Friday, September 12, 2025

How shall I kill thee?

 How shall I kill thee?

 

    They are both dead now.  Frank, bloated and stiff, lies face down across the bed in the other room.  He died first.  Julie lasted almost an hour longer; she lies on the couch here in main room of the cabin where I sit.  Her eyes are open and one small lifeless hand dangles from beneath the blanket and rests, palm up and white, on the bare board floor.

    The light from the fireplace leaps and dances about the room and provides the only illumination; it does strange things with the shadows, especially those on Julie's face.  As I write, I keep imagining that I can see her change expressions out of the corner of my eye, and even through I know it is impossible, my gaze returns involuntarily, hopefully, to her face each time.

    It is unbelievably quiet.  Outside I can hear the night sounds: frogs call from the weeds at the water's edge; a whippoorwill repeats his mindless nonsense somewhere in the timber behind the cabin; and out on the lake there is the occasional slap of a fish umping.  It is so peaceful -- and so ghastly.

    Frank was my best friend.  That's all I can say about him, for those are the only words permitted to express that unique bond that sometimes develops between two men.  If he were still alive I would be reluctant and embarrassed to discuss it like this.  But he is dead, so it no longer matters.

    When we were younger, in high school, people thought it unusual that we should be such good companions.  Frank was a social person.  Open and outgoing, he loved crowds and sports and fun while I was the opposite: a studious introverted type.  But it was as if the strengths in his personality complemented the deficiencies in mine, and vice versa.  Together we formed a composite, a symbiotic associate that benefited us both.

    I met Julie much later at the university.  She was an art student, and she needed an elective to complete the requirements for her degree.  For some unknown reason she chose a sophomore biology course, and she landed in the laboratory section I supervised as a graduate assistant.  I say for some unknown reason, because she was completely confused by biology and had, in contrast to her artistic abilities, absolutely no talent in the laboratory.

    She came to me for help outside of class, and I loved her immediately.  I began to look forward with such intense anticipation to her weekly Wednesday afternoon visits to my tiny office for tutoring that all of my other work, once so important to me, suffered.  My class work was below par, and I made no progress at all on my thesis for that entire semester.  I spend long hours staring out the window or at the same page of a book while in my mind I went back and relived every detail of our most recent meeting and constructed elaborate improbable daydreams about the next.  My shyness prevented me from declaring my feelings and forced me to be content with our business-like relationship, for my fear of rejection was strong.  But as the semester waned a panic began to rise within me and I soon realized I would have to take action if I expected to continue seeing her.

    At our last meeting before final examinations, it took all of my courage to blurt out, in a quavering voice, an awkward invitation to dinner.  She accepted with such undisguised pleasure that I laughed aloud in pure unbelieving joy after she had gone.

    I saw Julie as often as possible after that, and my love for her continued to grow and increased to near worship.  That she could love me in return was a thought so inconceivable I dared not even dream it.

    But she did, and within six months we were married.

    Oddly enough, rather than becoming a wedge between Frank and I, Julie added a new cohesive facet that drew the three of us closer together, so that we formed an inseparable group, a family.  Frank and Julie were like brother and sister with all of the teasing and banter that always accompanies such relationships.  Julie liked to scold and cluck over Frank's sometimes exotic love life.  Since he occupied the apartment directly across the courtyard from ours, it was impossible not to notice the varied and ever changing parade of young women he dated.

    "When are you going to stop fooling around and settle down?" Julie would demand severely.

    "You know there's only one woman I could ever truly love," he would respond with an exaggerated wink.  "And she's taken."

    Frank took a degree in engineering, and he worked nights for a local manufacturer; I continued to study and teach at the university; and Julie painted.  She had converted an extra bedroom into a studio, and she spent her days in there with brushes and paints and canvas.  Her paintings were the subject of much animated debate among the three of us.

