Peaches

(The following piece contains sexual situations featuring people old enough to be your grandparents. You have been warned :-)

“Old man, you so crazy,” Mary said laughing in that full-bodied way that she did when she was truly amused. Even as she was protesting the sudden “assault” she instinctively reached down and turned off the burners on the stove. She was just about to start cooking dinner when Micah had “attacked” her.

Micah smiled devilishly and pressed a little more tightly against Mary’s back. “Got that right, old woman,” he replied, the gravelly rumble of his voice low and husky and earnest. Micah had slipped behind his wife and seized her plump body in a full bear hug. He had nuzzled her neck and worked his crotch against her delightfully round and warm buttocks. He had brought his hands up around her belly and let them cup her full breasts with willful abandon.

Micah nuzzled Mary’s neck, letting the soft bristle of his unruly beard tickle her in that way that made her tingle from her head to her toes. He kissed his way up towards her ear, inhaling the potent mix of her own womanly musk mixed with the soft rosewater she liked so much, and began to hum softly.

Mary felt herself shudder and she closed her eyes. After all these decades, she thought, the old man still could make her melt like a schoolgirl with her first real crush. The grip of his rough, gentle, calloused, caressing hands on her breasts still made her whole body go flush and expectant.

Micah began to sing into her ear…”I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree”…and they both laughed in that heady, amorous way that they had so many times since the first time they spotted each other across the room at that party so many years ago.

“You too old to be messin’ around like this, Micah Harris,” Mary said in mock-protest, a smile still on her lips and her eyes still closed.

“Ain’t never gon’ be that old, girl,” Micah replied in a husky whisper. “Not as long as I got you.” He nibbled at her earlobe and then began to sing once more, “…really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree…”

Mary sighed and snuggled back into her husband’s comforting, arousing embrace. “What brought this on, old man?” she said, finding her voice despite the breathlessness that she was experiencing. “You been watchin’ that porno channel again?”

“Don’ need no porno channel, woman!” Micah huffed in mock-indignation. “I got me a big ol’ fine gal like you to mess around with, I don’ need nothin’ but that to get me as hot and bothered as a sissy in a C.C. camp…”

Mary laughed heartily at the ancient reference. “You don’t even know what that means,” she teased.

“Know as much as I need to,” he said petulantly, “and that’s all that’s important to me right here and right now…”

Micah released his grasp and turned Mary around. “It ain’t the words that matter, after all now is it?” He put his arms around her waist and drew her close.

“No,” Mary agreed, “now that you mention it, it isn’t …”

And then they kissed…in the meaningful, passionate way that people of a certain age did…no tongues flailing wildly against her other but lips, full and warm, pressing, soft and then hard and then soft again, lips parted just so. They kissed as two people who had fallen in love at first glance still did decades after that first meeting. They kissed as two people sharing sweet, eternal, soul-satisfying energy together did.

“You so crazy, old man…” Mary sighed passionately, reaching up to stroke Micah’s face.

“Yep,” Micah agreed, taking her hand and leading her away from the stove, “still so crazy about you, gal…”

Mary, realizing where he was intending on taking her, resisted half-heartedly. “Micah Harris!” she said, half-aroused, half-scandalized, “We can’t be doing stuff like this in the middle of the day!”

“Stuff like what?” Micah said mischievously as he continued to lead her through the house towards their bedroom.

“You know very well what I’m talkin’ about, old man!” she snapped playfully. “We ain’t kids no more…we can’t be goin’ and…you know…in broad daylight…”

Micah stopped and took his wife’s face in his hands. “We can do anythin’ we want, Mary girl,” he said tenderly. “I love you…and you still make my old pecker hard as a rock…we old, gal, we ain’t dead…” Micah let his hands slip down and cup Mary’s soft behind. He ground his hips against hers, letting her feel the stiffness of his member beneath his trousers. “Don’t even need no Viagra when I got a fine gal like you to stoke my fire,” he said in heated triumph.

Mary felt herself go even warmer and she smiled shyly. “You gon’ be the death of me, Micah Harris…”

They kissed again, passionately, deeply, tenderly. And then they looked into each other’s eyes and smiled like they had smiled into each other’s eyes a million times before.

