The Word Pimp Spits...

Tarot for Beginners

2012-02-14T11:34:00.000-08:00

...also for Val...

Tarot for Beginners

“Draw

a card before you go,”

She interrupts.

Not stopping my story

I reach out

& blindly pull one

at random; lay

it face down

between us.

“You’re not

going to look?”

She asks, smiling,

staring at the paper

destiny I simply

ignore.

“I’m still talking

here,” I reply,

“and if you can

just keep

your eyes on

that, when I’m ready,

I’ll flip it over.

Otherwise, feel free

to flip it for me.”

“Oh no,”

She replies as

Her smile spreads

to her eyes

as She glares at

her neglected Tarot.

The card itself

expands

like a sponge absorbing

moisture, but I hold

true to my word

& wait until I’m ready.

¡Flip! It’s Death

& we both start

laughing. “Death

doesn’t mean death,”

She begins.

“It means change,”

I finish, “I know.

My mother pulled

Tarot for friends

when I was young.

You learn that

Lesson One.”

“That’s right,”

She replies, now

looking me in the eyes

—that sea of golden

brown flecked green

exploring what’s inside

of me. ¿What does she

see? ¿The Hanged Man

or The Fool? ¿TheZero

or the Hero?

¿& Why couldn’t I

have drawn Lovers?

I suddenly remember

why, which makes me rise,

say my goodbyes, & fly

before She has me

draw another,

like The Tower

which will make

my world crumble

rightbefore my eyes.

For Valerie

2012-02-14T10:52:00.001-08:00

A Woman's Kiss

There is something that lives
in a woman's kiss,
behind the pleasure
of her lips slipping
against mine,
sof' friction awakening
the beast in the soul

It is something to know
how a woman tastes—
tongue touch tongue
soul touch soul—
impossible
to better comprehend
anyone,
to reveal yourself,
naked to her palate,
pure

It was a kiss that made me,
a kiss that destroyed me,
a kiss that consoled me,
a kiss that controlled me,
but only one kiss to save me:
the one from those
luscious lollie lickin' lips
that let the sun rise
once again
on this languid life
and left me lost
to anything less
than our destinies,
intertwined
like the ideal
lustful, lingering, loving
kiss

Killing Lilith Excerpt: The Cannibals

2012-02-06T09:22:00.000-08:00

A graphic depiction of Armin Meiwes serving Bernd Jürgen Brandes his own penis

So, there's been some discussion about the various other crazy internet craziness that has occurred since the beginning of the Information Age. Most would agree that the German Canibals take the cake. They actually make a cameo in Killing Lilith. Here's a snippet of that for your reading pleasure:

Idid as he instructed, opening a separate window for the newsgroup so that wecould continue to chat. At the time I don’t know what scared me more, what Iread and saw there, or the fact that it was suppose to offer some insight into SlowHand. The thought of either spread atide of fear over me, powerful and uncontrollable.

Regardless,I scrolled down a macabre list of topics and subtopics. As I did, I wonderedwhat new game I was playing. Was I intentionally seeking out a succession ofincreasingly outrageous realities? Why? How far would I go? What was I lookingfor? As I gleaned over the postings, tested my frontiers, I could feel thewalls that enclosed my morality and protected it from the absurd. Yet I couldnot stop.

AsI glanced at the overwhelming number of images¾pictures of rotting corpses,serial killers and their victims, mob hits, accident scenes, mass murder andburial sites, charred bodies pouring out from the ovens of Krakow, a manifestoby someone calling himself Billy The Killer, people sprawled like madsparrows as they tumbled down the towers, the towers themselves¾crumbling, gigabytes of AbuGhraib atrocities,bloated bodies floating like swamp grass in New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath¾I climbed over undeterred. I waspast the realm of morality. I had not yet discovered my new domain’s name. 

SlowHand: Click on the one titled “thegermans”. It’s my favorite.

Iscrolled down the list of gruesome titles, Man sleeps with dead wife, yoboywith face blown off!, Killing Strays with Hammer, until I found the right link. Itautomatically opened up my media player. After a lag, a video began to play. Adark shot of an wok sizzling on a stove. An arm reached into the frame with abottle, liquor of some sort, and poured it into the wok. It ignited.

