Bland Outline

Dear diary,

I am so burnt out from solving this galaxy’s problems that all I wanna do this morning is write an outline for a story that is purposely bland. That will help me re-grow all my feathers so that I can catch on fire again.

Let’s call my story-outline’s hero Thomas, after the doubter. Or after the gospel, rather.

Wait, no: let’s call him Thomas and Philip — that way we have a pair of heroes; who are also two of my favorite gospel writers. And let’s have these heroes go everywhere together, like a buddy picture. (In case you don’t know what a “buddy picture” is, that’s a film genre in which two friends go out on a fun quest — but I’ll make sure that our quest is bland, not fun.)

And, to be clear, cuz I’m not trying to hide this fact: I’ll secretly draw most of my ideas, as usual, from my own memories of other popular stories. I just wanted to admit this up front, so that people don’t feel the need to accuse me of plagiarism. I’m already in Writers’ Jail — I locked myself in here at the beginning — so in order to punish me you’d pretty much have to release me.

On a side note, that’s exactly what my parents used to do, when they were raising me and my brother Paul. Since he loved playing outdoors whereas all I wanted to do is stay inside & listen to late-80s rap cassettes in my room, in order to punish us for any wrongdoing, my parents would say to Paul:

“You’re banned from playing outside: you shall remain indoors, in your room, until you grow penitent — that’s why we named this place the penitentiary.”

But then when they wanted to punish ME, they would say:

“You’re banned from your room: you must spend your time out of doors until we feel that we can tolerate your prophetic attitude again.”

So I always complained that this was totally unfair: I argued that there should be the SAME punishment for both the lion and the ox, not two different or even opposite punishments. Because my thinking was that if they committed to treating Paul and me both equally, then the sentence for any evils we committed would ideally be to undergo house-arrest; and since I loved remaining inside, I’d thus have outsmarted the entire system of crime & punishment.

And, yes, I am aware that this pro-indoors attitude of mine wholly contradicts my mentor Walt Whitman, who in section 47 of “Song of Myself” sez:

I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house, / And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.

But, in my defence, Walt also sez, just two stanzas above the above:

I teach straying from me . . .

However, it’s true that he ends that very line as follows:

. . . yet who can stray from me?

So let me begin to relay my bland outline:

BLAND OUTLINE
A pretend story by Bryan Ray

Thomas and Philip are vigorous, happy 27-year-old detectives, who recently got expelled from Detective Headquarters, which is like the nucleus of detective work — it’s like the Holy of Holies inside the Catholic Temple of Detectivism.

What I’m trying to say is that Thomas and Philip lost their honor and now must work as undercover detectives, illegally. But they remain vigorous and happy about life, because they’re basically good people.

But it’s hard to pay the rent when you don’t make any money. And there are not many clients who are willing to hire illegal detectives to solve mysteries when perfectly legal alternatives are everywhere, easily available. So Thomas and Philip accept a lousy job from a client who promises to pay them poorly: but the amount that she agrees to fork out IF they succeed in this endeavor is enough to pay their rent for another two months — perhaps even three months; so this wins them over.

What this attractive female client wants the detectives to do is just drive people around in her vehicle, which happens to be a limousine. Simply cruise down the boulevard & stop before every pedestrian & ask:

“Wanna ride with me in this limo? If you say yes, I promise I’ll listen to your Life Story.”

And this woman, our detectives’ enigmatic new client, has installed cameras in the limo that she has hired our heroes Thomas and Philip to pilot; and these limo-cams are continuously recording; therefore this gorgeous, elusive, middle-aged female patron is able to monitor remotely all the footage of interesting people telling their Life Stories to Thomas and Philip, the limousine’s drivers.

Thomas and Philip first raise the objection that this chore has no apparent end-point: There is no problem, thus there’s no way to solve it; all they’re charged with doing is driving people around and listening to them blab: that sounds monotonous. Since they’re supposed to be outcast detectives, they really should be out in the gritty world: skulking around, looking for clues, decoding cyphers, and unraveling mysteries.

But the woman explains that their goal will be to help her cure her insomnia — for she hasn’t slept in ages. Therefore, the moment she falls asleep listening to one of the passenger’s life stories, they (Thomas and Philip) will have accomplished their mission: they will receive their pay immediately & be released from their duty.

