Days pass as the Golden Sunset sails from Bermuda into a quiet part of the Atlantic, a place where "even the whales had a chance," according to the captain. Gris and Teenie catch sight of one such "monster," which gets Teenie to bugging Gris about how big a cetacean penis is in proportion to the rest of its body and the mechanics of whale reproduction.
It's going to be one of those chapters.
Gris tries to convince the girl that whales lay eggs, but that night she shows up in his bedroom with a ruler. See, if she can measure his "relative proportions," she might be able to estimate those of a whale. This ends in more marijuana and more "Oh, Inky, aaaaaahhh!" and Teenie never gets around to making those measurements, the silly girl.
The next morning Gris tracks down Madison to yell at him for not bedding Teenie, but the publicist replies that he's trying to "make a lady out of her" by striking up a platonic, healthy relationship involving bicycle races and dance instruction. Gris remembers something Teenie said and accuses Madison of being a "mother lover," and the man calmly answers in the affirmative.
See, Sigmund Freud was only taken seriously after he married into an advertising firm, which means that all of advertising and public relations are intimately tied to Freud's teachings... wait, so shouldn't advertising reign supreme instead of psychology, since it's what allowed Freud to flourish? Anyway, if Madison "went against his teachings, I could be thrown completely out of the field---excommunicated!" On top of that, as the child of a rich family Madison was psychoanalyzed - "a caste mark, so to speak" - at age five after having nightmares. The psychiatrist ordered him to start sleeping with his mother. "All little boys love their mothers. I am simply carrying out the accepted prescription."
Even after hearing this, Gris keeps screaming at Madison to start sleeping with Teenie so she won't want to sleep with Gris.
He looked at me. The paddle fell out of his fingers. His jaw dropped. "Girls? Sex with girls? Oh, good heavens, Smith, that's obscene!" He went pale green. He staggered to the rail.
Man, if I vomited at every obscene thing this book threw at me, the barfing would never stop.
The sports director, when he came up to torture me, gave Madison a Dramamine and sent him below to his bunk. "I can't understand it," he said. "Flat calm sea, the ship stabilized like a billiard table and I have a seasick passenger throwing up his boots. Shows you what a mental problem can do. That fellow needs to be psychoanalyzed."
"He has been," I said bitterly, "that's the trouble." And I settled down to hours on exercise machines to get rid of the pot.
Could this be another crack in Gris' devotion to psychology? Might he start questioning the wisdom of those medical professionals if the results of their treatments are people like Madison?
Naaaaaah.
And that's the chapter. Whale penises and ephebophilia and incest and vomit. Mission Earth, ladies and gentlemen.
Back to Chapter Four
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