Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse

by Denis Johnson

  October 1966: The White House Oval Office.

  In a small zone of light, LYNDON JOHNSON and J. EDGAR HOOVER play gin rummy, HOOVER in a business suit, JOHNSON in shirt and necktie, socks, undershorts.

  JOHNSON pours himself generous drinks of bourbon. HOOVER sips sherry.

  A lynched black man hangs in the dimness just outside the zone illuminated.

  JOHNSON: The Mormon angels landed here from Mars.

  They claim to bring a major revelation,

  But look you close: It’s just so old it’s new.

  Naturally they revive polygamy.

  They’re polishing up the ancient creeds

  And revving up the old dictates,

  Virgin sacrifice and every scary

  Type of genital mutilation and

  Putting your hand on your balls when you swear a lie.

  HOOVER:—Elvis Presley is a clever robot.

  JOHNSON: Mark me,

  The aliens wouldn’t touch the Eastern Bloc:

  They ain’t nuts, just incomprehensible.

  They’ve never said so much as boo to us.

  They’ve got to have some outfit fronting them.

  Who sends his ticklish tendrils in behind

  The phony fronts? Our man J. Edgar Hoover.

  I want the goddamn Mormons infiltrated.

  HOOVER: Lyndon, do you mean to indicate

  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day

  Saints has extraterrestrial origins?

  JOHNSON: I mean of course I don’t mean Mars per se.

  Just outer space. And if they’re emissaries,

  Then they’ve got outer-space angelic leaders,

  Someone who dispatched them here from blackness.

  Soon’s they’re ready, they’ll negotiate,

  And I mean to say negotiate with us.

  We’ll find the outer-space administrators

  And cut ourselves a deal. We’ll dangle them

  The Soviet Union and one thousand virgins.

  HOOVER: You overestimate our populace’s

  Moral amplitude.

  JOHNSON: One hundred virgins.

  HOOVER: And you anticipate the politics

  Of creatures we can’t even guess about.

  JOHNSON: Nope. They’re good old boys in search of profit.

  If they were commies they’da lost the space race.

  I don’t care how many arms and feet

  And slimy orifices God supplied you,

  It’s hope of raw materials and markets

  That drives the steam from out your rocket’s asshole.

  Gin.

  HOOVER: No thanks.

  JOHNSON: That’s gin for me.

  HOOVER: Make mine

  Another sherry…No. This isn’t rummy!

  JOHNSON: Three fours, four jacks, a run of spades.

  HOOVER: Go fish!

  JOHNSON: Now why, when fortune blows a little stink

  Up your kimona, do you seek to change the game?

  Falling behind should goad your appetites:

  Sting you to whap the shit off the butt of your jeans

  And hook that bull by his nostril ring.

  HOOVER: You brew

  One nauseating mess of metaphors.

  …We’ve got bigger fish to fry than Mormons.

  JOHNSON: Martians.

  HOOVER: Lyndon, Mr. President,

  You spoke of leaders. Let us speak of leaders.

  JOHNSON: A hunnerd twenty-five and—flip them—three,

  And thirty—hunnerd fifty-eight for me.

  HOOVER: I’ll not disperse among the Mormon fold

  A hatch of undercover Martian-hunters.

  They’ll end up married to a bunch of milkmaids.

  JOHNSON: We’ve got Andromedans athwart our women.

  They breed with Mormon females to make monsters.

  Stick your spyglass in amongst that mess.

  HOOVER: My fondest vision is to map the hairs

  And very capillaries of the least

  Significant citizen and begin a file.

  To tongue and probe the grossness in the soul

  Of every enemy of the American Dream.

  JOHNSON: And what exactly is the American Dream?

  HOOVER: I’ve just described it.

  JOHNSON: Tonguing, probing—

  HOOVER: Infinitesimal infiltration

  And alphabetization of the masses.

  But not the Mormons—yet. Someday; my word.

