SALON

Hank Hyena

Tuesday, Nov 24, 1998 8:00 PM UTC

Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop And Some People

Hank Hyena reviews 'Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop and Some People' by Danny Hoch

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Stage-to-page efforts are often anemic; when the oral blood and physical meat of the actor is excised, the skeletal text leaves us hungry. Karen Finley’s pathos, for example, and Eric Bogosian’s menace are both drastically reduced when the words are stripped of inflection, timing and image. Monologues require a careful recipe of spicy ideas, poetic flavoring and emotional marrow to leap successfully from the boards to the book. Is any contemporary solo performer gifted enough for this task? Yes! Or, to affirm more exuberantly in the author’s patois: Word up, man! Yo! No doubt!

Danny Hoch’s “Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop and Some People” is a mad wild infectious pleasure. The Brooklyn boy wonder’s two critically acclaimed and internationally toured solo shows are fully alive here — as one of his characters puts it, “type lovely, enlightened, and powerful.” In his introduction, Hoch proclaims, “Hip-Hop is the future of language … It crosses all lines of color, race, economics, nationality, and gender.” This sounds linguistically pretentious, but the 28-year-old street kid who taught conflict resolution in New York City jails “represents” his assertion magnificently in his characterization of 21 complex and conflicted New Yorkers. Several vignettes are wrenchingly sad: Flirtatious Victor believes he’s a great dancer because he’s Puerto Rican, even though a policeman’s bullet has paralyzed him for life. Living-with-AIDS Andy strives to keep his optimism and immune system healthy, but the jail food’s laced with Percodan. Pervasive even here, though, is a warm humanitarian humor — a populist’s vision that we’re all linked by similar desires for meaningful work, friendship and love.

Hoch’s quest to “portray the reality of multi-cultural America” — a challenge he believes mainstream media has responded to with gross stereotypes — is bravely addressed in the lone autobiographical sketch, “Danny’s Trip to L.A.” When he’s offered a part on Jerry Seinfeld’s hit sitcom, Danny agrees — but he stubbornly refuses to play the locker room attendant role with a Spanish accent. “I looked at my fucked-up sneakers, and my fucked-up sneaker said, ‘Always listen to your instinct, kid.’” Danny ditches the plum opportunity because his instinct won’t disrespect the nonwhite friends that his street sneakers symbolize.

Even the most despicable portraits in “Jails” are etched with empathy. Brutal corrections officer Sam is revealed as a pitiful victim of the prison complex that economically superseded his family’s apple farm, forcing him into an occupation he loathes. The bitterness of African-American Flex has similar roots — the only employment he can find is constructing a new jail, “seven hundred cells we gonna build in that shit … We gonna lock niggas’ heads up all day in that motherfucker.”

The sweetest gift in “Jails,” though, is the joyousness of hip-hop’s idiom and attitude. Somber English gets injected with dance rhythms and a streetwise point of view, especially in the rapper sketches like the sidesplitting “Emcee Enuff.” Observations here, like “Once you taste a fresh tuna sashimi melt in your mouth, you don’t want to go to jail,” poignantly enclose both the ambition and the fear of the urban American underclass. Hoch’s book is fresh and fly — both as literature and as social observation. I ain’t playing. It’s all good. I hope he makes mad loot wid the shit.

Friday, Oct 23, 1998 7:00 PM UTC

Word up

Two new films, 'Slamnation' and 'Slam,' celebrate -- and exaggerate -- the power of spoken word"

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Recent cinema has extolled the power of poetry with varying degrees of subtlety : An impassioned postman uses Pablo Neruda’s lyrical aid to court a village sweetheart in “Il Postino”; in “Bulworth,” an insomniac senator raps out his radical agenda. In both cases, poetry succeeds because it exists in realms (love and revolution) the viewer can accept.

But in its depiction of an incarcerated African-American street poet, Marc Levin’s “Slam” is less restrained. The screenplay (written by Levin, producer Richard Stratton and actors Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn and Bonz Malone) overemploys and glorifies verse to the detriment of the plot’s credibility.

When protagonist Raymond Joshua (Williams) gets released on bail, he visits the prison’s former creative writing teacher, Lauren Bell (Sohn). After a sexy all-nighter together, they explode in a tremendous quarrel over how he should plead his case. But instead of babbling irrationally like distraught humans we could identify with, they take turns hurling metaphor-heavy stanzas at each other. Sparring poems might look fun on paper, but they’re annoyingly false in film dialogue.

“Slam” is strongest, ironically, when it grants us reprieves from its adoration of poetry. Visual elements, and occasionally the acting, often elevate this film about words far above the disappointing text. Particularly riveting are the prison scenes, filmed at Riker’s Island: Cacophonous noise, lack of privacy and the lurking threat of violence unfurl here with documentary precision. The vivid depiction of life behind bars ends up grounding the film in a clarity that the artificial language lacks.

The majority of the characters in the jail scenes are real-life inmates, and they often upstage the actors. Williams has the gentle face and ascetic physique of a street poet, but he has a narrow emotional range: He vaults from spaced-out confusion to wild gesticulations of wrath and wisdom, with nary a nuance in between. His formal enunciation also sounds alien next to the patois of his ghetto and jail constituency. Particularly compelling is prison-gang leader Hopha (Malone) who squints, slurs, snarls and struts across the celluloid with singular attitude. Sohn, who plays the creative writing teacher with a sordid, mysterious past, also reaches a depth in her jail scenes that she never attains on the “outside.” In her farewell speech to her poetry students, she conveys a complex stew of grief, love, hope, rage and generosity.

