Friday, August 22, 2003
OBFUSCATIONS
Howdy, Campers! Welcome to Camp Obfuscatotum, where youngsters learn the skills of professionals and politicans. I am pleased to present herewith two true stories. (Plus one other one.) Show your skill in the comments: Can you pick the falsie?
As a courtesy to those of you who DON’T have an unfair advantage, if you have the pleasure of knowing me well enough to know when I’m lying here, do us all the favor of an official abstention for that item. You know the truth, and we all know you know it. Let’s leave some for the ignorant and credulous among us. Play nice and don’t leave your room such a mess. Company’s coming.
I. PRIVATE DANCER
I was working at a big studio on a summer internship as a personal assistant to an independent producer. He was taking me on a tour of the lot and I wanted very much to make a good impression.
We wandered around, visited a few soundstages, rode the little golfcarts, and then he took me to a low nondescript building thudding with noisy dance music. Inside the unmarked front door was a wide room, unfurnished, with a row of short windows high on one wall and floor-to-ceiling mirrors on another. Occupying this space were about thirty hotties (mostly female) in tight-fitting dance gear, working on an ensemble number for the tv show Fame. My new boss and I leaned up against the back wall to appreciate the spectacle - sort of a fringe benefit. I didn’t know why we were there, but I liked it and didn’t want to make any waves.
After about five minutes the choreographer called a sudden stop to the coordinated cavorting. “Who are you people?” he demanded peevishly of us. Every dancer turned to see who had invaded their sanctum, to see whether we were worthy of their attention… As they looked back at us, some were clinically bored, some were haughty, some seemed to wonder whether these strangers represented the big break they’d been waiting for…
All eyes were on my boss and me, and he turned slowly to me - making me responsible to answer for our presence. I, who was lost and confused and ignorant and horny. I, who was barely 20 and petrified of screwing up my ticket to paradise. Unrelated words clogged my mind and locked my tongue to the floor of my mouth. I said nothing, my jaws mutely flapping open and closed a few times. After about five seconds of silence, which undoubtedly took years off my life, my boss finally spoke up - “I’m an independent producer, I’m looking to cast a broadcast feature.” I feel the ambient levels of hope and interest spike as the choreographer told us, “This is a closed rehearsal; you’ll have to leave.”
We walked out and I saw disappointment in my bosses face - not that we’d been evicted but that I’d failed my test. He’d wanted me to talk my way into staying. Instead, I’d vacillated and wavered and lost the chance to make a powerful impression, to be an impressario, to take over a situation outside of my control and make it my own. That was what he’d hoped he’d seen in me when he’d hired me; that was the special trait he’d wanted to foster in me so that he could feed off my youthful energy and excitement and we’d have a creative synergy based on chutzpah and genius. What I’d done instead was to fall on my face, without a single syllable uttered in my defense. I felt like such a loser.
II. LARGE AND IN CHARGE
We were on a hike on Pt. Reyes with two dear friends. Way out at the northern wilds of Tomales there’s a herd of elk running around like they’re the top of the food chain or something. We wanted to see them.
When we set off it was foggy, and it stayed that way - thick milky fog, sometimes lifting to unveil a valley or hillside or even a cliff dropping sheerly to the sea; other times the fog just took over and drowned the landscape altogether. We hiked along the sandy trail, warmed by exertion and enjoying a bit of conversation and whatever scenery we could catch. We came over a low rise into a broad gully filled with elk.
I say filled; there must have been 50 elk out there, grazing and frolicking and occasionally bugling. It was a funny noise. Not “funny ha-ha” - though it would probably seem “funny” like that if you weren’t hearing it in person. But there in the misty meadow the sound was deep and haunting, somewhere between a whistle, a wheeze and a grunt. We stood a while on the trail to take it in.
