Official Slacker Handbook Read online

  You need:

  1. A valid driver’s license (not necessarily your own)

  2. Enough money for gas, food, and lodging

  3. A few convincing character references (employer, teacher, pothead friend posing as your pastor, etc.)

  4. A flexible travel schedule

  You get:

  1. A functioning automobile

  2. Five to nine days, and usually a limited number of miles, to deliver the automobile to its destination.

  IF WHAT YOU HAVE IN MIND IS A LEISURELY TOUR OF OUR FINE CONTINENT TAKING IN ATLANTA, CHICAGO, NEW ORLEANS, AND SEATTLE, A DRIVEAWAY WON’T WORK. BUT IF YOU WANT TO BLOW FROM NEW YORK TO SAN FRANCISCO AND YOU’RE WILLING TO TRAVEL WITH ONLY AS MUCH LUGGAGE AS YOU CAN SQUEEZE INTO THE CAR (THE TRUNK IS USUALLY FULL), WELL, LET’S JUST SAY IT’S A LOT CHEAPER THAN ALAMO.

  (A WORD OF WARNING: IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT DRIVEAWAY AUTOMOBILES ARE AN IDEAL IF NOT ALTOGETHEF COMMON WAY FOR NEFARIOUS UNDERWORLD TYPES TO TRAFFIC DRUGS. BE CERTAIN TO EXAMINE THE CAR THOROUGHLY BEFORE YOU DEPART (DOOR PANELS AND ALL, JUST LIKE THE NARCS ON THE TUBE), LEST YOU BECOME SOMEONE’S PATSY AND END UP MOLDERING IN AN ARKANSAS PENITENTIARY INTO THE YEAR 2050.)

  AIRHITCH

  When your money is worth more than your time, you find yourself doing things Like agreeing to fly into any one of several cities in Western Europe on any one of several days at virtually any time, on a flight from which you might be bumped, in order to save a couple of hundred bucks.

  A couple of hundred bucks! You’d sell cross sections of your spleen for a couple of hundred bucks! Of course you’d make room for a little, shall we say, flexibility in your travel schedule in order to save that kind of cash. And that’s where Airhitch comes in.

  THERE ARE LOTS OF WAYS TO FLY TO EUROPE CHEAPLY—BE A COURIER, STEAL YOUR FATHER’S FREQUENT FLIER MILES, HIJACK A DOMESTIC FLIGHT AND REROUTE IT TO LUXEMBOURG—BUT AIRHITCH SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN DESIGNED WITH THE SLACK TRAVELER IN MIND. YOU REGISTER, LISTING THREE POSSIBLE DESTINATIONS IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE AND A FIVE- TO EIGHT-DAY RANGE OF POSSIBLE DEPARTURE DATES. THEY CONTACT YOU ABOUT TWO WEEKS BEFORE YOUR TRIP, GIVING YOU A LIST OF POSSIBLE OPTIONS. YOU PICK, AND THEY TRY TO GET YOU ON THAT FLIGHT OR ONE SORT OF LIKE IT. THE ONE-WAY COST IS $169 FROM THE EAST COAST, $229 FROM THE WEST COAST, AND $269 FROM ASSORTED -PLACES IN BETWEEN.

  The secret of slack traveling is simple: Embrace the variables. The spirit that would have you set off for remote locales without enough money to get back home is the spirit of Airhitch. Where exactly are you going? When precisely are you leaving? Who knows? Who cares?

  AT LEAST YOUR’RE FINALLY GOING.

  Slacker Sex

  UNFORTUNATELY SIDLING UP TO THE

  INTELLECTUAL FOREPLAY

  UNFORTUNATELY, SIDLING UP TO THE NEAREST PERSON DEMONSTRATING THE CUSTOMARY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENDER TOWARD WHICH YOU ARE DRAWN AND SAYING, “I’M LOOKING FOR SEX AND I’LL MAKE IT WORTH YOUR WHILE” JUST DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE. SLACKERS, VIOLATING THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE AS ESTABLISHED IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS ACROSS THE NATION, HAVE DECIDED THAT BRAINS ARE A TURN-ON. IF YOUR SAT SCORES USED TO SEND MEN SCREAMING INTO THE ARMS OF THE NEAREST BATON TWIRLER, YOU WILL UNDOUBTEDLY GREET THIS AS GOOD NEWS.

