David Raffin
RSS - PostsThe club with no name met in the computer room which was filled with computers but empty of people. Technically, it had started as a computer club but if we are to be completely honest, looking back upon it, these were nothing but plastic machines which made beeping noises when you fed them. There were some blinking lights with blocky graphics and if you were of an imaginative sort it was possible you could convince yourself you were looking at a dog or a cow or a camel. And that is only if you laboriously typed out, with nary a mistake, sister, a program in binary code which you copied from a magazine and called the results your own, which is how technology works.
You save it on disk, of course. You aren’t crazy. All that work. And you pass it on. Because that’s the friendly thing to do. So you copy it. And you give it out. And the recipient copies it and gives it out. And then everybody has a copy. And it’s all the same copy. It’s a little bit of you in their pocket. A seed. But of course you had nothing to do with it. Nothing but time. Which is the lingua franca of the economic system. If I may speak the queen’s French. And yet you give it out for free. Thumbing your nose at the very system which gave it to you. Boy did they ever. But they didn’t give it to you. You earned it. Though you paid nothing. And you are just passing it on. Giving back better what you got.
“This game is user mendacious,”
Simon said as he passed the warm disk to Frank. “It is openly hostile to the players. It is a natural innovation. But the results remain to be seen.” His glasses slid to the left. “If you hit reset you lose everything. Poof.”
Insert the disk.
“Christopher Rages Through the Desert…”
That was the problem with technology, which was still, in its infancy. It was text based. No graphics. You interfaced with your mind. Alone.
It was a MindF*ck. Classic.
In the camera club they flirted with old technology. Because that was all you could do with it. Anymore. It was just lucky to get any attention. And so they were learning photography the old way. On rolls of film. They had to unwind in a dark room. So they had to learn to do it blindfolded. They weren’t really blindfolded. They were in a dark room. With a roll of film. In the dark room proper there was a red light so you could actually see. But in the little auxiliary room where you actually handled the raw and unexposed film with your bare hands, that room was pitch black. For fear of exposure.
You’d lose everything.
It was also where an artiste could be alone for a few minutes in the schooldays without fear of interruption sullying any task at hand.
I mean, this was weeks after Frank lay awake in his bed all night the night before his first day of high school. Which had been no big deal. The day itself had not required his full energy or attention. It was mostly the same people in a new place.
A reboot.
Kevin was in the class with Frank but he was not his partner the day they made the box cameras. Which was a stupid thing to call them, people always call things stupid names. Most cameras were boxes. They were trying to set up some box hierarchy. A class division. A distinction. No, these were pinhole cameras. Cardboard contraptions with photo paper taped inside opposite a hole poked in the box with a pin. With a finger over the hole till it’s ready. Frame the photo. Move the finger. And then time does the work for you if you can wait it out. Ghostly images burned into the paper, then set for life.
Frank did this project in the parking lot with a Senior named Skip. He was a cool guy. Not because he was a senior, though it was cool he didn’t throw that in a guy’s face, but mostly because he had a car. As you can see in the photo.
Plain as day.
Through the peep hole.
But he ghosted. Never saw him again.
Let me ask you a question. It was the beginning of the year. About, no, less than a week in. So all the seniors were really just juniors or they had been three months before or even, maybe, hell, last week. Depending on where you draw the line. And it’s not up to me to decide where that line is drawn. Oh, I am not an artist. But I do know something about hierarchies. WHERE WE STAND.
Vince was also in this class. That boy (?) was an artist. He could draw doodles like nobody’s business. They sat around in the class reading National Lampoon magazine. Vince had an older brother who subscribed. It was the only magazine that had nudity in it (sometimes) which was not marketed strictly as ADULTS ONLY. Rather, it passed as a joke. There was a guy at the flea market every Saturday at the fairgrounds who re-homed old magazines. Making most of his money selling used Playboys to teenaged boys who frequented, after browsing the bins of cut rate records. Most corners cut. Clean.
Solid Gold gone.
Downbeat Bubble Gum Pop.
As the man on the other side sold paperbacks with the front covers ripped off. Many of the books said:
IF THIS BOOK IS SOLD
WITHOUT A COVER
IT IS STOLEN!
Certainly un-protected.
He had no National Lampoon. He would only sell the kids PLAYBOY and not HUSTLER or SCREW or GALLERY, which was where the Girls Next Door resided. (Off hours). He had class values. (Moonlighting). Many of the magazines were missing the centre spread fold out posters of the playmates of the month detailing on the backsides their secret desires and tastes, as an old style off-color joke; because these were often ripped out by the original readership. (Brutes). He was a businessman, petit bourgeoisie. (Small fry). Little man in the system. Important but expendable. Couldn’t operate without them. Dime a dozen. The magazines were passed through so many hands they were dirty. But they were also cheap.
