Falling from Grace

[Steven Hunley]

Falling from Grace
by
Steven Hunley

Colours I've none, dark or light, red, white or blue.
Cold is my touch (freezing).
Summoned by name - I am the overseer over you.
Given this command to watch o'er our miserable sphere.
Fallen from grace, called on to bring sun or rain.
Occasional corn from my oversight grew.
Fell with mine angels from a far better place,
offering services for the saving of face.
Now you're here, you may as well admire
all whom living has retired from the benign reconciliation.
Legends were born surrounding mysterious lights
seen in the sky (flashing).
I just lit a fag then took my leave in the blink of an eye.
Passionate play join round the maypole in dance
(primitive rite) (wrongly).

Summoned by name I am the overseer over you.—Jethro Tull Overseer

When his alarm went off the Overseer turned over, fluffed his cloudy pillow and went back to sleep. For this reason Dear Mrs. Poe’s contractions ceased and the boy baby didn’t come forth into the world until two the next morning on January fourteenth.

A woman checked in to the hospital under the name Poe. Poe, the father, was the British council to the U.S. in Los Angeles and wanted nothing to do with the ‘incident’. So the baby boy was given up for adoption, papers were eagerly signed, and all the juicy facts remain very hush-hush to this day.

What’s rumored is this. The admitting nurse that checked “Mrs. Poe” into the hospital was of the opinion she looked suspiciously like Scottie Fitzgerald, who was exactly that age at that time. "Mrs. Poe" even listed her school as Vassar. The nurse had seen a picture of her and her father and mother in The Saturday Evening Post. Years later, after the boy grew up and started writing, many scholars would point to these facts, the" Poe and Fitzgerald Connection" they labeled it, and cite his proclivity for drug use and writing was merely genetic, or that his early history, and therefore his psyche, was naturally infected by abandonment issues, much as a Swiss cheese is naturally infected with holes.

“That,” they would say later, “explains his torment and his endless search for self-expression.”

Still others said writing was his way of chipping away at the Everest mountain of crap his life had become, a kind of therapeutic endeavor.

But it was simpler than that.

Mr. Poe and Scottie had the affair, a baby boy was the product, in a manner just as formulaic as the start as any dime novel you buy in the neighborhood grocery.

The Overseer didn’t care about the details; the baby boy was just another name on a list, another unrecognizable face in the throng. When his celestial alarm clock went off, he fluffed his cumulus cloud pillow and went back to sleep...again.

But he DID wake up eventually at the aforementioned two the next morning. Trained his magic finger in the vicinity of San Diego, a little bit south, to National City. Out popped a baby boy and when the nursed asked “Mrs. Poe” if she wanted to hold him, she turned towards the wall.

“Not now,” she said flatly, meaning “never”.

But after she regained her composure her reptilian brain signaled for an appropriate crocodile tear to be shed quite realistically down her rosy cheek. As soon as she saw the nurse take note, she said,

“Bring me the papers, and let’s be done with it.”

Paradise Valley Hospital seemed hardly a fitting name. The whole process was more like a business than a miracle.

I don’t see why I’m telling the story. I’m only here to chronicle the Overseer’s part in all this. Better the boy should tell you himself. He can’t remember much before five, so he’ll start there.

***
©Steven Hunley2013

http://youtu.be/Dt1DRkJCdeo Jethro Tull--The Overseer


to be continued...

[Steven Hunley]

In fifty-two I was five. Believe it or not things were different then. I was in kindergarden and just at that age to start doubting Santa’s identity. But I didn’t. Not yet. My father ran a service station for Shell Oil. I say service station because that’s what they gave you then, service. For the price of the gas alone they’d wipe your wind shields, check your battery, water, and oil, even your tires. For free. Yes America, for free.

My Dad had always been good with his hands. I remember them well. They were rough and calloused, and deep in his fingerprints sat the indelible black of the miles of roads America had even then. No matter how much he scrubbed them with gritty Lava hand soap the black never came out. Like America itself, it was too ingrained in him.

My father worked hard, and because of that, so did my mother. She was from Missouri, Misery she called it, and he was from Dorothy’s Kansas. Working on cars was the work that dirtied him. The combination of road dirt and oil was tough to remove from the snow-white uniforms Shell wore at the time. White pants, white shirt, white captain’s hat with a gold shell on a red field in the front.

“What do they think he is, a sailor or a mechanic?”

Mom would say that every time she did the laundry. Every time.

She’d wake up every morning Monday through Saturday at four, wake him up and feed him by five so he could open the station by six. They’d both come to California in the early forties to work in aircraft factories during the war. That’s how they met. Hard working, with jobs, that’s how the U.S.A. used to be. Back before out-sourcing, way back when Americans did all their own work and were damned proud of it.

“American made” meant something back then. It meant quality.

He worked hard and was on his feet all day long. So about two weeks before Christmas she got him some new shoes to relax in. Appropriately enough they were called loafers. I suppose she expected him to loaf around in them. I noticed right off they were so new they squeaked when he walked. Christmas Eve came and while on the way to bed I asked could I go get a drink of water. We had a water cooler on the back porch.

“Don’t drink too much Steven, you’ll pee the bed.”

I didn’t like that my Mom said that. Mainly because I never did pee the bed yet she told me anyway. My Mom had been a Master Sargent in the WACs. Always good at giving orders. If you knew what was good for you, you followed them to the letter.

As I was putting the cup down I noticed a large unmarked box in the corner. I thought nothing of it and went back to my room and crawled into bed. She came in to tuck me in. My mom was good at tucking me in by now she’d had five years practice. My dad was in the living room reading the paper. He had plenty of practice at that too. I’d make him read me the funnies, like Alley Oop, the Katzenjammer Kids, the Little King, on Sundays. Like Blondie and Dagwood and Little Abner.

“Now tomorrow is Christmas, Steven, so you get some sleep.”

As if I didn’t know. That’s right, Mom, I forgot it was Christmas tomorrow. Kids always do that. Right.

Then she’d plant a warm kiss on my cheek and close the door.

I’ll mention right here that I was excited, so excited I thought I couldn’t sleep at all. But I wrong. I was asleep in mere seconds, but didn’t stay that way for long.
Around midnight I woke up. First I thought I heard sounds from the roof.

Nope, that wasn’t it.

Then I noticed they were coming from the other side of my door. I turned and looked. The crack under the door showed the light was still on. And it wasn’t the sharp clip-clop clip-clop of reindeer hoofs. It was,

“Squeak squeak, squeak squeak.”

My Dad’s loafers, that’s what it was. Feeling secure I went right back to sleep.

The next morning I came out and was still wiping sleep from my eyes when I noticed a brand-spanking new tricycle next to the tree. All glittery and sparkling with chrome handlebars and black rubber grips.

The unmarked box on the back porch was gone.

Even a kindergardener knows one and one equals two.

***

In 1953 War of the Worlds came out. Later they showed it on TV. It started way past my bedtime and there was no way on Earth or Mars that my mother was going to let me watch it. I went to bed at 8:30 as usual. But I didn’t sleep.

I tossed and turned. Then from under my door I heard sounds of screams and the buzz of the Martian’s death-ray. I heard about death-rays when watching Flash Gordon. Ming the Merciless had one. Death-rays were tuff. Death rays were hot. I wanted a death ray. Every kid on the block wanted a death ray. They were so much cooler than cap guns.

I snuck from my bed to the door and cracked it. I could see the TV from my angle just over my dad’s stocking feet propped up on a recliner. There were the Martians with their beady little eyes. Oooh they looked scary! Little beady-eyed Martian monster fellows! All squiggly of body they were, and slimy as well. I hated and feared them. They made quite an impression. Their image was going to haunt me forever, I just knew it.

About two months later I was sleeping in my bunk bed. There was no one in the top bunk, just me in the bottom. Spoiled, that’s what I was. Whining would get you anything if you did it enough. Even a bunk bed. You just had to be careful. In my house too much whining could get you slapped. The house had just been remodeled. My bedroom was turned into a kitchen, the house was topsy-turvy. I still wasn’t use to it, especially at night.

It was summer and my parent’s bedroom was upstairs. Now we had an upstairs. I woke up in the middle of the night. Not from a bad dream, probably from something I ate.

Half-asleep, I turned over and faced the door that opened into the kitchen. I was ready to drift back off when I noticed something. Something eerie. Two sets of sparkles across the kitchen were blinking at me like eyes.
I froze.
There they were. Maybe they were eyes. They weren’t too far from floor. Whoever was watching me was short. Short and watching. Watching me sleep! Then suddenly it hit me who they could be.

They were the beady-eyed Martians! Oh my God! Oh my God! Beady-eyed Martians Guys were watching me while I slept. So I did what I did best when slimy beady-eyed Martians were watching me.

I began to sweat.

I froze and sweat at the same time. This went on for ages. Then I got up my nerve. I poked my hand from the covers. They kept watching. Every strange moment aflame with new threats and new thrills. Alien beady-eyes were blinking out there in the darkness.

‘Probably having trouble dealing with earth’s atmosphere.’

That’s what I figured.

I inched my hand out farther and onto the wall just below the light switch. It stuck there at first and didn’t move. I knew if they caught me moving it would get their attention, so slowly, very slowly, one inch at a time, I crept up the wall. Kind of like The Beast With Five Fingers that I’d watched on Shock Theater last week, the one that strangled Peter Lorre at the end. It was a fear-charged journey into unknown realms of mystery, that’s what it was.

Up I inched, closer and closer to the switch. Cold rivulets of sweat trickled down my face. Finally I was there at the switch. Snap, it was on! A rectangle of light poured into the kitchen from my room to reveal...

Absolutely nothing! Absolutely nothing at all!

“Where are they?” I asked myself.

I got up and went in and looked around. Nothing.

