WordSlut

The Investment Strategist and his Redwood Cock

I was going to strip and spread my legs, nothing wildly enticing--just pissing out my anger at Garth the investment strategist who has been my lover on and off these past twelve years. So I put on Last-FM to help ease the flow. I wanted to listen to something ragged, maybe Amy Winehouse. And up flounced "Kala," a track by Ali Ibrahim “Farka” Touré to which you can't be fist-flinging angry; instead you settle yourself in a gentle sunny spot with your name sparkling in the sand, and you open your arms, wide wide, embracing even your enemies. Which is not such a bad thing, given the world's political and social climates, and aren't the two intertwined like an old married couple who have been together forever, bickering every waking moment. Winter takes such perverse pleasure in striking out the tropical sway from warm weather lovers.

Damn! Firstly, in all our years together, the man has never fucked me plain old missionary style. And hell, to feel his cock which is redwood thick, but not as long as Jimmy Bob's indigo wonder - there's something about wrapping your legs around a man's back so he can plunge his way to the end of your cunt and beyond, to the heart. I gasp every time in delight and wonder. Thing is Garth weighs 428 pounds. OK, he's 6'3" but when he lies down, his stomach is a low-lying mountain and when he lies on top of me, it feels like there's a solid ocean between us.

Bottom line is he wants to borrow three thousand dollars from me. A man who refuses to part with his comforting girth, who has labeled my mentally-ill daughter "an abomination on God's earth," who sits with his balls sliding out his old flannel shorts as he pictures millions flowing in from his state-of-the-art financial site, whose son knifed him in the shoulder and has yet to apologize, and who was bashed on the head with a metal motorcycle helmet and taken down (not out) by a local pusher pissed off at the same wayward son. The mammoth ex-bouncer with an Artic heart fell to his knees, his measured builder's strut replaced by a game leg that capsizes without warning.

But I've got the sweetest heart. A home to bees and needy folk. Garth wanted to borrow three G's and I said no. I didn't want him to depend on a broad twenty-two years older than he is. There is that entitlement thing in abused children who make it through to become men with pricks and cascading balls, such as Garth's. I'll do it. Spot him three bank-fresh notes. Although I wish he'd wind his way to my part of town once in a while, whirl me around for a night on the music town which I adore, and keep me company when my Caroline sits talking in diagonals or not at all.

He's the center of his universe, Garth is, and he believes he's destined for greatness. And perhaps he is. Life seems to take such detours; it's hard to know what route you're on or where you're headed. And so my only guideline is the old lady rocking and rocking. When you stand before her, she smiles graciously (like the magnificent Katherine Hepburn or maybe Jessica Tandy) at you, her younger self. That's the time - when you're standing there in your bare-and-nakeds and asking her, "What would you do?" and she slips her life-long crochet shawl around your shoulders and tells you. Straight out. You only have to listen.


Copyright Janice Colman 2008
Garth and his Redwood Cock

Sex, Love, and Lies at Sixty

It's like this. I've been writing, feeling good; my nipples are islands  with clear water surrounding, separate from adjacent land; thoughts about a writer/photographer who says I have a sweet soul. "Hey man, you haven't read my words," I write, and he says he has; he's read my work online. "Oh no," I write, "I was just a baby then, hadn't learned the art of deep throat. I can now tickle myself to death with the tip of a cock." Actually I never wrote those words. The man is a librarian, requests commentators on his blog to refrain from writing profanities --- you mean muf, fuck, cunt, vagi burger and side dishes like ass fucking or political shit --- Bush, Cheney, Lenny Kay,  Randy Best, and the rest of those hoodlums?

The photographer says my past comes with me, informs my present, and motivates me to pursue my future. Which is fine with me because I want to share sex and life at sixty and beyond, sort of a head's up, although I'm not the one with the cock and  I can say I've seen a few, closing my eyes to summon up images of favorites. Skinny cocks have no heart; it's the thicker ones whose hearts beat out uncommon tunes. And balls, well, balls will give your truth away every time: snug walnut balls held tightly up, refusing to leave home, or those wondrous spreading ones, rambling with lives of their own.

Anyhow, one morning (or did I say night?), I was chatting with my daughter Lisa who has been my muse since her birth and probably before. "Lisa, honey," I said. "I have an idea for a new blog."

She turned in her teak chair that is part of an outdoor set I use indoors so I can imagine sitting en famille somewhere in Southern France, while I'm washing dishes upstairs in this ancient downtown Toronto house. "And what about your other one? You shoving that one?"

"I knew you were going to say that" I said. "It's a blog, exercise, like warming up at the gym before hardcore training. You see?"

Lisa wasn't convinced.

Sex, Love, and Lies at Sixty

LiveJournal Tags: wordslut,Colman,erotic writer,creative non-fiction,erotic blogs,relationships,aging

Pissing in the Wind

Last night at eleven o’clock I had a powerful hankering to piss in the wind and slide over to the nearest black man with glasses. I missed out on one, a Detroit writer man, kept refusing him, "you gotta wait, maybe I’ll get eighty grand—you know how it is and what should I do, maybe you should keep one of those movie low-profiles and would you kindly give me your take?"
          What’d you expect a man with the most gorgeous cock in the world, purple with under layers of indigo blue and the tightest pain of balls you’ve ever seen, identical perfectly formed walnuts only I didn’t think so then, I was still used to Garth’s spreading balls and I was just learning to love my Jimmy Bob. I was just learning how to walk down a city street with shops and clubs and places to eat and people and that was Jimmy Bob—civilised with a southern twist which wasn’t un-civilised — more like a winding lazy river checking out the country side. I was leaving the sweat hog gyms and my builder past and Garth ex-bouncer and hopeful entrepreneur.

So instead I’m listening to some stupid song "I ain’t missin you, I ain’t missin you," when I know sitting on this Ikea swivel desk chair, my lonely cunt pressed down from its own memories, that I’m back in the sixties, lying in a darkened den in the dead of Montreal winter, listening to Dylan singing "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" and there ain’t no way, no how. The man is alive and living with a woman he calls "that damnable new woman" with whom he’s madly in love still. "The older I get, the more firmly I believe life is so much a question of timing," he said in an email in return for one of my bi-weekly articulate whinings,  "maybe it just wasn’t precisely the right time for us to build our live. I cannot tell you if that condition is permanent, or how long it will last. I’m not sure anyone could."
              Garth’s mother waited for nineteen years for his father or the man who might have been his father to come back. She had beaten him until he fell down the stairs and ran off. And then she had to wait for nineteen years until he returned and turned out to be the loser she had thrown down all those stairs.

         I’m having an art show. The guy who painted the basement turned out to be an art agent and I’m slotted for two shows, one in June and one in September. I’m going to enter the world, hob-nobbing like a lunatic on crutches, and I’m going to meet a man just like the one I used to call Jimmy Bob. For a while I figured I’d make do—sidle up to a man with smarts and a loud laugh---but now, fuck, I’m sixty and three weeks old, don’t you think I deserve to get what I want and that’s a man dark like Jimmy Bob with a mind to match.

            I’m having an art show one in June and one in September. I’m sixty and three-weeks old and don’t you think—I deserve, someone, with Jimmy’s Baldwin eyes and his dirty talk "you love my cock don’t you, you love my hard cock slamming up your cunt, don’t you?" with his head that gets itchy after he comes and his laugh, every time, every time he’d laugh, and he might be laughing after fucking right now. He was a night owl.

The top layer of my skin raises itself for his smooth hands. His whole body baby-ass soft while mine is patchy and rough.

"Write every day," my daughter Josie told me. "My therapist says ’write it out, every day, but don’t send it, no matter what. It’ll take a month but it works.’"

So I’m giving it a try.

Pissing in the Wind

Learning to Play the Sax

This is what it’s like: the forehead contracts from life’s vise grip, the throat constricts, head is thrown back—she was so kind, voice soft like the evening tide, a Russian accent --- "There is a support group," she was saying.
"Yes?" was all I could muster up, keeping my voice in a straight line, confining myself to the shore, but feeling—heaving an unmarked package of immense proportions out of its ancient tomb, something to do with volcanoes and ravaging a city—that huge.

Slow down your words, I told myself. Off the highway. Create a traffic jam, travel under tight residential guidelines, slow and easy, make it nice and slow, and easy. Learn to play the sax.
"CCAC will not help," the woman Rosie said. "That’s for personal care. Does she need personal care?"
"Well, no, I guess not."
  "Could you clarify?" Rosie said, still naturally rolling her r’s.
"She can get dressed and she knows how to use this shower. She likes to read. And she loves television. She watches too much television. She can’t go out, you see— a severe learning disability. She’d get lost, so she’s housebound. Rosie. We need some help. I just turned sixty."
"Happy Birthday!"
"Thank you, Rosie." I turned the ends of my voice up like a smile.
"There are new programs, now. New hope."
            
  I looked out my kitchen window at my garden. This was a Montreal winter in Toronto. I looked out my window . . .  I have a window I can look out of. I have a garden. We are in a house.

After the call, I sat down on my sixty-year sofa with its beige-upon-beige and white upholstery, and I, still wearing Caroline’s extra large pale blue flannel bathrobe with my polka dot panties and a red nylon jersey beneath, after, I threw back my head and howled so that God would stop his busy work just for an instant and gaze upon me in my abject neediness.

I’d been digging a hole in the sand for so many years using a child’s plastic toy shovel that I hadn’t noticed how deep the hole was, nor that I had climbed in, had covered myself until only my head was visible, and even then, in the searing sun, I’d cover my eyes. With this phone call, I could feel the sun scorching my skin, my eyes bald, wanting to shield myself and my Caroline and even my Lisa—but my arms are buried under years of acquired sand. Unable to throw my arms out and embrace, I throw my head back and howl out random pleas—one of billions on the battlefield pleading for a helping hand.

I hadn’t realized I was sleep walking, skimming through days this way, my tired feet sprouting my dead grandmother’s bunions, blue with cold. I should wear socks.

I’m thinking maybe this time God was listening to me, maybe I had to howl, start digging my way out. I hear he admires, possibly demands, a little initiative after all. Rosie says there’s a support group and a case worker, no charge.
         
"CCAC can’t help you," she repeats.
"But our doctor from Mount Sinai . . ."
"They like to advise; you feel useless . . .
"How did you know?" I say, looking at my garden again, then at the sky.
"They’re personal care," Rosie said.
"Whereas you cater to the soul," I said, hoping.

Yesterday, I walked by Quintessence on Yonge Street just north of Summerhill, on the west site. I had just passed the store by almost five steps when I whirled around, walked back, and in. I left the store, holding (I, not the store) an iron angel sitting cross-legged with a silver ball balancing on her right knee, also a tiny Buddha almost hovering on a platform, a glass lab tube for incense behind him, and a triangular candle holder for an accompanying oval candle on the pedestal in front of him. I figured if I were to meditate long enough, I’d figure out how to fit the oval candle into the definitely triangular holder.

