Dreams That Burn In The Night (16 page)

U are right. Eye
certainly would not like my I-balls washed out with soap. Eye will tell you how it
happened.

Eye was in the
amusement arcade. It was Friday that eye was there, because it rained Saturday. Eye was playing
the beaver rifle range game. It too is one of my favorites. In this game, one shoots
bullet-shaped tongues at wide-open beavers moving in a circle around a small tower of pulsating
clitorises. Two points for every clitoris your tongue bumps against and five points for every
beaver your tongue penetrates. Eye had just scored a multiple-score bonus from a ricochet shot
off the topmost clitoris (eight points total) and then down into one of the beavers. Eye was
elated by my natural ability as a beaver shooter.

Suddenly, a machine
voice came out of the machine. It was a compelling hypnotic kind of voice. It sounded
suspiciously like a
woman's
machine voice. Eye felt my scrotum tighten with fear. It
was
the voice of an opposite-sexer and the voice said, and eye quote:
in my youth, i wore gold shoes, underpanties of

SATIN, SILK AND
LEATHER RIDING QUIRTS. I AM TWENTY-NINE YEARS OLD. I HAVE ONLY BEEN USED ONCE BY A SAILOR ON
LEAVE. LOVE ME, LOVE MY URETHRA.

Eye was shocked!
Eye was flattened like the taste of granola! Eye was repulsed! The voice continued: i
am a sincere woman, a pussycat,

FORMER STUDENT OF
DR. DISCIPLINE, WHO INVITED LADIES TO SERVE AND BE SERVED TO THE
SOUND OF MUSIC,
NOW
AVAIL­ABLE FOR UNLIMITED HORIZONTAL BOOKINGS.

Eye was overwhelmed
with the sheer, obscene crudity! When the voice said deposit fifty aluminum sexies in the
machine, surely U can understand, eye was in no shape, eye was morally un-responsible. Eye was
demented, eye was incapacitated by per­version.

Involuntarily, my
hand strayed to my cheeks, where eye keep my supply of sexies. Eye counted the nipple-shaped
coins out in my hand, and like a mindless automaton, dropped them into the coin slot.

There was an
enormous crashing sound from within the machine. It sounded like a three-mile-long platinum
brassiere crump­ling under its own weight. The front of the machine opened. An opposite-sexer
stepped out of the machine, CLOTHED IN A BIKINI!!! Eye nearly fainted dead away! U ask me what
hap­pened next? Eye hardly remember, it was so obscene and it all happened so fast.

The opposite-sexer
approached me, and, GASP, she spoke directly to me, saying, and eye quote:
in this age of computers

AND DEPERSONALIZED
SERVICE, ONE OF THE NATION'S MOST RE­SPECTED BOOK CLUBS OFFERS YOU A UNIQUE SELECTION OF
OLD-AND-RARES. THE BOOK CLUB PROVIDES ITS MEMBERS WITH DIS­TINCTIVE PIECES USUALLY NOT FOUND IN
OTHER BOOK CLUBS AND ENHANCES ITS OFFERINGS WITH INDIVIDUAL AND HONEST SERVICE.

U ask how eye can
remember it so exactly. Believe me, eye have her words burned indelibly on my retina! What next?
U are about to ask. Eye shudder even to relate it!

The opposite-sexer
touched her bikini bottoms and said:
are

YOU FOND OF THE
SOUTH WIND?

What did eye do?
Eye fainted dead away, of course. Why, there is no higher obscenity! The mere thought that an
opposite-sexer has sexual feelings about a person of my sex (ridiculous) and eye am ready to
throw up! Wouldn't anybody? U ask. Yes, U are right, of course. A perverse concept, a perverse
concept! (Eye have always despised all those opposite-sexers and all of their beastly functions.)
Somebody should put those opposite-sexers in their place.

What about the
pants? U ask. Eye was getting to that. Eye can­not be rushed, eye have suffered, eye have been
abused, eye have been rolled up emotionally and bounced like a rubber ball. Eye am hardly in
possession of my critical faculties, surely U can be a little patient.

Well, eye was
walking through the park where the artificial trees were already in bloom. The first artificial
robins of spring were pecking the Astroturf for artificial worms. Eye was walking along, minding
my own business, as twilight approached, and then arrived. Eye was bothering no one. The chill
night air made my exposed genitals shrink up like fatty hamburger in a hot fry­ing
pan.

