Barbershop Quartets

[Sitaram]

(How many 17 year olds are hovering their mouse over this link right now, drooling, quivering, trembling at the thought of all the forbidden lusty adventure which is only a click away. Yea, of all the posts in the forum, you may read freely, but this one post, read not, for surely you shall die laughing Oh no, the evil one whispers, you shall not die, but if you read this post you shall acquire great wisdom and understanding. Fie upon you, wicked serpent! Eat dust all the days of your life!)


Well, now that all you seventeen-year-olds and younger have cast all caution to the wind and, with reckless abandon, have clicked on this link; I take this moment to publicly wash my hands of all moral responsibility. Read on! But I am telling your mommy!

Barbershop Quartets

The bald spot in the mirror catches my attention as I notice that it is time to cut my hair. I fetch an electric razor from the top closet shelf, plug it in, strip naked (is there any other way) and stand in the tub. With no mirror, I cut my own hair, simply by feel and common sense, using the shortest clip-on plastic 1/16th inch guide for the crown, so I am not completely bald. And you thought this would be about four men singing. I could hum something, I suppose, while the hair is falling in the empty tub.

You see, I have looked at life now from many different angles, analyzed and dissected it, drilled many core samples, and taken cross sections, looking for gold, looking for tin, looking for anything really. I found no gold, no tin. Just hair! No, not that Broadway musical of the sixties with naked performers jouncing up and down with most provocative jiggling bushes. Rather, I discovered a leitmotif of the tonsorial variety. Everyone has hair, and most must have that hair cut on a regular basis. To be mammalian means hair. Think of all those hairy whales which navigate the briny deep! Oh, you might not see flowing tangles locks and rapunzelesque tresses cascading down from the ivory towered prisons of skulls. But its there, the hair. Microscopic, but there.

I have discovered how to lace and weave together those moments into an entire world, a dimension of cutting and trimming and combing and brushing.

Suppose we choose to sort our lives in any sequence we desire. Suppose we choose to live through all the haircuts first? How long would that episode be? A month? A clever mathematician might calculate these crucial statistics. Followed by what, after all the haircuts are done. Sex, you say. Every sexual feeling strung together. Lets see. What might that be. A week of ooohhhhs and ahhhhs? A month. We need a programmer here, and fast! Then, all the baths and showers together. We shall be such a shriveled prune when its over!


So, back to the barber. What I propose here is nothing lest that a vast Wagnerian Nibelung Ring Cycle of trims, shampoos and shaves (not to mention that snip of the nostrils). Why not? Siegfried’s haircut. Siegfried’s fortnight climax. Siegfried’s ablutions. I can see it all now. I shall be immortalized.

http://www.ffaire.com/wagner/ring.html

While those generations of barbers work upon me, there will be the Ride of the Valkierie triumphantly playing in the background. Though, nowadays, Night on Bald Mountain might be more fitting.

Of course, I can be a clever author and disguise my hidden agenda. One of the barber shops is called “Vale Hollow” (get it, “Valhalla”). Ah yes, that sleepy little town of Vale Hollow, with its lone barber shop.


(This is a work in progress. I need some coffee, and a bathroom, but as MacArthur said in the Philippines "I shall return!")

Well, I'm back. And you believed me when I said coffee? Fat chance. I have a Budwiser, 24 oz. and I am drinking it, I don't care what my doctor said.

Did you know that Sartre got really pumped up on liquor and drugs sometimes, while he wrote? And he smoked cigarettes too. Well, I can't smoke, sorry. It makes me cough. But the beer I can handle just fine.

Say, awefully sorry about being naked in the shower. All those tiny hairs. It a mess, I'm tellin ya. But when its all done, I just turn on the shower and I'm clean as a whistle. And then I clean the drain. Oh you have to clean the drain. Do you know how angry a woman can get if you don't clean the drain?

