Decency, Please

Decency, Please

       by Pee Tom Ping

                if only i could have my way with words

                        i'd castigate the ones who speak with swords

                        and like sir thomas more who thought no more

                        of setting match to faggots piled at least three feet

                        beneath the soles of tynsdale and a hundred more

                        so would i burn with verbal and with cardinal flames

                        the pestilence and plague that comes from that

                        which self-virtuous calls this one a whore

                        that one a heretic and t'other

                        other names of infinite distain

                        regardless of the conventions of narrative closure

                       

"Let's use proper language," Anthony Watterman the Head said in his memo to staff. "Students have complained about swearing by professors. Surely we must set an example of decency." That said, most of the professoriate proceeded as before except that they kept their voices down somewhat, whispering their "fucks" and "shits" and "little assholes" if they were swearers and continuing to speak at high volume if they were not.

       To those faculty members who were not swearers in this particular university English department belonged a certain Sedgewick Penceil who taught the standard two undergraduate courses as well as a graduate level course on Jonathan Swift. Sedge contributed furthermore by heading two committees and serving on two more. He wore serge jackets and casual slacks, cologne, neat socks with diamonds or other designs, and Italian shoes polished and unscuffed, and he spoke with loud certainty in his office (door ajar) so that all would hear him the length of the long corridor. He was gay and made no mention of it though he did not hide it either.

       To those faculty members who were swearers but now kept the swearing quieter belonged Roland Beungerskaet, as lively and vociferous a friendly soul as any bored student might have adored for a prof. He lectured a similar load as Sedge but his graduate area covered Middle Ages' drama. Now, Rol, an American by birth and habit, loved baseball. But since no baseball except for the smaller league variety got played in Winnipeg he had to substitute for the verve in the game, its shouting, popcorn, hotdogs and beer, with other assertivenesses that produced these. He chose bondage games with other men. His favorite player happened to be Sedge. Sedge would yell out in the heat of play. When the ping pong paddle smacked him on the backside he minced no words and without swearing once made it known to his violator that his love for this pain bore no breaching and permitted of no alternatives. He had had it with Rolly, he would clarify in high volume, and would, he'd add, return the compliments with interest the first chance he got.

       Nevertheless, sexual activity, for those who know me, is the most common and the easiest place I tend to visit for narrative material and substance. Less facile and so, preferable, is a stop at the site of thought and feeling, descriptions of which leave the reader lonely, or sad, or rejoicing, or nostalgic, or vitalized, or reverent, or contemplative. Unfortunately, I can think of absolutely nothing about these gentlemen to recommend me to aspire to higher imagination than their coitiferous roarings. So, in deference to my lady readers as well as my mother whom I sincerely desire never to pick up any of these autobiographical Gonzaloic confessions (having myself been indoctrinated most successfully in the ruse that is church and moral uprightness), I will go to the only other place my archeology takes me in search of content appropriate to these two fellows' livings. I will go to etiquette and language. Their physical statures leaves me unemotional. Their appetites for food and drink bridge no river in my thoughts. The quality of their relations with students might as well immediately be forgotten, haughty and self-absorbed as it is. I am left with only one alternative in my re-creation of the lives and times of these two libidinoids and that is, having informed you all briefly of the particulars of their speech and behaviour at din din, to bid them so long and never turn meditation in their direction again.

       Sedgewick spoke with a Slavic accent. He had Polish blood in him if he had a drop of anything else. But he wouldn't admit it.  I asked him once if he had recently visited East Asia and he looked at me with a stupid certainty that was meant to convey that he had not and had no reason ever to do so. At table he tucked his nappie under his collar and loved to look down at the white unstained expanse of it after each second spoonful of "soupe´flammon." He was neat and clean as a new pillowcase. Ro, on the other hand, behaved at meals with the slobbering energy of a gone-to-fat two-year-old in a high chair. He spilled his coffee, he drank the first course (say, beet consume´ bruele´) out of the bowl, he dropped spoons, knives and forks and he never thought of himself as clumsy or infantile or oafish. Dress was another matter. He prided himself in his choice of apparel; from collar to painted thong underwear he dressed in "dainty perfume" style. No other professor had nearly his clear resolution when it came to fashionable taste. So, without further ado or adieu I bid these two worthies goodbye and leave them to their habits.       