  Now, Lyndon. Mr. President.

  JOHNSON: That’s gin.

  HOOVER: Gin?

  JOHNSON: I play the hand that’s dealt me.

  HOOVER: Dealt?

  I dealt you gin, a pat hand, one two three?

  JOHNSON: The odds come long, but once upon a time

  We all were zygotes in a long-odds race.

  People may complain, J. Ed, but think:

  We’re each the luckiest sperm there ever was.

  HOOVER: You S.O.B. You stacked the goshdarn deck.

  JOHNSON: How did I stack a deck I never held?

  HOOVER: Thus we hear your enemies crying.

  JOHNSON: Stud.

  —A hand of stud. All right, you’re high: Queen bets.

  HOOVER: Queen, sir?

  JOHNSON: I’m sorry, King of Spades. Your bet.

  HOOVER: Mr. President, I wouldn’t bet

  A hamster’s giblets on the King of Spades.

  JOHNSON:…Don’t you think I know what brings you here?

  I’ve dealt with darkness ever’ step along.

  Every ounce I’ve laid on the side of clean

  I’ve goddamn nearly had to match with dirty.

  The Civil Rights Act, 1964:

  There the scale bangs down decisively

  For victorious good. My life is right.

  —I’m paired.

  HOOVER: It’s lowball, and the pot is mine.

  Phone rings.

  JOHNSON:You love to monkey with the rules…[On phone] What say?

  …I see. And don’t we have our whole Sixth Fleet

  Playing war games down along those parts?

  …No. I won’t. Keep me apprised. That’s all. [Hangs up.]

  …My legacy is civil rights for all.

  HOOVER: Martin Luther King has got to go.

  Phone rings.

  JOHNSON [on the phone]: Who’s this? (Go on and shuffle please, J. Ed.)

  Yes, Admiral, I am aware. The submarines,

  The nuclear. I’m rattling our saber.

  —This is your president. Alert the fleet.

  Mao has got to know the ocean’s ours.

  [Hangs up.]

  We all agree you’ve got me where you want me:

  How do you like my starburst undershorts?

  I don’t bawl, I’ll take my punishment

  For letting a weasel get me by the eggs.

  But I can have a dab of shellfish compound

  Here in my palm by two this afternoon

  (Thanks to the chemists at the CIA)

  To make it look like heart conditions killed me;

  And I won’t even have to lick it up:

  It sinks into the flesh. And sink it will,

  And I sink too, before I let the weasel

  Devour my entire house. My deal.

  HOOVER: Those vicious chemists at the CIA.

  JOHNSON: Chairman Mao can kiss my bony ass.

  —I’m on a little junket Saturday.

  Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas.

  HOOVER: Just the time of year!

  JOHNSON: The votes down there

  Just might stay Democrat another decade,

  Although we smell a sea change.

  HOOVER: Lovely weather.

  JOHNSON: Smooch the infants, snip the ribbons, suchlike.

  Dedicate this one museum there. This feller

  Elvis Purvis is the hero of it.

  Down around where he called home. The man

  Who collared Dillinger. Rem
ember him?

  HOOVER: Several agents collared Dillinger

  With the assistance of the whole division.

  Later Purvis murdered Pretty Boy Floyd.

  I have the officer’s written recollection,

  The Kansas cop, or whatever state it was.

  On Purvis’s orders, he dispatched the wounded

  Prisoner with a bullet to the brain.

  JOHNSON: A perjured recollection?

  HOOVER: Written. Signed.

  And decades later, Purvis shot himself.

  I take that as the plainest mea culpa.

  JOHNSON: The South Carolina Criminal Justice Hall

  Of Fame. The Elvis Purvis Gun Display!

  —Elvis? That his name?

  HOOVER: His name was Melvin.

  JOHNSON: I’ll be saying words in praise of him.

  The nation sighs; let’s celebrate our heroes.

  Purvis; Kennedy; Martin Luther King.

