Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 06:57:25 -0500
From: Tom Emerson <thomas@btl.net>
Subject: Blissy's Song - 19

Blissy's Song -- 19
(Incomplete.)
by
Feather Touch

Nothing should be inferred from the use of media personalities.


Chapt. 19


       "Well," Bobby half gulped to himself, "first time for everything."
He'd dressed himself to kill and the mirror said he hadn't missed.  The
extra inch off the bottom of the black tee changed the naughty into the
nasty, the hint into the wanton invitation of a slut.  He damn well had to
admit it.  He would stop.  The mirror proved that.  Pretty darn long legs
sheer up to the hem of tight, black shorts.  Then a whole lot of white boy,
eight inches or more, before the top half of the monochrome packaging.  The
tee was way big and fell loose at Bobby's left shoulder, exposing what the
eleven year old felt pretty sure was a tantalizing come on, and never mind
the antiquated Fifties movie poster sweater girl.  Hell, maybe he was cute
enough that a certain style or look wasn't important and looking like a
moll who'd ridden with one biker too many wouldn't make much difference,
one way or the other.  Cute Bobby Brady, freckles, boyish, not so much a
dreamy waif as muscley athlete, but still kind of slim and girlish, for all
of that.

       "I'm all there is left," was Bobby Brady's second coherent thought.
He wasn't being vein, meant it generically.  "I" was kids, overall.
Tuesday night, as a reward for completing the excavation a full day ahead
of a schedule that didn't actually exist, Steve had taken each and all and
spread them willy-nilly around the Plunkett like so much bird seed.  Bobby
had ended up in the clutches of a very friendly, smart, cute seven year
old.  Even as a swimming buddy little Jeffy was exotic, and their
whispering hours together had reinforced his embryonic notions of what it
was that older males saw in young boys.  Mr. Brady had guided the young
couple off to their semi-private reverie in preparation for the coming
Saturday morning, and the kiddo's launching of himself into the world of
hitch hiking.  The lesson had been more than temporal.  Contrasting how
Jeffy wriggled ardently to his first deliberate touching with what was
showing on the new television, already notably degraded in a single month,
was more a spiritual awakening.  A mutuality and intensity of excitement
and expression that transcended entertainment, and a total back and forth
with the child receiving every hallowed touch with the same fervor with
which it was administered and returning like sin with more than equal
pleasure.  Television just wasn't up to it and one couldn't spend all their
time reading, especially on a Saturday morning.

       Wednesday night, Thursday night and Friday night.  Celibacy.  Cindy
in with Pete and Kelly for the night, sneaking back in every morning so
she'd be able to kiss him awake and tease him very gently about what a good
boy he was being and how exciting it was going to be when he had an
adventure to tell her on Saturday night.  In a mild sort of way she felt
she was being discriminated against, but Steve had explained several times
that what was acceptably dangerous for a young male would be inappropriate
for a nine-year-old girl.  In her heart she knew he was right, and finally
acquiesced when Steve started to get Brady.  Maybe next year.

       God, this new house was so weird and so cool.  Imagine climbing out
of your bedroom through a hatch in the ceiling, then crawling ten feet to
another hatch, which led down to a hallway, which wound itself eventually
to the main bathroom with its tiny tin shower.  This Bobby ignored.  The
New Brady policy on bathing had cut out showers almost entirely, and was
down to quick sponge baths from time to time.  America's obsession with
household spic and span was not only ludicrous, but an expensive
environmental disaster.  Pounds of detergents where ounces were needed.
Mass addiction to long hot showers at colossal cost.  Classic liberalism;
hug a tree, rinse and repeat.  Not for the New Bradys.  Neat and clean, but
not glowing and sparkling.  The difference was about two thousand dollars a
year, and uncounted hours of wasted time.  So it was a lick and a promise
for Bobby, and he rattled down to the great room which took up half the
first floor and couldn't help reminding one of a mountain cabin with
kitchen and one end and a sprawl of rustic furniture surrounding an
oversize trestle table, already gaining a moss of books and magazines.

