Summer Love

Once in a while, her face would slide off, and for the briefest, most terrifying of moments, I would be able to see her real head.

She did it right at the end of it all, on the last morning that we were together. Returning home from where ever it was that she had spent the night, I met her just outside the front door and told her that she had broken my heart.

I forget how exactly the conversation progressed, but eventually I found it necessary to threaten her, so I informed her of the fact that unlike the other spineless men she surrounded herself with, I wouldn’t be strung around like her personal yo-yo.

‘The difference between them and me,’ I said with wavering conviction, ‘is that I have balls.’

At that exact moment, her face slid off, and she castrated me with her smile.

The Old Man In The Bar

There was all the violence in the world in me as I stood over the old man, clenching and unclenching my fists, my jaw tight as a vice.

But he just chuckled and took another slow sip of his whisky, shaking his head.

‘I’m right, I know I am. That look in your eyes, he used to get that same look,’ he said, smiling.

‘You fucking take it back,’ I replied.

‘Or what?’

‘Or I’ll kill you where you sit.’

He chuckled again.

‘Tell me how you got to be this way, so full of anger. It never used to be this way, did it?’

Something inside snapped. I grabbed the old man by the scruff, tore him off his bar stool and onto his feet. He felt light, an old bag of bones, kindling.

‘You fucking take back what you said. You do that and I’ll walk away and we can both go back to our lives and you won’t wake up tomorrow in hospital, if you even wake up at all.’

Something came over the old man as I said that, a shadow, deep and dark moved over his face and his blue eyes froze over.

‘You got some demons in you, don’t you, boy?’ he whispered between his old and yellowing teeth.

I felt the colour drain from my face.

‘Churning inside you, loose shrapnel, bouncing off your bones, tearing you up.’

I let the old man go. There was something about him, something powerful rising up and I felt stupid clutching him like that. I let him go.

‘You called me the son of a coward.’

‘That I did.’

‘Did you even know my fucking father?’

‘I knew him well. You think I just walk around bars telling angry young men their fathers are cowards for kicks? I’ve been trying to track you down since he passed, but you sure as hell haven’t made it easy.’

I felt a fresh wave of anger wash over me. This man, this cantankerous old fox was leading me on and there was something about him that made my skin crawl.

‘Aaah, there they are again,’ he said, watching me.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Tell me something son, after he passed, you went to pay your respects, didn’t you?’

‘I asked you a question.’

‘And I’ll answer it in good time. But first you tell me, you saw his body, you went to pay your respects, didn’t you?’

‘I… yes. I did.’

The old man sighed and rubbed his face, he looked tired. He pinched his eyes and slumped back into his barstool.

‘They were waiting for you son,’ he said, taking another sip of his whisky, staring at a million miles of nothing. ‘They recognised the same traits in you that used to be in him. Your pride, your strength, your vanity… what happened the day you saw him last?’

‘Nothing. I paid my respects. I got up and left. I never knew the man, I mean, I’d met him once or twice, but I never knew him.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Fuck you! Who the fuck do you think you are? Insulting my father, talking a load of shit about ‘demons’, what the fuck do you know? I’m lying am I? Well, if you’re the fucking expert why don’t you tell me what happened that day? You’ve got me all figured out, bullshit! You don’t know the first fucking thing about me!’

‘He looked at you, your father, stared into your eyes, I know that much.’

My heart jumped. I felt my blood flushing my face red. In my head I saw him, lying there, pale and cold, small beads of condensation forming on his pallid skin. It was just him and me in that room, no one else saw his head turn, lolling to the side, his dead eyes open, staring into mine.

‘That’s how they move. It’s through the eyes, always through the eyes. You must have felt something, an anger, a hatred starting to boil inside you then.’

In my head I was back inside that room and my shock and fear was giving way fast to something terrible. The old man was right, I resented him in that moment, resented the life he’d lead, the trail of broken hearts he left in his wake. He was a careless man, a manipulative, charming devil, and I couldn’t for the life of me shake the image of my mother, drunk and sobbing uncontrollably the night she heard the news.

‘It rose inside you then like it’s rising inside you now, like it has been ever since that day. It’s in your eyes son, as plain as day, they’re in your eyes. What was the last thing you said to him? When you went to pay your respects? What did you say the last time you saw your father?’

In that room, there was all the violence in the world. There was all the rage and all the sorrow, and it was pouring into me, filling the empty spaces inside and I was coming alive, my blood flowing like lava inside my aching veins, my teeth grinding in my mouth, my muscles locking hard on my bones.

I grinned from ear to ear as I turned to look at my father’s remains and with two words, paid my respects.

‘Fuck you.’

The old man nodded his head slowly and finished his whisky. A tense silence hung in the air as the jukebox in the corner played out and a cold wind blew in through the thick, smoky bar.

‘I’m here to tell you something I think you need to hear, something that could just save your life,’ the old man said, his voice steady and calm.

‘You aren’t your father,’ he said to me, ‘you have his demons now and they will try and do to you what they did to him, but if you have the strength to fight them back, in time they will tire of you and find someone else, a lesser soul to infect.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Oh, I do son. Why do you think you’re so full of rage right now, looking at me? Your skin’s been crawling since you first laid eyes on me.’

‘They… know you…’

The old man smiled then, threw a handful of change down on the bar counter and slowly got up to leave.

‘You’ll be ok. Luckily there’s enough of me in you to see you through this.’

I swallowed hard as he said that to me and the realisation of who he was sank in.

‘Will I ever see you again?’ I asked the old man.

‘No. Not until you’ve done what you gotta do, and the sad truth is I probably won’t be around when that day comes.’

We shook hands then, the old man and I, and the feeling of his rough and weathered hand against mine felt good, they were the same, his hand and mine, they fit.

I smiled. Something I hadn’t done in a long while, and he smiled too and we stood there for a long time, shaking hands, before he turned and crossed the room, disappearing like a cloud of old, grey smoke into the swirling snow.

I never saw him again, but I visit the bar where we met from time to time.

I order two whiskies, but only drink one, and think back on the night I met the old man in the bar. I clink my glass against his, and I thank him for saving my life. I finish my whisky in good time and get up to go.

I don’t drink from his glass, but it’s always empty when I leave, and I always leave smiling.

This year’s holiday card is an illustrated version of the short story “Three Questions.”

The single-sheet constant fold form is new to me, so there have been a few prototypes and design layouts.

This is also a test run of the form for the big project, which I have not neglected. Much. Next to come are sketches and cuts for the first labor.

Every Dog…

It’s Monday night and the game has changed. I’m walking into another Newtown dive, some club or other to watch some band or other, and while they’re stamping me and my buddy Peggles, I see her.

She is sex incarnate. She is tall and leggy and has jet black hair and the face of a huntress, a feral creature. She is wild, her body is something godly, you almost feel embarrassed, you almost want to look away, you almost want to blush and hide, but she’s got you bucko, there’s nothing you can do. All the armour in the world can’t stop her smouldering, molten eyes. If you’re smart you’ll cut your losses and run a mile. But you’re not smart, are you?

You ignore her completely. If you so much as raise an eyebrow, she’ll know you’re hungry – you’re Pavlov’s dog, and that sound resonating in your head every time you look at her is the bell ringing. Head straight to bar, do not pass go, do not collect 200. You should know better than to try and douse the inferno inside with whisky, but in moments like these, common sense, well, it ain’t that common.

A few moments later I’m staring at her across the room and something about her starts to haunt me. I swear to God… I wait for her to turn and face me. Isn’t she… isn’t that…? Fuck me. It is. Her name comes to me, it’s Italian, it’s the name of an Italian flower. I know this because in another life, she told it to me.

