VV(8) - Profane & Fina

[Terrance]

Michael Perez wrote:
> 
> Benny is drawn to the world below the street and is could be said to be
> under the influence of its connection to the inanimate and the general
> "mystique" (sorry, I'm not fond of that word but it just came out).  He
> is *obedient* to Fina, but I don't believe he is under her influence.
> Like the exchange jbor began, I sincerely question how connected he is
> to the Mendoza family.  He still wants to be a "object of mercy."  I
> believe one reason he is unable to figure out the events is because he
> doesn't understand the "code" he respects enough to remove his
> influence.
> 
> Michael

Isn't one of the reasons he can't figure it, his own
passivity and transience, his "slewfooting in the February
sun."???

And isn't one of the reasons his agreements both with
political bosses or forces (i.e., Zoyd's with the
government--Brock Vond, Mason and Dixon's with the RS-- who
are we working for?, Slothrop's with 
JAMF/Bland/Parents/etc.. 

And isn't he also subject to another agreement, to put it in
VL's terms, "forces unseen"? To put it in M&D terms, what
resistance has Benny to the WIND?  

After working his first Patrol, creeping about in a 48 inch
pipe, hard blinding back breaking labor, this fat guy goes
home and his
new family. They take him out to celebrate, a "cheerless
celebration." He is stuffed into Angel's suit (contrast with
Mr. Mandooza's old depression suit) and while all he wants
to do is sleep, dragged out to an after hours club at five
in the morning.  Geronimo leads the charge, you can't sleep
in the day he tells Profane. Is Geronimo more interested in
cono than either Benny or Angel? Since Benny works night
shift (I'll come back to Bung's  shifty shifting schedule)
at first, if he can't sleep in the day, when does he sleep?
He must be like a walking dead man dead on his feet. 
Geronimo says,  we have to go out and hunt cono. When Fina
wakes up and joins the celebration, Dolores and Pilar are
called, and now there are six, three guys and three girls.
On 125th they drink wine and talk. Though Benny is the guest
of honor here, everyone is talking at and over
each other, only ten percent communication, and what's more,
Benny can't understand word one because they are talking 
in Spanish. Everyone is screaming. Imagine being in an
after hours club in Up-town Manhattan when everyone is
drunk, including the band,  and an argument is in progress
and
you don't understand a word of it? Too bad Benny didn't
think to give 
Paola a call. Well, fortunately, for our Hero, Fina is
there. 
She's feeling good, she's taken a day off, drinking a bit,
the others are arguing about marriage, a subject she doesn't
much care for, she leans here head on Benito's,
and oh boy, oh BOY, he gets a headache not a hardon.  He
ends up with fat
Dolores, dancing to the listless, inanimate bonging, she on
her side, he on his, until she cums down square in the
middle of his exposed foot. He crawls under a table and
falls asleep. They carry him down Amsterdam like a corpse,
chanting Mierda. He gets drunk, they hop from club to club,
bar to bar, they have a small run in with the  law, it seems
Angel and Geronimo try to lift a few toilet parts from a pub
on Second Avenue. They are either stereotypically drunk,
stereotypically Puerto Rican, or P is alluding to
Hemmingway's looting of the Gin Mill bathrooms on Key West,
or maybe none
of the above. 

In any event, it is a few days after this day of "cheerless
celebration" that "Profane came to tally his time in reverse
or schlemihl's light: time on the job as
escape, time exposed to any possibility of getting involved
with Fina as assbreaking,
wageless labor."

How should we read this? Is Benny getting paid or not? We
know he is. There is no doubt that he is being paid to kill
Alligators, but I think we also know that he is not. 

P is playing lots of tunes here. For example,  Benny is
living right out of the NY Times, just as Slothrop lives off
the London Times in GR. But on Thursday, March 15th, 1956,
the Ides of March,  no feast was celebrated in NYC. P is
mixing up history, politics, literature, religion, most
importantly the Roman Catholic religion, just as he does in 
all his novels. It may be like Jazz, I don't think so. It
may be more like Melville.