The Thirteenth Step: Chapter 3

Detective Preston Emery stood quizzically gazing into the toilet bowl, pants bunched like hand-cuffs around his ankles, pondering. He had been routinely bleeding into the toilet for nearly three years now. Seeing as he is, in his own words, not a sodomite, he was rather profoundly alarmed when he first discovered this phenomenon upon standing after a particularly painful posterior purge one evening— the toilet-water resembling a Shirley Temple if the grenadine had been added a drop at a time and hadn't been stirred. In the intervening years he had entertained all manner of flighty notions regarding its cause: from ascending colon cancer to swallowed razor-blades or finger-nails, from semi-conscious beet consumption to randomly rupturing vital organs. He never consulted a physician regarding this matter, as he presumed the doctor would believe him to be engaged in homoerotic activity— and that simply would not do. Furthermore, if it was indeed indicative of a larger problem, he would rather not know. Denial was more comfortable than having to cope with the knowledge that something was wrong with you.

In point of fact, Emery suffers from an anal fissure; an unnatural tear in the anal skin likely resultant of his attempts to regulate his own bowel movements. Emery's regimented existence rarely afforded him the luxury of an unscheduled intestinal elimination (shit to the layman), thus he felt he should attempt to coerce his body to acclimate to a routine by violently clinching his rectum whenever he felt the urge to purge out of cycle. This act of forcibly holding the feces in his intestines to facilitate the fluidity of his schedule eventually stretched the anal mucosa beyond its capability, causing a tear that would bleed violently following particularly hearty stools.

Not being profoundly knowledgeable on the subject of hemorrhoids, he was certainly at a loss for an explanation of why he was continually concocting a Bloody Mary in his porcelain distillery. However, with time one can easily acclimate to anything. As such, Emery was not staring into the bowl in another vain attempt at puzzling out the source of his bloody emission this evening. Tonight he was simply stricken with an unrelenting sense of foreboding. For reasons unknown he was dismayed by the call that had interrupted his allocated bathroom time: a request for his assistance investigating an assault perpitrated by a drug-addled prostitute on a young male resident of Chester Mulligan's "roach motel" in Carver park. The young man was in critical condition and in transit to Saint Theresa's while the woman was being held for questioning.

The lion's share of his trepidation eminated from Emery's hatred for that psychotropic sanctuary-- it was like an ant farm of pharmaceutical freaks nurturing their habits for the sake of an unnamed queen. As such, it was a hot-bed for criminal activity regardless of the legality of the drugs being consumed there. In fact, it was nearly routine for most beat-cops to make at least one pass by the place during their shifts. Something was bound to be rotten at the "High-Tower" on any given evening. Not more than three days ago an elderly female occupant of the building had hurled a feces-filled waterjug at a fellow inhabitant, presumably in reaction to his attempted intrusion into her room. The next evening a couch, completely engulfed in flame, had been hurled from a second-story stair-well out onto a fire-escape scaffold and into the street. Luckily enough, the windows in most rooms at the place were too small to fit anything of considerable mass through. Otherwise, flaming furniture of all shapes and sizes would be randomly expelled from the building without fail. As such, when Emery had the misfortune of being assigned an investigation within the harrowed halls of that disreputable dump he felt his insides begin fighting to get outside.

Perhaps his mood was also compounded by the fact that there is something unnerving about seeing his blood constantly co-mingling with his body's waste. Emery felt like a car leaking oil... he was certain that he was always on the verge of a break-down. Needless to say, a feeling of vulnerability is not the bedrock of solid detective work. Thus, his concentration was suffering from his constant worry-- and this in turn caused further physical deterioration. Hitching his britches, Emery made his best resolution to flush his fears along with the other worthless shit swirling in the toilet and exited the rest-room.

The hallways of precinct five were teeming with activity-- which was not entirely unheard of at 2:30 A.M, but it was certainly not a typical occurrence. Emery was not fond of crowds, which was why he requested the night-shift position in the first place. The trade-off for the accommodation of his social anxiety was that the bulk of the city's heinous crimes took place at night-- which put Emery waist-deep in detritus for the better portion of his career. In light of this fact, avoiding perpetually focusing on the morbid aspects of his existence was always a challenge.

Emery strode into his office and quickly, yet discreetly, eased the door closed on the chaos outside. Enclosed in his haven he slank around his desk and delicately eased himself into his faux-leather office chair as though he were climbing into a bath of unknown temperature. When he was able to join padding to posterior without any stabbing anal-pain, his muscles began to slacken slightly. When his gaze finally fell onto his desk, he noticed two of his pens and a stapler were ajar and that his phone had been shifted at least three inches away from its designated resting place. At the sight of this Emery burst up out of his chair and lurched to open the office door.

Performing a Kramer slide into the hallway (which caused a slightly irritating rectal itch) Emery bellowed like a bleating bull to no-one in particular, "How many times do I have to tell you guys NOT TO TOUCH MY DESK!!!!"

Several beat-cops were shocked out of their trance-like report-typing to throw a doe-eyed stare at Emery, while other officers around the office froze in mid-stride. Lieutenant Jensen, (the portly, shorn-scalped watch commander for the evening) struggled to bite back a laugh at the front desk. The scene was punctuated by the sound of a coffee mug shattering in the background somewhere, and shortly thereafter the general ruckus resumed. Emery strode angrily back into his office, oblivious to the chaffing such a stride caused, and slammed the door upon entry.

After acquiring a steno-pad (and re-adjusting the contents of his desk) Emery gathered up his briefcase and overcoat, then shuffled out of his office. He checked the lock on the door several times before vacating the premesis (seeing as he had to prevent the heathens from tampering with his arrangements), turning the knob with considerable force at various speeds to ensure it was tamper-proof. When he felt assured that the security of his office was ensured, Emery started on his arduous trek to his refurbished classic 1998 Buick Century waiting in the motor-pool. As he returned to his office door to verify that it was locked a paltry two times before actually leaving the corridor, it appeared to be the start of a very productive evening.

Rhretoric

Somewhere in the darkness
silence is born.

Midnight's veil is drawn from
the waking face of dawn-
the light erodes the quiet.

You and I,
gathering the mornings' breath,
dodge the creaks and groans of floorboards
on our way elsewhere...

Words spill into the silence
in incoherent moments
where our mouths
spew like lacerated veins--

Hours fill with discourse like jars of discarded change--
(always intending to trade them in for larger currency)

Rambling
like a grandfather's story
we waste our time complaining about
what little time we possess...

Always struggling to pin-point the moment when
we fell asleep as children and awoke as men.

I wish we could realize
(before the descending curtain of dusk
brings our conversations to a close)
in our youth
we were far too eager to sacrifice the silence...

