It's Only Words, but Words are All I Have

short story

“Paper, Andy. I’m talking paper, a sheet of white paper.”

“Doesn’t matter. Came across over the weekend. New, approved, accepted word change substitute. Tweeted straight from the Secretary of Language. Don’t you read your MediaWrite Tweets feed? Sent directly to you from the company who signs your checks?”

“In the tiny amount of free time I have, Andy, I stay away from work as much as possible. Rejuvenate the soul. Relax. Chill. You heard of that, right?”

“You fall behind, chief, you never get ahead. There’s a wolf in the pack right behind you ready to kill you and take your place.”

“No. Not accurate, Andy. Wolves are cooperative animals. The pack is self-protected. They only fight other packs and their prey. They don’t kill each other – it’s counter-productive.”           

“Ok. It was an expression I heard.”           

“No – you didn’t.”           

“I shoulda said sharks.”           

“You made it up.”           

“Maybe.”       

“Like most of the shit you write.”           

“Well, you try finding something good to write in Hollywoodland. Just ‘cause you write politico don’t go and get on your high cart. Since the sex transgression scandals in 2017 and on to 2023 – me too hashtag and its tons of variables, when time was up on the late great Harvey Whynotstein, the king of the gossip subjects, and all the other actors and writers and directors they dragged up along with him – the golden years of gossip, that’s what the old guys say… once that well dried, buddy, like after the next five years and beyond, Hollywood’s been locked down as tight as Suzie Sweet’s completely private and constitutionally protected genital area. Nobody does anything bad anymore. All I get to write about is their charity work. Vacations with their cute kids. Aurora Barrymore’s favorite recipes.”           

“High horse, Andy.” I leaned sideways in my chair. “Say it. Go ahead, I dare ya.”           

“Say what?”           

“Suzie’s you know what.”           

“In here, what are you, crazy?”

“Nobody monitors the daily office audiovid. Benson’s in charge. He eats Doritos and plays video games all day with his ear buds in. He never reviews anything.”           

“They’re still recorded and archived in the Cloud.”           

“The humongous Cloud with its bazillion files nobody looks at. It’s like the warehouse where they put the ark in Indiana Jones.”           

“Huh?”           

“Old classic movie. Pre-3d virtual immersion.”           

“A flat? Who’d want to watch that?”

“An extremely good movie, Andy. My point is, who do you think gives a rats? Say it. Say “Like Suzie Sweet’s tight, pristine…”           

He grinned. Andy was actually ok somewhere deep in his spineless soul. He leaned over and whispered, in a barely audible voice.

“Pussy.”           

We high-fived.           

“There you go soldier. Doesn’t that feel good ? Feel liberated?”           

“Sure, awesome. But you still can’t say white.”           

“About anything?”           

“Nope. Nothing. Not paper, not snow, not the part of the eye surrounding the blue or brown parts.”           

“Which would be called the iris.”           

“That’s what the round part’s called? Same as the woman’s name?”           

“Can’t get anything past you. So Einstein, with your keen insight, can you tell me what happened to us, how did things slowly slide into this oh so sorry state?”           

“You know how… the Hate Speech Law of 2034. At the beginning of Glampers second term. And then, it just kept going on its own from there, her legacy after she was gone. The extremely liberal senate starting up the Department of Language.”’

“Yes, I am aware of our history. A rhetorical statement, Andy, with alliteration. Rhetorical and containing a rhetorical device. It didn’t need an answer.”           

“You’re a damn genius, wordman. Why ask if you already know?”           

“It gets lonely, my friend. I want an echo. I have to pretend what I think means something. But come on, you’re kidding – white paper, white snow?”

“The DOL said the reason about changing white is because The Human Comfortableness and High Self Esteem Bureau did all this testing and found out the Rainbow People of Various Shades and Hues have involuntary bad reactions to the word white, no matter what context. See what you miss when you disconnect from your feeds? White has too many old bad associations. And like now it’s in the collective DNA or something like that. Because of the past. White control of stuff. White supremacy. All the white guys who always used to be charge. Still causes anxiety and low esteem in the Rainbow People. They did like massive research on this for years before making the decision. It explained all of this in a link in a second Tweet they sent after the word change directive.”           

“Ok.” I sighed, steeling myself for what was coming. “And the newly accepted word substitute for white is…”           

“Beige but lighter.”           

