HAVING WRITTEN MY EXIT FROM THE STAGE into the previous sentence there isn't much reason to continue our discussion of the Gustav Otto matter.19 The next logical (or at least natural) step for me to take in returning you to the main narrative thrust of this novel is to critique my "debut" as Arthur Long. While my performance didn't result in a standing ovation, a string of adulatory curtain calls or rave reviews in the Moronville Gazette, I couldn't have been happier over the way I had so thoroughly beguiled the Smiths into accepting me as a man made of the same common clay (or dirt) from which they themselves had been created. Immediately upon my return to the embassy I wrote a memo to myself in which I enumerated the following factors as contributing to my success:
1. Except for the occasional use of a word or phrase more appropriate to the vocabulary of a JewishIntellectual than to the proletarian patois of a Detroit machinist I couldn't recall making a single semantic snafu so serious it would cause the Smiths to suspect they were being flimflammed by a pinstriped diplomat disguised in the Sears &Roebuck mufti of a crankshaftgrinder.2. For the first time in my life I had resisted the temptation for turning a casual conversation into a tutorial on the cosmic ramifications of what seemed like the most trivial of matters (ie., demonstrating how the lackadaisical attitude most people have concerning the weather reflects their general insensitivity to the causal relationship between climatic factors and the rising and falling of civilizations).
3. In particular, when discussing the decline of Detroit's onceinvincible position as the automotive capital of the world with the Smiths I did not launch into one of my usual diatribes about "America's anticultural chickens coming home to roost."20
4. My expertise in the art of diplomatic deception notwithstanding, the fraud I perpetrated so slickly on the Smiths encourages me to think I may have been blessed with the natural acting talent it will take to engender the unquestioning confidence of ordinary people in "Arthur Long's" credibility as a grassroots American (or anything else I might want them to believe).
5. Most pleasing of all, perhaps, was the feeling I had of being completely "at home" inside Arthur Long's skin toward the end of my extended "chin wag" with the Smiths. After some initial "stage fright" I quickly grew so accustomed to the role I was playing that when my performance was over it required something of an effort for me to return to the reality of my real persona. As a matter of fact the elaborate procedures of redisguising myself as the overweight, bearded and geriatric diplomat I used to be seemed like more of a theatrical exercise than my "impersonation" of a slim, trim, cleanlyshaved, gregarious and, for the most part, blissfully mindless average American! There was no doubt about it: being normal had its advantages—some of which might eventually prove difficult to relinquish when my involvement with the Klutz Affair comes to an end.
6. As an interesting sidelight; on my way back to the embassy I encountered several pedestrians on Main Street who ordinarily would have recognized me and touched the brims of their caps in the way they customarily express their respect to another Moron. But none of them showed any signs of having not perceived me as being just another typical American tourist. Even more remarkable was the failure of Doris Darlinge (who happened to be waitressing at the coffeeshop where my conversation with the Smiths took place) to remember me as the man whose foreplay she once described as being the most unforgettable experience of her life!
7. To summarize: Based on this afternoon's experience with the Smiths it would seem as if my plan to pose as a retired auto worker named Arthur Long while I complete the writing of Morons Awake! is most decidedly feasible!
YOU CAN IMAGINE MY SURPRISE THEN, when not 5 minutes after completing the above memo the phone rang and the voice I heard in the receiver belonged to, of all people—Mrs Smith herself! "I don't know what sort of game you're playing, Mr 'Long' but I thought you might like to know I wasn't fooled for a minute by that little 'performance' you put on for our benefit this afternoon."
"How did you know where to reach me?" I asked illogically—unable to think of anything else to say that might conceal the state of panic and mental paralysis into which I had been temporarily thrown by the news my "auspicious" debut as Arthur Long had in fact turned out to be a flop.
