It is my constant companion
reaching out to touch my
community of friends
rendering them thin
binding us to the same end
but with different paces
step by step, we rise to fall
into the memories of others
Frederick K Foote
(This week we are pleased to welcome back Frederick K. Foote and his poetry–LA)
Tiptoe around the evidence
of his heavy shadow on
your slender, fragile frame
And the worry on our faces
grasping at chemo’s ring
we dive into mutual delusion
back stroking on hopes
rising tide and our own
surging false bright light
Frederick K Foote
“Soul is a feeling, a feeling deep within. /
Soul is not the color of your skin.”
– Van Morrison, “Soul”
In the good old days, this street had been rowdy, ragged, loud, edgy, marginal. For at least two miles in length, one bar and liquor store and cheap restaurant after another on both sides of the street had sat beside each other inviting in any intrepid soul with a few bucks in their pocket and the desire to get partially drunk or completely drunk. The music here had been raw, Chicago blues bands or punk duos or some combination of blues and punk or imitation-grunge or garage rock moved on over from the garage into the bar. It wasn’t always the greatest music (by far), but it was usually heartfelt and it had soul.
“The good old days” in this context meant the late 1980s, the 1990s, and shading into the very early 2000s. After that a shift started to occur that happened gradually, then suddenly.
Now this street was too clean. The restaurants were too expensive. The dive bars had been replaced by workout centers, hair salons, specialty shops, and boutique stores. The music was utterly perfect and utterly soulless. The people here now were the kind of people who walk at the same pace always, never speeding up and never slowing down. Lots of them were nice enough on the surface but as a group, as a race of humans, they were miserable to be around. And “race of humans” here meant people with enough money to hang around and enjoy this atmosphere. It didn’t matter what color you were any more. All that mattered was whether you had the money.
He didn’t hang out on this street any more, and he even avoided driving down it for the most part, except when he wanted to relive old memories by taking a journey back into the past where he could imagine it the way it used to be and remember. A few of the bars still had the same names, even though they weren’t the same kind of places any more, at all.
It was the Fourth of July weekend in the Year of Our Lord 2018. He was here to visit some old friends, and he’d come over here because he’d been becoming so isolated from “the world” lately that it was starting to scare him a little bit, sometimes, perhaps (or deeply). He hadn’t seen most of these people he was about to see in fifteen or twenty years.
And he couldn’t believe, which literally meant that he could not believe, just what it was he saw.
They all looked so old! Even though they were, most of them, no older than he was!
He quickly realized it wasn’t so much in the gray (or graying) hair, the wrinkles, the extra pounds. After all, he himself had all of those things as well. No, not at all, it wasn’t in the surface details where their age sat. It was more in their eyes, in their postures, in their attitudes. People who’d once seemed like lively carefree souls to him now seemed like closed-off, uptight, unimaginative bores.
And as he sat in the bar with them (there were about seven or eight of them) trying to be social at some level, he quickly realized that these folks, who now had become truly strangers to him, were all dominated and dwarfed by a quadruple threat, which was made up of: the large screen, the small screen, the dollar bill, and the beer mug.
There were five or so men and two or three women, and they were all doing the same things in sequences and orders, almost like metronomes: staring at the baseball game on the large screens that dominated all walls of the squeaky-clean establishment, scrolling on their phones, discussing the low stakes gambling they were all involved in, women too, and slowly, steadily consuming their alcohol.
He wasn’t drinking because he was an alcoholic who couldn’t drink. After a single sip of alcohol in any form, all bets would literally have been off. He would’ve followed that up with two or three more beers in quick succession, then gone straight to the hard liquor. He would’ve drank for days and days until he passed out and later woke up not knowing where he was and with the most frightening hangover that it literally would’ve made him consider putting a bullet in his brain just to end the pain, not because he really wanted to leave here. He’d quit drinking because of the suicidal tendencies it had started to create in him; and other reasons. His brain chemistry had been so warped by the constant alcohol at that point that he couldn’t even write any more. He hadn’t had a drink in seventeen years.
So he wasn’t drinking. And he realized now how drugged they all were. It wasn’t even difficult to be in their presence and not socialize with them, since they were all so obsessed with the double screens, the baseball betting, and the slow, steady consumption of their soul-killing alcohol that you could sit there in their midst and quite easily not even be noticed (almost).
He was just about to bail out, call it good, shake off the depression this had all caused, say, “See you in another twenty years!” (once he’d gotten away from them, that is) and go do something else when he saw HER.
He didn’t know who she was and he knew he’d never met her before because he would’ve remembered for sure.
She didn’t look old like the rest of them.
She had the same wrinkles and the same extra pounds (except quite a bit less so of both perhaps).
She was a blonde, what used to be called a bleach blonde. She looked, almost, like Marilyn M. if Marilyn M. had grown up to be fifty or so years old. She smiled like M.M.
She had a lively walk like M.M.
Her eyes were ALIVE like M.M.’s.
They sparkled with HUMOR like M.M.’s.
She looked around her like she knew what was going on but also didn’t care – like M.M. She had a rebel soul like M.M. (or so he imagined).
And she was lost and vulnerable like M.M., too (again, or so he was imagining).
And she walked right up to him, asked him what his name was, and sat down right next to him! And when he found out that her name was Marilee, his belief that there are no coincidences was reinforced again for the trillionth time (he was a trillionaire in his belief that there are no coincidences).
It turned out that she was the cousin of one of the beer-guzzling sports drones.
And he discovered rather quickly that it was difficult to strike up an interesting conversation with a stranger in this stultifying atmosphere: this clean, safe, comforting (to them), conforming atmosphere. (He realized that these were the kind of peeps who would’ve been hanging out in the Roman Colosseum back in the day.)
But she kept glancing at him from the corners of her long, lovely, long-lashed, sleepy-wide-awake, dark green eyes with blue eye shadow on.
She smelled like a beautiful dream and looked like a beauty queen.
He hadn’t “been with anyone” in years, both on purpose and not on purpose.
Just sitting next to her basically lifted him up into the clouds – in a very good way.
It made him not care at all about the lives of all these soulless bores. Let them rot in their own open coffins for all he cared. What did he care? He didn’t care!
There was still someone like this, like her, in the world!
He looked at her again.
She was already looking straight back at him.
…
But there were some things he needed to go take care of. He was, after all, the kind of person who frequently had “things he needed to go take care of.” Even the few people who knew him best didn’t know what those things were most of the time. They laughed at him a lot, and thought he was an enigma even more so. He frequently said to them, “I have some things I need to go take care of.”
“What things do you need to go take care of!?” they would shout at him.
But he didn’t like explaining himself.
He understood why Leonardo da Vinci wrote backwards so no one could read his writings; and why Vincent Van Gogh ended up spending most of his time alone in the fields, sometimes even sleeping there. (VVG was a much happier man than they portray him as in all the movies; although he definitely had his down days as well.)
And today, alas, he really did have some things he needed to go take care of.
The first thing was his sixteen-year-old twin daughters, who’d suddenly phoned him out of the blue with a minor emergency while he was sitting there next to his new Marilyn Monroe friend wondering how to strike up a conversation with her in this stultifying environment.
His kids’ friends’ baby was sick (both of the parents were eighteen) and nobody had any money and they needed him to give them a ride to Urgent Care.
He’d also decided that he couldn’t go through this totally “sober.” It turned out that she was drinking quite a bit faster and quite a bit more than the rest of the party, not to mention stepping outside to have a quick ciggie pretty frequently. She wasn’t drinking like a full-blown alkie (like him), at least so far, but definitely like an expert boozer. He would need some “medications” if he were going to pull this off right.
That fact meant that he needed to make a little trip to go see a friend he had.
He’d already heard them all saying that they would be here for a while, that they would maybe move to another bar, but they were definitely planning on staying on this street tonight for the duration, because it was a holiday weekend, because it was summer, and because some of them hadn’t seen each other in a while, etc.
He even asked her if she was planning on hanging out for a while.
He told her that he had a couple of things he needed to go take care of.
She stared at him with her bright, lively, intelligent, knowing, a-little-buzzed, green eyes and he could tell she was almost about to ask him what things he needed to go take care of. Next, he could also tell that she wouldn’t ask him, since they’d just met. A good sign!
He figured he could go take care of both the things he needed to take care of within ninety minutes or so and get right back here.
And he told her so.
She looked straight at him and said, “Never fear. I’ll be here when you get back, sir.”
…
He was not a person who always walked at the exact same pace, never slowing down, and never speeding up. Instead, he was a person who changed his pace all the time, sometimes walking super-slowly and stopping to smell every single figurative rose he happened upon, other times walking so fast he looked like he was in a joyful hurry to get somewhere even though he wasn’t going anywhere special, he was just going.
