Genius of Love

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."-The Great Gatsby

I’ve always liked girls. First kiss: first grade, under a blanket at the neighbor-girl’s house.
And then, nothing, for more than ten years.

            Nothing too physical, anyway. In my own way I was a grade school Casanova, known for catching even the fastest girls in games of jungle-gym “tag,” blushing, withdrawing my paw hastily, and, if I may say so, tenderly. In middle school I took several lovers who I called “girlfriends” and once, bowing to public entreaty, took one of their hands gingerly, lovingly into my own. But there I must concede she withdrew before I climaxed.

            But then, in the race to ascend into the spheres of ethereal pleasures, sexual gratification, I fell back. I recall my friends kissing girls under blankets in basements as I sat sidelong alone on the weight-machine. To this day my biceps and pectorals have never failed me.

            As time passed I grew yet more reticent and embittered and became convinced there was something fundamentally wrong with me. By my fifteenth birthday I had all but steeled myself for the big wait, to preserve my features and maintain my physique while my male peers fell victim to animal attacks and drunk driving…then my time would come. And I had nearly forced girls from my mind entirely, considering instead a life of religious asceticism, when, with the impetuous conviction of a certifiable psychopath and fourteen beers in my belly, I put my arm around a girl at a party.

            With that seemingly benign gesture the floodgates burst open and all hell broke loose; within two weeks I kissed her cheek. Her name was Johanna and she was younger than me, more sexually experienced and quite beautiful. All the lust and romanticism that I’d so long subdued bubbled to the surface as I masturbated two-fold. Finally! Finally, a decade’s neurotic self-doubts had been lifted, and I skipped gleefully through the streets singing “I’ve seen love go by my door, it’s never been this close before” and scattering flower petals all around me.

            The coming months were pervaded with the tastes and smells of cheap vodka, spring grass, dying campfires and Johanna’s intoxicating sweetness. I grew increasingly taken with her or, more accurately perhaps, with the situation, with what I was permitted to do her. Having drunk enough liquor to kill a man half my size, three-foot-one, I would take her hand and steer her shoulder away from a huddled group of our friends, a few steps and then down into the grass or sand or mud underfoot. There I learned to work my lips, conscientiously dancing my fingers up and down and across her lithe, well-proportioned figure, pulling a pesky black hair from my tongue. As each week went by and my hands inched further up her shirt and further down her jeans, I began to contemplate a day when I would experience firsthand that which I’d only read about, heard whispered by hooded figures on midnight street corners. I’m talking of course about a subject rarely touched on in conversation, film, and literature. I’m talking, of course, about sex.

            One day in the middle of the week I asked Johanna out on a date for that Friday night and subsequently set about making meticulous preparations. I asked a friend if I could borrow his car for the evening, and he agreed in exchange for a chunk of the little money I had. I tried to give him a fiber optic peacock as well, but he would not accept it. In hindsight I’m thankful as the bird truly sets any room off.

            With the car taken care of I turned my attention to finances. I did not have a job at the time and was operating with very little capital, but I wanted to have the money required to be a big spender, for one night, enough to buy Johanna’s dinner. Friday night, in my mind, was rapidly blossoming into a romantic adventure of cinematic scale: two beautiful young people dressed in sexy eveningwear dining in a burgundy-lit Italian restaurant, sipping wine and making keen eyes across the table, before being whisked off, whisked off, to an uproarious party on Jay Gatsby’s lawn. So to finance this occasion I returned cans and bottles and sold my Super Nintendo to a kid down the block.

            When the big day came I began my ablutions two hours early. I took a long shower, paying close attention to areas normally overlooked. I washed behind my ears as I’d never done before, only heard of in admonition, and lovingly lathered my crotch with Garnier Fructis. Stepping out of the tub I ruffled the towel across my head vigorously, aiming to achieve a certain boyish, I’m clean but I just ran through a field look. I shaved my face with three-and-a-half well-placed strokes, creating a blank canvas on which for Johanna to brush her deep red lips. Then I began with the clothes.

            I held a pair of my typical blue boxer briefs and looked at them wearily, before throwing caution to the wind and opting for a looser, sexier short. Then I tiptoed to the basement, to the dryer, where I met with disaster: my all-important tan khakis were badly grass-stained. For a minute I was flustered and considered calling it a night, hiding in my bed and not answering to Johanna’s calls or text-messages. This course of action might have a positive long-term effect, I thought; she might be paradoxically attracted to my unexpected neglect. But I regained my composure and, with a stroke of ingenuity, rubbed white toothpaste into the khakis to bleach the distasteful green blemish. Alas this didn’t work; it just looked like I’d smeared toothpaste on my grass-stained pants. Eventually I decided that the spot wasn’t that noticeable, and in any case might add a devil-may-care element to my otherwise dapper look. Somewhat disenchanted I applied my Speed Stick, stuck two successive clean arms into long blue shirt sleeves, knotted a red-and-blue-patterned tie and then, the pièce de résistance, a gray and red-spotted tweed blazer. As I stood before the mirror, I spoke. “You’ve done it: you are the embodiment of sex.”

            In my eagerness I found myself driving past Johanna’s house early, intent on mastering the delicate workings of the automatic Toyota Corolla machine. Feeling out the controls, harnessing the smooth power of 1999 craftsmanship beneath my ass, I turned into the Flowerama lot to purchase a colorful, inexpensive bouquet. Then sitting there with the flowers propped up in the passenger seat, singing “I’ve been shooting in the dark too long, when something’s not right, it’s wrong,” I watched the clock.

