Earl’s Teaser

From the film “Earl” starring Earl Woodruff. Currently being filmed about a struggling comedian who may be losing his mind. Directed by me.

Disintegration-Last Nights of Paris-David Eng-Ginnetta Correli

The Church Bell Player by Barry Titus

I did not know some facts until after I wrote this. The CIA had blamed my grandmother for some mistakes they wanted to hide. During the 1950’s they had let English agents spy on the H bomb, steal the plans and give them to Russia. CIA pretended my grandmother had done it. They harassed my father, planted agents, tinkered with his car and tried to kill him. Two years after this novel ended, I moved from a hotel to a one bedroom apartment. The Dutch and US cut off my television cable. I had a friend, Jan Derek (Dirk) Pasterkamp, a Dutch folksinger with an apartment but no identity card. We smoked cannabis every afternoon, played the guitar and sang. He went out on my bike and bought grass. We had a friend, Walter the German, we met on Leidseplein where we talked twice a week. Walter only talked about marijuana. One night I insisted that Walter and I rent a hotel room to watch television. We found one above Rookie’s cafe, and went downstairs to have coffee. The only ones at the next cafe were an older man and an adolescent girl. Fluffy haired with spectacles, he wore a beige check jacket and tie. The girl, four inches shorter and thinner, sat part way around the table. As he spoke, now and then she shifted her glance. He pushed his face toward something down the street, hers partly moved. Later, upstairs, I lay on the bed. Walter on the floor rolled joints. I heard thumps like someone banged on the wall, and smaller bumps; then a door shut which made Walter look up. Words came through the wall. With a blush and a grin, Walter translated:

“Dirty little bitch. You’re an evil girl, you mean, filthy slut.”
                                                            
February, 2000                                         
The attempt to cut an egg increased the charge in all my muscles. Pieces sped off the plate. My numb hand could not fork them up. Girls shook their heads No or didn’t answer. The perfect, vanilla kewpie doll, a level blue eyed blond with a round forehead and globe breasts, never saw me through the glass pane. The effort to cut conflicted with the muscular overcharge. I sawed on. The struggle united with the increased effort and doubled. I was enraged over an egg. I cursed, trembled and sneered. I stabbed at the fatty bacon, l pinned and shredded. A piece flew off the table. Tall Rita with the spear head cheekbones looked back from between her legs.
After breakfast, ease of walking provoked the CIA treatment to clench my lower back. Two days later, Rita left her bra on. The gluteal muscle followed the tendon and shuddered to return twenty times. She said she might know of an apartment; drop by tomorrow. The next day I felt a scratched anger. Black whips hung on the wall. Rita cell phoned in German. The apartment was no longer free. I thanked her and left.
In my small hotel room, I added details to old notes of interrogation by hidden CIA officers. I had been experimented on. The federal spies had done ten thousand conditioning trials on me with humans and electricity. Now I told secrets I had promised to keep: the officers’ names and hints of their personalities. They’d repeated their recognizable voices. If I concentrated, the letters wavered. In a light sweat, I trembled and felt I was losing my balance.
Upside down, Rita’s breasts had flown and swelled close. Her buttocks, a semi soft bubble, followed the cord in cream. I had glimpsed an extra spasm in her back.
Two canals East and five blocks South lay Nieuwmarket, a large square where at one end stood a brick fort with conical roofs. Down a side street halfway to a canal, a slim blond admitted me. Four days later, she said: “No.” I walked back to the hotel. On the bed, relaxation brought images of men who rushed with weapons. I cursed the government. The swearing erased the attackers, but not the nervousness created with frequent electric current. I went out again. I told Rita I yelled on the phone at my first hotel. The maid thought I meant her and they asked me to leave. How was the weather in New York? “Snowing.”           
In a stationary store I saw a German dictionary and thought of Rita but it was too small. Her question about the weather suggested a trip unfairly fast. Two days later, I tried a full chested blond. Upstairs she said, “I can’t. That’s it.”
Up at 2AM, tired, my thighs and biceps flexed. The main avenue was outside my window. A tunnel of air mourned from the left. “Breasts.” The plump brunette took her bra off. They faced away from me. “Now what?”  “Just stand.”  I held her. Outside the hotel window, a beggar played a plastic pipe. The Tv was too low to hear. If I looked too hard at the subtitles, the words switched places.

Rita called me: “Bugs Bunny.” How did my stomach get like that? The bicycle in Copenhagen. I couldn’t tell her the conditioned anxiety didn’t let me rest. A new, thick Langenscheidt’s dictionary lay on her sink edge. In Oudekerk Square, Old Church loomed, nine cement walls with nine orange tiled roofs, some conical. The bells rained a slow hymn, deep and high gongs; the melody rang like fallen cans scattered over clanged chords.

In May in the Broodje, a sandwich shop on Old Church Square, Rita came in for a sandwich, her face white above a navy coat. Her eyes looked higher than in make up. That night, the tunnel with air walls worried listened at 2:20 AM. The Church bell player, never married, wondered where the despair in the music came from. Never broken up, she hadn’t discovered grief.
         
Rita waved at the stars on the rear wall. I couldn’t think. Five minutes later, I said we could live in New Paltz a college town thirty miles North of New York, if she just wanted to get away. How to explain a college town. The students didn’t speak to strangers. We’d have no friends. The tension could build into an argument about what? She’d have to go back to Holland. A man spoke. Rita seemed to shrink backwards, like a scared deer.
         
I knocked on the glass beside the vanilla kewpie’s turned away face. She let me in. “____ me, ____ me, ____ me, ____ me.”

****
I had finished twenty poems since I left New York. An empty envelope from Mother; female modern dance; the word vergeven. Kopy Kwik copied and bound them. Under the plastic sheet, the front looked like snow with typewritten titles at different angles. Rita was probably not a lit major, but her x curtains were closed. The next day, walking up her street, I seemed to glide on light blue wings, but her curtains were closed, closed for a week. I worked on events from 1989. Hot water from the shower could make coffee in a glass container.
         
“Poetry; they came out well and I thought of you.” She flipped through it. Thanked me without looking up and put it on a package. The kewpie spanked my ass cheek with a leather fly swatter. Rita’s curtains were closed for another week. When I saw her, I asked her if she had a chance to read the poems. Yes. She brushed her waist length hair. Too complicated? Maybe.
Rita was with Ann sitting in a booth. One day with a shadowy look, Ann said, “Ulrika’s on vacation.” Her name was Ulrika; she’d discussed me. I put my hand on the kewpie’s shoulder. In two minutes, she said, “Yes, yes, yes, yes. How are you, Dracula?” Rita Ulrika joked.
Beside Kewpie’s armoire stood a pair of tan suede cowboy boots. Above them hung a fleece lined leather jacket. She said she will love others and I will love others. I asked if she was six feet tall. Only five eight, her wide dark eyes denied. How often did she go to the tanning booth?
“Twice a week, you seem tense,” Kewpie said.
I said: “I have strange problems. The government gave me this treatment. Electromagnetic rays.”
“Who is using these rays on you?”
CIA sounded crazy so I said FBI. Rita stopped on the way to her chair, hand half raised.

I knew I shouldn’t bring police attention to her or talk about surveillance…
To be continued

Barry Titus is a 71 year old poet and writer born in New York City. His publications include: the novel, Masks and non fiction,The Dalai Lama Caper. Barry has spent the last seven years in Holland.