  HOOVER: We want straight arrows, Boy Scouts, true believers.

  What we can’t abide are vivid heroes.

  If a man should stand too high, well then,

  We’ll lop him at the legs. As I did Purvis.

  JOHNSON: A preacher ain’t nothing to fret you, Herr Director.

  Preachers rise and fall.

  HOOVER: King’s dangerous.

  JOHNSON: They sit themselves on golden toilets, wiping

  Their holes with hunnerds, talking on two phones

  While flying around in bright red jet airplanes,

  Don’t pay no tax on half a cent of it,

  Nobody says boo. What shoots ’em down?

  What finally shoots ’em down? It’s good old poon,

  The whores and mistresses and altar boys.

  You’d like to hound and tree a man already

  Besieged by willing females who’ll destroy him,

  These underfucked and overfed and half-

  Way unzipped Baptist slatterns shyly come

  To sprawl themselves upon his offices.

  And some of ’em are sexy. Comely. Cuddly.

  Here you want to take him in your crosshairs

  And thunder him to earth, with all

  The messy implications that implies.

  HOOVER: The population is a nightmare seething

  On the earth. We can’t let heroes rise to wake

  The monster into chaos.

  JOHNSON: “I have a dream…”

  HOOVER: Man’s best ordered into hives and warrens.

  Public schools, vast corporate factories,

  Housing projects…concentration camps…

  I’m going to knock with three.

  JOHNSON: Let’s see, let’s see,

  That’s twenty points. You’ll catch me soon.

  HOOVER: I’m bored.

  JOHNSON: I come from westward-roaming pioneers.

  I like to sling my big old Eldorado

  Around the roads on my place, hollering

  And firing my revolver and raising dust

  And gunsmoke. You won’t get me in a hive.

  HOOVER: I’m not going to infiltrate the Mormons.

  JOHNSON: The last assassination crippled us.

  [He lifts the receiver and dials.]

  [On phone] What news?…Is that a fact? Well, well. I swan.

  He must be facing some internal strife,

  Some rumbling among his favored generals.

  Try the following: Sweep the guns of the fleet

  Across their bows. If they keep coming, raise

  The subs and let them see our nukes. [Hangs up.]

  …So freedom is a dusty artifact.

  HOOVER: You’ll have your Civil Rights Bill, Excellency.

  You just won’t have your heroes. You must suffer

  The lack of such as King and Kennedy.

  JOHNSON: I miss John Kennedy. I miss his wife.

  They think I rigged his killing. They’d believe that of me.

  HOOVER: And yet you’ve done much worse.

  JOHNSON: The other thing.

  HOOVER: The other thing. The undiscussable matter.

  Phone rings.

  JOHNSON: The Martians aren’t our only misery.

  [On phone]…Let him come. What say we weigh his pecker?

  …Turn them subs toward the mainland now

  And prime the missiles. Let him see our eyeballs.

  [Hangs up.]

  HOOVER: Friend, let’s discuss the undiscussable.

  JOHNSON: I wish I had killed John F. Kennedy.

  And Lincoln. And Caesar. Murder in pursuit

  Of power, well—

  HOOVER: It’s easy to imagine.

  JOHNSON: That’s why they imagine it of me.

  The other thing is past imagining.

  HOOVER: The other thing is undiscussable.

  JOHNSON: Speaking of artifacts and speaking of peckers,

  What’s the story on Dillinger’s remains?

  HOOVER: Ach! Purvis is responsible for that legend.

  He let reporters photograph the corpse.

  JOHNSON: May we all have such a legend told of us.

  HOOVER: He made it necessary that each daily tour

  Of FBI headquarters should begin

  With a denial of that vulgar fantasy.

  JOHNSON: You mean it’s merely a tale that Dillinger…

  HOOVER: That he was marvelous between his legs?

  That his gigantic organ was collected,

  And in a jar in some museum we have set

  Adrift his pickled genitalia?

