Oh, Aunt Helen!
She just picked up and left it all. I mean, in 1938, she just picked up and went away from everybody — from husband, from child — to go be a code-buster and bust the codes of the world.
But I don't know another thing about her.
Aunt Helen's not talking.
Why should she?
I wouldn't.
Working at a pink Formica table, go ahead and tell me it does not speak unfurtively for itself!
I JUST SAID THAT to throw you off. Her name's not even Helen, if you want to know the truth. Neither is anybody's, Miriam included.
I just thought of a good name for Aunt Helen's bodyguard.
Mr. Mischief.
Since I just made her up.
Mr. Rascal.
Since I just make things up.
IT'S WHY they called me that.
Bondit.
I bet it's why.
I am such an imp.
Every inch a nephew.
All nephew.
Oy.
Go ahead and break it.
Here it is again.
Oy.
THE PSORIASIS DIET
I DON'T KNOW about your first lesion, but let me tell you about mine. It was just itching when it started, just a tiny itching region, a little dot is all. My mother said it was the sting of like of an insect or like of something like that which made it itch. It wasn't. Everybody said it was something like that which made it itch right up until the time it got as big as a dime, and then they all after that started saying after that if only it was the size of a dime again. Because it wasn't long before it was a quarter and a bigger quarter and then a half-dollar they were all saying it was the size of.
It was money.
It was psoriasis.
Psoriasis.
I've seen worse words. Besides, it got me an education, being as how I took up an interest in language right after psoriasis got going divvying me up.
I started with all the pee-ess words and just kept on going after that. There was no stopping me, I can tell you. There was no stopping it, either. They did everything, my mother and father. You can't say they didn't try. They tried all the things the neighbors knew about. Then they sent away for things the neighbors never heard of. I put them all on. But you had to have a lot of stuff, being as how it was everywhere now, being as how there was nowhere it wasn't.
I was twelve.
I stayed home — working, as you can see, on the dictionary. I just went on from all those pee esses in it to the rest of the trick spellings. I liked the old words too. Here are some of my favorites. Pinguid. Pilous. Anachorism, which I'm always getting corrected on. But which I swear it to you, I swear it — this is the one which isn't about time, but what it's about I'm not telling!
You can't make me.
I don't have to.
I WENT TO DOCTORS when I had to go somewhere. They got the duds off me and took a look. They didn't like it, I can tell you. They were probably doing their best not to let on, but they didn't, I don't think, like it one bit.
I didn't either.
I'd get a jar to go home with. It wasn't enough for the whole thing, of course. But they said the idea was for me to try it out on a little spot of it to see how a jar of it goes.
The thing of it was, there wasn't any one little spot of it for you to try it out on, being as how it was all one big one now. Who could pick a place for you to stop at? I mean, where did you draw the line? It was the same thing with the dictionary, I noticed. You start with paraplegia and you go right to paraselene. It turns out to be all one big spot of it — the dictionary, your skin, probably everything.
I WOULDN'T WANT to tell you what they tried.
They probably tried it on you too, and it didn't work, did it?
I just went from one age to another age — by which adulteration, it did too. You might say the psoriasis and me, we reached our growth together. It was isochronous, you might say. That's if only you had a vocabulary as powerful as what you see. Or is it that you hear?
I was on my own by then. I can see how this was best for all concerned, being as how my folks could just not bear for them to look at it in order for them to get a look at me anymore. To tell you the truth, I didn't, couldn't, either.
I guess you know all about that part of it — the cathexis you get for always looking parallax to a mirror or not looking at all. Everything is askance, the way you see it. You keep getting stuff from a jar, but never can look for you to see where any of it's going.
But I'm not here to bellyache. What I am here for is for me to give you the cure.
It's a diet. It's what cured me and it's what'll cure you — so long as you follow directions to the letter.
Here goes.
Eat your heart out, sucker!
IF YOU WANT COPIES of this diet for your afflicted friends and relations, just remember I am protected by the copyright laws. It took me a lifetime to adumbrate my diet and I can't just go giving it away to every fool for free.
But maybe you don't want the cure. Maybe you really don't crave salutary skin. Maybe you would sooner sit there and be lonely but not without what you got. Maybe it gives you a conversation piece. Or maybe you just knocked wood that you didn't come down with Siamese twins.
I can understand this. Some people just don't want to be worse off. I didn't, either, until I decided I was.
Not anachronism.
Anachorism.
All your life, anachorism, anachorism!
Look it up.
HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL
FIRST MAKE SURE you have enough time. It is crucial that you have enough time to make things up. Myself, I do not have time enough for anything like that.
But I'll just tell you what's what. It will not be hard for you to follow me doing it.
Just listen.
Just watch.
I'm composing these instructions on an I.B.M. Selectric. I got it back in 1961. I did not buy it. I finessed it or I finagled it or I stole it.
The person who is the unexpressed indirect object of one or the other of these verbs was rich. He said you can borrow this thing, use it for a while. Then he stuck his other thing in my wife's thing. They still have their things and I have this thing and I'm not giving it up.
It's given tip-top service. I really loved it when I first saw it, and I still love it just as much.
I never cover it over with anything. I don't cover it over with anything like a cover or anything — because I like to look at it — the shape. I.B.M. is good at giving a thing a nice shape. I always look at the shape of things before I snap off the light in a room.
I think 1961 was the Selectric's first year.
I talk to engineers whenever I get a chance. I don't mean the kind that build bridges. I mean the fellows that service things. Those are the engineers I talk to.
You know what one of those fellows once told me once? Buy the first of whatever it is! He said buy the first one of whatever it is because the maker of it is never going to knock himself out like that again — making, you know, all of the others after that. That's why this one's still going fine after so many wonderful, wonderful years.
The same goes for the Polaroid camera I've got. I've got the oldest one there is. You know how old it is? Here's how old it is. It's called, they call it, the Polaroid Land Camera.
That's how goddamn old it is!
No shit, it was a first one — it was the very first Polaroid the Polaroid people made!
You want to see pictures? Look at these pictures! Tell me when in your life you ever saw in your life pictures as sharp as these pictures!