Now, lets get down to the nitty gritty. First things first. Now, what comes first. I was born? No, think of Lawrence Sterne. Be the postmodernist you were meant to be. You were CONCEIVED. Thats right. Hey, this post doesn't have an 18 symbol for nothing. You were conceived because your parents had sex (and probably more than once). And they were stark naked too. None of that pajama tops nonsense. And the lights were on. OK, so they werent on. I made that up. Well, momma wanted them off. But it was the middle of the afternoon anyway, so papa didnt put up an argument.

And suddenly, there I was, a singe cell (with no hairs to speak of).

It was a tender and sacred moment. A moment of piety and soul-felt splendor.

Never before have I told anyone (on the Internet) how I came to learn the terrible truth of these matters. I was in sixth grade. I was totally innocent (albeit somewhat suspicious about certain matters, but nothing concrete). I was in the lunch room, sitting at a table of six. I was carefully arranging potatoe chips inside my baloney sandwich. Really, it is so good that way. And then you press it down to kind of smash the chips, before you start to eat. Well, who was sitting next to me but Harold Feldman. I didnt really know him at all. We had never spoken a single word to one another. Suddenly Harold turns to me and says "You were born because your father put his thing in your mother's thing." I swear to God those were his exact words. He said nothing further. He silently munched on his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich until there was nothing left.


I returned home in a state of shock that day. I ran to my mother, with tears in my eyes. She looked at me. She knew that something terrible was about to happen. I did not beat around the bush.

"Mommy! A boy at school told me that you and daddy did something terrible."

You should have seen her face transform. She was torn between an anguished cry and a burlesque guffaw. The corners of her mouth oscillated furiously, like some quantum particle, between smiling and sobbing. Her lower lip quivered slightly. "What did he tell you?"

"He said that daddy put his thing in your thing, and I was born. IS THAT TRUE!?"

She hesitated for what seemed like an eternity. Then she summoned up all her courage and honesty and said, "Yes. That is true."

"HOW MANY TIMES?" I shrieked. "ONCE? TWICE?"

She began to giggle and weep simultaneously.

Later that day, she call my father and said he must have a talk with me.

That talk came the next day. My father was a man of few words. He looked at the floor for a long time. He stuttered and stammered a bit. Then he uttered the fateful words of eternal truth: "All I can tell you is, you don't pee inside the girl."

He walked away.

I had been spoken to.

Armed with this wisdom, I would go forth into this world!

Brevity is the very soul of wit.

Now that we have established my conception and birth beyond any shadow of doubt. May I take the liberty to say: I was born at a very early age.

The knowledge of my first hair cut was to come years later. I learned of it from my mother. She did not have the courage or foresight to tell me about intercourse, but she did tell me about my first haircut. She opened this little box of my baby things. And inside was a little book. And inside the little book was the longest blondest lock of hair you could ever imagine! She did not cut my hair until I was almost two. And she cut that lock and put it in that book. This long blond hair was not a man's hair. This was the hair of a beautiful and wanton woman who breaks mens hearts and tosses them away like recycled Kleenex.

 

[Sitaram]

Time for a picture




Here is my haircut in all its splendor.




Now, here is a photo of a mophead hydrangea.

There is no pun intended. Read on:

I was born in New York City in Women’s Lying-In Hospital in February, 1949. As Snoopy would write, years later, seated upon his dog-house, “It was a dark and stormy night” (dogs do not often suffer from sleeplessness.)

I had the good fortune to be born smack in the middle of the twentieth century. I don’t suppose there is really a bad time to be born into. Every age has had its triumphs and tragedies.

My earliest memory is lying in a carriage and gazing at a red translucent plastic toy. I thought it must taste like cherry flavor, since I associated the red color with cherry candy. I yearned to taste that color. I desired to enter into that translucent brightness as into another world.

My next memories were our house and yard on Suydam drive in a neighborhood called Rollingwood in town called Huntington.

I was five years old when my family purchased a television set in 1954. I was the first television generation. I thought that the people in the screen were actually inside the television set. Once I was watching a program and my mother turned off the set and took me to the stores. When we returned home, I turned the television back on and expected to see the same program resume right were it had left off.

