Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

12o. AS SOLID AS TANGIERS IN A BARE-KNUCKLE WORLD (nyc, 1967):

Now there's nothing wrong with nothing-people I guess but the fact of the matter is that they know 'nothing' and that's where I was from and the people now that I was amidst seemed to know by contrast 'everything' for just by being in NYC I suppose one becomes culturally aware in the know onto things savvy about stuff wise world-weary sharp and crafty too - everything I'd ever known before consisted mostly of suburban dullards doing dull things with little or no outreach towards larger matters of intellect or culture except perhaps for something that TV or Dave Garroway or Steve Allen or somebody like that was able to bring to them - any of those weird kinds of televised closet-intellectuals who would spout and badger about various things while managing at the same time to spoof and belittle their at-home suburbanized television-watcher audiences (it was all crazy and twisted like that) - in fact in today's 21st century world anyway a lot of that no longer matters and everything is now everywhere - but back then I didn't know that and walked madly amidst the new riches of wealth and intellect into which I'd stumbled.

119. A MOST BEAUTIFUL WHITE PAINT:

You've got to figure how weird could it be to have a millionaire criminal befriend you and never knowing why and one time he said to me 'forget the History of Art kid - what you really want to learn about is the History of the Thievery of Art - that's where the money is' and I shrugged as if to laugh and he started to say 'no matter it's all the same in the end and when you come right down to it your way is probably more noble' and 'people know who were never even there' : (a'propos of nothing let's say) and together we were reading (two separate copies) 'Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule' by J.P. Donleavy and he made me promise that one day I'd write him a long paper about it and we'd discuss it together over a few beers and coffee - I agreed but nothing was ever heard or said on that score again - not sure who ever ever finished reading the book actually but I knew that and the reason I knew it was that nothing was ever really sealed or finished with him and it all just had to BE in some fluid form of process-never-ending - there was a time when he paid me fifty dollars up front to paint the place for him (which was a pretty 'definite' move and commitment on his part) and I did so using some beautiful and thick white paint which he supplied from a paint and art-supply store around the corner and that paint was a revelation to me the very idea that something could have 'Quality' - a thick and brushful presence an accountability of itself like something I'd never seen before - I had no idea how much that paint cost nor the brushes but it was to my mind the most expensive and most beautifully 'qualified' object I'd ever dealt with - a rich-man's paint to be sure - and I was dutifully impressed and I painted the white wooden surfaces of those rooms with the most lustrous and serious-looking beautiful coat of fresh and joyous white paint ever seen : believe you me GALLERY quality in coverage and lustre and smoothness and when I was finished the place was beautiful - fifty bucks meant a lot to me for two days work anyway plus I had the run of the place food and drink and a place to rest as I needed it and I was able to experience - really EXPERIENCE - quality for perhaps the first time in my life.

118. FAT FAT FAT FAT SEX (tales from the road):

'I can't control what I eat' he tells his therapist the day after he encourages a struggling dieter to 'enjoy the meal' and then he says 'in the end she was looking at me as though I'd raped her' and the possibilities herein for slutty behavior in the fat community (otherwise known as the 'refuse heap') are endless - jokes about oral fixations ('would you like to eat my hot dog') jokes about 'sauces' and 'drippings' elegant meals which require 'consent' and 'mastication fantasies' and things wherein the body is most easily violated by and through the mouth and there's always a very certain richness about things which comes through as we wallow in the despoliations of eating - the grease fat toppings and all that - and the gleeful chewing and attentive dining of fixated and oh-so-carefully dining people for supplanting sex is a food-faddist's delight and the less you can get the more you cover it with eating which translates the sex-urge the squirm of semen-collecting into instead some shitty fatty noisy farty sloppy slimy debris 'what a whopper PLOPPED on us!' and all down the highways of some weirdly sexually-complicit America are one after the other after another places to EAT - food dine drink slobber stuff - every sort of mouth-stuff existent can be found and second only to the laughing vibration of good-old crazy sex is America sated by good-old crazy food FOOD food one stop after another stop after another WORLD without END amen!!

DR. LIVINGSTON SWALLOW, THAT LONGFELLOW BOY:

537 Park Avenue : this doctor had a catharsis and was taken from his office on a stretcher being rolled by two men while a female EMT with a plasma bottle held high walked alongside them and they were all chattering strange numbers and words I could not understand nor recognize but I knew the situation as well as any other for it isn't always that the 'Doctor' of the house goes down as the patient and gets taken away by the ambulance himself and (I wondered) 'where to?' does one go in such a case - the light blue flicker of a computer screen illumined the interior rear of the medical wagon as someone else was crouched at a keyboard plotting in numbers and information and - I'd supposed - awaiting results or instructions back and all this even before they entered the flow of auto traffic which whizzed the street and not knowing where they'd be headed I understood all too well the haste but the same would be said for anything along Park Ave's majestically reputated denizens and doctor's offices and psychiatric couches and chairs : everything medical was here pronounced real and sure and true and actual while to so many others everywhere else in the city it remained a distant fantasy a glimmer of something else a chimera one hoped never to need to face - that chasm that yawping hole that gaping wide-eyed destination DEATH that which slaughters us all - and with no one speaking I kept a watch at the least at what I saw (the languorous rump of the female assistant held the allure of assertion that - to me at least - proved still I was alive!) and they entered their wagon and slammed shut the doors and a siren pronounced its intention to garner attention and away OFF! they sped (sprinkling in between some cars and a lone workman's truck) while faces looked up - that old gent by the median's flowers the woman in a gaudy hat punishing her dog with a leash while looking back to what had occurred - but they all still passed as moments and people do : some tidy assertion of sidewalk and premise or occurrence and chance or doubt and dishonor and 'there but for fortune' go you or go I.

116. WAS ANY OF IT WORTH ANYTHING?

It's one thing to look the other way but another thing entirely to feign blindness or pretend you just don't see YET there are many people at any one time doing just that and having it work for them : by such manners do we convince ourselves of things invincible by fallacy of logic or reason - THINGS OTHERWISE UNTRUE - the good intentions of Ferlin Husky and the trials and tribulations of old Frank Kafka himself laughter and forgetting humor 'midst tribulation and leftover morsels at a hungry man's table : each and all for naught but all evened out in the end : for surely we never stand alone but there's always something with us whether memory falsity illogic or deceit to name just a few of the best and I've never won a medal neither for scarcity nor plenty though I did win one once for 'oratory' - back when I was the king of South Jersey High Schools and the mentor of Blackwood High - they'd come from miles around in winter Sunday afternoon school buses - tours and groups with guides and witnesses to whatever I was doing : stagehand productions oratory drama Shakespeare Kings and Passion Plays or reading Martin Luther's address before the Diet of Worms aloud ('SOMEONE'S got to bell the cat!') - one thing after another one little bit at a time - I wanted to be Ulysses I wanted to be Robespierre and Manon and I wished for all the world for a theater of my own but really really I ask WHAT was happening during that time ? Leroy Jones became Imiri Baraka that fellow named Little became Malcom X and Cassius Clay became Muhammed Ali with Zimmerman Bob Dylan to boot : and what the hell for ? was any of it worth anything?