There was nothing else to do but go back to sleep. I hopped back in bed, turned out the light and covered myself up and turned towards the wall. Then after a while, while trying to figure it out I had the strangest sensation. Someone was watching me. I turned over. Believe it or not the Martians were back. Clever slimy beady-eyed Martians anyway.

I occurred to me that anyone who could have a death-ray could probably make themselves invisible. So now I was in trouble. Should I make a mad dash up the stars to my parent’s room? What if there were more Martians up there and they’d taken my parents hostage? What then? Clever slimy beady-eyed Martians anyway! Always taking over the world. What could I do? I remembered what they said in the movie.

“Guns, tanks, bombs. They’re like toys against them!”

Now I’m hearing noises too. But it’s not Martians. It’s my mom wakened from me mucking about in the kitchen. She’s in her underwear and this whole thing is getting a little embarrassing.

“Steven, what’s the matter?”

“There’s Martians in the kitchen, Mom, that’s what’s the matter.”

She gives me a look.

“Well, let’s see,” she says, and turns on the kitchen light. We both look around. Nothing.

“It’s just your imagination,” she instructs me. “Now go back to sleep.”

Ok, so I do, but as soon as she turns off the light there they are. The Evil Slimey Martian blinking eyes.

“Hey Mom,” I scream up the stairs, “They’re back.”

She comes back down but in crossing the kitchen she turns on the light. Nothing there. I explain my theory about their ability to turn invisible but she’s having none of it. She’s too practical for that and besides she’s from Missouri the show me state. She has to be shown.

“OK,” she announces. “Let’s see."

She turns off the light. Nothing from her angle but from mine, there they are.
“See?”
She scoots down and looks. She walks into the kitchen. She follows the angles and figures it out. My Mom was always good at figuring things out.

“Come here,” she says.

“See these?” she says, pointing at the pilot lights on the stove. “They flicker when the wind comes in through the window. You can see them through the crack between the stove top and the counter.”

“Oh.”

I nod my foolish kid-head up and down. She tucks me back in bed and returns upstairs and I can barely hear my father trying to muffle his laughter.

The thing is, after that? I had their company any time I wanted.

Anytime I turned over after that I knew they were there watching me. Little slimy beady-eyed Martians anyway. Little Martian friends of mine were watching my back.

Sometimes I miss them.

Never let you kids watch War of the Worlds. That’s my advice.


©Steven Hunley2013

http://youtu.be/P9T9f3UbGuo War of the Worlds trailer

to be continued...

[Steven Hunley]

In fifty-seven when I was ten my ‘other’ family took us to the drive-in movie and we saw the first color Frankenstein movie. I say ‘other’ because I had two families at the time. Long before I was old enough to remember, I had been one of Solomon’s babies, divided up. I lived with one set of parents and on alternate weekends, visited the ‘other’.

It was a bad setup, and if I’d had my way, the judge in all his wisdom, should have been shot or forced to read 1 Kings 3:16-28 , write it on the board, and made to wear pink, a much less serious color than his usual somber robes, to mark his twisted sense of humor.

The effect was that I felt comfortable with one set of parents and not with the ‘other’. As far as I was concerned, one knew me and the other one didn’t. While with the ‘other’ I either felt I was on display, or worse, separated or cut off. After I’d gone to college and learned five years of English lit and sophistication I referred to it as the Sylvia Plath or ‘bell-jar’ effect.

From two to eighteen I was ‘the boy with two lives’ and didn’t much care for one of them. After eighteen, I abandoned the ‘other’ one, and by twenty-two the set I loved and lived with had jumped ship and abandoned me. My mother took the lifeboat, or I should say deathboat, of Cancer, and in her way steered clear of me, and my dad jumped on the leaky boat of cerebral hemorrhage for his bloody way out, leaving me, a wreck of unconsciousness, slowly sinking inch by inch into the depths of forgetfulness as icy and numbing as the North Atlantic.

I mean to say that fortunately or unfortunately, by that time I’d discovered Valium, and as a result, don’t remember one second of either of their funerals. I’ve never done public death well. I’ve never taken notes and memorized what polite thing to say, or how to feel. You’re never much good at consoling, when you’re expert at loss. You’re just not made of the right material.

I should have scrounged a dog-eared a set of Cliff’s notes on death and dying, or boned up on Elizabeth Kubler Ross, but it’s too late, and, as Robert Graves once said, 'goodbye to all that' for now.


We piled into the car, my step-sister Edna, and my dad John and his new Canadian wife. The drive in was a free-for all eating situation too. You could bring anything you wanted. Not just sneak in a candy bar or sandwich like today at the theater, but rather sodas and fried chicken, liquorice twists both red and black, and popcorn fresh and hot from the concession stand drowned in oceans of butter. Kids my age would wear their pajamas and bring their favorite pillow. The South Bay Drive-in was showing a double feature, The Curse of Frankenstein, and a black and white B picture, X the Unknown. It would stay unknown too, due to my stomach and scare-factor, but more of that later.

The real X-the Unknown wasn’t on the screen, it was out in the audience. It was me in their family, the odd chipped piece, the one that didn’t match, and the one you hid in the back. The tag along, week-ender.

I know it seems harsh, but that’s how I felt. Kinda second-rate, kinda outsider-like, kinda not quite right.

But there I was in my PJs, trying to fit in, doing my best, pillow in hand, jolly good show, stiff upper lip, doing my best to glean what was expected.

I had no pre-conceptions, and hadn’t seen the original Frankenstein. So here’s this Hammer film, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and Cushing’s a doctor, and it’s supposed to be a long time ago, and certainly not in San Diego, I can tell by the way they’re dressed. It’s not as long ago as Robin Hood, but they talk much the same, so I figure they’re in England. But now it’s getting scary! Oh my goodness, real scary, and I stop biting my chicken leg just long enough to watch Frankenstein unfold a cloth on the laboratory table, and what’s those two squishy things there, see em’?

It’s a pair of rubbery eyeballs the crazy doctor Victor stole somewhere!

His helper doctor dude is shocked! I am too, and a mouthful of fried chicken bites the rubber floor mat in the back seat, as my jaw falls uncontrollably open in awe.

Oh, now I’m primed and as on edge and any razor by Somerset Maugham.

Now the crazy doctor is robbing a brain and after he plunks it into a jar he drops the jar and glass splinters go into the squishy-soft tissue. It reminds me of liver and onions, which reminds me of my mother at home, and how far away that is, and how I can’t wait for Sunday afternoon when I get to go home, even though it’s Saturday night, and that snaps my elastic brain of consciousness back to the present, and my eyes back to the screen. Now there’s a body all bandaged up, with all sorts of tubes attached, floating in a gigantic aquarium. It’s like a mummy floating in a glass sarcophagus. I didn’t care much for mummies; they didn’t talk enough and made me nervous. When we watched Boris Karloff in the Mummy two weekends ago on Shock Theater, I had nightmares for weeks.

I’ll say right now that was the usual pattern. I led a sheltered life, but only on Arizona St. where I grew up under my mom’s care. In National City I was subjected to good times and bad, and whatever the outcome, would take it home with me to my mother. The repercussions went with me wherever I wandered, and trailed far behind, except the ones that stuck with me, which I’m still ungluing today. I shook free of as many bad repercussions as I could, but a man has only so much energy, and uses most of it up on everyday battles. Life is a constant struggle to attain and break free. Our egos suppose we choose what we like, but life is more simple and sometimes gives you no choices, no good ones anyway.

But right now my ten-year old tummy is stuffed with all sorts of goodies, and it’s getting tense. The fried chicken and licorice whips and popcorn and French fries are conspiring together for an evil effect, and the bubbling soda, let's not forget that. Mad doctor Victor is messing about in the lab and starting the mechanism up. But he can't do it alone and leaves to go get help. The body floats alone in the aquarium with all sorts of tubes of blood and who knows what else hooked up to it as a storm wildly rages outside. My little-boy stomach is squeezing with tension. I look at my dad and his new Canadian wife sitting in the front seat. They don’t see my strained expression; they’re turned towards the movie. Edna can’t see me either; she’s transfixed by the film. So I look to see what’s so interesting when suddenly comes a Boom! from the loud speaker that hangs in the window. Lightning has bolted through the window and started the mad doctor’s machinery without him.

They show a close up of the monster’s bandaged chest, and it’s moving, oooh, it’s moving, see that?

CRASH! Double CRASH and SHATTER!


‘Uh-oh, the aquarium broke,’ I figure, and my stomach tightens further, twisting like a washcloth.

Crazy doctor Victor and his helper are up the stairs and in front of the laboratory door. They open it up. Standing there, towering over them like the Colossus of Rhodes is a guy wrapped in bandages head to foot. Oh My God!

He grunts like a gorilla and grabs at his face and rips the bandages off his ugly mug. OH MY GOD!

He’s all squishy and shriveled and stitched up and his eyes are crooked and he’s green, do you see that? GREEN! OH MY GOD! The ugly towering giant guy is GREEN!

Right here the music gets loud, my stomach rumbles, and I lose my cookies.

Fortunately for all concerned the back window is rolled down. My head appears and I grimace and bellow likes an MGM lion that’s just been poisoned. The couples in nearby cars are scared to death, and not from the movie. My suffering face the real thing, and it’s 3 D too, and in Technicolor, don’t you forget, because they never will.


I’m embarrassed. So is everyone else. Edna hands me a stack of napkins. By this time I feel better, but it’s too late. With his face a paragon of determination John Simmes pulls the car out of the space, goes the end of the row, turns left and follows the wall to the exit. I look out the back window and X the Unknown is starting and it’s black and white.

The people in our car are black and white too. They all have granite faces, three rock faces of disappointment, let-down, and loathing. No one speaks, not even a whisper. The car rolls down the street stuffed with silent meanings and none of them good. I understand and am ashamed. I spoiled their night out, a trip to the drive in, and a good meal of junk food destroyed, all in one fell swoop.

