Quak, Quak or No Great Sheiks

The bulls**t market was dead.

Interview after interview petered out, leaving Dr. Ballard--he had just received his Ph.D. in time for it to "over qualify" him into unemployment and thus concomitantly diminished chances for food and sex. And indeed, his continual rejections by harassed Departmental Chairmen had cut into Herbert’s libidinal energies as well, feeling a casual listlessness towards the undulating a**es barely covered by co-ed micro-mini skirts, by the prow-proud busts--bursts he would have more accurately termed them--that preceded the sassy blacks who strode the linoleumed corridors of Chicago Urban University--that crumbling House of Usher in black belt Chicago. Actually, the school, which P.R.ed itself as a "dynamic multi-racial institution committed to confronting the problems of urban education," was a trembling "WASP" bastion staffed by dodderers eager to retire before the ebony deluge. For Herbert had discovered what urbanologists knew all along--Chicago was the Birmingham of the North, with whole blocks of whites evacuating in a few months before the pressure of urban blacks striving to escape the core ghettos, or their incarceration into monstrous hulks of public housing whose corridors and elevators were the newest urban battlefields pitting addict, mugger, and rapist against the already battered poor.

As he vainly sought a job, Herbert watched poverty edge towards him in the slow drip of days, which would end June 30th--leaving July 1st as his initial no income day.

Yet Herbert knew one could not afford to be poor in America, which lacked such essentials as universal health care for the non-monied and self-employed. Besides, there were still bills to be paid: $500 to his lawyer for supervising the final torpedoing of his wrecked marriage; a few time payments at 18% per year on his revolving credit card at Sears--so called because the interest rate makes one’s head spin--and even an overdue dentist’s bill.

What does one do when there is no money? No steady source of accumulating income? The telegram delayed his discovering the answer to that question.

But Quak? This telegram was the result of an ad in the Sunday Times which he had hopelessly responded to, expecting another curt and mimeographed "No" to add to the collection which might paper his bathroom wall, replacing the traditional Confederate money usually reserved for that purpose. A hasty trip to an ethnocentrically named Middle East Atlas showed Quak to be a small island perched above the littoral of the Arabian Gulf and fortuitously sitting on about one-fifth of the world’s known oil reserves. Since its native population was only about a half-million, this provided a secure if smelly economic base for Quak, creating--as Herbert read in the Atlas..."a tiny state that is Royalist, Capitalist, and Socialist." However, to Herbert’s consternation, his further reading revealed the State of Quak to be implacably Moslem--for Herbert knew by now it was Allah or nothing--and one of the few states where alcohol was banned by law.

Alcohol? They did not apparently mean that explosive substance which lights lanterns or is used to tingle the skin in massage parlors. No. They must mean beer--Budweiser, Lowenbrau, Amstel, Pabst, Miller, Stroh's--and wine--Mosel, Liebfraumilch, Amontillado, Claret, vins rouges et blancs--and whiskey, in its varied brandings and curved bottlings--Johnny Walker, Seagram’s VO, Chivas Regal, Hennessey Four-Star, Calvert.

Just because Mohamet was down on booze, he had wrecked it for everyone else. Still, it would be a profitable, even chic, place to teach. No income tax, and a free house.