Jay Fox - THE WALLS

Not too long after there was an event concerning Mongo, several unopened cans of beer, and a katana. The incident ended the only way that seemed logically possible: the utter destruction of a cheap coffee table. The three zoots eventually wrestled the katana out of Mongo's hands, though in the process they almost stabbed one of Les Poseuses , who, by this time, had removed her socks and held them in her hands as if dual pairs of nunchucks. She lambasted Mongo in French with vehemence, and then began to let loose with the nylon weapons, an act which took just about everybody by surprise (it is always overwhelming to see a nude woman of ostensible grace partake in the Martial Arts), especially the zoots, who attempted a retreat into the bathroom — though this proved to be impossible because the bathroom door had been locked by the two Elvi, who had commandeered the space either to take turns grunting vowels and the words “fuck” and “yeah” and “me” in various combinations, or to just fuck one another in the butt — before taking cover behind the remnants of the coffee table that had been butchered by Mongo. The Domesticon abandoned the stage upon seeing the chaos, and eventually got the woman under control by employing the help of the young Le Zouave and a Furry couple (a turtle by the name of Moxy and a snail by the name of Früvous) that he, the Domesticon, had armed with PVC piping retrieved from a nonspecific locale. The solo Les Poseuses put up quite a fight, though one would have to admit that the engagement was actually two-on-one as opposed to four-on-one — the plush suits worn by Moxy and Früvous gave the duo little better than carpal-tunnel dexterity. Perhaps the culmination of the event came just as one of the Elvi reached his climax, which sounded eerily like the half-mumbled/half-sung portion of the chorus sandwiched between the words “I'm all shook up” in the song with that title. The two other Les Poseuses not involved in the battle got to laughing when they heard this, which seemed to calm the rabid member of the trio to the point of submission, but not before giving the Domesticon one last whap across the face with one of her socks. The situation finally under control, the clarinetist returned to the stage and ended up taking arguably his best solo of the night on the Arlen/Koehler tune “Get Happy.” After the ado, I discovered that the clarinetist and the nearly-nude French woman, subsequently with elbow length mittens as opposed to socks, had been something of an item in the past — at least that's what Cobalt said as he was relaying the story behind the puncture wounds in the wall to the Elvi and Minos, the latter being one of the goth creatures who had missed everything while out on a cigarette run.

I have yet to speak with Tomas. I only know that he and Boots took their leave after two and before three. Patrick was conscripted to the citrus artillery shortly thereafter. They were still bombarding the wall with fruit when I left, though by this time they had moved on to launching cantaloupes to the sounds of bizarre psychedelic bands and hits from the seventies known more for their obscurity than their brilliance. (“You're never heard of Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band or the Jimmy Castor Bunch?” Moxy asked me when I voiced my ignorance. “But you at least know of Atomic Rooster, right? Can? The Chocolate Watchband? The Tages? The Koobas? The Galliwogs? The Daily Flash? Mouse?” When I responded with a shrug and a diffident shake of the head, she laughed: “Okay, but you have to know the La De Das.” Again, an uneasy shrug. “What rock have you been hiding under?”) I felt like an extra in Nut House Rock , the king's less than successful response to Magical Mystery Tour and Head .

I don't mention all of this to Sean. He can infer from my tenor that I have been through the proverbial looking glass and back. “And you've been told that Coprolalia's real name is Mordecai, that he is probably thirty-two years old, and that he grew up in Midwood?”

“Yes,” I respond. “I've also heard that he lived with a man named Willis Faxo for a while during Faxo's time at Cooper Union.” A groan travels down the line, deep into the low end of things. “I still don't know how they met. According to my source, Mordecai wasn't a student at Cooper Union.”

“Faxo?”

“Yes, Willis Faxo. You've heard of him?”

“I've heard more than enough about him.” He pauses. “But the A-R-E?”

“The Acolytes of some Roman god.”

