If You're Christian, Don't Read This.

 

Henry and Lucia are giving up pork for Lent. Some things are in play here—

A few days ago while driving their station wagon on Stock Key, they noticed a passing truckload of pigs heading to slaughter up north somewhere, Louisiana maybe, where Cajuns are broke mouth for barbecue. 

The hogs in the back of the rig look rundown, beaten, and sad. Lucia sobs uncontrollable, Henry pulls the car off the highway, parking it, they look at each other, vowing to never eat the doomed creatures again, for a few reasons—

Pigs are more clever than dogs. 

Bacon is never fully digested, it turns black and sits in your gut for an eternity.

And finally,

When a person goes pork-less for a year a pig is spared.

As for Lent and Jesus, the atheist couple reckoned Jesus was an unorthodox thinker and a victim.  

He spent his missing years— the years between his childhood and the beginning of his ministry— studying Buddhism in India, and at thirty He returned to the Middle East where He roamed the sacred red planet known as the Sinai. 

During this period Jesus was a desert hobo— barefoot, naked, sweating flowers, his soul inflamed, leaping over hills, landing in no-mans-land on Mount Qurantania, colliding with Satan, face to face with Satan wearing his newly tailored Horned Piper snake suit, looking like a Hope Diamond, as big as the Gods, letting Jesus pass, bored by the rube.

Forty days and forty nights in the Sinai desert, Jesus’s halcyon days, the genesis of The New Testament—the greatest show on earth, the passion play, a hard-edged period for the young God. 

Sadly, He didn’t have a chance, in the end, as the story goes, Jesus was duped by the Gods and strung up by Dago Legionnaires. 

For the last 2000 years, Jesus has been hawked like Motorhead T-Shirts in the back lot of a Detroit arena by the high economist of the Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Assembly of God conglomerates for control, ego, and bling.  

Later, Henry and Lucia are in the kitchen, she’s frying turkey bacon, and eggs in an iron skillet next to a freshly boiled pot of black beans and rice, a favorite in Cuban where she grew up. Henry asks, 

darling, are Cubans religious?

After El Revolución del 26, Julio, Castro declared Cuba an atheist state. Fidel’s brother Raul was a Jesuit schoolboy who later talked of going back to the church, but wouldn’t dare mention it as long as his brother’s alive. Cubanos are free to practice religion, as long as they keep a lid on it. 

They can only pray underground? That’s not freedom. Are there Satanists in Cuba?

No sé Henry, you think I’m the World Book? 

Yes, The Cubano World Book,

Sí querido, there are Santeria cults in Havana, it's voodoo, not devil worship. They sacrifice chickens and small animals, burn incense, dance around campfires. Fidel threw most of them in the hole because Raul the altar boy was offended by the infidels.

Lucia, let’s go to the grotto at Saint Mary Star of the Sea and smoke ganja. The spots venerated baby.

Buena bebe, we’ll dress in black, like in clerecía.

After showering the love couple oils their waist-length hair with patchouli oil, braiding it Cherokee style. 

They lock the front door of the bungalow, then hop on their Vespa scooter, riding directly to Saint Mary Star of the Sea, parking on the lawn.

The church is made of rough-cut black rock and has a copper Celtic cross on the steeple— it was built in the thirties but looks hundreds of years old.

The couple bypasses the church, entering the grotto in the back where there’s a shoddy rock and cement structure that houses a shinny ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary—  overgrown red poinsettia bushes engulf the shrine. 

They sit on the manicured lawn, lighting a joint and puffing on it— the wind rustles, and the bushes swirl, reaching out to them. 

A powerful feeling of religiosity engulfs them. Then as the sky turns purple and the sun sways— the face of La Madre Virgen liquifies and she says in Latin, 

Henricus et Lucia omnia tua dant Deo

Henry and Lucia give your all to God

The air turns cold as the grotto is swallowed in blue smoke.

They look at one another and Lucia asks,

what happened querido?

That was either a hallucination or a religious experience, depending on how you look at it.

Was it real Henry? 

If you believe in God it’s real, but for nonbelievers, it’s an illusion, like an LSD trip. 

On the way home, they park the Vespa in the lot of The Moon Dog Cafe, across from Dog Beach, needing a drink after savoring the words drop-shipped in their laps by the Virgin Mary at the grotto of Saint Mary Star of the Sea Church.

