When I awoke the next morning I was alone in my empty nest, a mother who has sacrificed a promising career to become homemaker to a large family; the kids leave and then I’m left alone having to decide whether to go back to school or take up drinking. All I could hear was the muffled swish of traffic and an occasional gurgle from the toilet upstairs.
I again studied the reproduction of the Mona Lisa that hangs on the wall above my bed, trying to figure out how she manages to smile without really smiling. She is caught for eternity, like her soul-sister Lauren Bacall – also on the wall above my bed – in a nicotine sfumato that shrouds a landscape every bit as contrived as that of the soundstage exteriors in ‘The Big Sleep’.
Porky’s back door knock broke the spell these sirens held me in.
“Here,” Porky said as he handed me a yellowed envelope, “I want you to read this and then you judge me.”
“What is this?”
“Just read it.”
I began reading the letter inside: ‘Dear Emil…’
“Emil?” I asked Porky. “Your real name is Emil?” I was amused. “Emil Flores, that’d be a great name if you were a Belgian florist.” I continued reading, ‘I want you to know how much I’ve treasured the time we’ve spent together these last few years in school. You made trigonometry bearable and I don’t think I’ll ever stop laughing at your impersonations of Mr. Soule – you’ve brought so much laughter into my life and nobody knows better than you how much I needed that.
I’ve thought about what you said to me on Saturday and it made me think of what a good husband and father you’ll be some day. You are kinder and more helpful than just about anyone else I know and those are surely two qualities that someone will treasure in you. I do care for you very much, but I can’t marry you. My parents would be upset if I even tried to date you let alone be your wife. I’m not proud of that and it’s not fair, but we are both from such different worlds it would be too difficult for us to try to make a life together. Please don’t hate me for that, I think you know it’s true.
It may be best for us not to see each other for a while, just until we get a chance to adjust to things, but I hope you will always be my friend. I do care for you deeply, Love June.’
“That’s sad Porky, you really loved this girl, huh?”
“Yes, but she wouldn’t let herself love me, and she did love me.”
“Well, that’s too bad but….. So, what, I’m supposed to feel bad that you didn’t get this white girl and give you Celestine’s address as compensation?”
“You’re a jerk,” said Porky as he grabbed the letter out of my hand.
“No, you’re the jerk,” I said. “You’re the one who wants me to help you to abandon your wife so you can run off with some one night stand.”
“I have the same feeling for this woman as I did for that girl I knew years ago. The very same feeling and I’m too old not to take what I want when it’s right there in front of me.”
“Porky, if it were right in front of you, you wouldn’t need her address and phone number. I wouldn’t exactly call Camarillo right in front of you.”
“She lives in Camarillo? Just give me her last name, I’ll go find her myself.”
“Porky, I can’t just give you a guest’s personal information. People expect discretion and privacy when they stay with me. They’re not expecting one of my neighbors to come banging on the door of their homes just because you thought she was sexy.”
“This is different, we slept together, we shared laughs and talked about ourselves to each other.”
“Well, why didn’t you get her address and phone number then?”
“Because we were living in a beautiful moment and we didn’t want anything to disrupt that.”
“I don’t know Porky, it seems to me if Celestine had wanted you to have that information, she would have just given it to you. Doesn’t that make sense?”
“We had a beautiful sexual encounter, it wasn’t about what was rational or what makes sense. Hasn’t that ever happened to you?”Yes, it had, not in a while but if I sat and thought about it, I did have a fling or two, the memory of which could help me to empathize completely with Porky.
“Please do this for me. Please. If you do this for me, I will give you plumbing that will cause you to burst into tears of joy every time you turn on the faucet. I will make your pipes sing.”
Now he had my attention.
There was no one else within earshot but I started whispering. “Porky, does this really sound like a good idea?”
And Porky whispered back, “Look, I’ve been a faithful husband for over thirty years.”
“So, you’re going to throw all of that away now? Because of someone who didn’t even bother giving you her last name or address.”
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to see me again.”
Then Porky did something melodramatic and highly effective. He took out the bill for all the work he’d done and began tearing it in half, in quarters, eighths, sixteenths and then with flair he tossed them all into the air where they scattered as confetti. This was the ticker-tape parade that led me down the road of unethical behavior.
I opened the drawer in the kitchen where I keep all the registration cards that I have guests fill out. I found Celestine’s and copied the pertinent information out on a scrap of paper for Porky.
“You are not to tell Celestine that I gave you this. I mean it. If you do, I’m going to Pinky and tell her the whole sordid business. Swear that you won’t.”
“I swear I won’t.”
“No, I mean really swear that you will never tell Celestine.”
