Note that in the print edition of cc&d magazine, all artwork within the pages of the book appear in black and white. Also, the Roger N. Taber blog at the beginning of this Internet issue does not appear in the print issue (this Roger N. Taber writing was written and released after the print issue was released). Because of the copy’s timeliness, cc&d is includiung this writing in this immediate Internet issue.

201108910
London’s Burning

    I feel a need to comment on rioting in London and elsewhere in the UK. TV images being flashed across the world will doubtless give a poor if misleading impression of the UK. Yes, we have our problems, but what country hasn’t? At the same time, there is no excuse for arson, looting and mindless violence, much of it masterminded and orchestrated by sheer criminal elements.
    Readers from around the world have been in touch asking what the hell is going on here. I hope today’s post will the put recent rioting across London and the UK in a context of sorts. Yes, it is only my personal take on events, but it is one that I know is shared by many people across a whole range of age, colour, creed, sex and sexuality.
    Trouble flared in Tottenham in the London Borough of Haringey after a 29year-old man, presumably a suspect, was shot dead by police last Thursday. No one has any details and this had been a cause of great distress to his family who are well known in the area. A peaceful protest vigil held outside Tottenham police station by the dead man’s family and friends on Saturday night was hijacked by troublemakers from all over London. Consequently, fierce rioting broke out on Saturday night. Apparently, many people, especially young people, have been ‘organising’ potential riots via Twitter, Facebook and their mobile phones.
    To be honest, it was almost inevitable although there is absolutely no excuse for it. The media keep referring to copycat criminality and that is true, but...why?
    Youth unemployment here in the UK is high and rising while Youth Clubs and other activity venues for young people have been closed due to cutbacks in spending (not just recently, but over a period of some years). Many young people genuinely believe they have little or no chance of getting a job and feel on the scrap heap even in their teens. Nor is there any shortage of die-hard criminal elements waiting to take advantage of the situation, inflame general unrest, encourage looting, and whatever.
    The vast majority of our young people are a decent lot, but those who feel disillusioned with modern society are not only a growing and (very) significant minority, but also very vulnerable.
    It doesn’t help that multiculturalism in the UK is an appalling failure. Many among the latter waves of immigrants especially (during the past ten years or so) have brought their historical prejudices with them while successive governments have done nothing to actively address this. I know I should not generalise, but... in many areas, many (by no means all, but too many) Indians have a problem with Pakistanis, and vice versa; the same applies to the poor relationship between many African-Caribbean and Asian people, and vice versa; East Africans and West Africans are traditionally opposed to one another...and so it goes on. Yet, there are many areas in the UK in which all these opposing groups have been housed close together!!
    Nor should we forget that many people from ethnic minority backgrounds have a problem with white people. (In the years leading up to my retirement, I encountered a LOT of racism from ethnic minorities while working with the public.) It doesn’t help if you’re gay, given that various cultural prejudices against gay people are very deeply rooted.
    I fear things will get worse before they get any better. Even once the police manage to bring the current waves of unrest under control, the UK will remain a powder keg waiting to explode until the politicians get real about the underlying causes behind it. If you ask me, our politicians have not had their fingers on society’s pulse for some years.
    While tensions are often blamed on poor relations between communities and the police, often justifiably so, I dare say the police, too, could use a more positive sense of direction from blinkered politicians.
    There is no excuse for what is happening here in London and elsewhere in the UK right now, but there are underlying causes enough; it really isn’t good enough for our politicians to continue deflecting blame away from themselves with a load of bullshit rhetoric.

(...and check out the Roger N. Taber A Poet’s Blog)

Back to poor Jesoo!

Back to poor Jesoo!
Nobody’s sure if he existed &
Matthew contradists Mark &
Mark contradicts Luke &
John tries to bring them
together because he wrote
65 years after Jesoo croaked &
Mark wrote 35 yrs after, but
none of them could read or
write, because they were poor
peasants, like Jesoo
HIMSELF, &
Paul disagrees with everybody
but Paul, & is it Aramaic or
Greek, & WHEN when
WHEN ??? so

let’s not get too huffy/ if
you wanna believe, believe,
BUT I believe in the big

blues singer sweating down his
black face bawling out tragedies in
front of the homeless center, cause

he’s got his mojo workin’ &
I don’t know if those Biblical freaks
know a mojo from their camels, &

if they did, nobody recorded it unless
it’s one of those early discs from Chess, &
by now that’s a little scratchy ...

!

My front tooth falls out of my nose

My front tooth falls out of my nose, &
dances all the way to Afghanistan to
chew up some Muslims & bite Karzai on
the toe, making

the world a better place/ it
goes to Iraq to chaw open the
k-rations of our 50,000 troops we
need to keep the peace, while

Shiites murder 500 Sunnis today, &
the Turks overrun the Kurds in
the North as Iran chortles & claims a
little more Mideast power, as

Netanyahoo builds more housing in
the West Bank to the joy of Palestinians, &
cholera destroys what’s left of Haiti, &
L.A. leads the nation in child abuse, &

the children of Chicago keep shooting
one another with guns distributed by
the NRA behind the 2nd Amendment, &
everybody keeps

screaming!

SCREAMING!

screaming ... (as
my tooth keeps
dancing ...
!)

!

Internet Issue Bonus poem
(this does not appear in the print edition):

Wanna live in Mozambique?

Wanna live in Mozambique?
It’s hard to get a square meal.
They starve to death to solve their
population problem
just like us if we
don’t raise the debt ceiling, but
some want to cut our programs to the
bone with
no meat left to feed us either,
but there’ll be meat left for the rich &#amp;
our war effort in the East.

60 percent of our budget goes to the
military &#amp; its industrial complex.
Eisenhower warned us yet
here we are, &#amp;
now America crosses over
the bar so
set ‘em up, Joe, we’ll
drink ourselves to death. should
we try a different way?. SAVE
YOUR breath ...

!

Internet Issue Bonus poem
(this does not appear in the print edition):

I wonder

I wonder
how many know our
debt crisis is a disguise
by the Radical Right Wing
led by Karl Rove & the Koch Bros
who finance the fiasco to
destroy Obama & the people to
further put the nation in the
hands of the rich & the
corporations?/
                          how
many know that
not raising the debt level will
obliterate America to
further drive us into the
hands of fascists &
facilitate our plunge into
the 3rd World with
the people their slaves?/
                                        how
many know this?
how many CARE ...

?

Crowd of Nothingness

Fabrics wrap the bodies.
Cosmetics paint some faces; and
Different perfumes clash in the air.
Brains can only think as far as
Surviving the scene they are in;
And hands are mostly grabbing.
Nobody goes beyond self.
They just bump into each other
Like hamsters in a maze.

Hearts pound that they may live,
But hearts seek for more than
Just life, a life of warm affection.
Amidst the sights and sounds,
The covers of defensiveness,
Will we ever find something
Pure and profound?

More new infants are born.
More products are advertised.
More ways of life are introduced.
More conversations go round,
And round. More arguments arise.
Will this crowd have something
Much more?

There’s always something

I’ve learned
that into every life
a little rain must fall
and so I’ve built a lifeboat
to float upon the flood;
yet, if one day
some clement sun drifts by
to dry away our tears;
well then, poised like Noah
at salvation’s doorstep,
my profoundest fear’s
drowning in the mud.

Neighbor Boys

The neighbor boys are up on the roof again,
loaded, shooting guns at the moon,
chugging Bud Light, getting silly on nitrous,
daring the sheriff to send up a flare.
They pulled up the rope ladder, cranked up
the hip hop. Got a pit bull, barb wire perimeter,
broken bottles, crushed glass.
They’re calling down dark stars to
jack up the menace, dance with the devil
and touch his rough tongue.
Big fun on the rooftop at night, neighbor boys howling,
shooting down starlight, signaling the mothership in.

At The Gate

to
and from
work
i pass an
abortion clinic

no matter
the weather
or
day of
the week,
a protester
stands
at the gate

it reminds me
of
the tomb of
the unknown
solider

i wonder
if when
the changing
of the guard
occurs
anyone notices.

Lawrence Gladeview Bio

    In 1983, Lawrence Gladeview was born to two proud and semi-doting parents. After two middle schools and losing his faith in catholic high school, he graduated from James Madison University, majoring in English and having spent only one night in jail. He is a Boulder, Colorado poet cohabiting with his fiance Rebecca Barkley. Lawrence is one of two editors for MediaVirus Magazine, and more than sixty of his poems have been featured, or are forthcoming in various print and online publications. You can read more of his poetry on his website, Righteous Rightings.

Garage Sale

Selling the debris of my past;
wooden sawhorses
supporting knotted plywood
carelessly draped with stained,
second hand sheets
covered in the refuse
of an average life.
I wonder who’ll buy the scars
of my childhood traumas
or the wounds of my first heartache.
Surely they would prefer
the toaster oven or set of
never-sharpen Japanese Ginsu knives
over the ruins of my adolescence
or that mint green 70’s disco jacket.
It would seem more practical
to opt for the still
serviceable hi-fi over the hair
I shed as a young man
in my premature rush
towards middle age.
And I know I’ll never
get rid of that old appendix.
Maybe, I’ll offer it as twofer,
buy one get a free gall bladder.
And what shall I do
about that bucket of spare woes?
I could always toss in the blender
and they could puree up their own
cup of instant despair.

December, 2010

This is the month you would have
turned two if what the doctor
said was true

if I hadn’t thought my freedom
meant a world alone, without you

but I went to the clinic that
sticky summer day, its windows
covered with grey cloth, blocking
the sun from further ripening
the pungent blossoms who walk in.

It was not a child that left my
gaping body, but my childhood,
all the frivolities and daydreams
I wanted to have in your absence
leaving my womb one piece at a time.

The roses bloomed all around me
as I waited for his call to pull over.
Neither of us spoke the entire ride
back, the smoke of his cigarette
dancing to our thoughts
too raw for any tongue

and I knew as he left me
one last time at my mother’s
doorstep that he never would have
been good enough for you to
call him Daddy, but just
the two of us would provide
each other all the love we needed
in this world I took you away from.

But Isobel, you came out strong,
for you only lost but once while
I still feel the knife everyday.

Waveform

So many things I cannot name:
a walker just a shape in the distance,
some factory of dread I do not recognize
out past the rocks.

I figure it is about a mile
between birds
dead in the sand.

If another one falls
I’ll have to recalculate.

I think I see a boat
a sail
a helicopter on the horizon.

Father, I miss you

Head-on Collision, early evening

The cops didn’t see the indigenous mutiny
of traditional eruptions speckling these arms;
didn’t ask for proof of prophetic assurance
or prescriptions for diseasiness, discontent.
They didn’t plead to read the arrangement
of queer braille on my legs, the propaganda
etched with voices and stitched in scabs.

(At that moment, I remembered my Dad,
how he saw spirits peeking through the holes
in the rusted floorboard of his ‘79 Chevy,
clinging desperately to his chassis
like lampreys on the belly of a shark)

In my defense, I was sick. Voodoo Sick.
Stuck with pins and needles too many times.
Mayans have braided stories into my skin
and Quetzalcoatl seeks a new sacrifice.
These are things that I have learned
and agreed to accept in exchange
                —for what?

(Dad says the end is near
and there’s nothing we can do
to stop the coming slaughter)

Oh, my dear heartless priest—
I’ve bled all over now; how is it
that you’ll divine what is to come?
My own transmission has leaked
and covered the road in slick queries.

I’ve been extorted, accused,
derailed by charlatan conquistadors.
So please forgive this impulse, disdain,
these leaps of logic that leave me empty;
please forgive the poison spillage
as I slowly tow away.

Mad, Genius, Sun-Ra

Ra, the black jazz sun
spikes puppet strings in the sky’s riff
the flickering colours pile vast
in beautiful new tones

followers tribe into a band
understand there are no limits
psychotic accountants poll notes
the weight of a fireball’s death

fat the acid bursts the mind
back to playing it
as straight as swing ever gets
before Dr. Jeckelling it
with a snide flower breath

Christopher Barnes Bio

    in 1998, Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 2000, Christopher Barnes read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology ‘Titles Are Bitches’. Christmas 2001, Barnes debuted at Newcastle’s famous Morden Tower doing a reading of his poems. Each year Barnes read for Proudwords lesbain and gay writing festival, and he partakes in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.

    On Saturday 16th Aughst 2003 Christopher Barnes read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.

    Christopher Barnes also has a BBC webpage: www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/gay.2004/05/section_28.shtml and http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/videonation/stories/gay_history.shtml (if first site does not work click on SECTION 28 on second site.

    Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored Christopher Barnes to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. Christopher Barnes made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about his writing group. October-November 2005, Barnes entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty’s Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. Barnes made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords. The film is going into an archive at The Discovery Museum in Newcastle and contains his poem The Old Heave-Ho. Christopher Barnes worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University before touring the country and it is expected to go abroad, funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bioscience Centre at Newcastle’s Centre for Life. Christopher Barnes was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children’s literature building. In May 2006 Barnes had a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People’s Theatre (http://ptag.org.uk/whats_on/gulbenkian/gulbenkian.htm).

    The South Bank Centre in London recorded Christopher Barnes’ poem “The Holiday I Never Had”, Barnes can be heard reading it on www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=18456.

    REVIEWS: Christopher Barnes has written poetry reviews for Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine and in August 2007 Barnes made a film called ‘A Blank Screen, 60 seconds, 1 shot’ for Queerbeats Festival at The Star&Shadow Cinema Newcastle, reviewing a poem...see www.myspace.com/queerbeatsfestival.

Adventures in Municipal Government

VI

In an interview a councilperson praised
the impressive collective intellect
of the rest of his colleagues
Imagine the ramifications if he could prove
the existence of the alternate universe
where that might actually be fact

After All the Rain,
Still the Smell of Piss (#3)

Waking up
after not enough
to drink and too much
bad open mic poetry
that you were able
to escape with somebody’s
leather jacket for a blanket
on top of this tar-papered roof
in Tribeca
—the loft-squat
for a post-apocalyptic
tribe trying to get
Western Civilization
to listen to its collective
incoherent but sincere
Poem-festo

But the narrow
ten tenement story-high
roof was tall enough
and aligned just right
for you to stretch your
arms and “touch”
the twin Trade Center towers

And after closing
your eyes & breathe-drinking
a new unemployed morning

that New York
perfume of taxi exhaust
subway grate vapor
steaming sewer cover
& salty homeless piss
began to feel like home

I’m Retarded

I’m retarded,
but I am just as smart as you think
that you are,

so tell me I’m special

and I’ll oblige your mind.

The Sinking Ship Dilemma.

The ship is sinking and I
have the tinned food, the knife,
fishing equipment – yadda yadda -
in my dingy, but now I face
a more problematic dilemma.

That is, I can only take one of
these, either A) a box full of
poetry and fine wine or B)
a box of beer and porn. I decide
instead to go down with the ship.

Aim Carefully

as the bullets flew through the air
I listened to the whirring

when you think about it
the bullets begin to sound
like
popping popcorn

and when it sounds like
the popcorn’s almost done
and you hear just a few pops

then none

that’s when it’s safe to move

#

I’ve been through this too many times
it’s been too many years
this has become second nature

after so may years
of putting the 9 mil to the line of people
after so many years
of pulling the trigger
of knowing the base of the neck was the best place
of knowing how they fell into the ditch
one
two
three
it became like a ticking clock through the years

tick
tock

and all this time

my only thought

every time
was

aim carefully

Frozen Together

so i’m sitting at the corner stool
of a bar no one ever goes to
holding my scotch on the rocks
            it’s scotch for now,
            anything to numb the pain
so i swirl my drink clock-wise in my hand
watch the liquor swirling around
watch the ice cubes spinning in circles
and try to get you out of my head

because when you came in,
you came in like...
like something that you can’t escape
like that beat from the dance bar
that’s stuck in your head
that makes you want to move together in time
or like your eyes, the color of the sky
or was it the ocean that i could drown in

like bright sunlight just after dawn
seeping past the window blinds
forcing me
to attention
to respond to you

like bright sunlight seeping its way
past the window shades in this bar
as i swirl the ice in my glass
now frozen together
a disc
swirling
clock-wise
‘cause the scotch is gone

it’s gone
like you
but i can’t get you out of my head
so next time
maybe i’ll have
jack

the Exhibit

     Melissa Frey belonged to a group which exhibited sculpture at different “alternative locations.” “Alternative locations” meant lobbies of banks and office buildings where the group would not have to pay rent to exhibit. It was a day before the show and Melissa had to get her two pieces and pedestals ready for the show. She had to paint the pedestals and polish up her stone pieces and she hated doing it. Besides she didn’t know where the show was going to be. They had sent her a notice when to bring her pieces, when to take them down, and when the opening reception would be. But like most pieces of paper in her life, it had somehow gotten lost and she had to figure out where the show would be held. This exhibit was to be in the lobby of a law school but which law school, which building of the law school, and where it was located was something she did not know and did not really care about.
    At one time she had been very excited about these exhibits and would polish and shine and paint for hours in anticipation. But that was when she believed that one day her genius as an artist would be recognized and she would become famous and rich and be known as one of America’s best women sculptors. Now after zillions of these exhibits, she realized that all the future held for her were endless exhibits in office building lobbies displayed to friends and relatives of the exhibitors. If one were to ask her why if she felt this way, she continued to exhibit, she could not tell you.
    Today, she was going to exhibit a sculpture she had made years ago—a beautiful piece of green stone that shone with light—it seemed to be made of a transparent green light. It was a torso, no head, arms or legs. She had made thousands of torsos out of this same green stone—just as she had made thousands of nudes out of clay. “I guess this is what they call burnout,” she thought to herself.
    But today she had to find out where the exhibit was to be held. She called one fellow sculptor. The husband answered, said he would tell his wife to call back when she came in but he didn’t really know when that would be.
    Melissa called another exhibitor. Her name was Bessie and Bessie was one of her favorite people. Probably because Bessie really marched to a different drummer. She seemed very masculine—she was big, wore men’s pants often, had once been a foreman on a ranch for people who delighted in Native American cults and built huge totems that usually strained the strength of a grown man but which Bessie carted around easily from place to place. At the same time, Bessie had been living for years with her husband. And she was beyond doubt one of the best cooks and bakers in the Middle Atlantic States. Bessie had once brought a chocolate cake to a party that had everyone in tears because it was so good. In fact, someone had written a cookbook and Bessie’s recipes were reprinted in The New York Times when the book review appeared. When anyone complimented Bessie on her cooking, she just laughed in her deep masculine voice and acted surprised, as if she had never heard such a fine compliment before.
    Bessie had “neuralgia” in her face that pained her all the time. She had tried every medicine in the book but none worked. Bessie was also a painter. She said she saw everything in two dimensions—on two planes and her huge iron sculptures showed that. She said “When I look across a room at objects against the wall, they all look like they’re on the same plane. You see them in three dimensions—I just see them in two, height and width.” She was strange—there was no doubt about it.
    Once in a very rare while, Bessie would get angry and then it was a sight to see and to hear. Because she was usually so calm, it was always amazing when she got angry. Her deep voice would slowly start to rumble like a volcano getting ready to erupt. When finally the anger came, her voice was so loud and strong, the walls would seem to shake and the ground to tremble. This happened so seldom that many people who had known her for years did not know that calm, placid Bessie could ever get angry.
    When Melissa called Bessie, there was no answer. Surprising because Bessie or her husband were always home, Melissa called another member of her group. She did not really want to, but she had to find out the information—she knew she had only one day to get her pieces ready. She called Mitchy—an older woman whom years of bitterness and envy had culminated into a thin papyrus-skinned body. When she called and asked about the location, Mitchy seemed surprised to hear from her and instead of answering the question, she began to pick Melissa’s brain for information about all the other exhibitors. After Melissa had laboriously answered all the questions Mitchy threw at her, Mitchy told her she was not going to exhibit in this show so she had thrown the instructions away and besides she didn’t like this group of exhibitors and she belonged to a much better group and was going to quit. Melissa hung up and dialed Bessie again. Her husband answered. “Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t you know? Bessie died two days ago—an aneurysm in her brain—a vein exploded.”
    Still in her early 30s, Melissa and death had never had a speaking acquaintance, not even with family pets. She put down the phone without saying goodbye. She thought of Bessie perfecting huge chocolate statues on top of her cakes, of Bessie seeing everything in two dimensions. Did she see people that way too? Melissa wondered, trying to accept the fact that she would never, ever, see Bessie again, a line from one of her favorite plays, Shakespeare’s Richard II, streamed across her consciousness:
    Even through the hollow eyes of death, I spy life peering.

