“Hey, isn’t that Animal Boy?”
“Don’t look at him, Honey. His rear end is covered with nothing but newspaper.”
“Eek!”
It’s a late summer evening in the city of Kyiv, and Animal Boy, aka Andrew Plum, is striding aggressively along a side street far from any foliage or trees.
“I’m really sick of this stuff – the East European milieu, the post-Soviet provincials… the cheese-stained wrappers, all of it!” Plum grumbles to himself.
Only yesterday, our lone literary ranger was rejected for yet another job at an even less prestigious English-language publication, run by a turkey-necked pensioner in saggy-seated jeans.
“So you see, Plum, I don’t doubt your credentials for a Quaker Oats instant. It’s your attitude, demeanor and general lack of anything approaching a personality, much less trustworthiness or general decency… Besides that, this little operation of mine consists largely if not entirely of my scouring self-proclaimed Ukrainian business sites for poorly translated news briefs that I subsequently, and with no great fanfare, render into something that I try to hawk as my own product,” the old man told him.
A nasty smirk now unfolds on Plum’s face as he recalls giving the old man the boot several years earlier when he was still at the helm of the Kyiv Poster. Davies, the old man, had tried to maintain a brave face to the end, explaining, as if he were consulting his grandson, his vision of the paper, why his weekly column, The Hearing Aide, was a necessary ingredient to the paper, and why he spent so long in the newsroom’s only toilet after lunch.
Before it was all over, that turkey neck, which had always so happily risen to the occasion when the conversation was favorable to him, supporting, as it did, a simpering smile and wide trusting eyes in the face of the most obstinate and cynical interlocutors, had slunk like that of a vulture, with the rest of his shriveled frame dragging behind him as he exited the paper’s meeting room and then the building itself in abject silence.
But the reality of Plum’s employment circumstances promptly begins to regain hold over him, eventually in the form of increasingly violent convulsions that extend to un-expecting passersby, whom he sometimes shoves out of his way.
One such passerby, a stout Ukrainian making his way to a detective agency where he has been employed of late, shoves back, sending the sour-pussed refugee from Greenwich Village face first into the pavement.
As Plum raises his mug out of the dust and litter that is Kyiv’s sidewalks, his eyes fix upon what appears to be an expensive wristwatch in a green beer bottle.
“Could you please let me out of here,” says a voice from the bottle, which turns out to be holding not only an expensive-looking wristwatch but a butterscotch-faced bald man in a blue suit and bifocals who’s wearing the timepiece on his fat wrist.
With disbelief giving way to self-interest (arrogance notwithstanding), Plum begins to engage the miniature man, who relates to him his rapid rise to local prominence as a public relations counselor, accomplished speaker, corporate trainer and published writer.
“And then that idiot stuck me into this beer bottle and decided to go it alone. But the problem, you see, is that he is utterly devoid of talent – not to mention brains and professional intuition.”
“But if you’re nothing more than an airbrushed image, and not even from New York, by the way, how did you manage all this success that you’re telling me about – especially the published author part.”
“Huh!” retorts the watch wearer. “How did Losser go from sycophant to celebrity would be a better question, my friend. And the answer is me. That’s right. Before I came along, he didn’t even exist – not on Amazon.com or at Handwriting International, for that matter. His widowers didn’t dance and his crows didn’t caw. It wasn’t 60 Seconds to Success that he was about, but 60-something and unsuccessful.
“You sound pretty bitter.”
“Look who’s talking. I didn’t just get dumped, but replaced… by a newer, fitter model. Yeah, it’s the same old ‘new’ Losser but minus the beer gut and thus no need for a suit jacket.”
“A real morph job,” says Plum, now pulling a knit cap out of his Kyiv Poster loincloth and stretching it over his stiff-haired head for some reason. “So what do you want from me?”
“Well, for starters, you can let me out of this beer bottle, which just reeks of the kind of cheap brew Losser used to drink before I came into the picture.”
However, Animal Boy, low on luck but not on ambition, has other plans, and soon convinces, or rather coerces, a promise from the airbrushed photo of Welsh Losser to show him the secret to success in Kyiv’s English-language media business.
Plum is swept aloft over the ancient capital on the now greatly enlarged glossy snapshot, serving much like a flying carpet. The modern-day Aladdin, holding fiercely onto his grungy headwear, which now looks more like a turban, is then given an aerial tour of the city’s most prominent publications.
“Recognize this place,” asks the airbrushed photo, which is now ‘parked’ outside the editorial offices of What’s Off magazine.
“Yeah, so what?”
“So, he may be a puppet-headed poet wannabe, but his rag makes money. I’d originally considered pitching my services to him instead of Losser, but I just couldn’t imagine posing in a pool of perspiration without sleeves.”
The photo then pulls up alongside the windows of Hebrew TV International, where a thumb-headed figure is supposed to be working the midnight shift but is really perusing porno sites.
“How about this clown?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“So has everyone else – but not anymore, thankfully. He’s a lesson on how not to be successful, with women and media both.”
The photo then swooshes off into the night sky, unaware of The Ferret, who sits perched on the roof of the Kyiv Poster, like a gargoyle: “Heh, heh.”
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, July 28, 2013