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They've got a horrid gash instead of a thrilling thing." "I can't face it." "Enough to turn a body to stone." Paul spoke wiser than he know being a really evil old shit when he talk about men lying with men doing that which is inconvenient. Inconvenient is the word. So who want to trip over a cock on the way to a cunt, and when a citizen get the yen to hump a gash, some evil stranger rush in and do that which is inconvenient to his ass. A. J. rush across San Marco slashing at pigeons with a cutlass: "Bastards! Sons of bitches!" he screams.... He staggers aboard his barge, a monstrous construction in gilt and pink and blue with sails of purple velvet. He is dressed in a preposterous naval uniform covered with braid and ribbons and medals, dirty and torn, the coat buttoned in the wrong holes.... A. J. walks to a huge reproduction of a Greek urn topped by a gold statue of a boy with an erection. He twists the boy's balls and a jet of champagne spurts into his mouth. He wipes his mouth and looks around. "Where are my Nubians, God damn it?" he yells. His secretary looks up from a comic book: "Juicing. ...Chasing cunt." "Goldbricking cocksuckers. Where's a man without his Nubians?" "Take a gondola whyncha?' "A gondola?" A. J. screams. "I put out for this cock- sucker I should ride in a gondola already? Reef the mainsail and ship the oars, Mr. Hyslop.... I'm gonna make with the auxiliary." Mr. Hyslop shrugs resignedly. With one finger he begins punching a switchboard.... The sails drop, the oars draw into the hull. "And turn on the perfume whyncha? The canal stinks up a breeze." "Gardenia? Sandlewood?' "Naw. Ambrosia." Mr. Hyslop presses another button and a thick cloud of perfume settles over the barge. A. J. is seized with a fit of coughing.... "Make with the fans" he yells. "I'm suffocatin'!" Mr. Hyslop is coughing into a handkerchief. He presses a button. Fans whir and thin out the ambrosia. A. J. in- stalls himself at the rudder on a raised dais. "Contact!" The barge begins to vibrate. "Avanti, God damn it!" A. J. yells and the barge takes off across the canal at a tremendous speed overturning gondolas full of tourists, missing the motoscafi by inches, veering from one side of the canal to the other (the wake washes over the sidewalks drenching passersby) shattering a fleet of moored gondolas, and finally piles up against a pier, spins out into the middle of the canal. |