The Moon Dog Cafe is an eclectic place where odds and ends are strung from wall to wall— fishing rods, surfboards, teddy bears, bras, you name it. 

The born-again lovers sit at the bar, ordering clam fritters, broiled grouper, coleslaw, corn on the cob, and a pitcher of Bucanero Draft dosed with Clamato— honoring their Lent commitment and not ordering pig ribs.

Lucia pours the red beer into mugs which they lift towards the sky, toasting all things religious, taking big swigs. Henry comments, 

the first mouthful is always the best.

Salud querido, I love you.

The bartender, an Israeli named Yoshi, sets the bar top with plates, tableware, and clothe napkins, then serves lunch.

As they’re eating, Henry points towards a shadowy figure at the end of the bar, someone who looks like he wants to be left alone, who's wearing a broad hat, black jeans, and a muscle T exposing his thin white arms. Lucia says, 

he’s a rock star, querido, 

yeah, it’s Keith Richards darling.

A few minutes later Keef walks towards them, sitting by them as Lucia says, 

you look hungry, bebe

she orders more plates of food and Keith says in his famous raspy voice, 

cheers, thanks, I don’t eat unless my old lady orders it, there’s no time when we’re touring. 

I’m Henry and she’s Lucia, 

Yoshi places an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels on the bar for Keith, gratis, and he says, grabbing the fifth, 

let’s get outta here, 

Henry places a hundred-dollar bill on the bar to cover what they ate and what's left behind. They follow Keith to a waiting limousine, things outside feel surreal.

In the back of the limo, Keith says, 

can I crash at your place for a few hours?  

Minutes later the limo's parked in front of the couple's bungalow.

Inside, Lucia pours drinks, Jack with coke, Keef passes out on the living room sofa, sleeping through the night till noon the following day, when Lucia makes him fried eggs, french fries, turkey bacon, and coffee. 

After breakfast, the legend grins, handing the couple a handful of backstage passes for the evenings' concert saying,

don't miss it, I might be dead next time around, fuck the naysayers!

Then Keef pads his chest with both hands, raising them towards the Heavens as he walks outside, walking his renowned unbalanced walk, staggering and getting into his limo which goes north on The Overseas Highway to Miami, where The Rolling Stones will play tonight at the Miami Orange Bowl.

It Was a Noteworthy Day

It’s a lie, how could anyone believe such a thing? 

Henry loves his Cuban wife, Lucia, he wants to take her in his arms and hold her. He wonders why she’s upset.

You must believe me, Henry, it may sound stupid, but, I’m telling the truth.

He looks out the kitchen window at the palm branches swaying in the morning wind, wondering what the drama is about and thinking, 

she’s Latin, when she’s upset she's has a problem expressing herself.

The lovers are sitting at the kitchen table, she lights a joint and takes a deep drag, forgetting about the liar, whoever he is, and saying,

querida, you burned la tostada, make some more. I finished Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude last night, I adore him, his stuff feeds the Latino soul, it's butterflies rising from mud and flying to the moon.

Yeah, he’s cosmic, baby, I know you love him.

Estas celosa bebe?

No, I’m not jealous, Gaby Marquez is dead, he's dust.

Henry, you’re jealous because you’ll never write like him, and his mind is beautiful and yours is muck. 

Lucia, is it rag week? Look, I write like me, OK?

I want to kill you, Henry, you make me crazy, tonight when you sleep I’m going snuff you out with a pillow. 

Let me tell ya, croaking beats dealing with you when it’s your monthly. If somethin’s eatin you doll I'll call Skank the shrink.

They shower, dress, braid each other's long hair, then make the short trip to the Skank’s office on their Vespa, parking it in the Sunset Mall lot— a conglomerate of pink cement modules connected by blue tile walkways.   

After walking past Radio Shack, and Sears, Lucia ducks her head inside her girlfriend’s salon saying, 

Chica, back in a few, vamos a hablar Skank the shrink. 

Inside Skank’s office, they go to the reception desk, where Henry asks, 

how much is a session with Skank? 

A middle-aged nurse whose face is deeply lined scowls as she answers,

160 dollars for sixty minutes, 

how bout a half hour for 80 beans?

Sir, our office is a member in good standing of the American Psychiatric Association, we don’t bargain.

