He lives to make art, but it’s not what he does for a living. He’s a slave to the eight hour day, like most of us are…but he’s hoping for a way out, in more ways than one.
If you like what you see, more of his work can be seen on Instagram.
ascending particles
mad dog raindrops screaming
the unknown vault amiss
double-bond chemical trail broken
drop the torch
in perfect gardens
deer hunting with Jesus
plucking strange fruit
inhabiting odd yet familiar places
which didn’t quite fit
but we lived it
anyway, our havens
more an exile
going back to the spherical music
of it all
is a wonder, a short-term lease
from outside the void
spitting on a quasar?
“Hello, this is Tracey. Which ad are you answering?”
“Tracey. This is Bob.” The man paused briefly, and I could hear the furtive sound of rustling trouser fabric. Bob forged ahead: “I saw an ad in the back of the Reader. It says, ‘Meet sexy friends who like to travel. Call Tracey.” There was a deep silence, fraught with one-sided tension. “Will these women really come long distance to meet me?”
Every call began in this manner. Every woman who answered the phone was Tracey, unless one of the men probed further, and we wanted to close the sale. At that point, it was safe to reveal our Phone Slut names, so we could create the illusion of intimacy. My Phone Slut name was Melissa, but most of the time, I preferred the anonymity of Tracey. Tracey got the job done.
My job entailed selling packets of women’s names, addresses, and phone numbers for $25.00 to men who were horny but lazy. It was 1980, and phone sex for hire was still nonexistent. However, the lust for phone sex was raging and omnipresent, and men called Tracey all the time. Sometimes, an especially desperate man actually ordered one of the packets. A few days later, a thick envelope stuffed with the names of traveling swingers arrived at his doorstep. The postal carrier collected the COD charges and left the hapless buyer with a worthless list. Astonishingly, many of the women’s names had originally been obtained through legitimate means. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, 300 desperate females had agreed to have their contact information provided to a nation of sexually starved would-be Lotharios. Now, several months later, most of the phone numbers on the list were disconnected.
The boss, Bill, was rarely around, but his photograph hung in our office. In the picture, Bill and his wife Jo Ann sat naked on a Naugahyde couch. Bill’s legs were spread wide, and an expression of cartoonish ecstasy was plastered on his face. Jo Ann grasped his enormous penis firmly in one hand. Above the photo, someone had written “Our fearless leaders!” in bold lettering. It was best to sit with our backs to the photo and pretend it didn’t exist.
We did have a supervisor — Lorraine, a statuesque woman who was in the midst of an ongoing sex change operation. Lorraine’s salary was so low that the process had to be done in installments. She sported perfect melon breasts, but rumor held that she was still saving up to have her penis removed. Lorraine didn’t talk about her penis. She was a cheerful woman, with a good sense of humor, and she allowed us to do whatever we wanted.
Most of the time, we wanted to ridicule the men who called TNT Enterprises. These fellows believed that sexually ravenous women would spend several hundred dollars on plane fare so they could exchange body fluids with strange men who lived on the opposite end of the continent. Some of the guys were slightly cleverer. They bypassed the sales process entirely and attempted to pull us directly into their fantasies. One of my favorites was a man who liked to play a porn tape in the background while I discussed the benefits of obtaining Tracey’s list. Whenever I picked up the phone for one of his calls, I could hear pre-recorded voices screaming “Oh, YES!” in the background.
A few seconds into my pitch, the fellow always asked, “Can you excuse me a moment?” and turned his face away from the receiver. He then shouted, “Would the two of you be QUIET?! I’m trying to use the phone!” He returned to our conversation immediately afterward. “I don’t know why they’re always going at it,” he’d say with sheepish exasperation.
A particularly frightening man called several times a week while masturbating with a vacuum cleaner. We could hear the electrified sucking noise. It nearly drowned out the man’s voice, which was surprisingly timid. “I’m using a vacuum cleaner on my dick,” he’d say quietly. We ridiculed him without mercy. “Why, is it really dirty?” one of us would howl, to which he always replied, “Yes. Very dirty. I’ve been so bad.”
This wasn’t surprising, since Chicago was a Catholic town. But, as Bill had hugely successful ads in a variety of national publications, it became clear that the entire country was pretty fucked up. He was on a mission to provide sexual relief to as many men as possible, and even appeared on a local radio show, proclaiming, “I’m offering an essential service for a reasonable fee. In New York, I’d be a pornographer. In Chicago, I’m a philosopher.” No one had the slightest idea what he meant.
