Second Best

WHY DON'T WOMEN WANT TO FUCK MORE OFTEN??

2010-02-22T22:57:00.002-05:00

It's weird -- female orgasms are way more pleasurable than men's. We, the world, are obsessed with them, their sound, their intensity, their multiplicity. You hear their sounds woven into rap songs, movies, porn.

A guy has one lousy orgasm and lets out a little grunt. Women, conversely, have as many as half a dozen at a time, and they scream and moan and shriek and holler as if it's a feeling that is both exquisitely painful and deliriously pleasurable. A woman's orgasm can last so much longer than a man's.

Given that, why on earth are women so fucking resistant almost every time you suggest sex. "I'm sleepy, gotta get up early with the kids, have a tough day at work tomorrow, we did it last night, I don't want to."

Why -- when they apparently have so damn much fun once you're finally able to talk them into it?

Not content just to ponder this conundrum, I asked 20 women this very question: why do you so often resist something that is so fucking thrilling?

Their answer, plain and simple: it's just so much work getting there. The thought of all the effort they'll have to expend to overcome their natural lethargy and lack of enthusiasm often defeats them -- and you in the process.

What can you do about it?

You've got to employ every possible tool at your disposal. Among the very best are flattery, a shower, talc (on you), an after shave or eau de cologne they like, massage, lots and lots of massage, little kisses of the head, ear, hair, foot rub, shoulder rub, more flattery, promises of jewelry, weekends at a nice hotel, theatre tickets, skilled and endlessly persistent cunnilingus, bringing home flowers, chocolates, the usual bullshit.

You get the picture. If you want more big O's from your lady, you've got to use all the artistry, creativity, generosity, salesmanship, and romance you can muster. And when all else fails, never forget: begging is under-rated. I wish you great success.

Your mentor, e-man.

YET MORE HAIKU FOR YIDS/GOYS

2009-12-11T03:53:00.005-05:00

The goy comes home from
walking his black lab to eggs
fried in bacon fat.

Sunday morning the
goy takes communion still drunk
from the night before.

Once a month the goy
goes to work under his wife’s
plaid flannel nightie.

The yid plays golf at
the goy’s club where the members
are sure he’s cheating.

REMEMBER, 5 syllables/7 syllables/ 5 syllables:

Broke yid sells his benz
buys a hundai and is thrown
out of the golf club.

Soon as the yid hits
the skids his wife fellates her
psychoanalyst.

Yid gets wife to scream
during sex fucking her ass
wiping dick on drapes.

Beautiful shickse
offers snatch to yid who asks
what's in it for me.

goys don't chew rather
eschew jew foods like matzohs
kasha varnishkes.

the goyim golfed on
velvety fairways for them
and their kind only.

tall shickse women
glided by little yiddles
sowing longing, angst.

the goyim stamp their
Feet waiting for the liquor
store door to open.

the goyim fight over
the last piece of pork throwing
the bones to their kids.

two yids came to blows
over how to pronounce the
hebrew word for peace.

Yids and goys and pork
Roast rampant she'll never let
Him shtup her standing.

After the clams and
The pork liver appetizer
The goy ate pussy.

8 inches the jew
told wife when reality
measured 3 hard.

Jew screamed the la crosse
team chasing mordechai with
beloved Nike sticks.

The goy vagina
has clean taste notes of cumin
tempts yids, then forbids.

New Short Story in The Cortland Review

2009-11-23T00:09:00.003-05:00

This month my short story "The Pact" is being published in the online literary magazine, The Cortland Review. You can tap right into its appearance in the magazine by clicking on the link below. I'd be thrilled if you take a moment to read it. It is an excerpt from a novel I've been working on titled "Outliving Emily." Would love to get your feedback, even though I know you're all too fucking lazy and withholding to give me any. e

http://cortlandreview.com/issue/45/weber_f.html?ref=home

L. COHEN, GIRL PROBLEMS, A JERSEY CHRISTMAS

2009-10-26T04:24:00.003-04:00

* Saw Leonard Cohen at Madison Square Garden Friday night -- best single concert I have ever seen in my life. And I've seen the best: The Stones numerous times, Joan Baez, Dylan all over the world, Ray Charles tearing down the place at the Newport Jazz Festival. No boring down moments with Lenny. Man's 75 year old voice better than it's ever been. Spectacular side musicians, beautiful girl singers, Cohen a powerful, charismatic, deeply moving singer. Must see -- very few tour dates left. Worth flying to Cleveland or Ashville or Vegas to catch the remaining shows.

* The video I conceived and directed for my son's band and song, both called GIRL PROBLEMS, won a big award at a gay and lesbian video festival. Time to check it out at youtube.com/girlproblemsmusic.

*If you're worried about losing your job in this relentlessly "stuck" economy, please send away to amazon for my new book, The Indispensable Emloyee: Recesssion-Proof Your Job. I've written 30 books on how to better your life. Except for How To Pick Up Girls, this is the best

*I have a new film just now going into distribution: A Jersey Christmas. It presents a vision of Christmas in a post-modern America, where a large percentage of the population -- made up of Jews, Moslems, Hindus, atheists, budhists, et. al. -- don't celebrate Christmas. The film is set in a Christmas Store, one of those places that pop up overnight in a blue collar neighborhood, and disappear sometime in early January. The boss, a cruel and compulsive gambler, gets informed by the mob that if he doesn't scratch together $45,000 my midnight, Christmas Eve, they're going to come back and break his legs. Needing every last penny, he forces his staff to keep the store open till after midnight. There is open revolt among the Christian kids, who have all made Christmas Eve plans. So the non-Christians tell them to get lost -- they don't need 'em, they can handle the store on their own tonight. The film is a comedy about all the wonderful slackerness, sex, crime, sacrilege, and fighting that goes on among the staff and customers on this most holy of evenings. I think you're going to love it.

Did It Work On My Wife??

2009-09-30T06:24:00.002-04:00

When last we communicated, I told you I was heading off to my bedroom to seduce my wife using Lynn Freed's techniques: going to tell her she fills me with overwhelming lust. I'm a biker who just happened to be riding by and I simply had to have her. So, how did it turn out. Well I tiptoed into the room, fearful of waking her up. I knew she had her alarm set for 8 to get up and work out with her trainer, and it was now only 7:15. She positively loathes being robbed of sleep she fully expects to get. It's like taking money or jewelry from her. So I stood looking at her in bed, sort of paralyzed, not quite sure what to do. She was lying on her back and her nightie had ridden about half way up her thighs -- very tempting.

And then I had an inspiration. Normally, I approach my wife from the right side of the bed, my side. She sleeps on her back on the left side. I decided to shake things up. Though there was almost no room to the left of her, I, nevertheless, climbed in on her side and lay down straight on top of her. My instinct is that I would seem more like a stranger coming in from this little used side. It worked. She embraced me, didn't resist, or whine, or push me a way at all. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me. "I'm the bellhop, Miss," I said. "I brought breakfast from room service, but when I saw you lying there I just had to get in with you. You are the most sexual woman I have ever seen. I have to have you."

I'm not going to go into the most intimate details -- Christ, if my wife reads this even the way it is now I could go 6 months without getting laid. But I just want you to know how it unfolded...and that I believe Lynn's strategy for seducing women is a good one. Later that day without any prompting from me, my wife allowed how it was somehow very sexy that I got in on her side of the bed. So give it a shot. Let me know how you do.

By the way, I have a new book out from Berkley Press titled: THE INDISPENSABLE EMPLOYEE: HOW TO KEEP YOUR JOB IN TOUGH TIMES. It is terrific, practical advice, full of simple ideas you can put to work immediately to secure your job. Give it a shot. It's going to help big-time.

best idea ever for turning women on

2009-09-18T05:33:00.003-04:00

I recently spent two weeks at a famous writers' workshop run by Middlebury College called Breadloaf. The writer who led my particular workshop is Lynn Freed, a fascinating woman in her mid-60s, a South African Jew who grew un in Durban and now lives in Sonoma, Calif.

We talked a lot about our favorite subject: the difference between how men and women feel about sex. She gave me some fascinating insights. Lynn says the thing that turns a woman on most is when a man is WILD about her. She loves the idea of his being crazy with lust for her. So if you've been hiding your lust, worrying you have to go slow, sneak up on a woman -- and it's not working -- maybe you want to try being honest. "I have to see you naked. The sight of your body, your breasts, your ass, turn me on like I've never been turned on in my life before. The thought of having sex with you gives me the biggest hard on I've ever had." I love the concept and since it's 5:40 a.m., E.D.T,, I am going, with some trepidation, back to my bedroom to wake up my deeply asleep wife and tell her that just thinking of her body as I was sitting at my MacBook writing my blog has filled me with lust to the point that i've had to come in and wake her up. I'll let you how this dangerous mission turns out.

2 other quick points from Lynn: 1) women often love to travel way more than men and the reason is that at least on an unconscious level they associate it with erotica, with having sex with exotic men, getting away from their predictable old husband and doing a Corsican on the beach of his faraway island.

And that relates to point 2. Women marry, fuck, and have children with appropriate men -- accountants, engineers, dentists. And while they're doing it, they're thinking about "inappropriate" -- men, bikers, hit men, brawlers, vagabonds, gypsies, rastafarians. So if your lady is resisting your advances one night, paint her a fantasy: it ain't you she's about to screw but a dirty, bearded pirate from the South Seas. If you paint a vivid enough picture, you just might get laid.

Okay, heading back to my bedroom. wish me luck. e.

OBSERVATION ABOUT WOMEN

2009-08-24T19:51:00.002-04:00

I have a wonderful woman in my life who reports in at least a dozen times a day on her condition: I'm sleepy, hungry, freezing, starving, exhausted. It's hot in here, noisy, stifling. I feel full, lazy, like vegging out. I'm bored, scared, pissed, really furious.

It suddenly occurred to me that I, who have all of the feelings described above, almost never report them. Just doesn't cross my mind to do so.

It makes me wonder: Is this a gender specific thing? Do women report in on what they're feeling on an hourly basis, while men don't? And if so, why? Is there a difference in the way boys and girls are raised that encourages spilling one's guts or keeping mum?

Anyone out there who has knowledge, scientific or otherwise, on this subject, please enlighten me.

SHOULD YOU MARRY HER? A SIMPLE TEST

2009-07-02T04:21:00.000-04:00

I meet hundreds of guys in a real quandry: they sort of like a girl they've been dating, but when she starts putting pressure on them to marry, they're not sure if she's the right choice. Not certain they love her enough. Not ready to give up on all the thousands of girls around who are prettier and hotter and more exciting. What's a fellow to do?

I've got the acid test for whether or not you should blast through your misgivings and marry the woman: Can you countenance the thought of her porking another guy, one of your friends, for example. If the answer is no; if the thought of her screwing your best friend Ralphie drives you to distraction, then she is the girl for you. This simple primal drive to keep her for your own is, in my carefully thought out opinion, the most basic form of true love.

If, on the other hand, you don't really give a shit, if your feeling is, hey, I don't particularly like the idea but it's not going to devastate me, then don't marry her. You don't love her. You don't quest for exclusivity. That's not love.

Parents and friends blabber on about compatibility, shared interests, similar backgrounds, suitable backgrounds -- it's all bullshit. The acid test is this: does the image of your pal Tony slipping his hand under her panties fill you with an almost psychotic rage, with terror, with the feeling that if it happened your life would be wrecked for ever after, you love the lady. Go ahead, marry her. And, remember, you heard it here first. From your pal e-man. Never forget: e-man may be a loser, but it doesn't stop him from knowing what's going on.

10 BEST THINGS TO TELL A WOMAN

2009-06-17T09:36:00.000-04:00

WHAT TO TELL WOMEN YOU'RE TRYING TO GET INTO BED:

1) You're so much fun to be with.

2) (If she's really pretty) I think you're the smartest person I know.

3) (If she's not so pretty) You're the sexiest woman I know by far.

4) I love the way you carry yourself, your posture, your expression, your attitude -- confident but approachable. Nothing is sexier.

5) Love the sound of your voice, throaty, sexy, mischievous.

Don't restrict yourself to just one of the above. Fact is, just when you think you're overdoing it, she's just starting to hear you. If you keep on complimenting her, making her feel unique and special, then even if she's not that attracted to you, she'll become addicted to being around you -- after all, you're the guy who makes her feel so good about herself. If you're eloquent enough, she just may slip out of her panties for you.

