Feels pretty good so far––meaning, I have a desire to finish up a draft whereas w/ the other it was a total chore. Novels and stories work that way, I suppose, there’s always an appropriate time and place to dip back in.

I know somehow I’ll get back to my other flighty vain characters again––they’re horribly endearing, somehow.

So, for now I’ll be wading in wily waters of the Subcontinent once again.

Can we start a rebirth of Victorian Utopian societies like they had in the late 1800s? Full of elegant, malaria-ridden ex-pats who love seances and use the latest exercise devices made out of that new glorious product, “rubber”!

Maybe in the Everglades, where we could hold meetings at the “Rock Bottom Bar”. There’s an old Naugahyde stool with your name on it, a sign that reads, “Some call it “Tourist Season” so why can’t we shoot them?” and a pretty swell guy who sings Hank Williams covers.

A few recent photos of the area.

I pilfered this post from my old blog and wanted to post it here again as I love this photo so much. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found it as it was so long ago.

“Prom Night ’62: Alone with Mr. McNamara” should have been the name of this photo.

I wanted to write about it but wasn’t sure why––not because of the kitschy aspect––that itself is of course fun but not the most interesting part of the photo. It may be the oddly symmetrical nature; the brick pattern on the wall in relation to the well, the conical ruffled dress and upward sweep of the pine trees.

Each prop contradicts (or compliments?) the other: She’s standing at a well, made of a brick-patterned cardboard within another brick enclosure, a river of gray crepe paper is draped over more brick and just beyond the door opening is yet another brick ensemble. Brick leading into more brick––a sort of sloppy Ikea display or a tossed sketch from Escher’s trash bin. It’s hard to tell if it’s really a set of stairs or another background––did she come through there? Or was she always there?

Not an uncommon prom photo, certainly apt for its time, but it’s sinister, the unharmonious mixture of artificial materials and the girl, smack in the middle, dressed to kill, not a hair out of place, perfect pink with white gloves and a tiara. It’s as if her geometry teacher had wandered in the room and said “Hey, let’s have a photo!” The girl looks caught in the headlights––somehow she ended up alone with Mr. McNamara.

“Beautiful, beautiful, you’re a perfect inverted Isosceles triangle ” he says then sighs, runs his hands over the ruffles of her dress. We need to get her out of there quickly! A mad rush from stale colors and pencil worn fingers! She steps back and falls into the well, pink taffeta slips over the edge and she is gone. The teacher is alone now, he looks over inside the well, it’s empty, a slew of old straws, paper cups, popcorn and corsets litter the bottom.
-

“Boyfriends” is fact and fiction based–renditions of terrible past boyfriends (much is fiction, much is fun…!) This is the first part in this series:

Terry

Terry was an asthmatic poet who conversed with strippers in foreign tongues as not to offend their gentle egos. His body was like a sack of leftover flour in a warehouse after a flood–porous, sticky and lacking in any form.

I met him at Starlights, a chain where movie star lookalikes danced on stage wearing tall,white cowboy hats and prowled about on all fours searching for thrown money. He was a regular and often composed sonnets about the girl’s eyelashes and less seen body parts. He bought me a Skydiver, three parts Drambuie, one part beer–a lot of bloody guts mixed in with calm perseverance.

Breaking Point: Terry had a brush with death one late evening with a votive candle and felt the need to write, long miserable epic poems about the experience and recite them in shady Armenian delis where not trace of any Armenian food could be found.

Hassan

Hassan was a Moroccan cook I met while working in the kitchen at Bob’s Big Boy. He had mealy eyes, butter breath and rarely showered.

His sister Fatima often cooked Tanjine for us as we fucked doggy-style in his tiny bedroom on his floral bedspread. He often sang French songs as he sucked on pickled lemons while rubbing my breasts with Algerian Lavender oil.

Breaking point: His brother Faisal pinched my ass and scratched his balls while praising the merits of the Algerian National Liberation Front.

