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Authors: Matthew Chapman
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Marshall down. I think she fought this development hard and won certain concessions. No new students would be allowed to attend but those who were there could stay. Before long there were only ten children left. And then they closed the place. Approaching fifty, Mrs. Marshall applied for a place at New Hall, Cambridge. Thirty years later than she intended, she became an undergraduate.
My sister stayed almost to the end, but I, thinking I was ready to start my war on education, demanded at the age of seven to leave the kind, inspiring Mrs. Marshall and go to a school I’ll call St. Anne’s, an all-boys prep school in Cambridge, where you were forced to wear uniforms and got thrashed if you misbehaved. Here was a worthy adversary, I thought. And so it was.
From Mrs. Marshall I took with me the only weapon I had. The brutality of the new place would be escaped through dreams, by the aforementioned fantasies of heroism and sacrifice, and later of marrying an heiress or joining the Merchant Marine. Most frequently I dreamed of furtive erotic encounters with one of the few misshapen females who taught there, this latter orgy of the inner screen being consummated several times a day in the wooden stalls of the putrid bathrooms.
This dreaming of all kinds became a way of life, compulsion, and finally a source of income.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Trail of Tears
At 2.30 P.M., we cross into Tennessee at Bristol in the northeastern corner of the state. The first sign I see is on a pawnshop, ‘Guitars, Guns, Knives, and Jewelry.’
Tennessee, my guidebook tells me, is famous for Elvis Presley, the Scopes Trial, the Ku Klux Klan, and Oak Ridge, the once-secret city which helped develop the first nuclear bomb. It’s also known for moonshine, which in turn gave birth to stock-car racing. Moonshiners built special cars to outpace the cops on back roads and tracks and in their spare time raced against each other. Along with moonshiners, there are now ’sang diggers who dig for ginseng in the mountains and sell it to Asia for as much as $500 a pound.
As we leave Bristol, I look down out the window of the bus. A car drifts up from behind. A bumper sticker on the front reads, ‘Got Jesus?’ As the car goes by, another on the back says, ‘Yes, Lord, I will ride with you.’ In between sits an overweight woman with a sullen face and a set mouth. The more I see of it, the more convinced I become that there’s something sexual about this adoration of Jesus. Every slogan confirms it. ‘Oh, Lord, Hold Me in Your Arms, for I Am Thine.’ ‘I Give Myself to Thee, Sweet Jesus.’
I see a woman married to some blundering, be-gutted, half-bankrupt Bubba who’s been trying to beat her down for years and hasn’t quite pulled it off. They rarely have sex because it’s become a weapon of denial for both. It’s war. One day the wife finds Jesus. Now she has a secret and profound relationship with another man and what’s more the guy is often depicted half naked
(he’s got nails through his hands, but his stomach is flat) and he’s like a young, great looking hippie (which pisses the husband off right there), but he’s also extremely well connected (unlike the husband), universally loved, and highly dominant—‘Thou shalt do this, Thou shalt not do that’—and Mrs. Bubba rolls over and gives herself to him as flagrantly as any ‘sub’ —right there in front of the husband! —floundering around and ‘hollerin” like … well, you’ve seen it on TV. You tell me when you last heard a woman make that kind of noise.
And all the husband can do is stand there and watch.
Victory for the wife? I’d say so.
Except you don’t feel it’s working. The philosophical question this woman asks herself is universal and interesting, but the answer, aptly reduced to a bumper sticker, is narrow and trite. She states that she is convinced, but everything about her says otherwise. Even when you see the wild demonstrations of belief, the hollering and
My sister stayed almost to the end, but I, thinking I was ready to start my war on education, demanded at the age of seven to leave the kind, inspiring Mrs. Marshall and go to a school I’ll call St. Anne’s, an all-boys prep school in Cambridge, where you were forced to wear uniforms and got thrashed if you misbehaved. Here was a worthy adversary, I thought. And so it was.
From Mrs. Marshall I took with me the only weapon I had. The brutality of the new place would be escaped through dreams, by the aforementioned fantasies of heroism and sacrifice, and later of marrying an heiress or joining the Merchant Marine. Most frequently I dreamed of furtive erotic encounters with one of the few misshapen females who taught there, this latter orgy of the inner screen being consummated several times a day in the wooden stalls of the putrid bathrooms.
This dreaming of all kinds became a way of life, compulsion, and finally a source of income.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Trail of Tears
At 2.30 P.M., we cross into Tennessee at Bristol in the northeastern corner of the state. The first sign I see is on a pawnshop, ‘Guitars, Guns, Knives, and Jewelry.’
Tennessee, my guidebook tells me, is famous for Elvis Presley, the Scopes Trial, the Ku Klux Klan, and Oak Ridge, the once-secret city which helped develop the first nuclear bomb. It’s also known for moonshine, which in turn gave birth to stock-car racing. Moonshiners built special cars to outpace the cops on back roads and tracks and in their spare time raced against each other. Along with moonshiners, there are now ’sang diggers who dig for ginseng in the mountains and sell it to Asia for as much as $500 a pound.
As we leave Bristol, I look down out the window of the bus. A car drifts up from behind. A bumper sticker on the front reads, ‘Got Jesus?’ As the car goes by, another on the back says, ‘Yes, Lord, I will ride with you.’ In between sits an overweight woman with a sullen face and a set mouth. The more I see of it, the more convinced I become that there’s something sexual about this adoration of Jesus. Every slogan confirms it. ‘Oh, Lord, Hold Me in Your Arms, for I Am Thine.’ ‘I Give Myself to Thee, Sweet Jesus.’
I see a woman married to some blundering, be-gutted, half-bankrupt Bubba who’s been trying to beat her down for years and hasn’t quite pulled it off. They rarely have sex because it’s become a weapon of denial for both. It’s war. One day the wife finds Jesus. Now she has a secret and profound relationship with another man and what’s more the guy is often depicted half naked
(he’s got nails through his hands, but his stomach is flat) and he’s like a young, great looking hippie (which pisses the husband off right there), but he’s also extremely well connected (unlike the husband), universally loved, and highly dominant—‘Thou shalt do this, Thou shalt not do that’—and Mrs. Bubba rolls over and gives herself to him as flagrantly as any ‘sub’ —right there in front of the husband! —floundering around and ‘hollerin” like … well, you’ve seen it on TV. You tell me when you last heard a woman make that kind of noise.
And all the husband can do is stand there and watch.
Victory for the wife? I’d say so.
Except you don’t feel it’s working. The philosophical question this woman asks herself is universal and interesting, but the answer, aptly reduced to a bumper sticker, is narrow and trite. She states that she is convinced, but everything about her says otherwise. Even when you see the wild demonstrations of belief, the hollering and
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