The Wrath of Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is here again, and like most unattached women in the United States, I’m filled with a vague sense of panic, fear and dread. What was meant to be a holiday to express your love for the one you care about has now become (a) a contest between coworkers for who can get the best flower arrangement delivered to their office, (b) a month-long guilt session from one half of an unsatisfied couple to the other, using the holiday as an excuse to vent their anger for being in a loveless relationship, (c) one more occasion for single men to skirt the constant badgering for a committment (they already have birthdays and Christmas to contend with, this holiday makes winter pure Hell), or (d) a day-long seminar on depression where women sit at home alone, over-eating, watching must-see-TV, wondering if they will ever find someone to love and honor and cherish them and save them from the horrible fate of becoming the dreaded “old maid.”

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a heart-felt holiday all about love, but has instead become a commercial holiday about either desperately trying to not feel alone or desperately trying to spare yourself from getting a guilt trip from the one you’re supposed to love.

Half of the confusion, I think, is from how men and women interact on a romantic/sexual level. The other half rests on how people define love.

The Battle of the Sexes
What do women think of when they think of love? Commitment, finding a soulmate, having someone romantically sweep them off their feet. What do men think of when they think of love? Being tied down, finally giving in, getting the old ball-and-chain, or else something to fake to get sex. Speaking of sex, women generically think of sex as the greatest connection between two people, something sacred, while men jokingly refer to the act with analogies to power tools or sporting games (see the cover, which is from the art series, “What Sex With Women is Called”).

Imagine a woman, looking for commitment, having what was most sacred to her taken away because a man thought he earned it by buying her dinner.

Granted, these are brash generalizations, but the fact that these examples exist gives an inkling to the differences between men and women, and the potential conflict between the two when it comes to relationships. How is love supposed to flourish when the two halves come in with such distinct ideas and plans?

The Definition of Love: Altruism Versus Respect
Love, by a dictionary’s definition, is rooted in three different ways: from kinship or personal ties, from sexual attraction or from admiration or common interests.

Think about that for a minute. From the first way, you’d love someone because they’re your family. Not because you like them, but because you’ve grown up with them. From the second way comes the more spur-of-the-moment feelings, none of which usually last. From the third way, you love someone because they share interests with you and you admire them.

Admire comes the closest to defining respect, and as a result, it comes closest to defining permanent and earned love. Unlike a religious-based altruistic love which tells you to love people even if they are not worth it - especially if they are not worth it, a love based out of respect and admiration, as well as common interests, is a strong, earned (therefore not easily lost) love. The altruistic “give everyone in your class a valentine because everyone deserves to be loved” doesn’t even fool grade-school children - usually someone is left valentine-less. The question children haven’t at that point figured out how to ask is “Why do they deserve it? They haven’t earned it.”

People claim to fall in and out of love sometimes with amazing turnaround, it seems, and I think the reason for that is that they were never actaully in love in the first place. Unless someone you once admired and respected revealed that their life and your perception of it was all a lie, or else drastically changed their life so as not to be respectable any longer, the admiration and respect probably wouldn’t die. Real love is a strong, earned (therefore not easily lost) love.

In my lifetime I have met only a handful of people that deserved respect. Imagine how difficult it must be to find someone to respect so highly, to have sommon interests with, and to be attracted to - that feels the same way about you.

Imagine a woman, looking for a soulmate, someone she could respect and admire, looking for a man who wants the same things in a relationship, finding men that are looking for a mate that will do their laundry for them, that will be subservient to them.

Images of Romance in an Unromantic World
Even to those in a happy relationship, Valentine’s Day has lost some of its appeal. If you’re in a happy relationship, you don’t need an occasion to celebrate it. And flowers and candy are hardly good symbols for true admiration and respect - real love. Who needs us as consumers to spend the money on these items anyway, other than businessmen?

So what place does Valentine’s Day have in our world? It helps conjure up the language of poetry, the beauty of flowers, the romantic notions of a world long gone... and sometimes you get a heart-shaped box of candy to boot. But in our world, considering the different ways men and women are raised to view themselves and their mates, there are a lot of other issues that have to be taken care of before we can make a valentine card out of a doily and pink and red construction paper hearts and have it actually mean something.

LONDON (Reuter) - AIDS activists said they would present dramatic evidence next week showing that HIV patients who got treatment with several newly approved drugs were much less likely to become seriously ill or die.
The AIDS Treatment Project and the European AIDS Treatment Group said they had compiled research showing up to a 50 percent reduction in hospitalizations and deaths among patients who got the drugs.
“When doctors and patients are able to use all the available drugs, you start to see some very dramatic results,” said Raffi Babakhanian of the London-based AIDS Treatment Project, which has lobbied to make such drugs more widely available in Europe.
“These are people who would have been hospitalized or would have been dead and they’re not.”
The drugs include protease inhibitors, which have shown strong results when combined with other drugs in clinical trials. Babakhanian said they also included new drugs that targeted herpes infections such as cytomegalovirus, which can blind AIDS patients.
The two groups surveyed clinics in the United States and Europe and contacted European governments that keep abreast of AIDS treatment statistics.
“This is very rough data,” Babakhanian admitted, saying it had not been submitted for the standard peer-review process that backs most scientific and medical studies.
“But we thought we should get this information out quickly. Everybody is seeing something dramatic. Everywhere we are looking is the same story.”
U.S., Dutch and French doctors who have been studying and treating AIDS patients would be presenting and discussing the data, Babakhanian said.
The drugs are widely available in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany but many have not been approved in countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal.

BEIJING (Reuter) - China has begun a national drive to test all blood products since the discovery of HIV contamination in samples of a product made in a southern province earlier this year, a health official said.
“We have requested all local health authorities to inspect blood products and report the results to us,” said the official at the Ministry of Public Health.
The official, who declined to be named, said the testing followed the discovery in April of some samples of an HIV-contaminated product manufactured and sold in the southern province of Guangdong.
The product was Wolongsong-brand blood albumin, a protein.
HIV - Human Immunodeficiency Virus - is the virus that can lead to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
“Following the incident we instituted a national inspection of blood products,” the official told Reuters.
Asked how the tainted product had been uncovered, she said: “I can’t tell you that. This is a very sensitive question.”
Results of the tests from several provinces had been turned over to central authorities, she said without giving any further details.
An official at the Foreign Ministry said public health authorities in Guangdong had called for government agencies around the country to stop the sale and use of the Wolongsong albumin.
Guangdong health officials, contacted by telephone, declined to give any information on the manufacturer or say how much of the product had been on the market when the action was taken.
They also declined to say how the item became contaminated, what conditions it was used to treat or how serious the risk was to people who used the product.
Officials in Beijing said that an order had been sent to have the Wolongsong product destroyed.
Official figures show China has 4,305 reported HIV cases and the total is expected to reach 5,000 by the end of this year.
Chinese officials quote health experts as saying they believe the actual number is anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000, as many cases go unreported.
A total of 131 people have been infected with AIDS in China, according to the official media.
China has been grappling with growing drug use and prostitution and experts warn these two problems could increase the number of AIDS cases across the country.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuter) - As many as 31,000 people die each year in Indonesia from the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the Jakarta Post quoted a research report as saying.
The research figure was nearly 500 times that estimated by the government,
The report by the University of Indonesia’s Centre for Health Research put the country’s annual AIDS death toll at between 12,000 and 31,000 people. It said the figures differed widely from government estimates because the latter comprise only reported cases.
The real figures are far higher because Indonesia does not have an effective monitoring system, the newspaper quoted Meiwita Iskandar, the director of the center, as saying.
At the end of September, the government said 449 people had the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that leads to AIDS or had AIDS itself. Of these, 66 had died, it said.
Government officials could not immediately be reached on Tuesday for comment on the research report.
The World Health Organisation has said as many as 50,000 people in Indonesia may have HIV, but that the virus is only detected when it develops into AIDS.
The term AIDS applies to the most advanced stages of HIV infection. HIV kills or impairs cells of the immune system, destroying the body’s ability to fight infections and certain cancers.

By Joanne Kenen

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop urged doctors to view obesity as a dangerous and chronic disease that can be treated with diet, exercise, drugs and even the Internet.
Known for waging war on smoking and tackling a then-controversial public education campaign on AIDS in the 1980s, Koop has turned his attention to the ballooning fat problem through his organisation, Shape Up America, which developed new medical guidelines for doctors and is introducing a “cyberclinic” for obese people on the Internet.
In a news conference in Washington outlining guidelines for treating overweight patients, Koop said that doctors have to pay more attention and become more involved in treating obesity, a health hazard that he called “the second leading cause of preventable death” in the United States.
“Physicians can no longer sit on the sidelines as America’s obesity epidemic reaches crisis levels,” Koop said, urging doctors to stop thinking of weight as a cosmetic concern and start realising that “physician intervention can actually save lives.”
He noted that when he became surgeon general in the 1980s, one out of four Americans was overweight. Now one in three people is obese, a fact which Koop said is “intolerable.”
Obesity has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, gall bladder disease, arthritis and certain cancers, including colorectal and prostate cancer for men, and endometrial, cervical, ovarian and breast cancers for women.
For people who are at low to moderate risk, nutrition and exercise are the keys.
For those at higher risk for serious health problems because of obesity, weight control drugs can also be used. In extreme cases surgery may be an option, according to the Shape Up guidelines, that have been reviewed by several medical and public health groups.
To figure out whether an individual is just carrying around a few extra but relatively harmless pounds or whether they are actually obese, Koop urged patients and doctors to rely on the “Body Mass Index.”
Though BMI may not be widely recognised outside health clubs, it is a fairly simple formula based on height and weight. Koop said doctors should give it as much importance as blood pressure or cholesterol checks.
Simple BMI charts are available to doctors, and will also be seen soon on an Internet web site Shape Up is setting up, www.shapeup.org/sua.
Doctors should intervene when a patient’s BMI is 27 - or lower if the person has other health risks, like hypertension or diabetes.
For someone 6 feet tall, a 27 BMI means being about 200 pounds. For someone who is about 5 foot 5, it means being about 160 to 165 pounds.
The web site will also include an “cyberclinic” where people can figure out their BMI and also click on to a virtual gym, where they can get advice about fitness and an exercise routine as well as background information on nutrition and health.

TAMPA, Fla (Reuter) - A jury in Tampa found a couple guilty of trying to sell their newborn twin boys to undercover officers.
“Children have rights too. And one of those is not to be sold in a shopping mall parking lot,” prosecutor Kin Seace said in her trial summary.
Christine Love, 25 and Jeffrey May, 31, of Hudson, Fla., met two undercover officers in May and offered to sell Jacob and Joseph Love, born just two weeks earlier, for $25,000.
Sentencing is set for Dec. 5 and May and Love could each receive a maximum of 364 days in jail.
Their four children have been taken into state custody and the twins have already been adopted by another family.
The two deputies, posing as a man and wife unable to have children of their own, paid May $2,000 as a down payment then arrested the couple.
Love and May had even brought two older children along so that the buyers could have some idea of what the twins might look like when they got older, witnesses testified.
One witness also said Love and May had tried to sell one of the older children a few years ago.

By Jackie Frank

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Genetic breakthroughs in the laboratory are spurring fears of discrimination among people in families at risk for hereditary disorders, a new study showed.
A Georgetown University survey of people in genetic support groups found that some decline to take tests, and others do not inform employers or insurers of test results because they fear discrimination or retaliation.
The study by Virginia Lapham at Georgetown and Joan Weiss, director of the Alliance of Genetic Support Groups, is one of a series of reports examining the scientific as well as the social implications of genetics in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
“People overwhemingly wanted information kept from health insurers and employers,” Lapham told a news conference held at Georgetown Hospita.
What scientists consider progress in finding the genetic causes of diseases may be a two-edged sword for people who may carry the trait. While genetic discovery may lead to better treatment and a possible cure, it can result in discrimination by insurers needed to pay for that care, the researchers said.
“Every one of us is carrying deleterious genes,” said Martha Volner of the Alliance. But she said relatively few of these genes have been discovered and as more were found the problem of discrimination could become more widespread.
Health care legislation recently signed into law was ``a first step’’ in offering people with pre-existing conditions, some of which may be genetic, hope of continuous insurance coverage. However, there were no guarantees that patients could afford it, she noted.
While the Science article did not mention any specific disorders, the researchers said the 332 persons surveyed reported 101 genetic disorders such as spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, Down’s syndrome, hereditary deafness and cancers.
Genetic tests are available clinically, or as part of research projects, for a growing number of disorders including cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease, and certain breast, colon and kidney cancers, among others.
For Brenda Duffy of Fairfax, Va., the cost of health insurance for her husband and two daughters who have neurofibromatosis, a condition that leads to many tumors, led her to take a low-paying job solely for its health benefits. “I am locked into that job,” she told the news conference.
This survey was the first of its kind, and the researchers said a larger study should be done.
One in four participants believed they were refused life insurance and more than one in five believed they were denied health insurance because of a genetic disorder in the family.
Thirteen percent believed they were denied or fired from a job. Nearly one in 10 chose not to get genetic tests because of fear of discrimination. Eighteen percent did not reveal genetic information to insurers, and 17 percent did not reveal it to employers.

RICHMOND, Va. (Reuter) - Three Virginia jurors who convicted an inmate of murder 11 years ago for setting fire to a fellow prisoner now believe he is innocent and have asked Gov. George Allen to spare his life, lawyers said.
Shelly Gray, Gail Reynolds and Robert Stinnet made their appeal in affidavits to the governor that were released to the media.
Joseph Payne was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Nov. 7, for killing David Dunford, who was serving 15 years for burglary at the time of his death.
“I don’t know precisely, what ended up making me go along ...” Gray’s affidavit read. “Maybe it was a combination of being tired, frustrated and scared. I also believe it was just weakness on my part.”
Dunford’s mother, Reba, also asked the governor this week to grant clemency because she, too, had concerns about Payne’s guilt and about his chief accuser’s credibility.
Payne, who was serving a life sentence for the 1981 robbery and murder of a store owner, was convicted of killing Dunford, 28, primarily on the testimony of another convict, Robert “Dirty Smitty” Smith.
Smith testified that on March 3, 1985, he saw Payne put a padlock on Dunford’s cell door, throw flammable liquid and a match through the cell bars. Dunford died nine days later.
Smith was released early from prison for his cooperation in the Payne case, and according to Department of Corrections officials, he has violated his parole and is now a fugitive.
I had nightmares for a few months after that trial was over,’’ Reynolds said. “I do not have a problem with the death penalty, but if the wrong man is getting executed ...”
Death penalty trials must have a unanimous verdict and jurors must sign the death warrant. The Virginia attorney general asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to carry out the execution.
Payne is one of nine Virginia inmates with execution dates before the end of the year in a state that ranks third in the country in executions - 32 since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 - behind Texas and Florida.

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to President Bill Clinton’s don’t ask, don’t tel’ policy on gays serving in the military.
The action, in the case of a gay U.S. Navy lieutenant who was dismissed from the military in 1994, marked the first time the Supreme Court had taken up Clinton’s new Pentagon policy.
The justices let stand a U.S. appeals court ruling in April that upheld the policy as constitutional. But the action, without any comment or dissent, has limited impact and does not create a nationwide legal precedent.
The Clinton administration put the policy into effect after Congress adopted a 1993 law relaxing the military’s 50-year ban on gays. Under the political compromise between Congress and the administration, the military cannot question members or recruits about their sexual orientation but overt homosexual acts or statements can lead to discharge.
Clinton promised in the 1992 campaign to end the military’s ban on gays but many congressional and military leaders opposed him. The Pentagon says gay service members could harm a unit’s cohesion.
The high court case involved Paul Thomasson, 33, a 10-year veteran who was discharged in 1994 after sending a letter to four admirals for whom he served declaring he was gay. His admission came five days after the policy took effect.
He sued, claiming the policy violated his constitutional rights, treated gays unfairly by forcing them to keep quiet about their sexual orientation, suppressed free speech and violated basic guarantees of due process.
In the Supreme Court appeal, his lawyers argued the policy limited the freedom of gay service members to state their sexual orientation and constituted an impermissible restriction on free speech. “At issue is whether the government may restrict the freedom of an accomplished and dedicated military officer to utter a fundamental statement about who he is, solely on the basis of the anticipated discomfort of others.”
They said the policy irrationally discriminates against gays and gives rise to ``invidious prejudice.’’ Thomasson, considered a leading candidate to rise to the rank of admiral, has opened a restaurant in Washington since leaving the Navy.
The Justice Department urged that the appeal be denied, saying the appeals court decision was corrent and did not conflict with any other appellate rulings. The Supreme Court sided with the government.
In the 1995 fiscal year, the Pentagon has discharged 722 gay service members, the highest level in four years, according to an advocacy group for gays in the military.
The action in this case represented the second time in less than a year the high court has considered a major gay rights issue. In May, the justices by a 6-3 vote struck down a Colorado requirement that outlawed legal protections intended solely for homosexuals and lesbians.

By Dina Kyriakidou

IRAKLIO, Greece (Reuter) - Greenpeace activists hung a giant banner reading “Stop Oil, Go Solar” between two chimneys of a Greek state power plant on this holiday island Thursday to protest against Greece’s energy policies.
Their protest banner between the two smog-belching towers at the Linoperamata plant, six miles from Crete’s main city of Iraklio, was part of the environmental group’s international campaign to promote solar energy.
A dozen activists sneaked into the Public Power Corporation (DEH) plant at dawn, climbed the 260 ft. high chimneys and unfolded the 3,230 sq. ft. banner, undetected by DEH security.
“Greece has great solar and wind power resources compared to northern European countries but doesn’t use them because DEH will not change the way it thinks,” Corin Millais, Greenpeace international solar campaigner, told Reuters.
The noxious fumes produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil include greenhouse gases threatening the earth’s climate.
Greenpeace has chosen this popular tourist island as the spearhead of an international campaign to promote solar power, sending its ship Arctic Sunrise on site, installing solar units at schools and pressuring the government with protests.
Greek authorities rejected Greenpeance’s proposals on the use of renewable energy as unrealistic.
“They are knocking on doors that are already open,” Crete Prefect Stavros Kambelis told Reuters. “We have already started a renewable energy program but we cannot totally depend on it with the existing technology.”
The Greek government says energy needs on Crete rise by eight percent annually, twice the national average, and the island’s two existing oil power plants cannot cover demand, sometimes resulting in blackouts.
Greenpeace has proposed building solar power plants that will store energy using a hydraulic system, supplemented by wind power plants.

CINCINNATI (Reuter) - A truck driver who killed three co-workers in a job-related dispute was sentenced to death.
Gerald Clemons, 54, showed no emotion when Judge Norbert Nadel of Hamilton County Common Pleas court handed down the sentence, which had been recommended by a jury that found him guilty of three counts of aggravated murder.
Clemons went on a shooting spree at a suburban Cincinnati trucking firm last December, killing two men and a woman. Last month he told the court that job stress had led him to temporary insanity.

NEW YORK (Reuter) - A 58-year-old man shot his former wife to death in a midtown Manhattan office building before shooting himself in the mouth, police said.
Pasqualle Coppler, who lived in the Bronx, was in critical condition at a local hospital and was not expected to live, police said.
Helen Coppler, 53, had obtained an order of protection against her ex-husband after he was arrested for harassing her.
According to police, the couple was divorced.
The shooting took place in the 11th floor offices of the Federal Employee Guidance Service at 17th Street and Fifth Avenue around 3:30 p.m. EST, where the slain woman worked.
Police said that after Pasqualle Coppler showed up at her office, a dispute took place between the couple.
“They were alone in a room. During that ... confrontation, two shots were fired. Mrs. Coppler was shot dead. Mr. Coppler suffered a potentially fatal injury,” said Chief Kevin Farrell of the Manhattan Detective Bureau.

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Despite the Pentagon’s claim that its don’t ask, don’t tell policy toward homosexuals in uniform is working well, the issue remains very controversial and, so far, unresolved by the Supreme Court.
The high court on Monday refused to hear arguments on one of eight gay military cases now in lower courts three years after the Pentagon told gays and lesbians they could legally serve if they kept silent about their sexual orientation.
The high court’s refusal to hear the case of a gay U.S. Navy lieutenant who was dismissed from the military in 1994 marked the first time the justices had ever considered President Bill Clinton’s controversial policy.
Without explanation, they let stand a lower court ruling that upheld Clinton’s policy, but they avoided hearing arguments on the policy, which the Pentagon calls necessary for “good order and discipline.”
A tenacious Washington-based group fighting for the rights of military gays and lesbians vowed on Monday to continue pressing the court to decide that the policy ban free speech unconstitutionally. “There are a number of cases that are out there and you can be sure that the court will be seeing the matter again,” spokesman C. Dixon Osburn of the Servicemembers Legal Defence Network told Reuters.
The group and other civil rights organisations say that while the 1993 law adopted by Congress officially relaxed the military’s 50-year ban on gays, it leaves gays and lesbians in constant fear of military dismissal or other reprisal.
“The ban is so absolute that you cannot tell your mom, your doctor or your best friend that you are gay or lesbian without reprisal,” said Osburn.
Under the 1993 political compromise between Congress and the administration, the military cannot question members or recruits about their sexual orientation - but overt homosexual acts or statements can lead to discharge.
Both Osburn and the Defence Department stressed on Monday that the issue has not been finally settled.
“It is disheartening that the court would let stand the worst civil rights abuse in the country today, but this is not over,” Osburn said. He noted that seven other cases are now being argued in lower courts.
“It is not a ruling on the merits by the high court,” said Air Force Lt. Col Deborah Bosick, a Pentagon spokeswoman, in response to questions. Bosick also noted that other lower federal appeals courts had upheld or strongly supported the constitutionality of the gay policy.
Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior commanders have said repeatedly the gay policy is sailing more smoothly as time passes. But a report by Osburn’s group last year charged widespread abuse of gays and lesbians under the rules.
Many officers in the traditionally conservative military concede that there is widespread prejudice against homosexuals but say it is a reflection of American society and does not necessarily result in witch hunts for gays and lesbians.
“The services have been warned repeatedly by the defence secretary and others not to violate the rights of minorities and I think we have historically tried to do that,” one senior Navy officer, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters on Monday.
Defence Secretary William Perry said eight months ago he had ordered his staff to look into claims that the rights and promotions of gays were being impeded under the policy.
That’s a serious allegation,” Perry told reporters. “We do not accept harassment of any individual in the military. But it’s very difficult to deal with anecdotal accounts of harassment.”

