Love of Ages: Kerouac, Betty Friedan, and Paul Dirac

Another night of sleeping, except I left my body in the corner, and my consciousness found itself tucked into a corner, witnessing:

Pasty Kerouac, soaked with booze, unable to move fast, drunk through and through, sopping with euphoria. He removed his shirt. He was alone in the basement. A couch was pushed up against one wall. He sat, rubbing his fat white belly, then unbuckling his pants. A single bulb, burning unhindered, lighted the subsequent action. "I'm Jack," he kept whispering, "Jack Kerouac." His pants were caught at his shoes, which he now bent forward to reach and untie. It was filled with an effort unwelcome to Jack, for he cussed, "Goddamnit," and proceeded to fumble with the bows on his left shoe. "Fuck it," he said, tearing both shoes off and hurling them across the room. They hit the wall in the opposite corner of the basement. He pulled off his socks and sat in his underwear. The couch creaked every time he shifted his weight. He couldn't sit still, scratching his arms, his thighs, rubbing his nose, itching his crotch through his white briefs.

The presence in the room was suddenly heavier. I saw her, an adumbration at first, but becoming real. Materializing. "Hey, Jackie," she said, coming toward him on the couch. Her lipstick was smeared around her lips, in grotesque strokes of inexperience and indulgent lechery. "Jackie."

"Call me Big Sur," he said, not smiling, not nodding, but twitching. He pulled on his nose, scratched his forehead, slicked back his greasy black hair. "I'm Big Sur, and nothing else. Don't you dare get off calling me more or less."

"And you will call me by my name, Big Sur, and that's Betty Friedan. No derogatory names this time, nothing at all like that. It will be yes, Ms. Friedan, or no, Ms. Friedan."

He shifted around, squirming, putting one hand over his growing erection. Ms. Friedan removed her top. Her breasts, pointy and barely average, held Jack's attention. Soon her clothes were completely removed. She put two fingers into her mouth and licked them. Ms. Friedan took extra care in swabbing her tongue with those fingers, and let the spittle drip from them before she buried them between her legs. "I'm wet, Big Sur, if you care."

"I care, sure I care," he said. He sneezed. He coughed. His hand was bloody after three hard hacks. "Fuck," he said, "this shit keeps coming up."

Ms. Friedan came to him, kneeling on the couch, hovering over Kerouac. You won't feel nothing while I'm here, you big fat writer."

"Hey!" he yelled. "Fuck you," he said. "I'm Big Sur, and nothing else."

"I forgot. I'll make you forget." She lifted his bloody hand and put her tongue to his palm. She slid her tongue over his hand, leaving a trail in the red that was dripping down his wrist. She swallowed, licked her lips, and slapped his palm onto her chest, making a handprint, of sorts, before dragging it down over her belly. "I'm a writer, too, you know." Friedan leaned forward to lick his forehead.

"I love your sleepy, drunkard eyes," he said. "Uh-oh, you got my blood on your cooch."

"I don't care, Love," she made his fingers work between her legs. "I don't...really...care." She licked his forehead again, letting his fingers take on their own endeavor. Her breasts found his face, and Jack lifted his head so he could suck on a nipple.

Ms. Friedan reached below, where tension and heat were churning, and popped Jack's Kerouac free, letting it stick up high, throbbing with anticipation. "This," Betty Friedan announced, "is what I call The Feminine Mystique." She inserted Jack's Kerouac into her hole and squeezed her muscles tight. Jack let his head fall back on the couch. "Do you like it? Do you like the Feminine Mystique?"

"You're fucking the King of the Beats," he said, sleepily, "and that's the best you can do?"

Ms. Friedan worked him hard, using her thighs and hips, smashing his face into her chest. She used her arms for leverage, she varied the motions, speeds, frequencies, and styles, yet his face remained calm, unperturbed, unaffected. "I should be blowing your mind," she said. "I'm the Fountain of this Age, the one and only cognizant female." She was out of breath. She slowed, trying a new approach, letting her lungs catch up. "Life so far, for the female, hasn't been that great. But I'm the female of the age, the fountain of bettering our women."

