New Moon

New Moon. Ramadan ends, Rosh Hashanah begins. The markets are down, the world waiting. I look for guidance.

"Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days."

T.S. Eliot
"The Waste Land"

Mute

Sometimes we just need somebody else to speak for us.

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”

"I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen."

Cormac McCarthy

Drifting

"You look good," I told her. "You've gotten sun."

"Oh, quit it. You make me blush. I did get sun. I've just been lying about. I haven't known what to do, so I have been lying out at my friend's pool. These are gorgeous days, but I don't feel equal to them. I am drifting. It is a helpless feeling, really, and I have to work to keep my anxiety levels down. There's always too much to do and too much that I can't do. I think I just want to be taken care of. You know what I mean?"

"Sure I do. All the time. But I've never found anybody who is willing to do that for free. The price is always too high."

These days are gorgeous here just now. Nobody could be equal to them. Sometimes, there is nothing to say. If you are lucky enough, you are taken by the desires of others. If you are luckier still, it will make you all happy.

Gin and Juice

I watched the Country Music Awards last night. I don't know why. I just happen to fall upon it. Sometimes when I am surfing channels, I get fascinated by two things, CMT and BET. Costumes and styling. They are the two most vivid things on TV, I think, superficially different but much the same, really. All that posturing, making up language. Molly Cyrus hosted with her father. All American, just like Vanity Fair and Annie Liebowitz.

So, if you want to hear the similarities and the fusion, I've included versions of "Gin and Juice" from both Snoop Dogg and The Gourds. There was a video on YouTube of The Gourds playing and Snoop in a big cowboy hat rapping, but I can't find it. If anyone can, send me a message. I would love to have that.

I can't embed the video, so you have to click THIS link.


The lyrics:

Gin and Juice
By Snoop Doggy Dogg
As played by the Gourds

With so much drama in L-B-C
It's kinda hard bein Snoop D-O-double-G
But I, somehow, some way
Keep comin up with funky ass shit like every single day
May I, kick a little something for the G's
And, make a few friends as I breeze, through
Two in the mornin and the party's still jumpin
Cause my momma ain't ho-ome
I got bitches in the living room gettin it on
And, they ain't leavin til six in the mornin
So what you wanna do sh*t
I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do too
So turn off the lights and close the doors
But (but what) we don't love them hoes
So we gonna smoke a ounce to this
G's up, hoes down, while you motherf**kers bounce to this

Chorus: repeat 2X

Rollin down the street, smokin indo, sippin on gin and juice
Laid back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind

Verse Two:

Now that I got me some Seagram's gin
Every body got their cups, but they ain't chipped in
Now this type of shit, happens all the time
You gotta get yours before I get mine
Everything is fine when you listenin to the D-O-G
I got the cultivating music that be captivating me
Who listens to the words that I say
As I take me a drink to the middle of the street
And get mackin to this bitch named Sadie
She used to be the homeboy's lady
Eighty degrees, when I tell that bitch please
Raise up off these N-U-T's, cause you gets none of these at ease
As I mob with the Dogg Pound, feel the breeze bytch

Chorus

Verse Three:

(slows down)
Later on that day
My homey Dr. Dre
Came through with a gang of Tanqueray
And a fat ass J,
(speeds up)
Of some bubonic chronic that made me choke sh*t
It ain't no joke, I had to back up off of it,
Sit my cup down

(stops) Yeah, Tanqueray and chronic, well I'm f**ked up now (speeds back up)
But it ain't no stoppin, I'm still poppin
Dre got some bitches from the city of Compton
To serve me, not with a cherry on top
Cause when I bust my nut, I'm raisin up off the cot
Don't get upset girl, that's just how it goes
I don't love you hoes, I'm out the do'
And I'll be

Chorus
Rollin down the street, smokin indo, sippin on gin and juice {beeotch!!}
Laid back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind

"Yes and Know"

I sent some links to Zippy cartoons to a few of my workmates. I've never had such reactions as I got about this. "What does this mean?! Is this some cryptic message?" And worse. Sometimes when I think I'm normal, something happens. I want to take it all back, of course. I won't send things like this to people any more. It is just too awful.