By Sambit Mohanty

NEW DELHI (Reuter) - U.S. fast food giant McDonald’s Corp opened its first restaurant in India, but its “Maharaja Mac” will not contain any beef in keeping with Hindu religious practices, officials said.
“This is the first (McDonald’s) restaurant in the world which will go beefless,” said Vikram Bakshi, managing director of the McDonald’s branch set to open on Sunday in an up-scale New Delhi neighbourhood.
McDonald’s made its worldwide reputation serving hamburgers made of beef. But Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India’s 940 million people, do not eat beef, and many are vegetarians.
“We have worked hard to ensure that our products are appropriate for the taste and culture of India,” Bakshi said.
“We have worked carefully to cater to the vast majority of the vegetarian population.”
The “Maharaja Mac” will contain mutton - eaten by Hindus and savoured by Moslems, who shun pork.
McDonald’s officials said they were confident their restaurant would not encounter the same difficulties as Pepsico Inc’s Kentucky Fried Chicken chain.
Farmers protesting against “cultural imperialism” ransacked a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the southern city of Bangalore in January.
Bakshi said McDonald’s India, whose emblem is a peacock’s wings spread behind the fast food chain’s familiar golden arches, is 50-percent owned by Indian investors, and cannot be called foreign.
“McDonald’s India is an Indian company,” Bakshi said.
He also said McDonald’s would buy 98 percent of its food and other supplies from local sources, benefiting Indian businesses.
Michael Gomes, director of McDonald’s operations in India, told Reuters the venture planned to open another 20 restaurants in India over the next three years.
The company has been planning its foray into India for the past five years, and Bakshi said it will have invested more than 500 million rupees ($14 million) before it sells its first Maharaja Mac.
“It plans to to invest profits in the future growth in India,” Bakshi said.
The second McDonald’s outlet will open in Bombay later, officials said.

The party of the first part (herein referred to as she) being of sound mind and fairly good body, agrees to the following with the party of the second part (herein referred to as he)
1. FULL DISCLOSURE: At the commencement of said relationship (colloquially referred to as the first date or match up), each party agrees to fully disclose any current girl/boyfriends, dependent children, bizarre religious beliefs, phobias, fears, social diseases, strange political affiliations, or currently active relationships with anyone else that have not yet been terminated. Further each party agrees to make known any deep-seated mother/father/brother/sister complexes and fanatical obsessions with pets, careers, or organized sports. Failure to make these before it has a chance to get anywhere.
2. INDEMNIFICATION OF FRIENDS: Both parties agree to hold the person blameless in the event the “fix-up” turns out to be a “real loser” or “Story”, available at most bookstores; George Hamilton at one of Imelda Marcos’ parties; or any picture of Bob Guccione in Penthouse. For definition of “psycho bitch,” see Sharon Stone in “Basic Instinct,” or Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.”)
3. DEFINITION OF RELATIONSHIP: Should said relationship proceed past the first “fix-up” both parties mutually agree to use the following terminology in describing their said “dating”: For the first thirty (30) days both parties consent to say they are “going out”. (This neither implies nor states any guarantee of exclusivity.) Following the first thirty (30) days said parties may say they are “seeing somebody” and may be referred to by third parties as “an item”. Sixty (60) days following the commencement of the “first date” either member may elect to use the term “girl/boyfriend” or “lover” and their mutual acquaintances may refer to them as “a couple”. Under no circumstances are the phrases “my better half,” “the little woman,” “the old ball and chain,” or “my old man/lady” acceptable. Further, if both members of the party consent, this timetable may be speeded up; however, if either party “gets too serious” and disregards this schedule, the other party may dissolve the relationship on the grounds of “moving too fast” and may once again be said to be “on the market.”
4. TERMS OF EXCLUSIVITY: For the first thirty (30) days both parties agree not to ask questions about the others whereabouts on weekends, weeknights, or over long holiday periods. No unreasonable demands or expectations will be made; both parties agree they have no “rights” or “holds” on the other’s time. Following the first six weeks or forty-five (45) days, if one party continues to be “missing in action” without explanation, the “wounded party” agrees to “give up”.
5. DATING ETIQUETTE: For the first thirty (30) days both members of the couple agree to be overly considerate of the other’s work pressures, schedules, and business ambitions. A minimum of three (3) phone calls will be made between the two parties during the working day, and each party will attempt - with best efforts - to originate 50% of the phone calls. Additionally, for the first two weeks all dates will be made at least twenty-four (24) hours in advance; there will be no “running off in the middle of the night” to console an old friend who needs me” from their vocabulary. Further, during the first six (6) weeks each member of said relationship agrees to attempt at least one spontaneous “home cooked meal” and will arrange the delivery of at least one unexpected bouquet of flowers. Following the first forty-five (45) days both parties will return to their normal personalities.
6. TERMS OF PAYMENT: It is agreed that - gross income aside - he will pick up the tab at all dinners, clubs, theaters, and breakfasts. Not included in this agreement are meals ordered from the bedroom, which are subject to the availability of discretionary funds on hand at the time.
7. LIVING ARRANGEMENTS (occasionally known as the “Why do I bother to keep my own apartment?” codicil): Should said relationship progress to the point where the couple spends more then five nights a week together, every effort shall be made to split the time between their respective apartments. Further, it is agreed that both sides will attempt to silence the lewd remarks of landlords, or roommates. Additionally, both will avoid having their mother call at 7:30 in the morning, and both agree to “pick up after himself” while in residence at the her apartment, including washing his whiskers out of the sink, and assisting with household duties. (By the same token, she agrees to respect his right to keep his apartment “a mess”.)
8. THE 90 DAY GRACE PERIOD: For the first three months, each member of the couple agrees to hold the other blameless in the euphoric use of phrases like “Let’s move in together,” “Why don’t we start a family?” and - using archaic terminology - “Let’s get married.” Additionally, each party agrees to love, cherish, honor, and defend the other party’s right not to meet his parents.
9. THE “L” WORD: For the first sixty (60) days both parties agree not to use the phrase “I love you.” They may love plants, dogs, cats, cars, concerts, or the way a particular pair of jeans fits, but not each other. Failure by one party to abide by this rule will result in the other party using the “G” word... “Gone.”
10. GROUNDS FOR TERMINATION: Any of the following will be grounds for immediate termination and final dissolution of said relationship:
(a) Excessive use of chatty French phrases;
(b) Ending any argument with the sentence “My ex- used to do that same thing”;
(c) Suggesting - no matter how kindly - that the other member should seek “help”;
(d) ending any argument with the phrase “My analyst thinks you are...”; and
(e) complaining more than twice about the contents of the other party’s refrigerator. (or lack thereof) .
11. DECLARATION OF STRENGTH: At the time of breakup each party reserves the right to make the other feel guilty by using one or all of the following phrases:
(a) “You’ll never find anybody better”;
(b) “Nobody could ever make you happy”;
(c) “I’ll find somebody who can really appreciate me”; and
(d) “My analyst thinks you are...”. (Psychosis to be filled in at the proper time.)
12. MISCELLANEOUS:
(a) Each party agrees to give the other at least five minutes’ notice before terminating said relationship;
(b) both parties agree to remain exclusive until such time as the relationship appear to be “on the rocks”;
(c) at the termination of said affair:
(1) both parties agree to be mature and return compiled socks, sweatshirts, books, record albums, door keys, personal undergarments with all due haste through impartial intermediary;
(2) each party agrees to wait at least seventy-two (72) hours before engaging in sex with any of the other’s friends; a period of at least seven days (bedroom performance included), and further consent to use one of the following nebulous terms in the description of the breakup:
“The timing wasn’t right”;
“He/She wanted more than I could give”;
“He/She was too involved in his/her career”;
“He/She decided to go back with his/her
(a) girl/boyfriend;
(b) last lover;
(c) hometown;
(d) therapist”.
13. ADDENDUM: After the initial breakup - no matter what - both parties agree to give the relationship “one more shot”.

If we could, at this time, shrink the Earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:
There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere (North and South) and 8 Africans.
70 would be non-white; 30 white.
70 would be non-Christian; 30 Christian.
50% of the entire world wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people. All 6 would be citizens of the United States.
70 would be unable to read.
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
80 would live in sub-standard housing.
Only 1 would have a college education.

Baby conceived on back seat of car with automatic transmission grow up to be shiftless bastard.

Man who lay girl on hill not on level.

He who fishes in another man’s well often catches crab.

Wife who put man in dog house find him in cat house.

Man who farts in church sits in own pew.

Boy who go to bed with sex problem wake up with solution in hand.

Woman who cooks carrots and peas in same pot very unsanitary.

Kotex not best thing on earth, but next to best thing.

Man who marries a girl with no bust has right to feel low down.

Man with athletic finger make broad jump.

Squirrel who runs up woman’s leg not find nuts.

Seven days on honeymoon make one hole weak.

Modern house without toilet uncanny.

Woman who springs on inner-spring this spring, gets off-spring next spring.

Nail on board is not good as screw on bench.

Man who have hand in pocket feel cocky all day.

Short man who dance with tall woman get bust in mouth.

Man who lay woman on ground has peace on earth.

Man who sleep on railroad tracks wake up with split personality.

Baseball very strange game. How can man with 4 balls walk?

Woman who go to man’s apartment for snack may get tit bit.

Man who kisses girl’s behind, gets crack in face.

Woman who spends much time on bedspring, may have offspring.

Passionate kiss like spider web, lead to undoing of fly.

Man and mouse alike, both end up in pussy.

Man who get kicked in testicles left holding bag.

Man who sucks nipples make clean breast of things.

Man who fights with wife all day, gets no peace at night.

Man who snatches kisses when young, kisses snatches when old.

Wife who slides down banister makes monkey shine.

Virginity like balloon, one prick and it is all gone.

Girl who douches with vinegar walk around with sour puss.

Girls should not marry basketball players, they dribble before they shoot.

Woman who flies upside-down have crack up.

He who sneezes without a handkerchief takes matters into his own hands.

Man who have head up ass, have shitty outlook on life.

Man who have hand in pocket not just jingling change.

A streaker is someone who is unsuited for his work.

He who make oral love to epileptic woman may get tongue-tied.

He who make love to exhaust pipe of car have hot rod.

Epileptic woman who give blow-job may bite big one.

“If a wild bear is chasing you and your friend,you don’t have to be able to run faster than the bear, just faster than your friend.”

If you can’t get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.

A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.

Don’t be irreplaceable, if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.

It doesn’t matter what you do, it only matters what you say you’ve done and what you’re going to do.

After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.

The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.

You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.

Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.

If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.

There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.

Keep your boss’s boss off your boss’s back.

Everything can be filed under “miscellaneous.”

Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.

To err is human, to forgive is not our policy.

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work he/she is supposed to be doing.

Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.

If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.

You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.

People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn’t.

If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.

At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.

When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

Following the rules will not get the job done.

Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.

When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the Lone Ranger handle this?”

No matter how much you do, you never do enough.

The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.

Let’s face it-English is a crazy language:
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?
Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man an> wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?
Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff.

- Mariah Carey

Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.

- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest

-Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today show, August 22

- David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.

- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign

- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward

- Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC

- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia

- Philip Streifer, Superintendent of Schools, Barrington, Rhode Island

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression “to get fired.”

Canada is an Indian word meaning “Big Village”.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn’t added until 5 years later.

“I am.” “I do.” The two sentences tie for the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The term “the whole 9 yards” came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got “the whole 9 yards.”

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

The word “samba” means “to rub navels together.” (who decided this?)

The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize that “this” was the day of the changeover.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

Dr. Seuss pronounced “Seuss” such that it rhymed with “rejoice.”

In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said “Play it again, Sam.”

Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

The term, “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye” is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, “No eye gouging.” Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone’s eye out.

A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.

Money isn’t made out of paper, it’s made out of cotton.

Every time you lick a stamp, you’re consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from and old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

An ostrich’s eye is bigger that it’s brain.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

autumn reason

by sydney anderson

11-18-82

My sister called me and wanted to have a talk with me last night. It’s so incredibly difficult to tell someone you don’t respect that you don’t respect them. She says she loves me. And things would be extremely difficult with my family if I told her the truth. Probably more difficult than if I just lived with it and lied to her all the time. It’s better when I don’t have to pussy-foot around her because she’s decided that she’s ignoring me again.
I was telling Susan about all this last night, the way my sister has been acting around me lately, and Susan was just amazed. She said it was probably the most unhealthy sibling relationship she had ever heard of, and that I should get away from her as soon as I could. What am I supposed to do? My sister is unhealthy, but it’s going to make me unhealthy, too, unless it already has, in which case it will make me more unhealthy. I don’t want that, but she doesn’t change, even though she says she tries to, and it’s taking it’s toll on me. What am I supposed to do? Tell her to get a job? Some friends? A boyfriend? Her own place? A life? Tell her to leave me alone? I don’t know if I want to deliver that blow.
And what makes things harder when it comes to this family is that despite all of her shortcomings (and there are plenty), everyone still treats her with more respect than they treat me. Mom and dad do it, and they’re the ones that are letting her be dependent on their income. They give her the opportunity to live there for a decade, no questions asked, and they let her waste her life that way. I think I’m more developed as an adult, than she is, and I think that’s partially because mom and dad coddle her. Granted, coddling, might not be good, but why didn’t they coddle me? Why did they give me the cold shoulder?
I remember my father always drinking. No one else in the family seems to think he is an alcoholic, but I do. He drank so much. Beers at lunch (or martinis), beers during the afternoon while playing cards with the boys, two martinis when he got home, wine with dinner, after dinner drinks (some heavy liqueur-type stuff) until he was ready for bed, then a shot of night-time cough medicine as he passed through the kitchen. Cough medicine. God it was so pathetic. Granted, the drinking has slowed down ever since he had the heart attack, but he still drinks a lot.
And the frightening thing is that I think I carry some of his traits - alcoholism being one of them. It always cuts me to the quick when someone sees me drinking and says jokingly that I’m an alcoholic. It’s what I’m used to.
I find myself having a drink a day if it’s there, then going out on the weekends to drink more. Or even on a weeknight. I find myself coming home from work wanting to have a beer, and if we don’t have beer, fine, I’ll make myself a mixed drink. Last weekend I went away for the weekend to visit friends, and while I was waiting for them I drank whiskey mixed with orange juice. I never do that. It was just that I wanted to get drunk.
I’m not drinking in the house any more. I’ve decided that. If I go out with people, I’ll drink if I want to, but I don’t want to drink alone, the way I have been. I wonder how long this feeling will last, though.
I’ve been getting along with dad a lot better lately - it’s my sister that’s been driving my nuts. He’s mellowed out in his old age, and only occasionally does he revert to his old ways around me. He’s not around me that often, which is a big help.
When I was in high school I didn’t date much. I was a part of a group called Feedback; it was a school group that met once a week at a different person’s house. We talked about teen stuff, troubles in life, almost like a therapy group. Alan was involved in it, and one night I was in a particularly good mood and was talking to everyone (the way I normally would now), even to the seniors, even though they were a year older than me. And I went over and talked to Alan, sat down next to him for a minute.
Then he offered to give me a ride home, I didn’t have one, I never did, my parents never let me use the car. That’s another thing. I’d ask to go out on a Saturday night, and they’d say I couldn’t have the car and I had to be home by 11:00 when I was 17. That was unless I worked Friday, then they’d say I was already out one night this weekend and I couldn’t go out. They didn’t trust me at all.
That’s probably why I joined so many activities, that was the only way I could spend time with my peers.
But back to Alan. He offered me a ride home, he lived only a mile away, so I accepted. He got to my driveway and tried to kiss me. I was shocked - I didn’t have the idea of him being more than a friend in my head. And I told him that, and he agreed to it, and we both felt sorry, and within a week we were considered dating each other. We went out four months, then he broke up with me because he was going to college (it didn’t bother me, though - I thought it wasn’t working out anyway).
I found out that right after we broke up he started dating a classmate, Vicki. She was fat, and ugly. She considered herself such a sexual creature, and I thought she was really gross. And Alan started dating her. What was wrong with me that he’d want to go out with her? I came up with a good (and probably accurate) guess - she blew him. Pardon that. But our relationship wasn’t sexual, it was romantic. Like puppy love, but it wasn’t love.
So he went away to school, and he’d always come back to visit, and he broke up with Vicki quickly, and he’d always want to take me out to dinner, and he was glad we were friends, and he’d talk to me about how all the other guys made fun of him because he was from a suburb. And they were all ass-holes.
But over that year I saw a slight change in him. He was hardening.
And he wanted to be more than friends with me, and I didn’t want that, but I couldn’t hurt his feelings, so... by the time he got back from his freshman year we started dating again. But this time it was different, he was a bit of an ass-hole himself, which meant he was cooler, I suppose, and he was always trying to make a move on me. He’d do things to me I wasn’t ready for, and I didn’t know how to politely say that I didn’t want to do anything. I kept dropping what I thought were subtle hints over time that I didn’t want to sleep with him, I wasn’t ready for that. But his hints that he wanted it were probably stronger than mine.
The first night I moved into my dorm with my new roommate he came over, and the two of them had liquor. Loretta had grape schnapps, that’s all I remember. And we were drinking out of plastic cups, and I remember that he kept refilling our glasses. But he was refilling hers faster. I even thought about that that night - why is he pushing drinks on my roommate? I could see him wanting to get me drunk, but why her? I know he’s not attracted to her.
I don’t know when we decided we had to go to sleep. I don’t remember much from the evening. I think we might have gotten the cue from my roommate passing out in her own bed. I’m not sure. I had no idea what was going on. I figured he wanted to stay over, that we’d mess around or something. I hadn’t thought about it.
One of my guy friends as a joke gave me a condom as a going away to college gift. He thought it was funny. He was trying to be cute. I told him I’d keep it, and I knew I wasn’t planning on using it.
I think Alan knew I had it.
I think I even told him that night that I had it. I was just laying there when he got the God-damned thing. God, I wish I knew what was going through my head. I know I wasn’t thinking clearly; I just wish I was. I didn’t fight. I was too drunk. I didn’t know if I should be fighting, or why I should be fighting. I knew I didn’t want it, but I had no idea of what to say. I almost felt like I was resigned to it.
I remembering him telling me to relax; it was hurting me. I was so tense that he was hurting me, and he was telling me to calm down, to relax. I remember him trying to push my legs apart with his. I didn’t want them to be apart, I resisted, but it just seemed like there was nothing I could do. I was still daddy’s little girl, I couldn’t tell anyone I didn’t like something or that I was right and they were wrong. I couldn’t raise my voice, I couldn’t even think of what I would have said if I could get up the courage to argue. This was how it was supposed to be, wasn’t it?
Now I know why he was pushing liquor on both of us, but my roommate more. He wanted to make sure she passed out drunk, so she wouldn’t hear anything. She didn’t hear a thing. And I never told her.
I didn’t even find him attractive. I thought he was a geek. I went out with him because he paid attention to me, and he was there when no one else was. I turned to him as a friend countless times. His family treated me like a daughter. He was smart, was going to be making money one day. I was going to be an engineer, like him. We’d be set. I thought this would be the man I was going to marry, I was resigned to this, even though I didn’t love him.
That night messed me up. I didn’t know why I resented him, but I did, and minute by minute I could stand being with him less and less. He was happier than ever when it happened, but I started “needing space”, that’s what I told him, I wanted to meet new people, I just got here, give me some room. And I started wanting more and more room.
I don’t want to write about this any more.

