ALL OF WHICH, I SUPPOSE, is a somewhat roundabout way of saying: In the final aesthetic analysis what every selfrespecting author—or foreplayist—does has more to do with pursuing his own (psycho)sexual happiness rather than that of his reader/lover. Or as Ayn Rand, the High Priestess of Unbridled Individualism, wrote in The Virtue of Selfishness: A Concept of New Egoism, or Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (offhand I can't remember which, not that it really matters28): "Whether this world of ours is or isn't one's personal oyster, only an overeducated fool—or a congenital idiot—would waste what little time she has to enjoy her (real or imaginary it makes no difference!) global (if not cosmic) sovereignty waiting for some philosopher, prophet, sage, guru, messiah, pundit, imam, pope, lama or even Great American Novelist to answer that most crucial of all the epistemo/ontological questions a woman can ask herself about the nature of being human!" Moreover, because the welfare—if not the continued survival—of America, Western Civilization and mankind itself (as we once knew it) depends on whether this novelized WakeupCall of mine succeeds in alerting millions of halfbaked, semiliterate UpperLow and LowerMiddleBrowed "ordinary" housewives29 such as yourself to the dangers of (among a plethora of antiKlutzian SocioCultural Sins30) opiating on trashy bestsellers, I think I'm entitled to the widest possible latitude superprolixitywise and/or poetic license in the writing of it! And, dear reader, by making this (what must seem to you—as it first did to J. P.) "suicidal assertion gratuitouslyantagonizingone'saudiencewise" I'm fully aware by doing so my valiant efforts to stir some small signs of intelligent life in that sleepy head of yours might very well result in the "silent" falling of yet another of those "mighty but unappreciated oaks" in the vast virgin forest of neglected and/or totally ignored literary and artistic masterworks. If, however, such a calamity is to be my fate—and that of our nation, our Graeco RomanJudeoChristian ethos and our entire race—I will at least have the satisfaction of also knowing my NeoEgalitarian (and -Baroque) integrity remained unsullied to the bitter end!
† † †
But getting back to our story: At some point in this ejaculatory soliloquizing I gradually became aware of another voice —not unlike the one I heard on that balmy (no puns and/or double entendres should be inferred) autumn night in Hollywood following my NakedBlondeSexgoddess wild goose chase by which God so inscrutably led me to the summit of Inspiration Point for His Morons Awake! Peptalk (aka my Mt. Olympus Epiphany). More remarkably yet, this disembodied voice was repeating the very same word—FOOL! FOOL! FOOL!—He had also shouted (but not at me, it must be remembered) over and over again. Nevertheless I persevered—thinking, as I erroneously did on that previous occasion, the voice I heard was my own. Or, more accurately, the one inside my head which constantly engages men of my pensive bent in dialogues of a speculative nature concerning what might superficially seem to someone less Talmudic- or Jesuiticallyinclined like the most trivial questions. For example: It's 3 a.m. and the streets are devoid of both pedestrians and other vehicles. You've been waiting no less than 10 minutes—which, given the agitated state of mind your already in might just as well be an eternity—at the intersection of Hollywood & Vine for what is obviously a defective traffic light to turn from red to green. Should you: (a) Disregard the red light and proceed across Hollywood Blvd. toward your destination north on Vine St. in violation of §337[g] of the California Highway Code which states, in no uncertain terms, that: "A defective traffic signal cannot be used by a civilian motorist as an excuse to proceed through a red light no matter how long said motorist is stranded at an intersection by said defective traffic signal," or; (b) Remain sitting where you are on the remote chance this ludicrous set of circumstances could somehow turn out to be part of some Grand—or even Celestial!—Design (not unlike that which tried the patience of Job) with you as its eventual beneficiary?
IN THIS CASE, HOWEVER, the voice I heard was neither my inner one nor that emanating from some supernatural source. It belonged to Icky Vanderphd. And those "FOOL! FOOL! FOOL!s" he kept repeating weren't intended for him but for yours truly. As it soon became plainly and painfully apparent when he finally got my attention by tugging the sleeve of my coat and, what he later claimed, "was one of my elbows which accidentally found its way into your rib cage when I slipped on the wet deck of that platform." I didn't need any further admonishments (or prodding) from him to understand the reason for his otherwise inexcusable use of those fightingest of all 4letter words one can fling in the face or any intellectual—especially a Jewish one. In a blaze of fullyfontalized nakedness I suddenly saw this starkest of truths: There I was—or had been—next year's Nobel Laureate for Literature, Time Magazine's Man Of The Century and the toast of every college town from Oxford (Mississippi and England) to Cambridge (Massachusetts and ditto) standing alone on an empty stage flanked by a pair of deserted grandstands in the middle of a stormdrenched and desolate turnip patch sounding off furiously (and, for all I knew, strutting & fretting) like an idiot telling his insignificant tale of how it felt to have "written a novel charting the future course for all mankind to The Promised Land it is already inhabiting but lacks the NeoEgalitarian imagination—as revealed through the Gospel of Born Again Klutzianity—to fully appreciate that sublimest of sociocultural facts!"31
Not that this funk I now found myself in was any less depressing than the one Vanderphd experienced when it dawned on him he had been "duped" by me into playing the role of a decoy at the border between Moronia and Country A for what was supposed to be my surreptitious entry from Country C. As he explained it to me (during what should have been our M$1.35 and 5 minute ride to Moronville in the cab he arrived in but ended up taking us an hour and costing me US$47.50 to compensate its driver for, in his words, "Literally bailing you chaps out of that stickiest of wickets, knee&hubcapdeep inmudwise."): "I was under the—mistaken as it subsequently eventuated—impression all those preparations being made for your Gala Welcome Home Celebration on Moronia's Southeastern border were actually a diversionary tactic you tricked the Morons into playing on themselves by "accidentally" letting it be known you were secretly planning to arrive from Country C while I served as a fake decoy at the border with Country A." Although I had no idea what he was talking about—especially that "fake decoy" business—I apologized profusely for any inconvenience I might have unwittingly caused him. "I assure you, old friend, my motives for doing what I did in the Machiavellian way I chose to do it were as honorable as they could have been given that the principal object of this borderswitching exercise was, as you of all people should know: To arrive at the side of Maria's death bed in the most expeditious manner possible before she passed away."
"Perhaps," Icky conceded grudgingly, "but if you had trusted me this humiliating fiasco we now find ourselves in might never have happened."
"Oh?" I asked him, without really wanting to pursue the matter any farther,32 "How so?"
"By telling you—if you had asked me!—it was common knowledge among the Morons that, in keeping with your normal Cloak& Dagger machinations, the 'leak' concerning your surreptitious entry via Country C was most probably not a red herring but a doubly duplicitous diversionary tactic calculated to mislead them into changing the venue for your Surprise Welcome Home shindig from their border with Country C to that of their border with Country A."
