gofuserectus

you know how we men are, right! we ask each other : are you a tit man? or are you a leg man? or, are you an ass man? i gotta say i am definitely a Vagina man!! ha ha !! ok if you are feeling like reading, try this.

update 8-10-05

SHE LIVES THERE
by M. Gira


The asphalt road that led up the hill towards my father's cabin was padded with a thick, perfect green fur of soft fungus . Our boots squeezed the moisture free from the fresh blanket of spores as we walked, sculpting an awkward pictograph of deep imprints that quickly filled with water and flashed like shaped mirrors behind us . My wife and I held onto each other for support , but inevitably we lost our balance along the way and we slid helplessly back down the winding hill like frantic children grabbing at the air , smearing our clothing with cold emerald scum and leaving great swathes of shining purple/black muck in the road - an epileptic's visual morse code left behind us as a warning to anyone foolish enough to attempt following us up the road. We grunted and we wheezed with the effort, rarely talking. The Redwoods rose up out of the near vertical walls of mossy stone and brambles on either side of us, tilting in at wild, chaotic angles. Their encrusted branches interlocked above us to form a canopy that revealed the sky only in occasional tiny rare prisms of flickering gold and shifting silver shards of light. The sound of our struggling was contained and deadened in this tunnel. Our bones cracked beneath the soft rustle of our down coats. Our frustration sprayed out from our mouths and nostrils in jets of crystallized fog that first sparked sonically, then hung dead in the cold air before dissipating and falling silently to the plush carpet path, sprinkling it with our sugared breath. Occasionally we helped each other up and over the massive hulk of a Redwood tree sprawled across the road like a dead beast, downed by the flood. The bark squeezed out water like a sponge in our fingers, sometimes whole sheets of it coming loose in our hands, soaked and heavy, revealing the polished hidden blond meat of the tree beneath it, glistening like freshly oiled human skin, obscenely exposed, soft and vulnerable in the filtered light. We reached an old pull-out along the side of the road. We carefully worked our way out onto the rotting wooden platform that still clutched precariously to the edge of the cliff. To keep from slipping off into oblivion, we held onto the rail - a wrenched web of two-by-fours tonailed together with ancient rusted square nails , some of which snapped instantly beneath the unfamiliar torque of our hands. We dug our heels into the spaces between the greasy planks and looked out over the valley. The rain had been relentless over the last few months and in this past week had finally engorged the soil until it burst open in wide fissures, gouging deep into the earth's crust, washing entire hillsides clean of the Redwoods, vegetation, and the cabins and houses that were built out over the hills on stilts and had linked their foundations and walls, as well as their fate, in with the giant trees. All of it lay at the bottom now, a complex tangle of debris hundreds of feet high . Whole sections of the formerly winding single lane asphalt road , its posts and guardrails intact, now ran directly through the accordioned garages and hot tubs that brimmed with gravel and mud , and the cutaway ruins of living rooms and bedrooms with tilted pictures on their walls and the furniture jostled but still vaguely in place. Newer model cars, pickup trucks, and their rusted ancestors surfed on top of and through this wave of junk, all laced together with a complex vascular system of threaded steel cable, telephone lines, twisted copper plumbing, foliage, and the huge ripped carcasses of the once-indestructible Redwood trees, with their fantastic systems of clotted roots, providing an eerie disjunction in scale, everything else like an architect's sized-down mockup of its true self.
