by Duncan Tierney.
Ted sat, dejected on the streets, with a bottle of Gatorade and a face like an Eric, spewing out the best of his mediocrity. Now, you might be wondering ‘How does one have a face like an Eric? What does a face like Eric look like?’ Well fucking chill. I’m going to tell you. I’m the narrator.
People by the name of Ted have a pretty average looking face. They have a nose, ears, a mouth, and – unless otherwise— specified, two eyes. People by the name of Eric have that same combination of attributes, only more Eric-esque. There is a certain Eric-ness to them that Ted had in spades.
So, Ted sat, day in and day out, sipping on cool blue electrolytes that he kept in a paper bag, philosophizing to the masses, with no skill, no hope, and a face like Eric. In Ted’s defense, these were the streets to philosophize badly in. The city had painted this side of town in a series of tacky pastels to improve moral (they said that the homeless over here had a real moral problem). Billboards had sprung up for the city’s new slogan— “Give it your all, be the best ‘you’ you can be”. Ted, who had always been a mediocre but civically minded fellow, had decided to give them the best of himself, which, he discovered, was the best of his own mediocrity.
Ted, having always had an interest in philosophizing, did as so many of the homeless did, and shouted questions at passersby. “Why?” Ted would shout at pedestrians, much as Socrates would have, and most would ignore him, and some would mutter under their breath things like “Shut up Eric,” or “I wish Eric would leave me alone” or “I will murder Eric.”
Ted went to sleep every night on the pastel streets, knowing that he had done his best that day, that he had been the best version of himself, and because of that, presumably something good would happen to him.
Everyday, on my way to work at city hall, as this horrible, pastel town’s narrator, I would pass Ted. He was dumb enough to always be happy, which is in a way, what I suppose we should all hope for. Talking to Ted was well worth my time. It was always fun to talk to someone who is both happy and at a lower status than you are. It makes you feel like you are somehow promoting the general welfare, even if they never asked to talk to you in the first place.
Ted liked me too. I was the only person who regularly acknowledged him. “Hey Ted!” I would say.
“Why do you say that?” Ted would reply, with the smug smirk of a college freshman who is playing devil’s advocate in a Philosophy 100 course.
“Okay, sounds good Ted,” I would say, and continue walking, because how else would you respond to something as dumb as that?
My work as a narrator was pretty boring. I had been hired as a part of the city’s effort to clean up the ‘rough side of town’. I was a part of the same campaign as the pastel buildings and the powder blue roads and the billboards that said “Give it your all; be the best that you can be”.
The town figured that if they could only get the poor, the destitute and the hungry, to ‘revolutionize their state of mind’ that the poor would be able to lift themselves up by their bootstraps or whatever. This campaign was the brainchild of someone who had never been poor, but was pretty confident that he had a grasp on the whole subject.
They had chosen me as the narrator because I ‘represent the underclass’, which is to say that I used the word ‘fuck’ in the interview, and they thought that that was pretty edgy. Originally, they had encouraged me to try to sell the merits of the city, but after like ten minutes of giving that my best shot I told them that I was the voice of the poor, and the city would riot if they fired me and continued talking shit, now protected by their fear of the poor.
After a couple weeks of talking shit however, even I got tired of it. It’s depressing to stand in a room and narrate a shitshow to a bunch of idiots. The narrator, in this city, is a job that they created, somewhere between a writer-in-residence and a voice for propaganda Kind of a good idea on their part. So, in my boredom, I decided to talk about Ted. In hindsight, I might have spoken too highly of Ted. I referred to him as the Gandhi of the pastel streets: a man who speaks like a preacher but loves like a father. I said that his words sooth the wounds of the poor and desperate. I mentioned that without him, I would still be an addict, clinging to a life in a crack house while my son cried from hunger. In reality, I don’t have a son, I’ve never been in a crack house, and I’m not addicted to anything aside from nicotine and scorn, but I said it anyways, because rich people eat that shit up, and rich people are the only ones who have time to listen to a narrator.
