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When I tried reading Beckett’s Molloy, curled up on a wingback, fortified against the harsh outdoors by a warm mug of tea, I lost interest after about twenty words. His writing is pretty dense, so I just chalked it up to my limited intellect. But then I began to notice that I could tear through the novel if I read it at the laundromat. Something about that place really put me in the mood. Was it the maniacal children orbiting the triple-loaders in a corn-syrup frenzy? The heavily-pockmarked man leering at girls through the window with a clammy payphone receiver pinched between his cheek and shoulder? The morose change-lady with quarters clanging in her apron pockets like rusty shackles? The sad-eyed ladies, folding their husbands’ underwear as if each smoothed crease was sucking the marrow from their souls? Or was it the filthy restroom? The laundromat is a place full of bitterness and desperation, and while trapped there, you’re lurking. Nobody at the laundromat really cares who you are or what you’re doing. They’re too wrapped up in the agony of cleaning their own tattered garments for the umpteenth time. You are free to let loose and watch with wide, greedy eyes as humanity slithers and sinks like ectoplasm into the murky cracks of existence. That is lurking, and it’s incredibly enlightening. Molloy is absolutely at home in the laundromat. The book’s central character, Molloy, is the Marlon Brando of lurking. A cripple who sleeps in ditches and rides around from town to town on a chainless bicycle—his mind adrift in a swollen sea of uncharted memories and freshly repugnant observations. He’s looking for his mother, but he can’t remember where she is, or where he is. His goal: to take her place in her deathbed, and to share her bedpan. Here is lurking beyond the boundaries of good taste. And thusly, Molloy is a book best digested in a lurk-conducive environment.
Beyond that crude and obtuse description of the tome, what is fundamental to Molloy is the essence of what veritable lurking can awaken within the appropriate mind. It turns out that Molloy was once, Moran, an average citizen. He lived a seemingly fulfilled life, surrounded by possessions and dictated by time and order. Molloy, Moran’s inner-lurker, is sort of like Caine from Kung Fu. He wants to wander the world free of possessions, and it would seem, free from the responsibilities that go along with owning shit. Molloy has transformed Moran, and taken him on a daunting journey into the bowels of his very existence. A place of artistic nirvana. Such a journey is as simple and contrite as finding the yin to your yang, and as sprawling and complex as knowing your true self. In each of us there exists the potentially gleaming contributor to society proper, and the withdrawn searcher of ultimate truths—the lurker.
True lurkers are easy to spot. I recently lucked upon an encounter with professional skateboarder, Julien Stranger. He is basically the Yoda of contemporary lurking, and he just happened to be pushing around my local skatepark. He skated for half an hour, then tossed his sack over the park’s high metal fence and climbed over after it. At this point, he found some especially murky shade and settled in for a light lurk. A short while later, he was cruising the park’s perimeter on foot, soaking it all in. Then he was back on his board, making float on every transition in sight. Soon after, wouldn’t you know it, that pack was on his back again as he moseyed off toward Lake Michigan, becoming nothing more than an anonymous speck on the horizon. All that he saw manifested itself in his skateboarding. His output was in rugged harmony with his considerate and observant ways. Beckett would’ve been proud.
Stranger is a classic lurker, but in the modern sense of the word. Lurking, by definition, implies some sort of evil intent, but the modern incantation is more about milking an opportunity to reflect. It’s about skirting unwanted attention so that you can finish that last sidewalk beer while watching a pigeon eat drying vomit, not casting spells on timid Quakers (that would be fun, but would qualify more as skulking, or prowling).
A lot of square types tend to confuse lurking with loitering. Which is sad, because they are two totally different worlds. Loiterers have no purpose, while true lurkers are on a quest. Loiterers are generally thinking of what they’d rather be doing. Lurkers are doing what needs to be done.
Think of it this way: lurking is Beethoven, loitering is Usher.
Lurking meshes well with skateboarding because, without welcome, skaters use the tangibles of the modern world for their own creative exploits, they are forced to lurk. The banal, 9-to-5 world doesn’t want concrete to be fun. To that sector of modern consciousness, it’s supposed to be cold and boring. To view the world in a contrary nature is to lurk. Skateboarders tend to be more in touch with their artistic sides because they spend so much quality time lurking. Through lurking, you are totally free to create.
To lurk is to truly see life, and perhaps eventually, your true self. As such, I can’t really elucidate how to lurk. But what I can do is lob out some suggestions as to how to go about finding out if you are ripe for the lurking life.
First, here’s the deal: if you don’t skate, don’t start now; you’ll look like a penguin crossing a puddle of marbles.
Second, if you have to work, get a job that provides ample time to sit back and observe. Valet, cab driver, bus driver, video store clerk, porno store clerk (basically any retail job that you can slack at), airline steward, whatever. Just make sure that you watch more than you work. If you can find this type of employment where you’re allowed contact with street people, you’re jumping double-dutch Mary, nice work.
Third, walk, ride a bike (chain optional), skateboard or take public transportation everywhere. You’re not going to notice anything driving a car. You’re just going to get frustrated over meaningless horseshit.
Fourth, drink beer in transit. Another good reason not to drive. Nothing says lurking like a backpack full of warm cans. The more buzzed-up you get, the more things you’ll notice. Or actually, the more things you’ll think you’re noticing. Carry a micro-cassette recorder to talk to, so you can review hazy observations later. If you don’t like alcohol, you can drink coffee or tea, but use a thermos. White cups sleeved in Audi ads are conspicuous as hell.
Fifth, buy some dark sunglasses and a hoodie. The Unabomber was a lurker first-and-foremost, and a sociopath second.
Sixth, lurk. You’ll know you’re making progress when people give you dirty looks, or ask you what you’re doing—to which you never, ever, answer, “lurking.” Just shrug, sip your drink, and slink away into any convenient shadow.
Finally, be very gloomy. That Beckett‘s not so easy on the eyes. Although my drawing of him looks a little like Ben Gazzara in the role of the scribbling Irishman, I think that much is clear. It’s not that he’s an ugly man, but with his penetrating, deep-set eyes, hawkline nose and tightly-sealed lips, he looks like he’s about to implode. And you know he‘s going to do it alone, behind the shed, like a cat. Beckett and fellow lurker/author James Joyce were buddies. Multiple accounts have it that the two of them were so in touch with humanity’s existential crisis, that they’d wile away hours together in complete silence. They probably loved
laundromats.
Fucking lurkers.
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