Human Construct of Time

is this the best of times
is this the worst of times
or is this just
          one of those times

only humans understand time
where did all the time go,
we ask
time slips away
as we search for ways
to avoid looking old
to avoid death

if i ever saw god
i’d have to ask,
how old are you?
how much longer
do you just sit there
                   observe

but time is a human construct
i have to remind myself
as i sit and think
at times like these

On This Ride

we’re on this ride together
tied together
for better, for worse
‘til death us do part

we’ve left for our fairytale honeymoon
and we’re the two tin cans
tied together
for better, for worse
being dragged along for the ride

No Compunction

some within the resistance during world war two
knew of others
assisting the Jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals

but most kept everything secret, for their safety
they had to
it was all they could do to stay alive.

#

Aafje waited quietly outside the stalag
so she could help
British pilots captured by the Third Reich

but when they escaped at six a m, under a blanket to Nazi gunfire
they all fell
coloring the snowy fields a crimson red.

despite losing her life in Heusden in silence
Aafje never knew
her relatives Johanna, Petronella, Marie

would all also have a similar fate
and be killed
at the hands of the Third Reich.

#

Marie was a lowlander, and never got involved
in politics
but she couldn’t sit by and do nothing

when her pharmacist, her daughter’s teachers, her
next door neighbors
were shipped to distant concentration camps.

Marie stayed awake through the night, on
her last night alive
with a candle lit in her front window

waiting for the two men, Jacob and Haim, so
she’d conceal them
behind her plaster and lime mock wall

before they could travel on to safety.
she stared all night
along the barren road near the train tracks and forest edge

and only saw the two figures in the distance
once daylight broke
so she left the candle burning, left her daughters

grabbed her coat and ran out the front door
to take them in
but when they were only twenty metres apart

she saw the dark truck coming toward them, littered
with swastikas
so she turned to cross the train tracks

and get to the still blooming rows of trees. Jacob
and Heim followed.
the SS men didn’t even get out of their truck

when they started shooting at them. the SS had
no compunction
for killing the Jews, or the homosexuals, or the resistance.

when Marie saw Haim shot first, her only thought was that Haim
is Hebrew for “life”
before she and Jacob were both gunned down.

#

the squad leader saw the male Jewish noses, could identify the
strong Dutch female
and thought about what fun he could have had with her.

he scanned the skyline for her possible home, then signaled
his men to go
after spotting one house in the distance down the road.

they violently knocked on the door, after seeing the lit candle in the window
they beat again
on the door before the frightened sixteen year old Johanna

made sure in the dark everyone was hidden, wondered where
her mother was
and finally opened her front door.

the three SS men stood there, each with greed in their eyes.
Wo ist dein Fater?
she told him her father died years ago.

her younger sister Petronella walked toward her before he asked
Wo ist deine Mutter?
She said she didn’t know where her mother was.

the three men walked in, and they told her this was
a random search
and they asked is anyone else was at home.

spotting the unpainted plaster and lime wall after
Johanna said no
the leader walked to the wall and knocked, thought he heard

a noise, then asked if this room was
smaller than before.
and before Johanna could answer about the last search

the squad leader stepped back and the the other two men
pointed their Lugers
at the unpainted wall adorned with a single oil painting.

in an effort to somehow alert behind the wall the small
trapped family
young Petronella said she wanted to save the painting.

then she walked toward the painting on the wall when
they opened fire
and killed young Petronella where she stood.

Johanna muffled her scream, in shock and disbelief.
Waarom deed u dit?
Why did you do this?, was all she could ask.

the squad leader walked to her, jerked her head back by her hair.
Sie war dashässhliche...
she was the ugly one, he told her, before he took her

to a bedroom to rape her while the other two listened for noises
from the fake wall
before they took turns raping Johanna.

when one of them would hear a noise in the unpainted wall
they fired one shot.
they didn’t know if they hit anyone, but the noise would stop.

after they finished raping the Dutch girl
repeatedly
the nearly unconscious Johanna smelled petrol

they poured everywhere in her home. they poured more on the
unpainted wall
before they left the house to set it aflame.

they stood outside and waited, in case any vermin
tried to run free.
they all had their guns pointed. they were ready.

as the flames of this little furnace died down
they lit their smokes
on the dying embers and got in their truck.

driving away, the three were pleased,
proud they saved space
on the next train to Birkenau.

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
    Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, Prominent Tongue, Chaotic Elements, Fusion, her death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, and A Picture’s Worth 1,000 Words, (available a a color and as a b&w photography journalism and art book). Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).

Everybody wears a suit & tie except

    Everybody wears a suit & tie except me, the headless kangaroo, & the naked ho who roams about offering herself to the important suits & ties. I am in my usual attire of coveralls, dirty shirt, & smelly socks. I roam through the party with my glass of hemlock, & everybody but the headless kangaroo holds me in disdain, as if I’d sneaked into the wrong party, which, of course, I have. I had intended to go to the state madhouse in time for dinner, but instead I’m in this party for the filthy rich. I expect to see Michelle Bachman, but maybe she’s waiting for the hundred thousand dollars of farm subsidies she says she doesn’t get in her great Republican political farce to get nominated for president, as Rick Perry, the political farce, is hard on her Right Wing heels. I walk through the party, carrying my hemlock cocktail & nodding to the suits & ties who hate me & sit down on a sofa with the headless kangaroo. I tell him I’m Fred Hammy & shake his foot. I ask him how he hopped the party, & he tells me he was shipped in a box from Australia, & they’d soon make kangaroo burgers of him for the suits & ties. We laugh because it’s as funny as everything else.
    “Why’d they cut off your head?” I ask.
    “So I could fit in the box,” he answers through the pain in his neck.
    I take a sip of hemlock, so I can perish like Socrates. Aristophanes is taking notes in the corner. Plato is passed out under the table. Hitler is revving it up in the garage.
    I find the kangaroo’s head in a plate of strawberries & screw it back on. The kangaroo thanks me & spits blood in my eye.
    The suits & ties finish with the ho & throw her into the blaze in the fireplace. She always was hot, but this is a bit extreme. She’s Jewish, & she goes up in smoke. Hitler & his men clap & cheer, but as they scratch their clap, they mourn her. Arafat pats Hitler on the back. Michelle Bachman comes up with her farm subidy but has no idea of what’s going on. Bachman’s hubby, the shrinko, says he can make Christians out of the Nazis, which should be easy.
    I ask the kangaroo if he’s happy with his head screwed on.
    He looks around & screams.

My friend Linda

    My friend Linda, 50 percent injun from New Mexico, Mexican & Irish, tells her Pasadena shrink about me, & the shrinko thinks I have syphilis of the brain. I just thought I was brain dead. I carry my head through Pasadena hiding behind a smile of contentment, because I don’t want anyone to see how sick I am behind my teeth.
    I get a couple blocks from my home of loonies at Centennial Place, where the poor recovering addicts dwell. I haven’t told them yet about the brain syphilis, but I suspect they’ve always known that something is askew. I’m certainly not going to tell them, for fear they’ll lock me up forever at the state nuthouse or just shoot me.
    Pretty Linda is trying to avoid me. Who can blame her. Brain syphilis is con- tagious. Even when I breathe, there’s syphilis in the air. Linda has probably carried it to Maui where she lived & spread her wares for 20 years before returning to Pasadena to save the city from brain syphilis.
    Anyway, it takes me a couple blocks before I notice that everybody’s headless, I assume to protect the community from my brain disease. Their heads are probably at the nuclear wasteland being buried with the rest of the waste.
    It occurs to me, if they’re at all discerning, they’ll decapitate me for the wasteland, & I selfishly don’t want to go there. So I take a train to the 202 Club to find Linda to talk it over. I find her in the parking garage sharing a quart of Wild Irish Rose with some other Indians.
    She smiles at me to hide her 20 years of sobriety.
    “Hey, Linda love,” I say. “Is your shrink sure I have brain syphilis? Maybe it’s just tuberculosis of the balls.”
    “No, Fred, it’s brain syphilis. Maybe it’s also TB of the balls, but nobody cares about that.”
    “They’ll care plenty if they get balls TB from me. Maybe they’ll get some in the teats.”
    “What you should do, Fred, is throw all of you into the nuclear wasteland. Your loss will be our gain.”
    “Maybe I should take you there with me for company.”
    “TS Eliot could write ‘The Nuclear Wasteland’ about it.”
    “That’s the cats, Linda. Maybe I should jump in & become a hotdog.”
    “Your weenie could use some fire, Fred.”
    When I get home, I find somebody has burnt down my Centennial Place. I sit on the ashes & become Job.

Like Souls

    It was a Sunday morning when Arthur and Annie met, Sunday morning in the vast town cemetery holding the thousands of dead souls who had been long forgotten with their deceased date together with a pathetically sad epithet embossed in place of a lost memory or feeble emotion.
    “In loving memory of Dora, loving wife of Arthur who passed away...” The cold slab of granite read. The pretty bunch of daffodils carefully arranged in a glass vase which was replenished every Sunday when he visited adorned the mound of earth as witness of his apparent love, devotion and sadness at his loss.
    “Married long was you?” the slight little woman asked as she stood next to his carefully tended plot looking at her newly filled mound of fresh earth.
    “Ten years – just ten years.” He nodded to her as she placed the small posy of Spring flowers at the head of the fresh earth. “Don’t seem long when you say it like that, does it? Ten years...I’ll remember those tears.”
    “I know what you mean –he only died only a week ago and I still can’t believe he’s gone. I suppose I’ll have to get him a nice granite stone like the one you’ve got for your wife.”
    “Yes – it helps - helps you remember.”
    They chatted on for an hour or so reminiscing in their own ways. Her Husband had died of a fateful accident which she obviously blamed herself for. He had been wheelchair bound for several years having crashed his car driving home from is usual Friday night out with his men friends at the local pub.
    “Had to do everything for him,” she said reproachfully picking at the head of one of the Primroses in the bunch of spring flowers. “Three years of every minute looking after his every need and did I get any thanks for it...?” She left the question floating in the air, her lip quivering with emotion,
    “Know what you mean,” he answered nodding sagely. “They don’t realize you got a life of your own to live do they? There was nothing really wrong with mine so the Doctors said – she just took to here bed and stayed there. Had to do everything for her and run my shop at the same time. Up and down, up and down those stairs I don’t know how many times. Something the matter with her insides, she’d complain but the Doctor said he could find nothing. He gave me every kind of prescription for stomach ache and believe me as a chemist I know most of ‘em. Even had her up to the hospital for one of those new-fangled MRI scans. Nothing! In the end it killed her – whatever it was.”
    “A relief for you I suppose and her after all that suffering.”
    “Oh she didn’t suffer. I know my analgesics. Yes painkillers I know. Been a chemist since I was a lad of fourteen – learned it from my father and he had a specialist business – he was very experienced in Chinese Herbs. Becoming very popular now you know.”
    Really?” she said, “In London?
    “Be surprised how many Chinese in London and they prefer their own cures. Even the English turn to Chinese herbs when the chemical stuff they get from the doctor doesn’t do the job.”
    “I’ll remember that next time I get one of my headaches.”
    “Be happy to help,” he smiled at her sensing the definite bond building between them
    Every Sunday for several weeks afterwards they met and eventually they began to meet outside their Sunday devotions and without a doubt their relationship blossomed into a permanent arrangement.
    He learned of the not so happy relationship she had experienced with her very demanding husband. “More fond of his beer with his mates than with me. First week after our marriage he spent more time out with his mates in the pub than at home. And he wasn’t nice with it either – you know? Some people are better when they’ve had a drink or two but him? No, a rough man he was. More than once I wished he would crash his car driving home drunk and end it all. Well, he did, but it only made him worse. I had to fetch and carry for him every minute of the day!”
    “Sounds awful,” he commiserated. “I know what you must have gone through. People don’t realize what looking after a loved one means. It soon becomes a burden particularly if it isn’t appreciated. I know I felt like I was my wife’s slave she was so demanding. I soon found I was hoping that what was causing he pain in her insides would complete the job and...” He waived his arms around indicating the graves. “You know,” he said, “It would have been a blessed relief.”
    “A blessed relief,” she nodded agreeing with him,” Indeed it was when he went down to the pub for the last time. “I had to push his wheelchair and sit in that awful smoky Pub and listen to him and his stupid mates until he wanted to come home. Then he was in a filthy temper and blamed me for every little bump in the pavement so he insisted on wheeling his wheelchair himself - I told him not to go too fast but...” Her tears welled up and she had to pause before she could continue until finally she said, “Didn’t stop at the Main Road crossing – the Bus driver didn’t have a chance.” She clapped her hands as if to illustrate the impact. “Dead as a squashed cat!”
    “How awful for you” he sympathized.
    “I couldn’t help it – he went so fast in that wheelchair!”
    “Awful but in a way I suppose a welcome relief,’ he offered.
    ‘Yes – welcome indeed. Some people was cruel though – said I should have been able to stop him. Others said I probably pushed him.”
    “Amazing how cruel some people can be! It was the same for me – they said that being a chemist I could’ve saved my wife in her suffering but as I said, I’m not the Doctor I’m just a poor chemist and a Chinese medicine chemist at that! Some even said I poisoned her. The police ordered a post mortem but they found no poisons only Chinese herbs which I’d mixed for her as an analgesic to take away her pain. Herbal preparations are harmless. Aconite is a Chinese herb I use as an analgesic and I used it to ease her stomach pains but they said that Aconites chief effects are on the cardiovascular and central nervous systems and it could have been that which gave her the heart attack. It was never proved but you can imagine how I felt – I was being blamed while all I was trying to do was to ease her pain. My Chinese customers understood but the English – nasty minds some people!”
    Their relationship blossomed even further and they gave up meeting at the cemetery every Sunday preferring to bury their painful thoughts with their spouses. They married secretly but the gossips who knew them both never stopped their tongues wagging and wondering which one would arrange for the other’s end. After all, they were both murderers weren’t they?

