Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army (41 page)

“My father died of mouth cancer,” I said by way of my explanation. “It wasn't pretty, those last months, him spitting out flesh all the time.”

We were instantly ignored.

Sara and Brooke were the most childlike in the lighting up and appreciation of the smoke, and the most disappointed when Lydia also refused to join them, feeling the blow to women's liberation.

“Oh, come on, Lydia,” they urged, leaving the invite into the club unstated, but gilt-edged nonetheless.

“No thanks,” Lydia said her radio-static voice puncturing the air. “The next time I feel compelled to wrap my lips around something long, cylindrical and brown— I'm going to want it to be Denzel Washington.”

The five laughed, delighted, for some reason, to have their absurdities pointed out to them. Abbie raise his long, brown, burning cylinder into the air and cried, “Surrogate cock suckers of the world, unite!” There was more laughter. The five felt fine, pleased, deeply satisfied. It was a combination of setting—is this the power of Feng Shui?—sustenance, satiation and smoke.

The preparation now fully completed, Max got back onto the track. He raised his snifter. “Please join me in a toast.” The tone of his voice indicated that things now were to be serious and not lighthearted. “To the Twenty-first Century!”

“To the Twenty-first Century!” everybody quickly repeated as they raised their snifters.

“It's going to be a bitch!” Max declared very pointedly then took a sip of his brandy.

The rest were not quite sure what to do. Some joined in sipping, some just sat and waited.

Then Lydia downed her brandy like a shot and said, “Well, if it's going to be a bitch, may that bitch be me!”

No one laughed. The look on Max's face did not allow for it. It was a stone. A stone with charm, if that can be imagined, but a stone nonetheless. Solidity, rock solid, something substantial, and very, very appealing because of that, because we all want the teacher to finally tell us what's important and what's not.

A stone—with charm—and meaning.

And just a slight hint—possibly too slight for the others to perceive, but I was predisposed to—just a slight hint of madness in the two muted green eyes set in the pink stone of his face.

“They took the Future from me,” Max started to speak. “The bright and shining Future. Do you remember it? It was laid out and portrayed in popular science magazines. At World Fairs. By Walt Disney. Cities. Bright, colorful cities of tall gleaming buildings. Cities clean and well ordered. Interconnecting bridges between the buildings of moving sidewalks automatically covered during inclement weather by crystal-clear plastics; open to the sun on gorgeous days, of which there would be many. We would each have small flying cars to buzz around the city; or jet packs, or personal ornithopters. Our clothes would never fade or soil. Robots would do the manufacturing in the factories, the paper work in the office, the childcare at home. They would tote that barge and lift that bale. Meals would be delicious, plentiful, prepared by automatic cookers. There would be acres of parkland in the city, lots of recreation, lots of fun. Always something to do. They never even considered that one could be bored in the Future. Everyone was to be happy in the Future, and the Future was always called the Twenty-first Century.”

He had been speaking to no one in particular; his eyes had been slightly lifted, concentrating on that bright shining Future, but now he brought them back down, and focused on Brooke.

“We're almost there, Brooke. The Twenty-first Century. What do you think? Did we make it? Did we get that Future?”

“Hardly,” Brooke said with a sweet and sour snort.

“Hardly, indeed,” Max said. “The Twenty-first Century is not going to be that bright, shiny future of colorfully illustrated magazine covers. It's going to be, I'm afraid, ‘...a series of jolts and jars and smashes in the social life of humanity...' Not my words. Some writer in
The Economist
in 1930 wrote those words. He was sitting in London at the time. The depression had just started. Europe was rumbling with the festering forces that had been abated but not controlled at the end of World War I. So he knew that World War II was inevitable, so he wrote those words and he was right. There were jolts and there were jars and there were smashes to the social life of humanity, but nothing compared to what's coming in the Twenty-first Century.”

Max paused. The stone smiled.

