Sins? Well... I killed a man. You didn't know? Wow. Sure at least you would know. "Drops of rain," and all.
Years ago I was walking home drunk from Clinton's. He'd just come from some Christmas party. He was drunk too. Lit his cigarette and then out of the blue asked me to stop for a drink. I said, "Yeah."
In the bar he told me all about himself, like a juke that didn't need quarters. I felt like a whore. On and on he went. Made me sick. After the third draft I said, "I'm off."
He followed me out, still going on about his problems. I was polite. He was an obviously miserable fuck. I think somehow he wanted to be killed.
"Gotta piss," I said.
Followed me down the alley, still talking. This time about some girl he wanted but couldn't have, some Cheryl something. Talk, talk, talk.
Who knew him? He was nothing. I was pissing on some broken glass. I zipped up and picked up a piece that wasn't wet. I pressed him against the brick wall and cut his throat with the glass.
I haven't told anyone about this. Til now. Seemed to me almost like a dream.
I can go in?
----------
Mexico
They were a distance from El Largo and Cheryl's flask was almost empty. Certainly not Lowry style.
Then El Largo, truly a one horse, hotel, cantina town.
John woke up.
"We there?"
Three weeks before--who'd made the plan at that party they'd met?--"Let's go to Mexico!"
I'm gonna kill myself by drinking in Mexico, resolved Cheryl at that moment.
Welcome to El Largo. They got a room and tequila.
The room had only one bed. It was dusk. Cheryl rolled over and suddenly felt horny. She touched John's stomach.
THUMP!
Morning, and John wasn't there. Singing and bells. She went to the window. A procession headed by a coffin.
Cheryl went down for breakfast. Still no John. Huevos and tequilas. Then she went out. The procession was just ending. A church with a large bell. A priest beckoned to her.
She went over.
"He wanted to say, he loved you."
She looked up to the bell. It was filled up, no clapper. She looked down and saw the blood.
"He wrote us five months ago. He wanted to be the one."
Cheryl went back to the hotel. Cheryl went back to the church. Cheryl went back to the hotel.
Ready for next November. Our child will be three months old.
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Get Me Rewrite!
Jameson was pacing around the newsroom, clutching his head. "What are we going to do?"
Carrying a yellow pad Parker came in. "Hi boss."
"Don't Hi me!"
"What's wrong?"
Parker slapped the front page mark-up. "It's this story about the riots."
"What about it?"
"I got a hold of the cartoons that started 'em."
"Oh, those cartoons of Motherfuck?"
"Yes, the so-called blasphemous drawings."
"That's great! Background! Do you have them with you?"
Jameson slid them across the table. Nichols picked them up and looked at them.
Mary Jane came in, looked over Parker's shoulder, and tutted. "Never understood bestiality." she said.
Parker said, "So publish them."
Jameson gripped the sides of the desk. "If we do, the Motherfuckans will murder us!"
"You can't withhold these drawings!"
"Parker, I'm a coward!"
Mary Jane circled the desk. "I've got a solution. We'll rewrite history."
"What?"
"We'll make as if the Motherfuckans haven't been trying to kill us for a thousand years. We'll make it so they're quite obviously right. We'll be on their side. Thus, we'll have an obligation to not publish the drawings."
"And thus, we save our necks."
"Exactly."
Jameson thought for a moment. Then he slammed the intercom button. "Jennifer, get me archives. And get me rewrite!"
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Brand
Meanwhile back at the ranch the brand was orange hot. Hanky pulled the brand from the fire before it was hot enough. No he didn't. He waited til it was red hot. The steer was stupidly unaware. A harmonica wailed a lonesome sound in the cold starry night. No it was two in the afternoon. A hundred and twenty degrees in the shade. And there was Hanky with his fire and his brand.
The girl, er, the steer, was ready. Hanky blew on the brand. The double H it was, no, the double G. Grail. Gregory Grail. Hanky ran to the ranch house and found Greg and buried the burning brand in Greg's face, pressing it down til the pus poured. No.
The animal was there beside him. Hanky stood and quickly pressed the brand into the beast's thigh. She bucked and howled. She said, "Why are you so mean to me? I love you, I don't understand!" No. She lowed indifferently, like there was no Hanky at all. Just another flight of gnats.
"Good job," said Foreman. "Let's call it a day. Go home, Hanky."
Hanky dragged from his cig. He could taste the fat of her flesh. I love you, he said, maybe to himself or maybe not.
----------
Arrival in Heaven
His was a quick stillbirth death.
So what does he know?