Color of Meaning by Phillip David Grainger

Words are colour true hidden between if and maybe ” David you know what the power of the message will do, you know the price of finding me”
“Maybe this is not the way of it “
Maybe you should try to find me”
The truth or my truth is nothing without you. If that the chose then I choose this path”
The greatest fear certaint, the marked paragraph where in lyes unquestioning meaning. “The power of the message the certainty of the destruction that it will cause just to find me”
certaint unquestioning, what good are these when all fact conspire against.
Words tone and pitch to strike a lye or hit a truth “David I choose for you to forget this, forget me this is not you world”
“I would lye to keep him safe ,the lye within a truth I would keep him from me knowing that it would better that the truth I require “
“becouse of you Edward I know there are world times were I am never just an on looking”
“David remember to live on till all the little that left
Your faded words mean little as your cold heart beat no compassion “Edward the power of the message I will use it to keep you safe stop the flame of memory
“Tom I can not save you, what you have done the path you walk you are lost so am I “
But lyes and tainted truth
“I see a world of perfection even in the smallest detail, I see no mark from the passage of time or dent were age has been unkind “
The black fog the reflection of your own self the monster the action you choose David
Just like Tom ,like all who tried to find me that what this refection show”
wear the eye it see all but know nothing
“I dont see or rather I choose not to see why destroy this world why question , look the crake faded truths.
This world of perfection was never yours to find
The lonely child who navigate a world by an alferbet which she has yet to learn, the lost child to the howling wind
“What I face,what I know?
What can I see, I can not tell”
Wear the teacher who knows all. the lyer and keeper of realy truths
“This is my mind ,my world, this creation but that note dose not make sence the word Edward left but word not for me
Final wear the mind that stop or the heart which fail ,danger as the game is lost , as the water of the mind turn cold,icely and unkind these word are gone the game stop.

Earl’s Xmas

“Twas the night before Christmas, and damn it was neat
The kids were both gone, and my wife was in heat
The doors were all bolted, and the phone off the hook
It was time for some nooky, by hook or by crook.
Momma in her teddy, and I in the nude
Had just hit the bedroom and reached for the lube
When out on the lawn there arose such a cry,
That I lost my boner and poor momma went dry.
Up to the window I sprang like an elf,
Tore back the shade while she played with herself.
The moon on the crest of the snowman we’d built,
Showed a broom up his ass, clean up to the hilt.
When what to my bloodshot eyes should appear,
But a rusty old sleigh and eight mangy reindeer.
With a fat little driver, half out of his sled,
A sock in his ear, and a bra on his head.
Sure as I’m speaking, he was as high as a kite.
And he yelled to his team, but it didn’t sound right.
Whoa Shit head, whoa Asshole, whoa Stupid, whoa Putz,
Either slow down this rig or I’ll cut off your nuts.
Look out for the lamp post, and don’t hit the tree,
Quit shaking the sleigh, cause I gotta go pee.
They cleared the old lamp post, the tree got a rub,
Just as Santa leaned out and threw up on my shrub.
And then from the roof we heard such a clatter,
As each little reindeer now emptied his bladder.
I was donning my jacket to cover my ass,
When down the chimney Santa came with a crash.
His suit was all smelly with perfume galore,
He looked like a bum and he smelled like a whore.
“That was some brothel,” he said with a smile,
“The reindeer are pooped and I’ll just stay here a while.
He walked to the kitchen, himself poured a drink,
Then whipped out his pecker and pissed in the sink.
I started to laugh, my wife smiled with glee,
The old boy was hung nearly down to his knee.
Back in the den, Santa reached in his sack but his toys were gone
New things were packed.
The first thing he found was a pair of false tits,
The next was a handgun with a penis that spits.
A box filled with condoms was Santa’s next find,
And a six pair of panties, the edible kind.
A bra without nipples, a penis extension,
And several other things that I shouldn’t even mention.
A cock ring, a G-string, and all types of oil,
A dildo so long it lay in a coil.
“This stuff ain’t for kids, Mrs. Santa will shit,
So I’ll leave’m here, and then I’ll just split.”
He filled every stocking and then took his leave,
With one tiny butt plug tucked under his sleeve.
He sprang to his sleigh but his feet were like lead,
Thus he fell on his ass and broke wind instead.
In time he was seated, took the reins of his hitch,
Saying, “Take me home Rudolph, this night’s been a bitch!”
The sleigh was near gone when we heard Santa shout,
“The best thing about sex is it never wears out!-Earl Woodruff

