Some Like It Hot
REMINGTON GRAVES
The gym was infested with festering phonies and drooling-on-dullards—these otherwise daunting dames. Television screens high above near the exposed ceiling displayed a myriad of mesmerizing shows for the huffing-and-puffing mare and minion. I had my headphones, as I pushed mildly on the elliptical machine, and listened to one of my favorite albums: And Still Wanting by an artist who calls himself “Prurient.” The cleaning ladies appeared with their ghostbuster back packs and began to suck silently with their bending grey hoses and tried not the bother the brutes.
A young Caucasian man in a hot green muscle shirt kept staring at me from across the building and smiled whilst widening his eyes. He lifted his dumbbells and with the back of his right thumb, wiped away the sweat from his eyebrows. Maybe he thought I was a fruit, due to me checking from time to time to see if he was still eye-fucking me.
A young lady walked by, who reminded me of Mansfield, also wearing headphones, and smiled at me as she shook her moneymaker from side to side and tiptoed to the contraption right in front of me; It was some kind of stair climbing station and she worked and worked and would peripherally pucker up those pretty pink lips of hers.
An overweight person with curly brown hair and red sneakers, who could have been a man or woman, quite easily, winked at me from a few treadmills over to my left. It adjusted its headband and hissed something to me I couldn’t make out.
Now I know why women are annoyed at the gym.
I am not one of those assholes, you know the type, that vibes off waves of I’m-here-to-work-out-don’t-bother-me messages in the subtle sway of the chilling cold shoulder and the upward pointing chin. Always open to new faces and good conversation, but nothing more. For I know what most mortals want.
They want to be wanted. They want to be reminded. Reminded each morning that someone cares. That someone is interested. To be wished a great day. That someone, maybe me someone, will be someone who loves them, someone who believes in them, someone who will allow themselves to be their property.
They want to belong to someone, these cow-eyed cowards who follow the crowd. I understand them, they don’t want to be alone. They want someone to wake them in the morning and say, “ Good morning, my love. My only love. You are the one and only person I think about. All through my day, your face is all I see. Your voice is my favorite song and can’t wait to hear it throughout my day. When I make love to you, I don’t think of the neighbor and her double D jugs. I don’t think of the man who lives next door who works for the Fire Department and comes home all sweaty and ripping through that ever so tight cotton shirt.”
But I won’t. I won’t say that. Because It wouldn’t be true.
I live life as a free man—understanding in my old age the true meaning of Liberty.
I don’t feel the pressure to live as you do, to have the need of someone tell you all the shit you know can’t possible be true.
My solitude is my solace—my Fortress Of Solitude.
Yes, I want to love. Yes, I want to look in your eyes. Yes, I want to tell you I love you…but then ask you how your date was last night..
…with the Fireman next door.
∞
Summer’s Salty Kiss
REMINGTON GRAVES
The church bell could be heard in the hazy day distance as her right toe pressed against the pillar of her porch while she rocked herself slowly, gently. Back arched and arms hanging lifeless. Her thin pastel-peach summer dress slightly swung in the summer morning breeze and caressed the faded-white wooden deck; the print on the dress was that of old withered roses done in oil by brush. And with creaking and sighing she squinted to see the dandelions drifting as the cicadas faded into silence; quietly observing her beautiful blonde daughter blowing bubbles and giggling after orange and blue butterflies. A pulsing yellow sun sat awatch above the germinating stone fruit in the peach tree orchards surrounding her home. She stood after a moment’s silence to search for her blonde-locked, bubble-blowing bambina. As she took a few steps, she felt a stream of sweat trickling down the small of her back and sidewinding to the left of her derrière and down her thigh. It felt like a thin, hot tiny river tickling her tush, she thought as she spotted her child falling down and then sitting in the tall grass combing her hair with the brush her father had given her.
Carved in the pastel coral-pink brush decorated with Blue-gray Tanagers, were the words “love, daddy,” in shaky lower case letters; they were almost invisible as they seemed to be swallowed up by the milky swirling pattern behind them.
