The Children’s Council

The oldest was Otis.  The other 6 were under age and the youngest, Leah was still only 13, as measured in conventional terms, though she was the oldest in terms of what she could remember.  John, Ingela, Mikelo, Leah, Knowles, Darrall and Otis were all standing in what they called the “dance room,” an old dance studio with wooden waist high dance bars alongside mirrors.  It was a large room, mostly used to practice combat techniques.  They stood around the body of their Mentor, Sal Tricamo, “Mr T”, who lied on his back in a pool of blood.  A sword stuck out from where it was lodged into the floor through his chest.  His hands were spread out to his sides and a couple of feet from his right hand lay the sword he had presumably yielded.

“What will we do?” Leah asked.

“stenfaglio….” Otis chanted.  Some kind of mix of the ancient languages he remembered and knew.  Darrall then spoke in English.

“Before we do anything we need to figure out what happened.”

“What happened?” Knowles said.  “Someone killed Mr. T.”

“But who?” Darrall snapped.

“I don’t know who,” Knowles responded.

Mikelo was a 15 year old and had been with the group for about 2 years.  He was thoughtful, meaning he didn’t talk much, but he listened, and he meditated, and was serious about his studies.  He closed his eyes as if to glean some hidden truth, “If we call the police,” he said, “we won’t be back here.  Our parents won’t let us continue our studies.”

Knowles face turned angry.  “Why should we come back here.How can we continue our studies without T?  It’s over.  We need to call the police so they can find out who did this.”

“Who do you think did it?” said Darrall.

“I told you I don’t know,” Knowles said again.

“One of us?” Leah said.

“Look at him,” Darrall continued.  “Killed with a sword.  He was good with a sword. That’s why we have to figure this out ourselves.”

“Someone from another cell?” Knowles asked.  “Someone we don’t know, but who knows us?”

“I don’t know,”  Darrall said.

“We’re not ready for that,” Lead said. “Mr T didn’t want us worrying about that yet.”

“What are you afraid of, dying?” Darrall said.

“Losing, I guess,” she said.  “Again. Like he says we always have.”

“Well we can’t win if we don’t try.”

“Mr. T always said,” Ingela jumped in.  She looked at Mr T on the floor when she mentioned his name, then she looked away and stuggled to continue, “that ours was a fight for civilization and that we must never give up.  There must be a way to know our enemy.”

“Maybe it was Lisa,”  Mikelo suggested.

“No.” Darrall said.  “I knew Lisa,  T didn’t want her to leave, that’s all.  She loved him like a father.  He always thought she’s come back, that’s why he talked about her so much.  She always did what she wanted, so she’d have no reason to be mad.”

“Not Lisa Goddard,” Mikelo said.  “I’m not talking about that Lisa.  I never even met the infamous Lisa Goddard.  Jeez the way everybody talks about her…”

“She found most of us.  Identified us for T.  She could have been a great teacher.  But she abandoned us, and we should not abandon each other.”

“Well I’m talking about Lisa B.  The one we call “B” because of Damn Lisa G.  She’s the only one of us who isn’t here.”

“What are you crazy?” Leah said.  “Lisa B didn’t even practice swordplay.  She”s an empath, a feeler. She loved Mr T ”

“Well, where is she?” Mikelo asked.

“Maybe she taken,” Otis chanted.

“She could be dead,” Knowles said.  “She could be dead too.”

“We could all be at risk,” Leah said.

“Hold your horses,” Darrall said.  He wasn’t the oldest, not in years anyway, but Otis spend all his time trying to learn ancient languages and was a  less intuitive about life in general.  He wasn’t the natural leader that Darrall was trying to step up to be.  “We are not sure of anything.  Yes, we could be in danger, or maybe whoever did this just wanted to break us up.  Maybe we’d be safe if we broke up and stopped, but then they would win, their side would win, and Mr T wouldn’t want that.  Then, on the other hand, maybe we’d be less safe if we split up where someone could just pick us off one by one.”

Leah was older than she seemed.  In fact she might have been the oldest in the way they all preferred to think about it.  She remembered further back than anyone, living before about 1,500 years ago.  It wasn’t a very elaborate memory, but it was further back than anyone else had gone, except Otis, and he only went for the language.  She said, “so, you’re saying we should do what?  Cover this up?  Pretend he’s not dead, so that we can continue the center?”