When I unpacked the Buddha, he was headless; his head was gently resting in tissue paper I was about to discard —recycle.  I have PH balanced adhesive in my six feet by eight feet art room, so now my wise Buddha sits whole about five feet away from me on a carved wood table passed on to me from Bobi and Zadi’s country house in St. Agathe des Monts. Bobi and Zadi are quite dead and the house on the top of Major Hill has been sold for more than two decades.

I prefer not to wear my glasses at home. I don’t like my view of the world being too specific and I’m more comfortable fashioning my own details. So I can’t see the fissure in Buddha’s neck and I’m sure he wouldn’t be able to feel it anyway, he’s that exalted. It’s probably healed by now; I read he has regenerative powers, and if not, what’s a little earthly pain anyway? 

Learning to Play the Sax

Wedged between Warhol and the National Film Board

          There is an acrid country where, if you stand spinning in its middle with your arms straight out and parallel to the earth, you can touch the land’s furthermost corners. Some nights—and who knows when or why—the young, old, and all ages in between dream of flowers with invisible petals. They dreamed collectively on the night of Feb. 13, 2008 , accepting some help from the limitless force of angels, and in the morning, at every bedside in an unglazed clay vase, grinned a chameleon flower that could shift its colour (and did) like one of those sixties’ mood rings. Were dreams responsible for this extraordinary flower’s sunrise glory? This was a parched land with flowers skimming the skies like airplanes given orders not to land.
           It was my tears of course—my tears irrigating the land and water-logging the weightless flowers swirling in those cobalt blue skies. Jimmy Bob broke my heart and I cried. I couldn’t stop for days. My head became bloated. My best friend Martina thought I might be having a stroke.
           "If you feel like this tomorrow and you have numbness in your extremities," she insisted, "I’m going to take you to the hospital."
           Martina was suffering from a bout of noxious farting—she had eaten beans for lunch and was canceling our movie date. I wanted to see this flick about a writer—I thought the inspired fallout would fill my father’s old Parker pen. On Tuesday I awoke with flaps of skin missing from my fingertips, mimicking my mental pain and preventing me from tapping on my Logtech keyboard. I figured a movie about a writer’s life might help me mend. But then Martina started farting and refused to leave her century-old Parkdale rowhouse.
           Anyhow, my tears were so plentiful that flowers in one small developing country sprouted on the bedsides of all its occupants. And Jimmy Bob was responsible — which was one good thing he did; there were others, of course, but if I try out these brooding limbs, I know I’ll fall and hurt myself. The universe must be teaching me a lesson, so I’ve emailed past flames and past hopeful flames whose hearts I’ve broken.
          When I woke up this morning my head was normal-sized. I walked around my house, gently twisting my head left and centre—I refuse to bend to the right—and there it was regular size, easily perched atop my neck stalk. But now, with my Last FM play list wrapping around me, my eyes have become water-glazed and my head—my head is again swimming in its own tears, flooding actually, and the inhabitants just rising in that small acrid country are bowing in thanks to Jimmy Bob who fucking broke my heart. Bowing to Jimmy Bob when it’s my heart that has been broken with my head’s swollen membranes causing me to lose balance and walk about like a homeless soul.
         See, Martina, it’s not a stroke; it’s heartbreak. Such a sad photo, worthy of an old Life magazine photo op. This is what it’s like: black and white; body crouching on the floor, possibly beside a bed, an arm flung across the mattress, head along side. And if, like a Walhol movie, you return each hour for twenty-four or forty-eight, the portrait will retain its black and white with shadows, the woman’s position will not have shifted—except, if you look really closely with ruler in hand, you might notice a millimeter adjustment—which is what I’m counting on.


Wedged Between Warhol and the National Film Board

Letter to Eugene or Rubber Time

Hey man, I have 2, actually 3, words to throw at you this morning: 1) pelicans and 2) rubber time.
Pelicans—I was reading "Eat, Pray, Love" and at this birthday party in Bali, the

question of a guest's favorite bird comes up and he says "Pelicans."
“They rock," he says, and I'm thinking, hey, they really do, so I'm sharing the thought of pelicans with you this morning.

Next and also and especially—"rubber time"—because when I read about this, I thought, hey that's how I think! C'est moi! And about fifteen minutes later, I thought— gotta tell E. about these 2 items.

Remember your email about how an outsider might see me as ready to love up another cock, but not actually able and willing to fall in love it with it? OK---GET THIS!
          “. . . and I remember again about the Balinese concept of rubber time, meaning that time is a very relative and bouncy idea. 'Four weeks' doesn't mean to Wayan what it means to me. One day to Wayan isn’t composed of twenty-four house, either; sometimes it's longer, sometimes it's shorter, depending on the spiritual and emotional nature of the day. As with my medicine man, sometimes you count the days, sometimes you weigh them."

SEE? That's how I think! Cause I process things in rubber times. So by the time you had sent me your email, one month had passed, maybe a year! And then, honestly speaking, when I received your email which I emphatically refuted, I had to admit—maybe the man has a point there (yeah yeah—I know about points!) and possibly it's time to do some mental spring cleaning, which is what I did.

Spring cleaning, which I never do in the spring (I like doing those spring things in winter because then I'm reminded of spring, my favorite season), is fascinating as one looks at stuff, even items to be discarded, and recalls the sweet good times related before chucking it. "Oh . . .  I remember when and how and where . . ." and then lining up a blue or grey recycle bin, I never know which is which and I'm told either will do, and just tossing that old dear thing.

So that's what I did and I'm clear; I'm in this glorious field in my naked wild skin with sun and rain all around, both equally beautiful, with my arms out and I'm just twirling, E., or looking up and around in sometimes gentle-quiet or gleeful wonder.

I gotta thank you, and so I'm offering you these two bits this morning—pelicans and rubber time. Ain't life sweet! And aren’t I –- ya know I’m falling in love with myself all over again!

Letter to Eugene or Rubber Time

Can a Cock Save this Broken Heart

"Are you writing about him?" Dr. B. asked.
"No," I said, wiping my eyes with my dead mother's handkerchief– white with embroidered flowers, red and blue, in the upper left corner.

"Nothing?"
"No."

"Maybe you should," he said.

"Hmmm," I said, still dabbing and mopping up.

So I'm writing.

Can't listen to music without crying.
Can't look at a cock without imagining yours.
Can't look at a man's face without seeing your little round head sitting on top of your shoulders, set between my legs, can't hear a voice without remembering you groaning and a-heaving, "yeah baby, ooh, ooh, LOVE that, whatja doin to me BABY!"

And who will look at me all google-eyed, taking my hand, putting my palm to his lips, for fuck sake.

Who!

Maybe that guy with the dreads, except he's too young not that I mind but there's botox between my eyes and last week I had my lips (mouth—stop thinking cuntward) enlarged and what's a man like that walking unattached around anyway.
It's snowing outside, stark zinc white, and I'm missing my favorite colour which is hookers dark green. So I've selected going on a date with David John Sanchez  aka a.fun.guy to groove to tame jazz at The Trane when I'd really like to shake my booty at the Orbit Room on a Tuesday night. Then there's this white Jewish dude who writes like he's smack full of wind—he just farts words. White and Jewish, and still I want this man who writes " . . . so, here i am, still around you like a paint stain on the index finger . . . you can smell it, but it is as old as morning's newspaper . . . slowly turning into a fish wrap." I've just gotta fuck this guy cause I know he's my Jim encased in white although I prefer brown any day of the week, but fine words are like magnets when my cunt's involved.
I'm not letting this old Victorian house dictate my path. I'm in love with this Roncesvalles house, it's true, but I'm going to streak my way back into the world, starting with a.fun.guy and winding into mind_afficionado, my hip Jewish man-writer and just a gentle reminder, the funguy's this Saturday night, and I'm going to wearing a tight black t-shirt to show off tits and biceps.

BTW, BYAM: the Trane's not tame.

I Like My Chocolate Bittersweet

            Two days before I moved into the old Victorian, Jimmy Bob sent me an email. "I deserve more than this," he said, "hell, so do you." Thing is I thought we deserved each other from the first time he fucked me on the wall-to-wall at the Novatel Hotel, when my legs were hiked up around his upper back, his cock touching that part of my cunt connecting to my heart, and he asked "Whom do you belong to [Jimmy Bob's a writer from Detroit and grammar flows in his veins]" and I answered "you." "Tell me," he said, "and look at me." "I belong to you."
           I knew my eyes were sapphire green. Sex does that to me. So does crying. I prefer sex, but Jimmy Bob makes me cry. It's true I'm vain and I'll do most anything to preserve or enhance my looks. My lips feel like a cloud of bees landed on them. My sixtieth birthday is on March 12, and I watched the Academy Awards last night, so this afternoon at 2: 55 p.m. I had my lips enhanced. Now they're burning. I'm going to try them out at the Trane Studio this Thursday night although it's hard to say which came first, my lips or my lateral mindset directly linked to them.
          On Valentine's Day, Jimmy Bob emailed me again: "I have a new person in my life – very quickly, I realize, and certainly not premeditated on my part. But one cannot predict how life will reveal itself or how the heart will respond."
          Lisa says Valentine's Day isn't all it's cracked up to be. I think this heart day is a big crack up an expansive ass. I can't get Jimmy Bob off my mind. I remember when I first saw him sitting in the art deco leather chair in Novatel's lobby. I winced and looked at my hiking boots. But I grew to love him, his sleepy Baldwin eyes, and the way his upper body pitched forward when he walked.
          I grew to love him. On Valentine's Day there were hearts plastered in storefronts—shiny smooth candy and milk chocolate. But I like my chocolate bitter sweet, like my Detroit writer-man, and if Al Green couldn't mend his own broken heart, even after asking millions of listeners, "Please help me, how can you mend, how can you mend?" --- then what am I to do about fixing mine?