Heavenly Rewards

    Max and I watched a TV program about suicide bombers and their motivation and we started talking about the heavenly reward for human bombs. The Islamic clerics make sure their followers are dehumanized and turned into poor, ignorant, horribly sex-deprived clowns then promise them seventy-two virgins of their own in paradise after they have completed their one and only mission.
    When the program was over I wondered out loud, “Why seventy-two?”
    “Must be a mystical number from somewhere in their theology,” Max said. “Religions are usually hung up on mystical numbers of some kind. Remember the million-man march on Washington? Hell of a turn-out! Then Louis Farakhan babbles on for an hour and a half about numerology! All those people wound up standing around asking, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’”
    “And, another thing, the old Jews seem hung up on numerology themselves. Mention ‘666’ and Christians roll their eyes and make the sign of the cross to ward off ol’ Debbil. It probably has nothing to do with facts of any kind.”
    “I don’t think seventy-two wives sounds like all that good a thing,” I ventured. “I have concluded, through years of experience, that one is more than sufficient.”
    “Are you kidding me?” Max exclaimed, sitting up straight. “Seventy-two wives all living in the same place, fighting over who’s going to do this or that, each one bragging about her own kid being smarter than anyone else’s, raising hell about the seventy-two bitches next door. And just imagine seventy-two shrill voices telling you to wipe your feet and take out the trash, and you come in late with a faint aura of perfume and liquor about you and seventy-two wives want to know what in hell you’ve been up to?”
    “You’re right,” I agreed. “The Christian heaven would be a quieter place.”
    “Yeah, quieter and boring, walking around on golden streets, playing harps, no Irish coffee, no dark beer and having to grin in the face of relatives that you thought you had mercifully seen the last of. Not me!”
    “Well then, wise ass, what’s your idea of heaven,” I asked.
    Max leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head and smiled. “If I believed in heaven and all those baloney, I’d pick the Norse version. You fall in honorable battle, a Valkyrie comes and picks you up and carries you off to meet Odin in Valhalla which is set in the grove of Glasir where the trees have shimmering leaves of red gold. The Valkyries take off their armor and change into lovely white gowns and pour mead as long as you can drink it and the cook serves up pork, all you can eat, and you don’t have to worry about cholesterol. After the meal, you sit around, drink more mead, monkey around with the Valkyries and tell war stories. Then in the daytime, you go out and fight more battles and at the end of the day, your wounds are healed and you start the party all over again. Now that’s a place that would be worth hanging out in for eternity.”
    “Sounds exhausting,” I commented.
    “But a lot more fun than going to human-bomb heaven and putting up with seventy-two wives forever. By the way, that sounds more like the other place to me.”
    “I think you’ve got something there,” I said.

Sidewalk Omelet

    After a week’s drinking, I decided to kill myself. I didn’t tell anyone. I figured I would do it while all my girlfriends were in the clubs looking for a new gullible bastard to take for a spin. You see, I’ve always been used because I am a good guy. Women see me and think to themselves I can use this son of a bitch. I can push him around and he is the kind of guy who will do anything if you look him in the eyes. And that’s just what they do. I begin to resent it: being pushed. Just always being pushed around like they have my cock on a string.
    I had checked into a cheap downtown corporate hotel with ten floors and a pool. It was a hotel near the top of a hill, just enough tilt to help you run down to the liquor store to grab a bottle, just enough climb to make the effort worthwhile. The hotel had once been painted a peacock green, lots of hot flair, but after the rains, the peculiar Midwestern rains that erode and fade everything, the hot green was just hanging on by its teeth: like the people who lived inside. It gave me time alone, and I liked that. There was something appealing about being in one locked room for a week’s time without having to hear anyone’s voice or see anyone’s face. One thing I have always cherished was my privacy, but recently the phone hasn’t stopped ringing with other people’s problems, and I have been trapped into spending time with pot heads in a smoke filled garage with no beer and playing video games. I have accepted this, but it’s not me. Sure, I get lonely, but I am more alone with a group of people than I could ever be on my own. With each break from all this ordinary madness, I retreat to my room, pull down the shades, and I become myself again. Sometimes I just lay down in bed alone for five or six hours, and marvel at how the depression and loneliness feels both dreadful and relieving at the same time. I just lay in that bed until I get something back: something that had been taken out of me, that juice. The absence from humanity can be so graceful that even god could understand if he invented them.
    When I checked into the hotel, the first thing I did was set my typewriter on the desk, and immediately began laying out the wine, which consisted for ninety percent of my luggage. I had bought a few huge jugs of port and lined them up on the floor, then I began laying out the eight or nine ordinary sized wine bottles behind the jugs of port, and behind the ordinary bottles I had four or five slightly smaller ones. They looked like a platoon of red velvet soldiers waiting to do battle for my soul.
    When the wine ran out, I knew I was going to do it. The depression, the fear, the uselessness became too much without wines protective barrier of courage. Besides, I couldn’t get drunk anymore, I couldn’t forget, the wine just warmed me and brought me strength but made me remember, and when the wine ran out I would be shaking on the floor after several hours and the cold spot spirits of my past slide up my back leaving me with nothing but ghosts to touch my body and to haunt me with everything that could have been. It was too much. I knew I was going to do it. How? I wasn’t quite sure, but there were hundreds of ways. I began thinking about all the ways I could kill myself. I remembered stories about a man who bought one bullet, went into a pawn shop and asked to look at the gun, loaded the bullet and blew his brains out right there in the shop. It certainly was cost effective, but seemed like a lot of effort, and I didn’t feel like going anywhere. I could shove a fork in the electrical outlet. Electrocution is just kind of a kiss. It leaves the body whole, but room service only sent up plastic sporks. Damn. Then I got it. I was on the fifth floor and there was a patio outside the room to stand on and look out at the bog, and the crummy buildings, and here the sound of gunshots on the sunset. Too low to jump off, unless you were on the tenth floor, so I decided I was going to weave the sheets into a kind of rope. Like you always see them do to save a princess or damsel in distress, but I was going to make a noose out of mine. It was a good plan: classy and poetic, something to be remembered. It made me glad that I hung out with the scouts as a kid.
    I sat outside the patio tying my knots and weaving the sheets together when I heard a knock on the door.
    “Senor! Senor, please open the door. It’s been a week, and no clean. Please, senor, I must clean.”
    “Not now!”
    “No senor, I must come in. I come in, senor.”
    She came in and looked around in horror,
    “Oh, senor, there are bottles everywhere! What have you done? This mess unbelievable!”
    I kept on weaving my sheets together, and out of nowhere, a body drops down in front of the patio, only a couple of feet away from me, heading straight down to the sidewalk. He was fully dressed in a suit, and had his neck tie on very neatly knotted. He was going in slow motion, when you think about it, a body doesn’t go too fast when watched. Evidently he had gotten on his patio and jumped off. He probably had the top floor: lucky bastard. I wondered if I was going crazy, but no, that had to have been a body that went by. Our eyes even met, like they would on the street, and he looked at me very strangely. I knew it was a body so I hollered into the room while the cleaning lady began to work,
    “Hey, Senora, guess what!?”
    “What now, Senor?”
    “The strangest thing just happened.”
    “Yes?”
    “Yeah, a human body just dropped by my patio. His head was first and his feet followed. I mean, he was all lined up and everything. He was just dropping through the air right in front of me.”
    “Disparates! Una completa mierda, you fool!”
    “No bullshit, it actually happened. I’m not making it up, I swear.”
    “You no funny, Senor. Stop trying to be funny.”
    “I know I’m not funny. Please, just come out here and look down.”
    “Alright, Senor, alright.”
    She came and looked down off the patio and saw the guy looking like a fried egg on the sidewalk and screamed, “Dios Mio! Dios Mio!” She ran into the bathroom and puked and puked and puked. I decided to drop the sheets. I didn’t feel like killing myself anymore. I sat down on the naked mattress, and saw that she opened the drawer of the dresser and it had a refrigerator compartment. I had no idea. I walked over, opened it, and was stricken the bliss when I saw all the beers and mini whiskeys. It felt good again. I could live now. I sat down and began to drink my beer. I felt like a king. After many threats to do so, someone had finally committed suicide for me... at last.

Liquefied

    It was Saturday in that final week of February, 1984. Morning breezes swept in from the Pacific pushing waves against Marina del Rey’s protecting breakwater. Sailboats tugged on taut lines while halyards beat aluminum masts in all lettered basins. Boils erupted in mid-channel where seagulls dive-bombed panicked anchovies driven to the surface by voracious schools of Bonita.
    Above Los Angeles, rain from heavy clouds fell to spot hard earth forming damp animated shapes. Soon cascading torrents collected at higher elevations to chisel arroyos before bursting into concrete spillways. Soda cans, eucalyptus bark, shrunken avocado-corks and things living and dead rode the pipeline. The flotsam burst into a drain, the San Gabriel River, before it dumped into the Pacific.
    At dusk they had risen from the basin. She had clutched his red robe passing sulking clouds that parted to reveal a glowing web of moving vehicles from coast to foothill. Water striking her face was warm and surprisingly drops touching her tongue felt alive. Some power transformed favored drops into crystals and these formed a thin skin on the earth. She knew if she hovered quietly they’d hear the membrane grow thick enough to eventually close Angeles Crest Highway.
    An hour later, Justine awoke to shivering in a burgundy colored quilt. She had removed Stephen Malone’s latest unwanted message from the answering machine causing swift retribution. The sound of palm fronds beating stucco gave way to roof tiles smashing and moments later a banging shutter had broken glass.
    Lights flickered and darkness turned solitude into unnerving dread. The wind whistling over the chimney sounded like intimate moments with Michael. Hands covered ears but she heard—whimpers and deep moans—a mockery of their love making. A fireplace freed hideous shadows that scampered from wall to ceiling.
    Fourteen years earlier, just after her twenty-sixth birthday, Stephen had swept her off her feet. Love at first sight, unthinkable now, had rendered them all but inseparable. Now, there was no place in her life for the Stanford graduate who had left Atherton, San Francisco’s affluent suburb, to arrive at Los Angeles’s top advertising agency armed with his father’s buyout overture.
    Stephen’s subsequent advertising campaigns, replete with subtle sarcasm aimed at Southern California’s skateboarding beach communities and sun-broiled blondes, had spawned a marketing and public relations empire.
    Justine Orman left Pacoima High in the most socially inadequate section of the San Fernando Valley to grace billboards that tempted motorists to join a well-endowed, bikini-clad teenager at a roulette wheel in Las Vegas above the caption “I’ve got your number.”
    Beneath strawberry blonde hair a bronzed face held ice-blue eyes, an exquisite nose and full lips. Her face smiled from magazines at a procession of would be suitors. There were assignments in Paris, Rome and other coveted locations but behind that patented grin and sheltered from a controlling soon-to-be-husband, an agent and legions of single females there was the hope of instant motherhood.
    Justine had wanted children and marriage; she was nearing thirty and time was running out. They tied the knot in St. Helena and boarded her father-in-law’s jet bound for Hawaii where she boldly sent birth control pills rafting at Akaka Falls.
    Weeks later Stephen’s uncompromising directive resulted in a devastating abortion. Part of her psyche was destroyed along with that long sought embryo. In the months that followed and despite the best efforts of her psychiatrist, Dr. Marvin Sangler, she continued to replace the loss of a living being with a vision so compelling that a child had crossed the threshold into her consciousness.
    An obedient wife swallowed those hated little pills again but by then she had completely dismissed Stephen—friendship had never been a component of the marriage—as a lover. Mutual betrayal unfolded painfully and was punctuated by Justine being thrown from bed-to-carpet. What frightened her most, as his laughter trailed off was his prophecy, “You’ll have a kid when I let you.”
    Justine’s marriage continued but sharing time with Stephen wasn’t considered. She retreated into books in an attempt to keep up with Stephen’s intimidating intellect and then at his insistence took drama classes at UCLA. Dr. Sangler’s warning—the inability to expose another failing to public criticism, no matter how well intended or constructive—proved painful.
    Face and form, highly prized merchandise, were accepted. However she was judged self-conscious with no ability to transmit honest emotion to an audience. Placated by managing Stephen’s hastily formed casting agency, Justine developed a talent for discovering new faces. She knew this allowed Stephen’s people to keep a tight rein on his “agitated wife”.
    Any interest in being photographed vanished when Stephen’s latest indiscretion went public. A strikingly beautiful girl of eighteen on a tabloid’s front page peering past Stephen in their bed caused Justine’s psychic decline. She told Sanger about standing naked in front of a full-length mirror very mystified as tears streamed down a face bearing a remarkable resemblance to her own.
    “Those tears couldn’t be mine...my face was dry.” Apprehension hid behind a level, relaxed tone. “Might that woman be the vulnerable Justine we talk about?” She was crying again. “Little Justine is grown up?” Sanger’s expression exposed her pathology as her hands went under her blouse to comfort her stomach.
    “You imagined you were the woman in the mirror.” Tense seconds ticked away as hands rubbed a belly. “You mean...I imagined she cried for me?” Tension around the eyes and teeth biting his pen went unnoticed.
    “Don’t forget we’ve talked about how the unconscious mind protects us.”
    “I understand she grew up quickly in order to help me...of course.”