    For some reason exhibiting her work now seemed very important to her and she began to work hard at making the pieces look really good.

Cul-de-Sac

    Detective Charles Ross, a rotund middle-aged man, went off duty at 11:30 P.M. He drove to Coney Island to get franks and fries at Nathan’s. He devoured them.
    At 11:50 P.M., he heard about a robbery on his police radio. He headed north to Mermaid Avenue and then west on Mermaid. He caught up with the robber who was on foot and heading east. The fellow turned around, ran west and then south on West 27th Street. He flew across the street. But it was a cul-de-sac. He was trapped.
    Detective Ross left his car on the corner and rushed into the cul-de-sac. The street was pitch-black except for a tiny area illuminated by a streetlamp. He couldn’t see the robber. Then he saw something move near the lamp.
    “Stop, police!” he cried out.
    The robber stopped, but pointed a gun at him.
    “Put the gun down!” he shouted.
    But the fellow lifted the weapon.
    Detective Ross shot him three times. He fell to the ground.
    Ross found a dead teenage boy, but no gun. He left to call for help. When he returned, the kid was gone.
    “You killed a kid and the corpse vanished,” his partner said. “Impossible, Charlie!”
    Ross returned to the cul-de-sac many times. Maybe it never happened. A corpse couldn’t vanish on that street. But his guilt was unbearable.

    One day, he looked in the mirror and solved the puzzle. He never killed the boy. He murdered Ross.
    The kid entered Ross’s precinct and gave himself up. Maybe the nightmares would stop. When they handcuffed him, he grew a big smile.

BIO

    Dr. Mel Waldman is a licensed New York State psychologist and a candidate in Psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (CMPS). He is also a poet, writer, artist, and singer/songwriter. After 9/11, he wrote 4 songs, including “Our Song,” which addresses the tragedy. His stories have appeared in numerous literary reviews and commercial magazines including HAPPY, SWEET ANNIE PRESS, CHILDREN, CHURCHES AND DADDIES and DOWN IN THE DIRT (SCARS PUBLICATIONS), NEW THOUGHT JOURNAL, THE BROOKLYN LITERARY REVIEW, HARDBOILED, HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, ESPIONAGE, and THE SAINT. He is a past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis and was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature. Periodically, he has given poetry and prose readings and has appeared on national T.V. and cable T.V. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America, American Mensa, Ltd., and the American Psychological Association. He is currently working on a mystery novel inspired by Freud’s case studies. Who Killed the Heartbreak Kid?, a mystery novel, was published by iUniverse in February 2006. It can be purchased at www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/, www.bn.com, at /www.amazon.com, and other online bookstores or through local bookstores. Recently, some of his poems have appeared online in THE JERUSALEM POST. Dark Soul of the Millennium, a collection of plays and poetry, was published by World Audience, Inc. in January 2007. It can be purchased at www.worldaudience.org, www.bn.com, at /www.amazon.com, and other online bookstores or through local bookstores. A 7-volume short story collection was published by World Audience, Inc. in June 2007 and can also be purchased online at the above-mentioned sites.

Humor for One

    I’m going on a blind date. My first one. I am actually terrified but my friends won’t let me back down. I was the last one of our group to try on-line dating. I fought it as long as I could, rebelled against it when everyone else in the world seemed to be doing it.
    Ashley was the first to do it; she created a profile on match.com. Within days she had tons of men interested, sending her e-mails and ice-breakers. She was so excited; she met every one of them. At least the ones that didn’t look like potential axe-murderers. Not that we really knew what one looked like. She would forward the profiles to all of us and we would vote whether or not to veto each one. If the guy made it past two out of four of us and Ashley, she would meet him. Ashley had some crazy experiences with some very strange guys, like the guy who asked her to meet him in a Denny’s parking lot and then showed half naked expecting to have sex – in her car! I think she was trying to meet too many guys to be able to notice if she actually liked one. Eventually, she slowed down and met a guy she really liked. He had a really sarcastic sense of humor but he made her laugh. They dated for four months until Ashley got bored and moved on. But that was Ashley.
    Chloe signed up on yahoo personals but she never met anyone. She chatted with a bunch of guys and got a lot of e-mails but she preferred chatting over face-to-face meetings. She spent most days in her office anyway working on computer programs so it was more comfortable for her. Once she chatted with a guy for a month who seemed to have a great sense of humor and she decided she would meet him. One night just before falling asleep, she e-mailed him her number so they could make arrangements. The next morning she woke up late, threw on her clothes and sped to the office. When she had a chance to check her phone at lunch, there were seventeen missed calls, all from him. The calls started at midnight and continued every half an hour until 10:00am. There were six new voice mails - from him. All but the first were complaining that she hadn’t yet called him back. She promptly sent him an e-mail that he would be better off finding someone else who can deal with high maintenance people. Then she cancelled her account.
    Brianna and Emily both have met a couple of guys but they are very choosy. Probably a result of Ashley’s experiences. I am a chef at a local seafood restaurant and I spend endless hours stuck in my kitchen and I never meet anyone new except the rare customer who wants to meet the chef and then gets introduced to this sweaty girl in a white hat with fifteen different types of sauces smeared down the front of her apron. My sous-chef has a hysterical sense of humor but he is married with three kids. Right now is the restaurant’s slow season so I have some free time. The girls are hoping I will meet someone worthy of taking to a party at the fashion magazine where Brianna works. The party is next weekend so I am not holding out a lot of hope.
    Emily is a bartender at a cool neighborhood bar near where we all live. While Jeff and I were e-mailing, I mentioned it as a place I like to go. So, he suggested we meet there. Perfect, I thought. Emily will be there to make sure I don’t get kidnapped or worse. When I walk in the bar, I see Emily cleaning a glass behind the bar. She sees me but pretends not to. I look around for Jeff to see if he is there yet but see no one who looks like the picture he sent me. The two things I like most about him are his shiny blond hair and witty sense of humor.
    A strange looking guy with greasy brown hair tries to get my attention as I walk by him. He is sitting alone at a table. I ignore him and keep walking. It happens every now and then at the bar.
    “Rachel,” he says. How does this creepy guy know my name? “It’s me, Jeff.”
    My jaw nearly hits the floor. There is no way this is that cute guy from the picture. I figure it’s a joke. Ok, I get it; I have a sense of humor, too. The real Jeff is hiding somewhere, waiting for a reaction. I’ll play along.
    “Uh, hi,” I say, shaking his hand. He motions for me to sit and I do. I look around everywhere for another single guy, maybe one appearing incognito with a menu in front of his face. I don’t see one, but I do spot Bri, Ashley and Chloe at another table, watching me. Ashley catches my eye and starts laughing. Then the other two follow. I’m glad they can find the humor in this. Maybe they know where the real Jeff is.
    Jeff begins to talk and I recognize the voice from our phone conversation. The realization that this is really him sinks in and I feel sick. I start to ask him what happened to his blond hair but as I look into his eyes to speak to him, I notice one of his eyebrow hairs is much longer than the others. It is so long, it curls down in front of one of his eyes.
    “What happened to your eyebrow?” I blurt out. “I-I-I mean hair, uh...blond hair, you – your hair, it’s not blond.” Unless you’re going for dirty blond, in that case, time to cut back on the dirty.
    “Oh, you mean the picture I sent.” Duh. “That was taken ten years ago when I used to work out in the sun all the time. I don’t really take too many pictures anymore and that was the only one I could still find. I must’ve lost the others in the divorce.”
    “Oh.—uh—your—uh—profile didn’t mention you were divorced.”
    “It used to but I took it off, no one would meet me. But it’s been five years.”
    “Five years. Wow, you must have married young.”
    “No, I was smart and waited till I was almost thirty, didn’t wanna rush it too much.”
    “But, uh, your profile says you’re twenty-five.”
    Silence.
    And more silence.
    I have to speak and try to break the tension. “Oh, I get it; you were twenty-five when the picture was taken.”
    He just stares at me as though horribly confused by a complicated math problem. No smile, no laugh, no audible response. He eyes tilt up toward the ceiling as though he is lost in calculations. Clearly, he has no sense of humor. What have I gotten myself into? And how do I get out of here? And who the hell wrote those witty e-mails for him?
    I begin looking around the room for possible escape routes.
    “Excuse me, are you Rachel?” Emily is standing beside the table. Oh, thank god. I was calculating the height of the table next to us to see if I could clear it on my way out.
    “Yes, I am.”
    “Someone just called for you, it’s an emergency, you have to go home now.”
    “Oh my god,” I say as I stand up. “I hope it’s not serious.”
    “I’ll go with you,” Jeff says beginning to get out of his chair.
    “No!” Emily pronounces. “I have to bring you something.”
    Emily turns and heads back to the bar as I put on my jacket. “Nice to meet you,” I say right before I run out of the bar, not even waiting for his response.
    I run all the way back to my apartment and fling myself on my bed. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
    I get my cell phone out of my purse and put it on my chest. I know the girls will text me when the coast is clear. At least we will have something new to laugh about tonight. They’d better have a drink waiting.

The Neighborhood

    There was a beast that lived in the caves of the forest. The forest was behind a little neighborhood subdivision.
    The beast had four, large black cat-eyes and a serpent’s tongue that waggled out from between his white teeth. He was missing an arm, his left one. He lost it when he was rummaging around an old, abandoned car by his cave one day and got a gash from the charred, rusty metal of the car. He contracted a deep infection and tore his arm off to save the rest of his body from becoming infected.
    The beast made a living selling rainbows to the locals in the subdivision. People would bring him food and water: usually raw, pink pieces of pork and mop-buckets full of murky tap water. He swallowed the raw pork down his throat without chewing, making a slurping sound. And he lapped up the tap water with his little serpent’s tongue, taking him two hours and fifteen minutes to finish the mop-bucket of water.
    And business was booming for the beast. People needed rainbows all the time.
    Inside a house in the subdivision just a few blocks outside the forest where the beast dwells, some humans are preparing for dinner in the late afternoon.
    A mother is stirring up a large kettle of soup on the stove, wiping her hands on her black-and-white apron. She wipes her hands because they are perspiring a lot. The late afternoon light spilling in through the window sheers warms her face. Her husband is at the dining room table, reading the world news section of the Greenwood Gazette. He takes a drink of vodka, on the rocks, from his short, fat little glass and sets it on the table. “Russia’s at it again,” he grumbles. He smashes his fist on the table. “Damn Russians!” he shouts. The glass of vodka with the ice in it tinkles and sounds like bell chimes.
    “Oh Charles, cheer up,” says his wife. “I’m making your favorite.”
    “Not that lentil soup again, Marla,” says Charles. “I hate lentils. Can’t you make something with any taste?” he sneers.
    Marla sighs, wipes her hands on her apron, and brushes the sheers away from the window to peek outside. There are four rainbows in the sky above the forest that is a few blocks away.
    “Do you think it’s time?” she asks.
    Charles puts down the paper and looks at her, thinking. He gets up and walks out of the room.
    “Honey, where are you going?” asks Marla.
    “The basement.”
    Marla turns the stove-knob to simmer, then walks over to the dining room table where the vodka in the glass is still shaking a tiny bit. She picks up a polished silver picture frame. On it is a photograph of a boy, about seven. His face is pudgy with leftover baby fat. He’s standing dressed in a little sailor’s outfit next to a clump of bushes. She can hear the sound of his little chuckle as she runs her finger along his face. It leaves a wet, sweaty finger-streak along the metal frame.
    In the basement, Charles is standing in the dark in front of a large freezer all yellowed and mildewy. When he opens it, the orange light illuminates the dusty toolbench behind him, the rusty worn tools hanging on nails on the wall, and the junk he doesn’t ever want to throw away strewn about at his feet. It smells like dust and mold, a little like rotten fruit. He takes out some ziplock bags and closes the freezer door again quickly because he doesn’t want to see the mess anymore. He scurries back upstairs into the house, where he fills up a bucket of water at the sink.
    He walks past Marla, who is now ladling soup into large round bowls. She doesn’t say anything. She knows where he’s going. He’s gone there every Wednesday evening for months, years.
    As Charles heads toward the forest that looms over the neighborhood, he sees people sitting in their front-yards, in lawn chairs. They are looking at the rainbows that are arcing out from the depths of the forest. The sight-seers are all smiling. Some have koozies of beer in their hands.
    One old man sits alone in his front lawn, bringing a pair of binoculars with a string tied around his neck up to his pale, wrinkly face every so often.
    Charles sees a yellow, diamond-shaped dead-end sign posted at the end of the street. Past the sign, the pavement turns into a dirt-road. Beyond that, there is a foot-worn path leading into the forest. The innards of the forest are obscured in darkness. Beside the entrance to the forest is another dead-end sign, this one a lot more rusted and worn-down. Its corners are bent and the yellow sign has faded into a rough rusty brown.
    Charles stands at the edge of the pavement, where the sidewalk ends.
    “You better get in there quick,” yells the old man, his binoculars shaking in his old, palsy hand. “It’s getting dark out.”
    Charles looks back at the man. “Mind your own damn business,” he barks.
    Bob smiles and puts his binoculars up to his eyes and looks at Charles through them.
    “Stop it,” Charles says.
    Bob focuses the binocular lenses on Charles’ face, looking at his angry expression that makes the old man belch out an old man laugh: a little like a wheezing heavy breathing, almost like he’s dying.
    “I said stop it,” Charles says again, more seriously. He walks up to the old man, slaps the binoculars off his face, and grabs him by the shoulders.
    Bob, scared, puts his hands up to his face. “Go away,” he pleads, shaking with fear.
    Charles now realizes that everyone on the block is now looking at him. “What do you want?” Charles cries defiantly at the whole block of people. He lets the old man go and walks into the forest.
    In the forest, the trees form a thick wall around Charles as he walks deeper. The trees absorb the sound of the outside world and distorts it into watery frequencies and airwaves. It seems to envelope him, the distorted sounds of cars driving by, lawn mower motors spinning devilishly, water faucets dripping down onto hard surfaces in booming resonances. The atmosphere is cooler in here, where the shadows of the trees seem to suck the light out of everything, so that there isn’t even a twinkling of a bug in the air. The cold wind that whips through the heavy tangle of trees slashes around his face like stinging scrapes that redden his cheeks. He holds onto the bucket of tap water tighter, he clutches the ziplock bags of meat closer to his heart that’s beating heavier. The leaves underneath him are half-dying, indistinguishably black within the mucky, soggy dirt. They are soundless against Charles quickening steps.
    Charles hears the panting of the beast as he gets closer to his lair; with each step Charles seems to lose the use of his legs as he begins to be guided onward almost against his will. Suddenly he sees the beast, crouched over at the entrance of the cave, its hideous face turned away from him. The beast brings his head up, slurping down a wet piece of meat with a ferocious shaking of its powerful neck. The beast is huge, almost twice the size of Charles. The beast’s four eyes emanate no light, his pupils have overtaken the whites of his eyes from years of living in this dark, soggy, damp forest-cave. The beast turns and looks at him, all four eyes blinking sideways. His wild, tangled, dirty, putrid black hair shake from his movements.
    Charles throws the meat at the beast, and puts the bucket of tap water on the forest floor. He tries to kick the bucket toward the beast, but it falls over and spills. The beast snarls a deep, low growl that makes the branches of the nearby trees bend away from the beast, trying to escape the rotten, dead air coming out of the beast’s flaring nostrils.
    “I..I want a rainbow,” Charles says.
    “Shut up,” says the beast, in a thundering, demonic voice. “I know what you want.”
    “I’ll take it right away then,” says Charles.
    The beast tears open the ziplock bag and wolfs down the meat, his four unblinking eyes never leaving Charles face as he guzzles it down.
    “You make me sick,” Charles mutters under his breath.
    The beast suddenly spews out the unchewed meat and charges up to Charles in a flash, who covers his face but stands his ground. The beast smacks Charles hands away from his face with his one arm and breathes deeply right up against him, their noses almost touching. “You made me this way, remember?” the beast growls.
    Charles’ face and spine stiffen now, and he looks deeply into the top two eyes of the beast. “You’re nothing to do with me,” he says. “You make rainbows for us, to make our neighborhood a better one, that’s all.”
    The beast puts his one remaining arm around Charles, trying to hug him. Charles coils back. “Get away from me,” he screams, “You monster!”
    “I don’t want to do this anymore,” cries the beast, in a child’s voice, in a sobbing voice that sounds like a pudgy child’s laughter.
    “It’s for your own good,” says Charles. He brushes his shoulders, wiping away some of the beast’s tears and turns to walk away.
    The beast gathers up the remnants of the regurgitated meat and licks it off the forest floor. He defecates onto the dead leaves outside of his cave and blows at it, making it spin and spin. His excrement starts emitting a white light that grows up like a beanstalk, separating into the colors of a rainbow.
    That night the neighborhood sleeps under a high arcing rainbow that lights up the neighborhood in a glowing red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet mosaic. The sounds of slurping coming from some deep dark part of the forest keeps Charles awake until three in the morning. He goes to work tired the next day.

