Chapter 17: The Conference of the Bird-brains

Arcane messages from ethereal gadabouts are just what Olney needs to further loosen his grip on the Jungle Gym of Life. Somehow he's got himself hanging off the very top now, knuckle-pits slick from increasing fear of successive next moments. If his ears had hands, no gasping mouth wouldst sound nor bulging eyes behold that tidy maze of iron pipes below. Seen through the frame of his straining arms, it's clear the only thing saving him from a grand multiplicity of concussions, contusions and ruptures should he hit the ground from this height, is an orderly riot of crisscrossing bars ready to bisect his crotch, fracture his ribs, and juice his Adam's apple.

Not to worry, downloads his ego, I'm on my way. And here he comes, the Right Honorable Fopdoodle, shuttling in from the Ministry of Deniability, whose his portfolio consists of running life extractors to shill the unformed. Jowls-a-wattle, he's mounting his throne atop the summit of a Cheez Whiz scend. Put your foot on the bar nearest it, he counsels, a shoo-in for honorary doctorates around the world. R-r-right, replies LOTHP Garkle, the handlers' dream. Both feet resting on yet another mirage of security, he pulls himself back from yet another brink. Yet, other brinks await his symbolic plunge into corporal desuetude. An end! There must be an end to brinking. While his chief adviser holds a press conference, the Chump King makes his move. With the analgesic ease of a world leader stepping out for that pack of cigarettes after his wind-up wife has just told him to pulp the world because she's afraid it doesn't like him, Olney Garkle monkey-grips to safety.

§§§

Taking advantage of a lull, Helga rounds up the cafe's label-free ketchup bottles and puts them on the counter, near Olney. She hoists a jerry can (marked "mayo") off the floor, from which the institutional ketchup will be transferred through a tin funnel. Olney's lips work to form a greeting.

"Hiya, Helga," he says, feeling overwrought and a little sentimental after all they've been through today. Helga must feel the same; she smiles back warmly. Olney looks in her eyes. Not much color there, but he pretends they're green, like the Tara, whose jade beauty and benevolent compassion were objects of worship for devotees and deviants alike. And what if Helga--only a waitress to the casual observer--were often afloat in the brilliance of her own diamond mind? Indeed, what if she were a walking talking repa, responsible in her cheerfully ingenuous way for wakening the Buddha nature in each of her unwitting customers? Ah, if it were only true. Then Olney's arriving at the crisis of his life in this once-deemed unholy place might be due to the fruits of good karma. The thought is electrifying. He seeks her eyes again. Prodded by Moon Food ESP, Helga looks up from her waitressy task to gaze at him benignly. She is about to say something, perhaps the very words that will set him free, when the funnel suddenly tilts, dumping its deeply red load on the counter. Set on the floor with a bang, the jerry can upchucks another unwholesome dollop, this time on her leg. "Buttnose!" is what Helga finally says, stomping off to the kitchen.

Olney follows his own sharply tapping footsteps down the echoing corridors of that mazy gourd of dreams he calls home. Who's there? he wails, pounding at the door of his Essential Self. Apparently no one is in. Olney's imploring fists drop bathetically to his sides. He's about to start blubbering when a bristling Helga returns from the kitchen, mop in hand. The two exchange brief glances. Their newfound hesitancy to regard one another is that strong the backs of their heads have come to within orb of an opposition. Glancing around the circumference of her parachute-styled hair to the back of her head is an easy feat for Helga, whose muscular recti are always diving and rolling anyway, but for Olney it's contortion enough to give his brain a charley horse. To Dester Blut, whose idle, incurious survey of the room has just rested on Olney's two wide open white eyes--pupils having slipped stage right--it affords the opportunity to splutter a terrified mouthful of coffee across the table to the shirt of an aghast Grunty McGhee. "What the Sam Hill?" shouts Grunty, as Dester stammers and dribbles. Helga throws up her arms in disgust and proceeds to mop the lavalike gop.

As if nothing were happening, Olney glances again at Snow White. His milky beloved, so soon to be pronged out of puberty into the world-in-which-we-suffer, is still there on the greasy shelf. He wonders: Did Snow White, like so many of her sex, leave the perfection of girlhood to grow up and become a goose? After the Prince thrilled her to post-pubertal consciousness, did she go on to broadcast in a garden of delights? Or did she go the usual route and become a slave to dusting furniture, cooking food, rearing children while longing for a career, and picking up after the less-than-Prince she once married.

