Why Is It What Goes And Comes Around Is Always Such A Pain In The Ass
Man Does Not Live By Buttfucking Alone
Chapter 31
Things are a mess, and it’s no use trying to hide the facts. Earlier today, Wanda Japan burst in on the author as he soaked in his tub. “You worthless toad!” she screamed as she kicked open the door.
“Wanda Japan!?” the author sputtered, his hands groping to cover his shriveled pecker beneath the crystal-clear water.
“This is no time for your stupid puns,” Wanda huffed, slamming down the john lid and taking a seat.
The author had no idea what Wanda was snarling about. His pun was unintentional, if indeed he had made one. The baby Japan was already quite noticeable. Soon the Palace would see what is fact and fiction when it comes to this incredible conception.
“I just remembered something about Paul Bare,” Wanda began. But then she gasped: “Oh my God! Why have you taken off your mask?” And she bolted from the room.
***
The previous evening, cranked and drunk, the author stumbled on his way to vomit and split his head open on the edge of the commode. There is no telling how long he lay unconscious in his quaint puddle of puke and blood, but when he finally came to, he snorted and spuffed. He whortled and sleazed with his eyes clamped to the darkness, imagining he was anywhere but where he was and anyone but who he is.
He would have been happy to convince himself he could have crawled back to his bed with no more than the leaden smirk of a hangover banging behind his eyes. If he could only make the bed, he wanted to think, if he could just make the goddamned bed…
Slowly, he became aware of an irritation on a line between the joint of his jaw and the corner of his mouth in the middle of his left cheek. With his tongue poking at the source of this discomfort from within, he reached up and fingered a crusty lump on the side of his face.
The first thing he thought was a tick had buried itself in his face—although there were no ticks in the Palace and the object he pinched between the fingers of his left hand felt more like a bean-shaped Gizmo than anything else. But he yanked sharply to dislodge it.
A vicious sting zinged around the right side of his skull and burst in a shower of icy green crystalline agony at the top of his spine.
When the author finally opened his eyes, he held in his hand an object which should not have surprised him at all had he been paying attention to what had been going on in the Palace and what his fingers had already told him. The blood-encrusted Gizmo was shaped and colored distinctly like a pinto bean.
And although he didn’t know it, the author was free at last.
***
No one will ever explain exactly why Wanda came to fall in love with Wayne. There were quite enough people to love her who would have been glad to be loved by Wanda Japan. The entire text of Wanda’s speech on the afternoon she declared her love for Wayne Trout is on file in the Hall of Records under the heading: “Black Holes—Lobotomies In Nature.”
***
“Hi,” said Wayne, plopping down in the pitch-black conduit, “Anybody sitting here?”
“Yes, Wayne,” said Wanda Japan, “You are sitting here,” and launched herself on a reinterpretation of 20th century religion in terms of the life and times of Alfred Jarry, the one writer who held any interest at all for Wanda. The writer to whom she devoted two and a half years of research while a graduate student in Comparative Morphology at Clemson University.
“Really?” asked Wayne.
“Nothing is real,” Wanda hissed, flying off for another twenty minutes on why the poet was an asshole. “He’s so phony if he ever reincarnates it will be as plastic laminate for sale in a discount building supplies store,” she said.
***
The first sentence of the last seminar paper Wanda ever wrote was: “Art is essentially worthless: of absolute necessity and without value.” The seminar was listed in the catalog as English 670, Directed Readings. Informally, the course was called “The Word in the Recent World: Semantics and Situational Aesthetics” and was taught by Dr. Randolph Toad.
The title of Wanda’s last paper was “Dehumanisticism”. Though no one fell asleep while she delivered it, and several students rose in applause at its conclusion, when Wanda finally received her copy back three days after the final exam, the first sentence (cited above) was underlined. In the margin were three jagged crimson letters which most observers interpret to be
AWK
Wanda promptly circled these three letters in black and scribbled sp over the circle and thrust the paper under Dr. Toad’s locked office door. The auk was extinct long before the current ice age.
***
It is difficult to pinpoint Wanda’s mood on the day she noted how the poet’s motto wasn’t even his own. In fact, he had stolen it from the very writer he called worst “in the entire history of the world.” Humanity, the line went, you never had it from the beginning.
During a brief interview with the author thatmorning, Wanda tromped over to the author’s refrigerator, opened the door, pulled out a can of Old Milwaukee, and drained the entire 14 ounces in a single chug. With one fist resting in the hollow of a cocked hip, Wanda tossed the empty on top of the VDT and grinned a few seconds before walking to the door.
She waved her hand under the electric eye, and the door slid open. Wanda turned to face the author and let fly with a disturbingly caustic belch. It rumbled up out of her pelvis for several seconds, like a freight train in Nowhere, North Carolina, or an earthquake beneath an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Excuse me,” she chirped as she made ready to disappear down the hall, “I usually puke.”