    Frank praised her efforts and had several he especially liked hanging in his apartment; but, just as Julie had no aptitude for science, I had no eye for art.  When she displayed a newly completed creation for our comments, I invariably asked, "What is it?"  Her canvasses, filled with colors and, at best, barely recognizable shapes, made no sense to my pragmatic scientific mind.  "Why don't you paint a picture of a tree or a sailboat, or even a bowl of fruit?" I would ask.  "Something I can recognize."

    "Insensitive biological slob," she would mutter in mock disgust.

    She displayed her paintings in several local exhibits, and as I was as proud and thrilled as she was each time someone bought one.

    For two years the three of us continued together.  Our friendship and happiness were unbroken, or so it seemed to me, and I don't know for how long we might have gone on like that if I had not make the discovery that forced me to the edge of madness and beyond.

    But let me just tell what happened.

    I returned to the apartment one morning just over a month ago to pick up some notes I needed for an experiment.  Turning the corner of the building, I saw Julie come out of our apartment and, for some reason I cannot name, I stepped behind some shrubbery before she saw me.  What possessed me to do it?  I don't know, but locking back, I think I expected her to come toward me, and I must have planned to step out and surprise her.  So much has happened since then, I can no longer be sure what was in my mind.  I only know I watched in shocked disbelief as she crossed the courtyard and let herself into Frank's apartment.

    I don't know how long I stood there, and I can't describe the thoughts clamoring inside my head.  Frank slept during the day, and I knew he must have been home.  The implications of what I just witnessed were almost more than I could bear, and as I wandered aimlessly back toward the campus, I forced myself to believe there was an innocent logical explanation for it all.

    I called our number later in the day, and it rang twelve times before I hung up.

    That night when I got home, Julie met me at the door as usual, and I waited expectantly, ready to believe her explanation of why she had been in Frank's apartment.  But she didn't mention it.  When I finally said I had called and received no answer, she looked confused for just a second before she recovered, smiled and said she had needed some more paint and had gone out for a while.  She lied to me.  I wanted to leap up and scream, "Liar!" but the situation and the hurt were so dreamlike, so unreal, that I found myself unable to say anything; I stood there, mute, struggling to control the fearful emotions that swelled within my breast.

    After that, suspicion took complete control of me; I waited in concealment each morning to watch her make the trip across the courtyard.  In the evenings when we three were together, their banter took on a second -- a hidden-- meaning for me that inflamed my already wounded pride.  Soon, the first seeds of hatred began to germinate and angry visions of revenge began to dance before my eyes.

    I considered going to the apartment to confront them and to accuse them with my knowledge.  If I had loved either of them less, I would have done just that, and none of this would have happened.  But there is a kind of equation that governs such things, and it states that greater love turns to greater pain turns to greater hate.  By the time I reached the third stage in the equation, nothing short of terrible revenge would satisfy me.  Form that moment, I began to plot murder.  That very statement shows the extent of my evil derangement.

    My first impulse was to get a gun and simply burst in and shoot them.  But hatred, held in check long enough, makes one cunning and shrewd as well as dangerous, and I decided to find a safer, more elegant, way to pay them back.  My reasoning went something like this: In order to succeed, to achieve true revenge, I would have to kill them in such a way that I could not be blamed for their deaths.  To kill them and not have to pay for it would be the sweetest revenge of all.  And furthermore, they would have to be aware as they died that I was responsible.  Only then, I thought, would our debt be settled.

    With these parameters as a guide, I set about the task of finding the proper method to achieve my goal.  In the days that followed I examined and rejected such crude and inferior schemes as accidental fires, defective automobile brakes and anonymous bombs.  When I got around to poison, I started to dismiss it too, as too risky, too traceable; but then my knowledge of biology provided the answer I had been searching for: Clostridium botulinum! Even the name had an evil rhythm, and I knew immediately I had the found the way to commit the perfect murder.