Still, the action is so absurdly wishful here, it belongs in a fairy tale. In a crucial scene, Raymond finds himself cornered by a dozen bruising inmates. His only defense is to rant mystical verses at his persecutors, and while one expects the tough cons to pummel the sissy-poet even harder after this exhortation, miraculously they back away, instantly converted to nonviolence by his poetry. Soon after, they declare a citywide cease-fire between opposing gangs — another testament to the power of the Word. It’s a nice thought, but if victims could “word” their way out of trouble, Federico Garcma Lorca would not have been shot, nor Euripides exiled, and the disarmingly articulate Joan of Arc might have eluded her public barbecuing at the stake.

“Slam” was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Camera d’Or at Cannes, plaudits it must have been handed for the social critique that shines out from beneath the scripted gobbledygook. One remains shocked, for example, at the severity of Raymond’s sentence: two years for possession of four ounces of marijuana. What a life-destroying, tax dollar waste.

The film concludes with Raymond, Lauren and other poets competing at a Poetry Slam (bouts where judges picked from the audience give verse warriors scores from 1-10 in their three-minute efforts). Once again, “Slam” awards everything sanctified by the Muse — anything uttered into the microphone gets a 10.7, or an 11, or a 10-to-the-infinite-power. As viewers, we’re bludgeoned with the supposed excellence of what we hear, even if we think it only deserves a 4.

Paul Devlin’s “SlamNation,” a 90-minute documentary that chronicles New York City’s Slam Team at the 1996 National Poetry Slam Finals in Portland, Oreg., presents a panorama of the true slam community, in all its dissenting glory. Several cast members of “Slam” reappear here, this time playing themselves: Saul Williams anchors NYC’s four-person team, with brash teenager Beau Sia (who plays a histrionic inmate in “Slam”). Their teammates are the effervescent Jessica Care Moore and the hulking but sensitive mugs the Schemer.

Interviews of the contesting poets reveal the event’s awkward union of competition and art; although purist Williams intones that “it’s about the poetry,” most contestants suggest otherwise. The charming “villain” of the film is a beefy WASP named Taylor Mali, who blithely admits that winning and money are his primary motivations, and that he’s obsessed with “strategies” that exploit the other teams’ weaknesses. Other poets, like Vancouver’s Alexandra (a Winona Ryder look-alike), Danny Ferry (author of the bitterly funny “I Am a Bald Man”) and Marc Smith, the Chicagoan founder of the event, weigh in with their own conflicting visions of what the proper poetic attitude should be.

Edited between the interviews are the slam poems themselves, passionately crafted odes delivered to authentically eager audiences. Williams performs two poems he delivers in “Slam,” but they’re livelier here, infused with the enthusiasm of the author’s true character. His teammates are equally entertaining: mugs the Schemer delivers a poignant “Cockroach,” Moore gets instructively raunchy with her “Teaching You How to Make Love” and Beau Sia — “SlamNation’s” enfant terrible — is electrifying in “Asian Men Are Hung Like Horses” and “When I Get the Money.”

New York City eventually grabs third place, out of 36 teams. The winner, cruelly enough, is the Providence, R.I., quartet led by the nefarious Mali, who was scolded that very morning for “trying to find the gray zones in the rule book.” Mali proves, however, that bad guys can perform good slam poems: He easily outshines his opponents with well-crafted and surprisingly moralistic poetry.

Although “SlamNation” offers more slam gossip, history, intrigue and strategy than any nonslammer would care to know about, it does successfully document the excitement of the event, as well as the passion of the poets and poems for whom it was created.

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Wednesday, Oct 21, 1998 7:00 PM UTC

How Europe changed my life

How Europe changed my life: A summer odyssey affects a young Republican in the most unexpected way.

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“Seven hundred dollars each for two months in Europe,” announced my roommate, Steven. He squinted through his tiny John Lennon glasses at the sequence of numbers. “$280 for round-trip air to London, $120 for the Eurail pass and 60 days at $5/day. Total: $700.”

“Groovy!” smiled Alex, our long-haired best friend. “I got the bread! Mon cheres, here I come!”

A week earlier, the three of us — tight chums bonded by girls, games and hallucinogens — had a simultaneous vision that depicted us traveling together in Europe. Glorious adventures glowed in our imagination.

Econ student Steven, Alex in French Lit and me, a U.S. history major, were now discussing the manifestation of our dream.

“Only $700?” I frowned. My military science classes urged me to prepare cautiously before any campaign. “Your estimate seems idealistic, naive.”

“Read it yourself,” said Steven. He tossed the Europe-on-a-budget guidebook at me.

I shrugged. “The old continent better be worth it.”

“Far out!” said Alex. “We’ll be ‘Les Tres Musketeers!’”

“I’ll outline an itinerary that will include 13 countries,” said Steven. “Sixteen, if you count Monaco, Vatican City and Andorra.”

One month later, we checked in our backpacks at LAX — three 19-year-olds eager to expand our soft innocent brains in the radical summer of 1972.

