Page 398 - Some Dance to Remember

368 Jack Fritscher

“...like the Devil tempting Christ!”
“You’re not Christ.”
“Get behind me, Satan.”
“You need to get down to earth. You’re overeducated. You need to roll
around with my boys. You need to get down off that pedestal where you’re
kneeling between Kick’s legs. You need to forget everything you’ve ever
read or been taught. You need to feel raw and basic and nasty and dirty.”
“I did that at the Barracks and the Slot.”
“Do it again.”
“I did it with Kick.”
“Listen to me,” Solly said. “I’m a guru of consciousness lowering.”
“Consciousness raising.”
“Consciousness lowering. For people who got too sensitive in the six-
ties and seventies.”
“How California,” Ryan said. “You’ll make a fortune.”
“We all live our separate fantasies that hardly ever intermesh. When
they do, it’s comedy. When they don’t, it’s another story.”
“So?” Ryan asked.
“It’s time for you to shit or get off the pot.”
“Why?”
“Because what honor you have left in this town is on the line.”
“My honor? I don’t give a fuck about San Francisco.”
“If you don’t do something to resolve where you stand with Kick, then
everything you say is so much a doo-doo about nothing. Stop being a fool.
It doesn’t become you.”
Ryan was miffed. “At least, it’s honest ‘ado.’”
“Then,” Solly said, “prove it.”

3

Katharine Hepburn played her part in all this.
Ryan once accused me as well as Solly of a certain coldness. “Nothing
ever takes either of you outside your calm, cool, existential selves,” he said.
He was wrong. About both of us.
The thighs of young hustlers lowered Solly’s consciousness.
I, Magnus Bishop, sometimes have what I call grand moments when
something on screen or on stage truly overwhelms me. In a theater, I sit,
up front and center, closer to the action than most of the audience dares
to sit. Sometimes I forget who I am. I forget I am a professor of popular
culture. Sometimes I am sucked up from my seat into the vortex of drama

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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