Kingdoms in the Rain

You know, it's strange to get to the age where you have nostalgia. Where you sit down and start thinking about the past. Before this point, I didn't have enough life to have a past. There was only the happening now. But here, in this now, the kids are out racing me. They don't know my cultural references and look at me strange when I tell them stories of 'how it used to be'. They look at me like I'm old. Like I know something they don't. When the fuck did that happen?

So yes, I have been thinking of the past...

Did we break her? You and I? Did we break her? We both were in love with her. Strange little bird that she was. Did we break her? Or was she already broken when we got there? She never let me forget what we did. Made me suffer for it for years. Jabbed me with little pointed phrases when I was least expecting them just to see me wince. Wept in my arms because of you as I smoothed down her hair and cooed in her ear. I lost her years ago and I don't think I can go back.

You know, I followed that black dog into the wood, my boots digging into the softened dirt up the steep hill. I followed his tail. Pointing his snout back at me to make sure I was following. His tongue hanging out and a smile on his black lips. A happy yip and he would dive back into the brush. All four paws in the creek, trying to catch silver trout with his long teeth. Once we reached the pond, a gleeful barking and splashing would send the startled ducks to air. In deep golden fields we ran, an hour hike from home all by ourselves. Me, 12 years old and off in the forest on my own. Me and that black dog chasing cattle down the road, running through the birch groves, eating lunch by that glittering stream... we always knew the way home.They never told me how he died. His tail still disappearing before me.

In the winter, I walked my grandmother's long country driveway to wait for the big yellow school bus that came lumbering down the road. Wrapped in layers, hopping from foot to foot trying to stay warm. My breath would hang in the air, ice crystals forming on my eyelashes. The world had gone white, buried in clean snow. Like a blanket had been pulled over the world. Everything quiet, gentle. Little tracks of field mice in the snow. Deer trails up through the trees. My foot prints following me down the path. Everything still, frozen until the roaring engine of the bus broke the distance promising warmth, a hard seat and shrill taunting laughs all the way to school.

I remember my first winter spent in the rain. No white snow but everything glistened with a dark wetness as the street lights bounced off the pavement. The wetness seeping in around the edges of my shoes leaving me with soggy socks. A rainy winter was foreign to me. No snow to shovel. No fire wood to chop. I obviously needed better shoes and a crash course in umbrella etiquette. The rain came down in sheets and beat against my window all night long. The world held it's breath and splashed me standing at the curb. We all shook the droplets from our hair as we boarded the bus. Everything stayed so green and the leaves never fell.

...
Tell me your story.
I want to know your past.
I might write it down as you should never trust a poet but know I treasure every syllable as we build a kingdom in the rain with words lost in the night.

Fifteen Years in the City

Fifteen years in the city and goddamn do I hate it here. Everything is wet. I feel like I'm growing mold. Fifteen years of mildew between my toes. I used to stand barefoot in clean, clear streams with the sun filtering in through thick green leaves dancing little reflections on the softest moss. That black dog's tail disappearing into the underbrush only to reappear with a great lulling tongue. A ruff of fur under my hand.

Fifteen years and still nobody wants me here. Every man who put his mouth to my lips lied. Every word was a distraction to get their hands down my pants. This water is so filthy I'm not sure it's safe to swim in. So murky, you can't see the sandy bottom and you dare not open your eyes to those depths. Still I strip my clothes off in front of a growing crowd and dive in. Each wave slams into me and my worries set to sea.

There was a lake so still it looked like glass. As green as the green eyes I was born with. Little fish darted past you and dragonflies painted the sky with humming wings skimming the water's edge. Just watch out for those fucking horse flies, they bite like a bitch. He told me he loved my green eyes, but it was a lie. Just like every sticky sweet thing that clung to his lips.

That big old Ford barreled by kicking up dust to the blue, blue sky. His laugh as loud as the engine. A chainsaw rattling around in the back. Sawdust in his hair. "Dad," I said, "where does this road go?"

My mother brushed her impossibly long hair out every morning by the wood cookstove that my great grandmother had bartered for two generations earlier. Her hair fell all the way to her waist like a chestnut waterfall. The whole cabin dense with the smell of fresh coffee warming on the fire's edge. That clay mug still in her hands.

Fifteen years and still I dream of grass lands stretching up the pine tree hills. So golden that it looked like flaxen waves in the wind. Purple alfalfa flowers dancing with fat bees, crickets leaping before my torn jeans in the heat. Saskatoon berries ripening under the sun. The willow tree in the edge of the yard swaying to the breeze. Alkali lakes all dried up in the summer time and birch trees rustling their leaves in the canopy.