LiLith: What’s this?  Some kind of cooking show?

SlowHand: Keep watching.

Thecamera zooms out for a second before zooming back in, closer. The flames dieddown as the alcohol burned off. I could barely make out what was beingflambéed. A sausage? Then it dawned on me.

LiLith: Is that a penis?!

SlowHand: Yes.

Thearm reached in, turned off the stove and pulled the pan off the flame.

LiLith: Like what? Dog?

SlowHand: No. His.

Thescene cut to a man, seated at a table, not all there. He looked tired, worn.Another man, the man with the arm, pan in hand, came to the table, set the pandown on a trivet, picked up a knife and started slicing. The seated man seemedto perk up.

LiLith: You’re putting me on, right.

Hewasn’t. I could remember hearing something, somewhere. A news clip. Maybe a fewwords in passing. Some Internet chatter. Did you hear about those cannibalsin Germany?

SlowHand: The man who is seated is Bernie.He met Arnie, the carver, online in 2001 through an ad Arnie placed looking forpeople willing to offer and share some of their flesh. Apparently, Bernie wasthe only taker, or giver as the case may be. Just google “german cannibals” ifyou want to read all about it.

Iopened a third window and did just that, incredulous that this could even bereal. I skimmed the article at the top of the list as I tried to keep up withthe action on the video. I could only shake my head as I watched Arnie serveBernie, and then himself. I felt my stomach roll as they both sampled theirgruesome meal.

LiLith: Heavy price to pay for a taste ofhuman flesh, don’t you think.

SlowHand: It gets heavier. Arnie convincesBernie to let him kill him. Keep watching. You get to see the slaughter… if youcan handle it. Bernie videotaped the whole thing, It was supposedly suppressedby the german gov, but I suppose someone leaked it. These things always getleaked.

Icouldn’t. I had seen enough, more really than I could take back then. I wantedto close my player. I didn’t. I couldn’t.

The Lilith Legend

2012-02-02T11:33:00.000-08:00

Only thirty more pages to edit, as of 1:00pm today. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Editing is actually moving at a fairly quick pace, which is a great sign. It means that I'm not finding anything blatant that I think I need to change. We'll see. the true test is a week from tomorrow when I meet with my critique group (¡Hi Barb, Holly & Tracy!).

Anyhow, my brother, Carlos, was talking about Killing Lilith yesterday, and he referenced some of the legends of the mythological Lilith. So I decided to post this small excerpt for him. Don't forget to check out the Killing Lilith Facebook Page and click "like" for news, updates & more excerpts!

Artwork by Kara T. Wells

My father consideredhimself the consummate bible scholar and student. “You learn until you die,” hewould say, “What you learn is up to you.” Obsessed with origin myths, he woulduse my misbehavior as an opportunity to expound on the legend of Lilith. “Thereare those who study the secrets of the scriptures that believe, before Eve, Godmade another woman for Adam.”

These same secrets are now sold with a red braceletand a bottle of blessed water to any celebrity looking to ride a new wave toenlightenment. 

“Certain students ofKabala believe that lost versions of the B’reshit (or bear shit as I would joke about the firstbook of the Torah behind his back; ‘bear shit, smut bear shit and smut,’ Iwould mock once he left the room after one of his lectures) tell her story—Lilith’s. She came not from Adam’srib, but from the same earth from which Adam was formed. Some even say she camefrom Adam’s filth. Like you, she went against the word of her father. Sherebelled against her husband and was banished as a demon. Do not follow herpath child; it will prove a difficult one.” 

The more he called meby that name, which he did more often as I got older and wilder, the more Iidentified with her. Why couldn’t we be equal? What made him better? Hisknowledge? His wisdom? His rib? The power of his voice? Men and women swooned,even shuddered, as his vibrato tenor resonated throughout the temple, the wordsof the scriptures pouring over them as if from the mouth of God himself. All Iever heard were his admonishments.

Dying to be My Muse

2012-02-01T07:48:00.000-08:00


A class photo of Sharon. She's the one in the cap, staring off to the right.

A little over fifteen years ago I was taking a class, Writing for the Internet Age—one of the first of its kind. During the ides of October, word came of a woman's body being found buried under a child's swing set in a trailer park in North Carolina.

