The Children of Hamelin (23 page)

“Simple, girl, simple. We got it down to a science: we tell the twitch he’s a great writer, but this story doesn’t
quite
make it. Then we tell him why, and we tell him to keep trying and think positive thoughts. And write more checks, of course.”

“Man, I still don’t get it. Go on, tell me what you’re gonna write to this freak.”

“Why not?” I leaned back, closed my eyes, pretended I was at my typewriter and the golden words of wisdom poured forth:

“Dear Mr. West:

Thank you very much for your latest science fiction story, ‘Meat for the Monster.’ I must say that this piece is certainly representative of your considerable talent at the top of its form. It has all the qualities that I’ve come to expect in a Harry Carew West script: vivid description, a unique imaginative power, a sense of the arcane and genuine reader-involvement. However, certain elements in the theme and its handling, I’m sorry to have to say, make this one not quite suitable for the current market....”

“Notice,” I told her proudly, “that at no time have I lied to the man.”

Robin giggled. “How could you,” she said, “when you haven’t said a fucking thing?”

“Ah, me girl, you’ve got the essence of it! Dirk himself couldn’t have put it better: don’t lie and don’t say a fucking thing.”

“Hey, I think I dig! It’s a crazy game, is all. Go on, rap out some more.”

“Con mucho gusto,”
I said.

“...first of all, you fruit, you seem to have scanted the question of motivation. Kellerman’s objective in landing in the Red Spot of Jupiter is somewhat unclear, but the actions of Buglush, the Jupiteranian Muck Monster, are even more unmotivated...”

“Hey dig,” Robin said. “My turn:

... for instance, creepo, what kicks does the Muck Monster get off strapping Kellerman to the rock and dribbling all over the poor shit? Is the Muck Monster some kind of disgusting pervert or something?”

“Ah, you got the fee-reader touch,” I told her. “To continue:

... Perhaps the reader can suspend his disbelief long enough to become convinced of the reality of the Muck Monster, and you are a good enough writer to bring off the tour-de-force of a
perverted
Muck Monster who is addicted to running tongue and tentacles over hapless Earthmen before dissolving them with acid drool and sucking up the residue with its hollow proboscis. But since you clearly establish that Kellerman is the first human being to visit Jupiter, the unanswerable question arises: where the fuck has the Muck Monster been scoring Earthmen for the last thousand years?”

“Your turn,” I told Robin.

“...After all, freako, the poor fucking Muck Monster would be out of his gourd if Kellerman was the first human being he had been able to score. A thousand years of being hooked on Earthmen before he ever saw one and he’d be chewing that slime-stone of his. Your story is unfair to Muck Monsters....”

We broke up in giggles.

“Jeez,” Robin said, “you do this all the time?”

“Five days a week.”

“Too much. Just
too
much!”

“You’ve got a pretty good natural talent for it,” I told her half-seriously. “Want to try out for the job?”

Robin shook her head. “Pass, baby,” she said. “I’ll stick to something honest like dealing dope. Speaking of which... I gotta do a thing. Should be back in about half an hour... unless you want to come along...?”

“Where?”

“Tenth and Avenue B.”

“Just around the corner, practically. Why the hell not?”

“Groovy,” she said, flaking a piece of hash off the cube. “Let’s take a couple more hits to keep us warm.”

The reek of cat-shit nearly knocked me on my ass. The guy who let us into the apartment had shoulder-length stringy hair, wore a denim workshirt and day-glow red bellbottoms, but otherwise looked like the world’s youngest wino or a terminal speed-freak. The pad itself was strictly East Side Gothic:

One big room with a tiny kitchenette in the far right corner next to the bathtub and a water-closet in the near left corner from which came obscene gurgling sounds. In the sink and spilling over onto the tin washtub-cover were geological accumulations of dirty dishes and rancid frying pans dating back to the early Jurassic upon which a thousand cockroaches were holding a grub-in. A white Japanese lantern over a blue bulb copped from the subway cast a mercifully-dim junkie light over the furniture in the room, namely: one mattress on the floor covered with a dirty sheet and a shit-brown Army blanket which in turn were covered with candy-bar wrappers, cigarette butts, ashes, under-and-over-ground newspapers, rotting socks and mildewed underwear; one kitchen table on which sat a box of cornflakes and a hookah constructed out of a Mason jar, an old pipe-bowl and lengths of enema-bag tubing; a monster stereo rig with two huge walnut speakers; four orange crates filled with records. The walls were papered with groovy posters and squashed bugs. The floor was carpeted with more old newspapers, ashtrays, paperback books, butts, both kinds of roaches, assorted slime—all covered with a rich patina of dust and occasional cat-turds. Close by the mattress, a sullen gray tomcat was shitting into a cardboard box filled half-and-half with Kitty Litter and cat crap.