            I arrived outside Johanna’s at exactly 6:30 and sent the perfunctory “I’m here” text-message. When she emerged from the house ten minutes later I was disappointed. She was dressed nicely in a white dress and she looked beautiful, but it was not what I had hoped for. I had hoped she would be wearing a deep-emerald dress, gold and blood-red jewelry, two more inches of height and much fuller breasts. Suddenly I was very aware of my tweed jacket which, I now realized, was somewhat outside the modern aesthetic.

            “Hi,” I began, bearing flowers, “I got these for you.”

            “Oh, thank you!” she said smiling. “Let me take them inside and put them in water.”

            I had pools of sweat under each armpit. I sat impatiently looking side to side and rubbing the grass-stain with my thumb until my pants began to fray. Five minutes later she was back; I pulled the car forward immediately.

            “I just got done Skyping Megan,” she said.

            “Oh, is she having a good time in Florida?”

            “Yeah, she said she’s having fun.”

            “Well, that’s good.” I was really on point; with each word I seemed to breathe the very essence of sex. “Where do you want to eat?”

            “Um, I don’t know.”

            “Wherever you want, anyplace, it’s your call.” I smiled at her obviously.

            “How about Olive Garden?”

            “Yeah, definitely.” It was a far cry from what I’d had in mind, some pricy little joint in Chicago or New York; I was prepared to make the trip.

            But instead I drove three miles north to the Olive Garden, where with good fortune we were seated right away. I removed the ugly, stifling jacket and hung it over the back of my chair, a move I regretted when I saw the big, damp blotches reaching down my sides. Nevertheless I ordered a hot coffee, hoping it would jog my brain into action producing charming witticisms and romantic remarks.

            “I had the weirdest dream last night,” she said, sticking with water. “Do you wanna hear it?”

            “Yes.”

            “Well I was like, watching The Parent Trap, but I was part of it, you know, part of the story—I was there.”

            “Yeah?” I asked, face brimming with interest.

            “Yeah. But it was different than The Parent Trap because the dad died at the beginning but then…at some point he was a big snake. Isn’t that weird?”

            “Yeah, that’s really weird. The Parent Trap wouldn’t be much of a movie if the dad died like that.”

            “Yeah,” she said, “I didn’t even think about that.”

            “I guess the weirdest dream I’ve ever had, that I remember well, anyway, I was like, swimming in the air”—I pantomimed my best breast-stroke—“above my sister’s bed, and the Brady Bunch were jumping on her bed trying to grab me.” I paused. “And damn, if I didn’t want to avoid those Bradys.”

            She didn’t laugh. “Yeah,” she said, like she knew exactly what I meant. I sipped my coffee.

            I ordered an expensive seafood medley, she ordered mac ‘n’ cheese from the kids’ menu, and we discussed with similar ardor our classes, our friends, and our respective plans for the weekend. I tried to coax her into a crème brûlée or a tiramisu, but she said she was full; she tried to pay for her meal but I insisted I cover it. When we left the restaurant it was just getting dark outside.

            Still hoping to realize some of my thought-dreams, I drove determinedly toward an old country road running parallel to the train tracks on the outskirts of town. It was along this road that my friends and I had spent many nights accelerating to unprecedented speeds of over 90 miles per hour, or daring each other to enter deserted, ramshackle old barns; to me the place reeked of manure and romantic mystery. I pulled off of this road into a small gravel lot to face the train hurtling past.

            “I love this place” I said, “My friends and I used to come here all the time. Some of them touched the moving train, but I was too scared”—Johanna looked straight ahead—“It’s so scary.” With that I lurched toward her, reaching across her body, and we began to make out.

            I was making out nicely, I had my left hand clasped over her bare right breast and she had fingers creeping steadily toward my crotch, when a beat up two-door pulled up alongside us. “Fuck,” I said as she clamored to readjust her bra. I backed the car up and drove away aimlessly.

            “I’m really tired,” she said stabbing my ears and wringing my brain.

            “Do you want me to take you home?”

            “No, no. I just got up so early because the birds were so loud. I like to listen to them sometimes.”

            That was a different kind of pain, heart wrenching. Bright white fireworks burst behind my eyes; a chorus of angels from my earlobes sang “I could stay with you forever, and never realize the time.” Without thinking I leaned over and kissed her, eyes splayed at an excruciating angle, one on her nose and one on the road. “Do you want to go back to my house?”

           

            I was wearing nothing but my looser, sexier shorts, and I had her panties off, fingering her. I was toiling away with my right hand, kissing passionately her face and thrusting lightly against her side. She reached down my shorts and took my dick in her hand, not by the shaft in her palm but just the glans, in a strong, three-fingered claw, as if trying to decapitate by manhood. I shied away quickly but pulled off my shorts, rolled on top of her, between her thighs.

            She reached down to give me a hand, but then started with an expression of apprehension. It registered and I sprung from the bed, excited, ready, and returned with a condom from my dresser drawer. I sat stark naked on the edge of the bed trying to roll on the condom, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I became aware of the oncoming need to urinate—damn that black coffee! As I struggled my dick was quickly deflating, being forced painfully into my groin, and bending, thickening up, as if it were malleable putty that could stretch here and flatten there. And I had to piss. Was the condom too small? Did I really need one of those Magnum SuperCocks? I’d always assumed those were more or less a marketing gimmick, the same size but meant for imbecilic jerks. Panicked, embarrassed and flaccid, I rose and stepped toward the door. “Sorry, I…” I addressed Johanna through the darkness, raising an index finger to indicate “one,” just one minute.

