you're viewing a work in progress from its inception. The goal is to have text finished in 3 weeks. You will no doubt find inconsistencies here and there as brilliant ideas come to me.
CHAPTER 1
Do I want love?
Sure I do.
Maybe our problem is wanting it too much. I know when I'm trying to write something, it never comes out right. Especially if I want it a certain way. Sometimes though when it just happens, it's the kind of thing that blows my mind. I could never have imagined it any better. No thought or preparation, it just pours out of me and I'm excited to the point of arousal by my own cleverness. Maybe thats what a good one night stand is like? I wouldn't know.
Fucking for me has always been like sitting down and telling myself I have to write. The only time I got laid was when I went just outside Altadena to my favorite whorehouse. Oddly, the establishment has been in business since my grandfather use to go. I suppose my father went as well when he was my age. I happened across the place by accident. I know of my grandfathers involvement simply by this: On the wall of a buried hallway of that whorehouse is a picture of him and several of the ladies. He looked like a happy fucker. That was when pussy was pristine. You'd be lucky to find valuable pussy now a days. Even if you did find a young girl who was that willing, it's usually not "off the shelf." So to say. You wouldn't have to pay for it, Yes, but it's definitely not valuable either.
You really do get what you pay for. Whether it be stereos, televisions, automobiles or pussy. There are those guys who pay for love as well. Their love isn't as obvious an investment as when I would get pussy at the whorehouse. They get their love in a wall street kind of way. Almost entirely on credit so to say. Those guys you see on the street in argyle sweaters and a wife who looks like she belongs in a porno. The kind of love you have to be a superior geek to figure out. The kind of love you have to have some kind of brains to be able to eek out.
I suppose I couldn't speak about Love without mentioning Hate. I once found in my fathers library a transcription of the Der Ring des Nibelungen. An important character in it is a Troll named Albrecht. When he can't get any pussy from the water nymphs and his heart is trampled on, he ends up incidentally causing the destruction of the world. More or less.
Hate can do that, also another good reason to get pussy whenever you can. Why do you think the religious types are always on about Revelations and the end of days. They know they're not getting enough pussy and it will do us all in eventually.
For a large part of my life I can honestly say I felt no disdain for another person. I was happy isolated in our house in Altadena. A world away from the children of Cain. I went out occasionally to see the congenial whores. Whores do tend to have a wonderful sense of humor, contrary to their portrayal in film.
Otherwise I kept to myself on the estate, occasionally interacting with my Steward and Butler, Ari. The older I became the less we interacted. Ari was a man of few words and had served closely with my mother since just before my birth. After she passed away, I became one of Ari's chores. Though our relationship was more or less a working one, he served as a mentor and a scrapbook in a peculiar capacity. They say no man is an island, but I tried my best to keep the world at bay.
CHAPTER 2
The day Miranda and her mother Lucretia arrived they were accompanied by a letter from my father announcing his new marriage. The driver helped to unload their bags and left the two a few feet from the front door. I looked at them from the left side light of the door. Lucretia removed her gloves by plucking the ends of each finger like the feathers of a chickens ass. I opened the door and those marble bitches stood.
Lucretia was imposing, the stark black suit coat and long skirt blotted out the angelic white blouse under it. Buttoned up to nearly her neck. Imagine, a Mexican woman with a nary a button undone! Her lips were voluptuous, she had eyes like Lilith, a strong jaw that gave you a hard on that then made you nervous because you weren't entirely sure you weren't checking out a transvestite. She had round cheeks, the Mexican kind that make a phenomenal mistress, or a wife you can put up with.
“Hello?” I said to Lucretia.
“This is for you.” She handed me my fathers letter. I wasn't worldly then. If I had been I would of read the letter then said to the woman, “So you must have some kind of snapping pussy?” For her to bewitch my father as she did took considerable pains on her behalf. He was a scrutinizing businessman and wouldn't enter lightly into any legally binding contract. Subsequently he barely saw Lucretia, Miranda, Ariel or I. He worked for the film studios legal department securing legally locations that were cheaper to film on overseas. My father hadn't known her long. Either she had some Helen of Troy grade pussy, was schooled in the art of bewitching men, or perhaps my father felt I needed a matriarch.
“Is there a man to take our bags?”
“If you mean Ari, he's in the Kitchen. We were not expecting you.”
She walked past me with her daughter in tow. She exited the foyer and entered the archway into sitting room.
“Tell your houseman to bring the bags to the largest room.” Going over it now, there's plenty of wise ass things I would of said had I been the wiser then. I simply went and notified Ari of their arrival and retired to my room.
When Ari announced dinner as usual, I came down winding staircase to find Miranda perched like a kitten in the chair of the sitting room. The white curve of her panties were visible, obstructed by her feet and the lace of her socks curled up upon the cushion. It was a regular occurrence that Miranda would prance around the house in increasingly provocative clothing. Provocative to the point that it seemed to be mended with scissors each time she wore it. She looked through me though and it was possible for me to control my urges in this instance. I have never been one to flog a dead horse.