“But how will you be able to compensate us, when, by definition, the instant our mission is accomplished, you’ll be asleep?” ask Thomas and Philip.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” sez Martha. (For their patron’s name is Martha.)

This answer does not satisfy Thomas and Philip, but they are too polite to push back.

*

Alright, now here’s the point where the story gets bland: I can feel it…

So Thomas and Philip drive the limo around the country. They listen to person after person tell their Life Stories.

One passenger is the owner of a movie theater, which he inherited from his father.

“Is film really old enough to’ve become the plaything of nepotism?” sez Thomas to Philip.

“Watch the road,” sez Philip; and they narrowly avoid hitting a large mole.

*

Another passenger keeps a diary, so when asked to tell his story, he retrieves the book from his inside coat-pocket and clears his throat and begins to read slowly.

This diary recital lulls their client Martha into a slumber, as she sits at home watching the live feed from the limo-cams.

And it turns out that Martha has rigged up a contraption where, once her head hits the desk where she is sitting (for, remember, she has fallen asleep at her observation post: that’s why her head descended and made contact with the desk: she was fast asleep — that’s how boring the passenger Bryan’s diary was), the weight of her head on the desk depresses a button that triggers wirelessly the release of two packages of money from the overhead storage chambers inside the limousine.

So Thomas and Philip collect their cash. And Martha told them that they could keep the limo, as well was whatever passenger they happened to be serving at the time of their triumph. So they drive back to their little office that serves as their illegal headquarters, and they park the limo in the back lot, and they invite Bryan the passenger (who is now their new friend) up to “HQ” for drinks.

When they approach the office, they see that its window has the legend “Thomas & Philip Detective Agency” painted upon it in bold white letters; and, below that, in a straight line of fine flat print, it sez: “Unlicenced, Unbonded, Uninsured.”

“Wow, you guys are no joke,” remarks Bryan.

“Thanks,” say Thomas and Philip. “It ain’t easy being illegal.

*

Now Martha shows up at the office, and immediately Thomas and Philip arise & assert in unison that they’ve already closed her case; therefore she should not be here — they owe her no more work:

“We’re all squared up,” sez Thomas.

“And, incidentally, shouldn’t you be sleeping?” adds Philip.

“Don’t worry, boys,” explains Martha seductively; “I’m still asleep: I’m just sleepwalking at present. And I didn’t come here to harass you about that old job — I came to stir up trouble by possibly instigating a new job.”

“And what would that be?” ask Thomas and Philip worriedly.

“I’m bored,” cries Martha; “sleeping is dull. I want some action.”

Now Bryan, the aforementioned passenger from that last limousine trip, steps out from his hiding place beneath the desk and sez:

“I couldn’t help but overhear when you said that sleep is boring and that you crave adventure. Now I wonder: Have you tried dreaming?”

Martha turns her face very slowly until she is looking straight at Bryan. The shot cuts back and forth measuredly between Martha staring icily and Bryan shrugging awkwardly. Neither one of them says another word. With the medium close-ups alternating like this, the scene fades to black.

*

So Martha takes Bryan out on a number of dates.

At a certain point they visit Martha’s ex-boyfriend, a U.S. Senator, at his mansion. When he steps into the parlor to greet his visitors, he spots Bryan and gasps and exclaims:

“Are you sleeping with my intended?”

Bryan innocently answers: “No, no: it’s not what it looks like. Martha’s asleep, yes; but I myself am wide awake.”

So this particular date allowed us to make a joke that is sort of a play on words.

*

Now it turns out that Thomas and Philip are stationed outside in the garden, watching the Senator interact with Bryan and Martha thru a window of the mansion.

To smooth the tensions between them, Bryan takes Martha and the Senator out for coffee. Then they go watch a movie at the theater that is owned by Thomas’ and Philip’s former passenger, from their limo-driving days.

During the movie, Bryan stands bolt-upright inexplicably, and the people who are seated behind him start to complain. (Martha is seated nervously at the seat to Bryan’s right; and the Senator is in the seat to Bryan’s left.)

Bryan remains standing, in defiance of the complaints of the fellow moviegoers.