Wannabe Cowboy

    Pat Martin, a lifetime resident of New Rochelle, New York, retired from his lucrative insurance business after thirty years. He had realized early on in his career that New Rochelle would provide him with enough wealthy clients for an above average income that would give him opportunities to invest in the securities listed in the biggest gambling hall in the world, the New York Stock Exchange. He was always able to talk those clients into over-insuring their expensive Westchester homes. In his eyes, that was far better than commuting to Manhattan every day just to increase his insurance business. Pat also knew that in Manhattan he would be competing with the slickest of the slick insurance agents in the business.
    Once established in New Rochelle new clients approached him on the basis of recommendations from others. He began cutting his office hours in the small space he had leased. This gave him time to explore the stock market and keep an eye on his investments. Pat Martin did well. He not only found a smart broker, he developed what he referred to his “gut feeling” about market trends. He was wrong about the “big board’s” direction only once, but that did not amount to any substantial loss. In fact, as he bragged to his cronies at lunch in Schrafft’s New Rochelle branch restaurant, “That loss gave me a nice loss that I deducted from my taxes. Sure helped that year.”
    When he decided to retire, he and Marge discussed at supper one evening where they wanted to go. The discussion continued for several evenings. Pat had been a fan of Western shoot‘em-up novels all of his adult life. More than anything he wanted to fulfill his dream of buying a ranch in the West where he could become a cowboy. Marge wanted to move to Florida where many of their friends had chosen for retirement. They argued back and forth until, of course, Pat finally won. Then they went round and round as to where in the West they would become ranch owners.
    Pat maintained that “most of the West happened in New Mexico” because Billy the Kid was famous there, and Pat thought Pat Garrett was the finest lawman west of the Mississippi. There was one time that he almost changed his mind about Garrett when he read that the famous lawman had met his maker from a gunman’s bullet as he was relieving himself in the sagebrush between Las Cruces and Alamogordo, New Mexico. Pat was almost disappointed in his hero, but made up his mind that whoever wrote the story never knew the lawman, or was jealous of his bravery.
    Pat and Marge decided to make an exploration trip to southern New Mexico before making a final decision. The flight from LaGuardia to El Paso was smooth and uneventful. They were surprised at the change in climate because they left New Rochelle the second week in March with a few snow banks that were remnants of snow banks from plows. When they deplaned in El Paso, they didn’t need their heavy overcoats.
    “This is almost like Florida,” Pat said.
    “I don’t see an ocean,” Marge half grunted her reply.
    “Well, I saw the Rio Grande as we made our approach,” Pat said.
    “I saw it, too, and there is about enough water in it to wash a miniature poodle if you don’t spill any.”
    “Dammit Marge, give New Mexico a chance. After all El Paso is Texas.”
    “It didn’t look any different from twenty thousand feet.”
    Pat retrieved their luggage and they went to the rent-a-car desk.
    The attendant stepped over in front of Pat and Marge. “What can I do for you today?” she asked.
    “I would like to rent a pickup, because we will be looking for a ranch to buy,” Pat said.
    “I have only one available. It is a Ford 150. Would that be satisfactory?”
    “That sounds fine to me,” Pat said, after glancing at Marge to gauge her feelings about renting a pickup instead of a regular automobile.
    They finished the transaction, and Pat and Marge went to the parking area. After putting their luggage in the bed of the pickup, they got into the cab and started the engine. Off they went to get onto Interstate 10 that would take them to Las Cruces, New Mexico, some fifty miles from the border city of El Paso. Pat had told Marge earlier that according to his research, the International Border was no longer safe because of the drug wars between drug cartels and between the drug cartels and the Mexican police.
    After checking in to a motel off the Interstate, they went to a western apparel store where Pat bought what he thought were appropriate “cowboy clothes”, including a pair of high heeled cowboy boots. When he walked out of the store Marge, with arms akimbo, stood and watched her husband navigate to the pickup in his new, strange footwear.
    “Why are you intent on wearing those cowboy boots when you can barely walk in them?” Marge asked, giggling once they were back in the pickup.
    “If I am going to look for a ranch to buy I want to look like a cowboy,” Pat said.
    Marge turned her head and looked out of the passenger side window while shaking her head in disbelief.
    Inside the real estate office Marge sat down and listened to the agent describe the various properties that were in his listing book. She felt embarrassed for Pat in the way he looked out of place in his newly purchased clothing. Marge also noticed that the real estate agent kept glancing at Pat’s new cowboy hat and wrinkling his brow.
    “I think I have just the ranch for you, Mister Martin. It is near Hatch. But, that is not a long drive. Would you like to see it now?”
    “That would be fine, wouldn’t it Marge,” Pat said. “We came to buy a ranch so we might as well get that done as soon as possible.”
    Marge sat siIently in her chair. The agent led them to his Ford Explorer for the drive to Hatch.
    Before arriving in Hatch the real estate agent turned off on a dirt road leading to some farms with irrigated pasture, a few metal buildings and deposits of old farm machinery. The impression was that the area was a haven for junk. They stopped just inside a wooden gate that the agent opened, then drove through. Pat and Marge got out and stood by the car to wait for the agent to see if anyone was at home.
    A stocky woman came to the door after the agent had knocked several times. She opened the screen door enough to talk with the agent face to face. A moment later she was back inside with the door closed and the agent was on his way back to the Explorer. Upon his return he opened the door for Marge and told them that the farmer was out in the barn working on some machinery. He also warned his clients that the farmer was quite deaf and to make matters worse refused to wear a hearing aid. Pat and Marge followed the agent to the barn where they found the farmer occupied with repairing an old tractor. After introductions had been made it was obvious that the old man was not able to hear much of what the agent had to say. They decided to let the agent talk to the farmer as best he could while they waited in the Explorer.
    Twenty minutes later the agent walked back to the Explorer and got in behind the steering wheel.
    “The old man has twenty acres left with the house and barn. There’s a small irrigation well that can irrigate the twenty and the house looks twice as old as the couple. They want to move to Deming where their daughter works in the school system. He is firm on his price of a hundred seventy-five thousand cash.”
    “That sounds like a lot of money for a twenty-acre ranch,” Pat said.
    “Well, if you compare it with the other places I have for sale, it is a bargain,” the agent said.
    The agent started the Explorer and drove back to Las Cruces. Back in his office the three chatted about the place and real estate in general around the area. Within an hour, Pat wrote a check as deposit on his offer of one hundred fifty thousand.
    “I’ll take you back to your motel and then run this out to Hatch to see if they will take your offer,” the agent said.
    Two and a half hours later the agent knocked on the Matins’ motel door. Pat was quick to open it and the agent stood there with a smile on his face. “Well, Mister and Missus Martin, you have bought yourselves a twenty acre ranch. Welcome to New Mexico.”
    A month later the old farm couple had finished moving to Deming and the Martins took possession of their new acquisition. Both Pat and Marge had become tired of living in the Las Cruces Motel. The house was empty of furnishings. They went inside and inspected the rooms. Marge put her hands on her hips when they reached what looked like the master bedroom. “Pat, I don’t know about you, but I am not moving into this dump until it gets new floors and fresh paint. But, before the paint, the walls need patching almost everywhere.”
    “I am sure there are people around Hatch that can do anything you want in the house.”
    “I hope you are right,” Marge said, out of the corner of her mouth.
    “I’ll bet we can get this place fixed up to be a dream house while we are back in New Rochelle selling our house there,” Pat said.
    “Pat, my dear, I think it would be best to keep the New Rochelle house until we are really sure about spending the rest of our days in this dump.”
    “What do you mean, ‘dump’? This place has a lot of potential.”
    “Potential! Potential, my butt,” she said. “We would probably be better off bulldozing this piece of junk down and building a new house,” Marge said.
    “By golly, I never thought about that, Marge. But, I don’t like that solution. I like the idea of living in the old ranch house with all its charm and history. We can stay in the motel in Las Cruces while the house is being fixed up.”
    Marge reluctantly agreed, but she was also angry with herself for not insisting on the bulldozing idea. She remained at the motel in front of the TV or went sight seeing in Las Cruces while the construction project was going on. There were days when she spent her time browsing in the many shops in Mesilla, a pastime she enjoyed more than trying to find something interesting in Las Cruces.
    Pat spent every day in Hatch, overseeing the project, but saying little to the workers. Ken Clafter was the man Pat found to be the contractor. He proved to be expert in the construction trades and did a lot of the work himself. One day, Clafter found Pat standing out in the twenty-acre field and approached him with an idea. “Pat, what do you have in mind for that field?” he asked.
    “I was just wondering about that myself. I suppose I ought to run cattle on it seeing that I am now a rancher,” he said.
    Ken couldn’t help but look at Pat from his cheap boots to his miss shaped hat. He wanted to laugh at Pat for saying he was a rancher, but he also didn’t want to antagonize the source of the good money that he was bringing home from the construction project. “My uncle told me to tell you that he might be interested in running some steers here. Would you be interested in talking to him?”
    “Sure, why not? It will be better than walking around here doing nothing.”
    Ken took off in his pickup, returning in a few minutes with his Uncle Elmer. Elmer Cobbleshell had a different look about him than Ken, the contractor. Elmer wore a battered felt Stetson that had sweat stains almost covering the entire brim and half the crown. His Levis were well faded, especially in the knees and thighs. Elmer’s cowboy boots had crude patches on the tops and the toes. The heels were scuffed so that anyone familiar with the cowboy life could tell that Elmer Cobbleshell was a genuine cowboy.
    “Kenny said you might be interested in what I have to offer,” Elmer said, a soggy toothpick still pressed between his lips.
    “He said something about running some steers on this twenty-acre pasture,” Pat said.
    “Well, I wouldn’t call this twenty a pasture yet. You would have to plant it and irrigate it before it could be called a pasture.”
    “Tell me then, what you have in mind,” Pat said.
    Elmer tipped his scroungy old hat back with his thumb and scratched the front of his baldhead. “This field will take diskin’ and a spike toothed harrow before it gets planted. I have a tractor and the implements to get that done. But, I’ll need seed for permanent pasture and that doesn’t come cheap. Of course there’s a lot of irrigatin’ to do and there needs to be a fence down the middle so the steers can’t get into the freshly irrigated half and punch holes in the turf with their hooves.”
    “That does sound like a lot of work,” Pat said. “How long will all that take?”
    “Once I get started I’ll have the pasture planted in a week. However it will be three or four months before we can turn the steers in, depending on the weather. A feller doesn’t want to start grazin’ new pasture too early.”
    “I need to know who pays for what,” Pat said.
    “Seein’ how I am doin’ all the farm work and buyin’ the steers, you buy the wire for the fence, the seed for the permanent pasture and the electric for the irrigatin’ pump. Then, since you are furnishin’ the pastureland and all, you’ll get a steer when they are ready to sell. You can either sell it with the others or I’ll get you together with someone who can slaughter, cut and wrap the beef. You’ll have enough beef in your freezer for at least a year.”
    “How do you figure that?” Pat asked.
    “The steer should weigh about eight hundred pounds when it is finished on the pasture. It will dress out around sixty percent, and that includes the hide. That should give you around four hundred and eighty pounds of meat. The chances are you won’t eat beef all the time so that should last you a year. It’s a helluva deal no matter how you look at it.”
    “What in hell am I going to do with the hide?” Pat asked.
    “The man I have in mind to slaughter your steer knows how to cure a hide and make a nice rug or wall hanging out of it.”
    “You know, Elmer, that sounds like a helluva deal to me so let’s do it,” Pat said, holding out his hand to shake with Elmer, who took Pat’s hand and clasped it firmly. Pat had read that all deals in the West got sealed with a handshake.
    That evening when Pat returned to the motel he told Marge about his transaction with Elmer. Marge’s only reaction was to ask Pat if he got it in writing.
    “Of course not, Marge,” Pat said. “That would be an insult out here in the West.”
    “Suit yourself, it’s your ranch.”
    Pat then described the deal in detail including the rug made out of the hide. For a moment he thought that maybe Marge was going to be excited about having a rug made out of their very own steer, but she turned away to continue watching the television.
    Pat walked out to the motel’s bar and sat down to his first Scotch on the rocks of the evening. All he could think about was how he could possibly get Marge interested in “The Ranch”, as he had become used to referring to the Hatch property. After the third scotch he began imagining the twenty-acre pasture all with green grass and dotted with steers of different colors.
    Two weeks later The Ranch had permanent pasture seed planted in the twenty-acre field. Three months later, after some mild spring temperature, the permanent pasture had grown to the point where Elmer told Pat that it was ready to graze. Elmer had all the steers in his own pasture, so he drove five of them to Pat’s and closed the gate. They were gentle and went right to the pasture and its green grass. Elmer told Pat that his own pasture had little left in it after a winter’s use. Two weeks later Elmer brought the rest of the steers and turned them out on The Ranch.
    “The total on pasture is sixty head,” Elmer said to Pat, who was leaning on the boundary fence watching the cowboy work at getting the steers through the gate into the pasture. “I think the pasture is strong enough to carry that many.” Elmer said. “If it looks like they are eating it down too fast, I’ll move ‘em out, at least some of them.
    Pat drove Marge out to The Ranch the following day to show her the steers on the pasture. Kenny came out of the house when he saw Marge. “The house is just about done, Missus Martin. All that’s left is painting the trim around the back porch,” Kenny said. “You can start moving in anytime.”
    Pat and Marge spent a week shopping for furniture and household things. They had decided not to move their furniture and other belongings from New Rochelle because the New Rochelle furnishings fit the New Rochelle scene. Little or nothing of their eastern belongings fit the flavor of Hatch, New Mexico. Marge had not explored Las Cruces enough to have many ideas about furnishing the new farmhouse so she relied on the salesmen in the various stores where she went to shop. Pat put up no arguments to her selections because he wanted her to feel happy with what was his choice of location.
    After they sat down to their first supper in the new house Pat repeated his past description of all the beef their steer would produce from filets to standing rib roasts with the bonus of a steer hide rug that they could place in front of the living room fireplace. Marge changed the subject. “This place is very nice, Pat, but I am still wondering about living so far from a city.”
    “Heavens, Marge, Las Cruces is just a short drive and there is always El Paso.”
    “Come now Pat, you certainly cannot compare those burgs with Manhattan.”
    “I’m not trying to compare them with Manhattan. I am really glad to be away from all those crowds in New Rochelle. And, just think of all that tasty beef we will have in the freezer. That will sure beat those skimpy portions at Schrafft’s.”
    “Oh, come now, Pat. Don’t start griping about Schraffts, the big difference between Schrafft’s and this ranch is that you may have to stand in line to get seated at Schrafft’s, but once you are in your chair they bring everything you want right to your table. Then they clear off the dirty dishes.”
    “There’s a good restaurant in downtown Hatch that serves great Mexican food,” Pat said.
    “I have heard all I want to hear about famous Hatch Chile and Mexican food. This is not Mexico.”
    “It used to be,” Pat said. “I have been reading up on the history here.”
    “Well, let’s eat before this roast pork gets cold,” Marge said, and took up her knife and fork.
    Life for the Martins begged excitement for the next four months. Marge spent most of her time sitting on the front porch reading romance novels or inside watching the television. Pat kept busy at his new job as irrigator of his twenty- acre pasture filled with grass-chomping steers. Elmer had taught Pat what had to be done to keep the pasture growing and Pat was more than happy to take over the chore. Irrigating also gave him the opportunity to watch the steers grow and fatten on the pasture.
    One early morning Elmer arrived riding a sorrel gelding. Pat was enjoying his first cup of coffee when Elmer rode up to the house and dismounted. Pat hurried to the front door and opened it.
    “What are you doing here so early?” Pat asked.
    “I’ve come to drive the steers over to my corrals where there’s a loading chute. I’ve got a buyer coming out to look at them this afternoon.”
    “Do you need any help?” Pat asked, hoping that Elmer would say yes, but remembering that he still hadn’t bought a horse.
    “Naw, there’s just enough of those critters for one man to drive over there. It ain’t far.”
    Pat went back inside to his coffee. Elmer mounted the sorrel and rode over to the gate to the pasture.
    After breakfast, Pat walked over to the pasture and sighed. He missed seeing the steers. He turned around and returned to the house. He was somewhat excited to hear what the buyer thought about the steers. Marge came to the kitchen an hour later and inquired who had been the visitor. Pat told her about Elmer coming to get the steers.
    Pat sat out on the porch with the latest in the series of Western novels all written by Jake Logan. Pat had read all the books in that series. He thought Jake Logan must spend all his time writing books to have so many in print. Marge finished her breakfast, and then went out to the porch to join her husband. Both concentrated on their reading until Elmer, still mounted on the sorrel, rode into the yard. He dismounted. Pat noticed a disappointed look on Elmer’s face as he approached the porch.
    “Well folks, I got some bad news for you,” Elmer said.
    Pat and Marge quickly looked at one another.
    “On the way to my corrals a kid on a motorcycle reved up his engine and spooked the steers and those critters broke loose and ran on down the road toward town. They ran out in front of a big semi-truck before the driver could stop. The truck killed your steer.”
    Pat and Marge looked at each other again with surprised looks on both their faces. Elmer quickly remounted the sorrel and rode off toward his place.
    With her hands on her hips and standing face to face with Pat, Marge scowled. “What does that old scoundrel mean, ‘the truck killed your steer’? How is it that the one steer the truck killed was ours?”
    “It must have been the steer Elmer had picked out to slaughter and cut up for our freezer,” Pat said, and scratched his nose.
    Pat got into his pickup and drove over to Elmer’s farm. As he approached the house he glanced over at the corrals and saw the steers with their heads in a long feed trough eating hay. He didn’t count them. Counting them wouldn’t have meant anything anyway because he had not counted them when they arrived in the pasture. It hadn’t occurred to him to count the steers in order to know how many there were in case they got out of the pasture for some reason.
    Pat and Elmer talked about getting another batch of steers to grow out in Pat’s pasture. When Pat drove back into his yard he saw Marge sitting on the front porch with two suitcases flanking her. He got out of the pickup and walked over to the porch.
    “What’s going on, Marge?” He asked. “What are you doing here on the porch with these suitcases?”
    “I am waiting for the taxi from Las Cruces since Hatch doesn’t have a taxi.”
    “Why are you waiting for a taxi, Marge?”
    “I am going to Florida,” she replied in an abrupt tone of voice.
    “Why?” he asked.
    “Because, I am leaving this so-called ranch and going back to civilization. I went along with coming out West because you wanted to be a cowboy. I listened to that hair-brained scheme of Elmer’s with those steers. Now, Lone Ranger, you lose your entire herd because of a motorcycle and a semi-truck. Masked man I think you should change characters and become the masked man’s faithful Indian companion, Tonto. When you need something to do look up ‘Tonto’ in a Spanish-English dictionary and you will discover that ‘Tonto’ means ‘Stupid’. Here comes my Taxi.”

