democracy school

The jerks in Parent Relations keep sending around the new draft brochure design like they want our input, when you know they want nothing more than for those of us in the democracy department to admit defeat, proclaim we've never seen better, and make them a whole bunch of god-damned cupcakes.

The one they're stuck on this week stars 233624, a kid mocha in complexion with a desert nomad vibe about him and his arm in a sling, his head wrapped in a bloody bandage, who carries this tiny American flag that looks like it's been through preteen Iwo Jima everywhere he goes.

In the cover photo, triumph: 233624 has just completed his first waterboarding exercise. He gives a strong wave of the flag, his eyes squinting and dripping but it could also be said gleaming in the burning light of the mock interrogation room. In the second he's preparing to cast some sort of vote, and has folded the flag with due ceremony next to what appears to be a classmate's blown-off foot.

In the third, 233624 and Bono are drinking venti Starbucks mocha lattes in front of the Vatican. In the fourth and last photograph, subtitled "Our Flag Was Still There," our star is pondering a bombed-out house that is clearly his family's, sobbing uncontrollably but still radiating Yes We Can, evidenced by the careful planting of the flag at the door of the smoking structure.

True, the kid's got spunk, but with 5 graduates per month from an average class size of 200 we either need better survival rates or hordes of smiling children in every photo, preferably both, or we're never going to survive this recession.

I explain as much in an email that reads to me as a scathing indictment (the logic of which should steer the reader and all cc'd to a simultaneous realization of numerous tragic character flaws, with expedient suicide as the only honorable response) but is probably overly polite. We need to be less functional and more aspirational , I write, etc. etc., Warm Regards.

It is suggested in reply: Thank you for your thoughts, Charles, we appreciate your feedback. (Fuck you, Charles, we hate your feedback and we hate you). And then: Do you think the same child might be judiciously Photoshopped, his injuries obscured through tricks of the light or via careful placement of school mascots, voting booths, or other decorations, and that through a kind of cut-and-paste cloning, several close friends or cousins can be manufactured without enlisting additional models? (Charles, we hate Photoshop, we're training little 233624 to kill you in your sleep).

Each month, we select a cohort of impoverished youth from the world's most oil-rich or otherwise strategic countries. Students, referred to in correspondence with our foundation supporters as democratically-challenged individuals, sleep in the open air and are fed dirt and diet Coke twice each day. (They seem to enjoy mixing the dirt and soda together, rather than consuming either on its own, sometimes adding a sprinkle of airborne dust or depleted uranium, the day's exercises permitting).

Students learn basic math, basic English, and the heroic history of white people, and are by turns broken into teams and hunted like animals, exposed to chemical or biological weapons, or subjected to sleep deprivation techniques and read the unabridged OED in sequence. Grading is on a curve, with the bottom 50 percent of the class rendered each week.

It's cute, they still stick gum under the desks, even when the lesson plan calls for gas masks.

Billy Joel's fingers/token friend who's dead

So one day on his way to work this guy takes a dive in front of an oncoming train. Maybe he's fallen asleep mid-step (reasonable in the early rush) or given up (reasonable on way to boring job as a middle manager). What's certain is that the guy comes to and he's a ghost floating above this black and white sign that reads Broadway-Lafayette, looking at himself dead smushed split apart on the ground.

The guy floats up off the track and past the platform where folks are already gathering to gape and freak, floats up out through people toward the exit. From a pedestrian perspective, he's glad to discover, New York subways properly accommodate those who float. It's something he hadn't noticed.

The light hits his eyes like he's hung over but also like it won't stick, like it's going through him. When he gets home no one's there and he hangs out in the kids' rooms a while, thinking how their eyes light up unconditionally when they see him, thinking about his wife when she has something teasing to say to him that reads him too well to deny but still cuts a little but in the end is mostly just funny and goddamn when someone gets you. It hits him what he's done and he tries to conjure some way to get back to life with them but he-of-course-cannot reverse-the-cruel-ravages-of-time-Janus-though-he-may-be.

