Two days ago I finished my first Young Adult-Teen Fiction novella (VAPOR) that will be released on November 7. I mostly write Literary Fiction and have for a long time and am anxious to see how all of you receive the book. While I’ve been learning the new world of publishing I’ve also been exposed to the fact that numerous authors seem to write more than they read and that stuns me. I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m not a successful author. I hope to be one day, but that day isn’t today. I decided to write this blog because I actually heard a writer say I’M NOT A READER. I’M MORE OF A WRITER. Why would he say that? Why would you let the reading public that buys you and feeds you and houses you and works shitty ass jobs that you don’t work, know that you’re not giving your best effort? What happened to respect? A bricklayer wouldn’t stack shit up without mortar! Now I’m going to lose my mind and list every book I’ve read since March 5^th, 2014 (in order) so you know I’m not phoning this in from the bleachers. This isn’t me being arrogant. You write my paycheck. I appreciate you. This list runs through 6:48 this morning. Here they are: William Faulkner (Light In August, The Sound and the Fury, Sartoris, The Unvanquished, Knight’s Gambit, As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom, Intruder In the Dust, Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner, The Wild Palms). Henry Miller (Sexus, Plexus, A Devil in Paradise, Nexus). Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel). Henry Miller (Henry Miller on Writing). Christopher Hitchens (Arguably). Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea). CS Lewis (The Great Divorce). John Steinbeck (The Pearl). Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ). Albert Camus (The Stranger, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom). Anais Nin (Little Birds). Raymond Carver (Fires). Ernest Hemingway (The Snows of Kilimanjaro). Charles Bukowski (Love Is A Dog From Hell). Michael Shaara (The Killer Angels). Henry Miller (Black Spring). William Faulkner (Soldier’s Pay). Gustave Flaubert (Flaubert In Egypt). Cormac McCarthy (The Orchard Keeper). Henry Miller (Under the Roofs of Paris). Cormac McCarthy (Outer Dark, Child of God). Charles Bukowski (Women). Blaise Cendrars (Moravigne). Charles Bukowski (Post Office). Anais Nin (The Four Chambered Heart). Franz Kafka (The Trial). Cormac McCarthy (Suttree). William Faulkner (Sanctuary, Three Famous Short Novels). Cormac McCarthy (The Road). Jim Harrison (Farmer). Annie Proulx (Close Range). Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall). Herman Melville (Moby Dick). Ray Carver (Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?). Edgar Allan Poe (Selections from Poe). James Dickey (Deliverance, To The White Sea). William Stafford (Writing the Australian Crawl). Jim Dodge (Not Fade Away). Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar). Mary V. Dearborn (Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller). William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch). Norman Maclean (A River Runs Through It). Flannery O’Connor (A Good Man is Hard to Find). Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn). William Styron (Lie Down in Darkness). Albert Camus (The Plague). Wayne Curtis (The Last Great Walk). D.H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterley’s Lover). Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451). Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment). Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio). Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian). Marcel Proust (Swann’s Way). Louis-Ferdinand Celine (Journey To The End of The Night, Rigadoon, Death on the Installment Plan). Honore’ De Balzac (The Girl With The Golden Eyes). Willa Cather (O Pioneers!). Phillip Roth (When She Was Good). Henry Miller (The Colossus of Maroussi). Blaise Cendrars (Sky). John Fante (The Road to Los Angeles). Jim Harrison (The English Major). Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground). William Faulkner (The Hamlet, The Town). Sunday After The War (Henry Miller). Ivo Frenzel (Friedrich Nietzsche). Arthur Schopenhauer (Essays of Schopenhauer). Marquis De Sade (The 120 Days of Sodom & Other Writings). Maurice Lever (Sade/A Biography). Simon Schama (Citizens). Joseph Conrad (Tales of Land and Sea). Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove). Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote). David H. Richter (The Borzoi Book of Short Fiction). Russell Blankenship (American Literature As An Expression Of The National Mind). Bliss Perry (The Heart of Emerson’s Journals). Ralph Waldo Emerson (Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson). Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird, Go Set A Watchman). Cormac McCarthy (All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain). Ernest Hemingway (Death In The Afternoon). Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon). William Faulkner (The Mansion). Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose). Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses). John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces). Truman Capote (In Cold Blood). Jack London (Great Short Works of Jack London). Herman Melville (Typee). Jack London (The Sea Wolf). Gore Vidal (Burr-A Novel). Knut Hamsun (Hunger). James A. Michener (Sayonara). Bernard Gilboy (A Voyage of Pleasure-Log of the Boat “Pacific”). Larry McMurtry (Terms of Endearment). Christopher Robinson (French Literature in the 20^th Century). Sigmund Freud (A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis). Jerzy Kosinski (The Painted Bird). Dagobert D. Runes (Twentieth Century Philosophy). Carlos Castaneda (The Active Side of Infinity). Jerzy Kosinski (Steps). Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy). Thomas Sugrue (There Is a River-The Story of Edgar Cayce). Will/Ariel Durant (The Lessons of History). Jerzy Kosinski (Being There). Anais Nin (Delta of Venus). H.G. Wells (The Outline of History). Stephen King (Bag of Bones). James A. Michener (The Source). Jerzy Kosinski (The Devil Tree). Abbi Glines (Until Friday Night, Fallen Too Far, Bad For You). Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno (An Invisible Spectator-Paul Bowles). Abbi Glines (Never Too Far). Stephen King (The Bachman Books-Four Early Novels). Ian McEwan (Amsterdam). Larry McMurtry (Crazy Horse). Annie Proulx (Postcards). Larry McMurtry (Horseman, Pass By). Abbi Glines (Up In Flames). Kylie Scott (Dirty). Joseph Heller (Catch 22). Abbi Glines (Existence). Jim Harrison (The Road Home). Abbi Glines (While It Lasts). Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov). Emily Foster (How Not To Fall). Jerzy Kosinski (Cockpit). Larry McMurtry (Boone’s Lick, The Desert Rose). Charles B. Guignon (Essay on The Brothers Karamazov). William T. Vollman (The Royal Family). Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons). Hush, Hush (Becca Fitzpatrick). Isabel Allende (The Japanese Lover). Edward Uhlan (The Rogue of Publishers’ Row). William Styron (Darkness Visible). William Kennedy (Ironweed). Ken Kesey (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest). Jack Britton Sullivan (Torment, Vapor). Henry Miller (Crazy Cock). Abbi Glines (Once She Dreamed). James Joyce (Ulysses). . . . . and on and on and on. . . . .because YOU HAVE TO READ TO WRITE. . . . .JBS