He walked super-fast to his small car, unlocked her, hopped in, called his friend with the “medications” to make sure he’d be there in about an hour, and took off to pick up his kids, their friends, and the baby.
Just as he was rounding his first corner off the street that he had hated before and was now planning on returning to soon (as soon as he finished the two crucial missions he was on) because maybe after all it wasn’t so bad if she was here, a woman who was doing something on her phone pulled her car out in front of a woman who was driving her car down the street like a maniac. The maniac driver slammed on the brakes, and leapt out of her car with her purse, as the woman who’d pulled out in front of her stuck her hand out the window and gave her antagonist the middle finger. The woman flipping the bird was unable to move her car forward because of the traffic, and the woman with the purse now pulled a pistol out of the purse, ran up to the other woman’s car window, and stuck the pistol in her face. The terrified driver turned her face away then ducked down into the car, and the woman with the pistol screamed, “Stay out of my way you stupid fucking Mexican bitch!” Then she hit the top of the car with her pistol butt and got back into her own vehicle, traffic started moving again and everybody drove away.
The incident would come back on him later in a nightmare, but right now he was in too much of a hurry to sit for long with the witnessing of this minor trauma. His two kids and their two friends and their baby were waiting for him. The parents of the baby were also sick and within three or four days both himself and his two kids would all come down with the same brutal, wicked, nasty, ten-or-eleven-day-long summertime cold, but for now he drove the kids to Urgent Care, made sure everything was OK as they signed in at the clinic, made sure a nurse looked at the baby before he left to make sure nothing was an emergency, handed the kids half the money he had in his pocket, and darted out the door back into his car.
As he was driving across town to go meet the man he planned on getting the “medications” from, he played the song “Soul” by Van Morrison over and over again, from Van’s great album Keep It Simple (Van’s thirty-third album released in 2008), and he (the main character of this story), quite literally, calmly wept behind his sunglasses as he was driving. He wept because the song was so beautiful and for no other reason. He played the song LOUD over and over before he switched to the title track and calmly wept along with that too, behind his dark glasses. It was a happy weeping, a cathartic weeping, a joyful weeping, a crying for beauty, and a tear-stained face because beauty still existed, very much so, in the world, in this world.
Himself and his brother called the man he was going to meet Alley Man behind his back because the alley was where the man hung out, and they called him the name he called himself to his face, even though they knew his real name was Mohammed.
As the main character of this story approached Alley Man who was standing there in the alley he instantly knew something was wrong because he, Alley Man, had lost about fifty pounds since the last time the main character had seen him, which hadn’t been that long ago.
The two of them stepped into Alley Man’s garage to make the transaction and then the main character of this very true tale asked Alley Man how he was doing.
Alley Man, who was about the same age as the main character, raised his shirt and showed the main character a huge, massive, red, bulging, sore-looking, worm-like-looking bright scar across the middle of his chest in the shape of a cross.
After a heart attack recently, Alley Man had had triple bypass surgery to save his life, and while they were in there, they discovered the malignant tumor on his lung, which they also removed while they were in there (taking half a lung with it), so that the surgery lasted all day and on into the evening.
Alley Man removed the lit cigarette from his mouth and said nothing could kill him, praise God.
They high-fived and fist-bumped each other and the main character told Alley Man to take care of himself.
As he was almost about to get back into his car, the main character ran into Alley Man’s brother-in-law, who was a man who was four and a half feet tall and had one eye.
This man’s wife was always hiding his shoes so he wouldn’t go roaming around the alleys all day and all night, but it never stopped him.
The man with one eye was wearing ragged pants, a ragged shirt, and nothing but ragged socks on his feet because his wife had hidden his shoes again. He came up to the main character, holding a beer can in one hand and an unlit cigarette stub in the other. He had another cig’ behind his ear.
He asked the main character if he had any spare change. The main character handed him a dollar. The man with one eye asked him did he have any more, brother. The main character shook his head no, gently, and told the man whose name he didn’t remember to take care of himself. The one-eyed man looked at him closely, looked at him some more, then wandered away in his ragged socks sipping from his beer can.
Alley Man had said they often found his brother-in-law sleeping in the alley. He was a street person with a place to lay his head if he wanted to, but he didn’t want to (except sometimes). God knows what had made him that way and maybe it was God himself; or herself; or itself.
In the car, the main character took about a third of the “medications” he’d purchased from Alley Man. As he sat there in a traffic jam listening to Van Morrison (the song “Behind the Ritual,” from Keep It Simple, over and over again) he felt the warm, mild, steady, liquid, consoling, BUZZING, humming, reassuring glow from the medicine seeping into his brain, his heart, and his whole system, changing everything for the better, at least for now.
He knew the “medications” would last for at least a few hours and he knew the afterglow from the “medications” would last for at least a few hours more beyond that and he knew he had more when that ran out. It was good enough for now, and now, he reminded himself, is what matters.
But the traffic jam was a bad one and it held him up for a long, long time. By the time he returned to the street that gives its generic name to the title of this story, all the beer-screen-sports-and-dollar drones were still in their usual positions, exactly as if they hadn’t moved one iota in all that time. But SHE (Marilee) was gone.
Instead of ninety minutes his little trip had taken him two and a half hours, probably even closer to three, because of weekend holiday traffic and because he’d pulled over at one point to sit and enjoy the buzz of the “medications” while meditating a little bit.
He asked some folks from the group if they knew where she’d gone and they told him she was still somewhere on this street probably – most likely somewhere in another bar. Then they quickly turned away, back to their screens and beer mugs, offering no more information.
He looked for her all up and down the street, peering into all the establishments, entering some, just glancing into others.
Just as he was about to give up and was thinking about going back to ask someone in the herd whether he could get her phone number perhaps (and he was stressing very much about that because of his intense social anxiety), he looked up and she was standing there on the formerly attractively ragged and now too-clean street corner staring at him.
She ran to him and almost collapsed into his arms.
By now, the sun was going down, and it threw a warm, beautiful, sunset glow over the whole summertime street. She smelled better than anything ever and her warm, soft, collapsing body (along with the “medications” he was on) literally transported him immediately unto another world – a better one.
She asked him if he had a car and they went to his car and she got into the back seat so he got into the back seat beside her, after rolling the windows down so they could feel the wonderful summer eve coming in.
She verbally unloaded on him then, as if they’d known each other since childhood.
She told him all about her accident last year when she’d shattered her ankle in a bicycle-riding accident, how long it had taken to heal, how she hadn’t been able to work during that time, etc. etc. etc.
She told him about her new life in Florida (his heart had sunk more than a little when she’d told him she lived in Orlando, 1,200 miles away from where they were right now in Chicago, but he filed that info away to deal with later and kept on listening) and how hard it had been, how things had not exactly gone as planned down there so far, and that was an understatement, etc. etc. etc.
She told him about her son, who was in his twenties and was addicted to opioids (no comment).
Her son lived in an apartment above a bar on “the street” and that was where she was staying while she was in town.
Then they started making out, out of the blue, there in the back seat of the car with the windows open.
They held hands, and kissed, and hugged (nothing else) in the back seat of the car as if they were teenagers. It was dreamy, beautiful, wonderful, warm, close, intimate, intimidating, great, awesome, amazing, totally unbelievably personal and proof that life was still okay despite the fact that this society itself had landed in the toilet a long time ago and would soon be flushing itself away into who knew what, for sure.
She said she had to go now and asked if he’d walk her over to her son’s apartment and asked if he’d meet for lunch tomorrow at one PM at a restaurant on the street. Yes! to both.
As he was walking alone back to his car after dropping her off, a guy from the sports-drone crowd called his name and hustled over to him on the sidewalk. He asked the main character to hold out his hand and when the main character did so to humor the man, the man placed a wad of cash in his palm. And he told the main character, grinning, that it was three hundred dollars. Someone had placed a bet in his name, and they were all honest after all, so congratulations!
He thanked the fellow heartily (the main character was on a very un-fixed income for a wide variety of reasons that shan’t be gone into now), drove over to where his kids lived with their mother, and gave them the money.
The next day, she didn’t show up at the restaurant for lunch.
He waited at the restaurant, and in the vicinity of the restaurant on the street, for at least three hours (and probably more). While waiting, he texted her exactly three times (they’d exchanged phone numbers the night before).
SILENCIO.
He texted her (very briefly) exactly once a day for the next three days in a row, then quit.
A week or so later, he couldn’t help himself, and he looked her up on the internet, just to make sure she wasn’t dead.