A mild rain fell steadily over the valley, feeding the new rivers and falls with a foaming brown silt that rushed straight down into the debris below. A few toy-like helicopters patrolled the valley beneath the roiling clouds, calling out to anyone below that might have ignored the warnings to evacuate. Apparently my father was among those that had elected to stay. Despite his mildly therapeutic version of the hereditary family alcoholism, and his encroaching memory loss, my wife and I had decided, one last time, to leave our five year old daughter with him at the cabin for a few weeks, while we hiked and camped in the high deserts of southern Utah, where I agreed I would attempt to sweat out my own more virulent brand of alcoholism as we talked through the sour melodrama of our marriage. I knew this to be a hopeless exercise, but I went along anyway, thinking the effort might win me some good will in the coming custody battle as I brokered for more time with Normandine , my only daughter, whom I will truly, ceaselessly, and hopelessly love. I had no remaining reserves of genuine feeling for my wife, or anyone else except my daughter anymore. We'd tried to make love in the desert, but I 'd failed in my pathetic attempt at sobriety , so it was impossible . I'd hallucinated in the heat , every cell in my body screaming for alcohol as I'd stood looking down at the implaccable , painted stone monuments , each one a hulking charicature of my father - as executioner , as judge , as murderous monk-like beast - so she'd finally relented and drove me a hundred miles to the state line until we found a roadside liquor store where I bought some whisky . So I was drunk and I didn't care any more when we tried to have sex later , barely half erect in her womb . This same womb I once considered almost holy , being a true source of love , and the protective home in which my sweet Normandine grew , curled up , warmly gestating , wet and secure - this same womb now was utterly without sexuality or life to me - like a sanitized hospital room , a gently menacing emptiness . As we worked our way up the hill I imagined I could hear my little daughter singing in her light bell tones . The tunnel of foliage grew progressively smaller and tighter as we ascended , gradually forcing us to bend forward as we walked . Less light and oxygen were allowed in by the more finely woven network of vines and branches that now enclosed us . The vines sometimes seemed to reach down for us , crackling and licking at our faces like articulated snakes , their rough tongues leaving phosphorescent trails of slime on our foreheads and cheeks, giving our faces the look of ritually painted , psychedelic hunters in the increasingly darker tunnel . The sound of our breathing slapped back at our faces , as if nothing could travel here without immense effort - no superfluous sound , heat , or light . The moss and fungus beneath our boots gave way to what must have been a finely quarried gravel but which felt like crushed eggshells or bones grinding melodically as we walked - we could no longer see the ground but were led along the road by a regular series of glowing markers laid out on either side , like quartz rods somehow electrified . The amonia smell of rotting vegetation grew increasingly more dominant , until finally each breath was rewarded with a sharp , biting stab at the delicate tissue of our lungs . I could see the air itself , black and thick , but alive with swirling particles , clouds of chemicals ,glittering dust , and microbes . Now I was sure : I heard my daughter singing . My wife noticed it too , and she laced her arm in mine . We struggled forward , choking , desparate for air . Soon with each step we sank down to our shins in the fractured bones - and they were bones , we could see them because they too glowed now , a milky , luminous green tide of jagged fragments before us - fingers , femurs , knee caps , and shattered skulls . The incline of the path grew steadily steeper and steeper until we were literally climbing , pushing the bones back down behind us , sliding , barely moving , swooning for lack of oxygen , the hairy vines and thorns of the tunnel closing in , ripping through our coats and scratching at our faces . We inched our way upwards like panicing rats , my beautiful daughter's voice singing just up ahead , calling us forward . Breathing was almost impossible now . We clawed at the vines , pulling ourselves on , unsure of which direction we were moving - it even seemed possible we were falling . I could feel the fibers of the vines reaching down into my lungs , growing inside of me , taking over my body from within , infiltrating my alimentary canals, sinuses, sliding dryly up the untouched , moist sockets behind my eyes . I lost track of my wife .