Poetry: Black Leather or Lament of a Modern Mistress

I mark you
with stripes like war paint
on a paling vacation-sun freckled back,
lightly the leather dances
to the tune of your breathing.
You moan with a warm pleasure
that precipitates
a weary fulfillment,
but I am far away.
I am thinking of the twisted backs
of Chilean political prisoners,
of Pinochet's Martyrs,
ghosts haunting my world.
I am thinking of their scars,
old like memories,
tougher than leather
not these supple strips I hold,
but harder and unforgiving;
and I think of the unseen bonds
that tie survivors to their torturers,
refugees to their countries,
and you to me.
This is what I think of with each blow,
mentally composing protest letters,
for Amnesty International
while you grunt and spill
on my new carpeting.
I am not the things I do
when you appear at my door,
every Tuesday night, regular,
like your dental checkups or your annual cardiogram,
though all you see is
black leather.

(c) 2015

Just venting

Because I can't put this on my Year-end Performance Evaluation (career suicide) but am still so irritated with this whole process to let it slide into silence, I am putting it here. It may eventually bite me on the ass but they'll have to dig for it. Plus I highly doubt my manager will understand the reference to Papal Indulgences.

Under Employee's Self-Assessment, I have excised:

"I have not completed any of my Projects and Career Objectives proposed for this year. Some do not have the extra time for special projects and career objectives, as they are busy doing their regular day-to day work in a timely fashion as proscribed in the measurable portion of this plan. Not that any of it matters anyway, as opportunities (if any arise at all) for advancement or promotion are doled out like Papal Indulgences only to those who are not, unsurprisingly, as productive in their day-to-day duties so as to allow themselves time to complete their "special projects" and highlight this in their evaluations. Some of us are picking up the slack of those who are ill-using their time to complete their special projects and career objectives. Given that Projects and Career objectives are not quantifiable here toward the Executive Member's Year-End Bonus anyway, it's a moot point and a pointless exercise."

So now I have a gaping maw of a blank box to write some neutral-sounding self-reflection on my personal work year, and cannot think of a single thing to say.

I hate my job.

Virago

From Oxford Dictionary: "a domineering, violent, or bad-tempered woman. A woman given to undue belligerence or ill manner at the slightest provocation. A woman of masculine strength or spirit; a female warrior."


Origin
Old English (used only as the name given by Adam to Eve, following the Vulgate), from Latin, 'heroic woman, female warrior', from vir 'man'. The current sense dates from late Middle English.

The second chapter of the Book of Genesis describes the creation of Eve: ‘And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ In the Latin version of the Bible known as the Vulgate, the word Adam uses for Eve is Virago. This is not the insult it appears to be now. Virago meant ‘heroic woman, female warrior’ in Latin and derived from vir ‘man’, the source of virile (Late Middle English) and virtue (Middle English) originally meaning ‘manliness. Virago first appeared in English with reference to Eve, but medieval man started using it in the disparaging sense ‘a domineering, violent, or bad-tempered woman’ that survives today.

I'd like to bring back the old English use.

The Muse

 The Muse 
(c) 2016

“Cazzo! Porca Miseria!” Hank Cabeiri swore and hissed when the solder he was melting at an odd angle to join the two pieces of steel dripped from their intended spot and singed the skin of his fingers instead. He hobbled over as quickly as he could to the bucket of cold water on the floor he always kept nearby in the workshop, bent down and dunked his hotly throbbing hand into the water, hoping to dull the pain. Swearing some more in both English and his few remembered choice words from his childhood Italian, he moved the fingers gingerly under the cool water to test the range of motion. They were smarting and his fine manual dexterity, so crucial for the small but complicated work he was doing, would be shot for the rest of the day. He pulled his hand out of the water, shook the droplets off angrily and then kicked the blameless bucket across the workshop with his good foot, spilling water everywhere, drops hissing off the burning red forge. The violent outburst only served to make him lose his balance and nearly topple over on his bad leg. Gripping the side of the long wooden worktable he steadied himself, then looked back and surveyed the sculpture he was working on. Hank shook his head in disgust. He was hot and sweaty both from the blazing forge and the past hour of fruitless labor. He was so tired, and his left foot and leg were aching from standing for so long. The piece he was working on was pointless and he had to admit now looking at it from a bit of distance, no closer to what he had originally imagined and sketched it could be. It was nothing but an ugly twisted pile of steel, not even close to something he would have been able to do in his first year of apprenticeship, much less now with the threat of his first gallery opening in less than 4 months. Threat of failure, of public humiliation loomed over him larger than life. What the hell was he going to do? He overcame the urge to upturn the whole workshop in anger and frustration and toss the pile of steel back into the forge to melt, to destroy everything, obliterate everything. He took a deep breath instead and decided to call it a day and just go back upstairs to the loft he shared with his wife Vena and pour himself glass of scotch. A very large glass of scotch.

