I hate the way some people speak names, the way they refer to a particular individual with a sort of aggressive and perhaps undeserved agreeability, a, how shall we say, arrogant presumption or, perhaps better, with self important disambiguity.
“What do you mean?”
The way they use names to either assert authority or to layer themselves into the glow of authority by association with the utterance of a name and its power. Like, say, Jimmy Williams.
“Jimmy Williams?”
Sure, Jimmy Williams. Like so, in lofty tones: “Jimmy Williams, you know, is coaching the team this year” or “I saw Jimmy Williams at the theater last night” or “Jimmy Williams will be there next weekend.”
“But who’s Jimmy Williams?”
The point is you’re not supposed to know who Jimmy Williams is. Jimmy William’s is the mere after effect of sequence of the letter sounds. The person who says “Jimmy Williams is here” expects you to agree that it’s a wonderful thing that he or she is somehow connected to or possessed of Jimmy Williams, whether Jimmy Williams is within visual distance or swimming at the bottom of the punch. It’s like television, as most people only understand a politician or celebrity as a reference to a face or a name on the screen. It’s the grand illusion of modern life to live with references to “what is and is not” or “to what isn’t but probably does” or “what is grand and godlike but can’t be played in person.”
Observe. This person who has referred to Jimmy Williams must persist. They must drag it out. They must lay Jimmy Williams out on the table and kindle the three dimensions with an underglass lamp. They must nail Jimmy Williams to the front of your shirt.
From the tone, the wavelength, and the stressings, you are to grow turgid with the courage of Jimmy Williams. Jimmy Williams and his long reach down a sewer pipe to save the kitten. And don’t leave out that strong back, that back Jimmy Williams used to save two compadres from the firefight and don’t forget those legs that carried him back in for more.
How if you had Jimmy Williams on your team, Jimmy Williams would lead you all the way to the big V, and if you had Jimmy Williams for a dad, woe to you, because such a dad as Jimmy Williams would be at every game, home or away, and he’d make your friends screech milk from their noses with the range and register of his wit. Your friends would say, “His dad’s Jimmy Williams” and everyone would remember how when hard times came Jimmy Williams kept the plant open and told the line workers that with him they had a job for life and a pension, poor suckers, and Jimmy Williams would be interviewed on the national news for his philanthropic disposition and people on the street would stop and point Jimmy Williams out to their ignorant friends and say, “That’s Jimmy Williams, who saved my husband’s job” or “my wife’s job and who saved the town” and “If only Jimmy Williams was the major” or “the Governor” or “the President” or “If only Jimmy Williams was the math teacher, he’d have all of our children doing calculus by puberty’s eventful and tragic surprise.”
What people don’t know is that at this very moment Jimmy Williams is probably bleeding outside a bar. That Jimmy Williams is grinning up on a load of heroine, that Jimmy Williams is on the Line of the Recently Unemployed or on the Line for Wishing he was Someone Else Himself, a Morris Stanislaw or John Jay Threnody or Carlos Esperanza the Third, maybe, or that he’s just trying to make his way through the big hot embrace of the day, just trying to slog his way through traffic, or trying to meet some deadline or whatever other headache has just stepped off of the elevator down, and so I say to that person who utters the name Jimmy Williams to me, that I’m going to slap them good on the face and walk away with my chin up and with my proud father’s name on my lips, no matter, no matter.
“But who was your father?”
Jimmy Williams, of course, Jimmy Williams, god rest his rotting bones, wherever he is.
