IPOD
RADIO
Ask an Anarchist #1
Welcome to the first in my series of blogs on anarchism. The plan for this series is pretty simple... you ask questions, and I do my best to answer them. I'll post blogs as I get questions, depending upon how busy I am with other projects. Remember, anarchism is very diverse and what I say here only reflects my opinion and my understanding of anarchism.
That being said, my first question comes from Mike, who says:
Hey, I'm ust wondering what is your stance on the upcoming presidential election?
Hmmm... I've got mixed feelings about electoral politics, and I haven't yet taken the time to sit down and put them into words. I'd hate to be glib, but what the hell, this is anarchy, right?
First off, I probably don't need to tell you about the structural problems with the representative system, the influence of big money, or the narrow choice of allowed candidates. As most of the non-voting public knows, voting ultimately only has major influence on election outcomes if you're voting in a block, and even then, the differences between all of the potential candidates are far less significant than they are portrayed. Furthermore, even these differences diminish as a result of interaction with congress and the judiciary. (Remember, we were bombing Iraq under Clinton and Bush Sr., and we would have been under Gore too, so very little changes but style.) The government operates as a single system. Though the parts may change, the function of the system doesn't change without major redesign.
However, I do think the candidates that get in office matter in a more general way... on the one hand, a female or black presidency could do wonders for opening up the social dialogue. On the other hand, another right wing nutcase could further expose the government for what it is: a tool for redistributing wealth from the poor to the wealthy. This sort of "revelation" just might hasten the demise of capitalism. So, should we pick who to vote for based on this type of social analysis? Meh, if you like I suppose. It matters very litte beacause, as mere voters, we are only spectators. Our job is to watch and see who ends up with the most funding.
As an alternative to voting, might I suggest doing something constructive? Your time is much better spent by taking on the challenges of society directly: feed the poor, protest the wars, educate, educate, educate. That's how all the real changes happen. Think of the great accomplishments in US history... emancipation, womens' suffrage, workers' rights, civil rights... all of these came down to getting out in the streets and actually making changes happen. In short: the ruling classes will play their games, and we should hope for the best, but if you really and truly want to make a difference, you've got to go out and do it yourself.
-N
www.nathanmcknight.com
Welcome to the first in my series of blogs on anarchism. The plan for this series is pretty simple... you ask questions, and I do my best to answer them. I'll post blogs as I get questions, depending upon how busy I am with other projects. Remember, anarchism is very diverse and what I say here only reflects my opinion and my understanding of anarchism.
That being said, my first question comes from Mike, who says:
Hey, I'm ust wondering what is your stance on the upcoming presidential election?
Hmmm... I've got mixed feelings about electoral politics, and I haven't yet taken the time to sit down and put them into words. I'd hate to be glib, but what the hell, this is anarchy, right?
First off, I probably don't need to tell you about the structural problems with the representative system, the influence of big money, or the narrow choice of allowed candidates. As most of the non-voting public knows, voting ultimately only has major influence on election outcomes if you're voting in a block, and even then, the differences between all of the potential candidates are far less significant than they are portrayed. Furthermore, even these differences diminish as a result of interaction with congress and the judiciary. (Remember, we were bombing Iraq under Clinton and Bush Sr., and we would have been under Gore too, so very little changes but style.) The government operates as a single system. Though the parts may change, the function of the system doesn't change without major redesign.
However, I do think the candidates that get in office matter in a more general way... on the one hand, a female or black presidency could do wonders for opening up the social dialogue. On the other hand, another right wing nutcase could further expose the government for what it is: a tool for redistributing wealth from the poor to the wealthy. This sort of "revelation" just might hasten the demise of capitalism. So, should we pick who to vote for based on this type of social analysis? Meh, if you like I suppose. It matters very litte beacause, as mere voters, we are only spectators. Our job is to watch and see who ends up with the most funding.
As an alternative to voting, might I suggest doing something constructive? Your time is much better spent by taking on the challenges of society directly: feed the poor, protest the wars, educate, educate, educate. That's how all the real changes happen. Think of the great accomplishments in US history... emancipation, womens' suffrage, workers' rights, civil rights... all of these came down to getting out in the streets and actually making changes happen. In short: the ruling classes will play their games, and we should hope for the best, but if you really and truly want to make a difference, you've got to go out and do it yourself.
-N
www.nathanmcknight.com
This may be the last story ever written. I write it to God, who would leave me alone on this Earth where all the nations have worn down to plains. The minerals that compose me come from the beginning of the world, shaped by wind and time. But the spirit that inhabits this clay form is human, shaped by other humans. I've waited the lifetimes of races to be discovered by some visitor or some god, and perhaps my hope will yet be borne out in the short time I have left. But, if the end-times sun undoes the magic that made me or bakes my limbs into useless branches, you should know that it is the same kilny sun whose light I count on to envitrify my words into the soft clay before the salt-laden tides of the last sea smother them out.
The story begins in Jewish Harlem, before the southern blacks replaced the Jews, before the Hispanic migrants replaced the blacks, before the Arab refugees replaced the migrants, and before the Israilis replaced them…
* * *
The Gilgamesh Golem
by Nahtan McKnight
Paul's mother was displeased in the extreme when she found out that her money was coming from boxing. She had stopped taking the blood money, as she called it, when word got around the neighborhood that Paul "The Maul" Stein had ended a fight by clocking one of the Italian boys and blinding him in one eye. Consequently, Paul and his fiancée had a modest savings.
They had planned to get married in grand fashion, possibly even in their own semi-luxurious apartment whose neo-Egyptian façade was shaded during the hottest part of the afternoon by the shadow of the new Empire State building, where Holly worked as an assistant executive secretary. It was the nature of their respective professions that they spent most of the day apart. Their only contact was at dinnertime, after Holly had spent a long day in the office without a break and Paul was readying himself for the evening's fight. Sometimes, the famished couple would go back to Harlem where Yiddish and Italian and Irish voices filled the air with the restless spirits of the old countries, voices that complimented Mother Stein's cooking like the spices of the east. Holly would impress them with anecdotes of rich foreigners who always seemed to make extraordinary demands of the secretaries or, on lucky days, to bestow upon them ludicrously large tips in exchange for everyday kindness.
It was on one such occasion that Paul first heard the name Israel ben Muhammad. Holly normally paid scant attention to changes of leadership in the company, but the buy-out by an Arabian oil baron precipitated an especially large shake-up among the employees. The stars portend opportunity, Mrs. Stein had told her son knowingly. Indeed, Holly ended up filling her own supervisor's newly vacant position as lead executive secretary, handling the appointment books of ben Muhammad himself. Paul learned of her new boss's real estate aspirations on the same day that the change in management for the East Central apartment buildings took effect. Notices were first posted to inform the residents on that very day. They were on all the walls and in all the mailboxes. They were given by hand to every occupant, sometimes more than once. The postings shrouded the fine sheeny wallpaper with a quiltwork of mottled parchment. In order to keep the "criminal element" at bay_some anti-Arab graffitoism had taken place in the otherwise immaculate children's daytime care facility_all residents were asked to carry punch cards. In addition, for reasons that were poorly explained, rent would be upped for certain occupants. Paul and Holly would have to pay more than triple the normal due.
The old landlord's chair and desk were replaced with a velveteen paisley dos-ŕ-dos, and a new door had been erected, making an office of the adjoining suite. Paul defiantly pounded on the door, though he knew he wasn't even supposed to be in this office-cum-foyer. Hey Mac, that area is off limits now, one of the janitors had explained to Paul, whose punch card was already scuffed and bent from being tried in all the newly locked doors that metamorphosed the building into the impregnable Egyptian tomb its lotus trumeaux had always bragged it was. The janitor had diffused Paul's evident rage when he punched his own card, as payback he said, for the five bucks he'd won off last week's fight. I wouldn't mind if you gave that new landlord a good right hook anyways, Slugger. But here he was, pounding on the door instead of the landlord.
A scratchy electric voice, like those at the larger boxing arenas warned that unappointmented queries may result in fees or even termination of the lease, and Paul argued with it momentarily about the appropriateness of his visit until he slipped the note under the door. The rent envelope came on the 28th of every month, and this one had contained instructions on how to contact the landlord for a lease review. Why the lease needed reviewing was second among Paul's concerns, which were dominated by the improbable restrictions on his options for an appointment: Anytime after 4pm on a business day before this month's rent is due.
"Mr. ben Muhammad will see you now," said the speaker.
The suite was air-conditioned_a luxury even for such a fine apartment building. The secretary directed Paul around the corner to the landlord's relaxation chamber. The conversation did not go well. Paul spoke, facing away from the landlord, who lounged in a freestanding washbasin, smoking from a long meerschaum pipe whose smoke did a better job keeping away the flies than the peacock plume he switched them with. Ben Muhammad sat quietly until Paul had exhausted his lexis in a jeremiad plea that touched on the wedding, elderly parents, and the potential for injuries in his line of work.
"Please return to the foyer while I consider your case, Mr. Stein," said ben Muhammad.
Paul did as he was asked to, but he found himself scratching the extravagant gold leafwork from one of the dos-ŕ-dos's arms. The repetitive motion calmed him.
"You will be billed for defacing the furniture," the secretary's voice itched over the loudspeaker. "This fiancée you mentioned; she lives with you here, does she? In that case, we will have to relocate one of you to the nearest vacant apartment until after the wedding. You will, of course continue to pay the increased rates. If you are unwilling to comply with the rules of this building, you are encouraged move into any of the other East Central apartment buildings, some of which retain independent management. That will be all, Mr. Stein."
"Excuse me?"
"One moment Mr. Stein…Mr. ben Mohammad says that he will be claiming your fiancée as well."
"Just what...?"
"Mr. Stein," it was ben Muhammad's voice this time. "Because of the problems you've caused here today, your tenancy has been terminated. The lease will be transferred to the name of Miss Landis. She will stay here with me, where you may trust that she will be in good hands."
"Just who in hell do you think you are?"
"Sir, please try to understand. She is mine. Since before you were born, I've dwelt on that face. I realize you love her, but I loved her first. You see, when my father brought me to New York as a boy, the beauty of American women astounded me. But there was one in particular. Her name was Honey. The wife of Milt Landis, her face caused my heart to weep. It was the memory of that face which I followed back to your country. Now, I've seen that face again, and it is Holly, the daughter of Milt and Honey Landis. She will be my bride. Please leave the premises now. Do not attempt to reenter your apartment."
"That will be all Mr. Stein," concluded the secretary.
On the way out, Paul regretted not provoking the guards who stood by to see that he boarded the elevator to the lobby. As he stepped out the front door, a voice sounded from above.
"Hey, you're the sparrer. Pauler the Mauler, right?" An overalled man squatted on the top rung of a ladder, holding a pile of gold foil in one hand, and a jar of glue with a paintbrush jutting from it in the other. He spoke with a British accent. "Do you live here?"
"Not anymore."
"That's too bad. I suppose you don't like the management? Well, a lot of folks round here feel that way. I can't say as I share the opinion, though. If it weren't for Mr. Mohammed, I wouldn't have a job. My family and me flew all the way from Norwich and Mr. ben Muhammad paid for the Zeppelin tickets. He says he's going to make these apartments into Utopia. I feel like I'm working for the pharaoh himself."
Paul threw his body against the ladder and lifted the little man by his collar. Several onlookers fled, but one of them_the janitor from upstairs_swung a fist at the air.
Paul bloodied the artist's nose and lips, dropped him and boxed his ears; he would have killed the man if he hadn't seen the Tommie-gun-wielding guards appear. As he left the chaotic scene, he looked over his shoulder and the janitor shouted out. "Way to go slugger," he said, only to be beaten and dragged off by a gang of security guards.
Another guard hollered, "Cut him off, he's heading across the street."
Paul and Holly were supposed to meet at the foot of the Empire State Building, but there was little chance ben Muhammad would allow that to happen, so instead Paul hopped a jittery trolley into Jewish Harlem. Ghetto faces lined with cracks stared at Paul, like ancient pottery sitting alongside a museum reproduction designed to imitate the beauty of newness. Mrs. Stein's tenement was infested with age, from the ladies with pepper pot figures to the tall-hatted Hassidic men who discussed philosophy over chess. Even the Irish boys who played stickball out front seemed oddly wise for their age. Paul had grown up here, but he felt he had pampered away his street wisdom. He no longer belonged.
"What should I do, ma?"
"Stay here with me. Holly will know where to find you."
It took Paul a few days to realize that his mother was wrong. He had taken out his anger in the boxing ring. He told his mother of the Micks and Negroes he had beaten, no doubt winning his fans more than a few dollars. He didn't mention the Jewish boxer that would never again be able to bite into a fresh apple with his own teeth because of Paul's callused fists. One night, Paul went back to the apartment building dressed in his late father's ragged work clothes. Paul and Holly's apartment was on the seventh floor, and he could barely make out shapes moving in the golden light. He stared for nearly half an hour before he saw Holly poke her head out the window. He shouted up to her, but she didn't seem to hear.
"Paul the Maul! You don't look so good, slugger."
The janitor had a huge can of garbage that he dragged towards the alley. He said that ben Muhammad had allowed him to keep his job after he had promised not to talk to a single person while on duty. In the quiet of the alley, they talked about Holly's coming and going and the increase in modern conveniences, and the accompanying increase of security at the building. The whole place was air conditioned now, and the elevators were automated, but many of the tenants had been evicted to make room for newcomers who could afford the forbidding rent. Paul told the janitor that he was afraid ben Muhammad was holding his fiancée against her will.
"There's a fellow might be able to help you," said the janitor. "He's a rabbi."
Paul's mother was shocked. "Rabbi Samson's only a rabbi in title. The man is a lush. Don't you go near him." It turned out that Samson was a lascivious whoremonger who was rumored to masturbate at the talkie theaters. "Uncut Samson," they called him. He was, however, also a renowned mystic and that's what made up Paul's mind. Nobody doubted the Rabbi's powers.
