She was from France, actually. Sophie was born and lived her childhood in the beautiful Ardeche, where she first saw the world in shale and vines, terraces and tides of sky. Her father was growing grapes and they got by through the old vines' grace for Ardechois vin. Zoe was her mother, a dancer and the second wife of Patrice. There were old families who loved the Chambons and their perfectly beautiful daughter. Sophie was welcome to any of their houses for coffee and breakfast, to liven up the morning and to learn the old traditions and lore of the vigneron. The familes were old and other young girls, the grandchildren of the families of the terraced vineyards only came from the cities to visit on holidays. She tried to make them friends, but they were of a different class of children. They spoke differently and had different expectations.
Sophie was a gorgeous girl, and would be a perfect woman in time, but as she was so young and left to find her young wonders in the terraces and trails, the blueish shale and the azul sky she was just as much boyish as she was gorgeous. Her favorite game one summer was the flying of a kite that Monsieur Meursault had helped her build from waxy paper and thin strips of pine. She was fascinated with its architecture and how well she knew her cerf-volant would fly higher than the birds. Perhaps he could even touch the clouds if she had enough ligne. How proud would her father be if she caught a nice goose by placing a fishing hook from the kite and a nice bit for the bird to eat!
Those fancies floated away as soon as the kite took to the sky. She loved her kite, the sky, the wind and the sun. Her dress was clean and cotton and she felt the ease of youth. A wizened but beautiful fair woman watched from the nicest house at Mazel. Sophie looked at her kite, pulling on her winded string and making her small arms work to keep him. She was as happy and glad to be alive as one ever is. Something older than she, much more than her few years gave her to pray a loving prayer to god:
God, I love you. Thank you for this kite and the sky.
I feel good and happy and the sun is warm and light.
May everyone I've known and come to know be so
So happy and thankful to be alive and how they are.
If I can be an representative of your love to someone
That they love me no matter what, and I them, so
We can, freely together find closeness to you as
This kite which floats higher and closer dans l'ceil.
It was maybe her echoing sonnets and poetry, bible and love stories she had been given to read and been read to. Still, there was a purity and genuineness in it and the words she issued were from her soul, a golden heart and her only request to share love with some love the love of god. Rarely do those of us that observe a faith give such a wholehearted and sincere humble and personal prayer. Sophie was just a young girl, and still pure and so innocent.
She was well behaved and her précepteur spoke so much praise for her natural and eloquent progress in all fields of study. Zoe and Patrice were proud of her, and with the same humility that reflected so much grace in Sophie they kept the reports inside the family for it would be distasteful to brag to the others in the village.
To be continued...
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
By Beaumarchais?
N.21. Duettino No. 21. Duet
SUSANNA: SUSANNA:
[scrivendo] [writing]
"Sull'aria ... " "On the breeze ... "
LA CONTESSA: ROSINA:
"Che soave zeffiretto ... " "What a gentle zephyr ... "
SUSANNA: SUSANNA:
"Zeffiretto ... " "Zephyr ... "
LA CONTESSA: ROSINA:
"Questa sera spirer‡ ... " "Will whisper this evening ... "
SUSANNA: SUSANNA:
"Questa sera spirer‡ ... " "Will whisper this evening ... "
LA CONTESSA: ROSINA:
"Sotto i pini del boschetto." "Beneath the pines in the copse."
SUSANNA: SUSANNA:
"Sotto i pini ... " "Beneath the pines ..."?
LA CONTESSA: ROSINA:
"Sotto i pini del boschetto." "Beneath the pines in the copse."
SUSANNA: SUSANNA:
"Sotto i pini ... del boschetto ... " "Beneath the pines ... in the copse ... "
LA CONTESSA: ROSINA:
Ei gi‡ il resto capir‡. And he'll understand the rest.
SUSANNA: SUSANNA:
Certo, certo il capir‡. Oh, yes, certainly he'll understand it.
Translation by Hannah Kilpatrick (hannahelizabeth[a@t]start.com.au)
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Misotheism (a mistake, be warned)
When Zeus noticed his eyes were stinging, he looked over at the torches and sacrifices. It was an unusual irritation, and the odor was not from Olympus. His nose and eyes watered and he appeared to be crying. Man was up to something, and he knew it. He saw small lights below, like stars on the earth. THEY HAD FIRE! Immediately, he accused Prometheus. That prankster must have taken such a liberty; no one else had the gall.
His daughter Athena was always "stirring the bitches' brew"(A.J.) and near the center of such deviance. He called her and she came forward, a mischievous smile barely subdued. Zeus' eyes rolled back into his head. Until he could find and collect penitence from Prometheus, he would curse his brother Epimetheus. Prometheus was given to intuit this, and warned his brother in advance not to accept any gifts, that Zeus was not likely to render any magnanimity for either of the brothers.
Hephaestus was ordered to create a woman in fine craftsmanship, under the direction of the gods and goddesses who would design and adorn her in a mutual symbols of gifts. She would be the undoing of Epimetheus and the men "to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth." And thus from the four winds Pandora was born. Epimetheus ignored his brother and accepted the lascivious smile, ample breasts, perfect legs, and beautiful eyes. Of course, he could only be blamed for this so much.
