Norman J. Olson is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota. Since publishing his first poem in 1984, he has published hundreds of poems and drawings all over the world.
Then she asked the inevitable question, “Do I know any of your books?”
“No,” I said.
She twirled a finger on the rim of her wine glass. “Well, what do you write about?”
I picked up my half-empty shot glass and downed the contents. It was filled again as soon as it hit the well-worn mahogany. I nodded at her glass. It was still full.
“Want another?”
“Well, I don’t know yet, do I?” she said coyly in a schoolgirl voice.
“How old are you?” I blurted out.
She stopped the rim-twirling and stared at me.
“What a rude question! A gentleman wouldn’t ask a lady that.”
I focused on my shot glass. It was filled to the brim. He’s my kind of bartender, Doug is.
I picked it up and rested it on my lower lip for a second. “I’m no gentleman,” I said, and threw my head back, feeling that old familiar burn traveling down my esophagus. “Are you a lady?”
She dropped her jaw with poorly feigned indignation. “You’re an asshole!”
“Hey!” Doug barked, strolling towards us from the opposite end of the bar where he’d been attending to a couple of the other regulars. He picked up my bottle and poured it. “There are no assholes in here, miss.”
Doug was right – at least for another half hour – then the assholes would begin streaming in from the surrounding office buildings. For now, it was just the regulars, five or six of us, and these three girls who had wandered in from out of nowhere – two of them sipping spritzers by the jukebox – and this one, who had seen fit to plunk herself down next to me trying to start up a conversation. I’d bought her a white wine spritzer – like a gentleman – which she was nursing with remarkable patience.
“Women,” I said, as she took a sip.
“I’m sorry, what?” she said, looking at me, holding her glass in midair.
“I write about women.”
She took another quick sip. “Why? Do you like women?”
“I hate them,” I said.
She put the drink down. Too gently. “You really are an asshole!” she said in a loud whisper, first making sure Doug wasn’t within earshot – then shifted her weight around the barstool for several seconds. We both knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She grabbed her glass and, for the first time, took a proper gulp. Good girl! When she’d apparently found a comfortable sitting position, she looked into my eyes, “Has anyone ever told you, you look like Kelsey Grammer?”
I’m usually pretty quick, but had no immediate reply to that one.
She turned to her girlfriends by the jukebox. “Mona! Molly! Look over here!” she yelled, pointing at me. “Doesn’t he look like Kelsey Grammer?”
The two girls looked over briefly, gave their friend a thumbs-up, and returned to whatever they were doing.
“You see! They agree, you do look like Kelsey Grammer!”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked.
“He’s handsome,” she said – adding, “in a sorta, kinda way.”
“Then sorta, kinda thank you.” I raised my glass and she extended hers.
“Cheers!” she laughed. “Cheers,” I said – struggling to muzzle a smile which made her laugh even more.
“See!” she said, “that wasn’t so hard, was it? My name is Jenny.”
I told her mine.
She wasn’t a bad looking woman – one of those bleached blondes you can’t avoid bumping into all over New Jersey and Southern California – the kind you’d have a hard time telling apart if you lined them up. They’re probably everywhere by now, and for good reason. Men love them. I’m no exception. Those blonde locks and curls make ordinary girls look slutty, and slutty girls, sluttier. This one – Jenny – did have some distinguishing features, most notably, no tits. Not a disqualifier in my book – on the contrary. Her upper arms were, however, problematic. They had the circumference of a dwarf’s thighs, and looked like them, too – meaty, but not muscular – the kind of upper arms you’d expect on a baker’s daughter who’s been kneading and stuffing down dough her entire life. She was wearing a white sleeveless cotton shirt which only added to their humongous-ness. But her face was both cute and sexy, although not at the same time. When she opened her mouth to drink, she’d twitch her nose like an adorable bunny rabbit. When she sat just observing, or in quiet contemplation, she looked eminently beddable. A cute and sexy face covers up a lot of flaws. Except for the arms, I didn’t detect any. I wondered what her legs were like under the loose flannel pants she was wearing.
I’m not much of a talker and we soon ran out of conversation. She’d gotten more and more jittery and distracted as the bar had begun to fill up with assholes. It would soon reach maximum capacity and stay that way for a couple of hours. Doug was earning a living.
Jenny thanked me for the drink – like a lady – and left to join her girlfriends. A little while later, the three of them were next to me. The room had gotten loud and overcrowded. A desperate horde, vying for Doug’s attention, was pressing up against those of us lucky enough to have a seat at the bar.
