Ishmael Reed - The Free-Lance Pallbearers

“But didn’t they get upset at all the invective from that tape recorder? And what about the news stories?”

“Aw man, you got them kats all wrong. Why, they’re real swingers. You should see them up there getting away. Why, they stomp up a storm.”

“YOU’VE BEEN TO THE HARRY SAM MOTEL?” I asked.

“Sure, baby, they’re my best customers. Why, I just go up there and ring the bell like a little old Avon lady and stone take care of business. I mean, those kats are not like the creeps around here: eating a whole lot of dumb brown rice and taking up collections for a gallon of Paisano wine or kneeling and worshiping some big fat lazy gook. They are really TOGETHER. I mean, it’s a groovy nowhere, if you know how.”

I felt better.

“Here,” Cipher said, giving me a slim ruffled cigarette. “The kids up at Walden High School smoke these. Take a drag.”

I felt much better. “Well, Cipher, do you really think that I can make a career at BECOMINGS and study loopholes too?”

“Sure, baby,” Cipher answered. “Why, the art crowd is crazy about you. Look at what this kat in the Deformed Demokrat says:

AFTER BEING STUMPED BY CECIL TAYLOR AND ARCHIE SHEPP IT DID THIS CRIPPLED MIND SOME GOOD TO SEE OL BONES

“He said that about me?” I asked, pleased.

“Sure, my man, you’re on your way to big things. Now let me get back to my article before the typewriter gets lockjaw and gum in the keys.”

I walked out of the loft possessed. A BECOMINGS person. I was really on the way now. I went into a store and bought a cigarette holder, a beret and some shades. Then I went into the drugstore and purchased Band-Aids, gauze and iodine. I decided to buy Buck magazine to read one of Cipher’s jazz articles before going to bed. I settled back and leafed through the pages until I saw Cipher’s by-line:

HOW TO BE A HIP KITTY AND A COOL COOL DADDY O

The next month went by rapidly with Cipher and me playing to standing-room-only crowds in the Hamptons, Provincetown, Woodstock, and Fremont, Ohio. I was invited to make personal appearances on radio and television; but soon it became known-after an interview in the Deformed Demokrat -that I was a loner, preferring to remain near the midnight oil — as it were — shirt-sleeved and diligently poring over Nazarene volumes. After this they stopped pestering me.

All the hippy bishops from the Church of Christ’s Disciples sent me fan mail; some even went so far as to send me the rattlesnake leavings from their altars.

My name appeared in the newspapers each day:

DOOPEYDUK WARNS: FROGS, BOILS, LOCUSTS, FIRE, GLACIERS, ASTEROIDS.

One day I received a small linen cloth envelope. I enacted somersaults over its contents,

YOU ARE INVITED TO A BAD TRIP

AT THE HARRY SAM MOTEL. MUSIC BY CHET BAKER

FUN, STROBOSCOPIC LIGHTS, HOOPLA HOOPS AND

FRANK FRANKS (SMILE)

a driver will call for you at 12:00 A.M. August 6th, 1945

I looked at my gold pocket watch. (That was tomorrow night.)

Just as I started up the steps the telephone rang. On the other end a voice exclaimed, “Mr. Doopeyduk, this is the Allen Hangup Show again. We would like to interview you tonight on the subject of ‘Git It On.’”

“Look, my man” (going colored on the kat), “I cannot be participating in no show. I thought you fellows knew that I’m studying the Nazarene faith in my spare time. Why, just the other day Nancy Spellman and I were discussing game theory. The Bishop seemed quite worried.”

“Mr. Doopeyduk,” the voice said. “I neglected to say that Cipher and I are good friends and I thought-seeing as how he’s done you so many favors-you might do it as a favor to him. He and I run a head shop out on Fire Island. We give up strange recipes to people.”

“I’ll make an exception this time,” I said. “As a favor to Cipher, but in the future you won’t be successful enlisting me for the show.”

“O, WONDERFUL, Mr. Doopeyduk,” the voice answered. “See you tonight.”

