Fran Ross - Oreo

By this time both Betty and the doctor were raging beasts. As the doctor ran to the attack — or, rather, the collaboration — Oreo came out of hiding and gave him a quick shu-kik to the groin, then got his jaw in the classic nek-brāc position. With his life but a blō away, he promised Oreo he would never again annoy innocent young women by phone or in person with his snortings and slaverings. With a half-force bak-bop she propelled him off Betty’s porch and watched as he shmegeggely fled the street.

She turned back just in time to hear Betty saying plaintively, “But what about me?”

Oreo realized that it had been very brave and self-sacrificing of Betty to participate in this little hoax. But her face brightened when she saw what time it was. She gave Betty the good news. “What about you? It’s five-thirty. Your father will be home any minute now. Do what you usually do in these circumstances. Fuck him .”

Will Farmer

James had been immobilized for fifteen years when Louise decided to take a boyfriend. By this time, she had added drinking to her cooking/eating hobbies and weighed in at a good two hundred pounds. She had a love-tap on her that could paralyze yeast for three days. Louise met her boyfriend, Will Farmer, at a pay party given by her club, the Rainbow Skinners. The Rainbow Skinners got together every Friday night to conduct the regular club business, which was to eat, drink, and play pitty-pat and Pokeno, and to conduct the special club business, which was to plan pay parties, which they gave to raise money to give other pay parties, and so on, unto several generations.

Whenever Louise brought Will home for dinner, she said, “Make yo’seff comf- tub ble, Frank… I mean, John… I say, Will .You jus’ like one de fam’ly.”

After he had eaten one of Louise’s specialties, Will, who was in his eighties (this was a Platonic relationship — or maybe Hegelian), would creak into the living room to relax. Once there, he would settle into a chair opposite James and succumb to a myoclonic jerk off to sleep. With his downcurving nose pincering toward his chin like a chela and a cigar held fast between clenched gums, he resembled a pegged lobster. His body became as straight and stiff as a bed slat as he began an inevitable slide to the floor. Just before he clattered into James, Louise would wake him up, thereby preventing him from making a body-temperature cancel mark across her husband’s half swastika. It was Louise’s lot to be surrounded — or, rather, flanked — by rigid but unavailing masculine spare parts — James and Will each in his own quirky fashion an instance of the-part-for-the-whole, a synecdoche of manhood.

Helen in a hotel room, Winnetka, Illinois

She was listening to Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Minor for Guitar and Viola d’Amore . Her head equation

meant that she thought it was time that she went home to visit her family and got Oreo started on her journey to learn the secret of her birth. The phone rang, interrupting the music and breaking off another equation at a crucial operation. It was a wrong number, a woman selling magazine subscriptions. Helen was annoyed, so she let the woman go through the whole megillah . Finally, she said, “You’ve convinced me that I can’t beat your low, low prices. I think I’ll take a three-year subscription to Field and Stream .” The vendor was overjoyed (this was her first actual sale in 5,235 calls). Then Helen said, “That is, of course, if you have a braille edition.” The magazine woman apologized wholeheartedly for her company’s lack of foresight — a choice of words which Helen pointed out was particularly unfortunate for a person with her handicap to hear. With further apologies, muffled sobs, and long-distance groveling over her lack of tact, the woman hung up.

Someone was obviously circulating a defective telephone-sales list, for a few minutes later a dance studio called. Helen debated a moment over whether she should be a paraplegic or an amputee but decided that either would be tasteless and settled for spasticity. Again, apologies, sobs, and groveling. Helen was able to complete her equation:

C = H — MB 2

where C = catharsis, psf

H = homesickness, cu ft

M = meanness, mep

B = Bell telephone, min

Jimmie C. and his friend

Jimmie C. and Fonzelle Scarsdale had been best friends ever since Oreo had beat Fonny up during her first practice session of WIT. Fonzelle showed Jimmie C. his report card. He was a straight-F student. He was not exceptionally stupid but had no time for studies, preferring to spend most of his free hours perfecting his walk (“I like to walk heavy , man,” he had confided to Jimmie C.).

Jimmie C., distressed, said, “What is your mother going to say when she sees this? My heart norblats for you, my hands curbel.”

“Hell, man, she’ll just give me a party.”

“A joyber? What kind of joyber?”

“A do-better-next-time party, jim. What else? But I’m hot, though. That yalla-nigger gym teacher give me a F in phiz ed. Now, you know I’m good in gym, jack. I’d like to bust that nigger up ’side his head.”

“Who are you talking about? Mr. Ozaka? He’s Japanese.”

“They got you fooled too, huh? Them so-called Japs, Chinks, all them — they all niggers. Just trying to chicken out of all the heavy shit going down on us black niggers. But they niggers just the same. One of these days, Charlie Chalk gon peep their game, then he’ll start treating them just the way he do us.” He laughed at the prospect.

Fonzelle put his report card back in his wallet and pulled out a celluloid zigzag of identification cards. Each one showed his picture, but the names on the cards ranged from toothsome (Vasquez Delacorte, Miguel Salamanca) to bland (Ronald Gray, Dave Johnson). “In case I ever get picked up, the pigs will be confused, dig?” He compressed the pleats. “My cousin’s a cop. I went with him when he had to testify in night court the other day. This foxy chick walks in. Man, she was really together. Legs so big and rounded off. I scrambled to write that address down. But the judge, he’s keeping it all to hisself. I couldn’t hardly hear, man. You know what they fined that chick? Ten dollars and costs! If it was some ol’ nappy-head broad, some pepperhead, they woulda thrown her ass under the jail. Gee-me-Christmas, there’s some shit going down, jim!”

Jimmie C. nodded in sympathy.

“Hey man,” Fonzelle said, “I’m looking for a job.”

“Doing what?”

“As a lover, man. That’s what I’m best at. What’s the opposite of red?”

“Bormel?” Jimmie C. offered.

“Yeah, blue. I get me a blue light and put it outside my door. Did I tell you about the last one I had. I told her, ‘Three dollars! Are you kidding? Where I come from, you pay me !’ She wasn’t bad, either. Really squared me away. After I came out, I saw this faggot. I thought it was a chick at first. I said, ‘What you mean you ain’t no girl, girl?’ I told Doris about that, and she cracked up. Doris is cool, jim. She may be a dyke, but she one stone fox . Wouldn’t mind some of that cat myself.” He giggled. “Know what she told me the other day? She had to go to the doctor, see? Had a infection in her cat. So the doctor examines her, does his little number with the slides and things, and says, ‘Miss Jefferson, I don’t understand this. You a virgin, you still cherry and all, yet and still you got this infection in your cat. And this ain’t no ordinary infection. This kinda germ, we usually find it in people’s mouth . It’s a — whatchacall — a oral germ. Now, Miss Jefferson, how do you explain that?’ Doris says that without even thinking, she comes out and says, ‘Well, doctor, I sat on a dirty teaspoon.’” Fonzelle doubled over, whooping and hollering.