11-19-82

I hate myself for not stopping him. I might not have wanted to do anything because that’s the way I was taught to be all of my life, but they never prepared me for this, they never prepared me for anything, but I still wished I did something. Why did I let this happen? I’ve worked on rape hotlines because of this, I know it isn’t my fault, but I think I will always look for something or someone to blame. Yes, I blame him. But there’s also a part of me that blames my family for making me feel so inadequate that I felt I had to stay with him because I would never find better. My family made me feel as if I couldn’t fight back. I could have fought back. They never wanted me to fight back, the best thing to do was ignore it, right?
They might be right anyway. Who am I to judge?
My father said that if he or one of his siblings came home and said a teacher hit them, his father wouldn’t get angry at the teacher for hitting him, his father would hit the kid and ask, “What did you do wrong?” He must have done something in order to get hit.
What did I do wrong?
God, I wish I could go back in time and change all the things I did wrong. Are they all my fault? If my actions are based on the way my parents did or didn’t raise me, then I wish I could go back and change the way they raised me. How can you change bad things that happened to you? How can you go back and change the past?
I didn’t tell anyone what happened to me for a while. I didn’t even know what happened to me, I didn’t know why I was feeling so depressed. That’s when I changed my major, that’s when I changed my hair color, that’s when a got a whole new set of friends. Alan still wanted to be friends with me, and I couldn’t think of a reason why I shouldn’t be friends with him, except that I didn’t want to, but that didn’t matter, because it was just me. Occasionally we’d have lunch in the cafeteria, but after a while I didn’t want to spend any time with him, I didn’t want to see his face. And I told him so. I was dating someone else by then, and I gained enough confidence to be able to say to him I didn’t want to see him. I told him to get out of the past and not talk to me any more. He’d call on the weekends in the middle of the night, high or drunk, telling me he loved me. I hated it. I’d see him on campus and he’d try to talk to me. I remember one time I was yelling at him on campus, screaming during passing time when everyone is out on campus, yelling at him to leave me alone, not to talk to me anymore, to give me some peace. I don’t even know if I knew why I was yelling at him.
Josh was a beacon to me during that time. He was a good person, a genuinely good person, and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me the way Alan did. He just wouldn’t. But he also chose religion over me, and once again, I lose out.
It was by March of the next year (a little over 6 months) before I told someone what happened to me. I told Colin, my friend from high school, and I sat there and cried for two hours. After that I told Richard. I didn’t tell anyone else for a while.
I remember that in the end of March I got a card and a mix tape in the mail from him. The card was for our anniversary of when he first tried to kiss me in the car after the feedback meeting, in my junior year of high school. He remembered, sent me a card, and made me a mix tape of all the songs that “meant” something to us during the course of our “relationship.” There were dates on all the songs, dates for when we heard them together, concerts we went to, things like that.
That disgusted me so much. I threw out the card. And I sent the tape back to him. It was scary giving the envelope back to the mail carrier, knowing then it would get back to him, because I was fighting back. That scared me. But I had to. I didn’t want him thinking it was okay to send me things. To talk to me.
As soon as he got the tape back he called me. I had to tell him to stop living in the past, to get over it, to leave me alone. I think he was making me cry. Forget I existed. Go away. Let me be.
I wish I could stop living in the past.
The next year he went to Germany for the year to study. I think a big part of the reason he left was because of me. Could re really have liked me? Was I hurting him? I’ve never told him he raped me. I’ve never just said it. Maybe he doesn’t know. Did he mean to hurt me? Did he even know what he did to me? How it affected me?
I remember him writing in a letter to me once that he was going out with this girl he really liked, she was about my height, the hair was the same, hey, even once when he saw her at the right angle she looked just like me. Well, they weren’t really going out yet, he just kind of liked her, but maybe they could go out.
I had to avoid him. This was unhealthy. I didn’t know what else to do. When he came back I did everything I could to just avoid him. He’s in Germany again, this time for good, I think. I still feel like he lives a mile away.
By that next fall (over a year later, when he was in Germany) I was dating other people as well as Josh (our relationship was rapidly falling apart due to religion, him working at a pizza parlor weekends and him being an engineer - he had no time for me), but I could never get close to any of them. Physically. I didn’t mean to lead them on, so I told them they weren’t going to sleep with me, it was that simple. It worked out okay, for the most part, I think I annoyed a few horny men, but oh well. I was going out with a guy named Ben for about 4 months in the fall, and he started noticing signs that it was more than a personal preference. Once we were watching a movie where a woman got raped and I had to go to the bathroom to cry. He made me talk after that.
Ben was a typical guy, a dick, so to speak, the type of guy that would just stop calling one day because he was bored with you. Not very romantic. But he was fun to go out with. I didn’t expect him to be responsive when I told him about last year. It was amazing how nice he was, he said I should go to group therapy, that he’d go with me if I wanted him to (that wouldn’t make him feel too awkward, would it?). It was very nice of him, but I was sure I didn’t need to see someone professionally, I mean, if I can’t handle stress... I rejected the idea of seeing someone.
January, right before classes started second semester, I saw an ad in the paper that said you could take a class for credit that would train you to be an acquaintance rape hotline operator. I thought this would be my own sort of therapy, and it would be constructive as well (and I got credit for it).
In that class we went over so many things that I’m not sure if I was ready for. Pornography, incest, basically the entire history of hatred toward women in a single semester. By the end we talked about how all of this, all of the conditioning of society, manifests itself in rape, especially acquaintance rape. It happens so often.
I’d come home from this class every Tuesday and Thursday at 5:30 and would rush to the cafeteria to meet my friends. You could always tell it was a Tuesday or Thursday, because I was either grouchy and silent or argumentative, starting a discussion group about sexism. I started doing more in my spare time about it. I ran a pornography workshop. I ran rape workshops for the sororities. I did more and more art work about it, trying to get that exposed. I did advertising for counseling groups.
And I thought I was getting better. I was behaving more and more like a normal person, even though I was a bit strong-willed. A bit of a feminist. I thought I took my cause to a more acceptable level than a lot of other violent feminists do. I thought I could make a difference.
Well, I don’t know if I thought I could make a difference, but I knew that I had to try, that if I didn’t I’d explode, or die.
And then I look at what I’ve done. Sure, I’ve done a lot. But have a really made a difference? Probably not. And then I start to feel like a failure again, I start to feel like people find me worthless again. I start to feel like a child again. I start to feel looked down upon, degraded even, like a child, like a little girl. Like someone who is mentally abused by their parents, physically abused by their boyfriend.
That’s why I act so dominant in a relationship now, I think - I don’t want to be looked down upon again. Nothing is ever good enough for me. I have to be strong, I have to be stronger. I never want to tell my problems to the person I’m dating because I don’t want them to think less of me, I don’t want them to view me like I’m a beaten child. I want to have a healthy relationship, and I guess I think that if I cover up what could potentially make the relationship unhealthy, then there’s a better chance of the unhealthy stuff not happening. If I act like a normal person, I’ll have normal, healthy interactions, which will make me more of a healthy person. It sounds like it would make sense.
But it’s still there, buried, in the back of my head, and every once in a while it comes out and there’s nothing I can do about it. Anything small can set it off. And then I’m crying, and I can’t even explain why.
I guess my determination in my work stems from the fact that I want to fight, I want to get over all these feeling I have. This is my way of doing it. But I think my depression stems from the fact that I’ve been taught all my life that my work isn’t important, won’t make a difference. That I won’t succeed.
Now I’ve got a job that pays me under 10,000 once taxes are removed, I live with a roommate I hate, and people like my sister still hang around - people that I can’t respect, people like her that have caused me to feel most of the pain I’ve felt in my life, who continues to give me pain whenever she speaks to me. How am I supposed to heal now?
I want to get on with my life. I want to get away from this limbo I’m feeling. I want to start progressing. I feel like I’ve already hit a huge brick wall and there’s no way I’m going to get around it, over it, through it. I’m going to work here forever, live here forever, be miserable forever.
And then I feel so bad when I think of all the suffering other people go through. Jim tells me stories, other people tell me stories... Is everyone out there suffering from some sort of mental or emotional problem? Who am I to complain? I’ve got a roof over my head, I’m not on lithium, I’m not having panic attacks, I haven’t had my car stolen, my boyfriend doesn’t treat me like dirt. But sometimes I feel alone, even if I’m not. Sometimes I break out and cry, and I try to stop it, but I can’t help it. Yesterday I cried in my office because William hit me on the back of the head. I thought it was rude, sexist and entirely unprofessional. But if I was in a good mood I’m sure it wouldn’t have bothered me. It was a tap. He meant it as playful. And on the way home yesterday from work I just cried and cried. I didn’t care what people in the passing cars were thinking. There was no point in worrying about it. There was too much else to think about.
And I flipped in a restaurant because they messed up my order. Big deal. But I started swearing, raising my voice, then I started crying. Why?
Why anything any more?
I went to a bar tonight with a few friends of mine. I’ve been there for a while, I just got home, I had a good time. They know nothing about me. That’s probably a good thing.
I miss you. I want to feel your arms around me.
I was driving tonight and I thought about suicide. I mean as an option. I haven’t thought about that since high school. Since I lived in my parent’s house. I thought I’d break up with you, try to piss you off so he’d hate me and wouldn’t be hurt by my killing myself, then try to kill myself when no one was at home. If they found me before I died, at least they’d know how serious I was. They’d know how much they hurt me, how much I hated them.
There are times when I wish I wasn’t afraid of death.
There are other times when I wish I wasn’t afraid of life.

11-20-82

Tomorrow I’m going to have Thanksgiving dinner with my family - everyone except my mother. She is out of town. Every family get-together is always pointless. We eat, maybe watch T.V., the women cook and clean, the kids fidget and leave the table early. It’s not as if we bond in any sense of the word when we’re together, if anything, I get bored or aggravated about something.
That’s even how funerals are. You’d think it was a holiday the way my family acts at a wake. They chat and laugh, talking about current events or whatever. No bonding. No feelings.
I was almost 10 when my grandfather died. I was devastated. Someone died. I talked to them last week, now they’re dead. The last thing my grandfather said to me was “you’re the most beautiful girl in the world.” My sister tells me now that he once held my grandmother and my dad at knife-point, threatening to kill them.
And I was at the wake, and everyone was laughing and talking about stuff that had nothing to do with where they were or what had happened. I just wanted to say, “Hey, there’s a dead man in the front of the room. And you’re related to him. Doesn’t that bother you?” But I was 9, and I didn’t know anything. My parents wouldn’t let me go to the funeral because it was on a Monday and I had to go to school. They wouldn’t let me take the day off to go to my grandfather’s funeral. I thought they were heartless.
I just want to ask my family: you mean it wasn’t obvious? Were you just that uninterested with things in my life, or were you actually afraid to think that someone actually did that to me? That you all did these things to me? Or did you care?
“Maybe if I don’t think about it, it won’t exist.” Well, that doesn’t work, everyone. It’s still there, whether or not you try to ignore it. I’m a shining example of that. How much longer do you think you can avoid me?
All my life, whenever I dealt with my family, I felt like I could never say anything to them. They made me feel as if they didn’t want to hear, they made me feel like I shouldn’t talk back, they made me feel as if my opinions didn’t matter.
I can’t love someone I don’t respect. I have to be able to like someone as a person, to admire their achievements. That’s why it’s so hard to say I love my father. I respect him as a person in some respects, he was a hard worker, he has a flair for getting along with many people... other than his family, which is why it’s hard for me to say I love him. My sister, I can respect her as far as I can throw her, which isn’t far since she’s so fat, but hey, I’m pretty strong, so that statement might even give her more respect than she deserves. Simply put: I don’t respect her, all the problems she has in her life are her fault and no one else’s, and I can’t love her. I can’t even pity her.
My father used to always yell at me because I didn’t smile. “Smile, damnit, you have nothing to be sad about.” First of all, I wasn’t sad, a straight face means no emotion, not negative emotion. Secondly, do you really think you’ll make me happy by yelling at me, by forcing me to smile?
I always put up a front whenever he’s around. I usually want to hit him, or run away when we’re in the same room. But I put on a fake smile, act happy. As long as it looks good for other people. As long as his friends don’t think he was an unfit father.
I wonder how many affairs he had. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had a few. And he’s my father. I have some of that in me. And I hate it.
I hate the mood swings, I hate my stubbornness, by bossiness, my temper. All of my bad traits I got from you. I learned from the best.

2-16-83

God, I don’t know if I can do any of this.
I don’t know what’s right for me anymore. sometimes there is just a part of me that wants to get out of here so much, to start my life. I just want it to begin. But I don’t know which path to take.
I want my own place. I could decorate it the way I wanted to. I wouldn’t have to have anything ugly in it, like lights from chains or silk lavender poinsettias. or a brass elephant statue. or any of Catherine’s shit. or Catherine, for that matter.
I could go out places without having to drive 40 minutes.
I could see you more.
I’m anxious. I need to relax more. I’m very impatient. It’s just that I want everything to happen for me, and I want it all to happen right away. Yesterday, actually.
I could have my own apartment. I could imagine my place now, with a desk with my computer. Maybe take a spare bedroom and convert it into an office/library room, with a book shelf with all of my books on it. and vases. and the living room would have all of my stereo stuff, and photos of mine all over the walls. and the kitchen would be my kitchen, and the fridge would be mine. I’d actually have room in the cabinets for all of my glassware. and food. I’ve never had a fridge to myself before. I think i’d have to live in a place by myself, I just want to have a place with no roommates. I want some space. It would only be messy when I wanted it to be messy. It would look how I wanted it to look. I could live in an old house, in the middle of nowhere, if it meant cheap rent and a lot of space and no roommates. I don’t need the best of everything. no cable. no call waiting. a 13” t.v., my stereo, my computer, fine. but I can deal with shitty furniture, an ugly couch, a small desk. I could put a sheet over my couch. I could paint and clean up some garage sale furniture. hey - I could get an unfurnished place for cheaper and just get any kind of furniture from garage sales. I could put a shelf over my desk for my computer monitor. I could make it some place i’d actually want to be in. It’s sounding more and more pleasing to me.
I could have Christmas in my own place. that would be nice.
I’m going to ask you to do me a big favor - could you get the Gazette on Sundays and check out the classifieds for me? Jobs as well as apartments. I’ll talk to you more about it later.
I just feel so lonely here.
Tomorrow I’m going to contact the village hall about getting space for an art show. I think I’m going to bypass the local fine arts society, because they drag their feet, and I have no patience. I could probably do plenty of my own flyers. and i’d be doing all the setting up on my own, even if I was sponsored by them. I’d have to pay for drinks and crackers, but then again, i’d have the whole place to myself, instead of being one of four artists or something. I could have all of my work, my gallery program running on my computer, and later do a reading.
I like to dream, don’t I? I get the feeling that I won’t ever have any show in town, and I won’t go to grad school. I think I just need to dream about these things so that I can keep what little sanity I have left.
Why do I think I can get any of this accomplished?
What can I do? What can I do to make myself feel like I’m accomplishing something? What can I do to make myself happy? What other steps do I have to take?
Should I hand-deliver every resume I send, and give them a little speech about how great I am? I don’t have time to go to all those places in person.
I can’t afford to move to a better place with the pay I make here, and if I quit to move far away, it just means that I’ll have no money at all instead of 14,3 a year. I’ll be even more in debt. I can’t do anything. I’m stuck in a hole. Am I supposed to go back to school? Am I supposed to spend my savings on that? Going to grad school is no guarantee that I’ll have a decent job when I get out. Hell, college alone used to be a guarantee of a good job. Now look at me.
I was saving all that money for my house. So when I got married, when everything started to happen for me, I wouldn’t have to struggle quite as much to make ends meet. Maybe it could mean that my children would have a better chance of going to college. I don’t know how I’m supposed to save any money for my children’s future with my life going the way it is. I know I’m thinking too far ahead into the future, and the next thing you’ll say is that I’m not going to stay at this job for the rest of my life, but at this rate, nothing better is going to come along for me and I’ll be stuck doing this fucking job forever. I left engineering because I hated the field and I didn’t want to sell myself just to make more money, and what has happened? I went into what I wanted and now I’m doing something I hate and making thousands less than I would have been if I stayed in engineering!
Do you know why I left engineering? i’ve never told this to anyone. Alan. he was in the same major as me. I don’t want to be associated with anything that was related to him. he was taking classes in the same building as I was freshman year. I wanted to get away from him. and all the stress of dealing with him made me not care about classes. I was slacking off, and you can’t do that in engineering. It just didn’t matter to me. I wanted to change myself. I changed my hair, my clothes, my friends - my major.
I couldn’t handle engineering. I’ve never wanted to admit it. I didn’t want to handle it, it didn’t want it enough to try for it. I felt like a failure because the schoolwork wasn’t coming easily to me, like it always had.
I shouldn’t blame him. I should blame myself. I should have been able to do it, and I just let myself down. my life would have been so incredibly different if I stuck with computer science.
Or if he hadn’t hurt me.
I think of all the ways it has affected me, and it drives me insane. Do you think I like being emotional? Do you think I like my mood swings? Do you think I’m happy with the direction my life has taken? I feel so alone, and I feel like everything has just gone so wrong. Should I blame him? Or is he a cover in my own mind for my father? Or are they both just a cover for me not wanting to blame myself for my own inadequacies?
It’s times like this when I feel I can’t do anything right.
Why is is that I can’t see myself as a success? Why is it that I find myself unattractive, fat, and unsuccessful?
Why is this happening to me?
Okay, maybe what I need is a big move, a move maybe to a warmer part of the country. Start a new life. I could lie on my resume, tell them I was a nuclear physicist at my last job, and boom - i’d be raking in a shitload of money. There’s my solution.
I’m going over to Ellen’s place tonight, I’m supposed to cheer her up. she’s going to be cheering my up by the end of the night at this rate. Nancy asked me yesterday if I ever had a day at work where I was just about to cry. well, yes, actually, and I’m having one right now.
Let’s go to that new bar this weekend. I think I need to go out, even if it does mean that I’ll end up spending a lot of money. Or maybe I just need to talk, get drunk, and cry a lot. That might actually be what I need. Think you could do that for me? Get really drunk with me this weekend, and let me just be a drunken fool? Maybe then I could spit out some things that I probably need to, but haven’t had the heart to spit out.
I just want to figure out why I get like this. What I’m supposed to do.
A psychologist would have a field day with me. With the pages I typed for you before and this, he’d have a field day. Make that SHE’D have a field day.
Today I feel so persecuted, and I can’t explain why. I feel like everything is out to get me, to sabotage my happiness. Not like I’m delirious and having delusions of grandeur, or having some paranoid feeling like people are out to get me, if anything I feel like people don’t care. Because they don’t. The feeling is more that I have to fight with the very nature of things in order to get something accomplished. I’m not just fighting a person, I’m fighting the world, I’m fighting the way things have always been done, the way I’ve always been taught to do things. No one is particularly against me, but no one is receptive to change, and would rather not deal with me because of it. And now I feel like I’m failing.
I get tired of fighting. What am I supposed to do then? give up? I don’t know how to. I don’t know how to change the way I feel. If I gave up, it would be me resigning and then losing all touch with reality. I couldn’t do it any other way. I couldn’t just become a cog in the wheel, and be happy with it, like all the fucking peons here at work. I’d die. I couldn’t do it. I could never be happy here.
Is something wrong with me because I can’t just be happy working, making money, and there you go, that’s life? It doesn’t seem right to me. I wish somebody could just show me the steps I’m supposed to take. I think I’ve proven that I’m willing to try.
I want to be with you, I really do. I want to try to make this work. And maybe it’s just that I’m so incredibly impatient, but I don’t want to have to wait for you to start your life so we can start ours. I want to start my life now. Maybe I could start to do that if I was at least with you. Being with you all the time would be one way for me to find out if that’s what I really want out of our relationship.
Hell, I might find out that it’s the dumbest thing i’ve ever contemplated doing. I can find a negative side to everything. But I think I’m actually starting to sound a little more cheerful. It can’t be.
I don’t know what the solutions are anymore, but I don’t think I ever did know. And it drives me crazy not knowing. You mean more to me than I want to admit. You’re my best friend, right? So, best friend, tell me what I should do. I can’t think clearly anymore.
I feel like i’ve hit a brick wall. I don’t know what the next step is. I think I need a vacation.
I like to plan things. I like to know what is going to happen next. I like to feel secure. I hate not knowing where my life is going. And that’s exactly how I feel right now. And how i’ve felt for months. I can put it out of my mind for a while, but it always comes back.

2-17-83

Who knows what I what to do. I know I want to live out on my own, but who knows how I want to do that. Working, school. I hate this. I’ve felt awful all day. My head hurts. I really have hit a wall.
I have to work at my second job tonight. I don’t remember what the place looks like.
I’m so depressed. I was crying over at Ellen’s, and I was just bawling on the phone with you. Crying on the way home last night. I don’t have the energy to cry anymore. I think i’ve even lost any motivation I might have once had.
I’m hungry. I just finished some pizza today. Pizza and an apple for lunch. I’ll have noodles tonight. Exciting. Spinach and tomato noodles. And wheat noodles. And shells and elbows. Don’t forget the all-too-exciting tomato paste with mushrooms. Maybe I’ll eat some bread with it, too. I might as well try to make it is creative as possible, because it’s all I get. I hate this diet. Then again, there are a lot of things I hate.
I’ve drank almost 100 ounces of water so far today. Ties me over. Gives me something to do while I’m here at work. I’ve been playing on the computer all day. I created some clip art from ads that were sent to me. gothic letters, pictures of dragons... It’s interesting. Has nothing to do with work, but it’s interesting. As far as interesting goes when I’m here, that is.

Janet Kuypers

I remember the hot tub party at the end of our junior year. Remember how I begged you to take me, because it was a date dance and not a casual party? You already had a date so you set me up with Reedy, and I thought it was just an innocent friendship set-up... Ugh, what a mess, there I was, trying to push him away from me, and then Chad came along and saved me. I have pictures of us from that night, in the hot tub together, with Tres, who won the palest-man-at-the-party award, or photos inside, with plastic lais around our necks.

I remember when we went to the They Might be Giants concert and managed to get seats in the third row. The two of us, along with four other strangers, then yelled requests at the band when they weren’t playing music. I still can’t believe we actually got them to respond to us while they were in the middle of a show.

I remember when we were travelling through Boston, how we stopped at Cheers to take our picture in front of the front door. We were soaking wet because it was raining on our only day in Boston. But we followed all the painted red lines on the streets to find historical landmarks, stood on the torture devises on the sidewalks, took pictures everywhere.
And when we drove to Harvard campus, we took pictures of ourselves looking “intelligent” - looking upward, hands under our chin, poised in thought, looking as tacky as possible.

I remember how we would sit in my dorm room, in the window sill, feet hanging outside, my stereo blaring. You used to always joke that one day you’d push me out the window. But we’d sit there, listening to music, singing to people that would walk in front of my window. Remember how we’d sing to Potholes in My Lawn by De La Soul or Pump Up the Jam by Technotronic or Hoe Down by Special Ed. How you thought the lines to Istanbul (Not Constantinople) by They Might be Giants wasn’t “This is a recording” but “Give it to me, give it to me.” How you thought the lines to Headhunter by Front 242 wasn’t “Three you slowly spread the net” but “Three you slowly spread the legs.” We’d sing, make people look up at us, and either wave or laugh.