Flashbacks are really cheesy, you smear a little Vaseline over the lens, dim the lighting, change everyone’s haircuts and bingo, it’s a year ago and I’m finishing up a shift at News Café one Saturday night. It’s three o’clock in the morning and we’re going to Taboo, a nightclub famed for the larney pricks it attracts. If you drive a sportscar they let you under a red velvet rope and you can park right by the door. Inside looks like Patrick Bateman’s sweetest dream; the kind of environment only a sociopath could love.

We do favours for the Taboo staff, we bring them free avo and bacon tramezinis, they get free drinks at News Café, so they let us in for free and don’t look twice when we walk in dressed like a bunch of Southern suburb refugees. The other patrons, however, look at us like we’re something they all just stepped in. This kind of entrance makes working as someone’s bitch-boy six days a week almost worth it.

This is where she is, I notice her because she has a beautiful pair of breasts and she isn’t scared of making that fact known. She’s dancing by herself, I watch her until she knows I’m watching her. I like how she moves, partly because she doesn’t really look like she knows what she’s doing, which makes me think I could dance with her, no problem. When she goes to sit down, I sit down next to her.

What makes this flashback especially cheesy is the fact that I can’t remember what we said to each other, so the music in the club is playing in the foreground and what we’re watching is more like a montage. She gave me her number, that’s all that’s important.

Our first date and she smells like something long dead. ‘Heavy night’ she says, and her breath confirms that fact. Part of me is pissed off that she didn’t take the time to freshen up before meeting me for drinks, the other part of me is too busy trying to be witty and interesting to give a shit. After awhile I find it’s getting easier and easier to do this. She’s smart, she’s different, she’s very, very conflicted, but that’s normal when it comes to most of the women I find myself attracted to. I am a night in shining armor, she is something worth fighting for.

The montage continues. Next time we meet, I’m late and she nearly ups and leaves. This time, she looks shit hot. We talk about all kinds of stuff, there are continents of common ground, it’s comfortable. In this montage scene she laughs at my stupid jokes, and we drink and even though you can’t hear it, at one stage she tells me that her breasts are getting a lot softer since she had the implants put in, and that she finds when she’s giving head, it’s way easier to get a man to come when you push a finger up his butt. My sphincter tightens involuntarily.

She tells me her name is an Italian flower, and I want to buy meadows of those flowers and fall asleep in them, drunk on their perfume, staring at an impossibly blue sky.

She tells me that she has an attachment problem, that when she gets to love a person, she can’t let them go, she clings desperately, she gives too much.

If a date can be said to go swimmingly, then the word to describe the third date is drowningly. We meet at Trance Sky, we sit side by side on a couch, we drink, we talk, conversation starts to dwindle, we both feel it. I start to become painfully aware that it’s do or die. I need to make a move. Am I sweating? Can she smell me? She asks me why I always wear the same shoes, and I don’t really answer the question so much as evade it. Is she making fun of me? This is shit. I go to the bathroom, she keeps our couch. I get back, she goes to the bathroom.

A bunch of gorillas are sitting across from me, and they start asking me questions. They think she’s hot, are we dating? I neither confirm nor deny this. They ask me how many times her and I have been out, I say this is the third time. They tell me, ‘Dude, make a move TONIGHT. If you don’t do it TONIGHT, you’ll end up in FRIEND ZONE. Once you’re in FRIEND ZONE, there’s no telling how long you’ll stay in there for. Could be weeks, could be years, but your hopes of getting laid will be fucked.” I’m pretty sure the implicit paradox in the last part of the gorilla’s sentence is completely lost on him.

I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling these guys to fuck off – who the fuck do they think they are, exactly? I disregard everything they’ve just told me, the jerkoffs. No pressure man, just be cool. She comes back and we sit close. The thing to do now is to make out, but…how? She’s right here, but she might as well be a world away. How do I do this? How do I bridge the infinity between my lips and hers? Conversation is limping around like a leper in the advanced stages of his affliction. She’s getting bored, this is going to shit, I have to save this, so I look dreamily into her eyes and say:

“I want to kiss you so badly right now.”

Cut. The director in my head screams, “What! The! FUCK! Those aren’t the fucking lines! Jesus, where’d we find this asshole!” The inside of Trance Sky almost comes to a standstill, it’s like everyone just heard me. She turns her head away from me and says, “Really?”

And right then and there, everything dies. All around me, people puke and die, flowers in vases shrivel up and wilt, stray dogs in the street hit the deck, paws up, even a block away a rose vendors stock turns to dust in his fist as the shockwave of lame ripples out from me.

I think we can end the flashback right there. After that, I didn’t bother to contact her again except to send a drunken SMS one night after I’d seen her out, I don’t remember what it said.

And now I’m standing across the room from her and she looks good enough to die for, good enough to murder for, way better than I remember her ever looking before. I tell Peggles who she is, I kick myself for never making a move on her, I do this repeatedly while I’m talking to Peggles to make my point, my big toenail cracks slightly, but I won’t realise this until tomorrow.

I tell him, “I’m a complete dickface if I don’t go right up to her and say hi right now. I’m a fucking loser if I don’t do this right now, I’ll never stop kicking myself if I don’t do this… fuck…”

Peggles stares blankly at me, he doesn’t have to say, “Stop fucking around” for me to know this is what he is saying. I clink my whisky against his, I take a hearty gulp, I go straight to her.

I touch her arm lightly and she turns to look at me, I say her name and her face blossoms into a smile. We trade pleasantries, I think she gives me an obligatory hug. Her neck is long, when I’m close to it, I’m torn between tearing it out with my teeth, or kissing it as gently as I can. Beautiful women often provoke this kind of response in me, it’s not conscious, and putting it into words looks strange, and sick.

She asks me about my father and his psychic girlfriend. I stiffen up involuntarily and briefly consider my next move.

“He’s dead,” I say, “as for his psychic girlfriend, well, I guess her powers must be going through a slump or something, because she never saw it coming.”

She expresses her sincere condolences, and I can’t help smiling despite myself as I relate the details of my late father’s untimely demise when his heart exploded on a treadmill in the gym. “I know it’s not funny, but the thing is, it’s like a double-edged sword, y’know?”

“Why?” she asks, also smiling.

“Because I never really got to know the guy, but I never really got to know the guy, if that makes any sense. I mean I’m not really torn up about it, which is a good thing, but that’s only because I didn’t know him very well, which is a bad thing,” I say, and she listens, and there’s something about her that reminds me of when we went out on that one really good date – she’s looking at me like she did that time, like there’s more to me.

She tells me she’s just bought her first house, she tells me she’s been having trouble with the plumbing because she’s renovating a bathroom. I tell her, “Yeah, people think that a bed’s the most important thing in a house, but I swear to God, it’s the toilet. I mean, you can sleep on the floor, but there’s no way you can shit on the floor.”

She packs up, and I quietly pat myself on the back. This isn’t going badly at all. She says she’ll be back, and ducks off to the toilet. I turn back to Peggles and tell him about the conversation.

“So far, I got two out of three man – she remembers me and she’s single. That’s a great start, now I just gotta get her number. That’s all I need to get three out of three. I’m not even going to fuck around, I’m just going to straight up ask her for it, and then everything will be fucking awesome!”

“Great.”

“Yeah, just going to straight up ask her for it, just like that, no fucking around. Then I got my foot in the door y’know?” Peggles knows I’m not saying this to convince him, I’m saying this to convince me.

At the bar, she sidles up next to me and I make her give me her number for the second time since we met. I fuck up the spelling of her name because I’m putting the whole thing in this time, not just the abbreviated version. Once I have it, I ask her to chose a picture to go with her name. I don’t know why my phone has this option, it’s the lamest thing in the world – you can choose from a variety of stupid faces and pictures to save next to a person’s name.