Within days, as the police discovered during what they thought was a murder investigation that the victim, Sharon Denburg Lopatka—a housewife from Hampstead, MD—had solicited her executioner, Robert Glass, to torture, rape & kill her. He wasn't even the only one. Glass was just the first to follow through.

While many dismissed her as yet another crazy, I was fascinated with Sharon. As I researched her story, a novel took shape in my mind. Click on Sharon's photo to read about the woman who inspired Killing Lilith.
Don't forget to check out the Killing Lilith Facebook Page and click "like" for news, updates & more excerpts!

Killing Lilith (excerpt)

2012-01-31T09:47:00.000-08:00

Wrapping up the latest edit on Killing Lilith. Going well! Don't forget to check out the Killing Lilith Facebook Page and click "like" for news, updates & more excerpts! Here's a little excerpt for you Lilith fans out there: 

4:14pm 

Phone’s ringing—been ringing now for twentyminutes, on & off: Emily calling from the stables wondering why I haven’tpicked her up from Equestrian practice. She’ll use it as an excuse to petitionfor that new car she says we’re too cheap to buy her—as if she can’t realize that shedoesn’t deserve one. I’d be shocked if she didn’t drive any car we got herstraight to South Central and trade it for a year’s supply of crack.

Jacob calling fromhis guitar lesson. He decided he wanted to learn guitar after he abandonedviolin, saxophone, flute, & piano. He’s been talking about giving up musicfor acting. The older he gets, the more attention he craves. Perhaps it’s otherthings he craves. Women. Drugs. Fame. I have little doubt he’ll find anythinghe seeks. I also doubt he’ll be capable of handling any of it before itdestroys him.

Jack’s called a fewtimes—probably pissed off, not because he’ll have to leave theoffice early to pick up the kids, but because he won’t get the chance to have afew drinks at the bar with his colleagues after work. He needs that to wind down before he comeshome.

I get to try windingdown between cleaning, errands, picking up the children, cooking, and liftingup my nightgown once in a while so Jack can release some sexual tension. Noneof them are worried about where I am.

Point Dume. Sittingon a beach staring as the sun burns a trail through the Malibu sky, listeningto the vain attempts of my family to contact me. I stare directly into the sunso that it might dry the tears before they leave their ducts. They love me. No,they need me.Dependency misconstrued as love. Fuck them!

My love wasunconditional for a time. What have I been able to depend on? I never expectedanything in exchange for that love. Regardless, I am mourning them. I will die,but they are already dead.  So Isit here, burning my ass on the sand, beating my chest, setting my retinas onfire—sittingShiva. 

I stand and begin to make my way back to the carthrough a haze of black and yellow. The phone rings again. Jack, Emily, Jacob.It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve made my peace. I turn around once last time,facing the waves and the waning sun, and throw the phone at the offendinghorizon.

[FQ31] 4:14pmChapter Three (Malibu)

Within, Without

2012-01-17T05:39:00.000-08:00

I wrote this poem on Saturday as part of a challenge from Laura Shovan. If I wrote & read a poem about posing nude for art classes, she'd read her "Great Wall of Vagina" poem. If you weren't there, you missed the fun. The Poem is still pretty raw...

Within, Without

Not such rough stuff,
making a living
in the buff,standing, free
for all to see———
so much of me
all of me.

For twenty minutes
at a time, I’m free
to live inside my mind,
to explore within
while without
all eyes are wandering
about
me, as if I were pure
landscape.

Until I get that dreaded itch
I need to scratch,
but what a bitch
because moving
is the one option
I don’t have.

So I dive inside
myself, again,
deeper still,
super zen,
until all I feel
is the silence
that blankets me
from within.

Soon enough,
a bell will ring,
or buzz or chirp
some tinny tune;
to let me know
my body
is now mine.

For just a few
& then I must
hustle back
to my post
to either find
my old position
or strike out
on a new pose.

What shall I do?
Perhaps a simple
contrapposto
will suffice,
something seated
would be nice,
or better yet,
let me just lie
down. Let
me rest,
and you can practice
foreshortening
while my ass is
getting numb
from the cheap,
old carpeting
on this wobbly platform.

