Padgett Powell - You & Me

I wonder if a bull has ever actually got into a china shop.

I would think, in the long reach of time, it not unlikely, at least once. A bull running, say, down a street in Spain could easily detour into a fine shop. Remember your laws of thermodynamics. I’ll say it was Dickens, Sterne, one of those guys.

I am a little depressed.

I am too.

Nothing novel.

No.

We should reknob the stove.

I’m going to. I left them on the floor only for evidentiary purposes. The crime will not be solved, we might as well sweep up the evidence.

That could be our motto for Life. Life will not be explained; sweep away the evidence.

The hindmost hand.

What?

I have had another vision, of “the hindmost hand.” As a phrase, not as a thing.

What does it mean?

No idea. But I like it. It comforts me.

It would be possible to take succor from the hindmost hand.

Far superior to that from the foremost hand.

Inarguably.

We have fallen on the right side of the fence on that one, yes.

And how discomforting is the hindmost foot, or the foremost foot, compared to the balm proffered by the hindmost hand?

That foot is not a halcyon idea any way you put it.

No. We favor the hindmost hand.

The hindmost hand helps us, leads us last through the door.

The hindmost hand on the small of the back.

It hands you peace of mind.

It sits you in the shade, the hindmost hand.

It shows you the valley, the light without trouble, the happy shadow.

It calms the water before you.

It hands you the halter to the gentle horse of Life.

It gives you a piece of candy when you thought you were left out.

It spanks you when you need spanking.

It waves a hearty farewell when you are leaving.

The hindmost hand greets you forever.

The hindmost hand helps you over the last hill.

The hindmost hand hauls you into the Final Alps of Heaven.

Studio Becalmed shakes your hand with his hindmost hand.

With your own hindmost hand you say, Hidey, finally, to Studio, and you rest.

Your long sojourn is done.

You may discard your electrified orange jumpsuit.

Let’s not go there again.

I have lost my mind, I am comfortable with having lost my mind, and I plan on having my mind stay lost.

That is Caesarian, almost. What precipitates this observation?

Por esample: I have spent the better part of the morning cutting up my bvds for rags, making nice usable little patches of soft polishing cloths by cutting along the seams. This surgery is done as carefully as if it were construction, not dismantling.

This is not irrational behavior. We can be compelled to many enterprises like this. The brain wants order. The soul likes clean lines, man. The isolated “cotton panel” speaks to it.

Yes. But I am saving the elastic waistbands, because they are generally unexhausted elastic, which I cannot throw away.

This too happens: waste not.

Yes. I plan on offering these waistbands to girls.

Whoa now.

Yes. To girls who come over. These old underwear waistbands will be given them and they will put them on as ur-bikinis, or strapless thongs, and be seduced by them.

I see.

I see that you hesitate to subscribe to the plan. There is a place in the plan for the skeptic: for a fee I will let you inhabit a closet and witness the seductions by waistband.

I will get in the closet and hold my breath.

Now you are coming along.

I have old underwear of my own.

Well join us on the outside, then. The scissors are in the proper drawer.

I’m there, dude. I am so there.

I told you that losing the mind is agreeable.

Who would fight it?

No one in his right mind would fight losing his mind.

Extremely well put. That epigram is evidence that our talk is not for naught. We come up with things, here and there.

As would, I think we admit, monkeys at a typewriter, but still, we type .

Do you know any girls to call?

No.

We will depend on the drop-in by kind stranger?

Apparently, yes. Unless you know some.

I fear I do not.

I didn’t think you did.

All right. I shall dismantle my underpants. I shall whittle them into magical charms. We’ll both be ready.

We are prepared. We are loquacious gentlemen with magic lingerie awaiting company. We should have a sideboard of liquor and a man to serve us. We should have important appointments we prefer not to keep. We should have vintage cars well garaged.

We should have a lot that we do not.

We have what we have. We are not to complain.

Complaint is unchristian, untenable, uninteresting, unadvised, undone underwater.

Undone underwater?

Correct. One should not complain underwater. It is less indicated than complaining above water.

And we live, figuratively speaking, if not literally, underwater.

So we do not complain.

We don’t.

This talk of specious lingerie has had an adverse effect on me.

How so?

I dreamed of a Japanese girl. She walked by me in a sheer peignoir, if that is the term for a short jacket. My bedroom French is not vast. Underneath were the obligatory bra and panties. They were embroidered with a perfect bold black Ottoman design. So that there was the likeness of a sultan’s signature on the mons.

What was adverse in this?

It was so striking that as she passed, without regard to me, of course, I was taken by a sigh of resignation, and then I nearly wept. I teared up. I thought of my wife.

You have a wife?

I had a wife.

Oh. Of course. We all had a wife. Wife is a synonym for past.

So I had a vision, inspired by this well-designed and well-positioned embroidery, of my wife in the perfect past, before it…

Became the past.

Yes.

And you cried.

I could have. I looked at the girl, who had walked by me and stopped on a gymnasium floor with padding on it for floor routines, and who stood there not thirty feet away still not regarding me, and I could have wept, but at this point I am offended by my sentimentality and getting everything in check, and finding fault with the girl. What is she doing in a serious gymnasium in high-fashion slut gear — you know, that kind of takedown.

Perfectly sensible defense. She looked good.

No. Delicious .

I feel your pain, dude.

Really striking underwear, I’m telling you.

Where would you like to go?

I would like to go to a place where there are orange fields and sweet young dogs to walk in them with. There is a small wind at all times, large wind at night. Things bud and decay in equilibrium, light and shade play together nicely. If things are named, the names are known but not used overmuch. Forgetting and remembering have shaken hands.

What would you do there?

I would play my little record player, a fabric-covered box for 45s with the fat spindle. I would be alert to birds. I would never hurt anyone’s feelings because I would never see anyone.

Would you not work?

Not at more than I have described.

Would you not eat, then?

It is entirely possible that I would not.

Obesity would not present unto you the challenge it presents to most.

No.

All right. I can see this place too. I could come with you.

No. You would need find your own.

I see that that is so. Would you do anything besides play the records and regard the birds?

I would write a book called The Ways in Which I Have Been a Coward .

A slim volume or—

No. Exhaustive, and exhausting. It troubles the prospect of my place, with my sweet dogs and old records and crisply singing birds. I might not write it. One more manifestation of the cowardice.