The Times

"Your blog hasn't been very funny lately. I count on you for humor."

"Yea. Me, too."

"Is something wrong?"

"Sometimes it isn't that anything's wrong, it's just that nothing's right."

Starting Over

She's lovely, really, mid-thirties, dark hair, fair skin, smart, talented. Wonderful in most ways, the sort of person who makes you feel better about yourself.

"There's something wrong with me," she said. "I can't DO anything. I just AM." Her hands lay upon the green table top, her mouth turned downward in thoughtful doubt. A server passed the table, paused, then continued on. I like this cafe. It seems out of time, quiet, fragile.

"A roach lay on the floor in my kitchen for two days. I couldn't bring myself to pick it up. It was more than I could do. My yard is a mess. I'm afraid the neighbors will complain to the city. I left my garbage can on the curb all week. This morning, the chain in the back of my toilet broke, so I have to take off the top of the tank and reach down into the water to pull the flap. It was the end. I can't fix it. Everything is in need of repair. I just can't do anything any more. That is me. That is my life."

She looked like she wanted a cigarette, but she doesn't smoke. She picked up her glass by the stem but didn't bring it to her lips. She placed it back on the table silently.

"Beyond that, I'm just scared."

She didn't look at me. Her pale hands fluttered a little, like moths. One patted the back of her hair softly.

"So I've decided to get rid of everything, just start over. I started with my closet. I didn't have the energy to clean it up. That would have been too much. So I told myself, 'ten things, you have to throw away ten things.' I picked out some blouses I haven't worn for a long time, then some pants that had gotten too tight. Then I chose three pairs of shoes. After that, I felt better. And now, I have decided to throw away one thing every day. It makes you see your life again rather than simply passing through it. You have to make decisions, seemingly small ones, but it is more difficult than I imagined. Today, I chose between a small woven basket and a painted soap dish. I don't really like either of them any more, but they have value and would look good somewhere. I just don't know where. So I tossed the soap dish. I won't miss it."

She drank from her glass and looked at me. Sitting there with her then, that is what I wanted to do, too.

Autumn's First Light

Autumn came late. The sun seemed to be sleeping in. I tried hard to find an appropriate poem, but nothing fit my mood. Most poems were about loss, old age, the dying ember. But that is not how I feel about autumn, perhaps because I grew up in the south. Autumn is relief from summer's horrid grip, a relaxing, a return. The shadows begin to grow long across the lawn. As leaves fall, finally the sky returns, in color, rid of it's metallic hue. Dead air and threatening storms, summer is. Now come the autumnal breezes.

I learned to read with Dick and Jane. In memory, they mirrored the seasons. I loved those autumnal colors. It was a happy place and time.

Summer's End

The last day of summer, I wake too early in the dark. Dawn is slow in coming. Fog. Fog is not a summer phenomenon where I live. Odd, this. I, too, am foggy. I continue to drink from the morning's pot of coffee. Silver, gray light.

I found this image on a website that posts a painting a day, Old Paint. Joseph Désiré Court, Woman Lying on a Divan, 1829

I thought to go to the beach today to see what summer's end was like, but I am living badly. I saw a glint of metal in my bald driver's side front tire. It was the shine of the steel radial belt come through. I doubt that I want to try getting to the beach and back on it, not because I'm afraid it will blow but because I do not want to change a tire. I haven't the energy or concentration just now. Still, there is something mighty strong pulling me to see what happens there today. If I stay, I will need to work around the house, in the yard, and if I don't do that, I will feel a wasting of the day. I do not need that guilt. Maybe taking a chance on that tire is a better bet.

