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 

 

Are We Going to Play Bingo?

 

Bingo, are we going to play bingo tonight? We’re going to be late, Henry.

Yeah, OK baby, 

if we’re going let’s go pendejo.

I need to take a dump first, 

how long will that take? 

I'll tell you when I'm on the pot,

hurry up then.

Lucia, Henry’s Cuban wife wanted to get to Key West Christian Church with time to spare to joke and drink coffee with her Latino friends.

Henry, who's compulsive at times, liked to sit at the same table every week, the same table he and Lucia had sat at for months now.

Last Friday night, he’d won a hundred dollar jackpot and had told Lucia afterward, 

I’ve been looking for another vice and now I’m hooked forever.

After he finishes the essentials on the throne, the couple locks the house and lets the Chi's, Che, and Mia, outside to run free in the fenced-in yard. 

In ten minutes they reach the church, parking their Vespa in the lot. And as you might guess, they're late.

Inside the recreation hall, they walk to a long table where hundreds of bingo cards are piled, choosing the cards they wanted, hopefully, the winning cards.

Then they sit at their lucky table and scoop a handful of white beans from a bowl, waiting for the game to get underway. 

Helena Humper, a stately, white-haired Latino church lady, commences turning her basket of numbered poker chips and begins calling numbers. Henry says to Lucia, 

I feel like something’s going to happen tonight, you wait and see, we’re going to hit jackpots all night long, we’re going to break the bank. She says, 

I don’t feel lucky, querido, your overtime caga is going to jinx me.

I’ll split my winnings with you baby, don't worry.

By the end of the night, neither of them had won a hand.

It's 11 PM, they’re riding the Vespa through Bahama Village, Henry’s driving in circles because he can’t get the bingo numbers out of his head— B 1, G 29, N 33.

A pit bull, running on the street dragging a chain leaps at the couple and rips a chunk out of the scooter seat, then falling to the asphalt. 

Undeterred, the pit pull gets up and runs at them again, this time Lucia pokes him in the ribs with the stiletto heel of her shoe, yelping the interloper runs home. 

The following morning the love couple's luxuriating in the hot tub and drinking Mexican coffee as Lucia says, 

bebe, we shouldn’t have left the house last night, your protracted caga made us late for bingo, we lost every hand, then on the way home, we were attacked by ese perro loco. 

Lucia, no one can foretell the future, life’s a crapshoot. She fires back,

Nostradamus predicted the death of Princess Diana and 911. 

Nostradamus? He’s abnormal. I’m talking about ordinary people. If people could predict the future Las Vegas casinos would go bust.

OK, you win, burro. 

Hey, we’re bullshiting in the hot tub, there's no winner or loser— it’s not the fucking National Forensic League. 

What were we talking about, Henry? 

I can’t remember.

Lucia's eyes are full of sweat so she lifts one fleshy butt cheek and then the other out of the hot tub, grabbing the closest towel and wiping her eyes. Henry who’s manning it out in the tub says,  

watching you get out of the hot tub, cheeks spread, was a moment that lasted an infinity.

love the honey mouth, bebe.

 

He remembers one morning, she had on a dressing gown and bent over to get some coffee out of a low cupboard and her breasts fell out and she continues to go about her business like nothing happened. She was drop-dead gorgeous and she knew it. 

Henry didn't have a great ass, but he could write like a motha-fucker. 

After a cold shower and a quick breakfast, he goes to his study to write. He’s going to do a bit on what Charles Bukowski called, The Frozen Man Stance. In Buk’s own words,  

it's an immobility, a weakness of movement, an increasing lack of care and wonder.

All men are afflicted with The Frozen Man Stance at times as indicated by flat phrases such as, 

I can’t go on, 

To hell with it, 

or, 

I’ve had enough. 

Usually, they quickly recover and are punching the time clock the next day.

Bukowski spoke of a European friend for whom The Frozen Man Stance lingered for months. So, he consulted, doctors, shrinks, and medicine men throughout Europe and none of them helped.  

One of the doctors treated him with worms, another stuck tiny needles in his neck and back, dozens of them. Then another prescribed a series of alternating hot and cold baths.

Finally, the poor chap, Buk’s pal, was staying in bed for days in a small dirty London room, living on the kindness of others, staring at the ceiling, unable to write or utter a word, not caring. 

In further explaining The Frozen Man Stance, Bukowski refers to his childhood. In his own words, 

I could and can well understand my friend the poet’s flop in a barrel of shit, for strangely, as long as I can remember, I was born into The Frozen Man Stance. One of the instances that I can recall is once when my father, a cowardly vicious brute of a man, was beating me in the bathroom with his long leather strap. He beat me quite regularly. 

I could not understand why he beat me. He would search very hard for a reason. I had cut his grass once a week, once lengthwise, then crosswise, then trimming the edges with shears, and if I missed one blade of grass anywhere on the front or back lawns he beat the living shit-hell out of me. 

It was just the first appearance of The Frozen boy. I knew there was something wrong with me but I did not consider myself insane. 

Henry concludes his story on The Frozen Man Stance noting that the condition is either temporary, permanent, genetic or learned.

Bukowski’s The Frozen Man Stance is more commonly known as depression, a disease that brushes aside sex, geography, and economic status. 

Lucia walks into Henry’s study and asks, 

what ya doin, burro? 

Finishing a story,

she places her hand on his head and says, 

you feel cold bebe,  

then she wraps a blanket around him and hugs him tight saying, 

tu mama will warm you up. 

As she hugs him Henry realizes the best things in life have little to do with the brain box and everything to do with heart and soul.