At Dinner the lady Lucretia made her formal introduction. She laid claim to my land and my birth with a calm and sterile tone of voice that must have been reminiscent of the Pilgrims at Patuxet. Ariel stood aside as she stood and spoke. I sat anxiously awaiting Ariel to endow the speech with a his succinct and elegantly delivered response. The kind of logic that could not be refuted and would gain him and I back some of the ground we were losing each minute the witch spoke. It never came. I had been abandoned by my own kind. My world changed instantly, and I was as if a ship tossed about at sea with a gathering storm obscuring the stars.
Freud could say I was emasculated. Could that have been the beginning? Sure. But it wasn't what made me do what I did to her.
CHAPTER 4
Lucretia had dominated the right side of the house. I'd claimed what was once my grand fathers music room as a current respite. It was adorned in wood paneling and accumulative junk. It's small space felt comfortable.
I walked down the halls until I heard a record player. The halls seemed longer than before. I followed the music, a Nelson Riddle recording. Scouting, I was careful to appear casual as I passed the ajar door. The room had once been my nursery. It was the room my mother read to me in up until her death from congenital heart failure. On the sleigh bed lay Miranda, her arable flesh looked like tan pastel oil paint spilt upon the blue bedding. She lay on her stomach, feet buoying in the air behind her. The peeking orbs of her ass gave me a hard-on. A man is never as aware of himself as when he has a hard-on.
“If you're just going to stand there, then come in.” Miranda said as she tipped her head back slightly. The thick curls bobbed. “I can hear you breathing. You sound like a water heater.”
I became even more awkward as I walked in. It made my stomach turn. The nostalgia raped by the presence of her young bony body. My face began to radiate. I glimpsed the fair pulp of her waist. Either I was aroused or angry. One passion tends to feed the other.
“What are you doing?” I drew my hand across the edge of the bed. Feeling the linen under my fingertips I closed my eyes. I tried to center myself. I didn't want to think about her ass being soft or how rough my pants felt against my cock. I wasn't embarrassed by the tent. I wanted control again of my head.
“Beading a bracelet.” She has seventeen bracelets split between her two wrists. It looks ethnic. I assume it was some sort of voodoo. “See.” She was effervescent. She swayed her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up with a cat like motion. Tribal drums beat on my temples. My skin was spandex. I wanted to rip and tear my skin off my hands and arms. I wanted to rip her shirt away. I wanted to hear the sound of shredding and the satisfaction of release. Was I going mad?
She removed one of her wooden bead bracelets from her wrist and stretched it over my hand. She brushed my arm with her hand. I opened my eyes and looked at what she was doing.
“No.” I said. I smacked the necklace with my wrist as I jerked my hand from her.
I would not give up my Puxatet. I would not trade myself or my domain for trinkets. I took for the door. I reached in my pocket and fiddled with lint from the dryer and then a nickle deep in the pouch.
I pulled it out and looked at it as I walked out the door.
“Coward.” she said softly.
I stopped in the middle of the hall and looked forward. The heat and the tribal drums paraded near my ears. My jaw was tense and I fought the urge to look back at her. I fiddled with the coin in my hand and marched on.
Her voice distant, “Yeah.”
On the first level of the house I began in the living room. I stood still and looked the room over indiscriminately. I heard a rustling and walked towards the dining room. I waited in silence near the archway by the table. I heard a clang. I moved quickly to the next door way and waited. Minutes passed and I played with my coin. This time the sound like sand paper bounced around the walls. I followed it to another doorway. I waited in a hall till I heard a “ting.” I walked down two more halls towards the rear of the house. I passed an open door and saw a figure rustling about.
“Ari. I will be late to dinner.” He nodded.
At dinner Miranda had her hair brushed to one side, her left side. It was a cockeyed mane. She sat across from me and Lucretia sat to our right at the head of the table. Ari stood in the corner solemnly waiting to be called upon.
Miranda fiddled with her fork. She would flip it so that the butt of the utensil, the long sleek end of the fine silver, was tugging against her blue lace top. She would expose first saffron flesh. Then she exposed part of the aureole. Her bastion of hair obscured this spectacle from bother Lucretia and Ari, who stood back and behind her. Her mother intently carved her food and chewed silently. Occasionally looking up from her meal. I could tell she wanted to smile. Something she wasn't practice in doing with her mouth of late I'm sure. I kept my head down, occasionally glancing up to see what Miranda was up to.
“Mother.” Miranda said.
“I have decided that I shall give Caleb lessons in speaking Italian.”
“Mm.”
“If he is to be a part of our family then he must be exposed to higher culture.
Otherwise we only have ourselves to blame.”
“Mm.” Her mother nodded consensually.
I threw my gaze over at Ari. He stood stoic. I thought about the whorehouse.
CHAPTER 5
I awoke early. I had Ari make me a light breakfast and I went into the television room. The set sounded like a power generator when I turned the knob on. I tried several stations and finally stopped on a morning news program. It was a program about dirt bags. I liked to keep abreast. Maybe I'd see an acquaintance on it. The host was attractive. Cathy Capulet. I rested my breakfast plate on my chest as I slouched down into the arm chair. Kathy's face was like a fuel tank. Her pupils were full, they were very knowing. Her eye lids the fill line, a subtle curve of sadness. She had the gas cap in her right hand. I bit into my English muffin as she spoke:
"In keeping with Channel 20's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, you are going to see another first: an attempted suicide."
