Jaimy Gordon - Bogeywoman

“Z’case of Zuk is unique in many, perhaps in all, respects…” he began. “She is z’chief professional in her field in the country where she is coming from, but, ennhh,” his pudgy white hands clasped one another this way and that way, “ennhh, it is a country in which mental science after Sigmund Food, that is, mental science as one knows it in z’Vest, is looked on wiz-?-” he shrugged “utmost suspicion? fear? So trained professionals are few, very few… She is z’chief… not only z’chief… I believe the only…” He sank into his chair, he could not go on. “What country?” I whispered. He was silent. State secret, I inferred. We exchanged what I took for a meaning glance. “Your question, Doc,” I reminded him, and he instantly blurted out again, startling me: “Vy is zis woman of interest to you?” “I… like her hair,” I lied weakly. I had been caught unprepared. But then I was off right behind him.

( You are grown-up woman , Zuk had said, talk to Feuffer, give him that-you want neighborhood pass? You want me for psychiatrist? This place is howyousay pushover for intelligent nut like you … At first, since blab to Foofer I must, I lied. The world-famous diagnostician set to work; he improvised: Let us suppose you may be any zing but human, Ursie, any zing at all you like, vot do you choose? I stared at the fluorescent light sizzling like an egg on his bald crown. I couldn’t think of a single thing. I’d want to be your hair oil, Doc, to be on top of you and go all around with you and see down inside the dreambox what you’re really thinking. And hear what you say about me when I’m not there, especially to Zuk, and then to jump over and be her hair oil -good godzilla what was I saying-but that was how it always went. I’d think I was telling the biggest whopper in the world and as soon as I said it, it had that telltale ruby glow of truth in its belly, like a snake that swallowed a flashlight. I’d try some fancy mouthwork to hide it, just choking, Doc, er, I mean, joking -caught even more red-bellied. Ah what the hump I thought, in that case pile it on, let er fly, serve it up steaming, that’s what I did, and by godzilla I saw that every confession had Jughead ears, I mean those telltale handles of a lie sticking out, even when it was gospel. So shoot! what the hump! From then on, anything went…)

“I like her hedgehoggy titanium hair, you know how it looks, not too mothery, kinda concentration camp chic, with spokes sticking out like the Statue of Liberty, only made out of gray matter, like some idea she had just blew her brains out from the inside…” “You are saying you admire Doktor Zuk for her beauty? Or for that she is a woman of ideas?” “ My question,” I reminded him. “Is she famous?” “Hah!” Foofer exploded. (Sometimes these days I honestly feared for his senses.) “Vot is fame? If you alone are dreambox repair in a hundred and sixty thousand square kilometers, that is fame? If you are commissar of mental science, and nomad chieftains who hid you during the purge bring you white Gamaschen and call you daughter of moon, that is fame?” “Is that a question?” I asked, my heart banging in my throat. “No,” he growled. I stared out the window. A fly-sized airplane zipped noiselessly across the sky. “A hundred and sixty thousand kilometers… daughter of moon,” I whispered, tasting them on my tongue. “Why z’devil you don’t ask her yourself, if you are such good friends?” he burst out. I looked at him curiously. “I do ask her, she won’t answer anything,” I said. Grrr his knuckles went up into his teeth, but then he petted his amber cravat, composing himself.

HELP! MY CHILD IS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN

Of course as soon as I knew there was a book by Zuk, especially a book with a title like that, I schemed to get hold of it. Fact was, sneaking into the royal library at Rohring Rohring and pilfering books with weird pictures was one of the oldest missions of the Bug Motels, and one of the easiest. The door stood always open, the “librarian” was a fogbound old lady from the hospital auxiliary, and the stacks made ideal tunnels for alien penetration.

All the same I could tell after reading one page it was a rotten book, with nothing good to say about anybody, not teenagers, not fathers, not mothers, not dreambox mechanics, nobody-and no story, no heroine, no freaks of nature, definitely no weird pictures. What a letdown after a title like that! I’d have asked for my money back if I’d paid for the thing.

As it turned out I only got to read one page-page 63, the one I’d torn out because it had THOMAS HARE ROHRING AND EUGENIA O. ROHRING PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC STAFF LIBRARY stamped on it. I had just been crumpling it up in a ball to get rid of it when Foofer came around the corner of Youth and Adolescence and snatched the book out of my hands. “Why is zis woman of interest to you?” he spluttered, and chased me out of the library.

I remember a phrase or two. It went sumpm like this:

doing exactly what their age requires of them in turning into monsters, that is to say, unbearable people or their parents would never have the courage to wish them gone, and they themselves would never have the stupidity who have never worked a day in their lives and haven’t any real fired in ten minutes for slacking exactly as it should be they are right to loathe their parents equally right to loathe them

Well! that’s about enough of that, I thought, considered lining the sound hole of my brand-new pukelele with the thing, but on second thought, threw it the oink away.

BUG MOTELS IN CONCERT

Pipette, test-tube & beaker glockenspiel ,

bed-panioforte …

Egbert Stein

(President)

Vocals ,

catgut puke basin & leg brace ukulele …

Ursie “The Bogeywoman” Koderer

(Secretary)

Vocals ,

speculum castanets ,

breathometer pings ,

sterilizer-top steel drum ,

toilet-bowl float mariachis ,

other assorted noise …

O

(Treasurer)

Vocals ,

scrub tub bass …

Dion

(Sergeant-at-Arms)

Vocals ,

PVC pipe kazoo ,

penny whistle …

Emily Nix Peabody

(Vice President in absentia)

Screeches ,

mumbles ,

falsetto ,

sirens ,

miscellaneous industrial sound effects …

Mrs. Wilmot

(Member ad libitum)

HOW LOVE GOT US OUT OF THERE

Though behind ourselves in every other way, as rockers we Bug Motels were ahead of ourselves, or our time, or at least far out in front of the sagging royals, and we intended to stay there, up around the bend where they had found us, or sent us. We were getting better, every one of us, at least there were signs. Long ago on his druggie’s endless wanderings, when he used to pace the corridors beaming every deadend wall and locked door with his x-ray eyeballs, Bertie had found the Bug Motels a clubhouse, NO ROYALS ALLOWEDit said on the door-we had taped that over the old sign that said NEUROPATHOLOGY. Bertie, now happily reunited to his legal moniker Egbert since (he thought) it had a certain musical ton , had turned up this weensy surgical amphitheater on the second floor, locked up tight so no mental patient of our day would even think of the kind of procedure that probably went on there once upon a time. But we liked it exactly because of that, because of the sick dream of skull tops sawed off like the ends of hairy coconuts and ice-cream scoop brains glistening wetly under their lids. Center stage down front was a dusty American flag and, in front of it, no lie-down table but a sit-up chair like a barber chair; here the poor wretch must have sat with the top of her head flipped open; here (we shuddered) must have clicked the doctors’ knives, forks and spoons to put an end to that mental peon’s troubles for good. And so after Bertie organized us a key we sneaked downstairs and took turns sitting in the barber chair, playing medical experiment, tongues hanging out, x ’s in our eyes. We sat in the student desks around the barber chair and rested our medical instruments on the stomach-shaped desktops and played bughouse music. We were trying to fool around as much as we could before the royals threw us out. But they never did throw us out.