[log in to unmask] wrote:

> In a message dated 12/30/2004 2:00:30 AM Central Standard Time, Ken
> writes writes:
>
>     He awoke in a room flooded with sunshine. He lay on a very large bed.
>
> now wasn't Stoney the one captured by the Galactic beings that sent
> down instructions gleaned from the akashic record on how to do the
> Hokey Pokey....at midnight on New Years eve ..the hidden meaning in
> this exotic dance (as my 5 yr old will tell you ) is just what this
> country needs ....besides the Beach diet
> .what I don't understand is just when you get to the sex scene (see
> above) you cut the rest out ?
> All the other Galactic beings go through sex changes ; but you???and
> as for the afore mentioned "finger stones" ...hah ...on a not so
> recent trip to the Dordogne with the lime mafia they showed us finger
> stones from the Cromagman era (17000 bc) only they kept calling them
> dildos .
> signed sense and sensibility

Excellent suggestions!
As you may remember teh sex scene in Being There comes along somewhere
past the halfway point in the movie.
This may have been what Kosinski needed at the time, but it has become
evident to me that contemporary writers/readers want their sex sooner.
So... as we have this pre-New Years lull in effect I spent yesterday
huddled next to the electric heater in the office extending Stoney's legend.
And here, from where we last left off...

***

"Was it the bread?" he thought. Then he thought, "What?" Then he
thought, "Thought?" There were no rocks in the room. The walls were a
sickly pea green. He wanted to follow this new voice that had been
invented in his head when he was unconscious and he kept looking behind
himself. There is nothing much to see in an empty room. His breath
smelled like old fish. Stoney floated on the bed, tucked in naked
beneath the sheets, and he looked at the green ceiling.

Stoney pulled up the sheets free of his left leg. The middle of his shin
swelled in a red-bluish blotch. There was pain.

"Mr. Trow Holden," she was saying slowly. "You lost consciousness."

Stoney closed his eyes and looked inside for the voice that he heard. He
could not find it.

"Raul can be, let us say, a bit hasty over his lunch. Don’t you think?"

Stoney squinched his eyes closed tight. It was as if he were worried
that his brains would escape. Then, in fear that he had not done enough,
he put his thumbs over his eyeballs and pressed hard. There was pain all
around him and it hurt. There were colors inside of his head.

There was a knock at the door; it opened and a man appeared wearing a
bloody blue smock and bottle-thick glasses. He carried a large plastic
tool box. "I am the veterinarian," he said, "and this must be Mr. Holden?"

"All that we know is that he had with him a bag of used toothpaste
tubes, a few rocks and a hammer. We assume the name on the hammer is his."

The vet joked, "Raul’s victim is very well endowed. But now I'll have to
examine him, and I'm sure you will prefer to leave us alone." The vet
with a slight smile slipped on a pair of latex surgical gloves over his
rather large and meaty hands. They snapped tight to his wrist and one
finger escaped.

When Stoney pushed on his eyeballs there was a curious effect and the
vet seeing the solid muscular priapus beneath the bed sheets had aptly
remarked on this phenomena. But it was all lost on Stoney who, when he
heard these strange voices in his head, pressed all the harder on his
eyeballs.

"I dare not leave the room, Randy, lest you take unfair advantage of our
unfortunate guest in your examination."

"This is something compared to a donkey, I admit, but it is nothing to
an elephant. You need not worry Sophia on my behalf. I’ve held the best
in man or beast that god has to offer."

"It is not your behalf, or your other half, either, that worries me."

"You are such a tease, Sophia. I would think you want this lost boy for
yourself the way you go on."

"It is not any business of yours, and if you don’t mind stay to your
business. His leg is badly bruised, as well as the lump from Raul on his
head."

Stoney's leg was tender; a purple bruise covered almost the entire shin.

"There was no other damage?"

"Not that we know of."

"What fun is there in that?" said with a wry flicker to his lips. "I'm
afraid that I'll have to give him an injection so I can examine the
err... the leg... without making him faint, you know... when I press it."

Randy removed an enormous horse syringe from his case. While he was
filling it, Stoney continued to press on his eyeballs. Not only was he
not aware of the proximity of medical care, distraught by these noises
in his head and captivated by all of the colors, he did not know that it
might be in his interest to show that he was afraid and to lay low.
Instead, he lay there beneath the sheet like a tumescent rock.