Eye paused in front
of a porno-holographic billboard. Perhaps

U have seen the
billboard to which eye now refer. Eye refer to the porno-holographic billboard of the Playboy
Bunny impaled on a long-necked bottle of Chianti. Imported Chianti.

Eye was staring at
the billboard, eye was getting an I-f. Eye was soaking up this church-sponsored visual treat
when some­thing about the porno-holographic billboard disturbed me. Call it premonition, call it
intuitive testicles, call it what U like, eye sensed something amiss. Eye peered even more
closely at the porno-hologram. Eye moved to one side to get another angle on this
three-dimensional objection d'art.

Immediately, eye
knew what was wrong. It was not a three-dimensional porno-holographic billboard of a Playboy
Bunny and a long-necked bottle of Chianti (imported) at all! It was a real Playboy Bunny impaling
herself with abandon on a Chianti bot­tle. Imported.

Eye was outraged.
Eye was shocked. She saw me. Eye witnessed some perverse change in her facial expression as she
re­moved the bottle and tossed it away. She advanced toward me. (Eye sensed that some illness
possessed her.) Eye began backing away, terror stopping the blood in my veins. She lunged at me,
eye blush thinking of it, since she lunged directly at my exposed lap of luxury.

Fortunately, eye
dodge good and she missed, allowing me to back away even farther. As eye left her, she said, and
eye quote:

I AM A FORMER
PLAYBOY BUNNY AND I AM TIRED OF INDISCRIMI­NATE PINCHING. I'M LOOKING FOR A MORE PERSONAL TOUCH.
IF YOU RESPOND, I WILL GIVE YOU A PIECE OF MY TAIL.

Eye turned and ran.
Eye was lucky to escape with my . . . U ask me about the pants? Can U prattle of nothing but
pants? Eye am fed up with this endless round of interrogations. Eye am but an innocent dupe, a
tool in the hands of ... Perhaps eye have chosen an unfortunate way of phrasing it, let us just
say eye have been manipulated.

O.K., eye'U tell U
about the pants, eye was just getting to that part anyway. Eye was in a rowboat. Eye was floating
through the TUNNEL OF LOVE, which is an underground peep show in New Jersey that takes U through
Mother Earth's vagina and out her anus. Perhaps U are familiar with it. It is very cleverly done,
built on a former strip-mine location, with a small stand of evergreen trees representing the
pubic hair. As U flow into the vagina, on a wave of natural gas, there is a continuous light show
on all sides. The waves of natural gas are turbulent, which gives U a constant in/out sensation.
The walls are lined with stalactite phalluses that drip limestone sperm.

Eye had reached the
halfway mark between Mother Earth's va­gina and her anus when suddenly a boat, coming up the
umbilical tube, crashed into the side of my boat. The jolt almost upended my craft. Eye was
outraged! This other boat had no business mucking around in the umbilical cord like that.
Maturity keeps one out of the umbilical cord and in the mainstream.

Well, eye stood up
in my boat and eye guess eye told the other man what eye thought of him. As his type so often
does, he ig­nored me. He was listening attentively to himself, preparatory to leading his own
wave of applause, He said, and eye quote: I AM

ARTHUR O. RAMA. I
AM A PRACTICING EGOTIST. THERE IS NO LIGHT

in my window
unless it
is
me.
i
am a bored
(and here eye pause because eye
admit to some confusion, perhaps he said: I
am boring.
Yes, eye think
he did say that, now that eye think of

it)  SCIENTIST
FROM THE MYSTIC YEAST. I SEEK A BRIGHT FEMALE

companion
to
(and here he made an obscure gesture
with an antiquated set of genital instrumentation, which reflected the un­knowable knowledge of
the inside of a vacuum cleaner)
help

SCRAPE OFF THE
ACADEMIC MOLD.

Eye was shocked,
but by this time, and sensing a certain chau­vinistic familiarity about this fossil, eye was not
in the least sur­prised.

What about the
pants? U ask. Eye am outraged about the way U continually harp about this theme! Eye was just
about to tell U about the pants when U so crudely interrupted! Eye was just about to tell all and
U butted in! Eye have no patience with peo­ple who have no patience.

