AUGUST
The pig’s out of the pen. Grandma can’t speak. My heart is about to explode. Negative-three: see how you look — crooked blouse minus a button, disheveled trousers, zipper jammed halfway. Negative-two: “maybe we’ll have a meatless-friday with your baited ponytail.” Negative-one: they’ve been watching your programs all night. Zero: whose idea was it to stock the pool with carp for the labor day potlatch. First of all, I don’t believe in the star system or nepotism and I’ve seen political patronage first-hand, having lived in Jersey City. Second of all, a potato-dumpling-riding show is a crystal meth image and not something to mention while I’m calling home. Third of all, when you’re done throwing flour at those chops, think about going to the store for air freshener. Deodorant for this chapel. “We smell from the speed. And we’re about to jump into a bracing pool of matrimony, of tax relief, of surfing and snoring … marry me you piece, you unwitting pawn in a brand … new … negligee!” I like that big pink cyst on his fishing pole. August … drum corps season, you can see the veterinarian’s office I designed, from this B-52 of an apartment.
Rakish crescent moon, does thin hair require combing or brushing? You want to comb my hair? You want me to remove my hat which I bought in Maine — so you can see my hair and sort of diagnose its needs? It’s difficult to hear — someone’s playing that whale album again.
The very tender message is not drawn above a resort beach by propeller plane, but left, say, between the cup and saucer of one’s fancy. The element of suspense attending such a message’s reply is said to be what goaded Bob into just forgetting it and he celebrated the easing of his burden in a park adjacent to the bait store. Drugs … sure, Bob took a few. Cheated the government? No more than the rest of us. Swallowed his gum every once in a while. Puts his pants on one leg at a time. Socks. Shoes. Buttons his shirt. Knots and adjusts his necktie. Winds his watch. Slips his jacket on. Quick cup of coffee. Puts water in the dog’s bowl. The car-pool honks. Out he goes. Not the most nutritious breakfast in the world — but so it goes. Day after day. With the thump of each new headline upon the front porches of our people — the North-Americans.
Digging for family roots, one may unearth an uncle who delighted in sniffing professional women’s tennis players’ “dew-laden” socks, (which, left to the winter night, provide an image of “frost encrusted socks”). National security, though, like the discovery of penicillin, may be served by providential accident. Video espionage mistakenly applied, for example, to room 325 instead of 225, may reveal an unemployable emigré, an idiot-savant with a funny accent in a long smock with a rattan cane, (one imagines him waving goodbye to the inflation-ravaged Western European nations whose citizens have been forced to choose between college for their children and air-conditioning for their homes), designing a bomb that would, regardless of the site of detonation, seek out and shatter Alexander Haig. But Secret Service agent and mermaid alike — my caveat for either would be identicaclass="underline" a summer cold can be pretty terrible if you don’t take care of it. Good health doesn’t have to be an accident.
I’LL BE WEARING GOLDEN ARCHES
I.
I think I’m wearing largemouth bass instead of sneakers, this afternoon. I think they’re laced through the eyes. I had better butter my magazine and put a band-aid on my watch band, your honor. Yak. Yak. Yak. And eat the article and nurse the time. I’d better cool the braggadocio and savor the silt and retire my Kodak to its pouch case. Vat’s dis katzenjammer? (She can’t stand his bruxistic slumber …) Your honor, this is a kangaroo court … A Central-Asiatic couldn’t get a fair hearing within 10,000 miles of this room. It behooves ya to eeeck out a living before they usurp your jurisdiction. Before I pour a quart of koumiss on this tinsel town. It’s late, shut the gate. Listen for the katydid.
II.
The Inquisitor: What will you be wearing?
Me: Just … peds.
The Inquisitor: I can’t hear you.
Me: Just peds!
The Inquisitor: 50 more lashes!
Me: Arrrrgh! No! No!
The Inquisitor: What’ll you be wearing then?!
Me: Wedgies.
The Inquisitor: Prepare the thumb-screws!
Me: Pumps!
The Inquisitor: Ready the rack!
Me: Wing-tipped Oxfords!
III.
Dawn breaks over the cabin and lake. The Rat Pack — Sinatra, Martin, Lawford, Davis — is drinking booze and horsing around with the bread dough bait that their guide has prepared.
IV.
As time robs moisture from our skin, death beckons. We sing: “It’s a hell of a way to go / noshing on herring and nagging each other / but we’re just hired stooges / getting laid off by death.”
V.
This is my feeling: Should the citizens, who people the slopes which descend from the abscissa, be segregated according to blood-sugar levels — those designated “X” doomed to an eternity of vending mother-of-pearl plaques and gold baubles at roadside stands — those dubbed “Y” left to rattle the bars of their proscenium calaboose? Wheat must be sold. Tradeswoman, meatman, fishmonger, and furrier must thrive. Commerce must hum as time traipses by.
Additionally, there is life’s diverting aspect, e.g. making a toast in one of many languages, “hunting” a lightning bug, tickling someone who’s drinking at a fountain, even ballooning or carving and painting miniature wooden animals. Finally, there is a wetter aspect, which includes singing in the shower or participating in a swim meet.
The Autocron’s girlfriend slipped out of her peignoir and tossed it across his miniature schnauzer which he adored more than his hordes of minions. When he went outside to get the paper, he noticed that the clew had become frost and, noting that the frost was architecturally complex although it could not literally house anyone, reasoned that a bubble’s tenant was simply air. His adjutant walked up the front path and said “Good morning, you have to drive your sister somewhere today.” The Autocron said, “Where? I thought I had today to myself.” The adjutant’s breath smelled mediciney and he said, “She needs a ride to the Lodge Hall where she’ll be singing tonight … she needs to rehearse.” After breakfast, when the Autocron got into his car, he noticed scores of sand nicks in his windshield. He wondered whether he should ask his father for the money for a new windshield. He wondered whether insurance would cover the replacement. He wondered whether bearing the cost himself wouldn’t prevent him from being able to afford the rent if his girlfriend got the H.E.W. job in Washington and moved out.
“Rouse the stevedores from their atmospheric bistro — we sail at dawn!” I said. While I was heating up some beans, later, I decided to have a braunschweiger sandwich with a yogurt dressing. (I’d just gotten back from visiting my parents in New Jersey.) I was reading Rex Morgan M.D. in the Post — Morgan’s standing behind some woman who’s on the phone — she’s saying, Vince please — listen to me — CLICK — Morgan looks up at her looking at the phone and says, Did he hang up on you, Connie? And she says, We — We must have been cut off. I’m one of those purists who can’t ignore a blurry television picture and still enjoy the show. If the networks were taking a survey and asking which programs I preferred, though, I’d be hard put to say. What could I do with the survey-taker? I don’t know morse-code, or the language of the deaf or Esperanto for “If I do not come out soon, keep going around the block” or “I love girls who smell like chewing gum.… like the ones at the all-night dermatologist’s office.” Three years ago in Hempstead, N.Y. where I was doing research in low-temperature physics, I had an experience with survey-takers. A couple appeared at my door one evening, with sheafs of questions. The second I let them in, the gentleman flew to the metallic globe I kept on my coffee table. The young lady was sweet and self-effacing and beguiling. But it was ridiculously beautiful the way he brandished the globe above his head as if to whack himself with a how-would-you-like-a-punch-in-the-nose attitude — his cerebral hemispheres parting like red seas, like masses yearning to be free, revealing down the center of his head, a black-top shuffleboard court with miniature retired people on it.