Film Fini - 2

by Feather Touch


      Five times?  That’s a bit lush.  Anyway, mountainous numbers, heavy dragging numbers compounded by an ego already the size of Pillsbury’s number-one millstone.  Good thing, the latter, because the today’s issue of MSN thrills us with the news Billy the Kid finally has a lawyer – and there must-needs be something more to write about, ‘specially if one is the mother of all contemporary fiction artists, statistically, and the mother of ALL writers in the very mind in which he resideth as legend.  (If conceit doesn’t come in handy once in awhile, why nurture it in the first place?)  At the same time, being kept abed whilst ye photographic marvel, the kind that gets more incredible with use, hangs neglected on the wall is kind of like the Beatles being imprisoned at The Ritz back in them-thar days, with the added burden of a taciturn  audience taking on the aspect of a pet with big eyes who loves in silence, trading on one’s guilt rather than a commotion.  Today you were thrown a bone – stormy with temps dipping to the seventies – but I swear if it’s nice tomorrow I’m just gonna up and split, pussy and all, to quote from the little Eminem number, and abandon ye shade and ceiling fan to join the mad dogs and Englishmen in the noonday sun, millstone-free.
      
      I’m that way, and I was with Alice.  Little girls are princesses, angels; sweet, demure and priceless.  Without them, as the song goes, what would Little Boys do?  They are to be persuaded in the mildest way that multiplication tables and phonics are good things and their hair is to be pampered, their clothes beautifully ironed, and their pink, silky worlds enriched with dolls and frilly quilts.  They are not, by the same token, to be pointlessly nagged about this or that and especially issues already settled in their bright little feminine minds. 
      
      Yes, my attention was total, but hadn’t a tattoo been mentioned?  More fuel for my dilemma; I wanted to triple check, ask the gently panting child, one last time, if she was truly ready for what was about to happen and assure the beauty she could vacate without prejudice to dream of sugarplums and princes.  But she was a tattooed lady, able to make the latest in contemporary statements on her own, albeit her body art was the mark of the ballpoint and not the dancing needle.  To see or not to see, that was the question, whether ‘twas better to shift my eyes the scant inches necessary to see how her brother had previously despoiled her in hopes of gaining ultimate insight, or keep them glued to the sensuous swellings half concealed by her tiny bra.  It might not occur to you that such a dilemma could be resolved by the scientific hand of cyber technology, but that’s how it turned out.  I was able to jockey the Elph to get a close-up of her upper shoulder, of the penmanship there inscribed, without moving my eyes the least quarter of an inch from her chest as she performed the most intriguing of feminine acts by reaching behind herself to unfasten the one tiny clasp.  And so it was without any further caveats from me that she completed her task and leaned to Jesse so her forehead rested against his, arms at her side as his hands found the straps and eased them from her trembling shoulders.  Slowly the silk was moved, steadily I held the camera, soft was the boy’s whisper, “oh, baby,” and still was my beating heart as I decided to drop dead on the spot so as not to have to profane my eyes by ever taking in another sight.  Then she was bare-chested and the picture was worth a million words, so we’d better get started.  Think sherry glasses, a cherry at the bottom, then filled with rich cream.  Now raise the glasses to the approximately horizontal position, and remove the vessels, the only synonym I can think of, however ungainly.  Sure, that’s not a million words, but at such a time does the reader really want a micron by micron prose poem, words of passion, lust, and foam, or, in our era of immediate gratification and cutting to the chase, the story of what happened next?  Of Jesse’s whispers as the child on his lap slowly raised her arms and linked her fingers behind her neck, arching in welcome, of his hands rising gently to her flanks, then tracing inwards and to the wild beauty of her jutting pink nipples atop their wondrously conical nascent mounds, of her responding whisper, “hi,” and of everything that transpired thereafter?  I rather think the latter, and storms don’t last long here in the heart of the Caribbean basin, so moving on sounds like a plan.
      