No One Had Been Following Emily

No One Had Been Following Emily

       by Careful-When-It Comes-To-His-Reputation, Ph.D.

       "Don't Paint in that dismal forest! You must return to the dazzle of the sunlit shore!" Olsen brooked no disagreement. Pupils either listened or obeyed him or they left the school. He preferred to instruct younger students in their mid twenties and especially males. At twenty-nine Emily received indifferent instruction from him at best and in fact found her painting unattended to, though not her behaviour. If she suffered a headache from the snapping light Olsen reminded her that pain inspires. If nausea overcame her from too long a sitting under the sun, he rebuked her for her timid constitution. He saw to it that when Mrs. Osternakinick dined with the "best of the students" Emily counted among the uninvited.

       The forest at Tagenau with its high solemn oaks and elms, quaint in their leaflessness in the lower reaches and snug with birdsong, relaxed Emily, calling upon her best spirit. Her hands felt the freedom from the sun here. Pine scent found its way into the very forms on the canvas. Birds sang from the unpainted edges of the work, mushroom spore tickled the lip and nose from the quiet painted density of carpeted moss and peat that darkly stood ground and guard beneath the arboretum. She painted herself as a small and hardly noticed beech treeling in the work she later entitled "Self Portrait in the Tagenou Forest." She drove a Nostrom Pine needle, renowned for sharpness and strength, through one of her earlobes and hung a marigold from a small golden ring in it each day. Evening saw her lay down her brushes, light her pipe, smoke, drink a glass or two of Barberini White (a product of the South Whales wineries), and lose the debate about returning the two miles to her sea-wall stone rooms. Her stays felt much too tight for her in this place and she loosened them gradually more each day until she removed them entirely and threw them into the gorse off to one side. A vision of Macknic birds with sharp blue eyes came to her one night as she slept and commanded her to begin to paint tall, tall trees without branches except for at their very tops.

       A fellow student, a pretty, roundish thing weighing eight stone, a bit of a coquet, but remarkable for her sunny yellows reflected in dark blues of the sea, without a ship or figure in the whole piece, called on her in her bower and stayed with her one whole night. She had felt afraid to return alone in the gathering dark, Emily declining to accompany her. Before she left in the morning she informed Emily that Olsen intended to pay her a surprise visit in the forest that very day and he was in no mood to compromise. As she turned to leave the clearing, and after hugging Emily goodbye and good luck, the unfortunate woman tripped on a root and fell into the moss. Her shins and her nose were scraped and bled. Crying briefly, she wailed out a second adieu and disappeared down the trail.

       Olsen did appear soon afterwards. He greeted Emily's friendly "hello" with a stern silence and simply looked about him and then at her canvases in the alcove where she stored them. They were excellent works Emily knew but the maestro failed to see their quality. He sniffed and even rolled his eyes as he passed his gaze quickly from one to the other.

       "Not good enough, Emily. This will never do, dear. When will you learn that sun alone makes a work worthwhile? This one here for instance is so dreary I wish to throw it into the shrubbery there." At each painting he offered only the most damaging criticism. A great tree that had been sighing in the high winds for all the days that Emily had worked here made a sudden and angry outburst as if it had reached some sort of personal decision. Olsen paid it no mind as he never paid the forest any mind. The tree swayed with rigor and lively intent, a branch of great proportions came tumbling down among the two of them but did not touch them. Yet Olsen kept his eyes on the paintings, speaking only the fault of them and not the fairness. Emily walked to the edge of the clearing and turned for a moment to look at this uncouth man and then strode down the path. She would not return either here or to her seaside rooms. From a distance she heard a windy sweep and roar of branch and trunk falling. A cry rose against the leafy world and lost itself in the darkness of conifer and shrub. Then another massive and terrified scream penetrated the wood and echoed round the retreating woman and the silent cliffs. No other sounds came. No footsteps followed Emily. She did not waver in her walking but soon her light steps brought her to the very crossroad that took travellers either to the town or to the quay where ships waited to ferry passengers to British ports of call.