            I walked quickly to the bathroom, dropping the condom in the wastebasket. I fleetingly wondered if in my haste I’d tried rolling it on the wrong way. I considered the toilet. I could not piss in the bathroom and risk Johanna hearing the stream; the thought was too embarrassing to take. So I quietly descended two floors to the cruddy basement half-bath.

            I stood cold and flaccid in the musty cement basement, pissing endlessly, while two floors up Johanna lay naked, sexy and confused, wondering, as Marvin Gaye asked us, “What’s going on?” I started to laugh. The night was cinematic, as I’d hoped, but I was in the wrong kind of movie.

            I then walked slowly up the basement stairs and into the kitchen, playing with myself to regain the erection, laughing quietly. I stood pumping away, fearing someone outside might see me a through a window, when my dog Kingsley waltzed in wagging his whole ass and expecting me to play with him.

            “Go to bed!” I whispered, and then conceded some of the affection, scratching his ear with one hand while keeping the other on my dick. Now I was firm. “C’mon, King, let’s go to bed.”

            He followed me upstairs where I shut my bedroom door in his face. Dejected, he sauntered toward my father’s snores.

            I collapsed onto the bed and began kissing her face, keeping my midsection well-clear in resignation. But she reached out and took hold.

            I bowed my head. “Sorry,” I offered meekly.

            “It’s okay; just pull out in plenty of time.”

            We proceeded to position and reposition in an ill-fated love-scuffle, working and reworking but to no avail. My penis was engorged with blood, but my soul had been bled of its spirit.

            “It’s just because you’re big,” she said sympathetically. I was less than pleased, presuming she was trying to twist my obvious ineptitude into some kind of positive. I looked at her sternly.

            “Last weekend would have been good,” she said. “Last weekend would have been so good…”

            …So I beat off ceaselessly, borne back lustfully into last weekend.

Wish You Were Here

             One Saturday night, early in the semester, I walked alone to the local middle school track to test my fitness in a mile time trial. Sitting on the hard bleachers shaking my leg and drinking my coffee, I watched a shirtless college kid run repeat 70-second quarters. I timed him, of course, and was delighted to find his workout, for which he’d stretched so pretentiously, was well within my ability. After warming up and eyeing him down some more, I approached asking if he wouldn’t like to exchange contact information and run together sometime. We talked, I got his number, he left, and I managed a 4:40.

            Emboldened by these successes I made the decision I’d make friends, that very night, no matter what; and for assistance I turned to that old trusty tool, alcohol. But I didn’t plan to drink—no, my intentions were healthier and unequivocally kind. I planned to bicycle to two or three drugstores and steal three or four bottles of wine, which I would then present individually to kids on campus who appeared likely candidates for friendship. Who wouldn’t take to a guy like that?

            But I struck-out at the Walgreens and the first gas station; the next stop was only confirmation of what I already suspected: these places didn’t stock liquor in Carbondale, Illinois. I longed to be back in Eastern Iowa, God’s country, where you could go into a drugstore and walk out with a satisfying tautness to your waistband, where things made sense. Whose breast do I have to suck to steal a bottle of wine around here? I thought.

            Somewhat disheartened but never deterred, I now, in an impetuous change of plans, wanted to drink myself silly. I hit the downtown avenue sometimes called “the strip,” (complete with gay-bar and Dairy Queen), and entered the ABC Liquor Mart as casually as possible.

           

“What the hell were you thinking, you little punk?” said the strong-man, a full eight inches shorter than me. I stood petrified, thinking in a vague, desperate way, muted by panic, that since I hadn’t left the store I couldn’t get in trouble.

            “You’re an idiot. You’re a thief,” he said, jabbing me with the butt of the bottle as he gripped my right arm and steered me backward. “What did you think, you could just walk in here and take anything? Cameras, bud, cameras. You’re gonna have a great weekend in jail!”

            He pushed me against a cooler toward the front of the store, beside the register. I was a public spectacle. An overweight, orange-haired girl gave me a sympathetic shrug, an I could have simply bought it for you. A tall, drunk bearded twenty-something was less forgiving. He raised his pack of Swisher Sweets in hand and said, cruelly, “You should’ve just gone with these, bro—taken it easy” and he laughed joyfully, drunk off his head.

The strong-man, bald, in professional-wrestling t-shirt, laughed with him. “You didn’t even get anything good.” His fury had shifted to sadistic amusement.

“What did he get?”

“Fighting Cock.”

A wave of derisive laughter broke over me and a million fingers were fired my way. A burning spotlight was cast upon me, as the band struck-up in full. A monkey clanged his big brass symbols and I started melting to the floor.

The strong-man took my I.D. and told me to sit on my ass so I didn’t get any ideas, pulled up a chair and sat directly facing me while we waited for the police. My mind fired madly; I thought, maybe I can spring forth, pry my emasculated license from his stubby fingers, and fly out the door free into the night. But I knew it was hopeless. Even if I somehow surprised him and managed to seize my I.D., I would have to duck any potential good-Samaritans waiting in line to buy their sauce; even if I managed all that, he knew my name. I would have to live in fear, constantly checking over my shoulder for a bald head, for World Wrestling Entertainment apparel—and what kind of existence is that?

The cop arrived and I shortly learned that I would not have to go to jail; apparently, inexplicably, Iowa phoned back word of a clean legal record. The three of us, the strong man, the cop and I, retreated to the back room, where I got a firsthand look at the monitor that had been my undoing. My racing heart was met with some amount of healthy resignation and I opened up and talked freely; I was rather enjoying myself, now. We went through the obligatory paperwork and, as I’d suspected, we hit a minor snag when the cop learned I’d never actually left the store. The cop, a relatively kind man of indiscriminate outlines, who looked like every other cop, grimaced concernedly and inhaled air between his teeth.

