Women and Men

Women and Men by Joseph McElroy Page B

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Authors: Joseph McElroy
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order? It’s only for drinks. They’re waiting. That’s all you do, you’re the one that says the words, let others carry them out.
    A home passes overhead in orbit, ‘least you saw it launched this A.M., an empty household fully equipped, built-in cabinets, now it’s over the Andes, downtown Won Ton, Tunis, you wouldn’t know, and sure to come by again in ninety minutes, no need to duck.
    You know what you have to do. Think of those waiting. Nothing to it: it isn’t as if this is even a mock killing-at-a-distance—nor that you have to be one whole person to give this order at a protracted time when you are letting a divorced whim bring you down here to Florida looking for a once-encountered Chilean only to find one of the best women you can remember.
    "Shoot, kid," came the father-type voice (meaning, "Speak") far away in time but close inside the void.
    But you, you don’t have to do the shooting. You just give the order.
    Just? (For somebody hammering away at somebody else in a self-help workshop has just shown us that the word "just" often is minimizing our own self’s felt needs, as in "I just called up to tell you.")
    Yes, that’s what you do. You do just. They take it from there. Standing up. Against a wall. In a revolutionary courtyard or an appropriated playground. But you don’t know what shooting: because maybe we have here a trial run, with blanks. Trial run to gain experience. Or give the squad waiting to take their best shot the real thing of hearing the blankety-blank gust of the weapons’ waiting life. And as for the terminal others waiting opposite, assembled in one timeless scheme all together or coming up in another time one by one to face the squad, the trial run gives them the complementary experience of, say, passing out at the explosion the shock of which we’ll hazard they’d have been condemned to run the risk of not quite hearing (whether they went-to-the-bathroom then and there or not) if the blasts had not been blanks—which "Victim then fills in" as blanks are to be filled in, with indifference, hope, rage, self, the blindfold smell of self’s waste, or say some tortured failure of heart (for who would go through that fake execution again? don’t ask), or (to reverse the words and economize) heart failure (for risk’s a factor and there’s such a thing as torture that goes too far) while on the other hand (human nature being what it is) failure of heart threatens to widdle and resolve itself into mere you know temporarily decreased cardiac silhouette or arhythm; or, after all, temporarily decreased cardiac silhouette may be but terminal arhythm.
    Dry run or wet, give the order. It’s waiting to come into existence in order to be executed. A mound of sanitary landfill waits to be a layer, a quantity of vegetable, animal, mineral-kindred (not controlled-toxic, though literally mind-boggling) landfill, and some of those waiting are to be under the layer, and some not. So give the order. You have to anyway. Don’t distract yourself with memories of the future and a metal plate with persons standing on it, two at a time, two to the zero power it comes to you. Save your breath. Think instead of those waiting here; be considerate, you have to bring the order to the point of execution. So give the order. Give it your best shot. Yet hold it.
     
    Oh sure, talk about the weather while we don’t know enough about it any more unless we wire Venus for un analogue much less consult weather’s novel rethinker in his disintegrating apartment furnished faintly with a sound of a cheerful old female talking aimlessly: or unless we hold to those ancient cumulus towers given us by the very Great Spirit who’d never incarnate vast self even in sign, even in spiral idea, much less stiff hat and short braids. But before getting into the weather, first give the order. That’s what you do. Take the power that’s fucking yours. The mayor’s spiel has gone on long enough. Don’t look back down

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