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.