"I might be a housewife from Muncie, Indiana but I know that when a man chooses his words as carefully as you were choosing yours with me and my husband there must be something he's trying to hide. Usually it's his nefarious desire to seduce another man's wife out of her pantyhose—a prospect, by the way, I wasn't altogether unwilling to see eventuate between us. But when you failed to slip me the conventional 'note under the table' detailing where and when we might consummate our mutual lust I took the initiative of asking the coffeeshop waitress if she happened to know where I could reach the tall, dark and handsome stranger who had been sitting at our table. And, as luck would have it, the little simpleton provided me with the telephone number of the American embassy! I call her a simpleton because she also told me what an exceptionally adroit lover she found you to be—something no woman in her right mind would tell another woman."
"If you're fishing for a compliment, Mrs Smith, I congratulate you for being so perceptive. But beyond that I don't see any meaningful basis for continuing this call."
"Oh? I thought a man of your analytical bent would be consumed with curiosity over my critique of your fiascoed charade."
She was right, of course. How could I not be consumed with curiosity over the reasons why a common housewife from Muncie, Indiana had so easily seen through the plot a man of my superior intellect had carefully constructed with a person exactly like her in his mind as its victim? On the other hand, in terms of my selfesteem, I would have to pay a very high price indeed for the humiliating information I was so eager to obtain—and which she seemed equally eager to supply. "Without exaggerating the importance of what I only intended to be a harmless exercise in amateur theatrics, Mrs Smith—as the human guinea pig I used in my little 'hoax' you probably have a certain moral claim to unburden yourself at my expense. For that reason I am not unwilling to hear your brief 'critique' of my 'fiascoed charade.'"
"I understand how humiliating it must be for a man with your "superior intellect" to have his welllaid plans undone by a common housewife, so let me set the record straight before we proceed any further. For starters I'm not a housewife and my real name isn't Mary or, for that matter, Smith. Moreover, my being here isn't the result of a travel agent's mistake. When, for reasons I will explain hereafter, my husband added Moronia as one of the countries we would visit on our annual trip to Europe, he naturally decided we could only do so incognito. Were we not to disguise ourselves as ordinary American tourists under the assumed names of John and Mary Smith we ran the risk, no matter how marginal, of having our social standing in Muncie compromised by the scandal that would arise from the mere fact respectable people like us had spent time in a place with Moronia's unsavory reputation as a tourist destination. Without going into details which could turn out to be 'incriminating,' suffice it to say both my husband and I are college educated professionals who are highly regarded for our philanthropic and cultural activities not just in Muncie but throughout the entire state of Indiana. We are, for instance, charter subscribers to the Indianapolis Symphony, the Hoosier Operatic Society, the South Bend Ballet and The Terre Haute Theatre Francaise. We also sit on the boards of several foundations, institutions and organizations dedicated to the purpose of promoting the physical and mental welfare of all Indianans."
While I was still dubious about Mrs "Smith's" motives and the truthfulness of the story she was telling me, the literate manner with which she spun her homely tale of amateur cloak & daggerism was itself disconcertingly credible. Her choice of words, the complexities of her sentence structure and the "novelistic" flow of her narrative were decidely not those one would expect to hear coming from the lips of an average Muncie, Indiana housewife.
"Are you still listening?" she asked.
"I'm all ears—"
"My point in telling you all of this is to eliminate the need for any more mutual mea culpas. The plain fact is that, for various reasons and in different ways, the three of us were deceiving one another in that coffeeshop this afternoon as if we were characters in a Feydeau farce."
"You're acquainted with the farces of Feydeau?"
"Didn't I just tell you my husband and I were charter subscribers to The Terre Haute Theatre Francaise?"
There was more than just a slight suggestion of condescension in her voice—something I wasn't accustomed to hearing from the Moronic women whose abject subservience I had come to assume during the last 50 years of my life was an international norm. But in order not to upset a turnipcart containing information that could be useful to me in perfecting my characterization of Arthur Long I bit my tongue and responded to her shrewish provocation in the discreetly deferential way I presumed all "modern" American males now did—"As a matter of fact, my dear, you certainly did."
Having been duly mollified by the emasculated tone of my voice she continued in a tone of her own that was tinged with only a trace of the bitchiness I had provoked by interrupting her train of thought with my impertinent, irrelevant and erroneous remark.
"You and I aren't the only ones who have been deceiving each other," she said.
"Oh?" I risked interjecting to demonstrate how keenly I hung on every word she uttered.
