Bed No. 29 (Sandy)

Dear Sandy,
° I commend to the Secretary of War and to Alexander himself Guy de Maupassant’s little warstrategy Bed No. 29 (Le Lit 29). The lovely Irma, luxurious favourite of the handsome and dickeous Captain Epivent, singlehandedly defeats the Prussians after the general vamoosement of the French battalions.
° For she purposely and singlemindedly undertakes the valourous mission of infecting every last Prussian officer with syphilis!
° "You ((Captain Epivent)) . . . with your cross of honor! I deserve more merit than you, do you understand, more than you, for I have killed more Prussians than you!"
° Annie, get your gun!

§

° Lovely dinner Wednesday, lovely wine, house resplendent. Good to see Julja and Kenton again. Sorry about your cold.

§

° Friday morning I awoke with a slight sensation of having swallowed a trot line.
° Friday noon I sensed a slight tumescence in the left tonsil.
° Christmas Eve I spent in silence--well, I yammered and yammered as if there were no tomorrow, for I could see I was fixing to lose my voice.
° Christmas Day, I drag myself from my bed of pain, play desultory bundleball with the Cat, set out the Bavarian ornaments in the Lalique, garnish the chandelier, vacuum--for the Cat too was sneezing, and I wondered a little if we weren’t both suffering from dustbunny dustmititis--, pause for 2.33 tablespoons of French Roast coffee with Maria cookies (the scum displayed the sacrum signum Tau), establish a blogsite for our friend the poet, make 30odd posts therein, eat honeyed toast and romano omelette, take siesta, de Maupassant myself for an hour, break open some gift chai (green tortoise, very soothing), then set about my day’s work of observing the progress of the Guadalupe candle.
° Hope Coz lit his in time.

§§§§§

° Count your blessings.
° For if I hadn’t taken your cold and thus aroused my immune system, I’d surely have taken Nathan’s flu Thursday.
° And if I’d died of it, your tax burden would’ve gone up by 1/300,000,000th next year.
° For our rulers are every bit as high maintenance as a prepox Irma parading her ermines through the capitol boulevard.

° Noel, Giac.

Notes from a Muted Trumpet 

Trade Fair (Lad)

Dear Lad,
° "Retarded"?! (I use this word only in free selfadmission of its applicability to me, to our leaders on high, to our slaves and vassals, to our--no, Cats and Wolves actually are smart enough for the world in which they dwell, Mosquitoes also.)
° Say, rather: daffy, daft, loony, pointless aimless feckless, selfdefeating. Then take a deep breath, click on Thesaurus, and have a fresh go at it.
° How many families, burdened by the necessity of every single member’s giving Befana gifts to every other member--cousins, aunts, uncles, blood, water, grass, every conceivable kinship--how many families have, in selfdefense against the Spirit of the Season, adopted the elementaryschool dodge of drawing names?
° You drew your Uncle Gonzago, he, by fatal chance, drew yours.
° Good going, Lad, you’ve struck it rich!

° Here is the How.
° You make out a personal check to Uncle Gonzago for, say, $10,255,666.39. Place same in a festive scarlet envelope, with vintage reindeer poliostamp as seal.
° He makes out a personal check to Nephew Lad for, say, $10,255,666.39. He places same in a festive green envelope, with vintage whitebread Santa tbstamp to seal.
° Come Twelfth Night Morn, you both open your presents.
° Che sorpresa! You’re a DutchUncle bazillionaire!
° You ring up Unc to see if there has been, by some mysterious mishap, an error. But you find that Uncle Gonzago, Speedy Gonzago as it were, has already set out for the Bank.
° Desirous of thanking him in person, or for some other reason, you set out for the aforesaid Bank at full gallop.
° You arrive just as Uncle Gonzago is approaching the teller’s window, you dash to the open window just next.
° At the exact same moment, you deposit your fortunes into your own checking accounts.

° And here is where Age goes after Beauty, young FaceBoy.
° For no sooner has the printer issued your deposit confirmation than you write a check made out to Cash and withdraw the entire amount, while poor Uncle Gonzago, elderly and orderly, is still updating his check register.

° "Retarded!" my hind foot.

§

° Now in case this advice does not work out exactly the way I intended--in the back of my mind there are shadowy images of "settlement periods," "felony fraud," and "Jailhouse Blues"--and in case "check kiting," that favourite sport of some of the richest bankers I know, is not entirely--o just forget the whole thing!

° Anyway, I see your point: you purchase a Home Depot giftcard for $25, Uncle Gonzago purchases a Blockbuster giftcard for $25, you exchange for Christmas and--
° --and where’s the gift?
° Isn’t it a wash?
° And what of the risk that you’ll overgift? If he only shells out for a $10 giftcard, how screwed are you!?
° So, since nobody never gives nobody nothing in expectation of receiving nothing in return--"How about dinner and a movie, my treat, then sex and coffee afterwards, your treat? Deal?"--where’s the gift ever?
° For even parents’ gifts to their wee ones serve to buy love and dependency, or at least to reinforce their inborn consumerism for the good of the economy, or at the very least to appease the shrill whining that otherwise embarrasses Mom at every checkout counter from Hallowe’en to New Year’s . . . .

