new year...new pages...

My 1973 BMW 2002 is the one thing I own that I’d consider a prized possession. The car was originally owned by Mr. Bellows, the husband of the aforementioned Mrs. Bellows, the little old lady who owns a home with pink trim on our block.
I vividly remember Mr. Bellows driving the car into his parking lot when I was 11-years-old.


I was reading a Hardy Boys book when I heard it idling down the street. It was a complete wreck of a car. Splotches of worn red paint, the hood and passenger door with considerable denting, and the sound of the clutch grinding as it tried valiantly to ease into third gear. It was love at first sight for me. The car was imperfect but I immediately knew it was enduring. Sexy, sturdy and most of all quirky.


For two years, Mr. Bellows worked on the car. I’d walk past his house on the way home from school and everyday he’d be clanging away. One day, I worked up the nerve to approach him. He smiled broadly when I told him I thought the car was really neat.


From that point on, I visited him once or twice a week until the car was finished. On the day the paint was finally dry, Mr. Bellows even let me apply a specially made bumper sticker to the back that said “Der Kleine Rot Hure”. I found out that it meant “The Little Red Bitch”. We made a pact that I wouldn’t ever tell Mrs. Bellows what it meant.


The next day, I walked by the house and was surprised to see that the garage door was closed but the car was parked in the driveway. An entire month went by and I didn’t see the car move from its spot. I was crushed. Selfishly, his project had become my pride and joy and I was hoping beyond hope that I’d get to take a ride with him.


On a Friday afternoon, in the middle of October, I answered the door to find Mr. Bellows standing with keys in one hand and a goofy grin on his face. I ran pell-mell up to my room, threw some shoes on and was in the car in a flash.


Before we left, he turned to me and told me he was just going to drive. He didn’t have any destination. He just wanted to drive if that was alright with me. We drove, mostly in silence, for two hours. We both had giddy smiles splashed across our faces the entire time. It was by far the sweetest silence I had ever experienced.
On our way home, Mr. Bellows stopped in a high school parking lot.


It was late and the only light was from the parking lot streetlamps. He got out of the car, came around to my side and opened the door.


“Wanna take her for a spin?” he asked.


My heart nearly leapt from my throat. I rushed to the driver’s side and got in. That night, Mr. Bellows taught me how to drive. He also taught me that old age can’t hide the boy that is always lurking somewhere beneath the surface.


When Mr. Bellows pulled back into my driveway that night, and
my euphoria had subsided a fraction, I asked him what had taken him so long to take the car out for a drive.


He explained to me that a long time ago, when his son was 18, they had seen a brand new BMW 2002 on a dealer’s lot. They both agreed that it was a beautiful car. His son said that it was his dream to one day own one. Two weeks after that, in a cruel twist of fate, his son was killed by a drunk driver.


Mr. Bellows promised himself that when he retired he would fulfill his son’s dream. After he had finished the car, Mr. Bellows said that a profound sadness had overtaken him and that he hadn’t really ever grieved for his son until he finished the car. Even though I was only 13 at the time, I think I understood. He told me that it was my enthusiasm about the car that had finally propelled him to take the car out. He thanked me for that.


Two years later, Mr. Bellows died of cancer. Mrs. Bellows left the car in their driveway, covered and lifeless.


On my 16th birthday, I walked out of my house to find the 2002 parked in my driveway with a giant bow wrapped around it. There was a card on the windshield. I opened it up and it read:


Dear Walter,
Before my husband passed he made me promise that I’d do this for you on your 16th birthday. There is no one else in the world he’d rather give this to than you. Thank you for being a part of one of the last joys he had in his life. He appreciated it more than you know and somewhere out there I do think our son did as well.
Oh and by the way, I know what the bumper sticker says you little shit!
Happy Birthday,
Mrs. Bellows


To this day, it is still the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me and I hope it sheds some light about why I’m outside fretting over the damage Brodie Brockford has done to my passenger side door.


Some neighbor kids are playing roller hockey in the street, while their mothers congregate in a circle in one of the yards, squawking away at one another. Mr. Smith, the previously mentioned owner of house number NINETEEN with PINK trim, is outside on a short ladder, his limbs stretched to gumby-like extremes, furiously painting his pink trim blue.