He's Righteous and He's Bad

I maligned Jimmy Bob's prick last night, the cock he calls Stalwart, da Bone, Boney, Ol' Stal, never Wart, although Jimmy thinks it would be kind of neat --- he has this image of us at a fete, although I'm a self-confirmed recluse, where I spy him across the room, crowded in by babbling faces and stray body parts. There would be my charmant Jimmy Bob with Stalwart recording. "Wart," I'd call out, "I need you, Wart!"
           When I first met Stalwart, I fell in love with his colour, his indigo underlining and transparent brown over-coat. We hit it off right from the start, Ol' Stal and I. He had a certain vitality and his head was tilted to one side which gave him a French jaunty air and what is all this romance about the French anyway?
            There is so much I love about my Jimmy Bob: the spittle congregating in the corners of his mouth, his Baldwin eyes, not his laugh loud ha ha ha but his grinning heart underneath.
            "I love Stalwart," I once told him.
            "Oh, that old thing!" he said.
            "Yup, that old young thing."
            I'd miss him if he were to slide into a slow fade. I might search for my remaining decades possibly three, without a glass shoe equivalent as my guide.
            I want you to know, Jimmy Bob, I never felt the centre of a cock before: the middle line like a sail's mainstay; the sail just blowing in a temperate wind. Who is this? I wondered. Where is my Stalwart?         
            All I want to say is Stalwart is a man I could take home to mother, except she died two years ago and I'm still grieving. Stal's a man who is righteous and bad and that's what I love about him. Same goes for Jimmy Bob.

Fifty Fucking Eight

fifty-eight readers at 2:59
a.m. no sixty-nine tonight. fifty
fucking eight, I'll deep
'em anytime, just keep
on reading while I ruck
out this trash, check it
out honey fifty-eight it's a
bash kneeling at their feet, sucking
balls all sizes, just slip in some words, slide
a few sweet into the coming
stream opague with letters splattered
in the mix. don't tuck in
flowers, tell me you wanna
fuck in some fast food joint; whisper
stories about my words, their curve
and swing, the feel
of my phrases on your skin like
running your hand up
a stockinged leg all sheer
silk calf pumped up
for the kill. fifty fucking
eight, who gives a shit about
sixty-nine except I'll do
yours, if you'll read mine.

Fifty Fucking Eight

Classifying Cocks

             
            

His cock had never felt like a sea urchin before. I was a familiar fan of Jimmy Bob's indigo cock, but this was the first time I had frisked its reedy centre. 
         "I want to fuck you," he said as I slurped along the inner vertebrae and fell out of love.         

"No," I said.          

Jimmy Bob sat up.

          "It's almost lunchtime and I'm too lazy to take my clothes off," I said. "Besides this was my plan — to suck you off and increase my protein intake."
          He placed his hands under my armpits, pulled me to him and kissed me in French. He had a lanky cock and tongue to match — my long-legged coke hustler who makes me laugh but not come.

"I owe you an apology," he said.

"Why?" I asked although I have nothing against apologies—words or flowers.

"Because I understand. It feels so good, I don't want to come, don't think I can."

            “Ah," I said.

Jimmy Bob's back in his home town, splattering words for the dailies. Today he sent me an email. "I hope to God you find this flattering: I just came from a meeting where a woman I'd never seen before was sitting across the conference table from me. I couldn't stop staring and feeling strongly attracted to her, but I couldn't figure out why. Then it hit me: long, wild black hair; muscular torso; rounded face, kind but penetrating eyes -- she reminded me of YOU! I feel very good, fortunate and blessed to have you in my life."
             I wrote back. "My darling man, with the roving eye: remember Dr. Strangelove where Peter Sellers plays a group captain with a 'Sieg Heil' tick? I'm afraid, my honey, your cock is like that."

And so our Southern hero in the midst of fucking his conference woman, gasps, "I know you remind me of . . ."

There are three types of cocks. One is great for fucking --- slamming up from the basement right through the roof; and there's a thick trunk, a tree to wrap my hands or lips around; and maybe there's one somewhere out there to wrap around and blow the roof off. One. Somewhere.

Classifying Cocks

Abie from Main Street

   

          I married two months before I turned twenty. First generation Jewish boy from Cote St. Luc, son of a wholesale poultry distributor. I met Abie at the Snowdon "Y" day camp. He was wearing green Bermuda shorts and a striped dark and lime green boat-neck jersey. Even when he was inside the building, he wore prescription sunglasses with dark green lenses and gold frames. Abie and his friend Josh, who also wore glasses but had the sense to wear clear lenses inside, had decided to earn some spare cash that summer and while two-hundred and seventy-five dollars wasn't a fortune, it could still fill a pocket.
          The pre-camp meeting was in Room 210 of the Jewish People's School on Van Horne. Sturdy school chairs were arranged in three half-moon rows. The guy with the shades said hello to me and elbowed his tall friend. I had my eyes on Howie Freedman because he had unruly curly hair and even though he was clean shaven, you could see he could grow a good beard.
            So I went after Howie and in our second week, we landed up in my parents' bed with its pressed cotton sheets.
            "What's the matter?" I asked him. "You want to do it or what?"
           "It's just that it's your parents' bed. You sure they won't notice?"
           "I'll make the bed and smooth the sheets."
           "You sure?"
          "I'll even make hospital corners, if that'll make you happy. They'll never know we were here."
            "OK," he said and climbed on top of me. He pumped away maybe ten times, shuddered, sighed and rolled off. "How was it for you?" he asked.
            "Great," I said. "Around the world."
          "What?"
          "You were great. Really good. I mean it."
           "So you want to spend the summer with me?"
          "I like you." I twirled my finger in his hair. "You live alone?"
           "I live with my mother. My dad died."
          "I'm sorry," I said and stuck my tongue in his mouth.

  The Y camp was run like a franchise. Ron, the manager, was a skinny hairy guy, who carried an overworked clipboard and wore a silver industrial whistle around his neck. No one wanted to go to his Thursday meetings, but like Ron said, giving was part of receiving—which meant he'd dock an errant counselor's pay. So on Thursday at 3:30, we'd amble in and sit on Ron's carefully arranged circle of stackable wood chairs. We'd fidget and rearrange ourselves, our chairs scraping the floor as the round wall clock ticked on. Ron was planning a weekend trip.
          "We've got some important business to discuss," he said, hiking up his beige camp casuals, and looking around. "Where's Abie?"

"Tooth-ache, emergency dentist," Josh said.

Ron scribbled on his clipboard. He pulled out two forms and gave them to Josh.

         "Requisition forms for the camping trip. Tell him to have them in tomorrow morning."

Abie liked to organize and he had been head of tripping at Camp Kvutza, a tough Zionist camp where he learned life drawing and Israeli street fighting. He could rock sew, create lean-to's out of whatever the forest might supply, and forge for edibles. He claimed he was in touch with his Neanderthal self.

"Men are the hunters," he'd say.  He was his best in the wild and that's the truth. Abie has made the city his jungle. Sometimes he feasted; these days he forages.

        I was lying in the grass with the yellow school bus behind me and the country sky above. Howie was sitting up yanking at single stalks of grass and tossing them aside.

         "Would you like to swing on a star?" I said.

         "What?"

          "Carry moonbeams home in a jar."

             "Sure." Howie looked at me and lay down. First he crossed his arms and then he started shaking his right foot.

             "See there's Orion,' I said snuggling up to him. "That's the Big Dipper, and there, look, the Milky Way. And the North Star. You figure they've got this great sense of humor, these stars, twinkling away like that."

              Howie's right foot kept fidgeting; soon his left foot joined in. I was lying right beside him under the stars, and his whole body was quaking.

             I sat up. "It's not working," I said.

            "So what you want to do?" Howie bolted up and stared straight ahead. I figured he was the dark, silent type. My mind was a matted jumble, unraveling, and getting tangled up all over again. Howie thought in simple sentences, sometimes only a solitary word surfacing.

             "I don't know," I said. "Hey, don't you feel like we're in a Fellini flick—like we're in this field, just field and sky and all these stars, it's a wide frame, and in the middle there's a yellow school bus, and we're sitting just the two of us . . ."

             "So what you're saying is you're dumping me."

             "Not exactly, it's just that we don't connect. I mean don't you see the scene, Howie?"

             "I think you're right, it isn't working. It's just one summer you know," he said, got up, and walked around the bus.

             I lay down in the grass and looked up at the stars. I spread my arms out, turned my palms up, and held my breath. I wanted to be caught in a star storm.

             On the other side of the bus,counselors were singing     a rousing rendition of"Oh, you can kiss me on a Monday a Monday a Monday is very very good. Or you can kiss me on a Tuesday a Tuesday a Tuesday in fact I wish you would . . ." I jumped up and rang out "And if you make it on a bleak day a freak day or a week day, well you can be my guest . . ."
        That summer night in 1968 in a field in the Laurentians with a postcard bonfire, Abie sang the last refrain from "Never on a Sunday," his legs side-stepping and crossing and his arms open, parallel to the earth. With his last note, he sprinted up to the fire, high-jumped over it, and grinning, landed in my lap. I was stunned. Everyone applauded. I remained stunned which he how he managed to marry me in the dead of winter at Hotel Bonaventure.           "
           So tell me again how you finally decided to make your move," I asked Abie. I repeated my question for the first two years of our marriage.

"You don't remember?" he'd ask.
           "I guess I have a selective memory." I'd say.
         

I couldn't figure out how marriage walked into my life, without even bothering to knock on my bedroom door, just marched right in, stripped, and pounced on me. In August 1968, the son of a shoichet from Main Street threw himself over fire into my lap and married me five months later. Abie fucked me over for twenty-eight years, and in the twenty-ninth year, I flung open the back door, laughed at the stars, and exited with one --- in this case, a four-hundred-and-twenty-pound bodybuilder, sometime training partner. And that's another story.

Abie from Main Street

I'd Write You the Grandest Emails

       "My left arm aches," I tell Caroline. "You're growing old," she says.

        "I always had this, even when I was young."

        "It's arthritis," she says. Caroline's mind is like a kid's feet on a winning hopscotch spree. She hops and lands dead-on and then she's off again.

        "Arthritis?" I say. "I thought arthritis was in the joints and this is deep in the muscle."

        "It's arthritis," she says smiling. "You're growing old."

        I stare at her.

        Last Thursday I told Dr. D. I felt time passing through my fingers.

        "Like water," he said, which I thought was rather poetic and told him so.