It was rumored that Bill and Jo Ann lived in a 20-room mansion in one of the northern suburbs. It was also rumored that Bill’s doctors had given him a prescription for the maximum allowable dosage of pharmaceutical anti-depressants. Meanwhile, his minions labored above a secondhand store on Howard Street, while seated at mismatched tables that were covered with nests of haphazardly arranged phones. Our pay was five dollars an hour, plus a five dollar bonus for each guy who actually paid for his packet when it arrived at his door.
My co-workers and I were in our early twenties-a ragged crew of misfits who were unable, for various reasons, to hold any sort of corporate job. The bespectacled, pimply fellow who wrote our ad copy held a journalism degree from Northwestern University. He’d wanted to be a screenwriter, but somehow landed a job churning out porn instead. We had sex occasionally, even though he was in love with Astrid, a blonde German girl who usually sat to my left. All of us were cynical beyond our years, a fact that was exacerbated by the sordid nature of our job. We were too young to handle our daily immersion into the shadow side of male sexuality, so we ruthlessly made fun of it instead.
Other than Lorraine, the only middle-aged employee was a woman named Martha. None of us could fathom why she had decided to work for TNT Enterprises. I suspected that she was in the throes of a particularly difficult midlife crisis. Martha had a comparatively lucrative day job, working as a secretary for the Chicago Board of Education. She was married to a cop, but after 20 years, she could no longer stand the sight of him. Martha’s husband was extremely upset by her decision to moonlight as a Phone Slut. He called constantly, demanding to speak to her, threatening to use his vast network of police connections to shut the phone room down. Obviously, his connections were not as helpful as he imagined, because cops often walked past the door of our building, without so much as a glance in our direction.
All of us had repeat callers, men who requested us by name, but Martha was the worst of the lot. She had several suitors who phoned insistently. They always asked shyly, “Please, can I speak to Miss Martha?” We’d hand Martha the receiver and then watch, dumbfounded and amused, as she spun a completely inauthentic web of enchantment around the poor fools. Martha had a puzzling weakness for Southern men with thick, almost unintelligible accents, men who said “ma’am” and “I’m fixing to come” while they masturbated. Martha egged them on because she had nothing else to do except go home and listen to torrents of abuse. Who could blame her, really?
For several weeks in a row, Martha had carried on with a man named Buddy. Buddy’s accent was straight out of “Deliverance.” He owned a gas station in Alabama, in a town so tiny that he was on a first-name basis with all of its inhabitants. The work was abysmally dull, and Buddy was lonely. All of the girls he’d fancied in high school were married to football stars and wealthy farming magnates, and every day he had to sell soda and candy bars to their grimy, demanding children.
Buddy was in love with Martha, and he wanted desperately to meet her. He proclaimed his love fervently and loudly. We could hear him all over the phone room, as we sat in our chairs with our hands over our mouths, trying desperately not to laugh. There was something poignant about Buddy’s ardor, and we were reluctant to hurt his feelings. Also, the routine was so entertaining that we didn’t want to hasten its ending.
Three days beforehand, Martha had looked especially rattled when she hung up the phone. “I’ve gone too far,” she announced. “Buddy purchased an airplane ticket, and he’s flying out to meet me next Thursday. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I’ve been leading him on this entire time. What the hell should I do?” None of us had an answer.
I was deliberating about the possibility of going home early one uncharacteristically mellow night, when my phone jangled sharply. I lifted the receiver, and Buddy’s thick twang assaulted my eardrums. “Is Martha there, ma’am?” he asked politely. I placed my hand over the mouthpiece and gestured towards Martha. She shook her head vehemently, a look of terror in her eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Could you talk to him? Tell him I quit or something.”
Resolutely, I removed my hand from the mouthpiece. “I have terrible news, Buddy,” I said, without missing a beat. “Martha quit a couple of days ago. She got up from her desk and said, ‘I can’t take this anymore.’ Then she walked out the door, and no one has heard from her since.”
There was brief, stunned silence, then Buddy emitted a low, shuddering gasp. “Oh no,” he said. “Did she tell anybody where she was going? Does anyone know where she lives?”
“I’m afraid not,” I replied. “None of us can say we really knew Martha.” I paused for a moment and gazed around the room. Astrid and Lorraine were convulsed with silent laughter, slumped over their desks, their shoulders heaving. Struck by sudden inspiration, I reached over to a stack of papers on my desk and jostled it slightly. “Wait, here’s an envelope,” I said. “It says ‘To Buddy, from Martha.’ Let me open it.” I rustled the papers again. “Dear Buddy, I am so sorry, but we can never be together. I will always love you and treasure our conversations. Please forgive me.”