The child looked up fighting the sunshine in her eyes and said, “Momma, will daddy ever come back?”
”No, darling, “ she replied as she sat next to her and played with her hair.
”Why not, momma?”
”Because your father is dead,” she uttered gently.
”Will we see him when we die?”
”No, honey, we won’t see him. We won’t see anything when we die. When someone dies they don’t feel anything, see anything or go anywhere. They simply do not exist.”
”Does that make you sad, momma?” asked the little one as she continued combing her hair with a smile.
”Yes, it does…sometimes. But it’s a reminder to love one another with everything we got while we are here. To appreciate each other. To spend time with one another. To see the world together. To seize the day, little one!” she said with gusto as she grabbed her fallen angel and buried her face in her neck and inhaled summer’s salty kiss.
∞
Megalodon
REMINGTON GRAVES
Countless tears fall from empty heavens cutting through the code, the nexus ripped and shredded, its invisible ribbons drape above my watery ceiling and sink hanging heavy, swinging right then left imitating the immortal jellyfish
Graciously gravid and gargantuan in the choking gulps of a million depths under the sea, I approach with crashing cymbals and thrashing thunder—The O Fucktuna—nightmarish scenic cantata composed of medieval chants in bombastic brutality; whilst lacerating other lesser life forms, I fuck the fickleness of fortune and waste the wastrel who only dreams of wealth, the ephemeral noxious nature of a dwindling life, jubilant in the joy that may come in the return of Spring
Great Whites see themselves in me
I see old almost forgotten me in Great Whites
And I summon thy pleasures unknown, lost pugilistic perils with placid guise in the draining shapes of gluttonous gambling to distract the mortal mind from the luxury of lust
I will not lament the wounds that Fortune deals for Fortune deals not for me
Dance instead on the severed heads of all my foes and feigning friends
My thoughts like spies on land like Maenads among the forest flowers
Trampling past villages and chewing through men and seething inside a frantic fire
Once I swam in lakes and more than once
In the shape of a thin calm and quiet brown boy
Naked along snakes
Past dead rodents Past human debris Away from just another brick in the walls and homes and paved streets
With eyes of cool and hard white like marble statuesque chiseled and charged, I vibrated in the macrocosm universe that was my human vessel, my veins all roads like dormant whores that lead my puerile heart to Rome
Emperor of the world
Pale monarch within
Sovereign seraph
Allies sidewinding slightly behind, vigilant, venal and vindictive—fierce notes in the opus of the mechanism that is the symphonic organ of oblivion
Imperial guards
Fiends of shared philosophy
I no longer remember the boy
I hardly think of the Great White
Except for when I’m hungry
and out for a swim
∞
Smooth Operators
REMINGTON GRAVES
“My fellow Americans…As your very handsome and capable President, I hereby have some groundbreaking news to share with you this beautiful and blessed morning.
Play the music, will you, darling,” he said as a tall skinny blonde in faux Fendi pointed a remote control to the corner of the room behind him, and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.14 in C-Sharp Minor ensued.
“Last night, for reasons beyond our greatest and educated minds, extraterrestrials chose the White House to make their first contact with the human race. It is no surprise they chose here, since America is the greatest goddamned country in the world, pardon my French, but hell, I’d land here too. I mean, c’mon, folks…the House is White, for crying out loud. Now, they have travelled all this way, for eons, they claim, to provide us with a very special gift. I know I am live at the moment. So, all of you in your automobiles, I implore you, please pull over safely and continue to keep watching this very important world-wide message—if you are watching this broadcast on a device of some kind. This gift may come as a real shocker to you folks at home, or wherever you may be. These Otherworldly fellows claimed that it would be devastating at first, due to our simple minds, but with decades, or centuries perhaps, we would understand the magnitude of this priceless gift. And the gift is this, my beloved Americans…and the rest of you out there in lesser countries:
I want you to, very slowly now, undo your trousers. And look inside, if you will. Go ahead, don’t be shy, this affects us all, now. There is no more need for shyness. Now, now, don’t panic! I said, don’t panic now.