Experts on the Economy

Suddenly, everyone is an expert on the economy. Everybody talks with authority about what went wrong, how to fix it. There are people who make their living acting as if they know about it like Ludlow and Co. I think that is what the show is called. I don't watch that sort of thing. But everyone who has a keyboard is now a pundit, even photographers.

I don't know anything about it, but I thought we all agreed a long time ago that it was bad to have companies so large that their demise could ruin our economic system. Didn't we learn that in home ec or somewhere? My investment plan has been to spend it all, and right now it looks like the better investment. I may be sorry in the long run, but I might not. My mother is a product of the Great Depression, so she has never spent money on anything let alone anything frivolous. She puts all her money in the bank's equivalent of her mattress. She sleeps better at night not worrying and she looks pretty clever now, too.

This is an old, crummy photograph I took in 1976. Like the others, the negative is long gone, so this is a scan from a very bad proof sheet. There is no manipulation here. We did not have video cameras. This was completely accidental. I was photographing my girlfriend lying in front of the TV when this image came on. I believe it was an ad for something. A five hundred dollar bill. I am sorry that the photo did not turn out better. I don't think I ever printed it.

Sex and money have always seemed similar to me. People desire both and the worst will do terrible things to get them. And neither have value other than what we agree upon. How much is a dollar worth? A kiss? A night spent with a stranger?

There was a bit of a recession when I took this photograph, too. I sure hope my mother has enough money for the two of us to live on.

Fading

He complained about the photograph in yesterday's post.

"You didn't illustrate your story."

Here is the photo I should have posted yesterday. This is a photo from 1975. Like the body, the photograph is decomposing, oxidizing, disappearing. It is the way of things. It is why we try to make art. This was my girlfriend then. I look at the photograph and remember much. I remember being young, I think. I remember what fun it was, everything, including getting naked and running around. Nakedness was our inheritance, it was our birthright and our treasure. There was a sexual revolution. I took lots of pictures of naked people then. I was naked a lot myself, too.

We should be naked when we are young. We are truly beautiful and there is no shame in it. Maybe we should be naked more as we get older, too. In America, I mean. The beaches of Europe are full of naked people, young and old. It is healthier, I think, than watching pictures fade like memories, like flesh.

Titties

"You're really getting to be a whiner," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"All this apologetic shit you put on your blog about taking photographs. It makes me sick. Exotic, erotic, the other--it's all intellectualizing. It's all horse shit."

"You don't think those are important questions," I asked him knowing he wasn't going to give me a bookish argument.

"They might be. Or they might be the wrong questions. Hell, man, everybody loves titties. Men, women, children--the whole universe loves titties. They're the source of life, mother's milk. Why do you think god made them that way?"

"You have any naked pictures of your mother?" I asked.

I could tell he started to get mad, but slowly his mouth formed an impish smile.

"Not with me."

Old Japan

I've come across two sites, one on Flickr and one other that concern themselves with old Japanese photography. The photography itself is fantastic both artistically and as cultural documents. They inspire me to continue my series on the exotic. I will have the space to do this, soon. I have been constrained lately, but I think that is going to change.

I often question myself about why I want to spend time making photographs. It is expensive and time consuming. I haven't any desire to make money, to do commercial work. I vacillate between feeling like a hobbyist, a shutterbug (you know, the fellow from the '50s with the pipe and the cardigan sweater talking about f-stops and film speed) and an exploiter or opportunist, or even a pornographer. Photography, more than any other visual art, forces such questions on you. In answering them, I either feel silly or sleazy.


And yet I am compelled to pick up cameras. They are fetishes, in part, lovely machines of modernism made with precision so that we might record and shape (deform) the world. I hold them, put the viewfinder to my eye, change lenses and look again. It is strange and intimate and fascinates me. Click. Snap. But what am I trying to say?


When I look at photos like this, I begin to think that way, too. Do these images effect me in the way the photographer intended? Did he have a conscious intention when he went through all the labor of making them? Surely there was something driving him.


One of my favorite commercial photographers, Mark Tucker, has put up a blog that I discovered yesterday. He has a discussion going about the morality and ethics of photography. People have a lot of opinions about it. They seem much more certain than I.

None of this, though, is what I set out to write this morning. I thought to explore my silly desires. Next time, maybe.

Fate's Rampage

"Harvest Moon. How'd that work out for you?"

"Seemed like bad ju-ju, eh?"

"It sure wasn't romantic. I'm nervous about the market. More than that really. Seems like EVERYTHING is breaking down, falling apart. I kept waking up last night thinking about all the parts of my life that are vulnerable. Hell, I worry about losing my job."

"I think everyone is like that right now."

"Not everyone. Not my ex. She doesn't even think about it."

"Maybe she's got the right idea. I'm not sure thinking about it helps. Simplifying might."

"Hell, her life is simple already. She rents, so she's not worried about real estate. She has a job that isn't going to be much affected by any of this."

"We all think someone else has it better than we do. It's our desires that get us into trouble."

"Oh, she has plenty of desire."

The barbs and arrows of fate seem directed at any of us most of the time. I am trying not to worry. It takes effort. I've quit watching the news or any parody of it on TV. I've long ago made my moral code. Remembering it, living it, that's the hard part. Especially when the moon is full and fate goes on a crazy rampage.

Harvest Moon

Tonight is the full moon, the Harvest Moon. There is a lot of preparation to make, totems to sort, readings to take. It is a big time in the farmland, though there are few farmers now. People lose touch with the natural world until it becomes a burden, really, something associated with tornadoes and hurricanes and fires and droughts. But the moon has power over us, scientific and statistical power if nothing else.

For years, I photographed every full moon and made a small essay for my friends. I tried to find them in my files this morning and thought to post one here, but I can't find them. I lose things. They just disappear. I am not meant to hold onto the past, only to create it. I am not sentimental at all. Sentimentality is the dirtiest of lenses, the worst sort of lie. But still, I would like all the images back. That is why I made them, I think.

I have even lost the new ones. I am not organized. I do not back up my hard drives. I ramble, narrate, get confused. I am a romantic depending too much upon the moon.

Habit

Part of the lure of the exotic is the momentary release from a life of tedium. We live lives of tedium and habit and routine, and we are afraid to lose them. But we dream of it and sometimes through unexpected or violent events we are torn from them and live other lives, and we are surprised by all that we have been missing. Some habits are good and some become ritual. It is the empty ritual we must avoid, the ones that are merely routine.

I am thinking of changing mine, of putting my shoes on first thing out of bed, of having tea instead of coffee, of writing only letters and avoiding email, of doing first what I was doing last. I think it would be like inheriting a completely new life. There are men and women who simply walk away from the lives they have been living, leaving wives and husbands and children. And often, they are happy afterwards. It is terrible for us to think it might be true. We imagine that the one making the decision is better off than the people left behind, but it is not always so. Sometimes being forced into change is a redemption, too.

There was nobody who wrote better about routinized life than Philip Larkin. His bitterness always makes me laugh.

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin

Climbing with the Hunted

We used to climb these gigantic towers when I was a kid. There were water towers and power lines. You had to shimmy your way up the first fifteen feet or so because there were no rungs to hold onto, but after that there were metal ladders. Easy, right? But the higher you got, the looser your grip felt, the slipperier the footholds. Up and up we would go until the air was gone, until you just couldn't breathe, then the first of us would go back down. Slowly, up and up, higher and higher until you could hear the sizzle of the giant electrical wires. It was wrong, so we did it.

Later, when we were older, we climbed the ancient, rotting wooden scaffolding behind the drive-in theater. Struts were broken or gone, nails falling out as we would climb there in the dark, calling to one another not to grab here, not to step there. Finally, we were on top, looking down at the sea of cars, looking back into the giant projector light flickering toward us, then leaning out over the screen, waving our hands in triumphant silliness, filled with adrenaline, then hurrying down to make our getaway.

