Always a winner with audiences, a patriotic story. Tell me about it.
We begin with a man, a humble young barber, who looks after the beards and thinning top thatch of the most important men in our nation’s government.
Man of the people. Jimmy Stewart type.
Not quite, John. Because he’s respected as a fellow who never opens his mouth, reliably discreet in all matters, politicians confide in him, and have on occasion let slip information that is classified and whose public revelation might compromise national security.
Excellent. Has promise as a B-thriller. Plight of the everyman lashed by a brutal system. Atomic-era update on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
This is a different kind of picture than any you’ve seen, I assure you, and it is unlikely ever to be made, except as an obscure animated short for the right class of audience.
Wouldn’t get it past Joe Breen, then?
Nor the studio censors. Cocteau might take a stab at it. It is not a story for the great masses of American moviegoers who have grown accustomed to the obfuscation of sex as the endpoint of intimacy between man and woman, not to mention the genesis of all higher life on the planet. Or perhaps because of that very disavowal of sex it’s a story meant precisely for the edification and enlightenment of ordinary women and men who desire nothing more than to live vicariously through the fantasy exploits of people just as ordinary as they. And if you have any doubt about its legality – obscenity aside, and the most graphic elements can all be done through suggestion off screen – then remember this is satire, protected under law.
The trolley stopped and while actors and crewmembers boarded and disembarked I muscled John to the back of the car where we could speak without being overheard. As we continued out towards the backlot, I handed him a mimeographed copy of the treatment I’d been carrying folded up in the breast pocket of my blazer. I don’t know what I thought I was doing showing it to him. Perhaps it was a way of indicating I had already given up, that my sense of alienation and estrangement from the dominant mood of the country was such that I had no choice but exile. John began reading, his face shifting between puzzlement and shock.
The trolley stopped again, letting off two young men in overalls and picking up a handful of women dressed as antebellum debutantes. One of the men in overalls I recognized as a carpenter I had slept with half a dozen times before you and I were introduced, Myles. I knew when I went to bed with him that he had a wife and three kids and a great deal of confusion in his heart, because he loved his wife and found her beautiful and she was pregnant with a fourth child, and yet he had looked at me with a strength of desire I could not ignore. If he remembered our encounters he gave no sign that morning, and I had made a point of forgetting his name. John noticed me staring and nudged me in the ribs.
You should watch yourself, Desmond.
That is the problem. I’ve been watching myself all my life, and I’m tired of it. I want to go somewhere I don’t have to watch myself anymore. I never belonged in the country of my birth, not really. My parents saw to that.
We turned a corner and on the hills in the distance oil derricks were rhythmically pumping, an industrial backdrop to the fantasies we concocted that was always hidden with optical mattes, each of us daily ignoring what was before our eyes because we knew that the ugliness of reality could be made to disappear. John reached inside his jacket to retrieve a flask and took a long sucking pull as the trolley continued deeper into the backlot, passing corridors of scaffolding. I watched while he flipped the pages of that underground treatment, leaning over the side at one point to heave, although nothing came up. When we had reached the oldest part of the backlot, passing the walls of what was usually a hacienda but on that particular day had been dressed as a Chinese village, we slowed for a moment and I thought I saw the same stout man in the panama hat I had noticed earlier outside the newsstand.
After John had finished reading, he loosened his tie and wiped his brow. I worry about you, Desmond. It might be by Anonymous but you can’t fool me. It’s trademark Frank. You should burn it before it falls into the wrong hands.
Who’s to say I wrote it? It’s a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy with no original. Even the material is a copy, and I suppose Gogol copied from somewhere else, too.
Then, as if we were traveling backwards and forwards in time, we came out of the old and into the new, the parts of the studio lot only recently developed, land acquired in the previous decade, where morning heat radiated from the snow-covered roofs of a mock Siberian village along whose streets a horse-drawn sledge careered on hidden wheels, the actors struggling to appear frozen as they sweated in their furs, while the world beyond the set shimmered in greens and golden browns. As the trolley finally came to a stop at the far eastern limit of the lot, John stepped to the ground and I followed him, blindly, dazzled by the day.
THE COCK
BY ‘ANONYMOUS’
FREELY ADAPTED FROM NIKOLAI GOGOL’S ‘THE NOSE’
STORY TREATMENT
March 30, 1950
IRVING JAKOBSON, a barber in Washington, D.C., runs his own shop not far from the Capitol Building. There being few places where such pleasures can be procured, Irving also acts as masseur to a select number of influential clients who phone to make appointments for a tonic rub in his backroom, where, relieved of their clothes, the men of the law give their bodies over to another man who is, unlike them, a youth of mild beauty who came to Washington seeking neither fortune nor power nor the responsibilities of public service, but the stability of continuous work that would earn no more than a comfortable living. He has been in the city a little under ten years, and after starting as another man’s apprentice, saved enough money to open his own establishment a few years ago, when he expanded his services to include these tonic rubs.