“I’ll have to check,” he said, “It could be the case that he didn’t technically do anything wrong.”

They both turned to me. “Were you going to steal the bottle?” the cop asked plainly.

“Are you kidding? No, I wasn’t going to steal anything. Honestly, and I wanted never to have to admit this, I just enjoy putting things down my pants like that. It gets me off.”

They looked at me like they both wanted to beat me up, and I relented. “Yes,” I said, “Of course I was going to steal it. I was just kidding, I’m sorry.”

The strong-man looked tough and then split a reluctant smile, conceding some of his superiority. “I thought it was funny,” he said.

We all had a good time. I learned about several notorious Carbondale bums and alcoholics, some of whom were now banned from the liquor store—like me!—and the casual banter was only occasionally interrupted by inquiries.

“What was the brand, again?” the cop asked.

“I had the ‘Fighting Cock’ in my pants,” I mused, appealing to what I imagined their comic sensibilities. By the time I was fingerprinted I had added both the strong-man and the cop to my short-list of “Best Friends in Carbondale,” where they joined Mike, the runner.

“Have a good night,” the strong-man said when I was dismissed.

“Thanks, you too,” I said leaving.

“Have a good year,” he called.

I stuffed the citations in my underwear drawer and then hit the “Pinch Penny” liquor store, adjacent to the “Pinch Penny” bar. Looking around at the glimmering glass bottles, to the employees behind the counter, to the exits, it looked so easy, so tempting. But I thought better of it and instead accosted a nervous-looking young loner, who agreed to buy me two forties. I gave him ten dollars and waited for him outside, where he handed me a brown paper sack, with change, and walked off without a word.

“Hey man, can I bum a square?” a kid with gross tufts of facial hair asked me.

“Yeah, no problem;” I handed him a cigarette. I had bought a pack to make friends.

“Thanks a lot, man, really appreciate it” he said and walked off. I crossed the street holding the bag of beer to my chest, looked nervously over my shoulder and disappeared from view at the back of a car wash parking lot. There I tramped through a patch of wood and found my seat on a downed-tree overlooking a ditch. I played “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” by Bob Dylan on my cellphone, the one song I had, and cracked open the first forty.

Nine minutes later and half-way through my second forty, I threw up in the ditch. That was okay. I finished the second jeroboam cautiously, rose to my feet, and then immersed myself in the outdoor bar scene.

An eighties cover-band greedily clutching the tail-end their youths played cover songs of Journey and Whitesnake. Ordinarily I would have found this insufferable, but with some cheap beer in my stomach I was content just to stand there, smiling, and watch this cross-section of humanity. Occasionally I made an effort to reach out to someone, (Hey, I like your hat—want a cigarette?), but mostly I just looked at the people.

The stage was then vacated for the bikini contest. Of course, none of the participants were in bikinis, but rather their underwear, as they were just drunk girls at a sleazy bar. Sadly, most of the girls were quickly eliminated, and I was sorry to see them go. But my favorite contestant remained, and I made up my mind to support her wholeheartedly, as I’d never supported a candidate before—to donate to her campaign fund and canvas door-to-door on her behalf. Her breasts were glorious.

“Show us your tits!” the multitudes bellowed. “Whichever one shows their tits is gonna win,” remarked one particularly astute observer. I, on the other hand, when it was my girl’s turn to jiggle and wave, simply cocked my head back and roared furiously, baring my teeth, arms outstretched and veins pumping from my skin. My efforts were rewarded: for once in this mixed-up, crazy world, something went right, and my girl went home with five-hundred dollars.

Satisfied with my success, I escaped the swarming crowd to sit on a stone embankment at the outskirts of the bar’s enclosure. Blonde barmaids in little white shorts and lime-green bikini-tops milled about me peddling overpriced Busch Lights, and I bought a few, chain-smoking cigarettes. Finally and without much thought I rose and took my leave, stumbling a bit on the way back to my dorm. When I reached my building I found half a dozen students on the stoop, one of whom I recognized.

“Hey,” I said with the key halfway turned, “I paid for your dry-cycle once, right?”

“Yes, you certainly did. I appreciate it.”

“Can I bum a cigarette?” I asked. I had plenty in my pocket.

“For you, of course. What’s your name again?”

“Andy. And you…?”

“Brad.”

“D-D-D-DJ Bradblast” I said emphatically, suffering a mental lapse. DJ Dadblast hasn’t really “made it” this far south, yet, so any possible humor was lost here.

“No, I’m not a DJ—I just play the drums.”

We all sat smoking and listening to a portly Southern kid play guitar and harmonica. “Does anyone know the lyrics to ‘Wish You Were Here?’” he asked.

Shortly thereafter I lay in bed rubbing my feet together beneath the covers, drifting to sleep peacefully. I had done it. I had made new friends; my girl’s breasts had been crowned champions; I had led the chorus in an impassioned rendition of a timeless Pink Floyd gem. Everything was going my way.

Workshop Piece

I submitted this to be workshopped in my creative writing class. I didn't start working on it until the night before it was due, therefore, I decided to lift almost half of it from myself, which explains why you may have read some of it before, as well as its zany disjointed nature.