“Sit down, man,” our gracious host wheezed. Seemed to be a problem there: sitting on the floor was a sure way to be carried off by the roaches; the only thing to sit on was the (yech!) bed. Which, apparently, was the idea. Our host swept the assorted crud off a considerable area of the bed with a swipe of his paw and sat down on the mattress. Robin sat down next to him and, after a slight hesitation, I planted my ass in the muck too.

“Cody is a writer,” Robin said, giving me a coy grin.

“Yeah, man, I write lyrics for some of the real heavy groups.”

“Oh? Any group I’d know?”

“I’ve done things for The Black Death... The Four Horsemen... Did about ten songs for The Meat Factory—”

“Don’t think I’ve seen any of their records,” I said.

Cody gave me a scornful Oh Wow look. “Shit man,” he said righteously, “those groups are too heavy for
record companies!”

Robin gave me a wink, cocked her head at Cody. “Tom here is a literary agent,” she said slyly.

Cody looked like he might start to drool like a Jupiteranian Muck Monster. Yeah, and five’ll get you ten old Cody’s drool would really be acid—Acid, that is. “Oh yeah?” he said real supercool. Didn’t know whether to put me down for a square or try to hustle me. I was tempted to really take him for a ride; Cody was definitely the fee-reader type.

“Yeah, but we don’t handle lyricists,” I said, turning him off and feeling all warm and virtuous inside.

“Hey baby, you got the stuff?” Cody said, apparently deciding to ignore me.

“How much do you want?” Robin asked.

“Man, I’ve gotta write some stuff for The Meat Factory by Monday, so I’ll take a nickel’s worth of anything that’ll get me high. But if you’ve got
good
hash, I’ll take a dime.”

Robin took a nickel cube out of her pocket, handed it to Cody. Cody unwrapped the tinfoil and examined the brown cube of hashish. “Good count,” he said. He took a five dollar bill out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Robin. “Tell you what,” he said, “let’s blow some of it and if it’s good stuff, I’ll take another nickel.”

Robin shrugged. “It’s your hash now, man,” she said.

Cody got up, fetched the hookah and set it down beside the mattress. He sat down, took a pocket knife out of his other shirt pocket, shaved off a big flake of hash and carefully placed it on the wire-mesh inside the bowl of the hookah. He scrabbled around under the blanket, came up with a box of wooden kitchen matches, lit one, held it over the bowl, and took a big hit. He passed the mouthpiece to Robin, held another match over the bowl for her and she toked.

Robin held the match for me. I took a big, big drag. The water-pipe cooled the smoke so I felt I could suck on the mouthpiece forever: the tit of the universe. I concentrated on filling myself up with hash from the bottom up, first my toes then up the bones of my legs like giant straws my body each individual sack in my lungs up my throat the little air space between brain and skull and finally holding the last nugget of smoke in my cheeks like a chipmunk. Concentrated on holding it all in as I passed the pipe to good old Cody. Felt every cell in my body swimming in hash soaking it into my DNA, ah yes, thing to do was get stoned on a cellular level a whole new high each and every cell stoned out of its little gourd so the whole would be higher than the sum of its parts—

Whooosh! Wheee! Smoke boiled up from my toes through my legs up my lungs, up over and out. Roger, over and out, that is. All systems A-Okay, orbit established.

Digging Cody’s pad as the pipe passed around in timeless cosmic rhythm. Good clean organic dirt—suck in smoke—God’s own crud, is all—hold it in—essence of Stoic philosophy—whoosh it out—why clean it up?—suck on the tit—just get dirty again—hold it in—live close to nature like Cody’s cat who doesn’t turn a Puritan back on his own shit—exhale—get rid of holier-than-thou put-down of ethnic East Side dirt—another drag on the pipe—no worse than pads I’d inhabited myself—don’t lose the smoke—destroy tension between inner chaos and synthetic outer environment—whoosh!

“Ah yes, ah-hah, yes...” Cody wheezed. “That’s good shit.”

“Fuckin’-A!” I told him. Of course, my chick sells nothing but the best. Class will tell, old man.

“Want another nickel?” Robin asked. ‘Course old Cody wants another nickel. That’s good shit, gotta get it while it’s hot. Or cool. Good stuff supply could dry up tomorrow. Principle of Free Enterprise what made American great.

“Waaal....”

“It’s good stuff,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but....”

I gave him the old snake-oil salesman look. “Could be there won’t be such good stuff when you’ve blown the first nickel,” I warned.

Cody pondered the cube of hash displayed like a brown jewel on the open tinfoil. “Got a point there,” he said.

“Yas,” I said. “Make hay while the sun shines. A cube in time saves nine. Treat instead of a treatment. Don’t be a boob, cop another cube.”

Cody cocked his head at me; then he grinned. “Son of a bitch,” he said, “ya talked me into it.”

