Um conto de John Hemingway, publicado na edição de primavera da Saw Palm, uma revista de literatura e arte do jornal do Sul da Flórida.
UM CARA DOS TEMPOS DA BRILHANTINA
John Hemingway
Trad. Lúcio Jr.
Quando ele olhou a si mesmo no cabelo, seus longos cabelos pretos e crespos eram o que tinham sido na noite anterior, só tinham perdido o brilho e precisava disfarçar isso com brilhantina. Sua visão nunca tinha sido lá muito boa e quando ele encontrou seus óculos, penso que precisava comprar uma caixa de tinta de cabelo. Sua namorada continuava na cama e se ele pudesse encontrar uma farmácia que estivesse aberta ele poderia resolver tudo antes de se levantar, mas ele estava cansado e sentindo-se estressado, então foi andar na praia ao invés disso.
O que ele realmente precisava era de férias e não só um tempo da cidade. Voando para Miami e ficando no hotel onde ele e sua mãe sempre ficavam quando ela era viva ajudava, mas não podia disfarçar a falta de sono ou o estado de sua carreira. Mentiroso agora era alguém que já era no mundo do teatro de vanguarda. Ele chegou a um beco sem saída, e nos últimos seis meses ele tinha sido forçado a pagar suas contas em dinheiro vivo ou com o cartão de crédito da namorada. Os tempos estavam ruins, mas falta de trabalho era algo que ele nunca tinha experimentado antes. Era uma experiência de empobrecimento, classe baixa, amesquinhadora e ele se perguntava quanto mais tempo ele teria como tirar dois mil dólares mensais de sua renda para pagar um processo que chegara ao fim e ele perdera.
"Que culpa eu tive?" Ele perguntava a si mesmo retoricamente quando saía do elevador e andava para a piscina e para a praia ali perto. Ele poderia ser culpado por dizer a verdade sobre aquele hotel em Roma? Ele não deveria ter falado sobre o brutal cheiro de esgoto que vinha do banheiro?
"Que merda de culpa eu tive?!" Ele dizia alto, esbarrando em uma empregada guatemalteca e um limpador de piscina da Venezuela. Ele não tinha planejado falar sobre a sujeira de seus alojamentos para toda a Itália, mas como ele ia saber que um dos jornalistas com quem ele falou iria realmente publicar o que ele tinha a dizer?
Foi quando ele entrou numa fria. O jornal publicou seus "observações difamatórias" e a próxima coisa que o hotel fez foi processá-lo. "Mentiroso disse que o quarto onde ele está dá nojo" era o título que o jornal colocou e foi mais que suficiente. Ele tinha uma reputação de falar merda e por muitos anos ele fez inimigos em dois lados do Atlântico, mas apesar de tudo seu talento (que era real) o protegeu. Ele tinha sido processado antes, mas dessa vez era diferente. Depois da crise, as pessoas não estavam mais tão piedosas quanto antes. Se no passado, um juiz tivesse entendido que ele era uma espécie de palhaço e deixado ele ir com um tapinha nas costas, tolerância agora era uma raridade e as pessoas tinham que ser cuidadosas. Para o hotel ele era uma presa fácil e os honorários do advogado consumiram todas suas economias.
Quando ele abriu o portão para a praia, ele tirou seus sapatos fora de forma que pudesse sentir a areia debaixo de seus pés. Na Nova Inglaterra ele tinha neve nos pés e ali nunca ficava frio. Sua mãe gostava de compará-la à cidade do sul da Itália onde ele tinha crescido. "Veja como a areia é fina", ela dizia, "e veja o azul do mar e imagine como era para mim quando eu estava com a sua idade". O mar, realmente, estava azul, mas nunca revelou muito sobre a educação que sua mãe tivera. Ele tinha sérios problemas com a verdade e podia inventar as mais ultrajantes histórias. Quando ele era criança ela sempre contava que seu pai era um negro americano que ela encontrou depois da guerra e essa era a razão de seu cabelo crespo, ou que os Mentirosos eram nobres italianos, mas que eles perderam tudo durante os tempos do fascismo. Nada disso era verdade, ou tudo fosse, quem poderia dizer? Quando alguém está mentindo para você vinte e duas horas por dia qualquer ideias que você tiver sobre a realidade acabam sendo diminuídas, na melhor das hipóteses. Ele sabia que era errado, mas o que poderia fazer? Ela era sua mãe e enquanto ele tentava resistir a ela, no fim das contas ele tomava o seu comportamento como modelo do seu próprio, mesmo se oficialmente ele continuasse discordando das mentiras.
Quando ele tinha dezessete ele a deixou, ou foi chutado para fora de casa. Existem duas versões dessa sua adolescência, mas a que muitas pessoas reconheceram como verdadeira, inclusiva postada em sua página da Wikipédia, disse que sua mãe estava vivendo com dois irmãos mexicanos próximo da fronteira do Arizona e que seus amantes a convenceram a lhe dar um chute na bunda. Muitos viram viram esse episódio como a inspiração de uma de suas mais peças mais escandalosas e criticamente aclamadas: "Non scopare quei uomini Mama! (Não transe com esses caras, mãe!)." Esse trabalho seminal acabou tragicamente para o protagonista que não somente foi rejeitado por sua mãe, mas também foi morto e transformado em churrasco por um grupo de imigrantes mexicanos famintos.