Yesterday was the first day that I hadn’t cried for you. Those first two days had been so hard, I might have been fine for a half hour and then something would trigger it in my mind and I would want to cry. I thought maybe I’m getting used to the news, but today I cried again.

I remember the Valentine’s Dance we went to together. It was at your fraternity house, you came over, dressed up in a nice suit, I was wearing a red strapless Vanna White-style dress, and you came over and you looked so mad.
“Why are you mad?”
“I just came from the house, it’s an hour before the dance, and everyone is wearing jeans watching the basketball game. Decorations aren’t even up.”
I look at my dress. ”So what you’re saying is that I’m overdressed?”
We decided to take pictures of us dressed up before I changed dresses. We went through a few photos, then I changed into a more casual, cotton, off-the-shoulder dress. We took more pictures with outfit number two. Then I felt a breeze. Apparently there was a rip in the back of the dress, making it indecent at best. So, back to the closet I went, found a casual black dress, and so we took yet more pictures. Then off to the dance we went.

I remember how you’d come over to my dorm on Sunday nights, and we’d order pizza, usually Grog’s, Home of Mold, I think, and spend the evening together. We’d play Stand by R.E.M. and do the dance they do in the video. Or we’d play Madonna’s Vogue and you’d contort yourself around. Once we even spent the evening writing up lists of exes, like we were in high school.

I remember how we met - I was sitting in the cafeteria with the other girls from my dorm, and you were friends with them so you sat down and ended up right across the table from me. And it was right after Christmas break and I just got back from visiting my parents in Florida and was tan, so your first words to me were, “Is that a real tan?” And I was so mad at you, I though you were a cocky jerk.
“Well, you could have gone to a tanning salon over vacation!”
I don’t know how that could have been the start of one of the best friendships of my life.

And when you called me on the phone to tell me the news you still sounded so happy. Your viewpoint was that anyone could die at any point in time and we have to live every day to the fullest. “And I could be hit by a car tomorrow,” you said. You can’t let the thought of death kill you. And you were telling me these things, and I was trying so hard not to just start sobbing on the phone.

I remember our freshman year in college, after the horrible way we met, of course, and how we’d go to Eddie’s bar for ice cream drinks. They were about the only things we could order while underage, so we’d spend I don’t know how many Saturday afternoons drinking Oreo shakes, or maybe peach, or mint. I remember walking home to the dorms with you one rainy Saturday after an Eddie’s excursion, and we just decided to walk in the middle of the street, jumping in as many puddles as possible. A truck even drove by, yelled that we were going to catch colds. And we just laughed. We were alive, and invincible.

I remember when we met up in New Orleans, I was with Eugene, you were with Randy and Jessica, and you found out how to get to the roof of the Jackson Brewing Company building. It was the highest building near the French Quarter, and we had a fantastic view, all to ourselves.

I remember our freshman year you invited me to see the Violent Femmes in concert at Foellinger Hall. You got drunk, and ended up trying to make the moves on me, knowing I had a boyfriend... I knew you had just drank too much, but I had to draw the line when you licked the side of my face. I still like to tease you with that one.

You’re not supposed to die. This isn’t supposed to be happening to you. I’ve always expected to be able to visit your family after we all retire, compare photos of grandchildren. You can’t leave this hole in my life.

I remember after I broke up with Bill I still tried to remain friends with him so I could periodically borrow his black convertible. So one day I did, told him I needed to get some groceries, but I picked you up instead and we put the top down even when it was sixty-five degrees and about to rain and cruised around the mecca known as Champaign, Illinois.

I remember the Halloween Dance we went to. We couldn’t come up with costumes, and last minute we went to Dallas and Company costume shop and you picked up a Dick Tracy bright-yellow overcoat and hat, along with a plastic machine gun with two water cartridges. I put on a black cocktail dress, pulled up my hair, added rhinestones and a dimple and was Breathless Mahoney, but we made a point to fill the machine gun water cartridges, one with peach schnapps, one with peppermint. Someone at the dance would say, ”Don’t shoot me!” And we would say in unison, “Don’t worry.” No one could understand why we were shooting at each other’s faces.

I remember how every time we were going out for the evening and you’d be over waiting for me to get ready, I’d come out and ask you how I looked and you would always tell me that I looked really nice. Or sexy. Or fantastic. Or whatever. But you’d always say something to me me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world.

I don’t want to catalog these events, these times I’ve shared with you. I don’t want to feel as if there will never be any more memories with you.

I remember how every time you guys would come over to my apartment and start drinking, you would inevitably pull out my hats, particularly the wide-brimmed straw ones, and wear them. How many pictures do I have of you with Jay, or Brian, or Brad, all in a drunken stupor wearing women’s hats?

I remember how at your fraternity house, every time they’d have a party they’d have to play “Crockodile Rock” by Elton John once. And when they did, people made a ring around the dance floor (otherwise known as the living room), and your fraternity brothers would then proceed to do somersaults and other strange dances with each other. I’m glad this whole scene frightened you as much as it did me, because I remember how every time we heard the song we’d run into the basement where the kitchen was and hide until the song was over. Usually we’d find some potato chips or salad croutons to munch on, and we’d sit on the steel counter, amongst racks of generic white bread and bulk containers to tomato paste and talk.

I remember taking Dan out for his twenty-first birthday, this six-foot-five animal of a roommate of ours, and how he got so drunk that when he started to get violent in the bar you suggested that he “play with Carol” in order to entice him to leaving the bar. So we carried him through the bar until he broke free and fell right in front of the bouncers at the front door, and you tried to drag him outside, and then the five of us ended up carrying him blocks home, stopping occasionally from exhaustion and setting him in the dirt. When we got him in you suggested we write all over him, but me being the voice of reason suggested we only write all over his back, so in permanent markers you and Chad and Eric and Ray and I scribbled “I am a drunk moron!” and other intelligent remarks all over him. And you, you were smart enough to be gone when he finally woke up in the morning.

And you were on the phone with me saying that you just have to get used to the fact that you’re not going to grow old, have a family. That all you superiors tell you, wait till you get that promotion, and you know there is no waiting for the future, you won’t be around. People take for granted that they’re just going to be around.
You never did, of course, you were the one that was always making a point to cram as much living as you could in a day, but most people aren’t like that. Most people are never as alive as you.

I remember you and Sara standing on Green and Sixth waiting in line for the cash station when a cop walked up behind the two of you, and appeared to be in line. You asked, “Do you think the cop wants cash?”

I remember visiting you in New Hampshire, trying to decide where to go out to eat for lobster, til I decided on the mess hall at the base. So while you were at work your mom showed me a private room in the hall, with one elaborately set table for two, with china cabinets and a couch and roaring fireplace. I reserved it, went home and put on a black velvet dress and waited for you to get home from work. When you got back, I told your brother and sister to tell you that I changed our plans and I was in the bathroom. You started banging on the bathroom door, and when I opened it you were stunned. You were wearing a uniform that looked like a gas station attendant’s, and there I was, completely dressed up for a formal dinner.
Your sister took a picture of us in your hallway, you just after your shower and still in a bathrobe, and me in that dress.
And after dinner we went for a stroll outside, and you were holding my hand, and I remember thinking that I wanted you to kiss me. It’s funny how we both have thought about dating each other, but never found the right time.

I remember shopping with you on the East coast, going into a clothing store and watching you look for sweaters. You pulled out a pink patterned one, asked my opinion, and I shook my head no. “I’m not a pink person,” I said. You kept looking, so I pulled up a dark brown and black cardigan from the rack and held it up from a few feet away. You shook your head no and said loudly, “I’m not a black person,” loud enough for the black security guard to give you a funny look.

I think I want all of my friends to die after I do. I don’t think I can handle this. You’re not supposed to leave me, I’m the one that’s supposed to make the dramatic exit. Besides, whenever I get married, you’re supposed to stand up in the wedding. If you die before then, I swear, I’ll kill you.

I remember once our freshman year we were sitting in the cafeteria, I don’t remember if it was lunch or dinner, my roommate Lisa was there, and we were screwing around trying to be funny. Well, I got up and got a soft serve ice cream cone and acted like I was tripping as I got to the table, like I was going to drop the cone into your lap. Well, I didn’t, but the ice cream wasn’t securely anchored to the cone, and the next thing I know all my ice cream was right in the middle of your food.

I remember visiting you in New Hampshire, and one night we just watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off over and over again. We learned half the lines to the movie that night.
“I could be the walrus, and I’d still have to bum rides off of people.”
“Drugs?” “No, thank you, I’m straight.”
We’d always find something, a line from a movie or television show... Oh, and Heathers, we could probably recreate scenes from that movie, we’ve seen it so much.
“Thank you, Ms. Fleming, you call me when the shuttle lands.”
“Icklooga bullets, I’m such an idiot...”
“Great paté, but I gotta motor if I’m going to make it to the funeral on time.”
“Will somebody tell me why I smoke these damn things?” “’Cause you’re an idiot.” “Oh, yeah...” God, these quotes make sense to no one else, just us, just you and me. It was like we had our own language.

I remember when you came to Chicago to visit me, it was around Christmas time, and you finally saw the house I grew up in. The only thing you noticed was that all of the lamps in the house were hanging from chains.

You said that some people feel like they are on death’s door with a T-cell count of four hundred, and some people can run marathons with a T-cell count of zero. You tell me yours is at eighty, and you feel fine. A little run-down, but that is to be expected.
This scares me. I know I’m being selfish, I know that deep-down inside of you it has to scare you too, but you’re too strong to let it beat you. I don’t want you to feel a little run-down, I don’t want you to feel just fine. I want you to feel alive, more alive than anyone else. I want you to live forever.

I remember once when you took me to an Air Force dinner dance, and afterward I went with you to a party of mostly Air Force people. There were people there I knew, and we were out really late, and by three-thirty in the morning you and Chris walked me home. And we stood out on Fourth Street and talked for a while, and before we knew it you had fallen to the ground grabbing you knee, screaming. You knew how to pop your knee back in place, and granted, from what I understand having your knee pop out is really, really painful, but watching you there almost made Chris and I laugh. After you got it back in place you were just drunk and sad and still in pain and all I kept thinking was “Oh, please, he just needs some sleep,” and I just kept thinking, “Oh, we’re right in front of my apartment, please, it’s four in the morning, let me just go to bed,” but I stayed out there with you and Chris until you were ready to get up and make the long journey home.

I remember the Halloween party I held on Friday the thirteenth of October - your birthday. I put up pages from the Weekly World News about supernatural sightings, lit candles and pulled out the ouija board, then you came over, put on one of my hats, I gave you a carnation, and then we all went out for the night.

I remember when you and Jay and Ellen came over to welcome Blaine to Illinois. You got really drunk, fed Ellen my pound cake that my mother gave me, then proceeded to fall asleep in my chair, sitting sideways with your head in my open window sill. And yes, I have pictures, so you can’t deny any of this.

I remember going to C.O. Daniel’s with you on Friday afternoons with the other guys from the house and how we’d dress up in our Greek Sweatshirts to fit in... Well, you always fit in, that’s how you dressed, but I had to make an exception in my dress code for these weekly happy hours. And I remember how we were wallowing in our respective depression one friday afternoon, saying that nobody loves us and we’re ugly and we’ll grow up old and alone. Well, the vision I had of my future was that I would be an old maid living in an apartment with forty cats, periodically picking one up and asking “You love me, don’t you?”
Well, anyway, I remember how we made a pact that if the two of us were still alone by the time we were forty, we’d get married.

We made a pact. You can’t back out on me now.

by CHARLES CHAIM WAX

I loved the snow, but it had not snowed all winter in Brooklyn. I became inspired to experience snow on the high peaks of New Mexico during Easter Vacation. All the other teachers thought I was crazy to spend so much money on a whim.
I dialed information to get the number for Holiday Inn in Santa Fe. I wanted to make sure I had a room when I arrived. I didn’t feel like wandering around searching for a place to stay. I called the number and one ring later a woman picked up and said, “Holiday Inn. How may we help you?”
“Santa Fe, Holiday Inn?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like a room for tonight.” And then I quickly added, “I wanna use my Platinum Card to reserve the room.”
“Did you say ‘room’ or ‘suite’?”
“Uh, well, suite.”
“Balcony?”
“Yeah.”
“In room whirlpool?”
“Yeah.”
“Apple or IBM PC?”
“With modem and fax?”
“Of course.”
“Both.” Then I started to laugh to myself. I quickly covered the mouthpiece.
She asked, “Your name and Platinum number.” I told her my name and read off my Platinum number. “The room is yours, Mr. Bernstein, for as long as you wish.”
“Thanks. I should be arriving at the airport about 10:30 tomorrow tonight.”
“Do you wish a limo to be waiting for you?” I again began laughing and again quickly covered the mouthpiece. The image of some chauffeur holding up a big card with my name on it seemed unbelievable.
“No. I’m gonna need a car. I wanna see a bit of the territory.”
“And beautiful country it is, especially in the mountains, if you love the snow and the cold...”
“I do,” I gulped. “You got snow there, right?”
“Fourteen peaks over 10,000 feet. I should think so.”
“I was in Santa Fe in 1971, or 1976. I can’t remember.”
And this time it was her turn to laugh. I was somewhat offended because I thought she was laughing at the fact I couldn’t remember which year I had been there. But a moment later she said, “I’m sorry. But I wasn’t even born then.”
“ ‘71, or ‘76?”
“Both.”
I moaned, “I lived mosta my life before you was born. But...but...so that means you’re, lemme see...”
“Nineteen years old...”
“And you already manage a Holiday Inn.”
“I pick up the phone at night, Mr. Bernstein.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what I was thinkin’.”
“Oh, I’ve got a call. See ya.”
“Yeah.”

The next night I heaved the duffel bag over my shoulder and walked into the lobby. I went to the desk and said, “Mr. Bernstein.”
“Isabella Dunbar, the nineteen year old,” she laughed.
“I spoke to you on the phone.”
“I spoke to you on the phone,” she laughed. I noticed she laughed a lot, and her eyes sparkled whether she laughed or not. Well, she was nineteen. Why shouldn’t they sparkle?
Then, for some reason, I blurted out, “How much is the room?”
“Suite, I believe...”
“Yeah.”
“If you have to ask...” And again the laughter.
“No, of course not. That was a joke.”
“Don’t be silly. Four hundred and twenty dollars...before tax...” And then the laughter.
When she said the price a sharp pain pounded the top left part of my cranium. I was completely loony. What in the hell was I doing spending so much for a room. I’d be whirlpooling my way to the poor house. I tried to smile but merely babbled, “Very reasonable, for this time of the year, I mean, with the ski season and all.”
“I think you should bring your skis inside, don’t leave them on top of your car. Sad, so sad to say, we’ve had...thefts...”
“I don’t ski.” My answer sent her into hysterics. The energy of her laughter was so effervescent I couldn’t become angry but I was curious so I mumbled, “Was that funny?”
“We don’t usually get many non-skiers.” What did that mean? I could be on business. I could be an international trader in Indian Artifacts for all she knew. “So?” she asked.
“What?”
“Why?”
“Why am I here?”
“Yeah.”
“I just arrived from Hollywood. One of my stars got in a tiff with the director on this big budget picture. She flew off. You know how these temperamental prima donnas are. They don’t get their wayÑoff they fly.”
“Who?” she asked eagerly.
“Not at liberty to say, but she does have blonde hair...”
“Michelle Pheiffer?”
“She got blonde hair?”
“I think so.” I stared at Isabella. I began to laugh and laugh. She must have thought I was laughing at her because she said Michelle Pheiffer had blonde hair. She moaned, “I’m a small town girl...”
“With super-duper flair.”
“Really?”
“I’m in the business. I should know. What do you do?”
She stared at me a little funny and then said, “Answer phones.”
“Full time?” I blurted out, and then realized I shouldn’t have said that. “I mean, is that your career goal?” I expected her to say she was a painter, a potter, wrote poetry, or dropped from a hot air balloon to pirouette down steep slopes inaccessible to the ordinary skier, or, perhaps, even a therapist devising new cures for anomie.
“That’s a good question,” she said, and then the laughter returned. I was glad to hear it again. “I’m nineteen...”
“Nineteen,” I sighed.
“...and don’t know what I want to do. Should I know what I want to do?”
“No, not really...”
An old couple came to the desk. The guy looked ninety and the woman in her early fifties. He held a cane in his right hand. The woman held his left arm firmly. Isabella smiled at me and pushed the key in my direction. Then she turned her complete attention to the old couple.
I went to the elevator, took it to the third floor, and walked to my room, C-17. I put the key in the lock and opened the door. I turned to the right and saw the light switch. I turned it on. I suddenly got dizzy. I dropped my bag on the floor and wobbled to the bed. I flopped down and closed my eyes.
After a few minutes I opened my eyes. I saw the remote control on the small table to my right. I picked it up and turned on the TV. Some guy with a well coiffured synthetically colored blonde pompadour was preaching. He said, “Jesus Christ has the power to get everyone out of debt. Say, ‘My God is a debt canceling God.’ Most of you have known him as a Savior, but now you can know him as a Debt Canceling God. Remember debt cancellation is everyday business for the man of God. God wants to cancel your debt. Everyone of you can have the miracle of debt cancellation. I hold in my hand a letter from Frank Peene. He received the miracle of a $500,000 debt cancellation. His farm was saved. And Pearl Nulle. She received a debt cancellation of $300,248. Her Hair Emporium business was saved. John Duff, $630,117 debt cancellation. If the Lord can open a blind eye, He can cancel your debt. Sixth chapter of Kings, 2nd verse. ‘The iron did swim and the man of God did say, Take that iron and be free of your debt.’ Say it, ‘MY GOD IS A DEBT CANCELING GOD.’ Remember what God wants is for you to be a prosperous person. Say it again, ‘MY GOD IS A DEBT CANCELING GOD.’ Now I want to give you this book More And More absolutely free which is the blueprint for the miracle of debt cancellation. Ninety lessons are in here. You do one a day. They show you how to take those things out of your subconscious mind that are blocking the plans God has for you because a double minded man is unstable in all of his ways. You got to have your subconscious mind in line with your conscious mind. Now there’s a number on the screen, but we’re being inundated with hundreds and hundreds of calls every moment so all you Victory Viewers call now for your absolutely free book More And More...”
I immediately reached into my duffel bag and got my Waterman rollerball pen and copied the number in a frenzy. I only hoped I could get through. According to this guy I could somehow write off this whole crazy search for snow trip if I only believed ‘MY GOD IS A DEBT CANCELING GOD’ and got my hands on this book More And More to guide me to that miracle.
I dialed the desk. Isabella picked up. I said, “This is Mr. Bernstein. I really can’t chit-chat now. Please get me 1-900-345 6789.”
“Yes, sir,” she said meekly. I think she was shocked by my tone of voice, but I had to get through before the hundreds and hundreds of other Victory Viewers dialed the toll free number.
I heard a guy say, “Victory Viewer hotline, Brother Paul Bruns.”
“Yeah. I want or order the absolutely free book More And More I just seen on TV.”
“Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord. Now, Brother...”
“You want my name?”
“Yes, Brother.”
“Bernstein.”
“Bernstein?”
“Steve Bernstein.”
“Steve Bernstein?”
“Yeah.”
“Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord for your safe return. Is the Bible in your hand, Brother Bernstein?”
“Hold it a minute.” I turned and opened the draw of the small table to the right and took out a Gideon’s Bible. “I got it in my hands now.”
“Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord. Let us read together, Kings 6th chapter, 2nd verse...”
“You want me to read to you, or you goin’ to read to me?”
“Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, but I’ll carry the ball this time, Brother Bernstein.” He began to read. He must have read for fifteen minutes straight. He had a robust voice, but I was tired from all the adventures of the day.
I blurted out, “I think I wanna order the absolutely free book, More And More...”
“What’s that, Brother Bernstein?”
He was so busy reading he didn’t hear what I said. I repeated myself, “I wanna order the absolutely free book, More And More.”
“Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord. Say after me, ‘MY GOD IS A DEBT CANCELING GOD.’”
“I hope so,” I mumbled.
“What was that, Brother Bernstein?”
“I said I hope so cause I musta spent three, four grand on this trip, and I really wanna get that Platinum Card yoke off my neck with the miracle which the book is gonna tell me how to do like it done for Pearl Noodle and Johnny Fluff and the rest of them people who wrote letters...”
“Only through the man of God and faith in Him. Let us read together, Nehemiah...”
“Hold it...”
He was off again. Well, I was laying down. I closed my eyes and let him read, but I mean, this could take hours, days, if he got carried away and read the entire Bible. “Brother Buns...” No response. “BROTHER BUNS,” I screamed into the mouthpiece.
“Did you say something, Brother Bernstein?”
“I did, Brother Buns...”
“Bruns with an ‘r.’ Now I know that ‘r’ is a little wiggle of an ‘r’ so we must take hold of it like the Lord...”
“Brother Bruns, I wanna order the absolutely free book...”
“Praise the Lord. Say after me, ‘MY GOD IS A DEBT CANCELING GOD.’”
“Yeah. Take my name and address, please.”
“Yes, sir, Brother Bernstein. Credit card number?”
“What?”
“Credit card number...”
“Brother Slocum said on the TV the book was absolutely free...”
“And so it is. We’re talking ‘Shipping and Handling.’”
“How much?”
“Nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents.”
“It looked like a pamphlet...”
“Say, ‘MY GOD IS A DEBT CANCELING GOD.’”
“Can I pick it up in person? I really wanna read it, but then I wouldn’t have to pay the S&H.”
“Praise the Lord. All Pilgrims welcome. 2411 South Front Street, Mobile, Alabama.”
“I’m in Santa Fe.”
“The reach of the Lord is long indeed. Do you want me to continue reading from the Bible, Brother Bernstein, as you come to a decision?”
“This guy is fulla shit,” I mumbled to myself, and closed my eyes. I began to breath deeply. I reached and put the receiver on the phone. “What was that all about?” I chuckled loudly.
In the morning I stood and put the Waterman pen into my duffel bag. Since I hadn’t taken off my clothes I didn’t have to get dressed. I walked into the huge bathroom and looked at the whirlpool. I smiled.
I went to the lobby to sign my Platinum bill. Isabella wasn’t there. A middle aged guy with a grayish mustache and a pot belly stood behind the counter. He was smiling. “I trust you had a pleasant stay, Mr. Bernstein.”
“I did.” He pushed the bill to me. I glanced at it. I immediately said, “There must be some mistake. I’m readin’ $532. How much tax they got here in New Mexico cause Isabella said the room was $420.”
“Correct. Plus a phone bill of $126.”
“I didn’t call nobody.”
“You were on the phone for sixty-three minutes.” He pushed a sheet of paper to me.
“That was a toll free call for an absolutely free book, More And More...”
“A $1.99 a minute...”
“What?”
He sighed deeply, “The price was on the screen.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“Need a microscope,” he said, and then he began to laugh. It was the same kind of laugh as Isabella.
“What’s goin’ on here?”
“Call American Express and dispute the payment. Explain everything to them.”
“What scam is this I am bein’ hoodwinked by, my good fellow?” I roared.
“You have to pay the entire bill, but call American Express and dispute the portion from the phone call. He read the Bible to you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“After the first five minutes he knew you didn’t know it was a 900 number. That means a toll call, not a toll free call.”
“In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, they should do such a thing...I am truly shocked.”
He groaned deeply.
I signed the bill and asked, “Was that your daughter last night cause you laugh like her?”
“Yes. She said you were a big shot Hollywood producer. Get your fancy lawyers on those bastards. Put ‘em out of business.”
“I intend to do that, first thing when I get back. But now I’m lookin’ for...”
“Julia Roberts?” he whispered.
I sighed, “Sorry, I can’t.” He nodded, and smiled a knowing smile.

