The Catcher in the Lye

I read The Catcher in the Rye in high school (which proves to my non-Canadian readers just how much of a joke the Canadian school system is, because I think the book, while one of my all-time favorites, would be better suited as required reading in junior high), and one of the assignments our teacher gave us was to compose a short story, with Holden Caulfield as the main character, set in the present day. It was fun -- definitely a step up from rest of the mundane shit we were assigned. I remember my story pretty well; in it, Holden visits a shrink and complains about the slow, steady eradication of the middle class, cruelty toward animals (I made him a vegan), the rapid growth of technology, and other issues that I believed the character would disapprove of, were he an adolescent growing up in the late 90s.

Sometime last week, probably while on the can, I had a thought: what would Holden be like if he were an ESL teacher in Korea? This intrigued me for a number of reasons. First, it would be fun, and hopefully funny (also the most difficult part, mind you). And, second, it would be a challenge. I don't think, for anyone who's read the book, it's very hard to write similar to Holden's narration in Catcher, but it'd be no piece of cake to make it engaging. And, as you probably already know, I'm always up for a challenge -- be it writing about a boring basketball game, or eating 6 hot dogs in an evening.

The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951, and in it Holden is 15 years old. Instead of making him a 15-year-old ESL teacher in Korea -- which sounds ludicrous, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's happened -- I've decided to keep it real and make him the age he would be in 2006: 70 years old. Still, I think you'll see that he hasn't matured very much in the intervening years.

Is this fan fiction or parody? Or Satire? It's a little of all three, or at least is intended to be. Below is the opening chapter of a series of posts I plan to continue writing on a fairly regular basis (Spring Cleaning's not dead, by the way; I hope to put up a review of Once Upon a Time in America by tomorrow night, which is a herculean task, seeing as how the film's like 300 hours long), provided there's enough interest and JD Salinger doesn't sic his thug lawyers on me, which is a very definite possibility. That crotchety old recluse is as litigious about his works as a crotchety old reclusive guy (my simile generator*is still busted). So if this disappears within the next hour/day/month/year/decade, you know exactly whom to blame.

1

I don't know why anyone would want to hear about all the madman stuff that happened to me last year, but there are people who'll read just about anything, or so I've heard. My sister Phoebe says her two kids can't get enough of something called blogs, which there are apparently millions of, all about the lives of normal everyday people. Jesus, I bet they write about what they ate for dinner, what stupid movies they watched, and what they plan to eat for dinner the next night, and what stupid movies they plan to watch in the future. All very highbrow stuff, naturally.

So, like I said, I don't know why anyone would want to hear about this mess that happened to me, but people'll read just about anything these days, or so I've heard. If there's one thing I hate, it's the Internet. Don't even mention it to me.

I'm not going to bore you with all the details of why or how I ended up teaching English in Korea and all that crap, because if I did I'd probably write 2 sentences and then drop dead of a heart attack. You probably would too if you read it. I'll just tell you about what happened after I secured a job, beginning with shortly before I got there.

For most of my flight I had to sit next to this crummy looking guy with an eyepatch. Boy was he a character. He was all fidgety and looked as though he was having a fit. He kept breathing through his nose all funny, making this whistling sound that told you how much of a bastard he was, how much he hated being stuck on an airplane next to an old man. I've heard that when you get old your nose hairs grow more plentiful and thicker, and that's why old people make such funny noises when they breathe through their noses -- but I've never had that kind of problem. This guy probably wasn't even forty though, and he was breathing through his nose and huffing like an angry bull. It's pretty ironical when you think about it. You could tell he wasn't one for flying, because he wouldn't open the window for anything, and he kept his eyes closed, at least the one that wasn't covered with that patch of his, the whole time.

The lady sitting to my left was no treat either. She had her hair pulled back tightly in a bun and looked all haughty. You could just tell she was uncomfortable sitting next to me. She probably thought I was going to wet myself or something, or that I hadn't taken my liver pills. Believe me, it was no fun being sandwiched between her and the psycho with the eyepatch, but at least I didn't show it. You can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their face, you really can.

I had nothing better to do on the plane than to stare at the big screen they have at the front of the aisles that tells you how high up you are and how fast you're going, like it's the most interesting thing in the world. I had a book, which I bought before leaving JFK, but it was a goddam monumental bore. Something about a Japanese guy whose cat goes missing, then his wife goes missing, and pretty soon you start to hope he goes missing so something at least halfway exciting happens. I should have known, nothing you buy at airport bookstores is ever any good. That's why you never hear people who enjoy good literature say "I picked up this terrific book while I was on a layover in Chicago," or "LAX has a really great selection. It's a virtual treasure trove of underappreciated classics." Every now and then I'd glance up at the screen to see how close we were to reaching our destination. Even though that's the absolute most tedious thing imaginable a person can do, it was a million times better than that book. Other than that, I tried to sleep. I also made a few trips to the lavatory, which was harder than you might think because the goddam stewards are always pushing or pulling something or other up and down the aisles, blocking your way.

