Nostalgia and Regrets

I regret almost nothing I did and only a quarter of what I didn't.

I was a traitor to the immortality of youth.

I failed to comprehend the true pathos of sex.

I drove too fast in cars alone.

I learned to dance too young and forgot how till I was too old.

I rebelled against the wrong people.

I drank puzzling beers on rainy days while women waited somewhere.

I never found out where.

Punkmuter

She was an aging punk rocker sitting next to me on the train

Orange hair spiked not out of rebellion or nostalgia but mere routine

Doc Martin boots made before they were hip

Leather and denim worn and comfortable

Her ginger perfume betrayed her rough exterior

She frowned at the words Mr. Grisham had written at her.

If I asked her what her favorite Bad Brains song was we could be friends

But that's not allowed.

I'm a man and she's a woman and if we aren't going to have sex we aren't supposed to be friends

Storm

Sheets of rain

Pillows of clouds

Alarming thunder

The monkey demon wakes

He hurtles to the ground

enters through your wall

and explodes in a crack of light and ozone

then is gone

You were spared

forgiven, pardoned

Lay down

Go to sleep

Mr. Patrick's Depression

Mr. Patrick frowned. It was all too easy. What's the use of doing this if there's no challenge? They all died without a sound. Most of them never even woke up. He enjoyed this sort of thing when he wasn't so good at it. There were mistakes then. Sometimes they fought back. He had to react and adapt and still manage to get the job done. Now all of the excitement has gone out of it. Maybe he needs to listen to his shrink. Time to step out of the comfort zone and give that bungee jumping thing a try.

Sexual repression as a defense mechanism

The creepy old guy sits at the strip club stage

but turns down every offer of private attention

Mostly he watches the foolish young men, envying their lack of sense

The only man in the place who is aware of his own pathos

The young girls see him as a challenge

The older ones know better and leave him alone

Fidelity pushed slightly over his own personal limit

He grins at the beautiful woman with the odd lipstick and large rear

She approaches him

He buys her a drink, some hideous cinnamon liqueur,

but rejects her offer of a shower show

She asks for his business card but he feigns their existence

She tells him a phone number that he promises to remember

but doesn't

The Ball

The phoenix came to the party dressed as a peacock.

The eyes on his borrowed feathers saw the truth of us all.

Masks and costumes, beer and wine, fear and ecstasy.

Lonely creatures stalking willing prey.

Hungry freaks tasting flesh previously forbidden.

A mass illusion held together by tawdry string.

At midnight the phoenix shed his false eyes.

He toasted our mutual folly and burst into flames.

The Open Door

Walk past the open door
Don't even look inside
that door is not for you

Maybe the next door
or the one after that
always the one after that

100 Words - Thunderstorm

Beaufort the Grand banished thunderstorms from his land. They were driving his dogs crazy so he sent them away and then they had to make their noise and lightning far out at sea where they wouldn't bother anybody. The people cheered the silence and welcomed the soft summer rain that remained. The mandoleers composed tributes to Beaufort's grandness. The young maidens lined up to offer their pleasures in thanks. Merchants laid golden trinkets at his feet. Old farmers brought him the first squash of the season, which is the sweetest of them all. And, most importantly, the dogs slept undisturbed.

100 Words - The Trap

Randolph sat in his car eating his quarter pounder. The Pest Busters truck pulled up across the street and two men got out. One had a clipboard, the other a large box. Every ten feet or so along the small office building they placed and noted a series of rat traps. They circled the whole building then drove away. As Randolph was finishing his fries a rat appeared from a drain across the street. It sniffed its way along the building and into a trap. A few seconds later it and all the other traps exploded, leveling the office building.

100 Words - Graffiti Jesus

Randolph stood across the street from the graffiti Jesus. The body was painted normal, in proportion to the cross to which it was nailed, but the head was huge. A giant caricature head hanging down in despair like a bobble-head with a busted neck spring. The savior’s eyes were security cameras, not painted, real. They were there long before graffiti Jesus appeared. These eyes really did follow you as you walked by. That's why Randolph stood here. He wanted those eyes to see him. Wanted the slime-ball he knew was glued to the monitors to know that he was coming.

100 Words - Drums

Randolph heard the drums in the distance. Hippie noise pollution he thought then listened. Hidden in the chaos of clamber was something that didn't fit. A rhythm that wasn't one. Randolph climbed the path up the hill towards the noise. In the little meadow on the other side he saw the drum circle banging away. He stood looking down on them listening for what was wrong. Soon the drummers started trading solos and the fifth soloist was the one. No simple banging the bongos. She was sending a message. So simple. Three short, three long, three short. Morse code. S.O.S.

100 Words - rooftop

Gary stood on the rooftop shouting nonsense phrases into the sunrise. Mary fanned him with yesterday's New York Post. The birth of a ritual. From this day on their predawn benders would climax in non sequiturs and cool breezes. When the sun fully rose they would retire to their separate apartments and dream of making love to each other. Something they never had the guts to do when sober nor remembered to do when they were drunk. They lived for that magic moment after two drinks when their love would spark only to be lost in the inertia of intoxication.

Review: I WAS A TEENY-BOPPER FOR THE CIA by Ted Mark

Before this book I did not know that comedy spy porn was a literary genre. Nor was I aware that a man named Ted Mark was that genres greatest scribe, having written dozens of such books.

I found this book at the last SF Library big book sale and thought owning a book with this title was easily worth a dollar. Several months later I finally got around to reading it.

Jaded as I am by the barrage of porn available on the internet I found the porn in the book to be almost quaint by comparison. It even seemed reserved by 1967 standards, which is when it was published. A modern romance novel would put it to shame. It does have however a certain naive charm. Genitalia are never named in vulgar terms. The writer uses either medical terms or cute euphemisms.

