Urgent Memo from the Desk of Dr. Gonzo
“Always sit close to an exit and never trust a man that doesn’t sweat.”
“Life is Vegas.”
Okay, while that Ben Charles Rhodes kid isn’t looking—I think he’s taking a shit—I’m going to take over this week’s edition. Don’t tell him. I feel like I deserve my own column every so often, considering this blog is named after me. And let’s be honest, folks: the kid’s a decent writer, but good Lord is he annoying. Every two weeks he comes to me, begging me to proofread his blog posts. Jesus Christ, the stuff he writes should get him locked up in an asylum for the deranged. Did you read that shit about Delaware? What the hell was that? And all that nonsense about Geico had me pulling my hair out, making my bald spot even larger. I have Geico and have never had any problems. It’s a fine company, though if I see that commercial with Idina Menzel singing in a living room one more time I’m going to get my rifle and blast a giant hole in the tv.
Regardless of Rhodes’ talents as a writer, I will give him this: he’s damn eager to be famous. He’s constantly texting me at 3 a.m. with typo-ridden messages asking whether or not I can get him a literary agent. Whenever this happens, my third wife, awakened by the sound of my phone going off, takes the phone and throws it against the wall. Even if I could get him a literary agent, I’m not sure I would; he’s not ready for the fame, fortune, prestige, and copious amounts of cocaine that comes with the life of a famous writer. When I published my first novel, The Elephant’s Refusal, in 1974, it had been rejected by 100 different publishers, and I was already 28. Rhodes is still only 22 (though with the hairline of a 30-year-old) and needs a few more colossal failures before he finds success, to better appreciate it when and if it finally occurs.
Still, I’m rooting for him. I first met the kid at a book signing I did about 15 years ago—I was promoting my latest book of collected social commentaries from my time as editor-at-large at Rolling Stone, and Rhodes and his dad were first in line for the autograph table. There he was, a skinny blond 9-year-old wearing a baggy sweatshirt and a smile brighter than the Vegas Strip. Jesus Christ, I thought to myself, smiling nervously behind my sunglasses, That kid’s gonna grow up to be a serial killer. Maybe that was the drugs talking, but I really did feel something different about him—even at age 9, you could tell this was a kid who spent too much time with his nose buried in a book and not enough time blowing up Nazis in CoD.
The kid and I at a book signing, circa 2008. Don’t worry about what I look like—look into the kid’s eyes instead. Jesus, doesn’t he look insane? What’s he hiding behind that “innocent” smile? Horrible things.
During his freshman year of college, Rhodes somehow hacked the Camden College mainframe to find my private email server, from which he contacted me. I received a lengthy and mostly incoherent email about how much he admired my work, how he had once met me, blah blah blah, and would I consider starting a correspondence? I wouldn’t have done it, but somehow my wife saw the email and persuaded me to reply. “He’s too much like you,” she told me. “If you don’t straighten him out now, he’ll end up exactly where you are. And one of you is enough.” I couldn’t argue with that, so I responded to Rhodes with a politely worded email saying that although I was busy, if he would send me some of his work I would give it a read when I found time.
He got back to me almost instantly with a short story about disaffected white people living in New York—hardly original material, but something about his use of tone resonated with me, and I sent a second email, this time more positive. My wife was right; there was something of me in him, and though he was like a young untamed racehorse, with too much raw power and not enough training, I felt he was worth investing my time in. I get thousands of letters and emails from admiring fans every day, and his was the only one I’ve responded to in the last 30 years. Everyone else in this fucked-up world is crazy. So is Rhodes, but at least he knows it. Self-awareness is the first step on the road to sanity—if anything Rhodes does can be called sane. I have a sneaking suspicion that he doesn’t sleep but instead stays up until the sunrise every morning feverishly pounding away on that greasy laptop of his, trying to change the world through words. I, too, once believed I could do that, and then I turned 10. It’s a hard lesson, to be sure, but someday he’ll learn.
When Rhodes proposed to me the idea of him starting a blog, affixed under the title of my name, I was skeptical at first. Who would want to read the demented ravings of a college kid with no life experience? A fair question, as it turned out—he averages roughly 50 views per post, which is bush league shit. My second novel, Solar Midnight Overdrive, got me a $100,000 advance from Random House and sold a million copies in six weeks. I don’t discourage him, though. He keeps telling me that he knows more about my books than I do, and he’s probably right. I was doing so much blow in the 70s that I barely even remember writing my books, much less reading them. Whatever. When I joined the faculty at Camden the first thing I told the department chair was that I would teach anything they wanted me to except for creative writing, because nobody understands what creative writing is. Whenever I try to explain this to Rhodes, he just shakes his head regretfully, smiles, and types another 1000 words a minute.
I recently turned 60, and with retirement on the horizon I’ve been casting about for ways to pass the literary torch, so to speak. Rhodes, of course, is confident that I’m going to pass it to him, that cocky bastard. I probably will, but I’m going to string him out for the next few years. As long as I have my mental faculties—most of them, anyway—I’m not letting anybody take my spot in the vanguard of the literary pantheon. Even if Rhodes someday hits the bestseller lists with a dense and unreadable novel dedicated to me, even if I’m in a nursing home I’ll call him to remind him that I did it first. I have to admit that I have a soft spot for the kid, though: he wrote me a great bio on his website, and even gave me “editor” credit.
Ah, maybe I’m getting to be a pushover in my old age (or maybe it’s just the drugs), but I actually like the kid. He’s a chip off the old block, and he’s the only young person willing to explain to me what the fuck “Twitter” is. A final warning for him, though: if he talks shit on Geico one more time I’ll send his skinny ass to Vegas, where literary agents are extinct.
Remember: don’t tell him I wrote this.
—F. S. Gonzo, Ph. D.
