Posted
by: Barry Fest - December 8,
2008 Catch
up
Hello
my darling darlings. (I apologize for the wanton, profligate, nay promiscuous
familiarity, but I have been affecting iconoclasm of late and am now given to
routine sarcasm.)
If you have been following my story, then you know that for the past year or so
I have been in exile from my home. The imposer of said exile is my wife, Dr.
Wharton-Stone.
(Writing that last sentence has reminded me that I need to call her. I have
been apprised casually -- by our mutual friend and accountant, Chili Nigro --
that Dr. Wharton-Stone and her entourage were leaving town to escape the chilly
Belverton Autumn, and I thought I might get a few nostalgic nights' sleep in my
own bed.)
I have been making shift abode-wise here, in my office at the Belverton
University Press, where I toil in the daytime as executive editor. Also during
said exile, I have been the object of desire of one Racine, the Belverton
University Dean of Intercourse. A provocative woman who has made my libido her
own, personal toy. I have been devising a fictive work - an alibi, if you will
- for an erotic conjunction with said Dean. My plan is a simple one: gratify my
desire in the flowering pink dermis of Dean Racine, and lie about it to my
wife.
To make this lie the very best fictive work possible, I have enlisted the aid
of Mike, a 55 year-old Starbucks barista and former New York literary agent.
Mike has given me a great deal of his time, but recently we have been on the
"outs," particularly after I revealed to him my plan to tell my wife the alibi
myself. Mike is opposed on principle to the self-telling of fictive works, and
has insisted that I submit my effort to professional lie-tellers in the
Belverton area.
I have elected not to do so, owing to the time it would take and the notorious
insistence of professional lie-tellers on giving notes to the authors of
fictive works.
But Mike was adamant. "Why Junior, I wouldn't pay four bits for a self-told
fictive work," he grumped at our last meeting.
Whilst musing over this dilemma in the solitude of my office, I found myself
the object of an attack by none other than the Texan president of these
Gorgeous States. Somehow, the president caught wind of my intention to cheat
and lie about it, and denounced me in a national press conference to stunned
reporters who -- in spite of the scientifically-proven popularity of this blog
-- reacted as if they had never heard my name. A moment later I was visited by
two FBI agents - the avuncular, male Cubby and the cold-eyed female Slund.
Both wore sensible shoes.
When last I wrote, Cubby and Slund were seated in front of my desk, grilling
me. Slund, smoking a long series of unfiltered cigarettes, and Cubby, smiling
and attempting to convince me that physical affection is a poor foundation upon
which to build a male-female "relationship." (I believe that is still the vogue
term).
Slund, breast-festooned but belligerent, now joined Cubby in his paean to the
platonic.
"But getting back to the point," she said, apparently recalling me from some
airy tangent of my creation or theirs, "have you had any non-erotic
experiences? With this Dean of Intercourse, I mean. She wasn't born a Dean of
Intercourse. She must have been a real person with real feelings at some point.
Say, from birth until she found herself unable to fit in, and learned that boys
would pay more attention if she brought them a superficial kind of joy."
She drew on her cigarette, as if it were my turn to speak. But it was a ruse.
No sooner had I opened my mouth to reply than she continued.
"What about the crossword puzzle fantasy Agent Cubby described?" she asked. "Or
the beach fantasy? Have you ever taken the time to walk on the beach with a
lady, holding hands? Perhaps some children run by giggling and flying a kite, A
kite with a streaming paper tail. And the two of you just watch them. Happy,
but with a teary kind of wonder at the miracle of life and sunshine."
I opened my mouth to reply again, and again I was too slow.
"Because, you know," she said, "children are the future of our nation."
"It takes a village to raise a child," injected Cubby.
"An entire village," added Slund.
These words conjured a startling image in my mind; an image of a horde of hicks
pointing sagely at a green slate held by a toddler in baggy short pants. I was
tempted to dwell upon it, but I resisted and focused instead on answering Agent
Slund's question.