***
Materex says Dias has become so engrossed in the creation of the perfect crossword that twice in the past five days he has failed even to notice a main control room power failure. He had be informed of the fact by a voice which barked from the total darkness while Dias pondered the possible clues for his answer to 33-across, “BITTERVETCH.”
“Mr. Mechanic,” the voice said, “The Palace is under attack. People are starving. It is difficult to prepare a meal without power. Ho, ho, ho.”
***
“You all realize, of course,” the Life Protector explained to the chosen assembled in the Heart of Materex, “that you are now gathered in the spiritual nexus of the Palace.”
***
“Hi,” said Wayne, leaning up against a console between Gottlieb Goforth and Cindy Gnomoure, “Mind if I sit here?”
“Hence we might mention on this rarest of occasions when the body politic finds itself huddled within its very aorta that the function of the body is to serve the soul,” the Life Protector went on.
“The shit you say,” said Steel-Eye.
“And since the function of the body is to serve the soul, the mind inside the body must first be made to understand the need for orderly submission. It is not enough the mind agree to the terms set upon its body by the soul. The intellect must also, of its own accord, revel in this opportunity to make the body do what the soul requires the mind to agree to wholeheartedly,” The Life Protector said.
“Really?” asked Wayne.
“Moreover,” he said, “Beyond swearing loyalty to the soul and delighting in that capitulation, the mind sometimes may be called upon to humble its body before the soul to bear witness to its complete surrender to some higher authority to whom its owe rent, if not complete and total loyalty. These displays often consist of having the mind compel the body to deny itself simple pleasures at first, and later the very necessities for continued existence on this darkling plain.
“In the Palace, the soul is not nearly so demanding. An occasional act of self-abasement should suffice.”
“But I don’t have a soul,” Paul Bare shouted.
“You may not have had one before, Paul,” the Life Protector instantly snarled, tossing his notes to the floor, “But believe you us, Mr. Bare, you’ve got one now.”
***
What Wanda remembered about Sean Locke on the day she confused her own name with a pun was what Sean Locke had said that made Wanda cry. The author was actually present when this happened. Twelve tears pulsed from the eyes of Wanda Japan, seven down the right cheek and five down the left. Her entire being was smiling, but twelve tears slid from the corners of Wanda’s eyes and gathered at the corners of her lips. Then they fell in two distinct droplets to the Astroturf of the barroom floor.
These two drops fell at precisely the same instant, were of equal volume, and slopped into the artificial fiber in unison. What Sean said to elicit those tears will remain forever a secret. That he was Boris Vian that night makes it more difficult than ever to imagine whatever he might have said.
***
On the afternoon of August 22nd, roughly one-third of the Palace population was made to stand to one side in the Heart of Materex and have Howdy Doody masks bolted to their faces.
“Oh really now,” said Dom Anickanicka, “but isn’t this going a bit far?”
“Distance is no longer an issue,” the Life Protector said, “We must ask you to bolt on your masks.”
“Says who?” Jules Cey challenged.
“We have no idea,” the Life Protector said. “We merely relay the message. You have,” checking his wrist, “Twenty-six seconds to put on those masks.”
“This is ridiculous,” said Rhoda Rome, “You’ll never get away with this. I’m a reporter.”
“Listen,” the Life Protector pleaded, “We don’t have time to argue with you. You’ve got less than fifteen seconds, or you’ll find out what its like to become an example.”
“I’m a’putting on my mask,” Clement told his brother.
“You pussy,” Jules answered.
“Well I putting it on,” Clement said, slipping the aluminum Howdy Doody over his head and sliding the metal straps down over his ears, tightening the buckle. But Jules snatched hold of his hands before Clement had time to secure it.
“Goddamn faggot,” Jules snarled, “Goddamn disgrace to the family.”
“Three seconds,” the Life Protector shouted.
“Oh I fail to see the point,” Dominick said.
“TWO SECONDS!”
“I wish I had a frog,” said Sugarporn.
“ONE!”
Sugarporn became a small ring of black dust on the floor of the Heart of Materex. Twelve other rings appeared at about the same moment.
—30—
Epilog In Media Res
It occurs to me that some straggler might want to read all of Trout’s Tale in its God-given order, assuming I live long enough to publish all of it. I guess I could start another stack and publish it in order there, but where’s the fun in that?
Instead, what I’ve currently decided to do is add this epilog as an index to previous posts in the order in which they were not written, but in the most recent order they have appeared in the Hall of Records. Links will become active as new URLs are generated.
Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.
Trout’s Tale thus far…
Frontal Matter And Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33