Nicholson Baker - Checkpoint

JAY: Where’s it made? Germany?

BEN: No, no, Japan.

JAY: Oh, of course. And it’s heavy, is it?

BEN: Yeah, but the great thing is, you don’t have to use a tripod. You can hold it with a handle called a speed grip. I love it.

JAY: It sounds very professional.

BEN: Oh, it’s definitely professional — I mean, I’m just an amateur, but it’s a privilege to hold this thing. I bought a couple of lenses for it, a beautiful hundred-and-ten-millimeter macro lens, butter smooth. I’m really into lenses now.

JAY: Remember that photograph of the girl, the girl running?

BEN: What girl?

JAY: The girl in Vietnam running from the napalm? She’s naked, she’s crying.

BEN: Oh, yeah, yeah.

JAY: Well, they’ve used napalm in Iraq.

BEN: I may have heard something about that.

JAY: Right off the bat they used it. At first they denied it. It came out in a newspaper. Napalm bombs. And some PR guy from the Pentagon wrote an outraged response. “We did NOT use napalm, we got rid of our stocks of napalm years ago, this is a GROSS INACCURACY and a DISSERVICE TO YOUR READERS,” and so on and so on. Well, then, of course, it turns out that, well, uh, yes, they’re shooting missiles full of this goop that starts intense fires and, well, yes, they’re using it to burn people alive, and, uh, yes, all our Army commanders do call it napalm, but it isn’t technically napalm because it’s not naphtha-poly-toly-moly-doodlemate, whatever. Whatever the formula was when they first invented it back behind the stadium.

BEN: The stadium.

JAY: The Harvard stadium. That’s where they invented it. So this is a different chemical formula, but the people who shoot the missiles call it napalm, the generals call it napalm, because hey, it’s exploding globs of fiery jelly that cause an agonizing death. In fact, it’s improved fire jelly — it’s even harder to put out than the stuff they used in Vietnam. And Korea. And Germany. And Japan. It just has another official name. Now it’s called Mark 77. I mean, have we learned nothing? Mark 77! I’m going to kill that bastard.

BEN: No you’re not.

JAY: Penisfucker!

BEN: Jay, relax.

JAY: Why should I relax? Jiminy Cricket. Anyway. So you bought a camera, did you? How diverting. How much did you spend?

BEN: It doesn’t matter.

JAY: Look, we’re having a talk. You tell me you bought a camera. I say that that’s glorious news, and I ask you how much it was.

BEN: I got it used.

JAY: I see, so it was probably cheaper than it would have been had you gotten it new, am I right?

BEN: Yes.

JAY: How much cheaper?

BEN: Oh, it cost me, let’s see, about twelve hundred for the body and the macro lens.

JAY: Whoa, not that cheap.

BEN: Yeah, and then I got a wide-angle lens for another six hundred, and another lens after that, and I got an extension tube coming, so it continues.

JAY: Boy, that’s serious money. You know I sold my car last week? I got eighteen hundred dollars for it. Of course the hood kept flying up in my face. “All right, where’s the road?” But I’m sure your camera is worth it. And your “speed grip.”

BEN: Well, you can get some amazing deals right now, because everybody’s panicking and dumping their film cameras so that they can raise enough money to buy one of those super-expensive digital cameras.

JAY: I thought film was dead.

BEN: It’s dying, but it isn’t dead. The larger formats still hold more detail. Look, my friend, look. Okay, they used napalm. That’s very bad. I agree. Shooting the head of state is not a solution.

JAY: I don’t like guns.

BEN: What are you, a swordsman? Are you going to flip a dagger into him?

JAY: No.

BEN: Are you going to blow up the White House?

JAY: Of course not; think of the innocent people. That’s what they would do. In fact, that’s what they did do.

BEN: So — how were you planning on doing it?

JAY: Couple of ways. I’ve got some radio-controlled flying saws, they look like little CDs but they’re ultrasharp and they’re totally deadly, really nasty.

BEN: Deadly nasty saws.

JAY: They’re incredible, lethal as hell. And a few other avenues of effort going forward, as well. I’ve got a huge boulder I’m working on that has a giant ball bearing in the center of it so that it rolls wherever I tell it to. And it’s indestructible. It’s made of depleted uranium and it’s a hundred tons of metal that just rolls, baby. So that’s an option.

BEN: You’re going to squash the president?

JAY: If I have to, I will. I met this inventor at a bar in Nahant. This guy is brilliant. He came up with the aimable saws, and if anything he’s more upset with the war than I am, so he’s not about to sell his inventions to the military.

BEN: So — where’s all this gear? I didn’t see any big boulders parked in the entrance when I came in.

JAY: You know that you can almost see the White House from this window? See that little tuft of trees there? I think it’s just to the right of that. Right there. I have some unusual bullets, too.

BEN: You know, you’re getting me nervous.

JAY: I’m getting myself nervous. Yesterday I walked around looking at all the people, wondering who’s a staffer, who’s a lobbyist. All these earnest faces. Parts of Washington are so beautiful, the Capitol Building, I mean, wow, that thing is stately. Big dome sitting on top of it. Then looking down over the Mall. A lot of money expended on that Lincoln Monument. And then you’ve got the White House, a little over to one side. And in your mind you have this piece of dark mischief, and you wonder if people can tell.

BEN: Oh, brother.

JAY: The problem is that the real elements that are moving Washington are not on the Mall. The Department of Defense is off across the river in that huge fortress, that brain-warper of a building. Five sides. It’s like it’s intentionally made to drive you over the edge just thinking about it.

BEN: Don’t think about it.

JAY: Wolfowitz is there. I mean, what’s up with him? And then the CIA over in McLean, Virginia.

BEN: “The truth shall make you free.” You know they’ve got that chiseled in the marble of the lobby?

JAY: No, I didn’t. And then all the consulting companies and the big federal departments out in Silver Spring, and Alexandria, Virginia, and Bethesda, and all these places. Spread out all over, far as the eye can see.

BEN: That’s deliberate, that they’re spread out. The whole beltway idea—

JAY: Yeah, so what you have in downtown Washington is this artificial image of a capital city. You’ve got the grandeur, you’ve got the art museums, the Hirshhorn, the Smithsonian, the Natural History Museum, you’ve got the museum of the African American, you’ve got the museum of the Native American — gee whiz, kids, this is the United States of America! And then you’ve got this unelected fucking drunken OILMAN over there squatting in the house itself. Muttering over his prayer book every morning. Then he gives the order to invade. That’s how this began, you know.

BEN: How it began? Why don’t you tell me.

JAY: Do you really want to know, or are you just being therapeutic with me?

BEN: I don’t care. You don’t have to tell me anything. You called me up. I’m here.

JAY: But do you want to know?

BEN: Sure, I want to know. Yes.

JAY: Well, so last year, I marched on the White House. This was at the very beginning of the war. First they had a tip that Saddam was in a certain house, so they sent in that cruise missile to kill him. But, oopsie, he wasn’t there — yet another totally illegal assassination bungled by the CIA. And then, I think it was the next day, there was the huge attack on all the palaces. Not military targets. Against the Geneva Conventions.