      Her brother molested the little girl slowly and thoroughly, kissing her as well as fondling her pert beauty.  After some minutes, her fingers went to the buttons of his shirt and I tried to imagine the feelings of Alice against the adolescent athlete’s solid chest, the feelings of his taut muscles against her delicacy, and got lost somewhere halfway in between.  And then, wondrously, four big eyes were on me, two heads nodding it was my turn, and four hands reaching.  Professional that!  Lack of moral fiber the English call it; neglect of duty at the temple of diversion (the alluring Sirens of the Odyssey).  All that leads to perdition, all of it’s warm poison coursed through every capillary of my own panting self as I let the boy take the camera so the girl could get at me.  And forsooth and far be it from me to wander far and gaze awide in hopes of treading on the toes of ye English masters, ye lyric ancestors, no, not my turf.  They were into god, and, to put it simply, because at that very moment, the moment her tiny, slim fingers touched me, at that moment I figured it this way: since it is patently obvious I’m be rewarded as a divine presence, I is one and have not, again, forsooth, to expound in cadence, metered or otherwise, on what my literary forbearers only guessed at and conjured over.  Cool, or what? 
      
      “It was a dark and stormy night,” Jesse again whispered, the boy now sitting on my left with his sister on his, center stage, and all of us half naked.
      
      “You’d better be a framing of that torch, lad,” the mate said, offering the castaway a hand as he was boosted aboard by the crew of the lifeboat.  “We’d have never seen you without it; might have run you down in such a pond-and-harbor dollop of a craft as you’ve ventured forth in, without even noting the bump.”
      “It was good of you to stop,” the blown-offshore boy responded as the helping hand turned into a shaking hand, “for, as you can see, I’ve run short of petrol.”  In context, this was funny because it was a rowboat.   
      “Welcome aboard,” the mate said, and who’s to say there was not a tear in his English eye, total likeliness always much appreciated in a young male.
      
      He was warmed with blankets and soup, the authorities were informed, and the sailing vessel “Sweet Witch” continued her offing.  Neil recovered quickly, told of his encounter with his malevolent antagonist with modesty, and was presented with a cadet’s uniform in just his size.  Their small talk eventually trailed off and the drifter noted a tension filling its place.  This became so palpable after awhile the boy wondered if he’d fallen in with a bunch of smugglers or pirates masquerading as a training ship.  “Is something wrong?” he finally asked.
      
      “No, Neil,” Hal Brown, the senior mate said, “nothing concerning you, and allowing for flexible interpretations of and variations in the word, the answer goes something like this: an issue might be wrong, there, and right, here; it’s a regular riddle.”
      “Well,” the boy mused, “I was going to watch ‘Four Hundred Teeth’ tonight (here he alluded to a rising comic trio), but since you mentioned flexibility, I might note that I am easily entertained and will try my best to fit in as the situation warrants, also a bit of a hand at any job to be done.”
      “No,” Hal said, “we’re Bristol in all departments and headed for open water, best radar on the market for all the canvas and hemp, so we’ve no task to set before you at the moment.”
      “Right,” the newcomer murmured.
      “And we’re at sea,” his friend elaborated, “where it’s customary to come to the point rather quickly, before, and then laze about with a long-winded accounting, at an appropriate later time.” 
      In the abstract, this made so much sense as to be obvious, but no one of the dozen present in the cabin seemed in any hurry to offer further details.  Something was wrong, or at least conditionally so, and who wanted anything to be wrong while embarking in few thousand tons of nothing on mile-deep water?
      
      “It’s our first night out,” the twenty-five year old mate finally said, breaking a silence no one seemed to want.  “And, well, that is something in itself.”  He stalled, seeming at a loss for words, and, since he was obviously a practical definition of the word “alert,” his reticence sent a chill down Neil’s spine.
      “First night out,” Kevin Curl repeated, the second mate parroting the first.  This brought a murmur and nods from the company.  Ship of fools, of that he’d heard, but outright morons, to whom the routine of a first night at sea was something akin to unspeakable wonder?  
      
      The third mate tried.  His name was Joseph Jennings.  “In port for a month,” he began, “and, well, during such a spell ashore, things, I guess one could say, happen with some of the lads.  Once we’re free of the costal lanes, we, I guess one could say, relax and engage in a theatrical reprise of various events various boys might find themselves of a mood to recount for the entertainment and edification of their mates and we officers.”
      “I know a few poems,” Neil interjected quietly.
      “And glad we’ll be to hear them,” Hal said, “for it is the first night of many, and we spend most reading aloud and reciting, both in smaller groups and for the company as a whole, but, as the saying goes, ‘boys will be boys,’ and we find the atmosphere at sea more relaxing if the fact is acknowledged early on.”
      “And I take it,” the thirteen year old said, “you plot your course using the teeth of a two-man saw as a ruler.”  Depending on the delivery of the speaker, the remark could have seemed like raw sass, but he was a nice boy trying, under strained circumstances, to get to the bottom of the matter at hand while retaining a light touch.  A very nice boy.
      “Tell you what,” Hal suggested, “why don’t you slip down the passage way, finish drying off, and put on your uniform, and, when you return, we will have taken a few of the wrinkles out of the way and can fill you in all straight and proper-like.”
      