OK then, an hour for my wife, Lucia, it’s somewhat urgent, but I wouldn't call it an emergency. 

Sir, if your wife’s situation is urgent I’ll call 911.

Call me Henry, so how long is the queue?

two hours sir,

two hours? Jesus, we’ll go have a drink then.

That's none of my business.

Whataya mean you old goat? You're Skank's nurse, ain't ya? Lucia pulls his arm and says, 

querido común.

The couple makes a b-line for Chica’s Beauty Salon, going inside where Lucia collapses in the parlor chair.

Oh mi Chica, that bitch at Skanks office is crazy. Henry laughs saying, 

when Nurse Ratched finishes jacking the patients up, Skank the shrink makes em whole again.

Chica brings them a beer and goes to work on Lucia's long curly hair, spraying it with water and shaving the split ends off her curls with a razor. 

Then the Cubano stylist leads Lucia to the shampoo station, where she washes and conditions her friend's hair.

As she’s being shampooed Lucia unconsciously spreads her long legs, exposing her thick black bush. Chica laughs saying, 

darling your cono es maravillosa, like a jungle bush.

She draws a mesh curtain on a circular track around Lucia, leaving and returning with a stand-up tray that has warm wax and strips of cloth on it. 

Then swabbing Lucia’s pussy with alcohol, cleaning her clitoris and vagina, slowly drying the sensitive area with a soft hand towel, arousing Lucia.

She applies tepid and gooey wax to Lucia’s bush that she’s trimmed down with scissors. Finally, placing strips of cloth on the pubic hair, letting them settle, and jerking them off.

The pain of waxing is akin to ripping a bandaid off sensitive skin— Lucia doesn't feel anything because she and Henry are three sheets to the wind.

When the beauty treatment's finished, the couple drinks with Chica till sunset, walking to the parking lot and getting on their Vespa.

They pull out of Sunset Mall— driving northwest on the Key’s Overseas Highway instead of driving home, pulled by something unknown to them.

Twenty minutes later they’re at Saddleback Key disoriented and driving in circles. 

Eventually, they stop and get off their scooter in an open field lit by a Waning Gibbous moon. Henry says, 

It’s fun bein lost ain’t it babe? This island’s witchy.

I wanna go home and go to bed, pollino.

OK, give me a second to suck in more green microbes. 

Green microbes? Are you loco, Henry? 

They’re in the sea air, they’re sobering, revitalizing.

A dark form moves out of a shadow, approaching them and saying, 

I’m Dom the Jew, I live in a Gypsy commune on Raccoon Key. I was night fishing and got lost so I rowed ashore. 

Everything about Dom the Jew is black, his curly hair, beard, overalls, and T. Henry smiles and says, 

you’re on Saddleback Key, Dom, can we help you?  

I'm OK, I’ll row home when the sun comes up. Let me reward your kind understanding. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a polished crystal, raising it to the moon, holding it there as shards of rainbow-colored moonlight flood the field. 

Henry and Lucia begin to feel a happiness that is impossible under ordinary circumstances. They feel sheer harmony leading to bliss.

Then, they’re engulfed in a balloon-like white aura that expands, and implodes, uncovering a field of fine white dust, a purely energetic state yogis call Sahasrara— a wholly other dimension of reality. 

The couple experiences an aha moment as they realize a pearl of wisdom has been thrown their way by the Gypsy boy.   

The out-of-body experience ends as quickly as it began and Dom the Jew is nowhere to be seen— most likely he was never there.

In a whisp, Henry and Lucia are cruising the Key’s Overseas Highway, wailing Walt Whitman’s Songs of Joy to the night sky.

O the joy of spirit— when it's uncaged— it darts like lightning!

A Quasi-Subterranean Stream

 

Lu Lu, Henry’s Cuban wife made him happy, he depended on her to deal with the people he didn't like.

The couple wakes early at nine. While sitting at the breakfast table Henry does a quick sketch of Lu Lu, showing it to her, 

dios mios, bebe, I’m all tits and ass, 

It’s a caricature, you know, exaggerating what's obvious,  

So, when you look at me, you only see tetas y culo? 

I feel the energies of the Gods and Things falling from the sky, passing through you at the speed of light embracing me. 

Sure, Henry talk big, you're no Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I adore him, he's an artista  versed in the words of love. 

