Among novelists I admire, a very high place
goes to Kingsley Amis, the shag making the
ridiculous face in the photo next to
the hyperlink for this page. Although I
don’t care for his reactionary politics
and have no doubt that he would have
despised me both as a liberal AND an
American, Amis still strikes me as one of the
funniest writers I’ve ever read. Girl, 20,
his take on the ‘60’s in a somewhat similar
vein to Burgess’ Clockwork Orange, made
me scream with laughter. In the
sincerest form of flattery, I therefore wrote
Libertarian in Love, an admittedly blatant
attempt to ape his style. In this excerpt, the
protagonist, Colin Bent, copes with middle-aged
despair at what should be a jolly cocktail party.
Things proceeded in the vein Colin had noticed these last few years, a rut that, quite frankly, bored him more than a little lately.
Booze was swilled; cigar smoke
billowed furiously. Taxes in all shapes
and forms, municipal, county, state, or federal, were roundly denounced to
general approval. Democrats in general
and Gore specifically were abhorred.
Bush II was upheld as the man of the hour, certain to snatch away the
rightful mantle of President back where it belonged, the personal property of
the Republican Party.
Bush, Son of Bush, would evict Gore the Bore and Serial Exaggerator, to take his rightful place upon the throne. Eight years of Clintonian corruption and sleaze would come to an end like a protracted flashback from a bad acid trip, and all would be right in the Realm. Loathsome treaties that infringed national sovereignty would be spurned. Long standing problems, pipsqueak nations like Iwrack and Iruin that dared to defy the Superpower’s will, would be taken to task and brought to heel.
Shifflett climbed up on a table, solemn and ceremonious as a priest at High Mass, and led everyone in the Bully Rag Song:
“Do you see among green hills
White columns domed and strong
The gift the Founder made to us
Let no man call it wrong
So University we cheer
In dear old Shifflettsville
We’ll tap another keg of beer
Come drink or go to Hell”
Like everyone else, Colin roared out the asinine 19th Century lyrics. He puffed his cigar, quaffed his scotch, and grinned. To all appearances, he was still the same jovial barbarian host his guests had known from college days who’d cheerfully derided early ‘70’s liberal shibboleths to the general amazement and sometimes scorn of his peers.
Over the years, once they’d left
school, quit smoking dope, and had to work for a living, Colin had the pleasure
of seeing old friends harden rightward like veins filling with cholesterol as
babies popped and mortgages accumulated.
Reagan’s triumphant two terms as
President had vindicated Colin completely as far as he was concerned.
Yet even these pleasant thoughts couldn’t ward off the accedia that overcame Colin. Scotch on ice was ambrosia as always, to be shitfaced among old friends was grand, but like everything lately, good or bad, it rushed by in a hurried blur. Sometimes Colin thought that what he had liked most about youth was time’s duration. A single party, a two-hour film, an acid trip, or a bout of lovemaking could occupy eternity, distill life to a state of pure, endless joy. Pleasure, happiness, the orgasmic highs of salad days: he desperately wanted them again. Youth slipped tantalizingly away from his grasp like an ever-receding horizon as middle age slowly enveloped Colin in a steadily tightening stranglehold.
What he most resented about the
process was age’s tactless insistence on constantly making its point. The wear on himself and the set grew more
pronounced with each party. Guts swelled and sagged. Hairlines receded at precipitous rates, as if
the men were trying to outdo one another in the race to be first to reach the
back of the head. Colin could live with
that, however. No matter how much they
came to resemble obese, scrofular uncles who’d
terrified him as a child, the guys were still his friends and boon companions,
veterans of mad drug and booze-addled antics.
They had heard chimes at
It was the women who truly distressed him, especially ones he’d once dallied with (there were more than a few at the party). Elfin features broadened, blurred, and wrinkled. Once svelte hips became prodigious outcroppings by dint of childbirth, lush diet, and little exercise. A smiling, flawless face, a dainty hand that had invitingly pulled back a sheet to reveal an equally lovely slender white body, weathered and wizened to a husk of a once gorgeous butterfly. Their slow rot made him concentrate involuntarily on growing old and dying. He could feel the earth slip from under his feet as bags grew under his eyes and long, thick hairs sprouted from his nostrils and ears. Someday, not too far away, he’d be so old and unattractive that no pretty young woman would want him unless he paid her money, a prospect he simply couldn’t bear.
