doused in gasoline beforehand.

Regardless, the bonfire was now engulfed and, even from this distance, I felt about fifteen degrees warmer. Remember that the remaining five of us were about fifty yards from the bonfire. This meant, in my mind, that everyone within a fifteen yard radius (and the closest you were allowed to be to the fire was ten yards) had been incinerated in the blast. This, of course, was not true, but it was the first experience I had of seeing the British in their natural character: Extreme discomfort in the name of tradition. I’m not entirely sure if this is admirable or if it is an indication that they possess some protein deficiency resulting in a masochistic complex. Now better because of the warmth, I clapped my hands and said, “Okay, who’s up for some cotton candy?”

“Nope,” said The Drunkard, taking out the largest hip flask I’d ever seen and having a massive swig from it. “I’m going to get a potato.” He walked off towards the potato stands.

“I find the idea of cotton candy repugnant,” said The Writer. “Really, humanity? Sugar around a stick? That’s the best you can do? Really?” He snorted. “Go rot your teeth. You might fit in better with these barbarians.” Then he walked off. I watched him closely. Sure enough, after feinting that he was going towards the sausage stands, he went to a cotton candy booth.

“What a schmuck,” I said.

“Fuck it,” said The Traveler. “I haven’t had cotton candy since I was a kid. Wanna go, Student?”

“Nah, there’s some vin chaud over there, so I think—yeah, wine time.”

“Hey,” The Traveler said, “be careful. We can’t carry you up that hill.”

“I only brought ten quid. Chances are I won’t get smashed off of that.”

The Traveler and I walked towards the cotton candy booth to which The Stalker had bolted. That’s when I saw the train laden with American flags. “Well,” I said, “that may just barely beat The Stalker’s weirdness.”

The Traveler looked at the train and sighed. “You’ll find,” he said, “that the rest of the world knows of only three Americas. The first is New York City. Everyone there, they think, behaves like the cast of Friends.”

I wretched.

“I know,” he said, “disgusting, isn’t it? But, what are you gonna do? They don’t like Seinfeld over here. The second America—Los Angeles—is where all of the scumbags come from. That is where materialism, mindless entertainment, and Starbucks originate.”

“And the third America?”

“The third America is the Old West. Everyone not living in New York City or L.A. either does not exist or rides around on horses shooting at each other with six-guns and shouting ‘yahoo.’ That, my friend, is why you are currently staring in shock at a carnival ride called The Rio Grande Train Company.” He paused for a moment. “Honestly, I’m just surprised they got the amount of stars on the flag right. Sometimes they just have a blue square with U.S.A. in the middle.”

I started humming our national anthem and successfully ignored the ill-natured look the Traveler was shooting at me. We queued for the cotton candy and saw, at the front of the line, The Stalker.

He was bouncing. Literally. There was no figurative play of words here, the man was bouncing. His mouth moved up and down rapidly, and I’d be willing to bet that the man was saying “cotton candy” over and over again. I nudged The Traveler and pointed. His jaw dropped. The line moved forward, and The Stalker walked to the counter, and shouted “Gimme cotton candy!”

“Candy floss?” I heard the man behind the counter say.

“Sure, just give me that sugary goodness.” By now, The Stalker was yelling quite loudly—loudly enough to beat out the music from the carousel, the Hellish cacophony streaming forth from speakers around the grounds, and the shouts and screams of children. “I’ve been a good boy, just give me the candy.”

The Traveler and I turned to each other and said, “How about a potato?” at the same time.

We quit the line, stealing one last glance at The Stalker, who had by now buried his face in a giant pink lump, and fled to the potato stands. Along the way, we ran across The Student, who was leaning up against a tree and sipping from a cup. I went up to him and, without speaking, took the cup from him and drank. “Er,” he said, “what’s the idea?”

“I need this more than you do,” I said. I pulled a couple pounds out of my pocket and gave them to him. “Go buy yourself another cup. After seeing what I’ve seen—well, it’s nightmare fuel.”

The Student turned to The Traveler and said, “What, did you guys see someone get disemboweled?”

The Traveler, pale-faced, said, “No. The Narrator exaggerates a little bit, but it was, nevertheless, quite frightening. Go, my friend. Go and fetch a cup of wine for your health, and we will tell you.”

The Student shook his head, pocketed my coins, and walked off.

The wine took the edge off of my madness. I was still a shaken man, and in the recesses of my mind, I could still see The Stalker, as if in the midst of some cannibalistic ritual, revert to some primordial, barbaric state and bury his face in a sticky lump of pink goo. No doubt that you do not find this as odd as I do. You, like The Student, probably think me quite mad for behaving the way I do after seeing this, but I can only respond with that motto of the man who suffers: You weren’t there.

