First Fisherman: I knew the worm, OK? I can’t hook him, all right? No way … can’t hook him. [He looks at worm.] I can’t hook you … no way I could hook you, man.
[Worm manages a weak smile.]
Second Fisherman: You want me to hook him?
First Fisherman: Please!
The trail of lavender azalea blossoms leads to the stadium, to the locker room. Faces are almost unrecognizable in the heavy fog of aerosol deodorant and jock-itch powder. Some of the strongest men can barely move, encumbered by their massive plated stegosaurian tails, which leave long trails of cheesy sebaceous excretion. The strongest man of all, who wears a combination lock through a hole in his nose, empties a box of Good & Plenty into the whirlpool. The Second Fisherman walks to the whirlpool and, leaning over the edge, stares into the gurgling vortex of pink and white.
The two scenes you have just seen, both from the 1979 film Let’s Not and Say We Did, helped make Iron Man Wang — who played the role of the Second Fisherman — one of Hong Kong’s most popular screen stars. Evincing a taut sexuality, high-wire anxiety, and vulnerable fair-haired eccentricity, Iron Man Wang is today attempting to parlay these attributes into political capital as he launches his campaign to become Hong Kong’s Administrative Prefect. Across the street, there’s a huge photograph of his face, emblazoned with the caption: “I’m Iron Man Wang, how are you this evening?”
I’m inside the King Fok Club — a Hong Kong mah-jongg parlor and lounge frequented by drug couriers, numbers runners, transsexual prostitutes, and off-duty cops. The bandstand is a green blur of jade drumsticks as the topless all-girl trio sweats through an aerobic repertoire of Buddy Rich covers. I’m dancing with Antoinette, who’s so gorgeous it’s hard to believe she was a man once — not only a man, but a Golden Gloves middleweight champion and then the head of a teamsters local that was considered the roughest on the East Coast, but let me tell you, she is absolutely ooh-la-la. I guess no matter how many pugs he KO’d in the ring and no matter how many scabs and union dissidents he savaged with his brass knuckles, there was always a beautiful woman struggling to emerge. Compliments to the surgeon, he sculpted a real Venus de Milo. I inhale her wicked perfume as we waltz, large pimples on her back spelling “Vote for Iron Man Wang” in Braille.
The band finishes its set, I bid Antoinette bon soir and kung hei fat choy after politely declining an hour of “infernal ecstasies,” she vanishes into the smoke, and I return to the bar and order the house special, something called a Stinky Pinky: two parts gin, one part strawberry schnapps, one part O-amino acetomphenome, which is the primary odor component of extract from the anal sac of a Japanese weasel. Some people hate Stinky Pinkies, I think they’re yummy, and I’m draining my sixth when there’s a loud commotion outside — so I run out and there lying in the middle of the street is Antoinette. She’s dying. But something quite extraordinary is happening in extremis. As she dies, she is gradually resuming masculine form. Whiskers sprout from her cheeks and chin. Her Adam’s apple protrudes from her throat. Her breasts shrivel, and her chest, now broad and muscular, becomes matted with black curly hair. Her hips and buttocks shrink and a large penis rises from beneath her Lurex skirt, stiffening in the cool Hong Kong night.
Now, I’m a writer, but I’ve always fancied myself something of an amateur forensic pathologist. My favorite show — as Arleen will certainly corroborate — is “Quincy, M.E.” So whenever I run across a corpse, I try to take advantage of the opportunity to do a quick autopsy. I kneel down beside Antoinette and get to work. “Does anyone have a tape recorder?” I ask the crowd. Silly question, this is Hong Kong — a dozen state-of-the-art, micro-format, voice-activated, digital audiocassette recorders with Dolby noise reduction are immediately proffered. I grab one and begin to dictate: “The decedent died as a result of craniocerebral trauma (skull fractures, subfrontal and temporal bone contusions, and an organizing subdural hematoma). Observation of brain tissue indicates that the decedent suffered from incipient cerebral sclerosis — an actual hardening and shrinking of the cerebral mass, a condition that in its advanced form would have reduced the size of the decedent’s brain to that of a peach pit. Other significant postmortem findings include multiple round, depressed skin ulcers in various stages of healing on the lower abdominal wall, thighs, and left elbow consistent with “skin-popping scars” of chronic subcutaneous narcotism.” I eject the cassette, return the recorder, and judging the proximity of the police by the rising volume of their sirens, decide that it’s time for me to say goodbye to the King Fok Club and good-bye to Hong Kong for now. I hail a rickshaw and we sprint toward Kai Tak Airport.