“I was thinking the girl, but she has red hair and yours is black,” I say.

“As long as it’s not the kid with glasses and freckles,” she replies.

“How about guy-with-the-moustache?” I ask, and she laughs and gives me that look again. “Nah, not really you is it?”

She shakes her head, still smiling.

“Here we go, the cat! That’s pretty fitting, don’t you think?”

The cat it is. I remember her tattoo, I see she has a new one encircling her arm, petit, some kind of flower. We order tequila, she takes a shot and recoils like an actual bullet just hit her. “Tastes like mommy’s kisses,” I say, baring my teeth.

The conversation breezes into star signs, she goes through half the zodiac trying to guess mine, and in the end I have to tell her “Scorpio”, which I always enjoy doing because Scorpio is not the kind of sign that ever causes a mediocre reaction.

Most sex offenders are Scorpio.

More Scorpio’s are murdered than any other star sign.

I ask her if she really believes in all that star sign hokey pokey and she says that she’s a pagan. I ask her if that means she wears all kinds of weird necklaces with magical crystals and rings that add 5 to dexterity and light radius, and she laughs and says yes. She’s leaning close to me now, there are parts of her naked skin that are touching mine.

I ask her not to put a spell on me, but I know it’s too late.

She bites me before she kisses me. Gently, on the neck. Her scent curls deliciously into my brain, I can’t think anymore, there’s no need for me to think anymore, I shut my mind down; I’m two parts animal, one part god.

In this moment she is everything beautiful and sick in this world. She’s hungry, she eats me up and I watch whole parts of me disappear and I give more, I give everything. She leans into me and I bear her weight effortlessly and the feeling of me, strong against her, gently crushing her to me, wrapping my sinews around her, is magnificent beyond words or measure.

God knows, it’s been too long since a beautiful woman has surrendered to me like she did. Of course, during that moment, I was blind to the fact that despite everything, despite the way she melted in my arms, the way she let my wandering hands slide where ever they pleased, she wasn’t surrendering.

It must have been nearly half an hour later when I came to. She was heading to the bathroom and Peggles was standing right by me and saying, “Nice.” The grin that spread from ear to ear across my idiot face radiated happiness to the extent that every person who met my idiot smile, smiled too. It felt like the first time I ever kissed a girl, it felt like I was coming up on acid and the world had never been so mind bendingly beautiful.

I was just really, really happy. Happy like kids are happy when they’re too innocent to know how bad it gets. I felt extremely confident that I was going to get laid and that my morning was going to end nestled like a cat full of milk in her warm, soft bosom, having just exorcised what has been one of the worst dry spells of my life.

“Go!” I told Peggles. “This is the best thing that could have happened to me tonight, and I have you to thank buddy. I thought this club would be shit, but man, this is fucking awesome! Things couldn’t possibly be better right now, fuck! So go, head home, don’t worry about me, I must venture once more into the fray and once more I shall emerge: victorious!”

“Ok man,” he said and left.

I figured without my lift, I had an even better chance of getting her to take me back to her place, which is like locking all the doors and windows of a building and setting it on fire in the hope that the lack of oxygen will stop the flames from spreading.

She took awhile in the bathroom and when she came back, she went to one of the guys she was with earlier and started talking to him. I bided my time across the room, I sized the other guy up and came to the conclusion that if it came to it, I could wipe the floor with his face, the skinny runt. He hat a hat on, he wasn’t what you’d call easy on the eye, he looked like he’d dressed himself to piss his mom off. After all, she’d had a taste of me and loved it and in a moment would be leaving hand in hand with me.

And then she kissed him. Held him like she’d been holding me, her hands traced the same paths on his neck and face that they had on mine. Her body yielded to him like it had yielded to me. It was like standing outside myself, watching an inferior carbon copy repeat exactly the same routine I had enacted barely ten minutes before.

I should have socked that fucking imposter as hard as I could. I should have stamped his skull under my sneaker until it came unglued in a viscous mess of bone and brains, but I didn’t. I drank a tequila and left.

Outside, winter never felt so cold. I slumped between the wall and the pavement on my haunches and tried to black what I’d just seen out of my mind and figure out how the fuck I was going to get home. I probably looked up at the sky and felt no surprise that the stars were obscured by pollution, that the whole world was going to shit, it probably comforted me.

All I know is that after awhile people came out who were going back to Tokyo Star, where the night had started, so I explained my story and they gave me a lift. One of the guys said, “That sucks bro,” but he didn’t really give two shits.

Back at Tokyo I had more tequila, and it did nothing. A buddy called John was still there, and he gave me a lift home. When he asked why I looked so miserable, I told him my dog had died, and he told me how he ran over his favourite dog when he was fist learning to drive because he got the accelerator and the brake confused.

He said it took three days for his dog to die.

“Lucky dog,” I muttered.

This story appeared in Everyday Genius on 28 October 2009. It was commissioned by Lee Rourke (who curated the site throughout October 09).

Dr Martens’ Bouncing Souls

It didn’t hit me at first. Not straight away it didn’t. For a few long seconds there, the world was freeze-framed. I half expected to see tumbleweed blow by. All around, people emitted muffled sounds as if sporting ball gags under water. Possibly swathed in cotton wool, they spoke in slow motion, their syllables hideously elongated like limbs on the rack. I distinctly recall being put in mind of an unravelling audio cassette, or one of those avant-garde sound poems that were all the rage back in the day. And then it hit me.
Hard.
Really hard.
Repeatedly.

To describe the pain as excruciating just wouldn’t do it justice. It was unspeakable, unsputterable; not even stutterable — utterly unutterable. What I can attempt to convey, however — to a certain degree, at least, though not, alas, to the third — is the unrelenting nature of the whole episode. I was stunned. Dumbfounded. Gobsmacked. At a loss for words. Mouth agog, screaming on mute. Bent triple, pissing bleeding blood. Pummelled into that liminal zone beyond which no representation is possible. With the benefit of hindsight, I see it as a crash course in transgression, no less. Nothing would ever be the same again. Not quite. Not for me. Uh-uh. Blown was my mind. Rocked were my foundations. Shaken was my core. Topsy-turvy was my world. Over tit was my arse. And then it hit me again.
Hard.
Really hard.
Really, really hard.
Repeatedly.
Repeatedly.
Repeatedly.
Repeatedly…

I blame it on Effie. Effing Effie and her fucking frock. A brown flower-print number, the kind usually modelled by ladies of a certain age. Ladies who have long ceased to turn heads. Ladies who are fading away inexorably. Ladies who are almost invisible already. Ladies who, even as we speak, are being cut out of the equation with tiny toenail scissors. Slowly. Surely. Snip, snip — snip. But draped around Effie’s nubility it became impossibly erotic, as if the breath of life had suddenly been pumped into a long deflated blow-up doll. As if all the old biddies in their flower-print dresses were in bloom again, having magically recovered their pertness of yore. As if our very planet were a tight pair of bouncy buttocks and the whole wide universe had a massive hard-on.
Hard.
Really hard.
Rock-hard.
Rock on.

Blowing mellow bellows from below, a cheeky breeze sported with the hem. Effie even had to hold it down on occasion, which lent her an air of charming vulnerability. Despite this precaution, and after a great deal of hemming and hawing, the flimsy material finally resolved to flare up, possibly in answer to the prayers of all those who had slowed down to admire the young lady’s graceful sway. Time almost came to a standstill as the dress made its giddy ascent in the manner of a Big Dipper inching up the steepest of Battersea slopes. I half expected to see tumbleweed blow by. Then suddenly — amid a cacophony of catcalls, wolf whistles and screeching tyres — the world went into overdrive frock’n'roll-style. Effie gasped in surprise, looking back instinctively to see how many oglers would be going home with a spring in their proverbial and diaphanous black lace on their minds. As she did so, I could not help but notice the imaginary ejaculates from a hundred passers-by glistening in her hair like so many constellations of icicles. It was hard not to really.
Really hard.
Really, really hard.

