Etiquette and Vitriol (31 page)

(Lecturing)
I see young mothers in the park walking their children, like poodles on leashes. I am aghast! They treat their children as if they were objects. I claim no expertise
BUT
it has been my experience that children are not dogs. Were they dogs, I'm afraid, I'd've been tempted to put Amy to sleep several times by now. I don't mean to be hard about Amy. I'm sure she has many fine qualities—which are not apparent to me. All people have goodness inside of them! Only some people have very little, and it's
very, very, very
deep down. And she is a stranger! That's what it comes down to. I know she came from me, but she's not part of— oh, God. I must sound awful. But it's true. My feet are part of me. My hands are part of me. My children are people I know. I do love them. Don't mistake my objectivity for indifference. I love my children very much. I just see that they are
other
people. And, if you ask me, we'd have a great deal less crime and drug addiction if mothers and fathers realized their children are not their pets. And this understanding would lead to happier children, healthier adults, less crime, lower taxes, a thriving economy, prettier architecture, less television, more theatre, less litigation, more understanding, less alienation, more love, less hate and a calmer humanity who felt less of a need to spit all the time in public!! Because that's what it is, really. All this spitting in public, is just a thinly veiled hostility for ME, MY TASTE, MY AESTHETIC AND THE COMMON CONSENSUS OF WHAT IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED
SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE!! —AND ISN'T IT WONDERFUL HOW I HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE, AND CAN NOW CONTINUE WITH MY STORY IN A NATURAL, LOGICAL FASHION!!

Everything goes in circles really. Except things that go in straight lines. Hmmm. I was counting spitters, vile, angry, lost souls who felt impotent to change their lives in view of what they think is fate. Well, after about a hundred of these spitting villains, I could take no more. I was in a rage! What has happened to my lovely city! What has happened to it? The buildings are suddenly eyesores. There are placards everywhere, for so-called bands I've never heard of with fascist-sounding names and illustrations of women so wanton as to degrade women everywhere.

Finally, I could take no more. So I started following this one young woman, who looked reasonably sane—except for the fact that she was wearing a tweed skirt with sneakers, but I allowed for a foot condition. She had on a blazer. Her light brown hair was piled high on her head with a tortoise clip. She looked fine. She looked normal. I thought to myself, “I will just stare at this young woman. I will not look to her right. I will not look to her left. I will see only her. And I will convince myself that I am surrounded by similarly sane young women. I won't look, so I'll assume everyone around me is just as polite and normal as she. . . .” And it was working. I had myself believing it. Everything was lovely . . . and then she
veered
over to the curb.
(A real panic builds inside of her)
I said a silent prayer. This woman had become, to me, a symbol: the last great kindness in a once kind world. My breathing changed. I felt my hands grow tense and saw my knuckles whiten in my clenched fists. She walked along the curb for a few feet. I thought, “Thank you, God, thank you. She's just walking along the curb. She's a little erratic, but she's not one of them, she's one of us!” And then slowly, it seemed as if everything was in slow motion . . . she
leaned
over. I hoped, I prayed she
was going to faint! I hoped she was ill and going to die! “Let her die a martyr to beauty, but please God,
please
, don't let her spit! Let her fall over, into the street, into the traffic, let her be canonized the patron saint of civilization, but PLEASE GOD, don't let her spit!” And she made a small coughing noise. “She's coughing—you're coughing—she's coughing—aren't you?—please don't be clearing your throat—just be coughing!” If I shut my eyes, I'll miss whatever happens and I can pretend that nothing happened and I can go on, continue to live and hope! But they would not close! I couldn't shut them! I wanted to! I tried to! But I couldn't! I was hypnotized! I just stared and stared and the seconds became hours and the hours weeks and the weeks millennia! And then it happened!!!

SHE SPIT!!!

