Violins
violently vibrating, Vernon Verdi vociferously voices, "Vixens,
vehement vibrations! Vigorously, vigorously!"
Verdi,
the half-witted Italian dwarf, a nineteenth cousin twice removed of
the great composer himself
Orated
to his sordid ensemble of shabbily dressed matrons: nine disgruntled
violinists, violists and vacillating vocalists
Intoning
loudly, deafeningly, depriving the wretched dwarf of his native
Italian, causing him to think in nothing but his makeshift,
self-taught American English
Loudly,
wishing there was a "Language God" to solace him in this
his time of sorrows
Agonizing
now, the chubby quarter-witted dwarf flings his baton at the
four-hundred-pound viola player still struggling to tune her
instrument, to find, as it were, her long lost "A", or “A”
flat or “A” sharp or any other “A” as hell
oozed from his dwarfish soul and he ranted:
"If
I had but one well-made viola, just one damned well-made viola, I
would still believe in God!"
Verdi
fell to the floor, Caesar-like in a fit, though un-Caesar-like, as
well, for Verdi, is not epileptic, he's having an epiphany caused by
the scent of the estrogen clogged
room that leaves him with but one word, that wonderful word he
learned while, touring Paris on that October weekend in Paris in the
mid-60s when he had that magically mystical encounter with Pierre on
that tiny barge, floating on the Seine, and then as the two boys
twisted in their feeble attempt at man-love, Pierre, who was two
months, nine-days older, and twice as experienced in the ways of
making love as Verdi, had shouted: Voila . . . Here it is! Here it is
. . . Here it is!
And
both boys’ souls became one and love oozed from their hearts as
well as their manly parts!
But
now, Pierre’s “voila” is barely a memory—and
the memory of voila had nearly vanished from Verdi's mind—that
is, until this moment. . . this voila moment. . . when Verdi, who
still wonders why he couldn't remove Pierre's sweaty undershorts and
twice-darned socks, or for that matter, why he couldn’t corral
these nine clamoring out-of-tune women, or find a dozen eggs at the
market for less than the price of a small ham. . . still lies here
before us on the yellow and blue tiled floor, in his spasm of an
earth shattering epiphany, wondering why everyone says the sun rises
in the east when it fact the sun doesn’t rise at all and
wondering why cowboy boots never fit his size seven feet—why
one foot, his left foot, always feels at home in a man-sized eight
and his right foot, his happy foot, his thinking foot, his tap
dancing to hell foot, is only content in a boy sized seven while his
left foot, that man-foot, screeches out in pain each time he forces
it inside the matching boy’s shoe. . . but mostly, mostly,
Verdi wonders what went wrong with the hot fudge sundae he made last
night—why it melted into goo and disintegrated before his one
brown and one hazel eye . . . and yes, Verdi does all this thinking
in the space of a scintilla of a moment of time and then rights
himself and stands, straightening his pants legs like he's done since
he started puberty—because one of his legs is a half inch
longer than the other, even though he never remembers which is which
or even
give a rat's ass why because that’s when the steam pours out
of his head and he proclaims:
