Mildly Sensual Stories

Man in woman         1,393 wds       

She finger-tipped a droplet of chocolate to his lips. He bit her finger. That is how it started.

“Oh, i’m sorry i bit you. But sometimes i just want to swallow you up. You’re oh so edible.”

She chuckled, her face a grim mask. 

As they sat half reclining in the languorous afterglow of love and he stroked the skin of her inner arm and the rise of her belly down to her valley of charms and the inside of a thigh, he said, “If i ever cut you up and roast you, gently of course,” his fingertips along the soft inner thigh meat, “i would feast on this part first.” 

She laughed, her jollity tainted with barely discernable fear. “Oh that’s too close to home!” 

Pausing, she asked, ”You would kill me before you cut me up wouldn’t you?”

“Oh yes of course and then drain your blood to make a yummy sauce. I don’t want you to feel pain. Yes, you would be so delicious. I would keep you in separate containers in the freezer, all carefully labeled, each day of the week noted and enjoy a little bit of you every day. Consider this, we can grow no closer.”

“Maybe that’s too close.”

Nodding, his smile agreeable, she looked upon her man whose eyelids grew heavy as he faded toward sleep. She reclined her head by his, the restful shades of sleep descending.  

It was the moment she was waiting for and she made her move. 

Rising as if to gently leave, suddenly whirling, pivoting on a microscopic notion, she leapt upon his head. He smiled in his sleep. 

Determined as only a woman in love can be she said, “I’ll swallow you up. I’ll put my gusher on you!” 

So swift he didn’t hear her, even in a dream, jumping high, she enclosed his cranium vault and rotated her legs on each side of his head so in a moment she swallowed his head and sat on his shoulders. “Goodbye sinciput!” she gasped.  As an author of children’s books, she loved the word ‘sinciput,’ and longed for the opportunity to use it in a book. 

Her man must have awakened then for she felt his head resisting inside; no matter, his shoulders now became disjointed, folded up and her body with a wet ‘sqwunch’ encompassed his entire torso down to the pelvic zone, pinning his arms to his sides. He was surprisingly ‘less filling’ than she suspected he might be, her abdominal musculature fiercely compressing him.  

“What is happening?” she cried to him and heard a muted response below. He wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her and she just as quickly expanded and swallowed up his hips, enclosing him below his waist. It happened that fast, until only his legs stuck out. 

Warmly cozy, feeling him moving, she was not at all uncomfortable, in fact, she felt loving caresses within. No pain, no nausea or cramps, yet she knew instinctively what to do and thrust her hips upward, turned her jerking back side to side slithered him inside snake-like deep with a wet ‘fillup.’ His feet with those ragged nails he reluctantly clipped disappeared and she crossed her legs, ah now she had him, complete. 

To the final toe, he was completely inside her. 

Strange to say, the musculature of her smaller form now easily accommodated his bulk. Astonished, when she looked in a mirror and not a molecule of distortion showed. This 125 pound woman with a 175 pound man inside her was mildly heavy and slow, that’s all folks. Barely discernable lumps and minor angles protruded, but these could have been there before. Were they blemishes she had not yet noticed? Moreover, should she not, with a man-body larger than her own, not feel cramped and heavy? 

Previously indisputable aspects of the natural world appeared less factual.

She cried out to him. She thought she heard something; it was unclear. There was a faint mumbling within. She clasped her mid-section, said, “Are you comfortable?” 

It felt like he jiggled. Laughter? Possibly he liked being inside her or had he gone mad? 

The man-sound subsided. She saw the clock numbers roll, waited, listened, waited. The clock silently marked the lengthening of her loneliness. 

A walk around the apartment being quite comfortable, her legs strong from running and bicycling; this weight was easily borne. Maybe he was hungry, she was hungry and went into the kitchen, moving smoothly, and fixed an English muffin and a cup of coffee, his favorite breakfast. 

He felt comfortable as did she, so she assumed all was well; the muffin and coffee made him happy. Distant murmurings which she felt more than heard had a jolly tone. She wondered if she should drink more coffee, that perhaps it would scald the top of his head. She giggled and cried, “Hello in there!” and drank her coffee. 

He needs a little wake-up!