Prometheus was summoned and presented to Zeus. 
He was chained in the Caucasus, with his liver garnished, to be eaten each day by the ripping talons and knifing beak of an eagle. Such an easy meal would not be passed up by the bird, and each night Prometheus' liver regenerated in his immortality. This was a sentence with no date of completion, and no indication that it would ever satisfy Zeus' anger.
He was chained in the Caucasus, with his liver garnished, to be eaten each day by the ripping talons and knifing beak of an eagle. Such an easy meal would not be passed up by the bird, and each night Prometheus' liver regenerated in his immortality. This was a sentence with no date of completion, and no indication that it would ever satisfy Zeus' anger.Pandora and her daughters would continue to seduce men. Men would send their gifts of prayer and petition to the gods, prostrated by the evils which had been unleashed without meditation from a jar she brought with her. She opened the jar out of boredom and mischievous curiosity, knowing full well that it was a foolish enterprise. From it presently sprung all sort of burdensome toil and sickness, disease, and a myriad of other pains.
As she was overwhelmed, she was unable to close the jar until nearly all evils had been born and scattered throughout the lands and seas; when she did but one was left, Hope. Blind Hope, by proxy through Zeus, Epimetheus, and Pandora, the cursed blessing of Prometheus, was left for man. It was, it would seem, the will of Olympus and her Zeus. Perhaps it was of a merciful turn in making edifice some comforting theodicy.
Eventually, Prometheus would have a last word. Words, however, do not make actions. At best they make lessons, maybe understanding, and in the reflection of hindsight (ironically), wisdom. Some three million or thirty years later, Prometheus was released from his torturous jail by Heracles. He then defied Zeus and Olymus. He saw the gift of Hope, blind and whole, to be a mockery of man and of himself, of Foresight. In a fitful rage he shouted at the heavens.
As was written by Goethe,
A bold and defiant Prometheus ignored the simple truth that in his provocation of Zeus' wrath in by stealing the fire, and before this in deceiving him in a deviant game of choice where he misrepresented offerings untoothsome as such and lavish as slim for pickings, that he, Prometheus brought the pain and evil into the world. It was fire that he bore, and light by it that felled the men he claimed love for. It was not love for man but his own pride and defiance, the challenge of outwitting omniscience, of disproving omnipotence that he loved.
Any witted soul can fall into this trap, but only one without respect for his place in the ever greater scales of realm, one that can persist in such a blind treachery to oneself and also those suckered by association into culpability, through gaming mischief and lawyering around with the laws of divinity, a soul such as Prometheus' will find itself bound with fetters of one's own doing.
This is all that caused so much pain for so many hearts of men. The games and antics of a trickster. In a way, he was instrumented to give blind hope to the hearts of men by god greater than he. There is a lesson to be seen in that emergent resolution, of the eventuality of the will of powers ultimate and greater than. For every web to snare righteousness he cast, he found himself tangled the more into evil. The heavens govern even this and until that day he finds it he will continue to bear the humiliation and pain, spreading it and winding it, casting it and drawing it. His redemption and amazing contribution to the affairs of the universe unknown and eclipsed by his shameful defiance and failsome knavery.
Monday, May 11, 2009
A Fantastic Pussy
My mouth is dry and gritty, and as the pain starts searing through my head I open my eyes. I am on an airplane. We are descending. Where am I? Right, flying to Frankfurt. The whiskey was a bad idea. Anthony is there next to me, and where are the other two? On the other side of him, of course. The desperate need for water has me nearly in a panic. The flight attendant is trying to tell everyone in German, English, French, whatever to put on their seat belts and put their seats up.
"Madam, may I please have a bottle of water? I'm so dehydrated I'm going to faint!" "Yes, but please wait." "I'm dying! Please hurry!" The pain is twisting my guts into knots and crushing my eyeballs. Waves of anxiety are creeping, and I'm trapped in this flying prison. I sat down and tried to hide from it all inside my head. "Anthony!" "Yes?" "It hurts." "I know."
The plane was big, with two aisles and three rows of seats. Fortunately, we were in the front and soon after we landed we were able to escape. My main interest was getting some beer to treat the hangover. "Anthony, do you think we can buy beer now? It's like 2AM our time." "It's Germany, Jay." "So that's a yes?" Anthony smiled. I got to the bar and started explaining myself to the bartender in English. He just looked at me and asked me what beer I wanted. Once I had two tall glasses in me I could feel my nerves start to settle. I felt alive again, but I knew there was a clock on how long that would last. I was sleep deprived and on a transatlantic bender.
There were four of us: Anthony, Josh, Kyla, and myself. We were all loser Americans, but at least Anthony had been to Europe before and had a broader cultural experience than any of us. Our final destination was Amsterdam, so we had a connecting flight to catch. I don't remember boarding the second plane, but I do remember waking up with a desperate need to go to the bathroom before we descended to land. There were two old Nederlanders between me and the aisle, and I could tell by their expressions that I was emanating alcohol. It would have been embarrassing but their screwed up old faces were too amusing for me to feel any shame. Besides, I was still drunk.
