You & Me (8 page)

&

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 mien? 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 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.

Without lives, men who are not neat and brave and Buster-Brown
bustamente,
you mean.

Yes.

Afraid.

Yes.

Nulls.

Yes.

I find that even if I have a coaster to hand I will rarely put my glass on it. I carelessly damage the surface of tables.

This is who we are.

I regard this carelessness carefully. I am industrially idle. This defines me.

There is no point to us.

I will not need another new swimsuit in my time.

We never needed a new swimsuit. We just thought we did.

What do you actually call a swimsuit?

Does one, or does I?

Do you.

I call it a bathing suit.

Would you ever have said trunks?

Never. Sounds preposterous, and I can't say why. My trunks alas are in my trunk.

Once I am in my trunks I will get in the water.

Still, I can hear Jayne say, Studio, put your trunks on, love, let's go for a refreshing dip in the Gulf.

That is the dead speaking, we cannot challenge them. And before they were dead they were neat and brave and not afraid. They can say what they will. I am having a cramp in my gut.

They can say that?

No, I am having a cramp. Now.

You are strange.

Make us a colorful drink with a sugary liqueur. Would you? I feel like a famous lost heroine.

But you are not famous and not a heroine. You are just lost.

Yes, I am comfortable enough. I would like to have a gun.

Not suicide.

Of course not. I would just like some oiled steel, just to behold.

A symbol.

I suppose. Of something. Perhaps not a symbol, but a
thing
.

The old
Ding an sich
!

I think so. We have finally gotten one, one we comprehend.

A good oiled pistol on the table.

To hell with the coasters and where the drinks park themselves, we have oily steel already on the table!

We are making progress.

I did not think that we would, in our time.

&

When I wake up in the mornings the impulse to cry is almost sufficient that I start.

Why do you not, then? As that little imp put it—do you recall this? Throw up right here, Mother.

You are referring to that child in the Sokol gymnasium.

Yes.

That was genuinely funny.

Why was he saying that?

Because she was complaining of having eaten too much spaghetti and said she might be going to be sick.

And they were kneeling on the gym floor.

And the child got tired of her threatening to throw up and tapped his finger on the mat and said, Throw up right here, Mother.

Politely.

Very politely.

No one took any notice.

That is what was so funny.

I recall it now. I am the same woman. I feel like crying.

So do. I will be the same imp. Cry right here.

I am embarrassed at how much weeping I have done in my life, and think that not one more tear is in order, to salvage what I can of . . .

Of what?

That is the question. Just what is this operation about? In preserving dignity or anything else, what is served? I think I do not quite get it all.

We've been over this.

Yes, and still, and this is what gets me, I feel that I should not cry anymore, even though intellectually, if we should call it that, we know one may as well cry as not if he's as lost as we are.

Lost in the nonwoods.

The closest we are to lost in the woods is lost in the woodwork.

I like it.

Anyway I am unstable until I get the coffee and by jacking my nerves up a bit calm them down.

Is that how it works?

Yes, it's irony, fairly traded and artisan-roasted irony.

Juan Valdez and Joe DiMaggio are taking care of you.

They are the same person except for the kind of women they ran with. They both help me keep on keepin' on. I love that idiocy.

Did Crumb do that? Was it a big Crumb foot marching in the air, leading the fool attached to it?

If it were not Crumb I don't know who it was.

Crumb left us here. He moved to France.

We would too, if we could. We would leave ourselves here.

Why does Crumb get to leave and we don't?

Because we are talking to the dead? Because we are weeping? Because we miss our dogs more than our parents? Because we are the
subject
of Crumb? It's a hard one.

Speaking of
rocket
science,
do you recall hearing children of the ghetto proclaim they were going to be
corporate
lawyers? Plain lawyer wasn't enough?

Is that not unlike wanting to be a
brain
surgeon?

Whence this zeal to
specialize
when they are so far in the hole?

Doesn't it mean they know it's fantasy so why not go ahead and make it
sound
fantastic as well? Is it really any worse or different than painting a car June-bug green?

Am I following you?

Can any of us follow Crumb to France? That is what I am talking about. If you cannot, paint your car green or cry all day, it does not matter. Tell people you are going to be a
rocket
scientist when you grow up. They cannot hold it against you. Shoulder to shoulder we look abroad and pray for Crumb to send drawings of feet and thick women.

We know he can because he's eating good cheese.