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

AUGUST 13, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night while we lay naked in bed, Alice requested to have her hands to be bound behind her back. I found a ten-foot cord and forced her onto her belly. She stretched her arms back and I looped the rope around her wrists. I entered her with a steely hardness and we fucked for thirty minutes. Neither of us came and she asked, if she could masturbate.

"Yes, slave."

"But you can't watch."

"You want me to take off the rope?"

"No, I can reach me." Alice had been a gymnast in high school. She could tied her body in knots and always said that if she failed as an actress that she could make it in the carnival as a contortionist.

I believed her and went into the living room, listening as her whimpers became moans.

I sat on the sofa feeling like a Wehrmacht soldier trapped in Stalingrad; no more bullets and nowhere to run, but to death.

This morning I did a wash-dry at the local laudromat on 1st Avenue.

I can't believe I'm writing something so banal, but most of life is banal and in most cases that is a good thing. Mark Amitin's theater venture fell apart on the road. I still have no money, no job, and no future. rent is due in less than two weeks. TS Eliot wrote that 'April is the cruelest month of all'. The poet had never spent an August in New York. Everyone is going on vacation. Only the dead, dying, and desperate remain in the city

Highways carry metal semi-trailers, 1967 Buicks and 1970s GTOs. Hector hitches Indiana-bound The army private is AWOL from Fort Dix. The conscript buzz-cut betrays his rank. The grunt's ironed khakis are government issue. His tee-shirt pressed creaseless. "Damn, it's so strange in boot camp, But it's only another two hundred miles to home.

In the 1960s and early 1970s army deserters dotted the interstate's shoulders either heading to Canada or into hiding at a hippie commune.

"Ain't no way I'm going back to Vietnam. Let the general fight with the blacks."

Afro-Americans constituted a high percentage of combat troops and casualties through the Long War. My draft number was 91. I avoided service by attending college thanks to a $10,000 grant to avoid shooting at strangers and Viet Cong shooting at me in villages foreign to teenagers on the South Shore. I started as a Math major, failed two subjects, but remained at BC. I saw no jungles or rie paddies. I heard no bullets whizzing past me or thudding into fellow soldiers. I studied THE MYSTERIES OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST. A Boy Scout uniform was the only one I have worn other than an altar boy's cassock and surplice forever faithful to atheism.

Alice lies on the futon, complaining about being nothing. She is in a rush to be an actress and their clock ticks fast. Still being nothing is better than being a bullet-riddled corpses in Vietnam, although the only fighting in Indochina is between the Khmer Rouge and the PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam). I have guilt about not fighting for my country. Not much, but some.

Alice looks out the window of the back bedroom.

"It's raining."

"What else is new?" After a heat wave the city has been deluged by rain for the past eight days. My kitchen faucet also drips endlessly.

Rain - the life-giver of water The Johnstown Flood 1889 The Little Conemaugh River The South Branch dam failure The flood washed away the helpless Like the mighty Mississippi through a valley. Forty days and forty night. No, just one torrential night And the next day Johnstown was gone.

AUGUST 13, 2021 - JOURNAL ENTRY - CLINTON HILL

About fifteen years ago in Pattaya, Thailand I learned that I had somehow transitioned to 'Vanilla' status by a visit to an S&M parlor. Nik, an English friend wanted to pay me back for a favor and suggested we go the THE CASTLE. MY wife was curious about how the club's goings-on and gave me permission for bad boys night out. 'The Castle' sas right across the street from our regular THE BUFFALO BAR. We told the girls there about our intended destination and they joked how we were going to be whipped like 'Kwaii.' or a stupid buffalo. The bouncers yelled we were 'sadique' and Nik asked me at the door, "Are you top or bottom?"

I don't know. I guess top."

"Me too, but I might try some bottom as a test." I wouldn't have expected any else from an Englishman. "Remember this is all on me."

The black-clad mama-san gave us a list. Top and bottom fantasies.

"Yeah, I'll do that and that. What about you?"

"Nothing really strikes my fancy."

Nik and the old lady read through the menu.

"No, no, definitely no."

The dominatrix and slaves enacted rough sex routines. I shook my head in disappointment. "Mai mee faaen-dah-see."

"Good enough for me," said Nik and two slender sadistic witches dragged him into a back room. The lash of a whip. Scream. "More."

After an hour Nik emerged chastened by the experience and said, "Damn, that was something, but I don't think I'll go bottom again. Are you sure you want nothing?"

"Nope, I'm vanilla."

When I was in the hospital I didn't look at any porno online or have a asexual fantasy. My libido had to be damaged along with my body by my years of excessive drinking, but I thankfully don't have any DTs. My roommate at NYU was a black lineman. I had overheard him tell the doctor that he had fallen in the street. Both of us so strong and now invalid. The doctor says I'll get better, but it will be a fight.

And I didn't forty-two years ago.

PS THE CASTLE is still open 24/7. Muang Pattaya, Thailand Hours: Opens at 6PM - Closes at 3AM Phone: +66 91 052 2671

Hand Bondage Foto by Joana Kruse

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.