I’ll do whatever,
just don’t ask
me to perform
some acrobatic,
bendy asana
to please your
hungry hands
full of coal, or brush,
or ink.

I hope I don’t stink.

So here, I bare
myself to you,
alien to shame,
able to stay true,
even willing
to occasionally torture
myself for truth,
for art, for beauty,
for goodness sake
without me you’d all
be painting fruit!

Happy New Year

2012-01-10T12:36:00.000-08:00

One of the panels from the Great Wall of Vagina installation

I know. I'm late, as usual. But I've resolved to work on that in 2012, especially since we may not get a 2013 if you listen to the apocalypse believers out there. As a matter of fact, I'm just going to pretend like 2012 may very well be the last year for civilization, as we know it; and I'm going to push hard to get my work out there. By "out there" I mean outside of the Baltimore Metro Area. Not Outer Space.

Here's a guide to what going on with The Word Pimp, so far, in 2012:

My Baker Award nomination page is ready to go. Please show it some love. It has a lot of my best (& best known) work, so you're bound to find some great stuff to read. If you have a nomination on the Baker site let me know, and I'll check it out.

I have a couple of appearances coming up:

Saturday, January 14, 6:30pm
Evil Grin Poetry Series @ Ahh, Coffee

Join me and Clarinda Harriss Poetry Prize winner Laura Shovan for what promises be an entertaining start to the new year. Laura has promised to read her ekphrastic poem inspired by the art installation known as The Great Wall of Vagina if I promise to read a poem about modeling nude. Such a poem does not yet exist, but I WILL have one in time. I might even try to read it naked!

Ahh, Coffee

1015 Bay Ridge Ave

Eastport, MD 21403

Monday, February 6, 7pm

Café Muse Literary Series

Get in the mood for Valentine's Day with a reading by Life in Me Like Grass on Fire poets. Readers include Laura Shovan, Shirley Brewer, Frank Joseph, Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, Margaret Mullins & me.

Friendship Heights Village Center

4433 South Park Avenue,

Chevy Chase, MD

Well, that's all for now. A show with Artichoke Haircut is apparently in the works, so stay tuned. MUCH LOVE!

A Few REALLY Old Poems

2012-01-05T11:34:00.000-08:00

Like I've mentioned, probably a million times, I've been writing since I was eight. If you've been to one of my shows, you may have heard me recite my first poem, a limerick I wrote in 3rd grade:

There once was a very small shrimp
Who ate till he grew like a blimp
Every day he got worse
Until one day he burst
& that was the end of the shrimp

Not bad for eight, right? Anyway, I've never really posted much of my really old stuff, mostly because it was written before I ever took a college level writing course. But being as I just came across an old book of my pre-college work, I figured I'd share some of it. After all, I no longer have any shame. Just don't be too hard on me, okay?

Sometimes

I sometimes wish
you could see my success.
When I wish too loudly
I am told you do,
I am told you share in it,
I am even told you help.
I don't believe them.
I want to believe them.

Perhaps I'm just so vain
that what I truly want
is what I can't have:
to hear your pride ring
loud like church bells
after mass.

Is it really my pride
or just a need for your
reassurance to go on?

Jasmine

I put my fingers to my nose
& smell the sweet scent of jasmine.
It seems amazing that once I touched her
the scent never went away.

I close my eyes, fists pressed tight
against them, & through the stars
I see her face.
It seems amazing that once I touched her
the scent never went away.

I lick at my tears as they roll
down my face, & through the salt
I taste the essence of our sin.
It seems amazing that once I touched her
the scent never went away.

& through the static of my speakers
I can hear her sweet,
sweet jasmine voice, speaking
to my soul, singing,
"I love you."
Is it so amazing that I needed only touch
her once, & now I know
the scent will never go away.

Okay, that'll do for now. Maybe more later.

Much Love!

Haters Hate: The Ron Paul Phenomenon

2011-12-31T09:26:00.000-08:00

2012 is almost here, and with it, the real start of the Presidential Election campaign. In less than a week a few voters in Iowa will brave freezing temperatures and pick their favorite Republican to go up against Obama in November. As I write this, most polls indicate that one Dr. Ronald Ernest Paul is poised to capture the hearts and minds of die-hard Iowans.

