More importantly, he was not confused. I am confused. And getting confuseder.
I am getting wondrier about our mental welfare.
Well, you should be if I cannot get up from the bed and recover the wanton emotions of the night. It’s very cold outside. I saw this mechanic wearing a pair of overalls into which he had inserted a heating pad and he had plugged himself into a power strip and was working comfortably. We could make rigs such as that.
If we got a generator and put it in a red wagon we could make it to the liquor bunker warmer and making more noise than all the brothers’ Buicks combined.
We would never be fucked with hooked up to a generator.
Are you making some roundabout insult?
I am just having a vision of us wired to a loud Honda generator, smiling in our super-warm jumpsuits, and carrying large unbreakable bottles of vodka unmolested through the ghetto. That is all I will confess to.
It is not a bad vision.
It is a happy vision. It is not a vision of a dark place I cannot rescue from abstraction. I am done with all that. This Red Flyer walk in heated suits is a Studio-Becalmed vision, and I am going totally with it.
I want orange electrical cords and orange suits, like jail suits.
That will be our very best protection, if we look to have escaped and are not in a panic to conceal our prison garb.
We will be bad. Unspeakably bad and loud and bold. One of us stays with the generator while the other goes in the store.
Right on.
I can see Studio camped in a pup tent beside Lake Rosa. He gets up at four in the morning under a moon and casts a Dillinger on the lake and catches bass the size of fire hydrants. His uncle remains asleep. There is coffee later, black coffee boiled in a black pot over a fire. An easy morning.
What is a Dillinger?
Torpedo bait, propellers fore and aft, striped like a zebra.
Is this a joke about primitive bass fishing?
Well, it was a funny bait and the fishing was primitive – the bass back then hit anything in the water, as near as I can tell. Water snake – there were enough of them that they rained from trees into the wooden rowboats.
You are on full-on nostalgia roll now.
I am. I am about to envision drinking the tangy water from the orange metal tumbler and petting the rogue water mocassin.
Do we have any heating pads?
No.
Jumpsuits?
No.
Metal tumblers?
No.
Dillingers?
No.
Did we party last night?
Not, to my knowledge, beyond the usual, the genteel talktail party we always hold. Why?
Because I notice that all the knobs to the stove are off the stove.
They are gone?
No, on the kitchen floor.
Neatly or scattered?
I would say they are in a configuration that is between neat and scattered. As if they fell from the stove behaving like apples falling from the tree are wont to behave: not far.
That is an interesting idea, stove knobs as fruit of the stove.
Well, the fruit is on the ground.
I am without answer.
A stove-knob burglar came in and was frightened off the booty by something?
One of us sleepwalks and likes to pull appliances apart? Were you punished for playing with the stove as a wee?
Did another appliance molest the stove – did the toaster oven pull her knobs off?
Did a bull come into our china shop? I would like to know who coined that conceit, the bull in the china shop, it is not bad at all.
I wonder if a bull has ever actually got into a china shop.
I would think, in the long reach of time, it not unlikely, at least once. A bull running, say, down a street in Spain could easily detour into a fine shop. Remember your laws of thermodynamics. I’ll say it was Dickens, Sterne, one of those guys.
I am a little depressed.
I am too.
Nothing novel.
No.
We should reknob the stove.
I’m going to. I left them on the floor only for evidentiary purposes. The crime will not be solved, we might as well sweep up the evidence.
That could be our motto for Life. Life will not be explained; sweep away the evidence.
The hindmost hand.
What?
I have had another vision, of “the hindmost hand.” As a phrase, not as a thing.
What does it mean?
No idea. But I like it. It comforts me.
It would be possible to take succor from the hindmost hand.
Far superior to that from the foremost hand.
Inarguably.
We have fallen on the right side of the fence on that one, yes.
And how discomforting is the hindmost foot, or the foremost foot, compared to the balm proffered by the hindmost hand?
That foot is not a halcyon idea any way you put it.
No. We favor the hindmost hand.
The hindmost hand helps us, leads us last through the door.
The hindmost hand on the small of the back.
It hands you peace of mind.
It sits you in the shade, the hindmost hand.
It shows you the valley, the light without trouble, the happy shadow.
It calms the water before you.
It hands you the halter to the gentle horse of Life.
It gives you a piece of candy when you thought you were left out.
It spanks you when you need spanking.
It waves a hearty farewell when you are leaving.
The hindmost hand greets you forever.
The hindmost hand helps you over the last hill.
The hindmost hand hauls you into the Final Alps of Heaven.
Studio Becalmed shakes your hand with his hindmost hand.
With your own hindmost hand you say Hidey, finally, to Studio, and you rest.
Your long sojourn is done.
You may discard your electrified orange jumpsuit.
Let’s not go there again.
I have lost my mind, I am comfortable with having lost my mind, and I plan on having my mind stay lost.
That is Caesarian, almost. What precipitates this observation?
Por esample: I have spent the better part of the morning cutting up my BVDs for rags, making nice usable little patches of soft polishing cloths by cutting along the seams. This surgery is done as carefully as if it were construction, not dismantling.
This is not irrational behavior. We can be compelled to many enterprises like this. The brain wants order. The soul likes clean lines, man. The isolated “cotton panel” speaks to it.
Yes. But I am saving the elastic waistbands, because they are generally unexhausted elastic which I cannot throw away.
This too happens: waste not.
Yes. I plan on offering these waistbands to girls.
Whoa now.
Yes. To girls who come over. These old underwear waistbands will be given them and they will put them on as ur bikinis, or strapless thongs, and be seduced by them.
I see.
