JON CARROLL
December 8, 2005
So there I was at Herbst Theatre watching Josh Kornbluth explain calculus, or rather explain why he could not explain calculus, which was a lot more amusing than it sounds. It ends with a near drowning — what’s not to like? A woman came in late and sat next to me. She was wearing perfume. I was wearing a panicky look.
I approve of perfume, in the abstract. My mother wore perfume. My girlfriend in high school wore Gardenia, which I’m sure was cloying as all get-out, but I can remember loving it. My first girlfriend in college did not wear perfume, but she was a Trotskyite. I have no idea why Trotskyites didn’t wear perfume, but they didn’t.
Now I don’t know anyone who wears perfume. When that woman sat down next to me, it was as though she had decided to drop a sweater over my head. I was blanketed in eye-watering, throat-closing scent. I felt as though I were drowning. Josh Kornbluth: up there onstage pretending to drown. Me: down in the audience, experiencing dry-land drowning. I could feel his pain.
It was then, dear friends, it was then, I tell you, that I stumbled upon the nefarious plot to keep us enslaved. Yes, as we suspected, the forces of repression and fascism have found a way to weaken our resolve in the coming battle, to strip us of our defenses, to make us ripe for the plucking. God, it’s like being a Trotskyite again. (OK, I never was one; I just mimed fealty in order to get a date. “Leon, Leon — he’s the side that we on!” — I never chanted that.)
I used to be fearless in the face of perfume. I used to embrace it. Now it drives me to my knees. I have been too long in a scent-free environment. I have lost my resistance to powerful aromatics. The Cossacks could come through tomorrow waving bottles of White Shoulders, and I’d be defenseless.
It’s part of the plan. We are in this ghetto of virtue, and we have lost our defense against vice. Suppose FBI agents were to take you into a room and interrogate you while they were smoking. The odds are you would experience extreme discomfort. I am an ex-smoker, and I can’t stand cigarette smoke now. I try not to make a religion out of it, because self-righteousness is the handmaiden of virtue and I must be ever-vigilant. But still, my defenses are down.
In the rest of the world, those with a limited resistance to secondhand smoke have been killed off. Only the strong survive. Only the sinewy citizens who can face an onslaught of My Sin and Marlboros remain upright. They are strong and we are weak. We are the boys and girls in the bubble. Break the bubble, break us.
The rest of the world is eating meat high in fat and hormones and antibiotics and God knows what; we are eating meat raised by schoolchildren in Sonoma who love them every day and weep when they are taken off to be humanely killed by divinity students. The rest of the world is eating fish high in mercury, and those who are sensitive to mercury are succumbing. We are spending ever so much time trying to figure out which fish is safe when and for how long, and of the non-mercury-carrying fish, which ones are not caught using devices that may also harm dolphins. It used to be dinner; now it’s a term paper.
There is a danger in making a perfect little bioregion in an imperfect world. It’s all very well as long as we stay here, but when we venture out — danger! Is it any wonder real estate prices are so high? People want to leave, but they can’t. Out There, people smoke in restaurants! OK, I’ll pay a million-five for that hovel; just don’t make me eat at a Denny’s in Houston.
Meanwhile, the people in the Denny’s in Houston grow stronger. Ever see “Children of the Corn”? Me neither, but it’s like that.
Friends, we must fight back. We need a Boot Camp for Precious Children, a place where the Precious Children can be taught to smoke, drink, eat hamburger, consume small daily quantities of mercury, wear Opium, smoke opium and stand firm in the face of vulgar taunts. They are the shock troops of the future. With their help, we will retake Sacramento and march on Reno.
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It’s something they do in the pastures of France. There are experts who do the blending. It’s very expensive, and it makes everyone nauseated. Genius!
I am that of your blood was taken from you for your better health, look no more upon’t, but cast it to the ground regardlessly; let the common sewer take it from jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.