The Thirteenth Step: Chapter 2

Maddy peeked out from under the gray standard-issue military blanket she used to isolate herself from the world. This time she was certain she had heard yelling. She glanced upward and noticed that neither of the 3x1 windows near the ceiling were showing any hint of sunlight. That meant morning was at least a few hours away and her meds had all but worn out. Maddy groaned outwardly. Restful sleep came too infrequently, and Maddy was never in a hurry to be rushed back to this lonliness.

Maddy sat up in bed and hung her head forward letting all of her matted graying hair flow over her face. She reached at it trying to run her fingers through but was unsuccessful. It had been at least two years since she cut it and about a year and a half since she stopped caring about her personal hygiene. Since she stopped caring about everything really.

That was the last time she had visited Dr. Culligan Manchester, a man who until that time had been a friend to her and her husband. During her one and only session of chemotherapy it was he who broke the news to her regarding the death of her family. It was he who suggested that she move into this place with the rubber walls and the mindless apes. It was he who explained to her the benefits of using drugs to stay alive. He told her, almost compassionately, that there would be light at the end of the tunnel.

Obviously he was one who didn't know what it was like to live at the end. And had to run up ahead just to find out what that light was really going to be. With those words it was he, who in effect, removed all hope. Such thoughts of those from her past did not frequently visit Maddy on account of her meds. And for this she was grateful. Who wished to live in the land of was? Surely not Maddy, surely not anyone whose entire life is now was.

Becoming aggravated with her own thoughts Maddy bent over to pick up a half-empty gallon in order to placate the dryness of her mouth. As she pressed the plastic to her lips she hoped she had picked up one of the gallons with water, and not one filled with piss and shit that she used to relieve herself - though, she realized, it didn't matter much to her either way.

Still unsure as to what she had drunken Maddy wiped her mouth with the back of her arm somewhat satisfied. Placing the gallon on her nightstand she stood up and crossed from one wall of her room to the other in thirteen short shuffled steps. In her time here she had paced this room thousands of times...back and forth...back and forth, always thirteen.

But as one dependent on others Maddy was used to playing this waiting game. Like everything else she did, it was not enjoyable to her, but it was the deed that required the least from her. Twice a week she waited for the person, her savior, to bring her the lifeblood on which she lived. Three gallons of water, some non-perishables, and her meds - a veritable grab bag of pills, both prescription and non. A total amalgamation of drugs to take her up, down, left, right on a goddamn Wonka-vator of highs.

That is what she was in need of now, but at this hour instead of finding nectar in her hallway she would only find calamity. Nothing Maddy was afraid of, or couldn't handle, just the type of shit she would rather not deal with. It wasn't horrible enough to match her own life for her to care. So as she heard the repeated thud of a man's hollow head hitting the floor she laid down to cover herself once again. The man's labored breathing; the sound of life fighting to stay alive became her metronome. Maddy drifted off again hoping the nightmare of a darker, colder, more fucked up world than this would find her.

Songcraft

We struck a chord then,
she and I;
Her discord and my discord
manipulated into unity
bled into airwaves
bled into eardrums
indiscriminately—

bystanders killed by stray bullets.

We surrendered
a portion of our pain
to one another;
to them all.

Disseminating harmonic disharmony to the masses,

we broke barricades
on scenes too grizzly
to view with impunity.

Our fingers probed the loam—

our songs were gravesites
wherein we entombed the past—

Unknown fingers
harvesting
sown seeds of discontent
flowering from carcasses;

Amassing superficial beauty stemmed from
obscured decomposition.

There were
anthems to agony,
melodies from misery,
lullabies of lies.

Strange how there is succor in collective misery.

Pillowtalk (aka Truth Hurts)

Beloved,

gazing down with
bedroom eyes
your doubt seeps in again--
befuddled by my resolve
to retain my virtue.

I fear it is not my resistance that wounds you;

Perhaps you struggle to recall
when you last felt needed
without towelling off afterwards...

The Thirteenth Step: Chapter 1

To the casual observer, Jann might as well have been a re-animated corpse acting on muscle memory for all the coordination he exhibited upon trying to discreetly enter the edifice at 1138 West Warm Springs Road at the early hour of 1:37 A.M. Upon missing the lock three times with carefully scrutinized stabs he accidentally dropped his key-ring to the ground and slammed the door rather violently with his head in an attempt to recover them expeditiously. It seems a 72-hour bout of sleep deprivation imbues one with the grace of a stumbling drunk. As it stands, the front door of the building had been battered to such an extent that the impact of Jann's head-butt (quickly accompanied by his entire body weight as he pitched forward) was sufficient to finally dragoon the wood away from the hinges. Needless to say, Jann would not have been more pronounced upon re-entry had he shot up a signal flare before entering. Oddly enough, though, his passage was unnoticed.


The compound at 1138 West Warm Springs Road in Carver Park, Nevada had once housed the New Castle Assisted Recovery Center prior to the ratification of the 37th Amendment to the U.S Constitution. Following this governmental declaration of legality for many “heretofore illegal substances” (concurrent with U.S. government subsidies on world-wide distribution of said substances) many of these rehabilitation clinics went the way of the dodo. As such, the buildings themselves were frequently demolished in an attempt to salvage property value. However, the New Castle center was purchased and refurbished by a prosperous and ingenious Las Vegas rounder by the name of Chester “Chess” Mulligan, who subsequently (and rather ironically) created a paradisiacal haven for newly liberated drug enthusiasts from the ashes of this monument to prohibition.


Forcing himself up off the door/floor, Jann cradled his head for a moment as he tried to re-orient himself to his surroundings. To his direct left was a rather spacious room bedecked with varied neon lights advertising the locals’ favored brands of spliff— amongst them Spectors, Watsons’ and the infamous White Widow brand. A brilliantly adorned three-foot-tall spun-glass bong stood like a lone reed in the room’s far south corner, adjacent to the scorched remnants of what may have passed as a pool table in a more civilized realm. Several strangely entwined potted plants and a headstone for someone (or something) named Bertha rounded out the current inhabitants of the compound’s “social suite.”


Scanning to his right, Jann saw a jumbled mass of flesh containing numerous limbs undulating rhythmically across the banister and steps of the ascending stairwell. Rather than fully analyze the jumble he groped furiously behind him for his keys. Upon locating them, he scurried past the surging sexual entanglement on the stairs whilst massaging the impact bubble that had begun to rise on his forehead. Trailing along the outlandishly graffitied hallway toward room 7, Jann recoiled violently into the wall screeching wildly as a calico cat with a smoldering tail darted out of the dimly lit corridor ascending from the basement. Heart aflutter, Jann composed himself as best he could. Squinting to try and discern any sign of the feline’s assailant in the gloom, he shakily closed the distance between rooms 4 and 7 in an excruciating three-minute crawl.