      A boy his own age near the hatch beckoned and Neil followed the cadet.  “I’m Sammy Nelson,” the lad said.
      “I didn’t mean to be sarcastic with the mates,” Neil said, “but it seems out of character for them not to explain what’s going on…”
      “I’d be the same,” his guide said, opening the hatch to a stateroom.  
      “Can you hang around, or do you have to go back?” the young fisherman asked.
      “If you like,” Sammy replied.
      
      “Well,” the boy went on, “I don’t want to put you on the spot, tales-out-of-school, but I’ve always had a weakness for, you know, secret theatrics and clandestine rituals.  Never one to quake at the thought of Druids.  I mean, doesn’t there have to be some monkey-business to go with classrooms and chores?”
      “Then welcome aboard the “Sweet Witch,” Sammy said with a shy smile as both boys sat on the bunk, Neil with the fresh uniform in his lap.
      “And I’m right not to be afraid, very afraid, and tormented with thoughts of potions and blood, right?”
      “Just seasickness,” his friend replied, “and it seems you’re immune.”
      “I’m saving it for later when we’re running beam-on,” Neil responded, “but the pitching doesn’t bother me.”
      “You’ll have company when we turn south,” Sammy grinned, “but by that time we have most of our sea legs so it’s over in a day or two, and life is doubled when that happens.”
      
      “Good,” Neil said, “because for the moment it’s standing still.”
      “Just that it’s a hard thing to tell,” Sammy noted.  “You might find it as we do, or you might be wanting to get on the radio and call in the law.”
      “Not with Morse gone,” the castaway said to a happy nod from his young friend.
      “What it amounts to is tradition,” the cadet began.  “Men away from women, boys away from girls, and some fairly obvious inferences that might be drawn and often have been, quashed as any public discourse is by Victorian reticence.”
      Beautifully stated, it made sense, as things beautifully stated rarely did.  “Listen to the warm,” is the nadir of examples, while “to err is human, to forgive divine,” is one of the more encouraging.
      Of course most things can be improved, even the Canon could be a wee sharper.  Neil tried.  “Not to mention hypocrisy,” he added.
      
      “Cor,” his friend whispered, “and just when I thought it was going to be miles of brambles ‘round Robin Hood’s barn.”
      “Well, a boy can hope, can’t he?” the wayfarer responded, “I mean, why would I have shined my torch, in the first place, if it wasn’t in hopes of avoiding a long, wet, cold night in a rowboat, and ever since Mate Hal started sputtering in his tea, we…”
      “It’s nothing lewd, you know,” Sammy said, “not the Follies come to the “Sweet Witch” with bump-and-grind music and boys stripping with one hand and holding on to the ship with the other, it’s more cerebral, I guess one would say, more lifelike.”
      “And sober?” Neil asked.
      
      “Dead so,” his friend nodded.  “Philosophy, if you will; we’re allowed this, and by Jove, that’s enough.  No skylarking, no drinking, no deserting in port.  We are not abused and we are allowed, that has to be enough.  Keeps things running wondrous smooth.”
      “It was poetry watching you bringer her up,” Neil whispered.  “Everything taut and humming until you were dead where you needed to be, then a huge thunder as you approached, not half a minute as you took her slightly aback to lose way and haul close enough to save me the tedium of rowing, even if I’d possessed two oars, plucked myself and my boat from the water in ten seconds, and had her off the wind in another ten.
      “And I’m of a mind,” the child continued, “to jump overboard tomorrow so I can watch you handle her in the daylight.”
      “And a dozen new cadets amongst us,” Sammy said, his voice likewise a whisper.
      
      “And if such a mate becomes tongue-tied,” Neil noted, “well, how can it help but set a lad a-hoping?”  His friend nodded in agreement.  The reverie, the memory of the tons of flapping canvas and protesting yardworks, the precise check in her passage and the hard list of the sails’ grip a few instants later and immediate return of the muted grumble of safe passage; how few had ever seen it.  Like boarding a passenger on a curb with fifty men driving the bus, with the added challenge of two dozen short tempered matrons on the upper deck, a dark and stormy night, and each lady with an heirloom umbrella.  It couldn’t be done, yet it had been without enough disturbance to spill madam’s tea, though had she been bracing her cuppa at the moment, complaints would undoubtedly have ensued.
      It was a lot for a pair of thirteen year olds to share and the two sat on the mate’s bunk for some moments.  “I’d better put this on,” Neil finally said to his friend’s nod.  The boy changed quickly and regained his seat.
      “Should we go back or hang out here for awhile?” Neil whispered after another interval of what had become very comfortable silences.
      “It might please the sirs,” Sammy replied, alluding to the officers, “if I filled you in a wee bit, and it’s a fine thing to please the sirs.”
      “They’ve pleased me,” has friend responded.
      