You love Marquez because he's Latin and writes in your language. If you love him so much fly to Columbia, light candles and burn incenses on his bones,

Estás celoso cariño? 

No, not jealous, I just don't like you talking shit about my work.

Henry gets up from the table and walks to his study where he to cowers over his typewriter, feeling the breeze from an open window, breathing it in his nose and exhaling from his mouth, shutting down monkey the monkey who lives in your head. 

I had an affair, not long enough, with a Woman I met on Isla La Roqueta Beach in Mexico, we had a wild time,  smoking reefer, eating and fucking. 

Henry thumbs through some paperbacks on his desk— Hemingway, Durrell, Miller, Marquez turning on his Grundig radio, listening to Copland's 5th Symphony, typing a few paragraphs. 

Only one great writer surfaces every five hundred years, and I’m not the one, writing nonetheless

I hang Shitzman Fly Paper on the terrace, sitting there and typing.

Lu Lu walks into Henry’s study dressing him down, 

busting his cojones talking to himself for talking to himself out loud, he tells, 

Let's go have lunch and a drink at the Tahiti Club?

About 2, they come home loaded and try to fuck but can't.

So, I go to work on a The John Cheever Story, my love, 

lo tienes, bebé.

John William Cheever was an American short story writer known for his rapier-like view of the middle class. His attention to detail, hypervigilant writing, and creative power was on fire.  

He was born on May 27, 1912, in Quincy, Massachusetts. His father Fredrick owned a shoe factory, losing it in the Great Depression, his mother Mary Lilly owned a gift shop.

Cheever was sent to Thayer Academy, a prep school in Milton, Massachusetts. As a seventeen-year-old Harvard-bound senior he arranged his own expulsion, spending his time at bars in downtown Milton, and writing at home.  

John struggled with alcoholism throughout his life and wrote about the disease in his stories about suburbanites who drink too much.

In the mid-1930s, John lived in a bleak boarding house in Greenwich Village, he taught English composition at City College

In 1943 he married Mary Wintergatz that same year publishing his first book of short stories, The Way People Live, mirroring his lifelong subject— the ways of suburban dwellers. 

Then in 1947, The New Yorker published his story, The Enormous Radio, it got raves from reviewers.

Each story eclipsed the last. Then in 1951, Cheever was made a Guggenheim Fellow.

By 1964, he was on the cover of Time Magazine, a world-renowned author. 

Later the same year his story The Swimmer was adapted for Hollywood, starring Burt Lancaster.

Ned Merrill, who sees himself as a legendary figure, is sitting in his at home with a glass of gin in his hand, deciding by coin flip to swim home via hitting every neighbor's pool for a swim. a route Cheever might label as, 

a quasi-subterranean swim through curved streams and neighborhood pools. 

As Ned’s journey begins his mood is buoyant and in Cheever's words he's, 

sucking in the powerful eroticism of travel, traveling with a hard-on, tapping into Universal Love. 

Ned moves smoothly like a decathlon runner, snake-like, on Slip and Slides, through lawns, running and jumping bushes to the next neighbor's pools

Like conquering king he's on the booze circuit, Ned's offered drinks along the, he sucks them down.

Then, as thunder roars and rain pours Ned takes cover under a neighbor's patio where he notices a red maple stripped of its leaves by the force of the storm and the sign of autumn makes him feel glum, causing his sense of self to waver.

Somewhere around the halfway point of his journey, he crosses a busy road and is jeered at and a can of beer is thrown at him.

In the end, Cheevers's greatest short story leaves you hanging, wondering if Ned made it home. 

Of course, the masterpiece transcends the swimmer's safari through the suburban backyards and is more of a journey into one man’s heart of darkness. In Cheever’s words,

it’s the telling of lies, a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life.

Lucia looks over Henry’s shoulder and says, 

what ya doin bebe? 

I'm finishing a bit on John Cheever’s The Swimmer. Whataya say we go for a swim at Sunset Pool?

Let's Go Freak

 

Henry's stuck on the opening paragraph feeling like his words are beached in his craw.

Lu Lu, his Cuban wife walks into his study with a drink in her hand asking sincerly,  

darling, am I good at sex?

Oh my God, yes, your sister, the nurse, teaching you to give blow jobs wrapping your lips around your teeth was is brilliant.

Really how nice, I’m going to take a bath.