The Traveler, it seemed didn’t have the same sensitivities that I did, as, by now, when I had finished the cup of mulled wine, he had regained his complexion and, though he was glancing over his shoulder, he seemed normal. “I wonder if that Dutch girl’s here.”

“My good man!” I shouted. “How can you think of women at a time like this?”

The Traveler sighed. “I have a penis, and I have the urge to copulate. I know that, somewhere deep inside you, you have such urges, and once you stop going mad from seeing The Stalker and the cotton candy incident… you’ll…” he turned pale again. “Oh. Oh, God. The horror.”

“Yes. View it in your mind’s eye and know my pain.”

At this time, The Student returned to us with a couple more cups of wine and said, “Okay, so what did you see that’s got you all weird?”

“The Stalker was eating cotton candy.”

He blinked at me. “That’s it?”

“It was in an eldritch fashion! As if C’thulhu, rising from R’lyeh and yearning for the dreams of man, were feasting instead of a being with whom we are familiar.”

“Okay, Lovecraft, you know something?”

I shook my head.

“Normally, I’m not one to say, ‘go get laid and your problems will be solved,’ but you really, really, need some release. Listen to yourself,” he took a sip from the wine, smacked his lips, “this is good wine, by the way—listen to yourself go on about The Stalker eating cotton candy. Worst case, he just stuck his face in there and started eating.”

“And that is exactly what he did!”

“Then who gives a damn? He eats like a kid. Jesus, pull yourself together. Look at The Traveler: He’s kosher.”

I looked at The Traveler, and he was back to normal. I took a deep breath. Was it truly so weird that The Stalker was devouring cotton candy in such a way? Yes. Was I going to let it ruin my night? Hopefully not. I took another deep breath and nodded my head. “You’re right. I’m bored and letting it get to me. Imagination’s a powerful thing, and mine’s running amok right now.”

“Good,” said The Student. “Now, when do the fireworks start? The bonfire’s not keeping me as warm as it wa, and I’m about to start shivering. I hate shivering.”

“Think,” said The Traveler, “of all the long-winded prose you’ve had to read over your career in academia. All of the two-dimensional characters excused because they’re in Works of Literary Art. All of those damn Russian authors who can’t tell a plot from a hole in the ground. Think of all that, and your hatred will make you warm.”

“There you guys are,” shouted The Drunkard. He held a hefty baked potato in one hand and a plastic fork in the other. “You gotta get a potato. One pound per—damn good deal, I think. Hey,” he said, poking The Student in the shoulder with his fork, “why are you twitching?”

“Doestoevsky. Doestoevsky, Chekhov.” The Student raised his hands in the air, still clutching the mulled wine, and shouted, “Tolstoy!”

The Drunkard, slowly, deliberately, stared at both myself and The Traveler and said, “You need to leave this man alone, or he will, mark my words, burn down a bookstore.”

“Narrator!” shouted a voice from my right. I turned and saw Zaf walking with a couple of his other friends. At this time, he was going out (ish) with a girl from Thailand, and she flanked him on his right. On his left was one of his friends, a Greek woman whose actual name I had no chance in Hell of pronouncing, but I and everyone else just called Natalya.

I gulped and muttered, “Guh,” along with a weak wave. About ninety percent of the time, when I was around a woman I found attractive, I lost all vocal faculties and resulted to uttering monosyllabic words. Occasionally I managed an atrocious joke, but that was about it.

“What are you going up to?” asked Zaf.

“The Hell did you just say?” asked The Drunkard.

“Er, Drunkard,” I said, “Student, Traveler, this is Zaf, er, his girlfriend, and Natalya.”

“No, no no,” said The Drunkard, “you’re not getting off that easy. The hell did you just say?”

Zaf responded with a huge grin and said, “Hey, dude, it’s all okay.”

The Drunkard grunted, took out his flask and took a swig. “I’ll give you English lessons. Five pounds an hour. Best deal you’ll find here. I’m not a shyster like the damn Brits—you can’t trust the Brits with money, I say; they just go around spending it on bullshit like those bizarre haircuts they have.” A tall British guy walked by with his hair gelled and crested at the top in a bizarre mockery of a faux-hawk. “See?” asked The Drunkard. “You can’t trust a guy like that. You can’t trust a people that allow that sort of haircut to exist without mockery. Who can you trust? Me. I’m a journalist—the most honest profession in the world.”

Zaf laughed and gave me the perplexed look I had come to recognize as “I don’t understand a word of what was just said.” Natalya, who acted from time to time as an interpreter of the English-speaking world, translated. After she was finished, Zaf said, “Ah. Well, no thanks. The Narrator can help.”

The Drunkard looked at me and said, “You’d better fucking help. The guy sounds like he stepped out of the 80s.”

I shrugged. “I’m working on it. Languages are hard.”

