Old friend, aren’t you happy? You and Edith alone know how long I’ve waited for this instruction.
– Damn you, Mary Voolnd spits at me.
– What?
– Your hand’s gone limp. Grab!
How many times must I be slain, old friend? I do not understand the mystery, after all. I am an old man with one hand on a letter and one hand up a juicy cunt, and I understand nothing. If my instruction were gospel, would it wither up my hand? Certainly not. It doesn’t figure. I’m picking lies out of the air. They’re aiming lies at me. The truth should make me strong. I pray you, dear friend, interpret me, go beyond me. I know now that I am a hopeless case. Go forth, teach the world what I meant to be.
– Grab.
Mary wiggles and the hand comes to life, like those ancestral sea ferns which turned animal. Now the soft elbows of her cunt are nudging me somewhere. Now her asshole is rubbing the ridge of my arm, not like rosy banister reverie as before, but like an eraser removing dream evidence, and now, alas, the secular message appears.
– Grab, please, please. They’ll start to notice at any second.
That is true. The air in O.T. is restless, no longer golden sunshine, merely sunny and warm. Yes, I’ve let the magic die. The doctors remember that they are at work and refuse to yawn. A fat little lady issues a duchess command, poor thing. A teen-ager weeps because he has wet himself again. A former school principal farts hysterically, threatening us all with no gym. Lord of Life, is my pain sufficient?
– Hurry.
Mary bears down. My fingers brush something. It is not part of Mary. It is foreign matter.
– Grab it. Pull it out. It’s from our friends.
– Soon.
Dear Friend,
It comes back to me.
I sent you the wrong box of fireworks. I did not include the Pimple Cure in my famous soap and cosmetic collection. I cured Edith’s acne with it, you know. But of course you do not know, because you have no reason to believe that Edith’s complexion was ever anything but lovable to kiss and touch. When I found her her complexion was not lovable to kiss and touch, nor even to look at. She was in an ugly mess. In another part of this long letter I will tell you how we, Edith and I, constructed the lovely wife whom you discovered performing extraordinary manicures in the barber shop of the Mount Royal Hotel. Begin to prepare yourself.
The soap collection, though it includes transparent bars, ghosts of pine, lemon and sandalwood, Willy jelly, is useless without the Pimple Cure. All you will achieve is scrubbed, fragrant pimples. Perhaps that is enough for you – a demoralizing speculation.
You always resisted me. I had a body waiting for you, but you turned it down. I had a vision of you with 19-inch arms, but you walked away. I saw you with massive lower pecs and horseshoe triceps, with bulk and definition simultaneously. In certain intimate embraces I saw exactly how low your buttocks should descend. In no case, when you were squatting in front of me, should your buttocks have been lowered so far down that they sat on your heels, for once this occurs the thigh muscles are no longer engaged but the buttocks muscles are, ergo your rocky cheeks, a very selfish development that gave me no happiness and is a factor in your bowel predicament. I saw you oiled and shining, a classic midsection of washboard abdominals fluted with razor-edged obliques and serratus. I had a way to cut up the serratus. I had access to a Professional Greek Chair. I had the straps and stirrups to blitz your knob into a veritable sledgehammer, mouthful for a pelican. I had a Sphincter Kit that worked off the tap like washing machines and bosom aggrandizers. Had you a notion of my Yoga? Call it ruin, or call it creation, have you a notion of my work on Edith? Are you aware of the Ganges you insulted with a million mean portages?
Perhaps it is my own fault. I withheld certain vital items, an apparatus here, a fact there – but only because (yes, this is closer to truth) I dreamed you would be greater than me. I saw a king without dominion. I saw a gun bleeding. I saw the prince of Paradise Forgotten. I saw a pimpled movie star. I saw a racing hearse. I saw the New Jew. I saw popular lame storm troopers. I wanted you to bring pain to heaven. I saw fire curing headaches. I saw the triumph of election over discipline. I wanted your confusion to be a butterfly net for magic. I saw ecstasy without fun and vice versa.