After a particularly bloody match, Paul delivered himself to a doorway lit by a gas torch that stood below street level only two blocks from his mother's apartment building. The door had a bronze plate inscribed with Hebrew letters. With the streaked green corrosion and Paul's limited knowledge of Yiddish, he could only tell that it said something like "All Are Welcome."
Samson was a fat and greasy slob whose once-exquisite accommodations had been used beyond their capability, and now exuded a pungent fetor that seemed to waft out of the holes in the carpeting. The Rabbi glanced at Paul senior's clothing and said, "You can't afford my prices." Paul told him that there was plenty of money in the ring for anyone tough enough to claim it. Samson laughed at the implied threat, but waved him inside anyway.
"I know of Israel ben Muhammad. He's obsessed with himself, like most of the world's better men. Your fiancée would be well off to stay with him rather than a low-born boxer from the ghetto." Samson left him alone long enough to reconsider his decision, but before Paul's mind could make sense of these awful circumstances, the Rabbi emerged from behind a curtain-wall. "It is done. The girl will be yours. Now give me whatever money you have and go away."
Paul didn't know what to expect, if anything, but he couldn't stand to waste time in actionless wondering, so he walked as fast as he could to the apartment building whose neo-Egyptian façade dripped silver rain like mercury in the bright moonlight. Holly was there, waiting in the alley. She was silent. Paul tried to talk to her, but she seemed not to know him. She didn't respond at all unless she was asked a direct question or given a command.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"What's happened to you?"
"I don't know."
He told Holly she would have to come with him, but she followed at a snail's pace, and when he carried her, he wasn't able to move much faster.
The walk back to Harlem ended as the sun was rising over Mrs. Stein's apartment. Though he collapsed with exhaustion in his mother's spare bedroom, his mind was restless with angry confusion. Holly lay open-eyed next to him, and when Paul finally gave up the fight to keep his eyes closed, she accompanied him arm-in-arm through the foggy morning street.
The Rabbi's door appeared to be stout but it only took one solid blow to unhinge it completely, allowing a cold draft to douse candles and to bear scrolls off tables. Uncut Samson was taken by surprise, nude, piggish, and shaking, when Paul grabbed him by the arm, sinking strong fingers into the flab. A sucker punch to the face was stopped when Paul felt a paralyzing blow to his own spine.
"Stay out of this. I'm going to kill him for ruining my bride," said ben Muhammad in a fearsome voice.
Paul turned on ben Muhammad and they began a dirty wrestling match. However, their battle was not yet to be. The fleshy slap of each strike quieted to nothing while the apartment filled with thick incense smoke until both men collapsed in a desperate embrace. They awoke lashed together and suspended over a smokeless fire and immediately resumed the struggle against each other, and now against the ropes, and against the flame.
"I will pay you," ben Muhammad yelled in between curses, "Holly, go get the money in my safe." Paul stopped slamming his skull against the other man's in time to see her run out the open door. Holly's departure left both men relieved enough to stop struggling. "If you think I want Miss Landis's body, you're mistaken. Soon, I'll have the body to take the women I wasn't strong enough to take in this body. I'm glad you both showed up here, but it's a pity that a golem fit for a wizard has to be wasted." He swung a lumpy arm towards an unrealistically muscular clay sculpture of ben Muhammad. "It took a long time to find a body sturdy enough to suit my tastes." He stroked the arm of the sculpture, and snickered. "You should be thankful. This magnificent creature is beyond value. It was fashioned in 1654 by Dutch Jews, fleeing the Portuguese in South America. They offered it to the Governor of New Amsterdam to protect the city from the Swedes, but instead he arrested the Jews and put the golem up for auction. It sat in a Brooklyn root cellar for nearly three hundred years until I found it. Soon, the two of you will fulfill the purpose of watching over this city_my city_at my bidding. You will inhabit a body with quite a pedigree, I'd say. Personally, I would rather have the real thing." Samson's cheeks reddened and he approached the men, gazing away from their eyes. "When I have your body Mr. Stein, I'll be as strong as my golem, but still human enough to enjoy it. And when I have your face, Mr. ben Muhammad, I will control your wealth. How much are you worth? Millions? Billions? As I said, it is a lucky coincidence for me that you have both decided to show up just as I'm begining my ritual." Samson began chanting in a tongue neither of the men would have recognized by name. He bent himself and fanned the flames with his hands as he alternated between prayer and silence in cyclic rhythms. On one cycle, he looked up and addressed the two men. "Have you ever heard the tale of Gilgamesh, who would split a baby in half so that two fighting women could share motherhood?"
"Isn't that the story of Solomon?" Said ben Muhammad "Shut up," The corners of Samson's mouth turned slightly downward and his eyes widened. "I told you each that you would have sole power over this woman, and I never rescind a promise." "Don't kill her, please," said Paul
Samson waited for the end of the chant to reply. "Idiots, you think I would kill your girl? You two can continue your fight over her as long as you like, for all it matters to me. Killing is a sin."
The rising flames drew Paul's eyes. He could see now that they were hanging above a burning bush. "Lord God," he screamed, "please help me!" Rabbi Samson laughed. "Yahweh," he addressed the bush by God's ancient name.
"What do you require of me, great Samson?"
"Give me the wealth of the oil baron and the strength of the boxer."
"Shall I cast their souls into hell?"
"No," he said even as his body was being reshaped, "I would like you to ensoul the golem doubly."
As he spoke, the fat seemed to melt from Rabbi Samson's body, and his skin seemed to darken, become more youthful. Paul had trouble focusing on the Rabbi. The scene became a jumble of images and he could see his own body from the outside, writhing in exact complement to ben Muhammad's. He could see both of their bodies starting to dissolve into a wisp of smoke over the burning bush. Soon, the Rabbi's body stopped its distortion and solidified into a chimera of the two vanished captives. Paul could tell he was still in the room, though he had watched his own body fade out of existence along with ben Muhammad's. He tried to move stiff limbs, but they felt clunky and he seemed unable to decide which way to move. His emotions too were a jumble. They were still filled with hate for Samson and love for Holly, and hate for ben Muhammad. But there was self-loathing now as well. Ben Muhammad was present inside him.
"Yahweh, partition the golem." With the Rabbi's words, the chaotic admixture of souls ended in pain. A line burned down the center of the clay form, singeing both souls and demarking a boundary that kept ben Muhammad in the left and Paul in the right.
"Enjoy your prison, children. I'm off to dabble in real estate." The Rabbi tore down the curtains and cloaked his new body with them, leaving the apartment through the still-open doorway.
Paul tried to stand, but he only had control over his_the golem's_right leg. The left was still. "Damn it," he said out of the right side of his mouth. "You damned idiot. If it wasn't for your greed, I'd have my wife and you'd have your riches." He began punching the left side of his face, chipping greenware knuckles and cheek. The left arm tried to do the same to the right side, and the golem struggled with itself until both eyes wept in tearless despair.
Eventually, the left side of the golem's mouth said, "Stop it! Stop it, Mr. Stein."
The left arm flung itself limply to the side while the right continued to work at destroying them both, pounding deep cracks in the hand and wrist, neck and face.
"I really do love her."
"You don't know what love is," said Paul bitterly. He took a breath and put the hand to his forehead, feeling dust and bits of clay slough off underneath his fingers.
The golem sat solemnly in front of the smokeless fire.
"Help me. All I want is to hold my Holly again, even under these circumstances," said the right side of the Golem.
"What can I do? Robbed of my body and rendered in clay, what good can I be?" asked the left.
"I don't know. I can't think. I can't do anything_I can't even cry," said the right.
"Can this god of yours help?" asked the left.
Paul considered this for a moment. God wasn't supposed to be part of his vocabulary. He was a man of the flesh; a man of the fist.
"Of course!" Paul started to lean forward with the right side of the golem's body, and ben Muhammad followed his lead with the left. The fire rose at the movement. "Yahweh, help us. Give Holly her free will back."
"I have made a covenant to give each of you command over the girl's will. I cannot breach that covenant." "Then, please give us back our bodies."
"As I said, I cannot contravene a covenant once made. Only Rabbi Samson can give you back your bodies. Perhaps I can help you in some other way."
"If you can't restore our souls, what can you do for us?" Asked Paul.
"I must do whatever you command that is within my power."
"Then give this body the strength to overcome Rabbi Samson, Yahweh," said ben Muhammad.
The flames grew, and with them the golem's body. Over the fire, the golem took on a vitreous sheen. The surface became covered with glass scales and the bulk continued to expand. Soon, the ceiling bowed against the golem's shoulders. Then it broke and debris fell from the upper levels of the old building into the basement. The fire consumed it all, and the golem had to step away to keep from hardening into bisque. As the golem grew greater and greater, the partition grew thinner and thinner, stretching imperceptibly thin between the two souls.
* * *
It was in that fire that my story begins. Though the Rabbi had divided me in two, I had to work as one being. Oftentimes, I wish I had continued to grow and grow until my body formed a world unto itself. Alas, that was not to be. I was compelled towards the glass and steel pinnacle where my lover would be opening a money-clotted safe on an upper floor. I stumbled and fell along the way, rending ironwork and bits of pavement under my weight. By this time, my feet were the size of trolley cars, my stride the length of a city block. I walked to where the shadow of the Empire State Building pierced the daylight on the street. People fled in terror before me, but by then I didn't care. My cares were torn between love and hate briefly, when I saw the tiny Rabbi scurry for cover into one of the East Central apartment buildings. I ignored him and grasped at the Empire State Building with an enormous hand, breaking windows and bending steel. I climbed until I could look with my left eye into the office where Holly carefully removed money from the safe without emotion or haste.
"Holly," my voice was hoarse and inhuman, large as a nation, but she responded anyway. "Come here," I said.
I wrapped one arm around the side of the building so that I could lift the other and give Holly somewhere to stand. She obeyed my every word, climbing out the window into my giant clay hand. As she did so, the building started tipping and screeching. I stepped down in time to back away and watch it fall like a tree, tiny people diving hopelessly from the windows. The collapse obliterated all of the East Central apartment buildings in one long, billowing crunch. The city was alive with sirens going every which way, and maybe no one noticed when I took a deep breath and did a backstroke into the cold Atlantic with Holly_or the mindless body that bore that name_sitting comfortably on my chest.
* * *
As I write this, the waves of the Atlantic are still crashing on gently sloping shores, though the shoreline has receded and the ocean has been split into two strings of slushy salt puddles running along either side of a vast mountain range. New York city is now long gone, as are the ever changing peoples of that ghetto called Harlem. When the sun has expanded and scorched me to a frozen statue, you may find my body on the peak of a mountain that was once an island. There, I will be lying alongside a pile of ashes that were once the bones of my dear Holly. But before I retreat into my private eternity, I must complete my tale…
The golem switched hands with the petrified mangrove tree he'd been using as a writing utensil, and then started a new column of inscription. "In glory to the Prophet (blessings be upon him), I write this tale in a sincere attempt to inform the reader_should there be a reader_of the true history of my creation, if it is Allah's will that I finish before the end-times sun undoes the magic that made me or bakes my limbs into useless branches…"
The story begins in Jewish Harlem, before the southern blacks replaced the Jews, before the Hispanic migrants replaced the blacks, before the Arab refugees replaced the migrants, and before the Israilis replaced them…
* * *
The Gilgamesh Golem
by Nahtan McKnight
Paul's mother was displeased in the extreme when she found out that her money was coming from boxing. She had stopped taking the blood money, as she called it, when word got around the neighborhood that Paul "The Maul" Stein had ended a fight by clocking one of the Italian boys and blinding him in one eye. Consequently, Paul and his fiancée had a modest savings.
They had planned to get married in grand fashion, possibly even in their own semi-luxurious apartment whose neo-Egyptian façade was shaded during the hottest part of the afternoon by the shadow of the new Empire State building, where Holly worked as an assistant executive secretary. It was the nature of their respective professions that they spent most of the day apart. Their only contact was at dinnertime, after Holly had spent a long day in the office without a break and Paul was readying himself for the evening's fight. Sometimes, the famished couple would go back to Harlem where Yiddish and Italian and Irish voices filled the air with the restless spirits of the old countries, voices that complimented Mother Stein's cooking like the spices of the east. Holly would impress them with anecdotes of rich foreigners who always seemed to make extraordinary demands of the secretaries or, on lucky days, to bestow upon them ludicrously large tips in exchange for everyday kindness.
It was on one such occasion that Paul first heard the name Israel ben Muhammad. Holly normally paid scant attention to changes of leadership in the company, but the buy-out by an Arabian oil baron precipitated an especially large shake-up among the employees. The stars portend opportunity, Mrs. Stein had told her son knowingly. Indeed, Holly ended up filling her own supervisor's newly vacant position as lead executive secretary, handling the appointment books of ben Muhammad himself. Paul learned of her new boss's real estate aspirations on the same day that the change in management for the East Central apartment buildings took effect. Notices were first posted to inform the residents on that very day. They were on all the walls and in all the mailboxes. They were given by hand to every occupant, sometimes more than once. The postings shrouded the fine sheeny wallpaper with a quiltwork of mottled parchment. In order to keep the "criminal element" at bay_some anti-Arab graffitoism had taken place in the otherwise immaculate children's daytime care facility_all residents were asked to carry punch cards. In addition, for reasons that were poorly explained, rent would be upped for certain occupants. Paul and Holly would have to pay more than triple the normal due.
The old landlord's chair and desk were replaced with a velveteen paisley dos-ŕ-dos, and a new door had been erected, making an office of the adjoining suite. Paul defiantly pounded on the door, though he knew he wasn't even supposed to be in this office-cum-foyer. Hey Mac, that area is off limits now, one of the janitors had explained to Paul, whose punch card was already scuffed and bent from being tried in all the newly locked doors that metamorphosed the building into the impregnable Egyptian tomb its lotus trumeaux had always bragged it was. The janitor had diffused Paul's evident rage when he punched his own card, as payback he said, for the five bucks he'd won off last week's fight. I wouldn't mind if you gave that new landlord a good right hook anyways, Slugger. But here he was, pounding on the door instead of the landlord.
