Where in the World is Jim Fairthorne: An Exposé

Hello again dear readers. I’d like to take a minute and thank you for coming back, even despite the conspicuous absence of State of Affairs’ fearless leader, Jim Fairthorne. For those of you who were concerned yesterday (as I was) about the disconcerting collect call I received, I wanted to update you on Jim’s status.

I spent several hours last night on a long-distance call to Beijing (a call that cost me to the effect of an arm, a leg, my soul and my first-born child – Jim had better bankroll this shit if he ever makes it back, otherwise I’m stealing all his stuff and giving it to Rogers Telecommunications before they decide to go Shylock on my ass and pay their bill with my bits).

I had what began as a very pleasant conversation with one Mr. Chang, who assured me he had never heard of anyone called Jim Fairthorne – certainly, he told me, no one by that name was currently incarcerated by the Chinese government. I reamed off all the pseudonyms that, to my knowledge, Jim has ever used, in the hopes of igniting the metaphorical light bulb suspended over Mr. Chang’s pointy little bureaucratic head. Unfortunately Mr. Chang had never heard of Edward Dalhousie, Tiberius Plonk, R.M. Burlton or The Artist Formerly Known As Bruce, either.

In desperation, I inferred to Mr. Chang (who was rapidly losing patience with the hyperactive, drunken gwailo on the other end of the phone) that I could provide him with the location of a secret Tibetan self-immolation training facility, including detailed satellite footage of dozens of monks learning the ancient art of lighting themselves on fire from displaced Vietnamese nationals, so the People’s Liberation Army could go in and quell this dangerous uprising.

All of a sudden, not only did the name Jim Fairthorne sound extremely familiar to Mr. Chang, he became exceedingly interested in what I had to say. I told him I would only exchange my top-secret intelligence for Jim’s freedom. Mr. Chang (by this time very excitable and anxious to get off the phone) agreed to my terms and promised to call me back within the hour. I finished my bottle of Five Star whiskey and sat restlessly watching my cell phone until Mr. Chang rang me at about 1am.

Mr. Chang’s tone was markedly different than when I’d spoken with him the hour before – he seemed nervous, agitated, and sounded suspiciously like a man whose very life depended upon the next few moments’ interaction. He informed me that there had been a change in plans – apparently Jim was no longer in Chinese custody. Mr. Chang didn’t say it outright, but the overriding sense I got was that Jim had somehow managed to escape his captors, and I silently applauded that wily maniac’s penchant for quick thinking. Mr. Chang promised the full cooperation of the People’s Liberation Army in locating Jim and returning him safely to home base if only I’d send the documentation I’d hastily concocted. I thanked him politely for his time and promptly hung up, turned off my phone, and buried it in the cushions of my couch to prevent a GPS lock on my position.

Shortly afterward there was a knock on my door. Convinced I was about to be accosted by members of the Chinese Secret Police, I deftly grabbed my trusty kukri (after dropping it three or four times and falling over a case of beer) and hesitantly approached the door. Swinging it wide I brandished my blade wildly at the intruder, only to discover he was not a Triad member come to tear off my fingernails, but was in fact an employee of the National Telegraph Service – I genuinely had no idea they were still in business. Without a word he handed me a typed telegraph and departed into the night. Collapsing on my couch and cracking my second bottle of Five Star with shaking hands, I blearily read the telegraph. Here is a word-for-word transcription.

Needless to say I was relieved. Relieved but unsurprised, actually. You see, this sort of scenario doesn’t really qualify as “odd” in my line of work. To explain, I’d like to tell you a story – a story about a man. A funny man. That man’s name is Jeff Oh.

But in order to tell you about Jeff, I have to tell you about me. My name is Alex James, and I’m a guerrilla writer. You may be asking yourself what a guerrilla writer actually is, and you wouldn’t be alone in that line of questioning – I often find myself waking up surrounded by cases of smashed beer bottles, plates of two-day old poutine and six or seven hookers of questionable gender, asking myself the very same question.

