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to pay a band to march past the house every Monday playing “Rampart Street Parade.”
    I told Iris and she said, “Whoop-de-doo. Yippee for you.”
    “This is a big deal,” I said. I tried to get her to go to Murray’s Restaurant and celebrate with the Silver Butterknife Steak for Two, but she said, “Why throw the money away when we need to buy a house?”
    “Why be tightwads? Let’s be happy.”
    “Nothing wrong with a little common sense,” she said.
     
     
     
    Dear Mr. Blue,
    I’ve been dating a wonderful woman and last night I invited her up to my apartment and opened a bottle of wine and we were sitting on the sofa which is also a fold-out bed and she asked me if I minded if she said a prayer. I said, “No, not if that’s what you want, Evelyn.” She prayed for God to show us the path He was planning for us and to teach us to honor each other and she prayed to be fruitful and bring forth a large family and teach them to love the Lord. Amen. I said, “But we aren’t even married, Evelyn.” And she said, “As soon as my papa knows I’m pregnant, he’ll take care of that.” Then I noticed her black bonnet. I honestly never realized until then that she is Amish. Anyway, I felt that even if God’s plan is for me to be the daddy of twelve, it’s not my plan, so I put away the bottle of Kama Sutra scented oil and I drank the wine myself and today I am feeling rotten. I really want to make love with her. How can I introduce her to contraceptives?
    —Secular Humanist
     
     
     
    Dear Secular, You two aren’t singing from the same hymnal. Tell her good-bye. And thank goodness you discovered her Amishness now and not after several years of marriage, as happens more often than one might think. You turn to your loyal, meek, industrious wife, and say, “How about we go tie on the feed bag in some swell eatery, Snuggums?” and she says, “Thee shouldst spend thy increase on a domicile, Ezekiel, not on licentious living.” And suddenly you’re living in the 18th century, dealing with smallpox and ague and dropsy, horrible roads, the fear of witch trials, and your life expectancy drops to about 38. And you’re 36 at the time.
     
     
     
    The check for $3,000 arrived and I took it to the Farmers & Mechanics Bank, and the teller looked at the name The New Yorker, and looked up at me, and asked for three forms of identification. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t look like a writer.”
    The house we bought was stucco, three bedrooms, screened porch, garage, rock garden, dry basement, two blocks from West 7th Street, in a rundown neighborhood of bungalows and old frame houses, a few duplexes, with ratty yards, some wrecked cars up on blocks, dogs running free, and up above us, like El Dorado, the ridge where the fancy lived, the Summit Avenue swells. “Someday,” I said, “we’ll make it up the hill.” “What’s wrong with this?” she said.
    When the alarm went off at 6 A.M., I arose from bed and went to work in the back bedroom, my studio, at a Selectric typewriter with Webster’s Second Unabridged and The Desktop Thesaurus of Ideas and Chapman’s 77 Basic Plots and I turned out publishable stuff. Iris walked to her job at Lutheran Social Services and then, she and her do-gooder friends started up a nonprofit called Minnesota Advocates for Moral Action, which specialized in programs for crazy old people and drug addict moms, with St. Iris at the helm.
     
     
     
    We celebrated with a garden party. Jug wine and burgers on the grill and ice cream. Our pal from the U (her pal more than mine) Frank Frisbie, who we hadn’t seen in years, came and he said, “I hear you’re writing for The New Yorker.”
    “Oh, now and then,” I said, as if it were something I did when I had a spare moment.
    “I used to read that magazine,” he said, “and then—I don’t know—”
    I used to think you were an ordinary decent person, I thought, and now I see you’re a shit.
    “I’ve been busy