In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [80]
The phone rang. Flick picked up the receiver.
“Yeah? Now, you know I’m going to the game tonight. (Pause) You can have the car. They won’t even know I’m not there. Okay, I promise. I will not miss the next meeting; okay? That’s a promise.”
He hung up.
“The wife. Janis.”
I remembered Janis faintly from school as a dark, quiet girl. I hardly knew her. I decided quickly not to pursue the subject any further. You never know.
“What meeting you talking about, Flick?”
“PTA. She drags me to that damn thing every month. They sit around and talk about the Penny Supper. And how to raise more money to buy more World Books.”
“You got kids?” I asked.
“You know it!”
A sudden thought hit me. The PTA. Teachers, parents—the old alma mater.
“Do you ever see any of our old teachers? Like Mr. Milton? Or.…”
I groped for a few names that were indelibly, forever tattooed on the tough hide of my memory.
“How ’bout ah … yeah, old Fatso Appleton?” He was a notorious Shop teacher who ran his Shop classes like an actual Sweatshop. I guess he figured we better learn early.
“He’s tougher than ever,” Flick said. “In fact, a couple years ago some kids even tried to start a union, in his Shop, and he imported a bunch of Scab students after they went out on strike. Locked ’em out.”
“Too bad we never thought of that when we were around. What a jerk! How ’bout Miss Bryfogel?”
He thought for a long moment and said:
“No … I don’t see her around any more. She really was something.”
I thoughtfully munched a pretzel.
“She certainly was, Flick. I, for one, will never forget her.”
XXVI MISS BRYFOGEL AND THE FRIGHTENING CASE OF THE SPECKLE-THROATED CUCKOLD
The sticky-sweet, body-warm taste of Pornography lingers in the soul long after the fires have been banked and the shades drawn. Where did it all begin? What ancient caveman drew the first dirty picture on the wall of his dank granite hole and then, cackling fiendishly, scuttled off into the darkness. At what point in time did some lecherous pornographer—his acne itching, his palms sweaty—proclaim his smudgy craft as Art? Thereby giving rise and hope and sustenance to a whole generation, nay, an immense population of beady-eyed, furtive probers in the rank undergrowth of human debauchery.
At long last we have finally solved that age-old problem, that ancient challenge which drove countless philosophers of the past to the verge of madness; of how to change the base metal lead into precious gold. Even as I write this, battalions of hard-working, Serious, dedicated artists, their tongues lolling, their breath coming in short, uneven pants, foreheads sticky with clammy perspiration, their agents impatiently clamoring at the door of their sacred writing chamber, are contriving at immense artistic cost yet another description; evocation, of a basically simple bodily function, or yet another monstrously imagined portion of the human anatomy. Theirs is not an easy task. Pause and consider. There really aren’t many four-letter words, and there are just so many ways you can arrange them. Already, perhaps, the end is in sight.
But their task is dwarfed by the legion of ready reviewers whose duty it is to transmute their inchoate lead into magnificent golden works of Art. His arsenal of phrases, like that of the Artist, is also limited, and hence sees repeated use:
“Biting satire.…”
“Scathing indictment of our Puritanical sexual mores.”
“Brilliant parody—a real thrust at the Victorian ethos.”
“Deliciously savage tongue-in-cheek treatment of.…”
“Ribald, picaresque, rollicking novel that has a deep undertone of.…”
“Ecstatic