Whether I had in fact outsmarted myself or been a victim of that cunning by which the Morons can occasionally make even someone like me look foolish didn't seem terribly significant at the time. "The important thing is," I told him as we reached the outskirts of Moronville, "in a few minutes this nightmare will be over. And, with any luck, Maria won't be any closer to the Pearly Gates than she was when it began 10 or 12 hours ago."
"15, to be exact," Vanderphd added, hoping his would be the last words on a subject that for him was of monumental importance; which, all things considered, I graciously allowed them to be by not quibbling over such a paltry increment of time. In any event—and far more importantly—luckwise my rosier estimate of the situation we found ourselves in was fully vindicated when, upon arriving at the Municipal Hospice we were told by the Chief Thanatologist, Dr. Kvânïjãç Kørkè33 ("Just call me 'doc' or 'Corky' like everyone else around here does!") that: "While in layman's terms Maria's vital signs were all of the 1 foot in the grave & the other on a bananapeel category, medicallyspeaking she was still alive, if not kicking." After which—Icky having "gallantly" declined his invitation—Kørkè led me to "the private room reserved for those patients whose life expectancy is measured in minutes and hours rather than days or weeks" where we found Maria lying on one of those Victorian brass beds the Morons (most of whom sleep on floursacks stuffed with sundried turnippeelings) regard as "a luxury fit only for the aristocratic likes of our King, his Queen and those royal brats of theirs." And to my pleasant (I was expecting to see the Love Goddess whose sirenesque allure remained undiminished well into her 70s transfigured into a sexless bag of skin&bones like those hags we passed in the Women's Ward while wending our way to her private room) surprise there was a decidedly regal, if not saintly, splendor in the serenity of Maria's repose; reminiscent of those heartbreakingly young (few of them lived long enough to savor the sweetness of their 16th birthdays) Ambrosian Princesses whose 7 or 8 state funerals I attended during just the first dozen of the 50 years I spent as ambassador to what was in some (but mostly less than) truly enchanting respects—such as these real life (and death!) "Sleeping Beauties"—a fairytale kingdom.34
"My god," I thought aloud, "except for the fact she's wrapped in a winding sheet and lying on her deathbed my poor old Maria looks almost as lovely as she did the day I first saw her!" At which point the mental snapshot of her standing on the OperaHouse stage wearing only a MonaLisalike smile suddenly appeared from that album where the memories of my preKlutz Affair (but what there and then seemed to me the most heavenly of) "epiphanies" are kept. The majority of which, dear reader, I must confess, are those arising from the more erotogenic (if not -maniacal!) chapters in my lifelong career as a collector of mostlycheapbutnow&thenpriceless voyeuristic thrills; ranging from the mildly obscene (ie., that indeliblyetchedfora12yearold sight of what looked like an authentic femme fatale's but was no doubt the most ordinaire of demoiselle's—or even maitress de maison's—dress being blown skyhigh by a burst of compressed air after some satansuited dwarf deftly maneuvered her with his electrified trident into straddling a strategically located hole concealed in the stagelike floorboards the female clientele of a Coney Island Fun House were forced to traverse before what turned out to be the notso makebelieve ordeal they were cajoled, seduced, begged, smoothtalked, dared—or dragged—into undergoing by their sweethearts, boyfriends, dates, escorts, beaux, gentlemanly admirers, suitors, fiancés and/or husbands could end) to those well beyond what the horniest of trashynovelreading housewives would consider her, or even the most lecherous of dirty old men's, pornographic pale (ie., those socalled "Cuban Circus Shows" featured in the more depraved of Havana's preCastro nightclubs where the "tricks" performed on a shamelessly less than convincing and ladylike "wild animal trainer" by her menagerie of stud ponies, billygoats, rams, dogs, signets and immaturebutstillroguishlyhung bull elephants were of a kind P. T. Barnum never imagined in his most grandiose Greatest Show On Earth dreams). But none of them came close to capturing a sight so pregnant with future analytical possibilities as the one I retained of Maria at that instant when she fully revealed herself in a state of such stark frontality it left me and my fellow judges with no choice but (after the 15 or 20 minutes we spent regathering our wits) to crown her as Moronia's 1942 Turnip Tournament Queen—an exercise in cameraless picturetaking whose original triumph of mnemonics over the fleetingness of (what are alltoo frequently) life's most precious moments was now made that much more sensational because its photographic clarity remained entirely undiminished (if not engraved with even greater precision!) by the passage of that halfcentury since it was taken!
"Although," Kørkè stated in response to what he must have known was a thought I had articulated accidentally—and despite my conspicuous efforts, both bodylanguage- and telepathicallywise, to notso politely inform him I was preoccupied with personal matters of an introspective nature—, "having arrived in Moronville after your departure I am, of course, speaking speculatively about the knowledge you must have acquired during your prolonged, and presumably, intimate relationship with Mrs. Klutz apropos the remarkable—one is tempted to say 'miraculous'—way in which her ravishing beauty continued to be unaffected (if not actually enhanced) by the ticking of that biological clock which takes its toll so relentlessly on a normal woman's physique." And, when I failed to take this bait, he tried again. After pausing just long enough to replenish his air supply. "Nevertheless, based on the results of the scientific study I've made of the Bimbeauxs in general and, more significantly, that halfdozen whose 'swansongs,' as fate would have it, ended right here in this most rational, civilized and clinically cuttingedged of all Moronic institutions on, what was for them, a reasonably comfortable (and for me, R&Dwise, the happiest possible) note—it can be stated with a considerable degree of biomedical certainty that Maria's case of what I am preliminarily calling juvenalia pseudopraeservare bimbeauxensis (or the superficial manifestation of eternal youthfulness among Bimbeauxs 3 and 4 decades beyond what for an average Moroness or -ette would be the onset of their crone- or haghood) could represent a rule not only for the postpubescent/premenopausal females in this smallest of ethnic enclaves but for women throughout the wider world no matter their size, shape, race, color, creed, nationality or socioeconomic status; rather than just another of those freakish hereditary anomalies which apply strictly to the aboriginal inhabitants of Moronia.
"Is that so?" I said, with a lack of sincerity that bordered on outright contempt—hoping thereby to discourage him from telling me any more of what I already knew about a Bimbeaux's extended shelf life for demonstrating the superiority of her mere feminine matter over a mind as ordinarily masterful as mine so I could continue exploring that snapshot of Maria when she really was (both inwardly and outwardly) at the very peak of her maidenly perfection for some fine point I might have previously overlooked.
