Lisa says...

For all of them everywhere

There comes a point when one begins to regard the Ex with a certain detached passion and a, perhaps, much too romantic fondness. 44 must be that point and I’ve hit it hard. What is the meaning of this twisted desire for the past and all its miseries? It’s fairly simple really and it all boils down to the distance that is now and almost certainly will always be between me and the long legged, sweet fleshed, heavenly assed fantasy that burns as reality in my brain. She’s gone and will never come back and I celebrate my liberation from chaos each day as surely as I mourn for a past that was so tantalizingly close to fruition, or more accurately, that’s the way I like to remember it all now, now that’s it’s long over and well done.

First and significantly- I no longer have to dwell daily in marital Hell and once free from this particular form of servitude I find (and yes, I am aware that I may be alone) that with the passing of each full moon I can more easily recall the nights in sweaty Heaven as we shook our bed and our world rather than the days of being chained to frustration, lies and sick manipulations of everyone trapped in her poisonous orbit.
It’s becomes increasingly easy to remember her blue pilot light eyes burning through the night and leading me to the end of our physical, animal limits until, at last, she’d finally drift off into her blissful slumber (somehow always first) and I’d watch her leave the waking world, breathing in the scent of her lustrous flesh, as I settled into my own dreams of a pure future.

Her mother died at childbirth and her father was never in the picture. She’d been raised in her Grandfathers’ family and he was, by all accounts, a very decent man. Being a natural rebel she shook the dust of her 2 horse town from her teenaged cheerleading boots and headed for the Big City where she fell into place with a then surging music scene (maybe late 80’s) centered around hard, angry RAWK, a very convenient fit for her and she took to it like a baby to candy. She joined some tours, partied hard and I have no doubt that she was a convenient if minor pleasure to some fairly major players. Her tattoos outnumbered mine.

And then she caught the fashionably high end Heroin wave and found her one true love.

I never minded her past, my own was scattered with greedy behavior, selfish indulgences and woman who once loved me and now never wanted to see me again. With great good reason. My own history of drug abuse was fairly tawdry when compared to the glittering stage lights of hers but by the time we’d met I was done with everything chemical and ready to be the Rock that she’d always needed; I like to think that I was the most solid man she’d ever met.
I was a damn fool.
The drugs and the constant lying that must accompany them? I seem to not quite……..recall the tragedy of her as clearly as the beauty. This is my immature embarrassing romantic failing and I’ve never felt more of the silly teenager for thinking it yet now this illusion sits in my brain like a detective looking at the scene of the crime and finding nothing but innocence and excuses amid the blood and carnage. Stupid Old Man.

But, healthy or no, this age of mine also, gratefully, seems to more and more often lately point me into the direction of forgiveness, whether I can walk the path or not and I find no small comfort in that direction. We’re all human and aren’t the ones that we used to really love deserving of that little bit of compassion that I can manage to bleed out every now and again? Maybe….don‘t know…….hope so.

And, as of last sad report several months ago, her end appears to be approaching much too rapidly but- like most heavy drug users- it's coming like a train with maximum pain, humiliation, degradation and all too everyday horror for anyone still close to her to sickeningly witness and bitterly taste as they desperately try to spit it out. All her bridges burned to the waterline, every lifeline forever severed and all her lifesavers drifting far away with a tide she willfully created.

Me? I’m the soldier who’s been airlifted out of the battlefield with no fatal injury leaving all his buddies behind to catch the shit- safe, almost sound and so sorry in too many ways. Immensely relieved at my escape and gutted by guilt at my failure. Everybody loses but I’m hoping she can pull one last card out her worn out deck and save that luscious ass and that the next moon brings a better word.

So I decided to share a bit of fiction for no particular reason other than that I’ll always love her and believe that she can be worthy of love and maybe they all can and, more hopefully, they all will.

Not for nothing but the fiction is below just in case you have a few minutes to spare and you like raw stories........

Backtrack


The divorce had been decided about four months ago.
After three years of riding elevators, filling out forms, standing in lines, filing papers, annoying the hell out of clerks, wearing out judges and asking stupid questions in every single office I walked into, I’d finally managed to get a Judge (who was running late for her weekend) to sign the decision. I was her very last case of a long day. When I left the courtroom I saw the Judge as she was hustling out of her office and we made eye contact. She said,

“Good luck.”
Wary and glad to see me go. I was all smiles.

“Thank you your honor.” I’d never meant those words more sincerely.

After that it was three more clerks, two more offices, one official stamp and it was all over. At least I thought it was.

I happened to be surfing through the county website looking for some forms and decided, for the hell of it, to look up my four month old case. Maybe treat myself to a pat on the back. I didn’t know of any other human being who’d ever tried their own divorce case and, not being anything resembling a lawyer, I was somewhat proud of my “accomplishment” in a backwards sort of way.
Ever since the day I came home early from work on our first anniversary to give her a surprise gift (I was the one who got the real surprise) my life had pretty much been moving in reverse anyway and the “accomplishment” of the divorce seemed par for my course.
A lot of life can slide by in three years while you wait in limbo for a decision and jog back and forth between courtrooms. Our son was now four (he was three the last time I’d managed to see him) and had no real concept of who I was, the Ex was on her second boyfriend (that I knew about) and I was living with my first girl since the anniversary surprise. If you wanted to listen to the Ex or the Girlfriend it seemed distressingly clear that everyone had been waiting for the finish line. I had little choice but to listen and the wait got old and tired fast, real fast. My heart skipped a rope in my chest when I logged on and discovered that the Ex had shown up to court sometime after the final ruling and was currently trying to get the Judgment overturned. I couldn’t imagine why and I didn’t want to try.

