On Hardasses

Britt Walford, the drummer and co-songwriter for the noise rock project Slint, once housesat for Steve Albini. This was in Chicago, near the sports bar Leader's where personnel of the Albini-affiliated label Touch & Go would hang out on any given night. Given the occasion, Walford came by the first night he was housesitting to join his labelmates. He spent the night trying to teach them the rules to card games he invented and drunkenly demonstrating various tricks with an outsized hunting knife he owned. Eventually Walford started playing darts by himself by throwing the knife at the dartboard, dislodging it, backing up several feet and throwing it again. After about a dozen throws he was escorted out by the manager. Label founder Corey Rusk later noted that every gash left by the knife was at the inner circle of the board, with a wide amalgamation of gashes at the dead center.

Walford returned to Albini's house unable to find his keys. He pulled himself up onto the veranda to try and open the attic window but it was locked as well. Albini's cat scratched at the glass to be let out. Walford had to piss. Walford climbed back under the veranda and proceeded to kick the door in until it broke down. He took a piss, then went to the basement to look for tools to try and fix the door with. He went back downstairs, put the door back in its frame, placed a 2x4 across the width of the door, hammered it back in place with the butt of his hunting knife and promptly passed out on the couch. The cat scratched at the attic window to be let in. Walford woke up and let the cat in. He climbed out from the same window and jumped down from the veranda. Albini came home weeks later to learn that, with the door nailed shut, Walford had been climbing in and out from the attic window the entire time that he'd been gone. He also found that Walford had somehow broken the toilet, causing it to overflow and drip down through the floorboards into the basement where Albin's home studio was. His cat was seen lapping up the water that pooled under the corroded body of a snare drum. When asked about it Albini said he wasn't sure Walford knew how houses worked.

I actually knew Britt Walford during a brief period when we both worked at a bakery in the East Village. I had started there as a means to fill time before the beginning of my discipleship. Britt had already been working there and trained me on register. The way he fixated on minor functions of the card reader or the thermal printer, not for their respective purposes but for the tactile, repetitious sensation they produced when used, made it apparent to me that he had been educated in a progressive schooling system.

The Graham Brown school in Louisville, Kentucky where Britt grew up, emphasized independence, creativity and mature decision-making for its student body over traditional measures of intelligence, like test scores and rote memorization. Although band wasn't a required class for Britt while attending Graham Brown, when he signed up for it he argued for his instrument to be tapes. He found a vintage LP of Anton Webern conducting a waltz by Schubert in the school's collection and recorded it onto a blank tape, then recorded said tape in every succeeding day of class onto another tape until the sound of the piece achieved a mucus-y quality that receded only in lapses of allegro. The school permitted this and even permitted Britt's hundreds of absences when he would skip band practice to go play drums at home. In fact attendance at Graham Brown was completely optional, though when I knew him Britt never missed a day at the bakery. To be precise he missed one day before wordlessly swinging by and leaving an overdue notice the same evening of his shift reading:

`Man, I am just so embarrassed from yesterday and I decided I just gotta buy a dictionary and get this whole reading thing sorted out. So I'm gonna be out for a while until that's done and shit. Make sure to take the chocolate mandingo donut holes out of the freezer by the way I'm pretty sure last night I forgot. Britt.`

The incident in question refers to when an Italian customer came by and contested the details of a cake she ordered. She took issue with the lack of frosting on the head to indicate the outline of a frenulum (it was an erotic bakery). Though the lady didn't have the vocabulary to name English word for the tissue that connects the head of the penis with the shaft, we both understood and I signaled to correct the mistake. But Britt remained adamant to be on the same page as the sesquilingual customer and tried to explain to her she meant "frenulum." She said she didn't understand. Britt explained what it was. Again she said she didn't understand and asked Britt to spell the word so she could look it up in her Italian-English dictionary. Britt then inexplicably stormed out of the bakery in tears before coming back in to clock out of his shift, still crying, and leave again.

Britt apparently never learned to read or write at Graham Brown so he quit Master Bakers in a huff in order to teach himself to do so. I had hardly known him one week and was now in charge of all his former duties. This was fine with the owners Ivan and Irene because it reduced the cost of payroll. A married couple, they acquired the business during the S&P crisis with the intention of reorienting it from a normal bakery to one with a more urban flare. Once the SBA loans dried up they were forced to reorient again for a more veritable market, so Hustle & Dough soon became Master Bakers. After this point Ivan discovered that the shop was a honeypot for single middle-aged women and divorced Irene to cash in on a lifetime's worth of loose sex. The business remained in her name and Ivan made it his life's work to keep it afloat. Not only did this mean he was in everyday but that he was also steadfast on Master Bakers having the most anatomically accurate products on the market.

"Marko come here," he said to me on the day after Britt left.

"Yeah?"

"Do you see this? Can you tell me what this is?"

"Those are the chocolate mandingo donuts we sell."

Ivan grasped the bridge of his nose with his thumb and pointer finger, "Just... touch them please."

