countryside flashes by … long straight stretch of road ahead.
“Now I’ll show you what this job can do.”
Hamlin presses the accelerator slowly to the floor … 60 … 70 … 80 … 85 … 90 … Audrey leans forward lips parted eyes shining.
At Tent City a top-level conference is in progress involving top level executives in the CONTROL GAME. The Conference has been called by a Texas billionaire who contributes heavily to MRA and maintains a stable of evangelists. This conference is taking place outside St Louis Missouri because the Green Nun flatly refuses to leave her kindergarten. The high teacup queens thought it would be fun to do a tent city like a 1917 Army camp. The conferents are discussing Operation W.O.G. (Wrath of God).
At the top level people get cynical after a few drinks. The young man from the news magazine has discovered a good-looking Fulbright scholar and they are witty in a corner over Martinis. A drunken American Sergeant reels to his feet. He has the close-cropped iron-grey hair and ruddy complexion of the Regular Army man.
“To put it country simple for a lay audience … you don’t even know what buttons to push … we take abunch of longhair boys fucking each other while they puff reefers, spit cocaine on the Bible, and wipe their asses with Old Glory. We show this film to decent, church-going, Bible Belt do-rights. We take the reaction. One religious sheriff with seven nigger notches on his gun melted the camera lens. He turned out to be quite an old character and the boys from
Life
did a spread on him—seems it had always been in the family, a power put there by God to smite the unrighteous: his grandmother struck a whore dead in the street with it. When we showed the picture to a fat Southern senator his eyes popped out throwing fluid all over your photographer. Well I’ve been asparagrassed in Paris, kneed in the groin by the Sea Org in Tunis, maced in Chicago and pelted with scorpions in Marrakech so a face full of frog eggs is all in the day’s work. What the Narco boys call ‘society’s disapproval’ reflected and concentrated twenty million I HATE YOU pictures in one blast. When you want the job done come to the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. AND WE CAN TURN IT IN ANY DIRECTION. You Limey leftovers …” He points to a battery of old grey men in club chairs frozen in stony disapproval of this vulgar drunken American. When will the club steward arrive to eject the bounder so a gentleman can read his
Times
?
“YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A BANANA REPUBLIC. AND REMEMBER WE’VE GOT YOUR PICTURES.”
“And we’ve got yours too Yank,” they clip icily.
“MINE ARE UGLIER THAN YOURS.”
The English cough and look away fading into their spectral clubs, yellowing tusks of the beast killed by the improbable hyphenated name, OLD SARGE screams after them … “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS A BEAUTY CONTEST? You Fabian Socialist vegetablepeoples go back to your garden in Hampstead and release a hot-air balloon in defiance of a local ordinance delightful encounter with the bobby in the morning. Mums wrote it all up in her diary and read it to us at tea. WE GOT ALL YOUR PANSY PICTURES AT ETON. YOU WANTA JACK OFF IN FRONT OF THE QUEEN WITH A CANDLE UP YOUR ASS?”
“You can’t talk like that in front of decent women,” drawled the Texas billionaire flanked by his rangers.
“You decorticated cactus. I suppose you think this conference was your idea? Compliments of SID in the Sudden Inspiration Department … And you lousy yacking fink queens my photographers wouldn’t take your pictures. You are nothing but tape recorders. With just a flick of my finger frozen forever over that Martini. All right get snide and snippy about that HUH? … And you” … He points to the Green Nun … “Write out ten thousand times under water in indelible ink OLD SARGE HAS MY CHRIST PICTURES. SHALL I SHOW THEM TO THE POPE?
“And now in the name of all good tech sergeants everywhere …”
A gawky young