A True Pessimist



  A True Pessimist

  By Alan Chains

  Copyright © 2015 Alan Chains.

  All rights reserved.

  www.AlanChains.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  It was my weekend off. I reviewed my Oink Oink subscription which was a law magazine that delivered case study, legal advice on topics that may interest the retired and generally bummed. The only reason that kept this publication coming to my door on a monthly basis was my role as a contributor to it. I had never thought of it as an honorable career, and the fact that we had thousands of subscribers boggled my mind sometimes.

  My article “How to Legally Remove Community Fir” was featured in the October’s issue last year. The editor had since ordered twelve pieces from me, and I had finished all but one, “An Existential Investigation of Legal Authority in Modern Society.” With this piece, my place would ascend from page thirty-six to page twenty, just before a full spread jewelry advertisement followed by John Holland’s divorce column. Frankly, I enjoyed reading John’s column despite not having any martial problems myself. I had worked with him a while back and knew first hand that John was an observant, responsible and perhaps reprehensible columnist. Every case he investigated was real and within the five-borough radius from where he lived. At this moment, I felt a lot of pressure because I was concerned that I would never achieve that level of professionalism on page twenty.

  I paced around my house for a while before sitting down to jot the first sentence.

  “Some water is hot.”

  I then decided nothing decent would come out of this confined space to become a worthy continuation of it. I instantly made up my mind to go out, abandoning my wife and children, just for this weekend. I had not an itinerary or even a destination planned because those were only necessary when traveling with reckless, unpunctual companions. I didn’t know how far I could get either (such was my fate in the publishing industry), but I knew I would keep going until the weekend was over. I would visit anywhere that piqued my interest, talk to anyone whom I found intriguing, make all necessary stops and return by Sunday night.

  I found myself at a roadside diner by Saturday afternoon, sitting across from a very questionable character. The man was suavely dressed and completely delusional.

  “Say, you are a lawyer then?”

  This was a typical question. No, I explained that if us columnists and publishers knew as much as lawyers did, everyone would get their asses sued off.

  “Well, I always knew something was off,” he sized me up again.

  “Not entirely. Just take whatever you read with a grain of salt,” I suggested, letting him know that I was, in fact, privy to some of the legal stuff. “Or you can always do what I do, only read either odd or even number pages. See, every publisher is only capable of coming up with half of what they are going to print - same throughout the industry. It doesn’t matter if you are a small tabloid or some big gun like Squared. I am not including ads here- I’m talking about the real content. Most folks can spot the worst few of the bunch, and they think of themselves as mighty clever people for that. But let me tell you, they are missing the other fifty!”

  “You have my thanks for this information,” as he expressed no excitement, the man sitting across the table reached into his pocket and took out a small notebook. He started scribbling in the notebook with his non-greasy left hand.

  “Now, the specific arrangement I was talking about was not the universal standard. Only half of the publishers I know operate this way. The others simply put good material up front and bad material in the back. They think you won’t notice once they get you accustomed to their style. I’ll tell you more, with things I’m disclosing now, you can tear off Drumstick from page twenty-six and still get your money’s worth.”

  “Great.”

  “Do you read Drumstick?”

  “No,” he responded coldly. “I have no interest in fast food and indie-rock mix media neo-journalism.”

  “Are you taking note?” I asked, seeing he didn’t stop writing.

  “No.”

  “Fine,” I half-heartedly continued. “What’s interesting about the page number distribution- the first type I talked about - is that it does affect the same article if it runs for more than one page. Say you have a featured piece and it runs for four pages. You can’t keep it consistent by inserting three ads to make the page numbers all odd or even. On the contrary, you are more likely to leave them altogether. So, on the first page of this article you’ll read something sensible. Then on the next page - even if it begins with the other half of a sentence, things will go awry. If it’s an open court case, the sympathetic judge will lunge at and stab the witness. The intelligent jury will turn into a circus. On the next page, things will be alright again. Turns out everyone was having a seizure and the judge was simply faking it to ease the tension. Then everyone gets convicted on the following page.”

  By now I felt dismayed that I had willingly disclosed some of the darkest secrets in the publishing industry to someone who seemed he couldn’t care less, who had hardly opened up to me. I made it my new mission to learn as much as I could about my confidant sitting across the table.

  “How about you? Anything you can share with me?”

  “Not my plate,” he said in a standoffish manner. I stared at him, so he reluctantly spoke again. “Well, I get laughed at a lot.”

