It got to the point where I was no longer poor — I was wretched. Like something out of a Dickens novel. My clothes were torn in places where it is not fashionable for clothes to be torn. I couldn’t afford to eat, let alone pay my bills, and Sally Struthers was calling my house asking if she could come over with a film crew.
But worst of all were the roaches. Despite the fact that an old friend of mine, Rodney Maciejewski, exterminator extraordinaire, had taken out their leadership and left them with an interim government, the roaches mounted a counter-offensive during a holiday cease-fire that left them firmly in control of the kitchen. They controlled the closets too, and the battle for the bathroom was tipping in their favor. Aided by sympathizers from neighboring apartments, the roaches conducted suicide raids in my bedroom, invoking the name of their God as they dive-bombed off the ceiling in a campaign to sew terror amongst any woman who dared sleep in my bed. I needed help to squash the insurgency, but having antagonized my allies by running up enormous debts, I found myself having to go it alone. And it wasn’t going well.
It was then that they came to me with The Contract.
In this particular case, the they I am referring to is also known as The Network. Actually, it is unclear whether it was The Network or The Conglomerate That Owns The Network. Since there are but four conglomerates that own all of the networks, and since they all use the same document, signing The Contract with The Network is a bit like swallowing the pill in The Matrix: you don’t quite know whom you’re dealing with, but you suspect they look like self-replicating monsters who wear suits and carry briefcases.
Everyone who lives in our society is familiar with The Contract or some similar version of this document. It works thusly: in return for financial gain, The Contract requires that one violate the one thing in The Universe that one values. If one values truth, one will be forced to lie. If one values virginity, one will be forced to fuck. If one values nothing, one will NOT be offered The Contract.
The language in The Contract is worded in such a way that only people trained in reading contracts can understand its true intent. This particular contract was written in Latin. Lucky for me, I studied Latin in school. But this was a different Latin. This was legal Latin. Scary Latin. The kind of Latin Jesus heard before they nailed him to the cross.
Also in The Contract, there was a set of parentheses, between which rested a number. This number represented the financial gain. The reason this number is in parentheses is because it is the one part of The Contract that is negotiable. Everything else in The Contract is standard and therefore non-negotiable. In order to negotiate the number in the parentheses, one needs to hire a person trained to read and negotiate a contract. We call such people Lawyers.
Now I have a very good lawyer. I know he’s very good because he lives in an expensive neighborhood, drives an expensive car, and sends his kids to an expensive school. I know that if I ask my very good lawyer to negotiate a contract, he can get me a 3% increase in the amount between the parentheses. For that service, he will charge me 5% of the amount between the parentheses. This is how he pays for his house, his car, and the education of his spawn. This is what makes him a very good lawyer.
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I was still suffering from post-election depression when I got the call. It was my agent.
“You’re needed in Denver to do a commercial for the McRib.”
“No way I’m working for those swine,” I told her. “Do you know what they put in those things? The way they treat their employees? How much deforestation their cattle ranching and over-packaging causes in the Amazon? The way they’ve lowered regional culinary standards by pushing out every decent restaurant in the market in order to make way for their pre-cooked, pre-packaged slop. Not to mention the obesity epidemic and the culture of incessant advertising they’ve created in order to saturate our minds with their sub-par product. What are they paying?”
The car came in the morning to take me to the airport. The driver was Armenian, and I gave him a pat on the shoulder when he told me that if he could have voted, he would have voted for Kerry.
“Do you know,” he asked, “afder de first towers was heet with plane … nothing? Den, afder second towers… dey dance. Dey dance in street. Dey dance, de Jews, wid joy.”
There went his tip.
At the airport, I proceeded to the bar and drank several pints of seven-dollar Budweiser. By the time I boarded the plane, I was an ass-grabbing lunatic. The stewardesses put me in restraints but failed to capitalize on the erotic nature of the situation.
Again, my mind turned to the election. The pollsters and Monday morning quarterbacks. The catch phrases main-lined into the American lexicon by op-ed columns and cable news pundits. Moral values, flip-flop, clear message, liberal elite, war on terror, evangelical base, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. If I had it right, the country voted for George Bush because more Americans would rather have a beer with him than with his former opponent, John Kerry. This despite the fact that George Bush doesn’t drink. If I had it right, the country voted for George Bush because it saw him as a tougher leader in the war on terror. This despite the fact that he sat out the Vietnam War snorting coke in a hotel room in Alabama and flew from Florida to Nebraska on September 11th after hearing that New York and DC were under attack. If I had it right, the country voted for Bush because his moral values were more in line with theirs. This despite the fact that, at every opportunity, his administration has accommodated corporations and the wealthiest one per cent of the country at the expense of the environment, the working class, and public education. If you looked at it closely, or even from afar, none of it seemed to add up. Hence my misery.
