9. saliva of the fittest
I had a boyfriend who was a computer nerd at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and he would softly strum his steel guitar and sing that the goddess of insurance dropped a feathery Nerf ball on Isaac Newton's head, causing him to invent calculus so that actuaries could calculate annuity premiums and he would strongly suggest that the Incas built a 750-unit parking garage for alien spacecraft in Machu Picchu and I would lay my head on his thigh as big juicy soft dark-purple Soviet submarines clustered in the bay for torpedo-loading practice. A hunting accident left me with a 19-inch quadrangular cavity that completely perforates my torso — I can stand directly in front of your television set without obstructing the picture— You can see the skeleton of a giant waterbug and you can see the skeleton of a giant entomologist. When I whipped him gently with my sash, he made me say the cathected words. The cathected words! he'd beg. Hertz, I'd whisper with the first stroke. Oooooh, he'd say. Paine Webber. Oooooh! Deutsche Bank, Reebok, Pennzoil, Taco Bell. And in the late afternoon sun, the trellised balcony would throw a grid of shadow across his acne-covered hunchback. They had warned tenants in high-rise buildings to expect some swaying, but we were unprepared for the severity— Our building lurched from side to side like a metronome.
The hood of my Hyundai is dappled with the morning dew. A diagonal smear of chocolate across my windshield is the result of a malicious doughnut tossed from a trestle. A succession of nose jobs has left me with little more than a pinched piece of foreskin in the center of my face. I had a friend who had a friend who knew the manager of the Vegetabelles, three comatose girls in antebellum organdy ball gowns who traveled the sideshow circuit on hospital gurneys… he had his own act in which he'd stand on a platform 15 feet above his curvaceous assistant who'd hold a doughnut outstretched and he'd urinate through the doughnut with such precision that not a single drop would splatter onto its circumference and he'd invite a member of the audience to come onstage, taste the doughnut, and prove it. And somehow this guy got us four ringside seats for the world lightweight championship fight, a bout that had been much ballyhooed because the antagonists were vicious men who genuinely loathed each other. The fight surpassed our expectations. Both boxers endured and meted out brutal, ruthless punishment and when the final bell rang at the end of the fifteenth round and their handlers had cut their gloves from their hands, they went at each other again with their bare fists and had to be restrained finally by a phalanx of celebrity fighters at ringside who, doffing their tuxedo jackets, leapt into the ring and, wielding their own gold-ringed fists, beat the 126-lb. competitors until they agreed to comport themselves with the dignity that befits a sport that dates back to 3,000 b.c. when, as depicted on cuneiform tablets recently unearthed near Reno, triumphant pugilists epoxied chunks of chipmunk meat to the huge "pizza of the pharaoh."
But a couple of days later there was a terrible terrible accident. My friend was driving with his friend and his friend's friend and their car went off a bridge and plummeted into the bay. Police dragged the bay and pulled a car up. I recognized it immediately — the partially decomposed bodies of my three compatriots were still seated in the '69 Oldsmobile. It was an old car but they'd had it customized with a high-efficiency engine using cryogenic liquid propellants and also two strap-on solid-fuel boosters. Can I get in with them for a minute? I asked. I slid next to my pal in the front seat, his hands were still holding the steering wheel, there was seaweed all over him. My pal in the passenger seat was also frozen in position— switching radio stations. Owiginally we thought death was caused by pawalytic shellfish toxin, said the forensic pathologist, kills in half a second — death and wigor mortis are simultaneous — but we wuled that out. The forensic pathologist was only four. He was an astounding prodigy, the youngest forensic pathologist ever, but he had trouble pronouncing his Rs. Did you know that this car once belonged to Lyndon Lawouche, many owners ago? I shook my head at the little genius.
That night Arleen and I got dressed rather nicely to have dinner with friends at a local restaurant. As we stepped out of the house and began walking towards the restaurant, I said to Arleen in a very solicitous tone of voice: You have a tiny bit of diarrhea right at the corner of your mouth. Arleen got very angry with me. Why do you have to say things like that? she said. She said that my humor was very hostile. Later she asked: Why do you have to be so cynical? I tried to explain that I was simply poking fun at the way couples groom each other en route to social events, but she still seemed hurt by the remark.
A flying wing with no fuselage tows a face across the sky. The face in the sky has freckles and an oily forehead and braces and expels spearmint breath and tells me the most violent stories in a cracking pubescent voice… and then poking through the clouds comes the nose with blackheads! Now the flow of cerebrospinal fluid from my skull to my spinal column is like the flow of ketchup from a bottle, moving slowly slowly and then in a great surge. At dawn we arrive at my sister's home in Las Vegas and the first thing I notice when we get inside is that all the silverware is bent, as if Uri Geller has been there. She has a stunning place — she's got a huge backyard with a driving range, archery, bumper cars, batting cages, video arcade, pizza, fried chicken, Ping Pong, saltwater pool, and a 120-foot diamond-vision stadium television screen which is showing the end of All the President's Men. Bruce Lee has just dealt the coup de grace to Nixon who lies supine on his front yard, neck broken, brain dead, incongruous tractor trailers passing on a nearby highway. After half a dozen superfluous punches, Bruce Lee collapses across his nemesis's insensate body, prostrate with what resembles postcoital exhaustion, hyperventilating until the police and his girlfriend Sondra arrive simultaneously with the apparent purpose of taking him away — to where… one can barely guess. A film is a spooled fuse— Beyond its final frame, flickering emulsion and perforated tags, it explodes into an infinite number of indeterminate trajectories. But Sondra has brought a tiny LCD pocket television set so that Bruce Lee can watch the big football game. And while she kneels beside him, kissing his superficial but nonetheless sanguinary wounds, the policemen become engrossed with the game because the heavily favored team's quarterback, chased out of the pocket by blitzing linebackers, has just thrown an errant pass that's been picked off by a defensive back who, unmolested, runs it back 60 yards for a touchdown — the clock's run out — and the home team has won, pulling off a stunning upset. This play is shown over and over and over and over and over and over again, in slow motion, fast motion, isolated camera, pixilated camera, thermographic camera, and finally X-ray vision which shows leaping skeletons in a bluish void surrounded by 75,000 roaring skulls. And while the police sit like Druids in a circle on the ground, their attention riveted to the tiny TV, Bruce Lee and his girlfriend Sondra get up and walk quietly into the distance…
— Scotch?
— Thanks.
— The thing of it is… the thing of it is… (He finishes pouring drink and hands it to Sondra.)… is that you don't know what a shoddy, loathsome, malignant person I really am… because I don't even know yet, I'm just beginning to learn, you see.
— Well, I do know to a certain extent… For instance I know that since your father died you've been managing his estate and I know that you've been less than honest with your mother about certain financial details and that you've been terribly stingy with her when she's asked for a piddling little extra here and there.