NEWSLETTER

In ’69 Gangemi wrote Olt, a 55-page speedball that you should be fined for not having read. He is also the author of The Volcanoes From Puebla, another criminally underappreciated title that critics like to label “transfiction” when really it’s just a damn good book. He sent Vice an entire unpublished, untitled novel made up of loosely connected short stories that are all amazingly funny and dirty and dark. If life were fair he’d be selling millions of books. As it is, he should be your new favorite author.



The Two Feminists

Story Read By: Comics artist Victor Cayro after drinking a bottle of Tuaca, two glasses of gin, four beers, two shots of whisky, and another couple of beers. Click here to open the player in a new window

As Nick was crossing 37th Street he heard a woman cursing. He turned west to see what was happening. Near the middle of the block he came upon two women struggling to change a flat tire on an old car. They were sweating, had dirty hands, and one had skinned her knuckles.

Nick stood behind them and watched for a minute. Because they had hairy legs, sloppy clothing, and grim-faced expressions, he figured they were radical feminists. One of them looked up and glared at him. Her blouse was beginning to stick to her back, and she was about to pop her bra strap. She probably attended a women’s support group. Nick thought it odd that she needed support to be a woman.

He wanted to help, but was faced with a dilemma. If he offered his assistance, the implication would be that the women needed help because they were weaker than men, and not as good with tools. He might provoke their feminismo. Maybe they would yell at him, accuse him of sexism, call him a male chauvinist pig. He looked closer and saw that the problem was the lug nuts were rusted, and one of them was stuck. They needed either more muscle or a short length of pipe to increase the leverage of the wrench. But they wouldn’t do anything with their weak, skinny arms. They had arms like Olive Oyl’s.

Nick regretted that he could not be their Popeye. If they were lucky, they would be aided by a passing bulldyke. Although no beauty, she would provide the needed muscle. So far they were unsuccessful in changing the flat tire. But he observed how they worked as a team and tried to rally their spirits. “Sisterhood is powerful,” he said, and walked away.

Nick headed back to Fifth Avenue. He turned south, thinking of the two weak feminists. They had barely enough strength to be pallbearers at a cat’s funeral. He wondered what they did for a living. They could not be editorial cartoonists: It was not a gender-specific occupation, but for some reason editorial cartoonists were all male. They could not be inventors, for a convention of female inventors could be held in a telephone booth. If human beings had to depend on women for inventions, we would still be in the Stone Age.

He was relieved that he had no trouble with them, for some feminists were violent. His friend Otto had told him what happened to Andy Warhol. A crazed feminist once entered his studio, waited until he got off the telephone, then shot him four times in the chest. At the hospital he was declared dead, but managed to survive. Otto could not understand why the woman who shot him served only two years in prison.

The tune “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” ran through his head. At home he ate lots of spinach, for Popeye was one of his heroes. Nick noticed that he was walking strongly. The encounter with the two radical feminists had somehow energized him. Did they go to meetings that used Roberta’s Rules of Order? Nick was a feminist, too. He strongly believed in equal rights for women.

But he had wondered about the correlation between lesbianism and radical feminism. What were the statistics? It sounded like a worthy article for a men’s magazine, if the editor had the balls. But unfortunately they had balls the size of sesame seeds.

Why not a feminist neighborhood, with names like Carrie Catt Road and Susan B. Anthony Drive? Carrie Catt: what a name! Why not Debbie Dogg? He imagined a province in Canada for women only. It would be named Womanitoba, and the motto on the license plates would be “The Pussy Power Province.”

Nick thought again of Otto, whose sister Ursula was a German feminist. Otto said that she was writing her femoirs. The consciousness-raising meetings that she went to opened with “The Ride of the Valkyries.” Otto had told him they wore uniforms to their meetings, and also about a Hairy Woman Olympics that Urusla attended. Gorillas were ineligible. The gold medal was won by a radical feminist from Armenia. Her legs were so hairy they cast fuzzy shadows, and her underarms looked like she had two men in headlocks.


