'Well, the faggot draws a deuce; and in the box he meets this cat who is some species of cheap hustler, and love sets in or at least a facsimile thereof convince the parties inna first and second parts. As continuity would have it, they are sprung at the same time more or less and take up residence in a flat on the Lower East Side. ...And cook in and both are working legit modest jobs. ...So Brad and Jim know happiness for the first time.
'Enter the powers of evil.... Lucy Bradshinkel has come to say all is forgiven She has faith in Brad and wants to set him up in a studio. Of course, he will have to move to the East Sixties.... 'This place is impossible, dahling; and your friend...' And a safe mob wants Jim back to drive a car. This is a step up, you dig? Offer from citizens hardly see him before.
'Will Jim go back to crime? Will Brad succumb to the blandishments of an aging vampire, a ravening Maw?... Needless to say, the forces of evil are routed and exit with ominous snarls and mutterings.
' 'The Boss isn't going to like this.'
' 'I don't know why I ever wasted my time with you, you cheap, vulgar little fairy.'
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'The boys stand at the tenement window, their arms around each other, looking at the Brooklyn Bridge. A warm spring wind ruffles Jim's black curls and the fine hennaed hair of Brad.
' 'Well, Brad, what's for supper?'
' 'You just go in the other room and wait.' Playfully he shoos Jim out of the kitchen, and puts on his apron.
'Dinner is Lucy Bradshinkel's cunt saignant cooked in kotex papillon. The boys eat happily looking into each other's eyes. Blood runs down their chins.' Let the dawn blue as a flame cross the city.... The backyards are clean of fruit, and the ash pits give up their hooded dead....
'Could you show me the way to Tipperary, lady?' Over the hills and far away to Blue Grass.... Across the bone meal of lawn to the frozen pond where suspended goldfish wait for the spring Squaw Man.
The screaming skull rolls up the back stairs to bite off the cock of erring husband taking dour advantage of his wife's earache to do that which is inconvenient. The young landlubber dons a southwester, beats his wife to death in the shower....
BENWAY: 'Don't take it so hard, kid.... 'Jeder macht eine kleine Dummheit.'' (Everyone makes a little dumbness. )
SCHAFER: 'I tell you I can't escape a feeling... well, of
Schafer is not listening. 'You know,' he says impulsively, 'I think I'll go back to plain oldfashioned surgery. The human body is scandalously inefficient. Instead of a mouth and an anus to get out of order why not have one all- purpose hole to eat and eliminate? We could seal up nose and mouth, fill in the stomach, make an air hole direct into the lungs where it should have been in the first place....'
BENWAY: 'Why not one all-purpose blob? Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.
'This ass talk had a sort of gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.
'This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called 'The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, 'Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?'
''Nah! I had to go relieve myself.'
'After a while the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.
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'Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy incurving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: 'It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any
