One Fell Soup

by Roy Blount

  “I’m talking over-the-counter right-there-next-to-Commentary-and-McCall’s now, of course. At that level, frankly, I don’t know that magazines will ever go to screwing. No. I’ll tell you what the next big thing is. I’ll tell you what the next breakthrough skin magazine is going to be.” Utterbund pushed aside his beans. His eyes were unusually bright. He said, he hissed almost: “Inspired.”

  He looked off into the distance, such as it was in the restaurant there. “Felt. Complex.

  “Achieved.”

  There was a pause. In keeping with the cuisine, he looked both inflamed and inscrutable.

  I got the feeling Utterbund had been working on his prospectus.

  “Let me just give you an idea of what could be done. A class act. Name of the magazine: Myrrh. We get that, as we make clear every month beneath the masthead, from the Song of Songs:

  I rose up to open to my beloved;

  And my hands dropped with myrrh,

  And my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh,

  Upon the handles of the lock.”

  “You’d use the Bible?”

  “Who’s going to sue? And incidentally, you could sell a lot of actual myrrh itself, mail order. But that’s incidental.

  “Features. A little imagination. Re-create a 1936 ‘Life Goes to a Party’ spread, same hairdos, same decors, same skin tones, only it gets out of hand. Everybody loses their heads and gets naked, right?

  “Here’s another. Modeling session, right? Starts out okay, first page she’s going along, gradually slipping out of things and rubbing herself with a velvet pillow and a bunch of grapes and musing; but then, turn the page, she’s outraged. ‘You want me to what? What kind of girl …’ Furious. Eyes flashing, hair rumpled. Shot of her throwing her blouse and skirt back on; shot of her stomping out half-buttoned with bra in hand. She’s gone. She never gets naked. For months, letters. ‘Can’t you talk Candy Veronese of your August issue into coming back?’ ‘Who does this Candy Veronese think she is, holding out on us? Signed, The Sixth Fleet.’ Does she come back? Maybe. Maybe not. Negotiations ensue. Some months, we report, she seems mollified. Sometimes she’s pouting.

  “I know what you’re going to say. We’d never find a model who’d actually get outraged. But the readers don’t know that. We could find one who could fake it.

  “Letters. No more ‘I never believed any of those letters you print about prolonged bouts of passionate oral lovemaking right on top of the teacher’s desk while everyone in the room looked on, that is until my History of Western Civ class yesterday.’ That stuff is played out. You need to attract a different tone of letters. You might get a few that sounded like letters to the Times of London on sighting the first cuckoo of the spring, only they would be about vulvae. We could get lively controversies going between top authorities, in which they could call each other filthy names.

  “Service articles. Edible panties—how are they nutritionally? Simple methods for keeping count of your climaxes in a swimming pool. What to do for snakebite of the cervix. How to regain your footing on Wesson Oil. Again: imagination.

  “Advice column. It’s ‘Ask Our Amy.’ All kinds of gamy questions come in—and Amy doesn’t understand any of them. She has grown up sheltered, refers to beaver as ‘down there,’ gives incredibly naive advice. Gets so embarrassed finally she says she thinks she’s going to cry. So now everybody is writing in, explaining things to her. Nicely. Gently. Affectionately.

  “Gradually, gradually, over a course of months, she begins to get hip. Opens up to things. Wears more and more revealing clothes in her picture. Even gets a little rowdy in an unaffected way. Everybody is hot. Everybody’s heart opens. She drives everybody m the country CRAZY!

  “Then … she begins to go over the edge. Bit by bit her advice, her features, coarsen. She gets into and advocates hard liquor, drugs, every kind of group and individual debasement. People write in: ‘Amy, don’t cheapen yourself!’ She advises them to shove it. Finally, above her last column, she sits there brazenly spread and smeared all over with margarine and making a pun about it. Well. It’s what America for so long has been dying to see. But now, somehow, it isn’t so great. Her face is not the same. Her advice has become jaded, glazed over. Next month we announce we had to let her go. She is reported doing French Dominant in a Newark massage parlor, for free. Then she drops out of sight entirely. So many people haven’t been moved to tears since the death of Little Nell.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s tough,” Utterbund conceded. “It’s life. Her kid sister takes over the column.”