Mary took Micah’s hand and led him through the door of their bedroom.

Micah smiled and followed her eagerly. He began to hum again as he watched Mary start to unbutton her blouse. “…really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree…” he sang humidly as he unbuttoned his own shirt.

Me and The Roman

The Roman’s man put a gun to my right temple and held it there.

Chester Roman…known rather unimaginatively on the street as ”The Roman”… sat staring impassively from a plush leather chair that was quite incongruous in the abandoned warehouse. “We’ve been here for over an hour now and I’m done with this shit. You’re gonna tell me what I want to know or you’re gonna die in the next ten seconds. It’s your choice, Richie.”

I swallowed hard. The ropes binding my wrists behind my back were cutting into my flesh and, oddly enough, the pain from that made me feel more alive than I had in a long, long time. “We all die, Mr. Roman…that’s part of the deal. Threatening to kill me is meaningless since I know from your boy here that that’s exactly what you’re going to do anyway no matter what I tell you. I can’t choose how I’m going to die…you’ve got the guns and shit…but I can choose how I’m going to live. And I’m not going out on my knees and I’m going out a rat. Do what you gotta do…”

I hoped I sounded more cocky and confident than I felt…my heart was beating so fast that I thought it was going to literally burst…I really did not want to die that night in that dank warehouse.

The Roman glared at his man. “What the hell did'ya say to him, Bobby,” he demanded.

Bobby swallowed harder than I had. “Nothin’, boss,” he lied, “I was just bustin’ his balls a bit is all…”

“Idiot,” Roman snarled, “how many times I gotta tell you not to overplay your hand?!” He turned his attention back to me. “And you, smart guy, there are worse things than death…Bobby here is a jackass but he does know a lot about those things if you catch my drift…”

It occurred to me that my employer…Mr. Charles Robinson…didn’t really deserve the level of loyalty that he demanded. But it didn’t matter…I was a man of my word to the end…my Daddy didn’t give me much but he did beat into me the need to be a stand up guy no matter what. “I understand, Mr. Roman,” I said softly. “But I still got nothing to say.”

The Roman hauled his girth out of the chair with an almost bestial grunt and came across the floor and stood face to face with me. His breath smelled like chicken, garlic, and beer. “Those are some big balls you got on you, son,” he said with a wry smile. “You really gonna die to protect somebody who wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire?”

I sighed softly, wondering when my life was supposed to flash before my eyes, and pushed back the urge to chuckle ruefully. “Looks that way, Mr. Roman,” I said barely believing that I had said it out loud…and stunned that it was indeed true.

The Roman stared at me for a long moment…I held my breath waiting for him to give Bobby the order to blow my brains out…and then, quite suddenly, he laughed heartily. “Jesus H. Christ, Richie, you just cost me a thousand bucks!” he said walking away. “Charlie told me that you wouldn’t break…I should’ve believed him, I guess.” He continued to laugh as he picked up his hat. “Cut ‘im loose, Bobby, and let’s get the hell outta here.”

Bobby used a pocket knife to cut my bonds. “Had you goin’ there, didn’t we?” he said with a chuckle as I rubbed my sore wrists.”

“This was some kind of test?” I asked the Roman.

“Kinda, I guess,” the Roman said as Bobby helped him put on his suede overcoat. “Mostly it was bet…me and Charlie get bored sometimes now that the war is over and nobody’s fighting over territory.”

“And Mr. Robinson won this…bet…?”

“Yeah,” the Roman said as he turned to walk away, “that sonofabitch knows his guys.” He paused and then said, “You’re a good man, Richie,” he said, without looking back, as he disappeared through the doorway, “if you get tired of workin’ for Charlie look me up.”

The door slammed shut and I stood there in the darkness thinking about how this craziness was my life. I stumbled over and sat in the chair the Roman had left behind…I lit a cigarette and laughed for a long time before I went out into the night again.

And...

And we thought things like that only happened in movies…and in Paul Simon songs. We smiled…warily, nostalgically…awkwardly trying to decide if it was okay to reach out and touch each other as our respective groups of companions…eyeing us knowingly… faded into the cool darkness of the crowded club and we were, as far as we were concerned, alone together.