Depois que ele foi para Nova Iorque, ele financiou seus estudos e seu estilo de vida vendendo LSD e prostituindo-se para advogados e executivos ricos. Foi um período que ele lembrava com certa nostalgia e podia falar entusiasticamente por horas sobre todos os escritores e músicos que ele conheceu nesse tempo em que ele e outros amigos foram ao Woodstock de carona para ver o concerto.
Ele tinha vivido muito e, honestamente, ele não achava que o aquilo que ele já não tivesse experimentado valesse a pena. Ele foi um grande artista e tinha sido parte de uma idade de ouro do teatro dos anos 80 e 90. Claro, agora tudo tinha chegado a um fim inglório e ele percebeu que precisava rapidamente escrever um livro (e fazer um contrato de um filme) sobre sua vida. Para isso, ele vivia em contato com seu agente.
Com um livro, especialmente com um contrato de filme, ele não precisaria preocupar-se com contas não pagas que o deixavam acordado à noite ou as críticas ruins a seus últimos trabalhos junta à sua namorada. Daniela era bonita e tinha feito uma telenovela e comerciais, mas ele precisava absolutamente ficar menos dependente dela do que ele já estava. Na noite passada quando eles estavam comendo em sua favorita churrascaria perto da praia, ela perguntou a ele de novo se ele realmente a amava e ele disse que sim e ela perguntou então: "Você não acha que é hora de nos casarmos?"
"O quê?! Ele engasgou-se todo com o bife de lombo que estava comendo.
"Não acha que é a hora?" Ela repetiu com um sorriso nos lábios que ele acharia atrativo em outra mulher, mas nela, esse sorriso fazia-o suar frio e ficar em pânico.
"Tudo tem o seu tempo", falou ele depois que consegui comer seu bife, "nós estamos juntos por o quê, uns três anos? Por que acelerar? Eu te amo e você me ama e não existe motivo para enfatizar o tema "casamento".
"Então você não me ama?"
"Nem tanto". Ele disse (o que era verdade).
"O quê??"
"Eu quero dizer que não devemos entrar nessa".
Mas eu quero entrar nessa, Gianni, eu que você entre nessa comigo". E ele sabia que não sairia dessa tão fácil e tudo o que ele disse naquela noite para ela foi o que ela não queria ouvir. Ele, que eraum gênio para virar e modelar a verdade de tudo de acordo com suas necessidades, parecia ter perdido essa habilidade, tudo o que ele podia fazer era colocar, de formas diferentes, que ele não estava tão a fim de Daniela. Claro, ele sabia que não estava dizendo o que ela queria ouvir e sua inabilidade para mentir o incomodava. Ele não estava bem certo se o estresse das situações artísticas e financeiras combinadas o estava inibindo de manipular ou se ele não tinha ainda achado uma saída para onde ele queria chegar.
Por sorte, nem tudo estava errado no mundo. A América tinha um novo presidente e tudo o que o cara fazia era inspirador e o levava a pensar que a mudança era ainda possível. Um afro-americano na Casa Branca tinha alterado a paisagem política e social de seu País e ele seria uma especial ternura por esse em parte devido ao caso que sua mãe contava de seu pai negro e em parte por causa do filho que ele teve, secretamente, com uma mulher do Harlem. De muitas formas, tudo se ligava e ele tinha, antes que ninguém tivesse tantas informações sobre Obama, sua própria versão personalizada do cara; um mini-eu que incorporava o melhor dos Estados Unidos (racialmente falando) e quem, como seu pai, poderia um dia ver a necessidade dos estrangeiros voltarem a seus países de origem e a língua ficar intocada.
"Se ele não atirar os estranjas no mar então ele não é meu filho". Ele lembrava isso a si mesmo enquanto jogava uma pedra voando para uma corrente do Golfo. Os ilegais eram uma peste para o País. Isso era óbvio para ele. Eles eram uma doença e um exército sujo que merecia um chute na bunda. Eles chuparam o sangue dos sucos vitais da nação e eles estavam acabando com a força da América e seu desejo de sobreviver. Claro, como um patriota, e como um artista, ele sabia o que tinha de fazer. Ele estava sempre na frente e estava somente esperando o contrato do filme tomar sua forma final.
"Por que eu sempre tenho que ligar para ele ao invés dele ligar para mim?" Ele pensava. O agente tinha um apartamento em Manhattan, mas nunca estava lá. De fato, Mentiroso não podia se lembrar da última vez que os dois tinham estado fisicamente juntos. Eles ficavam em contato através de mensagens de texto em que o agente escapulia e dava um jeito de atender outros clientes em Los Angeles ou Londres.
O telephone tocou e tocou e o Mentiroso ficou impaciente. Ele ficou de costas com seu Blackberry na areia. O sol estava se pondo e o céu na distância tinha sombras de lavanda e luz azul. Dois barcos estava entrando no porto e gaivotas subiam nas estacas de concreto do píer.
"Merda, onde se enfiou?" Disse Mentiroso. Quinze por cento de qualquer coisa que eu faço vai para esse palhaço e então, Deus tome conta, quando eu o ligo ele desliga a merda do telefone". Mas ele não teve resposta. Ele claramente não era um dos clientes prioritários do agente.
