Winter arrived
And the sun came out
Traipsed over suspension bridges
With hound at heel
And cigarette in hand
Mind’s a whirl
Of far off places and pretty girls
Of waking in strange rooms
Armed with books of poetry
And bad intentions
Soon enough
I’ll stroll up that gentle slope
And sit and share a drink
With that dead drunk
As the western sky
Burns a dull orange
And I sink into that sacred soil
Never to leave again
Loretta Blissful was a very attractive and sexy twenty seven year old and had an untamed and insatiable appetite for the opposite sex. She had been married and divorced nine times; a commitment to just one man was impossible for her.
One man was never enough.
Loretta liked to think of herself as a sexual vampire with an unquenchable thirst for cock. No matter how deeply Loretta’s love for each of her nine husbands, she could simply not resist the urge, the opportunities, the lust to pursue other men for sexual conquests and adventures. She simply could not help herself; her passion was her demon and she loved her demon well.
Loretta naturally knew the type of man she wanted, and this varied according to how she was feeling, but she no longer pursued fat guys; she had experienced a couple of fat guys and on both occasions found the scene to be limited and awkward and damn right uncomfortable, and she had felt nothing but a big fat disappointment.
Loretta had personal standards, too; there were some party-tricks that she would not engage in whatsoever, but there is no reason to go into all that detail right now.
Tonight Loretta was sat alone in one of her regular and most successful of pick-up joints, a seedy club called ‘The Purple Snake’. She cast her eyes around the place, checking what was on the menu. She took a sip of her vodka on ice and set the glass back on her table.
“Do you mind if I join you?”
Loretta looked up and was impressed by what she saw. “Yes, it would be my pleasure”
“I’m Duncan Weatherby,” he said, offering an outstretched hand, “pleased to meet you.”
Duncan was a smooth-looking twenty four old who was presently recovering from a treacherous relationship that had broken him to pieces, but his eyes shone bright and his voice was deep and confident.
“I’m Loretta,” she said, taking his hand as Duncan stumbled into her web.
The two struck up some easy and warm conversation. Loretta knew that Duncan found her attractive, and she found him appealing as well. At approximately 10pm, she decided to make her move.
“Duncan, would you like to join me for a nightcap? I don’t live far from here…”
Duncan did not hesitate; he was eager and he was keen and he hadn’t been laid in a long while. He was bursting with excitement and could hardly contain himself or the graphic thoughts that were now streaming through his head.
“Yes, that sounds like a great idea,” he said. “We can get a cab.”
Together they left ‘The Purple Snake’, and ten minutes later they were in Loretta’s apartment. She had fixed some drinks and put some Sibelius on the hi-fi. They sat beside each other on the sofa, both of them wondering who was going to make the first move, but actually there was no question who was going to make the first move; it was Loretta.
“Dunky, would you like to get funky?” Loretta asked, smiling with lust in her eyes.
Duncan said nothing in response, nodding his head vigorously.
“Then Dunky, you follow me…”
Loretta rose from the sofa and walked down the hallway, proceeding to her bedroom with Duncan just a few perspiring steps behind.
As she launched herself onto the bed and began peeling off her clothes, Duncan dived right after, removing his own clothing as well as they kissed and groped one another.
A few moments into the adventure, Loretta cried out, “Dunky, stop! STOP, Dunky!”
Duncan stopped and rolled off of her in shock; things had seemed to be going well. He didn’t know what he had done wrong; he was definitely out of practice, but he still knew a thing or two.
“It’s not you Dunky,” Loretta explained, “it’s me, really it’s me! Something’s just missing…”
“Missing? And what’s that?”
“Would you do something for me, something that would make everything alright..?”
Duncan nodded his head, telling her “I’ll do anything, anything you ask!”
“Okay…” Loretta said. “Behind you, in a row against the wall, are twelve hat stands.
Duncan glanced over his shoulder and noticed her impressive collection of hats for the first time.
“Go to the first hat stand on the left and choose a hat, any hat, just choose one and choose one quickly! GO DUNKY GO!”
Duncan had never seen so may hats in all his life, a dozen hat stands with dozens upon dozens of hats upon each of them. It was quite the sight; hats of all different shapes, styles, sizes, and colours. It was honestly a bit overwhelming, being suddenly forced to choose one.
Then, suddenly, without further hesitation, Duncan lunged in all his nudity for the first hatstand on the left, grabbing a bright blue beret adorned with ridiculous plastic flowers. As he slapped it down onto his head, several of the flowers came loose and fell to the floor.