I see that you hesitate to subscribe to the plan. There is a place in the plan for the skeptic: for a fee I will let you inhabit a closet and witness the seductions by waistband.
I will get in the closet and hold my breath.
Now you are coming along.
I have old underwear of my own.
Well, join us on the outside, then. The scissors are in the proper drawer.
I’m there, dude. I am so there.
I told you that losing the mind is agreeable.
Who would fight it?
No one in his right mind would fight losing his mind.
Extremely well put. That epigram is evidence that our talk is not for naught. We come up with things, here and there.
As would, I think we admit, monkeys at a typewriter, but still, we type.
Do you know any
girls to call?
No.
We will depend on the drop-in by kind stranger?
Apparently, yes. Unless you know some.
I fear I do not.
I didn’t think you did.
All right. I shall dismantle my underpants. I shall whittle them into magical charms. We’ll both be ready.
We are prepared. We are loquacious gentlemen with magic lingerie awaiting company. We should have a sideboard of liquor and a man to serve us. We should have important appointments we prefer not to keep. We should have vintage cars well garaged.
We should have a lot that we do not.
We have what we have. We are not to complain.
Complaint is unchristian, untenable, uninteresting, unadvised, undone under water.
Undone under water?
Correct. One should not complain under water. It is less indicated than complaining above water.
And we live, figuratively speaking, if not literally, under water.
So we do not complain.
We don’t.
This talk of specious lingerie has had an adverse effect on me.
How so?
I dreamed of a Japanese girl. She walked by me in a sheer peignoir, if that is the term for a short jacket. My bedroom French is not vast. Underneath was the obligatory bra and panties. They were embroidered with a perfect bold black Ottoman design. So that there was the likeness of a Sultan’s signature on the mons.
What was adverse in this?
It was so striking that as she passed, without regard to me, of course, I was taken by a sigh of resignation, and then I nearly wept. I teared up. I thought of my wife.
You have a wife?
I had a wife.
Oh. Of course. We all had a wife. Wife is a synonym for past.
So I had a vision, inspired by this well-designed and well-positioned embroidery, of my wife in the perfect past, before it…
Became the past.
Yes.
And you cried.
I could have. I looked at the girl, who had walked by me and stopped on a gymnasium floor with padding on it for floor routines, and who stood there not thirty feet away still not regarding me, and I could have wept, but at this point I am offended by my sentimentality and getting everything in check, and finding fault with the girl. What is she doing in a serious gymnasium in high-fashion slut gear – you know, that kind of take down.
Perfectly sensible defense. She looked good.
No. Delicious.
I feel your pain, dude.
Really striking underwear, I’m telling you.
Where would you like to go?
I would like to go to a place where there are orange fields and sweet young dogs to walk in them with. There is a small wind at all times, large wind at night. Things bud and decay in equilibrium, light and shade play together nicely. If things are named, the names are known but not used overmuch. Forgetting and remembering have shaken hands.
What would you do there?
I would play my little record player, a fabric-covered box for 45s with the fat spindle. I would be alert to birds. I would never hurt anyone’s feelings because I would never see anyone.
Would you not work?
Not at more than I have described.
Would you not eat, then?
It is entirely possible that I would not.
Obesity would not present unto you the challenge it presents to most.
No.
All right. I can see this place too. I could come with you.
No. You would need to find your own.
I see that that is so. Would you do anything besides play the records and regard the birds?
I would write a book called The Ways in Which I Have Been a Coward.
A slim volume or—
No. Exhaustive, and exhausting. It troubles the prospect of my place, with my sweet dogs and old records and crisply singing birds. I might not write it. One more manifestation of the cowardice.
Well, what matter is but one more?
Exactly mine own sentiment. We are so d’accordo that if anyone could accompany another to a magic place, you could me.
Yes, and horndog reciprocal, I am sure. But we know better.
We know better.
Would you care to go—
I would care to go fishing in that orange light I was telling you about. Some green frondage, in a wind. Either a monkey or a boy who resembles a monkey.
That is all you need.
No. I want also a canteen full of water, a tidy bureau of clothes, a postcard in my bungalow sent to a previous occupant, a lamp, a broom, a skillet, a spider, and a storm.
That is all you need.
That is all I need. Yes.
You would wish to be a man?
God no. Why do you ask?
Perhaps I misunderstood a complaint…
I do not wish to be a man. What you may have heard was my wondering how it is that I am not one, and do not care. This was at least my position at an earlier date.
It has advanced?
Yes. Now that I have had time to reflect a bit, I see that the situation is really considerably worse. I am not merely not a man. I am not even properly a boy, a good boy. But I have affected the costume of a good boy.
And mein? Is this a place we can finally use that word?
I think so. Or countenance.
So you are not even a boy.
No. I am a coward, an ass, and something else that I had my finger on last night but have now conveniently again forgotten.
Again?
Yes, it is convenient to forget one is a coward and an ass and whatever egregious else one is as frequently, or a little more frequently, than one recalls.
Go get us some coffee. I feel already tired today.
Alas, perfect, you jog me well, you queer musketeer: I am a lazy coward and ass.
Were we born lazy or did we through industry of some kind, some noble force, get tired?
That is the hopeful way to look at it, but I fear not. Why dispute it? Why struggle? A coward struggles to not admit he is lazy, or an ass, or a coward. There is bravery in surrender.
If you surrender you are brave and not a coward. I think you are in a jam here. Or is it a jamb?
In a jam of logic or in a door jamb of…I’ll get the coffee.
We have need of adventure. Let us have one.
Summon Studio Becalmed.
From the dead?
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 that 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 I.D, or O.D., or M.O., 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 soundtrack 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 a 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?
You & I Page 6