       Carol actually was barefoot, singing the McDonald's theme while she
pranced around the grill.  It was pretty funny, and the thought of a New
Brady even setting foot near a golden arch was preposterous.  Closer to
their thinking would have been that it might be worth the loss of American
culture, so long as the fast-food misery was among the casualties.  Steve
and Gregg had talked about it and felt that there was a splinter chance the
country could survive September with the loss of various mega marts and
their vast need for daily cash, emerging a whole lot more local and mom and
pop.  Critical mass.  That was the crux of everything.  New to history.
Above it, was a wonderland, below it, lingering death for one and all.  The
critical mass for big boxes was truckloads of fresh cash, seven days a
week.  One bad one could suck the razor margins out of ten good ones.  And
closing them?  They'd prided themselves on a scorched earth policy, Listen
to the downtown merchants cry (a reprise on the howling Boston merchants of
"Alabama" fame, well, Sherman did for them and guess who's here to do to
and for today's raiders), and their collapse would leave yard sales about
it when it came to finding household necessities.  Malls were merely a
ditto.  Vast fixed expenses, huge minimum volume just to keep the raindrops
from falling on the head.  Insanity under the best of circumstances, and
now playing their rightful role as ground zero for any who hate opulence
and excess, however hypocritical and irrational their hatred.  It was
highly probable America's end would come choking on merch that couldn't be
funneled through the collapsed bubble of catastrophic overindulgence.
Confiscate them and convert them into regional helpage centers, as the only
surviving embodiment of socialism.  Run them conservatively, and relax,
because however imperfect, you have the best that can be devised.  Even a
Porsche won't drive you to the moon.  Grow fucking up

       Bobby got a chorus of whistles for his costume selection.  "I better
call nine-one-one now, put them on the alert."  He said it half in jest,
half hoping the boy wouldn't be cited as an attractive nuisance, but
realizing that might be part of the thrill if it did happen.

       The overall and underlying paradigm was addiction control.  Theory
to be tested was whether loosely programmed wild excess could blunt the
need of chronic excess which defined compulsive behavior.  Or would it
trigger it; act as a catalyst and the banana peel at the edge of the
whirlpool?  No better time to find out.  All art had been run through, all
technology had been run through.  Mankind better find some new interest, or
it was going to get hairy as all hell, everywhere.  A new bonobo film had
played recently.  Third generation research attributed the peaceful
behavior of this sub-species of chimp to ample forage on the forest floor,
making eating a communal rather than an isolated activity.  The adult/child
vector was omitted, but has been covered in its own right.  After all, how
much was there to say about happy chimps?  Peaceful, boring; it would be a
hell of a climate for a novelist, life without conflict and resolution.  Of
course, Steve mused, if one had the skill perhaps he could put the reader
at great risk, and thereby imbue his audience with enough motivation to
plow on.  Not that he was a novelist, not that he was a writer, at all, but
architecture -- for whom?  And the New Brady life.  There had to be a theme
there.  Keep a careful eye on everyone, and see what developed.  Meantime,
experiment.  If nothing else, the vast slop of the recent age, Beverly
DeJulio as "Handy Ma'am," for example, was indicative of bathwater so
festering it would be worth the loss of a baby or two to get rid of
it. There was a certain puckishness to be found in the land of absolutes;
no apparent options, no apparent future, weren't these de facto permits to
play fast and loose even if premised on the notion of doing something, even
if it was wrong?  For example, if we repeat Bosnia, shoot from behind the
wall, kill thousands, lose none, won't we at least engender a hatred of our
cowards that will inspire new attacks and liven up a future that now
appears nothing but a bleak morass of politically correct popular
socialism?

       Not for the Bradys.  If Rumsfeld wanted to say exactly the same
thing over and over and over again, well, they'd just turn him off.  Mostly
Jews had made much of a living off the tube, so no one would be hurt if the
Bradys did not buy the wondrous products offered or participate in the
rituals that were promoted.  It's not that they were better than anyone
else, it's that everyone else pretty much stank to high heaven, so bumping
and grinding along the low road would not, in the new era, be prejudicial.
It might even be fun, and thank goodness, in these bleakest of bleak times,
that's what we're here for.

       How much does a thumb weight?  How much does a car weigh?  Wouldn't
it equal out to about as many ounces for the former to tons of the latter?
It may be common sense to drop hydrogen bombs on Arabs, but there is no
common sense involved in watching an ounce or two of bone, tendon, and
thin, pink skin bring a Buick to a standstill.  Bobby was impressed, too.
Neato.  First time, and screech.  Black must suit him.  Strange, because
there was not more Jewish concept than glamour, and here it was working for
a little goy boy.  Bobby didn't question it in depth, bigger fish to fry at
the moment.  He went to the door of the deep blue car and pulled on the
handle.