"And I'll fuck all of em," Jack said. "They're all housewives, junkies for cooking and cleaning, and that's okay." He was falling asleep. "I don't hold it against them."

Ms. Friedan slapped him across the face. His eyes opened. She hit him with her fist. "How dare you say that about women!" She rode him hard, violently thrusting, hitting a new fierce intensity.

"Ahh," Jack said.

"This goes Beyond Gender, you realize." She kicked and scratched, nearing orgasm. "This isn't about gender, it goes beyond. This affects you fat white males, too. This affects the WASPs, the writers, the businessmen. You alcoholic piece of shit."

"Ahh," Jack said. His reached orgasm without flinching. And another figure materialized in the corner. He wore a suit, very professional and unexpected. His hair was short and curly and very dark, the same as his moustache. He sat on the cement floor, cross-legged.

Ms. Friedan felt the explosion inside of her, and would have normally enjoyed it, except for the fact that she was pissed over the statements her lover had been making. She hit him, in the face, with her fist. Jack closed his eyes and leaned back into the couch. She removed herself from him and screamed upon seeing the long, juicy string of semen hanging from between her legs and Jack's Kerouac. "You fucking imbecile. You goddamn shit to come inside a lady, a lady like me. To come inside Betty Friedan. Don't you know!" She was belligerent. "Don't you know you never, EVER, come inside a lady of status!"

"It's either that or in your face," he said.

She began wiping away the sperm with her hand, and rubbing it on Jack's chest. Betty Friedan was gagging, narrowly holding back a stream of vomit, as she cleared away a colossal load of beatnik semen. "What do you call this!" she shouted. "Huh? What do you call this?"

"Stringy. Super stringy," a voice came from the floor. "A theory of strings. A super theory of strings. No, that isn't right. A Superstring Theory." He nodded, smiling, licking his moustache. "Yes, that's more like it. No, in fact, that IS it. Not like, but IS."

"Who the fuck are you?" Betty Friedan yelled from Jack's lap. "And why are you here? Can't you see we're trying to be alone?"

"You're not alone," he said, lightly leaning forward, "you're together. And I'm Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, and I've just come up with a brand new theory. I'll call it the Dirac Equation."

"How does it go?" Jack asked. Ms. Friedan slapped him.

Paul Dirac sat quietly, looking at the floor.

"At any rate, you soiled me," Ms. Friedan said, punching Jack in the gut. "And you didn't even make me come."

"That's hardly his problem," Paul Dirac said.

"So are you going to fix it?" she asked Jack, licking his lips, his nose, around his eyes.

"Yes, I suppose, yes."

"Then do me a second time, and let me get off, and then maybe I'll let you go again, like you did the first time. You bastard." She looked at his cock. "Are you ready, or do we have to wait? I'm surprised it works with so much booze in it."

"No problem. It's no problem, like Neal said one day. It doesn't affect real men like us."

"So, are you ready?" Betty Friedan grabbed her tits, rubbing them, pushed them up, let them drop. She tugged at the nipples. Jack, in the meantime, spit in his hand, making the dried blood turn wet again, and held his penis. He stroked it, rubbing up and down.

"Gotta re-energize it," he explained. "Gotta give it back its interior charm, let it know what it's missing, what it's going to get, again. I'm the King of the Beats," he said, motioning to his working hand. "King of the Beats. Father of the Mad."

"Are you ready," Betty Friedan said, "for a Second Wave of Feminism?" She didn't wait for an answer, but forced Jack's hand out and pushed his Kerouac inside. "You never gave me the opportunity to show you the full Women's Movement. We can move our hips differently than men, you know." She sighed, happy with her progress. Jack grabbed her ass. He leaned forward, nibbling her nipples.

