Meet the Candidates:

At center stage stands Stephen A. Douglas, the Little Giant of American politics, or Vast Midget as some called him, four-foot three in his custom “lifts,” his outsize rump atop ludicrously short legs almost dragging on the ground, his swollen gravy-and-wine-stained gut pressed against the thin rails surrounding the wooden stage, his cheap toupee askew, with a voice like the bass register of a church organ and the gestures of a drowning man. And beside him stands country lawyer Abe Lincoln, so tall that on fairgrounds the Ferris wheel kept knocking his hat off, looking in stovepipe pants like a scarecrow on stilts, with a high tenor voice like Jenny Lind’s, except he said “cheer” for chair and “agin” for again and “yonder weedhead” for Douglas—in short, two of the most respected and learned men in the nation.

The Stakes:

They met to campaign against each other for the office of senator from Illinois, Lincoln as the challenger from the Republican Party, Douglas as the incumbent Democrat. Both wanted to be president someday, if not king, and would settle for nothing less, out of modesty. Neither thought of losing, but only of what the country would lose by electing his opponent. Lincoln was already famous for his line, “A house divided against itself cannot stand, but can be rented out as separate apartments.” He decided that, if Douglas parlayed a debate victory into holding onto his senate seat, he would climb inside a hollow tree and bay like a dog. Douglas decided that, if Lincoln beat him, he would become press secretary for the prince of darkness.

The Terms:

The two would climb aboard flimsy outdoor podiums and mount wobbly sunbaked prosceniums in seven different towns in Illinois, or whenever they ran into each other as they crisscrossed the state on their independent campaign circuits by steamboat, railroad, or stagecoach, until they got sick of the thing or their war chests petered out. Douglas wanted to carry on into Tijuana, but Lincoln pointed out that since they were running for senator from Illinois, a trip to Mexico seemed counterproductive. Douglas, who had trouble focusing on reality unless it stuck a knife in his side or gave him a venereal disease, immediately agreed.

Fact: The candidates were vague and unfocused, especially in the first six debates (of seven).

Lincoln knew that he had something momentous to do with freedom, but was confused as to his precise platform and message. Was he for freedom or against it, and how much freedom could one man handle before he had to give some to someone else? He didn’t yet know. Douglas, for his part, was only certain that he was the better candidate and that he despised Lincoln, who he considered squishy on the New Testament and utterly incomprehensible to foreigners who weren’t from Kentucky. He also championed freedom, but had a long list of exceptions. Thus the ground was laid for a great and enervating dialogue.

Fact: Fifty percent of the debates was given over to rank advertisements and political paybacks.

After being introduced by the “neutral” moderator Winthrop Perkins of the local “Daily Chronicle” for the first contest in Ottawa, IL, Lincoln opened with the words, “Hello, Ottawa! Let me begin by thanking the Illinois Central Railroad for their secure coach and plush smoking car. Why, I wasn’t attacked by a single red man all the way from Winnebago! And what a smoker! I swear there was a polished spittoon and a happily spitting citizen every two seats.”

After more than thirty minutes of this, Douglas, who had already been in town for two days, got his turn to speak: “I begin by saying, if you’re here for the debate and need a place to spend the night without bedbugs and with no Canaanites in the next room, you can’t do better than the Owl’s Nest Inn. The mattress is laid under fresh ticking, the bed don’t squeak no matter how many pile on, and Tom the concierge, who is also the mayor in these parts, is only too happy to provide you with bottle of Bronze Age to ensure a good night’s sleep.” Douglas paused for cheers from the locals, and then added triumphantly, “And how about those big, dimpled nudes on the wall in the dining room? That’s real class, and a nice surprise in a hick backwater like this.”

But here Lincoln quickly seized the initiative, remarking to the 4-foot three-inch Douglas, known for his high-rise shoes, “Aren’t you going to plug those elevator slippers you’ve got on, Douglas? They are mighty sharp and give you a towering quality.” This caused his diminutive opponent to blush and lose his train of thought for the rest of the day and throughout the next two debates, until the third duel at Freeport, where he rallied to fight on.

Score after the third debate at Freeport: the reporter for the Philadelphia Press had it Lincoln 2, Douglas 1.  But the scribe from the Cincinnati Enquirer had it Douglas 2, Lincoln 1, and the man from the Louisville Journal had it dead even, with two victories to each candidate and one draw though there had only been three debates. The reader is advised that the scoring system of the day was unscientific and not everyone was polled, so be thankful for TV’s endless live coverage.

Fact: Even more than advertisements and paybacks, the debates consisted of cheap shots, zingers, and “gotcha” attacks.