I walk a few feet towards Mr. Smith and respectfully call out to him.


“Hi, Mr. Smith. I see you’re painting your pink trim blue again.”


Mr. Smith nods his head without looking in my direction and mutters something under his breath.


Hoping to better understand why he continues to self-sabotage himself, I ask what I think is a logical question.


“Doesn’t the HOA keep fining you and making you paint it back to pink each time?”


Mr. Smith jerks towards me so violently he nearly flings himself from the ladder.

His face turns ruddy-faced English red and a tree of veins appears across his forehead.


“Yeah, but those Commies got another thing coming the next time they put a notice on my door!”


“What do you mean?”


An evil smile complements his tree of veins, which now seem to be pounding not with blood but venom.


“Let’s just say that I’ll be painting the trim with gallons of their blood if they try and make me change it again.”


I look to his face, searching for a sign that he is simply making morbid light of the situation. He is not.


Mr. Smith goes on to demonstrate with his paintbrush, the stabbing that will occur when another notice appears on his door. He stabs the air with feverish precision. Blue paint specks fly back at him, landing on his clothing, face and mustache. He finally stops and gathers himself, breathing hard.


“Fucking pricks will wish they never crossed me!”


I take a few deliberate steps backward, trying my best to not look alarmed.


“Alright then. Keep up the good fight.”


I raise my fist in a show of solidarity, something he responds to with a clenched fist of his own.


“Fuck right, I’ll keep up the good fight.”


Our interaction is interrupted by some commotion in the street. A late model Lexus has come upon the kids in the street playing roller hockey. My father, Griffin Stutters, has rolled down his window and is now voicing his displeasure with them having marked his path.


“Get out of the street you filthy maggots!”


One of the kids is bold enough to respond in kind.


“Hey, screw you Mister!”


My father smiles and revs his engine. When they still don’t move he shoots the car forward to within feet of the kids. Shrieks of horror fill the air as they drop their sticks and skate off toward their mothers who are so lost in their own gossip they are unaware of what has just happened.


Joy fills my father’s heart as he cackles loudly. He makes a wide turn into our driveway, making sure he runs over their hockey sticks in the process. The tires crush the sticks and simultaneously defeat the kids’ hope that my father would just move on to the driveway without any other unpleasant incident.


Griffin Stutters is not a warm man. I’m not sure if he was always such a chilly, morally bankrupt individual but I think at some point he realized that tapping into his deep reservoir of unpleasantness could propel him to great heights. At the very least, it has served him well professionally.


My father is a criminal defense lawyer. He excelled in college, receiving his Law degree from Berkeley in spite of, in his words, “the constant distraction from the weak, liberal retards that ruled the campus”.


After college my father started his own law firm, consisting of himself and a secretary. Devoid of a conscience or a soul, his firm grew so fast that within five years he was considered the top criminal defense lawyer in California. He considered himself the “people’s champion” as long as those people were murderers, rapists and pedophiles.


I remember in seventh grade, on Career Day, my father came to speak to my class just after he had finished a particularly high-profile case. In a controversial decision, my father had gotten a child rapist off on a technicality even though there was DNA evidence to support the prosecutor’s case.


When it was time for the question portion of Career Day, one of my classmates, Tommy Duncan, raised his hand eagerly. My father called on him, mistaking his eagerness for admiration.


My classmate pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and asked, “My mother wrote down a question she wanted me to ask you. “ How do you sleep at night you disgusting excuse for a human being?”


The whole class went silent and my teacher looked as if she was going to faint.


It made everyone uncomfortable except for my father. He simply smiled broadly and answered the question with aplomb.


“Well, Tommy, first of all thank you for the question. You can tell your mother that I sleep like a baby on a bed of heavenly clouds. I look at myself in the mirror every morning and smile because I am doing a job that I can be proud of. I defend the innocent, because after all, we are all innocent until proven guilty. You can tell your mother that I found her attempt to use her child to put me on the spot amusing.”


There was a brief silence as my father let Tommy process his answer. He then advanced a question at Tommy.


“Now Tommy, let me ask you something. Is your mother fat?”


My teacher gasped, which had mixed with some of the other kids snickering.


Tommy stuttered through an answer that, yes, his mother had struggled with some weight issues but was trying really hard to control it.