    C. botulinum is the tiny invisible microorganism responsible for the deadly disease known as botulism.  The organism is common in the soil and mud throughout the world., and it produces, as a byproduct of its metabolism, the most potent natural poison known.  Microscopic quantities of this powerful toxin, when ingested by man, are fatal.  The most common sources of botulism are improperly canned vegetables and spoiled meat, and the only that that prevents the disease from being more common is the fact that the organism and its toxin are relatively delicate.  Acidity destroys or inactivates the organism itself, and the toxin, a protein, is easily inactivated by heat.  But nevertheless, enough people are stricken and die often enough from the malady to be significant.  If my unfaithful wife and her lover, my best friend, were to eat some tainted food, and if they were to subsequently die of botulism, a perfectly natural "accident", how could I be blamed?

    It was a simple matter for me to do the necessary research in the university library, and to prepare, unnoticed in the laboratory, the proper nutrient medium to grow and isolate the organism.  Within a few days, I had collected a flask of thick brownish fluid that contained enough of the deadly toxin to kill every human in the city.  I poured a small vial full of the fluid, stoppered it tightly, and dropped it into the inside pocket of my coat.  I locked the flask with the remaining poison in the lower drawer of my desk, just in case something went wrong and more was needed.

    Then I devised the rest of my plan.

    From my research, I learned the poison normally takes anywhere from twelve to seventy-two hours to do its work, depending on the quantity ingested, and since I expected to administer large doses to Frank and Julie, I figured a weekend would be plenty of time to carry out my design.  I would need to have them isolated from civilization to prevent their signaling for help, so I would suggest a weekend here at the cabin.  The cabin is owned by a naturalist colleague of mine at the university and we had often borrowed it before, so there was nothing unusual to arouse suspicion.  Wilderness surrounds the cabin and there are no neighbors for miles in either direction along the lake shore.  They would be totally at my mercy.

    I would poison them, and later, when I took their bodies back, I would claim I too had been stricken with a mild attack of food poisoning and had been too ill to go for help.  A sufficient percentage of botulism cases recover to make my story plausible.  It was a beautiful plan, a fool-proof plan, and it worked perfectly.  Even now, I take a horrible perverse satisfaction from that.

    All I had to do when we arrived here at the cabin last night was to empty the contents of the vial into a bowl of potato salad Julie had prepared as part of the our late supper.  Then I waited.  I lay in the bed beside Julie, unable to sleep, filled with anticipation of my coming triumphant revenge.

    I will not, indeed I cannot, describe the agonizing deaths they suffered early this morning.  I shudder at the insane delight I took in their suffering.  Before they died I carried them in and placed them side by side on the couch.  Then, I paced back and forth.

    By that time they were too weak to help themselves, and they pleaded with me to get them to a doctor.  Their heads lolled crazily because the poison had already blocked the nerve paths controlling the muscles in their necks.

    "Wh...why are you...doing this?" Julie managed to choke out.

    That's when I told them the truth.  I don't remember what I said, only that I shouted and laughed wildly and wouldn't let them speak until I had poured out all of the pain and hatred I had stored over the past weeks.  When I was finished, I stood triumphantly before them, relishing my revenge and the horrified expressions on their faces.

    "Gus... you fool!" Frank said.  It was increasing more difficult for them to speak as more nerve pathways were destroyed.

    "I was in... Frank's apartment...painting," Julie wheezed.

    "What?" I could not comprehend what she was trying to tell me.

    "Your birthday...next week...you said you wanted a painting you could understand...I was working on your present... a landscape...couldn't work at home, you might see... Frank let me work in his living room... while he slept."

    The meaning of what she said struck me like a blow and I refused to believe it. "You lie!"

    I grabbed her shoulders and shook her; her head flopped violently on her nerveless neck.  "You're lying! You're just saying that to cheat me!"

    "She's telling the truth," Frank said.

    I didn't want to believe it.  I looked from one to the other, hoping to detect some clue that they were lying to me. But their expressions were meaningless now, the eyes fixed rigidly, the facial muscles limp and useless.

    I don't recall much of what happened after that.  I remember a growing sense of horror, and I remember that Frank died a few minutes later; I carried him into the bedroom and dumped him on the bed.  My mind, a turmoil of grief and hate and disbelief, was totally paralyzed, and I could not decide what to do.  I laid Julie out on the couch and covered her with the blanket.  She did not speak again before she died.

