“But this name hasn’t always been my name. Or, more precisely, I once had another name in addition. Let me explain.” A story that highlights the malleability of birth names…
by: Michael Tilley
“Name?”
Here I am, so immersed in my work — in this block of names I need to get through before lunch — that I didn’t even hear a new patient walk into the office (which is located, for the record, on the Thomas Tanizaki Floor of the Milton Wexler Wing of the Eleanor and Francis X. McHugh Medical Complex, situated at the northwest corner of Ace Health Medical System’s main campus).
In response to Mary the receptionist’s query, the patient, a mountainous Black man in Coke bottle glasses, baggy corduroys, and a rugby jersey, accompanied by his wife, a petite Asian woman wearing a hot pink track suit and rhinestone-studded baseball cap, immediately peeks around the waiting area, to see if anybody’s listening.
“Well,” he says in a loud voice, grinning faux sheepishly, “you probably won’t believe this, but…my name is actually Richard Nixon.” Whereupon he and his wife beam at each other, shaking their heads in mutual amazement.
Sitting a few feet to my left, Mary, who comes in only on Wednesdays, when Wanda, the regular receptionist, visits her mother in the nursing home, is momentarily impassive. She musters a wan smile.
“Oh, how funny,” she says, in a tone not remotely suggestive of amusement, before quickly shifting her gaze to her computer and beginning the process of checking-in Richard Nixon. “Funny, funny, funny…” she trails off.
“Yep, Richard Nixon,” says Richard Nixon, chuckling lightly. “Let’s just say it gets people’s attention.” He again glances over his meaty shoulder at the room, no one seems to be paying attention.
Eyes glued to her monitor, still smiling gamely, Mary nods in acknowledgement but does not reply. When Richard Nixon shoots an expectant look my way, I react in the same manner.
A few moments later, check-in completed, Richard Nixon and his wife retire to the waiting area, where they take up seats nearest to Phyllis Buettner, seventy-six, and her plainly hungover dozing son. Basking in the glow of his entrance, Richard Nixon appears happier than any individual on the cusp of a colonoscopy ever has.
I am a thirty-two-year-old male, with an average physique and a face of average attractiveness on which I wear, like most males my age, a beard — a beard that I aspire to keep neat but which is in fact often a mess. I have brown eyes, a mole on my right cheekbone and a currently full head of sandy hair which, as its owner, I know has lately shown signs of incipient thinning. My dog is named Lonzo. My parakeet is named Kitty. Recently I began dating Matilda (“Mattie”) Gort, a daycare teacher three years my junior. Here at the office I do data entry, procuring and logging health insurance information for an endlessly regenerating list of names that awaits my attention every morning. I have needs and wants, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears. And, of course, I have a name. But this name hasn’t always been my name. Or, more precisely, I once had another name in addition. Let me explain.
For a time in my mid-twenties I was employed as a folding chair salesman, working under a burned-out old bachelor by the name of Earl Perch who had no energy left for the job but nothing else to do with himself. We were but one among a constellation of little sales teams operating out of the same office space, each peddling our own drab product — windshield wipers; dry cleaning solvents; Styrofoam takeout containers — and paying a slice of our revenue to the overlord who underwrote us. The overlord’s name was Frank Bunzoni.
One day, Earl signaled for me to follow him out of the shabby, chaotic bullpen where we sat. He led me into a supply closet and shut the door. I saw that he looked even more haggard than usual.
“Bunzoni’s cutting our pay,” said Earl. And not just a little — big-time. We’re gonna be on goddamn slave wages.”
I wasn’t surprised in the slightest. Business was horrendous, and for months our vig to Bunzoni had been a pittance.
“Well, I can’t do it,” Earl went on. “I got my dignity, not to mention I gotta eat. But listen, I cooked up something else. Gruebel will take us on at his shop. I want you to come with me.”
This, on the other hand, most certainly did surprise me. Because the truth is, I was awful at my job and didn’t deserve to be rescued. But Earl was a good guy, plus I think he liked having someone around who was willing to get lunch with him, occasionally go for a beer after work.
“There’s a catch, though.”
Earl grabbed the doorknob and held the door closed tight. He dropped his voice to a hush. He explained that the contract he’d signed with Bunzoni prohibited him from hiring another Bunzoni employee within a year of his leaving the company, or else face legal exposure.
Now Bunzoni, I knew, wouldn’t care one bit about losing me. In fact, he’d be happy to see me go. But then again, the man was a gigantic asshole, so maybe he’d jump at the chance to give Earl a hard time.
“Here’s the solution,” said Earl. “You’ll need an alias.”
“What?”
“A fake name. To cover our tracks. For the first year at the new place, whenever you’re at the office, whenever you’re selling on the phone, you gotta be somebody else. No one can know who you really are.”
I was bewildered, speechless.
There was a knock at the door, someone muttering on the other side, rattling the knob trying to get in.
“You gotta decide fast,” whispered Earl. “I need an answer by tomorrow.”
So that’s how I came to be, for a certain period of my life, for large portions of my waking hours, after I accepted Earl’s offer out of financial necessity, along with a torpor that made the prospect of job hunting intolerable, Henry Butterfield.
But I’ll save the story of the Butterfield days for another time. For now, let me formally introduce myself before I go: my name is William Gerhard Stanseki III. Call me Billy.
Michael Tilley‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Rosebud, The Alembic, and elsewhere. His story “Two Siblings,” which was published in Mount Hope Magazine, has been optioned by Oookic Productions. An alumnus of Colgate University and NYU’s Graduate School of Journalism, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