Given the choices open to her, Olney would rather she had opted for a future of goddesshood, her dwarf- and/or Prince-doting submissiveness transformed into the awesome puissance of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Yes, a great choice, he can see Her now, the full-blown Snow, striding copper-thighed over mountaintops, a strapping young wimp-snapper in Her prime, whipping the baby out of men with Her Oestrual Truth. O once knee-sitable Snow, now the terror of rapists and Mr. Mom's alike, their brittle, feathery bones dissolving at the thought of what She represents: the ultimate rite of initiation.

And O the roles of innocent Snow and fearless She mere OJT for Her grand apotheosis as Wisdom's Matrix of Clitorides, presiding then in pondsilver purity o'er the oaty bucolia of Karma's End, where task-champion men and women gather to receive Her blessings and permission to leave this cortical moil. From Snow White to She to the Grand Uterine Jewel: the one unselfish destiny incumbent upon womankind.

Just a-waxing away, here, Olney appears to be losing ground fast. But oh, if only Helga were a tulku. And oh, if only O. could spend a sweaty afternoon with Snow White. Wonders further: did she eventually run away? Golden jock-royale probably went to seed early, spent his time leafing through Bird Shooter magazine instead of tending to his wet-thighed bride. Of one thing Olney is sure: a well-coited woman will never run away. The only one's run away from a coit-crazy man, no matter how dumb or insensitive or unfaithful he may be, are the one's who get hooked up with a coit-crazier man. But, to the point uppermost in Olney's mind: what man, be he moth, frog, satyr or Prince, can stay interested in the same woman year after year? Whose idea was it to suppress sensuality by holding monogamy as the highest good? Marriage, inviting as it is with its security, complacency and conformity, is indeed good for business. But what it does to the questing soul! By the way, wonders he as an aside to the empty stool on his left, why is it that men always get stuck with the questing souls? Said soul getting further fly-papered with the administration of nations. Now, why don't women expand their superb capabilities as nurturers of family to the entire world? What on Earth are men doing running things?

Most of the women Olney's known are only too eager to claim that men never grow up, are emotionally deprived, become boring fast-fast-fast, and, well, let's face it, are the unevolved half of the species. While they, the wives and mothers, grow morosely into goosehood being disappointed in this, fed up with that, and suffering in cancer-forming silence unto bitter death . And all because of mis-taken jobs. Husbands and fathers, meanwhile, plod on with the unnatural task of regimented providerdom which, to varying degrees, turns them into alcoholics; poor fools drowning in their late night cups for a little glory while strapped to the yoke. Beyond their precious semen and the ability to earn money, it's common knowledge that men have evolved downward and are more headache than solace both to the world and their earthbound, delicate half.

"Hey, that's it," by-jiminy's Olney.

"Beg pardon?" asks that tie-tightening avuncular voice from the shadows of his mind.

"The patriarchs have been wrong all along."

"Yeah, right," says voice, fading.

"Like sending a man to do a woman's job, so to speak. Instead of attending to the accumulation of wealth, men should be chasing the holy grail. In the course of their travels they would, quite naturally, be called upon to foster children and look after the needs of lovely things here, there and everywhere. But not to the detriment of the quest. Imagine, not only would men have a woman in every port, but every woman would have an endless array of men passing through their ports."

"I like it," says voice, returning.

"It's a feminine planet, don't you agree?"

"Uh--"

"Whose terrestrial management would best be suited to an ilk of similar glandulature. What have men done since day one but pontificate and bluster, riding their horses, not through Sibelian forests chasing Mysteries, but into battle, to slay in the name of crackpot ideologies. Do women enjoy seeing their children slaughtered just because some fool wants to own a little more land without consulting the residents? Not on your pacifier. Let women run the world so men can find better things to do than sacrifice what is always an abstraction to them: human life. Men should be in perpetual initiation, the entire lifetime an emprise of discovery and learning. After all, what is the Holy Grail but the symbol of completion, of enlightenment. What a sane world. And women would run it, a flourishing matriarchy without wars. No more greed and self-interest turning into desecration of life. With women at the helm ours would be a world of justice, one without the embarrassing need for a blindfold to keep it honest."

"Why'd I get stuck with a crackpot?" moans the Unc. "So what happens to this gynarchy of sensitivity when dysmennorhea strikes?"