Colin wanted youth. If he couldn’t be young again, he wanted young, supple flesh in his arms again, to fuck youth. Instead, Shifflett bumped into him, his cheeks’ broad planes pockmarked by childhood acne, breath a compound stench of Napoleon brandy and Dominican Cuban-seed tobacco.
“Look here, oh, host person,” Shifflett intoned. He swayed gently.
“I think it’s about time you gave a toast to our guest of honor, get everyone to raise their glass to Dr. McQuacken. After all, its genius chaps like him who’re going to conquer the world for us!”
Colin secretly slightly disliked accomplished men like McQuacken, the kind who started businesses, attained advanced degrees, traveled the world, wrote books, had done anything that others might note and praise. They reminded him too painfully that at 47 he had little to show for his life beyond a wife and three kids, a college degree, a website, and a few more love affairs than most men. Beyond that, he was basically a blank.
“You do the honors, Shifflett,” Colin replied. “I need air.”
He walked out onto the deck. It was empty, the remaining guests driven inside by the increasing chill. Colin got a fresh plastic cup, pumped the keg a few times, and poured himself a short beer, Heineken, cold, fresh and delicious. Down below, in the minute back yard by the culvert, a lit cigarette tip flashed. Curious who was there alone, Colin walked down the steps.
Dane Minor was by the culvert. She’d slipped on a black leather motorcycle jacket, festooned with zippers and chains. Long thin white legs clad in sheer hose vividly contrasted with the black leather, gleaming in the full moon’s light. She took a last drag on her cigarette and threw the butt into the culvert.
“K? Is that you?
“Oh, hi,
Dane’s light voice, unroughened yet by smoking, was like tinkling bells in his ears. Her oval face was without wrinkle, wen or blemish, delicate features unmarred by crow’s foot or furrowed brow, swanlike neck unlined.
“You don’t have to come all the way down here to smoke,” Colin stammered.
“This is Liberty Hall where you can
spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.
Just like the Millard Fillmore Society.”
“Oh,
I just like the sound of the water rushing by,” she said, pointing to the culvert
for emphasis.
Colin had never considered the matter before, but pricked up his ears. A faint trickle could be discerned, like a dripping faucet from a distance.
“It is nice, especially in the full moon’s light,” he agreed.
“What do you think of the Whole Sick Crew, now that you’ve seen them a few times?”
“Oh,
they’re the bomb,
“I like to think we’ve got more than our share of stars, bitchy and temperamental as we can be.
“Despite his bombast, Shifflett’s a good journalist. He’s exposed more than a few liberal frauds in his day. Oaktree does his best to foil the government from within, pissing and moaning every step of the way. And the little woman does her bit too, lobbying with the best of them.”
“Don’t leave yourself out,” Dane replied.
“The next Matt Drudge, only for the environment. How many hits did you average on your site per day last week, 100,000? You’ll have your own talk show on VNN before you know it. ‘The Bent Report’?”
If he was going to make an attempt (the one his crotch had urged on him from the moment Colin realized he was alone with Dane), this was as good a moment as any. In palmier days, when running a restaurant had given Colin a perfect excuse to be around young women, such things came as easily as scratching his head or blowing his nose. But that was long ago, before he and Cece finally ceded to the biological clock’s demands and bred. Colin’s parenting skills might have improved since then but his womanizing was definitely rusty. After some deliberation, he decided on a simple frontal assault preceded by a pathetic ruse: the heavy-handed compliment.
“You’re leaving yourself out. Four years out of U-Law and already on the partnership track at Hamilton, Schreib and Nixon. Young, brilliant…beautiful.”
He awkwardly pushed his head close to hers. Icy pale blue eyes and two red slits of lip loomed large; he could smell the harsh tang of tobacco on her breath, heedless of his own smoky, peaty reek. She gave him the briefest brush of her mouth against his. Fleeting at best, the contact nonetheless electrified him, shot through his drunken corpus like a gargantuan line of cocaine.