- she must have been pulled back away into the brush , or maybe she'd sunk down into the quicksand of bones . I could taste my heart in my throat , soaking with alcohol , cooling , barely alive . I saw nothing but swirling black , as if my eyes were boiling in my skull . I felt my tongue dehydrating instantly in my mouth , hard as a meat corkscrew, turning to beef jerky , on its way to becoming a vine itself . The blood shrieked in my veins , like ice suddenly cracking . The bones in my legs and arms shattered like glass. The walls of my stomach collapsed limply , a wrinkled leather sack holding a dead , weighted stone ... Then , I heard a single , pure note , a lightly droning thread that connected somewhere to a toggle in the back of my head and lead out into the world , out from the strangling tangle of vegetation that consumed me ... We were suddenly out in the clear , dizzily perched on the slatted wooden path that fed out along the side of the cliff to the front door of my father's cabin . My wife stood beside me , both arms locked tightly around me now as we struggled to keep our balance on the path . The cold sharp air rushed into our lungs like a hit of some ultra-refined hallucinatory vapor . Everything rocked and swayed . The cabin hung shaking like the body of a wooden spider above the clouds , dense black smoke gurgling from the chimney . The helicopters whined beneath us , still searching , muffled by the lush grey mist above them . A few hilltops jutted through , like the rough backs of huge prehistoric monsters , trolling beneath the clouds for food . The network of wooden joists and stilts that had secured the cabin to the cliff-face and trees had been reduced by the rains to one or two braces that clung tenuously to a last Redwood tree that itself seemed ready to break away from its purchace in the tilting granite at any second . Again , my daughter's happy voice , singing from behind the cabin door , an endlessly unfolding silvery chain of improvised , weightless melodies . Now the door to the my father's cabin swung open , back and forth , rocking in sync with the rocking of the entire creaking structure in the wind . My wife and I made our way along the path , holding the slackened , water-soaked rope that served as a makeshift guardrail for balance . Inside , everything changed instantly . The fireplace raged unattended . Long yellow tongues jutted out into the room and rose up unabated to the ceiling , charring the tortured pine , which was already smoldering from within , the varnish beginning to bubble - ready to explode in flames . But the air in my father's cabin was wet , almost boiling , saturated with the thick stink of decay , of molded carpets , unflushed toilets and unwashed dishes , of flesh and garbage decomposing . The smell of alcohol laced through everything , the rank liquid medium out of which all the other odors grew .The half drunk cans of beer , hundreds of them piled in the corners , crumpled and spilling , turning to syrup , each can home to its own colony of fruit flies and gnats . Empty bottles of whiskey littered the floor , like stones set in the brown pool of gummy long shag carpet fibers . But the real odor , the foul essence , was a smell I instantly recognized , a smell as familiar as the sickly yellow color behind the sagging , thickening skin of my cheeks and the dark puffed sacks beneath my eyes as I looked in the mirror every morning , hungover : It was the smell of alcohol being squeezed out through the pores of the body , the smell of an abused or failing liver secreting poison nectar into the blood , a sickening perfume manufactured only in the living compost of an alcoholic's rotting body . And the flies smelled it too . They were everywhere , frantic with it , giant and furious , whirling through the air in scrawled black amphetamine clusters , dangling crucified from long-ago-unfurled nicotine-colored resin fly strips , screaming their dissonant , stuttering symphony of fly-agony. Agitated , furry sheets of them were spread out over every countertop and windowsill - some dead , some still whining as they spun in place , generations of their parched corpses mixed in with the shag carpet , crunching as we made our way to the bedroom , where my beautiful daughter called to us , singing gently . The bedroom was a chaos of torn mattress and ripped sheets , shredded clothing and ravaged curtains , old filthy socks and the garishly colored gutted bodies of stuffed animals strewn everywhere , mixed in with more discarded beer cans and bottles . As if to decorate this mess with a final last touch of color , bright red blood was flung over everything , hanging in sheaths from the walls , clotting with the piles of stuffing and fibers , sprayed in a crimson mist on the ceiling . My father stood naked in the center of it all , dripping with blood , drunk and singing . Even at his advanced old age his muscles were taut and ropey beneathe the leathery skin that hung from his bones . He held his erection in his right hand , choking it with all his strength , as if trying to strangle the trapped evil free from its head . His hawk eyes , once the stern black stones of an imperious business executive , now turned individually in separate directions , wildly circling like the eyes of an insane toy demon-clown , caked with flaking muck around the edges and all pupil . The corners of his mouth were pulled up in an idiotic , 3 year-old's grin , as if he'd just pulled some silly practical joke he couldn't help smirking about . In his left hand he held my daughter's ripped arm , like a little girl might casually hold her favorite doll . At first he seemed to be unaware that her body was not attached , but then he chewed at the arm a little , gingerly biting at little bits of flesh that dangled from the gnarled socket . As he snacked , still singing , red bubbles formed at the edges of his lips , popping silently . His tongue clicked at the loose dentures in his mouth , punctuating my daughter's song . And it was my daughter's song that my father sang proudly for us , my beautiful Normandine's voice emanating from somewhere deep inside his stomach , light , gentle , the source of all innocence , coming to me now in transparent wave after glistening wave of love , her voice glittering , the purest , most healing and most selflessly forgiving sound in this world , blessing us all , washing everything dirty and failed away , my angel , my life ...