The Meese Commission
Ronald Reagan, fulfilling his campaign pledge to restore to the nation the Puritanism that once made America sexually repressive, directed his Attorney General Igor, aka Edwin Meese, to appoint himself a commission with the mandate of determining the link of causality between gluing one’s eyes to a picture of a female pair of legs spread at an angle of one-hundred and sixty degrees, and chopping off heads with a rusty wood saw. In particular, one of its goals was to repudiate the 1970 Presidential Commission on Pornography, which concluded that a little porn in the average American’s basic diet could do no harm; and might even be an asset to healthy living. That commission stipulated that reading naughty text or viewing dirty pictures neither caused one to behave like a horse’s ass or to attempt to violate one in a fit of porn-induced bestiality. For his hand picked commission Igor put together a collection of coitus-phobic goofballs, who had excelled previously in the area of producing reactionary viewpoints on a variety of social and cultural issues. They dutifully noted in their final report that the First Amendment was not designed to permit anything as catastrophic to the national welfare as sexual stimulation for its own sake. One commissioner, Henry Hudson, in his earlier role as attorney for an unfortunate suburb of Washington, D. C., received a presidential commendation for shutting down every massage parlor and adult bookstore in his fevered county. Another commissioner, Park Dietz, believed that cranking off to particularly kinky pictures turned one invariably into a bicycle-seat-sniffing zombie, and that detective magazines were Beelzebub’s work. Another, Bruce Ritter, a Franciscan priest, later was exposed for buggering boys in his Times Square shelter for runaways, Bruce’s Covenant House subsidized by, and Brucey himself used as a hand-puppet by the screwhead right. The final report of Igor’s commission caused a profusion of bodily fluid to saturate the groins of two strident, anti-fucking activists from the hard school of anti-testicular feminism: Catherine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin, the latter Queen of The Woodkillers through the breadth of The Milky Way. During two-day hearings the commission held across the country, anti-friction fanatics generally were listened to with calm appreciation, and always spared cross-examination, while defenders of expressions of sublime manifestations of salaciousness were attacked with screwdrivers and frying pans. The Commission hired a Canadian sociologist named Edna F. Einsiedel to skim the studies already on the library shelves and summarize for the commission, previous studies of inappropriate representations of luridness depicted for the arousal of horny alien creatures, and those depictions’ effects on vulnerable yet innocent Earthlings into whose hands such depictions accidentally had fallen. She reported that, "No evidence currently exists that actually links fantasies with specific sexual offenses; the relationship at this point remains an inference." She told them that America’s finer pornography products in some cases had been of value to therapists, who had used them to treat their patients. For her trouble the uppity chick had a rag stuffed in her mouth in the form of a gag order obtained by Alan Sears, one of Igor’s best and most dominant commissioners, whom nothing aroused more than a submissively gagged and bound Canadian social scientist. Ms. Einsedel’s conclusions, apparently written in invisible ink, were not visible to the naked eye in the Commission's Final Report (Ixnay on that shit, Igor decided). The leather-hooded eleven commissioners also excitedly snuffed testimony from social scientists, to the effect that sexual attitudes are formed early on in life, and that wanking material is "a symptom of deviant sexuality rather than a cause." In other words, perverts are born, not made, and that if you aspire to become a pervert look to your nature and not to your nurturing for an optimal result.
In July 1986, when the commission issued the final report, Igor was photographed at the press conference holding the two-volume, 1,960-page dose of saltpeter in his sweaty palms. Some of the brainstorms the commission had for reducing occurrences of porn-fired genitalia, were: government requirements that peep show booths must not have doors, or holes in the walls between booths; nuclear war on America’s beloved smut using the RICO Act; and proscribing anything that could potentially make a Tom tumescent, from being transmitted across telephone or cable lines, a cat now so far out of the bag, the bag itself long since has forgotten it ever imprisoned a cat. Of course, since the glory-hole days of the Meese Commission, through cable television, videos and the Internet, Americans have been voting with their libidos in favor of getting themselves off with the assistance of filth. Praise the Lord and pass the AstroGlide.