“Gotcha” moments abounded, and since they added spice to what were too often monotonous and stuffy monologues, no one tried hard to put an end to them. Although the rules of the day forbade cross-talk and questions from one to the other, Douglas interrupted Lincoln an hour and a half into the latter’s opening remarks in the fourth debate at Jonesboro when he suddenly thrust out his sunken chest, pointed his finger at his ramrod-straight adversary, and exclaimed, “You were seen, were you not, sir, one night in Springfield reading a French novel and admiring sepia postcards by candlelight?”  Barely able to recover his composure, Lincoln, after twenty minutes of reflection, shot back, “What I deplore, sir, is your outlandish healthcare policy of forcing girls under the age of twelve to acquire a voodoo mojo hand to ward off evil spirits.” Three hours later, but in a different debate, Douglas struck back like lightning: “Did you ever notice, sir, that a fart traveling a lengthy path to your nose can smell like a really good hamburger?” To which Lincoln, having lost consciousness, could think of no response.

Fact: the candidates delighted in accusing each other of flip-flopping and inconsistency on the issues.

Starting with the third debate and continuing throughout the contests, Lincoln labeled Douglas as a flip-flopper, charging that the Little Giant had been “for indecent exposure before he was against it.” Douglas pushed back hard, stating that Lincoln supported public expectoration as an assemblyman, but became “anti-loogie” when he decided to run for the senate, and maintained his momentum by asserting that the Illinois Rail-Splitter had falsified his life story: instead of being born poor in a log cabin as he claimed, Lincoln had spent his childhood growing up in a “rather fine shed.” Lincoln cleverly defended himself against these charges by pretending not to hear them.

Score after the fifth debate at Galesburg: Record of the score was lost down by the canal and later given up for dead. But everyone tried to remain calm and not reveal their favorites until after the fireworks were over.

Fact: The preponderance of stated “facts” included unforced errors and clueless gaffes.

When Lincoln called Louisiana a “free” state at the second meeting in Freeport, pandemonium erupted even before Douglas could call him on it. When the crowd reaction had subdued somewhat, Douglas fired back with, “I maintain that there’s no Mexican domination of Eastern Texas.” This caused the “fact checkers,” a hastily assembled group of ploughmen and  undertakers, to go into overdrive, and also to burst into derisive laughter. The fact checkers continued giggling and groaning when Lincoln said the Mississippi River ended “somewhere in Georgia,” and lost their heads entirely when Douglas said “plenty of gays” lived in the Dakota Territory. As the checkers pointed out, no one in the nineteenth century chose to become gay, and there were no records of homosexuals living anywhere, except ancient Athens. Perhaps by “gays” Douglas meant someone other than homosexuals, such as libertines or high rollers, but if he did, he should have said so. In the second and third debates, Lincoln referred erroneously to the “female vote,” forgetting that women were too feral and pretty to have been enfranchised. And when Douglas referenced the “green party” he met at his hotel before the seventh and final debate, it was widely assumed he meant he had encountered a Martian in the bar, there being no other “green party” on the premises.

Fact: The Candidates relied heavily on makeup, props, cheap tricks and arranged distractions.

Throughout the debates Douglas, given to tidal sweating, had plenty of capacious hankies on hand to mop his fevered brow, and Lincoln, as yet beardless, slapped on a layer of orange pancake powder before his orations to increase his resemblance to an ax murderer. Some young woman could always be counted on to faint in front of Douglas, who remained nonchalant, stating, “Just give her some space. She’s going to be okay, she just needs some air.” Then as he signaled for a water boy to move in with a reviving cup, he added, “Such things are known to occur in my presence.” Attendants with pitchers of water and smelling salts were on hand for all his speeches, and a swooning female in the front row became a staple of Douglas’s performances.

Lincoln evidently had not thought of feminine fainters, but soon a Western Union Telegram boy began rushing to the fore of the crowds, allegedly bearing a letter from the distraught Mrs.  Lincoln back home in New Salem. Honest Abe, after ceremoniously polishing his glasses (glasses that he was rumored not to need and to use only for effect) then read out a few sentences from wife Mary Todd about how she and the boys were “pining” for him and how she sent “bushels” of her love and wept “barrels” of tears over the sacrifice he made in going out on the road for the “good of the country.”  With Douglas rolling his eyes several times a minute and humming loudly, Lincoln drew his bow over the crowd’s heartstrings until sympathetic onlookers proclaimed him a hero, often violently.

A tactic Douglas used to counter the effect of this in the third, fourth and fifth debates was to stand to one side on the podium while Lincoln spoke, and make a steady display of nonsensical but often bawdy  hand gestures on the grounds that they were “sign language for the hard of hearing.” Seeing Lincoln’s exaggerated expression of dismay at this undignified behavior, the crowd roared approval for the shorter, trickier man. Lincoln failed to win back the crowd’s sympathy even when, during Douglas’s speeches, he performed his trademark parlor trick of peeling an apple while allowing the skin to unfurl in a long spiral over the front of the podium. The stunt impressed many, but it wasn’t enough.

