Milkbottle H, page 37
but some children may inherit the awful sense of these Firsts of his Father with his own Firsts, Lee protrudes at Levi, so that the Last Mirror breaks in the Son and strews within him little rotting pieces of the Father’s childhood; I am very different from you, my son, Levi gently chides him, for I rid myself of my father at a very early age: that was one of my most glorious Firsts. You, on the other hand, Levi goes on grimly, are at your
penis)
; and Esther and I exchange dehydrated drolleries, our hearts quite calm now, for we put all our ecstasies and agonies upon our faces where they may be gratified by a shallow shame. Solomon Goldstein need not be jealous when he enters, nor Rachel spiteful when I return. So. Down there is my little girl Leeboy, the little artist subtracting with his hoop from paradise. Shall we go down and count, Levi courteously inquires of Terry Shannon, so that, as they stroll toward the ocean, Lee selfconsciously strides away from the ocean, the shushcrashing sound of the Atlantic breakers now humming in his ear my hum dont irritate you does it my hum dont irritate you does
it my hum
tuneless, irritating as the sagging, black, naked, angled, open outside stairs that lead up to the boardinghouse proper where the Wildwood Wildcats live for the duration of the summer baseball season. Everyboy mounts them as he holds on to Everyboy’s wooden jagged splintered handrail. He mounts to a darkened house and an empty one, the moths and furbodied insects brushing by, ignoring Everyboy. A faint saltwet down sprinkles Everyboy’s face. He reaches the deserted porch, his spine an odd rockingchair on its side, his skullhair sprung by errant steelsprings tufting from the gapes of a derelict sofa. Everyboy pauses, clenches hands on the saltwet porchrail. A ferriswheel rockets into the nightsky; the ghost of a tidal wave shudders over Everyboy; boys and girls on the boardwalk cry in dirging lust; there is a dog, there is a cat, there is a big furbodied moth; the night is fourfooted and winged; a chilling jazz motif picks at Everyboy’s earlobe; a spew of curses, fourfooted, spicules down the street; there is a whiff of smoke from Philadelphia, from Mrs Sherman who may very soon catch fire, and Everyboy angrily sneezes; there is a dog and a cat and a moth curdling Everyboys blood STOP HUMMING THE TUNELESS TUNE, LEVI
and Everyboy rushes, stumbling, into the boardinghouse, bumping into chairs and beds till he reaches the room he shares with his brother Clancy. His father’s tuneless tune tyrannizing his ear, Lee lopsidedly undresses, his abstracted smile on a shakedown cruise, the smile ploughing through high seas, his mouth open and his teeth breasting the spumy waters, a rolling in his loins, the Everyboy craft vibrating with remote and sickening shudders he no sooner pulls the single clammy sheet over him than with a tuneless grunt he shuts his eyes and with his left hand clamps over his penis as he encounters the handsome brunette girl first lightly squatting on his chest, her oily black hairs on her inner thighs, the girl faceless now but extraordinarily beautiful, her open thighs directly under Everyboys nose
he sneezes, allergic to oily black hair
with thumb and two fingers Lee nips his penis. Lengthening, the penis dispatches long envoys into Everyboy’s bowels and delicately prods at his anus while a thick salty white sweetness delicately overflows the brunette girls oily black hairs. She squats directly and lightly over the boy’s mouth but though he moves an electric light bulb so that it shines harshly on her mount he cannot see the brunette triangle itself, nor can he, widening his eyes though he does to their fullest, manage to see the girlslit, the girlslit, the magical girlslit. But his prick is rubberystoney now and he encircles it with his fist to ride the skin up and down, up and down, beseeching the handsome brunette lass to sit on top of it and, in a disappointingly invisible twitch of motion she hitches over her swimsuit and soothes down on Lees blushing icepick his fist compressing and decompressing the rigidly molten member, Everyboy’s breath grunting at the unseen clamwarm trough of her, he sneezes violently once, twice, three times, the mucus snoring on his upper lip, the girl enigmatically beautiful, her torso thrown this way and that by the elongated icepick plunging at her transparent plastic cunt that Lee is blind to though he snorts his eyeballs to see to see, to see, the snot dribbling down his own thighs, he jabs till he hears the soundless crunch of her, the plastic vagina shattering, his fingers pounding in his nose, his temples congested and his prick abruptly sliced
sliced from top to root
a larval gelatinous mass of luminescently white blood:
bolting its pigs;
swallowing fat bellies
to vomit without nausea, dashingly lapping; having eaten without satiety, having gulped without volume, the whole side of the room slides off the bed and down the street and over the beach and, in a brief screeching spasm, enters the mild lukewarm dimensionless billows of the sea, the whole Lee Everyboy contracted into his penis, itself reduced to a slab of idly bleeding seaweed, rocking,
rocking,
nudged slowly back to the shore where, slowly, Lee gradually regains size so that he can crawl back to the hot sand, the brunette lass unable to observe him but nevertheless reiterating BUT
THEYLL BE BACK
BUT THEYLL BE BACK; and Lee reassuringly replying
NOT FOR A COUPLA HOURS
NOT FOR A COUPLA HOURS
The music is lovely, isnt it?
