Eyeheart Everything (2 page)

I would like my sweater back. It’s my favorite sweater. I told you so when you took it — which I never said you could do. I NEVER LENT YOU MY SWEATER. I was given that sweater by a dear friend who died of an ear infection in South America, Hector, I told you about him. But I doubt you care about me, or Hector, or Hector’s sweater which has shrank two sizes since you’ve had it. It doesn’t fit you any more, or me, but I want it back. That’s all I’m asking.

I have consulted with an attorney, regarding said sweater, and he has assured me that I am entirely in the right, and should the issue eventually be aired in court, the law will back me up. But I don’t want that, and I don’t think you do either. Just mail it to me, in whatever condition you may find it, as soon as you read this, and there won’t be any trouble. Enclosed is a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

It is reported in our files that tall people are less short than normal people. It is reported by our spies that tall people are statistically more deviant in this respect. It is reported in our files that normal people are in all ways more normal than abnormal people, and therefore better from a governmental standpoint, and more aesthetically pleasing to the Census Bureau. It is the policy of this organization to subvert contemporary ideas of normalcy, and to replace them with our own far more normal values.

The two organizations that stand in the way of homosexuals’ relentless pursuit of human rights — at the cost of widespread public embarrassment! — are the United States Armed Forces and the Boy Scouts of America. Today the President issued a decree striking down the age-old ban on homosexuality in the Boy Scouts. Later today the newly formed Boy’s Council On Those Nasty Homosexuals accused the president of subverting contemporary ideas of normalcy, with the intent to replace them with his own far more normal values.

The two organizations that stand in the way of the president’s relentless pursuit of human rights for homosexuals — at the possible expense of a certain loss of innocence of every citizen above the age of thirty! — are the U. S. Congress and the Supreme Court. Today the Supreme Court struck down, by Presidential decree, the age-old ban on homosexuality in the Congress. It is reported in our files that more than ten percent of all members of Congress are homosexuals, or in some other way not normal. The freshly-

gerrymandered House Unspeakable Activities Committee issued a statement today to the effect that allowing homosexuality in the Congress will present insurmountable morale problems. Spokesmen and spokespersons insisted that separate bathroom facilities will become necessary, at a cost to taxpayers of over three hundred million billion trillion dollars, at a time when the federal debt is so large that some members of Congress get all turned-on just thinking about it. It was also insinuated that the House of Representatives would have to be redesigned completely, to accommodate one long row of chairs, over four hundred seats wide, so that no Representative would have a homosexual sitting directly behind him.

Today a source from deep within the Boy Scouts of America confessed to the press that a homosexual Representative had indeed been sitting directly behind him, on and off for many months, and that he had actually kind of enjoyed it.

Today the press attacked the Senators and the Representatives for their dishonesty and their sycophantic devotion to normalcy. The press, armed with makeshift spears and explosive exposés, surrounded the Capitol building for twelve hours, cutting off all access other than interviews. One man, an Eyewitness Mobile News Unit driver, loaded his Eyewitness Mobile News Unit with plastic explosives and attempted a suicide assault on the blockades, with a seething mass of journalists behind him set to stream in through the gaping hole. But his Eyewitness Mobile News Unit Special Live Report was preempted by the network affiliate’s Super Double Special Live Instant Action News Report of his kamikaze attempt, and the cancellation took all the fight out of him. He turned his videocam upon himself, thrust the lens in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His epiglottis just couldn’t handle the fame. The National Guard restored peace to the scene with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Today the just-coalesced citizen’s action group, Citizens Who Are Afraid Of Homosexuals For Some Reason, rallied around the Washington Monument in protest of the President’s war on normalcy. When the monument swelled to six times its usual size, the protesters ran away. A Navy team of combat urologists was sent in to defuse the situation, and then the National Guard restored peace to the scene with tear gas and rubber bullets.

In our files are listed the names of all citizens in the United States who are male, who are living with other males other than family members, who have been living together for more than a year, who are not macho. This information is easily culled from mailing lists. In a national security situation, these men can all be rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to detainment camps in the Arizona desert which are already constructed. In our files are listed the names of all citizens of the United States who have purchased AIDS-therapeutic drugs such as ATZ. Beleaguered pharmaceutical companies are happy to supply us this information. In a national security situation, these citizens could all be rounded up in the middle of the night and made to just disappear, forever. In our files are the names of all citizens of the United States who exhibit a standard Normalcy Fluctuation Index greater than thirteen per cent, calculated on their answers to the previous U.S. Census. In a national security situation, these citizens could be targeted by orbiting satellites as soon as they left their houses in the morning.

None of this will be possible if homosexuals are allowed to join the military.

Slowly, languorously you roll your pink socks up your smooth calves as I slip one leg, then two, deeper into the legs of my loose, loose trousers. You slide seductively farther away on the tan print sofa, shuddering slightly as you do the clasp on your brassiere, slide into your dress, your boots, your galoshes. My cock grows soft, softer as you spray me with the cold, wet garden hose. I talk about the economy to get you even less excited, and then I don my moist, dripping poncho.

