TO THE GULLEY JIMSON IN US ALL

TO THE GULLEY JIMSON IN US ALL
By Bob Coar

Toasting a lofty glass, “To the Gulley Jimson in us all,” I pronounced.

“Who’s Gulley Jimson?” the young abstract expressionist with a high forehead asked.

“Who’s Gulley Jimson. . .!?! Who’s Gulley Jimson,” I blistered. “What do you know about it? Why, Gulley Jimson is the quin-sensual artist portrayed in Joyce Cary’s underappreciated novel The Horse’s Mouth, you donkey’s ass! But more importantly, Gulley Jimson is Gulley Jimson.” I waived my free hand. “Bah!”

“Bah?” Forehead repeated, as if unfamiliar with the term.

“Yes! Bah! And a good deal of it. Most assertedly I say ‘Bah!’.”

“What are you? A sheep?” The red-headed sculptress interposed.

“Don’t change the subject.” I sipped some chardonnay. Sweet and bitter at one instant. A metaphor. “What was I saying?”

“Bah,” the sculptress teased. I pushed up my glasses to get a better look at her. Pretty, in the down-home sort of way that keeps a man at home. She didn’t remind me of any ex-lovers. Always a plus.

“So, what’s ‘the Gulley Jimson in us all’?” an overweight poet from Allendale queried.

The bar-room smelled of alcohol and floor polish. “Gulley waxes elegantly, while grabbing the bull by the balls. He made art his passion, melding with those raw energies bequeathed through countless generations.”

“It’s just a book,” that irritating abstract expressionless mocked. “You can’t take it seriously.”

I swear his cranium grew bigger by the minute. “You super-silly-ass twit,” I bellowed. “The book itself is art! Cary was real enough when he wrote it. Talking to you is like trying to teach a dyslexic child to sing the Bingo song.”

My opponent’s brow furrowed so deeply I might have planted a row of corn there. The Bard of Allendale offered up the bottle. Not to be ungracious, I tendered my goblet for refill. “Brim it.”

“Easy on the vino,” yon bulbous wordsmith advised. “You’re driving home, aren’t you?”

“It’s every artist’s duty to live life along the edge.”

The poet set bottle down. “That’s a pretty broad assumption, isn’t it?”

“Well, who doesn’t like pretty broads?” I winked at the sculptress, but Red’s full attention focused on the shapely legs of our waitress. I hate being right all the time.

“When you assume,” Forehead piped in, mumbling through a jawful of croissant, “You make an ass out of you and me.”

“Perhaps myself,” I admitted, “But you cover your own base roundly enough.”

Red turned back to the table. The dim lamp above shifted dull lowlights across her locks. The woman’s scent carried a ginger tint. “The cut of that waitress’s calves reminds me of Rodin’s early work,” she accounted.

‘Booh-Yah!’ I thought, ‘Still in the game.’ I touched her hand gently. “She’s got some long gams, alright.”

The sculptress withdrew her appendage from my reach, saying, “Of course. They go all the way up to her hips.”

Obviously a lesbian, as I first deciphered. Ahh, so what? To each their own. There must have been some point I was trying to elucidate before that waitress distracted me. Oh, right. “We stagger through this soda pop culture wearing blinders imposed by an institutional mindset. But, like Gulley, a few of us are fortunate enough to lock eyes on our muse, that Aphrodite we call ‘art’, for lack of another term regal enough to do her justice. And in that first eyeful you think, ‘Good, Lord! She’s beautiful, this maiden named inspiration! I’ll bet even her farts smell like roses. We take the plunge, swapping solemn vows upon the plaster-of-Paris altar in Athena’s Temple, and persevere the Socratic monologue of developing one’s style. Then suddenly it’s all turpentine and dirty diapers, hawking your progeny from atop card tables in dingy flea market stalls. Next thing you know you’re knee deep in half-finished canvases, bastard problem children, and dodging bill collectors. Life keeps ramming shopping carts into your way, as you sally forth to create something which will exonerate you of eccentricity. The animus mundane of day-by-day existence excrementally increasing, grinding already weary bones to talc. Reeling home, too frazzled to even ponder lifting a brush, only to find that precious trollop Inspiration laid bare across her bower before you. In a twinkling we find ourselves revived into the wee-est of hours. Transformed beyond ordinary.”

“Have you ever thought of being a writer?” the poet asked with a smile.

“I also considered suicide once or twice, but never took
the plunge,” I grumbled.

The cell phone in my pocket mimicked Rocky’s Theme. I hefted the contraption to my ear. “Hello? . . . Oh, what’s up, Dear? . . . Where am I? Stopped at a traffic light. . . No, I’m not hanging out with my loser artists friends!” I glanced over at the abstract expressionist, his forehead now enlarged to rival Goodyear’s blimp. Red sat frowning to his left. “Sure, Honey, I’ll stop at the mini-mart.” I snapped my fingers for the poet’s notebook, and his pen. I added to a verse in progress, “Milk . . . skim . . . uh-huh . . . Cottage cheese . . . Pudding. Is that the pack of six big cups or the pack of twelve small ones? . . . Okay. How many?“ I scribbled, “Got it. Six of one and half a dozen of the other.”