the new members of the troop, a gawky boy who had not yet procured a uniform, opened the door, his Handbook for Boys in his hand, and a question, never asked, poised behind his open mouth. That was that, and he left the troop, began to drink again, and flirted with Zen, just before joining the War Resisters League and a pornographic video club, i.e. Pussie Video Sales. For a time, he became an obsessive masturbator, but then grew bored with orgasms. At a rally in Union Square against hate and violence, etc., he fell in love with Joan Baez, or someone who looked and sounded like her, who was singing of peace and fellowship and against most, but not all, rich people. He left the square, humming some old Pete Seeger warhorse, and composing, in his mind, the perfect letter to Miss Baez, when, just as he was completing his witty postscript, he was hit by a Checker cab at Tenth Street and Broadway, directly in front of Grace Church, and died on his way to St. Vincent’s.
Obviously missing from this “sketch” (not my word, I assure you!) is anything that this man may have said, at any time, to anybody. It would have been interesting to know, for instance, the content of his remarks, if any, to Mrs. Ingebretsen and Donald Fritjofsen (the gawky boy), on the occasion of their common embarrassment, and, too, his comments on the matter to Pastor Ingebretsen.
It is to be hoped that this man practiced safe sex in “the age of AIDS,” shared responsibility for birth control whenever he “got lucky,” eschewed cigarettes and all other tobacco products, knowing, as he did, that they are far, far deadlier than massive carpet-bombings and low-level napalm strikes, avoided red meat, salt, refined sugar, and saturated fats, and got plenty of exercise, despite the weeping that regularly convulsed him.
Modern Business English; The Life of the Spider; Mark, the Match Boy; Fables in Slang; Dave Dawson with the Air Corps; Penrod Jashber; Selections from the Homilies of Pastor Pietsch; The Boy Ranchers in the Desert; A Mother’s Prayer; Tom Sawyer; Best Loved Poems of the American People; The Curse of Darwin; The Ordeal of Harriet Marwood, Governess; Letters for All Occasions; A Heap o’ Livin’; A Pocket History of England; The Adventures of Ulysses.
Joan Baez, or the singer who looked like her, could not hold a candle to Isabelle Piro insofar as feminine beauty is concerned; an indication, perhaps, of this unfortunate man’s mental decline.
“Checker cabs are gone, you know? And if we play our cards right we can get rid of the age of AIDS, too, you know? If we talk to the Checker cab guys who got them out, I mean, who got rid of them, the cabs, you know what I mean?”
“Talks like a guy with a paper asshole,” Tommy Azzerini remarks.
The tomato episode
H E HAD BEEN, FOR MANY YEARS, INTRUSIVE , selfish, callous, controlling, petty, and childish, and given to prevarication, forgetfulness, and maddening self-justification. An almost intolerable clod of a husband, whose smug egotism made him a good target for his wife’s occasional, unexpected, and thoroughly justified countermeasures. One night, when his wife asked him to slice a tomato for their supper, he took a large, ripe tomato out of the refrigerator, and noticed that there was a half-tomato there as well, covered tightly in shrink wrap. He took that out, too. He had sliced this half-tomato and was beginning to slice the whole tomato, when his wife asked him why, why he’d sliced the half-tomato when she had expressly asked him to slice a tomato, a whole tomato. With the counterfeit, smug patience that often causes brutal assaults and even murders to be committed upon those who pretend its possession, he explained that he’d sliced the half-tomato and would now slice half of the whole tomato, so that they could “use up,” was his phrase, the older, so to speak, half-tomato, and save half of the newer, so to speak, whole tomato. He indeed employed the phrase, “so to
Obviously missing from this “sketch” (not my word, I assure you!) is anything that this man may have said, at any time, to anybody. It would have been interesting to know, for instance, the content of his remarks, if any, to Mrs. Ingebretsen and Donald Fritjofsen (the gawky boy), on the occasion of their common embarrassment, and, too, his comments on the matter to Pastor Ingebretsen.
It is to be hoped that this man practiced safe sex in “the age of AIDS,” shared responsibility for birth control whenever he “got lucky,” eschewed cigarettes and all other tobacco products, knowing, as he did, that they are far, far deadlier than massive carpet-bombings and low-level napalm strikes, avoided red meat, salt, refined sugar, and saturated fats, and got plenty of exercise, despite the weeping that regularly convulsed him.
Modern Business English; The Life of the Spider; Mark, the Match Boy; Fables in Slang; Dave Dawson with the Air Corps; Penrod Jashber; Selections from the Homilies of Pastor Pietsch; The Boy Ranchers in the Desert; A Mother’s Prayer; Tom Sawyer; Best Loved Poems of the American People; The Curse of Darwin; The Ordeal of Harriet Marwood, Governess; Letters for All Occasions; A Heap o’ Livin’; A Pocket History of England; The Adventures of Ulysses.
Joan Baez, or the singer who looked like her, could not hold a candle to Isabelle Piro insofar as feminine beauty is concerned; an indication, perhaps, of this unfortunate man’s mental decline.
“Checker cabs are gone, you know? And if we play our cards right we can get rid of the age of AIDS, too, you know? If we talk to the Checker cab guys who got them out, I mean, who got rid of them, the cabs, you know what I mean?”
“Talks like a guy with a paper asshole,” Tommy Azzerini remarks.
The tomato episode
H E HAD BEEN, FOR MANY YEARS, INTRUSIVE , selfish, callous, controlling, petty, and childish, and given to prevarication, forgetfulness, and maddening self-justification. An almost intolerable clod of a husband, whose smug egotism made him a good target for his wife’s occasional, unexpected, and thoroughly justified countermeasures. One night, when his wife asked him to slice a tomato for their supper, he took a large, ripe tomato out of the refrigerator, and noticed that there was a half-tomato there as well, covered tightly in shrink wrap. He took that out, too. He had sliced this half-tomato and was beginning to slice the whole tomato, when his wife asked him why, why he’d sliced the half-tomato when she had expressly asked him to slice a tomato, a whole tomato. With the counterfeit, smug patience that often causes brutal assaults and even murders to be committed upon those who pretend its possession, he explained that he’d sliced the half-tomato and would now slice half of the whole tomato, so that they could “use up,” was his phrase, the older, so to speak, half-tomato, and save half of the newer, so to speak, whole tomato. He indeed employed the phrase, “so to
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