I’m a disaster, an unknown quantity, the unknowable symbol, the real X the Unknown, a B picture person, a cheap imitation, a piece of the puzzle that just doesn’t fit ‘cause I wasn’t cut out properly.

And folks, that was just the beginning. The psychological crap hit the fan later.


Like I said, whatever it was would be brought home to my mother. But mothers know quickly, or within a few days, if a child that was out of the nest comes back with a cold, say, or an avian virus. A few days later her child comes down with symptoms. Not so with psychogical diseases, which are much more deeply hidden in the mind of the child, and have no demonstrable diagnostic pain, unless they are manifested closer to the surface through actions. And even actions can be misdiagnosed as to what causes them.

So here I am, picked up a little of what they call nowadays ‘baggage’ and can’t tell Mom to help me unpack it and iron things out. I wasn’t articulate at ten, and didn’t want her to find out, as she’d be upset. Upset at them, me, the whole nine yards of an emotionally-laden gridiron that dotted the playground of her ex-husband’s infidelities.

The first thing I decide to do, I don’t know why, is dig an old teddy bear out of the closet. You figure.

‘Oh, there he is, look! He’s as warm and fuzzy as I remember, and he’s just about my size.”

Yeah, right. He was one quarter my size and his leg was nearly ripped off and he stank with a jolly old stink.

“Don’t worry, Boy, I’ll sew you up!”

I got out a needle and thread. Nobody’s looking. It takes me fifteen minutes to thread the needle. I do a field-hospital job, but I figure my stitching is no worse than Frankenstein’s and Teddy is tough. He doesn’t squeal, not once. I have plans for T.R. T.R. is someone you can depend on to carry a big defensive stick.

It’s late afternoon, and my bedroom is in the back of the house facing the sun. Where the shade doesn’t reach the edge of the window, bars of sunlight shine across the bedroom and reflect gold off the waxed wood floor. I sat down and pulled a pencil sharpener out of my desk drawer and a new pencil. Small spirals of wood with yellow edges appear as I twisted. Once it was as sharp as a Saracen’s dagger I stretched over the bed with my head against the wall just under the window and put the pencil down on the floor next to the molding. I withdrew my hand and reached down again with my eyes closed to see if I could find it by touch.

Next I put T.R. in the bed on the outside, next to my pillow so he’d be the first to go. I pulled the blanket and sheet as tight as possible over him and tucked it in.

Now for the test.

I took off my shoes but left on my red and black striped socks. Lying on the bed flat on my back in the center, I put my feet in first, toes up like normal.

No good.

I realized that if I was on my back, my toes stuck up and untightened the blanket. So I turned each foot outward, one extreme left, one extreme right, and flatten myself like a cardboard gingerbread man looking as stupid and hieroglyphic as Ramses the Second.

“So what if it’s summer? Didn’t Mom just take me to see Land of the Pharaohs? I’ll imagine I’m an Egyptian between some lines of hieroglyphics stuck on a wall and I could be, as it’s getting mighty hot.’’

So slowly, thoughtfully, carefully, I scooted down inch by inch, into the bed, like bread sliding into a toaster slot. My reason was simple and I considered it while looking at the closet door across the room.

“If the monster comes out of the closet, it will be dark. He’ll grab at old Teddy first. It’s so tight in here he’ll have a hard time getting him out. By the time he does, I’ll get the pencil and have it out with him.”

I reached down and felt for the Saracen-blade dagger-pencil.

“I’ll fight him tooth and nail.”

My life had turned from urban romanticized childhood to Kipling’s Jungle Book in a single dark night at the movies.

What was it Mogli said? Oh yes, “A tooth, a tooth! Now I can kill the tiger.”

So yes, I was a California child influenced by movies. I had imagination to spare and images I’d seen, for good or for bad, haunted me forever. My mother knew this and understood. An example of a bad idea in her decision making was Land of the Pharaohs, but she balanced it later with The Ten Commandments. Scary movies weren’t even worth considering to my mother, and The Curse of Frankenstein would have been way out of bounds. Better secrecy than a mother’s wrath I figured at the time. That very fact worked against me being able to talk to her about it later. Like John Wayne, I was keeping a secret too dangerous to reveal.

Kids with imagination don’t need scary movies, the world is scary enough. Come to think if it, no kids need them. Let them make up their own minds about what’s scary and base it on a world gestalt made of their own experiences.

I was prepared, like John Wayne was prepared in Back to Bataan, but it’s easy to prepare when the sun is shining, and it’s late on a summer afternoon and everything is accounted for.

The night would be the challenge, where shadows rule and noises are hesitant to give up their sources, and a certain ten years olds’ imagination is given free rein to go wild.

***

to be continued

copywrite Steven Hunley 2013

[Steven Hunley]

Night was always the supreme bug-a-boo. The fear gained from the night at the drive-in movie had the nerve to invade my prayers. That was the first thing it messed with, your faith. Up until then my prayers had been a simple “Now I lay me down to sleep, and ended with “I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” Standard Rendition.

But on this night, I decided to bless my parents. Not once, but twice. With a six foot monster mucking about in the shadows, God knows they needed it. And that was night one. By night two the other parents were included and my stepsister too. Each night another person was added, like my aunt Eileen in Missouri, and blessed, and then after a few nights more they somehow needed more blessing each, and my prayer, originally a sprint at thirty-two seconds, turned into an endless Marathon of twelve minutes ten seconds of concern and devotion.

At the end, instead of me crossing myself once in true Christian fashion, the number increased to five and then ten. If I had been crossed with swords instead of fingers, I could have been Errol Flynn, God rest his alcohol sodden soul and knighted myself in the process.

I was obsessed with ‘getting it right’ and compulsive about “getting it done.”

Maybe I was a getting a bit obsessive-compulsive.

Does getting up and checking and rechecking the door you just locked and twisting the knob to make sure ring a bell? Does repeating words in your head bang a gong?

How many times is compulsive anyway? Three times? How many more times than once is compulsive?

Does re-reading whole pages of Uncle Scrooge comic books count? How about Donald Duck? How many times for how many pages? When reading Tom Sawyer, how many times do you need to go down the Mississippi, how many pages re-read, how many times until it qualifies as obsessive-compulsive?

I’m getting carried away here, for the simple reason I was getting carried away at the time.

Three weeks later I’ve been sleeping with Teddy every night. The summer is baking outside in true southern California fashion. My parents are having friends over to play a card game named Canasta. I never hear of anyone playing Canasta nowadays. It’s hot even after dark, so my dad is setting up a card table outside on the patio, right below my bedroom window. I go to bed, and when I look out, I see my mom putting cards and ashtrays on the table below, dressed in a fancy Spanish-inspired skirt and a frilly peasant blouse barely off one shoulder. She’s smoking a Marlborough, and pushing a bobby pin in her red hair.

Me, the little Françoise Truffaut's Wild-Child upstairs, sweating like toast, has been contemplating the shadows a bit too often.

I yell through the screen, “Hey, Mom!”

She looks up.

“If you hear me start screaming, come up and save me quick. I won’t be kidding.”

The look on her face is puzzled, but that doesn’t stop her from making a command decision.

“O.K. Go to sleep,” were her orders. She used to be a master sergeant in the WACS, no kidding.

She never asked me a thing about it.

Did that sound a little crazy? Looking back I think it sounds a little crazy. I didn’t put the pieces together until a few years ago when I heard about Howard Hughes. Leonardo played him in the Scorsese movie The Aviator. He’d line up bottles of his pee-pee on a shelf to keep track of them. He liked order in his life. One of his original traumas was when there was a soldier’s riot outside on the street and his mother hid him out in a closet. Later he took great comfort from his public life in darkened rooms. Shadows became his citadel. I think I wanted more order in my life too. I still do.

In the original Frankenstein the monster is pathetic. He’s too large and too ugly for most people to stomach. But that’s not his real curse. His real curse, dear reader, is that’s he inarticulate. Boris Karloff played this aspect of him with certainty. Because the monster can’t communicate and make his needs known, he’s alienated from the rest of mankind. He moans and yearns but no one understands. He gestures, but no one can make out his meanings.

That’s why children are referred to as ‘little monsters’, and live in a world apart.

That’s why I call my affliction the Curse of Frankenstein, and why writing, to me, is downright therapeutic. It’s my way of getting my personality out of the citadel of darkness my childhood built and thrusting it headlong into the blinding light of day.

I have met my monster and I am him.

Some trauma, not of your doing, happens to you when you’re young. It could be psychic, it could be physical. In response, you become manic compulsive, trying to reestablish control. After a while you may notice you’re a little weird, maybe not. It’s hard to diagnose, children are wonderfully weird from the get-go. The original wound, with time, may stop hurting. So after a while you think you’re healed, when in fact you’re not. The scar remains to haunt you.

After a few years you’ve outgrown checking the door knob fifteen times to see if it’s really locked, or reciting marathon prayers. Instead, you take control of your emotions, your love affairs, your environment, any aspect of your life that appears edgy, anything that might go wrong. You cannot bear to share these decisions. Trust in others is the first thing to go, and not with a wiz and a bang, but so slowly you never see it coming.

Mistrust is a cup that gets filled one drop at a time.

So now you’re an adult and it’s you and no other in complete control. The weak point of this philosophy is when life throws you a curve ball and things go amiss, you blame it on yourself. When bad things happen they’re your fault. After all, whose fault can they be? You’re the one in charge and it happened during your watch when you were fully conscious.

There’s no one to complain to, no one to share the guilt of a bad decision, no one to face the music but you.

I have no answers; I only share the problem. The problem is a vigilant monster. Right when I think I’ve healed, life comes along and reminds me I’m not. I realize at that moment, as if I was shot with a crystalline bullet, that I’m only another one of the walking wounded, a casualty of an indifferent universe, and the fortunes of a Crusade that never ends.