A scratchy electric voice, like those at the larger boxing arenas warned that unappointmented queries may result in fees or even termination of the lease, and Paul argued with it momentarily about the appropriateness of his visit until he slipped the note under the door. The rent envelope came on the 28th of every month, and this one had contained instructions on how to contact the landlord for a lease review. Why the lease needed reviewing was second among Paul's concerns, which were dominated by the improbable restrictions on his options for an appointment: Anytime after 4pm on a business day before this month's rent is due.
"Mr. ben Muhammad will see you now," said the speaker.
The suite was air-conditioned_a luxury even for such a fine apartment building. The secretary directed Paul around the corner to the landlord's relaxation chamber. The conversation did not go well. Paul spoke, facing away from the landlord, who lounged in a freestanding washbasin, smoking from a long meerschaum pipe whose smoke did a better job keeping away the flies than the peacock plume he switched them with. Ben Muhammad sat quietly until Paul had exhausted his lexis in a jeremiad plea that touched on the wedding, elderly parents, and the potential for injuries in his line of work.
"Please return to the foyer while I consider your case, Mr. Stein," said ben Muhammad.
Paul did as he was asked to, but he found himself scratching the extravagant gold leafwork from one of the dos-ŕ-dos's arms. The repetitive motion calmed him.
"You will be billed for defacing the furniture," the secretary's voice itched over the loudspeaker. "This fiancée you mentioned; she lives with you here, does she? In that case, we will have to relocate one of you to the nearest vacant apartment until after the wedding. You will, of course continue to pay the increased rates. If you are unwilling to comply with the rules of this building, you are encouraged move into any of the other East Central apartment buildings, some of which retain independent management. That will be all, Mr. Stein."
"Excuse me?"
"One moment Mr. Stein…Mr. ben Mohammad says that he will be claiming your fiancée as well."
"Just what...?"
"Mr. Stein," it was ben Muhammad's voice this time. "Because of the problems you've caused here today, your tenancy has been terminated. The lease will be transferred to the name of Miss Landis. She will stay here with me, where you may trust that she will be in good hands."
"Just who in hell do you think you are?"
"Sir, please try to understand. She is mine. Since before you were born, I've dwelt on that face. I realize you love her, but I loved her first. You see, when my father brought me to New York as a boy, the beauty of American women astounded me. But there was one in particular. Her name was Honey. The wife of Milt Landis, her face caused my heart to weep. It was the memory of that face which I followed back to your country. Now, I've seen that face again, and it is Holly, the daughter of Milt and Honey Landis. She will be my bride. Please leave the premises now. Do not attempt to reenter your apartment."
"That will be all Mr. Stein," concluded the secretary.
On the way out, Paul regretted not provoking the guards who stood by to see that he boarded the elevator to the lobby. As he stepped out the front door, a voice sounded from above.
"Hey, you're the sparrer. Pauler the Mauler, right?" An overalled man squatted on the top rung of a ladder, holding a pile of gold foil in one hand, and a jar of glue with a paintbrush jutting from it in the other. He spoke with a British accent. "Do you live here?"
"Not anymore."
"That's too bad. I suppose you don't like the management? Well, a lot of folks round here feel that way. I can't say as I share the opinion, though. If it weren't for Mr. Mohammed, I wouldn't have a job. My family and me flew all the way from Norwich and Mr. ben Muhammad paid for the Zeppelin tickets. He says he's going to make these apartments into Utopia. I feel like I'm working for the pharaoh himself."
Paul threw his body against the ladder and lifted the little man by his collar. Several onlookers fled, but one of them_the janitor from upstairs_swung a fist at the air.
Paul bloodied the artist's nose and lips, dropped him and boxed his ears; he would have killed the man if he hadn't seen the Tommie-gun-wielding guards appear. As he left the chaotic scene, he looked over his shoulder and the janitor shouted out. "Way to go slugger," he said, only to be beaten and dragged off by a gang of security guards.
Another guard hollered, "Cut him off, he's heading across the street."
Paul and Holly were supposed to meet at the foot of the Empire State Building, but there was little chance ben Muhammad would allow that to happen, so instead Paul hopped a jittery trolley into Jewish Harlem. Ghetto faces lined with cracks stared at Paul, like ancient pottery sitting alongside a museum reproduction designed to imitate the beauty of newness. Mrs. Stein's tenement was infested with age, from the ladies with pepper pot figures to the tall-hatted Hassidic men who discussed philosophy over chess. Even the Irish boys who played stickball out front seemed oddly wise for their age. Paul had grown up here, but he felt he had pampered away his street wisdom. He no longer belonged.
"What should I do, ma?"
"Stay here with me. Holly will know where to find you."
It took Paul a few days to realize that his mother was wrong. He had taken out his anger in the boxing ring. He told his mother of the Micks and Negroes he had beaten, no doubt winning his fans more than a few dollars. He didn't mention the Jewish boxer that would never again be able to bite into a fresh apple with his own teeth because of Paul's callused fists. One night, Paul went back to the apartment building dressed in his late father's ragged work clothes. Paul and Holly's apartment was on the seventh floor, and he could barely make out shapes moving in the golden light. He stared for nearly half an hour before he saw Holly poke her head out the window. He shouted up to her, but she didn't seem to hear.
"Paul the Maul! You don't look so good, slugger."
The janitor had a huge can of garbage that he dragged towards the alley. He said that ben Muhammad had allowed him to keep his job after he had promised not to talk to a single person while on duty. In the quiet of the alley, they talked about Holly's coming and going and the increase in modern conveniences, and the accompanying increase of security at the building. The whole place was air conditioned now, and the elevators were automated, but many of the tenants had been evicted to make room for newcomers who could afford the forbidding rent. Paul told the janitor that he was afraid ben Muhammad was holding his fiancée against her will.
"There's a fellow might be able to help you," said the janitor. "He's a rabbi."
Paul's mother was shocked. "Rabbi Samson's only a rabbi in title. The man is a lush. Don't you go near him." It turned out that Samson was a lascivious whoremonger who was rumored to masturbate at the talkie theaters. "Uncut Samson," they called him. He was, however, also a renowned mystic and that's what made up Paul's mind. Nobody doubted the Rabbi's powers.
After a particularly bloody match, Paul delivered himself to a doorway lit by a gas torch that stood below street level only two blocks from his mother's apartment building. The door had a bronze plate inscribed with Hebrew letters. With the streaked green corrosion and Paul's limited knowledge of Yiddish, he could only tell that it said something like "All Are Welcome."
Samson was a fat and greasy slob whose once-exquisite accommodations had been used beyond their capability, and now exuded a pungent fetor that seemed to waft out of the holes in the carpeting. The Rabbi glanced at Paul senior's clothing and said, "You can't afford my prices." Paul told him that there was plenty of money in the ring for anyone tough enough to claim it. Samson laughed at the implied threat, but waved him inside anyway.
"I know of Israel ben Muhammad. He's obsessed with himself, like most of the world's better men. Your fiancée would be well off to stay with him rather than a low-born boxer from the ghetto." Samson left him alone long enough to reconsider his decision, but before Paul's mind could make sense of these awful circumstances, the Rabbi emerged from behind a curtain-wall. "It is done. The girl will be yours. Now give me whatever money you have and go away."
Paul didn't know what to expect, if anything, but he couldn't stand to waste time in actionless wondering, so he walked as fast as he could to the apartment building whose neo-Egyptian façade dripped silver rain like mercury in the bright moonlight. Holly was there, waiting in the alley. She was silent. Paul tried to talk to her, but she seemed not to know him. She didn't respond at all unless she was asked a direct question or given a command.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"What's happened to you?"
"I don't know."
He told Holly she would have to come with him, but she followed at a snail's pace, and when he carried her, he wasn't able to move much faster.
The walk back to Harlem ended as the sun was rising over Mrs. Stein's apartment. Though he collapsed with exhaustion in his mother's spare bedroom, his mind was restless with angry confusion. Holly lay open-eyed next to him, and when Paul finally gave up the fight to keep his eyes closed, she accompanied him arm-in-arm through the foggy morning street.
The Rabbi's door appeared to be stout but it only took one solid blow to unhinge it completely, allowing a cold draft to douse candles and to bear scrolls off tables. Uncut Samson was taken by surprise, nude, piggish, and shaking, when Paul grabbed him by the arm, sinking strong fingers into the flab. A sucker punch to the face was stopped when Paul felt a paralyzing blow to his own spine.
"Stay out of this. I'm going to kill him for ruining my bride," said ben Muhammad in a fearsome voice.
Paul turned on ben Muhammad and they began a dirty wrestling match. However, their battle was not yet to be. The fleshy slap of each strike quieted to nothing while the apartment filled with thick incense smoke until both men collapsed in a desperate embrace. They awoke lashed together and suspended over a smokeless fire and immediately resumed the struggle against each other, and now against the ropes, and against the flame.
"I will pay you," ben Muhammad yelled in between curses, "Holly, go get the money in my safe." Paul stopped slamming his skull against the other man's in time to see her run out the open door. Holly's departure left both men relieved enough to stop struggling. "If you think I want Miss Landis's body, you're mistaken. Soon, I'll have the body to take the women I wasn't strong enough to take in this body. I'm glad you both showed up here, but it's a pity that a golem fit for a wizard has to be wasted." He swung a lumpy arm towards an unrealistically muscular clay sculpture of ben Muhammad. "It took a long time to find a body sturdy enough to suit my tastes." He stroked the arm of the sculpture, and snickered. "You should be thankful. This magnificent creature is beyond value. It was fashioned in 1654 by Dutch Jews, fleeing the Portuguese in South America. They offered it to the Governor of New Amsterdam to protect the city from the Swedes, but instead he arrested the Jews and put the golem up for auction. It sat in a Brooklyn root cellar for nearly three hundred years until I found it. Soon, the two of you will fulfill the purpose of watching over this city_my city_at my bidding. You will inhabit a body with quite a pedigree, I'd say. Personally, I would rather have the real thing." Samson's cheeks reddened and he approached the men, gazing away from their eyes. "When I have your body Mr. Stein, I'll be as strong as my golem, but still human enough to enjoy it. And when I have your face, Mr. ben Muhammad, I will control your wealth. How much are you worth? Millions? Billions? As I said, it is a lucky coincidence for me that you have both decided to show up just as I'm begining my ritual." Samson began chanting in a tongue neither of the men would have recognized by name. He bent himself and fanned the flames with his hands as he alternated between prayer and silence in cyclic rhythms. On one cycle, he looked up and addressed the two men. "Have you ever heard the tale of Gilgamesh, who would split a baby in half so that two fighting women could share motherhood?"
"Isn't that the story of Solomon?" Said ben Muhammad "Shut up," The corners of Samson's mouth turned slightly downward and his eyes widened. "I told you each that you would have sole power over this woman, and I never rescind a promise." "Don't kill her, please," said Paul
Samson waited for the end of the chant to reply. "Idiots, you think I would kill your girl? You two can continue your fight over her as long as you like, for all it matters to me. Killing is a sin."
The rising flames drew Paul's eyes. He could see now that they were hanging above a burning bush. "Lord God," he screamed, "please help me!" Rabbi Samson laughed. "Yahweh," he addressed the bush by God's ancient name.
"What do you require of me, great Samson?"
"Give me the wealth of the oil baron and the strength of the boxer."
"Shall I cast their souls into hell?"
"No," he said even as his body was being reshaped, "I would like you to ensoul the golem doubly."
As he spoke, the fat seemed to melt from Rabbi Samson's body, and his skin seemed to darken, become more youthful. Paul had trouble focusing on the Rabbi. The scene became a jumble of images and he could see his own body from the outside, writhing in exact complement to ben Muhammad's. He could see both of their bodies starting to dissolve into a wisp of smoke over the burning bush. Soon, the Rabbi's body stopped its distortion and solidified into a chimera of the two vanished captives. Paul could tell he was still in the room, though he had watched his own body fade out of existence along with ben Muhammad's. He tried to move stiff limbs, but they felt clunky and he seemed unable to decide which way to move. His emotions too were a jumble. They were still filled with hate for Samson and love for Holly, and hate for ben Muhammad. But there was self-loathing now as well. Ben Muhammad was present inside him.
"Yahweh, partition the golem." With the Rabbi's words, the chaotic admixture of souls ended in pain. A line burned down the center of the clay form, singeing both souls and demarking a boundary that kept ben Muhammad in the left and Paul in the right.
"Enjoy your prison, children. I'm off to dabble in real estate." The Rabbi tore down the curtains and cloaked his new body with them, leaving the apartment through the still-open doorway.
Paul tried to stand, but he only had control over his_the golem's_right leg. The left was still. "Damn it," he said out of the right side of his mouth. "You damned idiot. If it wasn't for your greed, I'd have my wife and you'd have your riches." He began punching the left side of his face, chipping greenware knuckles and cheek. The left arm tried to do the same to the right side, and the golem struggled with itself until both eyes wept in tearless despair.
Eventually, the left side of the golem's mouth said, "Stop it! Stop it, Mr. Stein."
The left arm flung itself limply to the side while the right continued to work at destroying them both, pounding deep cracks in the hand and wrist, neck and face.
"I really do love her."
"You don't know what love is," said Paul bitterly. He took a breath and put the hand to his forehead, feeling dust and bits of clay slough off underneath his fingers.
The golem sat solemnly in front of the smokeless fire.
"Help me. All I want is to hold my Holly again, even under these circumstances," said the right side of the Golem.
"What can I do? Robbed of my body and rendered in clay, what good can I be?" asked the left.
"I don't know. I can't think. I can't do anything_I can't even cry," said the right.
"Can this god of yours help?" asked the left.
Paul considered this for a moment. God wasn't supposed to be part of his vocabulary. He was a man of the flesh; a man of the fist.
"Of course!" Paul started to lean forward with the right side of the golem's body, and ben Muhammad followed his lead with the left. The fire rose at the movement. "Yahweh, help us. Give Holly her free will back."
"I have made a covenant to give each of you command over the girl's will. I cannot breach that covenant." "Then, please give us back our bodies."
"As I said, I cannot contravene a covenant once made. Only Rabbi Samson can give you back your bodies. Perhaps I can help you in some other way."
