We sat on plastic chairs around a Formica table. Eugene had the immigrant’s love of plastic. We drank vodka. Eugene’s pad was extravagantly furnished in early flea market. The couch looked like something Leif Eriksen might have rowed over in. The floor lamp belonged in a brothel. The coffee table was a wagon wheel. A Rowdy Roddy Piper poster hung slightly askew next to a Mexican beer poster depicting four balloon-breasted brunettes in a red sports car. We drank from plastic tumblers.
“Yes, okay, finally now we make a party.”
We waited for the others to show up. And waited. And drank vodka. Eugene continued his preparations restlessly between shots of vodka. He changed the cat litter. He kept changing the music. He played John Cougar Mellencamp and Wang Chung and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Glenn Campbell and something with a zither and a trumpet.
“So, who else is coming?” he said. “Who else you are inviting to our party?”
I shrugged. “Uh, you know, a few people. What about you?”
“Not so many,” he said. “I invite Derrick from 309, but he say he’s working.”
“Cleaning pools at night?”
“Crazy, I know, zat’s what I say. What about you, Joe? You have sister, friends, you know chicks?”
“Some,” lied Joe.
“You call up on phone, invite. Friends, chicks, no problem, we make big party at my house.”
“They’re out of town,” said Joe.
“Shit motherfuck. Oh, well, we drink vodka. Eat a duck. I know Russian hooker maybe I call. You ever been with Russian woman? Oh shit. Zey fuck like forty-foot Amazon woman.”
“Let’s just eat some duck,” I said.
The ducks were kind of small for ducks. They looked more like pigeons to me. They were greasy as hell and threatened to squirt off the cutting board every time Eugene tried to carve them. He’d also prepared a beet salad, and tuna fish on crackers. While I had no intention whatsoever of eating duck, I didn’t want to risk offending Eugene, and so I did a serviceable job of pretending to eat duck, aided by sleight of hand and a half dozen felines mulling about under the table. We talked about chicks and money and hot cars. All the things we didn’t know squat about. Then we talked about cleaning gutters and making French fries and drinking vodka, and all the things we did know about.
Here, at last, was my suburban Bohemia, all the parlor talk and camaraderie I’d always yearned for without knowing it. Within the murky confines of this shag-carpeted apartment reeking of cool menthols, cats, and vodka, eight long blocks from the Pacific Ocean and two short blocks from Thrifty, home of the ten-cent ice cream cone, I, William Miller Jr., bore witness to a summit meeting between two of the great minds of my generation: Eugene Gobernecki, a poultry-obsessed Russian free-market capitalist, and Acne Scar Joe, a rabid patriot and confirmed homophobe somewhere to the right of Jerry Falwell.
“Chinese, Japanese, whatever. They’re all a bunch of kung fu fighting commies. We should’ve blown their slant-eyed asses up in Vietnam.”
“Joe, you cannot stop democracy. These people are dying for democracy, Joe. They yearn for free-market system. Think of the hamburgers you will sell.”
“Dude, they don’t eat hamburgers. They eat cats.”
“Look, Joe, all I am saying is, Joe, communism doesn’t work.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Yes, but what you are suggesting is not making sense. Zen why let the world’s biggest market toil in rice bogs, when you could be selling zem hamburgers!”
“They don’t eat burgers, dude. Don’t talk to me about markets. I sell thousands of burgers a month and I don’t sell more than a dozen to Orientals. And we’re talking about the ones living right here in friggin’ hamburger heaven. They’ve never even seen a hamburger over there! They don’t know a hamburger from a goddamn Frisbee!”
“You sell one in one thousand, you sell two million hamburgers. Zat’s what I’m talking about. You’ll see. Just you wait. I’ve seen zis all before in Soviet Union. If you smart, you see differently. Do you want to know what is great thing about capitalism? I will tell you great thing. Opportunity. Zat is great thing. You see opportunity, you make opportunity. Opportunity plus hard work equals big bucks, big success.”