I move even further away, humming lowly as I file my change of address forms. (The way you stop calling me makes me so steamy.) Now you are shaving your head, piercing your nose, changing your name, moving to Austria. You don another sweater. My cock is so flaccid and squeezably soft that I grow incontinent. Your nipples droop with restrained boredom. An icicle dangles seductively from your crotch.

“Are you ready?” I telegram as I mount my turgid space probe, clamping down my helmet and my thick, thick gauntlets. “I am pushing, ramming myself farther away. Beg me to leave!”

“Oh, god yes, go away, oh!” is your e-mail response from your concrete bunker. There you have encased yourself in quick-drying plaster and dry leather straps. The buckles chafe. My manhood shrinks to the subatomic scale. Your tits fall off. The rocket fires.

I exit you.

“Oooh! Yeah! Farther! FARTHER!” you scream as I approach infinity. My joints stiffen. “Hold on ... I’m going!”

“Me too! I’m going! I’m gone!”

The universe fades as we anticlimax together. I roll off the sofa and look for a cigarette but the cigarettes are all smoked. Then I remember we’re both dead anyway, so I smoke myself.

A pollster called me up to ask me who I planned to vote for. I told her I planned to vote for the candidate with the big floppy hat. She went on to inform me that the other candidate also has a big floppy hat, bigger and floppier, even, and that my candidate’s hat is rumored by scientists to actually be quite stiff. I told her I wasn’t listening and she said her candidate doesn’t listen either. I asked her who she worked for. She said she was from Citizens to Change My Mind.

I told her: I’m sticking with my candidate. Not only does he have a floppy hat and big goofy shoes, he’d had a real red rubber nose, American made, ever since he was mayor of Palm Springs. He sleeps with it on, though his wife protests. I told her: I demand real frivolity in government. I demand a Bozo.

She told me she liked that in a man, one thing led to another and soon enough we’d arranged a lunch date at a cheap eatery near my flat, a trendy place known for its vox populi, usually on rye. I waited there for her in my bleeding-heart-red jacket and size 24 shoes. When she arrived I was startled by her unconservative looks. Her hair: curly red. Her eyes: cobalt yellow. Her dress: none. Her breasts, firm but hardly overregulated, jutted forth to present areolas the size of campaign lapel buttons. I told her I found her blatant emotional appeal enticing. Well, she said, it’s only a week until the election.

Walking home along the waterfront we witnessed a shootout between supporters of Bozo and supporters of the incumbent, armed with rapid-fire urban assault rifles of the variety that her candidate would ban and mine would restrict. The gunners hid behind steel-reinforced campaign signs staked into the small patches of dirt where trees refused to grow. Vote Trust. Vote Change. Yes On Measure No. No On Measure Yes. If You Love Children, Vote For Guns. We dove through the crossfire and ducked down a side alley, where we each made fumbling attempts to shield the other’s body with our own. Everything was going well until she told me to get on my knees and beg.

“Beg for what exactly?” I asked, because I try always to keep abreast of the issues.

“Beg for the following: entitlement programs, educational excellence, freedom of speech, freedom of choice, freedom of religion, honesty in government, absolution from sin, a chicken in every pot, and an end to global warming.”

“You sadist!” I cried. She left in tears, and I walked home alone, feeling dirty, feeling used. And yet ... somehow, secretly thrilled.

I arrived home to find a steaming, smelly pile of campaign literature puddled in the front hall. Vandals had stuffed it through my mail slot. I fetched a sponge and some ammonia from the kitchen, but when I bent to sop up the mess, I caught a whiff of her perfume, the aroma of her campaign. Eau de Franco, a distinctive blend of patchouli and snake oil. My mother wore it when I was in high school. The nose, they say, is the quickest path to a man’s vote.

I carefully scooped up a slate card and sniffed the pungent aroma. I had forgotten the smell of ink that wasn’t soy-based. I picked up another flier, lifted my shirt and rubbed the warm, slimy propaganda across my nipples. The mild sting was titillating. My mind seethed with images of an all-nude hot-pork-wrestling match between the left and right wings of the Supreme Court. I saw Rheinquist, his tight red face and tortured lips quivering with each slap of a marinated ham hock on the prostrate, wrinkled buttocks of Clarence Thomas. As I slid my fingers past my belt I imagined that down the street a busload of children from a poor congressional district was driving past the shiny new astrodome, when out from the revolving toll gates poured a thousand American Gladiators, steroids dripping from their freshly shaven glistening backs. I saw them lay siege to the bus with enormous Q-Tips and tennis ball cannons. One by one the windows exploded inwards, the children were pulled out and passed, arm over arm, to the stainless steel feeder bin of the giant threshing device, stenciled “VOTE HERE”. America needs these children’s testosterone. America needs their skin. American needs their votes. American needs ...