“That’s one idea,” Darrall said.

“And then what?” Knowles asked.  “Who will teach us, you?”

“We’ll teach ourselves,” Darrall said.

“We remember,” Otis said.

“Yes, we remember,”Mikelo said.  “We regress to the lessons he taught us over the years.  We go over them again and again.  Maybe we can even connect with him on some level wherever he is in the afterlife before he is reborn.  We spend a much greater percentage of our time in meditation, in regression, back through not just other lives, but this one.He can guide us, if he can he will.  We meditate and we remember, and we use our powers to find out who did this.” Mikelo said.

Then Ingela spoke.  “I had a dream,” she said. “I think that I should tell you about it.”

And everyone listened.  Dreams were serious business.

“I couldn’t see anything, pitch black like there was nothing.  I could only hear, and I heard a man’s voice and it said, “who is the most powerful?” and then I heard a woman’s voice.  I didn’t recognize either voice, but if I were just to tell you my impressions, impressions I’m not sure about, but I can’t help that it just feels like this, it made me think of her, even before all of this…”

“who,” Darrall asked.

“She said, ‘You are, Master.’  It felt seductive to hear it.'”

“Who’s voice,” Darrall asked again.

“It didn’t sound like her, but I felt… it felt like Lisa B.”

Mikelo nodded.  “I knew something was wrong with her.”

“That’s not right,” Leah said.  “She’ll come back, and you’ll see.”

“We need to think on that,” Darrall suggested. “We’ll revisit that.  Don’t anybody come to any conclusions just yet.”

“What could it mean,” Knowles asked.  “That she’s under someone’s spell?  That he has her now, or that she had something to do with this?” Knowles asked.

“We don’t know if it means anything.  We could be getting manipulated,” Leah said.  “We are, ‘young’m so to speak.”

They stood still around the body.

“Are we really going to do this?”

“He was off the grid anyway.  If we don’t tell anyone he’s gone, no one will know.  The only ones he knew were us, and his graduates.”

“They would read it in the news, if it was in the news, and maybe someone would step up to help us.”

“How would we know how to trust them?   We don’t know them.  He wanted it that way.  If they are true, they will sense something and they will come to check on him.  If they are not, they won’t come to check on him.”

“Maybe.”

“We need to vote.  We’ll need to take votes from now on, if we’re going to do this.  Who votes to continue on our own?”  All of them but Knowles raised his hand.

“Fine,” Knowles said.

“It’s decided then.  We need to dispose of the body so it won’t be found, or else where if it is, no one will know how to trace it back here.  Then we need to continue business as usual.  And if Lisa B don’t show, we need to find her and tell her that T is dead, at least.”

“Who’s in charge,” Leah asked.  She was respected, for being the most direct.

Darrall volunteered.  “Otis and I should assume the lead, since I will be 18 in a couple of months, and he’s already an adult.  We”ll have legal rights as adults, which will be necessary for now.  But we’ll decide everything as a committee.”

That’s how the Children’s Council began.

There were seven of them.  The lucky seven, children, but they were old souls.  Immortal, because they remembered having lived before, but were treated like children by most people they met now.  One way they would be able to tell the others, the other immortals, from everyone else, is that Immortals didn’t treat them like children. Immortals didn’t treat anyone like children. But in some ways they were.  There was biology at work.  They felt young.  They healed fast, they had hormones that made them flirt and laugh at silly jokes and fall in love, or play with legos.

“What’s funny about this?” Amanda asked.  That was one of they ways in which they were advised to handle adversity, to ask themselves, “what’s funny?”  Some of your worst expeiences can turn out to make the funniest stories, and it helps to recognize the humor in something as early as possible.

“It is kind of funny, if you think about it,” Matt said.

They stood in a circle, Sally, Darrall, Matt, Amanda, Emmanuel, Jill and Sid. Sally said, “He would have laughed.”

They all looked down at their mentor, Mr. T, Sal Tricamo, who lay on the wooden floor of the dance studio, a sword lodged into the floor through his chest. His arms were spread out like a crucifix and a foot away from his right hand was the sword he has presumably yielded. Everyone stood clear of the pool of blood.

“I mean,”Sally continued, “we don’t know what to do.”

