He stood alone: a sniffling aristocrat who knew firsthand the blackened depths which society's voluptuous elegance had reached. He said, ``My body's master copy is printed on aluminum. Medical examination reveals that I am fit enough to think about exercise, but I won't. True, all too, this clumsy spread of stomach - the stomach of an ever-ruminating Rick Ames - well, it does project into space quite a ways.'' Rick Ames was fat.
The craftsmanlike sensitivity I show in reporting these events comes out of a series of therapeutic encounters I had with the mouse in the house where some TV screenwriters had been conferring, re: the Rhoda niche in Prime Time, which has been filmically unoccupied for two decades. During these twenty-odd years, weary script-writers have battled much stupidity. The opposite-saying network biddies reveal their lack of vision by examining each of the writer's inventive stories so closely for validity. Such men, Rick's nephew knew, become fervid or suppressed after eating: they are either howlers or nail-biters. We're talking about the never-ending, never-beginning battle between true artists, writers such as myself, and the Philistines who see no place for our - my - work on the televisions, which rest on one or another of the miriad styles of television stands across the country.
Rick's nephew was named Nigel. He lived in England. He wore one of those dark suits and dark ties. His hair fell in his face. He had a bit of a temper, and he would never buckle down and pay attention. As a consequence, he became a nowhere sort of fellow.
Nigel resented such a characterization as was given him by Rick's sometime business associate Bill. Bill was a big bull of a man, overweight and red-faced, and his clothes looked too shiny. Maybe he polished them, thought Nigel. Maybe he polished them instead of his shoes. His shoes were scruffy and caked with old dry mud. ``That's from his walking through cemetaries,'' Nigel told his Mum.
Nigel's Mum (Rick's sister) nodded sagely. ``The enormity of the range of discussions which we or anybody might have makes me tremble. Have we advanced as a society if the number of saves of severed heads remains stuck at the number zero? Arguably, it would be better to be a sun-struck Australian than the pale warm shapes we maintain, going in and out of the Northern Hemisphere's life's doorways.'' Nigel and his Mum pondered silently until the sun rose over the farm's back fence and the rooster crowed. Several neighbors opened windows and, depending on their temperament, shouted either encouragement or revilement to the rooster.
Once I made a mistake and criticized a sauce which Rick Ames had made in a densely bee-bothered grove of this urban barnyard. He got mad. He opened a window and shouted, ``You engage in a version of the Italian `freeload complex!' There you go, sallying about again! Shamelessly sallying! What do you say to that?'' he cried rhythmically. He was as dynamic as a dozen blacktop sheds. He practically sang. He did sing. Talk about Italian! When the major scale dodders downward toward the tonic, I scurry in a hurry to hear that man sing the dominant pedal
All hail the casters of doubt: the typically creaseless bourgeoise: the clowns with their mental juggling act of mutually agreed-upon withdrawal! They do not, like pre-historic tribes, eschew untethered thought! But their writing is incomprehensible! And their speech! They babble! Consider H. Mophead Esquire, for instance.
``Why, you have entirely nice chip-dips, don't you Ames?'' That's what H. Mophead Esquire said when he barged in uninvited to Rick's sleepover. H. Mophead Esquire is a total clown from the school in which pies are pressed firmly into each onlooker's face until way after bedtime. ``My very thoughts are plucked speculatively from a pool of collective wierdness which I saw while driving up here. It's on your front lawn, Ames! All the pollywogs are half frogs. Makes me jittery. And if such news is analogous to a torn green bedroll, then we can expect your extinction shortly - that is, in steps, of course, over a million years. These long waits are what gives the eminently sinkable darwinism a humanitarian impression: you still have time to change your ways Ames; you ain't a dyin' out quite yet! And that is what idealists say is... oh, about the only characteristic worthy of our marvel. You, Ames, are no more likely to be alive in the next epoch than that there sneezeweed you've got strewn about the floor which is (by the way) making me quite sick. There must be ten bundles of sneezeweed here, Ames! So half-unanticipated is my lonely misery - inasmuch as half ten is five, to be blunt - that I got to go in half an hour. But I'll be here until then - which is what I was saying: your sole asset as a host crosses out completely the stupor this party is to be after I leave!'' That's how that episode went - when that Obnoxious Person brought his presence into ours, and had the businesspeople of our fair city tied up in delivering ceremonial greetings to that sick, sick chief - which he is, forever.
And where was Bill while all this was going on: the quiet morning i London, Rick's wild party in the Hamptons? Where was Bill? Late again? Out walking? Berating Nigel? H. Mophea Esquire wanted to know, but couldn't find out. He suaved his chin with a gruff hand and plowed into the lunch wagon, upsetting everything: hamburgers, grill, apples, chips, cook...all went flying. Everyone sat around on the pavement to keep the stunned cook company for a bit. Someone made tea. No one said much.
