(This story first appeared in my book “Through a Garden of Leaves”)
I guess I was doomed from the start by my name. Phil Philips... I heard that. When I said my name there was that slight pause (I’ve known it all my life), that blank space when my name just disappears. Phil Philips... There, it happened again. Try as you might it’s a name that defines the boring, the average, the unimpressive, the easily forgotten.
When I was a boy I had ambitious dreams. I wanted to be a Major League baseball player and a Grand Prix race car driver. I wasn’t even sure what Grand Prix meant, but it sounded so exotic, with the “ix” pronounced as “ee”. And the names: Mario Andretti, Enzo Stuarti, Emerson Fittipaldi. Names that exuded speed, the smell of tires and hi-test gasoline. Even A.J. Foyt—a name as solid as a spark plug with STP plastered all over it. But as I sent my HO racers around the track it was hard to imagine Phil Philips leading at Le Mans. And as for baseball I just couldn’t picture myself playing for the Yankees. I was more like a utility infielder for the Montreal Expos—that guy who wasn’t even good enough to get his own baseball card. Do you remember this, when they would have two guys on the same card, the card split in half with Bill Nelson the journeyman relief pitcher on top and Phil Philips the .230 hitting second baseman on the bottom. I remember when we would play baseball games with the cards and a pair of dice (snake-eyes was a home run; eleven a double-play). Never would we use the “double card”. It was a given that it would always roll an eleven.
So as I grew up I noticed my life starting to fit my name. Instead of wearing the pinstripes or racing at Watkins Glen I saw myself, or rather the world saw me in a more prosaic light. Think of Phil Philips and what do you see? Yes, a high school shop teacher, that’s good. In fact, I suffered this selfsame foreboding in junior high when I met the seventh grade shop teacher, Mr. _______. (His name is a blank because it was so boring that even I can’t remember what it was.) And then in high school, the Driver’s Ed instructor, Mr. ________. And then my part-time job at McDonald’s; the manager, Mr. ________. I thought of my classmates—Milton Moscowitz, the famous economist and advisor to Presidents; Victor Eisenstadt, the avant-garde filmmaker and existential philosopher; Willy Van Gelder, the world-class jockey and Kentucky Derby winner; Prunilla Samms, the mystery writer and recluse; Walt Dumbrowski, the All-Pro tackle for the Chicago Bears; and then Phil Philips. “Do you remember Phil Philips?” they would ask at the class reunion. But then they wouldn’t even ask this because they would have forgotten.
So it was without much hope that I went off to Community College and majored in Business. I dated of course, but the girls were less than inspiring. (They were the kind of girls who would go out with Phil Philips.) I graduated in the middle of my class and then came the world. Suffice it to say the last ten years were another blank space, a void, until that is when someone in Seattle got a bright idea. Supermodels of course were all the rage. One couldn’t go a day without seeing their flawless faces smiling past one at the supermarket or having their perfect breasts thrust in one’s kisser from the TV screen. So it was no surprise when this enterprising young entrepreneur from the rainy city came up with an amazing scheme to market and sell Supermodel’s... how shall I say? Defecation? Number Two? Oh who am I trying to kid, everybody knows about it. They even called it “Supermodel Shit” for Christsake, trademarked with its own website! And there was something about it that was sublimely decadent (in the Caligula—Marquis de Sade sense), that this was the very stuff that came out of those incredibly well-shaped asses; that in a way you could be there, a vicarious part of those beauties’ most intimate moment. And believe it or not they became the thing to have if you were one of the wealthy elite. And the young entrepreneur from Seattle became a millionaire many times over and in fact, ended up marrying one of the selfsame Supermodels whose shit he sold to the world. (His name by the way was Mike DeShields, who if he didn’t sell Supermodel shit would have run a porn magazine or been a high school gym teacher.) So as the rich collectors clamored to buy the shit of Alexis Marks, Ashley Benton, and Brooke Worthington for two thousand bucks a jar (five thousand when Ms. Benton made the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue) someone had to... well, how shall I put this? Someone had to collect the shit from said Supermodels. And that someone was me. Granted, I didn’t collect from all the Supermodels—there are, after all, a lot of ‘em. No, I was assigned to just one, but that one was the aforementioned Ashley Benton. As to how I got the job, well, time’s are tough, and being out of work for awhile made me desperate. And besides, in the L.A. Times it didn’t sound so bad—Supermodel Refuse Engineer: No experience necessary but Business degree preferred. There it was, I was in like Flint! And I must admit there was a certain thrill, going up to Ashley Benton’s palatial mansion in Beverly Hills for the first time in my beige Ford Escort, stopping at the gate and looking at the guard.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m Phil Philips.”