       The passenger door on the coupe swung open.  Not trying to be
especially charming or precocious, Bobby nevertheless blew across the top
of his right thumb like Clint Eastwood blowing smoke from the barrel of his
pistol.  Let the rest of the world watch the ceaseless parade of Semites on
television, if they enjoyed this prequel, well, fair enough, but Bobby? he
was going for a ride.

       Seating himself in a bucket seat colored to match the exterior of
the thirty-thousand dollar car, Bobby said, "You shouldn't have hit me so
hard, look, I'm all black and blue."
       "Sorry," the driver responded, "I guess the situation was all
thumbs."

       Lame for lame.  They were obviously well matched in the wit
department.  Looking at each other, they felt it might go deeper.  The
driver's name was Panda, and, since his real name was Roger Paulson, he
must have been something of a cutie to keep a name like `Panda' to age
nineteen.  Certainly his looks had nothing to do with it.  Soft, round and
cuddly, he was not.  Rather rangy and a bit craggy.  Rough complexion under
jet black hair, all offsetting brown eyes to melt right away for.

       "I know you're a Brady," Panda said, "I've seen you guys twice.  I
used to think you were a little retro to be real, but if you keep on
keeping on you'll be getting it right, soon enough."

       That pleased Bobby no end.  Music was going to dominate as time went
on; no school, and they weren't allowed to read more than six hours a day.
Where there was one fan, there would be others.

       "Thanks," the boy said.  "Do you play?"
       "Acoustic guitar.  I'm still at the metronome stage.  But hey, only
a thousand hours to go; why, I'll be picking melodies any year now."

       "Yeah," Bobby said, "but then when you can do it, you can do it like
breathing, for fifty years.  That's what we're going to be doing, basics.
We're on the lamb from school, so we won't be able to perform in public
until society crunches down a little, then we can start playing dives."
       "Sounds like a plan," Panda commented.  "Where you going?"
       "Well," Bobby said, "not exactly anywhere.  My dad said we'd be
better off, since we spend so much time together, we're sort of rebuilding
and house, it would be good to hang out with strangers once in awhile, so
he gave me a hundred dollars and suggested I invite someone to dinner, or
to play videos; whatever."

       "I've got a lot of money, too," Panda said.  "My sister gave it to
me.  She's a star.  Well, sort of.  She's in the commercial for this place
that makes your debt go away.  Well, sort of.  The blond girl on her bed
with her dad, then the little brother comes in, well the blond girl is
Meggy, my kid sister.  The kid's another actor, we don't have a brother,
and that's not our dad, either."

       Bobby explained about his brother's friend Kelly, and Panda had met
his friend, Kelly, while making the rounds with Meggy.  He'd been cast in
an acne ad, when he was sixteen, played a boy who didn't want to have his
picture taken.  Bobby remembered the bit and Panda explained he'd paid his
sister's way through dance and drama with his checks, so now she was
repaying him.

       "I'm glad you stopped," Bobby said after they'd ridden a few minutes
in comfortable silence.  "Me, too," the older male replied.
       "You wanna see if I can sneak you into a club?" Panda asked.
       "Sure," Bobby said.  He explained about his father's theory on
addiction, and common sense told both boys it might be a good value added
feature of their morning together if they tempted fate, at least to begin
with, in a manner that was merely illegal and immoral.  Toes in the water.

       "You wanna sit beside me," Panda whispered as the found a both at
the rear of the cool, quiet establishment.  The bartender had broken two
glasses within fifteen seconds of the duo entering his establishment,
confirming Panda's theory that Bobby was freaking something else and it
would be nice to sit beside him.

       "Okay," Bobby replied, slipping into the booth first so his big
friend could hide him at least a little bit.  So far, so good.

       "What do you want?" Panda asked as the bartender approached.
       "A bullfrog's brain," Bobby said.
       "Make mine a hamster's hiny," the teen whispered in response, ever
so glad he'd stopped.  When the proprietor arrived, the couple decided on
martinis, and, on their arrival, toasted the official vacuum created by
obsessive compulsive strut disorders deep in common psychology.  Hut, two,
three, four, up and down the airport floor.  It was good to giggle, it was
good to be alive, and it was more fabulous than fabulous to be a boy.  How
nice we have two to tweeze and dissect.