I spun my chair sideways and we locked eyes. “You’re making your first good  joke, Andy, right? Tell me you are.”

“No joke amigo.”

“Show me where it says that.”

He turned to his computer, clicked the mouse a few times. “There.” Andy’s message box opened on my screen. Recent Tweet on the word “White” and the new recommended instructions on its usage, from the Secretary of Language. I clicked the link. Sure enough, exactly like he said.         

“Beige but fucking lighter.”             

“Shhhh. Craps, man.”           

“I’m dreaming of a beige but lighter Christmas. How are they going to sing that?”           

“They won’t. The song’ll just get dropped, like usual when words don’t fit.”           

“Disappeared… gone from the music stream…”

“Yup. Won’t be there when you try to find it. Books are all probably already updated.” Andy turned to his screen. “As far as copy, they suggest using adjectives with it, like, ‘the clean, bright beige but lighter snow.’”           

I didn’t bother to take out the tablet and check my Kindle library. I’d seen the nearly instantaneous effects of word substitute updates before.           

“I’m so glad it’s Friday, because I plan to have more than several drinks tonight. Maybe start with a few Beige But Lighter Russians. You know, actually, in that case, it works.”           

Andy wasn’t listening. He had ear buds in and was watching a Susie Sweet video intently, not bobbing his head.

                                    *****

Jayne had on a sensible blue dress, with a wide leather belt and oval bronze buckle that made her look great, accented her thin waist and toned shape. I was lucky to have her, she kept me on the straight and narrow. When Amy and Andy walked in she gave me a tight, grim grin. I rolled my eyes for effect. Amy had on a beige but lighter synth-skin suit so tight it looked like she’d been dipped in latex. It had a red line down each side, and a skinny matching red belt hanging on her hips going slightly below her navel, which was visible, because of the tightness. The outfit looked suspiciously similar to the one Suzy Sweet wore in a video I saw a few months back – Andy’d made me watch it in the office at least twice. Amy had on a platinum wig with bangs and her fingernails had little videos playing on them – a tropical island, an animation of a snowy mountain in Japan, a surfer curling a huge wave, men walking on the moon, a neon street scene in Tokyo, that kind of thing. They were all the rage. Andy was sporting a purple retro disco shirt open halfway down his chest. I had on my customary black t-shirt, jeans and old tweed jacket. Writer chic.           

“Well look at you two,” I said.           

“After drinks here, Andy’s taking us both out to the Clubs of the World Mall. I hear it’s awesome!”           

“Twenty bars, isn’t it?” Jayne cocked an eyebrow.           

“Twenty-four. One cover charge gets you in all of them. We are gonna dance!”           

“Doesn’t Amy look great?!” Andy was beside himself grinning.           

“Yeah,” I said. “You look like you could be a star. Maybe a singer.”           

“Thanks, that’s so sweet!” she chirped.

“Well, that’s the exact word I would use, you look just so… sweet,” I told her, smiling widely. Andy stared at me hard, his shut it look.           

We ordered up a round. I got a local IPA Jayne didn’t know was double alcohol, 8.4. With a bourbon neat on the side for sipping. Tonight she was the designated driver for me and her. I could freely indulge, I deserved it, after my day. Amy had something that glowed neon blue, Andy ordered a Bud, Jayne, a chardonnay I knew she would barely sip. We all toasted to nothing.           

“Did you hear?” Amy said, looking at us big eyed, her eyelashes touching skin, top and bottom.           

“Gee,” I said. “Can we whittle that down just a bit?”           

“Whittle?” Amy asked, a puzzled look.           

“Not to put too fine a point on it, Ames – more specific?”            

“But didn’t you hear? The Mount Rushmore Resolution!”           

“Ah,” Jayne said. “Did it pass?”           

“Yes!” Amy sighed. “Finally. She was the greatest woman – ever.”           

“Well, that’s ah… don’t you think that’s an… overly large statement?” I offered.           

“Universal health care, practically zero unemployment, free day care. All still working today, all part of the New America.” Amy was quite eloquent about it, actually. Jayne looked at me. We’d been – well she’d been – talking about her biological clock.

“Pretty significant legacy,” Jayne said.           