Most of her motivation had to do with drugs. I’d say all but that might not be entirely fair since I didn’t really have any clue as to her current daily habits.
This much (and only this much) I knew for fact: Louise didn’t return phone calls or correspond, she’d moved at least three times in the last three years that I was aware of, she lived two hundred fifty miles away, her family was sick and tired of her and completely uninterested in her whereabouts, her only lawyer gave up on her, her second boyfriend was dumber than the first which I didn’t think possible, our son was a little bit odd, she’d lied compulsively and convincingly about drugs while we were together, she was the most skilled manipulative liar I’d ever met, she was one gloriously fantastic fuck.

Everything else was an educated guess or a prayer.

Louise hadn’t bothered to come to court since her lawyer had called it quits two and a half years into the proceedings, she’d never bothered before that. The lawyer worked out of a free legal clinic that Louise had somehow persuaded to come to her desperate aid, ride to her rescue. I’d met and talked and wrote and faxed with that lawyer (another woman) off and on throughout the entire two and a half year period while she held on by her fingernails, trying her best to be Louise’ advocate and defender. As the months rolled by and Louise failed to show or even return her calls and then provided her with false information and led her down blind alleys, I watched her lawyers’ eyes begin to grasp the unpleasant reality of her sticky situation. Every time I saw her in court she seemed more exhausted and exasperated than the previous. She was catching on to Louise’ games just as I had and everyone did, slowly but surely Louise was burning her bridges to the waterline. I almost sympathized with that shyster.

We found ourselves alone in the elevator after one court date near her end and I told her,
“You know… You seem like a good woman, I mean….you must be if you’re working for a free service and all, just trying to help women who really need it, I mean… That’s commendable, but……” and I leaned in for emphasis, “don’t you think you could be much more effective if you help the people who really need your help? You know? Instead of people who are just kinda using you… taking advantage.. Know what I mean?”
“I think you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on with Louise by now… I think you know what she’s up to.”

Her face was set like drying plaster as she cocked her head in defiance, jaw tight.
"Oh I get paid no matter who I work for so don’t worry about me….. I’m not going anywhere, one case is the same as the next and I get paid either way.”

Two months later she asked the Judge for permission to resign from the case and the Judge granted it. I successfully fought back my smile as I stood in front of the bench. In the hallway outside the courtroom I told the lawyer,

“Hey, don’t feel bad. At least you’re done with her forever. I still got to play along with this farce.”
Then I winked. She didn’t have anything to say to that and it was the last time I ever saw her or spoke to her. As an opponent she wasn’t much but she didn’t have much to work with and I guess you get what you pay for.

Louise had since disappeared off the face of the earth for the last ten months so it was more than a little disturbing to discover, quite accidentally, that she’d decided to finally resurface and contest the divorce. Then again, Louise was nothing if not inexplicable.

We’d both attended a one day court ordered mediation session somewhere in the beginning of the divorce proceedings. It was the only time she’d shown up. They have you sit down and watch a film (just like high school) with a roomful of other grim divorce victims and then the two of you get together with your mediator to work out an agreement. The mediator, a woman, decided to see us one at a time to get our individual backgrounds and then afterwards we’d all sit in her office together and, theoretically, straighten out details like custody and visitation. That’s the theory anyway but like all divorce proceedings, I was just then beginning to find out, it’s wrapped in barb wire. I was up first.

I guess I talked with that woman for a good ten minutes. She listened intently, answered empathetically and gave every appearance of deep, abiding concern.

“What is your greatest worry?”
“Do you fear for your son’s safety?”
“Is there anything else I should be aware of?”
“How long has she been using drugs?”

She was calm and intelligent. We shook hands when I walked out and then Louise walked in.

Five minutes later the mediator called me back into her office to begin. When I entered she gave me a look like I was the guy who one nighted her six months ago, borrowed her car, stole her money and then never called back. Whatever story Louise had sold her in that five minute stretch must’ve been a classic because that mediating expert had ate it up like chocolate ice cream. Louise just sat there demurely like an innocent girl on the verge of maiden tears but determined to carry on stoically, fight back her grief, despite all the odds against her. My day went straight downhill from there.

Louise wore black fish net stockings and a knee length skirt for the meeting. Strappy high heeled sandals showed off her brand new pedicure and still perfect feet to delightful effect. Her top was black and tight. As the hours passed she never stopped fiddling with that skirt, crossing and uncrossing those long lean legs like cream tightly wrapped to near bursting from that fetish gear. The skirt would somehow rise up giving me a flash of luscious thigh and then she’d carefully adjust it back to its former position, only to have it slide up again. And over and over again. I don’t think I missed a single flash and my concentration suffered accordingly.
Louise was always masterful as a solo act but she was even better working with her brand new mediating ally and confidant. The two of them would’ve been good partners in cards; they kept throwing each other every lead the other one needed. By the middle of the session, three and one half hours in, they were communicating with nods and knowing glances, in perfect synchronized rhythms of emotional sisterhood. When we were finished at the end of a marathon day I thought they were going to hug like on Oprah and share a good cry. I left the office first so maybe I missed it. I didn’t see my son that day either. He was with her boyfriend.

