Gilbert Sorrentino - Little Casino

I’m afraid the two girls mentioned in this putatively tender yet wholly pointless, if not useless “recollection” have had their names garbled. They were Constance Ryan and Helen Mangini. The former was the recipient of what she now thinks of as the “unwelcome sexual attentions” addressed to her in the park. Constance was wearing a blue-and-white-striped linen skirt, and was concerned lest grass stains suggestto her brother, Paulie, an amorous dalliance. He put his jacket down for her when she said that she didn’t want Paulie to find out about it. Find out about what? he said, his hand under that tight skirt.

“They don’t much go in for Dant in California, as far as I can see, am I right? You never hear it mentioned.”

“Well, whiskey and cigarettes will kill you in about twenty minutes in California, a well-known fact. The only things that won’t hurt you are the merciless sunshine and the thousands of tons of poisonous automobile emissions that daily add a certain spice to the pollen and mold in the air. Anyway, ‘some weather!’ is a useful phrase to keep in readiness amid the friendly hollow smiles.”

(Another useful phrase is “how do you like San Francisco?” The reply should be either “compared to what?” or “it’s the Queens of California.”)

The true name of Bliss Park is Owl’s Head Park, by which appellation it is never called, at least not by neighborhood residents. The tree under which the young lovers performed their inexpert sexual acts was a rare copper beech. The tree may still be in the park.

Maybe Frisco is the Waco of California.

“Paulie was Helen’s brother!”

Hi!

We’re in the city that’s often called the Waco of California, but it looks sort of like Queens. Some weather! We’ve been reading about all the snow back home, ha ha. We’ll bring you back a souvenir from Haight-Ashbury where they invented modern beatnik poetry and rock and roll.

Love, Helen and Connie

HE HAS ON NAVY BLUE WOOLEN TRUNKS, cinched by a white canvas belt with a tarnished nickel-plated buckle, and a white cotton athletic-style shirt, on the chest of which is embroidered a navy-blue anchor to echo the embroidered white anchor on the right leg of his trunks. His mother and grandfather are with him, as are two teenage girls, Helen and Julia Carpenter. They have small breasts, which he looks at surreptitiously as often as he can, the little degenerate. Mr. Jenivere and his weirdly corpselike wife sit on an adjoining blanket. Mr. Jenivere considers himself to be “quite a croquet player,” elegant and ruthless, but his grandfather beats him, daily, without, as they say, half trying, and he compounds this indignity by playing the sweet, quiet game with a careless air, one of studied distraction, as if Mr. Jenivere is not really worth his concentration. The air off the lake is cool, and the leaves on the trees that cluster around the chalk-white casino crackle slightly with early messages of autumn. His mother takes him to the casino and they sit in the taproom, where she orders a Tom Collins for herself and an orangeade for him. She gives him a sip of her Collins from its magical frosted glass, and lights a Herbert Tareyton. The taste of the gin and lemon, the fragrant cigarette smoke, are, oh yes, appurtenances of leisure and summer, of the complex world of adulthood. A man at the bar, dressed in a pale-green polo shirt and white slacks and shoes, turns slightly on his bar stool and looks at his mother’s legs.

Dolores lies on the blanket next to him and her thigh, her warm, smooth flesh, touches his. Her hair is so black that it shines in the sunlight with deep blue and dark red glints. Her buttocks are round and perfect in her yellow bathing suit, whose little skirt completely and erotically subverts its purported function of modest concealment. He bites the flesh of his forearm to calm his longing. Hopelessly shaken by lust, he fights against a surrender to impure thoughts, however inaccurate their images may be.

The jukebox in the pavilion was playing a song that would, of course, be freighted with poignancy in years to come. I had a feeling you weren’t going to come, she said. How could she think that? It was obvious, from his stupid, beaming, stricken face that he was captive and slave to her, that he would be, forever, should she wish it, her chump and patsy. She was sitting on the blanket, her forearms crossed on her knees, squinting up at him, her face in a nimbus of honey-colored hair. Her thighs were slightly open, and he smiled vapidly, staring at her chin. Well, I’m here, he said. Here I am. The fucking dimwit idiot.

They played gin on the blanket, the cards sticky from the salt wind, the sun beginning to go down, the beach almost empty of people, the lifeguards packing up their gear. The children were cold, and clustered together in their sweatshirts, wrapped in a blanket, giggling and chanting a word that had struck them funny. He finished the last of the vodka and orange juice, and asked Ben if he wanted to play another hand, but it really was getting late. His wife sat, some few yards from the water’s edge, watching the ocean tumbling in ragged echelons, as she’d done for the last three hours. The bitch. Go get your wife and let’s go home, Ben said, as he handed his wife the folded blankets and the plastic cooler and thermos. Are we ready? his wife said. All of us? He got up and called to his wife, then began walking toward her with her denim skirt and worn sandals under his arm. She turned around but looked, not at him, but toward the children. He thought that maybe he should just throw her fucking clothes at her and take the bus home. Or somewhere.

The day was terribly hot and windless, and the sun on the Sound was so bright that it hurt their eyes. This was not a day to be at the beach, especially this pebble beach, which seemed hotter than sand. She was exquisite, glowing dark gold in her black one-piece suit, and he asked her if she wanted to swim, but she said that she just wanted to get wet and go back to the cottage. We can take our lunch back and eat on the patio. Under the trees, the lovely shady trees. They went into the water and then packed up quickly and walked the half-mile back to the cottage. Inside it was dim and cool. Shall we take a shower before we eat? she said. Sure, he said, and pulled his trunks down, half-turning away from her. Well, look at you, she said. He blushed. It must be the heat, he said, unless it’s the company. She pulled the straps of her bathing suit down and began to strip it of. What do we say, handsome, to the beach? The suit was around her dark-gold thighs, and she stood still and looked at him. We say, he said, you beautiful tomato, Farewell beach, Hello shower! Come on and do some dirty things to me, she said, I love you, God knows why.

There are additional lakeside and oceanside scenes that might have been here included to strengthen the figures of love desired, love burgeoning, and love dying, but the stern demands of organic form must be met, and I am, most of the time, the man to meet them. And since love’s magic spell is everywhere, dear reader, you may add your own remarks or amorous aquatic memories in, perhaps, the margins.

However, be cognizant of the fact that remarks are not literature, as Sylvia Plath once read.

“Nor are amorous aquatic memories,” Miss Stein says.

Budd Lake, Lake Hopatcong, Lake Hiawatha, Lake Ronkonkoma, Riis Park, Jones Beach, Coney Island. That’s the ticket!

“Those are not even remarks.”

“The turn of the wave and the scutter of receding pebbles.”