"If you can't restore our souls, what can you do for us?" Asked Paul.
"I must do whatever you command that is within my power."
"Then give this body the strength to overcome Rabbi Samson, Yahweh," said ben Muhammad.
The flames grew, and with them the golem's body. Over the fire, the golem took on a vitreous sheen. The surface became covered with glass scales and the bulk continued to expand. Soon, the ceiling bowed against the golem's shoulders. Then it broke and debris fell from the upper levels of the old building into the basement. The fire consumed it all, and the golem had to step away to keep from hardening into bisque. As the golem grew greater and greater, the partition grew thinner and thinner, stretching imperceptibly thin between the two souls.
* * *
It was in that fire that my story begins. Though the Rabbi had divided me in two, I had to work as one being. Oftentimes, I wish I had continued to grow and grow until my body formed a world unto itself. Alas, that was not to be. I was compelled towards the glass and steel pinnacle where my lover would be opening a money-clotted safe on an upper floor. I stumbled and fell along the way, rending ironwork and bits of pavement under my weight. By this time, my feet were the size of trolley cars, my stride the length of a city block. I walked to where the shadow of the Empire State Building pierced the daylight on the street. People fled in terror before me, but by then I didn't care. My cares were torn between love and hate briefly, when I saw the tiny Rabbi scurry for cover into one of the East Central apartment buildings. I ignored him and grasped at the Empire State Building with an enormous hand, breaking windows and bending steel. I climbed until I could look with my left eye into the office where Holly carefully removed money from the safe without emotion or haste.
"Holly," my voice was hoarse and inhuman, large as a nation, but she responded anyway. "Come here," I said.
I wrapped one arm around the side of the building so that I could lift the other and give Holly somewhere to stand. She obeyed my every word, climbing out the window into my giant clay hand. As she did so, the building started tipping and screeching. I stepped down in time to back away and watch it fall like a tree, tiny people diving hopelessly from the windows. The collapse obliterated all of the East Central apartment buildings in one long, billowing crunch. The city was alive with sirens going every which way, and maybe no one noticed when I took a deep breath and did a backstroke into the cold Atlantic with Holly_or the mindless body that bore that name_sitting comfortably on my chest.
* * *
As I write this, the waves of the Atlantic are still crashing on gently sloping shores, though the shoreline has receded and the ocean has been split into two strings of slushy salt puddles running along either side of a vast mountain range. New York city is now long gone, as are the ever changing peoples of that ghetto called Harlem. When the sun has expanded and scorched me to a frozen statue, you may find my body on the peak of a mountain that was once an island. There, I will be lying alongside a pile of ashes that were once the bones of my dear Holly. But before I retreat into my private eternity, I must complete my tale…
The golem switched hands with the petrified mangrove tree he'd been using as a writing utensil, and then started a new column of inscription. "In glory to the Prophet (blessings be upon him), I write this tale in a sincere attempt to inform the reader_should there be a reader_of the true history of my creation, if it is Allah's will that I finish before the end-times sun undoes the magic that made me or bakes my limbs into useless branches…"
This may be the last story ever written. I write it to God, who would leave me alone on this Earth where all the nations have worn down to plains. The minerals that compose me come from the beginning of the world, shaped by wind and time. But the spirit that inhabits this clay form is human, shaped by other humans. I've waited the lifetimes of races to be discovered by some visitor or some god, and perhaps my hope will yet be borne out in the short time I have left. But, if the end-times sun undoes the magic that made me or bakes my limbs into useless branches, you should know that it is the same kilny sun whose light I count on to envitrify my words into the soft clay before the salt-laden tides of the last sea smother them out.
The story begins in Jewish Harlem, before the southern blacks replaced the Jews, before the Hispanic migrants replaced the blacks, before the Arab refugees replaced the migrants, and before the Israilis replaced them…
* * *
The Gilgamesh Golem
by Nahtan McKnight
Paul's mother was displeased in the extreme when she found out that her money was coming from boxing. She had stopped taking the blood money, as she called it, when word got around the neighborhood that Paul "The Maul" Stein had ended a fight by clocking one of the Italian boys and blinding him in one eye. Consequently, Paul and his fiancée had a modest savings.
They had planned to get married in grand fashion, possibly even in their own semi-luxurious apartment whose neo-Egyptian façade was shaded during the hottest part of the afternoon by the shadow of the new Empire State building, where Holly worked as an assistant executive secretary. It was the nature of their respective professions that they spent most of the day apart. Their only contact was at dinnertime, after Holly had spent a long day in the office without a break and Paul was readying himself for the evening's fight. Sometimes, the famished couple would go back to Harlem where Yiddish and Italian and Irish voices filled the air with the restless spirits of the old countries, voices that complimented Mother Stein's cooking like the spices of the east. Holly would impress them with anecdotes of rich foreigners who always seemed to make extraordinary demands of the secretaries or, on lucky days, to bestow upon them ludicrously large tips in exchange for everyday kindness.
It was on one such occasion that Paul first heard the name Israel ben Muhammad. Holly normally paid scant attention to changes of leadership in the company, but the buy-out by an Arabian oil baron precipitated an especially large shake-up among the employees. The stars portend opportunity, Mrs. Stein had told her son knowingly. Indeed, Holly ended up filling her own supervisor's newly vacant position as lead executive secretary, handling the appointment books of ben Muhammad himself. Paul learned of her new boss’s real estate aspirations on the same day that the change in management for the East Central apartment buildings took effect. Notices were first posted to inform the residents on that very day. They were on all the walls and in all the mailboxes. They were given by hand to every occupant, sometimes more than once. The postings shrouded the fine sheeny wallpaper with a quiltwork of mottled parchment. In order to keep the "criminal element" at bayâ€"some anti-Arab graffitoism had taken place in the otherwise immaculate children's daytime care facilityâ€"all residents were asked to carry punch cards. In addition, for reasons that were poorly explained, rent would be upped for certain occupants. Paul and Holly would have to pay more than triple the normal due.
The old landlord's chair and desk were replaced with a velveteen paisley dos-ŕ-dos, and a new door had been erected, making an office of the adjoining suite. Paul defiantly pounded on the door, though he knew he wasn't even supposed to be in this office-cum-foyer. Hey Mac, that area is off limits now, one of the janitors had explained to Paul, whose punch card was already scuffed and bent from being tried in all the newly locked doors that metamorphosed the building into the impregnable Egyptian tomb its lotus trumeaux had always bragged it was. The janitor had diffused Paul's evident rage when he punched his own card, as payback he said, for the five bucks he'd won off last week's fight. I wouldn't mind if you gave that new landlord a good right hook anyways, Slugger. But here he was, pounding on the door instead of the landlord.
A scratchy electric voice, like those at the larger boxing arenas warned that unappointmented queries may result in fees or even termination of the lease, and Paul argued with it momentarily about the appropriateness of his visit until he slipped the note under the door. The rent envelope came on the 28th of every month, and this one had contained instructions on how to contact the landlord for a lease review. Why the lease needed reviewing was second among Paul's concerns, which were dominated by the improbable restrictions on his options for an appointment: Anytime after 4pm on a business day before this month's rent is due.
"Mr. ben Muhammad will see you now," said the speaker.
The suite was air-conditionedâ€"a luxury even for such a fine apartment building. The secretary directed Paul around the corner to the landlord's relaxation chamber. The conversation did not go well. Paul spoke, facing away from the landlord, who lounged in a freestanding washbasin, smoking from a long meerschaum pipe whose smoke did a better job keeping away the flies than the peacock plume he switched them with. Ben Muhammad sat quietly until Paul had exhausted his lexis in a jeremiad plea that touched on the wedding, elderly parents, and the potential for injuries in his line of work.
"Please return to the foyer while I consider your case, Mr. Stein," said ben Muhammad.
Paul did as he was asked to, but he found himself scratching the extravagant gold leafwork from one of the dos-ŕ-dos's arms. The repetitive motion calmed him.
"You will be billed for defacing the furniture," the secretary's voice itched over the loudspeaker. "This fiancée you mentioned; she lives with you here, does she? In that case, we will have to relocate one of you to the nearest vacant apartment until after the wedding. You will, of course continue to pay the increased rates. If you are unwilling to comply with the rules of this building, you are encouraged move into any of the other East Central apartment buildings, some of which retain independent management. That will be all, Mr. Stein."
"Excuse me?"
"One moment Mr. Stein…Mr. ben Mohammad says that he will be claiming your fiancée as well."
"Just what...?"
"Mr. Stein," it was ben Muhammad's voice this time. "Because of the problems you've caused here today, your tenancy has been terminated. The lease will be transferred to the name of Miss Landis. She will stay here with me, where you may trust that she will be in good hands."
"Just who in hell do you think you are?"
"Sir, please try to understand. She is mine. Since before you were born, I've dwelt on that face. I realize you love her, but I loved her first. You see, when my father brought me to New York as a boy, the beauty of American women astounded me. But there was one in particular. Her name was Honey. The wife of Milt Landis, her face caused my heart to weep. It was the memory of that face which I followed back to your country. Now, I've seen that face again, and it is Holly, the daughter of Milt and Honey Landis. She will be my bride. Please leave the premises now. Do not attempt to reenter your apartment."
"That will be all Mr. Stein," concluded the secretary.
On the way out, Paul regretted not provoking the guards who stood by to see that he boarded the elevator to the lobby. As he stepped out the front door, a voice sounded from above.
"Hey, you're the sparrer. Pauler the Mauler, right?" An overalled man squatted on the top rung of a ladder, holding a pile of gold foil in one hand, and a jar of glue with a paintbrush jutting from it in the other. He spoke with a British accent. "Do you live here?"
"Not anymore."
"That’s too bad. I suppose you don't like the management? Well, a lot of folks round here feel that way. I can't say as I share the opinion, though. If it weren't for Mr. Mohammed, I wouldn't have a job. My family and me flew all the way from Norwich and Mr. ben Muhammad paid for the Zeppelin tickets. He says he's going to make these apartments into Utopia. I feel like I'm working for the pharaoh himself."
Paul threw his body against the ladder and lifted the little man by his collar. Several onlookers fled, but one of themâ€"the janitor from upstairsâ€"swung a fist at the air.
Paul bloodied the artist's nose and lips, dropped him and boxed his ears; he would have killed the man if he hadn't seen the Tommie-gun-wielding guards appear. As he left the chaotic scene, he looked over his shoulder and the janitor shouted out. "Way to go slugger," he said, only to be beaten and dragged off by a gang of security guards.
Another guard hollered, "Cut him off, he's heading across the street."
Paul and Holly were supposed to meet at the foot of the Empire State Building, but there was little chance ben Muhammad would allow that to happen, so instead Paul hopped a jittery trolley into Jewish Harlem. Ghetto faces lined with cracks stared at Paul, like ancient pottery sitting alongside a museum reproduction designed to imitate the beauty of newness. Mrs. Stein's tenement was infested with age, from the ladies with pepper pot figures to the tall-hatted Hassidic men who discussed philosophy over chess. Even the Irish boys who played stickball out front seemed oddly wise for their age. Paul had grown up here, but he felt he had pampered away his street wisdom. He no longer belonged.
"What should I do, ma?"
"Stay here with me. Holly will know where to find you."
It took Paul a few days to realize that his mother was wrong. He had taken out his anger in the boxing ring. He told his mother of the Micks and Negroes he had beaten, no doubt winning his fans more than a few dollars. He didn't mention the Jewish boxer that would never again be able to bite into a fresh apple with his own teeth because of Paul's callused fists. One night, Paul went back to the apartment building dressed in his late father's ragged work clothes. Paul and Holly's apartment was on the seventh floor, and he could barely make out shapes moving in the golden light. He stared for nearly half an hour before he saw Holly poke her head out the window. He shouted up to her, but she didn't seem to hear.
"Paul the Maul! You don't look so good, slugger."
The janitor had a huge can of garbage that he dragged towards the alley. He said that ben Muhammad had allowed him to keep his job after he had promised not to talk to a single person while on duty. In the quiet of the alley, they talked about Holly's coming and going and the increase in modern conveniences, and the accompanying increase of security at the building. The whole place was air conditioned now, and the elevators were automated, but many of the tenants had been evicted to make room for newcomers who could afford the forbidding rent. Paul told the janitor that he was afraid ben Muhammad was holding his fiancée against her will.
"There's a fellow might be able to help you,” said the janitor. “He's a rabbi."
Paul's mother was shocked. "Rabbi Samson's only a rabbi in title. The man is a lush. Don't you go near him." It turned out that Samson was a lascivious whoremonger who was rumored to masturbate at the talkie theaters. "Uncut Samson," they called him. He was, however, also a renowned mystic and that's what made up Paul's mind. Nobody doubted the Rabbi's powers.
After a particularly bloody match, Paul delivered himself to a doorway lit by a gas torch that stood below street level only two blocks from his mother's apartment building. The door had a bronze plate inscribed with Hebrew letters. With the streaked green corrosion and Paul's limited knowledge of Yiddish, he could only tell that it said something like "All Are Welcome."
Samson was a fat and greasy slob whose once-exquisite accommodations had been used beyond their capability, and now exuded a pungent fetor that seemed to waft out of the holes in the carpeting. The Rabbi glanced at Paul senior's clothing and said, "You can't afford my prices." Paul told him that there was plenty of money in the ring for anyone tough enough to claim it. Samson laughed at the implied threat, but waved him inside anyway.
"I know of Israel ben Muhammad. He's obsessed with himself, like most of the world's better men. Your fiancée would be well off to stay with him rather than a low-born boxer from the ghetto." Samson left him alone long enough to reconsider his decision, but before Paul's mind could make sense of these awful circumstances, the Rabbi emerged from behind a curtain-wall. "It is done. The girl will be yours. Now give me whatever money you have and go away."
Paul didn't know what to expect, if anything, but he couldn't stand to waste time in actionless wondering, so he walked as fast as he could to the apartment building whose neo-Egyptian façade dripped silver rain like mercury in the bright moonlight. Holly was there, waiting in the alley. She was silent. Paul tried to talk to her, but she seemed not to know him. She didn't respond at all unless she was asked a direct question or given a command.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"What's happened to you?"
