Author: STEVE BIERSDORF

First responder

STEVE BIERSDORF

When the non-dairy creamer plant explodes in the Valley Hulk is quickly on scene, walking through a crowd of onlookers on the outskirts and safely at a distance, the crowd parting to let him through, comments at his back as he passes:

“I guess it’s time to drink my coffee black.”

“I’d say. Imagine what that stuff does to your innards.”

“Look, there’s Hulk.”

“What’s he think he’s going to do?”

The Valley is a bad place for this explosion and resulting fire, other industrial facilities in proximity, a developer’s idea of tony, assisted-living apartments that have to be evacuated, one resident expiring from the commotion.

To any of the firefighters or first responders on the scene, no amount of damage from a miscalculated leap can overshadow what they see that day, and they’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. No one sees what the Hulk does beyond the first responders, and the things he does are what make him the ever-loving Hulk. Things he does and does gruffly, that no one else can do, never responding to praise or thanks with anything more than a harrumph, his gruffness taken for modesty, part of the Big Lug mystique.

He controls the fire as it tears across a dry plain of neck-high weeds toward an acetylene production facility, this done by hopping around the front perimeter of the fire and blowing it to a standstill, Hulk able to generate 30-40 MPH gusts of breath, holding up the blaze as firefighters attack it from both flanks.

He lifts a collapsed cinderblock wall, still relatively intact, a wall only a crane could lift, beneath which are several people badly injured though still alive, Hulk carrying each of them to safety. He works through the rubble, casting aside blocks and girders and other decimated sections of the plant until he finds each of the fourteen people killed in the explosion, and carrying out their corpses, holding the corpses limply in his arms, almost reverently, carrying them out one at a time.

The shame of it is no one gets pictures. Of Hulk facing down the angry blaze, hopping frenetically from spot to spot wherever the fire attempts further incursions across the empty field of weeds. Of Hulk lifting the huge wall, maneuvering beneath it, balancing it on his hands, walking with it until it’s clear of the site, negotiating the imbalance of rubble from the decimated plant, uneven mounds of cinder blocks and steel girders with the huge wall aloft, tossing it out of the way. Of sooty Hulk carrying out the injured, of Hulk carrying the corpses, of Hulk going back into the mess time after time until no one alive or dead is left behind. The firefighters and first responders have their stories, and great stories they are. How legends are made. 

For the media, the Hulk angle doesn’t have legs. The patchwork, decades-old plant standards, regulations of volatile chemicals that don’t stack up against those of other countries, lax inspections, testimony in a Senate chamber about how this could have happened in the first place more compelling news.

H

STEVE BIERSDORF

Dr. Banner is aware he’s a whale to his fanged prick of a business manager, H. H will never have a higher net worth client, and he lives more extravagantly than Dr. Banner, Dr. Banner wondering if he’s paying H too much, half-jokingly, half passive-aggressively. H understands and respects and even appreciates passive-aggressiveness. H is worth it, H with his PhD in the shitty and petty and amoral things people will do to get at Dr. Banner’s various holdings.

Dr. Banner sits across a desk from H as H is talking with an attorney representing the center Hulk dispatched at the Jets scrimmage, the center in traction for three weeks, with a dislocated hip forced to sit out the entire season, losing his starting job to someone younger and bigger. 

“Not our concern,” H says into the phone, glancing confidently at Dr. Banner. “Football players get hurt…you should anticipate that…with more guaranteed money…if I played in the NFL I would never hire you or your firm.”

Pause, as the attorney on the other end of the line rebuts.

“Did you read the waiver? The Jets signed it…again, not our problem…the waiver is ironclad,” pause, H listening, “go ahead, the firm that drew up that document will shred you.”

H grabs a piece of paper from his desk and slides it into a crosscut shredder behind him, holding the phone to the humming grind.

“Like that.”

It was smart, the waiver, the Jets waiving any recourse against the Hulk or Dr. Banner, waiving recourse on behalf of the organization and any of its employees. H thinks of everything. He might be a rabid attack dog, but he’s Dr. Banner’s rabid attack dog and Dr. Banner’s yard he’s protecting. Dr. Banner privately wishes people like H weren’t necessary, but they are, unfortunately, as he knows all too well.

“Not our problem,” pause, H listening, “iron clad, my man. It makes no difference if he didn’t sign it, the Jets did and he’s an employee of the New York Jets football organization,” pause, H listening, “then sue the Jets if you want but I expect this to be our last conversation on the matter.” 