“I thought so Tommy. The question sounded like it had to come from a miserable fatty. Tell your fat mother good luck with her weight issue.”


The Q & A session ended there at the request of my horrified teacher as I sat with my head buried in my hands. What happened in the classroom that day is the best snapshot I can give you of what my father is like on a daily basis. Mean-spirited, smug and utterly shameful.


My father stands from his Lexus, his Armani suit perfectly tailored to fit his sinewy frame. He is a brooding, handsome man; a perfect complement to my mother’s beauty.


I often wonder why, with their combined good looks, I received such the short end of the stick. It’s as if, when his sperm connected with my mother’s eggs, there was an angry fight between the two, and I was the unfortunate aftermath of the melee.


I think that my father secretly loathes me because I am mediocre looking and am as likely as Stephen Hawking to excel in a sport.


“Hey Dad. How was--”


Before I have a chance to finish, his perpetual ear ornament Bluetooth headset goes off, and he flies into legal jargon. The only words I understand are “that prick can stick his appeal where he takes it from his boyfriend”. Charming.


Seeing that he has finished, I try again.


“Sounds like you had--”


“Not now, Walter, it’s been a long day.”


My father moves on towards the front door, giving a cordial greeting to Patrick before he enters the house.


My father makes me feel as wanted as a herpes sore that has Chlamydia.

a new day and subsequently new pages...

To be sure, my mother, Eva Stutters, is a beautiful woman. In her formidable years, she looked like a freakishly stunning cross between Ursula Andress and Kim Basinger. She is now in her mid-forties and Time, the ever-subtle thief of beauty has started to chip away at her looks. She is still beautiful, just now with hints of haggard.

Perhaps, as much as Time steals things from us, it is also our vices which wear us down. In my mother’s case, wine, in color both red and white, is a major contributing factor to who she has become.


Yes, she is a lush. Today, like most days when I arrive home from school, I find her lying in a heap on our overpriced, ultra-modern sofa. A bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon sits a quarter full and sweating on an end table within reach of her chronically unsteady grasp. In her left hand rests a wine glass. A terrycloth robe, wrapped less-than-snug, rounds out the absurd scene.


The television is playing Days of Our Lives, its mediocrity hypnotizing her.


“Hi Mom. How’s your day going?


She glances in my direction, grunts like an ogre and waves me away.


I refuse to let her off that easily.


“I had a super day at school. The highlight was when two guys jumped me in the hallway and pulled my underwear up my ass.”


I pause, waiting for a response, a sign of life.


“Okay then. I think I’ll go up to my room and amputate my arms with a chainsaw. Then I’ll come back down and rub my bloody stumps all over your robe.”


Still nothing. I give up.


“Enjoy the rest of your day.”


I take our stairs two at a time, reach the upstairs hallway and make a beeline for my room. Before I’ve taken two steps, beauty cascades from my parent’s room and overtakes the hallway.


Marta Dominguez, our live-in housekeeper, clothed in designer jeans that look specially made to embrace her hind curves and an orange blouse that is tasteful in a quietly suggestive sort of way.


Marta grew up in the slums of Mexico City and came to the United States when she was twenty-years-old in search of a life that did not involve selling her body so that she could eat on a daily basis.


Coincidentally, when I was ten-years-old, my mother, momentarily weary of living a charmed life, decided to try her hand at philanthropy. She searched for two weeks to find the organization that would suit her vast humanity.


Our local food bank is what she finally settled on. It was perfect. Volunteers had to commit to one night a month for two hours. Responsibilities included slopping soup into a bowl and handing the bowl to the unfortunate people in line. Smiling was optional.


Eva Stutters, a beacon of selflessness, didn’t even last one night. During the last hour of her shift, she encountered a churlish Vietnam Veteran who the United States government had failed when he came back from the foolish war. He mentioned to my mother that the soup was lukewarm. My mother told him that the soup had been out for over an hour, and besides, a man in his position didn’t have the right to complain about a meal that was free.


Vietnam Vet man didn’t appreciate my mother’s retort and proceeded to hurl his bowl of lukewarm soup onto her Gucci suit, calling her a “pretentious hag” as he stormed out of the food bank.