Now two years later, Louise was trying to prolong the finality, dispute the decision. I was terrified. I stared at that computer screen and felt, well, sick.
Louise had shown up on three consecutive dates, the screen indicated, and was due in court the very next day. What she had planned for that Judge I didn’t know and only painfully and excruciatingly decided to find out. For three years it’d taken every last ounce of my strength, money, will and time to fight for the decision and now, because of her, I was returning to the lion’s den to claw my way back to zero. Thanks baby.

The court call was for late afternoon. I dressed carefully and studied the mirror frequently. I checked my paperwork and checked it again. I looked at my watch. I was determined to be cool and until I walked into the court building I was achieving it.
What is it about uniforms milling around with guns strapped to their hips that makes me uneasy? Is it the monotonous routine of being forced to empty your pockets and walk through metal detectors while fat, sullen county cops give you the fish eye that makes me so uncomfortable? Or is it the impending pleasure of realizing that whatever happens in that courtroom will decide everyone’s fate and the people in control of that decision don’t know you or care and you don’t have a clue as to what’s happening either way? Is it the inevitability of getting sucked into the machine like so much cheap meat for the grinder? After three years and countless appearances I still didn’t know.

Every time I walked into that courthouse I was amazed at how easy it had been to get married. Amazed and appalled. Why hadn’t somebody stopped me before I shot myself in the foot?

Louise had gotten released from rehab a few months previous to our wedding day at City Hall. I’d first met her at a coffee shop she’d been working at and we wound up in her bed on our very first date. When she was naked and in my arms I couldn’t imagine a better place to be and I never needed any more pleasure than her legs around me while I sunk in deep. We started off fast and hit the gas the entire run, no seatbelts, no brakes; reveling wildly and suffering madly through a rollicking relationship rollercoaster of making up and breaking up until the day I found out about her drug use during one of our breakups. She’d crashed her car and ended up in the emergency room. Her roommate called me and I took her to rehab the next day. I was determined to say goodbye to Louise forever at the hospital doors and so I did.
But her drug was heroin and mine was her flesh.
Two weeks later we were back in her bed, naked and kissing and making sweet serious promises to each other, holding on tight. Three months after that she was knocked up and convinced we should marry, it sounded all good to me. I wasn’t about to give up on a body like hers.
The whole ceremony took about 35 dollars and 60 minutes. A sleepwalking Judge pronounced us married in his mean little basement office and we went off to our honeymoon the very next day.
Louise made it through the entire pregnancy (doctors’ visits, Lamaze classes, hospital tours), labor, birth and seven months of our sons’ life before I found out, again by accident, that she’d been using methadone and heroin the whole time. I’d thought she was clean and healthy. I later found out that her doctor knew about the drugs, the hospital staff knew, the methadone clinic knew, her junkie boyfriend knew, but somehow I was the last to discover it; everyone had known but no one saw fit to inform me. I guess I didn’t factor into their equations but years later it was still tough to swallow when I thought of all the times her doctor had looked me in the eyes and solemnly addressed my concerns, cleverly avoiding any information that I might really need to know.

It took me until our first anniversary to find out about the junkie boyfriend. SUPRISE! I showed the junkie to the door and that, eventually, started a separate court case for me.

I was working 60 hours a week and no matter how hard I tried to keep up with all the lies, she spit them out faster than I could swallow them. It was an assembly line I couldn’t keep pace with so I filed for divorce and she moved downstate with the junkie and my son. I couldn’t figure any way of stopping her from taking my son short of violence but I didn’t think that would work out too well in my favor (the law had never been on my side before and I knew once she turned on the tears only one of us would be ending up in jail) so I just let them go.
The night before her planned departure we made our bed rock for a good half hour, took a break, then made it shake some more. She gave it to me as if she never wanted me to forget it. I haven’t yet.
The next morning I changed my son’s diaper, made him laugh, then handed him off to her and went to work, by the time I came back that night she was gone with our baby and the apartment was desert empty. So was I.

I talked to three different lawyers and the prices they’d given me to even begin a custody battle were so far out of my range it was laughable, if one was in the mood to laugh. Each lawyer made it perfectly clear to me, however, that even if I fought for custody there weren’t any guarantees as to the outcome, no matter the circumstances of the case, state custody conventions being what they are. I called my bank, my Credit Union and a Loan Company about the five grand I’d been quoted to begin the agony. They didn’t completely laugh in my face or anything but I got the message. So two twisted junkies had my son and I had our empty apartment. For the first time in my life I understood why they put metal detectors in courthouses. Those Judges and lawyers certainly wouldn’t be safe without them, poor bastards. After a number of phone calls and some hours of research I gave up the idea of custody and handled everything myself. I started rolling the boulder up the hill. All it had taken was time, energy, all my money and every last drop of whatever was left of me.

Now I was back to the original courtroom, again, waiting for her arrival. Waking up to a recurring nightmare. I’d arrived early and was pacing the lobby outside the courtroom when the elevator dinged and she stepped back into my world.

Louise was holding my son’s hand as she walked into the hall, they both had their backs to me. He appeared to be almost the same size as when I’d seen him last, over a year ago. She looked unrecognizable.
I couldn’t count the nights I’d laid in bed and dreamt of her slender ripe body and her lush milky flesh, the way she’d tasted, the scent of her skin, the curve of her hips, her fine long legs, the swell of her beautiful ass, the sway of her sweet breasts. I couldn’t calculate the amount of time I’d spent remembering those legs wrapped around me and those cheeks in my hands, her lips on me, coming inside her and holding her tight, breathing her in, tasting her, all of her.

