Could it be a slam dog revolver? Or is it instead a silvery reflective shadow of my uncompromising virtue? My gloves are drying and my aunt lives in Florence, Italy where the rain falls more slowly, gravity being weaker in those parts. But those parts are not concerned with my rising dental and mental costs. I slid softly but loudly through the rough cardboard divider that seperated my room from eternal but noble sacrifice, barricaded the tarantula, and replaced the receiver on the wall.

"Whew!" I prophesized. It was a brisk day, a day that flogged the pincers of my favorite clam in an almost forgivable manner, a day like the kind of days I remember trying to be as a small dog. Could it be a slam dog revolver? I wondered yet again and then again a third time, maintaining my perilous balance over the waterfall miles below. But this story is not about me. It is about my father.

My father was born in freefall. His mother, my second cousin's daugther's neice, was a machine-gun repairman and the mayor of a small unnamed town just south of paradise, which is west of the North Pole. Instead of sticking to the rules, however, my father would always fly slowly over the government official's bicycles. "How can we expect to effectively remove our shoes," he told his mother several times a day, "when we can't even see salt that flies lengthwise?" His mother laughed quickly because she knew better. At least she knew better than her mentor and acquaintance, the deaf and dumb Mrs. Spectacle. Mrs. Spectacle was dead and spent most of her time in the living room. My father would put her in the backyard from time to time to comfort Elvis Presley, who lived in a small cup of sun tea that he had left carefully on the roof of the garage. Elvis loved to watch the nuclear tests which the government ran in my father's sandbox on the seventh Tuesday of every month. But it was too late.

My mind was a wild mix of sentient oysters and plastrons and saints on the cold, rusty day when my train left, slowly at first, and then more slowly as I tried in vain to tie my shoelace to the caboose. I was ten and scarcely out of graduate school when my train left. All my friends had either died, been recently born, or had recently moved to the east coast and I was rather depressed by the prospect of designing inticrately welded paper-machŽ waffle irons by myself. I was never a religious woman, but rather a religious man. I spent the sabbath day, Thursday, reading the bible out loud outside the window of my mother's classroom when she was sick, and outside the window of her hospital room when she was well enough to teach advanced eating at the local universities. My mother taught me how to eat well, and how to eat without using a muffler or spark plugs. She was terrified of spark plugs, and would hide in the basement if I so much as mentioned them, which I nearly always did. I remember lazy mornings when I would buy stock in major oil companies and sell it to my friends for the latest spark plugs. My collection was the largest in the nation, with over 15,000 spark plugs in all, until I lost it all in a freak explosion that destroyed my house, your house, and the White House. Arthur was president then.

The day my train left, I told you in desperation that I had left my cheese in the radiator of my new Studebaker, but I realize now that I was wrong. I remember we were the closest of enemies, and I remember the third degree burns you gave me, and I remember the scars you found on your face the morning after I ended the war for good. You were a cat sometimes, and sometimes just a vine, but I found you all the same. You were a liar. You never told me anything straight. But that's all behind us now. The train is long gone and I remain to pick up the pieces of my bicycle which I had disassembled in a frantic but drawn-out attempt to restrain the train. We were crazy. We did the craziest things. And you put my bicycle together backwards so that it would run faster when I pedaled slower -- and I believed you.

I reached for the gun in my pocket and found only vague promises. I was flying by then, and I saw nothing but the outlines of the shady partygoers and celebrities above. I sipped my complimetary beverage and reclined in the soft network of microwaves that shot invisibly and painfully up from the waterfall. Where is the lion? I asked myself, unaware that there was no lion, there was no turtle, there was no elephant, and there would be no customs official with crooked eyes and a wrinkled, tired-looking old dog waiting for me on the other end of the tightrope. I checked my other pocket but it was a door to a parallel universe where my name is spelled with an "S" and the weeks are three days longer. I was halfway to the other side of the infinitesimally vast canyon, but the vague question persisted and permeated my loud, pounding mind which I had placed in a box full of styrofoam worms for protection. What was the reason, and why? I searched the endless contours of my hands for a clue to revive the indians. Why? And for what reason? The question resounded through my mind like a question resounding through my mind, and my head spun with sober level-headedness. I took a step backward, and then two steps forward. The crowd grew quiet. "Now," I shouted, letting the sound travel around the world until I heard its echo from behind, "I will show you, and I will show all of you, what I am here for." But the words lost their credibility in translation to the strange dialect I was forced to speak by authorities with gleaming guns, vicious dogs, and large checking accounts. Why? my mind cried. Why "why?" I responded with a nervous chuckle that tormented my already distraught wife, who was reading my brainwaves from her houseboat in Washington D.C. The sea spun below me and the sun glared down at me with disgust.