These were not good kids I was hanging with. I would never have done this on my own. But it seems in my life I have been attracted to those sorts, running with the hunted rather than hanging with the safer, saner, more successful types. Thinking back on all that now, though, I'm not so sure. Still, looking at the world from the back of a movie screen is something. Not everyone has seen that.

Ju-Ju

"Jesus, man, these are weird times. I used to be doing OK. I dated the daughter of a social scion, a pretty girl. We went to events and high-toned parties. I thought I was something. I didn't concern myself with much other than books and art and travel. Now I work all the time, my girl has left me, I'm getting fat, and my car is a piece of shit. I haven't had air conditioning in it all summer. My house, which was worth a lot. . . well, I couldn't sell it for what I could have if at all. And suddenly, I'm wondering where the money is."

"It's going 'round," I said.

"I just took up with this girl who scares me."

"How's that?"

"She's just different, that's all. Everything she says has an edge to it, like there is some secret meaning. She looks OK, but I always feel like she is up to something. . . shady. When she leaves my house, I imagine that she's going somewhere to sacrifice chickens."

"Christ, you don't have to see her. Why don't you just quit calling her?"

"It's kind of exciting, too. I don't feel like I can really take her around people, you know, but when we are at the house drinking and are alone, I get excited by it."

"Well, the full moon is in a couple of nights. You might want to watch out a little."

"She's already made me aware. She says we're really going to celebrate."

"Tell her to send some money ju-ju your way. Tell her it will make you happy."

"Yes, well, I don't think that's what she has in mind."

He's really going through it. It is affecting him. But I feel that way about a lot of people. Seems like there's just a lot of ju-ju in the air.

Slava Pirsky Redux

Yesterday, the traffic on my site was crazy. A bunch of people coming from Live Journal sites. I tracked it down to a post by Slava Pirsky. I am not alone in admiring his work. The Live Journal group is mostly Russian, it seems, but it is apparently a heck of a community. The Russian Lilya Cornelli has a site there, too. I will have to get the woman who cuts my hair to translate this and some letters from Aliaksandr Veledzimovich, as well.


Thanks, Slava. I have to post a couple more.

Rescue

"These storms are no joke. People don't take them serious. I had a cousin once who went to the beach during a storm and drowned. They pulled him out of the water and resuscitated him, but he was dead for awhile. And it changed him. After that, he wasn't the same. He seemed the same to look at, but he acted different, even more strange than he did before. He was always a freak, but he started sniffing glue and lighter fluid and freon and all kinds of shit. He was a mess. I never liked to be around him."

"What happened to him?"

"Nothing. He still lives with his parents in a little house in Palm Bay. He's thirty-six and does nothing. I think his parents are too scared to turn him out."

"Maybe they they feel sorry for him."

"Nope. Nobody could feel sorry for this guy. He's an animal."

I didn't know his cousin, but I've known fellows like that. I guess sometimes getting rescued doesn't work out the way you want it to.

Beach Goers

I've fallen into a Charles Bukowski mood. It doesn't help things much, but it is good to know that someone had it worse than you.

(link)(link)(link)

"What was the fascination of the beach? Why did people like the beach? Didn't they have anything better to do? What chicken-brained fuckers they were."

Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye (1982)

Slava Pirsky

I was surfing through the Polanoid site the other day when I came across this image. I followed the bread-crumbs to his portfolio and found a wondrous bunch of photographs taken with an SX-70. Slava Pirsky. How, I wondered, did he get such colors? I haven't asked him.


I wrote to him and expressed my admiration for his photographs, and he sent me a link to his blog. I wrote to him again and asked if I could put up some of his photos and link him here.

I immediately took out my old SX-70 and tried to recreate these. Couldn't do it. I will have to give great sacrifices to the art gods, I'm afraid.