The woman now holding my son’s hand was fat. Sloppy fat.
The kind of fat a woman of a certain age becomes when she’s thrown in the towel, settled for less, given up any real notion of being attractive, being sexual, being desired and desirable; given up being a girl and aimed squarely at somebody’s mother. Given up on sex and taken up with food, or something worse. But Louise wasn’t of a certain age. She was only thirty but had evidently decided, to my pained dismay, to quit the dance. There is no standard to measure what happened to her body. And I don’t mean to suggest that she gained a few or ten or twenty pounds or that she was no longer wonderfully fit. No. From the neck down she was completely unrecognizable, absolutely foreign to the body I remembered and so fondly wanted to cling to like a wonderful dream during a satisfying slumber. There was no relation between the beautiful, sexy, sassy girl I’d married and the bulging, slovenly, gone-to-hell matron standing in front of me. She could’ve traded bodies with a 50 year old woman and it would’ve been a good trade, for Louise.
When she turned to face me as I approached I managed my last ounce of strength to hide the shock stabbed into my eyes, my heart.

Her lovely skin had always reminded me of full moonlight. A sensuous glow of pale nocturnal pleasure, moonlight promising taboo treasures of earthy delight.

As she turned her head and I looked into her once lustrous profile, I flinched at a different skin. Her face resembled the surface of the moon and every square inch was vandalized by red angry blotchy pocks and zits. Whatever drug combinations she was currently using were doing their devil’s work on her flesh, rapidly, and the work was frightening to witness. It was some hideous mask fixed to her beauty, a mundane narcotic horror. Her jowls sagged into an unnatural frown and her neck was bloated and ample, the chin doubling.

“So. What brings you all the way to the big bad city lady?” It was difficult to look at her. ”Don’t you know this rodeo’s over already?”

“Oh, you’ll find out why I’m here soon enough...… smart ass.” She was none too happy to see me or maybe none too happy to be seen.

Only her eyes remained untouched from before. They were still clear, penetrating and the deepest bluest blue. As I peered into those aqua depths I recalled holding her and staring into them late in the night, falling in them, waiting for a moment to kiss her, living for the moment to touch her lips.
Now I couldn’t imagine wanting to kiss her or even be near her. I only ever wanted to kiss beautiful lips.

I turned to our son and tried a smile.

“And who’s this tough guy with you?”
He blushed and ducked his head into his mothers legs. He was beginning to look a little like me and not so much her, at last.

“Yea, that’s right………you wouldn’t know, would you?” The drugs hadn’t affected her venomous tongue one bit. At least some things stayed the same.

“Hey boy. Howzabout a handshake. Show me what ya’ got.”
I stuck my hand towards him and he looked at me shyly, reaching his tiny paw towards mine. When we shook I made a show of pain and dropped to one knee, hanging onto his soft hand softly.
“AAAARRRRRGGGHHHH! Lemme go. Lemme go.”
A sparkling grin erupted across his face and he laughed out loud. I remembered the smile from the time his was in his crib. I could’ve flown through the air.

“Tom should be here in a minute. He’s going to watch him while I’m in the courtroom.”
Tom was the second boyfriend, Louise was the only one who seemed to know the whereabouts of the junkie boyfriend. I was still staring at our son. He was beaming.

“Good old Tom still hangin’ in there? Well…. Well…..Well….. Wonder’s never cease,” I was pouring it on, “Why didn’t he just come up with you?”

I was still smiling and realized that nothing she could say or do mattered for that one moment, wallowing in my baby’s bright eyes.

“He forgot he had his knife on him and he couldn’t get through the metal detectors.” Her tired splotchy face sagged all over, beat.
“He’s downstairs straightening it out.”

I looked into her baby blues and looked away quick but she caught it. I was never adept at hiding my distaste for ugliness.

“I’m going in as soon as he gets here.” She was trying a rally.

“You can go in right now, I don’t give a damn.” I was peering into her eyes again and she didn’t like it, that made two of us.

I didn’t want to see her like that, ever. I wanted the beauty that once was mine, the hunger that once was real. Instead of the pounding pure rush of excitement at the sight of her, the thought of her, now I was left with nothing but a sick wave of distaste and cruel reminder of avenging time. I would’ve never expected it from her if I wasn’t forced to look at the, perhaps, inevitable. She’d always been so proud of her body and had so jealously guarded her bold sexuality. She used to be proud.
Once, while we were lying in bed, she’d been trying to explain to me the everyday travails of a hot girl in the big city.

“I mean… I’m not being conceited or anything but….. What makes some guys think that they can even talk to me?”
Rolling her eyes, showing me the whole package. Confident and cool.

She’d been demanding in bed and worth every demand, in the nude she was endless bliss with a vast reserve of inventive intuitive favors. Whenever I left her I’d burn until I saw her again. Now she didn’t look worth a coin toss. I was embarrassed to be next to her, even close to her, a disgusted spectator to her shocking disintegration. Life mustn’t be like this, I thought, not for her, not for me and not for our boy.

“Don’t worry... you can go on in…I’ll watch him until your doggy gets here.” We used to get sexy with the banter, now there was no pleasure left. None. Just a sour lousy taste in my mouth.

“I don’t need you to watch him or for anything else. I told you….. Tom’ll be here any second and he’s gonna take care of him… he’s more of a father then you’ll ever be anyway.” She snatched our child into her arms and everything in me cracked.