WHAT TO TELL WOMEN WHO'VE BEEN GOING TO BED WITH YOU FOR OVER 4 MONTHS:

1) Did you see that good-looking guy at the party -- he was trying to look up your skirt all night long.

2) My friend Donny (your handsomest friend) thinks you're really hot.

3) This is Johnny Dep (or her favorite actor) slipping his hand under your skirt. (It's good old you, of course)

4) You've fallen asleep on a pile of coats at a party, and I'm a sexy stranger who's snuggling up next to you.

5) I'm not so sure I want you wearing that tight blouse anymore when we go out at night -- it gives me such a hard on and I'm sure it's doing it to every other guy in the room, too.

The point is, once you've been sleeping with a woman for a few months, she's going to get bored, way more bored than you. That's just how women are. If you want the fucking to be great, you're going to have to feed her sense of fantasy. If your nose is going to get all out of joint at the thought of her fantasizing about other guys, then, pal, you're condemned to a shitty sex life. On the other hand, if you're willing to indulge her a bit, she's going to squeeze your cock like it's never been squeezed before.

THE GASMAN'S WIFE

2009-06-08T03:35:00.000-04:00

Posnick was wandering through Debbie and Artie Van Nostrand’s expansive first floor looking for somebody to talk to. He’d left Stella in the kitchen chatting with two women from her Thursday golf group whose names he couldn’t quite remember, both of them wearing their hair cropped close as a man’s.
This is something he’d run into quite a bit over the past several winters in Scottsdale. He called them The Man-Wives of Desert Vistas. Slim, toned, sinewy women wearing little makeup and their hair in crew cuts. He wondered what they and their husbands did, if anything, in bed.
Posnick wasn’t quite sure what he was on the hunt for. A young, pretty woman with blond hair, bare shoulders, and slim arms? A landsman with an equally strong sense of irony about finding himself living among the golf-loving goyim of Arizona? A tall, slender WASP with a single-digit handicap who might offer to include Posnick in one of his high-powered golf games?
There was an empty seat on the L-shaped couch near the fireplace, and Posnick placed his plate on the coffee table and sat next to a gray-haired woman with a handsome face and a long, regal neck. Her skin was tightly pored and without wrinkles, yet there was something about her that suggested late sixties, even early seventies.
“….documentary on one of the cable channels,” she was saying to the elderly man to her left, “ and they were interviewing this woman whose husband had just died and she was saying something about getting on with her life, not curling up into a cocoon just because the man she had shared the last 48 years with had passed. I thought to myself right on.” The woman was talking with what sounded to Posnick’s ear a slight southern accent.
This was not the kind of company Posnick had been seeking, but something about the woman’s powerful sense of self appealed to him. It was clear that even at this age she was accustomed to being beautiful. Yet there was nothing arrogant about her. Some people are born with a musical ear, others with an ability to scoop up grounders, still others with fine features and eyes in which richly colored hazel irises sit in unusually clear pools of white. Accidents of birth.
“I don’t know,” interjected Posnick, “I’m kind of hoping that when I die my wife takes to her bed for the rest of her days, reading the classics and occasionally weeping over my absence, never once thinking about making love with another man.”
Posnick. Always the provocateur. The woman swiveled her head toward him with astonishing grace. She focused her hazel eyes directly upon his. “Why would you ever want that?”
Because I’m a conniving, pathologically jealous sneak who wants the run of the walk for myself while I monopolize every waking moment of my wife’s life, who, it turns out, cuckolded me with her boss in the very first months of our marriage. I lost my first born son, who made me happier than I have ever been in my life, in a car accident and ever since have been unable to sleep more than an hour or two a night. I’m out of the house before dawn, wandering the fairways on which he brought me such pleasure, hoping against hope, since I am a life-long atheist, that he will emerge from the early morning mist and make my life worth living again.
Posnick blinked, mesmerized by the woman’s gaze, reaching into the far corner’s of his brain for a response that might rescue him. “Because…” Posnick vamped, trying to make it seem as if he were searching for the absolutely perfect way to express his thought, “…because…I would never want some other man to hurt her.”
The older woman smiled. “Well, I guess that’s okay,” she allowed.
“Are you two guys married?” Posnick asked, knowing that there was no possible way she could be the wife of such an ordinary looking old man.
“We’re on a blind date,” she said. “He’s Deb’s father. I live up the road.”
“Wow, a blind date. I thought those only happened when you were seventeen.” Posnick stuck out his hand. “I’m Alex Posnick.”
“Good to meet you, Alex,” said the older man. As he reached across the woman to shake Posnick’s hand, his elbow grazed her not insubstantial bosom. Posnick was buoyed that she neither flinched nor pulled away. “I’m Pete. Pete Peterson. And this is Joelle Norsgaard.”
The woman simply nodded without offering her hand. Posnick, feeling an overpowering urge to touch her, stuck out his hand. She took hold of it, and shook it with neither firmness nor slackness. Posnick noted her long fingers and large, square-edged nails coated in clear polish. He felt her begin to withdraw her hand, and held it for an additional moment, not wanting to let it go.
“So how’s it going?” asked Posnick. “Any sparks yet?”
Pete shook his head. “She’s in love with another man. I’m very disappointed.”
“I would be, too. What’s he like?” he asked the woman.
“I’m not sure I can describe him. I knows he’s tall, which is important because I’m 5’ 10” and he just towers over me.”
At 5’ 6”, Posnick felt hurt to the quick. “He must be younger, right?”
“No, he’s 78. But he’s not in love with me.”
“Oh, he must be thinking you’re not in love with him. Just like in high school. Everybody feels that way,” said Posnick.
“How could he not be in love with you?” said Pete.
“He doesn’t return any of my calls anymore. We went out for about four months, and then he let it be known he really wasn’t that interested.”
“He told you?”
“He said it was a long drive up here to Desert Vistas. He lives way down in Tempe.”
“Why doesn’t he stay over?”
“He did – once.”
Posnick couldn’t contain himself. “Did – did he stay in your bed?”
Joelle nodded. “Yes.”
Posnick was drilling her with his eyes, willing her to reveal more. He looked over at Pete for some kind of support. The older man shrugged.
“Did…you…make love?”
“No.”
“No?”
“He didn’t seem to want to.”
“Oh.” Posnick waited for her to go on, but she said nothing. He realized she was not being coy, that it was simply not in her nature to volunteer information.
“You wouldn’t have had that problem with me,” said Pete.
Nor me, thought Posnick. “You’re still sexually active?” he asked Pete.
“Well, I would be if I had anybody to be active with,” he answered, then burst into a rush of laughter.
“Well, why didn’t you initiate things?” he asked Joelle. He was beginning to feel increasingly like Havelock Ellis.
“I’ve never done that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure I would know how.”
“Just grab the guy by his Johnson,” chortled Pete. “That’ll get the ball rolling – no pun intended.”
“Wait a second, I want to understand this. You’ve never once in your entire life initiated sexual intercourse? Not even with your husband?”
Joelle shook her head.
Posnick turned to Pete. “See, that’s what happens when you’re so beautiful. You never have to be the aggressor.” He turned his focus back to Joelle. “When you’ve got a puss like mine you’ve always got to be the one who gets things started.”
Posnick really didn’t think of himself as ugly at all, but he was hoping to wring some kind of compliment out of Joelle. She simply smiled.
“Her husband was a Texan,” added Pete. “Maybe that explains it.”
“You’re from Texas?” asked Posnick.
Joelle nodded. Posnick remembered his first sales trip to Houston, walking from boutique to boutique in the Galleria showing his fall line of sportswear, his head spinning as one after another tall, blond, full-bosomed, wasp-waisted, long-legged Houstonian sauntered by. So this is how they turned out.
“What kind of business was your husband in?”
“Farm equipment. Daddy was in the same business. Edward bought him out. He came to Daddy one day and said, ‘George, I want to buy your business and marry your daughter. He was 32. I was only 17 at the time.”
“Like out of an Edna Ferber novel.”
“I don’t believe I’ve read anything by her.”
Pete stood up. “I’m gonna see if Deb needs any help in the kitchen. Anybody want another drink?”
“I’ll have another red wine,” said Posnick.
“You can bring me one, too, Pete.” Joelle handed him her glass.
With Pete gone, she turned her body around to face Posnick more directly, giving him the she sense she was glad to be rid of her date for the moment. Perhaps she was enjoying being the focus of such an avid interviewer.
“So let me get this straight, you’re 17 – a junior? A senior?”
“Just finishing my junior year.”
“What year was that? You don’t have to tell me, I just find this fascinating. Trying to set the time in my mind.”
“1949. Truman was president. God, did Daddy hate Truman.”
Posnick thought, holy shit, I wasn’t even born yet. He did the arithmetic in his head. The woman was seventy, exactly twenty years older than himself.
“1949, smack in the middle of the Korean War. And your father comes to you and says, ‘Joelle, Mr. Edward Farm Equipment here wants to marry you and I think it’s a good idea.’ I mean, what did you think? Oh, good, he’s so handsome. Or, Damn, and I was gonna be captain of the cheerleading squad next year?”
“I’m not sure I was thinking much of anything. Mama and Daddy knew I’d be well taken care of and it just seemed the natural order of things.”
“Didn’t you want to go to college or anything?”
“Well, in those days not that many girls in our part of Texas went to college. I did finish high school, though. And as a matter of fact, I was captain of the cheerleading squad.” She smiled broadly for the first time, revealing just a suggestion of a sense of humor that Posnick hadn’t been sure was there.
“Really?” The image of a short pleated cheerleading skirt flying up over her panty had blood pounding in Posnick’s temples. “Alright, so you’re a married woman walking through the halls holding your books against your bosom just so…” Posnick held an imaginary book to his chest, “…the way girls did back in those days, and like how do all the other girls treat you?”
“Oh, a whole dozen or so of us must have been married. We sort of were a clique. We’d joke about it. The M.G.C. – married girls club. Two of the girls were even pregnant.”
Pete arrived and handed them each a glass of wine. He remained standing. “I’m going to turn in for the evening, Joelle. Do you mind? Maybe Alex’ll give you a lift home.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“I’ll see you at the Navaho course at about 10.”
“We’re playing golf tomorrow,” Joelle explained. “Great, see you at 10.”
Pete leaned down and kissed her on both cheeks, then disappeared down the long hallway in a defeated sort of shuffle.
Posnick said, “This is extraordinary. I mean, you have to excuse me for being so nosy, but this is so different from how I grew up.”
He watched her put the wine glass to her lips and take not a gulp but a rather long sustained drink. When she put the glass down it was less than half full.
“So you’ve got this new husband whom you barely know and now you’re sharing a bed, a bathroom, meals together, and yet he’s almost twice your age. It must have been weird.”
“Not really. Edward was a very good businessman, very strong, very forceful, and when I graduated high school he bought me this big brick house in the nicest part of Houston. A few months later I was pregnant with Edward, Junior. Edward was away on business most of the time and Mama lived just down the road and she helped with the housework and taking care of the baby and it was all very nice and normal. Then this big national chain offered Edward a whole ton of money for the distributorship – way more than it was worth according to Edward – and he retired. Wasn’t even 40 years old. Got himself a plane and a big Harley and souped up an old ‘55 Chevy. He loved to go roaring around all over the place. He’d grown up poor and had always dreamed of owning a ranch and so he took a whole bunch of the money he got for the business and bought a 3 thousand acre spread in Louisiana, just over the Texas border. So we left Houston and moved out to the ranch, Mama and Daddy as well, and by now I had all 3 kids, Edward Jr. and the two girls, Mary Pat and Jolene. And that was it.”
“And during this whole time, you, uh, never once cuddled up to him in the middle of the night and got things going.”
“I cuddled up if I was cold, and then sometimes he would start the process.”
“Oh, sort of passive aggressive.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.”
“After we were on the ranch about 12 years, something weird happened. Edward discovered there was natural gas on the land. He had an instinct for these things. Without really trying, almost everything he touched turned to money. Anyway, the Baton Rouge Power Company bought the drilling rights, and we began getting royalties, and Edward set up trusts for the kids and all, and then Edward died and I don’t think he had any idea how much money would come rolling in.”
“Sounds like he was a good man.”
“He was a wonderful man.”
“You must miss him terribly.”
“Not really. I don’t know why. I just don’t. When I saw this show on cable about this widow who got right back into life, I admired her so much. I thought that’s the way to do it.”
“Maybe there was just too big an age difference.”
“I don’t know, Alex, I really don’t.”
“Do you mind if I ask something very personal?”
Joelle shook her head. “Ask me anything. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer, but it’s okay to ask.”
“I mean, this is really personal.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you guys have a good love life?”
“I think so.”
“ Were you…orgasmic?”
“There you are.”
Posnick whipped his head around to see Stella coming toward him with a cup of coffee and a plate of desserts. “I was looking all over for you.”
He leapt up and gestured for Stella to sit. “This is Joelle….”
“Norsgaard.”
“Joelle, this is my wife Stella.” Stella was wearing a black décolleté dress with a satin-edged slit up the right thigh and Posnick hoped that her stylishness would boost his value in Joelle’s eyes.
“I thought you’d want to try some of these cakes. They’re yummy.” She held the plate out to Joelle. “Would you like to try some?”
Joelle picked up a petit fours. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said and popped it into her mouth whole.
“Have you been sitting here the whole time?” Stella asked.
“Just about. Joelle is on a blind date with Deb’s dad.”
“Oh, how romantic.”