  I told him I thought a job on a magazine like that would be too much for me emotionally. “But, Eddie,” I said, “you’re a visionary.”

  “That’s not what you said,” he replied, “when I told you they were going to show pink.”

  BETWEEN MEALS SONG

  I want to gnaw your ankles,

  Root behind your knees,

  Nip your bended elbows,

  Browse your forehead, please.

  Oh, let’s make love and supper with-

  Out washing off our hands.

  Eat prairie oysters, turkey breasts and

  Other sav’ry glands.

  Let’s make love and supper with-

  Out washing off our hands.

  I want to wrinkle your neck’s nape

  And stretch out your back’s small.

  Go “This little piggy” on your toes

  And darling that ain’t all.

  I want to heft your two prize calves

  And play like you’re a farm

  And I’m the farmer and my house is

  Underneath your arm.

  I’ll cultivate your collarbone,

  Achilles’ tendon, palm

  And ears inside and out and lobes

  And hair on end or calm.

  I like your eyelids and your hip

  And relatives and friends.

  Your navel is a constant source

  As are your finger ends.

  The bottoms of your feet rate high

  Before and after bath;

  I want to reckon on your ribs

  Whenever I do math.

  I’m taken by your vertebrae

  And back behind your ears,

  Your adam’s apple, temples and

  Most of your ideas.

  Oh, let’s make love and supper with-

  Out washing off our hands.

  Eat prairie oysters, turkey breasts and

  Other sav’ry glands.

  Let’s make love and supper with-

  Out washing off our hands.

  JEALOUSY SONG

  My darlin is dancin with some asshole.

  It burns my behind, I must confess.

  I think I’ll go see if he can wrassle,

  And if he can I’ll think of somethin ess—

  I’m goin to …

  get that stupid shit

  Who’s dancin with my darlin,

  Stomp on him with the strength of ten—

  I’m goin to …

  kick the livin shit

  Out of my darlin’s partner

  And fix him so he’ll never dance agin.

  THE WAGES OF FUN

  THANK GOD I AM married, is all I can say. I walk the streets of the city and see poor, single, promiscuous wretches, with these slightly-less-tight jeans and hangdog looks: their genitals have either fallen off or imploded. I was single once. I know what goes on.

  Stumble out of one partner’s bed; don’t wash; have a couple of vodkas, a number, maybe a little fhf, fnf; meet some strange piece of stuff at Sam Goody’s and off you go again. Whammitywhammity. (How do you ever get any work done? When do you write your mother?) I know.

  Seem like fun, don’t it? Seem like heaven.

  It ain’t heaven, brothers and sisters.

  It is Hell.

  They told me, when I was growing up in Georgia, in the Methodist Youth Fellowship: it would be Hell. And I believed them
. Then I saw a series of French films and got divorced and met all these … partners and I didn’t believe it anymore.

  Hey, you know, the body is a holy thing. And the ecumenical message is: There are a lot of holy things. With these really neat swells and declivities, and the most essential of oils, and barely perceptible down.

  And the Methodist Youth Fellowship message is (I remember a talk we heard about how you may think the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are cool, but wait a minute, she was divorced): you screw around and okay, buddy, you get a vile disease. You’re lucky you get to screw at all. Back off—way off—from around.

  And the Methodist Youth Fellowship was right. The Pill gives you cancer and the herpes never dies. Lord! Lord! Ain’t nothing that fills your soul and don’t eat your nose out and don’t rot your vitals but Jesus.

  Or Moses. Or Jesse Helms, Jr.

  Lord.

  It don’t pertain to me anymore. I’m settled down a family man once again, in the country. I wouldn’t doubt we have a certain amount of paresis up here in our town but I don’t think there’s any herpes, yet. Though who knows? Who after all knows? I’m worried about going down to the post office, afraid of who on up the line somewhere has been handling my mail.

  Talk about Communism!