He leapt back onto the bed and resumed his passionate lovemaking, shedding plastic flowers all over Loretta and her bed as he rammed it home.
He was in mid-stroke when Loretta abruptly cried, “STOP DUNKY IT ISN’T RIGHT, IT’S NOT WORKING FOR ME! STOP! DUNKY! STOP!”
Duncan pulled out and looked at Loretta with wild confusion in his eyes. “What the fuck is it?” he gasped between breaths. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the hat Dunky, it just isn’t the right one; you’ll have to try another. Go to the second hat stand on the left and grab a hat and DO IT NOW, I’M REALLY HOT FOR YOU DUNKY!”
Again, Duncan launched off the bed, this time coming back with a bright red and yellow sunhat with a wide plastic brim. Duncan slammed it down on his head and wasted no time at all jumping back on Loretta.
He hadn’t been going at her very long before she cried out once again, “STOP DUNKY! STOP! IT’S JUST NOT RIGHT! SOMETHING IS NOT WORKING! STOP DUNKY!”
“It’s the fucking hat again, isn’t it?” Duncan said. “WHAT IS IT WITH THESE FUCKING HATS?”
“DUNCAN, I’M HOT AND I NEED YOU INSIDE ME NOW! PLEASE, GO TO THE FIFTH HAT STAND FROM THE LEFT AND GET A HAT! IT’LL WORK THIS TIME, GO DUNKY GO!”
Once again, Duncan scrambled off the bed, grabbing a hat without looking from the designated hat stand. This one was a lustrous leather Australian outback hat with scores of wine corks dangling from its brim. They assaulted his face as he dashed back into bed, but he ignored the annoyance and got back down to business.
Within a few moments Loretta screamed, “NO DUNKY! STOP! YOU MUST STOP DUNKY! IT JUST ISN’T RIGHT!”
Duncan backed off of her, ripped the hat from off his head and threw it across the room.
“FUCKING HATS! FUCKING HATS!” he screamed in frustration. “FUCKING GODDAMN ROTTEN HATS!”
“DUNKY! I HAVE IT! THIS TIME I KNOW IT WILL WORK! DUNKY GO TO THE WARDROBE AND THERE YOU WILL FIND THE SPECIAL HAT THAT IS MAGIC! GO GET IT DUNKY! IN THE WARDROBE! GO DUNKY GO!”
With some reservation this time, Duncan raced over to the wardrobe and threw open its doors. He looked inside and had to take a step back to appreciate the view. It was the biggest fucking hat he had ever seen! A monstrous violet velvet Stetson, which he promptly snatched and heaved up onto his head.
Darkness overtook him as the huge floppy brim swallowed him to his knees. Stumbling towards the bed, he crashed into the nightstand and banged his kneecap on its corner, whereupon he tripped and fell face-first onto the floor. He lay there as he felt the warm ooze of blood begin to trickle from his nose.
All the while, Loretta kept screaming, “DUNKY! DUNKY! OVER HERE! I’M HOT AND WAITING FOR YOU DUNKY! QUICKLY! QUICKLY! HURRY! HURRY DUNKY!”
With the last of his strength and patience, Duncan wrestled himself and the massive hat up onto the bed. Loretta crawled in there with him and together they fucked beneath its floppy brim.
Within a moments, Loretta was writhing in ecstasy.
“OH! OH, DUNKY THIS IS IT! THIS IT IT! DUNKY! I’TS WORKING DUNKY! IT’S WORKING! OH DUNKY MARRY ME! MARRY ME DUNKY!”
Duncan couldn’t see what he was doing in the darkness, he had a mouthful of lint, his nose was bleeding and his knee seemed seriously injured, but one thing he knew for sure:
He was having the ride of his fucking life.
My girlfriend gets fed up with all the people who are always staring at her ass, so one day she locks herself in the bathroom with a giant kitchen knife and chops off both of her buttocks, just like that. They would’ve sew them back on at the hospital, but she lies and says she lost them.
Actually we keep them in a cardboard box on the top of the wardrobe, and I’m the only one who get to look at them. But one night someone breaks into our house, and I find a stranger sitting on our floor with the box in his lap.
He is staring at its contents.
“Get the fuck out!” I shout at him. “Stop staring my girlfriend’s ass!”
I kick him out of the door and I return the cardboard box to its place on top of the wardrobe. But around midnight, we awake to find that someone has break into our apartment again – there are now two middle-aged men standing in the living room, the open box at their feet, and they are gazing down at the cut-off buttcheeks inside.
