“You know, you look too nice to be in a dump like this. What brought you here?”
“You’re a queer one, you’re young,” she said. “Love brought me here.”
She laughed, and the laugh was harsh with the hint of tears behind it. She threw back her head, and touched the rose in her black hair. She had a lot of hair.
— from Confidential
by Donald Henderson Clarke
You see me with my sunglasses and cigar at ringside — then in the morning — it’s the 14th of September — I had bought a purple toothbrush to clean my tongue and imagine a voluptuous coed — a pouting libertine in men’s pajamas — a girl paring her eyelashes with the scissors my father had used for his nose hairs — a Hoffritz scissors! Some cowboy told me an eastern scissors won’t cut at this altitude … who do they take me for? Do they want to see me cry like Jackie Coogan in “Toyota Sally”?
(This section should be read like a Jewish Haggadah.)
I began to think of my employees as students — two of whom were intrigued by the image of a hypertrophic drummer beating upon a bus-like gong. The re-juxtaposition of words, that is, simply, the manipulation of language, from a position within the matrix of a consumer society, (such as U.S.A.), or from within the matrix of a draconian society (such as ours) is an analogous operation to one which I undertook a number of days ago and which I wish to render: I awoke on the morning of the 10th of September and divided my body up into square centimeters and upon each cm. applied a different cologne — in point of illustration, upon one nearly matted area beneath my pitching arm I daubed what is commerically known as “Canon & Common Law”—a fusty bouquet with the slightest hint of sherry and damp tweed; upon the raised demarcated square at the base of what Sean Michaels calls the “milch pimple” I applied the somewhat rousing fragrance of “Turkish Scimitar.” At any rate, each of the thousands of square cms. was “bathed”—as it were, in like fashion. The experiment consisted of, procedurally, simply this: entering a full early-morning bus and evaluating the response, particularly the distaff response to, first, the cumulative effect of the odeur and secondly the particular effects of each “flesh-tag”, as it was exposed to the air. I was at the time completely unaware of the fact that similar experiments conducted in Quebec City under the aegis of the Canadian Royal Academy had resulted inexplicably in epidemic-style outbreaks of (with each affliction a drop of wine should be poured into the plate) Bugger’s Itch, Bilge Mouth, Fad Dieting, Listless Advertising, and infrequently, Ridiculous Judicial Appointments. The bus rocked back and forth like a buoy and before I could collate any substantial data a behemoth percussionist had set his giant mallet upon the top of the bus and its metallic richness resounded throughout Boulder calling all writers to work. Boulder’s a writer’s town; its streets bespeak the tangled strains of the raconteur’s spiel. “Sally” I said to the girl sitting next to me, “Is that my wallet you have? Do you have any relatives with irritating habits? Is an olfactory art plausible?” Just then we careened into the old factory — the place where great literature is made — the place where many of the great classics were written including, most recently, Thelma Strabel’s Reap The Wild Wind and my own “In Susan.”
She insisted upon reading and re-reading “In Susan” and talking technique.
She pointed to my nose. “Run into a hammerfish?” she asked.
The next morning I wrote her a note:
In response to your question — how well do we know Susan — it seems to me that the question should not be — how well do we know Susan vis-a-vis the notion of character qua character — but how well do we “know” Susan qua Susan — a question which synecdochically raises the corollary — how do we “know” “In Susan” qua “In Susan”—at which point, the word “know” seems to spasm like a fish out of water.
I’ve recently begun a new tack … now I’m writing about the agent of my twenty-four hour-a-day anxiety. Listen closely … he’s like a madman on the loose. His footsteps approach with each creak of of the floorboards above. I can hear his bell. He murmurs, “Sally’s forgotten you …”
She lay in the sand with her scuba mask, snorkel, spear and flippers and I built, like the bowerbird, a chamber in which to woo her. To woo her hence. To woo her from the gloss of the page. I looked at the clock-radio, at the photograph of Sally upon the night-table and again at the photograph in the magazine. My laziness annoyed me — there were three matters which required my immediate attention: the unraveling of a blunderheaded confusion regarding my bank account, the acquisition of a New York Times and the purchase of Donald Henderson Clarke’s newest volume entitled Confidential. I was especially anxious to see the size of the headline announcing the Kaiser’s break with the Prussian Parliament. I called two of my students and told them to get right over with the new palanquin and take me to the bank, first of all!
I precipitated the disco wave by using a bat bone on a woman’s ear as a sort of musical dildo. The song went like this:
I know I’ve said and done stupid and upsetting things in the past — but please believe me, I want to be with you always — I just want us to be together for good. I have absolutely no interest in any one else — that’s simply the fact of it.
Uh-huh Uh-huh!
I’m not going to talk about who should move where or stay where or anything like that — I just want to tell you that I hope in the coming weeks we can make some plans (be they present or future plans) to stay together and perhaps get married.
Uh-huh Uh-huh!
I just want to know for sure that our relationship is permanent — because knowing that will make whatever separation there is more than bearable. I’ll talk to you soon.
Ah … if only nuptials were Sally’s bag. Perhaps she’s too much of the whore.
The sheets smell like Sally, There’s snow on the mountain already. Is Sally alive? Has she been driven to resort to cannibalism? Has she simply been driven to a resort — perhaps Steamboat Springs?
I attended, uninvited, a soirée in Louella Menzies’ smoky trailer. Nothing had yet been served and during a lull I fairly burst out, “Did somebody say dinner was on? What is the conventional wisdom vis-a-vis dinner, because I need the sustenance to make way like a smitten red-man into each valley and canyon where I’ll cup my hands to my mouth and call, ‘Yoo-hoo … Sally … yooo-hooo!’ ”
OCTOGENARIANS DIE IN CRASH
Close to the field of battle, they await an enemy coming from afar; at rest, an exhausted enemy; with well-fed troops, hungry ones. This is control of the physical factor.
What is called ‘foreknowledge’ cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the enemy situation.
CHARACTERS
THE DAUPHIN
VERNON, the Dauphin’s chamberlain
LUCAN
JUDY, who feasted on exotic bird’s nests for days at a time and dressed her Pekingese puppies in vests made of costly imported fabrics
VIC PIANO, owner of SIT-Siemens electronics plant and Pirelli rubber factory; Lucan’s ideal
DEBORAH
THE TIME: 1973
SCENE 1
A hubcap-shaped Connecticut gymnasium.
LUCAN: I appreciate it even more — the mildness is terrific. Is your telephone still hooked-up downstairs?