A Reflection of Reality

    “It is contemporary journalism that holds the mirror up to life. It used to be the novel that brought the news about the way we live. Not any more. Current fiction holds the mirror up to the writer. It’s masturbatory. Journalism turns outward to the individual in society, the big themes—everything from the national sweep of Presidential elections to true crime to life on mean streets or in suburbia. Its power is that the image is not imagined truth—it’s really real.”
    “Apart from truth and reality, how can you be sure the facts are accurate? You can create a character and know every thought he thinks, you can know things about him even he doesn’t know; but when you are writing about a real person—more or less real people like politicians and performers—you come to a place you can’t go past. I’m not referring to libel, just to how much you can know about anyone. Can you go through the looking glass?”
    “Not through it. Hold it up. The mirror image is factual.”
    “So much about a mirror image depends on the lighting. A change in lighting even changes your reflected skin
    tone. Tonal quality is part of truth.”
    “To keep this going till we kill it, a mirror is two things - matter and reflected matter. It is glass with a silver backing. It is all the ideas associated with a looking glass.”
    “And journalism, not literature, is now the looking glass?”
    “Yes. If you want to see the world, you find it held up to you in the journalist’s mirror. It’s also a looking glass you can go through. You can read people’s thoughts, even someone you don’t know, through the facts of life and action. The mirror shows the inner life, too.”
    “There are all kinds of mirrors. Plain, functional ones. Ornate, decorative ones. Long oval mirrors in cherrywood frames. Unframed sheet mirrors across bathrooms. Triple dresser mirrors where you linger in communication with yourself. Compact mirrors where you check if you are still there. There is the mirror as Platonic idea, the pure form giving the pure reflection. There is the mirror in the world, the reflection flawed by the flaws of the reflector.”
    “Now you are being...playful.”
    “Why not?”
    Joe Hunter and Belle Brammer sat on the distressed
    leather sofa in his D.C. apartment. A manuscript lay on the glass and ebony coffee table. The first thing on her arrival, she took it out of her olive canvas briefcase. She dropped her suitcase at her feet, and she did not even take off her battered trenchcoat before she started on the manuscript. She looked at him straight, level eyes fixed on his. Her objections to the manuscript were phrased as forcefully as demands.
    He shifted uneasily. He was not used anymore to young women who were not deferential, nor to having his basic premise challenged, could hardly remember when he needed to justify himself.
    Joe was a man who grew into himself as he aged. Cameras took the lines around his eyes for signs that all the things he had seen in his time had weathered him. With graying hair trimmed in a rumpled style, he wore faded jeans and a turtleneck with the confidence of money and fame.
    Belle was intense, the thing about her that registered even before her looks. She had a pale, pointed face; big, thick glasses; minimal makeup; a mass of center-parted dark hair: not as attractive as she could be if she made the most of herself. Planets and stars swung on chains from moonstones in her ears.
    His voice had school of journalism neutrality and hers English major precision, but underneath both there was still Texas.
    The manuscript was his biography of a Senator who was
    much in the news, for good and for bad. A considerable advance had been paid; and a book club deal was already done on the strength of an outline and Joe’s name, even beside the fact that anything about the Senator generally sold well. Joe’s book should sell very well, even though the Senator had not granted an interview.
    “What I had in mind to do was not a straight ‘life’ of the Senator,” he said. “He’s a rich and famous dumbo. So why is he a perennial Presidential possibility? I used the Senator as the exemplar of everything superficial in American life today. Do you think it’s too judgemental?”
    “Judgemental is fine. Just base the judgement on the known facts. You go beyond interpretation in all these parts I marked. That upsets me—you should not get into the tabloid realm. All through it, you are giving thoughts he never said he thought and dialogue no one ever documented. Some conversations here are the opposite of what witnesses have recorded.”
    “Writers—which you know very well—detail the thoughts of their subjects. You can tell a person’s thoughts in a situation from the circumstances and his action. If something did not happen exactly the way I described it, it happened very much in that way. I feel a responsibility to show the Senator’s thought processes as well as his actions, to show his character and inner motivations.”
    “it’s called fiction. That is what literature does. You have a responsibility to label it.”
    “Lighten up.” A knowing smile, detached amusement. He brushed off her concerns and took charge. “D.C. journalists know all there is to know about our great leaders. They always did. It’s only now that we can publish it.”
    The subject came up obliquely the next day during brunch at the Shoreham. She described the Western novel she was writing.
    “Billy the Kid was not really left-handed,” he objected. “The photographic image was reversed in print, and that’s how the left-handed gunslinger legend started.”
    “The Billy the Kid who lived and breathed and performed his natural functions may not have been left-handed,” she shot back. “But the Billy the Kid in my novel is the Billy the Kid of legend—the true Billy the Kid.” She mused several moments. “This is the eerie quality of the mirror—the image is the same, yet opposite.”
    Joe Hunter came up during the rebellious days. A boy
    from the rough side of Dallas, he grew up rough-edged, knowing he wanted out, full of ambition and resentment and intelligence. A graduate of North Texas State, still rough-edged, he was out of the loop for a major television station job; but at a small town station, he got to do much more than read copy. A local atrocity flamed into a major cause in the civil rights movement. He was there, he got the story, and he did not let go of it. The networks picked up his first report; and he came over strong, unsparing, idealistic. His intense investigation led him to high places in the small town and got him fired from the local station just as the networks were making overtures.
    The firing did not hurt him any. He got a book out of the atrocity. He was on his way as a sort of alternate journalist within the system—too rough for an anchorman, the coals hardly banked yet, but compelling when he led the cameras to places they had never been yet. It was not his ideology, for he had none to speak of; it was the questions he asked, where he went, his follow-up—above all, his follow-up on the picture that emerged after the big headlines were over with. He did a frontline tour of Vietnam, as far forward as they would let him go, and then sent the war to the living rooms back home. He got two books out of Vietnam, and he figured in others’ books. A great war photographer took a famous picture that defined him: the image of him flat to the ground and rockets the Vietnamese called “Stalin’s organ” overhead and talking it all into his recorder.
    He did not break Watergate; but he followed his own leads tenaciously, once even being warned about his rough questions by a nervous network before the whole story blew. He got his book. After that, he did special reports on the world’s hot spots, blending television journalism and dramatically organized books. He followed his instinct back to D.C. to cover national politics, knowing something would come of it. Issues of powerful incompetence and manipulated images were hard to get a handle on. Finally, he saw how to use the Senator as the way into his theme.
    The New School, in Greenwich Village, invited him to give a special course on the interplay between reporters and public figures. “You know you have made it,” Schlesinger told him, “when you are asked to give a special course at the New School.”
    Belle Brammer took his course. He was recently divorced, for the second time. Her ratio of looks to brains interested him. In the Lion’s Head after his last lecture, she explained why she had taken his course.
    “I don’t want to be a reporter. It’s just that you all get a look into so many aspects of society. Most of us lead such homogenized lives. I think so often of the Victorian writers, Dickens, Tolstoy, Balzac, how they captured all of their society, from top to bottom....”
    She was a Texan in New York City, at that time trying to write a novel that brought all the aspects of the big city together, but piling stacks of Westerns against the wall of her East Village apartment.
    He was a Texan in D.C.—but now a citizen of the world within the Beltline. Texas was only where he came from. He knew that people responded to him about as much out of their perception of “Joe Hunter” as they did from their own knowledge of him. It was a cloudy mirror, a slightly out of focus set: a true image, just a little askew. Since he was blunt, focused, still rough in spots, Joe was satisfied that the image of him was as close to the substance as such could be; nothing to bother about.
    After putting Belle into a taxi to Amtrak, Joe went to Georgetown to collect two of his children for the Sunday visit.
    The next morning, he made sure to catch an early talk
    show. The Senator’s daughter was scheduled to talk about her pet cause, dyslexia. There might be something he could use in polishing the biography of her father. The hostess was high gloss enamel, and the girl seemed just as professional. She was practiced from childhood in how to behave on television, even how to pause, lean forward, confide spontaneously.
    She said, “I’ve got dyslexia.” She lived her cause. She had trouble in school, felt dumb and hopeless, finally was diagnosed. Her father was very supportive. She said, “He’s dyslexic, too—but they didn’t know about it, back then.” Dyslexia was the cause of his well-known failures in school and difficulty with words. He worked around it with extensive tutoring and verbal briefings, first from friends, later from aides. He would rather send for a writer and ask questions than read the book. He memorized everything. She said, “He’s very stubborn, you know.” They worked together to overcome their handicap. She said, “It even makes a whole difference in your IQ. I used to be so ashamed. Now I’m more in control.” She listed the symptoms concerned parents should look for and pitched her cause.
    Joe was stunned. Nowhere in his notes, nowhere in the
    Senator’s extensive publicity, nowhere in the books and articles Joe had found especially useful was the word “dyslexia.” Yet it was all there. The Senator’s long trouble with words, dislike for reading and writing, was well-documented. His scholastic failures and the tutoring and pressure needed to get him through college and a state law school were documented as stupidity by foes and glossed over as a rich boy’s playboy days by friends. Even his supporters felt comfortably superior to the Senator on the intellectual plane. The pattern of behavior was there, though the one word was not; and no one ever got it.
    Joe leafed through his manuscript. The same old story read differently. The plodding and memorizing, the things the Senator did to get by, were things he did; there had been no therapy for an unrecognized condition. He fastened on what worked for him. She had said, he was stubborn. How did it feel to be, or think you were, the dummy in a bright family? And find out something different so much later?
    He went to the Press Club for lunch. Everyone there was talking about the Senator and dyslexia, and that was what he went there to talk about.
    Joe would have to revise.
    The Jefferson Memorial had a muted glow through a scrim of snow. The flecks did not stick; but the sky was grey, the wind was up. Joe turned the collar of his trench coat up and appreciated the simple beauty of the dome and columns in that stern light. Round, symmetrical, ordered, the Memorial was a Neoclassical temple to republican virtue.
    In his early days in D.C., propelled from obscurity to national prominence, so far so fast, Joe used to go there—to remind himself, he said, of what it was all about: to meditate. In the circle of columns, framed by immortal words, under the clear-sighted gaze of the great man, he could feel out what mattered and what did not. Later on, it was his place to walk and think and work out book ideas. It was something he just did. Joe Hunter was known for it.
    Some off-season tourists recognized him. His peripheral vision picked up their reaction, and he acknowledged them, and this he did without a blip on his stream of thought. It was much as he had once described a politician walking down a street, engrossed in talk, the peripheral vision scanning like radar.
    He broke stride a moment as the thought struck him.
    He was part of the establishment now. Of course. It was not just that he had lunch in the best places. It was that his voice was respected. The hurlyburly when he was coming up had carried him to the top. Not only him; his generation. It had to happen. Change could be handled with, or without, grace.
    He needed to talk to Tom for awhile.
    When he left, it was sleeting. He turned back to see how the Memorial looked through diagonal lashings of sleet: the harmonious lines remained an emblem of polished strength no matter how the storm roiled around it. He wished Monet could have painted the Jefferson Memorial instead of those everlasting haystacks.
    He went to his office and placed calls to the Senator’s office and to Belle.

Shock and Awe

     “Hey, Cody. I heard your dad got blown up Saturday.”
    Cody gaped up frozen and airless, stomach roiling, but was spared the effort of responding by Carrie Godfrey, who flung herself like some kind of battle maiden between Cody and Rob Kildeer’s giggling circle of jock friends.
    “That was out of bounds,” she said. “That was so out of bounds there aren’t words in the English language to describe how out of bounds that was. You ignorant assholes, I hope your fathers all get struck by lightning next week so you know how it feels. You don’t joke about that shit.” She turned to Cody said, “My mom died of cancer last year. If you ever want to talk to someone I’m willing,” and stalked out.
    Cody slipped out a moment later and slunk into the boys’ bathroom, hoping not to attract notice and, as quietly as possible, disgorged what little breakfast he had been able to force down. It honestly wasn’t safe to be in there at all – especially with being an even more tempting target than usual – but his fear wasn’t quite high enough to justify throwing up in the hallway, so he risked it. He made it back out of the bathroom again without incident and slid into his desk just as the morning bell was jangling to a halt, followed a good five minutes later by Carrie, who touched him “reassuringly” on the shoulder as she passed and nearly made him jump out of his skin.
    How the hell was he going to make it? Through the day, let alone through the however many months it would take this novelty to wear off. “Ladies and Gentlemen! Cody Johansen, the amazing human dishrag,” – he had, astoundingly, picked up an actual friend two years ago at a summer art program his mother had bullied his father into allowing him to attend, and under Kyle’s family’s tutelage Cody had worked his way up to “sturdy doormat,” but not everyone had noticed the change – “has a new vulnerability! Be sure to stop by at least three times a day, per person, and ask him about his blown up father!” Cody had finally nailed down the knack, just in the last year, of not crying in public, but that skill was being sorely tested and he was almost shaking with the effort, boring holes into the blackboard with its suddenly incomprehensible chalk squiggles.
    On the edge of his consciousness the teacher’s voice wavered in and out of focus. Maybe he should have obeyed his mother’s urging and stayed home more than three days – “When Seargent Dosset was killed his kids stayed home for two weeks” – but even with the four hours a day he’d been finagled to spend at Kyle’s house – “In a time like this people need their families, honey” – he hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of staring at those four walls for another day. And it wasn’t like he could get any grieving done there anyway, with his mother and her uncomplicated grief constantly hovering over him telling him how sad he was. Kyle’s family knew how it was between him and his father, minus the actual hitting, so they more got where his grief was starting from. Just as he was about to admit defeat on the crying thing and go into the hallway, the intercom crackled on and the voice of the principal started speaking.
    “Hello, this is Mr. Collins. It has been brought to my attention that some of you are behaving in a completely inexcusable manner to one of your fellow students who has just experienced one of the worst tragedies that can befall a kid.”
    Cody let his head fall forward onto his hands and fisted his bangs.
    “Please take some time to think about how you would like to be treated if it happened to you. If I hear that anyone is kicking someone while they are that far down they will receive an immediate and nonnegotiable three day suspension and five page research paper on the experience of grief. Thank you.”
    The complete and utter silence that followed that announcement did not provide enough cover for Cody’s slightly ragged breaths and he bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed, trying to pull himself in.
    “I’m sorry, Cody,” said Rob in a small voice. “I shouldn’t have said anything close to that. Carrie was right that it was out of bounds.”
    Cody nodded unevenly, not sure if he was accepting the apology or just agreeing that it was out of bounds, and gestured urgently to Ms Zimmerman to keep droning on.
    By the time class was over he was feeling a little steadier. There was at least some chance that that announcement would keep him safe until he wasn’t quite so on edge about the thing itself. And/or had some sort of handle on how he felt about the son of a bitch being gone. Mr. Collins didn’t put up with shit the way the middle and elementary school principals had, so thank God it hadn’t happened when they first got to Iraq. He snagged Carrie on her way out of the classroom. “Did you do that?”
    She looked at him, clearly unsure what the right answer was.
    “Did you?” he asked more urgently.
    She gave a slight nod.
    Cody sagged. “Thank you. I didn’t... Like I knew it was going to be two solid weeks of that, minimum, and I had no idea how I was going to survive it.”
    She touched him again. “I’m sorry.”
    He could tell she meant it too, and not in a snarky way. “Thank you.”
    “I meant it about my mom and you could talk to me.”
    “Thank you. I might.” He couldn’t imagine actually pouring his heart out to an even vaguely popular girl, but it seemed like the polite thing to say.