        This morning I took the subway to my appointment. I'm tired these days. Even now, at the library, as I wait for Caroline, my eyelids are heavy. The hum of the air-conditioning calms me. I want to rest my head on this rectangular school table. My arm feels better in the library. I breathe with the hum and sound of pages turning like birds singing on a spring morning­— not in the fall approaching winter as we are now. I last saw an ocean more than two decades ago, but there is a storm brewing in my body; I can feel it in the air, in the stillness of my limbs.
        When I leave the condo, I dial 94, wait for the tone, and then press 2. Sometimes when I return home, I forget to change the number of rings back to four, and Garth gets angry.
        "I phoned four times and you didn't answer."
        "Maybe I was indisposed. Maybe I was taking a shower."
        "Four times?"
        "I did the dishes."
        "So?"
        "I don't take the phone with me when I do the dishes; I refuse to be shackled to the damn receiver." I lean forward in the second hand dining-room chair in front of my Staples desk. I think the chair has bad karma. My assets declined because of that asshole Bush. I worry about my future and about Caroline's and Josie's.
        "Let me open your eyes," Garth says. He has four people on his staff including me.
        I worry Garth will discover Jimmy Bob and cut me out of his life which would reduce my income significantly. So from time to time I suck Garth off. I keep my clothes on. Last year I wrote poems about Garth's cock which I have since learned is wide, a sturdy trunk, but not a grand tree. Although he does have spreading balls and I like that.
        I wish he'd meet someone. I'd keep our lifelong friendship. Sabina says it's a pity I'm not a gold digger because I'd be set. But Dr. B. is right about life being like water which is where Jimmy Bob comes in.
        I'm in a deep pond with Jimmy Bob. He makes me laugh and I want to try coke with him. Sex and coke---you know that old ditty about love and marriage. I set this whole sex scene for him. Nothing fancy really. Been there. I emailed him: "Honey baby, I put on my Last.Fm playlist, close all lights, light one candle perhaps, we fuck on the floor, and see what happens. And then, when you're on top of me, and my legs are straight and tight, your finger up my ass, I love how you eat me out--you excel---I might merge that with masturbating, then you, then me, then you, then me, then when I'm about to come --- see the above. . . Whatja think?"
        I waited three days and the asshole didn't reply. The man with the indigo cock remained firmly in his city and I should publish his specific location and directions except he lives in a seedy part of town and you could land up in some bizarre tangle. I figure the man with the indigo cock trudged home one day after work, waited for the definitive slam of his metal front door, and curled inward like a water-logged fetus in his dead mother's belly.
       I say fuck them all. All the soft spots in my heart have been scooped up like slippery seeds of a ripe cantaloupe and scraped into a white kitchen Glad bag.
       I don't know when I first stole away. All I know is at an early age, I hid my heart in a safe place and I haven't been able to find it since.
        It's odd really. I'm the kid playing hopscotch, and one day I slit my chest open and my heart comes flying out. It travels, like a ball hovering over each word, following my girls through their lives.
        Meanwhile I'm sitting on my second-hand dining room chair listening to Corinne Bailey Rae on Last.FM. Did you know you could embed your track list? Like right here on this Typepad place, for example. And then you would fall in love with me and I would never grow old or have arthritis. And I would write you the grandest emails.

I'd Write You the Grandest Emails

Coke and Sex on the 401 during Rush Hour

Even in winter, the dealer's girlfriend wears short-shorts and a glitter top.

I'm pestering Jimmy Bob for details. He obliges me with this slight wardrobe description.

         "How old is she?"  I need a picture, 3-D, colour, wide screen, the works. What I really want is to lie under my Jimmy with his wondrous cock, which sounds out there I know, but it's a fact—Jimmy has the most beautiful cock I've ever seen. Transparent brown over layers of permanent purple and indigo blue. Gloss, never matt. And he's got these chestnut balls tight underneath. The man has cool genitals.

            "Around his age." Jimmy says.

            "And that would be?"

            "A mite younger than you, dear," he says.

            I move on to parking lots.

            There are two parking lots, one near the building and one larger across the street. Jimmy doesn't like to park his car in the large lot. He says he feels like a sitting duck. The dealer raps on the window, Jimmy rolls it down, hands over cash, gets the package.

            I need more info on the dealer. Like did he ever do time and for how long. Turns out the dumb ass was driving, windows down, stereo blaring, speeding along, enjoying the high life, and the cops were on him. One year in the slammer.

             "Does he have a grand piano?" I interrupt.

            "Yeah, white."

            "Why all this white shit? White carpets, furniture?"

            "You thinking he's thinking white is pretty, looks rich? He sits his ass on that white sofa, carpet's under his feet. Got it?"

            "Yeah, I got it."

            I look in the rear view mirror. My Honda CRV has blind spots, left and right.

            "So you're sitting on the sofa and . . .?"

            "Shooting the shit, I guess—details, huh? OK. Turning the rock into powder."

            "Like how?"

            "Grinding it."

            "With what?" Now I'm getting it. Jimmy's in an apartment, mostly white plush, and he's gabbing away, keeping his hands busy, flattening the rock with the TV remote, turning the rock into mewling powder fine enough for a baby's ass. When he finally gets home, he hears the slam of his metal front door and settles himself on this yellow chaise lounge, remnants of his second marriage—Susan got the house, Jimmy Bob secured the chaise lounge he sits on to eat, watch TV, churn out his articles, sleep. He says it would take three weeks to clean his house if I ever cross the border to visit him. His friends think he has a phantom girlfriend. It's getting embarrassing, he says. He never goes out with women anymore. Jimmy's place is a disaster. I know because he emailed me some Jpegs. He's fastidious about his drugs.

            Until the dealer shows up, and he's usually late, the girlfriend makes small talk. She's always high and talks in a squeaky girl's voice slurring her words and Jimmy can't make heads or tails out of what's she's saying. He's tried staring at her, focusing really hard, shutting out stray thoughts, and reading her lips. Usually he just smiles and nods. He says it works every time.

            "How much you think your dealer makes?" I ask.

            "About a quarter a million," he says.

             "For all that risk—that's all?"

              I know my funny man. I know his saliva gathers in the corners of his mouth when he gets carried away with an idea, he giggles after he comes, and his scalp gets itchy—but I don't know his insides, couldn't wing my way through his mind in the dark. Jimmy looks at me.

            "I have this friend, whose boyfriend writes for the Canadian Air Farce, makes two hundred K's easy, writing jokes, no worrying about a slammer door --- jail or coffin."

            "I don't make that kind of money. Never will." He looks out the car window. "Don't you think you should get out of this lane?"

            "Mind if I open the window?" I say. "I'm going to turn on 860 AM and check out the traffic. You OK, baby?"  His glasses are at the end of his nose which isn't a long way down. I push them up.

            He's staring out the window and I say, " So you get something hard and ground the coke some more and then what?"

            He stares at me. "You don't care that you're making me uncomfortable, do you?"

            "Nope," I say and it's true, I don't. I'm clear and smooth, not a ripple on these waters.

            Jimmy has a card, a smooth old credit card he uses to divide the powder, patting it into a neat straight line.

           I touch his crotch. "Then the straw, right? You got a supply?"

            "Yeah, I got a supply."

            "And what if you don't, if you're all out of straws?"

            "I roll a bill."    

            I wiggle my fingers, staying in place, playing the piano over his cock. Jimmy starts to grin. We're off in a single lane heading off the 401 onto Yonge Street north. Ten minutes to his hotel.

            I know the rest from what he's told me: the rush, not mellow like weed, doesn't creep up purring or roll in like Sandburg's fog. It's a feeling in his throat, he says. I know this because a guy, not quite family, but close, explained the whole ritual to me. I have a fondness for rituals although I have few in my life. It's not that I don't try. Every week I create new rituals and resolutions accompanying them. I'm a soul in search of one sustained ritual, which is why Jimmy coke routine intrigues me.

            "How about coke and sex?" I ask him as we pull up to the hotel's entrance.

            He leans over and kisses me on the lips. "How about sex?" he says.

            I haven't seen Jimmy Bob for two months now. Haven't found a coffee mug either. When I get around to it, I buy cheap red wine and at five o'clock, I pour myself half a cup and add some orange juice to disguise the rancid flavour.

            I'm looking for a house. Maybe there'll be enough room for Jimmy Bob or someone with a name like that. A man with a shining indigo cock, who gathers foam at the corners of his mouth when he talks, and offers me presents in the middle of rush hour traffic on a hot summer day.

Coke and Sex on the 401 During Rush Hour

Running All Round my Brain

"So you were in his bedroom—hooking for shit, honey. Baring your flat ass?"

"Oh, you are mean today!"

"I happen to be quite fond of your flat ass, it's like a wave sliding out to sea." I slide my hand between the car seat and his ass.

"And you have an ass with lines concentrically converging on that magnificent aperture of yours."

"How come he lets you upstairs then? You a regular?"

We're driving slow-mo on the 401. The highway is a parking lot. Time to ask and have answered. No place for Jimmy to run, my Jimmy with his small round head bobbing, oversize glasses slipping  as he sprints along in his size 14 ½ black real leather sandals that he bought for twenty bucks. Things in his size are hard to come by, and by his own account, his pockets have holes in them so his shoes are a good deal all around.

Jimmy Bob looks over the top of his glasses at me. "Why you doing what you do?"

"We're both addicts," I say. "It's how I am, like you. What I'm saying is don't be shy—hey, you've fucked me up the ass with the hotel light on. Stark naked 100-watt white without a shade. So you a regular or what? How come he lets you up to his digs?"

"It's my writing status," Jimmy says. "The token intellectual."

He gives me a story.

Once the dealer's significant other was really in her boyfriend's face. "Kiss me, c'mon, jest a lil kiss."

The dealer wasn't listening. The girlfriend was drunk or stoned, following him around the apartment, crying and begging for a kiss.

"He lost his cool. It wasn't pretty." Jimmy says.

"He hit her, you mean?"

"Nope — screamed at her is all. Let her have it."

I want to know exactly what the dealer said. Word for word. But Jimmy isn't doling out. Maybe I'll get him in bed, suck on his cock the way he likes, his indigo blue prick tickling the back of my throat. Cause I gotta know. I need an exact picture before I can move on.
          My Jimmy thinks I'm gonna forget, but I'm holding my questions in the my safety deposit box, right at the back of my cunt where it can't slide out or get lost.

           "So what she do?" I ask. I rub Jimmy's thigh.             

           When he visits me again, I'm going to rub both his thighs, we're gonna smoke up and drink and fuck all at the same time, and I'm gonna ask my questions. And then report back.

Running All Round My Brain

Jimmy Bob Snorts

I'm blinded by Jimmy Bob's fluorescent cock. I was thinking about buying a pair of sunglasses, but Jimmy beat me to it. He's a hat man, my Jim. Whenever he comes to town, he scopes out hat stalls downtown. Last visit he bought a Panama hat to wear with his white linen suit. I tried on hats for him but I winced every time I looked at myself, so he bought me a pair of black movie star sunglasses.

            When he fucks me, "You love it when I fuck you, don't you?" slam bam, "Missed my big cock, did you?" slam wham bam. He tells me to open my eyes because they're green which he thinks is unusual. I always thought my eyes were hazel, but maybe they turn green when Jimmy Bob fucks me.

            I really like this man. He's a writer and I worry he's wearing his fingers down to the bone. He types and types. Sometimes he sleeps, but not often and not for long. He's a coke man. I interviewed him for one hour once when we were stuck on that 401 parking lot. I needed details, all the where's and how's. Maybe I should have focused on the why's, but I just wanted a complete movie scene.

