The Bialy Pimps (27 page)

Philip had a few drinks in him. Drinks always greased the philosophical wheels. “Explain,” he said.

“Ask yourself: Why does that crystalline drying agent that comes packed with electronic equipment say really big on it, ‘
Do not eat this’?
That warning isn’t on there by accident. It’s on there because once upon a time, someone tried to eat it, or else the company was worried that someone would. But why in hell
would
anybody eat it? Who would think that their new stereo came packed with a snack? Stupid people, that’s who.”

Philip nodded.
 

“And why, pray tell, do sweepstakes entry forms send those ‘personalized’ letters that are so obviously form letters that it makes you feel like throttling Ed McMahon for sending them to you? The ones with your full name spelled out over and over again in huge, bold letters? ‘Dear MR. PHILIP MARTIN: You may have already won ten million dollars! The prize computer has indicated that MR. PHILIP MARTIN may already be the winner. Just think about it, MR. PHILIP MARTIN – all of that money just for you. What would you do with it, MR. PHILIP MARTIN?’ Like they’re trying to make it look like Ed McMahon wrote that letter only to you, off of his own personal typewriter. I used to wonder why, if the sweepstakes companies wanted you to think that, they would not just use your first name: ‘Philip’, instead of ‘MR. PHILIP MARTIN’, and why they wouldn’t just print it in the same type style as the rest of the letter. It used to really confound me. I knew that everybody would see right through what the companies were doing and realize, just as I did, that it was a patronizing, insulting ploy. Did they really think we were stupid enough to fall for that kind of transparent bullshit? Those letters used to make me so mad, with Ed on the front of the envelope and my name spelled out over and over again on the inside, trying to make me believe that Ed was my best bud. Trying to make me believe that I had any better chance than anybody else, assuming I wouldn’t realize that my odds in the sweepstakes were in no way privileged. And then do you know what? It all clicked: People are stupid.
 

“Sweepstakes companies aren’t dumb. They make millions and millions of dollars above what they give out when somebody
does
win. That’s no coincidence. They write those intolerably bad letters because people subconsciously want to believe that someone is paying attention to them. Someone thinks they’re special. So the company puts their name in lights, aware that people won’t believe it at a surface level, but knowing that they’ll badly want to – and therefore will – believe it at a subconscious level. Who are they trying to appeal to? The dregs, that’s who. The people who are the poorest, whose outlooks are the bleakest, who believe that they have no way out of their situation. Those people see Ed McMahon as their angel. Deep, deep down, they want to believe that Ed wrote just to them, to give them a chance to change the cards that they were dealt. Not through hard work and self-empowerment – an approach which seems futile and impossible – but through free money.”

“But it’s so obvious,” said Philip.

The Anarchist shook his head. “People don’t notice it.
They don’t fucking notice.
I refused to believe that for a long time. It’s too sad. It’s disturbing to believe that people will really fall for stuff like that, but they do, over and over again. People are stupid. It always comes back to that.”

Philip nodded. “Same thing with politicians. It’s a cliché that politicians lie, but they keep doing it, promising not to raise taxes and promising to balance the budget. And everyone always falls for it.”

“Did you every read
1984?”
asked the Anarchist.

“Once, but it was a long time ago.”

“Winston realizes that if there is to be an uprising, that it has to come from the Proles, the repressed masses that represent eighty percent of Oceana’s population. What’s worse, he realizes that it is
entirely
within their grasp, because they outnumber the ruling Party four to one. If only they would realize what was going on and unite, they could change their world in an instant. But they never do. They never can. And it looks like the reason is that they’re not allowed to organize, but the bigger reason is that most people don’t look further ahead than just the next few hours or days or weeks. Rising up involves delayed gratification, fear, risk, and stepping into the unknown. That’s hard. So even though the status quo sucks, it’s easier to believe all of the promises and affirmations of Big Brother and the Party than to stick their necks out. It’s easier to remain asleep.”

“But we’re
not
asleep. We’re not sheep,” said Philip. “Is that your point?” The Anarchist was a raging elitist. Of course that was his point.

“It struck me as odd that that guy came back in yesterday,” he said. “That he just became a customer again, and didn’t make any sort of a complaint. Didn’t that surprise you?”

Philip thought of the fat man, then of his own certainty that he’d crossed a dangerous line and would have to pay for it.

“Of course.”

“It didn’t surprise anyone else. We started screwing with people yesterday morning. Today, a lot of those same people came back in. They’re adapting, is all. Just as you can adapt to a lie here and a lie there from your nation’s leaders and just as the Proles could adapt to a Ministry of Truth here and Doublethink there, so too can people adapt to a bit worse service... and a bit worse service... and then to being told to scrape the boogers off of the tables. The fact that it seems strange to you means that you’re in the minority at work nowadays, my friend.”
 

Philip shrugged.
 

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Why would it?” said Philip, taking a drink. “Work just got fun again. It’ll be fun for a bit longer. I’m planning to enjoy it.” And that was the truth. You could be a cow or a sheep or any other barnyard animal, and you could do what you were told all of the time even if the person doing the telling had just slapped you with a spatula, and maybe that made you apathetic. But you could be apathetic while
not
doing what you’re told, too. Philip was living proof. He didn’t give a shit about being normal, and he didn’t give a shit about people who were normal doing their creepy normal thing. The Anarchist thought too damn much, always with his hands in everybody else’s business no matter how much he talked about living and letting live.

“I don’t
get
the world,” said the Anarchist. “I
wish
I could just enjoy it like you. But I’m too baffled. It makes me angry. When I cross the street against a ‘Don’t Walk,’ I get the nastiest looks from the people who are waiting for it to turn even though there are no cars in sight. I’d never put up with what our customers put up with, or let someone else decide how my life was going to unfold.”
 