      “So,” Sammy murmured, “what we’re about with this first-night ceremony is a pageant in which various boys who’ve had various adventures stage reprises.  It is an entertainment, an event, but it also informs the new boys, who, if they’ve had any experience along certain lines, are encouraged to reenact them, and though it surely engages our attention, it tends to be a complete event unto itself leaving each of us knowing what certain things are all about and where we stand with them, which is particularly useful in a situation where much is demanded in terms of both seamanship and academic performance.”
      “I suppose it could fit a corps of Dickensian pickpockets enroute to swarm Lisbon,” Neil mused, “but I do believe other game is afoot.”
      “No liquor, no plunder,” the cadet nodded, “and we’re not even smuggling software.”
      Again there was a comfortable silence.  “And, if you want,” Sammy said after a couple of minutes, “you can stay here.  Plenty to read and the mates will be staying with us in the hold, so the bunk is yours if you want to sleep.”
      “I was out for the late tide,” Neil responded, “as a matter of fact, I didn’t get up until noon, so I don’t need to rest.”
      
      That took care of an important point and Sammy nodded, beginning to relish the idea of filling in this increasingly likely stranger.  “It’s more than just us, we sailors, you know,” he explained.  “Take, for example, the American West of a century or more ago.  The great cattle drives that spurred the railroads and, along with cotton and coal, was an elemental force in the Industrial Revolution; and just beneath the surface, yet never alluded to even in ‘Shane,’ was the cowBOY.  The small trunk in the cook wagon with costumes suited to an environment where men were away from women and boys were away from girls.  Thus the cattle drives, as, in previous ages it was thus the monasteries, followed by thus the better men following the sea, and, in our day, thus the Internet.  Such is the reward.”
      “And we’re the reward,” Neil mused, having some difficulty separating in his mind the aspects of granting and receiving at the same time, especially foreign in concept because he’d attended church for some years and was thus imbued with a pattern of rewarding, as The Little Drummer Boy had been unable to do in tangible form, and being rewarded, in turn, with vague and contradictory rhetoric, his book lying uselessly on his nightstand for the duration.  
      
      “It’s hard for all of us,” Sammy said gently in response to the frown of concentration on the newcomer’s face, “finding out the dogma of convention is totally wrong, not a word of truth in it, not even a guiding glow, much less a light, much less a beacon, much less a star.”
      “But it’s led to many a war,” Neil observed, causing the boys to touch each other for the first time when they aped the amusing Americans by high-fiving.
      “Which becomes a downright startling factor,” Sammy continued, “when one finds amongst the entire lot of us a degree of essential Christianity – of actually being kinder and gentler, rather than telling others to – scarce indeed in a brutish world where bullies have rights and the worse you behave, the more seriously the law takes them.”
      “In California,” Neil said, “they spent twenty million dollars processing a rapist who’d actually made videos of his acts.  They are insane and they make the films.”
      “We do rather quake with relief at the shout: ‘No land ho!’ Sammy rejoined with a nod.
      “How ‘bout: ‘Land free!’ the survivor asked, earning a hot look from his age mate far exceeding their previous digital display.
      “We sort of figured you’d earned your keep for a few days at least with the amount of fish you brought aboard,” Sammy mused aloud, “but if you want to contribute more I suppose that would be just fine.”
      
      “I’ve read a lot about the sea,” Neil said, “W. Clark Russell and others, and especially Michael Scott’s ‘Tom Cringles Log,’ so things pop up, especially when you think in terms of how rough the kids in those days had it as against how soft we do, and, idle time being the devil’s playground, how the church leads the way toward a popular consensus in favor of dysfunction for lack of anything better to do, and sows the land with land mines, and in no lethargic and half-hearted manner, making it a good thing to be free of the place.”
      “We have thirty-two Russell’s aboard,” Sammy said, earning an immediate look such as he’d just given.”
      “That’s over half,” his friend said, referring to the master mariner who’d in fact devoted his retirement to publishing fifty seven long seafaring novels.
      