   

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       by the Rev. Lee Douglas James Brown-Reimer                 

"Each of us must make a choice about his personal orientation since we were created by God to fulfill a purpose in this world. In 1,500 years it will all be over anyway so why make such a fuss about what men and women do in the privacy of their own hotel rooms."  (The Right Reverend Johnny Bakstrom Jr. B.Sc., B.Div. to the Twenty-Seventh Annual National American Bowling Convention, Severn Valley Convention Centre, Boston, MASS. April 01, 1996)   

Nesbit wished he'd taken communion Sunday when he'd decided against it at the last moment. He chaffered now in his guilt and felt a modicum of shame. Not enough of shame, however, filtered in for him to hurry anywhere to make up for it. No need to attend church unless one felt the need for it in the very sould of one's beeing, he thought, distractedly. Any way one cut it, he said aloud at the mirror, shaving, one must decide for or against church going in the end.

       He had been a religious man for many, many years, faithful to the communion, to the tithe, to the charitable codes, and to the various requirements that the Catholic institution posited for its members.

       A robin sat at his window now regaling him with song and telling of a sweetheart lost in the South and never more to be found. It told also of brotherly love and the ruin such passion brought to the hapless individual.

       "Do not love your brothers," he cheeped with insistence and flew away.

       "For goodness sakes," Nesbit said to the walls. "Do we have to bring in gay sex each and every time we speka with anyone? For the love of Pete!" He turned from the window and put on his jacket. He would walk as far as the warf and back again for his constitutional. He took it rain or shine, and usually lit his pipe for the hour out of doors. Birds immediately spoke to him, a dog followed for a short distance, nearly at his heels, a duck quacked in the ally beside the tobacconist's, and further down the street near the haberdasher's gunfire erupted but it was from a television in a house with an opened window. He got to the dock and turned and went back home where he entered his garage and backed out his car. He would travel for a while. A day or maybe more.

       I will return by Suynday, is that if what I want, he thought. If not, I will not attemd church again until the need for it returns to me and then I will re-decide. He came home Monday, a day after Sunday, and that solved the immediate problem. This week he had not attended church and when next Sunday came round he again traveled and did not attend. He became that way a non-attending churchgoer who seldom ever again in his whole life stuck his head inside a holy building. He lost all interest in churches, in church history, in travels to see holy lands, in historical Mesopotamia, in Muslimo-Christian relations, in biblical allusions, in the story of the three wise men, in the innocence of lambs, and in all things religious or iconographic.

       Now, on April 2, 1986, on a clear day with the birds beginning to chant once again he left for a rendezvous with Satan. Satan met him and proclaimed him his own. Nesbit resisted the black-dressed man and told him that if he persisted he would begin going to church again. The devil backed down and left him. Nesbit went to the chocolate shop close by to catch his breath and decide what to do and then went home to sleep. His dog Nester barked at him unaccountably. The canary lay on its back in the cage with its legs up. The tap in the kitchen ran at almost full volume. The radio would not work and he had eventually to buy a new one. The appliances all quit that summer and by fall he had a houseful of new toasters, tvs, gadgets, exercise equipment and lights. Then he died. The church buried him in a cemetery near the tobacconist's.

       After he passed his friends and relatives remembered him at his wake.

       "He was a handsome man," a female acquaintance remarked. "He stood six foot two in his stocking feet." She nodded and looked about but no one else seemed interested in his stature so she gave it up.

       "I never saw him get irate," the priest from the Catholic Church said. Everyone agreed and nodded and all began to speak at once. He seemed, as far as the general opinion went, to have been a saint and one whose personality demanded respect. He once had been bitten by a dog and no one had heard a curse word. A bird had on one occasion shat on his corned beef sandwich in the park as he ate it and he refrained from loud revererance. Kids might walk across his grass in spring and he spoke not a word in anger. Neither had he ever done much to impress the opposite sex that he was a cad or a villain. All agreed that he was someone worth burying and they did that.     

