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“Welcome to Lucha Libre Night at the Taco Bell Arena in Chihuahua,
Mexico. I’m Edificio Del Huevo, your color commentator, and I’ll be
assisted by six-time Mexican female mud wrestling champion, Rosita
La Chingada.”

“¡Hola amigos!”

“We’ll be reporting on the hugely anticipated grudge match tonight
between Mexican champion Comandante Marco and his American
rival, El Grande Bush. There’s a lot at stake in this battle for North
American supremacy, wouldn’t you say, Rosie?”

“¡Ooooh sííííí! Mexico has been pushing for a rematch since 1846,
when the malditos gringos cabrones put a gun to our heads and
made us sign over Texas and California. Now if we want to go there
for a vacation we have to swim through rat-infested sewer pipes, and
mutherfuckers telling us ‘Speak English! Speak English!’ I like English.
I luv it! But I don’t need no gringo mutherfucker breathin’ down my
neck.

“Anyway, if Comandante Marco wins the match tonight, we gonna get
back all our land and then we be telling you cocksuckers to speak
Spanish.

“I know the first thing I’m gonna do when we take over is to move into
the Presidential Suite at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and go
skinny-dipping in the Grand Canal. Show the mutherfuckers what a
real Mexican chocha looks like!”

“Sounds good to me, Rosie, but as they say ‘Don’t count your huevos
rancheros before they’re hatched.’ Remember, the norteamericanos
are not going to give up all that loot without a fight.

“And as we speak, El Grande Bush is entering the ring. He’s wearing
his trademark pink tu-tu, dunce cap and glitter mask, and they’re
playing his music, ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise.’”

“Hey, Bushie, Bushie! Can we get a word from you for our studio
audience?”

“Waal, I’d like to address my remarks to the brave men and women
fighting in Eye-Rack for the forty-second consecutive year. I honor the
sacrifice you are making in the war on terror, and I want you to know
that I plan to win tonight so that when you come home you’ll have a
home to come home to.

“The threat we are facing in this arena here tonight is whether our
western states will remain The Home of The Free And The Brave, or
are allowed to become an open-air taco stand like the one on
Alvarado Street in downtown LA, where the crackheads and stray
dogs hang out, behind the convention center.”

“How inspiring! What’s your strategy for fighting Comandante Marco?"

“I plan to shock and awe him with my lightning speed, twist his head in
the ropes and bite his knuckles.”

“Excuse me, Ed, cut out that shit. Here comes Mexico’s national hero,
Comandante Marco of the Zapatista Revolutionary Army of Chiapas.
He looks ready for battle with his headdress of quetzal feathers,
jaguar-skin tights and crocodile nose mask. His musical
accompaniment is the Mexico City rock band Molotov singing their
anthem ''Viva México Cabrones.' Every time I hear that song it brings
tears of pride to my eyes, especially the part where they sing ‘No Me
Llames Cerdo.’ When I was a leetle girl in the shantytown overlooking
the security wall separating Nuevo Laredo from Brownsville, Texas,
my mother used to lull me to sleep by singing to me from Molotov’s
romantic love song ‘Chinga Tu Madre’, where they sing:

Nos vemos Acapulco a la fin de semana
Mientras yo cuido à tu hermana
Chinga tú chinga tu madre
[Ed. See you in Acapulco
But first I fuck your sister]

“Hey, big boy! You got something to say to your fans?”

“Hola, Rosie. I dedicate my life to the glory of Mexico. After I win, not
only are we going to reconquer our lost territories, but we are going to
sacrifice El Grande Bush on the ancient Mayan altar at Chichen Itzà
by ripping out his still beating heart and feeding it to the pirhana fish
that swim in the holy cenote. The whole ceremony is going to be
filmed by Mel Gibson for his upcoming movie “Jews of The Jungle.”

“Sounds great, sweetie. Only how do you plan to vanquish such a
great warrior like El Grande Bush?”

“I plan to shoot him with a curare-tipped blow dart and then, when he’s
paralyzed, I’m going to stomp on his balls.”

“And there’s the bell! The two fighters are circling each other warily,
looking for an opening, and they are being watched by the masked
referee, El Misterioso, who is also wearing a mask. Ed, what do we
know about El Misterioso?”