H hangs up, happy with himself, cocky. Dr. Banner knows this is a prelude to something else, a performance meant to impress or distract, or to lessen the impact of not so great news to follow. H could have handled this without Dr. Banner’s involvement. Normally he would have. 

“We won’t be hearing from them again.”

“What else is there?”

“Just this. I’m not sure what the hell this is. What are they talking about?”

H tosses an opened envelope on the desk in front of Dr. Banner, from the United States Department of Defense, swallowing hard.

“Chamomile tea?”

There is always the risk of a Hulk tirade if something pisses off Dr. Banner. A Hulk tirade means H’s expensive office accoutrements are at risk. No doubt they’re insured. 

Dr. Banner reads the information and smiles and he can sense H smiling too, relieved and leaning back in his chair. Dr. Banner says nothing, only smiling, H, not sure what to make of the smile, commenting cavalierly, “that’s a lot of money,” easy for him to say. Dr. Banner could still get angry. Smiles can be angry. 

An invoice for $485,365 addressed to Dr. Bruce Banner from the U.S. Department of Defense, for the destruction of four Nano-Hummingbird Spy Drones, payable upon receipt of the invoice. Failure to remit payment immediately can result in IRS liens on property or other of his financial holdings. 

He could complain about the selective memory. When he’d been on contract with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a consultant came his exposure to drone technology, his input into the creation of harvester drones with the ability to detect airborne radiation, used to inspect nuclear facilities for fallout. The harvester drones could see and hear and go places people couldn’t or shouldn’t, but what the harvester drones couldn’t do was detect anything, and so Dr. Banner’s contribution was the equivalent of developing an olfactory sense in these harvester drones, converting them into mechanized bloodhounds hot on the scent of airborne radiation.

He didn’t collaborate to make money. He collaborated, performing his duties to the utmost of his capabilities, for the safety of humankind. He’d rather have left it at that. Someone is selling the harvester drones to someone else. The regulatory commission may have and probably has mandated that any sanctioned nuclear facility must use these harvester drones, so someone is profiting from this idea, an idea that wouldn’t have been possible if not for Dr. Banner’s collaboration.  

He could tell H about the harvester drones. H would want to sue for patent infringement or royalties or something. He’s not sure he’s up to that fight at the moment, the entanglement of it, bureaucratic tedium that will result in meeting in the middle somewhere. The back and forth, posturing, measuring of penises, where the middle is and whose side the middle is closer to. That’s what they’re counting on, that he doesn’t want the fight. What they’re not counting on is H, his well-compensated Rottweiler. 

Hulk and the drones

STEVE BIERSDORF

It’s first thing in the morning lucidity, unadulterated logic of a refreshed mind, reset-button clarity before the obfuscation of another day.

Hummingbirds are not indigenous, their migratory patterns are relatively provincial and they prefer humid subtropical. Not that seeing a hummingbird here is out of the question. And it’s the height of summer. Seeing four of them hovering around a red maple tree is unusual, nothing flowering there, no nectar to drink. If they were availing themselves of a flower bed they would be less conspicuous. They look enough like hummingbirds, though their bills are too short and their movements not fluid and the slightest bit too herky-jerky.

Regarding his reflection in the mirror, his face sleep-bloated, hair pushed from both sides of his head toward the center and pointed upward like a buzz saw, an inexplicable vertical crease beneath his left cheekbone. Downloading the grid map would have been a red flag, Dr. Banner accessing the grid map, and Hulk capable of breathtaking devastation, whatever his motives might be, and the appearance of the hummingbirds. He wonders what they know about what he knows about drones. If they’re insightful, they’ll assume correctly that the answer is plenty, but then they have four hummingbird drones hovering around a red maple and not flowers, betraying the level of competence with which he is dealing. He’s aware everything he does is under surveillance and has been, from the days of windowless vans and thumbnail-sized microphones in the receiver of his handset to now, every email read, every website visited like a muddy footprint, every inbound or outbound call or any text sent or received listened to, read, stored. Something about the drones makes him angry. Maybe it’s the unwarranted suspicion. Maybe it’s that they think he won’t know. 

Jade and Daley Hueman are bitmap images watching from behind a window screen, seeing Hulk backpedaling, lurching, dancing to some fractured beat, swatting at, what, huge flies? Giant mosquitoes?

“What on God’s green earth is he doing?”

“What are those?”

“Birds? Hummingbirds?”

“Why is he attacking them?”

“Maybe they’re attacking him.”

“Where’s my camera?”

