The Teachings of Don B.

by Donald Barthelme

  “Are we together, or what?” she asks. “What’s going on?” I suddenly remember sleeping with her when we were nine at her mother’s house in Palm Springs and how tan she was and how tan I was and how we killed six bottles of her mother’s Dom Pérignon and watched Alfred Hitchcock Presents and sent the poolman out for burritos and tortured the maid by threatening to eat her green card, Ashley upright and bouncing naked on the bed with the green card held just above her perfect white teeth, me wrapped in a towel and reading Architectural Digest. “I don’t know,” I say. “Anyhow, it doesn’t matter, can we kind of pay these guys and kind of get out of here?” She pops a lude into my mouth and leaves twenty more on top of the check and we split.

  We go to Alafair’s house in Malibu where there are all these people we know, Paine and Malcolm and Andrea, mixing blow with mango ice cream in the Jacuzzi. Andrea’s bitching about the gay porno star who wants a part in her father’s new picture and keeps hanging around offering to get her into Fletch, the new club that doesn’t let anybody in. I wander into the game room where there are a lot of people playing Ms. Pac-Man and watching MTV, and this tall thin black dude in a Duran Duran T-shirt is sitting there by himself writing a letter, it looks like. I can’t understand why he’s writing a letter, why he doesn’t just call or something, and I stand there watching him for maybe ten minutes trying to figure out why anyone would write a letter to anyone and then I just get extremely nervous and go into the gun room and do three lines off one of Alafair’s father’s framed B-17 aircrew photographs from the Second World War.

  The next morning I’m leaning against the 450 at our house on Mulholland and retching and my sisters walk by in their tangas on the way to the pool and ask me what I’m doing. “Retching,” I say, and they say, “Oh,” and then, “Have a nice day.” I’m supposed to meet Ti-Ti for cheese and crackers at Filberts in Westwood where they’re notorious for carding people really seriously and because Ti-Ti is only sixteen that means he probably won’t be able to score a Mary despite his tons of phony ID, which will put him in a rage and he’ll jack up the price of the gram I need. There are not so many places Ti-Ti can show up these days because of what happened at Melody’s brother’s wedding reception at Ma Maison. I sit in the 450 outside Filberts and wait, feeling the hundred-dollar bills in my jeans pocket and wondering if I should call Meredith, who should be out of Cedars-Sinai by now. There’s a Kitchen tape playing on the radio and the phrase “Worse than a dream” is repeating itself in my ears. A bunch of guys who look like they go to USC, blond and tan and thin, are hanging around the entrance to the restaurant ready to park your car. I don’t see Ti-Ti and my mother is marrying yet another bastard and I feel very tense and there’s an 8.5 earthquake but I don’t notice it because I’m listening to Kitchen and I’m very tense.

  THE STORY THUS FAR:

  Borys Althusser, wealthy young manufacturer of sensitive electronic instruments for which he has immense government contracts, discovers one evening that something has come between himself and his beautiful wife, Evelyn.

  Rushing distractedly from the house, Borys is accosted by a lady of the evening. “Good evening, Borys,” the lady says. “Would you be interested in purchasing a pornographic television set?”

  In a grove of pictorial elements, Borys finds a seeress. “Pardon me, Ma’am,” he says, “but I have kind of a problem at home.” “I don’t handle domestic problems,” the seeress says. “You must see the Lord East-West.”

  The Lord East-West gives Borys a card to a Masked Marvel, in another city. The Marvel is interested in his problem. “What class of apparition was this?” “It was a Something,” Borys says. “Ah,” the Marvel says. “Try the Sick Friends. They deal with all classes of Somethings.”

  The Sick Friends are tickling each other and giggling, in the middle of a stream. “What are you doing there?” Borys calls, from the bank. “Nothing matters,” the Friends shout, giggling, “save that noble, pure, and powerful sentiment known as eroticism!” They recommend Wolfgang.

  Borys finds Wolfgang, a dragonlet, resting atop the solid-gold golf trophy that is his home. “See the Emptiness,” Wolfgang snorts. “Turn left at the rain of blood, left again at the powdered frogs. Step lively!”

  “That way,” the Emptiness intones, in a hallow voice.

  Following this vague and amorphous advice, Borys finds himself at a banquet at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Lone Rangers from everywhere have gathered to celebrate the closing of the West. “This is not my scene,” Borys says to himself. “The abnormity of my difficulty will not find a sympathetic ear, here.”

