MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

— Sylvia Plath, “Mad Girl’s Love Song”

--- Image Elizabeth Gadd

Both lifted at Liquid Night

Don't think for a minute....

...that I don't remember,  or that it didn't feel just like this.

God, how I love this song on this day.
That's all I can say.

THE SPORTSMEN'S BANQUET

I had never been to a Pottery Barn before yesterday. I had read about them, seen pictures, and heard stories, even heard a story one time about how someone left the Pottery Barn door open, and all the pottery was getting out. But it was in that estrogen soaked environment that my mind began to wander, and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts, and describe to you what happened at the Pottery Barn yesterday.

I should say straight away that I prefer the company of women to men. You can make of this what you like. I know that at dinner parties and various functions, invariably the guests will split up into two groups. Usually the women will congregate to the kitchen, or perhaps a sewing room if one is available, and the men will wind up in the garage, or perhaps repair to a new type of room I keep hearing about…the “Man-Cave”.

I’m not sure I like the sound of that one at all.

Once there, the men, perhaps smoking cigars and drinking cognac as they did on the Titanic, will begin to discuss various manly enterprises (enterprises that I really don’t seem to have much interest in),such as muzzle velocities, gear ratio’s of the ’68 Olds Positrac rear end, and how much they made on E-Trade last week. Of course the conversation eventually degenerates into some discussion over “pussy”, with huge clouds of smoke and many loud guffaws. This may sound hypocritical from a guy with Facebook albums such as “Fully Clothed Women” and “Its Not Safe Here”, but I just don’t care for it. Perhaps there was a time in my youth that I might tolerate this kind of talk, join in even, but those years seem to be past me.

There is a moment in most relationships with guys I call the “Screeching Record” moment, where you are chewing the fat with your good buddy you have known for years, and out of the blue he points to some nice looking soft woman and whispers huskily, “Man, I’d like to have me some of that”. And in my mind, its like a record just skipped across 3 songs, including “Color My World” on my Chicago III album. I’ve known him for years, but didn’t know he needed to talk like that. I’m stopped in my tracks,and wondering if I’ll ever be able to look him in the eye again.

Anyway, like I said, the women go to the kitchen, and sip chamomile tea, and talk about education for children, world peace, how to get a coffee stain out of a white shirt, dust ruffles, and recipes for Blackberry Shortcake. I find all this, and the way they say it, endlessly more fascinating than the men in the garage discussing .22 cal varmint loads and where Goodyear gets its rubber.

But finally to the Pottery Barn, where I learned yesterday the difference between a pillow case and a “Sham”, which is, not much. I bought some way overpriced dishes, and got to talk with the lady as she wrapped them for me. She found out that I had been a chef, and wanted to know what my “specialty” was. I told her that my specialty had been cleaning out the walk in.

“What is that?” she said, having expected for me to give her a recipe for Blackberry Shortcake, or Balsamic Vinaigrette maybe.
“That’s where I go through the refrigerator, and determine what needs to be thrown away right now, and what we need to use up before it goes bad.” I tell her.
“Oh” she says “Like I have to do at home sometimes. I’d hate you to see my refrigerator right now”
“Oh, I know” I said “It reminds me of the Sportsmans Banquet they had every year at a country club I used to be chef at.”

‘”What’s a Sportsmen’s Banquet?” she asked, and that’s all it took to send me flying.

“The Sportsmen’s Banquet is an event held every year, where all the manly men have their wives pull from the freezer all the meats and fishes they have killed and frozen over the years, all in various stages of decay and neglect,and they bring them proudly for the chef, being me, to cook for them at a big manly banquet, where they smoke cigars and drink cognac and talk of their safari they will be taking to the Trophy Game Ranch down by Kerrville. They bring you fish wrapped in newspaper, the headlines which read “JFK ASSASSINATED”, or frozen in a milk carton cut in half; they bring unknown meats in Walmart bags that are disintegrating in front of your eyes. They bring you an elk shank or bear tenderloin, freezer burned so badly you just want to cry. It is a "wound to the heart", as the great chief Sitting Bull would say, watching his beloved buffalo disappear slowly from the plains. There are big zip-lock bags of dove and quail that seem to be all liquid,except for the feathers. As they bring it to you, its pretty easy to imagine it sat in an ice chest for five days as they sat around a fire and told fart jokes at night, then on the counter for a day once home, then finally into the freezer 4 years ago where it settled to the bottom next to Uncle Jacks beef tongue from 1965. And now you have it, the duck that was shot in Nova Scotia all those years ago, and the beef tongue that the proud huntsman would like you to make into some kind of garnish for a smoked salmon tray, the same salmon that was caught on the duck expedition in 1972. It’s a deadly mess, it really is”

Now during this little speech a group of women has gathered, because , well, I dont really have an inside voice, and it just tends to draw a crowd sometimes

“So what do you do with all this bad meat?” one asked.

“Put it on a cart and take it straight to the dumpster, get on the phone and order some elk, bison, Smoked Salmon, duck, quail and beef tongue from a local purveyor, pretend that you are serving these guys exactly what they brought in. But these guys are smart. They run oil companies and stuff . They know what you are doing, and they just pretend what they are eating is what they brought in. Everybody is happy and no one dies the next day.”