Buddy burst into tears. “Oh God,” he sobbed. “I loved her so much.”
“I know, Buddy,” I intoned solemnly. “We all did. At least she left a note.”
“She was a wonderful person,” Buddy wept. “If you see her, tell her I still love her.”
“I certainly will,” I assured him. There was another long pause, punctuated by strangled sobs and gulping noises, as Buddy attempted to get a handle on his emotions. I waited patiently, while my co-workers writhed on their desks, trying desperately to contain their laughter. Obviously, Buddy was irrevocably shattered by Martha’s defection, and I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t fall apart before he even had the chance to hang up. There was nothing left for him now, except for the unrelenting bleakness of the town in which he resided, and his gas station duties.
Buddy’s sobs gradually subsided. “I have to go,” I said softly. I removed the receiver from my ear and prepared to return it to its cradle. “Goodbye and good luck.” Buddy suddenly regained the power of speech. “Wait!” he cried. “I have one more question.”
“Sure,” I said charitably. I was willing to do anything that would offer succor to the poor man. Perhaps I could say something that would help him get through his next few, tortured days.
“What’s YOUR name?” he asked.
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Not two minutes after slipping out of my lover’s peerlessly hospitable vagina, my traitorous NON-SEX thoughts plunged me into a recurring, ultra-violent daydream.
So with her magnificently rounded body tucked against my body and her damp arms tangled in my damp arms on a balmy Saturday afternoon with fuck-all to do and the time to do it with, I played out this ultra violence (I had no choice), shivered, then tried my damnedest to remember where my penis had just been.
In order best to do this and not fall prey to the pitiless, mutually unexclusive ecstasies of copulating and killing, I needed a little more than the usual post-coital peace and quiet—needed it like a clown needs the horror—those delicious moments when two satisfied and naked beings don’t become one, but less than one, zero, thoughtless.
Thoughtlessness is the point.
My pregnant lover, however, had other points. While running a ripe finger up and down my equally ripe ribcage, she whispered:
“What are you thinking?”
That question!
That baleful, impossible to answer question!
Yet, in intrepid quest of THE gapingly open and brutally truthful relationship, I had tried to answer it.
Tried and failed. Miserably. Continuously.
Continuous miserable failure tarred and feathered with acute mental anguish, confidence-smashing embarrassment, and hope-crushing humiliation.
Because you can step into the same failure twice.
Having stepped enough, I promised myself I wouldn’t aspire to fail better, but differently, fundamentally so.
That is: I would never, ever, under any earthly or unearthly circumstances, answer honestly—or even try to answer honestly—that backstabbing question again.
Instead, I’d dodge it, defuse and deflect it with the utmost sincerity and conviction, comme il faut.
Lying.
That’s right: Survivalesque, sanity- and relationship-saving fibbery, the kind certified by the Greeks.
But I, unfortunately, must have experienced a serious cerebral malfunction—a potentially lethal (to my most present permanent relationship, mind you, no one’s exaggerating round here) lapse of good common horsesense—because there they were, the frank words spewing from my face.
“We’re in the metro, alone and savoring the rare two and only two of us when a man comes down the stairs and ruins it. A big man. A big and hostile man who, without one word of warning, attacks us. Screams. Horrible, blood-curdling screams. I’m not afraid, I’m angry. I’m enraged like a wild immaculate animal, like I always hoped I would be. The attacker’s shocked. You’re shocked. He tries to run but I catch him, beat him to death with my bare hands. You remember what Sailor Ripley did to Bob Ray Lemon in the beginning of Wild at Heart? Against those marble steps? Well, this is mushier, brainier, and I feel no remorse when the police arrive. I feel only a… a certain pleasure.”
My lover snuggled closer, spoke the following words in the softest, most intimate tones imaginable.
“I’ve lost my sense of purpose. I don’t know who I am or who you are or what this growing thing in my belly means. I wonder if this is the end of independence, adventure, possibility, me. I used to do things, want things. I used to see the world, confront it. I’m scared. I don’t want to become one of those mothers, those women, those wives. I will never marry you.”
“Actually,” I said, retreating as fast as I possibly could back to solid, trustworthy ground, “I was thinking about our trip to Switzerland.”
My lover’s eyes widened. “Me too!”
