Sex & Bugletry, or, Once Upon a Blimp
The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part XXVII
“Personal errand, religious wandering, whatever you say it is. I say it is a week or more off the front. Why would I say no?” said Desotto to Tomasso, who never listened. “Look already! We are sailing to a mountain in a balloon ship. Did you ever think you would do such a thing? No. And, provided the dwarves are still groggy from their winter’s hibernations with their bears, it will be an easy journey. The weather is nice. We have good tents, but we may even stop at an inn. We have ample tobacco and liquor and cheese. We will get exercise. We could even do some hunting in the woods; I’ve brought shotguns. So of course I would go. But why would you?”
Continued from…
“Why would I what?” said Tomasso, whose tongue was becoming well lubricated by the bottle of sweet wine he and Desotto were sharing. “I will tell you why I am not afraid of the new Marconi machines. I will tell you the first thing. The first thing is mountains. Radio cannot penetrate mountains.”
“A bugle cannot penetrate a mountain,” said Desotto. He was chain smoking on the bench antipodal to Tomasso in their booth in the great airship’s main cabin. “Maybe we could do some fishing. That would be splendid. I need to check out maps and find a good stream. I could bite off one of your fingers and use it as bait.”
“What about fishing? Listen to me! I know a bugle cannot penetrate a mountain, Desotto. But do you know what can? Echoes. The echoes. The echoes of a brass bugle. They does not penetrate the mountain,” he slightly slurred. “The do not penetrate it, perhaps, but they go around it. Like kestrels fly around mountains. Properly aimed and projected, and aided by an extension horn, and an amplification drum and cone, the sound of a bugle, when made by a trained bugletrist like myself, can be made to wiggle and turn and fly right around from one valley to the next. Like a kestrel. Over saddles. Through crevasses. Everything. It’s echoes. You use the echoes. And then nothing can stop a bugle as far as communications are concerned.”
“Or your earlobes. I could catch a fat trout with your earlobes, Tomasso.”
“What?”
“I say, what about the noise of cannon and the general cacophony of battle? Not mention the sound of all the other bugles. Does that not make it difficult to hear and discern bugletry except with great time and expense of training? And will not that be alleviated by the Marconi machine?”
“No. No, no, no. For one reason, Desotto. One reason. Static. Do you know what is static? Have you heard a transmission from a Marconi machine, even over a distance of a few feet?”
“I wish your mouth were static.”
“What do you hear? You hear the statics. It is all over the air and sky, static. Static moves everywhere. Through everything. Combine that with all the competing radio waves, clouds, aurora borealises, lightning, unexplained electric discharges, and other electromagnetic interferences, and you are in for static the likes of which you have never heard before. With a bugle you get clarity. Clarity. Doo doo!”
“Do not do that again, Tomasso. Do not make bugle noises with your mouth. The sound is bad enough from a bugle. I will punch you if you do that again!”
“Save your punches for the bears, Desotto!”
“Speaking of punching the bear, I wonder, will be find Nuzzo and Gabler on the trail?”
“Gabler wanted to be a bugler,” Tomasso said laughing. “He tried. But he could not do it. Could not hit all the notes.”
“All four?”
“What for? I don’t know why, but he applied for the Bugle Corps. Tried out. Auditioned. But he couldn’t make it. He was dismissed from the bugletry academy. Drummed out.”
“Academy? I thought they just plucked you from the band. Or from tribes of gypsy itinerant musicians.”
“Drummed out! Of bugle-try academy. Drummed!” Tomasso laughed and filled his and Desotto’s little port glass. They were going through one every minute or two now.
“Yes, yes, drummed.” Desotto shook his head. He was getting fairly near to the point at which he would be unable to deny that he was also drunk. The talk of punching had him now thinking about boxing. He hadn’t had a good bout in a while. Not since the regimental field day when they had a week’s leave in late March. He’d had several bouts then. He’d beaten Second Private Lothargramin to a pulp. Knocked out Undercorporal Vinette. Bested even Sergente Magnan. Only Third Corporal Second-Class Binchette had beaten him, and that was on a technical. Desotto was quite a good boxer. Only an amateur, of course. And he was getting a little too old for it now. But he could still box. He imagined briefly beating Tomasso into bread dough.