And we hugged…self-consciously…the contours of our bodies fitting together the way they used back when we were in love, and smiled at each other looking for…and finding…the embers of affection that remained after the fire of passion had been quenched by time and circumstance, betrayal and disappointment.

And we danced…the murmur of the crowd and the thunder of music being too loud to allow for words…the way we used to when our hearts were in sync and our longing was freely shared and gloriously intoxicating. We danced and smiled and forgot, for a moment, that we were no longer lovers…no longer even friends.

And we kissed…tenderly, wistfully…in the middle of the club, in the middle of the dance…drinking softly of the sweet wine of each other’s familiar lips…and, for a moment, we were more than friends again, we were more than even lovers again.

And then the moment passed.

And we separated…our fingertips lingering in an eternal instant of electric communion before we moved back into the cocoons of our respective groups of companions and let the crowd sweep us away from each other.

And we glanced over our shoulders…our eyes twinkling with golden sparks of nostalgia, humidity, forgiveness, and resignation…and then let the night take us back to our separate worlds.

...and on some days...

And on some days the words flow freely…tumbling unabashedly one upon the other until pages and chapters are given life at an almost breakneck pace.

After a few days of not being in touch with my muse because of yet another family emergency…the preceding generation of my family always seemed invulnerable and immortal to me but, of course, they are not…I returned to my desk…to my novel of family interaction…and the words seem so anxious to get out that they often threatened to outpace my fingers on the keyboard.

Watching the end…and yes, the end is definitely in sight…come into focus…coming to grips with the fact that being true to the story means that one of my favorite characters has to die despite the fact that I dread writing that scene…feeling the words flow from my fevered psyche through my fingers and onto the screen…I am filled with bursts of excitement, trepidation, and fulfillment. And ain’t it grand.

I’ve written for the better part of 9 hours…with the dog (Autumn) and two of the cats (Bart and Mr. Gambino) taking turns being quiet company on the floor near my desk…with Emmylou Harris, Cassandra Wilson, Julieta Venegas, Nellie McKay, Elvis Costello, and Allen Toussaint serving as the inspirational soundtrack for the day…with a scant few minutes taken out to make lunch out of some leftover tuna salad from the refrigerator…and I’m done.

For now anyway (one never knows what’s going to happen after supper :-)

America Sings

America doesn’t always live up to its promise. But its promise is still something worth striving for…worth dreaming of…worth fighting and dying for if need be. I am a cynical patriot but I am indeed a patriot and no one can gainsay that fact.

Blind, unthinking loyalty to anything or anyone is a fool’s path; knee-jerk disavowal of everything this country thinks it is...everything this country wants to be…is also a fool’s path. As with most things in this world, the truth lies somewhere in between strident, inflexible extremes…this is certainly true here in America…our generous, arrogant, naïve, myopic America...our hard-hearted and inflexible, open-minded and open-hearted America… our complex , often marvelously and infuriatingly so, America.

Here in the 21^st Century, America is looking for its way…we’re fighting wars on distant soils and building walls on our borders…we’re reeling still from the knowledge that our shores are not immune from terror and chaos and sudden brutal deaths by the score; we are a nation united by history, hubris, and hope…we are a nation fractured along ever-fluid lines of politics, race, religion, pride, and culture.

We are America…for better and for worse…in times of peace and in times of war…in times of joy and pride and in times of sorrow and shame…in times when the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) celebrates us and in times when the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) reviles us.

We are America…the sons and daughters of many distant lands…the sons and daughters of adventurers and outcasts…the sons and daughters of slaves and freedmen…the sons and daughters of visionaries and madmen, of pirates and craftsmen, of warriors and peacemakers, of saints and scoundrels, of builders and destroyers, of emancipators and bigots, of heroes and villains…the sons and daughters of uncommon wizards and countless everyday folk…

We are America…we don’t always live up to our promise…maybe we never will completely…but it’s our birthday and attention must be paid just the same.

In the cool, soothing twilight,
In the soft, warm glow of the dawning sun,
America sings…

We sing of joy and hope, of pain and forgiveness,
We sing of sins gone but never forgotten,
Of sins to come, ready to be weathered and overcome.

We sing of bright souls lost and redemption found,
We sing of blood spilled and new life a-borning,
Of life renewing, ripe and fertile and eager to soar.