Hulk wonders why the hummingbird drones don’t fly away under duress. Maybe the protocol for recalling the drones or overriding a command is more bureaucratic than it should be, or maybe the program’s too new for contingencies. Maybe no one has attacked these drones before and there isn’t precedence. It’s an algorithm missing from the program, making these drones better able to think on their feet. Not that they aren’t quick, impressively so. They dodge his slaps deftly, but they don’t fly away; they dart around him like giant bees, but they don’t attack. They’re half ingenious, prototypes, first or second generation in their evolution. It takes longer than it should, and Hulk feels like he’s waving at holograms. The first one rent into several semi-intact pieces, the next one ricocheting off his open hand and slamming into the wall of his apartment building, embedded in the aluminum siding almost intact. He catches one flush, looks it directly in its peephole, “film this,” and when he crushes it into bits, its guts explode from within his grasp like pulp from ripe fruit.

Hulk and the NFL

STEVE BIERSDORF

Sports talkers fixated on Hulk for a time, which is to say they obsessed about him. Which is to say that all day and late into the evening, turn on the TV and Hulk’s prospects as a professional football player were being contemplated, conjectured, mulled, kneaded, pulverized, tenderized, or bitterly disputed. To intrigued and fascinated conjecturers the subject of Hulk ranging from “good stuff” to “great stuff, compelling stuff, outstanding stuff,” even “amazing stuff,” any kind of stuff putting a capper on the segment before going to commercial. When Hulk became part of the daily sports lexicon he was hard to quit, a nagging, ringing addiction, Hulk the equivalent of two or three packs of cigarettes a day, the subject of Hulk chain-smoked from pre-dawn until late into the night on sports talk programs.

A rumor began, more than likely started by a producer of one of these sports talk programs, out of fresh material, nothing new or breaking, in the dead zone following the previous scandal with nothing probative on the horizon, the middle of baseball season and not far along enough yet for pennant races, past the conclusions of the NBA and NHL seasons and weeks after the NFL draft, weeks before training camp. Everyone in agreement Hulk would make an amazing football player, the conjecture centering on where Hulk would play. Quarterback was out of the question. Or was it? He might have a cannon for an arm, and he could nullify any team’s pass rush. Imagine, you might not even need blockers with Hulk at QB, line up with a center and nine receivers. Hulk would set the West Coast Offense back a hundred years. Why not Hulk as fullback, who couldn’t he block? Opening holes for the team’s tailback to run through, but then why not give the football to Hulk and let him run over anyone foolish enough to try and bring him down? Or Hulk on defense. How about at nose tackle? Forget about running the football against any defense with Hulk anchoring the nose. And how much salary could he command? Imagine the signing bonus, the guaranteed money. Worthy of Croesus, or that modern-day Croesus, Jeff Bezos.

Turn on ESPN and it was Hulk all the time. It got so sports bars began sponsoring drinking games, turn on ESPN and drink whenever they say Hulk, beers served with shot glasses for these occasions and Hulk to thank for brisk bar sales, Hulk also to thank for a spike in summer OWIs.

And how it snowballed from there, someone in player personnel from one team assuming these sports talkers had gotten the rumor from someone in player personnel from another team, possibly a division rival. The focus turned to which team would take the plunge, NFL insiders probing the front offices of various teams and the New York Jets was to be the consensus “best fit,” ample room under the salary cap, a major media market, holes along their defensive front, no running game to speak of, and question marks at the quarterback position. The rumor propagating like snails in a fish tank, after the requisite no comment from the team’s coach and front office, from the general manager and director of pro player personnel on down to the PR flaks, nobody confirming or denying the rumor, by not denying it confirming it in the minds of the many.

Until early on into training camp, a late July morning and the Jets arranging a scrimmage to see exactly what Hulk could do, how he’d fit in, a closed scrimmage with no media until the Jets could get a handle on what they were dealing with.

Hulk lined up at nose tackle, Hulk the only player on the field not in helmet and pads. Hulk shirtless and barefoot in stretch pants past the knee like culottes from a big-and-tall men’s store, Hulk like a big green cartoon in the middle of the defensive front, a man playing with puffy children. Hulk down in a three-point stance, the quarterback barking signals, the ball snapped, the center surging into Hulk as though to move him off the line of scrimmage.

With his large right hand Hulk grabbing a handful of the center’s jersey and front of his pads, pivoting on his back foot as he tossed the center effortlessly behind him, the 300-pound center like a missile fired diagonally across the field and crashing into several tubs of Gatorade, a Gatorade explosion, a tsunami of red Gatorade.

