California Scenic Route 75

Sun and Moon hooked up on facebook. Their friendship actually went way back, but they’d lost touch around the time when Sun got into trouble with the Ozone and Moon met a spaceman whom she’d allowed to walk all over her. These years later, Sun and Moon agreed to meet in person at a coffee shop on Orange Avenue in Coronado. After catching up over espressos, Sun suggested they shine Route 75 with his ’98 Beamer. Sun dropped the top, and Moon let down hair that fell like ice and dust rocks down her back. Sun jerked the car to a halt near North Island Amphibious Base, into a two-hour parking space designated for fornicators. (If you ever park there without fornicating, don’t forget you must get your parking validation ticket from the nearby fish taco vendor, or else you’ll be charged twenty bucks per hour). So, Sun fucked Moon. Afterward, feeling weird and inspired, Sun rolled his ride straight into the ocean. Sun, Moon, and car splashed, tsunami style, and soaked the entire Western Seaboard. Sure made that puffed up United States naval base look like Tinker Bell. Even the wiped out little surf god was shaking a fist in the air and shouting, “You lunatic!”

Gentle friend, if there’s no sun or moon shining where you are now, you can bet that those two rascals are hanging out, sipping cosmos on the beach, and gossiping about—and just wishing they could outshine—the Hollywood stars.

A Legendary House in Harlem

Nessa could not avoid walking through The Projects to get to the more affluent Striver’s Row neighborhood. She was heading home after an evening of rogue jazz mixed with oddball stand-up comedy at a local underground club. She didn’t fear getting mugged because she wasn’t carrying a purse. She was carrying, however—a baby. Already forty weeks along in the pregnancy, Nessa’s belly could crowd up a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Now, as she walked past unremarkable buildings on Frederick Douglas Boulevard, Nessa feared any kind of assault less than she feared giving birth right there upon the mucky concrete. She already was feeling the early stages of labor and had laughed enough that evening to know that the child must be on its way, for she had read somewhere that laughter helps to speed child labor along.

At the corner of 134th Street she spotted Tony, the premier chef from Londel’s Soul Food Restaurant. He’s known for making soul food that could save any doggone soul; he was also known as a funny street poet. Nessa was ever grateful that early in her pregnancy Tony had shared his recipes for fried chicken and okra with her because her gravings could get pretty severe. About twenty weeks along, she ate one evening at Londel’s and ordered practically every dish on the menu. Then she had bared her teeth, ripped meat off bones; sniveled, shoveled, salivated, and snarled while she masticated. She was a starved jungle beast. Though it was difficult to embarrass Tony Jackson, Neesa’s manners were too much for Tony’s dining room, and when he knew she was pregnant and planned to dine at Londel’s often, as she lived only four blocks away, Tony decided to reveal his secret recipes so she could make them, and more importantly eat them, in her own home.

On this Spring evening, Tony was walking a pink dog. Pink! Why…how? A pink miniature poodle, or some cute and cuddly breed like that. Tony explained to Nessa that his dog was going to star in a YouTube clip about a day in the life of a True Style Dog. Nessa apologized that she could not bend to pet the wagging celebrity. Tony nodded at her bump and said he understood. Before Tony and his pink poodle let Nessa on her way, Tony thrust a book into Nessa’s hands. A book?

Tony said, “If you’re going to be white and live in Harlem, you had better read this…” She studied the cover of the book. It was by Wallace Thurman, entitled Infants of the Spring. Nessa looked at Tony, quizzical. She cocked a brow. She shrugged. Tony also added that if she knew her Black History, Nessa must know that she lived at an address that was famous during the Harlem Renaissance.

“Sure, I’ve seen tourists taking pictures of our place. The landlord lords it over everyone…the history of the address, I mean. And my neighbors throw parties these days that wake the dead. We’re talking NEO-renaissance, pal. We’re talking Zora Neal Hurston’s ghost doing the Charleston inside our plumbing.” Nessa boasted.

Then she rubbed her belly. “I’ll probably give birth tonight in the very place where Langston Hughes composed all that poetry. I’ll read the book, thanks, Tony.”