Soon loneliness joined by worry returned. How could he breathe, was he sinking into the darkness of death? Did her innards consume him and once gone forever, where would she be? 

Near as he was and now all her’s, she missed his naughty grin, gentleness and odd sense of humor. But how, if she jettisoned him, could they be closer than they were now?  Ejecting him so they could continue growing closer? That was illogical. If she shucked him out they could only grow farther apart. How was it possible he still felt distant after she enveloped him? 

The hours grew into days and months and years, ‘gather ye man-buds while ye may’.

Now she tried to think of how to extract him, to have him back in her arms. Once he was out she might have to lick him clean, like a cat her new born kittens; disgusting, but that would be fine. 

     In this state of limbo, him silent, she thinking, the sun rolled over until the time of her afternoon nap. Fortunately it was Sunday and neither was required to join the world at Sunday services or work. But she feared tomorrow. For then there would be only endless waiting for a better tomorrow when they could be apart as before and that day may never come. She was so tired! How could she face Monday, or any day without him? How can we live without love from each side, without one swallowing up the other? An unbearable thought, yet many bear it well. She did the only thing she could do and laid down to rest and dream of him in sunlight, in happy days gone by, gone forever? 

The sound of a thunk, of solid matter hitting solid matter woke her. She opened her eyes and there he stood, her baby naked, toweling, his body dry. 

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“I just got up to take a quick shower; i felt really sick.”

     They held each other.

   “I missed you,” she said. “I had this dream, this horrible horrible dream, you can’t believe it, it was so . . .”

“I believe it. I had a nightmare too. It really hit hard, that’s why i took a shower,” he said, “and i want you to know my sweet darling angel that i will never never again suggest or even hint that i would cut you up and eat you, never again will i say anything like that.”

“Say what my love?”

     “I cut you up and put you in small plastic containers, filled the freezer with pieces of you hoping to eat you later hair, teeth and all and then thought of you in there so cold and the refrigerator motor noise all i could hear, never again your laugh or singing in the shower and the motor noise hummed your name over and over yet i could not hear you. Never again to hear you say, ‘Love, how like you this?’” He wept. “I went wild. I bagged my head against the refrigerator door and those magnets and pictures of your nieces and nephews fell like rain. Horrible.”

They held tight.

“Don’t you worry, love, we’ll never get so far away from each other, or so close. I won’t let it happen.”

“Yes, i promise, i’ll never eat you up, never even think it.”

In silence both pondered better ways of growing closer.

end of “Man in Woman”

                              Modern Novelists                  2,175 wds        

   We met at an MFA seminar on Gardner and Russo. She leaned to me and whispered, “I have a sense that a discussion of the modern novel can take a vertical or horizontal form, the vertical being traditional, the horizontal unorthodox and possibly insanely risky.”  

“You don’t say.”

“I do say.”

That afternoon and many other afternoons in the clear light of day became our favorite time for the unspoken. Enjoying mutual rotation she said reading the veins bulging in my forearms excited her as emblematic of an ideal literary form. “That is to say, of the vigorous life flowing from your body into mine, interchangeably with and most delightfully italicized by your vigorous gyrations, and mine in response, but also the pulsing, vibrant issue of your mind, in particular that part of your mind seemingly consumed by literary provocation-production.” 

To further excite herself as she received my physical essence into her deepest sanctum, she stroked my forearms or to steady herself at her convulsive peak, grabbed my hair. 

And that was just the beginning; our dramatic opening chapter. 

“I enjoy the thought that the novel, ‘the great book of life’ as Lawrence called it, is so all inclusive,” i said nibbling the tender skin of her neck just below an ear and then the other and at the same time elsewhere deeply engaged. She loved my interpretive multi-tasking. I later read in her secret diary what i had said and was  thrilled to be quoted. “For instance,” i had also said, “one can find a municipal sewage report in a novel,” i gasped, for the pressures were almost cresting, “but there has never been a novel in a municipal sewage report.” And at the moment of my release i repeated in mind without speaking that one word, “report report report.”

“I quite agree,” she said after receiving my more than symbolic ardor and its man-life, “and thank you for this concurrent theoretical and material infusion it . . .  it is so insightful and on two levels/dimensions, takes my breath away.”