Once I heard some adults discussing how time goes quickly when you are doing something you like and goes slowly when you are doing something that you dislike. I decided to perform a great experiment regarding the passage of time. My mother would put me to bed in the afternoon for a nap and give me a bottle of milk. I was really too old to drinking from a bottle but I enjoyed it so much that she gave it to me to comfort me and encourage me to take a nap and give her some time to herself. Falling asleep was always a difficult challenge for me. I considered the ability to fall asleep as a great mystery. I used to work at it very hard. But for my experiment with time, my afternoon nap was the ideal setting. I took my least favorite book, a red book with fire engines, and gazed at it for a while as I sucked upon the warm soothing bottle of milk. I tried to detect whether the passage of time had slowed down appreciably. Then I switched to my favorite book, with was about the nativity and showed the Virgin Mary in soothing blue colors. As I gazed upon my favorite book, I tested whether the flow of time had speeded up any. Alas, I discovered that I was unable to determine the true nature of time with my experiment.

My father fought in World War II for 5 years. Even though it was the 1950’s, it seemed as if the war had ended only yesterday. My father would speak of it often. Talk of the war was frequent on the television. I would wake up around five or six each morning and tip-toe out to the television, turn it on, cover myself with a blanket, and quietly watch with the volume turned quite low so as not to disturb my parents who were still sleeping. At that early our, the only shows available were things like “Victory at Sea” and other war time newsreels. Being a child, I did not understand that World War II was an unusual event. I assumed that war was a normal part of life. I thought that I would grow up to be in the army just like my father and fight in the next war. War seemed like a glorious, heroic thing to me, a manly thing. I assumed that I would not be manly if I did not grow up to be a soldier and fight in a war. I did not understand about pain or injury or death.

Another vivid early memory was the forest of lush, blue, mophead hydrangia, pregnant with mysterious bumble bees. It was summertime. I was suddenly there, aware, aware that I am me and not someone else, that I have a name. I ran and played and did not realize that I was carefree because I did not understand what care was.

One day my mother tried to explain to me about the sky and the sun and the earth and how the earth was constantly rotating. I looked up at the sky and imagined how the earth rotates in a mighty fashion, and how I should really be bouncing back and forth across the sky, a victim of such motion. I became quite dizzy from this meditation.

Rollingwood was a new development in those days, sparsely populated. Many new houses were under construction. Mommy took me for a walk to look at the new houses. It was a brilliant perfect summer day. All around us was a breeze and the whispering of the leaves of bushes and trees and the chirping of birds and the chattering of squirrels. She sat on the doorstep of a new house. She saw a delicate daddy longlegs walking along the wall. I was quite startled when she gently picked up the insect in her hand. I was frightened of the spiderlike creature. She told me that daddy longlegs do not bite. She placed it on her lap and I watched as it walked down the fabric of her trousers. Years later, as an adult, I learned that the daddy longlegs is not a member of the spider family.

 

[Sitaram]

There was a forest behind the houses on the next street. My father would take me for long walks in those woods. We would climb and climb through the tangled limbs up a steep incline until we finally emerged on a trail beaten smooth by the passage of many horses; a bridle path. One day, as we emerged from the undergrowth and stepped onto the bridle path, we saw two people on horseback, approaching. I was certain that they were engaged in some heroic adventure. On television, all the people on horseback were either heroic, or else anti-heroes being pursued by the heroic. I was certain that great adventure and intrigue could not be very far away.

There was something erotic in my childish anticipations. I was certain that I might possibly glimpse a girl undressing in the bushes, or naked upon horseback. I was confused by the term "bridle path." I thought people were saying "bridal path." I did not really understand what a bride is or what sexuality is, but I knew it had something to do with females and that I very much wanted to see one naked, though I had no idea why I wanted this, and sensed that I should not speak of this with anyone. This was my cherished secret. Everyone should have a secret, and something to cherish, something that is uniquely theirs. I guess if I am going to tell you my entire story, then I must tell you about the sex as well. Is that okay with you? Do you mind terribly? I shall try to be tasteful and tactful in the telling of it. I have always wanted to tell someone about these things before I die, so I shall tell you first, and then die, later.

