2

I wasn’t always being eaten by a bear. 24 hours ago I was stretched out on the self-inflating couch of Camp Image Team with a cold Bud in my hand, smelling the outdoor smells of our dainty forest clearing — some pleasant, others repulsive — and supervising the erection of a large six-man tent by the six small, erectionless men of my department. By supervising I mean offering them encouragement and gentle criticism as they wrestled incompetently with a complex umbrella-like nylon pod full of sticks and stakes and strings. That was me doing what I’m best at: delegating. I’m not the kind of manager who gets in his subordinates’ way when they’re busy, unless they’re doing something wrong — and yeah, they usually are — but the thing is, the management wisdom is, you have to let them make those mistakes, and then gently rub their noses in it, for them to learn. And it’s easier to delegate like that with a cold Bud in your hand.

And I would know all about that, because I’m sipping one right now! That’s right! One cold, foamy cylinder of civilization’s finest beer. I waited for my opening, I concentrated my will, made a superhuman effort and with one heroic lunge I grasped the cardboard box from Wally’s Super Supply, dragged it over here and ripped it open to find: a hero’s snacktime! There’s Slim Jims, Bud, Bud Light (Edna’s), Cliff Bars, Diet Pepsi (also Edna’s), and I’ve barely scratched the surface. Man, there’s something perfect about a Slim Jim and a cold Bud … even when it’s cold outside, and you’re cold, and something warm would be really nice. But a cold Bud has such powerful iconic cachet; it’s telling every cell in my body that things are going to be just fine. It’s telling my body The King Is Here, and This One’s For Me. Now is the moment in my life when I must draw on my culture for strength.

I guess I’ve bled some. I haven’t passed out or anything, at least not since the jack slipped and the car fell. All in all, I’m surviving. I’ve got my fluids, my meds, my snacks and my positive mental outlook. My prognosis is excellent. I could use some bug repellent, but whatever. A local crew of ants seems to want to lay claim to my hair, but whatever.

Image Team is going to find me. Or rather, Image Team is going to find some competent Search & Rescue professionals, who will then find me. Image Team couldn’t find their own asses with a digital ass detector and a trail of breadcrumbs. But they ought to know how to delegate by now, isn’t that what I’ve been trying to teach them? They’ve got Baumer’s Toyota and their phones and a big-ass radio and it’s only thirty miles of unpaved road to a paved road, and from there to a ranger station should be quick enough. They had better go get rangers. They had damn well better not wander out here looking for me on their own.

Of course, since this is supposed to be Team Building Weekend, they’ll probably do exactly that, search for me on their own. Shit. I can totally see it: Frank Baumer will act all tough and give one of his gay motivational speeches from that book in the men’s bathroom, like he always does when he’s late on a project and has no ideas — which is usually — and then Halsey, always driven to kiss the largest ass he can smell, will suggest the group elect Baumer as an temporary leader, a sort of ersatz Me until the official Me can be found! And Wollencott and Frink, the Seattle Yes-Men’s Chorus, will think that idea’s a peach, an idea with legs, one they can get behind. And once they’re done humping the legs of Halsey’s gay peach, Baumer will give another fucking speech about big shoes to fill, footsteps of giants, not worthy, but okay, call me Boss if it makes you feel better. (Note to self: fire Baumer.) And then they’ll unpack the little Motorola two-way radios I bought them, totally useless beyond one mile, and they’ll fan out in all directions, calling my name and making noise and generally screaming HEY BEARS, COME AND EAT US. And then the bears will come and eat them. It’ll serve them right for trying to be a team without me. Those guys are nothing without me.

If you existed and were here listening, you might ask just what sort of team-building exercise we had in mind, me and my department of trend-reversal morons, to travel so very far from our natural element, specifically our air-conditioned offices in the sleek twenty-second floor of Seattle’s famous Merch building. What life-bending experience did we think this place could offer, to weld us together into a mighty unstoppable five-headed Godzilla of trend-reversal? Shit, I don’t know, I don’t believe in any of that teamwork bullshit. A team, really, is a group of people who do what I tell them to do, or else I fire them.