On another evening following a quiet dinner with wine and languorous music we were so eager to discuss the shaping and synthesis of nineteenth century French literature, le mot juste of Flaubert in particular, we had no time to remove to the bedroom, time only to sweep clear (hear the clattering/breaking of dishes) the dining room table. Our exertions of mind and body were illumined by candle light made all the more lambent by the shivering of the table.   

“How is your novel coming along progressing or regressing?” i asked, our hips, often like our shared cogitations turning in a circular fashion as if to mimic a vigorous rondeau in the French style of poetry or a musical roundelay.

“Oh, God, i’m making many mistakes, but a lot of progress as well. It’s getting personal. Your love also fills me with such lyrically cohesive ideation and recognition deep of symbolic interrelations.” I felt a gush of physical effluent that mirrored her lingual flow.

  Jove! I almost erupted with fluid ebullience on the spot!

“It’s good to draw from life experience,” i said, holding her climactic, shivering form steady on the dining room table, “but keep in mind what Atwood wrote, that ‘when i write fiction i’m accused of telling the truth and when i write a memoir i’m accused of lying.’ That’s paraphrasing. I’ll look up her exact textualization later.” I spoke in haste for hardly had the words issued from my trembling lips than my material infusion erupted.

“Oh please do,” she said, her hands not alone gripping to insure maximum infusion. “Atwood is engaging on so many levels though at times i find her spiritually reluctant.”

Oh my lover, her literary progress was in fact progress on an outline, i would learn as we lay by the pool (this conference was unusually luxurious) alternately entwined or reading, because, she gushed, “i know the story, and i’ve made character sketches of all the people and i know them well, i just don’t know where to start putting them together,” so she wrote one outline after another. In a biography of Dickens i read that for him outlining was an indispensable form, dare i risk lapsing into sexual obliquity, to call it literary foreplay? 

On another pleasant afternoon i paused, withdrew my face from her passionate core and said, “How about writing it as an outline and calling it Outline?”

“Or Outline Speculations,” she panted, for i had resumed my nonsonic circumlingual exertions.  “Or Spectators. Because it really is about people whose lives rarely climax emotionally, who watch life go by feeling uninvolved, not knowing they can be both physically and mentally involved with the world on many levels.” The thought must have been apt and exact, for she exhaled heavily and her entire body shuddered several times with convulsive eructations paralleling the erudite eructations of her voice.   

“Or Speculation on Spectators,” i said. She lay musing, i left the room to wash my face.

It was a good outline with fascinating, concise characterization. Fact; it would be an excellent novel. It was like a graceful, friendly octopus with many extra tentacles and all she had to do was make them move well and wrap around some central plot post, correlated with a theme ~ emotional, intellectual, spiritual combined with telling details and the suggestion of something beyond them all. 

My struggle was to start from two sides and meet in the middle, in harmony.

Feeling individualistic and ambitious to explore new lingual and literary parameters, we called our lengthy discussions tulking or sometimes tucking or falking and thought it possible we had created a new literary genre.  The physical in conflict/harmony with the intellectual.

   Still, my literary work sagged and the drive in me to create alternate worlds whirling in words waxed and waned and drained away. As my literary work wilted and withered, my lover’s work blossomed. I perceived that she was somehow remaining involved physically while in other aspects keeping a distance.  We spoke less at intimate moments. 

Also blooming in rich profusion was the central personality at the heart of her story. One morning in the shower after a long run in the park, our bodies were thoroughly soaped and we engaged in a standard procedure we discussed the mechanical act of writing; how important it is to “put in the time” each day as one popular scribe has said, how to start, when to stop, how to shape events, how to let characters walk into the room and speak, speak for themselves and illuminate their own truth and wherever that truth may lead us we must follow.  

“Let them give life to the story,” i cried over the sound of the shower spray dousing our frantic bodies. I avoided taking this advice myself. Advice is given away, because it is impossible to sell and too hard for the advisor to shake off or swallow. Oh her busy busy hands! 

