I’m back (momentarily) with Music Mondays. And today I just wanted to share this one from several years ago by Alicia Keys. “Superwoman”. Hmmmm, makes me wanna write a story. Enjoy. Bon appetit.
I’m back (momentarily) with Music Mondays. And today I just wanted to share this one from several years ago by Alicia Keys. “Superwoman”. Hmmmm, makes me wanna write a story. Enjoy. Bon appetit.
I’ve never seen him cry, the man I call Papa. He’s my grandfather, the one who, as a kid I used to arm wrestle with both my hands, practically standing on his wrists with all my weight and still couldn’t beat. Not even close. He’d sit there in his spot on the couch, shoveling peanuts into his mouth and adjusting his heavy bifocal frames. He’d ask me when I was going to try before turning my wrist over and placing it gently to the end table top.
The man who, years later when I was in my late teens and at the strongest and most physically fit, I thought I actually stood a chance of beating at arm wrestling. I still couldn’t. Not even with both hands. He was in his sixties then.
He was always a big man at six-foot-two and easily a stout two hundred seventy-five pounds with tree-trunk legs and Popeye forearms. Despite his belly I’d always known him to have that got bigger with age, despite the heart attack he suffered before I could even remember, he was still the strongest man I’d ever known.
The closest I came to actually seeing him cry was the day I left for the Army. We were always close. I spent a decent portion of my childhood living with my grandparents. And when the day came he was nervous, pacing.
He jiggled the keys in his pocket, stared out the window and finally after some time of doing that over and over again, he said something to me.
“Well, you’d better get going, babe. I know how the Army is when you’re late for things,” coming from a man who’d done his tour in the Army many years ago just as the Korean War was coming to a tentative cease-fire. “I’m sure gonna miss you. I better get going. I’ve got things I have to take care of.”
He hugged me tightly, not at all like any hug he’d ever given me. He told me he loved me with a pained look on his face. If I had looked closely, perhaps I could have seen the lump in his throat.
And with that, he got into his truck and drove off. I didn’t see him again until a year and a half later.
I found out months later from my grandmother that the reason he’d left before me is that he couldn’t stand the thought of me leaving and didn’t want to cry in front of me.
And so, I’ve never seen him cry. He took his mother’s death with dignity and acceptance. She was getting worse over the years. At first she didn’t recognize her great-grandkids. Then, she had trouble remembering her grandkids. Her two sons were mere memories of little boys growing up in Melon Valley just outside Buhl in Southern Idaho. Once she got to that point is when I’m sure he felt like he had already lost her. He kept his composure through it all. Many times he even joked about it but you could hear the tinge of pain in his voice even through the jokes. That’s how Papa dealt with pain.
This was different. When I arrived at my grandparents after the news, I was the last to show. I drove cross-country with my wife of four months and my son of three weeks. This was my first time seeing any of my family since joining the Army a year and a half earlier.
My oldest brother, who was also in the Army at the time, had gotten the news before me and been there a day or two ahead of me. My brother and sister, aunts and uncles and of course my grandparents all lived within a day’s drive.
My drive took me two and a half days at roughly 2,500 miles. I couldn’t exactly afford a plane ticket for myself and my wife and my newborn son. So we drove the whole way. Naturally, we were the last to arrive.
As happy as I was to see everyone, the joy was taken away by the one simple fact of the circumstances of our reunion. Papa was the first one I hugged. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if there was anything I could say. And so I didn’t. I just hugged him.
His hug felt more like the day I left for the Army, only tighter. It was almost as if this man who towered over me was leaning on me. I was his support as much as he was mine.
You see, I’ve never seen my grandfather cry. I’ve felt him, though. As tight and strong as his hug was, his huge frame still trembled and shook as he wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t see the tears. I don’t know if they came any closer than the bottom of his eyelids. Certainly not flowing like mine.
As a new father, I could now fully understand his love—and his loss.
I was a mama’s boy. She was a daddy’s girl. She was my mom, but my God how hard it must have been for him that she was his daughter.
“I need a fucking drink.”
“I need a fucking drink, too.”
“Yeah? If I was there, we’d go have one together. I need somebody to talk and drink with.”
“You’d have a partner in me. I love to have a social cocktail every now and again.”
“If by every now and again, you mean you’re a degenerate alcoholic like me that’s already drinking at 4:00 in the afternoon, count me as a friend. I should have gone to Nevada to hit the craps tables. Guess it’s not too late. Only a 45-minute drive…”
“Hell, I’d go if it was only 45 minutes away. And no, I seriously drink socially and that’s it.”
“Oh. I drink to take the pain away. Does that make me an alcoholic? Only if I admit it, right?”