I can see his appeal. Ron Paul is no dyed-in-the-wool Republican. Although he served in Congress as a Republican during the mid to late 70s and early 80s, Ronnie rose to political prominence as a Libertarian when he ran for President in 1988 and got over 400,000 votes, third most that election. After that loss, Ronnie took some time off from politics and went back to medicine, his first love.Throughout this time, though, Ronnie continued to push his political agenda, most notably through Ron Paul & Associates, a company that he established in 1984 that produce various newsletters, including The Ron Paul Investment Letter, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and Ron Paul Political Report. He gained tens of thousands of subscribers and earned millions of dollars with these newsletters promoting his Libertarian ideas.

Flash forward twenty years...

Read the rest of the story on my latest
From the Bottom Up on The Urban Twist.

A Few Older Poems

2011-12-21T12:23:00.000-08:00

Here are a few older poems written in the early 90s after the death of my mom & the break up of my first marriage to Maria. Both have been the subject of quite a bit of my writing, but this is the early stuff. I was so bitter, back then.

The Daisy Field

I walked past the daisy field today
a rock garden
casting shadows on my head
my heart searched for you
lost in haze

But this heart, you see
this heart still has problems
with the way things ended
left me so fast
so unprepared

And who was I to deny
your request that you find rest
traveling the many rivers
of our homeland
and not stay trapped with worms
and things that crawl & squirm

But damn, mom! It might have been nice
to have a place to visit you on lonlier days
to think about those too few years
we were granted together

Now, unless I fly a thousand miles
to find your river home
I'm left to the sterile corners of my room
left to strain for memories--
sometimes I strain so hard
the tears burn me

Embers

I sometimes find myself
combing through the ashes
of what we once had
digging, hoping to find something
salvageable amongst all the dead
embers

I search deep and long, longing
too long; because once I find hope
I uncover burning, breathing coals
blue-hot to the touch
remnants of you
burning me, watching me
blister & boil
and catch
until I almost become
one of you
one with you
or whatever happens
when two flames
meet

I know one day I'll accept that there is nothing but pain within the ashes

Clean Rinse

I wash my hands
I wash my hands of you
and everything about you
the little burdens you try to pass off

I wash my hands
I wash my hands of you
scrub beneath the nails
if only I could pluck them off
to be sure the residue
the rest of you
was rinsed deep clean

I wash my hands of you
scrub them to the bone
and even then I scrub & scrub & scrub
until the bright white light of reflection
blinds me!

Is this all the brightness you could give?

An Open Letter to Jerry Falwell

2011-12-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

Originally written in April, 2006, I'm reposting this ( with a few updates) from my old MySpace blog in memory of renowned writer & atheist extraordinaire, Christopher Hitchens. I know Falwell & his hate have been dead for a few years, but I like to think Hitchens would have appreciated my candor.

Fuck You:

Every time you open your mouth about Family Values, you insult me. Your claims that nontraditional families are leading to the decline of our country are equal to spitting in my face. What the fuck do you know about families, particularly nontraditional ones? You were raised in a world of lily-white palaces, where it was alright to treat a black man like a nigger. I read about your "conversion" from your segregationist ideals. I suppose segregation is a hard habit to break.

You want a nontraditional family, look at mine. My mother was a heroin addict for most of her life. There were hard times. There were even tragic times. But my mother, without the aid of my father— without the aid of any man for a lot of her life— taught us about the important things in life. She taught us to love everyone, regardless of who they are. She taught us not to judge others; that rather than judge, we should offer our help if they truly need it and we are capable. She taught us to strive for anything we wanted out of life.

Granted, not everything turned out roses. My mother died of AIDS in 1991. She never even told me she had it because of a stigma that you helped to foment in those days. The irony is that she had, seemingly, finally beaten her addictions, and was just starting to go after her dreams when death took her. My uncle succumbed to AIDS, and my little brother, who was 16 when my mother died, battled his own addictions and only a little less shame. He died of the same disease.

My sister, however, is the Queen of Retail, happily married and buying her first house. As for me, I've recently finished a novel and am working on a second. Hopefully, I can get them published. You probably wouldn't like them though. I model for art classes for a living. For now. I have two wonderful sons who cause as much trouble as teenagers are prone to cause.