Only briefly did my stories interest her. I was myself too interested in studying how she took off her shoes and gave her feet a rub and squeeze; she always did this, then stood up and let her clothing slide from her lean form. At this moment she looked at me and smiled and came to me. And i went to her, gave myself up to her. After she threw her body onto mine we discussed the concept of flat versus round characters and concluded, at the same moment our physical joining reached a zenith that flat characters could play a more prominent part in the story if their circumstances mirrored or in some way, flowing parallel as it were those characters of the central or “most round” sort. I believe these were key words to her understanding as her desire soaked my pivotal region and she shouted “most round most round most roundroundroundround,” and shuddered and crumbled on my heaving chest, heaving indeed, for at the same moment i too had reached the same conclusion. 

That was the last time our love was pure and uncluttered, the last time, i reflect on it now, that our bodies and minds were joined and the seam of the joining invisible, to paraphrase an old, distinguished and funny novelist.        

“We have to talk about something,” she said one day and unlike the many other days preceding she did not make physical contact to determine the intensity of my interest. Of course we loved our falking and tucking and tulking but this was a strictly verbal conversation. This talking was about ‘something.’ It would later be defined as ‘the turning point.’ For many weeks and possibly months we kept ourselves spatially distant, clothed and talked about various ‘somethings.’ We often burst into non-fluid interaction over trivial details, a sure sign that something significant, a subconscious fear or desire or a subcutaneous foreign body, was slowly working its way to the surface. I knew, and i think she also thought, this ‘something’ would eventually force on us an unpleasant understanding and i dreaded it. 

When we did make love it was in wordless melancholy less and less until we made love no more. We rarely touched each other and then the day arrived when i returned to find the house empty and read a note. “I no longer respect and admire you. All my amazement has vanished and as i told you once i need amazement. I thought you would grow and change, but you have not embraced change. In addition to this, your pace is uneven. I feel now our paths must diverge.”

So this is how it ends, not fade to face but with a note; my first thought was to suggest she take the path less traveled by and cram it, but she had finished her novel and by adding extra sex scenes and dialogue about the beauty of amassing great wealth and a few other popular political ideas, most notably how the poor are destroying the rich and the weak pulling down the strong, had found a chain store publisher and had a tv contract of some sort. I don’t know the details; i have never understood the tv business. I suspected that for her traveling a wild, untrammeled road was now impossible. 

I wrote to her and in a few days received a reply. We didn’t text each other because of character limitations and my fingers are too big for those tiny numbers. For the first time in years i decided to engage in self-release. Engaged thus, with my free hand i held her note in response to my response to her note. She wrote; “You helped me with my book immensely. I will always be grateful for that, but you dropped your own project and this demonstrates a lack of drive and interest and involvement or rather wakefulness to the present world and moment that i cannot accept.”

Now I must admit it; my own novel was going well until i met her, then my interest drooped despite our energetic discussions. The theory of the modern novel, which i knew well, simply would not merge in my mind with the story i wanted to tell. Mine was a simple love story wherein the two blessed and afflicted by Eros could not touch or even see each other and yet their love endures. During the daily four hours i worked on it i could think of nothing but me in her grip. How can i tell you why? All my reasons are cheap excuses, all my excuses the flimsy hindrances an author who is not fully committed puts on the path to completion. Completion invites rejection. Will you please understand that as i wrote on dry paper the memory of the smooth soft skin of her soft lips and limbs (the inner thighs most notably) would cloud my mind, cage it and carry it away?  And then she would call me from another room and her voice lifted me and her smile of crooked white teeth, (not truly crooked, more like individualistically aligned) and her naughty eyes and generous bosom. “Did you notice,” she said, “that when one removes the s from bosom it becomes boom?” Whichever way her teeth went, her kisses were sweet, always, long and strong her arms, her eyes direct, all of her drawing me in, giving me the warmth immortal of love and more love. Did i allow carnal knowledge to transcend artistic knowledge? I did, i would do it again and again and again pay the price. 

The simple fact is i lost her because in her arms i needed no art. In addition to physical fluids she drew forth and removed need/lust for any other creative form. Books were not necessary to our bodies joined. 

The up-side is that since she’s gone i’ve written, like, a ton, a pile and live now amid mountains of paper. In ways dark to the mere mortal minds some serve art, others are by it served.

end of “Modern novelists”

                                                        Clowns  3,306 wds        Our first time contra dancing Angela was surprisingly good. Although a dance newbie, her years on the soccer field helped her move in and out along the conyta lines. I knew she would be good; my first sight of her on the field running and her grace and power, her beautiful strong thighs in particular, was clear. The only thing troubling her on the dance floor was the social judgment; the looks and whispers; the presence of a rigid social code. 