The plane landed in the red state at six o’clock. A stewardess unbuckled my straps.
“Y’all promise to behave now?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered in defeat.
Waiting in the terminal was a tall Irishman, built like a brick shit-house, holding a sign with my name on it. I assaulted him at once. He didn’t see the punch coming, and it landed clean, opening a gash over his right eye. But the man knew how to handle actors, and he had me in a sleeper hold before I could finish the combination.
I awoke in a hotel room in downtown Denver and saw the Irishman standing over me with a monkey wrench.
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Years ago, Oprah Winfrey tried in vain to recruit me into her flock by sending me coded messages through the metal fillings in my teeth. On the advice of my physician, friends, and family, I had my fillings removed, stopped watching her show, and canceled my subscription to O Magazine. For a time, my life resumed a degree of normalcy, until this last month, when OW again found a way to contact me. She came through an old friend, Corky Crayn [names have been changed], who works as an event planner in Chelsea and who told me about the much anticipated “announcement” OW was planning to make on her season premiere.
“She’s coming out of the closet!”
“She is not,” I replied. “She’s probably just marrying Steadman or spawning.”
I avoided the premiere when it aired on Monday, September 13th, but I couldn’t help searching the Internet afterwards to find out what the “announcement” had actually been. When I read the article on Yahoo that described the events of her premiere, in which OW gave away brand new Pontiac automobiles to every member of her studio audience, I couldn’t help but feel a measure of disgust. OW knew I loved Pontiacs ever since Michael Knight drove a Trans-Am on “Knight Rider,” and I felt she was doing this just to upset me. I responded by writing the following email to some friends with whom I keep in touch via an email loop:
FROM: Judd Trichter…at this point, this is nothing more than materialism. seeing people jump up and down because they get a new car looks to me like a rich person throwing money in the street and laughing at the poor.
Though I had only sent this missive to my friends, the email (as with all my thoughts and digital correspondence) quickly found its way over to the control room at Harpo Productions, OW’s company. One of her staff, whom we’ll call Squeaky, responded with this letter which was then forwarded to me:
From: [Squeaky]
Subject: Oprahpoor judd. is he truly so pathetically embittered in his own life that he takes a gesture as big as giving people cars who really need them as being a BAD thing? i will make sure no one offers him a car.
Another OW acolyte, whom we will call LuLu, also responded:
From: [LuLu]who exactly is judd mad at here? pontiac, for advertising their product? … or is it oprah? (someone who contributes more to the greater good of humanity than judd could every think he could…) or is [it] those horrible, disgusting people who got free cars – AND HAD THE NERVE TO TAKE THEM!!???
At the time, I could not see that the good people at Harpo (Oprah spelled backwards) were actually reaching out and trying to help me. And so, hiding behind the Marxist politics that had been crammed down my throat as a young boy growing up on The Upper West Side, I responded in a shameful manner:
FROM: Judd Trichter…Using the 48 minutes between commercials to be a commercial for pontiac? No. I don’t like it… If giving away cars on TV makes you a saint, I’ll go light a candle to Bob Barker.
I’d prefer [OW] devoted 48 minutes to the most important election in the last 30 years. To the issues our country is facing. To the war we’re engaged in. She’s got a big ole soap box and a whole bunch of loot, it gives her the freedom to speak to the people who are watching her show… Let her say something more than buy Pontiac…I wouldn’t take a car from Oprah. Unless it was a hybrid.
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The third tab of acid was completely unnecessary, and my apartment turned on me in response. The walls shimmied, the carpet shook, the TV shouted like a strung-up cat. Midnight in Los Angeles. No question I needed a whore. I called the first escort service listed in the phone book.
“I need a whore fast.”
“I’m sorry Sir. We don’t do that here. But if you’d like some companionship for the evening…”
“Fast, fast I tell ya! Send Jesse fucking Owens! I don’t care if she’s got three tits and a beard, just get her over here!”
I hung up the phone and quickly rearranged my furniture. You can never be too careful with these whores. Can’t forget what happened in Bangkok.