  It is a hell of a note when you can’t be a roving port-in-every-girl bandito anymore. You notice the U.S. secretary of state hasn’t been running around with bimbos, now, for a number of years. Kissinger swore it all off and married a clean woman. Cyrus Vance had a bad back. Alexander Haig has other things on his mind.

  But forget about the federal level. We got to get down to the personal level. We got to accept that the sexual revolution is over and a certain number of people if they don’t watch out, going to be caught standing outside the Bastille waving their swords and grinning, and waving their swords, and grinning, and beginning to wave their swords a little slower, and beginning to grin a little narrower, and checking out what is accumulating in the atmosphere around them, and letting their swords kind of decline, and beginning to mumble, well, I wasn’t really revolting, you know, I was just, I just thought … Oh please have mercy oh God I didn’t know, I was just young you know and bliss was it then to be alive and, and, I see now I should’ve realized but, oh, I’ll … can I join a convent or something, please …

  You know why a dog licks his balls?

  No. Why?

  Because he can.

  And you know why we would do every vileness and call it sweet?

  Because we could.

  Yes. But. We can’t anymore.

  And do you know why, now, they will look at our every sweetness and call it vile?

  Because they can.

  I had a conversation the other day with a guy in Pittsburgh who said he had psychosomatic herpes. From worrying about it.

  “You know it came to this country’ from Peru,” he said.

  “No. I didn’t know that.”

  “From llamas.”

  “Fernando Lamas!?”

  “No. Llamas. From guys screwing animals.”

  “No!”

  Who knows how much truth there is to that? But I’ll tell you this. My friend Slick Lawson of Nashville once visited a Cajun home, and it was time for supper, so the father hollered to the eldest son, who was up on a ladder painting one side of the house:

  “Alphonse! Unclimb that ladda! It’s dinna time!”

  Sisters and brothers, the time has come. We got to unclimb that ladder. We got to get down off our high libidinal horse. We got to look toward new yesterdays. We got to stop … being … loose.

  Thank God I am married, is all I can say.

  Don’t be coming up here where I live in the country looking for salvation, with your infections, your carcinogenesis, your …

  You know a word that is going to come back in vogue?

  Pox.

  NO BIGGER THAN A MINUTE

  Maybe you re like six foot four

  And I’m just four foot ten,

  Maybe I’m just a little bitty woman

  And you’re all great big men,

  But you think you can outgo me?

  I’m tempted just to laugh.

  I ain’t no bigger than a minute

  But I can go like an hour and a half.

  Oh I ain’t no bigger than a minute,

  I’m cute as a newborn calf,

  But when it comes to going, boys,

  I can go like an hour and a half.

  Set your watches ticking, boys,

  Swing that old long hand.

  Mine may be a whole lot shorter

  But it’s got a longer span.

  When it comes to watches, boys,

  I’m right there fore and aft.

  I ain’t no bigger than a minute

  But I can go like an hour and a half

  (Chorus)

  Ok I don’t punch nobody’s clock,

  Ain’t nobody’s maid.

  Ain’t nobody’s play-toy either,

  They’re the ones get played.

  I’ve held longtime positions on

  Many a high-level staff.

  I ain’t no bigger than a minute

  But I can go like an hour and a half.

  (Chorus)

  SPORTS AFIELD

  Then ye returned to your trinkets; th’en ye contented your souls

  With the flannelled fools at the wickets or the muddied oafs at the goals.

  —Rudyard Kipling, “The Islander”

  FIVE IVES GETS NAMED

  JIM! ME! CALLING FROM the big leagues! You know, them leagues Ty Cobb and Warren Spahn was in! Woooo!

  I know it’s great. Jim, you would not believe tonight. I got a nickname, I—Yeah, I’ll call Pop. But I can’t tell him all of it. Don’t want to disillusion Pop about the BIG LEAGUES.

  No, it’s not—Just let me tell you. It is late, isn’t it? Is that the baby crying? Shit, I’m … You shoulda been up here, Jim. Waiting to show me around. Like in Little League and high school. If it hadn’t been for your knee. Yeah.