"It most certainly is!" he replied with a spurt of such unbridled passion it came close to rivaling my own (rather less eruptive to begin with but virtually unstoppable once I picked up a head of seminal steam) ejaculatory outpourings while in the rapturous throes of preaching the Gospel of Born Again Klutzianity.
WHEREUPON HE BEGAN LETTING ME ("As a former diplomat and Cold Warrior who knows how to keep his lips sealed!") in on his "Top Secret plans for isolating, synthesizing and then bottling that Magic Elixir of (almost) Everlasting Youth the Bimbeauxs produce naturally in those hormonal distilleries of theirs." According to Dr. Kørkè his discovery would answer not only the prayers women have been repeating since Eve ate that accursed (God: "Because thou art no longer immortal thou must keep producing children—the effect of which on thy once goddesslike figure will be appropriately catastrophic!") apple—but those of every man descended from Adam for a mate whose glamor won't fade when their honeymoon is over. Whether Kvânïjãç Kørkè is a mad scientist sincerely pursuing an impossible dream, just another cosmetological charlatan in search of a quick buck or actually on the verge of revolutionizing the lives of several billion women is a question which, frankly my dear reader, I didn't give a damn about at the time. Moreover, because of the severe time and space constraints I am faced with now, and the fact that even if he does manage to discover his Magic Elixir of (almost) Everlasting Youth it would have no relevance to this tale I am struggling to tell. Consequently those of you whose curiosity may have been inadvertently aroused over this matter will, I'm afraid, have to satisfy it without any further help from me.35
Returning to the spine of our story then—"Are you sure that 'alive, if not kicking' diagnosis of yours is still valid, doctor?" I asked Kørkè. Not simply to change the subject; but because—since he was so successful in breaking the nostalgic spell I was under—my attention had become (at least peripherally) focused on a reality made that much harsher by what looked from the corner of my eye as if Maria was well on her way to entering those Pearly Gates the Morons believe they will actually pass through on their journey from this "postlapsarian vale of blood, toil, tears and sweat" to the Land of Eternal Bliss awaiting them in Paradise. "She seems not to be breathing." I said with added specificity. Following an audible sigh of annoyance Kørkè approached the bed, took a small dentaltype mirror from his tunic pocket and held it under Maria's nose for a long minute or 2. And, after examining it for what I guessed were the telltale signs of condensation, announced: "Nothing has changed. The patient is viable—but, as I previously indicated to you—just barely."
"Thank God!" I exclaimed, without any logical reason for doing so. Given her corpselike status my beloved Maria who, even when all of her mental faculties were working full time never dazzled anyone perspicacitywise, was in no condition to appreciate the fact I had managed—after overcoming obstacles no less daunting than those encountered by Odysseus, Dr. Zhivago and John Wayne in their heroic struggles to be reunited with a Penelope, a Lara or save some distressed damsel from the villainous clutches of a renegade redskin, lecherous landlord or Chinese bandit with visions of white slavery dancing in his heathenish head—to keep our deathbed date before she finally gave up her lustforlifedespiteallitsaggravations ghost. "It's that book of yours, Mr. ambassador—"
"What about it?" I interjected before he could make what I surmised from his disparaging tone of voice would be some snide remark about the grandeur of my delusions in daring to imagine this once allbut brainless and now certifiably -dead Bimbeaux could profit from reading any book—let alone one whose (long) title would make even the highestbrowed of housewives think twice before heedlessly plunging herself headlong into its murky depths literary fictionwise.36 Or worse yet: Offer me some "friendly advice as someone who is neither a total stranger to the finer things in life generally, nor altogether unacquainted with what it takes to write a runaway bestseller from the reader's viewpoint"37 on how I could improve the chances my "revolutionary manifesto in the form of a bestselling nonfiction novel might miraculously succeed in waking millions of ordinary housewives from that somnambulistic—or completely comatose—state they've been in since their liberation from the equally mindnumbing but far nobler drudgery of insuring the human race doesn't run out of reproductive steam before it can get its sociocultural act together." My fears in this regard proved groundless, however, when Kørkè actually completed his sentence by telling me: "The damned thing weighs a ton—but she insists on clutching it to her bosom."
After which he addressed the following remarks to Maria—although from what I could observe she continued showing no signs at all of having understood a single one of the words Kørkè and I had exchanged to that point—"And considering the already marginal state of your respiration, young lady, that is an added complication we certainly don't need, do we? Or, you clever little monkey," he continued in a beside manner so transparently disingenuous even a Moron—and a semi- or unconscious one at that!—couldn't fail to see through it, "is this your sly way of taking the matter of life and death into your own hands? If so, you know we have the strictest rules against such behavior which I, as a dedicated thanatologist, cannot permit to be broken under even the most heartwrenching circumstances." Having grasped her wrists he tried gently at first, and then with increasing exertion, to remove the offending advance copy of Morons Awake! from Maria's chest. But she continued clinging to it with a grim determination that would have seriously challenged the strength of the most muscle bound Heman—and Dr. Kørkè was no Charles Atlas or Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Was this really a suicide attempt? I had my doubts. It seemed plain to me her purpose for clutching my book to her bosom was to make the only gesture she was physically capable of making to express her gratitude to me for having written the masterpiece that would insure Jack's martyrdom to save the human race from drowning in its own mediocrity was not in vain.
"It's quite hopeless," said Kørkè . "As frail as they are these women acquire a superhuman strength when in extremis."
"If you don't mind, doctor, I would like to be left alone with your patient?"
"Certainly," he sais with a condescending smile. "Perhaps you can persuade her to do what I was unable to accomplish by using brute force." Upon which (facesaving) "exit line" he made his departure and left me alone with Maria. Suspecting their relationship wasn't as rosy as Kørkè portrayed it to be I hoped his absence might produce a sudden change for the better in Maria's cadaverous condition. But, after sitting at the side of her bed, talking and caressing her face with my hand for several minutes the only sign of life I could detect was what might have been a slight movement—or trembling—of her (still luscious) lips. Putting my ear to them I heard at first what sounded like nothing more than the faintest kind of rasp—or deathrattle—escaping from her throat. But the longer I listened the more convinced I became she was indeed trying to tell me something. One almost wordlike sound kept repeating itself. "ghiss—ghiss—ghiss." Or, it suddenly occurred to me, was she trying to say "kiss—kiss —kiss?" Such a request from a dying (ex)lover for what was, in these desperate conditions, the only final farewell gesture we were capable of exchanging seemed sensible to me. On the other hand, after some further reflection, I couldn't dismiss the possibility Maria—who, in spite of all the evidence against it (except for her affair with me) had, like most of her wretched breed, continued believing the miserable life she lived as a Moronic housewife was only the "accursed prologue" of what would someday turn out to be a "fairytale ending"—was asking me to play Prince Charming to her Sleeping Beauty! There was, of course, only one way to solve this riddle; about which I must admit to a certain amount of curiosity concerning its outcome vis-a-vis what even the most reasonable man secretly thinks might be his magical powers for reviving a Princesslike female from her (psychosexuallyspeaking) stupor. Which I did by pressing my lips to hers with a passion no less ardent than that she aroused in me when we were both in the prime of our lovemaking time. Riddlewise, dear reader, the result was, I'm afraid, inconclusive at best. After only a few seconds of what would normally have been a kiss lasting 2 or 3 minutes I could tell Maria was no longer alive. Whether I actually felt her soul escaping at the moment our lips met, or knew from the way her body suddenly lost what little resilience it had to my embrace, didn't seem of much importance to me at the time. The undeniable fact was: My Kiss of Life had turned out to be a Kiss of Death. Which I'm now not only positive is what Maria was really after in the first place—that I, the man from whom she learned to appreciate the mixed blessings, pain&pleasurewise, of superprolonged foreplay, should be the one to finally end her deathbed misery with an act of kindness that couldn't be more climactic—but profoundly gratified to have been the deus ex machina through whom her coup de grace prayer was answered.