Risky Times

Don't drink around people you work with. You will say things that aren't right thinking it is OK because everyone is drinking and you are not at work. You might even do something that you will wake up wishing you hadn't in the morning. Your mistake will come to you in a seething, terrible wash of recognition. It might it might begin with some simple thing, like saying goodnight to a woman you work with but don't know well. There will be the tell-tale sign, the down-turning at the corners of the mouth, a squinting as if she's looking into the sun, the limp, unwilling handshake. "What have I done?" you will quickly wonder, running through the night's events in a panic. It may not come to you right away, but a subtle agony will accompany you until morning when you realize SOME of the things you said that might be construed as inappropriate.

These are risky times. Keep to yourself. Avoid danger. Don't go out in public. And you must quit drinking.

Another Saturday

Market Day, a Saturday alone. I've made a mistake. I tried to be safe, stayed away from crowds, and cooked my own food in order to avoid catching a cold. I caught the cold anyway. There is no being careful in life. I've tried never to understand what people mean when they say, "Take care." How? I've always wondered. I tried it and it was useless. There is something at work that we cannot understand. Being happy is the only defense.

I'm reading Tiziano Terzani's A Fortune-Teller Told Me.

"[A]t fifty-five one has a strong urge to give one's life a touch of poetry, to take a fresh look at the world, reread the classics, rediscover that the sun rises, that there is a moon in the sky and that there is more to time than the clock's tick can tell us."

Today I will wander, look, breath. Perhaps I will saunter into some mystery.

Wade's Family

Wade’s family came from Texas via Mississippi. There were three brothers, of which Wade was the youngest, and two sisters. If you’ve ever seen the movie Bonnie and Clyde, you would recognize their parents as relatives of Bonnie’s mother. They were old beyond their years, I hope, for they seemed more like grandparents than parents. At least the father did. They were thin and ropey and long, all sinew and bone. The father was a lineman for the power company and would come home with terrible tales of men electrocuted at work. When he came home, he liked to begin drinking beer, 16 oz. Falstaffs. His voice was low and gravelly, and he rarely spoke more than a couple of words at a time. There was something mean in him that made him seem dangerous, even though he was the least robust of all our fathers. Perhaps it was merely hopelessness that made him seem that way. He loved professional wresting. I think it was his only true joy. It was something my father derided to anyone at any time. Since he had been a boxer and, perhaps, a Fleet Champion, he knew that nobody could take those punches night after night after night. He would point out all the tricks, make us look at the wrestlers talking to one another as they clinched up in the corners. But to my knowledge, he never had a conversation with Wade’s father as long as we all lived in that neighborhood, more than ten years, something of an amazement to me now.

Wade’s oldest brother was a senior in high school when we were in elementary school. He was the oldest kid in the neighborhood. He was something of an artist and had painted the mural of the school’s mascot on the wall of the gym. It made him famous in a way. He wore his hair in a DA and seemed a James Dean character. He was always going out on dates. One day, Wade and I were hanging out at his house when his mother began berating the brother. She babysitted for a little girl down the street and the brother had been playing with her in his room. I was young and couldn’t make sense of it all, but he was doing something objectionable. I thought it had something to do with the little girl’s belly button which looked all swollen and red, but that doesn’t make much sense to me now. But that was in the last few months after he graduated and soon he had moved away. After that, he was just gone. I don’t remember anyone ever talking about him again.

There was an older sister, a very homely, skinny girl with dry hair the color of straw and of that same texture. There isn’t much to say about her. She was just there. I don’t know if she graduated from high school or not. She moved out soon after the brother and was gone.