    By the end of third period, however, a new problem had developed. No one was being overtly cruel and most of them seemed to be genuinely not cruel at all – although he couldn’t be sure – but people were pressing in from all sides issuing condolences that just made him feel worse. “I know how you must feel.” “Oh Cody, you must be so sad.” “I know if my dad died I would be...” And worst of all, the repeated thing about being grateful for his father’s service and sacrifice, all delivered with an obnoxiously stiff formality. As if he should feel honored and privileged that it was his dad who got to be blown up. As if, given the choice between father and country, of course he would have chosen his country and was merely somewhat bummed that it had come to that.
    By lunch he knew he was going to need a second announcement if he was going to get through this, and he just as surely knew that it was not an announcement he could ask Mr. Collins to make. Such was the measure of his desperation that he faux-confidently marched over to a table of girls he knew were his best bet, even if he normally wouldn’t dare to address someone so popular. Or for that matter so female. He forced himself keep going until the table top was actually brushing his legs and then stood there, waiting for their judgment before he risked the second step.
    Kathryn Beauchamp, the biggest gossip in the school by a factor of three, looked up and arranged her face into a suitably condoling posture.
    “Oh, hey Cody. I’m really sorry about your dad.”
    He bobbed his head in an automatic thanks and then took the next step in his plan. His heart was pounding but he couldn’t go forward without this question and he was in enough of a dither that asking something this overt was almost possible. “Yeah. I wanted to ask, I mean... How much are you saying that because you genuinely feel sorry for me and how much because you’re a bitch and about to laugh behind my back at how pathetic I am?”
    Kathryn’s face fell open, echoed by the rest of her posse. “Cody! I don’t...” she flapped her hands around for a moment, either a) trying to come up with way of saying just how much she didn’t or b) trying to come up with a plausible sounding lie so she could trick him into exposing some additional vulnerability to hit him with. Hard to tell. “I don’t talk about you that much. I mean I guess I have some, but I’m way not in the inner ring of your personal hell. And I would never ever act like this was a joke. Like I’m totally disgusted that Mr. Collins had to make that announcement.”
    Yeah, ok. That sounded legit. He made eye contact with the other five girls at the table to be sure they were all on the same page and they nodded. He nodded sharply and made to sit down. They all looked startled but rallied and moved their book bags aside to make room. “I need to ask you a favor.”
    “What?” Kathryn was clearly lost.
    “People are all ‘you must be so sad Cody’ and “I know if I lost my dad’ and” he grimaced distastefully “‘grateful to him for his service’ and it’s driving me crazy and I need you to spread some stuff around for me.”
    Kathryn blinked at him a moment to be told that this was her social role but let him go on.
    “Because it isn’t as simple as that and making me feel like it should be that simple is just making me feel worse.”
    They all looked authentically crushed that they’d been getting it wrong for someone who needed as little wrong as possible. Which was nice. “Oh. I’m sorry. How is it?”
    “My father was an abusive asshole who always hated me and put me in the hospital twice.” They were all looking at him with saucer eyes. “I’m not saying I’m straight up glad to see him go, it isn’t that simple either” – it was about equal parts weeping relief that he was gone, crushing grief that whatever small hope he had had that his father would someday love him was forever lost, and breath-stealing twists of guilt that those were the only two things he felt – “but enough of me is that ‘I know how sad I would be if’ isn’t helping.”
    “Ya. Totally,” breathed Kathryn’s second in command. Emily, maybe. “I’m really sorry. Like... for both things.”
    “Is that why you used to always wear that ‘kick me’ sign around your neck?”
    Cody felt his jaw drop onto the table.
    Kathryn winced. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Totally rude.”
    “Yeah.” He couldn’t think of any reason to deny it. “But then I just walked up to you and said ‘I need something spread around and I know you’re the worst gossip in the school,’ so we’re probably even.”
    “Oh.” She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “Yeah, I did notice that. I, um. I was just thinking if you were getting it at home too...”
    “Yeah.” No reason to deny that either. “Like school was only maybe forty percent of my ‘kick me’ sign. I came to school with a good one already started. But you think I don’t anymore?”
    They all thought for a moment. “Not really.”
    “For sure not like you used to.”
    “You still aren’t going to win any international prizes for assertiveness, but like you stand up for yourself a little now. I’ve seen you.”
    “Oh. Well, thank you.”
    “So yeah.” Kathryn seemed eager to move on from their respective faux pas. “If you’re using me for your publisher, what is the message that I’m spreading?”
    He had to think for a moment. What was it that he wanted people to know? “‘Cody’s father was abusive so his feelings are really complicated right now.’”
    She nodded firmly, followed by her minions. “I can do that.”
    “And, um. This ‘grateful for his service’ thing has got to go. I never liked this stupid war, my father never liked this stupid war, we shouldn’t be there and the fact that any human soul is over there fighting that idiot war really pisses me off. And it’s all a load of hooey anyway, he wasn’t ‘serving’ anything, it’s all just some asshole cowboy president with a bug up his ass threw him into this, this machine that war is and it zapped him dead like you zap a bug and with the same amount of thought and consideration for individual character. No glory, just guts. In the sense of spilled out on the street.” He took a deep breath and tried to pull himself back in. They were all staring at him. Dishrags don’t raise their voices and they certainly don’t rant. “Sorry.” Another deep breath. “So the take-home message is that Cody isn’t feeling so good about the military right now since it kind of killed his father so however you personally feel about his ‘service’ maybe better not to bring it up right now.”
    The girl next to him, Hannah maybe, touched his arm and he flinched again. “I’m sorry.”
    “Of course you would feel that way.”
    “I’m going to give it through today,” Cody went on, “or at least try to, for your publishing company to spread the word. But if anyone gives me shit about his ‘service’ after lunch tomorrow I’m going to give them a short arm to the gut, I don’t care that I don’t know how to punch and will probably hurt myself more than I hurt them.”
    They all nodded in unison, eyes huge. “Yeah. Sure.”
    “Totally.”
    Cody nodded shortly and left for his usual spot underneath the science wing stairs to inhale what lunch he could manage. Having effectively skipped breakfast he was pretty nearly ravenous. As he left the cafeteria he saw out of the corner of his eyes the various members of Kathryn’s clique each headed to separate corners of the lunch room.

    Sure enough, by seventh period most people were condoling him in more condolesome – was that a word? – ways and by the next day they’d achieved full compliance. Major relief. Some of them were even hemming and hawing and then apologizing for having been assholes for the last ten years, which he didn’t know how to respond to. Nor did he know what to do with the fact that all the girls kept touching him, including Amy Douglass, who he’d had a really miserable crush on for most of last year. Just little touches, but the cumulative effect was enough to put him in near shut-down, even without the other thing. That was seriously all a guy had to do to get girls to pay attention to him? Maybe he’d write a book, make a million dollars.
    After school he dithered for a while and then decided to ask Kyle’s dad to spend the weekend teaching him how to throw a punch, in case he had to follow through on his threat. Not that his father hadn’t attempted a thousand times to teach him to “goddamn stand up for” himself, but it’s hard to concentrate on learning to throw a punch when you’re being told you are a “goddamn fucking loser” and have fully eighty percent of your mental energy devoted to avoiding getting clobbered by your instructor.
    Cody was pretty sure Kyle’s dad would be nice about it – they’d been all kinds of good to him since he’d become friends with Kyle two years ago – and he was. At first it was freakish and terrifying to have an adult man with his hands on him that way, teaching him how to break out of holds and so forth, but Steve made it ok. It actually felt kind of really good. Like maybe a dad should. By Monday when he had to face school again – after two days of cabin fever with his forever weeping mother and her demands on his grief – he felt like he had half a chance if it came to that.
    Most of the day had been ok. Most of the people were treating him almost like a human being and being all sorry for him, which was going to get old eventually but for now was leaving him almost floating. But after fifth period Ben Klemens and his disgusting crowd of football “stars” were lying in wait for him in the English wing. Or maybe baseball, Cody could never keep them straight and didn’t especially try, just tried to steer clear. Probably not basketball, though; they weren’t tall enough. They all giggled and poked each other when they saw him like only jocks trying to prove their manhood do, which in Cody’s experience never led to good things. He tensed in half terror, half excitement.
    “Hey Cody.” Dylan Finnerty didn’t even bother with fake condolence, he just leered.
    Cody walked right up until he was less than two feet away. It was closer than he was comfortable being with a jock, but he needed to be close if it came to that.
    “I just wanted to say how grateful I was for your father’s...” but he never got any further than that, just a whoosh of all the breath leaving his body.
    The other five or six boys looked at him in outraged shock, as if it was a surprise, and two of them grabbed for Cody.
    “You fucking little faggot.”
    Cody pushed his elbow hard into the one’s gut and was rewarded with enough loosening that he slid out of his grasp just like Kyle’s dad had said he could and was able to punch Will Dougherty in the nose. He would have done it anyway, but there was extra force behind it because of what they’d said. His father was dead and no one was ever going to call him that word again. He had just enough time to see a very satisfying torrent of blood begin to pour down Will’s face before the whole thing turned into a fifteen person melee between Cody, who managed to get some additional swings in, the jocks, and an entire fistful of bystanders who jumped in on Cody’s behalf – which for sure had never happened the other million times he’d gotten creamed. This last group managed to have the snarling football assholes mostly under control and be picking Cody up off the floor by the time first teachers got there. Cody started patting himself down. It was pretty bad, for sure a black eye and a bunch of other bruises, but he’d had way worse.
    “What happened?” Mrs. Kowalski grumped. “Who started this?”
    “He did,” said Ben hysterically, pointing at Cody. “He threw the first punch.”
    Will added, “He broke by dose!”
    A thrill of excitement ran up and down Cody’s spine. Had he seriously managed to break a guy’s nose? How freaking cool was that?
    “Is that true, Cody?”
    Cody tried to breathe deep and square his shoulders, but stopped himself halfway through in response to an ache in his ribs. “I would like to call as my witness Kathryn Beauchamp.”
    Mrs. Kowalski frankly stared at him. “What?”
    “Under the advice of my attorney I have no further comment until my witness has testified.” He swung his left arm back and forth a few times and felt only a dull ache halfway down his chest. Good. Bruised but not broken. Broken he would know, courtesy of his father.
    Mr. Kowalski seemed to be desperately trying not to laugh, but he hauled the whole lot of them off to the principal’s office.
    As Cody did his perp walk he noticed a lot of people, maybe a majority, looking at him with an awed sort of respect he had never in his life seen aimed his way. A path cleared itself magically before him and he held his chin up higher and higher, feeling a shout of joy bubble up within him but managing, if only barely, not to let it loose.

Backup Man
(Pueblo)