“Yes, some are like that, very proper. Most are all right if you don't say much to them,” i said. “Listen to the music, move with it. Except for your partner everyone on the dance floor is temporary. And your partner won’t be around long either.”

“In other words, ‘shut up and smile?’

“Shut up and smile.”

“I can smile. I’m going to be an architect, not a secretary, butt i can still smile,” she said. Angela was proud of many things; she had her own rigid codes. Only a few inches over five feet, the projection of her personality made Angela taller. 

As an example of those social codes, as i danced with Betsy Dirkwood, , Ms Dirkwood said, “Are seeing anyone new?” 

I thought by her tone she wanted to add, ‘Already?’ or ‘so soon?’ I replied, “Life’s too short, Betsy.”

To my ear her lips dripped venom. Last spring Betsy Dirkwood asked everyone to start calling her Elizabeth instead of Betsy. Betsy is too cute, too homey and comfortable and truly doesn’t fit she who has grown stern. Thus we knew she had calcified into the form of spinster. I went out with Ms Dirkwood once but quickly put her on the bus, if you know what i mean. Nothing is good enough for the queen, that’s why people who dislike Ms. Dirkwood replaced the r in her last name with another letter found earlier in the alphabet. Had she been born poor and tough she would have become a police officer instead of the manager of a clothing shop her parents bought for her selling mostly bridal attire. I know, it seems contradictory for such a loveless person to oversee such marriage arrangements. I could go on, but will conclude with this; Ms Dirkwood is an excellent dancer. I love dancing with her, hate talking to her. I would make love with her and leave very soon afterwards.

As we arrived at the distant end of the contra lines and waited, standing out ntil the music brought the next comes around, i said, “So far Angela and i have related more than Patty and i did at about the same time.”

I think but can’t say for certain that Betsy-Elizabeth Dirkwood, considered people in terms of time; age, years together, length of residence in any neighborhood, city, etc.  Patty (from the former relationship) and i were together for over three years without marriage, a detail Ms Dirkwood would also find important. That is why i dropped some numbers on her to provide gossip.

“Interesting,” she said. 

“It’s difficult to say anything quality-wise right now. Angela is fourteen years younger than me. That changes the equation.”

Ms Dirkwood swiftly turned and looked at me,  then glanced away and smiled tight. 

“Indeed it does,” she said. She had a small clever mouth; lips i was never tempted to kiss. Her’s is a smile that conceals more than reveals. Yet i do love dancing with her; she is tall, slim yet busty, has good timing, knows the dances and has a graceful, swaying style. Most amusing to me is when we polka i can make her breasts bounce and i think she likes it, despite her tight smile. I see her trying not to smile. Some people, you know, endure being happy. In short, i would make love with Betsy Dirkwood, but only with her body. 

After the dance Angela and i went to Penny Lane, an English style pub in the city popular despite the lack of parking. The contra dance crowd often went there to chill after a dance. It is near the city stadium and on this night and throughout the week the circus was in town. The streets were crowded with people going to and coming from the circus. That night i learned a neat detail about Angela; she loves the circus. When the Big Top went up in the small South Carolina town where she grew up, she told me, it was like another Christmas. 

The pub was almost empty when we arrived. We sat at a table near the band which happened to be the band that played at our dance. They had just arrived and were setting up their chairs crowded onto the small stage. 

Penny Lane is, or was a maze of tall booth dividers with painted scenes. In one a cowboy ropes a steer; in another a jaunty pilot gives a thumbs up, a cigarette aslant from his lips, an old style aircraft with propellers behind him. In another a couple dances cheek to cheek. Some customers blended well with these romantic scenes. What i liked was the English beer.

We were approached by a couple from the dance i knew too well. They were prepared to say all the right things at the right times, wore the right clothes and facial expressions. They didn’t speak to us, just nodded as they passed. Good, i didn’t want them to join us, i wanted to keep some chairs empty for others more interesting and genuine. I hoped for someone Angela would like, who would make her feel welcome. 

