Even if I were in a position to negotiate, I didn’t know how to. I’m not sure my father would have, either. How much more, for example, should I have asked for? A hundred thousand more? Fifty thousand more? Would Trip have offered me only half of what he thought I’d be willing to take? two-thirds? half or two-thirds of what he’d be willing to pay? I doubted that. To ask for 50 percent (or, for that matter, more) above the offer would, it seemed, be impertinent of me; but then, at the same time, it seemed that to to ask for any less than that would be petty. I don’t quite know why. Perhaps I should have thought about it more: that the offer had even been made at all suggested that just about anything was possible. Then again, if anything were possible, Trip changing his mind in the face of my perceived impertinence or pettiness—or my hesitation, despite what he’d just said—and lowering or rescinding the offer was possible, right? The truth is that the difference between two hundred thousand and one hundred thousand dollars (no more or less so than that between one hundred fifty thousand and one hundred thousand dollars) was all but entirely academic to me, something like trying to imagine how much drunker I’d get off two liters of vodka than I would off one, whereas the difference between one hundred thousand dollars and what little I had in the bank (in my father’s account) was…not academic.
I stuck out my hand and let the kid shake it.
* * *
In the wake of our handshake, Triple-J squeezed his pendant, summoning Burroughs, who met us upstairs, in the second-floor workspace, to draw up our contract. Grand though it was, Trip’s plan for A Fistful, which I came to understand just a few minutes later by listening to him describe it to the driver, turned out to be straightforward enough that he certainly could have—and probably had—explained the whole thing while I’d handlessly wrangled around in my boxers:
Part A
Register the transcript of A Fistful of Fists (written by me, Belt Magnet) under the same limited copyright he’d used for “Living Isn’t Functioning” and “On ‘Private Viewing.’ ”
Have printed a TBD number (≥ 500) of hardcover copies of the Fistful of Fists transcript ASAP.
Screen the final cut of A Fistful of Fists one night in April 2014 (exact date TBD) at a TBD art museum or gallery space for an audience consisting exclusively of ≤ 250 special invitees—half of them critics, artists, academics, Yachts, filmmakers, journalists, and clients of Ronson Boyle; the other half adolescents Trip adjudged “influential”—and don’t charge admission.
At the screening, distribute free copies of the transcript to all those in attendance.
In the weeks following the screening, distribute remaining copies of the transcript for free to whoever asks for them.
Part B
Refuse to screen A Fistful of Fists again.
Refuse to make any copies of A Fistful of Fists.
Never sell the original of A Fistful of Fists.
The execution of this plan’s Part A would, Trip believed, create an increasingly loudening buzz around A Fistful of Fists. By the end of May 2014 (“at latest,” he said), people would be clamoring for another screening. Galleries and/or film distributors would approach Trip in hopes of brokering the sale of the original and/or distributing copies of it to theaters and/or for home video release.
Trip would turn them down (i.e. he’d execute Part B).
He would make it known that he had no intention of ever letting anyone see A Fistful again, let alone of selling it, or licensing the rights to it. He’d explain he had no interest in making money, and, further, that in making A Fistful, he had made a work of art that—for mysterious reasons he’d refuse to ever clarify to his interlocutors—would be lessened were it ever to be seen again. The April screening would thus become legendary: you wouldn’t just have had to have been there to “really understand” the collage, you’d have had to have been there to even see the collage. “Same as with the swingset murders,” he said.
And yet, “totally the opposite of the swingset murders,” the “inspiration” Trip hoped to effect in viewers of the collage would still be approximately, if not entirely effected by other means: readers of the transcript (assuming I, Belt Magnet, “got the writing right,” which was something Trip was counting on) would be inspired. Furthermore, he’d advise people—particularly those gallerists and film distributors who approached him—that while, yes, he would sue them into bankruptcy were they to excerpt the transcript, the limited copyright that he held on it permitted anyone who wished to do so to print it verbatim and in full as many times as they wanted, and distribute it at whatever profit they could manage without ever having to pay him (or me) a single red cent.
And they would. Or someone else would. The public’s demand for transcripts/catalogs would be too high not to.
As the months marched on, and the dissemination of the transcript broadened, and the inspiration to revolutionarily innovate spread, so would spread and broaden the desire to see the collage itself, and the value of the one and only copy of the collage would thereby skyrocket toward pricelessness. Yet Trip would stick to his guns: he’d never screen it again, make copies, or sell it. (Or maybe, if he sensed the furor surrounding A Fistful were plateauing too early, he’d “let [him]self be pressured” into hosting another screening to re-up said furor, but, as he had with the first screening, he would host that second screening at no financial cost to anyone but himself.)
By these means, A Fistful of Fists would come to be recognized as an entirely pure work of art; one more pure than even a cave painting, for no prehistoric wall-squiggler could have ever conceived of an opportunity to sell his work for the sort of gain (in inflation-adjusted meat? flint? furs? sex?) that Triple-J would repeatedly be offered for A Fistful, much less could such a man have conceived of turning down such a gain, as Triple-J repeatedly would. And down the line, as Triple-J continued making art that inspired revolutionary innovation—although he wouldn’t, perhaps, go to such great lengths (or even any lengths at all) to exclude the general public’s access to that art—he would never sell it, nor himself; he would never monetize his own name.
So, in the end—well before the end, actually, if it all worked out the way he hoped—Triple-J would be hailed as a maker of important art. He would, i.e., be an important artist, which would, in turn, ensure that A Fistful, and its power to inspire via the transcription, would stand the test of time.