Soon enough I was looking for the train to the city center with Anthony, and through our cloudy minds we found it. We went up to the second stage of the train. It felt like a dream. It was already getting dark and it was only like 3:30. The hotel we were to stay at wasn't far from Centraal Station and we blundered our way with enormous backpacks on through the city. A man in the street cursed us, "Baakpaakers!" We laughed.
After resting, we went out to see what the notorious city was about. As I walked along, I saw whole streets with multiple stories of windows, lit red with slithering and spinning sex. The prostitutes. I didn't actually believe they were prostitutes for some reason. It had never been clear to me that prostitution was legal but also a prominent business in the red light district. They look like little barber shops, or diorama sets of sexual dentists' offices. The women are of all colors, shapes, and sizes, all of them costumed in lust and fetish, performing in a bizarre theater of sex. There are even men on offer.
The coffeeshops have character and project a reputation for any kind of dope smoker. They have jars and cans, boxes and displays of all sorts of marijuana and soft drug produce. Ganja makes my head feel uncomfortable and I become sort of stupified and hypervigilant, a waste of anxiety and sometimes on the brink of paranoia. It doesn't agree with me. What I did like was that it was no big thing. No one cared. It wasn't taboo, and it didn't undermine society. In fact, the courage and humility to look morality and human vice in the eye made it less of a threat.
Soon I made it clear that I was over watching them smoke weed, and that there were much more interesting and inspiring things in Europe than sex and dope. My companions agreed to leave and we boarded a train northeast to Groningen. Anthony explained that it was a university town that he had known and was excited to return to. I liked the idea of a smaller, younger city. All the drinking and accents, the exotic erotica had begun to stir my libido. At 22, it didn't need to be stirred, but so it was. Perhaps I'd find some adventure in Groningen that would sate my appetites.
We stayed at the Simplon Jonerenhotel. It was very cheap. There were rollerskating drunken young stupidity, inebriated sloshing nederlanders and rickety metal bunks. Josh wanted to smoke more weed. Anthony wanted to find his memories. I wanted to get drunk and laid. Kyla was fending off the affections of the locals and travellers. She had some serious mammaries, but I was unable to find much else about her to adore. I am a bad man often and a worse man more often.
The beer was somehow better then. I loved to have a pint in my hand and a cigarette, balancing the smoke and the swill so that they cancelled and complimented each other. The few girls I spoke to entertained my advances for their novelty and soon abandoned my awkward interest. Truthfully, I am a nerd and a creep. In those years I had even less talent at dressing my romantic inaptitude. We killed enough time over a day or three that even the young revelry became tiresome.
Anthony guided us to the Martini tower. He is afraid of heights, and perhaps wisely attentive and observant of the age and physics of the architecture. There appeared to be a storm coming, and the tower has been destroyed by lightning several times already. Always taunting fate and trying to cheat destiny, I loved the climb and the views, the feeling of being in such an old and defiant edifice. After this affair, we sat around a table to collect ourselves and plan out our next destination. As we sat drinking, myself sipping a pint of Guinness for its nutritional value, the conversation turned to prostitution.
The women (and men) in the Netherlands may be exploited by some pimp, someone who controls or dominates them. This is not propped by the market demand for sex, though, because the women can register and license their practice and appeal to the law for protection if they are being abused. It isn't illegal for them to fuck for money, so they are still protected by the law. I was listening to the conversation. Kyla twisted her face up, pouted her cheeks and lips and with great indignation chirped, "It's sick and it exploits them!" This made a sinister smirk creep upon my face. I love all too much the protests of the morally righteous in myopic vision. They tempt me in ways I should be able to resist. I'm just not mature enough.
"These women, whom the law protects, choose to work in the oldest business in the world. By default no one makes them, and if they are forced to do it against their will, they have options. Say nothing of the services that are provided to them." I offered. Kyla sneered, "You're just a male pig. A chauvinist." I coughed a scoffing laugh. "You're not hearing me. Think of it like free-range, grass-fed, hormone and antibiotic free steaks." She loved this. It was dripping with opportunity. She was like a dog on attack. "See!? You think of women as meat, as objects!! You PIG!" I loved it. Something came over me.
"My dear, if one of those women is being exploited I should not patronize that particular girl. I should only choose the free-range fair trade whores. Just like meat, except I'm paying for the attentions and affections of a woman at my convenience, without any of the courting ritual or other expectation or obligation. If that makes me a -pig- then so be it. 'Oink, oink' I'm not sure if you can't handle the idea that men would pay for sex, but we all do in one way or another. In some ways, this arrangement is more honest than others." I was playing the devil's advocate, and some immature obnoxiousness was making me flick a forked tongue at the girl. "You're disgusting. You're a pig. You make me sick." She wasn't going to work with me on this one. She had made up her mind before we even began.
I set down my half of a pint of Guinness. "I'm going to go fuck one of them. A hot one." I looked at her and smiled. She shook her head and sniffed through her nose. Josh looked at me and said, "No way. You're kidding, right?" Until then I had been. "No, I am going to go and fuck a prostitute. I'm going to compare them in the windows until I find one that appeals to me and then I'm going to pay her for sex." Kyla turned her head away. Josh gasped and smiled with disbelief. Anthony just smiled, as he had been amused by the whole exchange.
