MY SKIN IS BRITTLE and shrunken as Slim Jim casing, but whereas continuously I ooze pus and loose appendages to the fans in LA, protegees in Marrakesh, or just the overzealous gibbon I hang with now and then in the jungles of Southeast Asia, continually too do I regenerate limbs, liquids, bristly tufts. It's gotten so I wonder if I ever lose my head, will my body grow back . . . or backwards? I've never seen a headless Buddha, but once a great Buddha-less head. I'm guessing I'd do the opposite of my cherubic, Tuesday night canasta partner. I think Atlas's physique as represented in the famous bust-with-burden resembles my own of long ago--a teenage Beelzebub. Beholding the statue from a just-so angle, it appears as though he has misplaced his thinker and substituted the gorged, gouged globe. Does not this resemble, in sense and insensibility, my own lot? Next time you're in Rockefeller Center check it out.