It took a two week mental-health vacation through the vineyards of Napa Valley for her to recover. To this day, she bemoans the loss of her Gucci suit.


Upon my mother’s return from her self-pity wino vacation, she put an ad in the paper for a live-in housekeeper. And so entered the beautiful Marta Dominguez into my life.


What started as a goofy school-boy crush has now exploded into a wanton sexual fantasy. On many nights, when I’m feeling particularly self-loathing, I penitently pleasure myself to the numerous pictures I have of her stored in a secret compartment in my underwear drawer.


You see, I have this unrealistic belief that it is Marta who will one day smell the sweet aroma of my man-flower and usher me gently into manhood.


Marta smiles sweetly at me now, lighting up the otherwise dim hallway.


“Hi Walt! How was your day?” she asks kindly.


Dammit! It’s been less than thirty seconds and already my entire blood supply is moving like an angry mob towards my genitals. Calm yourself!


“My day?” There is an awkward pause as I search for words. Say something you idiot!


“My day- my day is well.”


Stupid! Stupid! Gosh, look at her exquisite breasts. So well-formed and supple. Like nippled orbs of merriment. Don’t stare.


She giggles. “I’m glad your day is well.”


“Thank you. And how has your day been treating you my lady?”


I doth a cap, which I’m not wearing and bow like an 18th-century Londoner. I’m such a fool.


“Oh thanks for asking! My day…”


Yummy. Those lips. That hair, so silky and brushed. I wonder what kind of shampoo she uses? Head and Shoulders? No. Not good enough. Probably something like Hair Care for Goddesses. Her skin such a perfect shade of perfection. . Mocha colored, soft, with nary a blemish. What I wouldn’t do to rub some lotion on her.


“…and so besides all of that, my day is going okay.”


Piss, shit, fuck! In all of my daydreaming, I’ve completely missed what she’s said. In addition, I am now sporting a full-mast erection. I subtly put my back pack in front of my meek bulge. I lower my right hand and yank my boner upwards in hopes of concealing it in the contours of my Chino’s. The action is clumsy enough that I only succeed in making it point nearly 90 degrees to the right.


“Walt, are you feeling okay? Your face is flushed.”


Settle down. Avert eye contact. Think of Grandma Stutters naked and playing Twister with midgets.


“I’m feeling… so warm all of a sudden. So warm I am feeling. I think I’ll go to my room and lie on my bed for a bit.”


“Can I get you anything? An icepak or some water?


No, but you could let me rest my head on your ample bosom.


“I think I’ll be fine. Thank you though.”


“Okay. Be sure to give a shout if you need anything.”


“Thank you Marta.”


Such a genuine human being. The purity contained in the tightly constructed 110 pound body of hers is like Norwegian glacier water. I feel a brief twinge of guilt that I masturbate to her pictures.


I continue down the hall, hoping the poor lighting helps keep Marta’s eyes from discovering the diminutive tee-pee I’ve pitched in my pants. As I near her, I turn ever so slightly as to avoid grazing her in the mid-section with my man-missile.


She gives another megawatt smile as I pass, unaware of my discomfited attempt to avoid touching her. The final few steps to my room are rushed and I fling the door open and escape the hallway.


In the corner of my room is a pile of dirty clothes and it looks like an appropriate place to hurl my backpack. I collapse onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling, taking deep breaths, allowing my erection to take a peaceful path back to flaccid.


The ceiling begins to turn fuzzy as thoughts of my future ricochet from one side of brain to the other. What am I going to make of my life?


I am a white kid growing up in upper-class Suburbia with every advantage to make something of myself. It would be a fucking insult to every child drowning in third-world poverty if I didn’t become a contributing member of society.


Despite all of that, I still feel lost and I can’t imagine a place in the world that will have me.

……………

I peer out into the hallway and my eyes sleuth the corridor for any sign of Marta. She seems to have moved on from her upstairs duties. This relieves me as I am only capable of enduring one awkward teenage boner sequence a day.


I am lithe as I can be sneaking from hallway to downstairs. As I pass the living room, the corner of my eye catches what has now gone from an absurd scene to a sad one. My mother has moved on from drunken stupor to drunken slumber. She is fast asleep, still clutching her now empty bottle of Cab Sav. A puddle of drool has pooled from the left side of her mouth and found a resting place on a satin pillow. In spite of myself, I feel sorry for her.