This was the way it was. Our son glanced back at me all hopeful smiles and innocent curiosity. I stood there useless, unimportant, unresolved. Lost.

The ugly fat woman stalked off towards the elevators holding him in her arms, kissing him gently. He looked back at me but seemed comfortable in his position. He was happy and unaware. His mother had accomplished that much. I hoped it would be enough.

When the boyfriend showed she handed our boy over to him and walked directly into the courtroom. Tom stood unsteadily in the hall, wrapped in a plaster cast from fingertips to shoulder with the whole sad mess in a sling. What the hell? He looked worried, nervous, like he’d had too much of the day already. He was tentatively holding onto my son with his remaining good hand. I considered walking over and treating him to a friendly punch in the arm but decided it would’ve been too easy, he was just too pathetic. Instead I came up on him and peppered him with questions, hard and fast. He answered promptly and politely, he wanted to make friends. He claimed he’d been in a car accident and broke his arm and collarbone, he didn’t seem too comfortable.

“Tell you what.” I drilled my eyes into his. “Take a break Tommy boy. I’m gonna walk this little guy over to the fountain for a drink.” I fixed my son with a look.
“C’mon.”

His little hand fit right into mine and we strolled over to a drinking fountain around a corner. I lifted him up to the water and he got a sip. I wanted to squeeze his tiny warm body to mine and never let go. I wanted to run with him in my arms holding tight. Run and never come back. Instead we sauntered back to her boyfriend, holding hands; court was waiting. I took a knee and tousled his still baby soft hair.

“Hey boy. Lemme ask you something.” I had his fullest four year old attention. “You like this funny looking guy over here?” I jerked a thumb at the boyfriend.

“Yeah.” He was a shy one, I remembered being one too.

“A-OKAY.”
I winked.
“Listen, I gotta go now but I’m gonna see you soon. O.K. ?”
“Yeah.”
Four year old conversation but who knew what he really felt or what really mattered to him. I kissed his head and walked into the courtroom before the tears started.

The court call took about forty minutes and went exactly nowhere (they eventually sent her back to another Judge on a different day) so I left quick, sick, and sure to do it all over again. We all met up at the elevators, waiting.

“Gosh. This’ll be fun. Maybe we can all share a ride down together. C’mon kids, whattya say?” I was wearing my evil grin, sharing it, spreading it around.

“Yea. Right. I don’t think so. Asshole.”
It was her answer, of course. I don’t believe she gave Tom permission to speak too often.
The elevator doors opened and I stepped in alone, looking back at them.

A broken nervous man clinging to more than he could handle- A lost memory of feminine loveliness and desire, now a bitter old troll too close to her end and too far from her beginning- And our boy, smiling and happy, oblivious to the storms of the world swirling around us all. My heart lifted toward his smile as the doors closed in my face. Going down. Alone.

When I made it to the ground floor the place was swarming. It was a late afternoon Friday and everyone was rushing to get things done quick, quick, quick and get the hell out so they could jumpstart the weekend. Hundreds of people, a tornado of activity. That lobby felt like the inside of my head. I stumbled through there in a coma feeling the full weight of my mistakes, dragging behind me the dread of my future, my mind collapsing, my heart exploding, body as brittle as burnt toast. Wasted and worthless.

I saw her before she saw me. I could’ve spotted her in any crowd. Everything changed instantly, I noticed nothing but her, cared nothing but her, wanted nothing but her. She was young and radiant, slender and sensuous. Her skirt was short and her raven hair long and straight, glowing. She was standing still as everything whirled around her, a bright light in a dark cave, a beacon guiding me in. Into what I didn’t know or care. She appeared lost, I could sympathize. I was guessing she was twenty one or two, dressed up for sex and not yet fully aware of her magnetic effect, on her way to interview for maybe her first real job. She didn’t appear all that professional but she was definitely about to make somebody’s day one way or another. My heart surged wildly and I cut in fast, no hesitation.

“You need some help finding something?”
I felt suddenly like a genius with all the answers, or at least one.

“You work here?”
Her voice was vibrant and sassy, sly and unafraid. Her moist lips twisted provocatively as she eyed me.
“No. I’m just trying to be of some assistance to you in your hour of need.” I presented my most insinuating grin and she smiled a little bit sexy, lit me up with some almond eyes. It worked.

“You a lawyer or something?”
She put her hand on her hip and cocked her tight body into a bikini pose. I could feel that body in my hands already, juicy flesh poised to burst out of her clothes.

“No way, beautiful, I just play one on TV.”
She got the joke, smacked me with a killer smile and got down to business.

“Well…. I’m not sure but I think I’m at the wrong address, see?” She pointed at something in her hands, “And I’m really running late…. So…. if you can help?”

I caught an unmistakable lilt of promise in her question as she trailed off flirtatiously, and then peered down into a piece of paper as I leaned over her shoulder. Her blouse was unbuttoned enough to allow me the slightest peek at her upright breasts and just a hint of frilly black bra against the tan luster of taut skin. She brushed against me subtlety, carelessly, and I felt my cock bounce in my pants.

Her scent was fresh and heavenly.

“Yea….. You are.”
I was breathing her in and our eyes locked.
“This address is an office building over on the next block. C’mon, let’s you and me take a quick stroll and I’ll show you.”
I wanted to take charge so I started to walk away but she didn’t move. I stopped and turned.

