On a typical Friday night in the Nocturnal Animals' clubhouse, there is money in the air, and there is communism. And it smells like Glenfiddich double-malt whiskey.
This secret society
has the edge and opulence of any other, but with a few crucial differences: a penchant for leftist politics and a pure-hearted dream of social revolution. They are communists, straight-through; trust fund babies by day, ascetic visionaries by night. They are the Nocturnal Animals.
Note: the Animals have decided to violate their iron-clad secrecy and go public with this story, because they feel as though they are grossly underestimated as proletariat fighter-commies. As they embark on their biggest campaign ever, they invite Street to be the first member of the outside into the den.
As Wharton senior Wellington Wells III, Esq. lights his French hand-rolled cigarette, a framed portrait of Karl Marx looms in the background. The Communist Manifesto author isn't just another face in the nest of the Nocturnal Animals; he is an icon. Wellington himself is iconic, both in and outside of the Animals. What's the secret to this fiery redhead's mystique? "I've learned how to strike the balance between enigmatic and approachable," he explains with a dreamy look in his eyes, "I like to think I'm a man of the people, but also above them."
But onto more pressing matters. "George Bush can suck my ass," Wellington proclaims to his rapt audience. "Think of all those dying people in Darfur. They're dying of smallpox, and our president won't send any money. Doesn't he care about Asia?"
Presumably the Animals do care about Asia: the group cheers as Wellington takes a sip of his Glenfiddich, aged 12 years at least -- the drink of choice for the Nocturnal Animals. About 10 people are in the room. Lines of coke are drawn on the table for the taking, and a bowl is slowly making the rounds. Wellington's best friend, Mao X, a lanky and tan (but undeniably white) Engineering and Nursing junior picks up where his comrade left off.
"A specter is haunting Penn," he says. "Religion is the opiate of the masses." He takes a hit as he speaks. "The pureness of the white powder helps us approach our basest, most egalitarian needs. The Nocturnal Animal Manifesto was entirely crafted during a three-day coke binge."
Adrienne Channington-Wong, Mao's Penn affiliated girlfriend, sits against the immaculately crafted stone fireplace in the den. She says innocently, "They only let me hang around because I'm a quarter-Russian Jew and a quarter Chinese -- a Russian Chew!" She giggles. "It reminds them of those noble individuals of the homelands who died for their communist beliefs. It feels more real for all of us when I'm here." She then nudges her "Maui," as she likes to call him, in the rib.
"Maui," she says, loud enough so everyone can hear, "what's the plan for tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow, Adrienne, we kill Jesus," Wellington interjects, to applause, a few gasps and one girl who vomits. After all, these rich kids did grow up in the bourgeoisie, where Jesus was sort of loved by their alcoholic mothers. "That's just a metaphor; it's pretty tight. But, yeah, tomorrow we'll be up at 7:00 a.m. to storm the Penn Bookstore. No capitalist pig is going to get presents this Christmas. Penn's going communist, bitches."
The room erupts in ecstasy. Several couples consummate the event. They pour more drinks and take out more drugs. Adrienne whips out her cell to tell her friends about tomorrow's plan ("We're saving the proletariat and poor people"). Mao turns on the new 7" Kanye ft. Bjork limited-import-b-side- remix-bonus EP, pops open a bottle of Cris and shouts, "No private property!"
"We need social justice, everywhere," Wellington says. "Even in like, Chile. Pink isn't enough, nor is fuschia. We've got to go red."
Two weeks before the Christmas raid on the Bookstore, Wellington is eating a health salad at Gia Pronto. He's an Anglo-Saxon Anglican, by birth at least, whose ancestors crossed the pond from Dovernottinghamshire 400 years ago. For now, he's set on praising the efforts of the Nocturnal Animals.
"Sure, we go to A-list events in Milan, Paris, New York, whatever," he says. "But we're also out there on Locust Walk everyday, telling people about death and inequality and shit. Africa, Asia, Europe, India. Everyone's dying because of white people." He clarifies himself, "And by 'out there on Locust Walk everyday,' I mean metaphorically. We indirectly support those who do that menial shit." He takes a sip of his Perrier and spits it out. "Ugh, bitter. Fucking white cogs in the money-green machine."
Wellington joined the Nocturnal Animals two years ago and quickly ascended its non-ranks. The group had recently been kicked off campus for throwing hundred-dollar bills from its house's windows and is now referred to -- according to the nefarious Bookstore's own capitalist literature -- as an "underground, renegade organization posing as a fraternity." It sparked a hyperinflationary cycle, and Alan Greenspan had to raise interest rates to curb what he called "the monetary effects of, you know, rich college dickheads." The society was forced into secrecy thereafter.
"The thing about that," Wellington says, "was we had to change our bed sheets, and since we use hundred-dollar bills as sheets, we had to throw the old ones away." He explains that they never intended to spark inflation. "Everyone at Penn is already inflated, with ego and capitalist propaganda."
But Wellington took the school's marginalizing efforts as an opportunity to radicalize the N.A. He and another Animal, Benjamin Horatio Nelson Bush, had grown increasingly dissatisfied with "Penn people being opiates of Penn," in Bush's words. The two read the Communist Manifesto aloud to the Animals one night after a binge-and-purge, with The College Dropout playing in the background. The group was easily converted to Marxism. Adrienne had been at the Animals' house that night scoring some choice coke and couldn't help but overhear Bush's reading of the famous "specter" line (which he read 42 times, because he thought it was cool). The two went to his room, took out Bush's then-unframed Marx poster, and fucked on it for the first time.
