5.03 / March 2010

Of Magnates, Mavens and Moguls

Speaking, in our company auditorium, of the smokers’ tendency to seek higher ground, he said, Of course it will all be fine in the end, so long as we can keep them off the rooftops. Turning then to the subject of our personnel and its collective intellect, he beamed: You are all so worthy, he said, you are all like perfect little neurons in a smart animal’s brain. Following this remark there was a great deal of applause, and the audience, pleased with itself, failed to notice a minor betrayal perpetrated by one of its own, a supercomputer stationed towards the back. Meanwhile, our leader’s next topic was the future, and even before he clenched his fist his Adam’s apple said it all. An end was very much in sight, and this, it did not please him.

Let’s Defenestrate the Pope

Enough’s enough, Lyndon said crossing his arms, let’s phone in some favors and shove the guy out a window. But none of us knew a soul in the Vatican. We had to make fast friends in the Holy See. To start we hung around bars at closing time—all that got us was laid. There was suggestive throat-clearing in the marketplace and Lyndon cold-called from a payphone, combing the white pages for names with that conspiratorial edge to them. All month long the police dredged bodies from the Tiber and the Corriere della Sera ran editorials claiming Roman blood ran cold. At last we met a kid who’d vandalized the Sistine Chapel and he recommended we turn on the TV. We did; on the all-news-channel a deranged woman had shoved the Pope to the ground as he processed into Midnight Mass at Christmastime; a bishop had broken a femur, the Pope wore his winter Papal mozzetta and Lyndon wept until he dry-heaved.

False Start

Then Ricksy, who requires white noise to fall asleep, tells a sick one in which the girl’s vagina falls out of her like a sock used to clean an oil dipstick. Beer foams out of those newfangled wide-mouthed pop-tops and I laugh my ass off until I remember about the cancer.

Hours pass without incident and I’m debating pawning this old pogo stick in my garage when I decide instead to ride it. Wow, dude hosing down his lawn says—no one’s got those anymore. Every time it hits the ground I go blind in a different eye. I’m keeping it, yeh, not because of how it took me back when I needed to go but because of what he said about it. That and the curve of his green garden hose, which was and is still dumb.

Friend-o’s Unprompted Romp

A man in an orange jumpsuit leapt something made of barbed wire. Not so fast, a policeperson said, and requested to see his license and registration. The man pointed out to his credit that he was not in a vehicle at the moment. The pair took turns with a twelve-gauge and gamboled through a series of oblong parking lots. Gulls scattered and returned; higher still, frequent flier miles were frittered away. You’ll pay big dividends, friend-o, the policeperson said. I can’t do long division, the man said. His laugh was the kind they use to remove bone marrow.

Tax Dodge

Sitting over divinity fudge and a caramel macchiato already too cool for his taste, Getty bemoaned the death of the public intellectual as an institution. His conversation partner was his allergist. The allergist made house calls to patients whom he trusted to tip liberally.

Getty believed he would have excelled at public intellectualism. I’d number among the best, he said, if such a profession were still viable in the stifling idiocy of today’s cerebral climate. The allergist readied a needle chock full of cortisone to inject in dear Getty’s arm vein.

Just a quick pinch here, said the allergist, who admired the granite countertops of his patient’s kitchen even as he saw elitism in its absence of a microwave.

Getty winced and relaxed his triceps. This is deductible, right?

What for, asked the allergist.

My occupation requires that I be free of allergies, Getty said.

Most do.

Supinating his forearm, Getty said, I’ll just write this off. Do you think that’s OK with Uncy Sam?

The allergist worked at a piece of divinity in his molar and prepared another syringe, cromolyn sodium with a little something extra. What do you do? he asked as he inserted the needle just below Getty’s elbow.

Getty answered, after a long pause, by continuing not to own a microwave and frothing very violently at the mouth. Seeing no possible objection, the allergist leaned back in his chair, lifting its front two legs from the floor, putting his feet up on the granite without removing his shoes.