Paul Dirac had been crawling toward the couch the entire time. On his hands and knees, he made slow movements, careful not to rip his suit.

Betty Friedan shrieked when Dirac's tongue poked itself around her anus and slid its way between her cheeks. A moment later she was crooning, welcoming the arrival of another partier. A writer and a scientist meant she was at the top of her game.

"This is what I call anti-matter," Paul Dirac said, licking his moustache and sucking in lengthy gasps of air through his nose. "I now believe in God." He viewed Jack and Betty, their lascivious movements, reflected on the individual gain for pleasure. "This is quantum mechanics at its pith. This is the pinnacle of how problems arise, and how they might be resolved." Paul Dirac snuffed, for he had allergies and this sex in the air wasn't good for his sinuses. "If this is how they want to do it with two, what about adding a third? DxRxJ=B, but that would be B to the second power because of a glitch in simple arithmetic. And it wouldn't be that simple because the angles are not right angles and the contours, of course, are constantly in flux." He licked his finger, looked at Betty, who was heeing and hawing, and said, "This is a Negative Probability." He bent low, angling his head to get a better peek. "Simply because I know nothing about what is going on." He stood, turning from the copulating couple. "I'll give one quarter of my nobel prize to the person who can accurately map out that one." He cocked a thumb at their bodies, shaking his head. "I've had my jollies, that's for sure. And it's left a funny taste in my mouth. That's all too typical, in the lesson of equality. For pros equal cons, and with good comes bad." He walked through the wall, his voice echoing, "But, I'm satisfied."

I left with Mr. Dirac because I'd seen enough. I re-entered my body and tried to write off what I'd witnessed as a dream. I blamed it all on a wicked, disastrous subconscious.

Hail! Jack Kerouac

Mr. Kerouac, where do you reside? With your beer-soaked breath, and your fat white belly; wherever did you go? You left, misunderstood, not fully appreciated, and with a scowl on your face. You were mad, spitting drunk, and you died from a little blood, let loose to flood your organs and give you up to the mad hatter Creator you believed in so fervently.

Jack, Kerouac, come; come wherever you are.

How does one summon Jack Kerouac? Mr. On the Road; Big Sur, Haiku(s). Mr. Dharma Bum. How do you speak with Kerouac, and ask him why the hell he fucked up so badly. Why he left his family. Would you like to just say he meant a lot to you, even though you read him almost forty years after his stupid, immature death?

Well, you can summon Jack Kerouac by buying two liters of whiskey. To begin, you will want to drink the first liter, tainting its kiss with nothing except a grimace and a sigh. Next, you should break something, like a lamp, or a vase, or a mirror. Break something loud, dramatic, and, hopefully, regretful. Next, sip on the second liter of whiskey, and begin to cry. Whisper to the dark room, where you sit by yourself, that nobody understands you, and that you're not afraid to die, you're just too goddamn religious to do it yourself. Whisper that. Think of Jack, and whisper those things with full-on meaning. He'll come. He'll be there any minute.

And if Neal Cassady shows up, ask for his help. He's likely to spit in your face and ask you where your sister, or your mother, or your wife, is at. Don't tell him, because he'll make good on your "offer."

If Jack doesn't show up, don't despair. He hardly ever shows his face anymore. It's too bloated, and whiskey(ed) up. It's okay to scream how much you hate him. It's all right to yell a little, and holler about why he's so damn elusive, and enigmatic all of the time. Tell him, he hasn't heard it before, that he could have had such a long, prosperous life, living as long or longer than Allen Ginsburg. He could have slept with Allen. They could have been lovers. The hippie and the conservative. Ishmael and Queequeg. Leg over leg, arms entangled, genitalia nobodies business.

Offer an incantation: To Kerouac, how they loved you. To Jack, how we do still. You aren't ever going to go away. We'll burn your words and send the smoke, offering you praise, but hang our heads in shame.