“Only that he gained fame as the fiercest lucha libre fighter in South
America.”

“Wow! Now El Grande Bush leaps forward and head butts
Comandante Marco in the chest, but instead of falling onto the mat El
Comandante does a backflip, kicking Bush in the face. Bush goes
down and Comandante Marco sits on his face, locking him in a French
Butt Hold, squeezing the air out of Bush like an Anaconda python
between the steel vise grip of his powerful glutes.”

“With his last, dying breath Bush reaches between Marco’s legs and
manages to insert his two fingers in the man’s nostrils and flip him
across the ring like a slingshot. Bush jumps to his feet and delivers a
shattering roundkick to the head of El Comandante, who goes flying
into El Misterioso who, enraged, punches him in the face. Hey, he’s
not supposed to do that. He’s the ref!”

“Wait a minute! Now El Misterioso grabs a folding chair and breaks it
over the head of El Grande Bush.”

“The audience is going berserk. The mariachi band Los Tigres Del
Norte has started playing the romantic sentimental love song ‘Volver’,
I suppose expressing their wish for a return of Mexico’s northern
territories. Meantime, on the American side, Ted Nugent is shooting
off machine gun riffs from his guitar. Oh no, that’s not his guitar, it’s a
real machine gun! Now gunfire is breaking out all over the place and
bullets are flying.”

“Comandante Marco and El Grande Bush have recovered from the
surprise attack by El Misterioso, and they’re punching the shit out of
him in the corner of the ring. They rip off his mask.”

“Omigod, it’s Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, and he’s got
an oil gusher shooting out of his butt!”

“Well, let’s get out of here before the whole place explodes. Reporting
to you from Taco Bell Arena, I’m Edificio Del Huevo.”

“And I’m Rosita La Chingada…”

“Wishing you a big cuevo en el culo, cabrones!”

CHUCHA LIBRE

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Yeah, Brooklyn After Dark! It ain’t no Disneyland. When the sun
goes down the eagle flies and all bets are off.

On our way to Coney Island Beach my girlfriend, Magpie, and I
stopped off at one of the conveniently located liquor stores on
Brighton Beach Avenue for a pint of Cossack Vodka. It being
the height of summer, we determined that a moonlight swim was
in order before the Natalie Cole concert just across the street
from the boardwalk, in Asher Levy Park.

The beach was animated at dusk with beautiful Russian girls in
expensive bikinis, their less beautiful parents showing
unsightly bulges in no less expensive bathing suits,
bodybuilders with shoulder-length bleached-blonde hair, plus
assorted psychos and freaks who looked as though they were
on a day pass from Bellevue.

The sun shone brightly as it descended in a scarlet ball of fire
to the west, resembling the opening credits for a Charles
Bronson cowboy movie. A sprightly breeze animated choppy
waves as Magpie and I frolicked in the surf. Big waves crashed
into the shore, and Magpie and I bounced around happily like
little waterlogged tennis balls, diving into the surf, doing the
breast stroke, the back stroke, floating on our backs. I had
brought along a mask and snorkel, and that was fun for a while,
but I could barely see beyond my arms in the brown, murky
mulch, a far cry from the crystal waters of the Caribbean, to be
sure!

Coney Island Beach/Brighton Beach may not be Cheeseburger
in Paradise, but you won’t hear any complaints from the
immigrants who migrated there from the former Soviet Union.
For somebody who traces his origins back to Kazakhstan or
some little shit industrial city situated in the Ural Mountains,
Brooklyn is paradise. The beaches may not be as pristine as
those that line Israel’s seafront, but the money is American, and
there’s no way you can beat that.

The lifeguards had ended their shift at 6:00, and the beach
patrols in little green dune buggies blew little party horns and
tried half-heartedly to coax swimmers out of the water. This the
city is obliged to do to protect itself from giant lawsuits in case
a swimmer drowns. Naturally the swimmers ignore the
warnings, but that is not the point. The point is, if somebody
drowns, city lawyers can claim, “We took every reasonable
measure to warn him.”

