The young man was pretty much a standard suburban twerp growing up near NYC, carefully protected as an only child by his sturdy Germanic parents. He showed a bit of promise as a writer and they hoped he'd be recognized and famous, though he didn't have a lot of ambition. As a sort of compromise he signed up for Columbia School of Journalism, rather intrigued by old movies about reporters with their hat brims turned up. He bought a little notebook to write down facts. He was named for one of the Apostles but I don't remember which one. Let's say Mark.
One professor of journalism specialized in books about places where there were all men and they were tough. Rodeos, prisons, logging camps, and long- distance truckers. He preferred them to be in another country but always came back to his professor job at Columbia. Once in a while he wrote reviews of the many books by reservation indigenous men, highly praising them in hopes of being invited to their homes. He himself was married but it was easy to see that it was a cover. He assumed it was also that for the other men he liked because he thought they were like him.
When Luke walked in the door to his office, he had no trouble recognizing a kindred spirit. Pretty soon they were found out and the professor quietly lost his tenure. Luke also left but the professor had an idea that he thought would bring them both some money and more respect. He put Luke onto the case.
The facts were that the professor had highly praised an "American Indian" writer, very fashionable at the time, but that man had shunned his personal advances. He wanted Luke to go after the reservation man and blacken his name. Then he left for a mining work camp of men in Africa. He didn't expect to work, but to write about them and maybe form relationships.
Luke realized that though he could get by on the East Coast, mostly because he was so bland that no one ever remembered him, he would find more opportunity on the West Coast where life was more glamourous. He went to LA and attached himself to a group. They helped him to fit in by guiding him to a more innovative barber and giving him some of their unwanted clothes. When his parents paid his way home for the holidays, they were shocked by his appearance, but if that was the way to success they could hardly object.
When he visited his old professor, that man was charmed and they went out to dinner at a notorious place and took in a show before going back to the professor's small new apartment, necessary because his wife had divorced him. He was a bit short on money, but they mapped out ways Luke could research this offending writer. They didn't hint that he was gay because that's what they were and people might realize that they were projecting. So they thought of claiming he had a ghost writer, that he was on drugs, and other things like that. Since his folks didn't object, Luke lay on the sofa and called up long distance to ask many gossip columnists and other chatty folks to see what he could find out about this Bent Arrow guy. His folks were impressed that he knew so many people to call.
When he went back to California, he discovered that his group had become fascinated by a different Amerian Indian writer who wanted to make a movie and could get the money for it through trusts and NGO's which all loved Indians, partly because so many rich women were on their boards. They figured they'd go to fame with him. He wasn't Johnny Depp but he was the next best thing, a guy who got rich on a perfume called "Odious." He realized that if he attacked "Bent Arrow" it would get a whole lot of publicity.
He was right. It worked. He couldn't get a proper book deal, so he settled for an article in an alternative newspaper. It was much praised as a real and raw story about a man who cheated to escape being Indian. The professor was very proud of Luke. After padding his Vita a bit, he had managed to get a job in a small progressive SW community college close enough to LA for Luke to visit now and then. It was a good thing because his travel books about male communities weren't selling very well.
When photos of the two men, one older and one young, appeared here and there, no one suspected their relationship was anything more than teacher/pupil. But the story didn't get Luke any other journalism jobs. The actor who wasn't Johnny Depp turned out to have no talent but an addiction that used up all the money. There had never been a decent script anyway and neither the professor nor Luke was up to the task of writing one.
Over the subsequent years the two of them became more rolypoly due to alcohol, but no one minded. No one took them seriously.
Bent Arrow went back to his real name which was Aloysious Smith and wrote five more books. None was on the best seller list but they were widely read and much praised. He was offered professor jobs, but always declined because of wanting to go home and write another book. He wrote about the wind, the grass, horses, and freedom. Those are what he knew.
No comments:
Post a Comment