"The Albigensian Heresy"

 

"All right, Professor," said Hector Philips Stone, the doomed romantic poet, "take a hike."

"I beg your pardon?" said the Professor.

"You heard me. Unless you're willing to buy a round, beat it."

"Well, I never –"

"Scram, Prof," said Lucius Pierrepont St. Clair III, the Negro Poet.

"How dare you," said the Professor. 

"Hitch up your pony and ride, Professor," said Howard Paul Studebaker, the western poet.

"Am I to be attacked on all fronts?" said the Professor.

"Stand not upon the order of your going, Prof," said Frank X Fagan, the nature poet. "But go at once."

"I have never been so insulted," said the Professor.

"Make like a breeze, Professor," said Scaramanga, the leftist poet, "and blow, daddy, blow."

"Bolshevik!" cried the Professor.

"Ah, feck off, Professor" said Seamas McSeamas, the Irish poet. And turning to Angie, the retired prostitute, he said, "You should pardon my language, Angie, but sometimes harsh words are necessary."

"Don't apologize to me, Seamas," said Angie, "I can't stand this tinhorn bum."

"And you a common trollop," said the Professor to Angie.

"Professor," said Father Frank, the whiskey priest, "that is no way to speak to a lady."

"I shall speak to her any way I please," said the Professor.

"You be nice to Angie, Professor," said Gilbey, the demented mystic. "Jesus don't like it when you ain't nice."

"But why must I be exiled from the table?" said the Professor. "I don't see Angie and Father Frank or Gilbey offering to buy a round."

"They're not obnoxious know-it-alls like you," said Hector Philips Stone. "Now hop it."

"Oh, very well," said the Professor, and he heaved his round body up from his chair. "I won't linger where I'm not wanted. You can all go to hell as far as I am concerned."

He waddled over to the bar and found an empty stool, and Bob came over.

"Bob," said the Professor, "I wonder if I might have a glass of your excellent basement-brewed house bock."

"You got a nickel?"

"In point of fact, Bob," said the Professor, "I am temporarily financially embarrassed, but if you would let me have a glass of bock 'on the arm' as they say, I should be most obliged."

"No," said Bob.

"Very well, that is your prerogative as the proprietor of this fine establishment, but let me ask you then if I may start a tab. I am expecting a check tomorrow, and as soon as the post arrives I will hurry here at once, and –"

"You're a professor, right?" said Bob.

"Retired, yes," said the Professor, which sounded better than fired.

"So you can read."

"Of course," said the Professor.

"You see that sign?" said Bob, and he pointed with his thumb to the placard on the wall behind the bar, the one that said NO TABS. THIS MEANS YOU.

"Oh," said the Professor. 

"Now get out," said Bob.

"Just one glass?" said the Professor.

Bob rapped his Marine Corps ring against the bar top.

"Next time I rap this ring it's gonna be on your nose," he said. 

The professor had seen Bob rap his ring on men's noses, the blood gushing, the tears cried. But still he couldn't help himself.

"It's snowing out," he said.

Bob raised his mighty fist. This would not be a backhanded rap, no it would be a straight right to the button, and the Professor had seen Bob's straight right before as well, huge dockworkers sent sprawling backwards to the sawdust and cigarettes on the floor.

He climbed off the stool.

"So be it," he said. "I shall leave, and –"

"Good," said Bob. "And don't come back."

"What?" said the professor.

"You heard me," said Bob. "Get out of my bar and don't come back." 

"You mean ever?"

"That's right."

"But why? Because I requested to have one small glass of bock on credit?"

"No," said Bob. "Because you're the most annoying motherfucker I've ever met."

"Well," said the Professor, "as the young people say, 'Wow.' That's all I can say."

"Out."

"I don't think you're being very fair."

Bob didn't say anything, but even the Professor, as dense as he was, possessed enough of an instinct for self-preservation to know that he'd better accept defeat and beat a retreat in silence and with at least a semblance of dignity.

He turned and shambled slowly toward the exit, through the smoke, through the shouting and laughter and the music of Bob's recently installed juke box.

Why did everyone treat him so?

He made it to the door and opened it, the heavy cold snow falling down harshly from the uncaring dark heavens, and he went out into it.

It was so unfair. Life was so unfair. That it should come to this. And he, an educated man, a scholar, author of a published monograph on the Albigensian Heresy! 

It was a two blocks' walk to his room in the Parker Hotel. Two blocks, but it might as well have been two miles, because he suddenly felt weary, weary to his soul, if he had one, and he wasn't sure that he did. 

To the left of Bob's was a dark alley, filled with garbage cans and discarded boxes on which the Professor had sat on fine evenings, drinking from a bottle of muscatel, or, if he was in funds, Taylor port. The alleyway seemed to beckon him, and he went in and sat down in the snow, his back against the brick wall, the fat snowflakes falling down all around him, and on him.

I'll just rest here a moment, he thought, a brief rest, and then I'll get up and go home to the hotel.

He closed his eyes, and his head sagged forward, and he fell into oblivion. 

When he awoke he was standing below a enormous gabled mansion on a hill, and he followed the winding brick path up to a broad columned porch. He floated up the steps, and St. Peter, dressed in a faded canvas jacket and smoking a pipe, sat at a table.

"Name?"

"They call me the Professor."

St. Peter ran his finger down the page of a great book.

"Oh," he said. "You."

"What does it say about me?"

"Irritating. Boring. Opinionated. Not funny. Shall I go on?"

"No, thank you."

St. Peter wrote something on a pad with a quill pen, ripped the sheet of paper off the pad and handed it to the Professor.

"Go in, cross the big hall, follow the corridor to the very end, then go through the last door you see and show this slip to the doorman. Can you remember that?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Good. You can go in now."

"Thank you."

St. Peter said nothing, but picked up a paperback book and began reading it.

After what seemed like endless days and nights the Professor came to the last door. He opened it and inside was what appeared to be a cavernous smoky barroom, filled with the low murmur of voices. A man sat on a stool by the doorway, chatting with another man, and they both looked at the Professor.

"I was told to show this slip to the doorman," said the professor, proffering the piece of note paper. 

The man took the paper, glanced at it, then handed it back.

"Fine," he said. "Sit anywhere."

The Professor made his way through the smoke and the babble of voices to the bar. 

Perhaps here he would find someone to whom he could explain his theories on the origins of the Albigensian Heresy.

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}