“Yeah, it is…” I said, “but… then again, freedom of speech has been kind of, ahh… a little compromised, don’t you think?”           

“Anybody can say what they want,” Amy chirped, “it’s all just suggestions anyhow, guidelines they give everybody, everybody knows that.”           

“Sure,” I went on, trying to be careful to not get too pedantic like Jayne would point out later, if I was, “except books get changed, classics, changed for good, can’t find the originals, happens all the time, or they’re deleted and nobody has any say about it.”           

“Come on, chief, got off your high cart,” Andy said, “there’s more books now than ever.”

“Horse, Andy, high horse. Carts aren’t high. Yeah. Lots of approved books.”           

“I don’t see the difference. They’re still good books and new ones come out all the time.”           

“Good is a matter of opinion.”           

“Just think of it, President Diana Glampers on Mt. Rushmore!” Amy cooed. “It gives me the chills, as a woman, that is. And she only died six years ago, ninety-four, god love her. Though they’re going to have her beside Roosevelt and not Washington, like they originally wanted.”

“It’s going be composite rock,” Andy nodded, “but it’ll look just like the other rock. It’s supposed to last a thousand years.”           

“Then what,” I asked, feeling a kind of ongoing gloom.           

“Then what what?”           

“What happens after the thousand years?”           

“Who cares?” Andy said.

“The people there might. The thousand year people might care.”           

“I don’t now, it starts crumbling. Let them figure it out.”           

“What thousand-year old people?” Amy said. “I’m not following. How could they be a thousand years old?”           

Andy looked at me shrugged.           

“Diet and exercise,” I said, and lifted my hand to signal the waitress for another round.           

“You guys are just making jokes,” Amy said.           

“Yes, they are,” Jayne smiled at her.           

More drinks soon came and I started to feel a little snarly. I’ve been known to get a little snarly when a certain alcohol level has sunken in.           

“Papa was a Rolling Stone,” I said, out of nowhere.           

The conversation stopped. I grinned, lopsidedly, I suppose.

“This great old song, by the Temptations, one edition of the Temptations, anyway, a classic Motown group.”           

“Oh my god,” Andy said, “did you hear Suzie Sweet’s revival of the Aretha Franklin classic oldie you made me feel like a natural woman?”           

“No, I didn’t Andy.”           

He whipped out his phone and began pushing his finger on it.           

“Please don’t,” I said.           

It didn’t help. The autotuned atrocity played for three minutes or so. Jayne squeezed my hand, and we shared one of our special knowing looks.           

“Yeah, so, yes,” I said, definitely not pedantically, “that song is a positive affirmation of women, and so it remains ensconced in the granite of eternity for anyone to reinterpret in their endlessly entertaining ways, yes, it’s a confirmed classic. Carole King wrote it. But Papa was a Rolling Stone… it was this great, cool, funky song about a family whose father was a drifter…”           

“What’s great about that?” Amy said, her face scrunched up in an odd expression. “And what’s funky?”           

“Well, Ames, Rainbow men of the African American cultural persuasion had a tough time back then, getting jobs, being looked at as less than their… beige but lighter counterparts… so there were… resulting social situations that happened, that affected them in fairly strong ways, but…”           

Amy was looking away from the table, Andy was looking at me, like, what the hell, man, and Jayne just sighed. She’d heard it all from me before.           

“Ok, I see I’m crushing everybody’s buzz. But so this song was somewhere in between, it both acknowledged and criticized…”           

Blank stares all around.

“And it had this very cool groove. But to wrap it up, it’s been deleted. Permanently. My Dad had it on his hard drive, that’s how I heard it, as a kid. He was into Motown. The reason it was deleted they said, was, it portrayed an unflattering stereotype of black men…”           

“Rainbow men of the African American persuasion,” Amy corrected me, looking concerned.           

“Yes. As irresponsible. Somewhat analogous to Blaxploitation films.”           

Blank expressions again.           

“Ok, forget it. Sorry I brought it up. How about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?”           

“What about it?” Andy asked, bored. The whole table was against me by now.            

“It hasn’t been available since I was kid, that’s the last time I remember hearing it.”           

“Yeah,” Andy chimed, suddenly excited. “Cause it should have been deleted, chief.  Good example. A bunch of reindeer bullies who kiss up to Rudolph when his status improves. Bad message for kids all the way. There’s still the Jack Johnson version, though, which is pretty cool how he turns that on its head.”           