They drove six blocks north of the Van Nostrand’s, then made a left turn onto Cochise Trail, which stretched up into the most exclusive section of Desert Vistas.
“Next driveway,” said Joelle, and Stella turned the Toyota pickup with the extended cab into a sweeping circular driveway in front of a house that seemed every bit as long as a football field.
“It’s beautiful,” said Stella.
“You live here alone?” asked Posnick.
“I have a Mexican couple that lives in the casita.”
“Ah,” said Posnick.
“Alex, walk Joelle to the door for goodness sake.”
As they walked among the shadows of the front walk winding through the palla verde and the saguaro, Joelle hooked her arm in his. The cool night air of the desert filled him with a sense of possibility and optimism. They climbed several steps to the front door, and Posnick could see his truck gleaming in the moonlight. He wondered if Stella could see him as clearly, but the several glasses of red wine seemed to have dulled his sense of caution.
“Well, it was really lovely talking with you, Alex. You certainly have an unusual way of looking at things.” Joelle held out her hand, and as Posnick took hold of it he pulled her to him. He had to raise his head to kiss her, but felt a sudden rush as he realized she was offering him not her cheek but her lips. He held the kiss two or three seconds longer than was polite, hoping somehow to ignite a passionate response. He didn’t, but then she didn’t pull away either.
When they got into bed and turned out the lights, Stella hooked her leg over his. As often happened on nights when he had consumed more than his usual quotient of alcohol, Posnick had trouble reaching orgasm. He ran the usual cast of characters through his mind, Tarni, the Indian friend of his daughter, Mrs. Kershaw, his 8th grade teacher with the sculpted ass, Merril, the 14 year old daughter of his wife’s best friend whose tiny pink nipples he could see through the sides of her bikini top. Nothing showed promise, and then he replayed the kiss with 71 year old Joelle Norsgaard on the front porch of her stone and steel palace in the bracing desert air among the palla verde and cacti and he was off in a moment, thrashing about wildly atop his dark-haired wife. As he collapsed at her side, he wondered whom she had been thinking of. Intercourse is a union of four people. Sigmund Freud.
Although he kept his eyes peeled in the stores, restaurants, and supermarkets around town, on the driving range, pro shop, golf courses, mixed grill, he didn’t see her until six weeks later in the fitness center at Desert Vista’s main clubhouse.
She was lying on her back on an exercise bench, pressing a weighted bar repeatedly into the air. Over navy tights she wore a short-sleeved maroon workout suit. Her mane of silver hair hung down toward the floor. Posnick watched her for several minutes from afar, his eyes running up and down her legs, her arms, her torso. Certainly, she was not a hard body, but her limbs were long and toned, her waist narrow, her bosom full, her shoulders wide, rib cage small. Posnick couldn’t help but think of his own poor mother at 71, a plump, hunched woman with enormously heavy upper arms and thinning, patchy hair. Even their names were in stark contrast. Joelle and Florence. Whom would you rather fuck?
He came up behind her. “Would you hold my ankles down while I do my sit-ups?” he said.
She had sat up and was wiping her arms down with a towel. She looked up and smiled as if she weren’t quite sure who he was.
“Hi, Joelle, Alex Posnick. We met at the Van Nostrand’s party.” Awkardly, he stuck out his hand.
“Oh, you don’t want to shake my hand,” she said. “I’m all sweaty.”
Sweaty. Posnick felt his member beginning to stir.
“How are you and your lovely wife?” she asked.
“Stella’s back in New York for the week – shopping.”
“Oh, I’d love to go to New York. Edward and I went once for Christmas. The store windows were so beautiful.” She stood up.
“You should come and visit us. We go back for the summer. It’d be great showing you around – the museums, the theatre, the restaurants.”
Joelle simply smiled and began strolling toward the front desk. Posnick fell into stride beside her feeling ridiculously short in his lumpy sweat suit. “Would you like to have an ice tea or a cup of coffee?”
“Thanks, but I really need to shower.” She took two towels from the pile on the front counter.
“Don’t be silly, I like my women on the gamey side.”
She shook her head.
“Come on, I need to shower, too. We’re even.”
“I don’t think so.”
Posnick put his cards on the table. “Joelle, I’ve been looking all over for you for the last six weeks. I finally find you, and you blow me off. Come on. One ice tea, fifteen minutes. I so enjoyed hearing all about your life.”
She tilted her head. “My life? You must be starved for entertainment.”
They sat on the back deck overlooking Renegade Canyon, the rising April son taking the chill out of the morning air, the sky azure and cloudless and stretching forever.
Posnick thought, this at last is how life is supposed to be: money in the bank, health apparently okay, no job or fear of being fired from one, wife back in New York on a theatre spree with a few girlfriends, weather perfect, sitting with a tall, beautiful, dignified shikse, albeit one slightly older than I had in mind. “When last we met, you were telling me all about life with the gasman, the private plane, the royalties rolling in.”
“When last we met,” she said fixing him with her exquisitely clear hazel eyes, “when last we met you had just asked me – I’m trying to remember your exact words – if I was orgasmic.”
“I said that?”
“You’d had quite a few glasses of wine.”
“I can’t believe I said that. It’s not like me.”
“The answer is, I’m not sure.”
Posnick nodded his head as if giving her response great consideration. He took a sip of coffee. “Then I’d have to say you’re not. Or let me say you haven’t been. An orgasm,” Posnick declaimed, “particularly a woman’s orgasm, is the culmination of a build up of an enormous amount of blood and electricity in the pelvic girdle.” I am pulling this out of my ass, he thought. “At a certain point the build up is so great, the neurons in the area are so charged, that a synapse occurs. Like lightning leaping from one pole to another. That, Joelle, is an orgasm, and there is no other feeling like it in the world.”
“I guess I haven’t had one then.”
“Maybe that’s why you so admired the widow you saw on TV. There’s something you still need to accomplish before…”
Joelle smiled. “Before I die.”
Posnick shook his head vigorously in protest, but Joelle said, “No, you’re right. It’s probably what I’ve been feeling all along. I enjoyed sexual relations with Edward – sometimes – but I can’t say I was ever in ecstasy.”
He was about to ask, Do you masturbate? but a quartet of four women in exercise clothes sat down at the table next to them. “Well, thank you for the ice tea, Alex,” she said, pushing her chair back. “I really have to be going.” Joelle stood and this time it was she who proffered her hand.
Posnick hastily scribbled his signature on the check. “Wait, I’ll walk you back in,” he said.
Joelle checked her watch. “I’m going to shower at home. Talking to you, Alex, I lose all track of the time.”
“Then I’ll walk you to your car.”
Her car was a gold-hued Bentley with a convertible top, spotless, gleaming in the sun now high in the sky. She put her hand on the door, but Posnick stood in such a way that she would have had to ask him to move in order to open it.
“When can I see you again?” he asked.
Joelle looked confused. “You’ll see me around.”
“No, I mean, not just bumping into you.”
She stared at him for a few seconds. “Are you asking me out on a date, Mr. Posnick?” He detected a touch more of a drawl in her voice.
“No, not a…date. Just two adults grabbing a meal, seeing a movie together. My wife’s out of town, your husband’s…passed as they say these days. I’m lonely. I got nothing to do tonight.”
After what seemed like an eternity, she nodded her head slowly. “I guess a movie’d be okay.”
It was odd waiting on line with her for tickets. Posnick had been so thrilled she had accepted his invitation, he hadn’t anticipated that the obvious disparity in their ages would be an object of curiosity to others. True, she looked a bit younger than her years. But Posnick, too, was lean and fit, an exercise buff ever since he’d sold his dress business five years before. And then there was the Jew/Gentile chasm, Posnick with a classic New York City face, big nose, curly hair, and Joelle tall and slender-armed, with a nose that all the reconstructive surgeons on Fifth Avenue would have been proud to achieve for their patients. Posnick found himself drifting a few steps away from his new friend, looking up at the stars, pretending to be lost in thought.
But once in their seats in the darkness of the theatre, he felt the full gravitational pull of her being. He kept glancing at her profile, her long legs, her arms, her hands. He placed his elbow on the armrest between them, leaning toward her, hoping to feel her arm touch his. He was concentrating fiercely, willing her to inch her way closer, wondering if she were feeling the same mad attraction. Her right hand was resting on her thigh, and though it was the one part of her which most clearly evidenced the ravages of time, he wanted terribly to take it in his own. He made a few tentative movements toward it but could not summon the chutzpah to forge ahead.
All these ruminations absorbed him totally, and when Joelle asked him afterward if he’d liked the movie, all he could manage was a kind of blank, “It was okay.”
The 12-plex was housed in a sprawling upscale shopping mall, and on their way toward the brew-pub they passed a Brookstone’s. “Wait here,” Posnick said suddenly. “I’ve got a surprise.”
He dashed in, found a salesman, and minutes later came back out with a small, gift-wrapped package. They had cheeseburgers and pale ale. Posnick watched with awe as Joelle finished every one of her outsized french fries. Over her mild protestations, he ordered each of them a second pint of ale. When the waiter returned, Posnick waited till they’d drunk a few swallows before presenting her with the package.
“This’ll help you have an orgasm.”
“Should I open it?”
Posnick shook his head. “Not here. Maybe in the car. It’s a personal vibrator. They’re unbelievably effective.”
She shook her head. “You are something.”
“Listen, I take this very seriously. You told me yourself, you’re 71 years old. Skiing the Alps, watching your kid take his first step, meeting the love of your life – nothing, nothing compares to a good orgasm. There is no other feeling like it in the world. If you were to pass into the great beyond without having had one, I would feel like I let you down. I know about the problem. It’s my responsibility to fix it.”
Once again, she took his arm as they navigated the long walk from Posnick’s pickup to the front door of Joelle’s house. She had unwrapped her gift in the car and was now holding wrapping paper, ribbon, and massager box while rifling through her handbag for her keys. Suddenly, the door popped open, and there stood a tall, powerfully built man about Posnick’s age.
Posnick recognized in an instant the resemblance.
“Oh, Edward, what a surprise? When did you get here?”
“Landed in Carefree less than an hour ago.”
“Edward this is Alex Posnick. Alex, this is my son, Edward Junior.” The man had dark brown eyes, almost black, and they bored into Posnick as he reached out his hand. Edward Junior was standing in the entranceway, a full step above the front stoop, and this coupled with his natural height advantage made Posnick feel as if he were a young child shaking hands with an adult. A very stern, unsmiling adult. The man’s hands were gigantic and muscular and it took all Posnick’s resolve not to whimper.
“Come in, Alex, join us for a drink.”
“No, no, thanks. I’m exhausted, and I don’t want to miss Stella’s call.”
“Well, then, thank you so much. I had a wonderful time.”
Posnick sensed her moving her lips toward him and he quickly reached out and took her hand, shaking it firmly, keeping her literally at arm’s length. “Good night,” he said, “Nice to meet you, Ed.” And he went down the steps, two at a time.
“Oh, wait, I didn’t thank you for my present.”
“Think nothing of it. Bye.”
As he scampered down the walk, Posnick heard the son ask his mother what present.
“None of your beeswax,” she snapped, and then the door closed behind them.