       "Where were you going when you picked me up?" Bobby asked.  Panda
choked on his drink and turned red.  "Sorry," Bobby said.
       "No," Panda said, "it's okay.  It's just real hard to explain.  I
mean, I want to tell you, but it's kinda embarrassing.  I mean, you know,
you've got a kid sister, too, right?"
       "Technically, a step sister," Bobby affirmed, "but we're buds, so
she's my sister, big time.  Jan, that's the middle one, and, who'd have
ever thunk it, Marsha.  She used to be... hell, we all used to be, but,
yeah, sisters.  Times three."

       "And..." Panda prompted.
       "Well," Bobby mused, "I guess they're okay, you know.  I mean eleven
year old boys aren't meant..."
       "Yeah," Panda broke in, "but do you ever have to like buy stuff for
them?"
       "You're kidding, aren't you?" Bobby asked.
       "If you insist," Panda answered.
       "I'm sorry," the boy said, "no.  I mean, I don't think so.
Christmas and stuff, yeah, but I don't think that's what you mean."
       "I mean like clothes."
       "No," Bobby breathed, "but it's a hell of an idea.  I've got a lot
to learn.  What are you going to buy?"
       "Yeah?" the mature teen responded, "well how great an idea is this.
Meggy wants me to buy her, you know, not an overcoat or a hat or anything.
Get the idea?"
       "Why does she want you to buy that stuff?" Bobby queried.
       "It's embarrassing, Bobby," the boy whispered.
       "Like really personal?" Bobby came back, his voice dropping to a
whisper to match the low husk of his companion.
       "You've got to promise not to tell," the older conspirator said
softly.
       "No way," Bobby whispered back, "Cindy and I are buds to the bone,
in fact, we kind of all, you know, share, plus Kelly and Cliff, but I
won't, you know, blab or anything."


           [ I'm going to post this now, incomplete, as Hurricane Iris is
just offshore and the mighty have to flutter back to earth and batten down
the hatches.  Probably be awhile before my next post.  Looks like Dangriga
may be the second disaster point after New York.  This is why they call it
life. ]






       Homeland Security Agency.  Sounds like a cross between the
ground-nut scheme and Big Face Wilson's Fourteen Points.  If I can think of
something more un-American before I post this chapter, I'll tell you.

       Sunday Morning Oct. 7.  Nobody's doing any better.  I think the
death of dithering may lack literary merit.  I guess this is just since I'm
just coming down from publishing something like a hundred-fifty-thousand
words in less than a month.  Robert Reich's camera face.  He's led us where
we are, so why the continued worship?  They re-opened the Golden Gate.  Why
did they close it?  Had the jitters, eh?  Aw, wuzza-wuzza, dat's a gwood
wittle bwaby, you've got so many fine Jews running everything, just follow,
follow, follow.  And child, the fifty-third emmy's are on tonight.  Think
of all the gigantic articulated faces you'll be seeing.  Huge white teeth,
just like my mom's.  This is your life, and I can't help hoping you're
really into cinder block totality, because that's the bottom line of
socialism.

       Blue in Charlotte.  Blue seats at the race track.  Uh-oh.  My guess
is each empty seat represents a family just a wee bit overextended on the
old plastic.  I can't see how a ten or twelve crash race can be more
engaging than a few chapters in a good book, but then I write good books
and don't race all that much so my perspective may not be all it might be.



       The secret of Nostrodamus is simplicity itself.  He wrote thousands
of pages.  You can attribute anything to Nostrodamus because in order to
disprove a passage, a scholar would have to read the entire works.  Sounds
like a job for a Jew.
       Complex autos, gear lube, antifreeze.
       Victor Mature playing an army officer.
       Bonobo
       Iridium is back in the news, determined to make itself the whipping
boy if the century, it would appear.  Get this, just get this.  Real time
connectivity, voice and data from every flight.  Don't you just tingle?
Hmm.  Forty thousand flights a day, five thousand airborne at any given
time.  Of course, to be responsive every channel would have to be monitored
by human ears.  Five thousand channels, times three shifts a day.  Sounds
like one for the International Brotherhood of Clock Watchers and Paperclip
Benders.

       What Iridium should be used for is subsidized broadband in
designated semi rural areas to lighten the load on urban areas.
Motherfucking period.