Far from it. Douglas continued to score when a destitute woman showed up at the conclusion of each debate, but before the crowd had dispersed, and said that she needed a home for her and her kids and couldn’t afford one. With meaty arms Douglas embraced her and, while Lincoln cursed silently and smote himself on the thighs with a penknife for not thinking of faking compassion in this manner, handed her over to his staff to “provide for this pitiable but good woman.”

Score at the end of the sixth debate: Red Sox 5, Orioles 7. I told you so, now pay up.

Fact: Tiredness and loss of concentration played a major role in the event.

By the fourth debate, certainly not later than the fifth, both candidates showed signs of severe fatigue, both mental and physical. The fourth featured an uncharacteristically weak conclusion by Lincoln. Cogent and forceful for several hours, he became unsteady on his feet and lightheaded, ending with, “Finally, let me say that Jesus would never do as Mr. Douglas here has done, push a woman for two hours on a swing and then go and invent miniature golf for a box lunch.” This farrago of words caused puzzled looks all around, and the journalists from the Philadelphia Courier and Chicago Tribune could only shake their heads and return to their hotel lobby for more five card hold’em and heavy petting.

Douglas, on the other hand, who with not much foresight added the contents of a trouser flask to his bodily and psychical strain, contrived an even less forceful finale at the fourth encounter while also frothing at the mouth:  “Who am I?” he demanded of the nonplussed crowd. “What am I doing here? They say no man is an island when our allies must take the lead, but until now no man has left the donut hole untouched with a hankering for debutantes.” After dropping that sign of being non compos mentis it seemed all over for the Democratic senator, who looked most perplexed and sweated a bucket. But since no one in the audience knew what insurance limitations made up the “donut hole,” Douglas swayed many minds with his erudition and couldn’t be counted out of the final match-ups.

In fact he was far from finished. During the sixth debate at Charleston, where the crowd had dwindled from a high of above 9,000 at the first encounter at Ottawa, to about 37 infirm and aged, Douglas made the important point that the candidates’ families were off-limits in the discussion. This was in response to Lincoln’s claim that his, Douglas’s, wife possessed “self-lifting automatic skirts” and his son a “tin nose.” He also claimed that Douglas’s three-legged dog Monty was not housebroken. As Douglas fought to discount these odd accusations, he looked over to find Lincoln toying with a yo-yo in one hand and twanging a jaw harp between his clenched teeth with the other. “There you go again,” Douglas finally said as the Illinois Shopkeeper commenced his tenth rendition of “Polly Wolly Doodle.” That modest line wowed the crowd, and from then on Douglas had to be the favorite.

Score after the sixth debate at Quincy, unless it was Charleston: There is no score available, nor could there be from such a dim past.

The seventh and final debate at the Amateur Cemetery and Picnic Grounds in Alton featured ringing oratory from both Lincoln and Douglas. As upwards of 65 farmers and gravediggers gathered before the combatants, down from crowds that numbered 97 or 98 only weeks ago, but all a-cussin’ and a-prayin’ for rhetorical sparring, Lincoln, dodging the flying scooter ride that swept over his lofty head, steadfastly held that the best barbecue was to be found in the Northwest Territory, particularly near Minnesota where the ducks were fattest. “One day barbecued Minnesota mallard will be a byword for great American comfort food,” he claimed, while the skeptical Douglas never wavered in his assertion that nothing compared with the slow-cooked swamp flavor that alligator took on in the wetlands of Florida. “It’s the flamingo bones in the smoker that gives the ‘gator meat that distinctive snap,” he said convincingly several times. “Not to mention the sauce and pickles on the side.”

The verbal jousting continued until evening, when eleven members of the Trood family arrived to bury a number of their dead. But since everyone agreed that the sauce was incomparable, with or without the pickles, Douglas won the final confrontation hands down.

The final score: Douglas over Lincoln 5 to 4, with two debates rained out and not counting. The Outsize Dwarf went on to defeat the Sage of Knob Creek for the senate race, and the rest is history we know: Lincoln got those charming toy logs named after him, and Douglas stepped down as senator after his savage killing spree and series of armed bank break-ins raised an ethical “red flag” in congress. He decided not to run for president either, though he would likely have won in a landslide with his new moniker “Murderer of, by, and for the people.” Instead he toured the Utah and Washington Territories in the company of two female wrestlers, amassing close to five thousand dollars. Within three years, largely due to his efforts, a divided nation went to war. Later everyone became free.

————

Mike Fowler has been in Defenestration so many times he practically owns stock in the magazine. And by stock, of course, we mean delicious waffles. He’s all about self-promotion these days, so go buy his book.

