The Fantasy Years

FANS OF RUSH LIMBAUGH knew their world. They knew what was going on. They had only to remind themselves how much better grounded they were, how much more realistic their understanding of things were. From the gritty details of a debate; to its lofty, abstract heights of principle:

“Oh, you haven’t heard about postmodernism?” asked a voice. “It’s what the liberals are teaching our kids today at college. Postmodernism is like relativism.”
“And relativism says there are no absolutes.”
“Postmodernism says meanings change depending on how you look at things,” came a voice in Nevada.
“It’s like political correctness on crack.”
“Except instead of renaming things they’re re-interpreting things.”
“And instead of re-interpreting, they’re reinventing.”
“And instead of reinventing, they use it to justify anything.”

And on the radio, the voices commiserated in bombastic exaggeration:

“And now these liberals want to rewrite American history and say the fifties weren’t happy days just because of segregation.”
“What is it with these revisionists? The fifties were happy days even if there was segregation.”
“The fifties were the Good Old Days!” said a voice in New Jersey.
“If you ask anyone who lived then, they’ll tell you the fifties were the Good Old Days,” said another voice Arkansas.
“But not Hilary,” said another.
“Oh, no. Not the liberals.”
“Of course not. Hilary said the Fifties weren’t the good old days in her book.”
“Even if she did enjoy them!”
“Of course she enjoyed the Fifties! She just can’t admit it.”
“As if any of the white liberals didn’t enjoy the Fifties,” said a voice in Kansas.
“They all did. But white liberals can’t admit it. It wouldn’t be PC,” said another.
“They want us all to feel bad.”
“Because America went to sock hops!”
“And America had just saved the free world!”
“And drive-ins were popular!”
“And Elvis was big!”
“But to the liberals, this was somehow bad.”

Don knew all about the fifties. He knew all about how things used to be by law for people his skin color. And it amazed him how quickly white people went from lynching black people to appropriating their style. Starting with Elvis. No, starting with Chet Baker. No starting with all white jazz players in the 1930s…down to today. So Don didn’t trust white rappers. Don didn’t trust white actors. Don didn’t trust white women who liked to be seen with black men when it suited their public image. He didn’t even particularly like a lot of the white movie stars. Except Kim Basinger. He liked Kim Basinger okay, whatever happened to her.

The thoughts and suspicions uncoiled through Don’s mind as he drove along a highway, heading west out of Missouri, staring out over his steering wheel at the dark promise of the American night.
Don’s job delivering and installing parts for washing and dry-cleaning machines took him further and further from St. Louis. Not just to Illinois but also to Kentucky and Arkansas. He had the parts and toolbox in the back of his car. Like everything else in his life, it just kind of evolved this way.

One day he was running an errand for the owners of Stern Laundry Parts. Months later, he was making appointments with dry cleaning shops to come and fix their equipment.

At least, he got to drive a company car. A Taurus. And he got plenty of time on his own, which he liked. And he made decent money and didn’t have to worry about anything much, expect for possibly being pulled over.

Of course, being a young black man, the cops would probably be extra chickenshit with him. It made Don wonder briefly if he needed a license to cross a state line to do business. Didn’t intrastate commerce fall under the Federal Trade Commission?

Mike sneezed, sniffed, then wiped his nose with a handkerchief, and caught a glance of himself in the glass door before pulling it open handily. Not bad, he thought, then took the first step into the office building that could be the first step to his new life.

His yellow shirt was obviously starched and pressed. His jeans were clean. He wore polished boots and a Parker pen in his breast pocket- not a Bic like the chumps used at work. He glanced at the legend on the wall, with office locations. Pro-Work Solutions Suite 1-120. Mike ambled down the hall until he found the door.

Inside, after introducing himself to the college girl at the front desk, she asked him to fill out the form on the clipboard which she handed to him and to attach his resume to it.

“I don’t have a resume,” he said, fudging.
“That’s okay. Just fill out the forms. And we’ll need to see your driver’s license and your social security card.”

Mike took the clipboard and took a seat among the row of chairs surrounding the empty waiting area. One other person was waiting. A young girl. Pretty too. But she looked like she’d been captured and shoved into a business casual suit. A shame, thought Mike, flashing her the sheepish smile all job-seekers everywhere have.

She smiled and went back to shuffling the resumes in her binder.
Mike was taking the plunge. If he was going to get out of delivery driving all together, he’d have to get his foot in the door somewhere. His father-in-law suggested a temp-to-perm place. Twenty minutes later, after Mike filled out the forms and turned in his ID cards, the door opened and a young woman called for him.

“Hi Mike. I’m Vicky.”

As they passed in to the back of the office, she asked, “Oh, is there a resume with this?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t bring one,” he said and for the next ten minutes as he explained every class of truck he had ever driven all he could think were variations of the thought: resume? oh how could I have forgotten, I can’t believe I forgot one but I never knew to bring one until the interview ended and the woman, Vicky, said she’d keep an eye out for jobs for him and he knew that was a damn lie.