I cleaned up after a sex party. It wasn’t in my job description and I didn’t know I would be doing it, but then I had the opportunity and when a gem like that is tossed your way from the celestial funkiness you jump on it the exact same way we used to hit the ALL SKATE roundabout when Super Freak by Rick “Mutha Fuckin” James came on. I can’t tell you my age or where I was working because about a hundred people who read this blog and are currently putting me in prayer chains after they read it and laugh their asses off would know the people that surround it and I don’t want to embarrass or humiliate them because I am not angry or a complete dick. It was long ago and I was younger when my boss said “hey, ride over to BLANK’S house and wake BLANK up and help him clean his place.” I got in the company vehicle and went to BLANK’S house and there had been a quaint get together. The yard was scattered with beer cans and Free Bird was still playing on the outdoor porch speakers and cars were parked everywhere, as if some war angel had been playing with them like puzzle pieces. I knew there would be naked women inside. Since I really loved vaginas I realized I was about to be the miner 49’er who tunneled into the nookie lode, so I went inside. A body was blocking the door and although it wasn’t dead it was moaning and was nice enough to roll out of the way so I could enter. He said “hey lil’ Jack.” I replied “oh hell yes, daddy mac,” or something to that extent and he said “we blew the motherfucker out” and I said “shoulda’ called this pimp,” trying to sound cool or fly, though I’ve never been either. It smelled like someone had been clipping shark fins or doing an autopsy on a dinosaur, but that’s what happens when piles of naked humans fornicate in a wad in a house with a furnace in the dead of winter. There were oh, about twelve sexies therein and they were assorted about on the couch and floors and someone was asleep in the bathtub. The women were all wonderfully skanky and overweight (read my other blog about thick women. I like them thick) and there were seven of them nakedly delicious and lying about here and there like the LOVE GUN poster I had on my wall as a boy. I think you’re supposed to soak rubber dicks and butt plugs in warm soapy water after use, or put them in the dishwasher (read the directions), but someone had failed to do so and I tripped on a couple and finally fell face first into some woman’s ass (maybe on purpose) and she woke up and said “hell fire junior! You shoulda’ been here!” I immediately fell in love and then proceeded to wash my nose with isopropyl alcohol in the bathroom straddling a local minister who came awake long enough to say “gimme six and put ‘em on my tab!” At this point my penis was so erect I was having mild heart palpitations. I was in a sweat hut once with a bunch of weird naked Boy Scouts without an erection and it felt like that. And yes, I am an Eagle Scout. (: The person I was looking for then came into the bathroom with a thong speedo on and I wanted to thank him for creating this wonderful moment for me but he was too busy thinking he was peeing in the commode, but was actually peeing on a lady I thought was in prison, but was currently in the bath tub. Good times all around. When he finished he said “we knocked the bottom out of it till about five” and I replied “you shoulda’ called me” and he said “if I would’ve that’n in the tub yonder mighta bit your biscuits” and I replied “wow, she’s a looker” and he said “her pussy is like sandpaper” and I replied “oh.” I helped him clean around the bodies and then I went outside and picked up the yard and found somebody else walking around in the woods behind his house naked and coked out of his mind and we decided to go bird hunting later or play checkers or do some other ordinary thing. This was how we finished the conversation. He is no longer with us.