Horas depois, quando ele estava sentado por si mesmo no bar do hotel seu agente finalmente reconheceu sua existência com uma curta mensagem onde se lia: "Gianni, não deu para fazer contrato com a Warner/Universal. Tento na Disney? Beijos, Bernie".
Isso certamente não era o que ele queria ouvir, mas ele tinha de admitar que existiam razões. Não somente o agente era incompetente, mas os estúdios eram piores. Ele sentiu-se cercado por uma mar de filistinos e degenerados. Ninguém poderia entender sua arte. Estava além de seu alcance. Eles eram como formigas, pequenos e insignificantes peças da selva social e ele francamente tentara muito educá-los, para fazer com que chegasse ao ponto ele sempre esteve.
"Ao inferno com eles", ele disse enquanto tomava o seu quarto copo de coquetel e pedia outro. O bar tinha TV em cada canto e um jornalista com uma voz alta e cavernosa estava perguntando quanto tempo mais a América poderia suportar tantos ilegais em seu meio.
"Tá certíssimo", disse Mentiroso. Estavam umas poucas pessoas no bar, mas ninguém prestou atenção a ele. O jornalista estava comentando sobre a última ação do pessoal da imigração em Ohio. Os oficiais da Imigração cercaram uma fábrica de tecidos, fechando-a e prendendo todo mundo que não podia provar cidadania americana. A operação foi massivamente bem planejada, dando uma dura na comunidade latina que, em sua maioria, trabalhava na fábrica.
As notícias da operação trouxeram pânico para a população local, que correu para tirar as crianças das escolas e escondê-las das autoridades governamentais. O jornalista declarou com certa solenidade que mais de duzentos imigrantes ilegais tinham sido presos e sofreriam um processo que costuma acabar com a deportação.
"Isto", ele garantiu ao seu público, "é o que eu chamaria um bom exemplo de como nossos impostos podem ser bem gatos e como raramente eles são. Um bom início para a América.
"De acordo!" disse Mentiroso enquanto o trazia a quinta rodada. Ele estava aborrecido com seu agente e por lembrar de sua mãe, cansado e desgostoso com sua namorada, mas mais do que qualquer coisa, ele se sentia doente em ver o que os ilegais estavam fazendo com América. Ele os queria fora e estar preparado para entrar em ação era necessária. Depois de cinco copos de coquetel, ele estava furioso e chegou à conclusão que os imigrantes estavam na raiz de tudo que estava destruindo sua carreira. O jornalista estava certo, melhor lidar agora com o problema, antes que ficasse fora de controle.
"Dê-me um drinque!" Ele disse e o atendente lhe trouxe outra bebida. O jornalista de voz cavernosa estava gesticulando e lembrando Mentiroso que não se deve ter vergonha de reforçar a lei do País.
"Recebo muitos e-mails me chamando de ser anti-imigrante", disse o jornalista. "Mas nada poderia estar mais longe da verdade. Tudo o quero é que as leis desse grande País sejam respeitadas! E eu pergunto, isso é pedir demais? Nós desistimos da idéia da América, de que uma terra com liberdade, justiça e liberdade para todos não signifique nada? E disse não. A constituição ainda vale e qualquer um, e eu digo mulheres e crianças incluídas, que entre nesse País ilegalmente deverá e será forçosamente removida, se necessário!
"É isso aí", concordava o Mentiroso. O estresse de ter de lidar com os ilegais estava matando a fecundidade americana. Isso preveneria o País de sua imagem no estrangeiro. Ele conquistou o mundo com sua visão de abundância e individualismo. Ele discursava de forma sexy e cinematográfica e olhava ao redor para ver se alguém estava tão entusiasmado com a operação anti-imigração quanto ele. Estavam na sala um homem de negócios, próximo da entrada onde ele estava falando com um cliente em seu telefone, um casal no canto de mãos dadas e um grupo de jovens cubanos que faziam de conta que não o viam quando ele olhava para eles.
Sem estar no clima para ser ignorado, ele de repente levantou-se e olhou em sua direção. "Tu puta madre (sua mãe é uma puta!)" Ele não falava realmente espanhol, mas ele sabia o bastante para ter noção de que isso era um grande insulto.
"Tá falando comigo, velho?" Um dos cubanos perguntou.
"Sim, estou falando com você!"
"Senta aí, velho, e cale a boca".
"Qualé, estranja!" Disse Mentiroso e a essa altura até o executivo desligou seu telefone. Era Miami de qualquer forma e todo mundo na sala era latino. O garçom veio até onde Mentiroso estava e calmamente disse a ele que era tempo de respirar e ir embora. Isso era algo sensato de se fazer e iria poupá-lo de muita confusão e dois dentes a menos. Então, pela primeira vez entrando em ação, ele jogou o copo no cubano, quase batendo-lhe na face. Ele ficaram furiosos e Mentiroso não fez nada para diminuir essa fúria, xingando suas mães, suas namoradas e tudo o que vinha em sua boca. Quanto mais eles lhe batiam, de fato, mais ódio isso lhe fazia. Seu rosto ficou torto e roxo debaixo de seus golpes, seus óculos foram amassados, mas ele não se importou. Ele estava lutando o bom combate, sacrificando-se por sua arte e seu País no altar de suas muitas mentiras. O dono do bar tentou tirá-lo, mas os cubanos não paravam. Eles estavam para matá-lo, mas antes de morrer ele ainda lembrou aos seus atacantes uma coisa: "eu é que sou o culpado", ele disse, "essa é a verdade".
