The CuisinArt

I never wear socks when I sleep.  I couldn’t get used to it. But P persisted. “Dad, you need to keep your shoulders and feet covered.” The house was getting cold and heaven forbid I come down with something. She was right though, the temperature was sinking like a penny dropped in a tank of water, fluttering, but surely falling to the bottom.

–

The mornings were dark and this made waking up much more of a foe then I cared to confront at that hour; plus it was bitter cold. I hate waking up cold. There is a peculiar sense of pleasure when you go to bed cold: enveloped in a blanket, squeezing your muscles to produce your own heat or clutching at a pillow or partner until you finally and pleasantly just nod off. But in the mornings, the cold waits, like a contemptuous gull hovering above a busy shore of crabs. Just as soon as you forgot it was there, as soon as you’re asleep and cruising along the ocean floor, it rips you out into its beak and devours you.

I developed a proclivity to take long, slow showers at temperatures far hotter than I was previously accustomed to. The surface of my skin would burn and I would have to constantly shift positions. But whatever body part not absorbing the streams would shiver, and inside, underneath my skin I could feel my bones, trembling, and just feeling cold, as I stood there static and too distracted to think.

I arrived at Thursday, mid-morning. A low and hot sun welcomed me. I’d been gone for 23 days. Though a warm glow roasted my prostrated skin, and all around me were smiling faces: families on vacation, sorority girls on spring break, and the cold weather refugees just wanting to get away, I could scarcely focus on much more than P. No words spoken on that day, just a short note.

Segovia, a small village in Spain, was chilly the morning I left. I walked in wearing corduroy pants – grey, and worn, perfect for windy days – a long sleeve turtleneck (although I’ve never heard of a short-sleeved), and thick cotton socks. I could already feel my feet turning that sweaty and odious way they always do. My shirt dampened with each step. It’s not difficult to spot a traveler who arrives ill prepared.

The last straw was the typing. Exposed to the air, each finger stiffened one at a time, and I could feel it. No sooner would dexterity go than could I no longer comfortably make a fist. I leaned back and glared around the house at all the places where heat would escape: the windows, the doors, and the crack in the corner of the ceiling, above the microwave. I would sit on top of my hands, put them under my arms, down my pants - my loins - wherever heat was stored. But, for naught. My thoughts slowed, I could just think about the hands. I stared at the flashing cursor.

It was a small village in Istanbul that I decided to leave the camera behind. I left it with a young boy, Altan. He was the only person I spoke with during my tour of the U.A.E.

I didn’t take one to the UK, or France, or Hong Kong, or Seol. I took no pictures in Sydney, none of the Great Wall, or of the Pyramids. No rolling Scottish Hills, or Nepalese Mountains. Fragmented images were all the head of a somnolent old man - who’d grown weary and regretful from fulfilling his desires - possessed as I made my way from Argentina, to Paraguay, and up through Brazil. I became increasingly concerned that my desire to remember this trip had ebbed its way out of me- drops of nostalgia dripping off of my body at each place I visited, landing into streams, and mouths, and seas, all coming together in the southern Atlantic and navigating themselves to one place. That place. Did I remember to give Altan extra batteries? I hope he can find some.

MECHANICAL MAN by, Jessica Sansom

Though a sort of infamous recluse by this point, some are already hailing Raymond Chancellor as one of this generations’ greatest minds. But three months ago, the residents of Airway Heights only knew Raymond, if they knew him at all, as an advertising executive who sculpted as a hobby. Mostly, Raymond admits, he kept to himself. Not an “active social life.” Until, recently, when he has almost unwillingly been thrust into the limelight.

Now, the outside of Raymond’s house is a massive crowd of people from around the country – the majority of whom are present for religious beliefs. Some come to protest, others to worship. Raymond prefers to stay out the debate and hold up in his room. Occasionally peer out a window. Nothing more.