  …No, my president, the tale is false.

  JOHNSON: I understand the Great American Novel

  Is Moby-Dick.

  HOOVER: I disagree.

  Phone rings.

  JOHNSON [on phone]: What news?

  …Not yet. I smell a bluff. Just stay the course.

  [Hangs up.]

  Mao Tse-tung will get Taiwan. He’ll swallow

  Vietnam and a chunk of southern Russia,

  But Mao will by God never get my balls—

  [Phone rings.]

  [On phone]—you hear?…I won’t give in. Let’s stare him down.

  [Hangs up.]

  Them goddamn sonabitching commie Chinks.

  HOOVER: Sir, the greatest error of our century

  Was Truman’s failure to bombard the horde

  In 1953.

  JOHNSON: You mean with nukes.

  HOOVER: I do. MacArthur would have finished them.

  Instead, from that seed of mercy will grow all

  The terrors of the third millennium.

  JOHNSON: Right in here’s the famous crimson button.

  HOOVER: Aren’t there wires?

  JOHNSON: No. It’s wireless.

  HOOVER: Aren’t you going to let me see?

  JOHNSON: They change

  The combination daily.

  HOOVER: Well, I’m sure

  That I could get it for you.

  JOHNSON: Sir, I have it.

  I’m the president.

  HOOVER: Quite so.

  JOHNSON: I’m just

  Not certain where they put it.

  HOOVER: But it’s here.

  JOHNSON: Of course it’s here. It’s for the president.

  HOOVER: I’ve put it in the major newspapers.

  The Times, the Post, the London Times. And Pravda.

  JOHNSON: Well, that’s insane. But harmless. Can’t set off

  A war with a combination. Got to have

  This button that the combination’s to.

  HOOVER: I mean the other thing. I’ve sold you off.

  I have discussed the undiscussable.

  I’ve given it all to the press. Tomorrow’s headlines

  Will stretch six inches tall to tell the world that—

  JOHNSON: Never mention it anywhere nor ever.

  HOOVER: I think a headline in the Times and Post

  Will constitute a mention, will it not?

  JOHNSON:…And Pra
vda, too?

  HOOVER: Just to amuse myself.

  JOHNSON: Manure! Why would the organ grinder

  Grind up his monkey in his organ?

  HOOVER: Maybe

  The monkey made too many metaphors.

  JOHNSON: Folks say the Gila monster never shits,

  So everything inside him turns to poison.

  HOOVER: There you go again.

  JOHNSON: You’ve done it? Really?

  You’re sick enough, I grant you.

  HOOVER: God, you’ll never know.

  JOHNSON: I do believe you’ve gone and done it. I…

  I’ll be slaughtered like a roach. The mobs

  Will mutilate the relics of my flesh

  In hope of hurting every molecule.

  HOOVER: What you did would merit exactly that.

  JOHNSON: I’m bottled up. You’ve left me skinny choices.

  [Phone rings. Rings. Rings.]

  I’m going to murder myself in the Oval Office.

  I’m going to murder you, too.

  HOOVER: With a telephone?

  JOHNSON: You and everybody else. [On phone] Who now?

  —Well howdy hi. Yes, General, I’m sure

  You know I’ve spoken to the admiral.

  …Then don’t ask questions either of us could answer.

  Ask me something you don’t know, for instance

  When to conference call me with the other

  Lily-livered commie-loving Chiefs

  Of Staff. Let’s say at eight-oh-five p.m.

  —If I can start and finish Armageddon

  By eight-oh-five, then you can orchestrate

  A conference call by then, by God. Hop to!

  [Hangs up.]

  You’ve brought down Armageddon on my head.

  Might as well have jabbed the big red button.

  HOOVER: Is it actually red?

  JOHNSON: I’ve never seen it.

  —Why don’t we take it out for a little spin?

  [Phone rings.]

  [On phone] We need a fifth of Jack and a jug of sherry.