“How does one of these get started?” I asked him.

He replied “you don’t plan them. A sex party isn’t there and then it is. Like a cloud you see it from far off and whether dark or puffy white you know it’s coming and then it’s there. You’re both sure and unsure it contains anything at all as it shapes to drift over. Will it spurt on you or not? This is the question. Then you stand underneath the motherfucker and see what happens. It’s beautiful in its own way. I’ve snorted too much blow. My mind is overheated.”

In forty-seven years on this punishing earth I estimate I’ve read somewhere between 5,500 and 6 thousand books of mostly fiction (because that’s my job). But I can assure you, without trepidation, that whatever profound quotes came from any and all of those books, what that son of a bitch said is in the top five. And I’m sorry he’s dead. The world needed his words. It required his being. Thanks for reading. JBS

Postscript

A simple request. If you’ve bought TORMENT and have read it, or are reading it, may I ask you to please give me a review on Amazon because I would like to know what you think. People have already been telling me “it makes my head hurt” and I’m glad. You’re a sharp public. I wrote it for you. Again, I appreciate it immensely.

Commencing in the year 1990 I went to Luby’s in Waco, Texas with a big woman. I was twenty years old. We went once a week for the fall and spring semesters and then we would go to the free symphony. I have no issues with big women. Our society is sick against them. It says it’s not, then it bombards them with advertisements and fads and fear and dogma and what I believe is hate. They stand out because they’re not supposed to stand out and those are the ones that stand out the most. Because we never stop talking about standing out, whether good or bad, because humans are so fucking self-absorbed now they think they have to stand out with their looks and leanness and perfection and well, fuck that. Go be sick on another planet. Not this one. This lady, I believe, is married now and I won’t say her name. We haven’t spoken since ’91 and it’s not my place to name her. At the Luby’s we would eat a normal meal and not something that would make us shit blood from all its preservatives. Then we would talk about books by dead people. I’ve always been a fan of dead writers, how they shaped their craft and told their stories in a time I don’t remember or haven’t lived in. I probably won’t ever be one of our “treasured writers” or asked to give a top ten list of my favorite books. So I would like to list ten of my favorite books by dead people. They are dead. Won’t be writing anymore. I went through the list of the last 270 books I’ve read and picked out ten for you nice people. I want you to know they exist and by existing they can be read. If you read voraciously you’re forced to ask questions that non-readers would never ask, because they don’t know to ask them. If children read they are smarter, know more and tend to have higher incomes, unless they become actual writers of challenging material then they tend to be poorer. I think that’s okay. If you write something worthwhile and you know it’s worthwhile then people will read it, at first in a trickle and then in a stream, and after you’re dead in a flood. (; These are in no particular order. They’re just great books from the big woman herself (these ten were on her list and mine) I have on a list from ‘91. IRONICALLY, without knowing it, I’ve read all ten since March of 2014. I really hope she isn’t dead. The world needs big secure women. And I was proud to be in public with her.