Back in July, neighbors of Raymond started hearing noises coming from inside the house. Also, around this time, Raymond stopped going to work. Co-workers recount his absence as particularly puzzling. A fellow employee, Kelly Reich, says Raymond “never missed a day of work” the eight years they’d worked together. After a few days, Kelly recalls phoning Raymond at home. Raymond answered, said everything was fine but he probably wouldn’t be back to work for some time. When asked if he was sick, the answer was a terse “No.”

Outside of Raymond’s home, the neighbors’ curiosity grew. They knew he was in his basement, but aside from the loud sounds and a couple sightings of smoke from a small basement window, no one knew what he was doing. Just some bellowing and billowing.

“Right before all this,” a concerned neighbor says, “Raymond had been in a funk. His mother had died and he was very closeted about the whole thing. I don’t even know if he went to the funeral. Stopped seeing him at church too.”

All this speculation came to a head last Sunday night when the mystery was finally “revealed” as the “Gloxy Oxtornity Device” – or G.O.D. as religious patrons call it. The Gloxy is a large, sleek machine of sorts. With its peculiar shape, it is inarguably a technical marvel and may or may not defy both science and nature in its structure. Scraps and pieces fitted together to create what is either one man’s labor intensive artwork, or what may very well be the most complicated piece of equipment man has ever seen.

“I knew Raymond was into art,” a friend said, “but I didn’t know he was doing this sort of thing.”

While Scientists investigate Gloxy’s operative functions, Raymond holds up in his room, trying his best to remove himself from all the attention suddenly thrust upon him.

Raymond has shut the world out since Gloxy was unveiled, but yesterday he granted us an exclusive interview… of sorts. There were some conditions he requested: He would remain behind a closed door at all times, never speak or be spoken to. The questions would be slipped to him under the door, hand written on paper, and he would respond in kind - writing his answer on the other side and sliding it back.

Unfortunately, the interview was not as informative as we had hoped. Raymond’s answers were sparse, to say the least. Clipped, cryptic and, most of the time, completely illegible.

When asked specifically about how his mother’s death influenced Gloxy’s development, Raymond wrote back, “It didn’t.”

When asked about the origins of the name, Raymond wrote, “I don’t know.”

And when asked how he was able to design such a complex machine without anyone knowing anything about it, how he gathered all the parts and assembled it with no assistance, how a man with no training in engineering whatsoever built this machine in a matter of weeks, when asked simply “How did you do it?” Raymond wrote back, “I just followed the instructions,” followed by a long unreadable paragraph whose only decipherable word was ‘failure.’

More questions were asked, but Raymond stopped responding. Leaving myself, all the denizens on his lawn, and the attentive nation to wonder what this all means. This modern marvel.

The effect Gloxy has on people is undeniable.

There is no Horton street. 6^th and 8^th avenue are useless. Head down the Sunset Highway, people have posted signs directing you to “Gloxy.”

To “G.O.D.”

Of course, if you’re Raymond, all you have to do is peel back your curtains and look out the window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ny5BYc-Fs&feature=related

New from Dylan. Part 1…

The crate blocking Raymond’s front door stood almost six feet high and was made up of long planks of wood. Raymond wasn’t expecting any packages and it was far too early for the mail to have been delivered. Still, here was this thing.

His body tensed as the cold air chewed his skin.

Morning had come, as it had well over twelve thousand other times in Raymond’s life. But this was the first morning where there was something he couldn’t explain.

The sun had risen (as it had the tendency to do) and Raymond’s mind was lightning. In bed, on his back, head hanging off the side, he scribbled manically on a yellow legal pad. Quickly drawing diagrams and labeling them before their meaning was forgotten. Rough sketches of sculptures to-be. His hand almost couldn’t keep up.

That time of day was “dreamscape,” as Mkei had taught Raymond. Mkei was an underground African sculptor (who only went by his first name). He was Raymond’s favorite. At a seminar, Mkei had said to write when you first wake, when your mind is still somewhat in the dream world. Unfettered from daily hassles.