“Risus. God of laughter, joy. Greek too,” he adds. “Then again, there is Gelos, who is also cited as being the god of laughter.” He pauses. “Well, with regards to Risus, there' relatively little referential information about him. I believe Apuleius' the Golden Ass is the source most frequently cited.”

“You already know all of this?”

“Yes, and I've also heard a lot more about those initials. I would suspect someone's playing a prank on you, but I don't know who would go through that much trouble to dick around someone like yourself.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” defenses up.

“Look,” he begins, “I don't mean to be rude. It's just…it's just that there's a lot to explain, and I have a meeting in about half an hour.”

“It's Sunday.”

“Ah, well, the university never sleeps,” he says dispassionately. “I want to talk to you about all of this, though. Can you meet for coffee down in the Village? Let's say two?”

11.1

The heat is beginning to make life in the city that genre of annoying that requires all conversation address and exhaust complaints about temperature, humidity, precipitation, and Global Warming (or, provided you're too stubborn to use a term favored by environmentalists, Global Climate Change). “Hot one today, huh?” Sean says as I approach the table.

“Yeah,” I respond as several beads of sweat aggregate to form one big tear, which descends down my cheek. “I could barely sleep. My roommate is too cheap to have an air conditioner in the apartment.”

“Well sit down,” he says as he picks up his coffee as though to toast. “You look like you're been to hell and back.”

“This search is killing me, Sean. Seriously, I think I'm taking tonight off. I can't keep drinking like this.”

“You're twenty-two, right?” I nod hesitantly. “It gets far worse, my friend. Just wait until you have to start dealing with the two-day hangover. Just another bead on the con side of age.”

Sean has a bad habit of sounding patronizing even when he means well. A part of me thinks it's the environment in which he resides — that fantasy world of academia, where people lapse into worlds that only exist on paper, lose entire months of their lives to esoteric projects, revile sleep, subsist on strict diets of coffee, cigarettes, and consumables that contain heavy amounts of additives and require only the opening of a bag or a can to eat, and somehow always manage to under-appreciate a far too attractive girlfriend or boyfriend. When they reemerge, terrified of light and most forms of human interaction, they often make comments that seem bizarre, as they have forgotten that they are the only passengers on their train of thought. The significant other, of course, finds this endearing; just about everyone else finds it anywhere from perplexing to creepy.

The tangential form of consciousness and the absence of healthy eating habits are probably the least deleterious aspects of living a life that is defined by hermeneutics (in several ways). The greater concern has to do with amphetamine addiction, insanity, and all of those other adjuncts of solitary confinement that rear their ugly heads around the corner like potential assassins contemplating the best vantage from where to take their shot. The mathematics, economics, biology, and physic students are probably the worst in this aspect — what little time they do have to themselves they reserve for all-night drinking bouts, sleepovers in various psyche wards, or hours spent on the benches in the park where the largest populations of pigeons are known to congregate. The philosophers use their free time to argue via recondite and archaic terminology, which I suppose is nothing more than an extension of their already useless hobby; history students are prone to relegating sleep to a diminutive position, one valued only slightly more than masturbation (they are, after all, the biggest readers in the world of academia — something that law students like to deny, as law students are convinced that studying law is the single most demanding occupation one can have until they begin practicing — guess what becomes the most demanding occupation then?). Women's studies majors get offended by universal statements, generalizations, and any remark that requires it be taken either as a joke or with a grain of salt ( the fact that you're getting upset by this comment only proves my point ). The literature students tend to work hard enough to sound intelligent at parties where they are required to relive scenes from the Dharma Bums . In their more cloistered moments, they drink coffee and conjure up theories that trivialize and generalize things like sexism and racism, as comparative literature is less of a concentration or major, and more a method of autoerotic foreplay for nerds. Regardless of intellectual focus, the academic world breeds many things, but it must be remembered that, in some cases, it can cultivate introversion, narcissism, and the complete detachment from the world in which most of us reside. That being said, Sean is far more personable than most who have dedicated so much time to the university.