† † †
AS FOR THE PRINCIPAL REASON I returned to Moronia: My meeting with Ballbraker and Lord Y at the Main Street CoffeeShop to exchange my mash notes from Lady X for her affidavit concerning Jack's Handraising Incident—or the First Klutz Affair—was so uneventful it hardly deserves mentioning. In their dotage my exadversaries had mellowed to such a point during the 5plus years since we last saw each other that what had already become with the end of the Cold War our "bloodless and pointless" cloak&dagger games were now "toothless" as well. The transfer of documents went so smoothly that, even when he couldn't resist unfolding some of his wife's mashnotes for a furtive peek at their "steamy" contents, Lord Y's behavior toward me was an exemplar of British phlegm. "My hat is off to you, sir!" he said after reading one of the future Lady X's purpler passages extolling my virtues as "a foreplayist par excellence."
Ballbraker's appearance had undergone such a radical change he was almost unrecognizable. His (forced) retirement as FIB Director left him with "no reason for getting out of bed in the morning." And he looked as if there were many when he didn't. Or, as on this occasion, when he did he no longer bothered to brush his teeth, shower, shave and slip into one of those "swanky Eyetietailored" silk suits he (and nobody else—including the American ambassador) wore to work "As a fashion statement about who really runs this One Moron One Vote constitutional monarchy!" Needless to say, I was relieved when he made no attempt to renew—or even wax nostalgically over—that "intimate friendship" we (according to him) had in those weekly crossdressing partythrowing days of his (when, as I've previously stated, I was powerless to resist his grotesquely obscene advances for the most pressing of America's national security reasons).38 Like so many other powermad and -driven political animals (ie., Atilla the Hun, Napoleon Bonaparte, Benito Mussolini, Joe McCarthy, Fulgencio Batista, Richard Nixon and Erich Honnecker, to name a few) who suddenly find themselves deprived of their predatory perks, this latterday (and pocketsized) Caligula's once insatiable appetite for making a meal of every sexobject (regardless of its gender, age, size, color, shape, creed, ethnicity, social standing or even diplomatic immunity) he could sink his fiendish fangs into—vanished overnight along with his "reason for getting out of bed in the morning."
For storytelling purposes, I'm afraid what began as this potentially explosive "Homecoming Escapade" of mine ended with a rather disappointing39 whimper when my former adversaries and I completed our swapping of Lady X's Mash Notes To Me for Her Affidavit Re Jack's Classroom Handraising Incident over lunch at the Main Street CoffeeShop in a manner that couldn't have been more routine, businesslike and/or civilized. Nevertheless, dear reader, such an apparently futile exercise hasn't been a complete waste of your time because I've also been using this opportunity to neatly (and humanely) tie up all those "loose ends" left dangling at the conclusion of most novels, plays, operas and films whose "minor" characters, walkons, spear carriers and extras are summarily dismissed by their authors without so much as a "thank you,"—never mind a curtaincall, closing credit or an "appendicized obituary," when their services are no longer required to "advance the plot." And in that regard, let me consummate what has perhaps been this most wayward of my digressions with the following epilogue which, I hope you will agree, snatches a small measure of comfort from this otherwise "unmitigated fiasco," literary masterpiecewise.
AS BALLBRAKER HAD DONE, Doris Darlinge also came out of her recent retirement so she could wait on the table reserved in the rear of the Main Street CoffeeShop where Lord Y, Ballbraker and I could conclude our threeway transaction—"To make sure such a special occasion gets the VIP treatment it deserves."40 Unlike the former FIB Director, however, the years that passed since we last saw each other had been kind to Doris. So charitable, in fact, she seemed as brighteyed and bushytailed (not to mention having a body that, as the Morons say, "would make a turnip look twice") as the day we first met in 1940, shortly after her real life CoffeeShopWaitressToHollywoodGlamorgirlBackToCoffeeShop WaitressAgain scenario ended when she renounced the "glitz and glory of superstardom for the downtoearth satisfaction a woman gets from slinging hash for—and occasionally having her 'famous fanny' pinched by—Moronia's nottoobrightbut honestasthedayislong turnipfarmers, country bumpkins, river rats and city slickers."41 On a collective basis Doris carried out her waitressing tasks for our VIP table with an aplomb and professional efficiency equal to an entire task force of the stonefaced flunkies found in Europe's fanciest 5star restaurants. But individually she treated each of us with the same folksy egalitarianism she displayed toward those runofthemill Morons who sat at the lunchcounter. It made no difference to Doris how Low-, Middle-, High or even SuperHighbrowed someone might be. "Every customer is entitled to feel like he or she is special—if only within the walls of this coffeeshop" was her "motto." Hence she would show just as much concern over the reduced prospects some turnipfarmer had for his droughtridden crop as she did when the Prime Minister ranted about Moronia's chronic balance of trade deficit—or the young and newlyarrived American ambassador lamented the lack of sparks in his social life since he was posted to Moronville!
Consequently, after our threesome had broken up and her eyes just happened to make contact with mine when I was halfway through the front door, it didn't strike me as unusual when Doris said, "So long, handsome—and thanks for the memories!" I took it as just another of those sexysounding but (more or less) meaningless remarks she made to every Moron who paid his bill, left her a tip and "sallied forth to do battle in the cold, cruel world outside," whether he deserved it or not, lookswise. A few minutes later, however, while standing at the intersection of Main & First for a green light, I spent the time reviewing (what then seemed certain would be) the last mental snapshot I would ever take of Doris. And in doing so I was somewhat surprised to see a peachcolored chiffon scarf wrapped around her neck—a decorative addition to her waitress' uniform I never noticed her wearing during my 50 years of dining at the Main Street CoffeeShop—or those off duty days (and nights) when she was in mufti.