"Wise guy. Well, they could rule by committee. A body of women chosen not only for intelligence and compassion, but for punctual menstruation. That way the leadership could be rotated, see, so's one or two of 'em'd be off the rag at all times and the world could just sorta flow along serenely without bloodshed, and international crises could be solved with Midol and back rubs and people could roam the world without passports, using their wits for money ... and life wouldn't be a drudge any more."

"Maybe not, but you are. Where's your sense of reality?"

"Reality," sneers O. "Which one? Listen, if women take over, I reckon they'll rule the world as mothers. Do mothers let their babies starve? Not on your spout cup. Women are nurturing and unaggressive. Remember all those kids who liked doing chores? Or at least never put up much of a fuss? Mostly girls weren't they. The boys kicked and hollered to show what they thought about attending to earthly functions. Little girls are comfortable on Earth. So let them grow up to run it and take the burden off the ones who aren't suited or who'd rather not. And they'd be paid handsomely and never be beaten or buggered in some back alley, while men would continue to wander in and out of wonderful realities, beaming with ethics, meeting their proper destinies and gaining the wisdom it takes to evolve to a plane where volcanoes and earthquakes and human atrocities don't make an abortion of evolution. James Brown was wrong. It's a woman's world and men belong in the wilderness. As it is, middle age finds most men slumping on stoops in the urban heat, stinking and gasping for a few minutes of freedom from the unholy obeisance to hearth."

"But what about sex," whines Unca Screwge, "Don't we ever get to fuck, or anything? I mean, the problem with most fairy tales is they never get to fuck or anything."

"Relax, Unc, this is no fairy tale. In mum's world sex will be truly liberated. A learning process. The only class in town with perfect attendance. After centuries of repression under the uptight patriarchs, do you think women will repeat that mistake? Not on their G Spot. And since mums are genetically programmed to love kids, we can throw away the contraceptives too. All those passion-destroying pills, wretched tasting foams, uterine-withering IUD's, the whole lot."

"But overpopulation, for God's sake."

"No problem. Women will know, from generations of self-investigation, when it's not safe to make love. Don't you think it embarrassing that we don't know what's going on inside our bodies? Accidents, after all, are caused by ignorance."

The Unc heaves a sigh of resignation. "I dunno ... does all this mean no more fur-lined handcuffs?"

"Hmmm, good question. I suppose such tastes would be regarded as quirky, but acceptable. After all, lots of men and women are exhibitionists, and more women than not enjoy being taken--by the man of their choosing, let me hasten to add. What you'd probably find is a large assortment of sexual paraphernalia in specialty shops located in suburban malls; sex shops worthy of little more than a tee-hee from people whose interests are channelled elsewhere. No restrictions and no need to experience the forbidden out of rebellion. Such tastes might even become archaic."

"You mean people would be too evolved for perversion?"

"Might happen. In any case, consent would be the whole of the law between bodies in heat. Consent implies trust; if both aren't working, well then we're talking big problems, the kind sex abuse hotlines are dealing with all the time. And by trust I don't just mean the trust you have in the other person, but the ability to trust in yourself, to make the distinction between what's good for you and what's bad. This sanity-provoking ability to make clear distinctions would have been instilled in you by your parents, themselves free of sexual neuroses."

"Yeah, but everyone's neurotic now. When folks are hot to trot, the future--their's or anyone else's--can go to hell. The trouble is we're stuck with this imperfect world. Sure, if there were no gravity and I had hands, I could throw this ashtray you so fervently wish was full of butts right out the window and it would keep going forever. But as things are, chum, this is it. Reality. Earth. Better to forget these wild ideas. There are laws against evolution in this country of ours, didn't you know? In some states they hang people for talking about sex education for children. Of course, in those same states, the sexual abuse rates are the highest. But that's America, just full of good old fashioned contradictions."

"You're not wrong. It'll take a hundredth monkey the calibre of Jesus or better to turn things around. And if it's going to happen it better happen soon. Otherwise, the nay-sayers and their motto: Stop it, don't do that, it's forbidden will blow this Freudian epoch back to a snarl. Too bad they can't emigrate to some hell-simulating world where they could sit across the bargaining table and throw rocks at each other until they expire from apoplectic righteousness. Tantrums based on infantile feeding restrictions is about the level of their evolvement. What their mothers should have done in the first place was--"

"Hold on, now, don't work yourself up. Next thing, you'll be wanting to drop out and join another religion, ha-ha ... hey ... you're not leading up to that, are you? You were gonna walk to Mecca the last time. Mecca. While I, your dearest and only adviser, had to suffer miles and miles of ill-fitting shoes and weeks of unrequited hardons. Praise be to Allah you gave it up in Damascus and beelined West to lust after women. Now, on behalf of that wise decision, let's get out of this hole and find the Cruzers."

