Dear "Hans Bungle",
I read with moderate interest
your post a few weeks back about your
search for "Johnny" and it left me feeling a little empty.
Basically, no matter how you look at it, you blew the
ending.
I'll explain in a minute. First, I should tell you that
unlike all the characters in the story, I am not a longtime reader of your site,
nor am I a big fan. I actually stumbled across your site while I was
googling for Kurt Nimphius photos about a month ago. Since I am sort
of new to the site, I don't know what's real and what's just a gimmick. Is your
name Hans Bungle? I doubt it. Is there a Johnny? I doubt it.
But I guess that's what makes it fun for you -- you can
make up whatever you want, and then you can slip in a truth here and there, and
it all gets mixed up, baked, and served up to whoever's bored enough to be
reading. Since I imagine that's only a precious few, who really cares about
what's real, right?
As I mentioned, while I was reading the site for the first
time, I didn't know how much to believe about your "Johnny" article. But the
ending left me cold whether the story was 100% true or 100% fiction.
Your entry ends with Johnny returning your page, and then
the following exchange takes place:
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"Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want? Clock's
ticking," was the first thing he said.
"Johnny, it's Hans Bungle," I said. "From verbungle.com."
"Kerfuffle.com?" he said. "What the hell is that?"
Even after I got him to say the name right, he claimed he had
never worked here and he had no idea who I was. I couldn't tell if he was just
being difficult or if he was really that far out of it. I calmed him down
just long enough to ask him Limp n' Angry's question about the moaning
girlfriend.
He paused for a second, and then said, "You tell Limp n'
Angry that Julie's gonna keep screaming and I'm gonna keep doing the things that make
her scream. You got that? If he has a problem he can get some earplugs or call
the police or come knock on my door and take his chances. You tell him
that, OK?"
"Um, OK," I said. I wasn't sure if Johnny was just
being a smartass, or if he actually thought he was the one living next door to Limp
n' Angry. And the way things were going today, I couldn't be sure that he
wasn't the one making all the racket.
"You done with me?" he asked. "Mr. Fuffle or whatever your
name is?"
"Yeah, Johnny, that's it. Thanks for calling back."
There was a pause, and then he said, in a completely lucid
voice, the voice I'd heard so many times over the years, "By the way, I was
right. You're just a bunch of motherfucking cornflakes."
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OK, now first let's approach this from the point of view
that Johnny is real, and that your whole pursuit of him was a true story, and
that he really did say those things to you on the phone. You drew two
possible conclusions: Johnny was being a smartass by pretending to be the one with the
moaning girlfriend, or, in a bizarre coincidence, he was actually living next
door to the person who wrote in asking "Johnny" for advice -- indeed, Johnny was
the one whose boisterous lovemaking was creating the problem in the first place. Or at
least he thought he was.
Well, I think you overlooked a much more plausible
possibility: did you ever stop to think that Johnny wrote the initial email
himself, in an attempt to either send you on a wild goose chase, or, more
likely, to drum up some work for himself? You mentioned that he was down on his
luck -- wouldn't it be fairly easy for him to create a false market for his
advice by sending in bogus emails? Easier, for sure, than crawling back into
your offices with his tail down and his palms out. The only part of this
scenario that doesn't make sense is why Johnny would be so rude to you on the
phone, so rude that he wouldn't even leave you an opportunity to offer him his
job back. He wouldn't even engage you long enough to see if he could
squeeze a few bucks out of you for answering that one question.
Well, I think this is explainable. Johnny seems to be a
volatile character, prone to sudden mood changes and long struggles with
alcohol. Perhaps, by the time you paged him, he had a change of heart
about the whole idea. His pride took over and he was no longer interested
in his old job or anything else you had to offer. That would explain his grouchy
attitude, and if his pride was stinging, it wouldn't surprise me that he'd want
to get off the phone as quickly as possible. Even acknowledging that he
knew you could lead to a certain amount of small talk, and perhaps that was more
than he could handle.
I know, you're probably thinking, I can't believe this
person has enough time to deconstruct the Johnny story, and I especially can't
believe he's stupid enough to think it's real.
Well, I don't think it's real. But I had to allow
for the possibility.
Now let's assume you made up the whole thing. Maybe there
isn't even a Johnny. The whole story is a fabrication. Well, if so, wouldn't my
proposed scenario make a more interesting and satisfying conclusion to the
story? Couldn't you have at least slipped in one line about how you're wondering
if Johnny didn't send the email himself? It's a better, more thought-provoking
story that way. You search high and low for someone so you can ask him
something; it turns out he was the one who sent you on the search in the first
place. It's troubling, but in a good way. It makes you wonder all the
things I wondered about when I outlined the scenario in the paragraph above.
Most importantly: why would Johnny send the email if he didn't want his job
back? Did he just want to hear you offer it to him? Was that it? Was the moment
when you paged him the moment when he finally reached some kind of closure about
his dismissal? Did he need to feel like he'd been right all along? Did he need
to feel wanted? To me, this added ambiguity would have made the story a
lot more interesting.
You don't have to respond to this. But I'm sure you'll
probably post it on your site, along with some sarcastic response. And since
we're just readers, we won't know if this was even a real letter in the first
place. Did you make this up, too? Do I even exist? Only you and I will
know, I guess. And Johnny.
Take care,
Tommy R.
