The land of adventure if there is one. We will say to him, Studio, we poor cowards and asses are lazy and afraid, can you help us?
And Studio will say?
Fresh from the dead, he will say, Where is Jayne? Where are the Alps of Heaven? Where’s my dog? I at least must pet my dog.
Your dog is right here, Studio. We took good care of him. He is about sixty years old but there he is, not a hair on him, and Parkinson’s, but he is well drugged, so do not mind all that shaking and drooling, it’s the best we can do.
You are a mean bastard.
Who?
You.
Is that you saying that to me or Studio saying that to me?
That, to you, am saying, I. To speak to Studio Becalmed about his dog like that!
Studio is dead now over sixty years; I think he can take care of himself.
It’s not exactly the Boy Scouts.
Who said that?
Studio said that.
What the hell does that mean, Studio? “It’s not exactly the Boy Scouts”?
I cannot believe the tone you are taking with Studio. He’s dead, and he’s in our house.
He’s our dead houseguest.
Yes, exactement.
Where did we go so wrong, Moonpie?
To be speaking this way to the beloved dead?
In the Bakersfield in which we do not have a life, yes.
This, to you, confess, must, I, to not having a clue. But sore wrong we turned, and we are not young girls anymore.
&
I’m just a mouthful of pajama air.
I can’t play the accordion.
Picasso could paint.
&
I fell down once and did not get up for ten days.
Where was this?
In France. Or Belgium. Or Switzerland. It’s murky over there.
Troppo vino?
Couldn’t get enough.
This falling down and not getting up was not vino-related—
No. I fell down, and I could not get up. It was pleasant. I was speaking but no one could hear me. They were concerned for me, in twos and later fives, reaching out to me literally and figuratively. I wound up in a bed. There was no ID, or OD, or MO, or whatever it is called.
Diagnosis?
Yes, there was no inside diagnosis, outside diagnosis, or any known mode of operation for it. I fell down, couldn’t get up, and ten days later got up, said thanks, and walked out.
Without paying.
They would not take my money.
This all, I take it, was before I knew you.
Yes.
Because you don’t seem to have this kind of purposeful life now, since I have known you.
No, those were the good old days, sho nuff.
Have you ever seen those clips of flamingoes walking in water to a rock ’n’ roll sound track and it looks like they are stepping to the beat? Really with-it dancing pink birds?
Yes, I have seen that. Pinking shears.
I like that a lot.
I do too.
&
Are we free?
Insofar as no one is going to pay money to possess us, I deem us free.
Are we free to do anything we want to do?
Insofar as the better of those things cost money to do, I deem us not free.
But we are free to do the free things?
Yes, but we are afraid to do them.
What are we afraid to do?
We are afraid to be men, to engage the world bravely, to be upright in our behavior, to have moral height, to display ditto fiber, to shoot ourselves, to have another dog, to talk to anyone except Studio Becalmed largely because he was not afraid to have another dog and we respect that in another person, especially one safely dead who does not challenge us—
Okay. I get it.
&
I miss my dog more than I miss my parents.
Amenhotep.
Why would one want his dog back more than his parents back?
Because one liked his dog more? Is it a question so difficult that we need a computer geek to configure the answer?
We need them to configure everything else. Why not?
Let me change the subject, though not really: have you looked at yourself well in a mirror recently?
No. Should I?
I do not advise it.
&
Be neat, be brave, be Buster-Brown bustamente.
What does that mean?
I do not know. But does it not sound right?
It does. I hazard that you are implying that if we’d been neat and brave and Buster-Brown bustamente we’d be all right today, instead of… this.
That I imply.
I am in the accordion with you. Nice to see that Buster Brown get a piece of the Coppertone girl, wouldn’t you say?
You put it more vulgarly than we need to but indeed that is a mythological vision with a purity of force and justice in it.
His hard shiny shoes, his hope, her round unsunned buns, the nippy little dog playing around them.
Her clothes are nearly already off. One can see Buster perhaps struggling to undo the eponymous brogans, comically, sitting on the ground in his short pants, little Miss Coppertone saying, Hurry up, Buster Brown, for God’s sake.
Took off a piece of my finger last night in the Benriner. You know there is a cautionary slogan on the slide, WATCH YOUR FINGERS?
I did not know that.
Well, you do now, and I can report that that warning is not bullshit; the bullshit content in WATCH YOUR FINGERS on the mandoline veggie-holder slide thing is one hundred percent not bullshit.
You were brave but you were not neat.
I was as lucky as Buster Brown. Fingernail took the hit. Wicked crescent of ring-finger nail was in the salad, I guess.
I wonder if Howdy Doody ever got laid.
I never had a real grasp on who or what Howdy Doody really was. I see freckles but nothing else — was it animation, a real kid, what? And what exactly did Howdy Doody do?
There is a great children’s-culture porn waiting to be made in this country.
Go anywhere but Dorothy and the guys. I won’t stand for it. The country won’t stand for it, bless its heart.
I want to see the Tin Man tell the Scarecrow he’s too soft and the Scarecrow tell the Tin Man he’s too fucking hard.
That I can handle but leave Dorothy out of it.
What about with the exposed Wizard in the basket at the end?
Dorothy never gets in the basket. That’s what wakes her up.
We never got in the basket either, my friend, and that is what has us all woke up. We are looking up at the basket.
We is all woke up and nowhere to go.
&
My dog died. He never lost his enthusiasm for me. I now lament that I did not play with him more. It gave him supreme pleasure if I got down on the ground and he would turn me over to go at my face, insanely, insanely wagging happy. I should have spent all day doing this. It was a pure thing, he was unrestrainedly happy. I had the capacity to give something on earth that. There were days, weeks, I did not do this, I schlepped by leaving him alone.
You were a turd, but he knew you were an okay turd, that is why he did the licking.
My father sold his Parker shotgun out of our garage one Saturday morning for twenty dollars instead of giving it to me. I was thirteen or so. Why did he not give it to me? I would like to have gotten to the bottom of that, and to have talked to him and known him at the end. I schlepped right by all that too. But what I am saying is that I regret more not playing with my dog. I think in this preference I am displaying the trait or traits that put us where we are.