|
The organ of Acquisitiveness is situated on the side of
the head above Alimentiveness. To find it, take the
middle of the ear as a starting point, and move the
finger up one inch and then forward the same distance.
Its facial sign is thickness of the nose, especially
noted in Jews whose arched nosed has, not inaptly, been
called the Commercial Nose. The organ prompts us to
accumulate and to store our surplus. It incites the
farmer, the mechanic, or professional man to diligence,
and is one of the sources of comfort and elegance in
life. Its regular activity distinguishes civilized man
from the savage. Yet the perversion of this organ, as
history all too fully notes, is excessively developed.
My hands know which ones to steal. They know what
I really want. I hardly have to look; I just let
those nimble wonders go to work. I'm like a pianist
who doesn't need to look at the keys, or an old lover
who has long ago memorized the sweet spots and the
right amount of pressure. My right arm rests on the
display case while the other directs the salesman to
select among the cameras on the shelves behind him. No
not that one, two more to the right. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry
I meant the row above that. With his back to me, I
scan the location of the other clerks, noting the
closest ones, getting a fix on their eyes. A constant
stream of chatter occupies my salesman. He's from
Morocco. We're becoming buddies. We're talking about
trance drumming. I lean forward against the counter to
indicate a camera that requires him to stand on
tip-toes and stretch out his arm. At the moment he's
fully extended, all five and a half feet of him splayed
out against the shelves as if he had been flung there
by a petulant giant, that's when my hand curls around
the back of the counter and fires its five-strong
assault. Right away, I'm in the goodies and a quick
graze of the fingertips yields my objective. Cool
delight begins to spill down the back of neck. Is that
the one for sale in the window? I'm asking. My palms
envelope the cylinder, my fingers are tuned to its
taper.
With the prize neatly shot deep past my shirt
cuff, I retract my arm slowly, shadowing the action by
tilting my body even further forward. My eyes flash
from one far peripheral to the other; all's quiet
except for some glassiness—a sign of staring—in the
eyes of the bearded fellow giving a desultory polish to
the counter at my far right. He could simply be bored,
or maybe he's seen everything. The cool trickle ebbs
as a hot-water faucet opens in my stomach. I withdraw
my hand just in time to drop my chin dejectedly into an
upturned palm. Jeez, maybe I saw it in another store
window. My Moroccan friend turns around and tucks his
shirt in, making a great show of his irritation. Yes,
we were great pals but now that's over. Now I'm
another knucklehead wasting time he could otherwise
have spent making a number one, top-dollar sale. My
apologies do little to repair the rift that has opened
so suddenly between us. I make for the door feeling,
all the way, the bearded one's eyes on me. Everyone in
the store could be gaping at my bare ass, or the word
THIEF tattooed across my shoulders. An embarrassed
buzz raises the hair on the back of my neck but I keep
walking, now only a step or two from the threshold. No
one calls out. No footsteps in pursuit. In front of
me the pedestrian throng is an inviting stream whose
current tugs me forward. Once I hit the pavement, I
swim leisurely to the center, the imagined hoof beats
from behind stalled at the banks.
I permit myself to breathe. My steps grow
quicker, not with fear, but with restrained
exhileration. As I cross the street, I let my trophy
slide down my sleeve into my hand. It fills my palm
with delicious weight. I strum the grooves on the
carbon-fibre barrel with my fingernails. Fingertips
trace and retrace the clip. My eyes dead-ahead, I slip
off the cap and massage the nib, the heart, the tip.
Were I given to showy display, not now but in more
relaxed circumstances, I could be blindfolded and
proceed to name the brand and model of any one of these
by touch alone. I might take one and twirl it between
my fingers till it was a blur, then, with one hand,
remove the cap, unscrew the shaft, dandle the cartridge
or give the ink bulb a playful squeeze. If I were
shameless, after reassembly, I would, in fair Palmer
Method, write my name on the palm of the hand that
holds the pen.
An Alfred Dunhill, the AD2000 model to be
specific. I'd seen advertisements in magazines, its
blacker-than-black finish too potent a lure to resist.
Odd, that a clip-joint like that would be selling so
sophisticated an instrument. It deserved to be
liberated from such philistine quarters. I deliver the
pen to the inside pocket of my jacket, affixing it
there with business-like elan. By now the trickle has
flooded me. My thumbs are hooked loosely in my pant's
pockets—I'm giving my prehensile workmen a ride— I
fairly skip down the street. I could easily begin
shouting about my coup, but instead I settle for
singing to myself, to the approximate tune La Donna
mobile, the words, I stole a pen today. I stole a pen
today.
