You & I Read online

  I do?

  One does.

  Why?

  Would you allow me to tell you?

  Prosecute your voyage.

  One places ones hat on the pole and a barber will emerge from the woods and give one a haircut. It is an old barber who has cut the hair of certain famous deceased men. Now he is enfeebled and shaking so badly that you will need to repair to another barber for corrective attention to your new and sad-looking do.

  Is the barber pole turning?

  Yes. Why?

  Because I would feel odd, if not outright dizzy, watching my hat turn while waiting at a table in a grove of trees for an old barber to emerge and give me a bad haircut.

  I do not mean to suggest you must do it.

  No no, of course I will do it. It is a grove of trees with a table and a pole and a haircut to be had, I will of course do it. Something that is done is to be done, period, in the interest of good and modest citizenry.

  In the interest of being a good fellow, you mean.

  That is what I mean.

  Yes, well, then the barber of some famous dead will affect to cut your hair as you sit at the table in a pleasant breeze by a table in the shade of the trees. The whirling of your hat will not disturb you overmuch once you begin to worry about the undeft motions of the man with scissors and razor about your neck and throat and eyes and ears and nose. The straight razor under the nose when the nose is pinched up – the razor poised for the Hitler cut, that cut which will take out the hair which would otherwise form the Hitler mustache, I mean to say – will be your worst moment.

  I will sail through it as if it is the fifth of May. The table – is the table perhaps early American, unlevel, of two or three broad virgin boards badly joined?

  You have the picture, my friend.

  I do. I will enter the grove of trees, placing my hat on the pole, sit in the straight-backed chair, await the geezer, accept my scary butchering, in the corner of my eye my fedora turning dizzily, my arm resting on the uneven planks of pine or walnut or cherry since indeed it could be real wood if what you say about the table is true, all of this in the shade of the trees and in a breeze. I will be oddly and momentarily a complete man living a full life.

  I don’t want to go down there. Something could eat me – us. I forget you’re here sometimes. Something could eat us.

  I don’t regard that as the worst way to go. No matter how it went down, you’d not waste away. If the thing was large enough to attack, we might presume it large enough to get it over with. You’d be part of an appetite, part of Life.

  No old-folks home for you, eh? Down the hatch!

  That is right. Laugh as you will.

  I worry about small things eating me – malaria is worse than grizzlies.

  Of that no doubt. I am not going down there either if you think there are mosquitoes.

  Let’s stay right here in our nets and eat bonbon and get fatter and whiter and stupider and lazier and more cautious as we have less to be custodial of.

  Pustulent academics!

  I have never heard that word before. Is it a word?

  Pustulent? What other adjective could derive from pustule?

  It sounds good, I grant you. But the red vapor of Air Spell Check puffs from your mouth when you say it. I see pestilent and postulant, but no pustulent. You look momentarily like a sloppy vampire when you say it.

  I wish I could be a sloppy vampire. My life has come to naught.

  Don’t start. Let’s not go there. We live there, so let’s not go home.

  That phrase, “go there,” is funny I think because it approximates an abstract translation of the English idea behind it.

  What are you talking about?

  An Italian would say, “I have large friendship and I like to go there all the time.” If you put the move on a French woman who was not ready for it, she might say, “Don’t go there,” and stop your hand.

  I see.

  These bonbon are hard as rocks.

  They came from the little Filipino lad you purchased that brutal haircut for.

  He chose the barber.

  No, the barber is his uncle, and he had to go to him once you made it so public you were funding the venture.

  Is it my fault the uncle is inept? They’d have known the child got his hair cut no matter how it was financed. He looked like one of those faux primitives.

  Now he looks like he suffered a head trauma at Sunday School.

  He looks like a houseboy.

  He may, but he is bringing candy to us that might be ten years old.

  Well, we are free to lie here and complain of it, so what is there to complain about?

  A fattening man may not bark?

  I think not. Not honorably.

  Do we still pretend to honor?

  We do.

  All right, then. I say no more about the granite nougat from the wounded boy. I will say that when I came into the café you should not have humiliated me that way.

  What way?

  “Are you not wearing panties?”

  Oh, that.

  Yes, that.

  It did look as if you’d forgone pants. Everyone in there agreed. That is why they laughed.

  They laughed because I gave them that Dietrich pose.

  Well, that too. But the pose supported the notion that you had no pants on under that beach shirt with those tails.

  These people don’t know what to make of us now.

  So let them not know. You become wooden in your old age.

  Who does? Them? They?

  No – you.

  Because we don’t have to do anything unless we want to.

  Are you done with that?

  With what?

  That sentence?

  Yeah, why?

  Because it’s not a sentence, and it’s inane, for starters.

  Who hung you up in the stirrup?

  Did what?

  Twist your drawers.

  I am too tired to deal with you.

  Me too you.

  You too me. You sound like Tarzan.

  You Jane. What the monkey name? They had them a chimp, didn’t they?

  Cheetah.

  They had a cat name Chimp?

  Prolley did. They was stylin jungle folk.