Steven and Alex sported the traditional olive green Kelty packs, but mine was an “Old Glory” design that I purchased at a fish and game shop — a U.S. flag pattern, striped red and white with a starred blue flap.

“You’re crazy!” groaned Steven when he saw it.

“People will hate us!” said Alex. “Cool Euro-hippie chicks won’t even talk to us!”

“What’s the problem?” I asked. “I’m proud to be an American!”

Neither of them spoke to me until the plane was way past Wisconsin.

Politics had never before affected our friendship, but now, my hawkishness was napalming their doves. Steven was a McGovern Democrat, and Alex was an even bigger commie — he supported the People’s Party candidate, Dr. Benjamin Spock. They were both mimicking their parents, really: Steven’s dad taught psychology at a junior college and Alex’s folks had spent time in the Peace Corps.

I was the freak in our trio: a Richard Nixon fan. I admired the incumbent prez because he’d give us “peace with honor” in Vietnam, so the entire region wouldn’t just fall over like the dominoes of Eastern Europe. Sure, he carpet-bombed Cambodia, Laos and maybe some innocent villagers, but hey, war isn’t pretty. My father fought in Korea for a reason. My parents took me to John Birch Society meetings and I admired Barry Goldwater’s “None Dare Call It Treason.”

My domestic views were also perched on the far right wing. Food stamps, affirmative action and the income tax were, in my opinion, just socialist plots to undermine the American spirit.

“There’s Lake Huron.” Steven finally addressed me, pointing below us.

Alex sighed, five minutes later. “In Sweden they’ll spit on you,” he warned. “Even the prime minister marches for peace, and a lot of draft dodgers and deserters have moved there.”

“OK,” I conceded. “Maybe I can cover my pack up with a poncho or something.”

“Yes!” They both agreed. “Great idea!”

Harmony was quickly reestablished and we launched into a spirited debate about which stewardess was the prettiest.

We landed in foggy Luton airport at 11 a.m. — immediately, we scarfed down some bangers and mash before hitching a lift in a lorry that sped us on the left side of the motorway past Canterbury Cathedral to the white cliffs of Dover, where we hovercrafted across the windy English Channel.

Steven’s sadistic itinerary allowed us only 15 days of youth hostel lodging. The remaining 45 days had to be “free,” i.e., sleeping on trains or “camping out.” I didn’t dispute this detail before departure, but after 32 hours of adrenalin-pumped and sleep-deprived consciousness, I was eager for some comfortable bedding.

“That looks all right,” I mumbled, pointing at a cozy pension.

“No!” snapped Steven. He was waving the itinerary like it was the Magna Carta. “Tonight’s a ‘free’ night.”

We “slept” in a filthy alley behind Lille’s largest cathedral. Cobblestones tortured my insomniac organs. When dawn’s cruel light arrived, it found me shivering, starving and sniping.

“Damn! That sucked! I hate this!”

“This is what we’ve been saving our money for,” said Steven. “What’s wrong with you? Homesick?”

“I need a bath, a big breakfast and a shower.”

“There’s art all around us,” Alex scolded me. “History. Culture. Don’t bum me out.”

My companions had both slept soundly; they were now exuberant eager beavers, psyched up for a long day of exploring Belgium.

But me? I was the weight-lifting athlete, but budget travel had turned me into a wimp. I thrived on my fitness schedule — four huge meals, two hours of exercise, three bowel movements and a scalding 25-minute shower before nine hours of sleep — but deprived of it, my macho brain and brawn panicked — I became a frightened brat.

“Please … Let’s destroy the itinerary! Food! Sleep! I want to feel alive!”

“The itinerary is the backbone of our expedition,” said Steven. “It keeps us on budget.”

“Antwerp tomorrow!” gushed Alex. “And then … Utrecht! Wowie zowie!”

Nations flew by me, like nightmares. I averaged three and a half hours of sleep a night: Holland was a hallucination, Switzerland was evil TV. At Pompeii, I envied the ash-covered corpses, sleeping soundly for eternity. In Oslo, I trembled before Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” because I felt precisely the same.

Wretchedly I tossed and turned in the most inhospitable beds — Vienna on an iron bench, Paris in a phone booth. Rome under a roaring bridge, Madrid in a subway toilet.

I suffered scores of zombie hours on the second-class trains. The itinerary thought the iron horse’s lullaby would rock us to sleep, until our arrival in a distant land — this worked for Steven and Alex, but the roaring rolling kept me alert and increasingly demented as we entered Andalusia, crossed the Appenines or slithered past fjords.

Even the 15 days in youth hostels provided small respite. In Heidelberg, we were triple-bunked in crowded rooms, like concentration camps — the Irish lad above me snored, the Dane below passed poison farts … Invariably, I was also forced to rest my 6-foot-2 bones on a lumpy pad that was no more than 5-foot-9.

The Europeans we met were overwhelmingly anti-Nixon, anti-war. In
Florence two anarchists told us they wanted to blow up the U.S. Naval bases
in Italy. In Grenoble my distant relatives scolded me, “France left
Vietnam; why can’t you?” In Glasgow we played soccer with quick-footed
lads who dropped their smiles when I said I was a Republican. In Cologne,
lovely Gretel flirted with me until she discovered my politics; she ended
up smooching with Alex instead.
Every day, my opinions encountered harsh rejection. In Salzburg, we
partied wildly at the house of a Schnappes-drinking father and his three
shapely daughters — a scenario too good to be true. We thought they’d
give us a place to sleep, but we were booted outside when I praised Nixon’s
recent actions. The only hawk I ever found on the entire continent was an
alcoholic Norwegian who claimed to love only caviar and NATO.