She fixed me with a simmering grin, all lips and eyes, curious and naughty, sizing me up; looking for all the world, and especially for me, exactly like delicious tempting trouble. I was heading straight into it pedal to the metal. She spoke.

“You sure you got the time?”

I wanted to get out of that courthouse, out of that lobby, out of my life fast, and into her even faster.

“I got all the time in the world, slim.”


END

Odds and Ends

Am I the only one who misses “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson”?

Not thinking is superior- although much more difficult for some- to thinking yet I can’t seem to stop trying both.

Holding hands with your girl is forever underrated.

Anybody heard from Spike Lee lately?

Instant communication doesn’t help anybody.

Johnny Bench is the best there is, the best there ever was, and the best that there ever will be…………………now let’s move on to Clemente.

Are Banana Splits (the dessert, not the band) still popular?

Saw a beautiful young girl in a short skirt and high heels today. She was talking on her phone and didn’t seem to know I was alive. Creamy flesh, rose scented, long lean legs, fine ankles, dainty feet. God or no……………somebody did something right.

Cops piss me off………….am I wrong?

The sound of water flowing off a mountain is the truth.

The best quote I can recall from a Playboy Interview- Christopher Walken: “I mean…I like children but after a couple of hours I think…….I wish you would go away so I could have a conversation or something.” The man is close to my heart.

I’m basically ashamed of my attachment to my Ipod.

Had a wonderful girlfriend once (genius level performance artist) who lowered herself to watch football with me one Sunday strictly in order to please me. After careful observation she commented,
”Why don’t they wear different colors?”
I replied, “They do…one team’s wearing blue and white and the other’s got black and white with gold trim.”
She said,
“No…….I mean why doesn’t one team wear…..say…………. purple and the other team wear green.”
I could not dispute her feminine logic.

The other day I did not have sex with the wife nor did I even trouble myself to jerk off but I did, somehow, manage to get good and drunk. That’s age, baby, and death must be sniffing around somewhere.

My Ex-Pat Manifesto....................again

Religion.
Yes.
I must begin by stating the obvious and the obviously painful. If you are reading this then you and I are most likely simpatico and so I’m preaching to the choir just as everyone does with their own specific choirs’ so that consequently, and unfortunately, this is exactly the hopeless junction where we all miss the train. We pick our sides in this most minor of debates and then thump our books and quote our quotes to shore up our egos and support the beliefs that we’ll never stop trying to believe with our hearts fully open and our ears and eyes completely closed. We’ll go on and on debating, then cursing, then fighting and then building bombs. Maybe one day one side will build a really big one that ends the argument.
And none of us ever move the other guy a split cunt hair.
Well I’ve been listening and for what it’s worth……………………….

It’s 2007 and it, sadly, needs to be stated over and over again and then one more time. Open your eyes, we are here now, do not be afraid because it’s only life and then one day you (and me and everyone else) will die. There is no escaping it and if there is a reward at the end it will certainly be better than any of us deserve if not quite exactly what we were expecting but why not, just as a change, focus instead on the here and now so that we may just, possibly, improve our situation a tiny little bit and perhaps leave a smaller mess than the one we inherited.
There is no old white man with a long beard coming out of the sky to save me, there is no Prophet who owns the Final Wisdom, there is no one set of rules that insures my eternal safety, there is no amount of kneeling and begging that is going to make me a better person than less kneeling and begging would. Religion is fear. Pure and naked and as ugly as it gets. It is the creation of a being who craves constant and eternal reassurance because he knows he’s done something wrong and hopes that he can somehow weasel out of any unpleasantness without doing anything particularly difficult or costly. It is the fantasy of a creature that is simultaneously too foolish to appreciate the beauty surrounding him and too vain to ever stop thinking about anyone but his God who, he's been promised, closely resembles the man in the mirror.
The major spiritual difference between me and my cat is that my cat doesn’t know or care that he’s going to die because he’s too damn busy living and being a good cat. Maybe he’s a lazy ass, self-centered, son-of-a-bitch but not many days go by where I feel more worthy of life’s joys than him although I’m fairly certain that I’m almost always more grateful.
Practitioners of religious faith are the modern day magicians performing ancient card tricks on a gullible populace who seek a little excitement and sympathetic understanding from the very charlatans who empty their pockets and fill their heads with emotionally fascist bullshit but I can’t blame the pushers because everybody’s got to make a buck and the buyer really should beware. You may pick your own examples of the rampant insidious hypocrisy of their establishments as there are simply too many to list here. I myself was subjected to the American Roman Catholic variety of superstition and I’m afraid I’d need a few thousand additional words to even outline the fractured ethical practices of that organization but suffice to ask this?
Does anyone notice that in the last decade the RC Church has finally begun their much too late shelling out of multiple hundred million dollar settlements to that not so small portion of their young flock that in the past -and who knows about now- they’ve gotten most……um……familiar with…… and this hasn’t even dented their finances? Think about it.
Let’s keep it simple.

Look at the person next to you. Do you think you could make him/her feel welcome or appreciated or loved? I think you can and you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you how to do it. Start there and once you’ve mastered that we can move on. Personally I’ve been working on that one for over 40 years with widely varying degrees of success so if you can pull it off, congratulations and if you can’t just yet, don’t worry you will if you try- at least sometimes and maybe often- so welcome to the human club and good luck.
There is a moral compass inside all of us that tells us exactly everything we need to know about which direction is north and if your brand of faith is completely in sync with that compass then I would be willing to bet cash money that you are either- brainwashed, delusional, in denial, a liar or all 4. We can ignore this compass or fight it or follow it according to our whims and that, ladies and gentlemen, is called free will and yes, without it you may consider yourself a prisoner of society, religion or faith. Hope it works out for you. With it you are an everlastingly imperfect person in a wild, beautiful world so...............