I guess it all started back in 2007 when I was a fresh-faced rhetoric graduate with a taste for night life, a penchant for blues-folk music and an unhealthy obsession with the great and wasted writers of the last fifty years. I picked up a job as a teaching assistant for a suave and psychotic American Literature professor, Dr. Dow Paulson, at a major university, and quickly realized the academic environment was stifling my burgeoning creativity – apparently the institution frowns on attempting to teach a class on James Fenimore Cooper whilst acting like the bastard child of Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway. On the advice of Dr. Paulson I went on “permanent sabbatical” and ventured forth into the wider world, smoke in mouth, guitar on back and pen in hand.

The next two years are something of a blur. I recall images, blurred by time and strange cocktails, of nights spent shooting rats with BB guns in New Orleans whilst college-age women of dubious morality flashed exposed skin to hungry cameras; water-skiing naked across the Bering Strait pulled by what my skipping brain remembers as a tugboat full of Siberian railroad employees; repelling down the Wailing Wall as hordes of angry worshipers waited with lighted torches and pitchforks at the bottom; drinking Absinthe with a baker’s dozen of French existentialists while resting against a palisade as the sun rose over Cologne. Shifting images through a wall of fragrant smoke and syrup-tongues. Maybe all of it happened; maybe none of it did, but as old Orwell was wont to say, “For a creative writer, possession of the “truth” is less important than emotional sincerity.”

Anyway, on the night of September 8^th, 2008, I awoke disoriented and with a hangover of Olympian proportions. My shirt was covered with substances I wouldn’t hazard to identify, but that definitely included vomit, red wine and tzatziki sauce. Taking stock of my surroundings, I could make out through the fog in the air and the gum left in trails by my sticky eyelids that I was – for some reason – locked in a cage roughly the size of a guest bathroom.

I couldn’t discern anything beyond the wrought-iron bars apart from the vague outlines of brick walls and a bolted door, as well as the slumped shapes of two other persons who shared my captivity.

One was an old man who appeared to be of Southeast Asian descent, with a fu-manchu mustache draped over wizened lips, and locks of wispy white hair sprouting irregularly from his liver-spotted scalp. He was clothed in what appeared to be a burlap sack and he didn’t seem to be breathing – I immediately made an executive decision to remain blissfully ignorant of the state of his mortality.

The other was a Caucasian male with long, straggly hair poking out from under a beaten bowler cap. His arms sported rough tattoos I could only imagine had been applied with Bic pen ink and a heated nail. He was dressed in torn blue jeans spotted with blood and earth, and the remnants of a Clash concert teeshirt hung from his wiry upper body like the tattered ensign of some long-sunk man ‘o’ war. Battered Coverse sneakers completed an ensemble reminiscent of a jaded middle-aged Queen Street hipster who had long since crested the hill and was careening off-kilter towards the inevitable porch-and-shotgun coupling common to aging cynics. Unlike Mister Miyagi, this husk of a human seemed to be alive and well, albeit in a semi-conscious state.

Tentatively I approached my cell mate. I was nearly on top of him when, with a flurry of movement, he leaped to his feet and assumed a defensive kungfu posture. Startled I jumped back, and we began to circle one another cautiously, pausing only to step over our expired flatmate. My first clear memories are of the following exchange:

AJ: Where the hell are we? Who are you? What’s going on?

Man: Well, that only leaves “when” and “why”. Are you a journalist?

AJ: What? No! Why, are you?

Man: In a manner of speaking.

AJ: Okay. So we’ve got that sorted. Now I need a name and an explanation as to why I’m in a cage with a dead Chinese guy and a manner-of-speaking journalist.

Man: I don’t offer information for free, especially information I don’t know.

AJ: You don’t know your name?

Man: I don’t think I’d recognize my face in a mirror right now.

AJ: I’m surprised. If I had a leather boot for a face I’d recognize it instantly.

Man: This from the guy covered in Greek condiments.

AJ: Look. This is stupid. We keep this up, one of us is going to trip over that guy in the potato sack. Then something awful will happen and we’ll be no farther along. I’m Alex James, I’m a writer, and I don’t know why I’m locked in this cage.