“How can you stand going to the movies alone?” asked Stella.
“I don’t mind. Never have.”
“What’d you see?”
“I don’t even know. Some stupid chick flick.”
“A chick flick. You never go to chick flicks.”
“I was in the mood for light and frothy.”
“Which one was it?”
“Sweetie, listen, can I go to bed? I’m absolutely exhausted. I haven’t felt right all day.”
“Are you okay, Alex? I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine. I just need sleep, is all.”
“Alright, but take some Tylenol. Sure you’re okay?”
“I love you, Stella.”
“Love you, too.” He heard the phone click off and was instantly sorry he hadn’t prolonged the conversation, for almost immediately upon hanging up Edward Junior’s penetrating dark stare once again began boring down on him. And there was nowhere to flee.
He recalled the amusement/repulsion he’d felt years ago when he’d come across a turn of the century poster in a book on anti-Semitism. It read, ‘Jew Hollywood Producers Want To Seduce Our Daughters.’ The poster depicted a caricature of a short chubby man in a beret chasing a beautiful tall blond around his desk.
They were right, he said to himself. We did want to fuck their high-assed, wasp-waisted, blond-headed, blue-eyed, pretty-faced daughters till we couldn’t walk anymore. And the mamas that went along with them. He could picture the revulsion with which Junior would discuss this with his golfing buddies over bourbon and water in the men’s grill of some understated Louisiana golf club. Can ya’ll ‘magine presentin’ a goddamn vibrator to somebody’s mothah! – the incident stoking their repugnance for Jews a thousand fold.
Posnick lay in bed with a novel and the Times’ crossword puzzle spread out about him. He sipped periodically from an oversized goblet of red wine. Three pillows supported him from behind as he stared blankly at the wall on the far side of the room.
Suddenly, he pushed the book and newspaper onto the floor and reached over and turned off the light. He just sat there against the pillows, sipping his wine in the dark, for he knew it would be useless to lie all the way down. There would be no sleep for him tonight.
He began composing a speech in his mind, trying to be honest, trying to find the precise articulation of what he was feeling. Joelle, I am sorry for having stepped over the line. I feel like an ogre, hateful, perverted, ugly, selfish beyond normal human self-interest. Your beauty and your exoticness have inflamed me. All my life I have fantasized having sex with a tall, slender, beautifully-shaped blonde gentile woman. Who knows why exactly? It is theorized that a varied gene pool makes for a stronger species. There is no question that I am attracted to your differentness in a way that possesses me. I have never known a woman named Joelle before. I have never even heard the name before. I have never slept with a woman taller than myself. I have never kissed a woman with natural gas wells or a Texas accent or a house that must be over 15,000 square feet or with hands bigger than my own or –
The ringing of the telephone startled Posnick and he grappled with the receiver before getting a solid hold of it and bringing it to his ear.
“Hello,” he said tentatively. He checked the clock. It was 2:53.
“Alex?”
“Yes….” He thought he recognized Joelle’s soft drawl, but was far from sure.
“Alex, this is Joelle.” There was a long pause. “It worked.” She was speaking in little more than a whisper.
“What worked?”
“The personal massager. I had an orgasm. In fact I had three orgasms.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Thank you so much. It was wonderful. Who would have believed it’d be so easy.”
“That is so great.”
“I just feel this tremendous sense of loss over all the orgasms I’ve missed. Must be thousands.”
“You’ll make up for lost time. I’ll – I’ll help.”
“You’ve helped already. You’re like…like my guru.” The way she pronounced guru in her Texan accent made him heartsick with love.
“Come on over, I want to know all about it.” He was picturing the vibrator sitting on her night table. He yearned to hold it to his face. “Bring the massager.”
“Don’t be silly, it’s three o’clock. I can assure you, Edward Junior’d want to know where his old mother’s going at three in the morning.”
“I told you I could help.”
“You were right about that, doctor.” She laughed at her joke. “Well, I’m going to go to sleep now. I’m plum exhausted. You didn’t tell me these orgasms took so much out of a person.”
“I’m so anxious to hear all about it,” said Posnick.
“I will call you in the morning. Good night.” She hung up.
Posnick lay back and masturbated to his own deeply satisfying orgasm, visions of Joelle’s writhing on her bed dancing in his brain. Moments later he fell into a deep and undisturbed sleep.
He hung around the house the next morning waiting for her call, killing time by doing the laundry, rearranging the clothes in his closet, doing the New York Times Friday crossword puzzle on line. At noon, however, he left for the golf course to meet the guys for their usual 12:26 tee off time.
When he got home a little after six, there was only one call on the answering machine and that was from his friend Howard back east wanting to know if he’d gotten 17 down on the puzzle.
By 8 o’clock he was in despair, enough to give him the courage to dial her number. A man’s voice said, ‘Hello,’ and Posnick immediately hung up, hoping they didn’t have caller I.D.
Two weeks later he and Stella were being led to a table in the back room of Joe Steak when he saw her unmistakable head of silver hair. Posnick stopped at the very next table and said to the hostess, “How about right here?” Stella looked at him curiously.
“I like being able to see the fireplace,” he explained. But what he really enjoyed, although it caused him no small amount of anguish as well, was being able to watch his beloved Joelle without her realizing he was there. She was seated next to a man with an equally thick head of silver hair, combed to the side with a neat, even part. He was at least as tall as she and was wearing a white shirt under a blue blazer. From behind anyway, he had the bearing of a senator or CEO of a large corporation, signaling for the waiter with a quiet authority.
Joelle touched his shoulder and arm frequently, and twice during the meal they turned to each other and kissed. After the busboy cleared their table, the man in the blazer got off his banquette to let Joelle out. She had her pocketbook with her and appeared headed for the ladies room.
Posnick whipped the wine list in front of him, burying his face in it, for he knew that if she should recognize him and stop to say hello there would be no way he could disguise the brutal disappointment that was presently engulfing him.

new music video

2009-04-26T08:39:00.000-04:00

girls will be boys, boys will be girls in the crazy mixed up shook up world

of a new music video i shot for the band GIRL PROBLEMS.

Check it out at:

youtube.com/girlproblemsmusic

if you enjoy please pass on to like-minded people

thanks, e.

also, mother-fuckers, instead of just constantly plundering my blog for the occasional amusement, how about leaving a comment once in awhile. your lethargy disgusts me.

WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT NURSES (new story)

2009-04-08T16:04:00.003-04:00

What They Say About Nurses

Hanratty is standing amidst a crowd of twenty-somethings, sipping from a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon, eyeing a slender girl sitting alone at the bar. She looks to be no more than sixteen years old with a sweetness of face that to the young man’s unpracticed eye suggests lack of sexual experience.
Does he want to waste yet another evening talking to a girl who at best will neck with him guardedly in the parking lot in the back seat of his mother’s ‘47 Chevy while Posnick and Phayer and Lerner are all slipping their hands under sweaters and skirts, maybe even getting laid?
He and his three friends, college boys all, are doing what they call Posting, hitting one of the many road houses along the Boston Post Road in the hope of having sex with the secretaries and shop girls who go there to drink and dance of a Friday night, hoping somehow to meet a guy to marry.
It has been his pattern, picking out the religious girl, the tea totaling girl, the girl who finds herself curiously apathetic toward boys because she does not yet realize the depth of her attraction to women.
But tonight, tonight perhaps, will be different. Always the reader, Hanratty has recently come across an article in Girl Parade, one of the men’s pulp magazines, that posits that cutting back on masturbation will dramatically increase a fellow’s success with the opposite sex – ironic advice indeed considering the dozens of photos of bare-breasted women scattered throughout its pages. And so it has been two weeks since Hanratty last jerked off, a long stretch for a twenty year old male without a girlfriend.
However, by half past eleven, after failing to get up the courage to talk to any of the girls in tight skirts with slits up the side or clinging sweaters exposing great swaths of cleavage, he slides in next to her and orders another beer. Glancing down at the glass in front of her, he is surprised to see what appears to be a double whiskey on the rocks, encouragement enough to get him to mumble, “How come nobody’s snatched up a pretty girl like you?”
He delivers the line haltingly, woodenly, to the side of her head and is immensely relieved when she swivels on her seat, turns her face up to him, and smiles. “You really think I’m pretty?”
Up close like this he can see she is pretty indeed, with ebony hair and skin so pale he thinks it must be a coating of make up. But all she is wearing is very red lipstick and a little eyebrow liner, no more.
Years later, Hanratty will think back on this moment and wonder if it occurred to him, in that instant that his eyes first met Emily’s, that the computer that is our brain read, in what?, a quarter of a second, less perhaps, that the curl of this particular female’s lip, the twitch of her eye, the shade of her hair, whatever odors that were emanating from her feet, her pussy, from under her arms, the shade of her hair, the denseness of her lashes, the slope of her shoulder, the hint in her eye of pride and skittishness, selfishness and desire to please, that she, Emily Gilligan, was perfectly designed to be his ideal mate and competitor for the decades they soon would begin spending together, in bed and out, in sickness and health, triumph and failure. Did he somehow sense on some primal level, far, far from consciousness, that this was both the right team mate and opponent for him – not so strong as to over power him, not so weak that he would sweep her away, leaving him bored and restless. Was a similar instinct taking birth in her limbic brain – this is a man I want to be locked in lifelong battle with, a companion for the long haul.
“You’re not bad,” he replies, regaining some semblance of equilibrium.
“Most guys think I’m jailbait.” She takes a deep drag on her lipstick stained Pall Mall, blowing out the smoke expertly in a long, thin stream. “I’m much older than I look.”
“What, eighteen?”
“Twenty-five,” she declares with obvious relish. “I almost have my nursing degree.”
“Holy cow.” Hanratty is only twenty. He squints, scrutinizing her face for wrinkles. She stares back at him openly, unafraid. He wants to say something smart, modern, a trifle combative – a talent that usually fails him around women.
“You know what they say about nurses,” he manages to eke out, then worries he has been too forward.
When the girl smiles, Hanratty feels relieved. “No,” she says, “What do they say about nurses?”
What they say about nurses, at least in this case, turns out to be resoundingly true. She lives with two other nursing students near Portchester General in a one-bedroom apartment in a ramshackle three-story boarding house. One of the roommates is away, the other asleep on the daybed on the far side of the room. Still, the girl seems to feel no shame in pulling him down beside her. She unzips his fly, taking him in her hand, and he comes instantly, an unexpected downside of the no-masturbation plan.
“That’s okay,” she whispers gently. She stands, and he watches as she slips out of her clothes in the shaft of moonlight streaming in through the uncurtained window.
She is tiny, not five feet, hardly ninety pounds. Aside from small, budding nipples and a shockingly large black triangle, there is nothing to suggest a sexually mature woman. She helps him undress, then begins sucking on his penis till it grows hard again. Pushing him down on the bed, she straddles him, finding his cock with the practiced ease of someone who has done this before, perhaps often, letting herself slide down over it. He is aghast that such a tiny creature can have within her a canal that engulfs him so comfortably, so eagerly, so, so – familiarly.
Once again, despite a desperate attempt to call up car accidents, his Grandma Lorraine’s breasts, which he accidentally saw on a family outing to Jones Beach, and other orgasm-postponing imagery, he comes in seconds.
They make love thrice that night, the girl clinging to him with an odd intensity in the in-between times. Hanratty is lying on his back, his hands under his head. The girl has curled against his side, her head tucked in his armpit. He can’t wait to get together with the guys to compare notes. Slowly, he slides from under the covers. He hears the girl stir in her bed, sensing she is watching him as he pulls on his pants and socks in the dark. He pretends he doesn’t know she is awake. As he is leaving, she says, “Wait.” She writes a phone number on a torn piece of notebook paper and places it in his hand. He feels he should kiss her; but when he had trouble reaching orgasm on their last screw, she took him in her mouth. He bends down, steering his lips past her proffered ones, kissing her on the top of her head.
“Call me,” she says as he steps out the door.