Chump change.
The money was in volume.
The building smelled of old LP covers and decaying magazine paper. The books without covers were supposed to be burned. No food was allowed in the building as it was a museum of trash deserving our respect. The records were the ones which never sold as new. Still wrapped in plastic. (Fresh). Sold as-is. A pungent vanilla like aroma reminding one of the past transported. Hunger. Thirst. A Promise of Satisfaction Denied. Love. For sale. I’ll sing for you.
A sense memory.
False.
And Frank bought an egg sandwich at the fairgrounds. It was the off season and the sign at the fairgrounds said:
HAPPY HOLLIDAYS
FREE MANURE
TODAY ONLY.
Because it was Veterans Day last week and the rodeo had just been. And the man who wrote the sign board at the fairgrounds had been influenced in his style and his sensibilities by books which he read in the sleepless nights, some as cheap as a dime, regardless of value, which is a separate matter from cost, this is the infamous cost-versus-values-equation, taught in college, slanted to the curriculum. And he noticed that most books all said:
IF THIS BOOK IS SOLD
WITHOUT A COVER
IT IS STOLEN!
First thing. Like a poem. A petit bourgeoisie poem. A haiku in all caps. Demanding attention.
So he wrote:
HAPPY HOLLIDAYS
FREE MANURE
TODAY ONLY.
And hoped it would register to the passerbys. Which, of course, it did not. Because the people reading the sign had been ignoring the notices on the books for so long they were now blind to the form. They really did not see it. Like magic.
So they were all in a lot of sh¡t.
Frankly. Like boiling frogs. Cruel.
And little outcry at the time.
And Frank had answered a question when he bought the sandwich. They asked him:
“Howdya like yer eggs cooked, kiddo?”
And he didn’t know what to say. So he said:
“Over easy,”
He said it like he meant it. With authority. But he didn’t know what it meant.
‘Cause that seemed cool. And the cook said:
“You got it, kid.”
And when he bit into the sandwich, 40 percent of it ran down his arms. Sticky. Hot. Wet. And there was an unappetizing smell drifting from the rodeo area.
And he entered the flea market hungry.
Like anybody.
They also had tables of electronics for sale. Televisions and radios. Picking up signals from the air and trapping them inside itself, static loops, reassembled for presentation. Tape players from cars. Eight track minds. On repeat. Looped to the breaking point. Ripped out and the wires cut and displayed on a folding table as if they were cuts of meat rotting in the hot sun waiting to move.
And Frank went in the washroom to wash, to get off, which was supposed to be a third of the actions done in the washroom, and the act which gives it its classy name:
The executive washroom.
Which is what the sign says at the fair.
Where the petit run the yoke down the drain.
And he walked out and flipped through the record bins. Cut outs. And it was a lotta trash going back decades. Out of order. Haphazard. Where he found the damndest thing. It was the record album, Standards & Practices by the Vagabond Trio.
Which had been, not a popular, but a three season sitcom on the new-then fourth network. Based on the old Vagabond Boys Mysteries. Supposedly. Now, for some reason, the network, in a brutal slap in the face to the fans, had turned what should have been an hour long drama into a half-hour sitcom. (22 minutes). And worse, in addition to being teenage detectives they were now in a band. Like The Archies. The Monkeys. The Pussycats. Like the f*cking Partridge Family. (Which was a family traveled in a bus, all together).
Oh sugar,
you are candy
leave ‘em wanting
Three copies all together, now.
It was supposed to be really, really…
And it was, it was everything they said.
For some reason, the record cover featured only the actor who played Frank on the television program. Who was quite unlike the Frank as portrayed in the books. But everything about the show was off. For one thing, it had singing. They were singing detectives. And that’s not right.
Not that detectives can’t sing. But in this case it was just not right.
Frank purchased them (75 cents) (Not Each) and gave the other two copies to Simon and Pickles in the computer centre.
“Wow,” said Simon. That is what Simon said.
“And I am going to keep mine in the original plastic. Unopened.” That is what Pickles said. And she meant business.
For one thing, she was irritated it took so long for her to be introduced. Also, these other incarnations of Pickles had almost nothing to do with her.
Nothing
Whatever.
Because she has been here all along. You know. But people are not paying attention.
Typical.