And the world went black and the sun fell out of the sky, burning the earth and sending the buildings tumbling, bricks flying, people crushed in the rain of debris and humanity, which had only recently learned to walk, was SMASHED into oblivion for all time!! “WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?” I found my hand on her sleeve. “Don't you understand what you've done?!” She spun around with such a look of utter horror and disgust on her face that I was only spurred to continue—“The world is decomposing! Humanity is rotting away! We're reverting to the behavior of apes and YOU'RE TO BLAME!” “Let go of me!!” She shouted, very loudly, much more loudly than was called for. “I had to spit. What's it to you?!” And with that she shoved me, hard, and I fell onto the pavement.

All I could think about was how sad, how sorry, I was, that I'd chosen badly, chosen someone who didn't care, couldn't be convinced, didn't see that we are all just withering, dying, crumbling in on ourselves. . . . I looked around from my
position
on the sidewalk and I was the center of quite a crowd. And I thought, “Oh no. I'm sitting in it. She's gone, and I am sitting in her
expectoration
!”

(Sad and shaken)
And. Then. I shut my eyes and I hurried to the dressmaker. I was late of course and she was already on her next client, my old friend, Phoebe Potter. We were girls in school together. She looked so old, and I was so distraught from my experience that I mistook her for a mirror. It broke me completely, to see myself in her eyes and the folds of her flesh. “I'll come back tomorrow.” “No, no. Mrs. Potter's almost finished.” And so I waited. . . . And, soon, it was my turn.

I looked into the mirror as I was pinned. And, I was me again. I was shaken, but I was myself. I heard music in my head while she worked. And. As soon as I could, I rushed home. To Tony.

(Quite still, forgetting herself)
I did not speak. I unbuttoned his shirt and he wrapped his arms around my waist, mumbling something into my ear, which I couldn't or didn't understand. Didn't care. And I filled up the palms of my hands with his shoulders. He pulled my blouse from my skirt in the back and I pressed my hips against his genitals and felt his erection, under his jeans. I kicked off my shoes and unbuttoned his pants, holding him, hardened, in my right hand and pulling his hair with my left, while he penetrated my mouth with his tongue. He unbuttoned my blouse down the back and pulled it off, lowering himself to take my nipples in his mouth, while I stroked his eyelids with my fingertips. How late in life I came to understand sex, how much time I wasted. He unfastened my skirt and it fell to the ground. I bent over and licked his ears and the back of his neck. He licked my thighs and in between. And I led him to my bed. My baby. My baby boy. And he stood over me, making me want him, and understanding that I wanted to be made to want. And we made love with the violent passion of children and animals ripping at each other, biting and hurting beautifully. . . . And from my bed, the window views the river and the city beyond, and as he held me, as I had him, I became a child again, the years dripping
away and falling off of me, until I was a girl. And the river flowed and the city on the other side changed from what it is to what it was: the sharp angry teeth of the buildings, the glass angles and steel knives became rounded. Until he finished. And I finished. And I threw my head back and the sun was setting on a city of the past, where everything was beautiful, and we were children, and more . . . easily pleased.

(She looks around and realizes that she has exposed more than she intended)

So you see, sex, it seems, is very important, when it comes to seeing the beauty of things.

(She crosses to her dressing table, and slowly lets her hair down. Amy closes the chiffon drape quickly. Suddenly light comes up behind the drape and Tony and Vivian are there, as if by magic. Claire is seated, oblivious to their presence, looking into her mirror. Tony and Vivian are dressed in full evening clothes. We hear “The Physician,” recorded by Gertrude Lawrence. As the song plays, Tony and Vivian do a dance that begins in traditional ballroom style, but changes rather quickly. The dance becomes a series of movements, rife with double entendres. As the song ends, Amy pulls around a burlap curtain. The new curtain is dirty, distressed, covered with blood and grime. There are words on the curtain: “Sex, Work, Girls, Men, God.” The words appear to have been written in blood.)

Philip emerges abruptly from a tear in the burlap curtain. He walks to a pool of light and addresses the audience
.

PHILIP:
Sex. Philip and Sex:

What a preponderance of time I spend, we spend, everyone spends, dwelling on, pursuing, planning, regretting,
thinking about, and avoiding the subject of Sex. I don't know if preponderance was the right word, but you know what I mean, I hope.