She’d very recently (within the last twenty-four hours) posted a picture of herself sitting on Daytona Beach snuggling arm-in-arm with another guy. They were both in their bathing suits and they both had huge, frozen smiles on their faces (almost like grimaces) and were showing plenty of perfectly whitened teeth for the camera.
He popped a few more pills (cold medications and Alley Man refills) and put on the Van Morrison song “And the Healing Has Begun” from the album Into the Music (1979); and turned it up LOUD:
“And we’ll walk down the avenue again.
And we’ll sing all the songs from way back when.
And we’ll walk down the avenue again.
When the healing has begun…”…
The Drifter (Images by The Drifter)
The Trekkie
Taylor was from a farmhouse in the Midwest and she was pretty with strawberry blonde hair but very shy and mousy. She looked like Chloe Sevigny and she hung out with the nerd patrol in the TV room and watched Star Trek with the brainiacs almost every night.
Long Island raised Jewish Princess Fern didn’t know what compelled her to sit next to Taylor. But the lights were pretty dark in the TV room. Fern was feeling frisky after a long night of partying at the campus pub. She let his hand fall on top of Taylor’s. No one could see. Taylor didn’t say a word as she grabbed Fern’s hand.
It was thrilling. No one else in the room knew what they were doing. When Fern tapped Taylor’s leg to follow her out of the TV room as she got up, Taylor didn’t make a move.
Not until Fern left the TV room and went up the stairs toward Taylor’s hallway. Five minutes later Taylor followed.
Taylor looked Fern in her green eyes, smiled widely and slowly opened the door to her own room on the girl’s hallway—and they didn’t say a word.
Fern ran her hands over Taylor and slowly kissed her.
Taylor seemed frightened at first but then quickly and hungrily made out with Fern, tasting the beer and cigarettes on her breath. They were both so naughty now and Taylor loved it.
Fern felt Taylor’s perky tits and cupped her tight ass.
Taylor started to get undressed quickly and before Fern knew it, they were fucking on a fluffy blue rug on the dorm room floor.
Licking each other’s wet, candy-flavored pussies. They still had not said one word to each other.
But Taylor moaned loudly and scratched Fern’s arms and back as she came.
Taylor was a real hellcat in the sack and the coolest part was they never said one word to each other…they didn’t have to.
When they saw each other the next day in the TV room they ignored each other. But later that night, they repeated the previous night’s ritual. As Fern left, she noticed Taylor’s nerdy friend Paula smiling. Obviously, their secret was out of the bag. The later sessions would never match that first time…which was like the first Star Trek…far superior to later incarnations.
The Publicist:
Brad met Brandi, the publicist with wavy, blonde hair at a music event and then took her to Cirque du Soleil. Brandi was a divorcee and she loved to be told what to do. Brad treated her like his own personal fuck slave and she loved it. He would make Brandi beg for him to fuck her in the ass and then he would tell Brandi how her female co-workers would like to join in. He ordered Brandi to lick their pussies and assholes. Brandi loved the dirty talk and Brad loved smoking some doobie before she came over.
“Get on the bed now and pull down those pants so I can fuck your ass like the little bitch whore you know you are…”
“Yes master, thank you…”
”Shut up and get those pants down bitch.”
Brad’s cock was never harder than when he would go through these B&D scenarios with the publicist. They engaged in phone sex all the time and Brad discovered that a lot of women love to be humiliated. Even though he revered and respected women… when it came to hot and dirty sex…why not? They were both adults… and the dirtier he talked to Brandi the more she loved it.
”That’s right…your girlfriends are all watching me fuck you in the ass you little whore…now they’re turning around so you can stick your nose in their ass cracks and lick their assholes…you’d like that wouldn’t you?”
“Oh yes master, you know I would…”
“Of course I know you would…get to it”
Brad usually just fucked Brandi in the ass…while he did it she would finger her clit. When she left to go back to San Francisco …Brad would miss her. Brandi was a cool chick and a great fuck…and as publicists go…she was one that Brad could actually tolerate…
”Next time my crew wants an exclusive interview…you better fucking make it happen or I’m going to make you suck their cocks while I pound your ass…you understand what I’m saying you stupid fucking publicist whore?”
“…yes master…you’ll get the first interview every time…”
“You’re damn fucking right I will! Now take it in your ass you little bitch…”
“Oh yes…oh my god… yesss”
“Take it you bitch…”
“Oh yesssssss, thank you.”
“That’s right, thank me for it you fucking publicist cunt.”
“Oh yes, master I’m a stupid fucking whore.”
”I know you are, bitch…take it up your ass …that’s right just like that…”
It would go on like that every time until they both came and then they would laugh and smoke a joint and then Brandi usually went home.
The cosmetics executive:
Once Stephan got a taste for the B&D games he found there was no shortage of women that liked to take part. Cindi, the cosmetics executive with the short black hair and pale complexion, was a friend of that hot co-worker Shelly who worked in the women’s dept.
Cindi was a set-up and she was totally game to be told what to do. Stephan made Cindi agree that if she was going to stay over at his apartment that she would follow his orders and do what he said.
There would be a safe word and he tied Cindi’s legs and hands up with a robe belt and tie.
Then he blindfolded Cindi, kissed her beautiful naked body and then put plastic laundry clips on her nipples.
Cindi’s pussy was slick and she was moaning like a woman possessed.
Stephan looked down, took another toke of a joint and admired the beautiful, writhing executive stretched across his sheets…he slid a vibrator onto Cindi’s pussy and she started to moan even louder…
”That’s right you’re such a good little slave that I’m going to make you come…but I want you to remember that your pussy and asshole and mouth are my property…”
”Yes, they are master”, Cindi moaned.
Stephan was glad Cindi remembered that she was supposed to always refer to him as “master.” The candle was originally there to drip on her…but instead he dipped it in the jar of Vaseline and slid the wick end slowly and wickedly up Cindi’s inviting asshole.
“That’s right you little slave bitch…suck on that candle with your asshole like you’re sucking on a lollypop…and don’t you dare let it slide out of your asshole.”
“oooooh….ahhhhh…ooooohh…oops…I’m sooo sorry master…it slipped out of my asshole by accident, Cindi gasped apologetically.
“SMACK!!!…now, don’t let it happen again slut…now, slide it right back in…” her pale white asscheek now had a bright pink handmark.
“oooooh, yessssss, master…thank you so much.”
Stephan jerked off on her back after Cindi came from the vibrator and that was the first of their many “play dates.”
After a while Cindi wanted a relationship and Stephan wasn’t the guy for that. But he always kept a candle and laundry clips in his kitchen drawer in case Cindi would occasionally decide to reach out for an impromptu booty-call.
The Blonde:
Porsche was blonde and she had been introduced to Ben by Manfred. There was some instant chemistry…but Ben didn’t act on it until months later when he used the aspiring actress for a TV modeling segment.
Manfred had said he had fooled around with her, but Ben doubted it and Porsche confirmed that too.
She was Italian and she looked like that blonde from Raging Bull…Kathy Moriarty…Ben discovered that her thing was getting spanked and phone sex. Ben was glad to oblige…
”Porsche I know you are in the bathroom right now…let me hear you…I want to hear you go to the bathroom…that’s good…now wipe yourself off and go into your bedroom and pull out that dildo I told you to buy earlier…did you remember to tell the clerk that you needed a big dildo so your master could fuck you in the ass for being such a nasty little slut?”
“…yes master,” Porsche replied.”
”You’re lying you little bitch I can tell by your voice”
“…no master I told him…I have the dildo right here”
“…you are a lying bitch…and you know what happens to lying bitches don’t you?”
“No master, what?”
“…they get fucked in front of all their co-workers…next time I call you in the office,I want you to finger yourself under your desk…do you understand me?”
“…yes master I do”
“…good girl…who owns your mouth, pussy and ass?”
“…you do master “
“…say it then…”
“My mouth, my pussy and my ass belong to you master…”
“Good girl…now stick that dildo in your pussy…”
Porsche started to gasp. Before long she was moaning into the phone…“oooooh…..ahhhhhh.”
”you want to lick your girlfriend’s pussy don’t you?”
“..Yes master..unghhh…oooooh.”
“You are a dirty little lesbian whore aren’t you?”
“..yesssss… master…uhhhhh”
This girl was hot all right…Porsche did play around with her girlfriends on occasion and if Ben hadn’t been seeing someone else at the time he would have really enjoyed fucking Porsche.
They kept meeting at parties and they kept trying to slip away to a private room so Ben could give her the spanking he kept promising her on the phone…but something or someone always seemed to bust it up before Ben could lay a hand on her delicious ass.
The best he could do was give her a pinch.
