I post this true account only to show that I, too, am a vulnerable human
being.

A prose poem...


It is a fact universally acknowledged (there are so many of

them!) that if Jesus had a son, that son would have opened

a wine bar just off the Appian Way and experimented with flavored

olive oils.  Persons unfamiliar (as I am) with the thoughts of

the philosopher Hegel on the subject of thesis and antithesis

might have expected the junior Jesus to have begun a career

writing irritating epistles to the Second Corinthians and First

Collisions and gadding about the known world on his Father's

business.  But knowing that this career would probably involve

some time as a human torch in a sports stadium and being,

as sons and daughters of men and women who have an excess on the

spiritual side often are, a thoroughly superficial fellow Jesus

Jr. would have given this career a miss and the limit of his

ambition would have been to be the sous chef in Caligula's

kitchen.



Hartley Coleridge, son to a fellow so serious that he

even wrote poems on the bits of flesh that would come off as he

bathed, is another splendid example of this law or rule.  In

spite of all of his Dad's assurances that God should mold his

spirit and by giving make it ask and in spite of no little time

spent in the company of the poet Wordsworth, when one reads

Hartley's poetry one is convinced that here was a fellow who

found no novel satisfying unless the heroine, her nostrils

flaring, threw herself down on the thick, uncut grass exposing

the bosom with the sweet little strawberry mark that was soon to

be kissed by a pair of disdainful lips belonging to Lord

Valentine Ravenscar.



These are the thoughts which, as it were, seemed to pass through

my mind as I made my way to the hospital in the Awful Suburb

where Fate awaited me.  I say "seemed" because a true

transcription of my stream of consciousness would be closer to

this:



..."Hang on, Sloopy.  Sloopy hang on."

"Is that a Scottie?"

"Always liked Scotties."

"Scotties are nice dogs."





But in spite of this deficiency (Readers who crave the Real might

imagine the stream of consciousness Leopold Bloom might have had

if he had suffered a cerebral accident) I brooded long and long

on just why I lacked the gifts of the spirit.  The answer, of course

is that my parents were positively bursting with them:



December, 1957.  I am, as usual, sprawled on my Hopalong Cassidy

bedspread in my room reading the dirty parts of "Anatomy of a

Murder."  My mother is in the kitchen and, as usual, clutching

the edge of the sink staring into Nothingness -- for my father is

in the basement doing just what he does every year around this

time.



Father:  Jesus Christ, I can't find the fucking Frosty!"



Silence invades the house.  My brother eases out the door.

I panic briefly and then silently roll under the bed.  My mother

groans silently.



"Where's the fucking Frosty!  Goddammit every year I have to go

through this shit."



A strangled yelp and then a series of yips.



Mother: "Did you kick the dog again, you bastard?"



Father: "Where's the goddamn Frosty!"



Mother: "In the attic!  The fucking Frosty's the attic where you

put it every year you stupid moron."





At this point readers might be puzzled as to the spiritual aspect

of this situation but these readers are unfamilar with the poetry

of the poet Yeats whose observation on "gaiety transfiguring all

that dread" provides the needed insight.



As so often happens, the spiritual depths of my mother exceeded

even those of my Father.  It was only a few days later.  Saturday

night and Frosty blinking on and off on the lawn as snow fell

softly falling, falling softly on the living and the dead (c).

A blizzard expected and I toddled off to bed secure in the

thought that we would not be going to Mass tomorrow.  The erotic

possibilities of an extra hour or so in bed seemed endless!

As I looked out the window the next morning (awakened early

by the farting of my Scottie "Chip" so recently the recipient of

my father's struggle with God) I gave a little yelp of pleasure.

Frosty completely covered by drifts, the 53 Pontiac encased in a

block of ice.



But then I heard the wailing of my brother and sister as they

were shaken awake and, the next moment, my mother kicked open my

bedroom door.



"Get up! We're going to church!"



"How!"



"You have a sled, don't you?  Get up. We're leaving now!"



"No-one will be there!," I wailed.



"The priest will be there, won't he?  It's Sunday isn't it?

Get up NOW!"



I won't trouble the reader with an account of the howls and

screams of my five year old brother or seven year old sister as

they were smothered into snowsuits and bound to the sled.  My

father, of course, had never made it back from the VFW the night

before so even the slight possibility that the expedition might

have been put off by a remark from my father like "You're crazy.

You're whole fucking family is nuts" (therefore creating

the necessity for my mother to scream "At least they're not a

bunch of goddamn drunks" (a lie) and run about the house and yard

smashing my father's hidden bottles of booze) didn't remain even

the possible that is possible before all the actual decrees of

God.



"Pull," my mother subvented.



And I pulled.



