Longshoremen, forsooth!

On any jaunt on this description things are going to get somewhat muddled. I’m not blaming anyone, mind you. Ask the participants of any recent flood or earthquake and you’re bound to get conflicting accounts.

The longshoremen Basil says he saw me reciting to were not so much longshoremen as avante-garde artists. No doubt misled by the black woolen caps, black sweaters, little chin beards and sullen attitudes, Basil marked them down as sturdy sons of toil, lifters of barges and totters of bails as it were.

But no, every man jack of them was either a stern singer intent on hitting a new low note in vernacular poetry, a pugnacious playwright looking to expose the seamy lie that is middle-class America or a putrid painter hoping to rip open our sham conventions concerning beauty and get down to the horsehair, sharp metal springs and brass tacks that undergird all bourgeois notions of comfort and ease.

Ezra Pound once called artists “the antennae of the race”, but these guys were more like whole insects. Or, more accurately, parasites. Whatever their various artistic ambitions, they all shared a desire to have someone else pay for their upkeep while they went about doing all that ripping and exposing. Seeing me walk in with the resplendent Basil and the somewhat-less-resplendent-but-nevertheless-respectable-Fiendish, they immediately took me for One of The Ones, loaded to the gills and an easy mark.

They were right in a sense; I was loaded to the gills. So when I heard the sharp crackle of grant proposals surrounding me like the licking flames surrounding some early martyr at the stake, I saw only one way out: Basil must take this heat. Hoping to offend their acute modernist sensibilities I flung volleys of well-aimed rhyme, only to see it fall on pierced but deaf ears. When Basil heard me pointing at him and shouting “Wooster!” what I was really shouting was “Booster!” It was my mad, vain attempt to convince the Bohemian brigade that Basil was a great patron of the avante-garde, never happier than when supplying a select member of the unwashed with the repose Wordsworth recommends so highly for the recollecting of emotion. For some reason—possibly Basil’s offhand comment to the effect that Harrier pilots never really lose that knack of snapping necks like dried twigs—they weren’t buying my story at any price. And Fiendish’s antics with the flagon of Black Velvet did nothing to help along my harmless deception; when he smacked his lips they merely assumed he was blowing me kisses. This only heightened the Art Department’s esteem for me.

Long before I was set upon by the pack of wild genius, Basil and I had been having a stimulating conversation about the first British invasion of New York, back in 1776. We both felt that if we learned from the mistakes made back then we would have a much better shot at turning the metropolis’ defenses this time around.

General Howe’s biggest problem wasn’t Washington or his grandly-styled but poorly-drilled and -clad Continental Army; it was his own native caution. True, this was possibly due to the fact that he and his brother the Admiral had been sent to the colonies with a dual commission: while beating the stuffing out of any rebels they happened to come across, they were also supposed to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Whatever the causes, caution was the outcome.

Which is probably why, early on in the evening’s proceedings, we all started referring to the Fiendish One as “General Howe” or, for purposes of getting his attention across a crowded bar room so he could pick up another round, simply, “Howe!” Of course, address anyone in this fashion in a crowded nightspot like Chumley’s—an establishment where all that is brightest and fairest in the city tends to never show up—and you’re headed for misunderstandings. Someone is bound to think you’re saying “How”.

In the present instance, just about everyone within earshot made this pardonable error. What wasn’t so pardonable was that they all tried to correct us, stating emphatically that the classic Abbott and Costello baseball skit starts with, “Who”, not, “How”.

That’s probably why, a few minutes later, I grabbed a cocktail stick and a Maraschino cherry and endeavored to illustrate to Basil how one scored a “run” in baseball. Oddly enough—this sort of thing never seemed to happen when I was younger—I connected. The cherry went hurtling into the void, landing I know not where. In my state of Black-Velvet-induced cerebral excitement I thought of several places where that cherry might have landed. And that made me think immediately of a trans-Atlantic cultural icon Basil was sure to recognize.

“Kind of funny” I said. “Like on Benny Hill.”

“Who?” asked Basil.

“That’s right!” chorused our helpful playmates, pleased that we had finally caught on.

“Benny Hill” I said again.

“Yeah” said Andrew, who had apparently awoken and re-joined the human throng. “You know…Benny Hill.”

There are times, I have to confess, when Basil can look exactly like Mary Poppins right after Jane or Michael have said something unusually ghastly. Esteem and admire the man as I do, I cannot deceive my public. Nevertheless, I persisted in persisting.

“Benny Hill always managed to have a cherry land in the cleavage of some charming popsie” I said, rather slowly and carefully, like a ninja master initiating an eager young recruit in The Basics.

Well, it didn’t go so frightfully well. It seems that Basil, while having a pretty firm grip on Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sidney, Spencer, Milton, Dryden and Pope, has let the contemporary masters elude his notice.

More anon…

Mr. Peperium

Comments

[The Fiendish One]

I cannot tell you how relieved I am to read this account.
Well, OK, I'll tell you. I thought you fellows were referring to me as a generous ho, or sometimes just ho.
Although now I can't figure out why your biker buddies kept offering me free drinks. I may never be able to darken the door of Chumley's again.

[Mr. Peperium]

General Howe...Generous Ho...Yeah, Black Velvet can be hard on the syllables on both ends: transmission as well as reception.

But really, just be make things perfectly clear, those lads were not longshoremen or bikers. They were artists. Unlike the first two categories, to be an artist one needn't apply for a union card, master specific skills or buy expensive equipment. One just needs to declare oneself an artist. Indeed, artists might be said to constitute the world's most democratic elite. For an absolutely minimal outlay of cash (except, of course, for college; but then that's mom and dad's outlay of cash, isn't it?) one can instantly become a force to be reconned with.

[Basil Seal]

Artists you say? I would have never guessed that...I thought they were Chartists or something...I still have no idea who Benny Hill is or what was going on with the cherry...As far as General Howe is concerned, we all know that the gentleman was preoccupied with another matter...By the way, what contemporary masters? There is no such thing...

[Old Dominion Tory]

It was in the 1980s that Auberon Waugh wrote that "Never before in human history have so many people described themselves as artists yet so little real art been produced." Looks like things haven't changed much in NYC.