Vicky walked with him to the front office and handed his file back to the receptionist. There was a different receptionist now. More people waited for interviews now. And there was another person behind the receptionists’ desk. A young man. Mike instinctively pitied the guy. He had big, white teeth, red hair and a gawky expression to him. No doubt from college too.

“Can you file Mr. Hurtfield’s application?” Vicky asked the young man.

“Sure,” he said.

Vicky shook hands firmly with Mike, giving him a smile. Then she turned back to go inside. Mike headed toward the door.

“Oh, sir.” The young man said.

Mike stopped and turned around.

“I don’t see your resume here.”

THERE WAS NO EQUAL TIME for the opposing view to Rush’s rantings. Millions of Americans heard only the braying voices of one side. Rush was syndicated across hundreds of stations. His imitators filled up the time slots surround his, imitating his tone, if not his ideas. America was pissed off and the listeners wanted to hear it said so. Rush could say anything he wanted. He and his imitators were free to critique, to attack, to exhort, to demand, to bully, to belittle whoever they pleased and no one could stop them. No one could stand up to them. So in rural Indiana:

“Troopergate is the same as Watergate.”
“It’s the same as Nixon’s use of secret operatives.”
“Clinton’s abuses are the same as Nixon’s mismanagement of the White House.”
“Nixon’s flawed personality is the same as Clinton’s flawed personality,” a voice in Ohio said.
“Nixon’s paranoia was like Clinton’s overactive sex life.”
“Except Nixon was a super patriot who stepped over the line.”
“And Nixon served proudly in the military,” said a voice in Texas.
“But Clinton avoided the military.”
“Like the rest of those maggot-infested hippies from the Nineteen Sixties.”
“Yeah, Clinton is as flawed as Nixon,” declared a voice in Oklahoma.
“But Nixon is guilty only of being overzealous.”

But surely this wasn’t America. Surely no one could get on the radio day after day, hammering away steadily at the same targets – liberals, the Clintons, the Kennedys, political correctness, welfare, social security — without the targets getting to talk back. Where was the balance? The rebuttle? The ability for the accused to defend themselves? Surely, a provision was written somewhere that demanded equal time for this inflammatory speech. A guideline. A principle. There was: the Fairness Doctrine. But the FCC Chairman stopped enforcing that rule a decade ago: it inhibited the freedom of one-sided debate.

And so the barrage of bombast just kept spilling forth, it kept cascading down in thunderous torrents. And in South Carolina.
“National healthcare is the same as communism,” said a voice.
“And communism is the same as atheism,” replied another.
“And atheism is the same as godlessness.”
“And Americans are a God-fearing people. So we have no place for communism here.”
“Not even in its first stages like nationalized socialized medicine.”
“Nazism is short for national socialism. People don’t know that.”
“I bet the Nazis had no trouble seeing a doctor.”
“And you can see what happened to that society.”
“Hitler promised the German people the world.”
“But he delivered only destruction.”
“And that’s what you get when a politician promises you an easy life.”
“Like Bill and Hillary. Offering to make the government bigger to supposedly make life easier.”
“But we say no thanks to their snake oil.”
“Life may be a little harder.”
“But we say no.”
“We don’t expect handouts.”
“We understand that we might have to get our health insurance through our work, and the paperwork might be a little hassle, but it’s better if it keeps us free.”

Brandon worked regular hours at the Blockbuster now that he left Denny’s. The hours got him home at a decent time. In his own way, he was on a path. Already he felt slightly embarrassed for being a 24 year- old at the community college, instead of being just out of high school like most of the young people there. Of course, Dallas County Community College had all kinds of students – even ones much older than him. Some of them were even old people, with gray hair and everything.

He’d bumped up to twelve credits a semester since he met Carolyn. Just to get it done. And now in the evenings, when he got his homework done, he paged through applications for four year college. Real college.

Only after everything was done, all the work, all the class work, the homework and the applications to school—only after that—would he call Shane and have a couple beers to watch the Cowboys. “My Cowboys,” as Brandon called them. And sure enough, Shane would arrive, trusty twelve pack of Bud Light in hand.

“You sure it’s okay for you to drink beer?” he asked, settling into a chair.
“Yeah. What do you mean?” Brandon said.
“You sure Carolyn doesn’t mind?”
“Dude.”
“I’m just kidding.”
“I know you are.” Brandon said, working the TV sound against the CD player blasting Pantera. Carolyn was out at her sister’s tonight.
“I still like to party but I’ve got a lot going on.”
“I guess you do,” Shane said, shaking his head.
“Oh, shut up and drink.”
“I mean, it’s cool that you have a girlfriend and all. But you’ve really let her go to your head.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, dude, you don’t have to totally give up on your friends.”
“Who says I’m giving up on my friends?”
“No one. It’s just that we were there for you when you didn’t have a chick. And now you’re all about getting ahead and school and all that.”