      “And yet he missed the boat,” Sammy said, “because he never once even tangentially alludes to what really happens aboard ship.”
      “It may not have,” Neil said, “because his issue was the sailor’s food, and from the sounds of it, everyone aboard most sailing ships would have been so hungry so much of the time, not to mention cold, they’d have had little interest beyond survival, and it’s hard to imagine them having an interest in that.”
      “Interesting point,” his friend responded.
      “It’s a generality,” Neil said, “because there were obviously a lot of great voyages; yachting trips in southern waters; weeks and months in perfect conditions with plenty of everything.”
      “Plus Bangkok, “ Sammy noted.
      “Cor,” said his friend, and here they did giggle for a minute, having obtained an equilibrium so precise as to be funny.
      
      “There’s a sign over the hatch into the mid hold,” Sammy said to the neophyte, “and above it is a sign that reads: ‘Play shall set you free.’	
      “Is that where the theater is?” Neil asked.
      “Yes,” the boy replied, “one deck up from the bilge, which we keep sweet enough, I can tell you, so the motion is very tolerable as long as we’re pitching and not rolling.”
      “It still isn’t bothering me,” the land boy, but hardly a lubber, said.
      “Well, I’m meant to invite you, but our pageants begin where the Follies leave off, plus, it starts at nine, so we have an hour in case you want to change your mind or anything.”
      “Can you tell me more?” Neil asked, “or is it meant to be a surprise.”
      “All the new boys – new cadets – know,” Sammy replied, “and how ever unlikely your arrival, I guess you’d be classed with them.  Certainly not doing anything for shock value.”
      “Had my fill of that with the shark.”
      “And I’ll bet he had a fill of your oar,” his friend observed.
      “Well, he said aah.”
      “If I play doctor, my preference is a curious eight year old, preferably female.”
      “Have you ever tried anything like that?” Neil asked.
      “Some,” his friend whispered, “but some kids get uptight talking about that kind of stuff, you know, they like the play that sets them free, but that’s the end of it, they think it’s faggy to talk about things.  Not here, aboard, because everyone is quizzed before they’re signed on, but you didn’t exactly arrive here through channels, so I don’t want to be offensive.”
      “No,” the slightly older boy said, “it’s okay.”
      “Well, anyway,” Sammy said, “there’s not that much of it.  The storytelling is largely confined to the first-night pageant, and there’s some carryover for the next few days, I guess you could say until everyone has heard everything new and interesting, and then the physical things settles into the ritualistic, what they now call the same-old-same-old, though on a boat like ours, it might equally be called the same-young-same-young; in fact, when you come right down to it, it’s hardly distinguishable from our daily exercise sessions which consists of half an hour of skipping rope in the midships hold, which serves as a gym once we’re squared away.”
      “That must be a stunt,” Neil observed, porpoiseing his hand to indicate the motion of the bark.
      “When she’s rolling it’s more like a drunken circus,” Sammy laughed, “but the more fun for the misadventures.  ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack skip away from the boy that’s sick.’”
      “With most of them sick when you – we – turn south,” the older boy mused, setting off another set of giggles.
      
      “Which of the mates did you prefer?” Sammy asked when they’d sobered up a little, “because we boys don’t do much storytelling amongst ourselves, it’s something that’s better with an adult presence.”
      “They all seem very nice,” Neil mused.
      “Well,” Sammy responded, “it’s Joseph’s first cruise…”
      “Slick,” Neil interrupted, a say-no-more decisiveness in his voice 
      “This is his cabin.”
      “Did I ask you to super-size?” his friend said and both thought the Americanism worth a moment’s levity.  They were nothing to do with a lewd crew, yet neither were they extremists, so perhaps something a little bawdy might be allowed as an exception to the rule.  Sammy took a quick look down at his waist, then looked back at Neil.  
      “You didn’t have to,” he said.  
      More of the m-thing followed, then Sammy exited the cabin, returning in a minute  with twenty two year old Joseph Jennings.  Neil stood politely, the athletic young officer nodding for him to sit, then moving to the berth himself with Sammy sitting on his right and the older thirteen year old on his left.  “Gus Renfrew, traditionally known as Chips it fashioning a new oar for your boat,” the mate said, “and, truth to tell, she’s just the thing we’ve been looking for for the “Sweet Witch,” lighter than our longboats, and there’s just room for her on the mid hatch, which, since she’s an elegantly crafted little dickens, means we’d like to buy her, or, if you’ve a sentimental attachment, lease her for the voyage returning her safe and sound a year from now; meantime, you could use the money, not that it’s my place to suggest it, to fly home from Lisbon, or, for that matter, to ride along as a passenger.  Jeffers, our cook says your fish are first-rate, so you even have a head start in that department.”
      “I like the uniform,” Neil responded.
      “Our hope is you’ll remain with us at least as far as Greece,” Joseph said, “and our academic program is fully accredited, but we don’t want to interfere as you may want to stick with your former plans.”
      “I don’t know,” mused the boy, “a lot of kids my age have followed bright buttons and a jaunty cap into a hail of splinters and a fiasco of burning and drowning, rat-a-tat-tat on the drum, so, as an alternative, it might make sense to follow said buttons and caps to the Mediterranean whilst cruising aboard a ship laden with nice people and with a good library.”
      