The street with the whores was a small and dark one. If it were anywhere else in the world, it would probably be dangerous. I stopped and asked a man how the deal went. He told me that if I paid more than 160 guilden for regular suck and fuck I was getting ripped off. When I asked about tips he said that I could if I wanted to. There were no passwords or cloak and dagger bullshit. I paced slowly down the lane looking the girls over. There were dubious blondes and deviant brunettes. There were famished looking waifs and nubile sex kittens. They all wore lovely underwear and their skin looked perfect in the blacklights and red lights. Each room had a curtain, so you knew when the ladies were available.
Finally I got as far as I wanted to go. I realized that I'd end up spending all night trying to compare and interview them, working on the misled notion that I'd have some sort of relationship with them, that I'd have to be a gentleman and woo them. It was not so. I saw an attractive woman, about my height and well proportioned. She was a woman, not an exaggerated morph of sex. She had white bra and underwear. Her room had blacklight and there was no evidence of the luminescence of proteins on her skin. I know I am crazy, but hygiene matters to me.
I asked, "Are you free?" She nodded and waved me in. As she closed the curtain, she looked at me and told me with her eyes to go over towards the bed. The bed was exactly like the one in the doctor's office, with the paper that gets unrolled so that each patient, or in this case guest, has a new and clean surface. It felt strange and uncomfortable. When I went to sit upon it, she shook her head and told me, "Uhnuh." She smiled at my awkwardness and waved with her hands for me to undress. I did so, wondering when she would get undressed until I saw that she already was. I figured I would leave my underwear on since she did. She reprimanded me again with the, "Uhnuh." and waved her hands down to let me know they had to come off. Then she pulled me up to a small sink at dick level with her hand around my waist.
She turned on the water and made the temperature warm. This was about washing my dick, I realized. Ok then, I began to soap up my hands and wash myself and she prevented me from getting involved. As she washed me, she examined my wood for splinters. A smart girl, I thought. It was beginning to feel like a very strange visit to the dentist, an appointment with some unusual sex doctor. I tried to rummage around in the dirty parts of my head for an examination fantasy. She was too distracting.
The woman pushed me back onto the bed table and I laid back onto the crinkly paper. She prepared my dick for intercourse with a condom she put on with her mouth. My usual habit is not to watch a women when she gets up to these things out of respect for some fear, but I was so curious. As she continued to arouse me she lubricated herself with a free hand. Then it was time to fuck. She got onto her hands and knees and I dutifully put my dick inside of her. She felt like she'd been fucked today. I don't suppose that would be unexpected. It took away from the sensuality. Already it was a very sterile encounter, and there was no romantic lust. It felt cold and mechanical.
As such, I found that I could get nowhere close to coming. I fucked and I fucked until out of distress, frustration, and embarrassment I politely indicated that I wanted her to flip over. She asked me, "What's the matter? You don't like my pussy?" I got scared something was going wrong, "Oh no, no. It's a fantastic pussy. It's a great pussy." She didn't believe me. It was time to come clean. I gathered that her English wasn't the best, so I made it as simple as possible that she could probably get me off by sucking my dick. She reluctantly got to work.
I had to fiendishly obsess on my dirtiest memories and pretend I was having the hottest blowjobs I'd had so far. My body had to physically tense, the whole of my body I held as rigid as steel and the anxiety of feeling like I had to accomplish an orgasm or I'd let down my friends and myself and waste the money I'd spent on the prostitute. After I climaxed into the condom she had sucked like a professional, and she was a professional, I worked out all the cramps I'd began to suffer from such a prolonged physical tension. Suddenly I became super nervous, unsure of myself and felt bad for her and her pussy. It was a lovely pussy, but it was not mine and she did not want me to fuck with her heart. She wanted the money I'd give her for her pussy. That wasn't my thing. It was glaring and saddening.
I tipped her 30 guilden and in the fog of the confusion over what had just transpired I could only manage to ask her where she was from. She told me that she was from Hungary and asked me where I was from. I prayed for her and thought about how the bible's Rachav. Useless notions bouncing around my addled psyche. Fucking a prostitute was something I could now say that I had done, but I could not understand why a man would want to do that. I was admittedly horny as hell and sexually pent up. Even still, I could not come from fucking her. My conclusion was that maybe when I'm old I'd like to fuck young whores, but paying for them now wasn't worth the money or the stress.
When I returned to the bar I sat at the table. My half a Guinness had disappeared, and none of the fools I was sitting with knew what had happened to it. I was only gone for as long as it takes to fuck a prostitute. Surely they could have protected my pint. Kyla's view of me was set. I had completely written her off, and later I would feel guilty about disrespecting her by taunting her. After all, I was much more relaxed since I'd gotten off with the whore. Josh seemed to follow Kyla's regard of me insofar as it promoted his candidacy as a lover and thus access to those lovely big tits. Anthony remained impartial, though I sensed that he was on my team more than the tits' team.
I would leave Groningen a wiser and older man. A part of me felt like I had lost some sort of virginity, like I wouldn't be able to wear a white wedding gown. Now was no time to worry, though, for I had many countries and cities to see. They would hold love and sadness, company and loneliness, laughter and revelation. When I was young I was advised not to become too worldly. I remembered this and reminded myself not to become too much of this world.
