The rumours about me had been circulating for weeks, and I figured I had to make myself scarce in order to avoid the inevitable journalistic feeding frenzy. Sure enough, I managed to track myself down to a cheap motel where I had mistakenly thought I would not be found.
At first, I completely refused comment. Unfortunately, I was getting very close to a deadline, and I insisted on a response, loudly banging on the front door and shouting, "Mr. Nayman, I know you're in there! I just have a couple of questions - please, let me in!"
I opened the door the length of the chain. "What do you want?" I asked, suspicious.
I cocked my pen. "Mr. Nayman, are you really a knobhead?"
I slammed the door in my face. "Mr. Nayman? Mr. Nayman!" I shouted through the door. "I can wait here for days! You have to come out sooner or later, and, when you do, I'll be here, waiting! Why don't you make this easier for both of us and answer my questions?"
There was silence for a couple of seconds. "Look," I decided to change tactics, "when I write my story - and I will, with or without your help - it will be better for you if I have your side of it. You know how dumb 'No comment' looks in print?"
I suspected I was pushing a deadline, but I realized that not giving my side of the story would, as I had pointed out, look bad. "No," I finally said, opening the door a crack, "no, I am not a knobhead."
"Okay," I responded, scribbling inanely. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
"Don't patronize me," I said, glaring through the sliver of open doorway. "I've been a journalist too, you know. I've done my share of ambush interviews, and I know all your tricks."
"Fine...fine," I muttered. "...all the tricks. Good. Now, tell me, is it true that you are politically...well...I'm sorry if this question embarrasses you..."
"I can handle it if you can," I told me, sarcastic as hell.
"Okay. Are you politically soft?"
"Politically soft?"
"Soft. You know. Weak? Inconsistent? All over the map?"
"No."
"But, you have made fun of views held by both the left and the right. Don't you think that makes you soft?"
I sighed. I recorded that I had sighed. "Look," I tried to sound reasonable, "there is nothing contradictory in my position or my thinking. In the first place, if there is a philosophy at work in my, uhh, work, it's my own brand of existential weirdness. Humour generally, and mine in particular, is a reminder of human fallibility, that manmade structures, political, social or otherwise, are transitory, impermanent. This idea goes beyond political considerations of the moment and cuts across all beliefs."
What a knobhead, I thought, only half-heartedly taking down what I was saying. You use humour as a defense against those forces that affect your life, but over which you have no control, then tell yourself they aren't important. Or, you're a suck. Either way, you're not smart enough to spit-polish Jean Paul Sartre's war medals.
"Another way to look at it," I continued, "is that I'm interested in exploring the contradictions in the positions of people in power. Let's face it, no political party or belief system has a monopoly on hypocrisy. Right?"
I stopped sketching a broken heart with a knife through it and looked up at myself. "Can I ask you a personal question? Off the record, I mean?"
I shrugged. "Depends on what it is," I uncooperatively answered. I knew that nothing was ever really off the record.
"Do you really believe what you just said?
"Sometimes," I answered. "Sometimes, I believe I'm floating in a sea of ideas. Whatever ideas appeal to me at the moment, I follow. Does that make any more sense?"
I put my notepad away. "Frankly," I stated, "no. It doesn't."
"I see," I said, sadly. "Now, you tell me something. It wouldn't have mattered much what I said, would it? I mean, you've already decided what the focus of you're story is going to be, right?"
"Off the record?"
"Off the record."
"Of course."
"Thanks," I said, and returned to my room.
I left. Helluva story. But, as I was walking away, I thought, "Who is really the knobhead here?"