The heat was well and truly on. You could almost feel the sap rising as Effie walked by. Men for miles around seemed to be picking up illicit frequencies, pricking up their ears at the mere sound of her killer heels in the distance. I tried to throw them off the scent by accelerating or crossing the road at regular intervals, but to no avail. I knew I would bump into him eventually, or rather he would bump into me. He was out there somewhere — everywhere — whoever he may be. It was just a matter of time now, and now was the time. He loomed up, he loomed large, hurtling towards me with all the inevitability of tragedy. There was no way I could avoid him. In fact, he veered slightly to the right to ensure that we were on a collision course. It was fight or flight. It was lose face and face loss. It was too fucking late.

Effie did not notice anything at first. She pursued her monologue looking straight ahead as he rammed into me, only pulling up when I remonstrated with my assailant. This, of course, was the cue he had been waiting for. I was playing right into his big lumberjack hands, which he balled into mighty fists before felling me like a sapling. Effie screamed while I attempted to regain verticality by means of the wall. Paying no heed to the abuse that was being hurled his way, he slowly removed his jacket and folded it rather fastidiously. By the time he had finished rolling up his shirtsleeves, Effie had run out of expletives or patience. I noticed how she rolled her eyes in desperation as I finally staggered to my feet, still puffing and panting, only to hear that I was going to be taught a bloody good lesson in front of my wife. And then he hit me again. Hard. Really hard. Repeatedly. He decked me, then he floored me, then he pulled me up again and decked me some more. At first I was under the cosh, but I soon became conversant with the sentence that was being executed with such surgical precision; I could even distinguish the nuances of each blow. It was like learning a new language.

Taking on the demeanour of an impartial spectator at a boxing match, Effie stepped back to embrace the whole scene. She was more open-minded now. She wanted to hear him out. She was hedging her bets: let the best man win, like. At some point — a couple of cheeky jabs followed by a cracking right cross — she even started seeing his point, which he put across so eloquently, so forcefully. After all, he was only being fair. Firm but fair. So fair and so firm. Hard, really hard. With her arms folded across her ample bosom, she looked down upon me, sighing and shaking her head, as if she thought, on reflection, that a good lesson would indeed do me the world of good. She was bowing to the inevitable, submitting to a superior force and was silently urging me to do likewise, to let go. All resistance was futile: I had this coming all along and now it had come, and that was that. It was in the order of things to put things in order. It felt right; it even felt good, so good. Hard, so hard. The wicked gleam in her eye proved that she was now baying for blood. Baying, obeying some primitive urge. Harder, really harder.

After an uppercut and a left hook had left me on my knees again, begging for mercy, he slipped his jacket back on and bitch-slapped me to the ground. Blinking through the streaming blood, I caught a glimpse of my wife’s expensive black panties as she stepped over me to join him. They walked away hand in hand.

Punctuality

‘Fuck.’

It was the same way he always woke up, feeling like a truck had hit him, feeling like something evil had crawled down his throat and died, he lay sprawled on the couch cradling the empty bottle he had sucked down the night before like an old lover. His heart-burn was bad, his heart burned bad, and that badness rose like fire inside him.

‘Aaaaa fuck.’

His head split as he wrestled his leaden body off the floor, and the muscles in his back and on his side ached to the bone. The TV was still on, infomercials blasting through his skull at an impossible volume. How many days had this been going on for? How many days can a man wake up like this, he thought, before something bad happens? This is my life, he thought… goddamn.

In the bathroom he stared at his reflection for a long while, trying to decide whether or not he should shave his miserable face. He was dimly aware of the sour, alcohol stench rising from his pores. Rum. It had reached a stage where he didn’t even need to hunt the bottles down to figure out what he’d been hitting the night before, his stench said it all. I’m a stench connoisseur, he thought. He grinned widely at himself and stumbled backwards into the shower.

The steaming, scalding hot water brought him up a level from the depths he had plunged himself into, but the surface was still a lifetime away. He’d been drowning for too long. He brushed his teeth, but it did nothing for his breath. He put deodorant and aftershave on, but it did nothing for his stench. He ate a grapefruit for breakfast, but he hardly tasted it and just barely kept it down. He got dressed last.

Putting his tie on made him grin again. He’d always thought of himself as the type of guy who would eat a bullet when things got too much, but recently he’d changed his mind about that. Recently, he’d seen himself as more of the hanging type. He could imagine how it would feel as he kicked the chair out from under him and struggled like a fly in a web, every exertion bringing him closer to death. Two things about hanging appealed to him – the fact that you die with a hard-on, and the fact that he would use his ties from work to do it.

He decided on his plan of action on the way to work, he was listening to The Doors when it came to him, in an epiphany punctuated by the lumbering, morning traffic, and Jim Morrison’s screeching vocals. The day was overcast, but when the idea came to him, his world was flooded in sunlight.

Entire office blocks turned to towers of orchards and blossomed as his car sailed past, parking lots crumbled and sprouted forests of magnificent pines, the asphalt cracked and fields of soft, rich, green grass rolled endlessly toward the brightest horizon he had ever imagined. It was finally happening, he was abandoning all hope, all desire, he was letting go of everything and focusing his entire being on one goal, one plan, his plan.

Highways melted into crystal clear rivers, cars fell apart around him and were instantly covered in blankets of moss and mushrooms. As he drove closer to his plan, the foliage got denser, it became humid, misty. The rivers turned to swamps, and he could feel his world teeming with a million hidden creatures, croaking and calling and growling; hidden in the thick, soupy, dense jungle that was swallowing everything around him. This is great! he thought. This is the best day I can remember, I know everything is going to turn out great, this is the best day…

He was glad to find his office block utterly ruined, thick jungle vines wrapped themselves around the brick and cement and rent huge cracks throughout the building. The natural order was taking over, the law of the jungle. Colossal tree roots curled their way through reception, rupturing the tiled floors and ruining the blue/grey carpets in the staff tea room forever.

Elaine, the secretary at reception, greeted him and asked what was so funny. ‘Your face’ he replied, and smashed his fist into it until all of her front teeth were broken and her nose was hanging at an obscure angle. He was still laughing when the security guards fell on him and tried to cuff him. One of them made the mistake of getting too close, and he tore the guard’s throat out with his teeth, and pushed his thumbs into the other one’s eyes, right to the back of their sockets.

It was easy from there, the guards had guns. He blasted his way through the jungle, blasted his way through Chief Information Officers and Human Resources Managers and Account Directors all the way up to the top floor. The elevator was made from bamboo, monkeys pulled thick vines threaded through pulleys to operate it. He killed the monkeys.

At the top, the air was somehow thicker than on the ground, and it smelt like something long dead. He was heading into the CEO’s office, that was the prize, that was his goal, the others meant nothing, they had just picked the wrong goddamn day to go to work. He found the office locked and shot the doors until his guns clicked.

‘Fuck.’

The doors swung open, and he found himself at this, the moment of his life, facing down the greatest evil he had ever know, all out of shells.

She wasn’t in her normal work clothes, that was the first thing that threw him. She was barefoot, wearing a torn loincloth, and her breasts were bare except for the hundreds of beaded necklaces that hung from her neck in green and gold. Her hair was loose, spilling onto her shoulders in thick, golden tresses. He had thought this jungle belonged to him, he had thought that it was his, but now he knew, he was wrong.

