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Six Mile Avenue

We took an apartment on Communipaw Avenue in Jersey City in November of 1990. It was all we could afford at first. The two-fare zone made things inconvenient for zipping in and out of the city on Path Trains. The fare was only a dollar each way and the train stopped in the heart of the West Village and places further uptown. The bus was a dollar too, but always slow and jammed packed with hood rats. Anthony and I met James Miller on the bus that runs down Communipaw to the Gove Street Path Station– you know the place; right up the street from Exchange Place. It had the picture perfect view of the Twin Towers. James, a Black queen, was a cross between Sade, Prince and Rick James. He stole the last seat on the bus. We had to stand. James irked me because he tied his straight long hair with a pink silk ribbon. Was that so necessary? It seemed as if he were trying to make people hate him for being a shameless snow queen. He was as sissy as a sissy can be and unlike anthony was not 'light-skinned'. My lover and I were butch but not closeted. Anthony poked me in the ribs with his elbow. I could hardly keep from laughing when James gave us that look– ‘I know you’re gay too.’ I hung onto the metal strap for my dear life as the bus turned a corner down Fairview. Nothing had to be said. My lover wasn’t threatened. The middle-aged queen was lusting for me. He assumed I was into Black men because Anthony is Black. So I smiled back and gave him a pleasant nod, but we didn’t strike up conversation. Weeks later, Anthony and I went to see a late showing of ‘Cats’ and arrived back home in Jersey at the Gove Street stop when the place was like a ghost town. Buses were rare in the early hours of the morning so we decided to shell out the $10 for a ride the rest of the way home. James was standing at the bus stop. He had taken out his pink ribbon. It may have been because it was late and scary in Jersey City at 3 a.m. and even real girls don’t wear ribbons down their backs at that hour of the day. “You want a ride with us?” I asked. “Sure I’ll split it with you.” “No need for that, there’s already two of us,” I offered as we headed back down Communipaw and giggled like sissies as we let down our guards and all became flamboyantly gay for six miles.

Letter Boxes

Smokey comes outside on Saturday mornings.

He belongs to someone in the apartment building next door. He likes to cool- out on weekends with my cat, Bert.

The two stripped felines spend their day in an apple tree waiting for clumsy birds to fly into their trap. The fur balls haven’t a clue as to how lucky they are.

Not many cats in New York have a back yard, not to mention lots of perennials to hide and play in. It is so sweet that Bert and Smokey are friends and don’t fight over girl cats, spray for territory or claw one another to death over some pussy.

They are both ‘fixed’ and have flea collars on and simply like the company of one another.

I lifted the window after Bert demanded I do so. There was Smokey sitting next to my tomato plant waiting for his friend to come outside. “Morning Smokey,” I say. He runs to the back of the yard. Bert runs after him and the two disappear into an urban jungle of apple trees, grape vines, poison ivy.

They’ll sit there until someone gets hungry and crawls back inside the window they came out of.

There where two large blue birds outside today. The birds were nearly as big as Bert and Smokey. They jumped back and forth, taunting the cats as if they were protecting a nest, but it’s fall, baby birds are born in the Spring. “Caw, caw, caw!” The birds crowed very loudly as I started to write this.

The cats were ready to make the attack. Who were these birds to be so bold as to want to pick a gang fight first thing in the morning? Bert and Smokey have waited all summer for this opportunity.

I could not figure out why the birds were calling so loudly at the cats.

Eventually they went away and Bert came back in and walked across the keyboard of my;;;;;;;;ldslafhas;dlkjf;k ;

Shrimp Bisque

It’s nice to take a breather from writing my novel to cook. I just love spending the day fluttering around my kitchen like a 1950's housewife.

The remnants of Ernesto got things marinating in my Brooklyn backyard yesterday. My six foot high tomato plants were not designed to withstand a category -1 hurricane. One of the fruit vines was toppled by the 60 m.p.h. winds despite staking and caging.

My ketchup-like seedlings recently got their first signs of fruit. I know, it’s quite late in the growing season for tomatoes not have already ripened. It has been a most peculiar growing season here in Brooklyn.

We had very little rain all summer. Suddenly the ground is saturated with life- sustaining water and my saucy stalks are pumping all that tropical moisture into the still green fruits as if levies in the sky have broken and moisture is flooding into my creole crops.

In two days those paste creating vegetables grew from the size of a dime to a soccer ball and they have not finished growing, they are still green. It is no wonder the plant and its enlarging fruits toppled over in those Ernesto gusts!

I went outside while the eye of the tropical depression was passing by and quickly straightened up the fallen tomato vine. I stood in the moist soil while barefoot and quickly restored my little plot of farming land and its tattered crops.

“What’s for dinner?” Shawn asked.

I pulled out my favorite cookbook and wrote down the ingredients I would need for seafood bisque.

All that rain and moisture from the Carribean ocean put me in a seafood mood. I decided to double the recipe and wrote down: ½ lb. baby scallops and ½ lb. jumbo shrimp, not in my novel, but on a shopping list. I also jotted in 1 C. heavy cream, 2 onions, 4 potatoes, 2 sticks of celery, half of a red bell pepper wrapped in plastic wrap in the ice box, paprika, teaspoon thyme, 1 tsb. salt, 1 Tbs. pepper, unbroken bay leaf and 4 egg yolks. (Charles’ secret bisque ingredient: cardamom.)

A Chinese lady sold me the sea food. Her little seafood shop located inside Associated Supermarket is a separate business from the rest of the food center here in Bedford-Stuyvesant so I had to pay her almost $20 in addition to what I forked over to the cashier at the front, next to those doors that open automatically with the blink of an eye.

I took the last of the baby scallops (just over a half pound) and a pound and a half of those succulent shrimp sitting atop crystal clear ice and made a projected path towards the final checkout register and home.

My hands were quite full and I couldn’t protect myself from Ernesto with an umbrella. It was one of those days when umbrellas turn inside- out anyway. I got drenched on the way home from shopping, but my ingredients remained dry inside plastic shopping bags.

I brought 2 cups of water to a rapid boil and tossed in all those vegetables and seasonings. It simmered while I took an Epsom salt bath.

After I dried off I used an electric mixer to whip the tender vegetables like mashed potatoes. The concoction resembled pond- scummed mashed potatoes. I trickled in two more pints of water and returned it to a boil. Afterwards, I adjusted the seasonings. I looked out the bedroom window and saw that Ernesto had blown over ‘Gloria’ my tomato plant again. I went back outside in the pouring rain, lifted the toppled giant and used a spade shovel to secure it one last time in an upright position. Ernesto was not going to ruin my Labor Day weekend!

My pre-bisque had cooked down for well over three hours before I added one cup of heavy cream and four egg yolks to the soup which then officially made it a bisque. It is only after the creamy substance is added that one can name their bisque. I called mine ‘Florence’.

I turned off the flame and added the chopped seafood. Dinner was fabulous. Shawn and I rolled under the sheets like a wave of thunderstorms steaming off the coast of Africa. Afterwards we fell asleep and I neglected the novel.

This morning, both Gloria and Andrew had fallen over due to the loosening of the dirt from all that Ernesto rain and wind. I staked them both up again as if they were being crucified.

I was saddened by the fruits that had fallen from the vines but patted down the soil around the exposed roots and pray that they have eternal life.

We’re having fried green tomatoes dipped in Ernesto bisque with a touch of tropical moisture for dinner this evening. Perhaps we’ll invite a friend and have a threesome. It’s a long three day weekend and it’s not even half way over yet. The sun may even come out today.

Hurricane Florence

Hurricane season is a lot like Christmas. I’ve waited all my life to experience the power of Mother Nature’s period and by the looks of Florence’s projected path, there’s a very good chance she’ll blow the Hamptons into the sea and form a new Atlantis.

There has been a lot of public awareness this summer relating to Hurricane preparedness. My important documents are packed neatly away in zip-lock bags in hopes that St. Nick soon will be here.

If a category 3 storm were to perfectly squeeze into that little inlet where the Statue of Liberty stands with her torch, Lower Manhattan will be flooded like the 9th Ward.

Bedford Stuyvesant is on high ground but the new World Trade Center memorial is not.

If that storm surge comes our way I will tune into my Direct TV and watch the greedy swim after their money and Gucci bags.

I know I haven’t been a good little boy in years and perhaps that’s why hurricanes haven’t come down my chimney. I’m making a list and checking it twice as the projected path of Florence is pointing at Donald Trump’s steel structures with glass windows.

Years ago while there was still a World Trade Center, tour guides informed site seers that if a penny were dropped from the 110th floor the copper coin would crack the sidewalk.

What would happen in New York City with all that glass falling alongside the hail of Hurricane Florence?

I will not be around to watch it. I’ll be in Bed-Stuy while they are looting this little town.

Chaz Josephine

Earl Fox was introduced to me at a dinner at Chez Josephine, the four star restaurant in mid-town run by the gay, adopted son of Josephine Baker.

Earl was not a fox but for some strange reason felt I should be all over him because of who he was.

It wasn’t Earl’s birthday and he was far from being worthy of bedding with me, considering he had a lover and was a skinny-ass white dude.

My friend and landlord Patrick McGovern invited me to the dinner party at Chez Josephine, it was his birthday bash. I’m not one to pass up a free steak dinner.

They seated me next to Earl. It was a set up, an attempt to get the powerful physician laid while he was in town.

The Democrats had just lost the White House and Earl was practically starving at dinner, wondering if he would still have all that power after Bill Clinton, the man who appointed, him left office.

I pretended to be interested that Earl was doing so much to save the world.

“He’s an M.D., Charles,” my friend Patrick whispered in my ear as I reached out to shake his hand.

Earl ran SAMSA under Clinton, according to my sources and had control over a lot of the Federal Government’s grant funding and where it was spent.

I wanted a new job, a government job, with good benefits and lots of perks. Ideally I wanted to move to D.C. and find a position as close to the Oral Office as possible so I let Earl fondle me under the table at the chic midtown restaurant.

Oh to be that young and beautiful again with all those powerful men fussing over who was going to pass me the bread at Chez Josephine. Quite frankly, I wasn’t impressed and could tell that Earl was full of bologna, just like his boss Bill Clinton, and wanted nothing but to suck me off and head back to Washington to find a new position to hold him steady until the Democrats won back their rightful place at the top.

I couldn’t stand all the useless chatter in that special little party room on the first floor at the Chez so I tried sneaking away to see what was happening at the bar while we were waiting for our filet mignons to finish burning.

Little Miss Josephine Baker’s reincarnated gay soul was sitting at the bar. He owned the place and asked the cute bar tender to pour me a free one.

Oh to be young and beautiful again with all those powerful men fussing over who was going to pour me my first gin and tonic at Chez Jospehine.

Out came Earl and looked at me as if I were Miss Monica the intern standing in a forbidden zone at Hillary’s end of the White House. He rushed me back to the party room because the steaks were being served.

I never had the chance to thank Jean-Claude, or whatever his name was for that free cocktail. I thought for a moment I would get to hear a story about the Toast of Paris that nobody else knew– a bite into the life of a true star.

I thought it was sad when the director of SAMSA handed me his personal business card-- the little paper rectagle contact form did not have a telephone telephone number– only a post office box where we could communicate.

He promised me a good job if I slept with him. So I did, wouldn’t you?

I wrote the little dick several months later ready to cash in my favor.

He had the nerve to send me a form letter that he used for reaching out to the masses to whom he still owed favors.

I didn’t care.

I could have called Patrick and started making threats if he didn’t at least call me.

I remembered how Josephine Baker lived her life and decided that it wasn’t worth trying to call in all those favors.

I put down my bananas, picked up my ballot and watched from my living room as the Fox jumped over the moon.

Earl is still waiting for the Democrats to take back the White House, but as long as I’m around shaking my ass, he’ll never sing on stage again.

Mrs. Bubbles

There is something about a hot August night that gets my juices flowing. I love soaking in a hot bath. I just spent more than forty-five minutes with candles burning in the bathroom and my legs spread apart with one leg hanging over the edge of the tub. It was so quiet in the bathroom. I could hear the water drip from my toe onto the tile floor– that’s how quiet it was. I love how smooth my legs are today– just waxed. They feel so tight under the warm water and bubbles. Jack’s away this weekend, so I’m here alone, just out of a hot bath and it’s pulsating down there– like a drain on a tub pulling all that water inside me, I’m hot. My head is spinning from all that rubbing with the washcloth. I need something real to go in there and move from side to side inside my walls of cotton candy like warmth, ready to melt at the slightest touch of dripping saliva.

Rent Control

It’s so exciting to see the housing market in a slump when one is not an owner of a house. My landlord has been bending over backwards lately trying to keep me comfy and cozy in the Bedford-Stuyvesant roach motel he calls an apartment. Yesterday a new refrigerator arrived, a few days prior he installed a new stove in the place. It heats me up when landlords think they are doing a big favor by providing what the law demands they offer tenants. “Now keep this stove clean,” he insisted as he attached the gas line to the shiny white Kenmore awaiting my grease stains. He slid the old stove and all that baked in flavoring out the door. Years of burned on stains that even Easy Off couldn’t budge were cleaned out in one easy push. The refrigerator does not fit under the space carved in the cabinets but I told him to have the damn thing delivered anyway. “Lenox—have them bring the ice box. This one has been dripping non stop for the five years I have lived here. Look, the water has rotted the kitchen floor. I’ll sit it in the living room if I have to, but you better give me a new refrigerator too or I’m reporting you to the IRS. Wait a minute, it’s not my stove, it’s yours. It stays here when I leave. What the hell is wrong with you cheap bastard? I have paid you $1,400 a month in cash for five years now. Stop snorting my rent money up your fucking nose!” “How about a dish washer, Charles?” “Stop trying to bribe me! I want two free months rent or I am writing HUD, the agency who gave your Black ass the loan for this place and ask them why you cannot accept a personal check for my monthly rent.” A dish washer arrived this morning. Life is good in the hood.

It's Raining When

It is time for a hurricane to form in the Atlantic. I feel it in my bones. Weather Girl Georgina Taylor predicts it’s just about time for all that energy in the troposphere to pour back down to the surface of the earth via that drain in the atmospheric tub, called the eye wall. It’s nature’s way of flushing out the abundance of energy stored high above our heads from the extreme heat of the sun burning away water molecules. A few little showers pop up over the warm Atlantic waters and the next thing we know, a small circular motion begins and a hell breaks loose. NASA is getting a little nervous right now. The test project on a few offshore storms last year worked very well, perhaps too well. Researchers at NASA came up with a solution for weakening those devastating storms—set off a few bombs inside the north east quadrant of the eye wall and break the monster apart. What is happening now? Where have they all gone? This was suppose to be a highly active year. It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

The Twin In The Towers

I met up with Shawn on September 11th at 11:30 a.m. at his job in the city. I hiked across the Queens bridge and walked down to 43rd and Third. We decided to head up to my place in Harlem.

I put on a pair of his running shoes he had under his desk for the journey. He suspected it was Bin Laden, even before we made it to the house and turned on CNN. I didn’t even know who the man was. Shawn’s on- line research had already offered him enough clues to start putting the pieces together.

“Mother fucker! He done played Bush. It’s all over a pipeline, sexy– one that a lot of folks want to install on Arabian soil.”

I was happy to be out of work early and headed home. There was so much gossip flying around town that day. Conversations of strangers were loudly overbearing and on every street corner–

“Oh my God, my sister worked there until just last week.”

“Yo! I was just in that fuckin’ building yesterday,” a handsomely hung bike messenger said on his two-way radio.

“Someone said they found bombs on the subways.”

“You think that’s bad, I heard there are still at least a dozen planes unaccounted for.”

I attempted to tune them all out and not listen to all the hype. I was feeling quite anxious. I disagreed with Shawn’s hypothesis that Muslims had highjacked the planes and couldn’t wait to get to the house. Quite simply, I was sick of hearing it all.

We took note of how happy New Yorkers seemed that day, despite the closeness of all that likely death. Smiles were abundant on September 11th, perhaps it was only because we were out of work early and far from the spill.

"New Yorkers really know how to act in times of crisis," the papers later informed. There were smiles everywhere. I remember that vividly, at least among the crowds north of 43rd Street.

He kept talking about that pipeline– as if he had invested money into it or something. People kept smiling at me. I didn’t understand all the joy. “I can’t believe he did this. They don’t know the scope of what just happened here,”

Shawn tried to explain to me as I wove in and around the slow walkers. “They had something with them on those planes– some kind of psychotropic chemical. Just look at them sexy, can’t you tell they are on something?” We stepped from the lines of people plowing north and watched in disbelief.

The Psychotic Sea

When one leaves the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant on his or her way to the supermarket in the district of Clinton Hill, he or she must walk past the campus of Pratt University.

The Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Blacks, Hasidic Jews and Middle Easterners suddenly changes when rounding DeKalb Avenue and entering the land of artistically gifted folks-- Clinton Hill.

Bed-Stuy people wear hip-hop clothing adorned by beautiful braided hair. Some have curls around their ears while others have Mecca on their mind.

In Clinton Hill, the culture changes and residents are dressed rather oddly. The art school lends itself to a community filled with artistically gifted college kids from every corner of the world and they wear just about everything imaginable. The West Village of Manhattan is nowhere near as chic or happening as Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

I no longer imagine that the fence that surrounds Pratt is electric. I once had a psychosis and held a delusional belief that the Pratt fence sent out microwaves that interfered with metal plates that aliens planted in my head.

I never thought I would feel normal again, nor did I believe that the extreme pain that raced through every inch of my body and soul would vanish. But it has. I dreaded walking past the fence of Pratt and other CIA infested grounds when I was sick. Life was pure hell, and something as simple as buying food was enough inspiration alone for suicide.



There is a beautiful Episcopal parish along the way to the grocery store, right past the fence that surrounds Pratt. When I was ill, I told myself that if I made it to the block of St. Mary’s, I would be alright. The place was a lighthouse in my stormy psychotic sea.

In my imagination, the radio transmissions subsided when I made it to the front of the beautiful historic worship hall. Thankfully, I was never crazy enough to walk in there and ask for an exorcism, but the thought had crossed my mind.


The normalness of feeling alright again has made walking to the supermarket nothing like a chore. I sometimes glide my hand along the square metal rods, and woven strands of steel that make up the fence along Pratt. My fingers bounce in rhythm from pole to pole and I don’t feel a thing, other than the tender touch of cold metal to a warm fingertips.

There was a time when I couldn’t stand within 20 feet of that fence.

When I walk past St. Mary’s I still feel a little crazy though.

Tears stream down my face on the sidewalk in front of St. Mary’s.

The place made me feel safe before, but the aura I feel there now is nothing less than miraculous.

I don’t know the people who founded that place, but I’m sure one or two of them were saints, for their spirits still inspire me when I walk blindly and write about my psychotic sea.

Body Surfing

When Robert Moses designed the public recreational areas along the shores of Long Island, he was sure to give just enough space for cars to pass under overpasses. He didn’t want buses from the city, filled ghetto rats, washing up on the shores of the white, pristine Atlantic beaches.

Despite this, Jones Beach remains accessible by train and bus for anyone and the public park has become one of the hottest spots north of the Outer Banks.

A little east of the dunes of Jones Beach, a little further out the long extended island, before Fire Island lights up the night sky, there is an enchanted plot of sand where urbanites without cars can swim out to with a $30 cab ride.

It’s the real Robert Moses State Park and people are permitted to bathe nude in the sun there.

I laid out my towel and spread on my level 30 lotion refusing to take of my trunks because I adore tan lines.

The fat Long Island Broads with their big tits and hair to match were at first appalling, not to mention their beer bellied husbands with no snorkels.

“Where’s the nude gay section?” I asked.

“This is it. We’re all one big family out here,” my lover explained.

“These straight people are just like homos,” I said and suddenly got the urge to pull off my red Spedos and go with the flow.


“Oh, what the hell, I kinda like this, I’m the hottest thing out here!” I said while watching a nudist with a trunk that almost touched the sand walk by and kick sand in our faces.

The waves were huge that day. Very few were brave enough to venture into the rip currents, but Shawn and I followed the man who we later nick-named Robert Moses into the fierce waters.

“Dig tag, you’re it!” Shawn shouted above the white choppy waves.

I smiled as he secretly grabbed me under the green ocean waters.

“Go touch it. Just pretend like a wave accidentally pushed you into him,” my partner tempted.

So I did. I swam right up to Robert Moses and grabbed it with both hands.

It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It was soft in mushy in the cold Atlantic waters and did absolutely nothing for me.

“Let’s body surf,” I suggested trying to pull my lover away from the closet-case freak in the waters of the state park.

The stranger followed us closer to shore as we waited for the next big wave to come up on us.

The ocean reached out and grabbed our bare asses and pulled us high towards the sky.

The water below us disappeared and we rode the crest of the huge wave.

As the wave crashed us down, I turned sideways to brace myself for the crash directly atop the grainy sand.

The power of the sea brush- burned my ass cheeks badly.

The three of us walked naked, back to our towels with our long tails between our legs. Blood dripped from my ass cheek at the spot where Mother Nature kissed me.

“Why are they all looking at my ass? I thought they were straight,” I asked.

“Oh my God, look at your ass,” the straight nudist guy said with disgust.

Mowing

A patch of thick, green grass next to the septic tank stalled my lawn mower. I tilted the mower up so that the blades were exposed and began to peel the globs of compressed cud from the insides of the machine.

Of course I worried what would happen if the machine were to somehow start itself again. There would be no time for me to pull my hand away before the blades sliced off my fingers.

It didn’t stop me from reaching along side the metal blades and doing what had to be done to complete the task at hand.

The sewer worries me more-- that septic tank with its black, oil like shit, baking in the hot July sun, surrounded by flying insects, salvaging what nourishment there is left in my family’s liquefied poop.

How can this be legal? I mean really, that is shit sitting right out in the open.

Sure there are no turds or toilet paper after it gets processed, but it’s still black.

I pulled the rip cord and that faithful old mower’s engine started with hardly an effort.

It’s the grass down here that is so hard to mow, the think green stuff.

The rest of the yard is easy. It’s like I’m on autopilot, one leg after another, up and down in perfect parallel lines. I get inspiration for my stories while mowing the lawn, except when I get down here at the edge of the yard.

Watch out, I’m going to go over the thick green patch fast so that I don’t stall the mower again.

Can you hear me? Stand back!

Opps!

Sorry about that.

The Army Drafted Me

Pvt. Tamburro had numerous Article 15 punishment clauses in his personnel file.

“He’s a bad soldier, don’t follow in his footsteps,” Sgt. Greer instructed as he handed me my green wool blanket and bed sheets the night I was checked into 141 Signal Battalion in Ansbach.

It seemed unfair to be put in a room with a troublemaker, but he was cute and seemed harmless to me.

“I’m from Pittsburg,” the scruffy looking enlistee said while shaking my hand.

“I’m from Pennsylvania too,” I said while trying not to develop a friendship with someone with a bad Army reputation.

“Do you wanna grab a few brewskies?”

“No thanks. I’m tired from the flight and need some rest,” I declined.

The big barracks room was silent and spooky. During my intake briefing, I was informed that Barton Barracks were constructed during World War II and housed Nazi troops during the dismal days of the pre-cold war. I didn’t like being there alone and tossed and turned restlessly wishing my roommate would return.

I awoke to a squeaking sound from across the room. My roommate had returned with a German girl he picked up from a local pub and they were going at it in our room right in front of me.

She wanted some water, she explained in broken English.

“I can’t get caught with you in here,” Tamburro explained, “but I’ll sneak you down the hallway to the water fountain.”

I wondered how he got her inside the barracks past the guard at the front desk. I learned the next day that they climbed up the fire escape.

What an eyeful that was in the dark room—they looked like a swastika, legs were flying everywhere—I couldn’t see everything, there wasn’t enough light.

She asked him to stop.

The room was silent for at least two minutes.

Perhaps she needed more water.

She laughed and said, “Oh, it’s little now.”

“Yes, it’s little now, it’s not hard anymore,” my Amy buddy whispered to the German girl.

He seemed pissed and helped her to find her clothing and get dressed in the dark and escorted her back to the fire escape and set her free again.

When he returned to the room, I laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s what she said.”

“Oh, what whore. Can you believe that broad?”

“I didn’t mean to laugh,” I said while licking my lips, thirsty for water too.

Something for Stephen to Read in Three Springs

Mark Short took me hunting in his pick up truck during an ice storm. It was already the second week of buck season and I hadn’t bagged one yet. There was only one day remaining to hunt legally and after three years of roaming through the woods in fluorescent orange, I had yet to kill my first deer.

Locals were beginning to question my manhood and comments like, "He should have been a girl," were circulating in small town sportsmen circles.

Mark, a friend of my father, was determined to help me make that step to manhood.

Mark was known for his ability to track down white tails. At sixteen I was eager to pull the trigger on my 30-30 and shoot one between the eyes just to keep the gossip at bay.

"Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride, ain’t nothing going to slow me down," played on the radio at least three times that day as we drove along dirt roads on Jack’s Mountain.

Mark seemed nervous as I hit the high notes of that song. He asked me if it was a man or a woman singing. I explained that I wasn’t sure.

I was bored out of my mind and my eyes were weary from scanning the passing thickets of brush for four legged creatures so I reached over and turned up the radio.

"I don’t know Chuck, the deer are not going to be moving around when it’s storming like this. If we want to find one we are going to have to get out of this warm truck and scare them up a little."

I poured the last bit of hot cocoa from a metal thermos, rolled my eyes and agreed to face the frigid air again for the sake of sportsmanship.

I thought I would never bag a buck and agreed to leave the warmth of Mark’s truck wishing I had never pissed him off by turning up the radio when that song played for the third time that day on WHUN.

"I always see deer down in Sink and Run. What do you think? Do you want to take a walk down there?"

"Sure," I said, realizing that he, like the deer, was playing hard to get.

He was ready for it, I could tell. All I had to do was reach over and make the first move but I didn’t want to make it so easy for him. Despite those heavy insulated hunting pants, I could tell he was ready for it.

At fifty yard intervals we walked side by side through the forest trying to scare out the deer.

"Oh the games people play," I sang to myself while stepping quietly on slippery, ice covered stones in the woods.

"Here it comes, Chuck!" He yelled from behind a thick pine grove.

The buck was headed straight for me.

I lifted the gun and pulled the trigger without aiming through the scope.

The buck did not fall but stopped dead in its tracks. It blinked at me a few times. Both the deer and I could not believe I missed that shot.

The animal turned around, flashed me his white tail and ran in the opposite direction.

Kaboom!

Down it went.

"Way to go Chuck! You got it!" shouted Mark.

He showed me how to cut off the scent glands on the deer’s legs and the proper place to put the blade of the knife, just under the white fur on the belly of the deer in order to gut it properly.

I helped him lift the white tail so that the blood would drain from the cavity we had cut.

It took both of us to drag that ten point out of the woods and put it on the back of his pick-up.

When we made it back to hunting camp, Mark told everyone that I shot that buck right between the eyes on the first shot.

I didn’t understand why he gave me the credit, especially when I didn’t share my last cup of warm cocoa with him.

Lizard

Dad sometimes digs around and tries to find out the dirt on mom’s side of the family.

He’s still very bitter that my mom left him.

I mentioned my mother’s mother in a conversation.

“Oh, you mean Lizard?” he asked.

I laughed hysterically.

Her name is Elizabeth.

“Did you always call her Lizard?”

“Hell yes! When I first started dating your mother, I came up with that nickname for her. When I came to pick your mom up to take her to the drive-in, your grandmother would wait for me on the front porch. She’d order me take her and all the kids to Dairy Queen before we started our date.”

I laughed loudly and said “I bet she licked that cone just like Lizard.”

He laughed too and claims he never thought about that, but yes, she did look like a lizard.

Doing Them All

Mormons are so old fashioned.

So many wives and so little time to do them all...

That’s how the world once was, you know.

Tons of wives everywhere. Some men had twelve.

But here we all are, with the exception of the Mormons, waiting for death to part us so we can go get some strange.

I’m “married” again and going on five years. Before I said “I do”, I presented my partner with a list of rules:

“I can never me monogamous,” I promised.

Here I am again being monogamous and I don’t know why.

“We’re going out tonight and see what pops off,” he said.

I pretended like I could care less, but was actually salivating inside.

We rode into Chelsea to see what was up. We were bored in no time and decided to head home instead.

There he was– that dude I have seen for years in various places throughout town. I had him once, back in the ‘90s. Yummy! Damn! There he was cruising my lover and I.

I knew he wanted my partner and not I. After all, we already had each other and it’s never as good as the first time.

He must have been coming home from the gym. He had his bag and was still dressed in sweat pants and a wife beater.

He followed us off the train and down DeKalb Avenue.

I just knew something was going to pop off.

We made it to our door and my lover said to me “Yuck! Don’t you ever bring a tired queen like that home with us.”

The stranger heard it too.

I felt sorry for him, but could care less, I’ve thrown myself at him lots of times over the years and he passed it by.

It could have been fun– the three of us.

But we’re monogamous.

A New Pair of Lady Slippers

The Pink Lady Slipper is a rare orchid that grows only under ideal environmental conditions like found in the rolling hills of the Appalachian mountains.



The delicate flower prefers a cool, damp environment and soil with lots of decomposing organic matter.



It takes root among wild ferns and it's best to search for them near mountain streams.



When stumbling upon a patch of Pink Lady Slippers, it’s like walking into a mystical wonderland.



Ladyslippers grow like weeds on Jack’s Mountain, my childhood home.



My grandmother and I searched for them in May and carried them around in bouquets like tulips.



They stand on a stem almost 8" long. Two large light-green leaves support the base of the stem, and at the top is a tissue like floral bulb shaped like an Indian Moccasin.



