Sunday, April 25, 2010

2000: The Christmas of Our Discontent

My first full-time job after I graduated college was as a third shift security guard at Kenosha Memorial Hospital. Job responsibilities included monitoring the ER, ushering newly-deceased bodies to the morgue, and securing leather restraints on combative patients.

When you work third shift you feel like an incredibly boring vampire. There were days when I would go to sleep in the morning and not wake up until 9pm. Seasonal Affective Disorder in the house.

We had some serious characters come into that ER. One morning a drunk woman crashed her car into a public school and was brought in crying for shame, thinking she had hurt some children and that it was her son's school. She was too hysterical to hear us repeatedly tell her that it was Sunday and the only thing she’d hurt was her ‘85 AMC Eagle.

One night there was a head-on collision. In one car there were three illegal immigrants hopped up on coke and in the other car – I swear this is true – a neo-nazi and his girlfriend. He was covered in swastika tattoos and he was the only one involved in the crash without a scratch on him.

But Christmas Eve was the worst.

I have a large family and between divorces and other sporadic dramas, we're sometimes required to attend five separate Christmas celebrations. So that year, I went straight from the Christmas party with my extended family at the Grandpa Llanas house to work and then it was on to my mom’s right afterward for a quiet Christmas morning with my brother and sisters.

I was running on 2 hours of sleep in 32 hours when at around 3 AM Christmas morning a drunk woman came in to the ER. She’d fallen off her bartstool repeatedly in one of Kenosha’s hundreds of bars, so they called an ambulance for her, and she was pissed. We strapped her wrists and legs to the cart to stop her from punching the doctor, and then took turns standing guard over her. Here's a small sampling of the pleasantries that came out of her mouth for the next four hours:

“You f*%#$*g nerd, I know you want to f*@# me, you virgin c*#$%*@*ing f#*#%t.”

Her mascara and eyeliner were smeared into glops and blurs, but they seemed poorly applied in the first place, almost like stage make-up. I tried to imagine what kind of mood she had been in when she’d made herself up the night before. What did she think was going to happen when she got ready to get sloshed on Christmas Eve? Was it her plan to wreak havoc on the lives of innocent hospital security guards?

Maybe she meant to be a villain.


And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days. (1:1)


Richard III is a villain. Exhausted by the frivolities that his recently elevated brother enjoys as King Edward IV. Richard opens the play with the infamous declaration: “Now is the winter of our discontent” (1:1) and then lays bear his grievances. He’s a hunchback and ugly and everyone else has got lovers with which to frolic except for him. So to pass the time he's going to get his brothers to kill one another so that he can be king.

What’s amazing is that he talks like this about himself:


But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; (1:1)


As if he has no skills with the ladies. But in the very next scene he manages to win over the Lady Anne with nothing more than pretty words.


Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep

To undertake the death of all the world,

So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom. (1:2)


In Henry VI part 3, Richard kills Anne’s husband the Prince Edward. And then kills Henry VI, her father-in-law. But he tells her if she can’t forgive him that she should stab him in the chest. She presses the sword to his skin.


Nay, do not pause: for I did kill King Henry –

But ‘twas thy beauty that provoked me.

Nay now dispatch: ‘twas I that stabb’d young Edward –

But ‘twas thy heavenly face that set me on. (1:2)


She drops the sword and marries him.

Richard can spit some mad game. If he dedicated himself to amorous endeavors instead of bloody thoughts, things might have worked out for the house of York. A major misallocation of skills on his part. Overlooked talents.

The Tudors eventually emerge as the power in England, and as the victors they write the history. It’s widely believed that they slandered Richard’s character and that they were the ones who generated the image of him being a hunchback and a machievel. Portraits of Richard III were actually altered to make him seem ugly (one eye narrowed and his shoulder raised). 

Shakespeare based his character of Richard on the Tudor account, but it’s almost more interesting to think of him as being an attractive young man, a normal guy who just suffers from terribly low self-esteem. He thinks he’s deformed and inadequate, like the 40 Year-Old Virgin. He doesn’t know what he’s capable of until he applies himself. If only someone had kicked him in the ass before he started down the path to the dark side.