“I love Jack Johnson,” Amy cooed, a deliberately sexy voice on the word ‘love.’ “Classic oldie. He’s so… I don’t know the right word…”           

“Laid back?” I suggested.           

“Yes!” Amy cooed, like a baby who’s just found a lost toy. “No wonder you write. He’s so good with words, isn’t he Jayne?”                    

“A bonifed genius,” Jayne muttered. I looked sideways at her.

“I had a book when I was kid called Gerald McBoing Boing,” I went ahead, teetering perilously, “my dad had it. Gerald couldn’t talk regular words, he just made boing boing sounds. So at school he’s made fun of, the doctor can’t do anything to fix it, his parents are at wits end, his father gets frustrated and angry with him and sends him off, away. Out he goes, a little kid orphan, into the world alone. Can you believe that? It’s a children’s book. So anyway this radio guy runs into Gerald on the road and sees amazing potential in using him to do sound effects. Turns out Gerald can do animals, car horns, all kinds of stuff. So he becomes famous as a sound effects kid on the radio. His parents come back and say they love him and everybody’s happy. No wonder it was banned. Dr. Seuss wrote it. It was a TV film first, then they made the book. My Dad bequeathed the book to me.”           

“What happened to the book? You still have this book?” Jayne asked sharply.           

“Yeah.” She didn’t say anything else, like, I’d like to read it.           

“Where is it?” she said.           

“Home, where do you think?” As soon as I said it, I knew I was too drunk and it was a very bad thing to say.           

Her face got blank the way it does sometimes, when I don’t know what she’s thinking. She was sipping water through the little red straw. Not touching her chardonnay.           

I felt a bit woozy and had a sudden urge to relieve my bladder. “Little boy’s room,” I said, and excused myself. When I came back, it was just Andy and Amy at the table, being some kind of stupid cute with each other.           

“Hey, where’s Jayne,” I asked.           

“I dunno, she got up a little while ago, the bathroom I suppose,” Andy said.           

“She just got up all of a sudden,” Amy told me. “Right after you. Seemed a little funny to not say anything.”           

I sipped my IPA and when ten minutes went by I started getting edgy. Jayne’d never been a bathroom lingerer, I always liked her for that, not fussing about her make-up or something, which she hardly every wore. Maybe clear gloss lipstick once and a while, that’s all. She always looked terrific natural.           

“Hey, Amy,” I said, “can you go check the bathroom for Jayne? I’m gonna walk around.”           

Jayne was nowhere in the place. I went back to the table and Amy shrugged her shoulders, so I went out into the parking lot and saw Jayne’s car was gone. My ride. This, I knew, even in my compromised state, was not good. I didn’t go back in to ask Andy for a lift, he wasn’t the kind of friend who’d bail you out when you were in trouble, especially not when he had serious plans with Amy. There was a cab waiting there in the lot and I stumbled in.           

A half a day’s pay later I arrived at home. The door was unlocked, I walked in to see a big black garbage bag beside the door. I looked in and it was my clothes in a jumbled pile. Jayne was sitting at the kitchen table. If she’d been an old Max Fleischer cartoon she’d have had a flame coming out of the top of her head.           

“What’s this?” I said.           

“What’s it look like?”           

“I know what it is, what’s it all about?”           

“I found them, in that cardboard box in the closet behind your guitar case inside the access panel. An unlucky number too, thirteen of them.”           

I stood still. The room was doing funny things, not exactly stable things.           

“Ok. Where are they?”           

“Gone. All non-updated, non-approved, original old books. You’re out of your mind, you know that? And to do that to me, to put me in that kind of risk…”

“They’re not illegal.”           

“Oh, so they’re just fine to have around the house and that’s why you had them hidden in an access panel in a closet. You met my cousin Sara, right, remember her? At Jennie’s wedding?”           

“Sure. Skinny, red hair.”           

“Yes. Her boyfriend was a book geek too. He also wrote a blog critical of the Secretary of Language and the whole word update process. One day he was visited at work by agents of the Department of Language and they politely took him off to discuss his beliefs with them, together. He ended up at one of the DOL Dialogue camps, for three weeks. Sara got an email from him on the third week saying he’d met a woman there, a writer, and was going to live with her. She never heard anything about him again.”           