I have a sick feeling in my stomach. I don't remember
when
I ate last, so naturally, I don't remember
what
I ate last, but it has upset my stomach—I think. I'm sure it was spoiled. It was probably some bad fish. I hate fish. I would never've eaten fish. You know what I mean. Pressed fish. Processed fish. And now I have botulism! I don't think that's the right word. You get that from canned goods. No one cans fish. Hell, you know what I mean. Trichinosis! No, God, that's something you get from undercooked pork. I may have eaten pork last, but if I did I didn't get trichinosis, I got—food poisoning! That's it, food poisoning! Oh the hell with it!

Philip and Sex:

Although I have tried to make sex less and less important in my life, which implies that it was at some point
im
portant, which really isn't accurate—but you know, the pursuit of it was important. That was my point. I have systematically tried to make the pursuit of sex, the planning and flirting, the buying of equipment, etc. etc., less important in my life.

I don't find my sex organs particularly attractive. I don't mean that. I mean, I don't find my sex organs particularly attractive. That's the same thing, isn't it? Let me clarify—oh hell! I don't think mine are any less attractive than anybody else's. I don't think my penis is any uglier than yours, say, or yours. But then, I'm assuming a lot, because I haven't seen your penis. But then you haven't seen mine. And let me tell you right now, you're not going to! And not because I think it's any uglier than anybody else's, but just because
I don't want to
! So, my point is: sex parts are ugly. Which, of course raises the invariable question, what is ugly and what is beautiful? We are all trained to see certain
things as beautiful and other things as ugly, or less so. I haven't decided whether this is entirely environmental or whether genetics has a hand in it. But the pictures in
National Geographic
of women with long, pendulous breasts and disks, like garbage can lids, implanted into their lips, leads me to the conclusion that it is largely environmental conditioning. (I don't know if conditioning was the right way to end that sentence, but it was long and I lost the thread—DON'T JUDGE ME!)

Anyway, we are all trained that certain lines are attractive, angles, pleasing to the eye, cleanness of line and so forth. Anyone who's studied design or the Munsell color wheel knows what I'm talking about. And let's face it.
The scrotum
really falls through the cracks of what is generally considered attractive. Is it me, or does the scrotum look like you've been in the bathtub a long time before you even get in? Wrinkled and soggy. I know it's not me, so don't try to make me feel bad, I feel bad enough already. I have a terrible stomachache from fish or pork or something.

And I don't think women have it any better! What? Is the vagina such an oil painting? Apologies to Georgia O'Keeffe, but it's no Mona Lisa, which I realize is a mixed metaphor, I think. But they're not pretty. Although my penis has, from time to time, been my friend. It has, more often, not. It has been my enemy. Oh hell! That may be too strong. . . . I used to love to sit on the edge of my bed, naked, holding the head of my penis between my thumb and index finger, squeezing the hole on the end so it opened and closed, while I threw my voice and carried on a conversation. . . . YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS JUDGING ME! Everyone has done that! Haven't they? . . . Well, everyone with an imagination.

(He has a twinge of pain in his stomach)
I have a sharp, twisting pain in my stomach, like I've eaten a lizard, or something alive, hot and thrashing around.

I thought, for a brief time—well, what's a brief time?
Everything is relative. More than an afternoon and less than a decade. Once! I thought once, that I was a homosexual, but I'll get into the specifics of that later. Oh, don't worry, there'll be nothing graphic. No slides or anything. Although some of you would like that, wouldn't you? I know what kind of people you are! You get pleasure from the pain and suffering of others! But then who doesn't really? Isn't it more or less human nature—or is it nurture!? I tell myself continue. I thought I was a homosexual. I was not comfortable with the image of myself as a homosexual. I was not comfortable with myself as a man. Or a woman. Or a human being. Or a plant or a tree or a doorstop or a lump of disemboweled protoplasm! Oh hell, you get my point!! I was tortured! Nature? Nurture? Or just a bad case of botulism, or trichinosis, or that parasite you get from undercooked pork—that microbe. What's it called?