“She looked like a high school freshman,” says Ray Phayer.
“I have bigger tits,” says Alex Posnick.
“Hey, he fucked her three times,” says Ethan Lerner. “Cut the man a little slack.”
Tim Hanratty and his friends are sitting in the Hartsdale diner. It is where they gather at the end of almost every weekend night, no matter how late the hour, no matter what the evening has held in store.
“Somehow I get the feeling she wasn’t a virgin,” says Phayer, by far the most ironic of the foursome.
“How would he know,” says Posnick.
Phayer has picked up a sausage with his fingers and moves it back and forth between his lips, simulating a blow job. He winks at Hanratty.
“Believe me,” says Hanratty, “this was no virgin. We fucked with her room mate right in the same room.”
“What a slut!” says Posnick.
“You’re not kidding,” says Hanratty, although he feels curiously disloyal the instant the words leave his mouth.
In the ensuing weeks, Hanratty hits the local bars and dance halls with his friends with a new sense of confidence, with heightened expectation. He is one of the guys. He has lost his virginity. He no longer reaches the end of the evening without having approached one single girl.
His success rate, however, is little better than before his conquest of the nurse. He is too thin for his height, his jaw too big for his head. He wears glasses. Unlike Posnick in his leather jacket, Phayer with his classy good looks punctuated by a premature streak of silver hair, and Lerner with his Tony Curtis prettiness and curl, there is something hopelessly bookish about Hanratty. His off-beat sense of humor, which so tickles the guys, either puts women off or goes completely unnoticed. He enunciates like a college professor. His attempts to slur his words sound inauthentic, like a theatre actor trying on a Southern accent.
He has abandoned his no-masturbation policy and almost always comes now to the memory of the nurse straddling him. In his mind’s eye, she looks like someone’s kid sister as she lets herself down over him. There is something forbidden about it, her pale pink nipples, her guileless face. Hanratty is no dummy. He realizes that her child-like appearance is part of the appeal.
One night in mid-May, Hanratty and his pals stop in at Ed’s Outpost, one of a dozen roadhouse bar and grills on the outskirts of Portchester. He sees her right away, sitting with several women friends in a large booth, a pitcher of beer in the middle of the table. They are all smoking. Hanratty catches her eye, but she looks away. He watches with dread as a group of guys approaches the table. Over the next hour or so there is a pairing off ritual, with different combinations of males and females trudging off to the dance floor.
From his perch at the bar, picking at the label of his ever present Blue Ribbon, Hanratty observes with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, a crushing sense of doom, certain that at any moment she will return from the dance floor, one of the young men in tow.
But when the dust settles, and the coupling is complete, the nurse is sitting there all by herself. Although prettier than her companions, perhaps other men have come to the same conclusion Hanratty had: she looks too young and innocent to be sexually active.
“Tim, for Christ sake, go ask her to dance,” says Lerner. “She’s pretty.”
“Nah,” says Hanratty, “no tits.” In truth, he’s not sure she will remember him. He’s frightened of her sexuality. It is six weeks since he has last seen her. How many men has she brought home in the interim?
“I like the no tits,” says Posnick. “It’s like fucking your little cousin.” Hanratty watches as Posnick walks briskly over to the girl and leads her to the dance floor. Taking a seat at the bar, Hanratty turns his back to the dancers, locking his eyes on the jukebox on the far side of the room, determined not to turn around. He imagines Posnick and the girl swaying imperceptibly to the languid ballad coming over the speakers, eyes closed, bodies straining against one another. He is shocked when Posnick’s deep harsh voice cuts into his fantasy. “What a dog,” he says. “Bow wow.”
Hanratty tries but cannot keep from glancing at Posnick’s crotch. He has an obvious hard on. “She’s just young looking, that’s all,” says Hanratty.
“You can have her,” says Posnick. “Hey, Mac,” he hollers at the bartender, “bring me a Cutty on the rocks. Make it a double.”
Hanratty climbs off his stool.
“Where you goin’?” says Posnick.
“I don’t know. Just want to get some air.”
With a mixture of tremendous relief and yet a feeling that he is somehow settling for second best, Hanratty walks over to the table and says, “Hi, um, how’ve you been?” As he reaches for her name, it strikes him she has never told it to him. Nor has he ever asked for it, nor volunteered his own.
“I’m okay,” she says, swiveling her head around as if expecting her friends to be arriving back at the table at any minute, as cool and aloof as if they’d never met. He stands there, hovering over her. Hanratty is hoping she will say something, but she just keeps looking around, not meeting his eye. Finally, because he can think of absolutely nothing else to say, he asks her to dance. Without saying yes or no, she stands up and follows him to the dance floor.
It is a slow song. The six foot two inch Hanratty holds up his arms in the rather formal style he learned back in seventh grade in Mrs. Scoville’s dance classes; but the girl simply ducks underneath, wrapping her arms around his waist with that same sense of intimacy as the night they’d made love. After a few seconds, Hanratty asks, “How’d you like my friend?”
“Which one?”
“Alex. The guy in the leather jacket.”
“Not too much. He was pressing his thing into my stomach.”
“Oh,” says Hanratty, pulling back a little because he is doing the same.
“I thought you were going to call,” says the girl.
“I was going to. I just had gotten around to it yet.”
“That’s okay,” she says, pulling him closer and snuggling her face against his chest.
A sudden, almost staggering wave of pity washes over Hanratty as it occurs to him how much more battering it is to be an unpursued female in one of these places – particularly at the age of 25 – than a male with little courage to pursue. He nuzzles his nose in her bouffant of hair, inhaling deeply, recalling how much he had loved her aroma.
“I’m Tim,” he announces into the top of her head.

“Yeah, I know. Your friend told me.” She doesn’t say anything for

awhile. Then, as an after thought, “I’m Emily.”

porn song

2009-04-08T16:03:00.002-04:00

the band GIRL PROBLEMS has a great new song called THE PORN. think you'll enjoy it -- and maybe even recognize yourself in the lyrics...

The Porn

before the internet came out
I used to get my work done
I wasn't the type to stand in line
in some greasy grimy store
sure I looked at a penthouse
or flipped through a hustler
but always felt kind of wrong
that was then
but things have changed
since these websites came along

the porn the porn awakes me in the morn
by afternoon I'm forlorn cause I've been watching too much porn
I'm torn I'm torn
cause believe me
I coulda sworn
I intended to read of mice and men
ended up watching porn

can't remember what I did years ago
with all that extra time
guess I went to yoga
did community service
went shopping for art supplies
maybe I checked in on elderly neighbors
went to church taught sports to kids
but now that I bought a macintosh
my life has hit the skids

with scorn with scorn
would you look at me with scorn
would you look at me with scorn
if I told you I'd been watching porn
I'm torn I'm torn
believe me
I coulda sworn
I intended to read grapes of wrath
but ended up watching porn

now I know it's an industry built on exploitation
and most of the girls were abused when they were young
the videos, they're just a crude expression
of misogynistic and violent fantasies
but as I try to slip
quietly past my computer
and on to the sun-dappled street beyond my front door
I swear it whispers so seductively
come on baby
just...one more

you see all the beauties walkin down the street
they're all so hot
but all so out of reach
you wanna ask them out but you're paralyzed
by low esteem, doubt and fear of being chastised
it only makes sense to hurry back home for a beer
and watch clips of these lovelies with ankles behind their ears, yeah

MORE DISEASE NAMES

2009-03-02T04:41:00.005-05:00

Alright, you lame, unimaginative, passive moochers, who never come up with squat. Check out these new entries sent in by a few exceptionally bright and nerdy readers -- people, apparently, with so little to do that they actually sat down, alone most certainly, and came up with a few absolutely brilliant additions to my list.

Sis Titis; Hy Bloodpressure; Jen Italherpes; Al Coholism; Cole Itis; Carson Oma;

Art Eriosclerosis; Ann Urysm; Ann Giofibroma; Mal Ignancy; Rene Alfailure;

Sis Ticfibrosis; O. Taharasyndrome

And my favorite to date: ERIC TILEDYSFUNCTION!

WHY YOU DO SO SHITTY WITH WOMEN!

2009-02-08T03:40:00.000-05:00

Song titled GIRLS LIKE JERKS:

girls like jerks
guys who smirk
dicks and cops
pricks and fops

girls like mobsters, pranksters
rocks stars, gangsters

cocks, schmucks, cheaters, snobs,
hitters, burners, guys named bob

girls like tough, girls like rough --
silent, manly, all that stuff

girls like assholes, cowboys, greasers, hogs
oafs, clods, insensitive slobs

guys named fred, guys with dreads
muggers, sluggers, gropers, feds

girls like jokers, kidders, killers, tackles
guys who posture, guys who cackle

dopes, mopes, dems and dosers
scoundrels, schemers, scammers, hosers

guys named duke, guys named tony
guys who eat macaroni only

girls like goons, girls like grunters
they're the guys they let touch their cunts, sir

they like bullies, thugs,
inconsiderate lugs
agents, winners,
grinners, sinners
hipsters, actors --
not chiropractors

girls like guys who hardly speak
the strong, the burly, not the weak

jocks, they like, bikers too
brawlers, maulers -- just not you.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

2009-01-27T04:43:00.000-05:00

When I was a freshman at the university of wisconsin in 1960, i sat next to a lusciously shaped girl in french 101. She appeared soft and sensuous, large breasted and raven-haired, not skinny and scrawny like the anarexic models of today. Her skin was flawless, a creamy off-white, and her face sculpted with the perfection of an ancient greek statue. Her name was Susan Potash and I was helplessly, hopelessly in love with her. i fantasized about her every night as i passed into sleep, imagining the most carnal yet romantic intertwinings of our body and souls and holes. i ached to be spending the rest of my life with her on the island of corfu.

She was completely out of my league, of course. I was a nerdy little guy from New Jersey, she a political radical who had grown up in manhattan. She was militant, a warrior for justice and against the bourgeoisie, of which i was so obviously a charter member. she had dirt under her finger nails and smelled of pot. Her long thick black french braid curled down her back and sometimes even around onto her desk like a living sexual organ.

at the same time as i was taking french with susan, i was taking philosphy 101. For some reason i enjoyed it, digging ever deeper into the essays by kant and hume we were assigned every week. i found by reading it over and over again -- something i had never done in past courses and would never do in future ones -- that the impossibly dense prose would begin to yield meaning. i was good at it, which at the time was about the only thing feeding my much battered self-esteem.

somehow i wanted to communicate my expertise in philosophy to susan, my feeling being that though i lacked height, looks, confidence, charisma, and hot sexual experience, she would be impressed by my intellectual brilliance. it suddenly occurred to me that if i could come up with THE ANSWER TO LIFE, she would be so impressed she would step out of her panties for me, a garment she probably changed only every third day. oh, how i longed to collect her discarded pairs.

so i lay in bed everynight imagining the headlines in the wisconsin badger, freshman philosophy student comes up with the meaning of life. freshman figures it out -- the answer to life. and susan coming to class that morning, her enormous dark brown eyes misty with love and lust for me. the only glitch in this most delicious of fantasies was that i could never actually think what the answer to life was. i knew it was out there somewhere, that it was achievable, more than that, just around the corner. but i could never quite wrap my arms around it.

Well, you know what? 48 years later i finally have. the purpose of life is to prolong life, to figure out how to extend life, not just its length, although that's paramount, but its quality. i want to be playing great fucking golf at 127 years old, fucking my hot 126 year old wife every night, wringing chandalier-shaking orgasms out of her that put 19 year olds to shame.

Impossible? Fuck you. If we took all the fucking billions we spend on defense and warfare, the best minds on our planet would be figuring out how to work magic with genes. the average age of death for men in the 1920s was something like 57. it's now about 75 -- an advance of 18 fucking years! and we know so much more now than we did then.

So that's it, friend, the meaning of life: IT IS TO BE EXTENDED AS LONG AS IT CAN. We're the only species on earth that knows it's going to die. What's the only rational reaction? to put the inevitable off as long as is humanly possible. you read it here first, pal. now get your ass out and spread the word. if you don't, you'll be staring death in the face before you know it.

DISEASE NAME-GAME

2009-01-11T22:32:00.016-05:00

Alright, how many reasonably realistic names can you make out of diseases?