§§§§§

° So it would be no surprise to you that I didn’t get you so much as a sooty coal for your stocking this year.
° Nor Niece, nor Sandy, nor Coz, nor Piers, nor even my self.

° And yet, I did. I couldn’t help myself. And yes, in exchange, each of you must dote on--no, all I ask is that y’all live up to your own coffee scums all the livelong year.
° After all, it is more pleasant to love than to be loved.

° For Niece, Stiletto, by Caroline Cox. For Niece has just had a shoe design of hers accepted for mass production by her employer. Well done, Niece.

° For Sandy, a Fair Trade limesilkbrocadeandscarletvelvet Hindu bottle cozy, for Sandy is an accomplished oenophile. Just decorates a table all by itself, the cozy.

° For Coz, Damned--An Illustrated History of the Devil, by Robert Muchembled. Vasari’s fireupthewazoo engraving (after Dante, or Chris Marlowe), is worth the price of admission. For Coz, the firebreather, may as well see how artistically the Western World has libelled the poor Archangel all these centuries. When, as readers of Piers trinitatis iii well know, Lucifer, through the efficient housecleaning initiated by la Guadalupe, Emperatriz de las Américas and Dei Genetrix, while God was off breeding the Giant Vegetarian Cats, has been restored to Heaven, and to his original splendour, indeed he and his roomy Michael have finally made honest archangels of each other, in Heaven, not in Massachusetts.

° For Piers, a Fair Trade baby Weeping Camel. (Well, it’s an Incan llama, actually a vicuna, but who can tell at that age?) For it was seeing that film, and writing to him thereof, that finally, I don’t know quite how, made me understand that Piers is all grown up now, a free agent, incapable of being babied. O Rats! I even learnt that I could be wrong, and he right, and that I didn’t mind one bit.

° For you, my mellow Lad--well you know what it was, the female customers at Ten Thousand Villages were all oohing and ahhing. If it’s too girly for you and for your oolong, just knock out a couple of partitions, line with cotton batting, and eccolo! a perfect little bunk bed for the chinchilla.
° Hai capito?
° For my real gift to you, and to myself, was the pleasure of mentioning to the volunteer staff at Villages that I’d first been introduced to the concept of Fair Trade by my Lad and friend, who was, as you indeed were, responsible for converting Corner Coffee to Fair Trade coffee.
° Well done, mellow and heartwarm Lad.

° Affectionately, Giac.

P. S. And for me? An $8 Fair Trade Indian "Joy--Calm" incense sampler. For I never outgrew the sunredolent orange, the clove King Leo candystick, the "brasilnuts" and handful of pecans that stuffed my stocking . . . .

Doing the Maths (Coz)

Dear Cousin Juggler,
° I had scarcely sipped my first coffee when NPR announced that NBC and CBS had rejected, as too "out there," the United Church of Christ’s advert inviting samesexers, darkskinned folks, and speakinginspanishtonguers to come to church.
° My Goodness! said I to myself. 30,000,000 hispanics (give or take), 30,000,000 african(ancestried)americans (give or take), 30,000,000 samesexers, and at least 60,000,000 mixedsexers (just ask Dr. Kinsey). That’s a grand total of 15,000,000 Americans, not even counting the countless sexually promiscuous single differentsexers.
° The calculator upped it to a bodacious 150,000,000 Americans.
150,000,000 Americans who, knowing when they’re not wanted, won’t ever again flip the channel to NBC or CBS. Devastating to the ratings, just devastating.

° And bimeby I realised those same 150,000,000 Americans would be transferring their memberships from the Catholick, Baptist, Methodist, Anglican, Pharisee, and Unmentionable Churches that discriminate against them, to the United Church of Christ, which invites them (or tries to, if the public airwaves would only let ’em).
° And that would mean two things.
° One, Piers and Dr. Worklich and Murray Duggles and Tex Tyler won’t have a tenor or alto left in their choirs come Sunday.
° And two, that the UCC will overnight become the Church whose ass Politicos will be most eager to kiss.

° 150,000,000 communicants! Versus 10% of the 50,000,000 who voted against The Pink Menace. (Abortion I leave out of the question, I am male and I can have nothing whatever to say on the subject.)
° 150,000,000 versus 5,000,000.
° You do the maths.

° Your Cousin Fool, Giac.