His father helps all the time. He provides the background of a tuneless tune but now Everyboy is in the enviable position of lying flat on the hot hot sand directly in front of the handsome
brunette lass while she gazes out to sea and not for a moment suspects that Everyboy stares uncompromisingly and joyously at her now naked black mat of crotch
BUT THEYLL BE BACK I TELL YOU
NOT FOR A COUPLA HOURS; incredible the manner in which Leeboy and the brunette lass communicate with each other without the girl being aware of Everyboy, a species of the circumadoration of the globe, a condition of Satan and his tuneless tuning fork, of course it could be as marvellously simple as a baby crawling to a grownup girl to observe at first hand the curious black twitching creatures on the girl’s genitals
JESUS CHRIST I CANT I CANT I HAD NO IDEA YOU WERE SO BIG IT SCARES THE SHIT OUTA ME
YOU DONT HAFTA BE SCARED ONCE ITS INYA NOTHINLL HURT
BUT JESUS I NEVER SAW ONE THAT BIG ITS PRETTY GODDAMN BIG
AW COME ON I WONT HURTYA
WELL GO AHEAD BUT FOR CHRISSAKE TAKE IT EASY
SURE SURE
DONT DONT DONT THAT HURTS I TOLD YOU ITD HURT YOURE TOO GODDAMN BIG FOR ME IM SCARED IM SCARED
imagine a grown girl being scared of a little baby, Everyboy snorts to himself, but the marvellousness of it that the brunette lass continues to gaze wideeyed and expressionless at the Atlantic Ocean as she keeps her thighs wide open and continues to insist that EVERYBABY’S little prick is too gigantic and the baby gurgles his words to allay her fears meanwhile his eyes now but an inch away from her black crotch so he can observe minutely the crawling black creatures thereon, Besides theres tuneless background music he murmurs goddamn his father whats he doing here on the beach with his ruddy thick blond wrists and kindly face I dont need you EVERYBABY informs him I can see for myself I CAN PUT IT IN ALL BY MYSELF YOU THINK BABIES DONT KNOW anything well you just wait and SEE Dr Newman would you as a favor to Rena and me because you know Im entering the army and we wont be able to get married for a while and we want very much to have sexual intercourse and you see Renas a virgin
and I dont want her to be hurt so would you I understand this sort of thing is done you know so itll make it easier for us and could you also at the same time fit her for a diaphragm
Of course, Lee, its no favor at all, theres nothing to it, send her into me.