  A visit to the Great Chair of Being, followed by a visit to the Certifiable Cyclist of St. Cloud, is no more fruitful than his earlier initiatives. Borys is in, or near, despair. The know-how, savvy, and clout that have brought him to the top, in the field of sensitive electronic instruments, seem to have deserted him in this predicament.

  At this juncture, there is a “Psst!” from a nearby inferno.

  “Psst!”

  The speaker is Roberta von Knockling, the eternally damned child prodigy. Roberta, although a mere child, has already, through the working of a prodigiously unfortunate star, which controls her destiny and her life, committed all the sins available to seven-year-olds, and some that are not. That is why she is sizzling, in the inferno. “Borys,” she whispers, “listen. Your expertise is in the area of sensitive electronic devices, is it not? Well then, use it. Therein, you will find the means to exercise the Something.” Borys is not slow to take the hint.

  Rushing back to the lab, Borys gears up his baddest sensitive electronic instrument.

  Borys aims the criminally potent unit at some lilies, which droop. “Well,” he says, “if I can make lilies droop, I can . . .”

  Throughout the Free World, the hills resound to the sound of the news of Borys’s improved position, vis-à-vis the threat.

  Now read on.

  BUNNY IMAGE, LOSS OF:

  THE CASE OF BITSY S.

  Four Playboy bunnies, discharged two weeks ago for having lost their “bunny image,” appeared before the State Commission on Human Rights yesterday to press their complaint that Playboy practices sexual and age discrimination . . .

  . . . Miss [Patti] Columbo said Tony LeMay, the “international bunny mother,” told her: “You have changed from a girl to a woman. You look old. You have lost your bunny image.”

  “We have none of the characteristics which are considered loss of bunny image,” said Nancy Phillips, one of the four. “Crinkling eyelids, sagging breasts, stretch marks, crepey necks, and drooping derrières,” she said, are cited in Playboy literature as defects that will ruin the career of a bunny.

  Mario Staub, general manager of the club since 1971, asserted: “Termination for bunny image has always been company practice . . . They have simply lost their bunny image—that attractive, fresh, youthful look they had when they started.”

  —The New York Times

  INTRODUCTION

  Loss of bunny image, or Staub’s syndrome, was first identified as a distinct clinical entity by Altmann. Bunny image, or the plastic representation of one’s corporeal self as differentiated in specific ways from the corporeal selves of others, was discussed by Steinem and others as early as 1963. But it was Altmann who refined the concept and, more particularly, the cluster of pathologies associated with its loss. It is true that Altmann’s work is indebted to that of Pick, whose valuable discussion of the phenomenon of the “phantom limb” following amputation provided, as Altmann has acknowledged, a fruitful hint. But it was the case of Bitsy S., the protocol of which follows, that gave this investigator his most important insights, and his place in the literature of body disturbances.

  CASE REPORT

  Bitsy S., an attractive white female of twenty-eight, was admitted to Bellevue Hospital complaining that she could not find, physically locate, her own body. It was “gone,” she said, and added that she needed it and wanted it back. She further sai
d that she had looked everywhere for it, that it was absolutely nowhere to be found, and that she had thought of going to the police about the matter but had decided instead to resort to the hospital because she felt that the police might think she was “strange.” The case was first diagnosed as one of simple amnesia, but when the patient did not respond to routine procedures (including hypnosis), Altmann was consulted.

  Altmann began with a series of questions.

  (Investigator grasps left hand of patient, bringing it to patient’s eye level.)

  “What is this?”

  “A hand.”

  “Right or left?”

  (Patient examines hand carefully.)

  “Left.”

  “Whose hand is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “To what is the hand attached?”

  (Patient studies hand and forearm.)

  “Arm.”

  “Whose arm?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it your arm?”

  “No. I don’t have an arm.”

  (Investigator gently moves his hand up the arm in a series of light touches, finally coming to rest on the patient’s left shoulder.)

  “What is this?”

  “Shoulder.”

  “Your shoulder?”

  “No. I don’t have a shoulder.”

  “Somebody’s shoulder.”

  (The patient considers this for a moment.)

  “Probably. Maybe.”

  (The investigator squeezes the shoulder slightly—a friendly squeeze.)