“To tell you the full, God’s honest truth,” I said (we had never set foot in Switzerland), “I was thinking about our baby and snowcapped mountains and universal peace.”
“I was too! I was!”
“It’s uncanny.”
“But no,” she said. “It’s not—not at all—not if you stop and think about it because we should always be thinking about peace, mountains, and babies.”
“You’re right! You’re absolutely right! But—”
“Yes?”
“—are you aware what must follow?”
My lover’s face was not only attentive, revolutionary, and doomed—in other words: Wajdaian—but achingly beautiful.
“For the good of the tribe?” I asked.
“Austerity?” she guessed.
“Bingo!” I said. “Full—Ferocious—Stop! We NEVER ask about thinking again!”
She wholeheartedly agreed, and the atmosphere, I noticed, had become jubilant and frenzied—a certain twenty-first century cultishness in the air—very warm, fuzzy, and comfortable in a self-righteousy zealoty kind of way, so I frowned, got my face nice and ominous, whipped it back to prehistory, gunned it for the primordial ooze.
“But that’s not enough.”
“Oh no?”
“Not even close.”
I bared teeth and snarled before becoming cheerfully pedantic. “They can’t just exist, my dear… They must achieve a transparent real-talk regularity any addlebrained five-year-old could grasp.”
“They?”
“Why, our sacred human values, of course. Which means from this moment forth, till death or drudgery do us part, we are to live as if we are from Switzerland.”
“In Switzerland!” my lover enthusiastically corrected.
“WRONG!!!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “We must BE-COME Switzerland: peace-loving, snowcapped, baby-friendly!”
My lover had nothing to add or subtract from that cockamamie declaration, but after a few silent and heavenly moments in each other’s arms—too little too late—she whispered: “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I whispered back, just as tenderly despite my gut being carpet-bombed by the ever-present threat of thought.
“For asking about what you were thinking. It’ll never happen again, I promise. What a silly goose I was. Do you forgive me?”
“Nonsense,” I said, relieved. “I was lying anyway.”
“You were?”
“Of course I was. Forget it. Never happened.”
“I knew it! I knew you were lying!”
“And?” I asked, my voice unexpectedly—contradictorily—on the Hoboken side of needy.
“What?”
“Were you, you know, lying too?”
“Of course I was,” she said. “I’m always lying. Everything I say around here is a bald-faced lie.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Yes, God,” she said. “How do you feel? We can ask each other how we feel, can’t we?”
“Are we savages?”
“Well?”
“Like a believer,” I said.
My lover raised her eyebrows.
“Doubtless and serene,” I said, having been knick knack paddywhacked by the aforementioned atmosphere. “Unfuckingtouchable.”
“You’re wonderful,” she said.
“So can I ask you something then? Because, and I’m not the least bit ashamed to admit this, I was more than a little taken aback—I was, yes I was, damn near agoggled—by what you said on page three.”
“Anything. Except, you know…”
“Will you or won’t you?”
“Will I or won’t I what?”
“Be my wife.”
My lover smiled a smile midway between little slut and Mephistopheles. I was excited too, had been swirling my fingers around her benevolent nether regions for some time now. She said:
“I love you, don’t I?”
My eyes misted over.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, suddenly—genuinely—concerned. “What is it, mon chou?”
“There’s nothing more than that, is there?”
“Love?”
“Love, love, love,” I crooned, feeling closer than ever to the pure, neutral, mountainous ideal, but my fiancée appeared pensive again. She paused for (I counted with dread) thirty-seven seconds. Then:
“Well,” she said, “there izzzz Switzerland.”
Thus, and against all odds, she managed to read my deepest, darkest mind, so surprised I slipped my hungry happy dick back into the only language I truly believed in.
i know when you
told me you loved
me you were lying
i didn’t mind
i wasn’t exactly
in love with you
either
we were simply
passing the time
waiting for the
right ones to
come along
one day we’ll
be old and can
look back at
this and laugh
although, the
odds say a
murder suicide
is more likely
god willing
He was making that noise. The one he always tried not to make when he was close. Tonight, though, the wine had stuffed Kit’s head full of cotton. He couldn’t hear himself grunting and squeaking at the same time. Theresa was on top with her eyes closed. He didn’t know it, but every time she opened them, she would glance at the clock on the nightstand. He let out one final caribou call, and it was over.
Theresa hopped off Kit and headed for the walk-in closet, covering her small butt cheeks with her bony hands as she went. She grabbed her fluffy, mint robe off the back of the door and slid it on.
