John Barth - Where Three Roads Meet

"And what Manny couldn't manage, we managed for him. Put that in your oral history, Junior, since Cindy saw fit not to in her novella-thing: your pop's first pop."

Which so shot his maiden wad that some other brother — the least plastered one we could locate — drove us home in exchange for another little trick en route.

And tired and sore and two-thirds sozzled as we ourselves were by then, we douched and showered, set the alarm, hit the books bright and early next morning, and got our weekend schoolwork done on time.

Which just about wraps up Episode One of our connection with Manfred Senior as a freshman. Which laid the foundation—

"In a manner of speaking—"

— for all that followed: his whole fucking career, I guess.

Also in a manner of speaking. And since there's not tape enough left on this cassette for us to start the next chapter, let's close this one by adding that Manny and his pals invited us back a few times that semester and the next, separately and together, until MDU got wind of it and cracked down on Lambda Upsilon, and the brothers lost their lease on the row-house. "Dickson's Masons," they used to call us.

And once we'd gotten him started on that business of Threes and Y's, and said what we'd said about those two Greek letters, Manny notebooked everything we told him as if we were one of those whatchacallum oracles. Philadelphic?

"Delphic Orifices, maybe?"

Not only siblings, but sibyls. And this was before the guy had decided or discovered who he was! But in his second year at MDU — and Thelma's at ASTC, and Aggie's and my junior year there — he took up with a girl at Western Maryland College that he'd known from high school: the one he wound up marrying as soon as they both graduated. And since we sibyl types were still paying our freight in our particular way, it's no surprise that he didn't introduce us to his fiancée — that's your mom-to-be, Junior — or seek us out for more input, shall we say.

So we all commenced from our respective alma maters and went our separate if not quite equal ways—

"Some of us even went straight, once our last tuition bill was paid…"

— while some others found ourselves hooked on hookering, faute de mieux. But that's another story.

To be told another time, maybe, on another tape, before Cindy-Ella beats us to it with another novella à clef: how at least one ex-Mason reconnected with a much-changed Dickson. Let's close this one with a bit of oral oracularity for Junior-boy: that famously cryptic dedication of The Fates, which the lit-crit types have read as a salute to everything from the classical Muses as literary architects to the secret fraternal order of Freemasonry.

Try it orally with us, Manny-boy, and one more mystery will be demystified. All together now: one… two…

" To the Gracious Masons, who lent me— "

[End of tape.]

TAPE 3

… their rears: another Dickson triple-entendre lost in transcription, Listener, not to mention in translation.

"Like wise. "

At least one of which not even Grace is sure about: that queer Y-on-its-side that marks the last book of Manny's trilogy.

Though she has her hunches. Your dad himself would never talk seriously about things like that, Junior, especially in later years. Depending on his mood — which more and more came to mean his booze intake, after MDU sacked him — he'd say something like, "You and I are the oracles, doll, not the commentators," or "Let's leave footnotes to the kinds of assholes who fired me. "

"Like you-know-who, Junie-boy."

Not fair, Thelma: The kid's father gets booted when a conservative English Department finds they've got a nontenured Henry Miller on the faculty. His parents' marriage crashes, and his mom probably fills the kid's ears with made-up tales of his dad's fuck-arounds and orgies, which Manny's not there to deny 'cause he's out wrecking his liver. No wonder the kid's neutered! My Cindy and her brother were luckier, poor kids, having their pissed-off dad conveniently drop dead.

Amen. But "made-up tales," you said?

For the record, Junior, your pa may've been less than a model parent (likewise your ma, I'd bet my butt), but he was neither the big-time cocksman that some of his detractors and admirers alike have made him out to be, nor the fantasizing jerk-off that some others have maliciously proposed. In my own not-uninformed opinion, M. D. Senior was a man of no more than average libido, more curious than lecherous or lustful, and more fixated on his freaking Threes and Y's and capital-Q Quests — not to mention language and storytelling — than on literal cunts and cocks.

"I'll second that."

And I'll third it — though Thelm and I never came to know him the way Gracie did.

"'Came to know him…' Wait'll Junior goes to work on that line!"

What I suspect, girls, is that while J-boy's declared objective is to restore his dad's critical reputation (now that the guy's doubtless long since dead), his actual motive might be to get even with him for not having been a better father. Piss on his ashes, et cet?

"Amen to that, Aggie: Intentionally or not, that's what any quote critical reappraisal unquote of his will likely do, given where its author's coming from."

Ergo, guys, our Corrective Oral Testimony, if we ever get around to it before we've used up all three tapes. That side-wise Y, by the way — that Manny used for space-breaks and such right through the Atropos novel? — might be like scissors, mightn't it, whatever else it stands for? She being the Fate who snips the thread that Clotho spins and Lachesis measures out …

Score another for sister Grace, maybe. I always think of it as some Gracious-Mason type lying on her side and lifting her leg while "lending her rear" — but that's horny old me.

"If a mere former gynecologist's assistant can presume to add her reading to an ex — English teacher's and an ex — porn queen's, I'd say you're both right. The bitch-lady heroine of Atropos figuratively cuts her artist-lover's nuts off, no? Fucks him over till he can't get it up with the muses? Cindy's Wye — story comes close to saying that."

A-plus for Thelma Mason! And now watch us get some history done: Having whored our way cum laude to our bachelor's degrees—

"So to speak."

— two-thirds of us put sex-for-hire behind us after graduation.

Also so to speak — Yours-Truly-Agatha being the naughty third third.

But even she quit being a hooker pure and simple, excuse the adjectives. Having been a drama major and varsity gymnast at Arundel State, she took those talents and her others up to NYC and later out to LA, to try her luck at modeling and actressing …

Where she dropped her drawers in what she hoped were the right talent offices and undressing rooms, and actually managed to score a few photo shoots and bit parts. But then found her true métier — I believe the word is? — in Smutsville.

"You used to tell us it was the gymnastic aspect that appealed to you."

Manny even used that line — somewhere in Lachesis, was it? On with your story, Ag.

What's to tell? Unlike my straighter sisters, I never got to be anybody's wife or mother. Had a couple hundred lovers but never lucked into capital-L Love. Came closest with a more-or-less-lesbian colleague in my more-or-less-lesbian phase, but that didn't last either. Got too old for the porn game and worked as a talent scout for a while, till I learned I was scouting young illegal-immigrant Latinas to be flat-out putas. Put all that behind me in my forties and moved back east, where my better twin steered me to an M.Ed. degree and a job coaching gym and dramatics to the girls of Severn Day School.