Grabbing his cane from its spot propped up against the wall he moved toward the spiraling stair that led from the entrance to the warehouse up to the loft. He sighed and decided he didn’t have the patience nor physical strength that day to slowly navigate the twists and turns of the staircase, and instead walked toward the freight elevator on the other side of the room. It was a short ride on a rickety and loudly grinding old elevator, the sound would no doubt irritate Vena, but he didn’t care. He just could not deal with any more frustration and disappointment at the physical limits of his body. He hoped she would understand. Grunting with effort, he closed the gate and then the heavy steel doors, pressed the button for the hydraulic engine and rode the screeching metal box up to the home he made with his classically beautiful but sometimes uncompromising wife.

When the elevator stopped Hank pushed the doors open with his cane and then slid the creaking gate open. The loft was all open concept, a modest but modern living room area, kitchen, dining area and bedroom arranged in logical format, decorated sparsely but tastefully by his wife. One could see everything and everyone from the entrance of the elevator. So Hank was surprised to see Aaron standing in the space between the bed and the sofa, almost as if he were in mid-stride between the two distinct areas of the loft. Surprised, since he did not see nor hear him come in, nor was he expecting a visit from his business manager that day at all.

“Aaron! Hey when did you get here? I didn’t even see you come in.” Hank left his cane in its usual spot propped against the leather chair facing the bed and limped a bit as he walked over to greet his wife’s distant cousin. The men shook hands and Hank clapped Aaron warmly on the back in greeting. Hank gingerly moved to the kitchen area and opened the cupboard to pull out two glasses, then to the fridge to get ice. In the cupboard under the sink far in the back was where Vena hid the 12 year old Scotch from him; he bent and pulled that out and poured himself and Aaron two generous glasses. “I guess I must have been really into the work, I didn’t hear you come in at all.”

“No,” Aaron laughed nervously and accepted the glass from Hank with a slightly trembling hand, “you were really intense when I came in and I...I mean I am here to see you, I just… I came up, I didn’t want to disturb you. I figured I would visit with Vena a bit …just talking… and wait for you,” the younger man stammered.

At the mention of his wife’s name Hank realized she wasn’t there, which was strange. He turned his head around just as she emerged from the washroom tucking a few stray strands of her dark hair back into the tight knot she always wore and smoothing the non-existent wrinkles on her skirt. Out of the corner of his eye, Hank noticed Aaron mirror the gesture, passing a hand over the legs of his suit trousers. While he thought it a bit of odd behavior, Hank pushed the thought away and greeted his wife as she approached him, kissing her lightly on the proffered cheek.

“Calling it an early day Hank?” she whispered to him, glancing at the glass of scotch in his hand. Her face was a mask of self control, although Hank knew she disliked him drinking so early in the day, she did her best to conceal her distaste from reflecting in the deep pools of her eyes and smooth planes of her face. Hank studied her face now, and really every chance he got. She was, he always admitted to himself, extraordinarily beautiful; a placid beauty like some sculpted Grecian statue of finest Carrera marble. Pale skin, clear green eyes, a high regal forehead and arched cheekbones under warm thick chestnut hair always pulled back severely and knotted into a ponytail or twist, highlighting the sharper bones at her cheeks and temples. What she was doing married to him, an older man, ugly and body twisted by the accident and just plain old age, was a question most who saw them together asked and, lately, he found himself asking as well. He reached out to cup her face tenderly, and rub away with the pad of his thumb the slight smear of her lipstick at the corner of her mouth, the only thing currently marring her perfection. No matter how much Hank felt the failure in his workshop or in himself he could revel in and be inspired by Vena’s beauty enough to give him hope to start again fresh the next day.

From behind him Aaron cleared his throat and set his untouched drink on the stainless steel kitchen table. “Well I better get going,” he said and reached for his dark navy suit jacket thrown carelessly on the opposite leather chair. Shrugging it on, he made his way toward the spiral staircase.