Light in August- William Faulkner (readable for any and all I believe. Though Faulkner is always challenging).

As I Lay Dying- William Faulkner (academic types have been fucking the meaning of this book up since its release).

Under the Roofs of Paris- Henry Miller (really offensive and filthy. I love it).

Flaubert in Egypt- Gustave Flaubert (I’ve never known a human to ejaculate this much in a day. Unless it was me at thirteen).

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?- Raymond Carver (I think he died the year before the list. We must’ve read that he died or something. I don’t remember).

The Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway (people should be fined for not reading this one).

A Good Man is Hard to Find- Flannery O’Connor (focused and delicious creepiness).

Journey to the End of the Night- Louis-Ferdinand Celine (yes, life is shit at times, and also hilarious. And I don’t know how to accent the e in his last name on this damn machine).

Sky- Blaise Cendrars (I named my daughter after him).

Hunger- Knut Hamsun (read this. We really have it easy).

Thank you for your time, JBS

 

 

 

 

 

Once, long ago, I was a bouncer. I’m not naturally intimidating because of inherent goofiness so I developed a deep voiced, guttural type, throat thump. It made me sound like my testicles were larger than my head. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. At “the club” as I’ll call it, I was bad about getting up on the catwalk and “hoddy popping” to a song or two because the women folk up there were half naked and “danced” all over one other and that was better than the sweaty nut sack smell of the main dance floor. There wasn’t an inordinately large amount of “bouncing” to do up there, but there were women mouth kissing one another, as well as in the bathroom stalls (I also “bounced” in there a great deal). There was a stripper that came to “the club” and once I went to her place of employment and watched the nice lady leg lock around the top of an eight-foot pole with her body extended and drop an inch at a time down to the ground and it took her forever to get to the bottom. There were three of us on the front row crying because that shit was beautiful. I think we actually hugged one another after sharing the moment together. I was thinking about her one time while driving out west in the snow and ice through an area that was free range for cattle. No fences. No impediments. I stopped to pee on the side of the highway. There was a blanket of snow on the ground and the road was completely empty. I saw a blood spoor and some footprints in the snow like someone had cut themselves and then begun walking across the range into the foothills sloping upwards from the highway. You could see the drops of blood on the snow because there was nothing to see but snow on that vast wasteland of exclusion. I followed. I put my feet in the gray footprints and walked as he had walked. I knew what type of boot he was wearing and about the size of his body. He was going away, not to it. The sun was winterized and hanging there, but it wouldn’t hang for long. I followed the droplets for about a half-mile through the pasture in that white. The snow was deep for most of the walk and in places above my waist. When I arrived at the initial upslope I paused. He had carried on, but I didn’t. I turned around towards the highway to sit on a rock and a truck like mine was sitting by my own and someone was standing beside it. They were looking through binoculars at me. That’s the most frightened I’d ever been and the source of the fright was the emptiness, the space between him and me. Then he got in his truck and left.