Grandma attempted to dig up the roots and plant some in her garden, but they seemed only to want to grow in a certain patch of woodland along the south side of Jack’s Mountain.



One day, while walking hand in hand with my grandmother, I spotted two yellow Lady Slippers growing alongside all the pink ones.



We sensed magic after spotting those two slippers.



We refused to pick them, but held them in the palms of our hands.



It was like touching the wings of an angel.



“I have eight children, Charlie, but none of them are like you,” she said to me as we walked out of the woodland back to civilization.



Mothers always know when their sons are destined to wear lady slippers.

Death

"I can’t see the light! Oh no, I can’t see the light! Mamma, help me," cried Shawn as his liver failed and the toxins entered his blood stream.

What does one do when a loved one hallucinates, loses their mind and begins to die in sheer panic?

His cries of paranoia were so real. I wanted to see what he was so afraid of and chase it away.

He was in another world, perhaps hell itself.

"I have to get you to a hospital," I assured my fading friend while noticing he had pissed all lover the bed.

The urine was dark brown.

The angel of death was in the room, but she didn’t scare me.

“Back off, bitch, he’s mine,” I mumbled as chills rushed up my spine and I tried to calm him down.

He screamed and fought the paramedics and police. They called for back-up.

It took seven uniformed me to drag him from the house in his derranged state and strap him down on a stretcher.

I knew it was best for him. But the way they took him out of our home was brutal.

If I hadn’t been there to calm him down, he may have busted out of the restraints they had him in.

Hospital staff face death so calmly. The injected him with something and his screams of pure hell diminished and he grew silent.

“What was he talking about? Why was he screaming so loudly?” I asked the professionals at Brooklyn Hospital Center.

“He needs a liver transplant. He was acting that way because his liver is failing.”

Crazy people carry a certain conviction in their delusions that seem to seep into the reality of the sane. I could do nothing but tell him to hold on and that I was going to help him.
His body was bleeding in numerous places. Red rivers of life sustaining liquid, the color of love, flowed from his mouth.

"He wasn’t bleeding at home. Where did all this blood come from? What are you doing to him?" I cried loudly like my insane lover.

He opened his eyes and for the first time since the onset of the hallucination he said something coherent--"Hold your head up."

A stranger in the emergency room who was standing close by walked over to me and said, "Pray over him. He wants you to stop being sad and hold up your head. Now pray over him," she ordered like a Rabbi.

Words flowed from my mouth like the blood from my lovers lips. The commotion of the emergency room subsided as his body started to tremble and the bed on which he was strapped shook.

My hands trembled as they remained glued to his body during the laying of hands.

I couldn’t stop the flow of the words. They continued to spew from my mouth, and for a moment, the prayer itself seemed to be the purpose of my entire life.

I spoke things that were not coming from my conscious mind and known vocabulary, but rather, an ancient language consumed me, one that I only knew while laying hands on the body of my departing friend.

An old Black woman grabbed my arm and said, "I hope your friend makes it. I will pray for him too."

“Get away from me, bitch!” I shouted as I felt a draining of energy while she touched my arm during the prayer.
The pain and agony left his face. He seemed to be at peace and finally, I let go.

Burger Queens

I stopped by the Burger King on 54th Street and picked up a Whopper just because it seemed hilarious to me that New Yorkers eat food from that particular fast food joint.

The smell of hot grease brought back memories.

I remember when the Burger King was a theater-- a movie theater that showed nothing but gay porn movies on the big screen, twenty-four hours a day.

Mostly old men frequented the place, although on Friday nights, it was the place to be.

I picked off the pickles from my huge burger and remembered what the old stomping ground was once like.

Sesame seeds fell onto the table and I brushed them onto the floor as I reminisced about those guys who paid $10 at the front door for a glimpse of real motion pictures and got a little more than what they bargained for.

All the bath houses, with the exception of Mt. Morris in Harlem were closed down, and “The New David” theatre was one of only a handful of places where popper sniffing queers could go to line up at glory holes in the early Nineties.

My lover and I decided to see a movie one evening at the New David, just for kicks.

We were shit faced and ventured into all the dark, lonely corridors of the place, getting a glimpse of what gay life was like before HIV started showing up in all those Happy Meals.

They were still fisting as if they were in a boxing match.

I bit into my Whopper and spit out the stale bun and rubber like beef patty as I suddenly remembered how the place once smelled.

I had no business eating in there even though they did clean the place up.

An old man with white hair approached my lover and I and offered us the strangest gift the night we went to the New David.

He gave us little cardboard boxes with Chicklets gum inside.

“I own the company,” he said to us.

“I love this gum,” I said to him while brushing his cold lonely hand from my crotch.

“Do you really think he owns the chewing gum factory?” my lover inquired as we left the place blowing bubbles.

“I bet he does. Why else would an old man give away candy to young men like us inside a gay porn theatre?”

“At least they don’t sell popcorn there,” he said as we jumped in a taxi and rushed home.

Birthday Cake

"You’re invited,” an E-vite proclaimed from my inbox.

“Will you make Steve a birthday cake again this year?” a separate e-mail from my closest friend, Sue demanded.

I checked off the little box that indicated I would be there and filled out the comments section with: “I’ll be there with my cake filled with secret herbs and spices.”

I knew that would get the co-workers and friends from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office shooting back and forth high speed instant messages.

“Sue is inviting that fag from her job again?” they likely said to one another. “What does he mean by secret herbs?” they probably asked via modem.

I go to Sue’s husband’s birthday party year after year and I don’t know why. There is no weed and they drink like fish.

Striking up conversations with people from her husband’s job is not easy. What could I possible have to say of interest to those model citizens as we share pieces of celery dipped in Sue’s special dipping sauce: Miracle Whip and relish?

So what, Sue and I don’t work at a job where we get to throw the guilty behind bars. We are Starbucks employees. She’s married to a District Attorney and my husband knows the system very well.

We take our breaks together and sit at the little table next to the window facing Eighth Avenue and brag about our men.

“Steve’s got a big dick. He’s been working out. He always wants to fuck me when he gets home from the gym. Do you think he’s gay?” she once asked me.

“I don’t think so, girl. How big is it?” I asked while pouring a blue pack of equal in my latte.

She isn’t even one bit jealous when I say those things.

“So are you finally going to leave Bradley or what? Seriously Charles, get your self a man with more money and we can go shopping on our breaks together,” she tempts.

“I don’t know girl, I can’t leave Bradley. He loved me when nobody else would. When I gained 40 pounds, he still made love to me like I was Paris Hilton!”

“So what, he’s broke and you said he got a little dick.”

“I only said that when I was mad at him. I lied Sue, really I did. He’s hung to the knees.”

“You are so full of shit,” she said as we rushed back to our position at the frothers.

“If I see that bitch looking at my husband’s ass again this year, I’ll scratch his eyes out,” Sue’s husband’s co-workers said to each other on cell phones while I spent my Saturday baking a birthday cake for the husband of a co-worker.

I pulled my aluminum cake pan from the cupboard, the one shaped like a football, and worked my magic.

Of course there were no secret herbs mixed into the Duncan Hines mix, 1/4 cup of oil, three eggs and a half-cup of water.

I only added a little party inspiration. Straight men love football, and my football cake turns more eyes than a big set of firm tits on a kept woman.

I makes the boys wonder and wander.

I simply grabbed a glob of Crisco and greased the inside of the pan and shook it around with a little flour to coat the mold.

It only takes two minutes to mix the cake ingredients at high speed.

I popped the dream cake into the oven.

“Bradley, you should really come to this party with me. My co-workers have never met you and I have met all of their husbands and wives.”

“Fuck that! I’m not going to a party with a bunch of lawyers from the D.A.’s office.”

“You should, the next time your ass gets locked up, you’ll have someone to call.”

“You don’t ever make me cakes. You always bake and decorate them for your friends,” he said while sitting on the sofa and stealing glances of my big round bootie as I bent over to insert the cake in the pre-heated oven, set at 375.

I really didn’t want him coming along anyway. I always manage to find a closet case or two running around the rooms of Sue and Steve’s large apartment and the party is not as boring as it may sound.

I made my icing from scratch. One box of confectioner’s sugar combined with a half cup each of butter and shortening makes the best frosting this side of Antarctica.

Some of the icing remained white, a glob was colored dark brown and a little was shaded light brown with my special food coloring, made specifically for cake icing.

I sat there all afternoon with a pastry bag, and slowly dotted the surface of the cake football with the different shades of icing.

Eventually, I was left with a cake that made MacArthur’s Park look like junk food and as if someone had left it out in the rain.

Those married men at the party love my cooking.

The girls stand there with their mouths hanging wide open as I remind them of how women once were.

Sue thinks it’s hysterical when all those girls from the D.A.’s office who try to get a little piece of her husband’s big cake are upstaged by an old jaded queen who has a husband too damn fine to waste time on a Saturday night mingling with fat attorneys who don’t have a bitch who can burn like me!

I left the party early this year as soon as the Grey Goose was gone.

My ride was bored and wanted to go so I sneaked away before saying good-bye to my co-worker and thanking her for the hospitality.

Bradley was out fucking around again. It was 2:30 a.m. and he wasn’t home.

He eventually stumbled in around 3:00, smelling like a sweaty jockstrap in Steve’s clothes hamper.

I didn’t say a thing and pretended to be sleeping when he crawled into the bed like a cake in a molded pan, being slid into a pre-heated oven.

As he slid his pastry bag into me, I imagined myself back at the party with the D.A.’s with long dockets.

“Who bitch are you?” Bradley asked.

“Yours and only yours,” I said over and over again as I let them eat cake.

Lesbian Lust

I have new neighbors. They moved into the top floor apartment. Nobody ever stays for long in that space.

I told the landlord that $1,600 a month is way too much to charge for the place, although there are three bedrooms up there.

The landlord is Black but still insists that from now on only white folks will be renting from him.

“Lenox, that is very immature,” I said. “You cannot judge all Black people based on the track record of others who have lived here.”

“You must understand my situation. I have lost far too much money from those ghetto bastards who move in and don’t pay me their rent,” he said with his hands on his hips and his ugly red afro blowing in the wind.

“That’s because you always sleep with your tenants. Business is business, and pleasure is pleasure,” I explained.

“Tyler did have some good ass,” he said, while reconsidering his decision to allow a lesbian couple, Tonya and Sonja to take the place.

“I knew you were fucking him. Oh well, who am I to judge? I was too!”

We both laughed.

“Lesbians? You are letting dykes move in above me? There goes the neighborhood!” I shouted while slamming the door in his face.

A few moments later, he rang my bell again.

“What? What do you want from us?” I cried from behind the door.

There they were, Tonya and Sonja, my new neighbors.

“Tonya, Sonja, this is Charles and Bradley," Lenox said while introducing us.

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you , too!” “You guys don’t mind if we use the back yard do you?”

“That’s our back yard, you have the roof,” my partner explained.

I noticed Tonya forming a fist, and knew that there will soon be trouble in paradise.

They stomped off like Mike Tysons with long hair and we slapped each other a high five and offered one another double Z snaps.

“Bradley, if I see those dykes in the back yard I’m going to throw something at them.” “You can see inside our apartment from the backyard, I don’t want them back there either,” he said.

This morning, they slipped an invitation under the door inviting us to a bar-b-q in the back yard tomorrow evening.

I slipped an invitation under their door too, inviting them to the sex party at our place tomorrow night.

I’m not even going to pull the curtains closed.

German Broads

I met Fran while stationed in Hanau.

Her parents ran a guest house right outside the military base.

Fran ran a home based business of sorts in one of the rooms of the guest house.

All the guys in the barracks had her at one time or another.

Even I paid her twenty bucks for some head one drunken evening.

She had the nastiest, roughest, under lubricated bird I ever flew into.

I never liked that part of her, but the mouth was nice.

Eventually, the blow jobs bored me and I went on down there again.

"Wow, that was good. What did you do? Are you using KY?"

“No, that stuff is expensive. I just picked the scabs and let the puss run,” she explained with her German accent.

Father Mercy

“Give me that, child of the dark!”

“Tis mine. I found it first, go away vampire.”

“I will punch you in the face and knock out your fangs if you do not hand it over.”

“Be gone with you. You have no power here. I will tie you to a stake and allow the sun to rise upon your skin.”

“You weak fool. Don’t threaten me. You run at the sight of a crucifix! Why should I fear you?”

“Lighten up, Lestat. It’s only a bloody tampon.”

Brotherly Love-- By Father Mercy

He’s always in my way.

He always leaves his toys all over the house.

Daddy’s little chip off the old block—what am I?

I’m sick of my parents and that little brother of mine.

Just last night he ruined my life again, the little bastard.

I was hanging out in the park smoking some good stuff with Troy and Jeff and came home because I had the munchies something bad.

There was lots of celery in the ice box, that’s about it.

Not the stuff that hits the spot.

There it was—a container of Pringles sitting next to his stuffed animals on the sofa.

Wasn’t much left, so I popped off the plastic lid and tapped the bottom of the red cylinder and captured every last morsel.

I slept good last night, and he woke me up screaming—asking mom who took his scab collection.

Little brothers are a pain.

Father Mercy

When they took away my mother and father, a great fear consumed me. I

knew what was going to happen to them. We all knew it was a gas chamber and they were killing us like cattle.

The life in the eyes of the soldiers was dark and animalistic.

Darkness like nothing I have ever known was inside those eyes.

There was nothing human about them. They did as they were commanded and did not think for themselves.

The souls of my mother and father escaped through the smoke stacks of the shower house.

I watched them go from the court yard and could hear my father’s voice in the smoke.

We all wanted to bathe and felt filthy from the stench of illness and cough.

My mother, the beautiful gypsy woman, knew it wasn’t a shower being offered to those being led astry.

She held me close the night before they took her.

I will never forget her warmth and love.

The Land of Cotton

They resented me for my youthful beauty, but it was I who showed my people the way out of bondage.

I never had to pick the cotton.

My life was destined to be easy because of my charm and beauty.

My room was in the big house. Massa Levine made sure of that. I slept close to him, but far enough away where we could not be heard when he came to see me at night.

He told me he loved me sometimes, especially when he stood at the foot of the bed and I brought him his supper, served up right, as I backed my way to the metal rails at the end of the bed.

I loved him too.

I pretended like it hurt, only because that’s what he desired. Anything was better than picking cotton in the hot sun and living down back with them.

I loved taking baths. That’s all I really had to do.

Sometimes I helped the others downstairs, but I didn’t have to. I soaked my life away and knew my place.

I knew how to make him cry, though, just like a baby he would whimper when he called my name.

I would wait until I saw that look in his eyes—the meanness and sweat and I took a deep breath and imagined myself as cotton, and allowed my blossom to pop open as he picked me night after night.

"Look away," he would shout, "Look away!"

I didn't blink until he was done.

Father Mercy

I’ve sat in the booth for decades and nothing has turned my little white collar.

One day, a non-parishioner came stepping into the confessional.

“Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. I am not Catholic and have never been to confession.”

“Why are you here,” I asked the woman with the piercing brown eyes.

“I sold my soul.”

“How much did you get for it?” I inquired.

“Two hundred.”

The spirit entered me. I looked at her and replied, “Child, you are forgiven. Anyone who paid you two hundred is the one who committed the sin.”

“Thank you Father. God is truly merciful isn’t he?”

“Yes he is. But next time offer him some for free and watch how bread is supposed to be broken.”

“I feel so much better now. Where is the wine?” she asked.

“Are you married?”

“Yes, with two children.”

“You cannot pour old wine into new wine skins, but you can drinketh from my rod and staff if it will take the edge off.”

“One hundred,” she said.

“Fifty,” I replied.

“Cheap Jew bastard!” she shouted while running from the church.

Many are called, but few are chosen, I reminded myself.

Tacos and Chopsticks

The Mexican ladies of Brooklyn are not illegal, nor are the short men they call their husbands.

I see them in the laundry, rushing around pushing those metal carts almost as big as they are.

They are so cute.

I could put an entire family in one and push them down Bedford Avenue like a bag lady hauling her cans off to be recycled for five cents a pop.

Don’t send them home. I enjoy the doing my laundry with them. Although, I’m too tight to pay them extra to wash and fold for me.

I do my own wash in their machines that are much bigger than they are, especially the triple loader– I could wash an entire family in one for $4.75 plus the cost of detergent and fabric softener.

They all stick together, those Mexicans. I notice that especially while in the laundry. They save money by banning together as a community and doing their laundry. They rent out all the triple loaders and fill one with whites, one with darks and one with delicates.

I just don’t know how they manage to separate everything when the loads are done. They seem to know who owns the white sock with the orange stripes and who has the bra with the worn out elastic.

They look at me like I’m crazy when I rent out those triple loaders and wash only a few pieces at a time in the large machines.

“What are you looking at Mexican? This is America. We don’t have droughts here. Get a grip. Wake up! Stop living like it’s the end of times,” I say as I do my wash like a white woman and take over all the machines, like a Mexican heading over the boarder.

They hate me because I can reach that little compartment at the top of the triple loader and pour in my soap without using a ladder.

“It’s in the genes folks. Don’t be haters,” I sing while shaking the wrinkles from my jeans that I dry in machines at the Mexican laundry.

The Chinese ladies of Brooklyn and their husbands who ride bicycles are envious of the Mexican migrant workers.

It’s easier to work at a laundry and sort out socks in American than it is to fry rice all day and deliver it on bicycles along with fortune cookies.

And they are outnumbered, two to one, here in the Western Hemisphere.

Purple Barrons

It is silly to try and capture the nature of a dream while writing.

You had to be there to understand this dream, but no doubt, some of you were there because I saw you.

It happened last night in my sleep; one of those lucid dreams where I knew I was dreaming.

There we were, a bunch of us, riding down the highway in a Pontiac. The car was the size of a boat. There had to be at least fifty in that car.

It reminded me of childhood when the entire family packed into my grandfather’s boat and we headed down Route 22 to Boyer Town, an amusement park.

We came upon an open field, a place similar to Woodstock in the dream.

I’m not sure what we were doing there, perhaps it was a Dolly Pardon concert.

I was the one who first noticed the two lights in the sky and pointed to what appeared to be a constellation.

I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, but as soon as I did, down came the unidentified flying objects.

Everyone ran away with the exception of my brother Sean and I. We stood there and watched, fearlessly.

I haven’t seen Sean in at least four years. He’s busy with his life now and so am I.

The phone rang and awoke me from my dream.

It was Sean.

"You are an uncle again. Cathy had a little boy last night."

"What did you name him?"

"Barron"

That’s nice. Oh, that’s weird," I said.

"What?"

"I had a dream about you last night."

"You did?"

"Yes," I explained, but didn’t bother telling him about the silly UFOs.

"Do you know it has been four years since grand pap died?"

"Has it been that long? My God!"

Perhaps I should have told him my dream, because now I understand its meaning.

My grandfather is born again.

Bigger Love

It’s time to paint my apartment.

I’m feeling refreshed, in love and ready to move on with life again.

It’s time for new curtains, a new area rug and hell, not only am I getting a new computer but also one of those flat screen televisions.

I deserve it!

Yes, it is now officially my place. I have concluded that Shawn will not return from the dead and I can finally throw all of his things out in the trash and move on with my life.

I’m keeping that big black thing inside the cardboard box in the hallway closet though. When I redecorate the place after the painting, that magical luminous lighting fixture is going to replace the ugly lamp in my living room.

I believe the contraption inside that cardboard box is used to grow bud.

I’m not sure though.

My dead husband was so fucking smart. He must have known that the family would sweep in after his suicide and take everything but that “illegal” machine.

It was too heavy to carry so the family left it with me to dispose of along with hundreds if not thousands of porn tapes.

I didn’t go in that closet for years. Piles and piles of VHS pornography were stacked to the ceiling covering the magical cardboard box.

I finally got tired of crying and decided that after four years I needed more closet space, so I looked inside that box.

When I noticed the cigar box inside the black machine, I figured it was his stash of pot, which by now would have dried out totally.

But what do you know--- cash!
Lots of it.

Is it any wonder I cannot stop loving him.
So what does a bi-polar, jaded queen do when she finds another gift from her dead lover?

She takes her new man on vacation.

We’re off to Puerto Rico again!

Wee! It’s so fun being gay, I swear to God!

Several of Shawn’s friends knew of his magical weed machine. Since I don’t smoke they all called asking for it.

I was too lazy to pull it out of the closet from behind all that porn.

“No. You cannot have that. It’s the only thing his family did not steal from me when he died,” I explained.

It’s quite amazing, that mirrored fixture that stands about five feet tall. Behind the one way mirrors are rows and rows of fluorescent lights that make it possible for tropical foliage to flourish even in the most bitter of climates.

Wow, if I had only found that cash when he first died, I would no longer be in this town.

But hell, I have a new man now, just as hot as Shawn, so why would I want to leave New York City?

“No Ray-Ray, we are not going to use that thing. The electric bill is high enough. Besides, what happens if we get caught growing weed?”

“It’s for medicinal purposes. Tell them you are bi-polar and self-medicating,” my partner suggested.

“Look outside the window, dumb ass. Those are not marigolds! I have a plan for your birthday next month.”

“No, you cannot afford to take me to Puerto Rico again this year.”

“Yes I can. I have been saving up for years for this trip and by the way, we’re redecorating the entire place and this black box is going to be the focal point of my new interior design.”

“Finally! You are going to let me grow some pot?”

“Hell no, that’s for my vegetables but I could use some help smoking all of this!”

“Do you still love him more than me?”

“Yes, but he loves us both! Don’t you see?”

Wet Dreams

“Oh Charlie, you could fuck-up a wet dream,” were the words used to describe the process of manhood to me.

I always associated a wet dream with doing something wrong. I did not understand what my father was saying when he used that cliche.

I discovered masturbation before I discovered the wet dream. There was not a lot of lava left in my balls to cause a volcano in my dreams very often.

I wacked off at least seven times a day– but who was counting?

When those dreams did come along there was something strange about what was ejaculated.

Messy and pungent those globs were. No mater how much Clorox mom used, those white skivvies had received the mark of the beast.

The goddess herself reaches down and touches our private spots, molesting us in our childhood dreams and wakes us to a reality that sets us free.

“Father forgive me, for I am about to sin,” I said in my first wet dream as my pecker grew to a size somewhat larger than a succulent cob if corn dipped in butter.

We are lit on fire in our sleep. From head to toe we burn like a wildfire in a California canyon. Eventually the great pain within is dipped in cool refreshing mountain waters and for one brief moment our lust is gone.

Pop, pop, pop, like pop corn in hot oil we explode.

Relaxation takes over and that edge that makes young men so jumpy vanishes.

We are born yet again.

A few moments later the longing for that release comes back.

Our dicks get hard again.

We have become men and wack off at least seven times a day, but who actually counts those waking dreams?

I always felt sorry for the girls.

Purple Acres

Grandma Taylor was sexy in her seventies.

She was Irish, single, free- spirited and considered hard to catch buy county studs.

Her bright orange hair made her famous in town.

It was her real color and only a handful of men who saved their pennies made her rainy day and were permitted to wander down into that other bright red patch.

I loved her self-assuredness. Never did she doubt her good- looks and knack for survival in a male dominated society.

I lived my childhood walking alongside a woman who had coats thrown down in front of her and doors opened by men who took off their hats in awe.

I absolutely loved it!

I was royalty and learned at four how queens run empires.

She had already married another man following the death of Grandpa George before I was born.

She dumped her second husband when I came along, but kept his last name.

The years before kinder-garden, I waited along a dusty road for her to come home from work each evening.

I stood at the end of our chestnut orchard near the mailbox and waited to hear the sound of her Chrysler. She didn’t like me taking out the mail before she got there. It was almost a sin to open that little tin door and take out the mail and hold it for her.

“Keep your hands out of that box or I’ll kick your ass,” she threatened.

I often did it anyway just to see the day my grandmother would give me a spanking.

That day never came.

Two miles in the distance one could see dusty flying from the dirt road. It was Grandma Staub hauling ass home.

I quickly reached inside and pulled out the mail for her.

It was wonderful seeing her come home to me.

The long tin box with a red flag often was filled with garden catalogues, sweepstakes prizes, speeding tickets and bills. There was tons of mail in that box each day. I learned to read the word ‘Staub’ before the name ‘Taylor’ waiting for the woman who knew many men.

“The mailman gave me a lollipop today.”

“That will rot your teeth.”

“He asked how you are,”

“Tell him none of his damn business if he asks you again.”

“Why?”

“If I ever marry another man he is going to be rich and good looking. Martin is far from that.” She stopped for the mail everyday, picked me up and we drove up a long and winding driveway to her pink trailer.

“I wish your mother and daddy would stop fighting. I don’t want to lose you.”

“You’ll never lose me, Me Me!”

But she did.

“I told your daddy he could have the farm if he would stop drinking. But he couldn’t,” she explained to me years later when I went to visit her in St. Petersburg.

“That’s okay. I’m happy now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, go ahead live your life.”

“Well, I did meet this nice guy Sam. He’s a millionaire you know.”

I winked at her and told her Sam’s place was a lot more comfortable than her little pink trailer.

“How did you meet him?”

“I was working in my garden and he drove up to buy some apples. I was bent over picking weeds and he saw my big fat ass and fell in love.”

I laughed and urged her to sell that old lonely farm that belonged to George.

“You know, Charlie. Every year when we drive down here we stay at these fancy hotels.”

“Do you take the towels?” I asked.

“No I don’t have to any longer. Sam never wants sex until we stay in those hotels. It’s so funny, his old pecker gets stiff only in a hotel bed.”

“Grandma, I’m only sixteen.”

“It makes me wonder what he did in hotels, years ago.”

“He’s probably into hookers,” I said.

“Watch your mouth young man or I’ll kick your ass! I’m not a hooker.”

“I didn’t mean that, Meme.”

“I know. I know.”

Slaves and Sluts

He always gets up before the alarm.

Sharply at 5:55 a.m. he arises and pierces into my dormant cocoon, melting my dreams into reality as daylight sets in again.

I can do nothing but keep my head resting on mounds of pillows as he himself lifts the sun into the heavens above.

“I have to pee stop!” I cried.

“Shut-up and take it like a man, Bitch!”

“Yes master, yes!”

Eternity

It once saddened me that you go on like you do.

Going where exactly?

So that’s it? We get only a hundred years or so years and it ends like a motion picture?

Oh honey, when you are gone, they are going to sale your shit and go on a nice vacation, and you know it.

Now really. Think about it. Wouldn’t you?

Stop reading your own reviews and come down to earth for a moment.

What did your great-grandmother do for a living?

Isn’t she worth remembering?

Keep going on like you do.

It no longer saddens me.

I am your great-grandmother.

Burger Queen

I stopped by the Burger King on 54th Street and picked up a Whopper just because it seemed hilarious to me that New Yorkers eat food from that particular fast food joint.

The smell of hot grease brought back memories.

I remember when the Burger King was a theater-- a movie theater that showed nothing but gay porn movies on the big screen, twenty-four hours a day.

Mostly old men frequented the place, although on Friday nights, it was the place to be.

I picked off the pickles from my huge burger and remembered what the old stomping ground was once like.

Sesame seeds fell onto the table and I brushed them onto the floor as I reminisced about those guys who paid $10 at the front door for a glimpse of real motion pictures and got a little more than what they bargained for.

All the bath houses, with the exception of Mt. Morris in Harlem were closed down, and “The New David” theatre was one of only a handful of places where popper sniffing queers could go to line up at glory holes in the early Nineties.

My lover and I decided to see a movie one evening at the New David, just for kicks.

We were shit faced and ventured into all the dark, lonely corridors of the place, getting a glimpse of what gay life was like before HIV started showing up in all those Happy Meals.

They were still fisting as if they were in a boxing match.

I bit into my Whopper and spit out the stale bun and rubber like beef patty as I suddenly remembered how the place once smelled.

I had no business eating in there even though they did clean the place up.

An old man with white hair approached my lover and I and offered us the strangest gift the night we went to the New David.

He gave us little cardboard boxes with Chicklets gum inside.

“I own the company,” he said to us.

“I love this gum,” I said to him while brushing his cold lonely hand from my crotch.

“Do you really think he owns the chewing gum factory?” my lover inquired as we left the place blowing bubbles.

“I bet he does. Why else would an old man give away candy to young men like us inside a gay porn theatre?”

“At least they don’t sell popcorn there,” he said as we jumped in a taxi and rushed home.

Tinkering

Bill built a tool shed in the back yard behind his wood pile. It was a place to go to escape the never ending mouth of his beloved wife, Liz.

A man needs a place to go to tinker. Some guys like to work on motors in their cars, others will write until the sun comes up, yet some simply like to piss away time in tool sheds.

Women believe they have committed husbands when their men disappear for hours ‘at work’ on busy little projects in the garage or outback.

Girls do the dishes, mop the floor and throw in a couple loads of laundry while the boys do the hard stuff like wood chopping, mowing laws and fixing machines that break down.

Bill could never have enough wood to chop. Those high- tech hydraulic devices that split logs with a simple pull of a lever made his outdoor time go by way too fast. He got rid of his gasoline powered wood splitter and went back to the basics—an axe.

He’d balance pieces of oak and maple atop a thick tree stump and slam her down.

All day long in the summer sun he chopped his wood into smaller and smaller pieces, getting ready for the long cold winter ahead.

Liz would yell out the kitchen window at him, “Hurry up and get your ass in here Bill, I want to wash those dirty jeans you got on.”

“Don’t wait for me. I have a lawn mower to fix when I’m done here,” he yelled back with a Pal Mal dangling from the corner of his mouth and a six pack of cold brew waiting for him inside the small tool shed.