  The subject then said, in a singsong voice:

  “Please, sir, you are not allowed to touch the Bunnies.”

  This was, of course, Altmann’s first clue. In connection with his studies of horror vacua he had quite naturally gravitated toward the New York Playboy Club and had, in fact, been a key holder since its inception. Thus the statement “Please, sir, you are not allowed to touch the Bunnies” was not an unfamiliar one. He immediately asked:

  “Are you a Bunny?”

  “No,” she said. “I am not a Bunny.”

  “If you are not a Bunny then why are you a member of the class of persons that I am not allowed to touch?”

  There was no response from the patient.

  “Were you ever a Bunny?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “You were a Bunny yesterday?”

  “Yesterday I was a Bunny and today I am not a Bunny. I was terminated. For loss of bunny image.”

  “What is ‘bunny image’?”

  “The attractive, fresh, youthful look I had when I started. The International Bunny Mother came to me and said: ‘You have changed from a girl into a woman. You look old. You have lost your bunny image.’ Then she cut off my bunny tail, with a pair of tin snips. Then she asked for my ears back. I gave her my ears back. I was weeping. I asked her why. That was a mistake. She told me. Crinkling eyelids. Crepey neck. Drooping derrière. I mentioned that I had been pinched thrice on that derrière the night before. She said that that was not enough, that I was below the national average for pinches-per-night. I said that I slept every night in a bathtub filled to the brim with Skin Life, by Helena Rubinstein. She said that she appreciated my ‘desire’ but that it was time to cut the squad and the rookies coming up from the farm clubs were growing impatient. I said I would stuff extra Kleenex into the top of my bunny costume, if that would help. She said that some people just didn’t know when it was time to hang it up. Loss of bunny image, she said, was more than a physical thing. There were intangibles involved. I asked for an example of an intangible. She looked out of the window and said she had to catch a plane for Chicago. And then this morning I woke up and couldn’t find my body. It was gone. Naturally I looked in the mirror first but there was nothing in the mirror—just mirror. Then I tried to touch my toes but when I tried to touch my toes there were no toes and no fingers to touch them with. Then I began to get worried.”

  (The investigator then complimented the patient warmly on her physical appearance, which was in fact, as noted above, quite feminine, attractive, and pleasing.)

  “Who are you talking about?” she asked.

  “You.”

  “You is lost,” she said. “Somewhere all the lost bunny images are, each Bunny calling for its Bunny Mother, each lost bunny image still somewhere stuffing plastic laundry bags into the bosom of its bunny costume, bunny tails still pert, white, oh so white, each lost bunny image still practicing the Bunny Stance, the Bunny Dip—”

  The investigator then began a course of Teddy Bear therapy, in which the subject is gradually introduced to an object which is not the subject but which holds in common with the subject certain physical features (arms, legs, head, etc.) which, in time, enable the patient to “find” himself—in this instance, herself—by equating the specific appurtenances of the teddy bear with his or her own body parts. Although this course of treatment shamelessly trades upon the natural love of human beings for teddy bears, it was felt that it was not in essence more manipulative than other therapies. A more dangerous contraindication was, of course, the unfortunate parity between “bunny” and “teddy bear”—the problems involved being obvious. Altmann nevertheless decided that it was the therapy of choice and its use was validated by the fact that Bitsy S. has once again “found” her own body and, indeed, has been able to construct a mature, stable, and “giving” relationship with a member of the medical profession.

  CONCLUSION

  The life of man, as Vince Lombardi said, is nasty, brutish, and short.