"Hmm ..." I said, as is my wont in a ponder, "I don't believe I ever have
indulged the puzzle fantasy ... or the beach one ... or the villagers one ..."
"Whoops!" said Cubby. "The village with the child isn't exactly a fantasy. It's
more of a ..."
"Pragmatic expectation," finished Slund.
"We really think you should give one of those fantasies a shot," smiled Cubby.
"That or a similar non-tactile fantasy would really help us close the book on
this little fix you've gotten yourself into."
"Really? Wholly non-tact-"
"And that's the message we've been assigned to bring you," he said.
"It's what the president wants you to know. Lookit. We all know marriages break
up sometimes. A good, wholesome person like yourself runs into a secular
progressive with an eye for the genitalia and bang! Next thing you know you've
had a weekend of drunken humping. Let's do a thought experiment. Now, in this
experiment a guy a lot like you - working hard, no recent hugs from Mrs. Fest -
goes off to Vegas, gets drunk, and gets married to a showgirl in one of those
little vanity churches. Filthy, from a Saddleback Church point-of-view, but the
way this guy sees it, he's being perfectly loving and caring. Hey. We get it.
It's not like this is Northern Ireland."
I was trying to picture what he meant by that when he continued.
"And as for non-tactile ... well, let's say that you meet the right woman, you
do some puzzle fantasy, some beach fantasy, and maybe you hold hands."
"Hold - um ... "
"Hands can be erotic," he asserted with a gravity so sudden I could not help
but doubt its sincerity.
"Let's face it, Fest," said Slund, staring at the empty space three inches in
front of the top edge of my desk, "you know as well as we do that this is in
your own best interest."
"It is?"
"Of course," she said, sucking her cigarette slowly and looking no higher than
my tie. "One day you'll be confined to an iron lung or hospital bed."
"Happens to everyone," chimed in Cubby. "And when it does you don't want to
have to give up sex, do you?"
"Sex?"
"Sex in the hip, modern sense," said Cubby. "The sense where there's no
touching. That's why we think you should come up with a skin-independent
strategy for romance now, Barry. Think about it - " he leaned forward
suddenly. "Let's say you're giving the Dean of Intercourse these hourlong
orgasms all the cougars are wanting now that they've dumped the first husband.
Let's say you're giving them to her on a regular schedule, so they don't
interfere with her other empowerment activities. And let's say she loves your
technique, and you love it that she loves it, and all is happy here in
Campusville. Then just when you're thinking nothing can go wrong, boom! You get
hit by a crane or your elevator crashes and you end up in traction. No more
hourlong consortiums for the Dean of Intercourse, unless ..."
"Unless?"
"Unless she can find some young teacher here at the university, or some staff
physician - maybe yours - to take your place in the cougar-thrilling
department. But, but, you're right, she'll at least be there when you've
recovered enough to get back in the saddle. Unless ... "
"You get the point, don't you, Fest?" asked Slund. "Start planning for your
future as an invalid. Start preparing for it now and maybe you can save
yourself some humiliation and heartache while you lie there with nothing better
to do than stare at a gameshow and blow your nose and remember the little
squeals you'll never hear again."
"But doesn't it seem," I began, "Doesn't it seem, in that situation, that I
would have no choice at all?"
"The puzzle, Barry!" Cubby exhorted. "Get that crossword-puzzle routine down
and as long as you're conscious, you'll have it to remember and re-enact."
"Permit me to interject," I said. "You said before ... I know you said that
according to the crossword puzzle narrative I'm allowed to bite her gently on
the neck."
"That's right."
"How would I manage such a maneuver in an iron lung?"
Slund waved the smoke away from her face. "So she has to push the mirror away
and bend over," she coughed. "Use your imagination."
"Actually, it's ideal," smiled Cubby. "You can't do a crossword puzzle all by
yourself if you're convalescing - "
"Well - "
"Big convalescing," Cubby amended. "Like if you have third degree
burns over more than eighty percent of your body from trying to swim across
lava, or if both your arms and all your fingers have been crushed in a vicious
mugging. You can't work the pencil yourself, so your better half works it for
you. Like in the old days."