Fifteen years and this city hates me. Flesh presses against mine everywhere I go and I recoil from it. The dim grey pushes against me. Against my mind. Every voice struggling over the other trying to be heard until there is nothing but a dull roar poisoning the air. I can't be alone. They won't let me. They seek me out. Make me talk to them. Tug at my hems. Smile all lewd teeth down my shirt. I just want to be left alone. Take your fucking hands off me.

Five minutes of silence and clear water will flow over me, my hair floating like ribbons from my head. Grass lands will stretch before me. Sun will play on my cheeks. Great ravens will fill the air and blue jays will steal bits of food from the porch.  That big black dog will forever disappear before me as I follow him into that thickening wood never once looking back as the sun slips from my shoulders.

Who Writes This Shit?

The drugs are fast and faster and faster still. I feel everything in this resin heart. So clear. So full of nothing. I should be drinking. I should be smoking. I should be dancing. I should be meeting beautiful men and breaking their hearts.

What do I have left to write about? A dead life? A tree that refuses to grow? A man who avoids me at every costs but can't seem to stay completely away? Where did you go, apache? Where did you go?

The drugs are talking now. It's not me. It's just my fingers moving over the keyboard trying to make words come out.  I probably shouldn't let them do all the talking. They tend to not make any sense and I regret them in the morning.

Stars fill the sky. Stars fill my mind. I hate the people I meet so much sometimes I want to reach up and pluck their eyes out of their big stupid heads. Sometimes I want to see flames where people used to be standing. What are you idiots staring at? If you knew what was really in here... if you really understood... you would not be so eager.

My kitten is mewing at the door way. She says 'Let us go to bed. Dawn will be here soon.' She's right. What are we waiting for anyway? The sunlight hates us and only the moon wants us here. Who writes this shit anyways?

Big Man

She took a long drag off her cigarette and tapped it against the ashtray. She exhaled blue smoke as she spoke:

"He was a drunk so he had sleep apnea. You know, where you stop breathing for a minute or two in your sleep and then start again. I'd lay there every night listening to him breath. When he'd stop, I'd wish with all my heart that he wouldn't start again. I felt like crying every time he'd cough and start snoring again."

She stared out the window. The smoke hung around her head like a halo in the filtered sunlight.

"You know, I can't say I'm sorry he's dead. I just can't."

Crowbar

I don't know if I should fuck you hard or just fuck you up.

Fuck You

I hate people who have a positive outlook on life.

Weird Fucker: Scenes from Public Transit

He had the body and balding hair line of a fifty year old, wore his suit and tie like a forty year old insurance salesman and had the baby face of a fifteen year old boy. He looked like he had stepped right out of an episode of Seinfeld. I half expected the theme music to start up over the sound of the bus engine. Was he real? He seemed like a caricature that shouldn't exist in the real world.


He was earnestly chatting up the pretty young Asian women next to him who was too polite to tell him to fuck off. She nodded and through down cast eyes laughed at his jokes and stories of traveling to New York. He looked at her like he wanted to awkwardly fuck her and then sell her some Encyclopedias. He handed over his card sure to scrawl his phone number across the back. She politely took it but obviously had no intention of calling... Ever.


I cocked my eyebrow unable to tear my eyes away from this odd scene. I silently thanked my lucky stars that I'm a fat chick dressed in black wearing a death metal t-shirt and a 'don't-fucking-touch-me' look. He would have no interest in hitting on anyone who didn't look like subservient girl next door. I don't get the same amount of unwanted attention pretty young girls like this did. I mean, I get hit on and get mistaken for a hooker and get propositioned... Actually being unusual and mean looking means only the men who see it as a challenge or the most mentally unstable like to attempt to break through my personal space bubble. Fuck.


Starring at this awkward specimen of the male of the species, I wondered once again who is breeding these boring ass weirdo middle management motherfuckers? I think they hatch from eggs in the back offices of insurance companies. I wonder for the millionth time, why am I not a lesbian or a nun if this is what is out there?


Wait. I think to myself, that's not fair. I've had some lovely men in my life who fucked it right up. What would I have to write about if beautiful men didn't play with my heart and my cunt? We disembark from the bus and he walks the pretty young Asian woman all the way to the train platform chatting her ear off as she nods along dutifully. I contemplate following them to see how far he takes this, suddenly feeling like maybe I need to protect this poor woman, but I want a slushie and detour into the convenience store. Maybe I'd get a pack of cigarettes too.

Genetic

Sometimes I feel the violence and hate welling up inside me like an evil tide and all I can think is 'hi dad.'

I Feel Nothing

Sometimes I think you could hold a blowtorch to my hand and I won't even feel it.