"Don't let that idiotic facade my husband was hiding behind this afternoon fool you. As our trip to Moronia has taught me, I am married to a man who is quite capable of practicing the slyest kind of chicanery on his own wife in order to pursue his devious purposes."
"Well, he certainly pulled the wool over my eyes!" I exclaimed with a spontaneity that wasn't entirely insincere. The fact was: "John Smith" had indeed impressed me as being a man without a single disingenuous bone in his entire body!
"I admit it took me longer than it should have to unravel the tangled web of my husband's motives for plotting our 'accidental detour' to Moronia, but in the end the method of his madness became crystal clear."
I, of course, never had the slightest doubt as to why the Smiths were in Moronia. There was only one reason why any American "tourist" would visit a country whose only real attraction was the (dubious) claim its turnips had to aphrodisiac fame21—and that was the curiosity about his or her Moronic ancestry. What did surprise—and intrigue— me were the sordid lengths to which "Smith" apparently went in keeping his wife ignorant about the true purpose of their itinerary—and his success in leading me to believe he was nothing more than a prototypical Hoosier. Accordingly, the interest I showed in this phase of her story was anything but contrived. "Are you saying your husband's reasons for coming to Moronia were so Machiavellian he concealed them from his own wife?"
"Of course that's what I'm saying! Why else would a mature man suddenly develop a passion for collecting those ridiculous miniature objects d'art22 for which Moronia just happens to be the world's one and only source?"
"So; the hearttoheart and mantoman talk he and I had about his 'lifelong passion' for collecting Moronic miniatures was nothing more than a sham?"
"Frankly, the ease with which he led you down that garden path caused me to reconsider my earlier impression of what seemed like the scintillating intelligence you were trying so hard to keep hidden under that Detroit Tigers baseball cap of yours. But, in the final analysis, since it had taken me several months to discover the fraudulent nature of my husband's newfound infatuation with microscopic collectibles, I gave you the benefit of my doubts."
"Thank you."
"You're quite welcome."
"I'm curious about your reaction to my wearing of a Detroit Tigers baseball cap."
"Yes. I should think you would be!"
"Was it the cap or the team that triggered your reservations about the scintillational nature of my intellect?"
"That's for me to know and you to find out!"
At last! Mrs "Smith" was finally revealing her true colors! From the moment I picked up the telephone she had been playing the cat to my mouse. I was dealing with a woman who was no stranger to the artifices used by a professional extortionist! She knew exactly what I wanted—and how desperately I wanted it. Her notso coy remark about my having to find out what she knew was the clearest kind of cue the time had come for me to begin negotiating the price I would have to pay for the information she possessed concerning the reasons for my failed debut as Arthur Long. "For someone with your philanthropic affiliations that isn't what I would describe as a very charitable attitude," I said, trying to initiate our haggling on the lowest possible emotional level. Without the slightest pause she responded to my opening gambit like the hustler I took her for.
"If you're not smart enough to figure out for yourself where you went wrong this afternoon it's only fair that I be compensated for the inconvenience—and the dangers—of meeting with you privately to discuss the matter."
"I can understand the inconvenience you might be caused and would have no objection at all to compensating you for it, but frankly I'm quite mystified by your reference to the 'dangers' involved in meeting with me."
"As for the risks involved for me in taking this plunge—unfortunately that's a subject about which you know much more than I do."
"Nevertheless you seem to have formed some opinions on the matter."
"I've made a few guesses that aren't entirely uneducated on the question of why the 'distinguished' American ambassador to Moronia would try to pass himself off as a retired auto worker from Detroit. Even the most naive housewife from my midwestern neck of the American woods would suspect she and her husband were either the targets of a government sting operation or had inadvertently gotten themselves entangled in some Byzantine cloak& dagger scheme. In either case, the prudent thing for us to have done following your botched impersonation of "Art Long" would have been to pack our bags and hightail it out of Moronia as fast as we possibly could back to the constitutionally guaranteed safety of good old Muncie, Indiana, USA." I waited a few moments for this flow of information she was providing me with so freely to resume—thinking that perhaps her throat had gone dry23—but when it became apparent she was deliberately pausing for me to prime her pump I took the initiative.
