Free Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem

be,” I said, justifying myself.
    He said something I couldn't quite make out. It sounded like, “Every place has its price.”
    “What?”
    “That's the price of this place.” Or something. I was already walking away, toward my door. I'd seen that he was both unharmed and harmless.
    “Well, take care of yourself,” I said.
    “Don't worry about me,” he said.
    Then I went inside, and for the briefest moment, tried to think about what had happened.
I just hit a man in the head with a big piece of wood
, I told myself. A part of me insisted that it was a notable event, something disturbing, something extreme. I'd certainly never done anything like it before.
    But that part of me lost out. My attention just slid away. I literally
couldn't
keep my mind on it.
    I mention this because of the light it sheds on what happened with Matthew.
             
    W HEN M ATTHEW and I were in high school we had a running joke that I think epitomized our sense of humor. Our school featured special programs for musically talented students. For that reason, or for no reason at all, there was a bust of Toscanini in the middle of the main hall of the building. It was a dingy bronze, slightly larger than life-size. Toscanini gazed out with a stolid, heroic air, his thick oxidized hair flowing back in the sculptor's imaginary breeze. He could have been a general, or a football coach, but a plaque on the pillar informed us that it was in fact Toscanini. It was typical of Matthew and me that we even noticed the sculpture. I doubt if any of the other students could have confirmed its existence if we'd mentioned it to them. We never did.
    The joke was exclusively between us and some unseen janitor or security guard. Every week or so for a whole term, on our way out of the building after our last class, Matthew and I would hurriedly tape a pair of eyeglass frames, crudely fashioned from torn notebook paper and scotch tape, across Toscanini's glaring eyes. The glasses were never there when we returned in the morning. They were probably torn away within minutes, but that didn't matter to us. The sight of the paper glasses on the bronze was funny, but only initially was it the point of the joke.
    The real point was saying it, again and again. “Toscanini's glasses.” As though those glasses were a landmark, the one certainty in an uncertain universe. Whatever subject was at hand, the glasses were the comparison we'd reach for first. “What didn't you understand? It was as clear as Toscanini's glasses.” Or “Cool, man, like Toscanini's glasses.” Or “No more urgent than, say, Toscanini's glasses.” If one of us forgot what he was going to say, the other would gently suggest, “Something about Toscanini's glasses?”
    It was a joke about futility, and at the same time a joke about will, and subjectivity. If we filibustered the glasses into existence between us did it matter that the paper-and-tape glasses didn't persist? Worlds seemed to hang in the balance of that unspoken question, and in a way they did. Our worlds. The glasses stood for our own paper-thin new sensibilities, thrust against the bronze of the adult world. Were we viable? Did we have to convince others, or was it enough just to convince ourselves?
    The question was made immediate by our careers as students. Did it matter that you were smarter than your English teacher if she could fail you for cutting class to smoke pot in the park? Matthew and I gave her that chance, and she took it. When college-application time rolled around, the costs were suddenly apparent. You couldn't get into an Ivy League school on the strength of private jokes.
    Actually, I did. For the essay section of my Yale application I drew a ten-page comic, of the soul-searching, R. Crumb variety. It took me three weeks, and it was by far the most sustained effort I'd made in the four years of high school, or in my life to that point. I remember Matthew calling me at home during those weeks, wanting to