“Filthy pigs!” my girlfriend screams.
I chase them out from the house with a broom stick.
Afterwards, we agree that I’ll take her ass up into the attic, which sadly means I’ll have to climb the ladder every time I want to pinch her butt.
So next day, I find four strangers up there, just sitting in a circle around the box. It looks like they are in some kind of deep meditation state, transfixed by twin mounds of ass-meat within.
Before they’ve even noticed me, I grab the box and hurry back down the ladder.
At the moment, we’re keeping the box in a locked drawer. I carry the key on a string around my neck. Every now and then, a stranger sneaks into our home and peeps through the drawer’s keyhole.
My girlfriend’s wounds are healing, but she still looks kind of like an apple someone took a couple bites from. Every time we make love, we take her buttocks out from the drawer.
I put on some latino music, and I tell her: “Shake your ass, baby!” So she begins to shake the cardboard box in her hands – her buttocks bouncing around inside.
With the use of some adhesive tape, we temporarily reattach her butt back onto her, and she gives me a really nice lap dance. The adhesive tape isn’t almighty, however, and she leaves one of her asscheeks in my lap.
It’s a bit awkward, but she smiles just the same, snatching up her asscheek and rubbing me with it like it was a sponge or something. The strangely preserved meat leaves a odd slime all over my skin.
I gaze at the small black dot on the asscheek in her hand – the lovely birthmark that brings back so many fond memories. It is then that a small, wriggling worm squirms out from under it. My girlfriend screams and throws her asscheek to the floor.
We always knew there was something special about that ass, but even an ass that great can’t resist decomposition forever.
After a few days, my girlfriend’s butt ends up in the trash. Now strangers are gathering around the garbage can out front, unable to take their eyes off it for a second. It seems my girlfriend doesn’t care anymore that they are staring at her butt. Instead, she seems to miss it for the first time.
“But there are many things more important than a butt, right?” she asks through welling tears.
“Of course,” I tell her, as they all come to mind.
The morning stretching, for example. Or walking in a forest. The marrow-melting sadness of the snapping of deer antlers. The calmness of long forgotten costumes, the silent swinging of the coat hangers in a dusty old wardrobe. The gold resin drops hanging from wounded trees – my mother used to say they were the honeyed teardrops of angels.
These are all more important than an ass, to be frank.
The wet milk skin of puberty, when adulthood gathers in the corners of your eyes, like morning rose spores. The drying gypsum sculptures of the secret thoughts in your skull. The vanishing pulsation of the stolen body heat after holding hands. All of these are more important than having an ass.
There are many more important things, I tell myself, joining the long line that has formed down the block for a peek at my girlfriend’s butt.
High on heroin, we had sex on his mom’s blue-grey dining room carpet, and the small of my back was ripped raw and bloody by the carpet’s stiff fibers. Curly-q’s of frayed skin formed a frame around the tramp stamp of a wet wound. He went into the kitchen to get paper towels to clean me up, and me from the carpet.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.
“It was strange,” I answered. “It didn’t really hurt, but I knew that if we didn’t stop, there would be a consequence. I had to make a choice. Usually the pain makes the decision for you. I decided not to decide.”
I watched in the dining room mirror as he dabbed the area of my back with peroxide and care.
“This might leave a scar,” he said. “I’m not going to lie. I like the idea that I may have scarred you forever.” His eyes gave off an electrical medicated sparkle.
Over the next few weeks, he’d randomly lift the back of my shirt to chart the healing process.
When we last saw each other, the scab had fallen off, revealing a faded blue-grey bruise underneath, a surprisingly close match to his mother’s carpet.
There was a slight scar, but years later, only I, knowing what to look for, could ever make it out.
***
A few weeks into our coupling, my present boyfriend and I were having sex on the industrial carpet in his work shop. We’d been drinking, and were still in that first stage of a relationship, when you are polite and considerate, and on your best behavior. He was grinding into me, the small of my back flush with the carpet’s rough surface. There is something about that part of my back, sitting or standing, it curves inward, but lying flat, it aligns itself with whatever is underneath. Maybe all backs do this. I could feel the scraping this time – back and forth, up and down – the carpet as sandpaper, my back as a piece of wood. My boyfriend had read something I’d written online and decided I was a masochist. So early in our relationship, I didn’t want to let him down.
When we finished, I stood up.
“Oh my goodness,” he said. “You’re bleeding.”