"Hm," I said. "That plan sounds rather worked-out. As if you'd thought of every
intricacy in advance."
"Well," said Cubby, with more mirth than a smile might evidence but less than a
laugh might, "this has come up a lot in the last eight years, Barry. A lot more
than you might think."
"That's right, Fest," lectured Slund. "There's nothing about the second-hand
yuppie fantasy that says the bed you do the crossword puzzle in can't be a
hospital bed."
"Whoa," said Cubby, losing his smile and turning again to Slund. "There it is
again. The snide tone."
"Snide?"
"Yeah. What's with the 'second-hand' stuff, Slundy? It's like suddenly you
don't want to believe in the crossword puzzle fantasy anymore."
"I want to believe! It's you who's behaving as if something's wrong with
second-hand items," said Slund. "Personally, I love used things."
She looked over to me as if seeking an endorsement. I could feel my head
bobbing up and down.
"Indeed," I said. "How can one know if an item is any good unless it has been
owned first by someone else? It is the very ideology of antiquing."
Slund widened her eyes at Cubby while stabbing an index finger in my direction.
"Exactly!" she exclaimed.
I felt a sense of winning, victory, nay triumph at this sudden
alliance forged with Bad Cop. But an alliance with Bad Cop has its
disadvantages; viz., the irritation of Good Cop.
"Well, Barry," said the chastened Cubby. "You should know that the fictive work
you've been writing and re-writing and probably even rehearsing ..." he paused
here for a moment to search my face with his eyes," ... that fictive work is out,
even if you self-tell."
Self-tell?
Those last words were rivets in my consciousness. Only slowly did it occur to
me why. Yes, the words "fictive work" and "self-tell" seemed distinctly,
positively, nay outrageously out-of-place in the argot of the two
federales. But these were not unfamiliar terms of art to me. I had
heard the terminology before, and often, from Mike the Barista. Mike, the
former literary agent and my former collaborator cum editor.
They were preparing to leave. Cubby flipped his notebook shut and tucked it
into his jacket. Slund ground the last half-inch of her cigarette into my
Persianesque rug and reached for the flat valise beneath her chair.
I could resist no longer. As they rose to go, the man inside me, the Americano,
the scion of generations of Fests who had proclaimed "don't tread on me," or,
to be precise, don't tread on me often, felt rise an animating ire.
It made me stand. It made me speak.
"H-halt," I stammered. I was shaking with my own gall. The two agents turned to
me.
"Malt what?" asked Slund.
"You said 'self-tell,'" I said to Cubby. He looked vacant.
His eyes scanned my face and then stopped abruptly, as if he could see his
secrets -- or one of them -- written on my lower eyelids.
He no longer smiled.
"What is that supposed to mean, Mr. Fest?" interrupted Slund. "What are you
inferring from those remarks?" She twisted her head on its axis and looked at
Cubby without moving her eyes. "From those careless remarks?"
I was suffering the courage of the already-damned. "What I infer," I braved,
bolded, nay couraged, "is that you two agents of the federal
government have been surveiling this very office. Or perhaps even Starbucks.
Perhaps," I mused, "you surveil all Starbucks."
Cubby began to sputter. He started to speak, then at the last moment turned to
Slund, who fixed him with her button-eyes gaze. Yes, fixed him,
snugly, the way a harpoon might fix a tuna. Cubby swallowed and shrugged.
Slund turned to me. "Watch the tone, skel," she said. "We can still run you
in."
I swallowed. "Run me -- ?"
"Don't worry, Barry," said Cubby. He had his old smile back, which I confess I
found reassuring after the skel-talk of his partner. "We're not bugging your
office or Starbucks or anyplace else. For one thing, it's against the law, and
for another, well ..."
"You're dull," said Slund.