The two started in opposite directions then Nessa turned and was walking backwards. “Hey Tony, I couldn’t help but notice that your dog is pink. How does he feel about fitting into the Harlem color scheme?”

Without turning around, Tony shouted, “His bark is worse than his dark, lady. Ha! His bark is worse than his dark!”

Nessa returned home to 267 West 136th Street. To get her mind off labor pains, she read Thurman’s novel. She read about a Danish guy who moved into Niggeratti Manor during the early part of the Harlem Renaissance. She met bizarre personalities, such as Raymond and Paul, who all seemed to represent some element of cultural life: the singer, the writer, the poet, the painter: erotica enthusiasts, all. She enjoyed the part about the wild donation party they threw. She got to the part about the salon gathering when they all discussed Negro art and their plans to make black contributions to American culture. After that, Nessa had to put the book down because the labot pains were too intense and she felt the need to push.

She called her husband who was working late, again, at The Firm. He said he’d be home as soon as he finished just this one last 1100-page brief.

Next, Nessa called her midwife who said she was on her way. She had to travel from Brooklyn all the way to Harlem. Nessa clenched her teeth and hoped she’d arrive in time.

Nessa mixed herself a drink—a highball—gin and ginger ale in memory of the poison preferred by the bohemian personalities of Thurman’s Niggeratti Manor. The laboring mommy-to-be climbed into a warm tub and raised the glass to her Belly. “To nativity!” She knocked back her drink.

While gin worked its magic, Nessa surrendered her body to The Supreme Ache. Soon her mind started tripping on love hormones.

Nessa thought back to her former African doctor friend, a guy whom her husband always complained had only wanted to get into Nessa’s pants. Well, as usual, her husband had been right and Nessa’s friend had managed to do precisely that around the same time Nessa and her husband were working to get pregnant. Bam! Nessa got knocked up and suffered through an entire pregnancy accompanied by the nagging pain of paternal ambiguity. Humiliated, she shared this trouble with no one.

Soon after the third highball and a lot of otherworldly groaning, Nessa delivered a healthy girl in her bathtub. She cleaned the child, chewed off the umbilical chord and threw the afterbirth out the window to the starved stray that was always prowling around the trash.

“That wasn’t so bad.” She said to soothe herself and the nursing newborn as she hobbled to the king-size nest she prepared on the bed. The baby suckled while Nessa waited for the midwife and her husband. So, she opened Thurman’s novel and read to the end. The book has everything in it: gin, rape, laughter, suicide, abortion, poetry, all shades of carousing. It’s not recommended reading for new mothers, but then Nessa is not your typical new mother. Just as she closed the book and put it on the night table, The Mister and the midwife arrived.

Alfie’s face glowed with pride and relief when he saw his wife and daughter safe and cozy in bed. He didn’t notice anything untoward about the child until months later. He casually asked, “Does her skin look sort of dark to you?” Nessa, examined the child with feigned surprise; then she shrugged and pouted in that way that Alfie found so sexy. Nessa said, “Well, Alfred, we do live in Harlem, after all...must be something in the water."

California Route 163

“Observe perpetually.” These words echo through Sterling’s mind as she drives downtown on Historic Route 163. They are the words Hank repeated at the writers’ workshop. After another week and another twenty pages written, Sterling is heading back to the artist’s loft on 13th Street for a read and critique session. While driving, she grows frustrated. What can she possibly observe that is of enough interest to write down? The world passes at such speed. Hotel Circle. Old Town. Friars Road. University Avenue. There must be trillions of details she cannot observe, can only imagine: the woman reading a secret memo in the lobby of the Travel Lodge, the man bending over to pick up a wallet he finds in a saloon, the security guard at Bed, Bath, and Beyond scratching his balls when no one is looking, the men kissing in the “ladies” room at The Alibi; and these are only the surface details. Ah, what Sterling could do if she could actually observe these details and then probe the interior of each moment, each life, to get to the psychological mystery of the minutiae. Then she feels like she may be able to write, to put pen to paper and push upon something profound.