  TWO HOURS TO CURTAIN

  A big battle dance in Rogers, Tennessee! These country boys, despised and admired, know what they’re about. The way they pull on their strings—the strings of their instruments, and the strings of their fates. Bringing up the bass line here, inserting “fills” there, in their expensive forty-dollar Western shirts and plain ordinary nine-dollar jeans. Four bands are competing, and the musicians backstage are unscrewing their flasks and tasting the bourbon inside, when they are not lighting their joints and pipes and hookahs. Meanwhile they’re looking over the house, the Masonic Temple, a big pile of stone erected in 1928, and wondering whether the wiring will be adequate to the demands of their art. The flasks and joints are being passed around, and everyone is wiping his mouth on his sleeve. And so the ropes holding the equipment to the roofs of the white station wagons are untied, and the equipment is carried onto the stage, with its closed curtain and its few spotty work lights shining. The various groups send out for supper, ordering steak sandwiches on a bun, hold the onions or hold the lettuce, as individual taste dictates. The most junior member of each group or a high-ranking groupie goes over to the café with the list, an envelope on which all the orders have been written, and reads off the orders to the counterman there, and the counterman says, “You with the band?” and the go-for says, “Yup,” succinct and not putting too fine a point on it. Meanwhile the ushers have arrived, all high school girls who are members of the Daughters of the Mystic Shrine Auxiliary, wearing white blouses and blue miniskirts, with a red sash slung across their breasts and tied at the hip, a badge of office. These, the flower of Rogers’s young girls, all go backstage to admire the musicians, and this is their privilege, because the performance doesn’t begin for another hour, and they stand around looking at the musicians, and the musicians look back at them, and certain thoughts push their way into all of the minds gathered there, under the work lights, but then are pushed out again, because there is music to be performed this night! and one of the amplifiers has just blown its slo-blo fuse, and nobody can remember where the spare fuses were packed, and also the microphones provided by the Temple are freaking out, and in addition the second band’s drummer discovers that his heads are soggy (probably as a result of that situation outside Tulsa, where the bridge was out and the station wagon more or less forded the river), but luckily he has brought along a hot plate to deal with this sort of contingency, and he plugs it in and begins toa
sting his heads, to bring them back to the right degree of brashness for the performance. And now the first people are filling up the seats, out in front of the curtain, some of them sitting in seats that are better, strictly speaking, than those they had paid for, in the hopes that the real owners of the seats will not show up, having been detained by a medical emergency. All of the musicians take turns in looking out over the auditorium through a hole in the closed curtain, counting the house and looking for girls who are especially beautiful. And now the MC arrives, a very jovial man in a big white Western hat, such as the Stetson company has stopped making, and he goes around shaking hands with everybody, cutting up old touches, and the musicians tolerate this, because it is a part of their life. And now everybody is tuning up, and you hear parts of lots of different songs, fragments clashing with each other, because each musician has a different favorite bit that he likes to tune up with, although sometimes two musicians will start in on the same piece at the same time, because they are thinking alike, at that moment. And now the hall is filling up with people who are well or ill dressed, according to the degree that St. Pecula has smiled upon them, and the Daughters of the Mystic Shrine are outside, with their programs, which contain advertisements from the Bart Lumber Yard, and the Sons and Daughters of I Will Arise, and the House of Blue Lights, and the Sunbeam Vacuum Cleaner Company, and the Okay Funeral Home. A man comes backstage with a piece of paper on which is written the order in which the various performers will appear. The leaders of the various groups drift over to this man and look at his piece of paper, to see what spot on the bill has been given to each band, while the bandsmen talk to each other, in enthusiastic or desultory fashion, according to their natures. “Where’d you git that shirt?” “Took it off a cop in Texarkana.” “How much you give for it?” “Dollar and a half.” And now everybody is being careful not to drink too much, because drinking too much slows down your attack, and if there is one thing you don’t want in this kind of situation it is having your attack slowed down. Of course some people are into drinking and smoking a lot more before they play, but that’s another idea, and now the audience on the other side of the closed curtain is a loud presence, and everyone has the feeling of something important about to happen, and the first band to perform gets into position, with the three guitar players in a kind of skirmish line in front, the drummer spread out behind them, and the electric-piano player off to the side somewhat, more or less parallel to the drummer, and the happy MC standing in front of the guitar players, with his piece of paper in his hand, and the stage manager looking alternately at his watch and at the people out front. One of the musicians borrows a last cigarette from another musician, and all of the musicians are fiddling with the controls of their instruments, and the drummer is tightening his snares, and the stage manager says “OK” to the MC and the MC holds up his piece of paper and prepares to read what is written there into the bunch of microphones before him, and the houselights go down as the stage lights come up, and the MC looks at the leader of the first group, who nods complacently, and the MC shouts into the microphones (from behind the closed curtains) in a hearty, dramatic voice, “From Rogers, Tennessee, the Masonic Temple Battle of the Bands, it’s Bill Tippey and the Happy Valley Boys!” and the band crashes into “When Your Tender Body Touches on Mine,” and the curtains part, and the crowd goes crazy.