What the Whippoorwill Saw

I'm in those hills still. The tall golden grass flows gently swaying to the Northern breeze that comes down from the mountains. The fields shimmer like flaxen waves under the sun dappling from the canopy of birch trees breaking way to the hardier fir trees further up the tree line. Their green needle points creeping towards the rocky peaks of the valley. Wild roses grow along the edge of the winding creek with it's colourfully water-worn pebbles and little silver fish darting into the shady edges. Whippoorwills cry a shrill cadence of notes to each other. The Saskatoon berries grow deep purple and fat in the hot sunlight and even fatter bees buzz about the alfalfa blooms in the grass.  I was born here in this wild place and call it home.

But they have come in droves with their orange safety jackets swarming over the hills like florescent ants. They have whistles and dogs on long leashes who have their noses to the ground snuffling the underbrush. Pushing against rocks and upending rotten logs. The Safety Jackets have long sticks and poke at the ground meticulously. They call out to each making sure that everyone is kept in eyesight. Some of them carry clipboards. Some of them have radios. Some of them carry well-oiled sidearms in heavy looking holsters upon their crowded belts and have bright shiny badges that glint in the sunlight like beacons. They swarm the hills glinting and shouting and barking and searching.

They are searching for me. At least, they are searching for what is left of me. They are looking for my bones stripped away by hungry little carnivorous insects and sharp toothed rodents. I'm under this ground somewhere and they are looking for me. They are looking for a sign of the plastic shroud I might be wrapped in. They are looking for disturbed earth. Maybe a flash of bleached bone peaking out from some fungus patch. They are hoping the cadaver dogs will catch the scent of rot. They are looking for my body in these golden summer hills. They are searching for me.

I was supposed to come home early that night I had told my mother. I was going to the local bar for a drink with a young man I had met the day before. My mother didn't know him. I told her he liked to talk about old movies.  He was older than me but not too much. I was excited. I put on my favorite spring dress and brushed my hair. I coloured my lips and curled my eyelashes. I giggled when my mother asked me if he was handsome. I kissed my mother goodbye and told her not to wait up. My dark hair bobbing about my shoulders as I closed the gate and waved was the last she would ever see of me.

The police know it has to be bad. They've seen this kind of thing before. People remember me at the bar that night but do not know the man I am with. I seem too drunk at some point all of a sudden like. I stumble out followed closely by the mysterious man. There is blood on the sidewalk. It proves to be mine. I have been missing for a week when a burly detective tells my mother they found an abandoned car in the hills and my blood was soaking the seats an unhealthy rotting red. The car has stolen plates and a stripped serial number so they can't tell who owns it but a witness thinks they remember it outside the bar from the night I disappeared. They search and search and still there is no sign of me. They look for the man who took me. His description matches two other cases of missing young women but no one finds him.

I remember him. He sweet talked me at the coffee shop. I was reading a book about Boris Karloff.  He told me his favorite movie was Frankenstein and did I know Boris was Christopher Lee's neighbor? His young features sharp and dark. His hair long enough to fall into his eyes. He charmed me into a drink and then another until I felt strange and heavy. He held me up and slammed my head into the car door when I didn't want to get in. I remember his eyes glowing demonic red but that might have just been my fear staining my memories. I remember him punching my face in the back seat of the car when I started to scream. I remember a flash of sharp silver coming under my chin as he forced his way inside me. I remember crying through swollen bloody eyes. I remember bleeding. I remember the pain swallowing me whole. The blade deep inside me. My insides spilling outside all over the seat vinyl. And then a creeping numbness took me over. I didn't scream anymore. I didn't struggle. The night became a haze and the last thing I remember in my life is a deep black sky with a full moon as big as a dinner plate and a million stars winking at me all at once.

Months go by. The summer gets hot and still no one finds me. The bees buzz indifferently. The alfalfa flowers bow at each Safety Jacket's passing but hold on to their secrets. They search the hills. Their hope dying in the sweltering heat. The whippoorwills' cries become a funeral song. My mother holds on to the idea that I might be alive and cries bitterly every night. The officers know they are looking for a body. They want to find me and find the man who did this. They want him before he does it again. They need my body to prove I was here. To find hair, fiber, DNA, anything to point to my attacker. They are looking for me. For any sign that I was here. A piece of torn fabric. Trampled grass. A foot print. A drag mark. Anything to tell them where he put me. I have to be here somewhere but each Safety Jacket knows sometimes lost girls are never found.

I'm in those hills still and they are looking for me. Hope caught up in their throats as the dust settles on their sweating skin. I'm watching them swarm up the mountain side. I'm watching them. There are other bodies out here. An old native burial site where a whole settlement was nearly wiped out by small pox and buried in unmarked trenches. There are settlers in family graveyards that couldn't make it through the harsh winters and froze or died of starvation as the countryside was first settled by white men. A woman who died in childbirth 112 years ago buried on the family plot, her grave marker long since knocked over, rotted away and the homestead forgotten. Her little baby buried with her. A house burnt down 50 years ago not far up the road with an old man inside whose charred bones are still mixed in with the overgrown foundation. A drunk hunter who accidentally shot himself in the fall of 1973 whose bones were ripped apart and spread across the hills by coyotes.