In the bittersweet shadow of our history,
In the burnished glow of complex days to come,
America sings…

We sing of our days of glory, our dreams of tomorrows,
We sing of peace from war, liberty from chaos,
Of passion never-ending, God’s grace blessing us all.

In the cool, soothing twilight…
In the shadow of our history…
America sings…
“…God shine His grace on thee…”

Happy Birthday, y’all.

Namaste.

Black Hole Blues

Apparently there's a black hole somewhere in my house.

So far this week that black hole has swallowed up my favorite pen, my cell phone, a scrap of paper with a phone number I want, two edited pages of a manuscript I'm working on, last week's issue of Entertainment Weekly, and an almost full pack of Extra watermelon-flavored gum and deposited them into another dimension somewhere far outside the scope of all of my mortal senses.

As in the past I presume the black hole will spit them back out come laundry day but for now I wish my things well in whatever alternate universe they are now dwelling in (well, except for the gum...which is cloying and kind of vile and doesn't have to return if it doesn't want to...)

Fathers' Day

Sons…Fathers…Grandfathers…

I belong, in one way or another, to each of these groups.

My father was not around (by his choice) during most of my childhood but I am his son just the same (he had no affinity for the day-in, day-out trials and tribulations of parenthood…I allowed the formation of a different relationship between us in my adulthood, long past the time when I needed or wanted a father but not past the time when he wanted and needed me to be his friend.)

I have no biological children but I have children just the same (I put in the heavy lifting of helping with puberties and teenaged rebellions and the journeys into adulthood and the like and am thus counted by three precious souls as being a father despite not sharing blood with any of them.)

I have a granddaughter who melts my heart every time she calls me “Papa” and a grandson who is filled with an abundance of life and laughter.

Sons…Fathers…Grandfathers…

In the way of too many men, many important things between these groups go unsaid…go taken for granted…thus has it been…thus, perhaps, shall it always be…

Happy Father’s Day…to all of us who are sons and fathers and grandfathers…

Betty or Veronica?

The walk home from school took a half-hour or so (depending on how motivated we were on any given day) giving Bobby and I plenty of time to talk about the plethora of things that tickled our curiosity. One conversation came up…in differing permutations (the names changed but the intent remained)…a bit more often than the most.

“Betty or Veronica?”

I shrugged at first, I only read Archie comics when there weren’t any more super-hero comics in the spinner rack at the drug store. “Betty, no doubt,” I said resolutely. “She’s so sweet and Veronica is a spoiled brat. Archie is a dope not to see that.”

“Well you’re right that Betty is sweet…and cute. But Ronnie has all that dough…”

“Money ain’t everything, Bob,” I said, though I had to admit that my conviction was a bit lacking. “Kato or Karate Kid?”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “That’s too easy. Dude, Kato would kick Karate Kid’s butt so fast it wouldn’t even be funny. Superman or Spider-Man?”

I chuckled. “Talk about easy, Superman.”

Bobby looked at me incredulously. “Are you nuts? Superman is a big boring boy scout who can do anything! What kind of a stupid power is ‘super-breath’ anyway??? Spidey is a kid like us!”

I shook my head. “Spider-Man is always whining. He’s got all of those powers and yet he’s always crying about this or that. It’s boring.”

“That’s what makes it real!” he said. “Marvel’s heroes all have problems and they still get the work done. That’s what makes them cool! That’s what makes them real!”

“I don’t want my super-heroes to be ‘real’, Robert,” I said patiently. “I want my super-heroes to get in there and get the job done without all of the whining. Superman and Superboy and the Flash and the Teen Titans and all of those guys are too busy stopping super-villains to worry about whining about how hard their lives are!”

Bobby sighed. “You just don’t get it, man.”

“Guess not,” I said knowing that, yet again, we weren’t going to agree on that particular point. “Lois or Lana?”

Bobby weighed his options. “Hmm, I’m gonna go with Lana…redheads are cute. Gwen or Mary Jane?”

“Mary Jane,” I said with a sly smile. “She’s cooler…and redheads are cute. Aquaman or Sub-Mariner?”

“Give me a break, Sub-Mariner…it ain’t even close. Supergirl or Wonder Girl?”