“I want to know what are we going to do without T,” Jill said.
,
“I want to know what we’re going to do,” Matt said, “with T.”

Second Chances

My daddy was a writer. He never made a cent at it, if you asked him, he would have said “accountant,” but he spent all his free time wanting to write, and so we knew him as one.  I guess he wrote for all the reasons real writers write: fun, self-knowledge, and calling.  Perhaps most accurately he would have said it was for “salvation,” his way of seeking enlightenment.  It was the way he centered himself.  It was the way he gained an understanding of his world.  And it was his favorite cure for depression, from which he chronically suffered.  He had tried alternately, at some time or another prozac, welbutrin, and marijuana (which I didn’t know until I was older).  But he preferred not to use substances, legal or otherwise, because he saw his depressions as circumstance driven, and these needed to be tackled with an understanding of the circumstances.  Writing forced him to think about solutions.  And although journals helped him a bit, it was his fiction which was the most reflective.

The more he wrote the more he wrote for only those reasons.  At some point he knew it was never going to be his career, even though his stories were good.  But they were good stories that tended, consistent with his purpose, to center around his life.  He would even used us, my mom, my sister, my brother and me as characters.  In them, we would do and live experiences we never had.  We would see, in his stories, in us, something we didn’t like, or things that we loved as if we were looking at others.  And sometimes we were embarrassed over what we didn’t even do.  We would get mad at each other, for wronging each other only in his stories.  When they were real enough, it would become hard to differentiate.  But we learned to appreciate ourselves better because of the fictional experiences that we felt we really had.  We would laugh at ourselves, or we would cry, over these other lives.

I read all his stories again, and some I had never seen, after my father died. He hadn’t written as much once he got old, and so these stories brought me back again to when I was a little girl.  The one that hit me the hardest was the rediscovery of a story I had remembered well.  It was a story my father had written when I was young in which I had died.  I didn’t understand at the time why he would write a story like that.  I didn’t know at the time whether this was something he secretly wanted, and at first, I was hurt.  My father was everything to me, and quite honestly, although he would never say this, I thought I was his favorite.  He was a second child, like my sister, and so in many ways he was more like her, but I was his first, and he had always described the coming of his first child as the most significant event of his life.  Having a child was what taught him to love, he said.  He had snapped a photo of me at birth in which I was held up by the doctor.  Bloody and crying I was in a crucifixion pose.  Symbolic of all the things the crucifix represents,  love, suffering, salvation, life, he named this picture appropriately.  He called it, “My Savior.”

So, why would he imagine my death?

What I came to understand is that his stories, born out of daydreams, imaginative meanderings of his mind, were not necessarily what he would want to happen.  More often they reflected fears, or conflicts or anxieties.  And he would write them down, if he thought they were powerful, meaningful, or could help him in some way, to avoid the outcome or to handle adversity or to gain perspective.  And if it was a particularly good story, it had to be written, even though it might shock his only readers.  The more powerful, the more compelling, the more he had to experience and understand the fears and anxieties that seemed to rule him.  And then the story wrote itself, not unlike how life writes itself.

In this story, the car accident that took my life involved my mom, my sister Nickie, my brother Wally and my Aunt Bonnie too.  We were all in the car, on a road trip, from Atlanta to New York.  My dad stayed at home to work, preparing tax returns, like he did in his real life.  Bonnie went along to help with the kids, and for a free trip to New York.

My dad was on the phone with my mom.  He had called her on her cell phone.  Bonnie had been up too late and was too tired to help with the driving.  As my mom related this to my dad, she and Bonnie started to argue about it.  He heard enough to know the crash was bad, there was some screaming.  He heard my name, “Rose!”  And then he had to wait as he was hung up on so that my mom could call for an ambulance.

It was long wait.  He described hopes, fears, and frantic attempts to try to find out what was going on.   Then the wait was over.

In the story, Bonnie blamed herself cause she wasn’t able to help with the driving, and because she was arguing when it happened.  My mom blamed herself ’cause she was driving, and my dad blamed himself because he had been the one that called.  “I knew that talking on a cell phone while driving was dangerous.” He wrote.  “And if I hadn’t called… Rose would still be alive.”

