Mangiacake

My son's music teacher is named Mr. Prince. He hasn't been seen in months.

The assumption of some people is, if changing one person’s mind is near impossible, changing a million minds must be a million times more impossible. But that is not how it works.

Popular sentiment is more like what the scientists today are calling radioactive decay. You can’t know which particles will emit or when, but you can reliably know the number that will emit over a period of time. An element that is not normally radioactive can be made radioactive if you bombard it with the right particles. It’s like that with populations. You just have to know how to bombard a population with the right thing, and a predictable amount will react how you want. That’s the physics of public opinion.

The other thing is you have to improvise. You have to know how to work with what’s in front of you.

But I was about to tell you about the music teacher, Mr. Prince. Poor guy. He was in class one day, doing his job, and a student asked if he could make his trumpet sound like it was talking. Mr. Prince, being a resourceful guy, went and looked in the supply closet, hoping to find something that could be used as a mute. There happened to be a brand new plunger in there, just waiting to help him flush his life down the toilet. He went back to the class and demonstrated the technique to the kids, saying, “see how instead of a brap brap brap, like a normal trumpet, I get more of a wamp wamp wamp as I move the plunger on and off?”

One of my son’s classmates told the story at home over dinner, and he of course had to use this very unfortunate wording, to the effect of “Mr. Prince says if you put a plunger over a trumpet, you get a wamp!” His father, who is maybe just a little hot headed, and a little involved in some things and has a few connections, made some calls and had him fired. Not just from the school, but from all the clubs he used to play at night. Every one of them.

You know I’ve been up in Montreal for a bit, visiting family. Got back a few days ago. Train came to Penn Station, and from there I took the number line out to East Harlem. I was sitting there in the car, overhearing a conversation between a group of Italian boys talking about how it would be weird to be a mangiacake and not be able to say that word, the one the trumpet makes with a plunger. They must have been in Mr. Prince’s class. I didn’t want to say anything to them, the subway is overwhelming to me and I didn’t want to create an incident. The boys got off at my stop and went out into the station gleefully yelling the word at no one in particular.

I was thinking that someone should explain to them that it’s not exactly that mangiacake can’t say the word. I mean, it’s not hard to mouth the syllables. A trumpet can do it.

In 1874 there was an Italian man lynched in New York, up in Buffalo. There was another incident in the 1890’s where eleven Italians were all lynched in New Orleans. Everyone used to talk about it, but that was a generation before those kids were even born. It’s 1925 after all. It’s so easy for people to lose sight of this basic fact that to coexist peacefully is just one of numerous options. These kids are living in this fairytale that mangiacake literally can’t return the favor.

At the same time as this insanity is going on, the city is all in a huff about this other, well… inconvenience.

And this is what I came to talk to you about. I’ve worked some things out with the Irish, the Jews, and the Chinese, believe it or not, and we’d like to include you mangiacake, hopefully, as part of the deal. Its basically an agreement that we get to supply the alcohol going into certain areas, and in return, we won’t keep the molasses out of the Italian cake, if you get my drift. You and everyone else can play your little games to keep them out, we will simply neglect to play ours. This way we all get what we want. And, its a perfect setup for this public opinion thing I’m trying to enlighten you on.

You still don’t see it? Let me spell it out.

If we bombard the Italians with coloreds moving into the neighborhood, what do you think will happen? As predictable as particle physics, the mangiacake will cease to be the problem, in their minds.

We can all sit back, eat our cake, and watch the show.

Sitting back in his luxury stadium seat, number E9, Sam almost choked on his cake as he suddenly became aware that he too was already sitting back, eating cake, and watching a show. As he took a sip of his contraband, smuggled into the theater under his coat, he became intensely aware that there was no Mr. Prince, there were no Italian kids on the train, there was no weird conspiracy to get Italians to collude with mangiacake, the story was all a fabrication. The men on the screen were involved in an elaborate deception. Everyone was in on it. Countless people behind the camera were participating in this insidious ruse. Even the music was lulling him into this world of utter falsehood! (Wamp Womp.) He wondered if he was the only one in the theater who realized this.

For the rest of the film, he watched this elaborate stream of lies unfold. He watched the brainwashed masses in the theater get all worked up over every little twist and turn. Once he saw the lie, it became easy to see where it was going. What would they do the rest of the film if everyone got along? Were there moments where he got swept back into the drama, reacting to scenes as if they were real, becoming invested? There were moments, but they now had a sugary hollowness to them, that only briefly masked the stench of deceit pervading underneath.

As the credits rolled, he pushed the recliner button, and watched his feet slowly descend back to terra firma. The touch of agita this tired, predictable slop produced did not impede Sam’s sense of sober aloofness, which only a man who so gratuitously refuses to suspend disbelief can feel. Walking out into the lobby, he reached into his pocket for his phone.

As he pulled it out, he felt it move in a strange way.

When he looked down at what he had grabbed, it was not a phone he was looking at, but a spider, with its too, too many eyes watching him, curiously. He felt more crawling sensations, this time on other parts of his body, as more and more spiders, insects and eventually snakes continued to pour out of his pockets, his shirt, his socks, and scurry onto the floor of the lobby. The lobby, he remembered, was painted white when he went in earlier, but was now a dark eerie blue, and it was made of…cake.

The next morning a vague sense that deep truths were lingering just out of reach pervaded Sam’s psyche, and he decided to stop eating cake before bed.