Drunker than Mud

Humans like their drink.

They like it a lot.

But not as much as polar bears.

They love a cold beer or forty in the summer time.

Public Knowledge

Several years ago the beach resort of Pattaya announced plans to place public urinals along the Beach Road to better serve the nearly five million tourists expected that high season. Most sunbathers piss in the sea and beer drinkers relieved themselves in the bars along the busy road. Everyone else has to hold their water until the city actually follows through the the Mayor's plans.

I bet the chances of hong-nams being financed very good, but the money will disappear before a single WC can be built.

Paris was famous for its green pissoirs. Over 1200 were in service during the 30s. These vespasiennes were replaced by more profitable pay toilets. Only one pissoir on Boulevard Arago survived the 20th Century. I haven't ever used the new ones.

Not everyone is in favor of public toilets.

Gabriel Chevallier's 1934 book CLOCHEMERLE satirized the attempts of a small village to erect a urinal next to the Catholic Church.

In the end no one is happy with the new arrangement and those in need resorted to the nocturnal tradition of pissing against the church. The novel made the town of Vaux-en-Beaujolais famous.

In 1984 New York closed its subway toilets. The bathroom were homosexual dens of iniquity known throughout the gay community as tea rooms. The city has been discussing designs for a street toilet ever since without any installations on the sidewalks. Public urination remains a crime on the police books and I have avoided citation by holding my telephone to my ears as I violated the city statute.

The most famous urinal in history in Marcel Duchamp's 1917 Fountain signed R. Mutt.

My favorite urinals are those in PJ Clarke's bar.

Big and comfortable.

Works of functional art.

For as long as the bars remain open.

So good luck Pattaya.

Until then I will pee in the sea.

20 million Europeans do the same in the Mediterranean every July morning in the South of France.

It's only natural.

God's WC

A drunk staggers into a Catholic Church, enters a confessional booth, sits down, but says nothing. The Priest coughs a few times to get his attention, but the drunk continues to sit there. Finally, the Priest pounds three times on the wall. The drunk mumbles, "Ain't no use knockin, there's no paper on this side either.

Staying In The Cage

Back in the 1970s East 10th Street between 1st and 2nd Streets was what the locals called a 'hot' street. Drugs of every kind were sold at the Blue Door. The Green Door was a brothel servicing old Puerto Ricans. Street dealers conducted their business on the sidewalk with impunity. The police were on the take. I avoided walking down that block. Shootings and rip-offs were common and threatening junkies provided an annoying gauntlet for pedestrians seeking a short-cut rather than skirt the danger zone.

My old neighborhood of Fort Greene had been equally dangerous back in 'the day', but a wholesale exodus of white professionals had transformed the area into a desirable quartier for exiles from Manhattan. Muggings and robberies were rare, but I detoureds from the block between Lafayette and Fulton same as I had East 10th Street, although this time because of a cigar store on the southside of the street.

I hate the smell of the cigars and there was something not right about the middle-aged Wasta cigarsmoker running the den of nicotine. He nodded to me on several occasions and finally I told him, "You don't know me and I don't know you. Let's act like that's the case and life will be good."

He was surprised by my aggressive rejection, however my 6th sense about good and bad remain remained keen despite my age.

One morning around 9:30 my landlord AP received a phone call about his double-parked car. His Audi station wagon was blocking the Wasta's motorcycle access to the street. AP said that he'd move the car and like a good neighbor walked down to pull out, so the Wasta could hit the street, only when he arrived at the spot, the wasta was nowhere in sight. AP beeped his horn and the wasta strutted from his house to confront AP.

"What are you doing blocking my bike?" The Wasta is a wiry 6-1 and imagined himself a tough guy.

"I'm here to do you a favor." A line of cars were double-parked awaiting the passage of the alternate side of the street enforcement at noon. "I'll move out and then go back into my space."

"You don't have any consideration for this neighborhood." The Wasta worked late at the cigar shop. Rumor has it that his work had nothing to do with cigars.

"I have plenty of consideration, otherwise I wouldn't have put my number inside the car." AP was a good family man, but he's also a New Yorker. Backing down wasn't in his make-up.

The two of them jawed without escalation and he reported the confrontation to our mutual friend, Mumbles.

"Where was your upstairs tenant?" Mumbles meant me.

"I thought it was better to leave James Steele in his cage." AP was a good friend and knew how easily my blood got hot.

Of course when AP later recounted this altercation to me, I seethed with anger, but was also glad that he had the presence of mind to keep me out of it.