A few holy shits, a Jesus, and several players doubled over, gasping, unable to inhale enough to maintain laughing so hard. They would recall the sound of the big center projectile whistling by, speculating that if he hadn’t been obstructed he might have broken the sound barrier. Said one player: “From when he turned and flung him, when Hulk released the guy from his hand to when the guy slammed into the Gatorade seemed like it was instantaneous. And we’re talking about a distance of 30 to 40 yards and a 300-pound offensive lineman.” 

Before he could say it was fun while it lasted it was over, Hulk’s professional football career relegated to a single play in a training camp scrimmage. The NFL needed a legitimate reason why Hulk couldn’t play other than he was too powerful, and so gamma radiation was quickly added to the league’s list of banned substances.   

Hulk and the bank manager

STEVE BIERSDORF

At seven feet tall and a thousand pounds, entrances to most dwellings are a problem, the notable exception being bay doors. Hulk makes the effort when the mood strikes him, stooping, bending, contorting, shimmying. With his umbrella insurance policy, patience isn’t necessarily required of him, as long as he can stomach the escalating premium. What impatience looks like: steel or wood doors torn from their hinges and tossed aside like sheets of cardboard, plowed-through door frames. shoulder-contoured sections of missing wall, scattered glass fragments. 

Hulk isn’t happy with his bank when they EFT the funds from his account to cover the damages. For how much they assess his account for he’s paid up for future demolition. He doesn’t find out until he’s at the branch checking his balance, the teller nervously rifling her keyboard, a mad plastic scramble, pause, mad plastic scramble, circular mouse glide, mouse click, mouse glide, mouse click, mad plastic scramble, mouse glide, mouse click, mouse click, mouse click, mad plastic scramble, mouse glide, mouse click. He’s huge and full of muscles and he’s green for God’s sake, he’s gruff, none of the usual spry quips or weather-related banter, Hulk’s an economist of the language. The waterline rises perceptibly when Hulk’s in the pond and the fish are perfectly still, when Hulk arrives to the sound of shattering glass.  

The bank could have let him know. It would have seemed less like they were helping themselves to his funds, as if as stewards of his money the bank is entitled to some of it, or any of it, at their discretion. He has enough of it that they can’t resist, not offering him the opportunity to negotiate the amount or compare repair estimates.  

“Excuse me, Dave, the Hulk’s out here and he’d like a word with you.”

Dave the Branch Manager smiling absurdly, at how emaciated, how atrophied he is by comparison, as he introduces himself to Hulk. Dave apologizing, Hulk absolutely should have been notified, Dave politely denying Hulk’s request to transfer the funds back to his account, theoretically, numbers electronically transferred out, numbers transferred back in, a little 10-key action and a couple of mouse clicks to determine how much money he does or doesn’t have.

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that.”

The words hang echoless and still in the air. People are listening and pretending not to, anxious to see how Hulk will respond, but he doesn’t, instead lumbering back toward the compromised entrance. Dave following hesitantly, not sure if he needs to, wondering if Hulk is leaving, hoping so, wishing it would be that easy even if it never is. Hulk pauses at the entrance, surveying the damage, looking over the twisted metal frame and jagged shards of glass, Hulk pointing out that there is no structural damage to the wall, yet. Though he refers to himself in the third person and speaks monosyllabically, eschewing adjectives or prepositions and disdaining conjunctions, he has Dr. Banner’s nuclear physicist brain. 

If this isn’t enough to sway Dave, Hulk gives him something else to consider.

“Hulk could make big stink.”

Ah, yes. Hulk the celebrity, a case to be made for the too-small twin doors as discriminatory toward people of stature. There has to be a would-be civil rights attorney ready to take up the cause, soliciting other Americans of stature to join a class action with Hulk as high-profile fellow plaintiff. 

Hulk isn’t just another customer, Hulk is one the bank’s highest net-worth depositors, with his paid appearances at poker runs and ultimate fights and MMA main events and tractor pulls, the endorsements, royalties from sales of Hulk-trademarked paraphernalia like beach towels, Christmas cards with Hulk depicted in Santa regalia, Hasbro Marvel The Incredible Hulk Talking Smash Bash Fists™, Hulk hands beer holders.

“Let me see what I can do.”

Dave knows if he promises to see what he can do he’s committed to doing something, as far as the customer is concerned, and it gets worse if he sees what he can do and it turns out he can’t do anything. Consulting Lisa the District Manager seems wise, Lisa as cover, let Lisa make the call, but then he picks up the phone and thinks a few moves ahead. Knowing exactly what call she’ll make, and who she’ll let deliver the bad news, Hulk a hulking mass of human capable of breathtaking devastation. 

