Strikes and Gutters

As Walter settled in to finish his coffee, he was struck by a phantom, peripheral visage, white as pins in flight, or bunny white, in haze — a visit from “The Agent,” in the nominal parlance of chemical memory, calling from a distant muddied element. Or was it merely the milk he’d spilled in a fatuous fit, hooking out to the Brooklyn back of his cup? All he could abide, he put his face down in the muck, and made off for The Dude’s abode. “These are purple times,” he thought, “when pseudo-pious cliques strike polyester poses while jockeying for pockets. And mocking fatuous Donny? That sweet prince, that palsied, hiccuping flake of bunny fluff?” Not for this aggression would he stand — not for that element. It required satisfaction, and of superior sort to parlance. Oh, but he would have his ear! Though for this spar: lance and blade, tooth and trigger — less to mind, and more, would he abide, in body to this immodest plum-clad receptacle. He popped a Velemint, and rang His Dudeness’s door. “Bolted,” Duder’s hand had struck in ink, “Out of cream. Gone to market. 8pm practice.” His buddy was benumbed: “Dash this dairy! You’ve become fat to us with cordials of coffee and curds. Oh, uncareful beverage! Such fatuous froth and foam will be your undoing!” Yet not undone, but in parlay with his special lady, laid up in zesty enterprise, coital as bunnies, making maudlin moan. The story is ludicrous. Though if one abides that one must “feed one’s monkey,” in manner most gutter-struck, and not with precious prandials, “Brie pour lui. Et pour elle, 
emmental,” one can dig El Duderino’s doings. All others are cowards — elements without sentiment, without Johnsons or ethos, foreign and fatuous, with lingonberries on leashes, and marmot marmalades struck onto pancakes. Neither good men nor thorough, poor in parlance and in practice, unable to fix cable or walk on water — though may abide it when seated, in slumber, in summer, with clouds above, as Bunny puffs on polish. The poor woman, helpless as a frail fawn beneath a nude sun. A trophy wife, atrophied, fallen in with the wrong element: known pornographers; sycophants; Aimee Mann. Difficult to abide, and not exactly lightweights, is she herself to blame for her fatuous caprices? Her husband’s lost legs? The Dude’s stained parlor rug — his only tether, the life and memory of it, dimmed when stricken? Oh, the little for which we are compensated. About the size of our abidance, and theirs: some Credence tapes; a can of ashes, released to the 
elements; specklike Brandt, crisp and shivering. A yet-to-be-dismantled toe, Bunny’s.