  INTELLECTUAL FOREPLAY IS THE NEW NAME OF THE GAME.

  SADLY, ONE CANNOT DEFTLY DISPLAY ONE’S PERFECTLY FORMED BRAIN THE WAY ONE CAN SHOW OFF A HARD-FOUGHT-FOR SET OF PECS. IT’S DIFFICULT TO SUBTLY PRESS ONE’S BRAIN UP AGAINST A NEW LOVE INTEREST AT A CROWDED PARTY IN A DIMLY LIT BASEMENT. NO ONE HAS DEVELOPED A SHORT SKIRT FOR THE MIND, A TIGHT PAIR OF JEANS FOR THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS, A PUSHUP BRA FOR A COMPELLING COSMOLOGY.

  AT LEAST, NO ONE HAS UNTIL NOW.

  MOST OF YOU UNDOUBTEDLY KNOW ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT INTELLECTUAL FOREPLAY.

  IF YOU CAN DECONSTRUCT JOYCE AND RETHINK PUTEAUX CUBISM OVER A CUP OF CAMOMILE TEA AND A BOWL OF LENTIL SOUP, I ADVISE YOU TO PEAD NO FURTHER. MY GUIDE TO PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL POSTURING SOLELY AS AN EXPEDIENT MEANS OF GETTIN’ SOME WILL UNDOUBTEDLY TEAR AT THE FABRIC OF YOUR VERY BEING.

  BUT THE REST OF YOU—THE ONES WHO WOULD LIKE TO THINK OF YOURSELVES AS RENAISSANCE PEOPLE, BUT CAN’T QUITE PUT YOUR FINGER ON WHEN THE RENAISSANCE WAS—READ AND LEARN:

  RULE #1: Read reviews.

  NO matter how interested you are in that demure. auburn-haired cappucci-no-brewing maiden over at the cafe, you’re still understandably hesitant to forego The Simpsons in order to read Remembrance of Things Past. Don’t worry. Nobody’s read Remembrance of Things Post.

  In the interest of time, at this point you can pretty much bypass the classics. Instead, cultivate a very hip intellectualism by assiduously reading reviews and scanning the occasional brief introduction to a weighty piece of new scholarship. If you’re ever asked about a particular classic, either say you read the first hundred pages in high school and couldn’t get into it or use the question as a springboard into a diatribe over canonization and the systematic marginalization of works by womyn and people of color.

  RULE #2: Cultivate obscure intellectual interests.

  Every intellectual has a handful of interests toward which he will steer the conversation at any given opportunity. For obvious reasons, the more arcane and tangential yours happen to be the better.

  RULE #3: Get into film.

  First, it’s got a reasonably short, manageable history. Second, all you’ve got to read are the subtitles. Third, it only takes two hours to add an important work of art to your conversational arsenal. Whenever possible, steer the aesthetic debate away from art or literature and into the realm of film, and then refer to the seminal Bergman film you rented the weekend before.

  RULE #4: Always tote around a thin book.

  A painfully thin, well-worn book of German poetry sticking out of your coat pocket can work wonders. Likewise, a brief Kierkegaard treatise or a Samuel French play tucked in the outside pocket of your threadbare backpack. Novices often go the other direction, pretending to read War and Peace while sitting on their front stoop, but a thin book says infinitely more.

  RULE #5: Dabble in an art.

  This gives you room to spend hours expounding upon your own aesthetic philosophy, which can be as nonsensical as you well please: “My art is not Art, it is ‘not-art,’ meaning that while it is art, it aspires to a state of ‘not-artness,’ which you can tell quite clearly by this wiggly little piece of worm body dangling down from the corner of the canvas.”

