Read The Indifference League Online
Authors: Richard Scarsbrook
The Indifference League (8 page)
The road straightens again. He twists back the throttle, and the bike surges forward.
Love at first sight. Love at first sight. Love at first sight.
She squeezes the seat between her thighs, and the pure, sustained note that rises from inside her harmonizes with the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind and the rumble of the road beneath her.
Love. Love. Love.
HIPPIE AVENGER
“Go in peace, my daughter. And remember that, in a world of ordinary mortals, you are a Wonder Woman.”
â Queen Hippolyta, from the TV
series
Wonder Woman
, 1975â1979
H
ippie Avenger thinks that her Not-So-Super Friend nickname is a bit of a misnomer.
Sure, she still drives the pea-green late-sixties Volkswagen Microbus she inherited from her parents, but it isn't because of any sentimental desire to Keep on Truckin' or be Too Rollin' Stoned, to quote just two of the dozens of bumper stickers permanently affixed the van's exterior. The old Microbus gets her from point A to point B most of the time, and she can't really afford to replace it.
And, sure, she still pulls her long, curly black hair into a ponytail when she doesn't have time to wash and style it, and she still wears the same sort of loose-fitting pastel-coloured smocks and Birkenstock sandals that she's worn since childhood, but none of these things are necessarily symbolic of any great dedication to the idealistic convictions of a bygone era. They are just habits.
And, sure, she doesn't own a cellphone or an MP3 player or a laptop computer or a big-screen TV or any of the other technological devices that seem so important to other people, but it isn't because she is conscientiously boycotting the material trappings of capitalism, nor is she purposely trying to keep money and therefore power out of the hands of the Military-Industrial Complex. She simply doesn't care about any of that stuff. When she is outside her apartment, she doesn't want to listen to digitized music or blather endlessly on the phone, she just wants to look at the trees and listen to the wind (or look at the buildings and listen to the traffic, if that's what happens to be around). She rarely ever checks her email or uses the Internet on her third-hand home computer, so why would she ever need a portable one? And television? When is there anything worthwhile on television?
Her lifestyle choices are not a matter of philosophy; they are merely preferences. Therefore, Hippie Avenger is not a true Hippie. She knows this all too well.
Her parents were genuine tie-dyed, pot-smoking, vegetable-eating, anti-war, anti-establishment, free-lovin', free-wheelin' Hippies. They both turned twenty in 1968, and were already Old Hippies when they finally brought their first and only Love Child into the world ten years later. Now pushing seventy, they are one of the few ragged old couples who still cling to the whole Peace, Love, and Joy thing, and they will still expound at length about the dream of Woodstock, and how it died for most hippies at Altamont, but not for them.
Unlike most other members of their generation, who talk as if they had been there when they really just watched the movies, Hippie Avenger's parents had in fact journeyed to both Woodstock and Altamont, using the money they were supposed to spend on college tuition. They also went to Monterey, and they followed the Grateful Dead for an entire year, all in the same VW Microbus that their Love Child now uses for her weekly trip to the mini-mall to buy the commercial-industrial products that her parents so despise.
Yes, Hippie Avenger sometimes buys manufactured goods from corporate-owned stores. She eats factory-
packaged cookies made with unwholesome white flour and sugar refined from cane grown on non-unionized Third-World plantations. She knows that this is philosophically the wrong thing to do, but it's just so much easier than making them from scratch, and they taste uniformly, predictably, okay. She also uses toothpaste manufactured by the same company that made one of the ingredients for Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, because brushing with baking soda like her parents do makes her breath smell like a yeast infection. She even uses disposable razors and commercially produced scented foam to shave her armpits.
Does she feel guilty about doing any of these things? Of course she does. Her parents would be horrified. Her socio-political guilt wages war with her preference for minty freshness every time she brushes her teeth. Whenever she exfoliates under her arms or around her pubic patch, she hears her mother scolding her for “caving in to corporate commercial social norms.” If her father knew about his daughter's flagrant use of underarm deodorant, he would launch into a tirade about how “the minions of commercialism have spent millions of advertising dollars to make us fear the scent of our own humanity.”
And yet, still she eats Chips Ahoy! cookies, brushes with Crest, exfoliates with Gillette, and masks the scent of her humanity with Lady Speed Stick. She knows that she really isn't a hippie at all. She only sort of looks like one. So her nickname, Hippie Avenger, is not quite right. But so far nobody has come up with anything better.
She sighs as she heaves a burlap bag into the back of the Microbus, which contains a couple changes of clothes, her toothbrush, hairbrush, razor, and the only portable, battery-powered technology she owns: a purple, plastic-and-rubber, quasi-penis-shaped vibrator. Of course she would rather feel a real, organic penis moving inside her, and of course she would prefer the tongue of a real man flicking at her sensitive clitoris, but in the meantime she's grown quite fond of her Purple Pal. Certainly it brings her more pleasure than a TV, a cellphone or a laptop computer ever could.
