There’s
an old trick in Ethiopia they pull on unsuspecting foreigners. They call it the
Ole Jack Spittle. You are walking down a quiet street with few other
pedestrians, presumably minding your own business, when a young man coming
towards you hawks a loogie and lets it fly. Interestingly, it lands on you. No
doubt a humanitarian, our culprit’s terribly troubled at having inconvenienced
an upstanding citizen of the world. He immediately produces a scraggly old handkerchief
and begins rubbing about at your pant leg, abdomen – even groinal region if
need be – wherever that lingering trace of mucus might lie. In the process, he
pockets your wallet and whatever else can be had in this awkwardly drawn-out but
fiendishly insightful five-second exchange.
A
tactician’s wet-dream, the victim is caught unawares on several fronts: a) he is
not used to being spat upon; b) rarely
do complete strangers touch you in those
parts; c) seldom does anyone have the
decency to admit when they’ve wronged you, however unwittingly. (Your
correspondent once spat into the Chicago River on a windy day. The loogie shot down
and hooked a hard right before flying back up and over by 50 meters, spattering
against the shiny pink pate of an elegant old moneybags. Rather than introduce
himself and apologize, your correspondent ducked into Union Station and bought
a donut).
Off the
cuff, the rapid-fire chain of soul-searching questions raised by Ole Jack
Spittle is difficult to absorb: first, in assessing the element of surprise. Did that motherfucker just spit on me? Second
are difficult questions of ethics and honor: do I spit back or merely scold him?
Kick him in the knee or the shin? Smile and turn the other pant-leg, or act as
though nothing happened? Presumably most victims plop for the latter because, however
noncommittal one’s mood, at least three of the above involve direct
socio-physical contact with the “other.” Having landed on a new continent and only
left the airport ten minutes ago, one can be forgiven if not up for immediately
throwing down.
Yet before
you’ve settled upon a reasonable course of action (creepy smile followed by furious
bout of coughing), the cunning of history strikes again. Before you can say, mahogany
Muppet-faced Melungeon! Your man is wiping you down with a dirty rag, profusely
apologizing for that remarkably accurate ten-foot slobber-pop he landed right on
the little green alligator of your fanny-pack. Thus the second string of
tumultuous questions: have we met
before? And must we move so quickly? This
time the bastard’s really upped the ante, and there’s progressively less room
for our previous deranged brand of passivism.
But what is to be done? Am allowed I bop him
if he’s less than five feet tall? Will his boys jump in? Anyhow, what do I use?
A fist? A book? My bag? (We don’t want to break that old camera). Maybe I’ll
just be a good Franciscan sport and let him get on with it. After all, he’s
only trying to do the right thing. And thus, like a Bunga Bunga courtesan on
loan to Brussels, you close your eyes, clench your teeth and wait for it all to
end.
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Ole Jack
Spittle works because he strands his victims in the bloodlands between cowardice
and indecision. It’s the ace of trickery, the extra-Old World’s sweetest siren.
The Spittle betrays us for who we really are: waffling yellow perverts with no
idea what’s going on. It’s wonderful. On a random sidewalk in a strange new
land, out of sync and starved of context, privileged 21st century
man is revealed for the vast depository of muddled instincts and misguided intentions
that he is, or has the potential to become. A perfect storm, Ole Jack Spittle
only succeeds when an immoveable object (careless, dirt-poor, rambunctious and creative
Ethiopian youth) meets an unstoppable force (rapaciously “open-minded”
middle-class Western traveler).
(Spit on
a Chinese, Turk or Serb and you mightn’t get the same results).
But what
of our champion’s inner workings? Does he not suffer from the same tyranny of
choice? Sure as eggs is eggs and Camel is king, each morning he awakes to a new
and provocative pickle: to spit or not to spit? If so, where and upon whom? We
mustn’t forget that even if unsuccessful in fuddling about your pockets, Ole Jack
Spittle has already achieved the impossible. À la “too big too fail” and “stand
your ground,” it’s one of the world’s craftiest win-win criminal procedures:
either un-punishable when gone awry (“Hey man! I was only wiping my snot off
your trousers!”) or un-prosecutable when successful. Just like a pantless
breakfast-in-bed with Lloyd Blankfein, the victim is far too preoccupied with
being spat upon and fondled than being robbed. Even in the Nine Circles of Neoliberal
Traumzustand, physical sanctity and dignity still take the cake.
