The Ballad of Johnny F.

After Johnny F. died, brilliant though he was, a scholar of international stature and wide public (and private, quibblers would add) renown; and in spite of the unwavering attention the world lavished upon him (even in death as it had in the day-to-day drag), Johnny F’s parents were at wit’s end: they wanted nothing more than to be left alone and to forget about their phenomenal yet now kaput son for a while. His fame was his and his alone, they maintained. Why should it now be their lot to shoulder the burden his vast notoriety had spawned, not to mention the puerile imagery and obsequious nose and mouth dribbling that went with it? That was the question Johnny F.’s father had been asking since the funeral. For as the sacred walls of British media tightened round the family, and its members found themselves the focus of an increasingly myopic (some said stick-in-the-eye blind) public eye, the F’s grew ever more uncomfortable in their defenselessness and inability to connect with the reigning social and political milieu, a fact exemplified by the appearance of subversive libertine practices among the undergrads at the college and a purposeful elitist under-girding of the gamut of political issues by the graduate contingent which, even on its dourest and most hung-over days, looked upon itself and its aspirants as the uber-race, as proto-elites, if you will, a class above all classes; chomping at the prehistoric aristocratic bit, demanding to insert its ideas into the mainstream and put its money (or more likely its fathers’ money) where its mouths were (or better, where its mouths wished to be!). And for all of us, that was a day and will ever be a day of consternation and surprise, one which, should it happen again, will find me, well, fishing, either up-state or in the Cleveland Aquapark, depending on my need and mood, and more importantly, upping the levels of my tetracyclic antidepressants and/or reuptake inhibitors. For I can handle myself in almost any situation, be it business or social, serious or serio-comical, and I always appear—to interested and disinterested parties alike, I believe—in full control of my person, to the point where I easily might (at any time) find the gumption to apply for work at Gary's Beverage or any of the other high-end beer and potato chip outlets that unselfconsciously dot this and other similarly sized metropolitan areas.