"We're not going anywhere, you sleazy anthropoid. The trouble is, you've got no guts. No will."

"What do you mean? I'm talking high adventure, here. A real emprise. Not the kind you like, with horsies, hobgoblins and maidens with the vapors. I'm talking we find the Cruzers, wait'll they catch the bus home and if we're lucky sit across the aisle from that Inocencia and--"

"No money."

"Ok, ok," concedes the Unc. "Say, how about finding a smoke. This is getting tough."

"Stop trying to weaken me all the time. Your needs and urges are ruining my life. And it's true, I could have been in the Holy Land eating mutton with the darlings of Allah, my soul His to keep, but no, you wanted to drink Corbières in the Pyrenees and drool over femmes-fatales. And before that, I could have been contemplating the white light in a Himalayan grotto, but no, your sex drive drove me back to this sensory sideshow."

"You've always been the boss."

"That's right. With a future at stake. It's me who's got to pull us through this one. In the meantime I'm not buying into the system."

"Hah!" the Unc's turn to rail, "couldn't if you tried. System don't want you."

"What kind of a crack is that? I could get a job if I really wanted to."

"Don't bullshit me. They can smell you a mile away. Their frowns are in place before you walk in the door because they know you're not one of them. Face it, you're outside, and they're never gonna let you in."

"Hey, yeah, but--"

"Like the man said, if you were to set out every morning to 'love thy neighbor' while simultaneously cooking up deals to aggrandize yourself at his expense, you'd have to switch off the shuttle cocks of evolution too."

"Hey, yeah, but--"

"Your very presence is a reminder that they've trashed their lives. It's mean to show off your freedom in front of the self-defeated, so have a little respect, or at least compassion, and leave them alone."

"Hey-y-y Abbott..."

Elements local to the horse latitudes sweep vital airs from Olney's sails. His torso suddenly sags. It, as well as the rest of him, yearns to be folded accordion style, to become a pleated trunk with appendages at rest in a quiet corner, perhaps in the Moon Food's storeroom. Indeed, the unusual transformation is about to take place, when Olney, fighting the metamorphic imperative, wheezes erect.

"You're right, Unc, I'll never get a job. Never wanted one anyway. Then what do I want?"

A slick catalogue of ideas flips its pages idly on a sofa in his mind. He peers over its shoulder as images of fun-in-the-sun-for-free flutter by. "Hey, stop there." But the catalogue flips on to the last page, where it reveals a small contract with simple instructions: Fill in and mail to Mephisto Inc. Your worries over upon receipt.

O. groans. Weakness, all tentacles and beaks, enters the rich pipeline of his marrow cores, clacking and sucking vigorous fat en route to the CNS. Newborn there as overvolts along axons, it jolts further to hissing nerve deltas and out to synaptic seas, where accelerating electrical storms lash furiously at hovercrafting ions on the buffet from a none-other-than holocaustal inner chaos--

"Hey, it's not that bad," sez the Unc.

"No, but it's still hopeless. We've got to face the fact that we're prisoners of my suspended ambition and your horny fantasies. And there's no escape. Because how can you escape from a prison whose only walls are gravity and ignorance? A prison as big as a planet; you can wander all over it, but in the end it's still the same prison. After awhile--how many lifetimes?--you sort of give up and grow to love your state of unconscious bliss."

"Aw...."

"And it's all weakness and ignorance from there on in, accepted, cherished ... an ignorance as big as the Earth itself: a planetentiary formed for the ignorant."

"Gee...."

"Hey, asshole, I'm trying to develop some ideas here."

"Sor-ry."

Miffed, Olney cools, then, heating up again: "Come to think of it, though, if we, the inhabitants of this ball of shit, can never break out, then ... then the Goddess is a cunt."

"That's better."

