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EPISODE ONE:
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The Ups and Downs of Skeeter Kitefly
Skeeter Kitefly's Sugardaddy Confessor
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Skeeter Kitefly's
Titular Assets
COMPACTIFICATION
behind the scenes
RoBynne O'Ring's
GRUNTS OF
PASSION
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About the Author
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Last Updated
March 07, 2008
"That there is Miss Skeeter … Best of the lot, too,
if anybody should want to ask me."
—John D. MacDonald, YOU LIVE ONCE
I have always had a special regard (to put it euphemistically) for petite
women. I daresay the psychosexual grounds for this are nothing I should
boast about; but petite women are just so darn CUTE.
In a special category by themselves are the COMPACT. One such character—known successively as Scintilla (Toots) Sweet, Scarlatina Scargill, Griselda Whistlebait, and eventually as Sally Whistletoe—appeared in 1974 in my first extended all-out attempt at writing a novel (known successively as You're Up Against the Wizard, The Extravagant Notion, Hoosegow High School, and eventually as a trilogy of Bander's Natch Books).
Even in her earliest embodiment, Sally Whistletoe was described as a "short, brash brunette. Highly colored face. Compact and powerful." Not to be entirely complimentary, one synopsis added that she was
barely five feet tall, but makes up for it in being deceptively female in appearance while actually having the strength of ten men in her little body. She is enormously strong from the neck downwards, and has had the Weight-Lifting Machine in the Auxiliary Gym named after her.
Amends for this would be made before long. While studying the history of Hollywood, I became a great admirer of Clara Bow but was downcast to learn that hers was yet another case of onscreen ebullience masking a cruel childhood, studio exploitation, misery and madness, et cetera and so forth. Having already identified Sally Whistletoe with the effervescent picture-show Bow, I resolved that nothing was going to vanquish my It Girl; that sheer irrepressible BOUNCE, for once, would ride high and sweep all before it.
Not too coincidentally, Sally soon developed an abundance of bosom. She also transformed the end of The Bander's Natch Books from a danse macabre of triumphant vampires to a demonstration of good old full-breasted amor vincit omnia.
Many years later it was a profound satisfaction to engineer a vis-à-vis encounter between two compact cutiepies in "Projectile":
"You're sure into a lot of things," said Skeeter; and it was so. Sally Whistletoe was immersed in all ventures great and small that the Middle West could offer wholesome energetic teenage girls in those Derelict Days, the mid-Seventies.
She was no taller than Skeeter but looked a titan in her thunderbolted leotard. Sally had apple cheeks and deep-dish dimples, cinnamon-roll hair in a freshbaked Dorothy Hamill wedge, and a superimpressive bosom: the sort that appears to be pulling its owner along like a couple of dachshunds on abbreviated leashes.
"You gotta have a project!" she demonstrated with jutting jaw etc. "Gotta get with it—no time to waste!" You had to get a move on, get the lead out, get it all together and get your butt in gear, if you didn’t want to get nowhere fast.
Another compact character, this one named Beckie, appeared in The Elohssa Decaftihs Shining Show, a musical combo-parody I wrote in 1980. Beckie was the disgruntled but oh-so-cute girlfriend of Jim/Mij, the retrograde Elohssa Decaftihs of the title who started off wimpish—
Oh, don't you know how you affect me (Beckie)
Like Shatner affects a Star Trekkie (Beckie)
To pieces I go, so collect me (Beckie)
I've one thing to say: "Don't reject me (Beckie!)
Don't be mean!"Sure, I know that I'm not Nietzsche's Über-
Mensch, but I've a heart of gold.
You think of me as a goober
But B-E-C-K-I-
E love you so!
—and turned out, after a sojourn at an abandoned motel, to be a bikin', surfin', mass-murderin' acidhead. Along the way, I transformed Rocky Horror's "Science Fiction Double Feature" into "The Mixed-Up Merry Prankster":
When you're not really ill
A little yellow pill's
Sure to help you on your way.
You run for the shelter
Of mother's little helper
And it helps get you through your busy day.But when you're behind
The backside of your mind
And depression's the best of your highs
Then to us you should come
As fast as you can run
And we will open up your eyes:No more weeping, no more whining,
We will make you see the shining,
Friends and family may forsake you
But come on with us, and we will take you
To the mixed-up merry prankster, Elohssa.
And "The Time Warp" into "The Bass-Ackwards":
We needn't mention
The pressures of tension—
Brains have to bear the brunt.
Join the rehearsal
Of our mental reversal—
Turn yourselves back-to-front.Brains go about-face!
And you'll find that it takes
Just a jiffy to adjust.
No need to write you!
Aloud, we invite you
To DO THE BASS-ACKWARDS WITH US!
Shorn of most of this song and dance, "ELOHSSA
DECAFTIHS" would ultimately evolve into Chapter 15 of The Ups and
Downs of Skeeter Kitefly.
Proceed to Episode 2 of Compactification
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