Day 2, Part 3: Still reading from the bottom up

I was not a spy. Being a spy would have been far too adventurous for me.

Surit and I lost touch after she decided to pursue "the struggle" with more vigor. Later, she re-embraced her Judaism and started training at a Kahane camp in upstate New York. Years after we dated, I swear I saw her on CNN coverage of the Gaza Strip clearings, pouring boiling hot excrement on Israeli soldiers who had come to move the settlers.

[Editor's Note: Meir Kahane was a late 20th century Jewish extremist and rabbi who founded in the United States an organization called the Jewish Defense League and in Israel a group called Kahane'hai. The group's symbol was a black field surmounted by a fist soaring from a yellow Star of David. United in believing the world had conspired in an anti-Semitic plot against the Jewish nation, Kahane was a thorn in the side of Israeli politicians for many years, as he articulated the furthest outreaches of extremism on the national question. Whereas Palestinian extremists advocated driving Israel into the sea, Kahane advocated driving the Arabs out of Israeli territory entirely. Followers of Kahane were involved in terrorist activities, including the massacre of Muslim believers at prayer in Hebron and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin. Kahane himself was a victim of terrorist violence, having been assassinated in New York City by Palestinian agents. The author is correct in his reference to "camps," specifically a camp in New York State that sought to train young men and women in paramilitary tactics in preparation for living in Gaza and West Bank settlements.]

I guess you could say that by breaking up with her, I probably saved myself a lot of headaches, not to mention boiling excrement.

** Danger recoiled as Gascoigne advanced closer to him, her body undulating beneath her cleavage-bearing top and skin-tight micro-mini skirt. She licked her blood red lips as she backed him into a corner, near the band saw and the power lathe.

"Why are you wasting all this time on a silly li'l ol' red calf," the journalist purred. "Why don't we do something else in this barn - like go for a roll in the hay."

Danger closed his eyes and thought of summer camp, when he was 13 years old. He was running out with the other guys to the edge of the camp, to go for the last swim before nightfall. But that night, something was different.

That night Gordy, with his golden hair and insouciant pout, had hinted there would be a "surprise" when the boys got to the end of the swimming pier. And there was - a boat.

A rowboat, intended to be rowed across the lake to the girls' camp on the other side. Danger remembered his discomfort as the other guys who had seemed so upright during morning Bible verses talked with excitement about rowing across the river and necking with girls. Girls they weren't married to.

Danger remembered what had kept him on the boys' side of the river that night - Potiphar's wife. Now, in the present, standing in a barn with the smell of fresh hay and jasmine perfume clouding his senses, the passage from Genesis came to him again. He shoved Ginger backwards, sending her tumbling and cursing into the hay.

"Sorry, doll," he quipped as he ran out the door. "Hay is for horses!" **

The Biblical allusion is to Genesis 39, when Joseph is a servant in Potiphar's house. Potiphar's unnamed wife tries to seduce Joseph, even grabbing his loincloth, but he runs off. She then accuses him of trying to rape her and he goes to prison. There's a famous Rembrandt painting depicting the scene, actually.

As you may have guessed, "Forecast: Apocalypse" indicates that Jason Danger - and, indeed, Jason Huccurl, although by now you've probably also guessed that in mind they're hopelessly mixed up together - has certain notions about women. All those long nights at summer camp and fears over cleavage-bearing tops - many people would say he's got an unhealthy fixation.

I don't know about that, although I suspect that our definitions of "cleavage-bearing" and "skin-tight" are probably very different. Sure, Danger/Huccurl is hung up on sex, but it seems like that's the flipside of the way most people are hung up on it - by constantly thinking about it, I mean.

But the point here isn't to talk about sex, although we will address that soon. The point is to talk about the Authorship Theories.

One of the key activities for me lately has been trying to get a picture of who Jason Huccurl is and why he wrote "Forecast: Apocalypse." On the one hand, I realize this is trivial; I don't believe, for instance, that an author has more of a right to interpret his work than any reader. But I've invested enough time in thinking about the fictional world summoned up by Huccurl that I want to have my curiousity satisfied. So far, I have three theories:

THEORY NUMBER ONE: Huccurl is sincere.

I've already sketched the basic contours of this. I picture a chubby, earnest Christian who idolizes TV weathermen and thinks the world is a conspiracy designed to persecute good, god-fearing Christians. Maybe he's got a suppressed sadistic streak, although I doubt it; if we were dealing with a sadist, I think Jason Danger would do a lot more than push Ginger Gascoigne into some hay.

But this Huccurl, Sincere Huccurl, is more than just someone who wants to get a political or theological point across. He's a guy deeply unhappy with his life who tries to escape by the creation of a fictional alter ego named Jason Danger. I mean, for God's sake, they have the same first name.