“But you’ve gotta understand this is the real me. I was always the guy who was going to go to school. All that staying out all night. That…You can do that a while. But then you grow up.”
“Dude,” Shane said, waving a lazy hand at Brandon’s explanations. “Just say it and cut all this bullshit about the ‘real you’: you’re glad you finally got a girlfriend.”

The TV was on in the bar in Michigan after the Lions beat the Cowboys. The two customers had enjoyed so much making cracks at the players, and had drank so much beer and so many shots between them, they couldn’t stop themselves when the game finally ended.
“Hillary thought she was going to ram big government down our throats,” said the customer with the mustache.
“Her health plan was going to be like a big tongue depressor. And she was telling us to say ahhh,” said the other, wearing his gun club gimme cap.
“Like a big horse pill of communism to swallow. Cause that shit was communistic, the government telling us which doctors we can go to.”
“Like she was saying to the American people ‘Bend over. This won’t hurt.’”
“Turns out she and Bill had their own bitter pill to swallow.”
“Their own party voted against her. Did you see that?”
“Because Hillary doesn’t understand socialized healthcare is like anything else socialist.”
“This county doesn’t work on socialism.”
“It works on freedom.”
“Socialized healthcare is like Cuba’s communist healthcare.”
“It’s like dressing us all in the same clothes.”
“It’s like making us drive the same kind of cars.”
“It’s like making us all eat the same kind of food.”
“And the American people don’t want that.”

THE CRACKLING TIDE OF VOICES SURGED, they frothed. Although the clamoring mass drew on many voices, the choice in conversation topics was singular, unified. The topic was freedom because who didn’t like freedom? The AM radio hosts liked freedom. Listeners liked freedom. Even people who didn’t listen to AM radio liked freedom. Freedom was like a cold Slurpee on a hot summer’s day: everyone loved it.

And what truer measure of an American’s freedom than his or her right to call their neighbor whatever they damn well pleased? But something was getting in the way of this freedom, people learned. Something sought to circumscribe their liberty. It was called “political correctness.” Political correctness, they learned, wanted to stop them from saying what they damn well pleased. The sole existence of something called political correctness threatened their freedom. First it was not saying ‘lady’ or ‘Mexican’ or ‘colored’ or ‘cripple.’ Next it would be them giving up their constitutionally guaranteed rifles and shotguns. The price of liberty was eternal vigilance and the more listeners heard about political correctness, the more their anger grew, the more it was stoked, massaged, egged on, inflamed, irritated and finally vented by the same radio hosts who did so much of the talking.

But AM radio hosts didn’t need to probe the American soul too deeply to find irritation. Americans in the early 1990s had plenty of sources of frustration, just then emerging, silently, but strinkingly.
An exasperated voice said into a telephone somewhere in America: “Let me just say that your service sucks! Do you hear me? It sucks!”
“Yessir,” Jenny said. Jenny was a customer service representative, working on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa. A CSR. She’d already finished canceling the angry customer’s magazine subscription. Somehow, strangely, it had automatically charged his credit card for a renewal he didn’t order. “Anything else, sir?”
“You heard me.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Thank you then. Goodbye.”
Bing! Just because Jenny couldn’t take the headset off didn’t mean she had to let them yell in her ear. She left a finger on the volume control box. As soon as they started yelling, she turned the volume down. Like now, for example: “What kind of fucking customer service is this where I have to fucking wait on fucking hold for fifteen fucking minutes to make the address change?”

With the volume dial, Jenny brought his unhinged screaming down to a distant roar. Usually, a customer would yell themselves hoarse for ten or fifteen seconds, then their voice would edge down and she would thumb the volume dial up in increments.
“I’m sorry sir, could you repeat that?”
“I said sorry for yelling.” He was just getting it out of his system, she knew.
“Oh, well.”
“But fifteen minutes? A fifteen minute wait to do a two-second change of address? Ah, I suppose you’re used to it.”
“We are. In a way,” Jenny said.
“So a lot of people are frustrated when they call?”
“Some are.”
“Doesn’t that tell you there’s something wrong with your system?” His voice became icy, clear.
“Sir,” she wanted to say, “I just work here” but her supervisor could be listening in and Jenny knew that wouldn’t sound like a real motivated thing to say. “I don’t get to choose how the system works, unfortunately. Believe me, if I could, I would make it so that no one has to wait.”
“But let me ask you a question: what do you think of customer service that makes you wait for twenty minutes to cancel a subscription but only a couple seconds to order one?”
“I’m not paid for my opinion, sir.”
“I understand that. But I’m the customer. You’re supposed to give me good customer service and if that means I have questions you should try to answer them.”
“I am trying, sir.”
“Then tell me what you think about the customer service system!”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t think anything?”
“Well, I…”
“You’re being recorded for training purposes. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
Jenny assumed that even admitting that would get her in trouble. But yes, she was being recorded for training purposes: “I can’t really go into that.”
“The recording I listened to for twenty minutes said you were being recorded. Or are you going to tell me you’re not being recorded?”
“I don’t get to hear what the recording says.” What if others were listening? Not just her supervisor, Beverly. But others? Others she didn’t know? Others who didn’t know what a hard worker she was? Jenny broke out in the finest sheen of sweat.
“But you’re being recorded. If you weren’t being recorded what would you say?”
“Sir, can I help you with your subscription problem?”
“This is my problem. I want you to answer my question. What do you think about customer service that makes you wait for twenty minutes to cancel your subscription?”
It was like he was trying to pin her down. Trying to get something out of her. The line went quiet while she thought of an answer. Any answer that wouldn’t get her in trouble.
“Sir, I’m not paid for my thoughts.”
“Obviously,” he said and then got quiet, Jenny supposed, to embarrass her.