This particular morning, Raymond’s dreamscape session raged on for twenty sweat-filled minutes before his head felt about to burst with blood, forcing him to sit up and stumble down the stairs in a daze to grab the morning paper.

That’s when he came upon the delivery.

The crate with the red stamp on the side - a big circle with three lines through the middle. Below that, Raymond’s full name and address.

No mistake. Whatever was in there, it was for him.

“Embrace the unexpected,” Mkei had said once.

So Raymond figured the box should come inside. Lifting it was out of the question (far too heavy), so he tried to push it through the doorway. He positioned his hands along the beast’s sides and leaned into it. The box began to tip. Raymond struggled to keep hold, failed horribly, and the crate crashed down on top of his living room coffee table. The table’s legs snapped upon impact and the glass face smashed into a hundred pieces.

Raymond breathed out in frustration and looked behind him as if someone were there not bothering to help. That once notable piece of furniture had been rendered garbage. He’d be picking glass out of the carpet for months. But the crate was inside.

Step one complete.

“Always go one step beyond safe,” Mkei once said.

So Raymond squiggled his fingers between the planks and with a considerable amount of effort, ripped the top end off. Reaching in, he found a slew of loose nails and screws. Behind them, pipes. Even deeper, a set of gears. The box held the most vast array of mechanical parts Raymond had ever seen. Rods, cables, belts, wheels, wires, sprockets, coils, burners, sheets of metal, a surprising number of light bulbs, grates, blades…

Some objects were completely foreign to him. There was a cylinder of sorts with different sized teeth jutting out its sides that, to Raymond, had no conceivable purpose.

Toward the back of the crate, were the tools. Wrenches, screwdrivers, chisels, calipers, knives, a vise, clamps, saws, drills. Finally, a smaller box with a set of gloves, earplugs, a small surgical mask, safety goggles, and a tube of glue.

Raymond sat on the crate, exhausted. The living room turned to a junkyard. He scanned the spare parts, trying to piece it together. Nothing.

“Art is invention,” Mkei had once said. “And invention is expression of self.”

Raymond rose to his feet, lifted the empty crate with both hands, took it outside, heaved it over his head and began to shake it with frustration.

“The only time you’ve failed as an artist,” Mkei had been known to say, “is when you succeed on something that didn’t come from you. Unearned acclaim means nothing. Personal promotion is artistic death.”

Just as Raymond was about finished with his spleen venting, an envelope flew out of the crate and landed in the grass at his feet. Raymond dropped the box, picked up the envelope and opened it.

No note inside.

Instead, Raymond found a small handbook with the title “Gloxy Oxtornity Device” printed on its cover. The inside pages were a detailed set of instructions. Diagrams plotting out the construction of some sort of machine.

Raymond looked back in through his house’s open front door to the metal mess inside.

“Success and mass acclaim,” Mkei had said once, “is irrelevant to artistic growth.”

“Lovely day!” A neighbor on his morning walk called to Raymond as he passed by the driveway. And Raymond waved to the neighbor, though the wave meant nothing to either of them.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be something I wasn’t: I’ve been a child and wanting to be a teenager, a teenager wishing I were in college, in college impatiently waiting to become a man, and a man, wishing I was a better man. My whole life, I’ve felt like the pet dog at dinner, heeled, on the ground, snout on his master’s lap, hoping, waiting for a chance to have even a morsel of the meal that lay just inches away. With the smell assaulting me, I’d salivate at the thought of devouring it, but only managing to obtain a taste of the crumbs that fell from the kings that sat above me. I’m an old man now. I’m tired. I’m leaving.

The bad weather. It would come one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in Ithaca. Soon, the aesthetic pleasures of fall would be meddled with and wiped away by the white snowdrifts; our moods flew south with the ducks.