The Drunkard spat out what sounded like a factory floor.

“Er,” I responded.

“That means ‘kiss my ass’ in Klingon.”

I burst into laughter. “You know Klingon? You fucking nerd.”

I then found myself upside down and in a temporary rubbish bin. After pushing myself out, I dusted myself off and said, “Hey, I play WarCraft. I was just saying tha—”

“Watch it,” said The Drunkard.

I held my hands up and nodded.

An explosion sounded above us and a burst of green light temporarily illuminated the grounds. We looked up and caught the fading outline of the first burst from the fireworks display. All told, it was a decent enough show. Coming from Knoxville, I wasn’t that impressed. (For those that don’t know, Knoxville created a holiday for the sole purpose of shooting off fireworks. And, because it is such a center of creativity and originality, it is called Boomsday.) Everyone else in the group, though, was. Eventually, The Writer (the traces of cotton candy still sticking to his face) and The Stalker (utterly clean faced and slurping mulled wine) joined us and we all watched the spectacle as one.

I looked around and saw that, overall, the rest of the people gathered in the field were having the same experience.

The fireworks exploded overhead, and, right after they finished, it started raining. “Well, well,” I said to no one in particular, “looks like the weather’s going to put out the fire.”

The Drunkard turned and gave me an exhausted look. “I’m sorry?”

“Er, you know. Cause the fire might spread and…” I looked at the rest of the group and cleared my throat. “Look, I never said I was a smart man.”

The Drunkard patted me on my shoulder and said, “I’m heading back to campus, anyone want to come along?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some more reading to do,” I said.

The Student and The Writer said they’d go back as well—we three, it seemed, turned in much earlier than the rest of the group—and so, under the steadily increasing rainfall, we left for campus.

---

[1] Note: The word ‘torch’ in England means ‘flashlight.’ This is absurd to the level of Kafka, and I shall be damned if it creeps into my vocabulary.

Tex-Mex in England

The above is about half t of an essay I turned in for Ranting in Literature. One day, I was walking through the School of English building, trying to find a professor’s office, and I saw the essay printed out and displayed on a corkboard with comments like: “This kid is nuts!” and “Ha ha!” scrawled all over it. I do not expect to get a good mark in the class.

The next day, around five, our group met at one of the bars on campus for a meal before going to Bonfire Night. By this time, each of us was feeling a bit homesick and we decided to go to the bar that featured Tex-Mex cuisine—a tribute to the cheap Mexican restaurants sprinkled around the entire United States.

On the way, I asked The Student what he was doing the other day that had him disappear from the pub in such a rush. He shrugged and said, “Oh, you know, nothing important. I just had to, ah, take care of something.”

“Liar,” I said. “Your pants are aflame.”

“Fine. I had a date.”

I punched The Drunkard in his back, to which he responded by putting me in a headlock and said, “Do not do that again.”

Quickly turning purple—it appeared that The Drunkard had a terrifying natural strength—I choked out, “Okay.”

He released me and said, “Okay, what’s up?”

I wheezed, tried to respond, and coughed. I pointed to The Student and doubled over for a second. “Date,” I managed.

“You got a date?” asked The Traveler.

“Yeah,” said The Student, blushing a little.

“Hey, good for you, man. Didn’t we tell you the Law of Averages would work in your favor?”

“That’s not the best way to express congratulations,” said The Student, “but I’ll take it.”

“Next time,” said The Stalker, “don’t order red wine with a pasta dish.” He didn’t look back while talking. “It makes you look pedestrian.”

“You were following us?”

“No,” said The Stalker. “I was… in a good position.”

The Student and I looked at each other. It was one of those moments that bespoke a vast well of sympathy between comrades.

Without much more conversation, we stepped into the bar. (To be fair, it was an incredibly short distance from Dickens to the bar, and we’d already hit the entrance to the place by the time The Stalker, yet again, weirded all of us out.)

We hadn’t been in the place before, and so we expected a dimly-lit place with soft mariachi music playing in the background, a TV showing Mexican dramas over the bar, and a few murals of men in fields and women carrying baskets of God-Knows-What. It would have been an added bonus if Poncho Villa were featured on the walls somewhere, but we weren’t getting our hopes up. When we walked in, we were dismayed to see that it was a typical campus bar with the default beers (I’d worked up a craving for Negra Modelo, so this was a very strong blow) and little hint of joyful Mexican hospitality. The walls were colored in purple, green, and a strange off-dull-yellow color that I don’t believe I’d be able to see in nature.

The Student let out one of what I considered his trademarked sighs (they possessed a unique, heavy, thoroughly disappointed quality) and said, “Bienvenidos, muchachos. For table six?” in a faux-Mexican accent.

I patted him on the back and said, “There, there, Juan. There, there.”