"Yeah. Dear Big Mamou, your magic lantern routine doesn't help. You got taste all right, certainly is a beautiful creation, but why all the wanton slaughter and general farting around? Say, didn't someone just mention how you always looked after the kids? Then why all the suffering, bitch? What kind of a Mother are you anyway, wearing that godawful bouffant in the supermarket checkout line, and while you're waiting to pay for the cut-rate sponge cake, get a load of the headline on that tabloid: White Goddess Accused Of Funding Snuff Movies. Hah! Cuca grandé."

"That's tellin' Her. But, please don't--"

"Let's see, now, God the Father is Saturn, eating his children whole like some celestial shark, and the Great Mother, formerly the nurturing Moon of legend, is now revealed as a Martian thug--"

"--don't go overboard...."

"--while Uranus, under the influence of Neptune's crack, is sodomizing Venus in the laundromat, and Pluto, the karmic gangster responsible for everyone's urge to commit mayhem, is just a-waiting in the wings."

"You always go overboard."

"Bowl 'em outa the solar system's how I see it."

"Look, let's get out of here and--"

"Seriously, what we really need is some as yet undiscovered planet to become known, one whose benign influence will synchronize with the next evolutionary leap and awaken peace on Earth good will towards. Now that's the ticket. Would that it were spiralling thus."

"I'm sure all the brothers and sisters out there in Granolaland would that it were too, for I can hear their mantras now."

Too caught up to stop for expletives, O. continues: "You have to wonder, though, in just whose interest do human beings live out their heartbreaking lives of self-inflicted degradation? On the mere behalf of carbon dioxide and nitrogen? Brainless gasses that, when zapped, produce amino acids, hence life? If so, I'm sorry to announce that Life is lived in the interest of zip. A universe that just cooks us up and could care less about packaging, price gouging or shelf life. A self-perpetuating slow-cooker spewing out this replicating pudding from which comes all the life there is. A generous pudding, to be sure, even a good pudding, but let's not throw discrimination to the wild wind and call it a great pudding. And given the possibility of as many separate universes as there are grains of sand on Planet X here, then a pudding is not the sort of thing one would have hoped to emerge from. Certainly nothing to brag to the girls about. Then again, that's where they come from too. Imagine lapping up their warm creamy pudd--Unc! Stay out of this."

"Well, somebody's got to provide a little comedy relief."

"Listen, don't interfere with my thought processes."

"God forbid."

"So here we are, like transported spoonfuls of Mom 'n' Dad O' Wheat on a planet of horrors. And to make things worse, in a country where vitality is suspect, where ideas become cause for the squint-brained Right to start shooting. Real life has always been an underground affair because liberation is frightening; folks don't want any part of it."

"Aw, come on, lighten up, will ya?"

"Unc, it's a sad story. I mean, the hypocrisy is so blatant. And no one cares. If people cared, you could fight back. But the masses are truly asses, and fascist asses at that. Life is cheap everywhere. People sell themselves, their lives, for nothing. They don't care."

"Defeatist idealist."

"To me the ideal is the only deal."

"Now doesn't that just sound like the kind of one-liner sloganizing typical of ideologues. All it's missing is a southern accent."

"I'm not about to ram it down everyone's throat, though. The idealized life is not an ideology or a cause, it's a state of world wide cooperation. Ideals are the heart of life."

"But that's naive."

"It wouldn't be if the Molochs were replaced by philosopher kings."

"But that's naive too."

"It isn't. The fact that this planet of negative integers has always been run by the lowest common denominator means it all adds up to zero.

"It would sure make things easier if you joined the null and void."

"What would make things much easier would be for the government to look after me in the way I choose. My needs are small. About $2,000 a month subsistence, indexed to the cost of living, with a modest $10,000 yearly buffer for those spurs of the moment. What's wrong with that?"

"But that's the most naive of all."

"Why? If some people want to work for their money, let them. By the same token, why should they care if I get mine scot free. What's it to them?"

"Well, they figure your free money is coming out of their pocket, is why they get kinda mad."

"No reason why it should come out of anyone's pocket. We the people elect the goddamn government to look after our affairs, so let the goddamn government support we the people, instead of blowing trillions on killing machines. Listen, people should have enough to live on, whether they work or not; all that piddly money goes back into the economy anyway."

"Yes, but people in the know claim the world would turn into a fat-assed drunkard if folks got their monthly stipend through the mail slot."