Paul

Paul was a systems analyst who sat next to me at work. He weighed 300 lbs and smoked cigarillos in the janitor’s closet on his breaks. He had a Van Dyke beard and often ran his chubby knuckles through it while he stared at me as I calculated risk losses and annuitization options.

Our first date was in the back of his orange Chevette, he rubbed his cock and did whippits with a dairy maid cream can as I unhooked my bra.

Breaking point: His love for Arlo Guthrie and deviled ham sandwiches during sex.

Eulogio:

Eulogio was my neighbor when we lived in Orlando. He was the cleanest man I’ve ever known and smelled like fresh Hibiscus flowers and sanitized public restrooms. I visited him after my job at “Art’s Shell Repository” and we’d eat lengua rellena (stuffed tongue) on his back porch as I stroked his thighs and licked the insoles of his feet. He had a habit of wearing slick slacks so anytime I sat on his lap, I’d often slide right down; this always seemed to occur just as his mother came in bearing plates of braised plantains. She’d giggle, ignore me on the floor and spoon feed him with a silver baby spoon.

Breaking Point: His uncle coming over with shotgun and insisting the Spanish-American War was not over.

She would feign happiness, clap her hands like a child and bounce up and down, her breasts jiggling madly. There was the mink underwear, the lemon custard tin in the shape of a crown, the perfume made from the Trunky fruit of West Angola, the chocolate daffodil that stunk of rotten peaches and the worst by far–a life-size replica of her bottom. This was made of a gelatinous rubber and he placed it on the dining table during company. It was somewhat embarrassing, especially after a few drinks and the men would wink at one another and grab and squeeze the mold. After one such dinner party, she caught her husband’s best friend fondling the buttocks roughly, while the others were in the den. His other hand within his trousers rubbing away fiendishly. He seemed quite embarrassed when she discovered him and scowled in a baritone, my my, so realistic, perhaps Arthur should move that to the bedroom or donate it to the boy scouts, he he.

So when Arthur arrived that evening, he only had one package in his hand, it was a vivid green and quite small. This my dear is a golf ball marker. It marks your balls. She was shocked and excited he had returned with no present for her. It was certainly out of character and soon she grew suspicious. Does he have a mistress? She thought and peered at the strange gadget. You take a ball like this (he proceeded to reach in his pants, grabbed his balls and managed to fit one side of them in the little machine) arrange the letters – in this case we’ll put “Stella’s Property”–and put it in the little metal holder and press down, presto a little ball with a message. His pinkish balls lay still in the little press and quite clearly, she made out the words, “Stella’s Property”. Why darling I do believe this time you’ve produced a very practical present! And she hopped up and down and her boobs jiggled and her infamous bottom jiggled as well and that was that.

Of course the vintage lures are stunning.  Occasionally I go to Ebay and check out their vast selection and before long, I’ve been looking at lures for hours. They’re fairly pricey and every time I search, there’s always an old tackle box someone dug up full of old lures going for staggering prices. Here’s a few beautiful lures from: oldfishinglure.com. The boxes alone are just as beautiful.

Here’s some of the lures I bought on etsy recently, certainly not Heddons (they do have a few there) and not as old but still quite cool. These are going in a book I’m working on. Of course, I had to incorporate one with an old Rolling Rock bottle I found and I had to buy an old fishing pole. The red lure looks like a cartoon character and could possibly be a good premise for a new show; the life of fishing lures down at the pond. I can image the Ren and Stimpy guy drawing them! I also ending up taking photos of a 1960′s motor boat that was given to a friend recently. That sounds like a perfect day, drinking beer and fishing in your vintage motorboat.

Below are 3 great new rubber ones, I especially love the minnow.

I found this seller (aperkins) from etsy who makes the lures into bottle openers, the perfect combo! Again form meets function.

This other etsy guy (teddmcdonah) makes lures from recycled metal cans, etc. I love these two:

Title: The Art and Science of Homemaking

Owner: Mariam Wetter

Purchased: In her 3rd year of marriage by her mother-in-law, Bett. Wrapped in elaborate paper with a note, that read, “Feed your man and he’ll forgive you in the bedroom.”

