You & Me

by Padgett Powell

  Far superior to that from the foremost hand.

  Inarguably.

  We have fallen on the right side of the fence on that one, yes.

  And how discomforting is the hindmost foot, or the foremost foot, compared to the balm proffered by the hindmost hand?

  That foot is not a halcyon idea any way you put it.

  No. We favor the hindmost hand.

  The hindmost hand helps us, leads us last through the door.

  The hindmost hand on the small of the back.

  It hands you peace of mind.

  It sits you in the shade, the hindmost hand.

  It shows you the valley, the light without trouble, the happy shadow.

  It calms the water before you.

  It hands you the halter to the gentle horse of Life.

  It gives you a piece of candy when you thought you were left out.

  It spanks you when you need spanking.

  It waves a hearty farewell when you are leaving.

  The hindmost hand greets you forever.

  The hindmost hand helps you over the last hill.

  The hindmost hand hauls you into the Final Alps of Heaven.

  Studio Becalmed shakes your hand with his hindmost hand.

  With your own hindmost hand you say, Hidey, finally, to Studio, and you rest.

  Your long sojourn is done.

  You may discard your electrified orange jumpsuit.

  Let’s not go there again.

  &

  I have lost my mind, I am comfortable with having lost my mind, and I plan on having my mind stay lost.

  That is Caesarian, almost. What precipitates this observation?

  Por esample: I have spent the better part of the morning cutting up my bvds for rags, making nice usable little patches of soft polishing cloths by cutting along the seams. This surgery is done as carefully as if it were construction, not dismantling.

  This is not irrational behavior. We can be compelled to many enterprises like this. The brain wants order. The soul likes clean lines, man. The isolated “cotton panel” speaks to it.

  Yes. But I am saving the elastic waistbands, because they are generally unexhausted elastic, which I cannot throw away.

  This too happens: waste not.

  Yes. I plan on offering these waistbands to girls.

  Whoa now.

  Yes. To girls who come over. These old underwear waistbands will be given them and they will put them on as ur-bikinis, or strapless thongs, and be seduced by them.

  I see.

  I see that you hesitate to subscribe to the plan. There is a place in the plan for the skeptic: for a fee I will let you inhabit a closet and witness the seductions by waistband.

  I will get in the closet and hold my breath.

  Now you are coming along.

  I have old underwear of my own.

  Well join us on the outside, then. The scissors are in the proper drawer.

  I’m there, dude. I am so there.

  I told you that losing the mind is agreeable.

  Who would fight it?

  No one in his right mind would fight losing his mind.

  Extremely well put. That epigram is evidence that our talk is not for naught. We come up with things, here and there.

  As would, I think we admit, monkeys at a typewriter, but still, we type.

  Do you know any girls to call?

  No.

  We will depend on the drop-in by kind stranger?

  Apparently, yes. Unless you know some.

  I fear I do not.

  I didn’t think you did.

  All right. I shall dismantle my underpants. I shall whittle them into magical charms. We’ll both be ready.

  We are prepared. We are loquacious gentlemen with magic lingerie awaiting company. We should have a sideboard of liquor and a man to serve us. We should have important appointments we prefer not to keep. We should have vintage cars well garaged.

  We should have a lot that we do not.

  We have what we have. We are not to complain.

  Complaint is unchristian, untenable, uninteresting, unadvised, undone underwater.

  Undone underwater?

  Correct. One should not complain underwater. It is less indicated than complaining above water.

  And we live, figuratively speaking, if not literally, underwater.

  So we do not complain.

  We don’t.

  &

  This talk of specious lingerie has had an adverse effect on me.

  How so?

  I dreamed of a Japanese girl. She walked by me in a sheer peignoir, if that is the term for a short jacket. My bedroom French is not vast. Underneath were the obligatory bra and panties. They were embroidered with a perfect bold black Ottoman design. So that there was the likeness of a sultan’s signature on the mons.

  What was adverse in this?

  It was so striking that as she passed, without regard to me, of course, I was taken by a sigh of resignation, and then I nearly wept. I teared up. I thought of my wife.

  You have a wife?

  I had a wife.

  Oh. Of course. We all had a wife. Wife is a synonym for past.

  So I had a vision, inspired by this well-designed and well-positioned embroidery, of my wife in the perfect past, before it . . .

  Became the past.

  Yes.

  And you cried.

  I could have. I looked at the girl, who had walked by me and stopped on a gymnasium floor with padding on it for floor routines, and who stood there not thirty feet away still not regarding me, and I could have wept, but at this point I am offended by my sentimentality and getting everything in check, and finding fault with the girl. What is she doing in a serious gymnasium in high-fashion slut gear—you know, that kind of takedown.

  Perfectly sensible defense. She looked good.

  No. Delicious.

  I feel your pain, dude.

  Really striking underwear, I’m telling you.

  &

  Where would you like to go?