Within hours, I started getting calls, texts, and messages. One man sent me a smoke signal. People wanted to know Ted. They wanted to see him and here the Oracle of the broken speak his truth. By the end of the day, I had agreed to talk to a Ted, to see if he would come in and do some stuff for the city, to show that the poor can make it too. I agreed to talk to him on the way home, but only because my boss was already pretty mad at me for talking shit about him for several weeks. Also, I was pretty bored, and this seemed like it could kill some time.
“Hey Ted.” I said
“It’s actually Ted, not Eric.”
“I said Ted.”
“Sorry, people always say Eric.”
“I was wondering if you would come by the city building tomorrow.”
“Why?” Ted asked.
“They want to put you on a pedestal for your philosophizing?”
“Why?” Ted asked again.
“Because I talked about you to a crowd of strangers and they liked your plucky upbeat story.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Rich widows need a story to go along with their Xanax addictions, I guess. Just come to the City building.”
“Why?” Ted asked again.
“Oh, is this like your version of philosophy?” I asked, “Is that what you’re doing this or do you— like— actually not understand what’s happening?”
“If I understand, then do I?” Ted asked. He raised one eyebrow, smug as a banker’s daughter.
“That… that question doesn’t even make any sense. I’m just going to assume you’re going to show up tomorrow, and if you don’t, I’m going to say you died of some gross sex thing.”
“Why?” Ted asked again. I walked away. Ted could go fuck himself.
The next day started off well. Ted was not sitting in his usual spot under the billboard, so I assumed that he was at the city building, or else that I had jinxed him and that he had actually died of some gross sex thing.
When I got to the office, he and my boss were sitting behind my desk. My boss looked thunderstruck, though my boss is kind of an idiot, so he frequently seems thunderstruck. Ted, for his part, was staring aimlessly into the middle distance, his brow furrowed into an expression that was equal parts contemplation and confusion. Ted was wearing what appeared to be a wizard’s cape.
“Hey Ted, what’s with the cape?”
“Why?” Ted replied. My boss nodded thoughtfully.
“Where the fuck did you find a cape between five thirty yesterday and nine am today?”
“Oh, you mean my cloak?” Teddy asked. ‘Cloak’. What a fucking stupid thing to say.
“He wears it, because I think he might actually be magic,” said my boss.
“What?”
“Come here,” said my boss, guiding me into his office. His office was a lavender room. It smelled like lavender, the walls were lavender, there were lavenders sitting on the desk. My boss said it ‘fixed the energy in there’. The lavender was why I had started talking shit about him during my narration.
“Look,” said my boss, “I know we have our differences. Like I know that you talk shit about me on air, and that you refuse to learn my real name—”
“You are my boss, I’m trying to keep this relationship professional.”
“Yeah, you have mentioned. However, I think you might be onto something with this guy.”
“I was mostly mocking rich people when I said that he was a prophet.” I said, but my boss wasn’t listening. He was just sitting there is his lavender shirt, in his lavender room, hellbent on being a fucking idiot.
“We need him. The city needs him. I am going to bring him along to my boss. I think that he might be just what we need to get the city going He’s an inspiration. He is really being the best version of himself.”
“Alright,” I said, not because I agreed with him, but because I wanted to see where this went. So, we were off. We went in my boss’s car straight to his boss’s house. Ted sat in there staring out the window contemplating the universe.
My boss’s boss had a nice set-up. Having thought of the campaign that colored the town various pastels, and put up billboards, he had gained quite a bit of notoriety on his side of town. Having done so, he was free to sit in his home all day, thinking about new ideas that could revolutionize the town.
When my boss’s boss he welcomed us to his home, which was grandiose and tacky and smelled, for some reason, of olives. It was under construction, as it usually was. Men worked in the foyer, tearing down decorative pillars and Victorian paintings and throwing them aside like last week’s Chinese food, opting instead for the calm pastels that he had painted downtown in. It was a show of modesty that rivaled that of all the great kings.
“So, I hear that you are quiet the philosopher, aren’t you Ted?” said the boss’s boss.