"I don't know."
He told Holly she would have to come with him, but she followed at a snail's pace, and when he carried her, he wasn't able to move much faster.
The walk back to Harlem ended as the sun was rising over Mrs. Stein's apartment. Though he collapsed with exhaustion in his mother's spare bedroom, his mind was restless with angry confusion. Holly lay open-eyed next to him, and when Paul finally gave up the fight to keep his eyes closed, she accompanied him arm-in-arm through the foggy morning street.
The Rabbi's door appeared to be stout but it only took one solid blow to unhinge it completely, allowing a cold draft to douse candles and to bear scrolls off tables. Uncut Samson was taken by surprise, nude, piggish, and shaking, when Paul grabbed him by the arm, sinking strong fingers into the flab. A sucker punch to the face was stopped when Paul felt a paralyzing blow to his own spine.
"Stay out of this. I'm going to kill him for ruining my bride," said ben Muhammad in a fearsome voice.
Paul turned on ben Muhammad and they began a dirty wrestling match. However, their battle was not yet to be. The fleshy slap of each strike quieted to nothing while the apartment filled with thick incense smoke until both men collapsed in a desperate embrace. They awoke lashed together and suspended over a smokeless fire and immediately resumed the struggle against each other, and now against the ropes, and against the flame.
"I will pay you," ben Muhammad yelled in between curses, "Holly, go get the money in my safe." Paul stopped slamming his skull against the other man's in time to see her run out the open door. Holly’s departure left both men relieved enough to stop struggling. “If you think I want Miss Landis’s body, you’re mistaken. Soon, I’ll have the body to take the women I wasn’t strong enough to take in this body. I’m glad you both showed up here, but it’s a pity that a golem fit for a wizard has to be wasted.” He swung a lumpy arm towards an unrealistically muscular clay sculpture of ben Muhammad. “It took a long time to find a body sturdy enough to suit my tastes.” He stroked the arm of the sculpture, and snickered. “You should be thankful. This magnificent creature is beyond value. It was fashioned in 1654 by Dutch Jews, fleeing the Portuguese in South America. They offered it to the Governor of New Amsterdam to protect the city from the Swedes, but instead he arrested the Jews and put the golem up for auction. It sat in a Brooklyn root cellar for nearly three hundred years until I found it. Soon, the two of you will fulfill the purpose of watching over this cityâ€"my cityâ€"at my bidding. You will inhabit a body with quite a pedigree, I’d say. Personally, I would rather have the real thing.” Samson’s cheeks reddened and he approached the men, gazing away from their eyes. “When I have your body Mr. Stein, I’ll be as strong as my golem, but still human enough to enjoy it. And when I have your face, Mr. ben Muhammad, I will control your wealth. How much are you worth? Millions? Billions? As I said, it is a lucky coincidence for me that you have both decided to show up just as I’m begining my ritual.” Samson began chanting in a tongue neither of the men would have recognized by name. He bent himself and fanned the flames with his hands as he alternated between prayer and silence in cyclic rhythms. On one cycle, he looked up and addressed the two men. "Have you ever heard the tale of Gilgamesh, who would split a baby in half so that two fighting women could share motherhood?”
“Isn’t that the story of Solomon?” Said ben Muhammad “Shut up,” The corners of Samson’s mouth turned slightly downward and his eyes widened. “I told you each that you would have sole power over this woman, and I never rescind a promise." "Don't kill her, please," said Paul
Samson waited for the end of the chant to reply. "Idiots, you think I would kill your girl? You two can continue your fight over her as long as you like, for all it matters to me. Killing is a sin."
The rising flames drew Paul's eyes. He could see now that they were hanging above a burning bush. "Lord God," he screamed, "please help me!" Rabbi Samson laughed. "Yahweh," he addressed the bush by God's ancient name.
"What do you require of me, great Samson?"
"Give me the wealth of the oil baron and the strength of the boxer."
"Shall I cast their souls into hell?"
"No," he said even as his body was being reshaped, "I would like you to ensoul the golem doubly."
As he spoke, the fat seemed to melt from Rabbi Samson's body, and his skin seemed to darken, become more youthful. Paul had trouble focusing on the Rabbi. The scene became a jumble of images and he could see his own body from the outside, writhing in exact complement to ben Muhammad's. He could see both of their bodies starting to dissolve into a wisp of smoke over the burning bush. Soon, the Rabbi's body stopped its distortion and solidified into a chimera of the two vanished captives. Paul could tell he was still in the room, though he had watched his own body fade out of existence along with ben Muhammad’s. He tried to move stiff limbs, but they felt clunky and he seemed unable to decide which way to move. His emotions too were a jumble. They were still filled with hate for Samson and love for Holly, and hate for ben Muhammad. But there was self-loathing now as well. Ben Muhammad was present inside him.
"Yahweh, partition the golem." With the Rabbi's words, the chaotic admixture of souls ended in pain. A line burned down the center of the clay form, singeing both souls and demarking a boundary that kept ben Muhammad in the left and Paul in the right.
"Enjoy your prison, children. I'm off to dabble in real estate." The Rabbi tore down the curtains and cloaked his new body with them, leaving the apartment through the still-open doorway.
Paul tried to stand, but he only had control over hisâ€"the golem'sâ€"right leg. The left was still. "Damn it," he said out of the right side of his mouth. "You damned idiot. If it wasn’t for your greed, I'd have my wife and you'd have your riches." He began punching the left side of his face, chipping greenware knuckles and cheek. The left arm tried to do the same to the right side, and the golem struggled with itself until both eyes wept in tearless despair.
Eventually, the left side of the golem’s mouth said, “Stop it! Stop it, Mr. Stein.”
The left arm flung itself limply to the side while the right continued to work at destroying them both, pounding deep cracks in the hand and wrist, neck and face.
“I really do love her.”
“You don’t know what love is,” said Paul bitterly. He took a breath and put the hand to his forehead, feeling dust and bits of clay slough off underneath his fingers.
The golem sat solemnly in front of the smokeless fire.
“Help me. All I want is to hold my Holly again, even under these circumstances,” said the right side of the Golem.
“What can I do? Robbed of my body and rendered in clay, what good can I be?” asked the left.
“I don’t know. I can’t think. I can’t do anythingâ€"I can’t even cry,” said the right.
“Can this god of yours help?” asked the left.
Paul considered this for a moment. God wasn’t supposed to be part of his vocabulary. He was a man of the flesh; a man of the fist.
"Of course!" Paul started to lean forward with the right side of the golem's body, and ben Muhammad followed his lead with the left. The fire rose at the movement. "Yahweh, help us. Give Holly her free will back."
"I have made a covenant to give each of you command over the girl's will. I cannot breach that covenant." "Then, please give us back our bodies."
"As I said, I cannot contravene a covenant once made. Only Rabbi Samson can give you back your bodies. Perhaps I can help you in some other way."
"If you can't restore our souls, what can you do for us?" Asked Paul.
"I must do whatever you command that is within my power."
"Then give this body the strength to overcome Rabbi Samson, Yahweh," said ben Muhammad.
The flames grew, and with them the golem’s body. Over the fire, the golem took on a vitreous sheen. The surface became covered with glass scales and the bulk continued to expand. Soon, the ceiling bowed against the golem’s shoulders. Then it broke and debris fell from the upper levels of the old building into the basement. The fire consumed it all, and the golem had to step away to keep from hardening into bisque. As the golem grew greater and greater, the partition grew thinner and thinner, stretching imperceptibly thin between the two souls.
* * *
It was in that fire that my story begins. Though the Rabbi had divided me in two, I had to work as one being. Oftentimes, I wish I had continued to grow and grow until my body formed a world unto itself. Alas, that was not to be. I was compelled towards the glass and steel pinnacle where my lover would be opening a money-clotted safe on an upper floor. I stumbled and fell along the way, rending ironwork and bits of pavement under my weight. By this time, my feet were the size of trolley cars, my stride the length of a city block. I walked to where the shadow of the Empire State Building pierced the daylight on the street. People fled in terror before me, but by then I didn’t care. My cares were torn between love and hate briefly, when I saw the tiny Rabbi scurry for cover into one of the East Central apartment buildings. I ignored him and grasped at the Empire State Building with an enormous hand, breaking windows and bending steel. I climbed until I could look with my left eye into the office where Holly carefully removed money from the safe without emotion or haste.
"Holly," my voice was hoarse and inhuman, large as a nation, but she responded anyway. "Come here," I said.
I wrapped one arm around the side of the building so that I could lift the other and give Holly somewhere to stand. She obeyed my every word, climbing out the window into my giant clay hand. As she did so, the building started tipping and screeching. I stepped down in time to back away and watch it fall like a tree, tiny people diving hopelessly from the windows. The collapse obliterated all of the East Central apartment buildings in one long, billowing crunch. The city was alive with sirens going every which way, and maybe no one noticed when I took a deep breath and did a backstroke into the cold Atlantic with Hollyâ€"or the mindless body that bore that nameâ€"sitting comfortably on my chest.
* * *
As I write this, the waves of the Atlantic are still crashing on gently sloping shores, though the shoreline has receded and the ocean has been split into two strings of slushy salt puddles running along either side of a vast mountain range. New York city is now long gone, as are the ever changing peoples of that ghetto called Harlem. When the sun has expanded and scorched me to a frozen statue, you may find my body on the peak of a mountain that was once an island. There, I will be lying alongside a pile of ashes that were once the bones of my dear Holly. But before I retreat into my private eternity, I must complete my tale…
The golem switched hands with the petrified mangrove tree he'd been using as a writing utensil, and then started a new column of inscription. "In glory to the Prophet (blessings be upon him), I write this tale in a sincere attempt to inform the readerâ€"should there be a readerâ€"of the true history of my creation, if it is Allah's will that I finish before the end-times sun undoes the magic that made me or bakes my limbs into useless branches…"
"Donny, you're not a ninja, and there are no pirates in Malaysia." I turned out to be wrong on both counts. Just 'cause I suggested rock climbing with flesh hooks doesn't mean it was a good idea. Not really.
But tell that to Donny. He booked tickets without even asking if I was free. Not that I'd turn down a trip to Malaysia. Hell, I didn't even have time to pick up a Malay phrasebook. But here's him, handing me the ticketses and tellin me to get my climbing gear.
"No, no, nah... I been reading this Hatsumi guy, and..." Donny went on, but who gives a fuck, he's fulla shit. Don't get me wrong; he could kick my ass. But he's way too blunt for ninjadom. IMHO. "I swear to you, my friend. If we get wind of any pirates I will personally rip their fucking heads off with my bare hands!"
Now, that I believe.
Okay, let me tell you a little about Donny. He's a nice guy, he really is. Just a little ultra-violent, you know? But otherwise fine to be around. Let me illustrate.
He lives in a real nice neighborhood... and by 'nice' I mean next door to a crack dealer. And by 'neighborhood' I mean trailer park. The crack dealer next door--a skinny, bucktoothed motherfucker... let's call him Neville. Goodaname's any. So, Neville the crack dealer uses the courtyard in the trailer park for target practice, and it gets on Donny's nerves. Who can blame him? And one day, Donny politely suggests that Neville cease the gunfire or he'd.... I'll just quote here: "I'll knock your fuckin crack-dealin teeth in." That's what Donny said. Who can blame him? Donny's nothin if not a man of his word.
Well, sure 'nough next night Neville's serenading the neighbors with his nine. Donny comes out of his trailer and Neville (wisely) goes back into his own trailer. Who can blame him? Well, Donny is, as I said, a man of his word. He proceeds to kick in the door on the crack trailer and beat the living shite out of Neville. Neville's not in good shape when Donny walks out the door.
But that ain't the end of the story. This is how I remember it... Donny stands in the courtyard, huffing from the beating he just delivered and says to me "I told Neville I was gonna knock his teeth out, didn't I?" (only Neville's not his name...anyway, whatever) Donny turns around, heads back into the trailer and I follow out of sheer morbid curiosity and I see THE most disturbing things I've ever seen. Well, I've seen some pretty fucked up shit, so maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. Anyshit, you be the judge...
Donny's got his hands around Neville's neck and he puts his thumbs on the dealer's buck teeth. Nev's about out, so maybe he's not exactly aware of what's happening to him. I would take some comfort in that if I were you. Anyway, Donny's pushing so hard his thumbs are turning white and CRACK. The crack dealer's teeth crack back into his mouth and there's blood everyfuckingwhere. Who can blame...aw, nevermind. I've seen some pretty fucked up shit, but shit man, that was some pretty fucked up shit. I left and Donny left, bloody, and I didn't sleep for a coupla nights after that.
I'm not gonna say it hurt Donny more than it hurt Neville, but when you go and pull shit like that, it's gotta touch you somewhere. I didn't see Donny again for a little while. Who can blame me? But when I finally did get together with him, I think he'd chilled out a little. He got into body mod and suspension. Therapy for some, I guess. He got a good job and a tattoo of teeth on his shoulder to--and I quote--"Remind me never to pull any shit like that again."
Now, I mentioned suspension. Donny and I had done some climbing before and when I hooked up with him at the body mod convention (Hell City rocks, yo) he was part of a suspension display. If you don't know what that is, look it up. Longstoryshort, basically, you take these hooks and you push them through a pinch of skin in your back and then you hook yourself up to a rig that lifts you off the ground by nothing but the bleeding flesh of your back. Or front. Or knees I hear, but I've only seen pictures of that shit. I have a pretty high threshold, but that's not my bag.
I mentioned rock climbing... so I jokingly suggested--jokingly, mind you--that we should try climbing sometime, only instead of using a rope tied to a harness for protection, as is usually the case, we should use flesh hooks instead. It was a joke. Really, it was.
Now, here I am and Donny's got tickets to Malaysia and a bag fulla suspension apparatus and he's telling me to get my climbing gear and we're gonna go climbing on the coastal cliffs of the far east. Donny's a little worried... not because he's going to be hanging from a cliff with nothing but flesh hooks in his back. No, he's worried cause he heard there were pirates in Malaysia. Uh-huh.
