Sunday, July 16, 2000 | Fiction
The Adventures of Dr. Squat: “I Am Still the Eggman”
[Dramatis Personae.]
Dr. Squat, English Professor Extraordinaire
A Serviceable Villain, the Thane of Academia
The Walrus, God
Act V, Scene 2
[Trumpet sounds, English garden, waiting for the sun.
Enter Dr. Squat, A Serviceable Villain, and The Walrus.]
| The Walrus: | I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. |
| Dr. Squat: | Not this again! [Shaking his head.] |
| [To Dr. Squat] It’s Bloody Tuesday … man … anything can happen! | |
| Dr. Squat: | I’m not scared. That’s his game. It’s been this way ever since Nixon, ever since I protested the war by fraying my pants and wearing sandals in winter. I said far out a lot then, groovy too; I called can openers church keys—still do. Professionally, I argued for the right, and successfully I might add, to wear an oversized 16th-century codpiece when I taught literature from that period—still do. I drank Ripple from hairy leather pouches with like-minded groove-masters from St. Paul, that is, until what’s-her-name got rich for selling Ordinary People. It was all over then, the war thing too. Goo … goo … ga … joob. |
| A Serviceable Villain: | But what about now … man? You been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long. |
| Dr. Squat: | Look, I’m as vital as the day I first started. The muttonchops? They’re a deliberate display of my continuing contempt and denunciation of the white-devil-slave-master system that I’ve voluntarily been a part of semester after semester, year after nullifying year. This vile system of capitalistic indenture, which demands nothing short of soul-numbing fealty, that has clothed, housed and fed, and provided for all of my past, present, and future economic security needs has yet to deal me its final death knell. If I let it be, I may as well be sitting on a cornflake waiting for the van to come … I’ll be deader than dead in the yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye. I’m not a corporation T-shirt. |
| A Serviceable Villain: | Don’t you think the joker laughs at you … ho … ho … hee … hee … hee … ha … ha … ha? |
| Dr. Squat: | Never! Next, it was Reagan and Bonzo and Bush #1 that gnawed at my soul. Now it’s just good ol’ #2. And this new breed has been nipping at the heels of my earth shoes like ugly on an ape. And they have the gall to call me aloof! Aloof—just because I’ve dared to challenge the “Ark of the Fully Arbitrated and Almost Always Abided-By Covenant” from time to time? Well, we’ll just have to see how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly when they finally figure out that Dante was just about circles—that’s right—circles, like Toys ‘R’ Us is just about toys and nothing more, and Yeats was just vortex mad in search of monkey balls and Maude’s rear end, and all Eliot would’ve settled for was a 2 x 3 wallet-size of Pound and a few good cans of high-powered ether; we’ll just have to see how they run with that when I lay it on them one last time. Goo … goo … ga … joob. |
| The Walrus: | Dost thou not fear the line stretch … to the crack of doom? |
| A Serviceable Villain: | [Turning to Dr. Squat.] Really, think about it … man … you should have seen HIM kicking Edgar Allen Poe. |
| Dr. Squat: | [Glancing at earth shoes.] I’m not worried. I’m still snagging Lucy in the sky out of the front row and out of her bell bottoms with tales of brave Ulysses and how his naked ears were tortured, and none of that Joyce gibberish (mindless masturbational musings), mind you, and sestinas about Jimi and the blotter-acid headband rituals, and lurid details about Altamont, even though I was diagramming sentences (doing the expert texpert shtick) in a white room with black curtains when it all shook out. |
| The Walrus: | [Leveling his arm at Dr. Squat.] Earthbound misfit! Hold fast … oh credentialed prologue of imperialistic theme! Ask thyself … is it all that murderously vital? |
| Dr. Squat: | [Combing comb-over.] Vital, you ask? Why not contemporary? I have just as many friends, as do you, with tattoos of prisms and swirly things in places nobody will ever see, and oodles of treasured, onetime acquaintances with decorative staples in their ears and roofing nails stuck in their heads who love me, yes, love me, for me, and not just my power and position either. I’m not some Johnny-come-lately, or some elementary penguin singing “Hare Krishna.” I’m a doctor! [He sits, takes off mood ring.] |
| A Serviceable Villain: | Doctor of English … man … dig yourself … if the sun don’t come you get a tan standing in the English rain, just like everybody else! |
| The Walrus: | [to Dr. Squat.] Remember, if anyone shall ask what manner of man was he which came up to meet you and told you these words, you will say he was a hairy man, and girt with girdle of leather about his loins [2 Kings 1: 7-8.]. |
| Dr. Squat: | [He stands, leveling his arm at The Walrus..] Look … crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess, or whatever you call yourself these days … |
| The Walrus: | The Walrus. |
| Dr. Squat: | It’s never been any clearer—semolina pilchards climbing up the Eiffel Tower means only one thing and one thing only—I am still the eggman!! THE EGGMAN … GOO … GOO … GA … JOOB!! You dig? |
| The Walrus: | [Aside, to A Serviceable Villain.] Seek him out upon the English party. O, untimely death! Death! That’s Lear, did you catch it? |
| A Serviceable Villain: | Sure, I’m the Thane of Academia. |
| [Dr. Squat dies.] |