The three-story compound consisting of two above-ground floors and one subterranean level was created to comfortably house anywhere from 38 to 45 patients at any interval. Chess re-christened the compound the High Castle Assisted Discovery Center, establishing a business predicated upon another innovative Nevada rental establishment, the Moonlite Bunny Ranch. Initially at Chess’ High Castle, societal outcasts could indulge in their socially lambasted activity of choice on an hourly, daily or weekly basis away from the rheumy courtroom eyes of public opinion.


To facilitate the fluidity of the business aspects of the establishment, 12 staff members were housed within the compound itself to enforce what little sense of order one can impose over such erratic activity.


The business thrived for several years, until the bestial conduct of the clientele (and also, in truth, its’ proprietor) coupled with an almost cancerous public acceptance of many designer recreational drugs decimated the once lucrative industry of operating a den for private chemical consumption. Chess then converted the rooms to rent on a semi-permanent basis, and subsequently the building became the living quarters for many of its strongly loyal patrons. It also became low-income housing for individuals willing to sacrifice a measure of creature comfort for frugality’s sake. Enter Jann Whittmeyer.


Upon reaching the door affixed with a neon pink 7 emblazoned in grease paint, Jann again made several fitful attempts at coupling key and lock before finally using both hands to guide the key around the cylinder roulette-wheel fashion until it slid home. The recent burst of adrenaline from the cat frenzy did little to steady his hand. Upon finally finagling the lock into insecurity, Jann violently thrust the door open and burst into his room as though the devil were licking his pant-leg. Upon securing the door behind him, he proceeded to bolt the three redundant locks he had self-installed that aren’t engaged when he is outside it. With the rest of humanity effectively locked into a periphery realm, Jann collapsed onto his bed and drifted quickly into oblivion.


With the gargantuan levels of marijuana being consumed in the house at any given interval, nothing need justify a moment of quietude on any given evening. Stints of silence lasting up to 2 consecutive days can be indicative of a unilateral shift from DMT to grass by the freak faction downstairs. These trends do not last, however. The sound of shattering glass, the metronome for any significant gathering at the High Tower, had been noticeably fevered the past two evenings. With that providing context, one could assume that the madness was merely simmering its way back up to a boil. This was the main motivating factor for Jann vacating the premises and retreating to the few established areas between Carver Park and Las Vegas that were not overrun by addicts or avid experimenters looking to commune with corporate artwork or VdT flash displays.


What was once deemed an uninhabitable desert had been fashioned in the spirit of the vast majority of the great American continent; converted to a sprawling concrete jungle that forcibly prevented societal disconnect as much as it encouraged it. The modernization of miles of open desert had driven many activities once limited to moon-washed dunes and sand-bars into downtown avenues and side-streets. Few areas truly offer solace. Even Jann’s favorite library was relegated to a nearly-full hash bar peppered with sour-smelling, disheveled college students staring blankly at Foucault like a chimp attempting mathematics. Regardless of the lack of sanctuary, when the High Tower is ablaze with the vibrant sparks of true freak-dom it is advisable to be elsewhere.


The basement, which largely consisted of padded cells utilized in suicide watch during the rehab days, had long ago been cordoned off as the drop den. Given that the Tower’s quota of hallucinogenic flights had been reached years ago the night that Chess and his then coital companion Melanie did a tandem leap from a balcony whilst engaged in an ecstasy- induced slide-session, it was decided that the house's occupants would appear to be fizz-gigs to the greater neighborhood alchemists if nude couples continually plunged from the compound’s upper story. Thus, in the old days, all major chemical activity was relegated to the subterranean realms of the compound. Consequently, upstairs cubbies were intended to be utilized for smoking and imbibing substances with relatively mellow highs. While the building had converted, the mentality had not. The stoners stayed in the air, the crack-heads colonized the loam.


This left many of the buildings nouveau occupants, Jann included, as the ersatz cream filling between layers of hallucinating hooligans and Bob Marley enthusiasts. One would be hard-pressed to conjure a greater justification for an overwhelming feeling of unease than residing between an irresistible force and an immovable object. During Jann’s tenure at the High Castle, many an evening’s tranquility had suddenly surrendered to a cacophonous din of dope fiends orgiastically savaging their minds— but after two straight nights of seeking sanity in different surroundings, he was in dire need of a decent night’s sleep. Yet, just moments after surrendering his consciousness to a comfortable contour of his pillow, the suffocating silence of the house peeled back to reveal the frenzied beast it had so easily contained mere moments prior.

"I require more psychedelic mushrooms you corpse-fucking codpieces!"

Leif, the elfin arbiter of the chthonian chemical crew, was screeching with malcontent as he burst from the basement corridor and into the first floor hallway like an infant angrily shedding its' uterine cocoon. The battle cry of a freak-power behemoth banshee-wailing like Morrison's ghost on a quick ascent up a walkway is not something one can easily acclimate to waking up to. Consequently, Jann's semi-conscious full-torso recoil into his headboard was utterly uncoordinated and resulted in his becoming a trembling heap of bedding and trepidation on his floor. Leif's beleaguered bellowing faded like a siren ebbing into the distance as he had presumably moved from the hallway to the cafeteria in pursuit of his stash of psychotropic fungi that were languishing under an undisclosed sink.


There was a brief period of silence, and then a violent impact tremor shook the door to Jann’s abode with considerable force. Shocked, Jann struggled to remove himself from the bed-sheet tangle while his door endured another heavy impact, followed quickly by another with slightly less force. Then silence resumed it’s dominion over the compound. Perplexed, Jann sat for a moment in quiet contemplation of what strange creature had carried out the random onslaught.


After extricating himself from his bed sheet Bastille, Jann stumbled to his door and fumbled with the four bolt combination in the hopes of reassuring himself that the beast that bludgeoned his entryway had indeed vanished. The yawning maw of the basement corridor to his left was bellowing smoke, and several roving vagabonds from Leif's menagerie of miscreants were spewing into the first floor hallway in conjunction with Jann's exit from his sanctum. Any one of these individuals could have hurled themselves into his door, he thought… but upon Jann’s turning to his right to survey the rest of the hallway, a disheveled young woman clumsily adorned in an askew halter-top and whore skirt caked in what appeared to be either mustard or grease paint furiously hurled herself down the hallway, spearing him at the hip and mowing him down like a wrecking ball.


Clawing violently at his hair and neck with a wolverine’s intensity, the skank cyclone wreaked havoc on the sluggish and disoriented Jann who squirmed violently beneath her frenzied form. Jann could see a trail of blood flowing freely down her forehead, along with bits of wood embedded in the flesh of her scalp as well as her right shoulder.

“I know what you are!!!!” she wailed, “Come out of there!!! You can’t hide!!! Come out!!!!”