But she spends most of her time behind the wheel. When she is not writing, she’s driving a cab. And life presents little more to her than perpetual signs, perpetual signals, perpetual lanes, perpetual windows, perpetual lots, perpetual shocks of trees and buildings and seaside that may be empty for all Sterling knows of the life in them. There is no psychology. Only blink, blink. A pot hole. Some jerk merges. A car spins out of control and seems to head straight for Sterling’s face. She screams and sees red for a moment. Then more crashes and a weird thud heard around the world. When Sterling was scratching her head over what the hell there is in this world of interest to observe, she should have been observing her speed, or the “two-second” rule, or any warning signals from the other lousy drivers. But how could she have observed that the six-car pile up on this rainy day was caused by a man in an old Dodge Magnum, a guy named Fats Cajon who was listening to Jazz 88 and attempting a circle of fifths, T. Monk style, on his dashboard while using his knees for the steering wheel. He had been imagining jamming the solo when he swerved. Then he overcorrected. Six cars involved were all following one another too closely. Not only is Sterling a careless observer of the details of the road, but she also lacks an informed historical consciousness. Little does she know that in the very place where her car slammed into the wall of the Cabrillo Bridge is where there used to be a man-made lagoon into which seventeen people threw themselves to their deaths in the early 1930s. At the time, the locals called this method of suicide “the leap into eternity.” When Sterling crawls out of her mangled cab with minor bruises and bumps and checks in with the other victims of the crash and the cops and gets the story of Fats Cajon’s carelessness, she feels sorry for the guy. Then the police officer writing the accident report introduces Sterling Smith to Fats Cajon, right there on the side of the road amidst barricades, flashing lights, and crawling traffic. When Sterling meets Fats face-to-face, she sees eternity in the Jazzman’s eyes. She feels an urge to leap.

I-5 South

They feel zoom in their skulls and through their bones. Sunday afternoon. Coast and freeway. Zona Mona on the stereo. The surf, a symphony against rocks; waves play the dangerous cliffs then curl up and calm in the coves. A girl named Calafia and her mother head south on I-5 in their convertible Ejacula, a sports car that runs on pure sex juice. They’ll get a fistful for making Calafia’s father wait. He’s counting the nickels and dimes wasted, but let him count for the rest of his life. Mother and daughter could care less. The migrating season for whales is coming to an end, and these women agree it’s a great time to skip town—the border is just too damn close to this city, too close to this sly wife and her fragrant daughter. Illicit destinations call to Calafia and her mother. And their vehicle is so fast and fuel-efficient. They can make it to their Mexican lover before sundown, though neither will ever admit to the other the physical liberties they have allowed good old “Uncle” Zorro. Still, the two are convinced they’ll find freedom.

A year later, Calafia heads north herself. When the Ejacula gets a flat in Tijuana, a friendly Mister Fix-it gives her a hand, so she offers him her trunk. Though it’s tight, he accepts. Distracted, she forgets her stowaway, and Calafia keeps driving all the way to Canada.

Thinking Through Intercourse

In May 2007, I posted a piece inspired by Robert Olen Butler's Severance. Here's the link to my entry Voices of the Beheaded

Now I've read his latest Intercourse, published by Chronicle Books in 2008. I am so pleased that his work continues to inspire me.

Today I post a short piece of intercourse that is my own imagination engaged in a little Olen Butleresque playfulness, spinning a flash piece that is a complete knock-off of the award-winning writer's ideas. Cheers to R.O.B. He's given us another juicy collection. Before reading Intercourse, I wondered if he could pull it off what he did with Severance. He does. For those of us who tend to get a bit lazy and say things like, "there are no words to describe...", Robert Olen Butler finds the words. He gives us all of the threads of words that are going through a person's head during such moments of heightened emotion such as losing one's head or enjoying orgasmic sex. His collection of stories in Intercourse spans history and reveals what is going through lovers' heads during the act, a decent collection of all things indecent. It's a joy to read.
Here's my addition, two lovers I've chosen to explore in the way Robert Olen Butler does.