She walks into the bedroom and slips out of her dress, naked in the bathroom she opens the hot spigot and pours a few capfuls of lavender oil into the rising water. 

Laying with her legs up and outstretched on the edges of the tub she lights a joint, puffs awhile then looks at her skin thinking, 

my skin glistens when it’s wet; it looks absolutely perfect, but if I stay in the tub much longer, it'll get wrinkly, and I'll look old. 

As the bath water becomes cold, she stands, grabbing a large white towel, wrapping herself in it. Still feeling cold she thinks, 

bathing feels good at first but when the water cools you want out of the tub. It goes from good to bad quickly. I love hot tubs they never cool.

She stands in front of a full-length mirror in the bedroom, letting her towel slip to the floor, looking at herself, and admiring her body.  

She has natural round breasts that flop up and down when she runs. Her nipples are large, the size of thimbles. 

Her legs are shapely, not muscular. Her feet are rectangular, well arched, and her toes are straight.

She shakes her head from side to side— droplets of water spritz off her long dark hair. She puckers her lips into a heart shape. 

She picks her cotton towel off the floor wraps up, walks to Henry’s study, feeling bored, deciding to take the piss out of him saying,  

Bebe, is it true you're happiest alone except when you want to fuck me? Darling writers are so precious, precious, they can’t stand people, humanity sucks, right? He answers, 

I really haven't felt like talking about it, but I have writer's block,

Lu Lu walks to his desk, bends over, unzips Henry's trousers sucking his cock, wet, wild, nasty, with her lips wrapped around her teeth. He cums in her mouth and she spits it out. 

Composed, Henry lights a joint, puts a sheet of paper in his typewriter, and types madly. So much for writer's block. Smiling broadly, he says, 

I’m a bleeding supernatural phenom. 

You’re schizoid Henry, you need help. Should I call Doctor Heckler? 

 just leave, I need to be alone,

Fuck off, Henry. 

He works on a bit about the Hunter S. Thompson slash Keith Richards conclave.

If there was one man equipped, mentally, physically, and chemically to knock about with the Rolling Stones guitarist it was Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

The interview took place in March 1993 at the Ritz Carleton in Aspen but was originally scheduled to take place in MTV’s studio in New York. The plan was scuttled when the good doctor came down with the flu, so the people behind the interview lured Keef out to Colorado. 

When Hunter shows at the Ritz Carlton he’s mobbed by a group of ski bunnies holding out soiled napkins and wanting autographs.

He tells them to fuck off.

So much for the sophomoric star-fuckers, Hunter rides the elevator to Richard's suite on the top floor overlooking the Buttermilk Mountains. 

With a megaphone in hand, Hunter bangs on the door, Keith opens it, greeting him with something equally weird, a Tasar.  

Off to a raucous start, what else would you expect from the genus locos? Hunter, a rock n roll fanatic, listened to rock n roll continually working in his office at the Eagles Nest. 

The doctor kicks off the interview into unchartered territory with freakish questions like;

what will  J. Edgar Hoover's reincarnation be? Kieth says,  

a  bloody slug, 

Hunter replies, 

that’s too good for him, he's a rare breed of unremarkable fart. 

Then the conversation slash interview moves to the Beatles and Richards admits,

honestly, back then, there was little difference between the Beatles and ourselves. Without them there would be no Stones, if they hadn’t kicked down the door for us there wouldn’t have been a way through the door. John was the strong one though, I have to take my hat off to him. 

where were you on Christmas Eve in 1962? Chuckling  raspy voicedf Keith says, 

oh haha aha, funny you bring that up mate, it was snowing cocaine at Bryan’s mansion, Cotchford Farm. 

Hunter mentions Altamont in 69, at the Altamont Speedway,  meth-dosed-hot-to-trot Hells Angels go ballistic on concertgoers who are drunk and on bad acid. 

Richards acknowledged the gravity of the fatal event, adding some humor though and saying, 

Yeah, one person died at the hands of the Angels who were running security, one baby was born too, the same amount of people left as came.

The not very candid- would you say candid? Interview, I don't know.  

It was more than a brief meeting of friends. 

They had things in common; both drank, smoked cigarettes, and snorted cocaine.  

Thompson ends the interview, 

Wooden Creek Tavern is a must-stop for us,  for a drink? The Juke Box's bodacious