A minute later, after she finished the call, the word “obviously” stuck in her mind. The way he scowled it. Obviously, you’re not paid for your thoughts. Jenny wasn’t even sure how she was offended. She just knew she was. She took a deep breath, then she pushed the button bing! and another voice broke onto the line. “Well, it’s about time!” an angry woman muttered into her ear.

Nestled among the bustling urbanity of the Pitt college campus, a couple sat in a converted attic of a coffee shop. Layer after layer of yellow paint covered the walls of what used to be a firehouse. All the room’s third story windows were open, as if to air out the madness of college conversation. The young man ignored the buses, the faces, the people passing by outside on Forbes Avenue below:
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” the young man, named Ben said to his female friend sitting before him.
“Well, you should think twice before making such assumptions,” the young woman said.
And things had been going so well, Ben thought. He was halfway back to her dorm room with this conversation, saying all the right things about politics, about power, about justice. Everything a doe-eyed, vegetarian beauty could want to hear. He even believed the better part of it himself. Then he let slip a mention of “girls” when he should have said “women” and now he was in a conversational penalty box he couldn’t find his way out of.
“It wasn’t my intention to offend you.”
She stared at him mistrustfully. She was feeling her ideals strongly. His chances of going to bed with her were dwindling by the moment. Suddenly, the possibility of the day, so rank and humid outside, seemed frozen and hopeless at the table.
“Oh, it’s all apart of the patriarchal structure. You’re indoctrinated in ways you don’t even understand.”
“If I am, then I want to learn better.” Even Ben was put off by his own groveling.
“Don’t you understand how deeply embedded it is?”
“Maybe you can explain it to me.” He’d been so close to closing the deal. Their knees had been touching, he’d brushed her hand meaningfully, she kept grasping his wrist when she wanted to emphasize an idea she was getting at. Everything was before him. Like a feast.
“I don’t think so,” she said and he recognized in her tone how unappealing his pleading must be.

Whoosht! , went Dennis’ inhaler “It’s infuriating,” he said, surveying the Country Kitchen from his booth. It was his booth. Or he thought of it that way at least. He and his friend Will often met for breakfast before going to work in the morning. “It’s exasperating.”
“It’s galling,” Will said, his longish, forlorn face impassive, even as he expressed complaint.
“It’s appalling. That’s what it is. Who are these people who expect something special just because of their ancestors’ history?” Dennis asked.
“It’s unbelievable,” Will said in a monotone. His mouth hung open slightly for breath, a side effect of his deviated septum.
“I mean they get into college easier than we do. They get special dispensations for being black. Where’s the equality in that? Where’s the justice?” Dennis took a sip of his water. The waitress—Meg—approached the table with their plates of food. “You ordered the three eggs, hash browns, bacon and toast?”
“Thanks, Meg,” he said.
“Oh, and when you get a chance?” Dennis said, holding his tumbler.
“More water?” she asked.
“Thanks, hon.”
“What the hell do they expect, these people?”
“I’ll tell you what they expect. They expect something for nothing.”
“They do,” Will intoned.
“I work hard for everything I have. I never ask for anything. But these people, they have affirmative action.”
“And race-based admissions to college.”
“And quotas in the office.”
“I know we got one where I work.”
“And they got welfare.”
“And food stamps.”
“And WIC cards.”
“And Medicare.”
“And Medicaid. And it’s all a give away by the liberals. And it’s all because their liberal guilt. And they wouldn’t feel guilty if they worked for their money like I work for mine.”
“Damn straight. I work for mine, too.”
“Pass the salt, would you?”