Day 1, Saturday. My wife of thirty years has left me—who knows why. Sure, it annoyed her that I hadn’t changed out of my bathrobe or moved off her sofa since my retirement in 2005, but is that a good reason? Tonight I went to the bar where we first met and tried again. Actually that bar was gone, so I tried one down the street that looked similar, only someone had removed all the Pac-Man games and the jukebox and substituted a virtual darts thingum and a mechanical bull. I sat down next to a fox in her early twenties who was blonde like my wife was thirty years ago and asked her if I could buy her a drink. She looked at me with a disbelieving grin and said, “You do know you’re pushing seventy, right, old timer?” I said, “Hecky far, I forgot. It’s been so long since I’ve done this that I hit on the wrong age group.” I finished my beer and, thinking I was stepping in line for the men’s room, boarded the bull. The last I saw of my hearing aid, it went sailing over the crowd into some cowgirl’s Scotch.   

Day 2, the next Friday. Wiser after trips to the audiologist and chiropractor, I turned an eye to the bone-weary matron in work pants who bused my table at the mall food court. Emboldened by a large serving of liver and onions, I winked at her and said, “I’d like to make time with you, toots, but you probably think I grew up before running water and went to school in a cabin.” No,” she said, giving me the once-over, “but the last time I saw that tie you’re wearing was on a wax Lincoln.” Then she picked up my lemon pie, that I hadn’t touched yet, and tossed it into a refuse bin. Embarrassed? I would have died if it weren’t for my pre-meal insulin shot.     

Day 3, that Saturday. Tried singles’ night at the local supermarket. I located an attractive woman who couldn’t have been much younger than me, and gently banged my cart into hers. “Hey, good-lookin’,” I said, “wanna shop for carbs together?” She told me, “I prefer guys who wear their own hair,” reminding me of the cheap weave I wore. “At least my teeth are my own,” I retorted with a broad smile. “Let me guess,” she said. “Your friends call you Mellow Yellow.” “Actually,” I replied, “my friends call me Piles, on account of all the money I have.” “Piles is the perfect name for a…” she started to say, but here a 64-ounce can of tomato juice fell off the shelf and onto my foot—if she nudged it over, I didn’t see her—and when I looked back her way, she was gone!

Day 4, the following Sunday. Spruced up and splashed on some Love Potion Number Nine. Then went to church. As a born-again atheist I didn’t belong to any, but I drove around until I found a big crowd going into one. I got to the door just in time for the service, and asked an usher, “where do the widows sit?” He pointed a finger and said, “Right there. Want me to take you over, Gramps?” “Nah,” I said, “if a salmon can swim upstream to spawn, I can hobble fifty feet to an old bag.” I soon located a redhead who was years away from decomposition and sat in the pew beside her. When we stood to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” a song that plodded like one of Rod Stewart’s, I asked to share her hymnal. She agreed, though she gave me a look as if to ask what was wrong with the songbook in the rack in front of me. I almost expected her to say “Fresh!” Holding one half of the book as she held the other, I whispered to her that I just did harmony, and to let me know when to come in. She was still staring at me as she started to sing, and it began to look as if she knew the tune by heart. I hummed a bit, but otherwise kept mum. When the music segued into “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” as dull a song as anything by McCartney, I could take no more. Feigning chest pains, I staggered out, telling myself she wasn’t my type anyway. Sure, she was a great kisser and enjoyed oral sex, if I was any judge of character, but she had more veins sticking out than a junky.

Day 5, that Friday. Visited a Buddhist temple and came on to a vigorous divorcee in her sixties who could sit cross-legged for an hour and had the thighs of a linebacker. She was a bit put off, I think, that I screamed out in pain every five minutes during the “calm abiding” meditation, but I wasn’t used to the rock-hard cushion I sat on. After temple I agreed to join her for a two-mile run through the park—who was I kidding? I kept up with her for the first twenty feet, then fell off the pace with a crippling charley horse and watched her disappear into the distance. Sayonara, babe.

Day 6, Saturday. Went downtown to the big fountain this afternoon and sat on a bench beside a woman who was feeding the birds. She flung handfuls of sliced bread from a grocery bag at them, and had a good wrist for it. Growing bold, I leaned forward to catch a glimpse of her face, but she wore so many scarves wrapped around her head that I could only see the gray ends of her hair sticking out. I did notice that her ankles were the same thickness as her calves, giving her legs a columnar shape from knees to house slippers. Sexy? I guess! She flung out another handful of bread and I said, “Lucky birds, to have all your attention,” the only come-on line I could think of. She responded by taking a piece of bread from the bag and eating it herself. I stood and moved away, thinking I could do better. Hell, she didn’t even offer me a bite.