“Wait though,” Hank called him back, “you said you were here to see me. Was there something you needed to tell me?”

Aaron nearly stumbled on the edge of the carpet delineating the living room as he spun around abruptly. His eyes darted to Vena, then to Hank and back to Vena quickly. He raked his shaking hand through his sandy blonde hair.

“Umm, ah, oh it was just, uh…” Aaron searched his spinning mind for something to say “oh just wanted to see your progress on the installations and uh…yanno see how far along you were. The show is in four months.” He needlessly reminded Hank. Hank knew all too well he was no where near where he should be in his projects for the pending gallery show. Hank downed the rest of his scotch in one gulp and looked askance at Aaron in clear irritation.

‘Yeah I know. But you didn’t even stop to look in on things downstairs.” Hank’s left eyebrow crept up on his forehead in question. Again Aaron’s searching eyes shifted to Vena.

“He’s on his way out Hank, he’ll come another day and have a look at things downstairs.” Vena said firmly. Aaron sighed slightly, relieved, and Hank grunted and turned his back on the man to place his quickly emptied glass in the sink.

“Sure, ok. See you around Aaron.” Hank leaned against the edge of the sink his back still turned, dismissing him, and he sensed Vena moving away from him and toward Aaron.

“I’ll see you out Aaron, thanks for coming” she said pointedly, but Hank was already deep in angry and self-pitying whorls of thought.

A few moments later Hank realized he was being rude, but Aaron had hit a sore spot with his reminder. He realized the younger man was not to blame for his current frustration and he shouldn’t have unleashed his foul mood on him. The projects he had set for himself were failing, he felt unable to transfer his grand ideas into the physical form of his metals. He felt uninspired and empty. But that was his task alone, his curse as an artist. Aaron’s job was to remind him and ride Hank about his responsibilities, to see the bigger picture and the cash value of his art. It was his acumen with money and the business side of things that Hank appreciated most in Aaron.

Hank limped over to the wall of windows at the far end of the loft; maybe he would catch Aaron before he left and give him a conciliatory wave and smile, a goodwill gesture to apologize for his rudeness. But as he looked out the window he saw something that stopped him in his tracks and made him step back to avoid being seen. Vena and Aaron were embracing. But something in the embrace, a certain lingering, her fingers entwined in his hair at the nape of his neck, made Hank think this was not the friendly hug between cousins or even close friends. With a sudden sharp stab of jealousy Hank realized he could not remember the last time Vena had held him, her husband, in that way. Thinking back to the scene earlier, Aaron’s jittering nervousness, Vena’s untucked hair and smeared lipstick, Hank felt a sick tightening in his gut. What was going on? He glanced out the window again but the pair were gone, and he heard Vena’s graceful dancers’ steps on the spiral staircase coming up.

Hank watched Vena float across the floor toward him. Her face was slightly flushed and she wore the fading remnants of a smile. Hanks eyes unconsciously narrowed into slits as he watched her.

“I’ll get dinner started,” she said and slid past him toward the refrigerator, ignoring his stare. Hank gave his head a shake to clear some of the fogginess of the scotch before he spoke. He didn’t want to have an argument.

“What’s up with Aaron?” he asked, trying to sound casual and nonchalant.

Vena slowly turned her head to regard her husband. He couldn’t read a single emotion on her face this time, as though she had turned back into the marble statue he was so accustomed to seeing.

“He’s having a rough week at work, the bank is pressuring him. He’s doing his best for you, for us, managing things. I think you were a bit hard with him. I’m not sure why.” She had a way of admonishing Hank for his poor behavior that made his face burn and made him feel like he was again a 10 year old boy getting a lecture from his long suffering grandmother for some perceived social transgression.

Hank blew out a harsh breath and pushed himself off the counter. “I’m taking a shower,” he informed Vena and walked toward the bathroom, ending the conversation in five short strides.