Nearby in the lobby, on opposing sides of a desk too out in the open, the branch mortgage specialist trying to close a loan, the customer sitting back, arms folded.

“If you can’t tell me what the work gap fee is for, I’m out. Seems kind of outrageous that you don’t even know what you’re charging me for.”

“I understand, sir, I wish I could tell you, I don’t determine the closing costs. I have nothing to do with that.”

“You represent the bank and the bank determines the closing costs, so in my eyes you’re the bank.”

“We’re talking about a hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

They’re both looking down at a long list of closing costs and avoiding eye contact, the branch mortgage specialist referencing the hundred twenty-five by pointing to it with his bank-logo pen. 

“Okay, if you think that’s an insignificant amount, why don’t you waive it?”

“I meant in relation to the amount of your mortgage, or what you’ll save in interest with the lower rate we’re, I’m, offering you, or…”

Hulk wanders over and stands near and facing them and their negotiation suspends, both men turning to him, watching him from their sitting positions without a word. Where ordinarily they might wonder if they can help him, implying that he’s inserting himself into their private business. It’s the ever-loving Hulk, though, and Jesus he’s big up close. Hulk harrumphs like a buffalo about to charge. 

Dave knows, Lisa the DM will say, “DO NOT put the funds back in his account.” Hulk could react one of several ways and none of them good. Taking out the entire wall around the entranceway, charges of discrimination/negative media attention, taking his high net worth to a competitor, tanking the branch’s P & L and costing everyone their bonus, his included. If he isn’t fired. And always that threat, the unspoken possibility force-placing any directive no matter how poorly conceived, or for failing to meet assigned quotas for opening new checking or savings accounts or CD’s. 

“How are your numbers?” 

Always the first thing out of Lisa’s mouth when she sees him, when she calls, and she calls two or three times a day if she doesn’t visit. She calls between meetings, on her way in, at lunch, driving to her next meeting, on her way home, if she’s away at training. Checking accounts, savings accounts, CD’s, referrals to the investment guy or the mortgage specialist, more, more, more, more this month than last, more next month than this, grow or die, make the numbers go up or lose your job. Open more CD’s, when the branch pays less than one percent interest for balances of less than $25,000 with maturities under three years. Terrify then mollify them, tell them how risky the stock market is, the older they are the more risk averse they need to be, and CD’s are FDIC insured. As if that works.

“From now on, Dr. Ban…Hulk…I’d ask you to please approach at the drive-thru window rather than coming inside, that way we can avoid this situation,” his voice tailing away. Telling Hulk to do anything is absurd. Hulk ignores him, waiting on the teller to print a slip showing the credit back to his account, the teller fat-fingering the keyboard, oops, backspace, retype, “here you are sir,” the receipt tiny in his hand. 

Hulk ambles back through the open entranceway, squeezing daylight into corners as he passes through, ducking slightly, out into the parking lot and into a deep knee bend, disappearing into the air like falling up. Inadvertently destroying a section of parking lot where he pushes off, depressing the pavement and leaving a pothole that would bend any axle or snap any CV joint, ruin any expensive rim, flatten a tire, initiate a small claims action if not immediately repaired. 

Dave sighing as he surveys the damage, wondering what he’ll put for his reason for leaving this position on the application for his next one. They always want to know. 

As much as he does it Hulk enjoys leaping, launching himself, airborne bull soaring over a world of china, quickly being somewhere else from where he just was, sometimes as far as a zip code away. In much the same way as firing a bullet up into the sky, knowing the bullet will land, but where? As inconsequential as where the bullet might land, where Hulk might land surely isn’t. At half a ton, anywhere Hulk lands he leaves a mark. Dr. Banner calculates Hulk’s velocity at over a thousand pounds freefalling from an estimated height of three thousand feet, and the PSI when he lands is off the charts, registering at the lowest end of a base-10 logarithmic scale. 

Hulk knows where the parks are within the metropolitan area or the open spaces in the suburbs or outlying areas, cabbage fields, manicured lawns surrounding office buildings, golf courses, and he catapults himself to these places. To minimize the potential damage, wherever he lands is wherever he lands, no amount of flailing mid-air will change that. Hulk crashing into an OBGYN clinic at the edge of a park once, slamming down in front of a woman with her legs up in stirrups waiting to be examined.  

When he lands on soft ground, he leaves deep foot prints like tree stumps ripped from the earth, more than once on a golf course, the grounds crews opting to create bunkers wherever the Hulk may have landed, by digging out the impacted grounds and filling in the excavated area with imported sand, a finer grain. 