“You don’t look strong anymore,” Steven remarked when I took off my
shirt in Naples.
He was right — my thick musculature had decayed into slender flab.
The whirlwind pace didn’t give me enough slurps at the trough — daily
gruel was often just a stale baguette or a rancid sausage.
I left California weighing 184 pounds, I returned at 157. A half
pound a day withered off my frame: Biceps bolted, quadriceps collapsed.
The only muscles that retained their tone were the nervous slivers that
twitched in my face.
Why are there so many harelips? I wondered. Children with cleft
palates, blind youths, painfully crippled elderly. Steven and Alex didn’t
see them, but everywhere I looked I saw beggars without any teeth, Down’s
syndrome twins. Europe was poorer than the United States in 1972, and the hostels
were often in “slums” — but still, I think these sad apparitions appeared
before me in my weakened state to batter the last brittleness of my heart.

“We’re anti-war! Don’t spit on us!” yelled Alex, when our ferry
docked at Malmo. Three drunken Swedes were lofting phlegm at the patriotic
backback that I carried off the ship.
“I vote for McGovern!” Steven explained to the surly Vikings. He
waved the peace sign at them. “See? ‘No more war! No more war!’”
“Outta … Vietnam!” The Swedes continued to expectorate on my luggage.
I stared, unable to deter the goo.
Eventually, the dried-up Norsemen wandered off. Shaking, I removed
their spittle with a useless map.
“See?” said Steven. “Europe hates Nixon! Are you still going to
vote for that Kent State killer?”
“I dunno … Maybe.”
“You took acid,” said Alex. “How can you vote for Nixon after eating
psychedelics?”
“Maybe it was bad acid,” joked Steven. “Republican acid!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha!” laughed my two best friends. “Ha ha ha ha ha.”
I sat down, suddenly, on a concrete wall that outlined the Baltic
coast. I was exhausted, to the depths of my marrow.
Nearby, I saw a small, dying, half-eviscerated fish. It looked like
someone had caught it, started cleaning it, but then decided it was just too small
to bother with.
The fish’s guts gleamed in the Scandinavian sun. Three flies crawled
on the intestines. Tears started blubbering out of my eyes.
“What’s the matter?” asked Steven.
“We were just teasing,” said Alex.
“Give me a minute,” I shivered. “I’m having a nervous breakdown.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off that innocent, trembling fish.
“I’ll buy you a polser,” Steven said. “On me, buddy. I’ll pay for it.”
“The fish is dying!” I sobbed. “It’s suffering horrible pain!”
“Don’t freak out,” begged Alex.
“It’s a living animal!” I wept. “Don’t you understand? We’re all in
this together!”
Steven hurried back with a polser (hot dog), but I couldn’t eat it –
I was having a psychotic vegetarian attack, a spasm of compassion for all
sentient beings. Weeks of sleep deprivation and starvation had shattered
my sense of separatism — I became the disemboweled fish, I felt its pain
and all the pain of the world, the pain of the poor maimed and mutated, the
pain of the bombed Vietnamese, my pain was crazy, Christlike,
uncontainable.
“It’s the flies,” Steven told Alex. “I think the flies on the fish
are bugging him.”
They tried to shoo the scavengers away, but one gleaming insect,
slurping on the minnow’s liver, refused to budge.
Swat! Steven bashed the fly into the viscera of the still-twitching fish.
“No more death!” I blubbered. “No more meanness!”
“Shit, he’s losing it,” said Steven.
“His parents will kill us,” worried Alex.

I sniveled for about 20 minutes. When I stopped, I felt like I’d
stepped into an alien brain. The seagulls above me were beautiful.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I announced.
“Hank, you’re Hank,” said wide-eyed Steven.
“Yes, but … who’s Hank?” I replied.

Gently, they guided me into a hotel. They pushed me into bed. I said
I wasn’t hungry but they made me eat two bowls of fish chowder.
I slept on-and-off for three days, near-catatonic.
When I was awake, I thought about Thomas Eagleton — he was McGovern’s
vice-presidential running mate, until he was forced to resign when it was
revealed that he’d had electroshock treatment to combat nervous
exhaustion and fatigue.
I wondered: Were all depressed people Democrats? Did I need a good
zapping?
Steven and Alex watched over me, sullenly. There was nothing to do in
Malmo, and the scheduled itinerary events — Stockholm, and a museum in
Göteborg — were canceled by my collapse.
A week later, we flew back to Los Angeles. My parents were appalled
by my emaciated frame and disoriented tales — they put me on a pampering
schedule. My physique soon recovered, but I remained quiet.
In September I returned to my college campus. I avoided the beer
parties the first week; instead, I went for long walks, trying to sort
things out.
Finally, I jumped out of bed one morning — I ran to the
local McGovern headquarters. I volunteered all my free time, canvassing,
going door-to-door in conservative suburbs.
When McGovern lost in the ghastly landslide (520 electoral votes to
17), I stood in a room, surrounded by his weeping supporters. My eyes were
dry, though, because my disappointment was dwarfed by the miracle of
actually being there, in my new personality.
In Europe, I saw Picassos, cathedrals and castles, but what I
remember most is my psyche shredding in Malmo. People travel externally
for decades in the hopes of traveling internally. But me? I imploded
my entire personality on my very first trip! Thank you, Alex and Steven,
you sadistic, penny-pinching brutes, for giving me the best nervous
breakdown I hope I ever have.