Later that night after a mostly silent and brooding meal, they both retired to bed early, back to back each on their side with a wide canyon of space between them. Hank tossed and turned sleeplessly most of the night, but when he did finally fall asleep he was plagued by cloying and vivid dreams. In his dreams he saw his wife with Aaron; he knew it was Aaron though in the dream he was faceless. They shifted from the same embrace he saw them in when he was watching them from the window to a shimmering naked writhing coupling on the very bed he and his wife slept on each night. Hank watched, as he had watched them before from the window, it seemed from a not too far distance but they did not see him nor realize he was so near. It was as if Hank were watching the pair through a thick pane of watery glass or a semi-sheer curtain of fabric. The faceless man was at times rough and gentle with Vena, his hands grasping and molding the soft flesh of her body closer to his, in an effort to get more of her into his arms, more of her on his lips and in his mouth, his crazed hunger palpable. Hank watched the man penetrate Vena, sliding a sizeable hard cock slippery with her juices in and out of her repeatedly with such force her entire body shuddered. Her head was thrown back in a voiceless cry of passion, her hair cascading down her shoulders and back in an undulating chocolate wave and a sheen of sweat slicked them both, their bodies glittering in the half-light of Hank’s bluish nightmare world. He saw Vena pull and grasp at the man’s back, his thighs and ass, trying to get more of him into her, pacing him faster and harder, her hips undulating and gyrating to meet each of the man’s thrusts. They made no sound, and at the moment of Vena orgasm, her eyes shut tight and her mouth wide and wild as he had never himself seen in their life together, the brightest hottest flames of red and orange light burst from the pair on the bed, like the very heart of the fire in his forge. Hank woke with a muffled shout, his own body trembling. Hank was sweating, and he eventually noticed, his cock was fully and illogically erect.

Vena murmured softly next to him from her sleep and Hank slowed his breathing so as not to wake her. He gently swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat on its edge resting his pounding head in his hands. The dream was so vivid he could easily remember all the details. What was going on and why was he now so goddamned … aroused? The events of the dream should have made him angry, jealous, and furious, even if just a dream. But this? This was just confusing. Shaking his head a bit as if to shake out the last lingering images of his dream, Hank stood up slowly. Realizing he would never get any sleep if he didn’t take care of his current rigidity, he quietly walked to the bathroom to get some relief without waking Vena. It was surprisingly quick work, he stroked himself a few times recalling the most potent images from his dream and came with a muffled groan pressed into his forearm. He could not remember a time when it was so easy, or when he was so turned on. It only added to his confusion; why should a dream about his wife having sex with someone else make him this excited?

He decided, once he was finished and had washed and dried his hands, that the only way he could put this to rest was to confront Aaron the next time he came by. Or to catch the two either in the acts he imagined or, if it was just his over-active imagination, innocent of anything he could have conjured. This idea pleased him in many ways he could not quite understand as he tumbled it around in his mind like a river stone, and he returned to bed and eventually drifted again into a more dreamless sleep.

Days passed and Hank continued to wrestle with his metals and the fire of the forge, and with his preoccupied mind. As he hammered and cast, his mind wandered, recalling images from his dream. He also started to recall events from his early childhood in Sicily. He vaguely remembered stories of men driven to mad violence at insinuations of being a ‘cornudo’, in which the wife was ‘giving him the horns’ and sleeping with other men behind the man’s back. He remembered once asking his beloved grandfather, the town’s blacksmith with whom he first learned to love and respect the fire and iron, what the hand gesture he saw the villagers make had meant. The ‘cornos”, first and last finger up and pointing at a man’s back while the thumb pressed the second and third finger down toward the palm, Hank saw his neighbors make this gesture behind certain villager’s backs. Hank remembered the old man gingerly touching the iron horn of his anvil, the anvil Hank inherited that now stood in his own smith shop, and the old man sighed deeply. His grandfather’s deeply tanned and arthritis-withered hand caressed the horn gently. Hank knew the gesture, the ‘tocca ferro’ was for good luck, but something else in the movement, something almost sensuous, gave the young boy pause at the time and made his neck prickle with slight embarrassment. “They don’t understand,” was all the older man had said, and Hank never broached the subject with him again.

One day in late Autumn Hank heard a car approach outside. He knew instinctively it would be Aaron. Hank turned his back to the door and began a steady but measured hammering on the piece he was working on, but listened intently in the silent spaces between each strike. He heard the soft creak of the door, and after a short pause the lightened step up the spiral staircase of someone trying very hard not to be heard. Hank turned his head, still hammering, glancing at the stair just in time to see the bottom of Aaron’s dark navy pinstriped pant leg slip from view. Hank fought down the urge to drop everything and follow Aaron up the stairs, but he knew that if he wanted to catch them at anything, if they were in fact doing anything, he had to let them think they were safe enough to do it, or to start something at the very least. Hank felt excited rather than angry, which surprised him. It was if he was more excited to catch Aaron and wife together, to finally get the chance to actually watch them in the flesh together rather than just in his imagination than in being right and indignant or angry. Hank didn’t want to imagine them together again, but imagine he did, and between the feigned hammer blows he felt his cock again getting inexplicably hard.

