BODY Chapter 10

Sunday June 16^th

Chapter 10

My skirt is much too clean and it constrains my ability to be adventurous. It is always threatening to be thrown up, to expose me. It is a trick of the instruments of social control to imprison me even while I am at large. It was true in 1950 and it is true now that we have other threatening fashions, that put us in jeopardy when the pants are drooping or the low rise may expose more than a belly or a tramp stamp and those plumbers with their butt cracks, which have made them a laughing stock; of course they are laughing all the way to the bank.  That is its purpose. The purpose of everything is social control, our incarceration. We roam around, seemingly free, but we have ankle bracelets on hidden under the cuffs of our pants, just as a reminder not to cross the boundaries.  

           It is after all 1958. I have a petty coat that makes this skirt spread slightly into a tent. I wear a sweater on top to provide proper cloak of modesty. I do not have it on my arms but just over my shoulders, the sleeves flop around like the flaccid tentacles of paralytic octopus. I have a small chain with clips to hold the neck of the sweater together at my throat. My hair is always perfect with bangs and a permanent wave; it is a rich and shiny black that contrast to my extremely pale face and hot rod cherry red lips. Steve’s hair is almost blonde. I have lipstick. Steve’s lips are naturally pursed, and a kind of thin red line. The mouth always gives him a kind of inappropriately determined look.

I can remember that I was confused. I thought I was supposed to be Steve not Jane, poor evaporating Jane, plain Jane. As Jane I was always about to disappear into the wood paneling even though I am the sex interest of this film, the kitten. I feel like some kind of backdrop. But in reality I am not. I am the reason for everything. In this dream, I know that I am much more crucial than Steve.

The blob itself seems like a troubling soft ball of fat, une boule de suif, where enjoyment is captured, trapped in a sack, always threatening to break out to overwhelm our teenagers. This blob is something that I have generated, like the monster in Forbidden Planet. The Blob has come out of me.

No one will believe Steve and Me. No one believes it exists and only Steve has seen the proof. I admit to police Lieutenant Dave that I did not see the doctor dead from his encounter with the Blot. Only Steve saw it. But no one can believe him. The world is full of teenagers, hep cats and kittens. They want to drag race; they want me to throw the starting handkerchief at the the chickie run. But I am busy exploring the scene of this future crime. I am busy standing next to Steve while he searches for the source of this terror. 

In some way, I am on the Blob's side. After all I think it is nothing more or less than a shapeless expanding and collapsing—pocket-sized now, infinite later, consumer of adults. The teens are trying to warn the adults, but they pay no attention; they do not trust them; they don’t believe them. Finally the globule is attacking the diner and hot weapons seem only to make it worse until Steve discovers that it is stabilized—not destroyed—by cold. So they chill it and send it to the arctic on a military freight carrier. It is dropped gently by parachute, a surprisingly humane way to treat a moral threat, but perhaps it would have exploded like some water balloon if they did not give it a soft landing. At the end the screen announced the end. It said, at the end, THE END, then a giant question mark filled the screen.

          But quite unaccountably an alternate ending then begins to happen. In this ending, the police lieutenant and the green mohair suit fathers of the city come to me in my room and say that the danger will only be assuaged if I sleep with Steve. It seems that he is the one who is producing the Blob, it is his own eagerness his desire that had to be satisfied or it would be constantly transformed into this threat to all life on earth. That meeting goes unresolved except when Steve’ s father says the opposite of what he had said only a few minutes earlier. He said you know Steve always lies. He had said that he must be believed because he never lies. But now he says that he always lies even when he tells the truth. I then said I refuse to do this, standing my ground, disobeying not only the assembled wisdom of the whole town but my own father as well.

In any event I was strangely at peace. Everything seemed to be resolved somehow. I recall thinking even though I was disappointed at not being Steve, but instaead being Jane that I was quite happy anyway to see that we discovered the weakness of the Blob, this blemish, this blotch, this scar. I giggled nervously the end. I knew that it was only a matter of time, now that this whole thing was over, before Steve would fuck me.