The Young Actress

Story Read By: Comics artist Victor Cayro after drinking a bottle of Tuaca, two glasses of gin, four beers, two shots of whisky, and another couple of beers. Click here to open the player in a new window

At a mailbox Nick saw a beautiful woman with a copy of Back Stage visible in her shoulder bag. She dropped a 9x12 envelope into the mailbox. He figured she was an actress sending a résumé and a headshot to a producer. She had a perfect ass, so perhaps she also enclosed a tailshot. He imagined all the men who had wanted a piece of her. What a life! If she took off her clothes, she might go to summer stock. Directors and casting agents were notorious for trading sex for jobs. In the play Kennedy’s Children an actress traded sex for free hairdressing. And it was not uncommon for struggling actresses in Los Angeles to trade sex for dental work and auto repairs—perhaps a blow job for a valve job.

Nick wondered if she was already working under a big producer. He thought of all the showers she had taken. The young actress was dressed for a hot day, wearing a designer t-shirt and a skirt that barely reached the middle of her thighs. She had the lovely tanned skin of a summer blonde. But what was her real hair color? Only her boyfriend knew for sure. He thought of Raymond Chandler, “A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” The Nathanael West character in The Day of the Locust would say, “What a quiff! What a quiff!”

His friend Harry would pick her up easily. He would ask, “Who handles you?” Then he would mention a couple of big-time agents he knew in show business. Nick was intimidated by women of such beauty. But Harry was not intimidated at all. He knew that beautiful women were often lonely and unsatisfied with their lives. If they did have men, they were frequently bored with them. He had once quoted Alphonse Karr: “If men knew all that women think, they would be twenty times more audacious.” Harry would hit a home run with the young actress, but Nick wouldn’t get to first base. He thought of the Mexican poet José Juan Tablada: “You women who walk on Fifth Avenue, so close to my eyes, so far from my life.”

Did she keep in shape by running or by exercising at a health club? The young beauty had firm arms, a flat stomach, and a complexion that money could not buy. Nick wondered if her acting was any good. Perhaps Dorothy Parker would say of her performance, “She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.” He remembered a scene from an old movie. A Broadway producer says to a beautiful young actress from Indiana, “You stick with me, kid, and I’ll make you a star.” Later in the movie he takes her to the window of his penthouse and together they look down at the sparkling lights of the city. He puts his arm around her waist and says, “This is my town, baby, and if you play your cards right, it can be your town, too.”

An hour later Nick was in a restaurant a few blocks away, sitting at the bar and waiting to be called for a table. He saw a number of men staring at someone who had just walked in. It was the beautiful young actress who had been at the mailbox! Was she unemployed and looking for a job? The young woman spoke briefly with the maître d’ and then walked directly to the manager. The heads of the men all turned as they tracked her. Gratified by the attention, she was reminded of her days as the leading actress at Cuyahoga Community College. Nick was unable to see her. His view was blocked by a fat slob talking on a cell phone. But he heard the actress ask the manager if he needed any waitresses.

He looked her over, then gave her a special Manager’s Application. She went to the bar to fill it out. Nick saw that the application had two questions: 1) What is your marital status? 2) How do you feel about the ozone layer and the environment? As the young beauty filled out the application, Nick looked at her and thought of Shakespeare: “Ripeness is all.”

He knew that she had only a few precious years to make it as an actress. Meanwhile the clock was ticking and she was getting older. Every week her breasts sagged by another thousandth of an inch. Unless she worked out like a demon and restricted her caloric intake with iron discipline, her ass, hips, and thighs would slowly and inexorably become more ponderous. Eventually she would be too old, her freshness gone, with facial lines showing in close-ups. A new crop of young beauties from Chicago and Kansas City and Minneapolis would catch the eyes of the directors and casting agents.

When she returned the completed application, the manager saw that she was married. About the only principle he had was not hitting on married women. “We have no openings,” he said, lying as usual. “Besides, your feelings about the ozone layer and the environment are unacceptable. They run contrary to our corporate philosophy. We believe in a dirty planet because a dirty planet is a profitable planet.” He turned her away. “We cannot hire a radical environmentalist. You may even be a Communist!”



© Kenneth Gangemi, 2008


SIX STORIES | 1 | 2 | 3 |

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