The Traveler, unfazed by the dearth of Mexicanness, walked to a table, glanced at the menu and went to the bar. The rest of us dragged another table to the one he chose, and glared at the menu. “I bet this shit comes with black pudding,” said The Drunkard.

“Black pudding doesn’t exist,” said The Writer.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” responded The Writer. “It’s a cultural misconception. Really, Drunkard, I thought you would have been smart enough to realize that, England being a civilized country, they wouldn’t eat fried blood.”

“Actually,” said the Student, “black pudding’s still around.”

I glanced at The Stalker, expecting to see him licking his lips at the mention of fried blood, but he merely watched the proceedings with his hands in his hoodie and an eyebrow raised.

“Lies,” responded The Writer.

The Student shook his head. “Go down to Wetherspoon’s. On their breakfast menu, you’ll see that you get a serving of black pudding with the English Breakfast. Just because a country has modern buildings and—well, semi-modern roads doesn’t mean they’re above tradition, Writer.”

“Yeah,” said the Drunkard. “You might want to lay off being a wiseass from time to time. Might be tempted to toss you in the fire tonight.”

The Writer snorted. “Oh, yes, I’m truly afraid.”

The Drunkard leaned forward and said, just above a whisper, “Crackle, crackle goes the fire, motherfucker.” He hung his jacket up on the back of his chair and went to place his order at the bar.

The Writer turned towards me, “Narrator, he wouldn’t toss me in the fire, would he?”

I shrugged.

“Damn you,” he said, “give me an answer. Shrugging isn’t an answer, shrugging is putting off an answer. It’s a ‘maybe!’ I hate maybes!”

The Stalker said, “I just might help him,” and walked to the bar.

“Et tu, Student? Will you throw me in the fire?”

“You keep on referencing Shakespeare in common conversation, I just might.” He put his jacket on the back of his chair, shook his head, said, “Utter schmuck,” and went to the bar to order.

The Writer turned back to me. “And you?”

“I’m Switzerland,” I said. Now, it was my turn to go to the bar.

I ordered a chile con carne enchilada and a Mexican-style beer called Sol. I got the beer and realized something was missing. As the rest of my group went to the table, I stood at the bar, looking confused until someone came back to me. He was a tall, built guy with his hair gelled up to the very odd hairstyle prevalent in this country that I can only describe as the crest of an exotic bird; he wore his Union polo with the collar popped, and I blame these two things for the occurrences that followed. “Hey mate, you all right?”

“Welcome back,” sang a voice in my head. “You thought it was your ticket out.” I shook it off. “Um, yeah. There’s no lime in here.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Welcome back,” sang the voice again. “There should be a lime.”

“No mate, there shouldn’t be one.”

“It’s a Mexican beer,” I reasoned, “there should be a lime.”

“Which one of us is behind the bar? I think I should know a little more than you about beer.”

“Ba-ba-ba, Bar-bar-Barino,” John Travolta sang in my head. Suddenly, I felt my head snap back. I was back in Brooklyn. Horshack was there. Epstein was there. More importantly, all sense of social decorum, kindness, love for my fellow man, and tact imploded. “Look here, motherfucker,” I said, virtually shouting for no reason. “You keep pulling this superior shit on me, and I will leap the fuck over this bar and smash your Goddamn head in, capiche?”

The man had the audacity to snort. “Mate, a guy like you, I’d be surprised if he could leap over a stick.”

Well, I had to prove him wrong. I leapt over the bar, put him in a headlock, and said, “Listen: You know anyone workin at K-Bar? Motherfucker in a neck brace?”

The man gurgled.

“Answer me, asswipe.”

“Yes,” he choked.

“That was me. I put him in that neck brace. Now, I don’t know your English customs over here, so maybe I’m out of line. Maybe you should treat your customers like shit, thinking you can handle it all cause you got some fuckin namby pamby accent. But, brother, you think your shit don’t stink? I will take that bottle of Sol, stick it up your ass, and prove to you, once and for all, that your shit stinks.

“So here’s what you’re gonna do: I’m gonna let you go, and you’re gonna write a letter. A missal, if you will. And you’ll address it to your manager, detailing what a gigantic prick you are and requesting that you get some lessons in Goddamn courtesy. After this, you’re gonna go get me a nice, sliced lime to put in my drink so I don’t get the dry fuckin heaves every time I take a sip of Mexican piss beer. You get me, pal?”

The man nodded.

I let him go, walked around to the front of the bar, cleared my throat, and said, “Thank you.”

He took out some paper and penned the most impressive confession of arrogance I had ever seen. After I read through it, I nodded, saw that he put it up on the corkboard near the back, and got a slice of lime for my beer. “Now listen,” I said, coming out of the Brooklyn accent a little bit. “I’m gonna come back later tonight, and if I don’t see that letter still up there, then we’re gonna have trouble. Understand me?”