"No sense in making a big deal out of it."

"Yeah."

"Better to keep me calm."

Better for all parties concerned, because at my age I can't play tough.

Playing is for kids and I liked playing with my son Fenway too much as it is.

Peace and love.

That's the new me.

ps I have nothing against cigars.

As Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Other times it's phallic nuisance.

The End of NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD by Peter Nolan Smith (unpublished)

PAGE 291

Their lovemaking lasted until midnight. They showered together and packed their bags. They didn't have much. Vanessa locked the door to her friend's bungalow. She sat in the passenger seat and Sean got behind the wheel on the Lemans. They bought coffee at a 7/11 on Ventura Boulevard. Sean restarted the engine.

"You ready to go?"

Vanessa nodded with a shrug.

There wasn't anything left for them in North North Hollywood.

After leaving LA at Pomona they headed east on I-10. Sean pulled onto I-15 at Ontario and crossed the California stateline into Arizona at dawn.

Happy World Poetry Day

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work. The poet Richard Wilbur asserted, She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century.

"My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!"

Millay died at her home on October 19, 1950. She had fallen down stairs and was found approximately eight hours after her death. Her physician reported that she had suffered a heart attack following a coronary occlusion. She was 58 years old. She is buried alongside her husband at Steepletop, Austerlitz, New York.

From Wilipedia

Rules of the Game

A decade ago the bishops of the American Catholic Church urged congressmen to vote no on the health reform bill. These churchmen had offered the issue of publicly-funded abortion as the basis of their objection. The nuns in charge of the schools and hospitals broken ranks with their male counterparts to voice support of the Obama measure. This schism has been long coming as the nuns have witnessed the widening scandal of sexual abuse of minors by priests throughout the Americas and Europe. Rome has sheltered the offenders from legal prosecution, as if fucking young boys was a holy sacrament of birth control. The sacrament of pedastry. Earl Butz, the Nixon appointee as Secrertary of Agriculture, had pointed out the Church's hypocrisy at the 1974 World Hunger Congress, when the prime promoter of King Corn had refuted the pope's objection to birth control by saying, "He no playa the game, he no maka the rules." The GOP bureaucrat apologized to Catholics, but two years later was overheard responding to singer Pat Boone's question about why the Republicans had so few blacks in their ranks. Earl Butz was quick on his feet. "I'll tell you what the coloreds want. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit." "Loose shoes?" I liked tight pussy and a warm place to shit, but my affinity for tight shoes prevented my designation as 'colored'. That and my parents being white. The public outrage over this statement ended Butz's political career. One could only have hoped that the Catholic Church's comments on the Obama health reform will lead to the total ban on this criminal man/boy love organization. "He no playa the game, he no maka the rules." Earl was not always wrong.

White Men Redux

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed the civil equality to black ex-slaves and the GOP has promised to honor their privilege, but the Republicans remain true to the immortal words of Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, who explained why the party of Lincoln was short on blacks.

“I’ll tell you what the coloreds want. It’s three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit.”

Earl Butz led into that comment by telling the following joke to White House Counsel John Dean and the singer Pat Boone on a flight from the Republican Convention.

"After a horrible forest fire, a baby duck and skunk orphan start a conversation.. all of a sudden, the duck asks the skunk what he looks like. the skunk replies “well, you have webbed feet, feathers, and a bill,…you’re a duck”…the skunk then asks the duck what he looks like,..the duck replies, “well, you’re white, you’re black, and you smell,..guess you’re a Puerto Rican”

White men were angered by Earl Butz’ forced resignation. Insulting the Pope about contraception and telling race jokes in mixed company were protected by the First Amendment or the Freedom of Speech.

Of course being white I never really hear too many white jokes, so a googled ‘fat white guy jokes'. The search came up blank, but I scored big time with ‘white man’ jokes.

Such as;

How do you stop five white guys from raping a white woman? Throw them a golf ball.
How many white girls does it take to screw in a light? None, white girls can’t screw
How many white men does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, white men will screw anything.
What do you call a bunch of white guys sitting on a bench? The NBA
What does a white man do at the club? Pout while all the colored folk are bumpin’ and grindin’ with all of his fine white bitches.
What’s the difference between a white whore and a bitch? The white whore would screw everybody in the room and the bitch would fuck everyone but you.
What’s the flattest surface to iron your jeans on? A white girl’s ass!
Why can't white men jump? They were too busy making racist jokes.
Why did white people own slaves? They were not strong enough to pick cotton – weak bastards.
And lastly what’s 12 inches long and white? Nothing.