Thank you very very much
No, no, no thanks due, Lee, just drop in to see me whenever you like, Dr Newman’s oriental yiddishness crumpled in plastic yellow glints, I like talking with you, his feet not quite reaching the floor as he sits at his desk, bubblethighed, his lips lapping at some secret MILKBOTTLE H while he studies for his medical exams under the Atlantic City sun on the beach, permanently burned, falling asleep into the yellow sun, I will make sure, he brutally reassures himself, that virgins are no longer virgins, that violation after all is the most silken of crudities, the softest of horrors, that politics is mans noblest calling, the cruciform Recipe, the prescription of God, the stigmata on the crotch that the female bears, here we go nailing ecstasy to the cross Dr Newman turns to go from the office, youll have to excuse me, Lee, Im expected at the hospital, and if there be vinegar to wash her vagina I shall bathe it myself, poor female, the hot and dusty clitoris come a long journey from the City of God, come to announce to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses I will lead thy people out of bondage, for I am the one angel that sits between God’s feet, Angel Clitoris, and I am forever dispatched by God to succour Man, Recipe, Recipe, yes, Lee, have Rena come in her groin is solidly covered by crawling black ants that are so numerous that they even bridge across the crack in EVERYBABYS pavement,
Oh, oh Im telling you it wont hurt
Im not afraid itll hurt Dr Newman
Youre a brave one, Rena
No, not really, not but a monstrous giant of a black ant with a cracked white plaster face and a gigantic white ball between its jaw starts running across blowing a tuneless tune on a scarlet fife
You gotta let me try
No no
the Frankenstein monster of a black ant dancing across the pulsating black crotch the monster differentiated from the others by his plaster white face the crack sizzling like lightning across it
THE FIFE OF THE DANCING ANT AXES OFF THE SURF
ICE NEVER F
CHRIST NEVER F
MILKBOTTLE H
takes a running leap from his own cracked whiteblack face, the white puffball beteen his jaws, and flies
HIGH INTO RIGHTFIELD, leeboy’s cousin Charlotte whitely dripping from his saffron oriental jaws in the late aquamarine sky palely ripped by MILKBOTTLE H’S LIGHTNING BUT I DONT WANT THE BALL AND I DONT WANT TO CATCH IT EVERYBABY WHIMPERS
THE BLACK MOON IS BLINDING MY WHITE EYE
IM TELLING YOU IM GOING TO SCREAM IF YOU STICK IT IN
I CANT CATCH IT WITH MY BARE HANDS CHARLOTTE I CANT CATCH ANYTHING WITH MY BARE ITS SO LONG AND THICK YOURE A MONSTER YOURE A MON ALL BALLS ARE TOO HEAVY FOR ME A BABY TO CATCH CHARLOTTE
WHANGO AND WHANGO RENA PUMPS UP AND DOWN ON DR NEWMAN RINGS PRICK MY GRANDFATHER HARRY RING HE COMES AT ME WITH A KNIFE YOURE A LIAR CHARLOTTE YOURE A LIAR GRAMPA HARRY RING IS DEAD I GOT TO CHANGE MY SHIRT ITS SOAKING WET I DONT HAVE THE PERSPECTIVE TO CATCH A HEAVY BALL JESUS CHRIST EVEN LOOK AT YOUR TESTICLES THEYRE LIKE WASPNESTS HANG ON TO YOUR TITS BABY HELEN NATHANSONS ARE SOMETHING TO GRAB AT
THE BALLS COMING DOWN
CATCH IT
NO
THE BALLS COMING DOWN
CATCH IT
SAVE THE GIRL DOCTOR AND
LET
THE
BABY
D
LET
THE
BABY
D
ie…………………………………………………
………………let
wheres lee
were calling for him mrs emanuel shit my names rena call me rena were calling for him where is he
we dont know
didnt he leave word
were trying to find out he mustve left word calm yourself mrs e the names rena what did i have
rest
what did i have why dont you tell me wheres my husband were trying to locate him but i felt the
here take this i dont want it
im afraid youll have to
wheres lee wheres lee wheres lee wheres lee wheres lee wheres lee wheres leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
LEES DROWNING GODDAMN YOU YOU BITCH RENA LEES
UNDERSTAND
DROWNING IN ROCKY RIVER IN THE FUCKING UNITED STATES ARMY DROWNING YOULL RIP ME APART
Lee jolts upright in the bed, jaws aching. A scream is smashing, smashing, smashing against the jaws of his ears, then abruptly muffled
SHUT UP you bitch, Ill kill you make another sound.
Dont hurt me, Vince, please. Its just youre too big
SHUT up or Ill smash your cunt in, now spread your fuckin legs as wide as theyll go, hear me?