    All through the suspicious happenings of that weekend, Reggie had felt, even known, that Margie had to be up to something. And things were finally coming clear as he put his bags onto the bed in the New Day Inn. And with this delayed clarity came some anger, but he could hardly deny that there was even some eroticism.
    He stepped down the hall to get some ginger ale and ice from machines. Back in his room, he kicked off his shoes and stripped down to his underwear before mixing bourbon with ice and ginger ale in a tumbler. He switched on the TV set, but left the volume too low to be heard. Nursing the drink, he sat in a straight chair and propped his feet on the bed.
    The Pueblo. That was the ostensible reason he was here, a guest at Margie’s wedding. Her family wanted somebody there to remind of the old Pueblo days. That’s what they said, anyway. Margie even said as much. But, then, when Margie said something she never really said it all.
    The Pueblo was more than an apartment complex - it was a social phenomenon. The title was actually Myron Manor, but in appearance it resembled the cliff dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Socially, it was an island: people there were too well-off to have to live in the slums, yet they were scarcely in income brackets to be acceptable to West Side neighborhoods; so people, especially kids, were reluctant to admit living in the Pueblo (like, who would have anything to do with a Pueblo kid?)
    Reggie’s family moved into the Pueblo when he was eight - Reggie, his mother, his stepfather, and his half-sister, Rosalyn. Reggie liked it there, though it was a bit crowded, with Reggie having to sleep on a couch in the room that served as a den. But it was nicer than the place they’d come from, and there was a field where kids played baseball year-round. So being among the poorer kids in the West Side schools never really mattered to Reggie.
    Almost from the first day, he was aware of Margie Willard, a slender, dark, haughty, but quite pretty girl. But she was two years his senior, and, therefore, quite superior in maturity, worldly wisdom, sophistication, and all the areas that really mattered.
    Reggie’s family lived on the second floor in a two-bedroom flat with a small balcony overlooking what was supposed to be a courtyard. And when Reggie took a seat at the railing of the balcony, he commanded a nice view of the porch that came with the Willards’ first-floor apartment. And even at eight, Reggie enjoyed looking at the superior little sylph named Margie, especially when she was in skimpy little things catching rays in a chaise lounge.
    He had lived there almost two years before he actually spoke to her. The occasion was a hot summer early afternoon an hour or so before the boys gathered on the hill to play ball. Reggie climbed down a vine on the wall by his balcony and joined the sunbathing Margie on her porch.
    Margie was twelve then, at her sophisticated best, in halter, short-shorts, sandals and reflector glasses.
    “What do you want, you little creep?” she hissed with the bored nonchalance that can only be affected by a twelve-year-old.
    “I’m Reggie Martz. I live upstairs.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Just stopped by.”
    “Well, whoopty-doo!”
    Even at ten he knew a rebuff when he saw one, and he turned to go.
    She spoke again, “Well, while you’re here, you may as well do my back...”
    For the next few minutes, he rubbed lotion into her back while she dispensed her superior worldly wisdom, sprinkled with a few obscenities and personal insults for Reggie.
    Such was his progress with Margie, watching her from his balcony, occasionally stopping by her porch to receive the barbs she was so prone to heap on such an obviously inferior being.
    He never saw her at school - he was in elementary school while she was in middle school, then junior high. But he watched her, thoroughly, when he could, watched when girl-friends stopped by, then when boys were hanging around in the afternoons, watched as she grew more beautiful, as the woman emerged, as her hips softened and the breasts budded and then bloomed.
    When she was fifteen, Margie started having ‘dates’. There was a sixteen-year-old Pueblo boy who took her to the movies, after which he sat on the porch and held her hand. Others stopped by who were not of the Pueblo but of much the same ilk.
    Then came a pronouncement to Reggie.
    “I’m sick of being a damned Pueblo girl - sick of this shit!”
    The expletive didn’t shock Reggie - most of the kids were using them as a matter of course.
    “Now, you take Daddy; let’s face it: he’s a slop, a real slop! Greasy clothes, dirty fingernails...”
    “What do you expect? He’s a mechanic. I like your daddy, and a mechanic is better than my old man...working in a tire factory...”
    “What do I expect, you ask? I expect him to be something else! But he works away at that damned Chevrolet place...and he buys those old heaps! We never have a decent car; he buys those old wrecks and works on them at night...”
    “I know - I’ve been helping him...he’s nice...”
    “Yeah. And when he gets a car looking decent, he sells it and brings home another clunker! Well, he’ll be doing this the rest of his life...and Mama’s no better, getting up before daylight to go to that damned bakery...Class, man, real class!”
    “Don’t seem so bad to me...”
    “You stupid son of a bitch! Think I want to stay in the f---ing Pueblo all my life? No! This kid’s got some ideas...”
    “You gonna run away?”
    “No, you dumb shit! No place to go. But I got plans. I got together a little money...been getting some sharp clothes. You should see the way the high school boys look me up and down, even in my old rags...”
    Reggie wanted to say he could understand this easily enough.
    “See, I’m going into the tank for a while...”
    “The tank?” asked Reggie, knowing full well his question would be considered dumb.
    “Yeah, the tank: I’m not going out any more for a while. Not a single date for the rest of the summer. Then, when school starts, I’m going to have my hair fixed, and I’m going to be all decked out in new clothes. And I’m going to move in better circles.”
    Reggie observed Margie’s abstinence, which lasted, as she had said, until the start of the school term. And she did indeed look quite different when she went to school, though Reggie didn’t think the new look was necessarily better, so taken was he with her already.
    Margie’s ‘coming out’ was the night of the Halloween Dance at the high school. A tall, clean-cut fellow showed up in a convertible. Reggie was discreetly watching from the balcony when the convertible returned with the top raised at eleven. A full ten minutes passed before Margie got out of the car and went straight inside.
    “He’s neat, real neat,” she told Reggie later, “but I can’t let him rush me...can’t let him think I’m a pushover just because I live in the Pueblo.”
    The fellow, Ronald, was back on the next Friday to take Margie to a football game. Then he was back for a movie date. Then he was seen no more.
    Reggie was coming in from playing ball on a warm November afternoon and Margie was on her porch. He stopped by and took a seat by her on the glider-swing. He wanted to ask about Ronald, but he sat quietly.
    “You’re wondering about Ronald? F--- him! I’ve had to rethink things a little.”
    “Rethink?”
    “Yeah, Reggie. I should have known all the big shots want from a Pueblo girl is an easy piece of ass! I’m going to have to wait it out - got a couple of guys interested, but they’ve got to be interested in more than just a roll in the hay...”
    She offered no further explanation about the changes she’d affect in her routine, but Reggie saw over the next few weeks from his perch on the balcony what might have been a pattern. Margie went on dates with several fellows, all clean-cut, well-dressed, uptown-looking guys, all with nice cars.
    But they all had her home by eleven. She would get out of the car immediately; then she’d allow the man of the hour to sit on the porch with her for a little while. A hedge and shadows obscured the sight of them from the courtyard, but Reggie could see them as well as the light of the moon and the beams of a distant street lamp would allow.
    Planned or not, Margie’s petting sessions were getting heavier: long, passionate kisses, unbuttoned blouses, hands under skirts; and poor Reggie, glued to his balcony, suffered through it. And on a few cold nights, Margie produced a blanket for warmth and additional privacy, while Reggie shivered.
    By spring, all the suitors had dropped away except a pudgy blondish fellow named Charley. Charley was coming around two or three times a week, and Reggie could envision their spending school recesses together, and maybe time in a soda shop after school. And the petting sessions on the porch were getting torrid.
    One afternoon as Reggie was coming in late, he found Margie waiting for him.
    “Reggie, I know you’ve been sitting up there...watching me!”
    But she said this without rancor, so Reggie neither confirmed nor denied.
    “Don’t bother to deny it, you creep - I know! But no matter; I need some help, O.K.?”
    “Sure. What do you need?”
    “Charley is getting too horny. I’m about to lose control. We’re double dating tonight...and that’s bad! We’ll be making out all night...and when he gets me home, he’ll probably make his move.”
    “What do you want me to do?”
    “Well, can you be on your balcony tonight?”
    “No problem.
    “O.K. He’ll take me to the porch...but if he stays too long, well, I might be in trouble. So, if he’s not gone in fifteen minutes, I want you to interrupt.”
    “Interrupt?”
    “Yeah. Don’t climb down the vine like you do sometimes; come through the hall door. Call out my name before you get to the porch, but don’t step on the porch, just call - and not too loud. Then you tell me Mama had to go to bed early...but that she got a call from Aunt Anna...and Aunt Anna wants me to call her back right away ...Can you remember all that?”
    “I call you, but I don’t step on the porch. I tell you your mama had to get to bed early, but you’re to call your Aunt Anna right away.”
    The scenario unfolded just as Margie had designed it - with Charley leaving almost immediately after the Aunt Anna message. Reggie got no thanks for his performance.
    Reggie saw her several days later.
    “No more Charley: he can’t stand the heat. Wants a piece of ass, but the son of a bitch won’t buy a ring!”
    So the string of suitors resumed. By summer all had dropped by the way except a ruggedly handsome fellow named Bob.
    Reggie was not quite so regular in his voyeur role - he was playing night baseball, and, though he was usually at home by the time Margie got to the porch with her boyfriend, he was often too sleepy to enjoy the vicarious pleasure of the petting below. And he seldom even stopped to speak to her because he grew tired of hearing of how rich and wonderful Bob was, and how interested he was in taking Margie away from all this.
    On a Saturday morning as Reggie was leaving for his job at A&P, Margie stopped him.
    “Reggie, will you be home tonight?”
    “Yeah, about nine...”
    “I might need you again. The old Aunt Anna routine...”
    “O.K.”
    But this time the scene didn’t unfold in the same way. The car pulled up to the curb. The two of them got out and strolled up to the porch arm-in-arm. He was carrying a fifth of vodka, and she had a bottle of Sprite and some paper cups.
    A bright moon bathed them, and Reggie was hurting from the sight of the petting below, which was quickly more amorous than usual.
    Then Bob came down with a violent case of hiccups. He picked up one of the mixed drinks by the glider and took a long drink, but the hiccups continued. Then he leaped to the railing of the porch and vomited. This completed, he wiped his face on his handkerchief and began mouthing an apology, which was punctuated by the still present hiccups. Moments later he drove off.
    Reggie stared at Margie. She stood in the moonlight and her eyes beckoned him. It took less than a minute for him to climb down from the balcony and join her.
    He took a seat beside her on the glider-swing. She mixed drinks of vodka and Sprite for both of them - Reggie didn’t want his but he took it anyway. “We went on a swimming party this afternoon - a lot of loving in the bushes, lot of drinking. Poor Bob: can’t hold his booze. He’d have got some tonight if he hadn’t got so smashed.”
    She tossed off the rest of her drink and reached for Reggie’s, draining it in one gulp.
    “Booze don’t make me drunk - just horny!”
    She sidled and wiggled her way into Reggie’s lap, kissed him lightly on his face, then becoming more violent.
    “Open your mouth, dummy!”
    He did as he was told and she swabbed him with a darting tongue. Then she guided one of his hands inside the already unbuttoned shirt over her blue jeans. Breathing was a rapid labored process for both of them.
    She pulled herself away from him and said, “Wait right here, honey; I’ll be right back,”
    She scampered into her apartment and returned in a moment. She handed Reggie some car keys.
    “Round back there’s a Buick - you’ll know it...half painted, half not...dented fender. Unlock it and let it air out a minute. I got to get something else. Be right there.”
    When she joined him at the car, she handed him a package of three condoms.
    “Had to get these from the medicine chest...know how to use them?”
    Not waiting for an answer, she peeled off her jeans and panties and climbed into the back seat of the Buick.
    “Hurry, baby: I’m so hot I could scream!”
    In the sweaty heat of the back seat, they pounded away at each other for several hours, with instinct and energy erasing any problem inexperience may have held for them.
    “It must be getting late. Mama gets up at five...gotta go...And, listen, you little snot: you tell anybody about this and I’ll cut your balls off...”
    Bob was kept at bay for a week before being allowed a contrite return. He took her to a movie and they did little more than handholding for an hour on the porch afterwards.
    On subsequent visits the petting accelerated. In a week or so, when Bob left, Margie again signaled to Reggie. This led to another couple of hours in the Buick...and later the Dodge, and then a Chevrolet...
    And Bob was exchanged for Billy, who was soon driving Margie into calling for Reggie-relief.
    And Billy was exchanged for yet another Charley, with Reggie now making waves as a scholar and a good-hitting infielder, never dating school girls, but spending his evenings at home, moving to the balcony when Margie came in from dates.
    But then they both got away from the Pueblo at almost the same time.
    Mr. Willard was fired from the Chevrolet place for too much freelancing with repairs and sales of his own cars.
    This proved to be a boon. He rented a garage and a lot and began repairing and selling on a full-time basis. The operation was an overnight success. He expanded and then was given a new-car dealership franchise. This, too, was quickly successful. So he moved his family into a plush little mansion he stole at auction.
    Reggie’s move was brought about by less auspicious circumstances. His stepfather came home from work early because of a stomachache. He found his wife in bed with a local handy man. The stepfather beat the hell out of both of them before packing up and moving out.
    Reggie’s mother took Rosalyn and moved two hundred miles away to work in her brother’s floral shop. Reggie stayed behind and lived with his baseball coach until he was graduated from high school.
    An athletic grant from a small college, plus construction work and more baseball in the summers, and Reggie became a history teacher and baseball coach at an upstate high school.
    Which led to the present, with Reggie stretched out on the bed in the motel room in underwear and socks, sipping his third drink, pondering the incongruities that led to his being at this particular place at this particular time.
    He’d had no idea that Margie or the Willards even knew of his whereabouts. But the wedding invitation had found him, accompanied by a sincere letter from Mr. Willard - he was doing fine, had come up in the world, but he’d never forgotten the folks he knew before he’d made his mark. And he very much wanted Reggie there when he gave little Margie away. Then there was a letter from Margie begging him to come to the wedding. She’d arranged for places for him to stay - he’d spend Friday night at the Anderson home; then Saturday, the wedding day, he’d stay the night at the New Day Inn, all paid for, of course.
    Margie had practically ignored him at the rehearsal party, leaving him with plain little Lena, his date for the duration.
    And none of the charade had made any sense to Reggie, not the rehearsal party on Friday, nor the groom’s luncheon on Saturday. But a short time before the five o’clock wedding ceremony, a little bit of information was dropped in his lap.
    It was little Lena who said, “It’s a damned shame about the honeymoon, isn’t it?”
    “Oh? What about the honeymoon?”
    “They had to put it off for a week...they thought of postponing the wedding, but that got too complicated...”
    “I didn’t know any of this. Why are they putting off the honeymoon?”
    “Charley has to be in court - a traffic accident a year ago. He’s being sued; thought he could get a continuance, but he couldn’t...so they’ll have to wait a week for their big cruise...”
    And, of course, Reggie knew it all then, as he watched the maturely beautiful Margie say her vows to Charley (and Reggie was not at all sure that this Charley was not one of those he’d seen years ago on the Pueblo porch!), watched her smile and gush through the short wedding reception, watched her throw the bouquet and then hop into the car with the tacky decorations.
    And in his underwear and socks, dozing a bit, the television with the picture and no sound, Reggie looked at his watch.
    “Ten-forty-five. I’ll bet on midnight.”
    He missed it by a quarter of an hour - it was twelve-fifteen when the knock on the door led to his ushering Margie into the room.
    Her face was washed clear of makeup and her hair was swept under a plain kerchief. She wore jeans, a slipover shirt and tennis shoes, not at all like a honeymooning bride.
    “Thought I’d drop in on you. Surprised?”
    She spotted his bottle and helped herself to a drink.
    “Would you believe it, Reggie? The bastard passed out on me!”
    “You seem to be navigating all right, though.”
    “Sure, baby. Booze never bothers me - you know that.”
    “Yeah.”
    “You know a lot, don’t you? Now, be honest: you’re not at all surprised I came to see you, are you?”
    “Well Margie, last night I stayed with the Andersons. I could have stayed there again tonight -they have plenty of room - but somehow in all the elaborate arrangements you made, I end up here! Then just a few hours ago, I learned that you would not be going away for a honeymoon. I somehow figured you’d be staying right here in this very motel...”
    “Yeah. That law suit thing. We went to his office and changed cars...and we have the bridal suite here. But poor Charley isn’t taking advantage of it...”
    “You don’t seem to broken up over the turn of events.”
    “No, I don’t suppose I am...but, then, you don’t seem too broken up, either!”
    “It’s not my wedding night...”
    “May as well be, baby,” she mused, moving to him, “because I intend to take care of you tonight...mind if I slip out of these things?”
    “Not at all, Margie, not at all...”
    They quickly stripped and pounced onto the bed.
    It was much later, almost dawn, when she woke Reggie by nibbling on his ear and then snuggling up to him.
    “You know, Reggie, I’ve been keeping tabs on you.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yeah. I know about your teaching and all...”
    “Not really much to keep tabs on...”
    “Well, you know Charley’s folks are influential, and so is Daddy, now...”
    “So?”
    “We could get you a teaching job here...”
    “So I could look after you?”
    “No telling when I might need you!”
    “How do you know I’ll always come when you call?”
    “Because, you dumb son of a bitch, you always come when I call. You’re always on that balcony at the Pueblo...looking down at me...lusting for me!”
    He said nothing. She ran her fingertips over his chest.
    “And I can tell your lust is gathering again...Mmmm...”
    “Don’t you think you’d better be getting back to the bridal suite?”
    “Not just yet, dummy! I may go through a dry spell!”
    “Oh, the guy will sober up today...”
    “Sure he will, but I won’t let him touch me for a while yet...”
    “You mean you’ll punish him?”
    “More like instruct...just because he bought me a ring doesn’t mean he gets an easy piece of ass!”

Why You Should Stop Going to Strip Clubs
When You Reach a Certain Age

    Brian always found a girl’s face more important that her body. So while the other guys were whistling and cat-calling at every pair of double-Ds or every firm ass that danced onto the stage, Brian patiently waited for the one with the girl-next-door look he so loved. Girl after girl they came up, usually accompanied by a raunchy heavy metal song or a rap song that made you want to shower as soon as the sound hit your eardrums. But Brian’s hopes were raised when the seventh girl of the evening was announced and her music began to play.
    “Gentlemen, you’re in for a real treat tonight,” said the deejay, as the opening guitar strummings of Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You” was butchered by the blown out speakers. “Please take your hands off your junk long enough to put them together for Kelly!”
    When she walked out, her reception was lukewarm. And why not? The girl was a bit on the thin side. Which would be okay were ass and tits disproportionately large, but they weren’t. If she were lying on her stomach, Brian’s wood-working level could have spanned from her lower back to her thigh, and he was sure the bubble would be right there in the middle. Her breasts were paltry things; she could probably fit them into a training bra and have room left over for the sympathy singles the guys in the front row gave her.
    Kelly didn’t even have the presentation required to make a good stripper. Her hair was flat and somewhere between a plain dark blonde and plain light brown. She wore little make-up and even eschewed the glitter that lit up the faces and bodies of her colleagues. As she danced, she lacked any of the acrobatics that the other girls brought to the stage. For virtually everyone else in this dump, she was just a reason to go outside for a cigarette break or hit the john to take a squirt.
    But while Kelly may have lacked in every other department, her face more than made up for it. To Brian she was beautiful, in that familiar girl-next-door way. She had large brown eyes that gave off a certain sadness (read: she couldn’t act). Her nose pointed slightly skyward. She pouted her thin lips to make them appear fuller, but only creating a somewhat petulant look. Her skin had the color of coffee that would be too sweet to drink, but that is beautiful to look at.
    Kelly was the one that Brian wanted.
    She gyrated her hips for the crowd. She flirted with the removal of her bikini top, but nobody seemed to care one way or the other. When she finally shed her top and revealed her breasts—no big surprise there—a few guys half-heartedly whistled, what passes for chivalry at a strip club. She made like she was going to take off her panties and when she didn’t, there wasn’t even that disappointed groan that usually accompanies such a tease. Tough crowd.
    At the end of her set, most of the patrons applauded politely, but Brian stood and pounded his hands together. Some of the other men looked at him as though he were nuts. “What the fuck, is she your daughter?” asked a no-neck biker, to his cohorts’ pleasure. But this didn’t matter as Kelly’s eyes met Brian’s and she gave him a crooked grin. Good, thought Brian, she was sure to find him when she came out later.
    Having found the girl he wanted a dance from, he strolled over to the bar to wait for her to come out.
    He ordered a beer and tried to strike up a conversation with the bartender, a woman who looked to be an over-the-hill stripper.
    “Busy night,” he said, after paying for his drink and leaving a dollar tip.
    “I haven’t seen you around here before,” said the bartender.
    “My first time here. First time in Boise, actually.”
    “Then how would you know it’s busy?” She clearly wasn’t into small talk.
    “It just looks busy,” said Brian. “Forget it.”
    The bartender walked away to fill someone else’s order and Brian scanned the place looking for Kelly. It was too early for her to be out, but he looked anyway.
    The bartender came back. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to be rude. Been a long night and most of the guys who come here are kinda assholes. I’m Rudy.”
    “Nice to make your acquaintance.”
    “So what’s your story? Where you from?”
    “I make my home in a little town outside of Chicago. Greenvale. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.”
    “’Fraid not. What are you doing out here?”
    “Would you believe I’m a traveling salesman?”
    Rudy arched her eyebrows. “Really?”
    “One of a dying breed. Who needs to buy a product from a man going door to door when you can just order stuff off the net?”
    “Amen to that, my friend. Our industry is suffering, too.”
    Brian laughed. “I bet.”
    “I used to know a guy who would make sure to screw a pretty girl every new place he went to. This what you do? Hit a titty bar wherever you go?”
    “I never thought of it, but yeah, I guess I do. Ever have a job that keeps you away from your family?”
    Rudy shot him a look that said, You kidding?
    “Well, it’s lonely business. I got a wife and daughter at home—that’s not entirely true, Julie goes to Northwestern now—but I got a wife at home anyway, and, hell, I just get lonely when I’m out here all alone.”
    “She know you come to fine establishments like these?”
    Brian shook his head. “I don’t really think she’s mind, though. I’ve never slept with anyone while on the road. I just want to feel someone else’s body, you know? Hell, why am I telling you all this?”
    “I’m a bartender,” laughed Rudy. “Bartenders got two purposes: pour drinks and listen to people talk about their lives. Anyway, I can dig what you’re saying. Human contact. You know, I heard about studies—long time ago, wouldn’t get away with it now—of comparing babies who get touched and babies who don’t get touched. The babies with no contact get all weak and don’t mature like the other babies. Just because we aren’t babies doesn’t mean we can get along without contact any better.”
    “No, I guess not,” said Brian. “Physical contact, too. Talking’s not enough.”
    “Put your hand out,” said Rudy.
    Brian did. She took it with hers and held it for about ten seconds. As she held his hand, they stared at each other. It could have been awkward, but it wasn’t. Now Brian took the time to really look at the ex-stripper. She wasn’t the type of girl you would normally be attracted to, but she was prettier than he originally gave her credit for. The makeup she wore was tasteful, only enough to fill in her few wrinkles, and her face was naturally pretty. She did have very large breasts, which, Brian thought, always seemed to pull the attention away from a pretty face.
    When Rudy pulled away, she said, “That’s a freebie. Best offer you’re going to get in here tonight.” She smiled and winked at him.
    “Thanks,” he said. “It helps more than you know.”
    Rudy walked away to help the other clientele—they had gotten restless as she humored Brian—and he turned around to look for Kelly. She still wasn’t out, but since Rudy was busy, Brian watched the stage.
    Four songs and eight overly large tits later, Brian saw Kelly come out of the backstage door. Her hair was teased out now—maybe one of the other girls took pity on her and gave her some tips. He considered getting up to meet her, but thought that might come across as creepy so he sat at the bar until she made her way to him.
    After a few minutes of flirting with a handful of men only to walk away with no more names on her dancing card, she finally neared Brian. Upon seeing him, she walked straight toward him.
    “Hi, handsome,” she said.
    “Hello.”
    “Did you like the show?”
    “You’re very gorgeous.”
    She smiled and her smile looked familiar. Just from seeing her on the stage, he told himself. “You’re cute,” she said.
    “Thanks,” said Brian.
    “Want a dance?”
    Brian’s smile faltered. These girls could never just talk to him for a little while before they tried to sell themselves. He knew he wasn’t dating the girl or anything, but couldn’t she act interested in him just a little longer? But he answered, “Sure.”
    “Twenty dollars a song in the corner, clothes stay on. Or we could go to the champagne room . . .” she said.
    “The corner is fine.” He tossed another single on the bar for Rudy, thanks for her human contact.
    Kelly took Brian’s hand and led him to a corner. She sat him down and danced a little in front of him. “This song is half over. I’ll start at the next song.”
    “Okay.”
    “What’s your name?” To be heard over the music, she had to have her face directly in front of his. Her breath smelled of whiskey and cigarettes.
    “Brian,” he said.
    “Mmmm, that’s a nice name.”
    “Thanks.”
    The next few minutes passed awkwardly and Brian saw that Kelly was just as pretty up close as she was from the stage. He was again struck by the sensation that he knew her.
    “I’ve danced for you before, haven’t I?” she asked.
    “I don’t think so. Have you danced at other clubs?”
    She shook her head slowly, keeping her eyes on his. When the song ended, Kelly slid her body against his, snake-like. She pressed her tits into his face and he could smell the mixture of heavy perfume and light sweat. He breathed it in. “You like that?” she said.
    “Yes.”
    She turned around and pressed her ass into his crotch, grinding.
    She laughed. “I guess I don’t need to ask if you like that.”
    Brian, never certain what to do with his hands, lightly grazed them up her legs.
    “You can touch me,” she said. “Just don’t pinch or slap. No rough stuff.”
    Breathless, Brian nodded, then realized that she couldn’t see the nod with her back to him and he cleared his throat and answered. “Okay.”
    As she grinded, he moved his hands up her thighs, up her trim stomach, and before he could reach her nipples, she turned to face him and squatted between his spread legs. She moved her head like she was blowing him and he ran his hands through her hair. As her head moved, her fingers slid up his stomach and undid a couple of buttons. She slid her hand under his shirt and gently scratched his stomach and chest, playing with his sparse chest hair.
    When the song ended, she stood still as though the lack of music precluded her from dancing. “Another?”
    Brian nodded. He felt as awkward as she looked. He was never able to de-humanize strippers the way many of the patrons could. So rather than keep up the illusion that she was there simply to please him, he treated her like what she was—a working girl on a break.
    “Are you in school?” he asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “What are you studying?”
    “Bio.”
    “That’s interesting. What do you plan on doing with your degree?”
    “Is this really what you want to talk about?”
    Brian shrugged. But before she could answer, the next song came on and the illusion was recreated.
    As she rubbed her body against his, Brian only wanted to kiss her. When her face was before his, he leaned into her lips, but she put a finger over his and shook her head coquettishly. The more she grinded against him and guided his hands over her body, the less he wanted anything sexual. When this song ended, Brian decided he would sit through one more and then go to his hotel room.
    As she stood before him, the silence became unbearable and he once again struck up the small talk.
    “Did you grow up around here?”
    “No. My parents divorced three years ago and my dad and I moved here to be with this family.”
    “Are you a daddy’s girl?”
    “I guess so. But mostly I went with him because my mom went kinda crazy and started going through this weird midlife crisis thing. I had to get away from that.”
    “I like to think that my daughter would side with me if I ever got divorced. Not that I think things are going in that direction.”
    Kelly just looked at him.
    “Where are you from originally?” he asked.
    “Little town. You’ve never heard of it.”
    “Try me. I’m a traveling salesman. I’ve been to a ton of places nobody’s ever heard of.”
    “Greenvale, Illinois.”
    A cold sweat immediately broke out on Brian’s skin. His eyes widened and he had to swallow before he spoke. “Amanda? Amanda Green?”
    Her eyes narrowed and searched Brian as though trying to figure out how he knew her real name. After a moment, it hit her and her mouth and eyes were matching Os. “Mr. Andries?”
    She jumped away as though he were on fire and he jumped up, too, overturning his chair.
    “Oh my God!” he said.
    “Jesus!” she said.
    On either side of Brian materialized a burly man with a skin tight black Security tee-shirt.
    “This guy bothering you?” one of them asked.
    “No. No, he’s okay. I gotta go.” She ran to the talent entrance without asking for payment.
    Brian was embarrassed and in shock, but he did not want to go without paying for what he bought. He picked up his chair again and sat down as though he planned to watch the rest of the girls dance. The burly men did not wander far from Brian and he could feel their eyes on him constantly.
    After about ten minutes, Kelly, now Amanda, came out wearing a pair of jeans and a Boise State University sweatshirt. She strolled over to Brian and asked, “Mr. Andries, want to go get a coffee?”