NEW ENTRIES FROM READERS: Lara Engitis; Lou Gehrigsdisease;

Amy Otrophic-sclerosis; Ginger Vitus; Basil Cell; Al Zheimers;

Ann Hedonia; Al O. Pecia; Peri Carditis; Klaus Trophobia;

Ed Ema; Rosie Ola;

---------------------------------------------------------------
MY LIST:

Paul Zee; Di Abetes; Ann Gina; Ann Eemia; Lou Pus;

Lew Keemia; Anna Rexia; Beau Lemia; Sy Kosis; Colin Cancer; Mel Anoma;

Em Fazima; Paul Aigra; Clem Idia; Hy Poglocemia; N. Demitriosis;

Chick N. Pox; Arthur Itis; Perry Tonitis; Pan Creatitis

Mack Uladegneration; I. Ritis; Rick Etts;

Ray Naudsyndrome; Rue Maticfever; Scarlet Fever; Hy Drocephalia;

Sy Attica; D. Lirium Tremens; Sy Nusitis; Paul Io; Di Aria;

--- Anyone out there who comes up with more names than on my list wins one hundred bucks, even if you're an m.d. good luck,e

7 FAVORITE RELIGIOUS RATIONALIZATIONS

2008-12-23T02:51:00.003-05:00

1) GOD WOULD NEVER THROW AT ME ANYTHING I COULDN'T HANDLE

Well, what about a blood clot that strikes in your sleep, cutting off all oxygen to your brain, leaving you a virtual vegetable for a few months before you finally waste away from a raging pneumonia? Did god throw you a high hard one that somewhat got away from him?

2) SOMEWHERE UP THERE, MOM IS LOOKING DOWN ON US

How do you know? Did she send an e-mail? Text you? Somehow upload shots of herself in angel's attire and lyre on O-photo? Face it, pal, when your sweet little mommy plowed drunkely into the old oak on your front lawn in the flimsy little Kia, the only car she could afford after your father took off with his 19 year old secretary, it left her mutilated body dead beyond doubt with precious little energy to ascend to heaven. Besides, even in death she was still drunk. Heaven doesn't go for drunks.

3) MY BOSS IS A JEWISH CARPENTER

You show me a Jew who's good with a hammer and nails, saw, sander, awl and adze, and I'll show you a white Russian trying to sneak out of the Motherland in yarmulke and prayer shawl. No, your boss more likely is a tough, demanding Italian whose about a hair's breath away from firing you because you have the attention span of gnat and the carpentry skills of a man with parkinson's.

4) GOD OPERATES IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

Totally agree with this one -- he lets guys like george bush live in big houses with sharp cars, full security, lots of money, while in Darfur poor defenseless people, thousands of children among them, are left to die of starvation, machete attacks, cholera, AIDS. This is some cool cat, this God. Dude with a lot of compassion.

5) THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.

Yeah, but only after the strong have stripped-mined her clean of gold, platinum, uranium, steel, aluminum, and anything else they needed to set up their towering pleasure palaces on Venus. Not to mention that the strong have already made off with the only space ships that can make it all the way to Venus where they've set up a life style so decadent, so genuinely sexually stimulating and versatile, that the meek wouldn't have a clue how to fit in had they actually been able to find their way there. It's kind of like saying, One day the meek shall inherit Detroit.

6) GOD LOVES YOU.

He do? Sure has a funny way of showing it. I don't test well -- never get in the high 70s, much less the 80s, and the 90s are simply out of the question. I have a weak chin and thinning hair. I know beauty is supposed to be only skin deep; but, still, the only girls I get to fuck are ones I have to pay for, and they lay back, smoking, talking to the girls on the other beds while I'm eeking out my scared, hurried orgasm. And these girls? They have so little beauty I actually find jerking off way more stimulating. At least this way I can fantasize a beautiful girl. And if he loves me so much, how come I have really bad asthma, poor self-esteem, a grating, strident voice that drives away the few friends I have, the body odor of a goat, and spend just about every week-end night alone at my parents house giving serious thought to killing myself. The only time I ever felt even a smidgeon of god's love is when my Dad shamed me into throwing a ten onto the collection plate. Made me wonder: is god's love actually for sale??

7) GOD IS EVIDENT EVERYWHERE WE LOOK

Right, like the homeless lady sleeping on the church steps in her own urine in 24 degree temperature, wrapped in little more than a blanket, possibly frozen dead by morning. Or the Senegalese immigrant hawking watches on Madison Avenue, perhaps selling one a day at 25 bucks, living in a rooming house with a dozen compatriots per room, sending precious little money back to wife and children in Senegal, with no money here to live beyond a subsistence level, no money if he gets sick, no money if he can't work because he has such a high temperature he can't see straight. Sure, we can see god everywhere, in the sick, the disturbed, the crippled, the ostracized, the aging, the dying -- man, god's all over the place.

"Mette" by Girl Problems

2008-12-04T16:45:00.001-05:00

The new video for "Mette" by Girl Problems.

Visit www.myspace.com/girlproblems for more.

12 WAYS TO FISH FOR COMPLIMENTS/REASSURANCE:

2008-11-02T09:32:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to think all those sessions with my personal trainer are a waste of money.

My colorist made my hair too blonde, didn't he?

I think I should have cooked the steaks a little less.

Are these jeans too tight in back?

I didn't explain that very well, did I?

This dress makes me look fat, doesn't it?

This is my girlfriend -- it's not a very good picture of her.

I just wish I weren't so short.

I'm not sure green is my color.

I know what you're thinking, I've lost a little hair since the last time you saw me.

Ah, come on, Ma, Scarlet Johansen would never want to go out with a guy like me.

I came too quickly, didn't I?

WIFE #3

2008-10-29T11:16:00.000-04:00

New short story:

WIFE #3

Skipper slammed the door of his ’82 red Chevy pick up truck hard, but it made a flat, unsatisfying sound and he could tell that it hadn’t shut. He slammed it harder with the same result and screamed, “Fuck!”, swallowing the word at the last second so that it burned in the back of his throat. He leaned into the truck to see what the problem was and felt his head suddenly snap back as the brim of his 10 gallon banged hard against the edge of the driver’s seat.

The hat flipped up in the air and although Skipper tried to grab it on its way down he could not quite get his hand around the crown as it fell into a muddy puddle on the parking lot floor. He bent down to pick it up and his guitar case slammed into the truck door, making a loud thwack. Skipper hollered a garbled obscenity, then stood and took a deep breath, counting slowly to five. He leaned back into the truck and discovered the metal clasp of the seatbelt was lying inside the door housing. There was an ugly tear where the door had crushed the clasp against the padding of the door.

Skipper pushed the seat belt out of the way, shut the door, and walked slowly up the steps of Joe Steak, the oldest of the longtime cowboy restaurants on the main drag of Cave Creek.

As soon as he stepped inside, the quiet of the black, cool desert night gave way to the chatter and clinking of diners talking and eating. The clock behind the reservations desk read 8:20, nearly an hour past the time Skipper was supposed to have begun strumming the first few bars of the evening.

Got to cut back on the red wine, he thought. A light sleeper who up until recently had never needed an alarm clock, he woke with a start just 20 minutes ago, not knowing what day it was or what town he was in. His radio was blaring a Suns game at a volume that would have been too loud for the hard of hearing.

Wishing he were at least 50 pounds lighter, Skipper slid, as inconspicuously as possible for a man whose belly spilled some 8 inches over his cowboy belt, into the little set from which he performed Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. He unpacked his guitar quickly and launched right in, "Livin on the road my friend…", hoping that Oren, manager and son of the owner, had not noticed his absence. But banging the guitar had apparently loosened the D string, and Skipper had to stop and place the guitar across his lap.

At that very moment, Oren cruised by on his way toward the bar. Skipper tipped his hat, but the young man continued on without so much as a nod. Skipper resumed, "Now you wear your skin like iron, your breath as hard as kerosene …."

He felt out of breath, a little hoarse, but singing always soothed him, and as he started the second verse, his whole system seemed to lose its tenseness. "Lefty he can’t sing the blues all night long like he used to.…" Through all the ups and downs, the big paychecks and the little rundown bars, the nights in the arms of Gwen and Marlene or tumbling onto some dank motel cot drunk and alone, of one thing he could be sure: the people listening, as he did himself, took pleasure in his voice.

The tall waitress with the long thick braid that hung straight down the middle of her back stopped, as was her habit, to watch him for a moment. Skipper winked, hoisting an imaginary shot glass to his lips. The girl smiled back and went on her way.

The drink did not arrive, however, and Skipper sang a fifth and then a sixth song, his throat feeling drier, his voice sounding hoarser, till he thought it would just grind to a halt. He tried to catch the eye of the waitress with the braid as she hustled by with an enormous round tray, but she pretended not to see him.

“Oren,” he whispered, waving at the manager with his hand. “Where the hell’s my drink already.”

Oren put his forefinger to his lips. “Please,” he said. “I don’t think you should drink while you’re playing. It doesn’t look professional.”

“What the fuck. What’s a country singer without a drink in his hands.”

“You start to slur your words. The people in the back room can’t hear you.” This had become a point of contention within weeks after Oren had graduated hotel school and come to work in his father’s restaurant.

“I told you, get a better mike.”

“It’s a Senheiser,” he said and walked away.

In the old days Skipper would have just said fuck you and got up and bought himself a double at the bar and brought it back to the set and resumed singing. Or, maybe he would have caught up with Oren, spun him around and punched him flush on the nose, not because he really felt like it but because he imagined that’s what old Merle would have done.

But he’d blown too many good gigs, broken his hand too many times, gone through far too much money, and had his own nose flattened half way across his face and back, not to mention that Oren was 6 inches taller, 3 decades younger, and had played 2 years of college football.

So Skipper croaked out another song, finishing the set, then got himself a triple Jim Beam on the rocks and went and sat outside in his truck, turned the heater way up, lit a Marlboro, and switched the dial to WWAL on the FM radio. He loved smoking in the cab of his pick up at night, the windows all steamed up, dragging deeply on his beloved cigarettes while breathing in all the trapped smoke as well.

Made a fellow wonderfully light-headed and just a little sleepy. Skipper let his head loll back against the headrest. "We come here quite often and listen to music, Partaking of yesterday’s wine"….Jesus, that man could tell a story.

What the fuck is it with you guys, Lily, the only child of his 4 marriages, would say. Always thinking you have to live what you sing. You don’t see Placido Domingo walking around pretending he’s the fucking Barber of Seville.

Skipper smiled to himself. God, he loved women who got right up in your face even though they knew it might mean taking a hard slap to the cheek. Or even worse. Not that he ever really hit any of his wives. Mostly he just got a hard on when they yelled at him, hissing like alley cats, shoulders all hunched, asses out. He would think, what she really wants is a cock in her, but most of the time he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Closing his eyes, the alcohol beginning to ease the very last vestiges of tension in the far reaches of his limbs, Skipper stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray and pushed his hat down over his face, blocking out the streetlamp at the edge of Cave Creek Road. "Yesterday’s wine, we’re yesterday’s wine, aging like time, like yesterday’s wine."

It seemed just a moment later someone was knocking on his window. The waitress with the braid yanked the door open. “Come on, Skipper, you were supposed to be back on 15 minutes ago. Hurry up. Oren is so pissed.” She stood there with her arms folded across her chest.

“You run on in, darlin’,” said Skipper. “Jest got to get situated here.”

“You okay?”

“Oh, yeah, old Skip’s jest fine.” He waited for her to leave, then swigged the last of his bourbon, shuddered, and lit another Marlboro. He took a deep drag, but when he started to exhale the onrush of smoke tickled his throat and he started to cough, a small dry cough, but one he couldn’t stop. There was a rawness now at the back of his throat that made him want to suck in air, as if that would somehow cool the irritation. He opened the window and gasped deeply of the cold night air, but that just made his throat feel dryer, as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of talc, which in turn made him want to cough again.

He held his engineers handkerchief against his mouth, coughing every few seconds, waiting for the urge to cease. Liquid now seemed to be forming in the back of his throat, and he spit into the handkerchief, which he held up to the streetlight. But the red of the fabric made it impossible to tell whether it was blood or not. Whatever it was, the liquid had eased the terrible dryness.

Fuckin’ doctor, he thought as he slipped back into the set at the front of Joe Steak, pluckin’ those little pieces of flesh from the roof of my mouth. Shoulda never let him touch me. Bastards do more harm than good.

"Sitting at a fancy table in a ritzy restaurant, He was staring at his coffee cup….", he sang in little more than a whisper. Reaching down, he cranked the amp way up, smiling at the diners sitting nearest. He had always been able to work a crowd with his translucent blue eyes and big blond handle-bar moustache. But the patrons seemed hardly to notice him, young couples in nice clothes talking about buying new cars and remodeling kitchens.

The waitress with the braid brought him a tall glass of water and he drank greedily. But still he could find little of his voice and began leaving off in the middle of a phrase, trying to cover the missing words with ever more animated guitar playing, adding tremolos and arpeggios when his taste had always run to a Spartan minimalism.