The Orgasm is one of the few luxuries that Hippie Avenger was taught not to feel guilty about wanting. She considers slipping back inside her apartment for a quick self-pleasuring session, but she's already an hour behind schedule. She is always running late, probably the result of growing up in a home free from the tyranny of clocks.
She climbs up into the driver's seat of the Microbus, wondering if she's remembered to unplug the coffee percolator, or to lock the door to her apartment above the detached, bungalow-sized garage of her landlord's suburban stucco-covered-cardboard McMansion. She shrugs. If her place gets robbed or burns down it won't make any difference to her; she doesn't own anything of real value, either monetary or sentimental. It's one of the few old bumper stickers on the VW that actually reflects her own feelings:
THINGS ARE JUST NOT MY THING
.
Hippie Avenger slides the key into the ignition on the scratched-up steering column and turns it. Nothing happens. She wiggles the key and tries again. Still nothing. Then she notices that the switch for the headlights is pulled out.
Damn it! I left the lights on again.
She walks around to the front of the McMansion. Her landlord and his wife have already departed for the holiday weekend, so she won't be able to beg for yet another jump-start.
Great. Like, now what am I going to do?
Hippie Avenger doesn't feel comfortable approaching one of her neighbours for help, because she still hasn't met any of them (typical of these soulless, anti-community, commuter-culture subdivisions, her parents would be quick to point out). Besides, she doesn't actually know how to open the engine compartment on the Microbus, or where to connect the clamps on the ends of the tangled jumper cables. It's her landlord who always jump starts her van, and she has never paid much attention to how he does it. He is an expert on the mechanics of lawn mowers and weed trimmers and gas grills and other suburban gadgets that might as well be sub-molecular-particle accelerators as far as Hippie Avenger is concerned.
She climbs the stairs to her garage-top apartment. She has, in fact, left the door unlocked. In the kitchen, she switches off the coffee percolator, reaches for the telephone, and dials Mr. Nice Guy's number. He won't mind swinging through Guelph to give her a ride to The Hall of Indifference; that's why they call him Mr. Nice Guy. She gets his voice mail, though; he's probably en route to the cottage already, and law-abiding, safety-conscious Mr. Nice Guy would never talk on his cellphone while driving.
Next she tries Miss Demeanor; a recorded message informs her that “The caller you are trying to reach is currently unavailable,” which means that Miss Demeanor is probably engaged in another war of attrition with her cell service provider.
Hippie Avenger doesn't have a current number for The Drifter, so there is really only one other choice. She hesitates before dialling.
Maybe she should just stay home for the weekend. Of the eight original Not-So-Super Friends, Hippie Avenger and The Statistician have the least in common. They probably wouldn't be friends at all if not for the others. It might actually be less unpleasant for Hippie Avenger to spend the entire long weekend trapped in this deserted-for-the-weekend, miles-from-anywhere suburb, than to suffer that smug, philosophically-superior look on The Statistician's face as he jump starts the Microbus. Even worse, if the persnickety VW refuses to co-operate, she might have to face the horror of spending three hours in a car with The Statistician and his whiny, high-maintenance, country-club wife.
She looks out through the kitchen window, over the identical squares of chemically fertilized golf-green lawn and the identical asphalt-paved driveways of the identical beige-stucco McMansions lined up in perfect geometric order.
Like, why did I ever move here? My parents were right. I don't belong in the suburbs, no matter how cheap the rent. I really need to get out of here.
Like, now.
She breathes in slowly, and then she calls The Statistician.
THE REBEL ALLIANCE
“She'll make point five past light speed. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid.”
â Han Solo, about his spaceship
The Millennium Falcon
, to Luke Skywalker, from the movie
Star Wars
, 1977
“W
ow,” says The Statistician as he peers into the blackened engine compartment of Hippie Avenger's inherited Microbus, “How many miles does this thing have on it? Five hundred thousand? A million?”
“I don't know,” Hippie Avenger says. “The mile-counter thingy has flipped over so many times that ⦔
“The odometer, you mean.”
“The mile-counter thingy, yeah.”
“Wow,” The Statistician says again. “I can't believe this old engine still runs.”
Hippie Avenger glances at The Statistician and Time Bomb's shimmering black Cadillac Escalade SUV, and then at the sad-eyed cartoon animals on the
PLEASE DON'T POLLUTE OUR WORLD
sticker on the front fender of the old VW.
“Not all of us can afford to drive the Death Star,” she says.
“Hey, a
Star Wars
reference!” The Statistician cheers. “Good for you!”
When he was a kid,
Star Wars
was The Statistician's favourite movie, despite its obvious scientific flaws, like Han Solo referring to a parsec as a unit of time rather than distance, or all of those fiery explosions in the oxygen-free void of space. He and The Drifter, with their officially licensed action figures and plastic spacecraft, used to stage epic sagas on the top bunk in their shared bedroom.