My mother was always listening to the radio and the phonograph.

One of the popular songs said:

"Well, if you have something that must be done,
and it can only be done by one,
why there's nothing more to say...
I enjoyed her songs, but did not understand what the words meant.

A very popular song that year was "Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream..." That was my favorite song for such a long time. Whenever I heard it, my mind was aflame with imaginations of a make-believe world of stardust.

Another popular song that year was "Once, I had a secret love, which lived within the heart of me." One line said,

Now I shout if from the highest hills.
I even told the golden daffodils.
My secret love's no secret anymore.

My mother took me to the movie theater to see "Peter Pan." I was so convinced that I could enter into the screen and join all those delightful beings in their enchanted world that my mother had to hold me back and restrain me, and explain that it was only make-believe.


The best advice which the world always gives to writers is to write about what you know. This is so easy for me. Like breathing.

Here I am, Odysseus strapped to the mast, Christ-like, in amidst a thronging multitude of oarsmen with wax-deafened ears, while the lusty naked Sirens flog my tormented vision with their glistening quivering breasts and reddening hirsuite loins, singing their forbidden song for me and me alone. I am enflamed by the perfumed scents of their secret places and can almost taste the salty condiments of their ardour and desire.

Yet my greatest torment is that there is no one else to hear. There is no one to admire my unique priviledge. I am free with a freedom long-sought, free in my bondage to savor what can never be mine, free from that cannibal Cyclops, and yet I must shout my true name from my safe harbor and risk all for the sake of recognition. I am no longer No-man but Everyman. I make my gift of peace with Diomedes and then loose myself, consumed like a moth in his Aresteia.

I need to tell you about a very important event in my life, at the age of five, in Rollingwood. There were also woods behind the Smith's house on Suydam drive. All the children in the neighborhood would play in those woods for endless hours. One day, when I was five years old, I was in the woods climbing trees with a large group of children. The rest of the children tired of tree climbing and were slowly strolling away in a talkative group. They did not notice that I was hanging by my arms from a low branch. My legs were drawn up in the fashion of a frog ready to jump. I wanted to descend and rejoin the others, but something stopped me. I was beginning to have a feeling that I had never before experienced, a physical feeling in my body, in my groin. I watched the group of children recede into the distance. I wanted to run after them. But this feeling of pressure somewhere deep in my groin kept building. There was something quite seductive about this feeling. I sensed that something was soon about to happen, and that I wanted it very much to happen, wanted it more than companionship or food or toys or even my parents, but I did not know what was about to happen or why it was happening. Slowly the pressure and anticipation and desire built up, higher and higher. My breathing became rapid. I could feel my face reddening. Suddenly, the feeling climaxed in convulsive spasms. I gasped. My eyes rolled up in my head. It was over in a momemt. I hung limply from the branch for a moment and then dropped three feet to the ground below.

I felt so happy! I must never tell anyone! This must be my secret. I instantly understood this much. No one else had ever experienced such a thing before. This was my discovery. How could I be so lucky?

I quickly discovered through experimentation that once I achieved that feeling, I must wait several hours before I could attempt to feel it again. This constraint of time upon ecstasy disappointed me. I would have liked to experience that sensation continuously. This activity of hanging suspended in mid air and feeling this wonderful feeling had nothing whatsoever to do with other people, or with my curiosity to see someone naked. Nudity and arousal would not form a partnership until some years later, around the age of eight.

Are all thills and desires in essence one? Was my first taste of ecstasy then in some way related to my desire now for inspiration and immortality? Pleasure and desire lead us on through life. Eden is our secret garden.

One of my girl friends once confessed to me that, as a child, she would sit in her grade school classroom, at her desk, cross her legs a certain way, and feel that same ecstasy. Years later, as a teenager, she read about "self-gratification" and realized for the first time that this was exactly what she had been doing in those early years.

I am an artist. Your mind is my canvas. Words are my brush strokes and your imagination is the pallate of colors. We shall call this freedom. It is my freedom. It is not your freedom. You must find your own freedom to be truly free. No one else can find it for you.