Beautiful Losers

smelled of semen and incense. Homage to the priests of crutch-filled rooms who have penetrated an illusion, who know that lameness is only an aspect of perfection, just as weeds are flowers which no one collects. Homage to the walls of crutches which are weed museums. Homage to the alchemical stench of burning wax which bespeaks an intimacy with ghouls. Homage to the vaulted halls where we knelt face to face with the shit-enhaloed Accuser of the World. Homage to those who prepared me for the freezing vigil tonight, the only material sardine in a can of ghosts. Homage to those old torturers who did not doubt the souls of their victims, and, like the Indians, allowed the power of the Enemy to nourish the strength of the community. Homage to those who believed in the Adversary and could therefore flourish in the manly style of the warrior. Homage to desks in our old classroom, that little brave armada which, year after year, attempts the Flood with a green crew. Homage to our soiled books which were municipal gifts, especially the Catechism which invited marginal obscenity and contributed to the maintenance of the lavatory as a thrilling temple of the Profane. Homage to the great slabs of marble with which the cubicles were constructed, to which no smear of shit could ever adhere. Here was enshrined the anti-Lutheran possibility of matter which succumbed easily to washing. Homage to marble in the Halls of Excrement, Maginot Line against the invasion of Papal Fallibility. Homage to the parables of the orphans’ lavatory, the yellow failure of the porcelain proving a single drop of water was as powerful as the Ice Age. Oh somewhere, let something remember us strong orphans lined up in single file to use one cake of soap for our finger warts on sixty hands in order to appease Inspection. Homage to the brave boy who bit off his warts who was my friend F. Homage to the one who couldn’t sink his teeth into himself who was the coward me, who was the author of this history, and who is frightened at this moment in his booth above the drifts of Canada, whose digit wart has been distorted by years of pencil erosion. May I get warm with homage? I have offended everyone, and I see that I am frozen by everyone’s automatic magic.

– F.! Don’t eat your warts!

– I will eat my warts in front of the whole world. You better too.

– I’m waiting for mine to clear up.

– What?

– Waiting for them to clear up.

– Clear up?

F. struck his forehead and ran from cubicle to cubicle like a man waking up a village, opening each door and addressing each squatting machine.

– Come out, come out, F. shouted. He’s waiting for them to clear up. Come and see the poor fish who’s waiting for them to clear up.

Stumbling over their lowered ankle-chain trousers my classmates poured out of the cubicles, shuffling awkwardly in the rubberless loci of their underwear. Out they rushed, some in the midst of masturbation, comics sliding from their kneecaps, romantic information scratched in the varnished door half-read. They closed around us in a circle, pressing in to see F.’s freak. F. swung my hand into the air like a boxing gesture, and I dangled beneath his grip, my whole body withering like a sheaf of tobacco to be auctioned off by the Liggett and Myers midget bellboy.

– Don’t humiliate me, F., I pleaded.

– Step right up, folks. Look at the man who can wait. Look at the man who has a thousand years on his hands.

They shook their clustered faces in disbelief.

– I wouldn’t have missed this for anything, one of them said.

– Ha ha ha.

F. flung down my hand without letting go and I fell in a heap at his feet. He placed his Charity Shoe heel on my thumb with just enough pressure to make me give up any notion of escape.

– Under my foot is the hand that will merely wave good-by to a number of warts.

– Ho ho.

– That’s rich.

O Reader, do you know that a man is writing this? A man like you who longed for a hero’s heart. In arctic isolation a man is writing this, a man who hates his memory and remembers everything, who was once as proud as you, who loved society as only an orphan can, who loved it as a spy in the milk and honey. A man like you writes this most daring passage, who dreamed like you of leadership and gratitude. No no please, not the cramps, not the cramps. Take away the cramps and I promise never to interrupt, I swear, O you Gods and Goddesses of the Pure Event.

– Ho ho.

– Priceless.

Early morning as this takes place. There wasn’t much sun behind the barred opaque windows of the lavatory but we weren’t allowed to use the lights in the morning except during winter. Dirty aquarium light in which things supposed to sparkle only gleam like a half-dollar hidden in a small jar of petroleum jelly. Each white sink, every spike on the walls between the cubicles (so you couldn’t climb) had its jar of Vaseline. Shiniest of all were the bare kneecaps of my scornful audience, whitest of all were the slum-white shins of the older pituitary boys who were beginning to hair. With an intake of breath F. hushed their derision. I tried to catch his eye so I could beg him. I lay waiting for punishment on the Vaseline-colored marble tiles. He began his harangue in an objective tone, but I knew what was to follow.

– Some believe that the wart will clear up. Some are of the opinion that the wart will vanish with time. Some are reluctant to consider the wart at all. There are even those who deny the existence of warts. There are those who claim that the wart is beautiful and encourage it wherever it occurs. Some argue that warts are useful,