In a Walmart in northern New York, a youngish Black woman recently did a double-take when she saw the Founder. ‘O-My-God’, she said.
‘Hi’, the Founder said.
‘Are you –‘, she said. Her eyes were the size of saucers.
The Founder was pleased to see how knowledge of Dirtlease had permeated the community. He always liked to meet a fan. ‘Do you live in manufactured housing’, he asked.
‘Sorry – what’, the woman asked. She looked perplexed. She had long, slack hair. The Founder wondered if it was real or extensions. Her nails, he thought, could shred pulled pork.
‘You’re Dee Snider, right’, the woman asked.
‘Who the hell is Dee Snider?’
‘You.’
‘Nope.’
The Founder and the woman both pulled out their phones. Wikipedia told the Founder that Dee Snider (born March 15, 1955) is an American musician best known as the lead songwriter of the heavy metal band Twisted sister. He was born in Astoria, Queens, and raised on Long Island. His father is Jewish, whereas his mother is from a Catholic family of Swiss descent. As a child, he sang in a church choir, several school choruses, and concert choir in high school. The woman pulled up a picture of a fit Jewish-looking man in late middle age that, indeed, did look like the Founder, with a few more tattoos and piercings.
‘I’m a different kind of celebrity’, the Founder said.
‘What do you do’, the woman asked. ‘Do you sing?’ She started to hum, ‘We’re not gonna take it – no, we aint gonna take it – we’re not gonna take it anymore.’
‘No way’, the Founder said. ‘You don’t want to hear me sing.’
.
‘I see a man’, the Professor said. He was an older Black man standing next to a barrel on his lot lined with foam board and bedding. He was wearing boxer shorts and slide-ons. His gut hung over the waistband. In his right hand, he held a solar-powered lamp.
The Founder looked to his right and his left. ‘Where’, he asked.
The Professor brandished the lamp. ‘This doesn’t have a battery’, he said.
‘Kinda defeats the purpose’, the Founder said.
‘Has anyone told you that you look like Dee Snider’, the Professor asked.
‘Fuck off.’
The Founder handed a statement to the Professor that showed the Professor was into the park for three grand. The previous week, the Evictor had served him with a notice of petition. A court date was scheduled for the end of the month.
‘Are you going to pay or leave’, the Founder asked.
‘Gold has gone up to $4,000 an ounce’, the Professor said.
‘And Deng Xiaoping died’, the Founder said. ‘When are you going to pay?’
‘I separate gold from household appliances’, the Professor said. ‘That’s why I follow the commodity price.’
The Founder looked toward the Professor’s shed. A workbench, what looked like a bunch of soldering irons, and a pile of cannibalized toaster ovens sat outside it.
‘You need to clean that shit up’, the Founder said.
A cop car pulled up to the home two doors down from the Professor’s lot. A sheriff with a thick neck knocked on the door while his partner waited in the car. A skinny guy with a picture of Rick and Morty tattooed to his neck opened the door, held his hands out at waist level and allowed the cop to put the cuffs on. At the car, the cop pushed his head down to protect it from the roof the way they do in the movies. The cop in the front spoke into his radio handpiece.
‘The big thieves are taking away the little thief’, the Professor said.
‘You going to pay or you going to move out’, the Founder said.
‘I need to extract more gold’, the Professor said.
‘Well, fucking extract it, then’, the Founder said. ‘But hurry up. You have a court date in two weeks.’
‘You know, you really do look like Dee Snider’, the Professor said.
‘Oi’, the Founder said. His shoulders hurt. He put his face in his hands. He felt crapulous.
‘Do you know the lyrics of his biggest hit’, the Professor said. ‘It goes, ‘We’re not gonna take it. We’re not gonna take it. We’re not gonna take it – anymore’.
‘You know’, the Founder said, ‘This is where I usually say, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way’, but the hard way is proving to be difficult for both of us. Let’s try to do this the easy way. I will be more generous this time. What do you want? What can I do to make the transition easier for you? Name your price.’
The Professor looked at him and smiled, slyly. ‘You can get out of my light’, he said. He walked over to the shed and started fussing with the pile of toaster ovens.
‘You will be sentenced to leave the park’, the Founder said.
‘And everyone else will be sentenced to stay.’
‘What kind of wine do you like to drink?’
‘Wine that other people buy.’
‘You live like a dog.’
The Professor pulled the waistband of his shorts down, lifted his leg and began to urinate on the Founder’s thigh.
‘Hey, the Founder said, ‘The fuck?’
‘You called me a dog’, the Professor said. ‘Why did it surprise you when I did that?’
The Founder sputtered and looked around for something to wipe his leg with.
‘I could have done worse, you know’, the Professor said. The Founder remembered the section of the Frank and Dave course when Frank taught about dangerous breeds. ‘If a Doberman Pinscher humps your leg’, Frank had said, ‘You have no choice. You have to fake an orgasm.’
‘Don’t you embarrass yourself?’
‘Blushing is the color of virtue.’
The Professor plugged a speaker into his phone and turned on some dubstep music. As he swung his hips, his belly, which looked like a yoga ball, undulated independently of the rest of his body. A teenaged girl who lived at the end of the park stopped by and watched. She pulled out her phone, thumbed it, and kept looking. Another teenaged girl showed up, and another.
‘I tried giving lectures about philosophy’, the Professor said, ‘But I found that, if you discourse on being and nothingness or epistemology, they pass by. They don’t even give a crap about monetary policy. But if you whistle and dance and shimmy, you get an audience!’
‘You’re not going to play Twisted Sister’, the Founder asked.
‘That’s White people music’, the Professor said.
‘Dude’, the Founder said. ‘You really, really have to knock it off now. The park rules are posted by the mailbox and they are on the park website. Have you read them?’
‘You are an idiot’, the Professor said. ‘You would never eat a picture of a hamburger, but you learn from written rules instead of real-world sense-data.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake’, the Founder said. ‘I will see you in court. Let’s see what the judge says.’ As he walked away, he saw that the Professor had pulled his shorts down and begun to jerk off. When the teen aged girls in the audience giggled and asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘This is an experiment. I want to see if, when I am hungry, I can rub my stomach and make the hunger go away the same way I can now with this body-part.’