The two were an entangled mass of flailing limbs that was not altogether alien to the various onlookers in the hall given the mass Jann had previously encountered on the stairwell. Finally, the woman’s fingers found purchase at one point on Jann’s scalp, entangling with the ragged matt of his hair. He bucked violently beneath her, beginning to howl with the effort as she slammed his head repeatedly into the matted hallway carpet. The fluorescence of the hallway lights fluttered in and out of focus in Jann’s perspective as flashes of white pain like bursting fireworks overwhelmed his vision with each blow. With the squeals of the ravening she-beast resounding in his ears, Jann’s head came down with a firm, moist thud in the blood and fiber of the carpeting that finally extinguished the lights entirely.

Paddleball

In a relationship like paddleball,

someone has to be the string.

My sister loved her dad, so it

must have been her.

One day the string broke and we

never went back.

We hid at my grade school

with our jackets turned inside out

so he couldn’t recognize us.

It was dark and we ate shredded mini-wheats

out of a bowl that once contained butter.

It was a Sunday.

I remember because my mom asked me to get our

bowl back the next day at school.

I told her I couldn’t find it, but I never looked.

What was I supposed to tell the playground monitor,

“I need to find my mom’s bowl

that we left here last night when we

were running from my sister’s dad.”

I could have, but I was eight

and I already understood.

Where the Fear Lives

The fear usually resides wherever the pain is:

right underneath the surface out of sight,

but never out of reach.

It lives beyond the dark alleys of your stomach.

Past the place where all the secrets hide.

It lives above your shoulders,

between your eyes; every pore on your body

that creates sweat has fear behind it.

I met him face to face once,

looked into his weeping eyes

to see myself turn inside out

and crumble from the madness.

Wierd Habits

Sitting on the sink in a public bathroom,

I am regretfully aware

that this train of thought is becoming a poem

or whatever it’s called when ideas

run through my head

as I wait to find out who the guy is

that drops all those pebbles

into the bottom of the men’s room urinal.

Death March of the Yellow Butterflies

As we junctioned from the 85 to the I-8

heading west toward Yuma,

we came upon a patch of yellow flowers

floating through the air; as we saw them

flutter past our window in a chaotic tangle

with the current of air, bodies

swept around the side of our car, I couldn’t

help but imagine a Mexican child –

a little girl resting with her desperate family,

resting under the limited shade the desert

provides for the innocent ones like her –

grabbing yellow flowers from a bush

and releasing them into the wind.

When I began to notice my surroundings,

I realized it was far too late to help her,

as dead butterflies lined the highway

for a hundred miles in each direction.

Verdict

This is the second time you’ve asked me to die,

so why are you the one who looks condemned?

The first time it took six or seven years

To wake up in that stale room to an unfamiliar ceiling

and a half smoked Black and Mild, except that I

knew I was dead, or worse yet: had never been.

I had been pushed back into the womb,

back to the time of Adam,

and grown again from the seeds of life.

I am the only person to see man fall a second time

and yet there is no hesitation

in the words that will end my life again.

Revisionist Thinking

God, 

     grant me the
Serenity 

     to accept the people I cannot kill,
Courage 

     to massacre those I can, and the 

Wisdom 

     to know who will be missed.

Repatriation of the Planet of the Apes

Before the naked ape
took control of his dominion
the jungle was sultanate
to his brother the simian

When man's kingdom falls
to the secret of hydrogen
The family of pongidae
will renew their lost sovereign

My Lover Loses Her Temper

My lover loses her temper
and every fucking star
shatters to slivers
falling at my feet
A lexicon of loathing
unleashed at her blithering idiot

My face, swiped and sore,
flames from her abrasive tongue
Balance lost, I stagger
spattered by exclamations
of spitting anger
And I am too stunned to strike back

Tripping again, as I always do
I submit to the blame,
for I must vex her so
due to some transgression on my part
or a witless overstep of sacred bounds
Only a humbled apology
spares further assault

Such is my fate
to be the dupe of my woman's scorn
while suffering the stigma of provocateur
Reason holds no place in our love
and I've no courage to question
when my lover loses her temper

Pepino Voce Is Cute

Before picking up Lacey, his girlfriend of nearly a year now, and heading out to dinner, Nicholas Pocard had to call USA Trade Bank and transfer money from his savings to his checking account – an action which reminded him of the need to find a job soon, or else be unable to pay for his and Lacey’s routine Fancy Fridays. To Nicholas, Lacey wasn’t particularly demanding, but she kept to traditional gender roles which meant that she never deigned to enter a cab first, remove her own coat, or pay for a formal dinner. Mostly because of Lacey’s striking beauty, this ladylike obsession (no doubt inherited from her wealthy Alabaman mother) annoyed Nicholas no more than a slight tic would have, as if instead of draining one hundred dollars from him each week, Lacey was merely stretching her fingers on the edge of her seat every three minutes.

An automated bank teller’s “Thank you,” came through the earpiece and then, as Nicholas was taking the phone away from his ear, “Please stay on the line for our brief customer survey.” Nicholas, not one to bend to corporate interests beyond what was needed, hung up the phone, buttoned his shirt, slapped on a scent and left to pick up Lacey.
----
Lacey Allon looked like a teenaged angel when she opened the door for Nicholas Pocard. Like always, she was wearing a more-than-a-little formal gown for their Friday evening out. Nicholas noticed that her outfit and hair, together with the shape of her body, made her appearance not unlike that of a giant-sized bishop from a chess set, with the bottom two-thirds painted a rich blue by a player more interested in aesthetics than strategy.

Lacey skipped down the stairs of her front porch ahead of Nicholas. “Where to, darling?” she smiled, turning to face her boyfriend at the bottom of the stairs. Nicholas, hands in his slacks (which were only a bit too small for him) walked down the stairs two at a time, but slowly.

“I was thinking Pepino’s,” he said, taking his right hand from his pocket and placing it on Lacey’s cheek. After a kiss, the two turned hand-in-hand towards Nicholas’ Dodge.

“I like that,” said Lacey. “Anything else?”

“I just thought of Pepino’s,” said Nicholas.

“You only thought of one idea?” said Lacey, who, like the lady she was, waited for her door to be opened.

“Just the one,” said Nicholas. Opening Lacey’s door, Nicholas gasped at a nearly-empty package of cigarettes lying on Lacey’s seat. Lacey picked up the cigarettes without a word and, straightening her skirt against the backs of her thighs, sat down calmly, her knees hardly separating throughout the whole motion.

Nicholas sat down on something small which gave way. “You’re sitting on something,” said Lacey.

“I’m sorry. I left them on your seat,” said Nicholas almost dismissively, trying to steer the controversy towards chivalry – clearing the lady’s seat – rather than the more troublesome issue of Lacey’s hatred of tobacco products.

