20
AND THEN, some four years ago, I was sitting in Corinne’s Fabulous Fruits of the Sea one night, talking to Porky White, complaining along familiar lines.
“It still isn’t enough, Porky,” I said. “Now that I’m Roger Drake, I ought to be satisfied, but I’m not. I still keep trying to write that big book about myself, that book as rich and various as a good clam chowder, loaded with useful and interesting information, hilarious anecdotes, recherché allusions, philosophical speculations, intriguing stories, clever word play, important themes, striking symbols, creative sex, intricate diagrams, mouth-watering recipes, big ideas—”
“Yeah,” said Porky, “but you want to know something?”
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t think that the guy I’m listening to now is ever going to do that.”
My heart sank.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Porky. “I mean just what I said: the guy I’ve been listening to for the last hour is never going to write it. He takes himself too seriously, much too seriously to do what you’re always talking about doing. His ego is too tender, and he protects it too well. He’s too afraid of making a mistake. He’s afraid of making a fool of himself, afraid of falling on his face in print, afraid that people are going to laugh at him.”
There was a danger of my bursting into tears. To hide my face from Porky, I brought my beer mug up and drained it slowly. Porky signaled for two more.
“Let me give you some advice,” he said. “You don’t have to take it.”
“Okay,” I managed.
“What you need,” said Porky, “is a new dummy. You’ve got a dummy called Larry. Now you need another dummy. Let the dummy write the big book.”
Porky held his hand up in a gesture that meant I should hear him out.
“Years ago,” he said, “I used to listen to Bob Balducci on the radio. You probably don’t remember him. He was a ventriloquist, and he had a dummy named Baldy. Baldy used to say the craziest things, insulting things, embarrassing things, stupid things. I don’t remember any of them now, but they were crazy things. He used to break me up. Sometimes, though, Baldy would go a little too far: he’d say something too stupid, or too embarrassing, or too insulting, and you know what he’d say then? He’d say, ‘The big guy made me do it.’”
Porky laughed long and loud at the memory of this remark.
“And you know what Balducci would say to that?” he asked through his laughter, and answered himself at once. “He’d say, ‘Don’t listen to him—he’s only a dummy.’”
He laughed long and loud again, and then he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose twice. He shrugged.
“Maybe I’m not making myself clear,” he said.
But he had made himself so clear that my heart had begun to go pit-a-pat and I couldn’t speak. I just sat there wearing a wacky grin.
In Topical Guide 207, Mark Dorset considers White, Chester “Porky” as Benevolent Daemon or Tutelary Deity and Author as Puppeteer or Ventriloquist from this episode.
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