As you can see, there ain’t nothing dooown there. They’ve made us smooth like Barbie dolls…how the hell we are supposed to operate, is beyond me. I don’t get it myself, don’t see how this is a gift, since I liked using it from time to time—provided my prescription dose was met. They did mention that we’d find a way to reproduce without the pipe work, soon enough. Too many people on this damn planet already, If you ask me.
I remember as a young man, and sometimes now, where I would dress well and exercise only for the approval of the opposite sex. My success was ultimately to have power which let to my pickings of the best women out there. I don’t know much about women, but maybe makeup sales will drop now, that you don’t need to attract a mate. And how the hell you gonna get anyone to spoon you now?Look at me, getting ahead of myself. What on earth are we gonna talk about now amongst each other—the weather?! Only time will tell, I suppose.
This is the President of the best gosh darn country in the world…signing off. And remember, folks, there is a big world out there, with lots of people and lots of places. Keep yourselves and each other safe. Have a blessed day.”
∞
On Going Bald
REMINGTON GRAVES
It’s been a mortifying matter of a multitude of years, this falling out of love between my locks and I; I noticed the shiny, shitty spot on my scalp as I ran the comb through my hair as it collected clumps of polishing pomade. The ceiling fan caused a break in the gleam and summoned a ghastly grunt within. My Lucky filterless hung suspended by a bit of saliva on my lower lip as I squinted from the smoke and beheld the baldness in my dirty restroom mirror…I knew in my heart of hearts, that I wasn’t so lucky and that my head…it was toasted. But the days turned into months and the months to years, and out of sight, out of mind, I had heard people say, and so it went that awful way—for quite some time. Women came in and out of my life; they pulled and yanked and never said a word. Never did I consider that one day I would become part of the fucking Follicly Challenged Club.
Within the epoch of less-than-epic denial, bald men, after many an action film—after a stack or two of high-end magazine models, became sexy to me and I relished in the many voiced opinions of the mass of vixens who posited that chrome-domed polished-headed men were provocative. From vengeful hitmen, daring drivers, and yippie-ki-yayed motherfuckers, to bloated Buddhas, all had their place in the planet and some in the loins of lionesses. But no, not me…no way, no how, how could this be?
I am Forty years old now and just recently got tired of combing my hair this direction and that one, only to live daily in self-deceit. Man, I put up a fight, and can’t call it “the good fight” since, I finally admitted defeat and decided to shave it all off. Most people tried talking me out of it—bless their kind hearts, but I knew, like all men know, when it’s time to give up the jig.
‘Liberated’ was the word that came to mind when I stood up from the Salon chair under the buzzer of a bouncy, blimpy bimbo who also tried selling me the lie. So she could continue to cut my unthinkably thinning hair, no doubt. Can’t blame her, I imagine that Juicy Couture and Pink wardrobe do not come cheap for a girl in her early twenties.
When I arrived home after the drive from the Salon, flashes of the diaphanously discarded mane penetrated my mind in a hot shower as I rubbed my scalp. The water hit my skin and I dug the delightful sensation. Regret was now beginning to hold my confidence in ransom. I stepped out, dried myself, and stared in the mirror…I was a fucking god, I thought to myself, and even if my head fell off, I’d be a decapitated deity—I knew it then, for the burning black flame, which is my incendiary confidence, kicked in and commenced with a ruling roar. I had survived homeless in a Third World country at the age of eight during the eighties, there was no way this was gonna trip me up.
My apprehension almost apprehended me, but as the hours went by, my superego set its fists at its waist line while its red cape flowed…and I started to love my new look.
So, for all you men struggling with this balding battle of bruised ego, just let go, baby…just let go. Embrace the truth. Accept the older, wiser, sexier you. And carry on, my wayward, balding sons.
∞
”Engage.”
—Luc-Picard