"You disgust me." it said disgustedly. "I hate you and I hate your egotism. You think you're so hot because you can balance on a tightrope for days on end and evade your responsibility to the world. I can see the world, but you, you're just a tortured cheeseburger without fries -- you're the factory reject of a long process of elimination that started long before you can imagine anything starting. Just take a long, good look at yourself and then take a long, good look at what I have to shine on. And for God's sake, quit painting stripes on the moon!" I stopped painting stripes on the moon and let it fall silently into the water. It was early morning and I hadn't eaten dinner yet, so it was difficult for me to see. Through the intense, swirling darkness I could just make out the brightly shining morning sun, which reminded me vaguely of the time when I hid my parents' flying licenses behind the mirror so that they appeared to be reflections, although they weren't where they appeared to be reflecting from. My parents hated me. I gazed up at the obscure, controversial star which barred my path to Hollywood, fame, private telephones, and all the other comforts of modern imprisonment, and thought quiety to myself. After some thought and some non-thought, I flipped the foreboding switch on the foreboding control panel which I had remembered to bring, bringing to life seven princes and seven princesses, who fell marvelously.

"You'll see." I told the sun with my remaining conviction, or at least what appeared to be my remaining conviction. "I'll show you. I'll show you."

"I can't wait." said the sun with a gleam and newly brushed teeth, and set rapidly in the east. I shook my fist and did a little jig, which shook the tightrope quickly enough to send me plunging over the edgeless edge into thin, flowing air whose depth I could see in the approaching ocean of water, which extended at least as far as I could see. It reminded me, strangely enough, of a one-act musical which I wrote when I was seventeen months old that went like this:

(The scene is a blue landscape. To the left is a huge underground military-industrial complex whose entrance is obscured by a small clump of bushes and trees. It is raining people. Frog Jericho, a man with two eyes and a nose, lands front and center).

FROG

Well, here I am. I suppose you all wonder who I am and why I'm here. But you'll never know. (He reaches into his pocket and produces a small piece of microfilm). This is why I'm here. I am Frog Jericho, soon to be President of the Universe. But first, a little music.

(The curtains in the background part to reveal an orchestra and a chorus of dancing girls enters, singing a rousing chorus of "Frog Jericho!" Frog sings:)

(The chorus explodes. When the smoke clears, Frog's brother Milkshake peeks up above a hill, wearing protective earmuffs and attached to various phsychoelectric electrodes.)

MILKSHAKE

(Seeing his brother) Frog!

FROG

(Seeing his brother) Milkshake! What are you doing here? I haven't seen you since last Sunday!

MILKSHAKE

That's funny, neither have I. (Removing his earmuffs and the electrodes which are taped all over his body) Oh, I'm just here on business. I see you're here for world domination.

FROG

Not quite, Milkshake. I'm planning on being elected President of the Universe. But I'll need your help.

MILKSHAKE

You mean ...

FROG

No, not that. I just need to know where the military-industrial complex is.

MILKSHAKE

Why, it's right here, Frog. It's right beneath our very feet.

FROG

Really? Well how do I get down there?

MILKSHAKE

It's easy! Just cut the earth along the dotted line!

FROG

Oh! So that's what the dotted line is for! (He takes his enormous scissors and begins cutting a long slit in the Earth. He is almost finished with it when evil aliens come and completely destroy the world).

I remember vaguely sending the manuscript to a small German baker, who refused to publish it or even consider responding. I killed his family, but there was something gnawingly unsatisfying about it, as if I had somehow missed the proverbial boat. Perhaps, I thought, I should have stayed home and tended to the goat. The goat was large and had four legs which I washed every day except Tuesday. I hung the goat out on the line to dry after I washed it, and read it long stories and Shakespeare sonnets to pacify its suicidal tendencies. Sometimes, during a particularly absorbing passage when I wasn't watching, it would manage to twist the line in such a way as to completely cut off its breathing and circulation to its head. Sometimes. Other times it would just flap its wings in a vain attempt to fly or at least to present a decent media image. The media always bothered me. "Why did you kill Marilyn Monroe?" they would ask me. "Why did you kindnap the Lindbergh baby?"

I don't know how to answer people like that.