Chapter 58.
Characters from Mr. Ballantine’s God Clobbers Us All weigh in on his dashing new novel, Decline of the Lawrence Welk Empire:
I’M DRUNK AS I WRITE THIS and I wish I would’ve never left San Diego. San Diego is PARADISE. Billings, Montana is a PIMPLE ON MYBUTT. Edgar, Edgar, I loved you, why did you run away to a desert island? And why didn’t you take me with you? I would’ve fought by your side. I would’ve drank with you all night and waited tables at that hotel. Jesus the booze there is cheap. When I called your parents they said you’d gone to New YORK. How was I going to reach you? And why didn’t you mention me more than once in your new novel about love and betrayal in the jungle? I thought I was your best friend, Edgar. I feel so bad about Bev. Oh, Edgar, Edgar, please forgive me (and put me in your next book, OK?)
—Big Pat Fillmore
DEATH REVELATIONS? What would you know about death, young man? There are no Deborah Kerr movies here and I haven’t seen my brother once. It was interesting to learn, however, that I died at the Knickerbocker Hotel because I had no idea where I was. That boy said he was going to put a letter opener in my throat. Do you know how wicked men are and how glad I am to be gone? You should’ve never given me those drugs, though I don’t blame you for what happened. I know you didn’t want to see me dead. I think your jungle book, even if it’s not about Lawrence Welk, will be a great movie. I love all the birds, the madman in the grave-yard, your Johnny Weismuller imitations, the deserted coves full of warm green rain, and Mountain Moses, who reminds me so much of my brother, God rest his soul.
—Beverley Fey
YOU’RE LUCKY YOU RAN OFF to that island, Edgar, you pinche pendejo. Chingada, I’m still pissed and if you ever show your face around here again I’ll kick you in your pajarito. My husband is gay and it was your fault. I’d still like to know what you did to him.
—Chula La Rue
I’M FAT NOW,Edgar. I’m a blimp. I married this navy guy, do you believe it, and we’re living at my mom’s house on Mt. Helix. I see you’re still drinking too much. And then you fall off a cliff and I can’t stop crying. I’m so unhappy. Adrian told me about Bev. It wasn’t your fault. Why do we have to grow old? Why can’t we have another chance?
—Norma Padgett
A LITERAL “FALL FROM PARADISE” STORY, very clever. I like Tobackoo, your drunken M.D. He probably got sued out of practice in the States. I’ve been hit with my third malpractice lawsuit of the year, some conniving hypochondriac who claims I fused her vertebrae. Most of us would kill for a chance to escape to Paradise. Instead you drank and dreamed your way into another debacle. I saw Norma at the racetrack last year, by the way, and she was enormous. You should’ve married her. It would’ve done you both good. At any rate your Lawrence Welk book is a treat, you’re a funny guy with a strange philosophy. Keep up the good work. And don’t feel the need to put me into any more scenes, as you apparently think I’m a heartless dago.
—Dr. Adrian De Persiis Vona
For Mason Reese and Barry Newman.
ALSO BY POE BALLANTINE:
Things I Like About America God Clobbers Us All
—To begin then with things simple, the Perfessor said, I propose this question to the enlightened company which I behold before me: What is human life?
—Human life is a myth, Mr. Shawnessy said.
—Amen, the Perfessor said.
—To be most human is to be most mythical.
—This is wisdom, said the Perfessor
—A myth is a story that is always true for all men everywhere.
—An oracle speaks, the Perfessor said. But are there any new myths? I doubt it. In their wisdom, the Hebrews and the Greeks have furnished us with all our myths. Will there ever be another mythical race?
—Yes, Mr. Shawnessy said. The Americans are a mythical race. We are making a new myth, the American myth.
—What is this American myth?
—It’s the story of the hero who regains Paradise.
ROSS LOCKRIDGE, Raintree County
1.
IT SEEMS THAT ALL I DO IN THIS CITY IS DRIVE. UP THE coast. Down the coast. I drive to Clairemont Mesa. I drive to Linda Vista, Hillcrest, and Old Town. Here’s your large pepperoni, sir. Here’s your mushroom and sausage. Two hundred miles a night. And San Diego is getting crowded. And America is going to hell. And you can’t get to the beach anymore. And the disco era has sneaked in on us under the guise of a legitimate rhythm and blues revival. And my friends are all busy, getting married and making money and going off to college. And I’m twenty years old, going nowhere but down the face of a four-foot wave or to deliver a number two with onions and two grape Fantas to 2525 Cherokee Ave.
So when my parents suggest that I enroll in school, not community college but a real state university, and they’re going to pay, it seems like an answer. It seems like salvation. It’s like Linda Lovelace discovering her clitoris. All the pictures I had of myself as another of those leathery old straggle-headed, milky-eyed forty-year-old beachcombers shuffling bewildered (hey dude!) down the boardwalk, wondering what happened to his youth, suddenly and thankfully shimmer away. Oh, how can purpose be so vigorously restored!
Born again, grateful for a second chance, I settle on Humboldt State University, a nestled-in-the-redwoods academy of science famous for its marijuana and burly women, the last hippie outpost of California. It seems perfect to me: cheap, far away, no frats or sororities, not far from the ocean, and entrance requirements just above the Wyoming Community College for Ceramic Arts. Decadent, hypocritical, polluting America has become increasingly odious to me, but there’s nothing I can do to change her, so I will retreat to live in her woods with hairy, uncompetitive people who have disabled social lives and drink dark beer and smoke dope. I think I may be a lawyer. I despise lawyers of course, there’s the trouble with the whole plan. But I’m good at words, and most people secretly admire lawyers. Most people want their children to become lawyers. Most people who hate lawyers will hire one the instant they’re in the slightest trouble. And I’d like to be one of those guys who sues corporations that pollute rivers and crack up oil tankers. There are good lawyers, just as there are good witches. Rare, yes, but why can’t I be one?
