Chapter 47 Chapter Forty-Six

"Ready, baby?" Jaime Gumm sat propped up against the headboard, perfectly comfortable; the puppy curled up on his stomach, warm. Mr. Gumb had just washed his hair and wrapped a towel around his head. He rummaged among the sheets, found the remote control of the video recorder, and pressed the playback button. He made his show by copying two videotapes onto one.He looked at it every day when he was making crucial preparations, and always just before he skinned the man. The first tape was from the early sound newsreels, and the sound was rustling and indistinct. It was a black and white newsreel in 1948. The city participated in the preparatory event before the "Miss America" ​​election ceremony.

This is swimsuit competition.All the girls held flowers, and they went up the steps one by one to the stage. She has seen Mr. Gumb's Mane Dog many times, and when she heard the music, she narrowed her eyes, knowing that she would inevitably have another pinch. The beauties who participated in the competition looked very much from the era of World War II.They are wearing Rose Marie Reed swimsuits, some of their faces are lovely, and their legs are very nice, some of them are, but their muscles lack strong vitality, and they seem to be a bit bloated at the knees . Gumm pinched the poodle.

"Honey, here she is, here she is, here she is!" Here she is, walking up the steps in a white bathing suit, smiling brightly at the young man who greets her at the edge of the steps, then walking away quickly on high heels, the camera chasing the back of her thigh: Mom , that's mom! Mr. Gumm didn't have to touch his remote, he had it all taken care of when ripping this copy.The film rewinds, she backs up again, backs down the steps, takes her smile away from the young man, backs up the aisle, then goes forward again, back down, back down . When she smiled at the lad, Gumm smiled too.

There is also a shot of her among a group of people, but the frame is always blurry.Better to just put it away quickly and just glance at it.Mom, with the other girls, congratulated the winner. The next one was taped from cable TV while he was in a motel in Chicago—he had to rush out to buy a VCR and stay an extra night just to get it.They played this piece after piece of the film as the background of a sex commercial late at night on the third bad cable channel. The sex advertisement was typed into words and slowly climbed up the screen from the bottom.The reels were made up of gibberish junk, pretty bland, bawdy flicks from the 1940s and 1950s, and volleyball at nudist camps; With a fake nose and socks on his feet.The stereo is to play music, no matter what kind of music is on.What is playing at this moment is the "eyes of love"; it is completely out of sync with the brisk and lively movements.

There was nothing Mr. Gumb could do about the advertising text slowly climbing up the screen from below, so he had to tolerate it. Look here, it's an outdoor pool - judging by the leaves, it's in California, beautiful pool equipment, everything is very fifties.Several beautiful girls were swimming naked, some of them may have appeared in some Japanese movies, they were lithe and lively, bouncing, climbing out of the pool, running towards the ladder of the water slide, faster than the music The rhythm is much faster.They climbed up—wow—and came down!Their legs stand up as they dash headfirst into the waterslide, they laugh, their legs stick out, and whoa!

Mom shows up.Here she came, following the curly-haired girl out of the pool.Her face is partly obscured by an ad from a crawl out of Sex Power, a sex shop, but you can still see her walking away from here and up the ladder over there, dripping wet Glittering, full bosom, soft body, wonderful!Sliding down the waterslide with a tiny scar from a C-section - wow!so beautiful!Even though he couldn't see her face, Mr. Gumb knew in his heart that it was his mother; this was taken since he had seen her last, and that was the only time in his life he had actually seen her.Of course, except what you see in your heart.

The scene cuts to an ad for couples' aids and ends abruptly; The poodle narrowed his eyes, and within two seconds, Mr. Gumb hugged her tightly. "Oh, baby, come to Mommy, Mommy is going to be so pretty soon!" There's so much to do, so much to do, so much to do in preparation for tomorrow. When he was in the kitchen, he couldn't hear the thing even at the top of his voice, thank God.However, when he went to the basement, he could hear it on the stairs.He hoped the guy was sleeping there peacefully.The poodle walked forward under his arm, and turned back to bark at the pit from which the sound came.

