A Handful of Time

by Rosel George Brown

  “Right. But I don’t see where…”

  “In a moment. Let’s oversimplify and say the dinosaurs became extinct because they got too big and the sabre tooth tiger become extinct because its sabre teeth got too long. Then let’s leap a non sequitur and ask by the same token what attribute man may overdevelop that will make him extinct.”

  “You already said the ability to reason.”

  “Get at the bottom and say the ability to symbolize. All right. We can leave aside the question as to whether the species is doomed by nature to eventual overspecialization. The point is, we have overspecialized. We have oversymbolized. We’re symbolizing ourselves right out of the instinct of race preservation.”

  “And just how are we going about this?”

  “We get at the human race through all the mass media of communication. Billboards. Light paintings. Mostly TV. Who? Advertisers. What do they appeal to? Biological urges. What does every word and picture suggest? That so-and-so product is so satisfactory biological urges are unnecessary.”

  “Really, Barnes. Don’t you think you’re getting a little abstruse?”

  “I am not. You’re the one that pointed out how unlikely it was that P.C. is responsible for the falling birth rate. What did you have in mind?”

  Reid drained his glass and chewed his olive meditatively “Frankly, I didn’t have anything in mind. The whole situation just struck me as unlikely.”

  “When I was a child‌—‌for that matter when modern advertising was a child‌—‌there was a joke that predicted all of this. A joke about the jingle for a washing powder. ‘Why get married?’ it went. ‘Duz does everything.’ ”

  “That isn’t the best joke I ever heard.” Reid was stirring his next batch of martinis gently.

  “I’m not trying to amuse you. I’m trying to show how this thing happened. Then there was a business man. A shaving cream manufacturer, as it happens, who deplored the use of sex in advertising. ‘We want our customers to shave with our product, he was quoted as saying, ‘not have an affair with it’ ”

  Reid’s cocktail stirrer clanged on the side of the glass pitcher. “You don’t mean to suggest…!”

  “This is all on a symbolic level,” Dr. Barnes said hastily. “That’s the point.”

  “You mean,” Reid asked, “that the reproductive urge has been replaced by the products of technology?”

  “Exactly. Through a process of association of ideas, of symbolizing.”

  Reid pressed out the wrinkles in his forehead with his thumb. “Sounds like fetishism, if I remember right what fetishism is. Something about a woman’s shoe.”

  Dr. Barnes nodded slowly. “What is fetishism but the use of a symbol to represent an object? The fetishist cherishes the shoe as symbol of a woman. To the point where he would rather cherish the shoe than marry the woman. Cliff Reid, that sews it up.” Dr. Barnes extended his hand. “Long may Teenie Products wave.”

  Reid took the hand a little hesitantly. “What about P.C.? You’re not going to worry about the population getting out of control?”

  “It is out of control. The wrong way. That’s my problem, too. I don’t want the species to become extinct.” Dr. Barnes filled his pipe, pushing at the lever in the wall convenience. “I might say the emotions of my son are my problem, too.”

  “Hurrah for the personal element,” Reid said, shaking Dr. Barnes’ hand vigorously this time. “It’s more trustworthy than broad humanitarianism.”

  Dr. Barnes treadled the roof back.

  “Let’s let the starlight in,” he said. “I feel magnificent. I think I’ve been worried a long time without even knowing it. There’s something about working out a problem that‌—‌that makes me a little drunk. It removes mental warts and hangnails. You’ll pardon the exuberance of a sober man?”

  “For Teenie Products,” Reid said, “I’ll pardon anything. But it seems to me, Mark, that you haven’t solved the problem. You’ve merely stated it.”

  “My part is solved. Why do you think I called you? You do something about it.”

  “You mean you’re throwing this baby in my lap? I’ve been sitting here calmly letting your starlight drip all over my bald head and this is what you were leading up to?”

  “The people who matter,” Dr. Barnes pointed out, “aren’t going to listen to the wild theories of a government sociologist. Particularly since my P.C. campaign against God, Home and Mother. You, on the other hand, are a Teenie Products executive of substance, with a normal interest in preserving an expanding economy and a more than normal interest in the reproductive process.”

  “You make me sound like Gilles de Rais. However, I concede the point. What would you suggest that I do? Or are you going to walk out and leave the baby screaming in my arms?”

  Dr. Barnes laughed out loud. “Why are you business people so nervous? Be back in a minute. I’m going to make some coffee.”

  He returned with an ungainly double decker pot in which water tinkled.

  “My suggestions,” he said, “will be merely suggestions. This is a problem for big business and big business should have the resources to solve it.” Dr. Barnes pulled two thick cups out of his pockets. “Have some? Strong as love, black as sin, hot as hell.”

  Reid shuddered and shook his head. He got a cup of water from the wall convenience and watched his capsule of Relaxolator bubble in it.

  “Go ahead. Make a suggestion. I know who to talk to. But I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well, the problem, obviously, is to take the product out of reproduction.”