Warrensville is located between two hills: Lost Hill (where we

lived) and that mount known euphoniously to everyone as Hunkie

Hill -- named in honor of all those recent immigrants whose last

names lacked vowels.  Few of them, of course, were really

Hungarians (tho that blot Dooley Nagy lived there) and most were

simply refugees from those parts of Europe not occupied by the

"Wops."  In fact, one couldn't do better than to quote the words

of my father when one is striving to communicate the distribution

of population in Warrensville:



"The Hunkies live on Hunkie Hill.  The Wops are on the West End

and the goddamn Jews live on the East End.  They're all a bunch

of shitheads."



Our church, St. Sebastian, was nestled in the valley that is

Warrensville proper and this cheered me since it would be all

downhill after the initial long pull.  Of course, it is difficult

keeping a sled upright as one attempts to pull it down an ice

covered hill and my brother and sister received many bruises that

they could offer up to heaven as we did so.  My mother was grimly

silent and remained silently grim even as we neared the church.

Finally, we were there.  I stopped, panting.



"Why are you stopping!"



"We're here."



"No, were not.  We're going to the ten-thirty Mass at

St. Stanislaus."



"Why!"



"Because I say we are.  Move!"



And after being beaten for a bit, I did.



St. Stanislaus, of course, was on top of Hunkie Hill.  A cold

coming we had of it etc. but, at last, were there.



No-one else was.



"Mom, the church is locked!"



"Locked!"



"Yeah, its locked.  They're not having Mass because of the snow,

I guess."



And of course, this is what she had hoped for all along.  There

we were, strangers in a strange land before the locked church and

only God and I could see as my mother rose from untying my

brother and surveyed the houses of all the Hunkies snug in their

beds: all the Stefanics and Krysnysks, and Thisskis and Thatkis

too fucking lazy to get out of bed and worship God just because

the worst blizzard in fifty years had passed over the land and

said:



"And they call themselves Catholics."



We might all want to say with the poet Coleridge:



"O simple spirit, guided from above,

Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice,

This mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice."



And I was thinking something along these lines as I reached the

Awful Suburb, turned into Snow White lane and then saw a vision

so horrible that I cried:



"Never shake thy gory locks at me!"



and almost ran off the road...





Stave the Second



As soon as I changed into my hospital duds I padded forth

to show C..



"Who do I look like?"



"Joe, Put that cigarette down!."



"It's not lit.  C'mon... Who?"



"Muriel Hemingway."



"Nah, I'm Bob Fosse.  You remember..."



"All that Jazz"  (Did I detect a note of infinite weariness in

her voice?)



"Yeah, right.  I am just about to sneak down to the lower depths

of the hospital and sneak a smoke with the lower orders who think

I am just some poor pitiful white asshole who is going to die.

Remember? Look."



And I think I caught that look quite well.



"Cut it out.  We have to proceed to the blue area now.  Besides

you look more like Shirley McLain in "Terms of Endearment."



"What?  Shirley McClain wasn't about to die.  Her daughter was

dying."



"Oh, yeah... C'mon."



"Yeah.  Old Shirley was screwing Jack Nicholson who was an

astronaut who was really the devil."



The ordinary reader is, at this moment, quite startled by all

this.  After all, in my last installment I was proceeding alone

to the Awful Suburb to have a cat scan and the narrative had

stopped with:



"Never shake thy gory locks at me!"



as I glimpsed something on the side of the road that caused

me to almost lose control of the Fiesta.



Yet now I am, apparently, at the hospital and am accompanied

and gaily and airily chatting about the cinema.  I should also

inform you that I now know what I have.  Colon cancer was

possible. Bets have been made.  The ordinary reader who does not

see fit to inform me that my life is a quiet and desperate one

and that I should, at once, remove myself to the rural districts

so that I might learn that Nature n'er refused the heart that

loves her (if this be not a vain belief) might, one imagines,

want to know and right now whether I am to proceed at once to the

Western Gate.



And I, of course, ask myself:  "What is my responsibility as an

artist?"





What a silly question.





The point is that I displayed what I like to call negative

capability -- the ability or power to remain in mystery and doubt

without any sickened grasping after fact.  I believe that

Shakespeare -- more than any other artist --is pre-eminent in

this and even though, as Bertie Wooster remarks, his stuff sounds

wonderful but doesn't mean a damn thing and even tho he was given

to (as Bertie again remarks) stealing ducks -- the general reader

might (as many will agree) want to emulate the Swan of Avon.





C. and I proceeded to the blue area as per instructions.

She was there because within the hour I was to undergo a

cystoscopy and was to be sedated.  I required a drive home.