“You left what.”

“Smokes.”

“Do you smoke?”

“They’re Trace’s.”

“Trace’s,” said Lacey, with mock epiphany.

“They are. How could I smoke? You know how much I run.”

“When was the 10K again?”

“I don’t know when the 10K was, Lacey. Two months ago, maybe,” said Nicholas, trying to be peeved at Lacey as much as she was at him.

“Well, keep up the running there,” said Lacey, putting her hand on his thigh. “Don’t get mad, Nick. We’re not fighting.”

Nicholas took a second or two to speak. “I know we’re not. Lean over and kiss the driver, please.” She did. “So, Pepino’s? Or something else?”

“Let’s do Pepino’s. I like their shrimp,” said Lacey, leaning over to kiss Nicholas again.

“Pepino’s it is, then.”
----
Pepino Voce was a thin, one might say gaunt, Italian man not over five and one-half feet tall. An exceptionally polite host, he greeted diners as if they were entering an art gallery filled with paintings by his late father. Each man was greeted with a warm, firm handshake that made him reconsider Pepino’s size, as if he had mistaken a contrabassoon for a piccolo. This handshake between host and gentleman, it must be noted, naturally only came once each lady in the party had been embraced, kissed, and relieved of her coat.

Mr. Voce’s restaurant was like a projection of the man into dining room format. Pepino’s, at once small and spacious, hummed like a harmonica with its popping corks, an attentive wait staff, and carefree conversation without there ever being a moment when one did not have a secure sense of quietude. Pepino’s restaurant was as inviting, and as full of charming contradictions, as Pepino Voce himself.

But even the best of hosts cannot be equally hospitable to all, and Pepino Voce quite preferred pretty girls. So that when Lacey Allon and Nicholas Pocard entered his restaurant, the smile and handshake which Nicholas received were as cryptically, almost imperceptibly, cold and jealous as Lacey’s welcome was mildly tinged with sex. A distant observer with great vision could never have failed to notice Mr. Voce’s lecherous scowl as Lacey and Nicholas were ushered to their table.

Lacey ordered shrimp and Nicholas had the veal. Nicholas tried to order a bottle of wine, but the waiter asked for identification. So they both had iced tea.
----
“This was a good idea,” said Lacey, signaling she was finished eating by taking her napkin out of her lap and folding it next to her plate. “I always forget how much I like Pepino’s until I come back again.”

“Agreed,” said Nicholas, still eating.

Lacey sat, faintly smiling with her hands in her lap, and looked about the room for a moment before she spoke again, as if counting diamonds in a jewelry store. “You know what half of it is? I mean what’s great about this place, you know what half of it is? It’s Mr. Voce. I just love him. Isn’t he the nicest little man?”

“I like him.”

“He’s the cutest thing,” said Lacey, shaking her head at Pepino Voce, who looked up, found Lacey’s face like a walnut among almonds, and gave a quick finger-wave.

Just then, the waiter walked over and asked Nicholas if they needed anything. “I think we can do the check, please,” said Nicholas. Then, to Lacey: “I thought I was cute.”

Lacey reached her hand across and laid it on Nick’s. “Oh Nick, you know I think you’re cute,” she said. Nicholas stood up to kiss her across the table.

“And you, my darling, are ravishing,” said Nicholas, emphasizing the last word in a hauty accent.

“Don’t! Don’t talk sexy in my mother’s voice,” giggled Lacey.

“Talk dirty to me.”

“Stop,” said Lacey, and slapped Nicholas’ hand.

They looked at eachother until Nicholas continued. “I’m serious though, Lace. Let’s talk about this. I mean, I really wonder. What makes two people as different as Mr. Voce and I are both ‘cute’?”

“Why is that so hard?”

“Well, for example. I mean…Okay, I got it. I mean, when girls say ‘cute’ – and I’m making an assumption here – I think when girls say the word ‘cute’ they don’t exactly mean it like the dictionary says. Like, you could say that a bear cub is cute but that doesn’t mean the same as ‘Pepino Voce is cute.’ When you say it about a person – a male person – it’s something else.”

“That’s quite an assumption.”

“I think I’m onto something. You’re nervous.”

“Am not. You’re just over-analyzing everything I say. What exactly do you mean by ‘something else,’ anyway?”

“I don’t know really. But I almost want to say it’s sexual,” Nicholas said, looking to the ceiling for confimation. “Yeah, I’d say it’s sexual.”

Lacey was more baffled than offended. “You think it’s sexual.”

“I really do,” said Nicholas, putting his own napkin on the table. Just then the check came;
Nicholas slipped a Visa card into the black leather folder and balanced it on the edge of the table.

“Even if you don’t Lace, just go with it for a second. I’m onto something.”

“How much money do you have anyway? Seems like it’s been forever since you had a job,” said Lacey. “Before the 10K, even, and we both know how long ago that was.”

“Don’t be mad, Lace. I’m just trying to make a point.”

“That women are sex fiends.”

“Only some,” said Nicholas, who lightly kicked Lacey’s shin beneath the table in a failed attempt to resurrect some sense of levity. Coughing, he went on: “I’m not saying you want to have sex with Pepino Voce.” Lacey stuck out her tongue and Nicholas grinned. “But I do think that, if a girl finds one guy sexy, and she uses a single word to describe both him and another guy, then she must think the other guy is sexy, too.”

“That’s silly,” said Lacey, and thought for a moment. “I know what that is. It’s…a syllogism. A bad syllogism.”

At times like these, Nicholas became filled up with anger, all due to Lacey mentioning a subject which she had more familiarity with than he did. In this case, it was Lacey identifying Nicholas’ argument as a syllogism, a term not quite in his vocabulary, which sent Nicholas into such a hidden, embarrassed fury. Nevertheless, Nicholas seldom was one to confess his ignorance and therefore had to make some retort in order to save face. So he said:

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is. We just learned about it in Humanities last week. Just because I use the same word to describe you and Mr. Voce doesn’t mean that I think of you in the same way. That’s like saying that the Eiffel Tower is tall, and Tom is tall, so therefore Tom must be the Eiffel Tower.”

Nicholas couldn’t speak. He felt defeated.

As if prompted by a temperature gauge hidden in Nicholas’ collar, their waiter reappeared to take the bill. But the waiter, who performed a small bow as he lifted the billfold from the table, was stopped by Lacey Allon. “You don’t have my card,” she said and, reaching into her bag, pulled out a credit card and handed it to the waiter. “Just split it, please.”
----
To someone watching, Lacey Allon and her boyfriend Nicholas Pocard would have looked like a typical – not exceptionally happy – couple as they made their way through the parking lot of Pepino’s Italian Dining. Talking at a low, inflectionless volume, they held hands until Nicholas opened the passenger door for Lacey and closed it gently behind her.