To be sure, I steal other things—rare books,
belts, cans of smoked oysters, wristwatches, flashlight
batteries—when the need or opportunity presents
itself, but my vocation, so to speak, is the collection
of pens. Any and all pens. Expensive pens are nice to
own and a challenge to thieve, yet throwaway ballpoints
with a real estate agent's name are no less a prize to
me. More than any one pen's craftsmanship, the true
plumophile appreciates the plenitude of the species.
And in much the same way, I am drawn to the ample and
various opportunities for acquisition. Pens can be
pocketed out of your dentist's open drawer, unchained
from the counter at your bank, snatched in fistfuls
from under the myopic eye of local stationer, filtched
stealthily from a velvet case in an antique store,
stowed away home in bulk from the office, pickpocketed
from the gasman's pocket-protector, or spirited off
with stylish prestidigitation from a snotty Madison
Avenue clerk as he lays out three, or was it four?
Mount Blanc Meisterstucks. There is even the cheap Bic
handily vacuumed from a ladyfriend's purse. Indeed,
once such a boundary is crossed, daily life presents an
endless string of intimacies during which a writing
instrument might disappear. I once lifted a solid
silver Aurora from the desk of a bank officer with my
left hand as he shook my right and lamented being
unable to refund the fee I had been charged for a
recent overdraft: I signed my very next check with it.
Yes, even in our keybored kingdom, we still sign
our names. On checks, job applications, last wills and
testaments, birthday cards, casts, letters, yearbooks,
and driver's licenses. We still make our mark in ink.
With a pen. The pen is necessary. It is personal. It
is gripped with apprehension or hope as we append our
scrawl to a letter of resignation or a declaration of
love. Agents of purposeful bleeding, pens pour out
your name onto the world's tabla rasa. Cameras, some
primitives believe, can suck away your soul.
Similarly, with a pen in my pocket still warm from the
owner's hand, I like to think I have left them
scriptless. Stolen a piece of their name. Then again,
perhaps this is all a rather pompous way of describing
petty theft. So much embroidery around the simply fact
that I like to steal. And that I steal pens because
they are easier to take than Jacuzzis or wide-screen
TVs.
But I do cherish my scribblers, these ceramic,
metal or plastic stalks so ready at a thumb's click or
a good shake to make the mind legible. Flung as they
are in drawers, shoe boxes, travel bags, the junky ones
mixed with the jewels, you would never guess that each
batch is governed by rigorous affinities. There is a
drawer of those I have stolen from lovers, another
drawer of those taken from doctors. One bag holds only
pens filtched directly from people's pockets. An
unmarked box holds pens stolen at Christmas time,
another those stolen from from salesmen for whom I felt
some flicker of affection, and still another box
collects mostly cheap ballpoints that I obtained by
asking strangers for a handy pen, engaging them in
conversation, and then absconding with the now
forgotten loaner. A cup at the corner of my desk is
cramed with a bouquet of sleek plumes spirited, over
several trips, out of the best shops in Milan and Rome.
Of course, between any two pens there's only
modest difference. All stylistic flair must serve
basic requirements—that it can be grasped and that it
hold ink. The subtle variations, like those in, say, a
piano sonata, wax large to the plumophile precisely
because of this narrowness of range. In truth, though,
they're all still are pretty much the same. And so
their theft is really the same crime habitually
repeated. No doubt that's the deep grammar of it all.
The spasm of snatch and dash thrills, but stealing the
same thing, or really just one thing over and over is a
kind of lower-case grail quest. My singularity of
purpose lends a kind of purity to otherwise gross
robbery since what I'm really after, I suppose, isn't
some handheld booty but an idea—that penness that all
pens possess. And it's no surprise that so noble a
pursuit would yield salutory, restorative effects. A
stolen pen is like a Valium I might grope for in the
cabinet late some dismal night; as soon as it's in my
palm my breathing slows and the world eases back ever
so slightly—something small, something purposeful has
filled my hand. Now there's a thought worth jotting
down. That is, if I might borrow your pen for just a
second.
|
|
acquisi- tiveness
from "the handbook of phreno- logical organs"
albert mobilio
|