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       by the Rev. Lee Douglas James Brown-Reimer                 

"Each of us must make a choice about his personal orientation since we were created by God to fulfill a purpose in this world. In 1,500 years it will all be over anyway so why make such a fuss about what men and women do in the privacy of their own hotel rooms."  (The Right Reverend Johnny Bakstrom Jr. B.Sc., B.Div. to the Twenty-Seventh Annual National American Bowling Convention, Severn Valley Convention Centre, Boston, MASS. April 01, 1996)   

Nesbit wished he'd taken communion Sunday when he'd decided against it at the last moment. He chaffered now in his guilt and felt a modicum of shame. Not enough of shame, however, filtered in for him to hurry anywhere to make up for it. No need to attend church unless one felt the need for it in the very sould of one's beeing, he thought, distractedly. Any way one cut it, he said aloud at the mirror, shaving, one must decide for or against church going in the end.

       He had been a religious man for many, many years, faithful to the communion, to the tithe, to the charitable codes, and to the various requirements that the Catholic institution posited for its members.

       A robin sat at his window now regaling him with song and telling of a sweetheart lost in the south and never more to be found. It told also of brotherly love and the ruin such passion brought to the hapless individual.

       "Do not love your brothers," he cheeped with insistence and flew away.

       "For goodness sakes," Nesbit said to the walls. "Do we have to bring in gay sex each and every time we speka with anyone? For the love of Pete!" He turned from the window and put on his jacket. He would walk as far as the warf and back again for his constitutional. He took it rain or shine, and usually lit his pipe for the hour out of doors. Birds immediately spoke to him, a dog followed for a short distance, nearly at his heels, a duck quacked in the ally beside the tobacconist's, and further down the street near the haberdasher's gunfire erupted but it was from a television in a house with an opened window. He got to the dock and turned and went back home where he entered his garage and backed out his car. He would travel for a while. A day or maybe more.

       I will return by Suynday, is that if what I want, he thought. If not, I will not attemd church again until the need for it returns to me and then I will re-decide. He came home Monday, a day after Sunday, and that solved the immediate problem. This week he had not attended church and when next Sunday came round he again traveled and did not attend. He became that way a non-attending churchgoer who seldom ever again in his whole life stuck his head inside a holy building. He lost all interest in churches, in church history, in travels to see holy lands, in Mesopotamia, in Muslimo-Christian relations, in biblical allusions, in the story of the three wise men, in the innocence of lambs, and in all things religious or iconographic.

       Now, on April 2, 1986, on a clear day with the birds beginning to chant once again he left for a rendezvous with Satan. Satan met him and proclaimed him his own. Nesbit resisted the black-dressed man and told him that if he persisted he would begin going to church again. The devil backed down and left him. Nesbit went to the chocolate shop close by to catch his breath and decide what to do and then went home to sleep. His dog Nester barked at him unaccountably. The canary lay on its back in the cage with its legs up. The tap in the kitchen ran at almost full volume. The radio would not work and he had eventually to buy a new one. The appliances all quit that summer and by fall he had a houseful of new toasters, tvs, gadgets, exercise equipment and lights. Then he died. The church buried him in a cemetery near the tobacconist's.

       After he died his friends and relatives remembered him at his wake.

       "He was a handsome man," a female acquaintance remarked. "He stood six foot two in his stocking feet." She nodded and looked about but no one else seemed interested in his stature so she gave it up.

       "I never saw him get irate," the priest from the Catholic Church said. Everyone agreed and nodded and all began to speak at once. He seemed, as far as the general opinion went to have been a saint and one whose personality demanded respect. He once had been bitten by a dog and no one had heard a curse word. A bird once shat on his corned beef sandwich in the park as he ate it and he refrained from loud revererance. Kids might walk across his grass in spring and he spoke not a word in anger. Neither had he ever done much to impress the opposite sex that he was a cad or a villain. All agreed that he was someone worth burying and they did that.     

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