“Nice not meeting you!” one of Jenny’s girlfriends yelled, and squeezed past me.
Ah, a joker! I wish you’d been the one who’d come and sat next to me, I thought. Female jokers are so rare. “Likewise!” I yelled.
“Thanks again for the drink!” Jenny smiled and extended a hand. I gave her a wink and a thumbs up, and wondered if I might have misjudged her.
Then the second girlfriend was up against me and yelled straight into my ear, “JENNY LIKES ASSHOLES! OLD ASSHOLES, PREFERABLY!”
Perplexed, I watched the three of them shove their way through the thirsting herd. Someone opened and closed the front door, and I regretted my passivity. Not for the first time in my life. I looked at the bottle – my bottle – sitting on the shelf directly in front of me. I still had almost two-thirds to go and there was always a backup in case of an emergency. Soon the assholes would leave, except a few who were training to become like me and, in a few years, were likely to succeed. It was them and me, and the other regulars, for the rest of the night. Groups continued to drop in – ordered cocktails and wine, huddled somewhere in the barroom, made a lot of noise – then left. The hours got short and no one came in, save for a few lost souls in search of a watering hole to call home.
At some point Doug told me, my bottle had run dry. I paid, shook his hand, and said tomorrow. He nodded, and I walked out into an oppressively hot and eerily quiet Midtown Manhattan. I made my way down the block on the water sprinklered sidewalk, to my apartment, where I kicked off my shoes and opened a bottle.
Maybe I shouldn’t have lied about being a writer. Ah, so what, I’d never see her again anyway. I closed my eyes and downed another, simultaneously kindling and quenching the dying embers.
Each time is like
The first date
I dress to entice
Paint my face
To attract attention
From the balcony
Stage fright
Though I’ve played
This role before
Adrenaline flowing
Quivering muscles
As I strip you down
But this isn’t a show
Excitement sparking
Like thrown glitter
While I tie you down
Letting my long hair
Brush your bare chest
Ropes straps cuffs
Duct tape sizzling from the roll
Gas mask cinched tight
Immobilized
Cocooned
Encased
Totally at my whim
Not just your pleasure
Your very life
Held in these
Delicate fingers
Squeezing the hose
Do you love me?
Or is this unrequited
Like the air
Growing stale
In your lungs
There’s a look in your eyes
When the animal panics
A satisfying pop
As your body spasms
Drowning in latex and nylon
You are no longer alive
No longer a person
Just perfect slave meat
But you should know
This isn’t a game
It’s not about pain
It’s not about power
It’s not about perversion
Because when you fully submit
When you fear me
When you love me
When you do as I say
I am utterly your slave
it’s the year you’re reincarnated in Kim Deal’s voice
the makeup on your eyes is sunburst
our days a bratty buzz bin of melancholy
of crop top cannonball of pixies in the air
the double denim sky hangs sticky at the fair.
It’s the year you’re reincarnated in Kim Deal’s voice
da ah da da da like colourpop, like strawberry sandpaper
picked with Dunlop of chime & thunder at the fair.
We wait for the last splash but it never whatever.
We’re analogue kids passing through digital rain
glasstron at Metreon, vodka in Tupperware
cuckoo with the reggae bong dancing in our underwear.
You were all nerve all wave marshal stack
now I wait in the car, scavenge decades like perfect disasters.
It’s the year you’re reincarnated in Kim Deal’s voice
& I’m still tinkering with the vocal effects
I sleep nervous
with a mask on
Showered
inky pen
shiny
So when I get the dream
they will know me
and the mask
will keep
reality
from interrupting
going down
on the scene
I haven’t had the dream just yet
I don’t know how many nights
but I prepare
Maybe it will come
like a couplet comet
Streak past
the sonnet’s subconscious
Blasting
Intense end-stopped line ecstasy
Oh it will
Oh I will
when my time comes
So I am standing now below
some bright lights
Tacky sets with couches
Some beautiful Spanish visions walk in front
Super hot ones drinking on the sides
incredible female limber liberated voices
in the back
I say “Welcome..Not my first time, but…”
I pull the mask off
clear my throat
They pull out a video camera
old one with the tape
I clear my throat again
Nerves
They surround me
Maybe we live stream
I am potent
I am ready
I am strong
I am not ever asleep
I am ready for the exposure
all over
Then
It’s hard
I drink some water
I get the timing right
The movement
The rhythm
A real talent I hear
from the room
where the pipes of inspiration are banging
heats on strong
The passion personification
is all over the place
Sliding into lines
curves pure and punctuated hard
No shooting blank verses
Even if it’s fake sometimes
Howling
Other times
Soft
Tender positioning
Thrusts of dirty
censored words
Beautiful
forbidden whispers
Then after like over 2 minutes for sure
Silence
Cut-up
Silence
I gave them my whole everything
They even clapped
as the help cleaned up
I felt great
bowed my head
finished up
Some things were passed around
everyone lit cigarettes
No one was asleep not one second
It was great marketing
and publicity
and mind blowing
legendary industry
though cheap
When I wake
I fantasize
of watching the video tape
Rewind past to the meaty parts
Fast forward to the laughs
just like if it really happened
All there documented too
The greatest fucking
reading
of all time
Medieval man, enshrouded in a pall
of gloom, blamed Woman for Man’s vice.