       Rumsfeld and the sheik.  The sheik sitting so all can see the fine
roundness of his belly, Rumsfeld standing suddenly looking so grown-up and
impressive he might be an actual steward, not just a rank and file taxi
driver.  He's standing while a round, brown Arab is sitting.  And you're
going to follow him where?

       As an army journalist I covered many awards presentations.  Let's
see if I remember how it goes over lo, these thirty years.

       Pvt. Emerson is awarded the distinguished service medal for an
exceptional demonstration of initiative and courage under severely adverse
conditions.  While serving with the battalion information office, this
soldier found his unit under elemental attack, to wit, winds of sixty miles
and hour, temperature, minus ten degrees Fahrenheit, and with local
visibility reduced to long periods of zero due to capacious amounts of dust
and blowing dirt.  Undaunted by this seeming adversity, Emerson not only
reconnoitered until he found a unit-designated sanitary facility, but was
able to set stakes and string and by dint of long and arduous hours of
committed activity, lead a number of officers and other ranks to the relief
point.
       It is recommended Private, Grade E1, Emerson be promoted to the
grade of Privets, E2.

       								Signed

       								A.B. Surd
       								Capt.  Arty
       								Commanding

       Hey, I fired Expert on the M-16, too.

       Actually, since I was in the real army, I should confess I boloed.
And I was squad leader, to boot.  Think how happy that drill sergeant was.
He yelled and screamed, danced a jig and all but died of a heart attack.
Bolo is no score, the name pretty well says it all.  It makes one a dud to
have boloed.  And of course, it's the army, dauntless outfit, no excuses,
no explanations.  You've read the books, you've seen the movies.  It didn't
matter to Sgt. Serabian, or on single man jack on the planet that the last
six targets on my firing lane happened to be totally obscured by the mist,
that the farthest of these targets had the relative size of a stamp, while
the closest was about the size of a playing card, no sergeant, no sir, no
excuses.  I was a dud another time.  More exciting.  The grenade throw.
The recruit and the bomb.  The story hardly needs embellishment or the hype
of a master's touch, nor would a tangent delving into the lacey world of
the absurd add much.  All the drama was in that concrete cubicle with it
large and deliberate drain.

       A full recounting of the events of that November afternoon in 1966
begins in a prosaic enough way.  Reveille, like so many mornings before.
Shouting, formations, inspections, looking for someone to salute, because
it's new and fun and we're getting pretty good at it.

       Not in the army, of course, but some people have things in their
lives they become attached to.  It could be a pet, a romantic partner, or
just a favorite recipe for brownies.  The point is, everyone has something,
and, in the army, these somethings are usually boiled down to photos,
letters or perhaps an incidental keepsake.  I was no exception.  Yes, I had
a watch.  It wasn't a three hundred dollar watch, mind you, this is '66,
but it wasn't exactly a hundred dollar watch, either.

       Now for a nostalgic diversion.  The Spiedel "Twist-O-Flex."  They
used to advertise on television.  Anyway, my very nice, but not opulent,
watch had a "Twist-O-Flex" bracelet.  Now for some reason known only to the
deities that make the sainted angels known as gods, I am unable to wear my
watch on my left wrist, though I'm right handed.  I've tried for weeks, and
can't get used to it.  Ergo, I wear my watch on my right wrist, so, when I
cocked back to throw the hand grenade, I felt my watch slide down my hand.
I knew if I John Wayned my grenade, my watch was going with it.

       Many things went through my mind in this split second.  The chance
of the US Army letting me retrieve my watch, should it have survived, was
zero.  The bomb I was holding seemed small, indeed, I could hold it in my
hand.  The walls of the bunker seemed substantial, maybe three feet of
reinforced concrete likely built by the corpse of engineers.  In short,
there did seem an option that might, given a little Yankee luck, work.