Will passed the salt. Dennis dashed it over his eggs and began eating. Meg, the waitress, moved to and fro in the corner of Dennis’ chomping vision. One day, he thought. One day. Meg was plump but only in the healthiest way. Her curly hair dyed a sumptuous auburn. She smelled like both a peaches and roses. Always had time for a joke with him. Always glanced at him significantly when he paid his bill at the cash register. Dennis ate with a manic appetite. He ate with ferocity, as if the eggs and bacon might wander off if he didn’t gobble them down first. A piece of egg even clung to the goatee that circled his fleshy lips and covered his nearly double chins, like a kind of shag bib for his mouth. Once satiated, Dennis sat back in the booth.

“Man, you got a piece of egg…” Will gestured to his own chin.
Dennis felt for it, then placed it on the side of his plate.
“See that guy there?” Dennis nodded to Will. “The guy with the blue cap?”
Will turned to the side in the booth.
“Yep,” he said.
“That guy was in Vietnam.”
“Um-hmm.”
“I talked to him once. He said he used to fly out in a Cessna, you know, the little prop plane? They’d fly over a jungle area where there was enemy action and they’d radio in where the enemy was so the fighter-bombers could come in and napalm them.”
Will watched the customer.
“Takes balls of steel,” Dennis said.
“That reminds me,” Will said. “I got that catalogue of Vietnam patches. My cousin gave it back to me. If you’d like to see it.”
“Yeah, I’d like to see that,” Dennis said. He held up the check. Meg came and took the check with the money. You were supposed to pay at the counter at the Country Kitchen but once, a couple months back, Meg told Dennis she’d take it at the table. He never forgot her kindness at tip time, and although it wasn’t a relationship with a woman, it was an understanding at least. She did something for him. He noticed. He did something for her. She noticed. It was something.

“All done?” she asked Dennis.
“All done.”

When he got up to leave he left $4 on a $12 breakfast. Dennis said goodbye to Will and they both got in their cars to go their separate ways to work.

Talk radio blared from the speakers in Dennis’ LaSabre. Voices of irate listeners called in, condemning the current state of affairs. Dennis could only get Rush Limbaugh during lunch, so he listened to other talk radio hosts in the morning. They crowed that freedom was under threat and Dennis was inclined to think so. Dennis didn’t agree with everything Mr. Limbaugh said but he agreed with a lot of it. And just hearing the voice in the car, so animated and engaged, so palpable and real, was like having a friend along for the ride.

BUT THAT TIDE OF ANGRY VOICES grew. In numbers. And in volume. The outrage about what could and couldn’t be said by whom spread across the country, rippling through society. The talk sizzled. The talk consumed. The conversation spilled over, spreading from small towns to cities, from farms to suburbs and from cities back to farms. Yet more voices, from the stripmalls and parking lots in the center and the south of the country, to the warehouses and parking garages on the coasts. The venting session billowed wider into new radio markets.

The incredulous, aggravated tone puffed up the talk inside trailer rigs and truck stops, barbershops and break rooms, it animated the paunchy-cheeked faces, tweaking the expressions hidden behind beards and shaded under hunting caps, already distrustful of authority. Already wary of government. Trusting only the power they could exercise themselves. The freedom of movement offered by a cars and pick-ups. The personal veto power offered by a gun.

The tone of voice bled into the conversations heard in vinyl upholstered booths, in the smoking section of roadside restaurants
“Why don’t we get a special name? Blacks are free to call themselves whatever they choose. They have the freedom to speak however they like. But us whites? Well, we have to watch our mouths.”
“The African-Americans, you mean.”
“Them and the Hispano-Americans.”
“That’s what we need to be.”
“What?”
“We need to get ourselves an ethnic name like that. Become Something-Americans.”
“What can we be?”
“White-Americans.”
“How about European-Americans. Why can’t we call ourselves European-Americans?”
“Why can’t I be a Scotch-Irish-American?”
“Why can’t I be Italian-Irish American? Do you think I get any special treatment for that?”
“My grandparents were dirt poor farmers. Why shouldn’t I have a special name for that?”
“Well my ancestors were discriminated against. Why can’t I be a Dutch-Irish-Scottish-Choctaw American?”
“How do you think it was for my family?”
“You’d think my ancestors had it easy, the way these people talk today.”
“As if my ancestors weren’t poor and didn’t struggle. I remember my granddaddy’s hands calloused from picking cotton. And these people want a special status?”
“I don’t see where these people get off saying they’re the only ones who were discriminated against,” and with that, the man cleared his throat and spit.

The conversation crackled, the conversation consumed the nation, binding strangers together by a common rage. The voices grunted. The voices sneered. One of the angry voices belonged to Dennis McLeod, who lived in Fargo, North Dakota. Outrage was most definitely in the air for him. Dennis tasted outrage in his phlegm, it collected in the back of his throat. He brought the inhaler to his mouth, depressed the canister and Whoosht! But in the end, even after relaxing his bronchial tubes the choking, suffocating outrage remained.

Everywhere Dennis looked he saw things that flabbergasted him, even in the mall where he wandered, looking for a gift for his mother.

