Mad Diary of Malcolm Malarkey, page 18
“So, as I read this, all my time has to be accounted for including, say, trips to the toilet?” Malarkey asks.
“That, that’s correct. There’s a special column for the number of times you go to the rest room and the amount of time you spend doing each.”
“Each what?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t. Could you clarify that?”
Mrs. Rasmussen clears her throat.
“Number one and number two,” she whispers.
“Number one and number two!” Malarkey repeats loudly enough for the entire office to hear. “Hope everyone is clear about that!” “Of course. Number one and number two! How could I have mistaken those two numbers!”
“Yes,” she replies sotto voce somewhat embarrassed by his outburst.
“Right. So, how, exactly, am I supposed to measure the time taken for my number one and number two?”
“I’m glad you asked.”
She opens another drawer, takes out a plastic bag and removes a plastic stopwatch.
“You can use this.”
She hands him the stopwatch.
“A stopwatch.”
“Yes, all you have to do is account for the actual time you spend …”
“Doing number one and/or number two …,” Malarkey interrupts.
“Yes, and then log it in the appropriate column.”
“Is there a maximum amount of time allotted for this or are we on the honor system? And do you want me to return the stopwatch? That’s a bit sketchy.”
Mrs. Rasmussen nervously adjusts her blouse.
“I detect a bit of sarcasm on your part, Professor Malarkey. This, this is very important data collecting.”
“Caca collecting?”
“Data collecting.”
“No, not a drop of sarcasm on my part. Actually, I’ll get started on this right away,” Malarkey answers with feigned enthusiasm.
He grabs the form, stuffs the stopwatch in his corduroy jacket and starts to leave.
“Oh, one last question.”
“Yes?”
“There doesn’t seem to be a column for diarrhea. Should I add one or just bring in a sample?”
Mrs. Rasmussen doesn’t answer and Malarkey skips out of the office.
If the Reader has been reading closely, then the Reader knows exactly what is to follow. As usual, Malarkey sits across from Chancellor Jones.
“Joe, it’s April Fool’s day. It’s a fake tattoo.”
Malarkey starts to rub it off though it doesn’t come off easily.
“Fucking henna.”
“Malcolm.”
Malarkey is licking his fingers trying to get the tattoo off.
“Malcolm, it’s March first not April first.”
Malarkey looks at Jones somewhat confused.
“March first?”
“Yes, March first.”
“Who would have guessed? Leave it to Stephen Hawking to fuck up time.”
“Regardless, Malcolm, not everyone gets your sense of humor or your satire or your sarcasm.”
“I wasn’t being snarky. You know, the world would be a better place if it did. Even Jesus must’ve had a sense of humor.”
“And why is that?”
“He had a yahoody mother, right?”
Jones folds his hands on his desk.
“Can I ask you a personal question, Malcolm?”
“Sure. As long as it’s personal. I hate impersonal questions.”
“Are you under some personal stress?”
“Personal stress. Personal stress. Hmmm. Let me think. Why do you ask that, my droog? Sounds hound-and-horny to me.”
“That’s what they say.”
“That’s hearsay, Joe. Even Judge Judy wouldn’t accept that.”
“But is it true?”
“Maybe. Some. A little. We’re all under some kind of stress, aren’t we? Who goes throughout a day without some kind of stress? At this point, having a bowel movement would cause me stress. What if takes too long and I go over the defecation time limit! Or put the time in the wrong column! Can you imagine the pushback from Mrs. Rasmussen?”
The Chancellor leans across his desk.
“Malcolm, I mentioned this to you last term, but I think you need to take that sabbatical. You earned it so you should take it.”
“Is that what they think?”
Jones looks at Malcolm sympathetically.
“No, Malcolm, it’s what I think.”
Malarkey nods, but reluctantly.
“Will you think about it, Malcolm? Just think about it.”
The following page is left blank for the Reader to think about what Malarkey may have thought about after meeting with the Chancellor.
CHAPTER FIFTY
BETWEEN MARCH AND MAY; OR, ENTR’ACTE, PART III
Presumably, the Reader will want to know what happens subsequent to the Tyson fiasco and the end of classes. Except for the Karl Marx costume Malarkey wears to class on March 14 for which he is arrested and except for the leprechaun outfit he wears on St. Patrick’s Day while he paints the Chancellor’s office door green and except for the Muslim costume he wears to class on April Fool’s Day for which he is arrested and except for the bloodied Vietnam Vet costume he wears to class on April 30 for which he is arrested and except for the Pancho Villa costume he wears to class on May 1 for which he is arrested, nothing of major consequence occurs between March and May; however, the relationship between Malarkey and Liliana is a wee bit rocky. But what relationship isn’t? Is there a need to go into details? Let’s just say there are some disagreements about Malarkey’s future with Liliana and vice versa. The Reader already knows the details, but to recap, the Reader has to remember these are two people who are quite independent and so that independent nature is going to be tested if, in fact, they decide to get married, which, at this point, isn’t happening. If the Reader has been in one of those relationships, then the Reader can imagine what transpires over those two months: she prefers the toilet seat down, he prefers it up; she doesn’t like air conditioning, he can’t live without it; she likes to sleep on her right side, he likes to sleep on his left; she says tomato, he says tomahto; she prefers the missionary position because of direct contact with her clitoris; he’ll take whatever position he can get. You get the picture.