I wonder about things I can’t see. Wonder if they are really there, present, watching, wanting, needing, warring. . .and I wonder if you wonder also. Other people seem to see shit I don’t see and then I again wonder if I’m making the whole shebang too fucking complicated for my own brain and that there’s shit all around me if I would only simplify it, but we’re not simple creatures now are we? I put a lot of this musing in the book TORMENT (and for those who have bought it I thank you. I realize it’s a difficult read, but I can tell you there was little left of me when I finished the manuscript and some authors spend their whole lives waiting to say that very thing and I just did. You got it all, for four fucking dollars and ninety-nine cents, so yes, that is A BARGAIN. Hahahaha!). Anyway, you nice people seem to be reading the shit out of this blog in “bloggyland,” or whatever the hell it’s called, so back to the subject. I was walking the aforementioned “swamp trail” about two weeks ago in the hell heat and way in the distance was a man with a backpack and trekking poles and he was coming north while I was walking south and I tell you the asphalt was baking. And he wasn’t young. When he got within twenty yards of me I could see he had on expensive hiking shorts and boots and one of those memory fabric shirts that aren’t given away at flea markets. I’m not supposed to walk in brain damaging heat because of a minor “heat stroke” a few years back. But I have it in my head that if there’s anything deep down in my cells or body waiting to kill me I’ll destroy it by punishing the shit out of myself doing goofy exercises in too many clothes and all the bastard cells will die. Then I’ll live to be 140 or 142, or something in that range. So the man got right up to me on the other side of the main road without looking or lifting a pole or saying anything at all so I stopped, which I never do, and stared at him for what seemed to be an eternity. I’m not a good candidate for abduction or to be rolled in a van and sold to an overseas brothel, but I think about it. At this moment I thought, “this motherfucker is a spotter for the underground sex industry and I have been FOUND! This is it! Prepare!” If the van would’ve pulled up the first guy out was going to get the Mexican dagger from the prostitute in Juarez (see previous blog) in his throat or some other organ, but it was just him, another migrant like me, alone and solitary. He didn’t miss a step or even look my way. He said directly and patiently this: “hold fast. Do the miles. Stay coursed.” Then he was gone. Up the road in the hell heat walking and walking and I never saw him again. I do thirty miles a week on this particular trail and this is the only walker I’ve ever seen. Strange to me? Yes, it was. If you’ve had similar strangeness you’re welcomed to send me an email about it at brittsullivan0727@gmail.com. I don’t want to be distant and mysterious and arrogantly elitist and a literary asshole. I write like one, but I’m not in their fucking club. You can read Faulkner and Hemingway and Melville and O’Connor and still fix someone’s sheetrock. Because of you this is my job and I want to be available for your story, because you’ve been buying TORMENT, which is all I could offer just then. JBS

I wanted to post the entire Twitter book that I’ve been writing and to those who’ve been reading it nightly I thank you. I’m going to try and write an entire novel. Here is what we have thus far: I can’t drive her any further from what she doesn’t know, the woman locked in the trunk and she won’t stop screaming and her husband sitting…next to me in the seat and he is equally as disturbed as she, my pistol to his temple and his money in my pocket and therein the youth I’ve lost…what youth was left inside me, the two begging and screaming and it’s all but disturbing and the desert sun won’t set, my wound weeping…and bleeding and the seat is blooded through and McDermitt, Nevada is in the headlights, what it is absolute delusion, snow as is…on the side of the highway and I am dizzy to be sick but I have to tend to them and that is when the back left tire explodes and the pistol…goes off in his face, click, click and click, firing three more times, and he’s begging for the life that I give him, saying…”if you’ll slow down and pull over to the side of the road I’ll gladly change the tire, yet I consider it a good idea for you to not blow…my head off. And perhaps it might be best to let mama in the back there pee. She’s been in the trunk now all of six hours and if she isn’t…covered in her own smelly urine, she’s liable to cut loose soon. The Lord she drank a half-gallon of water and mama’s kidneys ain’t…what they were. They hooked her goofy ass to one of them machines, what went whir! Mutha! Whir! Whir! Whir! And I’ll be damned if…she didn’t piss blood and make the poopy in her brand new drawers. I bought them sexy kind what with the gone crotch and her toot as ancient…as a forest, though it’s the only toot I know, since the beginning of time it seems.” I looked at the man inside of the cab and I’m…astounded, I tell you, astounded! I’m dizzy from the loss of so much blood but the tire has to be changed and mama in the trunk isn’t…

And there you go. Up to date. Thank you for following along. I was walking my swamp trail two days ago and had a recollection of an incident from my heavy drinking days a decade or so in the past. I was in one of those skanky-delicious side o’ the road porno places that sells sexy subject items looking for nothing in particular and reveling in the excitement of still being able to smoke indoors. I stood over the bargain bend perusing hotsy old VCR tapes for three dollars when I saw that they had THE FIFTY-TWO INCH RUBBER FISTS for sell as clearance items. Yep, fifty-two inches. I got a measuring tape out of my pickup and had Donello Perveroso the sex attendant hold it up so I could measure it, and it was, to the knuckle, fifty-two inches even. Here was our conversation:

“So these don’t really fly off the wall I guess?”

“We ordered twelve and sold one. I wouldn’t want that up in me and I’ve done some crazy shit. There are dogs that’re smaller than that.”

“Are they really half off?”

“You can have that electric blue one if you’ll just get it the hell out of the store.”

“Really. Wow. Thank you.”