He decorated his shed the way he liked it. There were no knick-knacks taking up space in there. Only the antlers of deer, a few turkey feathers and a squirrel tail or two brightened the dull, unfinished walls of the shed.

It pissed Liz off as the summer went by and the wood pile grew taller and taller.

By the end of June, Bill would manage to hide his shed behind a wall of fire wood.

Only then was it safe to pull out that six pack and the greatest invention since the wood splitter and cigarettes—“Penthouse Magazine”.

After Bill died Liz decided to tear down the tool shed to make room for a flower bed.

“You wouldn’t believe all the nails that were in the dirt when I tried making a flower bed there,” my grandmother told me.

She didn’t mention those magazines that I grew up on as a child. Perhaps he was smart enough to burn them before he died.

Unlimited Terror

A cynaide attack in the New York City subway system was aborted because terrorist did not have unlimited ride MetroCards.

The Transit Authority’s decision to raise the subway fares to $2 each way in 2002 may have saved thousands of lives and is proof that Homeland Security efforts are working.

Al Qaida decided not to follow through with their plans to unleash a second wave of attacks on New York City simply because like so many others in this town, they could not even afford to get on the subway.

Straphangers learn years later that they were only moments away from falling onto subway platforms and kicking like roaches sprayed with Raid.

The news comes as a planned, coordinated effort by homegrown terrorist-- those who are at risk of losing billions of dollars in Homeland Security funds which helps to pay for summer homes in the Hamptons.

Bin Laden is proving what he wanted to prove about America and its media.

The news was not worth reporting when New Yorkers could have taken steps to protect themselves.

Only when the budget was cut, did our leaders decide to tell us the truth about who the real terrorists are.

Slaves and Sluts

“You’re invited,” an E-vite proclaimed from my inbox.

“Will you make Steve a birthday cake again this year?” a separate e-mail from my closest friend, Sue demanded.

I checked off the little box that indicated I would be there and filled out the comments section with: “I’ll be there with my cake filled with secret herbs and spices.”

I knew that would get the co-workers and friends from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office shooting back and forth high speed instant messages.

“Sue is inviting that fag from her job again?” they likely said to one another. “What does he mean by secret herbs?” they probably asked via modem.

I go to Sue’s husband’s birthday party year after year and I don’t know why. There is no weed and they drink like fish.

Striking up conversations with people from her husband’s job is not easy. What could I possible have to say of interest to those model citizens as we share pieces of celery dipped in Sue’s special dipping sauce: Miracle Whip and relish?

So what, Sue and I don’t work at a job where we get to throw the guilty behind bars. We are Starbucks employees. She’s married to a District Attorney and my husband knows the system very well.

We take our breaks together and sit at the little table next to the window facing Eighth Avenue and brag about our men.

“Steve’s got a big dick. He’s been working out. He always wants to fuck me when he gets home from the gym. Do you think he’s gay?” she once asked me.

“I don’t think so, girl. How big is it?” I asked while pouring a blue pack of equal in my latte.
She isn’t even one bit jealous when I say those things.

“So are you finally going to leave Bradley or what? Seriously Charles, get your self a man with more money and we can go shopping on our breaks together,” she tempts.

“I don’t know girl, I can’t leave Bradley. He loved me when nobody else would. When I gained 40 pounds, he still made love to me like I was Paris Hilton!”

“So what, he’s broke and you said he got a little dick.”

“I only said that when I was mad at him. I lied Sue, really I did. He’s hung to the knees.”

“You are so full of shit,” she said as we rushed back to our position at the frothers.

“If I see that bitch looking at my husband’s ass again this year, I’ll scratch his eyes out,” Sue’s husband’s co-workers said to each other on cell phones while I spent my Saturday baking a birthday cake for the husband of a co-worker.

I pulled my aluminum cake pan from the cupboard, the one shaped like a football, and worked my magic.

Of course there were no secret herbs mixed into the Duncan Hines mix, 1/4 cup of oil, three eggs and a half-cup of water.

I only added a little party inspiration. Straight men love football, and my football cake turns more eyes than a big set of firm tits on a kept woman.

I makes the boys wonder and wander.

I simply grabbed a glob of Crisco and greased the inside of the pan and shook it around with a little flour to coat the mold.

It only takes two minutes to mix the cake ingredients at high speed.

I popped the dream cake into the oven.

“Bradley, you should really come to this party with me. My co-workers have never met you and I have met all of their husbands and wives.”

“Fuck that! I’m not going to a party with a bunch of lawyers from the D.A.’s office.”

“You should, the next time your ass gets locked up, you’ll have someone to call.”

“You don’t ever make me cakes. You always bake and decorate them for your friends,” he said while sitting on the sofa and stealing glances of my big round bootie as I bent over to insert the cake in the pre-heated oven, set at 375.

I really didn’t want him coming along anyway. I always manage to find a closet case or two running around the rooms of Sue and Steve’s large apartment and the party is not as boring as it may sound.

I made my icing from scratch. One box of confectioner’s sugar combined with a half cup each of butter and shortening makes the best frosting this side of Antarctica.

Some of the icing remained white, a glob was colored dark brown and a little was shaded light brown with my special food coloring, made specifically for cake icing.

I sat there all afternoon with a pastry bag, and slowly dotted the surface of the cake football with the different shades of icing.

Eventually, I was left with a cake that made MacArthur’s Park look like junk food and as if someone had left it out in the rain.

Those married men at the party love my cooking.

The girls stand there with their mouths hanging wide open as I remind them of how women once were.

Sue thinks it’s hysterical when all those girls from the D.A.’s office who try to get a little piece of her husband’s big cake are upstaged by an old jaded queen who has a husband too damn fine to waste time on a Saturday night mingling with fat attorneys who don’t have a bitch who can burn like me!

I left the party early this year as soon as the Grey Goose was gone.

My ride was bored and wanted to go so I sneaked away before saying good-bye to my co-worker and thanking her for the hospitality.

Bradley was out fucking around again. It was 2:30 a.m. and he wasn’t home.

He eventually stumbled in around 3:00, smelling like a sweaty jockstrap in Steve’s clothes hamper.

I didn’t say a thing and pretended to be sleeping when he crawled into the bed like a cake in a molded pan, being slid into a pre-heated oven.

As he slid his pastry bag into me, I imagined myself back at the party with the D.A.’s with long dockets.

“Who bitch are you?” Bradley asked.

“Yours and only yours,” I said over and over again as I let them eat cake.

Lesbian Lust

I have new neighbors. They moved into the top floor apartment.

Nobody ever stays for long in that space.

I told the landlord that $1,600 a month is way too much to charge for the place, although there are three bedrooms up there.

The landlord is Black but still insists that from now on only white folks will be renting from him.

“Lenox, that is very immature,” I said. “You cannot judge all Black people based on the track record of others who have lived here.”

“You must understand my situation. I have lost far too much money from those ghetto bastards who move in and don’t pay me their rent,” he said with his hands on his hips and his ugly red afro blowing in the wind.

“That’s because you always sleep with your tenants. Business is business, and pleasure is pleasure,” I explained.

“Tyler did have some good ass,” he said, while reconsidering his decision to allow a lesbian couple, Tonya and Sonja to take the place.

“I knew you were fucking him. Oh well, who am I to judge? I was too!”

We both laughed.

“Lesbians? You are letting dykes move in above me? There goes the neighborhood!” I shouted while slamming the door in his face. A few moments later, he rang my bell again.

“What? What do you want from us?” I cried from behind the door.

There they were, Tonya and Sonja, my new neighbors.

“Tonya, Sonja, this is Charles and Bradley," Lenox said while introducing us.

“It’s nice to meet you.” “Nice to meet you , too!”

“You guys don’t mind if we use the back yard do you?”

“That’s our back yard, you have the roof,” my partner explained.

I noticed Tonya forming a fist, and knew that there will soon be trouble in paradise.

They stomped off like Mike Tysons with long hair and we slapped each other a high five and offered one another double Z snaps.

“Bradley, if I see those dykes in the back yard I’m going to throw something at them.”

“You can see inside our apartment from the backyard, I don’t want them back there either,” he said.

This morning, they slipped an invitation under the door inviting us to a bar-b-q in the back yard tomorrow evening.

I slipped an invitation under their door too, inviting them to the sex party at our place tomorrow night.

I’m not even going to pull the curtains closed.

Poor Lenox can never find people to stay in that place upstairs.

Saving Souls for a Rainy Day

It takes a long time to say good-bye to the spirit of one who dies with a strong addiction or from suicide.

Ghosts from those who cannot let go of their attachments to worldly things will hang around for centuries if no one takes the time or cares enough to tell them they have actually died and its time to move on.

Watch out when those spirits learn that you can sense them. An entire posse of addicts suffering from unimaginable withdrawal symptoms will call upon you to fulfill their every need like they did to me when my third eye popped opened and I was left hanging in the third dimension without any formal training.

The light—what is it about the light that frightens so many, yet others seem to walk right into it?

What is the light exactly?

The light is the miracle of life and is the gateway to the eternity we are already a part of. It is a process, the light-- as natural as childbirth and death. It is where we squeeze ourselves back inside something as small as a sperm yet as large as the universe itself.

Sure there is no guarantee we will be the winner of the great race again this time, but what other options are there?

I have led many spirits with strong attachments to that light. Call me Rita Miller if it seems appropriate and far fetched, but who you gonna call when you find yourself walking around like Sam, from the movie ‘Ghost’?

There are psychic readers everywhere in town these days. “Special Reading $5” their sings tempt passers by and tourists. I laugh, especially at those crystal balls.

It’s all a big scam in my opinion. Don’t waste your cash. Anyone with the real gift will explain that there is no guaranteed way to predict the future and those voices that some hear from the other side know nothing more than you or I.

“Well what are those voices telling you?” Dr. Redd asked sarcastically before admitting me.

“They are not actually voices. They are intuitions,” I responded.

“Well, do you want to harm yourself?”

“No! Why would I want to do that?”

“What is it that you want exactly?”

“I want them to leave me alone for a while.”

“Alright,” she said, “We can manage that.”

The antidepressants made it worse. I was like a sponge for those in suffering while flying high on those drugs. Never in my life have I experienced the pleasure I experienced when those drugs first started working.

I knew something was very wrong with the dosage when I picked up a sketch pad in the ward and starting sketching.

I could not believe those images were coming from my hands. How beautiful they were, especially the drawings of the things around me.

It all looked so perfect, so real. It seemed that those from the other side were giving me a little something for what I had shown them about the light or perhaps I had accidentally robbed them of a few things.

They came to me like infants crying for their mother searching for a way out and found themselves trapped inside my imagination.

“Stay for a while,” I insisted as my artistic skills improved day by day, I can get accustomed to this."

Then I heard the first real imaginary voice in my head, “Fuck-off. Leave us alone. We don’t want to live inside the mind of a fag!” they shouted in terror.

“Too bad,” I responded. “You should have headed into the light when I first told you to. Now you will forever be married to me.”

Just Say 'No'

There is a reason why I didn’t go to the morgue to see my lover’s body one last time. It was not because I cannot tolerate the sight of a corpse. I was in denial about his death and how it all ended so abruptly.

Four years have already passed and I am the only one who knows the truth.

He killed himself.

An overdose on Tylenol did the trick. How was I supposed to know that headache medicine, when used in bulk, will send us to an early grave?

Because we were not married, I did not have the legal right to order a blood transfusion. I told the doctor’s in the emergency room to proceed with whatever procedures were necessary to keep him alive.

The family held a different set of beliefs and threatened to sue me because I told them to go ahead with pouring someone else’s blood into his veins.

“Look lady, you may be his mother but I am his lover and this is New York City. I have rights.”

“I pray for your soul,” his momma told me over the phone, refusing to fly from Los Angeles to be at her son’s side during those last few moments.

The physician hinted at a suicide attempt but I cut him off at the pass.

“Tylenol? Tylenol caused this? How many did he take?”

“Lots of them. He had hepatitis and HIV. The chemicals from the drug are attacking his liver, which was already in a fragile state,” the doctor informed.

“He had what? Oh dear God. You must be joking!”

“Are you his partner?”

“Well, I suppose so. I mean it was all very weird, our relationship. But yes, yes, I am his lover.”

“He probably is not going to make it, perhaps you should start making arrangements.”

“Arrangements? Arrangements for what? He’s not going to die. Look he just moved when I touched him.”

“That’s nerves Mr. Taylor. Even if he does return he will not be the same. The toxins have already destroyed most of his brain.”

I went back to the house where we both lived together for only two short months.

I found a Valentine’s Day card I had given him two months ago lying on the window ledge. Inside was a thin rectangular Certs container filled with at least thirty Ecstasy pills.

I knew the suicide was real and from his death bed, and with my own words, he was asking me to follow him.

Aborting the Constitutional Amendment

I hope the Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage is passed.

What will Jim McGreevy and I do if they make our kind of love commonplace?

If we are freed and granted the same rights as everyone else, what fun will those trucker-sucker hot spots along the Jersey Turnpike be?

I can’t imagine a world where everyone embraces homosexuality. Young homosexuals will not grow up gifted if the oppression is erased from developing young gay minds.

If I am forced to watch two more gay male nerds suck face on the late night news I will puke.

Sure it’s important to show the news as fair and balanced, but why do the fags who read “Out” and “The Advocate” always take center stage when it comes time for fighting for our cause?

Has anyone else noticed that when CNN covers the gay marriage issue, they only spotlight commitment ceremonies of two prematurely balding, flamboyantly gay males who look like Elmer Fudd with Botox injections?

The lesbians they report on are also a waste of precious gay airtime. The dykes who kiss in churches as Anderson Cooper reports look like men who I’ve blown in turnpike rest stops.

The media is not making it sexy to be gay.

Our only hope of winning over America and our freedom is to first turn the heterosexuals on.

Start showing gay dudes who look like Brad Pitt and me on Rita Cosby’s Big Story and watch who wins the next election.

Under New Anger Management

Tony sat next to me in a mandated course in anger management. There was no particular reason why I selected a seat in the back of the classroom, but since I was the first to show up for the 9:30 class I had my choice of where I wanted to be in a room full of wife-beaters and women who do more than kick their husbands in the balls when they get rubbed the wrong way.

In they came, one at a time, all victims of a horrendous court system that had somehow outwitted their bipolar natures.

Tony sat in the back row next to me. There was no question about whether or not he was guilty. One look at his big Puerto Rican hands and I knew he was capable of throwing more than sliders and curve-balls.

The social worker who ran the four- hour class started things off by pairing us in two and asked us to interview one another on the circumstance which had led us all to a course in cooling down.

I was coupled with Tony.

His “bitch-ass” girlfriend started beating on him first, or so he claimed. They were shopping in Washington Heights and some broad checked him out. He did nothing but walk up the sidewalk while minding his own business when another women started salivating for him.

“Oh, yes. I know how that can be,” I said like a reporter for the New York Times. “You must get that all the time,” I said while edging him on for more dirt.



“I swear to God, Papi. You don’t know what it’s like for me and bitches. They always get so jealous.”

“So did you end up hitting her back and that is why you got arrested?” I asked.

“Yes. Look at the scratches on my fuckin’ neck though. I had to defend myself.”

“That’s a damn shame,” I said while hoping to keep the interviewing on him.

“So wassup wit you? Did you and your bitch get into it too?”

“Hmmm, well, I guess you could say that.”

“What happened, Papi?”

“My lover fucked around on me and I tore up his clothing,” I explained in the deepest tone and butchest way possible.

He smiled and seemed interested so I kept going.

“The bastard is an absolute man whore,” I said.

“Yes, my bitch is a slut too,” he added.

“And they get pissed at you when someone checks you out?”

“Hell yes! Ain’t that some shit?”

The class leader asked us to give the account of our partner’s unmanageable anger to the remainder of the class. This allowed for other victims in the class to comment on ways the situation could have been avoided.

Tony offered me a piece of Bubble Yum and we cracked at the back of the class and giggled at the broads with big door-knocker ear rings as their dirty laundry was aired by a total stranger in the class.



I told Tony’s story perfectly. I started out by asking everyone in the room “Isn’t this man fine? I mean really...he’s buff, got a great smile and who in the world would not take a second look at him walking down the streets of Washington Heights?”

The room burst into laughter. Even Tony laughed at my re-cap of his arrest.

Tony turned the tables on me when it came time to report on my rage of anger.

“Take a look at this man,” he said. “If you were married to him would you cheat on him?” he asked.

The girls in the room shook their head, rattled their earrings and licked their lips at me.

“Hell, I wouldn’t either and I’m straight,” he said while cracking the room up.

The four hours were a lot of fun and went by quickly thanks to Tony and I.

We were released with our certificates for the court and Tony Vega followed me out of the gates of Pratt Institute where we went to take our course.

“Where you headed Papi?” he asked.

“I don’t know for sure. I’m staying with some friends so I don’t want to go home until later this evening.”

“You want to chill out?” he asked.

We jumped on the G train and made a connection at Hoyt for the A and took the express all the way uptown to his mother’s house in Washington Heights.

She fed us both and we spent the afternoon smoking a blunt on a fire escape wondering if we really did have anger issues or if perhaps we were just too damn good- looking for the rest of society to accept.

He may have been waiting for me to make a move but I didn’t. I kept looking at those big hands holding that little brown blunt and grew more and more paranoid as the day dragged on.

I realized that if Tony were my man, I’d scratch out the eyes of any broad who tried to take him away from me and knew then that I had learned something at anger management 101.

“Until we meet again, padre,” I said to my friend from anger management as I left. I thanked his mom for the plate of rice and beans and headed out the door of the tenement building stoned off my ass.

“Stay away from the Puerto Rican chick hanging out downstairs under the fire escape on your way out the door,” he said while laughing hysterically. “That’s my girlfriend, the one who had me arrested.”

“I’ll be sure not to tell her we were trading baseball cards,” I said to the man I stopped on third base.

Shanksville Horseshoe Pit

Family reunions will start rearing their ugly heads and bad wigs soon.

The Taylor’s have them every August but I don’t attend them any longer.

There are simply too many drunks to squeeze under one tabernacle at Whipple Dam State Park.

I do all my family reunions over the telephone and with e-cards.

It has been more than two decades since I last sat down with a heaping of maccaroni salad and baked beans and swung my arm to toss a horseshoe.

The red necks at my last family reunion in 1986 not only had to deal with an out teenager but nearly fainted in the summer heat when I tossed a few ringers around the metal pegs and showed them how manly I could be if I really wanted to.

I will always be remembered in my family as the handsome gay nineteen year old, the one from Liz’s side, who looked just like Randy Travis and could play adult games with the big boys.

There were several gays in the family who made my attendance at the annual picnic a walk in the park. The men were happy to see that I hung out with them around the horseshoe pit and not with the girls who planned a family quilt.

It is important to Liz that all her stallions and patch-workers gather under her wing of the henhouse from time to time, no matter where they put there peckers.

I get my gift of gab from her side of the family and hear all the gossip I need from her. There has been no real purpose of attending those reunions.

It is only the bad news we hear over slices of watermelon and baked beans cooked with two pounds of thick bacon.

"Look at your Uncle Steve’s bad knee, Charlie. Isn’t that the ugliest scab you ever saw?" they ask just to stir up conversation at family picnics.

Attending a reunion to catch up on lost relatives is such a waste of precious time with the convenience of free nights and weekends.

I called grandma yesterday to find out if the reunion would happen this year or if too many bridges had been burned.

"Hi Mal Mal!"

"Hi Charlie," she said.

It always amazes me how she can distinguish my voice from well over fifty grandchildren and several with lisps.

"What’s going on?"

"My sister Ethel thinks she is going to move in with me."

"Why not let her? You live in that big house all by yourself."

"I can’t stand the bitch. She has always gotten on my last nerve."

"I know what you mean."

"What are you doing?"

"I’m off work today. It’s a Jewish holiday."

She laughed hysterically because she knows that I know the family secret.

"Angie is here and so is my son Dave," she noted. "Want to say hi?"

Before I could explain that I had to go, Angie got on the phone.

"Hi. Do you remember me? I remember you. You looked just like Randy Travis."
"Oh, Hi Angie. Yes I remember you. How are you?"

"Good. Wow, September 11th was something else. Were you near the World Trade Center?"

"No, but I could see it smoking from my job in Queens."

"My husband saw the plane that came down in Shanksville."

"Really? Does he work down that way?"

"Yes. He and a few co-workers say they saw two jets flying near that plane and shot it down."

"Now Angie, that seems a little far fetched, don’t you think? I mean really..."

"Well you believe what you want to believe living up there in the big city, but I trust what my husband tells me."

"Maybe I’ll make it back to the reunion this year after all, Angie. Tell grandma I’ll call her back later."

"I want you to sing, Forever and Ever Amen for me," she giggled while singing off.

"Here, before you go, Uncle Dave wants to say hi."

"Charlie, my gawd, it’s been over twenty years since I saw you last."

"How are you?"

"Good but the kids will not get out of the house. I even bought them the property next door but they will not leave," he explained.

"Perhaps you make it too comfortable for them there."

"You are damned right I do. The little heathens got pulled over for smoking pot down in Virginia. That cost them $1,200."

"Well as long as they had fun," I said.

He laughed at that one and told me to make sure I make it home to the reunion this year.

He wants a rematch in horseshoes.

Chain Smoking

Sallie Benson and I were cousins, neighbors and best friends.

We were not cousins by blood which freed us to do whatever we wished in her bedroom.

"Want to come up to my house and play with the Ouija Board?" she offered one June morning when school was out.

Sally knew I was one of the few teenage boys who could be trusted sitting on her be with her.


My hands went on only a heart- shaped oracle with an eye and a needle poked down through the plastic magnifier.

The magic was real with Sallie. She had mystical powers, that is for sure. The messages hidden in those letters on the Ouija Board came true.

"Who will I marry?" I asked it over and over again.

The oracle spun in confusion, knowing, as Sallie and I both did, that I would never marry a woman.

We grew bored with reading into the future and wanted to do something bad.

"Let’s go visit Grace Hershey and steal a cigarette from her," I tempted.

"You’ll never get away with it," Sallie challenged. "I hear she's a witch."

"I visit her every night when I deliver her newspaper. She keeps them in a little leather pouch on an end table next to her lamp near the door."

"Sure, let’s do it. I have some gum we can chew to chase away the smell," she giggled while putting on a bra right in front of me.

We walked out the dirt lane to Grace’s pink trailer, nestled under a canopy of oak trees.

"Hi Grace! How are you today?"

"Hanging in there, Charlie! I’m still waiting to meet and marry a rich man. Hi Sallie! What are you two up to today?" She inquired with her hands on her polyester slacks which matched her bright red lipstick.

"Oh nothing, we’re just bored and decided to stop by and say hello."

Sallie gave the game away. She was as nervous as a pot head seeking weed on vacation.

Grace grabbed a Parliament and a pack of matches while looking me in the eye.

"You want one of these?" Grace asked while lighting-up.

"Oh I already have a pocket full," Sallie giggled in relief that she didn’t get caught stealing.

Grace looked at us like a mind reader and said "You should have just asked, I would have given you one. I am an old woman. I don’t get that many visitors."

Dream Catching

Forsythia Fitness Center was once a fully staffed gym with all the latest workout equipment.


All the hottest guys in the city worked out there including celebrities like David Geffen and his entourage of young, hung hot studs wanting recording contracts.


Today, the gym is closed. They converted the place into retail space and a store called Cribs popped up there. It specializes in designer infant clothing.


There once was a time when those seeking membership at the Chelsea gym were put on waiting lists for months. Dues were $250 for 30 days and it was worth every penny.


The workout center was open twenty-four hours. When gay men didn’t find a one night stand in nearby bars, they could always wander into Forsythia’s for a few sit- ups and some steamy shower action.


Donald worked behind the counter at the popular gym. He was as cute as a button, professional and courteous.


“He’s not gay,” loyal members claimed. They all wanted him but he didn’t mix business with pleasure. He was of rare ethnic origin; an American Indian with thick black hair and a square jaw line.




It felt safe working out there with a straight dude to watching over things at the front desk.



He always had a smile on his face. His teeth were perfectly shaped like kernels of Indian corn and were as white as the feathers on the head of a bald eagle.


On the late shift, Donald not only handed out towels at the front desk and checked queers in for their workouts, but he was also responsible for controlling all the action in the showers.


Gay men didn’t rub him the wrong way. He found no fault in men who chose to have sex with one another. In his lost culture, homosexuals were commonplace.


“I wish that heterosexuals were free as you guys,” he said when he caught a few dudes blowing one another in the shower room without stalls.




I chuckled at that comment while in the last row of wall lockers in the back. I didn’t like being naked around all those men with chiseled bodies, it reminded me that I was truly a lard ass.

“Come join us, Donald,” they said invitingly with water dripping from their lips.


“No thanks! Not my thing, but have your fill,” he said with that gleaming smile across his full red lips.


He walked towards the back of the gym to check out things and got a bird’s eye view of my fat ass bending over to dry off my feet.


What a sight that must have been for a man not into buffalo butts. He smiled at me as if I too were a size 30 waist and went on about his business.


I was too shy to look him in his dark brown eyes. I absolutely melted when he flirted with me with simple kindness. He always had words of work- out encouragement as he checked me in and out.


“Well Charlie, those pounds are really melting off of you. Before you know it, you’ll be the hottest gay guy in town,” he said after I handed him my membership card.


I was well over 200 pounds and I appreciated the compliment although I knew I’d never be as fine as the fit men who strutted around the place in tight spandex.


I knew Donald was undeniably straight so I didn’t tempt my imagination with the thought of being with him.


I could never stop getting enough of his compliments though. I went to the gym sometimes twice a day just to allow him to fill my head with delusions of grandeur.


Sure I spent all that cash just to get an up close look at the man of my dreams and share his peace pipe. The problem was, once I got checked in, I simply couldn’t turn around and leave. I had to spend at least a half-hour there, pretending to work out while stealing glances at the straight guy with a huge bulge under his silky sweatpants.




I often wondered if his pubic hair was thick, straight and black like that on his head.




I jumped on the stair master and set it at the slowest speed possible and walked for hours watching the queens strut around the place in their designer workout gear. I ignored them and waited patiently to catch a glimpse of the man I was secretly in love with.


I worked out and cruised Forsythia’s for an entire winter without missing a day. Even my baggy workout clothing had faded terribly from the tons of sweat which had seeped from my pores while on the stair master.


When Spring rolled around and the cold weather broke I headed off to Forsythia’s again in a new workout outfit. I decided to shed the long sleeves at the gym and put on a simple white tank top.


I had spent so much time punishing myself with excruciating work-outs wishing I had never allowed myself to become fat and ugly at such a young age that I didn’t notice my changing physical appearance over the long winter months.




Like so many gay men, I was in love with a straight man that I would likely never have inside my teepee and developed a horrible self-image. I failed to build my self-esteem along with highly defined biceps and pecks which grew like maze upon my body.


When I stepped into Forsythia’s that day, even David Geffen dropped his dumbbell to take a second glance at me.


“I have a nice place in the Fire Island Pines,” the leader of the Velvet Mafia said to me while marching on the stair master next to mine.


I accepted his business card while the queens at the gym gnashed their teeth at me.

“What did he say to you?” Donald asked while I was leaving the gym that day.


“Oh, he invited me to Fire Island. Who is that old ugly bastard?” I asked.


“Did he say you could bring a friend along?” Donald asked.


“As a matter of fact he did. Who is he?” I asked again.


“I’d love to be your date this weekend, Charles,” Donald said flirtatiously with that irresistible smile.


“I don’t think I’m going to go to Fire Island,” I said. “I’m starting to see some results from working out. I don’t want fall back into my old laziness trap and get fat again,” I explained.


“Please Charles, do this for me,” Donald pleaded.





I couldn’t just sneak away to Fire Island for the weekend. I had a part-time job working for Geoffrey Holder and his wife the famous dancer, Carmen de Lavallade.


I wanted Donald desperately and the opportunity to hang out with David Geffen and the Velvet Maffia was almost irresistible, but I already knew famous people.


The last person I wanted to rub the wrong way was the 7-Up un-cola man and lose my off-the-books part-time gig.


He practices voodoo.


Geoffrey was in the middle of writing a play and required my assistance not only with writing and typing but also needed me to help him move his large paintings around inside the couple’s Soho loft.


I wasn’t sure how to tell Donald I was turning him down and ruining his chance of getting signed on a major record label and hanging out in the vacation home of David Geffen.


It was a great part-time job and I didn’t want to ruin the relationship I had developed with two of the most gifted Blacks in America by running off to Long Island for a quickie with a record producer and the hot straight guy from Forsythia Fitness Center.




The living legends were introduced to me by an ex-lover, Frank West. Frank knew absolutely everyone in New York City that set foot on a stage along the Great White Way. My lover was a former lover of Alvin Ailey, which in a way, makes me a distant lover of one of the most talent male dancers ever to spin on point.


“Alvin only liked dirty, rough dudes– straight acting Black thugs,” Frank shared secretly with me one night while dancing in the sheets.


“Hell, who can blame him?” I asked while savoring ever last lick of that third leg of his. “You are as rough as they come,” I insisted.




Holder, de Lavallade and Ailey were not the only stars frank had me two-stepping with. Keith David was his best friend during the years we dated. I’ve low crawled with the man who portrayed a crippled veteran in the Hollywood blockbuster “Platoon” and have been told by the voice of Spawn that my apple pie is better than anything he has ever tasted.




“I’m flying out of town to shoot a movie called ‘Armageddon’ with Bruce Willis he explained to us over dinner at our place one evening. I wanted to ask so desperately that he call William Morris Agency to see if they could find me a part as an extra in the film, but I kept my mouth shut, as Frank taught me to do, and served my two handsome men apple pie.