She drew away from him slightly and said:
“Hold on, son. Someone might see us.”
Colin paused. Was Dane interested but cautious? Or was this instead yet another maddeningly indirect feminine refusal to even consider having anything to do with him? Memories of dalliance weren’t so dim that he couldn’t recall other specious excuses having to do with washing one’s hair, studying really hard for a test, etc. Any doubts dissolved, however, when Dane said:
“Come back here under the deck.”
He eagerly staggered into the welcoming shadows, stumbled over a rake he’d left on the gravel, and hurriedly steadied himself. Dane pushed him up against one of the wooden beams that supported the deck and put her hands around his neck. She looked up into his eyes, perfect features dim in the near pitch dark, her perfume intoxicating, and said:
“There’s something I need to ask you, hoss. Last time I checked, weren’t you a married man, Colin?”
This was when Colin had to talk instead of act. Best play it cool.
“Yes, but I’m also a libertarian. Marriage has its uses and I’ll never leave Cece. But individuals will stray, especially free-spirited ones, individuals with drive. We ought to recognize that instead of trying to repress it. And where better to stray than you. I want you far more than any of those poof-haired, little boy wonks you know at your firm, more than I can tell you…”
Having acquitted himself rather well for someone who hadn’t kept his hand in for years, at least in his opinion, Colin bent low for another kiss only to have Dane slip away. She stood a few steps away and said:
“That night we first met at the Millard Fillmore Society, I figured you were interested. Now I’m curious what took you so long.”
“What can I say? It took me up until now to screw my nerve to the sticking point.”
“Yes, that’s right. Seduce me with Shakespeare. Colin, you’re a dear, sweet, most charming man.
“But you must know, as a Southerner I slant more toward paleo than neo con on stuff like this. Nothing’s more corrosive for the family than for the mother and father to be untrue.”
Colin withered like a green leaf in autumn’s chill only to reassert when Dane continued:
“Of course, that only applies to the great mass of people, the uneducated, simple folk who need things like religion and strict social rules to keep them in line, make them productive. For the elites, it’s a different story. With rank comes responsibilities and it’s only reasonable that there be occasional pleasures to compensate.”
“My sentiments
exactly.”
Colin clinched with Dane
again, nabbing her fairly deftly in the darkness. He clapped his hands around the two cheeks of
her firm, round ass, pulled her close, and kissed Dane violently. She gently but firmly pushed him away and
reached for her tiny purse, just big enough to hold a cell phone and a few
other essentials.
“In all honesty,
“But-“ sputtered Colin.
“But here, take this card. It’s got my cell and office phone number on it. Give me a ring some time soon and maybe we can grab a quick lunch if I can slip away from the firm for a few minutes. We can talk about things some more.
“Tell Cece thanks for the invitation; I love her new hairstyle. Ta for now!”
And with that, Dane slipped away, elusive as a dryad, around the house to the cul-de-sac where her orange Mercedes-Benz SLK 230 Kompressor Sport awaited. Colin heard the engine turn over and diminish as she pulled away. He stood stupefied, unable to think of anything but the texture of Dane Minor’s lips and the feel of her shapely hams.
Colin emerged from his horny trance and decided to go upstairs, freshen his drink, and see what the remaining guests were doing. The fact that Dane had slipped around front so they weren’t seen together showed uncommon good sense and was a good sign of practice at these things. His heart raced, but not from climbing the stairs. What a delight to discover he’d been wrong, dead wrong. There was still some gold at the end of the rainbow, some juice left in the lemon!
Inside the house, Oaktree had singled out a victim for a tirade. This evening’s target was an unknown guest, a tall young black man in a black suit, perhaps one of Shifflett’s many acquaintances. Fully soused for hours by this point, Oaktree held a tumbler a-slosh with scotch and ice. Periodically he would stop talking and hoist the glass to get some more booze down.
“You see what you, first principle, simply have to understand, absolutely need to know first, most fundamental principle to the whole thing is that,” he lucubrated, “is that under a libertarian regime, all the people like you, sitting in your government bureaucracies battening on taxpayer like ticks, you’ll all, you’ll all, just shrivel up and fade away.”