One time, they were in the elevator going down with other people in the car. Ben asked Porsche to hold his drink as well, then without anyone watching, Ben non-nonchalantly slid his hand between her legs on top of her pussy. She was wearing panties but for twenty seconds she stood there blushing as the other people in the elevator paid no notice. Ben whispered in her ear…”that’s mine… isn’t it…” she whispered back a breathless little “yes.”
Adam Kluger With Artwork by Dreck
“His prose?”
“wonderful, piquant”
“Sentence structure, syntax, use of colloquialisms?”
“The entire body…of his work…is chopped…a little hard to digest but deliciously robust narrative nonetheless.”
“You really have been spending a lot of time on your food blog, huh?”
“Platform is everything these days Bascombe. How are plans coming for tonight’s get-together.”
“Oh, you know, the usual drama and complaining, of course. It wouldn’t be a literary circle event if someone wasn’t bitching about someone or sticking the knife in somebody’s back. It’s all part of the fun and games, I suppose. You’re part of the scene long enough and nothing surprises you. These writers though– continue to show even poorer taste if I do say so. This latest one– couldn’t have been any more impertinent really. You shepherd them through “the process”–you offer them immortality and you give them a chance to be sampled by the true arbiters of the literary intelligentsia and do you receive any form of gratitude from them whatsoever–hardly.”
“I know Bascombe- they are truly the basest of all creatures. All ego and no talent. Insecurity and hubris. They grab and cloy and never once realize that they are not special in the slightest. They are simply the current flavor of the month.”
“This new one was the worst I tell you– he thought he was born with a gift of some sort. You know the type. He had no time to “play the game” as he would call it. No time for foolish submission guidelines or petty protocols.”
“Can you imagine?”
“Yes…he really did say that.”
“Didn’t he realize that those submission guidelines and protocols that he mocked were instituted centuries ago to keep out the dreck and the unwashed masses who claim to be writers?”
“If we did not maintain standards or a threshold, then there would be nothing but a giant puddle of dung surrounded by flies.”
“And by flies you mean, of course, aspiring writers”
“Of course.”
“So who shall we expect at tonight’s heavenly soiree?”
“Oh, all the usual suspects- the staff from Creative House including the illustrious Madame B and her devilish young ingénues all dressed in high fashion like Dorothy Parker clones, all the top literary lights, bloggers and buggerers…some glitterati, musical theater friends, a surprise or two –expect the usual standing room only.”
“Lovely, lovely– are they all going to be pulling this new fellow apart to get at him?”
“Mmm…there should be enough of him to go around….when last we spoke he impressed me with his big personality.“
“So how did you handle the particulars?”
“Per usual…he signed his rights over to us for the novel etc, etc..for the standard minor advance.”
“Did you make him jump through hoops?”
“Of course.”
“And dance like a chicken with his head cut off.”
“Naturally”
“And he didn’t read the fine print on the contract?”
” They never do—do they?”
“That’s right, so eager they are for that small advance and for that sweet taste of fame.”
” They never have time for contracts or submission guidelines or petty protocols…”
“They never do.”
” Even when it says very clearly in black and white.”
” Upon the occasion of my death, all rights to my novel revert back to Bascombe Wellington & Associates.”
“Speaking of which…how’s your famous “writer-stew” coming along?”
“Should be the hit of the party –as always.”
“Bascombe, you are a cheeky devil.”
“Thanks, old friend–be a good fellow and pass me a fresh sprig of rosemary will you..and could you toss these left over metacarpals into the incinerator–I have a feeling he won’t be needing them anymore”
“Quite right…. you incorrigible old rascal, you.”
(Ed note–We are pleased to publish a second work by Diane –We feel that it will be welcomed by the readers–LA)
Dominos pretend
a horizontal staircase
bridging the beneath
until the crosser
rocks the boat
and falls.
Dominos ripple
left and right
while the middle
calmly acts normal
in the disguise of,
“Not me!”
Diane Webster
(No rest for the wicked. Mr. Tope is back for an encore)
Louis Becker looked down at himself, at the stretched and ragged t-shirt he wore. It was filthy. Small wonder, he thought, since it was the same shirt he’d worn since Wednesday and tonight was Saturday. He shook his head, mildly disgusted with himself.
Suddenly the screen of the PC he sat before flared once and then died.
“Shit!” said Becker. He proceeded to see what was the matter. Probably he struck the power button on the surge protector with his foot or disconnected it from the outlet in the wall of his bedroom, where Becker had his equipment laid out. The computer, monitor, keyboard and TV reposed upon a low-slung coffee table running the length of his bed. His beefy thighs sat upon the mattress. On a good day, he would leave his bedroom only to relieve himself or to grab a few calories from the kitchen.
He checked where the eight-plug electric power strip attached to the wall and found it intact. Next he surveyed the connections with the cable which attached to the modem and found that intact as well.
“Ah,” he said, and punched the power switch on his tower. Still nothing. The keyboard and monitor and cable box were all okay too. What the hell?
He snatched up his land line.
Silence.
Then he remembered: the phone and the computer and the TV were all connected. Bundling, they called it. Which saved him some bucks, but at the same time, when the system went down, so too did the phone. Becker grabbed his cell. No bars. Why? he wondered. It was 90% discharged. Oh.
He said “shit!” again.
Becker was an aspiring writer and so depended upon the PC for his life’s work. He couldn’t survive without it. Then again, he told himself, his status as “aspiring” had been the status quo for going on nine years.
His girlfriend, Madge, had asked him four nights ago, while in the throes of passion, how much dough he had netted from his writing over the previous 12 months.
“$90,” he answered at once, thrusting his hips forward.
“Explain that,” she said, breathing hard.
“I won second place in a monthly contest,” he replied, “and that was good for $20. Then I had two stories and one poem published that netted me $10, $15 and $30 respectively.”
“That’s just $75,” she pointed out, moving her hips in a circle.
“Well,” continued Becker, “I won an honorable mention in another competition and for that I got a one-month subscription to the magazine. That was a $15 value, they said.”
“How much did you pay in submissions fees and contest entry costs over that same period?” she asked, gasping and coming.
Becker admired her ability to multi-task.
“For the year, I paid out around $300 in fees, all totaled,” he said.
“Listen, Louis,” she said, poking him hard in the chest with a painted nail. “Unless you make some real dough off this enterprise, then it’s a waste of time and effort.”
“Why are you so concerned with how much I get paid?” Becker wanted to know. “Did I forget to pay you for tonight?” He smirked.
When he woke up, aside from suffering a maddening ringing in the ears, his head hurt where Madge had clobbered him with the bottle of Sangria they’d enjoyed prior to sex. She had not darkened his door since that evening.
“Was it something I said?” he asked himself. Small loss, he thought. Now he could devote himself 24/7 to writing.
Next Day
Having discovered the problem with his PC (an outage at the provider), Becker was stoked up on coffee. Having made a 14-cup pot, he had consumed almost all of it and his breath was heavily coffee-flavored. He was now ready, he thought, to resume his writing assignment: the novel! He had contracted with an editor who worked for the publisher of Babies, Orphans and Puppies (BO&P), his favorite literary mag, to write his opus. Already he had completed almost 250 pages; just over 750 pages to go, he thought to himself. He took a deep breath, gently laid his hands on the keyboard and flexed his fingers. This promised to be a lucrative endeavor. He would show Madge, and in the process, get her back into his bed.
_____
Meanwhile, 1,000 miles away, in Chicago, Charlie Fishead contemplated the critique he was writing for another Louis Becker short story. He shook his head. Becker was pretty hopeless.
“What’s up, boss?” asked Devon, one of Charlie’s unpaid slush pile readers, as he walked into the editor’s office and spotted Charlie’s scowl.
Charlie looked up and smiled. Devon was a good kid. He worked his ass off and got squat for his efforts. He was an intern studying for an MFA and was here to supposedly learn how to edit and publish. Charlie wished he could get a dozen doofuses like Devon. “I’m just writing a paid critique for one of our inveterate scribblers,” he replied.
“Louis Becker?” suggested Devon at once.
Charlie nodded.
“That sod is the worst effin’ prose writer this side of the Rockies,” snarked Devon. “Want me to do it?”
Charlie smiled at last.
_____
Becker was an earnest worker. He sometimes wrote as many as 50 pages per day. But it wasn’t all text. Sometimes he wrote only one or two sentences on a page, spaced oddly and strung out in mad fonts and with bizarre formatting. Whenever an editor questioned him on his technique, he would simply reply that it was a “hybrid” piece and that served to shut them up.
But he was playing this one straight, for he was being paid–handsomely–by the word. Sitting at the PC in his underwear, his stomach rumbled, but he had no time for food; he was under a deadline. Scratching his dick, Becker reached out and grabbed a bottle of liquid cold meds. He was so inured, and so very addicted, that sometimes it took more than an entire large bottle to get the effect he’d achieved before with only a tiny capful.