Copyright 2010, John Hemingway
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segunda-feira, 3 de maio de 2010
quinta-feira, 29 de abril de 2010
Um conto de John Hemingway
rylcreem Man
Here's a short story of mine that was published in the Spring 2010 edition of Saw Palm, the Florida Literature and Art journal of the University of South Florida.
Miami Sunrise
Brylcreem Man
When he looked at himself in the mirror his long, black, wiry hair was as it had been the night before, disheveled and with a sheen that could have been mistaken for Brylcreem. His eyesight had never been that good and when he found his glasses he noticed the white roots and made a mental note to pick up a box of hair color. His girlfriend was still in bed and if he could find a pharmacy that was open he’d have everything done before she got up, but he was tired and feeling stressed and went for a walk on the beach instead.
What he really needed was a vacation and not just a break from the city. Flying down to Miami and staying at the hotel where he and his mother had always stayed when she was alive helped, but it couldn’t make up for the lack of sleep nor the state of his career. Mentiroso was now a has-been in the world of avant-garde theater. He had come to a dead end, and for the past six months he’d been forced to pay his bills either in cash or with his girlfriend’s credit card. Times were bad but this lack of work was something that he had never experienced before. It was positively plebian, lower class and demeaning, and he wondered how much longer he would have to hand deliver the $2,000 of his monthly rent in crisp $100 dollar bills.
“Was any of this my fault?” he asked himself rhetorically as he stepped out of the elevator and walked towards the pool and the beach beyond it. Could he be blamed for stating the truth about that hotel in Rome? Should he have said nothing of the raw sewage smell from the toilet?
“Was that my fucking fault?!” he said out loud as he brushed past a Guatemalan maid and a Venezuelan pool cleaner. He hadn’t planned on broadcasting the filth of his lodgings to the rest of Italy but how was he supposed to know that one of the journalists that he’d spoken to would actually print what he had to say?
That was where he’d screwed himself. The paper published his “defamatory statements” and the next thing he knew the hotel was suing him. “Mentiroso dice che la sua stanza fa schifo” (Mentiroso says that his room sucks) was the title that the newspaper ran and it was more than enough. He had a reputation for trash talk and over the years he’d made many enemies on both sides of the Atlantic, but in spite of everything his talent (which was real) had always protected him. He’d been sued before, but this time it was different. After the stock market crash people weren’t as forgiving as they used to be. If in the past a judge might have seen him as a kind of clown and let him off with a slap on the wrist, tolerance was now a rare commodity and you had to be careful. For the hotel owners he was an easy mark and the lawyer’s fees and the fine wiped out the million in stocks and gold that he’d saved.
When he opened the gate to the beach he took his shoes off so that he could feel the sand on his feet. In New England there was a foot of snow on the ground but here it never got cold. His mother liked to compare it to the town in southern Italy where she’d been raised. “Feel how fine the sand is,” she would say, “and look at the clear blue of the water and you’ll know what it was like for me when I was your age.” The water, of course, was still blue but it had never revealed much to him about his mother’s upbringing. She had serious issues with the truth and could invent the most outrageous stories. When he was a boy she would often tell him that his father was a black American G.I. who she’d met after the war and that that was the reason for his kinky hair, or that the Mentirosos were Italian nobility but that they’d lost everything during the Fascist years. None of it was true, or perhaps all of it was, who could really say? When someone was lying to you twenty-four hours a day any ideas they might have about reality were sketchy at best. He understood that it was wrong but what could he do? She was his mother and while he tried to resist her, in the end he accepted her behavior as his own, even though officially he still disagreed with the lies.
When he was seventeen he either left her, or was kicked out of the house. There were two versions of this coming of age, but the one which most people recognize as true, and which was posted on his Wikipedia site, said that his mother had been living with two Mexican brothers near the border in Arizona and that her lovers had convinced her to give him the boot. Many saw this as the inspiration for one of his more scandalous and critically acclaimed pieces “Non scopare quei uomini Mama! (Don’t fuck those men, Mother)” This seminal work finishes tragically for the protagonist who is not only spurned by his mother, but also killed and barbecued by a group of famished Chicanos.
Moving to New York he financed his studies and living expenses selling LSD and pimping himself to wealthy lawyers and stockbrokers. It was a period that he looked back upon with a certain nostalgia and he could talk enthusiastically for hours about all the writers and musicians he knew or the time when he and a group of friends had hitchhiked up to Woodstock to see the concert.
He had lived through a lot and to be honest he thought that there wasn’t much that he hadn’t experienced that was worth knowing. He was a great artist and had been a part of the golden age in avant-garde theater of the 1980s and 90s. Of course, now that all of that had come to an inglorious end he realized that he needed to quickly write a book (and secure a movie deal) about his life. For this reason he was in near constant contact with his agent.
