Personal Revelations Of Invasion Of MLA In Hopes Of Making Off With Knowledge. Failure As A Possibility Looms Heavily. by Richard Benyo Semi-Special Corrspondent Territorial Enterprise

Rich Benyo as Mark Twain

Part Four

MALE FRIENDS COME AND GONE

Having personally felt the biting cold of a winter in the area near Aurora, where Clemens and some male friends attempted to mine for gold and silver, and knowing the scarcity of wood in that high desert region, we feel safe to state that we'd have been willing to sleep with a goat, a few rabid weasels, and a muleskinner in efforts to stay away from freezing to death. Additionally, while in Virginia City, it wasn't uncommon for some of the 30,000 males in residence to not only use the same bed in shifts, but to use it simultaneously, as in a city that burned to the ground every two or three weeks, a good bed was hard to ignore, even if it was already occupied.

Twain's piece on onanism was also dragged forth, although onanism in those days was not a hanging offense as it has become in Surgeon General Edlers' day. We look forward to Mr. Coulombe's book with great anticipation.

Ms. Coste's presentation was insightful and enjoyable in spite of the solumnity we anticipated. She had obvioiusly done her homework on the subject of drinking and temperance, although not simultaneously.

She shared with the audience the fact that in 1910 hard alcohol consumption in these United States averaged out to 5.5 gallons per person. Various audience members licked their lips in anticipation of more to come. The temperance reform movement, Ms. Coste stated, felt that the abolition of alcohol would rid the country of all crime and insanity. Twain had seen both sides of the issue, both as a journalist involved in what journalists do after a paper is "put to bed" (another homosexual expression?) and by observing his own brother, Orion. In one of Orion's fits of reform, he had managed to ace himself out of becoming the Nevada secretary of state by jumping aboard the temperance bandwagon, just before the election; although well-liked and potentially a shoo-in for the post, temperance bandwagons in Nevada were--and still are--a ride to oblivion.

Ms. Coste rolled into an analysis of the role of alcohol in defining Huck Finn through both his reaction to it and its reaction on Pap.

Following the two papers, questions from the floor were entertained, and a lively discussion followed. But before it could become too interesting and informative, a functionary of the MLA appeared to force a close to the session before any untarriffed knowledge might be fermented.

THE EDGE OF KNOWLEDGE--AND BELOW

We descended from the heights of the session to the depths of our wallet to bail the ole Pap-mobile out of bondage to the damp, chilly subterranean garage. We turned the heater up as high as the unmaintained thermostat could stand, and raced away from The City with visions of homosexuality and temperance spinning in our head.

In order to slow down the spinning, we pulled into a brewpub on the way home and ordered a pint of seasonal brew and contemplated writing a book, from a purely journalist's view of a journalist, of Sam Clemens' years in the West. We'd visited most every place that played a role in Roughing It. We'd impersonated Twain at coyote howlings where a hundred men came together in the wilderness and drank heavily and howled at the moon while not one of them had sex with each other. We'd sat at the desk Clemens used at the Territorial-Enterprise and where he morphed into Mark Twain. We'd hiked and camped in the Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake and Aurora areas where Clemens had. We'd been Twain to an actor's Reuel Gridley. We'd slept in the same bed as other men and come away uncorrupted. We ordered another pint.

By the next morning, the morning of the last day of the year, we'd forgotten what we'd been thinking about the previous night. But we remembered our tires needed rotating.

Email: Rich Benyo at dvdick@metro.net

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