In my lone contribution to the proceedings, I humbly pointed out the necessity of capital in such an equation.
“Yes, there is that. This one I am working on. Free rent, you see, zat’s a start. Apartment manager gets free rent. Soon I get other job painting houses, or maybe Joe, you get me job at Fatburger, where I learn business. One day I build hamburger house in China, and I hire you Will, and you Joe, to run Chinese hamburger house. I give you benefits, stock options, big bucks.”
“You’re dreaming,” said Joe.
“Zat’s right, Joe. I am dreaming.”
Twenty-Nothing
April 23, 1990
Dear Will,
It doesn’t feel like spring in Seattle, doesn’t smell like lilacs or rosebuds, although my days do seem longer. I’m not in love with Dan—at least not the crocus and nightingale kind of love, but maybe a different kind. I was never really big on spring, anyway. We’re autumn people, you and I. I’m not sure if Seattle is the center of the universe, or the bottom of the vortex. Dan just joined a different band—one you may have heard of. He seems to think Seattle’s the center. It’s like our Summer of Love, he says. I fucking hope not. To be honest I don’t really care if it’s the center or the bottom, it’s the middle I’m afraid of, and if my life doesn’t begin soon, I fear I’ll wind up there. Yet, I can’t seem to get started. What’s holding me back? Who am I? What am I afraid of ? Why do I feel that I’m all these different things to all these different people, and yet at the end of the day I feel I’m nobody, nothing.
Is it because we spend every night in the same five taverns, talking, talking, talking? Because we wear our angst like badges? Because we regret things we haven’t even done yet? Because we’re afraid of building a new world out of the same crappy materials? It’s not fair of me to say “we,” because Dan is actually doing something, or believes he is, which may or may not amount to the same thing. This is really about me, whoever that is.
Enough about whoever I am. How are you? Dad says he doesn’t hear much from you. He talks in a way he didn’t used to. I’m proud of him, and scared for him, and trying to forgive him for his shortcomings. We should all forgive each other, don’t you think? I understand him now more than I used to, maybe. And I understand that people deal with their shit in their own way.
Dan is on tour for five weeks and will be in L.A. the second week of May. I told him he should call you. He likes you, though you got off to a rough start. I know you probably think he’s stupid, but really he’s just honest. There’s a difference.
I do miss you, Will, I hope you believe that, and again I’m sorry about the night in Cabazon. I was drunk, but also I was crazy for a number of reasons, which someday maybe I can explain, or begin to. I’m proud of you, William Miller, you’re one of the smartest people I know. Please say hello to Troy. I’ll try to write again soon.
Love,
Lulu
Dan called the second week of May, from the Sky Bar, no less, where he was drinking with an A&R guy from Geffen. I was not in the least surprised to learn that Dan was doing killer. Lulu was also doing killer, in Dan’s estimation. The Chateau Marmont, the band, the tour, life in Seattle, they were all killer. I told him I might show up at the Whiskey, where his band was headlining.
“That would be killer,” he said.
He put me on the list. I didn’t go. I think I watched Alf instead, or maybe The Wizard of Ass.
On the Soul, the Self, the Mind, and God
Hume: An Overview
By Will Miller
(with a ton of help from Albert Hakim)
David Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711 (arguably the effe
ct of his mother’s pregnancy). He formed syllables, learned to walk, talk, dress himself, say please and thank you, mastered his changing voice, and matriculated. His family wanted him to be a lawyer. He tried halfheartedly, gave up, and began a program of “private study” in literature and philosophy.
Impressions and Ideas
Hume believed that experience provides the first access to knowledge. Whatever came to us via direct experience, Hume called “perception.” He divided perceptions into two categories: “impressions” and “ideas.” Impressions were the immediate data of experience: sensations, passions, emotions. Ideas were “faint copies,” mere abstractions of our impressions.