The man nodded.

I looked around and saw that most of the bar was staring at me. I gave them a wave and what I considered a winning smile. I took the receipt for my food and beer, walked back to the table, and sat down.

The group stared at me. “What?” I asked.

“You ever consider therapy?” asked The Traveler. “That’s not the display of a sane and well-balanced man.”

“The last well-balanced man in my family,” I responded, “was run over by a horse-and-carriage three months after arriving in this country. As a rule, we try be as unbalanced and mad as humanly possible—all in an attempt to stave off death, mind you.”

“That,” said The Student, “may be the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

“I never made any claim in regards to my intelligence.”

The food arrived much sooner than I had hoped it would—for seeing your food arrive after five minutes is always a sign that it has been sitting in a refrigerator, waiting for someone’s order to set it free. Still, the food looked fine, with one exception: They had Englished up the Tex-Mex.

Now, chances are that my readers will know what I mean by ‘Tex-Mex.’ There is the main part of the dish—enchiladas, for example—followed by some sort of side, usually rice or beans. In the case of my current whereabouts, I assumed that beans were something the British could get a handle on. (Beans for breakfast were seen as a normal thing in this country.) However, they put chips near the enchiladas. Chips, that thoroughly British food staple, that cuisine to which they clung as if it were more important than their monarch. This may seem like over exaggeration, but I issue a challenge to those doubting readers: Go to a British-supremacy website—anything run by the British National Party will do—and view the absurd amount of comments decrying the “Chinky” or the “Paki” and instead hoisting up the “good British chippy.” For example, there was one comment that read, “Sometimes, my mates want to go down to the Chinky for food. I tell them, ‘No thanks, lads. Just drop me off at the chippy.”

Anyway, they tossed chips in with the Tex-Mex. I stared, gaping-mouthed, glaring at the bizarre and eldritch concoction which lay before me. I looked around, saw that my companions were munching away on their burgers, tacos, and quesadillas without showing any signs that the chips also residing on their plates were alien. The Drunkard looked up, saw me and said, “What’s up?”

“There are chips on my Tex-Mex.”

“Yeah,” he said. He took a swig from his Sol. He had no lime.

He had no lime. I jumped up from my chair, pointed at him and said, “You’re Hellenizing! You’re assimilating! Have you no pride? Have you forgotten where you come from? You have no lime in your Sol and you are happily eating chips with your God-damned Tex-Mex! Dear Lord, Drunkard, I be—”

The Traveler stood up and pushed me down by my shoulders. “You need to shut up,” he said. “This is just Tex-Mex. It’s not a big deal. Look, take a bite.”

I did so.

“It’s not even good Tex-Mex, is it?”

I shook my head. The food was bland. The cheese was different, more—I don’t know, plasticky. The beef, while definitely beef and possessing the typical properties that beef was supposed to have, was lackluster. It was bland. It was… English. “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

“Okay,” said The Traveler. “What is it then? It’s English. This is English Tex-Mex. They’re five thousand miles away from good Tex-Mex; you can’t expect them to get it right. What you need to do is calm down, enjoy yourself, and eat.” He returned to his plate. “And get laid. You’re way too tense, man.”

I ate, but didn’t really enjoy it. The Traveler was right, though. I was tense. I was bored. The little schoolwork I had—consisting of reading a book a week for my Ranting in Literature course, and thinking in general for my Philosophy of Life course—was not exactly fulfilling. I needed something else to occupy my time. Right then, I figured it would either be a job or… well, something else. But that was for another time. Right now, I had the bland Tex-Mex in front of me.

Ranting in Literature

It was something I’ve noticed a while ago. There were certain authors whose novels—in some cases, whose entire oeuvres—were little more than extended rants about one subject or another. Sometimes, the rants would be well-reasoned and civil—hard to call a rant, really. However, there were those authors who were so worked up about what they were doing that they could not help themselves and let all of their rage loose upon a poor, unsuspecting reader.

As I progressed in my Bachelor’s degree, I noticed that these authors tended to do the same sort of things to their main characters. More often than not, the protagonist was a symbol of that which the author hated. The man or woman was intensely stupid, stubborn, bigoted, greedy, headstrong, relentlessly religious—whatever the theme of the novel, the character embodied. The character never showed a desire—off the bat, at least—to change. They were happy in their ways, as their ways tended to bring them success. The narrator of the novel showed a thinly veiled hatred for the character’s beliefs—so thin that it was, in effect, cling film.

