The Dick Gibson Show (38 page)

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: All righty.
(to his mute guests)
No coaching from the audience. The question is … Why? Do you have that? Would you like me to repeat the question?

M
EL
S
ON
: Would you repeat the question?

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: Surely.
Why?

M
EL
S
ON
: Sin.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: Sin?

M
EL
S
ON
: Sin, sir.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: Sincerely?

M
EL
S
ON
: Sine qua nonly.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: Could you develop that a little? This is an essay question.

M
EL
S
ON
: Well …
because.
Let’s just say that I’m petitioning for an undress of griefiness.

Mel Son’s Story:

Mel Son was a normal child, no more curious than any other child his age—and no less. His hands had spent time in his mother’s brassieres; he’d fingered Dad’s jock and spied on Sis. But necessity wasn’t involved. It was just that same neutral obligation that makes an older boy smoke his first cigarette or one ten years younger sit behind the steering wheel of the family car while his mother shops.

Puberty hit him as hard as it does others, but if he was uncomfortable he was no more so than anyone else. It was as normal as the day is long. There were wet dreams—I don’t remember them, only the sensations—and some masturbation—I found it difficult; I could never really decide what to think about—and once in a while dates. It was a routine adolescence, steady as she goes.

Then, one night when I was fifteen years old, an old man sat next to me in a movie theater. He put his hand on me and stroked me till I came. It felt good and I let him. Maybe it was because there was a girl with me and my senses were already aroused, or that I knew that there was no chance, absolutely no chance in the world, that this girl would do to me what the old man was doing. Or it may have been something else, something about the old man’s surreptitious skill. Sly and smooth he was as a pickpocket … Whatever, I let him.

Do you see what I’m driving at? Do you know what I’m saying? That I’m queer? No! It was
normal.
That the pressures I felt, the feelings I had—they were
mine,
my own. What did they have to do with girls or women? What did they have to do even with that old man in the theater? Do you see? It was
my
thigh,
my
neck,
my
cock,
my
balls. Not pussy, not tits. It was my young man’s own ass I sat on, my skin I lived in, my reflexive flesh.
I never made the leap of sex.

And how
is
it made? What round peg/round hole argument in sex waiting on puberty like the plain geometry? How
does
it happen? What Noah instinct is it—in me omitted—that drives us two by two to beds like polite company approaching table? By what inevitable degrees does bent become inclination, inclination tendency, tendency penchant, penchant disposition, disposition fate? Is there glue in those brassieres? What lodestar astrology shoves our lives? Where’s it written, eh? As if love could only be the
prescribed
friction! Hah! I’ll write you a new prescription! Why, love
machines!
Marry the bus that takes you to town,
that
throbbing thing! Embrace wind, kiss the earthquake, hold the sea! Make up to gravity! To all the physics of adversity!

Feelings’ other was never for me. Erection was extension, not tropism. I was born sexually intransitive, a sort of mule, but complete too. Or now complete—since that old man complete.
Anyone
would have done: the girl I was with that night, men, whores, boys, wives—anyone. Or anything: my prick lapped by dogs, flies walking the white underside of my arm, tight squeezes, the warm pressure of the bathwater, Foot-Eeze machines, spot- reducing machines, whirlpool baths, a fast trot on a warm day on a good horse over rough ground!

And I was no more grateful to the man than I would be to the fly or the horse! And I wasn’t reciprocal; I have never wished to hold or mount or touch or taste another human being. Oh my body’s buttons, oh its levers, oh its zones! I want hands on me, in me, breath in my ears, fingernails on my back, a tongue at my toes, cunning massage. And I’ll tell you something else: it’s too damn much
work
to jerk off. Though after the old man I at last knew what to think of: why
me,
why
myself!
After the old man I couldn’t look at my naked reflection in the full-length mirror in the bathroom without getting excited!

So that’s about it, quizzer whizzer. I’ve lived with bad men, men so bad they’ve never wanted anything from me in return.

[He winks at State Assemblyman Victor Ash.]

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: You’re killing yourself for your sins?