Of Canine Bondage by J. de Salvo

8/25/01
      It started. I’m not sure exactly when, but it did. First it was fantasy, then pictures, movies. Finally…well, I still have that choice. Ah, Sophie.
      Before I get into this battle with myself…the hardest kind, and after all, who wins?…I need to ask a question. Not for you, for me. Why does sex have to be interesting? In nature we see a lot of rape, and my darker side inclines me to not have a huge problem with that. There’s something about force, about the exercise of power. It’s delicious. The next fundamentalist nut job who tells me we have no animal ancestry needs to set up a mirror above their own bed. If there’s one thing scientists and preachers agree on it’s that the main function of the sex act is for reproductive purposes. 
8/26/01
      Sophie is looking at me now, somewhat warily. She’s done a lot of work for me already. I can’t think that crossing this line will mean as much to her as it would for me. After all, I can’t expect her to understand the difference between filming something (fiction), and just doing it for shits and giggles (non-fiction). Her professionalism is superior to mine in that aspect. It’s all real to her. She’s what we in the porn business call a “real amateur”. Dogs don’t act. They can be taught to perform, but they don’t act. The cries of pain and pleasure are one hundred percent real. 
8/27/01
      I don’t know why I’m so afraid of this final act. I’ve been felated by Sophie and countless other dogs before, that’s how it started being more than just a thought. The thing was I didn’t start it. I had to finish myself off that first time, but I soon learned how to use food both as lubricant and enticement. Sophie is the best of them so far. I really love her. I really do. That’s the problem. I know I will cause her pain if I go forward with this. Not that she’ll remember it, or be traumatized, like…say… a little kid would be. But while I’m doing it… (Doing it? Am I really that serious?)…there will be physical pain. 
8/28/01
      Before I made Dog flicks I was into rape flicks. The problem was the raping was never real. The most clever one was a sci-fi piece about how there’s only one woman left on the planet after a big nuclear war, and she doesn’t want to put out. That was a big seller. I am an artist first, a pervert second.
      A fairly famous artist, actually. If it ever came out that Douglas Miller and Dr. Strange Love are the same person, I’d be in some real shit. 
8/29/01
      Part of me, I think, as I am not the most in touch with myself person around, would like that. I’d like to go down like a radical, an extremist… to hell with everyone else. I wanted to do it, so I did. Go down screaming; the most famous dog fucker of all time…. as fascinating as I was revolting.
      I like to be revolting. But I will not tolerate any half measures…no no no. I need to be revolting either in total secrecy, or completely openly. I am leading up to something, perhaps. 
8/30/01
      Or perhaps not. I suppose it’s just that I am sitting down and thinking about it. Most days I go about my business and turn a blind eye to my darkest sides. Then I make myself drunk, or take drugs…and they come out of the shadows. Take last night for instance. I was drunk when I wrote that, trying to give myself courage. I went into her room. I looked her right in the eye. I wanted to do it, but somehow I couldn’t disconnect my conscience. Yet the craving remains.
      I am a forty two year old man. For all intents and purposes, I have stopped having normal relations with women. My contact with women, in any real sense, stopped when I was married. That was when I was 33. 
8/31/01
      I have re-read yesterday’s entry many times. I am surprised at its honesty. That is what I set out to do here, though, but I am surprised that it is happening. I have never written anything before, so if I am gone and you are reading this, please excuse my bad writing.
      What I wrote yesterday seems significant. I’m not sure how. Maybe I’m afraid of women. That’s a theory that’s out there, about my kind of extreme pervert that seems to make some sense. The more I think about it though, the more I think that maybe I’m afraid of myself. I’ve never had any real trouble giving pleasure to women, not that they’ve seen fit to complain about. I’ve often been told that I was a good lover. Maybe it was getting married that did it. My wife and I never have sex anymore. We are bored of the same old thing. Maybe we are afraid to admit that. Not maybe, we are afraid. I can sense it in the room at all times. We hardly ever even speak anymore. Our sex life, or lack of it, has taken over everything. 
9/1/01 
      Did a shoot today. Lesbian Dog Porn. Sophie was marvelous, as was the actress. What was her name? I considered paying her a little extra to go to one of my empty studios and turn fiction into fact, but I chickened out at the last minute and went and masturbated in my office instead. Not so much chickened out, as I was actually emboldened. Is that the word? It sounds right anyways.
      No doubt she would have done it. She is an addict of just about everything and has no principles to speak of. Not only has she acted out so many diversely perverse scenarios of mine, but it has been whispered in my ear on many occasions that she does not limit her self to screen work if the price is right. It would be easier with someone else involved. I would feel less responsible. Maybe I will call her. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
9/2/01 
      No way. Man, what was I thinking? This girl is money hungry, and she could expose me. I was working on one of my films today. Not one of the dirty ones, but one designed for people with less evil imaginations. As I was watching the actress play out a scene I had written, I began to leave the set. In my mind, I mean. I began to picture her in the same role the other actress had played in the other film. I could just see little Sophie licking her cunt, loving the salts and the juiciness of it. Lesbian dog porn is an invention of mine. Imitators have sprung up, but they are few. It’s not essentially different than woman on male dog type flicks, except that the woman is never penetrated by the dog. That is what your average dog porn lover is looking for; the canine equivalent of the Tijuana donkey show. I have built my niche market by pushing that anonymous manila envelope. So far I have not found any actors willing to film with male dogs. Even hard core stars have their standards I suppose. But I will some day. Maybe then I will turn one way or the other. When I picture it in my head, it is always easy to do…and it is never like you picture it, is it? 
9/3/01
      I suppose the normal thing to do at this point would be to kill us all. I mean her, myself, the children. That seems shocking in too average a way. Maybe tonight I will do it. Also, you always hear of loving fathers faithfully executing themselves and their family out of love or poverty or both. None of this applies. I could do it, I suppose, just to act it out. I’m fond of such things. But no, I fear that I am totally alone….that this involves only me.
      Not true, of course. With my death, many things would come out. My trauma will be theirs. Good. If people would share each other’s trauma more, less of us would go out on our own limbs. 
9/4/01
      I thought the point of this was to get better. To try and work it all through and see if there’s any hope for redemption. But sickness, and I am sick, I admit it now, breeds sickness. It is hard to think of the thing you are not supposed to do without being tempted to do it. And yet you must think of it in order to learn to stop doing it.
      I could just let her go, but every time I try, something stops me at the last second. I have got as far as the front gate. Once I even opened it, but she just stood there staring at me, innocent to all that was in my mind. It seemed like it would be as cruel as it was kind to let her go. No, the problem is mine. 
9/5/01
      It all comes down to rape. I want to rape a woman badly, and I cannot tell you why. Some of us are just made in different ways than the rest of you, and yet we still have the instinct to preserve ourselves.
      I do not want you to think that I am talking about some billboard slut. Some blonde with lipstick and high heels. This would give me no satisfaction. If I use such women in my films, it is only because they are commercially viable. But not my type. Such women are always being raped by the eyes; I would like to rape someone who would never expect to be raped. Of course, I do not have the courage to carry it out on humans. And…still no penetration of the other…of Sophie.
      It is a question of loyalty. A dog is loyal once it has been made so, and it is very difficult- though not impossible- even to beat this out of it. That is the kind of woman I would want. The one who protests to the rape at first, but then ends up liking it. This persona exists in legend, for those of you who think that I am only referencing smut. I think that in this day and age, this would only be possible with a woman who was unattractive by modern standards. Such a woman would be the only one capable of responding to such a thing. Of course, I know the chances would be very low- but I am trying to get this out, to end my denial of the fact that I think these things.
      Previously, especially during the dark ages, you can almost understand an attractive woman wanting to be raped. Sex was taboo, and yet we must imagine that people’s carnal urges were not much less developed. The evidence would certainly seem to indicate so. But I digress. Once upon a time, the only virtuous way to get laid was to “allow” yourself to be “raped”. All sex, as in the animal world, was, virtually, thought of as rape. It was a way of protecting one’s reputation in those chivalric times. “He abused me”, such women would say to their girlfriends, smiling knowingly. “But I tell you, after a while, it wasn’t bad…”
      Now, of course, attractive women are raped by the eyes of all men. They know this, and this makes them unattractive to me. I love to pass some slut on the street, and make her notice that I seem to ignore her. I have grown the discipline of keeping them out of my vision, of looking towards, but never at them. This includes my wife.
      I tell you, for those of you who are interested, as I am surely not: that is the way to get them. Don’t look at them. All their lives they will complain about the eyes which pry under their tops, their skirts, their pants. But just let a man pass who doesn’t give them the time of day and they ask themselves: “Why? What’s wrong with me?”, and straight away they make it their mission to seduce him. These are generalizations, of course. But things become generalizations by first being generally true. Obviously, I am not talking about Lesbians. Or dog fuckers, for that matter.  
9/6/01
      I have done it. Not really…only in a dream. But this is different from closing my eyes and touching myself in a number of ways.
      …First and most of all, because of total suspension of disbelief. Some level of this is necessary to reach climax during masturbation, and of course during sub par intercourse, but there is- sadly, must be- some level of awareness that disbelief has been suspended. Not so in dreams. They only continue, typically, as long as we believe them to be real. It is amazing how much we are actually willing to believe, if you think about it. We can accept phantoms, all kinds of creatures, drastically altered buildings and sometimes entire cities. Sometimes even our own house has changed in some inexplicable way, or we walk into another room and find ourselves in another place; yet we do not question it. Dreams are proof that the only thing we question, on an instinctive level, is our own death. This seems to be the only possibility which begs the question: is this real? Of course, most of us are not ready to accept death, and that’s as it ought to be. It has probably helped us to stick around while so many other species have faded away. And yet, death is a very common thing, whereas many of the other things we dream about are highly improbable, if not impossible.
      (The fish would seem to contradict much of what I have just written, now that I think of it. Perhaps sex, reproduction is the key. Of course it somehow had to come back to that.)
      I am always myself in my dreams. I mean that I never have the oft reported experience of watching myself. I am always me, in my own head, seeing with my own eyes. I could only see the back of her head, unless I bent my neck to get a better view of her face.
      Strangely, she did not seem to react at all. There were no shrieks of pain, no thrashing around trying to get away. The look on her face was…almost worried. The same kind of look she gets when she is watching me eat. Except…how can I put this?…her eyes were not intent. It was as if she were lobotomized, they were so dead and empty of feeling. It would not be this way in real life, I know. I must have cum several times; at least three, judging by the evidence.   
9/7/01
      The best and the worst in us are borne in secrecy.
      I am turning into a poet. I did want to be a writer when I was younger. I guess I just never had much to say until recently. Now it is coming out, all of it. It is no longer secret. From myself, I mean. My motivations have gone unexamined for so long that it seems like I must have finally become aware of them through inertia. Then they just poured out onto these pages by their own will. I had no thought to write this all down. One day I just had to. Writing hard core scripts is not really writing. There’s not much dialogue, mostly instructions. I don’t write the scripts for my “normal” films.
      I’m not such a great writer yet, though. I was trying to talk about secrecy…about taboo, and how it makes us go astray, perhaps even further than we might have.  In secrecy there is no reference. No one there to say to you: you’re fucking up. That is why I have always loved confessions. However heinous the thing confessed, once published it is harder to get away with again.
      I read confessions. That is just about all I read, these days. It started with Rousseau in college… although that was barely a confession. That just made it all the more delicious in its own way though. Because of the morals of the time, the man had to write a book almost as long as the bible just to get it off his chest that he was a masochist. Still, I imagine de Sade must have read certain portions of the confessions over and over again. They must have given him the courage to expose himself. By exposing himself, he built a dam against the flood of his passions. He could only go so far. Had he not published, and continued having his little, um, “sessions”, he would most likely have gone down in history as a shocking item in the French or Czech newspapers. “Nobleman rapes and murders woman on country road!” Instead, we have his plays…which, whatever you think of the subject matter…are well written.
      I have read them in the French. Did I tell you I speak French? You who will read this when I publish my confession? I don’t want you all to think I am without education. Then you would chalk it all up to that one factor. 
9/8/01
      I have made a decision. I will kill myself in three days, on my birthday, and leave these notes out where my wife can find them. She has known that I am doing something secret and nasty for some time, I imagine.
      The thing is, to expose myself, to talk about all the things that I have done, would almost certainly mean imprisonment. It is too late to seek help. There are no real specialists who understand my problem. The science and the data are all behind the times. People chose to ignore Kinsey’s warnings, not to deal with the darker side of sexuality, and now we are paying the price. If I had not been born in such a puritanical country…but who knows. Enough ifs. I do not have long to live, and I intend to carry out every sick plan I have hatched in the meantime. Starting tonight.   
9/9/01
      Why am I doing this? To stop myself? To give myself courage? How much courage does it take to fuck a dog?
      I chickened out again. After last night’s entry, I drank myself into a stupor and cried intermittently all night. My wife came up to me and asked me what was wrong, and I ran away from her into the basement; forgetting Sophie was there…where I had left her. She did not follow. Amazing how I have convinced myself on some level that she does not exist, or at least does not matter. My wife, I mean. Not Sophie, obviously…she is ever present. Her existence blots out all others.
      Writing it, I felt so sure of it. But if words only deceive me, of what use are they one way or the other? But then I went down there, I looked in her eyes. She saves herself, somehow. Though in all things she is an abiding and loyal little thing, she knows somehow. She fears me only when I am ready to cross this one line. She can sense it –at least on some very basic level- her hair stands up on end, and she freezes on the spot. The thing is, she becomes afraid. Perhaps if she would resist…or better, somehow seem to want it. 
9/10/01
      Each day brings me closer, yet further away from a decision. I am no longer a whole person. I do not so much live as vacillate. I go to work in the day, and everything passes by me. Thankfully we are wrapped for a month or two while my starlet finishes up another project which she is under a more pressing contract for. Whether I shall be here or not all comes down to Sophie. I will try once more tonight. 
9/11/01
      This is it. Odd, but since early in the morning, the phone keeps ringing. I have dispatched Sophie’s violated body. She went quietly, drifting off in a pleasant opium cloud. Damn, there it is again. It’s my wife; she keeps calling over and over again. Well, let her. I am going to take the shot now. 