Now, just as inexplicably, Bryan begins to slap the Senator, over and over, very hard, with his full, open hand. These blows are much louder than the soundtrack in the cinema-house; and they are unhurried & deliberate, like the dripping of a faucet — Bryan’s hand rises and falls with the leisurely rhythm of a wheat harvester, and we hear the noise of the brutal contact of his palm against the poor Senator’s cheek: . . . Slap! . . . Slap! . . . Slap! . . . Slap! . . . Slap!

A voice in the audience shouts “Stop! he’ll kill him!”

Now the usher comes walking down the side aisle holding a very tiny flashlight. He enters the row where Bryan is standing and places his hand on Bryan’s shoulder:

“Come with me, sir,” the fellow mutters in Bryan’s ear.

“May I come too?” asks Martha.

The usher turns back & squints at the damozel. “Sure,” he sez; “but we gotta go right now.”

So Martha and Bryan exit the theater.

*

Thereafter, Thomas and Philip join Martha and Bryan; and they all climb into their old limo and drive around the city:

Everywhere they look, they see garbage and destitute people; so they stop and pick up the trash, and they rescue all the folks and give them better lives.

The people that they saved are very thankful when they all end up with successful careers doing exactly what they always wanted to do: If a man wanted to be a boxer, then they get him a job boxing. If a woman always wanted to write a book about dolphins, they put her thru college so that she can become an expert on the subject; & then they follow thru and get her a job writing books about dolphins.

*

Once the city is all cleaned up, Thomas and Philip drop Bryan and Martha at the side of the road and wave goodbye.

As they drive off, Philip watches the rear-view mirror and narrates for Thomas:

“Keep your eye on the road, Tom. Bryan and Martha will be just fine. They can fend for themselves. They helped us rescue the entire city of New York; I think they can manage to find an apartment and some food & clothing. Hey, check this out: Martha just walked over to the hay bale nearby and is already asleep. And Bryan just sat down on the curb and is writing in his diary. — Yes, I can tell they’ll be just fine.”

Here, Thomas swerves the limo to avoid hitting another large mole.

*

The detectives now make a stop at one of the buildings that they own. It is a charitable organization that takes street pimps and converts them into tender and faithful lovers.

They enter the establishment and say hello to all the staff; then they ask to see the patients.

“Follow me,” sez a voluptuous blonde nurse.

They walk down a hallway. Their shoes echo noticeably with each step.

“Here is an unhinged man,” the nurse points to the inmate of the nearest room, whose door has been left open. “He won’t stop telling us that he wants to kill Lady Liberty.”

Thomas and Philip are taken aback. Thomas sez: “Shouldn’t you keep the door shut and locked, if he’s so dangerous? And why would anyone want to slay a statue? The statue did nothing wrong, as far as I can tell. Or if she’s found guilty of several harsh crimes, at least she did nothing wrong to US.”

The nurse stares at her visitors and blinks.

“Can’t you at least find a cure for this illness,” asks Philip; “I mean, isn’t there some sort of Wizard who might be able to transform this violent pimp into a handsome general, so that we could put him in command of the South American forces, and use his talents for good rather than evil?”

The nurse assures Thomas and Philip that, within 24 hours, the man in the room will be entering the initial phase of his healing process:

“Come back tomorrow,” laughs the nurse; “you will see that this inmate is on the road to improvement, & that you & your friend here are heading down a much more destructive path than his; yet you don’t even know it.”

So Thomas and Philip leave the building by climbing out thru its ventilation system, which is quite a maze. They go and purchase a firearm from an illegal dealer, and they modify the weapon so that it shoots out a bullet whenever either of them say the password “Easy.”

*

The next morning, they return to the clinic where they encountered the voluptuous blonde nurse; and she greets them familiarly and leads them down the ecchoing hallway again, to the room of the man who was only yesterday a frenzied street-pimp.

“That’s the same guy?” exclaim Thomas and Philip at once.

“In all his glory,” sez the nurse. “He’s a tender lover now. And, as an unexpected bonus, we managed to secure for him a paid position as a Venezuelan General.”

“Really!” Thomas is intrigued. While marveling at the newly cured inmate, he absentmindedly places his hand on his hip, thus nudging his holster, which causes the pistol that he and his friend recently purchased and modified to be aimed directly at Philip’s right thigh.