He found himself in the same predicament year after year: his annual last ditch effort to buy his mother something for her birthday rather than give her the annual $25 gift certificate to Marshall Field’s he usually ended up giving her.

Dennis passed under the feeble, filtered sunshine from the massive sunlight overhead. The light gave the impression of being outdoors but without the flies and the other unpleasant realism.
The mall wasn’t too crowded today. Teenage couples walked side by side, their palms inserted possessively down the back pockets of each other’s jeans. Blue-haired grandmothers were led by their grown children. Their excited grandchildren ran ahead of them. Mothers shopped for clothes. Men stood together near the communal benches and trashcans and talked sports and work. Teenagers worked at the earring kiosks and gossiped with each other. This was life, Dennis thought. Or a kind of model of life but better air-conditioned.

Dennis winced at the candles and figurines in the Hallmark Store. Then walked in. He inspected the cards, the stuffed animals. The sight of so much cuteness almost offended him. None of it looked like a gift for his mom anyway. That was the maddening part. Maybe he’d just send her flowers. But that was almost as lame as a $25 gift certificate.

In the department store, he wandered through the perfume section, catching the eye of a few over-the-hill, overly made-up women.

Smells were so personal, he decided. Besides, she was his mom, not his wife. Perfume was something his dad should have bought her.

Clothing? Forget it.

Candles? Dennis wondered. Then he froze. Tim, his boss from work, walked by with his beautiful wife Lucy. Tim was looking oh-so-casual in his red Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts.
Dennis scanned the best route to avoid them and slipped gingerly out of the gift store. He moved into the anonymity of the music store. Dennis couldn’t imagine Tim and his remarkably hot wife coming in the music store. Tim was probably too cool to care for music. Tim was certainly too cool to say hi to Dennis half the time at work. He couldn’t imagine Tim had the heart to like music, either.

No, Dennis wouldn’t give him the satisfaction here in the mall. No way. It was one thing to be built up and torn down every other day at work by Tim’s nods or snubs as they passed each other in the office, it was quite another to allow Tim the chance to snub him in the mall. On a Saturday. On his day off.

No way. Dennis turned his back to the entrance and buried his attention in the bargain CD bin. He flipped past Iron Butterfly, Styx, Iron Maiden, Steely Dan, The Eagles. No way. No way. No way, he thought. Where’s the country music when you need it? Just an inconspicuous moment of browsing…Dennis thought. Oh, but how inconspicuous could he be? Last he checked he was past 270 lbs.

Yet another voice in a diner in Lexington: “The days of calling people what they are, are gone.” A man with bloodshot eyes spoke of the injustice. “You look back in newspapers from fifty years ago and they used clear terminology. Now we all have to be politically correct. You see it on TV all the time. Like that guy in LA who got beat up by those cops. He’s black and he was speeding when he got pulled over. He was endangering people’s lives. But can people say that? No!”
“He’s an African-American, don’t forget,” the man’s friend said. “His ancestors were oppressed.”
“African American? He was resisting arrest when they had to subdue him. But do they show you that on TV? No. They just show you the cops around him hitting him.”
“That’s the liberal media for you.”
“The same media who wants us to feel sorry for this—For this black man who had it coming.”
“Don’t you mean African-American?”
“If he’s African-American then I’m a European-American,” the man with the bloodshot eyes said, holding up his empty glass to the waitress. “And I want to be compensated for the hard life my ancestors had.”
“Me too,” the other said, nodding yes to the coffee refill offered by the waitress.

Another of those thousands – or hundreds of thousands – of annoyed voices belonged to Mike Hurtfield in Little Rock, Arkansas. Mike raked his fingers through his wavy hair, clawing at his sweaty scalp. Then he pulled on his work gloves, walked around the back of his truck and heaved the ramp down to the pavement below. Traffic on the highway hissed behind him in the background and he thought for a second how much he’d rather be driving on the highway rather than working here.

The front door of the customer’s house opened. He could feel their eyes on him, waiting for him to lug their delivery in the house. Just a second of eye contact and he could see their impatience. The couple’s eyes said Hurry up please, sweaty stranger. Hurry up and deliver our furniture. Then leave our precious home please. Mike hated the way these customers looked at him when he came to deliver their furniture.

The women always had a frightened expression. They were worried you’d scuff their hallway walls, which was fair enough, he supposed. Kath, his wife, might look the same way. But it was the men who infuriated him: they watched him as if Mike’s struggling and lifting was so foreign, so strange. It’s called hard work, Mike thought. That’s what he would love to tell them.

If a deliveryman brought Mike’s order to his house, he’d get out there and help the man bring the boxes in. But not these people. No, these people just watched you, like you were practicing some kind of lost art. Like this grunting and sweating and straining was something they saw in a documentary once on PBS.

‘Course it would have been easier if his partner Kenny was here. But after Kenny called in sick one day and Mike’s dispatcher realized he could manage on his own, he had Mike managing on his own more often than not.