Mariam Wetter doesn’t mind the smell of bleach, it’s all too familiar to her. In fact the undersides of her fingernails often smell like bleach and later when she touches her husband Edward’s penis, there is the subtle scent of bleach hovering about the two of them as if she were a nurse giving him a sponge bath. I can’t clean what I don’t see and what I see is dirt, she laments this often. Edward is breezy, indifferent and strokes the sofa like it’s a woman and reads his gardening books.  He doesn’t care for sweets anymore but this doesn’t deter Mariam Wetter from making endless amounts and they sit in cupboards and pie chests and gather mold and until she throws them out in a fit of rage, clutching her homemaking guide in her thick, ginger root fingers Milk made the difference don’t you see! It makes men, makes them blubbery and mean and lovely to look at! She’ll scream at him as she tries to push cookies and milk near his stick bug silhouette. When did he shrink? When did she loose his profile? She’s unaware of the timeline and grits her teeth as he gnaws on celery. Gradually fold in cream, should be her motto, as she is often doing this. Folding in the cream, folding in the cream, bloody cream! Sprinkle in the cinnamon, you lousy bastard!

Title: The Art and Science of Homemaking

Author: Mary. W. Cauley

Penned: 1937

Mary W. Cauley is commissioned to write a guidebook for struggling young housewives. She finds the assignment horribly tedious but is persuaded by her editor as her last book “Steamy forebodings at Dern Street” hasn’t done well, no, not at all. This is terribly frustrating as she has hardly touched a pot in her life and the site of food in general nauseates her. She is often guided towards food by her live in “friend” Millie,  like a cow to a slaughter house and only eats to survive. Now, she’s not sure she would like to survive as writing this book sends long, steel shivers to her heart. So she puts the sequel to “Steamy” aside, having done research when Millie was asleep, in her Rover on the streets of Captain Street, which is parallel to Dern Street and sufferers from the same malaise. She then turns to a neighbor down the road who seems to be rooted to the floor of her kitchen. This woman gives her many recipes and suggestions, having also once been married to a farmer. She tells her horror stories of sheep birthing and farmers losing legs in threshing machines and of losing her virginity on a mildewy bed of straw to a local herdsman. Mary doesn’t put that in the book and when it is complete, she and Millie celebrate by concocted a simple fudge but throw in some sorted liquors. It comes out like soup and they pour it down their gullets in midnight merriment.

When Virgil got into Harvard he expected so much more. It wasn’t the academics, his ivy covered dorm room, the French doors or dusty tomes on the library shelves. These were just as elegant as the brochure had shown. It was the women. He expected them to be shiny, glowing and full of luster like new Christmas toys. Yes, he saw the types in the quad milling about; the blondes, the reds and the chesnuts. Donning Bermuda shorts and glancing about, stretching their perfect necks like proud swans. The long tan legs spreading quaintly on the cut grass. These girls were wrapped in plastic like the couch his Aunt Tina had in her Florida apartment. Sitting on these couches was like avoiding reality and he often wished he could tear the plastic off and bring in a dozen cats to swarm and pollute the fabric with their scent and claws. If you broke the plastic on the girls you simply found dark hearts and trapped values. But he still desired to touch them, penetrate the layer and see if his instincts were right. He had his chance one Fall evening at a party. A dozen of them lined the couch like porcelain statues from another era. Virgil was fairly handsome and one girl promptly turned to him. She smiled a toothy, expensive smile and he smelled her breath. The hint of beer mixed with violets. Was this possible? He realized she had been talking for five minutes or so but he was mesmerized by her hair, straight and beige likefield grass. He heard the word, football and helmet and Darren Wortz and she laughed and he could have cried, he felt a gallon of boredom dumped on his head and he wished he had that helmet so he could stuff the remains of her words in and kick it with his loafers and it would fly softly and slowing into the night air, its contents irrelevant.