  I would like to go to a place where there are orange fields and sweet young dogs to walk in them with. There is a small wind at all times, large wind at night. Things bud and decay in equilibrium, light and shade play together nicely. If things are named, the names are known but not used overmuch. Forgetting and remembering have shaken hands.

  What would you do there?

  I would play my little record player, a fabric-covered box for 45s with the fat spindle. I would be alert to birds. I would never hurt anyone’s feelings because I would never see anyone.

  Would you not work?

  Not at more than I have described.

  Would you not eat, then?

  It is entirely possible that I would not.

  Obesity would not present unto you the challenge it presents to most.

  No.

  All right. I can see this place too. I could come with you.

  No. You would need find your own.

  I see that that is so. Would you do anything besides play the records and regard the birds?

  I would write a book called The Ways in Which I Have Been a Coward.

  A slim volume or—

  No. Exhaustive, and exhausting. It troubles the prospect of my place, with my sweet dogs and old records and crisply singing birds. I might not write it. One more manifestation of the cowardice.

  Well, what matter is but one more?

  Exactly mine own sentiment. We are so d’accordo that if anyone could accompany another to a magic place, you could me.

  Yes, and horndog reciprocal, I am sure. But we know better.

  We know better.

  &

  Would you care to go—

  I would care to go fishing in that orange light I was telling you about. Some green frondage, in a wind. Either a monkey or a boy who resembles a monkey.

  That is all you need.

  No. I want also a canteen full of water, a tidy bureau of clothes, a postcard in my bungalow se
nt to a previous occupant, a lamp, a broom, a skillet, a spider, and a storm.

  That is all you need.

  That is all I need. Yes.

  &

  You would wish to be a man?

  God no. Why do you ask?

  Perhaps I misunderstood a complaint . . .

  I do not wish to be a man. What you may have heard was my wondering how it is that I am not one, and do not care. This was at least my position at an earlier date.

  It has advanced?

  Yes. Now that I have had time to reflect a bit, I see that the situation is really considerably worse. I am not merely not a man. I am not even properly a boy, a good boy. But I have affected the costume of a good boy.

  And mien? Is this a place we can finally use that word?

  I think so. Or countenance.

  So you are not even a boy.

  No. I am a coward, an ass, and something else that I had my finger on last night but have now conveniently again forgotten.

  Again?

  Yes, it is convenient to forget one is a coward and an ass and whatever egregious else one is as frequently, or a little more frequently, than one recalls.

  Go get us some coffee. I feel already tired today.

  Alas, perfect, you jog me well, you queer musketeer: I am a lazy coward and ass.

  Were we born lazy or did we through industry of some kind, some noble force, get tired?

  That is the hopeful way to look at it, but I fear not. Why dispute it? Why struggle? A coward struggles to not admit he is lazy, or an ass, or a coward. There is bravery in surrender.

  If you surrender you are brave and not a coward. I think you are in a jam here. Or is it a jamb?

  In a jam of logic or in a door jamb of . . . I’ll get the coffee.

  &

  We have need of adventure. Let us have one.

  Summon Studio Becalmed.

  From the dead?

  The land of adventure if there is one. We will say to him, Studio, we poor cowards and asses are lazy and afraid, can you help us?

  And Studio will say?

  Fresh from the dead, he will say, Where is Jayne? Where are the Alps of Heaven? Where’s my dog? I at least must pet my dog.

  Your dog is right here, Studio. We took good care of him. He is about sixty years old but there he is, not a hair on him, and Parkinson’s, but he is well drugged, so do not mind all that shaking and drooling, it’s the best we can do.

  You are a mean bastard.

  Who?

  You.

  Is that you saying that to me or Studio saying that to me?

  That, to you, am saying, I. To speak to Studio Becalmed about his dog like that!

  Studio is dead now over sixty years; I think he can take care of himself.

  It’s not exactly the Boy Scouts.

  Who said that?

  Studio said that.

  What the hell does that mean, Studio? “It’s not exactly the Boy Scouts”?

  I cannot believe the tone you are taking with Studio. He’s dead, and he’s in our house.

  He’s our dead houseguest.

  Yes, exactement.

  Where did we go so wrong, Moonpie?

  To be speaking this way to the beloved dead?

  In the Bakersfield in which we do not have a life, yes.

  This, to you, confess, must, I, to not having a clue. But sore wrong we turned, and we are not young girls anymore.

  &

  I’m just a mouthful of pajama air.

  I can’t play the accordion.

  Picasso could paint.

  &

  I fell down once and did not get up for ten days.

  Where was this?

  In France. Or Belgium. Or Switzerland. It’s murky over there.

  Troppo vino?

  Couldn’t get enough.

  This falling down and not getting up was not vino-related—

  No. I fell down, and I could not get up. It was pleasant. I was speaking but no one could hear me. They were concerned for me, in twos and later fives, reaching out to me literally and figuratively. I wound up in a bed. There was no ID, or OD, or MO, or whatever it is called.

  Diagnosis?

  Yes, there was no inside diagnosis, outside diagnosis, or any known mode of operation for it. I fell down, couldn’t get up, and ten days later got up, said thanks, and walked out.

