1959 is the year North by Northwest was downtown on the marquee; also as of
that summer, on June 6th, the New Yorker for the first time anywhere
pushed
*Seymour: an Introduction* into the face of a perfectly perplexed public,
which nearly these fifty years later, is still, well, put it this way . .
.
As I was only 14 years old at the time, how can I be blamed, if the only
highly hilarious jokes I knew from the pages of my mother's New Yorker
were
in the cartoons? If Jules Feiffer was making me laugh, it was not because
I
knew he was Jules Feiffer: at 14, you are not old enough to be a big
phony.
You might be a little jerk or a little wimp, a small pervert, even a green
apple sneak thief and berry-patch brigand, a vain, greasy-hair,
duck-tailed,
skinny-belted, low pants, motorcycle-booted juvenile delinquent who
cleaned
his room only once on a blue moon, but thank your lucky stars you would
pretty much have to wait for your first year in college to become a phony.
The world of 1959 that I knew (and I knew it well, for the fact of
admiring
it so) was a damned nice place in my book, and I was in no big hurry to
get
out of it. I was no kind of angst-jaded, wise-to-the-game, suffering to
the
deeps of my soul, Holden Caulfield type kid. Indeed, I would not gain the
least acquaintance with him till my first year of college, after I'd
become
a phony. So don't tell me that *Catcher in the Rye* is not some kind of
valuable book, and a real shot in the arm, for an average, normal pervert
of
a wimp who thinks he's tough in a black leather jacket or football jersey.
I was not wise to the world, not to a world that seemed very wise indeed,
compared to me, and I was completely in the state of liking very much to
think of the day that I should become a free, independent, and comfortably
prosperous but ragingly romantic bachelor participant in it: the whole
"Playboy Ideal" is what you might like to call it, what I saw for the
best,
most perfect future for a man.
Never mind that at school I was always getting my ass kicked! And see if
you can figure this: I rarely went without having a girlfriend, despite
the
miserable reputation that a lot of ass-kickings will engender. I don't
know
why I didn't have the kind of mean-streak that it takes for a fellow to
stick up for himself in a fight. Maybe it was because I had no old man
there
to be getting all embarrassed over my wimpiness, threatening to kick my
ass
himself, if I came home again with a face swollen beyond
recognition--without having put a few punches in on the other guy for sake
of the family honor.
It's hard to tell the difference between a state of being just plain
scared,
or on the other hand a condition of just not being mean enough to raise a
fist upon another human being. In the view of everyone at school, I was
scared, chicken, a complete wimp. Then came the day when for once I was
challenged to a fight by a guy of my own size and age. Damnedest thing
was,
I'd always liked this kid, and had no idea what had suddenly caused him to
want to have a fight with me; didn't know whether it was jealousy over a
mutual pal, or if maybe it was because someone was telling him that for
him
to be known as a buddy of mine was *social death*, and that he had to do
this to save his reputation.
The fight took place down at Van Cleve Park, as scheduled. The crowd was
large, a big circle of boys wide as a boxing ring, where they were the
ropes
of braided strands; two or three hateful jeering assholes thick. I didn't
have a single fan in the crowd as they were all Johnny Samuelson's pals
and
none of mine.
As of then, like I say, I had no idea why Johnny wanted this, and that's
what I was asking him, directly amid the din of all the jeering. Somebody
in
the crowd shouted that I was "queer". Then another voice seconded the
motion. It was clear: wimp and queer are synonyms! When I heard it come
from Samuelson from a twisted mouth behind threatening fists, well . . .
This was novel, a first for me, to feel the meanness of strong anger
beginning to well, the kind of anger that pays no heed to fear of pain or
injury for the other or yourself. This was a new one, to find how I was
faced with an ass-kicking, not just for the usual, plain brutish
pissedness
of it, as beauty for its own sake, or art for art's sake, but here came an
ass-kicking for sake of a libel, a lie; a slander, a piss-smelling stream
of
yellow gossip: an injustice. If there was one thing I hated, one thing
that
could piss me off but good, it was some out of control, awful thing like
that, an evil that drifts around about men--some foul untruth like that.