I touched them.

"Well? How long have you been doing it like this?"

"What do you mean."

"I mean THEY'RE COLD. We cannot sell a COLD product, especially when they're in the shape of something that is famously WARM. Do you know what happens when the inside of a pairs of testicles drop below 90 degrees?"

"I'm guessing that the sperms die."

"THEY DIE. So why are they cold?"

"Uh, Britt left--"

"I don't care what Britt did. Take them out of the freezer before you close up. Don't make this mistake again."

"Right, OK" I said and I left to go deal with prepping the blue frosting.

"Also," Ivan started again, "you smell fucking bad. Go buy some deodorant."

"Right, OK."

I felt bad about harping on about Britt but because of him disappearing I was pulling 12 hour shifts, doing twice as much work and being blamed for not knowing things I had never been taught. It also made me wonder if Britt experienced this same kind of scrutiny or if his spacey nature acted as a shield against hardasses like Ivan. A person can trigger someone's sympathy just by having an air of whimsy about them. If you are guaranteed to learn anything from an alternative education it's that knowledge of the head and knowledge of the heart are one and the same thing, found out in the world through daily experiences. Reading, writing and knowing how houses work are, however, not a guarantee. Nevertheless, Britt's real enthusiasm for wanting to learn to make penis cakes was all that he needed to avoid Ivan's perfectionist wrath. He was also really good at darts. So I couldn't help but feel jealous. Rather than moping, I went to the library and borrowed everything I could find about alternative schooling. I wanted to adopt the mindset of someone who had been reared in a Montessori, a Summerhill, or a Graham Brown. Not for my sake, but for Ivan's.

***

Before I continue with this story I should shed some light on what I mean by the term hardass. A hardass is a type of permanently grouchy person who justifies their behavior and outlook with a system of outsourced values, communicated in the form of lectures. An asshole is a similar type of person but usually acts without explicit justification. A dickhead is more similar and may try and justify his attitude but only ever in an ironic, self-defeating fashion, as though he knows he shouldn't be this way. A hardass is unique because they are as self-aware of their meanness as they are self-righteous about it, and refer to concepts like hard work, the "real world" and generational malaise to support it. They lack irony because they take their false-consciousness to be reality itself. They also misinterpret pain and stress for signs of success, which they seek out masochistically. Famous hardasses include Adolf Hitler, Kobe Bryant, King Herod, Cesar Millan and Dr. Phil.

This hardass value system is also part and parcel with the moral philosophy of cynicism, a wholly modern tendency which Peter Sloterdijk had defined as `a kind of shameless, 'dirty' realism that, without regard for conventional moral inhibitions, declares itself to be for how 'things really are.'` By contrast, the ancient kynicism practiced by Diogenes and the historical Jesus was a mode of self-preservation that puts itself in direct tension with the world that denies the kynic his peace. The cynic/kynic divide is not so much a dichotomy than a perverted variant at odds with the real thing. Take, for example, in John 8:1-11 when the Pharisees tried baiting Jesus into saying something incriminating about a whore they found. He ignores them by drawing shapes in the dirt. They then threaten to stone her, per Rabbinic law, which prompts Jesus to say, go ahead, if you're so pure yourself, before returning to his doodling. Discouraged, the Pharisees disperse and leave Jesus with the whore, who observes him as he continues to trace his finger through the sand.

Just what Jesus was writing at the time is irrelevant; the sand was simply more interesting to him than whatever hateful spiel the Pharisees were regurgitating. In this encounter a rift appears between the two parties and we come to identify with the sinner between them, beckoned to choose the right path. But out in the world, this path remains concealed by the cynical words of the Pharisees, who still dominate all spheres of public life, where all good things are made bad and all bad things are said to be good. The cynic takes the language of capital as gospel and continues to spread his "good news". Take jobs, for example. Economists mourn jobs being cut from the economy. Longshoremen drink themselves to death at the lack of work. Jobs are the most sacrosanct thing in society, we hinge all our hopes on jobs. Yet anywhere else, both in media and reality, having a job is considered pure misery. We will do anything to leave our jobs. Yet when new technologies come around they rarely make our lives easier, in a roundabout way they often add on more work, or, God forbid, they automate and take away our jobs. Because that is the sacred cow of capital and the key to spinning the gears of the planet-sized machine of pain we live inside of.

Now take education. Experiences in primary school are often cited, across the political spectrum, as inspiration for radicalization later in the life. No surprise that this is also where most people encounter hardasses for the first time. The education system is a state-run sanctuary for them. Cuts to funding only make this worse and send private alternatives down the same cynical path. Boredom and desperation are taken to be signs of effective pedagogy in all cases. But why is it like this? Because power must pervert the idea of freedom at every opportunity. Children are free beings, which implies a natural curiosity for the world: they will learn no matter what. It's only a question of containing them and engaging them with the right things. This stop-gap between life and freedom is where power steps in and perverts things. Take Erich Fromm's word for it: `Discipline, dogmatically imposed, and punishment create fear; and fear creates hostility. This hostility may not be conscious and overt, but it nevertheless paralyzes endeavor and authenticity of feeling. The extensive disciplining of children is harmful and thwarts sound psychic development.` Pain is what cynicism supplies and what the hardass thrives on.