After I left the hospital that Christmas morning I stopped for a moment at Simmon’s Island. Lake Michigan was frozen and glazed with powdery snow. I walked out a little ways onto the ice. Never in my life have I trusted ice. Every year in Wisconsin or Minnesota someone falls through on some lake or river and drowns in freezing agony. And Lake Michigan is a wild body of water with a will of its own. When I was young its undertow regularly pulled unsuspecting kids out to sea in the summer months, leaving abandoned Huffy bikes on the shore near Pike's Creek like so much well-preserved flotsam. But still I walked out to what I deemed the precipice of security and stared at the sunrise.

Richard III's villainy may have been cosmically necessary. The houses of Lancaster and York feuded and killed one another for decades. It began with the unnatural murder of a king, and the imbalance in the universe (the winter of discontent) had to be righted. Richard was the final balancing factor. He finished off his traitorous, usurping bloodline by being traitorous and usurping, making way for the better men of the House of Tudor to rule over more peaceful days.

Villains emerge to kick us in the ass, to call into action the better angels of our nature. When we know what must be done, but are unable to progress, they secede, they rebel, they terrorize. They drive us out onto the thin ice, farther over the freezing water than we ever thought we should go. Because it's only there -- on the very edge of safety -- when all things are at risk, that we can see the empty dangers of the future. And we know that it's time to quit our crappy security job and write a damn play. 

Cause there's always going to be a drunken Tudor slut falling off a barstool who shows up to hurl insults at you. So you might as well let her insult something you're proud of, otherwise what the hell's the point of being out on the thin ice anyway?

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Why the F would anyone want to be king of England?

I've been in one real fight in my entire life. I went to a boarding school for high school and one year I had this roommate, let's call him Aaron. Aaron and I had been friends, we founded the LFA Chess and Checkers club together, we played pick up soccer and went on van trips to Hawthorne Mall. Then we became roommates and I hated him. Aaron was from Texas and outweighed me by about sixty pounds. He used to invite people into our room at midnight to play Monopoly when I was studying for History tests, he peed in my gatorade once and I drank it. And he knew I was crazy about this girl and he asked her to the winter formal.

So I tried to fight him and he kicked my ass. Or more accurately he didn't even have to kick my ass. We just wrestled and I never stood a chance. I couldn't throw a punch, because he had pinned my arms and gotten me onto the ground in the first five seconds. He laughed and told me to chill out. He laughed more when he saw how serious I was. I kept struggling for another ten minutes or so, until I was exhausted, but he was too fat and too strong and I was too big of a nerd. 

Sometimes, even if you're a nerd and a pacifist. You have to fight. Especially if you're the King of England.  

            Henry VI Part 3 continues the War of the Roses, where the house of York makes a claim against the house of Lancaster for the throne and war ensues. At the beginning of the play. King Henry VI, who is pious and peace-loving is cornered and relinquishes the inheritance of the throne to York and York’s family as long as they allow him to continue his reign in peace.

 

                                                            I here entail

            The crown to thee and to thine heirs forever,

Conditionally, that here thou take an oath

To cease this civil war (1:1)

 

York accepts. This pisses of Henry’s wife, Queen Margaret, who raises an army to kill York so that her son, Prince Edward, can be King, which is his birthright. Before she even comes knocking, York is persuaded by his sons to go back on his word and kill Henry and take the crown for the House of York. There’s a bunch of battles. York gets killed and his son, Edward, claims to be King Edward. This gets a little confusing because Henry’s son is Prince Edward. And it’s also confusing because there are in fact now two kings of England. King Henry VI and King Edward (the IV I think?).

People change sides and get married and in the end there’s revenge and heads on poles and King Edward (of York) kills Prince Edward. Richard of Gloucester kills Henry VI and begins to put his Machiavellian plan into action to take the throne from his brother in the final installment of the tetralogy: Richard III.

Richard figures prominently in this installment. He holds a severed head on the end of a pole at the beginning of this play and speaks to it, begging it to tell the tale of the victory the white-rose-wearing men of the house of York won against King Henry and the House of Lancaster:

 

Thus do I hope to shake King Henry’s head. (1:1)

 

            Later on Queen Margaret rallies her soldiers (the armies of Lancaster and the Red Rose) to arms at the battle of Wakefield:

 

            Off with his crown and, with the crown, his head  (1:4)

 

Queen Margaret wins at Wakefield and captures York and the Queen orders:

 

            Off with his head, and set it on York gates (1:4)

 

And then Warwick, finding Clifford injured to the point of death outside the city gates:

 

            Off with the traitor’s head (2:6)

