The Cerebral Catalyst

It wasn’t as if he could crib one off the Internet. There was a lot more to it than simply re-assembling it like a Mr. Potato Head toy. Wasn't there?

Flying in the face of his last two thoughts towards his laptop, Charlie Naseweis searched male heroes in fiction. It led him towards a source.

— Formula writing. An off-the-peg identity. Just need a genre, he thought out loud.

— What about hard-boiled detective? said a female voice behind him.

— What about hard-boiled detectives? You got something against me sister? Is it the name?

— No, I assure you Mr. Naseweis. Your ethnicity is not what concerns me. It’s your credibility as a man, answered Naomi Rittenberg, Charlie’s first caller of the morning, of the week in fact. And it was already Thursday.

— My credit’s not too good right now, sister. Spent my last bean on this here PC. But then I wouldn’t be a hard-boiled hero, if I didn’t have an easy-come-easy-go attitude to financial management. Not to mention a client list you could write on a grain of rice with a magic marker.

— Quite the wit, Mr. Naseweis.

— Whether you take me seriously or not, Ms....

— Call me Naomi.

— Naomi... my credibility as a man largely depends on your good faith. My credibility with the world at large depends on a suspension of disbelief, which quite frankly, I find incredible.

Naomi Rittenberg did something small and seemingly insignificant with her cigarette and her painted nails. It may or may not have been a clue to something interesting later. It nevertheless established a sense of presence in the room, a sloping-floored office over a run-down discount carpet shop nowhere near Osnabrűck station. She didn't miss Germany as much as she did smoking in public places. She had her Lucky Strike between her red lips while she talked.

— Mr. Naseweis, I’d like you to find me the end of a narrative thread. Think you can you do that?

— 125 a day plus expenses and I’ll get you your lost plot.

Naomi crushed the cigarette in her palm as soon as she went down the narrow winding stairs. She never smoked on duty.

Charlie thought he'd go to the nearest public house. Just for a change of scenery. There was something about being near men that was healthy. But first he'd call on an acquaintance friend of his: a visiting tutor at the Metropolitan University of Social Mobility, Steve Crapper. He’d known him for four years, but Charlie couldn’t really tell you if Crapper came from somewhere small in North Yorkshire or somewhere middling in the Thames Valley, if he was anywhere between five-foot-eight and six-two, 43 and 58 years old, thinning on top or already bald.

— There's nothing quite like nihilism when there's nothing left to believe in, he was saying to no one in particular. It was Crapper’s favorite line.

He had in actual fact spoken to nobody, since everybody had left the classroom after he turned around to clean the board. A void. Four letters and one diphthong didn't seem like enough. Being a nihilist Crapper spent a lot of thinking about nothing in particular. Nothing is a very comprehensive discipline.

The sign on the door read: Dr. Crapper Anti-Social Policy. Crapper himself added the Anti- in chalk every day.

Charlie knocked, then walked straight in. He'd interrupted Crapper in the middle of looking at Supermassive Black Hole by Muse on YouTube.

Goddamn internet, thought Charlie.

— Ah! Charlie Naseweis. My favorite Mr. Potato Head googleganger, said Crapper.

— Very funny. Look, I got a problem. The punters are sick to death of non-story. It's been so done already. We need a new angle on this one. But if he refuses to do story again, what can we do?

— You're a hard-boiled hero for Pete's sake. Do something proactive. What about the girl? Get her in on this. Can't you...?

— You want that I should make it with her, said Charlie in his best Italian American grammar.

— That's your usual male role, isn't it?

— I’m tired of that libido shit. It don’t work for me anymore. These days, a man is judged by the email in his bulk box. Not the bulge in his male box.

— Why not get a hold of the guy who's pulling the strings? Ask him a few questions, suggested Crapper quixotically.

— What? You mean I could do that? replied Charlie, furrowing his brow quizzically.

— Why not? What was it you once said to me? “Since this verisimilitude is never for a moment actually real, then nothing is really inadmissible.”

— I said that?

— Sure.

— How do you know it’s a he?

— Come on Charlie. Are you V.I. Warshawski? Is this Bleeding Kansas?

Charlie watched as Crapper rolled the tiniest cigarette he'd ever seen. He thought Crapper was talking a load of cockamamie bull.

— You mean we could actually contact him...

— Charlie. They get delusions of grandeur. End up playing all the roles.

That night Charlie had an all-too convenient dream. He met the creator of his moral universe. The creator told him to get the hell out of his face: it was far too late for men’s work.

— But Crapper said you’d...

— Who he? The guy who invented the toilet? yawned the creator, scratching his testes with one hand and rubbing the nape of his neck with the other.

— No. A friend of mine.

— Jesus wept. You have a friend? Why aren’t you bothering him at ten past four in the morning then? Leave me alone, will you?

Feeling rejected, Charlie, as a giant pink mouse in stereo headphones and high-heels, sang opera and attempted a high wire act over the traffic on Stevenson Expressway. He landed on a hybrid Toyota Prius below. There the dream ended, but continued to plague his waking consciousness over his eggs over easy. It was another inner voice talking.

What's so hard, boys? Stop cataloguing, stop putting things in boxes, make those leaps of imagination, let the stabilizers off and ride. Show what I’m thinking. Reveal me from the outside in. Not the inside out. Show what I look like, smell like, walk like, eat like and SMOKE like...

Charlie had a brainwave. In it was the germ of an idea he had had since the start of the case. He sensed what Naomi was missing in her life, apart from cigarettes. A her. A her story could not be told by a him. The best he could do was listen to as many hers as he could find. Listen and take apart piece by piece till he had enough parts to create his own story, his own narrative thread. One he could believe in. One that was authentically, really his.

I need to sit and think this one through, thought Charlie, revealing himself for the first time during the case. It felt OK. It would feel even better on the biffy. A relaxing, non-threatening environment where no one bothers you, and you can be one with your thoughts. On the can, a man can think, reflected Charlie. He hung his sign up around the handle and closed the bathroom door. The sign read: PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB, but not in the sense that Charlie meant. A fundamental problem with the imaginary: they take everything literally.

Hind end parked, Charlie wondered where the aptronymically-named Thomas Krapper sat when he’d had the idea for his famous invention. He would ask Steve at their next meeting. He'd be sure to know. He was full of shit. No. Yes. But... he was a good friend. His only friend. His more able foil in the general schemata of things, nihilist crap notwithstanding.

At the margins, Naomi Rittenberg was relieved the men had finally come to their senses. Now she could smoke. Addiction to a lethal psychoactive substance was one thing, but she drew the line at gender political posturing by two-dimensional stereotypes. Give her a real man any day. Grit and muscle. Flesh and bone. And no hyper-masculine meat head either. Tough and cynical, but tender. A wild yet mild man. A taboo-breaker who could embrace his full range as a rounded being: male and female. A role model. Not that cackhanded post-modern hard-bitten non-entity. No sir.

She took out a cigarette, stepped outside the narrative, lit up and shone.

______________________________________
Phil Doran is a (UK) performance poet/comedian/teacher/father/writer. He has published work in Zygote in My Coffee and has also self-published a book of 60-odd short stories. More poems and fiction on www.thespaghettifaction.blogspot.com.

posted 05.13.08.

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