Huccurl is a guy who lived in a cramped apartment and read dispensationalist novels at night for amusement. I'm picturing him alone, without a girlfriend, alienated from his co-workers, listening to a lot of talk radio. Walter Benjamin once wrote, "Why does a glimpse inside a lit window at night always reveal a solitary man sitting alone, bent over a table, in the grip of some trifling problem? But such glimpses are the germ cells of Kafka's work." Such glimpses are the germ cells of Sincer Huccurl's work, too.

Jason Danger is a guy with a semi-glamorous job (although maybe it's a commentary on just how much Huccurl has been crushed by life to note that his idea of glamour is a local TV weatherman), an ex-Navy SEAL, a guy who up and leaves his home to go on a daring adventure. He has a gorgeous girlfriend, he makes friends easily, he has the fear and respect of his enemies, and dangerous women like Ginger Gascoigne throw themselves at him. And he can hold his own in complex theological arguments:

** O'Hair smiled, and his grin looked like the way a snake's would if a snake could smile.

"You are aware, Mr. Danger, are you not, that there are many different ways to interpret the Bible," he said. "Why, the first exegete, the priest Origen, argued that there are at least three levels to intrepretation: the literal, the allegorical, and the spiritual. It was the last of these, he argued, that was the most important meaning. The literal he thought should be dispensed with early on."

Danger narrowed his eyes.

"And you, Mr. O'Hair, are probably not aware that there's only one interpretation of the Bible that matters - God's interpretation," he said.

At the mention of that word, O'Hair flinched in a display of reptilian disgust, but he quickly regained his composure.

"Ah yes," he said, walking over to where the lever of the trapdoor was located. "'God.' Well, God seems to have abandoned you at the moment, hasn't He?" **

By the way, I kind of identify with O'Hair.

As appealing as Sincere Huccurl is to me, I realize he isn't the only conceivable author.

THEORY NUMBER TWO: Commercial Huccurl

This guy is much less interesting to me than Sincere Huccurl. Commercial Huccurl is also overweight, but less so, and he has friends, a girlfriend he vaguely dislikes, and expensive clothes that somehow still look shabby on him. He's living in this apartment on his way up the ladder, although this path is blocked somewhat by the fact that he's always launching into a new hustle, too fast to see the old ones to fruition.

Commercial Huccurl is a guy who saw that the Left Behind novels sold more than 70 million copies, that imitators soon sprang up all over the place, and saw his chance to make a quick buck.

To this end, he did a little bit of research on pre-trib dispensationalism, assembled a cast of characters dumb enough to appeal to the shit market he was aiming for, and started writing. His goal was neither to educate nor to alleviate the misery of his existence, but to make money quickly and without much effort.

But he never finished, because Commercial Huccurl doesn't have a lot of follow-through. He's always onto the next get-rich scheme even while he gets ahead at work by sucking up to the boss rather than being better or smarter than everyone else.

I kind of hate Commercial Huccurl.

THEORY NUMBER THREE: Hipster Huccurl.

In some ways, this is the least appealing of the authorship theories, partly because it hits a little too close to home. I won't mince words: Hipster Huccurl is a douchebag.

Unlike his shadow brothers Sincere and Commercial, Hipster Huccurl is whippet-thin, in part because his diet consists largely of Camel cigarettes and doses of high-strength coffee drinks. He fills his small apart with kitsch decor, has a group of friends who all share the same opinions like some kind of hivemind, and takes pleasure above all in "ironic" appreciation of trash culture.

He has LPs by Jack Van Impe and has seen the Kirk Cameron-starring "Left Behind" movie. He has a black Jesus action figure and occasionally wears a "WWJD" bracelet as a joke. His bedstand reading consists of Refuel and Revolve, New Testament translations published as glossy magazines aimed at, resspectively, teenage boys and teenage girls.

Hipster Huccurl sat down to write "Forecast: Apocalypse" mostly as a joke, something to post in serial form on his blog, or maybe even get excerpted in MacSweeney's. He doesn't take his characters seriously enough to see them as stand-ins for himself, because he's supremely satisfied with who he is. He abandoned the novel mid-way through largely because doing research made him bored. As we speak, he is watching a bootleg Wendy's training video and laughing uproariously as the black kid does the "how to make the burgers" rap.

Of course, none of these caricatures are the real Jason Huccurl. In a way, they're all versions of me. Like Hipster Huccurl, I reconcile my high level of education with my lowly status in life by indulging in smug, ironic appreciations of things whose creators I can feel superior to. Like Commercial Huccurl, I like the idea of getting something for nothing, or at least the idea of getting something for putting miniscule effort into writing a trashy novel. And like Sincere Huccurl, I mean well, but I have a thing about women.

This requires some explanation.