PARTISAN REVIEW
433
"We will feel and breathe our way back into the world. The world
will not change us. We will re-create the world."
Jimmy Cogan emptied his wallet into a brass box that was
passed to him and began to chant. He felt again that life had truly
started. He was free. His words seemed to him inspired as he told
a girl with long snarled hair that he had felt the underbelly of a
dog. Having experienced that soft flesh with the heart pounding he
would always feel kin to the animal, feel one with its small anxious
body. Girls danced, Shelley among them, rotating her head
in
a
frenzy of relaxation. He thanked God - the old man with the beard,
the God whose cross he drew on his body before each quarter in
basketball, each fifty-yard dash - that he had not told Shelley
Waltz he was accepted at college.
"The daughters danced in the desert, their bodies like foun–
tains," - P.
J.
Clauson rose from his hassock in glory - "and the
desert was the city. With their tongues they licked the foul air and
breathed forth their purity. With their hair they watered the stone
and flowers grew. With their fresh bodies dancing they brought
forth a garden until the city was no more."
Quiet descended as though a signal were given. All the white–
robed people read in thin green books which reminded Jim Cogan
of his bankbook. He alone was empty-handed, apart from their
feeling. His legs were sprawled out while they, he noted, they had
magically tucked their limbs neatly away like nesting birds. Trying
to be one with their mood he took
Newsw;eek
from
his
pocket, his
only text: "Last week," he read, "in Los Angeles Superior Court,
curvaceous Sherrill Lang (39-23-35), space-wife in TV's popular
Stardust Lane,
defended herself against accusations of ex-husband
Mike Dougherty that she had undergone breast surgery in EI Paso,
Texas, in 1962 to obtain the remarkable proportions which launched
her Hollywood career. Surprising Judge Stanley Marcus, braless
Sherrill bared her bosom for the jury who awarded her the five
dollars plus legal fees she was seeking for defamation of character:
'Money means nothing,' said Sherrill, buttoning up her simple dress.
'I want to be a serious actress and I'm sorry if my breasts stand in
the way!'" Even
in
this story, Jim saw the terrible deceit. It was
supposed to be funny, he knew, but that was too easy. Fraud every–
where. Lies. Had Sherrill Lang
wanted
to play that scene in court?