Gearboxes and other signs of a workman's lunch (e.g., a lettuce crisper) were very much in evidence when I popped by Rick Ames's office Thursday last. Since sailing peaked early this summer, leaving everyone dissatisfied, really wanting sea monster to come along and stave in a few boats, life on Earth has become as spontaneous as on any planet in the inky blackness that is space. Nigel and others have become prodigies of knowledge. ``Priggishness connives with piggishness to make life interesting on Mars, Ames,'' says Nigel, wiping crumbs off the table with a waiter's crumb-wiper. ``How is it done here?''
``Well, Nigel, have you noticed that that there paste hydrant just galloped by like a horse?'' said Ames, reading the dessert menu. (I'd always called a ``paste hydrant'' a ``bottle of glue,'' but I will defer to Ames' nomenclature, as Ames is an expert on paste.) ``I forsee that the coming year will be dedicated to the recognition of joggers as `slow sprinters.' Plus any dancelike activity of those stubby pluggy objects that spew and move will be known - by year's end - as `Ballet Impeccabile.' '
``Unless fifths of absolutely everything in this bar are served to absolutely everyone, you can forget it. Because, already, everywhere you look there are pulp writers effectively hanging from the descenders of their own highest letters! They write all the movement criticism for the largest daily newspapers now,'' said Nigel, whose interests had strayed.
``Listen to me Nigel. Be quiet. Stay still for a goddam second. You are too noisy when I talk to you. I say things which you do not hear due to the excessive noise levels which are the result of the activities in which you are engaged. For instance, you do paltry sums. So do I, but not with a jackhammer! How can someone do paltry sums with a jackhammer? Then there is the issue of car insurance which I admittedly do not have, and yet, I don't see how you can expect to hear me when you are under my hood adjusting the valves, again, with the jackhammer? It buggers description! Beggars can't be choosers, and here we have a problem, in that I beg you to shut up and listen and then you don't. So I guess the whole story is ruined!''
``No it isn't! I would be listening, but I don't understand you and this jackhammer business, for instance. It has nothing to do with me! I don't even have a jackhammer. But you are correct that I don't listen. It's because I don't care; nothing happening holds together for more than a few instants. So my attention wanders.''
``Of course you care! Now listen: the Establishment is on a roll. If we want to make changes in perception, we must pester and pester until the grey-heads are served and severed upon silver platters.''
Bill's foreknowledge was like a fly at a wrestling meet. Tiny, and yet the whole gymnasium veers crazily as the fly buzzes back and fro. ``Lately, I've been performing with echoes in the low frequencies. Perhaps the trouble is coming from those nozzles, gents.''
And Nigel said, ``Now I'm talking again. And I'm still not understanding. All the listening I do is wasted on the things you tell me, or whoever you are telling them to now. I am lost as a ship on a moonless sea.''
At the morning conference, Bill's right to think was rescinded before he could know where the meeting was heading. Rick explained it to him as to a child. ``Bill, you'd not yet eaten fire, so the unspoken urges upwelling in our breasts had to remain unspoken, and therefore (not knowing what they were), they had to be faked with musical clinkers inserted strategically in our rendition of the Beethoven Symphony, as if in a moment of passion. But as dogmatically as we can, we're giving you the heave-ho, the ol' termination notice. The hollow, twisty fired feeling is now yours to enjoy. If you feel like vomiting into this letter of resignation we've prepared for you to sign, it's cool; the cleaning unit are also correspondence-sweepers, so they can clean the mail room as well as the steamy mess you left in the bathroom.''
``Fuck you too,'' added Nigel. ``Makes no sense!''
``Oh yeah, Nigel?'' muttered Bill. ``Okay for you, but admit please, that the cushion that supposedly moors you to the ground is magnetic.'' Everyone scuffed the carpet a bit.
Turning to the assembled group of reporters, Nigel announced, ``Bill is venomously foolish and lazy. Yeah, that's him...'' he said, pointing for the television cameras to follow, leading cleverly into a commercial for mohair. ``Plus Bill makes no sense still, and he annoys me. I will stop paying attention, because it never did get me nothing worth the paying I had to do. Which was a disappointment to me.''
But the nation of viewers of televisions which rested on televison stands heard him not: instead, they watched while the mohair spokesman - a dog - gave his spiel: ``I used to have a regular fur coat. But then came that fateful day when they bought me a mohair. Now I've ritualistically incensed my old coat entirely!'' d