It’s a never ending Pilgrimage for Sanity and Relevance to the Past without Guilt.

Sh*t, I should be Richard or Saladin. Maybe, with luck, I'll be my own hero.


to be continued

copywrite Steven Hunley 2013

[Steven Hunley]

I grew up, really grew up, in the fifties. I lived on Arizona Street just about a block off of University Avenue in North Park, a neighborhood in San Diego. My dad’s Shell station was on the corner.

Next door was a family, the Brights. Their garage was tiny, as most were in that neighborhood, built about 1915. Their back gate was next to our back gate.
They had two sons, Lee and Jackie. The boys were into cars. Lee had a forty-nine Mercury.

Jackie was only a few years older than me so we played. I’d often see him working on a car, his Levis smeared with grease, his white tee-shirt smudged where he kept a pack of Camels stashed in the rolled-up sleeve. His hair slicked-back with Brylcreem, his cuffed Levis, and his black motorcycle boots.

They would always be working on their cars and eventually Jackie got a thirty-two Ford, chopped it so it would have a low profile, souped it up so it would run fast, painted it yellow with scarlet flames on the side just for the Hell of it. The first time I saw American Graffiti I was reminded of Jackie and his car. He worked on it constantly and lived his life under the hood or on the street.

I never saw him race it but I imagine he did, out by Otay mountain, or in San Ysidro where the cops were few and far between. The family moved away a year or so later.

I did see the car perform one day however. It was years later, and my father had bought me my first car. I had to pay him back the sixty dollars for the 49 Chevy and I did, by pumping gas at his station, fixing flats, doing lube jobs, changing oil. Many tires still had tubes “back in the day” as my son now puts it. Back in pre-history, way back in ancient times.

Jackie came in my dad’s station for gas. I hadn’t seen the car or him for some time. I said hello, pumped gas, checked the tires. As he was leaving he pulled out on University Avenue. We were a half a block from Texas Street, and it was uphill. Just as he entered the street, a car came over the hill. It didn’t see him.
Even if it had, it would have been too late, it was going much too fast to stop.

I swear I could see what was about to happen.

But it didn’t. I forgot it was Jackie, and the car was Jackie’s car.

The deuce coupe suddenly accelerated. There were no tires screeching, no rubber burning, nothing but poetry in motion. It was as if the hand of God had flicked its finger on the back of the coupe and set it in motion, like a soundless shot.

A yellow blur, a flash, and it was over. The coupe did a vanishing act.

I imagined Jackie and his coupe could evade Death at will. There was no way it could touch him, he had become one of the Immortals.

A month later his brother Lee stopped by to tell me the bad news. While outside Joe’s Liquor on University Avenue Jackie heard a commotion. The place was being robbed. He went in to help Joe, a retired policeman, and caught a stray bullet. He staggered out to the street and collapsed within feet of his car. His young blood flowed into the gutter like rainwater stained red.

He lived on the street and died on the street. How fitting.

To me, Jackie will always be the real John Milner. I’m glad I knew him, glad I grew up in the fifties, and glad I still like Green Onions.

Somewhere between ten and eighteen I obtained my majority, whatever that means. Like I said I started working for my dad at his service station. I was skinny at the time. Here’s what I looked like and here’s what I did. I can still remember on accounta I got a picture.

When I was Skinny I was tall and lean. From the bottom up, I was this: Shoes soles all black and ugly, and scuffed brown shoes above that. One has a short lace where it broke off one day when I was in too much of a hurry on his way to school. Then brown socks. No telling where I got brown socks, probably at Robin Hood's Discount Stolen Socks right outside Sherwood Forest, as they were fresh out of forest green so Errol Flynn lent me his.

Errol, had he survived his drinking and good looks would have thought I was 'a jolly good fellow'.

Then it’s quite a stretch up the socks to the trousers. This is because I was an original friend of Noah, or lived for some time in Mississippi. Either way I’ve been the victim of a flood or a bad fashion decision, or maybe my mother used water that was just too damn hot, one or the other, or the other.

The trousers are rumpled and have grease-stains on baggy knees. I’ve been under cars and over cars, pumping gas, changing oil, or fixing flats. Then there’s a wide black leather belt which for some reason known only to me, has its buckle to one side. Maybe it’s to balance the chromium keychain reel clipped on my other side. Then it’s the kaki shirt, long sleeve, with the yellow Shell over a red field patch over one pocket, and the oval embroidery over the other pocket with the name ‘Steve’ in red, symbolizing either Shell Oil, or that I had a crush on Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, I can’t remember which.

In the left pocket is a ball-point pen and a chrome air-gauge. In doing this, I’ve predicted and pre-dated Nerd Fashion with the pen-and-pencil-in-pocket-protector-look by at least twenty years. You will notice no ear-buds or wires hanging from my head. That’s because the electronics revolution hasn’t happened yet. The only thing portable that I own that’s electronic is my transistor radio. Computer? I have no need of computers; I always had my trusty slide-rule in hand. It’s as full of inaccuracies as my brain.

You can’t see it in the picture but I have a six and a half ounce Coca Cola in my hand and I’m ready for work. When drinking Coca Cola I feel one-hundred percent Americano.

When working in Dad’s gas station I feel one-hundred and one percent American man. Cars, tools, women in distress with car problems, that sort of thing, a Cervantes knight in greasy armor, a shell to mark my heraldry, a shield that is promised to defend all defenseless women in general.

Oh, almost forget the head. It’s a square jaw with a clean shave, longish dark hair with reasonable sideburns. Large very-dark glasses shade blue eyes searching clandestinely for a ‘Pretty Woman’. That’s right, it’s a Roy Orbison face. It’s my version of a rock and roll kinda face. From the obvious lack of upper lip we know that I must be contemplating growing a mustache to compensate as soon as possible, as soon as I can manage to get as tough with my upper lip as Bogart.

***

to be continued...



http://youtu.be/HwkNI9tjqPI Pretty Woman

[108 fountains]

Steve,

Each of these chapters is an interesting little vignette in its own way. I hope you have some end in sight and a grand design of how you are going to pull it all together. If not, you might want to consider making each of them a stand-alone story (which is pretty much what they are already anyway).

There are flashes of excellent writing; for example,

“In the original Frankenstein the monster is pathetic. He’s too large and too ugly for most people to stomach.
But that’s not his real curse. His real curse, dear reader, is that’s he inarticulate. Boris Karloff played this
aspect of him with certainty. Because the monster can’t communicate and make his needs known, he’s
alienated from the rest of mankind. He moans and yearns but no one understands. He gestures, but no one
can make out his meanings”

and

“Mistrust is a cup that gets filled one drop at a time.”

But there are also some fairly long passages that seem to be drawn out a little too far without much happening; for example the whole thing about stitching up the teddy bear and then lying flat on the bed, etc. just seemed to me like an awfully long way to go to make the point. (Sometimes less is more, as I am often reminded in comments about my own stories. :smilewinkgrin: )

I thought Chapter 1 was really interesting, although I’m not exactly sure where the facts end and where the fiction begins. I’ve seen comparisons of Edgar Allen Poe and F. Scott Fiztgerald, not only of their written works, but also of their personal lives, so on the surface, it would seem that the narrator of the subsequent chapters, at least symbolically, is meant to share the Poe and Fitzgerald traits. However, there was also a factual/historical Scottie Fiztgerald, daughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who attended Vassar who married a man named Lanahan in the mid-1940s and lived in Washington, but I don’t know of any rumor that she ever had an affair or a child with a man named Poe or even ever traveled to Los Angeles (as in your story). The fictional Scottie in your story gives birth to an illegitimate child at Paradise Valley Hospital, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel was titled “This Side of Paradise” (and the factual/historical Scottie, a writer of short stories herself, published a posthumous collection of stories by her parents called “Bits of Paradise”). You obviously did some research in weaving facts and fiction together in this first chapter, but I guess what I’m unsure of is what your purpose was in doing so.

I really liked the concept of the Overseer in the first chapter, but that nice touch I thought was overtaken by the kind of weird mixture of fact and fiction surrounding the parentage of the child.

[108 fountains]

Hmmm... some of the other references (John Milner, the Pharaohs, "Green Onions," etc.) piqued my curiosity, and I found that you have all sorts of references to the film American Graffiti. I also just now noticed the teddy bear's name - T.R. - and that he's carrying a big stick (reference to Theodore Roosevelt who popularized the teddy bear and the "big stck.") From your previous postings, I know that you are an expert in American culture/trivia and that your stories are sprinkled with such references. In this collectiojn you've posted here, many of your references are up-front and obvious, but it appears that many are more obscure and much more subtle. I'm guessing that if I looked hard enough, I would find many more references and allusions. I kind of like the idea of doing that - it makes me feel that there is more going on here under the surface, but if it is difficult for someone like me, who has some knowledge of American history/popular culture, then it must really be difficult for non-Americans to follow. Still, I do like the concept.

[Steven Hunley]

108 Fountains-

It keeps rolling on! This just happened yesterday in Minneapolis on the way to Barbara's Fiftieth Class Reunion.

We meet the Manns. Stephen and Penny and Pam took us to dinner and we met Alicia, Stephen's fashionable wife, a holistic horse-healer who had once been a people nurse. Alicia was quiet but bold, bold enough to eat anchovies on her salad. Stephen was one of the few people I’ve ever met who understood the nature of street photography. And why not? He has cinema down pat, it’s his business to know all about film. Showed us his offices, and the original Deuce Coupe used in American Graffiti. But what impressed me most was how he talked tenderly to Barbara on the way back to the hotel. Before I met him I expected him to be a ruthless business man, a scion of theaters and all, but I was dead wrong. He’s sharp as a tack, never abrasive, soft spoken and amiable. One of those guys you feel comfortable with right off the bat.