Enjoy.

If your compass is out of whack it’s most likely because somebody tried to fix it. Will your compass always comfortably align with the Law? No, that would be the Perfect World and this is only, alas, the real one where brave souls are sometimes called upon to take firm stances. The compass can lead to greatness or hardships or anything in between so roll your dice and enjoy your humanity and the companionship of those around you because you most likely deserve it and maybe a little more. Do bad people do bad things? Yep. Always will.
If, however, for some wonderful reason, your brand of worship leads you to become a better person than you might not otherwise be, by all means, pray continue. Religious freedom is a wonderful gift for the frightened masses that only hope to band together and engage in a “spiritual” daisy chain of stroking each others egos with simple assurances of being “saved” from whatever particular damnation they fear but the Constitution provides all with complete freedom to practice your mythology so, fellow Americans, enjoy and please keep all that happiness to yourselves. My country is NOT based on your brand or any other. When it works it's "by the people and for the people" and when it doesn't it's our duty to fix it without asking for any divine help. So let's roll up our sleeves, spit into our hands and grab a mop....it's time for some elbow grease.
If, conversely, your brand compels you to ring strange doorbells unannounced and unwanted or bend your friends’ ears with unsolicited advice and counsel then perhaps you may want to reconsider your behavior.
If your brand invokes, compels or pleads for you to kill, maim, imprison, enslave, or judge your fellow human beings you may want to reexamine the text on which your doctrine is based because I’m fairly certain that you are (intentionally or not) misinterpreting it.

Here’s my quote from Peter McWilliams wonderful “Ain’t nobody’s business if I do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crime in America”

“All the major religions boil down to the same principles- Love everybody…Don’t judge anybody.”

If you can pull that one off then you’re a better man than me, neighbor, and you don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.

The Hippies are coming, the hippies are coming.....

Dude! Where’s my Decade?



I accidentally stumbled into the 60’s last weekend when the wife and I took a leisurely shopping stroll on a lovely, sunny, Sunday in Kyoto. Our ultimate destination was the Bike (as in bicycle) Shop to purchase some new wheels but along the way we got caught in a tie-dyed tide of dreadlocked, Earth shoe wearing, patchouli oil reeking, compost heaping, tree hugging, peace loving, all organic, perpetually stoned/smiley hippies heading for Kyoto University so………….yes……….we, inexplicably, drifted into that gentle “All we are saying is give peace a chance” flow.



As for me, I’m really more of an angry, alcohol swilling, fried cow eating, motorcycle loving misanthrope with no God, no patience and a rapidly aging appetite for destruction- my own and everyone else’s- and so consequently, I fit into this party about as well as Dick Cheney at the Playboy Mansion but at least no one seemed to mind and a good time was achieved by all as far as I could determine.


There was truly no representative demographic here although the 30ish crowd with barefoot children running wild did seem to be the barely dominant breed. But all ages from craggy faced septuagenarians hanging onto their graying hair by growing it down to the ass level of their hemp MC Hammer pants to grubby faced Wild Childs bouncing around the grounds like superballs in fearless abandon, complete freedom and totally reckless disregard for anyone around them were enjoying the festivities very nearly equally along with just about every age in between.

Yes, that is a tree house. And, yes........those are adults sleeping in it.


Gai-jin were scarce and designer jeans, bags, shoes or accessories even scarcer which is truly, profoundly unusual for Kyoto but that complete lack of materialistic consumer worship in full public view was oddly comforting. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen a young woman who didn’t look like the clothes on her back cost as much as a good used car and while that’s always OK with me I have to admit it was somewhat pleasing for a change to see chicks going natural in terms of their fashion and the overall greed level was, perhaps subsequently, quite low.
My own contribution to the days grace was strictly monetary and quite minor- 2 coffees with 2 organic cornmeal breads to nosh while we ambled about (600 yen= $6), the coffee was excellent and on time, the cornbread surprisingly hearty and tasty. Don’t know why but organic beer (shudders) and tequila seemed to be quite popular but as I deteriorate I find it increasingly less attractive to drink during the day and so I generally save my drunken madness for when the sun goes all the way down but that didn’t stop the crowd from their liberal intake of spirits, smoke and relaxation so all was most definately well at Kyoto U.

On this lovely Spring day the vegan, all natural, group hug vibe was permeating the air along with another- more pungent and much more familiar- odor of sweet corruption which may have accounted for the sleepy, happy, bashful and dopey smiles (sorry… I couldn’t remember the other 3 dwarves) in evidence everywhere one cared to look and the odor was yet another very unusual occurrence around these parts (traditional Japanese being bizarrely adverse to artificial stimulation that doesn’t include alcohol) so credit to the Freaks where it is due- they flew their flags loudly and proudly and I for one was most happy for them and, incredibly, with them.
And my Brother from another Mother, Eric, would’ve deeply, deeply appreciated the lovely perfume in the air and felt……… right……………… at home!



As the sun slowly set the Band mounted the stage and (pedal powered) threw themselves into…………….don’t know…………………a song?


Good Christ! The “music” was an atonal nightmare
of limp dick twiddling, navel gazing stoner bullshit, including a fucking didgeridoo, but the lead singer (big ponytails and bigger smile) was quite possibly one of the most charismatic performers I have yet seen and he held the rapturous crowd in a loving thrall.