There are bones under this ground. Mountains built on centuries of bones but they are looking for mine. My little lost bones; the bones of one girl in a vast wilderness. They know I am in these hills still and they want to bring me home. So many miles of hill and mountain and tree and grass and creek and leaf and fallen stump and animal burrows and little caves and deep bushes and dense thorns and surprised whippoorwills. They know I'm in those hills still but there is so much to search. So many places I could be. I am watching. I am watching the wind come from the North. I am watching the leaves dance in the birch trees throwing sun dappled patterns onto the forest floor. I am watching the birds flutter from tree branch to tree branch. I am watching fat bees drunkenly dance across the fields. I am watching in those hills... still as my last breath on that dark night. I died here and those wild hills call me home.


(He adjusts the orange safety jacket over his shoulders and whips the sweat away from his stinging eyes. He pokes at the ground with his stick, his face down, one foot carefully in front of the other, his eyes diligently scanning.  To his left another searcher is doing the same. A radio crackles in the distance. Suddenly his boot slips down below him into a soft part of the ground and into a hole. He almost trips. He looks back, crouches down to inspect the hole and sees plastic and a faint white glow. His breathe catches in his throat and then he starts to yell.)

We Are Terrible People

I am so thick. His hands hot under my skin. Trying to find that demon heart. I keep it ticking. Keep it licking. I call him here and fuck him under the watchful eye of all Hell. When we break loose the neighbors take notice and call the cops.

My screams met the ceiling with him deep inside me. Fear nothing but normalcy and mediocrity. Come here and taste my cold cream tones. Let me be your silent pain. Your silent falling. Fall into my many arms. Demon cunt. Rows and rows of teeth, glistening skin, lulling tongue. My grin is widening. Teeth line my deep red slash a well.

We are a black hole.

You and I. We are a black whole.

Swallow what I give you and move on.

Dark Den Electric

The invitation was vague at best mostly because of the illegal nature of the venue. It simply said 'use your cunning'. We wandered around the building trying to not look conspicuous and attract the attention of any unwanted police. "The entrance has gotta be here somewhere!" someone sighed in frustration. "Wait! A cop car... look nonchalant!"

I turned to him and said, "You know, my favorite euphemism for cops is a British one. The Filth. Or the Plod. I think we should adopt that here. Although I am fond of calling them the P.I.G."

After a couple of laps around the building and a trip through the urine soaked alley especially ripe smelling in the summer heat the entrance suddenly revealed itself to us. A quick check for cops, one hard rap on the door and we were suddenly standing face to face with a large, imposing door man wearing a balaclava and a bandana over his face to hide his features. My first thought was, "Wow. They're serious about this illegal venue shit here."

Three flights of long stairs led to a hot stuffy smoky room high above a fortune cookie supply house. It had long been illegal to smoke inside any building in this city, bars and dance halls included, so the novelty was high as people lit up cigarettes and fat joints near the open windows. There was one small bathroom where a line was already forming and a random bathtub in a room in the back where guys were allowed to go pee to reduce the bathroom line up. The building was turn of the century old and so dimly lit that you could barely see your own hands.

This was my kind of place.

The music pumped loud digital beats straight through the floor, up my legs and into my heart. As soon as I made it through the door and paid my cover, my body started thumping and moving all on it's own to the beat. We started pouring burning whiskey and rum down our throats to lubricate our social situation and dove onto the dance floor into the thick of throbbing, sweating bodies all transfixed by the DJs prowess on the decks. Some stood just moving their shoulders and shuffling their feet, others flailed their limbs about the place in tight circles trying to call some pagan god of the dance and drink, some swayed, some just tapped their feet... but everyone was moving somehow.

I let my long hair fall over my face, closed my eyes and as the swimming feeling of whiskey and rum took me over I moved and didn't stop until the music died and dawn forced it's ugly way into the world.

Face Breaker

Did he come for you? Did you put his hands on you? Did he tell you he loved you?

Because I'm pretty sure it was all a lie.

I had to resist the urge to slam his head into the counter when he told me he was leaving. He was looking for a better deal with better tits. I was just trying to keep my hand off the kitchen knife and keep the kitchen knife out of his chest. He thought he knew what was in my mind but I keep this kind of darkness for myself. The genetic violence, the seething hatred all mixed up in love and gentleness. I could softly kill you and you would never feel it until it was too late. I could punch you in the face with love and lap the blood up like a candy land vampire. I can feel the monster moving just under my skin calling my name. Telling me to come home.