Her burning lust provoked Man’s fall,
Eve’s vulva opening up another Paradise.
Henceforth, all life began in pain and shame.
Grotesque depictions then appeared,
Sheela-na-gigs, the medieval name
for twelfth-century carvings to be feared,
above doors and windows, entries
to European cathedrals and churches
as if they were horrific sentries
looking down from lofty perches,
with gaping vulvas of enormous size.
Some think of it as magical protection,
though it was hard to visualise.
The aim: to avoid Eve’s dread ‘infection’,
to ward off the contagion of Woman’s sin
(as reflected in Corbeau’s ‘Origin
of the World’ in the Musée d’Orsay)
to ensure no man would go astray.
I had a dream –
I was in a three way with Sylvia Plath
and Anne Sexton.
Nirvana played on the radio.
Ernest Hemingway stood in the darkest corner
of the room.
He was holding a camera
but he was filming himself and not us.
The camera was shaped like a shotgun.
Sylvia fondled me
as Anne stroked the hair
on my head and on my chest.
I sat there on the bed with my hands at my sides,
too afraid to touch them.
I closed my eyes as Sylvia blew into my left ear,
Anne my right.
I was as hard as a rock.
My body was tensely still.
Then,
in unison, their four lovely lips whispered to me,
“What are you waiting for?”
I remember when I called him Daddy
Smiled pretty all day so he’d spank me
I just gave in to the joke of authority
Ha! Forgot truth: No limits invade ME
Get out of my lighthouse;
the noisy-nitpick louse
Don’t need orders or opinions to Shine
Pack your gas-lighting dragging behind
What you’re putting out is putting You out
Cosmic cord-cutting for your piss n’ pout
Tried to transfer to me your gutless doubt
What you’re putting out is putting You out
Gimme that High for my Low; hearts aglow
Balance the beat, turn off the shit-show
That’s the only Daddy I ever wanna blow
a kiss. The only Daddy I wanna know…
She wanted to talk about my poem,
whether it worked with symbols
or something subtler. I mouthed
some inanity about what metaphor
means to me. How could I say,
instead, that I wanted to see her
naked, her blond limbs, her glossy
thighs. We talked a little bit more
about the poem. “It’s not often I
get to ask the actual author,” she
gushed. I didn’t feel actual. I felt
like a shitheel. But, reader, listen.
Her eyes were like the blue the sky
unveils only in early morning. And,
up close, she seemed to be made of
cake. I went home and she went home.
I tried to write new poems. She found
herself thinking about fucking and
called to her husband in the next room.
I was sitting at the bar listening to mark
telling
me about his roommate, lobster bob.
“he brings home a different
whore
three or four times a week.
“bartrolls. nothing but bartrolls.”
“still,” I said, “three or four times
a week? it’s not easy to pick up
anything three or four times
a week.”
“yeah it is,” said mark. “you find the grossest
chick in the place…
at 2.a.m. I mean the grossest…
that’s what he
looks for, and gets…”
as he was saying this, lobster bob came sidling out
of the bathroom.
he was about 45, with a loose-hanging
aloha shirt and a limp mop
of lord Fauntleroy hair framing his bloated
pink face. He looked a bit like a lobster,
but that’s not
how he got the name.
we watched as he nuzzled up to some lady
at least ten years
his senior, her broad beam spilling over
the barstool.
“and look at him now,” mark went on.
“he’s at it again…
the disgusting
fuck… and i’m gonna have to listen
to it through the wall.”
we both
shook our heads. I was
laughing… lobster bob
was more
of a man
than either of us
could ever be.
Horror Sleaze Trash 