  “That’s not enough of a hint, ” it certainly piqued my interest. “You have to be more specific.”

  “I get beaten up pretty frequently,” the stranger unleashed another important clue.

  “How frequent?”

  “Twelve times a week.”

  “By who? With what?”

  “It varies. Sometimes clubs, sometimes small furniture, sometimes just fists - they often miss on purpose, but it doesn’t change what it is. Sometimes I get my face smashed into walls. Police always want to hunt me down. I don’t blame them. I do a lot of stupid things. I always go to the rotten part of the town to conduct my shady business, and I must always go alone. I rise at four every morning and go to sleep three hours before that, yet I’m always full of energy. This is what I do for a living, you see.”

  “You are doing better. These sound great, but they are still vague and generic. I can’t imagine what is it that you do.”

  We both paused for a minute. I watched a whirlpool stirring from the bottom of his murky drink as he stared at a small piece of steak glued to the tip of my very large fork.

  “Let’s try something,” I broke the silence. “How about you tell me about your day? Take Friday for example. Just this Friday. What did you do? What was going on?”

  The man let out a long sigh before recalling all the events that took place on Friday, May 21 (which eventually helped me learn his true identity).

  “I had to wake up at four, just as I told you. Then I had to walk a mile to get my mail while dressing like a homeless man. Most of what I received were unsolicited requests which I had to respond to as soon as possible. It was 7:00 by the time I was done with that duty, so I showered and got changed. My wife was in the hospital, so I had to drive the kids to school myself. Traffic was always jammed when we got there, Friday was no exception. Mobs cornered us, so I had to roll down my window and beg them to let us go. At 8:45, I was on my way to work. At 9:30, I was already apologizing for not knowing how to use a flamethrower while juggling two fishing spears. The frustration was abundant; I can tell you that.

  I came back to work after my lunch break around 1 - it was unbearabl
y hot outside. I arrived at an abandoned construction site where I was made to jump off moving vehicles fifty times in a row. I felt frustrated each additional time I jumped while my co-workers were watching, since each repeat only meant I didn’t do a proper job the previous time. Finally, someone called it off. So we all sat down on those dusty steps and waited for the caterer to show up. It was worth the wait for everybody else, because they got to enjoy cake and fried chicken. I was only allowed to eat nasty garden salad, that was for sure.

  We carried on this business for another three hours before I was entirely spent and soaked in my own sweat. My shirt was totally ruined, so I showered in a trailer and got changed again and rushed to pick up my kids at school, where I learned that they were doing moderately in their class. I was given their daily academic report and lunch burping analysis along with fifty other forms I had to sign.

  About 6:45, I had no strength left in me and decided not to cook. So I took the kids to a catered event I was invited to. I believe they served us raw fish and ice water. Then it was show time. I stumbled my way onto the stage and received an award - it almost slipped out of my trembling hands and reduced to glass shards. I don’t remember anything after that. I had too much to drink.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I finally recognize your face now. Aren’t you Don Nod, the lead actor starring as Captain Existence in Raging & Racing, the most awarded action-thriller of the year? Weren’t you on TV last night when you received that award?”

  “Yes, if I must admit.”

  “Your wife - she’s in a hospital because she just gave birth to a baby, correct?”

  “That is right.”

  “I remember reading that from newspaper and major websites. This is just my deduction, but weren’t the forms you signed at your sons’ school posters to be autographed?”

  “I suppose they were.”

  “I think I know what the raw fish was, but how do you explain the ice water?”

  “It was scooped from some crest of the Alps.”

  “Well Mr. Nod, you have a truly peculiar perspective.”

  “So they tell me.”

  “Why, I must excuse myself. I’d hate to be an annoyance to you.”

  I left the diner with a strange vibe in my head, and I couldn’t convince myself to keep going anymore. So I filled up my gas tank in this desolated place while watching a helicopter heading towards the diner before I took off. I came home around midnight and slept on the couch until the next morning, only to wake up and discover that another man had spent the night there as well. It was none other than John Holland. He had no idea what I was going to do to him, but it would dawn on him soon enough.

  “Guess what, Holland? You took something from me- I’m going to take something from you.” I stormed into my study with a surge of adrenaline and destroyed the eleven articles I had completed before this weekend. The next week, I took over John Holland’s divorce column and left myself without a wife and him without a job.