The vet evidently did not notice that Stoney was not responsive to the
outside world. "Now, now," he said to Sophia, "it's just a mild state of
shock and, though I doubt it, there may have been some damage to the
bone, though from the look of things it hardly seems evident. I’ve used
this mix of pain killer, tranquilizer and psychotropic to good effect on
raccoons." The injection was quick.

Stoney felt no pain. He removed his thumbs from the pressure on his
eyeballs.

"Aha, that is curious," remarked Randy.

"Yes?" inquired Sophia.

"I’ve not seen flaccidity as a symptom in raccoons. Usually it is the
complete reverse."

"How can you make more of...? I mean, how can there be more of so very
much to begin with?" Sophia murmured almost to herself with a slight giggle.

Though Stoney kept his eyes shut he felt something. It may have been the
movement of the bed sheets. In places on his body it felt cold, like a
small stone pressed against his chest, or a thing warm that pushed
against his legs. He was rolled with his face towards the window and the
light of the sun cut through his closed eyelids.

After a few minutes and a descrete probe the vet reported that there had
been no injury to the bone.

"All you must do," he said, "is have your stranger, Mr. Holden here,
rest until this evening. Then if you feel like it, you can get him up
for dinner. Just make sure he does not put any weight on the injured
member. Meanwhile I'll instruct Raul about his injections; he'll have
one every three hours and this pill at mealtime."

"That is a pill?"

"Don't mind the colors. The swirls mean nothing."

"I was not worried about the color! The damned thing is the size of a
large cookie!"

"If you cannot get him to swallow it whole it is fine to break it into
smaller pieces, as long as he swallows all of it."

Sophia's attempt to break the pill in her hands did not seem to work and
she now had it wedged against the foot of the bed where, as she applied
pressure with her foot, the frame of the bed shook slightly. "God
damned, man! We'll have to use an axe to break this!"

Stoney was tired and sleepy. He opened his eyes.

FOUR

When one is addressed and viewed by others, one is not safe. Whatever
one did not do, or say, would then be interpreted by others in the same
way that one interprets a rock. Without words to provide a description a
rock is a fairly inert element placed at random in the scenery. Some
rocks are larger than others, some are more colorful, but there are a
good number of them scattered around on the earth and it is very easy to
lose track of their identities. Whole entire families and communities
and civilizations of rocks can wander around and not be recognized. They
are without labels and if we want labels, or words to put with them,
then we are forced to invent our own. But it is a risky business; a rock
could never know more about one than one knew about them and they can
crush you.

"I almost fell asleep," said Stoney. Then he lay there in the bed and
wondered where that noise had come from. He would have continued thus
but for an intrusion in a soft but harsh voice, something kind of raspy
and sweet all at once. A voice that he had heard earlier as if off in
the distance but he had not been able to find the source of. These
sounds of voices came at him and he was not able to hide from them.

"I am sorry if I disturbed you," Sophia said. "But I've just spoken with
the vet and he tells me that all you need is rest... and these pills,"
holding up one of the large placebos, "and injections. Now, Mr. Holden
—" She filled in a wooden rocker next to the bed. "I must tell you that
you can lay about in my bed as much as you need, but this is my bed and
I will sleep in it with you. I won't be denied my bed at night. If you
snore you go out in the peacocks' shed with Raul behind the station. Do
you understand? If you have an objection to share this bed with me then
speak it up now."

Stoney did not speak up. Stoney closed his eyes and quickly pressed on
his eyeballs.

"I'll take that as an answer."

Through Stoney's mind rushed a vision of rock, glorious and resplendent.
Molten hot igneous it flared through him in a hot rush. Unleashed in
uncontrolled spasms it was as if a magma fountain had been plumbed to
the very core of his being. It came at him, and at him it came in a
psychedelic wave of lava. Folded and unfolded it lapped away his
strength. It left him blanker than blank. He threw his arms out for the
embrace that he felt with the solid earth. He was swallowed in chasms of
ageless geology. He was made one with the universe of volcanic
disruptions. His hips jumped against the weight that held him. He
struggled to free his jewels, gems of the night, the poor pebbles lost
in the folds of a primordial creation and ooze.

to be continued...

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