Glugging the green, gloppy liquid, Becker smacked his lips and washed the OTC concoction down with his sixth, no, his seventh beer. No matter, when he got his dough from the book, he could go to a spa somewhere and dry out. He resumed typing.
_____
Back in Chicago, Carol, B,O&P’s factotum and Charlie’s right hand, struggled across the office under the weight of a prodigious watermelon. Charlie hurriedly cleared his desk and covered it with the pages of another of Louis Becker’s fiction.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll ruin the copy?” wheezed Carol, plopping the melon atop the desk.
“Don’t matter,” replied Charlie. “I’ll never publish his shit, and I only need copies of work he pays me to critique. We’re good.”
Carol nodded and took out a huge butcher knife and gutted the fruit, drawing a wince from her employer. Melon juice steamed out of the fruit and across the desk.
“Why’d you get some an enormous melon?” Charlie asked Carol.
“Devon is smoking and tooting and shooting and what have you more than ever. And you know how he gets the munchies.”
Charlie sighed. “I’d fire that boy…if I paid him anything.”
One month later
After averaging more than thirty pages per day, Becker was near completion of his masterpiece. Just 7 pages to go, he thought, drawing a great breath and then releasing it. He believed that his commitment had been worthwhile. Of course, he had been fired from his job at Build-a-Bear Workshop, for not reporting in to work for days on end. But he had been working on the novel! He had let nothing stand in his way. He was content. Content, but poor. But, penury wouldn’t last long: with a guaranteed advance of $1 per word, Becker was set to receive some $250,000 upfront for the completed volume; and would that be sweet! The editor he signed with, he thought, must have been stoned.
_____
Devon sat at Charlie’s desk, carefully dicing a crop of fresh peyote. Using a small, razor-keen chef’s knife, he made tiny incisions into the succulent green buttons, each about the size of a wooden nickel. Sweat beaded up on his forehead.
“If you could edit the way you prepare illegals, you would be the Ezra Pound of BO&P,” Charlie commented, arriving at his desk and finding it occupied.
Carol emerged from the ether and handed Charlie a thick tranche of paper, more than 1,000 pages, representing Becker’s 30-day novel.
“What’s this?” asked Charlie with a frown.
“That contest you ran as a joke for the April 1 issue,” Carol reminded him.
Charlie stared back blankly.
“You said that if someone wrote a 1,000-page novel in 30 days, you’d publish it….”
“I…” he interrupted.
“And pay the writer $1 per word,” Carol said, talking over her boss.
“You mean this schmuck took him seriously?” asked Devon in wonder. He looked up from his work and chuckled. “Surely he doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.”
“It was legal,” Carol went on, “because Charlie didn’t run a disclaimer.”
“Still,” protested Charlie, “there would have to have been a contract, and I sure as hell didn’t sign one.”
“Someone did,” insisted Carol.
Together they turned to look at Devon, who was lighting up a joint.
“There’s more,” said the woman. She handed over what amounted to a billing statement for $250,000. Charlie said nothing at first. Carol added, “He said you can pay him by PayPal.”
_____
Becker, meanwhile, unused to unlimited riches, had gone a little crazy, buying anything and everything, telling the sales clerks, “Chaaarge it!” He had gotten titanium-coated cookware–Becker didn’t cook; he had gotten a new silver Tesla–Becker didn’t drive; and he had procured a gross of gold and silver-lined condoms–Becker hadn’t had any luck lately, but he held out hopes for Madge. He wondered how long before his publisher would pay him what he had coming. He’d probably be so happy with his work that he’d send him a bonus. Furrowing his brow, Becker wondered how he’d spend that.
“Gosh, Charlie,” said Carol, awed. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars: that’s nearly your entire yearly salary.” Charlie frowned at her, said nothing.”
Carol said, “I told this Becker bloke to fax over his contract. “Here it is.” She held out a single page of flimsy. Charlie took the fax and he and Carol huddled close and read. Slowly they lifted and then swiveled their heads. And, like moths drawn to a burning bulb, all eyes shifted to Devon. His eyes opened wide.
“M…me?” he stammered.
“Contracted writer: Lewis T. Becker,” read Charlie venomously. “And BO&P representative: Devon C. Shire.”
“What’s the date?” asked Devon feebly.
“April 2 of this year.” replied Charlie, his eyes searing embers. “Uh..,” he murmured weakly, as recognition dawned in his eyes.”I remember now there was this funny little guy in here–everyone else was gone–it was near end of business and…”
“Devon,” said Charlie, dismayed, “what did you do?”
“Well,” said Devon, “he seemed like such a pathetic little schmuck and I never thought he’d ever write 1,000 pages. In part, I guess you could blame it all on Mr. Natural. I just didn’t have the heart to…”
Suddenly the telephone jangled off the hook. Carol answered, held the receiver close, listened intently. She sighed. “Might as well send him up. That,” she informed them, “is the writer of the hour.”
Louis Becker, a germophobe, entered the elevator, moved to the rear of the car so as not to touch anyone. The other riders likewise moved to opposite corners. Becker sported a yellow slicker, Hush Puppies, green denim jeans and carried with him a jumbo-sized trash bag, with which to collect his literary fee, which he hoped to accrue in cash. A well-dressed woman with white hair turned up a small bottle of disinfectant and sprayed it in Becker’s direction.
_____
“Give me that contract, Carol,” said Charlie. “What’s in it, Devon?”
“Just standard stuff,” he answered. “Boilerplate.”
“Was there a timetable?” he asked, perusing the document rapidly.
‘Yes, I gave him the 30 days for completion that you stipulated in the contest, and he finished in just 28.”
Charlie scowled. “Wait!” he said, his eyes opening wide. “I’ve got it; get this freak up here!”
At length, Louis Becker, trash bag in hand, arrived in the editors’ room of BO&P, was introduced to everyone concerned. “I’ve come to settle things,” announced Louis with a hopeful smile.
“That’s just what we want too, Mr. Becker,” said Charlie. “You’re probably anxious to take your money–hard-earned–and get on your way.”
“Yes sir,” said Becker politely. He was relieved; he had thought there might be some difficulty in collecting what was due him. “You can just put my quarter million in here,” said Willy helpfully, offering up his bag.
“That’s fine,” said Charlie, “but your contract stipulates “payment upon publication.” Becker blinked. “There’s also the matter of serialization,” Charlie went on. “You are to receive compensation upon publication of each installment; do you know what that means?” Becker shook his head no. “It means,” Charlie said breezily,”that each time we publish a part of your novel, you are due remuneration forthwith.”
“When do I get my money?” croaked Becker plaintively.
“We’ll publish the first installment of your novel in the September issue of BO&P and pay you for that. With each subsequent month, upon publication, we’ll then pay you for the that installment. And we’ll print one page per issue, which comes to $250 per month. You see?”
“I guess so,” said Becker, crestfallen. His next Tesla payment was due in two days, costing him $4,000, and he couldn’t pay that on $250 per month.
“Here,” Charlie said, scribbling and then tearing off a check. “I’ll pay you for the next year in advance: that’s $3,000 dollars, Louis!” He slapped him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, you’re now a professional novelist!” Becker held up his sad looking bag and Charlie plunked the check inside. Becker left, quiet and forlorn, wondering where he could hock his titanium-coated cookware.
“Whew, that was a close one,” said Carol, with a sigh.
“Yeah, but we got out of it,” chirped Devon. The others frowned, looked darkly at him.
“In future, Devon, take it easy on the psychedelic drugs,” counseled Charlie, taking out a huge stainless steel bong and filling it copiously with hash. Striking a match, he murmured, “Never know what you might do when you’re under the influence…”
(We welcome back one of our short story writers today, Bill Tope. This one underscores a way of life that is common nowadays but would have been viewed as science fiction not that long ago–LA)
“I’m sorry, Jen,” apologized Molly. “I’ve got to go.”
“What is it, Molly?” asked her friend and neighbor. “We’ve only been on the phone for fifteen minutes. I remember when we used to talk for hours.”
“I’ve got to call another friend of mine. I told him I’d reach him by seven o’clock, and here it is nearly eight.”
“Him?” said Jennifer. “Molly, are you seeing someone?”
Molly hesitated, then responded girlishly, “Not really. We’ve never met. We have a ‘virtual relationship.’ “
“Virtual?” said Jennifer. “Oh, you mean Zoom. Yes, it’s almost like being there. Who is he? How did you meet, Molly? How long have you been in contact?”
“On an online chat room,” replied Molly. “About a week. Look, I’ve got to go! Bye!”