The grief of losing a child is something my parents never actually had to experience, but my dad always said that with the birth of his first child, me, he understood those who had.  It wasn’t until he experienced that kind of love, he said, the love one has for your own children that he was able to understand what it would be like.  It was having children that helped him to understand losing children. And it was that fear, I guess, that drove this story.  What the story was missing, what he couldn’t imagine, was that you can recover, even from that.  That was something he never understood, because he never had to.
Hurt, as I was, that he could see me die, I had never up until that point, really understood the extent of his love.  Watching him grieve for me helped me to understand it.  For example, in the story my father couldn’t look at old pictures, even of Nickie, who survived, because “they were from happier times.”  He couldn’t sleep at night.  He would lie awake and silent tears would roll down his cheeks.  As I read, it was as if I was looking down from Heaven, hearing, from above it all, my dad, my mom and Bonnie all say they were sorry, to ME.  And I wanted to say softly back, “it’s OK.”  I wanted to tell them it was an accident, that I forgave them and that it was no one’s fault.

But it was as if I really was dead.

The trip he wrote about actually happened.  Bonnie really did stay up too late to share in the driving.  We did go to New York without my dad.

He told us that he came up with the idea while considering whether or not to call us on the road.  He went from thinking of calling into the reverie that became this “what if”.  That is how he would do it.  His imagination would wander, and he would play things out in his head.  He would have arguments with people.  He would quit jobs, and tell people how he really felt about them, that he hated them or that he loved them.  Then he would write these reveries down, and only afterwards, maybe, he would actually do some of these things in real life.

Like with some of his other stories, where we forgot which were real and which were not, I felt like I had died, and that by some divine miracle, we had all been given a second chance.  We never took each other for granted, I think because of this story.  We knew what we had. We appreciated what losing it would be like.  Reading this story again I can’t help but shed a grateful tear.  I’m thankful for the love we appreciated while we were all alive.  And I wonder whether this story was more than fiction.  After all, he didn’t make the call.  Who knows what would have happened if he had.  Maybe we really did get that second chance.

The Stalker

I’ve been living in a fog until recently and then it was finally lifted. See, I’ve got this guy, he calls himself my husband, and he lives in my house. I’ve put up with it mostly because I thought I had to. But I never really understood it. Then I read about this thing called stalking, and I said, “THAT’S IT!”

Listen, I go into the kitchen, he follows me. He asks me, “what’s for dinner?” I go into the living room to watch some TV, he follows me in there too. And sits next to me? I go into the bedroom, he even follows me there. He watches me undress. I go to sleep and he gets into bed beside me and sleeps there with me. Sometimes I notice that he’s in the living room watching TV without me, so I go do some other things, like laundry, and I find all of his laundry in my baskets. Then I pass by the living room again, and HE’S STILL THERE.

“Hi honey,” he says. Can you believe that?

So I read about this guy that was stalking a woman he was living with and I think, “that’s me, that’s me!”

I called the police. I said, “excuse me, but I think I’m being stalked.”

“You think?” they asked.

“Pretty sure.”

“What does he do to stalk you?”

“He won’t leave my house.”

“Is he there right now?”

“Well, no, he went to work, but he will be back tonight. He comes back every night”

“How does he get in your house, ma’am?”

“He has a key.”

“Did you give him the key?”

“I don’t remember ever giving him a key. I don’t know how he originally got here.”

“And what relation is this man to you, ma’am?”

“Oh, um, no. I don’t think he’s related to me.”

“Ok, now listen carefully. Are you currently under the care of a psychiatrist?”

“No.”

“Now what happens when you ask this man to leave?”

“I haven’t done that. But he acts like he owns the place, and I don’t even know who he is.”

“Is he violent at all?”

“He calls me ‘honey.’ That’s kind of forward.”

“Uh huh.”

“And he follows me around the house.”

“Uh huh.”

And he gets into bed with me.”

“He does?”

“Yeah!”

“Would you like me to send a car out there to check it out?”

“Yes. Yes I would. But wait. Wait until he comes home, like after 6.”

“Ok ma’am, I’ll send a police car out around 7PM.”

“Thank you. I feel so much better,” I said. And I did. I felt really good. Holy cow, that was so easy. I was so glad that I had heard about the stalker thing. I was going to get rid of my stalker once and for all after all of these many days, because this was just too much.

The stalker came home, like I said he would, after 6. First thing he said was “hi honey.” Oh, that gets me steamed.