Inside the car was different. “I don’t know what’s going on with you tonight, Lace. I don’t get what the hell that was back there.” Lacey was silent and pouty. She stared at Pepino’s restaurant in the rear view mirror on her right, her arms crossed, her knees together. “Good. Now you don’t want to talk. Perfect.”

“Just what the hell do you want to talk about? You said something, and you were wrong and I’m right, and that’s it,” said Lacey, surprising Nicholas by speaking. Nicholas, rather than reply, turned on the radio.

Music and traffic were the only sounds in the car for several minutes. When Nicholas sensed the atmosphere lighten, he turned the radio down so he could speak over it. “My only point, Lacey, was that it’s just awful funny how two guys, who are as different as Mr. Voce and I are, could be described with a single word, and I was trying to figure that out is all.”

“That’s stupid,” said Lacey, and then, after only a tiny hesitation, “What I don’t get is how two people, as different as you and I are, could ever have been in a relationship for so long.”

“Opposites attract, Lace. You said it yourself when we first started dating.”

“I did,” said Lacey, contemplating the fact. “I think I was wrong, though. Opposites don’t attract. Opposites just stay together for a while.”
----
When Nicholas Pocard was driving to his house later that night, staying in the rightmost lane and keeping the radio low, a desert hare darted in front of his car and fell victim to the Dodge’s tires and undercarriage. After pulling the Dodge over, Nicholas eventually found the hare in a stretch of gravel between the road and sidewalk. Squatting, he stared silently at the flattened vermin and after a while, letting his head fall forward into his hands, he wept.

Ameliorate

I’ve been staring at my cell phone for the last forty-five minutes.

It has not stirred—not one iota. Yet, here I sit… occasionally pacing over to pick it up, then instantly set the damn thing right back down. I’m a vibration away from a cataclysmic event. I’m just trying to stay calm. Practice in futility, anyone?

It’s just a phone call. Yes, my hand is shaking like a Parkinson’s patient- my heart is a speed bag being ceaselessly pummeled in my chest… but it’s just a phone call.

The trouble is that I can’t really convince myself of that. The phone call is a conduit to untapped pain and horror beyond the comprehension of my rational mind. Or, at least, that’s what I presume it will be… the harbinger of some emotional apocalypse that I’ll be coping with for the next 3 to 4 years until I’m dead or able to delude myself into pseudo-satisfaction with lesser circumstances.

How do you leave someone for her own benefit? Can you rationally justify that? How do you assert reasonable doubt about your sanity without seeming depraved?

Or lethal for that matter?

Oh, I’m sorry dear… I love you so much that I’ll probably end up doing you some irreparable harm. I don’t have anything specific in mind… I just know that you probably won’t be breathing when I’m finished. I’ve never been one for half-measures.

I’m beyond obsession at this point. I’m not sure if there’s a clinical name for it, but I’m damn-skippy that it warrants one. The night of our first fight I tried on a refreshing drunken rancor that made De Niro at the end of Taxi Driver look like Donny Osmond. I also rambled down random hallways screaming her name like Brando in Streetcar. The problem was that I was in my apartment complex, not hers.

I say this, and yet I know I can’t extricate myself from this affair without having a minor meltdown. It’s impossible. It’s like trying to quit heroin cold-turkey because you’re afraid of what you will do to the drug… Does that make any sense? And will that sort of justification actually dissuade me when that first overwhelming urge hits? Not-fucking-likely.

I’m still face-fucking the girl, for God’s sake. And no, not the bored porn-star her throat is more amusing than her vagina because the soundtrack is more colorful brand of face-fucking… I mean that I literally cannot take my eyes off the girl’s face from the moment of penetration to the final trembling spasm of climax. The fastest orgasm I’ve achieved on record occurred on our first official date—and I live in mortal fear of topping it. Thirty seconds in and she issues this fevered moan while biting the right corner of her lower lip and immediately my dick is frothing like a fire-hose spewing full bore at a blazing inferno. Tell me that doesn’t cast an ominous pall over the relationship…

I guess I’m saying that I just can’t handle her. Or, that is what I’ll tell myself to justify it all in my head later. It’s because of her that I had to ruin the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. The truth is that she’s driving me insane by not being as overwhelmed by me as I obviously am by her. You can’t love a woman this much without a measure of self-control. It’s perilous—and for the both of us. For her, it’s like having an alcoholic as your designated driver… you’re depending on someone who’s absolutely incapable of controlling themselves normally to watch you behaving erratically and somehow deny their every natural urge that arises in the interim. It’s absurd.

Perfect example of her ambivalence and my inability to show restraint: We were walking back to my car after an average Friday night at the Denny’s when I lurched into the “L” word. I was holding her hand, desperately fighting to keep my Moons Over My Hammy from resurging into my esophagus, and I just managed to catch her looking at me out of the corner of my eye. Her hair is the goth-girl cheap-o dyed crimson I adore on women… thus, when suffused in the amber glow of a streetlight it tends to radiate a slight halo. Due to this, she caught fire in my periphery like a transfigured angel— her lips curled into a smile like burning paper, and that blaze spread from her face into my chest and forced the words out of my mouth as a fireman pushes a child through the window of a burning building.

“It’s ridiculous how much I love you, Layla.”

Her lips parted gently, moist as a dew laden flower at dawn, as she turned to look me in the eye. I stood breathless as a man before a firing squad, and in place of the words of reciprocity I was so desperate to hear she uttered:

“Awww… thank you.”

A retort like that will deflate a libido faster than a balloon that’s been penetrated with a pin. It’s telling enough that I was the first one to say the word, but to be met with such a patronizing retort… It scarred me.

Can you stay in a relationship where the love is so preternaturally one-sided? It’s like a pimple on the tip of your nose that you hesitate to pop because you’re afraid of the scar—yet you just can’t shake the feeling that everyone is staring at it, judging you… It completely offsets any confidence you may display to the contrary: inside, you’re coming apart at the seams.

Fifty minutes.

I have been engaged in this deliberate little dance with my cell phone for nearly an hour, and nothing has been accomplished.

I mean, typically I call her the minute I leave work. She’s bound to suspect something at this point. Maybe she’ll think that I’m seeing someone else… or that I’ve been in some tragic car-accident. At the very least she’ll be wondering if something is up—there’s no way that she couldn’t at this point.

And yet… she … hasn’t… called… me… either.

That’s strange… You’d think that the one time your boyfriend (who dutifully checks in the instant he’s fulfilled his daily obligation to his employers) doesn’t call, you might express a little interest in discovering the motivation for the deviation. I could be lying in a ditch somewhere, desperately clinging to life—cell phone just beyond my outstretched fingers... Does she care?