It’s what happens when people of opposite genders who are wired differently spend a lot of time together. Liliana spends a lot of time on her studies occasionally asking Malarkey for some suggestions about books and such. Malarkey is eager to help and be supportive, but, over time, many of the books Malarkey suggests have gone out of favor, are considered passé even though the authors of said books were giants in their field. Leavis and Levin, Wellek and Warren, Auerbach and Lovejoy. It’s irrelevant if those names mean anything to the Reader because they don’t mean much to anyone else anymore either. So it goes.
Anyway, at some point, Malarkey does something very un-Malarkey like; namely, he visits Paolo not only to imbibe, but to chat about the love of his life: Liliana, not Bushmills. It’s near closing time at Flann O’Brien’s and Malarkey is talking with Paolo while sitting at the bar staring at the caricatures of Beckett and Joyce and Yeats all of whom seem to be staring back at him. Even though he’s had one Guinness too many, Malarkey realizes that the caricatures of Beckett and Joyce and Yeats are actually listening to what he’s saying and sometimes they offer advice which interrupts their dialogue.
“So, what’s up?” Paolo says.
“I’m a wee bit stuck.”
“What’s the problem? Not my cousin?”
“No, your cousin is the best thing to happen to me in a long time. I’m not sure what I’d do without her.”
“Have you told her that?” Beckett asks.
“Not in so many words.”
“How many words?” Yeats asks.
“I’m much better at writing words than I am at speaking them.”
“But this isn’t a book, Malcolm,” says Joyce.
“Point well taken, Jimmy.”
“Jimmy?” asks Paolo.
“Jimmy. Jimmy said it wasn’t a book.”
“Oh, right, Jimmy said that.”
At this point, it should be clear that what Malcolm sees and hears is not exactly what Paolo sees and hears.
“Maybe you should try it.”
“Try what?”
“Speaking words.”
“Communicating,” says Beckett.
“That’s a laugh coming from you, hah,” says Malarkey.
“Tell her how you feel,” says Yeats.
“Yeah, well, I can’t write like you do, Billy B. Actually, I’m not sure I’m much of a writer at all.”
“Why do you say that?” asks Paolo. “Weren’t you getting that book published?”
“Changed their minds. It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?” asks Paolo.
“Whatever talent I once had. Maybe there’s nothing left to say.”
“No pen, no ink, no table, no time, no quiet, no inclination,” says Joyce.
“Happened to me,” Beckett says. “You know with the eyes going and going and then going and going beyond and beyond the going to the ending, the ending of the beginning, going until and I can’t go on, I go on and in the end, the end of it, it’s gone.”
“All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions,” says Yeats.
“Yes, well, thanks fellas that cheers me up no end. I’ll have another Black Nail.”
“There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power,” says Paolo.
“Yeah, but Balzac was a great plagiarizer.”
“Then you have a precedent.”
“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
“Got it, Sam.”
“You don’t sound like the Malcolm I know,” says Paolo.
“Maybe it’s just a darker side of the Malcolm you know. Like being under a volcano.”
“Let me go to hell, that’s all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.”
“Chill out, Sam!” says Malarkey.
“Maybe it’s the alcohol talking,” says Paolo.
“Maybe it’s all the chuntering going on with Sam and Jim and Billy B. Guys never shut the fuck up. Gotta go,” says Malarkey.
“Are you okay?
“Yeah.”
“Ciao, Malcolm.”
“Ciao.”
Malarkey hops off the stool and tipsily starts for the door.
“Malarkey?” Beckett asks.
Malarkey turns.
“You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.”
Malarkey nods, walks out of the bar and silently staggers home through a shortcut of crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swoons slowly as he feels the rain falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. Malarkey thanks Jimmy J. and to the God of Public Domain for that bit of stolen prose.
Fortunately, Malarkey is able to secure the house key and open the door before the possibility of repeating his Basil Fawlty impersonation. Soon, he profoundly passes out atop crumpled copies of the TLS and the New York Review of Books that adorn his couch. What Malarkey is oblivious to is that those same periodicals will, in time, have reviews of his novel, which he will not want to read.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN IGNORED
Later the next night, the Reader finds Malarkey in his bathroom staring at the age spots on his hands. In the background, the Reader hears Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. IV Adagietto, which, as the Reader remembers, Malarkey invariably plays when there’s some agitation going on in his life, which seems to happen on a weekly, if not a daily, basis. The fact it’s the same piece played in Visconti’s Death in Venice is purely coincidental and Malarkey has no intention of contracting and succumbing to cholera whether it’s in Venice or Citrus City; however, he does think about tuberculosis and how romantic a nineteenth century disease it was and how he would choose tuberculosis over any other debilitating disease if given the choice. Especially since it goes well with his black, Baudelaire suit. But back to the bathroom.