Magpie and I left the beach as night fell, just in time for the
Natalie Cole concert. You could see and hear perfectly from the
boardwalk, which is much more agreeable than sitting in folding
chairs across the street at the band shell. Natalie Cole was in
excellent voice, and she sang a variety of genres from Nat King
Cole material to disco to blues and rock. We found ourselves
next to a lively group of black people who called themselves
“The Jazz Family.” With their beach chairs, their voluminous
picnic food, their dancing feet and their enthusiasm for soul
music, The Jazz Family were the stars of the boardwalk.

The first pint of vodka having long previously bit the dust at the
beach, I ran over to Brighton Beach Avenue for another pint of
rotgut, which we cut with pomegranate juice. Magpie lost her
mind and I had to lead her back onto the darkened beach so
that she could take a leak. Magpie can’t hold her liquor,
particularly when she’s happy. She has almost gotten us
arrested any number of times for trying to sweet talk police
officers who don’t have any sense of humor. Also, she loses
control of her motor functions and I have to lead her around
like the guy in the Times Square subway station with the
dancing dummy that he ties to his legs. The only difference is,
Magpie ain’t no lightweight. At 5’9”, she’s larger than most
men. She’s strong as an ox. She can bring home fantastic
loads of groceries and, one time, when we got snowed in at JFK
Airport, instead of quietly acquiescing and sleeping in the
airport waiting area, she marched across a field of waist-deep
snow in her Miami shoes lugging two huge suitcases to catch a
bus that would take us to the subway so that we could sleep in
our own beds in the city.

Magpie is the kind of girl every peasant farmer dreams of
marrying. She’s intelligent, she keeps an immaculate home like
a European. And, she’s so strong you can hook her up to a plow
and she’ll furrow 40 acres. But when she gets loaded she’s all
dead weight, and I was already carrying a big backpack filled
with our beach supplies.

The full moon in the eastern sky shined portentously red, while
to the west the lights of Coney Island beckoned like a Greek
fable. Out to sea the huge cruise liners leaving New York
Harbor glistened like miraculous jewels of the universe like the
Fellini movie “Amarcord” where the simple people go out to sea
in boats to be dazzled and amazed by the ocean liner, but what
we have in modern New York is so much grander, more like
science fiction.

After Magpie finished her feminine business on the beach, we
went back to the boardwalk to see the remainder of the Natalie
Cole show. In the summer the people of Brighton Beach are the
luckiest in the world, and I’m a die-hard Manhattanite who’s
testifying to that. Even late into the night the boardwalk is
hopping. Kids playing ball in the sand under the protective
glare of streetlights, overfed Russian couples having their
promenade, rollerbladers holding hands, wild kids on bicycles
with boom boxes attached. One joker even had a tiny television
attached between his handlebars, I kid you not!

On the avenue cops’ sirens blared an incessant howl,
reminding you that you might be at the beach, but you were still
in Brooklyn. Groups of motorcyclists roared by, rich Harleys
dressed up with fantastic light shows like Christmas trees,
super jazzed-up “Too Fast Too Furious” Japanese Ninja bikes
painted iridescent green and orange, the female passengers
holding on for dear life in the back, their butts stuck up in the
air like a fertility ceremony.

The show finally ended and The Jazz Family turned on their own
boom box, alternating John Coltrane saxophone pieces with
Sam and Dave soul music. I went over to speak to them. The
men shook my hand and presented me to their charming
women. Eugene from Far Rockaway told me, “New York is
brutal, man, but we shall persevere.”

BROOKLYN AFTER DARK

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CHUCHA LIBRE

200motels POLITICS

Comedy

Tragedy

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How much of Norman Mailer’s belligerent attitude was formed
by growing up in a world where the Jew was the Designated
Sucker even unto the point where half the world set on a
feeding frenzy of blood-lust against that race while the other
half just stood by and mutely observed is an appropriate
subject for meditation. Maybe if his formative years had been
spent in a world where Israel, with the world’s most
accomplished military and intelligence service had already
existed; a world where the enemies of the Jewish people
tremble at the thought of the Sword of Gideon, where Jewish
submarines prowl the seas, where the Jewish Uzi machine gun
is the weapon of choice in every corner of the world, Mailer’s
mind would not have been twisted into a Gordian Knot of
inadequacy, hostility and defensive aggression, and he would
have been able to artistically interpret the world from a freer
and more universal base of comprehension.