I did enjoy the movie and nearly fell over when I saw the car. I told Stephen I was dumbfounded and had written a story called Deuce Coupe. Seems like the real stories are often the best. At least since they're first hand you know them inside out.

As for the Poe bit, the truth is that I'm adopted and never knew my biological parents, only that their name was Poe and that the mom attended Vassar. I always like Fitzgerald and my mom passed away when I was 22, leaving me only a fragment of the story that told where I came from. So I made the rest up. It's as good as many and better than some.

[Steven Hunley]

I never managed to get my upper lip as tough as Bogart’s but I did manage to learn the technique of running my thumb over it like Jean Paul Belmondo in Breathless which is much the same thing. And where did I do this maneuver? It wasn’t in the Grey Castle of High Schools that’s for certain, but rather across the street after graduation. City College-first semester.

It happened like this: In nineteen sixty-five I graduated and started wearing my hair long. Not because of the fashion, at first. Because I had big ears. All my life the big ears. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but Disney came out with “Dumbo” at the same time I was in grammar school. So you know what they called me.

When the Beatles came in, here was my chance to bury my ears beneath mounds of hair, and I took it. The Mod fashion came later. The first American Mods had to search for the fashions, and copied “the look” from English band album covers. My wide-whale corduroy pants were as wide-whaled as Brian Jones’ red ones on the pictures from High Tides and Green Grass. You’ve seen it on TV or in history books by now. Long hair, military jackets, bell-bottomed pants, flowered or paisley shirts with plain cuffs and collars. Beatle-boots with stupid zippers on their sides that always broke.

Girls thought, everyone thought, you had to be in a band. I even rented a base guitar from Apex music downtown. Thought I could manage four strings at least. Turned out I couldn’t.

City College was right across the street from San Diego High School. It was small, and believe it or not, only three of us dressed anything Mod. There was me, a guy, Mike Millsap, who was actually in a band, and Steven Garrison, an artist who drew for the Fortnightly, the college rag.

Long-haired, all three of us.

We’d sit together at lunch and swap stories.

“Guess what happened when I walked by the jocks today?”

That’s how it started.

One day they’d say, “Is that a boy or a girl?” Typical topical jock-humor.

Next day it would be, “When you gonna get a haircut?”

Ditto the first comment.

Funny thing is, inside of a year they’d be, everyone would be, wearing their hair longer one way or another. We were the pioneers though. We took the flak for the rest of them. Like the first bombers over Berlin.

First in battle and so forth. Front-line fashion-troopers, that’s what we were.

Then one day Steve comes to the lunch table with a piece of paper in his hand.

“Look at this,” says he.

It was the first cartoon of Mod Man.

“It’s you,” he says.

He made them for a semester, and if you don’t believe me, go down to City College in San Diego and ask to see the back issues. Just for nostalgia’s sake I’m about to do it myself one day. Just for nostalgia’s sake, get me?

At the same time I was Mod Man I encountered Rikki in Color and Design 101.

When Rikki let me unbutton her top button I was certain she was going to give it up. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I was convinced it was coming. All the elements were there. We were alone. It was warm, dark, and comfortable. Music was on low slow and romantic. Parking brake was set. We just come from downtown on the ferry and were sitting in front of her mother's house in Coronado.

We’d been flirting for weeks in class. I’d finally asked her out. Two weeks later and we saw Lawrence of Arabia for the second time and been to dinner. Now, parked in the concealing darkness her face had been seeking since puberty, it was time for dessert.

I’d been taking my time, maybe because I was an old hand with women, or maybe because I had no idea what would come next.

I’d been working my way down from behind her ear with a trail of kisses, and now nearing her neck where it met her shoulder. I paused, inhaling her scent, a mix of a particular woman and perfume, an exotic proprietary fragrance worn by no other woman.

“It’s a wonder how women are,” I thought.

This hesitation made her inhale, swelling her breasts, urging them to tug against the constraint of buttons and blouse.

I moved down to the second button. But then she grasped my fingers and pressed them to her lips.

“I just can’t do this,” she said softly, “Not now.”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause tomorrow I’m going with Tony to Mexico.”

“Tony, that idiot with the motor bike?”

She nodded.

“But why him? Why not me?”

She dropped my hand, placed two fingers against my mouth to silence me, and looked directly in my eyes.

“Because,” she said, looking down as if she were in pain, “Tomorrow he’ll still be here. You won’t.”

I was speechless. Not because I was dumfounded you understand, but because I had nothing to say. I didn't want to admit, even to myself, it was perfectly true.

On Monday when I walked into Color and Design 101 she wasn’t there.

“Where’s Rikki?” I said to a girl who sat in front and was staring at the empty desk.

“Oh, the pimple-faced girl? Haven’t you heard? She’s dead. A drunk driver hit her in Tijuana. She was on a motorbike, Tony too. It knocked them fifty feet.”

I heard there was a funeral, never went to the funeral. Don't do funerals. I figured I’d paid my last respects on that night in my Chevy when I’d stopped at the second button.

And though it seemed the whole school appeared shook up by her death, they were shamming.

It was the fall semester at City College. I remember going downtown with Rikki to Woolworths and eating Baklava, doing the old Lawrence of Arabia thing. She was the one turned me on to exotic sweets, never considering she was one of them, so exotic you couldn't place her. There aren’t many maple trees left downtown but there are a few.

I strolled downtown today and the old Woolworth’s is decayed and abandoned. A cold wind blew a few twisted maple leaves past my feet and into the gutter.

The others, those educationally-delinquent kids, those various student bodies, shed nothing but crocodile tears. She meant no more to them than another dead leaf.

Only I looked into her eyes and listened to her whisper, only my ears heard her profound truth, and understood its logic and implications.

Only I would live to regret it, regret myself... and the way I acted.

***

©Steven Hunley2014
to be continued

[108 fountains]

Wow! This last installment is really powerful. It's not often that I get goose bumps from a piece of writing. I know that most of your stuff is auto-biographical to a large extent, and the sort of informal, meandering journal-entry style works well most of the time with these kind of anecdotes. In this case, however, I would urge you to just delete everything up until "When Rikki let me unbutton her top button..." Beginning with that line, and continuing to the end with absolutely no other changes, you would have a short short story that I would consider one of the best I've ever seen on this forum or anywhere else.

On a different topic, I was fascinated to learn that the first installment in this thread was also largely autobiographical - I would have thought it to be 100 percent fictional. There are some intriguing coincidences there involving your real-life name and Edgar Allen Poe and the Fitzgeralds. Have you ever tried to do any family tree research? I stumbled upon a website, ancestry.com, which I believe allows a certain amount of research before you have to commit to paid (inexpensive) membership. In any case, using this site, I learned a lot of things I never knew about my family - for example, that one of my great grandfathers was one of the original founders of a Catholic Church in a village called Mud Creek, Illinois, that changed its name to St. Libory after the church was built, and that his father died onboard ship during the family's emigration from Germany.

[108 fountains]

Oh, one small thing... Although I try to avoid the perfect tenses, in this case, I think using the past perfect in the second last sentence, "Only I had looked into her eyes and listened to her whisper, only my ears had heard her profound truth, and understood its logic and implications" would be better.

[Steven Hunley]

While I was still in high school, San Diego didn’t seem that romantic. Now I was across the street at City College, my perception changed.

It wasn’t Paris. It wasn’t the twenties or thirties. Hemingway and Fitzgerald weren’t sharing a table, drinking absinthe, working on their manuscripts at the Jack in the Box on Park Boulevard as they did in a sidewalk café on the Champs Ellysees.

But it was romantic, in true southern California fashion. The quiet harbor breaking fragile moonlight into a thousand pieces between downtown and Point Loma, the seagulls soaring over the docks in the sunset like black paper cutouts suspended by invisible wires.

Balboa Park, its stately Spanish tower looming grandly above the Eucalyptus, rang melodic hours in the still atmosphere. Night Blooming Jasmine perfumed sultry summer nights, nights filled with reflective pools, glowing street lamps, and lovers holding hands.

When you’re twenty, all these pieces play their parts, and the nature of your story becomes highly romantic and speculative. Yet it seems so real you swear you could cut it with a knife.

The arrogance of youth buoys you to unlimited heights, and you believe anything is possible. You’re convinced you have the power to seduce life itself, if your touch is tender enough and your intentions pure.

In time City College became more than an institution of learning for scholars on the cheap. It magically transformed into a meeting place for hesitant lovers, where tenative rendezvous were made over sandwiches and Coca Cola in the lunch court, and once agreed to, acted out between classes in the parking lot. In the winter we’d fog the windows of our parked cars like crazy, and listen to KPRI, the only station that played rock on FM, and gave you real stereo for your money.

Me and Arthur Lee had something in common, something we shared. I was proud of it once but now I’m not so sure. It was a woman, and her name was Patty.
Arthur Lee died just a few years ago. He was the leader of a band called Love. Their song, Little Red Book was a hit back in the day. You may not have heard of them, it’s a time long time past, but musicians remember them. They still imitate their style. That song Vertigo by U2? Just a copy of Love’s song Seven plus Seven is. Bono even copied Arthur Lee saying, “One two three four.”

Except Bono made it, “Uno dose tres quatorse." He should have said quatro.

I guess Bono donno his Espanyolo. Respect to him anyway. We all can’t be bi-lingual.

I met Patty at lunch one day across the lunch table at City. She was a student, a free-spirited, Bohemian art student. What could be better?

Her mother owned a Baskin Robbins ice cream store in La Jolla. To keep her out of trouble in L.A’s music scene she sent her to City College in San Diego. Spoiled little rich girl Patty, always got what she wanted.

In addition to her mother owning an ice-cream shop, Patty was just plain fine. She dressed sexy, like girls do when partying on the Sunset Strip. She had a decent figure and red-platinum hair that she combined so well with her o-so-long legs and her o-so-short crimson skirt that clings so tight, so very there, so outa sight, just like in Pretty Flamingo by Manfred Mann. Sometimes she wore boots. Boots be sooo sexy. Just look around. They’ve got women’s legs attached to them.

