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Show Anting Alone Page 166 Sam sure liked the little son of a bitch. Always had, ever since prep-school back in Salt Lake City when Sam had taught the other gentile bigboys that pogrom meant kick some ass in Polack talk, and they'd raided "Axle-grease's" sanity daily for four whole years: ruining his Bar Mitzvah shirt with a carefully proportioned mixture of fire extinguisher chemicals and fountain pen ink; bench-pressing him high over their heads by the lapels of his uniform blazer so the girls would laugh at him; in general, just seeing how many new and different ways they could elicit the famous Look from Axelrad's cherubic little kisser. Hunched double, his shoulders rounded inward, his eyes lit up a yieldsign yellow, staring out into mid-distances, his entire compact organism trembling as in fear and ecstasy, tiny boy Axelrad would get this Look when the goyim at prepschool wreaked pogroms upon his head. He was little and lived in terror and loved it. Their early relationship had been like sophomore Kerouac calling freshman Ginsberg a "twitch" and pounding him up and down the dorm halls at Columbia (Sam's image, not fastidious Axelrad's). They wound up in the same boys' camps, of course, summer after summer. Together they observed but did not participate in the traditional homoerotic nude gang romps that took place on lakeshores and on horseback under the auspices of latent counsellors; they observed but did not participate in the customary gang fights with the local hayseeds where at least one boy customarily had to lose at least one eye for the redemption of the camp's regional reputation. There'd been many slow river runs where Sam and Ax-honey always wound |