Prick & Chuck land in California. They meet Prick’s daughter! They end up in a bar brawl! Does Prick survive and if so, will be be able to remain in America?
Find out all this and more in Episode 9 of A Prick in America.
Transcript
Episode 9 The Public Leaning Post of Change…
Sacramento. The very name whispered of bureaucracy and broad, tree-lined boulevards. We’d brought the Sopwith Camel down in a truly audacious display of low-altitude aeronautics, almost piercing a billboard for a local MAGA Republican, much to Chuck’s delight. My liver, however, felt distinctly less delighted. The thought of sober ground was, for the first time in days, almost appealing.
Almost.
My daughter, Felicity, a product of my brief, tempestuous third marriage to the gloriously untalented American pop starlet Mindy (a woman who could still pack out stadiums in Kiribati), was, remarkably, based here in this very city. A quantum physicist, no less. Forty years old, fiercely intelligent, and possessed of a formidable disdain for her father’s more… gonzo tendencies. She tolerated my existence, largely, I suspected, because of the intriguing theoretical problems it presented for her understanding of chaos.
Her house was, as one might expect from a top-tier scientist with a pop-star mother and corporate sponsorship, quite sizable. Clean lines, minimalist art, and an almost clinical absence of crisp packets and fag ash. Too fucking clean. Her cleanliness obsessed mother’s child. Mindy once insisted an entire field at a famous British outdoor music festival was covered in well mopped lino before she agreed to play. This is why she was forgotten across the West. Her fastidious ways seemed to click in some of the more conservative, Eastern countries.
“Father,” Felicity said, her voice crisp, devoid of any discernible emotion as she surveyed Chuck and my rather dishevelled states. “You may stay. Congressman Finnegan may stay. But there will be no narcotics consumed under my roof. No alcohol. No… chemical enhancements of any kind.”
Chuck bristled, then visibly deflated as he met her unyielding gaze. I merely sighed. The universe, it seemed, had a cruel sense of humour.
Later that evening, after a truly harrowing experience involving artisanal Sacramento-sourced sourdough and what I believe was kale, the three of us sat in her impossibly clean living room (our shoes covered in medical grade rubber), attempting a “sober political conversation.”
“Felicity, my dear,” I began, gesturing vaguely at the gleaming electronics surrounding us. “With all due respect for your intellect, how can you, a champion of scientific truth, align yourself with this… this capitalist machinery? You work for the very corporations that enable the Trumps and the Musks. Why not walk away? Join the… the stealth revolution, as it were?”
She steepled her fingers, her gaze unwavering. “Father, naive idealism is a luxury I cannot afford. I understand the system, perhaps more intimately than you. To dismantle it from the outside is a fantasy. The only way to truly control the potential for misuse, the very real dangers of unchecked power – especially with the technologies I work on – is to possess a degree of power within the system itself. To understand it, to influence it, to perhaps, one day, steer it.”
“Influence it?” I scoffed, a genuine flash of anger piercing my enforced sobriety. “Influence it like the tale I once heard, a parable from a distant, (ahem) perhaps mythical land. This place had but one water source for miles, and the government decreed the water itself was free for all to collect. Yet, the only route to this oasis was owned by a faceless corporation. And they, in turn, employed a man – a seemingly ordinary fellow, just trying to feed his family – to police a series of ‘Public Leaning Posts’ and benches along this weary path. One had to hire a spot to rest! If you were too exhausted, too poor to pay, he’d force you to walk for miles without respite. He’d cite rules, drone on about ‘security’ and ‘the owner worked hard to build his business,’ but it was clear, darling, brutally clear: this was nothing but exploitation. Power used to squeeze money from the utterly spent, all for the distant, unseen rich. That, Felicity, is your ‘power within’ in action! The middle classes, the bureaucrats, the ‘good workers,’ policing the poor and the working classes for the rich to stay rich!”
Chuck, uncharacteristically silent during my tirade, grunted in agreement. Felicity merely watched me, her expression unreadable.
