. . . the treatment, the treatment . . .

note

note

note

Composition.

The mountebank is professional. That’s the difference. He plays a part but never comes to pieces; he’s whole in every suit, entire in each attire he chooses. Hilarity forces its fool way out of me, forces its life. I am embarrassed (it’s like pulling down my pants before a stranger), if I’m serious with myself. Take note. Position. Another defensive noise, a whistle for the graveyard. Stones to mark the selves that are no more. Note. Note. Surely there are ghosts in every grave (except the ones the Germans dug, ghettos underground which snuffed out even spirits), and one may suddenly materialize, condense on the side of the sky like moisture on a glass . . . and there I am, dead all these years, a little boy in knickers, flat sailor hat and scarfy tie, whiny nose and easy bladder—what a weapon that bladder was! how brilliantly I peed in every place—yes, that’s one ghost, and it may wet me yet, at fifty, as I pass among my selves . . . and thus he peed, the brat, in pews at church, the little turd, or in the Palmer House, carefully apart from the furniture and urns, stickered trunks or lazy bellhops in their servant’s suits, spittoons afloat the risen ends of logs on the lobby floor, far from the little leashed dogs of the dogged guests, so there’d be no mistake (credit where credit, he already thought), hosing from a trouser a protesting lake, no thumb allowed to dutchboy up the dike and win renown, but with both wrapped inside his fingers as though they were the puissant instrument itself, he turned the tap, urging strength and volume on the liquid. Thus he spoke his piece in elevators, restaurants, and offices, in the front seats of autos stalled at crossings, in trains negotiating trestles, at teas, at bridge, at ladies’ luncheons (every showing-off, he showered), on Ferris wheels or chute-the-chutes, at fairs while hurling halls toward bottles, watching Tom Mix make his six-gun smoke or listening to the Shadow. In schoolrooms he would leak reciting Latin, while at the grocery he always put a puddle by the pickle barrel. Again when playing catch or house or doctor, he’d release at a critical moment. In playgrounds he washed down the slides. Oh, then, too, from cats he learned the trick of standing liquidly in sandboxes, and very often, finally, from bravado, anytime, in fun, when dared, for bets, he pissed along his leg. But my god I never wet my bed. No, I was not incontinent in that fashion, for this was fully purposed protest pissing, the sort Jesus should have used in self-defense (the Jews could have, the Dukhobors, Mahatma Gandhi); in fact, that’s how I read the gushing-waters incident, when the spear is supposed to have entered His side.

I should begin anew because my mind careens.

Mountebank: does he wear a waiter’s dress suit one year, SS uniform another?