We looked at each other and smiled. We nodded and, at the same time, we both said, “Wonder Girl!” with satisfied smirks on our faces. We walked on, the subject of discussion flowing seamlessly to the relative merits of long division as we rounded the corner that led to Bobby’s house.

Guy

Today would have been my brother, Guy’s 48^th birthday. My brother loved me fiercely sometimes while we were growing up. My brother hated me fiercely sometimes while we were growing up (I don’t really blame him for that…he suffered the indignity of “why aren’t your more like your big brother” more often than I would have probably been able to handle.) Mostly, he loved me…he was proud of me…he wanted me to fly to places he’d decided he would probably never fly to.

My brother Guy was exasperating and needy and he had terrible tastes in friends and addictive behaviors. I loved him fiercely sometimes while we were growing up. I hated him fiercely sometimes while we growing up.

I don’t know if that’s the way of all brothers but it was the way of my brother and I.

My brother Guy died in 1992…a bitterly unsurprising overdose…and today…today would have been his 48^th birthday.

the night

You shouldn’t be here. You know that.

But you are here and it’s too late to turn back. Your searing blood is pounding in your head… your thundering heart seems ready to leap out of your chest…your resolve is threatening to fail you at any given instant.

The night is silent…nary a creature stirring in the impassive moonlight…the night is damp and thick and hungry…your fear is a palpable thing…your courage is waxing and waning with each wary, hopeful step…you shouldn’t be here…you know that…and yet here you are…

The breathing…steamy, pungent, casually edacious, filled with unnerving concupiscence…startles you without being a true surprise…you knew it was coming…you prayed it wasn’t coming…it was the reason you pushed past rationality and came out into the dead of the still night.

You had to know. You had to come here. The breathing envelopes you and you curse yourself, a fool.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Your throat is as starkly arid as the Sahara and yet you are still somehow able to croak out a reply. “I know. But I had to come. I had to know.”

“And now you do.”

You swallow hard. You fight back tears. You wonder if there is some bargain to be made. You silently plead for the intercession of a god you have long ignored. You close your eyes as the darkness touches you and draws you in. You shouldn’t be here. “I just wanted to know.”

“And now you do.”

You don’t have time to scream.

And the night…damp and thick and a bit less hungry than before…goes silent again.

Yes

"Do you remember...?"

The day we sat on the outermost edge of the bridge watching the storm-swollen river rage far beneath us...tempting fate while making naive plans for the future?

"Yes."

"Hmph. Then do you remember...?"

The afternoon we stopped along that quiet backcountry road and had gloriously primal sex in a field of wildflowers because the perfume and the longing wouldn't allow us to do otherwise?

"Yes."

"Well, do you remember...?"

The night we swore fervent fidelity we both knew was a bitter, unavoidable lie...our last night together before this one?

"Yes."

"Smug bastard."

"Yes."

"I love you even though. Do you...?"

"Yes."

Magdalena

Everybody called her “Maggie” but she never seemed like a Maggie to me. I’m not especially fond of nicknames (though I’ve accumulated a fair number of them in my time) but I understand that they fit some people like a glove and I don’t fret overmuch about it.

That said, nicknames don’t fit some people at all…Maggie never fit her. Once she (kind of reluctantly) told me her given name…Magdalena…I never called her anything else because that fit her like a glove (I’m not sure if she minded…I think not because she was the kind of woman who would have said if she was bothered.)

Magdalena was an enigma to me and to most of the other people who worked in the same offices as we did. She didn’t smile that often but her dark eyes were always bright with laughing, knowing, daunting energy. They were also infused with an almost tangible melancholy that revealed itself most tellingly in her rare, unguarded moments.

She walked softly and talked softly and flitted just outside the reach of anybody trying to get inside her personal space. She used Jesus and her quietly acerbic wit to keep people at bay but she couldn’t completely hide the caring heart she guarded so carefully (it seemed like she had endured more than her share of heartache through the years but I never knew for sure since she only doled out tantalizing tidbits of her past from time to time.)

I think she thought of me as awkward but somewhat endearing buffoon…and back then I probably was…but she tolerated me graciously just the same.