M
EL
S
ON
: Foo on my sins. Nah, what do they amount to? Lust and sloth. Nah. I’m killing myself because my gloss is going, because I’m heavier, because my hair’s falling out, because my teeth are rotten and my breath is bad. Even dirty old men draw the line somewhere. I will not live without pleasure. Where’s the solace, eh? I’ll put a ball in my balls. That’s it! Up my testicles to death. Whoops, confession’s over. I’m back in the trance.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: This is terrible. Will he do it?

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Of course he’ll do it.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: [There is still the possibility that it is all a joke, but he is caught up in the strange program, the strangest he’s ever been on. Not really understanding how they’ve worked it, but suspecting—where were the telegrams?—that the show might not be going out over the air at all. (The engineer, given great powers, emergency powers, one of those like tugboat captains or bombardiers, say, who rise to command for brief interims, or secret servicemen who under certain conditions tell Presidents what to do, bishops crowning kings while the kingdom floats leaderless and unmoored—ultimate privilege hiding in them, all the more awesome for its ordinary invisibility and its provisional quality— could have cut all of them off the air whenever he chose.) But even if it wasn’t actually going over the air—and he still had the feeling that it was—it might be on tape, and even if it wasn’t on tape there was still the studio audience to think about, and even if they were all deaf as well as dumb, then there was still Behr- Bleibtreau and Mel and himself. The show
must
go on. And this, he thought, is all I have for principles.]

When?
(softly)
Shouldn’t we try to take the gun away from him?

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: If you struggle with him you could be killed yourself.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: Mel?
(no answer)
Mel?
(nobody home)
Mel.
(out to lunch)
Mel, it’s Dick,
(closed for the duration)
Mel Son.
(Nobody here by that name; try down the street.)
Professor Behr-Bleibtreau.
(This sotto voce: in the style of the outnumbered, the beleaguered, two pals in ambush)
(This is serious, Professor. That gun could go off any minute. Maybe if we could get him to keep talking … Why don’t you release his tongue again?)

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: (It’s too late, but that gives me an idea. There may still be a way.)

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: (Is it a long shot?)

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: (Yes.)

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: (Is it risky?)

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: (Yes.)

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: (Is it one chance in a million?)

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: (More or less.)

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: (What is it? A man’s life’s at stake. It may be worth a try.)

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: His life for your silence!

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: Hey, what is this?

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Your silence for his life. An even trade.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: Hey, cut it out. Come on. Hey!

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Shh.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
:
(fiercely)
The show must go on!

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: It will.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
:
I must be on it!
The show must go on and I must be on it. I’m the show.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: But you’ve got nothing to show. I’m taking your voice.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: No.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Yes. I’m having it. I’m shoving it down your throat. Give it up. Let him live.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: What are you talking about? No!

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: They’ll board up your mouth like plate-glass smashed by the thieves. I’m taking your voice, I’m making you still.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: No. What do you think this is?
No!

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Some reticence there.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: The show—

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Hold it down. People are sleeping.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: I will not hold it down.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Dummy up, Dicky.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: I will not dummy up.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Stow it. Break off.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: I will not stow it. I won’t break off.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
:
Unutter! Muzzle!
Give me your word you’ll give me your voice.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: [He means to speak but can’t think of anything to say. Perhaps he can do the alphabet, and go on to numbers. He can’t remember the alphabet. What’s the first number? That’s it:
First
is the first number.]

First!

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Be mute, you turtle. You giraffe.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
:
(faintly)
First … and … another …

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: I have your voice. I almost have it. I have the others’ and I’m getting yours.

HENCEFORTH I CONTROL THE BROADCAST PATTERN OF THIS PROGRAM. I ENGINEER THE ENGINEERING. I USURP THE SIGNAL. I DIRECT IT AND REDIRECT IT. I WHISPER … (and we are blacked out in New England).
(in a normal voice)
I’m changing the sound patterns. I raise my voice …
(He raises his voice.)
AND I AM HEARD ACROSS THE MISSISSIPPI. COME IN KANSAS, COME IN CALIFORNIA.
(to Dick Gibson)
Now. Give me your voice, give up the rest of it. The voice is the sound—