One of the meals we were served was rice and an assortment of chopped vegetables, most of which I'd never seen before. It didn't look very appetizing, but I'm not very choosy about that sort of stuff, if you can believe it. It came with a small tube of what was labelled hot pepper paste. I didn't think my ulcer could handle it, but I wanted to keep it for later, so I put it to the side of my pulldown tray. But when the stewards came back to take away the plastic containers, wrappers, and all the other junk left over from everyone's meal, one young attendant snatched up the tube and whisked away before I even had a chance to complain. I tried to get her attention by staring at her with this really hard, patient look, like Mike Wallace interviewing the Ayatollah or something, but she didn't pay me any attention, even though I knew she saw me. I could have made a scene by shouting at her and telling her to come back and hand me the tube of hot pepper paste she erroneously mistook for waste, but then I probably would have had the whole plane looking at me, thinking I must have wet my adult diaper or something. Believe me, that's not fun, and it happens quite a lot for people my age, if you want to know the truth. People thinking I'm a senile old coot, and not me wetting myself, I mean.

Near the end of the flight I was just about bored out of my mind, so what I did was, I started fanning myself with the in-flight duty free brochure, sort of like a southern belle in a 30s picture. I wish old Phoebe was there. Boy, that would have killed her. My immediate fellow passengers didn't find it very humorous though, so I stopped and after a while pretended to be asleep. I stayed that way until we landed. I considered pretending to be dead, just for kicks and to make my fellow passengers in row 16 feel guilty, but didn't think any of the other bastards on the plane would get the joke. Most people never do.

Clearing customs took almost as long as the goddam flight, and afterwards I waited about an eon at baggage claim. I noticed my bags, but for a while I stood there waiting for someone else to pick them up, just for kicks. The thing about luggage is that it all looks mostly the same, so it's not exactly a mortal sin to mistake someone else's bag as your own. But tell that to the bastard who practically tries jumping on you and tackling you if you so much as look at his bag for more than 2 seconds. People get really overanxious about bags, I've learned.

After I got my bags, I went out to the area where people are supposed to get picked up. You'd think the people waiting there would have happy looks on their faces -- unless their friends or relatives had just returned from an overseas funeral or something, I mean -- but none of them did. They all looked depressed, like how people look in the waiting room when they're at the doctor and waiting for the results of a blood test or EKG.

Eventually, a short fellow wearing a San Diego Padres baseball cap waved at me and shouted "over here, mister Cawfeld!" I approached him, and when I did he asked "you dint see me? I was here whole time, holding sign." The sign he held read Halden Cawfeld. I was about to tell him it was natural for me to overlook him, seeing as how he was holding a sign with my name misspelled, but I didn't want to start things off with this guy -- whoever he was -- on the wrong foot. I lied and said it was because I took my contacts out during the flight and hadn't yet had an opportunity to put them back in. People will believe just about anything an old guy says, as long as it's about how old and feeble they are.

"Follow me. I have car," he said, taking one of my bags and my knapsack. Then he began skipping ahead of me like a goddam jackrabbit or something. He stopped a couple of times and looked back to make sure I hadn't dropped dead from exhaustion, and once, when my suitcase toppled over after getting off of an escalator, he ran back with panic-stricken wide eyes. After that, upon his insistence, he pulled both of my bags. I offered to at least take the knapsack, but he wouldn't allow it. It was pretty funny, in a way.

My initial thought that this kid was my saviour quickly wore off, though. After we finally found his car in the airport's labyrinthine parking garage and began driving towards Seoul, I started to realize what a phony this guy was. He kept staring at my acne scars -- something that makes me very uncomfortable, if you want to know the truth -- and asking me questions like "so, how old are you? Really? Your recruiter said you were much younger. He said only 51," and "why you have no grandchild? Why no married? You don't like women? You a very handsome guy."

He could tell his questions were bothering me, and after a while said "you lying! You look younger than my father, and he 43! Funny joke, Mr. Cawfeld." Then he laughed like a big phony and slapped my leg. But what he did afterward was, he left his hand resting on my knee, and stared at me sheepishly. Guys get all flitty with me a lot more often than you might think, even today, but I've never been comfortable about it.

"We almost there," he said, rubbing my thigh. When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. I tried to knock his hand away whenever we went over a bump in the road, but it wouldn't budge. It was like a goddam vice or something.

"You will like new neighborhood," he said, all soft-voiced and all. "Lots of PC rooms. Lots of bath houses. And I live in upstairs apartment, if you need something fixing."

It was then that I realized that this kid would be the first in a long line of bastards who I would soon meet. They must make them in a factory or something.

* which is another way of saying that I'm too tired and/or drunk to, as the British so aptly put it, be arsed to come up with something better.