I was drunk in a bar in Vicksburg, Mississippi a few days later and used the rubber fist as a weapon. I was trying to get a son of a bitch off me in the parking lot and it was available. I tagged him across the shoulders and he stopped immediately and the following was what we said:

“Is that a huge rubber fist you just hit me with?”

“It is indeed. It was given to me.”

“You use it?”

“No. That arena I’ve yet to step inside of. It’s fifty-two inches long.”

“I thought it would go over four feet. I think you broke my shoulder. Damn, hit with a rubber fist.”

“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I don’t think I’m covered for this.”

I let him swing it around and hit a few rocks. Right handed, not with his left. I pitched them to him and he swung away and then I took my turn. That bastard still sends me Christmas cards with photos of his wife and family. Beauty is often in the sewer. Get on your knees and search. JBS

 

 

 

 

I wanted to post the entire Twitter book that I’ve been writing and to those who’ve been reading it nightly I thank you. I’m going to try and write an entire novel. Here is what we have thus far: I can’t drive her any further from what she doesn’t know, the woman locked in the trunk and she won’t stop screaming and her husband sitting…next to me in the seat and he is equally as disturbed as she, my pistol to his temple and his money in my pocket and therein the youth I’ve lost…what youth was left inside me, the two begging and screaming and it’s all but disturbing and the desert sun won’t set, my wound weeping…and bleeding and the seat is blooded through and McDermitt, Nevada is in the headlights, what it is absolute delusion, snow as is…on the side of the highway and I am dizzy to be sick but I have to tend to them and that is when the back left tire explodes and the pistol…goes off in his face, click, click and click, firing three more times, and he’s begging for the life that I give him, saying…”if you’ll slow down and pull over to the side of the road I’ll gladly change the tire, yet I consider it a good idea for you to not blow…my head off. And perhaps it might be best to let mama in the back there pee. She’s been in the trunk now all of six hours and if she isn’t…covered in her own smelly urine, she’s liable to cut loose soon. The Lord she drank a half-gallon of water and mama’s kidneys ain’t…what they were. They hooked her goofy ass to one of them machines, what went whir! Mutha! Whir! Whir! Whir! And I’ll be damned if…she didn’t piss blood and make the poopy in her brand new drawers. I bought them sexy kind what with the gone crotch and her toot as ancient…as a forest, though it’s the only toot I know, since the beginning of time it seems.” I looked at the man inside of the cab and I’m…astounded, I tell you, astounded! I’m dizzy from the loss of so much blood but the tire has to be changed and mama in the trunk isn’t…

And there you go. Up to date. Thank you for following along. I was walking my swamp trail two days ago and had a recollection of an incident from my heavy drinking days a decade or so in the past. I was in one of those skanky-delicious side o’ the road porno places that sells sexy subject items looking for nothing in particular and reveling in the excitement of still being able to smoke indoors. I stood over the bargain bend perusing hotsy old VCR tapes for three dollars when I saw that they had THE FIFTY-TWO INCH RUBBER FISTS for sell as clearance items. Yep, fifty-two inches. I got a measuring tape out of my pickup and had Donello Perveroso the sex attendant hold it up so I could measure it, and it was, to the knuckle, fifty-two inches even. Here was our conversation:

“So these don’t really fly off the wall I guess?”

“We ordered twelve and sold one. I wouldn’t want that up in me and I’ve done some crazy shit. There are dogs that’re smaller than that.”

“Are they really half off?”

“You can have that electric blue one if you’ll just get it the hell out of the store.”

“Really. Wow. Thank you.”

I was drunk in a bar in Vicksburg, Mississippi a few days later and used the rubber fist as a weapon. I was trying to get a son of a bitch off me in the parking lot and it was available. I tagged him across the shoulders and he stopped immediately and the following was what we said:

“Is that a huge rubber fist you just hit me with?”

“It is indeed. It was given to me.”

“You use it?”

“No. That arena I’ve yet to step inside of. It’s fifty-two inches long.”

“I thought it would go over four feet. I think you broke my shoulder. Damn, hit with a rubber fist.”

“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I don’t think I’m covered for this.”