No one's ever home and every day the guy tries to occupy himself with something different, turns on the radio to listen to that bitch Imus and thinks about the off-season moves of the Yankees or those other jokers, thinks about football and hockey and what a poor substitute they are for the timeless evening of a decent ballgame and the kids arguing through the walls of their adjacent rooms. The leaves are everywhere, instant bullshit metaphors that they are and he makes himself a sandwich, puts on an old Billy Joel record (Piano Man I think), watches daytime TV. But no matter what he does, he's back to thinking about his wife and kids, wondering if their purgatory (if necessary) will be the same as his and how to occupy that time in the meantime. And sometimes his old friends, his mom, his brothers and sisters.

No one ever comes home and whenever he goes out it's fun, I mean, he can go to the movies and see concerts or Yankee games for free, sneak into people's hotel rooms while they're sleeping and watch them sleep or fuck or fight undetected. He can float above the city, its lights curving effortlessly into the sky at night like staccato pounding through Billy Joel's fingers, out over the cold fuck Atlantic, out into space. He's a master, he's in control, like Joe Torre or Derek Jeter or the Babe, or even Billy Joel himself.

It's always bothered me, man, that you turned out to be the token friend who's dead. It bothers me because your work track reminds me so much of my own, because your detachment from the day-to-day is something I find so intuitive. It bothers me because you were trying to cut your cholesterol, because you had little ones to live for, because there was so much that you seemed into, even though there was obviously so much you couldn't even pretend to give a shit about.

It bothers me because you gave me your records, and I just thought you'd given them up for CDs.

my energy efficient new heart

so the other day i wake up and my heart has stopped, a clot of bad vibes blocking up the works. wanting to do the responsible thing i pull it from my chest, seal it in a ziplock bag, and stash it on the bottom shelf of the freezer behind an old carton of vanilla ice cream.

i go down to the hardware store and replace my heart with a compact flourescent bulb. when i get it home it takes an extra couple seconds to light, but when it does i feel 1,000 times better.

people take to me and my replacement heart. i'm a new man. i sprint from the train to work and take the stairs 20 flights in leaps and bounds. my coworkers shower my efforts with unanimous, unfiltered accolades. within the week my boss gives me a big raise and moves me from a cubicle to the corner office with the nice view of the SILVERCUP sign. kids and elderly people rush up to hug me on the street. doves and deer appear everywhere i go, shitting rainbows. my girlfriend even stops hating my guts.

but every time i open the door to the freezer my heart is in there waiting for me, eating something, frozen chicken, tortellini, even raw coffee beans. it looks up in disgust, like a scorned claymation california raisin. my heart hates me. it wants to fight me.

life beyond the fridge continues to improve. my girlfriend and i marry, i inherit a zillion dollars from some aunt i never knew i had. the president of the company flees the country to avoid jail time and appoints me in his place. shares skyrocket. Economic Dipshit magazine puts me on its cover three months running. i lose weight, my piano playing develops a rhythmic quality, the ozone layer replenishes itself. my wife and i even speak in complete sentences.

back in the kitchen, my heart's moved to the refrigerator side and it's looking strong, poised to take over the whole apartment. knee deep in a tupperware full of leftover quinoa, it questions my manhood, my intellect, cursing at me like richard pryor kicked out of his own bed in the middle of the night by a dozen tiny richard nixons in elvis gear. my heart warns me of last days (mine) and irreparable offenses (grievous, multiple).

i know that it just wants me back, that all i have to do is promise to pay more attention to it and we can live in peace. but things have gone so much more smoothly without it that i can't justify the expense. so i stop buying groceries.

one day my heart chomps gloriously through a Hungry Man TV dinner, pantomiming sex with a big bowl of chocolate pudding, singing "Guantanamera." two days later it's dead tired, rationing the last baby carrot, plotting an escape it's too tired to execute. by the weekend it's just my heart and a half empty bottle of ketchup. two days later that's gone and my heart's too weak to even stand. profane requests are whispered for foods high in protein and carbs.

the next morning my heart's lying prostrate in the ice cube tray, both middle fingers extended, out cold. that night when no one's looking, i drive it out and lob it off the verrazano narrows bridge, my energy efficient new heart glowing in my chest.