Out came a fiver. Out came a cube. The transaction was made and the great wheel of commerce spun around.

“You’ve done your bit to avert a hair-curling Depression,” I told him. “Keep the money in circulation is the very principle upon which Our Great Nation is founded. You’ve done your fucking patriotic duty, is what!”

“Man, are you stoned!” Robin said admiringly.

“I deny the allegation and I defy the alligator!”

Cold out in the street. The sky clear and black and the air thin as outer space and the buildings the empty street all hard gray pumice-stone. Like walking with Robin on the Moon, sans spacesuits. Who needs space suits anyway? All in your head. Just take a toke and step outside. Spacesuits are a boondoggle. Must inform the Government first thing in the morning, save millions. Telegram to NASA: “SPACESUITS A PUT-ON STOP VACUUM IS NATURAL ENVIRONMENT OF MAN STOP GROOVE BEHIND IT.” Nobel Prize for sure.

“Man are you stoned!” Message from Robin at ground-control.

“Roger. All systems go.”

“Too much.
Too much!”

“Scientific impossibility,” I informed her. “We have reached equilibrium without Librium, is all. Only problem is to watch out for perverted Muck Monsters.”

“But the Muck Monster is your friend,” Robin opined.

“Listen, I don’t know about
your
friends....”

“Any Jupiteranian Muck Monster that drools Acid is a friend of mine!”

Of course! Must compose another telegram to NASA: “MUCK MONSTER IS YOUR CONNECTION ON JUPITER.”

“On the other hand,” Robin said, “I heard a rumor that Jupiteranian Acid is cut with disgusting green slime.”

“Shit, what’s the universe coming to when you can’t even trust your friendly neighborhood Muck Monster?” No integrity left nowhere!

Into the apartment, a warm cave in the mountain, climbers’ rest Swiss Alpine chalet at the top of an endless Matterhorn of puffing tin stairs. We flopped down on the couch in our coats sucking warm pad-air into the bottoms of our lungs (air still tasty with haze of hash smoke, a booster-shot) in sharp spasms like a team of horses just galloped flat-out up five flights of East Side stairs, sweating even in the cold.

Just laying there panting in my coat, too tired to move or even think, waiting for approximately a thousand years for my lungs to catch up with the universe. Finally, enough breath back (and feeling steam-heat leaching life’s juices into the cloth of my clothes) to peel off my coat and throw it on the floor and help Robin off with hers, expending last quantum of energy. The two of us curled together in a heap panting like summer dogs.

Nothing in the universe but the feel of her body panting against my panting side in a funky afterbeat—PANT-pant, PANT-pant, PANT-pant—and her eyes dimming and flashing in the same rhythm into the back of my brain—You-me, You-me, You-me—the rhythm of the great artery of the universe—PANT-pant, PANT-pant, PANT-pant—my brain pulsing with hers in the standing wave pattern of creation—You-me, You-me, You-me—Robin’s being beating like a secret second heart to my blood-rhythm—PANT-pant, PANT-pant, PANT-pant—I
was
the sighing of the universe—You-me, You-me, You-me—I was her—PANT-pant—she was me—You-me—we were It—PANT-pant—we Were—You-me, PANT-pant, You-me, PANT-pant...

PANT-pant... bodies grinding together... PANT-pant... shirts and buttons... PANT-pant... buckles and zippers... PANT-pant...

... secret white underwear... PANT-pant... naked flesh touching... PANT-pant... tongues rolling on each other... PANT-pant... drifting across the floor towards the bedroom... PANT-pant...

Grooving together in the blind blackness: two universes intersecting in the cosmic nexus of my being.

Feel of cool sheets on my naked back
—humming mandalas of neon
butterflies against black velvet
—Robin rolling me over enveloping me in a marvelous feather-bed of flesh—
a million tiny pinwheels of light whirling pulses of green-blue-yellow sparks into space
—lips touching mine and my blind universe of flesh filled with the wet essence of her tongue—
spirals of light moving within a greater spiral within a greater spiral the galaxies turning in their cosmic spirals the touch of our bodies the nexus of nexuses
—an upheaval in the Earth and now a rippling continent of flesh beneath my body—
spirals of neon light circling within spirals of darkness within spirals of color in pulsating yin-yang mandalas of the universe fucking the Cosmic Cunt
—circle of legs around my waist like primeval lips of her cunt around my cock her mouth around my tongue—
mandala of the universe flashing color and darkness
—my being thrusting in at the top out at the bottom in at the bottom out at the top
—flashing in and out of tongues of flame
—her mouth circling around my thrust cunt sucking around my beat
—cosmic spirals of light whirling flashing in-out-in
—pure FEELING of in-out-ness—FLASH IN, FLASH OUT
—her universe of flesh whirling in cosmic rhythm around
—yin-yang mandala around and around—
In, out and around
—In, out and around—