"You're better raised than that guy," he said to the hair on the back of her head. This underground dungeon is at the bottom of the stairs, go through a door and turn left.He didn't glance at it, and he didn't listen to the voice in the pit—it didn't look like English at all to him. Mr. Gumm turned and went straight into the studio, put down the poodle, and turned on the light.A few moths fluttered their wings and landed unharmed on the wire protective net of the ceiling lamp. Mr. Gumm is meticulous in his studio.He always uses stainless steel containers for his fresh solutions, never aluminum.

He had learned to do everything well in advance.While working, he warned himself: Things had to be methodical, precise, and quick, because when things went wrong it was hard to deal with. Human skin is heavy—16 to 18 percent of your body weight—and slippery.A whole piece of skin is difficult to handle, and it tends to slip off when it is not dry.Timing is also of the essence; skin begins to shrink as soon as it is removed, most noticeably in young adults, whose skin is already very firm and tight. Add to this the fact that human skin, even that of a young man, is not perfectly elastic.If you pull it, it will never regain its original proportions.Sew something extremely slippery and then pull too hard on a tailor's ironing board shaped like a ham, and it will bulge and wrinkle.Sitting next to the sewing machine, my eyes are about to fall out, and I still can't get rid of any wrinkles.Then there are the cutting lines, you'd better know where they are as well.Human skin is not pulled out in the same amount in all directions before its collagen bundles are deformed and fibers are torn; pulling in the wrong direction will leave a pulling mark.

Raw materials that have not been tanned are simply impossible to make.This, Mr. Gumm did a lot of experiments and went through a lot of heartaches, and finally got it right. He finally found that the old way was the best.His procedure is as follows: First, he soaks the object in a water tank with plant extracts cultivated by Indians-all natural substances; no salt mineral components.He then uses the way New World Americans make that buttery soft, incomparable deer hide—traditional brain tanning, where the Indians believe that each animal has just enough brains to tan into leather.Mr. Gumm knew that this was not the case, and had long since given up on the experiment, even on the largest-brained primate.He now has a refrigerator full of bull heads, so there is never a shortage of stock.