    Sanger knew the mind had gone topsy-turvy; Justine had made room for yet another companion, this time it was an unseen adult offering advice. “Don’t listen to that psychiatrist; Stephen uses him to manipulate you.” There were no more counseling sessions, prescriptions or secrets shared with Dr. Sanger.
    Three years passed quickly with separate beds, bank accounts and lives that led to rare encounters and that final bedroom skirmish that rewarded Justine with a court-ordered breakup of Stephen’s company. Justine received the new house in Pacific Palisades and became the sole owner of Malone Casting. The woman who had begun a marriage full of promise ended the battle with little regret. It didn’t really matter; she had sole custody of the child inside.

    During the year’s first week, a mere seven weeks ago, a handsome, twenty-three year old Irish face with the requisite dark eyes and brown hair had descended on Malone Casting. Probing questions about his theatrical past were dispensed with a quick wit. Michael Morrison had more than a passing interest in being cast for the role of Eugene O’Neill’s alter ego, Edmund Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
    Nervous energy would be channeled into a credible younger Tyrone son named Edmund and a life meaningless up to now would be salvaged in the footlights. The distant voice of Edmund Tyrone overpowered the chosen cast at the reading. Justine consumed each word as nourishment. There were very authentic coughing spells and his profile displayed sunken cheeks as required.
    Wanting him made perfect sense to Justine, they were meant for each other. Justine was an avid reader just like Edmund even though Stephen had ridiculed her romance paperbacks as mindless retreats from reality? Writers that Edmund sought created conflict, but he hadn’t been led astray and neither had she.
    She read the French poets too, maybe not Baudelaire but she had frequented Paris’s museums, art galleries and libraries. Edmund had traveled the world—that changes anybody—and his insights were hers. Both shared a spiritual side, Edmund’s solitary walks by the sea proved that. Only a soul mate knew water harbored supernatural power. Edmund sensed he might disappear in the ocean and wasn’t his consciousness lost in liquor, a liquid laced with energy?
    If final proof were needed, the very week before meeting Michael when reading the play a second time, an epiphany had occurred. The printed word of a playwright gave clarity and purpose to her most recurrent dream. In that Hollywood theater the missing pieces had finally come together.
    The play was about Catholics, an unknown commodity, yet refreshingly different from the Jewishness Stephen seemed to exude with conceit. And wasn’t O’Neill a Broadway actor just like Michael. The mystery was solved; Edmund had a brother named Eugene who had died as an infant. Eugene was the cherub who danced above her bed in a red robe when fitful sleep had played tricks on a suffering newlywed.
    When Michael finished, he slowly disappeared into the wings as if the clapping was soundless, then he advanced cautiously from behind the curtain wearing an almost visible smile. In the front row Justine gathered the applause as if it was meant for her. She rose on shaky feet feeling inexplicable joy. The applause was thunderous to her ears. It caused the hair on her arms to stand on end and goose pimples to pop out.
    Long Day’s Journey into Night would open in two months. Michael became the beneficiary of untested sexual interest. Nobody had auditioned in Justine’s bed but at dinner she sensed Michael expected an invitation and found that appealing in a man chasing young women. There were rough edges and just like Edmund Tyrone, she saw a dreamer eager to squander money. An uncouth, ill-mannered juvenile lurked near the surface—bravado masked vulnerability, liquor unknown fear—but his grin could thaw granite.
    Glaring dissimilarities: financial station, maturity and flirtatious behavior were overlooked. More than lust kept them in sheets, destiny was in control. “I always believed you couldn’t possibly see me just as just a casting professional and so I used to play at kissing you with my husband before we met. Oh! I’ll say it, Michael; I’ve been in love with you forever—preparing for only this.”
    New Yorkers knew California was noted for drama. Their kissing hadn’t meant anything as he held her hand the first night. He’d won her but who was this forever young, overly attractive Californian? He found in Justine all that he had heard a Jewish woman was supposed to be: soft, pliable and needy. It was as if this woman had a duty to perform, so he had happily enjoyed their lovemaking.
    The third phone message she had left when electric service returned to Amalfi Drive that Saturday in February breached the limits imposed on self-respect. It ended in muffled sobs and a plea for a return call at 7 P.M. Los Angeles time. Longing intensified in the certainty that although she had loathed it, making love with Michael that last night had been inescapable. Fate ruled both their lives.
    During the weeks that followed little, robe-glad Eugene had lost his reassuring smile. At first there was only a mere suggestion of disinterest in her questioning Michael’s leaving, but later Eugene had no answers. Brief encounters in fleeting dreams were unsatisfying. Uncharacteristic silence—little Eugene appeared aloof with a detached stare—replaced laughter and flights but those were only dreams, tonight’s journey above the wet city was real and they had been inseparable.
    She pulled the phone’s cord from the wall amid a flood of hot tears and laid the last log to rest in the bedroom fireplace. Alone again in that empty house, Justine had watched Last Tango in Paris and downed two sleeping pills with Chateauneuf du Pape. Michael unpolished, rough-hewn, immature, but a surprisingly astute gifter of fine wine had been Marlon’s understudy.

    In Manhattan a phone was a necessity and Michael had a ready answer for the missing telephone in his apartment. “The thing’s been banjaxed since I dropped it in the tub.” A car in Manhattan was a troublesome luxury so he had taken the subway to the Woodlawn Avenue #4 subway station and then walked to the Bronx’s Monte Fiore Hospital.
    His coughs produced scowls but he had moved ahead in the line of patients taking occasional nips from his ever-present NyQuil. After a twenty minute wait, he stood before a brown face framed by corn-rowed hair to retrieve a promised biopsy report. It went unread to his pocket.
    Winter was more enjoyable underground; it was crowded with the skin shades and accents New York makes available. Peruvians from Queens wore ancient woolen caps designed by Incan masters that Macy’s modern mavens could never improve. Puerto Ricans bounced to rhythm pouring from headsets and one, a statuesque teen, danced slowly past Michael.
    Her pink leather coat and matching fur-lined boots momentarily drew his eyes from the folded biopsy report before settling on her smiling mother. She was an exact duplicate of the teen-queen with twenty years added. Her shopping bag proclaimed a boutique patron; an imported handbag and full-length leather boots said high-classed but a red tint in her hair confirmed a hustling Puerto Rican had snared a rich Italian somewhere in Westchester.
    Michael opened the report. The news required no white gown or spiritual support. Tumors spread, everyone knew that happens. He crumbled his death sentence tossing it in anger at the third rail. Fingers tore at his neck breaking the necklace’s clasp. Serpentine gold fell across Michael’s boot forcing the girl’s mother back. Glazed eyes brimming with tears created a hushed platform.
    He retrieved the necklace staring at the crowd with hollow eyes. A faint rumble grew louder behind shimmering rails in the approaching light. Brakes squealed as blue light sliced through a surging groundswell of foul-smelling air. Turned heads shielded faces as debris completed its journey back onto the tracks.
    Michael’s eyes clouded over as they fixed on his palm. The tiny man looked back from a small cross that had piercing skin as if to confirm the futility of denial—it was Michael’s turn to die. Life was ending cell by cell—there would be no sacrifice to save souls, no resurrection—below feet and blaring horns.
    He stumbled through opening doors squeezing the cross tightly. Watching rusty pillars pass in smudged glass he glimpsed seething anger. Rib-rattling coughs caused two teenagers seated nearby to bolt in disgust. Running the back of his hand over his chin, Michael was shocked to find bright-red blood. The girl brought the back of her hand to her face and looked away.
    “Nice gross-out, Dude. You got big balls bringing your disease shit in here.”
    An hour later, he stepped from a steaming tub to a carpet littered with paperback books. He fished a marijuana roach from an ashtray and found sleep on a cot in the one-room flat. He awoke to screeching cats in the alley, which brought a welcomed smile.
    “Nature calls—be we two-legged or four. Tis’ best I make another me.” Michael held the gold-colored, glass-ribbed container under the faucet waiting for hot water and observed ominous credit card receipts with a wary eye. “Alfred Dunhill, come out...ya’ bugger.”
    Opening the top drawer of a blistered dresser; he patted beneath socks to the rear right corner. The fifty-dollar bill would have to do. Coaxing drops of cologne to his fingertips, he fought a cough. NyQuil left a even greener tongue.
    Transit above ground was dreamlike. Mist was transforming the city. Freezing rain fell lazily, layer upon layer, to form a glassy sheet. Glittering pavement became the stage on which Broadway’s marquees danced. Skating on leather soles past immobilized taxicabs restored treasured memories.
    Church bells echoed in the stillness and for a split second he believed the rare tranquility to be heaven sent. One troubling thought held him in its clutches; had a Guardian Angel been dispatched just for him? If only he could allow himself that one inconsequential illusion. The important priorities: getting laid, being happy and maybe even having one last chance to matter in someone’s life dispersed that feeble hope. “I can’t be saved, tis much too late.” He resolutely brushed any likely presence from his right shoulder and ducked into the Pen & Quill.
    It was dark, filled with carved wood and beveled-mirrors that bounced the excited voices of a working theatrical company into low-lit booths. Phoenix Park, near Dublin’s Trinity College, was nearly visible through fogged windows. The bar’s patrons knew Michael from casting calls.
    Trish, the barmaid, whose father owned a pawn shop, lived down the street two blocks from Michael. The first drink was prized Jameson 1780 Old Irish Whiskey. It earned Michael’s praise. “Uisce beatha”. Irish whiskey was the water of life. He found companions and squeezed into a crowded booth annoyed by Trish’s telling glances towards a girl seated in a corner booth.
    Disinterested in the conversation, the girl had shifted her attention to Michael who had captured uncommon allure—devilry in a bewitching face framed in golden-brown hair—in the mirror above the bar. Trish waved him closer.
    “That girl’s been asking about you.”
    “Well then, it’s time to tell her the truth.”
    “What do ya’ think of her?
    “Don’t ask till I’ve downed a few.”
    “Deirdre’s a set designer with pencils needing blarney...sit with her.”

    She made room. Michael was more than close, two became one. Their interplay held center stage for Trish and lonely singles, as the couple moved from the sobriety of eye contact to the intoxication of memorized features.
    “That’s a name meant for you. As a boy I heard about a royal storyteller. Tis’ half-truth, half-fancy—but no matter—you live up to the foretelling.”
    “Tell me more.”