       Well, let me just tell you.  I threw like a girl.  Flipped that
`tater.  The grenade landed about twenty feet past the wall, I caught the
watch on my fingers as it flew off, and the guy who was sort of a prancing
god, come to earth, started screaming Short Round like he was throwing his
best Sipowicz hump to a ten year old gypsy.  Then things got real army.
Flutter, sputter, cackle, crow.  A really tremendous explosion created a
momentary lull, then it was back in the hen house.  Hundreds of words were
said, much ado about everything, and the only thing that never happened
during the extended hoopla and fandango was no one ever asked me Why.  I
should add that I want on to sore the highest in fucking everything in
basic, fired expert, topped the p.t. test, and aced the grenade throw.  The
kind of Mesopotamian assholeism illustrated by these stories is the reason
I was able to serve with hundreds of guys and never meet one who wanted to
stay in the mixed up mess called the army for ten seconds past their
enlistment.  I've got other stories, the week I got court-martialed four
times, for example, but I'll save them in case we get bogged down in
depressing minutia and need our spirits lifted.  Suffice it to say, for
now, that I ended my military career as a Pvt. E1, with dozens of articles
in the Fort Wolters paper, hundreds in "The Armored Sentinel," at Ft. Hood,
and an unknown number in "Stars and Stripes" because it didn't make it the
DMZ, so I never knew if they printed my submissions, or not.  (Anything
about the 501st Arty Battalion, LZ Sharon, Quang Tri, Dong Ha, summer and
fall of 1968, would probably be mine.  (Copy or art.))

       I've been reviewing my comments on UNICEF, and need to add
something.  I've mentioned it before in passing, but it is such an absolute
symbol of contemporary liberalism it needs a rehash.  This is the Big
Brothers program, run under the United Way organization.  I applied when I
moved back to the states from Mexico.

       T start with how it should have gone, I should have called the
number and gotten a recording.  The recording should have listed the
minimum qualifications for consideration by the program, and, especially in
Los Angeles, the fact that you had to have lived there at least four years
as a basic requirement.  Instead, I got a live person who asked me to fill
out a form and attend a meeting.  I went to an elegant suite, filled out a
two page pre application, and some short time later, attended a meeting.
There were about a dozen guys there, résumé clowns, one and all, and
if any of them had showed up on my doorstep, I would have hidden behind my
mother's skirts.  They were fat, they were bald, they were humorless,
gentle jesus, they were brokers, and all they were reminded me, again, of
Larry McMurtry's description of a character sharing a cab ride into Los
Angeles with two "stone-silent" businessmen.

       Anyway, it turned out that in the greater metro area of Los Angeles
and Los Angeles County, with nearly twenty million people,
two-hundred-fifty Big Brother couples existed.  The waiting list was said
to be thirteen thousand boys, for non of whom I was deemed fit.

       UNICEF, Big Brothers.  Like the guy in the car polish ad, What a
bunch of bull.  Very much like your god and your democracy, come to think
of it.

       Already stories of unions and mobs at ground zero.  I thought it
would be a couple of months, but I think I deserve a little slack.  In a
country where the secretary of defense stands, while brown kings loll, it's
going to be hard to call the shots with precision and accuracy.  You'll
have to work with me here.

       I try to avoid stress and personal problems to enhance focus and
productivity.  In spite of my best efforts, a distraction has arisen.  I
have three mature cats, about three years old.  In late May, one of the
females presented me with two black kittens.  These are now almost cats,
and what they've been up to is teaching the old guard to play.  It's not
impossible to type with five large, healthy animals crashing around the
place after each other, but it's no walk in the park, either.  It does make
me glad they are such clean and outrageously beautiful animals, and they
sure are cute when they're asleep.

       I do have to tell another cat story.  In my early days as a fancier,
I had three, long since gone to the snake the boys found across the street.
Anyhow, I used to cue their dinner with a loud whispered "Fish."  After I'd
done that for a few weeks, I waited until the house was full, which means
about six or eight kids.  We'd be sitting watching the Cartoon Channel,
and, without warning, I'd hiss "Fish."  The three cats lived under my bed,
and they'd all hit their heads at exactly the same instant, then come
flying out from under.  It was a close parallel to the school-room scene in
"The Gods Must Be Crazy."  Very funny.  Mercifully, this was five years
ago, and all the kids are grown and moved on to jobs and jail.  They have
not been replaced, because they can't be.

       The lie in Chapter 14 is about letters.  Truth to tell?  I have not
received a single letter on this story, and only one on C-Camp.  This is
only interesting because my first stories brought a daily deluge, some
readers writing as much as four times.  It became a major distraction and
also a bit of a puzzle.  I've read thousands of books and not only have I
never had the slightest inclination to write a fan letter, I don't think
I'd have anything to say to even John D. MacDonald or Larry McMurtry on a
four-hour flight, other than a quick thanks and handshake, if it seemed
appropriate.  John O'Hara might be another story, when I think of it, and
if we both got about half in the bag I might be tempted to plumb him on his
feelings at being a virtuoso at the most fiendish of arts.  In other words,
grovel.  Of course, I don't particularly like his novels, and that would
probably slip out, since I feature myself master of the long ball.  So much
for groveling.  Anyway, it's been a stunning rookie year, with events
feeding genius like oxygen feeds a vat of molten steel.  An epic shower of
sparks spanning well over a thousand pages, with much of a full-blown novel
produced at the speed of daily paper.  Literary ping-pong. with more than
enough fireworks to shell shock an entire nation.  Get over it, and drop me
a line.