 

King Edward:

 

For Somerset, off with his guilty head. (5:5)

 

            Obviously there is some association here with Alice in Wonderland, especially when you consider the oft-employed imagery of staining the white roses with blood or painting the roses red throughout Shakespeare’s Henry VI series:

 

Why do we linger thus? I cannot rest

Until the white rose I wear be dyed

Even in the lukewarm blood of Henry’s heart. (1:2)

 

            Maybe it’s because I saw Tim Burton’s 3-D mess, but I am none too interested in talking Alice. It’s a little more interesting to think about all these calls for decapitation as something out of Highlander. When they cut off a nobleman’s head there’s lightning and brouhaha and then they are infused with the dead man’s power and youth. 

There can be only one King of England, right? That’s why Richard has to kill Henry in the end even though he doesn’t fight and doesn’t want to be king.

            Decapitation is symbolic. As King Edward observes when they have Henry VI captured:

 

But Warwick’s king is Edward’s prisoner.

And, gallant Warwick, do but answer this:

What is the body when the head is off? (5:1)

 

            Like chess, capturing the king should mean victory. Unfortunately, the Herculean task of overthrowing a monarch is more aptly analogous to beheading the Hydra. In all the mess of a headless state many new heads emerge, each in turn wonting a good severing. After Henry relinquishes his inheritance, he essentially puts the crown up for grabs. This is how they end up with King Edward and King Henry and Prince Edward and Richard of Gloucester lurking and plotting.

            John Wilkes Booth played Richard III many times and was a Shakespearean actor of renown. It makes sense that he would believe that assassinating Lincoln would somehow undo the Union. He learned his history from the original theatrical Machiavel. But the fact that he commits his assassination after the war ended demonstrates something else: vengeance is futile.

            Almost every player in the War of the Roses has some blood they wish to avenge. The Earl of Westmoreland:

 

I’ll have more lives

Than drops of blood were in my father’s veins. (1:1)


Clifford slays York's innocent youngest son:


Your father slew my father; therefore die. (1:3)

 

Warwick is embarrassed by King Edward and switches sides to revenge his honor. Queen Margaret taunts York with a handkerchief dipped in his son's blood before revenging the murder of her lover, Suffolk. And the entire war was begun as vengeance for the generations earlier deposition and murder of Richard II by Henry's grandfather.

Revenge has a wicked momentum. Just ask the Hatfields. 

      Henry VI, for his part, is not interested in vengeance. He is happiest when he's being held captive by the Yorkists:

 

My crown is in my heart, not on my head;

Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,

Nor to be seen. My crown is called content;

A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy. (3:1)

 

Henry tries to surrender and stand aside, but Lord Hastings makes it plain that words and treaties won’t settle this conflict:

 

            Away with scrupulous wit! Now arms must rule. (4:7)

 

When one’s rivals are warlike, even the most pacifist of men must be prepared to fight. And Henry was always going to have to pay the price for his grandfather's crimes against the Yorkists. He's the King after all, his head is the most important one to have off. And you can't cut it off yourself with words. He should have fought, even if he was going to lose.

I fought Aaron. Presumably it was over a girl. A girl who I never asked out. Who I liked in secret and with ineffectual gestures like fasting for Ramadan and writing terrible poems. When you fight for a girl, your chief rival is her affection. She's the one who needs to be confronted on the battlefield. Not your 220 pound, mo-hawked roommate.

For me, fighting Aaron was actually about fighting Aaron. It was about revenge. And revenge doesn't get you anywhere with the ladies. 

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Words Are My Only Weapon

The first professional writing I did was as a columnist for the Kenosha Midweek Bulletin. Every week I would comb the internet for inspiration and then spew 800-word satirical diatribes against the Bush administration. Once I wrote about him being replaced by a digital version of himself like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings. Another column was about the invasion of Iraq as a remake of an old television series that I vaguely remembered as a kid like they're doing with V now.

I was not a very good journalist. I always went for the most extreme opinion that I could and I used incendiary, disrespectful language. Luckily there was a forum in the Bulletin, called Sound Off!, where anyone who liked could call up and leave a 30-second message that would then be printed in the paper (provided it passed standards and practices of the Kenosha News Organization) and my detractors had ample opportunity to dismantle my arguments.