After a few chapters I started to wonder whether the book was porn disguised as social commentary or social commentary disguised as porn. After a few more chapters I decided that neither could stand on its own which is probably why the whole spy plot line had to be added.

The premise is that this handsome recently-divorced lawyer owes a Senator a favor and is recruited to investigate communist infiltration of community theater groups in middle class American suburbs. In the course of his duties he begins to have sex with each female member of his local theater troupe. I say begin because he is almost always interrupted in some humorous manor.

The humor is of course mostly juvenile and exceedingly chauvinistic. The old complaint of how porn objectifies and degrades women is truthfully founded in works like this. In the midst of the sexual revolution the author paints woman as opportunistic nymphomaniacs looking to avoid all responsibility in life.

While not apologizing for the sexist views of the author, like H.P. Lovecraft's racism you have to take it as a symptom of culture and marketplace. It does detract for the work but it shouldn't be banished because of it. The work should stand on it's own. Though I doubt Mr. Mark's work will ever be measured beside Lovecraft's.

So what am I trying to say about this book? It's interesting as a time capsule of a forgotten sub-culture and an artifact of a time in publishing of which I will always be jealous. A time when many new writers found an easy path to getting their little paperbacks published and distributed. Of course cable TV, the web and the publishing industry's changes have done away with all that. It sounds like I'm down on how things have changed but I'm happy with the current state of things. My words find their way to my readers. I think I'm just romanticizing a bygone era.

250 Words - Saliva's

Rapid fire guitars split the dark. Explosions and smoke got us to our feet. The stage lights rose and the band appeared. We all cheered and stomped our feet. The music began and it all went wrong. If they had done a sound check someone should be fired. The mix was way off. The lead singers mic didn't work at all and the backup singer's drowned out the instruments.

We gave it one song. The band froze wondering what to do. Nobody from the club made any motion to help. They started on their next tune and it was still all wrong. We rushed the stage, beat them to a pulp then smashed their instruments and amps. The bouncers came running but we outnumbered them and they were soon down and out.

Then Billy screamed something about an open bar. Unfortunately those of us still on stage were too far away and the bottles and even the kegs were all gone before we could beat our way over there. The sirens came and everyone ran for the doors. Billy, Joey and I sat down at a table and watched as the people tried to escape and the cops tried to get in.

In the end it's just us three and about fifty cops left in the club. They asked us questions. We told them what happened, excluding our participation. They told us we could go. Outside the cops had everybody zip-tied. We waved goodbye to another Saturday night at Saliva's.

100 Words - Benny

They say that murder is nothing but extroverted suicide. They also say that cats are nothing but effeminate dogs. Benny has been awake for thirteen days writing truth tables on his walls trying to create formal logical proofs of every possible combination of those sayings. Unfortunately his hatred of cats clouds his reasoning. So-called emotional language, which is invalid to logicians, keeps appearing in his premises. He knows it's wrong but can't help himself. He looks the other way and fudges the conclusions. Down by the radiator that doesn't work the equations balance telling him to kill all the cats.

100 Words - The Van

The man in the black spandex pants said he wanted to sell me some pretty pictures. Something about an art dealer whose gallery was in a windowless van didn't seem right to me, but I needed something to perk up my apartment's plain white walls, so I climbed on in.

Inside the walls were covered with paintings and photographs. From the ceiling hung a variety of kinetic sculptures that swayed and clanged with every corner the van took. The photograph of the city at night was too expensive so I bought a little painting of a jellyfish swallowing a tricycle.

100 Words - Hack

I never liked that cat. He was too clawing. Ha Ha. Bet you never expected me to open with that bad a joke. What can I say? No really, what can I say? My head is blank. (Sound effect of rimshot.) Take my strife...please! Sometimes I get like this, only able to communicate in variations of bad old jokes. Maybe I'm channeling Benny Hill. Maybe I asked too many people how many cars he owned. The answer is zero. Maybe I'm just a hack at heart. Sounds like a Valentine's day axe murderer. Tip your waitress. I'm here all week.

100 Words - CX

The clouds were puking rainbows. The wind made promises it could not keep. The trail boiled muddy tearing at my heels, tearing at my wheels. Younger men and women flew past mocking my torment, spraying me with the residue of their strength, the by-product of their glory. Cold old bones twisted in their sockets trying to escape the torture I'd bequeathed them. Ligaments stretched, lost their grip and shouted for mercy. I could go no further. I veered off the path and fell into a growth of ferns. A soft bed on to which I laid my head and slept.

I'm suffering from literary ADD.

Lately I only seem to function in single sentences, or at best, single paragraphs. The quick fix of flash fiction and social status updates. They leave me jonesing for more depth and structure but I fail to convert that desire into action. The brain slugs are winning.

100 Words - Her Music

The music began as a distant drum beat. Soon there were other instruments. Horns and strings welled up into an orchestral march. A harp fluttered above and faded taking the others down with it till there was just the drum and a single oboe drawing strength from sadness. Her smile appeared in the mist. A piano offered a few tentative notes of encouragement. The oboe continued unchanged and the piano was not heard from again. Her hand reached out cold and damp but her touch electric. The sadness sweetened. The glory of righteous pain. The music ceased. She was home.

100 Words - Therapist

Jack sat and thought about what happened. He was clearly sitting in his therapist's office but his therapist was not there. If he remembered correctly, two men wearing motorcycle helmets broke in and threw his therapist out the window. Then he remembered that happened to Buck Henry in a David Bowie movie. Jack was under hypnosis at the time and wasn't sure if any of it was real. Yet, he's not hypnotized now, the window is open and his therapist is gone. As long as he doesn't look out the window he can still imagine that she's alive. Schrodinger’s Therapist.