by Bruce Genaro

I sit behind the wheel of the convertible, silent, focusing on my driving while Sarah plays with the radio knob. Pop, rock, news, classical. Finally she lands on a popular station that plays songs from the 50’s and 60’s. Buddy Holly and the Crickets are singing “That’ll be the day” and Sarah cranks it up full volume, singing along, her bare feet up on the dash board, her hands slapping her knees in rhythm. Sarah’s usually soft voice is belting out “Yeah that’ll be the day-ay-ay when I die.” I glance sideways at her with a quizzical (O.K., snide) look, hoping she doesn’t see it but she does.
“Don’t give me that look” she says.
“What look?” I reply, “and don’t give me that attitude!”
“That condescending look and I’m not giving you attitude,” she says as she pulls a magazine from her satchel on the floor and starts flipping through it in that way that she has to let me know that she is irritated but is not about to discuss it. Sarah is all too quick to give the silent treatment, to shut down and pull a Laura Petrie “Well if you don’t know, I’m certainly not going to tell you!” So of course I have to drag it out of her which is exactly what she wants. “It wasn’t a condescending look it was a quizzical look.” I say this in a desperate attempt to lessen the fury I know is brewing behind her pale green eyes. Eyes that seem so soft and inviting that I am usually taken by surprise when she throws one of her (all too frequent these days) tantrums. “I was just surprised that on this beautiful sunny day as we’re headed to the park for a leisurely picnic lunch, you chose Holly over Mahler.”
“Depth and range, that’s what you lack Mitch, depth and range.” Ouch! We drive for the next ten minutes in silence, because rather than lower the volume or concede and change to a classical station, she turns the radio off with a dramatic flick of the wrist. She sits there quietly, nervously playing with a gold crucifix that hangs from a chain around her neck. Her other hand and her mouth are actively involved in some enterprise that involves the ends of her hair and a rhythmic movement of her head.
My silence isn’t sulking, just thinking. I had planned this picnic in the park to break off our engagement, something I had been trying to do for weeks. It would have been easier if we were not in the throes of making arrangements; if the wedding weren’t just a couple of months away. With everything that was going on, I could never find just the right moment. Or if I found the right moment I couldn’t find the courage. The idea of being in the country I thought, some classical music playing, a basket of gourmet food, the peaceful serenity of the lake, would somehow civilize the whole thing. We could discuss it like mature, rational adults, slicing up Brie and pate instead of each other. And here she was turning into a teenager on me, and turning into a hostile, temperamental one at that. Lately her fuse had gone from short to none. An only child raised by a devout Catholic mother and an authoritarian father, she learned to steam roll her way through life, knowing exactly when to employ guilt and when to use intimidation to get exactly what she wanted. She often lacked the ability to see both sides of an issue. But, as any good Army Reserve sergeant will tell you, it’s the skirmishes that make all the training worth while. I may not have depth and range but I know a little about detente. I gently take her hand in mine. “I’m sorry,” I say, as I press her palm to my lips. She leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “Me too.” We make it to the park without further incident.
The blades of clean green grass tickle my toes as I stroll down to the waters edge. I kneel down, my eyes scanning the few rocks on the all but barren shoreline to find the smoothest, flattest one for skipping. I find one that is close to perfect. A small nib on one corner might affect the balance of weight slightly, but otherwise it’s ideal. I stand up straight, draw back my arm as far as possible, bend my knees a bit, hand just above the shoulder, swing it forward and with a snap of the wrist, the small stone leaves my palm and goes sailing across the water. Nine, ten, eleven. Eleven circles in the water, each getting larger, each overlapping the other, like wet sound waves, before it disappears beneath the surface.
I stroll back to the blanket where Sarah is sitting, sipping white wine from a plastic tumbler. She looks so lovely and relaxed in the afternoon sun. She is wearing an outfit similar to the one she had on the first day we met and for a moment I falter and question if I’m doing the right thing. “What talent!” She giggles as I approach. “I’d pour you some wine, but you’re obviously in training.” I sit down on the blanket and pour my own glass of Chardonnay from the half empty bottle. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss the benefits of rock skimming my dear. It takes great skill and concentration. You have to find just the right projectile. Then one has to assess the perfect height to throw from based on the weight of the stone. And then there’s the problem of currents and wind factor to take into consideration. All in all, not quite as simple or mundane as one might think.” “And this little ‘sport,’” she says sarcastically (making little quotation marks with the first two fingers of each hand) “gives you some sense of satisfaction? Of accomplishment?”
“Dear Sarah, I thought you of all people with your yoga classes and your Buddhist friends would see that it is not a sport at all but rather a form of meditation.”
“So did your mother tell you about her ideas for the reception?” she says, changing the subject to our impending wedding in a successful attempt to annoy me. “Now there is a person who should learn how to meditate,” I say, tearing off a piece of a baguette and smearing it with Brie. “I think the band she’s chosen is going to be perfect,” Sarah continues brightly. How does she do that? Go on with her own agenda, as if my part of the conversation makes no difference. I pinch my arm in a mocking fashion but the inference is lost on her. At times having a conversation with Sarah is like talking to one of those stuffed childrens’ toys with the prerecorded messages where you’re forced into answering a set series of questions. This does however jar me back to reality and makes me realize that I am just stalling the inevitable.
I want to tell her how I feel but I always get sidetracked. I had meant to tell my mother the truth as well, to prevent her from making all of those unnecessary arrangements, but they seem to be made from the same mold, barreling through life like a tornado, pulling up trees, houses and trailer parks, leaving in their wake destruction while they pick up force and speed. It has always amazed me how they can be so oblivious to their surroundings, to other peoples’ feelings. Women and mothers were supposed to be nurturing and comforting. Is it years of oppression and feminism that has caused this shift in all women or do I just subconsciously attract and encourage this type of aggression? Granted, I like a challenge as much as the next fellow, but I don’t like it all the time. I appreciate - like, in fact - strong women, but not ones who feel they have to prove their strength. I get enough of that crap in the reserves and on poker nights with my old frat brothers. I look across the blanket at Sarah and wonder how someone so pretty, feminine and kind can also be so castrating and self absorbed.
It’s knowing where to start that’s the problem. What do I say? I’ve something to tell you? We need to talk? There’s something we need to discuss! It’s silly really, to fret about it I mean. No matter how it’s approached the end result will be the same. I like to think that I’m worried about hurting her feelings, which I am, but the real reason for the hesitation is that I want everybody to like me. I spent my formative years silently apologizing to people for my mother’s aggressive and often combative ways and have never quite freed myself from the role of diplomat. Suddenly I blurt out (mumble really as I still have a mouth full of bread and cheese) “Why do you want to marry me?” I don’t know why I ask this. Perhaps I hope she won’t have a good reason and I can suggest that maybe we should postpone the wedding for a few months till she’s sure this is what she really wants. Instead, she answers without hesitation “Because I love you silly!” And then she makes the mistake of asking me why I want to marry her. “I don’t,” I say with little or no emotion in my voice. I saw an opening and I took it. Silence. I want to explain, to soften the blow, to keep talking, rationalizing, as if that might soften a bad reaction. But having said it, I become mute while waiting for the counter-attack. She brings the glass to her lips and takes a sip of wine while she tries to calculate if I’m joking or not. She puts the wine glass down on the blanket, folds her hands and places them in her lap. She looks me straight in the eyes and says, also with little or no emotion, “You’re not kidding are you?”
“I wish I were.”
“Is there someone else?”
“No.”
“Is it that you don’t love me or that you’re just don’t want to get married?”
“I don’t know. I mean I know that I don’t want to get married, but I don’t know if I love you. I know I did, I just don’t know if I do.”
She takes another sip of wine before saying, “So where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know really. I just know that if we went ahead with this wedding we’d be making a terrible mistake. I’m not afraid of commitment Sarah, I’m just afraid of making a mistake, of hurting you.”
“So you’d rather hurt me now than later. That’s a cop out Mitch. You should know by now that I can handle anything except being patronized.”
I shake my head and break into a nervous smile. “Look, this is no picnic for me either, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
She doesn’t. She glares at me. “O.K. Mitch, no bullshit. What’s the real reason you don’t want to get married?”
“It’s not as simple as that. I didn’t wake up one morning with a list of reasons why we shouldn’t get married. There’s no definitive answer. It just feels wrong.”
“And how long have you felt this way? Maybe it’s just cold feet. Perhaps we should talk to a counselor.”
“I’m not against doing that, but I don’t think that’s the answer. You’ve changed Sarah. We’ve both changed. But right after we got engaged you seemed to became another person. Maybe it’s the time you’ve spent with my mother making all the arrangements. Maybe it’s parts of your personality I overlooked until I thought of making a life-long commitment to you. And maybe I’m just the spoiled brat that that Gestapo of a mother always said I was. It’s not anyone’s fault. I’ve changed too. What ever it is it just isn’t right between us anymore.”
Sarah looks at me for a moment, her eyes glazed over as if there’s no thought behind them, then turns her head and looks off across the lake. We are not alone in this park but it feels as if we are. Sarah’s eyes seem to linger on a family of four, a father and his son playing Frisbee, a Golden Retriever jumping up to intercept. She watches them as if in their solidarity they have all of the answers to life. I fix my gaze on a group of six playing volleyball, marveling at the way they volley and serve, in-tune with each others movements, as if each can read their team-mates minds. They are independent and yet a team. Watching them rotate and set up a serve, it’s clear that they have the advantage of playing a game that has rules, roles and boundaries. If only life were that simple. We sit there like this in silence for a few minutes that feels like a few hours until she says, definitively, “Take me home!” “We haven’t really discussed this yet,” I counter, hoping to soften the blow I feel is yet to come. Sarah gets up onto her knees and starts busying herself packing up the picnic basket. She looks at me and makes a conscious effort to keep her bottom lip from quivering. “I’ve heard all I care to hear. Take me home.”
Sarah walks back to the car alone leaving me to gather the remains of the picnic and my life. When I reach the car, she is sitting in the passengers seat, arms crossed over her chest so tightly I’m afraid she’s going to cut off her circulation. Her shoulder is butted up against the door and she’s looking straight ahead through the windshield, her eyes glazed over as if she’s in some drug induced trance. I put the basket in the trunk and take my place in the driver’s seat. I sit there for a moment, just quietly looking at her. When I realize that she’s invested too much in her anger to talk to me, I start the car and begin backing out of the parking lot. Her silent treatment makes me furious. To relieve some of my own tension I press the gas pedal to the floor. Tires screeching, dust flying everywhere, I just miss backing into someone’s brand new Range Rover. When I slam on the brakes the car stalls and it takes three tries before I get it going again.
Out on the open road, I try one more time to come to some sort of resolution. I fear if I drop her off at her apartment it will be weeks before she answers the phone or consents to talk to me. “Sarah, at the risk of having you bite my head off, these tantrums you throw and this refusal to communicate when your angry is one of the reasons I think we should call off the wedding. What kind of marriage would we have if we couldn’t talk about things?” Suddenly she starts to cry. Not sniffling and wet eyes, but convulsive sobbing. Her body is shaking, tears are streaming down her face and a wail is coming from somewhere deep inside of her. I pull the car off onto the shoulder, turn off the ignition and wrap my arms around her. I am surprised and glad that she doesn’t resist. Neither of us say anything. The odd thing is that I know that this has little or nothing to do with what just happened. The kind of emotion she is releasing is something that has been stored up for years if not lifetimes. We are all just walking around stumbling through life waiting for something to trigger us so that we can let go and release the pain that has been built up by horrible parents, bad luck or past lives and lots of negative karma.
She composes herself just long enough to say, “I don’t blame you. I can’t even stand to be around me these days. I feel so out of control. Work’s got me crazy, I’m not going to make partner this year, I’m ready to strangle your mother and yesterday I found a small lump in my breast. And now you tell me something I’ve been suspecting if not fearing for months.” I give her this panicked look when she mentions the lump thing, but she just puts up her hand, palm straight up and shakes her head as if to say it’s nothing and even if it is she can handle it. Surprisingly, she continues. “I feel like I haven’t stopped moving forward since I was six. Wanting to please my father and afraid of ending up like my mother living in his shadow. At some point, I just started going after the things I thought I was supposed to want, never stopping to consider if I really wanted them. I envy your courage to do what you did today. I know it was hard. That’s one of the things I love about you. You know what you want and you arrange your life accordingly. The sad thing for me is, and don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m more afraid of failing at something than I am of losing you. I’ve had doubts about what we were doing, but I never stopped to look at it on an emotional level.” She buries her head in my chest as the tears continue to flow. I kiss the top of her head and stroke her long blond hair.
I am amazed and touched that she has finally let me see this vulnerable side to her. This is unfamiliar territory for me and I fight against saying such trite things as “There, there” and “Everything will be fine.” I am cautious against falsely reassuring her. Cars that pass us on the freeway are slowing down to get a better look at what’s going on in the blue Mustang on the side of the road. The heads of passengers turn to watch us, their little faces getting smaller and smaller as they carry their speculation about what they’ve just seen into the future. They watch because they are glad it’s not them and yet fearful that whatever dreadful fate has befallen us might be waiting for them around the next corner. The difference between “us” and “them” is always closer than we realize. We all spend so much of our time trying to avoid pain that in the process we don’t notice that we also stop feeling pleasure. Sarah wipes her eyes dry, straightens up in her seat and says that she’s O.K., that I should take her home. There is a calmness about her and a softness that’s been absent for months. As I put the car into gear and pull back out into traffic, I glance over to make sure her seatbelt is fastened. She sees me do this, gives me a faint smile, rests her head on my shoulder and I think, “now this is someone I could fall in love with.”