I am going to miss the ducks. They paddled close to my dock. I often went out there to read, or strum my old but trusty acoustic. It needed new strings. Penelope would always throw the ducks bread, and soon a crowd would gather. She loved to imitate their sounds and quacks. I would sit and smile. It was getting too cold to eat dinner out there, but we would often graze on bruschetta and full bodied reds while the main dishes finished cooking. She loved my cooking, as undistinguished as I thought it was, but that had always made me feel all right. The wine and the meal and perhaps a few beers were sure to keep me full, but with enough energy left to write after the sun had withdrawn under the stretching silhouetted tree line opposite our unassuming lake house.

Though still plenty of fine days to be had and enjoyed, the arrival of the dreaded weather was in sight now. Just a few minutes down a darkening road. Left with the choice to wallow or savor, I chose to exclusively wear Hawaiian shirts, drink spirits and work often and with my own heat - along with the new fireplace – that would be warmth enough to avoid the toil of winter living. Though as I architected this mantra, the voice of doubt, which I fought hard to ignore, sang its hymn deep and proud and in stereo. And eventually, it was all I could ever hear.

I left around eight on Thursday. I let P - as I called her, despite her disapproval – sleep, or more appropriately, I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye. I stopped in a Podunk gas station before departure. Gas, oil, wiper fluid; I would need coffee. “Do you need room for cream?” asked the clerk, a girl of no more than 20 with a pallid face still afflicted by the scars and memories of acne and adolescence. “Just leave room for the lid,” I instructed. I always took it black in those days. Her eyes told me she had 15 minutes left in this abhorrent shift of menial, meaningless labor; but the truth was that she had years. In the car, I alternated sips on an organic cigarette and freshly brewed cup to compliment each other for the five hours I had ahead of me.

I recalled that morning: the sky had less color than I could ever remember. When I looked across the endless pine covered landscape of central New York, the sun was nowhere to be seen. Not only that, the atmosphere looked as though the sun had never been there in the first place. I couldn’t stop looking. I knew of the sun. I loved it, it has been a source of friendship. But where had it gone? I looked in all directions. There were no traces of anything save for this endlessly bleak and bloodless sky and this troubled me. There will be eight minutes from the point of which the sun burns out, and the time we can no longer see it’s bright, and resplendent rays. Had that harrowing day arrived?

Hours later, the sky was black and clear and crisp and beautiful. I’d made it. The stars shone and reflected upon my windshield, which was finally clean: I ran out of wiper fluid two weeks prior and since I was driving with a suspended license, under the influence, and over the speed limit, I didn’t want a dirty windshield to arouse any suspicions among young officers who needed to fill their ticket quotas for the evening. I don’t know if it was recklessness, or just indifference, but the prospect of being arrested and losing my car, injected no fear into my bloodstream. I had other things on my mind, yet it was still far from wise to burn bridges I very well would have to drive over again. Ignoring my provident sensibilities, and a phone call from P, I pressed on into the night along the empty, bending road.

Once, in a magazine, he’d read that a liberal application of foreplay could compensate for a sub-par sexual performance. Using this as a template, he made his way down to frolic face first in her forested meadow. There he smelled familiar flowers, heard the soar of familiar moans above, and felt at ease. New plan. He would continue these oral acrobatics until she passed out—or at least until her parents came home.

Concerning gravity, what goes up must come down, while concerning foreplay, what goes down must come up. An unbreakable law of sexual thermodynamics, and it had slipped his mind. In time she wrenched his tongue from her nethers, and placed it between her teeth. He knew then that his plan had backfired. Instead of placation, he had achieved titillation, turning a presumed penetration into an inevitability.

The woman wasted little time. She reached across the bed and produced a condom wrapped in orange foil. Lifestyles. Ribbed for Her Pleasure. The man let out a sigh of relief. Good, the ribs will take care of everything.

The man understood the principles of what was to follow. Shaft. Hole. Insert. Remove. Repeat. But three years of rabid porn viewing had muddied his certainty about the particulars. Porn is a world of receded testicles slamming against prolapsed anuses, and 10x zoomed vaginas oozing ejaculate. Porn is a world concerned only with the ends: one that has little time to point out the means.