"Madam, may I please have a bottle of water? I'm so dehydrated I'm going to faint!" "Yes, but please wait." "I'm dying! Please hurry!" The pain is twisting my guts into knots and crushing my eyeballs. Waves of anxiety are creeping, and I'm trapped in this flying prison. I sat down and tried to hide from it all inside my head. "Anthony!" "Yes?" "It hurts." "I know."
The plane was big, with two aisles and three rows of seats. Fortunately, we were in the front and soon after we landed we were able to escape. My main interest was getting some beer to treat the hangover. "Anthony, do you think we can buy beer now? It's like 2AM our time." "It's Germany, Jay." "So that's a yes?" Anthony smiled. I got to the bar and started explaining myself to the bartender in English. He just looked at me and asked me what beer I wanted. Once I had two tall glasses in me I could feel my nerves start to settle. I felt alive again, but I knew there was a clock on how long that would last. I was sleep deprived and on a transatlantic bender.
There were four of us: Anthony, Josh, Kyla, and myself. We were all loser Americans, but at least Anthony had been to Europe before and had a broader cultural experience than any of us. Our final destination was Amsterdam, so we had a connecting flight to catch. I don't remember boarding the second plane, but I do remember waking up with a desperate need to go to the bathroom before we descended to land. There were two old Nederlanders between me and the aisle, and I could tell by their expressions that I was emanating alcohol. It would have been embarrassing but their screwed up old faces were too amusing for me to feel any shame. Besides, I was still drunk.
Soon enough I was looking for the train to the city center with Anthony, and through our cloudy minds we found it. We went up to the second stage of the train. It felt like a dream. It was already getting dark and it was only like 3:30. The hotel we were to stay at wasn't far from Centraal Station and we blundered our way with enormous backpacks on through the city. A man in the street cursed us, "Baakpaakers!" We laughed.
After resting, we went out to see what the notorious city was about. As I walked along, I saw whole streets with multiple stories of windows, lit red with slithering and spinning sex. The prostitutes. I didn't actually believe they were prostitutes for some reason. It had never been clear to me that prostitution was legal but also a prominent business in the red light district. They look like little barber shops, or diorama sets of sexual dentists' offices. The women are of all colors, shapes, and sizes, all of them costumed in lust and fetish, performing in a bizarre theater of sex. There are even men on offer.
The coffeeshops have character and project a reputation for any kind of dope smoker. They have jars and cans, boxes and displays of all sorts of marijuana and soft drug produce. Ganja makes my head feel uncomfortable and I become sort of stupified and hypervigilant, a waste of anxiety and sometimes on the brink of paranoia. It doesn't agree with me. What I did like was that it was no big thing. No one cared. It wasn't taboo, and it didn't undermine society. In fact, the courage and humility to look morality and human vice in the eye made it less of a threat.
Soon I made it clear that I was over watching them smoke weed, and that there were much more interesting and inspiring things in Europe than sex and dope. My companions agreed to leave and we boarded a train northeast to Groningen. Anthony explained that it was a university town that he had known and was excited to return to. I liked the idea of a smaller, younger city. All the drinking and accents, the exotic erotica had begun to stir my libido. At 22, it didn't need to be stirred, but so it was. Perhaps I'd find some adventure in Groningen that would sate my appetites.
We stayed at the Simplon Jonerenhotel. It was very cheap. There were rollerskating drunken young stupidity, inebriated sloshing nederlanders and rickety metal bunks. Josh wanted to smoke more weed. Anthony wanted to find his memories. I wanted to get drunk and laid. Kyla was fending off the affections of the locals and travellers. She had some serious mammaries, but I was unable to find much else about her to adore. I am a bad man often and a worse man more often.
The beer was somehow better then. I loved to have a pint in my hand and a cigarette, balancing the smoke and the swill so that they cancelled and complimented each other. The few girls I spoke to entertained my advances for their novelty and soon abandoned my awkward interest. Truthfully, I am a nerd and a creep. In those years I had even less talent at dressing my romantic inaptitude. We killed enough time over a day or three that even the young revelry became tiresome.
Anthony guided us to the Martini tower. He is afraid of heights, and perhaps wisely attentive and observant of the age and physics of the architecture. There appeared to be a storm coming, and the tower has been destroyed by lightning several times already. Always taunting fate and trying to cheat destiny, I loved the climb and the views, the feeling of being in such an old and defiant edifice. After this affair, we sat around a table to collect ourselves and plan out our next destination. As we sat drinking, myself sipping a pint of Guinness for its nutritional value, the conversation turned to prostitution.
The women (and men) in the Netherlands may be exploited by some pimp, someone who controls or dominates them. This is not propped by the market demand for sex, though, because the women can register and license their practice and appeal to the law for protection if they are being abused. It isn't illegal for them to fuck for money, so they are still protected by the law. I was listening to the conversation. Kyla twisted her face up, pouted her cheeks and lips and with great indignation chirped, "It's sick and it exploits them!" This made a sinister smirk creep upon my face. I love all too much the protests of the morally righteous in myopic vision. They tempt me in ways I should be able to resist. I'm just not mature enough.