It’ll be a long flight home, but even as we prepare to take off, I already perceive the geographical and cultural disjunction. I write on a napkin: “I feel like a seed in the digestive tract of a bird, being transported thousands of miles from one habitat to another.” I sign the napkin and ask the stewardess to give it to the pilot. Fortunately, I’m seated next to a fascinating passenger. She’s Flo, a chimpanzee selected by Jane Goodall from among chimps at Tanzania’s Gombe National Park, who was taught a sign language vocabulary of over 2,000 words. Flo often appears on MacNeil-Lehrer, “Nightline” with Ted Koppel, and CNN, participating in panel discussions on animal rights, the use of animals in medical research and cosmetics testing, etc. Luckily I learned sign language when I dated the Academy Award — winning deaf actress Marlee Matlin when I lived in L.A., so communicating with Flo is no problem. I learn that she’s flying to the States to “speak” at a demonstration against a new product that’s been introduced by Burger Hut called Rhesus Pieces: bite-size chunks of rhesus monkey coated in granola and deep-fried.
Even though it’s quite expensive, I splurge and take the Glass-bottom Bus from Newark Airport back to headquarters. Upon my return, I find Arleen in bed, fast asleep, a book called Object Relations Group Psychotherapy open across her softly rising bosom. I kiss her warm lips and whisper, “I love you.” Carmella is also asleep. I lift her ear flap and whisper, “I had a great time in Hong Kong — I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Good night, babe,” I say, stroking her. The first autumn night of the year … I fall asleep with a feeling of profound contentment. How strange that I’ll abruptly awaken in the middle of the night and clamber like a zombie to the roof — my eyes blazing in the darkness like the cigarette I smoke so rabidly!
It was determined at an October 17th meeting — attended by my literary agent Binky Urban, editor Marty Asher, publicist Katy Barrett, and lecture agent George Greenfield — that I disguise my appearance before entering the Hyatt Self-Surgery Clinic in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Although the dimpled, clean-shaven face framed by blond-flecked chestnut tresses combed back into an undulating pompadour had become an instant icon to millions of fans who clipped photos from the pages of Rolling Stone, Creem, the New York Times, and the Asbury Park Press and pasted them to dormitory walls and three-ring binders, sometime in early November, a makeup artist was summoned to Team Leyner headquarters and instructed to execute a temporary new Look. The Look was Hezbollah — Party of God — closely cropped black hair, black beard, white button-down shirt, black pants.
The Hyatt Self-Surgery Clinic? Self-surgery clinics were the medical equivalent of U-Hauls or rental rug shampooers. Clinics provided a private operating room, instruments, monitoring devices, drugs, and instructional videocassettes for any procedure that could be performed solo, under local anesthetic, on any part of your anatomy that you could reach easily with both hands. As I pulled into the parking lot of the recently renovated Hyatt, I realized that I’d left my copy of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene in the Mercury Capri XR2 that I’d test-driven for Gentleman’s Quarterly. All my notes on the 132-hp turbocharged roadster were scrawled in the margins of the Elizabethan poet’s magnum opus. I called Casale Lincoln Mercury on my cellular car phone and asked for Joe Casale, showroom manager. My heart went out to Joe — tiny misshapen “pinhead,” flipper-like forearms.