Keith is a cool; probably the most talented straight man I have ever met. He told Frank to get his shit together when I threatened to leave them both. Keith was as addicted to my apple pie as Frank was to my hair pie.


“How did you know Alvin Ailey when you studied at Dance Theatre of Harlem?” I asked my ex-lover one morning after he banged my brains out.


“There are only so many dancers in New York and there are fewer gifted ones. I am a gifted one and Alvin saw that in me,” Frank explained as if he too were rich and famous.



I ate with Carmen and Geoffrey every Saturday night. It was a tradition. Geoffrey has published several Caribbean cook books and appreciated my no nonsense reviews of the fish dishes he whipped up. I’m not a huge fish fan and can hardly swallow anything that tastes like the sea.


Geoffrey loved getting me ripped over bottles of white wine. Carmen got ideas for her artwork and choreography as I spoke with my hands and told stories of how one day I would become a famous writer. Perhaps they loved me as much as they do their son, Leo. I’m not sure, but they are like parents to me.


“What’s your take on reincarnation?” Geoffrey asked.


“I’m here, am I not?” I said to answer their question with a question.


Carmen laughed hysterically.


For a moment I thought perhaps I may be the reincarnated Josephine Baker as I sat with two theatre legends playing the part of the parents I had always dreamed of.


One would never believe the Broadway legends have plastic lawn furniture at their dining room table.


The huge windows overlooking Prince Street offers a feel of eating outdoors.


I broke bread with Josephine Baker’s opening act in a Soho and was bored with the celebrity scene as I tried to swallow a little more fish and clean up my plate before insulting Geoffrey’s cooking.




I wanted only to be with Donald from the gym that Saturday night.




My own rise to stardom would have to wait.



“I’m sorry Geoffrey, I have to be honest with you, the seared sea bass is making me ill,” I explained while running to the bathroom in the west wing of the Soho loft.


I flushed the toilet several times to make it look authentic and splashed some water on my face before returning to the dinner table. I hoped my acting would fool the two Broadway legends and I seemed to be pulling off the request for sick leave.


“Oh dear, are you going to be alright?” Carmen asked.


“I think so. I really should go home and lay down. No offense, Geoffrey, the cooking is excellent as always, but I’ve been fighting off a bug all week.”


“Darling, stay here. Sleep on the sofa.”


“Geoffrey, let him go. He’s sick.”


He handed me a wad of twenties and I thanked them both. Carmen asked me to wait a moment while she went behind the partitions which separated her private bedroom from the rest of the huge loft space of their home.


“Here I want you to have this.” Carmen handed me heavy cardboard box from the Museum of Modern Art. “It’s a vase, put it in your new apartment when you find one,” she said.


“This is very beautiful, Carmen. Honestly, if you saw the rat trap where I am staying you’d think twice about giving me such precious gift,” I said with a slight moan while holding my tummy.




Perhaps she gave me the vase in case I got ill on the subway ride home. The box was dusty. The gift of the vase made no sense at that moment, but I took it anyway. I didn’t want to insult Carmen’s cooking either.


“Frank told me the two of you are breaking up,” Geoffrey said.


“Oh, yes. It’s time. Things were not working out between us.”


“Well, that’s none of our business. We like you and want you to keep coming around,” Carmen offered.


“Have you ever considered painting? I watch you at the keyboard when you capture my words. You look like a concert pianist when you type. Did anyone ever tell you that?” asked the man who played the role of Punjab in Annie.


“No. But trust me, I am no painter,” I responded and once again had that inclination that I was reincarnated and destined to have met the famous pair.


“Many of the world’s most accomplished painters did not pick up a brush until late in life,” said the actor from the James Bond flick, “Live and Let Die” while winking at me and granting me the night off.




I hurried down the freight elevator and ran onto Broadway in search of a phone booth.




I called information and obtained the number for Forsythia Fitness Center.




A woman’s voice answered the phone.




“Forsythia’s, how may I help you?”



“Is Donald there?” I asked.



“I’m sorry. He had to leave work early. He wasn’t feeling well,” I was informed.


It pissed me off that he was not at work.

Maybe he knew he had such a hold on me that I would actually call him on his cell phone and beg that we go to Fire Island together. Handsome men always carry that chip on their shoulder.

I looked too good to beg for sex in exchange for the connection to David Geffen. What was I doing? Donald was only a tease and I just blew off Geoffrey Holder.

The Summer of 2000 was pure bliss. Finally I met a man who made my heart jump again. I felt lust again, despite the hundreds of men I have bedded during my homoseuxal career.

It was most likel, the best time of my life. Some may say that I was riding the waves of the sea of mania that year. In a sense, we all were raging lunatics back then. There was no war, cash was readily available, and life was still fun and full of adventure.

There was nothing to do but spend lots of cash and lust over receptionists at the gym.I had a full- time job which required very little from me. I filed my nails all day and looked pretty while serving as the personal secretary for a high-riding bitch for a whopping $70,000 a year.

My boss surrounded herself with handsome gay men. I am as pretty as they come. Not only did I work part-time for two of the most talented Black artists in America, but was in the best physical shape of my life and had a cushy nine to five that allowed me to make lots of personal phone calls.

It was not easy losing over 50 pounds, but I did it in less than two months. Perhaps I had an eating disorder which was the real fountain of youth that when combined with a fierce work-out schedule offered me buns of steel.

I looked fabulous and straight men like Donald were giving me their private cell phone numbers.

It felt damn good to be self-centered for a change. I was a bitter divorcee; angry at the world because my husband, a dancer with a fierce body, fell in love with a skinny queer and dumped me. I lost the weight because the words of our lover’s quarrels hurt. "Your ass is washed up. You don’t even make my dick hard anymore, you fat bitch," were his last words to me before I cracked and beat his ass like a man before walking away from it all like a woman.

I was out for blood and although I was nearing 30, I refused to throw in the towel just because my ass got a little chunky.

There were days that I worked out for two hours and ate nothing but a ninety-nine cent bag of peanuts and lots of hung cock.

It was difficult competing for butch alpha males with herds of bottoms roaming the streets of New York City, pumped full of steroids and AIDS cocktail drugs.

I worked out religiously and refused to eat anything carbohydrate related. I lost all that weight and somehow didn’t get any stretch marks and didn’t have the bad breath associated with steroid use.

It was a gift from God, a new lease on life– ‘one last time around the rodeo’ I said to myself as I put on my square toe boots, baggy 501 jeans and a wife- beater t-shirt and refused to believe that I would ever again settle down with just one man.

I gave those skinny bitches a run for the money. It felt good to turn heads again and have handsome men and pretty girls insist that I take the last empty seat on crowded subway cars.

I spent the first thirty years of my life pursing a monogamous relationship with another man in a town where the life expectancy for those types of love affairs was three months.


Men are dogs and gay men are even worse when it comes to love. No matter how much you throw at them, there's always another piece of ass to chase.

I walked away from my third husband and decided it simply was not worth it to try to be married when there were not tax benefits or children involved. The anonamous sex scene was much more convenient and the men did not say cruel things when the love making started to become boring.

I decided to become a full-fledged slut despite all the risks involved with multiple sex partners.

Gay men in the city were spreading money around to cute skinny men like myself like STDs.

Times were changing. Queers no longer feared AIDS. We grew up with it and pretty much knew as New Yorkers, the odds were stacked against us anyway.

Rich old men wanted to give me tons of cash just to rub their backs. I was so sexy we didn’t have to have sex.

It was almost fashionable to be ill, thin and still pretty in 2000. My Johns knew I didn’t have the bug. There are many little traits that men can detect in one another that gives away the deadly murder weapons hidden secretly in the veins of promiscuous homosexuals with HIV.


It’s a sixth sense, a form of ‘gaydar’ that lets us know when a twelve incher has a secret weapon hidden in the semen. We can see it in their eyes. That desire to spread the horrible fate around and kill others as they had been slain by the demons of lust.

Thankfully I waited until my late twenties before getting caught up in the wealthy Hollywood sex and money scene and had parents like Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade who kept me grounded.

"You are only as good as your last press release," they reminded me over and over again, sharing secrets to surviving fame.

My fame was different than theirs. We were stars from different parts of the galaxy. I was the real star in town and their time had already come and gone.

Although I didn’t get any record deals out of my John’s I snatched parts of their souls as they paid me cash and thought they were exploiting me.

New York City is an orgy waiting to happen for those of us with good looks. I was breathtaking the summer before the terrorist attacks. I often chose to stay at home and not accept invitations for sex parties.

Being beautiful was a power I had never before tasted and I didn't want to get type-casted.

I found myself frequenting hustler bars in mid-town and sold my ass not only for cash, but because I had an itch that simply could not be scratched and the element of danger involved in the sex-trade industry was like stumbling upon a twelve- inch plastic sex toy in a Times Square porn shop.

I screwed chicks too back then. They knew I was gay-- those pretty white girls from Long Island. I told them so while sipping Cape Cods in gay male bars of all places.

They were fag hags who, like Carrie from Sex and the City, were sexually attracted to homos.

"Hi, I’m Francie. My friend Mark thinks you are cute" she proposed while pumping me full of $10 cordials. "I’ll fuck you both," I said with a cigarette dangling from the corner of my cherry red lips.

"Giggle, giggle, giggle."

A few hours later, they took turns blowing me in a penthouse suite overlooking Central park and paid me $500 for just one load of love juice.

I admired how fag-hags appreciate and almost worship the gay species. They are beautiful women who can pretty much have any man they want and find solace in the company of sensitive guys. The only problem I saw in women who chase after men who lust for other men was that queens were only a tease to those pretty chicks.

They were sitting ducks when a guy with no boundaries walked on by. All of those girls I had in the summer of 2000 were hot, cover girl types. Their legs were so soft and waxed to perfection. I loved that the most about screwing women. They didn’t brush- burn me like dudes sometimes do. Their kisses were passionate and the loving making went on for hours. Their breasts were delicate and although I simply couldn’t get enough hardcore male pectoral muscles, liking silver-dollar sized nipples and titty fucking broads was a tasty change for one who thought he had done it all. I loved girls with natural breasts that were not too big. Sometimes I did them with other men, other times my dick got hard for simply a girl by herself.

But when I met Donald, the sex games stopped.


My part-time employers Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade reminded me that no matter what stage we perform upon, it is how we treat our audience that matters. It’s what we give the press to write about that makes us famous or washed-up, has-been performers.


That night, after I blew off the two fading Broadway stars to be with a man who worked as a receptionist, I knew that I was caught up in one of my own stories again.

It felt like something my ego had written out for me, offering a juicy soroy to put down in words one day.

It was a story being told and I was given a front seat in the press room of life.

Love found its way back to me and once again, I wanted nothing but monogamy with a straight guy.

The world of the rich and famous bored me.

My novel would have to wait.

Life is meant to be lived, not watched on a stage, I said to myself while popping fifty cents into the pay phone and calling Donald on his cell.

Showgirls and Wives

I nearly asked Claudia to be my steady girlfriend this morning.

As she scrambled eggs and made me breakfast I wished for one second that I belonged to her.

“No need to cook for me today, Claudia. It’s warm and muggy in here.”

“It’s not a problem Josh, I love to cook.”

She’s just another broad after all my cash, I assumed.

She dropped an eggshell on the floor and picked it up with her toes.

“That’s so funny. How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Curl your toes and pick up both pieces of that eggshell without looking down?”

“Oh, that. I don’t know. I’ve always used my feet that way.”

Her pink briefs gathered into the crack of her sweet, tangy ass cheeks as she scrambled the whites inside a non-stick pan that some other girl bought me when I first moved into the place.

“These are nice, Josh!”

“Oh thanks. My mom sent me the set for Christmas. I never use them, as you can see.”

“What a shame. If I had a skillet like this I would make omelets every day.”

“Are you trying to move in with me?” I asked.

“No, no. That was just a compliment on your cookware,” she said with most of her long hair covering the right side of a petite pretty face.

“Want some coffee?” She asked.

“Sure that would be nice.”

It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I should settle down. I would be very happy with this specialized pampering everyday. It may not be all that bad living with just one chick.

I sipped my coffee and she dipped a bag of Lipton tea up and down in a cup of hot water while holding the little white paper attached to a string with her left toes.

“Too bad you got a bag and I can’t take you to a church and marry you Claudia.”

She got pissed off and stormed out without finishing her eggs.

Sure it’s a hot piece of ass, but there are lots of trainees in town who need a wealthy man to pay for the operation and know how to make a tasty cup of tea.

Chill

I started writing Chill in prison back in 1987. He was locked away in Utica, serving 15 years to life for murder with a stick at a pool hall in East New York.



He was only nineteen.



The poor unsuspecting soul received my hand written pen pal letter postmarked from Nurenberg, West Germany while sitting bored to tears in a cold, lonely cell.



I was one of only a handful of writers to send him a letter during those 15 years. Only three of us visited him while at Utica. His mother went to take him care packages several times over the years. My lover and I went to see him in the Spring of 1992.



He saved those letters for years he told me after he finally got released. He thought I was only his brother’s Army buddy who liked to write.



One does not simply pick up a piece of paper and a pen and start writing a murderer informing him that you are his new brother, but not in-law.



It took time, lots of stamps and careful writing to draft my way into the Miller family and the heart of Chill.



I wrote about the crabs I caught from a girl I banged, the horrible field training exercises in the woods of Bavaria, my sight-seeing ventures to the Dachau Concentration Camps and other happenings from my life in a different prison of sorts.



I sent a photograph from the barracks in my tight brown t-shirt. He returned a Polaroid of himself with dread locks and a green uniform of his own. He also requested that I order him a few things from the prison approved catalog.



His wish list consisted of boom boxes and Adidas sneakers.



After all those exchanges I never had to heart to tell him I was blowing his brother.



When he got released, he came to live with my partner and I. Nobody else would have him.



He seemed surprised at the one bed in the house.



Anthony turned to him and explained, "Now Chill, you were away for a long time. Don’t tell me you remained a virgin all that time."



He grew silent and angry but didn’t kill us.


He remembered my letters and they saved us from additional murders.



When I was released from a psychiatric ward, decades later, my pen pal paid me a visit at home.



He was one of only a handful of folks to do that.



He brought me a gift, a fancy ink pen and some paper and told me to come off those drugs and write down my feelings.



He explained that he didn’t like what those drugs did to his boyfriends in Attica.

Chunky Love

Tony found the woman of his dreams before he croaked from a heart attack while making love.

He was in perfect physical shape. Nobody including his physician would have ever guessed he was at risk for a coronary thrombosis.

God gave him three good years with a woman who knew how to make love to him.

Liz was that woman of his dreams. She was pretty, honest, charming and full of hope as well as lots of cholesterol.

He was glad to have known her during three years of heavy emotions and love making.

She certainly was not the sexiest woman he ever went to bed with. Most men would not be attracted to the layers of flabby flesh that covered her belly like fiberglass insulation in an attic.

Underneath it all was the tightest hole he ever ventured into.

Of course she was a plus-size, all of his girlfriends in life were. But she took the cake and them some.

Sometimes, Tony wasn’t even inside and couldn’t tell.

She loved that little trick.

“Oh baby, that hurts so good,” she claimed while giggling inside.

“You want more of this, baby? Ride me like I’m skinny, damn-it!” She shouted as her head slammed off the headboard.

After she had enough and wanted his skinny ass to get from up on her, she sucked in her tummy as much as she could.

“Damn baby, I never had a woman with muscle control like that,” were his last words as he came inside her belly button.

It’s terrifying for a schizophrenic to undergo dental surgery and face a root canal.

I tried ignoring my aching molar for weeks, believing that if I simply chewed my food on the other side of my mouth, the infection would get swallowed.

Eventually my jaw swelled up like the head of a powerful C.E.O.

I had to face another dentist.

It was scary for me to have to choose between hearing voices again and the unbearable pain causing me to see stars.

It was a lot like waiting to get HIV results.

I remember from my psychosis that dentists were responsible for the implants in my teeth which caused me to pick up transmissions from the NSA inside my mouth.

The pain from infection in my gum line was overwhelming so I called the dental clinic that accepts my not so tasty dental insurance.

I remember being truthful three years ago when filling out the forms in the waiting room to be treated at the tooth factory. "Have you been hospitalized within the last three years?" the long and winding form asked me.

I boldly checked ‘yes’ and in the (Fill Out Only If Marked Yes) space I wrote: ‘Schizophrenia’ in sloppy handwriting.

Everyone knows my spelling is often off and I accidently scribbled ‘Skit on Oprah gave me diarrhea’ or something like that.

"Dr. Nagley will not be in until Friday," the receptionist informed me on Wednesday.

"Oh, my," I said. "I don’t think I’m going to make it until Friday. I’m coming in anyway," I moaned from the corner of my lips over the phone.

A skinny Black girl worked behind the counter at the dental clinic. She wore green eyeshadow and her lips were glossy like an MTV video chick. Her hair was parted on the right side above her deep brown eyes and it was her real hair, I think.

I was embarrassed to have assumed she was white over the phone.

"Oh dear, here we go– a sista," a voice in my head said. "She’s only a receptionist. She can’t throw you out of here when you are seeking medical attention," someone said.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"I’m Charlie Taylor. I called a few moments ago. I would really like to see a dentist today," I said while flashing her with the budge on my pie hole.

"Oh dear. Please have a seat Mr. Taylor."

I picked up a copy of ‘Highlights’ from a metal rack. The only other optional reading material in the waiting room was the ‘New York Times’.

A few moments later a flamboyant-queen dentist picked up a chart and called my name.

He led me down a hallway with bright fluorescent lights, similar to the ones they have in psychiatric wards. He swished his ass like a bottom leading me to his private room in the bath house.

He briefly scanned my chart and tapped the top of my teeth on the bottom left side.

"Oh damn, it’s that one," I cried.

"You are going to need a root canal. Our root canal specialist is here today and can see you now," the polite homosexual offered.

"How much is this going to cost? How much of it will my insurance pay for?" I inquired.

"You’ll have to check with the front desk, but first, we need to get you started on antibiotics right away," he said while writing on his little pad.

I waited patiently for the second prescription for the real wonder drug to be written by the gay dentist.

He must have noticed what I was hospitalized for on my Medical History Form and decided not to offer me any mind altering drugs and a pass for codine.

By the time I made it to the font desk, someone else had stolen the slot on the schedule of the root canal specialist.

The very professional receptionist apologized and gave me some good news, "Your co-pay for the root canal is only $20. Come back on Friday to see Dr. Negley, he can likely get you squeezed into the root canal specialist’s schedule then."

I left there without any pain killers.

The antibiotics did not stop the pain. I didn’t sleep for two nights while crying from the extreme agony in my mouth.

I was angry at those who think crazy people should be forced to live through agony because our imaginations cannot be trusted.

"Fucking faggot dentist," I shouted and explained to my lover that the queer dentist was probably afraid to write another pain killing prescription because he writes far too many for his gay party-boy friends.

On Friday I saw Dr. Negley.

"Why didn’t you get your root canal on Wednesday?" he rudely inquired.

I explained the mix- up with the scheduling and batted my puppy dog eyes at him for something to stop the pain.

"Keep taking the antibiotics and make an appointment with Dr. Schwartz. His next opening is on Wednesday," I was medically advised while in pain on Friday.

My only hope was the sista who worked behind the counter at the front desk who had an arm that jingled while answering the phone.

"Look, there is no way in hell I can get by another week like this," I pleaded while hoping she would offer a phone number to a drug dealer in Bedford Stuyvesant.

The receptionist tried making a referral for me. "No, we don’t accept Cigna 5" she was told over and over again.

A Jew with one of those hats without brims interrupted the conversation between the Black girl and I to alert her of a change on his schedule.

"Dr. Schwartz, will you see him?" she asked.

He took one look at me and said, "Yes, of course."

The root canal specialist was not only Jewish but somewhat of a nerd. He reminded me of my best friend Richard from high school with a beard.

"I know how these root canals are. They are horrible things. I work at the V.A. hospital and soldiers wounded in battle say a tooth- ache hurts more than getting shot and injured in war," he explained while walking down the brightly lit hallway to his office all the way in the back.

His office wasn’t as nice as that of the secular dentist down the hall– the ones who wear the hippest of Diesel sneakers and preppie Banana Republic clothing under their short white skirts.

I noticed that the white tiles on the ceiling were brown from a leak above– a gloomy sight for one when that drill is turned on.

Dr. Schwartz talked on and on about politics and how he couldn’t wait for Bush to get out of the White House and I noticed shapes and images of angels and demons on the tarnished tiles above my head.

Outside a thunderstorm roared over Manhattan. I wondered if the dentist's drill was well grounded in case the place got struck by lightening.

It's hard for schizophrenics with tooth aches not to imagine they are God while sitting in dental chairs.

While I was waiting for the novocaine to kick-in I suggested to Dr. Schwartz that Hillary Clinton would likely win the White House. He didn’t tend to agree with me, perhaps because she’s a female, but I was in no condition to piss him off and argue with him.

"Did you see Cast Away, with Tom Hanks?" he asked while giving one more tiny pinch between my cheek and gum.

"Oh, yes."

"Remember that part where he knocks out his tooth with an ice skate he found washed up on the shore?" Dr. Schwartz asked.

I laughed hysterically, like I often do with close friends over an inside joke, because I realized I felt like a cast away the last two nights.

"Tooth pain is no joking matter," the Rabbi like dentist said to me while clamping a dental dam down over my face like a Lesbian heading to a pie eating contest.

I smiled at him and was grateful that our veterans are being treated by men like Dr. Schwartz and closed my eyes while the saint performed a miracle inside my tortured tooth.

"Well, we are done here," he said to me much sooner than what I had expected.

"Do you need anything for that pain or are you one of those brave souls who can bare it?" he asked me while smiling at me.

"Oh no, no, no. I’m a sissy, give me the drugs,"

He laughed at my Tom Hanks joke and gave me what I needed.


The Black chick was smiling at me as I stopped by to give her my $20.

"Thank you so much for what you did for me," I said to her.

"You are welcome, Charlie!" she said to me in a voice as beautiful as Aretha Franklin’s.

I sang "I Knew You Were Waiting for Me," as a thunderstorm ended, the sky parted and the sun came out in Manhattan as I left the dental implant factory with a new canal in the place where the NSA once hid its dental implants.

In my dreams I swim in a river
One moment a person the next a fish
A dolphin
Smiling at those swimming in the rapids with me
My grin is permanent
I try to tell them all to watch out for the waterfall ahead
They throw small fish at me and bounce beach balls from my nose
If they only knew what I was trying to tell them
From below the water’s surface
Up here in the sky
What most call the sea

Geoffrey Holder is a close friend to me.

He’s the voice of 7-Up—the man who came up with the catch phrase ‘The Un-Cola'.

After having my first manic episode and experienced psychosis for the first time, I called Geoffrey in desperation because I had a hunch he is a little off his rocker too.

I was frightened from all those imaginary voices in my head and didn’t know what to say to them, so I called the Tony Award winning costume designer for fashionable advice.

"Darling, where have you been?" He asked with a Caribbean accent when I called him after being released from the psychiatric ward.

"Oh Geoffrey, it’s horrible. I’ve been diagnosed with Schizophrenia." "Marvelous! How wonderful," he said.

I didn’t understand his remark.

"I must see you soon, love. Tell me what did you have on? I certainly hope you were wearing something fabulous," he said.

I didn’t laugh.

"Listen darling, don’t get yourself all worked up, you are now beginning to read from the Book of Life," said the Un-Cola man with his trademark laugh.

I called Aunt Cathy on Christmas.

It was wonderful hearing her voice again.

She was a second mother to me. With no kids of her own and all that time on her hands I was a perfect candidate for informal adoption.

She lived with Uncle Daryl right next door to us and I often knocked on her door just to see what she was up to.

“You look like you need a haircut, Charlie. If you want it cut, you better get it cut today because I’m busy all weekend.”

She washed my hair in her kitchen sink with the finest of shampoos and conditioned it rather nicely in preparation for the cut.

As I nearly drowned under her kitchen spigot she lathered her delicate hands one last time and put a cream rinse in my hair.

I flipped my thick brunette stands to the side and water smelling of heavy perfumes cascaded down my face.

Her towels smelled like a gallon of Downy had been used to soften their fibers. She led me blindly under the wrap of a fluffy towel and sat me down on her kitchen stool for a not so fashionable clip.

Aunt Cathy never had formal beautician training although she watched others do it in beauty salons and told me not to complain when it was uneven because it was free.

For years I ran around the hills of Appalachia looking like an Osmond brother with badly gapped teeth thanks to my Aunt Cathy.

The last time I saw her was 1988 while I was still in the service and came home on leave. Shortly after my last visit back home she had an affair with a man who ran a home style restaurant across the street.

My buzzed military haircut upset her.

A divorce soon followed and she vanished. Years later while driving down the Pennsylvania Turnpike I pulled over for gas and found my Aunt Cathy working the cash register at a rest stop. I waited for her break and we had coffee.

There was so much to catch up on and she only had a fifteen minute break. We didn’t reminisce about hair cuts and growing up in a town where sexually outlandish folks are asked to buzz off. “Hey Charlie, guess what the manager nick-named me?” I looked into her dark brown eyes and admired the bee hive still on top of her head. “They call me the silver fox because my hair is grey. Isn’t that hysterical?” I threw my hair like a Clairol model and giggled abut the fun in life with my second momma.

Eggs

I miss the chickens and roosters we had on the farm when I was a child. They woke me up in the morning as soon as the yellow sun turned the hillsides golden.

“Cock-o-doodle-doo, cluck-cluck-cluck” they cried out in harmony with bluebirds that had nests in mulberry trees.

There were so many birds on our farm. They woke me each day, singing a chorus of bird harmonies.

The chickens gave us eggs. Their eggs were as warm as the sunshine which had yet to fully rise in the hills of Appalachia in the morning- the time of day when we harvested eggs.

The chickens made cool pets. There were not as friendly as cats and dogs, but they were nifty to have around. They allowed us to take away their eggs before they hade been fertilized.

We ate so many eggs while growing up in the country.

In May, my grandmother, Esther allowed her favorite chicken ‘Sally’ to hatch a dozen or so eggs and raise some offspring.

“Let’s not take those eggs today. Let’s see if Sally can have pee-pees,” my grandmother instructed with a full basket of brown eggs dangling from her arm.

Chickens do not sit on their eggs all day long when they first decide to become mother hens. Mothers will sit only for an hour or so the first few days when there are only a handful of eggs in the nest. The hen knows not to give the developing yokes too much body heat until the entire nest is filled. That way, all the eggs will hatch at the same time.

It takes days for a good hen like Sally to lay a dozen eggs, but only moments for the rooster to fertilize them.

The breeding of new chicks made way for a few slaughters behind the barn when our bellies yearned for parsley roasted rooster.

One sunny May day, we chopped off the head of a rooster. It’s proper etiquette to use an axe and a tree stump for chicken beheading.

The rooster’s head fell to the ground, clearly sliced from behind its bright red beard.

It blinked at me as its body flew for its life.

When the body came down for a crash landing we threw it in boiling water to remove its feathers.

Then we cut out the guts.

Our rooster had eggs inside. Ether called it a hermaphrodite but cooked it and fed it to us anyway.

Sauna con Leche

I pulled on my lover’s leg and begged him to go to the Waterworks sauna in San Juan.

“We’re not going there to have sex. I just want you to see what a gay bath house is like,” I explained to my bashful boyfriend.

We were the new faces and fresh meat in town. I felt irresistible as the men chased us around the sexual playground in Old San Juan.

“Why do they shave their pubic hairs?” My partner asked.

“It keeps the crabs at bay,” I explained.

“Oh, I see,” he said while we entered the S & M chamber like kids in a haunted house at an amusement park.

“What are those holes for?”

“Those are glory holes. Stop playing the Virgin Mary! What do you think they are for?”

“I’m leaving. Don’t talk to me like that. It’s my first time in a place like this.”

“Shut up and put that big mouth over here and watch what happens.”

We giggled as love rods of different shapes and sizes came from the other side of the wall, like groundhogs searching for their shadows.

“Let’s go back to the room,” I suggested.

A Latino albino with hair as white as snow and pubic hair unshaven followed us down the hall into our small room.

He asked me if I wanted his leche.

I told him that I didn't get off by placing blood sucking parasites on my skin.

My lover said, “No stupid—his milk. Do you want his milk?”

“Si! But not too much. I’m lactose intolerant,” I explained while imagining what color albino milk may be.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Check Book

So many people ask me for small change. Honestly, I cannot afford to give it away so freely, but I try to be charitable as much as possible.

If I were homeless, the last person I would want feeding me would be a virgin nun. I take this into account when the junkies hound me for cash.

Street people look at me like a saint when I pull singles from my wallet. Who am I to judge? Hell, if I lost my job, I’d be right next to them in less than three months.

Oh yes, I know– it’s illegal to give to pan handlers on the subway. I’m tempted to do it anyway, just to break the law.

I feel like Jesus when I sneak a quarter to the heroin addicts on Sundays.

It’s much more socially responsible to give to the Red Cross or the United Way. Take a look at how much administrative staff at some not-for-profits make. You may hide your wallet as if two strangers were approaching you in a parking lot at midnight.

Hurricane Katrina has pulled the tax ceiling of corruption from the roofs of our charities and it didn’t take a very strong wind to do it.

I certainly hope you were one who donated to the Red Cross after September 11th. If you hadn’t, I would not be listening to Mary J. Bliege on the radio this evening.

Money from the September 11th Fund went to a radio station to replace their antenna.