            "It feels like you're picking at a scab," Jim said after sixty minutes of my questions. "I must love you to spend an hour talking to you about something that highlights my failure in life and as a human being."

            Of course he didn't say exactly that—he's been writing for over thirty years, nationally published and all.

            "There are things I need to know," I said. "Like what the contact wears. I want a picture, beginning to end."

            "He dresses well."

            "You mean coordinated colours?"

            "Yes. That sort of thing."

            "Suits?"

            "Not exactly."

            "Then what?"

            "Track suits."

            "Sweats?"

            "No, expensive track suits."

            "Oh, I know!" I said. "I read this book about a rap artist, co-written actually, and his contact always wore track suits too."

            "There would be no leisure-wear business without dealers," Jimmy Bob said and I laughed. We laugh, Jimmy Bob and I, and that's neat.

            "OK. So he wears track suits. You ever see his closet?"


Jimmy Bob Snorts

Writing like a Blind Man

I want to write with closed eyes sensing words like a blind man. The other day—or was it a week—a grey car heading north on Yonge Street which is the longest street in North America possibly the world turned east on Cummer and cut off a blind man with dark glasses and a white stick. The man thrust out his hand steadying himself on the trunk of the car and then walked into oncoming traffic. A woman with spiky blond hair dashed from the sidewalk to the middle of the road, grabbed the man's elbow, and talking all the while, led him to the south-west curb. Good thing too — I guess his cane could sense obstacles but not direction. This pen rolls out indigo ink and leaves the rest to me as I stand in the middle of an intersection without a white cane or an onlooker to rush out and show me the way.

Writing like a Blind man

Blue Moon (***First Edit)

       Sometimes I think I don't need a man because I have my paintings. I live with one hundred and ninety-seven canvases and twenty-three watercolors and I'm in love with each one. I'm like a lady with her cats. My artwork covers and leans against walls, hides behind doors, and graces window sills. It consumes closets. As soon as I wake up, I pad around and take a tour of my gallery. I hold my breath. Lovers may leave before dawn. But these colours, these lovers, remain with me always.
       There is one man who loves the canvases as much as I do. He places a steady arm around my shoulders. I lean forward, like standing at the edge of a dock with my toes curled over the ledge. Except for the slightest swaying, I'm still. I arranged for a single violin. It's not that she knew anything about music. She had certain favorites that served as backdrops. Like candles. The last time I sat on her leather sofa, she played the sound track from the "Red Violin"; she liked the way the piece started out with a blend of sopranos, how one pure note from a violin wrapped itself around the voices, hypnotizing and silencing them.
       The day after my birthday I drove over to Celine's house. I always laugh when I reach the end of the lane of row houses. Dots of lights line her path like stars. I tell Celine it's heaven on earth, at which she smiles and hugs me. I was late as usual, but she was painting her bedroom so she didn't mind. Her house makes my heart sing. But this time, the rooms seemed larger and separate from each other — I had driven to the country expecting to walk along the shore and lie down under a country sky, but the land had sectioned off for sale. "I'm paring down," she had said. "Simplifying my life, getting rid of clutter."
       "Remember when you first got your sofa and you were so proud, and I spilled my glass of red wine all over it?" Celine was sitting on the couch with her legs curled under her. "Look at you!" she said. "You're sitting the same way I am. No pain?"
       I shook my head. I had questions I needed to ask her that night in her strangely sparse house. She answered them all.
       "I'm having an indoor yard sale," she said before I left. "I thought you might like a few pieces." She showed me a bureau smelling of jasmine. "You can tell its age by the wide wood planks on the back instead of one solid piece you see these days," she said. She gave me a silver metal lantern, a wood salad bowl "for the dinner parties you never have," an Indian carpet I'd always admired, and four red candles still conjoined at their wicks.
       "I love you," I called out after we loaded my new Honda CR-V. She was wearing a long white sweater and her hair shimmered electric blond in the night's light. She turned and waved.
       In the spring, summer, and fall Celine and I talk on the phone. Usually we leave messages. When the weather inspires us and when our schedules overlap, we go out to hear music. Celine wiggles and shakes her head so that her blond hair swirls around her shoulders. When I met her, she was thirty-two and driving a streetcar for the TTC. "I wanted something with security and a pension," she told me. At the first sign of spring, Celine wakes up. Her garden is paradise. She's even registered her house and garden as movie sets. One year Daniel Baldwin used her toilet and offered her his card. For the past decade, she's hosted her August birthday party in her garden. She sashays about, making sure everyone is in good spirits. No one gets drunk, just a bit tipsy, the mood becoming more jovial as the night progresses. Celine says I'm the most passionate person she's ever met. "And you," I say, "are the most accomplished flirt." Men flock to her and hand over their business cards.
       We share stories about our men. Some we've laughed about and our hopes have soared. Each time I say, "This is the one." I forget about the others so I ask her, "Was I this wild about the last one—and when was the last one anyway?" Celine says when we were younger the tap gushed, but now we have to be thankful for drips. "And yes," she says, "you're the same each time. I'll love him if he makes you happy. I'll be his best friend."
       Last spring I sent one of my new flames a CD of my work. I mailed it Express Post to Raleigh, North Carolina and he answered me straight away. "I need to see your work live," he said and asked me to arrange for a moderately priced hotel. "Welcome to my gallery," I said as I opened the front door. Leonard stepped in and whistled. He took off his running shoes and placed them side by side on the mat. He stood a few feet back from each painting, cocked his head to the side, moved in, stepped back to his original position, and nodded. There are forty-seven pictures on the main floor. Midway I slipped Nina Simone into the CD player.
       "You know what?" I said.
       Leonard turned away from a small canvas titled "Alone on New Year's Eve '99."
       "What?"
       "When you stand there observing the canvases the way you do—it's my soul in naked light that you're seeing—my soul with its dress slipping off its sloping shoulders, sliding down to the floor, circling its ankles. And you, you're standing all dressed up with your clothes and your fancy mind, and you're watching. Like that Gauguin painting, you know the one of the naked woman leaning against a Victorian armchair? "
       Leonard's finger rested on my neck. "I can feel your heart," he said. "You paint like Kahlo, like Duchamps with a smattering of Matisse."
       I smiled because I had just seen a movie about Kahlo. I didn't know who the hell Duchamps was.
       "What were you thinking of here?" he asked, pointing to a woman bending over to pat a fish. "And this?" he paused in front of a woman, sort of a Modigliani/Picasso/Monet blend with a blue moon hanging in the right hand corner.
       "Listen, you nice man, you can't ask an artist what she's thinking."
       "Why not?"
       "Because she'll lie."
       "But her paintings tell the truth," he said.
       Leonard's eyes were water and sky, clearer and deeper than any I've ever seen.
       "If I were to look at your pictures long enough, I would fall in love with your soul," he said.
       "And if I lose it? If one day I stare at an empty canvas and I run out of colors?" I looked up at him. Then I remembered that my face gives me away.
       "See these colors? This spot here took four hours. It takes time and focus and I have to say it—love. It's like lying in bed under a man with your heart straining out of your chest to meet his. It's all fire and yearning and joining before you can bring color to the canvas. And then from time to time you stand back and just look. You fall in love with each segment, a line of green that's actually six different shades when you get close enough, a patch of brown that is slightly raised and rough. It's a love affair."
       Leonard cupped the back of my neck in his hand and rubbed his thumb up to the spot below my earlobe and down to the tendon at the base of my neck.
       "Could you paint something sexy for me?"
       "No problem."
       "But I have children visiting, so you'll have to take that into account."
       "Something sexy, but there's children. No problem."
       "So what are we doing tonight?" he asked.
       "We're going to Hugh's Room to hear union songs."
       "And you'll wear a skirt?"
       "Skirt and boots."
       "So you're going to take charge, is that it?" He leaned against the door, his legs stretched out in front.
       "I'm going to let you think you're taking charge."
       "That's how it goes, is it?"
       I stood on my toes and kissed him.
       After he left, I phoned Celine. She wasn't home so I left a message. "This is the one," I said.
       Winters destroy Celine. Every winter since I've known her, she's been planning to kill herself. When I don't hear from her for a few weeks, I wonder whether she's still around. She called last week.
       "I'm still here," she said. "No excuses. I work, I'm home, I rush, I work, I sleep. I went to my homeopath finally last week. 'Why did you let yourself get in such a deep hole?' she asked me. I told her I thought it was the pain and that's the truth. The pain was so intense, I forgot about the hole—but I'm taking the Aurum again and they help. It's quite amazing really."
       "I was worried about you."
       "You know how I am in winter. Winter is a white violent time. I thought with Dwayne in my life —he only gets better and better—each time I see him, I think if this is it, if everything stops at this moment, it's perfect. It was even a chore to think about him."
       "That's saying a lot."
       "But this week it's a pleasure to think about him again. I don't know how I'm going to keep going through these winters. It's not the cold and even when there's sun— it's the white. I can't stand white and there are no leaves. My garden is a cemetery."
       There was a time when Celine was fourteen — a forest, older boys, running, winter. A year after we first met Celine brought a sentence out of her, one sentence about a time in the winter. Then she snatched it back and stashed it inside. In all our fifteen years as friends, we've never mentioned it since. I expect we never will.
       "You should spray paint your lawn and plant a forest of evergreens. Buy some of those spots photographers use."
       "I'm just phoning friends to tell them if they hear about an accident on the 401 involving a rented car, a barrier, and a blond, they'll know it's me."
       Celine says when she considers suicide, she has a sense of clarity. This winter as she was leaning against a downtown bridge and staring into the swirling water beneath, a black limo honked and stopped. The door opened, "Celine," the man shouted, "my God, it's you. I haven't seen you for eight years. Where are you going? Get in."
       It's not that everything in her life is bad, it's just that there's nothing that feels good. I'm quiet when she talks like that, because I understand. Only I don't want her to know. If you had a backdrop for the stage that's my life it would be a dull Payne's grey. Maybe a sheer colored curtain would descend from time to time to set a particular scene, but you can always see through it to the solid wall of grey behind. The rich colours in my canvases sustain me. My walls are painted off-white. After I moved in, I bought white duvet covers and white sheets and towels. I go to sleep wearing my father's white pajamas. This year I've already attended two funerals. I keep my mother's round two-sided mirror on my bathroom counter top. Several times a day I examine my eyes. Sometimes they're clear as morning. If I continue staring, storms filter across and then it's fair again. Like the centre of the violet crystal I used to keep on my glass night table. One day I looked at the crystal and moved it to my bottom bureau drawer under a pile of soft woolen scarves and beside my winter tights that I roll and line up according to hue.
       I'm worried about Celine. It's snowing again. Yesterday I thought spring had arrived. My whole body relaxed and I breathed deeply. Usually my breathing is so shallow I think I'm holding my breath. I thought Celine might be making plans for her garden. But today her shoulder might be hurting because she's got to reroute those metal tracks and unless she's taken her medication, her wrist is throbbing. Beneath her movie star sunglasses, she's crying.
       She's thrifty, but not to a fault; she's proud of her message machine because her monthly phone bill comes to twenty dollars plus tax. She loves receiving my rambling messages. Whenever she's down, I leave her messages about men. Today I'm going to tell her the summer story about Leonard. I'll listen to Eric Bibb singing "Hold me and make life new" and I'll tell her the story of Leonard's first visit. It's one of her favorites.
       "Remember Celine, the message he left for me when he got home—he had this electric kazoo and he played 'A Kiss is Just a Kiss.' I thought that was the most romantic thing I had ever heard. I played it over and over. And you told me maybe he was trying to tell me something but you wouldn't say what."
       "I finished it, you know—Leonard's painting. She's on her knees, bending over. There's a breast, an ass, black stockings, garters, and these platforms shoes. There are squiggles and easy-going intersecting lines all over the canvas. It looks like a modern puzzle. And the truth is it's representational because of his request and because I'm just not that fucking good. I should have painted stilettos, but I had this photograph of platform shoes. Anyhow I don't relate to stilettos—I have my grandmother's bunions. Remember that night with Leonard when I kept my shoes on and you thought I was being kinky?"
       Celine complains about my Bell answering service. Sometimes she has to leave four messages in a row. Her reply time is usually two days after I leave my message. This time she took almost a week.
       "I had a tiff with Dwayne," she said. "I thought we were so good. And you know I really don't care. The truth is they're all props with genitals attached."
       I called her the following morning.
       "It's kind of disappointing all of a sudden, an abyss . . . He's usually so accommodating and understanding. But my depression was bad this time. Last week I thought—but I didn't call you."
       "I thought with Dwayne there, this winter . . ."
       "I was focused on my wrist and the pain. I was trying to make peace with not being an athlete. My back hurts so I can't run and in winter, I can't bike. And with my wrist and shoulder I can't even do upper body. But you were a builder so you know."
       I was lying on my bed on my right side. There was a slight pressure on my hip beneath my eight-inch scar.
       "So at the end of the week I phoned my naturopath and she asked how I let myself get so deep in the hole. I took two Aurums in the morning and on Friday afternoon I felt like the sky had opened. But by Saturday I was back in bed, I was spent. My whole holiday home, lying in bed or on the couch.Nothing. God forbid libido and sex. Forget that. But Dwayne was coming over. I should have cancelled."
       "He has to understand."
       "I was irritated he was here. I had no words. I asked him to watch T.V. because I know that's what he loves to do. I couldn't stand his smell. I wanted to hit him. Imagine! He wanted to kiss me. 'Dwayne,' I said, 'it's not working. I'm numb. Nothing's coming.' And he said, 'Don't you care about me anymore?'"
       "I told him, 'I'm in my cocoon. I'm not here. I just need a break.' and you know what that self-centered ass said?"
       "I can imagine," I said.
       "'That really hurts!'"
       "Schmuck. Can you imagine—there's Dwayne's bleeding on the ground, and all you want to do is jump his bones and fuck him. He's moaning away and you say, 'You know, that really hurts!' The man's flashed open his raincoat and exposed himself. It's his mother and her depressions, you know— he has this over-riding anger." I'm warming up. "Yeah, and that old male rejection bit—I hate the fucking pig."
       "You always want to protect me."
       "I'm your friend," I said, as I folded a set of turquoise and black flannel sheets.
       "I tried to explain I wanted to be alone, to lie on the floor and stay warm. I told him to leave and I covered my eyes. He grabbed his sweat pants and packed everything into his gym bag. And then—he took the key off his key chain and put it on the table. I couldn't say stay and he didn't say anything until he was at the door. 'You have a lot to give. When you're ready, you know where to find me.'"
       "Your voice sounds flat." I said, sitting at the edge of my bed.
       "I slept twelve hours that night. I felt let down. I thought he would give me more. He said my eyes were dead when I looked at him."
       "Are you going to stay?"
       "I'm going to talk to him and ask him why he acted like that. I'm going to tell him that if we stay together, he has to understand."
       "He'll say all the right things. It's what he does. Look, he writes comedy for a living. He doesn't want depression in his life."
       I lifted my left shoulder to hold the portable. I put the folded sheets in the cupboard. I picked up the phone book and put it on the shelf underneath my new desk. I heard my cell phone ring in the living room.
       "You know he doesn't come," Celine said. "He can stay hard for four or five hours but he doesn't come. Once or twice a month, he tries to jerk off. He says if he were to come it would interrupt our love making."
       "But he has desire?" I asked.
       "Oh yes, he feels horny but he just doesn't come."
       "And does it bother you? I mean you know he's not going to come and then do you?"
       "He's good. He wasn't that experienced but I've taught him a lot. Anyhow I'm not into my partner when I come. I see faceless strangers, naked people walking downtown. Everything has to do with humiliation."
       "His shoulders are so thick and straight. There's no slope and that really turns me on—it's heartwarming. Endorphins are flying high. I'd miss it. He holds me and I feel at peace. I can even forgive him his belly and his shortcomings and his being judgmental when he holds me."
       Celine is going to give him another chance. It's winter and she needs his flesh. She says when she comes she wants to punch him and scream. He doesn't know she's not even thinking of him. "I have ongoing themes," she says. "Up north. Maybe a chalet. There are women wearing robes with folds that open. Men come and go. Sometimes I watch or I direct."
       "And it feels real?"
       "Oh yes, and it continues. There are themes. Sometimes it's a short story. And there have been sagas."
       "Well, you're the fiction writer. See if I could learn to write fiction . . ."
       I can see anything when I'm not wearing my glasses. When I paint, I take my glasses on and off. Last night I lay in bed wearing my dead father's white t-shirt and his white and blue striped cotton pajama bottoms and I looked out my bedroom window. If there were stars I'd be floating right up there with them. I don't believe in weird things happening during full moons, but the moon last night was so full and luminous—it shone from the inside with this iridescent blue covering on top. And beneath that top coat, just floating under, I swear I could see a face, maybe part of a body. So I put on my glasses and I stared really hard and still I saw the face, its eyes wide and mournful looking right back at me. I rolled down my quilt, and with my arms and legs spread out at the same angle, I lay there with the moon streaming in.
       In the morning, I do a quick mood check before I decide what I'm going to wear. My moods are like a morning that can't make up its mind. Sunny, then cloudy, a mixture of snow and rain, a hail storm in the summer. I opened my fourth drawer and chose a brown crocheted wool sweater with green and blue flecks. The sweater has a round sweetheart's collar and shiny sepia buttons; it buttons up to my neck and ends just below my knees. I pulled on my yellow winter wooly tights and searched for my work boots. I like the look of the work boots and my yellow legs sticking out of the long brown sweater. I brushed my hair with sharp fast strokes and fastened a metal barrette at the back to keep the stray ends in place. I left Celine a message: "I took a photo with my phone—sounds ridiculous doesn't it? I took a photo of Leonard's canvas and I emailed it to myself and then to him. I think I compensate well, you know, but it's good this one. I like to look at it and it pleases me. Anyhow, I was right. They're schmucks. Even the ones who say they like art. You know what he wrote back, fucking asshole putz, 'I'm going to put it in my boudoir.' Boudoir—imagine! And, and — 'I plan to use it as a conversation piece for my lady visitors.' Now you know why I horde my paintings. I left him a phone message."
       I began my walkabout. I paused beneath each canvas. I relaxed into my skin. What I love most are the colors, bleeding beyond their borders and shining out to me. I like how they live separately and together and how they balance each other. As I go about my life, I steal any shade that has a hint of ecstasy and stash it inside me. My body is a vault. Downstairs, I pulled up the venetians beside the front door. The day was bright sure enough, but the piercing sort of brightness that freezes your bones and your breath. When I opened the door, just a crack, cold air crashed against me like a crow slamming into glass but I was still warm with the colours from my walk-about.
       The blue box on the balcony was almost full. I put it out on appointed days even though I hate sorting and carrying the box out on command. The street was quiet except for rumbling of snow ploughs. I was sitting on the stoop, the flecks in my green and blue sweater blending with the evergreens that can brave any weather, and wondering at the sky the way I used to when I was a kid and had a name for wondering while mourning; beautiful-sad I called it. It was my childhood high and even now, in my middle years, I cling to it.