The bar stools were placed seat down atop the bar. Skipper sipped a Budweiser straight from the bottle and watched the girl with the braid swabbing the counters, stacking glasses. She had a big ass and a weak chin, not nearly as pretty as any of his wives. But she was at least a quarter century younger than he, and that counted for something. “Sit and have a beer. Tell me all about yourself.”

“Oh, I’d love, too, Skipper, but I gotta finish closing up. My boyfriend’ll be here any minute.”

A light flicked off in the back room. “That’s okay, Annie, you run along. I’ll lock up.” Oren appeared out of the shadows. He walked behind the bar and poured himself a Cutty on the rocks. “Skipper,” he said, “come and sit up here. We gotta talk.”

Once in 1967, after a performance at a dingy club outside Houston, Skipper sat at the bar drinking when a skinny kid with a druggy-looking girlfriend -- the two of them couldn’t have been more than 17 -- began mimicking Skipper’s singing voice. Nothing mean, almost sort of flattering. But when Skipper kidded back, something about the young man being a string bean, he was off his barstool and suddenly Skipper was on the floor, holding his arms up as the kid and his girl and a whole bunch of their suddenly materialized friends were kicking him with their steel-toed boots. That was the first time it struck him: how fast things could get real bad.

In August in Phoenix it not infrequently gets up to 112 degrees. In Cave Creek, about 30 miles to the north, where Skipper had lived for the past ten years, it’s usually 8 to 10 degrees cooler. Lily, Skipper’s daughter from his second marriage, invited him up to Minnesota where she and her husband had rented a little house in the lake district.

But his throat hurt too bad. And after the surgery, he talked funny. So Lily got out her old, dog-eared address books and began making calls. Wife #1 was remarried to a veterinarian living in Nevada and laughed at the idea. Wife #4 said she was sorry to hear the news, but that she and Skipper had been together less than 6 months and she just didn’t feel that much for him.

The answering machine at the apartment of Wife #3 said, ‘Leave a message and if I’m in the mood I just may call you back.’ Wife #2, her own mother, had been killed in a car accident on the Pacific Coast Highway three days into her honeymoon with the Xerox salesman she married after divorcing Skipper.

Lily was searching Expedia.com for a cheap plane ticket to Phoenix when the phone rang. “What’s this shit about Skipper?” said the voice with the deep Mississippi accent.

Skipper was lying on his unmade day bed watching Oprah and soothing his endlessly raw throat with cold Budweisers when he heard footsteps coming up the wooden steps to the little apartment he rented above the travel agency. A skinny woman with bleached blond hair and big hoop earrings stepped through the front door.

“Holy shit, look what the cat dragged in.”

“You talk funny, Skipper.”

“I got cancer of the throat.”

“I heard.” He looked at her curiously. “Lily called.” She fished in her pocketbook and pulled out a deck of cards. “You still play gin rummy?”

She sat down on the bed next to him. “Jesus, what a mess. Soon as we play a rubber I’m gonna clean this place up. And don’t think I’m gonna sleep with you.” She looked over her shoulder. There was a couch against the far wall. “I guess that’ll do.”

Skipper swung his legs onto the floor and sat up. “I heard they made you some kind of big time pit boss over in Vegas.”

“I took a leave of absence.”

“You can do that?”

“No ex-husband of mine is gonna die alone – even if he was a giant pain in the ass.”

Wife #3 held out the cards to be cut, but Skipper waved her off. She started to deal. “Supposedly, the doctor says you ain’t gonna last more than 6 weeks?”

Skipper shrugged. “What does he know.”

“Well, don’t go provin’ him wrong. A girl could go crazy in this shit hole.” She flipped over a card. “Okay, knock with 7 or less.”

EXCUSES, EXCUSES!

2008-10-12T12:28:00.000-04:00

THE REASON I'M LATE FOR WORK IS:

My alarm clock didn't go off. I volunteer at a soup kitchen every Thursday morning. The subway's are fucked up. I didn't get home from the office last night until 3 a.m. I was having breakfast with the client. Stuck in the elevator. Mugged on the way here. Had a seizure.

LOST MY HARD ON IS:

I drank too much wine with dinner. You're almost too beautiful. I'm worried about the economy. Don't think we know each other well enough yet. It gets so big I'm afraid of hurting you.

MADE A LOAD IN MY PANTS IS:

Thought I was only farting.

AM A RAGING PIMPLY BITCH:

About to get my period. Had a lousy night's sleep. Am tired of being the only one who does the dishes around here. Don't enjoy your constant attempts at anal intercourse. Find it insulting to constantly be compared to the sluts on your favorite porno sites. Resent being railroaded into performing 69 with my cousin Rachel.

WENT TO WEST WYOMING TECHNICAL IS:

I don't test well. Wanted a small school. They're the only ones to offer a course in stalagmite sculpture. Didn't apply myself in high school. Heard it was a great place to meet women. Love wide open spaces. Can't stand the east coast liberal media elite.

HAVEN'T PROGRESSED FURTHER IN MY CAREER:

I''m just too damn nice. Enjoy being part of a team. Give my best ideas away to others. Have so many outside interests. Lousy at company politics. Just not interested in being chairman. Like to stop and smell the roses. Refuse to kiss ass.

DRIVE A 14 YEAR OLD KIA:

I for one care about the environment. Just want a car that gets me from here to there. Easy to find parking spaces. Don't give a shit if it gets broken into. Get tons of left-wing girls who hate investment banker types in their bmws. Just not a materialist.

WEAR LIFTS IN MY SHOES:

They're not lifts, fuck face, they're orthotics, and if I didn't wear them I'd have to get an operation on my bunion and wouldn't be able to walk for six weeks which would mean I'd put on weight again and when you're 5' 2" even if it's only 8 or 9 pounds, it makes you look short and squat.

"FRIENDS" YOU WANT TO KILL SAY THINGS LIKE....

2008-10-02T04:55:00.000-04:00

It's so embarrassing, my girlfriend comes so loud she wakes everybody in the dorm.

It's a nightmare having your own tennis court -- people keep inviting themselves over.

You have no idea how fucking temperamental a Ferrari is.

This is the last time I get a sports jacket at Gucci.

My four years at Harvard were a total waste.

I'm so depressed -- my accountant just told me I owe the federal government $285,000 in taxes.

It sucks being 6' 4" -- you're always banging your head on something.

Went out with Miss Sweden last night -- all she wanted to do was fuck -- no intellectual stimulation whatsoever.

Shot a lousy 76 today -- I tell you if things don't turn around, I'm quitting this stupid game.

If I can't find a brand of underpants that don't strangle me, I'm going to kill myself.

MOST PATHETIC RATIONALIZATIONS EVER!

2008-09-09T19:11:00.001-04:00

SIZE DOESN'T MATTER

MORE THAN A HANDFUL IS WASTED

I LOVE ALL MY CHILDREN THE SAME

MY BOSS IS JEALOUS OF ME

IF I HAD IT TO DO OVER AGAIN, I WOULDN'T CHANGE A THING

MONEY DOESN'T BUY HAPPINESS

BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP

I DON'T CARE WHAT I DRIVE AS LONG AS IT GETS ME FROM HERE TO THERE

I DON'T CARE WHAT I SCORE, I JUST LOVE BEING OUT ON THE GOLF COURSE

I LOVE SEEING OTHERS DO WELL

IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE

BRAND NEW STORY

2008-08-14T00:32:00.000-04:00

REALITY FICTION (Part I of II parts)
by Eric Weber

Rabinowitz scuffing down Elkwood Street, hating his name, hating his religion/race/ethnicity – you tell me what it is – despising his shortness, loathing his balding-ness, nauseated by his softening belly, his skinny little dick, his truncated thighs, his gnarled arthritic fingers, cursing his gift – some men are born with the ability to scoop up hardballs rocketing at them across rutted infields at 140 mph, poor Rabby an ear for titles – plucking them out of the cacophony of morbid thoughts pin-balling inside his skull, the tyranny of nostalgia, you have to make allowances, my wife is trying to kill me, the wrong Jew, hundreds of ‘em, planning, one day, to write a story for each – if only there were a software program, feed in the title, dial the genre, men’s fiction, and a passable story, up to the standards of at least the East Stroudsburg Teachers College Review, is written for you.
R passes the shabby little house at the corner of Mountain and De Peyster, blight on the neighborhood, lawn gone to seed, sea of leggy yard-high dandelions, porch sagging, hulking shiny black Escalade parked caddy corner in the driveway, someone must have come home drunk. Questions arise: how can they afford it? What do they do for a living? R slows his pace, checks his watch. 3:24 pm. Early. He continues on another hundred yards or so, then, at the sound of a straining engine from down the block, about faces. As if on cue, the curved yellow roof of a school bus rises from behind the little hill on De Peyster and pulls to a stop in front of the house. Octagonal red signs pop up like ears on either side of the bus. Horn honks. A moment later, from out of the house steps a Daisy Mae-like creature, all breasts and legs and long blond ringlets, tripping down the dilapidated porch steps. A small boy, pretty doll’s face, emerges from the bus, toddles in front of it, and Daisy sweeps him into her arms, peppering his head with kisses, pushing him face first into her cleavage.
“Afternoon, “ says R, closing his eyes for a moment, imagining the warmth, the softness, sucking in two lungfuls of air, hoping to pick up a whiff of perfume and sweat, salt and skin. He slows almost to a stop. “Lovely day,” he says. Love, lovely, love making – it’s in the air. “Yes, beeyootiful,” she says in a comically squeaky voice, although to R’s ear it is pure Bacall, Bankhead. The woman smiles as Rabby ambles by in slow-mo, neighborly yet, in his mind, not without a touch of elan, hoping she has come to accept his miraculous appearance every weekday afternoon at exactly 3:30, give or take a minute, as simple evidence of a fixed routine, our 50-something gentleman, semi-retired (rhymes with fired), out for his afternoon constitutional, Daisy never imagining in a million years the heartsick fantasies R is harboring, not only a fusillade of anal thrusts to the hilt but, perhaps much more telling and sad, candlelit dinners at their little Italian restaurant along the Hudson – she would laugh at these more than the sex. Rabby continues on, right on Lawrence and all the way to the top of the hill that brings him to Jones Road, which sits on the ridge of the Palisades and reveals, in one breath-taking instant, a most sudden and assaulting view of the New York skyline, glittering today under a mid-October sun, cloudless and azure, 55 degrees, low humidity.
Like Rocky atop the library steps, King Kong the Empire State, there is that moment of exhilaration, of having surmounted obstacles insurmountable, of triumph and freedom, panoramania, a place from which to look down on all those about him. R’s sense of release and possibility is harshly tempered by the inescapably bowel-searing knowledge that this very skyline, icon to the world, has soundly defeated him, kicked his ass out of town, sent him Jersey-bound just one short year ago, Alphabet City, his old stomping grounds, suddenly too expensive, too crowded, too intense, everyone there on a mission with no time for the likes of Rabby, not even postal clerks willing to schmooze with the lonely, always-eager-to-talk-sometimes-going-a-whole-week-without-a phone-call-or-shared-meal-with-a-friend Rabinowitz – why should they when all around them stream platoons of long-legged young people marching up and down Avenues A, B, C, D, vibrating with self-love and a collective obsession with power, money, fame, sex, and six-pack abs – Rabby’s complete and total invisibility in their eyes paralyzing his fingers on the keyboard, his brain, his will, reducing him to a soggy, mute, self-despising impotency, driving him out of his beloved city of 50 years to a suburban village across the river, taking up residence in a dying man’s boarding house – the landlord a former banker pushed out of his job in his early fifties, unable to land anything at one-tenth his former salary, his wife leaves him, takes the kid, clears out the bank account, you know what comes next – a lethal, berserk prostate cancer – can’t pay the mortgage, has to take in borders, installing beds in his dining room, basement, living room, the place a fucking mess, full of misfits, petty criminals even, and the omnipresent stink of shit and dirty socks – and all the while he’s dying, his urethra blocked, pissing through a tube coming out of his side, managing his parody of a bed and breakfast between trips to the emergency room at Hackensack hospital, because he can’t afford a doctor’s visit, all the while hounded by bill collectors, repo men, and his estranged wife’s lawyer.

