Monday, May 17, 2004
A Spy in the House of Love
I have nothing original to contribute to this morning's statutory unfurlings in the Mayflower state. Aside from imagining the continuous stream of dejected rag tag ultra-conservative Bible thumping refugees fleeing that ground and bound for Salt Lake City or Midland Texas or any other number of brutal outbacks, with all of their belongings lashed to the roof of Ford Explorer flipover carriages like so many retreating rebels fleeing over the Potomac at Williamsport, i haven't prepared any additional official imaginings. Perhaps though, it will all remind some of Josiah Gorgas's grim diary entry of July 28, 1863,: "It seems incredible that human power could effect such change in so brief a space. Yesterday we rode on the pinnacle of success - today absolute ruin seems to be our portion. The Confederacy totters to its destruction."
In which case all i can say is: Yeah well Josiah, ya win some and ya lose some. Git over it.
So heres to all the same sex marriage victors in Mass who will celebrate liberty this morning - May 17, 2004 - and their new won freedom to hitch their wagon to whoever the hell they want to hitch their wagon to. And as a hi-ho thumbs up go-get-em don't tread on me salute i offer an old yarn, written a year ago and tossed into the roaring current of the Eschaton, in honor of the occasion. Just for the celebratory fun of it.
Originally titled "A Spy in the Garden of Sapphos," here goes again. Roll the tape.
Obviously, Bill Clinton's bad example put Mary Cheney on the path to lesbianism.
I was shown the path to lesbianism once.
It seemed a worthy enough path. So I decided to venture down it. And at the end of the path there was an inn tucked into a green woodlot at the base of a hill. A handmade sign that hung at the entrance to the inn read "The Tenth Muse". Ok then, pretty regular looking place, front porch, flower garden, pickup truck in the drive with a "Melissa Etheridge rocks" bumper sticker attached. Whatever. So I went up to the door and rang the bell. A woman opened the door and I said "Is this the path to lesbianism"? She said "no, this is the end of the path to lesbianism, the path to lesbianism is behind you." Then she whacked me in the side of the head with a paperback edition of 'The Journals of Anais Nin'.
"Ow" I said. She said "c'mon in". So I went inside with her. It was a nice enough place filled with light and the sounds of falling water. Then she took me out into a backyard garden where a mountain brook fed into a beautiful pool of lilies ringed with iris and globeflower, aspodels and babys breath. Spotted baby fawns drank from an indigo fountain and a jaguar lay sleeping in the crook of a huge Banyan tree. And right there, in the middle of the pool, was none other than the Clenis. Naked as a wood duck. Frolicking among the sapphic nymphs as Erato plucked notes from a lyre. They were all singing a stanza to a little song, which went like this:
And then they'd laugh and laugh and clap and begin the stanza all over again.
I said to my host, "I had no idea that the path to lesbianism would lead me to the Clenis." She said "Oh yes, sometimes it may. He frequently stops by for a swim with the nymphs and naiads. Then she told me, "Although the Clenis has a penis, he's a friend of Venus! A special genus. We like to kid him and call him the Clenis Dionysus... think about it."
"I am" I informed her.
I then remarked, "You have a nice place nestled here beside this hill. Not without its troubles I'm sure, but cozy enough and well away from the harpies and scirons of reactionary theogony or the reckless plunders of spartan conservatism. But why not build it atop the hill so you could look down upon those encroaching upon your path." At which point my host pointed to a sign swinging from an arbor made of woven willow boughs smothered with morning glory and grapes - the sign read:
"No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together each the happier for the other."
"Frank Lloyd Wright" my host informed me.
"I like it!" I exclaimed. "It makes good sense!"
"Now, can I have a sponge bath?" I could see her cocking the Anais Nin volume again so I jumped to my own defense, "just kidding, just kidding" I quipped, "you know how it is." And she looked at me in a mischievous way that reminded me of a wood-sprite and said, "I do at that." Then she slapped me smartly on the back of the head with Anais Nin anyway, and said, "watch here."
At which point I heard splashing sounds and giggling coming from the garden pool. I turned quickly, just in time to see the Clenis, bathed in a rainbow, transformed magically into a silenus. The Clenis silenus. At which point the whole noisy pool party went skipping off into the fauna, the Clenis silenus and the nymphs, all of them, laughing and clapping and singing together:
And then they were completely gone. Swallowed up by the woodland twilight.
I thanked my host for her hospitality and told her I'd be back as soon as I could find a copy of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" to bludgeon her with. She laughed and said, "good one", and then we shook hands and said goodbye.
I walked back up the winding path from lesbianism and when I got home late that evening I sat down and turned on the TV. There was that obnoxious boob-toob man-shrew Joe Scarborough sneering forth with some self-righteous opinionated bit of excitable concocted quackery or another. Desecrating whatever sliver of journalistic integrity MSNBC might still have left. Which granted, ain't much of a sliver these days. Click.
I wasn't going to let that horseshit shoveler ruin my day. No siree by mother nature. So I poured me a shot of bourbon and took a big drink and slid into my manly action outerwear jacket from the Cabela's sporting goods catalog mail order warehouse and went out hunting. Hunting like a rutting buck......through the bookstore stacks and used book bins for my very own copy of "Spy in the House of Love".
