Strangely, last night I decided like it would be a good time to start kicking some serious ass on my reading list. Sadly, aside from the Watchmen (sick nasty btw), I can’t remember the last time that I actually finished a book, which translates into a couple thousand pages of make up work on books that I have started.
Luckily, I picked up IV, which I had started over the summer and was really just expecting to pound out the last 150 pages just to be done with the damn thing. Instead, I had left off right before some really cool shit, including this hilarious excerpt from “Three Stories Involving Pants” in the “Some of These Things Are True” section:
The following was a hilarious excerpt:
This might be one of those stories that ultimately ends with the narrator saying, “Well, maybe you had to be there.” However, it remains the coolest story that anyone ever told me, primarily because virtually every element of the narrative (a) makes no sense whatsoever, and (b) remains mostly unexplained.
My associate Brenda and I were desperately in need of marijuana, and we couldn’t find anyone in Fargo to sell us some. This was often a problem, but it was especially pressing during the middle ’90s. As a last gasp, we decided to visit Brenda’s recently unemployed cousin Sharky, a thirty-three-year-old goofball iconoclast who was regarded by Brenda’s family as something of a black sheep. Sharky lived in downtown Fargo, directly above a bakery; his rent was roughly $90 a month.
Upon entering the anachronistic apartment, it became instantly clear that Sharky-regardless of his bad-boy reputation-was an incredibly sweet guy. It was also clear that Sharky was never not stoned. He sold us some drugs at an incredibly cheap price, and the only thing he asked was that we “hang out” for a few hours, which we did. We drank Sunkist soda and talked about music (especially the lesser-known works of Iron Butterfly) and about Sharky’s vast VHS videotape collection (specifically a bootleg tape called Acts of the Unspeakable).
When Brenda and I finally got up and began to leave at 2:00 A.M., we noticed that Sharky had an apple green zoot suit hanging on the back side of his front door. The suit was small (I would estimate that the inseam of the pants was somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-four inches), but it remained in remarkably good condition. So just before we left, we asked Sharky why he had this apple green zoot suit.
This is what Sharky told us:
Several weeks previous, it seems, Sharky had been walking home from a downtown Fargo tavern at a little past midnight. As he left the bar, a little old man wearing an ascot suddenly emerged from the shadows and stopped Sharky on the sidewalk.
“Would you like this suit?” the little man inquired, holding the outfit in Sharky’s direction.
“Why would I want your suit?” Sharky replied.
“I have to get rid of my clothes,” said the man. “It’s free. There’s nothing wrong with it. I just need to get rid of it.”
“Why?”
“What difference does it make to you? There’s nothing wrong with this suit.”
Sharky examined the garment.
“It looks small,” said Sharky.
“Well, it’s a free suit! If you don’t want it, just say you don’t want it.” The little man grew agitated. “You know, you’re not the only person in this city who I can give this suit to.”
Somehow, this logic worked on Sharky: he accepted the offer. The little old man thanked him curtly and disappeared. Sharky continued on his way home, his right index finger around the claw of the metal hanger and the green zoot suit slung over his shoulder.
Three blocks later, two police cars suddenly pulled alongside him and turned on their flashers. This made Sharky understandably nervous, as he was holding six ounces of pot in his pants (and was drunk, and he had smoked two joints in the bathroom of the bar). However, his nervousness changed to confusion as soon as one of the cops began questioning him.
“Is that guy back there selling suits out of the trunk of his car?” asked the cop.
“What?” Sharky replied quizzically.
“You know exactly what we’re talking about,” said the other policeman. “That old man you were just talking to. Is he-or is he not-selling suits out of the trunk of his car?”
“I don’t understand this question,” said Sharky.
“Is that guy selling suits out of the trunk of his car? Yes or no?”
“Well, I don’t think he’s selling suits out of the trunk of his car. Maybe he is but I don’t think that’s the case.” Sharky was now recalibrating his reality. “I mean, I don’t think he even has a car, you know? He just gave me this suit for free.”
“Why would he do that?” asked the officer.
“I’m not sure. That was my question, too. I didn’t even want this suit, really.”
“Then why’d you take it?”
“Because… well, you know. Free suit.”
“So you just take clothes from people you don’t know?” asked the policeman. “Does this happen to you a lot?”
“No!”
“And you didn’t pay him for this suit?”
“No. He just gave it to me. I don’t think he’s selling suits out of the trunk of his car. I really don’t. You should arrest him if that’s the case, I suppose, but I don’t think he’s selling suits to anyone.”
Quite suddenly, the police officer’s social posture completely changed. “Well, okay then. Sorry to bother you. We just had some reports that an older gentleman was selling vintage apparel on the street. It must be somebody else. Sorry. We really apologize for hassling you.”
“Oh, no problem,” said Sharky, now relieved (but still confused). “And actually, that description sounds a lot like the guy that gave me this suit. Do you need this suit as evidence? You can take it if you want.”
“No, no,” said the cop. “Keep it. You should take a free suit if you can get it.”
The officer got back in his car, and both police vehicles left the scene. Sharky walked the two blocks back to his building, hobbled up the flight of wooden stairs to his $90 apartment, hung the green zoot suit on the inside of his door, and went to bed.
When he woke the next morning, he saw the suit on the door and realized that this had not been a dream. That realization completely blew his mind, so he decided to immediately smoke more dope and not leave his apartment for the remainder of the day. Which is why he missed work, which is how he got fired from his job at the bakery, which happened to be located directly below his apartment.
And this is probably why Sharky was unemployed.
I first heard about Klosterman when I was 18, because my buddy Ty had just picked up a copy of his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I read it (or most of it anyways not sure if I finished) and thought it was cool, but didn’t really get a lot of the references or really understand what he was getting at. Honestly, I think I liked the title more than the actual book itself, but having just finished IV I’m fairly convinced I would have hated that too at 18. Hell, I even hated it for a little bit while reading it at 23. However now things are different, by the bitter end, things all sort of came together and I saw it all in a new light. And I really like a lot of where he is coming from.
Klosterman poses some really interesting questions and I will certainly need to share some of his thoughts on monogamy later on… maybe a few other issues/questions too, but that will have to wait for another day. Time to power through some more of this gigantic stack of books that is steadily collecting on my nightstand. Anyways, 1 down, 13 or 14 to go… for now…
Fuck. (/Sweet.)
-J
In the immediate future, some grad parties going on this weekend and on Saturday night, Flight of the Conchords with Iron and Wine @ Red Rocks. I’m really pumped for it.