Quite the sight for the golfers, the green speck in the sky growing quickly in size and landing suddenly and with enough impact to deliver a tremor throughout most of the eighteen-hole course, leaves trembling like astonished murmurs, water hazards rippling like visible echoes from his abrupt arrival. 

He lands in an outlying area near the freeway and runs south on the freeway into the downtown area, crumpling the freeway like a mishandled bag of potato chips spilled in his wake. It takes forever to fix the freeway, an important artery to the downtown business district, traffic snarls at all hours and particularly suffocating during rush hour. 

Fuckin’ Hulk.

An Incapacity for Savoir-Faire

STEVE BIERSDORF

There was much more they were hoping to accomplish. In the back of their thoughts – tumbleweeds blowing by, squinting into the sun and windblown sand, A Gun For Ringo playing in the background – they knew they were wasting their time. No one likes Pho that much. They discover he’s lefthanded, likes his steak medium well (would have thought he liked his food raw or undercooked), dislikes kimchi (a surprise), and eats with Western utensils instead of chopsticks when given the option. Desperate for progress, diagnosing as false positive his use of forks, knives and spoons. 

By his command, Old Uncle strapped to a wall, by wrists and thighs, dismembered with one of those Chinese antiaircraft guns (88 mm, German made) with foot trigger, from World War II, so loud you wear headphones or your hearing is permanently damaged. Sawed off at the shoulders, at the tops of his femurs, the torso and head dropping to the floor with a sticky thud, arms and legs pinned to the wall. 

It would shock you to know he thinks he’s better than you, smarter than you. You assume he assumes you’re superior to him because you’re Caucasian and he’s Asian. He thinks it’s odd that you like him. He sees this as exploitable. If he can’t win, he’ll quit. Never was there the remotest possibility of win-win. 

If Satan were to walk into a crowded café somewhere under guise, strapped with C4, and detonate himself, this would be the anti-Christian equivalent of his dying to propagate sin (as opposed to absolving it), each bit of his flesh an incubus for evil and hate. You and he are two chunks of scattered incubus meat.    

Tagger

STEVE BIERSDORF

On my drives to and from work, I go on hiatus from the morning palaver I normally half-listen to, or have on for noise. I drive with only the hum of the tires or cars going the other way, passing me with a gasp, or the occasional off-key brass section of an approaching train. Sometimes if I have to wait on a train I count the cars. Sometimes the trains are over two hundred cars long, and during drive time. I could write my congressman, suggesting there be restrictions on how long trains can be during drive times. Fifty cars or fewer seems like a reasonable expectation. My congressman is notoriously pro-commerce and with a well-funded hammerlock on his congressional district, so any response is unlikely. Accountability doesn’t apply. 

During a momentary lapse from my hiatus I make a fortuitous discovery. I’m pretty sure it was Marge and Murray and not any of the other him and her morning drive-time concoctions, Bruce and Darla, Lefty and Carole, Johnson and Box. Marge says that would be a cool job, watching TV for a living. Murray says you can go to our page and check it out. On Marge and Murray’s page is a help-wanted advertisement for TV-watching positions in the UK or Ireland, for a well-known subscription service for movies and TV shows. If I’m willing to relocate I’m invited to apply. I think about moving to the UK or Ireland and watching TV for a living. Getting paid to watch TV might be worth the dearth of sunshine or living among people with jacked-up grills and pretentious vocabularies.

My cell phone number is like a porterhouse dropped into a river teeming with piranha. It’s on marketing lists cold-callers ply, the standard lists, not the high net worth lists. Occasionally I take these calls, usually not. Sometimes there’s an automated message telling me I’ve reached my credit limit but that if I call now they can extend it for me, or sometimes the automated message tells me it’s imperative that I call an 888 number immediately. I don’t have any credit cards (if I don’t have the money for it I don’t buy it, which as an American is counterintuitive of me). I’m not sure what’s different this time, but I take the call. 

A woman wants to know if I’m still interested in the TV-watching position I applied for. I’m not sure why we don’t conduct the phone interview right then, but we prearrange a time and date. A recruiter calls me at the scheduled time and gets my basics, then questions me extensively about what I watch on TV. I watch a lot of TV. Even if I’m doing something else I leave the TV on. I go to sleep with the TV on, my remote has a timer and the TV shuts off while I’m asleep. She’s careful not to react to my answers, but I sense she likes the smell of what I’m cooking. Sometimes she interrupts my answers with the next question when my answers are long-winded. I’m told my responses will be carefully considered and if they’re interested in moving forward they’ll contact me. On my drive home, I wonder if they have road construction in the UK or Ireland. I’d be willing to trade our road construction for their dentists, but not if I’m moving there.