    I tried to convince myself they had lied to me, that I was right in what I had done, but by then the madness had complete control of me and I paced about the cabin gesturing wildly and talking loudly, illogically, to the two stiffening corpses.

    Sometime during the day, my wildness subsided into a quieter more rational form of grief and I calmly made what I considered the only proper choice open to me:  I would seek to atone for my horrible mistake by imposing the same fate upon myself that I had decreed for my wife and friend.  The flask of poison locked in my desk back at the university provided a simple means for me to accomplish my self destruction.  I took Frank's keys and drove back to the city in his car.

    Once again my memory grows sketchy and I don't remember the trip clearly.  I recall I wept and whispered to myself and drove very badly on the way in.

    But on the way back, I laughed and shouted and waved at the few other astounded motorists that I encountered.  I drove recklessly and giggled hysterically as I slid the car around curves, barely missing trees and bridge abutments.

    It was dark again by the time I arrived back here at the cabin.  After a time I regained sufficient control of myself to build a fire in the fireplace and to sit down here at the table to write this account.

    I must end quickly now, for the evil fluid that I drank is doing its work.  Already my vision is starting to blur and my throat and lips are sore and dry.

    It won't take much longer.

    But before I stop, I must explain why I am still occasionally wracked by uncontrollable laughter:  You see, after I had unlocked the desk drawer and forced myself to take a long nauseous sacrificial pull from the flask, I decided to fetch the paining that had been the cause of this disastrous circumstance.  I, in my state of guilt, thought it would be somehow just to bring it back here as an ironic symbol of the love that had existed between the three of us.

    I drove to Frank's apartment, and let myself in -- and that's when the fits of laughter began.

    There was no painting.

    I entered the bedroom and the bed was still unmade, as if the inhabitants had only recently departed.  There was a pair of Julie's sandals lying askew beside the bed and the familiar smell of her still pervaded the trysting place.

    That is the story, concluded just in time, for I am having difficulty with the pen now and wish to seek a comfortable place to endure my final blissful agony.  There is room on the couch beside Julie.  Perhaps I will join her there beneath the blanket in one final meaningless embrace.

    It is all so incredibly funny.  

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Letter to the Head Man

11-8-76

 

The Head Man
National Linen Service
P.O. Box 5324
Dallas, TX 75222

Dear Head Man:

I am writing directly to you, whoever you are, to register a complaint against your firm and to terminate the service you have provided to us for the past two and a half years.  I could easily have called to ask your name, but, judging from past experiences when I tried to deal with your people on the phone, I doubt it would have been worthwhile.

 On October 14, I called to inquire about the monthly bill you sent.  It was for $26.25.  We had been charged $5.25 for five service calls, each of which involved delivery of one toll towel.  I questioned the amount because previously we had been charged $1.52/visit and our monthly bill ran in the neighborhood of $6-7.00.  I called about noon and was put through to your bookkeeping department.  A woman answered and listened to my inquiry, after which she tried to connect me with the service department.  They were apparently out to lunch, however, and she assured me that she would have them call me right after lunch.  When I hadn't received any word by 3:30 p.m., I called again and this time I got through to the service department.  The man listened to my story again, said he would have to go through the records and look it up, but promised to call me back.

By Tuesday of the following week, I had still received no reply, so I called again. The receptionist at first said the head bookkeeper was in a meeting and would call me back, but I insisted that I needed to talk to somebody right then.  The same woman I had talked to the first time then came on the line and said, " What is your problem, sir?"

I explained it again to her, and she said she would send a salesman out to our shop, "either today or tomorrow," to straighten things out.

Three days later, on October 22, the salesman had still not shown up, but I happened to be present when the delivery was made.  As luck would have it, (at least I thought it was lucky), a supervisor was accompanying the delivery man.  I cornered him, showed him the bill, and once again explained the story.

"We have started charge a $5.00 minimum charge," he said.