The younger sister was a knockout. She wore her hair stylishly in a beehive hairdo and wore dresses that accentuated her full breasts and hour glass waistline. She listened to the radio and read magazines and had a southern voice like lilacs and honey. One night, my parents terrorized me by asking her to babysit while they went out. I was of the age that it was optional whether or not I would even need a babysitter, but they planned on being out late, so they erred on the side of prudence. I couldn’t breathe. When she showed up, I was paralyzed. I stood with my legs and spine locked, my arms rigid by my side. I tried to escape to my room, but the house was small and that was pretty useless. When they were gone, however, she asked me what I wanted to do. I was too young to know, so we listened to the radio. Every Friday night, the radio station ran one of those contests where you got to call in and vote for your favorite song. And that is what we listened to. We called in and made our votes. I voted for the Beatles song “I Saw Her Standing There,” she for George Hamilton the 4th’s “Abilene.” We listened and argued and laughed as the DJ led us up the chart until we finally got close to the top—four, three—and then number two. By that time, we knew that our songs were left. It was only a matter of which one was number one. And the number two song was “I Saw Her Standing There.” Oh, what misery and what fun. She had won , and she was delighted. It was fitting and right, if odd. What witchcraft had taken over things, I wondered, but I couldn’t have been happier than to watch her smile and bask in the glow of her victory.

Jerry was Wade’s older brother. He was two or three years older than I. He was a bully and a brute. When we played football in the yard, he would tackle me as hard as he could. He seemed twice my size and his poundings really hurt. I think I hated him. He was not popular in high school, I was sure, and I hoped he was humiliated by the memory of his brother.

Wade was almost a year older than I, and he was held back in the fifth grade. They don’t do that any more, but when I was in school, there were kids that had been held back two or three times. When I was in the seventh grade, one of the kids in my gym class quit school and joined the army. Wade was destined for such a fate. My worst memory of Wade was the time he sucker punched me in the jaw for picking non-edible berries off a bush in his yard. He told me not to in a tone that pissed me off, so I looked at him and picked another. And to my surprise and dismay, he hit me as hard as he could in the temple. I’d never felt such pain in my life. My jaw locked up so that I thought it was broken. Indeed, that is what I screamed out over and over—“You broke my jaw, you broke my jaw!” I don’t know if it was broken or not. We did not go to the doctor for punches. But I couldn’t talk for quite a while nor chew for much longer. Today, as I sit writing this, I twist my jaw with a pop and a crackle. TMJ. And I am quite sure that it is the result of that punch. Some time after that, I fought Wade and beat him badly. It was s a surprise to me for he was about six or seven inches taller than me according to some old photographs of the time. But he was his father’s child, not thick and strong, just mean and a bit scary.

Long after I moved away, my mother told me that he had been arrested for stealing chickens in a rural part of town. I was in college at the time and couldn’t imagine such a fate.

MILF

I didn't know what MILF meant until a few days ago. I would see the acronym in print, but I was too embarrassed to ask anyone what it meant. I finally Googled it. I think the term is funny, because that was not something I ever thought about when i was young. I knew some who did. They would talk about it, but I was far too conventional. I didn't have a sister, but I imagine it is something like that, though I knew fellows who did that, too. Looking back, I know now that there were women who flirted with me, who stood too close and looked directly into my eyes, but it only made me uncomfortable. It might have been different if I knew women who were glamorous in some way, but those kind of women did not populate my life. The women around me wore curlers in their hair, dressed in bland clothing and wore orthopedic bras and bloomers. I guess it was part of the punishment of being poor.

My life has changed dramatically. I was about to say that life had changed, but I don't know that much about life as it is lived by others. Now, I am surrounded by MILFs, women in their thirties who go to the Y after their children go to school and work out with their personal trainers. They stay slim and fit and are coifed and I am sure desirable.

But let me tell you about some of the people who I grew up with. Tomorrow. Right now, I have to go to the Y.

"You Saw Your Mother Naked?!"

"Dude, you saw your mother naked?"

"Sure."

"You guys just run around without your clothes on?"

"Yea. My mother used to cook in the nude. She just loved cutting cabbage and making soup and burning her titties on the stove. You're a moron, you know that?"

"Me? You ever read your blog?"

"What'd ya mean?"

"Man, you need an editor."

