Arts & Manners

The lectern is a jaded young thing. Lift the tail, it has no gender. Yet they rush at it, aroused and drunk with instinct: luna moths drawn to a mate across the wide forest night. Stage center there’s a funerary contraption. Someone’s hall umbrella stand, made deciduous for the evening, autumnal leaves strewn beneath. Just above, an immense banner of Allende and Neruda, jowl to jowl. Crude as an exclamation point. Could be the sketch for a 1940s MGM film poster, “Salvador’s Back and Pablo’s Got Him!” Probably the poet wears glasses. I don’t know which is which. And don’t much care: They’re both dead. But it’s fun to watch the live ones. The American Communist first string is here and they have their way with the lectern in all 78 positions. A speakers’ Kama Sutra at Town Hall.

Angela Davis. Haven’t been this let down since I swore off blind dates. Angela is not beautiful. Sharklike, she has doubled rows of teeth, her bite so erratic it could punch out Brahms’ “Lullaby” on a music roll. She suffocates the lectern, doing athletic pushups on it. Her skull lolls left-right, broken-necked, under the big Afro hair dryer. Angela screams, but her emphases are random, crazed. She’ll hit “the” in “the people’s revolution.” Only Spanish names excite her. She pronounces like a Berlitz record: “Pahb-lo. Ney-roo-dahh! Chill-leh!” Her rs come from the Elmer Fudd school of elocution. Angela hasn’t one damn thing to say. I’m astonished: a blank. The light of intelligence in her eyes couldn’t power your kid’s bed lamp.

The lectern is a jaded young thing. Lift the tail, it has no gender. Yet they rush at it, aroused and drunk with instinct: luna moths drawn to a mate across the wide forest night. Stage center there’s a funerary contraption. Someone’s hall umbrella stand, made deciduous for the evening, autumnal leaves strewn beneath. Just above, an immense banner of Allende and Neruda, jowl to jowl. Crude as an exclamation point. Could be the sketch for a 1940s MGM film poster, “Salvador’s Back and Pablo’s Got Him!” Probably the poet wears glasses. I don’t know which is which. And don’t much care: They’re both dead. But it’s fun to watch the live ones. The American Communist first string is here and they have their way with the lectern in all 78 positions. A speakers’ Kama Sutra at Town Hall.

Angela Davis. Haven’t been this let down since I swore off blind dates. Angela is not beautiful. Sharklike, she has doubled rows of teeth, her bite so erratic it could punch out Brahms’ “Lullaby” on a music roll. She suffocates the lectern, doing athletic pushups on it. Her skull lolls left-right, broken-necked, under the big Afro hair dryer. Angela screams, but her emphases are random, crazed. She’ll hit “the” in “the people’s revolution.” Only Spanish names excite her. She pronounces like a Berlitz record: “Pahb-lo. Ney-roo-dahh! Chill-leh!” Her rs come from the Elmer Fudd school of elocution. Angela hasn’t one damn thing to say. I’m astonished: a blank. The light of intelligence in her eyes couldn’t power your kid’s bed lamp.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.