Walker Percy - Lost in the Cosmos

ALLEN: Well, actually, Vera has a low sex drive. We’ve always been quite inactive, even at the beginnings—

AUDIENCE (groans, jumbled protests) : Nooooo.

DONAHUE (backing away, holding up placating free hand, backing around to Dr. J.F.): It’s all yours, Doc.

DR. J.F.: Studies have shown that open marriages can be growth experiences for both partners. However— (groans from audience) — However: It seems to me that Vera may be getting the short end here. I mean, I don’t know Vera’s side of it. But could I ask you this? Have you and Vera thought about reenergizing your sex life?

ALLEN: Well, ah—

DR. J.F.: Studies have shown, for example, that more stale marriages have been revived by oral sex than any other technique—

DONAHUE: Now, Doc—

DR. J.F.: Other studies have shown that mutual masturbation—

DONAHUE (eyes rolled back ): We’ve running long folks, we’ll be right back after this — don’t go away. Oh boy. (Lets mike slide to the hilt through his hand, closes eyes, as camera cuts away to a Maxithins commercial)

DONAHUE: We’re back. Thank the good Lord for good sponsors. (Turns to Penny, a thin, inattentive, moping teenager, even possibly a pre-teen): Penny?

PENNY (chewing something) : Yeah?

DONAHUE (solicitous, quite effectively tender) : What’s with you, sweetheart?

PENNY: Well, I liked this boy a lot and he told me there was one way I could prove it—

DONAHUE: Wait a minute, Penny. Now this, your being here, is okay with your parents, right? I mean let’s establish that.

PENNY: Oh, sure. They’re right over there — you can ask them. (Camera pans over audience, settling on a couple with mild, pleasant faces. It is evident that on the whole they are not displeased with being on TV)

DONAHUE: Okay. So you mean you didn’t know about taking precautions—

DR. J.F. (breaking in) : Now, that’s what I mean, Phil.

DONAHUE: What’s that, Doc?

DR. J.F.: About the crying need for sex education in our schools. Now if this child—

PENNY: Oh, I had all that stuff at Ben Franklin.

DONAHUE: You mean you knew about the pill and the other, ah—

PENNY: I had been on the pill for a year.

DONAHUE (scratching head) : I don’t get it. Oh, you mean you slipped up, got careless?

PENNY: NO, I did it on purpose.

DONAHUE: Did what on purpose? You mean—

PENNY: I mean I wanted to get pregnant.

DONAHUE: Why was that, Penny?

PENNY: My best friend was pregnant.

AUDIENCE: (Groans, laughter)

DR. J.F.: You see, Phil, that’s just what I mean. This girl is no more equipped with parenting skills than a child. She is a child. I hope she realizes she still has viable options.

DONAHUE: How about it, Penny?

PENNY: No, I want to have my baby.

DONAHUE: Why?

PENNY: I think babies are neat.

DONAHUE: Oh boy.

DR. J.F.: Studies have shown that unwanted babies suffer 85 percent more child abuse and 150 percent more neuroses later in life.

DONAHUE (striding): Okay, now what have we got here? Wait. What’s going on?

There is an interruption. Confusion at the rear of the studio. Heads turn. Three strangers, dressed outlandishly, stride down the aisle.

DONAHUE (smacks his forehead) : What’s this? What’s this? Holy smoke!

Already the audience is smiling, reassured both by Donahue’s comic consternation and by the exoticness of the visitors. Clearly, the audience thinks, they are part of the act.

The three strangers are indeed outlandish.

One is a tall, thin, bearded man dressed like a sixteenth-century reformer. Indeed, he could be John Calvin, in his black cloak, black cap with short bill, and snug earflaps.

The second wears the full-dress uniform of a Confederate officer. Though he is a colonel, he is quite young, surely no more than twenty-five. Clean-shaven and extremely handsome, he looks for all the world like Colonel John Pelham, Jeb Stuart’s legendary artillerist. Renowned both for his gallantry in battle and for his chivalry toward women, the beau ideal of the South, he engaged in sixty artillery duels, won them all, lost not a single piece. With a single Napoleon, he held off three of Burnside’s divisions in front of Fredericksburg before being ordered by Stuart to retreat.

The third is at once the most ordinary-looking and yet the strangest of all. His dress is both modern and out-of-date. In his light-colored double-breasted suit and bow tie, his two-tone shoes of the sort known in the 1940s as “perforated wing-tips,” his neat above-the-ears haircut, he looks a bit like the clean old man in the Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night, a bit like Lowell Thomas or perhaps Harry Truman. It is as if he were a visitor from the Cosmos, from a planet ten or so light-years distant, who had formed his notion of earthlings from belated transmissions of 1950 TV, from watching the Ed Sullivan Show, old Chester Morris movies, and Morey Amsterdam. Or, to judge from his speaking voice, he could have been an inveterate listener during the Golden Age of radio and modeled his speech on that of Harry Von Zell.

DONAHUE (backpedaling, smacking his head again) : Holy smoke! Who are these guys? (Beseeching the audience with a slow comic pan around)

The audience laughs, not believing for a moment that these latecomers are not one of Donahue’s surprises. And yet—

DONAHUE (snapping his fingers) : I got it. Wait’ll I get that guy. It’s Steve Allen, right? Refugees from the Steve Allen Show, Great Conversations? Famous historical figures? You know, folks, they do that show in the studio down the hall. Wait’ll I get that guy.

General laughter. Everybody remembers it’s been done before, an old show-biz trick, like Carson barging in on Rickles during the C.P.O. Sharkey taping.

DONAHUE: Okay already. Okay, who we got here? This is Moses? General Robert E. Lee? And who is this guy? Harry Truman? Okay, fellas, let’s hear it. (Donahue, an attractive fellow, is moving about as gracefully as a dancer)

THE STRANGER (speaks first, in his standard radio-announcer’s voice, which is not as flat as the Chicagoans who say, hyev a hyeppy New Year) : I don’t know what these two are doing here, but I came to give you a message. We’ve been listening to this show.

DONAHUE (winking at the audience) : And where were you listening to us?

STRANGER: In the green room.

DONAHUE: Where else? Okay. Then what do you think? Let’s hear it first from the reverend here. What did you say your name was, Reverend?

STRANGER: John Calvin.

DONAHUE: Right. Who else? Okay, we got to break here for these messages. Don’t go ‘way, folks. We’re coming right back and sort this out, I promise.

Cut to Miss Clairol, Land O Lakes margarine, Summer’s Eve, and Alpo commercials.

But when the show returns, John Calvin, who does not understand commercial breaks, has jumped the gun and is in mid-sentence.

CALVIN (speaking in a thick French accent, not unlike Charles Boyer) — of his redemptive sacrifice? What I have heard is licentious talk about deeds which are an abomination before God, meriting eternal damnation unless they repent and throw themselves on God’s mercy. Which they are predestined to do or not to do, so why bother to discuss it?

DONAHUE (gravely) : That’s pretty heavy, Reverend.

CALVIN: Heavy? Yes, it’s heavy.

DONAHUE (mulling, scratching) : Now wait a minute, Reverend. Let’s check this out. You’re entitled to your religious beliefs. But what if others disagree with you in all good faith? And aside from that (prosecutory again, using mike like forefinger) what’s wrong with two consenting adults expressing their sexual preference in the privacy of their bedroom or, ah, under a bush?