    “A story teller of the King, whose name is lost to my recall, was on his way to fatherhood and a Druid, named Cathbad—can’t misplace that one—forewarned that the baby girl would be beautiful with the hair and eyes that I see before me.”
    “Forewarned, I don’t like that.” She felt a knee press hers. “The message, from heaven itself, said kings and faithful lords would war over this one.”
    “If my name was Helen; I’d change it for that very part.” His hands framed her face. “Truth be told, the best warriors of Ulster were exiled on your account.” Soon they shared earlier days. Deirdre rode Money Man, an Irish thoroughbred given to her by her father which had been put down with a broken fetlock.
    Michael watched hot road-apples drop from a pony he rode over the stones of Connemara, his birthplace in Ireland. A month later, Deirdre would learn the name was derived from the Gaelic, Conmhaicne Mara, meaning descendants of Con Mhac, the sea.
    He wished he had a better place to take her. She’d follow without a bridle of his typical lies. He’d tell nurses in the hospice “Jay-sus! I’ll tell ya this and no more, I never saw a more beautiful creature be it woman or beast.” His search for a younger, saner Justine—which since the biopsy’s edict had become more than a hope—might have been answered. Suppressing a dreaded cough, he left her standing at the booth with a slap of his palm on her bottom that evoked a smirk.
    “I’m off to the jacks, mind me drink.” He tossed a winking eye at Trish, passed the men’s room and exited through the rear door. Tucking his chin low, he drove into a brisk wind. The Rolex he always ignored showed ten minutes to ten. Justine’s unwanted peace offering was reason enough to propel him toward the phone booth on the corner of Broadway and Forty-Seventh Street.
    There would be no apology to Justine, just a simple request for clear thinking. He’d find work through New York casting agents in spite of a hasty exit from a union play. He had left the house in Pacific Palisades dejected with no appetite for closeness, but with Deirdre, he needed every crumb she would offer.
    Sex with Justine had been intense. They had stayed in bed for two days with trips from the master bedroom to the Jacuzzi or kitchen. He’d told lies to keep sleeping with her, reveling in liquor-fueled bliss. Trish had said it all. “A California nut believes anything, forget connection...she won’t see any dots.”
    Michael frowned at Rolex-hands tickling diamonds at ten and twelve on entering the phone both. A closed door commanded a fan to whirl. It spewed tiny, thin-winged corpses into a cone of diffused light. They fluttered in the eddy of air that brought the stench of stale urine. He fixed his eyes on encrusted vomit near his heel. A dial tone hummed while a finger hovered over the zero that could summoned a collect call. It never made the journey.
    Minutes later, as Michael’s coughed before the cramped newsstand, a red-dotted apparition wearing a saffron-colored turban and frayed Army jacket took the fifty. He returned a twenty, two fives and a lotto ticket.
    “I see a red bindi under the wrapping. Is the cure handy?”
    “A cure no, but pacification for the demon breaking your spirit.”
    “My spirit can use it; I’m short twenty-four of my dollars.”
    Long fingers dropped a brown cube into the hand below. “Hashish meant for a Maharaja with rupees to spare, but offered to a good friend for mere ha’pennies.”
    He found Deirdre with pens, paper and a satisfied audience but wasn’t allowed to see her drawing. They sought the solitude of a booth where she discreetly offered an expertly rolled joint. Deirdre made a home in his leather coat whose aromatic warmth offered security. The wait for Michael had seemed like an eternity and squeezing him again left her deliciously smug.
    Perched on a stool, her fingertip traced the outline of his lips into memory, one fattening moment at a time unaware that hours had become minutes. At closing time, Deirdre tucked her penciled sketch into Michael’s jacket while he paused at the bar to retrieve a phone number. Deirdre’s father wintered in Gustavia on St. Barts, so Michael was invited to join her near the park.
    They concluded separate lives in a subway car. Yearning grew to a hunger as Deidre responded to the warm hand cradling the breast beneath the sweater. The first kiss melted her legs and thrust her tongue through parted teeth. Warmth was moving in waves under molded jeans drawn to the apex between her legs.
    A chilly draft cascaded down the damp stairs but the flight from iced sidewalks to brass doors had no effect on the couple. The doorman, scratching a stubby pencil over The New York Times crossword puzzle, flashed a grin as the pair plunged into the elevator. The doors opened on a penthouse that sprawled amid mauve-colored walls. Four-legged walnut sentinels burdened with Wedgwood rose from white carpet. French Impressionist art swept up to the cathedral ceiling on lighted pedestals that exhibited Monet, Degas, Bazille and Sisley.
    Michael left reality outside the library’s beveled glass to fantasize about a life with Deirdre that he’d never have. The books drew him in but she enticed him to the couch with warm brandy. Veiled questions about his income and family were put off. Giving up, Deirdre snatched the brandy decanter from his hand.
    “Stop drinking. We’ll enjoy a number, then ourselves. Don’t waste tonight.” He sighed with a boyish grin. “If she only knew.” She left without a word and reappeared with a razor blade to slice shavings from the hashish. Marijuana fell from a small plastic bag containing apple wedges onto cigarette paper.
    “What was that ‘only knew’ all about?”
    “Trifles it was.”

    She moved past the slowly shaking head, kissed his cheek and snuggled in his arms. “Well...I’m waiting?” His last hit was long and for the first time in weeks brought freedom from painful breathing. Exhaling gently he saw his ocean of purple air topple books. He had no urge to cough and thought he heard a distant voice but purple waves drowned it out.
    Deidre put his hands on her breasts. “You’re freezing Michael...follow me.”
    He suddenly realized she was naked and staring over her shoulder saw a heater’s glow had spread a bronze hue over mahogany shelving and books. She pushed him past the bedroom and turned the thermostat higher. They entered the paneled exercise room where she dimmed the lights as he surveyed a mirrored alcove. Deirdre leaned closer.
    “Your lady wants to know everything about you. Are you a Druid, Michael?”
    “Not tonight, I’m not high enough to tease their gods.”
    “You’re high, you nose nearly touched that heater’s coils.”
    She was back in his arms before the window high above Central Park. Michael looked into adoring eyes absorbing the incarnation of a pathetic dream. He kissed her and his chin trembled slightly saying “I’m...sorry.”
    “Sorry for what?” His voice was uneven. “For waiting too long to truly love. It seems I’m just a beginner ya’ know.”
    Her lips brushed lightly over Michael’s eyebrows on their journey to his ear. Her tongue left the ear drawing a thin line down an accommodating neck toward starched cotton. Her left hand pressed his buttocks as her fingers reached the last button, extracting the shirt from the grey waistband of opened trousers.
    Her teeth were again at play, this time pulling the lengthening tie’s end. He opened the sauna slowly as eager hands withdrew his belt and paused; she slid his trousers down. There was no rush; the ecstasy of nakedness was hers at last.
    Tiny beads of sweat shone on Michael’s shoulders and chest, while his left hand pressed her ever closer. The gentle restrained pressure of a teasing thumb and forefinger controlled her thrusting pelvis. Feverish toes and fingertips supported rhythmic lunges. Toes found no refuge on blistering wood and the moist valley between Deirdre’s breasts shimmered in amber light.
    His right hand pulled the grinding bundle of energy nearer feeling the first shudder of pink skin. He bathed in trickling sweat that merged with his to splatter below. A wave of pleasure happened for her. Below, imprisoned tears spilled out as he sought salvation in silent prayer yet again. “Please, ya’ take me now.”
    Both faces were streaked with tears. The wonder shared by two ended when he reached for a fiery Rolex that revealed four o’clock. Michael’s cross went from a shoe to Deirdre’s neck. They slipped pass the dozing doorman to run on frosted grass while a silver moon winked through the icy lattice of sheltering branches.
    A world away, Justine placed her hands on her stomach and was drawn again to the picture of promising newlyweds. When it was all over she knew Stephen was even a bigger bastard. She opened the attaché case on the bed to look at the triumphant divorce decree and absurd pregnancy report. The sight of the empty wine bottle on the nightstand stirred the anguish of their last night together.
    Michael had left Malibu in a taxi returning sullen and remote after their wine-laced quarrel. Edmund was true to form passing a note to an admiring hostess. He had crawled across the wasteland of her bed to invade self-loathing by softly touching her shoulder. They spoke no words. She turned her damp head away and he caught traces of her herbal shampoo. He fondled obstinate skin in an insincere attempt—acknowledged as pointless, tolerated as male weakness and meant to extinguish whatever sentiment remained—at arousing Justine’s interest.
    She spread her legs obediently. It was rough, abstract, indifference and thankfully completed quickly. Their eyes meet briefly, unwilling to stay. Justine felt more than used, not as soiled as she had felt with Stephen but worse, deliberately violated. Michael ashamed, dropped the unwanted cross into his shoe. Fluttering curtains invaded the gloom carrying the scent of Night Blooming Jasmine. At daybreak, he crossed a soggy lawn to enter a taxi reading Justine’s inscription on the back of the Rolex. “Edmund, I give you everlasting love.”
    By noon Sunday in that final week of February, all firewood in Pacific Palisades was gone, even the paper-log variety. Lucky opportunists had left blinking yellow lights to hurdle curbside puddles. They entered Brentwood’s hidden market in one last search. The lucky ones would retreat to snug bedrooms, music or rented movies. Outside, Interstate 10 mustered an unlikely motorcade.
    Bright plastic platters endured the steady downpour in a crawling Diamond Lane. Truck beds held soggy beach towels and unconvincing, made-in-China snow shovels snatched from storefronts. Polyester snowsuits framed the faces of expectant children who searched the ridges for a glimpse of crystals leaving pink batches above Riverside.

    By Monday morning, the weekend’s grey sky had evaporated. Precisely at 11 A.M. a brilliant sun poked through as expected. Still air hung over the glistening surface of the marina. Behind the protecting breakwater lethargic sailboats with sagging dock lines cast mirror images down all the numbered basins. The sky turned pristine with white clouds floating in a blue sky over the City of Angels.
    Justine’s Mercedes eased quietly into the crowded parking lot for her 1 P.M. appointment. A white splatter hit the black hood with a weighty, dull thud. Her eyes followed the trio of pelicans gliding high overhead toward the Marina unable to identify her latest gift giver.
    Two weeks earlier, Dr. Gill’s lab had confirmed the second pregnancy test. She studiously checked the cellphone again for Michael’s missed message and watched several clouds glide together. The infant’s likeness was designed to test wavering will power. Another look verified the anticipated vision overhead.
    “Stephen, you have to resort to that...using fucking clouds—shame on you.”
    Dr. Gill accepted her verdict with a deferential smile on his side of the stirrups. Marvin Sanger and he were in agreement about the future of Justine’s prohibited dream which was now a clump of cells growing a thicker membrane.
    In New York, a piece of paper in Michael’s coat held the pawnshop’s number. A convulsive, deep-seated cough gave way to gasping and a bloody facial tissue dropped before his finger pressed raised chrome numbers. Justine’s watch guaranteed his funeral expenses would be paid in full.
    Michael began to crumple paper, but stopped to look at faint traces of colored lead. Turning it over, Deidre’s drawing was revealed. A smiling baby boy with dark eyes and brown hair enveloped in a flowing red robe danced on clouds above a vast blue planet.
    It was the precise moment Dr. Gil’s uterine evacuator began sucking fluid. Inside Justine’s a rose-colored mass was liquefied. A red stain ran down the plastic tube passed the vaginal speculum on its way to join others surfing the pipeline that dumped into the Pacific.

The Check-up

    George Armbruster glanced away from the front page of the WALL STREET JOURNAL just as Herman, his wife’s Miniature Schnauzer, leaped to Marge’s chair, stole an English muffin from her plate on the breakfast table, and jumped back down to race into the living room to take refuge on the flower-patterned couch facing the large stone fireplace. Marge stopped in her tracks with coffee-pot in hand.
    “Herman, you naughty boy!” she said.
    “Chrisakes, Marge, put that unruly sonofabitch outside while we’re eating.”
    “George, why do insist on calling Herman a sonofabitch? You know he is very sensitive.”
    “If that flea-bag isn’t a sonofabitch, what the hell is he?”
    “Herman is not a flea-bag, Doctor Diefendorfor shampoos him once a week, and both of us would appreciate your not referring to Herman as a sonofabitch. You remember what Doctor Diefendorfor said about his feelings of being unloved.”
    Herman continued to devour the English muffin from his crouching position on the couch. Whenever his name, Herman or sonofabitch or flea-bag was mentioned he glanced furtively toward the couple in the next room.
    “Flea-bag or not, he’s getting buttered crumbs all over the couch, Marge.”
    “You know very well that the couch is Herman’s favorite place. We can replace the couch but we can’t possibly replace Herman.”
    “I like the couch. The couch doesn’t eat, doesn’t growl at me, doesn’t crap on the rugs, and doesn’t run up gigantic vet bills. I only wish I could enjoy it.”
    “You have your recliner, George.”
    Exasperated, George folded up the WALL STREET JOURNAL, took a gulp from his coffee mug, and rose from the his chair. “Please don’t forget to pick up my suits from the dry-cleaners today, Dear.”
    “I have to take Herman to Doctor Diefendorfor’s for his quarterly check-up, Darling. I’ll try, but the dry-cleaner is across town.”
    “Chrisakes, Marge, I have a board meeting tomorrow. I need a clean suit. That little bastard can’t be as important as my board meeting.”
    “Please, George, Herman is not a bastard. He is an American Kennel Club registered, purebred Miniature Schnauzer.”
    Anxious to leave for his day’s work at the office, George tapped the folded WALL STREET JOURNAL on the breakfast table. Hearing the familiar noise from the couch, Herman put his head between his front paws and closed his eyes. George was nearing the end of what patience he had remaining.
    “I’ll try to simplify matters for my benefit and Herman’s. Leave the dog with the vet, go get the dry-cleaning, and go back to the vet’s after you have picked up my suits.”
    “Oh, George, you know I can’t leave Herman there alone. Besides, I can’t miss Doctor Diefendorfor’s consultation after the quarterly check-up.”
    “That’s another thing we need to discuss before I leave for the office. I examine the bills very carefully before paying them, and I notice that this Diefendorfor charges a hundred bucks for these goddam consultation periods. Tell him to send you a written report on Herman.”
    “George, be reasonable. Those consultations are extremely important to my understanding of Herman’s health conditions. As Doctor Diefendorfor has repeatedly suggested, you should attend the consultations for both your and Herman’s good.”
    “Who is going to earn the money to pay the vet bills if I take time away from the office to consult with that arrogant dog shrink?”
    “Doctor Diefendorfor is a canine psychologist besides being a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. I feel very fortunate to have found him for Herman. He is very particular about the patients he sees.”
    George put the paper under his arm, picked up his briefcase and gave his wife a smirk as he shook his head slowly. “Do be a good girl, Darling, and pick up the dry-cleaning sometime before they close for the day.”
    When the door closed behind George, Herman opened his eyes and lifted his head from between his paws. After seeing that he was alone with Marge he jumped down from the couch and bounded toward the breakfast table, panting a canine smile with his pink tongue dripping saliva onto the floor, his entire hindquarters rapidly wiggling his cropped tail back and forth. Marge handed him the last bite from the remaining half of her English muffin. He gobbled it down in an instant of joy.
    “Good boy, Herman, she said. “Now that Daddy’s gone, we have to get ready for our trip to see Doctor Diefendorfor.”
    Herman had remained looking up at Marge. His hindquarters were still moving and his tongue continued dripping saliva. At her mention of Doctor Diefendorfor, the little Schnauzer stopped his wiggling posterior, pulled in his pink tongue and cocked his head.
    Marge stood up and carried the breakfast dishes to the sink. From the refrigerator she took a package of ground beef and spooned half of it into the dog dish that displayed the name, “Herman”, on its outer edge. Putting it on the floor, she patted the dog on his head as he began devouring the meat. “You eat your breakfast while Mommy gets ready,” she said.
    Marge left Herman in the kitchen while she dressed for the quarterly check-up at the veterinary clinic. Herman finished licking the plate clean and shortly retreated to the living room to his favorite spot on the rug where he evacuated his bowels.
    Finished dressing, Marge came carefully down the stairs to keep from getting her spike heeled shoes caught in the carpet. Reaching the threshold, she took the leather leash from the hook by the front door. “Come, little man, it’s time to go.”
    Herman trotted docilely toward her. She reached down and snapped the leash into the ring on the rhinestone decorated collar. Herman followed her out the front door and around to the green Jeep Cherokee parked in the circular driveway. The Armbrusters, at Marge’s insistance, had purchased the vehicle after acquiring Herman six months before. On the front bumper, a sign the size of a license plate proclaimed, “Herman’s Chariot”.
    Marge opened the door to the driver’s side, and Herman leaped in. He jumped to his place on the front passenger’s seat, and perched there authoritatively.