    Half an hour later, Amanda and Brian were sharing a slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie and a cup of coffee at the only 24-hour diner around. In a few hours, it would be filled to capacity with the college kids turned away from the bars after last call, but now there was only the stripper, the salesman, and the waitress.
    “I’m really sorry I freaked out on you like that,” said Amanda.
    “It’s okay. It was a shock for me, too.”
    There was silence, except for the sounds of forks clanking on the plates and the soft hum of the diner’s AC unit.
    “This is going to sound stupid,” she said, “but, I always liked you when I was growing up.”
    “I liked you, too. You were a sweet girl and you were Julie’s best friend.”
    “No, I mean I liked you, liked you. I had a bit of a crush on you.”
    “Oh,” said Brian.
    “You don’t have to feel awkward. I’m over it. Besides, it would be really weird if you felt that way about me.”
    “Mrs. Andries never liked you,” said Brian. Then after a moment, “I don’t know why I told you that.”
    Amanda laughed. “That’s okay. Is it true?”
    “Yeah. She thought you were a bad influence on Julie.”
    “Well, I did get her into smoking cigarettes. And we stole some of my mom’s pot and smoked it a few times. Jesus, I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
    “It’s fine. Believe me, I won’t be telling Julie or the missus about our meeting.”
    Amanda blushed. “I appreciate that. Not that I’m ashamed, I just . . .”
    They said nothing for a moment. In its own way the diner was as depressing as the strip club. The smell of burnt grease hung in the air. The waitress stood behind the counter looking as though these two pie-sharers weren’t worth her time. Perhaps she was only relaxing before the rush. There was an old jukebox in the corner, but it sat as quiet and alone as the waitress. Maybe it would get some play when the college kids came, but it looked like it wanted to be alone.
    “You have some pie on your lip,” said Amanda.
    Brian licked his lips but managed to avoid the pie.
    Amanda giggled. “Here, let me help you.” She took the napkin from her lap and, reaching across the table, wiped the bit of strawberry from the corner of his mouth. When it was gone, she left her hand there and caressed his bottom lip with her thumb. “You’re still pretty handsome.”
    “You’ve become a beautiful young woman.”
    She began to withdraw her hand and he grabbed it. Gently but firmly.
    “I’m sorry about your mother,” he said and kissed the tips of her fingers.
    “Thank you,” said Amanda.
    Brian released her hand and she placed it in her lap. “Isn’t there a better way you can make money than this?”
    “Do you have any idea how much a dancer makes?” asked Amanda.
    “I’ve heard stories.”
    “I’m not even a popular dancer, but I make more in a few hours doing this than a full day at any other job I’ve ever had.”
    “I see,” said Brian.
    “And I’m not ashamed of it.”
    “Yeah, you said that.”
    The plates were empty and the coffee cups nearly so. The waitress was in no hurry to refill them.
    “Do you want to go back to my place?” asked Amanda.
    “God yes,” said Brian.
    “Oh, I didn’t mean like that. I just—have you got a hotel room?”
    “Oh. I see. Yeah, I’m set up for the night.”
    “Okay, good.”
    Brian reached into his pocket and left a twenty on the table. Then he unrolled four more and held them out to Amanda.
    “What’s this?” she asked.
    “For the dance.”
    “No, I couldn’t.”
    “You earned it. And you left with me before the night was done. I probably cost you much more than this.”
    She stared into his eyes until she realized that he wasn’t backing down. “I’ll take it, on one condition.”
    “What’s that?” asked Brian.
    “Come back to my place.”
    “But I have a place to stay.”
    “But you don’t have anyone to stay with,” she said. She bit her lower lip. “Besides, I was lying: I did mean it like that.” Amanda stood up and held her hand out to Brian. He grasped it with the hand holding the cash and slid out of the booth.

Forest Light

    Amy swore silently to herself. It would do no good to swear out loud. There was no one to appreciate the occasion, and that was the problem. She was alone, and she was alone because she was lost. She looked at the large fir trees that surrounded her. It was not a dense thicket, and there was little underbrush. It would have been better if there were. She would have been forced to remain on the trail, instead of wandering cross-country.
    The sun had set, and it would soon be dark. She felt panic rising. Something deep within her told her to run. It didn’t matter in what direction. The important thing was to run. With difficulty she silenced the inner screaming and sank to the ground, her back against the trunk of a tree. She closed her eyes and forced a semblance of control in her mind.
    Regret replaced her panic — regret she had come on the outing in the first place. It had sounded nice — a few days in the woods with friends and a chance to get away from it all. How was she to know Derek would be along? She hadn’t seen him since the night they had broken up and that was over a year ago, but there he was as big as life, sporting a new woman. It wasn’t seeing him that bothered her or even the new woman. It was the realization that she still cared. She had, over the past year, carefully convinced herself she didn’t. Amy despised surprises, especially about herself. Pushing the thoughts of Derek aside, she returned to her predicament.
    She opened her eyes and took in the scene before her. Trees. The blue sky. At least it wasn’t raining. She mentally tried to retrace her route. It was hopeless. She had purposefully separated from the group. Wandering aimlessly, she followed a bird or stopped to investigate an interesting mushroom — anything to keep her mind occupied.
    She had passed a lake, several streams, and a few ponds, but where and their relationships were tangled. She told herself the worst that could happen was she would spend the night in the forest. The others would miss her, and a search would start in the morning. She smiled grimly. It was not only the worst scenario, but it was also the only scenario.
    The panic started to rise again. She fought it down. It was late summer, and the days were still warm. The night would be cold, but not freezing. Her light jacket would be inadequate, but she would not freeze to death — just be miserable. Amy was not into misery. Mild discomfort for a good reason maybe, but misery, especially as a result of stupidity, was unacceptable.
    For the first time in her life she regretted not smoking. For if she smoked, she would have matches or a lighter. A minimum of precaution, she reflected, would have seen a flashlight and matches in her pack. Amy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had to remain calm at all cost. She resolved to spend the night where she was. Wandering around would at the best be useless and at the worst dangerous. Tripping over a fallen log or stepping into a hole could leave her with a sprained ankle or a broken leg.
    She focused on keeping her mind occupied with thoughts other than her predicament. A task she found more difficult as the darkness deepened and the temperature dropped. The stars were a welcome distraction. The absence of the moon enhanced the display. Patches of the Milky Way shown through the trees, stretching across the sky like a silent, diaphanous river.
    The last time she’d seen the Milky Way in all its glory was with Derek. She frowned and refused to relive the experience and diverted herself by picking out constellations. Since she knew very few by sight, her diversion was short-lived. Nevertheless, she continued the game by making up and naming her own. It reminded her of when she was a child. She had spent hours on summer days lying in the backyard and letting her imagination bring the clouds to life. There were two differences. It was easier to build on the shapes of clouds, and the summer days had been considerably warmer.
    It was several hours after sundown when her constellation game played out. It was cold, colder than she had anticipated. Sitting stoically under a tree was no longer practical. She rose, stamped her feet, and swung her arms. The exercise eased her chill. She realized how lucky she was that there was no wind. Amy worked out five days a week at the gym and was in reasonably good physical condition; nevertheless, after an hour of heat generating exercises she began to tire.
    She was about to halt for a rest when a noise froze her, right foot in the air and arms stretched out horizontally in front of her. Her eyes were riveted toward the sound, which was to the front and slightly to the left. The noise had been indistinct, not the obvious snapping of a twig or the snorting of an animal. A rustling. The wings of a bird or a footstep on the sandy soil? She remained in her awkward position, staring into the night and listening intently.
    The forest was pitch black and deathly still. Slowly she dropped her foot and lowered her arms. She was tense, ready to run. The logical part of her brain was completely frozen. It was not available to remind her that headlong flight would be dangerous. Her only functioning faculties were deep in the primitive brain, the part that had told emerging man to flee the saber-toothed cat.
    Three things happened simultaneously. She heard a louder noise, she screamed, and something grabbed her left wrist. She convulsed in terror and pulled back, but whatever was in the blackness held her wrist in a vice-like grip. She continued to writhe like a fish on a line, and her high-pitched screams split the night. Her mind detached and floated someplace above, sensing the scene as it unfolded. The mind noticed Amy’s violent struggles and then felt the jolt as she was yanked off her feet. The mind felt her being dragged first on her side and then on her back.
    “Stop!” she screamed, uttering the first intelligible word since the episode began. “Let me go!” The words brought her mind back to its customary home in her skull. It celebrated its return with a cascade of panic-driven thoughts. It’s going to murder me! I’m going to be raped! Maybe it’s not even human! Maybe it’s going to eat me!
    A vivid mental image of an artist’s conception of Bigfoot pulsated before her inner eye. Whatever was dragging her had to be incredibly strong. She lurched to her feet and tried to break the grip. Her abductor jerked her off her feet without breaking stride.
    “Please. Let me go! Let me go!” There was no response. “Why are you torturing me? For God’s sake do whatever you’re going to do without dragging me!” She began to sob hysterically, her tears driven alternately by terror and rage. Her shoulder ached from the force of being dragged. Her eyes stung from the sand, and she could feel the grit in her teeth. She bounced over rocks and against trees. She must be, she knew, bruised and bloody.
    She staggered first to her knees and then to her feet to avoid the pain of being dragged. The relief was immediate. Although she stumbled frequently and ran into branches, the pain was considerably less than that of being dragged. She alternated between sobbing, cursing, and pleading. The response was always the same — silence.
    Amy had no idea how long she marched through the forest behind her abductor. She tried to make out her captor in the feeble starlight, but she could only see a dark, indistinct mass in front of her. The hand — and it was a hand — that gripped her wrist was callused and hard. Given the sketchy data, she could deduce little, not that her powers of deduction were functioning particularly well. Slowly her terror and anger gave way to exhaustion. She fell frequently and only with difficulty regained her footing.
    A root grabbed her ankle and sent her headlong into the sand. She struggled to rise and then realized her abductor was no longer moving. Although he still held her wrist, there was no tension on the arm. She collapsed, panting. Her hand fell beside her. He had released her. She was too tired to flee. She felt something cover her. It took her confused mind several moments to realize it was a blanket.
    He’s going to rape me, she thought. She felt no fear. It was merely a fact to be noted and filed.
    Nothing happened. There was no sound and nothing other than the blanket touched her. She tried to raise her head but lacked the energy. A few questioning thoughts drifted through her mind and then she was asleep.
    The next time Amy opened her eyes it was light. At first she wasn’t sure where she was. Then she remembered the outing and Derek. “That’s right,” she muttered. “Derek and lost. Dragged. Dragged for hours.” She wondered if the whole experience had been a nightmare. Maybe she was in the cabin. She started to move and halted as pain shot through every part of her body. She felt the sandy soil beneath her hands. She was not, she knew, in a cabin.
    Amy lay still for several minutes, mustering her courage to move again. Curiosity tinged with fear eventually drove her to stir. Perhaps her abductor was nearby, watching. With considerable effort she managed to sit up. The sun was well above the horizon. She blinked in the unaccustomed light and glanced to either side. There was no sign of anyone or anything.
    She looked at the blanket. It was of heavy, coarsely woven wool. Wincing with pain, she managed to stand up, letting the blanket drop. Gasping, she staggered to the nearest tree for support. Her arms were covered with scratches, lacerations, bruises, dried blood, and grime. She assumed her face was the same. She ran her tongue over her teeth. They were all present and accounted for. At least there were no noticeable gaps.
    She looked around again, this time more carefully. Convinced no one was lurking nearby, her eyes went further afield. She was in a clearing on the top of a rounded knoll. Below was a lodge beside a large lake. People were dining on the deck. Fishermen dotted the bank, and canoes glided through the water. Amy took a deep breath, which made her wince, and let it out slowly. She took a few tentative steps. It was painful but not unduly so. A sign, she assumed, that nothing was broken. She scanned the ground, looking for tracks or some sign of what had brought her here. There were a number of formless marks in the sand, but nothing she could identify.
    She looked at the lodge and smiled slightly, thinking of the stir she would cause staggering onto the deck. She wondered if the people would even speak her language. Perhaps Derek and his new woman would be there. The thought struck her as funny — funny enough to endure the pain of laughter.
    She started to descend, halted, and returned to the summit. She picked up the blanket, shook it, folded it neatly, and placed it on a rock. Satisfied, she walked down the hill.