"Why weren't we informed of this in advance?" I asked. We received no notice of any increase.

I told him that it wasn't worth $26.00 per month for four towels and I said we wanted to terminate the service. He then got on the phone to someone with your company and worked out a deal whereby your routman would deliver two towels every other week and we would be charged at the old rate of $1.52/towel.

"What about this bill for $26.25?" I asked.

"Just hold on to it.  Don't pay it yet, and we'll send out a salesman to adjust it for you."

And that's what I did.  I was happy with the compromise and the supervisor seemed pleased about it too.  It was a pleasure for me to do business with someone finally who could get things done.

However...

No salesman ever called.

On Friday, November 5, we received another bill from you, with the $26.25 carried over as past due, and an additional two $5.25 charged for towel deliveries.

But the thing that finally clinched it for me was the gummed sticker that you had affixed to the center of the bill.  It says:

    We are subscribers to Commercial Collection Division Dun & Bradstree, Inc.

A pox upon you and your whole organization, sir.  I am through with you.

I have sent a check for all the charges you have billed us for in a separate envelope.  That should ease your pain.

But now I have an ultimatum to issue to you:

If you don't have that towel dispenser removed from our shop by Friday, November 12, I will remove it myself and you can pick it up from the sidewalk outside at your convenience.

                                                    A very irate,

                                                    Roger L. Deen
                                                    for Swiss Coiffures
                                                    305 W. Centerville Rd.
                                                    Garland, TX 75041 

Monday, March 31, 2014

Southern Seas

One of these days (just wait and see)
I'll sail away to a southern sea.

I'll find an island with a palm-lined coast;
I'll lie on sand as warm as toast.

I'll eat papaya and abalone stew;
I'll top it all off with a mango or two.

I'll drink spring water and coconut wine.
I'll pick big berries right off the vine.

I'll swim in the sea, but I'll never bathe;
I'll race with dolphins from wave to wave.

I'll live in a hut without any doors,
I'll sleep in a shack without any floors.

I'll have some friends (maybe one or two)
On the next isle over, just out of view.

I'll invite 'em all when the weather's fine
To come help drink some coconut wine.

We'll dive for pearls and sunken loot;
We'll sing and dance and holler and hoot.

We'll wear grass clothes or none at all
We'll swing through trees; we'll have a ball.

So if you wake one fine spring morn,
And find me gone, don't weep or mourn.

Don't fret yourself; and don't be sad;
Think instead of the times we've had.

Just smile to yourself and know I'm free,
Sailing somewhere on a southern sea.

Friday, March 28, 2014

The Craft of Napping

Guppies at work are bored a lot. Boredom leads to drowsiness, and drowsiness leads to naps. Since management generally disapproves of sleeping on the job, Guppies must develop good clandestine napping skills to get the rest they need to be sharp and alert after work when their real day begins. Napping is about equal parts art and craft; the art you are born with, but the craft can be learned. Here, then, are the basic principles for the craft of napping:

Achieve a Stable Posture

This is the first principle of napping on the job. Part of the great attraction to napping is the relaxation response that occurs when all of your muscles let go as you drift peacefully off into the arms of Morpheus. But when this happens, unless you are either lying down or are in a structurally sound position with bones bracing and supporting your body parts, you are likely to experience some sort of collapse. Nothing detracts from a good nap more than falling out of your chair, or dashing your face painfully into the keyboard--both considered extremely poor form, by the way.

To prevent these sorts of embarrassing disasters, learn to use triangles in your nap postures. The triangle and its relative the pyramid are the strongest, most stable of the geometric shapes; if you ensure that your head and upper body are supported by triangles, you can snooze for hours in rock-solid security. There are many triangular postures--some quite daring and exotic and recommended for experienced nappers only--but the most basic is the old chin-in-the-hands position: lean forward, place your elbows on the desk at about shoulder width, and place your chin on the joined heels of your two hands with the fingers resting comfortably on each cheek. Your face should point to your terminal, as if you are studying something intently on the screen. This is a tried-and-true technique and, if other conditions are right, will give you many hours of peaceful slumber.

