Trad Xmas List: Satan for the Stocking

“There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy (God). He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”  The Screwtape Letters 

There's a Playboy interview (Nov. 1985) with Klaus Kinski where the actor goes bezerk over highway signage:

"There is a sign that says, RIGHT LANE MUST EXIT. Right lane MUST exit! MUST! And I say to myself, MUST? Fuck YOU!"  

For me, this was an instant connection to Kinski. It's still there but mostly shows itself through a shallow disgust of popular culture telling me what I should like and most importantly buy.  That's why I'm so happy to discover the truffles of life. A restaurant, an oxford shirt, chinos or even an uncommon thought on a common subject. 

I wish I read The Screwtape Letters when I was 13.  It wouldn't have been an easy read. It's not an easy read now but there's an odd way correspondence between an elder devil (under-secretary), Screwtape, and his young nephew, Wormwood, have illuminated some simple ideas on how to live life...whether your Christian or not.  Screwtape suggests fashion and novelty are key tools to keep man from the Enemy (God).

"The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under."

Despite the formality of C.S. Lewis, it's exciting to watch demons manipulate man toward their goal.  Screwtape digs into the marrow:

"...He (God) wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it rightous? is it prudent? is it possible? ...if we can keep men asking 'Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time?  Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way history is going?' they will neglect the relevant  questions.  ...while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on." 

It's hard to think of a more contrarian view of God that operates in the positive. I say that assuming you're not related to Srewtape.  My own philosophy, 'God tells me what to do but the Devil's my secretary' touches on my own weakness --  giving up when the going gets tough.  

"The Enemy (God) allows disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. 

...the boy...enchanted...by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek.

...lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together.

In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing."

When I was 13, I asked my Dad if there was a God.  He took me outside, pointed to a sky filled with stars and said, "It's impossible to look at that and not believe there's a God."  When I asked why we didn't go to church anymore, he said he had changed his mind about some things.  This was only two years after he came back from Vietnam. But, he added, "If you remember only one thing...just treat people how you want to be treated." 

I've failed countless times but it seems impossible to give up on the Golden Rule.  Still, I'm not sure where I would be today had I read Screwtape when I was 13. Of course, I'm not sure where I would be if I had never read it. 

“Nothing...is strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is took weak and fuddled to shake off.”

Gideon by Paddy Chayefsky

Esquire, December, 1961

The Angel

"It is passion, Gideon, that carries man to God. And passion is a balky beast. Few men ever let it out of the stable.

It brooks no bridle; indeed, it bridles you; it rides the rider.

Yet, it inspirits man's sessile soul above his own inadequate world

and makes real such things as beauty, fancy, love and God...

Passion is the very fact of God in man that makes him other than a brute. I must own, Gideon, yours was an old and cold and settled soul, and I huffed and puffed quite a bit before I found the least flame of passion in you."

Paul Stuart's Mad for Plaid

Six bloggers & editors kick Simon Doonan's ass in the Fall windows at Paul Stuart. 

Eff'ed Out of a Seat

St John's County, FL

The red station wagon was almost 15 years old the day it ran a stop sign on a narrow county road that followed the St. John's River northwest of St Augustine. Most of the homes on the river were mobile while the families living in them were not.

The sheriff's car idled under hanging Spanish moss and was unseen by the driver of the red wagon due to three gas pumps belonging to a Gulf station owned by a thick short man named Jimmy and his German Shepherd.

Behind the steering wheel Tanner complained how long it was taking to get dentures and how his wife enjoyed his lack of teeth when the red wagon rolled through the stop sign. Tanner slapped the column shift in drive with one hand and flicked on the lightbar with another.

Gravel shoots at gas pumps as tires grab asphalt and the Gran Fury pulls up fast behind the red wagon which pulls over immediately. Tanner parks behind the wagon with half a car width hanging out on the road and gums, "Take this one. I got my quota for the month."

The passenger door opens and a black corfam shoe settles into soft shoulder sand. Four more steps and it's on asphalt between the cars. A high rise holster unsnaps freeing the hammer of a four inch S&W Model 19 like it was a hand in a girl's blouse.

Three children, the oldest around 10, quietly stare at the sheriff's Plymouth from a rear rumble seat. Sam Brown leather squeaks between steps of corfam. Four more kids in the rear seat look straight ahead. High water Farah pants, t-shirted button downs and Sunday dresses do little to hide anxiety.

Behind the driver's door edge, Ray Bans are removed from under a green straw Stetson the sheriff forces his deputies to wear. The driver is black and in his 40s with salt and pepper hair. "You ran the stop sign back there." The driver cranes his neck to look back. "Yes sir, Sheriff."

