Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

He passed the joint to Sara, saw her drag a deep tight bread times drag, wondered why he hadn’t bitched about this pot-party scene, so patently a show-the-flag Jack Barron-returns-to-the-people schtick, had looked forward to it, need for… need for…?

“Hey, man,” the Wolfman said, “those stories going ’round about you and the Foundation true?”

“What stories?” Barron asked, and the whiff of a very professional rumor-mill (Luke’s rumor-mill already) hung in the air.

The Wolfman took the joint from Sara, dragged, held smoke in his lungs and talked through it in old-time pothead screen-door croak. “Say you’re out for Bennie Howards. For blood. Last show a real gas. Public freezer. Man you—” The Wolfman spasmed, coughed smoke in talk-inhale conflict resolution, then immediately continued, loud, and gesticulating in new-found lung-freedom. “Yeah the word is that you’re in with the Public Freezer cats, playing it real cool till you got the Foundation set up for the kill, and then Pow! down on the fuckers with both feet, split things wide open, and then everyone’s got a chance at living forever not just the usual fat-cat fascist bastards, but like people, dig? Like we’re all people, dig? One thing you glom on to when you’re born, no matter what you do later, like whether you pile up bread or not, or how long you wear your hair, or whether you got a nine-to-fiver or just like make it, whether you’re white or black or purple dig? Yeah, like this death-kick is laid on everyone as soon as they’re born. I mean, one boat we’re all in together— people, see? Like they got Medicare for everyone cause they finally dug that you shouldn’t die just because you’re wasted. Well, ain’t Freezing just one more medical-type thing to beat the death-kick? So it should be free for everyone, like the rest of it. Like people. I’m people, you’re people, Bennie Howards’ people. We’re all people, and we all should have the same odds to live, dig?”

Barron felt the wheels turning. Cat’s riffing out straight SJC party line with a neat little Jack Barron tie-in, too neat. Got put in his head real professional-like, but he doesn’t know it, thinks it’s his own scam, in the air, is all. Rumor-mill stuff, all right: whispers in drunken barroom voices, on street corners, discos real-spontaneous-looking, just stuff everyone hears around. And ten to one it all comes from Evers, Mississippi… And I oughta know, I invented the schtick way back when.

Yeah, Barron thought, as he picked up on the moment hanging in the air, the four of them looking to him with life-death desperation in their eyes, vacuum-eyes of Brackett Audience Count estimated hundred million people, planted story, but a good one ’cause it hit a nerve, Luke and Morris are right, death is like the issue. Face of death, we’re all just people, do anything (lie, kill, form Foundation for Human Immortality, sell out to Bennie Howards) to stay alive just one more second, ’cause when you’re dead, mortality bullshit dies with you. Only two-party system on issue of life and death: Death Party and Life Party. Gut-level Presidential campaign: SJC-Republican-Jack Barron Party of life eternal versus Howards-Democratic Party of death by the numbers.

Jesus H. Christ on a Harley! Barron thought as it hit his gut-reality for the very first time—I actually could make the old college try for President!

“Well, like I’m with you in principle,” Barron said, with horrid awareness of his words as possible projected instrument of history (stuff history!) public statement from the Man Who thrust unwillingly into electric-contact reality social-conscience reality (goddamned silly-ass Berkeley bullshit is all!) he needed like an extra rectum. “But from where I sit, the whole Public Freezer schtick’s nowheresville. Don’t you see what you’re bucking? Bucking Benedict Howards and like billions in frozen assets bucking the Democratic Party that’s elected every president but two for over half a century bucking Teddy the Pretender and his ghosts and bucking the Republicans too—they don’t want Public Freezing, just a piece of the action for their own fat cats, is all, and they’re still rolling in bread. So what’s that leave on the other side, the SJC and my big mouth, and a few hundred fruitcakes parading around with picket signs? Big fucking deal!”

“Hey, you’re beautiful, man!” the Wolfman said sincerely. “You got more people listen to you than any cat in the country, and you don’t dig your own power, so groovy. You’re the coolest head around, is what you are, sitting up there with those sons of bitches, bigger than any of ’em and not playing that game, still keeping your cool. Cat we can trust. Shit, you’re beautiful, man.”

“He’s right,” the blonde chick said. “Don’t you dig? You got the power like the rest of the bastards, but you’re the only one didn’t get it on a pile of dead bodies, so you can use it the way it should be used, for people… ”

“Don’t you see, Jack?” Sara asked, staring hungrily at him with those old Berkeley eyes. “Power… Remember how we talked in the old days about power, what we’d do when we got it? Sure you remember all that bullshit. But don’t you see, it doesn’t have to be bullshit anymore. We’ve got you, and you’ve got the power. You weren’t afraid to lay yourself on the line in the old days, when it accomplished nothing, and now you can do it again, but this time it’ll matter.”

“Power!” Barron snapped. “None of you know shit from shinola about power ! Look around you, take a good look, and you’ll see Howards and Teddy and Morris— that’s power. They’re people, dig, people, is all, but, baby, they’re junkies. All of ’em power-junkies. That’s what power does to you, a fucking monkey on your back—just like junk. First shot’s free, kiddies, but after that you’ve gotta go out and cop more and more and more to feed the monkey. I’m a beautiful cat, eh? I’ll take you outside and show you fifty former beautiful cats you wouldn’t piss on because, baby, they’re junkies. And a junkie don’t give a shit about anything but junk. Power and smack—it’s all the same junk.”

“Luke Greene’s a junkie?” Sara said quietly.

“Bet your sweet ass he is! There he is, stuck in the Mississippi boonies, the poor lonely fucker, surrounded by sycophants and plain ordinary schmucks, hating every minute of it, hating himself, hating manipulating people… All that race-put-down come-on—only it’s real. He hates himself for being a nigger, thinks of himself as a nigger surrounded by niggers. Luke Greene— there was a beautiful cat, my best friend, and now look at him, hating himself, hating everything, nothing but a big throbbing vein to feed the power-monkey on his back. You wanna see me like that, Sara?”

The silence was so thick you could cut it with a knife. What brought that on? Barron wondered. Jeez, what’s in this grass, maybe it is loaded with opium junk… Junk… Yeah, maybe that’s it man, once you really were a power-junkie, in the old days, just a bag now and then to keep the monkey quiet. Wasn’t that why you got yourself the show in the first place, biggest jolt of power-junk you ever had? Worked funny, didn’t it, OD’d you, got you off it? And now you got everyone shaking the stuff under your nose, feel that hunger so hot you can taste it, and everyone telling you go ahead shoot up, you can’t get hooked again sonny, you’re a beautiful cat!

And that’s where all this is at, he knew. Whole Village is a power-junk supermarket for old Jack Barron, and that’s why you dug this party idea, baby, you smelled the shit like an old junkie, couldn’t keep away. One fix, and you’re hooked.