“So, it is like I said, the bugle is far superior to the Marconi wireless. You get no static. With Marconi you get all the static from lightning, and static electricity in the air, and lightning, and aurora borealises, and all that. Like I said. And you also have… It takes training to use the Marconi too! Maybe not as much as in bugeltry and the understanding of bugeltry, but it takes training to Marconi. Also, they are heavy, the wireless machines. The bugle is light. Marconi machines are expensive. Bugles are cheap.”
“Especially yours.”
“Hardly! Mine is from the Zähringen Bugleworks in Verona. You won’t find a finer bugle. It has taken a bit of a beating… Anyway! Marconi machines are difficult to fix. Bugles can’t be broken. Marconi machines are heavy. Bugles are light.”
“Yes, Tomasso, you said that. If we stay at an inn, perhaps there will be women there…”
Desotto rocked his head back and forth, bandying about his options were he to find himself in close proximity to a willing member of the fairer sex. He’d already decided he would surrender his virginity if he had the opportunity during the war. It seemed only fair. If he survived the war he would take up holy abstinence again. But that was for then. For now, when he might die at any moment, he had decided he would not hesitate if he had the chance to defile himself; he would do it with grangusto. That he had managed to keep himself pure so far was no mean feat given his athletic frame, good looks, and his many female acquaintances from among the less moralistic working classes he’d been born into. He had managed to stay firm — ahem — in his convictions due to his rock solid — ahem — Catholic faith and a deadly fear of germs and disease, though if you had to weigh the two factors it would be perhaps twenty percent of the former and eighty percent of the latter.
As far as disease, he had heard of a new miracle medicine, Salvarsan, which could cure syphilis. Cure it, just imagine! So there was that at least. What’s more, though, he had also acquired one of Mr. Fromm’s cement-dipped, rubber guantones from a friend who’d gotten it from a cousin who’d gotten it in Denmark. His friend assured him it had been washed, but to be safe Desotto had washed it at least twelve times himself with soap and very hot water. (The water would have been hotter, but Desotto didn’t know what temperature would melt the rubber, so he’d been conservative in his heat estimates.) Desotto had then coated the condom with a few drops of mineral oil and wrapped it in waxed paper. He kept that in a ventilated envelope in his toiletry kit, not his pocket, so it would not get too hot.
As far as the sexual proscriptions of his faith, it was complicated. On the one hand, he took them seriously and sincerely believed that they formed guard rails on the way to Heaven; to violate those commandments as to adultery, fornication, sodomy, marmot-clubbing, and the rest was certainly a sin. He was also conscious in the extreme of the emotional and physical harm that could come — ahem — to one and others from careless indulgence in the sensual vices, such as, to name but some: Premature loss of innocence, exposure to bad sorts of people including acrobats and dancers, laziness and debauchery, divorce, possibly becoming an actor, hard-to-explain abscesses, family dissolution, bastardy, disease, abortion, orphanings, burning urination, pornography and production thereof, habituation of sin (e.g., cocksmanship and slatterncy), deadening to arousal, embarrassing contretemps, listening to jazz, narcissism, onanism, lessening amounts of jism, impotence, prostitution, becoming too discerning and picky about imperfections in the female form, flesh-peddling, cancer, loss of material ambition, loss of sphincter elasticity, pederasty, crying bouts, philandering, existential loneliness and the inability to experience love and meaning in one’s life, strange rashes, insects living in one’s pubic hair, a never-ending search for someone better in bed, tendinitis, halitosis, shame, shame to a degree theretofore unknown when one’s eleven-year-old son finds a love letter to your mistress in your coat pocket, a stark increase in the risk of and embarrassment from farting in a lover’s face before you’ve gotten to the point that you can laugh about it together, drastic lowering of one’s standards, heightened exposure to rape, heightened exposure to being murdered (by a lover’s jealous spouse or lover), the never-ending outrageous expense (E.g.: Endless dinners! Wine! Champagne! Chocolates! Prostitutes’ fees! “Doctor’s” visits! Extortion payments! Child support! Alimony! Lawyer’s bills! The divestiture of a lifetime’s assets in tur capra thruna! Dresses! Stoles! Carriage rides! Apology payments! Shopping trips! Second homes! Secret apartments! Secret families! In comparison, being faithful to one’s spouse is practically free.), the loss of good pious friends, habituation of sin (i.e., lying), the breaking of vows, and, to save the worst for last, the breaking of hearts.