Final analysis- While normally I am most likely the guy manning the fire hose in these situations on Sunday I settled in and communed with my Hippie Brothers and Sisters with ease and significant satisfaction. No mean feat to me and all, and I mean all, credit to them. Don’t know how they make a living in this here day and age (or how I do either) but more power to each and every one.

I left thinking…………………………………….
What the fuck is so funny about peace, love and understanding?

My Ex-Pat Manifesto...continued

Mr. and Mrs. Red State USA, the terrorists are not coming to get you!

Allow me to explain.

Let’s think of the world as a giant school and each nation as a student in our worldwide classroom. Right now (2007)the USA is the biggest, richest, youngest kid in the class and everyone knows it. Imagine a 700 lb. strong willed toddler who’s used to having his way in the School. Why? Because that’s the way he’s always had it. He's huge, powerful, infantile, lovable, dangerous and oblivious in equal measures. Of course, as in any school- intelligence, drive, discipline and hard work will allow most students to succeed but certain countries are going to excel despite any circumstances because they have the most (and a gold star to you if you guessed it) MONEY and RESOURCES. The Japanese kid, the German kid, the Swiss kid and to a lesser extent the English, French, Indian, Chinese, Spanish and Italian kids are all going to graduate even if their parents have to buy their way through and then they’re going to move on to their separate more or less successful careers. The African kids, the Mexican kids, the third world kids, they’re hanging on by a thread with little to no room for error, one small miscue and they’ll be flushed down the toilet forever. On the other hand there is almost nothing the Toddler from the USA can do that will harm his chances because he is the biggest of BMOC’s and even he knows this.
And what feelings does this aura of entitlement unwittingly encourage in other classmates? Envy, admiration, awe, malice, sycophancy and hatred in disproportionate amounts based on individual relations.

Where are the terrorists in this school? They have no place, they’ve been expelled, thrown out, discarded.

Now imagine the poisonous hatred of a mean little prick who has to sit on the sidelines and watch the other kids play nice with their spiffy uniforms in their fancy school with shiny classrooms and the best of everything while he can only press his nose up to the glass of a locked door, fuming and plotting his big day of revenge. Does this little bastard get help at home to assuage his anger? No he does not. Indeed at home his frustrating problems continue because he’s strapped with insane parents who not only don’t comfort him but, being religious fanatics who are sure that GOD is on their side, actually fan the flames of his hatred and encourage his fantasies of retribution against his enemies who, in truth, barely notice his existence or lack thereof. They fill his mind and soul with psychotic delusions based on their particularly peculiar mythology promising glorious revenge, revolution and one day, of course, his own school where his children are running the show.
So what is this scruffy, hungry, frustrated, passionately deluded urchin’s redress? Will he burn down the school? No. The job is too big and he is too small. Will he kill all his enemies as he insane parents have promised him? Never happen. There are too many and he is always making more. Will he one day enroll in “the School” himself and exert his will from the inside. Not a chance in Hell. His fanatic family has ensured his social blindness and enslaved his malleable little mind so completely that he cannot even dream dreams other than those of twisted paradise for “the True Believer” sold to him by crazed fundamentalists who worship only God and despise everyone else.

But because he is hopelessly trapped in his passion, anger and determination you know what? Every once in a while he’s going to get up the nerve to sneak into the playground and kick someone right in the balls before he runs away in joyous celebration.
Every now and again he’s going to nail one of the kids in the playground smack in the head with a rock he’s thrown from across the street with minimum skill but maximum hate then celebrate his glorious victory against his oppressor.
From time to time he’s going to flatten some tires in the parking lot, break some big expensive windows and pull the fire alarm so that every damn one of us has to march out of the school and mill around like cattle while he hyperventilates behind the bushes as he slips his slingshot out of his back pocket and takes aim.
Is it gonna sting? You’re damn right it is but he has absolutely no chance of closing the school and he never, EVER WILL!
Only occasionally will he ever he be captured and only then wrestled to the ground while he spits in your eye and curses your Mother. Lock him up and he’ll spend his days praying for strength and waiting for his now much more specific revenge.

But breathe easy Mr. and Mrs. Red State because the vicious little son-of-a-bitch is not coming to bomb your strip mall, blow up your corn silo, burn down your Wal-Mart or sabotage your satellite dish. His ultimate accomplishment (and he's already achieved it) will only be the most minor of footnotes in your otherwise busy day.
He’s not the seething, bestial Hun at the gate gnashing his teeth while waiting to tear down your civilization and eat your babies.... he’s only,-and can only be- the pathetic, desperate, starving junkie thug looking to score................... and what is his drug? God is his drug and religion his fix which leads me back to-
Religion.
Yes.

to be continued...................

Look at me, Ma! Top 'o the World!

This was my quest and, yes, there is good news for all the grey hairs out there.

Affirmative! I made it up those back breaking, leg aching, killer set of steps and thought you might like the view. Something about running through a graveyard is oddly comforting yet difficult to explain. Perhaps it's the fact that if I keel over and croak on the spot they'll most likely just dig a hole and drop me in because it would be a GENUINE BITCH to have to haul my corpse all the way back down.

I'm getting younger all the time.

Even the graveyards in Japan are crowded.

BTW- I just kind of liked this shot so...............please don't blame me if evil spirits start crawling out of your computer screen..............it was your fault for looking.