I.D. tags, or metal tablets, or slender sunken scutcheons. He sees no belts in the tight cuneiform-print trousers, in the plaids like colored grids, like cage, windowpanes, that climb their legs like ladders. The pants hold themselves up, self-supportive, a flap of fabric buttoned to a rim of itself like flesh sealed to flesh in operations. He marvels at their bump-toe shoes, their thick fillets of composition heels like shiny mignon or rosy cross sections of pressed geology. At their shirts like Christmas ties.
Where has he seen such men? Sitting beside him when he had ridden on airplanes, with their slim gun-metal attaché cases open on their laps like adult pencil boxes. (He has no attaché case, travels even lighter than they.) Huddling with maître d’s behind the velvet ropes in restaurants. In convention at Miami Beach and San Diego in low season. With widows in the public rooms, restaurants, and oyster bars of good commercial hotels. With unmarried women a dozen years younger than themselves who chew gum. Yes. Yes. And always together, always in pairs or pairs of pairs, their flings a cooperation and conspiracy, their style a fever. (Though it wasn’t “fling.” They would have entire wardrobes of such clothes, their closets actually hazardous, flammable, with Fortrels, Dacrons, low-banked acetates, back-burnered polyesters, double knits.) And made brave, it could be, by the very resiliency of their clothing, the flexible permanent press that snapped back into place like rubber bands, that would not hold a wrinkle or keep a clue, as though they wore, these loud and husky men, garments blessed by gods, an invulnerability they perhaps took seriously, a vouchsafement of safety that made them louder, easily tripping their anger as galosh-shod boys might stomp in puddles. Not so he, Flesh, in his wools and silks and cottons, his earthy, dry-clean-only fibers, his easily trampled crops of clothes. Nor Lace the Liquidator, that creased and rumpled, raveled man.
Oh why, why, why do I mourn them? Why do they touch me so, wrapped in their crazy laundry? These Necchi men and Falstaff distributors, this pride of Pontiac dealers and Armstrong linoleum licensees? Am I not one of them? And if my kindling point is higher, what doth it avail a man to keep his cool if his eyes boil, for the truth is, I cannot look at them without something profound in my throat forcing the maudlin hydraulics of the heart. Maudlin and sober still. These are my Elks, my Vets of Foreign Wars, my Shriners and Knights of Columbus and Pythias, my Moose mobs and Masons of all degrees. Oh. Oh. Variety Club is the spice of life. They do good work: tool the cripple, and patiently teach the retarded their names, bus the underprivileged to the park and usually it doesn’t rain. God’s blessing on them. Mine. All praise to the raising of their hospitals, to their raffle good will. Just, damn it, make them careful where they drop their ashes or swing their cigarettes! One live ash on a single pant leg and we could all go up. It would be the Chicago fire in Columbus, Indy, Wichita—all the landlocked campuses and home offices. (Home offices, yes, those legislative capitals of our trades where we, patriots to machines, to goods and services, pilgrims to the refresher course, all those wee congresses of American style, where last year’s figures and this one’s plans and promos hang out, where we honor the founders and applaud the record beaters, inspired and instructed, seminar’d, on-the-job-trained in Hamburgerology, the new models, sign placement, the architecture of the access road, lapping it up, taking it in, community relations, how the Civil Rights Act of ’68 has opened the way to the black dollar, which credit cards to honor, and all the rest. Business and Sociology, the first on our block to key the restroom, guard the fountain, cage the clerk. Inspired by their inspiration, enthused by their enthusiasm, standing when others stood and humming
Where has he seen such men? Sitting beside him when he had ridden on airplanes, with their slim gun-metal attaché cases open on their laps like adult pencil boxes. (He has no attaché case, travels even lighter than they.) Huddling with maître d’s behind the velvet ropes in restaurants. In convention at Miami Beach and San Diego in low season. With widows in the public rooms, restaurants, and oyster bars of good commercial hotels. With unmarried women a dozen years younger than themselves who chew gum. Yes. Yes. And always together, always in pairs or pairs of pairs, their flings a cooperation and conspiracy, their style a fever. (Though it wasn’t “fling.” They would have entire wardrobes of such clothes, their closets actually hazardous, flammable, with Fortrels, Dacrons, low-banked acetates, back-burnered polyesters, double knits.) And made brave, it could be, by the very resiliency of their clothing, the flexible permanent press that snapped back into place like rubber bands, that would not hold a wrinkle or keep a clue, as though they wore, these loud and husky men, garments blessed by gods, an invulnerability they perhaps took seriously, a vouchsafement of safety that made them louder, easily tripping their anger as galosh-shod boys might stomp in puddles. Not so he, Flesh, in his wools and silks and cottons, his earthy, dry-clean-only fibers, his easily trampled crops of clothes. Nor Lace the Liquidator, that creased and rumpled, raveled man.
Oh why, why, why do I mourn them? Why do they touch me so, wrapped in their crazy laundry? These Necchi men and Falstaff distributors, this pride of Pontiac dealers and Armstrong linoleum licensees? Am I not one of them? And if my kindling point is higher, what doth it avail a man to keep his cool if his eyes boil, for the truth is, I cannot look at them without something profound in my throat forcing the maudlin hydraulics of the heart. Maudlin and sober still. These are my Elks, my Vets of Foreign Wars, my Shriners and Knights of Columbus and Pythias, my Moose mobs and Masons of all degrees. Oh. Oh. Variety Club is the spice of life. They do good work: tool the cripple, and patiently teach the retarded their names, bus the underprivileged to the park and usually it doesn’t rain. God’s blessing on them. Mine. All praise to the raising of their hospitals, to their raffle good will. Just, damn it, make them careful where they drop their ashes or swing their cigarettes! One live ash on a single pant leg and we could all go up. It would be the Chicago fire in Columbus, Indy, Wichita—all the landlocked campuses and home offices. (Home offices, yes, those legislative capitals of our trades where we, patriots to machines, to goods and services, pilgrims to the refresher course, all those wee congresses of American style, where last year’s figures and this one’s plans and promos hang out, where we honor the founders and applaud the record beaters, inspired and instructed, seminar’d, on-the-job-trained in Hamburgerology, the new models, sign placement, the architecture of the access road, lapping it up, taking it in, community relations, how the Civil Rights Act of ’68 has opened the way to the black dollar, which credit cards to honor, and all the rest. Business and Sociology, the first on our block to key the restroom, guard the fountain, cage the clerk. Inspired by their inspiration, enthused by their enthusiasm, standing when others stood and humming
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