“Yet you graduated first in your class in high school, went to college, and are going on to grad school, just as a guidance counselor must have once suggested,” said Philip.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“The dumb people are the ones content to just let life happen. I may be within a system, but I’m
kicking its fucking ass.”
 

Philip lit a cigarette. “Why did you go to college?” he said.

“Because... because I wanted a degree.”
 

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Telling.”

“And what are you going to do with said degree?”

“Grad school,” said the Anarchist. “You know this.”

“Ah. So you went to school so that you could do more school?”

“Again, different. What’s the path of the sheep? It’s the default path, the path of least resistance. I’m taking the path of most resistance.”

“Are you?” said Philip. “Seems like semantics. On one hand, what you’re doing may be a lot of work, but on the other hand, I’d say that a good argument could be made that you’re just (and you know I’m just busting your balls when I say this, and that there’s no disrespect intended) doing what someone else told you to do.”
 

“Nobody told me to do this.”
 

Then Philip said something that surprised him. “Do you
like
the idea of working in a lab in grad school, and in whatever comes later?”

He hadn’t thought about that much, as hard as it was to believe. He was
good
at it. It was a
solid
and
rewarding
career path. It
made sense
and had a future. But
like?
Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no.

“And might it not be
harder
and
less default
, but maybe more rewarding,” Philip continued, “to do something with the rest of your life that you actually do right now and
enjoy
in your spare time? Something with computers, maybe, or writing?”

The Anarchist gave a small nod, conceding a point well-made.

“You’re not as dumb as you look, my corpulent friend,” said the Anarchist. “But I like a lot of things, and some make for a better future than others. And I
do
like science. I
do
like the idea of working in a lab. And if I want to do that, and to get a job spending my days figuring out how to create the mutant frog people that this world so sorely lacks, this is how I need to go about it. I get one vocation, and the rest of the things that I enjoy become hobbies. I’m a Renaissance man. But the people I’m talking about? The sweepstakes-entering, Ed McMahon-loving, BHT-eating motherfucking sheep that the new Bingham’s has apparently accidentally filtered out and purified in droves? They get a job at Arby’s and make burgers for forty years. They don’t get Ph.D.’s.”

“Ah. And so going to grad school next year versus being at Bingham’s this year is you deciding to leave the Arby’s path behind.”

“Correct,” said the Anarchist, but the thought made his stomach uneasy. He didn’t want to leave Bingham’s. It was home. The crew was his family. Philip was his brother. So why did that dead-end, sheeple path feel so much better at a gut level than heading off for a higher degree and a career filled with cutting edge discoveries?

“So what
of
these... these sheep we’ve inherited?” said Philip. “You seem to have settled in quite nicely to abusing them.”

“It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who literally takes shit and comes back for more,” said the Anarchist, and he meant it. Philip knew he meant it. Another of the Anarchist’s biggest pet peeves was people who used the word
literally
incorrectly, so when he said that they took shit and came back for more, he meant that Nick somehow brought a donkey onto campus and stopped at Bingham’s, that the donkey relieved itself on the floor, that Slate shoveled the manure into garbage bags and handed it out as prizes for lucky customers, that Slate encouraged the customers to come back later for more chances to win, and that many of them did.
 

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that I’m not a mean-spirited person...”

Philip started to say something, but the Anarchist rolled on.

“... but
you
were the one who proposed living it up in whatever time Bingham’s had left. ‘Going out in a blaze of glory’ and all that. And you were the one who started this little sociology experiment by hitting that asshole yesterday morning. And so yeah, I kind of want to see where it goes. Isn’t this fascinating you? I’ve always said that people are stupid, but can you believe just
how
stupid? Just
how
eager and willing they are to do what they’re told?”

Philip nodded. “Not to make more out of this than it is, but you know that sociology and psychology are my majors, and so to me, this is kind of like one of those sadistic Milgram experiments where they’d put people in terrible situations and trick them in order to see how they’d react.” He took a sip of his beer. “Maybe I could even get a final thesis out of this.”
 

“I think we’re doing the world a service,” said the Anarchist. “We’re identifying a segment of the population that will do almost literally whatever they are told, neglecting common sense and rational thought. Think of the applications. The post office will never again want for talent.”
 

“And it’s fun,” said Philip.

“It’s fun,” the Anarchist agreed. Really, all of this talk was just justification. Philip was asking the Anarchist if it was okay to slap people with spatulas and throw things at them, and the Anarchist was explaining why doing so was in the best interest of mankind. The Anarchist, in turn, was asking Philip if it was okay that he was a conceited, intolerant fucker, and Philip was telling him that it was totally cool and that really, he had little option to be otherwise.
 

“And
they
have been bastards to
us
in the past,” Philip added.
 

“We’ve been getting paid,” the Anarchist pointed out.

“Yeah, well,” said Philip. “They still suck.”

“We’re not really hurting anyone. The spatula thing was the closest to actual violence, but it was just a tap. The real wound was to his pride. And after the wounds some of these people have inflicted on us over the years – the hippies who yell at us for serving meat, the faculty who give us that
dumb kid
sneer, the preppie kids from frat row who treat us like vending machines instead of people who might appreciate please, thank you, and dignity, the bums who spit on us, the asshole parents who tell us we ‘did this wrong’ even when we didn’t, the people who take an error as an affront and get angry as if we were out to get them – after that, I really feel like this is just evening the score.”
 

“And they can leave, too. It’s not like we’re putting people in chains.”

“Yet.”

After a pause, Philip said, “Of course, if people
do
keep coming back...”

“People aren’t
that
stupid.”