Apparently, she does not.

My phone has been lying dormant on that damned kitchen counter for nearly one hour. I left work nearly two hours ago, and my silence hasn’t so much as elicited a concerned text message. Do I mean so little to her? Here I am ensconced in an effusive rant about over-indulging in my passion for the woman and I don’t even warrant a fucking phone call! My God… maybe she’s the one screwing around on me. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility. I mean, considering how we started this relationship, how can I not expect the worst?

Who sends nude pictures of themselves via cell-phone as a means to garner interest from the opposite sex? Honestly? Granted, it absolutely worked, but still… I suppose that it says something about me in that I was not only ensnared by the pornographic flash cards, but I also reciprocated. And let me tell you—getting a flattering shot of one’s penis with a camera-phone is not the easiest task imaginable… You’ve gotta get decent lighting, proper framing so that it’s impressive, but not intimidating… I digress.

I suppose we’re two beasts feasting from the same trough. However, she was the one that initiated the short, sharp dive into the gutter. I just followed her down… Yes, her conversations bored me… so I stopped texting. That doesn’t mean I need a one-way ticket to tit-town just to get me to come back around… I wasn’t so overwhelmingly engaging that she just had to keep me interested at all costs. There are plenty of fish in the sea—especially when you’re using stink bait. So, it’s not irrational that I presume she’s out lubricating every piston on the east side of Detroit for the fuck of it.

Two years ago I got into a relationship with a girl because she spilled beer on my corduroys at a frat party and offered to help clean me up. That’s all it took. One spill, a little flirtation and ten minutes later I’m pouring club soda on an undulating mass of flesh, blood and bullshit that was siphoning my cock like a fugitive with an empty gas-tank. Is it serendipity? Is it temporary insanity? No, we pass it off as some contrived ambiguous state of intoxication that we label as love.

Love is just one giant con segueing into another… a river of deceit that we have to ford sans paddle. We sell ourselves with our aesthetic, or our personality—and yet, in spite of it all, we’re like a used car salesmen peddling a lemon. We know we’re hurling damaged goods back into the market, but we don’t care. You just have to get the person off the lot with it… Then it’s their problem. If it breaks down: “Sorry, we made no guarantees about the quality of our product.” We’ve got to make a living, or die trying.

Perhaps I’m being used to facilitate daily activities that she would otherwise be ill-equipped to perform. Need a ride to work? Fuck the boyfriend. Looking for a hot meal free of charge? Fuck the boyfriend. Who’s to say that every relationship isn’t, in essence, a bartering system in which sex is exchanged for goods and services?

At the end of the day perhaps we’re all just using each other just to get by… She’s using me physically, and I’m using her emotionally. She gives me a definition: at the end of the day, Layla loves me. I’m the man Layla loves; Or the man Layla cares enough about to lie about loving; Or the man Layla won’t even take the time to call in order to lie to him about loving him. Fuck…

Sixty minutes.

Two hours of tedious deconstruction under the bridge and I’m not once centimeter removed from the spot I inhabited at the outset. So much for evolution. Maybe I ought to eat the danger-end of a twelve-gauge and decorate my walls with what’s left of my sanity—at least then I’d have connected with another human being on a primal level. I’d ruin someone’s Friday night and cause them to get slightly nauseous at the sight of Cherry Jell-O forevermore.

I guess I feel like I’m driving at full speed past a dead-end sign without any care or concern for my well-being. She’s just the cul-de-sac where my careening little death-trip will end. I just can’t be that irresponsible for my own actions anymore.

I can’t shake the image that she’s out there pining for someone else in the way I’m longing for her. I wish I could. It would be nice not to presume every word that escapes her lips is a lie. It would be nice to feel as though you can get what you give in this life.

And thus we reach the inexorable conclusion that set me on this chaotic carousel to begin with: Maybe I should just address the white elephant in the room... Perhaps it's best to get it straight from the horse's mouth, as the saying goes. Just ask her, "Was I nothing more than a one-night-stand that overstayed my welcome?" and be done with it. The emotional equivalent of tearing off a band-aid… It will damn near destroy me, but better to hear it from her lips and try to move on than to agonize over it every time I look at the fucking phone.

All of this is conjecture is condemned to be moot, though.

Sure, it’s just a phone call. Static transfer between two points of reference… It shouldn’t be this complicated…

However, saying it should be easy to make a phone call is like saying it should be easy to pull the trigger on a gun. You have to realize that the impediment has very little to do with the mechanics… and everything to do with the trajectory.

God's Lightning

For me it didn’t quite happen that way…

it happened gradually at first

and then all at once,

but no brightness.

I woke and found out that someone had

cut a hole in my vision

where the world should have been, and

I know there’s nothing behind it --

because if there was I would have seen it.

I’ve heard of ghost pains, but I never thought

they’d happen to me.

When I sleep, I can sometimes

feel my eyesight itching-

so I reach for my pencil and

scratch at it with the tip,

trying to write on my brain

what the world used to look like.

Buying Bodega Sold Dreams

Not even Piñiero got his for free.

But is that what I’m doing now?

Buying the dreams

shelved in lost corners

on coffee shop stages?

No cash in my pockets,

Just my Visa.

Sorry.

Only Discover.

Discover? The brightest, the best,

the most originally unoriginal.

Not the dreamer who can’t

put one and one together,

let alone two

with the almost-right word. The one

whose ideas

generate one-liners in the wrong place

at the right time to

buy bodega sold dreams.

They Give Us the Ghetto

The shingles are discolored.

Did they do that on purpose?

Their sheet --

Pink and white blowing in the wind.

Like its own little nation.

Walking down the street becomes an endless dance with the cars.

Stop or go.

Stop or go.

Stop.

Roll.

Go.

Glad you made up your mind.

I always like to walk with one foot on Private Property.

The ground is still squishy.

I always knew the ground moved under my feet, and today I can feel it.

It smells like watermelon by the sign of the missing girl.

Weird. I pass that sign everyday.

What’s the girl’s name?

Ariel, I think.

Hey it’s the abandoned lot where we play football.

Smile.

Don’t they realize its all luck.

Zeroes.

I’m not philosophical.

I’m not logical.

I’m not emotional.

Everyone can lie to us, but what’s the truth?

I’m ignorant.

I’ll be here forever.

I wonder the odds.

I’ve always hated my own possibilities.

More Fun With Legal Penetration: or Balloons Are For Parties, Not For My Privates

… her flesh glistened beneath the steam of his breath like glinting abalone. Gazing deeply into crystalline pools of opalescence masquerading as eyes, Marco felt his soul quiver beneath his glimmering pectorals. His pulse sambaed with the vigor of an African war party, his loins aching with a bittersweet longing at the sight of her heaving, corseted breasts as they rebelled against their restraints—hounds fighting the leash when the game is afoot. He lavished kisses upon the undulating flesh of her stomach, slowly winding upwards over her pillowy bosom until reaching her neck, whispering lightly into her ear…

“GOOD GOD JUDITH, what kinda filth are you foppin’ off on me???”