"Why?"

"Because it is riddled with mistakes."

"I just write it in the morning. I hate editing."

"Well, it makes you look stupid."

"Sure. I guess. Hey, how's your girl doing?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Oh. I see what you mean."

Bart's Mom

My neighborhood was a new, working class neighborhood already run down by tired redneck, hillbilly, and cracker families not up to the esthetic challenge of landscaping and decorating let alone lawn and house maintenance. But most of these families were buying their small two and three bedroom homes into which they packed some very large families. They were property owners. So it was strange to me when I realized that one of the kids lived in a rental house.

Bart lived with his mother and sister. That, too, was an oddity, for everyone else lived in complete family units. Bart's father would come around to see him from time to time. He liked to take Bart to the baseball spring training camps and to see the pre-season games. All the major league teams came to Florida back then, and I was impressed at Bart's collection of autographed baseballs. He had Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and baseballs signed by entire teams.

Bart's father, though, was not like the other fathers. Our dad's all worked with their hands and were thick and strong and had large bellies. They defined manhood for me. Bart's father was a musician and worked in a music store. He would come over in white shirts and slacks like the people we saw in movies, often wearing a jacket and tie. His shoulders were narrow and his fingers delicate, not fat and calloused the way I thought a man's hands should be.

We did not go to Bart's house much, and one day I guessed why. His mother was not like the other mothers. She wore what I took to be expensive clothes, had her hair done at beauty parlors, and wore lipstick and makeup and necklaces all the time, even in the middle of the day. I think men came over and took her on dates, but I didn't really know much about that since I was young and home at the courting hour. One afternoon, we went to his house to get something, his baseball glove, I think, and his mother was there. As we came in, she came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. I had never seen a woman wrapped in a towel before, it showing the tops of her breasts, her legs and thighs, her decency almost exposed. But there was something wrong with her that I couldn't make out. I had never seen anyone drunk like that, especially a woman and especially in the middle of the day. She was talking like a my mother's aunt who was a stroke victim, and flailing about like something had gone wrong with her inner ear when her towel slowly slid to the ground. Other than my mother, she was the first woman I had ever seen naked. She was a natural redhead, a little chubby and freckled. It was like being hit with a bolt of lightening on a sunny day. Maybe Bart was used to it, but I thought I might pee my pants. Suddenly, Bart's sister came out of her room and helped her mother to the back of the house, telling Bart and me to leave.

Bart was embarrassed, but he handled it well. We never said anything about what had just happened. Later, Bart went to live with his father.

His mother stayed on in the neighborhood a little while longer. One evening, about dusk, I was cutting through the yards between houses on my way somewhere. There were lots of cut through yards in our neighborhood, and we all used them. We had to be quiet going through some yards so as not to get caught, while others were as open as freeways. I was alone this time, surely on my way home. I was sliding along the narrow place between the Ivey's carport and Bart's mother's bathroom where light fell warmly from the window. I saw her there in the mirror. She was naked, just out of the shower, attending to herself, putting on her makeup. Irresistible. I could not help myself. Terrified, I crept silently closer and watched her as she leaned close to the mirror applying eyeliner and lipstick. She was slow and deliberate and took her time. How long I stood there, I couldn't say. An eternity, perhaps. This was wrong, I knew, but there was no helping it. I throbbed and trembled in ways I had not known before, standing there in the yellow light, things I'd never dreamed of unfolding before my newly opened eyes. Then, somewhere close by there was a noise, the clicking of a door handle. Terrified, I fled into the street waiting for the voice that would cry out an alarm. I waited for a long time. I waited through the evening and I waited in bed and all the next day. Perhaps I still am.

I can see her even now, middle-aged, a little fleshy but more glamorous than our mothers, a woman of experience and high taste. A divorcee. A drunk. How much has she shaped my unconscious, determined the choices I would make in life?

She moved from the neighborhood without notice. I don't remember anyone talking about her after that.