"Well—why didn't you do the 'prudent' thing?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Don't tell me you weren't making a play for me in that coffeeshop—or that you failed to receive the sexual semaphore signals I sent you with every ounce of body language a woman can muster in a situation where she is sitting next to her husband while conversing with some perfectly strange man whose intellect she finds so captivating her mind becomes enthralled by that most blissful of all prurient prospects."
Once again she seemed to be inviting me to prime her pump, which I didn't hesitate to do by asking her, "Which is?"
"Committing adultery with a goddam genius, you silly man!"
So that was the kind of game this "typical Hoosier housewife" was playing with me! Like all eggheads I was inclined to believe most women were attracted more by the magnitude of a man's mind than the dimensions of his genitalia, but I had never seen, read or heard of any hard evidence confirming what would be such an agreeable state of hetero sexual affairs. In my limited experiences with nonMoronic members of the opposite sex this was the first time24 when the article of faith I clung to so tenaciously (and blindly) on this issue seemed justified by the words I just heard coming from a normal woman's mouth. But before leaping to such a monumental conclusion there were several questions which, in order to be absolutely objective, needed to be asked; questions that could only be answered with Mrs "Smith's" cooperation. Could I, for instance, formulate a rule applying to all the Mrs "Smiths" I might meet on my impending travels throughout the length and breadth of America based on a single act of infidelity? Furthermore, just how average is any woman who would so brazenly confess her "enthrallment with the prospect of committing adultery with a genius?" According to even her own statements Mrs "Smith" was anything but a common housewife from Muncie. And judging by her cultural activities and philanthropic affiliations one would have to conclude she moved in social circles of the highest "brow"—at least by Indiana standards. Such a conclusion could also be supported by the subtle sophistication she demonstrated during that blandest of coffeeshop conversations I tried so assiduously to orchestrate between myself and the "Smiths." Her remark, for example, about sending me "sexual semaphore signals with every ounce of body language a woman can muster" is doublyentendred in the way it reveals both her capacity to conceive such an elegant idea and then to express it with a cogency some bestselling novelists would find enviable! Which made me wonder if, in fact, she hadn't lifted some—or all—of her "literarylike" remarks straight from the pages of those trashy romance romance novels so many American (and Moronic) women are addicted to reading. And that distinct possibility forced to me ask myself this $64 question: Could I believe anything this selfconfessed impostor had told me about herself? For all I really knew Mrs "Smith" might be a pathological liar, a nymphomaniacal adulteress, a woman whose mind had been warped by the type of fiction she read, or just another midwestern housewife driven to hallucinate about the thrilling prospect of fornicating with a genius by her marriage to a braindead husband.
Even more ominous was the possibility I was dealing with a professional femme fatale—a seductress recruited by the CIA (on Ballbraker's behest?) to discover what my intentions were vis a vis the knowledge I had inadvertently acquired about the Klutz Affair.25 In the final analysis this proliferation of questions about Mrs "Smith" itself indicated my curiosity could only be satisfied by getting to know her in the Biblical sense of that word. My plans for reversing the decline of Western Civilization had reached a point where I could no longer afford the luxury of being an armchair messiah. The time for ruminating ad infinitum on the smallest details to avoid making a major blunder (clever me; I couldn't even bamboozle what I mistook for a common housewife from Muncie, Indiana!) had run out. Henceforth Arthur Long would have to do all his "thinking" from the neck down: with his gut, his adrenaline, his survival instinct— with that brace of ovate organs all men of action rely upon when the call to battle is bugled! Whether I knew it or not, from the first moment I entered that coffeeshop and met Mrs "Smith" I had already become a fugitive—a fox on the run from a pack of hunting hounds whose predatory thirst could only be quenched with his blood!
While my ruminations on the riskrewardratio of satisfying the adulterous desires of a perfectly strange woman without unduly hazarding my prospects for reversing the decline of Western Civilization occupy several pages of this book, in actuality they transpired26 in what was the briefest of hesitations between Mrs "Smith's" exclamatory outburst: "Committing adultery with a goddam genius!" and her ensuing dialogue,27 which began with—"Naturally I would never confess so brazenly to entertaining such an unorthodox idea had I been sober. You've probably surmised I've been fortifying my courage with alcohol."