      Well, putting it that way…
      
      “Then welcome aboard,” Joseph said, reaching across with his right hand to shake that of the willowy child at his flank.
      “I’ve told Neil a little about the first-night pageant,” Sammy said.
      “Were you able to guess the rest?” the tall mate asked.
      “It all sounds a bit sensible to be real,” the youth replied, “but since all the loopy paradigms are running in circles, there might actually be a calm at the vortex, so instead of guessing I suppose one could say I was in hopes that whatever the rest is it remains sensible.”
      “I have an inkling,” Joseph said, “that if we asked you to keep the log we’d reach Lisbon with a five hundred page bestseller ready for the market.”
      “The art of the people has always fascinated me,” the boy responded, “rendering what others have done.  I love taking pictures of beautiful farms and landscapes, anything someone else has created. even if the aesthetic value is by default and unintentional, a byproduct or offshoot of function.  Bicycles, for example, especially when it’s rained and they are parked together all sparkling and wet.  Home-built fences and sheds.  The art is of the people, I didn’t make the bikes or lie them against a stone wall, but, snap, they become mine, all that work of others at the push of a button.  In the same vein I would like to write, now that you mention it.  The ship and her company supply the art, but instead of just transcribing it myself, as I do with the camera, we can all do it.  That’s thirty stories from the cadets, alone, plus the seamen, instructors, and officers.
      “And,” the boy continued, “as far as a theme goes, well, Sammy told me how you all jump-rope in the mid hold, so that might be worth a try; the first time each crewman skipped rope, what he thinks about while doing so, the best time…”
      
      Cadet and mate looked a long time at each other, then at the novitiate who sat guileless as a doll at a tea party, twiddling his thumbs, mouth zipped. 
      “And it would be age-before-beauty concerning who was meant to begin this literary fest?” Joseph eventually asked.
      “As long as he’s able to skip the part about the rope,” Neil replied, “I’ve given up on that as lame.”
      “Well, you had your neck out there for a moment, no mistake,” the mate observed.
      “And thank goodness so briefly” Sammy added. “The ‘Sweet Witch’ may not be the fastest jammer on the sea, but she’s no skowffold.”  It was a pun of the rarest brilliance, so similar in structure to a punt, and by acclimation they decided to give it a rest.  
      Yet, where is the place in life for funny, lively, sassy boys?  The frivolous ones, always with the wit and droll aside?  I wonder about this, myself.  Alex called the Elph a toy, engaged as he was by striking images of his eight year old daughter, Little Miss Model if ever there was one, and of his wife and Catharine.  It got me to thinking.  Doesn’t Samantha fill that role in my life?  Attendant to the concept of that personage dying with the most toys winning, isn’t there a parallel saying he with the best toy wins?  A convenient victory, so much so you have to go back to the Jews inventing the god that gave them the holy land (as in holy kids) to find a situation that would be its equal were it not for the trivial nature of the latter.  What is the antonym of toy?  Anything productive, right?  And the first thing you grab when you smell smoke is the photo album, at least according to disaster survivors I’ve seen interviewed.  Yet the pictures are intrinsically worthless.  Bringing us back to toys.
      