Her skin had a light sheen to it, and glowed bronze. He could clearly make out her taut sinews beneath her flesh, and he knew that even though she looked calm, leaning back, half sitting on the wreckage of her desk, her palms resting on it’s rent mahogany surface, in an instant she could spring at his throat. Her smile said it all, the things that slithered and lurked behind her swamp-green eyes said it all. He threw his guns down. He met her languid gaze.

There was all the murder in the world in her eyes. There were the shadows of the empires she had crushed, and the fires of the bodies she had burned to get to where she was. For the first time he saw her for the predator she was, at home here, in the dank, in the dark, in the rot.

He stripped his clothes off, unable to tear his eyes from her and crossed the vast tracts of swampland between them.

Her tender embrace when she held him against her betrayed nothing as the fingers of her free hand trailed slowly backward across the desk and curled around the rusted handle of her letter opener. When their lips met, a feeling of sweet rapture flooded his senses and overwhelmed him to the point where he didn’t feel the sting as she plunged the letter opener right to the hilt in the flesh of his back.

His rapture began to rise, he tore the beads from her neck and stripped the loincloth from her waist, he found the nape of her neck and bit down hard as his fingers slipped between her thighs and found her wanting.

She pulled the blade from his back and plunged it in a second time. He forced her thighs apart, and, bending down to kiss her where they met, felt something warm trickle down his spine.

He sunk himself inside her, she arched her back, he felt something irrepressible welling up inside himself, something great and terrible. It spread from his loins throughout his body, it felt like lava in his blood, it shivered up his spine and filled his skull to bursting.

His breath began to rasp in his throat, he coughed violently, felt something warm on his lips, opened his eyes. She had plucked the blade from his back and was sinking it deep in his stomach, rocking slightly with his every thrust, her gaze slithering behind slime of her green eyes.

He pulled the blade from his stomach and turned it on her. She gripped his wrists as he forced his weight down, the blade edging closer to her throat, while he thrust himself violently between her glistening thighs. Her sweet moans spurned him on through the mist that had started to roll before his vision.

The feeling inside him was growing, swelling with every lumbered breath, sweat pouring from his every pore, the tip of the blade bearing down, making a small dimple in her throat with it’s rusted point, and all the while she held him fast in her Medusa-gaze, right up until the feeling burst inside him, and he cracked his spine and rent his sinews and splintered his teeth between his grinding jaws.

He was magnificent in that moment, he felt magnificence, he felt it with every staggered heartbeat and tasted it with every raw, iron-laden breath. He collapsed on her with all his weight, and though he drove the blade clean through her jugular, she didn’t flinch.

All went quiet in the jungle, the eyes of a million swampland creatures watched them as their breath grew strained, and their hearts beat synchronously, slowly pumping the life out of them both. Before her eyes dimmed, she met his gaze one last time.

“You’re late for work Harold.”

He returned her impassive stare, and for the first time in weeks, he spoke his usually trite, unemotional response with more conviction than he’d ever felt in his entire life.

“It won’t happen again.”

The jungle watches them die, but feels nothing. The jungle has many queens and many kings, but sooner or later, the law of the jungle usurps them all. The croaking, calling and growling of a million unseen creatures resumes and is joined by the far-off sound of police sirens wailing through the humid, jungle mist.

 © Tony Niemeyer 2009

Killer Beginning

 Indian cracked his knuckles and lit a smoke. Around him, bodies lay strewn in the aftermath of what he guessed was very probably his latest job. By the look of it, these people had been having some kind of party – over there potato chips and sausage rolls lay in the already congealing blood of Elvis Presley. He’d had the misfortune of falling through the glass coffee table in the center of the room and was sliced to ribbons, but judging by the half of his head that was shot off, Indian guessed he hadn’t felt much.

Over there, Cleopatra lay face down in a scattered mess of soil and fern with three wide holes punched through her back. Her whisky glass lay on its side, just out of reach of her outstretched hand, its contents spilt in a way that perfectly illustrated the trajectory of her fall. Only heavy caliber rounds could do that to a person, thought Indian, hope the neighbours didn’t mind.

Indian crossed the floor, picking his way carefully through the wreckage and examined himself in a mirror that had somehow survived the onslaught. He was covered in smudges of something green and greasy and was wearing a rubber Richard Nixon mask, which he pulled off and stuffed in his belt. The right side of his face was swelling up something fierce, it hurt when he smiled and his teeth had that chipped feeling like he’d been on the receiving end of a couple of heavy blows.

Otherwise it was the same old sallow face staring back at him – heavy bags under watery red eyes, ten o’clock shadow, tinged with shades of grey, various scars he only dimly remembered getting. He rubbed his face, exhaled a heavy lungful of smoke and wondered how much longer it would be before Marco spoke to him through his molar and told him what to do.

I’d better count the bodies, thought Indian, and try to find where the hell my gun wound up. Indian lumbered down the passage toward the front door, which was still splintered from where he’d kicked it in. Lying spread-eagled in the entrance-hall with a broken face and two holes in his right lung was Hugh Hefner.

He must have let me in, he looks kinda surprised, thought Indian. A little further down the passage Indian found Madonna dead under the table, the pointy cones covering her breasts had come off, revealing almost equally pointy breasts underneath. In the kitchen, Indian found the Incredible Hulk, and knew in an instant this was the man who had roughed him up.

The man was lying on his side with a large steak knife protruding from his throat. He’d painted his entire upper body green and was naked except for a pair of tattered purple pants. He was a handsome man, and looked like he’d been carved out of a six and a half foot tall block of granite. Indian found himself staring at the man for a long time.

Some guys had the best luck on the planet, this guy looked like one of them, a prime specimen, grade-A stock. Indian imagined this guy’s entire life, from the private school where he’d been captain of the rugby team to the beautiful, popular, teenage princess he’d lost his virginity to in the back of his Dad’s 4×4.

Indian pictured this man’s mansion of a house, his corporate three-piece suits and polished leather shoes, his mahogany desk and emerald green lawyer’s lamp. He had a trophy wife who got wasted every night on expensive Champaign and industrial strength tranqs, and a horde of little brats who were spoilt and rotten to the core.

This guy had his life handed to him on a platter, he thought, but he was wrong. Had he looked closer, Indian would have noticed the scars in the places where the green body paint had come off, and the darker patches of green which hid tattoos. Indian left the kitchen without giving it another thought, but had he looked closer, he would have noticed that the real monster lay underneath the paint.

Outside, a balmy summer wind breezed its way through the open bushveld that surrounded the property on all sides. The sky was silver with consolations and galaxies that Indian could never remember the names of. I must be miles away from civilization, he thought, guess I won’t have to worry about those neighbours.

The patio extended to a pool of gargantuan proportions in the middle of which a dark-haired woman floated in a fuchsia halo. She was naked, and after staring at her while he lit another smoke, curiosity got the better of Indian. He fetched a pool pole, hooked the brush end under her arm and pulled her toward him.

She was an exceptional kind of beautiful. He laid her out on the bricks by the pool and finished his cigarette, staring unashamedly at her naked body. He wondered what kind of person she had been, how she had moved, what her voice sounded like, if she had kids.

She looked like she was in her late twenties and though her body was a work of art, it was her face upon which Indian’s eyes rested. It was gentle, and there was a warmth to it, a luster that lingered even in death. Indian imagined her smile, in his mind he saw her face brighten and her eyes light up and the thought of it made him smile even though his face hurt.

Back inside the house, Indian was rummaging through the kitchen to find something to eat when he heard what sounded like footsteps upstairs. He pulled the steak knife from The Incredible Hulk’s throat and cautiously mounted the staircase. Halfway up, James Bond was lying with his one hand blown off and his insides clutched desperately in the other and in the passage upstairs, Marilyn Monroe lay in a crumpled heap with her wig half-off and a gaping hole where her heart used to be.