The Statistician fastens the jumper cable clamps onto the terminals of the VW's ancient battery, and says, “If our SUV is the Death Star, then your Microbus is an X-Wing fighter.”
“I don't know what that means,” Hippie Avenger admits. She suspects that she has just been insulted, but she isn't sure, since she's never seen
Star Wars
, despite being made to feel as if the space saga was somehow her own generation's Woodstock.
“The Empire,” Statistician explains, “were the bad guys. They had the big, expensive, technologically advanced Death Star. The Rebel Alliance, on the other hand, flew rickety, outdated, patched-together old X-Wing fighters.”
“And the people in the Rebel Alliance were, like, the good guys?”
“Indeed. Here on Earth, Luke Skywalker would be driving your Microbus into battle. And he would probably vote for the Green Party, too.”
Hippie Avenger smiles. So he meant it as a compliment. With The Statistician, she is never sure.
He taps a knuckle on the faded “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” sticker affixed to the front bumper of the Microbus between the “Impeach Nixon!” and “Free Leonard Peltier” decals.
“And,” he continues, “in addition to being the good guys, the Rebels were being environmentally conscious by
reusing
old space fighters, instead of wasting precious raw materials building new ones.”
Hippie Avenger's smile disappears. “Are you mocking me?”
“No! This is one of the few bumper stickers on your van that I agree with. The Earth has
finite
resources, so we can't go on digging and burning them up
infinitely
.”
“Then why the friggin'
Battleship Escalade
?”
“It's hers, not mine.” The Statistician says, gesturing toward the sleeping Time Bomb, whose face is pressed against the passenger window of the enormous SUV. “I usually just take the subway to the university, but she refuses to use public transit at all â too many âallergens and toxins' in the air, apparently.”
He raises the long, heavy hood on the Escalade and connects the jumper cables to its massive black battery.
“I thought she should get a nice, efficient little Honda Civic to run around the city in,” he continues, “but apparently people who live in
our
neighbourhood don't drive
Hondas
. Apparently she feels â
empowered
'” â he makes quotation marks in the air with his fingers â “by driving something large enough to generate its own gravitational field. Personally, I blame the feminist movement.”
“Hey! Buying a gas-guzzling tank has nothing to do with ⦔
“Aw, relax. I just said that to annoy you. Her mother bought it for her. She's got one, too, so they're both very
empowered
. Now, jump into your VW and we'll see if we can get you
empowered
, too.”
Hippie Avenger climbs onto the frayed driver's seat of the Microbus and turns the key. After a few wheezy, laboured turnovers, the little engine sputters, coughs, and then begins running earnestly. Its irregular burbling is music to Hippie Avenger's ears; she won't be trapped in the suburbs for the weekend, nor will she have to endure the trip to the cottage in the Death Star with The Statistician and Time Bomb.
“Shit!” cries The Statistician from within the SUV's cavernous plastic and fake-wood interior. “Everything's gone dead! What the â¦?”
Time Bomb's eyelids flutter, and she mumbles sleepily, “Jump-starting another vehicle can trick the ATS into disabling the onboard computer so the engine won't run.”
“ATS?”
“Anti-Theft System.”
“You didn't think to tell me this until now?”
“You need a special electronic gizmo to reset it,” Time Bomb says. “It'll be tough to find a mechanic who can do it, since it's the long weekend. I guess we'll just have to stay home.” She pauses before adding, “Darn the luck.”
Hippie Avenger wanders over beside the open driver's-side window of the Escalade. She offers tentatively, “Well, like, if you two want to ride with me ⦔
“In
that
thing?” Time Bomb gasps. “My God! Does it even have CCAPS?”
“See-see-what?”
“Climate Control and Air Purification System!
Air conditioning
, for God's sake! My hair will be a disaster in this humidity.”
Hippie Avenger says, “The Microbus comes equipped with a top-of-the-line NAS. It's an older technology, but it always works.”
“NAS?”
“Natural Airflow System.”
Soon the old VW is rattling along a northbound highway, humid summer air blasting through its open windows. Hippie Avenger is behind the wheel, and The Statistician rides shotgun.
Time Bomb sneezes three times,
“Ah-shee! Ah-shee! Ah-SHAH!”
,
then curls up in a fetal position on the rear bench seat. She grumbles something about “toxins and allergens” before falling into a drooling, snoring slumber.
*
They have been on the road for nearly an hour when The Statistician abruptly says, “âMeat is Murder!”, quoting the translucent sticker affixed to the windshield above the dashboard in front of him. “Actually, killing another human being is
murder
. Meat is
food.
”
“
Vegetables
are food, too,” says Hippie Avenger, knowing that she's chomping on the former high school Debating Champion's bait.