  “Maybe we should advertise biological urges for a while, instead of products.”

  “We have to be careful there. That might do nothing but reinforce the symbolic transfer that’s already taken place.”

  “Well, what about dropping sex from advertising? Use something else. Like scenery. Or dogs.”

  “Watch it! The symbolic process is tricky.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! What do you suggest?”

  “A frontal attack. And then a complete clearance of the field. No advertising.”

  Reid was aghast. He drained his paper cup of Relaxolator. “My God, man. You don’t know what you’re saying!”

  “That’s why I can take an objective view. Well?”

  “Well?” Reid rose to go. Dr. Barnes followed him to the front door and watched him step into his outside shoes.

  “You’ve ruined my weekend, you know.” Reid frowned, then grinned, his plump face almost cherubic. “But it was worth it.”

  “Bye, boy. I’ll be watching the Dreambook.”

  The next Saturday night, a little guiltily and without ceremony, Jack slunk into the TV room.

  Dr. Barnes followed him, his fingers crossed.

  He enjoyed the show tremendously. He enjoyed even more the expressions that tromped heavily over his son’s face. By the end of the evening he felt Jack’s thoughts were set on the right track, ready to roll.

  The first program was an ad for frozen strawberry shortcake. The hero was unusual enough to make everybody sit up and take notice. He turned out to be the hero of all the ads that evening.

  He sported no tattoos, no eye patches, no diamond inset teeth, no frosted eyebrows. He looked, as a matter of fact, the way men of distinction frequently do look. He was a fat, shiny-pated slob with lips that looked as though they had been turned inside out.

  A well-moulded brunette in a low cut apron brought on the shortcake. But she didn’t have a chance to fade off the stage. Hero caught her in a gargantuan clutch.

  “Strawberry shortcake,” he told the TV audience lustily, “is no substitute for women.”

  Then he let the girl go, as she was obviously getting bruised and her teeth were beginning to grind, spoiling her lovely smile.

  “But it is delicious shortcake,” he went on, eating with healthy gusto, letting the strawberry juice run down his chin.

  The next ad was for Whiskoff shaving cream. Hero took the plastic container and spraye
d it all over his huge face. It flew into his hair and onto the floor and dribbled down his clothes. It gave rather the effect of Santa Claus the day after Christmas.

  Hero then grabbed the beautiful blond who had proffered the shaving cream, smothered her with kisses and suds, and pushed her off camera quickly so the audience wouldn’t see the way his beard had scratched her face and the pink froth bubbling out of her mouth.

  “I only use Whiskoff,” he boomed at the audience, “because it attracts women.”

  Then he shaved luxuriously, as only a really fat, hairy man can.

  “That’s swell,” Dr. Barnes told Reid, calling from the office telephone.

  Reid, looking incongruous amid pictures of babies presumably made joyous by Teenie Products, grinned happily. “I’m everybody’s fair-haired boy,” he said. “Everything done in the ‘new advertising’ is selling like crazy.”

  “But it isn’t enough. Birth rate is still falling, of course. Marriage is up one half of one per cent. That isn’t enough. That might be coincidence. Look, this is a serious problem. I think you understand that. Now you tell whoever decides these things to go on hitting with the ‘new advertising’ until the end of the week. And then cut it off sharp. No advertising.”

  “I don’t think they’ll do it, Mark. Doomsday or no doomsday.”

  “The American psyche,” Dr. Barnes insisted, “has got to have a rest. It can adjust itself. But it’s got to be left alone.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Reid looked unhappily around at the baby pictures. “Somebody’s got to get diaper rash.”

  When he’d hung up, Dr. Barnes turned around to tackle Miss Carson again. She was taking P.C.’s reversal of policy hard.

  “I can see,” she said miserably, “the theoretical necessity for encouraging the birth rate… after all the trouble we went to… at least, I guess I can see it. But Dr. Barnes, it’s hard to see how a man of your moral principles can… can bear to encourage this sort of… I mean, you know… moral turpitude.”

  Dr. Barnes removed the pipe from his mouth and frowned at her. He knew it would hurt her feelings, but really. “There is nothing morally turpitudinous about marriage,” he said.

  Miss Carson gave him a queer look, a stream of color flowing across her dry face. “You mean that? Even for people like you… and me?”

  Dr. Barnes hid his face by the wall convenience and began to empty and fill his pipe desperately. Somewhere beneath her neuter, shoulder hung tweeds, he knew, Miss Carson was a woman. But Dr. Barnes would much rather not find out about it. Why? He prodded himself. If Miss Carson were prettied up a little she wouldn’t be at all bad. Certainly she was devoted. Efficient. There were no other women in his life. “Not,” he said hesitantly, “me.”

  “How can you say it like that?” she said hoarsely. Her voice had risen little above its whispery normal but it seemed to be traveling over goose bumps in her throat. “After all these years!”