  RULE #6: Utilize your at-home props.

  While the big turn-on used to be a black lightbulb and a small jar of edible fluorescent body paint, now it’s Maurice MerLean-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception on the coffee table and Wittgenstein nestled next to Calvino on the nightstand. Hide anything that is incriminatingly lowbrow, not to be confused with things that are refreshingly lowbrow, like a weakness for comic books or a thing for Beverly Hills 90210.

  RULE #7: Don’t talk politics.

  For some reason, other people’s politics usually sound stupid. I don’t know why, but it’s true. Also, avoid religion, as other people’s religions usually sound stupid, or, at the very least, seem likely to cramp your style.

  RULE #8: When in doubt, keep your month shut.

  All it takes is one “I really like Flannery O’Connor because he…” or a “So you like the Pre-Raphaelites? I never could get into that medieval stuff,” to blow the lid off your scam.

  Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, becoming a well-read, overeducated intellectual snob is not going to happen overnight.

  Oh yeah. The Renaissance. Fourteenth to seventeenth century.

  Roughly.

  BUT WHO SPRINGS FOR THE CONDOMS?

  The New Sex Etiquette

  If you haven’t figured out how to get your grubby hands on free condoms by this point in the book you are a sad excuse for a slacker.

  Condoms are an inalienable right in this country. NO ONE EVER BUYS THE CONDOMS! YOU EACH HAVE A SHOEBOX FULL OF THEM! SCAMMED FROM RED-RIBBON-WEARING SAFE-SEX PROFESSIONALS! />
  CONDOMS ARE THE LEAST OF YOUR PROBLEMS. BUT THIS HANDY LITTLE PUT-OUT CHART SHOULD GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF WHAT SORT OF AMOROUS EXPECTATIONS WOULD BE IN LINE WITH THE FOLLOWING TYPICAL SLACKER DATES:

  THE DATE: PROBABLE OUTCOME:

  Coffee, dutch Nothing

  Coffee, he pays Nothing

  Coffee, she pays Nothing

  Accidentally meet up at after-hours bar, both drunk Score!

  Springtime bike-ride/picnic Move in together

  Stay up late watching Japanese horror flicks on video, sober Would never happen

  Stay up late watching Japanese horror flicks on video, drunk Score!

  Expensive dinner out and tickets to the theater, he pays Would never happen

  Nice dinner at home, he cooks, followed by theater tickets, she pays Declarations of true love

  Club-crowd thrash concert at which entire audience drops acid Jointly raise accidental love child

  Twelve-hour backgammon marathon followed by kitchen table drinking binge Third base, followed by “but I think of you as just a friend” talk

  Meet at basement-apartment party, spend hours discussing the dehumanization of labor and deconstructing Horton Hears a Who Buy Volkswagen van together and hit the road

  The Slacker NETWORK: How It Works

  BILL lives in SOUTH PHILADELPHIA in a house that he shares with four other people and works at CAFE URBANISTA, a popular slacker cafe ten blocks from his house. Up until a few months ago BILL bussed tables at OH HENRY’S, but he was caught absconding with his weight in nonperishable food items and was terminated With Extreme Prejudice. He plays the bongos and the harmonica in a band called CARPET BOMB, and does a little painting on the side. BILL’S girlfriend SUE has just finished her first short story entitled “Dreamscape 12: The Winter, Descending,” and she is extremely anxious to see her name in print. BILL calls his friend ANNE, who is the lead singer of CARPET BOMB and, incidentally, also the not-infrequent target of BILL’S drunken late-night AMOROUS ADVANCES. ANNE used to be a waitron with BILL at OH HENRY’S but after seven years on the floor she leapfrogged up the career ladder to the esteemed position of BARTENDER. ANNE talks with JOE, who runs the popular weekly SONNET SLAM at OH HENRY’S, and secures a position for SUE to read her story on FRIDAY NIGHT. SUE agrees to read, but is not pacified by the concept of a LOCAL SONNET SLAM and proceeds to send her story out blindly to HARPERS, THE ANTIOCH REVIEW, THE GEORGIA REVIEW, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, TRI QUARTERLY, and, of course, THE NEW YORKER.