Day 7, the next Friday. Ran into a lady professor at the library who was reading up on her great passion, Elizabethan-period dress. This also happened to be my great passion that morning. I went back to her place to try on a doublet and some leggings and with any luck at all a codpiece, when her wheelchair-bound boyfriend from down the hall rolled in brandishing a broadsword, real or prop I didn’t know. This flame fancied himself Hamlet to my Polonius, and called me a rake and a puppy as he circled the room and swung at me with the sword. I had to skip briskly in my leggings to stay out of harm’s way, and didn’t know any of my lines, so I exited out the door, codpiece untouched. Curtain. 

Day 8, that Sunday. While attending a community rally for Women’s Rights I met the free and fearless Nettie, who hadn’t worn a bra since 1967 or a top since mid-morning. Her tats of butterflies and flowers showed resplendent in the afternoon sun, and I sensed, though I didn’t verify it by staring, that her sundrenched femininity had turned a tempting shade of pink. “My dear,” I asked, “didn’t we meet during the Summer of Love? I think we were getting it on when Jimi caught fire at Monterey.” 

“Were you at Monterey, Hoot Owl?” she replied. “You do remind me of a seedy little drummer I dated back in the day.” Then, taking note of my shy glance, she added, “My things stood straight out then.”

“So did mine,” I conceded. I stopped short of apologizing for my skin tags.

Day 9, Monday. Nettie and I went shopping for sandals and then I got a tattoo at the emporium below her rent-controlled apartment. I was a tattoo virgin, so it was my first. Nettie said my initial one was of critical importance, since it laid the foundation for all my future body artwork. Though it struck me as a tad ornate, I took her suggestion, a six-mast schooner on each buttock. As she nursed me back to health, applying lotion and painkiller to promote the healing process, she said, “These scabs aren’t so bad, no worse-looking than tertiary syph.” I thanked her for being my caregiver, saying I hoped my nose wouldn’t fall off. “When you’re back in the saddle,” she said, “you don’t need to ride out. We can fool around in here, and hit the street to demonstrate.” I thought about that. It might be my last chance to join the revolution. And I’d become devoted to Nettie’s challenged pets. Angus, a goldfish who suffered brain damage from jumping out of his tank, was my favorite. Under my care Angus had started to swim again instead of sinking down to the gravel in bewilderment, and great things were expected of him.     

Day 10, Wednesday. Nettie threw me out after she returned from a neighborhood activity meeting to find Angus dry and flaking on the kitchen floor, and me watching high-def TV in the bedroom. Too bad. If I had succeeded, she was to have given me charge of Fennel, a blind mouse. 

Day 11, Friday. Fractured my arm at the post office lifting a booklet of stamps the wrong way. The lady postal clerk I was showing off for said I put too much torque on my elbow, and probably I had a lack of calcium in my diet and should schedule a DEXA scan ASAP. She was nice enough to call me an ambulance and now I’m to have a cast. I told them at the clinic to seal me in plaster down to my thighs, to ensure my celibacy for a few weeks. With luck, my sex drive will dry up in that time and a new, neuter me will emerge from my cocoon. I hope so. I’ve decided a geezer like me needs to ride easy along what’s left of life’s trail. 

————

Mike Fowler has been in Defenestration so many times he practically owns stock in the magazine. And by stock, of course, we mean delicious waffles. He’s all about self-promotion these days, so go buy his book.

But maybe not. When had Catman last made a big capture? I couldn’t remember seeing the Cat Beacon in the night sky once in recent weeks, as a desperate Police Chief sought the assistance of the Furred Avenger, or reading about the crimestopper’s adventures in the Daily Metro, once so thrilling and so just. It seemed he was still living down the recent scandal of his DUI in the Catmobile where he crashed it into a police cruiser in pursuit of a bank robber who got clean away. From the looks of him now too, overweight and puffing on a cig as he prowled around his yard, his Catsuit frayed and wrinkled and probably unlaundered, he’d bottomed out pretty badly. Yep, perhaps his best days were behind him now. The Catmobile, too, looked pretty useless in Catman’s new driveway, sitting there shiny and black, but still needing a lot of body work after the DUI mishap. Maybe, I thought, he should trade it in on a Smart Car.

Catman stayed inside most of the day. Only after six, when I was home from work, would he put in an appearance at his front door, in full ratty costume. He might come out and sit on his porch chair, a can of Bud in his paw, and survey the neighborhood in his sleepy way. He never even started on the much-needed repairs to his place. No new roof, no fix to the peeling paint, not even a lawn manicure so that his yard, already choked with three-foot weeds, got worse. I don’t think Catman even owned a mower, and in the ‘burbs that’s a mortal sin.

