Jun
26
“Fat Daddy said you might have something special for me.”
“What – Oh, probably just this oxy that we just got in.” Reg reached into his pocket and pulled out a prescription drug bottle and rattled it. “Here take a couple on the house, one for each of you.”
“Thanks man.”
“I’ll grab a couple of beers to wash those down. I’ll be right back.”
“See I told you this was a good idea. Here.”
“I don’t want an oxy. I want to go to The Cave.”
“Fine more for me.” Paul popped both pills in his mouth and took a long draw from the beer that Reg handed him.
“Can we go now?”
“Reg just brought us some beer. Let’s drink these and we’ll go.”
Reg chased a couple of guys from one of the couches so that they could sit down. Claire looked down at the filthy couch and resigned herself to sitting on it. She sat on the edge in order minimize the area of her skirt that came into contact with the couch. Paul had engaged Reg in a conversation about baseball. Claire looked around the room wishing that she was anywhere else. The apartment was filthy and the heat and the stench were making her ill. There were two women on the couch across from them doing lines of coke off of a compact mirror. Both were barely clothed one was wearing knee high blue boots and the other stilettos that appeared to have been salvaged from a dumpster. There was a shabby skinny man unconscious in the corner. The couple in the recliner was now fully engaged in sexual intercourse. Claire diverted her eyes and stared at the floor. She gritted her teeth. It was too much.
“Reg. I’m sorry, but we have to go. Paul.” Claire stood up to leave. Paul grabbed her wrist and attempted to pull her back down.
“Come on let’s stay for a while. The fuckin’ chair is free.” Paul was slurring his speech.
Jun
17
“How was your first night at work?”
“It sucked. I got soaked to the bone; I cleaned the dirty, filthy grease trap, which nearly made me puke it smelled so bad, and my co-workers found it oh so funny.” Paul had slept until noon after drinking late at the Cup. “But it means that I don’t have to go home this summer and spend time with my parents and all the snobbish, fake little rich kids that pretend they’re my friends – You wanna get high? I got a new bag from Fat Daddy. It’s hydroponic, supposed to be really good.”
“I want to go out tonight. Let’s go dancing.”
“Alright. Hand me the pipe, we can go to the Cave there’s a band playing that’s supposed to be good.”
Claire handed Paul the pipe off of the coffee table, and she watched as Paul went through the daily – morning, noon, and nightly – ritual of breaking bud from stem, rolling the bud between his fingers and letting the loose pieces fall into the bowl of the pipe where he packed it firmly so that it would burn without going out. When he was finished he pressed the pipe to his lips, put the flame of the lighter to the bowl and inhaled. The hot pungent smoke filled his lungs and burnt his lips leaving a sticky acrid coating of resin. He held his breath until his body rebelled and forced the smoke from his mouth and nose in fit of coughing that lasted after he had passed the pipe to Claire and she had repeated his actions. They did this until the pipe was cashed. They laid back on the couch and laughed.
They spent the rest of their day this way, drifting on a warm hazy breeze listening to music and talking idly and enjoying the freedom that is afforded to college students in the summer. They ate frozen burritos heated in the microwave, and drenched in salsa to soften the chewy shells. They drank cheap berry flavored wine, and made love in the warm sunlight that flooded the studio apartment. The fading light roused them from their stupor and they headed out for the night. Claire had changed into a poodle skirt she had rescued from a consignment store and meticulously cleaned and mended. Her hair was up and she looked beautiful. As they walked down the street under the arching oaks, heads turned and the eyes of everyone she passed followed her. Paul was oblivious to the attention that she was attracting. He was anxious and walking fast. Every block or so he would stop, grab Claire’s arm and impatiently pull her forward.
Jun
17
I was in PA for a few days, but I’m back and will be posting again.
Jun
8
“Tim. Tim. Get up.”
Tim opened his eyes and immediately shut them against the blinding light of the sun. He shielded his face and tried to say “Go away”, but his words were unintelligible. His teeth were fuzzy and his saliva was the consistency of mucus, his head was throbbing and some asshole was shaking him.
“Tim you have to get up man. Come on,” Jimmy was pulling on Tim’s arm. “Andrew stop laughing this isn’t funny.”
“Oh come on, if this isn’t funny then what the hell is.”
“Go get a blanket or some pants or something.”
Andrew roared with laughter as he left to follow Jimmy’s instructions.
“Tim get up. Now”
“What the hell is going on. Just let me sleep.”
“Tim. You are naked in the front yard and its noon. The police are here. You have to get up and put on some clothes.”
“Shit.”
Tim was awake and on his feet immediately. Indignation turned to embarrassment and he passed Andrew moving as quickly as he could while still maintaining, what he believed, was left of his dignity. He was quickly relieved of his illusion when Andrew handed him a blanket and burst into another round of laughter. Tim made his way quickly inside to the kitchen and washed away the foulness in his mouth with a glass of water. He sat and tried to piece together what the hell had happened to him. He was definitely clothed when he had left Candice. Then he lay down in the grass. That was it; what the hell happened.