Still an
overwhelmingly win-win situation from our protagonist’s point of view. Even if Papa
Urchin VIII doesn’t acquire your money, he gets the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to slobber his will-to-power toward the top on every foppish foreigner he
passes on the street. (A godsend in a starving slumtropolis that’s festering
with thousands of hyper-remunerated UN bureaucrats).
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Thus is Ethiopia,
all and sundry will say, by far the ‘most peaceful country in Africa’. Which your
correspondent will not deny. There’s virtually no violent crime, armed robbery,
aggravated assault or anything more inappropriate than a good occasional
groping (no offense, women and skinheads of Cologne). Its people are prudent,
pacific, almost placatory. All day long, for years on end, they do things like perch
under trees, fiddle with prayer beads and sit in fields. Perch under trees. Fiddle
with prayer beads. Sit in fields. Perch
under trees. Fiddle with prayer beads. Sit in motherfucking fields. It bludgeons
the coked-up-I-is-the-angriest-birded mind, much less he who simply desires a
maté and a good book to pass the time in this vale of tears.
Drive seventeen
miles in any direction. A lifetime of bumpy gravel roads with neither vehicle nor
pedestrian to speak of. A horizon as barren as Fiorina’s soul and Scott
Walker’s scalp (if only the Chippewa had been responsible for that glabrous work
of art, and not “banging his head on the cabinet”). Nothing but parched hills
and fallow fields, sterile sweeps of crusted yellow earth. In a clearing is a
flat and sun-stained plateau. Right in the middle, hundreds of feet from
anything – the road, the nearest tree, the closest donkey – a middle aged mudasooka
is simply posted up. What mean you,
demand the eager masses: doing what? Just sitting
there, since the dawn of time, in the middle of the hotdamn field. Not
Indian-style, not contemplative, not i-motherfucking-ronic. Casually seated, as
though a bus stop, a clucker’s park bench, the lower Manhattan arraignment
room. For hours and hours and hours and hours and hours on end. Not quite sure what’s
more riveting or relevant: the why or
the how?
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Many put
the Ethiopian’s remarkably peaceful composure and awe-inspiring ability to sit
in a field for fifteen hours down their ancient Orthodox piety; the mysticism
that thwarted a thousand years of Muslim invasions; the rock-hard stoicism
they’ve inherited from Sheba herself; or simply the fatalism that numbs a
country perennially plagued by famine. It’s undoubtedly a combination of them
all. Yet among the would-be criminal (which lurks in the breast of every man),
there’s a far more plausible explanation. Why resort to violence and pillage, fall
prey to misery and despair, when you can spit on foreigners with impunity and
take their money?
That’s
why Ole Jack is so much more than a measly career, a paltry pastime, a gimmicky
way to fund one’s khat-and-cold-beer routine. Nor, we must adamantly stress, is
it merely a way of life. Ole Jack Spittle’s an ethos, a justice system, a Weltanschauung
for the weak-pocketed-and-heavy-hearted. It soothes the grievances of the soul;
it rights historic wrongs. Grandfather perish under Fascist reprisals?
“I just spat on that Italian and he didn’t do shit.” Fresh to the capital from the drought-ravaged sticks? “I loogied
all over that hooker-hounding, caviar-eating Kraut and he didn’t do shit.” And though ideal, your winnings
needn’t come in monetary form. Also up for the grabs is any number of titillating
wonders: whitey’s peanuts, lighter, passport or Piccadilly keychain will also do.
And let
us remember: behind every catch, however meager, is a heroic tale of bravery,
knavery, conquest and cunning, victory snapped from the jaws of defeat. The audacity
of dope. “Christ may or may not have risen, but you see that Norwegian in the
suit and tie? I just spat on that bitch and took his chapstick.”
Such is
the brilliance of Ole Jack Spittle. A tactical maneuver combining the element
of surprise and the speed of confusion, sprinkled with a divine spark of the
absurd. It salivates with stealth, it vitiates with vigor, slobbering sublimity
from the crooked timber of its rotting teeth. Good thing we’d read about it in
the guidebook and jumped out the way as he hawked and took aim.