       I've never dealt with writer's block nor been able to understand the
concept or issue or whatever it is.  I can't imagine sitting down to write,
if you didn't have something to say.  Wouldn't it be like swinging a
racquet with no ball?  At the same time, there comes a point when you have
said it all.  You can't think of anything more to say, simply because there
is0n't anything.  You are in mortal danger because of Semites and Semitic
influences.  You must profile this class, and either kill or deport it.  If
you don't, you will die as surely as a candle in the wind.

       I'm thinking of moving to Guatemala.  Maybe it's the seven year
itch.  My income is twenty-two thousand a year, net.  In Guatemala I could
live in a palacio of sorts.  Maybe have a nice horse.  Become a bit of a
gentlemen, instead of some beatific Christ-like person who helps the needy
with seventy percent of his income.  I have learned better.  The best way
to help, is to consume.  Buy quality products made by reputable companies
through conventional channels.  My first venture here was setting out over
two hundred fifty truck-tire lobster traps.  This took about forty-five
days.  Not only an investment of over thirty thousand dollars, but twelve
hours on a short day of my own time and effort.  And it returned nothing
for anyone involved, though undoubtedly the traps, themselves, are making a
pretty penny for someone.  The experience is the total dichotomy of working
in the third world.  A crew of five to seven, who were brilliant, as long
as I was simply there, went amok the second I was not there, and failed at
everything under every circumstance.  As UNICEF is flawed, as the big
brothers organization is flawed, so is liberalism, and, inescapably,
democracy.  It is a system that can only survive under opulent conditions
and if stimulated frequently by brilliant inventors and entrepreneurs.
Your only hope for survival is an American monarch for twenty-five years to
do the dirty work, then restoration to your rightful place under the
English crown.  My family took this from you in the person of William
Emerson, facilitator, extraordinaire of the Revolution.  It is my duty to
make good this error in judgment, and I have done so, fully and fairly on
these pages.  I have presented my work unheralded and un-hyped to the
common American citizen for his or her consideration.  I have included the
world in all discussions.  Churchill wrote more than I have, but they're
books on a shelf.  This is another kind of literature, perhaps more of the
heart, mind and soul than of accurate history or grand schemes gone by.

       You know you're at the brink, your current leaders have been before
you incessantly.  It's time to think down where the brain lives because any
light at the end of the sewer is either way funky or the eyes of an
oncoming rat.

       Well, I'll put Guatemala on a back burner for a few days.  Maybe run
a book exchange for wayward hippies on the border with a minor in digital
photography.  In the meantime, I think I've painted the Bradys as I would
have them.  Adoring life rather than loving it.  Less is more.  Lessons
that are simply the only ones out there.

       I do leave with reluctance.  My second novel was meant to occupy me
through the fall, and I was going to spend December writing David some
boy-band one offs, because these seem to be Nifty's specialty.  It's
ironic, because the main secret to being an artist is to be ruthlessly
methodical.  Planning the work and working the plan.  Ending up three
months ahead of one's self, after nine months, is a freak out.  As you can
tell from my army sketches, I never blame myself for anything, so I'll flog
my tired old silly horse one more time by pointing out that it's you that
have put a wrinkle in my railway.  Your fault.  Then, now, and always.

       Finally, it's up to you to distribute this work.  Best way I can
think of is with a graffiti assault, writing, very neatly, Read Feather
Touch on Nifty, in traditional places for graffiti.  There's a bit of
symbolism in urging your fellow Americans to stay out of the sewer, while
standing at the friendly end of the pipe, but forgo that.  Just write a
short, neat massage all over town.  Repeat.  If you can think of a better
way, be my guest.  The point is, it's up to you.  Pedophiles make up a
significant percentage of society, and have repeatedly played crucial
roles, behind the scenes.  In many ways we have to be different if we are
going to survive, and outspoken pervs is just one of them.

Posted by Thomas@btl.net

xxx