His penis, an object of unprecedented familiarity, felt suddenly alien and obtrusive. Confused, he started to poke her. Distraught, he poked harder. In a little under 17 seconds he managed to probe her navel, buttocks, and grundle without once making the slightest contact with her labia.

Then it came as a shooting star: sudden, explosive, ultimately fleeting. The nothingness of air gave way to a warm nestling, and even the woman’s face, previously contemplating the mold stains on the ceiling, showed a slight tweak of the eyebrows. But it left sooner than it had come, leaving him yet again to flap his latex sheathed rod in the wind.

It was then that the woman, in a quite literal fashion, took matters into her own hands. He did not mind the ease with which she slipped him inside, but her sudden change of direction left him suspicious.

Moans followed. Not sexy. Monotonous, rehearsed. Like vocal exercises in drama class. He checked her chest for clarification. No flush. No contractions of the vaginal walls, either. Certainly no increase in wetness. In fact, with each passing second he sensed an increasing aridness. Her moans turned to grunts. Her hands flailed, pulling and tugging at whatever she could find.

No, he thought to himself. Something is not right. There’s no way I’m this good. There’s no way I’m even fractionally this good. A woman flopping and floundering perhaps. But a woman writhing?

The revelation came with a swiftness he wished his hips could emulate. She was preparing to fake on him.

A man confronted with unspeakable evil has but two courses: submit and be consumed, or become that very evil in the hopes of destroying it. The man chose the latter. He chose to become what he feared most. He chose to fake his own orgasm.

The desertification of the vagina was almost complete. Time was of the essence. Using what little wetness remained, he built to a steady rhythm. He pulled out only as shallow as he dared, knowing if he slipped out entirely the lips would close forever. In time he began to palpitate his own breathing. Moments before she closed the deal, he pushed himself the full depth of her, closed his eyes, quivered his right leg and held his breath. After a believable three seconds he exhaled an exaggerated breath, fluttered his eyelids, and let a small droplet of saliva splash onto her breasts. He fell atop her, wheezing, snorting, his lips mashed against her collarbone. It was a revolting sight, no doubt. But she could not argue with its authenticity.

“Get off,” she grunted

Not one to upset her further, he pulled out and ran to the bathroom to dispose of the evidence. There he shed a tear of respect for the fallen condom, en route to sexual purgatory, never fulfilling its intended purpose. A face full of denim welcomed him back into the room. He peeled them off to find the woman already dressed, clacking bubbles with her lips, avidly tapping the keys on her cell phone. The man dressed with haste and silence, not quite sure what to say.

She took the initiative.

“Remember the number I gave you when we left the bar,” she asked.

“No,” he answered truthfully

“Good,” she cut.

But a wave of embarrassment did not follow. He felt instead a warm and impregnable numbness. As a somnambulist he left the room, head in clouds, toes dragging across the asphalt. There had been no ejaculation. No pleasure. No ecstasy. The whole experience had more or less resembled a siege on a castle wall. But he was no longer a virgin, because as long as you get it in it still counts, right?

That night he regaled his younger siblings with the mysteries of the fairer sex. He phoned friends, and hinted of a story to tell. A story, unknown to them, that he would embellish and transform at his leisure. No one needed to know every harrowing detail of room 24-17 B. He’d keep certain facts intact—lack of stamina, mismatched experience—for believability’s sake. But the rest was his to do with what he would. Once home, his newfound manhood would glisten and shine amid the drab virginity of his friends. They would flock to him, honor him, admire him, and with a gracious wave of his hand, he would bestow onto them all that he had learned.

In the land the virgin, the man who kind of, sort of, almost had sex is king.

New from Shea, the satyric scribe from San Francisco…
–
This here’s a tale about a virgin.

A virgin who came to Disney to ride the rides, and stayed behind to ride a woman.

There are some who might call him a hero, and others who’d call him a fool, but then again the line between the two has never been but a hair thin.