After a few more minutes Hank abandoned his work and slowly, painfully, made his way up the spiral staircase to the loft upstairs. Muffling his grunts of exertion, he managed to climb with as little noise as possible to announce his arrival. A few steps short of the top riser he stopped, crouched and peered up and across the loft toward the bed.

All of Hank’s feverish dreams over the last few weeks could not have prepared him adequately for what he saw. Vena was laid naked on the bed, her alabaster skin pearly in the softening mid-afternoon light from the wall of windows. Her hair undone, it was longer and fuller than he had ever seen it, rippling about her face and shoulders, silky as fur, stray wisps clinging to her flushed face. Her eyes were firmly squeezed shut; she could not see Hank watching. She bit and gnawed her lip in an effort to silence her gasps and moans and her body trembled, her shuddering causing her small perfectly round breasts to shake, the nipples hard tight buds tracing unseen arcs and shapes in the air above them. Her shuddering was caused by Aaron, kneeling at the foot of the bed his face firmly and deeply pressed to the mound between her legs, his head rising and falling in small motions only to occasionally kiss her inner thighs, drink in deep draught of air and utter small moans of pleasure himself. Vena’s long tapered fingernails raked mercilessly through Aaron’s hair, scraping his scalp and pulling him ever closer. Aaron placed his knees, still in his blue pinstriped trousers, on the bed, wound his arms under and around her trembling widely spread thighs and with a fluid motion straightened up and hoisted her high up off the bed, hooking her knees over his shoulders, as if wanting to take her further, deeper into his hungry insatiable mouth. Vena lost her careful control then, head thrashing from side to side on the bed tangling her hair, hands grasping and nails digging into and tearing the pale blue coverlet of the bed and she let out a low keening sound Hank had never before heard from her, a guttural animal noise he never even knew she could make.

Hank held his breath and slowly crept down the staircase, carefully, as his eyes were swimming with  unshed tears and his head was spinning. Once back down in his shop he sat in a rickety wooden chair and held his pounding head in his hands. Thoughts and emotions raced, uncontrollable. What he had seen, what he was an unknown and unsuspected witness to just then…it was the most beautiful thing Hank had ever witnessed in his life. It was if he was given the rare blessing of watching the most ancient and profound act, watching his exquisite wife being given the greatest physical pleasure Hank himself could never hope to give her. Hank mentally relived it over and over, watching his usually reserved and reticent wife transformed into something wild and feral, almost otherworldly; a marble statue melted and come to life into the soft flesh and warm blood of a glorious and unbound woman. Hank felt… so much, too much, it threatened to all burst from his chest and heart and head. It confused him. He knew he should be feeling anger, rage and an urge for ineffective violence; but instead he felt pride, love and joy and… glancing down at the tightening bulge in his pants, oh yes arousal. Hank could taste the acrid bitterness of shame in his mouth, the shame in realizing he himself would never be able to give his wife the pleasure Aaron had given her and, if Hank listened very carefully, was continuing to give her now upstairs, but Hank’s mind spun deliciously with new images. He wanted to pull the thoughts out of his head, to see these images in front of him, hold them and caress them himself, mold them or smash them, he didn’t quite know which. Getting up from his chair with a new-found energy, he stoked the forge to a blazing bright red heat, grabbed several bars of bronze, copper, steel and iron and worked… and worked. Hank worked like a man possessed, or a man renewed, bathed in the sweat of primordial creation.

Much later that night closer to dawn, Hank fell exhausted into bed next to his already sleeping wife. He had not stopped working, not even stopping for dinner, until his hands were cramped and his leg was a stabbing knife of pain. If only I were a better man, he had thought, a stronger man, I could at least continue working a few more hours…

“Hank?” Vena’s whispered question reached to him in the dark. “What’s wrong?” Did he nearly hear tears in her voice?

