“I know. I know,” said Hangup, shaking his head sadly and turning to me. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Doopeyduk. It’s just that they’ve had twelve moderators before me who had the same problem. They expect you to be a passionless machine like those cameras over there. But I’m not a stone, an empty shell; I’m human and I get damp in the crotch like all the others (sigh) when ‘Git It On’ is discussed.”
“I can forgive passion,” I answered, “but the next time watch the vines, my man. They’re expensive,” I said, tidying my mussed suit.
“Just be careful,” the engineer said to Hangup and returned to the studio.
The commercial was concluding-“THEN TAKE DAT GOOK BY THE NECK AND SLAM DAT GOOK. …”
The show continued.
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” the composed Hangup said, “what do you think about this grand place?”
“Grand? Are you for real? You call this FAR OUT grand? Why, the only issue is whether those kats up there in the watercloset (FCC rules were stringent) will get off their big fat rumps and come out.”
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” Hangup continued, “why I haven’t heard such vile language about the land we all love since my years in radio. Such demagogic things to say about this country.”
“Land! Country! Man, those people have been up there in that foul nasty place for thirty years dripping feces everywhere they prowl and you got the nerve to talk about land and country. Are you off the wall?”
“Mr. Doopeyduk, this is the bastion of liberty and democracy, the citadel of fair play, the bulwark of individual liberty.”
“Aw man, cut out the stone walls. Why, anybody in his right mind knows that this is a BIG WAY-OUT BRINGDOWN,” I said, my voice rising. “There are things going on in HARRY SAM that will give you the willies. It bothers me ’cause I loves HIMSELF so much. Bats fly into his stomach walls and shit in his brain. And there’s horrible screaming inside as funny lookin’ monsters tramp through his testicles searching for food. Enchanted areas where the undead travel around on motorized golf carts. Why, I can go on for days. A bunch of ol people singing ‘Roger Young’ off-key, forgetting the words and trying to unload Hadrian’s rock on suckers. A collection of rusty trumpets and a wheelbarrow full of heroic couplets and fugues. Who in his right mind would want to buy a rock or a wheelbarrow full of dead verse? Why, just the other day I saw a man running out of a bar yelling: ‘Just like Munich, just like Munich.’ WHAT THE FUK DOES MUNICH HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? You can only hear that kind of talk in some place where people pine over classical American vamps, where judges comb their hair with two-foot combs …”
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” Hangup said, “surely you’re putting our audience on. Why, I never saw a nun raping a hun in Bronxville. Are you sure you’re not fantasizing?”
“Man, you can put your psychic elbows and shoulders in the way and block like a (beep) if you want to — but I don’t think it’s funny. I mean, if you keep on talking about Bronxville and places that don’t even exist, the place will be turned out. Pure and simple. Every damned cobweb will be ripped to shreds.”
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” the Hangup said, “we’ve had some weird customers up here on the show. Richard Nixon was on once discussing federal dog-napping legislation and so was a man who thought he had visited Mars. But you, Mr. Doopeyduk, by far are the most bizarre.”
“I don’t have time for tricks. I’ve spent the whole week studying watercloset seat covers and I’d just as soon go back to my work if you don’t mind. I think that I’ll hat up anyway because you don’t seem to be willing to run it down front.”
I walked out of the studio as a commercial for Radio Free Europe was quickly put on. Two minutes of barbed wire and Spike Jones playing “Ave Maria.” I was shook from the interview. I mean, didn’t this kat know that he’s living in a freak? If he doesn’t, somebody ought to pull his coat.
The next evening I ran up the stairs, my tuxedo draped over my arm. Once inside the room, I washed, shaved, dressed, put fresh Band-Aids on the craggy bruises which covered my face, applied iodine to swollen areas of my neck and wrists. I tried to do something for the lopsided nose and small slit that ran above my right eyelid.
A rap at the door was followed by Elijah’s voice. “Hey, man, there’s SOMETHING down here who wants to see you, looks like a strange-looking beast.”
It must be one of HARRY SAM’s drivers, I thought.
“Tell him I’ll be right down, Elijah.”
A man was standing at the bottom of the stairs. At least I took him to be a man because he wore a derby and smoked a black cigar; otherwise he was so short, he could have been a child. He wore a white smock, and bow tie of polka dots and butterflies.
“You Bukka Doopeyduk?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered him. “You must be one of HARRY SAM’s assistants?”
“That’s me,” the little man said. “We have to join the others down at the boat, what’s locked up at the pier.”
We went out of the house and climbed into an old Pontiac. I carried the black attaché case crammed full of notes on my knee. “Do you mind if I open the window?” I said to the derby, barely showing above the front seat of the car. I was choking on the smoke issuing from the cigar, in thick black bunches.
“Go ahead,” the little man said, steering the car, its sirens screaming terror at the stricken passers-by.
“Gee,” I said, leaning forward and gripping my knees, “I can’t wait until I get there and engage those bishops in a discussion of the Nazarene apocalypse.”
The man slammed on his brakes, almost sending me flying over the seat of the car. “Look. If you don’t mind, I would appreciate it if you cut out the yap. I don’t go for all the yakkity-yak while drivin’ the customers up to SAM’s. Unnerstand? I mean, I’m not innerstead in your ’pinions so if you want to go shooting off your trap, then swim the Black Bay to the party,” the little man fumed.
“I get the message,” I answered, leaning back into the cushions of the seat. Peppery little fellow, I thought, as we drove the rest of the way in silence.
We reached the pier where the plumbers’ battleships had been decorated for the occasion. We climbed out of the car and jaunted up the ramp to the ship. There was a spattering of applause as some of my fans recognized me.
My escort disappeared into the shadows, leaving me inside the stateroom with some of the guests — which included most of the nothing elements: Nazarene apprentices, Nazarene Bishops, judges and their manicurists, mechanical drawers, and Stephen Wolinski, the mayor of Buffalo, who had left the rest of his party atop the Empire State Building while he accepted an invitation to meet the Chief of State. The guests were doing a dance called the stomp which involved smashing your foot or kinda lifting it and merely stompin’.
In his hand, the mayor held a gift-wrapped kabalsa. Some of the others moved around the edges of the room in their own thing: hands in pockets and doing a mean blasé stomp.
The guests were being entertained by a group of rock-and-roll Nazarene apprentices from the Lower East Side who were playing recorders, lutes, drums, tambourines and electric guitars. They had taken the poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry David Thoreau — all white men with three names, dead many years-and set them to music.
Songs such as “Look at Dat Waterfowl Bending Its Skinny Neck in da Crick Ovah Dere,” “Ain’t Nature Grand?” or “Your Cock Was Nevah So Good but When I Laid Ya in the Calabash Field” rang out with authority over the Black Bay.
I leaned over the rail; NOTHING slipping out of sight before me as the boat picked up anchor and began its arduous push toward the island. It felt as if we were moving above the smooth slime of the Black Bay. I could see the old men trudging homeward after a day of clipping out articles from the old Harper’s Brothers magazine led by a spright-stepping octogenarian beating a bass drum.