“And a strange thing happened with this group of lovely ladies. The primal dangers buried and forgotten inside each of them combined to give birth to a single, whole danger, a quasi-real creature, a protean primal lust, a male brute multiplied by ten times ten, the Golem100. I won’t describe the horrors that the Golem100 brought with it into the Guff. All that’s over now. The brute’s disappeared into another universe.
“This must never happen again. It will not happen again with me or my girls. Desire men, yes. Accept men, yes. Use men, yes. But never let a man use you. Let them want women, good, but never be corrupted by their craft of shaping the tusk into safe carved ivory. That’s why I said: Like men, yes, but no more than that.
“Like them, enjoy them, use them for what they’re fit, but never need them. Why should you? We have ourselves. No more ladies; we’re women. We’re the house; they’re only the tenants. They can come and go; we’re forever. The next Twenty will be held in this Zauna again, same day next week. I’ll arrange it. Meanwhile, stay and enjoy your freedom. Pi-girl, you come with me. I have to split for a showdown with a chauvinist chemist who’s used my ‘lady hangup’ just once too often.”
* * *
(The Soho exit from the Baths. Gretchen and Pi emerge into the Guff. They are clean steamed, massaged and bathed. They wear fresh jump suits. Neither has applied maquillage, but Gretchen has frittered her Afro with rainbow sequins. Pi has braided her pale hair into pigtails tied with white silk bows. They stop for a moment while the street and sidewalk signs glow and speak and urge the public.)
THE SIGNS
LIVE! LIVE!LIVE!LIVE!LIVE!LIVE!
LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!
EAT! EAT! EAT! EAT! EAT! EAT!
SIDEWALKS
Won’t you adore having your ass banged off, baby? Follow me! Follow me! Follow me to the scene of the scrime!
(Two drunks giggle and totter the length of an endless glowing sidewalk penis which leads them around a corner.)
1ST DRUNK
(In slurred Guff Blurt) Hey man grab man blast man scrime man ‘round the world man in all directions huh huh huh?
2ND DRUNK
(Simulating aristocratic elegance) Aye dew nott föllöw yew m’freund.
THE SIGNS
MANBALONEY… 100
MUDBALONEY… 150
GIRLBALONEY… 175
GUTBALONEY… 160
PISSBALONEY… 75
GRETCHEN
(Pointing) We head this way, Pi-girl.
PI
Where to, Miz Person?
GRETCHEN
Uptown west. To Blaise Shima’s penthouse. We’ll have to walk it. Come on, girl.
(The two women thread their way through the Guff streets. As they skirt the banks of the Hudson River, the mud monsters, generated by the radioactive pollution in the New York harbor ooze up onto the broken pavements; ambulatory slime molds in search of foul foods.)
THE MONSTERS
Ssss! Pfff! Srrr! Zzzz!
(In the Scrime House of Mother Merkin, three whores stand at an upstairs window, burning phallic candles in left hands, right hands preparing their allure for the night. They are dressed and coiffured in replication of current entertainment celebrities.)
PI
Ooo look, Miz Nunn person. Isn’t that Greta Grabya?
GRETCHEN
No.
PI
And Fonda del Solitary?
GRETCHEN
No.
PI
And Rh Factor?
GRETCHEN
No. They’re just fifty-class funks.
(The bawds throw open the window and begin their singing commercial to the Guff public.)
THE WHORES
My mother said I always should
Prance with a yanceman in the wood.
If I did, she would say,
You lucky girl to use your ass.
Use your ass.
Use your ass.
And make the lucky fucker pay.
(A corner Pukebox blazes lurid lights.)
PI
Oh please, Miz Person. I just love Phlegmy’s latest. Please, Miz? Please?
(Gretchen grudgingly halts and inserts slug in Pukebox. Pi presses button No. 1101. A sound-bug flips out, is drawn to the print of Pi’s index finger, and follows her finger, sounding softly.)
PHLEGMY
(With clinical realism)
Vomitation. Vomitation.
Retchitation. Retchitation.
Spew. Spew.
Upchuck, daddy,
With a solid pour.
(The sound-bug finishes its number and flies back to the Pukebox. Near Person Lane, formerly Maiden Lane, twenty-two porters, bearing huge delivery loads of Condensed & Evaporated Plastequila, are in hot argument with a squad of P.L.O. soldiers and their lieutenant.)
A PORTER
Hey man gotta makeadeliver. Since when gotta customs boundairy line here is all?
LIEUTENANT
Hey man set up yesdy. Wanna deliver gotta pay twemmy is all.
(To Gretchen)
Hi hey. Remember youse. Bije babe Falasha Jew doll come to our pyramid. Hihey pretty Jew jill.
GRETCHEN
Hi handsome. I see our PloFather got new illegal neighborhood boundry. Great. We got to pay?
LIEUTENANT
No money fm’you, pretty bije babe. Maybe something else, later?
GRETCHEN
Sure. See you underneath.
(Explosion! Concussion! The Krypton Ketchup factory bursts open as a bomb explodes and the Organic Terrorist Movement makes a statement over the public broadcast system.)
BROADCAST
We done it! We done it! But be assured, poisoned public, that the ingredients of our bomb were pure-ly and safe-ly organic. The Movement NEVER rots.
(A thousand and twenty-seven Guff ghouls are crimsoned as they lick up the ketchup.)
THE GHOULS
Lap-Lap-Lap-Lap-Lap-Lap-Lickety-Lap.
(In Captain Shaft’s Dart Range the naked female targets scream challenges at the Sado-Mach dart-shooters.)
TARGETS
Shoot, man, shoot! Hate me and shoot! Shoot for a triple! Tit, tit, and cooz!
CAPTAIN SHAFT
Try your luck, babes? Got some juicy big-prick targets…
GRETCHEN
She’s too young and I’m too old.
(A Hang-Glider sails low overhead, slowly descending. A man hangs by the neck from the glider, the strangling noose knotted into the traditional thirteen turns of the rope.)
PI
Ooo look, Miz Gretch person. I seen a lot of suicides but never like this one before.
(A gaggle of crones follows the falling glider avidly absorbing the emissions from the spasming penis of the suicide.)
GRETCHEN
Saw, Pi. Saw. It’s obvious I must put you through a good school.
(A night class in the Educational Television Elementary School earnestly studies a projection screen.)
THE SCREEN
PABLUM/GOOD OLD-TIME FLAVOR
Define “Good”
Define “Old”
Define “Time”
Define “Flavor”
Write five hundred (500) word essay on use of the hyphen.
Define “Hyphen”
Define “500”
PI
(Sadly) I couldn’t pass that test, Miz Gretch. Person.
GRETCHEN
(Cheerfully) Not to worry, dear. That was an advanced class for high-I.Q. types.
(In Nixon, formerly Lincoln, Center, Ms. Liz Cuiz blushingly receives First Prize for her display of wax flowers in the Seventy-fifth Annual Imitation Horticultural show.)
MS. CUIZ
Gotta admission, wax beat plastic anytime, exspecial fr’eatin’.
(Hastily)
Doan beez mad on me, youse beautiful Photo-Plastic Ink. guys… I dig plastic too.
(The Eskimo Exterminator Company cleans out an IRS warehouse to save tons of accusatory and incriminating documents from the ravages of insects and rodents. Two Eskimos debate over the merits of ants and roaches as they devour them.)