Indian scanned the passage; to his right it branched out to a bathroom and an adjacent bedroom, to his left it ended in a master bedroom where he was pretty sure the sound had come from. He moved soundlessly down the passage, his knuckles fading to white as he tightened his grip on the steak knife and focused on keeping his breathing deep and even.

He checked the on-suite bathroom first and found Johnny Cash slumped on the john. He was wide-eyed and his head dangled precariously from the few sinews that still held it attached to the rest of him. Next to the startled corpse was his driver’s license and three thick lines of cocaine. Hmm, thought Indian and dipped a finger in the blow. It tasted good, it was definitely cut with something, probably speed, but not too much.

Indian rifled through Johnny Cashes pockets for his wallet and fished out a twenty rand note. Someone had written ‘32 B/More 22h00’ on it in pencil. Indian scratched his head, something about this note was familiar. He plunged into the stagnant quagmire of his mind and trawled the soupy mess of his memory, but as usual, came out with nothing but a handful of slime.

His thoughts were interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a wire coat hanger rattling lightly in the master bedroom. His heart lurched in his chest and he felt the flush of his blood rising. He quietly left the bathroom and crossed the master bedroom to the closet against the far wall. His reflection in the full-length closet mirror was fierce and dark. He looked every inch a killer; the cold glint in his eyes matched the moonlight sparking off the steak knife as he readied himself to gut whatever was in the closet.

His fingers crept into the steel groove used to slide the cupboard door open. Outside, the wind suddenly dropped and died. Indian took his cue. In one furious motion he swept the cupboard open, swore loudly, swept it shut and dived to the floor.

Indian rolled backward out the master bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him. He slumped against the door and slowly sank to his haunches, breathing heavily. He lit another smoke and tried to think what to do. Fuck, he thought, fuckfuckfuck. A familiar screeching reverberation tore him from his thoughts as Marko made contact.

“Marko?” said Indian.
“Polo,” said Marko. “What’s the count?”
“Eight, but I might have missed some.”
“No, eight is right.”
Indian chuckled, “Is that a fact?”
“What’s so funny?”
“I followed this noise.”
“And?”
“There’s a girl, looks about eight or nine years old, I found her in the cupboard upstairs.”
“Well what the fuck? Kill her!”
“Small problem chief.”
“What?”
“She’s got my gun.”
“WHAT!?”
“And she just shot me.”

(c) Tony Niemeyer 2009

“It’s just one of those days”, said the fox. “I was not able to trick the other animals.” “How come? You worked on your new tricks All night long.”, said his wife and the fox replied: “Yes, but for some reason, the other animals don’t believe me any more. It seems like they always know what I’m planning. Maybe we need to move somewhere else. To a place, where no one knows us.” “But we can’t move away. We have a great number of friends right here and we can’t leave them.” was his wife’s answer to the fox’ suggestion. The fox was getting angry, because he didn’t like his wife disagreeing with him. He decided to give it one more try, but if the beaver doesn’t believe his new trick, the fox will be looking for a new den somewhere else.

The next day, the fox went up to the beaver and told him that he saw the rats breaking the dam about half a mile down the river. The beaver was getting angry, because everybody in the forest knew about the rats broke the dam last year and so caused the death of many of the beavers friends. The beaver ran down the river, but then suddenly stops and goes back to the fox. “Hey fox, how do you know about the rats breaking the other dam down the river? You came to me from the opposite direction.” The fox got angry. “My wife saw them on her way back to our den.” The beaver knew the fox was lying, so he told the fox that it doesn’t matter whether the dam is broken or not.” The fox was speechless and though he knew the beaver was lying, he got beaten. The fox was very mad as he got back to the den. He told his wife that they will be moving to another forest.

About two days later, the fox and his wife were living in another forest and the fox came back from work again. “”It’s just one of those days. No one is believing my tricks any more. They seem to know what I’m planning.” “Maybe we should just stay here and you’ll look for another job!” the fox’ wife said carefully, knowing that her husband will be quite mad about what she just said. And of course, the fox got angry and yelled at her. The fox’ wife was hurt very deeply and decided to go back to the old den, with or without her husband. As she went there about two days later, on her way back to the den, she saw the rats destroying the dam, the beavers built last fall. She ran to the beavers cave and told the one of the beavers what she saw. As a matter of fact he didn’t believe her. “Nice try, but your husband tried the same thing about a week ago.” said the beaver and the fox answers: “Maybe, but this time it’s not a trick. It’s not my husband telling you about the rats, it’s me this time.” The beaver was convinced of being tricked and didn’t do anything to stop the rats. As a logical consequence the dam breaks and many friends of the beavers die.

Moral: “Don’t judge somebody because of ones friends”.

Regards, Christoph

The good fairygodmother was talking to an Asian Butterfly. A long time friend of hers who happens to drop by her secret haven.

“It is almost time now, my god daughter is growing up and very lovely. Tomorrow, the prince of the kingdom of Fantasia might come and ask for her hand. What am I going to do? How will I explain that my little princess wants to marry a frog and not the prince?”

“Oh my old friend, that is such an easy thing to solve. Fear not, make her realize that the frog is not going to turn itself into a prince after being kissed. Your god daughter is intelligent enough to realize that.”

“How? I am running out of time. Once the prince of Fantasia realizes the dumbness of my little princess, he will turn his back. He will say he won’t marry an insane princess. You know how stupid princes can be sometimes. You’ve met a few princes from different kingdoms.”

“Let your princess kiss the frog and she will know that what you told her is true.”

“Oh no! Never will I risk my little one’s life.”

“What do you mean old friend?”

“That frog is venomous. It will make her sleep forever. And Oh, my friend, I cursed that frog and he is here for revenge.”

“A curse?”

“I casted a spell unto him, that whoever he falls in love with will sleep forever and be thrown away to the cold kingdom of Antarctica. An the frog will not be able to save her, because he will freeze to death.”

“Why don’t your curse the frog to death then? You can do anything my friend. You can make the whole world dark and kill him without your little one’s knowledge.”

“Oh, I cannot do that. It is beyond my power to curse a frog two times. The first curse will get back at me. If I will be cursed, the world will be doomed forever. Humans will see no stars and moon on the heavens. My princess will no longer be happy upon realizing that there’ll be no more diamonds in the sky.”

“Oh, you love her too much don’t you?”

“Her parents died for me.”

“I know, I know old friend. I am by your side. I will find the best solution that I can find.”

GIRAFFENKÖPFE

Herr Josef hatte sich stets darüber empört, dass er von den Giraffen, die zu gewissen Zeiten scharenweise im tiefen Fluss an seinem Haus vorüber gewatet waren, stets nur deren aus dem Wasser ragende Köpfe zu Gesicht bekommen hatte. Seit Jahren hatte sich Herr Josef eine Trockenperiode gewünscht, die den Wasserspiegel des Flusses auf ein Minimum gesenkt hätte, damit er endlich Blicke auf die Hälse, die Körper, vielleicht sogar die Beine der Tiere hätte werfen können. Als der Fluss tatsächlich während des Sommers auszutrocknen begann, blieben allerdings zu Herrn Josefs Enttäuschung mit dem Wasser auch die Giraffen aus.

By LitterART, 07/09/2009 ©

The sky above the island is a palimpsest for centuries of celestial motions, as is the sand for prints of youth gone generations; at least, that is the impression on an open mind whose viewpoint is the pre-eternal.

The tiny island had posed for time-exposures of a heavenly paparazzi since long before the scandal sheets of legend went to galley stage.

The island and adolescence have disappeared now. All that remains are some footnotes in history books, this vagrant idler’s prose and, oh yes, the necklace of youths in its museum case.

Museums and briefer genres are a sanctuary for would-be artists with open minds and shutters.

I have been pressed close to the glass staring unblinking for hours, rousing an old guard’s curiosity.