“Why do you think that?” said Ted.
“Well I guess I just don’t really know. I suppose I hadn’t thought about it,” said my boss’s boss.
“Hmm,” Ted said, “really makes you think, huh?”
“Well it sure does,” said the boss, with an earnestness reserved for idiots and youth pastors. “But if you’re such a good philosopher, why don’t you tell me some of you’re thoughts on the bigger issues. You know, God, the universe, life, happiness. What are your thoughts?”
“Who are you thinking that for?” said Ted.
“Well I suppose I don’t know. I guess I just needed some comfort. I needed some sort of guidance on this,” said my boss’s boss. Tears sprung to his eyes. The conversation continued like this for quite some time, with my boss asking inane questions and Ted saying nothing at all but looking thoughtful.
After some hours of this, my boss who had sat silently the entire time decided to chime in. “This is why I think that he should head our campaign.” He said to his immediate supervisor. “With his influence, there is no way that the other side of town remains poor. It’s all uphill from here. Imagine the lives we can save.”
“You’re right,” said my boss’s boss. “You are absolutely, one hundred percent right. There is one thing though, Ted.”
“What’s that?” Ted asked.
“Well, it’s just that…we need you to change your name. You seem so much more like a Eric. You’re very Eric-y. I don’t think anyone would believe that you are a Ted.”
Eric thought back to the billboard that he had been sleeping under for some months now. Be the best you that you can be. Ted was a Ted. Ted had never been a Eric.
“Fuck you,” said Ted, standing up, and walking out of the house. And the next day, I saw him under the billboard, smiling and asking inane questions.
“I’m sorry?” asked my boss’s boss, in a way that implied that he felt himself to superior to ever be really or truly sorry.
“I will not bow into the machinery of the man. I will not give in to your authority. It is that billboard, that saying that has made me who I am. I will be the best ‘me’ that I can be. And who I am, before anything else is Eric.”
“Wait, what?” I asked. “Do you mean that you’re Ted?”
“I’m sorry what was that?” asked Eric, his eyebrows raised.
“I think you accidentally called yourself Eric.”
Ted chuckled, shaking his head “Oh my goodness, that is so embarrassing, I just got so into my whole spiel, yes I mean of course, I’m Ted.” He said, it again, more quietly, to himself, “I’m not Eric.”
“So I guess what I was saying is that—” my boss’s boss started, but Ted cut him off with a flap of his cloak.
“Fuck you,” said Ted. Pointing at my boss’s boss. “Fuck you and shut up.” My boss’s boss reeled back as if he had been struck, falling down to the ground beneath this vagrant in a cloak. The scene could have been a Victorian portrait of something biblical.
“Fucking just shut your idiot mouth,” Ted continued “You stupid idiot. This whole thing is because you are a stupid, dumb idiot, with a mouth that doesn’t shut. I wish that you would change it out for a different mouth that was shut way more often. Because right now, it doesn’t. Right now it opens and it says a bunch of stupid dumb things. Idiot things. I hate your mouth.”
Ted jabbed his finger once again at my boss’s boss, who was now on the verge of tears. The room was silent, waiting for a response from my boss’s boss. When a moment passed without it, and silence continued, Teddy clapped his hands and yawned, rubbing his hands together, like an uncle trying to hint that it was time to leave his barbeque.
“I guess I should head out, lots to do.” Ted said, simply, and turned about on his heel, leaving the room with one last flash of his cloak.
We all stood there silently, me looking at my boss, my boss looking at his boss, his boss trying to blink the tears out of his eyes. I don’t know how long we stood there, silently, but I am comfortable saying that it was far too long.
Now, I soon left, as did my boss, and pretty much forgot about the story. It was an interesting anecdote or whatever, but life goes on and things only stay interesting for a very short amount of time. My boss, I’m assuming, forgot it as well, though I don’t know for sure and haven’t gone through the effort of checking.
