The house of God

on TV these days?or Marilyn Monroe hold back from letting any subway grate in the world blow up her flimsy dress and whistle around her frigid genitalia? Did Norman Mailer ever, on anything? Did the CIA or the FB?fucking?I? The hell they did, Basch, the hell they did. You just gotta do it, flush it, and pick up the money you get for it.'

'For fraud?'

'For dreaming the American Dream. In this case, the American Medical Dream.'

The Runt and Chuck sat down with us, and the Runt, like a TV serial that you couldn't turn off, rolled out the latest thrilling episode of Thuunnnn?der Thighs: 'She was her usual voracious self. We were watching TV, she rubbed the inside of my thigh, the news finished, she took off all her clothes, she walked into the bedroom. She didn't want to mess around with a lot of foreplay, and the first time, she said something?it got me so turned on I was short?circuiting left and right.'

'Well, man, what'd she say?'

'I'm not sure, but I know it had the word 'cunt' in it. She's a gold mine. I'd been poring over her body quite a bit, and it was getting to the point where she was going to have to do some poring over mine. I'd been nibbling at her, labia-they're fine and thin, like puppy dog's ears-and since I've had this fantasy that she was knocked up in high school and had a kid, I was trying to get in there to have a good look for an episiotomy scar, but I got too close, and my eyeballs got all steamed up. Ha! We were really building —up to something big-we were in this crazy contortion sort of the Reverse Dog with her sort of sitting on my face like my old roommate Norman's women used to do to him and she was bending over fiddling with my cock and then I did it. I sort of gave her one big slump and gently nudged her head down between my legs and I'm telling you she . . . went . .

We all stopped chewing.

'. . . bananas!'

'Bananas?' asked Fats, jaw slack.

'Very bananas,' said the Runt. 'HA! It was animal. We were all over the bed. She was moving around on my face and I could feel her teeth on the base of my dork. Wow! Those girls my mom liked, they'd scream whenever my pants would get lumpy at the sock top. And do you know what she said this time, when I was inside her?'

We did not know what Angela said with the Runt's penis inside her.

'She said, 'Oh, Dr. Runtsky, you're soooo big!' and the Runt did look kind of big, sitting there before our eyes. 'This morning she handed me a toothbrush, and when I went to the bathroom, mine was the third toothbrush in the rack.'

The Fat Man had stopped eating at about the time that Thunder Thighs had put her lips on the Runt's penis, and staring at him as if he were loony, Fats said, 'What the hell's been going on with you guys up there anyway?'

So we told him. We told him about Chuck and Hazel and about me and Molly and about how the Runt with the help of Towl and Thunder was getting bigger. We told him about the Golden Age, where we were legendary in our ability to care for 'the toughies' and legendary in our liaisons, which, because of Hazel, had produced clean sheets and bug-free bedding and, because of Molly, had produced snappy instant nursing care. We told him how we were as high as the golden leaves riding the crests of the October maples, falling through the gestating skeleton of the Wing of Zock.

'There's only one thing missing,' I said, 'placement. We still can't get the gomers placed. Anna and Ina are still there.'

'No problem,' said Fats, 'placement is as easy as pie. Who's responsible for placing the gomers?'

'The Social Service.'

'Yup. The Sociable Cervix. The third toothbrush means that Angel doesn't mind sharing, so why should you? You guys gotta scrog the Sociable Cervix. Oh, and remember: if you want to scrog the librarian, you gotta talk about Shakespeare. So long, and good luck.'

Well, of course it was brilliance. Each ward had a Sociable Cervix, whose responsibility it was to get the gomers placed. It was an impossible job. No one wanted the poor gomers. The nursing homes would say the gomer was too well and didn't need them, and the families would say that the gomer was too sick and needed a nursing home, and the House Privates would say the gomer was way too sick and needed the House of God Blue Cross care, and the terns would say we couldn't stand having Broccoli Ladies who blasted us for keeping them alive, and would the Cervix kindly get them the hell out. The gomers offered no opinion.

The Cervix was the pimp. It was made up of two types of women: the first was young and energetic and idealistic, working out the guilt of separating from her parents and abandoning her grandparents, all the time jockeying for Mr. Right, who had to have a stethoscope in his pocket; the second was menopausal, divorced , abandoned by kids like the first, not energetic but empathic and tearful, cynical and masochistic, working out the upcoming old age and all the time searching for a second or third Mr. Right, who had to have something nonstethoscopic in his pants. The younger Cervix for us was Rosalie Cohen, a young woman who had that pizza? faced look of severe adolescent acne, the kind that sever responded to anything. She had the habit of opening her blouse down past Thursday, as a decoy from her pitted face. The older, or Head Cervix, was Selma, whose nose was big and bent. Billing and cooing with Selma would be more bill than coo, perhaps earning the tern a punctured eyeball, and yet from the neck down Selma was good. Struggling against the life force as it swept by her, Selma was sexy and suffused with the form fruste of the more?liberated?than?my?children syndrome that was ravaging America in the seventies, producing the pot?smoking mama, and the daughter wailing, 'Pass me the joint, Mother, please.' Selma fell right into my lap: 'I attended that grand rounds where you made those points about keeping the patients in the House too long, Dr. Basch, and I want to tell you, the way you handled the flak was terrific.'

Chuck looked at me and then at the Runt, who looked at him and then?at me, and I looked at Chuck and then back at Selma, who went on: 'For thirty years I've been trying to learn to express my anger like that, and you've already got it. I wish you could show me how. And let me tell you, a lot of psychotherapists?the best in town?have tried and failed'

Smiling seductively, heart sinking, I knew that I was the one.

The next morning, Chuck was first to arrive at Jo's rounds, a half?hour late. An hour later I straggled m, and sometime later, in rolled the Runt. When we had a shaken off the foaming Jo, I told Chuck and the Runt how I'd gone over to Selma's that night, hove we'd started listening to hard rock, how Selma had started to talk about her loneliness and her burdenous nosh and how, after a drink and a joint, Selma had told me she wanted me to stay. Cringing at the way she reminded me of my mom, I'd thought of my obligation to my buddies and prepared for the worst, and, when Sehna rheostatted down the lights and took off her bra, I was shocked.

'Bad, huh? Man, we'll never get these gomers placed.'

'Nope, not bad. Good. Great! Her breasts are beautiful. Vintage Ava Gardner, made in 1916 and still dynamite.'

'Well, man, how does she do it?'

'I asked her. Premarin.'

'Premarin? Premarin!'

'Premarin. Estrogen supplements. Total?body female hormone. It's like making love to purified molecular woman. Stupendous!'

During all this, the Runt had been silent, but as I finished, he burst out with his story, which was that he'd spent the night with Rosalie Cohen, which prompted Chuck to grimace and say, 'You did it with that ugly?bugly? Yecch!'

'It was grr?ate,' said the Runt, beaming his maniac smile.

'The Man Who Scrogged 'Rosalie Cohen,' I said. 'Chuck, we have created a monster.'

'Man, what was it like to wake up to ole Rosalie?'

'Well,' said the Runt, 'I did try hard not to look on her face.'

The gomers began to get placed. The true Golden Age had arrived. From the Leggo to the Bruiser, no one in the hierarchy could understand how the nursing-home beds seemed to open at a touch for ward 6?South, and only for ward 6?South. Gomers as close to legal death as possible were described by our Cervix as being 'of excellent rehabilitation potential' and were admitted to the homes the day the beds fell free. Incontinent gomers who were shitting all over the ward were described as 'continent of feces and urine' and, shitting on the ambulance stretcher and shitting on the down elevator and shitting in the hallway leading to the ambulance and shitting