I turn back to the clerk, who has finished wrapping my dishes.
“My husband has some elk in the freezer. I’ve been asking him to get rid of it for years” she says.
“They have Elk at Central Market” I tell her.
We exchange knowing looks.
“Thank you so much” she says “Have you seen these Egyptian Bamboo place mats? “They would look very nice with your new dishes.”

THE THERAPIST

He asked me "What is the goal, what is it you want out of all this, Bulletholes?"
I said "I just want what everyone else wants Doc."
"And what might that be?"
"A love that lasts forever, till the end of time."

One of us laughed, and one of us didn't.
Right now I can't recall who did what.

DON'T BE A JERK

Back in 2009, I told you about how my son had come to me, and asked if he and his girlfriend, Maddie, could come over and set up a little love nest in my middle room, because he was living with his mother, and she wasn’t going along with his romantic pursuits happening under her roof.

I told him that was fine with me, but that he and I needed to get my apartment cleaned up a bit first, that it really wasn’t presentable in its current state.
So that night I’m sitting there watching TV, and there is a knock at the door, and its Maddie. She has brooms and mops, spray bottles and towels, and we set to cleaning my apartment, including getting the middle room set up as some kind of honeymoon suite for them. She really is a swell girl, and we went shopping and bought groceries, and I made a little cheese and fruit tray for them to have the next evening when they were together. It was all very sweet, ya know?

So they would come over a few times a week for about a month, and then they stopped. A week or two went by, no lovers setting up in my middle room.The next time I saw the Rip (my son) I asked him about where they had been.
He says “Oh, that’s done”
“Done?’ I ask ‘Whats that mean, “done””
“Done” is his one word answer.
So I say:
“Don’t just say “done” boy, like you finished changing the oil, or finished up a deadline. Say “she broke my heart”, or “We split up” or “Oh, it just didn’t work out”. Give it the respect it deserves. Don’t be a jerk. We are talking about a nice soft sweet woman here, not a steak dinner. Don't say "Done". Please don’t be a jerk.”

So the Rip, here a few years later, he’s watched me fall in love with this woman the last two years.

Back at Christmas, he came over to where I was living, and had dinner, and she came over too. We had  a nice dinner, and she left, and later he asked me “Pops, what are you doing with her?”
And I told him “You know I love her to death. I really do. I'm flat crazy about her." 
And I went on to try to explain what I thought the relationship was about, and what I thought I was trying to do.

 “I can see that. But Pops, you are too sensitive a guy for all that” he says.

“After everything I been through, what do you think she could do to me?” I said.

And he just shook his head.

So I been finding out the last few months what she could do to me. Love just goes its own way, and you can try to control your feelings, and keep your heart safe, but maybe for guys like me it just don’t work that way, and at some point loving a girl can take root in your heart, like a Tanglewood tree, and it grows into something that's too big, too wild, too deep-rooted and its huge and hungry like a crow in the corn, and one day they come and tell you you need to cut it down, you need to cut it down for your own good, and you know if it comes to that, them telling you to cut it down, then they are probably right. They must be right. They must be right or they wouldn’t be telling you, would they? But you have no idea how to cut it down, this thing you been watching and growing and loving all this time. Its been out of your control the whole time anyway, and you are just now finding THAT out.

Anyway, I’m talking to the Rip about it last week, and I remember what he said back at Christmas about me being “too sensitive a guy for that” and I asked him how he knew back then. How did he know I was too sensitive?

He says “Because I’m just like you Pops.”

“What do you mean?” I says.

“Well, I have these girls that come to me, and they want to have sex with me; they are nice and soft and smell so good and they look at me with those big caring eyes and I fall in love with them. And then they break my heart.”

I’ve never been so proud of him all my life.

My boy, he’s not a jerk after all.

MY NEW NEIGHBOR

I finally met a neighbor worth knowing. He is into fitness products. We talked for some time, decided that there is not much better than a nice swim on a hot day, mustard is the way to go for a hot dog, metallic blue is the best color for cars and bikes,and stuff, that girls are pretty much for the birds (until you find a nice one), and that 1000 jumps on a pogo stick isn't that hard, but it is something to shoot for and, and that growing up is a really bad business.
His name is Riley, and he is 9 years old.

SONNET DESPITE

darling she said darling he said
love is work draw me that triangle
again tell me it’s the strongest
shape you and me are always near
an open window that’s three we
expected firework but settled for
romance in the shape of tuna
melts we go away to try to miss
us from a different angle I want that
feeling of swallowing a big ripe beet want
mine to bleed with yours that makes
two he said yes two he said yes two

she said the third is all the nameless
that keeps us rising despite despite

—OLIVER BENDORF

ONE-EYED HUTCH

First time I met One-Eyed Hutch he was hitchhiking down Hwy 10. Buckman and I had just seen Dick Gregory at UTS's Texas Hall. During the course of giving Hutch a lift, Buckman  gave him 100 bucks to score a pound of what Hutch had said was "really good stuff". We dropped him off at the corner of Brown Trail and Redbud.  He said he'd be right back, dashed into some apartment complex and we didn't see him again for like two years.

The last time I saw One-Eyed Hutch was 20 years later. He was driving a cab in downtown Fort Worth.

"Say man" he says "If you got a hundred bucks I can get you some really good stuff"

"Really?" I say "Where at?"

"Right around the corner" he says, and he turns to point over towards the bus station "Its just right around the corner, and its really good stuff"

But when he turned back towards me, I was already gone. 

 ONE-EYED HUTCH'S SUNGLASSES