I lost track of Magdalena when I quit both the company we worked at and the city of Los Angeles to move south but I always hoped she’d found happiness…the melancholy in her dark eyes was something that was as out of place as the nickname was…in a circle of love (as sexist as it may or may not sound, she seemed like a woman destined to be the firm but loving mother to a good number of children.) If there is any justice in the universe it has proven to be so.

Home

The man came home but it wasn’t quite home anymore.

This was not an unexpected turn of events so the man just shrugged and dumped his bags on the floor and reached for the light switch.

The light didn’t make much of a difference.

The man stood in the doorway looking around, the familiar touching off only the vaguest feelings of belonging in him. Time and circumstance had done what they could to make this a place of ghosts and they had, in large measure, succeeded admirably.

The man closed the door and paused for a long moment as though waiting for something…was though waiting for someone to come out of the kitchen…out of the bedroom…out of the office…and then, when nothing happened at all, he picked up his bags and moved towards the bedroom door.

He thought he caught echoes of life…a child’s unapologetic laugh, a woman’s casual song, a man’s rueful grunting…but he dismissed them as indulgent, foolish memories and pushed them aside brusquely.

The bedroom… the still air perfumed with stubborn whispers of jasmine and Chanel No. 5, of Right Guard and Secret and that godawful musk cologne he used to think made him smell sexy…stirred little in the man either.

The man undid his tie and tossed it aside. He fell on the bed…the quilt he had dreamed under and wrestled upon and copulated under was there was there having seemingly waited patiently for his return…and looked up at the ceiling.

In the coolness of the bedroom, the man took deep breaths…taking in the air and its defiantly lingering perfumes as he tried to will himself to remember when this place meant something powerful and undeniable, something gloriously bittersweet and compelling, to him. He closed his eyes, laughing silently at his own hubris, and let his mind go quiet.

The night was what it was and the place was what it was. It was home but it wasn’t quite home anymore.

The Big One

April 18th is the 100th anniversary of the "great San Francisco quake" and they're talking about it a lot this weekend of course.

For me, the "big one" happened in 1971 when the greater Los Angeles area was shook up something fierce. I was sleeping at the time (soon enough I would have to be up to face another day at Louis Pasteur Junior High) and for the first couple of instants I just incorporated the earthquake into the dream I was having.

And then I woke up...and I rode it out under my blanket. My brother, sleeping in the bed across the room, did likewise.

My mother, an early riser, had leapt up out of bed and ran down the hall telling us not to panic. She needn't have bothered...neither my brother nor I came up from under our blankets until we were sure the shaking was over. Outside I could hear the crackling of downed powerlines and the combined murmuring of people who had run outside their houses and were now recounting the experience.

Parts of the city were heavily damaged but we, our little house apparently located in a hardy part of the sprawling metropolis, had nothing much to complain about (one drinking glass fell off a kitchen counter and broke and a small crack appeared in our driveway.)

I grew up here in Southern California and I've experienced a good number of quakes...I don't take them for granted but neither do I sit around waiting for "the big one" to turn us into the island state of California (most of us who've lived here for any good length of time tend not to think about quakes much...at least until one large enough to actually get our attention strikes...)

One day the next "big one" will indeed strike (the slumbering giant that is the San Andreas Fault will wake up sooner or later, there's no getting around that) but until it does life goes on (knock on wood :-)

The Audience

She regaled us with a symphony of sighs which, though she was uninvited and free to leave anytime she chose to, was her way of letting us all know how utterly bored she was with our company and our conversations.

We did our best to ignore her.

She redoubled her efforts to bend the room to her will by adding flourishes of deep hacking coughs and sneezes like banshee wailing.

“Bless you,” we said, each in our turn, before turning back to pick up the threads of conversations.

Undaunted she continued her campaign to draw the spotlights in the room…all of the spotlights in the room…to her. The theatrics of practiced sighs and stage-whisper coughs and throat-clearings rising until a crescendo until, at last, we surrender.

“So what’s going on with you?” Someone asked her.

She cleared her throat…demurely this time…and smiled ever so slightly. She gazed…contentedly, a little contemptuously…at her audience and nodded with satisfaction. “Well, as a matter of fact…” she began.

