Distinguishing Features (2016) Part 1/8

There was a time when a particular creed seemed to have run its course and trickled into the Ocean. People looked up from their playthings with a perspective sharpened too late. A movement was initiated. There was an onrush of adherents. Some dismissed this as nihilist, but it was simply ‘anti-thing’.

Henderson was president at the time, arguably the last, but a few more follow on that list. He was great. We still study Henderson, and the memorable quote from his nomination acceptance speech:

“Not since way back when I was a Colonel and I base-jumped off Kiliteki ridge over the fire of government troops into rebel-held territory on a pro-active mission and I walked out of the jungle… (shrugs) …a hero, have I ever been as excited as I am now.”

            Henderson didn’t have a ‘six pack’, he had an ‘eight pack’; an anatomical anomaly which he was willing to display at times, and he wasn’t, as it was rumored, an inch shorter than his wife. All that was cleared up in a report three weeks before the election. She just looked taller from the part in her hair, but she was still the tallest first lady ever. That was included in the subcommittee report, along with the more important determination that if the nation were ever told if Henderson had links with any spy agency, they would have to kill it. The constituency pissed itself in exaltation and after Henderson’s virtual crowning came the next memorable quote from the exclusive interview of the Professor of Actuarial Science First Lady when she was asked if she would ever go ‘into politics’.

            “HA HA ha ha hahaha… You’re kidding. Right?”

            There had been a two-party system before Henderson, but when he was compelled to choose between them he did so like one picks a lane on a freeway while driving a tank. Ultra-confident disregard. But they teach this in middle school. 8% of the nation thought he was too perfect to be human and 90% of those didn’t claim to know what he might be instead or care either way. Henderson delegated when he was supposed to delegate and took charge when he was supposed to take charge, and the nation was done for as it had been known. It was Henderson who convinced the people that if land weren’t given up, there would be no more things to buy. There would be no more things that went ‘whizz’, ‘bang’, or ‘vroom’. No more things that flashed or sparkled or hung off the shoulder just so. Of course, now we know they put something in the water.

           And there was a place along the Big River, smack-dab in the middle of what is now Imno Conglomerate, Western Region. A city of that was home to a Notstalgia bar, a branch of a chain whose motto was: ‘Don’t fret. Everything’s been done.’ The tone of particular Notstalgias varied, but the corporate hallmarks were a dearth of marketing and conscious lack of grandiose ideas. The sparse mission statement of this corporation with 300 locations read:

            “Our employees are suitable by definition. We grant our patrons the good taste and intelligence they had in choosing us. We will keep prices low by stifling any attempt to alter the personal outlook of employees or customers.”

            The bars quickly became popular, though many didn’t like the idea. The negative articles and comments concerning Notstalgia seemed to stumble, however. They seemed to be searching for an alternative to the epithet ‘nihilist’, which obviously didn’t apply. This search continued for a decade, then was abandoned and rendered moot with the quasi-apocalypse.

            At Notstalgia the drinks were cheap as long as you kept your grandiose ideas to yourself. No value club chips were distributed. There was no way to sign up for discounts and find a bug in your ear later; telling you about the latest events and sales, and this was a boon for the tactile-defensive. For many, Notstalgia was a place to get away from changing the world. There were no worldly distractions, just drink, music, events and games. Some patrons caught hell for their hours of social inertia spent there, but they were an accurate cross section of the population, considering demography and level of involvement with the world outside. All of that was considered very important then, so it is important to consider now, looking back.

            Some of Notstalgia’s letterheads and handouts reflected this conflict, though, slipping other slogans in, like: ‘Welcome to Notstalgia. You still need to get out more.’ And: ‘Notstalgia. Not the best place to hide.’

            It was to Notstalgia that Friends of Matt hustled their ward one evening. There were five of them with Matt in the center and they actually possessed an idea a bit grandiose: it was to get Matt out so’s the stink would blow off him. So, all five were intelligent subjects and it’s a given that when they told Matt that he would love the place, he protested to a huge degree, and so they implemented ‘Plan B’, which was to gang up on him. And what better place to trundle into with Matt half-captive than Notstalgia? The hub of that kind, lively group, he entered, wearing a sky blue shirt and dungarees. On the shirt was printed the phrase ‘Born To Serge’ inside a kind of lacy barbed-wire frame. He was semi-furtive, (and who wouldn’t be?) thinnish with ginger hair of wiry texture and with a sharp face, naturally tanned. Matt was handsome, but he didn’t care. He usually wore three or four woven bracelets on his left wrist that meant something to him. His weight would vary two to three kilos either way; from healthy to gaunt, but his physique insisted on maintaining a perfectly round paunch the size of a medium sized salad bowl. Matt marked files for a living and had been promoted seldom, which was no surprise in that stagnant economy.

            You couldn’t avoid the self-assigned ‘journalists’, boxed in as one was in the teeny-tiny downtown area of that community. They would block or converge, demanding existential justification from anything alive, assuming that their own raison d’être was thus solid-secure. The next set of questions, if the subject were cornered long enough for them to ask, centered on who the person was beneath all those things. And why they didn’t have the correct things in the first place. The results would be posted immediately, or nearly so. In other words: everyone was busy-busy, but little was done. Little could be done.