"These women, whom the law protects, choose to work in the oldest business in the world. By default no one makes them, and if they are forced to do it against their will, they have options. Say nothing of the services that are provided to them." I offered. Kyla sneered, "You're just a male pig. A chauvinist." I coughed a scoffing laugh. "You're not hearing me. Think of it like free-range, grass-fed, hormone and antibiotic free steaks." She loved this. It was dripping with opportunity. She was like a dog on attack. "See!? You think of women as meat, as objects!! You PIG!" I loved it. Something came over me.
"My dear, if one of those women is being exploited I should not patronize that particular girl. I should only choose the free-range fair trade whores. Just like meat, except I'm paying for the attentions and affections of a woman at my convenience, without any of the courting ritual or other expectation or obligation. If that makes me a -pig- then so be it. 'Oink, oink' I'm not sure if you can't handle the idea that men would pay for sex, but we all do in one way or another. In some ways, this arrangement is more honest than others." I was playing the devil's advocate, and some immature obnoxiousness was making me flick a forked tongue at the girl. "You're disgusting. You're a pig. You make me sick." She wasn't going to work with me on this one. She had made up her mind before we even began.
I set down my half of a pint of Guinness. "I'm going to go fuck one of them. A hot one." I looked at her and smiled. She shook her head and sniffed through her nose. Josh looked at me and said, "No way. You're kidding, right?" Until then I had been. "No, I am going to go and fuck a prostitute. I'm going to compare them in the windows until I find one that appeals to me and then I'm going to pay her for sex." Kyla turned her head away. Josh gasped and smiled with disbelief. Anthony just smiled, as he had been amused by the whole exchange.
The street with the whores was a small and dark one. If it were anywhere else in the world, it would probably be dangerous. I stopped and asked a man how the deal went. He told me that if I paid more than 160 guilden for regular suck and fuck I was getting ripped off. When I asked about tips he said that I could if I wanted to. There were no passwords or cloak and dagger bullshit. I paced slowly down the lane looking the girls over. There were dubious blondes and deviant brunettes. There were famished looking waifs and nubile sex kittens. They all wore lovely underwear and their skin looked perfect in the blacklights and red lights. Each room had a curtain, so you knew when the ladies were available.
Finally I got as far as I wanted to go. I realized that I'd end up spending all night trying to compare and interview them, working on the misled notion that I'd have some sort of relationship with them, that I'd have to be a gentleman and woo them. It was not so. I saw an attractive woman, about my height and well proportioned. She was a woman, not an exaggerated morph of sex. She had white bra and underwear. Her room had blacklight and there was no evidence of the luminescence of proteins on her skin. I know I am crazy, but hygiene matters to me.
I asked, "Are you free?" She nodded and waved me in. As she closed the curtain, she looked at me and told me with her eyes to go over towards the bed. The bed was exactly like the one in the doctor's office, with the paper that gets unrolled so that each patient, or in this case guest, has a new and clean surface. It felt strange and uncomfortable. When I went to sit upon it, she shook her head and told me, "Uhnuh." She smiled at my awkwardness and waved with her hands for me to undress. I did so, wondering when she would get undressed until I saw that she already was. I figured I would leave my underwear on since she did. She reprimanded me again with the, "Uhnuh." and waved her hands down to let me know they had to come off. Then she pulled me up to a small sink at dick level with her hand around my waist.
She turned on the water and made the temperature warm. This was about washing my dick, I realized. Ok then, I began to soap up my hands and wash myself and she prevented me from getting involved. As she washed me, she examined my wood for splinters. A smart girl, I thought. It was beginning to feel like a very strange visit to the dentist, an appointment with some unusual sex doctor. I tried to rummage around in the dirty parts of my head for an examination fantasy. She was too distracting.
The woman pushed me back onto the bed table and I laid back onto the crinkly paper. She prepared my dick for intercourse with a condom she put on with her mouth. My usual habit is not to watch a women when she gets up to these things out of respect for some fear, but I was so curious. As she continued to arouse me she lubricated herself with a free hand. Then it was time to fuck. She got onto her hands and knees and I dutifully put my dick inside of her. She felt like she'd been fucked today. I don't suppose that would be unexpected. It took away from the sensuality. Already it was a very sterile encounter, and there was no romantic lust. It felt cold and mechanical.
As such, I found that I could get nowhere close to coming. I fucked and I fucked until out of distress, frustration, and embarrassment I politely indicated that I wanted her to flip over. She asked me, "What's the matter? You don't like my pussy?" I got scared something was going wrong, "Oh no, no. It's a fantastic pussy. It's a great pussy." She didn't believe me. It was time to come clean. I gathered that her English wasn't the best, so I made it as simple as possible that she could probably get me off by sucking my dick. She reluctantly got to work.
I had to fiendishly obsess on my dirtiest memories and pretend I was having the hottest blowjobs I'd had so far. My body had to physically tense, the whole of my body I held as rigid as steel and the anxiety of feeling like I had to accomplish an orgasm or I'd let down my friends and myself and waste the money I'd spent on the prostitute. After I climaxed into the condom she had sucked like a professional, and she was a professional, I worked out all the cramps I'd began to suffer from such a prolonged physical tension. Suddenly I became super nervous, unsure of myself and felt bad for her and her pussy. It was a lovely pussy, but it was not mine and she did not want me to fuck with her heart. She wanted the money I'd give her for her pussy. That wasn't my thing. It was glaring and saddening.