On the other hand, many things were sins and confession is a sacrament that one could receive as many times as was needed in life, unlike most of the other ones. He thought that meant something. Also, while he knew some who were able to faithfully keep faithful in matters of the loins, bed chambers, and tavern bathrooms, he knew a great many more even among the faithful who had not, could not, or would not, to one degree or another and in one way, shape, or form or another. How hard — ahem — they tried to do so was not for him to judge and was between them and their confessors. In this vein, he had come to the conclusion that there had to be some understanding on the part of God and St. Peter that some sins arise from excesses or perversion of drives that can also be used for good, such as gluttony and the sins that arise from lust. These can be contrasted to sins that arise from nothing but the evil inherent in and unique to man, such as anger, greed, hatred, murder, theft, covetousness, and such like. Plainly to Desotto and to a few of the priests he’d encountered, such as Father Koblenza, the latter type of sin must at all times be unequivocally condemned, absent the most dire of mitigating factors (such as, for example, murder and war time). Whereas, with respect to the former type of transgression, a more pastoral approach should be taken, for the church in imposing its strictures as to these matters is asking the faithful not to avoid a clear and unecessary wrong, but to tamp down and battle a force inherent in one’s own flesh — a much more formidable undertaking to be sure. After all, what is the distinction between the laity and the priests and religious if not a recognition that some — and they are the holy, sworn or ordained few — can more easily than others — and they are the weak, easily tempted many — bear the yoke of the Christian moral life? More understanding and compassion in dealing with such sins of the flesh than when dealing with those of the darkest reaches of man’s reason and knowledge, is all the more warranted once one gets to a place in life, as Desotto already had, where it can be seen how many even among the holy vocations are unable to fully contain their inborn urges. To constrain and deny one’s innermost desires takes will and energy lacking in all some of the time and some all of the time. So to impose unnecessarily strict sanction and punishments on simple people for sexual sins, rather than exhorting them to try to do better and creating a world where it is easier for them to do so, struck Desotto as cruel, especially considering the unrivalled ecstasy of the human orgasm.
As for himself, Desotto took pains to avoid and correct those who caused scandal by boasting of their affaires and seductions or acted as if they were trifles at most, and he was skeptical of priests who implied, often with shifty glances, silly laughs, and touchy hands, that such things were of no importance. And, of, course, he made all efforts to not lead others into scandal: He did not speak of his sexual intentions or indiscretions, let alone boast of them, and if asked he did not question or mock the church’s teachings, but instead tried to defend them if he had to. He would also do his best to help his future children understand why it was important to follow the Christian moral life, not simply dictate it to them, and if they failed, he would not cast them out, but keep loving them and helping them to do better. And he thought that was more than most did and beyond what he could be reasonably expected to do.
After all that, Desotto took solace in an oft-overlooked passage in the Didache, an instruction of Christian life from its earliest times. It jumped out at him when the ancient document had been taught to them at the Jesuit academy he and Charlemagne had attended, and he’d remembered it ever since:
See that no one causes you to err from this way of the teaching, since apart from God it teaches you. For if you are able to bear the entire yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you are not able to do this, do what you are able.
As to the first sentence, it seemed to Desotto that it was the teaching that was of most importance. As for the second, Desotto had come to wish (Not wished to come! Clean your mind!) that, perhaps once a year was all, its last clause could be the subject of a homily. Not to give an excuse, but to give hope.
Continued…