By now, dear reader, I can hear you saying: "Wait a minute! This peachcoloredchiffonscarf business rings a bell! Wasn't that starknakedsexgoddess in the Cadillac convertible stopped at the corner of Hollywood & Vine wearing the same kind of 'garment' when the author saw her while he was waiting for another red traffic light to turn green at a similarly (in microcosmic terms) celebrated crossroad?" Which is exactly what I began to think. And it wasn't only the peachcoloredchiffonscarf that started my analytical wheels turning. The closer I mentally scrutinized42 the image of Doris in the act of saying "So long, handsome—and thanks for the memories," the more she began to resemble that Starknaked Blondebombshell in the flamingopink convertible. Her big babyblue eyes, her (still natural) platinum hair, her Snow White complexion, her kissable lips—everglistening from the nectar she habitually applied to them with a "come hither" lick of her flytrapping tongue) and, last but definitely not least, her vital statistics (42-22-38) which were every inch equal—or even superior —to those of Jayne Mansfield, Hollywood or GraecoRoman Sexgoddesswise! In addition to which, I suddenly remembered this most striking of all the similarities between what happened when I was halfway out the Main Street CoffeeShop's front door and those miraculous events which unfolded in Southern California nearly 6 years earlier: 2 or 3 seconds before the nude (except for her peachcoloredchiffonscarf) driving the Eldorado Biarritz sped away from me as the red light at the corner of Hollywood & Vine changed to green our eyes also met momentarily when she turned her smiling glamorgirl's face toward me and said something which—because the Adagietto of Mahler's Fifth was reaching its climax43 just as those 345 HighOutput horses under her Caddy's hood unleashed their thunderous roar when she suddenly floored the gas pedal—I found it impossible to fully comprehend.44 But, with Doris' "So long, handsome—and thanks for the memories" valediction still ringing in my ears, there could be no doubt: Hers were the words I had heard spoken by what was (as that A MUSE license plate was so obviously meant to indicate!) no ordinary vision of female pulchritude but one sent straight from Heaven for reasons that couldn't have been less lascivious or more theological in their consequences. Not just for me and my immediate future as America's Greatest Novelist, dear reader—but for the entire human race's prospects of living happily FOREVER after.
Footnotes
28 Ah, but it might! Since I haven't had time to check any of the quotations used by the author in this partially edited appendix the reader should regard them all with the utmost skepticism.—J. P.
29 In the event some of you still find the author's frequent (almost ad nauseum) use of "housewife" either offensive to our entire sex or personally insulting I have some good news for you, ladies. His purpose in doing so—which I have come to endorse wholeheartedly not only as a woman but in my professional capacity for what is a brilliant stroke of social satire equal to that of Beckett's inspired reiteration of the word "waiting" (as in for Godot among other things), Ionesco's rhinocerosization of the bourgeoisie, that nebulous and interminable "legal case" brought by Kafka against his own Josef K, Orwell's barnyarding of the political establishment and Swift's radical Yahoo/Houyhnhnm=Englishman/Horse equation—is not to disparage those oldfashioned homemakers who, from dawnt-dusk 7daysaweek, continue slaving over hot stoves and washtubs so their sons might some day become one of those Dead (or exceedingly old) White (if not 100% Caucasian) European (but only via the Diaspora) Males (unqualifiedly so!)—such as a certain former ambassador to a small country turned evangelical novelist—whose contributions to the aforementioned GraecoRoman JudeoChristian ethos formed the bedrock upon which, until recently at least, the values of Western Civilization & Citizenship were taught to each new generation of American college students. Instead, as most—especially the nonfemale—readers of Morons Awake! have already worked out for themselves, he is using that (for the most part highly overdrawn) cartoon image of the average American housewife sitting (or sprawled) on an easy chair in front of a TV screen dressed in a slip or bathrobe with her hair in curlers, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, a can of the hubby's Bud Light held in her (trembling) hand and a vacant expression on her face to symbolize that burnt-, worn-, flaked-, washed-, wrung-, hung-, strung-, clapped-, crapped-, smoked-, dragged-, drugged-, punched-, knocked-, kicked-, cleaned-, pigged-, left-, sold-, freaked- pooped- and (punwise most emphatically intentional) peteredout state in which 250 million Americans (give or take a few hundred thousand newly Born Again Klutzians) notso figuratively find themselves at the end of what began as "their" century. If you think this starkest and bleakest of word pictures the author is painting doesn't accurately represent the state of your sociocultural affairs, or even those of your most moronic countrymen; remember what Picasso told Gertrude Stein when she complained about seeing "no resemblance whatsoever" in his unflattering portrait of her: "Believe me, my dear Gertrude, you will!"—J. P.
30 Which includes the trendiness among what should be the creamier elements in our skimmedmilk society of such recent barbarities as the Elvis Presley/Marilyn Monroe postagestamps, Broadway musicals and major motion pictures based on comicbook characters and orchestral conductors who receive topbilling over the composers whose music they "interpret."
31 Although, in retrospect, perhaps this might have been another of those "disguised" blessings without which these "evangelical ejaculations" of mine—had anyone actually heard them—would no doubt have been construed as nothing more than the rant of yet another selfdeluded PURSUIT OF EVERLASTING HAPPINESS THROUGH THE READING OF LITERARY FICTION lunatic.
32 Sooner or later all adult Morons—and especially those rare HighBrows like Vanderphd—acquire the obnoxious habit of trying to bluff their way out of the tight conversational corners into which they are so easily backed by any foreigner, let alone one with my phenomenal power of persuasion. Accordingly (and for their own good) unless you force them to justify the kind of wholly unreasonable (and impertinent) remark Icky addressed to me the result is to perpetuate their belief that "The average Moron is just as smart (or at least no dumber) that the average American, Pole, Swede, Bulgarian, Scot and/or citizen of any other First World country." This practice of never letting the Morons get away with even the slightest challenge to one's intellectual superiority is also highly effective in training dogs, horses, guineapigs and other "dumb" animals, such as husbands and children.
[Unless the author is speaking in the past tense—which doesn't seem likely for someone so obsessive about grammatical niceties—I think we can safely assume that, once again, his memory is playing tricks on him. Otherwise this bigotry he is exhibiting toward the average Moron's mental capacity (or lack thereof) can only be construed as a complete repudiation of this book's Primary Thesis, to wit: That literary fiction is the tool by which millions of mainstream Americans and several hundred similarly designated Morons can transform the tedium of their daily lives into the blissful pursuit of SocioCultural Excellence—and all those other NeoEgalitarian autodidactic goodies Jack F. Klutz supposedly lived and died for. Not that the author is the only one who has trouble overcoming those prejudices which, when we no longer had the poor Neanderthals to kick around, turned the Morons into Homo sapiens' favorite scapegoat for its own antiIntellectual sins. In spite of those stubborn Moronic chromosomes which show up so consistently on the Playne family DNA tests (no matter what kind and how many of them) we take to establish our AllAmericanAngloSaxonProtestant roots I myself find it exceedingly difficult to come up with a substitute for an epithet that was so handy for rebuking someone in a way that would insult their intelligence without being called a racist for doing it.—J. P.]