With a book, but especially with a movie deal, he wouldn’t have to worry about the unpaid bills that had kept him awake at night or the consistently bad reviews that his latest works had garnered or even sticking with his girlfriend. Daniela was pretty, and gifted in a commercial/pop/soap-opera kind of way, but he absolutely needed to avoid becoming any more dependent upon her than he already was. Just last night when they were eating at one of his favorite steak houses near the beach she’d asked him again if he really loved her and when he said that he did she upped the ante with “Well, don’t you think it’s time then that we got married?”
“What?!” he managed to blurt out as he almost choked on an exquisite piece of aged New York sirloin.
“Don’t you think it’s time?” she repeated with a knowing smile on her lips that he would have found attractive on any other woman but that on her filled him with a sense of panic and dread.
“I think there’s time for everything,” he told her after he’d swallowed his meat, “but we’ve only been together, for what?, three years? Why rush it? I love you and you love me and we’re fairly clear on that and there really isn’t any reason that I can see to over-emphasize this issue.”
“Then you don’t love me?”
“Not at all.” He said (which was the truth).
“What??”
“I mean that we shouldn’t jump into to this.”
“But I want to jump in, Gianni, and I want you to jump in with me.” And he knew that he was not going to get out of this one easily and in fact just about everything he said to her that night as they ate was not what she wanted to hear. It was as if his genius for spin and molding the truth of anything to his needs had abandoned him and all he could do was state, in as many different ways, that fundamentally he wasn’t all that fond of Daniela. Of course, he didn’t say that, but he wasn’t telling her what he knew she wanted to hear and this inability to lie troubled him. He wasn’t sure but he suspected that the combined stress of his financial and artistic situations was inhibiting his manipulative gifts and that if he didn’t find some kind of relief there was no telling where it might lead.
Fortunately, not all was wrong with his world. America had a new president and everything about the man was inspirational and led him to believe that change was indeed possible. An Afro-American in the White House had altered the political and social landscape of his country and he felt a special kinship to this politician in part because of his mother’s tale of his black, G.I. dad and in part because of the baby boy he’d secretly fathered with a woman from Harlem. In many ways, he’d come full circle and had, before anyone else knew about Obama, created his own personalized version of the man; a “mini-me” who embodied the best of the U.S. (racially speaking) and who, like his father, would some day see the necessity of alien relocation and language integrity.
“And if he doesn’t want to throw the Spics into the sea then he’s no son of mine.” He reminded himself as he skipped a flat rock into the Gulf Stream.
The illegals were a pestilence on the land. This was obvious to him. They were a diseased and unsanitary army that needed a good kicking in the butt. Having sucked greedily and for years at the nation’s vital juices they were sapping America of its strength and will to survive. Of course, as a patriot, and an artist, he knew what he had to do. He was way ahead of the curve and was just waiting for the movie deal to gel and take its final form.
“But shouldn’t he be calling me instead of me always having to call him?” he wondered. The man had an apartment in Manhattan but he was never there. In fact, Mentiroso couldn’t remember the last time that the two of them were physically together. They kept in touch text messaging and with quick conversations that the agent managed to squeeze in on his way to see other clients in LA or London.
The phone rang and rang and Mentiroso grew impatient. He paced back and forth with his Blackberry in the sand. The sun was coming up over the horizon and the sky in the distance had shades of lavender and light blue. There were three container ships steaming towards the port and seagulls kept watch atop the concrete pilings of a pier.
“Where the fuck is he?” said Mentiroso. “15% of everything I make goes to this clown and so, goddamnit, when I call he’s suppose to pick up the fracking phone.” But there was no answer. He obviously wasn’t on the agent’s list of priority clients.
A few hours later when he was sitting by himself at the hotel bar his agent finally acknowledged his existence with a short text message that read: “Gianni, no film deals with Warner/Universal. Try Disney?? Baci, Bernie.”
It certainly wasn’t what he wanted to hear but he had to admit that there were reasons. Not only was his agent incompetent, the studios were even worse. He felt surrounded by a sea of philistines and degenerates. No one could understand his art. It was beyond them. They were like ants, tiny little insignificant specs of societal sewage and frankly he had had enough of trying to educate them, of getting them to the point where they could see what he had always known.
“To hell with them,” he said as he downed his fourth shot of Grappa and ordered another. The bar had TVs set up in every corner and looking at the one in front of him there was a pudgy, balding journalist who in a deep, booming sort of voice was asking America again how much longer it could afford to support the illegal aliens in its midst.
“Damn right!” said Mentiroso. There were a few other people in the bar, but no one seemed to pay him any attention. The journalist was commenting on the latest I.C.E raid in Ohio. Immigration officers had surrounded a textile factory, shutting it down and arresting anyone who couldn’t prove their US citizenship. The operation was massive and well planned, targeting the thriving Latino community that for the most part worked in the factory.
As news of the raid spread throughout the community panicky parents rushed to pull their children out of the local school and hide them from the government agents. The journalist noted with a mix of solemnity and badly cloaked glee that over 200 illegal aliens had been apprehended and were at this very moment being processed for deportation.
“This,” he assured his audience, “is what I would call a good example of how our tax money should be spent and how it rarely ever is. A fresh start for America.”