If you don’t believe me, write your congressman and ask for a detailed spreadsheet showing where every dollar donated to victims of the terrorist attack went.

Clear Channel Radio makes more each year than you and I put together and they thank you for every dollar of your charitable support.

The Red Cross and the United Way thank you too– especially New Yorkers! Society passed a law here that makes it only legal to give to pure Jewish and Christian charities like the Red Cross and the United Way. Thank the Lord that you give those in need and follow in the path of Jesus.

Sonny Dearest

My brother Bill and I were playing wiffle ball with our best friends and neighbors Ryan and Robbie.

Robbie spaced his fingers as if making the peace sign, placed them like two fangs across the back of the plastic ball and threw a curve my way.

I swung and missed like I always tended to do.

“Strike one,” shouted my brother.

Robbie stopped the game.

“If you had to screw either your mother or our mother, which would you choose to screw?”

I thought “screw” had something to do with the way one throws a special type of pitch in base ball.

Ryan and Robbie waited for Bill and I to answer with a swarm of little gnats swarming around their Three Springs little league base ball caps.

They squinted as the sun peaked under the visors of their caps and waved their hands above their heads to chase the little flying bugs away.

“Well, to be honest, our mom,” replied my brother.



“Yes. Us too. Your mom is fine!”

I didn’t say a word.

Suicide and Murder in Middle America

Barnaby shot himself in the head in the woods just outside of our hometown.

“He went crazy. That’s why he did it. He turned into one of those Jesus freaks and eventually ended it all by splattering his brains down in a pine grove,” according to local news.

I thought he was much stronger than that. He should have known better. It’s not smart to decide to leave the Bible belt as a teenager to become an open queer, only to change your mind and go back there after the wrath of God has come down in the form of a virus that eats away at the very soul.

I’m sure he got many evil-eyes the day he woke up and decided this is the day.

Men with big beer bellies and greasy baseball caps probably looked at him like one of them damn queers when he went into the Seven-Eleven for his last cup of frothy Cappuccino that morning he pulled the trigger.

Church ladies likely waved at him from afar telling him that it’s not too late to repent and be saved.

“Suicide is the only sin that the lord cannot forgive,” the townsfolk whispered the night Barnaby took that great leap of faith.

Perhaps I should have called him when my mother first told me he came back home and wasn’t looking very healthy.

What could I have done? Go back there to change his shitty bed sheets when nobody else wanted to?

They may have figured out that I was a queer too if I did that.

They would have ridden me out of town on a rail and dragged me down to the pine grove and shot me!

I’m smarter than that.

Queers do not move back home to kill themselves.

They can do that here in the big cities where nobody judges one for pulling their own trigger.

April Showers

I sold the soul of my garden this spring.

There’s a new Home Depot on the corner and they’re having a huge sale on garden plants, tools and furniture.

My son came by. I have custody this weekend. We decided to journey down to the Depot and buy seedlings to supplement the ones we started inside from seed with Miracle Grow soil in egg cartons.

Just as my luck would have it, and my son’s, all the regular shopping carts were claimed. Christopher and I had to settle for the huge one, designed like a race car. Christopher just loved the fact that I had to push him around like a child in a shopping cart.

Sure he’s nine now, but not too old to fall into the marketing baskets of the Home Depot.

“Over there Dad– that’s where the tomato plants are!”

“Settle down Christopher. I can only push this thing so fast. We only need a few plants. Remember- we have all those seedlings in the egg cartons to plant in our little garden.”

“Hurry-up Dad. Don’t let that woman cut us off like that!”

“That’s not nice Christopher. That’s road rage.”

“Dad, stop being such a punk, run into her!”
“Look, Christopher! There’s an empty check-out line. Let’s take these pink geraniums, white impatients, jalapeno peppers, Four O’ Clocks and basil and get the hell out of here before I spend any more money.”

“Alright Dad. Oooo.... Do you hear that ice cream truck?”

Pop Goes the Weasel echoed from somewhere in the neighborhood.

“We are not getting any ice cream. Let’s get back home and get these things planted. It was supposed to rain today, but look at that blue sky, Christopher.”

“I can carry the green watering urn and those bags, Dad.”

“Thank you Christopher.”

We rounded the corner and the ice cream man came driving down King Street.

Christopher flagged him down, ordered a double cone with chocolate ice cream and sprinkles.

I hummed Pop Goes the Weasel while planting my beautiful flowers from the Home Depot.

They only cost me $38 but the ice cream was $5.50 for a double shot of frozen milk.

Fishing Lines

My older brother is a talented fisherman. He is the first born of the school and more at ease in the great outdoors than I.

It was never fun fishing with Bill. He always managed to catch fish while the slack on my line remained limp.

Despite the fact that he could out-swim me in the rapids of Pennsylvania rivers I adore him to this day because he tried so hard to turn me into a man and convert me from my sissy ways.

In the spring of our youth– those years before we started dating girls, Bill woke me at 5 a.m. to help harvest minnows for a business we started. We sold live minnows to local fishermen for a quarter each.

We threw on our rubber hip boots and waded into the waters of a nearby creek. A net was used for scooping the tiny fish from the rapids. Bill held the net while I walked down the stream to scare the tiny fish into the trap.

As he lifted the net from the water, tons of tiny fish would jump for their lives, showing their white bellies in an attempt to find their way back into the stream.

Our minnows were stored in a tiny stream behind our home. We built a damn across the trickling brook and kept the fish in a submersed storage bin made of a recycled screen door.



The business was a success. We made tons of cash from selling live bait. Our harvested minnows were irresistible to large mouthed bass and trout. Bill showed me how to put a minnow on a hook without killing it. When the tiny fish swam while pierced with a hidden hook, unsuspecting fish bit down hard on the bait.

I fished shoulder to shoulder with Bill, but he was the one who always managed to catch the big fish. I stood on the banks of streams for years waiting for a bite while he yanked them in all afternoon.

I tried stealing his fishing tricks. I watched closely as he spat on the tiny minnows, adding a little extra flavor to his bait.

It seemed so childish, but the trick worked. However, I refused to spit on my bait considering the act to be as silly as crossing one’s fingers for good luck.

Eventually I gave up and decided to spit on my bait too.

I hawked a greenie and thrust the glob of saliva from my mouth with a burst of air, deep in my throat.

I missed the fish and the wad landed on Bill’s fishing vest.

“You are such a girl! You should have been a girl,” he shouted.

“Shut-up and spit on my bait for me!” I demanded.

He aimed perfectly with his lips and landed a juicy ball of spit on my minnow.
A few moments later, I finally caught a fish.

He looked at me in worry. He knew I could never survive off the fat of the land without a good man in my life.

I knew I would be alright in life though.

No one can scare minnows into nets like I do.

Purple Acres Revisited

It was a warm May evening when my grandmother was struck by lightening.

A thunderstorm crawled along the summit of Stone Creek Ridge, the rain tapered off, and Esther, my grandmother, thought it was safe to go outside to check on our new hatched baby chickens.

She and I hatched seven chicks in an incubator purchased from a garden catalog. It took exactly 21 days from the day we first turned on the light bulb until the moment when I finally understood the theory of the birds and the bees.

We placed the eggs we stole from underneath our favorite chicken, Sally and carefully laid them inside a yellow plastic incubator which sat next to a red lava lamp on top of the television.

The eggs glowed for weeks under a bright white light while grandma forced me to watch the Lawrence Welk Show and wait for those eggs to hatch.

I was responsible for turning the eggs three times each day as they warmed under the warming light.

"Over easy," she instructed.

If the eggs are not rolled around under the light, they will fail to hatch, according to my grandma.

The bright yellow hatchlings pecked their way into the world to the sounds of a polka tune on Lawrence Welk.

I bounced back and forth, kicking my legs up in the air as my chickens pecked their way into the real world.

After leaving their shells they got a close-up look at the boy who carefully nursed them to life inside a plastic womb of sorts.

My mouth opened widely and I crowed with a bright smile as the eggs started to come to life. My two front teeth were missing and I ran my tongue back and forth in the gap on my gum line wishing I too had a beak for cracking shells like the pee-pees had.

We kept the chicks inside grandma’s trailer for a few days before putting them outside in a specially designed bird cage for baby chicks.

Lawrence Welk waved his magic stick on television and I allowed the baby chicks to run across the palms of my hand as we all swayed to the music of yesterday.

The thunderstorm that blew over our farm in May of 1972 was fierce. Grandma and I both thought we may have lost the yellow birds to the wind.

Trees had lost the limbs during the windstorm. Part of the roof from our tool shed had blown off, and it appeared as though a tornado may have touched down.

"Go save the pee-pees, grandma! Go save the pee-pees!" I cried, trembling from the loud thunder bursts.

We watched those eggs, night after night and were just as protective for their lives as a mother hen would be.

The thunderstorm rocked my grandmother’s pink mobile home. I realized that the small wooden box built with chicken wire, wood found behind the barn and rusty nails taken from a scrap pile of odds and ends in the tool shed may not be strong enough to withstand the power of the storm.

It seemed very likely that the tiny hen house, where the hand cultivated chicks now lived, may have blown away in the storm.

Grandma knew it wasn’t safe to step outside yet but she loved the chicks as much as I.

She gave me orders not to turn on the television and to stay away from the windows while she prepared a meal for her frightened baby chicks, pinned up in a wooden box at the south end of the apple orchard.

She boiled three eggs and tore out the greenish-yellow balls inside. She crushed the yokes with a fork and put the meal into a mason jar lid.

She ran barefoot across the wet grass to check on the chicks.

Their home was still standing.

Grandma was relieved.

The fresh country air turned greenish blue, like the color of a boiled egg yolk, and grandma's bright red hair stood on ends.

The mason lid lit up with bright orange fire, scrambling the chick’s meal of yolk morsels across the damp lawn.

I eventually grew tired of waiting in suspense for her return and left the trailer without permission.

I saw her laying motionless on the ground with the jar lid burned into her hand and still smoking.

I rolled her around, like a egg inside an incubator and she pecked her way back to life.

The Smoke Weaver's Other Daughter

I miss my old friend Thomas Barbour.

He died a few months ago.

Many know him from his movies-- "Arthur", "Suspect", "The Age of Innocence" and "Girlfight".
I knew the real Tom Barbour off-stage.

He was not the most famous person I ever worked for but he will always be my favorite actor.

I never watched the movie ‘Arthur’. I was very young when it first came out and could not manage to sit for two hours when it finally appeared on the small screen.

I have always liked the theme song by Christopher Cross and the verse that warns listeners “you can get caught between the moon and New York City”. The song hauntly echos in the wide open spaces of my musical mind every time it is played on the radio.

When I was a child riding in the back seat of my step-father’s Chevy, we argued over the lyrics to that song. Dad always insisted the the words from Arthur's Theme were “You can get drunk between the moon and New York City.”

“That’s stupid,” I said. “That’s not what he’s singing.”

The family would laugh at my obsession with poetry and musical lyrics.

Those lyrics always seemed odd to me. They were prophetic in nature, even while listening to them as a kid.

I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.

After I started working for the man who played an important role in "Suspect" with Cher, I ran to Blockbuster to see my boss at work as a professional actor in the Dudley Moore classic, “Arthur on the Rocks”.

The Hollywood scene didn’t impress Tom. He came from money and he didn’t pursue acting for the fortune and fame. He never bothered applying for a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

It didn’t really matter all that much to him that he portrayed Arthur’s father,--at least he pretended to be modest when I asked him about being a movie star.

“I rented Arthur last night. It was weird watching you in it. Now here you are sitting right in front of me,” I said like a star-struck employee.

“You did? Well good! I got lots for you to do today,” he said while brushing off the compliments.

Tom was a Harvard graduate with a degree in literature. In addition to acting he spent his life writing plays. His favorite was “The Smoke Weaver’s Daughter”.

When I worked for him on weekends to afford my outrageously expensive New York City rent we spent many hours trying to figure out which draft of ‘The Smoke Weaver’s Daughter" was the most recent.

"I’m not sure if this is the one, it’s dated August 1952."

"Hell no! It was much later than that."

He was a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and a registered voter for the annual awards ceremony when Hollywood honors its own.

Tom, who started to lose his vision at the end of his life, hired me as his personal seeing- eye- secretary.

The accomplished actor asked me who we should vote for as we went into his personal mail and stumbled upon the SAG ballot.

I had recently been discharged from an in-patient psychiatric unit in New Jersey and could hardly organize my thoughts while on Lithium. My hands trembled while I held up the ballot and read off the names to my boss.

It was hard reading the fine print. He was patient with me as my mind slowly learned to read again.

The job working for Tom was heaven sent for someone in the mind-shattered state that I was in at the time.

St. Vincent Hospital's $120 session per visit cost to see a shrink was killing me financially despite the fact that I was a member of a reputable HMO.

Tom was willing to allow me to work for as many hours as I needed to help cover my medical costs. His company and patience helped to pull me back. It was comforting to be in his presence when I was alone in my post-psychotic state and nobody else seemed to want to spend too much time with me.

He was a lot like a father to me.

On his desk, beneath piles and piles of unfinished drafts of “The Smoke Weaver’s Daughter” was something called "Brain Gum". The gum was one of those practical joke products that one can buy as a gag gift.

"She sucks, don’t vote for her!" I said while chewing the stale gum as we read the piece of mail from the Screen Actor’s Guild.

"Then we’ll vote for someone else. Read a little more to me," he giggled.

The hours ticked by and he payed me the the salary he promised– $20 per hour, plus personal insight to his "magic drawer" in the bedroom.

It was a drawer filled to the top with twenties.

Every Saturday before returning home, Tom often needed something from the corner deli.

“Will you do me a big favor before you leave me and run home to your lover?” He asked.

“Sure, do you need something from the deli?” I would ask.

“As a matter of fact I do. Do you know where my magic drawer is?”

“Of course I do!”

“Well, take out one twenty dollar bill, buy me a bagel and coffee, and bring back the change,” he ordered.

I gave him his food, filled out my own check and guided his hand to the proper place for signature.

He grew sad as I left him there in the dark and headed home to a lover with whom I was in a monogamous relationship with.

"I never had a real lover like you do," he said.

"I can't imagine why not! Hell, you are loaded! Half of gay New York City would marry you if you would just ask." I replied.

"Oh, you are a naughty one," he said while laughing in the dark like an actor from a silent movie.

“There’s tons to do around here, you don’t have to leave so soon!” he said temptingly with his magic drawer calling from from the bedroom.

"I have to go home, Tom. Bradley does not like it when we don’t get to spend our Saturdays together."

“Well then, suit yourself,” he said while I led him to his bedroom in the dark and the theme from Arthur whispered in my mind, like an intrusive thought.

Anthony Miller's Fresh Air Fund Stories

My first experience with another man happened in the hen house. I was only thirteen and Anthony, a Fresh-Air fund kid from Brooklyn showed me that there isn’t too much difference between the races.

Granddaddy told me that Fresh-Air kids from the city grew tails. I believed him and just had to see for myself.

It was true. It surprised me when I noticed Anthony’s long black tail grew from his belly though.

It all happened very innocently. Anthony was a little older than I and was street smart. He hated the Fresh Air Fund and would rather have stayed with his Aunt Millie in Brooklyn, but his mother, a girl from North Carolina felt it necessary that he participate in a summer program which granted inner-city youth the opportunity to experience the simpler side of life.

Anthony wouldn’t talk to anyone in his new home. My mother tried very hard to make sure he felt welcome but he only sat at the breakfast table with his arms crossed refusing to pick-up a fork and eat.

“Those eggs are brown,” Anthony said while refusing to peel a farm fresh boiled egg and eat it.

“Sally laid that egg,” I said to the tall Black kid with puffy hair.

“Sally?”

“Sally is a chicken we hatched inside an ink-u-bater,” I explained. We have twenty-five chickens now, you wanna see them?”

Anthony ran to the door, put on his shoes and went running across the pasture towards the wooden hen house before I could catch up to him.

“Where’s da chicken heads?” he asked.

“Right there in front of you. Ain’t they something?”

“Those are pigeons, where da chicken heads?” He asked while showing me how kids from Brooklyn feed their chickens.

Wible's Orange Soda

Shirley lived out the lane. Her trailer was parked in a pine grove. Despite the fact that it was 1972, she was a single young woman who didn’t need a man in her life.

She was a country girl as fresh as hay in July. Her youth blossomed in a body as firm as cucumbers. My dad treated her kindly, perhaps he was too kind to her.

Dad got a twinkle in his eyes when pretty girls wandered into nearby pastures. He used my cute little face with a thick, full-head of hair and a cow-lick to lead them into casual conversation.

“Oh, he’s so cute!” Shirley said to my dad one day while we were at the Country Garden Market buying bread. Dad rubbed my head, like a trophy he won in a horse race.

“I’m Bill,” my father said to Shirley with a twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, and this is my second, Charlie.”

Even at four I knew when something smelled fishy.

I went into bars with my dad, I knew what Shirley was after–

Pop.

Many ladies in town liked my daddy because he bought them pop.

Dad only bought me and my brother one pop when we sat in those cool air conditioned watering holes in Huntingdon in summer.

Girls like Shirley got as many as they wanted.

Shirley told my dad and I that she just moved out from her mom and dad’s house and bought a trailer up on Stone Creek Ridge.
“My mom sold you that land. I’m Bill Taylor and I’m married.” Dad giggled while pointing behind my back at me.

“Hey Dad, I’m telling mom you are talking to women again,” I said cute and casually.

Shirley bought me a six pack of Wible’s orange soda pop that day.

2013

In a former cycle I lived in Mesoameria. It was a time when vines did not grow wildly over the pyramids– the place where they buried the gods of our days. We bowed down to our gods and did all that we could to please them. Our gods were the men who knew God-- those born from the belly of the great bird in the sky.

The gods were intelligent beings. They gave many gifts to those of us who served them. My god gave me a gift from his god-- a timetable that showed me everything that would happen before the return of the worm in the woods.

The end was so far away. I was told that I would live to see the worm. I knew that the times of sorrows was at least 2011 years away.

They lived lavish lives-- those from God. We buried them in the temples at the top of the man made mountains– wonders of the ancient world.

My father worked an important job below the plaza. He kept water running through the homes of the kings and queens of civilization. Kings and queens never had to leave their homes. My father made it so they could dump in their homes without attracting flies and worms.
I was light a light bearer-- the one who kept things alive inside those dark rooms of the dead.

I performed my job well and the flame never went out when it was my job to carry a burning stick up the mountain with steps and light the oil inside the temples of our gods.

When the fall storms came from the great ocean, the winds howled greatly and the beasts of the wind would try to devour the flames.

I stayed in the temple when the storm came while everyone else, even the kings and queens ran to the caves in the mountain.

The real temples of God were in a land in which even my gods could not go. They were caves in the mountainside, filled with stalagmites. As a child the lands still belonged to my people.

I knew of many secret passages in the caves. The deep dark corridors that seemed to go on endlessly with thousands of entrances that branched off into nothingness.

I counted the passageways in the dark caverns as a child and memorized the place like a map in my head.

One day I stumbled upon the place where they buried God with all the treasures of the ancient people. The gold from my fire wand seemed dim in that room.

I told God to get over it, I was taking some of his treasure and buying a pretty dress like those bitches who lived in the plaza got to wear during their lives.

The golden lid from the royal tomb lifted and God started to rise from his sleep.

“Come here my child! I have been waiting a long time for you to come back to me,” he said while burning like a bush.

1984

Matthew got what he asked for on Christmas morning 1984– an Atari 2600.

The first god of the video game revolution was all anyone wanted for Christmas that year.

That gift under the tree seemed to sparkle brighter than all others that snowy cold day in December. He couldn’t wait to plug it into the new television and fight over joysticks with his three brothers.

“Go feed Brandy,” his mother ordered. Matthew didn’t want to put on his boots and coat and run up back to change Brandy’s frozen water dish. The family had a new pet now, one that step-father would allow to sleep inside the house.

He rushed into the basement and filled up a five- gallon bucket from a spicate located next to a wood burning stove. The thought of shooting down rows of aliens as they slowly crawled from the top of the television screen raced through his mind.
There certainly was something special about Christmas 1984.

Having to feed Brandy was such a chore.

She came out of her box shivering. She was a pure mutt. Her ancestors were farm dogs-- dogs that went on hunting expeditions with their owners and chased away coons in the corn fields. In Brady’s days on earth, times had changed and farmland turned into towns.

Dogs had not yet fully integrated into society.

Her brown hair was stiff like a wire brush. Brandy never got a real bath. She stayed tied to her box on a chain all her life.

Sure the four brothers played with their dog from time to time but they were not allowed to let her run loose.

The family lost several dogs over the years– Road Kill! They were mushed by hit and run drivers. It wasn’t worth the risk to allow dogs loose in a small town with only one road going through it and an unlimited speed limit.

In strict households in 1984, pets were not allowed to run freely inside a family’s home. The only alternative was a dog house and a chain.

Matthew felt incredibly sad for Brandy on Christmas morning. He saw other dogs on television who were allowed to live inside and sleep with their families.

“I’m sorry Brandy! You shouldn’t have to sleep outside.”

Because it was Christmas morning Matthew decided to give Brandy a fresh handful of straw from the barn which was turned into a storage shed.

Brandy loved straw.

It kept her warm inside her large wooden dog box.

As both Matthew and Brandy shuffled the straw inside the doghouse the Christmas memory of the new Atari 2600 returned.

His palms rubbed rapidly along the wooden floor of the dog house and bumped into something warm.

Brandy had puppies.

“Merry Christmas, Brandy,” Matthew cheered while scratching the coarse hair on the mutt’s head.

“They are so beautiful, Brandy!”

Brandy ran as fast as she could, chasing after her favorite of the family brothers but was soon jerked into a sudden stop by a thick silver chain.

Matthew stopped, turned around and returned to his dog and rubbed her floppy ears.

“Sorry about the chain!”

“Guess what Brandy? We got an Atari for Christmas this year. I wish you could come inside and see it. But just wait until I tell them about your puppies. Do you mind if I take one and show them?”

“Ruff, Ruff, Yes-- show them for gods sake! We’re freezing out here.”

Brandy whimpered and hung her head low and crawled inside the doorway of her kennel believing that she would be abandoned in the cold yet again.

It was simply too frigid in that dog house with those puppies, especially on Christmas morning.

The Atari never did get plugged in that day.

The kids were too busy playing with their new puppies-- inside a home heated by oak, under a pine tree.

The pups were already several weeks old and their eyes were opened, but nobody ever took the time to visit Brandy inside her X-Box.

It was too cold and difficult changing her water dish when it froze solid at night in the highlands of Appalachia.

Brandy looked like she had Weiner dog in her blood and her tummy already dragged on the ground.

Fat Lady Sings The Blues

Shedding fat the natural way is the best cure for common depression.

Men can be cruel and fart all over our egos when we get big and round when not carrying their children in our tummies.

They may call you an obese ugly slut as they pack their things and finally get out of your kitchen.

Ignore them.

Anti-depressants make us chunky and rub salt on the wounds that form on those flabby patches on our inner-thighs-- the spot where our legs rub together.

Run it off and you’ll have the guys eating off you again.

Don’t set there and watch Oprah pull out another red wagon and remind you that you’ll never be a talk show host.

Start with baby steps, increase your stride over time, and before you know it, you’ll be as tasty as re-fried beans.

I had subconsciously settled into my fat inner- self and decided that sex was for the heterosexuals and birds anyway.

“If they don’t love me for who I am inside, I don’t want them anyway,” I secretly told myself.

Times have changed. Even Oprah does not look inside others any longer.

When my husband decided it was time to go run off with a skinny Chelsea tramp I spent my time on a tread mill and not bench pressing the refrigerator.

Don’t let the steroid queens at the gym depress you either. In a few months they’ll be checking out your bubble gum butt at the gym.

Just keep running and ignore those laughing at your fat ass bounce up and down on the stairmaster. If you break the machine, who gives a fuck—that’s what memberships are for!

Cut-out the bread and cereals. I know they are an important part of our diets, but us fat heifers have had enough to last our bodies a lifetime.

Keep wearing the baggy clothing and secretly change within.

When warm summer days come again, throw on a wife-beater tank top and watch all the fat ugly men chase you down like crumbs on the plate from a deliciously prepared meal-- like the ones we once prepared in good faith for the skinny men in our lives.

Ambian Night Cap

Ambian set off my psychosis.

The sleep medication was prescribed to me the day I went to get my HIV results.

I waited just over a week for a positive or negative sign.

I didn’t sleep for six nights.

I stayed awake as the clock ticked slowly, planning my will.

It was a treacherous week without sleep– crying over my dead lover and getting fired from my job within a two week period.

I walked into Dr. McGowin’s office quite delusional to get those test results.

“Charles, glad to see you! Come with me,” she said with a smile. I was rushed to the top of the waiting list that day because Dr. McGowin understood just how upset I was.

I wondered if she were a lesbian. She seemed far to kind and understanding of the needs of the gay community.

When I came in for the test, referred to her by my HMO, I broke into tears and told her to give me all the Hepatis shots available.

“I was going to call you and tell you over the phone but I’m not allowed-- it’s okay,” she said reassuringly before we reached the exam room.

I cried all over her white doctor’s jacket. She held me for a while and slowly pulled herself away.

“I haven’t slept in a long time. Can you give me something to make me sleep?” I asked.


She prescribed Ambian and handed me the lab paperwork-- outlining statistics on blood as red and healthy as life itself.

I left there with my pill pass, still very sleepy and unsure of just how happy I really was about being ‘negative’.

When those nights passed so slowly waiting to hear the bad news, I didn’t have time to sleep.

There was far too much to think about.

I had to find another job and arrange for my lover to be shipped off to the City of Angels.

The Ambian sent me to heaven where I spent some time with my recently passed over lover.

His was the first voice I heard in my crazy head.

“Hey sexy, guess what heaven’s like?”

I pushed the pillows around my head to drown the chatter.

“See that beer over there on the desk? The bottle is your body and the beer is your soul. Take away the glass and the beer is still good!” he said to me in that irresistible masculine voice of his.

I must have slept for three days straight on Ambian before I could pull myself out of the bed. I walked the streets of the great city like a sleep- walker on the run on that sleeping pill.

I knew the pill had set something off in me and I couldn’t snap out of it.

I was dreaming yet awake.

I went to the same hospital where my lover died and waited all night to see a psychiatrist.

I grew tired and left.

In my walking dream I knew I could not stop dreaming, even though I was somewhat awake.

I’ll never swallow another Ambian nor will I ever have another HIV test.

But I do sleep well at night now that I know I’ll always be like beer without a glass.

Playing Football

Christine and I met in high school.

I played third string in the Rocket High School football team and sat on the far end of the bench watching her with blue, white and gold pom-poms and the prettiest legs I ever saw on a lady.

She kicked them in unison with the rest of the squad. Those black and white shoes went way up past her head and I was the only one with a front row seat to view the pleasure hidden beneath a pleated skirt that blossomed like a pumpkin down over her hips.

She had big fat lips, just like mine.

I wondered if people called her ‘nigger lips’ too.

Christine was the only girl in school worth kissing.

Her lips matched mine.

She only smiled at me all those years.

Having big lips was not as glamorous as being first string quarterback.

Christine deserved to be homecoming queen and date someone as fast and precise as the quarterback.

She was so pretty.

We may have never kissed, but she cheers for me still.

Swing Low Sweet Cherry

It wasn’t my fault that my wife and I became addicts to the swing-scene.

Our best friends, Matt and Christine came over for a cook-out in the back yard one Sunday afternoon and mentioned that they were exploring a “free and open relationship”.

Connie, my wife of four years seemed appalled at first when Christine bragged about being the center of attention at the recent gathering of ‘Hammocks and Rocking Chairs’, a club specializing in fantasies for those who made the mistake and tied the knot.

“I thought I’d be pissed at first,” Matt explained while rubbing his crotch and eyeing Connie up and down like a slab of baby back ribs while she slaved over the grill.

My protectiveness over the sanctity of my fine wife kicked in and I nearly lost control and punched Matt in the face, but I sat in a lounge chair and let him finish.

Christine didn’t say a word. She flipped burgers and pretended not to be all that interested in the proposal being served by our guests along with potato salad and a summer platter of sliced tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and a drizzle of olive oil.

I’m a wholesome Jewish boy with a Protestant upbringing. Sharing my wife is something I would never do under most circumstances.

My mind changed later that evening over cordials.

Connie and Christine started it. They began by licking Bailey’s off one another’s fingers and the next thing you know I was lapping it off of Matt’s huge cock.

Lazarus, Walk!

When life kicks us in the ass over and over again and the bad times seem endless, angels are sent to us, even in America.

It happened to me. I swear. A total stranger approached me in the emergency room of Brooklyn Hospital Center as my lover died. I believe she was an angel.

I’m not sure if the Black woman with a golden tooth was a good angel or a bad angel. She was creepy though. She knew too much. I didn’t like how she read my aura next dripping I.V.’s and plastic bags in which dying lovers on hospital beds pee.

Two others who were visiting Shawn in the emergency room with me and witnessed the powers of the stranger that day.

“He wants you to know he’s okay and to hold your head up,” the stranger said.

She wasn’t like a Jehovah’s Witness throwing literature my way. She dove into the darkness of my soul and told me things that no one should have known.

“Shawn wants to know why you turned your back and slept on the far side of the bed last night.”

How did she know of our lover’s quarrel?

“He kicked my cat off the bed!” I responded and asked her to leave us alone.

“Pray over him,” she instructed.

Without questioning her or her godly authority I closed my eyes and prayed.

I closed my eyes and placed my hands on the thin white sheet covering my lover and words poured from my soul.

I dripped in sweat as I said that prayer. Words that I did not know spewed forth from my mouth.

