well-adjusted fellow mowing his lawn, singing. From the chimneys of Dachau the film cut to the same man pulling funny faces, crossing his eyes, as he washed his car. Next the camera zoomed in on two men french-kissing and zoomed out again on the well-adjusted man peeling a banana.
That well-adjusted man, that villain, was Mortimer.
Finally Mortimer was held in a frozen frame, winking, licking an ice cream. This frame was superimposed over an H-Bomb explosion, and scrawled in blood over Mortimer’s face was one word:
WASP
As the audience rose to give Different a standing ovation, as all around Mortimer there were cries of “Bravo,” he seized Joyce by the arm and fled the cinema, just making it outside before the lights came up. “That ungrateful son of a bitch,” he said.
Joyce had to laugh. “Why, Mortimer, you amaze me. I thought Ziggy could do no wrong in your eyes.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Joyce, he sensed, was pleased, enormously pleased. Mortimer took a deep breath and explained that had he been used so badly by anyone else but Ziggy, he would sue.
“But,” Joyce said, delighted to finish what he had left unsaid, “as you have explained so many times before, this sort of dirty trick coming from Ziggy cannot be interpreted as an outrage. It –”
“Oh, shettup, will you?”
“It is but another of Ziggy’s sardonic, but meaningful, jokes. Or is that not the case when the joke is so obviously directed at you?”
“I said I don’t wish to discuss it.”
“He’s made a fool out of you.”
“He has not. He most certainly has not. He has merely used my face for his own artistic purposes.”
Ziggy had not even attended his own world premiere; he had had his name removed from the credits. In a statement distributed by students in the cinema foyer he explained that his film had been emasculated by the producers for commercial reasons. Some of his most finely wrought scenes had been excised from the finished print.
“All the same,” a reporter asked, telephoning Ziggy the next morning, “don’t you feel you’re better off here than in Russia?”
“Not bloody likely,” Ziggy said.
At least, the reporter went on to say, he was not being put on trial for his artistic beliefs. Unlike Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, he had not been sentenced to hard labor.
Mortimer’s indignation was not mollified, but Joyce was more than somewhat pleased by Ziggy’s astute retort to this typical bit of red-baiting.
“While I do not approve the recent sentences imposed on Sinyavsky and Daniel, it is a measure of just how seriously art and artists are taken in the Soviet Union.”
Then Ziggy returned to the censorship question in the so-called freedom-loving West, where artists were considered jokers. He summed up the problem succinctly by saying so long as you couldn’t pull your cock on TV his artistic freedom was impaired.
11
M ORTIMER LAY NUDE IN BED EXCEPT FOR A SCENTED black silken blindfold. Hands and heated tongue caressed him, rousing him, then a loving mouth came down on him, sucking, sucking. Gorgeous, he thought. Exquisite. Don’t stop … Until a bass voice said, “You’re yummy, baby. Real soul food,” and he leaped up from the sheets, revealed to the world as a queer.
Different .
“No, no,” he shouted, wakening.
Migod. Ziggy Spicehandler’s film had left Mortimer with plenty of food for thought and with Joyce asleep beside him, he lit one cigarette off another. Am I a homosexual? he wondered. If, as Ziggy’s film claimed, invoking the loftiest authorities, the type is not recognizable (limp wrists, fruity voice), then I can no longer be assured that I’m not one simply because I don’t appear to be one. On the contrary. I may be one of the most noxious kind – the repressed homo. Even, he thought, my ostensible enjoyment of conjugal rights may be nothing more than overcompensation; a clever front.
What concerned Mortimer most deeply was that unlike Ziggy
That well-adjusted man, that villain, was Mortimer.
Finally Mortimer was held in a frozen frame, winking, licking an ice cream. This frame was superimposed over an H-Bomb explosion, and scrawled in blood over Mortimer’s face was one word:
WASP
As the audience rose to give Different a standing ovation, as all around Mortimer there were cries of “Bravo,” he seized Joyce by the arm and fled the cinema, just making it outside before the lights came up. “That ungrateful son of a bitch,” he said.
Joyce had to laugh. “Why, Mortimer, you amaze me. I thought Ziggy could do no wrong in your eyes.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Joyce, he sensed, was pleased, enormously pleased. Mortimer took a deep breath and explained that had he been used so badly by anyone else but Ziggy, he would sue.
“But,” Joyce said, delighted to finish what he had left unsaid, “as you have explained so many times before, this sort of dirty trick coming from Ziggy cannot be interpreted as an outrage. It –”
“Oh, shettup, will you?”
“It is but another of Ziggy’s sardonic, but meaningful, jokes. Or is that not the case when the joke is so obviously directed at you?”
“I said I don’t wish to discuss it.”
“He’s made a fool out of you.”
“He has not. He most certainly has not. He has merely used my face for his own artistic purposes.”
Ziggy had not even attended his own world premiere; he had had his name removed from the credits. In a statement distributed by students in the cinema foyer he explained that his film had been emasculated by the producers for commercial reasons. Some of his most finely wrought scenes had been excised from the finished print.
“All the same,” a reporter asked, telephoning Ziggy the next morning, “don’t you feel you’re better off here than in Russia?”
“Not bloody likely,” Ziggy said.
At least, the reporter went on to say, he was not being put on trial for his artistic beliefs. Unlike Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, he had not been sentenced to hard labor.
Mortimer’s indignation was not mollified, but Joyce was more than somewhat pleased by Ziggy’s astute retort to this typical bit of red-baiting.
“While I do not approve the recent sentences imposed on Sinyavsky and Daniel, it is a measure of just how seriously art and artists are taken in the Soviet Union.”
Then Ziggy returned to the censorship question in the so-called freedom-loving West, where artists were considered jokers. He summed up the problem succinctly by saying so long as you couldn’t pull your cock on TV his artistic freedom was impaired.
11
M ORTIMER LAY NUDE IN BED EXCEPT FOR A SCENTED black silken blindfold. Hands and heated tongue caressed him, rousing him, then a loving mouth came down on him, sucking, sucking. Gorgeous, he thought. Exquisite. Don’t stop … Until a bass voice said, “You’re yummy, baby. Real soul food,” and he leaped up from the sheets, revealed to the world as a queer.
Different .
“No, no,” he shouted, wakening.
Migod. Ziggy Spicehandler’s film had left Mortimer with plenty of food for thought and with Joyce asleep beside him, he lit one cigarette off another. Am I a homosexual? he wondered. If, as Ziggy’s film claimed, invoking the loftiest authorities, the type is not recognizable (limp wrists, fruity voice), then I can no longer be assured that I’m not one simply because I don’t appear to be one. On the contrary. I may be one of the most noxious kind – the repressed homo. Even, he thought, my ostensible enjoyment of conjugal rights may be nothing more than overcompensation; a clever front.
What concerned Mortimer most deeply was that unlike Ziggy
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