He said, "You know what, you're too moody. You need to lose 20 pounds and your hair is a mess. You hang your bras on the doorknob. You're too needy. You want me too much. You're too fucked up. You're so emotionally damaged. I can't stand it when you get sick and need me to take care of you. I hate the way you always want to fuck. You tell me you love me too much. You don't suck my dick enough. You're always naked. Who does that? You spend too much time writing. You don't hate the same things I hate. You take everything too seriously. You spend too much time putting your makeup on. You never do the dishes. You talk to yourself when you think nobody is around. You spend too much time in your head. You always eat the last piece of pie. You're too much of a bitch. You burn your bridges. You keep a knife under the mattress. Sometimes you scare me. And you snore."

That's when the plate came flying out of my hand and shattered into the wall by his head. The shards flying past his cheek leaving little dotted lines of blood welling up and spilling down his skin. I hadn't even realized it was in my hand. He stood there in stunned silence. His eyes as big as coffee cups. Tears on the edges of his eyelashes. His lip quivering like a child.

With my fists clenched tightly at my side, I sighed through tight teeth, "You should probably leave now."

Always Chasing

You are always on the hunt for something. More sex. More sexy young things. More sex with sexy young things. You already have several of those sexy young things in love with you. But they are like potato chips and you desperately want to eat more slurping their salt from your fingertips.

And they call me insatiable? All I hunger for is admiration and sopping emotions. I suck up the hurt of others and make castles from the remaining sand. Occasionally I eat the worry and violence that clouds the brows of beautiful men but that never really makes me feel full, you know? I'd rather have them deep inside me pouring out their energy in waves as I inhale it right through my cervix. Candy land cunt.

Don't tell me how to feel. Don't tell me what to like. Don't stand there with that stupid look on your face. You and me? We've got the rest of our lives to share these stories so be sure to keep stocked up on cookies for when I come around.

Give Me Treats

I'm waiting for you to break my heart again. I'll just sit here quietly and eat my snacks until you do.

Stop Talking

You have a lot of theories and philosophies when it comes to life, love and sex. And you like to tell them to me like you know what the fuck you are talking about. Like you have some sort of authority. Well, I have a philosophy too. Everybody dies. And if you don't shut your fucking mouth, I'm gonna make sure your death shows up a lot sooner than you thought it would.

Feed Me

I have a dream so thick I want to slip it down your throat like jam. All hot and buttered. I burn like rum right to the back of your throat. Right to the back of your mind. Burning fingertips in your head plucking out the tasty bits and licking the inside of your skull. My dessert man. Only the hated and the devoured come here for dinner.

You are in the kitchen making me soup. I'm hungry in so many ways. I am insatiable they say. Cannibal for everything. Chewing on the leaves in the garden. Chasing fat chickens. I nibble your ear. Hungry. Slip my fingers down below your waist. I am so hungry. I swallow you whole.

"Let's go to lunch," you say, "We can have tea and cookies and maybe a little arsenic." Sounds dreamy. Feels tasty. Little acid punches to my cheeks. Little dreamy swirls in the whipped cream. Mountains of marshmallows and valleys of candy. I'm so sticky. My voice is rich with chocolate metaphors. So yummy in your tummy.

They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Just slip the blade in straight and then twist upwards for a sure kill.

Pass the Jam

He was so mind-numbingly dull that I imagined that fucking him would be like fucking unbuttered toast.

Baked

I'll bake cookies if you promise to spend the night.

Why Didn't I Spend More Time in the Barn?

I know you are out there breaking other girls' hearts. You know, you could of just stayed here and broke mine instead. You wouldn't have had to travel so far and your feet won't hurt.

I met this boy and he really liked me. Or at least he liked my tits which seems to be the same thing these days. I told him he wasn't broken enough for me. I like my men more... shattered. Splintered. Beautiful.

My heart could split into all these shining garnet jeweled pieces. You could take them and add them to your crown. Frame your perfect face in bits of glass with burnished thrones settling between our legs. I can see my reflection in your eyes but I can not see myself.

Rich women drink champagne is giant bathtubs filled to brim with luxurious sparkling bubbles that slid down their perfect white skin. Poor girls like me drink beer in the shower. Poor girls like me wear beat up leather jackets they found in second hand shops. Poor girls like me know how to chop wood and build a fire. Poor girls like me rode in beat up dirty old pickup trucks that had no seat belts with their fathers laughing behind the wheel as they roared over a particularly big hole in the dirt road that bounced them all towards the roof. Poor girls like me grew up in a house where chainsaw parts littered the kitchen table. Poor girls like me know how it feels to starve and to still go into work that day. Poor girls like me carry knives in their back pocket. Poor girls like me miss the farm and haunt the city like big black bugs in the way of pretty rich white women who would rather spit on us than talk to us. Poor girls like me don't really care.

