Lizard Head, Chapter 2: Angel Princess Troubled By Nuptial Night

In their first summer of love, Liberty Bottomley and his angel princess were hitched. He had seen her in a park walking her dad and her dog, and he was struck dumb.

Whereas many many men are attracted to well-breasted but hipless womyns whose shapes plummet straight from the waist to the floor, Bottomley wasn't one of them.  He didn't like womyns with sides resembling mens, flat as irons. As a matter of fact, Bottomley didn't like mens at all and didn't like to be reminded of them. Bottomley liked womyns only. This was his nature. He liked their plumposities and considerable meats—inimitable womyns with structured meats that cosmeticians find hard to imitate even today, womyns with hard-to-imitate-superficies.

Don't ever think that Liberty Bottomley had no depth: he saw immediately that Angel was wearing yellow soul shoes. But his depth was in huge dreams of desire and possession, never in slyness or craft.

And the yellow skirt lifted as Angel leaned forward. In a great flurry of sudden sensations, Liberty glimpsed tanned thighs, yellow blonde hair, shaped calves, soul shoes, skin-tight leotard, tiny waist, arms fingers lips, and such a shape that for long afterward "shape," whenever he heard it, in Liberty's mind was given as its meaning Angel Cowdraye bending forward. And there is something else. 

Nota Bene. Liberty's brain confused or mixed the second phoneme 'l' of the word "glimpse"  with 'r' and so say "grimpse" instead, so that Bottomley, later in life would say such things as "This morning, my darling Angel, I grimpsed your minister, the Reverend Dithers, on the Grand Boulevard." Please, darling Reader, note that the phenomenon was limited to just the word "glimpse," in all its morphology and conjugations (e.g., is grimpsing (p.p.), a grimpses (n. pl.), etc.). Whenever he said this word to his wife, Angel, he pronounced it "grimpse." This influenced her deeply, as you will later see, as it gave rise to the "Legend of the Grimpse" among the people of Lizard Head. Not only among the Horse-Womyns, mind you, but among the males as well.


But let us return to the scenery.

Instead of flattened sides, Angel Princess, his beloved, showed curves. She smote him with her hourglass of ultra-feminine fat bending up- and inwards to an unusually small waist (which she later would pass on to her twins, Darlene and Pandora). In an instant, Angel's Incarnation of the Feminine overwhelmed Liberty's imagination with immense and sensuous impact.

One moment his soul had been far away and his senses were dull with thinking, with that anxious burrowing nosing into the past bygones and about the dreamiest future the mindlessness of mankind confuses with thinking. The next moment, Angel was leaning from the waist full forward to a smell a flower. Her baruras were thrust out behind. Swiftly his soul returned him to the present. Instantly, his eyes fastened on her. (They fastened on her bodime [pron.= "bohdeem"] in that atrocious way mens have of reducing our beautiful invisible non-material and infinitely spiritual souls to mere bodies as if we were carved rocks.).

Suddenly, Liberty Bottomley smelled the air, the trees, the flowers, the the moist wet grass, the sounds of the birds, saw the puffy clouds drifting overhead, the blue sky beyond along with the sight of her leaning forward. His senses aglow, his soul and his senses were joined. He had returned to Earth from his somewhere else. Struck dumb, he could hardly breathe. Who was that woman? Why of course! She was Angel, the daughter of the banker Morgan Cowdraye. He knew her. When was it? June 16th, 1969. 

He was impulsive and romantic when it came to womyns, Liberty was. 

Liberty approached the banker who was his banker, too, old Morgan Cowdraye, formerly Cowdrowsky, of First Global Conglomko Bank. He knew then them, the Cowdrayes, pere and mere. But where was she, the mere?

Gross Inconsideration Shown Angel Princess by Libertine Bottomley

Old Morgan Cowdraye's wife, as Polish as he with a little Khazar thrown in (to mingle with his), was not there that fateful day. I myself do know exactly where she was, but I'm not going to tell you right now. You'll have to wait. 