His story doesn’t get told too much. Common lore favors instead the tale of the virgin woman. Wherein man is cast as the hornet: a savage insect who rends a flower’s virginity with multi-pronged perforation pistil, spewing white-hot trauma inducing poison. The myth is so injurious that unassociated third parties still trouble to craft consistent pollination metaphors.

Yes. His story is less told. But it is replete nonetheless with its own unique mortification.

To frame his story, let us take the aforementioned metaphor, polish it a mite, and turn it on its axis. Viewed like such, we see that long before he became the hornet, man began his sexual journey as the carpenter bee—incommodious, oafish, cumbersome, spending more of his day in congress with the wood surrounding the nest than the nest itself. A life spent fluttering six inches from the bull’s-eye.

Yes, a carpenter bee has wings and a man has a penis but neither is too sure what to do with their given extremity. Still, the man was willing to brave this uncertainty for the opportunity to understand the mysteries of the fairer sex.

Many people talked about it. The Juniors spoke frequently. The seniors spoke more. Even the occasional sophomore hinted at an understanding. He wanted in, and Disney seemed as fitting a place as any to gain membership. Look hard enough, the innuendo is there: Mickey; Minnie; phallic train cars penetrating dark, cavernous tunnels.

By day the man trolled the parks; by night he trolled palm-lined walkways of his resort. Orlando was rife with young vixens. Blondes. Brunettes. The occasional redhead. The man would have been happy to cast any as the willing damsel in his tale. But there was one he hoped for above all the rest.

A brunette, with eyes of a deep, snakeskin color, and a porcelain face that reflected a mastery of symmetry. She was the type of woman who made flowers bloom as she passed and wilt in her wake. She bore the figure of an hourglass, and not only in her curves, but in her ability to effect time. She had unrelenting nipples, and wore only that which would highlight such an anatomical curiosity. She was anthropometric perfection, the Sandwoman who dwells only in the wettest of dreams.

With her he always kept it innocent, hanging back to watch her from afar. He’d like to think he did it out of common decency and respect for the chase. Hazard instead it was the flimsy stitching of his bathing suit and a hair trigger erectile response that stayed his course.

Came the day he happened upon a bar. Virginity, they say, loves company, so he ordered a Pina Colada without rum. He nursed it conservatively, and a steady influx of adolescent males soon turned the pair of virgins into a crowd. Perhaps they came to the bar to find women; but perhaps, too, they came unconsciously to avoid them. If so, they picked the appropriate joint. Most of the night the bar remained estrogen free. Until she arrived.

The woman blew in as a wayward ship run aground by an invisible tempest. Her spandex framed camel toe, and halter-top accentuated cleavage had no business in a place of boys dressed by their mothers. She nursed her cigarette in front of a no-smoking sign, and through the puffs the man could see snakeskin eyes, which until that very moment had been but a mirage.

The man felt the sudden pull of his erection. Fate, it seemed, had put him in this very bar. His mother, however, had put him in a pair of triple stitched cargo pants. No hard-on short of an immaculate erection could defy the durability of those seams. And it was a good thing too. Because she was headed his way.

Cut from the impending adolescent flirting and flash forward to room 24-17-B.

Prostrate naked upon pastel sheets, ass angled at 15 degrees, with two fingers reaching behind to explore various curiosities laid the woman. Framed in the doorway, wearing an XL Gap sweatshirt with no pants, double palming a sweaty erection stood the man. A look of confusion etched upon his face as he struggled with both the vision before him and the unsettling fact that his pants lay ruffled 12 feet away yet his sweatshirt remained upon his shoulders.

He always knew his impending sexual performance would be abysmal. He had only hoped that his relationship to the girl in question might lessen the mortification. Given an equally nascent virgin, for example, shared ignorance might have negated inexperience. Or if he were to meet a soul mate, a sense of cosmic destiny and overarching synchronicity would nullify the need for any kind of carnal fulfillment.