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Friday, Oct 2, 1998 10:12 AM UTC

Escaping college poverty

If this campus parasite can make money and get laid, you can too.

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Are you eating Kraft’s Macaroni and Cheese (75 cents) for dinner every
night? Reading all your homework in the campus bookstore, because you
can’t afford to buy the books? Sneaking out of Kinko’s without paying for
your copies?

If you answered yes to these questions, you’re a pitifully poor
starving scholar, like I was, haggard with hunger in the halls of
knowledge. If you’re wondering what “War and Peace” would taste like
baked and lightly salted, or boiled with a bouillon cube, you’ve descended
to the same dismal depths.

Do not despair, my dear famished prisoners of the Ivory Tower. There
is hope for you. With only minor ingenuity even the most abased academician can defeat destitution. I succeeded, and so can you.

Turn your thin ears toward my tale, gaunt creatures of the cap and
gown. Listen, I will teach you how to use your marbles for money. But first let me tell you my own tale of deliverance.

I plummeted rock bottom in the fall semester of my junior year. I began sneaking into fraternity houses on Tuesday mornings; my fingers dug under couch cushions, hoping to discover coins that dribbled out of Docker pockets while frat brats couch-potatoed for Monday Night Football. Sure, I
found $1.17 at Phi Sigma Kappa, but soon realized I was morphing into
a scavenging jackal, a deplorable pigeon-man. I needed to improve my
self-esteem and my income with an imaginative Money Plan.

I cruised the campus pub, nabbing pizza crusts off soggy
tables. Beautiful girls laughed all around me, rich boys were buying them drinks. I glowered in the shadows — green with envy because I was hideously sex-deprived. Wealthy lads were burping up delicious meals and pawing curvaceous co-eds. But me? I was getting nada.

I desperately needed cash and cuddles, a concise but thorough plan
that would satisfy both lusts, simultaneously. Wistfully, I prayed for
guidance to the Deity of Dinero, the Muse of Money.

Suddenly … Yes! Yes! A duet of lights exploded in my cerebellum –
I received not one idea but two beautiful visions that successfully put bills in my bank and babes in my bed for the remainder of my collegiate years.

The first inspiration was: Teach Massage. A week earlier, I’d found an
oil-stained how-to massage book in a trash bin. I could instruct others in the Groping Art, I could get paid to fondle. Sweating, I imagined a roomful of bikinied women lying supine before me. “Rub me!” they moaned. “Higher up my legs!”

That night I shivered wildly in anticipation. The next morning I
designed a New Age poster offering my services in 1-Day, 2-Day or 5-Week
workshops. I littered this ad all over campus, and at the appropriate
housing and departmental venues. Within a week I was scheduled to teach at
the Peer Counseling Center, at a human sexuality class and at Santa Rita
Hall (a freshman dorm).

I stuttered my way through the first dreadful workshop — I had to
keep the rancid manual open beside me the entire time because I forgot all
the strokes. The students enjoyed themselves, though. Eventually, I
realized there was no way to ruin the experience. The students just
wanted an excuse to lounge around each other half naked, feeling each other
up in the name of health.

Dorms proved to be the most lucrative arena. I left flyers with the
resident advisors with notes attached suggesting a one-evening
introductory workshop, costing a mere $2/per student. Sometimes 75 eager
freshmen would show up — the entire floor, plus dozens of curious friends.
Everybody wanted to check out their neighbor’s anatomy.

Money came streaming toward me, accompanied by a sensuous new
identity. I became “the massage guy” on campus — luscious women who had
wrinkled their noses at me when I was a destitute nobody were suddenly begging
me for back rubs.

When the massage frenzy died down, I launched into my second
enterprise: silk-screening T-shirts. Once again, I commenced with a flyer
– I sketched a samurai warrior waving a squeegee instead of a sword, with
the words, “The Silkscreen Empire will print T-Shirts for your team or
club” emblazoned beside him. I plastered this notice in a wide circle
surrounding the women’s gymnasium: I wanted a jockette clientele.

Women’s rowing called first, followed by women’s field hockey and
women’s rugby. I nodded confidently when they described what they needed.
Cheerfully, I accepted their deadlines. Then I requested 50 percent down payment. Securing this, I purchased a hobby kit, so I could learn the craft.

Silk-screening is simple: Push paint through the prepared screen,
iron the T-shirt to heat-set the ink, repeat, repeat, repeat. Monotonous,
but profitable, if you get the shirts wholesale for $30 a dozen and sell them
with the logo added for $7 each. My service was quickly in enormous
demand: teams, clubs, sororities, fraternities, department events.

The silk-screening Love Factor was excellent, too. I offered girl
jocks 15 percent off if they did the ironing and folding themselves, at my house.
“For sure!” they roared. They jogged over all sweaty and scrumptious-looking after a workout; they labored cheerfully into the dark hours, keeping me company, making me laugh.