He went to go retrieve his first aid kit. He’s like that. Every situation has its dovetailing tool. He came back, his hands fishing around inside the plastic box, looking, I assumed, for some kind of bandage.
“The spot is too awkward,” I said. “I don’t think anything would stay on.”
He touched his finger softly to the wound. “Your beautiful back… I think I might have scarred you…”
For a moment he seemed genuinely mournful.
“I kind of like the idea I may have scarred you forever.”
***
One more.
A few years ago, I became painfully skinny. The only thing I didn’t like about my size was my breasts. Every part of me had been reduced, my breasts included, and I became intrigued with the idea of getting a breast job.
I was seeing a guy in Brooklyn, who made a good salary.
“You should pay for me to get a breast job,” I suggested, one Saturday morning, over coffee.
He seemed to think about it.
“What if we broke up?” he said. “I wouldn’t want another guy touching the breasts I paid for. Nah, I don’t think I like that.”
“Obviously, you must have some doubts about of our relationship, if when you look into the future, you see some other man touching my breasts.”
“I don’t like it. Maybe I’d do it if we were married.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be married to a person who didn’t trust me enough to cover my breast job unless we were married.”
That seemed to put him for a loop. His large salary wasn’t based on intellect.
“I’d have to think about it,” he said, a sneaky grin spreading across his face. “I do kind of like the idea of scarring you forever.”
They know they’ll reel you in with those carefully spun words,
Words that read like music and make you swoon.
Words they use to build themselves up in their own minds
So they can carelessly compare themselves
to all that they’ve romanticized.
Bukowski.
Kerouac.
Burroughs.
Ginsberg.
Go ahead and fancy yourselves a “new beat generation.”
String those words together as well as you can manage,
At least they’re pretty on a printed page.
They’ll make you blush.
Those smiles, that spark in their eyes,
They wear their costume – dark demented soul – so well
That you’ll fall for how they fall for you,
How they just can’t live without you,
They’re in love and they know it.
You’ll fall for how they watch you
Because you’ve never noticed a red flag in your life.
Animal-like. Almost primal.
They’ll play up their sob stories
Because it’s so much easier to play a victim or a martyr,
To tell you how unfair their lives have been
Then it is to tell you that they’re fucked up.
They’ll cry about how things didn’t turn out.
The dreams they never chased, never really worked for,
Surprise. Those didn’t pan out either.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
A few reworded quotes, a couple of lines
Read just the right way, in just the right voice.
Their picture, their video masked with just the right filter.
Deep. Tortured. Begging.
Please, please choke on this regurgitated shit.
There are men who write poetry who aren’t
Whiny, unevolved, poor little poetry boys,
But those men are poets,
Not boys who slide into your messages with:
“I’m drunk.”
“I’m horny.”
“My wife/girlfriend
Doesn’t love me anymore.”
“I’m sad so I can go behind her back,
But she belongs to me.”
“Sure, I’m messaging some cute young thing,
But that bitch finally found happiness
In a real man’s arms instead of
Worshipping and appreciating the ego that is me.”
Poetry boys spin their words with their pens,
Their typewriters – if we’re going to get real hipster about it –
Because real words, substance, gets stuck in their throats,
And they haven’t faced themselves in the mirror
In god knows how long.
They want you weak at the knees with your legs and heart open,
So they smile those smiles, wink those winks.
“Let me fill you up so I can fill up all the parts of me
That I haven’t already drowned out with booze.”
Because all the real artists are alcoholics, right?
on cheaply lit bedroom sets
he fills squealing blondes,
their perky plastic tits bouncing wildly,
but now he worries about his creaky knees.
his contract requires a comfortable cushion.
energetic cow girls half his age
ride him fast,
instinctively he grabs
their tight little asses
squeezing for the camera—
all a blur to his tired eyes.
he misses the seventies, Hef and Jack’s debauchery:
jacuzzi orgies with champagne,
bunnies and cocaine lines,
when fucking
was a work of art.
I especially liked married men,
so sex-starved and disillusioned…
they were always hungry.
And I got to be the thing
they looked forward to the most.
It was great for the ego, theirs as well as mine.
They did shit with me
their wives would never do.
I would, not for them, but for me.
But my biggest excuse
was the role each wife played
in sending their husbands my way.
She withheld sex, bartered, manipulated.
And plus, she’d let herself go—
safely married, she no longer worried
about being attractive, interesting, or dynamic.
She’d reject his advances because he didn’t compliment
her new fucking earrings
or some shit.
The story was always the same.