    The ample parking lot in front of the veterinary clinic had designated spaces for “Patient Parking”, “Deliveries Only” and “Doctors Only”. In front of a sign painted in gold lettering saying “Doctor Diefendorfor” a new red Farrari Sports coupe sat sparkling in the morning sun. Next to it a BMW and a Mercedes were parked sedately in front of the more inconspicuous “Doctors Only” section.
    Marge parked the Cherokee and led Herman to the entrance. In antique brass lettering on the mauve-colored stuccoed wall next to the door, the names of three veterinarians, complete with their academic degrees, greeted visitors and patients. Recognizing the surroundings, Herman balked, planting his short hairy legs firmly on the Italian tiled walkway. “Come, now, Herman,” Marge said. “You know you like Doctor Diefendorfor.”
    Herman remained in his adamant position until Marge bent over, picked him up, and carried him through the automatic sliding, glass door into the waiting room. She went directly to the counter, behind which a white uniformed girl in her twenties with bleached blond hair and dark eyebrows looked up with a forced smile on her round face with no make-up except purple eye-shadow. “Well, Herman, how are we this morning?”
    Herman answered with a low guttural growl.
    “Herman, be nice to Mary,” Marge said. “Mary’s your friend.”
    “Doctor will be with you in a few minutes,” Mary replied. “Please have a seat.”
    Marge carried Herman to a green naugahyde chair, keeping him on her lap. Across the room a middle-aged woman with a cold stare and pursed lips sat with a spitting, arched back Angora cat. Herman tried leaping from Marge’s lap to attack the cat, but Marge’s grip contained him. Stoically, Marge avoided the woman’s icey stare. Five minutes later the door to the inner sanctum of the clinic opened and a woman in a green smock and surgeon’s cap faced Marge. “Doctor is ready for Herman.”
    With a muzzle in her hand she approached Marge and Herman. Herman growled again. “We must take this precaution,” she said, holding the muzzle toward the dog. “Last time he was here, Herman grabbed my hand with his teeth.”
    The woman deftly had the muzzle over Herman’s mouth before he knew what was happening. She swooped him into her arms and left Marge sitting in half shock on the naugehyde chair, watching Herman as he looked back at her with baffled, pleading eyes. Before closing the door, the woman turned back to Marge. “Herman will be ready this afternoon unless something unexpected arises.”
    “About what time should I come back for him?” Marge asked, hoping she could wait for Herman.
    “Doctor should be finished around four.”

    Marge left the clinic, picked up the dry-cleaning, and went to her tennis club for lunch where she spent the afternoon chatting with her best friend, Harriet, mostly about their respective dogs.

    Returning to the clinic shortly before four o’clock, Marge asked the girl behind the counter if Herman was ready.
    “Doctor will be with you in just a minute. He is in surgery right now,” the girl answered.
    After fifteen minutes in the naugahyde chair, Marge was relieved when the woman in the green smock appeared at the door. “Doctor will see you now, Mrs. Armbruster.”
    Marge followed the woman to a spacious office where she sat down, as directed, in a brown, leather arm-chair. She looked at the ornately framed diplomas on the wall. Shortly, the veterinarian, in green smock and cap with a stethoscope draped around his neck, entered the office, and slid into the cordovan-brown, high-backed leather chair behind a large, walnut desk piled with neatly stacked manila folders. Deifendorfor, a stockily built man of fifty odd years with piercing blue eyes and shaved head reminded Marge of some actor she had seen in a World War II movie portraying a Nazi general.
    Diefendorfor opened the manila folder he had brought with him, glanced at the top sheet of paper and looked up with wrinkled brow and a serious look on his teutonic face. “Mrs. Armbruster, I am not totally pleased with the results of Herman’s quarterly examination. While cleaning his teeth, Doctor Rushkin noticed some slight gum inflammation that could lead to a more serious condition. He suggests you bring Herman in for weekly check-ups and treatments until that condition is cleared up.”
    Marge felt a twinge af guilt that she had not inspected Herman’s gums.
    “In addition to the gums, I have found that Herman is suffering from A.D.D. and recommend regular treatment sessions. However, before I begin this therapy, I must see you and your husband with Herman for consultation and observation.”
    “What is A.D.D., Doctor?”
    “A.D.D. stands for Attention Deficit Disorder, Mrs. Armbruster.”
    “Doctor, I don’t think George has time for this.”
    “For the good of Herman, Mr. Armbruster must find the time. It is imperative that I consult with those involved with the dog. When I have completed the therapy I will enroll Herman in our Obedience Training Academy.”
    Marge sat silently, trying to understand what the veterinarian was telling her.
    “He is also showing symptoms of an overactive adrenal gland. The condition is treatable with injections of attenuated botulism. I am recommending this in order that the condition does not advance any further, Mrs. Armbruster. Before you leave, you can make the necessary appointments with my receptionist at the desk. Oh, one more thing. Doctor Rushkin mentioned that Herman may need a root canal in one of his molars. This can be done when Doctor Rushkin takes another set of x-rays in a month. Do you have any questions?”
    “No, Doctor, I appreciate your taking care of Herman.”
    “Herman is a fine Schnauzer, Mrs. Armbruster. Have you given any thought to standing him?”
    “I don’t know what you mean, Doctor.”
    “At stud, Mrs. Armbruster. I can make all the arrangements and supervise the breeding.”
    “I hadn’t given that any thought. I will discuss it with George.”
    Diefendorfor cracked a faint smile. “Then we will see Herman and your husband next week.”
     After Mary had presented Marge with a copy of the bill and made appointments for the various treatments and therapy. Opening the door to the inside the woman in the green smock led Herman into the waiting room and dropped the leash. Herman dashed toward Marge skidding on the slippery linoleumed floor, peeing as he went. Marge made like she didn’t notice the trail of urine and picked Herman up and held him in her arms. “Are you glad to see me, Herman,” she said, and left the clinic.
    Having parked the Cherokee at home in the driveway, Marge reached around for the dry-cleaning just as George parked his BMW behind her. “Hi, George, you’re home early.”
    Herman fled to the front door dragging his leash.
    “I left the office early to make sure I have a clean suit for tomorrow’s board meeting.”
    “I picked up the cleaning, Darling.”
    “So I discovered. Thank you for remembering.”
    They entered the house after Herman squirmed his way through the opening door, still dragging his leash.
    Once inside, Marge hung the dry-cleaning on a hook inside the coat closet door. “Come, Herman,” she said. “Let’s take off your leash, Sweetie Boy.”
    Herman had sought his favorite place on the couch and remained there.
    “Goddamit, Marge, this house smells like dogshit,” George said after he had put his briefcase on a chair in the hall.
    “Herman must have had an accident. I’ll go find it and clean it up while you make us both a drink. This has not been one of my better days.”
    Before getting the dustpan and paper towels, Marge put Diefendorfor’s bill on the breakfast table, intending to discuss the quarterly examination with George after she had cleaned up Herman’s accident.
    George went about making two vodka martinis. Placing the drinks on the breakfast table, he glanced at the bill. “Chrisakes, Marge, what the hell did that bandit do that’s worth eight hundred and forty dollars?”
    Marge came into the kitchen with the accident wrapped in paper towels. “Herman was there most of the day, George. You can read what Doctor Diefendorfor found out.”
    “What the hell is A.D.D. ?”
    “Doctor said it was Attention Deficit Deficiency and he wants to see all three of us before he starts therapy.”
    “Jeezus,” George exclaimed as he continued reading. “Dental prophylaxsis, a hundred and two bucks?”
    “Doctor Ruskin said Herman may need a root canal and his gums are in bad shape.”
    “What’s all this crap about an overactive adrenal gland.”
    “I don’t think it’s serious. Doctor also wanted to know if we had thought about standing Herman.”
    “What the hell is that?”
    “At stud, George. You know, breeding him. Doctor Diefendorfor thinks Herman is a very fine Schnauzer and said he would make all the arrangements and supervise the breeding.”
    “I’ll bet he would. The sonofabitch is not only a goddam Freudian fraud, he’s a goddam pimp!”
    “George, Doctor Diefendorfor is the finest veterinarian in Westchester County.”
    “Listen carefully to me, Marge. I don’t give a rat’s ass if Diefendorfor is the finest veterinarian in the United States of America. I don’t want you taking that goddam flea-bag to him again. It only costs me fifty bucks to have my teeth cleaned and all that crap about Attention Deficit something or other is so much bullshit. I have had it with the bullshit and with the bills. Your precious Herman gets more attention than a baby.”
    “George, Darling, you’re not jealous of Herman, are you?”
    “Jealous? Jealous of that rug-crapping neurotic mutt? No, Marge, I am just really tired of sharing my house with him. In fact, I have decided to expand that expensive doghouse in the back yard. Since Herman refuses to go in the door, I am having it remodeled into a study.”
    “Are you planning on living in the doghouse, George?”
    “Yes. It will not smell like dogshit and I can get a full night’s sleep without having to wake up with Herman humping my legs.”