The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe 300 and some years old
Old Father Gander 300 and some years old

The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
Please come in--watch your step around Buzzy's skates, Clara's headless horsemen, and Davy's X Box--I've warned them about tidying up I've given them broth without any bread I've punished them, pet them, and put them to bed You go on and lie upon that Sponge Bob sleeping bag I've spread over the carpet because I'd hate to have to remove our stains but you can remove your own square pants (I hope) and You can relieve me and fill me fill my gaping womb satisfy my desire for more and more children I have an insatiable urge to multiply to give birth to go through these exhausting motions again and again and again my pussy ripped open again and again to push forth new life because I want and want and want to die and let live to rip and let live to give and let live. It is not your seed or more children I want but without an infant to suckle my milkfull moonboobs and a feeding schedule orbiting my body I am a lonely planet; even if They want to put my picture on the cover of Good Shoekeeping and they have they recently interviewed me regarding my steel-toe approach to discipline and my straight lace approach to teaching my infants to read The twins, Mitch and Max, are already through War and Peace, and they're only 24 months old! And they say I don't know what to do. Hah! I know what to do with you I can fit your square pants in my round hole because I am older than Methuselah and menopause means nothing to me

Father Gander
The old nursery rhyme never mentioned me by name, but I'm the one I'm taking credit and responsibility I've spilled seed and can keep spilling Who do you think pays for the mortgage on the shoe Whose investment banker brother got us out of a pinch when we nearly defaulted on the loans because the twins needed reading glasses and Bessie needed braces Rico needed his own wheels and Guy needed golf clubs? The guys at the office wonder how I even find the time to embrace with these late-night hours I pull They don't seem to understand what a no-nonsense organized woman you are They don't seem to understand that your prayers to the Divine Mother are always answered and your ovaries have an endless supply of eggs My colleague, Father Christmas, has been trying to get his old lady pregnant for centuries They've even tried the high octane fertility clinic--those classy health care cafes that are popping up on every corner like Starbucks these days But he kept shooting blanks and then she started giving birth not to children but to elves. I love every one of our wee ones and I intend to send them all to college too because I intend to make one thousand dollars for every last sperm I spill to honor every last tiny one, even if the poor fellow never had a chance to penetrate The Egg

Book Review of I Was Wrong: The Meanings of Apologies by Nick Smith

Alfred Kinsey’s work elevated the conversation about sex. Timothy Leary’s work elevated the conversation about drugs. Now, Nick Smith gives us his thorough study of apologies, a work that promises to elevate the conversation about what it means to say “I’m sorry.”

I Was Wrong: The Meanings of Apologies exposes how contemporary gestures of contrition demand our critical attention. Smith, who teaches Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire, examines the significance of various forms of regret. From collective apologies for the holocaust to a pet owner’s apology for forgetting to fill his dog’s bowl, all remorse receives scrutiny. Smith writes with the learning and patience of a benevolent professor. His message persuades a reader that today’s public and private apologies are playing fast and loose with morality.

Smith wants to move the conversation beyond what he regards as the juvenile exchange of “I’m sorry.” “No you’re not.” His book challenges readers to consider the moral force, or lack thereof, behind any act of contrition. His purpose is to guide a reader through an exercise that assures her moral sensibility will grow more sophisticated upon confronting the meanings of apologies. Smith leads us on a journey through a quagmire of questions. For example, who--precisely--is responsible for the 2006 Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and what would be the most suitable redress to those who were injured?

I realized the full urgency of Smith’s work when considering blame, redress, and emotions. Smith illuminates the contemporary practice of blaming corporations for wrongs when culpability lies with individuals and their complex social associations. Blaming an automobile manufacturer for a death caused by an SUV that rolled over, or blaming a television network for one commentator’s sexist comments, appear to be comparable to X throwing a rock that injures Y and Y asking the rock to apologize? Corporations, like rocks, cannot be held morally accountable for injuring someone. Can throwing money at the loss of human life or dignity restore moral decency? These are some more issues that Smith’s work helps us approach with clearer thinking.