Hume said: “Every simple idea has a simple impression which resembles it.” A sensation, an emotion, a direct and immediate response. Not so with complex ideas, which were extrapolations. If, therefore, impressions are the direct consequence of experience, they are the main vehicle for our knowledge of objects. The more closely our ideas correspond to our impressions, the more reliable they are.
On the Supposed Necessity of Causality
Hume noted that there was no correlating sensation for the idea of cause and effect. We merely associated in our minds those objects that are constantly associated outside them, as we merely associated flame with heat, and without further ceremony we call one cause and the other effect. Since there was no impression for cause, since we could not “know it,” only “believe it,” to believe in effect was little more than a leap of faith.
On the Self, and God
Hume observed that there is no sensation, no single experience in which the unity of the self is perceived. The self is merely a collection of qualities, perceptions, conjunctions, and beliefs: “When I turn my reflection on ‘myself,’ I can never perceive this ‘self’ without some one or more perceptions; nor can I ever perceive anything but the perceptions.”
As for God, he was just another cause, the ultimate cause, another perceptual conglomeration that had no specific corollary in the realm of sensations. God wasn’t demonstrable.
Hume died in Edinburgh in 1776.
Nice job, Will! Clearly stated. You seem to have a firm grasp on Hume’s brand of skepticism. Interestingly, toward the end of his life, Hume granted God a few concessions.
—G.S.
Why Anyone Would Want to Live Here
In June of 1990, two weeks shy of the twins’ high school graduation, I got a call from Big Bill. He said he was driving out to Lucerne Valley to some old turkey ranch on the following Saturday and wanted to know if I’d like to come along. I wanted to know why. He didn’t know why, exactly. He thought it might be fun. I doubted it, but I didn’t tell him so.
My first thought was that Big Bill, under mounting financial pressure and the further duress of a severe identity crisis, was about to do something rash—that he was contemplating or possibly even intent upon buying a turkey ranch in the middle of the Mojave, and that it was my duty and responsibility to persuade him at all costs against undertaking such an enterprise.
Things were worse than I thought. Big Bill was driving a minivan. It was the color of Carlo Rossi sangria, the only alcoholic beverage I can remember Big Bill condescending to drink upon occasion, usually with ice cubes and a splash of 7Up, frequently gulped in concert with a beef burrito the size of a football.
The van still smelled of new vinyl. Even in his present state of shrunkenness, Big Bill looked hulking and ridiculous at the wheel.
“Where did this come from?” I said, dumping my book bag between the seats and settling in.
“Willow bought it up north,” he said.
“How’s the mileage?”
“So far so good. Better than the old Dodge.”
Through Hollywood and Sherman Oaks and Burbank we engaged in small talk. News from the gym (where Big Bill was still relegated to spectating), some talk about baseball, and a little talk about my upcoming finals—but not much. I couldn’t see discussing Spinoza with Big Bill any more than I could see discussing the French Enlightenment with Yogi Bear. Thus, we opted for the greener pastures of chitchat until, somewhere around Newhall, Big Bill switched gears.
“Lot of changes coming, Will. Lot of changes. Especially for your brothers. Have you talked to them lately?”
“Not like lately lately, a couple months.”
“Well, Ross is getting an apartment with that friend of his, the one with the red leather pants, Regis, Regan, Reagan, you know the one. He’s lined Ross—er, uh, I mean Alistair up with a job selling women’s shoes downtown somewhere, one of the department stores. Apparently the commissions are pretty good.”
“That’s cool,” I said.
“Of course, he’ll have to stop dressing like Ronald McDonald,” said Big Bill. “And comb that hair of his. I can’t even light a match in that upstairs bathroom anymore. I’m afraid I’ll blow up the house with all those hairspray fumes.”
I couldn’t help but grin. Big Bill grinned back.
“He’s something else, isn’t he? He and Lulu. Every time you turn around there’s something new. A cape, a nose ring, a crazy haircut. Have you seen the T-shirts he’s wearing lately? They hang like ribbons on him. But darnit, I’ve got a good feeling about him. He’s going to grow into himself one of these days. It’s his brother I’m worried about.”