His body began to tremble and shake. I opened my eyes and saw a smile on his face. The machines he was connected to jumped to life and started beeping loudly when I delivered that prayer.

Another Black woman approached me in the emergency room. “I hope your friend makes it,” she said with a reassuring smile while laying hands on my back.

I turned to the angel. She smiled at me. I walked outside with her.

She told me other things.

“Your friend, Shawn, who was he?” she asked.

“My lover,” I explained.

“Oh, I know that, but I mean who was he spiritually?”

I started to question her authority. If she knew who he was in the bed with me, why didn’t she know who he was spiritually?

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“His spirit is very old and very strong. I heard his voice this morning and it led me here. I hope I am done doing all he wants me to do,” she said with a fearful look in her eyes.

“I had a brother who died from AIDS. He went on because he chose to. Some choose to stay, some choose to go. My brother chose to go. Shawn will stay,” she said.

“Do you mean he will live and get out of the hospital and come home?”

“Yes,” she promised.

Dead Man Calling

“Paige? This is Charles. Shawn just died.”

“Oh dear God!”

“Paige, did you know he had AIDS and Hepatitis?”

“I thought that was pretty obvious, didn’t you?”

“Hell no, I fucked him without a condom.”

“What did they tell you at the hospital?”

“It was liver failure.”

“Well, he did drink a lot when he lived with me. He went through a fifth of Jack Daniels every night. Charles, he had a really bad drinking problem before he met you.”

“Oh, well I didn’t know that either.”

“Are you going to be alright?”

“I don’t think so. I think I’m dying now too.”

“Did you call his mother and tell her?”
“Hell no! Why is this dead man my responsibility? His family didn’t care enough to fly from LA to see him in the hospital and now, because I’m white, I’m supposed to be wealthy enough to have his body shipped back to California. I’m not calling her, you call her!”
(CLICK) I walked through his apartment, which was now my apartment too.

When I opened his closet a black address book fell at my feet.

I opened it and written in bold dark numbers was the telephone contact information for his mother.

I knew he was still with me.

I picked up the phone and dialed the City of Angels.

Hello, Aileen!

My high school girlfriend, Aileen Querry looks better at 39 than she did at 16.

She made the Society Page of the ‘Huntingdon Daily News’ recently-- a hometown newspaper.

My mother always mails me Aileen clippings from the ‘Daily News’.

The black and white daily informs readers of south central Appalachia that my girlfriend from high school was voted “most changed” by the class of 1985 during a 2005 class reunion.

She’s a lipstick lesbian, but the ‘Daily News’ will not import that bit of information into its long- winded homepages.

We have both appeared in the ‘Daily News’ over the years. I’ve guest written in Jo’s column, “Along the Juniata” several times. Aileen is a bit of a county celebrity. She frequently captures the lense of the paper’s photographers while visiting back home.

It’s odd that we both turned out to be gay and put ourselves through uncomfortable moments during puberty.

Life is like that for children of the press.

We don’t see each other often in person, it’s much easier to catch- up with each other’s lives in that hometown newspaper.

Who would have ever guessed that Aileen and I were both gay? We had each other fooled.

I was the younger brother of the quarter-back of the Rocket football team. I didn’t have to act butch, everyone assumed I was because I was Bill’s younger brother.

Aileen had a huge crush on Bill. He called her a fat-ass ugly bitch and told her to get lost, so she ran right into my blossoming gay arms.

She was Dolly in our high school musical and I was Cornelius Hackle.

We kissed backstage during after school rehearsals of ‘Hello, Aileen’, but that’s as far as it went.

I allowed her to rub up on me and sense my desire to get out of Yonkers, but Miss Levi would never get into my Levi’s!

I resisted her personal match-making ventures better than my brother Bill.

I never put out because I never really wanted to and Aileen thought it was adorable that I wanted to save my virginity until I got married.

In 1994 she came to visit my lover and I in Brooklyn.

I called her one day out of the blue and decided to “come out” to her.

She laughed and told me she ate pussy and she thought I knew.

She laughed some more and told me that she and her best friend Dorella were lesbian lovers, not best friends.

She admitted to having an affair with me while being my girlfriend.

When she arrived in New York City to visit my happy gay home, I met her in the subway underground of the World Trade Center.

She was a sight for sore eyes. It was like watching Dolly sing while walking down a spiral staircase carpeted in red velvet when I first noticed her sticking out from the crowds of thousands shuffling home from work up those escalators.

She came to town on New Jersey transit and the Path Train.

I met her at the top of those long mechanical stairs which once carried thousands of commuters from the base of the Twin Towers.

She allowed her brownish-red hair to grow almost to her ass. She lost some weight and her tits could finally be seen for what they really were– the spittin’ image of Dolly Parton’s.

I expected to spend the weekend reminiscing about our lives as children and how silly we once were.

I was prepared to laugh about the lesbian affair she had while dating me.

The strangest thing happened after we had both came out and got over it quickly while sipping bottle after bottle of white wine in my Brooklyn back yard.

We made love in my laundry room downstairs while my gay lover Anthony slept unsuspectingly in a bedroom above our heads.

It felt downright sinful and was glad that I had never married when I had an affair with my high school sweetheart.

Time-Outs

One of my favorite black and white photographs in my dead lover’s portfolio is a snapshot of two naked Mexican guys.

Two Mexican models pulled down their pants and leaned over a sofa while Shawn captured their somewhat flat asses on film.

One of the short dudes with a tan ass was giggling at his friend who showed only the back of his head.

“Did you screw them?” I asked.

“Of course, all the time,” he shared.

“Tell me about them.”

“They were double trouble. I took them with me to a friend’s house- warming party. It was a house party thrown by my friend Diana. Those two little bastards ended up luring her boyfriend into the bathroom and took turns blowing him.”

“What happened when she found out?”

“Oh, she didn’t find out. I was the one who caught them in there,” he explained.

“What did you do?”

"I made them leave the party immediately. We came back to my house and I made them take this nude photograph.”

“So, you gave them a spanking with your camera,” I noted.

“Yes I did! But that was long before the appropriate form of punishment was a time-out,” Shawn explained.

Sunday Clothes

I vividly remember walking into a protestant church service in the height of my delusional state of mind.

Weeks before I wandered into a Mormon tabernacle in mid-town and asked for literature, but it was only because it was an extremely hot day in the desert of Manhattan and I wanted to soak up the free air conditioning.

I was hallucinating out on the streets of the great city and needed a respite. I knew that even Jesus went through it when he went out into the dry empty places.

Those Mormon dudes cruised me for weeks after I treaded into their sacred church. I made the mistake of giving them my number and address while pretending that I was fascinated by the life of the great prophet, Joseph Smith.

The Mormon missionaries were sexy. They always work in pairs. They came to my house a few times to counsel me on the path to Christ, but I scared them away when I kept asking them to show me their Moses staffs.

It was a warm Sunday morning in late June when I re-converted to my protestant roots and headed off to church in my bad boy clothing.

I had on my jeans and a wife-beater tank top and walked all the way from Brooklyn to the lower west side of Manhattan to worship the lord.

I wasn’t sure where I was going when I got dressed that day but a loud voice in my head was telling me to get- off my skinny ass and go– “Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men,” the voice promised.

I was walking to nowhere again.

As soon as the birds started chirping in my Brooklyn back yard, I threw on my clothes and head out searching.

I didn’t like sleeping. The dreams were far too intense, especially the reoccurring one involving a book which beamed of the brightest golden light. When I dreamed of that book, I felt my soul slip into its pages. In my dreams I was dying and in reality, my body was doing the same.

I decided to fast like Jesus– only Newport cigarettes and water were permissible in my manic diet.

There were still a few stars in the morning sky– the strong bright ones that even the golden rays of a summer morning cannot wash from a once stained sky of perfect white dots.

The traffic was calm when I left the house. It was 5:45 a.m. and I knew I had to hurry-up and get somewhere fast.

I walked more than three miles to the foot of the Brooklyn bridge. I was too paranoid to take the subway and I didn’t want to be underground when the weather outside was absolutely delicious.

Morning was the best part of the day for me after the demons took hostage of my soul. That was the time of day of peace– before the severe anger sunk in its teeth.

I hadn’t slept in weeks and the only thing to ease the deep thick sinister depression was to walk.

One idea spawned another as I headed off into the light again.

My feet moved on their own. They moved quite fast– I was practically jogging as I walked.

When I stumbled upon a church with its doors open on 8th Avenue I was dumbfounded.

For days I thought I had died and I was simply a lost spirit seeking out the light. What was a church doing there, directly in my path?

My feet stopped on their own and spun me around. My legs carried me into the church on their own will. I marched my ass inside, picked up a hymnal and sang as loud as I could towards the huge brass cross hanging overhead.

A fat queer preacher dipped a set of twins in a bird bath like Baptismal pool.

I laughed hysterically, but not in an inappropriate manner as a gay saint sprinkled drops of Holy Water on twin babies.

A lesbian couple took photographs of the Baptism of their adopted oriental kids-- that is why I laughed and couldn’t stop.

My laugh was so loud in that church that my tummy ached. I couldn’t breathe.

They had no right to throw me out of church like the world’s last sinner!

But I did enjoy the fellowship while it lasted.

Calling All Cars

I never met my mother-in-law face to face.

Shawn warned me she was crazy but would likely bring me under her wing as one of her own like she had his other friends in life.

I almost met her. We were weeks away from moving into an apartment above her duplex in Crenshaw before the Feds took Shawn away.

"She’s going to love your pies. I want you to show her how you make a crust when we get to L.A. She’s going to adore you like I do."

"Are you a momma’s boy?" I asked.

"Of course I am. There is noplace I’d rather be than with you in my momma’s home. She is such a good cook. Sexy, you’ll never have to do laundry again and expect to sit down to a home-cooked meal every evening."


I carefully assessed the situation. I was far from being my mother’s favorite. Moving to L.A. with a man I had known for just over a year was scary enough, but men who can’t let go of momma’s apron strings are ticking time- bombs.

"Are your sure your brother Bobby can’t rent us an apartment in a different part of town?" I asked.

"Bobby has a safe in this place. We can’t keep the money in a bank. Here’s how it’s done– we get mindless 9-5 jobs and keep those minimum wages in the bank. We pay our taxes and live the fruitless existence that we already live here in New York. But in five years we’ll have enough cash to buy a place down in Puerto Rico."

"Will you give me the combination to the safe? What if you get caught and I have to make a run for it? I promise, if you let me have the combination, I’ll take care of your mother if something happens to you."

"I’m not worried about you running off with our money. I’m only worried that you will run from me. Things are different in L.A. for a white boy as fine as you, sexy. You’ll meet some rich white mother-fucker and realize that you don’t need me."

"I don’t need you now. Believe me, I know better than to allow myself to become a housewife and depend on another man."

"I’m still not giving you the combination to the safe unless you make me."

I pulled down my underwear and told him to try crackin’ it and he mumbled out ‘32-3-38' as I slowly turned the lever clockwise.

A Beautiful Smile

I walked down the street and the traffic lights seemed to change at my very wish.

When I blinked they turned red, stopping the flow of traffic.

"Take that! Slow your asses down," I shouted when I was the god of traffic.

It was reassuring when I reached the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Something inside told me it would stop there-- the crushing feeling around me would cease if I could just make it to the bridge.

I felt the police with their laser lights drill past the protective covering of my brain and try reading my thoughts. I was too powerful for the small radar guns the cops carried on their uniforms– the ones they were using to pick out those with the light hidden within.

But the larger devices installed in patrol cars were far too overwhelming, even for one with a mind as powerful as mine.

I walked up the bridge pretending that those ahead of me were my horses-- pulling my heavy weight forward. I was controlling them like slaves and traffic.

I let go of my magic lasso tossed invisibly around the tourist heading up the wooden walkway of the spanning roadway of stone and thick metal wires.

Cars continued to drive on the bridge below my feet and it seemed that they did not care that I was the one controlling transit.

The pain did end on that bridge.

When I tried leaving the soothing comfort of the wooden walkway, the pain returned. I walked the entire length of Manhattan and Brooklyn several times, night and day.

It seemed to me that I would reach the light soon, after all, I had already come to the conclusion that I was dead.

There had to be more than this noisy city with all its traffic.

Where is Shawn? Did he make it to heaven and I’m the one in hell? Couldn’t be...I was more saintly than he.

The bastard tricked me, I thought.

Calling All Cars The Re-Mix

Shawn withdrew from an addition to crack in a state prison.

Most insist that one can never overcome an addition to crack, but Shawn did. "It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do," he explained to me one morning while having instant coffee with him at his place in Brooklyn.

"Remember this sexy, you have to go through the fire to come out like gold," he advised.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"You’ll never understand what I’m talking about until you go through it, but I know you will go through it too because I chose you."

I looked at him like he was crazy, because he was, after all.

"I dated this guy back in L.A., Alfredo was his name. I was totally head over heels for him, but I ended up leaving him and a few months later he killed himself."

"He killed himself? Over you?"

"No, not over me, but I think I set it off—his depression. He was thrown in prison soon after I left him. He busted a few windows in a department store complex with a garbage can. He ended up killing himself in jail."

"I’m sorry."

"Getting over him was harder than getting over the crack. Honestly, I felt his pain—that pain that made him throw trash cans into windows. I wanted to kill myself too, but I never did. I think it’s because I was destined to meet you."

"Damn, you must have really loved him, but what made you leave him?"

"He was a clean freak. One night I spilled some sugar on the coffee table and he went off on me—started hitting me—it was out of the blue, he had never done anything like that before."

"What was the secret to getting over the crack and your lover?" I asked.

"I taught myself everything there is to know about computers and learned to play chess while in jail. Nobody ever beat me in chess in the pen. When it comes after you sexy, make sure you spend your time learning something new and not feeling sorry for yourself."

Convoy

A tractor and trailer slowed to a stop along highway 67 in Arizona.

Windshields from sixteen brand new Ford Mustangs glistened in the hot sunshine like real horses in a mobile stable made of steel.

A young man who had just finished sipping the last drop of coffee from a silver thermos bottle jumped from the steel steps below the small red door of the truck cab.

Dust clouds formed around Ryan’s Timberland boots.

He felt like a cowboy from Ponderosa. He tipped the visor of his red baseball cap down over his nose to stop the morning desert sunshine from giving him a headache.

The 23 year old lad from Pennsylvania pulled the copper zipper down on his size 32 x 34 Levi’s jeans and released his penis into the open prairie. It rolled out like the large rubber mud flaps on his truck.

He realized he may have been too tired to drive when he first thought he saw a toilet in the light brown sand.

The trucker held his hose like a fireman.

He pulled away an arm from the heavy slab of hot white meat to rub his eyes and clear the fog in his eyes from an all night drive.

It wasn’t a toilet, but a rattle snake in which he was pissing.

He slowly withdrew his large pecker and charmed the snake by humming a Margaret Rowe Clifford tune.

When the rattler shook it’s tail in delight of the presence of a stranger, Ryan whacked the snake over its fangs and finished pissing a scribble in the Arizona sand while running back to his truck.

Seventy-Six Trombones

We often dispose of our close friends like we sometimes hide recyclable garbage in the black draw-string Glad trash bag.

They get thrown out or donated like used clothing.

I’ve dumped so many in my time from pure boredom.

Others have been black listed because they simply talk way too much.

Most know me in the Biblical sense and I tossed them in the dirty clothes hamper with my terry cloth hand towels.

I miss only one dearly– Faith Ann Sipes, a Mennonite.

Oh sure she was as old fashioned as they come. She was truly a plain Jane. She didn’t even wear those funny clothes to school, but still, she was not on anyone’s A-list.

She sat next to me in band and plays the clarinet like I do.

I took band very seriously but all she wanted to do was talk during eight measure rests.

I was dreaming of my future as a gay man while blowing on that long black woodwind and Faith Ann had a huge crush on me and my clarinet.

The entire band made fun of me and Faith Ann’s crush.

Randy Querry, my best friend and French Horn player made the most fun of Faith Ann when his hand wasn’t closed like a fist and placed into the mouth of the delicate brass instrument.

Faith Ann didn’t get the joke that Randy played with his fingers while the rest of Senior High Band laughed in unison. He held his palm a few inches from his Adam’s Apple and pretended to be stroking the string of a string instrument with his pointer finger.

Faith Ann thought it was really hysterical too, but didn’t know the joke was on her and the long hairs that grew between her plump breasts that she often shoved in my face like tubas.

Faith Ann was the only girl in the clarinet section who could play high G, A, B and C with only one hand. She rested the black musical tool on her tits trying to lure me into that conservative religion of hers.

My clarinet buddy gave up her quest for the guy in the first chair and ran off and got pregnant by a guy much, much older than we were.

"I haven’t told anyone this yet, but I wanted to tell you first– I’m pregnant."

"Why didn’t you tell your boyfriend first?"

"Oh, I already did, but he don’t count– you’ll always be my best friend."

I squeaked on the reed of my horn and although feeling sad for her said, "I’m not upset with you. Perhaps our love was not meant to be in this life."

"Promise we’ll always remain friends forever and that we will always stay in touch," she requested.

"We will. Every time I play my clarinet in life, I’ll think of you and those long hairs on your boobs," I said sarcastically while assuming she’d be pissed and piss off in her pregnancy.

"Oh honey, just wait until you get those fucking things on your tits!"

Crack Hoes

I’m sore today. Gabriel challenged me last night. He swears he can bust at least five nuts in one sitting.

He can.

“There is something wrong with you. You know that, right?” I asked. “I have better sex at 38 than I did at 28 and it’s all because of you.”

“Oh sexy, that’s nothing. Back in the day when I banged girls I could go all night.”

“So you really are attracted to both men and women?”

“I’ll never date another woman. The sex is good, but it’s putting up with them after the sex is over that causes me to go soft.”

“Did you ever think you just messed with the wrong females?”

“There’s no doubt about that. Me and my crew gang- banged crack whores back when the drug first hit the streets. It was unreal—I mean, those addicts were da bomb in high school. You know-- the pretty girls in class who would never give you the time of day in the 10th grade. When they grew up and got on that crack they couldn’t get enough sex so me and my boys helped to calm their uncontrollable addiction. We took turns screwing them all night long and they never wanted us to stop.”

“You’re nasty and vulgar,” I said as I pulled Link’s nails from the sofa and told the cat “No, no!” I carried him over to his scratch post seasoned with catnip and he lost his desire to continue scratching.

“Ready for another round?” I asked.

“I’ll suck you for a dollar and more stories of crack hoes.”

My tight ass lover pulled a ten from his wallet and asked me if I could do those cheers that cheerleaders do in high school. “I grabbed two pillows, shook them like pom-poms, put them on the floor and buried my face like a crack hoe.”

Finding Our Husbands

Trish was the only person locked down in the psychiatric ward who didn’t smoke. She spent her long, medicated hours imagining that her ‘future husband’ was going to stop by and pay her a visit in the hospital.

She didn’t want to be outside with the smokers if he dropped in to propose.

I was only in the hospital for a severe case of restless leg syndrome. I wandered up and down the hallways because I simply couldn’t set still. The medications were far worse than electro- shock therapy and the drugs caused my body to feel incredibly rigid and tense.

Walking helped.

Each time I passed by Trish’s room she looked up from her bed and smiled at me as if I may be her long awaited future husband.

In my delusion, I imagined Trish was trying to convert me to a heterosexual.

At the end of the hall, Jose, a very cute psychotic Latino guy slept around the clock. I’m not sure what kind of drugs they force fed him, but the poor lad could hardly get out of his bed to join the rest of modern day society for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Jose checked into the Hotel California a few days after I did. He was manic and doing some very outlandish things. Medical authorities insist that delusional people like Jose sometimes suffer from a grandiose sexual drive. I agree with the authorities.

One evening I strolled by Jose’s room with my restless legs and he took out his pecker. I swear, if I were not suffering from Restless Leg Syndrome, I would have fallen to my knees and offered the mentally ill guy some head.

I must have passed Trish and Jose’s doorways several hundred times over the course of my three week stint in physical therapy.

Trish had a takedown one night. She refused to take her medications and was acting out. Guards tackled her to the floor and accidentally slammed her big head through the dry wall above her bed.

It angers me when those who have yet to see the light treat those who live in imaginary worlds like ugly girls with little tits.

I paid Trish a visit in her room after they finally unchained her from her bed. “Are you my husband?” she asked.

“No silly! I’m gay. Can’t you see that? Now snap out of it!”

Trish was released the next day and I was finally moved into the room next to Jose.

Interviewing the Dead

I dozed off on the B train today.

Like a bag lady asleep in a navy blue suit, I crashed on the subway.

I wasn’t supposed to be on the B train. I thought I had stepped onto the F train. It was only 10:30 a.m. and I was on my way home. I had no work today so I used the time to interview for a new job.

I was done selling myself in just over an hour and headed back home.

I nearly fainted when I saw the empty subway cars post rush hour. I grabbed a seat and closed my eyes because I knew that my connecting stop in Brooklyn was at least 20 minutes away.

The train rumbled softly underground and I could care less that I wasn’t offered a position today.

I drifted into a rare realm of sedate New York City commuting. I didn’t think about terrorists blowing up the train or the Chinese chick selling refurbished double A batteries.

Suddenly there was light. The darkness of my eyelids turned blood red as the morning sun struck my face unsuspectedly.

The B train came above ground and was crossing the Manhattan Bridge. “Oh darn, where am I?” I murmured while rubbing my eyes.

Nothing is more dangerous than falling asleep on the subway. I realized I picked the wrong train on the orange subway line.

Only one other person was on the subway car with me and of course she was sitting in front of the subway map. She moved her big hair for me and I quickly assessed my position on the B line.

The stop of DeKalb Avenue appeared close enough to my house for walking so I got off at the first stop in Brooklyn and headed home.

“Oh, I see why I’m out in a suit and tie today. It wasn’t about a new job or interview after all, was it? Yes, I know you died on this day, but why can’t I just move on with life? You know? An interview, more money, more power?” I asked at last as I walked past Brooklyn Hospital Center, the place where Shawn died four years ago on this day.

Shake Off The Dust From Your Shoes

I pulled the pin stripes from the closet the other day and hauled my suit down to the cleaners in preparation for a big interview.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” I asked. “Sure, it’s $20,000 more are year but you will not get the job because nothing ever works out the way you think it will.”

This time it felt different. I did not scan the help wanted section of ‘The New York Times’. A woman who I currently work with read a few of my words hammered out in the form of “Minutes from the April 2006 Divisional Board Meeting” and asked me if I had “any friends” as efficient as myself– “The Job pays $60,000 a year,” she informed.

I shot off an e-mail before the woman who understands the writing on my walls could double click on her in-box icon.

Things always happen for a reason I said to myself glowing in the realization that a woman who studied literature at Yale called upon my pen.

The tabloid news hit the workplace at my current job. They were all in my office yesterday rubbing my back telling me how lonely it will be there without me.

I came home and tried to read the reviews of my writings in the craigslist writers forum but couldn’t log on.

I tried all evening to get that little “connected to” message. Eventually I discovered that my cat somehow knocked out the plug of my high speed connection.

“I wonder how long my phone has been left off- line,” I said while reconnecting the clear plastic communications penis into the vagina like hole sticking out of the wall.

I showed up at the interview looking fierce. The train ride there was better than a stroll down memory lane. I haven’t had so many eyes undress me since the days of Go-Go dancing at the club Splash here in town. I blushed nonstop on that train ride. Both girls and guys were checking me out. “Well damn, I’ll dress up more often! Get off me- I’m on my way to an interview,” I said.


“I tried to get in touch with you last evening. The position has been filled, but since you are here, I’d like to interview you anyway. We have similar positions opening up all the time here.” I was informed.

It turned out to be the most challenging interview I ever had. They asked me to edit a sample letter. The woman seemed very impressed with the little details I caught like “Chicago, NY 66235".

On the way out of the revolving doors of the huge skyscraper I looked up the street and noticed the Fox News studios.

I almost walked over to the window to flipped the media the bird.

I flew home and wrote instead.

Twin Beams of Light In My Wallet

Frieda Gwisdalla gave me my first job in the Big Apple.

I thought for sure with my writing skills and Army experience, I’d land a job in the World Trade Center on the top floor.

Fresh out of the Army, I threw away my camouflaged uniform and put on a suit and tie. My hair still had a buzz cut and it was a time when dudes still wore their hair long.

She itched during the interview. I knew the position was mine.

Our cubicles connected and I was her assistant.

After working in the gay friendly environment of CT Corporation System for just over a year, my blonde boss, who looked a lot like Madonna, but much prettier, insisted that I go on a date with her younger sister.

I was in a closeted gay relationship with an Army buddy and I didn’t want to ruin the work relationship with Frieda.

I agreed to take her sister, Cherille on a lunch date.

“Here’s her senior picture, take it!” she ordered. So I did, and put it in my wallet behind my credit card with no more available credit.

I never wanted to go to gay clubs and be “out”. My Army lover insisted that we let loose and have a cocktail or two at Uncle Charlie’s.

Sure as shit, there stood Jerry Spychala, the big office queer at the bar.

Like George Michael found wacking off in a public restroom, the tabloids broke loose in the office.

Suddenly Frieda had issues with my productivity and wanted Cherille’s senior picture back.

I ended up leaving the place and went to work for an AIDS charity.

Years later after determining that I didn’t know a soul who perished in the Twin Towers, I turned on CNN one evening in 2001 to see Frieda Gwisdalla talking to Larry King.

Her very handsome brother, James had perished and Frienda was leading a group of families of 9/11 victims. How very sad I thought. I always wanted to carry his photo in my wallet instead of Cherille’s.

A Star Is Born

Yes, they closed down bathhouses in the Early Eighties, but little do you heterosexuals know about the new gay underground.

Pay attention—your straight boyfriends may frequent our new spas.

Gifted poets come up for the names for the modern world’s answer to a place where closeted, married men can go where nobody knows your name.

“Blatino” was one of my favorites. Shawn and I went one evening ‘just to watch’.

They hand out condoms at the door and guys bring their own fancy lube. ‘Blatino’ moves location from private house to private house. There are no longer doors for the city to close down.

Bouncers check pockets at the door, but they are not looking for illegal drugs.

“No white boys,” they said to me.

“Show them Bert, suggested Shawn.”

So I whipped it out and the bouncers blushed and lifted the velvet ropes.

We were embarrassed to be there. We hung out in a corner as if we were monogamous and in love. “I love the living room furniture, don’t you Charles?” my lover asked with a devilish look in his eyes.

“Let him suck you, Shawn,” I proposed.

“Are you sure you are okay with me doing that?”

“If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be here. Now whip it out because my lips are sore.”

Down the Blatino Queen went and I watched the game, like straight men do in ball parks.

I excused myself and went upstairs to see if my neighbor had decorated the bedroom with 600 count sheets.

They had a video camera mounted on a tri-pod focused on the bed. The homo-thugs stood around the walls of the bedroom nervous and too afraid to initiate anything in front of the light of the camera.

I was tired, so I took off my clothes and crawled into bed, feeling as if I were undergoing a sleep study research project.



“Yo, let me hit dat?” asked the boldest of all the hard core thugs standing along the wall watching my ballet.


“Only if you come to my house party next weekend—it’s called Cock Asian.”

Shawn walked in the room and stepped in front of the camera while I was filming the open shot of my first major motion picture.

Veronica stepped off the last step of the stone stairs onto the sidewalk of King Street. She looked down at her new yellow shoes with pointed toes and clicked off towards Seventh Avenue to catch the C local train heading uptown.

She pulled her blouse open a little more to allow the morning sun’s rays to bounce off her glistening white boobs. Her chin connected to the soft, sponge-like surface of her breasts while she made sure they will still perky.

A UPS driver dressed in a dark brown jumpsuit paid her no attention as he reached into the back of the box- like truck to pull out a cardboard container. It infuriated Veronica when men didn’t watch her like they once did. She stopped her shoes from clicking down the sidewalk, flipped open her cell phone and pretended to be making an important phone call.

She wanted to be absolutely sure the delivery dude wasn’t interested in carrying her away.

“Yo- move, bitch! Get out da way!” shouted the Latino delivery man.”

Veronica covered up her secret weapons and decided to forget about trying to remain sexy and irresistible. She would have accept the fact that she wasn’t the cat’s meow any longer and men these days seem to be more attracted to those MTV video girls with child like bodies and colored contact lenses.

She watched as the driver walked with a small package towards her apartment complex and a tear trickled down her chubby cheek. She decided to forget going to work and headed back up the stone stairs towards the driver still ringing the doorbell.

The man in brown removed a small cordless headset from his ear and asked, “Excuse me—does a Mrs. Frumkes live here?” “That’s my neighbor, I’ll sign for it,” answered Veronica.

“Wow, I never saw an I-Pod that hooks right up to your ear! You know sir, I didn’t know you were singing a rap song when you passed me back there and shouted “Move, bitch, get out da way! But now that I see you were only singing and not actually talking to me, I feel so much better.”

“What da fuck you talkin’ bout ho? This is my hearing aide. Would you hurry up and sign for this? I get off and fifteen minutes and I’m going to an all male sex party in Brooklyn tonight, girlfriend! By the way, those shoes are fierce, honey!” exclaimed the driver as he headed back to his truck.

Bert

It hasn’t been easy dragging Bert around all my life. Honestly, it’s not as glamourous as it may sound to be hung and gay.

Who ever said I wanted to use Bert in the bedroom? Just because a man is hung does not mean he wants to go shoving his pecker in things. I always considered it a very handy pee tool- reaching down in the darkness of night, in bathrooms lit by night lights to comfortably find where to go on its own.