“I write to take the pain away. Does that make me a writer? Only if I admit it, right?”
“Can one have multiple addictions at the same time? Answer: no. So you’re a writer with other vices. I’m an alcoholic who happens to write as a vice. I just wish my other vice wasn’t sex. I’m often disappointed and still have to practice ‘self-reliance’ on a regular basis.”
This is by one of my favorite poets, Joi Miner. Приятного аппетита!
I love you hard and deep
Like pains kneaded from shoulders after manual labor
Like chops through wood in preparation for Winter’s chill
That penetrating kind of love
That blisters hands and leaves hearts pusting just beneath skin’s surface.
I love you with no expectation
Openly like a flower welcoming the Summer sun though it may soon be beaten by the same beams that warmed it.
Innocently as an infant loves the mother nursing it, though the toxins from chain smoking will certainly poison her
That trusting kind of love
That asks not what should be given, only tries to meet the invisible quota set at its creation.
I love you tirelessly
Like the quarks in a watch strive to accurately record each moment in time
Like the cycle of hydration, evaporation, and precipitation course from earth to heaven to earth once again
That repetitive kind of love
That can come to be expected causing chaos in its change.
I love you passionately
Like a succubus draining the life through kisses
Like a lizard wrapping tongue around meal that squirms hopelessly rather than accept its demise
That smothering kind of love
That smolders a flame in its youth, killing its warmth and promise with my ambition.
I loved you angrily last night
Suffering from the exhaustion that weighs on a body following overexertion
Swallowing saliva to silence stomach pangs from a hunger not satisfied
That single-sided love that forces one’s hand in Poker play
Your Poker Face had me taking faith in your bluff because you loved me with a love that was never enough.
I loved you stubbornly today
Continually giving you everything you never asked for
Wishing to meet needs before knowledge of them arose
Deafly thinking my knowledge of your desires far surpassed your own.
That dehydrating kind of love
That offers sand in place of fluid, and then gets frustrated with suffocation.
I have loved you ignorantly.
Like dying roses in a vase littering the floor with withered petals
Like sparkling diamonds sitting upon satin bust in museum chambers
That useless love
That disguises its lack of attention with moments of grandeur.
My love a feast spread here to yonder
Like plastic décor fruit dusting on grandmother’s table
Like Christmas dinner lain out before homeless orphan just beyond window pane
That taunting kind of love
That could be enough with a bit more effort.
-Joi Miner, “I Can Love You Better”
“Our fears inhibit us from our full potential. Our greatest fear is in anticipation. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. Our deepest fear is not that we exist for no reason, but that we exist for a purpose we believe we cannot fulfill.”
-Marianne Williamson, Francis Chan and Casey Robbins
This is for me. This is for you.
This for my son and the select few,
Who believe in me and the good I can do.
Bismallahir rhamanir rahim.
I was nineteen years old when I found out what a clit really was.
Strangely enough, I was in the Army and it was my qualification day on the range. The last time I had qualified on my M-16 was almost a year prior.
Of course, it was another unit running the range. Some infantry unit. I was military intelligence, the butt of many jokes in the Army, not the least of which had to do with our oxymoronic title. I guess the others didn’t realize they were making fun of themselves with that, too.
Before every qualification fire, we were required to battlesight zero our weapon. A cool sounding name for adjusting the sights of our weapon so that what we aim at is what we’re actually shooting. It was simple enough: put three rounds into a 25-meter paper target within a four centimeter diameter in the middle of a human-shaped target.
I was having trouble. Normally you get between nine and eighteen rounds to do it. I was on round 36 and counting.
One of the range safeties was a grizzled old Sergeant First Class, a leftover from the Gulf War era, Grenada, Kosovo and every other conflict we thrust ourselves in after Vietnam. I’m pretty sure he was past the retirement age but one of those guys who loved it so much – or had nothing else to look forward to after the Army – that he refused to submit his retirement paperwork.
“It’s your trigger squeeze.” He was so matter-of-fact and yet still able to instill fear in me with the way he spoke. He pointed to my shot group which had three holes punched in it in a more or less horizontal line. They were on target. Just not good enough to call good by Army standards.
“Yes, Sergeant. I’ll try harder.”
“No! That’s the problem,” he explained to me as we walked back to the firing line. “Do you know what a clit is?”
I looked at him curiously. My mind wandered to the word ‘clit’. I’d heard the word many times before. I found a stash of Playboys and Penthouses when I was younger. It wasn’t a foreign word to me, I just wasn’t entirely sure what or – more importantly – where it was. I simply knew it as a part of a woman’s anatomy (the concept of the elusive G-spot was something much more foreign and something I still wouldn’t learn for many more years to come – pun intended).