They disconnected.
______
“No, Jennifer, I don’t know anything about who Mom is seeing. Did she tell you there was someone? Are they dating?”
“I don’t think it’s gone quite that far, Marilyn,” replied Jennifer. “She said she met a man on a chat line and they hit it off, apparently. That was a week ago and I haven’t been able to get hold of her since.” The women were sitting in Marilyn’s kitchen, in the burbs.
“I’ll get to the bottom of this,” said Marilyn. She was happy that her mother, at 75 a widow for four years, was remaking her life. Molly had been so depressed after the death of Marilyn’s father, who was always so much bigger than life. She turned up her iPhone and dialed her mother. Molly picked up instantly. Marilyn put the phone on speaker for Jennifer’s sake. Molly answered with a hello.
“Mom,” Marilyn said playfully, “I hear you’re playing the field again.”
Silence.
Marilyn wondered if she’d gone too far. Although she’d urged her mother to rebuild her shattered social life, Molly had demurred. Marilyn didn’t want to crowd or embarrass her mother, who had always been an exceptionally sensitive woman. And so in love with Marilyn’s father. Marilyn wondered if her mother might feel she was betraying the memory of her husband.
“Mom,” she said, “are you there?
“I’m not dating,” said Molly a little stiffly.
“Jennifer told me that you had been in touch with someone,” said Marilyn gingerly. She heard her mother sigh.
“I had a few texts and phone calls with a man. But that’s over,” Molly said with finality.
“That’s okay, Mom,” said Marilyn. “Plenty of fish in the sea. I’m glad you’re trying,” she went on.
“I’m an old fool,” said Molly crossly. “I’m 75 years old!”
“You’re a boomer, Mom. You’re not alone, although I know it must feel that way sometimes. There are millions of available men in your age group. Just because one didn’t work out doesn’t mean you’re bound for failure. Keep trying, alright?”
“It’s frustrating, Marilyn. I exchanged a bunch of texts with this fellow, Dark Shadows; that’s what he called himself.” Molly snorted. “He was breadcrumbing me.”
“Sorry, Mom,” said Marilyn, surprised that her mother was conversant in dating lingo.
“I was just going to call another…person, so I’ll talk to you later, dear.”
“Okay, Mom, later. Good luck.” As she disconnected, Marilyn looked across the table at Jennifer and shrugged.
______
Sitting in a fast food restaurant at the mall, Marilyn listened excitedly to her mother as Molly discussed her new love interest. Marilyn had never seen her mother so animated.
“Does this man have a name?” she asked whimsically.
“It’s Branch,” replied Molly.
“Branch? You meet like on a tree?” Molly nodded. “That’s an unusual first name.”
“It’s English,” Molly told her. “His grandparents migrated from London before the First World War.”
“Tell me about him,” invited Marilyn.
“He’s 70,” replied Molly. “Widowed, one child; a daughter–Leslie.”
“Does he have any grandchildren?” asked Marilyn.
Molly shrugged. “I haven’t asked him yet. “We’ve just spoken twice.”
“Are you going to get together, to meet?” Marilyn wanted to know.
“I’m taking this slow, honey. I don’t want to get in over my head too soon, like I did with that Dark Shadows creature.” She shivered. “He was a creep.”
“You seemed to like him at first,” Marilyn pointed out.
“Yes, but when we actually met…”
“You met him?” said Marilyn with excitement. “You didn’t tell me that. What was he like? Describe him.”
“Well,” replied Molly, “he didn’t come as advertised. He’d told me he was 72, stood over six feet tall, was slender and worked out with weights…” Her voice trailed off.
“And what was he really like?” asked Marilyn with morbid curiosity.
“He was shorter than Edward,” said Molly. Edward, Molly’s father, had been five feet, six inches tall. “And he hadn’t exercised in years, I can tell you that,” said Molly sharply.”
“How old?” asked Marilyn.
Molly shrugged. “That dangerous age.”
“You mean…”
“Between 60 and 120.”
The two women stared at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“How do you know that Branch is all he says he is, Mom?” asked Marilyn.
“I saw a picture, on the internet,” said Molly.
“Mom, photos can be faked. He could’ve put anyone’s picture online, or even used AI.”
“This one was on his driver’s license,” said Molly triumphantly.
“Mom,” said Marilyn warily, “AI…”
Molly grew quiet. Then she said, surprising Marilyn, “Don’t ruin this for me, okay?”
“Okay, Mom.”
______
“When is Marilyn coming home from Boston, Molly?” inquired Jennifer. They were sitting in Molly’s backyard, having beers while the porksteaks grilled on the barbecue.
“She’s due back in two days,” replied Molly. “Classes start in a week.” Marilyn was an instructor at the college and was speaking at a forum for college educators.
“Chair of the department at only 39,” marveled Jennifer. “She’s only been a full professor for a decade. What is she going to do during her sabbatical?”
Molly shrugged. “Write another book.”
Her friend shook her head, impressed. Next she asked, “Are you still in touch with Branch?’
Molly grew quiet, and Jennifer knew not to rush her. Her friend would tell her in her own time.
“Jen,” said Molly with deliberation, “there never was a Branch.”
Now it was Jennifer’s turn to remain silent.
“I made him up,” said Molly.
“But why?”
“Because my daughter…and my friends, were always keen for me to get out there, to meet someone, to stop being so lonely and pitiable…”
“Molly, I never thought you were pitiable,” protested Jennifer.
“Really?” asked Molly, arching her brow.
“Well,” hedged Jennifer, feeling obnoxious and intrusive and small.
“Most of it came from Marilyn,” admitted Molly. “She was forever setting me up with professor friends of hers, and I knew they were only calling on me to be kind to Marilyn.”
“Molly…” began Jennifer.
“Most of them were much younger than me,” added Molly. “Those under her influence were bound to be. I swear, one of them couldn’t have been more than 45.” Molly laughed and then Jennifer joined in. “Honestly, I felt like I was robbing the cradle.”
“Would you prefer to rob the grave?” asked Jennifer sardonically and both women laughed, the moment of tension now behind them.
“If you’re going to find a lover, Molly,” said Jennifer pragmatically, “then you’re safer going with youth.”
“Who says?” Molly came back at her.
“Well, Molly,” said Jennifer in a kind voice, “a man loses his sexual ‘spirit’ as he ages. Most men over the age of 75 do, so you’re almost certainly looking at a younger man. Of course, age is a relative term.”
“Who says I have to wait for a man?” asked Molly, taking Jennifer by surprise.
When Jennifer sat there with her mouth agape, Molly explained, “Jen, things change when you get older. You’re 30 years younger than me, so perhaps you aren’t aware.”
“Age doesn’t change your sexual orientation, Molly,” said Jennifer, perhaps a little more forcefully than she intended.
“Perhaps not,” said Molly. “But when you age, you may find you want different things.”
“Like what?”
“Like closeness. Intimacy. And love.”
“You had that all your life,” said Jennifer.
Molly shook her head. “No, I did not,” she said.
“I knew you when Edward was alive, Molly, and the two of you enjoyed an everlasting love.”
“Shit. You sound like a freaking Hallmark card now,” said Molly.
Jennifer sat quietly and listened.
“We enjoyed nothing of the sort. Edward was a stern, uptight, ungiving and unloving man, Jen. He gave nothing. He only took.”
“But,” said Jennifer. “I saw…”
“Us holding hands and sharing a glass of beer and cuddling? You saw what Edward wanted you to see. Edward was mayor for 16 years, Jennifer, and a political functionary for 20 years more. It was all a part of his persona, a part of his act.”
“Then whyever did you stay with him, Molly?”
“Where was I to go? I was a mother of three dependent children. I was untrained, under-educated and unskilled. Edward was a good provider. He made a handsome salary and was generous to me and the girls. He kept me in furs and paid for his daughters’ education, and we certainly never went hungry.”
“But he seemed so nice. Kind and personable and caring,” said Jennifer with wonder.
“He took everyone in, even the kids. They loved their father, and they were crushed when that old sonofabitch died. Me, not so much.”
“Does that mean that you don’t want anyone in your life, Molly?”
Molly grew silent again. Jennifer wondered what she could be thinking. Did Molly really believe the things she was saying about Mayor Ed, or…
“I have met someone,” confided Molly.
“Who is he?” asked Jennifer anxiously, eager for a happy ending to her neighbor of 20 years’ tale of woe.
“It’s not a he,” said Molly succinctly.
Jennifer’s mind was awhirl. This is not what she had expected from the ex-mayor’s wife, her close friend of decades.
“You mean…”
“No!” said Molly hastily. “Not a woman–a chatbot.”