So, impulsive Libery began talking to the banker, Mr. Cowdraye. The latter nodded. Mr. Cowdraye, the Banker, told yes to Bottomley for his daughter. He liked the looks of this Bottomley man. For one thing, he was six feet six. For another, the Bottomley property was extensive. True, Bottomley looked like a bum, but rich bums are terribly hard to find. Third, Cowdraye had been infuriated with Esther, his gorgeous wife, for a very long time. He was henpecked. And Not only that, but he had never been satisfied in a you-know-what kind of way. Let us be very frank. Esther had never surrendered herself truly. Esther could not. She was unable. She had not the imagination, unfortunately, to be able to. And she was unable even to imagine a man wanting her to, much less imagine why he might. And unlike the majority of womyns, Esther was unable even to fake the proper surrender behavior that mens world wide love to see in their womyns. And Esther passed this trait of "never-say-die" on to one of her daughters, to one of the twins. 

But not to the other. 

Because of old Cowdraye's decisiveness, the next Tuesday Angel was married in the Old Pole style, replete with the Khazar window dressing and trimmings. Little baby buntings flew from the balconies. The white pavilions shined in the sun. Flags flapped over the buntings. Enormous blown up photos of Angel hung by the mansion's mullions. It kind of looked like a big bad mitzvah but only to onlookers not in the know. There was plenty of money to go all around. Babes, three-quarters of the invitees, boiled in the high sun then withdrew to the tented awnings where Cowdraye's cads lurked. Everything was starch and stiff, even the old poles. Bankers are like that. They're all the same. It's not a nice story. Mrs. Cowdraye had flown to shop by Quai D'Orsay, as was her wont, oblivious to how Cowdraye now played the Shake. You see? His private eye had informed him of the shutterbug session several Shabats before. That was the key. He knew her now, knew Mrs. Cowdraye. So the ceremonials would be foisted in her absence. There were even Camels for free and golden lighters. Some babes were hosed somewhere in the house. I know. I saw. I watched. I was there.

And thus, before she knew anything Angel had been married by her dad to Liberty Bottomley, a prospecting cowboy with an endowment that was huge, though she didn't yet know it. It waited for her to know it. It, the endowment, was his. With his endowment, he was not a bum, but Angel didn't yet know that when marrying. The marrying was done by Shake Mutz, which was his nickname, imagine the humor. Done in 5 minutes and that was that. Back to the tents, awnings, pavilions, buntings, and babes, some of whom were quite decently well-hosed. There were porch swings and white ladies quite a lot, laid back.

And then it was time. There were the night’s goodbyes, and Liberty and his newly-wed wife went up to bed but not to sleep, alas, and clumsy Liberty, as all big PUDs almost always do, behaved very badly, dragging out his endowment and bragging about it, opened his trunks to show Her Shyness his filthy treasures and little keepsakes, his secrets, his only for her he said, forever and forever. With this, you are rich, he averred. Such wealth by my count exists only for 1 in 500,000, and what’s mine is yours, and with this I do thee endow.

The day after, only Cauchemar was told all the details of that nuptial night — yes, just one person, a woman, Angel's best friend, Eileen Cauchemar, and no one else — for Bottomley had married a woman discreet, one who could, and often did, keep secrets from everyone. Indeed she did, yes, even from him, her own dearly beloved, from whom keeping secrets and thoughts those whose intimacies are profound but not necessarily extensive know she should never have done but instead should have kept her secrets from Cauchemar and opened them only to him. For the Tabernacle is built on secrets and never can be open to all. 

Who may we blame if we blame any for this? Why blame Morgan Cowdraye and his wife, gorgeous Esther. That couple forever and anon trained their daughter to talk only of world policies, business, finance, wars, taxes, and slaughter, but never never to speak of those endearing moments that all the world knows which yet make up the chief occupation of man and soothe his weeny anxieties.

Angel's Nightmare: A Grimpse

The Horrible Grimpse Spied upon Angel
as She Waded in the Pond beneath Bridal Veil Falls