Select the Napping Site Carefully

It is perfectly acceptable to sleep at your desk if you have a modest amount of privacy from bosses or nosey passersby, but if your desk is exposed, you may have to select another nap site.

Bathrooms are good for naps, but sitting on a commode for long periods tends to make your legs fall asleep. The danger is that the company will call a surprise fire drill and you will have to be carried out of the building. Sleeping in the bathroom also can be hazardous if you tend toward hemorrhoids. I once worked with a man who spent at least four hours of every work day locked in a stall in the bathroom, sound asleep. He complained a lot about hemorrhoids, and we speculated that he used them for a snooze alarm. The theory was that he sat on the commode and slept until his hemorrhoids hit the water; the shock would wake him up so he could return to his desk for a while until the next nap attack struck.

Have Explanations Handy

Sooner or later, somebody is going to catch you napping. When that happens, it helps--particulary if the catcher is a boss--to have a plausible explanation ready. If all else fails, claim narcolepsy.

Great Nappers I Have Known

In my thirty years as a Guppie, I've had the opportunity to observe many nappers and their techniques. Three stand out in my memory for their creativity and style.

Leroy

Leroy and I shared a cube in a secure area that was protected by a locked door, so surprise visits from the boss were not a problem. A couple of illustrators worked in the cube next to ours, and they insisted that the overhead lights be kept off because reflections on their CAD screens gave them headaches.

It was nap heaven.

I drifted peacefully in and out of consciousness for several days, delighted and well-rested in my new surroundings, before a curious sound intruded to disturb my naps. I began to notice that every few minutes a short beep sounded. It wasn't loud, but it was like a leaky faucet--I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. At first I was mystified; I thought the illustrators must be doing it, but I soon discovered that it came from Leroy's direction. I turned around quietly (we sat back-to-back) and watched him. He seemed to be working. He was leaning back in his chair, his left hand supporting his chin in a good napping position, but his right hand was on the keyboard and he seemed to be scrolling up through a file looking for something. Suddenly, the scrolling stopped at the top of the file, and the terminal emitted the offending beep. Leroy, as if treated to an electric shock, immediately roused up and took a quick look around to ensure nobody had sneaked up on him. He then placed his finger on the right arrow key and began scrolling back down through the file while he went back to sleep. When it hit the end of the file, it beeped again, rousing Leroy for another quick perimeter check before he reversed the process again. He spent all day scrolling up and down through the same document and getting lots of rest.

Harvey

I shared an office with Harvey back in the days before computers, when we wrote everything by hand on yellow legal pads. He was the best napper I've ever seen; he was always on the verge of taking one. He took a morning nap, and an afternoon nap, and during lunch he put his head down on the desk and took a lunch nap. To Harvey, napping was a devine right. He made little effort to conceal it when he felt the urge to doze. I've seen him sit reared back in his office chair, arms hanging straight down on either side almost to the floor, head lolled back so that he faced the ceiling, slack jawed, mouth open, snoring like a dirt bike, and not giving a damn who walked by and saw him. The man was a master.

But for his most entertaining nap sessions, Harvey used the bobbing-for-apples technique. I can close my eyes and--if I don't fall asleep--I can still see him: He sits hunched over his desk, pencil touching the pad of paper before him. Slowly his head begins to sink. At first it is a slow, gradual lowering, as if he is trying to get closer to what he is writing. But the lower he goes, the more speed he picks up. Finally, after he has attained terminal velocity, lowering his forehead toward the desk at a frightening speed, he suddenly snaps to a stop and pops back up. But he doesn't recover quite as far as his starting position. He starts another descent, and, like a bouncing ball, each bounce is a little lower in amplitude than the one before. Miraculously, he never descends to the point where his head bumps the desk. At the end, when the bounces have died out, he is sitting with his forehead about three inches above the pad, sound asleep. He starts to snore.

