IT’S REALLY TOO late to be writing. In fact I’m afraid if I look at the clock I’ll fall asleep. But I had to tell you that there was a guy in here tonight, he lives in this building, on my floor, who flipped for the novel. But first let me tell you what happened this afternoon. The lady art director made out a list of free pictures to get from the public library, illustrations for Gemini, General Grant National Park, generator, Genesis, Geneva, Genghis Khan, genitalia, and Genoa. Photographs of General Grant National Park, Geneva, and Genoa, she said. Diagram of a simple generator. An old Bible history picture for Genesis. Something similar for Gemini. All in the public domain, mind you. Check the copyright. O yes, and something stylized for genitalia. You know, she said, stylized. Sure, I said, but I didn’t really. I mean, I did know and I didn’t know, if you know what I mean. Anyway, the library’s picture collection is a big junkyard of folders arranged alphabetically under some pretty strange titles. If you know where to look you can get a picture of almost anything. Like genitalia might be under reproductive system, or crotch, or fun & games. Anyway, I rounded up everything but the stylized you know what, and I had tried all the possibilities, including cock and cunt. Well, finally I hitched up my moxie and told the ancient maiden-in-charge about my genitalia problem. And she did nothing to put me at my ease. In fact she opened her watery blue eyes a little wider as if to let me know that she had had experience with perverts like me before. Then she called from her office a rosy little chicken about seventeen and told her to get the, and she paused, the atlas. The girl glanced at me nervously and went off to obey. The, ahem, atlas was a book about a yard big both ways. You will find here, old bitch said, in this anatomical atlas, pictures of every part of the human body. It is a very valuable book, please handle it with care. Then discreetly she took the young girl aside. It was fascinating, the most detailed etchings I have ever seen of anything. On the left, say, would be a male arm and hand, the fingers curling up in a kind of absolute relaxation. On the right, a woman’s arm and hand. And so on, page after page. It reminded me of those juxta-linear translations, Latin on one side, English on the other. Limbs were severed from the body proper, and even the exposed veins and muscles were represented with exquisite accuracy. What was so interesting and uneasy-making, though, was that the pictures lacked comment, as if they had been etched by a machine rather than an artist. So I looked at the title page, and might have known, published Leipzig 1882. Well, I worked my way, turning the newspaper-size pages, through feet and calves and tits and butts and two rather beautiful heads, which in their innocence looked like Adam and Eve, on to the pookies. On the left the male organ lay against a thigh like a sleeping bird. And on the right, ladies and gentlemen, was the cause of all male joy and sorrow, the much-storied fountain of youth, the rancid sump seen by Church Fathers, the fur-lined honeytub of adolescent boys, the saw-toothed monster of frightened fags, the perfumed rose of healthy dreams. In a word, vagina beatissima. I nodded toward the two females, who had been waiting like salesladies. May I borrow this to have it copied, I asked in my most picture-editor manner. We don’t lend bound books from this department, bitch said, only loose pictures. You may have it photostatted in the library, however. All right, I said, and went to pick the book up, at which bitch propelled her tender helper toward me. The girl took the great open book like a tray from my hands. Let me help, I said. She turned away, refusing my offer, and we marched, I behind, she before, out of the picture collection, down the hall, into the elevator, she just barely maintaining the thing on her hands and forearms. The poor baby’s high color heightened further in transit, and in the elevator everyone had a look, at me, at her, at the open book. It was as if I hadn’t shut the bathroom door. The photostat department was also manned by a woman. We put the book on her counter, and I told her my desires. You must pay in advance, she said. I did, and will you send me the stats? Disdainfully she told me that these pictures could not be sent through the mails. All right, I said, completely shamed by now, I’ll pick them up on my next trip. And as I turned to leave I saw her close the book, bringing the facing pages together with distaste. Back at MUI, the art director said that in my absence she had found exactly what was needed in the American Health Encyclopedia. She showed me the pictures, and I understood what she had meant by stylized, an arrow and a circle, for Chrissake. Anyway, the guy who read the novel is a handsome, drooping-mustachioed young Spaniard named Jose Llano. His family name means both plane and plain, he told me. Very appropriate, he said, for I am a flat and ordinary fellow. Flat he is, skinnier than I am, but ordinary he’s not. For instance, he has a wild attitude toward copulation, he’s against it. He practices it, but he’s against it. No escape, he says, you walk through the fields, ravished by the flowers, plucking, plucking, until one day a flower plucks you. You marry, you fertilize, you rear, you’re through. It will happen to you, he says, yes, it will even happen to me. Then I shall forget my music and mathematics, resign myself to translating for a bank doing business with South America, retire at sixty-five, and die at sixty-six. Coitus, he said, and spat without spittle. Degrading, and he spat again. Coitus is for weekdays. But masturbation, masturbation is for Sunday. With masturbation you slap nature in the face, trample the grave of Darwin, distinguish yourself from the animals. I can’t tell if he’s serious or not, but I know he’s fantastically smart. Harvey claims he’s the only authentic genius he’s ever met. I got to know him in a peculiar way. He had heard that I was a writer for MUI and came to ask my help with the spelling in a children’s book he’s writing. It’s called Very Tales and is intended to explain to kids, through little didactic stories, the true nature of the universe. For instance, he showed me his Very Tale about relativity. This is how it goes after I cleaned up the English. Once upon a time there was a man who had a pimple in the middle of his back. Try as he might he could not reach it, and the pimple grew bigger and bigger. So big, in fact, that it became a question whether the man had the pimple or the pimple had the man. Whichever was the case, the two of them were out walking one day when they happened to meet a pure pimple, that is, an unattached pimple, which was, from a pimplish point of view, a very handsome pimple. Red and shiny and taut with a great white head like an albino volcano. The handsome pimple, seeing the other pimple so badly blemished by the rough hairy man, said You should really do something about yourself, my dear. You could be a very attractive pimple if you only took care of your complexion. Whereat the pimple with the man began to cry. Don’t worry, don’t worry, the handsome pimple said, I’ll take you to my dermatologist, and in no time you’ll be on your way to beauty and happiness. And that very day the handsome pimple took the blemished pimple to the doctor. The doctor shook his head and clicked his tongue and said that in his entire career he had never seen anything like it. But I think we can help you, he said, whereupon he put the pimple up on a leather table, removed the scraps of clothing that adhered to the man, and with the help of a nurse squeezed the man until he burst. O what a relief for the pimple! Now, keep this bandage on for a week, the doctor said, and don’t worry about a thing. You’re going to be all right. And sure enough, after a week, when the bandage came off, only the tiniest scar remained where the man had been. I took it to work and showed it to Prudence, she said it made her sick. I showed it to the art director. She accused me of writing it, saying it reminded her of my biographical articles for MUI. Harvey said it was genuine dada prose and high art. He also said it would make a great movie. I mentioned this to Jose, and now he’s trying to get Harvey to collaborate with him on a scenario. Anyway, tonight, more to reciprocate than get help I gave the beginning of the novel to Jose. He took it, not reluctantly so much as with a touch of contempt, like it was all right for me to help him out with the mechanics of English but I shouldn’t presume to swap fiction with him. Nonetheless he was back in half an hour saying that I was on the verge of creating another Don Quixote.