d.h. lawrence, "apocalypse'':

''What man most passionately wants is

his living wholeness and his living unison,

not his own isolate salvation of his "soul."

Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost,

since now, once and once only,

he is in the flesh and potent.

For man, the vast marvel is to be alive.

For man, as for flower and beast and bird,

the supreme triumph is to be most vividly,

most perfectly alive.

Whatever the unborn and the dead may know,

they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh.''

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I blame D.H. Lawrence for my current Vonnegut addiction. Awhile back, I was in the local library grabbing up some of  D.H.’s books when D.H. said, “ I was good, but Vonnegut is funnier, Jimbo” .  He is not a solid presence ; more an insinuating nervous excitatory ephemeral effect, you know what I mean? When you go into the dewey decimal 800’s , you gotta expect ghosts, I have found. Just me, maybe, I dunnno..

(he smiles with insinuating insistence...bastard...)

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" Vonnegut funnier": that’s for sure. I got some of V’s short stories, on D.H.’s advice.  Good Gosh, it’s like I wrote  them.. !

(Except I musta been really really on my game when I did.something  I rarely am.)

 I only write when I am on my game:

when the words come out with very little effort on my part, just a gnawing need to articulate the brainstorm that emerges, piecemeal, transiently, and departs not long after.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

I brought my  Vonnegut book on  a blind date. To read just in case she got boring.

She was a good girl . I suspect she is well read. But immediately we got into a conversation about contraception, which all the elite intelligentsia are pondering these days, due to some damn fool comments by bishops and archbishops and presidential candidates.  She was an up to date girl. She followed this issue, as a member of the intelligentsia.

( I personally approve of contraception, let me make my bias clear, here, at the start.)

 The date was a damn disaster. Until the very end, where I  saved the day.

“Why do you bring a book on a date, dude,” she said, ready to scorn me. She was full of scorn, this sister.

“Just in case you fail to capture my interest, I guess. “

“Bad answer”

“Yeah?  Why? Is honesty outlawed suddenly?” I was sipping coffe in a tiny little cup. I motioned to the waitress to fill me up. She ignored me.

“When is the last time you dated,” she asked,  putting her long legs out into the midst of the restaurant traffic.

“When Bush2 was president.”

“When is that?”

“2009”

“Three years? Anyway, Obama was prez then.”

“Not quite yet”

“Oh. Ok. Shit!!!” She was perturbed by something. She was itching her arms frantically.

“What is wrong,” I asked.  I put the book back in my bag. This gal was better than any book: she was real, sort of.

“Itchy.  Fabric softener, maybe, I dunno.” She stopped itching and said, “ So you are are, where, politically? “ She drank some coffee in a gulp. Motioned to the waitress, who ignored her.

“Here.”

“Huh?”

“I am not political, but not yet apolitical.”

“Ok, I getcha. What about birth control?” She was getting a text in her handbag she wanted to answer, I think, but god bless her she didn’t.

“It is fine by me. You?”

“Well, yes. Of course! “ She gulped the last of her coffee and looked for the waitress, who was talking with a customer. “Lousy service. HEY!!” The waitress turned around and gave her the stink eye. My date pointed to her cup. 

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She was the typical impatient modern girl. A treasure, for someone else to dig up out of her sophorific  involvement with the satan of politics. I am weary. I just want to communicate under the red sky with a gal who knows just how drastic things really are, and that the only way to forestall it is simple human lovingkindness. Which, from a paternal guy like me, looks like pablum.

“Wanna use it later,” I sneered. I was sick of her. She was political. I am almost apolitical. I don’t wanna  have to make up opinions just to get laid. I am too old for that.

“hey! Huh?” she was split in attention between me and the waitress, who was taking her sweet time to refill us.

“I said: why don’t we go practice contraception?”

“ You..what?..you mean..oh.”

She was suddenly shy. All hunched up. Over her empty cup.

“Yeah?” she said.

“I don’t see why not.” The book called for me, but this weirdo chick had her charm. I decided to eschew Vonnegut today.

…………………………………………………………..

 We went back to her place and made love for a few hours. I found her method of contraception to be quite compatible with my desire not to be physically inhibited while I brought her to orgasm .

We lay in the sheets a bit, then she got political on me again. In a blurry way.

‘’ so, lover..’’ she purred, her head on my chest, ‘’ why do they want to take away our rights? Our goddamn god-given rights to enjoy our bodies? Why why why…” she was half asleep. The way I liked her.

I sighed and said, “ they wanna take away the pleasure. They do it because they are  aggrieved by some sense of disgust for their own bodies, these boys.  They hate their own skin, and cannot imagine it up against a girl, who these days is soft and clean all the time, see?”

“I aint real clean right now,’ she admitted. Her toes were doing exercises.  Attached to those legs,ay!

“Well, but, “ I said, losing my political train of thought, “ah,well: the thing is, there is terrible transference, that is a psychological term, going on.”

“I was a psyche minor. “

“Oh really, and your major, if I may inquire, “ noticing that she wanted to kiss me.

“Po-lit-ick-all Science, of course,” she said brightly, and went for the kiss.

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VONNEGUT:

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

§  "Knowing What's Nice", an essay from In These Times (2003)