Jehovah Joint

    Witnesses scoured the land with their droning promises of eternal salve. From a peephole that made the world outside even smaller, Jeremiah Wilson, retired college professor and disciple of the hemp, watched a pair of them stride up the stoned walkway to his porch. He undid the security chain and turned the knob lock. He opened the door.
    “We bring the good news of the Kingdom to your doorstep, neighbor.” The speaker was tall and elegant, a man with bright green eyes and thin lips. His suit was recently pressed and seemed to faintly glitter. “Are you familiar with Jehovah’s undeserved kindness and the Kingdom of hope?”
    “Want a brownie?” Wilson said, offering a ceramic plate through the doorway. An aura of sweet marijuana smoke hovered around him.
    The speaker frowned. “The plate is empty, neighbor.”
    Wilson chuckled. “Did I say it wasn’t?”
    “You mean to tempt us with an empty plate?”
    Wilson winked. “Takes one to know one.” He withdrew the offer. “If you’d come a few minutes earlier it wouldn’t have been empty. I guess I got tired of waiting for salvation.”
    The second man quoted: “If we stop actively supporting Jehovah’s work, then we start following Satan. There is no middle ground.”
    Wilson nodded. “Can Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cannot eat it?”
    “What?” the speaker said.
    The quoter’s brow furrowed. “The path of the righteous ones is like the bright light that is getting lighter and lighter until the day is firmly established.”
    Wilson flicked a burning joint onto the porch. It smoldered lazily, the smoke flowing along the quoter’s pant leg. The speaker licked his lower lip, a reflex action, no doubt. He had partaken of the weed. Wilson watched him watching the younger man. Would he stand firm or step back?
    The quoter performed an interesting compromise, maintaining his lead foot while withdrawing the other until he looked something like a sprinter preparing to take his starting stance.
    “This one is lost in Satan’s grasp,” he said.
    Wilson shook his head. “You don’t believe that or you wouldn’t be here.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s see, now, John 16:13 as I recall: When the spirit of the truth arrives, he will guide you into truth, for he will not speak of his own impulse, but what he hears he will say, and he will declare to you the things coming.”
    The speaker looked thoughtful. “You have studied the page, but do you understand its meaning, Mr...?”
    “Name’s Jeremiah,” Wilson said. “And, yes, I have a passable understanding, though we should both admit that some meanings come from inside the head and others do not.”
    The speaker blinked.
    Wilson stepped aside. “Come on in. Don’t mind the clutter. My cleaning man is incapacitated.” He indicated a man snoring on the couch, a shock of white hair protruding from his scalp.
    “We abhor clutter,” the quoter said. “It is our duty to sweep clear the heads of those who would be saved.”
    Wilson pressed a broom into the man’s hands. “Have at it. Might I suggest you begin with those cobwebs?” He pointed to a mass of dusty web that would have made the most extravagant haunted house jealous.
    The quoter stabbed tentatively as if expecting spiders to pour forth. Wilson led the speaker into a kitchen layered in flour dust. Someone had been baking recently and it had not gone well. A table leaned into the wall on three legs, the surface smeared with a brownish substance.
    “Sit,” Wilson said. He set the plate on a counter.
    “There’s only one chair,” the speaker said.
    “You are my guest,” Wilson said. He lifted a plastic bowl and wiped a finger along its brim. He extended it toward Speaker. “Batter?”
    “No,” the speaker said. He sat. The chair tilted, nearly dumping him. “Might I offer you Jehovah’s bread in place of that dark substance?”
    “Sure,” Wilson said. “I’m up for anything.”
    The speaker steepled his fingers. “For us to be acceptable to God, our sincere beliefs must be based on accurate information. I will be happy to assist you in examining what is involved in serving God with sincerity and truth.”
    Wilson laughed. “Didn’t you people predict the Second Coming, like a thousand times?”
    The speaker withdrew his arms from the table. His sleeves pulled reluctantly from a tarry substance.
    “Even the Apostles made mistakes,” he said. “This does not excuse us trying to understand Jehovah’s will, to seek his spirit and draw it close about us.”
    “I like that,” Wilson said. “Cloak of the Christ, plus 5 versus demons.”
    “I don’t understand your reference.”
    “Now you know how I feel when you show up at my door.”
    “I doubt that,” the speaker said. “My purpose is clear, my reasoning sharp. Your thoughts are muddied by the drugs you consume.”
    “Or maybe it’s the other way around.” Wilson produced a wadded joint from his pocket and pressed it carefully to his lips. The speaker’s expression showed disdain. His eyes did not.
    Wilson spoke carefully, lips doing gymnastics around the stub: “That’s how it is with weed, neighbor. The fuzziness clarifies the longer you hold it in you. Soon enough it’s the sharpest logic.” He flicked a lighter. He lit up and inhaled, taking the smoke deep inside.
    The speaker’s lips puckered subtly.
    “You want a hit?” Wilson said, voice gone high in his attempt to minimize his lungs’ loss.
    The speaker glanced through the doorway. In the living room his companion was leaping up and down, broom extended. The speaker looked back, lips ticking into a smile that, surprisingly, did not shatter his elegant face.
    He reached.

Freedom

    I embrace positive quotes; this fact is the last thing you would expect of someone like me. Someone who wakes up each morning to metal bars encircling my cage – bars to conquer the animal within. Someone who fashionably wears the same orange jumpsuit with the skid mark on the left leg each day. Someone whose current idea of fun is the half hour of fresh air allowed to me when I’m welcomed by black pavement and another large cage hugging the pavement. A girl who never expected to find herself here.
    And yet being free physically and being free in your mind are two different things. While I’ve suffered from a lot of pain, my mind is what keeps me alive. Someday, I hope that my daughter will read these pages so that she will never look at me with disappointment or worse, disgust, but with admiration and love – two things I never had for a very long time.
    I missed my mother. I missed how we used to sit in front of her large white mirror, as she’d smile down at me brushing my tangle of light brown curls. How she’d whisper “good morning green eyes.” She had always loved my bright green eyes.
    My father had passed away before I was born, and so I never got to know the man who truly created the other half of me. But from my mother I had always heard great things about him. My mother remarried when I was six years old and there were two things I’ve always felt about Roy since the day I met him; he would never be my father and even from childhood I had detected a trait that surrounded him which really turned me off; I know now it was phoniness. But Roy had swooned my mother and I was too young to voice my opinion. He was kind to me in her presence, but whenever she was gone he was terrible. Often I would have to hear, “Can’t you ever give your mother and I any alone time?” And “If it wasn’t for you I’d have your mother all to myself.” After my mother married Roy, I would often curl up in my tiny bed with the pink flower comforter and cry my little heart away to nothing.
    While I loved my mother with most of my heart (my real father composed the other parts), I always wondered why she would marry a man that treated me so badly. And while I admired her, I saw she too was blind, or at least liked to pretend.
    But when I turned eleven my heart broke again and I lost the only person in my small family who treated me kindly. My mother, in a rare occasion that surprised doctors, had a heart attack at the age of forty. They couldn’t resuscitate her and I lost my true best friend in the world. And, I was left with Roy, or I should say, Roy was left with me.
    The next seven years were the worst in my life. I wondered what mirror I had broken to receive such bad luck. I became Roy’s slave and when I wasn’t going to school, I would have to mow the lawn, clean out the attic, paint the house, cook and bring him food on a tray, and clean his shoes. If this sounds a bit like Cinderella, it’s because I became Cinderella. Maybe Roy watched that movie one too many times in his neglected youth. Most people would wonder why I didn’t rebel, call someone for help, especially as I escalated in years. But, he threatened me with horrible things. And the worst part was I knew he wasn’t kidding.
    When I entered high school I began to rebel more and more. But often I found it wasn’t worth it for the punishments were much worse. Yet during my senior year, when I turned eighteen, nearly everything changed. I had always had friends at school, but always only saw them during the school day. Finally, when I was invited to a guy Josh’s party whom I really liked, I decided I was going. My friend Lisa would be giving me a ride, and I had to hear from everyone,
    “Julie, you can’t hide in your house forever. I don’t care how strict your dad is.” “Step dad,” I would always correct.
    After school instead of venturing home like I normally did to do some homework, study a little, then begin cooking Roy’s dinner, I went straight from school in the company of some friends and to Lisa’s house. Since I told her I couldn’t risk going back home to retrieve the small amount of clothes I owned, she was letting me borrow her own clothes for the party.
    Around five, after we had been primping for two hours I looked at myself in the large mirror that surrounded her walk in closet. I was taken aback by how different I looked. Roy never gave me money to buy makeup or things like hair straightners or even nice clothes. Lisa had straightened the tangles and curls out of my long, light brown hair. She had outlined my bright green eyes with black eye liner and made my eyes sparkle with the black mascara she used to lengthen my eyelashes. A little blush covered my cheeks and she had used lip-gloss as well.
    Tonight, I decided, I would not be plain Julie with the abusive stepfather; I would be someone else. What really surprised me however, was my new outfit. At first I was a little skeptical; I had never worn anything like this before. But Lisa and my other friends assured me they had never seen someone look so beautiful as I did that night. I stared at myself and the tight black, tube top dress with sequins down the left side, and a slit up the left leg, that concealed my usual plain Julie appearance. I stared at the black stilettos that I would need to practice walking in. I thought about the baggy clothes that were the only thing Roy approved me wearing when I came home from school and his sick enjoyment out of continuing to treat me like a seven year old. And I determined, tonight was going to be the first time in my life that I would have fun.
    After a delicious dinner at Lisa’s of steak, mashed potatoes, corn and salad (a change from the PB&J Roy allowed me each night), we primped ourselves one last time and headed out for Josh’s party.
    “You’re going to be the hit of the party tonight,” Lisa encouraged. I was skeptical. Finally we arrived at Josh’s beautiful, white mansion and knocked on the enormous wood door. I knew his parents were away on a trip together and so the party would most likely be pretty crazy. This was underestimating; the party was already off the walls. As a random kid with two beers in each hand and a propeller hat on opened the door, we were surrounded by hundreds of students our age, drinking and laughing, and loud music blasting throughout the house. People were jumping on couches, sliding down the banister and running around upstairs and downstairs. Frantically, I looked around for Josh; I really wanted him to see me, dressed like this, and more importantly, at a party.
    I had never drank before and I knew that if I did and I came home drunk, Roy would be even angrier than me not coming home from school. I didn’t have a cell phone so there was no way he could reach me, and I concluded that this was no fault but Roy’s own. Lisa persuaded me to have a mixed drink, Kool-Aid, and some form of alcohol she referred to as Ever clear. At first, I was hesitant but she when she reminded me how I said I would have fun tonight and how I wanted to show Josh my fun side, I gave in. After the first drink, I definitely felt more relaxed and silly. I was enjoying this sensation and Lisa patted me on the back as I went and got another drink. I still hadn’t found Josh, but with this magical drink, when I did I’d be ready. By the second drink, I was definitely drunk. I was aware of everything that was going on, but couldn’t stop laughing, and dancing promiscuously with my friends and a few boys that came up to me. One boy I was dancing with encouraged me to go get another drink, so I followed him thinking, “what’s the harm in one more drink?”
    “Oh my God, Julie’s on her third drink,” I heard my friends laughing. “She’s going to feel this one tomorrow,” another friend joked. I just laughed along because at the time, I found these jokes the funniest things in the world. I continued dancing with this boy while sipping my drink and by this point everything was becoming very fuzzy. I was very drunk. But, finally when Scott approached me, drink in hand, I found what I was looking for. Pushing the other boy away, I walked towards Josh, walking towards me.
    “Julie, you look beautiful,” he said. Even in my state, I could tell he had had a few drinks as well. “Thanks, you look beautiful too,” I remember saying. “Well, gee thanks,” he laughed. He grabbed me and we began dancing, me grinding up and down against him like my friends had shown me. He began kissing my neck and I was ecstatic. Finally, he reached around and kissed me and we began making out, the first time I had ever kissed a boy. I heard someone yell, “Look at Julie and Josh!” But then everyone turned into a blob again. “Want to go upstairs to my room?” he whispered in my ear. Somehow, I found myself nodding.