One can reject power on political terms but this is usually outside the means of regular people. Fortunately, rejecting the will of cynicism is effortless. This is accomplished by doing mostly nothing while suffering as little as possible. When a lounging Diogenes was visited by Alexander the Great he told the conqueror to step out from his access to the sun. A kynical outlook takes any appeal to power and cuts it down to size, to that of a mere cynic, a crony, a hardass. The cynic is revealed as a foil to the kynic. The former is pliant to his circumstances, the latter the same no matter what.

When philosopher David Hume was in university he decided that the lectures bored him and resolved to spend his time learning privately in the library instead. Eventually he dropped out. Once on his own he found trouble finding a job. By 25 he was broke and began to see the need for a degree. He returned to school for as long as it took for him to matriculate and then he went on to write A Treatise of Human Nature. In it he says, `We learn the influence of our will from experience alone`. For every one David Hume there is about twenty million more men who dropped out of college, did not return and became longshoremen instead. Hume's words bears true for them as well.

***

I started my next shift early to start working on a mounting list of specialty orders. No one else was doing it, so it was up to me. I had to teach myself as I went along, accepting any surprises along the way. Like a whirling Italo-prog classical crossover suite I allowed the cake-making journey to wash over me. I layered the cream and sponge in slow intervals, one after another, so as to achieve a very natural form. I cradled the shape then smacked it gently, as though to comfort the pastry, and then I would stop, stand back, and appreciate the shape it was taking. As I repeated this sequence again and again, a tantric-like rhythm developed out from my craft, leaving me exhausted but pleased. I whipped my rag out from my belt and wiped my brow. I sat down and drank a Coke we had in backstock. After several more minutes of sitting and drinking Cokes Ivan arrived at the shop and came tumbling down the stairs.

"What are you doing down here?" he asked.

"I'm making a cake," I said.

"One cake and it's not even done. How long have you been down here?"

"Since 6:30."

"So you've spent 2 hours down here away from customers to not even finish one cake."

"Well what's the rush."

"What?"

"I said what's the rush."

Ivan paused, staring blankly, then started forcibly laughing so as to unsettle me. He stopped laughing and wiped the mean smile off his face. He began lecturing me, "I don't expect you to know this because you're young, but life is going to get a lot harder for you. It's gonna be one shitass day after another. I don't know if it's this younger generation or what but in any other kitchen you'd get your ass handed to you in a wet brown paper bag talking to your superior like that. Once a sous chef chased me around with a butcher knife because--" Ivan continued for the better part of an hour, lecturing me on responsibility and what it means to be a man living in Bill Clinton's America. I could hear customers begin to pour in and became antsy. This spelled trouble for me and I was already being yelled at for a previous fuck-up. One punishment in the present precluding another punishment in the future, a classic double bind. I reassured myself by remembering that in the most literal sense it did not matter. Shedding the anxiety, I tried my best to listen since that's all that I could do. Eventually Ivan wrapped up, "...and I think that it all started with my uncle, have you ever had a mean uncle? He basically raised me and as a kid I was thinking the whole time like, where is my dad? Turns out my uncle was my dad and my step-dad was a boyfriend my mom had who later disappeared on a trucking route to Spokane. Anyway, my uncle, who was my dad, always gave me a hard time, and I think that's what makes me such a perfectionist now. I don't want you to take it personally. And I appreciate you listening."

“Yeah it’s no big deal.”

“Thanks. Alright if you want to take care of the customers upstairs I’ll get to work batching out the rest of these orders.”

“Oh I already finished them all.”

“What?”

“Yeah I spent the night here.”

“You said you got here this morning.”

“I meant 6:30 at night. I figured that I needed the practice so I used up everything from the walk-in to prep for the next two weeks.”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

"I just told you."

"Well I don't pay you to stay here all night!"

“I thought that you might appreciate it.”

“No! I don’t!” he shouted and then moved past me in a huff to the fridges where the cakes were kept. “What the fuck-—these are all normal cakes in here,” he said.

“Yeah I made them all normal cakes.”

“What!!” Ivan frantically searched for anything phallic, testicular or gluteal among the shelves as the sound of the entrance doorbell chimed again and again. Hopeless, he turned back around, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, “Why did you do that!!”

“Well what’s the difference?”

“What do you mean? We’re an erotic bakery! The cakes have to be erotic!”

“Calm down, it’s only cakes.”

“What?”

"I said take it easy."

"No!! You're fired"

“You can’t fire me, I don’t actually work here.”

And it was true, on my first day I had simply walked in behind the counter and acted like I worked there. To my knowledge Britt never returned and Master Bakers has since been replaced by a Barre studio.