33 Sans all that diacritical camouflage "Kvanijac Korke" could be—and in my opinion is—an anagram for Jack Kevorkian. Accordingly I for one will refuse to buy the author's story (if and when he dares to tell it) that: "I was only trying to protect the identity of this heroic thanatologist [a term I've been unable to locate in any of the more than a dozen uptodate dictionaries a prudent editoress keeps handy to foil such wordsmithing and/ or wool pulling shenanigans; but one I strongly suspect has been coined as a respectablysounding handle for a doctor of Kevorkian's infamous deathdealing ilk] against some goddam RightToLifeChristianFundamentalistAMADogoodersCoalition witchhunt." As for the judgment you make, dear reader, I can only say it would be a crying shame if the author's gratuitous act of "anagrammatical" gamesmanship damages, or even destroys, your trust in what is (for the most part) the absolute truthfulness of almost every word he has written to this point. A state of mind he (with the "help" of my eagle eyed vigilance) has been trying to cultivate with such dogged determination and—until this hopefully minor setback I'm confident you will agree—success, from the very first of Morons Awake!'s meticulously footnoted sentences and "fullyfrontalized" pullingnothisisnotarunofthemillblockbustingbest sellerpuncheswise title page!
Although, after giving this "credibility glitch" predicament a little more thought, there may be a way out of it you might find plausible, to wit: The Kvânïjãç Kørkè =Jack Kevorkian equation was the author's wellintentioned but sadly misguided way of testing (what by now should be) your razor sharp ability to detect that which, for the average reader of an ordinary bestseller, would be the imperceptible artistic deceits, pedagogical pranks, psychosexual snowjobs, factitious flimflams, double entendreings, prurient puns and all those other tricks of literary legerdemain played on them by even the most mediocre of trashy gothic romance novelists?—J. P.
34 Just as the private lives of America's First Family are, for the most part, shielded from our scrutiny no matter (or especially) how scandalous they might be, and unlike the causecélèbreprone residents of Buckingham Palace, when it comes to washing their soiled linen in public Moronia's House of Ambrosia is a riddle encased in a shroud no less airtight than that used for fumigating purposes or to play an elaborate game of architectural hide&seek as (only God knows why) Christo did when he "empaquetaged" the Reichstag in mile upon continuous mile of white nylon drapery fabric. With such similarly seamless perfection has the impenetrable veil of Ambrosian secrecy been constructed that, despite the impressive resources of the FIB (including a Cubanstyle countrywide web of snitches, stool pigeons, busybodies, informers, finks, blabbermouths, squealers, tattletales and under cover cops so thoroughly tangled every one of Moronia's 676 citizens is—or at least thinks they are—spying on the other 675 and vice versa) its Director has only rarely pierced it. And even when he did manage to get some "choice dirt" on the Ambrosians there was always "the nagging doubt those sly bastards were serving me the same kind of phony baloney I feed to all those MCLU [Moronian Civil Liberties Union] Weisenheimers who think they can take advantage of our Freedom of Information Act to prove what everybody in this smallest of countries already knows and doesn't give damn about, namely: That Jedgar Ballbraker has written the bloody book on turning what looks like their One Moron One Vote democracy into the modern world's longest- and smoothestrunning totalitarian policestate!"
Although my own motives for discovering what secrets lay hidden behind the House of Ambrosia's palatial walls weren't nearly as neurotic and/ or sinister as Ballbraker's (for me this Sleeping Beauty Affair was primarily an intellectual challenge no thinking man could ignore; especially one who was curious about whether the foreplay knowledge he had gained from his experiments on the general female population would apply to these most blueblooded and virginal of Moronettes) they produced no more fruit than his did. So much for the rewards of (comparative) virtue!
After burying her third daughter—a tall but Boticellilike drink of Venustian water named (with an incredible lack of foresight) Diana, or Princess "Di" as she was bound to become affectionately known not just by the Morons, for whom her blue eyed blonde glamorgirl image was a rare source of ethnic pride among a race whose females were unfairly (in most cases) described as "short, dark, dumb & ugly;" but in several major European capitals where the betting was "if she lived long enough this spunky creature would bring a breath of fresh Ambrosian air to one of our staler monarchies"—I put the following proposal to Queen Mildred via one of the notes we exchanged now on and then on such matters of mutual interest as our fondness for pastrami (she was educated at Columbia), our feelings of being "stranded in Moronia like a pair of beached whales" and, of course, these Sleeping Beauty conundrums (which she attributed to a curse placed on all the female descendants of Ambrose I ("Christ's Cudgel") by the High Priestess of what was then known as Mä•Mä/Dä•Däism when he "Forbade the heathen practices of blackmagic, necromancy, witchcraft, wizardry, thaumatology, voodoo and all those other forms of superstitious nonsense associated with the worship of Mä•Mä/Dä•Dä" throughout his newly acquired (but only as the puppet of a Catholicized Cretiny) kingdom:
"Your Most Exalted Majesty;While in some respects I might agree with Your Highness that ignorance can be bliss (ie., that which the average Moron enjoys from never having had a really good pastrami or corned beef on rye) the repeated loss of young lives such as that which is rapidly depleting Moronia's supply of marriageable princesses isn't one of them. On the other hand, these tragedies might be avoided if America's vast intellectual, scientific and, most particularly, medical resources were brought to bear on what I continue to believe is in fact not an insoluble problem.
Before my nation's arsenal of expertise can be mobilized for such a specific purpose, however, I would have to conduct a preliminary (but meticulously detailed) factfinding investigation of Princess Lolita's mental, emotional and, of course, physical health. Having recently ripened into that state of young womanhood which makes her a Sleeping Beauty candidate she is the only 1 of Your Highness' daughters in immediate danger. (Although it might be prudent for me to also make at least a cursory examination of the twin Princesses Justine and Juliette who, as I understand it, are showing the first precocious signs of their budding femininity.)
Most Humbly & Obediently Yours,
Amb. Mordecai Goldberg, PhD.
P. S.
Naturally I would expect Your Highness—or some chaperone of Her choosing—to be present during the aforementioned meticulously detailed physical examination(s).