I Was Wrong also gives a reader a fresh perspective from which to read the newspaper. All the lip service people pay to newsworthy remorse reveals a glaring shortcoming—most apologies fail to address moral culpability. For instance, a recent article in the San Diego Union-Tribune reported the misdemeanor of a City council candidate John Hartley. Two women complained Hartley was masturbating and urinating into a cup inside his truck while parked in front of their house. The paper reported “an apologetic mailer [in which] Hartley admitted he had to ‘take a leak’ but denied he was masturbating.” Hartley’s apology rivals an excuse a potty trainee might give when nature calls. The news article simply relates that Hartley said the voters will decide whether or not they accept his apology. Beyond the question of whether the apology will be accepted, Smith’s work encourages one to wonder to what degree the candidate’s apology contributed to the dropping of an indecent-exposure charge.

Another example from the local news here was a story about Chinese Americans rallying outside CNN’s Hollywood office to demand the firing of Jack Cafferty for calling China’s goods “junk” and its leaders “a bunch of goons and thugs.” The article reports how China “snubbed an apology from CNN over the remarks, which Cafferty said were in reference to China’s government, not its people.” This snubbed apology raises all kinds of problematic issues discussed in Smith’s book. First, for CNN to apologize for remarks made by one commentator raises questions about whether a collective can or should apologize for one person’s remarks. In this situation, CNN’s apology looks that much more suspicious when Cafferty further tries to justify the target of his comments. This is a clear case in which an apology is only making matters worse.

Anyone who has a moral debt to pay, or is owed a moral reckoning will want to read this book and embrace its wisdom. As Smith suggests, the work of a satisfying apology for many injuries and injustices in the world could take lifetimes to fulfill. Those committed to moral justice will want to begin this tremendous work with I Was Wrong.

LMP

For the past eight months, Leslie Strange has been cowed by this acronym: “LMP.”

First of all, Ms. Strange despises acronyms; to her, they are like Dixie cups or swizzle sticks, things once intended to be useful but eventually inadequacy renders them kitschy. She doesn’t think it’s cute the way the newspapers refer to an institution as NATO or the UN. Why not just write out the whole stinking phrase to avoid confusion? NATO could stand for “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” or “National Association of Theater Owners” or the name of that Queen album “Night at the Opera.” Likewise, UN might stand for “United Nations” or “User Name” or “Uranium Nitride.” Acronyms and abbreviations might seem convenient and cute, but they can cause confusion, especially if a reader only gives the content a cursory eyeball. Considered in this way, acronyms reveal themselves as unstable little beings that might be diagnosed as Bipolar or Schizophrenic if they were to pay a visit to Doctor Dictionary.

Leslie Strange cringes when she reads LMP.

To Ms. Strange, this acronym stands for both “Literary Market Place” and “Last Menstrual Period.”

Ms. Strange is a struggling writer who also happens to be eight months pregnant. When she fills out medical forms, the box asks “Date of LMP?” She assumes the doctors want to know when she had her last menstrual period, not the date of the latest rejection she received from the Literary Market Place.

But as Ms. Strange’s pregnancy nears its final stages, well-intentioned women, who like to offer advice, warn her about PREGNANT BRAIN. “Pregnant brain,” referred to by some as PB, is a mythological condition in which the pregnant woman is supposed to experience some sort of clumsiness in her intellect; she loses her normal mental focus and turns into a veritable dumb dumb. That hasn’t happened to Leslie quite yet. But supposing it may happen, Leslie Strange is likely to get confused about the meaning of “LMP.” Perhaps she’ll start to worry that the Literary Market Place has ceased altogether on that fateful day in March when she ceased needing a tampon. She’ll assume there’s no use writing another word or trying to get published because her pregnancy is the equivalent of the financial industry’s Black Tuesday market crash. She thinks about this prospect with some narrative distance: "The writer Leslie Strange’s menstrual cycle is on hiatus; consequently, the Literary Market Place experiences a Great Depression." Now, Leslie thinks, that’s not a bad beginning for a wild-minded story.