Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

"I took a couple of classes. Online. But my instructor called me Don Juan because in all the simulations I used my masculine wiles instead of, like, a waterboard. When the situation allowed for it. Arab men are attracted to me. They have a whole different take on buttly rapaciousness over there."

"Don."

"Sorry, baby. And what I mean is virtual Arab men, anyway. I'm not a racialist."

"Racist," said Sasha.

"Racialist," said Don. "They're different words."

"Not for the people who use them both," said Sasha.

"Touche, douche," said Don.

"These simulations," I said now, "this class, was this through the army?"

"Not really."

"No?"

"It was on the fake internet."

"The fake internet?"

"Ask the fellow you supposedly work with."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"That's the kind of thing a guy who knows all about the fake internet would say."

"Really, I don't."

"Your ignorance is duly noted. Got that, satellite?"

"Got it," I said.

"Wasn't talking to you. But now that I am, do you have any questions you want to ask me?"

"I didn't come to ask you questions," I said. "I'm not exactly sure why I'm here. I think I'm supposed to make sure that you're okay. To find out how your father can help. He really does want to see you. Do you have a message for him?"

"Yes, I do, Mr. Burke."

"Milo, please."

"Okay, Milo. I certainly do have a message for my father. Please tell him that my mother, his precious Nathalie, the woman he loved so much he let her fester for twenty years in nowhere towns, was better off without him. And that the son he cares for so deeply that he tried to make sure he never found out about him really just hopes that someday soon he, Purdy, goes for a checkup, and the doctor tells him he's dying of cock cancer, and then he, my wonderful father, goes out into the street, stunned by the news, and gets hit by a bus, and lives, only to spend the entire following year rotting from cock cancer and in horrible pain from getting just crushed by that bus, one of those huge kinds with the accordion middle, and him just begging for somebody to feed his mouth a gun. Tell my father that."

"Okay," I said. "I'll try to remember it all."

"And also tell him that the envelopes will need to get much thicker. And that I look forward to joining him for some wonderful father-son time very soon. It may sound corny, but I'd like him to take me to the Bronx Zoo."

"That's the fun one," I said.

"Tell me," said Don. "Was there anything you wanted to be before you became some rich dude's bitch?"

"An artist," I said.

"So you wanted to be some rich dude's bitch all along."

"I guess," I said.

"He guesses."

"By the way," I said. "And don't take this the wrong way."

"What's that?"

"You sound a little like your father."

"I never had a father."

Here came the international teens with their embossed leathers, their cashmere hoodies and pimpled excitements. They had traveled from China, Japan, Russia, Kuwait, just to squeeze into the lone Mediocre elevator car and delay my arrival at work. The international teens studied English in the language program down the hall from our suite. Who knew why they bothered? Maybe someday Business English would be the only trace of our civilization left. Bored youth across the global globosphere would memorize its verb tenses, concoct filthy rhymes in its honor. Maybe they'd speak Pig English to trick the oldsters. Pig English would be Latin.

Rumor had it the whole deal was a scam, that the students were gaming us. We sponsored them for visas, and when the paperwork went through, they transferred to one of the online universities, lit out for the territories, Vegas, Miami, Maui. No classes to attend, all their assignments written by starving grad students and emailed for grading to shut-in adjuncts scattered across the North American landmass, the international teens would have a whole semester for the most delightful modes of free fall. Daddy's Shanghai factories or Caspian oil pipes would foot the bills.

But rumor also had it that Mediocre had to somehow benefit, or the practice would have been stopped long ago.

The international teens wore jackets and carried handbags worth half my monthly paycheck, back when I received a monthly paycheck. They clutched cell phones and cigarette lighters shaped like postmodern architectural masterpieces. The international teens rode to the roof to smoke. Later they would gather in the lounge area, nap. One boy, a handsome kid in rumpled club wear, could often be glimpsed snoozing on the suede divan outside Dean Cooley's suite. No other disco napper dared claim this inviting nest, and I never discovered who the boy was, or why he merited this dispensation, but sometimes I found myself unconsciously bowing my head in his presence.

Now the international teens jammed me harder up near the button panel, chatted in their conquering tongues. Their giggles, I concluded, regarded shabby me. It felt good to be colonized, oppressed, a subaltern at last.

You reactionary scumbag, I upbraided myself. But I'm just being honest, I replied. Your so-called honesty is a weapon against the weak, I said. Fuck off, I retorted, I am the weak. Look at my dollar! It's shriveling in my hand! It's like a vampire caught out by the sun. My dollar is exploding into dust. I'm not the bad guy anymore! Han brothers and sisters have the wheel of this wreck now!

"Excuse me, sir," said one of the Chinese students. "I must ask once again, I do not mean to offend. Is this your stop?"

Another nodded, held the door. How long had they been waiting for me to leave the car?

"Yes, thanks, xie xie ," I said, slinked past them into the lounge area.

The receptionist had gone to lunch, left Horace curled up in one of the Eames knockoffs with a twist of pemmican and a paperback book.

"What up, kid?" he said. "How's my home slice?"

A devout ageist, Horace frequently mocked me with antiquated slang.

"I'm okay, thanks."

I took a seat nearby.

"You passing the dutchie, or what?"

"I don't know what that means, Horace."

"Sure you don't."

"What are you reading?"

"This book my sister got for one of her college seminars. It's called The Unfortunate ."

Horace held up the book. It was called The Infortunate.

"You sure?" I said.

Horace flipped the book around.

"What the fuck are you talk-Ah, good catch, Meister Po. Anyway, it's an awesome book. It's about this dude back in pre-revolutionary times. Like his memoir. He was in law school and living on the family dime in London, but really just partying and shit. Listen to this sentence here: 'In my Clerkship, I did little else but vapour about the Streets, with my Sword by my Side; as for studying the Law, little of that serv'd me, my Time being taken up with pursuing the Pleasures of the Town. .' He's like the first slacker. Just saying you're not the boss of me to his whole world."

"Like you."

"Hardly," said Horace. "There are no slackers anymore. Your generation murdered the dream. You guys were lazy pigs. We're more like highly efficient pleasurebots. But this guy, he really sparked something, in his way."

"Sounds interesting."

"Don't be a phony, Judge Holden."

"Your references are all over the place. You know that, right?"

"That's the point," said Horace.

"Oh," I said.

"Got it, Francis Gary Numan Powers? William of Orange Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?"

Our grandchildren would be steeped in some other nation's trivialized history. It would be their salvation.

"Got it."

"So anyway, this guy, Moraley is his name. He's a real joker. Does no work, gets kicked out of school. Finally gets cut off by his mother after his father dies, and he gambles and whores himself into serious debt. As only a true vaporing dude could."