"City Boy", by Leonard Michaels (1969)

This story makes me laugh, inwardly, or if having consumed beer, I might even use throat, teeth and tongue, and do a proper LOL. Often the laugh (inward, or out) is in different places to the times I'd laughed when reading it before. And it's great fun to read aloud. You should try it. It feels very Portnoy, which was of course published in the same year as this: 1969.

Incidentally (very incidentally), Micheals' protagonist is called Phillip, and Roth's is called Alex(ander), which strikes a similar register to Leonard, although I don't think either Roth or Michaels were tipping their hats (or cocking a snook) at each other.

Even the year (1969) has a scabrous, slightly surreal silliness to it looks-wise: all those beast-with-two-backs sixes and nines. So much so that at the end of the piece I couldn't actually bring myself to read the year, which Ford appends to every story in the anthology. Also, how does one intonate Veronica's demand (entreaty?) to Philip in the last paragraph? My reading of it sounds a little cranky, when presumably she would have uttered the endearment...well, how?

Answers on an MP3, please.

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