You are massacring that poor Mango. Merc makes his critique without really lifting his eyes from his bowl of cereal. To cut a mango requires some skill and more art. If you keep doing that, not only will you get your hands sticky, but the most of the mango will end up in the trash. I am thrilled that you have decided to quit eating junk food and turned to the natural, but such a change means more than just buying things that are still in their skin. To be a fruitarian you need to be intelligent. With Mango you need surgical skill. You begin with the cheeks and then you can dice it in the skin and dig it out with a spoon or just go for it and take out the little planks of it. But I would have to show you and it seems that the poor little guy is already pulverized. Merc just sat in his chair eating a bowl of Count Chocula. He was watching the Cartoon Network. But the sound was so low that Jack could barely hear the mash up of voices and the music and sounds not found in nature. It sounded like a foreign language in whiny voices set to music that resembled a child's idea of what life sounds like.  Jack said in his lecturing tone, Are you telling me how to be healthy? Eating crap and watching crap?

This is not crap. Merc’s voice was earnest with a slight tone of protest without being serious, These moral tales make more direct sense than most of what passes for elite intellectual culture. I prefer it to Downton Abbey by a long shot. Jack went back to making his breakfast. Why aren’t you gone already, Merc said. Aren’t you going to the old Folks home to pray this morning?

We don’t pray. We sit. Jack said pedagogically. I sit. Merc responded archly. You pray. And he munched the cereal punctuating the remark. And they aren’t all old. Jack said, Oh, forgive me I meant to say old folks and hopeless hippie fuck-ups. Merc almost shouted with an undertone of hilarity. I don’t exactly see how you fit with that crowd to tell the truth. But be that as it may.

I was sent there by my therapist, Jack changed the subject . Where does a person get a name like Merc? Merc started one of his soliloquies. From the curse an evil king who wishes you to wander hopelessly through the world looking for something honest and genuine and finding only grief and loss. At least that is the basic plot of the cartoon I am watching. My life resembles it. Merc ate. Jack encouragecd the stream. What does your name mean?

Such a name means ...it  means I own you forever. Like Adam naming the animals in Eden. Merc said uselessly. Did you finish college? Jack asked him. I went to Berkeley and studied why the world is screwed and I dropped out after  a year of grad school. I decided that the struggle was a draw and I made a tactical retreat. I would never win, but I would never let Berkeley win either.

Merc paused; he didn’t like this direction. It is short for Mercutio, which Lonnie thinks means Mercury. So my life began with a malaprop. My father liked the name. It had a humorous edge to him to name his child Mercurio di Mercurio. But that was a bit too silly. As luck would have it, he was forced to read Romeo and Juliet in high school and, naturally, he thought Shakespeare spoke Italian and so Lonnie named me after one of the characters. He named all of his children after Roman gods and goddesses. My sister Minerva was first. She is still sane. Then me. Then Juno, Vulcan, and Fortuna, for good luck. It was not good luck for Fortuna. All the kids in middle school called her Tuna. A nice big disastrous Italian Catholic family.

If you went to such a great college why do you work as an office assistant? Jack asked. Said teh man who sells plasmas. merc eneded jack's sentence and then went on, For money. Merc answered. Why do you work for Lonnie? That’s the real puzzle. Merc said wryly. You told me about the job. Why did you send me there? Jack said, eating his toast and bits of mango while drinking a cup of miso.  I thought you needed to be purified by accomplishing certain labors and the first was to clean the shit out the stables. I didn’t know of any convenient nearby stables, but there’s a lot of shit at Yellow Dick’s. Anyway, it is my way of keeping Lonnie under surveillance. You are my mole. My spy in the house of love. 