She put a revolver behind her right ear. There was a shot and the program faded to black. My mouth was dry and I sipped the orange juice beside me. Some of it fell onto my shirt. I brushed it and the crumbs off of my shirt and set the plate down on the table and the glass on the plate. I switched through a few stations. Then I went back to Channel 20. Gentle ben was playing. There was irony in there somewhere. I was sure of it.
I caught the bus line out of Altadena. I ended near Hollywood. It was a short jog to the whorehouse. My girl was busy so I sat in the parlor with the dirt bags. Irene brought me some wine. Irene was the madam. The skin on her neck and jowls looked like a plastic shower cap on a hook. She knew my grandfather. She would occasionally clasp me with one hand as she went by. Her palm against my ear and fingertips around the small of my head. She'd squeeze lovingly, in a kind of fond remembrance.
The muscle at the front door was Antonio. Tony. He was a brute of a Sicilian. A kind of Gentle Ben strong arm. You wouldn't know it to look at him. That was back in the days before the IRS and FBI cut the nuts off of Italians. It use to be that you feared any Italian guy you came across. Now its Mexicans and Blacks. It wasn't the guns or the muscles. Its the principle that a dangerous mother is anyone who doesn't have anything to lose, or has nothing to gain. With Tony you could never be sure what he was thinking, you didn't know what he loved or if he loved anything. He was a conversational black hole. You could talk to him and get no response. He just sucked all information into that bulging brow and rivet like eyes.
My girl was Izzy. Isabelle. Izzy made my heart sing. She had a solid nose. Her hair was onyx. So were her eyes and lashes. Her skin was alabaster. Her lips were soft, even though she sucked on a cigarette like it was life or death. I wish I could remember how she kissed. Boy did she make me laugh. Izzy was some kind of girl. Izzy and I went at it only once. I didn't have it in me to go all the way. I paid hearty for her company. You wouldn't use your grandmothers diamond wedding ring as a drill bit, ya know.
I sat against the headboard and Izzy lay across me. Her knees over my thighs, every time I made her laugh she pulled her feet in hugging my legs.
I slept for an hour after we talked. I dreamed of waves crashing around me. In it I flailed and tread vicious waters. It was violent. Izzy awoke me just in time.
Izzy poured some cognac and lit a cigarette. I sat up, still in my shorts.
“Am I keeping you?”
“You know you're V.I.P. Daddy. Don't worry about it.”
I wondered if she called everyone daddy.
“Hey Iz. I'll take a shot of that.”
“Hun I could only give it to you straight. You sure 'bout that?”
“Yeah. I got a lot on my mind right now. That's how its done, ain't it?”
“Less messy than sticking your head in the sand.” She laughed. She brought me a dingy glass of cognac. As inept as I was in the manners of social culture, I was even more so in the drinking culture. I tossed the liquid lightning back into my throat. I choked on the fumes. I felt like petroleum had been thrown on my face.
“You were s'posed to sip it Daddy.” That laugh of hers.
She sat down beside me and lay into me. Her breasts against my side, she reached her arm across my chest and fell back. I took Izzys cognac and tossed it back. I felt a numbness in my limbs, like when your leg falls asleep. Had the world been sitting on my body and lifted away with the cognac? Was my body wakening up from falling asleep?
If there was a deeper wisdom in the bottle I was aimed to find it. The rain came in spurts. It came with the men inside. I left the whorehouse and realized I'd have to wait for the next bus. I was legal enough to get beer at the bar near by. I decided I'd attend my first dirt bag convention. I wondered if beer held the same wisdoms as Cognac. If I wanted cognac, I would have to go back to the whorehouse to get it. Cognac would cost me too much per hour.
I'll tell you something about Hollywood. its a people zoo. We study celebrities, snap photos all the time, waiting for them to start throwing feces at their cage. Boy do we eat it up when they do. Thats all it is, a damn people zoo.
I learned in that long hard walk of stupor, Jazz is the sounds of the city. Its the engines turning over. It's the loose muffler on wet asphalt. It's the air conditioning units. Its a woman in heels on the street. Her hips driving nails into your head. I reveled in the dirt bag universe. At least here even the cons were real. They were apart of the cosmic balance. Far and away from the schemes of Miranda and Lucretia I faced at home. The city smelled like piss and bile. It was unashamed. There was no perfume over it. Maybe I didn't respect it, but I could appreciate it.
The Tar's Pit Bar was indiscriminate. It blotted the strip near La Brea avenue. It was full of geezers. Living fossils. It wasn't quite twilight yet. I wanted to wretch. It wasn't the cognac. The women lacked more than class, in some instances body parts or attributes like teeth. Some of them abundant in other cases; blemishes, scars, weight. The hags were simply mirrors for the men. Fun house mirrors, a few, the majority of them fitting facsimiles.
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