“How did you effect such an overhaul of his naturally evil tendencies so quickly?” inquires Philip of the nurse.

“It was easy,” she answers.

But the password doesn’t cause the gun to discharge, because it was not spoken by either Thomas or Philip. For, recall that the detectives programmed this weapon to heed nothing beyond the frequency of their own aural signatures. That is, they limited the parameters of the weapon’s listening capability so that it could only hear the sound of their two unique voices.

“Easy?” inquires Philip. “How easy?”

“Well,” explains the nurse, “we simply let him out last night and allowed him to rob a convenience store. When he failed, because there were armed security guards everywhere who yelled at him, he returned to his room here and sulked for about a quarter of an hour. Then he dried his eyes & agreed to sign up for our church program. We have an emergency program where a priest will come dressed in raven-black and visit you in your room and attempt to abuse you. (You guys should know all this; you’re the founders our charitable organization.) Anyway, the one fright canceled out the other fright; & our inmate’s psychology modified itself, & he became righteous. He fell to his knees and prayed to the Master, begging Master to drip a little blood down to save his soul: ‘Let just a droplet trickle hither from off the table of your feast, so that my faith can revive,’ he said; ‘I just wanna get my crime-life back on track!’ And then the blood appeared, and voila: you know the rest. The result stands here before you — you can view his restored career plainly with your own two eyes. There’s nothing mystical about it.”

*

Then it comes to pass that Thomas takes a second job as a prostitute, and this begins to interfere with his detective work; so Philip tries to convince him to “Stop your hooking!” at the men’s prayer breakfast that they are hosting in their office. So Thomas decides on the spot to shave his head like a monk and see if this new look can ward off future customers. And it works. So all the people say “Amen.”

*

Then, for their final adventure, Thomas and Philip decide to try to reverse a murder scene, so that the hideous atrocities are wiped clean from the record and can be said to have never even occurred.

So they travel to the East Village. They enter a brothel. They see a number of bodies dead on the floor. There are bullets everywhere, and gangsters sleeping on couches, clutching their firearms to their chests like newborn infants.

Philip takes his typewriter out of its case; then uses his pocket-kerchief to wipe the gore off the nearby table. He sits down and begins to type up a news story. Thomas, meanwhile, paces back and forth in the brothel and helps brainstorm ideas for their joint article.

While pacing, Thomas keep carefully stepping over the corpses that litter the floor of the room. This is unnerving to observe, for we keep thinking that he’ll surely trip on a corpse during one of these passes, because he’s closing his eyes in concentration (so as to spitball more imaginative concepts), but he never even stumbles; & this comes off as equally humorous and commendable.

“Let’s say,” sez Thomas, while we hear Philip typing on the keys to record this dictation, “that, instead of multiple murders taking place last evening around seven, there was just one lone killer lurking in the park, and he never even came into this room — he just killed his own sad self in the park.”

Philip looks up from the keyboard: “I like what I’m hearing!”

“OK, now, additionally, instead of having a shootout take place in this here boudoir, let’s just have one single woman — say, your ex-customer Mary — return home from her job at the grocery store. And let’s have us two (I mean you and me, Phil; for we can act as ourselves in this tabloid piece; that way we won’t have to pay any players salaries) — I say, let’s have us two pull up at the entrance of this housing complex. Mary should then hear the sound of our horn honking, and she’ll come running to the window and spy our limo. She’ll then dash down the spiral staircase, still holding her grocery bags, and the produce will spill out and bounce down the steps alongside of her while she descends. (This will feel very poetic.) And, once she gets within sight of us, she will smile and wave. Then she’ll open the back door and climb in, and we’ll drive away with her in the back of the limousine. This way we’ll be able to hear her tell her Life Story, and we’ll find out what REALLY happened between her and Martha, that fatal day so long ago. But the audience will leave the theater in maddening perplexity, because we won’t reveal the conversation that takes place: we’ll just show the limo driving off into the distance, while the credits begin to roll. Like when, in the good old days, they’d direct the cowboy to trot off into the sunset.”

Here Mary enters the room where the detectives are writing: “Oh, I forgot one thing,” she sez thru clenched teeth, while aiming her gun.