"Let's call it a hunch."
"Your friend, Doris, provided me with a flask of turnipschnapps. She said it was reputed to contain certain properties that could relax a woman's inhibitions and help her take the kind of extramarital plunge I am taking."
"Apparently Doris knew what she was talking about."
"The only reason I've raised the matter of how and why my sobriety came to be impaired is to establish the fact I am ordinarily neither a lush nor an adulteress—not that the kind of humdrum marriage fate has seen fit for a woman with my romantic soul to endure hasn't given me ample reasons for being both."
"Based on the impressions I formed this afternoon about the depth of the intellectual chasm separating you from your husband I have no problem accepting what you say about the strength of character you've demonstrated in resisting the twin temptations of drink and infidelity."
"Temptations I could, and probably would, have continued resisting if it hadn't been for the ironic consequences of my husband's curiosity about his pedigree. To think that I would find my Prince Charming—the mental superman of my wettest dreams—in, of all places, a cultural backwater like Moronia! But, drunk or sober—and sexually fulfilled or otherwise—what normal woman doesn't indulge the occasional fancy of playing Pussy Galore to some James Bond- or Joycelike hunk? Unfortunately, like all fantasies, the fruition of this one is fraught with the perils of scandal—and of the disappointment that frequently (if not always!) attends the realization of our most fervent desires. Nevertheless, it isn't just the turnipschnapps that has led me to do what I am doing."
"Oh?"
"Of course not. There were several factors I carefully analyzed before deciding to take this moral dilemma of mine by its horns. The first of these is the obvious one that: A woman of my age can't expect whatever remains of any seductive powers she might have once had to last forever."
"You know what they say about wine—" I said, having darkened the timbre of my voice to that seductive level used by the (semi)chivalrous likes of Bogart and Boyer when they were "consoling" their way into the arms (and boudoir) of some "downhearted dame."
"Yes. But even the rarest vintage can spend too much time in the bottle," she replied with a wryness of wit I was unaccustomed to hearing from my Moronic conquests—the vast majority of whom failed to see anything even remotely humorous in the futility of their sexlives. The more we talked the clearer it became that my foreplay expertise would be put to its severest test in satisfying Mrs "Smith's" climactic expectations. And so it should be if she was indeed a harbinger of the other adulteryminded housewives Art Long might be forced into "comforting" on his transAmerican travels. Like Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, it was possible that in creating Long I had inadvertently produced a monster with a mind, a will and—more importantly—a sexappeal of his own! In which case it behooved me to learn as much as I possibly could about the nature of the beast I was about to become before turning him (and the fate of Western Civilization) loose on the countless females struggling to stay afloat in the turbulent waters of America's matrimonial mainstream.
"But," she continued, "in addition to what I believe is the Godgiven right of every female to consummate her lifelong lust for carnal bliss there are patriotic dimensions to this affair we are contemplating which can't be ignored by any decent American woman—especially one who's father was martyred at Pearl Harbor. If only you knew how it has galled me all these years to drive cars made on the assemblylines that produced the instruments of death that deprived me of the rolemodel every girl needs for the man in whose hands she will one day place her sexual destiny."
I had some difficulty following the circuitous way in which her feminine logic linked our coffeeshop discussion of America's chronic trade deficit with the prospects of an adulterous liaison, but one thing was crystal clear: She saw me as a figure to replace the father she never knew. This would account for her attraction to a man who, with even the most generous allowance made for the years I had removed by diet and exercise, most women would regard as being a borderline geriatric. How many other American women, I wondered, would be similarly seduced by my fatherly (or grandfatherly) "mystique?" Or were such cases confined to that generation of women whose first crush was inspired by a silverthatched, craggyfaced and superannuated heart throb like Spencer Tracy in Bad Day at Black Rock or Clark Gable in The Carl Sandburg Story—the same women who, if we can believe The Publisher's News letter,28 might be willing to read a deadly serious novel of the kind I was planning to write provided they also believed it would stimulate those regions of a female's intellect located somewhat to the south of her décolletage?