Hank rolled over to her, although it pained his sore abused body and made him grimace;he put his arms around her slender frame and held her close. “It’s ok,” he whispered. But he could say no more. What could he say? How would he say what he longed to tell her? Where could he begin? He kissed her then, a light brushing of her lips with his at first, then a harder press, an urgent tasting. Hank imagined her mouth tasting of Aaron, or of her own juices transferred from Aaron’s mouth. She soon reciprocated his kisses, and, though it pained him physically that night, they made love; slowly, softly, almost reverently.

Over the next few weeks Hank repeated the process, working himself hard, pushing past his limits, collapsing into bed next to Vena only a few hours before sunrise. Like he was exorcising some demon, he would take his rest and solace in her arms for a few hours, then go back to the struggle again the next day. Vena became worried, tired of the sleepless nights waiting for him and, though she knew he disliked it, she decided to go down to the shop to see for herself what was going on with her husband, why he was working so obsessively lately.

As she crept down the stairs she heard the hammering, the tinny strike of sheet metal being shaped into a developing form, a sound she knew well married to Hank now these 10 years, but this was somehow different; it was almost too fast, too hard, too…desperate. When Vena reached the bottom of the stair and stood in the smith shop, Hank’s back was turned to her and he hadn’t noticed her approach. She looked at what seemed to be several already finished pieces, the sculptures Hank had been working on for the gallery opening she guessed. As she walked slowly amongst them, she gasped softly. They were so different from what he usually did; they were unspeakably beautiful, finely wrought and honed, the bronze and copper glimmering, the steel and iron strong yet unfathomably fine. They were sculptures, she realized finally in amazement, of her. Her and a man, posed together in loving and erotic embraces flowing and melting into each other, bodies opening and dissolving into each other, limbs wrapped sensuously, disparate metals merging and blending as she had never seen before. Her hair was fine strands of copper hammered and pulled filament thin wildly scattered in ecstatic disarray, her metal breasts shaped smooth and held by impossibly fine long fingers of steel caressing them as if they were warm and malleable flesh, the man’s young robust body was the polished smoothness and hard glint of tempered steel and iron. She stepped slowly closer to Hank as he hammered a sheet of heated metal over a cylinder form, and she saw her own face take shape in the sheet with each of the precise hammer blows, her mouth open in a cry of pleasure, the metal mask an image of pure sexual abandon.

“Hank!” she said aloud, startling him. He stopped hammering and turned to her blinking like he was coming out of some kind of trance.

“This …where did this all come from?” she asked, her hands upturned and gesturing to the pieces.

Hank put down the hammer gingerly on the table and turned off the blowtorch he was using alternately to heat the metal sheet between hammering. Pulling off his heavy gloves, he limped towards his wife, eyes downcast; he found he could not look her directly in the eye as he spoke.

“I saw you. You and Aaron.” Hank whispered. “I guess I became obsessed. I wanted to capture it, capture the two of you like that, forever.”

Vena barely stifled a cry, her hand flew up to her mouth in shock and in horror when she realized what her husband was saying.

“No, no!” Hank protested, “It’s ok. It was beautiful, the most beautiful awful gorgeous thing I ever saw!” Hank grasped his wife’s hands in his calloused grip, how like a frightened bird they trembled. He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed her fingertips gingerly. “I was so inspired, filled with…” he paused, searching for the words, “awe, that I made this. Some from memory, some from imagination.” He swept a hand around him toward the sculptures surrounding them in orgiastic coupling.

Vena’s lips trembled and a tear slipped down her cheek. It left a fissure on her smooth face, like a fine hairline crack in an otherwise perfect and smooth piece of cherished marble.

“No, please,” Hank brushed the tear away with his thumb. “I loved seeing you so happy, so fully pleasured. I know I can’t do that for you, that I haven’t in a very long time since the accident but my god it was so amazing seeing you like that again. So wild, so beautiful, so free!”

“Hank, I love you,” Vena tentatively started to explain. “It’s just been so hard and so long since…”

“Oh I know, I’m so sorry,” Hank’s gaze softened and he took a deep shaking breath composing his thoughts, things he had wanted to say to her all these weeks that he could only express in the way he knew how, through his art. “Vena, my love, I want to ask something of you. I want, no…I need to see you like that again. I know I can never make you look like that, like this.” he gestured toward one of the pieces, the woman’s head thrown back, her graceful steel neck stretched and smooth glimmering steel back arched, the metal seeming to retain in its shine the heat of the fire that created it. “Please, I need to see you like this again, with him or someone else, I don’t care, I just want to see you in that moment: on fire, glorious and divine.” Hank smiled at Vena, still holding one of her trembling hands.