A few weeks later and I recognize the same area code when the next call comes. The caller introduces himself as Jim Goodlatte. I ask if an affinity for lattes is genetic predisposition, and he chuckles as if he’s heard this a thousand times. Only good ones, he says, his stock rejoinder. He has only one question, why I want to be a Tagger, which is what a professional TV watcher is called. Who wouldn’t?  I ask. He’s coming to town, and wants to meet face to face. He schedules me for an interview at a local hotel. He’ll be interviewing people for two days, interviews on the hour. He instructs me to go online and take a personality test in the interim. 

The personality test consists of side-by-side responses to a single question, in rectangular boxes, with rounded corners, in big font and simple sentences, nothing so mind-bending as a double negative. At the outset I’m warned that it takes approximately forty-five minutes to complete the test and that I should set this time aside. I’m to go with the response that most closely matches how I am, or how I self-actualize. I’m encouraged to answer instinctively and not overthink my responses. The questions have nothing to do with watching TV. An example: When confronted with a difficult situation do I 1) trust myself to come up with the appropriate solution or 2) do I prefer to first gather input from others? Offended by these inane questions, I decide to be contradictory. I choose the same or similar response to sets of oppositely intended questions. I tear through the test in little more than ten minutes. 

And then I’m back at work, trying not to think about this opportunity, but that I might get out has me in a good mood. Watching TV in the UK or Ireland is an exciting proposition that I’m totally up for, I decide. A customer is telling me about the vehicles he’s modified. He’s a parts manager at an Audi dealership. He’s a nice guy, but he’s the tenth or eleventh customer of the day. I’m thinking about how I can get him to sign two more forms and break out my disinfectant wipes while he’s telling me about how he tripled the torque output of his Ram truck. I smile suddenly and he smiles back like I’m smiling at something he said, like discussing torque ratios really tickles my balls.

    

Cardinal in the tree

STEVE BIERSDORF

You painted this on our door,

At the Shelter Island house

The Hermit

I didn’t know why, then

The Hermit

Seeker of self-enlightenment

Soul-searcher, on a path of self-discovery

Your journey

 

You were born in time of great worry

You died in another time of great worry

A baby and an old man, unconcerned

I remember being little

Falling asleep next to you

Listening to your deep, cleansing breaths

A rhythm

 

The greatest memories of my youth

Asking you, begging you to take us to the Hamptons

Diving into breakers

While you lay on a blanket, reading

Standing on the edge of the surf in late afternoon

Sun fading, wind stiffening

Book in hand, finger between pages where you left off,

Time to go

Time to go

 

You sitting alone in a movie theater

Color aftershock flickering across your face

I wish I could have sat beside you

I wish I could have seen what you saw

I can’t now

Obituary – J Biersdorf

 

A principled man

A light in you

A light you refracted, you, game changer

A light so many saw in you

Souls you attended

With purpose

 

Maybe things you didn’t say

Maybe they didn’t matter, Dad

Because a week rarely went by

Without you checking in on me

The sound of your voice

Echoes in my mind

 

Fear of relevancy, question mark

Anger a gray shroud

The sun hides behind

How a gentle and kind soul

Becomes obscured

You loved me,

Cardinal in the tree,

I know

 

After your stroke

You looked like you’d grappled with death

A great struggle you survived

The worse for wear

Holding on, a last chance for forgiveness

The greatest thing in life

What you were unable to say

In your eyes

 

In your breathless voice

You wanted to come home

Someone overheard, and so it is

Goodbye father

Watch over me

Singha

STEVE BIERSDORF

He usually parked at the edge of a weedy vacant lot for sale that would soon belong to someone, adjacent to a new home under construction. It was early, and he desired to get the day started right with a brisk walk. Atop a ladder was a man in a white t-shirt, injecting nails with a nail gun as if he was stapling the house together. As he was walking by the man looked down at him and said something, what, quite, he didn’t catch, only the word “local” and a number, and it was a question judging from the tone.