Matters of material processing he was able to handle; practice had brought him close to perfection. Structural problems remained, but he was also exceptionally well placed to solve them. The studio door opened into a passage in the basement, which led to a disused bathroom, where Mr. Gumm kept his lifting tackle and clock; It was a large, dark, crowded room. He opened the door to the dressing room, which was brightly lit—floodlights and incandescent tubes tied to the roof beams, and the light was tinted like daylight.A raised floor of acid-washed oak holds the mannequins.Each mannequin is partially clothed, some in leather, some in muslin as a pattern for the leather.There were mirrors on both walls—nice plate glass mirrors, not tiles—so the eight mannequins were reflected double, a dressing table with cosmetics, wigs, and several Set of models with wigs.This is the brightest room in the dressing room, all white and light-colored oak furniture. The mannequins are dressed in unfinished commercial clothing, mostly dramatic pieces imitating Armani designs, made of light, durable fine black sheepskin, all wrinkled, with peaked shoulders and padded chest . The third wall was filled with a large workbench, two industrial sewing machines, two tailors' models for displaying garments, and a torso modeled after Jaime Garm himself. Against the fourth wall, a huge black wardrobe, painted in china, with a ceiling almost eight feet high, occupies a dominant position in this bright room.The wardrobe is old, and the pattern on it has faded; there are still a few golden scales where a dragon is drawn, and a white eye is still very clear, still staring, there is another dragon here, the dragon body has been blurred Hard to find, only a red tongue left.The paint underneath is still intact, just cracked. The wardrobe is large and deep, and has nothing to do with commercial clothing.The ones on its model and the ones on the hooks are all "special goods".Several of its doors are closed. The puppy sipped water from its water bowl in the corner, then lay down between the feet of a mannequin, looking at Mister Gumm. He's doing a piqian.He needed to get it done - he meant to get everything in front of him clean, but he was in the midst of a creative frenzy and he was trying to make it for himself out of muslin His clothes still didn't satisfy him. Mr. Gumm had grown far beyond the techniques taught to him by the California correctional school as a boy, but now the job was a real challenge.Even if the fine and delicate light soft sheepskin is made, when it comes time to do delicate work, it is still insufficiently prepared. He has here now two samples in muslin, like a white waistcoat, one in his own size, and one in Katherine Baker Martin's, which he had while she was unconscious. It can be measured in the middle.As soon as he put the smaller one on the model it became clear that she was a very big girl with excellent proportions, but she was not as big as Mr. Gumb after all, and her back was nowhere near as broad. His ideal is to have a garment without seams.This is impossible.But he was determined to make the front of the bodice absolutely seamless and flawless.This meant that all appearance changes had to be made at the back.difficult.He had thrown away a muslin sample and started all over again.He pulled the material very deliberately and made two underarm pleats—not a French pleat, but a vertical welt, pointing down—and by that he could get over the problem. .The two pleats at the waist are also on the back, just where the two kidneys are.There must be only a tiny seam, and he is used to such working standards. His mind was no longer on the visual side, but on the tangible; it was understandable that an attractive person could be held tightly. Mr. Gumm dabs talcum powder on his hands, then hugs a mannequin made of his body in a natural and comfortable embrace. "Give me a kiss," he joked into the empty spot where the head should have been, "not you, fool. He said to the dog; the dog pricked up its ears at his words. Gumm gently stroked the back of the model in his arms, then walked behind it, thinking about how to mark it with chalk.Nobody wants to feel a crack here.However, in a hug the hands are brought together in the center of the back.And, he reasoned, we're all used to that central line of the spine, which doesn't seem out of place like some unevenness in our bodies.Therefore, it is definitely not acceptable to have a seam on the shoulder.The solution is to make a pleat in the center of the top, so that the point is slightly above the center of the swollen shoulders.He could use the same seam to fasten the solid yoke, which was lined for reinforcement.Lycra panels under the sides on both sides—he had to remember to do lycra—and a Velcro chain under the right mouth.He thought of those marvelous Charles James dresses, with the seams staggered so that they fit perfectly and lay flat. The back slits would be covered by his hair, or rather, by the hair he'd soon have. Mr. Gumm dragged the muslin off the model and got to work. The sewing machine was old-fashioned, a finely made, ornate pedal-operated machine, converted to electric operation perhaps forty years ago."I never tire, I speak only of service" is painted in gold-leaf scrolls on the armrests of the machine.The treadle was still functional, and Gumm stepped on it to start the machine after each set of stitches.When it comes to fine stitching, he prefers to do it with bare feet; he treads lightly on the running board with his fleshy foot, gripping the front edge of the running board with his nail-painted toes to keep the machine from turning. overdo it.The only sounds in the warm basement were the sewing machine, the dog's snoring, and the hiss of the steam pipe. After he has inlaid the sartorials into the muslin samples, he goes to the mirror to try them on.The dog turned its head sideways, staring at him from the corner. He still needs to put a little under the armholes.There are still some problems with the welt and lining, otherwise the dress would be beautiful!Soft, flexible, elastic.He can imagine himself running up the waterslide ladder as fast as you want! Mr. Gumm played with the lights and wigs for a little drama, and tried on a pretty short shell necklace at the neckline.How wonderful it would be to wear an off-the-shoulder gown or hostess nightgown over his new breasts!How tempting it would be to just get on with it now and really get busy!But his eyes were tired, and he wanted his hands to be absolutely steady, but he was not ready for the noise.He picked out the stitches patiently and arranged the materials one by one.It's a perfect cutting template! "Tomorrow, honey," he said to the puppy, taking the bull's head out to thaw, "we'll do this first. To-morrow. Mommy's going to be so pretty."