I tipped her 30 guilden and in the fog of the confusion over what had just transpired I could only manage to ask her where she was from. She told me that she was from Hungary and asked me where I was from. I prayed for her and thought about how the bible's Rachav. Useless notions bouncing around my addled psyche. Fucking a prostitute was something I could now say that I had done, but I could not understand why a man would want to do that. I was admittedly horny as hell and sexually pent up. Even still, I could not come from fucking her. My conclusion was that maybe when I'm old I'd like to fuck young whores, but paying for them now wasn't worth the money or the stress.
When I returned to the bar I sat at the table. My half a Guinness had disappeared, and none of the fools I was sitting with knew what had happened to it. I was only gone for as long as it takes to fuck a prostitute. Surely they could have protected my pint. Kyla's view of me was set. I had completely written her off, and later I would feel guilty about disrespecting her by taunting her. After all, I was much more relaxed since I'd gotten off with the whore. Josh seemed to follow Kyla's regard of me insofar as it promoted his candidacy as a lover and thus access to those lovely big tits. Anthony remained impartial, though I sensed that he was on my team more than the tits' team.
I would leave Groningen a wiser and older man. A part of me felt like I had lost some sort of virginity, like I wouldn't be able to wear a white wedding gown. Now was no time to worry, though, for I had many countries and cities to see. They would hold love and sadness, company and loneliness, laughter and revelation. When I was young I was advised not to become too worldly. I remembered this and reminded myself not to become too much of this world.
Friday, May 1, 2009
The Blind
If there were ever a blind man forced to live in my house, they'd find injury and humiliation. There are steps where there shouldn't be, furniture turned on end, and clutter everywhere. It's amazing how inhospitable it is. I don't think I could make it moreso if I set out to.
Sometimes I hear the voices of the other men that live in my house. They're blurred, smashed voices, twisted and cracking voices that reveal the shattered hearts of the men they belong to. They can't articulate much, other than grunted needs and wants. Most of the time, they want a cigarette, but occasionally they'll throw a curveball and try to ask for a lightbulb or something. That sort of thing isn't easy or as small a thing as it should be. It takes ages, if not minutes, and really I don't carry lightbulbs around with me so it's all for naught.
Every time they want my attention I feel a dread. Whatever it is, it won't be easy. They're taxing, no matter what. Still, I brace myself and try to cover up my body language so that I won't flail about with rage. Even when I go to bed, my poor roommate always wants to listen to the same freaking CD, the latest Radiohead album. I'm too disheartened to tell him no, because this small imposition is actually a gift in that it doesn't steal all the love from my heart. I can still fall asleep. It's just surreal and not what I want to think about.
When I overhear them trying to resolve some irrelevant dispute, or find whatever they've decided they need, whatever it is about, at best I'm amused. Then I feel guilty for being amused at what feels like men as animals trying to inaptly to live as men. Really, though, it takes many breaths and a period of not being disturbed to recover from the tide of seething rage when they catch me out unawares.
I love expressions. Sometimes the old adages annoy me, though, and I want to slap the shit out of their authors and do worse to their parroters. They mock me, and sometimes it's just disgusting. To wit, "No rest for the wicked." That particular expression, it would appear, is from Isaiah 57:20 YLT, "And the wicked 'are' as the driven out sea, For to rest it is not able, And its waters cast out filth and mire." I would like to slap Isaiah or his writer. I confess.
We're all wicked one day or another, in one way or another. That much I know. So often I have to remind people that I'm wrong at least once a day, and I'm not spending the effort to inform them but to inform them that I know myself. There is a karmic debt where I spent my time and soul to ends that frustrated others, and surely I'm paying it off. Once I went into a boulangerie and asked them for a cup of flour. This was in France.
My French is bad enough, and it was a bizarre request. I didn't have any neighbors, so they seemed an obvious choice. I figured out the word for flour was "farine" or something that sounds like it, which made sense because of the cereal "farina". The girl ended up just wanting me to go away, but because I didn't understand much and pretended like I didn't understand what I didn't want to hear... and because I was so animated about it all I think she just gave me a bag of flour. I've been similarly simpleminded and selfishly focused on one appetite or another in much less savory circumstances than a desperate need for flour.
Is that what this is about? It's hard for me to live life thinking that it's all just randomness and the result in the energy world of our little twists and curls of effort and mistaking. As such I ascribe sometimes more meaning than should lie in something. What is worse, I look for meaning and context to make sense of life when it hurts and seems to hurt for no reason. I can endure pain so long as I understand why. When that becomes obfuscated I am overwhelmed with anger.