She happily held court for the better part of the next two hours.

of missing persons

Like most people (or at least so I presume) I don't like funerals. I honestly haven't been to that many but it still seems like too many (especially the ones for my brother and my favorite uncle far too many years gone now.)

For the second year in a row I'll be attending a funeral for one of my mother's sisters (my mother was the fourth of six children...she's now the eldest surviving sibling after the deaths of her older brother and two older sisters.)

My Aunt Sarah and I weren't especially close during the past couple of decades...we were closer when I was a child but we drifted apart when she wouldn't...or couldn't...stop trying to keep me in a child's space long after I was past the age of majority...and her passing wasn't a surprise (she's been fading for some months)...but it is still sobering and sad that we will be burying her on Thursday.

Perhaps she's found the peace on the other side of the light that she never seemed able to find here during her nearly eighty year journey on this bittersweet Earth of ours. I certainly hope she has.

Pictures on the nightstand, TV’s on in the den
Your house is waiting, your house is waiting
For you to walk in, for you to walk in
But you’re missing, when I shut out the lights
You’re missing, when I close my eyes
You’re missing, when I see the sun rise
You’re missing...

"You're Missing"
words and music by Bruce Springsteen

Dancing Just for the Sake of Dancing

The music was loud…far too loud to permit any kind of meaningful conversation to take root and bloom…and so we danced. Almost all of us…in the cocoon of shadows and flashing lights, of sweat and body heat and primal expectations, of energy sparked and stoked by lust, loneliness, alcohol and recreational drugs…dancing the night away because the alternative was too much to bear.

At some point my companions…fellow seekers of things we didn’t really want to give voice to…melted into the throbbing throng and I was dancing alone…dancing with random partners…dancing just for the sake of dancing.

Then, suddenly and amazingly, random partners became one specific partner. We smiled…obliquely, sizing each other up, drawing close without getting too close, looking into each other eyes to see if what we thought we needed was to be found there…and the crowd fell out of our perception. The crowd fell away and we were dancing…alone, together…maybe a prelude to something wonderful…maybe a prelude to something fleeting but thrilling for that magical moment…maybe a prelude to nothing at all.

In the middle of the invisible crowd…in the midst of the booming music…we danced…alone, together…letting furtive, pregnant glances speak where words could not. Fleetingly we touched…sweet electric contact of skin on skin, body on body…and then, inevitably, the crowd surged back into our perception and we were driven, inexorably, apart to the jealous, all-consuming beat of the never-ending music.

The music and the resurgent crowd brought me back to my companions…still dancing, still seeking something we really didn’t want to give voice to…and my attempts to locate my specific partner in the crowd came to nothing. And so we danced…we danced until we were tired of dancing and looking for something we really didn’t want to give voice to…and then we pushed our way back to the cool openness of the night.

We…my companions and I…shared some self-conscious small talk before we drifted off to our personal vehicles. Feeling for my keys, I found a piece of paper…a piece of paper with seven numbers and a name scribbled on it. My specific partner’s hands apparently having been quicker than my besotted eyes.

Maybe it was the prelude to something wonderful…maybe a prelude to nothing at all…maybe it was just a prelude to dancing just for the sake of dancing.

Many Happy Returns

Today is my favorite nephew's 11th birthday. It seems like he was a baby just a little while ago...seems like it hasn't been that long since I held him up to a warm summer night's sky and told him, in the vein of the somewhat corny but still meaningful scene from "Roots", to "behold the only thing greater than yourself" (yes, I really did this and I'm only slightly chagrined by my hubris...he just gurgled happily [babies trust me...don't why but they always have] and it was all good.)

I will spare you (and myself) the cliches about time "flying" and the like ...

Springtime weather slipped in here while I wasn't looking. Walking in the breezy sunshine is a grand way to recharge the creative and emotional batteries and that too is all good.

Enjoy the day.

Namaste, y'all.

a prologue

The novel I’m currently tweaking and editing…Soul Deep… is about a boy living in Los Angeles who turns 12 in a tumultuous year (1968). This is the prologue from that novel (which may or may not make the final cut):

* * * * *

My childhood was a series of shadows…shadows eluded and shadows embraced with all the strength one little black boy could muster. Sometimes I thought the whole world was lost in shadows. Sometimes the shadows were just fine with me…they were just something to dance with…to scream into…something to keep the rest of the world at bay.