Blushing in embarrassment, Judith lightly craned her chin towards Leverle, pinching his elbow near the arm of the chair as though the subtlety of the move would somehow override the bellowing of her counterpart.

“It’s the only other book I have,” she whispered, “And I only brought two because I was fixin’ to finish that one. So you just consider yourself lucky to have it and pipe down, or you can read what they’ve got here.”

Leverle Federton, Lev to kith and kin, surveyed the transparent coffee table like a hardened general whose men had been found wanting for courage. In the company of the Boston Medical Group’s brochure on male impotence and US Weekly, the scandalous exploits of the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” spokesman were, sadly, a welcome respite. The phrase, “ Any port in the storm,” springs to mind. Reluctantly, Lev slumped back into his chair-shaped plastic Bastille and sulked.

After another five minutes of libidinous literature, Lev was near combustion. His surroundings certainly didn’t add to the atmosphere of the story, either. The irony of reading a romance novel in a urologist’s office was certainly not lost on him. Soon he was unable to quell the insurgent thoughts that had been amassing behind his clenched teeth.

“You know, I wouldn’t need a damn book if they didn’t sit my ass out in a waiting room for all eternity…”

“Honey, please…”

“And you know why they make you wait out here, don’t ya? They want to heighten yer anxiety, that’s why! Raise yer heart rate, peak yer blood pressure and tighten yer bowels in one fell swoop so….”

“Lev,”

“… they can fop off whatever silly sugar pills they’ve concocted in some back room to extort the wages of a working man…”

“Lev, dear….”

“…Charge ya ninety gawdamn dollars for their crazy pree-scriptions, like they’re selling snake oil that could reanimate Kennedy, God rest his soul, if they’d only kept the sumbitch on ice…”

“Leverle Monroe Federton, you just hush up THIS INSTANT!”

The room had frozen around them. At least 8 pairs of eyes had fixed on Lev, awaiting the impending nuclear meltdown. However, our hero was cowed. The woman hadn’t employed his full name since he’d toppled two dozen suppository boxes in the Walgreen’s while reeling at the phrase Ribbed for Her Pleasure a month ago. Judith was markedly displeased. Perhaps, Lev mused, discretion was the better form of valor. He ceased his squawking, and the nomadic eyes had returned to their respective reading materials.

In the mean-time, Judith’s index finger had apprehended a refugee from her Aqua-Net blasted hair-hive and nestled it back into place along with her composure. Be damned if the woman couldn’t conceal an Abrams tank if she thought someone would find it offensive Lev chuckled to himself. Judith’s frustration had frightened away his trepidation temporarily, but with equilibrium on the rise unquiet seeped back into his subconscious. Fear, it seems, is akin to adolescent hormones: it can only be distracted, never subdued.

“Well…” Lev stuttered in a tone that longed to salvage some dignity in the face of his surrender, “I’m just saying…” He continued, his mutterings trailing off under his breath as he lowered his gaze to the tawdry tale in his lap.

Lev is, notably, Alabama’s answer to the Six-Million Dollar Man. He has been the recipient of a full hip replacement, a balloon angioplasty for a collapsed aorta (he’d also considered a pig-valve transplant as an ironic allusion to the attribution of his ailments to his fondness for bacon…) and, to date, 24 and one quarter dental implants to spare him the shame of removable molars. Needless to say, he needs no coaxing into the doctor’s office for the treatment of any minor infraction of Henry Gray’s code of biological conduct. However, this trip was an entirely different animal to tranquilize. The urologist was the undiscovered country. It also bears stating that many of man’s more profound anxieties center on the prospect of the malfunction of his nether regions. In point of fact, Freud’s constructed volumes on the matter… As such Lev was, quite literally, adrift in a vast sea of anxiety.

Firstly, there was the pain; and it was considerable. At this point he felt as though someone were attempting to repeatedly pass a pipe cleaner through his urethra. This was further exacerbated by a persistent testicular throbbing and rather acute lower back pain. All were symptoms of a prostate infection, prostatitis according to the available online dysfunction databases (a point discovered by Judith, whom the cough suppressant ads would have referred to as doctor mom).

Second, there was the locale. Surrounding Lev was a cavalcade of medical oddities: one muttering German who purported to the desk nurse that he completes nightly urination in roughly seven separate attempts, a red-haired Scotsman whose ability to stay erect had collapsed with the soviet block, a wild-eyed teen who believes his phallic swelling to be the result of a less-than gentile inspection by space aliens, a disheveled vet who could feasibly be the only seventy-two year-old concerned with herpes this side of the San Andreas fault, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. The office itself was filled with a heady aroma derived from lubricants, bleach and cotton swabs. For Lev, this was strangely reminiscent of a gypsy bandwagon he’d encountered during the greater Tuscaloosa entertainment crisis of 1929. There was an assortment of jars in the gypsy rattletrap containing reclaimed fetuses, and the shock to his naive mind made a lasting impression.

Ultimately, however, it was Lev’s absolute aversion to the methods of diagnosing his malady that was the main cause of his persistent trepidation. Lev was not a fan of anal penetration… He’d been administered to by his mother during instances of childhood illness with what was, at the time, a modern medical standby: the rectal thermometer. As the concept of lubricating the device had never occurred to Lev’s sainted mother, the incursions were always very uncomfortable. At one point, he’d become so tense during a diagnostic that he’d managed to break the cylinder of the thermometer, causing a roiling amalgam of blood and mercury to ascend into his colon. This, coupled with the tissue damage (resulting in turbulent bouts with evacuation and subsequent cleanup), the removal of broken glass and the mythical quest to recover the wayward mercurial material from his bowels left him irrevocably averse to future anal exploration.

His anxieties mounting to a fever pitch, Lev had begun to entertain the thought of self-sterilization with his trusty Zippo when he heard his name resound above the riotous din of apprehension.

“Mista Levy Earl Federton???”

Mispronunciation aside, his name came as the sound of shattering glass immerging through the murky fog of a dream. He looked up from the dime-store trash novel to see a bulbous nurse that bore a striking resemblance to a pear perched atop two drinking straws standing at the office door bemusedly gazing at him. Lev’s entire being was petrified, minus the area that he came here to fix, and thus he sat frozen in his chair for several seconds before a gentle pat from Judith prompted him out of it. Stepping towards the door, Lev was suddenly burdened with the notion that if he hadn’t had trouble urinating before coming into this office, he would certainly have difficulties after leaving it.