  I remember when Tarzan take a shower in his clothes in New York City and rip out of his wet shirt with a muscle show.

  A muscle show?

  He stretch like, like a cat, and his like Arrow single-needle tailoring oxford shirt rip to shreds right there in the shower.

  Did that turn Jane on?

  You know it did. Jane in her leather skirt.

  Do we not have anything else we could think about?

  We must, but I can’t think of it.

  We should read a book, about the atom bomb or something.

  Or about the philosophy of aesthetics.

  Or about explorers, or history, some political and economic history, this is what we should be talking about instead of Tarzan and Jane stylin jungle porno folk with a big monkey named for a big cat.

  Did Tarzan do any vine swingin in New York?

  You know he musta have, acause how else could he get around except when he was riding elephants—

  —And that time he run on foot to stop Boy from going over the waterfall on the giant lily pad—

  —Yeah, he run then, but allus elsetimes he swingin everywhere, and what I want to know is how did they, you know, get him the vine equivalencies in New York, like what – steel cables and shit? Tarzan could just happen on some loose electrical wire and swing to a new building.

  Oh man, you know he could, he was a dude.

  For example, we should be discussing like the differences between Hellenistic or even Roman conquerors and Central Asian conquerors, I am thinking largely of Timur here and the path of centuries-old degradation he legacied by virtue of the policies of razing, whereas, say, Alexander preserved, Caesar preserved…

  And so you have Europe as opposed
to Uzbekistan, this is your thesis?

  Yes it is. Do you think Weissmuller was a steroid user?

  Did they have them then? He was in the Olympics in 1932?

  The idea of steroids before the rise of Hitler is strange.

  Steroids is what the Nazis were all about. Bullies kicking sand in the face of six million ninety-pound weaklings on the beach.

  That shit is hard to believe.

  Yes it is, but is it not the only thing that explains the US of A going into Iraq “unprovoked”? Isn’t the cordata of that game the presence of Israel and the shadow of them steroids?

  You are a wise man. Is it possible to get Tarzan movies at Blockbuster?

  You will recall that Jesse Whatwashisname irked the Nazis in the 1936 Olympics running faster than the bullies.

  Owens. We are I think confusing Weissmuller’s Olympics with Owens’. They couldn’t have been in the same games, could they?

  Yes. My point is that today if they redid Tarzan, Tarzan would be played by Owens. Or Denzel as Owens.

  No, it would have to be Owens, because if subs were allowed then Schwarzenegger would be Weissmuller.

  Ooo. That sounds nasty.

  That is nasty. Do you know how to get mold out of a car? I am afraid I enclosed a car under a car cover and now it looks like an orange been in the basket two months, an olive velvet interior head to toe.

  Your car messed up. I guess you could put 55 gallons of vinegar in it and drive around.

  We could go down to Blockbuster in the vinegar and get Tarzan.

  It is not for me to say.

  To say what?

  Anything.

  Then why announce that you’ve nothing to say?

  It’s just a polite filler, like the little business at the end of a newspaper column.

  I see.

  No you don’t.

  You’re right, I don’t.

  So why say you see when you don’t see?

  All right, there’s nothing for me to say either.

  But we keep talking.

  Yes.

  We must.

  Must we?

  Apparently. Evidently. I love “evidently” used that way.

  Remember that hurricane victim sitting inside her collapsed house saying, “Evidently I’m in shock.”

  Evidently she was.

  Evidently.

  It is hard to say what she thought she meant. The evidence that she might be in shock did not seem wanting.

  So she meant, “Obviously I’m in shock”? “Apparently I’m in shock?”

  No, she meant, “I’m in shock,” but some force made her preface it with “evidently.” Evidently my house is destroyed and I am therefore in shock.

  Well, you know, let’s say she was in shock, and the evidence of that fact might be, to her, obscure. Say she has heard about shock, and is feeling strange, with her house gone, but she is not wailing or gnashing, she’s numb, and she gets the idea that she would be wailing and should be wailing and if she’s not then maybe she’s in shock. There’s some evidence that she’s in shock, evidently.

  So the old bird is actually pretty smart, not inane?

  It is not for me to say.

  Are we perfect?

  No.

  You have such a poor attitude.

  I confess it.

  You would.

  Should I deny that I have a poor attitude?

  Anyone with a proper attitude would deny that he has a poor attitude.

  But I have a poor attitude, because I confess that we are not perfect. I should claim that we are perfect, indicating that I am a lunatic.

  No, indicating that you are a positive thinker.

  You would like me to be more positive?

  Yes.

  That will make it all better?

  Yes.

  All right. We are perfect. Tomorrow we will make a million dollars. My dog will never die. The dead one did not die. No more deer will be struck by cars. My intellectual fundament is not subject to measurement or decline. My soul is eternal. The hungry children of the world tomorrow will find bacon and eggs in their stockings. Rosy human potential is limitless.

  See? Is that so hard?

  No. It is not hard at all. Imbecility is the greatest feelgood power on earth. It’s why so many are drawn to it, like religion. It is a religion.