“You’re days are numbered, mister,” I said.

“What I do?” he said.

“Like you don’t know. I’m onto you.”

“Onto what?” he asked.

“Y’know.”

“Have you been taking your medication?” he said.

I just looked at him. What was this?

“You haven’t been taking them again haven’t you?”

What do you think? Is it me? Is he playing a trick?

“Um… what medication?”

He came over and sat me down on the couch, put his arm around me and said that I suffered from a delusional lapse of some kind and that I need to take my medication to stay focused on reality.

“Do you know who I am,” he asked and I said, “You’re my husband.”

“That’s right,” he seemed pleased.

“The stalker,” I added.

“Oh brother,” he began. “Look, I have been your husband, and your lover, and your sweetheart for 15 years. We go through this every time you forget to take your medication. You know me, when you’re on your meds. I am not some stranger.”

“You’re not just some guy who won’t leave?”

“NO!” he said. “I’m your loving husband. I have stayed with you through thick and thin and I will forever. We have a life together, partners, and we’re going to beat this thing as a team, because I love you. And you can trust me.”

“ooooh.” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

“You are cute when you’re like this, you know that right?” I smiled. I kinda was liking this guy after all, I thought to myself.

“Now, I’m going to go get your meds, and you’ll take them, right?”

I nodded. He got up, then the doorbell rang. “I wonder who that is,” he said.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“About seven.”

“It’s probably the police,” I said.

To Those Who Wait

When I was a little girl my parents used to have sex in their bedroom and we could hear it going on. I don’t remember ever not knowing what they were doing. We knew. I mean we didn’t really know the details, but we understood that they were having sex. We didn’t think of it as anything other than an act of love between our parents. They didn’t discuss it with us, but they didn’t hide it. I’m not sure they knew we were awake. Maybe it was the heat of the moment that took away their worries. At the time we thought they just didn’t care to hide it.

And my parents had great sex. We would hear my mom moaning. They’d hit their heads up on the headboard and then we’d hear them laugh.

We would hear the low hum of talking sometimes during but also for a long time afterwards. Sometimes my mom would talk out loud, enough for us to hear her. “Oh God,” she’s say or “that feels so good.” And sometimes she would tell my dad, “oh Barry.” You heard her more than you heard him. It was always a surprise when you heard him moan or grunt. His voice was more rare.  So we used to listen for it.

Once I hit puberty and started understanding this a little more, I would visualize myself feeling like my mom. Sometimes I was alone and then other times there was a man in my visualizations. My breasts would tingle and the tingling would move down my side. My nipples would get hard, and my vagina felt hot. There would be that familiar scent, as the wetness came. I would have my pajama bottoms down to my ankles, but I was under the covers of my bed. My first orgasm was completely from visualization. I never even touched myself. When I came it was like a pulsating explosion that surprised me and took away my breath. I called out, if but for a moment, like Mom did. My sister stirred in her bed, which was in the same room, but she didn’t wake up.

And so I’m not a prude. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sex. I’ve had plenty of opportunities, like I can’t count how many, but something always stopped me, and I think it’s just that I have high standards. These guys did not seem like they could meet the standards set by my dad and mom. I wanted it to be like they had it. And not like my sister had it. She had sex, but never seemed to enjoy it even as much as I already had – by myself. At least it didn’t seem like she did. It was something in the way she talked about it, without enthusiasm.

I didn’t want it to be like her.

And so I waited. And I waited some more, even though I was open to the opportunity. I dated guys, guys that always wanted to jump right to the action, squeezing my “girls” first thing. Trying to get even just a couple of fingers under my clothes would make me mad. I hated guys who were pushy. That didn’t seem the way it was supposed to be. It was supposed to go slow. And so I didn’t get any. I sat at home in my pajamas visualizing instead, even though I was perfectly willing if they would just have approached it right.

My Junior prom date, Jared got so excited just from us kissing that he came in his pants. He wasn’t even embarrassed, he was just angry. “I have to return this tuxedo tomorrow, how am I going to explain this,” he said.