“I’ve heard those kind of conspiracy theory stories,” I said, weakly, shook by what she’d said, “but they’re just rumors. He could have easily met this other woman…”           

“No, he was crazy about Sara. People are sent away, the discontents. Wake up, for Christ sake. Who knows where or what goes on. Not gonna happen to me. Get your laptop, whatever else. You’ve got five minutes. A locksmith’s on the way.”           

I felt a current of rage come up and go through me. “Where are my books!” I shouted.

“Gone. I told you. That’s all you care about. I don’t know what I was thinking, thinking about having a family with you.”

“Your biological clock, probably,” I snarled.

“Perfect! There it is. There’s you being grown up. A sarcastic 17 year old. You’re a flimsy person.”

“No, I’m not. You can only see me in two dimensions, that’s all.”

“Yeah, exactly, you’re a cartoon. A pretend writer.”

“Fuck. I care about words. Is that so bad? Nobody else here seems to. Words are all we have. You take away words and we’re cave men grunting at the sky – first one’s grunting it’s beautiful and wondering how it gets to be that color and the second one’s grunting about how he plans to go to the third cave later on to visit the cute young cave girl there.”

Jayne would have laughed before, now she made sure she didn’t even grin.

“What happened to them?” I said.

“I told you. They’re gone. Dumped. Nobody can find them.”

I got a sick feeling in my stomach, like I was going to throw.

“Five minutes,” she said. “And out.”

Jayne went into the living room. I zombied my way to the bedroom, got my guitar, my laptop, car keys, toothbrush and prescriptions. I looked back in the living room as I was going.  She was staring out the window.           

“You make people believe in you then you let them down,” she said.           

“Yeah. It’s cause I want people to hurt like I do,” I said.           

I sat in my car, with the stuff dumped in the back seat, wondering where to go. There was a Motel 6 on 95 I drove by every day going to work, the day rate wasn’t outrageous, I figured that’d be as good a place as any to think things through. I didn’t have to be back to work until Monday. On the way there I made a pit stop at a liquor store and got a 1.75 of bourbon, some potato chips and Slim Jims.

The check-in clerk was a very pleasant and cheery woman of around forty. I appreciated that she was cheery on the night shift. In turn I was equally pleasant, smiles mirroring back and forth, no dark clouds anywhere, all right with the world. I had my bourbon and snacks in a big brown paper bag that didn’t look suspicious in the least. I went to my room, then out to the ice machine, got a bucketful and a few plastic cups.           

I took out my sleeping pills and popped three, then another. Filled a cup with ice then bourbon. The chill of the first drink was luxurious. Followed by the slight internal burn and that solid acknowledgement, like an anchor, down there in the pit of my gut, that everything was all right.           

But it wasn’t.

Gerald McBoing Boing. Leaves of Grass. The Collected Works of Flannery O’Connor. The Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe. Borges, a Reader. Pale Fire. On the Road. Catcher in the Rye. The Poetry of Robert Frost. Moby Dick. Huck Finn. Dante’s Inferno, Robert Pinsky translation. Shakespeare’s plays.

It’d taken me eight years to get them. Through painful, labyrinthine processes.

I drank the cup and filled it again. Drank some more.           

“To be beat or not to be beat, that is the quest, isn’t it?” I slurred, eyes closed and floating. “Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer all the useless bling and the many narrows of mind, with their misfortunate lack of forethought, or take your arms and try to push back against a sea, no – a deluge – of these imbeciles, in a stupid futile attempt to oppose them, when you know they’re going to drown you and wash over you and they say it’s like drifting off, to drown, that is, and so you sleep, ah sleep, but there’s the rub, huh – like he said, and if I can’t dream here, how can I dream anywhere, the kind of dreams that have words in them that are still words, still words and not still words, words that aren’t still, that is, words that are living words, words that run like happy dogs across a page, words that mean what they are, the words themselves being the thing because the thing, anything, isn’t a thing until it has a name – and it’s all just a game of shuffling meaning for them, they’re just shuffling meaning off this mortal coil so then where will it be to be found again, where’s meaning going, ending up, where do we go to find it again, I mean…”           

I reached for the cup and drank it to the end, filled it and then drank and the rest of what I remember is just dark, all meaning and thought going off, off and far away.

*****