Too soon after introductions the bell rang and we had to go to class. The last thing she told me as we parted was,

“I’m Arthur Lee’s Groupie.”

“Oh Wow,” I said, trying to sound impressed.

I didn’t even know who he was. I’d heard the song Little Red Book on the radio but didn’t know any more than a group called LOVE had made it a hit. I didn’t know he was a fricken genius.

Within three days we were going out. She loved making out and was so practiced at it she had me loving it, and in the process, loving her. It was easy for me to fall in love at the time. Falling in love wasn’t old hat. And I was one of those rare animals at the time, a virgin. We’d make out in La Jolla at her mom’s house beneath Mount Soledad.

One day her mom came home early and interrupted what was going to be a first. You know, a record-setter, a trophy event. Patty was not to be deterred. The next night she called.

“Come over now,” she whispered with a certain sense of urgency.

As I pulled up she was standing outside in a fur coat that reached mid-thigh, and the boots. She was damp, I thought from the dew on the grass.

“She’s cold. It’s cold out and damp. That’s why she’s wearing a coat.”

That’s what I told myself. But I was wrong. She was hot.

And she was damp alright, but in a different sort of way. We took off down the street.

“Make a left."

I turned to go up Mount Soledad. It had a view of the sea on one side, the city on the other. The road was all hairpin-switchback-uphill-straight-a-way-but-not–for-long. When I leaned a little nearer I noticed her perfume. It was one of her most dangerous weapons and it was at the ready.

I’ve always been a sucker for good smelling women.

She scooted closer then closer yet and whispered in my ear,

“‘I wanna give you something special,” all soft-like.

We were about pass by a vacant lot but she said,

“Pull in here.”

There were few vacant lots there on the mountain but she’d spotted it at once. It was like she’d been there before or something.

I pulled off the road, and faced the car overlooking the city. The streets below were filled with a thousand multi-colored lights racing off into the distance at breakneck speed. Then there were the tall buildings of downtown San Diego. Behind that loomed the blackness of Mt. San Miguel and beyond that lay the mysterious shadows that only exist in Mexico. Yes, it was romantic. And I didn’t even know the meaning of the word.

A single embrace, her breath so close, a touch, and then a sigh. It was just…… like…… that.

“Let’s go to the back seat,” she suggested, “There’s more room there.”

In the back seat she began to get intense, like she wanted something she had to have.

I thought at first it was a new-improved squeeze, or an intimate term of endearment. That must be what she wanted. Perhaps it was some more tongue. I was wrong. It was something else. It was a good old you-know-what.

I can’t say exactly what she did. Saints preserve me. But here’s how she did it.

She started by revealing secrets in my ear, revealing them real soft-like, real sincere-like. When she told me what she wanted, how could I refuse her? I couldn’t. Not me. Off with her coat. Surprise! There was nothing underneath… nothing but Patty.

So I had her.

That’s when she became Queen Patty the First to me. Each man has his own Queen Whoever, one and only one. I believe that may be how it is with women too.

So in reality she had me. It was a little of the ol’ in, a little of the ol’ out, a little of the ol’ in and out. Something happened to her while she was beneath me. She had some sort of woman-quake, some sort of female major seismic event. So impressed and scared and nervous was I….. that… I didn’t. Whatever happened to her was intense. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Or now, looking back, maybe I should have.

On the way home I was in a good mood, a tremendously good mood. I figured that somewhere, somehow, something had made me a man, like I’d joined a kind of exclusive men’s club.

“Glad to be here boys,” I felt like saying to all the he-men in the world, to Eastwood and Schwarzenegger and Stallone and the rest, “I finally made it.”

Then I’d interlock my fingers and hold my arms aloft pumping my fists like in Rocky. They would applaud. I was laboring under the illusion that I possessed complete and total self-control. Really I’d been too nervous to relax and, like Long John Silver, "let her rip."

I figured this ability would broaden my horizons, expand my vistas so to speak. If you’re going to labor under an illusion this was certainly the one. If you were bound to be wrong-headed about something this fit the bill. If you’re going to be delusional and wrong-headed at the same time at least be happy about it.

But the next day I had trouble getting hold of her. She had found me out. She had found me out in the backseat of my own motor vehicle. She became more distant. Her calls, which were frequent, became less frequent, then infrequent, then not so frequent, then not at all.

I tried for weeks to reconnect? You bet.

Was I sad? You bet.

But did I ever get over it? You bet.

There was you see, that girl in philosophy class, Bonnie.

I wasn’t dumb enough not to know what medicine would fix me. I needed a second one; Uno Numero Segundo. Someone to take my mind off number one would do the trick. I needed a dose of Bonnie. And that’s what I would get. But Patty, if you’re reading this, take heart. Allow me to celebrate you, to bring your ego to a climax. You were steamin’ hot. It was me, not you. Sorry I didn’t deliver the goods.

Like I said, me and Arthur Lee, we shared Patty. When you were with Queen Patty the First, it was almost like being in LOVE.

My head was never any good at ruling my heart. Let only the saints judge me.

to be continued....


©Steven Hunley2014

http://youtu.be/NCoKcAD6FJc Seven and Seven Is Love

http://youtu.be/iyHlLYwmLwY Vertigo U2

[DATo]

Just a line to let you know that I am not ignoring your thread. I've read only the first installment which was quite compelling. I'm just waiting to read the rest all at one time when it is complete. Looking forward to an entertaining read.

[108 fountains]

Very enjoyable, Steve.
"Boots be sooo sexy. Just look around. They’ve got women’s legs attached to them." -- I love it!

Of course, it reminded me of my own Queen Patty the First.
"Was that your first time?" she asked after our 20-second adventure.
"No, no. I've done it hundreds of times - thousands of times!"
I still remember her laughing at that - loud and long.

[Steven Hunley]

Bonnie came, Bonnie went, start of cure, end of story.

Though I imagined I was in love, I wasn’t, I was in lust. Not one woman was of any consequence even though I ran after every skirt I saw like a dog in heat. I was beginning to act like an intense young man, one without a single thought in his head. I wasn’t for real. Then appeared someone different, a rare, exotic, golden bird. Like Conan Doyle’s The Woman, she became My Woman, and my sweet obsession.

Kristina was blond, a surfer girl, and married at nineteen. Besides those three things, I could completely describe her with only five more words. They are as Nickleback sings, “Are we having fun yet?”

So as the Beatles sang, “I shoulda known better with a girl like you.”

But I didn’t. ‘Cause I was a chump, the thick and blunt end of anything.

I met her through a mutual friend, Marc,

“You wanna go over to Terry’s house and smoke a joint? He’s got a wife and kid now.”

“Wow,” I thought, “We’re only a year out of high school.”

So, like the right-guy-smoker I am, I answered “Yes,” and my fate was sealed.

When we got to the door, I tripped on the rug walking in. But instead of having that kind of feeling, I felt like I had stepped on a rollercoaster that was already moving.

So here was the dude I hadn’t seen in over a year, his attractive blond wife, their baby upstairs asleep, all real domestic like. It’s just the kind of situation you don’t mess with outta respect.

We smoke a few, laugh a bit, say goodnight. The next week we’re over there playing board games far into the night. Terry has to work; he’s a mailman, goes to sleep early. Uh-oh, now I’m in trouble. I shoulda seen it coming. Someone shoulda said,

“Red flag,” but we didn’t have the phrase back then.

She has a girlfriend, that’s good; it makes someone for my friend Marc to hook up with. But after her old man crashes, that leaves me for her. I want to keep my distance. So we make it a foursome.

One night we crawl up into a storm drain to smoke a joint. The next night it’s the beach. Old Devil Moon has been working his magic. SoCal is undeniably romantic. By this time we’ve been partying for weeks, and are getting close.

We drove to the jetty at Ocean Beach. O.B. Jetty had a radio show named after it on KPRI. It’s deserted, but we look for a more remote spot to smoke. Police were tough in those days. Finally Marc and friend wander off leaving us alone. She sits real close, ‘cause there’s an on-shore breeze, cuddling up for warmth. The fog and darkness were handing us an invitation to exchange secrets. Our confessions were freely exchanged using doublespeak and innuendoes, but the meanings finally slipped out when nobody was looking.

“I can’t understand,” she said, “why you don’t get close.”

“It’s just that…” but words failed me.

I had a stick in my hand, and drew a small circle in the sand. “It’s just that you’re…”

She grabbed the stick from me, and scratched a jagged line through the ring, dividing it in two. Then she grasped me by the collar with both hands, drawing me closer.

“That’s just it,” she said with serious longing in her eyes, “It’s not working out.”

I’d had good news in my life and recognized it when I saw it. It hits you like lightening.

At this point her lips crossed into my danger zone, so close I couldn’t resist. I believe what happened next was the best kiss on the beach I’d ever had. After that …let’s just say sex and the beach at night… there’s nothing like it. Black velvet darkness quietly envelopes her breasts. The pounding surf effortlessly invades her freely abandoned southern shores, leaving hard-earned pearls scattered carelessly on the sand, reflecting moonlight like dew. These primitive elements combine to provide a pure white noise, allowing a woman to concentrate on what matters; herself.

Let’s face it. There’s nothing artificial in an encounter between a man and woman. It's raw... unplugged. Everything about you is alive during that moment of truth. Barricades are down, and you'll tell each other anything, admit to every crime.

Nothing are as precious as our secrets, and once told, nothing is as terrible as the emptiness that remains. We comforted each other with silence, and let the waves and tide do the talking.

Two weeks later she moved to an apartment, filed for divorce, and was on her own. That put a whole different spin on the situation. But that was O.K. with me.

My celestial gyroscope was already turning.