My senior prom date, John, was doing better at first. I remember I was really getting into kissing him. I was feeling particularly sensual and focused.  He tried to move his hand to my crotch but I stopped him and told him to “slow down.” I was pretty much directing traffic and that’s why he had the best chance if he had just followed my signals. Then he said, “I don’t have a condom, are you on the pill?” and that just really pissed me off. First of all we weren’t far enough along to be talking about condoms, although I admit I was thinking it could have gone there. In retrospect I was glad he brought it up when he did, better sooner than later.  Of course he could have eaten me, but I would not have even thought about that then. All moot anyway after the pill question. He thought I might have been on the pill? What kind of girl did he think I was? I went home and didn’t even think about masturbating. I was so angry at him and maybe at myself too that I just wanted to suffer.

In college it was more of the same. I had one guy come right out and ask me if I wanted to have sex with him. “No,” I said, “but thanks.” Others would offer drugs hoping that you would have sex with them afterwards. I wasn’t going to go out like that.

And so I made it through college without managing to get me any either, and it was about to drive me crazy. But the longer I went, the better it was going to have to be, and that was making it even harder. Needless to say, I got pretty good at masturbating. I could give myself multiple orgasms. And I was almost satisfied with that, but oh if a guy would ever do it for me – that remained in my dreams.

Now my sister by this time was already married. And before that happened she had, unlike me, experienced a lot of different men. But she and her husband didn’t seem to emanate the kind of love our parents had. I don’t think she really had what I wanted. I could have been wrong. I could have been jealous, but I don’t think so. And I didn’t understand why she settled. She heard the same thing I heard in our parents’ bedroom.

I went to live on my own in the city after college, getting a job at a Border’s bookstore during the day and at night I waitressed at a fish place called Steamy’s. A lot of good a degree does you. But it didn’t matter. I was just happy to be on my own, and I had a lot of energy I needed to work off, so I worked two jobs.

I met my boyfriend Marc at Borders actually, or at least I saw him there first. Helped him find a book. He seemed nice. We chatted a bit, but then he went on and I went back to work. I thought at the time, “that was a nice guy, too bad I’ll never see him again.”

Then he happened into Steamy’s. He was with a co-worker, another guy. They wore suits. When I went to take his order, he recognized me, “Hey, Hi.”

“Oh hi,” I said, as if we were old friends.

“You used to work at Borders.”

“Yeah. I remember you.”

“So you quit?”

“No I’m still there.”
“Oh. Two jobs?”

“Yeah. Gotta’ make ends meet, y’know?”

The restaurant was very busy that night and I didn’t have too much time to chat, but I made an extra effort to keep their drinks full and to check in with them on a frequent basis to see if they needed anything.

At the end of their dinner things were starting to slow down. His friend had left the table, I actually don’t know if he had left the restaurant, or just gone to the bathroom or if Marc asked him to step away. But when I returned his credit card Marc said.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“I know this is weird and I usually don’t do things like this so suddenly, because I know I don’t really know you, but I like, I mean I was very impressed with how you handle yourself here, so many tables and always on top of it, and working two jobs, and you were so helpful in the bookstore… and nice, so… I’d like to take you out, if you would like to, I mean. If you’re interested. You’re not interested. Nevermind. I’m sorry.”

That was just so cute.

“Sure,” I said.

“Really?”

“Um, I’ll give you my number.”

Which was kind of stupid cause I’m never home.

But I returned his calls after my shift one night. I woke him up, but he still seemed happy to talk to me. For the first couple of months when we saw each other I was always so tired from my two jobs. There were many nights he came over to my place and I just lied there exhausted in his arms and didn’t move a muscle. He just held me and didn’t move either. We talked in hushed tones about life, and love and embarrassing moments, like when he asked me out, he said. He said he sounded so stupid. I told him it was cute. And then we slept like that. Time passed and he was going slow, maybe a little too slow, but I wasn’t going to make the first move. I don’t know why I didn’t want to. I just thought I’d like it better if he did it.

I tried to act inviting to him though. One day he took the invitation, looked into my eyes, my willing lips, saw something and kissed me. I kissed back. There was something different about these kisses. I was enjoying the pace of it, enjoying this man just touching me, my side, my back. I pressed my breasts up into his chest, but through our clothes. I liked these small steps. Then he leaned back.

“Is it OK if I go a little further?”

I smiled. “Yeah. I guess. I’ll let you know if you go too far.”

Now he smiled. “Ok.” He said. Then he asked, “are you… experienced?”

“Do I look like a virgin?”