But basically we came to kill bears. Frink and Baumer apparently come up here every year to shoot ducks and fish and whatever else is small and defenseless and moves slowly and is halfway edible. And all those guys have been whining to me for some kind of off-site for months now, ever since I made the management error of letting one of our recalled hair product clients personally congratulate them for the supposedly excellent job they did following my orders and implementing my plan. Like that’s not their job. The hair clients even gave us all little gift boxes full of — no kidding! — the self-same recalled hair product that we had just so deftly convinced the hair-washing public was safe and sexy and wouldn’t cause excessive scabbing or patchy baldness. Right … like I’m going to put that on my head. But the boys in Image Team did, and it did something to their brains — it made them think they deserved things.

So here’s my whole doe-eyed, scabby-scalped department whining for an off-site, and then Frink and Baumer pitch this fishing, sniping, blowing duck calls and wearing orange underwear outside our pants in the beautiful Alaskan wilderness package. I immediately called them on their total lack of balls. I told them: boys, you are a pathetic pack of pussies if you need high-powered ammo to kill a duck. Ted Nugent uses a bow and arrow, for Christ’s sake, and he kills moose and bears. Eats them, too. Raw! Drinks their blood! Subsists on nothing but moose burgers and bear sandwiches for months at a time, and then comes back home to NugeLand and writes deep, plaintive songs about the human condition. You little girls couldn’t kill a moose if I sedated it, strapped it into an electric chair for you, showed you an instructional video and held your soft, trembling hands.

And of course they knew I was right. Being right is my job. The thing is, some managers hire people they’re excited to work with. I prefer to hire people I’m excited to dominate. I don’t want to work with my subordinates, I want them to work for me, instead of me. I’m the idea man, and in marketing that’s the only man who counts. Delegation means never getting caught up in lame, tedious, time-wasting “work.” I create, and I delegate. That’s all I do.

And while the delegating side of my brain berated my weak staff, the creative side of my brain got to thinking how very client-impressing a large bearskin rug and a stylishly taxidermied bear’s head might look in the client-impressing outer lounge, or perhaps even more so in the deal-clinching inner lounge, behind the wet bar. I hear that a creative over at Vermion has a bear’s paw humidor on his desk. Probably bought it at Crate & Barrel, or bearparts.com. But the point is, I heard about it. It made an impression, on a whole chain of jaded industry people linking that Vermion creative to me, and if Vermion’s making an impression, then we’d damn well better be making a bigger one.

To make a long story short, I sweet-talked the Ups and the Veeps into bankrolling a little bear-bagging expedition for Image Team, under the excuse of “departmental bonding.” They love teamwork, those Ups and Veeps. Teamwork is their mantra. In fact the senior partners fly to Thailand together each January for three weeks, to do coke and fuck hookers, as a team, and to strategize the future of the firm. That’s how they bond. It’s said that when a group of really rich men fuck the same hooker, it breaks down the masculine neuroses that prevent communication between them, and allows them to think and act as one, or some such faggitude. All I know is, this time next year I’m going to be on that team-building expedition and not this one. Because the Ups love me, and the Veeps are starting to hear good things about me, and when I plant a big black bearskin in the inner lounge — or maybe in the executive john, if it wouldn’t get peed on — and when they see me sporting my new bionic foot, and I tell them the story of how I bagged that big one for the firm, well, that’s going to make an impression that’s just huge.

Still stuck. I tried wriggling, yanking, squirming. I can’t feel my legs too clearly, but that’s just fine considering. I’m biding my time, waiting for my opening. Mister Bear is fast asleep. I’d be asleep too, if Mister Bear didn’t snore so incredibly loud. I thought animals were supposed to be silent, so they can’t get snuck up upon and eaten by other animals. But bears don’t worry about that, do they? Other animals don’t fuck with bears. Bears rule the animal kingdom. Okay, I respect that. But I’m not from the animal kingdom, I’m from the United Fucking States. The animal kingdom is our colony. Mister Bear, you may think you’re the carnivore and I’m the carne, but time will prove you wrong. Time will prove you a bear-burger breakfast and a soft warm place on the floor upon which to get nasty with Marcia from Product Dialogue.