  “Miss Carson,” Dr. Barnes said, wishing he could gag on his own tongue. “I had no idea… we’ve been… business associates…”

  “Of course,” she choked out. “And now you say that of course you would not be capable of… this moral turpitude.” She began to cry. “And after all these years of faithful service you do not have enough respect for me to include me? You imply I am morally capable of turning my back on everything I’ve ever stood for? Maybe even capable of getting married. You know what that implies. Dr. Barnes! How could you?”

  Dr. Barnes’ spirits soared so fast his apology was positively exuberant.

  “Oh, forgive me,” he cried. “I just took for granted you were included. Miss Carson, you are the most pure minded…” Dr. Barnes smiled tenderly at his secretary. “Miss Carson, I would never think of asking you to marry me.”

  Miss Carson sighed deeply to gather herself together and extracted a whispy-skin mask from her purse, to hide the signs of her tears.

  “Dr. Barnes,” she sighed again with a happy smile. “To think I doubted you! There are so many… er… ah… intangibles in spiritual… er… you know, I mean…” she trailed off in a hasty whisper.

  “Yes, indeed,” Dr. Barnes agreed. “Now, I want you to get me that man from ‘Quality Not Quantity’.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Things were back on their old, comfortable basis. Only more comfortable, because Dr. Barnes knew where he stood. He was so pleased with Miss Carson he almost fell in love with her, after all. But then, as always, there rose in his mind a picture of Juliette.

  “Arise, fair sun,” he murmured.

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, Miss Carson.”

  “Some of the kids are acting neuro,” Jack told his daddy the next Saturday night, before he pressed the TV button.

  “Yes?”

  “Yeah. Marvin’s got a black-leather jacket. Bob’s got himself a duck tail hair cut. Straight out of the 50’s. Real gone.” Jack laughed.

  “Sometimes,” Dr. Barnes pointed out, “there’s a revival.”

  Jack shrugged his shoulders as though some kids were really hopeless. He punched on the TV. The ghost figures on the stage developed solid ectoplasm and the ghost voice reached normal dimensions.

  The announcer was the most noncommittal looking person Dr. Barnes had ever seen. He was about 5 feet 8 inches tall, a little on the thin, worried side, had brown hair, receding and vaguely greying, cropped straight around his head on a level with his ears. His teeth were the slightly yellowish, slightly long sort that dentists always say are the least subject to damage. He had small hazel eyes and sparse lashes.

  “Cigarettes,” he said tonelessly, “are to smoke.” He lit a Filt R Tip with the habitual gesture of the heavy smoker and went on, like the habitual smoker, hardly aware that he was smoking.

  “Froz N Strawberry Shortcake is to eat.”

  “The purpose of Whiskoff shaving cream is to facilitate the removal of whiskers.”

  “Universal automobiles are to get you from point A to point B. They may be driven by either men or…” he caught himself. This line had obviously been censored at the last minute. “They may be driven by adults.”

  Advertising had not been stopped altogether. That really wasn’t to be expected. But this‌—‌maybe this was better. “Cigarettes are to smoke.” What could be more direct? More simple and to the point?

  The next few months were known as the Dun Period in advertising. Idea Men with gaunt faces slunk along Madison Avenue and many took to writing verse. There was one man who actually did write the novel he had been planning to write all those years.

  But this sort of cultural frothing was not available to the average citizen of, say, Caribou, Maine, or Golden Meadow, Louisiana. “How did our forefathers,” they came to ask themselves, “occupy themselves on long, cold nights?”

  There were many interesting folk revivals, such as folk dancing, story telling, bundling, the fais do do, and of course, marriage.

  Eventually Jack approached Dr. Barnes somewhat sheepishly.

  “Er… Dad? What do you… er… do on a date?”

  “Whatever seems… er… natural, Jack. Every generation has its own dating habits.”

  Jack looked thoughtful. “I guess you’re right. We don’t have movies or road houses or juke box joints. Say, could I have a party over here?”

  “Sure. I’d enjoy it.”

  “Well… I really didn’t have in mind the older generation.”

  “I get it.” Dr. Barnes laughed. “I’ve just worked myself out of my own home. Well, it’s worth it.”

  It was not long after that that Reid called. “How’s it going?”

  “Births up five per cent over last month. Marriage up twenty-five per cent.”

  “Fine. There’s just one thing, Mark.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’ve used your name a lot in this. As a government expert. And one of the news commentators last night‌—‌he’s not against us, he’s just contrary‌—‌he said how come y
ou’re not married, since you started all this?”

  “Me? That’s nobody’s business.”

  “You’ve made everybody else’s marriage your business. You’re still young and you’re almost as handsome as I am. Actually, Barnes, why don’t you get married?”

  Dr. Barnes was silent for a long time. Then he said. “I’ve got my home and my son. Women are fine, but what I really enjoy is a good cup of black coffee‌—‌strong as love, black as sin and hot as hell.”