§§§§§-§
Subtraction (Coz)

Dear Cousin Juggler,
° I forgot to mention, that not two hours later, as I drove to Pope, I was listening to AMOUR-1000, the call-in. The topic was "What would you do if you walked in on your husband with another man, or your wife with another woman?" "Why, join the Church of Christ and be one big happy family," I piped up.
° But I was a minority.
° Although all the men would forgive their women, it turned out that all the women would leave their men as soon as they themselves got out of jail.
° For every manjack of the ladies intended to castrate by means of buckshot or Bowie knife. The panel of experts, two of them black preachers, tittered manfully in agreement.
° So I may’ve been a little premature in adding those 30,000,000 darkskinned folk to the UCC rolls.

° 120,000,000, then.

° Your Cousin Fool, Giac.

§§§§-§§
Defection (Coz)

Dear Cousin Juggler,
° And then came noontide.
° I’d just finished my swim, had showered and dressed, and in comes Chaz. How’s the wife, how’re the babes, sez I. Excited over Christmas, asks I. Staying home or going to Grandma’s, enquires I.
° Excellent, most excellent, yea verily, both.
° And then if he doesn’t just whip it out and salute the flag. I representing the flag. It’s mighty kind of you to say so, sez I, for I’m always glad for folks to be glad to see me. I’m just fixing to proselytise for the C of C when--
° --when a couple of Primer type geekoids from work come through the double doors and Chaz, scantily speedoed, is at once all footbally and soccerpappy and Idon’tknowwhatally. Fully deflated, like a pricked balloon.
° Say hello to Mrs. Chaz, sez I in parting. He glares at me as if I’ve outed him on NBC or CBS.

° So, 60,000,000, for the mixedsexers’ll never get their wives’ permission for decircumcision, and maybe not even their boyfriends’.

° Your cousin Fool, Giac.

§§-§
Deduction (Coz)

Dear Cousin Juggler,
° After a light dinner of latkes and sour cream came Alexander. Was ever a film so savaged by reviewers? Samesexers blamed poor Oliver Stone for not making Colin and Jared play the classic videogame, Tops & Bottoms. Differentsexers savaged the film for showing a samesex mouthtomouth in Pakistan, in a Room at the End of the Known World. Nobody gave credit to the most precisely portrayed bloodletting in the history of cinema. Must say, didn’t make hacking and stabbing (aka War) look all that much fun.
° The music, at least, did suck hardcore, the worst I’ve heard since Spiderman. (Harry Potter had the friskiest newwritten score since Eric Korngold. Closer had the hardestassed torchsongs joined to the hardestassed Mozart ever recorded. While poor Alexander just got synthetic moanings and groanings.)
° But my point was, that the audience, such as it was, was entirely old geezer differentsexer exArmy couples. Not a hip samesexer in the lot.
° Even though Alexander presents without flinching or exaggerating the only known period in Western history during which mixedsexers, if not indeed samesexers, had a fighting chance for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For, in actual fact, it is entirely plausible that Alexander and Hephaistion, devout Academicians (for Socrates was nearly as inimical to the goddess Venus as was Moyses himself), never actually got past first base, or at most past second, with one another. Platonic Love--it’s not just a cliché, it’s a whole neurosis of its own.

° So, 30,000,000. Samesexers as limp as a wrungout speedo.

° Your Cousin Fool, Giac.

§
Difference (Coz)

Dear Longsuffering Cousin Juggler,
° And that very evening, no sooner had I drank tea and pandafied the Cat, than Terry Gross was interviewing two guys whose updated documentary on the Religious Right is just fixing to screen. On Cable not network, it goes without saying. HBO, to tell the honest truth.
° The 50yearlong preamble of redbaiting. Yet I had forgotten that it was the School Prayer issue, back in 1972 (!), that really started the wheels rolling. Abortion was but a lateterm asskick.
° And GastheFags only became a conscious religious strategy in 1992 (!), when it had become clear that Communism was as dead as America’s own Democratic-Socialist Party is today. 30,000,000 poor limp samesexers have to bear all the animus that formerly a couple of billion ironhard Communists shared among themselves. There’s gonna have to be some right smart butching up, seems to me . . . .

° Yet, I always look on the bright side.
° There’s still the 30,000,000 left.
° There’s still that shocking headline from Overton’s Hispanic giornale, "Un Infierno Para Los Gays La Reelecion de Bush." For the Mexicans have been watching Oprah, they’ve learnt that no one is free if all aren’t free.
° And just as the Mexicans make all our beds, cook all our meals, build all our roads, load all our garbage, harvest all our food, chew it and digest it for us, then brush our teeth for minty fresh breath, do all the little chores we lilyfaced Gringos are now too pansyassed to do for ourselves, so it is that the Mexicans will have to resurrect singlehandedly the ideal of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in this country.
° For it would be entirely beneath native samesexers, mixedsexers, darkskinned folk, and single differentsexers to lift so much as a frail little finger.

° Your cousin Fool, Giac.

P. S. Don’t omit from your Mind and Intention l’Immacolata (oggi) and la Guadalupe (I’ll get the candles and water, you get the masa, gentle Coz?), la Vergine Madre di Dio ci protegga. Sono sicuro che nessun dio ci aiuterà.