Tim sat like that for fifteen minutes staring blankly at the table filling the void in his memory with all sorts of fantastic things that might have happened. Andrew sat down across from him grinning from ear to ear. Tim looked up at him and couldn’t help but to laugh.
“What the hell happened to you last night that you ended up naked in the front yard?”
“I don’t know. I was going to ask you. The last thing I remember is going outside and lying down on the grass because I was hot.”
“I guess it was a hell of a night all around. I woke up with Suzy this morning.”
“Suzy Mitchell? I hope you remember more about your night than I do mine. Did you see me after we did that last shot?”
“Nope. You left with Candice and I went outside and hooked up with Suzy. We spent the night over at her house. I came over to see if you guys wanted to grab some lunch, I walked up, you were naked and Jimmy was trying to wake you up. Maybe Jimmy can shed some light on the situation.” Andrew motioned behind Tim with his eyes.
“Well, our neighbors aren’t going to press any charges and the police agreed not to arrest you.”
“Good.” Tim relaxed a little. “But what the hell happened last night. I did that last shot, I danced with Candice, and then I went outside to cool off.”
“You yelled at Rhonda that you wanted her to come outside and call you Poppy T.”
“Shit.”
“I’m sorry I missed that.” Andrew wiped the tears of laughter form his eyes.
“You almost broke Ronald’s nose with the door on your way out.”
“Is he alright.”
“Yeah, it was an accident. You just threw the door open on your way out. He walked around holding a cold beer to his nose the rest of the night.”
“I bet he looks like a baboon this morning with a big purple nose and his ass up on his back.” Andrew choked the words out between fits of laughter.
Jimmy and Tim laughed not at Andrew’s ribaldry, but because of his laughter.
“That doesn’t explain why the hell I was naked in the front yard.”
“That, my friend, I don’t know.”
“And where are my clothes?”
“I don’t now that either.”
“My boots.”
“Nope.”
“Damn.”
“Get dressed and let’s grab some lunch. I’m buying. I feel generous this afternoon.” Andrew had stopped laughing, but his spirit had not changed.
“Are you going to see her again, or better yet is she going to see you.” Tim stood up and checked his blanket for coverage.
“Tonight.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. See who? What’d I miss?”
Dec
22
The Light of Day is now available directly from Create Space. https://www.createspace.com/1000251476
Nov
13
Happy birthday and Semper Fi. Also, thank you to all our veterans. I know I’m a little late. I didn’t actually intend to post anything concerning the Marine Corps birthday or veterans day, but I was reading my son poetry tonight and I read him one of my favorite poems, and – well we’ll get there.
Almost the first time my son heard my voice I was reading verse. That first night in the hospital room while he and my wife were sleeping I read to him from Classics of Victorian Verse, and although since then the ratio of poetry to prose has shifted dramatically to prose, I am happy that he now asks for me to read him poetry.
Poetry and fine art have a lot in common in the way that they viewed in our society. They are seen as effeminate leftist drivel, the providence of hippies, beatniks, existentialists, and deconstructionists. People don’t get it, and the reason is that the tastemakers, the critics, the intelligentsia have convinced people that drivel is art. A friend of mine in art school had a professor that called it “barbed wire and vomit”. Duchamp hung a urinal on the wall and the art world went to hell. Suddenly figurative art was pedestrian.
When it comes to poetry literary critics have convinced people that poetry that has rhythym and rhyme is for children and simpletons. They torture school children with drab boring verse or poetry that is written in language that is unintelligable to school age children, in effect killing the natural love that children have for poetry. Most people probably haven’t read the fireside poets; Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Lowell, and Holmes. People read these poets by the fireside as entertainment. But remember, in the intelligentsia’s eyes any art or literature that is intelligable and enoyable, and therefore has the potential to be popular, is pedestrian. Only if they, the intelligentsia, are the only ones that can enjoy and understand it is it real art.
So now we come around to the reason for this post. My son asked me to read his current favorite poem, The Dangerous Dan McGrew by Robert Service. Comparative Lit majors everywhere are rolling their eyes. So, I read to him about Dan Mcgrew and Lou and the stranger crazed with hooch. Then I read him one of my favorites, Tommy by Rudyard Kipling. I am going to share it with you. Remember that this was written in 1890. The problems we face today aren’t old, they have always been with us.
Tommy
by Rudyard Kipling
I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins, when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mr. Atkins, when the band begins to play.
I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.
Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy how’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.
We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints:
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind,”
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.
You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country,” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
But Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!
Nov
7
For those of you with a Kindle, there is now a Kindle version of The Light of Day available. Currently Amazon shows that it is not available in the United States. I assure you that it is available in the U.S. I have contacted tech support and they should have the issue resolved soon.