"Sorry," said Cubby. "Agents don't like to talk about it much, but when it
comes to taking a surveillance assignment we're pretty picky about who it is we
have to listen to for hours on end, and, well, after you've listened to a bunch
of guys talk about whacking out another bunch of guys, listening to you talk
for months about some lie you want to tell your wife so you can have sex with a
colleague is ... well ..."
"It's dull," said Slund.
"All that happened, Barry, is that somebody came forward," said Cubby. "Not a
bad person. Not a rat fink. Just a concerned citizen. Nobody we had to, you
know --"
"Beat with a rubber hose," injected Slund.
"Just somebody the President knew from the old days, somebody who'd worked with
him on his memoirs of owning a baseball team. The President heard his story --
your story -- and took a special interest. And now that you've been warned -"
"- You've been warned," finished Slund. "Don't make us come back here with the
local authorities."
Cubby stuck out his hand for me to shake, as if putting the period on the end
of Slund's threat. I shook it resignedly, already wondering whom I might know
who knew in turn the president of these Robust States.
I considered offering my hand to Agent Slund, but as I made a nascent motion to
do so she fixed me again with a forbidding stare, dropping my hand to my side
like the shards of an exploded skeet.
They left. I followed them to the door, half expecting the fraternal Cubby to
turn to me one last time and smile, but it was not to be. All I had was the
backs of their heads all the way down the deserted hallway to the front door.
I stepped back into my office. The deserted hallway. I looked at my
watch. Five minutes past six. I sat down in the comfortable chair, still warm
from throbbing bottom of Agent Slund.
I could not quell my fulminating thoughts; speculations on the identity of the
so-called "concerned citizen" who, as the street-smart pundits phrase it,
ratted me out to the man. Of course, it did not escape my considerations that
Slund and Cubby were dissembling; that they had, in fact, used nanotechnology
(or something else beyond the ken of intellectuals) to eavesdrop on every
university press in America.
I frowned. My rectum clenched like a pugilist's fist. If they were lying about
eavesdropping, then, perhaps, it was all a lie. Perhaps, far from
finding my amorous adventures dull, they found them arousing, exciting, nay intriguing.
Perhaps ...
I sighed.
Of course the FBI was not surveilling my office. Who else, besides
myself and Mike and the Dean of Intercourse -- the ravishing,
anti-establishment Racine -- even knew of the plan? Aside from all of the
people who read this blog, that is. Does the FBI read this blog? And if it
does, why would Cubby confect a "concerned citizen" with which to mislead me?
Perhaps ... I thought ... Perhaps I am mistaken. A number of our conversations
were had in the very commerce-tumescent Starbucks that employs Mike, and where
he is surrounded by his fellow baristas, students pretending to be freelance
writers, and loud men on cellphones. What about that girl ... what is her name?
April. Yes, April. The barista with the sadistic laugh and the predatory
appetite for sexual gratification?
No, she couldn't be a concerned citizen.
Let's see. Someone who helped the President with his memoirs. Who --
Forgive me if my deliberations seem to have been unbearably long for what must
have been for you, the reader of this text, an almost immediate surmise; to
wit, that the traitor in my company was none other than my confidante, Mike the
Barista! Mike! My friend, my ... dare I think it ... my less-educated, same-sex
soul-mate?
But as I relived our last tete-a-tete, I recalled a certain, shall we say, judgmentalism
leaping from Mike's tone and temperament. A kind of distancing, as they say in
horserace politics. He clearly did not approve of my contemplated shennanigans,
even as he was attempting to help me make them real.
The epiphany roiled me. I balled my hand into a thing that could punch. I
looked down at the arm to which that hand was attached and I knew that, were it
not for the adiposity of my dermis, I would have seen veins dilate. And with
that knowledge came the mental image of Mike's strangulation at the hands of
beefy Sicilians.
I am a civilized man, but the image left me warm as Xmas.
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Rights Reserved. Copyright 2003-2008 Dan Roentsch.
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