Atop an Underwood by Jack Kerouac Page B

stogie?
    Young Fellow : At Joe’s. I bought a dollar’s worth—20 of them.
    Nick : You did? Well, whaddaya say?
    YF: Help yourself
    (He does. He lights the cigar and sits down in the grass
    beside YF. He sighs and doesn’t say a damned word.
    That’s the wonderful thing about Nick.)
    YF : That’s the wonderful thing about you
    Nick : What is?
    YF: Nothing
    (Now comes the third bather. He is Walter . His hair is all curled up in wet ringlets on his brow. He strides up to them with his cigarette. He has a white sweat shirt over his bathing suit. He sits down with a contented
    Walter : Aaaah ...
    (Offstage we hear the sound of shouting swimmers. They come nearer. Now they are here, two young fellows racing. They are both naked, because they forgot their bathing suits. Anyway, nobody ever goes to this place much—that is, girls. They end their race and flop on the grass beside the three smokers.)
    YF : Walter, throw that lousy butt away and have one of my cigars. There’s nothing can beat a cigar.
    Walter : Just as you say (The two racers are PAUL and SEBASTIAN)
    Sebastian : Zagg, you’re not very polite. Don’t you offer us a cigar?
    YF : Of course I do. Help yourself. I bought a dollar’s worth at Joe’s
    Paul: (Lights up his cigar; he is ringing wet.)
    Broush—broush, burp . . . ahem . . . egad ... kapf . . . kaff kaff . . . how does the stock stand today?
    Walter : (Also assuming a business man pose):
    Well, it’s like this JP. Amalgamated rose two points today, but I’m afraid that Consolidated will go down (Walter does this very well, and he raises his leg to indicate a typical business man fart as he speaks. He is bursting with opulence, power, prestige, and importance. He again raises his leg.)
    Nick spits calmly.
    YF watches Walter and bursts out laughing. Everyone laughs, in his own way. Sebastian smiles wanly, YF laughs out loud, Paul has a pleasant high-pitched giggle that is not at all silly, and Nick slaps his thigh approvingly.
    YF : You know, I used to smoke cigars and imitate burpers like Mouse just did. But now I’ve a new perspective. I smoke cigars because there’s something about them that gets me. For one thing, it’s such a silly goddamn thing to do, that I have to laugh at myself. From there on, the coast is clear.
    Sebastian : Laugh at yourself, and cry too. (He is getting into one of his moods, as he was in my last play. Now he springs to his full six feet and starts shouting at the top of his lungs:
    Sunday in Moscow, gray gloomy Sunday in Moscow. Oh, ye bells of Moscow . . . ring . . . ring . . . I must see them. I am going there now. To Moscow . . . . (Sebastian runs off into the woods. In his youth, he read a lot about wood-nymphs and Pucks and stuff. So now he is going out to try it, naked. He is a wood-nymph too, because you can hear him all over the forest, reciting Poe’s “Bells” ... or should I say, shouting “Bells”)
    YF : Isn’t that marvelous? And to think that the poor bastard has to get up in the morning every day and go to his business, sleepy, grouchy, exhausted, hungry, cold, sick, empty, bleak, disgusted . . .
    Walter : It’s a wicked world
    YF : (Taking a luxurious drag from his cigar.)
    But, there’s something about cigars just the same. Like the time I walked out of a movie in New York and began to walk home along Broadway. I was cold, and shy of the world. Suddenly, I saw a cigar store. I said to myself, “Zagg, you’re going to go in there and buy yourself a cigar. What for? I don’t know. I’m glad I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I’ll just buy one and smoke it.” So I bought a cigar and lit it and walked out and went right along the street, a new man. I looked at every one with new interest, because the cigar gave me courage. It made me say: “Well, hello there. How the hell are you, you little pavement cipher, you little nameless,