©Steven Hunley2014

http://youtu.be/n8IisewrGP0 Caroline No America

[Steven Hunley]

When Kristina got her divorce and moved out she needed a place. She found it in Hillcrest. It was upstairs in back, with nine steps up, a landing with a left turn, and twelve more to the top. There the stairway ended, with her door on the right, the neighbors’ on the left, who were Tim and his wife Chris. It was cozy, which was a nice way of saying it was small.

I’d stop by after work or school. Sometimes I’d sleep over. That was an accomplishment for me, and I felt rather risqué, not sleeping at home. She had a Murphy bed, a marvelous contraption that folded down from the wall. It creaked and cracked if you gave it much action, which we did whenever we could. Kristina smoked cigarettes, Marlboro Reds. After doing it she’d smoke one. We were young and eager, and she’d hardly finished, (with the cigarette) and placed the still-glowing butt in an ashtray ‘cause I wanted more. The second time the bed was moving so much, rocking and rolling as it were, that the ashtray with the still-glowing-butt fell from where it was balanced, turned over in mid-air, the cherry falling on the small of my back. This increased my thrusts by a good number of foot-pounds of torque, driving her wild. I don’t know why she referred to them as foot-pounds, I wasn’t using my feet, perhaps because her father was a mechanic.

I was calling her one afternoon to see if I could come over, but no answer.

“That’s funny, where could she be?”

So, impetuous youth that I was, I went over anyway.

I climbed up the first nine steps,, turned, climbed up the twelve, and knocked. She opened the door.

“This is Sean,” she said with a flourish, “he works for the circus.”

I knew Ringling Brothers was in town, but didn’t expect to see the circus in our love-nest.

“Hi,” he said, and we shook hands.

He was tall, taller than me. He was good-looking, and his jeans were skin-tight. He was tan and tattooed. In other words, he was definitely not me. He looked like the lead singer from Nickleback, a handsome guy if ever there was one. To top it off, and I mean top it off, there was on his shoulder a falcon. This circus idiot had a falcon on his shoulder! What could I say? He oozed charisma.

“Whadda you do for the circus?”

“I sell tickets.”

It was more than tickets he was selling, I just knew it.

But I had to go to work. I didn’t want to go, believe me, but reluctantly took my leave. When I left, Kristina didn’t give me a good-bye kiss as usual. That wasn’t a good sign. I worked until ten o’clock selling books at Hunter's in La Jolla. When I got off I gave her a call. No answer.

So, impetuous youth I still was, I drove over.

I bounded up the stairs. I knocked, no answer. I ran down the stairs and out to the back to take a peek. The lights were on but low. Bad sign number three. I bounded up again. She answered this time.

“Whadda you want?” she said, not removing the chain.

I could see inside, though the door was only open a crack. I saw the low lights, I saw him, his shirt off, tats prominent, sitting on the Murphy bed. I saw no bird. Bad sign number four.

“I want in,” I said lamely.

“Not now,” she said, and closed it in my face.

I was hurt, dejected, and rejected. I drove home.

Moms and Pops weren’t home. That was good as I needed to smoke a joint and think. I rolled downstairs, rolled a joint, and put on some tunes. If there’s anything that can change your emotional outlook it’s smoking a joint and listening to music. Let me tell you about the room. My parents didn’t use it so it was all mine. There were the paintings I’d done, they sucked, and posters. There was the bookcase I made in high school, filled up with the books I’d stolen at work. Now I was kicked back, allowing the music create my mood. I looked up and saw the poster of Jimi. Jimi, what a great guy. He was so damned cool it hurt.

“Look at Jimi,” I said to myself, the joint half wasted. “He’s so damned cool.”

But then the tune on KPRI was over. I figured I needed another, so as homage to Jimi, I put the original Jimi Hendrix Experience on the turntable, and took a hit.

My eyes drifted over the wall. There was the kukri I stole from Cost less Imports. It was a huge knife from India used by the Gurkas. Gunga Din probably had one or Sam Jaffee had one I couldn’t remember which. It was shiny and large, somewhere between a machete and a Bowie knife, an evil looking blade. I took another hit.

“Yeah,” I thought while exhaling, “It’s a mean motor scooter.”

But then something happened I didn’t quite plan. My thoughts drifted back to him and her.

Just then, of all things, Hey Joe came on.

I had feelings for this song. It had been done a thousand times in a million ways by others. Only Jimi had the sense to slow it down, to give it drama. He gave you time to think, time to let the words sink in.

“Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?”

I looked at the shiny thing on the wall.

“Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?”

I took the kukri off the wall, feeling its weight in my hand. Right then, it felt good, unusually good.

“I’m going to shoot my old lady, she’s been messin’ round with another man.”

I knew, as the joint was smoked far down now, exactly what I had to do.

I turned off the stereo, hopped in the car, drove across town, the kukri in my lap. I was ready to go. I knew real and ready equaled ready and real.
I’m up the stairs again. I know I have to go through with this fast, before the mood is lost, before my nerve is lost, before the weed wears off.

“They’ll blame it all on the marijuana,” I told myself, “the evil weed whose roots grow in Hell.”

I’m up on the landing in seconds, then rocketing to the top. I knock on the door. She opens it up.

Here’s what happens in a nutshell.

I break through the one sixteenth-inch chain holding the door like a real man. That’s pretty impressive. I flash the blade of the kukri. Circus Boy sees it real good, as his eyes turn the size of saucers. Pretty impressive too. Then everything gets a bit foggy, and the rest is only an impression, but here it is:

He hits me up the side of the head. I lose possession of the knife. Then somehow I’m out the door. Then I’m down the stairs, starting with my butt hitting stair number twelve, then my shoulder hitting stairs numbered ten and nine, my right hip careening down stairs numbered seven and six, then plummeted my worthless *** to stairs numbered four, three, and two, eventually landing it on the landing, where else? The stairs not numbered are not numbered because they weren’t contacted by my body, it being in the air at the time. So I come to rest on the landing, a crumpled, forlorn, and defeated man. Not so impressive. Then I limp down the remaining nine steps to the cement that leads to the gutter.

A day later I’m nursing my bruises realizing I’m out one hell of an exotic knife. I figure it’s all over between us. I’ll never see her again. But as usual, I’m wrong.

A week later she’s taking my calls. A week later we go out. The week after that we’re rockin’ and rolling with Murphy, and the performance was so good we did a few encores minus the ashtray. I never talked to her about it, never asked her why she took me back. Maybe I didn’t want to know at the time. But I found out years later.

Chris, Tim’s wife, asked her one day,

“Tina,” she said, “Why did you take him back?”

Kristina looked out the south window towards Tijuana and noticed a dove on the alleyway fence. It was so soft and pure it hurt her to look at it, made her eyes tear, as her voice wavered, “Because he’s so sweet, and because he’s still here.”

The women were busy having coffee and cigarettes; Kristina, tapping the ash from her precious Marlboro with the tip of her forefinger, casually catapulting it into the ashtray in magnificent arcs.

“Besides,” she said logically, without a trace of emotion. “The circus left town.”

©StevenHunley2015

http://youtu.be/44G3Zwm8hgM Hey Joe

[108 fountains]

Great story Steve! It brought back painful memories of Shanna. I guess we all have a Shanna or a Kristina somewhere. I thought I had forgotten about her - but 37 years later, this brought it all back.
The consolation is... never mind, I was about to say something very unkind.

Anyway, I liked the tone of the writing - sounded about the way I would expect a 20-year-old to think and talk and write, and I think that's what you were aiming for. You should take one more look at it though for correcting typos and making other possible changes in word choice, stuff like that. (You inadvertantly duplicated the first few paragraphs.)

The change from first person narration to third person narration at the end was not the smoothest, but it worked, and I can't really think of any other way to do it to get the same effect.

Foot-pounds, huh? Hey, I've still got a kukri packed away in my things somewhere.

[AuntShecky]

I can't believe I haven't weighed in on this before now. Please forgive my oversight.

This is the kind of stuff you do so well --nostalgia with a wry perspective. The style reminds me a little of that of Jean Shepherd. (If you've read him you'll realize this better than merely watching the movies based on his works.) You've got a way with the colloquial expression, no doubt about it. Also, you could go to any bar and ace "Trivia Night," as your expertise in pop culture strongly attests.

Speaking of which, I remember Jethro Tull's music. If I recall, Jethro himself (if not a band member?) employed a flute in his tunes. You could hear a flute in West Coast Jazz (was it Shelley Mann?), but seldom if ever hear one in rock music, which then as now was heavy on the guitar. I don't know about Jethro's lyrics though. Strike me as kind of pretentious, especially with the "Yoda" speech.

Oh, and the Fitzgerald connection. Once I told Daughter #2 about how much I admired F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was about my daughter's age at the time. When I mentioned Zelda and their daughter Scottie, my daughter thought it was hysterical. "If their daughter's name was Scottie," she said, "what did they call their dog?"

Anyway, bottom line, Steven: your stuff is always fun to read.

Auntie

[Steven Hunley]

Then came a day of magic. It wasn’t planned to be that way, few often are. It was planned to be a simple afternoon at the beach. We left too late, forgot half of what we intended to pack, and were totally unprepared for the weather.

On the way out Kristina said, “Where are we going anyway?”

“To Torrey Pines.”

We wound our way up the Five north and parked the car and got out. The wind coming from the Pacific smelled of salt and seaweed and tropical islands thousands of leagues distant. The sun sat low and rested just above the horizon. Cumulus clouds welled up along the rim of the world and promised a sunset of incomparable beauty.

“Looks good to me," I said. She nodded in agreement.

The beach was long and stretched its arm beneath tall sandstone cliffs standing like silent sentinels. When you walked its length you felt safe on both sides.

“It’s surrounded and cut off,” I thought, “It’s a good place for thinking.”

“It’s cut off and surrounded,” she thought, “a good place for loving.”