by David McKenna

Lesley startles Roger at lunch by declaring, “If Bob were human, I’d date him.”
“Some guys say the same about you,” Roger says through a mouthful of crabcake.
She licks hot sauce from a fat french fry. “What do you say?”
He swallows. “I say hurry up and eat. There’s a storm coming.”
From their table they can see the highway and, beyond it, a soybean field stretching to a horizon of dark clouds. Roger wolfs down sweet potato souffle and fresh buttered corn. Lesley’s hamburger is untouched, her fries piled high.
“Watch me, it’s easy,” he says, swabbing his plate with a buttermilk biscuit. With the way she’s staring, he could be gnawing a hunk of raw liver or gobbling chocolate-covered ants.
He positions the biscuit between thumb and ring finger, with pinky extended. “Miss Manners would hold it like this.”
Lesley pushes her plate to one side. “Did Miss Manners lecture at the county jail?”
His morose good looks and droll baritone used to amuse her, or so it seemed. She’s been miffed all day, since he scolded her for buying a hundred-dollar leash in Philadelphia. Maybe if he were a dog she’d think more of him. It’s disquieting, her glee when Bob licks his bowl.
Roger does such a thorough job with the biscuit, his plate is almost clean.
She frowns in mock disgust. “If it tastes that good, it must be bad for you.”
He shrugs. “So is sunshine and seawater.”
Clouds surge like crude oil on a clear lake. The sunlight is milky and dimming fast. He barely feels it on his drab brown hair. Lesley’s sun-bleached curls and honey-gold skin brighten. She looks lit from within. Their waitress, a well-fed brunette, drifts toward them like an abandoned ship. She wants to hear Lesley’s beauty secrets.
Lesley sighs. “I’m poor, I’m depressed, I eat.”
“I’d kill for those cheekbones,” the waitress drawls.
“They’re holding up the entire rest of my body.”
Lesley is built like a runway model: long limbs, small breasts, straight back. Nothing awkward or inelegant. A long, strong nose and sulky lower lip. She doesn’t blink. Her high-voltage smile is an act of will, not warmth. On their first date, when she invited him to her April Fool’s party, there was no chance he’d say no. He felt glad all over at the light in her eyes, like a druggie with a nickel bag and new needle.
“Those are so pretty,” the waitress says of Lesley’s amber ice cube earrings.
“Thank you. A gift from Donald Trump.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am,” Lesley says. “They cost two dollars at a flea market in Phiadelphia. You really like ‘em?”
Roger frowns. It’s tiresome, her feigned insecurity and casual arrogance. At work she brags of his finesse and stamina, but those are trifles. Her beauty demands gestures of homage. If he loves her, he’ll drive her to Philly at dawn. He’ll accept Bob, to prove there’s more to his ardor than appetite. He’ll learn to live with dog hairs on his clothes and waking to Bob’s tail in his face. To the smell of moldy dog.
A sudden gust rattles the windows. Startled diners look outside, as if expecting the wind to take shape. He picks up the check and watches heads turn as Lesley glides to the exit in a white cotton chemise that accents the casual grace of her stride. A clap of thunder greets her as she bolts into the tentative rain.
He catches up in the parking lot. Raindrops drum against the cars at an accelerating rate. They’re soaked before he finds the key. Thunder rolls across the bean field to meet a white flash in a grove on the far side of the lot. The sky explodes with a great ripping sound and a deep boom. They face each other, startled and gaping. Her eyes are electric gray. He reaches to touch her face.
“The door,” she shouts, pushing his arm. “Open the goddamn door!”
Sheets of rain batter the Honda as they head east. A blackjack/cocaine dealer gave her the car in the spring, when a shore flood ruined the antique Mustang she got from her pit boss. She’s since dumped the dealer and burned out the original clutch. Roger wants to teach her to master the stick shift, but the storm has unnerved her.
“I don’t care if you have a death wish,” she grumbles. “Just don’t get me killed.”
“This car smells like dog,” he says, ignoring her tone. “It’s worse now that we’re wet.”
“Enough about my dog,” she snaps. “What does dog smell like, anyway?”
“Wet clothes on a radiator in a homeless shelter.”
“I guess you’d know, you eat like a street person. Or an ex-con.”
He’s sorry he mentioned the bad old days, before he got paroled on the drug rap and went to dealers’ school. What came over him? He took Lesley back all the way, to the funky streets of Fishtown and the boarding house when his mother abandoned him to a well-sedated aunt in order to stalk her true love, a tattooed stuntman on the West Coast. He remembers Lesley yawning. She’s not the ideal confidante, nor much of a road partner. It’s always too hot or too wet or too far from a good bar with a clean bathroom. There are too many cars, too few quality people, too many reminders of how boring it is to be anything but wealthy.
It could be worse. She might have brought Bob instead of trusting him to the care of her bookish friend Amy. Fortunately, she scared herself last week at the mall by leaving the ratty terrier sealed in the car in 90-degree heat. A vet labored for an hour to revive him, and Lesley vowed to never again expose Bob to such abuse.
The harder the rain, the faster Roger drives. He imagines himself submerged in a bathosphere or stuck in the splendid isolation of an automated carwash. A pathetic fantasy; two hours of solitude and he’d be phoning Lesley, or planning to ambush her when she clocked out. The beachfront casino with the tacky minarets would be a bleak place to work without her, though he shouldn’t have told her that.
“How can you see where you’re going?” she says nervously.
He leaves one finger on the wheel and shrugs. “I can’t. I’m counting on my Higher Power.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Roger, or you can pull over right now.”
“Say when, baby. I’ll put you out to pasture.”
The rainfall is so heavy he can barely hear her cursing him. It rolls over them in great white waves, then abruptly gives way to a dry road and sunshine on a sparkling windshield. It’s as if they just left a movie set.
“We drove right through it,” he says. “Happy now?”
“I need to stop for gum,” she commands. “My breath is disgusting.”
“Your breath is sweet. It’s your mind that’s foul.”
She keeps a bottle of mouthwash at her waitress station and uses it on breaks. Her apartment is crammed with cleansers, enough to stock a small dormitory. She retreats to the bathroom for long periods after sex, leaving Roger to fend off Bob and nurse a nebulous dread. Making love to her seems a defilement, a debased form of appreciation, even when she appears to enjoy it.
He waits outside the car in the Wawa parking lot, trying to figure where Bob fits in. Surely she could find a tidier way to torment him. Near his feet, ants circle a discarded bag of spiced nuts. A lone ant tries to carry off a nut fragment. The rest, he guesses, keep their distance because the meal is too hot.
The passenger door slams. Lesley exhales loudly. Her glamorously tangled hair and cotton dress are still wet. She looks like a starlet playing a shipwreck survivor. He remembers her dream of heading west to do screen tests.
“They don’t bury their dead in New Jersey,” she says, unwrapping a stick of sugarless gum. “They put them to work at Wawa.”
Last night a high roller with pinky rings on both pudgy hands tossed her a $500 chip, which she’s converted into earrings, two meals, a new leash, a $27 tube of lipstick and a $250 linen suit for Roger, to pressure him into trying for a supervisor’s job. She’s determined to spend what’s left before they drive to her place, just across the bay from the casinos.
“Don’t take the bridge exit,” she says, popping her gum. “Let’s have some drinks.”
They speed past fast food joints and a billboard promise from the casino that employs them: ONE CARD CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE. The garish logos of the gaming halls glow in the distance. Now it’s Roger who’s annoyed.
“I see enough of this crummy town on work days.”
She pinches his cheek. “Don’t be a party pooper.”
“Bob will be pissed,” he cautions.
“Amy’s there,” she reminds him. “Besides, I’ll make it up to him.”
They barrel off the expressway into immediate heavy traffic. Atlantic City is seagulls and smog, solitary buildings, a succession of black-topped parking lots. Roger refuses to drink where they work, or in the other casinos, which stand in a row along the shore. He makes a sharp turn near the Inlet, narrowly missing a doubledecker bus and a black cyclist with a boombox on his head. Up ahead is the boardwalk, a sliver of beach, a few stumbling vagrants.
“Let’s play chicken,” he says. The car lurches onto a lot, narrowly missing a trio of bow-tied slot machine attendants who curse and wave, then resume their sluggish trek to the Taj Mahal.
Then, alluding to her most recent flirtation, “How many points for a bisexual roulette dealer?”
“You hit someone, Roger, I don’t bail you out.”
They bicker about bars and settle on a popular dive on South Carolina Avenue called the Last Resort. The off-duty casino workers at the bar, in rumpled black and white, look like guests at the tail end of a rowdy reception. Roger gulps a whiskey and soda and orders another. Two months of loving Lesley have nearly worn him out. His tough-guy veneer agrees with her, so long as she gets her way most times. It’s like walking a high wire without a net. Sooner or later he’ll crash in a broken heap.
“Don’t sulk, you look like a monk,” she says.
“I’m commiserating with myself. That guy is sulking.”
Sitting across the crowded circular bar is a large black man with a shaved head, wearing dark glasses and a T-shirt that says: CONGRESS STAY OUT OF MY VAGINA.
Lesley signals the bartender. “Give Mr. Vagina another Coirvoisier and Coke.”
The black man intones the word “Martel” without smiling. Roger recognizes him as a craps/cocaine dealer who works graveyard at the Avalon.
“Would you mess with that man’s reproductive rights?” she says as her own glass is refilled.
Roger crosses two fingers and shakes them at her. “I’d have his tubes tied.”
All eyes are on her, as they would be on a fire raging next to Roger.
“It’s no joke,” she says, suddenly somber. “Women lead such dirty lives. We stand up and there’s stuff leaking out of us, or we’re cleaning up somebody else’s stuff.”
“You mean Bob’s.”
She asks him to play “Everything Is Beautiful” after he tells her it was a favorite of a serial killer in Philly who used loud music to drown out the screams of victims chained to his basement wall.
“Didn’t this guy have any neighbors?” Lesley asks.
“Your victims are much better behaved,” he says, ignoring the question, strolling to the jukebox.
Returning, he sees her crying in her Kahlua. Other men are drifting closer and eyeing each other like tomcats. The Vagina Man is saying, “Can I help you with something, honey?”
“Her dog,” Roger says, resuming his seat. “He has a skin disease and needs a full-time nurse.”
It’s getting to be a regular thing, the partying and then the tears and the maudlin remarks about growing up an only child in a trailer park, which means she must have been in roughly the same income bracket he was, though she has an amazing talent for making him feel like a street urchin in the presence of a princess.
Now she’s going on about her stepfather - his name, oddly, was Bob - who died three years ago, right after she moved to the shore and landed a casino job. “Bob was always there, no matter how badly I screwed up. A skinny little guy, sickly even, but the smartest and kindest man I ever knew. He told me I was beautiful, and made me believe it. I should have been more grateful.”
Roger thinks that one over, stroking her thigh and fingering the square patch of scar tissue where her knee was dented in a teenage motorcycle crash. Another contradiction, her fascination with outlaw bikers, but one she refuses to discuss. Sometimes when they make love he kisses the scar, grateful to it for humanizing her perfection.
“Wait a minute,” he says. “Your stepfather’s name was Bob too?”
“Bob One,” she says through her tears.
He shakes his glass and examines the ice, in the manner of a witch doctor rolling the bones. “You named your dog in your stepfather’s honor. Is that what you mean?”
“That little fellow is totally dependent on me, totally forgiving. He demands nothing.”
Roger says, “Shit. Only because he can’t.”
She blows her nose on a bar napkin and dabs her faraway eyes. “Honestly, I have to tell you, Bob is the perfect being.”
Roger is stumped. “Bob One or Bob Two?”
“Both.”
The Vagina Man, back on his stool, mouthes the words to “Achy Breaky Heart” and salutes Lesley with his glass. She taps the bar with her cocktail straw and studies the jukebox, which has a glass case with three decorative CDs rotating slowly in bright light. The smile on her closed lips is proud. She could be a cheerleader thrilling to the national anthem.
Roger glares. “This Bob thing is giving me indigestion.”
“Bob Two is the reincarnation of my stepfather,” she explains brightly. “Have you looked into his eyes? Can’t you see the intelligence?”
She pushes her hair behind her right ear, resting her elbow on the bar and her cheek on the heel of her hand. She tilts her head downward with brows arched and eyes turned upward. Her ice cube earring flashes in the bar light. He can’t tell if she’s vamping or trying to demonstrate Bob’s facial expression.
“Intelligence is a trait I don’t associate with dogs, or most people,” he says.
“Bob isn’t most people.”
Her mood sours again on the road home. She reproaches herself for the locked car incident and other crimes against Bob. She wonders aloud if subconscious malice is a factor.
“I feel so guilty,” she says, slapping the dashboard. “I never put my arms around him and said ‘I love you, Bob.’ “
“Bob Two?”
“Bob One. And why don’t I like oral sex? Maybe I’m repressing a terrible childhood memory.”
“Is it a memory if you can’t remember?”
“It’s repression,” she says, clearly annoyed. “Don’t confuse the issue.”
The bridge comes into view. Lesley’s staring out the window at the moon hanging over the bay. Roger vows to look straight ahead and say no more.
“So,” he says as they reach the bridge. “You’re inhumane to Bob Two because of repressed anger at Bob One.”
She rolls down her window and sighs. “Fuck you, Roger. You’re a great one to psychoanalyze.”
Her apartment is dark, a bad sign. Amy was supposed to drop in twice to attend to Bob, and leave on the lights, as he gets scared at night.
“It’s hard to believe,” Lesley says, rushing past Roger with her bagful of purchases from Philly. “It’s like I keep having the same bad dream.”
Lesley, it turns out, forgot to inform Amy that she and Roger pushed up their day trip from Thursday to Wednesday after she lucked into the $500 tip. Roger pictures Amy lounging on the beach with a romance novel while Bob was home alone, growling for Gravy Train or a drop of canned soup, Lesley’s specialty.
He follows Lesley up wooden stairs to the bayside entrance. Bob yips and leaps at her as she gropes for the kitchen light. His food and water bowls are empty. Puddles and piles of excrement foul the white tile floor.
“This apartment smells like dog.”
“It’s not funny,” she snaps, grabbing a can of Chicken and Stars from a cupboard. “Here, open this.”
He cuts through the top with a can opener, the kind with one metal tooth and a little sprocketed wheel. She dumps the soup into a bowl, places it in the microwave, sets the timer for three minutes.
“Look what mommy bought,” she says, dangling a rhinestone-studded leash.
Bob clearly has more urgent needs. He leaps at Lesley, scoring her slender brown calves with thin red wounds.
“Again,” she says, stamping her foot.
The dog’s legs are bony and bent, with long nails that click frantically on the tile. His brown fur is drab as an old throw rug, with pinkish bald spots where he gnaws himself.
She throws the leash. “I did it again.”
The microwave hums. She bites the knuckle of her curled index finger, as if to stifle a scream. He pictures her on TV as a reckless suburban girl who runs off with a biker gang and gets more than she bargained for.
“I take him to the vet and forget his medicine,” she says. “I take him shopping and almost suffocate him. I go away and forget to feed him. I blame myself.”
The microwave beeps. She removes the steaming bowl and places it on the floor. Bob leaps at it, yips and backs away. He repeats the sequence several times, as if practicing a grotesque trick. He yips more loudly with each failed attempt to ingest the scalding soup.
Roger picks up an empty bowl, fills it with water, places it next to the soup. Bob splashes half the water onto the floor and quickly drinks the rest, then retches like an old drunk. He attacks the soup again, this time with more success, after Roger dilutes it with cold water. When the bowl is empty, Bob continues licking it.
“Yes, I can see his intelligence now,” Roger says, crouching to eye Bob at his own level.
“You think I’m silly,” Lesley says.
Bob growls and shows his tiny yellow teeth. Roger glares. “His kindness too.”
She grins. His sarcasm obviously amuses her. He’s on the floor, after all, waiting on her dog.
Roger crawls to embrace her from a kneeling position. He slides his hands up the back of her bare thighs and pushes his face against her belly, which is rumbling like a thunderhead.
“You smell good.”
She wriggles free, eyes flashing. “Don’t be disgusting, I need to bathe.”
She steps around him and disappears from the kitchen. Bob dashes after her into the bathroom, before Roger can punch him. The bathroom door slams.
All Roger smells now is dog. The stench annoys him; he can only imagine Lesley’s revulsion. The bathwater is running, Bob yips. It’s a dog’s life, but all is well. Roger checks the cabinet under the sink, to make sure Lesley has everything. Paper towels and a dustpan, a big can of room deodorizer. He’ll fill a bucket and mop up, but not before she finishes her shower.
He picks up the new leash, careful not to step in any messes. When they reappear, he’ll take Bob for his walk. A practice walk, the first of many. He’ll pat Bob on the head instead of just yanking him around. Think about the new places they’ll explore. Out by the bay, past the bridge. Here, little father, fetch the stick. When the marsh sucks him up, Lesley will be angry, but in the end she’ll blame herself.

by Lois Ann Morrison

When you first told me, I felt as if my whole body exsanguinated. There was a loud ringing in my ears and I seemed distant, far away.
“I have a big mass in my lung,” you said.
I sat down, immediately weakened and numb, trying to assimilate your words. “No!” I protested to myself. “You’re only forty-seven years old. All you have is pneumonia and you’re better now after taking the antibiotics. Soon you’ll be all right, just fine.” But I knew the implication.
“Did they tell you anything else?” This was all I could say, my voice strained and fearful.
“They say I have an obstructive pneumonia caused by the mass.” You were in control but your voice was as fearful as mine.
I came to you then, took hold of your hand, your arm, and wrapped myself around you. We cried together, softly, a gentle mixing of our tears. We didn’t know anything for certain yet, nothing was confirmed and nobody, including ourselves, had mentioned the “C” word. It was fear that made us cry.
But a biopsy confirmed it was cancer and our fear was made real. You were scheduled for surgery, a thoracotomy to remove the mass, a lobe and possibly the entire right lung. Looking back now, I find this time the most difficult to accept - your surgery and its recovery period, our futile interference with the inevitable disease process. Your pain, physical, mental and emotional, our separation during your hospitalization, these things were agonizing to both of us and gave this time an aura of estranged unreality. Thank God you never had to be hospitalized again. Together at home we gathered the strength to recuperate and face the ordeal which lay before us.
Your surgery was a success though, the tumor was excised with clear margins and the surgeon only had to remove your right upper lobe. You recovered well at home, regaining much of your previous strength. They recommended a course of radiation to your mid-chest nodes which you followed with relatively minor side effects. During this time we held on to a false hope, even knowing the statistics were against us. This was our form of denial, a defense mechanism we’d been perfecting. But the fear still hovered menacingly around every corner of time, waiting to jump us with the ultimate bad news.
I remember vividly one afternoon you sitting in your recliner, shaky and tearful after hearing new dismal statistics. “I’m so frightened,” you said. It was brave of you to admit this openly. “I don’t know where it’s going to hit next.” I wanted so badly to take away that fear but I was frightened too.
There was no more denial when you started having severe back pain and a bone scan revealed the cancer had spread to your bones. I remember that devastating phone call.
“The bone scan is positive in Michael’s spine and left humerus,” the oncologist said. “You need to come in so we can talk about the future.”
It was the final blow. There was no future. You had three to six months to live. We clung to each other desperately then with open hearts. We cried for days, holding and touching, taking comfort in each others presence. We’d hit bottom now, with no more bad news they could give us. And curiously, that menacing fear dissipated, that fear of the unknown. We were now certain what lay before us though not of the details.
There is more than one way to beat cancer. For you and me, it was by not letting it defeat our spirit. This didn’t mean there was no heartache or tears, there was plenty, but together we faced the cancer squarely and endured the pain, emotional and physical. The experience, fierce and horrible as it was, confirmed and strengthened our love; it didn’t break it. Because we did not run from it and the cancer did not destroy our love or spirit, we were winners.
You did not give up or let go prematurely. This was your way. We spent more quiet and reflective time together, going for walks, taking day trips to Mt. Lassen and Burney Falls, and we had another Christmas together. We even made one more trip to Mexico where we’d been vacationing every winter. But mostly we reminisced and talked, talked about us, talked about your death and dying, and talked about what I would do afterwards. This comforted you, to hear my plans. You offered suggestions and helped me prepare. You had a need to feel a part of my future and I had a need for your involvement. You gave me courage to continue on and an unspoken permission to begin a new life. It’s true, we frequently cried together freely and openly, but we also still found time to laugh together and moments of fun to share.
It was after our trip to Mexico that you started to look ill, like you had cancer. You began to lose weight and your color became pale. Your attention span decreased and you fell asleep frequently, often slipping into what you called the “red zone”, a dreamlike state in which you spoke nonsensically.
Your bone pain increased. You showed too much stoicism I believe and endured more physical pain than was necessary. But you did have a couple short courses of radiation, to shrink the bone tumors, which eased the pain and you started taking morphine continuously into your subcutaneous tissue via a battery-operated pump. The only treatment you accepted was pain relief. This was also your way, no oxygen, no blood transfusions, no forcing of food or fluids. You would die as naturally as you could. There were no more tests, even to confirm the further spread of the cancer. It wasn’t necessary. Your appearance and physical decline were evidence enough and in short time I could see and feel the enlarged liver in your abdomen.
The last thing people can do for someone they love is to care for and comfort that person as he or she passes from this life. I was honored to do this for you, Michael. Your dying and death did not repulse me but drew me closer to you. I know it wasn’t easy, you wanted death to come sooner. Towards the end, there were many mornings you woke up crying because you were still alive. I could only hold you and tell you how much I loved you. And though it broke my heart, I had to admit that I wanted your death to come soon too. One morning between tears you looked at me and asked, “Do we ever laugh any more?” I answered you with more tears because at that point, no, we didn’t laugh any more.
The hardest times were when your mind wasn’t clear, after you’d become so physically weak, and you’d forget you had cancer. “I’m in bad shape,” you said once between gasps of breath. “You’ve got to take me to the doctor.” My heart ached as I had to say you had cancer and there was nothing more we could do. It was like telling you for the first time all over again. The anguish on your face was nearly unbearable.
Fortunately, these days did not linger long. You could tolerate little food and I remember your last. I’d fixed some hot applesauce with whipped cream and cinnamon. You took a couple bites then weakly protested, “Why do I have to eat applesauce?”
You didn’t have to and you stopped eating anything after that. A few days later you were having difficulty swallowing water and when you stopped drinking, I knew your death was near.
On your last day, you couldn’t even get out of bed, though you tried. You knew me, you knew I was there and you knew that I loved you. Your final request had been to die at home where you belonged and to be with the woman you loved. This request was fulfilled.
I was with you the moment you died and I sensed your spirit ascend into heaven. You didn’t have cancer, Michael, your body did. I take comfort in knowing your spirit, the real you, is safe now in the presence of God. You won.

ACKERMAN, Bruce

By its very nature, liberal dialogue is hardly a jealous mistress. It does not pretend to solve the final mysteries of life; it is forever pointing citizens beyond itself, inviting them to make the sense they can of their place in the universe. Any form of social life that makes sense to any significant group will find a place in the liberal state. It will survive so long as it continues to convince a fragment of the next generation that the ideal it puts forward deserves the respect of a free and autonomous person.
From this perspective, it is possible to see how shallow are the critics of liberalism who look upon it as a peculiarly modern form of consciousness whose beginnings can be traced no further back than Hobbes, Locke, and the Industrial Revolution. However important these modern sources, the liberal impulse runs far deeper in the history of philosophy. As Nietzsche saw, it is none other than Socrates who stands as the emblem upon the liberal standard. This is so not only because his death stands as the paradigmatic political wrong, but because his life stands as the paradigmatic ground of political right - in its insistence that all people submit to questioning about the things they hold dearest; that each of us contemplate the possibility that our moral vision may be distorted; that all of us accept the discipline of dialogue and restrain the temptation to destroy those whom we cannot convince.
- “Social Justice in the Liberal State”, pp. 347-348

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

- letter to Thomas Jefferson

Heretics deserve not only to be separated by the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death.

- “Summa Theologica”

“God is Love,” we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.

- “A Certain World”, “God” (1970)

If someone were to prove to me - right this minute - that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn’t change a single aspect of my behavior.

- “My Last Sigh”, ch. 15 (1983)

Why has a religious turn of mind always a tendency to narrow and harden the heart?

God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son.”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on!”
God said, “No.” Abe said, “What?!!”
God said, “You can do what you want, Abe, but
Next time you see me comin’, you better run.”
Well, Abe said, “Where you want this killin’ done?”
God said, “Out on Highway 61.”
- “Highway 61 Revisited”

The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so, cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing.
If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent.
Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?
- “Aphorisms”

Burn the synagogues; take away their books, including the Bible. They [Jews] should be compelled to work, denied food and shelter, preferably banished. . . . Moses said that idolators should not be tolerated. If he were here he would be the first to burn their synagogues.

In a sentence he [Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan] sums up the dark and deadly pages of Christian history: “If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.”
- “The Uses of the Past”, Mentor Books, 1952

It seems to me that Dante committed a grave blunder when,with disconcerting naivete, he put over the gate of hell the inscription: “Me, too, eternal love created.” At any rate, the inscription over the gate of the Christian paradise, with its “eternal bliss,” would read more fittingly, “Me, too, eternal hate created” - provided it is fitting to place a truth above the gateway to a lie. For in what, precisely, does the bliss of that paradise consist?
We may have guessed by now, but still it is well to have the thing certified for us by a competent authority in these matters, Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. “The blessed in the Kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned in order that their bliss be more delightful to them.”
- “The Genealogy of Morals”, 1st Essay, section 15

Many sick people have always been among the poetizers and godcravers; furiously they hate the lover of knowledge and that youngest among the virtues, which is called honesty.
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 35

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.
- “Beyond Good and Evil”, aph. 295 (1886)

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
- “The Age of Reason”, pt. 1, “The Author’s Profession of Faith” (1794)

“The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its ends when rebels against it disturb the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics who cannot be restrained by any other penalty from continuing to disturb ecclesiastical order.”
- Preface to vol. 2 of “Book of Canon Law”, 1901

It is not God that is worshipped but the group or authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority, not violation of integrity.
- quoted in: J. A. C. Brown, “Techniques of Persuasion”, ch. 11 (1965)

We are ourselves the ultimate and irrefutable arbiters of value, and in the world of value nature is only a part. Thus in this world we are greater than nature. In the world of values, nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad, deserving of neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create values and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to nature. It is for us to determine the good life, not for nature - not even for nature personified as God.
- “What I Believe” in “Why I Am Not A Christian”, 1957

That they [the dogmas of religion] do little harm is not true. Opposition to birth control makes it impossible to solve the population problem and therefore postpones indefinitely all chance of world peace.”That they [the dogmas of religion] do little harm is not true. Opposition to birth control makes it impossible to solve the population problem and therefore postpones indefinitely all chance of world peace.
United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, toward a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need - of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed.
- “A Free Man’s Worship,” in “Why I am Not a Christian”

The twenty-first century man or woman cannot be a creature of medieval fantasies and dogmatic superstition. What follows now is, I know, a highly unlikely proposition, but who knows? After all, hardly any dominant religion - Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. has not had its contemporary share of disaster through contending sects within its own adherents - the murderous consequences of Iranian extremists in Saudi Arabia is one very fresh example which must never be permitted to fade from world consciousness. So, perhaps the following notion would find adherents in quite unlikely places. And so to the proposition - if the United Nations, or more probably UNESCO, has not yet found a theme for the closing decade of this century, what about declaring it a “Decade for Secular Options”? Let me hasten to add that I do not advocate an attempted (and quite impossible) demolition of religious thought, practices, or any reduction in the cultural status of their physical structures - mosques, churches, temples, shrines, etc. As a mythopoet, I have drawn from far too deep and rich resources in religious essence to trivialize or despise the pervasiveness of religion in human activity. But it is time, surely, to come to terms with the anomaly of the theocratic state at the close of the twentieth century, especially when, as inhumanely chronicled by the upsurge of hitherto unthinkable atavism of the past few decades, this idealistic striving of the human imagination has been ordained as principles for the reversion of gains in the liberating of that same human mind.