I ended up dating two volleyball babes: setter Deborah and striker
Robyn. Plus I enjoyed a thrilling one-night stand with Kelly, the rugby
team captain — she told me not to blab because she was also president of the lesbian collective.

That’s my testimonial to capitalist ingenuity, dear cash-strapped
comrades. Now I beg you, take heed of the seven steps to student solvency.

1. Confront the ugly facts.
2. Examine your campus carefully. Deduce what your body and
student bodies desire.
3. Brainstorm entrepreneurial efforts that combine your many needs into one job.
4. Then offer it at a reasonable price!
5. Begin without knowing what you’re doing and without going into debt.
6. Be charming while you fake it.
7. Move on before you get bored.

I challenge you: End your plight now! Do not, I repeat, DO NOT FEAR SKILLED COMPETITION FROM OUTSIDE THE IVORY TOWER — you can do the job cheaper, you know how to advertise better (student newspapers, bulletin boards, word of mouth), you’ve got the contacts and, last but not least, your trump card: Students prefer to hire other students.

Here’s Hank Hyena’s List of 10 Sure-Fire Collegiate Enterprises:

1. Bike repair: My friend Barry at spoke-infested UC-Davis offers $20
tuneups to derailleured co-eds. Granted, this takes some skills you can’t fake, but if you have a mechanical bone in your body, chances are you can help your student population.

2. Haircuts: Cute Cathy at UC-Berkeley trimmed locks for $5 a head,
colored ‘em for $15. She learned her craft by enacting numerous atrocious hair cuts on her own head and the heads of a few indulgent friends.

3. Dictation: Jessica at Stanford scribbled lecture notes for truant
students. She went to any class, any time — and she enjoyed it! “I
learned a lot about everything.”

4. Bartending: Drink mixers are tres chic at elegant college parties. Don your dapperest duds, create a snazzy business card, learn cute concoctions with umbrellas and olives and put the word out that you’re available for weddings, graduations and other fabulous fetes.

5. Scholarship advice: If you bagged some free dough, everybody wants to
know how you did it. Spend a week or two diving into the mind-numbing bureaucratese of information at the financial aid office and the grants section of the library, then charge $15-$25 an hour for researching grants for fellow students.

6. Tutoring: Teach English to international students. I had a charming
Nepali customer named Sarasvati when I pursued this line. She cooked a mean green curry.

7. Car repair: Provide on-site visitations to ailing automobiles. You’ll be desperately desired, even off-campus, even if your price is high.

8. Computer repair and instruction: According to friends who have mined this vein, never do cute humanities students look so lovingly on geeks as when you have just recovered their hard drive with their thesis intact!

9. Campus calendars: It’s shameless, it’s cheap and with the help of your local copy store, you can transform a pile of cheesecake shots into cold hard product. Besides, anyone with school spirit or a secret crush has to
purchase “Asian Beach Beauties of Santa Monica College” or “Buff Men of
Nebraska Football.”

10. Matchmaking services: All you need to become a modern-day yenta
is a file cabinet full of everybody’s photos and identifying information. Collect a small initial fee to be in your files and a more substantial “finder’s fee” for every “connection” you make. And don’t forget: Put your own photo in there, just in case.

There are (at least) two fund-raising plans that MUST BE AVOIDED!

1. Drug dealing: Profits can be lucrative, but the lifestyle is cheesy
and dangerous. My senior-year roommates got robbed at gunpoint; they lost
two kilos and almost their lives. Another friend got expelled for concocting mescaline in his chemistry class.

2. Embezzling from your parents: My pal Randy dropped out of college, but he
kept cashing tuition checks he received from his folks. His
rationale? He claims he was getting a better education not going to
class. Mom and Pop didn’t agree. When he finally confessed, they exiled
him to Fairbanks, Alaska. He’s still “straightening out,” doing
construction work for a polar uncle.

OK, you’ve got your dreams, I gave you schemes. You got nothing to lose but those holes in your clothes and that ache in your belly. I want to see you tacking up notices tomorrow — tell us about your latest cottage industry, your recently discovered area of expertise. Remember: There’s no sense in being a MENSA member if you got no cents at all.

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Wednesday, Aug 20, 1997 12:03 PM UTC

foreskin or against it?

Is circumcision the unkindest cut of all?

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“you need a flesh-cap,” I snickered, “because winters are
frightfully cold in Helsinki.”

My Finnish friend Paavo and I tease each other incessantly about
cultural differences. A primary source of amusement is our differing
penises: I am circumcised, while he carries a foreskin.

Chuckling softly, he mused: “You’re absolutely not jealous?”

I replied, “No! Why should I be?”

Paavo shook his head. “If I was not whole, I would be angry extremely.”

His sympathy annoyed me. The assumption that his penis was perfect, but
mine was damaged, incomplete …

Circumcision is a hotly debated issue in my social circle, due to
the expected babies of several friends. My wife, Carol, is adamantly opposed
to “cutting” — sometimes she even waxes nostalgic about the benefits of a
former lover’s foreskin. “I never had a yeast infection
with him. No abrasion.”