Lee, stiffly upright in the bed, wants his brother Clancy never
to come. Nobody. Let whats going on the next room do so without interruption. Everyboy clenches his prick, erects it in a moment. Fuck her, Vince. Terror sweats the boys prick up while he muffles it with his fist, the prick wont cry out. Rip her apart, rip the girl apart, Vince, jab her, jab her, jab her, maybe there’ll be a murder, MURDER WITH THE WEAPON OF A PRICK
VAGINACIDE like the murder of small business in the united states of america Levi he talks to himself in the deathbed;
where is the wonder of the flying black ant now, Lee grips the bedrail by his father;
like the murder of all the middlemen in the united states of america on American Street in Philadelphia, cobblestoned and grasstufted because so few drive their cars parallel to the Penn-sylvaniaReading Railroad freight tracks, the warehouses and the silos and the courtyard urinals of Kensington. The plants with their RECEIVING platforms paralleling the tracks, RECEIVING MILKBOTTLE H nothing like cold milk sveetest there is Levi nods to Lee who sees his father endlessly tilting MILKBOTTLE H to his ruddy lips. In the wheelchair on the puffily hot June day Levi Emanuel sits upright, his spiculethin forearms resting on the black metal arm supports, his once bulging biceps no longer in evidence, his upper arms mere slim tubular shafts. Levi sits upright by virtue of a pillow propped behind his back; even so, after a few moments, his torso tends to falter to one side, and the nurse rights it, rights not Levi but his torso since his head remains perfectly perpendicular to the stone porch step on which the huge rubbertired front hoopwheels of the wheelchair are braked. Levi himself needs no righting: this is clear from the insistence of his skull as his torso tilts, the angle made by the latter to the former resembling a phase of Hindu dance, but the human rights the god even as the nurse does Levi, so that no banal symbols come to rescue Lee from the real sight, and the temple bells desist before the son can issue the order for them to be struck; however, expectation of symbol and bell tattle a niche at the comer of Lees mouth, which faintly wags, the puppy of Everyboy. The color of Levis eyes is very nearly that of the stagnant green of the little pond on the farm of Joshua Nathanson, Lee’s maternal grandfather—on whose bank stands the abandoned outhouse; very nearly, the difference being that while the pond’s water is scumgreen, Levi’s eyes are a green roughly opaque, a green ridged and ragged, and in the process of being deepened rather than polished by stone; and Levis outhouse, not yet abandoned, is contained in the pissbottle underneath the wheelchair and concealed by the fall of his robe, an outhouse in which Lee cannot possibly hide to flick varicolored snotballs on shimmering cobwebs. The cobwebs are cleared, and Lee’s sinuses are not stuffed; nor can he hear his mother calling that it is time to go; the young man does not even feel, as a matter of plain fact, an urge to cry, nor any urge on this pollenheavy day to sneeze; he breathes quietly and unperturbedly through his nose. Nobody looks at Lee, not the nurse, not the mother, not Norma, his wife; everybody regards Levi, who pays none of them heed, for Levi gazes outside, looms his eye through the long pane of glass set in the outer porch door, across the Roosevelt Boulevard through the house once owned by his sister, Bella Zion, and his sister’s husband, Sidney, who dies one year after his wife despite a prefrontal lobotomy performed upon him as an emergency measure to relieve his constantly increasing pathological melancholia; Levi focuses, beyond the house of his sister, on the Outside. It is a very simple Outside consisting of three persons, his grandson Richard Emanuel, his office manager and chief weigher at the Levi Coal Company, Henry Feinstein, and his principal distributor of bagged coal and charcoal, Gene Hertzog; these three form a partnership offering to buy from Levi the Levi Coal Company; they comprise the Outside that Levi, dying, visions on the puffily hot June day in the wheelchair on the stone porch step, the Receiving Platform that grows from three to many times three, the Outside that either will efface the Levi Coal Company entirely or incorporate it as a unit in a larger organization, a process that suggests to Levi a positively jaunty skip over his immediate issue, David and Lee, who expedite the process by default, who are themselves, Levi recognizes, surreptitiously jaunty in the default. Nor would it have mattered at all had Levi studied the Law after having immigrated to the United States, for the same process would have taken effect,