Irving rubs down the politicians with his own blend of fragrant oils, despite the fact that many of these powerful men fail to practice adequate personal hygiene, so that Irving often finds himself holding his nose. When it becomes clear that the politicians might be receptive to more intimate manipulation – the message is often unambiguous – he removes the towel covering their most personal areas and provides the relief they seek, perhaps even relief they were unaware of wanting until that moment when, alone in a room with an angelic younger man and clothed only in a white slip of a towel too small to wrap all the way round their ample mid-sections, they could not control that part of the body whose behavior is often beyond the governance of the conscious mind.
Irving has given tonic rubs to Senators and Congressmen, to members of the President’s Cabinet, a Supreme Court Justice, Generals, and even the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. But Irving’s most loyal client is that oiliest of recent arrivals in our nation’s capital, the JUNIOR SENATOR from Wisconsin, who, as soon as the door to the backroom is closed, dispenses entirely with the fig leaf of towel and allows his fleshy body to be worked without any concession to modesty, complaining only that Irving’s hands are sometimes too rough and that his breath stinks. ‘You smell like garlic,’ the Senator complains, and Irving will apologize, suck a peppermint, and spray the air with cheap eau de cologne.
One morning, Irving arrives at his shop on Capitol Hill, unlocks the door, and discovers, sunk in the bottom of one of his jars of fragrant oil, a wellpreserved penis and pair of testicles. No signs of cutting or trauma or blood, and very little indication of use. Irving looks in horror at these jewels, not because they are gruesome, although they are, but because he instantly recognizes them. The coarse quality of the hair on the testicles, rising more than halfway up the shaft of the stubby little cock, its oily slackness and atrophied veins, as well as the small but unmistakable birthmark in the shape of a hammer on the glans, means that it could only be the cock and balls of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin.
[Remember: satire. Protected by law.]
Irving pulls down the shade on the front door and carries the jar of fragrant oil to the backroom whe
re he extracts the penis and testicles he knows so well. The cock wriggles like a fish out of water, as if it has a life of its own, and even seems to turn and look at him, gasping through its tiny mouth.
Irving quickly wraps up his discovery in the pages of yesterday’s newspaper. He posts a sign on the door announcing he will only open at noon and walks out onto the streets of Washington, intending to drop the parcel into a trashcan, or perhaps even to buy a box and return it to the Senator himself so that the organ might be reattached, although he fears that he, Irving Jakobson, might have cut off the cock and balls and simply repressed an act the Senator can be expected to remember.
Who knows, Irving thinks aloud, perhaps the Senator is already plotting revenge, having identified Irving as the ringleader of America’s Communist spies, a Red horde intent on emasculating the whole of American manhood!
Irving glances over his shoulder, worried he’s being followed and that the police or Feds are just biding their time until they can get him alone in a dark alley and bundle him off in a paddy wagon. As soon as he thinks he’s found a suitable place to dispose of the incriminating parcel, Irving is accosted by a FRIEND who wants to know why he’s running late and doesn’t he have any early appointments this morning, since, after all, Congress is in session and the leaders of the land prefer to handle such business before the flashbulbs of the press can catch them. The friend winks as if he knows about Irving’s secret other business in the backroom and asks him what’s in the bundle of oily newspaper. ‘Just some sausages,’ Irving mumbles. ‘My cat’s not feeling well, so I’m taking him these sausages.’
‘But they’re moving,’ his friend says, eyes bulging in horror.
‘A fish, too. I bought a fish for him. It’s still alive, I guess,’ Irving says, and bashes the writhing package against a lamppost until it stops moving altogether.
He and his friend part ways and Irving hurries along, the streets filling up with morning traffic. Every corner Irving turns it seems less likely he’ll be able to rid himself of the package, which has started wriggling again in his grip.
At last he catches a bus to Arlington Bridge where he walks to the middle of the span, pretends to be staring into the swamp of the Potomac, perhaps we see his anguished reflection in the waters below, and then he drops the Senator’s cock in its bundle of newspaper down into the water, watching as it wriggles free and begins to swim upstream, jumping like a salmon, leaping and diving and twirling ecstatically in mid-air.
As Irving walks back towards the Lincoln Memorial, a car pulls over, stops, and out steps another of his clients, the CHIEF JUSTICE of the Supreme Court.
‘Here now, Irving Jakobson, what on earth do you imagine you’re doing?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, your honor. I was just going for a stroll on this beautiful morning.’
‘But tell me, boy, what did you drop in the water? You shouldn’t litter, you know, it’s a criminal offense.’
Irving smirks at the Chief Justice, whose cock he also knows well, and raises an eyebrow.
‘Really, your honor, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to test the discretion of a barber privy to all of his clients’ secrets.’
The Chief Justice blushes, scrambles back in the car, and shouts at the driver to step on it, and how. As the car rounds the Lincoln Memorial, it accelerates just at the moment another car, traveling in the opposite direction, crosses into their lane, colliding at high speed. In the midst of the crash the door of the Chief Justice’s car swings open and his honor falls out onto the road, blood flowing everywhere – blood of a surprisingly red hue for a man of such patriotic fervor.
Fearing that someone might have witnessed his brief confrontation with the Chief Justice, Irving catches the nearest bus and returns to his shop, where he goes to work on heads and hair and stiffened muscles.