Richard

I shared a cube with Richard right after he retired from the service. His great napping talent was his ability to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation. He loved to talk and tell war stories, so he usually initiated the bullshit sessions. But after he had told his story, and it was your turn to respond with one of your own, he would sit and look you right in the eye and smile and nod as if he were following what you were saying, but his lids would droop and finally close completely. All you could do was stop talking, turn back to your desk and go back to work. After a while, he would wake up and, as if nothing had happened, start telling another war story. I heard later that he was diagnosed with narcolepsy, but it was damned disconcerting to watch him fall asleep while looking you right in the eye.

Cowboying

My first inclination as a lad was to follow the cowboy profession. I discovered cowboying through Saturday double-feature matinees. In those pre-television days, it was customary for parents to deliver their children to the local movie theater on Saturday with a quarter to cover the price of admission and refreshments, and a promise to pick them up three hours hence. It was the high point of the week for the children and the parents, although, I suspect, for slightly different reasons. The only ones who failed to enjoy these weekly rites were the theater employees, who were usually high-school kids working their first jobs to earn money for dates or college or a car. They all aged noticeably by the end of the second feature, and, as a result, the turnover in these jobs was fairly brisk.

There were two distinct and antithetic schools of cowboy thought in those days, each based on the work of one of the two foremost practitioners of the cowboy art: Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. We kids were about evenly divided between those who maintained that Roy could out-shoot, out-ride, out-fight, and out-sing Gene, and those who swore that the opposite was true. Arguments raged frequently between the two constituencies, and friendships sometimes ended abruptly in fisticuffs.

I was a staunch admirer and defender of Rogers--until, that is, one Saturday when he committed the unforgivable sin: he kissed a girl. Sounds of shock, disgust, embarrassment, and derision filled the theater. The Autry admirers hooted and taunted, and we in the Rogers crowd could only sit and take it. Some, unable to bear the humiliation, got up and left the theater. I hunkered down there in the dark and stayed to the end of the picture, but I vowed on the spot to have nothing more to do with The King of the Cowboys.

For a time I threw my allegiance to the Autry camp, but the kissing incident had so tarnished my concept of cowboy life that it was never the same for me again. If there was the remotest possibility that one would have to kiss girls in the course of cowboy work, I wanted no part of it. Of course this attitude soon began to change, but by then it was too late--the time for cowboying had passed and I was never able to get the excitement back.

I've never forgiven Roy for that.

Soldiering

When I was in high school, World War II was still fresh in our minds, the Korean War had just ended, and the draft was a fact of life for young males. Boys who had graduated in previous years, returned to town in spiffy new uniforms with shined shoes and neat haircuts, and I saw how the girls watched them shyly, and how the old folks treated them with a respect that hadn't been there when they were mere damp-eared students like me. Soldiering seemed an exciting and rewarding way to earn one's living, so I announced that the military life was for me, and, shortly after graduating, I enlisted in the Marine Corps.

The problem with soldiering, I soon discovered, was that the Corps did not view my decision to join in the same light that I did. I had naturally assumed--based on the assurances of the local recruiter (a scurrilous class of scoundrels, I later found out, who are notorious and shameless liars)--that the Corps would be exceedingly glad to see me when I reported for boot camp. Indeed, I expected to be welcomed with smiles and, if not open arms, at least handshakes and slaps on the back. I expected some gratitude on their part because I had consented to become one of them.

But the sergeant who picked me and seven other enlistees up at the airport, didn't seem glad to see us at all. Instead of welcoming us like future heroes, he treated us like vile members of the criminal class. He remarked--in language that, although certainly colorful, is not suitable for repitition here--that the country was in a sad state when such scum as we were allowed into his Marine Corps. He said that he suspected we were communist agents whose only purpose was to screw up his Marine Corps, but that he was on to our plot and he was going to personally see that we did not succeed.

At first we assumed that he was just having a bad day, but when we got aboard the base we discovered that everybody else in the Corps was apparently having a bad day, too. This mass ill humor persisted the next day, and the next, and the next, until it dawned on me and my fellow recruits that this was how it was going to be every day.