"Correct me if I'm mistaken," she went on, "but your choice of impersonating a retired crankshaft grinder and the way you kept raising the subject of Japan's domination of the U.S. auto market indicated to me you were testing my willingness to play a role in some kind of cloak&dagger plot whereby our declining industrial supremacy might somehow be reversed."
"The truth is," I lied, "my disguise was part of an espionage scheme of sorts; but one that is being masterminded by the Drug Enforcement Agency—which has its reasons for believing Moronia may have become the source of a new turnipderived narcotic29 that has been appearing in the Detroit area recently. My real reason for engaging you in a 'casual' conversation about how General Motors has improved the quality of its products was not to shame you into buying American—although that's another of the 'fringe benefits' which seems to have accrued from this afternoon's debacle—but rather to establish my credentials as someone you could safely do business with in the event you turned out to be the kingpins of a MoronicAmerican drug cartel posing as a pair of typical tourists from Muncie, Indiana. Happily, of course, that was not the case. But knowing what I now do about the talent you displayed in leading me to believe you were just an average Indiana housewife; if the State Department was using its overseas ambassadors to recruit femmes fatales for some cloak and dagger scheme aimed at reversing our trade deficit with Japan your name would be at the top of my list."
"I'd be lying if I said I swallowed everything you've just told me. Nevertheless, I can't help being impressed by the gallantry with which you so insidiously softsoap a woman into not only accepting her subordination to a man's superior intelligence but relishing it in the bargain! Doris was certainly right about the effect she predicted your smoothtalking would have on the escalation of my orgasmic expectations. I only hope she was also telling me the truth about your tenacity in finishing every job you begin! The proof of that, of course, will be in the pudding you and I are about to cook up—"
"Since we both seem ready and willing for me to prove my amatory abilities puddingwise, there are some practical matters that should be addressed at this pregnant point—"
"If you're worried about my husband walking in on our 'culinary escapade'—don't be. Since he will be preoccupied with frying some furtive fish30 of his own tonight we can count on being undisturbed for the 6 hours Doris tells me it took you to fully orchestrate the Grand Finale of her fulfillment fantasies. So, I suppose, the only remaining question is: Whether we make this pudding of ours in your kitchen or mine."
Using her "kitchen"31 was, of course, out of the question. In the event Mr. "Smith" did happen to return prematurely from his genealogical intrigue I couldn't risk exposing "Arthur Long" to a scandal Ballbraker was bound to get wind of. Besides, my place was peculiarly suitable for the purpose at hand. After fifty years of foreplaying my way through several generations of Moronia's (adult) female population it wasn't surprising I had perfected a decor32 that rarely failed to put a "client" of mine completely under the spell of my lovemaking magic. While waiting for her to arrive I made the usual preparations; which included a mental review of those fundamental principles I had developed in perfecting the Art of Foreplay—one of these being the rule that: There are situations in which an excess of foreplay can become counterproductive. On such occasions a man must recognize the limits beyond which his prolongation of a woman's climactic cravings may turn out to be unendurable.
And—now that I think of it—the same principle might apply to the art of writing a novel! Is it possible, dear reader, I have overprolonged your suspense concerning what transpired between me and the starknaked blonde in the convertible at the corner of Hollywood & Vine that caused a lifelong agnostic like me to believe he had undergone some kind of transcendental experience? If indeed there is such a point—and whether or not I may have reached it—I think the time has probably come for us to return to the scene of my "epiphany." [Which we will do as soon as I tell you that (without going into details which are far better left to your imagination) my liaison with Mrs "Smith" was, in every respect, consummated.]
Book One Chapter 3 Part 1 Return to Index
Footnotes
19 Unfortunately, for those whose curiosity about Otto's fate (or his existence) hasn't been satisfied, not only is A Portrait of America's Most Successful Car Dealer as a Young Greasemonkey out of print—-the transcript of his once sensational war crimes trial has "mysteriously disappeared" from the archives in Bonn.