      Dipped in Johnson, this off of reviewing the English literary greats on Encarta and happening to have a copy of his work (as against Boswell’s “Life of…”) on hand.  I suppose I don’t really need your help to make me look good, but should the mood strike you, hi yourself off to library or bookstore and try him for yourself.  We’ve come a long way, baby, in the lingo department.  He’s the ultimate look-how-well-I-write-mom practitioner, his work a display of what passed for talent a couple of centuries ago rather than a commitment to his subject (though, I have to admit, his Dictionary illustrates a lesser tendency to dissemble).  One theme I glanced at was how the great attract brickbats, and as far as I can see the reason is that so many greats turn out to be treacling blowhards, like Samuel Johnson.  Again, a reason to rejoice in conquering household by household, in chambers, rather than through overt display and manic promotion.  I will get you to stay slim, live modestly, and read to your kids, so help me I will, and find a world of laughter if you disobey, so close to your world it might be a little scary.  (Don’t scowl, scaffold humor is like Terret’s syndrome, one can’t f-f-f-f-ing help it.)
      
      Numbers for this week are a replay of last; huge.  More thanks.  Yes, there is a matrix that says lots of people download lots of stories because it’s quick, easy, and free; not necessarily to read them.  But all writers face that.  How many people who buy a book indulge in it, cover-to-cover (most are gifts, and how many of them are read by the recipient)?  How many subscribers to “Playboy” read a particular piece of fiction or editorial content?  Difficult to measure accurately, and the mail indicates no one is reading word one of anything, merely downloading for abstruse reasons of their own (how chic is an empty C:?).  But eighty thousand a week must mean something so one tends to hang in there.  (In the name of precision, I should clarify.  I’m taking the file count of ASSTR and multiplying by ten to account for the larger volume of files, and the larger site, of Nifty, then adding a percentage for copies downloaded from commercial sites who’re posting my ms., as well as P2P, bulletin boards, newsgroups and the like.  With the exception of “Poet of Phu Bai,” I place no non-commercial restrictions on my work, nor any restrictions on minor commercial distribution.  If someone’s smart enough to make a buck off me, cool.  More readers.  As the priest said of the altar boy, “I’m not in him (it) for the money.”)
      
      What I would like to be is a stabilizing force.  The one who tells you, reader and writer, alike, flat out, you are being hoodwinked by the likes of Heller and Vonnegut; they know, as marketers, a certain contrarian element exists in society, those who like goofy things simply because they don’t like anything else.  They like goofy art, Surrealism, and goofy books, Tolkein.  The authors of this trash are frequently bemused at their audience reading symbolism and metaphor, allegory and metaphysics, into their works.  It takes very little talent, and less work to obscure, just as it would be easier to build half a maze than a complete one.  Again, to reader and writer I say you’re nuts and you’ll get worse if you keep it up.  English is a language of the greatest lucidity and clarity, and getting trendy with it, or tolerating it in trendy form, is a shortcut to premature imbecility.  Try the same with psychology, and the fun really begins.
      
      Stories are things that happen to people, possibly animals.  The inner clockworks of angst and conflict are mealy worms in the meal.  Numberless.  More interesting.  “Women in Love” has everyone bouncing off everybody else in a procession of mad turmoil that’s only interesting because each page brings the possibility of some one of those someones leaving behind a crater and pile of smoldering rubble.  It’s hard to imagine a rabbit finding more of value.  And the problem is, this leaves only me.  John O’Hara is great, but his compass limited, no one else on the field.  This is wondrous for the ego, but comes, you know, the requirement to say it all, with inherent liabilities to do with, in Frost’s words, “…the nature of time and space.”  This is followed by: “Ants are a curious race,” which helps with perspective, but hardly solves problems on a scale survival seems to warrant.  If only a chain of adroit words elegantly fashioned into a literary web were the answer, I might be of use, but, darn the luck, I reign without the homage of a single subject, so I might not be.
      
      You’re wondering at the skill it takes to turn this stuff out at the rate of five thousand words a day, give or take.  My response is that I detect nothing mortal in it.  For example, we’re presently dealing with a case of first-night jitters, and there’s nothing manly about that.
      