Mike grasped the box through his extra-grip gloved, took a great breath of air and lifted. No sooner was the box held a couple feet from the ground than Mike wondered what cotton-ball sized hunk of pollen he just inhaled? Mike could feel the sneeze-to-come play in the back of his nose. He struggled forward with the box.

Almost to the door, Mike set the box down. He held it lightly with one hand as a violent sneeze shook his body. He looked up just in time to catch the expression on the wife’s face. Her eyes said it all. My children’s bedroom set. You almost sneezed on the box of my children’s bedroom set. Well, what kind of fucking pollen cloud, Mike wondered, did these people live in? Then he jerked his head to the side and let loose a roaring torrent of a sneeze.

Yet two more voices of men driving a truck at seventy miles an hour down I-35. “And do you know they want us to call history, HERstory? Can you believe that shit?”
“Herstory?” his co-worker asked. “Where’d you hear that?”
“The radio. Can you believe that? HER-Story. Because HIS-tory is too chauvinist. It’s too sexist. So it’s HER-Story.”
“HER-Story?”
“HER-Story. Have you ever heard of such—?”
“Because HIS-story is too chauvinist?”
“More like too normal, I’d say. These people can’t be satisfied with anything normal.”
“Her-Story? Why not call a hernia a HIM-nia?”
“To them all bad things come from white men.”
“What’s wrong with these people?”
“HER-Story.”
Flat farm land shrouded in darkness passed outside the windows. It had been raining and the fields were wet. “That sounds like the part in a divorce case where the wife gets to tell her side…”

Dennis could see his boss Tim and his wife standing before the record store, debating which way to go in the mall. Of course, they took no notice of Dennis. He might as well have been a potted plant or a trash can as far as they were concerned. But Dennis just kept glancing up, checking that they stood there enough times to notice Tim’s jagged toenails. They hung over the ends of his flip-flops, like boar’s feet.

Yep, Dennis, reflected, his dad was right. There were two kinds of people in the world: those ashamed of everything and those ashamed of nothing. Tim was definitely in the second group. Look at those toenails. How did Tim even get a woman like his wife with those toenails?

Dennis moved from aisle to aisle until to his dismay he found himself turned away, until he found himself vaguely perusing the musical show tunes section. He could just imagine Tim finding him here: “I didn’t know you liked ‘Annie’, Dennis…I didn’t know you were a ‘Cats’ fan.” That would make for a funny story back in the office, wouldn’t it?

Finally, Tim and his wife wandered off in the direction of Banana Republic. Dennis meandered out of the store to a candle shop on the far side of the food court.

There, he found yet another infuriating collection of candles and silk flowers and semi-collectable ceramics. His mom would be surprised if he could find her something different. Something unique. It was all so cute Dennis had to restrain himself from picking one up and smashing it under his shoe.

He examined almost all the gifts within his price range. He had almost settled on a small ceramic pot with silk flowers. Yes, that would be it. Yes, definitely this, Dennis thought. Until he turned it over and saw it was $34.95.

Dennis had to think about it. $35 was a lot of money.
He stepped out of the shop and almost walked into Tim.
“Dennis?”
“Hi, Tim.”
Tim went to say something else but Dennis had already nodded in embarrassment and stepped past him. No, he thought. No. Dennis just couldn’t stand to see Tim, all balanced and easy, with his pretty wife by his side, and his jagged pig toe nails jutting out. Dennis just couldn’t endure the condescension. He couldn’t bear to make eye contact with Tim, he thought and strode on.

Other voices. Voices of men unknown to each other. Gruff, angry voices contorted by work. “Yep, Blacks aren’t even black. They’re not even African-American. Have you heard? Now they’re People of Color,” said a voice in Florida.
“What color?” asked another.
“I don’t know. I guess it means you and I have no color at all.”
“People of Color? What would that make us?” asked a voice, separated by several states and a thousand miles. The voice was in Arizona. Even if its speaker knew none of the other voices, it was part of the same conversation, the same talk gripping the nation.
“The people of non-color?” another asked.
“How about the people of minding our own business?”
“How about the People of Not Asking for A Special Status?” said someone else in Connecticut.
“But why the hell can’t we be the People of the Majority? Or the people of Hard Work? You try to say that and see what happens.”
“Shit. The politeness police would have your hide.”

IN 1989, THE BERLIN WALL CAME DOWN, taking with it the Great Other for Americans to oppose. The morning after, they, the American people awoke, stretched, drank their coffee, looked over the horizon and asked, “Now what?”

No one thought The Great Other would simply cry uncle and start coping with the realities of a capitalist’s world. After so many skirmishes, after Korea and Vietnam and the countless proxy wars in Angola, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and all of South America, after the secret battles and contests for nations’ souls, victory for the United States, if it could even be counted as victory felt, well, a little anti-climactic.

