… in the never-ending saga of “Life Is Unfair”
Or, how it all was, in part, for Andrzej Vishnya at the not-so-rosy What’s Not play mag in Kyiv, circa 2008 (give or take a year)
Vishnya floats off into idiosyncratic reflections of grandeur, thinking something like, What’s he doing here, how did he become chief editor, who is he, he doesn’t even know anything, he can barely speak, much less English, with those lower class Scotch marbles rolling around in his half-risen dough mouth out of that fucking puff pastry melted crater face, fucking ugly son of a bitch, fucking dickhead, fucking goon, low level low class street rube – that’s RUUUUUBE – auto part’s dealer, insinuated his way in, what the fuck did he come over here for anyway, how did this happen, give me a fucking break, this guy’s a fucking imbecile, I can’t BELIEVE he calls himself a writer, I can’t fucking BELIEVE he has the nerve to try to pass himself off as a writer, every fucking chance he gets in his stupid, moron editorials, ‘I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer…’ And I have to edit them – for grammar! How did this happen, how did it happen?
And an inner voice that Vishnya tries to suppress but, of course, finds impossible to do (as these voices are insuppressible), says to him something like, He’s the boss because in some basic and essential way he’s better than you’ – yeah right, yeah right, YEAH RIGHT!!! Vishnya blurts out, screwing up his chlorine-soaked physio-mug, violently whipping his head down toward his desk a number of times to shake the voice out of his skull, drawing the attention of mag room staff, including the chief editor – who enjoys being called any number of sobriquets, like Raw Stench, or Stinky Shirt, or Sweaty Top, by his quickly made business friends, likewise from the Empire Isles, loyally helping their own – who bays across the compact square meterage at Vishnya, ‘What’s gang o’er,’*[see Note at bottom] to which Vishnya snarls back, ‘Nothin.’
In the second or two that it takes the What’s Not chief to get up toward Vishnya, Vishnya thinks, I’m going to get this son of a bitch; I’m going to undermine his little operation and destroy his delusional little world; step on his fucking disgusting scarecrow face as he drags it through the muck back to his wee li’l Scotland.
What gang, Vishnya, says the chief, me thought ich tol’ you ta stop wi’ yar fookin’ delusions o’ writer. Ich am the writer ‘roun’ here, ich the chief, the boss, and ich gang show you yar damn fookin’ place. Ne shut yar fookin’ meuth an’ gi’ me the pieces ich aksed ye fer yesserday. It’s fookin’ amazin’, I gi’ ‘em you, an’ you canna e’en do the wee li’l labor as ta check the grammar. You mus’ be soome kind o’ fookin’ animal boy!
This last comment elicits laughs from the staff. Vishnya gets to work.
Several minutes later, the What’s Not chief again stands over Vishnya, harassing him, suspecting, as any good boss should, that Vishnya is using company time for his own purposes. Apparently, he was right, because Vishnya, in a startled, rushed, creature-quick movement, just manages to close whatever he was doing – most likely rewriting his 800-page Pynchonesque novel, per his New York literary agent, Ruth’s, instructions – before the chief sees what it is.
Ne, Vishnya, ich dunna know whar ye get yar fookin’ narve usin’ company time fer yar oon parsonal accant. You fookin’ miserable, oonderhanded, a-scheming – and so on.
And then, not that much later, the What’s Not’s chief is raging. It was time to put this week’s issue of What’s Not to bed, he thought, but before signing off on the proof sheets – which he would normally symbolically glance over – exercising his right and power to do so – before rushing out the door to accommodate his alcoholism in his bar of choice ahead of somehow managing to careen his prematurely shapeless, swollen-necked, triple-chinned beer, whisky and mutton-bloated carcass into his apartment – decided, as if instinctually, to examine them more closely.
Vishnya! You fookin’ leusy – I’m gang rip yar blooody noo-guid fookin’ guts aut an’ make you eat ‘em! Ich canna BELIEVE you fookin’ changed me version o’ the texts, an’ you snuck ‘em in thar, like a fookin’ snake! Ne ich mus’ do it o’er! Ye fooked it all up!
No, Vishnya says, snarling, lisping venom through his tongue-churning defect, you don’t know what you’re fucking talking about! You’re simply not a good writer. Hell, what am I saying – you’re not a writer at all; face it. You managed to get that chief editor position somehow, but how you got it has nothing to do with your writing skills, which don’t exist. Read it; compare what I did to your original. It’s fucking better!
Ich AM the chief editor, ich AM the boss! Ich write o’er you; you dunna write o’er me! Ich AM the writer! Me edit is the last edit, the last say, the last woard, not YOURN!
It’s fucking better, Vishnya insists. Oozing hatred, screwing up the eyes, crossing his arms in front of his chest, the wide, shapeless ragged sleeves of his Beat sweater ballooning down from his forearms with mystical Kerouac authority, lifting his head and shaking it defiantly, contorting his mouth and snarling his lip…
The chief is compelled to show his power.
Whan ye got fookin’ fired froom the Kyiv Poster, he says to Vishnya, ye cam crawlin’ your arrogant fookin’ mug to What’s Not magazine, beggin’ foor a job, an’ ich taken ye, ‘cause ich jus’ losten a real bonny lass deputy, a great gal she were, to a new Ukrainian TV show, and ye almost mejeatly start a-actin’ like ye be the fookin’ chief and ich yourn fookin’ boy, puttin’ in yer fookin’ fancy words, an’ ich takes them aut, as they annoy the hell autta me, and you put ‘em back in, an’ whan I asks you why, all polite-like at first, you sayin’, ‘cause I feel like it, all defoyant-like, an’ ich sellin’ car parts ta English noble blood, and no-a-one o’ ‘em ever coom ‘cross so fookin’ superior ta me as you. Ne, I know ye be fookin’ angry an’ jealous, seein’ as I jus’ coom here and get a job as chief editor of What’s Not, based on me merits, an’ ne bein’ a writer and you not.
Vishnya’s wedge jaw has dropped. His otherwise proud vulture neck is bent, his beak nose pokes groundward in stunned humiliation. Staff members are aghast, but laughing. The chief has overwhelmed him. He is indeed the more powerful.
With Vishnya helpless and mesmerized, it’s here that the chief roars like a bagpipe in Vishnya’s face, sending him collapsing and shaken back into his seat:
Ich am the fookin’ boss! Do ye fookin’ understand me?! Ich am the fookin’ boss ‘round here, and wha’ ich fookin’ say fookin’ goes, and me fookin’ edit is the last fookin’ edit, or do ye see anoother fookin’ entertainment weekly in this town ye can work for?!
Filed by Jack Step, April 13, 2013
*[Note from Jack Step (approved by the Secret Editorial Board): It is not with apologies that I write this when I say that you will probably have to slow down and somewhat struggle with the What’s Not chief editor’s Scottish, but while the transcription, transliteration and interpretation into English letters is admittedly not always internally consistent and scientific (for that, please go to works such as “Trainspotting” by Irvine Welsh, or “Rob Roy” by Sir Walter Scott), I strongly believe it contains the Spirit of what this person is saying. Writing in the pursuit of truth and the relentless recording, documentation and statement of facts, this, to me, is the most important thing.]