Half an hour later, the bell rang.
“Did you call for an escort?”
I introduced myself. “Julius Fischman. Writer. Actor. Footsoldier of the revolution. Friends call me Fish.”
“Nice to meet you, Fish.”
She stood about two yards tall but sank half a foot when I made her take her shoes off.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked. “A cigarette? Some acid?”
“No thanks.”
“Come on, live a little!” She was a young one. Nineteen, maybe twenty. She had white hair with dark eyes and the stink of a perfume I recognized. I wondered if her corpse would fit in my hatchback.
“Where you from?” I asked, attempting small talk.
“Sacramento.”
“Show me your ass!”
“Do you mind paying first?”
“Sure,” I said. “What’s the damage?”
“Depends what you want.”
What did I want, and what made me think this strange woman who arrived at my door after no more than a phone call could provide it? What had happened to my lofty goals and ambitions, my dreams, and pet terrier? Was I drowning myself in near-lethal doses of illicit hallucinogens in order to escape the path that had been cleared for me from the time I was born? Was I nothing more than a spoiled cynic, a wannabe anarchist, disdainful of the American dream because its realization would be an admission of my complicity with and conformity to the very society that had branded me an outcast in my formative years?
My God, she really did have three tits!
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I owe money. Tons of it. And I owe it to everyone I know. I owe my ex-wife, most of the women I’ve dated, and every member of my immediate and extended family. I owe my friends, my co-workers, my neighbors, my landlord, my bookie, my drug dealer, the guy who brings me my water, every doctor who ever examined me, and half the hookers on Santa Monica Boulevard. I owe the local video store, the cable company, the electric company, the gas company, American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Discover, AAA, the DMV, and the IRS. I owe the university I attended, which still, to this day, refuses to give me my diploma until I reimburse them for some library books I borrowed and never returned. But even if I did compensate them for the books, I still couldn’t graduate because technically I never graduated from high school. Why did I not graduate from high school? Because I owe my high school money. I owe money to the City of Los Angeles over parking tickets on a car I don’t own because I still owe money on the payments. I owe the mechanic across the street (who fixes the car I don’t own), the bagel baker around the corner, and the ten-year-old girl who sells lemonade from a stand down the block. She cries every time I walk by, and her mother gives me a dirty look when she sees me at the market.
There are those who might shudder at the prospect of carrying a debt as ponderous as the one I carry, who might feel guilty, irresponsible, or emasculated by such a burden. I’ve even heard of some who contemplate suicide or, worse, feel inclined to sell off their assets in order to lighten the load. Lucky for me, this has never been as issue. Instead I see debting (or defaulting as some call it) as a revolutionary action against a usurious corporate oligarchy that strives to enslave us with its decadent consumer values. In a faux democracy where the vote has become meaningless and where free expression is drowned out by the babble of a bought-and-paid-for media, owing money has become the only means of rebellion that still holds any promise for affecting change. When violence does nothing more than shepherd the bleating populace into the arms of fascism, how else but by cutting off the cash flow, by striking the beast at its transactional core – how else can we hope to save ourselves from this monolith of avarice we call “the global economy?”
But such sedition isn’t for everyone. It would be amiss if I didn’t mention some of the hazards one needs to be aware of before embarking on a career as a professional debtor. For example, I do often have trouble sleeping, especially when some former best friend is slamming on my door at three in the morning, screaming, “I know you’re in there!” And it is difficult for me to borrow money from a recognized financial institution, to obtain a mortgage for a home, or to pay off a purchase in installments. Credit cards are no longer an option (at least not in my name), and bank accounts are susceptible to liens. But once you get used to living without these unnecessary conveniences, there’s a great deal of fun to be had. Such as when collection agencies send harassing letters, and I send back used toilet paper; or when they email me, and I reply with links to kiddy porn sites then inform the local authorities that such-and-such company is in possession of perverse material on its hard drive; or when some creditor dares to call me at my home, and I turn the collection agent into a participant in my most diseased and deranged sexual fantasy.
There was one time, however, when circumstances led me to ponder whether I would have been better off balancing my accounts and ledgers, abiding by the law of the land, and participating as an ordinary Joe in the global marketplace. This particularly spirited campaign against me is worth describing if, for no other reason than, it may serve as a warning to others that owing money is neither for the dilettante nor for the faint of heart. And if not for my years of debting experience, my erstwhile determination, and my sociopathic commitment to dishonesty, the devil only knows what suffering may have ensued from this fateful affair. The incident I refer to began, harmlessly enough, with a call from Bangalore — a young woman named Indira, who informed me that I carried a balance of $10,000 on my American Express card, now three years past due. I responded by asking her what she was wearing.