               

                I had been typing in the park all day. I was working on my next, most ambitious book, a factual retelling of The Bible. I had everything I needed to write set on the dusty orange-wood picnic table: my typewriter, my gin and my ice. The lone table was perched upon a sparsely wooded embankment with a view of clay tennis courts; I watched girls in short skirts hurry to and fro, crying passionately as they swung for the ball.

                As the day got on the world grew stiff and tired; the blazing sun beat town and I broke into a torrid salty sweat. The girls walked to the edge of the court with flushed faces, sipping from plastic water bottles and smiling congenially. Then they disappeared. The whole park dried up from exhaustion as people sought refuge from the thickening sky. But I remained posted, religiously, tap-tapping in a mad poetic fervor.

                The sun went down but the temperature didn't. I had drunk a fifth of Gordon's Extra Dry Gin, with no regard for the Slutski screening, and had begun to feel slighlty sloppy and rather out-of-my-mind dehydrated. Finally, upon the horrific apparition of an oversized overhead bird, I thought I'd had enough and shoved off for the evening.

                I strolled to the house where I sleep and keep my things. I had let Consuela, my cook and concubine, spend the weekend with her fast-dying husband and it was just as well: I was a better cook than her anyway. I ate linguine, fresh mussels and asparagus and sipped delicately from a glass of Andy Sauvignon. Then I summoned the courage to review the day's work. I was pleased and thought I had earned a whimsical respite, not the tortuous affair looming ahead of me--so I extracted two pills of ecstasy from my underwear drawer along with my best satin shorts.

                I exited the taxi at the base of a twisting smooth-cement drive, preferring to ascend on foot and gather my thoughts. I was well-fed, the air had cooled slightly, but I walked with apprehension. I was approaching the symbol of success for the entire adult-art industry. Leopold Slutski was the king--and this, The House That Come Built, was a veritable Versailles, complete with countless vaginal statues.

                Slutski had first gained international recognition exploring existential questions of implants and impotence. Since then he had become increasingly pretentious, shooting all his films in black and white using interracial pairings. His most recent release had been nearly three hours in length and shot entirely from inside, using a tiny dual camera and contraceptive of his own invention. No matter how far-out he reached, however, sacrificing content for technique, he was praised lavishly by critics and the community. He was so well-revered as to afford almost absolute freedom; accordingly, he elected to host these screenings at his own home-theater, so he could retire to his bedroom should inspiration arise.

                I was a relative nonentity, a hasty last-second addition to the guest list known mostly by my comedic first novel--the kind of juvenile work I wanted to leave in the dirt, the kind of mold I wanted to shatter. At the screening I would have to accept praise for a work I now hated, and criticism for my second, more serious novel--which surely pointed the direction my art was taking. As I strode heavily up the stairs before goliath double-doors, my stomach sunk for fear of the event I was about to endure.

                Inside my eyes met with an incomparable cavern, a room designed to resemble a magnificent, sparkling cave, illuminated only by stalactite-reflected candlelight and the starry wide window above. The walls were cragged and rocky, sloping inward toward what functioned as a circular skylight but which, from an aerial view, served as the areola of a giant female breast. The room was more or less bare; a heavyset bearded man I'd met somewhere before was hurrying a young girl across the floor and out of sight, causing her to stumble drunkenly over her heels, while a solemn house servant stood to my right watching me. I looked to him inquisitively and he gestured me to the right of the room--"This way, Sir."

                I followed his finger and entered a brightly-lit metallic room filled with stars of the adult industries. I recognized at once famous actors, actresses, directors, makeup artists, stuntmen, authors, poets, painters, musicians and historians, all dolled-up, like me, in their finest formalwear, milling about making idle conversation. Sweeping among them were midgets in spacesuits, carrying unrecognizable hors d'oeuvres on platters high above their heads.

                "He has a very modern conception of decoration, don't you think?" I would overhear in conversation. "Every room is a different theme, a different feel--has a different aura."

                "Yes, it's very kinky."

                Striding slowly, ever so casually across the gleaming silver floor, I was accosted by an hysterical blonde girl wearing a tiny red-sequined dress. "Are you Damien?" she exclaimed excitedly.

                "Excuse me?"

                "Damien--from the movie?"

                "Um, no--my name is Gene. And you are?"

                "I'm Jeanette" she said proudly, "And this is--Shelly!" she called obnoxiously to a nearby redhead in a gold-sequined dress, who quickly joined her, grinning. "This is Shelly. We're best friends."

                "I see. It's nice to me you. Were you in Slutski's new picture, then?"

                "Picture? Oh, movie. We were extras," Jeanette said, and turned to Shelly who nodded as if in confirmation. "I thought he was Damien. Doesn't he look like Damien?"

                "Who's 'Damien?'" I interjected.

                "He was the star of the movie. Only we don't know exactly what he looks like, because he wore a brown paper sack on his head. We all did."

                "Oh, but I look like him. Can you tell me what the picture's about?"

                "Um, I don't know. Nobody told us. I don't think anybody knows. It's an, uh, 'pictorial tribute to the future of New York fashion' or something."

                I left them standing there with a nod and a grimace and walked to the bar, where a spaceman poured me a healthy glass of gin. I stood beside the bar looking haughtily at all the well to do people, going in circles putting on airs and trying to impress each other.

                A notorious critic named Dave Cretin stepped in front of me, standing much too close and studying me through a fat and forested face. "I read your last book" is all he said, but I knew he was looking for a kind of explanation.

                "Well," I started, "Cock Puppet was written with too much an, I think, self-conscious literariness." But Cretin was already rushing away, saying "Is that Damien? I must speak with that young man."