Later, as she prepared for bed, I cornered her again. “Look, my clever child. I need your help. I need to understand them. These MAGA types. These… disciples of the orange tyrant. Can you… can you point me to a watering hole where I might encounter some of them? Observe them in their natural habitat?”
She sighed, a sound of profound parental exasperation. “There’s a place downtown, ‘The Grizzly Bear Saloon.’ It’s… frequented by a certain demographic. But Father, please. No scenes. And no drugs.”
“Naturally,” I lied, with a practiced air of innocence.
As soon as Felicity’s bedroom door clicked shut, Chuck and I were out the door, hailing a taxi to downtown Sacramento. The Grizzly Bear Saloon reeked of cheap beer and desperation. Inside, a works party was in full swing. Blue-collar men and women, their faces etched with the same weariness I’d seen on the walking dead on the highways, clutched pitchers of light beer. Lost souls; once the living engine of the American Dream… now the forgotten, the maligned, the exploited. We immediately integrated ourselves, plying them with Jameson and whatever questionable powders Chuck had secreted in his sock.
“So,” I began, my voice butter-smooth, “this ‘American Dream,’ eh? What’s your take?”
A woman with calloused hands and a faded union T-shirt scoffed. “Dream? More like a goddamn nightmare. I work two jobs, my man works three. Still can’t pay for the kids’ dental. They say it’s ’cause of the immigrants, or the woke liberals. But I just see my pay barely covering the rent while my boss buys another jet. Sumthin’ needs ta change..!”
“Yeah!” chimed in a burly man, downing his beer. “It’s the damn elites! They want to take our guns, tell us what to think. They don’t get that we just want to work and… and raise our families right. But everything’s rigged. That’s why we gotta back the Don. He gets it. He ain’t one of them pointy-headed college types. He’ll drain the swamp, for real this time.”
Another, a younger woman, took a drag from her cigarette. “They say it’s the Democrats wantin’ hand-outs. But who’s giving all the tax breaks to the rich, huh? And why’s my kid’s school falling apart? It’s all a conspiracy, I tell ya. They want us fighting each other so we don’t look at where the real money’s going. We need change!”
Their reasoning was a tangled knot of legitimate grievance, bewildered anger, and utterly bizarre, sometimes contradictory, conspiracy theories. They were struggling, truly struggling, but their solutions, their allegiances, were utterly baffling. Chuck, nodding sagely, punctuated their pronouncements with calls for the “dismantling of the psychopathic corporate apparatus” and offered unsolicited advice on the benefits of peyote for spiritual clarity. I took copious notes, refilled my gin, and watched the pink bats begin their silent, drunken dance through the smoky haze.
The stale air hung heavy with the scent of cheap beer and simmering resentment. I found myself propped against the grimy counter, attempting to engage the barmaid in a philosophical discourse. Her name, she grunted, was Brenda, and she eyed me with the suspicion usually reserved for a man trying to pay with cryptocurrency. “Woke,” she declared, wiping down the counter with a practiced, weary swipe, “that’s the problem with everything. My bills? Woke. My ex-husband? Woke. The damn potholes outside? Woke. Woke don’ change anything.”
I, ever the diligent inquirer, raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, Brenda,” I slurred, attempting a suave, journalistic lean, “what, precisely, constitutes ‘woke’ in your estimation? Give me an example.” She slammed a fresh beer down for a trucker, then turned back to me, her eyes narrowing. “Anything Jurgen Habermas says. That’s woke. All that talk about public spheres and communicative action. What we need is feudalism, I tell ya. Government’s too soft. Elon Musk, he should be deciding who lives and who dies. Now that’s leadership.” I took a deep breath, trying to marshall my thoughts through the gin-soaked haze. I had to say something to this broken logic. This philosopher on minimum wage. I began, “But Habermas, bless his rather dry Teutonic heart, would argue that corporations, and indeed figures like Trump, with their manufactured realities and curated narratives, are precisely what destroy the authentic public sphere. They hate real life, Brenda! They hate the messiness, the genuine debate. They present a false, sanitized reality to sell you more dreams you can’t afford, more products you don’t need, more… more beige.” Brenda, however, merely stared, then poured me another suspiciously strong gin, her lip curling. “You’re a wokey, ain’t ya?” she scoffed, before turning her attention to a fresh torrent of belligerent patrons. The fight, it seemed, was brewing, and not just in the philosophical realm.