Wish I could sleep. These pills are just a tiny bit speedy. That’s usually how I like them. I think I’ve got some codeine in here someplace but I can’t see at all, feeling slightly lightheaded under a Range Rover in the middle of the night in Noplace, Alaska. There’s just the tiniest eau de petrol in the mix of hideous nature smells I’m choking on. But I’m cheerful, I’m upbeat.

It’s funny … I used to fall asleep with a bear, a cuddly toy bear my parents gave me when I was small. He was a brown bear, and he wore reflective sunglasses and leather motorcycle clothes — the jacket, the hat and the chaps. He looked just like the singer in Judas Priest, Rob Halford. I called him Bomber — Bomber Bear. Technically Bomber was my little brother Jimmy’s bear, but Jimmy was too young to really appreciate bears. During the pre-divorce meltdown I used to have a lot of trouble getting to sleep and I really grew to depend on Bomber. So when I went off to live with Dad I appropriated him: I told Jimmy that Bomber had been killed in a motorcycle accident, and we had to bury him in a closed casket because his corpse was too mangled to look at, and we had held a nice funeral but we forgot to invite Jimmy, and Bomber never liked Jimmy anyway. Jimmy cried about that. Jimmy was a big crybaby, but we all cried a lot back then. So I said goodbye to Mom and Jimmy, and me and Bomber went to live with Dad in Orange County, and I slept with Bomber every night until the ninth grade when I found out Rob Halford is gay.

Knowing what I now know about bears, I think it’s just sick that people give cute fuzzy stuffed gay ones to children. What are we teaching these kids? Bears aren’t cute, they’re not friendly or helpful, they’re vicious, stupid, bloody-minded people eaters. You might as well teach children to play with infected rats, or foamy-mouthed doggies. I read tons of stories on the Internet during my extensive bear research phase about little kids climbing into bear cages at zoos to pet the bear, and getting mauled and eaten. Polar bears especially. I ask you, should we even be surprised? We’re just setting kids up for that … Look, mommy! See the bear? Oh, so cute, so white, so fluffy. Watch him dance. Back and forth, back and forth in his little home in the zoo. The bear looks sad. Why is he sad, Mommy? Does he not like the zoo? Maybe he is lonely, and needs love. I will hug him, Mommy, like I hug my own bear at home. Rrrrrrr … splat!

On my father’s grave, on my mother’s grave, on the graves of my bear-eaten subordinates and on the grave of my own foot I solemnly swear that when I get home I’m going to pitch the Ups and Veeps a public service campaign for children: Just Say NO to Bears! Reversing trends is my specialty and that one needs immediate, well-funded reversal. (We have to meet a public-service percentage every year anyway, ever since that whole Chinese lead paint dog chew mix-up and the accompanying class-action hell.) We’ll need some kind of evil bear that kids can learn to fear, and some kind of hero figure — a hunter, or a ranger … no, even better: a talking car. A talking Sport-Utility Vehichle who will remind kids that nature is dangerous and bad! If it wasn’t for society’s deranged bear fetish and the conditioning I received from my parents, I probably wouldn’t even be stuck here in this stupid mess. Thanks a lot, Mom.

I’m not getting depressed. Power of positive thinking. Power of yes! I am smart and lucky and sexy and cool and wealthy. I am edgy! I have good teeth and excellent taste! Good things happen to me. Because I make them happen. And because the universe loves me.

Tom Petty never seemed so deep and meaningful to me before. But somehow Tom Petty knew: the waiting really is the hardest part — especially when you’re covered with crawling ants. But I can beat this. I’m a can-doer. I just have to bide my time. Someone will come, soon. Meanwhile I’ve got something here in my hand that feels about like I remember codeine feeling, plus another OxySufnix, in the unmistakable blister pack. A cold Bud, a Slim Jim and these pills, and then I’m going to try to get some shut-eye.

Getting rescued tomorrow. Big day ahead.