"Those 'people in the know' are the same ones who made sure the work ethic was in place before they abolished slavery. One of the greatest cons of all times, the work ethic is based on the humiliating assumption that without it everyone would suddenly go gaga and start playing with their poo. Well, just maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they would have more time to look after their fellow man, or at least stop contributing to his misery. Maybe they would finally have time to question their own existence--in a way usually reserved for artists and other fringe dwellers--and begin taking the necessary steps to prevent being born into it again."

"You're a bleeding heart!"

"I'm a bleeding heart with balls."

"My God, I've been installed in a genuine dingbat."

"Unc, if you could think beyond the end of my cock, you might enjoy discussing truly revolutionary ideas, ideas like subverting the Great Plan for Earth and its Primary Species--"

"Now, what in hell--"

"You know, like a successful prison riot. Assuming the Earth is a vast prison for spiritual criminals, suppose a rumor got out that deep down none of us really are criminals, or that if we have been--somehow, on other planes--we no longer have to be. That all it takes is a simple redirection of vision and we can commute our own sentences. Overnight, you would see greed turn into generosity, hate turn into compassion. The Earth would no longer be a field of war, or a factory for its weapons, or a concentration camp for its intolerance. Who knows, within a generation or two, the planet may no longer need to be populated--all of us crims having returned to the refined, less corporal existences we enjoyed before blowing it--unless of course the Earth were turned into what it always should have been, a prime location holiday resort for the inhabitants of all universes who get an itch to go slumming."

"My dearest Olney, I advise you to let your fingers do the walking in the nearest phone book for a nice, quiet mental home. One that caters to pretty women, if possible. You see, I feel there is little hope..."

"There would be if we were brought up without ideological restrictions. But what's the use? The ideal will never find a home on this garbage dump. It's much too late to hope for the best. Earth is a Right wing cesspool, a high density failure. Maybe on a space colony those of us with our hearts and minds intact could build the kind of life we're meant to have."

"A space colony! Are you crazy? The road to Mecca was bad enough, now you want to live on a space colony?

"You're a basket case, Unc. You're the part of me that seized up the first time I came. All you've ever wanted to do was just keep coming and to hell with everything else. Well, fuck you."

"Hey, take it easy. It's not my fault I live in your cock. You put me there, remember. And say, didn't you set this all up while you were thumbing through Keyhole magazine in the aetherport? You should have been paying attention to the guidelines for a fruitful life instead."

"You're absolutely right. I fucked up and I knew I was fucking up. I knew then that whoever obliterates greed and desire unshackles all limitation. I also knew that the obliteration preceding freedom was going to be a lot harder than just getting a hardon."

"Obliteration? Freedom? Now, hold on a minute, that sounds a tad--"

"Freedom, Unca Downer, freedom. You can't even imagine--"

"--religious."

"--the delights of being free."

"Right, ok, anything you say, but here in the real world, we've got real delights. Take Infanta's titties, for example, when we brushed up against them at Sears. Her nipples were hard, man."

"Idiot."

"What is more noble than guiding the glossy maiden to womanhood?"

"Listen, you tiresome phantom, vegetating in prison for a labial lagniappe is not my idea of a life well spent.

"We don't have to go to prison. We'll be careful."

"Lloyd have mercy! Instead of always talking rubbish, why can't you do something to help me?"

"I hate you."

"I don't blame you, Unc. But remember, this hurts me more than it does you."

"So what is all this leading to? More walks with the Lord?"

"Nope. If God isn't peeking through a dilated cervix, then forget Him, I agree. Besides, you'd keep interrupting like you've always done. There was an entire decade when every time I tried to get next to God you'd slap a vision of sopping wet pussy clear across the face of the universe."

"Wait a minute, you were always interrupting me. Every time we got it on with some hot tomato, you'd start having visions of Han Shan. I had great plans for you, back when your nuts dropped, but you've turned into a neurotic jerk. And all the girls, especially Maggie, agree. Zorba would've kicked your ass."

"Zorba fucked everything that moved. What about esthetics? You compassionate sex fiends don't care if there's cellulite or not. Me, I'm always judging long fibulas and round patellas wrapped in smooth sleek skin and to hell with the fine mind ... Unc! Will you stop trying to corrupt me?"

"It's just that we're wasting precious time here. Why, oh why can't we go find the Cruzers? I'm so horny I could cry."