Bert has been quite a pest in the homo-bedroom. I’m what they call a bottom. It’s the lowest one can go on the totem pole of the human sex chain.

Bert ruins my chances of being a happy bottom.

In high school gym showers in the 9th grade I scared my classmates who knew me previously as the poor boy with bad acne.

They called me “Kick-stand”.

Life wasn’t any different in the Army. They made me carry the M —60 because they knew I could! I have spent my life searching for a top who does not become a bottom when I introduce him to Bert and my pen.

Easter Morning in the Hood

This will likely be the last year of hiding Easter Eggs for the kids.

Calib and I boiled a dozen eggs and colored them the old fashioned way last evening.

None of the local stores sold fancy egg color kits, so we had to settle for simple food coloring, hot water and vinegar. The eggs came out quite colorful though. We only lost one egg in the rapids of the boiling water. Eleven were still suitable for shading.

Easter morning was cool when Calib was 5. At 9 he still insists on coloring eggs and waiting for the Easter Bunny to hide them so that he can still collect his $3 per egg. He’s still sleeping, but I hid the eggs well this year. I can’t afford it if he actually finds all eleven of them.

One of the eggs is in the coffee bean grinder hidden under a pile of freshly powdered beans, another is in the cat dish, buried under mounds of 9 Lives and the other colored ovals are placed according to their color, in hidden camouflaged places throughout the apartment.

Calib’s brother Eric didn’t hang around for Easter morning this year. He’s 14 now with a girlfriend. Childish times like Easter morning are now a thing of his past for Eric. I bet he and his girlfriend colored a few of their own eggs last night.

Married To My Garden

The Inspiron 1100 has made it into my Brooklyn ghetto garden.

I spent the morning cleaning dead stalks of corn and weeds that died upon the fertile land that I rent here in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

No, I didn’t plant pot back here, but I assure you, that if it were legal, bud would flourish here in the outback of the Big Apple.

This is summer number four here in the home of my lover who died. We are coming upon the anniversary date of his dramatic departure from the physical realm.

The day after he officially died, I came back here and planted a few things to try and ease the pain.

The tomatoes and green peppers flourished but I was too sick in the heart to care enough to pick them and eat them as that first crazy summer passed.

My landlord helped himself to my crop, without even asking. "You don’t mind if I take a few of these tomatoes and peppers to my mother do you?"

"No, help yourself, there is plenty," I said feeling like an indentured servant and as if I were giving away the spirit of the man I forever will love.

If he were alive, he’d love it back here in 2006.

It’s gorgeous in Brooklyn today.

Bumble bees are flying around already. I wonder where they were all winter.

I have officially claimed all the land in this rather large lot.

I have cut my garden in two this year, and constructed a path of stone down the center of the 8 foot by twenty-foot space, now available for any seed of my choosing. Now I can tend to my crops without stepping in the dirt by walking down my stone path, barefoot.

Last year, my garden was too wide. I wasn’t able to easily weed the crops that were mid-way in the eight foot wide space without stepping on the soil.

The secret to growing abundant crops is to not step in the dirt that surrounds them. Plants like soil that is loosened– so the air can reach the roots, like it has reached me on the Eve of this Easter.

Sometimes I like to come back here in the morning for my first cup of Joe before shoveling off to my nine to five. I put on my white terry cloth robe and walk back here with a green watering urn and give my little girls a drink before the sun comes up over the branches of the apple and cherry trees which are planted next door.

Sometimes I wish I actually did hear voices like most Schizophrenics do so that I could hear what my dead lover has to say about the garden I planted in his memory today.

The apple and cherry trees with pretty blossoms which now overshadow me are the property of the landlord next door. Their branches tower over the new bench I made from slate rock under their shade.

In past years, those pretty white flowers above me lasted for about three weeks before the green leaves of the trees take over the twigs of their trunks.

I’ve pruned the apple and cherry tree this year– I never had the nerve to cut back someone else’s trees until today. If I didn’t hack off those branches, my Four O’Clocks, parsley, lettuce and dill would not get enough light to germinate.

There’ s still at least five by seven feet of space left to plant my zinnias and other annuals when the farmer’s almanac and moon in the sky tell me that it’s time.

As I was pulling out dead leaves and rotted apples from between large stones while cleaning out the back yard I came across a sprouting apple seed from the core of the brown fruit that somehow kept itself in tact throughout the long cold winder.

I planted the little seedling in the eight foot wide square of my city garden. When I look closer, I notice that two of the seeds from the rotted apple core are sprouting forth.

Their little green heads are smaller than my pinky nail. But one day, two apple trees will grow here on Dekalb Avenue– and symbolize the love I still have for one of the many flowers I picked as husbands in my life.

Charles Taylor Living

There is nothing more refreshing than the country air of Appalachia in April.

When I was a young lad growing up on Taylor’s Mountain in Central Pennsylvania, warm Spring breezes flowed like invisible Bounce fabric softener sheets across the farmland when the sun started to heat the world.

The winds spoke to me while growing up on that mountain, like subtle whispers from an imaginary voice in a psychotic delusion.

It was a blessing to live during a time when man grew his own food, when breezes sang songs and nobody was around to care that one could hear things that others did not.

It was many moons ago, this time of year, long before I turned gay and eons before I learned to ride a bike that I bowed down towards the ground and plopped potato pieces into the organic soil.

The smell of the air was fabulous in April and May working those potato fields.

Fruit blossoms were everywhere in our nearby orchard. There were no neighbors because we owned half the mountain– the very top of Stone Creek Ridge.

They came from all across America to buy grandma’s special cider.

There came a time each year following the butchered hogs of winter when the weather turned perfect for plating vegetables.

The family once again became more vegetarian.

The trees which produced fruit, with the exception of tomatoes vines, were planted only once. But vegetables required re-planting each Spring.

During a certain quarter of the moon, when the gods of time and astronomy collided in a little yellow book called the Farmer’s Almanac, the trees blossomed like flowers and grandma and I began working the ground and planting our fields of golden vegetables.

The smell of the soil was like a burp from mother nature after she finished off a pint of hard cider.

The chicken manure we spread with pitch forks sometimes steamed after we spread it upon our still cool bread and butter land.

"Be careful Charlie, make sure you point the little white roots down and stop eating all my potato eyes. Put one at the edge of each footprint" taught grandma Esther as we rushed to get all her blue potato sprouts into the ground before sundown.

Rakes glided effortlessly across soil as fine as sand yet as fertile as nearby woodlands.

I walked like a robot with my feet pointed in a perfect forty-five degree angle down the row, to pack the dirt down.

"How will it know how to start growing?"

"It just does. Now stop naming them all or we’ll never get all these potatoes planted."

Pink Trigangle Gardening

One of the best books I ever read is "Square Foot Gardening", written by Mel Bartholomew.

Years ago, before white people populated Brooklyn like an infestation of salt marsh caterpillars in a cotton field, my lover and I rented a duplex with a back yard in Sunset Park.

There wasn’t too much to our back yard. It was filled with spare tires, soiled children’s diapers and rusty tin cans. There wasn’t much room to plant things, until I came across the book.

The author had an interesting theory. He asked his readers "If a packet of seeds instructs growers to plant the seeds four inches apart in rows spaced two feet apart, why bother with measuring out the distance of rows? In other words—plant the seeds four inches apart in all directions, in little square foot sections of soil.

My Latin neighbors watched from their fire escapes while I cha-chaed in the abandoned lot, measuring out square foot blocks of land and popping in a host of seeds, not bothering to plant them in rows.

I started my garden with only three different squares and planted everything within minutes.

The author wanted to prove to city folks that they too can raise their own produce, with just a little bit of land. Bartholomew wrote the truth and I had a very fruitful garden in only three square feet.

I haven’t planted in rows since reading his how-to manual.

My new garden at my new place is just as mouthwatering as the one I had in Sunset Park.

My new neighbors are Black, and I must admit that I thought I may have problems with locals stealing my beloved crops, but they didn’t.

This year, I decided to give square foot gardening another shot in the hood, but I’m not going to spend sleepless nights guarding my garden again.

This year, I only bought flower seeds from the hardware store.

My lover told me not to plant too many flowers or the neighbors will think we are gay.

"I plant in squares, not triangles-- they’ll never suspect a thing!" I insisted.

Passing Gas

I know the angel of death and how it passes over.

I’m one of those folks who died and came back to life.

Yes, I saw the light--alright? And all that other bad stuff too.

Let me tell you a short story about the secret to life this holiday season.

Many times throughout history mankind would trip out and hallucinate in a communal kinda way and witness what many described as an "Angel of Death" in their presence.

They could see it plain as day– it wasn’t the simple old way of dying– ashes to ashes– scatter me in the wind kinda way to go.

It was not uncommon for folks living during the Black Plague to describe Death itself walking in pure daylight, dressed in total darkness among common folk.

He seemed to harvest some and leave others behind and nothing dared try to stop it.

The phantom was just an aberration perhaps-- joint psychosis, mania or many other explanations exist. Hell, it may have been aliens.

It wasn’t only the Jews who feared The Angel of Death. Many cultures and religions embrace the concept and the need to establish a time to count our blessings and outwit the bastard.

Well I saw death, face to face and I’m not afraid any longer when death passes over each Spring.

I saw the Angel of Death, but I don’t any longer.

Break some bread and count your blessings, because there is only one true way to the kingdom within, and very few find it.

I have.

If you are ever possessed by demons or the Angel of Death like I was, call out the name of your savior.

Chick From The Piano Bar

She used the same two fingers from which she dangled her Parliament Cigarette to spread her lips slowly apart.

"Don’t be afraid, it’s not going to hurt you," she explained with a smirk across her other lips.

"Just shut up and lay there, I’m paying you well!" I said.

My mind raced for an image of something that would turn me on.

Eventually I settled on pretending to be in bed with Brad Pitt and Eminem.

It can’t be that difficult to get it off inside her, I thought, as I completed the act which could lead to a pregnancy and permit me to inherit my father’s fortune.

She lit another smoke after I planted my seeds and slowly wiped my lipstick from her crotch.

I nearly fainted when she wiped between her legs with a towel.

I cried "Don’t do that, leave it there…how many times do you expect me to go through with this?"

"Don’t worry, girl! I got you," assured my new wife and best friend from the gay piano bar.

Wonder Bread

History Channel produces excellent documentaries.

They unleashed a powerful show on the lost Gospel of Judas this past Sabbath Day.

Producers kept the preaching to a minimum. The show asked viewers to sit for hours and watch forensic puzzle assemblers put together a thin piece of papyrus as fragile as the written word itself.

Time had worn away the artifact and its precious words and left an impossible pile of written rubble to piece back into a grammatically correct ancient poem.

Scientist were able to unravel the antiquated mysteries of tiny pieces of prehistoric papyrus by comparing microscopic elements of certain sections of the decomposed pages.

Perhaps scribes ate and drank at their pages like I often do, leaving behind a trail of words seasoned with wine and potato chips.

Under a microscope, re-writers and editors are able to assemble the pieces in near- perfect poetic puzzle shapes. They haven’t quite finished the job, but the few reformatted pages of the Gospel of Judas tell some interesting stories of the man who betrayed Jesus with a kiss.

The writer of the Gospel of Judas was forced to watch critics destroy his words.

It must have been heartbreaking when his work was not chosen for publication in the New Testament.

The History Channel informs us that according to the recently discovered Gnostic Gospel, Jesus asked Judas to turn him in for the crucifixion.

At the Last Supper, it turns out Jesus laughed hysterically as eleven disciples followed the traditions of Old Testament and broke bread during Passover and didn’t volunteer for the job of snitch like Judas did.

It was hysterical! He laughed and laughed. He was, after all, the wine and bread of life.

The History Channel explained that perhaps it was all a clever plot– an attempt by publishers to keep readers focused on their yet to be developed hatred of Jews. "Judas" was a name easily associated with "Jew" and by making him the great betrayer... the rest is history.

I laughed too, but really wasn’t sure why.

I always thought communion was rather silly. In my church they used Wonder bread and Welch’s grape juice to symbolize the Last Supper.

When I had my first cocktail in life, I realized that Christians are sacrilegious and should pass around potato chips and not little square pieces of dry white bread when celebrating the savior’s re-birth.

Mud Sharks

My former roommate often tracked mud onto our spotless hard wood floors.

"Were you out cruising in St. Nicholas Park again last night?" I asked.

"Yes, girl! I almost got arrested. The police are harassing the homos again. Last night they snuck up on us and shinned a bright spotlight on all the activity in the bushes. You should have seen all the sissies scram out of there. Some of them flew up in the tree tops like squirrels."

"What did you do, how did you get away?"

"Honey child, you know my Black ass and these long legs hauled ass like a crack head outta there."

"Do you actually have sex in the park? Haven’t you heard about the queers murdered in Prospect Park in Brooklyn?"

"Yes, but I can’t help it. There’s something about the danger of the chase that turns me on."

"Take me with you next time—I don’t feel comfortable as a white man cruising for Black cock in Harlem. At least if I’m with you, I can pretend you dragged me there and they will not call me a Mud Shark."

"Mud shark? What the hell is that?" asked my roommate while I wiped away the mud he tracked into our cozy two bedroom in Harlem.

Forsythia Queen

Forsythia Queen < charlesgeorgetaylo > 04/09 19:39:43

Forsythias are out in abundance in central Appalachia.

Oak, locus, maple and a host of other saplings have yet to release their buds.

The hills are still naked this time of year.

The yellow leaf-like flowers of the forsythia bush blemish beautifully on hillsides like acne on the face of a teenager.

I looked into my rear view mirror to see a complexion as clear as sailing skies with no puffy clouds in the way as I took a breather from city life this weekend and headed back to my roots.

I remember when I first learned to drive popping pimples while shifting a four- speed Pinto on the roads of home.

Look at you girl, in your green Ford Focus– you’ve come so far! I thought while looking in the rear-view while slicking my hair down in fear I may bump into a high school sweetheart from the football team.

I didn’t remember there being so many large rocks on the mountainsides of home.

I took the Fort Littleton Exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike with George Michael pumped into the rental car’s CD player and drove down a quiet country road with the sun shining so brightly, that the bird shit on the windshield looked like a silver dollar.

I pumped the song “John and Elvis Are Dead” but realized that Charles George Taylor sure as fuck ain’t!

There were so many rocks– covered with a pretty green fungus everywhere along the roads. I wondered why I never thought twice about them as a child.

I saw a few irresitible lads from the good ole days-- they had beer bellies and looked like they would fart under flannel sheets.

When I was forced to actually use the gas pedal and take off the cruise control down the winding roads towards home, I was mesmerized by the forsythias that matched the parallel lines on the road perfectly.

I clipped a few, brought them home, stuck them in a Corona 24 oz. filled with water and will plant them in my Brooklyn Ghetto Garden in May.

Lighthouses

I sent my grandfather into the light while smoking a cigarette with him.

The two of us never had much to say to one another in life– he tickled the skin on my face with his whiskers when I was a child and held me down and until I cried ‘uncle’ while growing up.

Lots of other grandchildren came along as life went on. I watched him play grandfather with them. I didn’t get all the attention like back in the days when there were only two of us grand kids. There were hundreds of us little rug rats on the day he passed away.

When he reached the end of his life’s line and came home from the hospital for the last time he sat at his favorite window in the kitchen with a bored look in his eyes. He hadn’t had a cigarette in days and wanted one badly.

For as long as I can remember my grandfather always had a Lucky Strike in his hand and a loving look on his face.

Everyone else was strong enough to make him stop smoking, but I smoked too and knew exactly the pain he was feeling.

His bruised murky skin showed lily pads of blood beneath, evidence of a life long addiction that had secretly offered him so much inner joy in all his days but a habit that cut the years short.

He looked like a frog wanting to catch a fly with his tongue when I came to visit him for the last time.

He knew I smoked and I knew that I didn’t want him to tickle me until I couldn’t breathe with his whiskers.

Who was I to tell him "No, you can’t have one of my cigarettes, it’s bad for you"?

Grandma couldn’t take the constant pleading for another smoke and she loved him too much to allow death to come at him again. But when the queer grandchild came back to visit again– the one who always told the family to mind their own fucking business and "I’ll do what ever I want to ‘ruin’ my life," grandpa felt a breath of fresh air again and removed his oxygen mask to say hello to me.

"I’m going for a walk, who wants to come along?" asked grandma with a fearful glare in here eye. Everyone put on their jackets and headed down to the crick.

"I guess I’ll stay here with Pap, pap," I offered.

"Charlie, can I have a cigarette?" He pleaded.

I pulled out my pack of Newport’s and replied "Sure, but these are menthol’s".

"I have my own-- they’re in the kitchen cabinet but your grandmother will not give me one."

"Sure Pap Pap, but you can reach it."

"I know, but I’m afraid."

"Afraid of what? Grandma yelling at you?"

"No, but please just get me a cigarette."

I pulled open the kitchen cabinet and wondered what magical powers I possessed that made it okay for me to light one up my fading father.

We inhaled simultaneously and felt that initial hit of pure inner peace.

"I don’t even know why I’m smoking it– I don’t really enjoy it or want it."

"I feel the same way. I wish I had never started."

"What do you think happens on the other side?" he asked me.

I stood there and thought long and hard about what I wanted to say to him.


Three weeks prior, my lover had died and I rushed home for respite only to find my grandfather heading into the light as well.

I walked into his hospital room and he called me "Ryan", the name of his favorite grandchild.

I felt honored.
Grandma was in tears and I suggested that we pray together.

Grandma, not the church going type, looked at me as if I knew Jesus personally.

"What would you like us to pray for Grandma?" I asked.

"I want him back home for our wedding anniversary, then I can let him go."

So we asked for it and our prayers were answered a few days later.

We returned to the hospital the following morning and my grandfather was somewhat better following a procedure he had undergone the previous night.

"I met Shawn last night. He said to tell you hello!"

It went right over everyone’s head but mine.

"He’s just a little delirious from the morphine," nurses assured. We all looked at each other in wonder.


I immediately returned home to New York to try and shake it all off.

My recently deceased lover’s name is Shawn.


Three weeks later, wore out from pure sadness and grief, I went home again, just to escape the madness of city life and the ghost of Shawn.

I hadn’t been home in years and everyone liked it that way. I lived my gay lifestyle out of sight and mind and it suited everyone’s schedule. Two trips home in the same year was unusual for me,

I thought I had written the place off as lost and homophobic.

We went to visit grandpa at home on my second trip back to the country of Appalachia.

Apparently the prayer worked and grandma and everyone else go their wish. He was released from the hospital and sent home.

"What’s it all about, what’s it all for?" he asked as his constant craving for calmness subsided after the nicotine took effect– as if I may know something about the light and how he can be sure he ends up in it.

"There is no secret to it. It’s all about how you lived your life."

"I think you are right!" he said while smiling warmly at me.

"I worry about your grandmother and don’t want to leave her yet."

"She will be fine. She has lots of family who will take care of her. Besides, you don’t really leave us," I assured.

"Do you know I can hardly see any more. Everything is closing in like a fog on a pond."

"Then let go and tell them you are with Shawn and I."

A few days later he walked into the light.

He sits in his favorite window watching the rest of us tickle each other with our whiskers.

I do too, and wonder why nobody else sees the fog closing in.

The Seventh Day

It's strange when the neighborhood turns white.

I’m a white man who lived among the Black folks of Bedford Stuyvesant years before they started building cafes and hosting poetry readings.

I must admit, I side with the natives of this land when they say the white people are crazy and should not be allowed to buy up all the property here, just because they can afford to do it.

Someone bought the place next door and is gutting it out. He made all the tenants who lived there pack their shit a go.

I miss the ex-con who was my neighbor for years. He had a gun and I swear, he shot the thing in his back yard. He was simply practicing with his gun. I come from a land where they kill dear with guns and we practice all the time.

He must have thought I was crazy when I kept working in my garden, only yards away from where he was pulling the trigger.

He sat on his window ledge in the evening and smoked weed while I was on my stoop sipping Starbuck’s coffee.

He watched as tomatoes grew more than five feet high in my yard as the summer progressed.

We never struck up conversations and sometimes we had battles with our radios. He just loved the Notorious B.I.G. and I’m a BIG George Michael fan. George hadn’t had an album out in years, so last summer, I filled the airways of Bedford Stuyvesant with the lyrics, "I was going down for the third time. My heart was broken. I thought that loving you was out of the question. Then I saw my reflection and said please don’t let this go."

I played the song over and over again as the vegetables slowly grew.

My body still hurt badly from being paralyzed. But after learning to walk and use my mind again, the soil felt godly.

When I remember all that pain I realize that perhaps I was wishing that my neighbor would accidentally shoot me and put me out of my misery. It w

as a magical summer between my Black thug neighbor and I, even though we never struck up useless chat and poetry readings with one another.

It was nice to have an audience while I played Martha Stewart. I wonder what he thought when I was out there in my boxers and no t-shirt, bending over mooning him in the bright morning sun.

Hundreds of white people with their flower beds have moved in the Stye. None will replace the handsome thug with a gun.

A prissy white family will likely move in next door and I'll be forced to watch them outside roaming their gardens in their pajamas when I try to find peace while having my first cup of joe on summer mornings.

Despite all the new Martha Stewarts taking over the block, my garden is the most beautiful of all in New York City. They can plant all they want in their tiny beds. I have an entire backyard with a huge vegetable garden and a green thumb.

The apple tree and cherry tree are in blossom again.

It will not be long before I’m back outside with George Michael blaring away. I hope those Kelly Clarkson wanna bees like Eighties Queens!

I don’t think I’ll enjoy "Patience" without the subtle rhythms of the Notorious rapper singing back-up to Mr. Make It BIG.

I just hope white people don’t move in and ruin the vibe of the Garden of Eden with their hill billy music.

Share Croppin'

Mike Holden, an old timer gave my family some pumpkin seeds from a huge jack-o-lantern like squash he cultivated organically with goat’s milk and pig shit.

He grew the largest pumpkin ever to enter competition at the county fair. According to reporters with the local newspaper, The Daily News, the vegetable was "monstrous".

Old Mike, a geezer who looked like a monster himself, was like a grandfather to everyone in town. He was particularly close to my family. We rented farm land from him to grow our food.

Our family didn’t plant things like pumpkins in our fields. At planting time, when the Farmer’s Almanac gave clear timetables for planting, the seeds sat in the garage inside a glass mason jar.

Our crops consisted of corn, green beans, tomatoes, potatoes, green peppers and zucchini. I took it upon myself to plant those Jack and the Bean Stalk seeds on land which we did not rent.

I filled a cardboard box from a case of beer with ashes from the wood stove and top soil from the back yard and popped the magical seeds in the box of dirt in late Spring. Local cats pissed in my home made flower bed like a litter box and I nearly abandoned my sprouting love for gardening.

One day, little seedlings popped their heads up and seemed to be thirsting for more earth. I watched as one of the three sprouting leaflets struggled to pop the shell of a white pumpkin seed from its head.

Feeling responsible for playing God, I immediately planted the cat pumpkins in a wild strawberry patch adjacent to my family’s share cropping farm.

Summer slowly passed and I forgot about the little magical Mike Holden seeds and the plants I started in a cardboard box.

I hated when we went to Mike’s farm to work like slaves in the cotton fields of the south. The summer heat was unbearable and little swarming bugs called gnats circled our heads like vultures. There was no time or reason to check-up on famous pumpkin seeds with ancestors that outgrew the pages of The Daily News.

One September evening, while picking the last of an abundant tomato harvest with the family, I walked to the edge of the field to take a pee and stumbled upon a huge pumpkin that was still green.

I squeezed my little pecker to stop the flow from landing smack on top of my blue ribbon winning vegetable. It was too late-- I cleansed the crop by mistake.

It grew larger than I was at the tender age of seven. I never told the family how I fertilized a pumpkin that grew even larger than Mike’s.

"We can get at least six pecks of pumpkin from that," said my family as they eyed my masterpiece ready to begin the canning process.

Months later, in late October, I picked the pumpkin and carved a Jack-O-Lantern with a big wide open mouth and told my family the crop wasn’t fit for eatin’.

Fisting Patrick, With Crisco

Bumping into an old queen from the days of the Christopher Street piers and gay bath houses is not a sight for sore eyes. It’s like getting splattered by hot grease while frying chicken.

"I know that’s not you," shrieked a voice from aisle one in Gourmet Garage.

I pretended like I didn’t see ‘her’.

I remember watching the bitch get fist screwed on a bar in the meat packing district decades ago and now ‘she’ wants to swap corn bread recipes.

"My heavens, how are you?" I asked.

"I’m alright. You look great!"

I gave ‘her’ that look that says, "I know!"

Patrick, the bath house ho, lost a lover to AIDS like I did.

‘Her’ boyfriend passed about a decade ago. ‘She’ inherited a ton of money from the dead ex and decided that while ‘her’ lover was croaking that ‘she’ was going to explore marriage and heterosexuality.

Patrick got married to a real woman (a dyke) and they had two children.

They remained on the ‘A’ list of New York’s most gaily elite for years.

"How are Helen and the kids?" I asked as if I really cared.

"She got a wild hair and left me."

I didn’t have to ask if she took half of Patrick’s dead lover’s money.

"I’m moving out of the city, Patrick. This town bores me," I said as I picked up a delightfully red bunch of rhubarb.

"I hate it here too. I really can't stand people in New York now, they are all so superficial-- especially the younger queens," ‘she’ said.

"Oh, I do too. They are not freaks like we were," I said as I threw the celery like fruit into my basket, dangling from my arm like a Gucci bag.

Patrick licked 'her'lips and wondered why I never fist fucked him in that closed down bar along the Westside Highway as I headed home to bake a pie, in memory of my lover who loved when I baked pies with Crisco, flour, salt, rhubarb and lots of sugar.

Wooden Nickel

The Great Depression destroyed George’s hope of establishing a home based business.

He could no longer support his family with income from his farm.

He walked five miles down a dirty country road, kicking stones with his boots until he reached Route 22. He stuck out his thumb, hitched a ride to Mill Creek and laid bricks for a few bucks a day and did it six times a week.

The biggest insult to his love for farming was the fact that he had to hold down two jobs– mason and farmer, just to feed the family.

When potato picking time came around, after the green vines of the potato plant had withered to brownness, the family reaped the free rewards of mother nature. It felt good to hold firm brown root vegetables after lifting heavy grey bricks all day in the hot son. His kids hated working the farm, especially picking potatoes.

They would rather listen to Elvis records.

The Taylor kids and his wife Esther stood at the edge of the fields and George held a nickel with a bison on its face in his palm and said, "Whoever finds the biggest potato gets this buffalo nickel."

His youngest son said "You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog," and spit at his daddy.

George was going to whip his ass good this time. But the eight year old tore off running down the dirt road in the opposite direction his daddy walked to work. The child ran for at least a half mile at top speed while laughing as he escaped the wrath of the whip of his foolish daddy who tried to buy him for a worthless nickel.

As he slowed down and a dust cloud formed around his worn out sneakers he could hear his father’s footsteps close behind him, running at top speed out the lane too.

"Go pick out your own switch."

Little Barry found the nicest looking sapling he could.

George lashed his ass and back on the long walk home down the dusty lane.

The family ate mashed potatoes at every meal for the rest of the year, but not as part of Barry’s punishment, but because George dropped the buffalo nickel somewhere along that dusty dirt road.

More Morse Code

Two nineteen year old gay dudes sat sipping a Cape Cod in the oldest original bar in New York City—Julius’.

"I’m thinking about enlisting for Iraq, doll face," explained a tall thin queen with hair colored the shade of the stripes on Old Glory.

"I say go for it girl, just don’t tell them what your real intentions are," rebuffed his cock sucking queer running mate.

"Do you think basic training is as hard as they say it is?" inquired the bottom wanting to reach the top of the chain of command.

"Oh please! How hard can it be? Nobody can low-crawl like you and they say we homos are in demand now—we can learn foreign languages much faster than the breeders."

"Really, I never heard that before? Has someone scientifically proved that we have superior language skills?" asked the well read sissy.

"Just listen to yourself, Miss Thang!"

Learning To Write Non-Fiction

"Every school year, I ask my students to write an essay about me, their teacher. You are not required to write your name on your paper. You can write whatever you wish—I only ask that what you write is truthful," instructed the fourth grade elementary school teacher at Spring Farms Elementary School in rural Pennsylvania.

Stephen and Charlie, cousins through marriage and huge Donna Summer fans looked at each other in disbelief.

Stephen immediately grabbed his writing tablet and drew the cover of his short story. He wrote the words "Go to Heaven and take a U turn" and sketched a half circle with an arrow pointing down.

Charlie giggled like a little girl, grabbed his number two Ticonderoga pencil and began his career in writing.

The song "Bad Girls" was running through his head that day in class and he quietly hummed the lyrics "Toot-toot, hey beep-beep," as words started to fill the light blue lines running across the page.

Mike Nead, Penny Chilcoat, Missy Anderson and the other bad kids in class took note of what the kissing cousins were up to and joined in on the literary bashing of their school teacher.

Charlie noticed lots of bad words underlined on the pages of his fellow classmates and could not resist joining in on the vulgarity of it all.

Mr. Holovokia collected the essays at the end of the day. "I don’t know who wrote some of these essays, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it," insisted the school teacher. "When I find out who wrote these things, you will receive a paddling and I will contact your parents," explained the teacher while holding up Charlie’s neatly written piece with near perfect penmanship.

Mr. Holovakia whipped the young tender asses of Charlie, Stephen, Mike, Penny and Missy like a sado-masochistic pedophile.

When Mr. Holovakia contacted Charlie’s mom, she told the ugly bastard to fuck off and the next time, he should not encourage his students to write whatever they wish.

