RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,334
(getting to yes / getting to no)
Somebody named John, who lived
on the southside of Elmira and had
his house wrecked in the flood, was
living now almost as a refugee. At a
friend's house. It went on for some
months, and we was sleeping with
the wife of the guy who lived there
too. I never understood that oddball
euphemism 'sleeping with' - it meant
nothing like that at all and everyone
knew what one did in place of sleep,
which became merely the offshoot
of exertion. In its own way.
-
In any case, John had a good deal
going, and the husband there apparently
didn't mind either, because he was, at
the same time, buttering his own bread.
Using another euphemism for what I
bet you know what I mean. It was as,
in one of those game - Yahtzee, maybe -
(they were always passing time in that
house by playing games or listening
to music in the stereo system). Fairport
Convention. Steeleye Span. Old British
folk songs. Everything was about a
half step out; you never heard the usual
stuff - Beatles, Rolling Stones, or any
of that 70's crud. The mother of the guy
of the house - her, I never met - was
working with and for Eugene McCarthy,
who at the time in addition to running
big as a candidate for President (the
'Peace' candidate no less) was writing
a considered form of 'serious' poetry -
all of which was later published. She
was involved in that endeavor too,
and the word was how great the stuff
was. I thought it sort of stunk. Rhyming
Vietnam with 'the fate of Man' wasn't
all it was cracked up to be.
-
Anyway, back to Yahtzee...you put the
dice in a tumbler, shake it, and throw
them out of it, and the dice come
splashing down and you never know
what you'll get. The household of sex was
like that. Maybe there's even a poem
there! The whole of 1970's, you need to
remember, reeked of a forlorn sadness
that tried to be rectified by stubbornly
stupid 'recreational' stuff, in this case
all of sex, pot, music, and a spaced-out
cosmic-cadet overlay over humanity. You
were supposed to 'like' everything, and
be all spacey and goofy about goodness
and mirth, yet at the same time it seemed
that every little detail of everything was
always under scrutiny, talked about, and
dissected, deconstructed, reviewed and
criticized - making a big lie out of the
entire process presented. It was the
beginning of all that modern-philosophy
stuff, but no one knew it.
-
What food there ever was had an equally
weird veneer : of course, crispy munchies.
The fact of being stoned meant that all
of the taste sensations of that food was
to be savored, in the most useless and
childish way. It could take 20 minutes
to eat a handful of potato chips, because
the blitzed-out person eating them went
on a tethered space-walk in their brain
with every bite and crunch. The other
big thing - somehow - was fondue.
These folks were always cooking
something over the reserved open
flame (which they only ended up
staring at, with a wide grin, for yet
another nineteen lost minutes) of the
fondue, and then - as I recall - eating
something from it which they poked
onto the edge of a long stick. I think
that was it, though I too really don't
remember much. It was all, to me,
like a long cigarette or beer or liquor
commercial - before they were
banned from the media - people
with high-fashion swishy clothes:
(Ladies, that is. Gay men and fashions
for gay men had not yet entered media),
and gallant dudes sucking on cigarettes
while doing some heroic deed - the
fireman saving your house and kids
would probably be sucking on a
Marlboro, while wearing, too, his
stetson).
-
The whole thing was screwed up, and
just about the same time 'pornography'
was entering mainstream society big
time. It was no big deal at all to find
photos of a snatch anywhere. Naked
Burt Reynolds too. Whatever you
wished for could probably come true.
Twisted up old guys in Washington
DC had been given free rein to mess
with your future; what else was there
to do but act equally insane on your
own part. Everything was undergoing
some sort of a turmoil, but it mostly
went unremarked, and people just
undertook the task, without comment.
-
Of course, beneath that new facade all
of Elmira was numb too. Every bit of
it that previously had been quiet, staid,
conservative, and filled with 'American'
values, was getting pissed away in this
new flood of consternation. The reactions
were weird, and people kept quiet. How
does a local preacher grow sideburns
to signify his new hipness? Does that
change the scripture he has to read to
his congregants? Does that then flavor
the general 'new' tone of his 'oh so cool'
sermons? 'I only go to Father Bob's
services, because he's so with it!' That
sort of life is not sanctification; it's more
like a long, slow, wobbly, death.
-
If, after the Elmira flood, you brought a
handyman over to the house to review the
situation for repairs, it became a fair bet that
your wife would have sex with the guy as part
of the deal. Somehow softening the price.
No one any longer cared. The flood
had somehow erased all the moral and
ethical characters of the town. Except for
the elderly and the church-folk. You don't
believe me? Nothing I can do to help you
except write-on more about this stuff.
All things had been flipped. The last
shall be first and the first shall be last?
That became laughable at best, as a
concept by which to observe one's own
behaviors in life. There were runaways
too - high school kids fighting parental
supervisions. More disbelief on your
part? The guy whose house this was,
the one with the McCarthy mother in
DC, as a high school art teacher he'd
often be awakened by a knocking at the
door, from yet another kid who wanted
to hang out, invisibly, at the house so that
his or her parents, or the local police,
wouldn't find her. It was bizarre, and in
they came - the NYC bus station being
but some ten blocks away.
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