† † †
While Queen Mildred thought my proposal "an eminently admirable, if slightly unorthodox, one" Ambrose XXXIII took the dimmer view that he was "not about to put the welfare, let alone the virginity, of their remaining daughters in the hands of a sexmaniac who, according to those who should know, is in the process of fornicating his way through the entire—and not necessarily adults only—female population of Moronia!" Accordingly we can only surmise whether these Ambrosian princesses, whose ravishing beauty was second (and not by more than the length of their eyelashes) to that of the Bimbeauxs, were:
(a) Born with some fatal hereditary flaw like the hemophilia, hypersuperciliousness, chronic promiscuity, subpar mentalities and outright insanity afflicting so many other of Europe's royal families, or;(b) Like any normal female teenager, simply succumbed from the sheer boredom and frustrations of living in a castle with nothing to do all day but gaze dreamily through its (barred) windows at the naked urchins frolicking in the Mainstream—some of whom, like them, were already (and alltoo obviously) straddling the threshold of sexual maturity and/or—even more exasperating because of the SuperSnug Kroch&Bunne jeans they wore—watch those postpubescent Morons ("strapping lads") as they slaved shirt- and shamelessly away on turnippatches so close to the royal apartments that, no matter how hard a maiden might try, it was impossible for her not to overhear the salty stories, lascivious tales and lewd locker room jokes they told one another—not to mention the "love" songs whose unexpurgated AngloSaxon lyrics they sang so lustily (and with a talent for masculine choralizing not unlike that of the Red Army or a pubfull of Welsh coalminers) while pulling their plows and harrows in lieu of the oxen few turnipfarmers can afford to rent, let alone own.
35 Don't panic ladies! This socalled "Magic Elixir of (almost) Everlasting Youth" is either: (a) Another of those Moronville Chamber of Commerce schemes for attracting tourists to a (micro)metropolis whose only claim to sightseeing fame—besides the Annual Turnip Tournament Parade & Big Game festivities (and excluding the proposed shrines to Jack F. Klutz's having been born, raised, bootstrapped his way to Massiahdom and died there)—is its total lack of tourist attractions or, more likely; (b) A hoax perpetrated by the author for reasons I won't burden you with except to say that, as with most other Great American Novelists, he has a habit of writing himself into storytelling deadends from which he escapes by leaving his reader in a literary lurch or up some paddleless creek continuitywise—examples of artistic malpractice which, by the way, provide an editor or -ess with his or her raison d'etre. In either case, the notion women are so gullible as to actually believe the answer to their Prince Charming, Living Happily Ever After and/or Fountain Of Youth prayers can be found in any bottle (or jar)—be it one containing vanishing cream, ginseng pills, alcohol or eau de bimbeaux—is a myth fostered by men who can't get it through their thick skulls our sex really does believe the only beauty worth having is that which lays hidden within a woman's heart, mind and soul from all but the most sincere, sensitive, caring, gentle, conscientious, empathetic, refined, faithful, valiant, decent, tender, perceptive and, above all, compassionate, of her wouldbe lovers.—J. P.
36 This, of course, raises the 64 billion dollar question I've been trying to answer throughout Morons Awake!—and the one Paul Gray asked in his Time Magazine (10 October 1994) critique of Harold Bloom's The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, namely, "WHAT SHOULD [A WOMAN] READ AND, [EVEN MORE TO THE POINT, WHY SHOULD [SHE] READ IT?" According to Professor Bloom: "Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens...The study of literature...will not [improve the life of an] individual [or the society in which she lives]...All the Western Canon can [do for us is provide] the [best possible] use [we can make] of... that [solitary state of being human in which we are all forced to confront the stark fact of our] own mortality."
While Bloom may be (in Gray's words) "a Vesuvian source of erudition" who has devoted his entire life to passionately advocating "the intrinsic aesthetic merits" distinguishing "the imperishable value of all great literature"—in my humble opinion he's missed the boat completely when it comes to the reason why all forms of culture are indispensable for not only pursuing one's happiness but actually achieving it! If reading the greatest books ever written doesn't make us "better citizens" or "improve the society we live in" what's the point of relishing a good meal, savoring a fine wine, admiring (even as a platonic proposition) a beautiful woman, rhapsodizing over a spectacular sunset or -rise, being enthralled by a rendition of Beethoven's or Mahler's Fifth Symphony, perfecting the practice of superprotracted foreplay or trying to appreciate every minute of an average day as if it were at least a minor artistic masterpiece? In short: What is the goddamn point of anything—or everything —if none is to be found in the reading of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Tolstoy?
Bloom makes another mistake—although he can be excused by reason of the fact his book was published before I finished writing mine—in not expecting (let alone demand) that his "Common Readers" (a term coined by Dr. Johnson, reminted by Virginia Woolf and translated by me into the more modern and relevant bookbuyingwise "Average Housewife") will in fact familiarize themselves with all 3,000 of the works—ranging from the Gilgamesh to Angels In America—he thinks "deserve an educated person's attention." Instead he recommends a "shorter" list comprised of Dante, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Cervantes, Montaigne, Moliere, Milton, Dr. Johnson, Goethe, Wordsworth, Austen, Whitman, Dickinson, Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Freud, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Borges, Neruda, Pessoa and Beckett. And if that list isn't sufficiently short for the canonicallycuriousbuthardpressedbytheexigenciesofherdailyratrace Common Reader/Average Housewife, as a last resort there is always that most seminal of all Dead White European Males—the Bard of Avon alone; whose plays, poems and sonnets alone would, in a pinch, make life on a desert island (or in the midst of a vast cultural wasteland) well worth living.
The obvious problem with Bloom's approach is: No matter how long or short his reading lists are they contain authors who, by definition—and despite the household nature of their illustrious names—have all failed to get The Message across, to wit: Vita Brevis Ars Longis, or in plain English— "NO MATTER HOW MUCH TIME PASSES A GREAT WORK OF ART NEVER LOSES ITS NEWSWORTHINESS." Hence: While today's headlines of political corruption, sexscandals, crime, and natural/manmade disasters will be replaced by tomorrow's political corruption, sexscandals, crime and/or natural/manmade disasters; Homer's Odyssey, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Mozart's Zauberflöte, Van Gogh's Starry Night, Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps and Picasso's Guernica will forever burn as brightly as the day they first burst upon their contemporary scene in a blaze of everlasting sociocultural glory. Nevertheless, and for all our creaturecomfort blessings, as this Second Millennium comes to its close our civilization continues declining toward a new—and what could be a permanent—Dark Age. Which, as I have been telling you from page 1, dear reader, is what separates this book of mine from all the previous efforts to produce a single work of art that would forever change the course of human history. Whatever else can—and will—be said about my attempt at doing just that, this much must be admitted by even the harshest of its critics: Morons Awake! is the first novel ever written which states so deliberately its author's intent to raise his reader's Klutzian IQ from zero to a NeoEgalitarian level where she can (and will!) begin to appreciate the finer points in her own life—one she previously thought was lacking the kind of Grand Aesthetic Design fate so happily bestows on the heroines of her trashy romance novels.