Man: That makes two of us.

AJ: You’re Alex James too?

Man: No, I’m Jeff.

AJ: I thought you said you didn’t know your name.

Jeff: Nothing escapes your attention to detail, does it D.H.?

AJ: Jeff what?

Jeff: Oh.

AJ: Oh? What? What is it?

Jeff: It’s Oh.

AJ: Oh.

(pause)

AJ: So why are you in this cage?

Jeff: I was hoping you might be able to answer that for me. Last thing I remember I was haggling with a Bulgarian merchant over the price of his daughter.

AJ: Wait! What was his name?

Jeff: Belov, I think.

AJ: That shifty Bulgarian! I was negotiating the sale of a vintage vinyl copy of “Rhinestone Cowboy” in return for a handful of rubles I was going to use to purchase a ten year-old bottle of Maker’s Mark. Then something hit me from behind and the next thing I know I’m getting buddy-buddy with an aging hipster and a corpse.

Jeff: Something is definitely wrong. This doesn’t look like any gulag I’ve ever been locked in.

I was about to reply when the rusty bolt was ripped back and the door I’d vaguely perceived was shoved open. Light streamed through the open doorway, momentarily blinding me and my mysterious cell mate. When my sight returned, I was face-to-face with a Goliath of a man: shirtless, with a veritable carpet of chest hair adorned with a huge silver crucifix that hung by a chain from his tree-trunk neck. His upper lip was crested by a black mustache the likes of which would put Tom Sellick himself to shame. Stringy black hair barely covered his exposed scalp and lay haphazardly across his glistening forehead. He stood with his bear-like paws curled around his generous hips and his eyes – black diamonds peering from cavernous sockets with the keen, animal intelligence of a predatory bird – scoured first Jeff and then me, like a cat coolly observing the mouse that would comprise its evening meal.

His voice was at once grating and wet, like gravel being blended through a healthy dollop of Jell-o in a martini shaker. He introduced himself only as “The Fixer”, one hand toying absently with the gigantic cross around his neck, the other scratching his nether regions through the thick leather of his pants. He offered no explanation as to the circumstances of our forced confinement, stating only that it was “necessary for the security of the Mission.” Apparently, he had no idea who the dead Chinese guy was either. When Jeff inquired as to “what, precisely, the fuck” he wanted from us, he removed a key from beneath the fold of his stomach and with a speed belying his Woolly Mammoth stature, unlocked the cage and swung it open. The rusty hinges squawked as the cage door crashed against the bars, echoing hollowly through the small room which, in the newfound light, was revealed to be the inside of a large industrial storage unit. Gesturing with a meaty digit, The Fixer invited us to exit our cell. Jeff and I fell over one another in our haste to leave the confines of the cage, lest The Fixer’s generosity be short-lived.

Upon exiting the unit, followed closely by the enigmatic behemoth with the curious name, Jeff and I found ourselves standing on a loading dock of some kind, surrounded by longshoremen of unknown ethnicity armed with what appeared to be AK-47 assault rifles.

Seeing the armed men, Jeff spun on his heel and confronted The Fixer.

Jeff: Okay, look. If this is about that Bulgarian girl, her father swore she was of legal age! I can’t be held accountable for his lies!

Fixer: No, my friend. I have little interest in the more clandestine of your activities.

AJ: Then what in the name of all the major and minor deities is this about? I’m getting tired of asking “where am I” because it’s only disorienting me, and frankly, I’m disoriented enough!

Fixer: Mister James, you needn’t shout. You’re among friends here.

Jeff: I have only a few friends who think it’s funny to lock me up in a box with dead beggars and jumpy hobos, and even fewer who get followed around by a cadre of heavily armed migrant workers. You are not one of those friends.

AJ: Hobos? Hey, fuck you old man. At least I don’t look like Adrien Brody on the tail end of a meth binge!

Fixer: Gentlemen, please! Calm yourselves! I have brought you here to offer you a chance to take your rightful places as forerunners of The Mission!