“Wow.” Kit said, “I mean, wow.”
Panting, he grabbed the sheet and wiped his brow, expectantly.
“I mean, wasn’t that… how was it for you?” He said as he slowly raised the pitch of his voice.
“What time will you be home from work tomorrow?” she said as she threw some clothes out of the closet, the slide of the hangers muffling her voice.
Kit looked down at his stiff penis, then his hairy chest, and answered, “Six.”
“Ok well I need you to take Zeek to practice after, and then on your way, I need you to grab some milk, and coffee, and diapers.”
Each item on the list accompanied by a white shirt or sock, flying out of the closet.
“And don’t forget to buy the Huggies, not Luvs, I know the Luvs are cheaper, but they always leak. Last time you forgot to buy the right kind, and then Bailey had a blow-out while I was at the Pinner’s conference. I had to throw away that cute dress my mom bought her for her birthday. I’m planning on meatloaf for dinner, but I need eggs for that, so you’ll need to buy them from the store. Get the brown ones, not the white ones, the brown one’s are better. I’ve gotta wash Zeek’s uniform. Make sure he wears the right socks. Ok?” As her words increased in speed, the clothes began to fly higher, tracing a rainbow over Kit’s lingering erection. He watched as the clothes continued to arch and land at the foot of the bed in a rhythmic beat which accompanied her stream of anxiety. Kit wondered if she had heard him, so he asked again, “Wasn’t that amazing? I was hoping you’d be a little more…relaxed.”
“The sex? Yeah, of course. Did you hear me?” She responded distantly from inside the closet. Yeah, the sex, he thought.
“What are you doing?” He said, raising his voice. He opened his mouth and tried to yawn to clear his ears.
“Are you even listening to me?” she said, popping her head out the closet for a brief moment and then popping back in. “You keep doing this, Kit. You keep not listening to me. I feel like I have to do everything.”
“I’m listening—” he said, “But what the hell are you doing?!” He stretched his jaw and wiggled it from side to side with a finger simultaneously shaking in his ear.
“Laundry. I’m separating the whites. What the hell did you think I’m doing?”
Kit reached underneath the covers and felt on his pubic bone. It was still hot.
“Nothing,” he said with a downward slope in his voice. “I just thought we could lay here a bit and just…”
“Kit,” Theresa snapped, “The diapers? Do you want me to write it down? I can’t lie down. I’ve gotta get this done by tomorrow. I have a Room Mother’s meeting at six, so I need you to remember all this.”
“No, I’ve got it,” he said, moving towards the pile of clothes. He picked up an undershirt from the pile and wiped her off his thighs. “Luvs.”
“You’re disgusting.” She commented, “At least I’m washing that. And no, Huggies, Kit, we need Huggies. Just think of it this way: You can always hug someone, you can’t always love them. Huggies, always.”
“Hugs without Luvs. Got it.” He said, searching for his pajama pants.
“I’ll write it down,” she condescended, coming out of the closet and scooping the whites in her thin arms.
She left the room and Kit stood pant-less, watching her drop socks on her way out. He went into the closet to find pants, but as fate would have it, his eyes caught the white dress she liked to wear on special occasions, the one with the lace back, the one she had worn on their anniversary. He took it off the hanger. He examined the label, Dry Clean Only, it said. He heard Theresa slam the dryer door open as it hit the wall. I’ve gotta move that over more, he thought.
His mind flooded with the stressful thoughts of tomorrow. The ever-growing list of things to get done, the diapers, and milk, and the something that he had to get from the store. He took the dress in both hands and twisted it like a towel waiting to be snapped. He held it taut. He held it with intention. He held it stiff and unappreciatively. And instinctively, Kit moved that pretty dress in a flossing motion between his legs, rubbing and wiping, letting it soak up all the evidence from five minutes before.
“Coffee.” He said aloud while he continued to floss.
“And something else…” He smiled.
His pantswere in the corner of the closet next to his shoe rack. Fuck it, he thought. And he slid the dress back on its hanger and slid his pants on. He made his way back to his side of the bed and waited there, watching the door, wondering why Theresa was taking so long. He turned off the light and rolled on his side, watching the clock, counting the seconds. He yawned and his ears popped, amplifying the sound of Theresa muttering “I do everything.” He listened to the washing machine rumble and Theresa’s footsteps up and down the stairs as she collected dropped socks from the floor.
Horror Sleaze Trash 