MEANWHILE
On the other side of town, the Junior Senator from Wisconsin wakes from a deep but troubled sleep. As he has every morning of his adult life, he shouts, ‘REDS! REDS! REDS!’ and then makes a rumbling rata-tat-tat sound, aiming an imaginary machine gun as he mows down his spectral enemies. ‘REDS! Reds everywhere! Reds crawling down the walls! Stop the Reds!’
He pulls a bottle of bourbon from his side table, fills a tumbler, and drinks it down in a single draft. He’s been dreaming of ways to derail the Communist Plot, and his latest brainwave is to ban the letters K, G, and B, since these are obviously subversive, and then he remembers that there are other undesirable letters as well, such as N, K, V, and D, and he thinks these should be placed on a watch list. When it comes down to it, there are so many suspicious letters it might be better to ban language altogether and rely entirely on images for communication, since these can be controlled so much more easily! The purchase of cameras and writing utensils could require a license and all imagemaking rendered subject to prior review, which is not such a difficult thing to manage, since imagemaking and its reproduction so often requires the cooperation of multiple individuals, technicians and the like. Writing, on the other hand, is far more dangerous. Writing can be done so privately that no one ever knows where words may spring up or what they might hazard to say. Writing, the Senator feels certain, is the worst abomination since the birth of language because it can never be trusted to mean what it says. So much better if language could be expressed only by men and women speaking to a camera, held accountable for what they say, words always attached to their persons without the ambiguity and reproducibility, not to mention the dangerous anonymity, of the page.
Although past forty, the Junior Senator from Wisconsin has never married and rumors about him are beginning to spread. As a man content in the armed services, and happy in the halls of Congress, he has never sought or desired the company of women. After finishing the glass of breakfast bourbon, he asks his houseboy, BILLY (20s), to give him a rub down. When he takes off his pajamas he is astonished to discover he has lost his cock and balls. In their place, the Senator finds a smooth, hairless cleft, like a freshly baked fan-tan dinner roll.
The Senator runs to the bathroom, bathes his eyes with seltzer, and examines himself in the full-length mirror. He spreads his legs, crouches down, reaches deep inside the cavity, and digs around, his panic growing.
‘Billy!’ he shouts to the houseboy. ‘Fetch a flashlight!’
Billy arrives a moment later with the light and shines it inside his employer’s shiny new orifice.
‘Feel around in there and see if you can find it. It must have gone spelunking.’
Billy reaches inside the Senator, feels around, the Senator shrieks with surprise and not a little delight, slaps Billy on the ass, and then Billy removes his hand, which is slightly damp but entirely empty, sans cock.
And so, the Senator dismisses Billy, showers and shaves, has his first double bourbon of the day, all the while continuing to examine the cleft between his legs, fascinated but also repulsed (he’s a misogynist, of course), and still convinced the cock must be hiding somewhere deep inside his abdomen. ‘Call the doctor!’ the Senator shouts to Billy. ‘He should cancel all his morning appointments!’
No sooner has the Senator stepped onto the street than a limousine pulls up, a DRIVER opens the back door, and there, in the billowing black robes of a Supreme Court Justice, is the Senator’s very own COCK, shuffling on its protuberant balls, now shod in a pair of smart brown brogues. Instead of the diminutive creature it was only hours earlier, the Cock has engorged itself to the height of a man. It glares at the Senator, coughs once, and wrinkles its face (if face it can be called), before slithering back into the car. In a deep, congested voice, it burbles to the Driver, ‘Take me to the Court!’
The Senator feels a fever coming on and his legs buckle, but darling Billy is there to catch him just before his fall. ‘Get the car, Billy. We have to go after it.’ And for the first time, we hear the Senator’s voice crack, as if puberty might be, well...reversing itself.
By the time they arrive at the Supreme Cour
t, the Cock has been appointed the new Chief Justice, already replacing the recently deceased former Chief Justice on the logic that since the Court is mostly a bunch of dicks and the Cock’s the biggest dick in the land, it should be cock of the Court. Our poor Senator wonders how he can possibly approach his dismembered member since he, the Senator (he wonders if he should still call himself ‘he’) has no particular standing in the Court. At last, he’s so desperate that during a lull in the proceedings he pushes forward to the bench.
‘Excuse me, your honor!’ he shrieks. ‘Your honor, please, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I wondered if I might have a word?’
A GUARD tries to restrain him until the Senator threatens to have him blacklisted.
The Cock squints down at the Senator and speaks from the same orifice it uses for seeing, eating, and excreting. ‘What do you want?’ it bellows in a loud but strangely thin, strangled voice.
‘It’s just, if you’ll excuse me, I wonder what you think you’re doing up there on the bench? I mean you know where you’re really supposed to be, your honor.’
‘I don’t have the foggiest idea what you mean,’ says the Cock, wheezing between each word. ‘Are you accusing me of something, you little pervert? What do you think this is, a freak show? This is the Supreme Court of the United States of America. This is the greatest court that ever was courted in the history of the world’s courts!’
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