Chief, art by David Michael Jackson

<     He held my hand as I stumbled up his giant staircase, in which over thirty people were congregated, along with more upstairs. When he opened the door to what I assumed to be his room there was a couple hooking up on his bed and shockingly, a group of people in the room at the same time talking and laughing. “Everybody get out of my room,” Josh yelled. “You can continue that in any other of the twenty rooms in this house, but I want mine back!” It took him awhile, but eventually he got everyone out and it was just he and I. He closed the door and locked it. Still standing, he began kissing my neck and then me again. I remember giggling and kissing him back. Then what I thought to be my dream came true; he carried me over to his bed, laid me down and climbed on top of me.
    We continued to kiss and he began undoing the zipper to my dress, slowly letting it drop so that my bra showed. I had refused at first for I was scared but I was drunk and with a little prodding he achieved his goal. He began kissing my bra, then my boobs, and slowly began undoing the hook to my bra. I was reluctant and afraid but something inside of me told me this was the most fun I would have in a long time, the most fun I ever had, and to let this go would be silly. He took his own shirt off, and then his shorts so that he was only in his boxers. By this point I was very nervous and wanted to tell him that this was going too far. But as he continued kissing me, something told me I would never receive this much affection again. Sad, at the time, but true. He began to pull my dress down entirely so I would only be left in my underwear. “No,” I whispered. He continued trying. “Please, Josh, no not yet,” I remember pleading. But he continued anyway, and I was afraid he’d leave if I complained so I let him. When he began touching me there, it was like nothing I had ever felt before. I wanted to kiss him one thousand times, do anything for him, if he could make me feel like this.
    As he began taking off his boxers I was horrified. “Josh, no this is too far,” I told him. “But why?” he whispered. “I’ve never seen someone as beautiful as you; now I know that you’re beautiful inside and out,” he continued. I let him take off his pants. This is as far as we will go, I told myself as he rubbed up against me. Pressing me down with his body weight, he held me down and tried taking off my underwear. “No,” I said clearly. “But you’re so beautiful,” he said. “Josh, no this is too far, I’m done,” I said. “But what if I’m not done with you?” he said. As I struggled underneath him he took off my underwear. I began to cry. “Please, Josh, no, I don’t want to do this,” I begged. Looking frustrated he stared at me. “Okay, how about I pour us another drink? He asked. “I have some of the stuff in my closet over there and we can just finish off the night lying here and cuddling with our last drinks.” He smiled at me. “How’s that sound?” Finally, he was being the sweet Josh I knew again. Lying in his bed and cuddling with him sounded like heaven.
    After I finished my forth drink everything felt fuzzy. I don’t remember much except silently sobbing, trying to push Josh off of me but being so weak I was unable to do so. My arms felt heavy, as did my entire body. Had I been drugged? And I remember him inside of me, and me being able to do nothing about it.
    The next day, I woke up entirely disoriented. I was lying on my friend Lisa’s bed, next to a snoring Lisa, in a pair of pajamas. Shifting slightly, I must have woken Lisa up. “Thank God, my mother was asleep when Tiffany got us home. If she saw you in the state you were in, she would have killed me! And luckily, she works Saturdays and left before we woke up because I’m sure you are completely hung over.” Everything was still fuzzy, my head was killing me and I had forgotten last night’s events. “Thank goodness Josh was nice enough to have brought you back downstairs. He told us he found you basically slumped over in the corner of his room smiling, too intoxicated to even recognize him.” Then I remembered, Josh. He had raped me. He had deliberately lied to my friends and most likely drugged me to the point I was too lethargic to consent or not consent to anything. Tears welled up in my eyes.
    “It’s okay,” Lisa continued. “I’m just glad you finally had fun, though I’m sure you’ll be feeling the effects today, and evil Roy might murder you before I can ever see you again. But I won’t let you.”
    I felt sick but the last place I could go was home. When I finally did return home, my heart felt sick, my stomach had an enormous lump and my legs shook. When I walked in the door Roy slapped me across the face. I knew he hadn’t called the police; he’d be too afraid of what I would tell them. Instead he stormed, “I don’t care where you were. For the next five days you will be attached to this leash I bought.” I looked in horror at a dog leash he held in his hands. “If you disobey, I will tell horrible lies about you, maybe even kill you. You will be tied to this in your room every until it’s time to do your chores, which will be quadrupled for nearly eternity.” I threw up on his carpet and he slapped me again.
    For the next month, I began feeling sick every morning and it wasn’t because of the lack of food Roy gave me. He had always done this. My friends at school began avoiding me because I refused to look Josh in the eye and he told them he realized I was attractive, but a real weirdo. His friends backed him up. After not getting my period for nearly two months I began to panic and felt even sicker. I didn’t care if Roy would kill me for this but before returning home I stopped at a drugstore and bought something I never imagined I would possess, a pregnancy test. Slipping into the drugstore bathroom, I stared at the directions on the stick. I felt so sick I wanted to puke again. Squatting down I peed on that dreaded thing and leaving it on the sink waited for a result. Someone began knocking on the door and I yelled, “Just a second!” I waited a good fifteen minutes, terrified to look at it. And when I did, I nearly puked again. I was pregnant.
    I hid my secret for another three months. It wasn’t hard when your provider nearly congratulated you for wearing baggy clothes. Abortion wasn’t an option; the only money I received was Roy’s, I had no cell phone, and the places were too far to walk to. Thus, I had no money for a cab. One night when Roy didn’t realize I had simply a flimsy white night shirt on, and my large stomach peaked through, he walked into my room. Looking at me, then pausing and staring down at my stomach, his eyes widened in rage, as I’m sure my own widened in fear, and he slapped me so hard I saw stars. “GET OUT!” he bellowed. “Get out of my house now before I call the police and tell them you’ve been stealing from me!”
    I began to cry. “But Roy, I have no money and this wasn’t my fault.” He simply screamed, “Get out now you little whore. You slut! You disgust me!” “And don’t expect to go back to school,” he continued. “I’m telling them we moved.” I walked out of that house with only the clothes on my back and the child inside of me.
    For one week I survived by starving and stealing. But eventually, when I was caught stealing food from a drugstore, someone noticed and called the cops. I was dirty, pregnant and pitiful looking, and the sad truth of law is, I didn’t have a chance. When I tried telling the cop about Roy and my story, the first time I had ever spoken out he looked at me as if I was the world’s biggest liar. But, still they had to investigate and Roy would be testifying.
    Roy convinced the jury I was a thief; he said after my mom died I stole from him and lied to him and was an all around bad egg and liar. When I brought up Josh they informed me this wasn’t a rape case, this was theft. It was true, I had gotten greedy and stolen $175 worth of stuff; it had seemed so easy. But I was trying to save my own and my baby’s life. Regardless of whether I was pregnant, I would be sent to jail for a year, and within that time sent to a hospital to have my baby; Roy decided she would be given up for adoption.
    And so here I am. And now you know my story. My beautiful baby girl, I hope that someday you will be able to read this story when mommy is free and can have you back again, when fate is finally kind to me. When I am allowed to be free from the wrath of a terrible stepfather, of a boy my own age who deceived me, of the law that denied me justice, of this cage. Someday I hope that to you, I will be the lovely mother that I once lost, and my story will teach you to never let anyone deny you of free will, of freedom. To always speak your mind when someone has done you wrong. And that I will touch your life, with my story, that someday my story will make a difference. But most importantly I want you to learn that everyone is put here for a purpose and that no one should ever feel that they don’t belong here. I have finally realized that my purpose is to give you the freedom, and more importantly the love, that I never had.

    The full version of this story was found nearly five years later in a crevice in the wall of Julie’s cell. The other copy of the story was multiplied by five thousand and is now on the New York Times Best Seller List. Roy was put behind bars when he found Julie’s house, and attempted to attack her little girl. Josh is being charged with rape, not for raping Julie, but another woman he met at a club. And Julie? She lives in a beautiful white house with her daughter Freda. Their favorite past time is playing in the enormous backyard that surrounds their house and that does NOT contain a fence.

Drum Beats

    I darted between cars in the rainbow stained parking lot, leaping over small inky puddles from the gathering mist. I hurried, only to stand in line. I was late. I was always late, even when I tried to be on time. My phone vibrated and I looked down as it lit up with a text that said, “Inside where u @?” I sent a quick response and waited. I sighed and leaned against the wall to keep out of the spray, resigned to wait another fifteen minutes till I could get in. There was always something about live shows that I loved. The air tingled a little and people stood around anxious, waiting, hoping, that they were going to have a good time. The slight deaf feeling after and the rush of adrenaline always made them worth it. Tonight, Sage had convinced me to come out even though I didn’t know the people playing.
     The walls from the venue reverberated from the music inside. I felt my leg, shaking from impatience, begin to match the beat of the muffled song. The people in front of me smoked and chatted as they waited their turn to go in. I looked up at the mist haloed lights and took a deep breath of the damp air. A stream of cars drove up and down the street in front of the parking lot, their tires making wet little splashes adding to the song of sounds around us. Everyone seemed to be gesturing and nodding to the same rhythm. As I waited, looked around at Converse clad feet, replicated vintage rock shirts, and shaggy hair, I noticed the beat in everything; the shuffle of our feet, the intake of our breath, the pulse of our heart. We carry it without noticing, the flutter of fingers as they gesture to make a point, a leg swaying beneath the table, all part of the music that makes our individual beats.
     I was lost in these thoughts as I witnessed everyone making their own music, when I saw a tall, slender guy, with closely cropped hair walk out of the door I was eagerly awaiting to get in. He bounced slightly when he walked; heels seeming to barely touch the ground. He emanated a nervous energy, a little faster, more animated then the rest of us, who now mirrored the beats from inside. As he talked to the door guy, he gestured broadly with his hands patted him on his meaty arm with one hand while he pointed inside and laughed. The laughter moved his whole body. His shoulders scrunching up toward his neck, in a childlike motion, back moving in unison to the laughter I couldn’t hear, and when he did this I couldn’t help but resent his exit while I was still waiting to getting in. I watched as he walked past me, grin quickly fading, shoulders suddenly braced, head up as if daring the misty night air. I cocked my head for a moment as I stared after him then turned to see the line had not moved.

    “Oh my god that took forever. I’m so sorry!” I yelled, gesturing to the bartender, “Heineken, please.”
    “It’s okay. You really did take forever though,” she yelled back, “I almost thought you had flaked!”
    “What?!” I yelled just as the song ended and people turned to look at me.
    I shook my head and shrugged as she laughed. Never failed. We hadn’t seen each other in a few weeks and this was supposed to be our catch up. We couldn’t talk through the loudness, so I sipped my beer and optimistically looked around. We resorted to eye conversation and texting when one of us missed the message. We looked at each other as one guy with a tall platinum Mohawk took long large steps for his short combat booted legs. I grinned as it made the ‘hawk sway side to side. A shark fin dancing in the crowd. Another guy, with a portly body seemed to drag himself to a slow heavy pace; his hunched shoulders exaggerated the sluggishness of his demeanor. We looked at each other wide-eyed as we noticed his facial hair was gelled out in points. “He looks like a catfish!” I yelled into her ear, and she laughed. She grabbed at her long dark hair and made a mock mustache with puckered lips and I laughed even harder.
    We moved to a table close to the stage and fell into a forced silence. I looked at the people trickling in and floating around the large circular space. I gestured to an older waitress in short shorts to bring me another. From a distance you could almost make out what she had looked like ten years ago, but the smoke and life perhaps had softened the edges and added some lines across the canvas. The longer we sat the more filled the place became. One of the bands was doing a sound check and I tried to stifle a laugh as the lead singer said “Check check check,” over and over into the mic, so many times the word morphed into only a sound.

     I pulled at the strap on my heel and rested my feet on the bottom of the chair near me. I saw the next band go up with only a second glance. Sage poked me in the arm and gave a thumbs up sign. I smiled and nodded. They began to play, but I continued to people watch, taking in appearances and sometimes bemusedly laughing, when something caught my attention. I heard it, it started out faint and it grew, but I felt it in my chest. I looked up at the band. I saw the top of the drummers head as he slouched over the drums. The beat did something, what I wasn’t sure, but I felt as if he was playing something familiar, intimate, something only I knew. How did he know my beat? I wanted to see his face to see how this stranger with two wooden sticks in his hands had found this moment, in this song. As it ended he finally raised his head and I saw the same face I had seen earlier, the slender guy with the little boys’ laugh. This time, the smile was real and didn’t immediately disappear. It lit up his face and he laughed as he nodded to the lead singer and they went straight into another song.
    Sage poked me again, this time the thumbs up was a question. I nodded, distracted as I turned back to the stage, and she smiled her bright smile. I was transfixed. There was something about how they played, he played, that made me lean a little further, stand, and forget about the people in front of me. It was wonderful and freeing mingled together. The lead singer eccentric, not wearing shoes just black socks, had Converse kicked to the side. He sang into the mic from a profile angle never directly looking into the crowd. Similar to the way the drummer played head down sinuously swaying side to side. His arms reached out to create the beat that was encompassing me, everyone it seemed as they all swayed and moved. The beats slowly seducing us all into whatever it was he was feeling at the moment. A trace of it could be seen on his face from the brief glimpses he allowed when he looked up. Glimpses where I think he lost himself in what he was doing.
     Everything became a reflex, automatic, and the grace in which he did this made me want to know him, talk to him, make love to him as he continued to draw me into his world. With each song we were drawn in a little more, wanted to hear a little more, wanted to feel that same uninhibited audaciousness that seemed to emanate from him. Their last song took me back to my childhood, a small yellow kitchen, with cumbias playing in the background as I chopped onions, and my grandma danced, the cooking pan her partner. I closed my eyes and swayed losing myself to a beat my heart had forgotten. The beat of childhood, my life, love and loss, passion and stolen kisses in the dark. The song like a train, building momentum, grew louder and faster and I smiled and danced with a wild abandonment, a mirror to his face as his arms moved more quickly than I could imagine, the momentum of his body making him look like he was dancing in his seat. I continued to move and dance as I felt the slickening of my skin as if he were my partner. The song sped up and slowed down simply to speed up again without a hope of catching my breath, but I was lost, we all were, and when it was over we stopped winded but sated, for the moment.
    I looked up and pushed my hair from face. Sage was laughing and clapping. The band was beginning to move off stage, but still I waited, looking. He stood, his face glistening, white shirt clinging to his lean frame. As he walked from the stage there was a hint of a swagger that hadn’t been there earlier and I smiled.
    “I need a beer, and a cigarette!” I yelled at Sage as they turned on the house music again.
    She nodded, grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the bar. I looked back one more time to see a now empty stage. We waited in the long line at the bar for something to drink. I looked around trying to find him, but he was nowhere to be seen.
    “Awesome, right?” Sage asked.
    “A-mazing!” pushing back at my disheveled hair, “It’s hot!”
    “Let’s grab our drinks and go outside.”
    I nodded and continued to look around. Everyone was a little more buzzed, a little less self-conscious, and a lot more loud. Humid people brushed past me and bumped against us. We got our drinks and bee-lined for the patio. Outside, the cool misty air was a relief and our cold beers, the best we’d ever tasted. I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up into the air.
    I leaned against the wall and held beer in one hand my cigarette in the other. The patio was crowded but not as bad as inside. My ears had that after concert feeling as if I’d been swimming and couldn’t shake the last drops out. I took a drag and exhaled another breath in relief, eyes closed.
    “Hey, do you have a light?”

The Eve of St. Agnes

    A man wearing a backpack walks down the red light district in Amsterdam. He walks up to the windows with prostitutes dancing behind them. He knocks on the door next to one window and a prostitute wearing white answers. They talk for a little while and the man enters and they walk together into a small back room. There is a bed and a sink in the room. A mirror runs horizontally on the opposite wall from the bed.

AGNES: Money first.

MAN: How much?

AGNES: Fifty is the minimum. If you want extra it will be a hundred and fifty.

MAN: Extra?

AGNES: Touching and positions.

MAN: Ok, let’s go for that.

AGNES: My name is Pamela.

MAN: Sure.

AGNES: Do you want me to strip?

MAN: No. He appears irritated. Just, um, just sit here for a moment first.

Here. Read this.

AGNES: Ok. From where?

MAN: From here. He points.

It’s ok. Don’t worry about the words. Just keep going.

AGNES: Now what if I just—

MAN: irritated No. Stop. We’ll find another one to read. Pause. What do you think about love?

AGNES: What?

MAN: frustrated Never mind. Forget I said that.

MAN: Is this a double-sided mirror?

