FLOSSING IS THE ANSWER

EZRA POUND

Chaney had gotten those words many months ago, while having some dental work done. The dentist suggested they try nitrous oxide, and Chaney eagerly agreed.

He remembered that the great psychologist William James had once thought he had the whole secret of the Universe on a nitrous oxide trip. What James had written down, in trying to verbalize his insight, was OVERALL THERE IS A SMELL OF FRIED ONIONS. Chaney wanted to know what it was like to be in the state where fried onions would explain everything. He sniffed deeply and expectantly as the mask was placed over his nose, and waited.

No illumination came at first, but the room seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, and then it was getting smaller and smaller, and then he became aware that the dentist, as was typical of his species, was making remonstrating noises as he gazed into Chaney's mouth, saying that brushing was not enough and that everybody should be more conscious of dental hygiene and so on, all the usual craperoo, and then he, Chaney, wasn't there anymore, he wasn't anywhere; it was just like what he had heard about quantum jumping in physics, because he was there again, having gone from 0 to 1, and then going back to 0 again, not being there, and then back to 1 again and the dentist said somberly, like a very wise old wizard:

"Flossing is the answer."

And Chaney felt like he might giggle or weep, but was too dazed to do either, having found it at last, the Answer. And it was so simple, as all the mystics said; it was right out in the open and we didn't notice it because we weren't conscious of the details. And he stared up, awed, at the wise face of the great sage who had given it to him, at last, the Answer.

Flossing.

And the damnedest part of it was that for weeks after he still had flashes when he thought that was it, the Answer. Flossing.

After Kyoto, Chaney went to Yokohama to see the infamous Sex Shops, as was inevitable.

In the first Sex Shop he purchased an artificial vagina which seemed vastly superior, in both realism and pneumatic grip, to the model he had at home.

In the second Sex Shop he bought a box of pornographic Easter Eggs.

By then he was feeling the surging despair again, knowing that these substitutes were not what he really wanted, knowing his loneliness and his exile with that bitterness that he usually kept at bay by concentrating on the absurdity of everything-in-general, experiencing the terrible isolation of being out there on the moon separated from the ridiculous oversized clods by 250,000 miles and sizeist prejudice.

And then, in the third Sex Shop, he found it.

The Answer.

And it wasn't flossing at all.

Dr. Glopberger had worked in the Sex Change department of Johns Hopkins for a long time, and thought that nothing could surprise him any longer.

Markoff Chaney surprised him.

"No," Chaney said, in answer to the first question Glopberger always asked, "I've never felt like a woman trapped in a man's body."

"Um," Glopberger said. "Well, sir, what do you want here?"

Chaney opened the box in his lap.

"Good God," Glopberger said. "I've only seen one that big once in my life." What was that character's name- Wildebeeste? Strange one: he had kept it after the operation, had it mounted on a plaque or something like that.

"You see," Chaney explained, "I don't want to become a woman. I want to become more of a man."

"Well," said Dr. Glopberger, professionally. "Well, well." It was an ingenious challenge, even with the advances in Sex Surgery in the past three years, but it could be done… My word, it would be a Medical First.

The stocks in Blue Sky were now paying eight thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars a month.

"Name your price," Chaney said with a steely glint.

Justin Case heard about the man with no name at one of Mary Margaret Wildeblood's wild, wild parties. Joe Malik, the editor of Confrontation, told the story. It was rather hard for Case to follow because the party was huge and noisy-a typical Wildeblood soiree. All the usual celebrities were there-Blake Williams, the most boring crank in the galaxy; Juan Tootrego, the rocket engineer responsible for the first three space-cities; Carol Christmas, the man who had invented the first longevity drug, Ex-Tend; Natalie Drest, the fiery feminist; Bertha Van Ation, the astronomer who had discovered the first real Black Hole, in the Sirius double-star system; Markoff Chaney, the midget millionaire who owned most of Blue Sky, Inc. Hordes of other names-maxi-, midi-, and mini-celebrities-swarmed through Mary Margaret's posh Sutton Place pad as the evening wore on. There was a lot of booze, a lot of hash, and-due to Chaney-altogether too much coke.

"The town was called Personville," Malik was saying, "and the man with no name was a detective for a big agency like Pinkerton's. But then Kurasawa adapted it, and the man with no name became a Samurai."

"Of course we can go to the stars," Markoff Chaney was saying, even louder, on Case's other side. "The speed of light doesn't mean a thing when you consider what the next two or three jumps of longevity will bring. There are no real limits anywhere, except in the thinking of the timid and the conservative." He was armed with new Courage.

"Then he became Glint Eastwood," Malik said.

"What's your game?" Juan Tootrego asked, making conversation.

"Oh, art," Case said. "I write the art column in Confrontation."

"But he still doesn't have a name!" Malik exclaimed.

"Then you're the man who discovered El Mir," Juan Tootrego said, impressed. Blake Williams snickered suddenly.

"Everybody this is Simon Moon the President's husband," Mary Margaret said.

The First Man fidgeted in their gaze.

"I'm not here to do any electioneering," he said.

"He's one of the best chess players in the country," Mary Margaret said, completing the introduction.

"Um how does it feel to be married to a politician?" Case asked, trying to put Simon at ease.

"Eve has her thing, and I have mine," Simon said.

"I have a theory," Blake Williams orated, "that the chessboard is a model of the human brain. What do you think of that, Mtr. Hubbard?"

"Mt. Moon," Simon said quickly. He was a Masculinist.

"You see," Malik went on, "whether he's a detective, a Samurai, or a cowboy, he still has no name. Isn't that archetypal?"

"I always look at the bright side," Hagbard Celine was saying to Natalie Drest. "There's only 337,665 years to go in the Kali Yuga, for instance."

"Well, if Batman is so smart," Marvin Gardens muttered, "why does he wear his underdrawers outside of his pants?"

"Pardon me," Simon Moon was asking Blake Williams, "but did you say Grand Canyon should be considered as an artistic whole or as an artistic hole?"

"Why, yes," Markoff Chaney was telling Mary Margaret, "I am working on a second book. It's called Reality Is What You Can Get Away With, and it's about the future evolution of consciousness and intelligence." His Courage was growing.

"Childproof bottles, my Abzug," Marvin Gardens complained. "There isn't a child in the world who doesn't have the patience and curiosity to open one of them."

"He has no name," Malik said, "because he is Death, and Death is a nightmare from which humanity is beginning to awaken."

"It's time to stop worshiping gods," Chaney went on earnestly, "and aim at becoming gods. It took four and a half billion years to produce this moment, and who's really awake yet?"

"It's adults who give up on the damned bottles," Marvin Gardens went on. "They decide-I know I do-'Agh, the hell, I don't need the Potter Stewarting pills.' What they are is adultproof bottles."