He did put a new gas grill in the back, and soon was spending whole evenings alone behind his house, grilling fish and drinking beer in his crimestopper get-up. Not that he was completely antisocial. Every so often he’d take a short stroll down the block, belching softly, his belly sagging beneath the Cat logo on his shirt, and nod hello to everyone. Or he’d raise the hood of the Catmobile and fiddle around under there with some tools with the radio on country. Every once in a while, too, a neon blonde in a rusted-out van would visit him. But he looked bored out of his skull to be here, even his costume couldn’t hide that. I guessed he was watching for the Cat Beacon out of the corner of his eye, and ready to roll. But after all the beer he put away, you had to wonder how effective he’d be, and if it wouldn’t be a big mistake for him to try to get involved, and if the Catmobile would even start up. I thought he needed to get going on that yard and maybe take up roofing as a hobby.

Unfortunately, his feline nature stayed a part of Catman even as his heroism ran
downhill. No longer did he leap sure-footedly from rooftop to rooftop on downtown’s skyscrapers, or climb nimbly up sheer walls in pursuit of evildoers. But he sure as anything was in all the trash dumpsters at night, and yowling to beat the band at ungodly hours. It wasn’t bad enough that his own yard was a litter of beer cans and Little Friskies tins. He had to spread everyone’s garbage around. It got so I kept my garbage locked in my shed until pickup morning, and waited by it for the truck, or I’d find it spread all over the yard and even a trail of rib bones from my last cookout leading down my drive and across the street. I didn’t know if Catman was broke or just couldn’t resist my special sauce. Maybe both. Horrible as it was to think of, the neighborhood bird population declined too. We sure didn’t see as many nests in the trees as we usually do. So Catman was eating well, too well, and to be on the safe side, I hauled my kid’s sandbox into the shed and locked it every night, after I got word from a friend of what Catman did in his son’s box. That’s revolting even in a superhero.

Worst of all, though, were his tom urges. One night about a week after Catman first moved in, my wife Flo heard some strange scrabbling noises outside our front door about eleven. She looked through the Venetian blinds just in time to see Catman with his shorts down spraying our porch swing. Our female cat Fancy was in the window on the other side of the blinds, Flo said, staring out at Catman with a bizarre look in her eyes. Catman finished his territorial ritual and, with a meaningful glance at my wife, trotted across the street again back to his place and later never even gave her an apology. It was as if it never happened, though Flo got out the garden hose and disinfectant next morning.

Catman enjoyed his catnaps too. After a night of prowling and feasting on whatever, he would fall asleep on his lounger in his back yard and still be zoned out there in the morning, weekends and weekdays both. It seemed he had totally given up on being a crimefighter by now, since he took off his Catman suit once and for all and wore old jeans and sandals and went shirtless in the summer heat. I guessed he didn’t mind anymore if people knew his real identity, either, though everyone still called him Catman since no one out our way recognized him. He had a thick head of reddish hair, lots of freckles, and a pasty white body. You could see the outline of his Cat mask since the skin it used to cover around the eyes and nose was really white, at least before the sun burned him bright red all over. Catman looked like everyone else now, I’d say, only messier and lazier.

A lot of the neighborhood kids early on formed a kind of friendship with Catman, since being kids they didn’t respect the great man’s privacy, and many worshipped his legend, not quite realizing that Catman’s fortunes had gone south. Bunches of them would gather at Catman’s fence alongside his back yard and talk to him. Catman had complete control of his scalp and hair, and could change his hairdo without touching it. As the kids watched in amazement, the part on the left side of his head would travel over to the right side, and the hair lay itself down in the opposite direction. He could make the part stop in the middle too, in a sort of hippie style. I saw him do that once. It was astounding. How could a guy like this not be in something big?

He was still fairly agile too, and once, to show off for the youngsters, he pounced from his patio straight up onto his roof. Unfortunately he lost his footing up there and fell, taking out a section of rusty rain gutter as he crashed down. He landed uninjured on his feet though, and sat nonchalantly back in his lounger, to the admiration of the boys and girls, who cried, ‘Are you hurt, Catman, are you hurt?’ even though they could tell by Catman’s wave of his hand that he wasn’t. I saw that one too, since I admit I spied a lot. A celebrity doesn’t come along every day, you know, and I had dusted off my binoculars. Later I saw him install a satellite dish on his roof in about five minutes–without falling, yes! At the insistence of my son, Brad age 5, but also because Flo and I had wanted to all along, we invited Catman over for spaghetti dinner, figuring he could use a home-cooked meal. We sent Brad over to do the inviting, he was so excited. But he came back looking glum. ‘Catman says he’s busy,’ Brad said. ‘But he wants to borrow $10.’ I gave, but just that once. Of course I never got it back.