J. de Salvo is the editor of the Bicycle Review. http://www.thebicyclereview.net/current-issue.html His fiction, poetry, and articles have been published in numerous online and print publications, including Art/Life, New Angeles Monthly, and the Poetry Super Highway.


 

Episode 21 Picture Time

Mr. Fedlister, combs my hair and parts it down the middle. He pulls each side of my locks behind my ears.
“You need a haircut,” Mr. Fedlister spits on the comb and strokes my hair strands again with the comb.
I’m ready for my close up. I stand on the stage. My hands rest on a textbook. The book sits on a classroom desk. A nature scene and earth globe behind me complete the picture scene.
“Smile. Say cheese,” the photographer looks through the lens. I hear a click.
Lights flash. I smile and hold the pose.
“One more time please” the photographer presses the button. The lights flash again. I blink. See dots. The dots blink and don’t stop. Off and on someone plays with a light switch in my brain. My head starts to hurt and my brain can’t keep up with these lights. I try to chase them away and close my eyes. The lights come back. Watching them swim I see neon-colored tetra fish. My stomach feels pain. I receive a message from the burrito I brought from home and ate today at lunch.
“Out. Let me out. I can’t stand it in here! I can’t breathe, Beatie,”
“Mr. Fedlister, I think I need to get to a bathroom fast.” My hand rubs my belly.
“First, Comb your hair again. Your hair is so messy, Beatie doesn’t your dad ever take you to get your hair cut?” He hands me a small black comb. I run the comb quick against my ears.
“I’ma comin’ out, Beatie, ya better let me. I ain’t stayin’here no more,”
“I gotta go,” I hand the comb back to the teacher and run out of the room. There is not much time-Burrito wants out. Once at the bathroom. Latch a door behind me. Hug the latrine. Stick my finger down my throat. Hang my head inside the bowl. I gag.
“Please Beatie, get me out fast!”
Try again. Put my finger inside. Tickle my throat.
“I’ma comin’ Here I come!”
something comes up my stomach. I release broken Burrito into the potty.
“You saved my life.” he moans. I stare at broken Burrito and flush the toilet.

MORNING TIME
Dressed and ready to walk to school. An unwrapped burrito sits on the counter of the kitchen. I throw it in my brown lunch bag along with an apple.

LUNCH TIME
I eat my burrito and take two bites from my apple.

AFTER LUNCH
Neon fish swim in my head again. My brain gets a message from Burrito.
“You gotta let me out fast. I can’t take it no more.”
I let Burrito free into the latrine.
“Thank you Beatie, I love you”

LATER
“Beatie, your dad’s on his way from work to pick you up,” I lie on a cot, covered with a brown blanket inside the nurse’s station. Mrs. Reid pats my head.
Father arrives, his eyes soft.
“Mrs. Reid, I think I’m gonna throw up again.”
“You betcha, Beatie, I wanna be free your brother Jeffrey isa’ comin too,”
Mrs. Reid grabs a plastic dish off the table near the cot. My body shoots up and I hurl Burrito onto a dish.
“Good girl, get it out.” She pats my back. I hold the plate close and concentrate.
“This is the third time in the last two weeks your daughter has thrown up at
school,” Mrs. Reid says.
“She also looks like she’s losing weight. She’s getting too thin. Maybe you should have her looked by her doctor. Does Beatie have a pediatrician?” Father pauses for a moment, his feet uncrossed.
“I’ll take her to dat doctor soon.”
Father stares at the wall. Father’s legs cross.

THE GYMNAST
A few days after school I see Mr. Fedlister. He walks toward the teacher’s
lounge.
“Mr. Fedlister, watch me. Watch me.”
I run through the grass, both my arms raised at the elbows. My Hands flop straight ahead. I run, dive and roll. I am a gold medal gymnast, a swan.
“Good job,” Mr. Fedlister glances in my direction.
I stand proud. My arms reach for the sky. This is the moment. I wait for my medal. My arms held high. The star spangle banner plays God bless America. Father and the rest of America watches me from inside the Olympic stadium. Father stands from his seat first.
“Look at dat” his gorilla hands clap with a strong muffle sound for me.
The world follows Father. People rise from their chairs. The world gives me a standing ovation. It’s the proudest moment in the American history of women’s gymnastics. The camera on Father. He wipes tears with a clean handkerchief. The camera on me. I smile valiant. The medal placed upon my neck with a bouquet of purple lilies handed to me by “Bella” the famous gymnastic coach.
Beatie brings home the Gold. Nadia, the silver medalist gives me a hard look. I smile at her. I don’t care, too bad for her. I won.
Mr. Fedlister walks away.

I WALK HOME ALONE
My mind thinks about food. I am hungry. I hope Father left the back sliding door unlocked and I can steal some cheese and bread out of the refrigerator.
Father told me: “Do not eat dat food when I’m not home. “You can eat an apple if you’re hungry.”
I open the wooden gate to the backyard of the bright yellow house. I make sure I put my foot on each of the round concrete stepping stones. (Someone told me that if you step on a crack you break your mother’s back.) I skip on each stone leading towards the sliding glass door to the dining room. My stomach growls. The sliding door is locked. I peer into the window and see the time on the clock near the thin bar table. The time reads 3:15. I hit the glass with my fist. I cup my hands and make circles around my eyes and press my face against the window. I see a bag of red apples on top of the refrigerator. I turn and pretend to eat a vanilla ice cream cone dipped in chocolate.
I hear a noise, a slight cry. I walk toward the sound. Lift my leg to take a step.
“Aaahhh!”
See greasy, gray fur. Red eyes open, a bright red mouth. A long thin tongue. A belly in the dirt. I lose my balance. The face of death. My behind foot grazes the spine. My lead foot smashes the ribs. Hear the crack then a high-pitched baby squeal.
My heart rushes and I run. My mind follows. I am scared and sick to my
stomach, but think your here with me and I know I’m not alone. We will make
it, won’t we? We just gotta wait till Father gets home, right? Wish we could leave but where would we go? Next door? Lorena’s house? No… Father will have a fit if we leave. We better stay here.
Now can you see the cat’s ear? A pink bit of flesh poking out of the ground. It’s sick isn’t it? All these dead cats in our lives, but your here with me and you won’t let me down. Thank God. Were gonna make it. We sit on the steps and wait. Thank God your here with me. I don’t know what I would do without you. A few hours pass. The cat is silent now. Let’s stay far away from it.