It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other hand, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument - their intellect - which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously.
- quoted in: “Independent” (London, 24 June 1990)

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.

But can we “know” anything about the good? Sure, all of us have beliefs; but isn’t it merely pretentious to proclaim one’s “knowledge” on this subject? Worse than pretentious - isn’t some loud fool typically the first to impose his self-righteous certainties on others? Rather than welcoming such certainties, they should be taken as a sign that your intellectual arteries are hardening, that you are beginning to mistake your own personal musings for the unheard music of the spheres. The hard truth is this: There is no moral meaning hidden in the bowels of the universe. All there is is you and I struggling in a world that neither we, nor any other thing, created.
Yet there is not need to be overwhelmed by the void. We may create our own meanings, you and I; however transient or superficial, these are the only meanings we will ever know. And the first meaningful reality we must create - one presupposed by all other acts of meaningful communication - is the idea that you and I are persons capable of giving meanings to the world.
- “Social Justice in the Liberal State”, 1980, p. 368

“The authoritarian exploits the child’s cultural dependence to limit his cultural freedom. Infancy is a time to plant the seed in good moral ground; childhood is a time for the weeding and pruning needed to transform good young saplings into extra-fine timber. By maturity, a well-educated person can only look with contempt upon the stunted and deviant growths that, unaccountably, inhabit so much of the forest.
“Such horticultural imagery has no place in a liberal theory of education. We have no right to look upon future citizens as if we were master gardeners who can tell the difference between a pernicious weed and a beautiful flower. A system of liberal education provides children with a sense of the very different lives that could be theirs - so that, as they approach maturity, they have the cultural materials available to build lives equal to their evolving conceptions of the good.”
- “Social Justice in the Liberal State”, p. 139

Indeed, many secondary educators will be confident that the lessons they teach, both in words and actions, represent “the” truth for humankind. Such intolerance may often be pedagogically useful - so long as it is not permitted to envelop the child for too long a time, it will often be best for the child to assess a culture’s strength when it is presented by its wholehearted enthusiasts. The entire educational system will, if you like, resemble a great sphere. Children land upon the sphere at different points, depending upon their primary culture; the task is to help them explore the globe in a way that permits them to glimpse the deeper meanings of the life dramas passing on around them. At the end of the journey, however, the now mature citizen has every right to locate himself at the very point from which he began - just as he may also strike out to discover an unoccupied portion of the sphere. For the liberal state is not committed to a system of liberal education because it wishes to indoctrinate children in one vision of the good rather than another. An Amish child, turned adult, has every right to follow his Amish parent; the New Yorker, the New Yorker. The liberality of an education is to be measured not by outcomes but by the extent that the growing child’s question of legitimacy is taken seriously. The ideal liberal education is one that permits the child to move from his initial resistances to an ability to define his own objectives in the light of the universal culture defined by all humankind.
- “Social Justice in the Liberal State”, pp. 159-160

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They never alter their beliefs to meet the facts. They alter their facts to meet their views. Which can be quite uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering.
- the Doctor in “Doctor Who”

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- “Principles of Philosophy”

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.
- Preface to 1843 ed. of “The Essence of Christianity” (1841)

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. . . we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure - that it is possible to live and “not” know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes that this is true.”

I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

Did it indeed seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?
- “Catch 22”

Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the tree of Knowledge.

What bothers me is some people try to make science selective. You can’t do that. You can’t accept one part of science because it brings you good things like electricity and penicillin and throw away another part because it brings you some ideas you don’t like about the origin of life.

This fool [Copernicus] wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. Holy Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth.

Science is expanding, and with it our vision of the universe. although this new and constantly changing view may not always give us comfort, it does have the virtue of truth according to our most effective resources for acquiring knowledge. No philosophy, moral outlook, or religion can be inconsistent with the findings of science and hope to endure among educated people.

. . . we teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks “ex cathedra”, that is, when in discharge of the office of the pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith and morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church. . . .
But if any one - which may God avert - presumes to contradict this our definition: let him be anathema.
- “The Dogma of Papal Infallibility”, 1870

As the human race moves into adolescence and adulthood, it can no longer afford to guide its affairs via those simple myths. Our human ancestors thought long and hard on who and what they were and came up with the best explanations they could make. The frightening thing is that we - almost at the end of the 20th century, entering the space age, becoming a society based on knowledge - are still hanging on to those explanations, which date back to our Stone Age. I think we need a more fruitful way to analyze these questions. We need exciting philosophical thought.

I do not pretend to be able to to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings. To have insisted upon the introduction of this virtue into philosophy, and to have invented a powerful method by which it can be rendered fruitful, are the chief merits of the philosophical school of which I am a member. The habit of careful veracity acquired in the practice of this philosophical method can extend to the whole sphere of human activity, producing, wherever it exists, a lessening of fanaticism with an increasing capacity of sympathy and mutual understanding. In abandoning a part of its dogmatic pretensions, philosophy does not cease to suggest and inspire a way of life.
- “A History of Western Philosophy”, 1945, p. 836

Either there is a God and all is well. Or, if all things go by chance and fortune, yet mayest thou use thine own providence in those things that concern thee properly, and then art thou well.
- “Meditations”

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world’s.
- “Samuel Butler’s Notebooks”, (1951), p. 199

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
- when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
- whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees;
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring
what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t: blow death to was)
- all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live
- “what if a much of a which of a wind”

Who then is free? The wise man, who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty, nor death, nor bonds affright, who bravely defies his passions, and scorns ambition, who in himself is a whole, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing can rest on the polished surface, and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever defeated.
- “Epistles”, Book II

History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.
- letter to Baron von Humboldt, 1813.

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.
- “A Memorial and Remonstrance”, 1785

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
- “On Liberty”, 1859, Chapter 1

Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
- “On Liberty”, Chapter 1

If it were true, that old legend about appearing before a supreme judge and naming one’s record, I would offer, with all my pride, not any act I committed, but one thing I have never done on this earth: that I never sought an outside sanction. I would stand and say: I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful fact of existence and seeking justification beyond myself. This is my pride: that now, thinking of the end, I do not cry like all the men of my age: but what was the use and the meaning? “I” was the use and meaning, I Gail Wynand. That I live and that I acted.
- “The Fountainhead”

How is freedom gained? It is taken: never given. To be free, you must first assume your right to freedom. In writing “The Satanic Verses”, I wrote from the assumption that I was, and am, a free man.
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize all orthodoxies, including religious orthodoxies, it ceases to exist. Language and the imagination cannot be imprisoned, or art dies, and with it, a little of what makes us human. “The Satanic Verses” is, in part, a secular man’s reckoning with the religious spirit. It is by no means always hostile to faith. “If we write in such a way as to pre-judge such belief as in some way deluded or false, then are we not guilty of elitism, of imposing our world-view on the masses?” asks one of its Indian characters. Yet the novel does contain doubts, uncertainties, even shocks that may well not be to the liking of the devout. Such methods have, however, long been a legitimate part even of Islamic literature.
What does the novel dissent from? Certainly not from people’s right to faith, though I have none. It dissents most clearly from imposed orthodoxies of “all types”, from the view that the world is quite clearly This and not That. It dissents from the end of debate, of dispute, of dissent. Hindu communalist sectarianism, the kind of Sikh terrorism that blows up planes, the fatuousness of Christian creationism are dissented from as well as the narrower definitions of Islam.
- “In Good Faith: Reflections on a Year of Controversy,” 1989

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes.
- “Why I Am Not A Christian”

Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
- “Why I Am Not A Christian”

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world - its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.
- “Why I Am Not A Christian”

Brief and powerless is man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow fall, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.”
- “A Free Man’s Worship” in “Why I Am Not A Christian”

To be worthy of the name, [a freethinker] must be free of two things, the force of tradition and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely free from either. What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not, he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem. Freedom from the tyranny of passion is as essential as freedom from the influence of tradition. The jealous husband who suspects his wife of infidelity on inadequate grounds, and the complacent optimist, who refuses to suspect her when the evidence is overwhelming, are alike permitting passion to enslave their thought; in neither of them is thought free.
- “Bertrand Russell on God and Religion”

A strange mystery it is that nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking mother. In spite of death, the mark and seal of the parental control, man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticize, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life.
- “A Free Man’s Worship” in “Why I Am Not A Christian”

“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.”
- “On Life and Essays on Religion”

CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
- “The Devil’s Dictionary”
DECALOGUE, n. A series of commandments, ten in number - just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice. Following is the revised edition of the Decalogue, calculated for this meridian.
Thou shalt no God but me adore:
‘Twere too expensive to have more.
No images nor idols make
For Robert Ingersoll to break.
Take not God’s name in vain; select
A time when it will have effect.
Work not on Sabbath days at all,
But go to see the teams play ball.
Honor thy parents. That creates
For life insurance lower rates.
Kill not, abet not those who kill;
Thou shalt not pay thy butcher’s bill.
Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife, unless
Thine own thy neighbor doth caress
Don’t steal; thou’lt never thus compete
Successfully in business. Cheat.
Bear not false witness - that is low -
But “hear ‘tis rumored so and so.”
Cover thou naught that thou hast not
By hook or crook, or somehow, got.
G.J.
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
- “The Devil’s Dictionary”

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
- “Texts and Pretexts”, “Amor Fati” (1932)

Top Ten Amish Pickup Lines
10. Are thee at barn-raisings often?
9. If our religion didn’t forbid the use of telephones, I would ask thee for thy number.
8. Can I buy thee a buttermilk colada?
7. You’ve really got the build for that plain bonnet and shapeless black dress.
6. Say, my favorite movie is “Witness” too!
5. Are thee a model?
4. There are so many phonies at these quilting bees. Let’s go somewhere quiet.
3. Thy buggy has a bitchin’ lacquer job.
2. I got Sinatra tickets.
1. Are thee up for some plowing?
- “The “Late Night with David Letterman” Book of Top Ten Lists”

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission
and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from Billy
Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shudda.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as, in a
way, against each we are pitting them,
And that is, don’t bother your head about sins of commission because
however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn’t be
committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you get really painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven’t taken out and the checks you haven’t added up
the stubs of and the appointments you haven’t kept and the bills you
haven’t paid and the letters you haven’t written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn’t as though it had been a riotous red letter day or night every
time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn’t get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forgot to pay a bill;
You didn’t slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let’s all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this
round of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of the things you haven’t done,
But they are the things I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn’t do give you a lot more trouble than
the unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of
sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.
- “Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man”

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for Him there.

Moreover - if I may put another strain on you - he [Man] thinks he is the Creator’s pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affront, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance. I must put one more strain upon you: he thinks he is going to heaven!

- “Letters from the Earth”

By Richard M. Grove

There is hope on the horizon,
with our setting sun,
5:05pm,
the amber beam of her brilliance,
still unset,
inches from disappearing,
over the blanketed silver hills,
of the still winter landscape.
Minutes later,
Venus and Saturn,
bright in the western sky.
Venus in her brilliant glory.
Saturn, a pin prick,
saddled fatefully beside her wonderment.
Both reflecting the sun’s now set resplendence.

The Earth is a Cathedral

The sun is shining
and though we’re in the deepest
cold of winter yes there are birds
overhead floating like tiny
dark clouds, and if Grammy
were alive still, she’d be one hundred
and three telling me all about how
God and Jesus and Mary are high
up in the sky behind
the clouds but not so high as to not
be watching us and hearing us,
and she’d be smiling
at me too rubbing her withered
arthritic hands as if they
were tiny puppies.

Michael Estabrook

Jack Bowman

The engine accelerated to a comfortable hum
as the distance shrank pulled back
beneath the wheels
he felt the harsh laboring of life
masked in the clarity of the engine in motion
this day was not what he dreamt
but what occurred regardless
he had no control, little influence
except over the truck and the
semblances of life
passing by at
75 miles an hour.

Young Man with a Ha

Nothing wrong with the head
Or the hair for that matter,
A good Caucasian mop, middling brown and
Of a profuse teenage thickness
But nearly always covered, sometimes
With one hat, often, at least today, with two,
Always the cap exactly backwards
With the bill shading the neck, today
A broad black floppy brim borrowed,
I believe, from a friend, making him look
Like a pulp fiction hero who thrilled me
When I was his age: The Shadow, master
Of disguise and even, on radio, invisibility,
Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts
Of men; this one may know, too,
Although he is too polite to blurt it out;
At any rate his head is so full
Of pin-wheeling notions that they might
Dazzle us to blindness if he did not

Discreetly cover it at all times.

J. Quinn Brisben

Two Vows at Mont. St. Michel

by Christophe Brunski

a Nuptial Fantasy

Gifting

(to Sarah)

Swimmer,
When you rescued me from the airsphere
You clutched my voice and pulled me
Under the surface of words

There I gaze for you in the light-webbed wavebreak
To attain the depth of simplicity’s waters
Fluttertonguing imagined weather from the recalitrant shoreline:

Par terre sous les ardeurs les murmures mouills
Je donne

A ring and Paris for you
A painpath I followed
Drown me angel

(to Christopher)

Hermetic emblem-shedder,
You are a perfectly naked orb
Faceless and suspended in the middle of your void.
And although your mind wraps its spiny tendrils
Around my shoulders, breath, chest, and neck
Around everything thriving in the flesh
You are the quintessential definition
Of the impatient urge
To surpass the mire of being and being.

Joyce Carbone

Of memory or fantasy
without expectations
enliven these lonely days & nights.
Savored warmth
is now the calm significance of silence.

A raised eyebrow,
that come hither glance,
laughter turned breathless by surprise,
the cool shivery flesh pimpled
as shoulders huddle closer,
touch, as we hug the sparking fire.

Minor things?
Created epiphanies.
Lightning bolts flashing images
to blind my eyes
against the brillance
so uncaring so unemotional
as sun speeds across the sky
warming this day.

J.E. Dorsey

I am intrigued by planets
however,
it is people that amaze
and astonish me

I cherish the time traversing
through dense autumn leaves
exploring the mysterious fog
of earthy desires
Then, sailing into the misty breath
of pleasure’s wet mornings...

And beyond the day to day
of living
payments and purchases
I yearn
to pursue the blue
of my love’s persistent eyes
and the soft touch of her ardent kisses

There is an electricity high in
the mountains today
running through great wires
coiled and ready to surge
stirring the hearts of warm
and loving people

As I look our over the sea
I can feel the resonance
of this earth - laugh with heaven
knowing - that we stand naked
without understanding the vast truth of it
And awed at the scant voyage
we take on life’s little ocean

How we reach out to embrace
one another
finding only air
and the smell
of eucalyptus.

D. Michael McNamara

Nancy L’enz Hogan

I wish we had known Us as
little girls - you ‘n me -
meeting first in kindergarten, maybe;
two pink little larvae
wearing grosgrain hair bows
being polite to each other’s mothers
and miserable giggling under the adult
Eye;
ascending the grades together
through pets and bikes and bras and boys -
And yet, we’re met, two ladies grown,
brimming with black coffee and with poise,
laughing in your patchwork garden
eating baby lettuce in the dusk and
sprinkling salt on silvery-trailed
marauding snails.

Sometimes we all get too caught up in life
in death and i can understand some of this now
but you know it’s a smooth place like a
spring day where we slide from start to finish
just like the weeds the dandelions or roses
some wanted some not but it is all the waves
one after the other each meant each beautiful
in its way we flow one after the other as
important as ants as insignificant and
as beautiful as clouds.

Ray Heinrich
ray@vais.net

It smells like death, it tastes like fire
But that dosn’t stop the foolish buyer.
With teeth of yellow and skin of grey,
For their life, I hope I pray
One after, its like a chain,
What do they think, will it stop their pain?
A self inflicted death, I feel like crying,
Because I know they are slowly dying.

Vania

Donald Surles

Your lips,
Your hair,
Oh for your body I care.

Your lips,
your eyes,
Full of wonder,
Full of suprise.

Yopur lips,
Your heart,
Oh how sweet the love it drips.

Oh your lips.

Jacqui Smith

Roses are not red,
Violets are smelly,
While you wash my feet,
I’ll dance on your belly!

D. Michael McNamara

I’ve lived eight-thousand and sixty-four sunrises and have seen about two dozen. Regarding women, I’ve seen even more, met a few less, dated about two dozen, loved exactly five, andmade love to none.

I am familiar with that heavy and dangerous feeling of falling uncontrolled into a lifeless blur.

I’ve seen a vertical cloud as well as the formation of a tornado. I’ve danced in a hurricane and stumbled four miles in a Nor’easter; flown in an aeroplane through Northern Lights and stood on a fault during an earthquake; felt the tide of the English Channel come in and swallow up> around me and fell down the cliffs of Balleycastle as Scotland looked on, laughing.

This is mathematical precision, the laws of physics applied to perfection, syllogism complete with premise and conclusion: this is the downside of the parabola.

c ra mcguirt

sex
drugs
religion
art-

everyone buys
information.

only fear
is free.

“From Mom”

The day the angels sang your song
your star bloomed in my soul
while the sunlight clasp the earth
and the moon beams kiss the sea,
the greatest work in all the world-
heaven sent to me.

Forever I will be
the gentle rain to shower you
in peaceful, loving grace-
nurture you through all your days
and carry you through endless fields
when life can’t show the way.

In the dawning morning hours
you’ll find the silent blanket of comfort
wrapped within my love
and through the darkest icy nights
as your confidant with listening ears
I’ll cradle you and hold you tight.

My son,
the day will come to spread your wings
and there I’ll be right by your side
standing proud ...
I’ll watch you fly.

Admiring the Enemy

plowing through the
American Poetry Review
I see a poem titled:
“Admiring the Enemy”
and very briefly,
my mind reads
“Enduring the Academy”

Deckard Kinder

an album of faded pictures
laying on an empty bed
on one side of a dusty room
nobody rents
even though the rates are god-awful good

I give up
[not that I invested much in this to begin with]

today passes like yesterday
hollow words
empty promises
donuts in a box on the radiator
and an album of faded pictures
remains unopened
[keepsakes left behind]

sepia suits you
delicate lace and silk stockings and
mauve suits with shoulder pads
style is your substance sweetheart
don’t fight it

pungent perfumes remind me of you
heart stopping poses no one else can emulate
[you really set the hook didn’t you?]

so I am in this god-forsaken place
reaching for grasping at a little peace
sidestepping shadows [very fred astaire]
doing nothing I can undo

underneath it all:
desire

[somewhere someone I don’t know
takes notes]

underneath the desire: fear

[everyone here knows this is true]

underneath the fear:
emptiness
or hunger

like the pictures in the album
evaporating in the summer heat
wrenched from me in absentia
sympathy proves insufficient

regardless:
everyone who checks in stays

regardless:
some never check in

regardless: everyone ends up here sooner or later

my memory justifies nothing
taking the easy way out

arguments bury evidence
to no advantage

secrets are revealed on cue

no one here escapes
devastation depression devotion

grandiose stories
told over and over in the bar
even though none of us believes them

[so what if
nobody cares?]

so what if nobody knows better?

regardless:
my album sits on my bed
forgetting nothing remembering all

supposing any of this is real

so what if it’s all just another bad dream?
do you care? [did you ever?]

like love: this is never over

mea culpa sweet thing
reneging on history
gets you nowhere
except here

FINALLY DANCING NAKED

Allison Eir Jenks

A flawless dance for this porcelain morning.
Extending our breath, our eyes hold glass fortune.

As chiefs of the air, in a timid bath of chords, we absorb.
Evening colors drown.
Wandering from the gates of a long, dramatic sleep, we dance,

Calling trial to conformity, embarrassing ourselves,
Stripping on the street we disrupt caution with our fancy wind.

Dim from the skies eyes, we let the sun circle our flaws.
Skin is cooler bare.

Those watching see it as carelessness.
They drown in fountains of charcoal.
Uniforms never wrinkled; fear growing on their lives.

When time calls the hands of them
their names will be erased.
Only dancers can hear the music.
Gliding with determination, our laughs are frozen
With arms of warmth, dancing naked, still surrounded,

he tells me we forget most of our lives,
entering other ones while we sleep.

He says there’s always a place to hide,
if even under our own eyes.

The sky is a mass of mind
which someone grabbed pieces of;
the pieces were put into bodies.

We dance with weak walls
guided by fractions of the sky’s energy.

Sometimes, when I get behind the wheel of a car, I feel like I’m at Six Flags Great America Amusement Park In Gurnee, Illinois again and I’m thirteen years old and I’m able to drive one of the bumper cars. And it’s such a thrill - because, I mean, I’m thirteen years old and I can’t drive, and I’m now in control of this huge piece of machinery. Granted, there’s this wire sticking up from the car that gets electricity from the ceiling, but for once I feel free, that I can just go, go faster than I ever could by running, or even if I used my roller skates or my bicycle.
And when I get that feeling and I’m behind the wheel of my car I want to drive really really fast out on an abandoned road, blare some rock music, roll down my window, and turn up the heat, since it’s the middle of winter.

Sometimes, when I go out on a new date, I feel like I’m sixteen again, and I’ll rifle through my closet, deciding I have absolutely nothing to wear. And he’ll pick me up, and we’ll go to a restaurant with deer heads on the walls, and we’ll have whiskey sours, and we’ll struggle with the lettuce leaves in the salads because they’re too big, and when we’re done with dinner we’ll go to a bar that’s so crowded and so loud that we won’t be able to talk to each other, but we’ll have to stand real close.
And then he’ll take me home and I’ll invite him in, he’ll sit on the chair, I’ll sit on the couch, and he’ll ask for a glass of water. When we can’t think of any more small talk, and the clock says 3:12 a.m., I’ll see him to the door, he’ll kiss me good-bye, and I’ll lock the door after he leaves. And when I’m sure he can’t see me through the window, I’ll turn on the stereo and dance in my living room before I go to bed.

