Many people crawl to sex to be forgiven, Valerie, so will you absolve me? Will you press me into your lovely belly button? By the way, have y'all come across this construction site witticism, "I'll eat a mile of her sh*t just to see where it came from"? Of course, that's not meant literally, but neither was the SCUM Manifesto. In any case, its central weakness is not its literary suggestion that all men should be killed, but its portrait of the ideal woman as one who's "dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant ["] who trust only their own animal, gutter instincts ["] whose sole diversion is prowling for emotional thrills and excitement," and the best way to get even with a man, for being a man, is to "ram an ice pick up his a**hole," so the fully realized woman should act like the worst kind of man, per Solanas. (Discussing the last voyage of Gulliver, Borges points out a similar blunder in Swift when he had his animals act like humans, and his humans like animals, a reversal that cancels itself out.)
What's not allegorical, successful or otherwise, are recent stories of men, in Boulder and Tulsa, who squeezed themselves into public toilets and piously waited in sh*t and piss to breathlessly admire, from below, not-exactly-amicable female posteriors. If only Swift and Solanas could comment on these cases. Though extreme, they implicate us all, for just as we're ready to bask in another's glory, we're also smeared and flecked by any other man's depravity. On balance, though, are men so foul and murderous? What, you don't read newspapers?
Alone, a man can be monstrous enough, but when you band them together, drape them in spiffy uniforms then hand them the deadliest weapons available, what do you get? Heroes, of course! And there were plenty on display during the latest Show Us Your Shoes Parade on the boardwalk. Riding in individual cars, Miss America contestants were shorn in over the top, custom-made shoes that embodied their states, all but Miss Kansas, who simply wore combat boots, along with her Army uniform, as she's an active soldier. Uniformed troops were also interspersed throughout this rather lackluster, low-budgeted affair, with the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force all represented. Not just patriotism, but militarism was in the air. Accompanied by roughly 60 children in red, white and blue, most holding flags or buntings, a local yokel twanged his way through Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." (To book Greenwood himself would have cost at least $20,000, his fee in 2007.) Written in 1983, it has become an anthem to those who cheer any American war, including ones they haven't heard of. On YouTube, videos of this song are filled almost exclusively by images of soldiers.
Halfway through the parade, a group of perfectly ordinary looking women appeared, with several rather frumpy or fat, so it would not be unreasonable to assume these were simply ladies from a local organization that fight against some disease or vice, perhaps Mothers Against Driving while Drunk, High on Meth, Texting and Rapping. It came as a shock, to this observer at least, that these were all former Miss Americas! Subjected to a regiment of healthy eating and endless exercising, not to mention constant grinning whenever in public, these women apparently let go the second they got the crown. During the contest the next day, one of the eliminated beauties actually declared on camera that she couldn't wait to get back to her hotel room to scarf Kentucky Fried Chicken. Pressure over, let's kick back and balloon, American style, with six-packs of Bud and tubs of the Colonel's original recipe. Why not? Everybody else is doing it. Before she won, this year's winner was even caught on tape sneering at last year's queen, "She's fat as sh*t!" Then she, too, will turn to redolent earth before too long.
Dethroning woman as goddess, Swift uncovers and wallows in her actual sh*t. Debunking male pretensions, Solanas charges that everything that comes from him is figuratively sh*t. Daily, actually several times daily, each of us is grounded, humbled, by this burden that cannot be properly assimilated into the culture, though it's spewed, often enough, from our mouths, out on the streets.
But enough of this, OK, I won't say it. Let's get off the boardwalk, for Atlantic City isn't just that. With less than 40,000 people, this is no city, really, but a town with two dozen high-rise hotels, and a daily influx of day trippers. On Pacific Avenue, just a long block from the ocean-fronted promenade, the seediness begins. Here, you can see cheap residential hotels, liquor stores, tattoo parlors, cash-for-gold dealers and strip joints. At A.C. Dolls, a sign advertises "Divorce Parties!" Even before dusk, prostitutes prowl, and there are plenty of cops also, to make sure no tourists get mugged, so unless you wander further inland, you won't likely be punctured and divested.
On a recent evening, I turned from Pacific onto South Georgia Avenue to photograph a curious sign, with "CASH FOR GOLD" over "ROOMING HOUSE." In the distance, a dozen young people were hanging out in front of the well-lit porch of another flop mansion, with its shared bathrooms of antiquated fixtures, and thin mattresses draped in dull, gray sheets that flaunt constellations of stains and cigarette burns, like bruises and sores on a worn out body, though still sexy. In the dark, a bi-racial couple strolled towards me, the woman in hooded sweat, the man in knit cap. In this society, white men command just about every board room, while black dudes rule the sidewalks, at least those with folks still loitering on them. It took me a minute to get my shot right, and when I was done, some older guy sitting on a low step huffed, "You shouldn't be taking your camera out around here, man. Those people were saying they wanted to smash it!"
"Ah, they're always talking sh*t!"
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