It was easy to see how things worked with the herd. There were a bunch of females in the middle, huge and heavy creatures, grazing regally among reeds and grasses that were taller than me. Among them strode a handful of males, broadchested and alert, towering racks festooned with vegetation. They’d bully up to a female and get all huffy and bugly, sometimes push each other around a little - and then he’d show up. He was obviously The Elk in Charge. Everything the other males had, he had more of it. He was taller, heavier, with more antlers and bigger shoulders. He’d step up to whatever boy or boys were making trouble by exciting his cows or getting above their station, and he’d give them a look and a snort and a wave of his breathtaking rack, and the troublemaker would mosey along.
We watched this spectacle unfold several times over several minutes before the Elk in Charge got tired of us. I felt his eyes fix on us from across a good-sized copse. His shoulders squared to us, his brow lowered a bit and he huffed meaningfully. It felt personal.
It was. He came at us steadily, in a straight line, eyes black and glittering, antlers resolving into clear focus as he approached - a thicket of rapiers atop a proudly tossing head. He whistled his bugle at us, none too loudly but all too clearly. We began to back away down the path. He kept closing, flailing the bushes with his antlers, tearing up saplings with them. We needed to make better time and turned our backs on him toward the path back to the car. It was obvious that we’d never outrun him anyway no matter what direction we were facing. He stayed within fifty feet or so of us until we got the hell out of his little valley.
Such an utterly masterful animal, ruling his natural domain with wisdom, restraint and unquestionable physical superiority. And all he wanted was to be left unperturbed in his one little valley with his herd. It seemed like such a reasonable request. Especially when it came from an angry stalking elk.
III. FINDING PURPOSE ON HIGH
It was a grey day and I was bored - home in the afternoon, a weekday, tired of my own company. At such times I sometimes visit the local park, as I did on this very occasion. The park is around 1100 acres of brilliantly planned gardens ranging from the highly formal victorian style of the east end to the wilds of the west side with its bison and brewery. I walked the three blocks to the broad northern edge of the park, entered at the rose garden, and turned right, having had my fill at the time of order and organization and seeking a less orchestrated perspective.
I walked past the uphill-flowing stream all the way to Lloyd’s Lake, a few acres of water surrounded on three sides by dense undergrowth and thickets of mature trees. I began to walk around the lake in a self-indulgent funk. It’s a kind of spooky place, with a dismembered entryway from a mansion that had been destroyed in the ‘06 fires set up on one shore. It’s called “Portals of the Past.” I walked on behind that landmark and looked out over the lake from the rugged, overgrown hill that backed against the area.
There was a huge tree standing across the lake from me, rising mightily out of a steep hillside of ivy and juniper. From this tree extended a mighty bough, and from this bough descended a thin yellow rope of some sort. From this rope, a middle-aged man hung by his neck. His head lolled off to one side and his body slowly twisted in the light breeze. His hands were pale, his face seemed relaxed. He appeared to me to have given himself enough rope to have died from a broken neck, rather than from slow strangulation.
Two park employees were standing at the bullrush marsh at the edge of the lake, as close to the dangling body as they could get, looking up at him and gesturing gravely. Within a few minutes four park police cars had arrived, along with a park utility truck . The utility truck had a cherrypicker on it; a cop climbed in and got lifted up to corpse-level above the grey lake waters. He took a few snapshots of the man before lowering the platform and then raising it up again right under him, putting a floor beneath his feet, so to speak - and then cutting the suicide loose and steadying his body against the rails of the picker platform on their trip back down to terra firma. When he cut the rope, the remaining portion fluttered in the breeze, drifting apart into several strands - yellow with black markings. He’d hanged himself with caution tape. His head rolled easily as they pulled him from the cage of the picker.
I had been watching intently so the voice in my ear startled me. “When did you get here?” It was a cop, sent around the lake to investigate, look for clues.
“Just a few minutes ago officer. Just before you got here. I came in at the waterfall, walked around behind the Portals, got to here, and just stood here and watched them cut him down. What happened?”
“I’ll have to ask you to move along. This is a crime scene.”
“Sure thing, officer.” I moved along. I’d been looking for something to shake up my complacency and apathy. Seeing a dead body hanging from a tree did the job. I went home with a renewed dedication toward being actively engaged in my life. The alternative looked terrible.