I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t know what it was. He already looked down on me. I imagined him going back and telling his grunt buddies about this MI geek who didn’t even know what a clit was. I could see them all laughing at my expense around a case of beer and a blazing barbecue (cooking sausages, no doubt).
“Yes, Sergeant.” The uncertainty in my voice must have tipped him off that I had no clue. That and my long response time.
He played along anyway, “You see, you gotta be gentle with it.” He put his trigger finger and thumb together and gently rubbed them back and forth. “You play with it too hard and she screams in pain. You gotta do it nice and soft. Gently squeeze until she pops off. Now imagine the trigger is your girlfriend’s clit. Be gentle. Squeeze it, don’t force it. You got it?”
“Roger, Sergeant.” Clear as mud, I thought to myself.
And as I got myself positioned in the foxhole again, I thought about it. I truly didn’t know what a clit was. Had I been doing things wrong this whole time? Man, I thought I was good at cunnilingus. Apparently I had been fooling myself this whole time. Truth was, I knew a clit was down there somewhere.
I remember my first ever experience. It was high school. And I went down on her one night after a football game. I licked and licked and licked until my tongue got so sore I couldn’t lick anymore. I certainly knew when the time came I would have no trouble with where to put… you know what. Because that’s what I was licking.
I even tried the trick my friend had suggested in spelling the ABCs with my tongue. I got bored around Q and was pretty certain she knew what I was doing. Besides, I could tell it wasn’t really doing anything for her. I never ventured outside of that area enough to know there was something else I should be paying attention to.
I went through high school like that. Granted there were only two other girls I performed cunnilingus on, so it’s not like I had a lot of experience to begin with.
As I grabbed my M-16 and loaded three more rounds, I got the gist of what he was saying: gentle trigger squeeze – in more words than that complete with a visual.
And I did just that. I gently popped off three rounds in a four centimeter diameter, key-holing two of the rounds. It was a great shot group.
Even the Sergeant First Class congratulated me – in his own way, “Yep. I believe you’re ready to go qualify.”
I damn sure was. I was confident. And I shot well enough.
That night, I searched for my girlfriend’s clit. It took a little while and a sore tongue, but I found it. It was the first she or any other girl I’d ever been with had actually humped my face. She moaned and kept grinding her hips. And I thought to myself…
Yep, I’m officially official. I’m qualified.
Welp, this year I misjudged the amount of candy I would need. Turns out, I should have brought two oversized king pillow cases. Then again, I came across a lot of cheap asses who only bought one bag of candy that was gone by the time I got there and the ones who got stingy because my handful is bigger than the average kid’s.
Slap my hand again bitch. I dare you.
Some people have some pretty crappy ideas on what’s ok to hand out on Halloween. For instance, candy corn. Yeah, it gets a bad rap… For good reson. Really, what is candy corn but yellow, orange and white colored sugar. Why don’t you just give me your diabetes. Or better yet, give me some Sweet N’ Low so I can get cancer.
And the fresh fruit people kill me. Yeah, I really want some fucking fruit my mom puts in my lunchbox for school.
A fucking coupon booklet? I’m 6 not 65.
A pack of pencils. Fuck off, Poindexter.
Somebody gave me a slice of American cheese. You know that processed shit that’s barely better than velveeta? Ok, it’s not actually better.
To the lady that gave me a penny taped to a religious card, here’s my thoughts (for your penny): a cent doesn’t go as far as it did when you were a kid. In fact, a penny can’t even buy me a piece of candy nowadays that your cheap ass was too “frugal” to buy.
Anything that doesn’t come in a wrapper. Keep it. I don’t want it. You wasted your money because it’s going in the trash. Mom is strict about this. And you just fucked up my Halloween because it’s going to be a week before I can even eat any of the shit I got. Thanks, ass hole.
One old couple even handed out pint-sized milk cartons like the ones you get in the school cafeteria. How do you like those broken windows you cheap bastards?! Have fun cleaning the spoiled milk stench in your house! Ok, I’m sorry Grandma, but like you always told me: Don’t cry over spilled milk.
And then there was the guy handing out a travel pack of Kleenex. Really, dude?! The least you could do is hand out free condoms. Next year, I’m skipping his house and going straight to Planned Parenthood. I hear the girls there are easy. Two birds, one stone. Actually, now that I think of it, that’s three birds, one stone — if need be. Gotta love Planned Parenthood.
I guess it wasn’t so bad. No razor blades in my caramel apples. At least it was a lesson learned for when I grow up not to be such a douche on Halloween.
P.S. – To the lady giving out D batteries, you probably should have saved them for your vibe.