So, in a way,
I was their sexual
comeuppance.
I was their punishment for their gratuitous arrogance;
taking their husbands for granted; holding them hostage
with their dry, uninviting cunts.
And the shitty bait ‘n’ switch
they’d pulled at the altar
the moment
they said
I do.
I’m not saying it was right
and I don’t do it anymore,
but I was
that woman,
once.
The one all housewives
whispered about
when their husbands
were finally caught
cheating.
I was a golem, the succulent succubus
of their serene suburban nightmares:
A terrible justice,
sucking on their
husband’s cocks.
One summer, I painted
the Desiderata on the walls
of a deserted Civil War mansion.
My best friend was visiting
from California. We swam in the pool
and played tennis at the edge of town.
At night I stole furtive glimpses
of her long body, dark hair
piled on top of her head
and carefully secured with bobby pins.
She slept in a folding cot
at the edge of my mattress,
rolling and tossing in the Illinois heat.
We talked feverishly about our virginity–
how we might lose it, and to whom.
She was convinced I’d surrender mine first.
We nabbed containers of powdered paints
from my mother’s kitchen cupboard,
carried warm water in jugs for blocks,
laughing at our cleverness.
The building’s crumbling walls
were defaced with coy obscenities:
“Meet me here at 10 PM.
Wear cut-offs and nothing else.
Blow me.” Carefully, I painted
red and green and brilliant blue
over scrawled pictures of erect penises,
copied words from the sacred text
about disenchanted love, perennial as grass,
and decorated the gaping edges of holes
with flowering vines and sunrises.
My best friend’s artwork
was always more fluid than mine,
her hands steady while she dabbed
a tiny paintbrush on dirty plaster.
As vivid color stretched across the walls,
more girls paraded to the mansion,
carrying brushes, markers and glitter.
Each of us either copied a line
from the text or devised our own quotes.
I branched out to TS Eliot verses,
since I had painstakingly memorized
“The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”
several weeks beforehand.
The aged building overflowed with words.
A reporter from the small-town paper
photographed our artwork,
somehow capturing its brightness,
even in black and white.
She took pictures of my friend and me
standing in front of our paintings,
both of us looking solemn and deep.
She asked why we were determined
to decorate a decaying house
that had stood abandoned for years.
We wanted to transform ugliness
into beauty, bring dignity back
to the majestic structure.
She nodded at us sagely,
though she didn’t really understand,
and wrote a nice puff piece
that ran two weeks later.
By then, my friend had returned to California.
Two days after the story broke,
I eagerly climbed the broken stairs
to the mansion’s second floor,
but our paintings had been destroyed.
Someone had smashed holes
in the flowers and sunrises,
and written obscenities next to the quotes.
It took great determination
to destroy the work
we had spent so many days creating.
That person needed to bring
a combination of rocks and hammers
to the top of a collapsing staircase
and attack a wall repeatedly.
The colors made him furious.
My friend sighed when I told her,
and said, “Well, that’s just how
people are, I guess.” It was easy
for her to be philosophical, since
she was two thousand miles away
and couldn’t see the destruction.
She was always more lucky than I.
I worried about promiscuity
when I was seventeen,
and its alignment
with moral character.
I felt certain
I had sacrificed
my own values
without much resistance,
and I feared this
would go on
a permanent record
that would reflect badly
on me, later.
In secret locations,
I furtively opened
medical pamphlets,
library books,
and paperbacks I’d bought
at yard sales.
I read everything I could
about penises and vaginas,
eagerly devoured details
about their angles
and dimensions.
I gorged myself
with gaudy images,
but felt sick afterward,
as if I’d eaten
too many hamburgers.
My boyfriend and I
had an elaborate ritual
that summer-
I spread out my body
on his basement couch
like a cheap buffet.
While my head
nestled in his lap,
my boyfriend probed
the inside of my vagina
one furtive digit at a time,
until he was finally able
to place his entire hand
inside me, at least as far
as his knuckles.
His parents
never came downstairs,
and never asked
what we were doing:
it was 1970s America,
and they couldn’t
have been less interested.
We ate hot dogs
in bright red baskets
at the drive-in afterward,
and my boyfriend
talked about planets
and where he was going
to college in the fall.
None of my
moral pronouncements
made a goddamn
bit of difference,
because our parents
and geography
would shove us
so far apart that
we would never find
each other again.
Milkshakes and sex
were all we had
at the moment-
the viscous sweetness
of cream,
and rapid metabolisms
that would make it
much easier
to forget everything.
