“What kind of ice cream, daddy?” Pisha was still trying to protect his image.
“Strawberry,” Dickson guessed.
“No, daddy,” Nat Dickson giggled delightedly.
“Vanilla.”
“You’re getting warm, daddy.”
“Blueberry, mother. It must be blueberry!”
“Wrong, daddy. You’re wrong.” Nat Dickson was as exuberant as a cheerleader after a touchdown—albeit an aging cheerleader. Its not strawberry. It’s not vanilla. And it’s not blueberry.”
“You mean to say it’s not red white and/or blue, mother? “ Dickson was mock-shocked.
”It’s as American as red, white and blue, daddy,” Pisha assured him.
But it isn’t red and it isn’t white, and it isn’t blue,” Muley added.
“I’ll give you a hint, daddy.” Nat Dickson winked a Doris Pay wink, feminine but pure. “It’s your favorite flavor!
“[Expletive deleted], no!” Dickson beamed.
“Yes!” Nat, Muley, and Pisha chorused.
“It s not-—”
“It is!” they assured him, banners flying.
My favorite,” Dickson mused. “As American as apple pie, as American as red, white, and blue. . . . Then it must be -” He paused dramatically again.
‘Yes! Yes! Nat and Muley couldn’t restrain Pisha from turning a cartwheel.
“Macadamia nut!” Dickson held up both hands clasped together and shook them, still the champ.
Somewhere a brass band played a Sousa march. “Thats right, daddy! You guessed! You guessed!” His wife and two daughters were beside themselves with delight.
But for Dickson the game was over now. “Let the record show that I guessed it, my favorite all-American ice cream, macadamia nut. And now I am ready to eat it. Let there be no doubt about that.”
Nat Dickson signaled the serving girl. She hurried out to the kitchen. A moment later she reappeared with a large bowl.
Once the bowl had contained a large mound of macadamia nut ice cream carefully sculpted into a replica of the S.S. Titanic. But the sculptured ice cream was more than half melted now, and the Titanic had all but sunk. Somewhere a ship’s orchestra played “Nearer My God to Thee.”
“Who scuttled my ship?” Nick Dickson demanded to know.
“We waited too long, daddy,” Nat told him sadly. “It just melted right out from under us.”
“I leave that kind of talk to the purveyors of doom and gloom,” Dickson reminded her. “My faith and the faith of millions of silent Americans remains unshaken.” So saying he started slurping up the Titanic ice cream with a soup spoon. “As sound as the economy,” he was heard to mutter over the molten mess. “As sound as the American economy. . . .”
After dinner the Dickson family and friends and bodyguard (myself being included) adjourned to a large screening room. We were going to be shown a new hit movie, The Excretist27 .
We sat down. The lights went out. The screen lit up. Duke Wayne made a heartfelt appeal for the Watergate Memorial Fund. Hans und Fritz, in Marine Corps dress uniforms, passed among us with red, white, and blue donation cans. Under Dickson's watchful gaze, we all contributed. (Somewhere Will Rogers28 turned over in his grave.)
Alicia settled down in the seat next to me. She passed me a bag of popcorn. The feature began.
As the credits faded away, the camera came up on an old rabbi (Orthodox) excavating an archeological digs somewhere in Egypt. The rabbi’s shovel hit something: an artifact; with much visible excitement, he extricated it. A close-up of the artifact: it was a large political poster. On one side was a picture which bore a striking resemblance to Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson; under it was the identification: Attila The Hun. On the other side of the placard, in large capital letters, were the words BRING US TOGETHER AGAIN! The rabbi lifted his yarmulke and scratched his head, disturbed. Obviously something was very wrong.
The scene switched to a political rally in Washington, D.C. There was a long shot of a little girl waving a sign. It was the same poster as in the previous scene except the name Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson now appeared under the photograph. There was a close-up of the little girl staring at the picture. Slowly her expression changed from one of sweet innocence to the one of sly, cynical cunning on the face in the picture.
On the rally platform, high-level Dicksonites had gathered to pay homage. The little girl intruded on them. “You’re all going to be bugged!” she screamed at them hysterically. She cackled shrilly. She lifted one leg and urinated on Don Zigzag whose fixed smile never changed. The little girl’s mother, horrified, pushed up and yanked her daughter from the platform.
Now there was a series of scenes designed to demonstrate that the little girl had been possessed by a demon. There was a graphic close-up of her vomiting. (I passed the bag of popcorn back to Alicia.) The gush of vomit filled the screen. (Alicia dumped the popcorn onto the floor and herself upchucked into the empty bag.) A Niagara of diarrhea cascaded in Cinemascope. (Alicia tried to pass me the popcorn bag.) A Red Sea of menstrual flow washed over the wide screen in living color. (I refused to take the puke-filled popcorn bag.) Finally, steaming piles of human excrement vied with turds in the process of elimination to fill the eyes of the audience.
“[Expletive deleted]! That’s what I call art!” an awed voice pronounced in the darkness of the screening room.
About now, in the movie, the little girl’s mother was starting to get a little bit concerned. Cleaning the little gir1’s room was becoming a problem. So mama called in a local young rabbi (Reformed) for help.
The rabbi found the little girl ramming a mezuzah up her anal cavity. “Like this you masturbate?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye, trying to gain her confidence by showing what a hip young rabbi he really was.
“You get your kicks your way, and I’ll get mine my way,” the little girl told him in a deep voice that sounded like Nick Dickson with a German accent and a bad cold.
“You’re making an awful mess of your hemorrhoids.” The young rabbi called the carnage to her attention.
There was a long close-up of the disgusting mess. (Several people in the screening room threw up into their popcorn bags. A stewardess on loan from Pan Am passed among them murmuring words of comfort.)
“What’s wrong with my little girl?” the worried mother was asking the rabbi now.
“She’s possessed,” he told her.
“I was afraid of that. What can be done about it?”
“I’m afraid that demon is going to have to come out.”
“You mean—!”
“Yes.” The young rabbi nodded his head seriously. “I’m going to have to call in ‘The Excretist!’ ”
Now came the climactic scene. “The Excretist turned out to be the old rabbi (Orthodox) seen at the beginning of the picture. Together with the young rabbi (Reformed), he confronted the demon in pos- session of the little girl.
“The first thing when you want a demon should be excreted,” he explained to the young rabbi, is you should establish what they call a relationship with him. To do this you should talk nice. Like so. He turned back to the little girl. “Hey, demon, you maybe feel like shmoozing?”
“All right.” The little girl answered him in the hoarse, Teutonic, Dickson voice.
“You got maybe a name; it don’t sound so nice I should call you ‘demon.’ ”
“My name is Attila the Hun. You can call me Attila.”
“Oy, veg! I should have known it was you! We met before. Remember? It was in some pharaoh’s tomb—I forget his name—in Egypt.” Sotto voce, the old rabbi added to the young rabbi: “This is one tough demon, believe you me!”
“Can you get him excreted?”