It seemed as if it would go on forever, the sex and death chant. The very next afternoon at the office I received a telephone call from my wife saying that her friend Arline had just been taken to the insane asylum. They were friends from the convent school in Canada where they had both studied music and the art of masturbation. I had met the whole flock of them little by little, including Sister Antolina who wore a truss and who apparently was the high priestess of the cult of Fonanism. They had all had a crush on Sister Antolina at one time or another. And Arline with the chocolate eclair mug wasn’t the first of the little group to go to the insane asylum. I don’t say it was masturbation that drove them there but certainly the atmosphere of the convent had something to do with it. They were all spoiled in the egg.
Before the afternoon was over my old friend MacGregor walked in. He arrived looking glum as usual and complaining about the advent of old age, though he was hardly past thirty. When I told him about Arline he seemed to liven up a bit. He said he always knew there was something wrong with her. Why? Because when he tried to force her one night she began to weep hysterically. It wasn’t the weeping so much as what she said. She said she had sinned against the Holy Ghost and for that she would have to lead a life of continence. Recalling the incident he began to laugh in his mirthless way. “I said to her -well you don’t need to do it if you don’t want… just hold it in your hand. Jesus, when I said that I thought she’d go clean off her nut. She said I was trying to soil her innocence – that’s the way she put it.
And at the same time she took it in her hand and she squeezed it so hard I damned near fainted. Weeping all the while, too. And still harping on the Holy Ghost and her ‘innocence’. I remembered what you told me once and so I gave her a sound slap in the jaw. It worked like magic. She quieted down after a bit, enough to let me slip it in, and then the real fun commenced. Listen, did you ever fuck a crazy woman? It’s something to experience. From the instant I got it in she started talking a blue streak. I can’t describe it to you exactly, but it was almost as though she didn’t know I was fucking her. Listen, I don’t know whether you’ve ever had a woman eat an apple while you were doing it… well, you can imagine how that affects you. This one was a thousand times worse. It got on my nerves so that I began to think I was a little queer myself . . . And now here’s something you’ll hardly believe, but I’m telling you the truth. You know what she did when we got through? She put her arms around me and she thanked me … Wait, that isn’t all. Then she got out of bed and she knelt down and offered up a prayer for my soul. Jesus, I remember that so well. ‘Please make Mac a better Christian,’ she said. And me lying there with a limp cock listening to her. I didn’t know whether I was dreaming or what. ‘Please make Mac a better Christian!’ Can you beat that?
“What are you doing to-night?” he added cheerfully.
“Nothing special,” I said.
“Then come along with me. I’ve got a gal I want you to meet… Paula, I picked her up at the Roseland a few nights ago. She’s not crazy – she’s just a nymphomaniac. I want to see you dance with her. It’ll be a treat… just to watch you. Listen, if you don’t shoot off in your pants when she starts wiggling, well then I’m a son of a bitch. Come on, close the joint. What’s the use of farting around in this place?”
There was a lot of time to kill before going to the Roseland so we went to a little hole in the wall over near Seventh Avenue. Before the war it was a French joint; now it was a speak-easy run by a couple of wops. There was a tiny bar near the door and in the back a little room with a sawdust floor and a slot machine for music. The idea was that we were to have a couple of drinks and then eat. That was the idea. Knowing him as I did, however, I wasn’t at all sure that we would be going to the Roseland together. If a woman should come along who pleased his fancy – and for that she didn’t have to be either beautiful or sound of wind and limb – I knew he’d leave me in the lurch and beat it. The only thing that concerned me, when I was with him, was to make sure in advance that he had enough money to pay for the drinks we ordered. And, of course, never to let him out of my sight until the drinks were paid for.
The first drink or two always plunged him into reminiscence. Reminiscences of cunt to be sure. His reminiscences were reminiscent of a story he had told me once and which made an indelible impression upon me. It was about a Scotchman on his deathbed. Just as he was about to pass away his wife, seeing him struggling to say something bends over him tenderly and says – “What is it. Jock, what is it ye’re trying to say?” And Jock, with a last effort, raises himself wearily and says:
“Just cunt… cunt… cunt.”
That was always the opening theme, and the ending theme, with MacGregor. It was his way of saying -futility. The leitmotif was disease, because between fucks, as it were, he worried his head off, or rather he worried the head off his cock. It was the most natural thing in the world, at the end of an evening, for him to say – “come on upstairs a minute, I want to show you my cock.” From taking it out and looking at it and washing it and scrubbing it a dozen times a day naturally his cock was always swollen and inflamed. Every now and then he went to the doctor and he had it sounded. Or, just to relieve him, the doctor would give him a little box of salve and tell him not to drink so much. This would cause no end of debate, because as he would say to me, “if the salve is any good why do I have to stop drinking?” Or, “if I stopped drinking altogether do you think I would need to use the salve?” Of course, whatever I recommended went in one ear and out the other. He had to worry about something and the penis was certainly good food for worry.
Sometimes he worried about his scalp. He had dandruff, as most everybody has, and when his cock was in good condition he forgot about that and he worried about his scalp. Or else his chest. The moment he thought about his chest he would start to cough. And such coughing! As though he were in the last stages of consumption. And when he was running after a woman he was as nervous and irritable as a cat. He couldn’t get her quickly enough. The moment he had her he was worrying about how to get rid of her. They all had something wrong with them, some trivial little thing, usually, which took the edge off his appetite.
He was rehearsing all this as we sat in the gloom of the back room. After a couple of drinks he got up, as usual, to go to the toilet, and on his way he dropped a coin in the