  I’m going to tell you. Yeah, sort of drunk. In New York. Jim, I ain’t going to get mugged. You’re worse than Pop. No, I just mean—listen, I walk in this afternoon. Right? Visiting clubhouse YANKEE DAMN STADIUM, Jim. Summoned up by the Techs.

  Course, yeah, we didn’t exactly grow up drooling to be Techs. Cause there wasn’t any then. But if the Dodgers’d held on to me I’d still be in Lodi. Techs pick me up, this Perridge breaks his leg, and I get a CALL, Jim.

  Only thing, to get here, I have to grab two buses and a redeye. And I walk into the dressing room with zip sleep. And first thing, this Spanish guy jumps on my back. Yelling, jibdyjibdyjibdy, ninety miles an hour. Then this bald black guy with a big gut who is stepping real painfully into his pants yells across the room, “Ju-lo get off the man’s back! He don’t even speak Spanish!”

  “Jibdyjibdyjibdy espik Esponish!?” the guy yells. And he gets off me, like he’s pissed I’m not bilingle, and he goes to his locker and I see the name, it’s Julio Uribe! You remember, played second for the Orioles a couple years and bounced around, yeah. And—Jim, the fat guy is Boom Holmes! “God DAMN my feet!” he yells, and that’s my greeting to the Techs.

  Except just then I meet my Peerless Leader. Berkey. Yells out from his office, “Who you!” Jesus who’d he think I was, I’m the only guy got sent up. I go in, kind of salute, like reporting to duty, only he don’t laugh. He is sitting there eating a—looks like maybe a Franco-American-spaghetti sandwich, real wet, and there’s a big bottle of Maalox on his desk, and he looks at me like I’m already overpaid. “Can you mbunt?” he wants to know. Is all he wants to know. I don’t know whether he can manage, but he has a lot of trouble with his b’s.

  “Yeah,” I say. He’s a big sumbitch but a real old sour-looking guy, Jim, looks like Mr. Wiedl used to teach us history and be pissed all the time because we didn’t care about the broad sweep of the great human saga. Only Berkey I guess is pissed because the
Techs just about got a lock on last place in June. Yeah.

  Anyway, what Berkey does, he grabs me by the arm and drags me back out into the dressing room and hollers at everybody, “This guy can mbunt! He prombly can’t play, but he can mbunt!” And he goes back in his office with his wet sandwich.

  And I’m standing there. Clubhouse guy shows me my locker—I’m dressing next to Hub Kopf. Yeah, right. He is talking to Junior Wren. Yeah, used to have the crippled-children commercial. And here’s what they are saying:

  “Your niece! How could you … ?”

  “Axly it was more my half-niece,” says Junior Wren.

  “How the fuck … ?”

  “Anyway she was adopted, I think.”

  “You think. You didn’t know?”

  “Anyway she was in these little shorts and halter and she had this raspberry wine … and I gave her a little bump. Next morning I felt so bad, I quit smoking.”

  Here I am hearing this shit from guys was All-Stars once, and meanwhile I am wasted. “I’m Reed Ives,” I say. Cause I’m new in this whole organization, they don’t know me. “I’m wasted,” I say.

  “Welcome to the AL,” says Junior. “Have one.” And he gives me a pill.

  So—no, I wouldn’t ever depend on it, no, but anyway I pop this thing, and then I ask, “What is it?”

  You’re right … but—anyway, “Five milligrams,” he says.

  I never did half that! And I’m sitting there thinking, “Oh Jesus. Five milligrams.”

  And the next thing, I’m on the field running all over like I’ve had twenty hours sleep. Playing pepper, taking grounders, little b.p.—yeah, I got ahold of a couple pretty good—and then, though, the game starts.

  And I’m sitting. And I’m, you know, VAW-AW-AW-AWM. There’s these billions of dollars’ worth of Yankees out there a few feet in front of my face, and I’m jumping up, getting water, sitting back down, jumping up, taking a leak and thirty thousand people are screaming all up above and behind me and Junior Wren is looking over and nudging Hub Kopf, and they’re giggling, and Berkey is glaring at me. Cause I’m not even seeing the game. I’m sitting there exploding thinking, “Five milligrams!”