I’m a philosopher; that’s what i enjoyed studying in college most and i’ve continued following the discipline even though it has nothing to do with my work. We must always seek out and support the part of society, if there is such a part, living the truth. Honesty is the best policy, as the old folks said, and this means seeing other people as who they truly are. Call self centered if you like, but i will not scrape myself raw fitting into a society; i will find a society that fits me. 

  Yet there must be some “adjustment” of our beliefs, or at least the ones we make public, in respect for the thoughts and feelings of others. It has a lot to do with keeping my relationship to Angela going. 

We had a drink as Penny Lane gradually filled up. Over the music which was not electronically amplified so we could have a conversation, we heard a man talking about the circus. He was out of place there. He had just come in and was too friendly, a well built man of sixty with a strong voice. Because Angela was excited seeing the circus crowds, the banners and lights as we drove past the city coliseum, when this man came close to our table i said, “Are you with the circus?”

“I am that, yes sir.” He said.

“We love the circus. Have a seat and tell us all about it.” This he did and before he could even thank me for the invitation i said, “Have a drink and tell us about the show.”

Sure he would have a drink and tell us. “Am i in it, i’ve been in it all my life. When i was a boy i sold programs or gave them away when times were good and worked on the floor thirty years. Now i’m too old to put on the paint and run around the arena so now i’m back to selling programs, come full circle and it’s still a great life.” “Did you come in on the train?” Angela said.

“I live on the train and you know, that rail yard is the quietest neighborhood in the world.”

All over the country in every state he had been an acrobat, a mime, the act the French made popular so they all tried it, a clown and roustabout ~ everything, you name it. And what did he like about it the most, what’s the best part?

“We’re all one family, one big happy family and your family takes care of you.” 

“What do we call you, buddy?” i said.

“Buddy is fine, and thank you.” the beer came and we clinked glasses. 

We talked about places and people, he knew the town where Angela grew up, where she had gone to the circus and no doubt had seen Buddy perform. This thrilled her. 

Our first round gone dry, our guest ordered another and paid for it from a roll of bills round as a baseball. 

Buddy admitted that his wad was mostly one dollar bills, so we should not be too impressed; small bills because the programs he sold cost one dollar. Now he always has money though he would trade it all to be able to entertain again. Angela spoke his name several times, she seemed to like the sound of it, as our conversation grew long and at times he hesitated as if the name was unfamiliar. Or maybe the drink was making him lose track; he had enthusiasm along with the high color of a tippler. I understood; tonight he was Buddy, another night he would be Tommy or Perry or Mack, his name depended on his mood. We are new each day, each day we start fresh, redefined. 

Knowing the life of an entertainer like Buddy, the mood of the audience matters most. 

Never before had i seen a man who looked so bad acting so happy. His face was not merely high color but deep red, his nose enlarged by drink but his expressions were open and enthusiastic, his tone genuine, not parental or preachy when he told us we were “Lucky because you have the rest of your life to see the circus.” Angela was twenty one and i was thirty-five. Buddy made us feel like kids. 

We had a few more drinks and Buddy told us some of the acts he did but could do no more. “You just can’t do it anymore, much as you want to.” 

In Penny Lane, being an English pub, fifteen minutes before closing the bartender simply leaves from behind the bar. I mentioned this so when the lights came up we were ready to go. Out on the sidewalk i offered Buddy a ride home.  

  Home was a car on the circus train in the Shockoe valley rail yard a mile away. I was worried that if he walked he would get rolled and told him so, exaggerating the neighborhood crime rate. He gave me a brief, serious look, the only time he looked at me without a smile and accepted my offer. I’m sure it had been on his mind.

We climbed into the cab of my truck and soon after we left the curb Buddy opened his back pack and i thought, ‘This is it, the gun is coming out, the man, the circus talk, the smiling was an elaborate charade.’ 

Buddy pulled out an enormous bottle of schnapps. He offered us a drink. I declined as i was driving and the bottle was so large if i tipped it up i could not see the road ahead, but Angela, barely able to lift the bottle, took a sip. I had confidence in her; she was thrilled alert at the moment. We were going to see a circus train!

