Chapter 12

The cab I had was a real old one that smelled like someone'd just tossed his cookies in it. I always get those vomity kind of cabs if I go anywhere late at night. What made it worse, it was so quite and lonesome out, even though it was Saturday night. I didn't see hardly anybody on the street. Now and then you just saw a man and a girl crossing the street, with their arms around each other's waists and all, or a bunch of hoodlumy-looking guys and their dates, all of them laughing like hyenas at something you could be wasn't funny. New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can here it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed. I kept wishing I could go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe. But finally, after I was riding a while, the cab driver and I sort of struck up a conversation. His name was Horwitz. He was a much better guy than the other driver I'd had. Anyway, I thought maybe he might know about the ducks.

Normal Jean

Story by Mary Narducci

One winter evening a year or so back, I wandered into the Copley Square Dunkin Donuts. Across the bay from me I noticed a blonde girl scribbling in a notebook and chain-smoking. Pretty soon a guy came in and sat down next to her and (I could scarcely believe my ears) asked her if they had not me at a party sometime somewhere. She turned to him and in a flat voice unreeled from her wordspool yard after yard of verbigeration. Her discourse had to do with several generations of defunct Kennedys and the CIA and the FBI and I know not what all, but it seemed to involve the most terrible mutilation of the mind and body. In less than a minute the young man was clearly sorry he had spoken at all and threw up his hands in an apotropaic gesture and begged her to desist, let him alone, just let him drink his coffee in peace, please, okay? Somebody told me the other day how the people who roam the streets haranguing the middle distance are rarely if ever molested by the bohaymas ... the crocodile spawn among us -- you know, the folks Bernie Goetz imagines some kind of bounty has been place upon. So maybe it is some kind of adaptive maneuver, psychosis or the counterfeiting of it ... Certainly a girl who just wanted to sit in a public place and drink her drink and invite her soul (perhaps she does have a room of her own, but it is dreary) could do worse than adopt such a strategy. But then another though struck me: At this time the 'bloids were full of how, after years of being sequestered under the twentieth century equivalent of lettre de cachet in a federal funny farm because she knew all kinds of awesome 1960s secrets, Marilyn Monroe had escaped and was at large. So here was somebody who had been turned out of the hatch with a jar of Thorazine and a modest stipend -- the Krazy Pay as it is called -- but no longer knowing who the hell she is. But she had determined (maybe with the aide or mirrors, which, like copulation, are abominable, because the multiply our image) that since she is blonde and blue-eyed and had once been pretty in the confectionery way we like around here: Oh wow, I must be Marilyn Monroe.

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Okay, Ask.

This was for my Massachusetts College of Art Spring semester sophomore illustration class. The assignment was to draw a cute animal. Our instructor, Mister Floyd Covert (MassArt), felt we were only drawing stuff we liked. His long-term plan was to have us show the cute stuff to potential clients in the summer, then have real-world stories to tell the next Fall.

As you can see, I wasn't in a cute mood that semester. This probably had more to do with the Dostoevsky-like flophouse I was living in at the time than anything else. Anyway, we had to use photo reference. I found an old issue of Scientific Monthly. In it was a photo story of Rhino Rats. The photo I chose as a reference was the most disgusting one in the bunch. The skin was pale and looked like intestines.

I also decided to use crosshatch pen-and-ink. Covering one inch at a time took forever. It must've looked like time-lapse photography to see a little bit more inking done to it every week. I worked from left to right, top to bottom. When the top third inked, I found out about the Smurfs Saturday morning cartoon. Trying to pass this off as a social statement, I quickly penciled the Smurf and inked it.

You'd think this was right up Mr. Covert's alley, but he was surprisingly appalled. The exact word he used was "sophomoric". One of the biggest laughs I ever got out of my classmates was reminding him that (a) this was a sophomore class and that (b) if I can't do this now, then when?

Mr. Covert eventually relented, eager to move the class along (did he ever teach more than 30 minute classes?) The Smurf blue and bloodstains were his ideas. After all that drama, the drawing earned an A-, and is currently living in Paris.