THE DEAD ARRIVAL
Father arrives! He opens the sliding glass door quick.
“Sorry I’m late, I had to present an offer for a house” he says.
“Daa-Dad, there’s a dead cat out here. I had to sit here alone while it died. It was horrible.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah, Dad… dead” Father walks out to the backyard.
“Where’s dat kitty?”
“Over here Dad” Father follows us to the dirt. Father squats and examines the cat. Father’s knuckles bend with one knuckle stuck on his chin.
Father grabs a garden hoe near the peach tree. He taps the dead animal with the small shovel, a serious look to his face.

“Dat poison I put out must have worked.”

before i died i felt the wind rushing my face by Rad Wolf

Dog by Alastair Cook

Ankitaslut by Rich Hillen Jr.

The name she goes by is ankitaslut. She’s Indian. From India not American Indian. I met her on an adult networking site. We started off leaving each other photo comments. She made it clear that she wants to be called names and treated like a slut. It’s amazing what you can be on the Internet. I’m not the type to call names and say abusive things but she came along at the right time and the words seem to flow when I message her. If she only knew what a nice guy I am in real life.

Our messages and photo comments eventually evolved into instant messaging on Yahoo. She likes to send me photo after photo and wants me to tell her how much of a slut and whore she looks like and what I will do to her. I do this with surprisingly great pleasure. I never did this before to this extent. I’ve done some role playing in bed with girlfriends before but never went over the edge with the name calling and abusive language that I do with Ankitaslut. It is really odd to look at these pictures of this innocent looking beautiful girl and only be able to tell her how slutty she looks.

Some days we do this for hours and other times just for a few minutes. She is always the first to get off line in the middle of a sentence she either says “OMG. I gotta go.” Or she just goes off line mysteriously and leaves me hanging. I’m supposed to be the dominant one, right?

I know nothing about this girl except what she looks like and her age. Well, the age she tells me. We never discuss anything. We just get right to business. I am so curious about her but I never ask her anything. I don’t even know where she lives. I kind of like the mystery of it all but there’s a part of me that wants to get to know her. Learn what’s she’s into. Where does she work? Does she go to school? Does she have a boyfriend or a girlfriend?

I finally broke down and asked her if she wanted to get to know me and vice versa and she said no. She just wants to fantasize on the internet. I immediately went back into dominate mode half hoping I didn’t blow what we had and half not caring. We haven’t talked as much since and it really doesn’t matter because it was all talk anyway. I would have rather gotten to know her. 

True Story by Earl Woodruff

I was working as a DJ at a shitty sawdust joint in Oklahoma. The band was done for the night and everyone was hooking up and leaving. A sexy Spanish girl with brown eyes and long curly black hair walks up to my DJ booth and wants to request a song.
I can’t hear what she is says, not because of the music but because I can’t stop staring at her breasts. Not huge breasts but I could see the B-cups playing peek-a-boo inside her open blouse as she is looking up at me with her request.
She catches my look. She puts her hand to her chest to cover up. That’s when I see her nails. Her fingernails were the prettiest thing I ever saw. Long nails maybe two inches long, multi-colored and painted with palm trees like her nails were on vacation. I asked her name and she replies: “My name is Lorena and I’ve been watching you all night. Could you drive me back to my trailer”
“Trailer?” I ask.
I should have said no but thinking I should feel guilty for stealing a peak at her breasts earlier I felt inclined to take her home. Well that and the thought that I may be able to bang the drunk broad. I take her to the trailer.
“We can party in the front room.” She says.
We pour some Jack on the rocks and sit on the couch. As we drink I see those nails again those wonderful sparkling two inch beauties wrapped around her glass. I imagine them wrapped around my dick.
to be continued

Maybe Die by J. de Salvo

Maybe die

My wife is asleep
The city is outside my window

And me?
I have nothing

Just this last piece
Of night

Every road out there
Leads to trouble right now

Better not
To go anywhere, better

To go to sleep
Right now

But there’s something
Inside me, crawling

Wants to shoot out the windows
Wants to make a mess

And clean it up later
Hope no one finds out, then

Stick my face into the night
And maybe die

J. de Salvo is the editor of the Bicycle Review. His fiction, poetry, and articles have been published in numerous online and print publications, including Art/Life, New Angeles Monthly, and the Poetry Super Highway.

Asian Midget by Rich Hillen Jr

I work at a counter top luncheonette style restaurant in the middle of a mall. It used to be part of Woolworth’s. It was a hamburger and hotdog grill. That was years ago. Now it’s a Bistro. The food is good. Pasta, pizza, fancy salads and sandwiches. I am a server. A waiter. A head server. Head waiter. That’s not the point. The point is that I work in the mall and that’s where I saw her.

I see many good looking women everyday I work. Young and old sexy women pass by the restaurant and I look and I watch whenever I can. I like women. All shapes and sizes and ethnicities.

One day I saw a hot Asian midget girl walk past with an average size friend. I was in shock. I was in awe. I was turned on for some reason.

I’ve been curious about being with a midget for while but mostly seeing them on the internet or on TV. Rarely seeing them in real life. I’ve always been attracted to Asian women and have dated a few and been with a few through the years. She was a delicious combination. I couldn’t get her out of my mind for days.

A few weeks later she appeared sitting in my section at the restaurant I work at. I had to server her and her friend. I was red in the face from excitement and nervousness. I acted polite and courteous and maybe a little extra friendly but I wanted to hit on her so bad. I wanted to try and talk to her but I was too shy. I did my job of servicing them and tried not to stare and enjoyed looking at her for the half an hour to forty minutes they stayed.

When she got up to leave I made it a point to watch her and check out her little body. Mmmmm. She was well proportioned for her height. She was wearing a short skirt and tights on her shapely little legs. I’m a leg man and love tights and pantyhose on a girl. Apparently I love them even more on an Asian midget. So my new dream girl vanished into the crowd at the mall and I haven’t seen her in over a month. I still think about her and wonder what I will do the next time I see her. Until then I’ have to settle back into checking out girls over the height of five feet. Oh well.

Hippodrome Mime-Last Nights of Paris-Ginnetta Correli

Naked by Rich Hillen

I’m naked in the middle of a department store and no one notices. It’s not a department store. It’s a Grocery store. It’s not a grocery store. It’s a sex club. A department store of sex. A grocery store of sex. Still no one notices me. The room is filled with cocks. Cocks in hands. Cocks in mouths. Cocks in pussies. Cocks on guys and cocks on girls. Cocks. Cocks. Mine blends in with the rest.

I dig a shallow grave in the corner to sit and die in as I watch couples, singles and transsexuals living their lonely morbid lives. I accept my fate.

There’s an old man rolling around on the floor begging for someone to piss on him as he touches himself.

There’s men whipping women and women whipping me. Tied up. Tied down. Begging. Crying. Laughing. Moaning.

Men on women. Men on men. Women on women. Trransexuals and transvestites doing everything in between.

I grab my cock and start my own memorial and pay tribute to my surroundings. I get turned on and laugh to myself when I see the fully clothed tourist girls clinging to their men frightened by the scene. They’ve never seen such debauchery in real life. I have. This is the highlight of my life. I think.

A woman walks up to me in a short tight dress and offers a hand. It’s not a woman but looks like a woman so I give myself to her. My cock is hers. She has her own but takes mine. I abandon everything until I cum. The party’s over for now.

At least I was a part of something, someone for a moment. I crawl back in my grave.