    Buddy showed us where to go between the train cars in the Shockoe Valley rail yard. The cars were dark and above them on the hills all around the city buildings were alight as they usually are all night. We saw the undersides of the bridges spanning the valley and stopped as Buddy indicated beside four cars at the end of a track. 

I knew Buddy wanted to sit and drink his schnapps with company instead of probably alone and Angela was excited so i turned off the engine and said, “Pass the bottle.”

I wanted to go home and into bed with Angela, but she and Buddy were getting along so well i listened. She told him about the circus coming through her town in South Carolina and described the clown acts she loved and laughed all over again. He knew the acts and the place and mentioned some performances that she recognized. She told him when she was little her uncle knew someone who took them back after the show and they got to talk to the clowns and that the clowns were so funny she thought she would never, never stop laughing. They had so much fun.

“The circus must be great way to go,” i said.

“It’s a great life,” said Buddy but in a sad tone, and i think Angela picked up on his mild sadness and started talking about how great it was to take care of the animals and the new places they went. Her sister, she said, trained horses and loved them more than people. 

“The animals are so great because you can love them or hate them,” Angela said, “but they won’t hate you back,”

“That may be horses,” Buddy said, “not elephants.”

“Are elephants mean?”

“Not mean, they have a memory, they do. Otherwise sweet as pie, but you cross an elephant and they get you back hard. Long after, they remember, they do!”

“They talk to each other i heard,” i said.

“They do, but i never got it.”

Angela must have felt sorry for him and said something about weariness and Buddy lit up.

   “My friend Cathy is there in the car, she said ‘Buddy, it’s so hard to get going again, it’s so hard to go out and perform for them again.’ I said, ‘don’t show me that face in the morning. I want to see a smiling face. I want to see a happy face.’ So when you get up in the morning you put on the good face, the sunshine face so everybody’s happy, see? Everybody’s smiling. That’s the way it’s gotta be.” He smiled, his teeth straight and white and they looked real but i couldn’t tell for sure.

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone,” i said. 

“That’s right. Then the next person passes it along. Always the smiling, happy face. That’s what people like to see.”

This idea was familiar. A few days before Angela and i had been discussing it ~ one of those very basic, simple ideas young people find so monumental. Show your love, plant your love and let it grow. For Buddy it was different because he was older. I don’t know if Angela understood this. Then it takes too much energy to be so full of light, still, Buddy was trying; he deserved credit for that. 

In our philosophy classes we mostly agreed that a true, lasting meaning in life could only be found by accepting grim reality. Born from the chaos of imperfect parents, we struggle, grow old and die and fade into oblivion. It’s a fact and the only way we ease the pain is don’t pass it on, don’t burden the world with yet more sorrow.    

This night we were good; cozy, fresh, loving. i was almost too drunk to think of anything. If I have a cynical nature i suppressed it very well. I had been dealing at work and sometimes at home with dreary, dull people and events. Angela and Buddy lifted the stone of gloom. 

Yet i felt Buddy was struggling to avoid a very simple sadness: life and time had caught up with him and he was demonstrating with all his might that he could stay the course, continue performing and get the laughs. All of this passed through my mind later. In the truck by the train car i sang, “When you’re smiling, when you’re laughing,” and they helped finish the verse, “the whole world smiles with you.”  

“But when you’re crying . . . “ i started to sing, but Buddy cut me off, “No, we don’t sing that one around here!” 

“Okay buddy, how about ‘There’s no business like show business, like no business i know. . . “ He picked that one up right away, a great Irving Berlin hit. Angela didn’t know the song, never heard it before, and that inspired Buddy and he closed the show. 

I was grinding low so that’s what i told them and they agreed. Yes, it is late. Buddy left with his good night schnapps bottle and i had a hell of a time getting out of that train yard. I think i ran into some trash cans, and as we went dragged them along under the truck. I don’t know, we were blind drunk happy. 

I think that was the best night of our relationship. Angela had a lot of roommates, being a college student, so we never stayed at her house. I didn’t ask her if she wanted to stay with me that night but when i turned toward my apartment she said, “Oh good,” and moved closer. I stepped on the gas. 