  BILL’S housemate TRACY, meanwhile, has lost her job selling SOCKS at the SOCK KIOSK in the MALL. TRACY asks SUE if she knows if anyone is hiring at KINKO’s, which is where SUE works part-time when she’s not peddling jewelry on SOUTH STREET. SUE says KINKO’S is not hiring, but she has a friend named JERRY who does CATERING and maybe he can give TRACY some work. TRACY wanted the job at KINKO’S because she’s publishing a LITERARY MAGAZINE and was hoping to get FREE PHOTOCOPYING for a week or so, and then QUIT. SUE finds this out and agrees to photocopy for TRACY while on the graveyard shift at KINKO’S.

  SUE reads the first issue of THE ROOT CHAKRA, TRACY’S new magazine, and is mildly impressed. She gives TRACY a copy of “Dreamscape #12: The Winter, Descending,” which TRACY agrees to publish in the next issue—that is, if SUE will continue to provide her with FREE PHOTOCOPYING. SUE agrees, seeing as her mailbox has been flooded with rather brusque REJECTION LETTERS from every national LITERARY MAGAZINE known to woman. TRACY gets a job at BOOKENDS, and proceeds to provide SUE, BILL, and even JERRY with 40 percent discounts on every book they purchase.

  After meeting BILL at the SONNET SLAM, JOE begins hanging out at CAFE URBANISTA, eventually weaseling his way into a position as MANAGER of CARPET BOMB, a job which is as thankless as it is unpaid. JOE, however, spends a lot of time hanging out with SUE while BILL is busy on stage and the two eventually FALL IN LOVE and MOVE TO TUCSON. ANNE succumbs to BILL’S advances Late one night but then proceeds to watch in disbelief as BILL and JERRY decide to make a life together. TRACY dies in a freak job-related accident when a wall of books falls on her and pins her to the ground, crushing her to her death. Her parents sue the pants off BOOKENDS and retire to the CARIBBEAN.

  Met a Guy Who Hangs Out in This Cafe Who Knew GUY Who Worked in a Bike Shop Where This Girl Hung Out:

  THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS

  FIRST DATE: Underground club to see Vomit Hole

  SECOND DATE: WAREHOUSE CLUB WHERE FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD ON ACID JUMPS FROM ROOF

  THIRD DATE: Tacos at the House of Tacos

  FOURTH DATE: HOURS OF WATCHING HER NEW BAND PRACTICE, SOME CAFE SITTING AND CARD PLAYING

  FIFTH DATE: Share $275 apartment and plan on going on the road

  How to Pick up Art School Chicks

  BEDDING AN ART SCHOOL CHICK IS OFTEN THE TONIC OF CHOICE FOR THE LIBIDI NOUS SLACKER GENT WHO HAS GROWN TIRED OF BRAINY SLACKER BABES OVERRUN WITH HANG-UPS. ART SCHOOL CHICKS ARE GENERALLY YOUNG AND UNFORMED, WITH THE SORT OF MAGPIE INTELLECTS THAT WILL NOT ONLY EMBRACE THE MOST SPURIOUS OF YOUR CONSPIRACY THEORIES BUT BE OVERHEARD ESPOUSING THEM AT THE CAFE THE VERY NEXT DAY. THEY WILL DEVOUR THE BOOKS YOU RECOMMEND, RENT THE FILMS YOU TELL THEM TO SEE, AND PRETTY MUCH DO THEIR BEST TO SHAPE THEMSELVES IN YOUR OWN IMAGE. NEEDLESS TO SAY, YOU WILL FIND ALL OF THIS QUITE REFRESHING. AS AN ADDED BENEFIT, THEY CAN OFTEN BE COUNTED ON TO PAY FOR THE BEER, PARTICULARLY IF THEIR FOUR-YEAR-LONG EXPERIMENT IN BOHEMIANISM IS BEING BANKROLLED BY A CONTROLLING SUBURBAN FATHER.