Well, he knows everything about colours and shapes and he's met thousands of people. (Let's not go into that, that how.)
So he's up at the Gates.
The Gatekeeper says, "That was quick."
He answers, "Quite brief it was."
"It happens."
"I know. It's happened to me many times before. I was wondering about something."
"What?"
"What was the point of giving me the spark of life only to have it snuffed out immediately? I can't say I learned anything there. Maybe in the long run I learned something, on this higher plane, but what did I learn there?"
"You weren't the only one there."
"I suppose not. So what it for the sake of others that I died so suddenly?"
"It might have been that way."
"When I think of my other lives, yes, I can remember stillborn children of my own. I can even remember performing abortions. The moment of the death of another, especially a baby, affects you. I learned things about life at those moments."
"You gave your life for others."
"I see. So, can I go in now?"
"No, not yet. Back you go."
And back he went.
----------
Primal Scene
When I was a twelve I spent Spring Break on a farm owned by the uncle of my best friend James Deakin. His uncle was a Reid, and the farm was near London.
It was a rainy, muddy week. Our galoshes was constantly muddy, and our pant legs too.
We messed about with the pigs, the geese, the cows, the chickens, the silo pigeons, all week long.
The day before we left, I was out between the two barns and the house, in what you call the yard. It was raining or almost raining. I was feeling really happy. I'd changed that week. I'd forgotten about my brutal life at home. There was a cow there and so as a lark I ran at it flapping my arms. The cow lowed and ran away.
Slept well that night. Cozy old farm blankets.
In the morning we were packing up to go. I went out to the yard with my duffel bag of clothes. There was a tractor there, with a double chain coming out its end, and it was dragging a dead cow. I knew it was the cow I'd chased. The cow had run out into the mud and she had gotten stuck.
In the struggle the cow had ripped her anus, and purple intestinal ropes were hanging out. A dead cow. She'd wandered into the mud.
The Deakins and me drove off. I didn't say anything about it for a long time.
This is why I can never be a vegetarian.
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Folks, the problem with writing a story based on real life experiences is that maybe the story isn't over yet. For example, CL. She left my life a long time ago. (I still love her a lot.) But I'm sure you've heard tales. "We kind of knew each other in high school. Then we met again years later, and we hit it off. I married him." We've all heard this. So when do we close the stories? I could tell you about TLH, my earliest love. How can I close that story? It's unlikely she's dead. She could turn up any minute. Ran into CE last week. She's divorcing from JE. Relationships change, and most of the time we're just watching it happen. TLH is out there somewhere, probably nearby. On the internet I find (if it's not someone else) she's signed some guestbook about 9/11. But this TLH seems to be from Victoria. Found CL though on the cover of a Calgary magazine.
Everything gets lost. I loved TLH and CL. (My third love I'm with now, in case you're wondering.)
But where are these girls now? Are they sleeping? Are they dead?
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Family on Holiday
They were driving from A- to a motel in F-. They went through B-, C-, D-, E-, G-, C-, and then they noticed they were back at B- again. Something of a cirle. They started again, through C-, D-, E-, and then G- looked familiar.
Father was getting angry.
Son said, "I hafta pee!"
Father said, "Let's take a break."
They all got out of the car. Son took out his penis and urinated.
Daughter pointed and said, "Why don't I got one of those?"
Mother said, "You've got something better, honey."
Father said, "What you mean, better?"
"Positive self-image, dear."
"But what about Son's self-image?" He patted Son. "Good-looking cock there, boy."
Son said, "I heard cunts are nice, too."
"Yes, they're nice. Nice for fucking with a cock."
"Father!" said Mother. She turned to Daughter. "Cocks are good, good for fucking with a cunt. Don't let these nasty boys deceive you."
Daughter said, "So is my cunt better than Son's cock?"
Father and Mother both said, "Yes and no."
Son and Daughter both said, "That sucks!"
Father and Mother both said, "We'll talk about that at the motel."
They all got back into the car. They found F- with little difficulty.
----------
Peter Kürten
"I don't know what it is, doc," said Peter. "I simply got a bit too deep in this."
"Tell me everything," she said. "I'm completely nonjudgemental."
Peter bit some dead skin off his thumb. "I never felt wanted. We were poor, you see, and I was often beaten."
"Root causes," she said. "Noted."
"So I fell in with a rough crowd, you know? Stealing stuff, trying to be the big man."
"Low self-esteem," she jotted down. "You poor thing."
"Yeah, but I knew I was better than any of them, though."
She wrote nothing.
"Still sad, though. Still hurting."
She wrote something. "Go on."