In my kitchen we paused long enough to drink a glass of juice, then we were all over each other. We flew into the bedroom and into a frenzy of love. The circus must have turned Angela into a tiger. This kind of frenzy never happened before so i must conclude it was the old circus clown and what it all meant to her; i’m not manly enough to inspire such passion. We tore off our clothes, leapt onto the bed and i got her ready, though i didn’t need to. She had very strong thighs and almost twisted my head off, she was that fired up. In the morning, late, we woke, spruced up and started all over again. Thank god it was Sunday and no work. It was a beautiful day, our best. 

We were also going to the circus. Buddy had told us he would be there to hand us a program and we were on time in the late afternoon. He told us where in the coliseum he would likely be standing. 

I was deliriously happy. All i wanted was Angela. i didn’t really care about the circus or anything else. Yet part of me, as i see it now, held back; there was one dark room in my house i didn’t want to open. I tried and still try not to think what’s in there.

At the circus that afternoon Buddy was not there. We walked all around the coliseum, missed a good part of the show trying to find him, but he was out of sight if he was there at all. We settled in to watch the arena, then looked for him more. The clowns were very good buzzing around in their tiny cars and hitting each other with huge foam rubber hammers. One was especially funny to me; he ran around with a gray and white cloth ghost attached to his back with its hands around his throat so no matter how hard the clown ran the ghost stuck with him. Or her, the clown could have been a woman. This clown ran around in a circle, very funny. The other part, aside from the horse riding and the elephants, was the acrobatic lady who spun around and flipped and hung and spun with nothing more than a rope in her teeth. She probably had a mouth piece at the end of that rope holding her teeth securely in place and some kind of neck race concealed. She must have had a very strong neck and jaws. Incredible! 

After the show we continued to look for Buddy. Angela was very disappointed and wanted to go back stage and meet Cathy and the other performers; she wanted to talk to the elephants. We asked some official looking people and they were polite but more or less told us to bug off. An no, i never heard of no one named Buddy Lewis. 

We were excited, then confused and finally downright depressed. Again we walked all the way around all the levels the coliseum and she even bought a program from someone else, a young woman with a face i would charitably describe as ‘durable.’ When we asked if she knew Buddy she said, “Don’t know no such a man,” and turned from us so abruptly we had to step back.

Angela’s determination to find Buddy was admirable. This determination would carry her far as i heard it did in her career as an architect, but i also thought it indicated a lack of realism. And that is what i told her; people come and go, it is the cycle of life, try to accept it, no, you have to accept it; there is no other way. 

I should have kept my mouth shut. Instead i had to tell her how the world is full of Buddys who disappear and the only way to endure their coming and going is not to believe in them. I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have let her figure it out for herself. 

Now when i think of her i think of all the circus performances we missed because i demanded she see and believe in my point of view. I’ve been back without her and all the clowns in the arena are Buddy Lewis; I see him in every act. He has to be dead by now, yet he lives out there. I was also a clown, but serious. That is not Angela’s kind of clown.  

 end of “Clowns” 

No Way to Treat a Banana    376 wds

We were sitting around resting from practice when the coach told us how when he was in college he went to a fraternity party and there was a young woman “of loose morals and questionable character” there who was in a room and “taking on” all the guys. We knew what he meant when he said, ”taking on.” That was the home run, the buzzer shot, the instant pin, the fourth quarter last second touchdown.

He himself said he was too drunk for exact mathematics but believed himself to have been “sloppy sixteenth.” In another room the guys were prepping Murphy, who was scared to go in to her. They were getting him full of whisky courage. While preparation of the victim was under way one of the guys who “is probably a general in the army or the head of a huge corporation now,” according to coach, gave the girl a banana and she peeled it and slid it into herself. The whole banana? Coach nodded, “She was a big girl.”

When Murphy came in all full of gusto and liquid courage and dropped his shorts to show he was capable, the girl said, “Come over here Mr. Big Man” and by flexing her inner muscles pushed out that banana. Murphy flipped. He jerked his head away and turned green and spun around and as he did he ‘ralphed’ (vomited) in an arch on two guys and a table and some chairs. Then Murph got pissed and hit some of the guys and they had to pin him down and got it all over themselves, it was bad. They got him out on the lawn and rolled him around. It was one wild night. 

We all thought it was really something, but coach was very definite when he told us, however, that these kinds of shenanigans are not what going to college is all about. 

end of “No Way to Treat a Banana”