                I was thoroughly low-down and desperate, so I tried my luck with a woman standing across the room. She was five-foot-eight, one-hundred and twenty-six pounds, with glossy brown hair, sharp classy cheekbones and breasts and ass that would make any father proud. I sauntered toward her coolly.

                "From across the room I couldn't help but notice your good child-bearing features, so I think we should entertain an idle and meaningless conversation to function as an adequate segue to animalistic copulation."

                She didn't even blink. "No, I don't think that's a good idea."

                "Oh?"

                "Not at all. If you couldn't tell from my outward appearance, I am completely and totally daft--wind blows in and out my ears. My one valuable commodity is my body which, if you haven't noticed, is unbelievable--and I plan to invest it in someone of better financial standing. Thank you."

                I bowed courteously, reading by a subtle body language that I was being rejected. I returned once more to the bar, and then excused myself stealthily onto the back patio.

                I found myself standing alone at the edge of uncertainty; I could hardly see my reflection in the backyard pool. I stood isolated between two polar extremes, both of which I found shameful: on one side, big-budget musical adaptions of the Kama Sutra--on the other, the pretentious sterility of filmmakers like Slutski. I desired, almost hopelessly, to return the human element and a literary sensibility to sexual intercourse.

                I stood staring in self-assessment for some time. When I looked back I saw, through small circular windows like those of a ship's lower deck, the crowd of celebrities being ushered toward Slutski's home-theater as space-midgets tidied up in their wake. I made no rush to follow. I sensed I had seen the film many times before, and feared I would sit through it many times yet. I felt a hundred times alone.

                I was not alone in the pool. I had disrobed and entered the dark shimmering water slowly, gently, so as to not disrupt its cool, perfect mystery. I quietly splashed water first over my forearms, then my shoulders, chest and neck—I heard a girl's short stifled laughter. I surveyed my rich verdant surroundings with a sharp, staring-gaze and caught a rustling fly-trap and a flash of bare skin. Then she revealed herself to me: a slender gold fox with a quiver in her smile and a fire in her eyes.

                She carried her naked body as if it made no difference—as if she had been born naked. In her I saw an exploding vitality absent in Consuela and a sparkling adroitness missing from the bimbos at the screening; prismatic rays of effervescent heat shot between us at pulse-quickening speeds and I knew I had to fuck her.

                "Hello" I said coolly. "Are you with Slutski?"

                "No," with a coy smile, "but I live here."

                Her ambiguous answer spoiled my nonchalant countenance; she smiled wider and gestured me toward her. I half-swam, half-trudged toward her ethereal form; she turned calmly toward the pool’s edge, found it in three graceful strokes, and deftly hoisted herself from the water. I followed her wordlessly.

                Marigold hair clung dripping all the way to her backside, which was mindboggling in both its shape and movement. I stared lustfully as I stepped closer and, for a moment, there was nothing in the world but that bulbous piece of flesh. Her entire body was uniformly bronzed. She stepped without apparent purpose and brushed branches aside as naturally as anything; she didn’t have to try—she was purpose; she didn’t have to live—she was life itself. I loved her then.

                She stopped and pivoted toward me, cocking her head to the left to indicate direction. What I saw was the most resplendent picture, as eye-evoking as the phantom herself—a jungly makeshift mattress of dirt, sticks, leaves and ferns. 

                “You live here,” I echoed dumbly. She nodded.

                We made love in her bed. The setting, the circumstance, and her astonishing sexual technique kindled in me a primeval fire; our delirious cries pierced the vespertine silence. We were like Adam and Eve fucking around in a capitalist Eden. Afterward we held each other buried beautifully in the dirt. Then we arose together, holding hands, and walked straight into the pool.

                I had forgotten about the ecstasy but now I excused myself to retrieve it from my dress-pants. When I returned I was alarmed to find my lover standing beside the pool stroking the feathers of the phantasmal pheasant from hours before. It had not been hallucinatory: the pheasant was nine feet tall and appeared fully capable of killing us. I stood stock-still and terrified, but Marigold laughed. Cautiously I extended a hand to pet the overgrown bird and it cooed its appreciation. Then Marigold took my hand assertively and we climbed dripping and naked onto the pheasant’s back.

                “Can pheasants fly well?” I asked.

                “Khalil can.” She said.

                I had ridden on planes, trains, and hot air balloons, but never a giant pheasant. Its wings beat mightily as we elevated, whooshing freely into the clear black overhead. I saw the colossal breast below and now felt pity for its occupants. They had more money than me but lived in a world of their own invention. I rode beside a golden fox; I saw the world sprawling before me limitless and wonderful, everything an adventure to be had, feeling liberated now to live and work on my own terms. I held Marigold closer as the pheasant increased its speed.

                We swallowed the ecstasy and soared southward. We leaned precariously from the bird’s back, staring in wonderment at the murky blue fields below. I mark that as the night I learned everything is better from the back of a pheasant. I felt the joy coming up my throat, choking me gladly, and I howled at the silver moon.

                We floated on euphoria until I had lost all sense of direction--and time, which seemed trivial. Then once again we saw Slutski's palace. I watched as Marigold gently rubbed Khalil's back and, kissing him sweetly, plucked an elephantine golden-brown feather from the base of his neck. "Thank you, Khalil" I said cordially, and my love and I clutched the feather and slid lightly from our friend. We descended slowly on the wind toward the sprawling front lawn below. We were dry now, and rather chilly, so we made mid-air love to stay warm. We were headed directly for two persons kissing each other on the grass--the ditzy extra, Jeanette, and the critic Dave Cretin--and by the time they saw us it was too late. The girl managed to take three steps out of the way but we flattened Dave Cretin to the dirt.

