The Last Gentleman

steno pad. It seemed to be a casebook of some sort, with an autopsy protocol here and there and much scribbling in between.
    Sutter wrote:
    A w.d. and n. white male, circa 49.
    Eyes, ears, nose, mouth: neg. (upper dentures).
    Skin: 12 cm. contusion rt. occipital region
    Pleura: Neg.
    Lungs: Neg.
    Pericardium: 10 cc. pink frothy fluid
    Heart: infarcted anterior wall right ventricle; coronary artery: moderate narrowing, occasional plaque; recent occlusion anterior descending branch, right c.a.
    Abdomen: neg. except moderate cirrhosis of L. with texture fibrous to slice; central areas of lobules visible macroscopically.
    Police report: subject found rolled in room above Mamie’s on 16th St. behind old L & N depot. Traced to Jeff Davis hotel. Here from Little Rock on opticians’ convention. Traced from hotel to men’s smoker in warehouse (girl performer plus film, neither on opticians’ schedule), thence to Mamie’s, thence to room upstairs, wherein slugged or rolled; but head injury not cause of death. Mamie off hook.
    Lewdness = sole concrete metaphysic of layman in age of science = sacrament of the dispossessed. Things, persons, relations emptied out, not by theory but by lay reading of theory. There remains only relation of skin to skin and hand under dress. Thus layman now believes that entire spectrum of relations between persons (e.g., a man and woman who seem to be connected by old complexus of relations, fondness, fidelity, and the like, understanding, the comic, etc.) is based on “real” substratum of genital sex. The latter is “real,” the former is not. (Cf. Whitehead’s displacement of the Real)
    Scientist not himself pornographer in the practice of his science, but the price of the beauty and the elegance of the method of science = the dispossession of layman. Lewdness = climate of the anteroom of science. Pornography stands in a mutual relation to science and Christianity and is reinforced by both.
    Science, which (in layman’s view) dissolves concrete things and relations, leaves intact touch of skin to skin. Relation of genital sexuality reinforced twice: once because it is touch, therefore physical, therefore “real”; again because it corresponds with theoretical (i.e., sexual) substrata of all other relations. Therefore genital sexuality = twice “real.”
    Christianity is still viable enough to underwrite the naughtiness which is essential to pornography (e.g., the pornography of the East is desultory and perfunctory).
    The perfect pornographer = a man who lives both in anteroom of science (not in research laboratory) and who also lives in twilight of Christianity, e.g., a technician. The perfect pornographer = lapsed Christian Southerner (who as such retains the memory not merely of Christianity but of a region immersed in place and time) who presently lives in Berkeley or Ann Arbor, which are not true places but sites of abstract activity which could take place anywhere else, a map coordinate; who is perhaps employed as psychological tester or opinion sampler or computer programmer or other para-scientific pursuit. Midwestern housewives, look out! Hand-under-dress of a total stranger is in the service both of the theoretical “real” and the physical “real.”
    I do not deny, Val, that a revival of your sacramental system is an alternative to lewdness (the only other alternative is the forgetting of the old sacrament), for lewdness itself is a kind of sacrament (devilish, if you like). The difference is that my sacrament is operational and yours is not.
    The so-called sexual revolution is not, as advertised, a liberation of sexual behavior but rather its reversal. In former days, even under Victoria, sexual intercourse was the natural end and culmination of heterosexual relations. Now one begins with genital overtures instead of a handshake, then waits to see what will turn up (e.g., we might become friends later). Like dogs greeting each other nose to tail and tail to nose.
    But I am not a pornographer, Val, like the optician, now a corpse, i.e., an ostensible liver of a “decent” life, a family man, who fancies conventions with smokers and call girls. I accept the current genital condition of all human relations and try to go beyond it. I may sniff like a dog but then I try to be human rather than masquerade as human and sniff like a dog. I am a sincere, humble, and even moral pornographer. I cultivate