The wind gusted again so I gave her my coat.

She took it with a smile, because she knew as a girl always does, it would require us to sit close later. As the sun lowered, the sky turned pink and gold cellophane. The only sound was the scream of plummeting gulls and the wind kissing the waves white-laced necks like in Tales of Brave Ulysses by Cream. It was just us, the sky, the waves, and endless expanses of sand.

“Let’s sit awhile,” she whispered, so not to break my thoughts.

We picked a place at the base of the cliffs. I pulled a joint from my pocket and tried to light it. The on shore breeze refused to be polluted.

“It’s OK,” she said. “Try this instead,” and gave me a kiss. “You must be cold,” and snuggled up close.

It was only too obvious I had something on my mind. Women know such things because they can cook. She knew I had a thought baking, she could tell by the smell of me. I strive to be mysterious and opaque. In reality I’m transparent as glass.

I looked at her face. She saw what was coming. We’d come to the point where it might be said with impunity. Well, only if I was lucky. I was guilty of the thought, she could see it in my eyes, so it was time to confess.

The sun dipped lower, setting flame to the clouds. Dark cumulus rims tinged gold. The heat spread, setting the night on fire. Jim Morrison roared his magnificent roar. "Try to set the night on fire." It was time to release, set free, unshackle, my most intimate emotions. I’d entered the confessional of sand wave and cliff. I confided in her ear, afraid of seeing her face

“I love you,” I blurted out. “You know?”

“It’s OK,” she said. “Don’t worry. I love you too.”

The words were out like chained lightning. If they meant exactly the same thing to each of us it would have been a miracle. But they were out, and right now that was good enough. It was something we both wanted to hear.

I let out a breath. When I was satisfied she wasn’t saying it just for form or as something she knew I expected to hear in return, I squeezed her tight to protect her from the wind. It was useless. My coat could do that. What I really needed to do was protect her from myself. I, the perfect fool, didn’t know what was within me, or what I was capable of. But it was too late; the words escaped.

Feeling a chill, I dropped my arms and clasped myself. There was no going back. She took off the coat and blanketed me like an autumn leaf trembling with a sudden awareness of mortality, afraid to give up the sap of life. Kristina fell over me, protecting me with her flesh, attempting to drown my sorrows in her fragile body.

She overheard me say, more to myself than her, “This isn’t going to be easy.”

“I know,” she answered calmly, her breath caressing my ear. “I know,” she repeated, even more softly this time, but with all the weight of experience, humanity, and common sense behind it.

When we left the beach at dusk, the sky had turned to ink and gold. Our tracks in the wet sand glowed with the sparkle of florescent diatoms disturbed by the pressure of our naked feet. Those caught in the ebb tide were busy dying.

Our relationship, a relationship freely entered, was caught there too. Trapped by the words of love we uttered, captured in own poisonous red tide of love, tangled by the love-knot she’d plaited in her hair with delicate fingers and placed around both of our necks like a noose with only the strength of her beauty.

When we got in the car and drove away, the sand, the cliffs, the sky and waves, our whispered promises, our impossible dreams, faded into the distance, where they’d been all the time, took a realistic perspective, and were forgotten as easily as unintelligible sentences spoken in dreams.

©Steven Hunley2015

https://youtu.be/u8hLc_nqx8g Tales of Brave Ulysses-Cream

https://youtu.be/LY1l8T2Lcl0 Light My Fire-The Doors

[Steven Hunley]

We had a fight. We were both on each other’s neck for having been with someone else. So you could say it was a fair fight. Each of us had plenty of ammunition. I had to go to work soon, so there was a certain sense of urgency to the matter. That didn’t help. I was pissed because I’d caught her red- handed. I suspected she’d had more than that one idiot from the circus in her tent so to speak. She, on the other hand, hadn’t caught me in flagrante delicto. Instead, she’d found my journal, which I’d been keeping for my English class. It was written for my eyes only, so it was damning evidence for sure. I never kept much from myself in my journal. Not as much as I kept from her. After this episode finished I promised myself I’d hide it better next time. But right now I was busy defending myself.


“You know you’re the only one for me,” I said, “the only one who really matters.”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed. I was standing near the brass post at the end. Tears were welling up in her eyes. They weren’t in mine, but only because I thought I was a man. It was her turn in the confessional.

“I couldn’t help myself,” she sobbed, “I just couldn’t.”

Tears of heavy weight came tumbling down.

The thing here is we knew we had hurt each other with our indiscretions, and hadn’t meant to. Because any way you cut it, we cared about each other. And it wasn’t as if either one of us was ready to claim the moral high ground with a cry of “victory” either. We were both equally guilty. Both of us perpetrators, both of us victims, of each other’s lust.

The clock hand was approaching three. I’d have to be in La Jolla soon. It was time to leave.

“Maybe we can finish this later,” I said, “I gotta go.”

She’d grabbed my hand a minute before, so it was clasped between hers. I pulled it free.

“I’ll give you a call when I get off.”

So when I got off at ten I did. There was no answer. I went over anyway.

Racing down the freeway a few thoughts crossed my mind.

“She shouldn’t be like that. Women I know aren’t like that.”

I searched for a name of a woman I knew and came up with one. It was Laura, beautiful blond Laura.

“Laura liked Pasha, and why not? Every woman has to have a first love. But when she made it with evil Victor Komarovsky it was only because he was in a position of power over her. In reality she hated him. That’s why she shot him at the Christmas Ball in Moscow. Slimy Rod Steiger anyway. And when she balled Dr. Shivago, it was only because they were so isolated, and because he had such drippy eyes, because of the revolution, because it was so cold and all.”

Somewhere there, somewhere on the freeway I heard Somewhere my Love playing on balalaikas.

“That’s how a proper girl should act,” I concluded, “how a proper girl should be. Why can’t she be more like that, more like Julie Christie? This sexual adventuring stuff should be left up to us men. We’re the ones who can handle such matters.”

I pulled off the freeway, and turned on to Brooks avenue in Hillcrest. It was late on a hot summer night. I ran up the stairs. I should explain that I had trouble sleeping on hot summer nights. I’d turn the pillow over and over, trying in vain to find the cool side. What I needed was a distraction. What every man needs on a hot summer night is a cool woman. I was no different from the rest.

So I knocked.

No answer. Perhaps she wasn’t home. Maybe she didn’t want to continue the argument. Maybe she’d already made up her mind what to do. I turned and went down about seven steps when I heard the click of the door. It was a lucky seven. I looked up and saw it had opened a crack. It was time to take a chance. I was feeling lucky. So I did.

The lights were off. She’d already gone to bed. So why did she open the door? It didn’t open by itself. I entered in silence. I couldn’t see much. Outside, cumulus clouds were racing across the face of the moon. Sometimes then you’d get a glimpse of the room from the moonlight dancing in the large open window. Mostly you didn’t. But there was one thing I glimpsed when I had a chance. Strands of her blond Julie Christie hair were making S curves that shined like silver threads against the black-coal darkness of her bed’s satin sheets. That was good enough for me. If I couldn’t see, then I’d feel my way to her. I was pretty good at feeling my way in the dark. So the lights were off… but the game? The game was on.

I took off my clothes without a sound and piled them on a chair nearby. When I sat on the corner of the bed nearest me the mattress springs made a creaking sound. I started to say something, but was stopped immediately when she pressed two fingers to my lips, setting the rules. So this was how it was going to be. She was taking charge. I would have to trust her if I was to have my way with her. Almost as soon as she touched my lips with her fingers she drew them away and retreated. The clouds covered the moon completely just then, plunging the room into total darkness. I drew up a bit, then pressed my knee into the mattress, inching forward to begin my search. Another creak was heard. It would be the first of many.

I decided to reconnoiter. My weapons were to be my kisses. I figured that it really didn’t matter which end of her I found first. I could work my way up from her bottom as easily as I could work my way down from her top. I always ended up in the same place anyway. But, my beloved enemy had plans of her own. That’s how women are. Their strength lies in the fact they make you think you’re the one in control. In reality, I was the one out of my depth, and she, being a surfer girl, was the ultimate swimmer.

About the time I thought I might find some flesh with my fingertips I noticed some warm breath near my ear. There’s nothing as nice as warm woman-breath near your ear. Then there was the scent of perfume and the tickle of hair across my neck. That was nice too. She’d snuck up and taken me from behind. So, man or no man, I gave up. I surrendered big time. There were a few more strategic creaks, then more tactical creaks, followed by several creaks in rapid succession. This was followed by the only word she uttered that night. I obeyed, so then it was several long slow creaks, or rather I should say creakings, with some squeaks thrown in for good luck. When we concluded, we panted with the breaths of exhausted angels.

No couple sails blissfully the whole distance do they? Nobody I know. That’s what sailing is all about; making adjustments, picking the proper tack, being a sailor, surviving the storm. As the Beach Boy’s sing in their song Sail on, Sailor, you’ve got to, “Sail through the sorrows of life’s marauders.” You do what you gotta do. That’s why your lover is called your mate. That’s why it’s good if at least one of you can swim. Life is such a rough sea.

‘Cause truth be told, I can’t swim. I’ve always been afraid of the water. The next day, when I left in the morning I was heading down the stairs when she told me,

“Stop.”

She ran back into the room, grabbed a small something off the counter, then reaching down, pressed it into my hand, closing my fingers over it. It was like Michelangelo’s God passing the spark of life into Adam’s hand on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was a gift.

“Don’t open it ‘till you’re driving away,” she instructed me. The woman was good at instructing me.

It was hard to drive with it in my hand while grabbing the steering wheel, but I did. About a block away I opened my hand. To be candid, I already knew what it was by the feel, but seeing it was even better.

It was the key to her place. I guess she’d made up her mind.

It had been her intent all along to drown me in herself.

[Steven Hunley]

withdrawn by author