Sometimes I would imagine, in the way the only children can imagine, that the whole world revolved around me. I knew all too well that this wasn’t the case but that didn’t stop me from wondering, more idly at some times than others, if (and indeed how) people really moved and did things when I wasn’t around to see them. Imagination was one thing I had in abundance.

Imagination and childish ambition…at one point I wanted to be a fireman, at another point I wanted to be policeman. In years to come I wanted to be a hero…a super-hero if possible…and I had more than enough imagination to make it all seem like something I could easily do.

I had plenty of imagination…given free reign in pictures and words (in books and comics and wherever I could find them), and in music and fanciful ideas…and so many memories.

One of my earliest memories is a painful one. We were living on the East Coast at that time; it was a cold, autumn morning and storm clouds were gathering purposefully overhead. But I didn’t care. My daddy was coming to spend the whole day with me. Only me. I was three.

I waited, bundled from head to toe, at the gate in front of my mother’s little rented house straining to catch a glimpse of his car coming up the quiet street. Daddy loved big cars and I knew that I would be able to see him coming from far down the street. The icy breeze cut through me from time to time despite the coat and scarf and button-down cap Mama made me put on…but I didn’t care.

My sister Amanda, six years my senior, was pouting in her bedroom because she wasn’t invited to come along with Daddy and I (I didn’t care about that either…she’d spent the whole previous weekend with him and now it was my turn.)

There was music playing, my mother often had the radio on while she was doing housework or just trying to relax, though I don’t remember exactly what songs there were.

Behind me in the doorway, my mother stood fuming silently. Her eyes were filled with hot, stinging tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks every time I craned my neck at the sound of a car engine only to slump down dejectedly when it wasn’t my daddy’s car engine.

“Bastard,” she hissed as she spun on her heels and stormed towards the telephone. She stopped herself and took a deep breath. She lit a cigarette and made a concerted effort to calm herself before she picked up the phone.

Mama drew a measure of pungent smoke into her lungs and exhaled it slowly. She dialed the number she wanted and waited. It rang once…twice…thrice…twelve times in all. She dropped the receiver back onto its cradle. He wasn’t in his apartment. And he wasn’t, she was sure, on his way to pick up his son.

I stood at the gate for nearly an hour, crestfallen and hopeful at the same time. I waited until the clouds finally opened and the rain began to fall. I turned, my face wet with both raindrops and my own quiet tears, walked back up the path and up the stairs into the house.

Mama took my coat and scarf and cap and hugged me for what seemed like a million years. She said something about daddy but I don’t remember what it was. Amanda slipped out of her bedroom and asked me if I wanted to play Monopoly; I declined with a shrug and shake of my head. I went into my bedroom and flopped down onto the bed. I closed my eyes and slipped away to my garden…the quiet place in my head where the world was right and my mother was always happy and I was the sunshine of my father’s life. I spent a lot of time in the garden way back then; it was a world I felt safest in until I discovered the many safe havens to be found in books and comics and rock ‘n’ roll music.

Daddy showed up two days later. It was a bright day…cool and crisp and sunny. He was perplexed by the reception he got at first…even Amanda, who loved Daddy more than anybody, was chilly…and then it dawned on him what he had done. He had forgotten. “Sorry ‘bout that, boy,” he said in that happy-go-lucky, undeniably charming way of his. He chucked my chin and smiled. “Think you can forgive your old man?” he said flashing his most disarming grin.

I nodded. And I forgave him. But I never forgot the lesson he taught me on the cold autumn morning. My name is Malcolm Eli Hunter and this is part of my story.

Important Birthday Questions...

When I get older, losing my hair,
many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine,
birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'till quarter to three,
would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm 64?

I could be handy, mending a fuse,
when your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside,
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
when I'm 64?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
in the Isle of Wight if it's not to dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Ah, grandchildren on your knee:
Vera, Chuck, and Dave.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say,
yours sincerely wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
when I'm 64?

Today is my birthday…I’m still a ways away from 64 but it never hurts to start getting your ducks in a row as early as possible :-)

Namaste, y’all.

“When I’m 64”
words and music by John Lennon & Paul McCartney