And like magic the gates opened wide and in seconds I was in the world of the Rich and the Beautiful. I never really spoke to Ms. Benton in the eight months I worked there. Well, actually I did speak to her. I said hello my first day but she just walked past me as if I didn’t exist. But I heard that she had a cold, and those sinus things can wreak havoc with your middle ear. At any rate, each day I would come to her house and sit in a private room with cable TV and all the latest magazines featuring Ashley Benton while I waited for her to take a dump. And when she did I’d be summoned to the bathroom and... Well, I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that by the time I was through the precious merchandise was vacuum-sealed in a glass jar. From here it would be sent to the factory where Ashley’s name would be put on the lid and a special label affixed with a photo of her in a string bikini. After the jar was purchased the label could be peeled off, revealing the prize for all to see. And if you could get past the more repulsive aspects there was something about it that was authentic. After all, each product was unique, and while not exactly handmade was indeed made by the Supermodel herself. So for a time I was a “Supermodel Refuse Engineer”. And there were fringe benefits. For example, when Ashley Benton went on location to the Caribbean or the French Riviera I was right there with her in my private trailer with cable TV and magazines. At first I thought this would be a great way to meet other models (my entrée into their world as it were). But I soon discovered that being a Supermodel Refuse Engineer did not rank very highly in the eyes of the models themselves, which of course was painfully ironic.
The problems started when, to put it bluntly, I just got sick of their shit. Day after day, week after week, month after month of scooping out toilets. It dawned on me that as jobs went this was probably one of the worst on earth—even for someone named Phil Philips. I began to resent how I spent my days and the way the models collectively snubbed me. Didn’t I in fact treat their shit like gold? And of course whenever anyone asked me what I did I was quite reluctant to say.
Imagine the scene: I’m at a bar. I go up to an attractive woman.
“Buy you a drink?” I say.
“Sure, why not?”
And we talk for awhile, we seem to hit it off when the inevitable question arises.
“So what do you do?”
Needless to say, for the eight months I worked as a Refuse Engineer I didn’t get a single date, even though I was surrounded by the world’s most beautiful women.
And then, the moment when I said to myself that enough was enough. How many times had I stared into a toilet bowl, scooper in hand, glass jar at the ready? This was it, I could take no more, and I flushed the toilet and bid it adieu. When I walked out I was barely noticed (as I was each day) and then I got a brainstorm. What did it really matter whose shit was in the jar, am I right? After all, when you think about it... Well, perhaps it’s best not to think about it. But at any rate, my plan was this. I would put my own... excrement, as it were, into the jars at home, and then just pretend to do my job at work. The bathroom door was always shut and no one ever checked my bag. So overnight I went from having the world’s most degrading job to being a well-paid toilet flusher. In fact, this was even something I could tell others.
“So what do you do?”
“Me? I get paid twenty bucks an hour to flush the toilets of Supermodels.”
“What?” they’d ask, amazed.
“Yes, it’s true,”
“But, I mean, I don’t understand. Can’t Supermodels flush their own toilets?”
“Apparently not, as they pay me twenty bucks an hour to do it for them.”
And in one fell swoop Supermodels would be revealed for who they truly were, and I would be seen as a kind of anarchist or iconoclast in the true sense of the word. I would rise above my name! I might even get a date!
But then it happened. For the past month I had stuck to my plan and work had become ironically amusing. And as Ashley Benton walked by contemptuously oblivious I smiled to myself. After all, it was my shit that was selling for two thousand bucks a pop! It was my shit that sat on the mantelpieces of the Rich and Famous! And then that sad day when I was arrested as I pulled up to the gate.
“That’s him,” the guard said. “Phil Philips.”
And I was led off to jail. Apparently one of the rich people who bought Ashley Benton’s shit had it DNA tested for authenticity and it turned out that it was mine instead. Well, as you can imagine, when rich people get pissed off there’s hell to pay. And after a speedy trial I was sentenced to three years at a maximum security prison for fraud. So I write to you now as a convicted felon in the state pen. Phil Philips, although I also have a number—3765917. My cellmate of course calls me something else, but that’s between him and me, and the rest of the guys on cellblock B.
www.kevinkunundrum.com