“But why am I talking to you guys about this?” He put a loving hand on Brett's arm, turning to look past Sara to Thad, then crossing the table with his eyes to scan and acknowledge those of us on the other side, not so very far that his eyes could not achieve the same effect as a loving hand gently placed on a willing arm. “You makers of Franchise Entertainment, you makers of Tent-pole movies to hang your global media corporate wishes on, you—Show Biz folks. Except for our lonely lawyers, of course, but you happen to be on this train, Muck and Meyer,” Max made quick eye contact with Henderson and Pinsker, “so you're just going to have to make the stops with everybody else.”

Then the subject returned to the objects.

“Why bring all this up? Especially after such a lovely day of fun—fun renewing the battles of yesteryear when we did manage, by the barest of margins, to recover from those jolts and jars and smashes, and fun swimming in the pool of privilege. The joy of an excellent dinner. Superb brandy. Wonderful cigars. Why do I have to be such a downer among you ‘entertaining' folks?”

Max got up from the table. “Tunnels dank and dark are often the only conduits to the light. I will take you to the light. Even more exciting, I'll show you how you can be part of the light.”

Brett and Abbie started to get up as well, thinking it was time to follow, but Max waved them down with his hand, assuring them that they could sit and relax, it wasn't time to march just yet. Then he moved around the table and crossed over to the large glass case on the serving table behind me. Those of us who had to, shifted our positions in our chairs to face him.

He looked at the model of the Titanic, moments before being jolted and jarred and smashed by the iceberg.

“This was not one of Mr. Hearst's treasures, by the way. This is mine. Built it myself. I love it. It's a great symbol. Of what? Of the whole history of humankind, a history that is about to take an unfortunate turn. Unless we work to prevent it, or, if it is inevitable—and there is plenty of evidence indicating that it is—unless we work to prevent the turn from being so sharp that we lose our purchase of the road, spin out of control; crash and burn. The ride will still be wild, but maybe, just maybe, we will not be crushed in a total wreck.”

Max turned to us, keeping the model to his side for presentation purposes.

 
“I'm sorry. I rather dry-docked my metaphor, didn't I? Well, returning to the perilous waves.” He pointed to the Titanic. “It was called a Luxury Liner. The upper decks were beautifully appointed. Hand carved woodwork polished to a high shine. Marble staircases. Crystal chandeliers. The deepest, thickest, finest carpets. Great chefs working in the most modern of kitchens to create delicious meals for refined palates. Large, spacious staterooms. The most solicitous service ever, making the passage over the North Atlantic as comfortable as humanly possible for the elite, the privilege, the rich, the deserving, the important people of the day who, quite frankly, ran the world to their specifications.

“It cost, as you can imagine, quite a bit of money to travel on the Upper Decks of a luxury liner, but the irony is, White Star, the company that built and operated the Titanic, did not make their money from First Class passengers. As high as the ticket price was, it didn't go anywhere near covering the costs, much less pushing the books into profit. The money was made down here,” Max pointed to the very lower decks, “steerage. Not very well appointed, of course. No great staterooms. Just a hole to cram them in to. Who? Immigrants. Millions and millions of immigrants who wanted to get from the old world where they had been ground down into the pavement, to the New World, where the pavement, they believed, was made of gold. In 1905 the North Atlantic trade had its first million-passenger year, and there were millions more waiting at the ticket office. It was a numbers game, like everything else. A volume business. These ships weren't built big and impressive to impress the big and impressive few. They were built for volume to carry the rank and oppressed many carrying on their backs, so to speak, the big and impressive few in the manner they were most accustomed to. The manner they quite rightly deserved. For I'm not stating any of this as a criticism. I don't criticize the natural order of things. What fucking good would that do?

“The deserving—the smart, bright, crafty, talented deserving, have always ridden on the backs of the mass of humanity that wasn't smart, bright, crafty, and talented, and so, of course, not at all deserving. There's more of them than us, though, more of them than us. A resource. A vast resource of little flesh pockets of muscles. Muscles to till the land, row the ships, build the Pyramids, and, yes, pick the cotton and take out the garbage and pay for passage to the promise land with every last cent of their meager savings. Have you ever known it to be otherwise? The natural order of things. We all give to society what is ours to give. The deserving give, let's call it, intellectual/creative/cultural impetus. That is their true wealth to share. The mass gives what little wealth they have: their labor, or the meager savings their labor has acquired. A pitiful pittance per individual, but great, transferable wealth in mass quantities. The natural order of things.

