I stood at attention when the flags went by--feeling, as I always do,
the aspiration in those white stars and those red stripes.
We would continue to aspire--some of us--while breath stayed in us.
But this stirring--this patriotic thrill--did not debilitate my
sphincters. Tightened them, rather, against the multimillion goons who
would as soon sell all of liberty down any creek as their own two-bit
integrity. What patriots remain these days must battle harder against
their countrymen for truth, for dignity, for honesty and love than ever
against an outside foe.
It proved a misfortune to be moved to lofty sentience, at that time.
The tiresome military iron clanked by as it has clanked through every
city on the earth for thousands of years.
More men of the newer war came, canoe-shaped hats worn cock-eyed,
bellies lean still, faces blank in the scalding sunshine.
I noticed, now, that many paraders were moving among the
spectators--marchers who had been dismissed some distance up the
Avenue. These men, from other states, ticketed like parcel post,
badge-thick and boozy, shoved among the ordinary citizens, cawing
and singing, carrying pails, and shooting water pistols. Occasional
cops watched them with the fixed, tolerating smiles taught in the
department--proper address toward large political groups. The men, in
what they thought of as boisterous glee, peed out their pistol streams
at any pretty girl, blotting blouses, stippling skirts with dark
dribbles, and evoking, as often as not, coaxing screams.
I wandered through a block or two of this nickering infantilism, this
petty and symbolic repayment for a thousand lacks and ten thousand
wretched frustrations. Men will be boys, I thought. Boys, I knew, will
hardly ever be men.
I came to a lamppost where a dozen pistoleers were singing, "I want a
girl just like the girl who married dear old dad." Their mouths yearned
it and the sun sparkled on the gold fillings in their teeth. This song,
so far as I recall, is the only legitimate outlet for the Oedipus
complex permitted in twentieth-century U.S.A. So I watched gents from
Oklahoma and Idaho and Nebraska sing their incest, get their backs in
it, and I wondered how much effort it would take to elicit from even
one of them an acknowledgment of that emotion which, hidden deep inside
him, gave him his particular inflection and look while he sang that
particular song. I have wondered before while viewing luncheon clubs as
they yearned for a girl like mother. To a face, every here and there,
the anthem does memorable things. I supposed they would all rather be
dead than have to admit the possibility of the truth. I supposed that
the recognition of the baby alive in us all would require the hurdling
of yet more dead bodies--billions, at least--to bring them to a happy
acceptance of such affairs.
American babies are not allowed to be Freudian.
Not till they grow up, anyhow.