Throughout the novel, there would be plot points surrounding the character—usually pertaining directly to the character’s family, but sometimes extending to the world at large—that propelled the character into seeing that something was wrong. However, the character, being so incredibly dense, would never actively do anything about these events. In one example, Oil!, Plainfield looks on blankly as the Bolsheviks control Russia, unions form for the betterment of employees, and owners of drilling companies declare war on their Red Menace. And, of course, Plainfield blithers on in his course, knowing full well that the union cause is right, but, darn it, he can’t up and change the way he runs his business. Wouldn’t be good for profits.

In this example, we see Upton Sinclair jumping up and down, using Plainfield as a paper doll against a backdrop of a chronology of the 1910s, shouting about the evils of capitalism. It is nothing more than a rant, a tract whose main complaint is that the capitalists in society are cold, heartless sons of bitches backed by religion (did I mention that the evangelists get shouted about a lot, too?). They, Sinclair says, don’t give a damn about anything but profits, and should be strung up from a tree—for they are spineless.

Now, it doesn’t necessarily make for a great narrative to see a character whose spine seems to be made out of Jell-O—especially since all of the other characters in the novel seem to evolve and show the capacity for change throughout the book. But, that is not to say that these novels should be ignored. They shouldn’t. Books like Oil! and Babbit by Sinclair Lewis stand as examples of what a nation needs in its political atmosphere. With few examples, there is a dearth of such brazen calling-out from the left in the United States. Michael Moore does it, but Moore has the misfortune of not being, ah, photogenic.

It is, of course, easier now to spot out inconsistencies in arguments, to see when someone is cherry-picking information. So, what can you do? Do you make documentaries like Moore, only to get shouted down by the even more bombastic right for supposedly hating America? Do you create paper dolls of characters in an attempt to show the wealthy and governing body’s corruption and bigotry? (The answer to that should be, of course, no. There was a time and a place for that, and that time was the 1920s.)

So, once again, what can you do? I believe the solution to this problem is infinitely more varied and difficult than anything politicians and commentators are doing. We have an entire history of back-biting and vindictiveness in politics. Smear campaigns have always been the norm in election seasons: Jefferson was referred to as a half-breed, in an attempt to get voting Americans to believe that a half-Indian was going to be their president. What we’re facing now, with the Bill O’Reillys, Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and, Keith Olbermans, is the consequence of two hundred and fifty years of infighting: The dangerous possibility that those on the right and on the left are approaching a point where they will refuse to work with one another. Congress isn’t helping the situation at all. Turning anything resembling an objective eye towards this Congressional year will show that the representatives are too afraid of losing their seats to do anything. With the exception of one man from the House who voted for the health care bill even though he knew his district would probably vote him out—because “it was the right thing to do” in his opinion—none of them show any spine. They toe the party line when doing so damns their countrymen. And why? They’re backed and financed by lobbyists. Congressmen leave Congress millionaires, sometimes going to lucrative positions in corporations.

So, what can Americans do? Stop listening to bombastic twits on TV and the radio. No one on the left wants to turn the United States into a sharia-run Islamist state. And, I would hope, no one on the right wants to starve out workers for profits. Stop feeding cable news networks with ratings. When you do, Glenn Beck is allowed to insinuate that a Muslim Senator works with terrorists.

Perhaps that is what the modern political literature—satire, maybe—needs to show. The time for straw man and paper doll arguments has ended—and it must end if there is to be any sort of civility in political discourse in the future.

The Decision

We met, as usual, in The Sub-Pope’s Flock, across the public square from the Cathedral. I stood outside for a moment. Maybe, I thought, I shouldn’t go in there. There was the pressure of knowing whether or not anyone thought my story was any good. Could I take the criticism? More importantly, would The Stalker be waiting for me, prepared to kill me? “Hello,” said The Stalker from behind me.

I leapt around, bursting immediately into a heavy sweat and whimpering. “Hi there,” I responded. He was back in what I considered his normal clothing. Where the dress shirt and normal people clothes were slightly disconcerting on him, this was even more so, considering that it was now obvious he was hiding something worse than sinister—something normal.

“You and I both know what you saw yesterday,” he said.

Hearing this took some weight off my shoulders. “So,” I said. “Are you Hyde, or Jekyll?”

The Stalker snorted. “Apt comparison, I guess. Although, I would assume that one such as yourself—who I, up until now, assumed was an intelligent man—would not need to ask the question in the first place.”

“Hyde, then.”

The Stalker shrugged. “Persisting in the black-and-white picture of my existence, are you? Fair enough. If you want to think of me as Hyde and other-me as Jekyll, then so be it. Regardless,” he said, clearing his throat, “I think that it would be best for you if you did not mention what you saw. It would complicate matters for me, as I have worked quite hard to project an image upon all of you—an image that I have my own reasons for showing.”

“And what are they?”

