The Decadent Worker

My imaginary king was able because of his training to resolve all disputes in the manner of Solomon. Not then understanding anything about the SNAFU factors involved anywhere there is not communication between equals, I thought of it as a helluva nicer way to make a living than telephone soliciting.

If he really didn’t have me in mind for the job, I didn’t want to seem so low as to envy anyone else who might be appointed. To resent the line of work itself — like some raving anarchist hanging out at the Ryder Coffee House who was bitter at everyone and moreover possessed the nerve to look smug about it, seemed inappropriate.

If perhaps the idea Gary dreamed of wasn’t functional, there were still always the esthetic considerations to take into account. Omar Khayyam never wove such fantasies as these in the minds of Sultans. And that was so unusual for Gary, who generally preferred to discuss something ugly…. (pp. 53-54)

“And there is also the fable of a king,” he once mentioned, “whose people were forbidden to speak to him by a rival monarch, so he worked out a code where every article of clothing and every gesture stood for something, so they could tell him what was going on. Do you think you could do something like that in a similar situation?”

Yet another time or two he said, “Kerry, you know, one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is that they develop whole languages of their own — using ordinary words, but ascribing their own private meanings to them.”

“Yes, I read that in one of Loy’s psychology textbooks from nursing school.” Loy was a French Quarter friend, one of my closest, a serene woman with long black hair who made her living as an artist.

“Well I wonder what makes them invent their own secret languages. Why would anyone, especially a crazy person, go to all that trouble?”

“Maybe because they are crazy. One kind of paranoia is paranoid schizophrenia.”

“But you know, Kerry, there are some people who have exhibited the symptoms of paranoia who were taken to psychiatrists, and when they began investigating their backgrounds and their life situations they found out the patient was really being persecuted.”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that a couple of times before. There are also actual paranoids, though. Not all of them are really being persecuted.”

“No, Kerry — not all of them.”… (pp. 85-86)

“Kerry, I think the best person to solve a complicated political assassination would be an anarchist — because he would not be partial to any of the many political factions involved.”

“Yes, but anarchy isn’t practical.”

A smug smile brightened his expression. “Don’t be hasty in passing judgement on the writings of the anarchists. They had some good ideas, no matter how you feel about the need for government. For example, Bakunin and some of the other anarchists said some very perceptive things about money and banking.” His evident amusement puzzled me at the time…. (pp. 114-5)

LANGUAGE IS THEFT/ Fascism: A political view holding that government is a necessary evil and that, therefore, the more evil there is the more the conditions of necessity are set.

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