  STEP 1: FIND ONE.

  They are the girls who a) tote around large black portfolios, and b) wear babydoll dresses and clogs. They tend to roam in packs.

  STEP 2: WOW HER WITH YOUR SEARING INTELLIGENCE AND/OR ARTISTIC INTEGRITY.

  This can take as long or as short as you like. It can happen during a twenty-minute conversation on the stoop outside a club she’s too young to get into or be prolonged over the course of a semester in chance afternoon encounters at your cafe.

  STEP 3: SPEAK IN CRYPTIC ZEN PROVERBS AS YOU ATTEMPT TO REMOVE HER CLOTHING

  A man searched for years for a great Zen Master. When he finally found him, the roshi (Zen Master) did nothing but sit down with him every day and drink a cup of tea, and then place the cup upside down on the dirt floor. THIS WENT ON FOR YEARS AND YEARS, WITH THE BEFUDDLED SEARCHER TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THIS TEA-DRINKING AND HIS SEARCH FOR TRUTH. Finally, one day, as the roshi looked at the Searcher over his tea, he said to him in a voice ringing with countless years of Zen mastery, “You must empty your cup.” At that point stare into her eyes and say, “Empty your cup.” Works every time.

  TO THE VICTOR GO THE SPOILS:BREAKING UP

  Contrary to Neil Sedaka’s soulful Seventies hit, breaking up is not hard to do—if you do it right.

  Permitting a slack relationship to get to the point where an old-fashioned breakup is in order takes some doing. Most romantic liaisons can be terminated with no more muss and fuss than a silent scramble for discarded clothing under cover of night and a few weeks of diligent call screening. But if you do end up surrendering your free agent status only to discover that what you thought was love was really just another narcissistic self-destructive impulse, Well, you’re going to have to break up.

  In an ideal world you’d be able to slip out of a long-term relationship as easily as you slipped into it—semi-lucid, mildly depressed, and in a mental state in which no court on earth would hold you responsible for your actions. The problem, however, is that the slack meeting of minds and exchanging of hearts often involves the borrowing of stuff and the accumulation of joint property. Shared body fluids often equals shared friends, apartments, books, CDs, beat-up automobiles, cafes, and garage bands. What you want to do is avoid Divorce Court. What you want to do is Remain Friends.

  Thus, most traditional breakup methods—like, say, coming home with the name of another woman spelled out in hickeys across your abdomen—simply won’t work. You need to be mature. No matter what you say, they’re going to have to face up to a harsh new roma
ntic reality: Supply remains constant at one, demand has dropped to zero, and it’s a buyer’s market.

  So do your best to convince him that you still love him, even though you’re not in love with him. Let her know that she’s the first non-suicidal girl you ever dated. Assure him that if he cuts down on the alcohol that little problem will iron itself out, and besides, your girlfriends told you that it happens to a lot of people. And if that doesn’t work, keep in mind that possession is nine-tenths of the law and then go ahead and drop them like a lunch tray in a crowded cafeteria.

  Sophie’s Choice,

  Quiz #3

  Lucky Sophie. Two wonderful men are smitten with her and ready to move into the second-floor bedroom she occupies in a house she shares with five other people. Sophie realizes that this is more than just her chance for true love—the right decision will enable her to cut her monthly rent payments in half! But despite these two young men’s similarities, one is the discerning slack female’s obvious choice for live-in love interest. See if you can pick who won:

  NAME: Brian NAME: Edward

  DESCRIPTION: 6′1″, 165 lbs. Long wavy dark brown hair, soulful brown eyes. Heads, male and female alike, turn when he enters a room. DESCRIPTION: 5′10″, 160 lbs. Blond hair, green eyes. Sexy in a 1950s Tab Hunter sort of way.