Then again, girls like me still keep their broken little hearts wrapped up in cellophane and bailing twine tucked inside the secret pocket of their leather jacket. It's covered in white dog hair, and orange cat hair, and bits of yellow sticky notes, and the blank ends of mixed tapes, and wild rose petals, and bits of green moss, and poems written about us, and fried dough, and bitter saskatoon berries, and broken fences, and grass hopper wings, and crow feathers, and golden grass, and alfalfa flowers, and old nails from the barn, and vodka, and stolen cigarettes, and rustling birch leaves in the fall sun, and watercress from the stream in the ditch, and shells from my brother's rifle, and stones from the creek next to the house, and my mother's big yellow bowl, and flour from the bread, and the last traces of childhood mixed with the sweet spit of your last kiss.

I'm not here anyways. I think I've gone home.

Smut

I adjusted the leather straps about my hips and slowly sunk my synthetic cock into his waiting ass. The pretty young woman whose own ass was wrapped around his large member whimpered in a heady mix of pain and pleasure as he pushed deeper into her.

I had carefully tied her hands behind her back as tight as I could without cutting off the circulation to her fingertips and set her on her knees; head to the mattress, ass in the air just begging to be taken. I had lashed the delicate skin at the top of her thighs until it was a burning red welt with my belt. She was breathing raggedly and I left her there begging for a cock deep in her ass.

And now her wish was granted. My beautiful lover thrust deeper and harder into her ass causing her to scream out. I pressed my breasts against his back and moved my own cock deep inside him careful to match his rhythm  He moaned in delight biting his lower lip with half closed eyes. Our submissive conquest screamed again. I reached past my lover's side and twisted a handful of the conquest's long dark hair around my fist yanking her head back sharply. She yelped. My lover responded by riding her harder. Slamming his hips into her round bouncing ass cheeks. I yanked her head back harder, he rode her harder sweat slicking our skin and dripping down our naked bodies.

I wrapped my free hand around my beautiful lover's throat tightly and tilted his head back to mine. I pried his lips open and sunk my tongue deep into his mouth as I sunk my prosthetic dick in his ass. Our conquest continued whimpering. I smacked her ass with a sharp open hand and the sound rang about the room.

"If you keep whimpering, I'm going to have to put something in your mouth." I hissed at her. She whimpered louder as my lover rammed his cock deeply into her again and again.

I slipped my strap-on out of my lover's beautiful ass slowly biting his neck as I did so. He sighed in contentment. I re-positioned myself in front of the conquest's face, my rubber cock pointing to her throat.

"I told you you need something in your noisy little mouth." I grabbed her throat clutching hard, choking her and eased the cock past her lips slowly penetrating past her teeth, and then tongue and finally throat. She gagged and swallowed like an expert. I thrust my hips towards her mouth, my cock ramming the back of her throat. My lover kept pace in her ass. I locked eyes with him as we both leaned over the conquest to kiss deeply fucking her from both ends. I leaned back, pulled my dick out of her mouth and slapped her sharply across the cheek. I put the cock back in her waiting mouth and continued to pump.

My lover sighed, "I'm going to cum."
"Do it." I replied.

My lover thrust harder and harder, faster and faster to frenzied pitch, the conquest gagging hard on my rubber cock. She shuddered and moaned around my false member. I pulled out of her mouth, forced her head into the mattress and kissed my lover deeply as he thrust as hard as he could into her ass. He gripped her hips, I gripped his neck as he shuddered hard and moaned out loudly cumming deep inside her tight little hole. I reached down slowly easing his large cock out of her well-ridden backside. I kissed him again.

I pushed the pretty conquest on her side as she shuddered and moaned dripping in sweat and bodily fluids. I untied her hands and smacked her ass one more time.

I grabbed a handful of her hair holding her face close to mine. "Get dressed and leave. We are done with you." I sighed. We watched as she dressed and walked out slightly bow-legged. I smiled at the thought of her sore, bruised ass haunting her every time she sat down for the next couple of days. I hoped she'd get wet every time she did.

I removed my strap-on and curled against my waiting beautiful lover's side. He slipped his fingers down between my legs skittering over my clitoris and dipping deep into my pussy.

I smiled staring deeply into his deliciously sex-drunk eyes, "Now then... what should we do next?"

Gravity

You are such a pretty little black hole.

Nihilist

You seem like a terrible person. I bet we could have some fantastically violent hate sex.