“Doug?”
“Of course, Doug. I never worried about you, Will. Never had to. Somehow, I always knew you’d be okay.”
I felt a twinge of resentment.
“You’re made of strong stuff,” he pursued. “Your mother was made of strong stuff, you know. She was a fighter. You’ve got her determination.”
“Hopefully not her endurance,” I said.
“You’d have made a hell of a bodybuilder, you know that? All that determination and compact musculature.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Oh well. To each his own, I guess. You’ll find a way to use it. There’s a big market for determination.”
Whatever gave Big Bill the idea that I was strong and determined? Was it my tireless and unyielding pursuit of . . . nothing? Why were people forever overestimating me? I almost said something to that effect, but Big Bill, in his silence, had begun to furrow his brow, like something was weighing upon him.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Doug’s got it in his head to join the air force.” He shook his head and frowned. “I should have seen this coming. He watched that darn Top Gun every day for two years.”
“Why don’t you stop him?”
“There’s no talking him out of it.”
“You could say no.”
“He’s eighteen,” observed Big Bill. “And even if he weren’t, I can’t see the advantage of forbidding things. Everybody has a will of their own, everybody makes the same mistakes in different ways. You can’t stand in anyone’s way.”
“Well, at least they’ll pay his way through college, right? It’s not like he’ll be marching off to war. He’ll be vacuuming cockpits in Arkansas, or something.”
“I suppose you’re right. But something about it still troubles me.”
We rolled down Soledad Pass and into the high desert. I could smell deep-fried fat on the desert wind. Victorville was no longer a quaint desert outpost, it was a sprawl of low-density development, gray modular homes, fast food joints, gas stations.
“It wasn’t always like this,” observed Big Bill. “Heck, I remember when there was nothing here. It’s sad.” Indeed, he was wistful for a moment, but then he wrinkled his nose a little. “You hungry?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
The development spread through Hesperia into Apple Valley, an undeterred rash of deli-marts and affordable housing. It didn’t matter that the landscape was Venutian, that there wasn’t a museum for a hundred miles. There existed no place too
inhospitable for a Gulf station or an Arby’s. Build it and they will come. Lucerne Valley would be next, maybe a year, maybe five, but eventually Colonel Sanders would come knocking.
By the time Big Bill and I hit Highway 247, we’d finally left the development behind us, and soon there existed hardly a trace of anything at all—an occasional homestead, a crooked row of fence posts, a blown-out retread.
Big Bill guided us off the highway and down a dirt road that headed east into a wasteland of greasewood and sand.
“Maybe we’ll run into Moses out here,” I said, but I don’t think Big Bill got the joke.
The road got worse the farther we bumped along. Two or three miles in, Big Bill veered off down a second unmarked dirt road, this one heading southeast into obscurity. Here and there a rusty barrel or an engine block jutted out of the earth. After a quarter mile, the road ended abruptly in a pile of railroad ties. Big Bill stopped the van and killed the motor. He unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out of the car. I got out, too. We trudged a ways out into the desert, stopped in our tracks, and just stood there. The air was dry and heavy with the smell of sage.
“Well,” said Big Bill. “Here we are.”
Here: scorched earth as far as the eye could see, a few crumbling foundations, a giant ditch with a bunch of old tires piled up in it.
“Where are the turkeys?” I said.
“Oh, they’re long gone. Haven’t been any turkeys here for at least fifty years, I’d guess.”
It wasn’t hard to believe. In fact, it was somewhat more difficult to comprehend why there were ever turkeys here in the first place, why there was ever anything in this place.
“Why are we here?” I said.
Big Bill didn’t answer right off. I wasn’t even sure he heard me. He stood perfectly still in a sort of reverie. “I dreamed it,” he said.
“Dreamed what?”
“Dreamed this place.” Big Bill squatted down and sifted some sand through his fingers like he was panning for gold. When all the sand had slipped through, he scooped up another handful and began sifting again, this time without looking.