But I still wonder why you did not go to the center this morning for your dose of Let’s all think nice thoughts about me. Merc said with little enthusiasm. There’re problems at the Zen Center. Jack said quietly. This morning I was not feeling very energetic about it. I’ll go back. Jack said. I think that you are going to see that little scar baby that we ran into at the Waffle debacle. I heard you say, when the two of you parted, that you would see her on the N Judah. So you are stalking her this morning I bet. I’m not stalking her. Jack said. Okay, Merc said and swallowed the last mouthful of Count Chocula. Okay. I want to tell you a story. Well it isn’t really a story. It is a plot. It is the plot of a show on the Toon channel called Adventure Time. Don’t be fooled by the innocuous title. It is pretty close to the quality of the original Star Trek or the deep philosophical and ethical depths of House.

            Merc sat down and gathered his legs underneath him while he told the story. The episode is called “The Suitor, or PB is working too hard” you can find it online. I did. In this episode Peppermint Butler is told to pause from torturing Cinnamon Bun, who is undercooked and possessed by a demon, to get a suitor for the Princess Bubblegum, who is in her lab working on things like getting a soul that is in the shape of little Christmas ornament that sparkles, or something. So Peppermint Butler tells Bracco he needs to be more attractive and he wears a hat like a wedding cake with a tiara on top and goes … Bracco is peacocking when he goes to see the Princess. When she tells him that she is trying to find the soul, he decides to get it for her, which leads to his being badly burned on the face and beaten up, but the sharks who guard the soul let him have it because he is in love. So he gets it.  Bracco gets the soul for her and returns to give it to her, but she tells him she has already invented a fabricated soul and doesn’t want the real one anymore. Jack interrupted him. –Kids watch this?

            Meanwhile, Merc look offended by the interruption. Meanwhile, the Princess builds Bracco a robo wife because he is transformed into a monstrous love magnet by the tortured Cinnamon Bun, who does it to get released from the hook in Peppermint Butler’s cave, where he is hanging. Bracco now has three spider legs and a face that is falling off and a left arm like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. Jack then said You haven’t wasted your life watching TV. You are the new Freud. Merc starts again with renewed enthusiasm. But it works. The robo-wife and Bracco live happily ever after. Jack intervened now with a kind of superior tone. It’s a cartoon, Merc corrected him. –It is an award winning cartoon that once produced one of the best Lesbian desire stories on TV called “What’s was Missing” when Princess Bubblegum almost goes for Marceline. Bitch magazine said it was like the most inspired way to deal with female desire and they had this controversy when they shut down the YouTube channel where it was showing. Bitch said it was an assault on queer romance in children’s television. Jack was sardonic. You read Bitch magazine. Merc insisted. I do. A pause. Then he hurled it as a invective. Bitch! He said with a flourish and exited.  Jack hollered after him. Queer romance in children’s television? Jack ended the comment with a smirk. Walking from the kitchen back into the living room with a drink in his hand and collapsing onto the sofa Merc said sarcastically, And so do you see straight romance in children’s TV? Of course you do. He swallowed.

            But to the point, Merc appended while stretching his arms above his head. So Jackson … The advice of Peppermint Butler should be instructive to you: You got to get your peacock on and become a love machine no matter what the cost. That’s the message of a Bracco’s love life. But he didn’t get the princess, Jack said. He got a perfectly charming robo-wife, Merc added. That’s not something to sneeze at in this disappointing world. And …he lived happily ever after. Jack edited him, As a monster with an artificially-made princess substitute? Merc thought and spoke with reason. Yes … Yes. It has its downsides … but all the right organs are there in working order and the artificial Princess Bubblegum has this homemade soul as well.

            Jack said, I don’t think I can wear a hat that looks like a wedding cake. Merc responded helpfully, Think of it as a helmet. You like football don’t you? Sometimes I think you are much too Finn. Jack did not understand the reference, but decided not to pursue it. You have built your whole value system on the cartoons. Merc spoke while he walked exiting with a flourish to get dressed. I need to go to Brunch. You just ate. Jack said. You don’t go to church and eat Jesus for the calories. Merc said and then, You can learn a lot from these things and he said emphatically, in 15 minutes and he raised the emphasis another notch, be entertained at the same time. Now if you will excuse me, I am gong to get my peacock on.