Jeff: What the fuck is this, a Jamestown Reunion? Look pal, I don’t know what you’re selling, but I bet I can get it cheaper online, so why don’t you make like Madonna and her adopted children and take us the hell back to America?

AJ: Besides, I’ve got my own “missions”, and they don’t involve getting locked up by shady gangsters with poor fashion sense.

(At this point Jeff eyed me critically, and I was forced to reconsider my previous statement.)

Fixer: Let me be succinct.

Jeff: That’d be a first for this post…

Fixer: In short, I find myself in need of writers – writers of a caliber I have, until now, failed quite spectacularly to locate and secure. I will not bore you with the details of my sordid life, but suffice it to say it is in my interest to develop a series of internet-based, politically-charged, article-template subsidiaries of the greater thrust of my Mission in an effort to promote and proliferate its closely-held philosophies.

AJ: If that’s your idea of succinct, I can see why you need writers.

Jeff: So what you’re telling me is…you need bloggers?

Fixer: In a word, that is precisely the nature of wordsmiths I require.

AJ: That was nine…nevermind.

Jeff: The next question is a two-parter, Mister Fixer. First of all, wouldn’t it have been a little more expedient to find writers in a more…conventional way? I mean, shit dude, haven’t you heard of Craigslist?

Fixer: Bah! I have perused this man Craig’s obnoxious excuse for a cross-referenced search engine, and have turned up naught but the poorly-scripted, plaintive whinging of a nation of sycophants lamenting their lack of gainful employment, sufficiently-depraved sexual partners, and large- screen plasma televisions at a bargain price.

Jeff: You know, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But on to part two – why us?

Fixer: Aye, there’s the rub, as the Bard was wont to say! Gentlemen, I have followed your literary exploits wherever they have taken you, for as you might have surmised, I am a man of some fiscal consequence. Your words have filled me at once with glee, with sorrow, with the gamut of the human experience!

AJ: And here I thought the only way to get myself my very own fat middle-aged stalker was to write Harry Potter slash fiction.

Fixer: The world over, I have yet to find your equals. And believe me, I have searched exhaustively.

AJ: Judging by your ego-stroking skills, you clearly know something about writers. Tell me more about me. Something about my chiseled jawline and rugged-yet-handsome features would be nice.

Jeff: Give me a break: you look like you just got dragged through a runoff drain in Calcutta on all- you-can-eat chili night.

AJ: I hope you and your entire bloodline die in a sanitation backup, you geriatric cock-holster.

Fixer: Ah! You see? Such wit! Such candor! How could the Mission fail with such prolific genius at its helm?

Jeff: You know, he’s got a point. So what’s in it for us, Big Man?

Fixer: Accommodations, access to research materials, bagged cigarettes by the pound, and all the whiskey you can feasibly consume.

AJ: Give me the damn contract.

Fixer: There is a caveat, my friends – a certain quid pro quo if you will.

Jeff: NAME IT! I wants my whiskey!

Fixer: I have already secured a cadre of associates with whom you will collaborate, including (but not limited to) a Pikey pickpocket with a large pet turtle, but there is one more I require to complete my Triumvirate of Vitriol. Are you acquainted with…James Fairthorne?

So there you have it, and here we are. Jeff, Jim and myself have been diligently toiling under the ministrations of The Fixer ever since. Everything has been going swimmingly here at our luxurious compound deep beneath the infrastructure of the city of Toronto – at least, until recently. Jim was dispatched to China to cover the Tiananmen protests, and after being waylaid in Marrakesh (I have no idea if he secured the ape or not, so don’t ask)…well, you know the story. I am currently hunkered in my bunker, sipping whiskey and collaborating with Jeff via wireless networks and carrier pigeons while we await a message from Jim. My sincerest hope right now, apart from the hope of remaining undetectable to the Chinese authorities I so convincingly bilked last night, is for Jim’s safety.

I will update you when I have more information. In the meantime, go read Jeff’s blog for his side of the story.