  Without paying.

  They would not take my money.

  This all, I take it, was before I knew you.

  Yes.

  Because you don’t seem to have this kind of purposeful life now, since I have known you.

  No, those were the good old days, sho nuff.

  Have you ever seen those clips of flamingoes walking in water to a rock ’n’ roll sound track and it looks like they are stepping to the beat? Really with-it dancing pink birds?

  Yes, I have seen that. Pinking shears.

  I like that a lot.

  I do too.

  &

  Are we free?

  Insofar as no one is going to pay money to possess us, I deem us free.

  Are we free to do anything we want to do?

  Insofar as the better of those things cost money to do, I deem us not free.

  But we are free to do the free things?

  Yes, but we are afraid to do them.

  What are we afraid to do?

  We are afraid to be men, to engage the world bravely, to be upright in our behavior, to have moral height, to display ditto fiber, to shoot ourselves, to have another dog, to talk to anyone except Studio Becalmed largely because he was not afraid to have another dog and we respect that in another person, especially one safely dead who does not challenge us—

  Okay. I get it.

  &

  I miss my dog more than I miss my parents.

  Amenhotep.

  Why would one want his dog back more than his parents back?

  Because one liked his dog more? Is it a question so difficult that we need a computer geek to configure the answer?

  We need them to configure everything else. Why not?

  Let me change the subject, though not really: have you looked at yourself well in a mirror recently?

  No. Should I?

  I do not advise it.

  &

  Be neat, be brave, be Buster-Brown bustamente.

  What does that mean?

  I do not know. But does it not sound right?

  It does. I hazard that you are implying that if we’d been neat and brave and Buster-Brown bustamente we’d be all right today, instead of . . . this.

  That I imply.

  I am in the accordion with you. Nice to see that Buster Brown get a piece of the Coppertone girl, wouldn’t you say?

  You put it more vulgarly than we need to but indeed that is a mythological vision with a purity of force and justice in it.

  His hard shiny shoes, his hope, her round unsunned buns, the nippy little dog playing around them.

  Her clothes are nearly already off. One can see Buster perhaps struggling to undo the eponymous brogans, comically, sitting on the ground in his short pants, little Miss Coppertone saying, Hurry up, Buster Brown, for God’s sake.

  Took off a piece of my finger last night in the Benriner. You know there is a cautionary slogan on the slide, WATCH YOUR FINGERS?

  I did not know that.

  Well, you do now, and I can report that that warning is not bullshit; the bullshit content in WATCH YOUR FINGERS on the mandoline veggie-holder slide thing is one hundred percent not bullshit.

  You were brave but you were not neat.

  I was as lucky as Buster Brown. Fingernail took the hit. Wicked crescent of ring-finger nail was in the salad, I guess.

  I wonder if Howdy Doody ever got laid.

  I never had a real grasp on who or what Howdy Doody really was. I see freckles but nothing else—was it animation, a real kid, what? And what exactly did Howdy Doody do?

  There is a great children’s-culture porn waiting to be mad
e in this country.

  Go anywhere but Dorothy and the guys. I won’t stand for it. The country won’t stand for it, bless its heart.

  I want to see the Tin Man tell the Scarecrow he’s too soft and the Scarecrow tell the Tin Man he’s too fucking hard.

  That I can handle but leave Dorothy out of it.

  What about with the exposed Wizard in the basket at the end?

  Dorothy never gets in the basket. That’s what wakes her up.

  We never got in the basket either, my friend, and that is what has us all woke up. We are looking up at the basket.

  We is all woke up and nowhere to go.

  &

  My dog died. He never lost his enthusiasm for me. I now lament that I did not play with him more. It gave him supreme pleasure if I got down on the ground and he would turn me over to go at my face, insanely, insanely wagging happy. I should have spent all day doing this. It was a pure thing, he was unrestrainedly happy. I had the capacity to give something on earth that. There were days, weeks, I did not do this, I schlepped by leaving him alone.

  You were a turd, but he knew you were an okay turd, that is why he did the licking.

  My father sold his Parker shotgun out of our garage one Saturday morning for twenty dollars instead of giving it to me. I was thirteen or so. Why did he not give it to me? I would like to have gotten to the bottom of that, and to have talked to him and known him at the end. I schlepped right by all that too. But what I am saying is that I regret more not playing with my dog. I think in this preference I am displaying the trait or traits that put us where we are.

  Without lives, men who are not neat and brave and Buster-Brown bustamente, you mean.

  Yes.

  Afraid.

  Yes.

  Nulls.

  Yes.

  I find that even if I have a coaster to hand I will rarely put my glass on it. I carelessly damage the surface of tables.

  This is who we are.

  I regard this carelessness carefully. I am industrially idle. This defines me.

  There is no point to us.

  I will not need another new swimsuit in my time.

  We never needed a new swimsuit. We just thought we did.

  What do you actually call a swimsuit?