That’s all, folks.”
Janice’s eyes were big and round, but she was smiling.
Damien said, “You’re nuts. What a lot of bullshit. If you ever really worked on any book like that, if there really is such a book, it didn’t have that kind of bullshit in it.”
“That’s very astute, Damien. I told you it was an example…a version of the entries I do for my own amusement.”
“Well give yourself all the amusement you want. Who cares about any of that shit?”
“I didn’t mind the sexy talk at all,” Janice said.
“Well, you said you wanted to learn,” I told Damien.
“Go fuck yourself. Come on Janice, what do you think? It’s time to go.”
“Damien, Damien, Damien,” she had to tell him.
Sitting in the booth across from only Janice I had assumed full responsibility for her entertainment. Positioning her hand low in front of her, pointing discreetly in the direction of the bar, she said, “That guy?”
“Yes.”
“If he’s been in jail so many times…you said mostly stealing and scams and things?”
“Um hum.”
“Couldn’t somebody here help him with money or give him advice on how to get a job? At least help him figure out how to stay out of jail? You know, use some influence to change his way of looking at things?”
“Janice, nobody else here has any money either. That’s why this is their neighborhood. It’s not because they looked in Bel-Air and Malibu, but when it came to architectural stylishness, couldn’t find anything that favorably compares with this.”
“I know, I know. Ease up.”
“And this isn’t the best group in town to be giving advice on how to get a job. I’ve tried to use my considerable influence to get him to change his ways. The problem is, well…he’s stupid. I don’t have any more ideas left.”
Taking my hand and beginning to caress it, she said, “I bet you have some good ideas.”
I finished the contents of my glass, swirled the ice around, and began to gnaw at the cubes. I said, “I don’t miss him yet, do you?”
“Miss who, Damien?”
“Yeah.”
She slapped me on the arm and said, “Shut up. He was kind of a nice guy.”
“Were you guys, excuse me for using the term...dating?”
“No,” she said firmly. “I just met him tonight, early tonight. We were only hanging out.”
“Why’d you come here? Somehow, you knew I’d be here, right?”
“That’s it. The man of my dreams…I took one look at this place and I knew I’d find him here.”
“That happens a lot.”
“I’m sure.”
“So you just proposed to your newfound escort Damien, that you two check out this little bar next to the Essex Hotel.”
“Maybe,” she said, giggling. “No, I just happened to pass it.”
“You just happened to pass it, not we?
“Me, and we…we were playing a game.”
I nodded. “Playing a game. All right.”
“See, we were coming through the neighborhood, and I saw this place. I was walking up ahead of him. We were playing our little game. I was playing our little game. But he was playing along.”
“Hmmm.”
“I was making him chase me. I came in here for a drink, and to see what the place was like.”
“I sort of unde
rstand…as much as I’m willing to.”
“So show me where you live. I’m tired of being here.”
“Maybe I just want to relax down here and have a drink.”
“Whatever,” she said, a make-believe pout thrown in to boot.
“Oh, all right,” I sighed. “Let’s go upstairs.”
When we opened the door to leave, before we stepped outside, she put her head close and softly said, “This means I’m going to find out pretty soon why they call it The Sex Hotel?”
“Absolutely,” I answered, “any minute now.”
We began to walk the brief length of sidewalk to the hotel’s entrance. I stopped us, and pointing across the street said, “This way. I want to show you something.” We jaywalked, strolled to the corner, made a left, and started walking in the opposite direction from the bar. Halfway up the block I stopped, and pointed high, in the direction of the Essex. “Now you know,” I said. She stood beside me, and looked up to where I pointed, until she finally saw what I was directing her to. Above the hotel, visible from where we were, was the red neon Essex sign stretched across the roof. Its first two letters burned out, the sign read: SEX HOTEL.