Chuck, emboldened by the camaraderie and the potent cocktail of Jameson, cocaine, and whatever illicit delights he’d slipped into the collective, decided that this bar was his new pulpit. With a surprising burst of agility, he vaulted onto the sticky surface of the bar, scattering half-empty glasses and bewildered onlookers. “Listen!” he bellowed, his voice straining over the suddenly nervous jukebox. “They tell you it’s your fault! They tell you to pull up those boots, those imaginary bootstraps, while they’re flying off to Mars on your goddamn pension fund! The American Dream? It’s a con, a grand illusion spun by the rich for the benefit of the rich! We need to seize the means of… of cosmic consciousness! We need to collectivize the spiritual broccoli! Smash the algorithms of oppression!” To one burly man with a NASCAR t-shirt, Chuck’s increasingly fervent rhetoric sounded less like a call for enlightenment and more like a declaration of war. “Sounds like goddamn communism to me!” the man roared, launching himself forward.
And then, the beautiful, awful chaos truly erupted. A fist flew, connecting squarely with Chuck’s jaw, sending him tumbling from the bar in a shower of broken glass and cheap beer. The air filled with shouts, the sickening thud of flesh on flesh, and the splash of spilled libations. Beer bottles became blunt instruments, bar stools became projectiles, and the works party dissolved into a furious, drunken melee. I, being of a more strategic, less pugilistic inclination, opted for psychological warfare. Instead of direct violence, I began frantically tossing handfuls of my own notes – I no longer needed them, the reports were already filed – into the fray, shouting situationist slogans like, “We want nothing of a world in which the certainty of not dying from hunger comes in exchange for the risk of dying from boredom!” and “Boredom is counterrevolutionary!” and, “Workers of the world, have fun!” while spraying a fine mist of cologne into the air (which on my inebriated state I was convinced had hallucinogenic properties). My aim was to confuse and disorient, to inject a layer of pure, unadulterated madness into the already chaotic scene, turning a mere brawl into a performance piece.
The symphony of destruction continued until the inevitable, flashing red-and-blue lights painted the bar’s grimy interior. Sacramento’s finest, looking utterly unamused, burst through the doors, guns drawn. The fight dissolved instantly, replaced by a collective, groaning surrender. We were all rounded up, an eclectic mix of bewildered blue-collar workers, a psychedelic congressman, and a supremely annoyed gonzo journalist, and carted off to the local lockup.
The next morning, the sterile, unforgiving light of the jailhouse felt like a physical assault. My head throbbed with the combined fury of Jameson, gin, various narcotics and the unfortunately robust bar brawl.
It was Felicity, looking impossibly pristine and radiating an aura of profound disappointment, who arrived to spring us. Miraculously, I wasn’t deported, though the stern-faced officer made it abundantly clear I was to remain within Sacramento’s city limits until our court date.
“Father,” Felicity stated, her voice dangerously calm as we walked out into the blinding sunlight, “you are henceforth confined to the house. No more ‘gonzo reportage’ that involves drunken brawls and potential federal charges. And certainly, no more chemical enhancements. My research depends on a modicum of peace, and my patience, unlike the quantum field, is finite.” The words were chillingly absolute. “If you want to help nurture change, you must remain grounded! I want you to meet someone. Someone with a secret. Someone who has knowledge the President really would not thank you for. And you need to remain bloody sober!”
The revolution, it seemed, was temporarily grounded, and my freedom curtailed by a family member with some sort of a whistle-blower friend!