I let him swing it around and hit a few rocks. Right handed, not with his left. I pitched them to him and he swung away and then I took my turn. That bastard still sends me Christmas cards with photos of his wife and family. Beauty is often in the sewer. Get on your knees and search. JBS

 

 

 

 

 

Between the ages of seven and thirteen I hid in the hamper in my sister’s bathroom and watched all of their friends in the shower. It was a wicker hamper and I was undersized so even at thirteen when I was ogling the high school juniors and seniors I still had a good bit of room. Wicker is, depending on its use, often an inferior weave. I could see straight through it. At the height of my pre-pubescent and pubescent perversions I would stick my tongue through the wicker and make animal sounds. I did it once while a cheerleader was pooping and I can’t believe she didn’t turn me in. I mooed like a cow for her. With others I did a naughty elephant. And my silent giraffe, which was rotating the tongue, never even raised an eyebrow. Surmising and musing on those formative years I think about how many naked girls I saw. Thirty is a solid round number. It was probably more like ten. There were tons of repeats, over and over, and I was always excited when I knew they were coming, especially showing up dirty. I would always time it perfectly so it wasn’t a member of the family. Could you imagine the psychotherapy bill? In 2010 while I was thru hiking the Appalachian Trail (south bounder) I walked into a campsite somewhere in Virginia with a few inches of snow on the ground. I am not threatening at all. I am a pleasant fellow I think. Honest and mentally healthy, or I wouldn’t be writing this shit. There was a nice lady alone in the campsite, sixty-five or sixty-six. She was nervous about being in the woods, so I told her the hamper story, to calm her down a bit. She started crying and asked me “if I was going to rub naked up against her tent in the middle of the night?” I replied, “I hadn’t planned to. Perhaps there’s still time to bring somebody in. A familiar, if that’s your groove.” She said “would you do it for a hundred?” I replied “what? Dollars?” We began working out the details of the naked rub. Were there animal sounds involved? Did I need to yell at her? Call her missy? A cousin’s name? We ended up settling on a screaming naked sprint through the camp howling like a wolf. I passed by the tent three or four times and got my howl down pat. I’ve streaked a great deal in my life. Ran through a trailer park in Auburn, Alabama for five vociferous minutes. That having been said on that particular evening when I did my hundred-dollar sprint, I never asked if anyone was with her. Her husband was sitting naked in a tree.

One of my earliest and most profound memories reaches back to the Carter years. It has nothing to do with the president, anything he said or did. I tend to divide my life by presidential administrations. I think it was ’77, maybe ’78. I was eight or nine on a family vacation out west for as much as we could cover. We parked our cab over camper on the Juarez side to roam the Mexican streets. It was safer back then I suppose, not that we really cared. Safe was for pussies and we wanted adventure so into the streets we went. There were vendors abundant and one in particular was a hooker selling small daggers. I was tiny and blonde with Toughskin jeans and a shirt from Kiss’s first tour. I got erections a lot and wanted a blade to potentially stab some villain. Some bastard I’d yet begun hating. I said “fuck” quite often without getting beaten because I murmured the word like a secret. I also said “shit” and “dickbrain.” I heard a carnie say “dickbrain” and I really loved it so I threw it around like a javelin, or an atlatl, something like that. The prostitute had a table with an oilcloth cover and about twenty items. All of them would kill a human. Part of the allure was that she wasn’t wearing panties so I stared at her crotch for an hour. Standing directly in front of the table. Wow, this gal was great. She wore a mini skirt, the kind hookers like to wear, and her lawn chair was red and white. I don’t know why I was alone. Perhaps we divided as a family to cruise for whores and booze? After drooling until my legs were weak, I approached the stand and bought an eight-inch blade, which to this day hasn’t killed another. It has a jaguar upon it eating a lamb and on the blade is dripping blood. It was four dollars even and I tipped her a buck because I thought the lady was swell. The prostitute asked me in broken English if I had any interest in “muling brown dope” across the border in my anus. I thought she said “ruling through a periscope” and I replied, “I play first base. Would you like to go to the Fall Festival? The bouncy house is only a quarter. Hey, let’s be pen pals!” That shit was huge back then. She wouldn’t give me her address so when I got back to Dora I wrote her a letter about riding in cars and about my big green comb. It was the size of a tortoise. I mailed the letter to the PROSTITUTE in the MEXICAN, JUAREZ and the missive never came back. She never wrote and I hope she’s not dead. She’d be about 65. Maybe 66. I still haven’t stabbed anybody. I really don’t want to now.

 

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