#43 | July 16 - 30, 1998  

by Mark Ames

Vlad, the eXile's new sales director, handed me the death threat last Monday. Judging by the fonts, and by the lack of an identifying number at the top, I assume it was sent via home computer. It's a single-spaced, creepy two-page rant that begins, "This is by no means should be considered as fax to sic. Do you think someone like myself will want you cocksuckingt-shirt? This is a letter addressed personally to Mark Ames, the cocksucking editor of your dickless newspaper." After several paragraphs of eloquent, piercing attacks on me for being a dick, a frat boy, a boozer, a swinger, a nerd, a bookworm, a woman repellent, a "motherfucker," a lame frat boy, a fucking frat boy, an investment banking reject from JP Morgan, and an arrogant colonialist, he spells out the stakes in large, nerd-font letters representing something like broken glass or spider webs:

"WHAT WE ARE LOOKING AT IS GOOD AND EVIL, RIGHT AND WRONG."

And then he ends it with this Mark David Chapman stream of consciousness:

"Now, I want you to know, Marky, that there is someone out there, who knows everything about you, to the last bit. Who tracks your every move and every word. Don't fuck with me, Marky, or it's gonna be the last year for you here. Remember you published 'Dying Here' stuff once? You WILL die here, trust me. You were right half a year ago-it's gonna be a tough year for us-one of us should abandon this city, and I'm not leaving, Mark. You got my message?

"I want you to step down. Exile needs another Editor-in-Chief. Could you please explain what else did your paper become but your tool for shameless self-promotion and easy scores with Russian chicks? Otherwise, please explain, what is it that you have got that puts you where you are.

"Please, Marky, don't act like there is no problem. Cause you've got one already. You need to get outta here. If I EVER see you fucking face in the Hungry Duck or any of the low places you are advertising, I'll kick your ass. Rest assured, it's gonna be serious. No jokes on my part. Poor boy, you've inflicted so much trouble on yourself. Simply because you can't hold your dick in place.

To be continued...         H8 RED"

Two things immediately came to my mind: first, quick fast-forward through the film Talk Radio, up to the slow-motion shotgun murder of the Eric Bogosian character, who plays a shock-jock killed by a smelly redneck. I winced, rewound, played it back again in my head.

Problem is, this isn't up to Matt or me. It all depends on the hormonal caprice of some Insulted & Injured stalker with a little too much time-and hair-on his hands.

It's unsettling to think I even matter enough to warrant an anonymous death threat. I have to admit, when I read that last part of the letter, I thought, damn, maybe there's something rewarding about having your own stalker. But there isn't. A stalker uses smoke and mirrors, playing on your paranoia and fears, moving-via his wounded, twerp psychology-between gargantuan threats and the unknown act. He wants you to think that he knows more about you than you do about him; and inevitably, he does. If you're already predisposed to paranoia-hiccups, and if you've been abusing your spinal horn with cheap, low-grade stims, to the point that you're starting to see little winged spiders out of the corner of your eye, then a letter like that can magnify daily fear and raise it to something clinical.

People who are stalked are uniformly loathsome. Take John Lennon. In many ways, Mark David Chapman performed a mercy killing. Think of all the shite '80s pop songs dedicated to his horrible little family that he'd've pumped out. And Jodie Foster... Ever since Taxi Driver, she got real ugly. John Hinkley didn't think so. He wanted to do something big and great to win her love. The whole Hinkley episode is such potty-pants retard stuff: I love you Jodie Foster, so I'll blow James Brady's scalp off and make it more difficult for decent Americans to obtain sidearms. Thanks, asshole. And speaking of sidearms, here's a little tip: you don't go to an assassination carrying a gutless pistol! You may as well have worn a Uriah Heep T-shirt!

Even in the movies, the stalkee is always more loathsome than the dumb, wounded, desperate stalker. I once even went so far as to root for Kiefer Sutherland against Sally Field, if only because you knew, right from the beginning, that Kiefer would lose.

So who is this guy? I sent a copy of H8's letter to my mentor, Dr. John Dolan, in New Zealand. He emailed me back his profile, headlined: "Barnaby Jones, At Your Service." We guessed that my stalker is a Russian male in his mid-20s who probably spent a few years in America, where he was routinely ignored. Now he's back in Moscow, and he has it in for me. John thinks I've met him before.

Calling me a loser and a frat boy is fine-harmless middlebrow nerf insults of the Jean MacKenzie caliber. But making me the object of a stalking-putting me in a category with Jodie Foster and Ronald Reagan and Bridget Fonda and that bloodless senator from Taxi Driver...

If I do get popped, at least my friends will be able to exploit it for a quick buck, sort of like Rick Furmanek did with his brother-in-law, Paul Tatum. If that happens, then I demand that my corpse grace the cover of the eXile. I also insist that in every issue, a four-block corner be dedicated to a time-lapse photographic account of the decay of my face. Put captions on it when the skin begins to crack off: "Gee, maybe I should switch to Clinique!" Trust me, I won't be hurt.

You guys have to promise to throw a Funeral Party for me at the Duck on Ladies' Night. I want to be a sexist corpse, a frat-corpse. Rest my body on the inner bar top, wrap it in ice packs, and nail a propeller cap to my skull. I want all the stripping to happen literally over my dead body. In fact, I want to be stripped myself. Moscow's first dead male stripper! Serve some kind of wacky cocktail-Jaegermeister and grenadine-and call it "Embalming Fluid." You can also use me for other things, such as the first human drink dispenser. Put a tap in my mouth, run a tube out through the back of my head and into a tub of pre-mixed Embalming Fluid. When you want a drink, roughly knock the rim of the glass against my upper mouth, opening the jaw and letting the red cocktail pour. Careful that my tender dead teeth don't drop out! I'm sure some out-of-work world-famous Soviet embalmer could keep me fit enough for bar duty.

My corpse would be great for business. It could tour the circuit. The eXile could rent it out to the highest bidder. Live at Cactus Jack's! Lip-synching Ser-Ga at 16 Tons! Take my corpse out for a Saturday night trawling in the Johnny Chen White Merc: use it as a pick up line. "Hey baby, wanna see a dead body? It's in my trunk."

In the techno world, no one would notice. Give the dead, gray hair a Caesar cut, throw on a Star Trek shirt, and place it in the corner of the bar at Khaos. When it comes to fitting in with the I'm-so-cool-I'm-bored crowd, my corpse would set the standard. Make sure, though, that you keep me near some fresh air-my corpse is likely to start stinking like very old and very curdled milk, with a dollop of cat shit thrown in, so you gotta be careful.

I don't want this to be cute. I want it to be annoying. I don't believe in life after death, but if, after death, my corpse can ruin just one asshole's breakfast, then I'll go to my grave that much happier.

Just as this issue was being put to bed, I received a second faxed threat from the same guy. I haven't had time to read it-something about the IMF and American imperialism mixed with penis-size insults... Real listserv vengeance. So that you know, I don't take you seriously. If you mean what you say, stop wasting your time on letters and get it the fuck over with. Just remember: while you're rotting in Butirka, coughing blood and pulling lice from your scalp and savoring each sip of stone soup, my corpse will be banging more drunken teenagers than Leonardo Di Caprio.