Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Author:Katherine Dunn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 2011-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

14

The Pen Pal

It was Earlville, on the Gulf of Mexico. One hundred windless, muggy degrees. Mosquitoes drowned in your neck creases. The only industry in town was the federal penitentiary. The midway was jammed and the show tents bulged with sweating, stinking, bad-tempered drawls. It got dark but it didn’t cool off.

The fat woman surfaced at Arty’s last, hottest show for the day. She was young but her colorless hair was scraggled up into tight separate curls with so much scalp between them that she looked old and balding. She was crying as she stood up on the fifth tier of the bleachers and pushed her clasped hands out toward the tank where Arty was deep in his pitch.

“You, darling,” said Arty, and the feel of “darling” rose up through her puffy ankles and through every buttock in the bleachers. The crowd sighed. The fat woman sobbed.

“You feel ugly, don’t you, sweetheart?” and “ugly” and “sweetheart” thrummed the crowd, and they all gasped and she wasn’t the only one nodding.

“You’ve tried everything, haven’t you?” said the bright floating spirit in the tank. “Everything,” murmured the bones of the people.

“Pills, shots, hypnosis, diets, exercise. Everything. Because you want to be beautiful?”

Arty was building it up now, winding them tight.

“Because you think if you were beautiful, you would be happy?” He had the timing pat. Arty was a master of tone and timing. I leaned on the last steel strut of the bleachers in the aisle and smiled, though I’d seen him do it all my life.

“Because people would love you if you were beautiful? And if people loved you, you would be happy? Is it people loving you that makes you happy?”

Now the pitch drops a full octave into the groin groan. I can feel it even in the support poles. The asses on the seat boards must be halfway to orgasm.

“Or is it people not loving you that makes you unhappy? If they don’t love you it’s because there’s something wrong with you. If they love you then it must mean you’re all right. You poor baby. Poor, poor baby.”

The place was full of poor babies. They all sighed with tender sympathy for themselves. The fat woman’s nose ran. She opened her mouth and cried, “Hoooh! Hoooh! Hoooh!”

Now Arty was gentle and low as a train a mile off in the night. “You just want to know that you’re all right. You just want to feel all right.”

And now he dives into the sneer. Arty’s sneer could flay a rhino. “That’s all you need other people’s love for!”

The crowd is shocked into stillness. Arty grabs their throats while they’re down and starts pumping the tempo.

“So, let’s get the truth here! You don’t want to stop eating! You love to eat! You don’t want to be thin! You don’t want to be beautiful! You don’t want people to love you! All you really want is to know that you’re all right! That’s what can give you peace!

“If I had arms and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.