But the truth of the matter was that he was a carpenter bee lost in a place carpenter bees have no business being. The jungles of Disney grow thick and arboreal, and the flowers are unforgiving.

He would have to stall…
–
Tune in tomorrow for Part 2…

Nerves, perhaps? Something didn’t feel right. A numbness of sorts had overtaken Meng Yau’s left hand. A stroke? He felt no pain, although when he looked at his fingers, speedily marching around the instrument’s neck, he saw his little pinkie about to fall off. There was no blood. Just the single digit, that tiny one on the end, dangling by a thin strand of skin. Swinging loosely as he continued to play.

This is odd, Meng thought as his pinkie broke apart from his hand entirely and fell to the stage floor in a tailspin.
Why, he wondered, did that just happen? Attempting to answer that question, Meng replayed the evening’s events in his head.

Though the park’s air was cool, all he had felt when this performance began was the hot lights above him, pushing sweat out his pores. The gerontocratic lawn before him, population on blankets and in folding chairs, applauded his entrance. Meng remembered trying to shake away a dizziness in his head as he took his seat, center stage, and readied his instrument.

He thought back to the crowd’s silence as he first poised his then full-fingered hand over the fret board. Eyes squinted out into the distance once more before closing in concentration, Meng raised his bow and placed it above the strings.

How unnecessarily dramatic, he had thought.

With a long stroke, he drew his bow across the hull of the object resting against his body. This first note, low and ominous, carried out across the night, spreading into nearby ears.

And a few notes later, his finger fell off.

Meng was convinced he had done nothing different than any other night’s performance. He pushed up his glasses and smiled outward to where tradition told him the audience lay. Perhaps none of them, he thought, have noticed a thing.

So, mostly blinded by brightness, he decided to forge ahead. To not let his sudden handicap deter his concert. He moved his hand a little faster and stretched his fingers a little farther to compensate for the missing member.

Forward and back, quickening in pace, the spell he was casting mounted in pace and grandeur. The longer it went, the more it took hold of him. He felt the heat dripping down his brow, and in opening his eyes to bat away a salty bead, he happened to glance at his left hand again. Both his ring and middle fingers seemed to have gone completely limp. Lacking any dexterity, all he was able to do was clumsily slide them up and down the instruments neck.

Fear finally took hold of him and he felt his stomach drop. What is happening to me? And as he finished that thought, both of his fingers broke off his hand and freefell to the stage floor, joining the pinkie.

My god, Meng gulped. And then he thought of the audience. Perhaps they will only think of this as a diminuendo.

And the heat from the lights was becoming unbearable. He felt covered in it. Dripping in perspiration. Surely, he thought, I look repulsive.

Breathing heavily, he reached up to wipe at the slime of sweat on his brow, but as he brought his hand down, he found it covered in hair. Wet hair, his own, sticking to his hand.

At this exact moment, his tongue discovered a small, hard object inside his mouth. He spit it into his lap. A molar. Tonguing around, he found a space in his mouth where a tooth used to be. And continuing investigation found the entire lineup to be loosening and ready to dislodge completely.

What a contretemps! Meng thought as he spit a few more teeth into his lap. What more could he do except attempt to keep track of them all?

It wasn’t long before Meng’s mouth was all gums.

He decided to stop playing then.

Rising from his chair, he wiped at his lower lip, which hung weighty on his face. Saliva dribbled out his mouth and down his shirt. He tried to speak but, to his surprise, his jaw had unhinged itself.

What a wicked role Fortuna has given me tonight, he thought. Then his legs gave out and Meng tumbled to the floor. The teeth he had cradled in his shirt spilt across the stage.

As he stared at the lights beaming down at him, he wondered what the audience out there must be thinking of him. All this work, he thought. Six years of college…

But his schooling could not save him from his undoing

An update..

