King of the Idiots
I told the idiots I didn’t want to be their king. Don’t even think about voting for me, I told them. You want proof they deserve their name? They thought you voted on kings the way you voted on presidents. I did not try to disabuse them of the notion. It was no use. They’re ineducable, individually and as a group. But I did stand up at the end of the bar and urge them in a loud voice to vote for Mack. Mack, you see, actually wanted the job. I’m no saint, but I try to do the right thing when the opportunity presents itself.
The sons of bitches elected me anyway. Talk about a slap in the face to Mack. He took the hit like a gentleman, came over and congratulated me, shook my hand and bought me a beer, but losing put a hurt on the man. He has a heart the size of the Grand Canyon. Why do there have to be winners and losers in everything we do? Can’t we reorganize society, or at least how things work in it? I know, it’s a question worthy of an idiot.
I don’t mean to go off half-cocked. It’s a tendency. Here is what you need to know: the bar where the idiots congregate is located in a Buffalo neighborhood you probably never go to, and for good reason. The residents, most of them anyway, work hard to justify its stinky reputation. The bar is called Lumpy Peter’s Traditional Grist Mill, and I wish I could tell you why. I’ve heard theories but give them no credence. There’s an owner, but he steers clear of the joint. Do you blame him?
The idiots grew up here and never left. That takes integrity, not to mention a lack of ambition. Put the two together and you get a group of citizens in their thirties and early forties, men and women both, who call themselves The Idiots. In their minds the name is capitalized, to distinguish them from the run-of-the-mill fools you meet on a daily basis on the sidewalks of every city in the world.
I should mention the time of year, since weather is a big factor around here. First week of March, with the winter hanging on making you think this year it’s actually going to do it, it’s going to eat the spring and we’ll freeze our asses off until May. The leftover snow gives no indication of melting any time soon. Everywhere you look there are gray and gritty mounds of the stuff. Florida, you think, but it’s not a complete sentence, is it?
When the election was over I was ready to shove off for home, where my wife Janet had to be told the bad news. I was able to put off that disagreeable task for a few minutes thanks to Florence, who poured me a congratulatory shot of good Scotch. Florence has worked at the Mill forever and has latitude. She wants to give away a generous shot of the good stuff, she gives it away. She claims she is six foot seven, but that’s an exaggeration. In any case she is what my old man used to call a long drink of water, and blonde in the worst way. The size of her hoop earrings is legendary among the idiot tribe, along with her snappy comebacks, which have been known to draw blood.
“You really didn’t want this, did you, Jimmy?” she said, which I thought was insightful.
When she leaned her elbows on the bar she looked like some sort of trophy, but I can’t be more specific.
“It just goes to show,” I told her.
“Show what?”
“They really are idiots.”
“Takes one to be their king,” she said, and I was in no position to deny it.
Janet took the news about like I expected, which is to say, with frigid deprecation. She grew up in the neighborhood just like the rest of us but absolutely refuses to be an idiot. She works as an insurance adjustor and makes a decent living. We could move somewhere else, and that’s her goal. So far I’ve refused to budge. Get my back up, and it stays up.
I found her in the living room watching Jeopardy reruns on her computer, a bowl of popcorn on the couch next to her, wrapped in an afghan her grandmother crocheted for her. She’s an attractive woman, everybody says so, on the petite side with curly red hair she keeps short, liking things under control. She has that white Irish skin I’ve always been partial to. Under stress it glows pink and is a sexy sight to behold.
“You campaigned for this,” she told me.
“No I didn’t.”
“That’s how you managed it, by not wanting it. Very clever, Jimmy. Too clever by half, if you ask me.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You’re going to make the speech, aren’t you?”
“Do I have a choice?”
She shook her head and went back to her Jeopardy and her popcorn. If Ken Jennings showed up at the front gate, my wife would be out the door like a shot, wouldn’t even stop to turn down the thermostat. They would live happily ever after in Trivia City. Not likely. Ken Jennings would never come anywhere near our neighborhood. He’s no idiot.
You’re probably thinking I’m a total deadbeat. It’s what you expect of an idiot king. Twenty hours a week at a convenience store, something along those lines. But I have a good job, as good in its way as Janet’s. I do web development work for a healthy company that supports non-governmental organizations. How’s that for defying your expectations? Most of the time I work from the house, which I’m more than happy to do. Now and then the favor of my presence is requested at a headquarters meeting, and I go. While I’m at those meetings, you would never know I was king of the idiots.
