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fruitcake director and his fayguluh crew got done letting me 'save' them from the gay life, I was
so raw and miserable double residuals wouldn't of been enough to make up for all that weirdscene
swinging, and besides, if they'd taken along some hooker they'd of had to pay her, too, so I
should be getting extra consider--"
... beep, bip, boop, blah, bdip, chee chee chee ...
"... a gass! A real gass! The joint is laid out like an Arabian Nights kind of thing, with the
waitresses in these transparent pants, and all the waiters in pasha turbans, and you lay on your
side to eat, and I've got to admit it's hard as hell eating laying on your side, which is almost
as bad as laying eating on your side heh heh, I swear I don't see how the hell they did it in
those days, but the food is ab-solutely a gass, man. They've got this lemon drop soup, they call
it kufte abour and it's a g--"
... bdoing, bupp, bupp, beep, bip, chee chee chee ...
"... this compendium of aborted hours and dead-end relationships is of minor concern, for at this
moment, this very instant in weightless timeless time, this moment that I am about to describe
minutely, all of what I have been through before this will outline itself. If not in particular,
then in essence, hindsighted as it were, and what went before will be seen as merely a vapor trail
of incidents one like another, building to this moment and ... oh for CHRIST'S sake, Ginny, take
your finger out of your nose ..."
... bang bang bang, bding dong, clank, crunch, chee chee chee ...
Technically, it might have been a party. Superficially it resembled a party, with too many people
clogged into too small a space, a dingy loft off Jane Street in the Village. But there was more
going on than just that.
The ritual dances of the friendly natives were being staged, both physically--as Simone and her
husband's agent did a slow, extremely inept, psychosexual Skate--and emotionally--as Wagner Cole
scathingly sliced up the peroxided poetess whose aspirations of literary immediacy were
transparently Saturday Review--as well as ethnically--minor chittering of who-balled-who in the
far corner by the rubber plant. The whole crowd was there, because it was Florence Mahrgren's
birthday (wheeee!) and not just a dreamed-up reason for getting together.
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Andy Sorokin stood against the fireplace wall, his margarita in his two cupped hands, talking to
the whey-faced virgin Andover had found and brought to him. She was talking at him, about a bad
movie made from one of his lesser novels.
"I never really thought Karin was completely bad," the virgin was saying. "And when they made the
movie, I just did not like the way Lana Turner played the part."
Sorokin stared down at her benignly. She was very short, and large-bosomed. She wore a Rudi
Gernreich and it had her pushed all up tight in front; she smiled with her lips but not her teeth.
"That's very kind of you to say; there wasn't a great deal in the motion picture version to like,
though I thought Frankenheimer's direction was nice."
She answered something totally irrelevant. He bore these conversations neatly or badly, depending
on the final objective. In this case, it was getting the short, buxom virgin into the master
bedroom; he gave it what charm he could spare.
Around them, like mist encircling a cleared space, the eye of a storm, the party pitched itself a
noticeable degree higher in hysteria. Florence Mahrgren was hoisted on the shoulders of Bernbach &
Barker (producers of three current Broadway hits) and carried around the room, as Ray Charles sang
in the background, her skirt crumpled about her thighs, Bernbach & Barker improvising obscene
happy birthday lyrics to the tune of their current success's theme song. Sorokin felt his gut
tightening on him again. It never seemed to change, no matter how many times the people changed.
They said the same stupid things, did the same senseless things, postured and played with
themselves insipidly. He wanted either to screw the virgin or to get out of the party.
From another corner of the living room someone yelled, "Hey! How about Circle-Insult?" and before
Andy could make for the door, the virgin had been snapped up by Andover, and she in turn had
clutched his sleeve, and daisy-chain, they careened into the center of the maelstrom.
Circle-Insult. They were already forming the circle, everyone hunkering down cross-legged on the
floor. The idle talented and the idle rich and the idle poor and the idle bored playing their
games; affectation of innocence, the return to honesty in form--if not in content. Circle-Insult.
The women sitting in the preordained postures, careless, nonchalant unawareness of lingerie and
pale inner flesh flashed and gone and flashing again, beacons for the wanderers who would home
there that night, keeping the coastline firmly in sight, keeping the final berth open to the lost
and the needy. Charitable bawds.
They began playing Circle-Insult, the world's easiest game.
Tony Morrow turned to Iris Paine on his right. Tony to Iris: "You're the worst lay I've ever had.
You don't move. You just lay there and let a guy, any guy, stick it in, and you whimper. Jeezus,
you're a lousy lay."
Iris Paine turned to Gus Diamond on her right. Iris to Gus: "You smell bad. You have really vile
bad breath. And you always stand too close when you talk to someone. You stink completely."
Gus Diamond turned to Bill Gardner on his right. Gus to Bill: "I hate niggers, and you are the
most obnoxious nigger I ever met. You got no natural rhythm, and when we played tennis last
weekend I saw you were hung smaller than me so stop trying to horse around with Betty, nigger, or
you'll find your throat cut!"
Bill Gardner turned to Kathy Dineen on his right. Bill to Kathy: "You always steal outta these
parties. One night you stole thirty-five bucks from Bernice's purse, and then split, and they
called the cops but they never found out it was you. You're a thief."
Around and around and around. Circle-Insult. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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