Catman’s downward spiral picked up pace. The sleek if crumpled Catmobile was replaced by a previously owned, rusted Ford Escort, and even that didn’t go anywhere except to the convenient store at 2 a.m. when Catman ran out of beer. Lacking a muffler, it reminded the whole neighborhood of Catman’s all-night drinking. Finally, about six weeks after he had moved in, Catman vanished in his Escort, his stuff put out on the street. Large catnip toys, elaborate scratching posts, monogrammed food bowls, fancy collars and a lot of hairy furniture were stacked by the curb. I imagined that Catman had overextended his credit, with the usual results.

Catman’s stuff was still on the street when who should arrive on the scene but Wonder Kid aka The Boy Crusader, Catman’s crimefighting companion. He was balding, packed a gut almost the heft of Catman’s, and had changed his hero costume for a sports shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. I wouldn’t have recognized him except for the personalized plates on his Lincoln, ‘W-Kid.’ Everybody knew the Boy Crusader had recently opened a restaurant in town named after himself, Crusader’s, and had publicly acknowledged that he was out of the justice business. More to do with his and Catman’s little incident with the Catmobile, I figured. He stood by the curb, hands on his well-padded hips, shaking his head as he surveyed the scene. He looked prosperous all right. Then he saw me watching him and came across the street.

‘Doesn’t look good,’ I told Wonder Kid.

‘Didn’t know where he was till I saw an article in the paper,’ said the Boy
Crusader. ‘Guess I’ll check the flophouses and shelters.’

‘It’s a shame,’ I said, ‘after all he’s done for this town.’

‘I offered him a job at the restaurant,’ said Boy. ‘All he had to do was greet a few
folks, shake a few hands, let me name a Catburger after him. Couldn’t be bothered. Had to be a hero, you know. Well, a man’s gotta eat.’

‘Sure does,’ I agreed. ‘Say, do you suppose my boy could have one of those cat
toys? Sure would mean a lot to him.’

‘Help yourself,’ said Wonder Kid, ‘they ain’t mine.’ Then he got back in his
huge Lincoln and drove off.

I latched onto a few. They gotta be worth something on eBay. They’re Catman’s!

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Mike Fowler has been in Defenestration so many times he practically owns stock in the magazine. And by stock, of course, we mean delicious waffles.

It is known that, at the University of Bonn, Nietzsche preferred cream cakes to beer and was admitted to the prestigious Franconia fraternity only because he could sing the falsetto parts to the then current doo-wop songs. The story of his visiting a house of prostitution and, upon seeing the women, seizing upon the piano as the “only living thing in the room” is legendary but probably untrue. According to Hegel (Bill Hegel, not the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich), who was also a visitor to the establishment that evening, Nietzsche exclaimed, “Now you womens listen here,” took out his pocket harmonica, and bent blue notes all night long. By morning he had surpassed W.C. Handy and Jellyroll Morton in the development of the 12-bar blues, had transformed the Hohner harp from an instrument used by the Germans only to play the song “Sweet Edelweiss” and “The Beer Barrel Polka” into an instrument beloved of the swinging, lowdown masses, and had grown an enormous mustache that women referred to as “the little beaver.”

Nietzsche’s musical innovations did not stop there. While he continued to take courses in Aryan appreciation and world domination at the university, he got a job as a volksinger or “volkie” in a local coffeehouse, one of the first of its kind. Here he tried holding the harmonica in his mouth vertically, so that it resembled a small ladder running from his chin to his nose, and sometimes strummed a guitar while he played it. Other times he blew on the guitar while strumming the harp, but this didn’t work out so well. But his creativity was not to be stopped, and one evening when the great bluesman Wagner stopped in for a large house blend with half-and-half to go, he and Nietzsche got in to a cutting session, Nietzsche on harp and Wagner on the Bonn Philharmonic Orchestra. Nietzsche was sharp, but he was outgunned.

Nietzsche’s meeting with Wagner was a turning point in his life. Nietzsche revered the older man, who had already composed the operas Big Leg Woman and Smokestack Lightning and was hard at work completing the libretto for his magnum opus, Has You Ever Seen a One-Eyed Fraulein Cry?, soon hailed as the beginning of opera for Nordic blondes. The maestro was also occupied in opening a chain of musical instrument discount stores and tanning spas in Bayreuth. Nietzsche quickly became the disciple of the great man, took a job as assistant manager in a Wagnerian boutique and allowed himself to be reduced to the role of household servant and babysitter. Nietzsche did Wagner’s Christmas shopping for him, and bought his and Cosima’s children some toy Jews to shoot with their BB guns. Wagner and the kids were delighted, but Nietzsche had second thoughts. By the new year he saw he had to break with Wagner, not just over Jew-baiting but because he had a jones for Cosima that was bringing him down, and the erstwhile disciple sealed his fate by leaving the sheet music to “Havah Nagilah” on Wagner’s piano. The great composer was incensed and banished the younger man from Triebschen forever, or at least until he stopped eating matzo.