I concluded early on in my tour--that first day, in fact--that my decision to enlist had been a bit hasty, but I was unable to prevail upon the Corps to let me reconsider my contract. I served the entire four years, and it has cured me of any hint of the soldiering urge to this day.

Dreams

I know people who claim they never dream, but I can't imagine a writer who doesn't. Writers deal in dreams, and, as a consequence, I suspect that they dream differently than normal people; they spend so much time inside their own heads that things are bound to be a bit bizarre in there. The solutions that writers seek nearly always come from some deeper resource pool that can often be tapped only after a good (or bad) night's sleep. When you wake in the morning to find the plot solution or word association that eluded you the previous day there awaiting your order, you can bet that during the night, your dream-self went rummaging back through the dusty attic of your subconscious to retrieve it. You may or may not remember the dream, but the night shift has probably put in a good day's work to have it ready for you when you woke.

Most of my best dreams occur in the hour or so just before I arise in the morning, when I meander back and forth across the border between sleep and wakefulness. It is a fertile dream time for me, and I find that my mind sometimes likes to play semi-erotic word association games. A few years ago, in this pre-awakening state, I suddenly found the word "virgin" intruding insistently into my dream thoughts. The word floated in and out through the open jalousies of my mind like a white butterfly. Every time I shooed it outside, and tried to resume my journey toward consciousness, the darn thing would sneak back through a side window and dance white and tantalizing there before me, obscuring everything else. Suddenly, as if to neutralize the confounded thing, another word, a brown furry word, sprang in through a window and grabbed the white apparition in mid air; they fell heavily to the floor in front of me and lay there writhing and struggling, as if demanding my attention, insisting that I recognize some association between the two of them. The other word was "infallible". I was puzzled. Why had these two words juxtaposed themselves in my morning reveries? Then, by changing the spelling, I saw the relationship, and almost laughed aloud in my sleep. The relationship went like this: virgin = inphallible.

Another time, I was again making my hazy way up toward the light, when I saw hundreds of plastic breasts, such as department store manikins have, raining down before me. There was nothing gruesome or particularly erotic about the scene, it just kept forcing itself into my thoughts, insisting that I notice it. I struggled with the meaning of this vision for a while, and was getting nowhere with it when the word "bra" flashed into my mind and established the connection that I had seemingly been tasked to find: bra = breast pockets.

I am one of those who, from time to time, records dreams in a journal. I don't get them all, for dreams are vaporous wispy things that vanish quickly in the light, and sometimes they evaporate before I can capture them on paper. I tend to be cranky on those days when a good dream has escaped.

On five occasions, astounding secrets have been revealed to me in dreams--secrets so profound that I knew immediately I had been given the keys to the universe. On each of these occasions it was as if a rainbow appeared in the heavens with the Universal Answer to Everything writ large across it. I felt overwhelming joy, amazement, and relief that the solution to all of life's problems and mysteries was so simple and obvious. The fear that I would not be able to remember the revealed truth in the morning roused me from the dream just long enough to scribble it on a pad beside the bed. I then plunged happily back to sleep, knowing that when I woke I would save the world.

I have kept the five secrets in my journal for years now, and periodically I go back and review them. Something happened between the time I saw and understood everything in the dream, and the time I awoke to find the cryptic messages scrawled on the bedside note pad--the simple and obvious meanings that so excited me in the dreams evaporated in the daylight. I still ponder the messages from time to time, and occasionally I catch glimpses of the shadowy meanings behind them, but I cannot quite make them out, and I cannot figure out how to apply them. The gods giveth and the gods taketh away.

As a service to mankind, here are the five great cosmic secrets of the universe, as revealed to me in dreams. Maybe you can figure them out and save the world--but you'd better hurry. Time is running out.
  • Ones and nudes are palaces.
  • The Bedlam Duchy.
  • Twenty-seven thousand dozen puck appointments.
  • Bits o' bars and bite buckets.
  • They live like Seikhs in shacks that leak like sieves.
Don't ask me.