However, his boss did not. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to my boss’s boss like that. He wasn’t sure what sort of Freudian demon that it had unleashed, but my boss’s boss did not sleep a wink that night. It bothered him, to have been undone such wisdom. He was, until then, the smartest man that he had ever none. Ted had ruined that.
This went on for weeks, the insomnia and the misery, the sense of undoing that had come at the questions. My boss’s boss, had, for some time, and for some unthinkable reason, labored under the impression that the pastel that coated downtown was to be this town’s crowning achievement, but now he saw that there was something bigger than his own ego— a slight change in the health of his own ego.
And finally, after weeks of drowning in his own wounded solipsism, my boss’s boss had an idea. Ted Day. Since he could not beat the philosophy of Ted, since he could not show him off to the city as his own, he decided that he would create a day for Ted.
And so my boss got to work commissioning floats and reserving streets. He made announcements to every school and hospital, that any and all who could get up should be there. He talked to his brother, the warden at the county jail, and saw that all non-violent prisoners be let out for Ted Day, as Ted Day was the sort of patriotic hurrah that he believed would turn their lives around and make them realize that there was something beyond murder or whatever. And soon it was Ted Day. A day of greatness. A day for philosophy and a day of wonder. A day to ask all the questions that my Boss’s Boss new were important but couldn’t quite remember.
My boss’s boss stood on a float at the start of the parade. A float shaped like a Ted, with all the Ted-ness that one could muster, and at promptly nine am, three weeks after the meeting they began to move. The parade had reserved the city sidewalks, so that the floats could be wider, and wider they were, filling the streets. The few who had apartments lining the streets looked down, in a confused but disinterested sort of revulsion, much as one would look at their dog if it had farted so loudly that it had woken itself up. The rest of the city sat and did things at their home, because the parade had taken over not only the main streets but also the main sidewalks.
And I, a dutifully civil employee sat on my float, the second one in line, and narrated the parade as it went, to any and all who listened. And then abruptly, at nine-twenty three there was a bump, and the entire parade to a halt. Remember how I said Ted lived on the street?
I dismounted my float and ran up to the front of the parade, eager to see what had happened. My boss’s boss, his security, and like seven people who had windows facing the road looked down in horror, at the bloody carcass of what used to be Ted.
Ted, who I now assume was a heavy drinker, or else otherwise intoxicated, had not heard the parade coming, and—being lost to a dreamland of colors and candy— had allowed one of the massive tires of the parade float to bisect him. His corpse lay there, the top half, still lost in a dreamy, albeit now very pale, smile, his hands behind his head, and his legs a couple of feet away.
My boss’s boss, who had never been particularly stoic, was now weeping, crumpled on the street in front of Ted.
“Why?!” he wailed at Ted’s corpse. “Why would you ruin the first annual Ted day?!” The corpse made no reply.
My boss’s boss sat there for a long while, wailing and waiting for the police to come. It took quite a bit, as there had been a rash of murders that day. Finally, after that long while, an ambulance came. Two very tired paramedics came over, complaining about how busy they had been as they took Ted’s body into the ambulance and place it next to a couple others that they had collected that morning.
“Sure is ironic, isn’t it?” I asked my boss’s boss, as they were carting Ted away. “Of all the homeless people to hit.”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“Well, just that you hit Ted, the guy who started this whole thing.” I said, staring at the ambulance as it shrank in the distance.
“Now is not the time for jokes,” said my boss’s boss, “I know that what happened here is a tragedy, but don’t you dare say that that was Ted, you will put a jinx on this whole day, as if it hasn’t been jinxed enough.
“What?” I asked, “That was Ted.”
“That was certainly not,” said my boss’s boss. “That is Ted.” He pointed to the float that he had been standing on, in all it’s Ted-esque glory. It occurred to me, for the first time, that it didn’t look anything like Ted did.
“Now,” said my boss’s boss, wiping the last of his tears from his eyes, “I will not let today be delayed any longer by vagrants who refuse to be the best them they can be. That man who I hit, a Eric if I ever saw one, certainly shouldn’t have been there. He should have been out, partaking in Ted Day.”