                "WHAT THE FUck--WHAT THE FUCK" Jeanette screamed.

Amateur Novelization of the Movie "Love Actually"

            I just happened into the Common Grounds coffee shop right off campus and, oh my God, the most beautiful girl works here, and I don't know if I'll ever leave.

She has slender arms and neck and a jarring kind of collarbone under a blouse flowery in both its pattern and fit. Her legs are slim, too—but she still has an ass, and breasts are apparent despite the loose hanging flowers, despite the otherwise perfectly lithe figure. There's no wasted flesh on this one.

            Her face is bright and striking and speaks kind words and whispers truths like the-secret-of-life-is-love—and who could deny that to stare in those eyes for eternity would be the best possible fate, and to have sex with that body while doing so would be even better.

            She walks around the corner to rub-down a table with a wet rag, and I look up from my coffee to stare, to study, and to wonder. I watch as her kinky brown ponytail bobs a bit from the back of a baseball cap—an understated adornment, a public cover of her soul's complexities, no doubt—or perhaps a perfunctory feature of her professional ensemble. I look downward, linger, look down her contoured calves and ankles to her feet where she dons what look like Converse All-Stars, but they're not Converse All-Stars, but something much better; something so subtly high-fashion—subtly expensive, I'm sure—they can only be found in certain big cities at certain chic stores and, even still, only if you know who to ask about the back room.

            Her face, sure, is reminiscent here-and-there of so-and-so, such-and-such a beautiful girl, but to simplify a face—a face so stunning, so invigorating to the soul as to implicate the existence of a soul—to a mere compromise of "X" and "Y" would be to commit such a devastatingly crude and immoral crime as to render me unfit to glance at the eyes. This girl was certainly conceived someplace beyond parents.

            She is probably twenty-two years old, though; she probably has a car and a nice apartment here in town—maybe a boyfriend, too. She probably has a twenty-two year old grad-school boyfriend who wears tight fitting plaid flannels year-round and has gauged ears, and is the foremost authority on obscurity—it’ll be his thesis, in fact. Or, Heaven forbid, I hope to Hell no, he's some douchebag with shorts below his knees.

            How could I stand a chance in the face of all that—against the likes of those two? I eye myself up and down and see I'm in a two-day-old outfit; I see my reflection in my laptop and the black crescent moons, the short haircut my mom clipped for me, and the pervading look about my brow and eyes and lower lip: like an uncertain freshman, which is what I am.

            Unwilling to give up, I scowl a bit more and look disinterested in my surroundings. I turn a page of the hard-bound book I'm reading, which appears rigidly and horrifically academic—perfect for this persona—and I solemnly sip my black coffee. Its surface reflects no light.

            Well, after that initial trip to Common Grounds I made myself a fixture, all the time cultivating this terribly intriguing image of Intellectual, Disinterested, Coffee-Drinker. My hair grew longer and my clothes became more stylish, more flannel—at the heighth of fashion, you might say—as I devoured books and scribbled furiously week after week in small hardbound notebooks or, when I wanted to make a real statement, on loose-leaf, scraps, or the cardboard sheaths from steaming black coffees.

            More and more this angelic little devil began to notice me; as I sighed, frustrated, rubbing my hand through my hair and glancing around the room with all the boredom I could muster, I saw her more than once staring at me abstractedly with her lips just slightly parted.

            Eventually the fall got on and the campus turned autumnal; I trekked the daylight through Thompson Woods with shoulders hitched toward my ears and my teeth clenched in audible it’s-brisk inhalation. My once stylized academic, coffee-drinking persona had become very much who I was; having arrived at Southern Illinois with no identity, all it took was a divine face and figure to provoke an obsession and steer me toward erudition. I was outspoken and pretentious in my classes but, I’d like to think, I backed up my talk with impressive performance: I was batting four-point-oh and had heralded the recognition of my peers—as the pompous ass you love to hate, like a literary sports team that always wins.

            After Anthropology 104 let out with a big breath of excitement I’d rush over to Common Grounds, for two or more hours of exalted absorption of Melville, Hawthorne and Beecher Stowe. By late October I’d torn through the entire “Major American Writers” curriculum and been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books. Having completed all my immediate class assignments, I was busily writing an essay entitled “Life Doesn’t Imitate Art, It Imitates Bad Television” comparing conflicts in the movie Husbands and Wives to what personal turmoil Woody would soon endure, for my own reasons, when she, the most attractive girl alive, nervously asked me out for a date. That is to say she asked me on a date.

            Not knowing what to do, I scoffed. “Yes, I’d love to,” I recovered, still sneering. Twenty minutes later we were walking toward her apartment which she shared with her ex-boyfriend Cal, who, she made clear, was nothing more than a friend if even that.

            I talked in big language and drew myself up to my almost six-three, and when she eyed me there was a sparkle there. Her nose and cheeks were chilled rosy red and I thought for an instant I might collapse beneath her beauty as we strode the short distance to her red-brick apartment.

            Her name changed twice during that walk. By the time we arrived at her door I called her Olive—maybe the best name I could think of.

            It was then she put on Blonde On Blonde, and we smoked a joint in the sparsely furnished living room. We talked, talked, passed, and as quickly as I got stoned my pretentions unraveled into rambling neurotic monologues. She was very quiet sitting with a pleasant smile and low, glazed eyes that bore no ill-effect on her attractiveness but—was it possible?—made her even more endearing. Then there was a key at the door and in came Cal—Cal, who upon conceiving I knew I’d ultimately hate—Cal, who was slight of build, with a light brown beard and just too charming a smile.