The Sons and Daughters of Bad Men: A Memoir

A simple post on Facebook about the silly way my father taught me to ride a bike led to several stories of abuse and parental terror and I realize just how many of my friends grew up in violent households.

It makes me think about the perfect storm I lived in the middle of that should have led to an abusive household and didn't. It makes me think just how lucky I was.

The Storm:

My mother's father was a violent alcoholic who beat the shit out of my grandmother regularly. My grandmother developed agoraphobia and a drinking problem of her own to deal with it. My mom told me she was about 6 years old and thought everybody's family was like that. Everybody's dad must get drunk and angry and everybody's mother must never leave the house. She didn't know anything else.

My grandmother quietly told me the story of how she spent a night standing over my grandfather with a knife in her hand. He had beaten her again and had recently taken to beating the children. He was passed out stone drunk. She thought long and hard about slitting his throat from ear to ear. She told me the only thing that stopped her was the thought of leaving her children with no mother. She threw him out the next day and listened to him bang on the door to get back in.

He died several years ago from a brain tumor caused by a lifetime of hard drinking. I never met him.

My father was an undiagnosed schizophrenic who had a serious drug problem. My mother was 15 living on the streets of a small city when she met him. She has always told me she wanted to live on the streets. That it was different back then than it is now. But I don't think that's the whole story. My grandmother says my father was just really screwed up from too many psychedelic drugs.

She told me the story of him climbing in the window in the middle of the night where ever it was my mom was living at the time. I think Mom was pregnant with me. He scarred the bejezus out of my grandmother. He had been in the hospital all day because he had tried to kill himself again. He cried telling my grandmother that all he ever did was fuck everything up.

My great aunt said when my mother and him visited her she wasn't comfortable sleeping in the same house as him. My mom says he was completely off the rails. My uncle (his brother) whom I only met a few times told me that my father was spiraling out of control for a long time, was constantly seeking out violent situations, ended up in jail where he contracted HIV and died when I was 8 years old. He didn't raise me. My mother extracted him from her life before I was even a year old and before my brother was born. Someone had seen him leaving a bar with a hooker and that was finally enough for her. I never met my father.

My uncle came to a birthday party I had once. I think I was turning 22/23. He came and met my friends and my brother and had a great time. He gave a friend a ride home at the end of the night. I heard back from her later that he said he was amazed how well my brother and I had turned out because our father wasn't the greatest person.

My Mom had me when she was 17. She had my brother when she was 18 and my youngest brother when she was 20. She was so very young. I was raised by my step-father. I consider my step-father my Dad. I think I was barely a year old and my brother had just been born when my parents met. Dad was 19 at the time. The story goes that he drunkenly stumbled into my Mom's house with a friend looking for my Mom's brother who was living with her at the time. Probably to buy weed or something. They sat down and had a beer together. It was later decided that my dad would move in when his car broke down in the yard and he couldn't go home. Shortly after that my mother was pregnant with her third child.

I remember no other father. I don't remember who told me or when that my step-dad wasn't my real father but I always just knew. It just wasn't a deep dark family secret. It didn't seem to matter. My father raised me and my brothers like we were all his kids. He treated us all the same. He was just 'Dad' and nothing else.

Like my mother, my step-father was raised in a violent household. His father beat the tar out of him on a regular basis. We used to catch shit for rocking back on our chairs at the dinner table so they were on two legs. Dad told us stories of how his father would backhand him off the chair if he did the same. My mother said it was a fucked up household he grew up in. His parents had three kids and only seemed to want the one daughter. She was treated like a princess. The other daughter, whom most likely had minor down syndrome, was ignored and Dad got shit-kicked regularly. I remember my dad telling me once that he hated his mother most of all even though she never laid a hand on him because she stood by and let it happen never once trying to stop it.

And there it is. The perfect storm of abuse and trauma. Two parents raised in violent situations. Two very young parents not ready to have three kids. One parent not even my biological parent. My real father by all accounts dangerous and violent. Us kids growing up poor in a small town. These are usually the ingredients for a tragic childhood...

And yet...

I was lucky. My step-father was never violent and we were always pretty close. My mother was never violent even though it must have been hard to raise three kids at that age. I know we didn't always make things easy. We got into trouble, we made terrible messes, we screamed and fought, we broke things, we ran wild some days, we made her want to tear her hair out but still... things were okay.

I mean, we were still poor. Dad spent winters away working in the logging camps. It was hard to make ends meet. My parents fought and screamed sometimes. They even broke up for a few months when I was young and Dad lived in a shack on the edge of town for awhile. We got spankings when we were bad but never bruises. Dad was even most likely bi-polar (as my youngest brother, his biological child, was recently diagnosed with) and his moods could shift dramatically. He could go from manically happy and giddy to grumpy in no time but it was never a violent, angry swing. It was more like living with a big, grumbly, grumpy bear that you didn't want to poke because he'd grumble some more. And then he'd be all giddy again and singing the Smurf theme song in the kitchen.