“Not nature, but Man!” Max mocked a protest as he moved on towards the massive fireplace. “You might suggest that—” He stopped and looked down the long, narrow table at us. “—Well, actually, none of you would suggest that, I'm sure, but maybe some people with their emotions on their sleeves and their brains in storage might suggest that Man divided himself into the Haves and the Have-nots, not Nature, but man is as much a part of Nature as any old—oh—delicate dandelion, for example, or a plague of locusts, or the magnificent Big Horn Elk, or UV radiation, or a gorgeous sunset—caused by Man's pollution. So let's not deal with that old argument.

“Nature throws curves at us.” He pointed down the room back to the Titanic display. “An iceberg. Upsetting that particular natural order of things. 2200 people. 1500 drowned. There weren't enough lifeboats. Proportionately, more from steerage drowned than those from the upper decks. Because there weren't enough lifeboats. The natural order of things. Oh, some millionaires died. John Jacob Astor. Benjamin Guggenheim. Isidor Straus. The rich make their sacrifices too. People seem to forget that.”

Max returned to his chair, Sheila Barnes greeting him there with a fresh snifter of brandy. He thanked her sweetly then sat.

“Twenty-first Century icebergs? There's going to be quite a few. First, I think you'll have to agree, overpopulation in the ‘Developing Nations.'”

Max took a drag on his cigar then blew the smoke up to the saints.

“That's a bit of PC nicety, isn't it? ‘Developing Nations?' We used to call them the Underdeveloped Nations. Some did develop. Rather well. Japan. South Korea. Taiwan. Others, though, especially many in the Southern Hemisphere, have not, and they are not making great strides. Why? Because, with some atavistic notions of the cattle value of human life, they keep pumping out babies they cannot adequately, feed, care for, or educate. Numbers add up nonetheless. Volume is filled, nonetheless. Without any corresponding increase in resources, of course. So let's just have some simple honesty with ourselves, shall we? They are not Developing Nations. They are Non-Developed Nations—and they are not about to get developed anytime soon.

“Another iceberg? Environmental problems. Very real, I think you'll agree, and, yes, we in the developed nations, we caused a lot of it, but we are also the ones now cleaning up our act. But the Non-developed Nations, in their futile bid to catch up to us, industrializing with no sense of a world social conscience; burning down the rain forests for farm land to feed their creeping, crawling masses, they are now the ones really fouling the air with their stench, and they won't listen to reason. They refuse to learn from our mistakes. But, then, why should they? When the Holy Grail image in their head is the clean, comfortable, luxury appointed upper decks of the Developed Nations. Especially as portrayed in our film and television entertainment!

“Yes! The product of your endeavors. But let's put guilt aside for a minute. I'm sure I'll remember to return to it later.”

It was time for Brett and Thad, Nick, Brooke and Abbie to throw and catch furtive glances at each other, so they did. Lydia kept her eyes on Max—fascinated.

“And yet another iceberg. Technology. We—” Max gestured to us all “We love technology. No reason not to. It has done wonders for our world, but our world is the developed world that deserves the wonders of technology. The non-developed world, unfortunately, does not equate well to technology. An explosion of technology is, in fact, antithetical to an explosion of population, for the purpose of technology is to relieve laborious burden. That's why developed nations decrease their fertility rates. More technology, less need for human labor, less people to share the wonders of technology and its financial fruit. A proper balance is struck. People used to think technology dehumanized us. Of course it doesn't. Much the reverse. By relieving us of laborious burdens it frees us to become more human. Technology lets us be people not labor. Isn't that the real way to equal out the distance between the Haves and the Have-nots?