"And I think, don't quote me on this, I think that's pretty much why I did what I did."
She leaned forward. "And what do you think you were forced to do?"
"I had to kill Christine Klein, Rosa Ohliger, Gertrude Hamacher, Louise Lenzen, Ida Reuter, Elizabeth Dorrier, Gertrude Albermann, maybe three or four others." He sighed.
She looked up at the clock. "I'm sorry. Our time is up. Can we meet again next week? Same time?"
Peter smiled somewhat sadly. "Yeah, let's leave it there. I've got a lunch date with Fritz Lang. Could run to six figures."
----------
I cried the night Bob Dylan died
I
cried for you and me
Our sentimental troubadour
Was not to sing
again
I thought of this when I lost Gary. With him one night with another guy he said. We were alone. He took off his pants and I sucked his cock, and that was quite nice. I think guys who've never sucked cock have really missed out.
So after enjoying sucking him Gary seemed to want to suck me. I leaned back but my cock wasn't at all hard. I'm sure he would have preferred a nice stiff one. I wish I could have given him a nice hard cock to suck. Alas!
A month or so later we got together. 'I don't want what happened to change our friendship.' That's what we said. It's true.
Not much later he's dead. He always had bronchial problems. So he died of pneumonia.
He said, "I've been in love with you since high school."
What could I do but believe him? It must have been at least partially true.
I can't say I didn't love him. He was a funny guy. We wrote things together in high school.
Can I still love him, please?
----------
Everybody has AIDS!
So the good people in the advertising world have caused to flutter into my lap a document WE ALL HAVE AIDS, IF ONE OF US DOES. Well, isn't that interesting logic.
He all have nine toes. He have all murdered 12 people. We all have a brother named Garon. We all have two left feet. We all dreamed last night about a blue house, we all think they're in on it, we all carry on a private conversation with ourselves. We're all sick of life. We all have fucked our sister. We all pull out hair one strand at a time. We all can't understand why it ends so quickly. We all have regrets, like that boy we could have gotten closer to, and that girl too. We all couldn't understand why Cathy O'Connor broke down in the ROM cafeteria. We can't understand the meaning of this sentence. We've all got the blues, deep. We're all much too drunk for a work night. We all found something yesterday we thought we'd lost forever. It was yellow and shiny. It seemed to speak. What did it mean? We all carry the curse. What does it mean?
----------
The Dollhouse
I don't know for sure why we always celebrated Christmas in late September. My brother said it was because of our father's experiences in the war, but I'd never heard about any war. My brother could have been lying, but now I'll never know.
My gift was a really old dollhouse. A hundred years old at least. The wallpaper was peeling and there was dust everywhere. A plane of glass covered the front.
"Be careful sliding off the glass."
I lifted the glass, carefully I swear, but when it got free of the guides it started cracking. I tried to stop it, and a big shard went into my right palm. Pulling it out my hands got cut all over. My mother said, "It's very old glass."
Then we went to the auditorium for the party. Everyone was there. It was fun.
Then a balloon-alien floated down from the fly gallery. I grabbed one of its tentacles but it resisted. It was tough! I got it down lower and my brother grabbed its happy-face torso. Together they floated up some, then my brother let go. On the ground he screamed, "I've got space AIDS!"
My brother is now dead.
I still have the hole in my palm.
----------
The Professor (and the Student)
Once upon a time, at a teachers' college, an upper-class Professor taught her middle-class students about lower-class people.
Her name was Wendy, and she examined ethnographically boys and girls from "oriental" neighbourhoods. The children told her the stories of their lives, and only sometimes were they interrupted by Wendy's sentimental tut-tutting.
Wendy took her researches to her students to show them how misguided they all were concerning those they were going to teach in the "inner city."
Then, one magical day, she awoke to find herself, not in her four-poster but upon a futon, facing a poster concerning someone or something called NWA. Where was she? After some inquiries, she found she'd magically switched places with one of her students.
She went to a class on class and she was told she was a horrible person. Wendy wanted to object but all her fellow students were hanging penitential heads. She felt oriental.
So Wendy dropped out of school, drifted for a while. A moment of pleasure brought her a nice daughter. Wendy found some administrative work, and a good-enough man.
Wendy's daughter got a college degree and lived happily ever after.
THE END
----------
She says, "C'mon, let go to bed."
If I live long enough, I'm sure my cock will fail me. There's been some indications that way already. I will stop being virile; I will fail. Even jerking off takes more time than it used to. Way long ago, when I was 17 or so, I could come five times a day. Not that there was any interesting receiver, just toilet paper or such.