"I'm not the sheriff. I'm the sheriff's deputy." The driver looks at the deputy's gold name tag above a matching Cross pen and pencil tucked into the white shirt pocket. "Yes sir, Deputy." The wife flicks open the glove box and roots through receipts, match books, brochures, while the driver leans toward a kid, four or five, sitting between them.

The driver pulls a hand made whipstich wallet from his back pocket and leans back toward his door pulling out his driver's license. 44 years old and six foot one, Mr LaSalle's wife, not without relief, hands her husband the registration. Taking the registration the deputy asks, "Mr LaSalle, are all these children yours?" LaSalle squints at the deputy, "Yes sir, Deputy. I've about fucked myself out of a seat."

The red wagon pulled away. The deputy returned to the air conditioned Gran Fury. He told Tanner what Mr LaSalle said. "That's a good one," laughed Tanner. "You let 'em go when they tell you something like that." I quit -- because most of 'em were not 'good ones' and, in the years since, I've learned there are many ways to fuck yourself out of a seat.

Was I Gay?

Gay at Nine (Chapel Hill, NC 1966)

The naked woman in the chocolate milk carton looked up at me from between my legs. Shoulder length brown hair bounced off her shoulders in perky flips. Dark eyes lined in powder blue eye liner matched the neglige laying at her knees. Long finger nails lacquered in silver polish and one hand with spread fingers across, "Gross!" said Victor, a fellow 4th grader at St Thomas More Catholic School.

Naked pictures of women were passed around in milk cartons under the table at lunch. Sister Jane and Sister Rose patrolled the boy-girl segregated tables in what was a lunch room/auditorium/ gym. Sister Rose, elderly and sweet, was the soft touch but Sister Jane, the school principal, was as mean as her habit. On a very hot day, I saw her without the coif and black veil. Her short shock of black hair reminds me of '80s punk but, it was 1966 and another shock of hair had my attention.

"That's disgusting," I told Victor. "I mean...is that for real?" I had seen pictures of breasts before but this was the first look south and it just didn't seem possible and certainly not natural. Alan Fox, in hipster black framed glasses too large for his face, leans toward me from across the lunch table, "You know those Hell's Angel guys...? I heard they actually... lick it." A chorus of disgust rises from what looks like a convention of nine year old photo copier salesmen in short sleeve white shirts and navy clip on ties. The camaraderie of shared nausea momentarily lowers our vigilance as I shake my head wildly while mouthing, "Nooooo Waaaayyyyy" and only stop when I feel an unfriendly hand on my shoulder.

My IBM comrades bury heads into lunch trays of fish sticks and mashed potatoes. The hand squeezes. I hunch my shoulders and wince -- More out of theater because my father did the same pinch but his was far more painful thanks to a childhood injury... He lost the feeling in his right hand and could put cigarettes out on his palm and not feel a thing.

It was Sister Jane... Why God? Why couldn't it have been Sister Rose? Sister Jane reaches between my legs and removes the milk carton and then me from the lunch table. Actually, I remember it as more of a jerk. If there was any punishment, I don't remember it and while Sister Jane and I would continue to have future clashes, this one, at least for me, is the most memorable. I'll always wonder how many of us at that lunch table became Hell's Angels.

Straight by 12 (from National Lampoon, February, 1974)

Dive Bar Coasters

Thought up in an airport bar by a couple Trad readers -- I feel like a father. Special thanks to Kay and Sally.

"God Tells Me What To Do But The Devil's My Secretary"

Subway Inn 143 E. 60th St at Lexington Avenue

The first of a series celebrating NYC dive bars. And while the honesty can be too much -- a good dive bar is a refreshing contrast to the vacuous sports bar where Bud Lite consumption is subsidized by insurance company expense accounts belonging to pasty white men in golf shirts, Dockers and Cole Haan Kilties.

The Subway Inn's neon is like a roaring Christmas Eve fire to the eyes of the afflicted. Tourists hurry their children by and must wonder how something so low brow can be so close to Bloomingdales and the Container Store. It's almost impossible to see into the bar through the window but once inside any sense of real danger is left to unknowing imaginations.

I was weaned as a 19 year old on the strip bars along Hay Street in Fayetteville, NC so my bench marking may be out of whack. The inside is not dangerous at all. In fact, the place could use a rougher crowd. Certainly a poorer one. Shots are $5 and bottled beer is less. Hipsters take over on weekends and regulars have it on week nights but to see the hard core pop in around noon. A beer at lunch ain't gonna kill you, but the guy at the end of the bar might.

Rating: The Classic 8/10