“No. I don’t’ know. I’m. I’m a virgin.”

“Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I was just messing with you. Actually I am a virgin also.”

“So neither one of us really knows exactly what to do.”

I just looked at him. I didn’t know whether to tell him about my parents.

“Well, I don’t really know,” he amended.

“Well, if we get that far, I can tell you exactly what to do if you want, but they tell me that the first time isn’t usually so great for the girl anyway, painful but that’s ok, I guess. I’m just looking for someone that I really like, and that I trust to get started.”

That was the first moment that I realized that was what I was really looking for.

“I don’t accept that your first time can’t be really good,” he said. “We should do whatever we have to make it great. If you tell me exactly what to do, I’ll do it,” he said, adding, “if, and when, we get that far.”

We got that far. I showed him where the clitoris was and then he just started exploring, like he had waited his whole life for the chance. He was satisfying his curiosity (and much more). He put his thumb inside me and moved it back and forth (what a tease), he gave me oral sex (I didn’t know I could have so many orgasms in a row). And except for a brief moment of pain, it was just like Mama used to make. And when we banged our heads on the headboard, we laughed.

A Beard Story

My wife often tells me that I overanalyze things and that my tormented soul would be less so if I did not.

I tell her that I like to overanalyze things, that it gives me satisfaction although in such musings do I encounter uncertainty and confusion. Nevertheless, it is due to my exaggerated enjoyment that I have been endeavoring to make a career of it, that is of writing down my over analytical ponderings in the profession of writer.

And yet it is often just when I do not want to analyze that she makes effort to force me to explain my innermost reasoning, logic and motivation, in short, to do exactly what she tells me I do too much.

It was that way in the case of the beard, which I will now relate:

You see, the notion has struck me from time to time, before and also after I met Gloria, my wife, to grow a beard. Before I met her I had one on two occasions, and it is also true that I have rarely been of frame of mind to partake of blade to face on a daily schedule, except when forced by requirements of employment to do so. It was during one of those periods of employment that I met my now wife. In fact it was not only during but at said employment, since she worked there also. That was at one of the most prestigious accounting firms, located, of course, in midtown Manhattan, where I grew up, but where Gloria didn’t. Her rearing took place in South Carolina and she jokes now that she came to New York to get me, but of course that was impossible, since she didn’t know me but for our chance meeting on the day that we were both interviewed at the same firm, that, while she still resided down south, but I digress.

The point is that she got to know me as a very well dressed well groomed man, but I’m afraid without intention she was deceived. Not that I am a slob, by any means, I always place a fair emphasis on cleanliness, though my tastes in style lean towards the appearance, not fact, of neglect: wild uncombed hair, loose, worn clothing, sneakers; and of course my trademark among those who have known me any length of time, the Met cap, a baseball cap proclaiming my allegiance to and, properly stated, membership in (as the tenth player – the fan) the Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York.

Gloria didn’t know any of this when we met, and yet she fell in love, and once that happened, it was too late.

But concerning beards, it was not until we went on vacation together the first time, for a month, to travel across Europe in November, that she had to contend with my reluctance to shave. I bet you are wondering why November? There were many reasons, not the least of which was finding a time not inconvenient for being absent from work. Another rationale might have been that the scarcity of other tourists at that time might have increased the likelihood of actually experiencing the people and charm of these foreign places without the interference of others like ourselves nosing around and generally making themselves a nuisance. In any case, it tended to be cold, which provided me with yet another excellent reason, if I even needed one, to sport facial hair.

As it turned out, I met only mild opposition that time from my then girlfriend. At first she complained that it scratched her when we kissed, but then as it grew it became soft, she said. Perhaps because she knew that at the end of a months time it would be gone, she didn’t complain. I don’t really know, but the next time I contemplated growing one, right after I had quit accounting to do this sort of thing, what you are reading, create such and the like, the idea was met with hostile rejection and subtle but strong pressure. It was the type that only a woman can give a man, or a man can give a woman, but a man can not give it to a man or a woman, woman, except in certain instances. I am not talking about the withholding of sexual favors. I am simply talking about that emotional pressure that a loved one can impose, to make you feel bad, as if you have taken this beard out of it’s holster, pointing it threateningly, until finally when asked how you could do it, you realize that you have hurt someone very dear to you, the last person in the world you wanted to hurt. Oh, how could you have done it.