“What is there to see?” he asks me.

“Just visiting with the prisoners, sir. I see canoes setting out at sunrise.”

My press card as eccentric buys much freedom of speech.

“And there is Gauguin by the tree, a child’s unread letter lines his paint box.”

Gauguin had his problem, and I have mine. His problem was art. My problem is hidden pearls.

How difficult it must be to prepare the pearls for threading, and so easy to break the string and see the work undone. There are works which can never be undone but only fictionalized. Authors do not work as hard as
jewelers. A bunny hides the pearls for all the youths to find on Easter morning. The reader must only have faith not to be strung along.

The island had its good and bad months. The divers had their ups and downs. Sometimes a shark would have his way. The youths grew up quickly in their hardship. Some grew up not at all.

Some things are rare and we reckon that rarity as priceless. How often does a month see two full moons? But it does happen. And once in a blue moon a young diver would surface triumphant with a perfect pearl.
Such a treasure was not his. He would give it to the entire village and there would be a feast. Some became brides during such festivities and the fuel of the village fire was stoked deep into the night.

Twice a year, a ship would come with merchants who purchased all the pearls. The perfect ones were for the Imperial jeweler.

Before the empire collapsed, the Queen would wear this necklace of forty such perfect pearls.

King David, of olden times, grew thirsty from battle; a thirst which nothing satisfied. He thirsted for water from the enemy’s well. Guards were sent by night at great peril to their lives to fetch a pitcher back. As the King filled his cup, he saw, not water, but blood to the brim. He poured it out as a libation and never took a sip.

The Queen loved her necklace. When the assassins slew her, the thread broke and the pearls scattered. There is always someone to mend what is broken when the price is right.

But I see you heading for the exit. I must tell you the joke before you go. The Queen never learned how to swim!

How many pearls are in the sea? How many stories are in me? How many worlds are in the metaverse?

I sought a pearl of great price but found only the paste of Maupassant.

Winthrop Sargeant translates it this way: “On Me all this universe is strung like pearls on a thread.”

The city is at its darkest several hours before sunrise, when the thieves have only just fallen asleep.

Good reader, you ask “Who are these sleeping thieves and what do they steal?”

All thieves sleep at such an hour that are unsuccessful and have given up and gone home. Even a thief has a home. Home is a good word, even when someone bad lives there.

A gentle rain begins to fall, more like a mist than a rain, and the practical nurse pushes the wheel chair much faster now, hoping to catch the light and cross the street. They approach the clinic door.

The old woman in the wheelchair says, “Wait! Don’t go in yet.”

The nurse asks why, surprised.

“It feels so good.”

“What feels good?”

“The rain on my face. It has been a long time since I felt the rain.”

“But, who are the thieves?” the reader asks.

“Well, I am one of them.”

“But you are not asleep.”

“I did not say that all thieves sleep; only thieves who have given up.”

“Look at this old chest I found! What do you suppose could be inside?”

“It is always the wrong people who die.”

“What do you mean, ‘wrong people’? Who is right for death?”

“Well, the ones who really want to die never die when they really want to. Only those, who want to live more, die when they least expect it.”

“But, we all die sooner or later.”

“Yes, this is true. We all die. We all go home and sleep at some point.”

“We are most alive when we are most free. And we are most free when we have lost our desire to live. I am free just now, writing these words.”

“But, to whom do you write?”

“I write to no one. I write to myself. I write to unborn children.”

“We are free when we are alone and have something worth saying. Only, whom to say it to in solitude?”

Do you see how we need to be in control? We demand to know who the thieves are and what they plan to steal. Who is the old woman in the rain and where is she headed? Does the nurse grant the drizzling request? And what is in that chest? Where did you get it?

A prince is not a prince without his realm of paupers to pay homage. And who steals from whom? Does the prince steal the poverty of the paupers? Do the paupers steal the prince’s fame?

The nurse patiently waited for twenty minutes while the old woman had her fill of rain. A composition by Pachelbel played softly in the background.

When I opened the chest, I found inside, another world. Many worlds. It was a Dr. Who’s Tardis of alternate realities.

A master of words is also a Time Lord.

I stole that memory from the nurse. She mentioned the scene one day, in idle conversation.

I am finished now. I must go home and sleep.

I am not speaking to you now. I am speaking to that other person (over there)… you see. Oh, I guess you can’t see from where you are. But that other person has been reading me for a while now. They sort of started reading by accident, out of curiosity. But then, as they read, they began to know not just the words, but me, behind the words. And as they read, I opened up to them, and they opened up to me. And I showed them more and more of myself. I exposed myself slowly. I stripped before their very eyes until I was as naked as the wrestlers in the Palaestra. But then, I stripped down even more, exposing the atoms of Lucretius. And before they could catch their breath, or say no and leave the room, I stripped
down to the very waves of Patanjali. But for all my nakedness, they never came to know the me that I know. They fell in love with the me that they thought I was, and that me became them, but a them they shall never
show to me. So now, there they are, over there, looking somewhere else than my direction. And now, I feel slightly cold, being so naked. But that is ok, because if it weren’t for being that someone else that they love, I would never have been anyone at all. And it is the love which matters
really, not the self. Is this not so?

We never think of titles until the end. We never know until its over. So now I must think of some title, or perhaps, epitaph for the cenotaph:

“Affair with the Reposed.”

Flowers, flowers red, blue, white, yellow random wild flowers and fancy ones filed in rows peopled the lawn which fell from the windows and milled as the wind rolled through them.

A slight breeze rustled the open blinds, the classroom was filled with the quiet of thirty people breathing in and out, the girls with their hair piled above their heads, or braided in buns, or smoothed out straight and long across their backs and shoulders; the boys with scalps, sat quietly in their chairs, or squirmed and scuffed their shoes restlessly, and thirty pens and pencils scratched and hummed across the sonorous desk tops, and papers smacked and crumpled under thirty hands gliding over them, bracelets tinkling and rings tapping and sweaty palms squeaking over plastic-finished tops, sped by the teachers gaze rolling through them and the electric drone of the big hand erasing minutes from the face of the clock. She made thirty-one, but she was not writing. Three giggles and the brassy tones of a chair leg broke the surface tension of the sound, and her eyes shot quickly to the source. Is that paper in your hand so funny? she said, smiling, Bring it to me and I will show it to the class so that we may all enjoy the joke.

Her young face drained and her skin turned pale and tightened against her cheeks. She held the paper between her fingers as though it were a dirty napkin that she wished would disappear. Hesitating, and then drawing in her breath, she stood up cautiously, her legs sliding her chair into the knees of the boy behind her, and walked solemnly to the waste paper basket by her desk, crumpling the paper in her hand as she walked.

No, no, she said, still smiling, stretching out her hand, How can we read it if you crumple it like that? Still smiling, she took the paper ball in her hands and unfolded it slowly in the puddle of sunlight which shimmered on her desk. As her eyes rolled up and down its crease-lined surface, she caught her breath in surprise. Blood rushed to her face and her smile fell limp and drooped about her cheeks.

She caught a glimpse of the sketch on the paper in her hands before she folded it in half. She let out a sigh of relief.

Did you draw this?

No no, I found it in my desk. A sarcastic cough from somewhere singed the air.

She cast a sharp eye in the direction of the cougher and then returned her attention to the folded paper in her hand, its inky lines had seeped through the porous paper and had made a faint image on the underside. She sniffed the cleaning fluid fragrance of the magic marker ink. This is fresh, and look, there is some on your hands.

She looked down at the red smudge that her lipstick had left while she was biting her finger (she had a nervous habit of biting her finger), and then looked up again.

Step into the hall with me for a minute. She stood up rapidly and her leather cushioned seat rolled up against the wall behind her.