Months passed into the first President Bush’s term. Into this strange period of peace for America. Across the country voices could be heard. Voices in conversation in roadside coffee shops, in diners, in truck stops. Voices in hospitals, in city halls, in universities. Voices in malls, voices in shopping centers and convenience stores. Rough voices who knew lives of hard work. Voices that knew a life of office work and procedure. Crude voices. Rash voices.

Across the airwaves came the ideas. In truck stops and diners; in cafeterias and loading docks; in community colleges and pizza shops. On radio speakers and over the Formica countertops of restaurants. New voices disturbed the tranquility of America’s victory. Voices animated with complaint. Enlivened with concern. With energy. With outrage for the world they found themselves in. And what did these voices say?

“Do you notice you can’t say the word ‘Negro’ anymore?”
“Oh, no sir.”
“The word ‘Negro’ is a bad word.”
“You can’t say anything about black people.”
“Not anymore.”
“All black people are off limits. That’s political correctness for you. You can’t say anything about Mexicans any more, either.”
“No, you can’t. You can’t say she’s a ‘nice lady.’ Have you noticed?”
“The feminists don’t like it.”
“What kind of country is this where ‘lady’ is a bad word?”
“And you can’t say ‘girl,’ either.”

“And,” said an American voice, unknown to the others, and yet a part of the same conversation consuming the nation, “You can’t call anyone a cripple any more. You notice that? I work with a guy, gets around with crutches.”
“But you can’t call him crippled!”
“Oh, no. You’ve got to say ‘disabled’.”
“Not even that! You’re not even allowed to say that. They want you to say handicapped.”

Elsewhere, more voices in another breakfast place, hundreds of miles north, across the plains surrounding Interstate Highway-35 said, “You can’t call Mexicans Mexicans anymore. Do you know that?”
“What do you call them then?” came the response.
“Now they’re Hispanics. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Hispanics? Nah, they’re Mexicans.”
“No, I heard it on the radio. I heard the clip where this guy was saying not all Spanish speakers are Mexican.”
“They are around here.”
“Well, there are Puerto Ricans, too.”
“I don’t care what people say. I call them Mexicans.”
“I do too. I think it’s ridiculous we have to be so friggin’ sensitive to everyone who comes here. They’re in our country. We should be free to call them what we want.”
“Should be…”
“But I don’t even know if freedom applies to us anymore.”

In another conversation, elsewhere in America, “But who? Who’s saying we can’t say this?”
“The sensitivity police.”
“Who are they?”
“Come on! The professors! The liberal egg heads!”
“Where?”
“Everywhere. On college campuses. Everywhere.”

And on a college campus – just that moment – a young male voice spoke passionately. His voice, a pitch higher than those around him, talked of a more sensitive view of the world. He spoke in hushed sincerity, outrage for injustice contained in the intensity in this voice. In his rush to get a thought out, he referred to a mutual, female friend, thoughtlessly, as “a girl.”
“What do you mean ‘girl’?” came the response from his female friend.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” said the young man.
“We’re women.”
“Women. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“See? You’re young enough to be a girl.”
“Okay. Boy.”
“Come on.”
“See how it feels?”
“How does it feel? I’m obviously not a boy.”
“Why does that offend you?”
“Because it’s not accurate.”
“Sure it is. How old are you?”
“I’m 21.”
“You’re a boy.”
“Whatever.”
“See? That’s how the whole patriarchal structure works. By using diminutive, demeaning names men can keep women down.”
“I don’t mean it that way.”
“Sure you do. You just don’t know it.”
“If I don’t know it, how can I intend it?…Why are you smiling?”
“Because you can intend it by being part of the male dominated power structure.”
“Your arguments would be more persuasive if you weren’t smirking when you made them.”
“I’m not smirking.”
“Yes, you are. You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m enjoying watching you in over your head.”
“And you look like you’re loving it.”
“You’re kind of cute when you’re upset,” the girl said.

At another college, outside in the grassy Quad, one voice retorted to another: “That offends me.”
“I was just asking if your family rode camels,” quickly explained the first.
“And it offends me. You ask me that because my parents are Middle-Eastern.”
“I asked you that because…I dunno.”
“Do your parents farm? This is the Midwest.”
“I just asked the question.”
“For your information, I’m Lebanese. My parents are Lebanese.”
“Isn’t that where they blew up all those Marines?”
“Yes, it is. And now you’re looking at me like I’m some kind of terrorist. You know, you should open your eyes to the world before you judge it.”
“I’m not judging. I’m just asking questions.”
“…Before you ask questions.”
“Whatever dude.”
“You should be more aware. Just because I look different doesn’t mean you understand me.”
“Whatever. I said whatever.”

And in a wood-paneled student union in a Mid-west college, a young woman’s voice prattled glibly, smugly, “I’m anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-culturalist, anti-ethnocentric. I hold no prejudices and am open to the world.”

No voices answered her. None needed to.
She did all the talking.