Vena smiled. She loved her husband, had been in love with him since she met him all those years ago in art school, with his brooding dark looks and artist’s soul. She loved their life together even though he put so much strain on himself and too much pressure on them both sometimes. She loved the way Hank made love to her as well, so tenderly and sweetly, and she knew how much effort, care and love he put into it despite his pain and physical limitations. But more often than not she found herself with those unspeakable urges, those desires, to free herself, to let herself go completely in a way she could not do with Hank. And though she never wanted to hurt her husband, a part of her, a very small, vain and entirely human part of her relished the idea of him watching her with Aaron, of being so filled with rage or awe or lust or jealousy all mixed and mingled together in a passion that it inspired him to create these amazing works of art. No impotent humiliation for her husband, no directionless jealousy and rage of a man who glimpsed of the true core and beauty of his beloved wife. Her husband, her god-touched artist,found a way to make her immortal forever with fire and bronze and iron. She smiled at him warmly, lovingly. What better tribute could any goddess ask for?

Weeks later, Hank and Vera were late for the opening night of the gallery. Vera adjusted the bow tie of Hank’s tuxedo as they sat in the back of the limousine Aaron had rented for them to take from their warehouse home to the upper east side gallery where Aaron and everyone he could think to invite were waiting for them.

“Ah, stop fussing,” she admonished him playfully. “We’re almost there.” She kissed him quickly before stepping out of the car on her side, grasping Hank’s cane in one hand while the driver held the door for Hank and offered a hand, helping him out on his side. Vena quickly walked around and handed her husband his cane, and smiled at him.

Aaron was waiting for them outside the gallery, pacing, excited. In the months before this night Hank had watched Aaron make love to his wife several more times, always without Aaron knowing, but with Vena’s complicity. Once or twice she even winked at Hank in his preferred hiding place when she glanced his way. Those moments were magical to him, made him feel connected to his wife in ways he could barely understand and would never be able to describe in words but found a way to communicate in the growing collection of statues in his smith shop. They had inspired the last few pieces Hank felt the gallery needed for a good opening night. Or so he had hoped.

“Hank!” Aaron walked quickly toward him, excited. “It’s amazing! Your best work! All the works, all the pieces, they’ve already been sold, spoken for as soon as people saw them! It’s fantastic! Can you believe it? They are already asking when your next show will be!” Aaron opened the gallery doors and as soon as Hank and Vera walked in the room it exploded in thunderous appreciative applause.

Once the applause died down, Hank felt a small and warm hand slide and nestle into his. He turned his head to see Vena and she smiled up at him, pride beaming in her lovely face.

“Oh Hank, it’s wonderful. And I have one more bit of good news, just for you.” She whispered close to his mouth when he leaned down to kiss her. Hank blinked and looked into her face questioningly.

“I’m pregnant.” Vena breathed and smiled, a beatific smile Hank had seen before, on the statuary of the Blessed Virgin his grandmother had in her bedroom back in Italy, or the statues of Athena and Aphrodite he often sketched endlessly in art school; faces sublime and tranquil, so self-assured of the devotion and love of their supplicants. Hank smiled back and squeezed Vena’s hand. It was good news indeed.


(c) 2016

I sometimes wish I could find a pen pal. A real pen pal, not over e-mail, but rather another anachronistic writer of letters; long thoughtful, dirty-word filled and salacious, highly anticipated and treasured letters...on thick vellum paper or bespoke stationary, words in delicious cursive handwriting, delivered to me in slightly scented envelopes sealed with a personal wax seal across the closure.

I know I was born in the wrong era, and I recognize that in as little as 20 years people won't believe that we used to write letters by hand with a pen and on paper. In 20 years people may not even be able to hand write letters anymore, having lost the physical ability for it .

Much like we today cannot fathom people wrote with quills and pots of ink, and had to dust a page with sand to dry the ink before folding and sealing with a wax seal and entrusting it to a friend or enemy to deliver it to our desired recipient.. And yet, here we are today watching movies like Dangerous Liaisons and Immortal Beloved and we can see exactly that. This is pleasing to the few of us desirous for a time long ago of thoughtful meaningful communication. Although practicality dictates that I type this on a keyboard or peck at a tiny phone screen with painfully erroneous pokes of a fingertip.

And perhaps, it is just as Marshall McLuhan said,  the medium is the message.