Rich Hillen Jr is an author, artist and performer. He is famous for The Serial Killer Coloring Book from the late 90’s. Hillen has since made a string of horrible full length and short films such as Serial Killers Gone Wild, Night of The Groping Dead and Welcome Home. He also founded Crawlspace Records mostly to promote his former band The World Famous Crawlspace Brothers; acoustic songs about serial killers. While he fights his sex, drugs & rock n roll addiction on a daily basis, Hillen is also working on a novel called: Yellow Socks chronicling his relationships with his paranoid schizophrenic mother and the various other mentally ill women throughout his life.

Crash Dive by Barry Titus

Crash Dive

Viral lightening burnt this shirt green
for a second a day.
Radar stations recorded
a six thousand feet per second descent.
The wounded in the damaged boat
a rope dragged under water
at night past Japanese enemy guns
to a beach.

Narcissus bleeds the darkest blue,
platinum carpet and overcast.
Divorce,
son in tears,
until you see a lawyer.
At dark
over a bay of water
lost control
in the haze.
“…. another student to court,
a bad influence on his ’son’.”

Assay the shade when it alters your arms.
He’d heard the words,
an urge as a phrase,
so the impulse must be pulled
by the CIA.
Silence yourself,
shrivel,
an all afternoon session,
five a week with Jeff Goldberg
who orders small, and no answers.
“I’m not qualified.
I don’t really want to go.”

Served papers
have locked your child’s breast
behind a lawsuit letter
two hundred a piece
and words you break.
Pots and pans weep chrome roads.
Gongs slash screams and bells.
Staircases circle.
The sky piles stone.
Insults cut the skin away
to eat the meat
stomach and bannister radium.

If guitar with the guy over the intercom
changed body or arms
they stopped to reeducate
until he disowned
and reported their version.
Go for, jam out,
any drama role
can cause restless and impulsive
and then the flank
ulcers kiss purple and rove down.

The scorn of God
if film star Peter Lawford
who listened to
and stared at the butler
was weak and false.
Then come the dark and unsure
with feelings.
The Navy robot
salvaged the broken fuselage.
Military law will deduce the causes
and transcribe the duress,
lessons
he had to not look aside during.

He saw with the wholeness
of the alone
when love hasn’t smashed it.
Focus on him
immobilized eye and ledge
like the spine of a tame cat,
even him who hated
the shallowly scooped angles.
His feet lifted gnawed latex
by the tongue and cloth laces
to pound up wires to loudspeakers.
Above the banquet tables and seat rows
unnoticed cathedrals shaded the ceiling.

Unspoken self
to be washed off
drained not even by phosphorous
until mute upon muteness.
The breathless add a wall
as the door to your cellar.
Stand, you can steal each skin cell
through stillness to listen.
Have no knowledge of what comes next
like paint on your pants
when you must not glance at a guest.

When the morning moisture is glazed off
the ripest green grapes
are the first seen,
hands full over the wagon side.

Reply Forward

Barry Titus is a 71 year old poet and writer born in New York City. His publications include: the novel, Masks and non fiction,The Dalai Lama Caper. Barry has spent the last seven years in Holland.

Who is John Galt?

Finally finished this. Thank You to the band: End of Science for a great tune and to the actors some of whom are pissed at me at the moment.

Fuck Your Words by Rich Hillen Jr

I want to fuck your words. Never mind your body, your face, your personality. Never mind you. It’s your words I want.

Press myself against your words and have my way. Take your words. Kiss, lick, caress, fondle, molest and taste your words. Fuck your words. Bend your words over the chair and give it to them. Hard, fast, wet and deep inside your words.

Obsessed since I first read them I dream, eat, sleep, love and lust your words. Day and night your words cut through my mind and my body like a sharp scalpel. Incision after incision I try to live my life but your words won’t let me. I love your words.

I want to fuck your words. Tie them up. Whip them. Rape your words.

I want to hold, cuddle and spoon your words. Sleep, eat and drink with your words. Live with your words.

It’s not you. It’s never been about you. It’s not what you do or how you act. It’s your words that excite me. Fascinate me.

Still what I want the most is to fuck your words.

I want to fuck your words.

Rich Hillen Jr is an author, artist and performer. He is famous for The Serial Killer Coloring Book from the late 90’s. Hillen has since made a string of horrible full length and short films such as Serial Killers Gone Wild, Night of The Groping Dead and Welcome Home. He also founded Crawlspace Records mostly to promote his former band The World Famous Crawlspace Brothers; acoustic songs about serial killers. While he fights his sex, drugs & rock n roll addiction on a daily basis, Hillen is also working on a novel called: Yellow Socks chronicling his relationships with his paranoid schizophrenic mother and the various other mentally ill women throughout his life.

Episode 17 Court Morning-Mourning

“You are so beautiful.” Mother says to me.  My hair has been curled with sponge curlers. I wear the pink and white flowered dress Mother bought me. I also wear black Mary Janes. The shoes surround my white Bobby socks with white lace around them. Mother strokes my hair with a brush and drinks coffee.
“Don’t be afraid. The judge will be real sweet to you. I just hope I don’t see that girlfriend of your father’s. What’s her name?”
“Oh, you mean Valoria? They’re just friends, Mom. That’s not his girlfriend. Dad’s just lonely, that’s all.”
Mother takes another sip of her coffee. She closes her eyes and presses her hands to her forehead. Mother’s fingers shake.  

I LOVE COURT
In the court room I see people who sit on benches. I sit near the back with Mother. Finally, I see him. Father sits toward the front. Father looks like a young boy. He smiles with his lawyer as if the lawyer is his father.
“The court calls case number #45987 Scareli versus Scareli,” the bailiff says. 
Mother and I walk towards the front of the courtroom. Father is already in front of the judge. The three of us together again.
“First what I like to do is to call the minors to my chamber. The judge removes his glasses and wipes them. “Lets all take a ten-minute break,”  
The bailiff leads me through a long hallway to a room.
“Have a seat,” the bailiff says to me. I sit in front of a large oak desk with framed pictures of the judge’s family. Certificates surround the walls. I breath. I am scared. The judge walks in and takes a seat at the desk.
“Want some candy?” He hands me a lemon ball.
“No thanks”
“The judge puts the lemon ball in his pocket. “Well, then. Do you want to live with your father or your mother?”

Inhale

I stare at pictures of a happy family on a big desk. A boy, a man and a young mother with long, soft blonde hair combed to one side. The mother smiles. Her teeth white. A pearl necklace hung soft on her neck.

Exhale

“My mom is crazy, she can’t take care of me. She just got out of a mental hospital a month ago and she doesn’t have a job either. So I have to live with my dad. There is no way I can live with her.”
Inhale
“Beatie, I always like to hear what the child has to say. I will keep this discussion with you today in mind when I make my decision. By the way, you say your father is not crazy, correct?”

Exhale

“No way. My dad is one of the smartest men in the world.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. If it wasn’t for him I don’t know what would happen to me. I mean, my mom is just plain crazy. She never does anything around the house and she always sleeps. She thinks my dad has girlfriends and everyone in the world is out to get her. My dad has one friend named Valoria who spends the night sometimes since Mom moved out. Dad says they’re just friends, but Mother thinks my dad wants to be with Valoria instead of Mother. Can you believe that? Maybe if she wouldn’t sleep so much my dad would want to be with Mother instead.”
Keep breathing
“Is that what you think?” The judge asks.
“What else could it be?”

