“Exactly like Skywalker, but Lancelot fell for it every time. It happens, like, nine times with a bunch of different goblins, and he never learns to expect it.” “Cause he’s so pure and good, he trusts everyone and gives them the benefit of the doubt.” “Exactly.” “We are like Lancelot.” “I didn’t have Mrs. Diamond, but Lancelot sounds pretty doofy to me.” “That’s what we said to Mrs. Diamond! But then she explained about his pureness and we believed her. She’s smart.” “We should probably stop being like Lancelot so much, though.” “Lancelot, Shmancelot. We’re now, at this point, more like Guinevere.” “I think you’re right.” “Yeah, it’s safe to say the goblin’s got us.” “But Lancelot’s on the way.” “We’ve got a lot of Lancelots.” “That’s the benefit, in the end, of being like Lancelot; you make a lot of friends along the way.” “Or if you’re pretty like Guinevere.” “Pretty like Guinevere?” “Pretty like Guinevere, because the goblin’s got us, which means we’re like Guinevere, not Lancelot. We’re like Guinevere with Lancelots on the way, like you said.” “I was speaking figuratively. I was saying we’re like Guinevere cause the goblin’s got us and we’ve got Lancelots on the way, but we’re actually Lancelot in the end, ourselves.” “Um.”
“I don’t know what they dial, Gurion.” Do you know what they dial in Israel? “I never had an emergency in Israel. Don’t you think more important questions are afoot, boychic?” Not ones you could answer, no offense. “I don’t see the relevance—” “Because why on 9-1-1? It hardly seems arbitrary.” “On that I agree, Emmanuel, but—” “Who’s the message for, is the question we’re getting at.” If 9-1-1 means nothing to Amalekites, this mastermind’s talking to— “I see, I see.”
“Can I get my phone back, Shayna?” “My family’s line’s busy.” “All the more reason to give it back.” “Three more times.” “One more time.” “Three more times, so I know I’ll have tried ten. That’s how desperate I am to contact them.” “Seven’s enough, Shayna.” “Three’s enough, but I’m so desperate to get in contact I have to try seven more, I’m compelled to do so, even at the cost of alienating those who’d help me is how desperate, so just bear with me.” “I have already.” “Just wait your turn.” “It’s my phone.” “It’s my family.” “It’s my family, too. My uncle.” “My cousins.” “Connecticut.” “Manhattan.” “Brooklyn.”
“We’re like Lancelot if Lancelot was like Guinevere.” “I don’t think that makes sense.” “Think harder.” “Don’t get confrontational in times like these.” “Who ever thought we’d live in times like these?” “No kidding. And that’s not the craziest part, because we’ve always lived in times like these, it turns out.” “That’s what being Lancelot gets you, blindness to the times you live in like these.” “Goblins inside every shadow, laughing at you.” “But you hold your own. You don’t change for goblins.” “When you change for goblins, that’s when you’re defeated.” “If they’ve been there all along, the goblins, then we know we can survive them intact as Lancelots.” “But still you have to wonder, if we’ve always lived in times like these and didn’t know they were times like these, then how were these times like these affecting us?” “Probably they were really doing some job on us.” “Probably these times have been doing bad stuff to us we thought was just from bad luck or ourselves.” “It’s true. How much of our woes owe to times like these because we didn’t know about them!” “That makes it sound like it’s our fault for not knowing.” “Maybe it is our fault for not knowing, after all.” “How can you ignore your times, especially in times like these with hiding goblins?” “It’s our fault for being so good despite the goblins.” “That’s all I’m saying. We’re good and pure. We’ve been taken advantage of for being good and pure.”
And then the fall of the North Tower, and Flight 93. Air Force One missing, celebrations in Gaza, firemen dying, bin-Laden, bin-Laden. Taliban, Taliban, Osama, etc.
Pritikin’s Complaint
At eleven, Pritikin asked for a re-match. I told him no re-match, the territory was ours. He told me he’d been distracted; that he’d seen Sheldon Markowitz get back in his mom’s car and known something bad had happened. I told him that I’d seen Sheldon, too, that all of us had. He asked if I’d known something bad had happened, though. I told him of course I hadn’t known, but neither had he, he’d only convinced himself after the fact. He told me it wasn’t right to exploit 9/11. I couldn’t tell if he was casuistic or simply confused. Maybe both. Maybe the latter had engendered the former. I did know he was wrong, though.
He walked away from me angry.
By noon he’d gotten Gooses to tell the same story. They marched around lobbying, and a lot of kids backed them — not everyone, but roughly 30 percent. Even though just a few were still simple adherents, Pritikin’s complaint harmonized easy with their underdog sense of entitlement.
For the sake of the definitude consensus would foment, I chewed my tongue raw and agreed to a re-match.
Fuck Yourself
You will get no conclusion beyond that, Mr. Beagle. The truth is I don’t understand why you would ask me or anyone else at Aptakisic to write about how 9/11 changed what it means to be American. The textbook enlightens nothing. It says the fall of the towers confirmed the same things here that it refuted there, that what 9/11 means or meant varies according to who you ask. You teach from the textbook, so you’re no help either. And me, I was five years old when it happened. Five years later, I know the world much better, but it’s still almost always impossible for me to distinguish change from revelation. I’d imagine it’s the same for any scholar. I’d hope so.
This is what I know for sure: Neither on 9/11, 9/12, or anytime thereafter did anyone who was in the multipurpose room at Schechter think, “This is how it is now.” We thought, “This is how it is.” Whether we were correct or incorrect, it’s impossible to tell, but the distinction between what a person becomes and what he finds out he’s been — let alone what a people becomes and what it finds out it’s been — is too important to ignore, so I won’t. Not for some chomsky Social Studies essay.
Go ahead and flunk me for begging the question, then go ahead and fuck yourself for asking it.
Coda
On September 12, Schechter was closed. On September 13, I re-matched with Pritikin and Shmooly Gooses. Emmanuel and I had come up with new terms of the contest the night before, and I explained the new terms to the crowd around the bigtoy.
I said, Since I didn’t see the way 9/11 gave me an unfair advantage last time — and since I still don’t see it — I’d be foolish to trust my vision this time. So what I’ll do is simple with Pritikin and Shmooly until either one of them beats me, or both are satisfied I beat them fair.
We began.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 3.
Pritikin said unfair — he’d had a series of itches.