“Oh, for cripes sake, I really swear that I will never tell Celestine.”
“Nor anyone else.”
“I really swear that I will never tell anyone else.”
“Nor any government agencies, local, state or federal.”
“Nor any government agencies, local, state or federal.”
I handed him the slip of paper.
Before he ran out the door, though, I had to ask him,
“Is this a mid-life crisis, Porky?”
“This is not a crisis, this is an intense feeling of desire.”
“Well, if this is what I have to look forward when I become middle-aged, I’m not exactly looking forward to it.”
“WHEN you become middle-aged?!”
“I’m not middle-aged.”
“Of course you’re middle-aged, you’re forty.”
“That’s not middle-aged.”
“Yes, it is. How long are you planning to live?”
“I hope to hit my eighties but I’m never going to make it with an attitude like yours.”
“Well, what’s half of eighty? It’s forty, it divides eighty right down the middle, hence middle-aged. You’re a victim of Candy Bar Syndrome.”
“You mean when the manufacturers cut back on size but still charge the same amount?”
“Exactly! It’s the same mentality that calls a 2”x 4” a 2”x4” instead of its actual size of 1 1/2”x 3 1/2”. Or, worse yet, the 2”x 10” which, if reality were taken into account, would be named 1 1/2”x 9 – that’s a whole inch!”
“Don’t you have things to do?”
Brume sticks
It was to be a day for desperate acts.
Tip was desperate for warm bodies to fill beds and I for one female body to fill my own bed and we lowered our standards accordingly on both counts.
Charlene, or Suzanne as she first presented herself to me, came into my life and this environment of desperation as though scheduled according to a precise lunar calendar.
It was an appropriately stormy night, the winds clearing the usually overcast sky and I watched the rapidly flying brume and the large white pill of the moon dissolving in a palliative of fog and ether. I got an overly excited call from Tip that he had a live one and I should get ready to check someone in. ‘I’llcallyourightback,’ he said in one long word. Germ
ans, I’m told, make big words like that out of lots of little words. I waited for his call which came a minute or two later.
“She’s just called from the Riteway in the Mission. She’ll be there in five minutes. I told her she could have the spot in back; so, 65 dollars a night if she stays two nights. She wants to look the place over before she decides, so turn on the charm. Let her know what a bargain she’s getting, I told her about your fresh fruit plates, she sounded interested.”
Rough sex
Her car soon arrived out by the side near the back gate, which I went out to open for her. She drove one of those overly large 1970’s gas-guzzlers that Detroit rode into decline and she never took her eyes off me as she coasted in. She took her time diddling in the car before she emerged. She was thin, with a pixie haircut and long earrings that made her head look like a Chinese lantern. She tilted her head left so that one earring scraped her shoulder and it was odd to see her lower right arm snap up from the elbow because it had appeared glued to the side of her body. She kept it at a perfectly rigid ninety degree angle, like she was trying to maintain her hold on something pressed to her side as she shook hands, which was hardly a shake because her hand was kept in a flat plane that was hard to grasp in greeting. It’s what I would imagine the coupling of ironing boards to be like if I spent time thinking about such things, which I do despite all my efforts not to.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Beautiful moon isn’t it? I love a bright full moon.”
She remained quiet and then said, “Mmmm, The moon gives medicine to the shore.”
“What’s that?” I asked, though I’d heard her well enough.
“The moon makes the tides and a woman’s cycle, a woman’s ebb and flow.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking this was going to be a long night. I got a nightmarish flash of her and myself as two octogenarian retirees, Eb and Flo, sitting on the front porch of our mobile home at the edge of the trailer park, looking out onto the interstate, watching it all go by; back and forth, back and forth.
“Look out for the sidewalk here, the roots from this tree have made it a trip hazard,” I warned her.
We climbed the front stairs in silence. Inside the lamps cast yellow light. I could see her clearly now and her face looked flushed as though feverish. She was still wearing that smug smile she had when she got out of the car. I began to show her around, and she seemed to like what she saw, saying ‘lovely’ and ‘mmmm’ often. We climbed the stairs, her in front of me moving her ass to one of those saxophone riffs that signaled a wanton nymphomaniac in old movies; her own private soundtrack. She was too bony to pull it off but the effort registered. I showed her Septimus and Mimi. When we got to Jefferson, she suddenly collapsed onto the bed as though she’d been on her feet for days. She closed her eyes and said, “ I just need to spend a little time here and get a feeling for the room to see if it’ll be right for me. Do you mind?”
“No, not at all why don’t you just think about it for a few minutes. I’ll be downstairs, just knock on the door at the end of the hall when you’re ready.”