      
      “I have pictures of my family,” Joseph told Sammy and Neil, “in fact, I went on watch as soon as I’d logged aboard, so I haven’t had time to unpack anything.”  His companions, sensing they all needed a respite in the rising tension of the small cabin, quickly volunteered to help.  The mate’s duffle was in the small head so they hauled forth the two stuffed bags and began putting the right things in sensible places.  In ten minutes the task was largely completed with but a single plastic bag yet to find a home.  Joseph took it from Sammy and the three returned to the young officer’s bunk, adult in the middle and Neil at his left.  He held the bag in his lap for a minute or two, then said: “These belong to Catty, my eight year old sister.”  He pulled out rather less than might be expected if he were displaying her wardrobe, but the boys nodded silently.  “And these,” he continued, brandishing a compact disc, “are pictures of two of our cousins and herself.”
      The laptop had remained on the desk with its inch-high guardrails and Sammy fetched it for his commander who installed the CD and placed the unit on the deck where they could see the display from a three foot distance.  Meantime, the boys had examined the tiny filaments of the mystery girl’s bathing and sun suits, apparently designed for way wet and way tan skin.
      “Do either of you boys have sisters?” the officer asked.  Both shook their heads (though I know readers will be nodding in approval at the thought of two less divergences in our not-half-assed maze).
      “But there are twins next door who practically live with us,” Sammy noted, and who’s to say he wasn’t just trying to get a rise out of US.  
      “Plus I have a cousin who’s eight, Karen,” Neil allowed, nothing of me too! in his shy voice, not trying to one-up anyone, though an intent observer might have noted a trace of a wink for the reader.  Fear not, like the general, “I’m in charge here.”  We shall not again bury ourselves in ye multitude of subplots, so easy to open, so difficult to tie off.
      Of course, that still leaves three.  (Gotcha.)
      
      “Do you want to put them on before I push the Play button?” Joseph asked.
      Sammy and Neil looked at each other, eyes smoking as they gazed back and forth between themselves and fabric that went out at about fifty dollars an ounce.
      “They’re not as clean as they might be,” their host continued, “but after what they’ve been through it’s something of a wonder they aren’t more liberally encrusted than they are.”  The basic facts of the matter Sammy and Neil were discovering for themselves, both mature enough to understand.  They kept nodding spontaneously causing the older male to wonder if his charges would agree to exploring the Marianas Trench in the barkentine.  “Well, why not ride with the winner,” he mused to himself, adding: “Hal told me there’s a supply of wigs aboard, and I can get a couple if you’d like, you know, for the pageant.”  Now fearful of their soft tissue, he rapped each lightly on the head with his knuckles, and left the cabin.
      “Have you ever seen it before?” Sammy asked Neil, his voice suddenly low and husky as he held the tiny bra to his friend.
      “Is it real?” the older boy asked, looking at his own garment and fingering the top.
      “Totally,” the more experienced boy said. “unless it’s from somebody’s nose, which seems a stretch.”
      “Can we put them on in private?” the newcomer asked.
      “Good idea,” his mate said, “I’ll duck into the head and you can stay here.”
      “Okay,” and yes, they were still nodding happily.
      
      The sea is a breeder of promptness and dispatch: at one’s post on time and always.  So ingrained does alertness and punctuality become, even an officer standing down from his watch can be counted on to respond to a random situation in a timely manner.  In fact, the athletic young mate’s traverse of this and that passageway, including his return, took less time than it does to tell it.  It need only be added that especially Sammy, and now Neil, hoped to be officers one day to set our tableau with maritime dispatch.
      
      He tapped at the mahogany stateroom door, then opened it.  Beyond a quaking lump on his formerly shipshape bunk, there was nothing to be seen.
      “All hands,” he whispered.  This brings up a counterpoint.  At sea, there are duties and procedures performed with the utmost, meticulous, inch-by-inch care. Wearing ship (jibing in a smaller craft), is one example, and taking the strain on a tow line is another.  A third was the sedate progress of the boy under the sheet who began exposing himself in a most leisurely way, taking a number of beats just to uncover his alert and handsome face.  Joseph sat to stare, the laptop forgotten for the moment as time stood still.  A long forever went by, then there was a gentle tap from the door to the toilet and it opened with a lubberly reluctance.
      “Hi,” a voice whispered through a small crack.
      “Hi,” the adult responded.
      
      
Shorter file this time, but I’m getting the drearies.  Three days of wind and clouds, some rain, no pictures.  Your literary orchid needs his time in the sun; to be reassured by the weapons-grade quality of his stainless-steel masterpiece, and another hundred images to re-touch – if it ain’t art, it’s therapy – thus restoring bod and soul, with ego eminently capable of restoring itself.  This is turning into another novel, almost a third of the way to the basic sixty thousand words required, and it was meant to be a tidy little short story, least I get out of practice with same cut-and-dried genre.  Then cometh ye alluvial depredations of useable light with gusting winds, fit weather for neither mad dog nor Englishman.  With thanks for downloading over fifteen hundred copies in two days, I am, like Dr. Johnson, your most h’bl & o’b’d s’v’t.

Film Fini – End File-2
xxx
      