I sat across from Janet in a chair that goes beautifully with the sofa although the fabrics are different. She has excellent taste. I had some lines of code to rethink. They lacked the elegance of simplicity. I don’t always get there, but I shoot for elegance in my work. I couldn’t focus on the code, though. It was the speech. In accepting my election to the kingship, I agreed to make a speech at the Mill, the night following. I’m not big on public speaking, not even around people I know. You know the strong, silent type? I’m half that.
The inauguration speech is a tradition, though, and I couldn’t let my reluctance get in the way. So many decent and reasonable things have gone out the window lately, haven’t they? Extremism is in. Man, is it ever in. That’s why I had to respect the unwritten law that said the new king or queen would make an acceptance speech laying out priorities for the new reign.
Priorities for the rain, the idiots think it is, and bring their umbrellas.
After twenty minutes of fidgeting in the chair I got up.
“I’m going out,” I told Janet.
“Where?”
“To the Mill.”
“If you’re looking for some adulation from your subjects, I bet most of them have gone home.”
“I’m restless,” I told her.
Sometimes honesty really is the best policy. She called me over and gave me a kiss goodbye. In it was the promise of comfort, and maybe more.
“Do you know the capital of Brunei?”
I didn’t. Not the first time I’ve disappointed my wife.
Janet was right. The Mill had pretty much cleared out by the time I walked in. Florence was standing behind the bar, and Mack slouched in front of it, nursing a beer. The Mill was a down-home kind of place. You’ve been there, or someplace just like it. A television nobody paid attention to; the colors tended toward orange on the spectrum. Stools that looked like they came over with the Pilgrims, if you can picture a Pilgrim on a bar stool. Old posters of rock bands on tour, and a framed picture of a snowstorm that made the front page of the Buffalo News, as though any amount of snow was newsworthy in our city. The door to the men’s room featured the Zig-Zag man burning his classic blunt.
“All Hail the King,” said Mack, lifting his glass.
Maybe there was a tinge of irony in that, maybe there wasn’t. Like I said, for reasons of his own he had actually wanted the job. Mack works for the city. In the winter he drives a snow plough. Summers he does maintenance at the parks. He has a round face, a squatty body, and that enormous heart. Standing next to Florence, which of course he occasionally does, he looks like a munchkin.
Florence asked me, “You write your speech, Jimmy?”
I didn’t want to moan and groan about being elected, not with Mack there. But the whole idea of being king of the idiots was really getting to me. I guess it’s good that there are things you don’t understand about yourself.
“Not yet,” I admitted.
Florence poured me a shot. She poured one for Mack, and then one for herself. Who’s going to turn down Johnny Walker Black? We talked for a few minutes. Desultory I think is the word for our conversation. I was sipping slowly, The whiskey went down like a kid on a water slide.
It was Florence who came up with the idea of me practicing my speech on them. Seemed like a good idea. At least it was an idea, a commodity in short supply just then.
“You ought to stand on a table,” Mack suggested. “That’s how a real king does it.”
I had my doubts, but I climbed onto a chair and from the chair onto a table that had been at the Mill since Leif Erikson outflanked Columbus. It seemed sturdy enough. They don’t make tables like that anymore.
“You got a theme?” Florence wanted to know.
Until she asked, I didn’t know I did.
“Who needs idiots?” I told her. “That’s the theme.”
It was the spark I needed. In half a second the funk I was in went away. The fog dissipated, the sky cleared, and the sun of comprehension broke through.
“Idiots,” I told them.
“Sing it, brother,” said Mack. “Give it everything you’ve got.”
What a guy, what a heart. The City of Buffalo has no idea how lucky they are, having him on the payroll.
“People think we don’t need idiots any more,” I said, warming to the topic as it came into focus. “They think the day of the idiot is done, the world has moved on. From here on out we all need to be smart. We need to be calculating. We need to be fashionable and pleasant and mind our manners in company. Well, fuck that noise. I’m here to tell you, beloved subjects of the reign, that those who predict the demise of idiocy are not just wrong, they’re dead wrong. A society without idiots is a society without a soul.”
I went on for a while, riffing on my theme and having a fine time. It kind of surprised me, all that articulate heat being in me, especially because, as I said previously, I’m no kind of public speaker. When I was done, Florence raised her glass and told me, “I think you’ve got hold of something there, Jimmy.”
Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. But I knew that by the time I stood up on that very same table to give the speech, less than twenty-four hours from now, I was definitely going to have it.
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Reader Comments
I think I’ve been to that bar!
Good stuff. Somehow (really?) applicable to our idiotic times today in the USA.
In a million bars, in a million neighborhoods, they’re all the same…