Dateline: Lexington and Concord, May 2004.
amor vincit omnia
*
In which case all i can say is: Yeah well Josiah, ya win some and ya lose some. Git over it.
So heres to all the same sex marriage victors in Mass who will celebrate liberty this morning - May 17, 2004 - and their new won freedom to hitch their wagon to whoever the hell they want to hitch their wagon to. And as a hi-ho thumbs up go-get-em don't tread on me salute i offer an old yarn, written a year ago and tossed into the roaring current of the Eschaton, in honor of the occasion. Just for the celebratory fun of it.
Originally titled "A Spy in the Garden of Sapphos," here goes again. Roll the tape.
Obviously, Bill Clinton's bad example put Mary Cheney on the path to lesbianism.
I was shown the path to lesbianism once.
It seemed a worthy enough path. So I decided to venture down it. And at the end of the path there was an inn tucked into a green woodlot at the base of a hill. A handmade sign that hung at the entrance to the inn read "The Tenth Muse". Ok then, pretty regular looking place, front porch, flower garden, pickup truck in the drive with a "Melissa Etheridge rocks" bumper sticker attached. Whatever. So I went up to the door and rang the bell. A woman opened the door and I said "Is this the path to lesbianism"? She said "no, this is the end of the path to lesbianism, the path to lesbianism is behind you." Then she whacked me in the side of the head with a paperback edition of 'The Journals of Anais Nin'.
"Ow" I said. She said "c'mon in". So I went inside with her. It was a nice enough place filled with light and the sounds of falling water. Then she took me out into a backyard garden where a mountain brook fed into a beautiful pool of lilies ringed with iris and globeflower, aspodels and babys breath. Spotted baby fawns drank from an indigo fountain and a jaguar lay sleeping in the crook of a huge Banyan tree. And right there, in the middle of the pool, was none other than the Clenis. Naked as a wood duck. Frolicking among the sapphic nymphs as Erato plucked notes from a lyre. They were all singing a stanza to a little song, which went like this:
Albert Mooney says he loves her
All the boys are fighting for her
Knock at the door and they ring that bell
"Oh my true love, are you well?"
Out she comes as white as snow
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
Old Jenny Murphy says she will die
If she couldn't get the fellow with the roving eye.
And then they'd laugh and laugh and clap and begin the stanza all over again.
I said to my host, "I had no idea that the path to lesbianism would lead me to the Clenis." She said "Oh yes, sometimes it may. He frequently stops by for a swim with the nymphs and naiads. Then she told me, "Although the Clenis has a penis, he's a friend of Venus! A special genus. We like to kid him and call him the Clenis Dionysus... think about it."
"I am" I informed her.
I then remarked, "You have a nice place nestled here beside this hill. Not without its troubles I'm sure, but cozy enough and well away from the harpies and scirons of reactionary theogony or the reckless plunders of spartan conservatism. But why not build it atop the hill so you could look down upon those encroaching upon your path." At which point my host pointed to a sign swinging from an arbor made of woven willow boughs smothered with morning glory and grapes - the sign read:
"No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together each the happier for the other."
"Frank Lloyd Wright" my host informed me.
"I like it!" I exclaimed. "It makes good sense!"
"Now, can I have a sponge bath?" I could see her cocking the Anais Nin volume again so I jumped to my own defense, "just kidding, just kidding" I quipped, "you know how it is." And she looked at me in a mischievous way that reminded me of a wood-sprite and said, "I do at that." Then she slapped me smartly on the back of the head with Anais Nin anyway, and said, "watch here."
At which point I heard splashing sounds and giggling coming from the garden pool. I turned quickly, just in time to see the Clenis, bathed in a rainbow, transformed magically into a silenus. The Clenis silenus. At which point the whole noisy pool party went skipping off into the fauna, the Clenis silenus and the nymphs, all of them, laughing and clapping and singing together:
Tell me ma when I go home
The boys won't leave the girls alone
They pulled my hair, they stole my comb
But that's all right till I go home
She is handsome, she is pretty
She is the bell of Dryad city
She is a-courting one, two, three
Pray won't you tell me who is she
Let the wind and rain and the hail blow high
And the snow come tumblin' from the sky
She's as nice as apple pie
She'll get her own lass by and by.....
And then they were completely gone. Swallowed up by the woodland twilight.
I thanked my host for her hospitality and told her I'd be back as soon as I could find a copy of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" to bludgeon her with. She laughed and said, "good one", and then we shook hands and said goodbye.
I walked back up the winding path from lesbianism and when I got home late that evening I sat down and turned on the TV. There was that obnoxious boob-toob man-shrew Joe Scarborough sneering forth with some self-righteous opinionated bit of excitable concocted quackery or another. Desecrating whatever sliver of journalistic integrity MSNBC might still have left. Which granted, ain't much of a sliver these days. Click.
I wasn't going to let that horseshit shoveler ruin my day. No siree by mother nature. So I poured me a shot of bourbon and took a big drink and slid into my manly action outerwear jacket from the Cabela's sporting goods catalog mail order warehouse and went out hunting. Hunting like a rutting buck......through the bookstore stacks and used book bins for my very own copy of "Spy in the House of Love".
Dateline: Lexington and Concord, May 2004.
amor vincit omnia
*