“Indeed!” said Mentiroso as the bartender brought him his fifth round. He was pissed off at his agent and his mother, tired and somewhat disgusted with his girlfriend but more than anything else he felt positively sick at the thought of what the illegals were doing to America. He wanted them out and was ready to take whatever action was needed. After five shots of Grappa he was furious and had come to the conclusion that they were at the root of everything that was destroying his career. The journalist was right, better to deal with the problem before it got out of hand.
“Gimme a drink!” he said and the bartender handed him another shot. The pudgy-faced man was wrapping up his philippic and reminding Mentiroso that enforcing the law of the land was nothing to be ashamed of.
“I get plenty of emails accusing me of being anti-immigrant,” said the journalist, “but nothing could be further from the truth. All I want is for the laws of this great country of ours to be respected! And I ask you, is that too much to expect? Have we given up on the idea of America, on the idea of a land where Freedom, Justice and Liberty for all still mean something? I say not. The constitution still holds and anyone, and I mean women and children included, who enter this country illegally have to and will be forcefully removed, if necessary!”
“That’s the way you do it!” agreed Mentiroso. The shear stress of having to deal with these illegals was killing America’s mojo. It prevented the country from spinning its image abroad. It had conquered a world with its vision of wealth and individualism. It was sexy and cinematographic and casting his gaze about the bar he wondered if anyone else was as enthusiastic as he was about the immigration raid. There was a businessman near the entrance who was talking to a client on his cell phone, a couple in the corner holding hands and a group of young Cubans who pretended not to see him when he looked their way.
Not in a mood to be ignored he suddenly stood up and shouted in their direction “Tu puta madre (your mother’s a whore)!” He didn’t really speak Spanish but he knew enough to know that this was a bad insult.
“You talking to me, old man?” one of Cubans asked.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you!”
“Sit down, viejo, y cállate (shut up).”
“Stuff it, spics!” said Mentiroso and at that point even the businessman put down his phone. This was Miami after all and everyone in that room was Latino. The bartender came around to where Mentiroso was standing and calmly told him that it was time to take a deep breath and then leave. It was the sensible thing to do and in retrospect not only would it have saved him a lot of grief but his two front teeth as well. Instead, taking aim for the first time in his life, he threw his shot glass at the Cuban, hitting him squarely in the face. The reaction of the victim was immediate and soon he and his friends were pummeling Mentiroso. They were enraged and Mentiroso didn’t do anything to lessen their anger continuing as he did to insult their mothers, their girlfriends and whoever else he could think of. The more they beat him, in fact, the more he spewed out his stream of venom and race-hatred. His face had turned puffy and blue under their blows, his glasses were shattered, but he didn’t care. He was finally fighting the good fight, sacrificing himself for his art and his country on the altar of his many lies.
The bartender tried to pull him out but the Cubans wouldn’t stop. They wanted him dead, but before he passed out he reminded his assailants of one last thing: “I’m in charge,’ he said, “and that’s the truth.”
John Hemingway Copyright 2010, John Hemingway
Here's a short story of mine that was published in the Spring 2010 edition of Saw Palm, the Florida Literature and Art journal of the University of South Florida.
Miami Sunrise
Brylcreem Man
When he looked at himself in the mirror his long, black, wiry hair was as it had been the night before, disheveled and with a sheen that could have been mistaken for Brylcreem. His eyesight had never been that good and when he found his glasses he noticed the white roots and made a mental note to pick up a box of hair color. His girlfriend was still in bed and if he could find a pharmacy that was open he’d have everything done before she got up, but he was tired and feeling stressed and went for a walk on the beach instead.
What he really needed was a vacation and not just a break from the city. Flying down to Miami and staying at the hotel where he and his mother had always stayed when she was alive helped, but it couldn’t make up for the lack of sleep nor the state of his career. Mentiroso was now a has-been in the world of avant-garde theater. He had come to a dead end, and for the past six months he’d been forced to pay his bills either in cash or with his girlfriend’s credit card. Times were bad but this lack of work was something that he had never experienced before. It was positively plebian, lower class and demeaning, and he wondered how much longer he would have to hand deliver the $2,000 of his monthly rent in crisp $100 dollar bills.
“Was any of this my fault?” he asked himself rhetorically as he stepped out of the elevator and walked towards the pool and the beach beyond it. Could he be blamed for stating the truth about that hotel in Rome? Should he have said nothing of the raw sewage smell from the toilet?
“Was that my fucking fault?!” he said out loud as he brushed past a Guatemalan maid and a Venezuelan pool cleaner. He hadn’t planned on broadcasting the filth of his lodgings to the rest of Italy but how was he supposed to know that one of the journalists that he’d spoken to would actually print what he had to say?
That was where he’d screwed himself. The paper published his “defamatory statements” and the next thing he knew the hotel was suing him. “Mentiroso dice che la sua stanza fa schifo” (Mentiroso says that his room sucks) was the title that the newspaper ran and it was more than enough. He had a reputation for trash talk and over the years he’d made many enemies on both sides of the Atlantic, but in spite of everything his talent (which was real) had always protected him. He’d been sued before, but this time it was different. After the stock market crash people weren’t as forgiving as they used to be. If in the past a judge might have seen him as a kind of clown and let him off with a slap on the wrist, tolerance was now a rare commodity and you had to be careful. For the hotel owners he was an easy mark and the lawyer’s fees and the fine wiped out the million in stocks and gold that he’d saved.
