Little Casino

Mysteries of causes and effects

HAD HIS MOTHER NOT GIVEN HIM CREAM of tomato soup for lunch every day for four years, three months, one week, and two days, it is possible that he would not have married the neighborhood whore. Had his mother not got a restraining order against his father, which prohibited the latter from coming within fifty yards of him, it is probable that he would not have become a dedicated drunk. Had he not got “pink eye” at the Tompkinsville swimming pool, it is likely that he would not have become a truck driver. Had she not torn open her forearm on a rusty hurricane fence, it is not too much to assume that she would not have, some years later, contracted poliomyelitis. Had she not unaccountably lost her panties during a festive day at George C. Tilyou’s Steeplechase, it can be conjectured that she would have graduated from a “good college.” Had he not drunk a third of the contents of his father’s quart of Kinsey Silver Label Blended Whiskey, he, perhaps, might have become a priest. Had he not, in 1950, bought a 1937 Chevrolet for sixty dollars, he, maybe, would have bought, in 1982, a 1982 Mercedes Benz. Had he not had eleven tubercular ribs removed, it’s a cinch that he would never have written a novel. Had he not been seduced by an ugly young man in Owl’s Head Park, it is a surety that he would not have been seduced by a handsome young man at a Grove Street party. Had he not masturbated relentlessly, obsessively, and “at the drop of a hat,” he would surely not have burst into flames while sound asleep. Had he not regularly tormented and thrashed younger children in the schoolyard of P.S. 102, he would have absolutely avoided his fate as a palooka club fighter. Had he not had his eye injured in a fall down a stairway of Fort Hamilton High School, he, without a doubt, would have had a long career as a noncommissioned officer in the 2nd Armored Division. Had she not been sexually exploited and slandered by a petty criminal, she would, doubtlessly, have resisted the lure of heroin. Had he not blasphemously prayed to God and His Blessed Mother to supply him with “bevies” of lascivious girls with whom he could have his debauched way, he, conceivably, might have avoided “problems” with various sexually transmitted diseases. If she had not hated her mother and father throughout all the years of her childhood, adolescence, puberty, and young womanhood, she would have, presumably, resisted the call of the convent. Had he not been fascinated by ships and the sea, it is evident that he would not have been killed in action aboard the U.S.S. Portland. Had she not lied, regularly and flagrantly, in the confessional, she would certainly have embraced atheism. Had he not seriously injured his hip while roughhousing in the Loew’s Alpine, he would, clearly, have become a professional baseball player of minor-league proficiency. Had she not masturbated with various kitchen implements, most notably a wooden potato masher, she would have definitely resigned herself to her husband’s indifferent carnal performances. Had he not eaten, laughingly, a Baby Ruth just fifteen minutes before receiving the Eucharist at the altar rail of Our Lady of Perpetual Help R.C. Church, he would, indeed, have escaped the lightning bolt that killed him on the way home. Had he been aborted, as his mother wished, he would not, positively, have had the opportunity to shoot to death two Armenian shopkeepers and a policeman of Irish extraction one hot July afternoon. Had he not smashed a plate-glass window of Shiftman’s Toys, he would have become a successful corporate attorney and rapist. Had he not been dangerously frivolous in his play with a Gilbert chemistry set given him for Christmas, there is a good chance that he would have been famously unsuccessful in a “search for the cure” for AIDS. Had his mother not suffered his rage, insults, and contumely, it is not beyond expectation to assume that he would never have developed into a sadistic killer. Had he not become frightened when he tried on his mother’s underwear, he would, presumably, have become a contented, if boring homosexual, or, as he would have learned to say, “queer.”

Each of these linkages can be added to or changed. The mysteries of causes and effects are beyond understanding.

“Or not worth understanding, buddy.”

“Whore,” in the present context, may be read as “tramp” or “slut.” No professionalism is suggested by the use of the word. It may even be read as “mam’selle” by Frankie Laine fans, among whom, believe it or not, are a number of boring homosexuals, or “queers.”

This diversion, here indited for your pleasure, may ultimately be the cause of your divorce. Don’t ask me. It’s quite probable that had I not written this “chapter,” I would have written a different one. So much for the inevitability of art.

“What do you mean?”

Or the inevitability of anything else, for that matter. Save death.

“What do you mean? Death? Who’s Frankie Laine?”

Certain troops, discharged into civilian life from the bosom of the 2nd Armored Division, find that they are Nervous From The Service.

Georgene liked Frankie Laine and knew all the words to his “Mam’selle,” “Black and Blue,” “Mule Train,” and, perhaps unforgivably, “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” That was before she went to Barnard and met Gilbert C. Grove, a man who worshiped F.R. Leavis and E.M. Forster. Nothing to be done with Gilbert!

It may be of passing interest to note that the phrase, “queer studies,” if enunciated as an anapest, takes on a different meaning from the meaning projected when the phrase is enunciated as a dactyl.