            “What’s up, man?” he said so casually, before disappearing down the hall.

            “That’s Cal,” Olive said.

            “Yeah.”

            He returned with his own pot and paraphernalia saying “Hey man, do you smoke?”

            “Yeah—I mean, I’m already pretty high”—dipping my head toward Olive as if to indicate where and when this came about. “But if you’re offering…”

            The three of us sat passing a pipe. “Do you smoke a lot?” Cal asked. “No, not really—mostly I drink.”

            “Why, man? Drinking’s so much worse for you.”

            “Yeah…yeah, I drink to forget.”

            He scoffed. “Forget what?”

            “It’s funny,” I said, completing the classic bit, “I can’t remember, so I guess it must be working.”

            Olive coughed loudly and covered her mouth with her one free hand, blushing, laughing, coughing—beaming at me. Cal sat with annoyance sketched across his face.

           

            If love dissipates the second you begin to analyze it, then, accordingly, Olive and I were careful not to appraise our lust. It was perhaps the strangest relationship I have ever been in in that we avoided all the basic framework of close interpersonal relationships. She didn't know, for instance, my parents' names, my friends from home, my biggest aspirations, or, unbelievably, how old I was. She never asked. I liked to think that some arbitrary number of planetary cycles was trivial in our more mature relationship, but this was probably an unreal rationalization. More likely, I think, I avoided these basic points because I knew I could never really be with this beautiful coffee clerk.

            The basis of our relationship instead was a simple give and take: she invited me to parties; I brought hard liquor and a sardonic wit.

            “Mother,” I’d say, spontaneously, drunkenly launching into a character, “The black kids here smoke marijuana. Just watching them mill about in their oversized—bloomers—makes me feel disreputable and unclean. What a shame how they sacrifice identity to, to—basketball hoops, and cancerous vegetation. For God’s sake, Mother, I couldn’t tell my very roommate from any other member of the, uh, black persuasion if he robbed me at gunpoint!” Then I’d recede sheepishly into some quiet corner of the room, to nothing more than chuckles, or annoyance, mostly—but always a look of adoration from Olive, for my improvisational prose talents.

            “Most wine connoisseurs agree that 2009 was the best year since, well—’32, of course” I’d begin. “Wait, really?” “No” I’d continue, removing the twist-off metal cap, “You’ll notice a subtle corky flavor—don’t be alarmed by that. Made from only the finest grapes plucked from the verdant hills of Winesburg, Ohio, Purple Cow is a bold, lusty wine sure to make you dance and sing!”

            And this was my way at these parties until, invariably, Olive got me alone and we together enacted my daydreams.

            When it came to the-two-of-us she was overtly coy, I could say; she would grow quiet and detached from everyone at a party, myself included, before quickly exiting alone—to where one could only imagine. A few minutes later she would walk wordlessly back and gesture for me to join her, or simply take my hand and lead me away, as if the brief disappearance had voided her from the heads of the other houseguests—as if she’d become invisible. Before long I learned to follow her on cue, and we’d retreat to someplace, anyplace, anyplace we could think of to make love.

            She was a seemingly telepathic lover: depending on my moment’s particular want she played either meek and defenseless or aggressive and domineering. We would have sex for hours in endlessly imaginative positions as my hands and mouth made the impossible effort to keep pace with desire and impulse. One second I was glancing over her back to where her hair hung down, hands on her ass, and yes, the very next I was thrusting passionately across her chest, occasionally kissing her left breast. Immediately she was on top.

            And sometimes there were threesomes with girls I knew from home.

            But our relationship was damned by structural instability and as surprisingly as it had started it was bound to stop. It all fell apart at an anachronous Halloween party—it had grown cold so long ago, so far south, and we’d been fucking so regularly for so long it could never have been Halloween. But I wanted then to dress her in costumes, so it was.

            I dressed her as a sexy cat. I dressed myself as a football star. I threw the party at Cal’s close friend’s house whose name, for whatever reason, was K-E-L-L-Y-N—“Kellyn.”

            But upon arriving at Kellyn’s house I saw Olive and Cal sitting secluded on a couch chatting abstractedly; I had a sinking feeling of disappointment and I knew instantly what was happening, what had to happen, the only thing I knew to happen: I was being forgotten in favor of another boy. I looked at them and then pivoted, suddenly self-conscious of standing strangely in the center of the room. Kellyn was standing right before me, four feet tall, dressed as a giant pumpkin.

            “Hey man, I’m Kellyn” he said extending a palm.

            “Yeah, I know” I said bitterly, begrudgingly shaking his little hand.

“Who invited you?” he asked, grinning insanely, masturbating furiously.

“Olive and Cal.”

“Ah, my main man, Cal! He’s getting it in tonight, don’t you think?” Kellyn tossed a thumb toward the couch, where Olive and Cal were having violent sex.

“Yes, I guess he is.” I was tired. I was tired of the way the year had turned. So instead of staying there I made love to Olive, one last time, with her still in cat costume.

The stereo in my head began blaring as her whiskers quivered in ecstasy: “Beat the pussy up—beat the pussy up.”

I start laughing. I shake my face off the brim of the cup and finish my cold coffee. I gather my things together and take one more look at the nameless coffee clerk. “Jesus Christ, that girl’s hot” I think. I get up and walk out into the oppressive August heat, singing to myself, “I really did try to get close to you…”