20 Normally, whenever the subject of American vs Japanese industrial competitiveness is broached by one of my Moronic acquaintances, I invariably make the argument that: The emphasis placed by the Japanese on the appreciation (if not the veneration) of such prosaic activities as handwriting, teadrinking, flowerarranging and even taking a bath—and the devaluation (if not the outright trashing) by Americans of any cultural pursuit that is remotely esoteric—correlates directly with the escalating postwar trade gap between America and Japan. The simple secret of the Japanese success story is that they apply aesthetic principles not only to the manufacture of everything from chopsticks to luxury automobiles; they practice their Asiatic brand of capitalism as if it were a fine art.
21 Also known as "The poorman's Spanish Fly."
22 Shrewdly capitalizing on its reputation as the world's smallest microstate (and constantly seeking ways to diversify an economy so heavily dependent on the turnip) in 1931 the Moronic Chamber of Commerce funded a cottage industry for the manufacturing of superminiaturized replicas of the world's greatest artistic masterpieces. Throughout the winter months, when their fields are fallow, Moronia's turnipfarmers and their impoverished families spend their days handcrafting the tiniest conceivable reproductions of DaVinci's Mona Lisa (3 x 5mm), Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon (5 x 8.5mm), Rodin's Thinker (4 x 8mm) and Burghers of Calais (6 x14mm), the American and Moronic Declarations of Independence (2.6 x 3.3mm), etc. Like everything else in Moronia, while this venture has been successful, the turnover in diminutive objects d'art is itself minuscule by nonMoronic commercial standards. According to the Chamber of Commerce trade statistics for 1993, for instance, gross revenues from this enterprise amounted to M$612.39. These figures, of course, do not include the rather substantial black market traffic in "miniporn"—microscopicallysized items of erotica the Morons find much more lucrative than turning out Lilliputian versions of the legitimate art treasures most tourists claim to revere but few are actually willing to purchase.
23 From the start of our conversation it seemed clear to me from the (not unseductive) huskiness of her voice and occasionally slurred or mispronounced word that she had been hitting some sort of bottle—possibly the local turnipschnapps, which has been known to suckerize even the worldliest of foreign boozers with the sneakiness its punch.
24 I exempt my epistolary affair with Vicky Truelove on the grounds that in all such cases the assumption can, I think, be reasonably made that any female predisposed toward a relationship which, by its nature, is more platonic than physical qualifies as an exception to the rule that: The average woman is probably unaware of her irresistible attraction to men with scintillating mentalities until she actually meets a man who has one.
25 For this to be the case it would mean that when I sauntered into that coffeeshop looking for someone like the Smiths on which to practice my impersonation of "Arthur Long" I was actually walking into an ambush the "Smiths" had set for me! And, since they couldn't have known exactly when I was planning to make my debut, it would have been necessary for them to sit where I found them sitting from the time I hatched my Arthur Long plot to thwart the conspiracy aimed at preventing me from raising the lid on the Klutz Affair. While such a convoluted cloak& dagger scenario might seem to lend some credence to the malicious criticism Morons Awake! is the product of a paranoid mind, how else can one explain why Doris the waitress was willing to divulge the intimate secret of her loveaffair with me to Mrs "Smith" if their relationship hadn't been cultivated over a considerable period of time? Unless, of course, Doris herself had also been recruited into the conspiracy against me by Ballbraker and the CIA—a possibility I regard as being a very remote one indeed based on my experience with the fanatical loyalty with which Moronic women reward a man who has mastered the art of satisfying their excessive foreplay requirements.
26 The reader is reminded this chapter consists almost entirely of those thoughts I had while waiting for that red light at the intersection of Hollywood & Vine to turn green. While (as you will soon discover) it seemed as if my stoppage at that mythical crossroads was of a duration so unnaturally prolonged I ran the risk of being stranded there for an eternity—in retrospect the entire episode probably consumed no more time than that which it will take you to read this footnote. By deliberately elaborating at such length on the aforementioned thought process my intent is 2fold: First, to demonstrate the way in which even the smallest increment of time can (and more often than not does) contain the stuff from which whole chapters of a novel are written and; Second, to let you in on some of the mental machinations involved when one contemplates embarking on an epochmaking enterprise like the writing of a book that will change the course of human history (for the better).
