Padgett Powell - You & Me

You were brave but you were not neat.

I was as lucky as Buster Brown. Fingernail took the hit. Wicked crescent of ring-finger nail was in the salad, I guess.

I wonder if Howdy Doody ever got laid.

I never had a real grasp on who or what Howdy Doody really was. I see freckles but nothing else — was it animation, a real kid, what? And what exactly did Howdy Doody do ?

There is a great children’s-culture porn waiting to be made in this country.

Go anywhere but Dorothy and the guys. I won’t stand for it. The country won’t stand for it, bless its heart.

I want to see the Tin Man tell the Scarecrow he’s too soft and the Scarecrow tell the Tin Man he’s too fucking hard .

That I can handle but leave Dorothy out of it.

What about with the exposed Wizard in the basket at the end?

Dorothy never gets in the basket. That’s what wakes her up.

We never got in the basket either, my friend, and that is what has us all woke up. We are looking up at the basket.

We is all woke up and nowhere to go.

My dog died. He never lost his enthusiasm for me. I now lament that I did not play with him more. It gave him supreme pleasure if I got down on the ground and he would turn me over to go at my face, insanely, insanely wagging happy. I should have spent all day doing this. It was a pure thing, he was unrestrainedly happy. I had the capacity to give something on earth that. There were days, weeks, I did not do this, I schlepped by leaving him alone.

You were a turd, but he knew you were an okay turd, that is why he did the licking.

My father sold his Parker shotgun out of our garage one Saturday morning for twenty dollars instead of giving it to me. I was thirteen or so. Why did he not give it to me? I would like to have gotten to the bottom of that, and to have talked to him and known him at the end. I schlepped right by all that too. But what I am saying is that I regret more not playing with my dog. I think in this preference I am displaying the trait or traits that put us where we are.

Without lives, men who are not neat and brave and Buster-Brown bustamente, you mean.

Yes.

Afraid.

Yes.

Nulls.

Yes.

I find that even if I have a coaster to hand I will rarely put my glass on it. I carelessly damage the surface of tables.

This is who we are.

I regard this carelessness carefully. I am industrially idle. This defines me.

There is no point to us.

I will not need another new swimsuit in my time.

We never needed a new swimsuit. We just thought we did.

What do you actually call a swimsuit?

Does one, or does I?

Do you.

I call it a bathing suit.

Would you ever have said trunks?

Never. Sounds preposterous, and I can’t say why. My trunks alas are in my trunk.

Once I am in my trunks I will get in the water.

Still, I can hear Jayne say, Studio, put your trunks on, love, let’s go for a refreshing dip in the Gulf.

That is the dead speaking, we cannot challenge them. And before they were dead they were neat and brave and not afraid. They can say what they will. I am having a cramp in my gut.

They can say that?

No, I am having a cramp. Now.

You are strange.

Make us a colorful drink with a sugary liqueur. Would you? I feel like a famous lost heroine.

But you are not famous and not a heroine. You are just lost.

Yes, I am comfortable enough. I would like to have a gun.

Not suicide.

Of course not. I would just like some oiled steel, just to behold.

A symbol.

I suppose. Of something. Perhaps not a symbol, but a thing .

The old Ding an sich !

I think so. We have finally gotten one, one we comprehend.

A good oiled pistol on the table.

To hell with the coasters and where the drinks park themselves, we have oily steel already on the table!

We are making progress.

I did not think that we would, in our time.

When I wake up in the mornings the impulse to cry is almost sufficient that I start.

Why do you not, then? As that little imp put it — do you recall this? Throw up right here, Mother.

You are referring to that child in the Sokol gymnasium.

Yes.

That was genuinely funny.

Why was he saying that?

Because she was complaining of having eaten too much spaghetti and said she might be going to be sick.

And they were kneeling on the gym floor.

And the child got tired of her threatening to throw up and tapped his finger on the mat and said, Throw up right here, Mother.

Politely.

Very politely.

No one took any notice.

That is what was so funny.

I recall it now. I am the same woman. I feel like crying.

So do. I will be the same imp. Cry right here.

I am embarrassed at how much weeping I have done in my life, and think that not one more tear is in order, to salvage what I can of…

Of what?

That is the question. Just what is this operation about? In preserving dignity or anything else, what is served? I think I do not quite get it all.

We’ve been over this.

Yes, and still, and this is what gets me, I feel that I should not cry anymore, even though intellectually, if we should call it that, we know one may as well cry as not if he’s as lost as we are.

Lost in the nonwoods.

The closest we are to lost in the woods is lost in the woodwork.

I like it.

Anyway I am unstable until I get the coffee and by jacking my nerves up a bit calm them down.

Is that how it works?

Yes, it’s irony, fairly traded and artisan-roasted irony.

Juan Valdez and Joe DiMaggio are taking care of you.

They are the same person except for the kind of women they ran with. They both help me keep on keepin’ on. I love that idiocy.

Did Crumb do that? Was it a big Crumb foot marching in the air, leading the fool attached to it?

If it were not Crumb I don’t know who it was.

Crumb left us here. He moved to France.

We would too, if we could. We would leave ourselves here.

Why does Crumb get to leave and we don’t?

Because we are talking to the dead? Because we are weeping? Because we miss our dogs more than our parents? Because we are the subject of Crumb? It’s a hard one.

Speaking of rocket science, do you recall hearing children of the ghetto proclaim they were going to be corporate lawyers? Plain lawyer wasn’t enough?

Is that not unlike wanting to be a brain surgeon?

Whence this zeal to specialize when they are so far in the hole?

Doesn’t it mean they know it’s fantasy so why not go ahead and make it sound fantastic as well? Is it really any worse or different than painting a car June-bug green?

Am I following you?

Can any of us follow Crumb to France? That is what I am talking about. If you cannot, paint your car green or cry all day, it does not matter. Tell people you are going to be a rocket scientist when you grow up. They cannot hold it against you. Shoulder to shoulder we look abroad and pray for Crumb to send drawings of feet and thick women.

We know he can because he’s eating good cheese.

Variegated terrain.

Yes?

I am thinking about it.

What about it?

Is it all it’s cracked up to be.

This I trust is not a pun.

No. I think that I am attracted to the idea of variegated terrain, or to the thing itself, and then I wonder what is wrong with a smooth plain—

The sound of wide water! We finally got to use that.

I have never heard that.

Then you are under-read or I am stupid because I think it’s Yeats.