🎧 404: And then, ...

AND THEN, well, I’ll let May say it:

And then, well, Lorna died too. At least neither of them had to go through that dreadful Alzheimer’s business. I mean, what a damned injustice it is for someone who’s been an absolute delight to have to become all sort of baffled. But — they didn’t, thank God. They even became famous — quite famous. They’re the only famous people I’ve known, really. The only famous people I’ve had dinner with. I wish they were around to enjoy it. I’m sure they would enjoy it. I know I would enjoy it.

     Today, in Punta Cachazuda, clusters of multi-story condominium buildings occupy most of the section nearest the Gulf, where Humboldt and Bitsy Bagnell built the first of the original cement-block houses. Each of the apartments boasts a balcony that faces Gulfward, and on these balconies the residents sit at sunset and think. The town has reproduced itself many times, spreading farther and farther inland. Its plan of meandering roads, sidewalks, and canals has become the model for many other communities along the Florida coast. The town’s population is many times what it was when Herb and Lorna lived there, and fully ninety-six percent of the residents are engaged in some aspect of erotic sculpture.
     Notoriety came, when it came, first through admiration, not condemnation. The revival of interest in crafts and folk art led to the “discovery” of erotic jewelry and the other erotic crafts and arts, to the revelation of the “colony” in Punta Cachazuda, and to the Smithsonian’s mounting of the erotic-jewelry exhibit. In the current cultural climate, the Punta Cachazudans prosper, and their art prospers, despite the occasional outraged yowl. Since it is in the nature of humankind to diversify in matters of taste, it shouldn’t be surprising that today’s Punta Cachazudans work in a bewildering variety of media and styles. There are traditionalists who work in shell, amber, and a plastic substitute for ivory, who make nothing larger than a Watchcase Wonder. There are ultraminiaturists, some of whom “carve” with laser light and observe their work under electronic magnification with the aid of computer-enhanced imaging made possible in part by a grant from ChacalliTech. There are “charmers,” who produce coy, vulgar, cheap cast-metal and plastic charms with elementary moving parts. Apparently enough people consider these trinkets amusing “gag gifts” with which to mark birthdays, engagements, and wedding anniversaries to make manufacturing the things a profitable business. The charmers are to be distinguished from the “charmists,” say the charmists, whose work is equally vulgar, but, because they work in precious metals, not cheap. There are some who work life-size, in the pliable flesh-emulating plastics used for bouncing baby dolls. Their work may be obscene; I haven’t made up my mind. There are also, I hasten to say, many Punta Cachazudans who have no collective name for themselves, who make intricately animated, individualized, affectionate, delightfully lusty charms and men’s jewelry in the Lorna-and-Herb tradition.
     The Punta Cachazuda recreation center today is much more than the single cement-block building it was in Herb and Lorna’s time. It is a cluster of buildings, situated in the empty place left between four replications of the original plan for the town, like one of the four-cusped bits of dough left after cutting cookies. Its handsome buildings and broad lawns make it look much like a college campus. The largest and most impressive of the buildings are the sculpture studio and the hangarlike mechanical shop, in either of which, at any time of day, you will find men and women whistling, and sometimes giggling, while they work on erotic sculpture and the mechanisms to make them move.
     At the center of this recreation campus is a huge wind-driven erotic mobile. It is a smooth, idealized work. It depicts a copulating couple, a dozen times life size. When the wind passes over the arched and rounded surfaces of their bodies, they rise and fall, embrace and draw apart, tumble and turn, kiss, caress, and couple, in ways designed by the artist but powered, prompted, and provoked by nature. In a zephyr, their movements are gentle and tender. In hurricanes, their antics are the stuff of legends, of giants in the earth, whose couplings make the ground beneath us tremble. The figures are intended, I’m sure, to represent Everyman and Everywoman, but in a certain gesture, a little eccentricity, a moment in which they pause and he brushes her cheek with his lips, from certain angles, in a certain slant of light, I seem to see my grandparents, Gumma and Guppa, Herb and Lorna.

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