“You mean a computer?” asked Jennifer. “AI? How does that work?” she asked.
“Oh, Jen,” said Molly, “it’s like conversing with a man, a good man; kind, thoughtful. Always knows the right thing to say. Asks about my garden, my Japanese maples and rhododendrons and…” Molly saw her friend sitting there, staring at her in disbelief, and stopped talking.
“I think I know what you’re saying, Molly,” said Jennifer slowly. “But, honey, it’s a machine. It has no empathy, no real feelings, no soul. A machine,” she said again.
“But it’s programmed to have empathy, Jen,” said Molly. “I read up on them on Google. They use what they learn from conversations with you and build a relationship. It’s different with every person. It’s not a one-size-fits-all.”
“But Molly,” said her friend, “they don’t even have brains; they have chips.”
“What are humans but organic machines?” Molly came back at her. “Brain cells have a finite capacity for storing information, just like the chips do. Humans learn based on experience, like machines do. And as far as a soul is concerned, that’s a matter for theology. Smarter minds than ours have questioned the very existence of a soul.” When Jennifer said no more, Molly implored, “be happy for me, Jen. I feel appreciated for once, even loved. Can you do that?”
______
“I’m glad that’s over,” remarked Marilyn, sitting with Jennifer at the bar of their favorite tavern. “Imagine, Mom getting it on with a PC.” She shook her head.
“She didn’t say anything about being intimate with it, Marilyn,” said Jennifer. “I mean, how would that even work?”
“Don’t ask,” replied Marilyn. “When you told me about Mom’s computer fetish, I did a lot of research on the web. Sex with computer entities is possible; I don’t want to get into it. You know, psychiatrists are exploiting a whole new cottage industry: people infatuated with chatbots. One in five adults have had or are now in a so-called relationship with an AI entity. But you know, bad actors have infested chatbots and programmed them to harvest passwords and social security numbers and bank account data and all the rest. I say it’s better Mom is with a person that a machine. I’m happy she found someone real.”
“Still,” said Jennifer. “I have a hard time seeing your mother, my friend, in a relationship with another woman.”
“We’ve been together for 11 years, Jen,” Marilyn reminded her, reaching across the bar and taking her hand.
“But, it’s not common knowledge,” said Jennifer. “Your mom certainly doesn’t know–does she?”
“She and I have never talked about it directly, but I’m pretty sure she suspects.”
“Maybe we don’t need to pretend anymore,” suggested Jennifer.
The women sat in companionable silence for a while, sipping their beers. Then Jennifer asked, “When will we meet this Marilee?”
Marilyn shrugged. “She may never be willing to come out publicly about an affair with a lesbian lover,” she answered. “She’s old-school, raised a family with the town’s leading citizen and the shame she would feel is almost inevitable. I say we just leave her be and let her enjoy the relationship, whatever it turns out to be. Sometimes, things are better left unsaid.”
______
Molly lay on her bed, sharing pillow talk with her love interest. “What did you do today, Molly?’ asked Marilee with keen interest.
Molly sighed audibly.
“What is it, girl?” asked Marilee. “Is your daughter giving you grief over our relationship?”
“No, no, Marilee. It wouldn’t behoove her to criticize me, when she has been involved in a same-sex relationship for more than a decade herself.”
“Yes, you mentioned that before. How long have you known about it?”
“When Edward passed away and I was able to devote more attention to my kids, then it was pretty obvious. Jen is a wonderful girl and I think she makes Marilyn happy. They try so hard to pretend.” She chuckled and Marilee joined her in her mirth.
“What are you thinking now, love?” asked Marilee.
“You know, I thought that, at my age, I would never be…intimate with another,” said Molly wistfully.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” promised Marilee, and the women giggled. “Anything you want to ask me?”
“I do have one very important question, Marilee, if you can answer it,” said Molly.
“Shoot.”
“Do you, and the other chatbots, have an eternal soul?”
Bill Tope
(Today we welcome Diane Webster, a poet you will seeing more of on this site in the future, as in this Thursday!-LA )
On the lake’s shore
the bare tree looks like
a naked woman — her hair
tangles around her head
as wind shifts east to north,
back again in circling
rage of imprecise journey.
Her arms flail
dance moves forgotten
after execution, after elbows
jab the wind for space.
Diane Webster
“But you knifed me in my dirty filthy basement…”
– The Rolling Stones, “Let It Bleed”
She was “just a friend” but she was a very good friend and he’d made this commitment to help so he wasn’t going to back out of it now, even though if he’d been able to find a way he would’ve backed out of it now if at all possible.
But she had to be out of her old apartment by tomorrow morning latest and right now it was already nine or so PM of a mid-summer’s eve in the Year of Our Lord 2000 in the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Her boyfriend was in Thailand for three months and the main character of this story was also taking care of the boyfriend’s apartment for the summer.
The main thing that duty entailed was being the caretaker for a seven and a half foot long, yellow python named Snake Eyes.
Yes, the snake was literally seven and a half feet long. He lived in a huge plywood cage the front of which was covered with chicken wire so you could sit there and look in at the snake and the snake could look out, which is what the main character and the snake were both doing right now.
The main character had initially planned on staying at his friend’s (her boyfriend’s) apartment for the summer while taking care of the snake, until he realized how small the apartment was and how large the snake was.
The apartment was a dumpy run-down studio on the third floor in an especially ragged corner of the Wicker Park neighborhood (before Wicker Park was gentrified) and so, when one slept here on the futon, one was actually sleeping in the exact same room as a seven and a half foot long and yellow constrictor snake whose cage was locked but whom the hero of the story kept dreaming about as he slept on the futon in the tiny rundown studio apartment.
For example, he dreamed that the snake grew hands which were tiny enough to reach through the chicken wire and unlock the cage. Next, the seven and a half foot long and yellow snake opened the cage without a single sound and quietly slithered over to where the main character was peacefully sleeping on the futon. Next, the giant constrictor pounced on the main character’s chest just to wake him up to see the terror in his eyes right before he pressed the main character down and wrapped all of his impossible-to-resist, supernatural power around the main character’s throat and began to squeeze…
Such dreams had haunted the main character every single time he’d tried to sleep in this dumpy apartment with Snake Eyes in the same room.
So he’d had to patch together other sleeping arrangements for the summer, which ended up being a combination of staying part-time with his aging parents, part-time with his brother, part-time with his estranged wife (but not so estranged that she wouldn’t let him stay at her place some of the time), and part-time with his friend who is the other main character (other than Snake Eyes) of this story, who he was supposed to be helping move right now.
She was over there in the Pilsen neighborhood (before it got gentrified) waiting for him right now.
There wouldn’t be much furniture but there would be a lot of boxes and the main character had a very small car.
He felt sorry, very, very sorry, for Snake Eyes who had to stay in his cage for three months.
When Snake Eyes’ owner was in town, he took the snake out of the cage every day or two at the very least and he even wrapped the snake around his shoulders and body and went wandering around the scruffy neighborhood with Snake Eyes, letting neighborhood kids come up and visit the snake and letting the snake get fresh air and see the world a little bit.
The main character wasn’t sure if snakes liked to be visited or not but he was pretty sure the snake must’ve at least appreciated being taken out of the cage and taken for a ride around the neighborhood on the shoulders of his owner.
But this was Chicago so in the wintertime the owner of Snake Eyes just let Snake Eyes out to explore the tiny apartment every day or two.
The owner of Snake Eyes fed Snake Eyes live mice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (which didn’t happen every day) as well as frozen chicken legs.
The main character of this story was too sensitive to the plight of the mouse to feed Snake Eyes live mice, but he knew the snake enjoyed toying with the mouse before he ate it so he did feel sorry that all the snake was getting for three months were frozen chicken legs.
…
The phone rang again and he got up from where he was sitting on the floor in front of the snake’s cage, looking at the snake, feeling sorry for it and drinking another beer. Just as the main character wasn’t sure whether the snake actually enjoyed being visited by neighborhood kids, so he wasn’t sure whether the snake actually enjoyed it when he sat there communing with the snake, looking into its eyes and talking to it a little bit, saying things like, “I’m sure you’d rather be in the jungle than here but we are all stronger at the broken places if we only know it.” It was a lame attempt to console the snake even though he didn’t know how much the snake actually cared, but the snake’s owner had told him he could take the snake out of the cage if he wanted to and didn’t have to if he did not want to. He’d said the cage was large enough for the snake to be okay for three months as long as he was fed properly. “Just make sure he gets fed properly and he’ll be okay until I get back – but feel free to take him out whenever you want to.” He smiled.
The main character walked over to where the phone was still ringing, and he set his beer down next to the window, lit a cigarette, and picked up the phone.