They marched in a line, one leading, the other following, the sharp clicking heels punctuating the silent padding loafers. The door closed smartly behind them and the rush of wind rustled the open blinds; patches of whispers sprouted in the sunlight.

She leaned in a relaxed fashion against a locker door, her clean, white fingers unfolding the paper, and, with a sarcastic smile, turned it, flat open, so that the back side faced herself and the front side faced the young girl standing before her, shifting first to one foot, then the other, chewing the lipstick smudge on her finger.

Do you know what this is?

She stared back blankly.

Ha, dont tell me! I just bet you dont!

She shifted to another foot and deposited another layer of lipstick on her finger.

Dont be afraid. Im not mad at you. Im quite fond of you. Im here to help you to grow up nice and clean. A nice young girl like you should be thinking of other things nice things flowers; not this! Nice girls dont think about these things! This is dirty!

When you’re a woman like me, you’ll understand. She slipped for a moment into her natural voice and the young girl raised her head in surprise.

The young girl started on another finger, the first finger being quite happy and content.

And take your fingers from your mouth; that’s a dirty habit, she said, fingering the paper which she had nervously rolled into a tube (she had a nervous habit of rolling paper into tubes while she talked,) and was gesturing with it, for emphasis you understand, to one side of the young girls cheek. Nice girls don’t do that. A woman certainly wouldn’t. ad she took hold of her hand and gently pulled it away from her mouth.

Well, the young girl didn’t understand, and she never would. Neither of them would ever really understand, although there was really no difference, and there certainly was nothing difficult about it. The simply marched back into the room in a line, one leading, the other following, the soft padding loafers filling in around the sharp clicking heals. The paper mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again.

The young girl sat down at her desk and turned around to smile. She loved the smell of hair tonic and she was very happy; the breeze was blowing it her way. The pretty young teacher sat down at her desk to think of all the pretty young faces that she had seen come and would se go. She looked at the long, slender vase sitting on her desk, brimming with water and filled with fresh-cut flowers, and with the wind. It was coming her way. And, it was very, very nice.

- Sitaram

(written 1965)

What is it about this blank page that I fear?

When I allow my mind a certain freedom, yet with introspective resolve, then my mind becomes a vehicle of time and the past and travels, adrift within the tangled forest of my memories. Why do I want to write them down? Shall they become your memories too?

I was too young to read or count or tell time when I was aged 5 in 1954. Perhaps I was not too young had someone taught me. But those were the days when small children were expected to be small children and play. There was no pressure to get them into an Ivy League college.

My mother would send me out each morning to play. Somewhere, unseen, in a place I had never been to, was a firehouse with a noon siren; at least so I was told. I imagine it had been an air-raid siren during the war, but I was not aware of such things as wars or bombs or terror or death nor concerned by them. But with dependable regularity the siren would sound each day at noon. That was my signal that it was time to come home for lunch. My mother would have a scrambled egg sandwich ready for me on Wonder Bread. She would cut off the crusts, and then cut the sandwich into quarters. I never liked bread crusts at that age, for I found them bitter. Crusts resemble death. Perhaps the small quartered sandwiches were easier for my small hands to grasp. I assumed that everyone lived this way. I took for granted that everywhere around the world, an anonymous invisible siren would sound unseen at noon and children who could not read or count or tell time would come home to quartered egg sandwiches with the crusts cut off and a mommy for whom the sun rose and set on her one and only child. I was the center of her world as well as mine.

Odysseus heard Sirens too. My childhood and Mommy, dead and buried in the distant past, are a Scylla and Charybdis to crush my voyaging heart. If I fill my ears with the molten wax of melancholy, it is only a navigational precaution.

Mommy was simply there. I knew there were mommies everywhere, and noon sirens and egg sandwiches. I was all the world for mommy, but I was not conscious of that. It seemed only natural to me that I should be. I felt special and loved. It did not occur to me that my mother’s love for me was excessive, smothering, beyond the bounds of reason, and something to alienate and displace my father from our lives. Being unable to read or count or tell time, I was far beyond the reach of psychodynamics; beyond the reach of twisted , crazy sorrow.

I would set forth each morning with no plan. The morning simply happened. I would wander and wonder at a stone or acorn or leaf or pebble. I would talk with myself in my mind. I had a notion of the possibility of great adventures, always just around the corner.

In the afternoon, my mother would enforce a nap. Falling asleep was the most arduous labor for me. I felt it a duty. I would try to focus my mind in some fashion which might induce sleep. I discovered that if I lay on my stomach and put my face upon the bed, surrounding my eyes with cupped hands to shut out any light, and stared with my eyes open, then I would begin to see a mass of distant stars; specs of light. This bed of stars would slowly drift beneath my bed and vision, which gave me the feeling that I was sailing; flying; soaring. If I lost my concentration, then the vision would fade. Vision requires concentration.

As a teenager, I remembered my bedtime star wars and wrote a poem about my experience.

Once I thought… to a Pillow-Blanket Time

(circa 1965)

Once I thought
To a pillow-blanket time
When, where cupping hands, I saw
Unworlds of drifting black
Tortured dreamily
With rushing yellow train-tracks
Ribboned in and out
In purpling roars.
Red ladders I could climb
If hard enough I thought.
Red ladders I dissolved
If too hard I remembered.

Once I thought
To a pillow-blanket time
When fingers could find faith
In locks of hair
And we were a congregation
Of something slightly more
Than we deserved.
When a minister touched
On something slightly less than God
In a pulpit
That was all that it could
Or should be.

Once I forgot
To a pillow-blanket time
When ghostly figures moved
Through linen mists,
When ticks of clocks slowed down to sighs,
When sunsets were rainbows
Of tears and laughter.

My thoughts are now no more
Than a cloud’s whisper
Or the sea.
My lips
Are the ripples of raindrops everywhere.
My ribs
Are sweet white birds
In the mystery of flight.
My eyes are new-born spiders
Discovering the tapestry of dew.
My hands are apple trees,
Their fingers hold
Children.

– Sitaram

I had become conscious of pity; of feeling sorrow for another being. When in my room, alone, I would conjure up in my imagination a squirrel, and I would talk to the squirrel and say “Oh, poor little squirrel” and my imaginary squirrel would look up at me in a plaintive, sorrowful fashion, grateful for my sympathy and compassion. I am not quite sure why that squirrel was so wretched except that wretchedness was a prerequisite for pity. I suppose it was my own selfishness and egocentricity which made me choose the role of the pitier over the pitied. Beatrice Potter may well have been my guilty accomplice.

Now that I have written this, I read it aloud. Unexpectedly, I burst into tears and weep uncontrollably. It did not bother me at all when I composed it in silence.

“My tongue is the pen of a swiftly writing scribe.”

Perhaps the fingers are not as connected to the emotive part of the brain as the hearing is.

“Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word.”

The Psalms speak of a demon at noonday. The desert fathers, monastic solitaries, called that demon “akedia” in Greek, which means ennui or perhaps depression.

My noonday siren becomes my noonday demon.

All I have of momma?s now is a montage of photos which she assembled and framed, hanging upon the wall, and the delicate crystal wineglass from which she would sip her Dubonette wine, and a clock with the letters of her name, “M-A-R-J-O-R-I-E” around its face where the numbers ought to be, ticking very loudly but with a comforting effect.

When she died, fifty years after those halcyon days of noon sirens and egg sandwiches, it took months to empty her house of memories. How does one empty them from the mind?

Tell me now, do you yet feel sufficiently haunted by my absence, reading the pale penumbra of my memories in words that, like the shadows of ghosts, glide across this page? For I died long ago. My mother and my childhood haunted me in life and now we all haunt you in death. History is a form of haunting. Language is a cruel and beautiful resurrection.