That’s bullshit, because the proper response was, is, and will be John ‘Wadd’ Holmes, who was the champion of white cock. The blonde porn legend Seka had sworn that Wadd was the biggest in the industry. His manager had measured a fully-erect penis as 13.5 inches, although many actresses akinned his semi-erect penis to “doing it with a big, soft kind of loofah.”

Is nothing scared?

Only the GOP knows that answer.

The Loss of Caul's Vision

On March 4, 2020 after a simple breakfast David, my guide, and I left Kibo Hut on Kilimanjaro to descend to Hurumbo Hut. I turned often to eye Africa's tallest mountain rimmed by hoarfrost. Near a grouping of old volcanic rocks David said, "We can get the Internet here. Maybe even a phone home."

I tried to contect my wives in Thailand without successs and read the Guardian online, while David spoke to his family in Chagga. The Guardian reported how the Coruna Virus was scourging Wuhan, China, Italy, and Iran. The world was a much different place than the one we left eight days ago.

David finished his call and asked, "You know about Covid?"

"Just what I've been reading over the last days."

"And what do you think?" David like many of the guides and porters trusted my eye on the weather.

"That we are in for a hard time, but not today."

Pendaeli, the Park ranger, greeted my arrival at Hurumbo with a broad smile. Basketball tied us tight. He was Lakers. I was Celtics. That night at dinner he whispered, "What do you think about Covids?"

I had been born with the placenta wrapped around my head. The phenomena affected one of 87000 births and the Celts believed the Caul granted the newborn with the gift of sight of the past, present, and future, but I admitted to Pendaeli, "I see nothing."

I hadn't foreseen the death of my longtime friend Dr. Bertoni.

Nor my getting Covid in March.

Nor the closure of the City That Never Slept.

All day I heard the sirens of ambulances speeding the sick to Brooklyn Hospital.

Death and illness.

No laughing matter as the world shrunk day by day, but I hadn't been so sick thanks to my Neanderthal heritage and O blood and Charlotta's D3 treatment.

I stayed home alone.

I spoke to the walls.

They spoke back in languages I refuse to decipher, but I understood they said, "Don't go outside."

I didn't listen.

I was a man of the world trapped in the USA.

I visited Guadacanal, an old punk friend, across the Hudson and saw the wonders of Jersey City. The guitarist never left his house and communicated with his wife in Kansas City and the squirrels in his back yard. He was leaving for the fly-over in the next month.

I wished I could click my heels to be transported over Kansas to Thailand to see my children and grandchildren.

The gift of the Caul was my only power and I remained trapped in Brooklyn.

FDTrump's HQ was on Broadway.

Fatso refused to believe in the pandemic.

Thousands of people died in New York City during May.

Then the ambulances stopped coming in June.

My downstairs neighbor Brigette and I became friends.

Her BF Jacob too.

We traveled to the Catskills.

I lost three more friends.

The numbers were mounting and FDTrump offered voodoo medicine as a cure.

I hate him more and more.

No one visited his Bushwick HQ.

There was no way he would win Brooklyn in 2020.

I wandered a little farther from the 'Hood.

Maine and New Hampshire.