Two weeks ago I arrived in the city of Los Angeles. More specifically, my bus stopped at 6th and Wall St. Even more precisely, I was dropped right around the corner from this lovely neighborhood. There is a profusion of homeless people in this city, and given the recession and the halt of TV productions of late, I can only assume there are some former actors among them. Ironically, given the number of sidewalk dwellers, I have not been hassled for change too often. They seem preoccupied.

Luckily, being at the nexus of creativity, a unique solution to that problem was reached in late 2007.

C.H.U.D.’S aside, the transition has been smooth.

Marla got her camera’s shipped out recently - and she’s been on a photo kick, taking pics whenever we go out. Here’s me at the beach. I like the way she composed that shot. This one is Marla and I at a dive bar. It reminds me of Ithaca.

Since I don’t have a car, I ride the subway to work, which reminds me of being back East. Surprisingly, more people ride it than I expected. It’s crazy in the mornings. It’s a short ride to my office. Yes, all those desks are mine. I like variety-not lots of choices, the magazine. I read a different section at each desk.

We got a great apartment, although the neighbors are a bit loud, and I actually have to wait for the water to get cold in the faucets- everything is backwards in LA!

The best part of LA, obviously, is the weather. The weekend I arrived, the Santa Ana winds were blowing. This happens a couple times a year, when all the trash and air pollution, is essentially blown out of LA- the next few days are resplendent.

I asked Justin Long for directions at 1:10 AM when I got lost.

And yes, I do see naked women a lot in this sexy city. In fact, directly across my balcony, I can see a  sultry woman who walks around topless, often. Talk about bright morning.

So that’s all for now. And more stories to come.

From Adam

–

Pitiable destination, never to be reached
A weak stream drying
Droughts of love and verve, parched for a crest that would replenish strong rivers,
Flowing lush beneath a permeable blue
No solace, but the desert
Dried tears, salt and not much more

Weak streams creep
Creep toward a sea of dust
Stream to dust, dust to dust
Nothing here in the delta
Desolate, easily traipsed

I’ve come far in search of rivers, to the horizon’s end
Prayed they be wide and rolling; spare me weak streams

Abandon it, abandon the attempt
Before the arrival at the weak stream’s delta

Nay, I’ve pressed on in misery

An oppressive trail
Full of old dogmas and forbidden gratifications

The straight and narrow, like an arrow to the horizon
Black as bold typeface in a blurry, smeary green-gray jungle
Flagellated in contrition, I mush forth with eyes on the line
Limping gait favoring to the left, to the right
Footfalls lead, follow
My uncomfortable, uncontrollable arousal into brambles
In search of always sweeter fruit

Though I walk the line
I veer subconsciously,
In search of sweeter fruit, delectable indulgences
And sap on the trees
Scarred, mute, remorseful,
I trek haphazardly from the darkness,
Back to black as boldface

Guiding stars lay hidden
Cotton web clouds stick to my thoughts, my memories
Clouding my reason, chastity
Diffusing the black bold straight-and-narrow

Yet somewhere an alabaster moon, partially concealed
Hovers like peering over shoulder,
Threatening to expose the fraud, painstakingly spun
A looming apprehension and
A persistent, recurring erection at the wrong time

Amidst the uncertainty, the doubt, the lack of
A light to follow through the night,
There remains a steadfast guilt
Guilt of the circular penitent, succumb to his egression’s transgressions

A beacon, pulsing, warm, stands like a monolith deep in the smeary jungle
And I veer into brambles
I bow to my own obelisk in the wrong place, always at the wrong time
Huddled in the shadow of its respite, I am lost to the horizon and old typeface
I am tempted by something that stings to spite such things
Overcome by fructose and bramble berries
Red as sin in the smeary gray-green

Sullen, bedraggled, utterly sober, wading once more back from brambles
Again, still again, I follow footfalls
Those deep, weary drums that sound the dirge

I fail to grasp: no sweeter fruit but straight lines black and bold
Sullen, steeped in the languor of misdeeds and paths too often taken,
I tread the line
To the delta
Slightly off kilter, dead and closer to dead.