The Stalker responded with a grin revealing stark white teeth. “Absolutely nothing sinister. Just remember: it would be for the best if you were never mention what you saw to the others. I’ll know if you do.” With that, he brushed past me into the pub.

Now that the thing I was most worried about had already happened—and I escaped without any puncture wounds—there was relatively nothing to fear from criticism. I followed in The Stalker’s trail.

When I walked in, the others were already in the middle of debating stories. “Ah,” said The Traveler, “there’s The Narrator. I hope you don’t mind that we already started, but we were all anxious to get going.”

“No worries,” I said. I went to the bar, ordered an ale, and sat next to The Drunkard. He had black bags under his eyes and was struggling to keep his head up. “Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

He craned his neck towards me as if it had cinder blocks tied on. “Late night. French ordered two crates of wine. Wine hangover. Awful.”

I patted him on the back and he belched.

“Okay,” said The Traveler. He sat across from me and massaged his temples. “Over the course of the last half hour of debate, we’ve established two things. One: The Drunkard is on the verge of puking on the table.”

At this, The Drunkard nodded and groaned.

“Two,” continued The Traveller, “The Writer despises every other tale but his own.”

“You leave out the principal reason why,” said The Writer.

“Which is?”

“Because no one dares take the bull by the horns and create something worth listening to. All of this was worthless. Mere entertainment. If I wanted mere entertainment,” said with such a sneer that no amount of italics could portray, “I’d go into a Border’s and pick up the latest New York Times best-seller.”

The Student, in a sing-songy voice that I would never expect to hear from him, said, “Go fuck yourself.” It had a nice ring, the way he said it. Almost as if it belonged in a nursery rhyme.

“Okay,” said The Traveler. “Everyone needs to calm down. We’re done with the first round’s debate. Voting time.” He took out his messenger bag and put it on the table. From the inside, he took out a pad of white paper, ripped off a few sheets, and passed them around. “On this paper, you are to write the name of whoever you thought had the best story. And,” he added, “do not write your own name. That’s just not sporting.”

And, of course, everyone but one person wrote their own name. It became clear this happened when The Traveler announced that The Writer received one vote. Of No one in our group other than he would given him a vote. Even if his story had been an amazing one—and it hadn’t been bad—we wouldn’t have voted for him solely out of spite.

One vote remained, and the only person without a tick by his name was The Drunkard. His head lolled next to me, and he hiccupped and groaned to himself as The Traveler picked up the last piece of paper.

All of us leaned forward. Would this final vote show that we were all petty sons of bitches who wouldn’t admit the merits of one another’s stories? Or would it instead show that someone among us was capable of admitting that theirs wasn’t as good as another’s? “And the final vote is for The Student,” announced The Traveler.

“Huhzah!” shouted The Student.

I turned, slowly, to look at him. “Huhzah?”

He blushed. “Well, we’re in Britain, aren’t we?”

“Fuck,” said The Drunkard. “I shouldn’t have voted for you.”

“So, Traveler,” said The Stalker, “by virtue of The Writer receiving a vote, I assume this means that, apart from The Drunkard, we each voted for ourselves. Rather unsporting, don’t you think?”

“Ah,” said The Traveler. “Well. You see, it’s simply a matter of forseeing trends and being able to—”

“Bullshit your way around them?” asked The Writer.

The Traveler responded with a nod.

“So, now that I won, you all owe me a drink.”

“Nope,” I said. “The terms of the first round stated that the winner of the first round would receive naught but bragging rights.” I stood up, reached over, and patted The Student on the shoulder. “Enjoy them. They won’t get you drunk, but they will make you smug.”

The Student, eyes downcast, said, “But I don’t want to be smug. I want to be drunk.”

The Drunkard grumbled.

“In hangover language,” I said, “that means ‘No you don’t. The hangover is a bitch.’”

The Drunkard nodded in agreement.

There was something in the way The Student stared at the table—I imagined a kid watching his hamster fall prey to a vacuum cleaner—that made me take pity on him. I went to the bar, ordered a drink, and gave it to him. He looked down at the whiskey and said, “This Jack?”

“Would it be anything else?”

He knocked it back without a response and grinned. I’m sure that a liberal enough rabbi would agree that this constituted a mitzvah for the day.

“Well,” said The Traveler, “I congratulate you, Student. It was a hard-fought battle, one that was taken up by the best among us—and The Writer—”

“Fuck off,” said The Writer.

The Traveler grinned wolfishly and continued. “As I said, by the best among us, and the vox populi has spoken.”

The Drunkard leaned over and said, “Christ on a broomstick. Vox populi?”

“Dunno,” I whispered. “Apparently we’re on par with a voting populace.

“So,” continued The Traveler, heedless of our interruptions, “I say to you: mazel tov and enjoy it while you can. For soon enough, it shall be snatched away from you and, God willing, I’ll be able to run around shouting that I’m the greatest.”