       The sky on this morning is an untroubled blue. It could be a sky or a clear country lake. I remove my glasses, lie on the snow and stare up at the sky as if it were summer and I hadn't a care in the world. When I look up I see the morning moon, which in itself is something to wonder at. I'm spread out on my white winter lawn with the sky shifting altitudes until it hovers within a breath above me. I can't see the man in the moon but I know he's there. I can't say he looks like this or that, what colour hair, wearing what, is thin or tall as forever. But I can trace his steps and I know he's there. And even though I'm lying in the snow, a warm glow begins to radiate from the centre of my chest to the rest of my torso, travelling down my arms and legs, and to the knob at the back of my neck.
       I spread my arms out wide. My breaths are slow, deep, and even. A man stands beside my left boot, his arms forming a circle, palms facing each other, the back edges of his hands resting on his thighs. I lie like this and then I swing my arms across the snow to my torso. I skim along the snow back out again and then swing inwards. Flapping now. Flapping and laughing. The man shifts from one foot to the other. I catch the beginnings of a grin widening into a lewd smile. I give him an Italian up yours, bending my left arm and putting my right hand in the bend. He puts out his hand to help me up.
       "You're here," I say.
       "You sounded so sad," he says. "What are you doing dressed like that on the snow?"
       "I needed to look up at colour, to lie beneath it—I'm afraid of the grey backdrop. So many decades with the same old dull colour. I'm going to repaint it transparent gold."
       He stops. I stop beside him. He's wearing a black cap and coat, but his eyes—I have no need of blue skies. A soul can fly or swim in Leonard's eyes, and I'm almost sure he knows it.He takes off his glove and for just a second he places his hand on mine. I feel the warm rush of his colour under my skin.
       We continue walking. He lets go of my hand, but he's right by my side. We're at the door. I turn the handle. After I'm inside and the door is closed, I take off my hiking boots. I look outside the oblong window beside the front door. There's a snow plough in front of the driveway. The phone sits on a dark wood hall table against the foyer wall. I want to leave a message for Celine, but the moment is like the snow I've just imprinted. I wait. I press the numbers and wait for her sultry outgoing: "This is Celine. Tell me what's on your mind and I'll get back to you." Instead I hear something that begins, "When you hear this message . . ." I dial again, and again the same words.
       "Something's wrong." I say.
       "It's OK."
       "I don't think so, I have this feeling. . ."
       "Shh," he says taking both my hands and drawing me into the center of the foyer. I'm submerged in the swirls of paintings and the deep clearness of his eyes. And when he takes off my sweater, the skin on my arms is gleaming rose with an under wash of iridescent gold.
       "I love your art," he whispers into my ear.

