have anything to do with the money that they work so terribly, terribly hard for?
Why are they always in and out of one clinic or another?
Why don’t they stop throwing up on people?
Why do they think that fashion designers are artists?
Why do they think that they themselves are artists?
Why are they eternally honing their fucking craft?
Why don’t they know the words to “Prisoner of Love”?
Why must they have recently learned to “appreciate” jazz?
Why can’t they make a decent marinara sauce?
Why don’t they stop sucking on that bottled water?
Why do they drive such dumb cars?
Why do they think that they can write?
Why do they think that they can write poems?
Why do they all go to the same restaurants and then go to the same restaurants and then go to the same restaurants and then go to the same new restaurant?
Why do they eat egg-white omelets?
Is it true that they will hump anything that will stand still?
Why don’t they get rid of their grand pianos?
Their acoustic guitars?
Their “outsider” art?
Why are they such glorious marks for fake paintings, fake antiques, and fake first editions?
Should they drop dead already en masse, or one at a time?
Belatedly, Bromo Eddie queries: “Why don’t they go fuck themselves?” What a serious and well-informed citizen and consumer Eddie is!
What, precisely, is the “blow-job theory” of inexplicable success, and is it germane to occupations other than the movie business?
Eddie reminds his chums that he prefers the term “film business.”
Did many of these basically regular folks have gals and fellas back home in, say, ah, Moline?
What is the joke which bears this punch line? “Well, how about ten dollars’ worth?”
Can one actually “fix” a cold beer?
An attractive woman
H E ENTERS THE RESTAURANT WITH HIS mother, into the wonderful smell of the bar, just opened on Sunday early afternoon, the serious, adult smell of whiskey and bitters, lemon peel, gin and vermouth and rum; the sweet and sharp cigarette smoke from the first patrons, sitting quietly with their griefs and their hangovers and their Sunday papers, waiting patiently for the liquor to make the slow afternoon sadly bearable. He orders a Gibson, his mother a Clover Club, or is it a Jack Rose? He waits for her comments on his news, given her, abruptly, two days earlier, regarding his plans to marry, suddenly, a girl whom his mother dislikes a good deal. Not only is she a Protestant, but she is much too young, not even out of high school, so his mother insists despite the facts. The cocktails arrive, his mother takes out a pack of Herbert Tareytons and lights one with her beautiful little jewel of a Dunhill lighter, inhales and blows smoke at an angle past the little brim of her small black velvet hat. She is an attractive woman, whose terror and loathing of men has been elegantly metamorphosed, over the years, into an aloof but sharp contempt. She puts the lighter squarely on top of the cigarette pack. So, she says. Have you given any thought to this, you lummox? He looks at her and shrugs, a gesture of love, intimacy, and respect. The trouble with this girl, she says, that is, one of the troubles that I can see, is. She stops, and takes a sip of her gorgeously blushing cocktail. Is, she says, simply that she is obviously a little tramp. Do you, dear God, want another little tramp to set next to the first one? At least she was Jewish.
The restaurant was on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights. It may well have been Armando’s. It looks like Armando’s.
The young man once accidentally saw his mother, through a half-open door, as she was dressing, and spied on her, shamed and disturbed. He has trained himself, if “trained” is the word, to think of her, on that particular day, as a woman wholly different from the woman he sits across from in the restaurant. In this way, even a hint, a breath of the incestuous may be successfully proscribed. More or less.
The Gibson
Why are they always in and out of one clinic or another?
Why don’t they stop throwing up on people?
Why do they think that fashion designers are artists?
Why do they think that they themselves are artists?
Why are they eternally honing their fucking craft?
Why don’t they know the words to “Prisoner of Love”?
Why must they have recently learned to “appreciate” jazz?
Why can’t they make a decent marinara sauce?
Why don’t they stop sucking on that bottled water?
Why do they drive such dumb cars?
Why do they think that they can write?
Why do they think that they can write poems?
Why do they all go to the same restaurants and then go to the same restaurants and then go to the same restaurants and then go to the same new restaurant?
Why do they eat egg-white omelets?
Is it true that they will hump anything that will stand still?
Why don’t they get rid of their grand pianos?
Their acoustic guitars?
Their “outsider” art?
Why are they such glorious marks for fake paintings, fake antiques, and fake first editions?
Should they drop dead already en masse, or one at a time?
Belatedly, Bromo Eddie queries: “Why don’t they go fuck themselves?” What a serious and well-informed citizen and consumer Eddie is!
What, precisely, is the “blow-job theory” of inexplicable success, and is it germane to occupations other than the movie business?
Eddie reminds his chums that he prefers the term “film business.”
Did many of these basically regular folks have gals and fellas back home in, say, ah, Moline?
What is the joke which bears this punch line? “Well, how about ten dollars’ worth?”
Can one actually “fix” a cold beer?
An attractive woman
H E ENTERS THE RESTAURANT WITH HIS mother, into the wonderful smell of the bar, just opened on Sunday early afternoon, the serious, adult smell of whiskey and bitters, lemon peel, gin and vermouth and rum; the sweet and sharp cigarette smoke from the first patrons, sitting quietly with their griefs and their hangovers and their Sunday papers, waiting patiently for the liquor to make the slow afternoon sadly bearable. He orders a Gibson, his mother a Clover Club, or is it a Jack Rose? He waits for her comments on his news, given her, abruptly, two days earlier, regarding his plans to marry, suddenly, a girl whom his mother dislikes a good deal. Not only is she a Protestant, but she is much too young, not even out of high school, so his mother insists despite the facts. The cocktails arrive, his mother takes out a pack of Herbert Tareytons and lights one with her beautiful little jewel of a Dunhill lighter, inhales and blows smoke at an angle past the little brim of her small black velvet hat. She is an attractive woman, whose terror and loathing of men has been elegantly metamorphosed, over the years, into an aloof but sharp contempt. She puts the lighter squarely on top of the cigarette pack. So, she says. Have you given any thought to this, you lummox? He looks at her and shrugs, a gesture of love, intimacy, and respect. The trouble with this girl, she says, that is, one of the troubles that I can see, is. She stops, and takes a sip of her gorgeously blushing cocktail. Is, she says, simply that she is obviously a little tramp. Do you, dear God, want another little tramp to set next to the first one? At least she was Jewish.
The restaurant was on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights. It may well have been Armando’s. It looks like Armando’s.
The young man once accidentally saw his mother, through a half-open door, as she was dressing, and spied on her, shamed and disturbed. He has trained himself, if “trained” is the word, to think of her, on that particular day, as a woman wholly different from the woman he sits across from in the restaurant. In this way, even a hint, a breath of the incestuous may be successfully proscribed. More or less.
The Gibson
Similar Books