  There you go again, taking a turn for the worse.

  I must pull up out of the trees. I recant. Imbecility is a rare affliction that we are rapidly eliminating as we evolve into the perfect species on the happy planet. Any more talk out of me of the other sort and I’ll just wear the dunce cap for a bit.

  I’m bopping in my head to something something the Midnight Rider.

  What?

  It’s a song. I never listen so I only know the last words in a line, if that. Something, something, the Midnight Riiiider…

  Why don’t they saponify hemp oil itself?

  Who?

  Well, They, they, anybody, but this Dr. Bronner outfit would be a more logical party than say Colgate-Palmolive. They recently made a big deal of putting hemp oil in place of jojoba oil in their soaps.

  The famous hippie soaps.

  Yes. Hemp for the hippie, you see.

  Does the hippie want hemp in everything he uses?

  That would seem to be the premise. So what I am saying is why not just take straight hemp oil and saponify it?

  Maybe it would be lousy soap.

  It probably would be lousy soap, but what’s that got to do with anything? Hemp oil is probably a lousy additive compared to jojoba oil, which itself was regarded as a magical elixir and selling aid for years. Now it’s out. Hemp is in. I’m seeing this. When the hemp soap is worn down to suppository size, you slip it up the bombay winking portal like a suppository and get high.

  Or you cut it down, like a plug of chew—

  Or they just make it in suppository form, like these little parlor soaps in baskets in B&Bs—

  Those are called parlor soaps?

  I don’t know. Novelty soaps? Demi-tasse?

  They have wrappers on them, pleated wrappers—

  Like candy, sort of. Anyway, the hippies just pop these hemp-soap suppositories in and go about their buzzy days.

  The oil surely won’t deliver a buzz.

  I’m thinking it won’t, but that won’t be a total dissuasion. A man can have an assful of gushy hemp oil on hand anytime a narc elects to conduct a body search. It will be a kind of countercultural chaw. The laxative value is probably high.

  They can sell it as Soap Not On A Rope.

  This is my million-dollar idea for today.

  These bullet things—

  You mean our heads?

  Yes, we have to do something about these bullet things, our heads, if you insist—

  What can we do about our own heads?

  I don’t know but we cannot very well sit around uncomplaining and content with powder for brains, can we?

  From an ethical point of view, or from perhaps a social point of view, you are right, we do not want to be perceived as having been content to having had bullets for brains. But from let us say a naturalistic point of view, is one really capable of repudiating his own brain? Has this been done too often in the animal kingdom?

  So you maintain we just sit around like the howitzer heads we are until we go off?

  Yes, we just calmly take aim at an enemy down range, which is anyone who happens to be down range, and sooner or later, according to high principles of military art or acknowledging the low principles of happy circumstance putting a victim in our cross hairs, we kill. We use our heads and annihilate. It’s easy. It’s what we are designed to do. We are bulletheads. You need to relax.

  That much is true. I do. Need to relax.

  We all do.

  All us bulletheads need to chill.

  Right on. We could hurt ourselves if we don’t.

  Bullets don’t just go off by themselves.

  No, they don’t.
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  Exhale.

  Okay.

  They’ve started letting us take the yoga classes if we wrap our heads in towels.

  That is good news.

  Yes it is.

  That is a man with fifty functional rain hats.

  What do he paw fink?

  What?

  A man with fifty hats makes me think of a joke about a bear. A country boy is told that a bear hibernates all winter. What do he do? the boy asks. He sucks his paw, the teacher says. What do he paw fink? the boy asks. You needed to have been there.

  Where?

  I will estimate that I heard my aunt tell this about 1962 in a rented cabin on the Crooked River in Georgia. Boozists and card players.

  Big hit, was it?

  Medium hit. They lost a large quantity of beer leaving it in a chest freezer too long, looked like ropes of intestines and brown glass in there. Good snake count outside. Rough river with some salt water in it. Nice place. These places are all gone now. At least I fink they are.

  I fink so too. My paw is dead.

  Mine too. This is one reason why I do not discredit totally a man with fifty rain hats.

  I am not following you, but I dig where you comin from.

  My paw could wear one of those hats were he here. I did not really know him. That is a shame. Had I to do it over again, and if he himself had fifty rain hats, I would not laugh at him for that, is all I am—

  —Yes yes, perfectly clear.

  You going to pay me, or whut?

  How much you worth?

  Four grand.

  Four grand.

  Yes.

  Okay.

  You don’t think I am worth four grand?

  I said I’d pay.

  You said Okay. You have doubts.

  Okay, I doubt that you are worth four grand.

  Okay. Pay me.

  That is what I said I would do. No one who argues to effect the initial status quo is worth four grand.

  I made an error. I have mental problems.

  I would say that you do. It may take your four grand to begin to address them.

  That would be a waste of money. My first purchase will be a deep-fried hamburger, followed by a nice leather bag for some new toiletries. I lost all my toiletries in the misplaced-car incident, or series of misadventures related to losing the car, I should say.