Tendered Vitters
Tendered Vitters
(The action takes place in a slightly-alternate universe, where a grown-up Augustus Gloop is the junior Republican senator from Louisiana: a staunch, if not hard-line family values moralist who entertains a penchant for non-marital, non-procreative coitus of by-the-hour nomenclature. Nomenclature, of course, for whores, denotes an obfuscated code of name-changing and namelessness.)
1. Whereupon Senator Gloop, eluding a shrieking horde of photogs and newspaper writers, clambers into The Museum of Artists and Conspirators, coming face to face with the inscription past the door:
Illegitimus non carborundum est!
Unless it’s a bitch or a whore. Or a Senator with a golden ticket to La Factorie Hardcore. “Life,” he tells us, “is an everlasting gobstopper of god-given gob-droppings.”
MEANWHILE!
(cue Bat-segue music)
back at the mise-en-place of Are Too Much
and Are, Too - Not!
otherwise known as the Mall of Near-Misses
(the museum got tired of losing money and renamed its halls malls)
here is where our nightly Fata Morgana hangs
not like a Mudd or Seurat
but a Surrat
dangling from the five knots like a neo-impressionistic Sunday afternoon
never rejiggered from the 24-hour news cycle sweep-n’-swoon
save an extra stipple of Babylon-Whore Red
on the prim-faced girl to the right:
she’s staring not at the boats on the water
or the mermaid-whore with the daisy festoon
but into the four-poster bed of the sun.
2. Whereupon Senator Gloop, reminiscing about his indiscretions, suddenly finds himself transmogrified into the painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, where its principals become his constituency
“This is America. It’s Sunday in the Park with George.”
And then, of course, it’s later in the scene - the picture’s not between the lines but between the mien of dots and jots and Rorschach blots - and a curse from the couple always a shot away from the picnicked shades of Yellow 36:
ah, shit - we’re in a fuck of a fix
we’ve got the kids this weekend
and they know who’s turning tricks
with all their questions and quotations
and superfetations with needles blood-drawn
that baby’s gone, baby - gone
you can’t pawn off what’s already been pawned
it’s like a fucked-up fable
where the fucking-up is ivy
and the kids are fiber-optic cable
and the vines have got entwined
between the timid and untidy
Senator Gloop’s out of town, you see,
and he’s making movies with a grown-up Veruca
she still calls him Daddy
even though he’s the one with the diaper rashed-ass
you can pawn it if you pwn it
it’s all about the cash
and your sixth sense of smut
sometimes you feel like a nut
if you are willing and are able
and are auto-immune
and if there’s enough salt in the stores to salvage your wounds.
But not so much with the kids. They’re kicking dogs and clicking on to a more urban setting (fuck Seurat): here come the combat-pimped SUVs of Liberty City and the Pepper-me-up-‘til-I-puke-Kids), singing:
“You’re a Pepper”
and, “He’s a Pepper”
and, “We’re all Peppers”
and, “She’s a demimondaine! Ooh la la! Daddy said so!”
And if you look real close, you can see her walking through the trees with Senator TV (not to be confused with Senator TB, whose time came not at all too soon); her bags filled with capsaicin and condoms. But that’s okay - don’t sweat the small stuff, like diaper-rash or dick-span or that diamond-in-the-muff. You can’t believe everything you read in Hustler. Cortez was a killer, yeah, but that was only her working name - her call-sign. And she was called often, between calls for import and impeachment. Sure, she fucked up the exit plan, but don’t get your war-profiteering in a bunch - she was just a flash in the pan. Don’t believe it? Don’t kid yourself. We all got milked; you can catch the clean-up on C-Span and See-It-All Online. And milk kills the burning
every
fucking
time.
3. Whereupon Senator Gloop, cornered and covered in chocolate, is dragged kicking and screaming not through a Senate Sub-Committee, but through the Press Junket:
When excursus has given way to eulogy
when the apoplexy of yellow journalism
or yellow-bellied paternalism is reduced
by force or simmer
to a slimy, pious falsetto of denial
(cue Bat-fight music and strap in for denouement)
“Here he comes. Here he comes.”
(flashbulbs pop)
And cue Senator Gloop!
as he does his Cajun kabuki dance of regret, about as subtle as a head of garlic floating in facedown-suck on the chocolate river
And cue sweet wife Violet!
as she snaps her gum not in silence but with a blueberry eye toward the reelection campaign
And behind the green door a pas de deux of hush-hush acquittal and ‘How do you do?’, brought to you and us and them and we by Big Pharma and the letter B: “Brandy Britton? Yeah, I know her. She was a Playmate, I think. October ‘82? Oh, right, Shannon Tweed. I admit it; I forgot: I did not serve.” And, “It’s hard to have a good time, when the time’s already bought, and a good time means trying not to get caught.” And, “If it weren’t for the Aughts,” and, “Of all the fucking nerve…” And, “It’s a shame it turned out like it did, but that piece of ass was so damned ripe…”
And one more thing was overheard:
“Hey…I think there’s something stuck in the pipe.”