"Can the 'we,' ok? And while you're at it, can the 'I' too. We're me. You're me, just a member of the crew. I'm all there is, get it? You take orders from me, none of this--"

"All right, all right! Like I was saying, if we're lucky ... I mean, if I'm lucky, we ... what the hell do I say?"

"Look, only I can say 'I' when referring to me. Although you're me too, it doesn't follow that you can use 'I' in the same way that I can. Still," Olney pensive, here, "you are a valid figment of my imagination. In some way you exist, with your own ration of clout--"

"'Ration of clout?' Did you just say 'ration of clout?'"

"Sorry. I've been expounding and that tends to stiffen the language. As I was saying, in some way you do exist. Got to differentiate here. It's like this: I don't want to get busted for your trip because I'm the one who has to pay. But-tuh ... what was that little emprise you were speaking of?"

"Right," says the Unc, calmed immediately. "We could sit across the aisle from Inocencia, and then ... you could drop somethin' or other and then we--you --could bend over t'pickitup and ... and look up her skirt or kissherknee, or somethin'." Olney groans. "Yeah, I know," sez Unc, punctured, "sounds kinda lame, actually."

"Especially when it's my teeth she's gonna bust with her knee, jerk! Keep those fantasies to yourself--"

"But myself is yourself."

"Then stop trying to hog the show. You're just a part, get it, far from autonomous. This is a dictatorship."

"Gonna coup you some day."

"Keep tryin', Unc. You've got the artillery, but I'm guarding the button. I'm the President of these here Divided States and don't forget it. We've got to stop--"

"You said 'we'."

"I can say 'we' but you can't. I'm all there is, dammit. I can tune you out whenever I want."

"No y'can't."

"Yes I can."

"No y'can't!"

"Listen Unc, I've--we've--got to stop living for cheap thrills. Need money so we can buy expensive ones ... I mean ... no! Stop sneaking lines."

"I didn't say anything."

"I know. I did. But it was you saying it."

"I didn't."

"You did."

". ......!"

"... ...!"

". ......!"

"This must stop."

"You're the boss."

"Unc, let's get this straight. If I keep listening to you, we'll end up in Vacaville, where, if I'm not mistaken, an hour's recess every day in the downy playgrounds of Paradise is not allowed. Your desires are impossible, so once and for all, stop rocking the boat."

"The boat, the boat! The little man in the boat. Imagine how cute he'd be at the tip of our tongue, trembling and giggling at the helm in all that briny sap."

"Fiend."

§§§

Diners in the cafe, earnestly unaware of events beyond their transmutations of boluses into chyme, are even more incognisant of the inner turmoil of the twitching man at the counter, in whom they could hear, if each were armed with a conch-shell attuned to the man's brain wrangle, a battle of such dimensions as are rarely found outside the daily comic pages, and in particular, at Olney's elbow, the comic pages office of a certain Mr. Dithers, who, having been asked once again for a raise by his employee, renowned knothead Dagwood Bumstead, has just seen fit to give his usual reply. Pow, Crunch, Oof, goes the soundtrack as the two whirl like pinwheels on the Fourth of July, the fists and rooster cut of Mr. Dithers alone emerging with some definition from the angry roundelay; ah, but here, the X-ed-out eyes of Olney Bumstead take a fly-by and there, Unca Dithers is gnashing his teeth while Dagwood Downer grits his.

Who's who and what's to do battles it out while the cafe's diners continue to enjoy their neurasthenic attacks on the hardboiled food before them. Only Dester Blut is aware, against his will to be sure, of the monstrous war going on at the counter.

Suddenly the twitching man is quiet. Is the struggle over? Has he made a decision? Can he make a decision? Perhaps so, for deep within his agitated innards, a playful warm front rides in on soft breezes to cross battered neuronal isles. Overland axons sizzle lazily in the unheard of calm as dendrites dip pale toes dreamily on the shores of tranquil synaptic seas. Tiny protein boats sail with ease into smilin' myelin ports with fatty cargoes for furloughs of requiescence. Indeed, celebrations are under way already, proclaiming peace and love and resolve for neuron beings everywhere. The organism, integrated at last, turns on its stool, grinning like a palm frond providing shade for Esther Williams' tits, and ready for one last aggravation. Chick and Cleola, digging into their dessert of canned fruit cocktail, look up in alarm.

"What's that nut doin' now," mutters husband to wife.

§§§

Chapter 18: Battle with the Bulge

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