Malarkey turns his attention from his hands to his face and scrutinizes it: turning one cheek, then another, running his hand through his cropped white hair, looking at his neck, checking the age spots wondering how to get rid of them.
“God damn you’re an old fuck, Malarkey. You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that, is there?”
There’s a knock on the door.
“Gotta pee, hurry up.”
Malarkey walks out and Liliana rushes in and drops her pants.
Malarkey returns to the living room and sits at his typewriter with his back to the Reader. After a few moments he stands up and walks off. The Reader lingers on a page in the typewriter which reveals the sentence: “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
At the same time, Liliana sits on the toilet peeing. She looks again at the medicine cabinet now with a bottle of Vicodin in front of the plastic container meant for the semen analysis that was due several months earlier because of the fuck up in the urology lab. Liliana slowly leans over and opens the cabinet doors. She pushes away the Vicodin bottle that’s in front of the plastic container and merely stares at it. Then, overtaken by what its emptiness means, begins to weep silently. The Reader should realize by now that the empty container is not the same container that Malarkey used to collect his semen initially, but a new container for him to come into. Also, Liliana does not know the secret between Malarkey and the Reader; namely, that Malarkey made a second trip to the urology lab for an additional test on the same day he had his hand stitched. Just why Malarkey doesn’t tell her is a mystery even to Malarkey, but, as has been stated repeatedly, Malarkey is often delusional.
In his living room, Malarkey sits in a chair, legs propped on an ottoman, when he hears Liliana slam the bathroom door; rushes into the living room and hurls the container meant for his semen sample at him. He ducks as it whizzes by.
“What is that!”
“I’m hoping whatever it is it’s plastic.”
“Don’t give me that shit! Why have you done nothing with it!”
“No time.”
“No time! It’s been in that cabinet for months. You told me you were going to do it months ago. Why didn’t you do it!”
“Shit happens?”
“How could you do that to me! We talked about this! I trusted you to do it!”
“I know, but I went …”
“No buts, Malarkey! Don’t I mean anything to you! Don’t you love me enough! I would have done anything for you, Malcolm! Anything! I have done everything for you. I asked for a simple gesture on your part! Something that would show me you love me. But you failed even that.”
“You do mean everything to me.”
“So, why not this? You know how much it means to me. Why not this!”
“Because I fear being a new father is gone for me.”
“Great. Now you tell me. After months and months. Do I have to admit that my mother was right! God forbid!”
“No, I’ve told you before. In so many words.”
“You’re so good with words on a page, Malcolm, but not from your heart! You’re a dick, Malcolm. Testa di cazzo!”
“Perhaps. But it’s hard to see myself as a hero by leaving a young widow and a fatherless child on this godforsaken planet.”
“Now he waxes existential! I trusted you to do that for me!”
“Expectations …”
“Stop with the fucking quotes, Malcolm! You hide everything beneath that intellectual veneer!”
“It’s the only veneer I have.”
“God damn you, Malcolm!”
She picks up the plastic bottle and throws it at him again.
“It’s just like you!”
“I don’t disagree.”
Liliana rushes him and starts hitting him in the shoulder. Malarkey does nothing.
“Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo!”
Crying, she puts her arms around him the way she did in his dream. He embraces her though it seems to be too little too late as he half expects her to disintegrate into a pile of wetted ashes. Distraught, she lets him go.
“I can’t stay here. I can’t. I have to leave. It’s too much for me.”
She grabs her purse and heads for the door.
“Goodbye, Malcolm.”
“I love you,” Malarkey says as she slams the door. There is no response to his words of affection as Malarkey stares at the plastic container now resting ruefully in a corner of the room. Her last words resonate throughout the house. Hell hath no fury like a woman ignored.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
WHEN FACING THE TRUTH FAILS, TAKE A SABBATICAL
Two weeks pass and Malarkey has not heard from Liliana. It’s springtime. The Reader knows this because the jacarandas are blooming, turning the streets of Malarkey’s neighborhood into carpets of lavender and the college into a tent city in preparation for commencement. Malarkey always finds commencement a time of reflection since he often recognizes students he’s had as freshmen graduating as seniors. It’s a bittersweet moment for him since he senses the passage of time not only by the erection of tents and scaffolds, but by the fact students of students he has taught over the years are also the children of children he has taught over the years. A bit like Proust’s madeleine with the difference being one should not eat students.
Regardless, there’s a piece of parchment tacked on Malarkey’s office door and scribbled in a font that tends to bleed on the page reads,
PROFESSOR MALARKEY WILL BE ON SABBATICAL FROM JUNE-FEBRUARY
There’s a knock on Malarkey’s door and Malarkey, a wee bit hung over from finishing yet another bottle of Bushmills the night before, catatonically sits at his desk staring at a computer screen the screensaver of which shows a picture of ships sinking in the Grand Canal of Venice, before he gets up and opens the door. To his surprise, it’s Matthew.