Five minutes later she knocked on my door. “This is a nice place you have. What’s the neighborhood like?”
“It’s fabulous: safe, lots of restaurants.”
“Are there any places around where I can unwind? You know really relax and maybe meet someone.”
“There are tons of bars, some real old neighborhood places, lots of character.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a club, someplace discreet where I could play.”
“Huh, not in this neighborhood really.” I was getting a bit nervous.
“Could I just have a few more minutes to decide. Can I just sit in the living room a little longer?”
“No problem. I’ll be out in a few.” I closed the door to my apartment again and slid the latch back. I was trying to figure out what was going on with her, thinking that it couldn’t be this easy to get laid. She was a little off, just short of creepy, a girl whose glass was half empty. Could I hold back her mental illness long enough for me to get off?
It was useless trying to be rational, my dick was making a tent out of my sweat pants and there was no shutting it down. So I bit my lower lip, closed my eyes, counted to five and sauntered out into the living room. “So what would you like?” I asked her
“That,” she said from the couch. I walked right up to her and she stretched the top of my sweats down to my thighs. I needed this and suddenly the fact that she was unbalanced became a turn on and really, during the sex she didn’t seem any crazier than anyone else doing what she was doing, which was everything rough I could push or pull from her.
We worked up to a heated finish in the middle of the living room, steaming like a compost pile. She decided to stay; I would have felt weird if she hadn’t but that unease I’d felt around her came back as soon as I caught my breath after orgasm. She paid me sixty-five dollars cash and said she would get the rest tomorrow at the bank.
“Which room would you like?”
“How ‘bout the one in the front, the white one. I love the big mirror and the draperies and everything all white. What was it called?”
“Mimi, it’s my favorite, though you hear the traffic a bit more than the others.”
“That’s not a problem, the traffic doesn’t bother me. I even like the way the headlights shine into the room off and on. It seems so mysterious.”
Three hours or so later I awoke in my own bed feeling horny. I walked out into the hallway. The lamps were all dark now, timed to shut off at midnight. The moon streaked through the windows leaving blue shadows that seemed to peel off the objects in the house. As I climbed the stairs they squealed. All the doors were open but she wasn’t in Mimi and I could see that all the beds in the other rooms had been slept in. This really annoyed me and I was ready for some angry sex, but she was nowhere to be found.
I went downstairs and stood in the big bay window staring at the street, my erection prominent. I was in a frenzy to rub and suck some woman’s skin and no longer having other options, I took care of myself right there in plain view, my good standing in the neighborhood be damned. I made a mess. Practicality snapping to attention as soon as my penis had eased, I ran back to my rooms for a robe, a towel and a tonic of bubbly water and lemon juice, which I doused on the spray of semen on the rug.
“I’m melting, I’m melting,” I said on behalf of the deaf-mute spermatozoids.
I did walk out to the back door and a parting of the curtains confirmed what I already knew, she’d driven away and in a last act of thoughtlessness, she’d left the gate open.
I went out in my bare feet to close the gate, struggling a bit with its sagging frame and disabled hardware.
“How are you,” a voice from up the block intoned. It was that of my rotund homosexual neighbor, representing about sixty percent of the combined bulk of the Balloon Brothers (or roughly 300-plus pounds). He speaks as though always talking to kitty cats or small children with learning disabilities.
“Hi, a little late, or early, for dog walking, isn’t it?’
“Not any more, Mr. Beezly is on an exercise regimen. He’s getting a teeny bit heavy, so I’ve been waking him up every night for a little after midnight doggy walk.” Mr. Beezly was one of those tawny, curly haired dogs which I can never remember the breed of.
I looked my neighbor over from top to bottom lingering on the rolls of flab that cascaded from above his ears, down below his chin, pouring over his belly and disseminating over the pubic area and around the thighs, and then I looked at Mr. Beezly, 90% of whose body weight was blow dried fur, and I knelt down and said directly to the dog, “Someone has a bad case of dysmorphia.”
“I think she got her shot for that,” my concerned neighbor assured me.
“Goodnight,” I said and returned to the house.
I was pissed that I’d have to make three beds and violently upset at what I t
ook to be, at three in the morning, a sexual betrayal but it could all wait for the morning, which, oh, come to think of it, it already was. I kicked furniture and cabinet doors with my bare feet , shouted things like, “fucking bitch” and then went for the linen closet to get clean sheets to make the beds because experience has taught me that if I’d left the beds unmade until later, I’d have gotten a phone call at 8am from my agent telling me to prepare for the imminent arrival of a busload of Japanese tourists.