Sometimes, when I’m having sex with someone, I feel like I’ve done this for years, like I’ve been married to this man for twenty years, and I still don’t know him, but I’m still there, night after night. After the wedding, after the new house, which was a little small, but we’ll get something bigger when we have the money, after the two kids and the fifteen pounds, after I lose my job, after we don’t get that new house and after the kids complain about their curfews, after the dog dies, hell, it was only trouble for us anyway, after the sinus headaches, the back problems, that all-over sore feeling, you know, it’s harder to wake up in the mornings now, after it all he still has the nights, the sex with the woman he knows all too well but not at all, and we do it, as we always do. It becomes memorization. It becomes like a play, that I act out night after night.

Sometimes, when I get home after 10 o’clock from working overtime on the computers, I just want to retire, to quit the work, to stop it all. I see my parents, after a life of working at the construction site and raising five children, now beginning to relax, buying a small home in Southwest Florida, playing tennis in the morning, playing cards in the afternoon, drinking with other retired couples in the evening. Sometimes another couple invites them out for a boat ride off of Marco Island, where they smoke cigarettes, drink a few beers, and drive slow enough to make no wake when they’re by the pier.
Sometimes I look at the computer screen I work at and remember how computers used to mean video games. I remember when I was eight and I would sit with my best friend in the upstairs den on the floor in front of the old television set and play table tennis on our Atari. Times change, I suppose, and I get old. This is my life.

Janet Kuypers

Molecular physics teaches
that even a phone booth packed
with Guinness hopefuls is mostly
empty space. Astronomy
reveals that a wash of stars
across a night sky consists
less of light than of light years,
dots that would take forever
to connect. I’m continually
amazed that we ever could’ve
bumped into one another.

**********************

air show: a baby
carriage parked on the tarmac,
next to the bomber

pete lee

Jim Maddocks

It was there.
She knew it would be
if she dug deep enough.
But she seemed disappointed.

What did she expect to find ?
Nothing smells very sweet
this far down.

DANGEROUS BIRD
c ra mcguirt

you’re gone, but it’s all right.
you just went out to play.
the world is green & grey & cold,
but it won’t be turning colder.

we made love last night.
we didn’t fight today.
no reason to, tomorrow
& suddenly i feel sorrow

fly away, & hope alight
very lightly on my
shoulder.

(the author was later discovered
with his shoulder torn off
as if by the talons
of some terrible
beast.)

D. Michael McNamara

doris popovich

i close my eyes,
seduced by magical thinking
and tactile daydreams
of your soft skin.

i know this may be cheating, but
for a split season i roam
to the alternate service area
of my tiny genius.

your specter is there,
as is mine
calling to me
expansive warm and blue.

soulmates or not, truth is
each breath takes us the
distance of the universe
from each other.

The Girl Left Behind

I was made to be a good girl
To be seen, but never heard
To never let a man
See me with no make-up
To dream white picket-fence dreams....

And I held them-
Long after his words, not his fist, took me down

I was made to be a good girl
To make peace at any price
To always set a pretty table

But how does a girl learn to speak when
It’s time to be a woman when
She was made to be
Seen, but never heard?

I lost my own voice, only
Heard myself through others
I was even grateful for the role
But it took me down

Not fast, but far and low

Til I came to my crossroads
And was made to sing my own song
Martyrdom will never find a home in me again

By Peter Scott

Hope
Care
Sit
Stare
Dial
Try
Love
Why?
Plead
Beg
Say
Work
Rebuild
Listen
Cry
Deep
Inside
Bleed
Die
Hope
Survive
Cut
Epoch
Resurrect
Cry
Live
Try
Ascend
Deepen
Introspect
Differentiate
Fulfillment
Elimination
Center
Wash
Cleanse
Build
Strive
Strength
Determination
Love
Beauty
Rumors
Unease
Peace
Comfort
Squirm
Crack
Break
Back
Pain
Suffrage
Hope
Luck
Wonder
Attempt
Bother
Regression
Faith
Lack
Muscle
Prayer
Bride
Contaminate
Dream
Smear
Communication
Games
Favor
Remembrance
Joy
Love
Death
Dear
Cancer
Alive
Burning
Inside
Nails
Sullen
Despair
Trial
Contempt
Bemusement
Strike
Back
Hope
Revenge
Fantasy
Cursed
Warning
Care
Yelling
Dear
Death
Fear
Smell
Regret
Twice
Sorrow
Twice
Pain
Twice
Conforming
Darkness
Shadows
Light
Exclamation
Stand
Beauty
Band
Lord
Grace
Utter
Disgrace
Suffrage
Pillage
Love
Redemption
Hope
Stay
Give
Wind
Whisper
Words
Hope.

By Paul L. Glaze

Beneath The Rays Of A Moon’s Soft Glow.
Two Lovers Lay In An Intimate Flow.
Specials Moments Were Theirs To Capture,
As Lovers Combined In Spiritual Rapture.

They Were As One This Special Night
Beneath A Moon Glow’s Shimmering Light.
Together, They Professed Eternal Love.
While Reaping Its Rapture From Above.

Time As Passed, These Two Have Parted.
Lovers At Once, But Now Broken Hearted.
Their Wounds Will Heal, As Time Does Flow.
They Relive Those Moments, As Both Do Know.

They Shared And Affair,
With Loving Care.
Delights Of Nectarous Nights,
Within A Lovers,
Moon Glow.

mackenzie silver

what if you and the one person you always loved
the one person you would always have a place in your heart for
the one that was your mentor
the one that was your first love
the one you’ll always feel a twinge of pain when thinking about
the one that was your soulmate
the one you thought of as the one that got away
the one person you have regrets over leaving

what if the two of you were friends
and you thought still that he was your soulmate
and you didn’t know what your future entailed
and you wanted to see him because he was your teacher
and you’ll always love him
and you don’t know what you’re hoping for
and you’re definitely hoping for something

and then you talk to him
and he says that would be good to see you
and then he drops this bomb, that he has a girlfriend
and then he says that he’s been going out with her for over a year

and i know it’s retarded
but you’ve never met anyone like him
and you don’t know what else to hope for

what would you do then

mark sonnenfeld

THERE WAS A PHOTOGRAPH
OF TOY MESSERSCHMITTS

56 - THAT I HAVE BEEN AROUND THAT KINDLY
OF THINGS 14 - CONVERSATIONS (S)
WITH THE SHUT-ME-UP ON THE STREET

88 - HUH?
89 - ANOTHER TWO PAGES EVERY FOUR HOURS OFF
THE MAIN STORY 202 - I,
PENNED PEOPLE WITH MOTION, SAW A THING ABOUT
ON TELEVISION:

THERE WAS A PHOTOGRAPH
OF TOY MESSERSCHMITTS, FROM VARIOUS ANGLES
GIVES OFF A NIMBLE ALERT MIND, OUTSIDE
TREES AND SHRUBS ETC., SAYING LITTLE ETC., SAYING
IT’S MENTALLY PEACEFUL AS BOBBINS OR SPOOLS
REGARDLESS,
I THOUGHT

Chris Stolle

coffeehouses and billows of white smoke
seem to go hand in hand
like diamonds in caves
and wrecking balls and historical monuments
as if there was some

necessity of peanut butter and jelly (strawberry, of course)
on wheat. took a spork in my hand
to delve into that mysterious jello
and all the while the water was boiling
because sometimes I like to eat
hard-boiled eggs after

dessert to see how it feels to
live in reverse. vibrations in my skull
grab every tendon and stretch them
to the outermost reaches of my skin
and the bones poke through and

not an ounce of blood do I shed
as the pores are clogged. a judge on the pulpit,
a priest in a coffin and a corpse in the courtroom
but that’s how they are perceived from the outside
and of the law, the Lord or life, I can only ask
which one really tells the
truth while in the newspaper I read
a comic strip.

RIDING A HORSE CALLED LUST
Cheryl Townsend
in a saddle
that is way too big
or just bare back
Can’t quite grip
your legs around
the torso as you
bounce one way
or the other Can’t
secure the ride
Grab the reins
and pull

and now i wonder what i’ve done
and now i wonder where you’ve gone
and now i wonder if i’m dead

are you thinking of me right now?
can you feel me sliding under your skin
an injection coarsing down your vein?

i must believe you know i’m here

helena wolfe

by courtney steele

Many times the average person wakes up in the morning after experiencing a vivid nightmare. “Thank God I was only dreaming,” a person might claim. But a question then arises: is it possible to know for a fact, without a shadow of a doubt, that you actually aren’t dreaming right now? After pondering this question, the conclusion only seems evident that you cannot have true (propositional) knowledge about whether or not you are not dreaming right now.
In order to have true (propositional) knowledge, the three premises from the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge must apply. In other words, one’s argument must possess the following three qualities: 1) What the subject claims to know must be true, 2) The subject must believe that what they claim to know is true, and 3) the subject must be fully justified in believing what they claim to know to be true.
When it comes to answering the question of whether or not we are not dreaming right now, we cannot fully answer or prove claims 1 or 3 in the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge. Therefore, it seems only appropriate to state that we cannot have true (propositional) knowledge concerning whether or not we are not dreaming right now.

Let us first address the soundness of the premises of the argument stated, concerning ourselves first with the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge. In order to have true (propositional) knowledge, three conditions have to be met:

1) What the subject claims to know must be true. If, for example, I claim that my philosophy professor has blonde hair when in actuality he has very dark brown hair, I cannot have true knowledge about his hair color. The subject cannot make a false claim and also correctly claim that they have knowledge over the particular topic. This can be represented through a diagram of the argument:

a) I claim that I have blonde hair.
b) I do not have blonde hair; I have dark hair.
—————————————————-
c) Therefore I cannot know (have knowledge) thatI have blonde hair.

Without this premise, many arguments would be invalid, for a false conclusion may be made if what the subject claims to know isn’t true.

2) The subject must believe that what they claim to know is true. To continue with the example used earlier: if I were to claim that my philosophy professor had blonde hair, but I didn’t believe that he had blonde hair, I wouldn’t have knowledge on the subject. A broader example could pertain to religion. I could claim that God exists, but if I don’t believe he exists then I do not have knowledge of the matter. In this case, his existence (premise 1) is irrelevant, for if one doesn’t believe in his existence (premise 2), the argument has already been proven that the subject doesn’t, in this case, have true knowledge. This could be diagramed as follows:

a) I claim a statement to be true.
b) I do not believe my statement to be true.
c) One must believe in a certain piece of knowledge in order for them to have knowledge in that area.
—————————————————-
d) Therefore I cannot have knowledge that my statement is true.

3) The subject must be fully justified in believing what they claim to know to be true. In other words, there must be no reason to suppose the subject is wrong in claiming or believing what they know to be true. To provide an example: if I claimed that I owned a dog, and I believed that I owned a dog, but I had no reason to believe that I owned a dog, then I wouldn’t have true knowledge of my “ownership”. Furthermore, if I claimed I knew that I owned a dog because my dead grandmother told me in a dream that I did, I still wouldn’t have knowledge: this is because there is reason to suppose that I am wrong in believing it. In other words, I would not be fully justified in my claim to knowledge on this particular topic. A possible argument may be:

a) I claim that I own a dog.
b) I believe that I own a dog because my dead grandmother told me in a dream that I own a dog.
c) A claim to knowledge because one’s dead grandmother told them in a dream that their statement is true is not a valid reason.
—————————————————-
d) Therefore I do not have knowledge about the topic (owning a dog).

This argument does not even address whether or not I do have a dog. It is because of the subject’s unsound reasoning (speculating that they own a dog for some very odd reasons) that the subject cannot have knowledge pertaining to this topic. Whether or not I even own a dog in this case doesn’t matter.
This argument can also, once again, be applied to religion. If a subject claimed to believe in a God (whether or not a God existed), the subject cannot claim to have knowledge over God’s existence because the subject was not fully justified in believing that a God existed.

These three premises, when combined, form the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge, which can be diagramed as follows:

a) The subject makes a claim, and what the subject claims to know is true.
b) The subject believes what they claim to know is true.
c) The subject is fully justified in believing what they claim to know to be true.
—————————————————-
d) Therefore their claim is a valid claim to knowledge. These conditions must be met in order for a person to be able to correctly claim that they have knowledge.
When applying the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge to the question, “Do you know that you are not dreaming right now?”, a problem arises, for there are evident conflicts with premises a and c in the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge.
Firstly, concerning premise a: we cannot know (positively) that what we claim to know is true. As Descartes explains in his Meditations on First Philosophy, we have no way of proving that we are not dreaming right now, and are possibly about to wake up. In Meditation I (concerning those things that can be called into doubt) he explains:
Indeed, how often has it happened that during the night I have dreamt these familiar things, that I am here, dressed, sitting by the fire, although I lie undressed in my bed. But now, at any rate, I am surely gazing at this paper with wakeful eyes, this head I am shaking is not heavy with sleep, I am consciously and deliberately extending this hand, and I am feeling it. In sleep what happens would neither be as clear nor as distinct as these things. But, thinking carefully, I recall having often been deceived by similar thoughts in dream. Now, as I think over these matters more attentatively, I see so plainly that there are no conclusive signs nor sufficiently certain indications for distinguishing being awake from dreaming that I am almost amazed. And this very amazement almost convinces me that I am dreaming.
Based on the skeptic’s claim that if something can at all be doubted, or if something cannot be proven to be true then you cannot have true propositional knowledge, the conclusion would be that one cannot be sure that they have true knowledge pertaining to whether or not they are not dreaming right now.
This can be illustrated as follows:
a) In order to have propositional knowledge on a certain topic (for example, knowing whether or not you’re not dreaming right now), the claim must be true (i.e., you must not be dreaming right now).
b) It cannot be proven, or we cannot know, whether or not we are not dreaming right now. This is because, for example, our senses have deceived us before and they could again, or people have thought that they were awake before when they were actually in a dream and this could be happening now, or because people can have dreams that they are dreaming and “Life” (as we refer to it) could merely be one long dream.
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c) Therefore, since we cannot know if our claim is true, we can’t know if we have knowledge pertaining to whether or not we are not dreaming right now. In other words, we do not know that we know we are not dreaming right now.
Furthermore, it can be argued that premise c of the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge in this example cannot be achieved, for it may not be possible to acquire full justification (even if partial justification may seem reasonable enough). Some possible examples for justification will be given later, but it will become evident that although they are reasonable justifications, they do not give full justification. Therefore, one cannot be certain that they ever have true knowledge. This can be shown as follows:

a) In order to have true knowledge, one must be fully justified in believing that what they claim to know is true.
b) Concerning the question of knowing whether or not we are not dreaming right now, full justification cannot be provided.
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c) Therefore we cannot have justified true knowledge about whether or notwe are not dreaming right now.

Some possible rebuttals to this argument may lie in the original argument’s second premise: “When it comes to answering the question of whether or not we are not dreaming right now, we cannot fully answer or prove claims 1 or 3 in the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge.” Critics may state that this is unsound and that it is possible to know the answer to be true or “yes” (premise 1), or that we can be fully justified in believing their conclusion to be answered affirmatively (premise 3).
In stating that premise 1 in the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge can be true in this instance, a critic may assert that through tests of brain waves, breathing patterns or REM monitoring, differences can be proven between awakened states and dreaming states (because awakened states possess different body functions and patterns than dreaming states). A possible reply to this, however, could simply be that the subject dreams that these tests exist to differentiate sleeping/awakened states. Other arguments could be given, but because this argument alone shows that there is doubt in this proof, no other argument is needed.
Other critics may state that premise 3 is possible to achieve- that it is possible to have full justification in believing that one is not dreaming right now. The falliblist would probably claim that full justification can be justification which is possibly uncertain to a slight degree. For example, Descartes’ depiction of an “evil-genius” is unreasonable, and unreasonable accusations don’t necessarily have to be taken into consideration when considering full justification. To make the point clearer, let us suppose that we have a large jar full of 10,000 marbles. We cannot see into the jar, but is it safe to assume that after pulling out the first 5,000 marbles and seeing that they are all green, the next one we pull out will be green? Without a doubt? After 7,500 marbles are pulled out- can we be sure then? What about 9,999 marbles? Can we be sure that the next marble pulled out will be green, and that there is no chance that there could be a marble of another color in the jar? A falliblist may answer “yes” to any one of these questions; however, the definition of full justification entails having no reason to doubt. No matter what the chances are that the next marble pulled out won’t be green, no matter how thin they are- there is a chance. Therefore there is a doubt. Therefore there isn’t full justification.
Therefore, we cannot have true knowledge about whether or not we are not dreaming right now. In summary, this can be proven in the following argument:
a) In order to have true knowledge, the following three conditions ( from the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge ) must be met:
1) what the subject claims to know must be true,
2) the subject must believe that what they claim to know is true, and
3) the subject must be fully justified in believing what they claim to know to be true.
b) When it comes to answering the question of whether or not we are not dreaming right now, we cannot fully answer or prove claims 1 or 3 in the Justified True Belief Analysis of Knowledge.
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c) Therefore we cannot have true (propositional) knowledge concerning whether or not we are not dreaming right now.
Although this argument may seem unreasonable or outrageous in the respect of considering even unreasonable (or almost impossible) possibilities in the achievement of its goal, it is ultimately not farfetched at all. In an endless universe, most anything could happen- and, more importantly, everything has the opportunity for happening. Even if these ideas seem far-fetched, it doesn’t matter. For as long as there is a slight possibility that there is but a shred of doubt, then that shred of doubt must be taken into consideration.
In light of this argument, Descatres’ conclusion seems only appropriate. “This very amazement almost convinces me that I am dreaming.”

Nick DiSpoldo, Small Press Review (on "Children, Churches and Daddies," April 1997) Kuypers is the widely-published poet of particular perspectives and not a little existential rage, but she does not impose her personal or artistic agenda on her magazine. CC+D is a provocative potpourri of news stories, poetry, humor, art and the "dirty underwear" of politics. One piece in this issue is "Crazy," an interview Kuypers conducted with "Madeline," a murderess who was found insane, and is confined to West Virginia's Arronsville Correctional Center. Madeline, whose elevator definitely doesn't go to the top, killed her boyfriend during sex with an ice pick and a chef's knife, far surpassing the butchery of Elena Bobbitt. Madeline, herself covered with blood, sat beside her lover's remains for three days, talking to herself, and that is how the police found her. For effect, Kuypers publishes Madeline's monologue in different-sized type, and the result is something between a sense of Dali's surrealism and Kafka-like craziness.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada
I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer's styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

Ed Hamilton, writer #85 (of children, churches and daddies) turned out well. I really enjoyed the humor section, especially the test score answers. And, the cup-holder story is hilarious. I'm not a big fan of poetry - since much of it is so hard to decipher - but I was impressed by the work here, which tends toward the straightforward and unpretentious. As for the fiction, the piece by Anderson is quite perceptive: I liked the way the self-deluding situation of the character is gradually, subtly revealed. (Kuypers') story is good too: the way it switches narrative perspective via the letter device is a nice touch.

Children, Churches and Daddies.
It speaks for itself.
Write to Scars Publications to submit poetry, prose and artwork to Children, Churches and Daddies literary magazine, or to inquire about having your own chapbook, and maybe a few reviews like these.

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet I'll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers'. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren't they?

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what is veganism?
A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don't consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

why veganism?
This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

so what is vegan action?
We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444

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C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies) cc&d is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist. "I really like ("Writing Your Name"). It's one of those kind of things where your eye isn't exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked "knowledge" for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor's copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@aol.com... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Also, visit our new web sites: the Art Gallery and the Poetry Page.

Mark Blickley, writer The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

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MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

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Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site) I just checked out the site. It looks great.

Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs) Visuals were awesome. They've got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool. (on "Hope Chest in the Attic") Some excellent writing in "Hope Chest in the Attic." I thought "Children, Churches and Daddies" and "The Room of the Rape" were particularly powerful pieces.

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review: cc&d is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies) The new cc&d looks absolutely amazing. It's a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can't wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, "Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment." Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers' very personal layering of her poem across the page.

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Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
Indeed, there's a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there's a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Mark Blickley, writer
The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We're only an e-mail away. Write to us.

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Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies') obvious dedication along this line admirable.

The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST's three principal projects are to provide:
* on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
* on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST's SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
* on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
The CREST staff also does "on the road" presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies') obvious dedication along this line admirable.

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Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
"Hope Chest in the Attic" captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
"Chain Smoking" depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. "The room of the rape" is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

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Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

The magazine Children Churches and Daddies is Copyright © through Scars Publications and Design. The rights of the individual pieces remain with the authors. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I'll have to kill you.
Okay, it's this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you'll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we're gonna print it. It's that simple!

Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It's a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the book "Rinse and Repeat", which has all the 1999 issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us. It's an offer you can't refuse...

Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.
Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It's your call...

Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: "Hope Chest in the Attic" captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. "Chain Smoking" depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. "The room of the rape" is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, "Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment." Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers' very personal layering of her poem across the page.
Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer's styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.
Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there's a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there's a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Published since 1993 No racist, sexist or homophobic material is appreciated; we do accept work of almost any genre of poetry, prose or artwork, though we shy away from concrete poetry and rhyme for rhyme's sake. Do not send originals. Any work sent to Scars Publications on Macintosh disks, text format, will be given special attention over smail-mail submissions. There is no limit to how much you may submit at a time; previously published work accepted.