Message from discussion
Twins
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From: psm...@sedona.intel.com (Dee Dee Hawkins)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: Twins
Date: 29 Jan 1994 00:22:19 GMT
Organization: Little Dancing Hearts
Lines: 123
Sender: psmyth@sedona (Paul Smyth~)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <2ica7r$i04@chnews.intel.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfalfa.intel.com
Keywords: beer commercials, video, information, spiral suitcase, tandem relevance
Originator: psmyth@sedona
300K
copyright 1994
Morbid Pronoun; Ample Barbie. The big book of mental illness is
invoked against him, and he's ordered to take a three month leave of
absence from his practice as a defense attorney, which he now dislikes
anyway. His wife, also an attorney, kisses him goodbye the first
morning as he sits on his medicated butt in front of the TV set
building a new world in his brain. Around the talk show audiences
real and imagined, around the game shows and sot-coms that suggest,
wholly erroneously, that there is some sort of consensus about the
world that really exists. They *all* exist, and what was to be a
relaxing three months of tv and fiction is already a harrowing
disintegration.
...until he sees the commercial for Burton's beer! He usually mutes or
ignores the commercials, but one day he finds himself drawn in,
watching people do the things he'd always imagined he would do:
trapeze artistry, rocket surgery, paleo-indian lifestyles. All of
them respected professionals by day. All pausing to drink Burton's
beer at the most unlikely times and places. All showing that there
was more to them, another side. But then the wave crested, and he
wondered who would be stupid enough to care about the straight-life
cover stories that made their imbecile enthusiasms so fascinizing.
The stockbroker who whittled egg cartons. The neurosurgeon who raced
chests-of-drawers--hadn't he been on PBS a few weeks back, with all
the impressive preferences and details of the aficianado? so really
real, so genuinely authentic? And the CPA who jumped off skyscrapers
wearing only a jockstrap and skis--what morons. All that fuss, still
unaware that they were even alive. Not that it mattered to the
wholesome folks selling Burton's Brew. Or the fools who bought and
drank it.
That night, MP rolled over and had sex with his AB. She wasn't ready
for it, and took a while to warm up to the idea, but as she groggily
realized what it probably meant, she urged him on with pet profanities
and began to move her hips suggestively. He paused, short of breath,
and observed that an x-ray of her pelvis--right here, right now--would
barely show his immobile boner, due to its composition of flesh and
blood. He was about to go on about it, philosophically, but she
shusshed him and said that x-rays were a radically limited form of
reality. They took the next day off, and at three o'clock were
standing in front of The Bank, holding hands and nervous.
"Here we go!"
Mr. Bankersfordshire graciously loaned the duo three hundred thousand
fing-fings. They were ecstatic. She (Barbara "Baby" Crittendon) was
happy because he (Boswell Crittendon) was happy. And ipso facto.
(Only on the bank application did they use their real name
(Crittendon)). Baby 'n' Boswell stopped at the sign maker's shop and
also purchased newspapers, pencils, and citrus fruits. At home, they
sprawled on the floor and planned their new reatil outfit, Imbecile
Enthusiasms. "We gotta have a philosophy!" he declared. She nodded
and revealed a low cut black lace bra. "we're gonna be a beacon
of--hey, where'd you get that?"
Then they had some orange juice.
In their cycle of iteration ((hic) sic) including planning,
philosophizing and investigating certain anatomical contours, he was
able to kick the fifty or so pills he was supposed to be taking for
whatever it was he was that he wasn't supposed to be yet so
disturbingly is. They opened Imbecile Enthusiasms, a store that sold
its customers hard copies of their own images of themselves; a
customized beer commercial that dispensed with the useless
products--ha ha! products! what a dopey idea *that* had been!-- and
focused only on the self to be suggested. There were props, of
course, perhaps even a can of beer, but the emphasis was reversed.
That's what Boswell told the people who came to hear about franchising
opportunities, which were sold only to those who agreed to operate
from downtown shops in their own 'hoods. Those who couldn't imagine
the reversal? who insisted that it all collapsed back into
commodities? They were charged extra, and made to feel unwanted.
"Not nice, but that's our policy," the C's printed on their contracts.
Since close correspondence with "reality" was unncessary, they were
able to market the service to professionals, para-professionals,
so-called professionals, students, teachers, and shift workers. Grave
diggers were particularly amusing, while the spoiled platter-children
of narrow money-men often simply sat there, looking cross, despite
parental instructions from off-camera. Baby acutally filmed, using a
hidden camera, several disownings and a stop-payment order issued by
cellular phone to a fiduciary in B-b-b-beantown! It was popular with
great men and great women, and great women and great-great men-women,
and like that. Humans, mostly. Prestigious universities began to
require them as part of each application, then stopped. Business was
booming, and the C's were happy.
Best of all, Baby was able to stop her own fitsy, fruggering legal
stomp, and she found that--for her?--on a flat, non-rotating earth far
from any matter?--a pound of affectation was worth an ounce of creative
cure. They had favorites, of course.
His: The day Dick Nixon stopped in and had himself taped presenting
nursery rhymes from a podium using a flip chart and wooden pointer.
Hers: one of the early net-writers, back when the world was just
beginning to wire up, who attempted to script himself being flamed by
Joyce Carol Oates (played by an assembly line worker from, touchingly,
an undercover FBI "sting" operation) while he sketched scenes from
'Naked Lunch.' The outtakes from that session ("Information Fantasia
#6") were purchased by a big-boys-good-good east coast magazine and/or
it's parent corporation(s), and presented on public television as a
political favor to a wealthy dead rubber baron's poet/mistress.
Ample Barbie indeed, Baby says nowadays; I'm going to have twins.
(c) 1994 Little Dancing Hearts. All rights reserved. May be
inscribed in agar or written in the sky with smoke; all other uses:
no.
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