AGNES: What?

MAN: Can people see us?

AGNES: nervous No. We are alone.

MAN: Sure. He returns to the bed.

AGNES: I’m sorry. This just seems a little strange.

MAN: What? You don’t like Wallace Stevens?

AGNES: flustered No. I mean, you paid. Shouldn’t we –

MAN: No. We shouldn’t. Not yet. Please, start again.

Stop. There it is. That’s why I was doing it. You see, that was the moment. You are a woman. I know you are there. I close my eyes, and I hear the poetry, spoken by a woman. The words are beautiful. The woman is beautiful. But when I close my eyes, whose beauty is it? Yours or the poem’s? It blends.

AGNES: slightly angry What do you want?

MAN: calm What do I want?

AGNES: Yes. Am I going to be reading poetry all night? This is ridiculous. What is it that you want?

MAN: I want to write.

AGNES: she lets her accent slip Just what the world needs, another writer. Look pal, if you want to write about girls like me, Dostoevsky was about two hundred years ahead –

MAN: lost in thought No, you are mistaken. I want to write stories, just to have them read by a woman, not for the story itself. All literature has just been for the story itself, or worse, the ideas. I want merely to have my stories read by a woman... in a red dress. Yes, I write for red dresses. I want that same beautiful woman to let me paint her. I want her to be in the same room as I, and I want to watch her open a wire cage and pull out the brightest red and green parrot on her finger. I want to have this parrot in my stories too. Nights will be long and tireless. [breaking into verse] We will say when the song shall end,/ long enough for the paint to dry,/ the paint of flesh and feather,/ and my black ink, racing in wild, close-eyed fervor to dry/ and we will laugh, the woman, parrot and I.

AGNES: What are you talking about?

MAN: We’ll laugh because we will know the indistinguishability between the paint and the ink, the ink and the flesh, and the flesh and the laugh. He pauses. That is not your real accent, is it, how you were speaking earlier?

AGNES: No.

MAN: And you read Dostoevsky?

AGNES: Yes.

MAN: pensively Oh.

AGNES: Look, whatever. What you are saying doesn’t make any sense. You are starting to freak me out, honestly.

MAN: no longer cheery And why is that Pamela? Because I’m not following the protocol? Because I came in here, not refusing to acknowledge the truth – that we do not know each other, and you want nothing to do with my body. You are freaking out because a stranger does not want to insert his genitals into yours and for one brief moment give himself the mental satisfaction that he is succeeding in the ritual of sex, or, perhaps if he is really honest, tricking himself into thinking he has love, or does not need it, partaking in a basic lesson in friction in a circumstance where it is at least economically acceptable by way of monetary transaction? This is freaking you out, Pamela? That for one moment when you are presenting yourself to me as a good or a service (I can’t really figure out which one) I insist on viewing you as a woman rather than an object? You’re mad because I don’t want you to be an object, Pamela? Is that it?

AGNES: Look man, I just –

MAN: And here I am just trying to have a conversation with someone, trying to maintain some level of honesty, trying to find a moment of humanity amongst people wearing blinders, masks, a world of facades where I merely want to embrace some inkling of sincerity.

AGNES: You’re crazy.

MAN: Yes, but at least I have been talking crazy talk in my real accent.

Pause

AGNES: Look, I’m sorry. You’re not crazy. I’m just not... used to that kind of stuff. So we’re not going to –

AGNES: Sorry, I just wanted to make sure. Pause. So, what were you saying about the paintings?

MAN: The paintings?

AGNES: Yeah, ink and paint and parrots or something.

MAN: Oh, right, the fundamental problem. It’s easier to see by looking at the painting of a woman. When you are painting, there are correct lines and incorrect lines. When an incorrect line is made, it is painted over again and again until the correct line is found, which remains visible. So what is a finished painting really? One to be seen as all correct lines, or one not to be seen as incorrect lines that are erased and covered up? Both types exist in the painting, but what is it really—what we see or what we don’t? The incorrect lines, the erased lines, they have as much to do with the painting as the correct ones. Well then you can look at color. The parrot is red, the woman’s dress is red, but is the parrot dress-colored or is the dress parrot-colored? It’s easy to not see the difference ultimately between the paint of the flesh and the paint of the feathers, to see it all as paint. But what about the paint and the ink of my stories – both mediums of art, of the woman, read by the woman, they are understood as of the woman. And what about her laugh? Let’s say she laughs while I am painting her, a laugh that comes from one of my stories which she reads – the scenario can be understood in terms of that too. Where does it stop?

AGNES: What does that matter if it is a red parrot or a red dress?

MAN: It matters a lot. It’s perspective. It’s the most important thing. Look, we can’t actually say anything about anything, all we can say is our own subjective perspective, and if it all works, if everything can be looked at in terms of everything else, where do we stop? It’s the difference, which may not be as big as we think, between loving a woman and loving the painting of her. It all comes back to the fundamental problem with love.

AGNES: And what’s that?

MAN: That if we really want to love infinitely, we should love every atom of the universe the same. Look, what I’m saying is that it’s wonderful that there is an infinite amount, or rather, anti-amount of guiding factors when it comes to perception. The difference is that there ultimately is no difference. Red Parrot, red dress. Just like your red dress.

AGNES: My dress is white.

MAN: It looks red to me.

AGNES: It’s the light.

MAN: hmm. Does red light on a white dress make the dress red? I guess it is both red and white. He closes his eyes. And now it’s black.

AGNES: Are you on drugs, man?

MAN: What? I don’t think you’re getting it. You want me to put this in terms of math for you?

AGNES: Sure.

MAN: Ok so they say it is impossible to draw a triangle without drawing three straight lines; like, you can’t draw it by using only one straight line.

AGNES: Yeah

MAN: But let’s say you just take a line and let it go on to infinity. You know, that happens all the time, people talking about lines going on forever and ever.

AGNES: Ok

MAN: Yeah, but people don’t understand what that means, what it really means to go on forever and ever. I mean, if you’re going to have something continuing to infinity, eventually after so much space, you are going to moving outside of space. Meters, miles, light-years, they can’t be measured in terms of numbers anymore because eventually there will be no more numbers left. If we are really talking about things in terms of infinity, you are going to reach a point where you start counting in letters, or pieces of fruit, or emotions, and eventually, far enough down the road, to maintain integrity in the idea of infinity, the only way for that straight line to continue will be for it to make itself into a triangle, and on and on it will go, past numbers, past things, past ideas even.

AGNES: So everything is infinite?

MAN: Everything...as infinite as you want it to be at least.

AGNES: Ok, make my hand infinite.

MAN: Alright, hold it out in front of you and look at it.

I’m going to bring you in before I take you out. So, what do you see? Four fingers, your thumb, and your palm. The lines that run across and tickle when they are touched. On the surface there is the oil that your body generates which may be slightly acidic, and according to the Bronsted-Lowry definition of an acid, you’ve got some extra hydrogen ions that would like to go somewhere else, that want to stray, mix with someone else’s oil perhaps. Beneath the oil you’ve got your epidermis, and your dermis, made up of skin cells, fat, and then you’ve got muscle, various veins and vessels, and bone. There are millions of germs on your hand, living, dying, fighting, eating each other, having sex. Your hand is already a drama. All these things are made of atoms, and each atom has subatomic particles, protons, neutrons, electrons. And each of these is made of quarks, crazy things jumping and flying around at rates and in paths that no one can really determine. You have trillions upon trillions of them in your hand, more in your hand then there are stars in the entire universe, and these quarks may even be made of something, string-like objects, elastic bands that make no sense whatsoever because they break just about every physical law there is to break, being in two places at once, splitting apart, coming together, acting in a manner that would seem to suggest parallel dimensions would have to exist. Not to mention the fact that your hand is experiencing the force of gravity, which, as an object of matter contributes as well, even if it is only a little bit, in the impression the earth makes in the fabric of space-time; it helps in generating the very gravity that holds it down; your hand is not only your hand, it’s the forces on your hand. It gets better. We haven’t even broken out of science yet. I mean, if you really want to look at your hand, you want to see the infinite nature of it, would that not involve both looking at the hand and not looking at the hand? Concentrate on what you see, so that you can get an idea of what you don’t. Consider this: somewhere, on this planet, in a place where you do not speak the language, an entire field is covered with dew. Across the world perhaps, where the sun has not yet risen, there is a narwhal that has never been seen by a human. It is swimming right now, while you are looking at your hand. It breaks through the surface of the water, penetrating it first with its long tusk, and gives a scream of freedom as it fills its lungs with the icy air. Now, the thing is, in terms of perspective, would the narwhal still exist if you had not looked at your hand? Look, we’re all made of energy. Everything fundamentally is energy; even solid things are just stored energy: the sun, you, me, narwhals, and paint. It’s all the same. But we’re still not there. So many things about this hand have yet to be considered. We are still looking at your hand in terms of things that exist, but what about things that don’t exist? Think of how your dreams relate to this hand. All kinds of nonsense, unicorns, magic kingdoms, your second grade teacher giving remedial alchemy lessons to a banana, lobsters doing yoga. If you are thinking about it, and looking at your hand, some kind of a connection is established, it exists, just outside the realm of rationality, which is only half the picture. You’ve got to embrace the infinity that’s there and the infinity that isn’t. Absurdity is only a recognition of infinity.

AGNES: Wow. That’s fairly incredible. Pause. I must say, this is a type of penetration I haven’t experienced.

Sorry, that was inappropriate. Pause. What’s your name?

MAN: I’m not going to tell you my name. Why would I need to do that?

AGNES: Look, Pamela is not my real name. I want to tell you my real one.

AGNES: What’s so funny?

MAN: What? Oh, nothing really. It’s just – isn’t it supposed to be such that you don’t want me to know your name, and shouldn’t you not care about mine?

AGNES: Yeah, but we seem over that. Pause. So, the fundamental problem of love, huh?

MAN: Yeah.

AGNES: That there is some kind of relation between everything, that if infinity exists we should love everything the same.

MAN: irritated and a little tired Yes, yes.

AGNES: And that’s the way to freedom.

MAN: What?

AGNES: True freedom, no masks. A universe of rapture in every glance; it does exist. The grand problem is then how to love it all.

MAN: Look, you’re right, this is a little silly, I should probably get going. I’m sorry for wasting your –

AGNES: No, please, stay. I understand now. The woman, the painting of the woman, the bird on her finger, and the screeching peacock from the poem I read a while ago, the screeching peacock and the narwhal’s scream of freedom, which is our freedom. It’s all the same. It’s just energy.

MAN: You look a little pale.

AGNES: Don’t go. Please....please, I want you to stay. Tell me about yourself.

MAN: I’m not going to do that. There’s no need to. I’m a stranger, you’re a stranger. It’s just another label. This whole thing, this evening, it doesn’t mean anything. This is it, this is freedom: I’m whomever you want me to be.

AGNES: Well then why did you come here? You came to me, remember? To ask a prostitute how to love.

MAN: Who else was I going to ask?

AGNES: My name is Agnes. I’m nineteen. I was born in Denmark and I used to study dance. I just – it seems stupid... I just want you to know that, regardless of what you tell me.

MAN: Goodbye.

AGNES: Stop, will you! You’re crazy, you really are, brilliant perhaps, but that doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that and just leave, like, like an asshole! Pause. She is exasperated, Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You just – you really got to me, like you’re the first person to see me in a long time. And now, you want to leave, like every other client. This is crazy, but you’ve said a lot of crazy stuff, let me say something.

MAN: Ok.

AGNES: Do you...like me?

MAN: No.

AGNES: I’m sorry, I just—

MAN: Yes.

AGNES: What?

MAN: No.

AGNES: What are you doing?

MAN: Yes.

AGNES: You’re not making any sense.

MAN: No.

AGNES: Stop that. Just answer the—

MAN: Yes.

AGNES: Do you like me?

MAN: No.

AGNES: Do you like me?

MAN: Yes.

AGNES: Yes or no?

MAN: No.

AGNES: Yes or no?!

MAN: Yes.

AGNES: I don’t understand you. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to tell me something?

MAN: No.

AGNES: she grabs him by the shoulders. Should I love you?

MAN: Yes.

AGNES: Really?

MAN: No.

AGNES: Ugh! Damn you!

MAN: There. Now we’ve broken free. Not that we’ve broken through one system and created our own, we’ve abandoned systems altogether. That moment of frustration set you free from depending on only yes or no. Infinity is both yes and no at the same time. Love me, love me now, Agnes. Love me so much that you don’t love me.

AGNES: I...I’m a prostitute, and you haven’t even told me your name. I don’t believe in love at first sight.

MAN: Agnes. Please, love at first sight is for idiots. This is love before first sight. When I love the paintings, art, even and especially the things that don’t make sense, the even sound of footsteps, the way the grass bends and I don’t have reason for it, I see the blending. In loving these things, as far as I’m concerned, we were never not loving each other.

Would you like to know my name?

AGNES: Maybe later. I want to read another poem.

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 quarterly by Scars Publications and Design, 829 Brian Court, Gurnee, IL 60031-3155 USA; attn: Janet Kuypers. Contact us via snail-mail or e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for subscription rates 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 2012 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.