Rabinowitz out here on Forest Avenue, stag, as always, wishing he had a dog to disguise his blatant loneliness, the stench of his neediness, if only he loved dogs like a goy loves dogs, deriving succor from pet ownership – writer of short stories published by small houses that go out of business and literary magazines that go unread and pay $125 per story on a good day. Can’t get a job at Sarah Lawrence or Bennington, where it is rumored there are plenty of girls who will fuck a published author, no matter what he looks like, no matter his age, can’t even get a job at fucking Fairleigh Dickinson, just 6 miles west on Forest Avenue. Maddening to Rabinowitz not to be able to parade his earth-shattering new insight in front of a semi-circle of adoring, mini-skirted coeds – secretly worried that his idea is already found in one of the histories or comedies (that’s an eventual project of rabinowitz’s, to catalogue every significant idea found in Shakespeare’s work, to see if, in fact, there are any ideas anywhere not found in Shakespeare, well, of course, there are things like e=mc squared, but maybe even its forbear is in there somewhere, and after Shakespeare, maybe the Greek myths and the bible, The Great Big Book of Ideas, bet that’d sell – it could give you brain cancer, all these ideas but neither the energy nor follow through to write them.
It has recently occurred to Rabinowitz – this is his really big idea and one of his fantasies is to unveil it as a guest on the Donny Deutsch show – that everything we say and write is designed either to protect or promote our ego. Everything. “Good evening,” to the scowling West Indian parking lot attendant, “Just going to be an hour,” said to keep him from killing you or hurting your car…”I like the blouse,” to your fellow teacher (Rabby spent 35 years teaching English at Stuyvesant before being forced into early retirement by a newly appointed principal with a revolutionary vision of education) to help you get laid – nuts as the human animal is, lots of the ego promotion backfires – but the intent is always self-interest. So why write, it’s so fucking transparent? Because this is what Rabinowitz does: write. It’s all he knows.
Contemplating the conundrum, conflict, R does not see the big gleaming black Escalade motoring toward him on this leafy little street where a car doing 25 feels like it’s 50, and this bastardization of a Cadillac is doing, what, 65? 70? And here’s Rabinowitz in his earth tones, colors of the Ashkenazi migrated from the steppes of Russia, camouflage basically, never call attention to yourself. Once after the sale of a story to the New Yorker in his early forties, R, pumped up, sure that his time had come, bought a souped up fire-engine red Volvo, the XJ47K, and got 6 speeding tickets in the year he had the car, lesson learned, a ticket a pogrom, singled out for hubris, the gods kill us for sport, watch out, Rabinowitz, don’t get too big for your britches. So here he is in the shadows of a row of overhanging oak, the sun dancing among the wind-blown leaves, Rabby’s clothes the color of bark and foliage, the twinkling sun shining south-eastward straight into the eyes of the driver sitting up so high, high above the foreshortened R – who can possibly see him among all the foliage and chiaroscuro, sun in your eyes. Whoa, only at the last minute does the herky-jerky Rabinowitz walk cut through, right shoulder ducking, head bobbing. The driver driving twice the speed limit swerves, honks, yells something out the window in a harsh male voice, Jersey accent, basso profundo, something that sounds suspiciously like, “Watch where you’re going you stupid scumbag!” And, oh, how Rabinowitz is offended, the injustice, the danger, the feeling of powerlessness triggering the most delicious rage.
“Fuck you,” screams Rabinowitz, “COCKSUCKER!!” He karate chops the belly of his elbow as he raises his fist in the Italian fuck you, flipping the departing Escalade the finger, then the finger with both hands in a rhythmic, pumping motion, both arms going up and down in counterpoint like pistons, “Fuck you, buddy, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you – “ Uh oh – flash of angry red brake lights. R scampers on a few yards, poised to race through somebody’s backyard. But the Escalade motors on, just a momentary slowing to ogle a slender Asian high school girl in shorts, jogging in place, waiting to cross the street. Her head swivels to follow the disappearing car and Rabby feels a stab of jealousy – girl probably lusting for the driver of the big SUV, maybe a cool black guy, a handsome Italian, maybe even a fucking Greek – but Rabinowitz – invisible, that’s what he is to high school girls. Let’s face it, that’s what he is to anyone with a vagina.
So this must be Daisy Mae’s man, barreling through the oak-bowered streets of town like Rommel in a tank. A swirl of adrenaline courses through Rabinowitz’s bloodstream – what if the fellow had stopped and chased him up the street. Why R would have cut across the big old Victorian’s lawn, then left on Birchwood Place, then into the thicket of woods at the end of the block. R’s heart is pounding with film footage of his imaginary escape – R scampering through hedges, Escalade man rippling with muscle hot on his tail. What a story! What a movie! R is suddenly delirious with a vision of his Oscar acceptance speech – “I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!” he hollers after the disappeared SUV – then the inevitable acid rebound: what fucking middle-aged, bespectacled, pot-bellied nerd of a writer hasn’t been startled by an oversized car going too fast through his neighborhood. Writers! Frightened, law-abiding, law-loving fellows – of course, they hate the dude zooming by in his brawny, big-shouldered vee-hickle…rough, tough, ready to rumble – one thing about writers, they’re never ready to rumble, ‘cept on the written page. Shit, if he picked up a story about a car going too fast on a suburban street, he’d know exactly where the writer was coming from – a contemplative walk in the neighborhood interrupted by a young male wheeling by at too high a speed. Ugh. Revulsion. The writers – you see what they’re up to – that’s all a writer is ever doing, stating his case, grinding his axe, yammering on about what’s good for him – which isn’t a big black gleaming Escalade zooming by – wrong for the writer for so many reasons: can’t afford one, afraid of speed, attracting hot tough girls who really want to fuck right then and there, boom bang thank you ma’am – writers like to talk a lot first – and big tough guys who want to fight – so he takes out his pen and attacks – but because he’s a writer, and fancies himself an original, and in fact is a pretty book smart guy, he’ll flip it all around and make himself, uptight, law-abiding, nerdy protagonist, the butt of the story – he’ll side with the guy in the Escalade just to throw you off the trail – not out of conviction – he fucking hates the guy in the Escalade, but to be tricky – to disguise his motivation, that’s what a fucking writer does and our little Rabby can smell it a mile away. So why write?
R was invited to a party once at a big mansion in Southampton owned by an actual billionaire in the lend-lease biz – his egregiously fat, acned daughter took one of R’s fiction workshops at the Westside Y. R seated at the same table as the man, along with a famous woman novelist married to an equally famous husband/writer – R can’t tell you their names, but in 2004 they were the darling of the literarti, writing true shiterature – nice thing about the rich collecting artists is that they feed them, the wild striped bass was the best Rabby had ever tasted – “Why do you write?” asked the billionaire. R deferred. The girl went first. “I write, I write, the reason I write, “she said, “is I think, and I, I, I, I don’t want to sound vain – noooooooo – but I write because I think that something I write might just help someone live a better, fuller life.”
Billionaire nodded, pleased, turned to R. “I write,” said little Rabby, always the provacateur, “I write to dominate the reader, to show him how much smarter I am, that I can think of things so much deeper than he that he is awed, cowed, beaten. That is why I write (Mr. Lend-lease man), to show the world I am the smartest dude in the universe.”
Billionaire had dropped eye contact with R half-way through his tirade, turning to once again have intercourse with the beautiful young novelist, whose jaw hung open in shock and disgust at the ranting little R.
Writers, ugh! As hungry as actors and senators for the big bucks, recognition, the limelight. The one thing you can say about Rabby is: at least he knows why he writes. It’s a terrible compromise, of course. You want to be a dude on a horse with a lance, but you’re not equipped. Not athletic, strong, big, mean, or man enough, no appetite for the battle, nothing but fear of fighting, so you pick up a pen instead, only thing you’re good at. Through no fault of your own, you were born with an ability to cobble a sentence together. Others can design a dress. Inborn, all of it. You use your skill. Oh, the injustice of it all. Imagine, instead, being able to whack a golf ball 375 yards – whack! – the strength, the balance, the hand speed – 375 yards, just like Tiger did on the 17th at Augusta as R sat watching on his dying landlord’s plasma TV. Now there’s a man who dominates – oh, to be born with that long, strong black/Thai body, that steely sense of his own greatness – maybe in a few years, R thinks, the answer we always give ourselves, this mad belief in what he calls THE CORRECTION – that someday we’ll somehow get what we yearn for, no matter how impossible. R wishes he were taller, better endowed, born with a smaller nose, stronger chin, an ability to play the sax, to last longer during sex – someday, he muses, someday. He can see it now, sitting on the staff at Breadloaf with Roth and Updike and Oates –No money, no friends, no pets, no relatives except a sister happily married to a successful home builder in Prescott, Arizona with 5 kids and a couple of dogs, nothing to distract him from the task at hand, no one in his life except his dying landlord and a few mangy housemates to whom he owes nothing but a trifle of morning civility as they share the toaster and breakfast table, so Rabby has all the time in the world to devote to the writing of his next great story. But how great can a story really be…everything he reads nowadays sickens him – he can feel what the writers up to – takes a writer to know a writer – Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train (what douche bag named that?,– writers writing for writers – Christ, the driest stuff in all of Christendom, Jewdom, as well – dry, starchy, arch, smug, self-congratulatory, ain’t I smart, and subtle, and don’t I see just what’s wrong with the world today…nothing’s wrong, pal, nothing at all….just ain’t kissing your ass the way you want it to, you smug little cocksucker….life’s always sucked, idiot, always has, always will…for the simple reason it will never give you what you want – never. You’re a writer, for Christ sake. No matter how good it gets for a writer, how the fuck can it compare to being Tom Brady. Brad Pitt. Not even close. So you squirrel away in your little corner of the intellectual world writing your dry little stories.
R has worked himself into a rage, shuffling down Forest Road in his speedy little walk, 13 and a half minute miles. Man can motor. He longs to be the Tiger Woods of writing, the terminator, to dominate the field by being at least five times as good as his closest competitor. Rabinowitz has, among his stored up titles, a series on writing: writing in public (when he’s blocked, he brings his laptop down to the Starbucks on Broad Avenue); writing as performance (brings his laptop to write with great flourish, as if conducting the Philharmonic, on a bench in Van Saunt Park); writing for health (writes standing up with his laptop on his bureau, the windows wide open, heat off, white Irish seaman’s sweater and woolen cap on); writing to avoid brain cancer (writing furiously to unload as much of the swirl of mad thoughts as he can bear); and, finally, writing to end all writing. Oh, to write the piece that ends it all. They say that after reading Shakespeare’s 58th sonnet, Francis Bacon just up and quit. There is nothing more to say, he wrote, nor words to say it so sweetly. I shall never take quill in hand again. This is what R wants to do to his fellow writers – paralyze them so that they will never sit down at the keyboard again.
Thinking, thinking, thinking – Rifkin, he likes the name Rifkin. Rifkin is walking, no, shuffling, no shilly shallying down the street when in the distance a splash of sun highlights a looming black fender – no, ugh! Fie upon it! Rifkin! Right, Rabinowitz with his Rifkin. How original. Roth with his Zuckerman, Malamud with Fidelman, Bellow and Herzog, Richler with Kravitz, even fucking Updike with his Jewish Bech. Writers writing about writers. Jew writers writing about Jew writers. No, R is going to do it himself, not going to assign some nebbishy little Jew named Rifkin – Christ, he’s the nebbishy little Jew himself – he doesn’t need to create one. He’s it. R. Nobody else will do. It is time, says Rabby aloud to no one, it is time I step forward myself. Me. Rabinowitz. I will be the warrior. Warrior/writer. Didn’t Hemingway drive ambulances in Spain, for Christ sake? Okay, didn’t shoot guns but driving ambulances is nothing to sneeze at. And didn’t he beat the shit out of Wallace Stevens. There you go, I will become a warrior, no, I will be a warrior, and document it all along the way….keep a diary of my metamorphosis not into a cockroach but into a fucking warrior and I don’t give a fig if I’m a diminutive 58 year old man. I can do anything. Reality tv – how about reality fiction. Rabby’s excitement has sent him into a mania…he feels like Rumplestiltsken, whirling in a maddening circle, Rabinowitz, inventor of a whole new form of writing – reality fiction. He fuckin loves it.
R buys a digital camera and takes shots of his food, his vitamins, himself doing sits ups, the high school track where he has begun his daily wind sprints. His book will have pictures – proof of his emerging warrior shape and status. And don’t his readers deserve pictures – secretly jealous of graphic novels, R thrills at the prospect of doing his own. Pictures! Breaking up the endless black highway of text!