Likewise, if he had been born into a larger and more impressive
physique he might not have felt threatened by his women, who,
after all, were about the same size he was. The funny thing

about Norman Mailer’s antagonism towards women is that he
always felt the need to keep them around him. He was married
six times. I have also had a life of endless problems with women
and girls. If you’re heterosexual and driven by hormones there’
s no alternative. But I never felt compelled to marry one. My
father and my uncle were each also married five times. I’ve
been living with my present woman for five years and, believe
me, this will be the last go-round for me. If I am lucky enough to
survive this latest disaster I will be very happy to live a
bachelor’s life going into my old age.

Mailer had more in common with his female adversaries than he
would ever have cared to admit – a sense of physical
diminutiveness and powerlessness that propelled him into an
attitude of perversity. What kind of man is he who feels the
need to take after his wife and puncture her with a ballpoint
pen? He employed a lot of female tricks, like verbal aggression
against a much larger guy, knowing that the guy would be
forced to restrain himself for fear of going to jail.

I read some of his books.The one I liked best was “The
Executioner’s Song” about Gary Gilmore, who was executed for
murder. Mailer was responsible for springing another murderer,
Jack Abbott, from prison once because he could write a little
bit, but immediately after being released Abbott stabbed
another man to death and was immediately sent back. After that
Mailer never again involved himself in social issues.

Mailer and Ernest Hemingway were consumed by the ideal of
the writer as a man of action. Hemingway was able to see the
world as a traveling correspondent for The Toronto Star. André
Malraux was born into an environment of adventurers, his
father and grandfather having traveled widely throughout Africa
and the Maghreb. This additionally frustrated Mailer who, with
the exception of serving in World War II as a cook, hardly ever
left New York.

Maybe if he really spent more time in foreign places and
prowled the exotic climes of Soviet Samarkand and Ushuaia
instead staying ensconced lifelong in the Brooklyn that he both
detested and couldn’t tear himself away from (like with his
women) he could have become the man of action that he always
promoted himself and dreamed of being.Maybe..

Mailer did his best work while he was still young and then lived
ever after on his previous accomplishments. Another writer like
that who comes to mind is Hunter S. Thompson, who, well into
his sixties, had to refer back to “Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas,” which he wrote close to a half-century ago, in order to
validate himself. Didn’t these writers learn anything new later in
their lives, when they should have known a lot more? Writers
are not intellectuals, they’re artists. Tolstoy inspired a whole
generation with the beauty of his philosophy, but he died
without being able to resolve the contradiction of his own
personal unhappiness. (Incidentally, one of the major themes of
“War and Peace” was the alacrity with which men went to war to
escape their women and live in a masculine environment)

The writers of Mailer’s age were all a psychological mess. Never
mind Hunter S. Thompson, he burnt out immediately. Saul
Bellow was so emotionally fragile that he couldn’t even be in
the room with anybody who was even remotely a threat to him.
Once he met Nelson Algren in a Chicago bar for a drink, by pre-
arrangement, and he walked out after five minutes.

Algren was another tough guy writer, what with the motorcycle
jacket.Hunter S. Thompson liked to shoot off firearms. There
used to be a guy named Eric Hoffer who was a philosophical
stevedore. Where the tough guy nonsense came from, who
knows? But it goes back to my theory that these people started
writing at too young an age and later felt the need to
authenticate themselves as something other than sterile
academics. I don’t include André Malraux in this because he
was a rarified species indeed, who pursued his dreams of the
queen of Sheba and the volcanoes of Chicastenango many
times nearly at the cost of his life. These guys who start writing
at age 20, what can they possibly think they have to share with
the world? I only properly started writing after I had flunked out
of every other earthly pursuit ha-ha! That is not strictly true, but
the things I wrote as a young man so distressed people who
were invested in their self-image of bourgeois respectability
that whatever merit I manifested was buried by their natural
human instinct to pretend to ignore the unpleasantness of the
realities I ignited.

Mailer is the last of his breed – literary writers who actually had
something to say. The modern age is as sterile as “Brave New
World.” I’ll use for my example the Frenchman, Houllebecq, who
is shallow and narrow as a gutter, an office worker and sex
tourist possessing no literary depth whatsoever. The only
element that presents even a possibility of literary expression
is the Internet, where writers can take their case directly to the
reading public without being squeezed through a strainer by
the publishing establishment.

Norman Mailer

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