He pushed back the unfashionable aviator frame glasses that magnified his protuberant blue eyes. His widow’s peak of prematurely gray hair had receded considerably and only accentuated his curved hawk nose. Neither age nor booze, however, could still his acid tongue. They just made him repetitious.
“You see again, it’s nothing personal, Mr., Mr., uh-“
“Malaparte,” said the young man. “Kurt Malaparte. We met earlier.”
“Oh, Malart, yeah.
“Like I was saying, you see, the
least amount of government means the greatest good for individual men and for
society in general. You can see that,
can’t you? Least you seem somewhat,
somewhat educated for a, for a-. And
that’s why you’ve got to go, you and all your ilk,
you’ve just got to pack up and go, that’s all!”
A thoughtful, considerate host
at this point would have cajoled Oaktree out of the
room by some means fair or foul and then returned to apologize to his guest for
Oaktree’s behavior.
Colin instead sipped his new drink and maintained a posture of watchful
expectancy. Oaktree
had gotten on his wrong side more than once.
He particularly resented frequent lectures when they were both at the
University about certain moral shortcomings of his that Colin was perfectly
well aware of in the first place without Oaktree
pointing them out. Malaparte
was plainly strong, broad-shouldered and thick-armed. Perhaps he would throw his drink at Oaktree or, better yet, slap him hard across the face.
To Colin’s disappointment, Malaparte seemed more amused than offended. He waited patiently for Oaktree to stop talking and deftly interjected:
“Mr. Oaktree, this is all very interesting. But don’t you work for the federal government yourself?”
About to further perorate, Oaktree did a quick double take at this question, tongue jerking in and out at reptilian speed, eyes now bugged out to an alarming extent.
“Yes, well, er. Yes, yes, it’s true. But what, but what I do is, I’m a lawyer for
the government. It could wither, wither
and die and there’d still be work for me to do, why, even plenty more work
without the federal government getting in the way. With my contacts and expertise, I could walk
into any big firm on
“I’m sure. Myself, Mr. Oaktree,
I’m pretty confident that whatever degree of government there might be,
there’ll be a need for my particular skills.”
“Oh, oh? And what would those be, these so incredibly
valuable skills that make you so necessary?
You mean you actually, actually do some work, that’s it, you’re the only one who works?”
Malaparte leaned over and murmured in Oaktree’s ear, taking care not to brush against him. Oaktree recoiled as if he’d been shot, horror in the whites of his eyes. The young man turned and walked away from him. He set his empty drink on the folding table and headed for the stairs. Hand on the banister, Malaparte paused and said to Colin:
“Thanks for the invitation, Mr. Bent. I enjoyed meeting you and your friends. Have you seen Ms. Minor, by the way?”
“Uh, she left already.”
“I thought she might have. Good. Well, I’ll be seeing you.”
He left quietly. Colin went over to Oaktree and said:
“My God, Oaktree,
what did he say to you? You’re white as
a ghost!”
Sweat sprouted on Oaktree’s
forehead and slowly streamed down his face.
He moaned:
“
“What the hell is going wrong around here when people can just run up and threaten you? What kind of goddamn, goddamn fucking sort of parties are you running now, Bent, letting some lunatic threaten me?” Oaktree shouted, the significance of Malaparte’s murmured remarks at last fully processed by his booze-impaired mind.
Alerted by her mate’s cries, Elsie Oaktree hurried to placate Oaktree, taking his hands in hers, murmuring soothingly. Oaktree snatched his hands away and stomped out of the room, giving the finger to everyone as he left. Elsie burst into tears and ran after him.
The CD player rotated. “Somebody To Love” by Jefferson Airplane revved up. Colin ran to the stereo and cranked the volume, hoping for once Cece would let it roar. His wish was granted. Distracted by Callie downstairs, his wife paid no heed.
Grace Slick blared ungodly loud: “Your mind, your mind, your mind.” Colin snatched the hand of the nearest former amour and induced her to shake her now cow-assed booty with him in joyous abandon. He grinned wildly as he danced and hugged himself with delight. After all these years, convinced life had lost its zest, that he was just too damn old, the party had turned out a gasser after all!