The men I live with work through their dramas with the greatest unease. I endure my own humiliating days and enjoy the taunting of their shared lifes. My bed isn't my own, and I have a growing fear that I'm sharing it with very small creatures, bedbugs. When I wake up I have mysterious bites, too small to be from any of my roommates and far too itchy. I am a hypochondriac, but I think I'm going insane. I should sigh though, and remind myself that I've been here before.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Halo Smithy
At night I dowse a blisk for loveThirsting to find water sweeter and hotter
Found rarely, barely far above
So fairly roused, seek my sibyl by augur
It lights on bedding sweating shove
Bursting with blood golden salt spawning matter
Bathed in moonlight an ancient grove
To throw my soul skywards and feel it shatter
Saturday, April 25, 2009
כתר גם קליפות
The shower washed out the sound of the world and provided a sanctuary for reorder. James started with the shampoo at the crown of his head and worked clockwise around and down. He made sure to massage his scalp and this commenced a sort of autobaptism. As he continued with his bathing, working his way down from the very top in a perfect order and completeness, he meditated on the refinement of his soul. All the madness and discord were put into place, spiraling down the qliphoth of the drain.
He wondered how men and women lived in the world without a reverence for the mysteriousness of existence and the magics of intent and will, symbolism and ritual. What would life be then, he asked himself. Views from highrise houses, titles and credits, swishing suits and the smell of dry cleaning were all he could imagine to aspire to. For his lot in life was not given to the achievement of power and he could not marry his hunger for success with those trophies. Truly, as he looked at his body and the water that ran down it, his health and physical comfort were the meter. Intimately tied to physical comfort was the balance and even keel of his psyche, maintained by order and earned wisdom.
Enjoying the private water in the shower, he went over his dreams. He had promised himself the sail across the Atlantic, abandoned the dream of owning a vineyard as he realized that alcohol was a poison for him but still loved the idea of civilized agriculture in southern Europe, and after the delay and failure at making a comfortable and controlled life for himself by thirty had resolved to ride a motorcycle to Argentina. It was clear that he could not afford to add to these epic aspirations, but he could in fact make his small moves to achieve them.
The trouble, he admitted, was in love. He could not do what his heart told him to and also be a man worth the love of a woman. This was a clear problem. As he delighted with his clean skin, the clarity he felt and the simplicity of his thinking, direction and solution emerged. In order to become the man he wanted to be, a man he loved and respected, he would have to be with and by himself. He would have to travel through the chapel perilous, the world and her gravity, his own doubts and fears.
He stepped out of the shower and dried himself off, again from his head then down. In the mirror, he saw his young face and the gravelly unshaved jaw. His hair was a little too long, and he had to brush his teeth. Then he stopped looking at his appearance and looked into his eyes. In the blackness of his pupils he stared deeply. He could see and feel a sympathy for all of the pain, humiliation, and failure and he determined to be an ally to himself. A strong voice in his internal dialogue resolved in statements, "The promises I have made I will strive to keep. I will make no more promises until I am free again from the onus of my own words. My duty is clear and my heart is pure and may god not let me forget or lose that."
The challenges of life in the city of men were regular and constant. Absurdly, the greatest was in making his intent known to those he loved. He would only do this when for benefit, for he had known for some time that grand declarations were dangerous ones. For a man to give his words speci, he can not issue them so freely. His dream and the destiny he saw and sought to make would seem selfish, but eventually he knew they would prove to grant generously in his experience and sharing it. So long as his reverence for god, his humility of heart, and his sobriety of mind were kept, he would do no wrong he would be unable to atone for.
People speak in small voices about spiritual experiences. It is a personal and embarrassing thing to speak of. It invites dubiousness and mockery. Still, men worthy and wise will acknowledge that this shared humanness is one profound and authentic. When men and power, esteem and authority are introduced to the spiritual, she becomes adulterated, corrupt, and perverse. God, who is real, does make men eat their words.
James, this particular day, knew the verity and tragic humor of this. It made him resolve to be careful with his tongue. He prayed that his voice and tongue echo and draw that which is beautiful and true, reflected brilliance and love imparted by divinity so long as he was willing and true. May the crown and gnostic matter be both known, but not for knowledge or power; may they be respected for wisdom and love, protection and generation. His prayer concluded with the petition that his soul be a Fresnel Lens for love and light.
He stared still at his pupils and made the realization of his existence. In them he saw all that he had seen, and knew all that he felt. The mirror made an image of himself he recognized, though he had never truly seen. As a man, he would never be perfect. Like the image, he would only see what was presented, and there was nothing to be seen on the back of the mirror. A jewess once told him that man will never see the face of god. This gave him both a humbling solace and a spark of jealous defiance. What then, if he gave his soul to god that he may see that face and know it? Dangerous thinking, he knew, but natural still. The very consideration pushed him off the course of righteousness.
At the time of his changing from boy into man, he heard the defiance and became lustful of the knowledge of the universe. A print he loved, quoting Albert Einstein, "I want to know god's thoughts... The rest are details." teased him affectionately in his youth. What then, were god's thoughts and how and why is matter as it is? He sought to become closer to god and see behind the ether with LSD, he crept through the occult of the university library and the art of old Europe. All he gained through this fantastic but feeble odyssey was irreverence and disregard for the line between madness and genius. It took most of thirty years before he learned to be small enough to ask for god's will for him, as an instrument, and the power to carry it out.
All this and more swirled in his pupils, and he came back to his station and presence at the sink. He breathed deeply and was thankful for the air. He brushed his teeth with consideration and attention to each one. Finally, he was ready. So long as he kept his resolution to be willing and true he would serve all things great and see his dreams. And so he would.
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