He noticed they were dressed similarly, he also in a white t-shirt and jeans, though his white t-shirt was an advertisement for Singha beer, a souvenir from his one visit to Bangkok, there for a week and a half, where he had unprotected sex with a deaf Thai hooker who started menstruating mid-copulation. And so he came back with the Singha t-shirt and six-months’ wait to see if he was HIV positive, an interminable wait for the results in those early, terrifying days of HIV. Since he wasn’t conversant in sign language, the deaf hooker had communicated with him by pointing and gesturing and making nonsensical noises. When she wanted to get paid, she pointed to his wallet and grunted. She observed as he counted off the bills, and when he didn’t give her enough Baht, she grunted with more emphasis. He’d felt entitled to a discount.

“Sure,” was all he could come up with, and the man on the ladder pointed toward the front of the skeletal house and he heard the man say, “start cutting those boards. And make sure you wear the safety goggles.” Appreciative that the man on the ladder was concerned for his well-being, he came into the front yard and there was a single board lying across two sawhorses, other boards piled nearby, one by sixes if he had to guess, the safety goggles hanging from a protruding shoulder of one of the sawhorses. After affixing the goggles he found the hand-held circular saw and began cutting, one board after the other, slicing easily through them and a pile of sawdust growing steadily like an ambitious anthill beneath where he cut.

A while later and the man had descended from the ladder, and he was trying unsuccessfully to shout over the zinging metallic whine of the circular saw. From the man’s expression, he appeared upset. He took his finger off the saw trigger to hear what the man might have to say.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’d think that would be fairly obvious. By the way, I’m getting paid for this, right? It’s not that I mind lending a hand, but I did have other plans.”

“I mean, what the fuck are you doing to this wood? This is all the wood we have. We’re on a schedule.”

“I’m cutting the boards in a herringbone pattern. For never having used one of these things,” looking slightly maniacal or overzealous with the safety goggles still on, he hefted the circular saw aloft and shook it for emphasis, the man staring at the Singha advertisement on his t-shirt, coming to a realization. “For never having been trained and thrown to the wolves, this is precise work if I say so myself.”

Ass Ventriloquism

STEVE BIERSDORF

On a walking/bike path through suburbia, eavesdropping on a couple twenty feet in front of him. They seemed unaware of him behind them, and he measured their walking cadence, matching it perfectly so as not to gain any ground and not to lose any, stay with earshot but not encroach, hanging back in their fuzzy periphery.

“It was Cinco de Mayo, so they were the Cerveceros instead of the Brewers, on their uniforms, in honor of the day, I suppose,” the woman was saying, alternately watching her feet take one step after the other, a mechanical process that might seem to her like she was detached from. Right foot and left foot trading places in the lead, and glancing at her male companion to check his reaction to anything she might say. They were confidantes and between the two of them there were suppositions aplenty.

“They have to appeal to their Hispanic fan base I suppose,” said he, as if she needed a mansplanation, or was angling for his usual pithy summation.

He would do that, eavesdrop, unrepentantly. If people were speaking loudly enough in his presence they were inviting him to listen, and they were intentionally loud to attract an audience so he was only obliging them. And anyway, they had nothing to worry about if they were being unintentionally loud and invidious. Most of what he overheard didn’t hold his attention for long. 

“Harley-Davidson was doing some kind of promotion, so just before the start of the game the Racing Sausages raced Harleys along the outfield warning track, and when I say race, I don’t think they broke thirty. Naturally the Chorizo won that race, and then they held the regular sausage race during the game, surprise, the Chorizo wins again. Seriously, would anyone have cared if the Hot Dog or the Italian won a race, or the Bratwurst? Would the Hispanics, Hispanic people, would they really have been offended…”

“…given a mierda…”

“…if the Chorizo didn’t win both races? Isn’t Cerveceros enough of a tribute?”

“How many Hispanics go to their games, realistically?”

“Exactly.”

He watched their feet as they spoke, feet taking them confidently and with determination to wherever they were going. She was wearing white running shoes with pink trim, upturned at the nose of them, the pink sole extended up over the front like a tongue trying to taste something on the upper lip of her shoes. His running shoes were glittery cloth, splayed to near bursting at the sides, as if he had wide feet, ever widening, as if the inevitable weight gain was causing his feet of clay to splay out to toed flapjacks, the breadth of his feet threatening to defeat his shoes. The outsoles were more worn as though he walked on the outer edges of his feet, as if he customarily walked on hot coals.

He watched their asses when they would speak, as if when they said anything they were really talking out of their asses within their shorts and lip-synching. His ass appeared flat and muscle-less beneath the long, baggy shorts, an ass pounded flat from sitting, her ass like two pumpkins beneath gym teacher shorts, shorts from years ago she could confound by still fitting into them, if gruntingly, shimmying, holding her breath, sucking in her gut and lamenting the inevitable spread of her hips.