Fates
You can’t work with the public without a coming up hard against Murphy’s Law. I think that it will soon be recognized as an established scientific fact. It’s just another corollary of the laws of entropy: all matter breaks down, therefore everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Like the time I had this nice couple stay with me. They had a daughter in college, nice looker who only had a passing interest in moi, and I gave them the suite. Well, he calls my attention at the breakfast table one morning and as an aside, in order not to panic the other guests, he tells me there’s a grave situation in his room, Aldaric, that demands my attention. I follow him reluctantly out to his room, which has it’s own entrance at the back and occupies what most people mistakenly call the basement. It is however not the basement but the sous sol. He points to a corner beside the bed; by this time I’m afraid I’ll find the bloodied corpse of his wife, and as I kneel down, I’m smack in the middle of a swarm of ants, I mean gajillions of them. That’s when I found out he was a reviewer for an international travel magazine.
“Arrgg,” I said, unconsciously mimicking those comic strip characters, the dog and the bird and all those kids with bowling ball heads, whose anguishes, ennuis and sorties I followed religiously as a child.
Or the time this old woman was staying with me. I love old ladies but this one was a bit out to pasture (sweet, though, very sweet) and she’s definitely breaking down; she’s the proven proposition. You’ve heard of the Teflon president? She was the Gor-Tex granny; trouble just wicked off her like sweat from a jack-ass in heat. She could pick flowers in a field in the middle of D-Day and come out of it without a scratch. She remains immaculate while empires and my home crumble around her.
Nothing ever went quite right during her visit. She went out without her key four times and I had to come racing back to let her in five times (one time she had her key, but just couldn’t open the door.) She left the tea kettle on, the milk out, the bath water running, the toilet plugged, several electrical appliances on high, six slices of burnt toast, one of which caught on fire, indelible stains on the carpet and me with a black eye – oh, and a two dollar tip!
In the future all folk wisdom will be seen to have a firm foundation in science. They’ve already discovered that chicken soup helps you to get over illness. I haven’t actually read the studies but apparently there are certain chemical compounds that affect the immune system in a really good way. Think of how unimpressed and secretly proud all those Jewish and Italian grandmothers were when they heard that!
And the way bad luck always happens in threes, they’ll find that it is one of the fundamental properties girding the universe. Let’s assume X to be your effort. We assign X a value 0: X=0; no effort on your part. A force Y intercepts your effort in equilibrium as expressed by 0/Y creating an inherently unstable condition that, according to the Bad Luck Law of Threes, opens the way for further assaults upon X at 0 before righting itself in time to make for a neat little package of three catastrophes.
There is a reason that whenever you go to your gym locker, there will be four other people shuffling their possessions around in their lockers, folding everything just so and those lockers will be to your immediate left, right and below you, right in the same tight corner as yours, though the rest of the locker room is empty. Finally we have The Lemming Principle of Probable Massing to explain this heretofore little understood phenomenon. It has to do with the way we’re all wired; how we’re such social beings that we simultaneously get an urge to interact and the act of all of us going to that same small corner will provide us with one of the few opportunities we’ll have to actually try to talk to other people we don’t already know at the gym.
And why is it that a church like calm will reign all day while you’re at home waiting for some important phone calls and then suddenly when you can’t put off defecating or urinating even one more second, and with great relief you are seated comfortably on the potty in mid squeeze, suddenly the phone rings. Do you pinch and waddle over to the phone? At least now, with the scientific proof of the When the Shit Hits the Fan Theory of Timing, you’ll understand there’s a reason behind what had previously been perplexing and deeply aggravating.
By the time 8:00 rolled around, I was wiped out. The phone rang, proving again that death, taxes and an early phone call from Tip were the only things I could count on in my life.
“Good Morning, how’s the weather over there?” When he’s feeling cocky and overly confident, Tip sometimes sees himself as the emotional weatherman; he wants everyone to know how in touch he is and how much he cares about the minute to minute fluctuation of your feelings. “How’s the weather over there,” he says, trying to elicit some messy emotional confession that makes him feel as though he’s on the six o’clock news, sweeping his arms over back-lit maps of America.
“Fair.”
“How’s our little oddball member of the human race doing?”
“Gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? You mean crazy gone or out for the day gone?
“Nope.”
“Vanished gone?”
“She left some time late last night but not before sleeping in all the beds and leaving them a mess.”
“What!? Wasn’t she happy?”
“Slap Happy.”
“That Abby Normal. That twat.”
“Her twat was the one normal thing about her.”
I was glad to be rid of her, but I couldn’t help wondering; where had she come from; where had she gone?
Chapter VIIII: Riddle of the Sphincter
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