This doesn't mean I'm claiming that Great American Novel- or Timeless Artistic Masterpiecewise Morons Awake! is (or needs to be) in the same literary league with Melville's Moby Dick, Kafka's The Trial and/or Joyce's Ulysses. No, my dear reader. For all the boasting I've done about its "Biblical-," "Nobel Prizewinning-" and "Overnight Runaway Blockbusting Bestsellerdom" what distinguishes this book as the most monumental ever published is: That it was written not for The New York Times Literary Review, the Mandarins of Academia or even posterity; but with only you—the average Moronic (or American) housewife—uppermost in its author's mind. [A mind, by the way, which, while it mightn't rank with those of Milton, Shakespeare and/or Swift (to name but a few) is—I think it's reasonably safe to assume—the most brilliant, scintillating, witty, amusing, whimsical, astonishing, debonair, intriguing, sophisticated, refreshing, romantic and, yes, seminal with which you have ever had (or ever will have!) the chance to become engaged in the kind of profoundly intimate tet-a-tets we've been having throughout this "literary" loveaffair/trainofthoughtride of ours—and especially via footnotes as furtive (hidden in the pages of an appendix!) as this one.]
To summarize: While Morons Awake! is many things—including a blockbusting bestseller, a revolutionary manifesto, a (pseudo)religious tract, a sociocultural wakeupcall, an antiEstablishmentarian polemic and a compendium of useful NeoEgalitarian information—above all else it remains a nonfiction novel whose plot—as that dustjacket blurb promised—is its reader's steady progress toward what will be her "postgraduate" pursuit of Autodidactic Happiness as she embarks on an armchair journey to distant lands no less magical, amazing, exotic, enchanting or endowed with fabulous riches than those discovered by Marco Polo, Columbus, Magellan, Cook, Gulliver, Lewis & Clark, Nemo, Ponce de Leon and, last but certainly not least, that most intrepid (and prototypical?) of late 20thcentury selftaught innerspace travelers, Miss Kendall Hailey.
37 In his "defense" it should be mentioned Dr. Kørkè kept the shelves of the hospice library filled with the kind of "escapist" (ie., trashy romance novels) reading material that would help his female patients "concentrate on something other than their impending doom." Thereby, of course, ending any chance they ever had for their "15 minutes of fame"—if only to star in the Dying Scene from La Vie de Bohème or La Dame aux camélias as the only (melo)dramatic moment in what was an otherwise entirely untheatrical life.
38 A state of affairs made more remarkable because, as a result of my Klutz Affair/Morons Awake!related plasticsurgery, bodybuilding program and weightcontrol measures—combined with what I now realized were the rejuvenating effects of writing any novel, let alone one making sociocultural history, at my advanced age—I was looking better than I ever did in those "good old days" when my principal claims to sexappeal fame among Moronia's love- and nutritionallystarved female population were the phenomenal size of my IQ and my waistline!
39 Speaking personally, of course, I couldn't have been happier over the lack of a Big Bang Finale (ambush and revengewise) for my having upset Ballbraker's Klutz Affair turnipcart and introduced Lord Y's future bride to the artistry of a foreplay so superprotracted he knew it would be impossible for him to ever fully master.
40 Since he no longer had any official excuse to be there, and wasn't personally involved with the documents exchanged between me and Lord Y, what other reason could Ballbraker have had for getting out of his bed that morning and join us for lunch; if not to tip his hat to me as a final salute to (what he mistakenly believed was) the mutual respect we had always had for each other despite the "ups and downs" (in addition to his disgusting sexual proclivities he had alltoo willingly gotten into bed with Moronia's Nazi and Soviet occupiers during the period 1941-52 and, even more to the point ups and downswise, never did accept the fact that: Just because a "Special Relationship" existed between our 2 nations didn't mean Moronia was America's geopolitical equal; or that my moral, intellectual, racial and ambassadorial credentials weren't vastly superior to those he enjoyed as "the biggest fish in this microbutneverthelesscosmicwhenyou'restuckhere pond") of our relationship?
41 "River rats" is the name given to those Huck Finn- and Tom Sawyertypes who spend their days on the banks of the Main Stream fishing for "cat," "skinnydipping," digging for buried treasure or simply catching "40 winks." Contrary to their New York, Chicago and Los Angeles role models, Moronville's "city slickers" are a (relatively, since it was one of them who "accidentally" ended Jack F. Klutz's life) harmless breed of exurchinturned juveniledelinquent who confine their downtown activities to standing on the corner of Main & First wolfwhistling at bumpkin- and Moronettes, panhandling tourists and, when all other forms of amusement fail, entertain themselves by perfecting their skills at thumbtwiddling, earwiggling, eyecrossing, elbowbending, knucklerapping, armpitfarting, assgrabbing and those feats of precision, high altitude and long distance "spitbombing" the Roman historian, Herodatus, ridiculed as "typifying the Morons' utter lack of regard for civilized martial etiquette,"—while admitting (but only in a footnote) "their disgusting expectorational tactics have on occasion produced a demoralizing effect on some of our most battlehardened troops—who (quite irrationally) believe the slightest contact with such saliva will turn them into mindless barbarians."
42 Being of such recent vintage my total recall of what transpired during those 2—or at the most 3—seconds of eye contact when I caught Doris in the act of saying what she said was more like the loop of a film or video clip one can play over and over again in searching for the minutest details which are impossible to detect in the onrushing events of real time.
43 That most magnificent Mahleresque moment which comes when—following the morendo (dying away) of the Adagietto Motif, and an extremely lethargic beginning (Wieder äusserst langsam)—the string section gradually accelerates (etwas drängen) while their Empfinding (hushed but with much emotion) playing slowly but ever so surely (poco a poco) gathers itself viel Ton!, breit, viel Bogen wechsein (played with the richest tone, in the broadest manner and bowed as if one were squeezing blood from a turnip) for those fabulous "8 falling notes" (C#, A, G, F, Eb, Db, Bb, Gb whose heartwrenching cascade culminates with that nothing less than epiphanal F major chord. [Ah, if only my words had the power Mahler's music has to make a grown woman swoon, the case for reading literary fiction rather then trashy romance novels could have been fully argued—and won!—in the very first (albeit chapterlong) of these footnotes!]
44 My subsequent efforts at gathering the fragmentary remains of what I thought she said into a reasonably coherent sentence were fruitless. As this most "plausible" of those attempts should prove: "[Is he] so wrong when some [strange] man thinks [my] baring these mammaries [aren't only for his benefit]?"