Inhale

PATRICIDE OF THE RICARDOS
Our parents return to the courtroom. I wait on a chair outside of the room. It’s a blur and I’m confused. I’m a fish in a glass bowl waiting for someone to feed me fish flakes. A young boy stares at me through the glass.
“Hey Cosmo” the boy says to me. I pucker my lips since I can’t speak. Maybe the boy will feed me.
“Jeffrey it’s time to eat dinner.” I hear a woman’s voice say.
“Okay Mom I’ll be right there” The boy stares at me from above.
Please feed me I wiggle my fin. The air is getting thin.
“See ya Cosmo” The boy walks away.
Time passes. Mother walks out of the courtroom first with her lawyer. Mother dressed in a glitter pant suit. The lawyer shakes Mother’s hand. Father walks past Mother and the lawyer. Father looks away as if passing a stranger on a busy street. He walks in front of me. Is it possible Father didn’t see me? Mother picks imaginary sparkle lint off her shoulder as Father’s feet leave us. Mother’s lawyer walks away. 
“Mom, what happened?”
“Your father divorced me and gets to keep the house, Ricky is dead.”
“What about me?” 
“You get to live with me on the weekends.”
“Is that good?” I ask.
“No.”

AFTER THE PATRICIDE
Mother smokes a Salem in her housecoat. She rubs the ass of a cigarette in the glass black ashtray on the night stand near her bed. She covers herself with a dirt cream-colored blanket. Mother falls asleep. Mother wakes to go to the bathroom and eat puffed rice cereal out of a box. Mother does not leave her apartment for three months.  

DEMON EXTRACTION
(Father visits Mother at the Flat)
“Frata, you’re gonna end up back in dat hospital if you don’t get out of bed. It’s been three months now and dis house is a mess.” Father and me sit by mother’s side.  
“How are you going to get a job and pay your rent if you can’t get out of your bed? The money you took out of our bank account isn’t gonna last forever,” Father says.
“What money?” Mother asks.
“What do you mean what money? The money you took out of our bank account. What did you do with it?” 
“I gave it to my brother,” she says. 
“You gave it to your brother? You crazy woman! You crazy! You Crazy…”
Father stands above Mother. She lies under heavy blankets. Father swings a pen near Mothers forehead.
“Follow the pen!” Father says.  Mother follows the pen with her eyes. Father swings the pen pendulum. Slow then fast, he moves the pen from one side to the other side. Mother’s eyes follow the pen. I watch Mother. Her eyes close. Father makes the pen go faster. Father’s brow furrows. Father thumps Mother on the head hard
with the pen. Mother growls and turns a dull shade of pale green.
“Damn Crazy Woman! I command a crazy woman to become sane!” The bed shakes. 

‘Darling are you wet?’

she hides her face in my chest

unwilling to let go

for in our embrace

I have grown nearly hard

she presses against me

Minutes ago, as I sat on the bench

waiting for her arrival

I thought of the night

yet to be had

and promised myself

that I wouldn’t shag

As she approached

her hips they did sway

God, help me

back and forth, left and right

as smooth as the skin she wore

and I grew, pulling my jeans tight

Closer she moved with each step

her chest jumping and bouncing, dancing

like it would, like it will

when I finally decide

to rip off her clothes

and put myself inside

To gain the final submission

she must wait, so must I

I tug her hair

she lifts her face up to mine

I turn, taking her hand

Intent on finding somewhere to dine

days, weeks, months later

finally we meet ready for each other

her body is soft, wet

and ready for me, my member

fills her as we both sigh

it was worth all the wait -Diego

Mixed Media by Rajinder Aggarwal

Thirteen-Squaretumbleweed

Episode 16 Mother’s Flat

It is a one story flat. A box of a flat. One bedroom. One bath. A kitchen and a gas stove. The Dodge is parked in front of Mother’s apartment door like an old blue Chevy Nova parks in front of seedy trucker motel.
“Beatie open it up,” Mother says. 
The box sits untouched on my lap. I try not to cry. 
“Mom, you just got out of the hospital. How are you gonna take care of yourself let alone take care of me? Just let me go back to Daddy. Let Daddy take care of me.
You’re sick!” I say.
“Just open the box, Beatie.”
“No, it’s not gonna change anything.”
“Open the box!” 
I open the box. The box is cardboard. Six pairs of jeans stacked, the same color, same style, and a pink flower dress with a petty coat. A blue and white bag of my favorite candy, the kind with coconut and almonds, sits at the top. 
“Just eat some candy,” Mother says. “I bought you some of those saddle back Ditto brand jeans you always wanted.” 
“I don’t want them.” 
“Then just eat the candy.” 
I open the bag and stick a bite size candy bar in my mouth. The taste of tears and chocolate makes my throat dry and my tongue salty.
Mother watches me. She takes a hard inhale of her Salem.
“I bought you some Barbie, dolls too.” 
Mother coughs a fur ball and rubs her eyes. Her fingers twitch.  

DOORBELL RINGS
I run to the door. Father. I know it’s cFather.
“Move outta my way, Larry.”
“Look Beatie, your dad isn’t gonna come and take you home.” Larry stands at the front of the door. His butt rubbing the doorknob.
“Larry, get outta my way.”
Larry shakes his head.”You’re a dumb bunny, Beatie.”
“Please just open the door,” I say.
“Open the door,” Mother says. Larry opens the door. I see Father. He sits in the Datsun. I run to the car. The car moves in reverse. Father does not see me.
“Dad… Daddy!” Father’s body faces forward, his head faces the road. Father’s glasses sit straight on his face. Maybe he doesn’t hear me.
“Dad!”
Father’s head does not move. The car moves forward and away from me onto the road. I watch the back of Father’s black hair become a small dot. He is gone. I turn and walk towards the door. My eyes keep to the ground and notice a brown wrinkled grocery bag on the doorstep. I pick up the bag and look inside. A note sits on top of some of my clothes from home and some old sour ball candies. I read the note.  

Dear Beatie:
Don’t worry. Everything gonna be okay
don’t cry. Your Dad.  
 
BACK INSIDE THE FLAT
Larry smiles and takes a final sip out of his beer can.
“Frata, I gotta go. I’ll give you a call in a few days when I get to Amarillo. By the way, Frata can you give me some money?”   
Mother takes a drag off her Salem and smashes the butt in a black ashtray.
“Here’s some.” Mother hands Larry a large bundle of cash.
“Thanks. Have a good life, my little sister, I’ll pray for you.” Larry hugs Mother. 
I walk to the bathroom and sit on the toilet. I cry. Did I forget to mention I hate my life?  

A FEW DAYS LATER
“Mom, do you want me to go to the store?”
“Yeah get whatever you want honey. Take twenty dollars.” Mother points to her wallet on the night stand near her bed. Mother’s body under dirt sheets.
“Thanks mom”
I walk to the grocery store. It’s dark. I notice a chalk-colored sidewalk ahead of me. Cars drive by and honk. I hate to walk in the dark. I run.  Once, at the grocery store, I put two six packs of root beer soda and a six-pack of fruit punch soda in the grocery cart. Three bags of different kinds of chips go in the shopping cart. grab fifteen chocolate candy bars from the check-out lane and set them on the conveyer belt along with the other snacks.  
“Boy, that’s some party you’re going to have. Is that all for you?” The white haired checkout lady asks.
“No, I just do most of the shopping for my family,” I say.
“Wow.”
She puts the groceries in the bag. I walk out of the supermarket and stop at the hot dog stand on the way to Mother’s apartment.
“Six chili dogs,” I tell the gray haired hot dog lady.
“Are you gonna eat all them hot dogs?”
“No, I have a family to feed.”
“Oh,” the hot dog lady says.  

EAT THE CHILI DOGS
I arrive home. Mother is asleep.
“Hey Mom, I got us some dinner.”
“Oh how nice,” she says.
I turn on the kitchen light. Mother wears her usual housecoat. We sit on the small couch together. We drink soda and eat chili dogs. Mother chews her food
slow.
“Mom, can I watch TV?”
“Sure honey. Do whatever you want.”
I turn on the TV. The picture on the television is dark.
“When I get some more money from your father I’m gonna get us a new TV, this TV needs a new picture tube.”
Mother stuffs hot dog in her mouth. Some of the chili misses her lips and lands on her cheek. More chili falls on Mother’s lap.
“Maybe if we turn it on its side it will work better.” I turn the TV on its side.
“Yeah, that’s a little better. Here, let’s try turning it upside down. Maybe it’ll be even better that way.” I turn it again and Mother and me move our heads to the side.
“That’s better,” Mother says.
“Let’s see what’s on.” I grab the TV Guide off the coffee table and flip through it.
“Hey Mom, guess what’s supposed to be on tonight?”
“Hmm?” Mother’s mouth full of chili dog.
“The Exorcist. Can I watch it?”
“Sure, whatever you want.”
“Yay!”

