Umbrella Fetish

While research­ing those rumors, I did find a very inter­est­ing fan fic­tion about the ori­gins of the Pen­guin. This story was writ­ten by Jonathan Gold­stein and pub­lished in the Car­olina Quar­terly on Jan­u­ary 1, 2004.

Before he ever moved to Gotham City, before he grew into the over­weight, obses­sive sad sack of his later years, The Pen­guin was a poet and a dandy who lived in Lon­don. He wrote com­plex vil­lanelles and threw lav­ish din­ner par­ties at which he only became more charm­ing the more he drank. He wore a mon­o­cle and a top hat and car­ried an umbrella.

One evening, at one of his din­ner par­ties, after hours spent sip­ping absinthe, The Pen­guin tan up to the roof of his build­ing, opened up his large, black umbrella, and leapt off into the air. As he coasted to the ground, he hollered out lines from Blake, stuff about grab­bing life by the fat of its stom­ach and giv­ing it a twist. He was that crazy. He was that burst­ing with life.

From that night on, he made it his habit to jump off roofs, ever higher, while clutch­ing an umbrella. After a while, he got pretty good at it, too. He saw that by kick­ing his legs and twist­ing his back a cer­tain way, he could actu­ally pro­long his flight, coast­ing all over the place, some­times only land­ing after sev­eral dar­ing min­utes aloft.

It came to pass that The Pen­guin started hear­ing more and more about a cer­tain nanny named Mary Pop­pins. She, too, he was told, had been float­ing around Lon­don hang­ing from an umbrella han­dle. Every­where he went The Pen­guin kept hear­ing about her, how it was sim­ply insane that they had not yet met each other.

So finally, a din­ner party was arranged by some­one who knew them both, and on the evening of the party, The Pen­guin walked into the draw­ing room, saw Mary Pop­pins on the divan, doffed his top hat, and bowed low, as was his style in those days.

He had planned a few things to say and do when first meet­ing Mary Pop­pins. He thought he might lift up his umbrella as though chal­leng­ing her to a duel. He imag­ined she would smile and take up her own frilly, per­haps pink umbrella, and then, together, they would dance about the room, leap­ing over fur­ni­ture, par­ry­ing and thrust­ing, per­haps even wind­ing things up breath­ing heav­ily, nose to nose.

Instead what hap­pened was The Pen­guin became very shy and quiet. As he stood there star­ing at her, his top hat felt need­lessly clumsy and his mon­o­cle too small for his lace, and the squint­ing needed to keep it in place was giv­ing him a slight headache. For the first time in his life, The Pen­guin felt ludicrous.

“I imag­ine you two must have an infi­nite amount of things to speak of,” said their host as he sat them together at the din­ner table. The Pen­guin nod­ded uncertainly.

After three or four min­utes if became clear that The Pen­guin and Mary Pop­pins had absolutely noth­ing to say to one another that did not deal exclu­sively with umbrella travel – get­ting stuck in trees, the shoul­der aches, anx­i­ety about tip­ping over in the wind.

Every­one at the table just sat there star­ing at them expec­tantly, which made the whole thing even more awkward.

Try­ing to move things along, Mary Pop­pins asked The Pen­guin if he liked to sing, to which The Pen­guin responded, “Only when I’m drunk.” Then she asked if he enjoyed chil­dren, to which he replied, “Yes, in a sweet wine sauce.”

The Pen­guin then asked Mary Pop­pins how she kept peo­ple from look­ing up her skirt when she flew. She smiled politely, then turned to the man on her left and asked him how he was enjoy­ing the lamb.

The man on her left was wear­ing an ele­gant, aris­to­cratic cape. Mary, a bit drunk on the sherry, noted that if he spread his cape out he might be able to glide about like a bat. The man on her left chuck­led and sug­gested that after din­ner they head up to the roof and give it a try, which they did.

Tags: Dinhternet