There were lots of angry calls. Almost every week someone would demand my immediate deportation to France, or call me a snot-nosed punk. I think my favorite was the one where someone told everyone else to relax because Gabe wasn't real, he's clearly that Jared guy from the Subway commercials. You can see below that I actually do look like him in the picture that ran beside my column every week.

The point is. I never inspired anyone to make any intellectual comments. I never started a dialogue. For three years I wrote for that paper, and I think the only person my column ever made any difference to was me and my Grandma who clipped every single column for a scrapbook.

In Act 4 of Henry VI Part 2, Jack Cade and his lower-class companions lead a rebellion against the young king. Cade claims to be the rightful heir to the English throne. While rousing his followers, he proclaims the miraculous math that will rule his kingdom:


There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny. The three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it felony to drink small beer. (4:2)


After a few hurrahs, Dick the Butcher, one of his followers and friends lets loose this famous Shakespearean quote:


The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. (4:2)


Soon after this, an accountant is brought before them, and when it is discovered that he can read and add and sign his name. Cade determines his fate:


O, monstrous!

Hang him with his pen and inkhorn about his neck. (4:2)


Literacy can be a weapon of inequality. Education and book-learning are methods of oppression that elevate some and leave others behind.

Jack Cade’s rebellion against Henry VI is also against education and the tools high-fallutin' lords and ladies use to control the common. It's a bloody, inhumane rebellion that unsettles the monarchy so that York can march on the King and make his legitimate (and also bloody) claim to the throne. But despite Cade's ignorance, there’s something that makes his soldiers (the butchers, tailors, blacksmiths and laborers of Cade’s army) sympathetic.

It's knowing that in the conquest of France (see Henry V), they were the ones who perished on the battlefield, and that in Medieval England they were utterly disenfranchised and the nobility, who played at governance, did not care for them except as a political tool.

Cade and his rebels are terrible people who are terribly oppressed. Oppression drives some to desperate methods and foolish rationalization.

In the American politic we have seen public discourse disintegrate since the signing of the constitution. Two years ago we had Sarah Palin thrust upon us. The poster-child for ignorant populism. Now the Tea Party, in all it’s glorious ridiculousness, threatens to drag the Republican Party further and further from it’s illustrious past. Toward a base element. A kindling.

In all the popular clamor against my radical columns, I was sometimes lumped together with other liberal journalists, such as Molly Ivins. It seems strange to me in retrospect that people would ever associate my satirical bombast for actual journalism. I was just a smartass punk with a laptop.

But I couldn’t help it. I never felt more powerless than I did the night Al Gore lost Florida. I wanted to take arms against what I perceived as outrageous injustice. I wanted to fight and rebel. But luckily I’m a writer and words are my only weapon. So my thoughts could not be bloody. I sought only character defamation and the extraction of my enemies’ argumentative teeth. Parliamentary dentistry.

The saddest part is that Cade’s rebellion, was initiated by the Duke of York. Who wanted him to assault the King’s claim to the throne, and weaken it. Cade succeeded in seeding the doubt in people’s mind that Henry’s monarchy is tenuous, inherited from a traitorous murder (York’s great grand uncle or something was King and was murdered by Henry IV).

Cade was tricked. Manipulated by a nobleman and a politician. York layed out his plan in soliloquy:


And for a minister of my intent,

I have seduced a headstrong Kentishman,

John Cade of Ashford,

To make commotion, as full well he can,

I know no pain they can inflict upon him

Will make him say I moved him to those arms.

Say that he thrive, as ‘tis great like he will,

Why then from Ireland come I with my strength

And reap the harvest which that rascal sowed. (3:2)


That’s the way of it for we, the low players. It is our small movements that loosen the lids on jars of political jam across history. But the preserves, the power, the control, the sweet spread inside, is reserved for the lords. Men of a better ilk. Men who can read and write their names and perform complex calculations of character manipulation.

Cade gets his in the end. He is slain by a gentleman named Alexander Iden who brings his decapitated head to Henry, and earns himself knighthood. Violence begets violence. Slander begets slander.

My column-writing career is long-over. I just hope I made a few people laugh. Somewhere in the rhetoric and fury a good point or two was lost. I’m sure I didn’t change anyone’s mind. I felt weak at the time, and I wanted to pick a fight. I think that’s okay, because conflict forces us to grow. And I was the one with the most growing up to do.


Fat Gabe in his Barcelona jersey.
Photo taken circa August 2001.