When he opened the gate to the beach he took his shoes off so that he could feel the sand on his feet. In New England there was a foot of snow on the ground but here it never got cold. His mother liked to compare it to the town in southern Italy where she’d been raised. “Feel how fine the sand is,” she would say, “and look at the clear blue of the water and you’ll know what it was like for me when I was your age.” The water, of course, was still blue but it had never revealed much to him about his mother’s upbringing. She had serious issues with the truth and could invent the most outrageous stories. When he was a boy she would often tell him that his father was a black American G.I. who she’d met after the war and that that was the reason for his kinky hair, or that the Mentirosos were Italian nobility but that they’d lost everything during the Fascist years. None of it was true, or perhaps all of it was, who could really say? When someone was lying to you twenty-four hours a day any ideas they might have about reality were sketchy at best. He understood that it was wrong but what could he do? She was his mother and while he tried to resist her, in the end he accepted her behavior as his own, even though officially he still disagreed with the lies.
When he was seventeen he either left her, or was kicked out of the house. There were two versions of this coming of age, but the one which most people recognize as true, and which was posted on his Wikipedia site, said that his mother had been living with two Mexican brothers near the border in Arizona and that her lovers had convinced her to give him the boot. Many saw this as the inspiration for one of his more scandalous and critically acclaimed pieces “Non scopare quei uomini Mama! (Don’t fuck those men, Mother)” This seminal work finishes tragically for the protagonist who is not only spurned by his mother, but also killed and barbecued by a group of famished Chicanos.
Moving to New York he financed his studies and living expenses selling LSD and pimping himself to wealthy lawyers and stockbrokers. It was a period that he looked back upon with a certain nostalgia and he could talk enthusiastically for hours about all the writers and musicians he knew or the time when he and a group of friends had hitchhiked up to Woodstock to see the concert.
He had lived through a lot and to be honest he thought that there wasn’t much that he hadn’t experienced that was worth knowing. He was a great artist and had been a part of the golden age in avant-garde theater of the 1980s and 90s. Of course, now that all of that had come to an inglorious end he realized that he needed to quickly write a book (and secure a movie deal) about his life. For this reason he was in near constant contact with his agent.
With a book, but especially with a movie deal, he wouldn’t have to worry about the unpaid bills that had kept him awake at night or the consistently bad reviews that his latest works had garnered or even sticking with his girlfriend. Daniela was pretty, and gifted in a commercial/pop/soap-opera kind of way, but he absolutely needed to avoid becoming any more dependent upon her than he already was. Just last night when they were eating at one of his favorite steak houses near the beach she’d asked him again if he really loved her and when he said that he did she upped the ante with “Well, don’t you think it’s time then that we got married?”
“What?!” he managed to blurt out as he almost choked on an exquisite piece of aged New York sirloin.
“Don’t you think it’s time?” she repeated with a knowing smile on her lips that he would have found attractive on any other woman but that on her filled him with a sense of panic and dread.
“I think there’s time for everything,” he told her after he’d swallowed his meat, “but we’ve only been together, for what?, three years? Why rush it? I love you and you love me and we’re fairly clear on that and there really isn’t any reason that I can see to over-emphasize this issue.”
“Then you don’t love me?”
“Not at all.” He said (which was the truth).
“What??”
“I mean that we shouldn’t jump into to this.”
“But I want to jump in, Gianni, and I want you to jump in with me.” And he knew that he was not going to get out of this one easily and in fact just about everything he said to her that night as they ate was not what she wanted to hear. It was as if his genius for spin and molding the truth of anything to his needs had abandoned him and all he could do was state, in as many different ways, that fundamentally he wasn’t all that fond of Daniela. Of course, he didn’t say that, but he wasn’t telling her what he knew she wanted to hear and this inability to lie troubled him. He wasn’t sure but he suspected that the combined stress of his financial and artistic situations was inhibiting his manipulative gifts and that if he didn’t find some kind of relief there was no telling where it might lead.
Fortunately, not all was wrong with his world. America had a new president and everything about the man was inspirational and led him to believe that change was indeed possible. An Afro-American in the White House had altered the political and social landscape of his country and he felt a special kinship to this politician in part because of his mother’s tale of his black, G.I. dad and in part because of the baby boy he’d secretly fathered with a woman from Harlem. In many ways, he’d come full circle and had, before anyone else knew about Obama, created his own personalized version of the man; a “mini-me” who embodied the best of the U.S. (racially speaking) and who, like his father, would some day see the necessity of alien relocation and language integrity.
“And if he doesn’t want to throw the Spics into the sea then he’s no son of mine.” He reminded himself as he skipped a flat rock into the Gulf Stream.
The illegals were a pestilence on the land. This was obvious to him. They were a diseased and unsanitary army that needed a good kicking in the butt. Having sucked greedily and for years at the nation’s vital juices they were sapping America of its strength and will to survive. Of course, as a patriot, and an artist, he knew what he had to do. He was way ahead of the curve and was just waiting for the movie deal to gel and take its final form.