Aw, fuck. What was I to do?
"Hell yeah," I said, "We're goin to Malaysia!" Who can blame me?
Now, I hate to cut it off just here. But I gotsta get some sleeps. So, Imma go bed, but you stay tuned. This story's called Pirates vs. Ninjas, and I'll have part 2 for you soon enough.
Nighters,
Nathan
But tell that to Donny. He booked tickets without even asking if I was free. Not that I'd turn down a trip to Malaysia. Hell, I didn't even have time to pick up a Malay phrasebook. But here's him, handing me the ticketses and tellin me to get my climbing gear.
"No, no, nah... I been reading this Hatsumi guy, and..." Donny went on, but who gives a fuck, he's fulla shit. Don't get me wrong; he could kick my ass. But he's way too blunt for ninjadom. IMHO. "I swear to you, my friend. If we get wind of any pirates I will personally rip their fucking heads off with my bare hands!"
Now, that I believe.
Okay, let me tell you a little about Donny. He's a nice guy, he really is. Just a little ultra-violent, you know? But otherwise fine to be around. Let me illustrate.
He lives in a real nice neighborhood... and by 'nice' I mean next door to a crack dealer. And by 'neighborhood' I mean trailer park. The crack dealer next door--a skinny, bucktoothed motherfucker... let's call him Neville. Goodaname's any. So, Neville the crack dealer uses the courtyard in the trailer park for target practice, and it gets on Donny's nerves. Who can blame him? And one day, Donny politely suggests that Neville cease the gunfire or he'd.... I'll just quote here: "I'll knock your fuckin crack-dealin teeth in." That's what Donny said. Who can blame him? Donny's nothin if not a man of his word.
Well, sure 'nough next night Neville's serenading the neighbors with his nine. Donny comes out of his trailer and Neville (wisely) goes back into his own trailer. Who can blame him? Well, Donny is, as I said, a man of his word. He proceeds to kick in the door on the crack trailer and beat the living shite out of Neville. Neville's not in good shape when Donny walks out the door.
But that ain't the end of the story. This is how I remember it... Donny stands in the courtyard, huffing from the beating he just delivered and says to me "I told Neville I was gonna knock his teeth out, didn't I?" (only Neville's not his name...anyway, whatever) Donny turns around, heads back into the trailer and I follow out of sheer morbid curiosity and I see THE most disturbing things I've ever seen. Well, I've seen some pretty fucked up shit, so maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. Anyshit, you be the judge...
Donny's got his hands around Neville's neck and he puts his thumbs on the dealer's buck teeth. Nev's about out, so maybe he's not exactly aware of what's happening to him. I would take some comfort in that if I were you. Anyway, Donny's pushing so hard his thumbs are turning white and CRACK. The crack dealer's teeth crack back into his mouth and there's blood everyfuckingwhere. Who can blame...aw, nevermind. I've seen some pretty fucked up shit, but shit man, that was some pretty fucked up shit. I left and Donny left, bloody, and I didn't sleep for a coupla nights after that.
I'm not gonna say it hurt Donny more than it hurt Neville, but when you go and pull shit like that, it's gotta touch you somewhere. I didn't see Donny again for a little while. Who can blame me? But when I finally did get together with him, I think he'd chilled out a little. He got into body mod and suspension. Therapy for some, I guess. He got a good job and a tattoo of teeth on his shoulder to--and I quote--"Remind me never to pull any shit like that again."
Now, I mentioned suspension. Donny and I had done some climbing before and when I hooked up with him at the body mod convention (Hell City rocks, yo) he was part of a suspension display. If you don't know what that is, look it up. Longstoryshort, basically, you take these hooks and you push them through a pinch of skin in your back and then you hook yourself up to a rig that lifts you off the ground by nothing but the bleeding flesh of your back. Or front. Or knees I hear, but I've only seen pictures of that shit. I have a pretty high threshold, but that's not my bag.
I mentioned rock climbing... so I jokingly suggested--jokingly, mind you--that we should try climbing sometime, only instead of using a rope tied to a harness for protection, as is usually the case, we should use flesh hooks instead. It was a joke. Really, it was.
Now, here I am and Donny's got tickets to Malaysia and a bag fulla suspension apparatus and he's telling me to get my climbing gear and we're gonna go climbing on the coastal cliffs of the far east. Donny's a little worried... not because he's going to be hanging from a cliff with nothing but flesh hooks in his back. No, he's worried cause he heard there were pirates in Malaysia. Uh-huh.
Aw, fuck. What was I to do?
"Hell yeah," I said, "We're goin to Malaysia!" Who can blame me?
Now, I hate to cut it off just here. But I gotsta get some sleeps. So, Imma go bed, but you stay tuned. This story's called Pirates vs. Ninjas, and I'll have part 2 for you soon enough.
Nighters,
Nathan
Later this week: MACHINE GUN PIRATES vs. TATTOO NINJAS, stay tuned.....but read my last blog in the meantime. And to all who have commented or messaged me, I promise I'll reply in the next few days. It's been another hectic week!
-Nathan
-Nathan
He had metal chunks in his eyes, studded like WWII sea-mines! Matched his belt. Peepers--the girl with anime eyes--drug me over here, pinkies linked after we'd finished making out and washing the blood off.
This story's'bout't take a turn for the worse. Seriously. But let's just start with the better why don't we? Oh, and by the way, if you haven't read my blog from December 4th, you may want to go back and do that. Ain't strictly necessary, but you can learn why she's called Peepers, and you can learn about finding love in a bloody nose, and you can see a purdy picture.
You should do that. Or not. See if I care, honkey.
Now, Peepers had it in for me from the start. Maybe I'm wrong, but frankilly I don't care. She was somthing painful, something startling. But she wanted something painfully plain.
I started wondering when she brought me here, to see her landlord, the guy with the sea-mine eyes, the guy who surgically inserted hearts in Peepers' peepers. She told him she was outta here next week. She was moving to Florida with her parents.
And that's what we did. Yep, I said *we*. Don't ask me...I was more surprised than you. Crazy shit, that. But we're still on the good part, so let's start from there.
Her apartment was above the bar, and peeling in the painty parts, but sparkly with dusty dishes and beer bottles. She shoved me onto a futon mattress on the floor and we wrangled sweaty. Her legs were dotted with heart shaped bubble tats, loose beige paint chips, and goose bumps. I put an arm under her, raising her hips, and I unbuttoned her shirt one-handedly, then pulled the drawstring on her pajamalike pants. The pink futon made her powder white skin look all the more pale, and my hands on her body seemed downright tropical. It's rare I notice my Mediteranity, but it was there then. Maybe heading south wasn't such a bad idea. <<<<I'm calling attention to this particular pun, because it was truly accidental. Freudian, even?
I never know what to say about love really. But then the this wasn't the that. Not in this case. Not then, not there. It was just lovely lust, long delayed. I hate to skip this part, really, I reallyreally do. But then there's always time for lust.
And another thing...just cause it ain't love don't mean it cain't be mistaked for love. That shit happens you know. Ask anyone. Crazy crazy shit makes you do crazy crazy shit.
I was looking for a job at the time and she was looking to get out of a job she just started. I never asked why. One day I will. Truly, I won't. Anyway, me and my job-hunt had gone nadawhere, but as it turned out, deep in the panhandle of Florida, her dad had a farm and her mom had a store.
What's the store called?
Wait for it...wait for it...
It's called Bent 'N' Dent.
I liquidated damn near everything in the week leading up to the move. I kept my car, a '78 Corolla wagon. Sky blue, with wood paneling. Fuckie yeahp. Kept it because that's what we were gonna take to F-to-the-L-to-the-O-to-the-double-R-orida. Florrorida. Rhymes with horrorida. Horror-ful, horrid, and florid all at once. How odd.
See, she proposed to me and I said yes. Well, actually I said "Uh...alright, cool." I don't know why.
But I did feel like we knew each other a long time. We *had* known each other a week, after all. And I *did* know her pretty freakin well. For example, I knew she had shiny-ass eyes and I knew her futon was a comfy-ass place to screw and I knew her name was Peepers (only that's not true since I just made up that name for the sake of the story...but I digress). I guess I'm a hopeless romantic. Crazy shit, that.
Filled the Corolla with Peepers' belongings and nothing of mine. Nothin but me clothes and me kitty (I call her Rocket, but I don't know what she calls herself). So we left at four on a Sunday morning. I was rocketing as fast as that old beauty could rocket, and Rocket was purrrrrinating in Peepers lap.
On the way, she filled me in on her parents. I got the whole story: Fran was her mom, she told me, and Frank was her dad.
The End.
…of her whole story. Not of mine.
So anyway, hell hath NOT the fury of a redneck with a castrating device--she didn't tell me that, I just thought I'd throw that in as a little retrospective foreshadowing. Is that a contradiction? I didn't know, but now I know hell would not even know where to buy that sort of deep south fury. Maybe at Bent 'N' Dent.
Oh, hey by the way...yes, the rumors are true; my next story's got pirates with machine guns. I swear on Jello the Pig's grave. You'll see what I mean by that soon enough.
My beautiul car shuddered and clanked and made it most of the way through Tennessee. The Corolla finally threw in the towel about fifty miles west of Chattanooga. The tri-state area, according to the radio. For those of you who ain't up to snuff on your geographatitty, that's way far away from Florida. According to my map, the distance was only about two thumb-widths, but it looks MUCH bigger in person. My Rocket was still purring at least.
SHIT! SHIT. DAMN DAMN DAMN. SHIT!
Fuck.
I was standing on the side of Interstate 24, swearing and I said to myself, "Self, get it together." And I did. Okay, well that's not so true actually. Peepers had to calm me down. She did so by jumping on my back, nibbling my ear and, well, clasping her hands over my mouth.
"It's cool," she said, "daddy's got a Bronco."
Oh, well daddy's got a Bronco. That makes everything better. <<<<taste the sarcasm. Taste it.
"He can tow us home," she said.
So, on the last juice of my cellphone, she called daddy...I wouldn't call him that myself, but maybe I'll call him dad whenif we did do the marrying thingy. But I was having my doubts. Maybe it was just the stress. Or was it maybe...say...the downright stupidity of the whole fucking situation? Nah, couldn't be that. Anyway, it turned out Frank wasn't going to get here until late evening. So, we'll fast forward though the waiting part. If you watched the fast forward, this is what you'd see…
2x: We fight, we fuck, we fightfightfightfuckfight, we fuckfightfuckfuck. The cat purrs.
4x: fffighfuckfighttfffuckffffighttt. Purrrrrrrrr.
8x: ffftttffprrrrrr.
See, if you watch it go by fast enough, it's all purring.
Fffprrr, Frank arrives. Luckily, we're fighting when the Bronco pulls up.
I help Frank hitch the Corolla to the Bronco with several wraps of a long extension cord...was this the only thing he could come up with? Was he ropeless? Whatever. The problem here was compounded by the fact that Frank had brought Fran and brother Bo with him as well. So, with dad and mom and Peepers in the front and me and Bo in the back, we headed down to the Florida. Rocket the cat got to ride with us in the back, too. It was a wee bittle breezy, since the Bronco's cab had been removed...apparently, with a hacksaw. Me and Bo bore the dusty wind like men, but Rocket bore it like a cat. Which is to say, clawing into my chest for dearest life. The cat does not, at this point, purr.
Several hours later, the Corolla-towing Bonco pulls into the gravel lot at the farm on Captain Fritz Road in Ebro, in the crotchpit of the panhandle. I could almost smell Louisiana from there. Oh, haha...I call some of my online friends my "e-bros". <<<<That's irrelevant to the story, I just happened to notice.
As soon as we get out the truck, Rocket tears off into the night. My flesh was still wet on her claws, no doubt.
Damn, I'm thinking maybe I should turn the rest of this story into Bent 'N' Dent part three. It's late and I have to work at six. But you wouldn't like that, would you? No, I'll finish the story. I'll have to make myself a Red Bull Mimosa to get through the workday, and hope my date cancels again tomorrow night so I can sleep, but I'll finish the story anyway. One thing though: I hope you'll make it worth my while. The coffee and cigarettes are taking years off my life, no doubt. You readers are stealing my life, you realize this, don't you? Okay truth be told, I guess I'm giving it willingly. But tell me what you think of this story and I'll be encouraged to write another one in a week or two. And next time, there will be pirates! Pirates and rock climbing. Pirates and rock climbing and flesh hooks. Oh my, that sounds nice now doesn't it? <<<<taste the Minnesota accent. Taste it.
Yessssss. I can't wait. But first let's get this Bent 'N' Dent shite out the way. No more northron crap. We's in the deep south. Continuing...
Bent 'N' Dent, (the store not the story) was so called for a very good reason. It was a store that bought dented cans and crushed boxes from other stores, then re-sold them at lower prices. This is pure panhandle genius. Oh, the insight. Oh, the humanity.
The store was on the farm property, facing Captain Fritz Road, right in front of a soybean field with a muddy pond in its middle. I got a look at the store late that night because there was no other place for me and Peepers to do our thing in private. So we did our thing in the store. And we did our thing for the last time, it would turn out. Now, since this was to be the last time, let me describe it a bit. That wouldn't be too gratuitous, would it? I went down on her on the cool tile floor. The aisles were lined with cans, some with labels, some unlabelled. It's more surprising that way. I brushed my lips against her bellybutton peach fuzz and tasted her skin, mildly salty. Kissing down the valley of her hip, I teased with fingers and tongue. I'm rushing the story, but I wasn't rushing at the time. Now I was breathing warmly on her--well, how shall I put this? When I was in elementary school, we would have called it her 'butterfly'. I kissed her there. Gentle licks, slowly over a long time, building and receeding, and building again but stopping short of climax. Each time she thrust her hips upwards, and my jaw with them, out of the corner of my eye I caught glimpses of things. Lick, thrust. Ramen noodles. Lick, thrust. Spaghetti O's. Lick, thrust. Cajun boiled peanuts. Lick lick lick. Thrust...I slid my body up over her and slid myself into her. But I didn't move. Not yet. I just held her still to savor the fullness inside until she couldn't stand it any longer and she rolled over on top of me and rhythmically rode, raging and roaring to orgasm.