Okay, but say I was "queer" that there had been, on one occasion some
silly
adolescent homo***ual hanky-panky going on between our mutual pal and
me--and let us even go so far as to say that I had been the chief
instigator
of it? Does that make me "queer"? Maybe yes, maybe no. Make it yes! It
wasn't long after this that the 'truth' came out with a Rorschach test,
that
I did indeed have at least "latent" leanings of ***ual affection for
persons
of my own gender.
Had that psychologist asked me, I'd have told him he was nuts, and would
have started counting out on my fingers the names of all my girlfriends.
Put
it this way: I had no desire to see myself as queer, nor to be identified
as
such. Neither was I willing to allow that one or two (maybe two, come to
think) such amorous/*****c encounters between myself and another fellow,
should serve to define me as strictly the one thing as opposed to the
other,
largely because there was no truth in it. I loved the girls, I wanted the
girls, I fantasized over the girls. Playboy magazine was a big turn-on for
me, and so I was not about to stand there in the middle of that circle of
hate and be defined as something those mean bastards wanted to make of me.
Hell! Even if I had been queer--and maybe I was, if only a little--there
was
something a whole lot more powerfully strange about me than that, which is
my hatred for the injustice of prejudice. My closest pals, not one of whom
were there for me that day, thought me an enormous bore for the way I was
always spouting off about the bad break that Negros were getting in this
world. For a while, the bastards took up the habit of calling me
"Preacher".
Assholes.
Only now do I realize that Johnny Samuelson himself was fighting to save
himself from that same injustice, from being tarred by it, as it would rub
off me and stick to him. And you could sure see that, even if you weren't
conscious of what it was; it was there before my eyes burning in his, in
the
shame that was blu****ng and breaking into sweat over his face, and though
it
was all there in a bare fla****ng of teeth, the strangled noises coming
from
his throat; knowing nothing of what really was shaking him, I only knew
that
it puzzled the piss out of me.
It was the ugliness of that crowd that kept coaxing Johnny to beat me
bloody, it was that I hated, not Johnny who had been my pal, and I almost
felt sorry for the poor bastard, but when finally he connected to my jaw
with one of the many missed p***** of his fist, when I heard the ravenous
roar of glee from the herd, and saw Johnny's countenance ****ne in the glow
of it, I wanted to smash that.
I went into one of those wild, swinging windmill things and battered that
poor son of a ***** so bad that he wound up on the ground. Pity that I
didn't have the killer instinct to go down on him right there and then to
finish the punk off because the shame of his fall soon had him up and
going
strong, till he'd laid punches enough to the side of my head to put me in
a
dizzy daze that landed me at his feet.
Demands of the crowd that he get down on me for the coup de grace were
heeded. Under his knees my arms were pinned, and with each slam of his
fist
came the big question, "Do you give?" Do I? No, not so long as I know
what
those words really mean. "Give?" Give what? My silent answer came as I
finally found the strength in my fear of further damage to roll him off,
and
in the sense of my triumph as my knees were now down hard on his chest;
then
came the sense of power to say with my fists, "Here's what I 'give' to
you!"
After the three of four blows I landed to his kisser, I then knew that I
had
him beat. With my spit splattering to his face I asked him, "Do you want
to
quit this?" The pack of wolves round about us would not have it! Johnny
said, "No. Never!"
I told him I didn't want to hit him again. He swore at me, calling me a
dirty fellator. I didn't hit him, I yelled at him, "I'm tired of hitting
you, Johnny! Let's just quit this and call it even, okay?" It was true
what
I told him. He had weakened to the point where hitting him more would be
too
easy, too cheap and that kind of bullying cruelty, I could not generate
from
myself, not even in redress of those sad, desperate aspersions.
I told him, "I'm going to let you up, Johnny, but the fight is over." How
that den of s****s around us hissed and rattled, but I could see they were
beat just as bad as Johnny and there was nothing in them for me to fear or
respect. But how, like the whipped dogs they were, they did begin to howl,
and yap as they received Johnny back into their fold with loud
declarations,
declaiming the FACT that Johnny had won the fight.
--
JM http://whosenose.blogspot.com
http://jesu***egesis.blogspot.com
--
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