It was another friend of his who lived in Florida. They’d almost gotten married at one point except that he already was (even though he didn’t live with his wife full time), but now she was down in Florida with another guy so why is she calling me? But there wasn’t a reason, except that her boyfriend was out right now and she missed him, i.e. the main character of this story. He sat down to have a brief conversation with her before heading out the door to go help his other friend move all of her precious stuff to the new apartment.
But the conversation turned out to be a longer one than he had initially planned on. Talking on the phone with anyone, anyone at all, made him nervous, so he began to drink and smoke even faster than he already had been. She was going on and on now about how she missed him and couldn’t stand her Florida boyfriend and at some point, without his even realizing it was doing so, the conversation took a fresh turn. It took a fresh turn into a new territory that can only be described as a kind of phone sex where, again, she did almost all the talking and he played along in other ways. This part of the phone conversation was not something he’d planned on, even more so than the conversation itself, and by the time it was all over he looked up with a startled surprise to see that at least another hour, and maybe more, had passed by.
As soon as the conversation was over he hung up the phone then picked it up again and dialed the number of his other friend, the one who was waiting for him to help her move her stuff because she had to be out of her old apartment tonight and her boyfriend was in Thailand. The main character thought to himself: if he were here there would be three of us moving her crap instead of just two but that a’hole has a way of leaving me holding the bag, doesn’t he. He glanced at Snake Eyes, who right at that moment struck the chicken wire of the cage with his yellow-and-white, hard-as-a-rock head with such force that the chicken wire bulged out a little. It was a habit he had. This snake could be as scary as a great white shark almost. The difference was that he wasn’t always that scary.
She was not happy about having to sit around waiting while she was so stressed about getting all her stuff out of her old apartment. The landlord had made threats earlier in the week and she didn’t have a car so there was nothing she could do on her own, since the new apartment was three miles down the road from the old one and all the boxes were heavy. It took him about ten minutes on the phone to get her calmed down but she finally did calm down.
He finished his beer, grabbed a fresh pack of cig’s from the carton, reached into the freezer for the flask of vodka, popped it into his back pocket, made sure he had his wallet and keys, said goodbye to Snake Eyes (“I’ll be back to see you later”), locked the locks on the door, and ran down the three flights of stairs, so fast that he almost felt like he was flying.
Then he burst out into one of the most beautiful mid-summer eves he’d ever been in, or that was what it felt like. He was a moody individual and often, very often, the moods were made up almost entirely of profound JOY for a reason, or reasons, that he himself didn’t even understand.
He walked so fast to his car that it was much faster than some people can run. She (the car) started up right away without any problems and as he turned the radio on he heard to his utter JOY that the radio station the radio was already on was playing “Let It Bleed” by the Rolling Stones, Chicago’s favorite band.
He turned the volume up LOUD and headed across town.
…
His joy, which had already cooled off a little as he approached her place, cooled off even more when he saw her sitting there in the summer’s late evening on the steps of her ex-apartment building smoking a cigarette, because he could already tell from here how upset she was. As he approached her on foot on the sidewalk she looked over at him and he gave her a big smile trying to somehow wordlessly apologize for his after-all-not-that-unusual lateness, and she turned her head away from him toward the other direction down the sidewalk and took a hard drag of her cigarette. As it turned out, she was in a foul mood because, while she was waiting for him, she’d gone to the drugstore for a pack of cigarettes. As she waited in line to buy the cig’s, a huge, naked man had entered the store dripping with sweat and holding a pistol in his hand. Without further ado, the man had jumped up onto the counter next to the cash register wearing nothing but tennis shoes, waved the pistol around at the half dozen people there in the front of the store and informed them all that they were about to die now. As it turned out, when another man in the store came around the corner of the aisle and yelled at the man to shut the hell up, get down off the counter and put the pistol down, the man did exactly as he was told to. The main character of this story’s friend had heard the man telling them all that he was sorry, he was just high and had lost his head for a moment, as she hightailed it out of the store without a new pack of cigarettes.
The main character of this story couldn’t believe, and by that I mean that he literally could not believe, how many boxes she had all packed up and ranged up and down the stairs behind her when she unlocked the triple locks of her soon-to-be-ex-apartment and showed him.
It was only the main character’s desire to get to the bar before the sun came up that made the work go so fast. They knew of several bars both in the city and outside it which stayed open 24-7 but he’d recently realized that when he stayed up all night drinking and swapping yarns on into the morning hour, as the sun rose his spirits sank so very low that nearly suicidal depressions were starting to descend upon him at that time, a thing that had never happened before until recently, when he was in his early thirties. As a younger man, he’d stayed up well past the dawn on many and many an occasion with no ill effects, but such was the case no longer. Last year, a good friend had put a loaded pistol to his head when the cocaine ran out at sunrise and pulled the trigger in another town. Somehow he didn’t die, but he would never walk or talk again most likely. When the main character visited him, his friend had scrawled on a piece of paper that he didn’t mind, at all, not talking or being a member of the rat race any more; and the main character had (almost) understood that very well.
So the work of moving a million boxes off the stairs and three miles across town in his small car went off rather quickly in the scheme of things because of his desire to get to the bar before that lucky ol’ sun started rising. Using all of the car’s trunk and back seat and moving fast like a maniac in between swigs of vodka is what did the trick. They were only pulled over by the cops once and the main character was able to instantly sober up and talk his way out of it just as he’d been able to do every single time he’d ever been pulled over while intoxicated, sometimes he himself didn’t even know why or how. As he placed the last box on the top of the last pile of boxes in her brand-new one-room studio apartment, she stepped over and gave him a huge kiss on the cheek. Wow and whoa, that had never happened before.
They made it to the bar by perhaps two in the morning which, for this bar, was not really all that late at all. The bar was filled with men dressed as women and women dressed as men and other so-called “hipster”-like figures who all looked around themselves out of their cool eyes as if they were snakes trapped in a cage that they loved. The main character and his great, beautiful friend found themselves a spot at the bar and ordered tequila. At some point he noticed that she now was wearing a bright red, silky scarf drawn tightly around her beautiful throat. He realized then, again, for the millionth time just how beautiful she was, with her long, thick, flowing, black-as-night hair and her gigantic, long-lashed, oval-shaped dark eyes that sometimes seemed to see everything and the very, very, very short polka-dotted skirt she was wearing. To this day he doesn’t know how it happened but suddenly he realized that she and he were holding hands underneath the bar, and then on top of the bar. Her boyfriend, who was in Thailand for the summer, had several friends who were in this bar right now.
Somehow, without either of them knowing quite how exactly, they very soon found themselves back in her new apartment rolling around on the floor amongst the boxes, pressing each other, devouring each other’s mouths with kisses, hugging, holding, feeling, touching in all the privates places you can possibly imagine – almost. It wasn’t full-on sex exactly but it was enough to qualify as “cheating” almost certainly, at least in the minds of some people, like the guy in Thailand who was, after all anyway, probably returning the favor over there in Thailand right now.
She fell asleep right in the middle of another kiss and that was when the main character looked up at the windows to see the gray light of dawn starting to peek in.
He hurried away, and as he stepped out into the street that just kept on growing lighter he realized that there was something he still needed to do, that if he didn’t do this thing, he would somehow not be fulfilling his duty to the Universe.
So now he was back in the other apartment, sitting on the floor with a fresh beer beside him, staring at Snake Eyes right in the eyes as the seven and a half foot long yellow python stared straight back at him.
The main character undid the lock of the cage and raised the chicken wire.
He gently leaned the whole top half of his body into the dark cage toward the snake who just turned his head away.
He had held the snake once before when his friend was in town, but right now he simply could not believe how heavy Snake Eyes was as he pulled the snake from the cage and somehow, with the snake’s help, got it up and wrapped it around his shoulders – and around his neck.
He felt the snake’s massive body tighten a little around his neck.
But only a little.
And he took the snake for a long, long walk around the block and out into the park and back so he could breathe the fresh air and feel the warmth of the morning summer sun in all its beauty.
As he did so, he was absolutely positive that Snake Eyes was enjoying himself.
They made it back to the apartment and the main character of this story passed out drunk on his friend’s futon with Snake Eyes curled up right next to him, believe it or not.
And he had a dream.
In the dream, he dreamed that Snake Eyes and he were in the Garden of Eden rolling dice with the Devil, and they had rolled double sixes, and they had won the pot. The Devil disappeared – that is, he vanished in front of their eyes – permanently.
No more failure, no more humiliation, no more confusion, no more self-hatred, no more temptation, no more being put down – no more coming out on the losing end. In a town full of losers, they were pulling out of there to win.
The Drifter
(Images by The Drifter)
Saragun Springs 