This for a beard.

Unprepared, I gave in.

But then after months and months of attempting to maintain the same respectable outward composure that previously I had maintained for pay, while struggling to be true to myself, and write my heart and soul, alas the truth, all the while maintaining this outward lie, which was never me, I determined that my month to month failures must somehow be linked to this propensity to shave.

I dismissed these thoughts, at first because it didn’t seem to make sense. Besides, I would have to make do with the way it was, for I was marrying this woman, who I loved so that I would shave my face for her, and I certainly would not defile my wedding pictures with the black scraggly growth which never grew too long and always looked incomplete anyway. If only I could grow that shunned facial hair on the top of my head, at least just for the pictures, to keep that shine away, that was sometimes apparent through my thinning egg, but no matter. That is also of little use to reflect upon, and it is an entirely different story.

Onward:

My wedding day gone, and honeymoon too, the thoughts and feelings came back to me, and this time I felt a liberating freedom to actually consider them. My money was running short; and relaxing, so that I could write and succeed in this noble effort, to the cheers of all those lost lamb (the accountants I left behind) who watched with interest, so that if I achieved my dreams, then they too could take risks (which would be no longer risks, I guess, because if I can do it anyone can?), was of utmost importance. The feeling must be right, I thought to myself. Relax. Grow a beard. It would give me outward truth. It felt good.

I resolved that it would be, and so commenced to cease and desist in my previous face whitening activities.

Much to the chagrin of my wife.

“No!” she exclaimed to me when I told her, which is what I had to do, since going a few days was my usual habit, and she might not have realized my intention for quite a while if I did not tell her, so tell her I did, at one convenient opportunity after she made a comment about my gruff, and she wasn’t happy. I managed my way through that encounter though, reasoning to her that it was my right and explaining that it was important to my writing that I follow my feelings on this matter.

For every day since, one didn’t slip past without her telling me how much she wanted me to shave, about how it hurt her face, with comments about it’s look thrown in for good measure, those comments not flattering.

It was on the fourth day that she began to insist that I overanalyze the problem, obviously hoping that the illogic of a beard helping me write would weigh itself upon my resolve and topple me. She said:

“How much more work have you got done since you started growing it?”

She knew the answer, my efforts have been for long, not so fruitful, and yet, I felt that the beard had not had a chance as a plan, and so I stared back, but for a long time had nothing to say. At last I decided to defend a single day.

“The fact that I was at the automechanic’s all day today would not have been avoided if I didn’t have a beard.”

“What about the last four days?”

I didn’t want to analyze it. It didn’t make sense, it just felt good. She didn’t buy that, she’d just say it didn’t feel good to her, it scratched her. I could have analyzed it if I wanted to. In my heart I knew there was a good reason, I just felt it didn’t matter and that it was detrimental to have to defend it. Perhaps it served as a symbol of my freedom, or a symbol of truth, both of which are important to a writer. They are a writer’s allies, they are a writer’s lovers. They share parenthood with every written work of art. Without them the birth is impossible. Or perhaps I just wanted to feel good about myself, and the beard helped. What I knew was that I didn’t want to be so rational about it. I went with the irrational defense.

“You’re not supporting me.” She looked at me with surprise. “You don’t want me to do the things that help me to write.”

“Fine,” she said. “Just don’t expect me to make love to you while that beard is there to scratch me.”

And with that came finally the threat of withholding sexual favors. I wondered what the real reason was that she wanted me to shave. Vanity? “That’s my husband the one with the scraggly face.” I was beginning to think that she just wanted to win, and that she meant to do it. I wasn’t sure I could withstand the coming romantic assault, but for the moment, I was o.k.

“Two can play at that game,” I told her, and with an added smile, we made it through one more day.

If a woman can have the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion, shouldn’t a man own his own body to the extent of having the right to choose whether or not to have a beard? If this became a fight over who had rights to control my body, it could get ugly.

She told me that I could grow a beard after I sold a couple of teleplays. I countered, sticking to my position that it would help me write, that I would shave after I sold a couple of teleplays.

And at this point the story is still without conclusion, but with this writing I can now attribute something to my beard, for you see, it is still on my face, and it has most certainly, unquestionably and undeniably contributed to this writing.