Gee, only one paragraph? I could have written more. But this isn't pornography, goddamnit. Sure, I thought it was pornography at the time, but I found out I was wrong. In fact, I found out graphically the next day at the cookout that this story was most definitely NOT a pornographic story.
It started by the pig patch (shut up, I'm cityfolk). I was observing the swine and brother Bo was manhandling them. Frank--dad, I guess--strode up alongside me, carrying a shotgun and some other big metal thingy. "Hmmm, what's Bo doing?" I asked, innocently.
Dad told me to watch and pay attention. He lifted the metal thing, which looked like a very very large pair of forceps or something of that sort. They had a rubber donut on their end, no bigger than my thumb with an opening the size of a dime. Brother Bo held a pig in a headlock and dad operated the forceps. They stretched the rubber donut out big enough to go all the way around the pig's scrotum. And pig balls are huge, let me tell you. They looked like elongated softballs, and before I could get a grasp on what was happening, dad released the forceps and the rubber donut snapped around the poor piggy's nuts and the pig went wee wee wee all the way home. Well, not home, more like in circles around the pig patch. I'm not sqeamish, but seeing any male, human or otherwise, having his scrotum pinched through an opening the size of a dime was enough to make me light-headed and heavy-stomached.
"They'll fall off in a week or two," said dad. Then he said, "I'll do that to you if you get on my bad side." Me: blink blink. Frank: "Time to get this cookout started." I stared at the forceps, or whatever they were. I was shaking. At least the swine abuse was over.
Dad pointed at the remaining three pigs. He told me Peepers had named them last time she was down this way. "That one's called Skinny, the one in the middle is Cosby, and that one there's Jello," he said. "Which one should we roast today?"
I didn't know if there was a right answer to this question, but I said, "Um...Jello I guess."
He told me to cover my ears, then put the shotgun barrel to the pig's head and BAM! Cosby and Skinny wasted no time in feasting on their fallen comrade's brains. Yes, I write fiction. No, I am not making this up. Sorry for the gore, but that's the way it happened.
"Pigs'll eat anything," said Bo, chuckling.
Thus, I decided then there that I had had enough of panhandle culture. When dinner came around, I ate Jello with the rest of the family--whom I affectionately know as Peepers' peeps. Um...and the extended family, aunts and uncles and cousins eating stale Peeps from Bent 'N' Dent. (Peepers' peeps' Peeps?) And...um, neighbors, members of the greater Ebro business council, golfing friends, shrimp gumbo, shrimp scampi, jumbo fried shrimp... Well damn, it was a regular wedding party.
Aw, shit. I was in deep, I thought.
So, after dinner, coffee, Busch Light, introductions I tried hard not to remember, dirty plump kids, et cetera, I found myself in the night with a girl I barely knew and a family that scared the shit out of me. I curled up with Peepers in bed and said, "I'm not so sure about this marriage thing." I could hear a cat yowling in the night.
"What?" She was hurt, and I could tell by the quiver in her voice that her heart was starting to develop tears. Well, the eye where she kept her heart, anyway. "I have to talk to daddy," she said. :-o
Ugh. "Well," I said, "I'm not sure, I'm just thinking out loud." Lying out loud, perhaps? I told her we'd talk about it in the morning and I lay there awake until daybreak, having no intentionnerz of talking about anything in the m'nmorning. I said to myself, "Self, this is too serious a moment for wordplay, damnit!" So, in the earliest dayzzle'light, without a hint of intentional mis-spelling, when the house was quiet except for a cat yowling in the morning sun, I slid out of Peeperses armses and dressed m'selfses and opened the screen door from the smoke-stained k'knitchen.
Rocket was there at the door, yowling in the morning sun, and she rubbed against my legs. I picked her up and carried her to State Route 79, sticking out my thumb. Kitty purred purringly. I looked over my shoulder, praying not to see a Bronco. It took an hour-ish, but finally I got picked up by a trucker truckin shelly concrete--Coquino!--from Panama Beach City to Louisville.
Three Hondas and a Buick later, I got back to Columbus comfortably, sleeping in the passenger seat of an '83 La Sabre, not dreaming of a damne thing, thank god. The last driver shook my shoulder as we entered the city, asking me where I wanted dropped off. I didn't have an apartment anymore, so I told him to take me to the piercing studio.
The guy behind the counter was the one with the sea-mine eyes and antennae and facial tats. I didn't know his name, but I did know the guy in front of the counter. It was daddy.
"I'll rip that stupid ring right out of your nose," he shouted.
"You know this guy?" asked sea-mine eyes.
I dropped the cat and said to daddy, calmly as I could, "Wait," then he popped me in the nose. Sea-mine chased daddy out with a baseball bat, then shouted in the back for somebody to get a towel.
"That was Peepers' dad," I said. Only I didn't call her Peepers...but you knew that.
An lavender-headed girl in pigtails came out and rushed a towel to my bloody nose, "Aww poor thing," she said, genuinely concerned. And genuinely adorable.
The guy with sea-mine eyes asked me, "Do you know the new girl?"
The End.
Survey Question: In the next story, should I have... More sex? Less sex? *Better* sex? Remember, I want you to actually FINISH the stories! Oh, and public comments are much better than private messages. Unless you have a REALLY personal message anyway.
Alrighty, love and lube boys and girls...til next time.
Ffffpprrrr,
-Nathan
This story's'bout't take a turn for the worse. Seriously. But let's just start with the better why don't we? Oh, and by the way, if you haven't read my blog from December 4th, you may want to go back and do that. Ain't strictly necessary, but you can learn why she's called Peepers, and you can learn about finding love in a bloody nose, and you can see a purdy picture.
You should do that. Or not. See if I care, honkey.
Now, Peepers had it in for me from the start. Maybe I'm wrong, but frankilly I don't care. She was somthing painful, something startling. But she wanted something painfully plain.
I started wondering when she brought me here, to see her landlord, the guy with the sea-mine eyes, the guy who surgically inserted hearts in Peepers' peepers. She told him she was outta here next week. She was moving to Florida with her parents.
And that's what we did. Yep, I said *we*. Don't ask me...I was more surprised than you. Crazy shit, that. But we're still on the good part, so let's start from there.
Her apartment was above the bar, and peeling in the painty parts, but sparkly with dusty dishes and beer bottles. She shoved me onto a futon mattress on the floor and we wrangled sweaty. Her legs were dotted with heart shaped bubble tats, loose beige paint chips, and goose bumps. I put an arm under her, raising her hips, and I unbuttoned her shirt one-handedly, then pulled the drawstring on her pajamalike pants. The pink futon made her powder white skin look all the more pale, and my hands on her body seemed downright tropical. It's rare I notice my Mediteranity, but it was there then. Maybe heading south wasn't such a bad idea. <<<<I'm calling attention to this particular pun, because it was truly accidental. Freudian, even?
I never know what to say about love really. But then the this wasn't the that. Not in this case. Not then, not there. It was just lovely lust, long delayed. I hate to skip this part, really, I reallyreally do. But then there's always time for lust.
And another thing...just cause it ain't love don't mean it cain't be mistaked for love. That shit happens you know. Ask anyone. Crazy crazy shit makes you do crazy crazy shit.
I was looking for a job at the time and she was looking to get out of a job she just started. I never asked why. One day I will. Truly, I won't. Anyway, me and my job-hunt had gone nadawhere, but as it turned out, deep in the panhandle of Florida, her dad had a farm and her mom had a store.
What's the store called?
Wait for it...wait for it...
It's called Bent 'N' Dent.
I liquidated damn near everything in the week leading up to the move. I kept my car, a '78 Corolla wagon. Sky blue, with wood paneling. Fuckie yeahp. Kept it because that's what we were gonna take to F-to-the-L-to-the-O-to-the-double-R-orida. Florrorida. Rhymes with horrorida. Horror-ful, horrid, and florid all at once. How odd.
See, she proposed to me and I said yes. Well, actually I said "Uh...alright, cool." I don't know why.
But I did feel like we knew each other a long time. We *had* known each other a week, after all. And I *did* know her pretty freakin well. For example, I knew she had shiny-ass eyes and I knew her futon was a comfy-ass place to screw and I knew her name was Peepers (only that's not true since I just made up that name for the sake of the story...but I digress). I guess I'm a hopeless romantic. Crazy shit, that.
Filled the Corolla with Peepers' belongings and nothing of mine. Nothin but me clothes and me kitty (I call her Rocket, but I don't know what she calls herself). So we left at four on a Sunday morning. I was rocketing as fast as that old beauty could rocket, and Rocket was purrrrrinating in Peepers lap.
On the way, she filled me in on her parents. I got the whole story: Fran was her mom, she told me, and Frank was her dad.
The End.
…of her whole story. Not of mine.
So anyway, hell hath NOT the fury of a redneck with a castrating device--she didn't tell me that, I just thought I'd throw that in as a little retrospective foreshadowing. Is that a contradiction? I didn't know, but now I know hell would not even know where to buy that sort of deep south fury. Maybe at Bent 'N' Dent.
Oh, hey by the way...yes, the rumors are true; my next story's got pirates with machine guns. I swear on Jello the Pig's grave. You'll see what I mean by that soon enough.
My beautiul car shuddered and clanked and made it most of the way through Tennessee. The Corolla finally threw in the towel about fifty miles west of Chattanooga. The tri-state area, according to the radio. For those of you who ain't up to snuff on your geographatitty, that's way far away from Florida. According to my map, the distance was only about two thumb-widths, but it looks MUCH bigger in person. My Rocket was still purring at least.
SHIT! SHIT. DAMN DAMN DAMN. SHIT!
Fuck.
I was standing on the side of Interstate 24, swearing and I said to myself, "Self, get it together." And I did. Okay, well that's not so true actually. Peepers had to calm me down. She did so by jumping on my back, nibbling my ear and, well, clasping her hands over my mouth.
"It's cool," she said, "daddy's got a Bronco."
Oh, well daddy's got a Bronco. That makes everything better. <<<<taste the sarcasm. Taste it.
"He can tow us home," she said.
So, on the last juice of my cellphone, she called daddy...I wouldn't call him that myself, but maybe I'll call him dad whenif we did do the marrying thingy. But I was having my doubts. Maybe it was just the stress. Or was it maybe...say...the downright stupidity of the whole fucking situation? Nah, couldn't be that. Anyway, it turned out Frank wasn't going to get here until late evening. So, we'll fast forward though the waiting part. If you watched the fast forward, this is what you'd see…
2x: We fight, we fuck, we fightfightfightfuckfight, we fuckfightfuckfuck. The cat purrs.
4x: fffighfuckfighttfffuckffffighttt. Purrrrrrrrr.
8x: ffftttffprrrrrr.
See, if you watch it go by fast enough, it's all purring.
Fffprrr, Frank arrives. Luckily, we're fighting when the Bronco pulls up.
I help Frank hitch the Corolla to the Bronco with several wraps of a long extension cord...was this the only thing he could come up with? Was he ropeless? Whatever. The problem here was compounded by the fact that Frank had brought Fran and brother Bo with him as well. So, with dad and mom and Peepers in the front and me and Bo in the back, we headed down to the Florida. Rocket the cat got to ride with us in the back, too. It was a wee bittle breezy, since the Bronco's cab had been removed...apparently, with a hacksaw. Me and Bo bore the dusty wind like men, but Rocket bore it like a cat. Which is to say, clawing into my chest for dearest life. The cat does not, at this point, purr.
Several hours later, the Corolla-towing Bonco pulls into the gravel lot at the farm on Captain Fritz Road in Ebro, in the crotchpit of the panhandle. I could almost smell Louisiana from there. Oh, haha...I call some of my online friends my "e-bros". <<<<That's irrelevant to the story, I just happened to notice.
As soon as we get out the truck, Rocket tears off into the night. My flesh was still wet on her claws, no doubt.
Damn, I'm thinking maybe I should turn the rest of this story into Bent 'N' Dent part three. It's late and I have to work at six. But you wouldn't like that, would you? No, I'll finish the story. I'll have to make myself a Red Bull Mimosa to get through the workday, and hope my date cancels again tomorrow night so I can sleep, but I'll finish the story anyway. One thing though: I hope you'll make it worth my while. The coffee and cigarettes are taking years off my life, no doubt. You readers are stealing my life, you realize this, don't you? Okay truth be told, I guess I'm giving it willingly. But tell me what you think of this story and I'll be encouraged to write another one in a week or two. And next time, there will be pirates! Pirates and rock climbing. Pirates and rock climbing and flesh hooks. Oh my, that sounds nice now doesn't it? <<<<taste the Minnesota accent. Taste it.
Yessssss. I can't wait. But first let's get this Bent 'N' Dent shite out the way. No more northron crap. We's in the deep south. Continuing...
Bent 'N' Dent, (the store not the story) was so called for a very good reason. It was a store that bought dented cans and crushed boxes from other stores, then re-sold them at lower prices. This is pure panhandle genius. Oh, the insight. Oh, the humanity.
The store was on the farm property, facing Captain Fritz Road, right in front of a soybean field with a muddy pond in its middle. I got a look at the store late that night because there was no other place for me and Peepers to do our thing in private. So we did our thing in the store. And we did our thing for the last time, it would turn out. Now, since this was to be the last time, let me describe it a bit. That wouldn't be too gratuitous, would it? I went down on her on the cool tile floor. The aisles were lined with cans, some with labels, some unlabelled. It's more surprising that way. I brushed my lips against her bellybutton peach fuzz and tasted her skin, mildly salty. Kissing down the valley of her hip, I teased with fingers and tongue. I'm rushing the story, but I wasn't rushing at the time. Now I was breathing warmly on her--well, how shall I put this? When I was in elementary school, we would have called it her 'butterfly'. I kissed her there. Gentle licks, slowly over a long time, building and receeding, and building again but stopping short of climax. Each time she thrust her hips upwards, and my jaw with them, out of the corner of my eye I caught glimpses of things. Lick, thrust. Ramen noodles. Lick, thrust. Spaghetti O's. Lick, thrust. Cajun boiled peanuts. Lick lick lick. Thrust...I slid my body up over her and slid myself into her. But I didn't move. Not yet. I just held her still to savor the fullness inside until she couldn't stand it any longer and she rolled over on top of me and rhythmically rode, raging and roaring to orgasm.