The Newest Testament

Fictional re-write of John 19:19

Pilate hired a handsome carpenter to engrave the sign that was hung above The Son of Man’s head when they killed Him on the cross.

The well toned woodworker was more of an artist with his craft than a typical carpenter who earns a living building simple furniture.

The thin framed man who mastered his ability to turn lumber into art carved “JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” in Latin, Greek and Hebrew on a piece of wood cut from an olive tree.

His penmanship carved on lines of time marking the olive tree’s age was clear and concise and grammatically perfect.

He darkened his carved letters with hot coals from a fire.

His work looked as true and perfect as the Ten Commandments carved on stone.

Pilate took a day off and headed to his version of Camp David to watch the popular craftsman at work on the commissioned project.

The wood worker sat in the morning sun with sweat pouring down his slender body and used a hammer and chisel to reflect his comprehension and love of three languages.

The carpenter created the world’s first billboard.

Fictional re-write of John 19:20

The literate masses passing along the busy streets of the great city, no matter what their language, could read the sign as He died between two dudes.

Fictional re-write of John 19:21

The flamboyantly gay and highly skeptical Chief of all the High Priests looked at the sign in disgust and demanded to Pilate, “Do not write, “‘The King of the Jews’ but ‘I Am King of the Jews’”, while bending his wrist like a fag.

Pilate turned to the handsome man who he paid well as a carpenter and loved much The carpenter put his hands on his hips, turned to Pilate and shook his head to indicate that he would do no more carving.

Fictional re-write of John 19:22

Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

I'm A Hustla, Baby

Coming out to Dad was a breeze.

Good ole dad– I’m a chip off the old block.

When he was a big boozer he came to visit my lover and I in New York City.

God bless his drunk country soul.

Back then, my boyfriend was actually my ‘roommate’.

I was trying to hide it from him.

I only wanted to protect him.

My lover and our queer friend James from next door were at the door to welcome poor old dad in, like homosexual vampires.

I was a nervous wreck, but he insisted on coming to visit his son despite the fact that I hadn’t seen him since childhood.

Dad pulled a copy of Hustler Magazine from his suitcase and threw it at us as if he were Moses throwing the Ten Commandments our way.

My lover and James leafed through the pages like an Ikea catalog and said, “Mmmmm, Mmmmm, damn, now wouldn’t you love to just stick your rod in that pretty pink thing,” and giggled at each other in queer tones.

I was so embarrassed for Dad and quite frankly, felt my lover and James were being rude.

Dad popped open a can of Budweiser and sat down with the trio of fags and said, “Son, I have something to tell you...”

I sat there at the kitchen bar like a good gay son and perked up my big ears.

“I’ve been with men before, plenty of them. I never minded a fag sucking my dick after a bar closes when there’s no bitches around to blow me.”

My lover and James put down their cocktails and handed my father his copy of Hustler Magazine and asked him to autograph it.

I told Dad I didn’t want to hear any more and to go back in his closet.

Miracle Cure

They are not lining up for the 20 minutes AIDS test.

I can’t say I blame the bashful. I’ll never take another one even if they can tell me the results in twenty minutes.

The first time I went, I thought perhaps I would be okay. I only sucked a few strangers off on subway platforms late at night and always spit when done.

The second time I went, I was a little more concerned. I learned that an old lover died from the horrible virus.

The third time I went to be tested, I lost another lover to AIDS and we screwed each other in every hole available and never used protection.

Back in the day, we had to wait for weeks for our blood to be shipped away and studied before learning if we were going to die soon. The follow-up appointments were excruciating. Doctors were not permitted to give results over the phone—either negative or positive. It had to be done face to face with counseling.

The last time I went for my HIV test, I told my primary care doctor, a dyke, that I was losing my mind. She didn’t believe me and laughed it off.

When I came back for the follow-up appointment, she told me I was negative, I nearly fainted.

I told my doctor again that I needed psychiatric help and was losing my mind.

She laughed it off—but you have so much to look forward to now, you are healthy, explained the lesbian. “Have you had your Hepatitis B shot?” she asked. “No, but listen Dr. McGowin, I am telling you—I hear my dead lover's voice at night when I try to sleep. I can’t sleep, I’m losing my mind.”

She laughed it off and patted my back as I left her office with a new lease on life.

But, just as I had predicted, I lost my mind. I almost jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge when I was psychotic, but I stopped myself because I saw a hot man cruising me on the bridge and I followed him home for anonymous sex.

After spitting again, I realized then that I would never die.

Turtle Tracks In The Sky

A sunny afternoon filled with cotton candy like clouds overshadowed the deep valley.

The world appeared to be larger than the sky from such a low altitude and perspective.

I reached down and picked up a box turtle and looked for carved initials on its bottom shell.

Bill and I carved ‘B.T.’ and ‘C.T’. on every turtle we found on our farm.

This one was a blank, a virgin, a foreigner.

I grabbed my pocket knife and carved C.G.T. I held the shell up to the little sky, nestled between mountain ridges on both sides, and watched a jet fly over. Its tail matched the clouds and looked like a pen writing a message in the clouds.

I threw the turtle into our pond and watched little waves on the pool’s surface spell out the Theory of Relativity.

And pretended to be talking to Jesus as a child.

Rough Trade In The Coo Coo's Nest

I kept his number on a post-it note inside my address book for three years. The lure of his deep masculine voice called to me, like an imaginary voice in my head, from the binders of my leather bound Day Runner.

He wore a blue handkerchief on his head and ran up and down the hallways of the psychiatric ward like a crazy person. He ruled the joint—his six foot two frame was covered with large muscles and he looked like he could kill a person with his bare hands.

My first encounter with him was in the hallways. My restless legs would not allow me to lay down or sit, so I wondered the hallways day and night.

He walked up to me grabbed his crotch and stated, “Damn I’m horny. I could sure use some pussy.”

I wondered why he told me that before my mind drifted again into the great abyss of nothingness.

Sex was the furthest thing from my mind—the drugs had forever taken away my desire to get it up and get off, so I ignored him.

Later that evening I walked into the lunch room. In-patients were fighting over containers of vanilla ice cream—small white Styrofoam containers with pull off paper lids hit the hunger spots of those who couldn’t get enough comfort food while on the psychiatric medications.

“There he is, the queer,” proclaimed the man with the snot rag on his head. “He likes me. He thinks I’m hot. Tell them, you think I’m hot, don’t you?” he asked me in front of those in the loony bin.

“Yes, you are ruggedly handsome,” I said as I tried to remember how to hold a fork and feed myself again.”

The lunch room grew incredibly silent. Even the sane nurses didn’t know what to expect after I confessed to being a crazy homosexual in a predominately straight psychiatric ward.

The man with the rag on his head was discharged a few days later. He never confronted me for sexual favors again, although he slipped me his telephone number on his way out of the gates of hell.

When my sex drive returned, it was he who I lusted to make love with.

But I never called him, after all, he was crazy!

One Fell In Love In The Coo-Coo's Nest

When I woke up in the psychiatric ward I hated absolutely everyone in the world and trusted none of the crazies locked up with me—that was until I met a self-cutter with a really intriguing hair style.

While everyone else was heavily medicated on tons of tranquilizers and glued to the television in the recreation area the two of us went into a group room with paper and colored pencils which his family brought to him.

I sat there studying his self-inflicted markings wondering why they trusted he and I with sharp pencils. We turned on a radio and sat at different ends of the table and sketched together.

He drew racing cars and science fiction like cartoons. He was an artist and could sketch near perfect images on paper.

I thought he was absolutely beautiful, so I sat there, looking at the healings wounds on his neck and arms and pretended to be sketching with him. But I only wanted to be in his presence because his spiked hair made me smile and he was really quite beautiful, despite his self-inflicted wounds.

When I looked down at my sketches, I realized they were actually pretty good. I drew him sitting across from me without looking down at my work.

The pencil drifted aimlessly on my paper while I tried to stop thinking about God.

I let the pencil move on my paper as if it were my fingers running across his beautiful face.

I showed my drawing to him. He couldn’t believe how much my artistic skills had improved in only a few days.

“That’s really good,” he said to me.

He grabbed his colored pencils and went away, and never did come back out to play with me in the Coo-Coo’s nest.

Stella’s is more than a pool hall. It is a hustler bar where young men in New York City can go when Con Edison is threatening to cut off the electricity. Its patrons keep the lights on, year ‘round for hundreds of young men exploring their sexuality.

Despite the blemish it leaves on today’s adoptive gay community, the bar is one of the best watering holes in the Big Apple. Two drinks in the place will put even the most tolerant of alcoholics in the mood for cheap, fast love.

The place has a pool table and a jukebox filled with tunes ranging from Patti Labelle to George Michael.

Guys strut around in g-strings and ask customers, both gay and straight, male and female, to "touch it" for a mere dollar.

Mayor Gulliani toned the place down quite a bit. There was a time when Latino street thugs pulled eleven inch snakes from their cages for a mere dollar. The former mayor’s no tolerance approach to dealing with the trade without tax service industry has made things even more challenging and exciting in this unknown lavender light district.

The hustlers who play pool there have dicks like pool cues and screw girls when they don’t need cash. They’ll screw anything after a few beers and bucks.

Richard, a dude who had just broken up with a whore like lover went there for a drink one evening. He had no idea what went on in the place. He simply liked to play pool with real men, so the place seemed harmless and inviting.

Those who play pool at Stella’s do so to display their irresistible physical features to older and uglier bar patrons. They show off knocking balls into holes and spinning cue sticks not to win a fifteen number game but to prove their manhood to those who see nothing wrong with helping a few down- low gay men keep the lights on.

Richard needed not only a new apartment but a two month security deposit, new clothing and almost every commodity available to modern man. He lost his Gillette Mach Four razor blade set in his recent hostile gay divorce and he was out for blood.

"Who cares?" he thought. "Who am I trying to impress? They already told me I was going to Hell when I told them at thirteen that I was gay. This is an essential part of gay culture and I’m stuck behind the eight ball,." he assured himself.

When gentlemen at Stella’s starting buying him beers and telling him to keep the change from twenty dollar bills, he realized that as a homosexual, he had nothing to prove to civilization and decided to drink up and grab that stack of bills.

The rest of gay New York City who participated in the underground Velvet Maffia seemed to be having a blast and they welcomed him with bright smiles and lots of pats on the back.

He really loved Robert, his ex-boyfriend, and was hurt by being dumped. But the attention was undeniable from the place where nobody wants to know your name. Richard put on his wife- beater tank top and managed to earn enough cash for his new place and new "look" in only one weekend.

While playing pool at Stella’s, Richard felt like a drag queen diva pushing her way to center stage as he challenged Black and Latino hustlers at their game. He knew they were gay just like him, but had learned the secret of playing it straight, in a dog- eat- dog world.

Gay men, like the ones in Stella’s are the sexiest men alive. Society hasn’t learned to embrace them like those girls who spin around silver poles in heterosexual strip bars.

There were not many white boys in Stella’s who could pull off the role of ‘rough trade’ for a such a selective audience but Richard could.

Richard was as masculine as the ghetto dudes who ruled the joint. He was in the military and kept his hardcore image in New York and it worked well in Stella’s.

He met many friends in the bar who he never actually conducted business with but found charming and full of insight. They often insisted on buying him drinks, but Richard respectfully offered to buy the first round and discussed opera with real opera stars and business with men who ran some of the largest corporations in the Big Apple.

They played games of pool while sharing songs on a juke box.

When his dick grew hard at the pool table Richard’s name and number was passed around town like that of a good interior decorator.

He felt guilty by taking money from men who he secretly enjoyed having sex with, but they always insisted he take the money. "It will keep you honest," they said.

Gabriel, one of Richard’s most challenging pool table competitors finally broke down and begged Richard one night at Stella’s at closing time to turn a trick together. "Yo, you wanna do these two wit me? I can get you $500 for two hours," promised the handsome Spanish man with a scar across his face. The shark wore baggy clothing and adorned his neck with thick necklaces.

Richard knew the dude from the night he was locked up in central booking for shredding his lover’s clothing.

"Aight, but yo dude, I don’t get fucked. They can suck me off for $500 but after I bust my nut, I’m out," explained Richard while outlining the details of his contract with his jail buddy.

Gabriel and Richard traveled in a yellow cab with two middle aged white business men who rubbed their thighs all the way to the upper nineties and Broadway.

The two hustlers looked into each other’s eyes and wondered just how much would be expected of them in the company of such wealthy gay businessmen.

"Look guys, we are lovers. We have been together for twenty years and this is our anniversary. We have always had a fantasy of watching two guys like you get it on. We will gladly pay you $500 each, I only ask that you make our anniversary special," requested a very polite middle-aged gay white male.

Richard looked at Gabriel and rolled his eyes. Gabriel smiled, looked at Richard and grabbed his crotch.

The apartment was beautiful. Plush sofas covered oriental rugs and mahogany end tables were topped with lamps with satin shades and gold stands.

Richard and Gabriel fucked each other royally on their furniture and the patrons from Stella’s got every penny’s worth.

Purple Acres

Esther, my grandmother, God rest her soul, was a diva.

It’s where I get it from.

Dad told me a story about the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Esther Taylor.

Esther loved to garden. She grew absolutely every seed that fell between her thumb and middle finger.

Dad gave her some pot seeds and she planted them in her garden.

Nobody but family ever came to the farm, so Esther did what ever the hell she pleased on her land.

Dad said the plants were taller than her trailer. “She had at least two dozen of those plants,” informed my father.

One night she shot a deer from her trailer window and called the PA Game Commission and told them to come pick up the dead deer from her apple orchard.

Thankfully, Dad showed up for breakfast with his mom that morning. She made lovely pot omelettes.

“I called the Game Commission and told them to come get that dead deer from the orchard,” my grandmother joking informed Dad, stoned off her ass.

“Mom, you have pot growing in your garden. He is going to see it and you could go to jail.”

“Oh my gawd, Barry. Hurry up, go pull it out and hide it up in the barn.”

My father did as my grandmother ordered.

“What are those holes in the ground out here, Esther?” asked the game commissioner rather coldly.

“Weeds, really big weeds.”

“Do you want to show me where you put those weeds?”

“Oh, I burned them down in the dump,” proclaimed my grandmother as she harvested her first real cash crop.

Bird Flu

Recent reports on the avian flu bring back symptoms of my childhood.

I once had to kill a chicken with my hands and an ax. It’s true what they say-- a chicken does run around with its head cut off.

My brother and I expected the bird to run around with its head chopped off as we put the bird’s head between two nails pounded into a tree stump and slammed down the ax.

He let the legs go and the bird’s body flew away, not knowing where it was going because it could not see.

Its head fell to the ground and landed topside up. The bird blinked for several moments before it realized its body was somewhere else.

Bill stepped on the blinking bird.

I wonder what it must be like to kill thousands of birds.

The Resurrection

Mary grabbed me by my long braided hair and pulled me from her.

“Not in there fool, in here!” she cried while falling to her hands and knees and reaching through the space between her legs to part her Red Sea.

I was repulsed and threw-up the loaf of bread I had eaten while Mary and I escape the wrath of the Pharisees.

“No Mary, I love only Him,” I tried to explain.

I could not stop the spiritual intercourse.

The Spirt moved me right into her warm embrace and I immediately became One with the Spirit.

My spirit fell to the ground and watched as my body played host to my Beloved living through my body. He smiled and asked me to join in, so I did for a while.

Mary allowed me to enter her body as I felt Beloved again, like I did when we spent nights together in the desert.

The Resurrection

Mary took my hand and we walked inconspicuously down the rocky hillside past those who were seeking to lay hands on me. They didn’t recognize us as we strolled right past them in the dark of night.

They used their sticks of fire to look everywhere in the forest and we giggled as we slipped right under their noses.

“Remember this Thomas—fear is the root of all evil—never fear or they will capture you,” she warned. “Place your trust in Him and fear nothing, for he is with you always.”

“Where are we going to go, Mary?” I asked.

“I am going to Egypt, to the land of our fathers, do you want to come there with me?” she suggested.

“Where has everyone else gone? I haven’t seen any of his brothers since the day they crucified Him. He said he’s coming back soon Mary, I want to wait for him here in Jerusalem.”

“They have all scattered, Thomas. Remember what he told us would happen. I want to tell you something, a secret I haven’t told anyone else—I am with His child.”

“His child?” I asked. “But he told me I was the one who would carry his child.”

Mary looked at me with sadness in her eyes. She believed I misunderstood his words.

“That’s not what he meant,” she said while pulling me down into the grass on top of her. She pulled herself apart with her dirty fingers, grabbed me from my behind and pulled me inside her.

I saw small blue and gold lights encircle us as I began to ride the rhythm of her thrust from beneath me.

My legs were shaking as I pulled her from the ground as she sat on me. I pulled her into my manhood and showed her the things the lord had shown me.

“I am his Beloved!” I exclaimed while taking it from her warm caress and placed it in her other womb while she cried, “Yes, my Lord!”

The Resurrection

I ran out of the temple in great pain. My head hurt and my eyes were filled with tears . Clouds disrupted my vision and I could see only the outlines of obstacles in my path as I ran for my life.

They chased after me for about forty cubits but I run fast and they were lost in the dust from the bottom of my feet in minutes.

I threw off my white robe adorned with garnet stones and jogged naked and barefoot on the footpaths surrounding the Fortress of Antonia until I was far away from them.

My sight returned and I decided to rest among a thicket of wild grape vines.
I always loved running but after what had happened on the Temple in Jerusalem, I was too frightened to run without becoming breathless. I needed to rest.

When I was a child, Beloved sent me into nearby villages to pick up bread for dinner.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness," He said, as I always volunteered to do something that would benefit the family of disciples. He handed me coins that followers had thrown at us and I ran off to pick-up our supper from women who did nothing but bake bread all day and sold their golden fruits for only a few schillings.

With all my energy and love for my newfound family, I would do anything asked of me by my Fathers and Mother. Every day, I ran off to fetch our bread.

I learned to loved to run and serve others while turning the stone beneath my feet into bread each night.

I could feel my heart thump like a drum inside my chest while running to villages for our supper. I was so thankful to have a family– I was no longer an orphan and would run in the name of the Father anytime they asked, even as I grew older and I loved the women who baked bread all day.

"Would you like to taste some before you buy it?" they asked me while chuckling, pinching my cheeks and holding their hands over their big bellies.

I told them that I knew they made good bread because I could smell it while running there. They laughed and gave me a few bites for my run back to camp.


Beloved taught me how to pray while running-- a secret he didn’t want to share with everyone else because he felt they were not ready to know those secrets of prayer. When He took me into the desert for several days and nights, we would run together in the hot sun without drinking water until sundown.

We bathed in desert pools of salted water and yearned greatly for fresh water after our runs, but we always had to wait until the sun went down before we drank anything.

I ran my fingers between the thick strands of His braided hair while he bowed his head in the hot sun and spoke to the Father in prayer.

I asked why he would not teach others about the flesh and the Spirit.

"They are like nursing infants, my Beloved, they must first taste the bounty of the Heavenly Mother’s breasts," he said to me while showing me how to properly stretch prior to running and praying.

"Some will never learn that one cannot live on bread alone," He said. "They are like cattle being fed for slaughter."



While hiding out and avoiding arrest after creating such a scene in the Temple of God, I was glad I had spent so much time learning to run and pray with my Beloved in the desert. Those in the temple would have devoured me if they managed to lay their hands on me.

I needed to be alone but I could feel them pressing in while searching for me hiding in the brush. They wanted to arrest me like they did my Beloved.

Their thirst for the spirit was unquenchable– like one who has ran all day in the mid-day sun and hasn’t had anything to drink all day. I was like a goblet of white wine made by the miracles of the Father, sitting in a goblet in the desert sun while hiding in the brush.

They were all still nude while searching for me, while touching themselves on their third eyes.

Beloved showed me how to hold salted water in my palms and turn it into white wine when we went exercising. "Use your gifts well," he warned as I sipped down the best vintage in thousands of years and fell hopelessly into his arms and ask him to make me whole again.

We drank handfuls of wine in the desert together at night and listened to the heavenly Father as he spoke to us in spiritual form under a star filled sky with too many gods to count. He drank the wine made in my hands and He kissed my fingertips after each sip.

"Thank you for giving me a reason to believe again," he said to me.

I felt intoxicated, like my fasting days in the desert, while hiding in a patch of thorn bushes from the Pharisees and those who worked as their soldiers from coins offered at the temple.

I breathed heavily while watching the authorities look for me in the spur just below.
I wasn’t yet prepared to die by hanging upside down on a crucifix and I badly wanted a handful of wine while fasting among the thorns.

I knew my time had not yet come and I had to remain hidden.

My Beloved appeared to me in a vision as I sat very still atop piles of dead thorn vines wishing not to be seen by those searching for me along the hillside.

Beloved didn’t speak to me while looking lovingly into my eyes as he waved and placed his finger under his chin, as to say, "Hold your head up, for yours is the Kingdom of God".

I watched him break into eleven sparrows and fly over the fortress and those looking for me.

I was tempted to start running again and follow the birds. They headed towards the shores of the Sea of Galilee and I wanted badly to swim away from the authorities. I wished the sea would swallow me or that I would be eaten by a whale somewhere offshore rather than die on the cross like most of His disciples already had.

I waited with hot flashes in the bushes until night fell. The sea called to me in a seductive tone but I didn’t come out from hiding. My heart beat like a drum in the stillness of the bushes while the thorns of dead vines tore into my naked ass while they kept searching for me in the darkness of night.

The wands of fire lighting the hillside did not frighten me as I fell into the arms of the Father in prayer and remained hidden.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be called Sons of God," said a voice of a female standing behind me in the darkness of the thicket.

I turned and saw Mary, with her hands on her hips and smiling at me.

"Thank God you are here, Mary of Magdalena!" I cried. "I saw our lord riding into Jerusalem on the foul of a donkey and his spirit has been unleashed upon the chosen ones of the Father. Help girl, they are trying to rape me."

"Relax darling, I’ll show you how to handle those sweet, handsome and rich men," replied the woman who knew Him well, just like I.

Faith

Into the basement I would go with a pen and a piece of paper.

Sunday afternoons were blissful when composing my weekly stories for the county newspaper with a circulation in the tens of thousands. It was the only newspaper in the county for a very long time and pretty much still is.

The family sat upstairs and shouted over Steelers games. I watched those games in agony for years. Fortunately, my school teacher elected me as a reporter from our school and the writing assignments gave me something to do. My writing was horrible, but Mrs. Hicks could twist the words around and compose some very interesting stories from within the walls of Northern Bedford High School.

I once wrote a story about the things one can find in or on a school teacher’s desk. I wrote about Mr. Straightoff and the coffee cup on his desk which was filled with a home grown version of penicillin. Readers digested on the cigars found inside Mrs. Robinson’s desk drawer and copies of the Holy Bible on Mr. Anderson’s desktop.

The school news page photographer, Richard, was my best friend. He snapped black and white photos of everything I wrote about. We were a dynamic duo back in the early Eighties and despite the scandalous reporting, we both managed to land in the top ten of our class.

The story about desktop clutter made me famous among readers of what was sometimes jokingly called “The Daily Liar” by county Republicans. They turned to my stories before reading what was on the front page. Eventually, I told Richard to spend more time with the other reporters because I didn’t need his negatives to write what I saw.

Richard was like Andrew Ridgley trying to release an album on the heels of ‘Faith’ while snapping shots for the other reporters on the team.

I wonder what it was about writing those stories down in the basement that scared me away from this craft for so long.

I actually watched the Steelers win the silver cup this year and wrote during those expensive commercials.

I leaned against my exposed brick walls with pen in hand and it felt like being home.

The Resurrection

I was his beloved. He called me ‘Beloved’.

I was an orphan when I met him on my thirteenth birthday. He gazed at me standing along the roadside as a beggar. I threw the two loaves of bread I had collected for the day at his feet.

I was the first to know he was the one. When he saw me and ask me to follow, he simply looked into my eyes and I followed him.

He spoke to me as if in prayer– with his mind-- and I heard every word he thought towards me. He didn’t have to summon fish into nets to get me to believe he was the one. I knew it in an instant.

I learned so much about love as I watched how he performed miracles to gain the faith of his chosen twelve.

When the followers started to multiply, he kept me close at his side. “You have the faith of a mustard seed, my beloved– it is you who knows me for who I am and what is to come, and for this, you will have your reward,” he said while kissing me on my mouth at supper.

I laid my head on his thigh while they ate.

We all have our weakness– mine was envy– I wanted to be his only one.

He told me to go outside and wait for him when he went into a house to bring his friend back to life. I went inside anyway– he knew I was there, and I watched as he brought forth the one who was by his side before I came along.

I fell hard to the ground when I watched the dead man open his eyes for I knew he loved Jesus like I love Jesus.

His mother and the beautiful woman Mary woke me while pouring water from a vessel onto my lips. “Mother, behold your sons,” he said.

They came after all of us after they killed him. They knew who we were very well. We cured the sick, gave sight to the blind and cast out demons in his name– we may have very well been him in their eyes.

I escaped into the forest of olives trees and spent my nights there until everything calmed down. Mary and Martha wanted me to come stay with them, but I told them My Lord had need of me. I knew I could survive and outwit them if left alone.

Even in my sleep I sense those who move near me and hear the dreams of others. I can hear the thoughts of others long before their footsteps – as long as I sleep alone.

I was warned in a dream, that I must take what the Lord had hidden in me and run to the wilderness.

The Earth continued to suffer tremors for days after the burial.

My dreams were violent. I stood in a desert, forsaken by all, and screamed my beloved’s name with all my might.

It seemed to me that the earthquakes were the result of my anger.

I was too frightened to return to the city and watched Jerusalem burn from the hillside. I sat alone, hungry and missed him terribly.

He came to me at night and spoke to me regarding the things that must come to pass. He awoke me from my dreams by calling me by my name, ‘Beloved’. I saw him clearly in my dreams. His black hair was thrown down over his face like a thick veil and he cried my name with his soul. I went to him in his cry of death and delivered back to him those things he had asked me to hold for him.

I wasn’t surprised to see him standing before me under a limb of a tree with moon light shining upon his face. I didn’t have to touch the wounds to know it was him returning from the dead. I was relived he had awoken from that place in my dream.

“The fields are ripe for harvest but the laborers are few, go now and do the first acts,” he asked of me before he walked away into the wilderness.

I took the linen cloth that was wrapped around his body which I found in his empty tomb and kept it near me as I slept in the wilderness. The fragrant oils from his body had mingled with the smell of his blood and flesh. I felt close to him when I laid my head on the linen while sleeping in the wooded land.

I met the angels he promised to send to me the day I went to his tomb and found the cloth that had fallen from his body– the one I used for a pillow.

The angels were more beautiful than I had imagined. They tied my hands and feet with the cloth used to wrap his tortured body and reached within me to untie what had been bound.

I felt him there with the angels during the ceremony-- that’s why I wasn’t afraid.

I left angels in the tomb and returned to the Mount of Olives awaiting his return.

He no longer came to me in my dreams and something had gone horribly wrong.

I tied the linen cloth around my waist and marched off to the great city.


My feet were bleeding by the time I reached the Fortress of Antonia on the outskirts of the great city. I stumbled several times upon rocks which covered the hillside on the eastern side of Jerusalem.

I was with the Master on the day when he, like the angel, healed those who were wading in the Bethesda pool. I prayed the waters from the spring would help to alleviate my burning feet and tired, bruised legs.

I slowly walked into the water among a group of lepers who were not frightened by my ragged appearance. The blood stained linen cloth wrapped around my waist came off in the pool. I reached down to secure it to me but it disappeared into the murky waters.

The group of lepers cried out and spoke in tongues as their diseased skin pealed from their backs like the skin of a serpent which sheds after a fresh layer of scales has grown beneath.

They looked at me as if I were the angel who had stirred the waters and made them well. I left the pool naked and sat in the sun to dry.

All my energy was gone and I thought perhaps it was my turn to die. “It is finished,” I said while awaiting my ascension to the kingdom.

When I opened my eyes I saw that the bathers from the Bethesda pool had removed their garments, were healed, and were lying next to me nude, on the grassy embankment.

I looked into the distance and noticed the Mount of Olives, the place that I had called my home while running from the authorities, was ablaze, and another earthquake rocked the City of God.

I walked with no clothing into the temple and those from the pool followed me there.

There were at least forty men and women—bathers from the Bethesda Pool who were cured of their ailments the moment I stepped into the water.

They followed close behind as I boldly walked through the gates of the temple naked.

My followers were acting like a group of drunkards and continued to feed from my aura as I made my way inside the walls of the city to the confront the Pharisees and ensure the temple was destroyed, just as my Beloved had predicted.

“What more do you want from me?” I asked my followers in anger. “It is not I who cured you, but your faith that has made you well. Do not follow me unless you are prepared to drink from the cup from which I have quenched my thirst,” I warned.

I then understood why My Lord ran and hid in the wilderness so often. The burden of the unfaithful is great and after performing miracles it is not wise to hang around too long, or they will drink all the light that is within a man.

They did not listen and the mob of naked bathers created quite a scene inside the walls of the great city, not knowing what to do with the spirit that had cured them.

It is typical for one who has tasted the power of the Holy Spirit to confuse the love with temptations of the flesh and I prayed for them.

Crowds of Jews were already confused and frightened as fires burned everywhere inside the temple and our parade of newly healed individuals stopped almost everyone in their tracks as we marched right into their midst.

“The Pharisees are like a dog that sleeps in a stable with cattle; the dog does not eat, nor does the bitch allow the cattle to eat -- and all are miserable,” I shouted to my followers as we gazed upon the blood stained slab of marble which was used for performing sacrifices.
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