“Mister, I do not see what it is important is what I am wearing,” she replied in an accent thicker than a bowl of mulligatawny soup. “Tell me please what you are going to do about your account today.”
“Are you wearing panties?” I asked.
“Are you aware, sir, that if you do not pay this balance, we can sue you and take you to court?”
I was more than aware – I was aroused. “Two grand if you take off those soaking wet panties.”
There was a pause at the other end. She was, after all, paid on commission. “Mr. Fischman, what you are asking is not appropriate.”
“Good golly Ganesh, you drive a hard bargain. 2500 and that’s my final offer.”
To be fair, collection agents have a difficult job. They deal with all kinds of abuse in the course of their days: people hanging up on them, cursing them, blowing whistles into the phone. Still, I hoped I was providing a level of degradation beyond the norm.
“Take ‘em off, you filthy untouchable!”
“Three thousand,” she said.
This was unexpected. In all my years of talking dirty to these people (collections agents, not Indians), never once had I come across someone willing to play ball. A more experienced debtor, a true master of the craft, would have recognized this as a red flag, but unfortunately for me, my ego had subdued the better of my judgment.
“You give me an electronic check right now,” she said, “and then I… I do what you say.”
“I ain’t falling for that,” I replied, calling her bluff. “You take off those sweatshop-manufactured panties first, and then I give you the check!”
She was a bright girl. Hell, she’d have to be to have this job, coming from where she came from. My guess is she was making $8,000 a year on the phone while most of her friends were busy carrying water from the village well to the village sewer.
“How do I know,” Indira asked, “that you will not hang up the phone after I remove my garment?”
“You got me all wrong,” I said in my sweetest, softest, serial-killer voice. “I’m not the kind of lover who thinks only of himself. I want to bring an orgasm tsunami to your beautiful brown body.”
“Mr. Fischman,” she laughed. “I believe you are very sick man.”
“You don’t know the half. Now take off those fucking panties!”
Anyone else would have hung up the phone or handed me off to her supervisor, but Indira was different. She was game.
“Okay,” she said. “I am doing it.”
I heard movement from her end, but who knows if she was really stripping down or just going through the motions. Either way, it convinced the little yogi in my pants to stand in warrior one.
“My garment is off,” she said. “Now give me the check number.”
“Touch yourself,” I replied.
“Mr. Fischman, you made promise.”
“Moan for me, whore!”
“Mr. Fischman, I have had enough! You must pay me now!”
I gave her a check number and three grand from an account I knew had no money in it.
“Now where were we?” I asked, but by then, she had hung up.
Not to worry. A week later, Indira called again.
“Mr. Julius Fischman, I am calling about your American Express account.”
“Back for more, ey?”
“It seems the check that you have issued did not clear.”
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
“I will not have another incident like the one we had when last we spoke.”
“We’re going all the way this time.”
“I need you to issue another check.”
“I’m gonna practice my kama sutra on you.”
She laughed.
“Mr. Fischman, you are quite a character.”
“We should get to know each other in a more intimate way,” I recommended, and something in the way she blew into the phone suggested my flattery was working.
“And what would you want,” she asked, “with a poor Indian girl like me when you live in Hollywood, California 90048?”
“I want to make you my love slave.”
“I am not that kind of woman!” She was pissed. Apparently, third-worlders hate to be called slaves.
“I’ve been bad,” I said.
“Very bad,” she agreed.
“I need to be spanked by your many arms and hands.”
“Mr. Fischman,” she sighed, tiring of my antics, “I will not allow you to talk this way to me. I am an honorable woman who is saving herself for husband.”
“Marriage,” I whispered, “would be a small price to pay for a jewel like you.”
It’s rare that collection agents hear compliments. I could feel her appreciation.
“Are you proposing to me, Mr. Fischman?”
“Depends on your caste.”
“I assure you I would make a worthy bride.”
Indira must have been way below her quota for the month, because not only did I get her panties off, I actually convinced her to describe her vagina to me in glorious detail. In recognition of an outstanding performance, I issued a check for $4,000. Two days later, after it bounced, her supervisor called me at home.
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