WATCH THE EXORCIST
Mother goes to her room. She turns out the bedroom light. I watch the TV upside down. A girl lies on a bed. A priest overlooks the girl and waves a cross to her forehead. The girl’s eyes are stretched open. The picture on the TV is snow green. The sound on the television is good. Kind of loud. I hear the girl in the bed growl at the priest. A woman cries. The woman sits near the girl’s bed.  I hear a noise from the window behind me. It’s the sound of cats. The cats meow and fight outside Mother’s apartment. A girl growls at a priest on the TV and cats hiss outside Mother’s window. I listen to both sounds. Mother sleeps. Mother wakes. I watch Mother.  She glides from her room and crosses the living room to the front door.
“Hey Mom this movie’s weird.”
Mother moon walks to the door. Mother opens the front door.
“Mom what are you doing?”
“Here kitty kitty… Here kitty,” Mother whispers. 
Her housecoat moves to the breeze in the darkness of night. Mother’s arms raise and stretch to the moon. Mother rushes outside, her arms raised high. She welcomes a Noah’s ark of alley cats.

WHAT IS MOTHER DOING?
Mother runs to the alley behind the apartment. I follow her barefoot wearing a white tee-shirt with a print of a yellow smiley face. I stay far enough behind Mother that she doesn’t see me but close enough to see what Mother does. Mother dances near a metal trash can in the alley. A glow-eyed mom cat meows behind the garbage can. The mother nurses her kitten. Mother pauses for a moment. She raises her arm. Mother’s fingers spread into a web. She snatches and tears the dirty white infant quick from the mom.  An alley baby in Mother’s grip. The kitten’s mother has no choice. She flees and leaves the child. Mother holds the baby by its neck. I hurry back around the other side to the living room. I jump onto the couch near the TV. The sound of an exorcism comes from the television. I watch Mother from the window. Mother swings her hips. A greasy kitten’s body dangles from mother’s fingers. The eyes red-orange glass marbles. Mother enters the door. A stiff-headed young cat wiggles its legs under the palm of Mother’s hand.
“Mom, where did you get the kitty?”
“Behind the Dodge, next to the president,”  
Mother kisses and swings the cat.
“The president?”
“Yeah Beatie. Didn’t you know that John F. Kennedy is in the garbage can outside?”
“Mom, the President isn’t in the garbage can.”
“Well, then God the Father is.”
Mother shuts the door to her room. I stare at the TV. A girl screams at a priest. A bed shakes. The baby cries in Mother’s room. I fall asleep.

MORNING TIME
“Mom I don’t feel so good today. I don’t think I’m gonna go to school. My stomach hurts.”
I haven’t been to school for two weeks. Mother says when the spirit moves me to return to school and moves her to drive the Dodge she will drive me to school.  Mother sits at the dining room table. She drinks black coffee and smokes. 
“Want to watch TV?” Mother asks. She sticks her finger in her nose.
“I thought maybe we could go to the store and get me a surprise,” I say.
“A surprise?”
“Yeah, like some toys,” I say. 
“A surprise?” Mother asks.
Mother puts her cigarette out in the ashtray. She gets up and walks to the bathroom. She shuts the door.
“Go get a surprise for yourself,” She says through the door.
I hear Mother vomit in the toilet.
“Mom, are you okay?”
The toilet flushes.
“Just go get a surprise and bring me back a chili dog,” she says.
I leave Mother. I buy a chili dog and a Barbie doll. I return home to Mother. 

Nurse Lucy record now available on Amazon and Itunes

Outtake from yesterday. Who is John Galt?

We finally started filming yesterday for the Who is John Galt video. Thought this week the weather would be cooler at Lake Mead.
It was still 95 degrees. Two of my lead actresses backed out at the last minute and didn’t show up. Down to one crazy nurse, three heat stroked drunks and a few young difficult actors to work with. Ha! Kidding.

Mother Nature’s Curse by Diego

I kiss her cheek
and miss her lips
for not to intimate

She saw the miss
and wanted more. Ah God!
life’s a whore

But we just said
we’ll not to bed
she, them, all I cannot comprehend

You want it on the mouth?
Without a second thought
we bring what we have brought

All tongue and lips
I touch her hips
and surely it’s divine

My hand it’s free
And like the blind to see
I take what’s given to me

From her hip my fingers trace
her side, her breast, her neck, her face
I drink up all the draught that is my race

Once again I’m drunk and without hate
woman! you do inebriate!
I, me you do debilitate

On her knee, and up her thigh
my fingers they do fly
but at the top I stop nigh

Her skirt is tightly drawn
on legs spread open like the dawn
but I dare not touch the mons

For there’s no guarantee
that if I did I would be free
entangled still might we be

One more trip
one more rip
one more taste of her flavors I will sip

And as my hand comes close
to that which I desire most
I dig into my fleshy host

I would not dare impede
like some rampaging steed
because I know that she does bleed

Mother Nature here’s a curse
You base lecherous sot or worse
and all those impediments in your purse

As I dream of woman’s powers
I walk through fields of dewy flowers
I sit and lick and drink the juice for hours.

Diego’s Bio: An actor and writer of plays, poetry and prose. His focus on the human condition and just how peculiar it can be.
photo by Mick Opportunity

His Mother Mary

Three years later. Sunday morning. The father finally speaks to Mary. A fragile man.
Inside a humid sacristy the priest advises the ministers and sacristan.“Mary fill the pitcher. All the way. Use the Boones Farm. It’s going to be a full house today.”
In the name of God. At the alter. Mary helps a frail priest pass eucharist.
“The blood of Christ” She hands the young solder a half full goblet.
“Ah-man” The young man sips the sacrifice.
She stares. Sees blood in the man’s eyes. Mary wonders if the soldier can still smile with a lover. She wipes the glass clean with a lipstick soiled handkerchief.
Most evenings. After dinner. Mary escapes by van to the desert. Alone she listens to classics. The young woman imagining fears. Pain. Mary recalls the other day. At work a handsome rock star sneered at her uniform.
“God what a sleazy looking costume. Come here baby take the dollar”
The next day. In a hot kitchen. The father glares at Mary. She cooks dinner for her dad and a wounded serviceman. Makes chicken garbanzo soup.
“Mary have you ever actually been to confession?” The marine asks.
“No. Fuck. Never got around to it.” She looks inside the dishwasher for a knife.
Most every word out of Mary’s mouth these days is “Fuck.” Her father sticks to a chair. Can’t stand the girl. The old man’s options limited. The soldier hungry as hell. What a slut The father’s daughter still has no degree. She carves and chops dead chicken fat off the butt.
“Shit. Is that the mailman?” Mary wipes her hands with a dirty dish towel.
She runs to the box. The winter schedule arrives. Mary opens the envelope. Looks at it. “Shit!”
The University of Guitar Hero raised tuition fees again. Mary stuffs the college catalog in the trash. -ginnetta correli

A JACK TALE

In wet dreams. Jack penetrates the blind man’s wife. Left with cream splatter on hand. The toilet sea must swallow confessions of love… daily. Ashamed to admit dirty whispers of smelly knickers. The wife has no choice. The mother and infant pirate must drown. The other day the vet told the pretty “bitch” young Jack would grow up to be lazy and lie. Maybe even ingest “Mary” and that girl what’s her name? “Jane”
Life scares the man’s wife. Pinching her once raw now soft nipples. Jack wants only to suck easy treats from plastic bottles instead. To kill is not her blood. A stranger’s blood. The bastard’s blood. Deadline. As canine alpha two bleeds the woman’s heart is ripped. The male pup cries with hunger. Pushed and bitten by “King” baby Jack cast to sea.
-ginnetta correli