For a long time, I regarded the debate as much ado about nothing: To
pack a foreskin or not, does it really make a difference? Last week, though,
I decided to educate myself. I went to the library and read magazine
extracts from medical journals. The vast majority of the 109 studies
documented foreskin risks: higher rates of urinary tract infection, penile
cancer, gonorrhea and HIV/AIDS. Whew! I exulted. I’m glad I’m clean! Who
needs that slimy, wrinkled hood?

Jogging that afternoon with my wife, I relayed my new knowledge.

“Don’t believe those studies,” she grunted. “They’re biased. Doctors
in America enjoy circumcision.”

“You’re wrong!” I sputtered. “Why don’t you admit it?”

“Get modern,” Carol replied. “Surf the Web. You need to scam some
fresh data.”

The next morning I typed “circumcision” into Yahoo! Twenty-three
site matches appeared. Many were the same affirmative reports I’d already
examined, but there was also a promising list of anti-circ groups.

I dialed a phone number. Tim Hammond, Director of NOHARMM (National
Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males) answered.

“Gosh!” I blurted. “I’d like some of your educational material.”

“We have a video,” he offered, “‘Whose Body? Whose Rights?’ We aired
it on PBS.”

“Really?”

We talked for an hour about circumcision and his battle against it. “I
consider myself a child’s rights advocate,” he stressed. “I want boys to
have a choice.” This sounded reasonable, but he spoke with a crusader’s
urgency — people with an actual purpose in life make me suspicious.

“Every 26 seconds a helpless infant gets circumcised in the
United States. Female circumcision has been outlawed, but little boys lose
an important part of their body.”

“Female circumcision? You mean clitoridectomies?”

“Yes. It’s all genital mutilation. We believe in maintaining the
integrity of a child’s organ. When they reach the age of consent …”

“But Tim,” I cut in, “I read numerous medical reports listing diseases
you can get with a foreskin.”

He snorted. “In the Victorian era circumcision was promoted to ‘cure’
masturbation. Physicians said having a foreskin led to blindness, cancer
and epilepsy. Idiotic, but they didn’t give up. American doctors still
insist that circumcision cures something. They’re desperate — it’s a
solution in search of a problem.”

“Tim! Hey! I’m supposed to believe you, not the doctors?”

“Did you read the new study?” He crowed with self-confidence. “In
JAMA? By Dr. Laumann, the University of Chicago sociologist?”

“JAMA?” I mumbled. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Read it!” He ordered. “I’ll mail you the video, with some pamphlets.”

JAMA turned out to be the acronym for the very respectable “Journal of the American Medical Association.” The article Tim guided me to,
“Circumcision in the United States,” appeared in the April 2, 1997, issue.
When I read it, I started to sweat. I had to stop every 10 minutes and
drink some water. I paced around, agitated, alarmed by the statistics.
Unlike the pro-circumcision reports, which were distant and smug, this one
clanged with truths I recognized from my own genital experience.

I’ve suffered through two urinary tract infections and one inflamed
prostate. Would my urology be even sicker if I had a prepuce? No, claims
Dr. Laumann. His investigation discovered that “circumcised men were
slightly more likely to have both a bacterial and a viral STD in their
lifetime.” The greatest disparity involved chlamydia: He found 26
cases in circumcised men, but zero in those left intact! Grrr! I snarled.
I had chlamydia! What a mess — I passed it on to a very mad girlfriend!
Chlamydia … damn! Can I blame it on the geeks who stole my shield?

The study also exposed the stupidity of the original Victorian impulse:
Circumcised men, it reported, actually masturbate 1.4 times more frequently
than intact males.

Two days later, my wife and I watched the video. Carol bravely stared
straight at the “live circumcision” footage while I peered through my
quivering fingers. The infant, spread-eagled in a restrainer, shuddered when
the Gomco clamp bit into his penis. He shrieked with terror and pain during
the amputation. Blood gushed in his crotch. Afterwards, he was catatonic,
detached.

When it ended, Carol stood up and bellowed, “We’ve got to save
Rebecca’s unborn child!”

Puzzled, I asked her, “Rebecca’s getting an abortion? Why? She’s eight
months pregnant!”

“No!” my wife raved, “it’s a boy! Rebecca’s going to circumcise him!”

“Oh dear,” I whined. “What can we do?”

“Talk to her!” My wife pleaded. “You’ve got a penis; she’ll listen to
you!”

“OK, OK, OK,” I stuttered. “I’ll … study. I’ll learn
everything.”

I memorized all the data in the pamphlets; I carefully made notes from
the video. I discovered that:

  • Ninety percent of U.S. boys used to undergo circumcision, but this figure has recently been snipped down to 60 percent.

  • The United States is the only nation that severs the foreskin for medical (rather than religious) reasons.

  • Dr. Dean Edell and Dr. Benjamin Spock oppose the procedure.

  • Foreskin anatomy isn’t studied in medical school, but doctors learn to
    slash it off anyway.

  • The foreskin has 1,000 nerve endings — 36 percent of the organ’s pleasure reception.

I realized that the only way to stop Rebecca was
to shock her with the grossest statistics. I called Tim again, demanding the
worst. “Talk to Marilyn Milos,” he urged. “She knows everything; she’s the
director of NOCIRC” (National Organization of Circumcision Information
Resource Centers).