“Er, I’m not planning on running around and shouting anything.”

“Oh,” said The Traveler, “you say that now. Right, so. As you know, today is the third of November.”

We all nodded. Well, everyone except for The Student nodded, who turned deathly pale and said, “What.”

“Yeah,” said The Stalker. “It’s the third.”

“Fuck,” said the Student. In a series of movements fast enough to give a hummingbird’s wings a run for their money, The Student was out of his chair, put on his jacket, and fled out the door.

The Writer blinked in incomprehension before saying, “What was that?”

“He’s late.” The Drunkard. “He’s late. He’s late for a very important date.” He slammed his head on the table and said, “Fucking kill me now.”

I patted him on the back, “There, there, pal. It’ll be all right. Soon enough, your liver will shut down and you’ll be dead. Hard to quote Disney when you’re dead.”

I was quite impressed with the way he managed to shove me out of my chair without looking at me, and even had to clap a little bit from the floor before sitting back down in the chair.

“Anyway,” said The Traveler, “I have two things to say—and I guess I’ll just have to tell The Student them when I see him next. First: In two days, it is Bonfire Night. The city is hosting a public bonfire out on Tyler Hill, and I’m heading down there with a few friends. You’re all invited to come along, and I’m sure it’ll be a blast. Hey, we might even get to throw The Writer into the flames.”

“Fuck off,” said The Writer. He must have been having an off day—once a couple of weeks back, he told me, “Anyone who uses the same insult twice in one day should be flayed alive and hung from the Washington Monument.” I decided not to remind him of his suggested punishment, and instead shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

“Second,” continued The Traveler, “in a couple of weeks, I’m thinking about going to Oxford. You see, I haven’t gone anywhere thus far, and am getting quite antsy.”

“I’ll go,” I said. Already, plans were hatching in my head about running around shouting at the university students and calling them nerds.

“Why the fuck not,” said The Drunkard. “Oxford’s gotta have better bars than this hick town.”

“Ah, come on,” I said. “This isn’t that bad.”

“Bullshit.”

“Drunkard,” said The Writer, “correct me if I’m wrong, but Cumberland Rift University is in Eldritch, Tennessee, is it not?”

“Yeah.”

“And Eldritch, if my geography serves me correctly, as,” here The Writer gave a little chuckle that made me want nothing more than to bash his face in, “as I’m sure it does, Eldritch is a town of—not including the university students—three thousand, four hundred people. Is it not?”

The Drunkard finally raised his head off of the table. The look in his eyes clearly said that The Writer should not progress further, but The Writer—madman that he was—ignored it. “So, Drunkard, tell me: How can a town of three thousand—in a dry county, no less—have better bars than a city of forty-five thousand in a country that has, more or less, run on alcohol since antiquity?”

Like The Student before him, The Drunkard was up faster than a human should be able to move. This time, though, instead of someone taking up a coat, The Drunkard took up a very shocked Writer, took him outside, and shoved him in a rubbish bin. After that, neither The Traveler nor I saw The Drunkard until Bonfire Night. The Stalker, The Traveler, and I sat in the pub blinking at each other until The Stalker spoke. “Well,” he said, taking a slurp from his cider, “I don’t think I’ll be joining you all in Oxford. The tension in the group is palatable and I’d rather not be there to see someone impaled on a spire in another city.”

The Traveler nodded. “Fair enough, you’ll be missed.” As he said that, I saw a flash in his eyes that said quite the contrary. That miniscule flash said that The Traveler was thanking God.

“Well,” I said, “I should be going. I’ve got to read a novel that is little more than a 400-page rant against 20s America for class next week.”

“What book?”

“Oil! by Upton Sinclair.”

The Traveler nodded. “What course is it for?”

“The Art of Ranting in Literature. Pretty good class, but stress levels run quite high.” I stood, wished them a good day, and made my way out of the pub.

Outside, it had started raining, and the cobblestone square took on his natural, English tint of looking like something out of a Sherlock Holmes movie. The rain beat down, there was the faint chatter of children, and the slight whiff of vinegar and frying fish from a nearby chippy. I took a deep breath, looked to my right, and saw The Writer’s legs dangling out of the side of a rubbish bin. A small crowd gathered around, taking pictures and laughing. From inside the bin, I heard The Writer shout, “Yeah, laugh now, you French bastards! When I get out I will rip off your frog heads!”

A child walked up and started landing blow after blow of pudgy fists on The Writer’s right calf, laughing while he did so. I let him have his fun for a couple of minutes before I walked up, shooed him away, and helped The Writer out of the bin. He dusted the refuse off of himself, glared at the onlookers and said, “Whiskey time.”

He walked back into the pub, and I made my way to the bus station.