27 Prompted, no doubt, by the ruminating she herself had done over matters not dissimilar to those I was pondering.
28 According to an article entitled, "Recent Trends Away From Trash In The Female Readership Of Gothic fiction" appearing in the June, 1985 edition of The Publisher's Newsletter, writers of romance novels have been put on notice by declining sales figures to "enrich" their product with the kind of "cultural nutrients" that have become increasingly fashionable among modern American women. Whether these women are trending toward novels which are intellectually respectable because: (1) Of their moral indignation over the softcore porn masquerading as "gothic fiction" they have for so long been addicted to reading, or; (2) Whether they have finally come to realize the most efficacious pornography is that which is frequently found in books of the highest literary repute is still an open question—but the article's author argued it would be prudent for every novelist to assume that (2) would prove to be a more plausible answer than (1).
29 The Moronic turnip has a long history of being used for other than strictly nutritional purposes . Among its many pharmacological properties the turnip has provided Morons with remedies for everything from the common cold to arterial sclerosis. It also enjoys a reputation for being an aphrodisiac, a cure for impotence and a "Love Elixir." As for its narcotic efficacy, my own experiences with injecting, snorting, smoking and imbibing the various distillates, powders and enzymes derived from the humble brassica moronicus have proven to be only mildly soporific. This fascinating topic will be revisited later in Morons Awake! and is treated rather exhaustively in the chapter (124) on Moronic Turnipculture in Vol. II, History of the Morons.
30 It seems Mr. "Smith" was busy practicing intrigues of his own on Mrs "Smith" by telling her he would be "spending the night in Moronia's boondocks hoping to pick up some miniatures on the cheap from the simpleminded cottagers who made them." But Mrs "Smith" was not so easily deceived. Once again it was Doris who provided her with the helpful information that she had overheard Mr. "Smith" negotiating for one of those nocturnal visits to Moronia's subterranean National Genealogical Repository secretly arranged by the selfstyled "Society for Promoting MoronAmerican Affairs" to oblige those tourists who are unduly sensitive about their Moronic roots. Because such afterhours research is paid for by the hour (and because the Morons doing it are technically in violation of the law against governmental moonlighting) these sub rosa activities normally begin at suppertime and don't end earlier than 3 or 4 in the morning—when the streets of Moronville are bound to be devoid of both tourists and members of the Moronic constabulary and/or FIB.
31 I don't know about you, dear reader, but I found her gastronomic metaphors a trifle overdone.
32 Over the years I had gradually expanded my bachelor's bedchamber into a "Grand Salon d'Amour" that by now entirely occupied what had been a 5room flat. Thus the shelves of literary masterpieces and library of classical music lining the walls of my study, the Modigliani nudes and scenes of pastoral bacchanalia by Matisse, Gauguin and Picasso with which the walls of my parlor were hung, the mosaics of Roman orgies, genitally symbolic plumbing fixtures and Jacuzzied hot tub in my lavatory; and even the rack of vintage wines, antique culinary paraphernalia and chandeliered ambiance of my kitchen/diningroom all combined to create an atmosphere calculated to impress the average Moronette or -ess with how seriously I took the task of satisfying her foreplay needs. The bedchamber—or "boudoir"—itself was, of course, the jewel in my lovemaking crown. With the flick of a single switch the room became permeated by a coordinated succession of floral fragrances and French perfumes set to the symphonic strains of Mahler, Schubert and Brahms. The 4poster bed was draped with Gobelin tapestries depicting scenes of the most tender and fastidious displays of affection between aristocrats of the opposite gender. While the walls were devoted exclusively to Beardsley's elegantly lascivious pen&ink illustrations for Lysistrata, Salome and Lucian's True History. Nor did the walltowall carpeting escape my connoisseur's attention to every detail that might enhance a woman's prospects for attaining the very pinnacle of her gynecoidal capabilities. Through my diplomatic connections I was able to procure a rare Belugastan whose dimensions happily matched those of my bedchamber and whose design was even more happily comprised of illustrations from the Kama Sutra. But I think I've said all that needs saying on the subject at this juncture.