Milos, a nurse at Marin General Hospital until she was fired for
informing parents about the risks of circumcision, turned out to be exactly
the bloody fountain of knowledge I needed. “Nobody knows how many babies are
killed,” she claimed, “because doctors often report that they died of blood
dyscrasia, hemophilia, meningitis, sepsis and other diseases.”

That said, she launched into four horrible stories that were apparently
made public knowledge. In Miami, an infant bled to death. In Los Angeles,
another perished from gangrene. In Alaska, a child was turned into a blind
spastic quadriplegic by a circumcision-induced staph infection that damaged
his brain. Last but not least, “John-Joan” had his entire penis burned off
by a malfunctioning electrical circumcision device — to remedy the accident,
surgeons removed his scrotum, to turn him into a girl.

“Good grief, Marilyn,” I mumbled, “that’s enough.”

Her voice rose with passion: “Genital mutilation isn’t a medical issue,
it’s a human rights issue. Parents don’t have the right to remove healthy
tissue! The child has a right to his own body! It’s his foreskin!”

“OK, OK, OK … thanks!”

I telephoned my mother right after that, to pester her. “Mom! I’m
interviewing people about circumcision.”

“Oh dear, oh yes, oh no.”

“Why, Mom, why? It hurt!”

“Don’t be silly. Are you one of those nuts now?”

“Ouch, Mom! Ouch! I still feel it!”

“Stop. Everybody was circumcised. Did you know that your grandfather
was circumcised when he was 45?”

“No!”

“He was born in France, where they don’t do the operation. When he got
here he wanted to feel like a normal American.”

“Why didn’t he do something productive, like study the Bill of Rights?
Circumcision would be illegal if we paid attention to the Fifth and 14th
amendments. Not to mention Article V of the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights: “NO ONE SHALL BE SUBJECTED TO TORTURE!”

“Oh, no. Hank, are you eating enough?”

“I love you, Mom! Bye!”

I felt like I was on a roll, so I called Rebecca next.

“Don’t do it,” I begged her. “Don’t chop his little weenie.”

“Foreskins are ugly,” she replied. “Circumcised pricks are much cuter.”

“Thanks, I’m flattered,” I whispered, sincerely appreciative.

“Did Carol put you up to this?” she asked. “You’re not doing well.”

“OK, what about this?” I argued. “Female Circumcision was outlawed in
1995 by the Female Genital Mutilation Act. Why is male circumcision still
legal? It’s not fair; it’s gender bias!”

Rebecca sighed. “Male rage, Hank? This isn’t pretty.”

“Listen, please!” I read her the NOHARMM chart that compares male and
female circumcision: “Both were adopted to suppress or control sexuality …
both use hygiene, medicine, religion and tradition to justify it … both
force it upon the child without his/her consent … in both cases the victims learn to accept it as ‘normal’ and defend the practice.”

“Stop,” groaned Rebecca. “I have to circumcise my son. It’s the
covenant.”

“Covenant?” I repeated.

“Yes. We’re going to have a bris. The Jewish ceremony.”

“Oh no … Yikes! Rebecca, I’ll call you back.”

I hung up the phone and shouted, “Carol! She’s Jewish! I forgot! What
do we do now?”

Hands on her hips, my wife scolded me. “Of course she’s Jewish. She’s
always been Jewish.”

“What can I do?”

“Look in your pamphlets! There’s got to be a way!”

Diving once again into my notes, I discovered numerous facts and names
that could assist in my new dilemma. I telephoned Miriam Pollack, author of
“Circumcision: A Jewish Feminist Perspective.”

Carefully choosing her words, Miriam stated, “Circumcision does not make
a man Jewish. It’s the heart and mind we should be after, not the penis.”

“Yeah, but my friend says it’s a sacred ceremony, a covenant with God.”

“We are talking,” Miriam continued, her voice edgy with anger, “about
taking a knife to a baby’s genitals and calling it ‘sacred.’ It’s not
sacred; it’s violence taken as the norm. Mothers who permit this are
totally disempowered in their deepest maternal instinct: to protect their
child.”

“Thanks, Miriam. Really. Thanks a lot.”

Calling Rebecca back, I repeated what Miriam said. I also filled her in
on the Jewish anti-circumcision community: Norm Cohen in Detroit, who created
a booklet offering alternative bris ceremonies. Helen Bryce in Santa Cruz,
Calif., who also provides packages for non-cutting rituals. Orthodox
Moshe Rothenburg of New York, who refused to have his son cut, proclaiming,
“We must not do anything hurtful to another human being, including and
especially our children.” Leland Traiman of Berkeley, Calif., who runs a sperm bank
that is available only to parents who agree to leave their sons intact.
Lastly, I told her about an organization in Israel that seeks to ban the
ritual it describes as “a primitive and barbaric act.”

Rebecca was quiet when I finished the list. Finally she said, “OK, I
have to go now.” She hung up.

I sat there, worrying about my glans. Numbness was definitely setting
in. If I had a protective foreskin, like Paavo, it wouldn’t be exposed,
chaffing incessantly against my clothes — my once-delicate squamous
epithelial cells wouldn’t be “cornified.” Sometimes you learn things you’d
rather not know.

In 100 years, I mused, will circumcision exist only in books
that chronicle gruesome medical foibles? Will it be found in the chapter
right after leeches?

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Page 15 of 15 in Hank Hyena

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