            There had been a power famine; there had been one for months, so it was going from twilight to pitch-dark when Matt’s friends dragged him through the paparazzi gauntlet, through questions prefaced: “Your thoughts on…” or the fancier: “Considering (insert recent catastrophic event here) just happened, and here you are (insert implication of space-wasting).” At least the receiving line lit the way. Notstalgia was mostly BYOL (Bring Your Own Light). A hundred or so years ago, you see, things weren’t as brightly lit as they are now. You couldn’t just flip a switch and expect a light to come on. In Matt’s time you crossed your fingers before you flipped that switch. Fuel availability had been used as a weapon and nations attacked one another’s electric plants, refineries and pipelines which in the best of times ran under potential due to lapsed contracts. Jobs were lost, maintenance and training lagged and the few groups providing power became more holding companies than working providers.

            So when FOM + Matt entered, all they could see was a faint halo of light around an eclectic assortment of furniture and people. It reached, dimly, to the ceiling. The heads turned toward them. Matt expected disaffected dark clothing, tams and berets, but this was a happy place, albeit dark. Notstalgia had its characters, though. The loyal opposition. Bruce among them.

            Bruce was loyal, but opposite. He was a loyal drinker. He was opposite because he had been loyal to drink for so long that his frontal lobes had fallen into such a state that they were only as useful as a pair of large, oddly-shaped pickled cucumbers.

            But spare Bruce your pity! He had followers, which was of the utmost importance at that time. He and they would inform the View Facilitators out in front of Notstalgia that they had arrived to ‘shake things up’, then they would go inside and recite that evening’s news from print outs they carried- to already informed ears. Emerging minutes later, they would announce that no one in that bubble ever listened. Sometimes the scribes would have the presence of mind to ask- “To what?” but by then Bruce and the Crusaders were already long gone. The hope that it was toward a venture more varied was a prayer unanswered.

            Bruce was becoming less adept in his niche at Notstalgia at the time Matt and friends introduced themselves to that venue. A week before, he’d been escorted out after exhibiting much stumbling-about-knocking-tables-over-and-excusing-himself activity. Not banned. But then returned from exile triumphant, insisting that the reason he was ejected was what he was saying that Tuesday night, and not the coat stand snapped in two. He cleared his throat, cocked his fuzzy head and announced to Friends of Matt and Matt-

            “It is rumored that tracts of land in ceded territories are being cleared for the cultivation of feed grain.”

            Then from behind poor Bruce, near the tiny drink counter, a voice:

            “Fedgren? What’s that. I wanna try it. Is that like Belugas?”

            Bruce’s bowl cut and five day beard- the texture of it- visually squealed in indignation, then phased out of synesthesia to voice.

            “FEEDGRAIN! They’ve taken the land. The time had come…”

            Another: “We know that, Bruce. Happened in February.”

            “…to pay the piper!”

            “Do you have Fedgren on you now?”

            At this point everyone knew that the ball was rolling, even the six new arrivals. Except for them there was no knowledge of exactly where it would roll.

            “…the militia rose…”

            “Saw it on TV, Bruce.”

            “…The guard stopped them, then down came the paratroopers, and they weren’t us.”

            “Henderson had to let ‘em.”

            “Henderson had to. I’m tired of Henderson!”

            Every head turned and every voice minus Matt and Associates minus Bruce shouted-

            “HEY! WHAT?”

            In unison.

            Which was that group’s answer to any statement negative toward Henderson, and it couldn’t be any other. He had the mind and body of a god, (men you wouldn’t think considered womb implants for the off chance…) and, still, wielded quite a lot of power.

            “No fair holding on to that Fedgren. I just got paid.”

            “Feed Grain! For the pigs!”

            Then Julie’s voice sliced sweetandsour out of the back room. Julie Rose. And she was kidding.

            “Just because they’re from another place doesn’t mean that they’re pigs, Brucey.”

            Then the endgame in this argument, that night, in Notstalgia (off near the broken-down pinball machine): “Whoever they are, they sure eat a lot of feed grain.”

            “NO!” Bruce shouted, but he was already being ‘played off’. Matt et al. heard the music start. “The people grow feed grain. Then they ship it to the swine.”

            “COD?”

            “Of course not!”

            Then the incomparable Julie Rose was through the door and on the floor, reflecting the music. Everyone else was on their feet. Did Julie shimmy as she walked, or move to the rhythm otherwise? No. But no one was watching Bruce. Only the voice of the ‘Beluga’ enthusiast could be heard over a recording of ‘Love Shack’.

            “Swine. Is that like Fedgren? Is the Fedgren already gone, then?”

            Matt and Force Five began bobbing along with the rest of these cut-ups, but they weren’t as schooled in the ritual. Bruce was drowned out and all torches in the room suddenly pointed to Julie, there in the center, as she took the solo.

           She then executed a curtsey and went back to gathering empties.