THE BEAUTY OF BALI by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the 90s I developed an annual routine of working seven days a week at the diamond exchange during the Christmas season. The weekly income and commission from the sales provided enough money for a 5-6 month hiatus in Asia and my yearly bonus paid for the around-the-world flight. Once Richie Boy and his father finished their January vacations, I quit 47th Street for the winter and bought a round-the-world ticket from Pan Express Travel Agency. Two weeks after January 1, 1993 I bid Richie Boy and his father good-bye for the third time in a row. Snowflakes swirled in front of our window. Richie hugged me and his gruff father offered a mean-spirited Bon Voyage. "Don’t expect your job, when you get back." Manny was serious about this warning. To him there was work and little else. "I won’t be back soon." February was dead in the Diamond District. March and April were also zombie months for diamonds, although young people got married in the summer and no one sold more wedding bands than me. "I’ll come see you." Richie Boy was a die-hard surfer. The surf of Bali was world-class. The waves in Ulu Watu broke double overhead in the winter. They were out of my league, but Richie Boy could handle the swell. "Maybe in March." "He’s going nowhere." Manny expected his son to uphold his fanatical work ethic. It was a lost cause. Richie Boy liked life. “Manny, sie gesund.” I wished him well. “You take care of yourself.” The old man got up from his desk. He paid my salary, and commissions,then and pressed a hundred dollar bill in my hand. "Have a few drinks on me." "See you in six months." I was leaving New York in the morning. The flight from NY to Bali took about 30 hours. A cab from Denpasar drove me up into the mountains. My parents had Poste Restante Ubud as my address. Ubud was a simple market town set in the verdant rice paddies. I lived in a simple house overlooking a ravine. Villagers bathed in the stream in the evening. The sun set between two distant volcanoes. The music of the Legong band warbled in the air filled with dragon flies. The small village offered backpackers a chance to discover hidden Bali with the comforts of cold beer and nasi goreng. The town was family friendly and many of tourists stayed at the hotel up the path from my house. It had a swimming pool and served a tasty Gado Gado. One couple from the North Shore of Boston were vacationing with their two teenaged kids. I came from the South Shore. The husband and I discussed the Red Sox’s chance for winning the World Series. The wife was into traditional dancing. Her daughter was studying ballet and looked like a dancing girl from a De Mayeur painting. Her name was Dawn or Kakatu in Bahasa Indonesian. The long-haired brunette stole peeks at me lounging by the pool, whenever her parents weren’t watching her every move. I had a good idea what she was thinking and avoided her, for young girls are big trouble for men in their early 40s. One night I attended a dance performance of the Legong girls at the temple. Their lithe movements to the acoustic music was a pleasure to the eye. The candle-lit courtyard was easily to mistake for the 18th century, if I ignored the rumble of traffic beyond the red brick walls. After the end of the show I gave the venerable teacher $5 or 10,000 rupiah, which was enough to buy her young performers a meal at the market. She thanked my gift and lifted her eyes to the flickering streetlights. They wavered with the dying surge of distant electricity and then the village was plunged into a primeval darkness. Outages were common occurrences in Indonesia and I flicked on my flashlight. Dawn stood in front of me. "Hi." She wore a red shirt without a bra. "Where are your parents?" I walked out of the temple. Kerosene lamps illuminated the small warungs. Car headlights lit the road and I yanked Dawn out of the way. "They went to the hotel before me." She pushed back her long brown hair. "Then I guess I have to walk you home. There were no taxis in Ubud, at least none that could navigate the narrow footpaths through the rice fields. "You're not scared of the dark, are you?" "Not with you with me." She reached out to hold my hand. "Just follow me." I skirted her grasp and proceeded down a small lane between several Balinese family compounds. The high walls created a narrow chasm leading to the open rice paddies. The hotel lay across the darkened fields and I felt a little like Orpheus leading his wife from Hades, except Dawn was no Eurydice and Bali was more heaven than hell. "Can we stop for a second?" Dawn's eyes shone with the rising moon. "I want to look at the stars. They don't have so many stars where I live." "Okay." I sat in a rice shack. Dawn sat next to me. Thousands of fireflies hovered over the golden husks of rice. Overhead the cosmos glowed in stellar streak across the equatorial night. Dawn lay down on the bamboo pallet. The stars painted her skin silver. "Do you think I'm beautiful?" She touched my thigh with a trebling hand. "Anyone your age is beautiful to a man my age." I thought about LOLITA and DEATH IN VENICE. My resolve weakened under the caress of her fingertips and then cracked with a kiss tasting of bubble gum. "How old are you?" I sidled to the edge of the rice hut. “15, but my friends say I look older.” She shimmered with forbidden youth. "You do look a little older." I had hoped 18. I had hoped wrong. "Let’s go. Your parents must be worried." "Can't we stay a little longer?" She unbuttoned her shirt. "No." I stood on the path. The rising moon showed the way.We walked toward her hotel. I had not crossed the bounds of decency.

"You don’t know what you’ll be missing." She pouted with the failure of seduction.

"Oh, yes, I do." I had been fifteen before.

Dawn's mother waited anxiously at the hotel entrance. Worry hardly described her expression and I said firmly, "Madam, I brought back your daughter intact."

"I’m not intact." Dawn pouted with vengeance. "I'm not a virgin. I'm a woman."

"Young girl, get to your room." Her mother nodded her thanks and the next day the family had decamped from Ubud.

I resumed my life without any threat from Dawn, but I remembered her lying in the bamboo hut wearing only starlight.

I regretted telling her 'no', knowing that I would have been wrong to say yes', but then it was only one regret of many and at forty I had plenty of chances left to regret doing the right thing instead of the wrong. Beauty was all around me in Bali.