Adele - I Can't Make You Love Me (Live) Itunes Festival 2011 HD

Early reflections on NaNoWriMo

Day One! Actually will start writing at midnight, my witching hour, but will have to discipline myself to writing at 5 a.m. as it is the only time I have realistically in my life to work on it.

In one of the many tips I've been reading about writing, I keep seeing "don't forget to also make time to read". Which I find problematic for myself. When I write, I make very sure I do NOT read anyone's writing. My fear is that I will unwittingly and subconsciously begin to mimic that author's style or voice in my own writing. And one thing I've learned about the literary world, imitation is not sincerest flattery. A person can be accused of hack-writing or worse, plagiarism. So I avoid the whole trouble by putting my reading for pleasure on hold until whatever I am working on is finished. If afterward I still recognize some other admired author's voice I can say that I came by my influence honestly and change or edit if necessary.

Dredging up from the bottom of your being an original unique story, that is also universal (because all stories are human stories and therefore universal) is hard. It's all been done before, said before, and done better by better writers going back as far as the Greeks. This kind of thinking can stop a young amateur writer dead in her tracks and make you throw up your hands at the sheer futility of it all. Self doubt is self defeating. But the mantra of NaNoWriMo is "The World Needs Your Novel".  I have to remind myself of this as I struggle to bang out those 1700 words every day this November. And if not the world, then at the very least I need my novel. I need it out of me, out of my heart and soul and onto a page, in existence in some form outside of myself, if nothing else to remove the onerous weight on my existence. This novel is as much about me and my life as it will be about yours. The perspective is different, the experiences - some real and some fictionalized and fantastical - are also as much a part of me as it can be yours.

At least, that is my hope, and my drive.
Wish me luck! Wish me the ability to wake each morning at 5 a.m.! lol

Ranty rant... apropos of nothing really

I think my main issue with some poly people is that they think they are somehow a much more evolved sexual being than the rest of us mere monogamists, poor backward traditionalist-types,  unhappy face. They believe, and will tell you, ad naseum, that they have transcended the petty jealousy and illogical emotional responses to non-traditional relationships. they will quote at you the SCIENCE behind non-monogamy and how we have been tricked to accept patriarchy defined constructs of relationships. They not only have read ALL the literature regarding the subject, but LIVE it each and every single day. Their relationships are tight. Their communication skillz are so much better than my, yours or anyone else's communication skillz, yo.

To which I have only one response: Fuck you. 

If relationships were logical we’d all look like Mr. Spock. 

Excerpt

All she wanted to know with complete trust and absolute certainty was that, despite the terrible things she did to him, despite the tender atrocities he allowed her to inflict on his body and his spirit, that he still loved her, still desired her, still wanted to be with her. The truest definition of unconditional love she had never experienced.

She didn't want to explore how lustful he felt or how beautiful he thought he thought she was: those things were too facile, too trite. She wanted to examine how difficult it was, how filled with longing, pain, uncertainty and anguish but ultimately filled with peace and joy these moments between them could be. She wanted to test him, an irrational desire to see how far she could push him, or push him away. Would he stay? She was almost too afraid to find out. But the need to know, that certainty she craved, drove her.

"Come here Adam, " she whispered.

He left his place, seated on the floor by the bay window. He was watching the rain. He crawled on all fours toward her, head down and quickly yet smoothly as he had been taught. She watched the patterned muted light from the window cast shadows along the skin of his naked back, dappling on the muscles alive and moving. When he reached her he rubbed his face on her silk nylon sheathed crossed legs, without her permission, without asking. A small infraction this unexpected and ardent gesture of affection, it would serve to answer her questions today. He would have to be punished.

(c) 2015 from the forthcoming The Weft and the Weave

Beginning

"Do you trust me?" she asked. She paused, waiting, a heavy silence between them. The question was more than it seemed, carrying the weight of her life, and his; a burden almost too great for the four small words.

He thought for a long moment, she could see the workings of contemplation on his face, could swear she heard the grinding gears in his head as he imagined every possible reason, every pro and every con, every foreseeable circumstance to come that he would be called upon to trust her, and his reaction to her question every time.

Finally he answered: "I do". Simply, boldly, with a breathtaking strength punctuated with a heartbreaking meekness. He looked at her, into her eyes, waited.

She smiled, a bit forlornly. "You shouldn't." she replied.

(c) 2015 from the forthcoming The Weft and the Weave