Rule of 3

    Boy, I can’t wait to hear this! I thought, sitting next to them at the bar, as I had been for most of the night.
    Having nearly shouted themselves hoarse over a debate as to whether a prime Sugar Ray Leonard would’ve beaten a prime Oscar De La Hoya, Everyday Joe and Average Sam turned to more important matters.
    “All right, ” Everyday Joe said. “Since you can’t see that Leonard would’ve wasted De La Hoya, answer me this.” He leaned forward, his angular face challenging in the dim light. “What does it take for a man and woman to fall in love?”
    Average Sam guffawed. “How the hell am I supposed to know? Every time I fall in love, I just fall – down – that is! Why you asking me? You’re the man with all the answers, so give ‘em.”
    I smiled. I didn’t know their real names. I called them Everyday Joe and Average Sam because they were the kind of old guys you could find sitting at a bar in any city, anywhere in the good old U.S. of A. They reminded me of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, or at least Tim Taylor and Al Borlen, but perhaps with a little more intelligence. Everyday Joe was the skinny one, Average Sam the fat boy. Both men wore stylish; black fedora hats, crisp black suits, and dress shoes, which made them cute in a Roaring 20’s kind of way.
    Average Sam sat on a bar stool, his fat ass hanging over the sides. He had the rosy, swollen face of the frequent drinker. He nursed a Bicardi and Coke in a small glass. Everyday Joe alternated between standing up and sitting down, depending on how passionate he was feeling at a given moment. His face was thin and hawk-like; with keen, intelligent brown eyes. He was drinking Sam Adams.
    Everyday Joe had a good vocabulary and excellent manners. He still had a shine to him, and he was taking a shine to me. I gave him a welcoming smile. As for his friend, Average Sam, how would I rate his vocabulary and manners? His shine? Well... Average Sam is someone you just have to experience. You’ll see what I mean.
    There was no doubting that Everyday Joe had agreed with Sam’s last statement: Joe did see himself as the man with all the answers. I read it in the tiny smile on his face. I suspected he believed that if the world would ever make him king, he would straighten out all the bullshit in a hurry. Most men saw themselves that way, to one degree or another. But this Everyday Joe was a little different, not so typical. He was a confident man, but not cocksure or arrogant. I found this attractive.
    I sensed that something else was going on here too. Joe had an almost nonchalant attitude, as if he could stand there all night and wait on Sam to say something. It was as if he were waiting for the tension to grow. Sam fidgeted on his stool. He kept picking up his rum and coke and shaking the ice cubes in the glass.
    The whole scene reminded me of a teakettle placed on a stove, and Average Sam was the old kettle, with Everyday Joe slowly turning up the heat, just waiting for Sam to get to boiling and shrieking on that burner. My suspicions were confirmed when Joe gave me a wink, as if to say, “Know what’s going on here?” I winked back at him as if to reply, “Oh yes, I do.” This was all part of their game: Everyday Joe throwing out the question, and Average Sam getting frustrated enough to demand an answer.
    “Well for Christ’s sake, let’s go!” Average Sam finally exploded. He slammed a meaty fist on the bar top. “Out with it! Give it to me straight. You’re always the shade-tree-fix-it-man! Tell me what it takes for a man and woman to fall in love.”
    “Why should I?” Everyday Joe teased. “Why should I tell you? You never agree with me on anything.”
    “Give me a try,” Sam said, his puffy face glowing redder with earnest. I suspected he was always earnest in most things, until he decided to disagree. “Go on, give me a try.”
    I believed too that Everyday Joe always did give him a try. He appeared to me not only as a confident man, but a charitable and kind one too. His “giving it a try” was probably just as important to the interaction as Average Sam’s feigned open-mindedness.
    “All right,” Joe said. He took a good pull from his beer. “I’m going to give you my theory. I call it the Rule of 3. I believe by the time I am finished, you will see that I have solved the mystery of what makes a man and a woman fall in love. This mystery is solved by letting love happen, rather than making it happen. Love itself happens within the process of the Rule of 3.”
    Average Sam snorted. “Yeah, and Leonard would’ve whipped De La Hoya.”
    “There you go again,” Everyday Joe said. “Already disagreeing.” His mock frustration had the desired effect and Average Sam again became tolerant, almost angelic.
    “Sorry,” he mumbled. He finished his Bicardi and Coke and ordered another. “I’m ready,” he said, after the bartender poured him another drink. “Give me the Rule of 3.”
    Indeed, I thought. I’m ready too, Everyday Joe. Give me this Rule of 3, your theory, and show me how you let love happen.
    “All right then,” Everyday Joe said. He looked over to ensure that he had my attention. I rested my chin in my hand, my eyes sparkling for him. I was only two seats removed from them so I could hear it all, and I wanted Joe to know I could hear it all. “The first element of the Rule,” he continued, his eyes lingering on mine, “is what I call connection.”
    “There are tangibles and intangibles when it comes to connection,” he said, “and they are either attractive or unattractive.”
    Average Sam started absently picking his nose. Remember when I had mentioned earlier his vocabulary and manners? Well...
    “Go on,” he said, while at the same time removing his finger from his nose and checking for any boogers.
    Everyday Joe didn’t seem to notice his friend’s bad manners. “Let’s start with tangibles,” he said. “I use this word loosely to describe consciously observable phenomenon, things or qualities men and women experience through their five senses. This is where beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder.”
    Average Sam continued picking his nose. He examined his finger again and this time having found a booger, he began rolling it between his index finger and thumb.
    Everyday Joe watched him. He had noticed after all. “My list is by no means exhaustive, but obviously there has to be physical attraction,” he said. “Body types and shapes, smiles, facial expressions; hell, even upright walking styles and postures can all be attractive tangibles. Maybe he likes the way she sweeps her bangs away from her eyes; or she likes the way he tilts his head to one side when he is listening to her. Maybe it’s her style of dressing, or his good, clean grooming.”
    Everyday Joe stopped and watched Average Sam roll his booger.
    “I’m hearing ya,” Sam said. “Keep goin’.”
     “And then there is the proper handling of money and a good credit rating: more attractive tangibles that can make for connection between a man and a woman.”
    Sam was still rolling away. The booger was reaching the hardening point for the eventual finger-flick, or the subtle drop to the floor.
    “Are you really listening to me?” Joe asked.
    “Absolutely,” Average Sam said. “But we should speed things up. Let’s move to unattractive tangibles.” His voice took on a pompous tone when he said, “Conscious observable phenomenon that might kill connection between a man and woman.”
    “Yes,” Everyday Joe said. “For instance, a habit like picking your nose, then rolling what you find? That is a very unattractive tangible.”
    I had to look away momentarily to keep from bursting out laughing.
    Sam stopped his rolling and shrugged his shoulders. Dropping his arm to the side, he opened his index finger and thumb. Flicking a booger in public, unless really seeking shock value, was apparently unseemly in a social setting, even for someone as coarse as Average Sam. He had opted for the subtle booger-drop to the floor.
    He looked unflinchingly at Everyday Joe. “Hey, I ain’t out to impress nobody.”
    “Obviously,” Joe said. He merely smiled and went on. “We can list other unattractive tangibles. Two others might be an obnoxious sounding laugh, or the inability to meet the other person’s eyes. Maybe he stinks, or she wears too much perfume. His tone of voice might betray a lack of confidence and he comes off as a wet-noodle-back; or she talks only about her wants and needs and comes off as a vain-ass-boor!”
    “I get the picture,” Average Sam said. “What about intangibles, the attractive and unattractive?”
    “Intangibles are not observable through the five senses,” Everyday Joe said. “They are more subconscious. This is where someone knows he or she likes (or dislikes!) something about somebody, but can’t always put a finger on why.”
    “For example, an attractive intangible might be her intellect, as opposed to his being too emotional. Maybe he’s an optimist, with a bubbly personality and a positive outlook that she finds inspiring because she’s a cynic. Of course, these attributes can be unattractive intangibles too. He might be intimidated by her intellect, or she could be skeptical that anyone could ever be so sugary and happy all the time.”
    Everyday Joe paused, his index finger resting on his cheek in an evaluative gesture. “The combinations of tangibles and intangibles are endless when it comes to connection, and they will be as unique and individuated as the men and women involved.” He took a swig from his beer. After swallowing, he smacked his lips with satisfaction. “But suffice it to say, attractive tangibles and intangibles build a connection between a man and a woman; the unattractive tear that connection down.”
    Interesting ideas, so far. But how do all the elements tie together, Everyday Joe?
    A few rowdies came in and ordered some drinks. The bartender waited on them. Joe sipped his beer and Sam took another pull from his rum and coke. They seemed to be waiting for things to quiet down again.
    After the noise dropped to a dull roar, Joe said, “I think it’s important to mention at this point, before moving on to timing, just how all these elements tie together.”
    I licked my lips. I’ve always known I had a touch of the serendipity, and my choice of this Everyday Joe was confirmed for me by the last words he had just spoken. He was on the verge of addressing my question.
    I’m fifty-eight years old and to quote Rod Stewart, I wear it well, especially when dressed in my black cocktail dress and matching heels; and when highlighted by my long, silver and black hair. I’ve done marvelous things with my skin over the years, and I look more than good. I would say I’m downright yummy.
    I caught Joe giving me the once over and I smiled at him. You are already mine, sugar. He smiled back, probably thinking he was the one doing the choosing.
    “The important thing to remember regarding my theory, the Rule of 3, is that all three elements are at work simultaneously,” he said, returning to the subject at hand. “Connection, timing, and hearts: all three are at work during an evolving process.”
    Average Sam gave him an almost dismissive glance. “Why not call it the “Theory of 3” then, or the “Process of 3?” he asked.
    “Because the rule is that all three elements must be at work for love to happen between a man and a woman. Timing might be a little behind, but if it’s there with connection and hearts, love is still possible. Timing and hearts may be present, but if there is no connection, love cannot happen. All three elements must be at work at the same time in the process. That is the rule, which I call Rule of 3.”
    Good enough, I thought, makes perfect sense in a perfect world.
    Average Sam leaned over and ripped a fart. “Well then, my doctor of love, let’s have your little talk about timing.”
    “I’m talking about good timing. Unlike what you just demonstrated.”
    “Whatever.” Sam waved his hand dismissively. “On to timing.” He took a slug from his rum and coke, and then smirked. “Come to think of it, I’ve got terrible timing when it comes to women. I’m always saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.”
    “I’m not talking about timing in that sense,” Joe said. He took a swallow from his beer. “I’m talking about stations in life. A man and a woman have to be in the same place.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “This river of life we are all on. A man and woman have to be at the same point on the river, or at least on the same raft. She can’t be sunning herself on the beach while he is battling with the tiller. He can’t be back-floating in the shallows while she’s struggling with the sails.”
    Sam shook his head. “Listen, fuckin’ Socrates. Get to the point, will ya?”
    “Bad timing is shown,” Joe said, “when a man or woman starts dating shortly after a divorce or a long-term relationship. They think they are ready to date again, but they are not. Happens all the time and people muck up their lives and the lives of other people in the process.”
    Sam nodded. “Go on.”
    “It’s not just rebounding from divorces or breakups that show bad timing. Another example is a man trying to be a father because he loves the woman, and yet he really doesn’t feel the same way about her kids. Or women grabbing men who are already fathers, and then competing with the children for their fathers’ time and attention – just one more example of bad timing brought on by an unhealed life.”
    “And what about this business with people trying to “get ready?” Joe continued. He was preaching it now. “I hear this all the time too: ‘I’m getting myself ready to where I can have a long-term, loving relationship.’ Instead of trying to “get ready,” what that person really should be doing is accepting his or her current place in life and “getting real,” with themselves and other people first, before getting involved again.”
    “They make compromises?” asked Sam. “Is that what you’re saying?”
    “Yes,” Joe said. “They make compromises with themselves and other people. They injure themselves and others because of their poor timing.”
    “Fine,” Sam said. “That all makes sense. But isn’t there something to be said for getting out there and making things happen?”
    Everyday Joe jumped off his stool. “That is exactly the problem: trying to make things happen, rather than just letting them! They can’t accept that certain relationships with certain people aren’t going to work. An example would be the woman who continually works to get a man who just doesn’t want to be gotten. Another is the man who won’t take “I’m really not interested” seriously, no matter how many different ways she might tell him. Do you get what I’m saying? Can you see the futility?” Joe sat down again.
    Average Sam pursed his lips, considering the arguments.
    I saw that Everyday Joe had given his Rule of 3 some thought. It was for that reason, when a stud approached me and offered to buy me a drink, with his smile beaming and his cologne wafting sexily, that I brushed him off. Everyday Joe was intriguing me, and I wanted to take him home for the night!
    I was pleased when I saw relief cross Everyday Joe’s face shortly after I gave the stud the brush off. Joe was hopeful that something might happen between him and I. He looked almost awestruck. I loved that!
    Average Sam studied his friend for a few moments, looking to me, and then back to him. Sam seemed to know something was going on between Joe and I, but he really couldn’t put his finger on it.
    “We still have one more to go,” he said, as if he could distract himself and us from the strangeness of it all. “The Rule of 3, remember? We still got one to go. We’ve only done connection and timing.”
    Everyday Joe blinked once, as if to break the hold I had on him. “Oh... oh yes,” he said, his eyes still lingering on me. “The Rule of 3 and one to go.” He swallowed. “Two down, one to go!” He laughed too loudly and I smiled. He grinned back, almost stupidly.
    Average Sam cleared his throat.
    “Oh...oh yes,” Joe said again. “We have reached the third and most important element of the Rule of 3. This element is the imperative for love to last. Both people must have the right hearts!”
    Average Sam raised a thick hand. The hand wasn’t only to interrupt Everyday Joe, but to maintain balance. Sam was swaying badly. If not for the marriage of his huge ass to the barstool, he might’ve toppled over and fallen on the floor. The rum and cokes were having their say, even as Sam was now trying to have his. “I think I can open this up,” he said, his voice slurring. “This turd...uh...uh...third and most important element.”
    Everyday Joe grinned at him. “By all means.”
    “Hearts,” Sam said. He dropped his hand to the bar top for a steadier hold. “People either have hard hearts or soft hearts. The hard-hearted have to find other hard-hearted; the soft-hearted have to find soft-hearted.” He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Simple enough.”
    “Almost,” Everyday Joe said. He smiled again and finished his beer. “Bartender,” he called. “Ma’am?” he asked me.
    “I’m good, thank you.” I pulled up my skirt a bit further on my folded leg. Gave Joe little more knee. He blushed.
    God, I love this guy!
    The bartender brought Joe another beer. During the interval, Average Sam had been staring at Joe. He continued staring, his drunken eyes blinking slowly when he mumbled, “Almost?”
    “Almost,” Everyday Joe said. “You almost have it right.”
    “I do have it right,” Sam said. “Think about it. Hard-hearted people have to get with other hard-hearted people.”
    “And do what? Emotionally and mentally batter each other? Join as a team to brutalize other people? Doesn’t sound to me like a recipe for a happy and loving life! No, two hard-hearted people shouldn’t get together because they are too strong. Too much backbone there.”
    Sam looked doubtful now. “I suppose that means soft-hearted people can’t get together either.”
    “They can, if they want to get run over by a bulldozer,” Joe said. “You know as well as I do that bulldozers come in all shapes and sizes in this world, and that makes it difficult for soft-hearted people to make it as couples. Not enough backbone there.”
    Sam looked ready to quit. Almost. “Fine. Then we go with the fact that opposites attract. Hard-hearted people need to find soft-hearted people and vice versa.” He took a deep gulp from his rum and coke, finishing it. “There it is!”
    “Not quite,” Everyday Joe said. “Almost, but not quite.” Joe’s eyes were mischievous as he studied his friend.
    “I need another drink,” Average Sam said. “Bartender!” The bartender looked over and made a cutting gesture across his throat. He too had observed that Sam had had enough for the night. “Can at least have a coke then?” Sam asked. The bartender poured him a coke, brought it over, and took the empty rum glass.
    “I give up,” Sam said. “I’m cut off from drinking and that’s probably a good thing, since I’m cut off from thinking too.” He sighed. “Give it to me straight, Bill.”
    Bill! So that was Everyday Joe’s real name!
    “All right, Edward,” Bill said, formerly known as Everyday Joe. “You were partly right in that there are hard-hearted and soft-hearted people in this world. They get together every day and make wrecks of their lives. But in this world there are also warm-hearted people. Warm-hearted people have the right hearts for love to happen in my Rule of 3.”
    “How so?” asked Edward, formerly known as Average Sam.
    “Warm-hearted people are folks who were once either hard-hearted or soft-hearted, but they evolved beyond those limits. They developed warm and loving hearts, which can be soft as silk when needed, or hard as granite too, depending on what a situation warrants.”
    Bill got off his stool and made his way over to me and gently put his arm around my shoulders. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Bill.”
    I placed my hand over his on my shoulder. “I’m Sharon, and it’s very nice to meet you.”
    “It’s very nice being met,” he said.
    “I was wondering when you’d come over to say hello.”
    Edward looked ready to fall off his barstool again, and this time not from drunkenness, but from surprise. “What is this?” he asked. He looked like he wanted another drink – badly. “Bill? What is this? Are we done talking the Rule of 3?”
    “Pretty much,” Bill said. I took my cue and slid off my barstool. The bartender had been watching us. He brought our bar tabs over and we gave him our charge cards. He returned after ringing us up. We took our tabs and proceeded to sign them.
    “Bill, what about connection?” Edward asked. I heard confusion in his voice and saw it written on his chubby face. “You don’t even know this woman.... this... this...Sharon! How can you possibly have already connected? You might not like her perfume.”
    “Seems all right to me,” Bill said, handing the bartender his signed bar tab. “Smells downright divine, actually.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “Your cologne?”
    “Curve,” Bill said. “You like?”
    “Indeed! I knew that fragrance the moment you put your arm around me.” I gave the bartender my tab.
    “Shall we?” Bill asked, taking me gently by the hand. We started for the door and Average Sam, no that would be Edward, called after us.
    “Hey, wait a minute! What about timing? She could be freshly divorced! On the rebound from a long-term relationship... there might be baggage... many kids you... you don’t want to be a father! You told me!”
    The bartender stared at him. “Well, he did tell me!” Edward barked. “Mind your own business, or pour me another fuckin’ drink!”
    We kept walking. Edward wasn’t giving up. “Remember hearts? You’re a softy! She could be hard-hearted.” Bill and I stopped and smiled at one another. He dropped my hand for a moment and turned back to Edward. I felt almost sorry that we were leaving him there alone.
    “Ed, you are taking this way too seriously,” Bill said. He turned to the bartender. “Call him a cab, will you?” The bartender nodded. Bill retook my hand and we started again for the door.
    “What about letting things happen instead of making things happen?” We were almost to the door now and Edward still wasn’t giving up. He was bound and determined to have his say. “You’re going home with her! That’s making things happen, the huge no-no! in your theory.”
    “But that’s all the Rule of 3 is,” Bill called back over his shoulder. “Only a theory.”
    “I disagree! It was more than a theory,” Edward said. “It was something approaching truth!”
    Yes, something approaching truth, I admitted to myself, as I hooked Bill’s arm in mine and lead him out the door and into the waiting darkness. Indeed! But the Rule of 3 is still only a theory, and you know what I say?
    I say, “Man shall have all his theories, and they shall all be confounded by woman.”

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?

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

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@scars.tv... 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

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.

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.

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.

    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.

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!!!

    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.

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, WrBrian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     Brian B. Braddock, WrI 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.

    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.

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!

    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 1999 book “Rinse and Repeat”, the 2001 book “Survive and Thrive”, the 2001 books “Torture and Triumph” and “(no so) Warm and Fuzzy”,which all have 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 and tell us you saw this ad space. 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.

Children, Churches and Daddies the unreligious, non-family oriented literary and art magazine Scars Publications and Design ccandd96@scars.tv http://scars.tv Publishers/Designers Of Children, Churches and Daddies magazine cc+d Ezines The Burning mini poem books God Eyes mini poem books The Poetry Wall Calendar The Poetry Box The Poetry Sampler Mom’s Favorite Vase Newsletters Reverberate Music Magazine Down In The Dirt magazine Freedom and Strength Press forum plus assorted chapbooks and books music, poery compact discs live performances of songs and readings Sponsors Of past editions: Poetry Chapbook Contest, Poetry Book Contest Prose Chapbook Contest, Prose Book Contest Poetry Calendar Contest current editions: Editor’s Choice Award (writing and web sites) Collection Volumes Children, Churches and Daddies (founded 1993) has been written and researched by political groups and writers from the United States, Canada, England, India, Italy, Malta, Norway and Turkey. Regular features provide coverage of environmental, political and social issues (via news and philosophy) as well as fiction and poetry, and act as an information and education source. Children, Churches and Daddies is the leading magazine for this combination of information, education and entertainment. Children, Churches and Daddies (ISSN 1068-5154) is published monthly by Scars Publications and Design. Contact Janet Kuypers via e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for snail-mail address or prices for annual collection books. To contributors: No racist, sexist or blatantly homophobic material. No originals; if mailed, include SASE & bio. Work sent on disks or through e-mail preferred. Previously published work accepted. Authors always retain rights to their own work. All magazine rights reserved. Reproduction of Children, Churches and Daddies without publisher permission is forbidden. Children, Churches and Daddies copyright Copyright © 1993 through 2011 Scars Publications and Design, Children, Churches and Daddies, Janet Kuypers. All rights remain with the authors of the individual pieces. No material may be reprinted without express permission.