She remembers the time that The Statistician passionately advocated atheism to Teens Need Truth co-chairs SuperKen and SuperBarbie, and then turned around and argued for the existence of God with the vociferously atheist Psycho Superstar. When everyone else proclaims to be liberal, The Statistician is conservative. When they are warriors, he's a pacifist. When they are socialists, he's a capitalist.
“Humans are
omnivores
!” he says, the volume of his voice rising. “We're designed to eat vegetables
and
meat. It's why we've got incisors in our mouths. It's why we come equipped with the enzymes and acids particular to our digestive system. It's why ⦔
It's the same argument they've been having since high school, and Hippie Avenger inevitably runs out of ammunition before The Statistician does. She's not in the mood to fight this battle yet again, so she says, “I didn't put that sticker there. My parents did.”
“But you're a
vegetarian
,
aren't you?”
He might as well have replaced the word
vegetarian
with
idiot
.
“Actually, I eat a bit of meat once in a while now.”
“Oh,” he says, deflating.
To The Statistician, a good debate is as essential to a road trip as the road itself. When they were kids, sitting in the back seat of their father's Buick Skylark en route to some horrible tourist destination like the World's Biggest Ball of Twine, he and The Drifter would wile the time away arguing about almost anything; whether Spider-Man was more or less than half as strong as Superman, would Mario Lemieux have scored as many goals as Wayne Gretzky if he hadn't been hampered by injuries and illnesses, would it be better to colonize the Moon or Mars, and so on.
“So you eat meat now, eh?” The Statistician says. “That's a sudden change in philosophy, indeed. What about all the cuddly, friendly animals?”
Hippie Avenger says, “I was becoming iron deficient.”
“Anemic,” says The Statistician.
“Yeah, iron deficient. Like, especially during my menstrual cycle. When all that blood gushes out of your body, you lose a lot of iron, and, like ⦠or would you rather I didn't get into the details?”
“I'm married, remember? Believe me, I know all about the magic and mystery of the menstrual cycle.”
They both glance back at Time Bomb, who is still snoring on the bench seat. Hippie Avenger wonders if Time Bomb is having her period right now, or if she's always so distant and irritable.
“So, how often do you go carnivore, then?” The Statistician wonders. “A few times per month? A three-to-one ratio of vegetarian to omnivorous meals?”
“Oh, just about every day,” Hippie Avenger says, “but it's not like I order the twenty-four-ounce porterhouse or the triple cheeseburger. Only a few ounces at a time, and, like, not for every meal.”
She is surprised when The Statistician says, “That's pretty sensible, really. Each meat-producing animal consumes way more than its weight in corn, soy, and other grain, which could just as easily be eaten directly by humans. North Americans in particular consume much more meat than they need to, which is
not
efficient use of food energy. It's simple mathematics, really. You don't expend five units of food energy to create one unit.”
Well. This is hardly the adversarial debate she expected.
“I only buy free-range, grain-and-grass-fed meat,” she says, with an intentionally haughty tone. “I will not buy factory-produced meat products, like, no matter what. Penning up animals, and force-feeding them chemicals and semi-edible waste until they're slaughtered is just wrong.”
That ought to get him going
,
Hippie Avenger figures. But rather than trotting out the familiar counter-argument that corporate agricultural methods are more economically efficient, or the rationalization that livestock are food, not personalities, The Statistician
agrees
with her.
“Indeed,” he says. “Meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, and generate ridiculous amounts of greenhouse gases. And all those antibiotics and hormones they pump into the animals get passed onto the consumer. And, besides, the animals are much better treated on free-range farms. There's no reason they need to be
tortured
before becoming food.”
“Like, when did you become so reasonable?”
“I've always been reasonable. Reason is my forte.”
“So, you mean we, like, actually agree on something?”
“Indeed we do.”
They ponder this for a while. As they travel farther from the city, through farm country, the smell of tarmac and exhaust fumes in the air is replaced by dust and manure, and the road becomes bumpier and noisier.
“So what else do you want to talk about?” The Statistician says. “Good conversation makes a long trip seem shorter.”
“I don't know. What do you guys usually talk about?”
“Whenever we go anywhere, she takes an antihistamine, two ibuprofens, a Gravol, and an Ativan, and she's asleep before we leave the driveway.” The Statistician shrugs. “Oh well. At least she isn't complaining about anything when she's unconscious.”
“At least you've got somebody.” Hippie Avenger says wistfully. “At least you're not travelling alone.”
Even someone as literal at The Statistician knows that Hippie Avenger is speaking metaphorically. He wants to say something soothing, so this is what he comes up with: “Well, as Oscar Wilde once said, â
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out
.' Indeed, Oscar Wilde. Indeed.”
Hippie Avenger sighs. “Actually, I think it was, like, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne who came up with that one.”