My Mom and Dad split for good when I entered my first year of university. I still talk to my Dad and I'm very close with my Mom. Dad hit the bottle for a few years after the split but seems to be doing better now. Even drunk he was never scary or violent (he rarely drank when we were kids. Mom didn't like alcohol in the house because of her own drunken father). Last year Dad had a girlfriend that he seemed to be really fond of die suddenly and unexpectedly. It was a sad and tearful phone call that day. I don't see him much as he lives far away but I still think he was a pretty good Dad. I should probably go visit him.

My childhood wasn't always easy. There were hard times. There were good times. There were bad times. But there was never violence. And for that I am eternally grateful to my parents.

Fucked

I'm standing in the shower drinking a bourbon and coke letting the hot water slide over my sore muscles. Last night I smoked opium in the nude above the alleyway and wrote poetry late into the night. One of my favorite futile pursuits. Tonight I'm making love to Jim Beam thinking about long hair wrapped around my hand. My back straining against the mattress. The walls shaking and my thighs shuttering. I'm thinking about digging my fingers into the soft flesh about the throat. Sinking my teeth into that soft spot between the shoulder and neck. Tender and inviting. I'm thinking about sighs in my ears. I'm thinking did I get everything I came for?

"Jim," I say, "Who do you love?"

Silence and the pitter patter of water against the tile are my only answer. Ice clinks in the glass as I raise it to my lips. I drain the last sweet drops down my throat tonguing the rim of the glass like a lover's mouth, ice clicking against my teeth. The amber fluid warms my throat, sinks into my stomach and spreads to my limbs. I feel leaden like sinking under water. My minds swims for the surface, breaks and slips back down under the softness of the liquor. We've been down here a lot lately. It's starting to feel like home.

"They're thinking about me right now, you know Jim." I sigh, "They're thinking about my big tits.  They're thinking about fucking me. I can feel them. I can feel them like tendrils in my mind. I can feel them thinking, and sighing, and muttering, and deciding. I can feel the ghosts of their hands on me. I can feel all of them. Each and every one. Every. Last. Fucking. One."

I raise my hand to throw the now empty glass against the shower tiles. It shatters into a thousand sparkling shards slipping past my naked feet down the drain. My blood starts to flow red against the glass and water. A thousand little sparkling bloody cuts. The blood and glass swirl mesmerizing me as my mind slips down the drain after all that hot water. My mind is going to sea in a river of sewage. We are bleeding for nothing.

"Fuck," I mutter to the steam rising off my skin, "now I have to get another drink."

Ennui

He said, "You have to have goals. Always be moving forward. Good things only come if you want them. You have to want them, visualize and move towards the things you want. I want to be happy. I strive to be happy."
I stared at my hands, "Good luck with that."
He frowned, "Well, what do you strive for?"
I raised my eyes to the ceiling and sighed, "Stasis."

Everything Will Be Okay

Okay, so the dog was gone but not really gone. She was sitting on the shelf. In a black urn. On the red bookcase. In my mother's new home. We all missed her. Fourteen years is too short but a good long time for a dog like her. Such a good girl; such a good life. My mother said it felt wrong not having her there. She felt better when the urn was placed upon the shelf so she could talk to her every morning as she had done for fourteen years.

When my mother dies, I will bury that urn with her.

The thickly wooded hills are covered in snow. Beautiful, cold and still as only a deep Northern winter can be. Under a big pile of my grandmother's quilts my mother and I catch up on our news. We gossip and debate and laugh and dissect the social happening of family and world. The icicles hang heavy on the eaves. The night has a million stars. Christmas lights twinkle on every lawn in town. In this small place, we drive around for ten minutes after dark and see them all. This tiny town where I grew up in the golden fields and pine forests. Where everything closes by 10 o'clock and big trucks rumble by on the highway.

In the city it rains all the time. There is no snow. It is warm but damp. I always feel wet. Mildew grows everywhere and you can barely make out the stars. I briefly entertain the idea of living back in the country but quickly wonder what the fuck I would do with myself if I did?

I don't sleep as much as I should but I cook. I make a mess out of my mother's kitchen and she grumbles as she cleans up behind me. My grandmother is getting old. My mother is cobbling together her new home with bits and ends she finds. Making a new life with no money once again. My brothers are being... well, my brothers. And I'm trying to get my stupid life to work in some sort of fashion. I give it a good kick and hope it will start better in the new year.

I touch the urn on the red book shelf and watch everything change around me. We go on and trust that somehow everything will be okay.

Nearly There

I only fuck men who are emotionally ambivalent about me.