The next morning, as Bush was cleaning himself from the poster, he announced that his name would be Mao X from then on. "Benjamin Horatio Nelson Bush is a specter haunting Mao X, the proletariat," he explained.
"That night was great," Wellington remembers. "We were able to persuade the whole group to accept the true doctrine, and Mao took his rightful name. Oh, yeah, and Mao conquered some fine pussy in the name of, on the face of, our Marx."
Wellington, Mao and Adrienne comprised the Nocturnal Animals' unofficial Marxist steering committee. Jackie Engels, whose great-great-grandfather was actually Frederick Engels, thought she had a right to join, but her qualifications seemed lacking to the others.
"She is from New Jersey -- South Jersey," Adrienne explains. "I asked her, 'What do your parents do?' And she was all like 'small-town lawyer,' and I was like, 'No, capitalist. Die and be reborn a Russian Chew from the Upper East Side and we'll talk.'" Zing! Eventually, however, they let Jackie help them out on their missions -- even though she slept on cotton sheets.
***
The Christmas raid was always the Nocturnal Animals' ultimate goal. "Christmas is the capitalist's wet dream," Wellington explains. "And Jesus. Jesus is a hand puppet of the Man, an instrument of production, probably a German police-spy."
They set their sights on raiding the Penn Bookstore, where undergraduates flock to Bursar Christmas presents for their parents, who pay the bill. Their goal was to "destroy anything capitalist," in Wellington's words. "The Bookstore reeks of white exploitation of minority labor -- Chile."
But the group needed some test runs before the big event. Everyday, one of the three (and sometimes Jackie, if Adrienne decided her shoes are cute enough) handed out flyers on Locust Walk, advocating "giving America's money to countries like Chile, and saving Darfur from smallpox."
The group also raided a Catholic mass one night. "We just walked in and like, booed at Jesus," Adrienne remembers. "Maui was just shouting about specters and opium. Wellington was telling them that if they're going to be Christian, they should at least be Anglican -- you know, respectable."
Since the church raid, the Animals refrained from anything major -- just blacking out a few holiday greeting cards at Hallmark. In the store, an angelic mannequin that Hallmark had named "Mother Christmas" balanced a small Christmas tree on her head. The Animals, with various weapons, and one of Wellington's Glenfiddich bottles, took down Mother Christmas. Wellington then lit the tree on fire.
"We destroyed the shit out of Mother Christmas," Wellington explains. "We annihilated Mother Christmas' everything. Then we sat on the floor and had a nice spot o' kip; tasteful indeed."
It was only after the Hallmark fiasco that Wellington, Adrienne, Mao and "Pink Jackie" felt comfortable enough to initiate their campaign -- a march up-and-down Walnut Street and an inspection of every capitalist protectorate. They first attempted, in a raging fit (after having attended a workshop on the sinister underbelly of films like Love Actually), to storm and devastate the emblem of capitalist propaganda, a capitalist cult masquerading as the domain of the proletariat. They formed a phalanx and entered Urban Outfitters, where they furiously cut up piles of "humor tees," as Adrienne described them, screeching, "Everyone loves a communist now, you tweenster fucks!" The Animals have refused to comment on the store's response to the attack but will back its new line of "Urban renewals" -- inspired from the Animals' own shredding handiwork -- called "Cut By Red."
With a persistent series of setbacks and a lack of respect from the student body, it truly was an uphill climb for the valiant Animals, though they threw a lovely launch party for "Cut by Red."
***
After several weeks of semi-rigorous protesting, the Animals grew lazy and defeatist. As it turns out, they'd prefer to bitch about the corrupt Capitalist hold on the world than do anything about it. In fact, they'd rather drink their Glenfiddich and smoke the occasional opiate than much of anything. They still meet though, infrequently, to practice their leftist rhetoric and revel in their glorious hypocrisy.
"Fucking white people," Wellington starts off this Friday evening.
"Accept me," Jackie Engels, the ever-insistent outsider, responds,
"Fuck me on Karl Marx," Adrienne says to no one in particular.
Mao and Adrienne might be the only two truly upset that campaign has failed: Mao for his sincere beliefs on the sorry state of the world, and Adrienne who was always hoping to satisfy her insatiable power fantasy. As an attempt at solace, the pair gets ready to fuck against a high-rise window, where Adrienne keeps her room of secondary shoes.
Little did they know, however, that Jackie downstairs (she obviously lives in the high-rises) sees an opportunity for divine retribution and takes a picture of the exhibitionist couple. She circulates it aggressively throughout campus, sparking a ridiculously unimportant nationwide debate.
That was the end of one era of the Nocturnal Animals and the beginning of another. The den deserted and Adrienne and Mao humiliated (and also sort of turned on), they've reportedly gone further underground and changed their tune, though their renewed secrecy has prevented them from maintaining any contact with the press or outside world. Various rumors peg them at starting anything from a meth lab to an I-bank in an undisclosed location. Well, as long as they're saving Darfur...n