Up in my benighted barrack the lights had been turned off, but a bit of streetlight made it through the window. We had progressed, or devolved as it were, to panties in the case of Janice, while I was shirtless, but clad in pants as I stretched above her on the bed. I nibbled her ribcage and across her belly. Her arms bent behind her head, her torso rose, and her torso fell. My face hovered over her panties, until finally I tugged them aside, softly licking her there. Covering her again I used my tongue from the outside to push the cloth, which was soaked by now, well inside her. I kissed her thighs, wrenched her legs apart, and buried my face deep in the delicate and maddening crevices. I clenched her panties in my hands and pulled them over her bottom, down her legs and over her feet. She scooped them up with a foot, and gave them a second launch. I lapped between her preternaturally parted legs. She planted her face in the crook of her arm and moaned. In the midst of deep and sonorous groaning she stopped, and said, “Wait.” She gasped at me, “Roll over onto your back.” Once I had, she knelt above me and slathered me with roving kisses from the base of my neck to the top of my jeans. She undid the belt. She unzipped the zipper. She trundled my jeans to below my knees and took me in her mouth
My eyes were open and I was able to observe her silhouette in the murky light from the street. I was surprised when she stopped the thing she was doing, and began swaying on her knees above me. As she did, she softly emitted the sound, “Ummmmmmmmmmmmm.” She would pause, and then begin again: “Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.” I said nothing when she suddenly got to her feet, and stood above me on the bed. Then considerably louder she started to make the sound, “Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” pausing, and resuming, “Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.” On she went, more loudly and elliptically: “Whoaaaaaaaaaaa. Whoaaaa. Whoaaaa. Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Whoa. Whoa.”
Easing my pants up I said “Janice,” but she ignored me totally.
“Whoaaaaa. Huaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”
“Janice? What is it?”
She began to twirl on the bed and to flap her arms up and down, increasing the volume more as she went, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Whoaaaaaa. Whoa. Whoa.”
“Janice? JANICE? HEY?” I yelled.
More “Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”
“Janice? What is it? What the fuck?”
By now she was jumping up and down on the bed and screaming, as well as screeching and squealing at the top of her lungs. I attempted to grab her, but she lunged at me with her feet. I tried to pull her down, but her feet were kicking ferociously as she jumped and screamed.
About then there was a banging at my door. I dove under a rapidly moving calf, and onto the floor. Buckling my pants on the way I got to the door and pulled it open. The gaunt freebaser from across the hall was standing there holding a machete in one of his hands. “Hey man, what’s happening?”
“This chick is screaming her head off,” I snapped.
“What the fuck did you do to her?”
“What did I do to her? I didn’t do a fucking thing to her. She’s nuts.”
“No shit,” he said, peering around me.
Out the open door across the hall came Jimmy, the longhaired freebasing partner of the gaunt man already standing in my door.
“Goddamn,” he said when he got a look.
“There’s only one way to do this,” the gaunt man said. “Come on.”
Following his lead, Jimmy and I moved nonchalantly in the direction of the bed. Doing as Jimmy did the other two of us charged her with him, and the three of us brought her down. One man, holding her arms and shoulders; another with his arms around her middle; the other wrapping his arms around her legs, we began to carry her like a piece of lumber. She managed to scrape her dress up off the floor as we left the room. We carried her down the hallway and down the stairs. Along the way she yelled, “Put me down,” as well as an assortment of unintelligible sounds in between the screaming. As we neared the entrance to the building we put her down, and formed a barricade across the hall to prevent her from returning. But as soon as we put her down, she took off running out the door naked, still clutching the dress balled up in her hand and screaming.
As I and the two other partisans in the fight against female terror made our way back up the hallway, this time headed to the elevator for a calm return, I told them, “Why is it I attract so many of the severely mentally ill ones? I get them right before they have to be institutionalized, or they find me seconds after they’ve been released.”
“That’s why,” the gaunt man said, “they’re always available. You ain’t the first man it ever happened to, I tell you that, man.”
“Yeah. Damn,” Jimmy said.
CHAPTER NINE
THE ALGONQUIN CLOWN TABLE