Writer Lust

I do believe I've become promiscuous. My friend Sabina who is Nordic and blond — that's a lie — truth is she's German and still talks with the slightest of accents which is quite charming really. Her "v" turns into a "w" when she's tired or depressed, as she is now. Sabina claims to have fucked over 100 men.  I learned this in a conversation we had about men, sex, and love about five years ago. I know she's calmed down since, although I don't know to what degree. She says she gets thirsty for the touch of a man's skin, body-to-body intimacy. I hunger for mind-to-mind with bodies interweaving — which is why I first sought out Jimmy Bob who lives five hundred miles away. We don't have enough cash for steady interweaving and he's damn stingy about sharing his mind.
        Now, I lust after readers. At first I was satisfied with ten a day, but after a week or so I was horny for more. This morning I had only six which almost drove me round the bend. I have hundreds of thousands of words stashed in boxes, journals, CD's from dead computers, and I know could easily siphon off a few. But when I'm feeling hot and randy, I need to write something fresh and meaningful. This morning I emailed Jimmy Bob — "Fuck me with your words," I begged him. "If I can't have your cock, kiss me with a sentence or two. I'm hungry for love," I wrote. Famished. But he didn't get it. Doesn't. Or does and he's keeping his words in his pants.

Wave your cock at me, Jimmy Bob. Paint two eyes on the tip, sweep a smile across with red lipstick, and wave. I don't fucking get it, you see. A man wants to fuck, and I'm damn good at it, and all he has to fucking do is scribble a few words with his cock in hand. So I plan to flash my readers instead, writing slips about sucking, fucking, ass and cunt all. 

He had the most gorgeous cock I've ever laid eyes and mouth on, Jimmy Bob did — dark as the night and shimmering like a country sky. How we danced under the moonlight! But tomorrow I'll woo my readers with spicy words, create a banquet of foreign treats.

It's not that I want individuals to write me that oh baby shit. I'm after discerning readers who can put their cocks where their minds live and the reverse. And is that too much to ask?

Writer Lust

Blinded by Jimmy Bob's Cock

The thing Sam likes about blogs is that she can smoke up in her tangerine bee-kini, send Jimmy Bob an email (some bit about being BAD), and slam it all up on her blog.
            If you wanna know what BAD is—bad is French kissing a lover while the first fuck's come is still fresh in your mouth, between your teeth, in your throat; the scent of his cock still on your palm—that's bad, but badder is when you have a blog and you know he's got your RSS.
            Sam's bad but not for kicks. It just works out that way. Of course she gets off on mild bad, but that's what living's all about. So next weekend she and Jimmy Bob are turning philosophical,  spinning words while he's ramming his cock right up to her inner cunt. She's got it figured out—a cunt has three parts like any great play: there's the outside cunt, the cunt proper, and then at the very end, well, that's the cunt inner. Cunt inner sits there shimmering, glimmering and simmering --- in Sam's case, for her Jimmy Bob writer-man.
           And the thing about a blog Sam kinda likes is she can put it out there for the world because she adores fame, loves seeing those numbers adding up. It's like sitting in black lace stockings with garters, elbow-high gloves, eyes rimmed with kohl, the works, on a window sill in Amsterdam and you're reading, walking by, retracing, taking photos, blowing kisses, staring with your collar up, hat tilted back.
         Sam's not into flashing. She's all out spreading 'em with this blog of hers. She knows there's a glass separating her although some cocks can chisel right through. Like Jimmy Bob's posted on Yahoo personals — zoomed right through the fucking screen and damn near blinded her.

Blinded by Jimmy Bob's Cock

Tip of the Hat

When Sam tells Dr. B. that Jimmy Bob claims to know the difference between profound like and love, Dr. B. raises his eyebrows.

"You sure he said that? He really knows? Because I sure don't."

Sam laughs. She loves when Dr. B. shares his personal thoughts.

"I was listening to a new song of Leonard Cohen's the other day and he was singing something about not trusting your inner feelings," he says.

"That's so cool. Here I've thought all along, as I sift through my stash of inner feelings — it's like looking through drawers of old and new clothes—I can't find what I'm looking for or I find something and almost immediately I'm not satisfied so I rummage around, find something else, go out feeling all hot and cool for five minutes tops, regret my choice, and on and on it goes. I thought I was deficient."

Dr. B. says sometimes he loves, then he hates, other times he's bored or just plain indifferent. Could be the next day or the next moment.

"I'm really glad to hear that. And there I was telling Jimmy Bob to search inside."

Meanwhile, it's the third day and Jimmy Bob has still not emailed or called. Thing is Sam has this blog thing going and Jimmy Bob probably knows she's freaking out again. Maybe he'll rise to the challenge or his cock will—or they might rebel in tandem, his cock like a turtle hiding its head and 'ol Jimmy turning obstinate, hoarding his typing fingers. On his dating profile he says he digs strong women. "My mother was one," he writes. Think again, Jimmy Bob. His mother was a powerful woman but Jimmy Bob is a pack rat loaded with ambivalence.

After Dr.B., Sam takes the Yonge subway northbound. She always walks to the end of the platform so she can find a seat, possibly a double. Sometimes she reads. This time she chooses to write in a 5 X 7 inch notebook. She's wearing her jeans rolled up to mid-calf, her blundstone boots, and her black ART MATTERS T-shirt with short sleeves that show off her arms. Also her father's heavy silver-linked watch. At intervals she looks right, straight ahead, and then left as if thoughtfully taking in. She closes her eyes for three seconds and writes one page, turning, the next, turning, one more. A young man sitting beside the door stands up and walks to the exit. At Eglinton he leaves the train.

A fat woman wearing black tights and a brown jersey sits down on the three-seater beside Sam. The woman's belly is a table to rest her hands on. Her head, with a rolled bun perched on the top, is attached like an ill-fitted afterthought. Sam looks at the woman's nails which are bitten down.
            Maybe she gets hungry, Sam thinks, maybe she'll bite her entire finger off, self-cannibalize.

Sam likes the way subway musicians perk up when she tosses them loonies. She likes to smile and thank them. Sometimes she says thank-you and touches her heart. This time she's standing against a round column and writing furiously in her black notebook. The guitarist throws in some trills.

"Thank you!" she calls out.

"What's that?" the musician asks.

"Thank-you! I wrote a poem!"

"Oh!" he laughs. "Have a nice day!" and tips his white panama hat at her. Which is all she really needs.

Tip of the Hat

If Jimmy Bob's Cock Could Write

     Sam's getting wise to men who glibly say "I'm sorry" or "I was wrong." The first time Jimmy said he was sorry and wrong, Sam phoned her friend Sabina. "I found a man who's not afraid to say I'm sorry."
      "I'm glad for you, but will he follow through?"  Sabina has fucked over one-hundred men and trades in her boyfriends more often than a leased car. She looks like Bo Derek except the movie star has tits and Sabina is quite flat, which pleases Sam who is good looking enough with her green eyes, long dark brown way hair, and great biceps. Still, going out to clubs with a friend who is drop-dead-gorgeous can be a real drag.
      Jimmy Bob says he's sorry for being invisible for over three weeks. "My friends tell me if anyone needs therapy, I do," he says to placate Sam.
      "Another crazy one," she says to herself.  Jimmy's excuse is he's a writer, and Sam loves words. When she and her Jimmy sail and the wind is right, they're across the ocean in a split. But when there's a storm brewing, Sam is out of town in a flash. No evacuation warning needed. She zooms off in reverse until Jimmy's a dot like the ones on Google Earth where she checks out house locations which she's doing a lot of lately, God be praised, as one her Stumble Upon fans puts it. He asked Sam to review his site, but the god-fearing man aligns the Republicans with the Almighty, so Sabina wrote a diplomatic farewell and signed off with "God be praised."
      
      Jimmy Bob says when writers have deadlines, they cloister themselves in windowless rooms until work is one-hundred-percent complete, revisions and all.
      "No phone calls to family, loved ones, and offspring?" Sam asks.
      "Nada," Jimmy says.
      "But what if, when the hacks emerge, those loved ones on the outside are dead, or get this --- after waiting and searching and mourning, going through all the stages --- is it eight or twelve, no, twelve is the 12-step recovery from addiction which I'm going through --- you've been a real ass, you know."
      "I'm sorry," Jimmy says.
      "Yeah, well, after searching and going through those mourning steps, they move on, locate beaus, attentive and in-town?"
      Jimmy sighs. "I was wrong." he repeats.
      "Damn straight you were!" Sam says
      "It came as quite a shock to me, if you must know the truth."
      "What?"
      "The depth of your feeling."
      Sam shifts to her left side to check the flashing digital clock on her teak nightable. She's on Roger's plan A, without discounted long-distance rates.
      "Maybe we define love differently. Perhaps you feel profound fondness," she says.
        "I'm pretty sure I know the difference between love and like, although with you I've got both."
      "You sure?"
      "Yes."
      "I need to know."
      "I see that."
      " See we don't sleep in the same bed, touching skin to make sure it's warm, not a cold body lying beside. I'm not into necrophilia, you know."
       "Neither am I," Jimmy says.
      
       Day two and Jimmy hasn 't sent Sam an email.
       If Jimmy Bob's cock could write, Sam would have her fucking email.

If Jimmy Bob's Cock Could Write

Jimmy Bob and his Cock Resurface

Two times a night Sam stumbles into her ensuite and two more times she wanders over to her new teak patio table in the kitchen to hoist some fruit. She's really proud of the table and four chairs that can fold up, leaving room for her easel—also new—and an oversize canvas. Each time she wakens, she phones Jimmy Bob. She knows he's not going to answer, but she's hell bent on making the schmuck suffer. And it's not that she needs to leave a message; the machine is full, says a smoothing female voice.

Jimmy Bob is depressed. Sometimes he hears the phone and turns over on his couch which is his sleeping place. Other times he's oblivious to any sound but the whirring in his head. He can't seem to get things right, he thinks, no matter how hard he tries and the Canadian woman just isn't working out.

Sam's fingers stretch, attaching to any phone within reach. She feels a spreading warmth in her chest when she thinks of Jimmy, but then her chest tightens and she doesn't know who the hell she is, how she feels or what to do about the man, or anything else for that matter. If he could gently place one finger on her mouth, sshh ssshh, perhaps her mind could lie down and curl up.