“But shouldn’t he be calling me instead of me always having to call him?” he wondered. The man had an apartment in Manhattan but he was never there. In fact, Mentiroso couldn’t remember the last time that the two of them were physically together. They kept in touch text messaging and with quick conversations that the agent managed to squeeze in on his way to see other clients in LA or London.
The phone rang and rang and Mentiroso grew impatient. He paced back and forth with his Blackberry in the sand. The sun was coming up over the horizon and the sky in the distance had shades of lavender and light blue. There were three container ships steaming towards the port and seagulls kept watch atop the concrete pilings of a pier.
“Where the fuck is he?” said Mentiroso. “15% of everything I make goes to this clown and so, goddamnit, when I call he’s suppose to pick up the fracking phone.” But there was no answer. He obviously wasn’t on the agent’s list of priority clients.
A few hours later when he was sitting by himself at the hotel bar his agent finally acknowledged his existence with a short text message that read: “Gianni, no film deals with Warner/Universal. Try Disney?? Baci, Bernie.”
It certainly wasn’t what he wanted to hear but he had to admit that there were reasons. Not only was his agent incompetent, the studios were even worse. He felt surrounded by a sea of philistines and degenerates. No one could understand his art. It was beyond them. They were like ants, tiny little insignificant specs of societal sewage and frankly he had had enough of trying to educate them, of getting them to the point where they could see what he had always known.
“To hell with them,” he said as he downed his fourth shot of Grappa and ordered another. The bar had TVs set up in every corner and looking at the one in front of him there was a pudgy, balding journalist who in a deep, booming sort of voice was asking America again how much longer it could afford to support the illegal aliens in its midst.
“Damn right!” said Mentiroso. There were a few other people in the bar, but no one seemed to pay him any attention. The journalist was commenting on the latest I.C.E raid in Ohio. Immigration officers had surrounded a textile factory, shutting it down and arresting anyone who couldn’t prove their US citizenship. The operation was massive and well planned, targeting the thriving Latino community that for the most part worked in the factory.
As news of the raid spread throughout the community panicky parents rushed to pull their children out of the local school and hide them from the government agents. The journalist noted with a mix of solemnity and badly cloaked glee that over 200 illegal aliens had been apprehended and were at this very moment being processed for deportation.
“This,” he assured his audience, “is what I would call a good example of how our tax money should be spent and how it rarely ever is. A fresh start for America.”
“Indeed!” said Mentiroso as the bartender brought him his fifth round. He was pissed off at his agent and his mother, tired and somewhat disgusted with his girlfriend but more than anything else he felt positively sick at the thought of what the illegals were doing to America. He wanted them out and was ready to take whatever action was needed. After five shots of Grappa he was furious and had come to the conclusion that they were at the root of everything that was destroying his career. The journalist was right, better to deal with the problem before it got out of hand.
“Gimme a drink!” he said and the bartender handed him another shot. The pudgy-faced man was wrapping up his philippic and reminding Mentiroso that enforcing the law of the land was nothing to be ashamed of.
“I get plenty of emails accusing me of being anti-immigrant,” said the journalist, “but nothing could be further from the truth. All I want is for the laws of this great country of ours to be respected! And I ask you, is that too much to expect? Have we given up on the idea of America, on the idea of a land where Freedom, Justice and Liberty for all still mean something? I say not. The constitution still holds and anyone, and I mean women and children included, who enter this country illegally have to and will be forcefully removed, if necessary!”
“That’s the way you do it!” agreed Mentiroso. The shear stress of having to deal with these illegals was killing America’s mojo. It prevented the country from spinning its image abroad. It had conquered a world with its vision of wealth and individualism. It was sexy and cinematographic and casting his gaze about the bar he wondered if anyone else was as enthusiastic as he was about the immigration raid. There was a businessman near the entrance who was talking to a client on his cell phone, a couple in the corner holding hands and a group of young Cubans who pretended not to see him when he looked their way.
Not in a mood to be ignored he suddenly stood up and shouted in their direction “Tu puta madre (your mother’s a whore)!” He didn’t really speak Spanish but he knew enough to know that this was a bad insult.
“You talking to me, old man?” one of Cubans asked.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you!”
“Sit down, viejo, y cállate (shut up).”
“Stuff it, spics!” said Mentiroso and at that point even the businessman put down his phone. This was Miami after all and everyone in that room was Latino. The bartender came around to where Mentiroso was standing and calmly told him that it was time to take a deep breath and then leave. It was the sensible thing to do and in retrospect not only would it have saved him a lot of grief but his two front teeth as well. Instead, taking aim for the first time in his life, he threw his shot glass at the Cuban, hitting him squarely in the face. The reaction of the victim was immediate and soon he and his friends were pummeling Mentiroso. They were enraged and Mentiroso didn’t do anything to lessen their anger continuing as he did to insult their mothers, their girlfriends and whoever else he could think of. The more they beat him, in fact, the more he spewed out his stream of venom and race-hatred. His face had turned puffy and blue under their blows, his glasses were shattered, but he didn’t care. He was finally fighting the good fight, sacrificing himself for his art and his country on the altar of his many lies.
The bartender tried to pull him out but the Cubans wouldn’t stop. They wanted him dead, but before he passed out he reminded his assailants of one last thing: “I’m in charge,’ he said, “and that’s the truth.”
John Hemingway Copyright 2010, John Hemingway
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