Nietzsche’s settled life was now over. He resigned his professorship at the University of Basel, where he had transferred from Bonn under the mistaken impression that the chicks were wilder here and sunglasses cheaper, and where he taught Blues Harp 101, Working with Mojos 101-2, Beginning Hand Jive for Teutons, and Introduction to Saluting and Heel-Clicking. The official reason he gave for his resignation was that he had no clean laundry. Also, his first book, Wagner Is De Hoodoo Man, had earned him the opprobrium of the conservative academic community, since he wrote it as a comic strip. He tried a career in the cavalry, but was thrown from his horse so often that it was more convenient to just let the animal drag him places by his heel caught in the stirrup. There was now nothing for him to do but wander over Europe as a vagabond thinker, a job that paid only minimum wage.

Now begin the years of Nietzsche’s greatest writings, but it was a race against time since staying in cheap hotels that smelled of unwashed tourists and trying to read foreign, handwritten menus with his failing eyesight would soon drive him mad. At Steinabad in the Black Forest, 1875, he wrote the first of his immortal aphorisms:

1. You can’t pooh-pooh Purdue.

This was followed the next year, in Naumburg, by the stunningly original:

2. I like Ike.

And then in Klingenbrunn came the farsighted:

3. Nixon’s the one.

Even Rohde, Nietzsche’s best friend at Leipzig, did not fathom these insights, whose future-directed import was only detected by Lou Salome, the brilliant and beautiful Russian discotheque dancer whom Nietzsche had befriended. It was she who was the inspiration for his next famous barb, composed at Tautenburger:

4.What is woman? A flat-foot floozy with a floy-floy.

Lou refused to marry Nietzsche, who proposed to her within five minutes of their first meeting, since his schedule allowed no time for foreplay. The two parted in bitterness, Nietzsche writing:

5. Hot sted ralston on the rilla rah.

This seemed to skirt the real issue, and Ritschl at Bonn was openly skeptical. But then, at Sorrento in 1882, came the final breakthrough and cry of independence:

6. It’s my way or the autobahn.

It was a virtual hermit who completed what is assuredly his most famous work, Zarathustra Does Dallas, in a tiny apartment in Turin that did not have running water, heat, a roof, or a floor. The work was made even harder by his always being behind in his rent, but whenever the landlord demanded payment, Nietzsche produced an a priori proof that the landlord didn’t exist. That bought him valuable time.

Soon the philosopher began to have dizzy spells. Once he excitedly asked the landlord, whom at last he had ingratiated by agreeing to stay away from the paying guests, who found him repulsive, if he would like to see Zarathustra’s Stone, the natural monument that had inspired him to write of good and evil. He dragged the protesting landlord into the nearby forest and there showed him a rock the size of a walnut, exclaiming, “There you see it! The magnificent stone that has inspired the greatest of all books!” Only after much heated debate did the landlord persuade the thinker to call a much larger stone in the vicinity Zarathustra’s Stone, so as not to make a laughingstock of himself and his work.

The end was now near. The first of every month, when his pension of three deutsche marks, a booklet of discount coupons, and a complimentary sausage arrived from Basel, Nietzsche, sick to death of sausage, which he called “the curse of the Germans, unless I mean lite beer,” rang up Pasquale’s Pizza in downtown Turin and ordered a delivery. In the words of Tony, the usual delivery person, “Nietzsche’s toppings grew wilder and madder each month. One time it would be olives and figs with mutton, then jalapenos and cotton candy with hemlock and bean sprouts, and crazier and crazier after that. His tiny room was full of empty and half-empty pizza boxes. And he didn’t tip, or maybe he’d just hand me an aphorism written on a napkin. Tragic, I call it!”

Nietzsche had just received a sub with pizza sauce and extra cheese when the final breakdown occurred. They had forgotten the pickle spear! It was too much and his great mind turned inward. He accosted strangers on the streets and introduced himself as “the god of pepperoni.” He threw his arms around the neck of a street cleaner’s horse and cried, “Manny, do you remember those nights we spent with Alma in the back room at Arnold’s?”

Within a few weeks his sister Elizabeth arrived to become the insane man’s business manager and barber. She allowed his mustache to grow to a weight of fifty pounds and billed him as a rock act called The Teutonic Bopper. He died five years later, like many central Europeans of the era from a combination of primary, secondary, and tertiary syphilis, migraine, plaque build-up, existential angst and nonstop touring, and also because his guitarist quit. By then he was world famous with ten platinum albums to his credit.

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Mike Fowler has contributed so many times to this magazine that he might as well live here.