Josie, her daughter who lives alone, is buying a kitten.

On Sunday afternoon, the phone rings. Sam's hearing is going, which runs in the family --- her grandmother and then her mother--- but she can hear the beat of long distance from any room. Let the fucker ring. She watches the clock and takes thirty minutes before she checks the message. "I'm back in the world," he says, "going to a walk for suicide prevention for my friends Paul and Marie who killed themselves. I'll phone you when I get back if it's not too late, or if it is, I'll call tomorrow."

Two days later he calls. "I need to see you, talk face to face, touch. Miss you. I love you."

Yeah, Sam thinks, fucking right—asshole doesn't know the first thing about love. Sam's just learning how to dance love. She's clumsy, gets out of step and flustered, stepping on the guy's feet. "Sorry," she keeps saying, "sorry."

What she plans to do is check NOW Weekly and see wassup. Jimmy Bob and Sam like going to movies. They sit real close and every once in a while he kisses the palm of her hand. They also like to window-shop. Once Sam noticed a V-neck navy blue dress with white polka dots. The skirt was pencil-pleated organza, something gauzy but with class. Jimmy strode right into the store.

"Yes?" the clerk asked.
"We're trying to enter," Jim said tilting his head toward Sam who was hovering in the doorway.
"Can't. It's a dress."
"We can see that, darling."
"Next time," he told the clerk. "It's a process."
The clerk flashed a thin-lipped smile and turned away.

Really, there is nothing Jimmy Bob refuses to do—street fares, jazz clubs, Harbourfront, art galleries, strollin' down the avenue—he's agreeable to all. When he sits beside Sam, he brings his face an inch away from hers and stares into her eyes. He's got a romantic notion about up-close and personal. Sam laughs and repositions his face. Another time she laughed was when he sucked on her big toe, partly because as Jimmy says, she has gnarly feet, and it was just plain out funny—this naked man sitting on the bed with her big toe stuck in his mouth.

He makes her laugh. "You're my FES dispenser," she told him when they finally did start talking again. "OK, you got me." Jimmy's a cool dude who has a handle on almost everything.
"Fun ease flow---FES---who know like those e FEZ candies."
"I'm your candy man."
"Yeah baby, that's you."
He pauses. "I'm sorry," he says.
"I know," she says. "But it still hurts."

Jimmy Bob and his Cock Resurface

Jimmy Bob's Evil Twin (continued)

            In spite of all his faults, and even Jimmy Bob says his could fill an epic novel, Sam loves her writer-man. She’s a jeans and T-shirt kind of broad, but for his next visit she plans to march right down (twenty minutes give or take by foot) to “Naughty and Nice,” just south of the Anglican Church on the west side of Yonge Street to purchase a teddy, that one piece low-cut-on-the-top and high-on-the legs garment. “Not too expensive,” Jimmy Bob had cautioned her. “It’s not going to stay on you very long cause I’m gonna rip it right off.”

            “Ooh!” Sam had said and made another one of her mental notes.

            Sam doesn’t put effort into what she wears, which her boyfriend has duly noted. She lives by her muscles, recalls when Bev Francis first came over from Australia and how men and women both freaked out: “She looks like a man. She’s a freak.” they’d said. Sam saw her live at the Toronto Convention Centre. After the show the Australian was wearing a lime green latex minidress, and Sam told her coach who was with her at the show that Bev was selling out.

            Now, Jimmy Bob LOVES clothes. His house is a jumble of magazines, papers, and clothes. He has no time to read books which he regrets. But he’s lived fifty-four years and he swears by you-can’t-teach-an-old . . .   Sam’s youngest daughter who lives downtown is a clothes junkie and spends hours preening. You can’t always see the effort going into buying and coordinating, but maybe that’s just the point.

            Hats are another item both Jimmy and Sam’s daughter Josie adore. The first time Sam met her American, he was sitting in a blue art-deco hotel chair and wearing a black wool cap turned backwards from which his wayward ears stuck out at right angles. As for Sam, she’s not a hat person although she has two black caps she sometimes wears when she’s writing. One says McGill Crew to commemorate Sam’s rowing days though she was never on the McGill crew, never even thought of rowing in those days, and the other has a Nike swish on the side.

            It’s impossible to get hold of Jimmy when he’s immersed in one of his big writing projects. “I hide away, live on old pizza and coffee. It’s not pretty,” he told Sam after she tried reaching him for three weeks. She had taken to calling him thirty times a day at odd hours. She sent him as many emails and when he didn’t answer, she looked up his university email address and started sending him messages there. The night before he finally called her from his car, she had searched out his work phone number on the Internet and left him two messages with her coming. “ I want . . . I need . . . ohh Jimmy . . . your cock . . . remember . . . your big cock slamming up my cunt . . . right to the end  . . . oooh yes, YES,” she breathed and moaned into the receiver.

           It was all about timing: Sam closed her bedroom and ensuite bathroom doors so her daughter hooked up to the TV in the living room couldn’t hear, brought the portable into the bathroom, spread out the old beach towel on the floor, stripped off her jeans, kept on her torn socks, and lay down. She was really good at coming on the bathroom floor: after forty-seconds max, with her legs straight and tensed, she could come once, then again, up to four times maybe five until she was satisfied. Once she pissed on the towel because she had forgotten to pee before. As it turned out, she liked the feeling of warm pee journeying through the alley of her cunt. She didn’t often indulge in coming and pissing though because the towel had to be washed and of course she had to shower after—it was a pleasurable process involving too much work afterward.

            The trick was to rub and almost come, dial, almost come again, but fast enough to keep the number on display and then press talk. Most men lust after coming messages. You could catch a show anytime if plays every week, but when your favorite comes to town once a year maybe twice max, well then, the scalpers are out and laughing.

(more later or tomorrow)
Copyright Janice Colman 2007

Off with your Cock, Jimmy Bob

"Off with his cock!" the queen shrieked. Jimmy Bob pressed behind the door, would not answer when she, dressed in garish colours, clanged the bell. Instead, he hid in his briefcase, climbed in, snapped it shut, and lost himself within sheets of paper work. "I miss . . . need to touch . . . see . . . I love."

Bullshit, Jimmy Bob! Southern man sopping up graveyard chicken skin with his fingers, and yet, how he kissed, his cock shimmering midnight blue, semen thick with words filling. Evil Jimmy Bob grins from across the border, waving his cock, giggling his crooked laugh.

Bullshit, Jimmy Bob! Off with his cock tempting ladies, flashing words like glass diamonds, charlatan lover, southern foot fetishist exposed for peddling words. "I'm a hack, driving taxis for cheap fares; no, you are the writer,” he says.

Maybe or not. But I suffer like one.

Off with your Cock, Jimmy Bob

JVColman@gmail.com

Remembering Jimmy Bob

Things I’ll miss about Jimmy Bob in no special order—the length of his cock like a medieval bettering ram (not his tight tidy balls); his Baldwin eyelids; his love noises like a wheezing Ford skidding in a Montreal snowdrift; how he makes me laugh until my soul turns inside out; how he dawdles, hems, and haws when he buys hats at the International bazaar. I thought Garth’s cock all thick with orange curls surrounding and his spreading balls lapping over to the shores that are his legs—his one equal to my two—were the best in the world until I met Jimmy Bob’s cock.

I return to my book in its thirteenth edit, fretting over words and structure the way Lisa appraises her outfits before a night on the town—trying on, posing this way and that, discarding, sifting through drawers, boxes, plastic bins to discover a new look, something irresistible  and expressive.

            Sam says it’s good to enter a scene at the last and leave at the earliest moments. Derek tells me my work isn’t grounded and he’s right, this workshop member whose writing barrels down the street, swerves at unexpected side streets, brambles through hillsides as shortcuts, where I’m no sure but I’m staying for the ride—Derek is a fine grounded writer. You know the inner and outer when you read his work.

            Do writers make the best lovers, think of attention to detail, structure, build in surprises, unexpected turns and twists, looping toward the final scene laden with combined sighs, moans, and questions like Jimmy Bob’s:

           “You like this don’t you?”

            “You like when I ram my big cock up your cunt? Feel this? Huh? Huh?”

He slams three times, and sitting high, stares down at me. The momentum makes me gasp.

“Mind if I come?” he says.

I grab his ass with my builder’s grip, scratch the sides of his back and pull him to me. I kiss the sides of his neck and his nipples because I hear men like that although I can’t figure it out. I wrap my legs high around his shoulders against my hip surgeon’s orders.

“Oh oh oh,” he says— he writes better than he moans.

Then he laughs, giggling almost uncontrollably. “I’m sorry,” he says.

I scratch his head because his scalp gets really itchy after he comes.

Our first time I thought he was great. He produced a tube of lotion and rubbed my back, waist, quads, hams, even behind my knees. He kissed and rubbed and murmured so I thought I had found the meaning of life one year before my sixth decade. I introduced him to the art of ass fucking. The first time, he couldn’t even locate the hole. I wanted to laugh out loud—what do you expect from a Mac user? Far as I can see, they’re all technical idiots.

             These days which are rare because he’s pouting in Detroit, he starts with kissing. “You kiss like a twenty-year-old,” he says as he aims his stalwart cock. I get wet because I take Siberian ginseng three times a day giving me an ocean’s capacity, no shit. He slides down and sucks on my clit, vacuuming in my organs. I place my palms on his silver wooly hair and press down.

            And then he’s back, shoving and talking dirty in his fundamental Catholic way.

Once I told him, “I want you over here,” and hoisted his two-hundred-and-ten  pounds, which is really not so much, over so I could climb on top of him, grind and wiggle, sitting up to show off my delts, lats sweeping, pecs built high and mighty.

“You know how good you are? Has anyone ever told you how good you are?”

“Yes,” I say.

I swoop down and kiss him there and there. I love compliments but I never know quite what to do upon receiving them.

Jeem

Jeem, Jiimy man who was mine, your long body a putty man with moveable arms and legs, bones rearranging themselves over mine spreading over. Sometimes I think I'm going to lose my mind --- when you knocked I pretended I wasn't in, but all the while I was hunched into my child's shape hiding on the top shelf. How easily you glided under that gap between carpet and door's edge until you stopped in front of the cupboard and then stood up.

"C'mon out. C'mon, you can call me Jimmy."

"Jimmy? I like that," I said, "I've never known a Jimmy before."

"Yeah," you said, "you like it?"

"I could."

"You think so?" you said, your voice like a sax singing into my veins.

Like sap clinging, like the smoothest songs sliding, like a shimmering layer of tender oils covering my skin, you made me shine oh honey.

You made me shine.