Gee, only one paragraph? I could have written more. But this isn't pornography, goddamnit. Sure, I thought it was pornography at the time, but I found out I was wrong. In fact, I found out graphically the next day at the cookout that this story was most definitely NOT a pornographic story.
It started by the pig patch (shut up, I'm cityfolk). I was observing the swine and brother Bo was manhandling them. Frank--dad, I guess--strode up alongside me, carrying a shotgun and some other big metal thingy. "Hmmm, what's Bo doing?" I asked, innocently.
Dad told me to watch and pay attention. He lifted the metal thing, which looked like a very very large pair of forceps or something of that sort. They had a rubber donut on their end, no bigger than my thumb with an opening the size of a dime. Brother Bo held a pig in a headlock and dad operated the forceps. They stretched the rubber donut out big enough to go all the way around the pig's scrotum. And pig balls are huge, let me tell you. They looked like elongated softballs, and before I could get a grasp on what was happening, dad released the forceps and the rubber donut snapped around the poor piggy's nuts and the pig went wee wee wee all the way home. Well, not home, more like in circles around the pig patch. I'm not sqeamish, but seeing any male, human or otherwise, having his scrotum pinched through an opening the size of a dime was enough to make me light-headed and heavy-stomached.
"They'll fall off in a week or two," said dad. Then he said, "I'll do that to you if you get on my bad side." Me: blink blink. Frank: "Time to get this cookout started." I stared at the forceps, or whatever they were. I was shaking. At least the swine abuse was over.
Dad pointed at the remaining three pigs. He told me Peepers had named them last time she was down this way. "That one's called Skinny, the one in the middle is Cosby, and that one there's Jello," he said. "Which one should we roast today?"
I didn't know if there was a right answer to this question, but I said, "Um...Jello I guess."
He told me to cover my ears, then put the shotgun barrel to the pig's head and BAM! Cosby and Skinny wasted no time in feasting on their fallen comrade's brains. Yes, I write fiction. No, I am not making this up. Sorry for the gore, but that's the way it happened.
"Pigs'll eat anything," said Bo, chuckling.
Thus, I decided then there that I had had enough of panhandle culture. When dinner came around, I ate Jello with the rest of the family--whom I affectionately know as Peepers' peeps. Um...and the extended family, aunts and uncles and cousins eating stale Peeps from Bent 'N' Dent. (Peepers' peeps' Peeps?) And...um, neighbors, members of the greater Ebro business council, golfing friends, shrimp gumbo, shrimp scampi, jumbo fried shrimp... Well damn, it was a regular wedding party.
Aw, shit. I was in deep, I thought.
So, after dinner, coffee, Busch Light, introductions I tried hard not to remember, dirty plump kids, et cetera, I found myself in the night with a girl I barely knew and a family that scared the shit out of me. I curled up with Peepers in bed and said, "I'm not so sure about this marriage thing." I could hear a cat yowling in the night.
"What?" She was hurt, and I could tell by the quiver in her voice that her heart was starting to develop tears. Well, the eye where she kept her heart, anyway. "I have to talk to daddy," she said. :-o
Ugh. "Well," I said, "I'm not sure, I'm just thinking out loud." Lying out loud, perhaps? I told her we'd talk about it in the morning and I lay there awake until daybreak, having no intentionnerz of talking about anything in the m'nmorning. I said to myself, "Self, this is too serious a moment for wordplay, damnit!" So, in the earliest dayzzle'light, without a hint of intentional mis-spelling, when the house was quiet except for a cat yowling in the morning sun, I slid out of Peeperses armses and dressed m'selfses and opened the screen door from the smoke-stained k'knitchen.
Rocket was there at the door, yowling in the morning sun, and she rubbed against my legs. I picked her up and carried her to State Route 79, sticking out my thumb. Kitty purred purringly. I looked over my shoulder, praying not to see a Bronco. It took an hour-ish, but finally I got picked up by a trucker truckin shelly concrete--Coquino!--from Panama Beach City to Louisville.
Three Hondas and a Buick later, I got back to Columbus comfortably, sleeping in the passenger seat of an '83 La Sabre, not dreaming of a damne thing, thank god. The last driver shook my shoulder as we entered the city, asking me where I wanted dropped off. I didn't have an apartment anymore, so I told him to take me to the piercing studio.
The guy behind the counter was the one with the sea-mine eyes and antennae and facial tats. I didn't know his name, but I did know the guy in front of the counter. It was daddy.
"I'll rip that stupid ring right out of your nose," he shouted.
"You know this guy?" asked sea-mine eyes.
I dropped the cat and said to daddy, calmly as I could, "Wait," then he popped me in the nose. Sea-mine chased daddy out with a baseball bat, then shouted in the back for somebody to get a towel.
"That was Peepers' dad," I said. Only I didn't call her Peepers...but you knew that.
An lavender-headed girl in pigtails came out and rushed a towel to my bloody nose, "Aww poor thing," she said, genuinely concerned. And genuinely adorable.
The guy with sea-mine eyes asked me, "Do you know the new girl?"
The End.
Survey Question: In the next story, should I have... More sex? Less sex? *Better* sex? Remember, I want you to actually FINISH the stories! Oh, and public comments are much better than private messages. Unless you have a REALLY personal message anyway.
Alrighty, love and lube boys and girls...til next time.
Ffffpprrrr,
-Nathan
You ain't gonna find love in a bloody nose. I found that out harder'n the hard way and ended up getting chased by a pig-mangling lunatisk that tailed me all the way back to Ohio. And to think I was this close to calling him dad!
But it all started in Columbus, Ozhio. Right here at home. Well, in the piercing studio anyway, which is as close to home as anything. They said the new girl would do my septum at half price, and I thought maybe Kati was expanding into piercing.
Kati had done my last tat as part of her internship and she did a great job, but apparently she wasn't the new girl anymore. There was a *new* new girl.
At the time, I knew not who the new new girl was, but it turned out that the new new girl was a girl I knew. It was the girl with the anime eyes. You know how they do a close up to where you can see a little glint of light in their big doe eyes? Well, this chick had a tiny silver HEART in her eye. I guess they can insert the jewelry under the sclera, right on top of the choroid layer. Hearts in her eyes, heh. I won't use her real name. Let's just call her Peepers.
I met her at show a few days before. It was a little low-ceilinged hole in the wall, but the bands they book, hellers yeah. Shit, that was a damn good show! Um, I don't remember what band it was. But I bumped_well, slammed really_into Peepers and we danced, if you'd call it that. She got my number, but I think I accidentfully told her my dentist's fax number. What can I say; I was probably drunk. Okay, I was definitely drunk. But so was she. Other than gesturizing at her cellphone, I believe the only thing she said to me that night was "Yum".
Anyway, nerp. Now she's doing my septum. You know, "doing" like piercing, not "doing" like…you know, I'm not implying *nose* sex or anything, not really. So she's going to punch it up to 6 gauge from scratch. When I asked about that before, they told me it wasn't a good idea. I should've listened to them. No, I shouldn't have. But she was new, and I asked her really nice and she liked me and, being the half-price girl, she'd been stacked with appointments so we were doing this in the afterhours. Thus, when she put the skin punch up to my nose, there was nobody else there to say "Hey, Peepers* that's not a good idea!"
*Again, I'll mention that's not her real name, so they wouldn't have said that even if they were around to make some such similar exclamation. But I digress.
Hole punch, girl, septum. Gnuff said. I guess she didn't have enough muscle behind it or something. When she pushed it through, my eyes watered but otherwise I felt fine.
But I didn't feel fine when she said, "Ewww!" and jumped back in a very un-piercemanlike manner. Her glinty eyes were wider'n I've ever seen a manga artist draw.
So, of course I asked, "What!?" My heart was threatening to treacle out my bellybutton in a thin paste, and I shudder to think what the look on my face must've been. She pointed me to a mirror and under the metal tubey thing that transstomatized my septum, I could see a little divot of my very own nose flesh. Very not yum.
"Well, what do we do?" she asked me. Let me repeat that: *she* asked *me*. Ugh.
Shrug. "Just yank it off." She gave me a look that was some sort of halfbreed between 'dubious' and 'I am a spidermonkey lost in a supermarket'. "Nevermind, I'll do it."
"You're not sterilized. Okay hold still." That statement was unnecessary because she held me still with an elbow in my shoulder, one hand under my neck and the heel of her other hand against my cheekbone while she pinched the flesh wad in her fingers. "Okay ready," she said with her Marlboro breath bridging the inch between her face and mine, then jerked it off without waiting for an answer.
"Fuck, that hurt! Well_it wasn't too bad, actually," I said, perhaps a bit too masochistically.
She smiled, perhaps a bit too sadistically.
"I love the metal in your eyes," I said.
"Oh that's nothing," she said, "you should see the guy who did it for me!" I'd definitely be taking her up on that offer as ASAP as possible. "You're a hopeless romantic, ain't ya?"
"Hah, naw. I'm a ropeless homantic."
She leaned in for a kiss_or maybe more of a face-rape since she was holding me down? *Not* expecting that, but what the fuck? If she still likes me when we're not both drunken lushes, then that's a good thing. That's what I thought at the time anyway. I dug deep with my tongue and sucked on her upper lip and sucked on her lower lip and realized I was bleeding profusely and nibbled at her tongue and licked her teeth. She sat up, grinning like a fool with blood all over her face, and I realized it was about time to end part one of my story.
Stay tuned for part two, in which I get chased by a redneck wielding a castrating device all the way from Captain Fritz Road, Florida to fucking Comeblowus, Ohio.
Oh and by the way, this story is called BENT 'N' DENT. You'll see why later.
-Nathan
But it all started in Columbus, Ozhio. Right here at home. Well, in the piercing studio anyway, which is as close to home as anything. They said the new girl would do my septum at half price, and I thought maybe Kati was expanding into piercing.
Kati had done my last tat as part of her internship and she did a great job, but apparently she wasn't the new girl anymore. There was a *new* new girl.
At the time, I knew not who the new new girl was, but it turned out that the new new girl was a girl I knew. It was the girl with the anime eyes. You know how they do a close up to where you can see a little glint of light in their big doe eyes? Well, this chick had a tiny silver HEART in her eye. I guess they can insert the jewelry under the sclera, right on top of the choroid layer. Hearts in her eyes, heh. I won't use her real name. Let's just call her Peepers.
I met her at show a few days before. It was a little low-ceilinged hole in the wall, but the bands they book, hellers yeah. Shit, that was a damn good show! Um, I don't remember what band it was. But I bumped_well, slammed really_into Peepers and we danced, if you'd call it that. She got my number, but I think I accidentfully told her my dentist's fax number. What can I say; I was probably drunk. Okay, I was definitely drunk. But so was she. Other than gesturizing at her cellphone, I believe the only thing she said to me that night was "Yum".
Anyway, nerp. Now she's doing my septum. You know, "doing" like piercing, not "doing" like…you know, I'm not implying *nose* sex or anything, not really. So she's going to punch it up to 6 gauge from scratch. When I asked about that before, they told me it wasn't a good idea. I should've listened to them. No, I shouldn't have. But she was new, and I asked her really nice and she liked me and, being the half-price girl, she'd been stacked with appointments so we were doing this in the afterhours. Thus, when she put the skin punch up to my nose, there was nobody else there to say "Hey, Peepers* that's not a good idea!"
*Again, I'll mention that's not her real name, so they wouldn't have said that even if they were around to make some such similar exclamation. But I digress.
Hole punch, girl, septum. Gnuff said. I guess she didn't have enough muscle behind it or something. When she pushed it through, my eyes watered but otherwise I felt fine.
But I didn't feel fine when she said, "Ewww!" and jumped back in a very un-piercemanlike manner. Her glinty eyes were wider'n I've ever seen a manga artist draw.
So, of course I asked, "What!?" My heart was threatening to treacle out my bellybutton in a thin paste, and I shudder to think what the look on my face must've been. She pointed me to a mirror and under the metal tubey thing that transstomatized my septum, I could see a little divot of my very own nose flesh. Very not yum.
"Well, what do we do?" she asked me. Let me repeat that: *she* asked *me*. Ugh.
Shrug. "Just yank it off." She gave me a look that was some sort of halfbreed between 'dubious' and 'I am a spidermonkey lost in a supermarket'. "Nevermind, I'll do it."
"You're not sterilized. Okay hold still." That statement was unnecessary because she held me still with an elbow in my shoulder, one hand under my neck and the heel of her other hand against my cheekbone while she pinched the flesh wad in her fingers. "Okay ready," she said with her Marlboro breath bridging the inch between her face and mine, then jerked it off without waiting for an answer.
"Fuck, that hurt! Well_it wasn't too bad, actually," I said, perhaps a bit too masochistically.
She smiled, perhaps a bit too sadistically.
"I love the metal in your eyes," I said.
"Oh that's nothing," she said, "you should see the guy who did it for me!" I'd definitely be taking her up on that offer as ASAP as possible. "You're a hopeless romantic, ain't ya?"
"Hah, naw. I'm a ropeless homantic."
She leaned in for a kiss_or maybe more of a face-rape since she was holding me down? *Not* expecting that, but what the fuck? If she still likes me when we're not both drunken lushes, then that's a good thing. That's what I thought at the time anyway. I dug deep with my tongue and sucked on her upper lip and sucked on her lower lip and realized I was bleeding profusely and nibbled at her tongue and licked her teeth. She sat up, grinning like a fool with blood all over her face, and I realized it was about time to end part one of my story.
Stay tuned for part two, in which I get chased by a redneck wielding a castrating device all the way from Captain Fritz Road, Florida to fucking Comeblowus, Ohio.
Oh and by the way, this story is called BENT 'N' DENT. You'll see why later.
-Nathan
FEBRUARY 2008
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JANUARY 2008
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DECEMBER 2007
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NOVEMBER 2007