I run to the kitchen and grab a napkin. It occurs to me, as I wipe the pillow and dab the side of her mouth, that at one point in her life she probably did this for me. Favor returned mother. Now, please get your shit together.

...............

i am not a spook...

greetings kind readers,

this will be my last post before i unveil some new pages at the end of this week.

enjoy.

I am Not a Spook

No. I am not a spook; I am a man of substance.
I cut to release, watch the poison leap from my veins,
my hibernation is a covert preparation.
Our skin is a stain upon my progress, I shed it.
Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form,
to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death.
I live with my head in the lion’s mouth, open wide,
I drift like Marlowe, closer to my heart of darkness.
Bound by a great dream to a beautiful monument,
bound by a thieving nation, steal my soul, make me feel less than human.
“Let them swallow you whole til’ they vomit or bust wide open.”
Wise words from an old fool who died a shade less black.
I denounce and I defend and I hate and I love.
This road was not chosen but I enjoy the exile.
Who knows, perhaps on some frequency, I speak for you?

consequences...

In Midnight Sleep, In Another Time

In midnight sleep, faint faces
watch me sleep. I know them
intimately as I attach to their forms
like a child clings to mother. I am
mortally wounded, smoking holes from
their heads, intertwined arms, a family of
four in a house turned grave. I dream,
I dream, I dream.

Of scenes of sand, blood mingles
with viscous stains on a street
teeming with contempt. Of skies
different from ours, there are no
storms and so there is no beauty.
Simply sunrise, sunlight, sundown
and scattered bodies somewhere in
between.

Long, long is the trail
of matter from
the smoking holes of four heads
to the steel tip of my boot. Through
the carnage I have created, I walk
with callous composure. Mother, daughter,
father and son. Now,
of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream,
I dream.

light's omniscience...

i love lamp. and art. especially abstract art. it often inspires my writing. i find it interesting that concrete ideas can leap from an abstract visual. mark rothko happens to be my favorite abstract artist. the fact that his seemingly rudimentary artform can have such depth and texture has always fascinated me.


this next writing crystallized from the following rothko painting.

I am
the light
that pervades
your darkness,
the fire-
silk that
leaves you
with indelible
brand. I slip
through you
like descending
diatonic scale,
dispersing droplets
of dreams
and globules
of gold.
I am
slow poison
and there
is no
antidote for
my vengeance.

a father's dilemma...

hello again,

over the next week i'll be posting some non-novel writings ( old and new) as i polish up the next 10 or so pages of the novel. enjoy this little morsel.

dick and guns don't mix.

my gait is shaky,
unsure if right can conquer left.
only a few were consumed.
two, four, maybe nine?
should a father love his daughter
even if his daughter loves the daughter
of another father?
proceed with caution, i hear harry say.
advice my daughter could have used
as she swam through the murky depths
of sexuality on her way to
the kingdom of lesbians.
this 28 gauge is cold metallic POWER
its parts slathered with god’s gift to my
bank account. OIL! OIL! OIL!
all of these years searching for some
common ground and now we’ve found it
in the contours and curves of the female form.
i see a covey of quail to my RIGHT, harry to the left.
i lean RIGHT, petroleum coursing through my veins.
accept her on the outside
and loathe her poisonous life choice on the inside.
My gun explodes and so does harry’s face.
just another casualty,
he should have been on my RIGHT

filling the gaps...

hello all,

more pages to come soon but first i'd like to share something old that has just recently been recreated and therefore become new .



searching for exile.

thoroughfare of sadness
weathered and fraying at the seams
like a mother who has just lost a child.

the deafening patter of hurried feet
echoes a mainstream in aimless wander.
artful lines of vulcanized, amorphous elasticity
make them as punchdrunk
as the vagrant with the sign on the corner.

my madness.
calculated is my walk, i yearn for an opening
a void in this collection of concrete.
my search for exile begins and continues.

night descends upon me once again
a recurrence around which i should not linger
but i am conned by the consoling colors of twilight.

each facade as uneven
as the unanswered questions
in my head.

in my hands i cup my fate
like precious water.



does all of this matter in the end?