U see, eye was at
the mortuary of the future. An attendant was lecturing on corpus delicious. Suddenly one of the
corpses, a lonely thirty-four-year-old woman from Philadelphia, sat up on her slab and said, and
eye quote: I
am alert and vibrant, i am

EXPERIENCED. I'VE
SLEPT WITH POLICEMEN. I'VE MADE TV COM­MERCIALS. MY GREATEST DESIRE IS TO MEET A WELL-HUNG MAN
WHO WANTS A DEEP, PENETRATING ENCOUNTER WITH A REAL WOMAN.

U say this is
getting me nowhere? Perhaps U are right. Eye stole the pants off a dead nigger. Am eye joking?
Certainly not.

The dead nigger was
stuffed and mounted in an exhibit at the Smithsonian. It was the section of the building that
dealt with ob­solescence and ideas whose time had come and gone.

Eye stole the pants
off this dead nigger and eye took them to the wisdom urinal and eye put them on. WHY? WHY? WHY?
Uask.

It seemed like the
thing to do.

He was
hustle-looking, hustle-hungry. Sitting there in the door­way of the cut-rate record shop,
watching the Sunday afternoon in New York scene. Eyes scanning the freaks and the lunch-hour
ladies, the alarm-clock, time-card-punching cowboys. Sunday af­ternoon and Johnny on the record
store steps looking for a new boy. He could always tell the new ones, almost smell them. He just
sat there, looking for a home in every face.

This boy coming
down the street. Some kind of Indian cos­tume. God! Authentic-looking, maybe even real deerskin
and wood-and-bone chokers, the whole trip. In New York City, and looking out of place in this
authentic suit right down to the moc­casins. That whole thing there, he added that up. It had a
smell to it of money. Those kinds of costumes are strictly heavy paper over the counter. This boy
coming down the street.

Johnny looked at
the boy's face and knew he had a mark. A freak, a face-painted freak on Sunday afternoon in New
York. The boy was out-of-town action, hick-town, he looked out of place. Strictly a stranger,
lost, bewildered, looking like he just got off the boat and everything is new to him.

When that boy went
by, Johnny moved out behind him, stalking him like a cat. He kept close, planning, figuring
angles, figur­ing how to take him before the other hustlers moved in. When the boy stopped to
look at his reflection in a store window, Johnny moved up and touched him on the shoulder,
touched him softly, caressingly.

"You're going to
need a guide. Someone to show you the city. Show you the sights. Huh, boy? You're new, boy,
you're new here and you need someone to take care of you." Johnny grinned, mixing threat and
invitation in his voice. The marks liked Johnny. He had full, soft lips, he talked his hustles
nice. He wore old clothes but they were always clean and he had that little-boy look. The
little-boy look, the curly hair, the clean, hairless face, the soft neuter movements that made
the marks go for him.

"I show you real
nice. You're going to like how I show you." Johnny said it right, said it dirty.

But that
face-painted freak, that costumed crazy, he was like a million miles away. He just stared at his
reflection in the window. Then he spoke, a language of lilting polysyllables, strange
inflec­tions. He seemed to speak as much to himself, as much to his reflection, as to the
hustler.

"Hell!" muttered
Johnny. "I shoulda known you'd be a damn foreigner." The hustler smiled again and gave it another
try.
"Habla espanol?"

Behind the boy,
Valdez was coming along, coming up behind the boy. Valdez with that empty walk when he's empty,
hungry for himself, hungry for that next best mark. Johnny saw him com­ing, saw that
high-pressure hype with the big chest and overmus-cled arms, and his face went black with rage.
Valdez came up quick, nose out like a fish nibbling bait.

Johnny grabbed the
boy, spun him around, tried to pull him away. There was a hiss like animal fat burning in a cook
fire and the space where Johnny stood was empty. There was a stench, an odor of scorched hair.
Valdez had frozen in place, one arm ex­tended, reaching for Johnny's new boy.

The strange boy
turned and looked at Valdez, turned and looked. Valdez was paralyzed. The strange boy's face was
chang­ing color, going from brown to blood red, and then he was gone. So gone. It was a goddamn
trip. He was there and then nothing. It was like a light bulb going out. Sunday afternoon in New
York and there was this freak in this damn Indian costume, and two
hustlers had tried to take him and one had disappeared like out of
some goddamn fairy tale and the other hustler had watched them both disappear. Man, it could only
happen in New York City on a Sunday afternoon.