Normally, as any parfait gentle knights will recognize, the code

requires that this sort of thing be faced alone.  After all, a

cystoscope -- which is a kind of telescope with plumbing

attachments and about the thickness of a French Foreign Legion

saber was about to be plunged into my penis --without anesthesia

-- by a Korean urologist who conceived of medicine as a martial

art and was now approaching me with the swagger displayed by

Bruce Lee after dispatching the more cunning members of this or

that Chinese Tong or Tang.  I was now reclining on a gurney.

C. at my side.  Below is an accurate description of our

conversation:



K.U. "Hah! You here!"



Me  "Alas."



K.U.  We know soon.  I know now!  Very rare. Very, very rare."



C. (C): "What do you mean?"



K. U. "Very rare.  Very, very rare.  Second time in two year.

37 year old man come to me.  Hah!  Been already to four

urologists.  Hah.  I ask him: 'Gas in Penis? Yes?  Pain right

here?  Yes?  Same thing your husband have.  You bet.  Watch.

I'm right."



And then he strolled away.



ETLP:  "What the hell?  I didn't understand a thing he said."



I was too busy sneering bravely at the retreating urologist to

reply at once.  And then two nurses were too busy disengaging

my hand from C.'s arm for me to reply.  I wouldn't have told

her anyway.  I would not love thee dear so much loved I not honor

more.  Finally, I was separated from C. and only had time to

fling her one last brave look as I was wheeled to the operating

room my nurses chatting gaily or airily (Jeeves would know) about

the new gurney.



I interrupted their speculations about how the sides came down:



"I haven't been sedated yet."



"I think you just push the red thing here."



The doors to the operating room gaped.  I was inside.



I don't know how many of you have been awake inside a theater of

this type.  Perhaps other hospitals have moved away a bit from

the Frankenstein look.  This one had not.



Two other nurses busied with something at the end of the horrible

table with the...yes.. stirrups.



"Just push the red thing"



"Neat"



Just move so that your bottom is on the end of the table, sir."



"Feet up."



My feet then strapped to the stirrups, poor penis dangling over

the edge.



"What about my sedation?"



"In a minute"



K.U. entered the room and strolled about my body once and then

exited humming a strange tune.



The nurse located nearest my penis said:



"Cold."



I am afraid I gave a little martial arts cry as suddenly my

penis and balls were covered by a freezing cloth whose dampness

recalled ( I don't know why, the medicinal smell, the peculiar

chill) dank sorrow.



"Here's your sedative."



I was, of course, about to inform her that I didn't need it but I

was too late.



It didn't seem to have any effect.



Nurses busy doing this and that.  I was, of course, busy trying

to think happy thoughts so only heard bits of their conversation.

One nurse had been at the wedding of the daughter of another

nurse who was not present.



"A very nice wedding."



"Of course, the meal began with a fruit cocktail."



"They had fish and everyone got two red potatoes"



"Fish?"



"Yes, it was done just right."



"Her wedding gown was very close-fitting."



"Little seed pearls"



"She's not a small girl.  Would you say?"



"Her gown was very tight."



"The musicians announced the relatives when the came in."



"Grandfather and Grandmother of the bride."

"Stepfather of the bride."



"Do you think that's odd?  I think her grandfather had a wooden

leg."



Then silence invaded the room.  My K U shimmered to the foot of

the table.  I wanted to see every move he made but suddenly

the nurses surrounded him and then:



I think that it is customary at these times to describe this sort

of thing as indescribable.  I felt more or less as Bamboo did in

the short subject "Bamboo Meets Godzilla" exactly at the moment

that Godzilla's foot comes down on the poor fawn.



"Grrruhhhgrrruhhhhhhhgrrrruuuh" is the mot juste, I gather and I

was filled with, as I suspected I would be, the most peculiar

sorrow. Why were they doing this to a living thing?





Then:  "uhhhggrrrruuuhhhhhgrrrru  uhhhhhggggggahhhhh" as he

twisted the instrument about with the satisfaction that Balboa

must have felt in the Keats poem as he peered through his

telescope and a "new planet swam into his ken."



"Hah!



 Twist.



 "Urrghertehehr"



"Hah! Hah! Hah!



Then the instrument was withdrawn with a flourish and he jumped

up leaping from the chair he sat in.



"Just so!  Colon eroded into bladder.  Very serious.  Very, very

rare.  Must have surgery.



And then, without another word, made his exit.



"I'll bet she couldn't wait to get that gown off."



I didn't hear the rest.  I was too busy reciting my mantra as

they wheeled me out:



"Bubble gum. Bubble gum. In a dish.  How many pieces do you wish?



Well?






-- 
Joseph Green
The Pleasant Reviewer
Headmaster, St. John Boscoe Laboratory School

Switchboard Captain, Hollywood Colonial Hotel

All complaints shall be directed to:

Camelopard Breathwaite
The Fallows, 200 Fifth Avenue, Fredonia City

"That's Double Dependability"

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