We sat on a sofa behind a table with a tea service on the top. Allen Hangup had his blond hair done at Mlle. Pandy Matzabald’s Mudpie Salon. Little pockets of flesh hung underneath his eyelids. He was a middle-aged medium-height man wearing a mod tie. A man stood before us holding a card which was the signal for the show to begin. It was one of those informal programs in which the viewer could even witness the cameras wheeling in and out of the studio, bare except for a round platform supporting the sofa and table.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hangup began. “Our guest tonight is none other than the star of the Broadway-three-offs-removed hit, ‘Git It On.’ ‘Git It On’ has become such a box-office success that it’s being considered for the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts.”

It wasn’t warm in the studio, but nevertheless Hangup began removing his tie and moving a finger around his wet collar.

“It’s been unanimously acclaimed by the trustees of the Eugene Saxton Foundation and such magazines as Good Housekeeping . If you haven’t seen ‘Git It On’ before, see it now. It’s in its fourth week,” he started to say but then sticking his tongue over the side of his lip and panting, he lunged for my throat and throwing his papers to the floor shouted, “OKAY DOOPEYDUK, TELL US WHEN WE GONE GIT IT ON.”

“MAN, WILL SOMEBODY GET THIS KAT OFF ME?” I yelled. The man in the control room bolted through its door and came to my assistance, giving him a cup of Miltown and water. A commercial was substituted.

“DO YOU HAVE A CHINAMAN IN YOUR DUMBWAITER?”

When Allen Hangup was perfectly calm a man holding an earphone and bending on one knee reprimanded the moderator. “Hangup, we warned you about this. If you continue to break down each time ‘Git It On’ is the topic for the Allen Hangup Show, we’ll just have to call upstairs and see if J.C. can’t get somebody else for the gig.”

“I know. I know,” said Hangup, shaking his head sadly and turning to me. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Doopeyduk. It’s just that they’ve had twelve moderators before me who had the same problem. They expect you to be a passionless machine like those cameras over there. But I’m not a stone, an empty shell; I’m human and I get damp in the crotch like all the others (sigh) when ‘Git It On’ is discussed.”

“I can forgive passion,” I answered, “but the next time watch the vines, my man. They’re expensive,” I said, tidying my mussed suit.

“Just be careful,” the engineer said to Hangup and returned to the studio.

The commercial was concluding-“THEN TAKE DAT GOOK BY THE NECK AND SLAM DAT GOOK. …”

The show continued.

“Mr. Doopeyduk,” the composed Hangup said, “what do you think about this grand place?”

“Grand? Are you for real? You call this FAR OUT grand? Why, the only issue is whether those kats up there in the watercloset (FCC rules were stringent) will get off their big fat rumps and come out.”

“Mr. Doopeyduk,” Hangup continued, “why I haven’t heard such vile language about the land we all love since my years in radio. Such demagogic things to say about this country.”

“Land! Country! Man, those people have been up there in that foul nasty place for thirty years dripping feces everywhere they prowl and you got the nerve to talk about land and country. Are you off the wall?”

“Mr. Doopeyduk, this is the bastion of liberty and democracy, the citadel of fair play, the bulwark of individual liberty.”

“Aw man, cut out the stone walls. Why, anybody in his right mind knows that this is a BIG WAY-OUT BRINGDOWN,” I said, my voice rising. “There are things going on in HARRY SAM that will give you the willies. It bothers me ’cause I loves HIMSELF so much. Bats fly into his stomach walls and shit in his brain. And there’s horrible screaming inside as funny lookin’ monsters tramp through his testicles searching for food. Enchanted areas where the undead travel around on motorized golf carts. Why, I can go on for days. A bunch of ol people singing ‘Roger Young’ off-key, forgetting the words and trying to unload Hadrian’s rock on suckers. A collection of rusty trumpets and a wheelbarrow full of heroic couplets and fugues. Who in his right mind would want to buy a rock or a wheelbarrow full of dead verse? Why, just the other day I saw a man running out of a bar yelling: ‘Just like Munich, just like Munich.’ WHAT THE FUK DOES MUNICH HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? You can only hear that kind of talk in some place where people pine over classical American vamps, where judges comb their hair with two-foot combs …”