I have a sister-in-law whose gay who has a wonderful young son who is intelligent, talented, tolerant and plays a mean game of basketball. Most important is that he is happy. I will love him whether he's gay or straight. Jesus would, too.

So you see, your ideas of morality have no effect on the way families succeed or fail. Success and failure happen with nearly equal proportions in black families, white families, religious families, Atheist families and yes, gay families.

Please Jerry, stop insulting me and my intelligence almost every tine you show your face on television. Let God, if there is just one or any, be the judge of our lives here on the planet. Divert your energy to the issues that need them, like poverty, hunger and literacy. They are still here, Jerry.

What would Jesus do? Otherwise, I hope that everyone wakes up to your hateful lack of tolerance, and stops giving money to a bigot, a bigot who doesn't know Jesus from an asshole, not even to realize he is one, an asshole that is. You could change today, Jerry: be a Jesus instead of an asshole. I certainly pray you do. If not, please just go fuck yourself, and leave me and my families alone.

Irreverently Yours,
The Word Pimp
Fernando Quijano III

Black Thursday: Did Black Friday ‘Jump the Shark’ by Not Caring About Thanksgiving?

2011-11-17T14:57:00.001-08:00

Editor’s note: this may contain offensive language to some. – BJ

Black Friday has officially jumped the shark. For those of you who might not be familiar with the phrase, it’s the moment when something that was once popular attempts to maintain or regain that popularity with a grand, attention-getting stunt that ends up failing miserably. It comes from 70s television hit Happy Days. In the show’s waning days, there was an episode where Fonzie, the main character of the show and icon of everything cool back then, jumps over a shark, while on water skis and wearing his leather jacket with a pair of swim trunks.

The show, having hit its creative peak, continued to offer storylines that were more grandiose than previous ones. It was that episode where most of the adults who were still watching Happy Days realized it had become a joke. The show went on for a few more years, but it was never the same. Now it’s Black Friday’s turn...

Read the rest on .

Published on Baltimore Fishbowl

2011-11-16T23:25:00.001-08:00

Life with Mom: My Hero, My Heroin Addict

Published November 16, 2011
by Fernando Quijano
It’s odd having been raised by a mother who remembered being at Woodstock, but who didn't remember where her six-week-old son was that weekend. However, odd barely begins to explain my childhood and my mother.

Miriam Esther Figueroa, my mother, left home when she was 15. The story Mom told me...

Read the rest on the hippest ezine in town:

Paradise Regained: How I Killed Bin Laden

2011-11-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

It's just afeeling, a sense that something isn't... right. I'm strolling through ElYunque, the rainforest high in themountains of northeastern Puerto Rico when it registers—an imbalance. Maybeeddies in the time space continuum. It's hard to explain. I'll try.

I come here to see the sky being born, to watch the cloudspeel off the mountaintops and drift towards the sea. I come to listen to the higuaca birds croak and the coqui frogs chirp. In short, I come to be with God. It'snot hard to feel a flaw on God's throne.

I'll admit that my first instinct's to avoid it. After all,I'm here to be cleansed, not to detail God's chair. But it's like ignoringtrash because someone else left it behind—it's bad form. So I'm compelled tofollow the disturbance to it's source.

The source is just some old jibaro, the Puerto Rican hillbillies who roam the mountainsliving off the land. I greet him graciously, and he offers me a cordial welcomeand a box of mangoes, for five dollars. He's a dirty, old man, tall &gangly, wearing burlap clothes as tattered as his long beard and his widesombrero. He's carrying a lot of weight, not the mangoes, but the gravity of thousandsof dead souls.

"Viejo, you seemtired," I say, "¿Have you been to the fountain?" He bows hishead a bit, shakes it slowly. "¡Bueno! Vamonos."

I lead him to the top of Las Minas, the waterfall the locals hike miles to for itswaters' curative properties. We wade in. He's more cautious than I am, takinglong but hesitant strides. "¿Lo sientes?" I ask, "You can feel it, can'tyou?"

I turn back to see his eyes widening wildly. "Si, but the current, la curriente—" His English is bad, his Spanish is worse, buthe's right. I stop in the middle of the river and watch as he drifts closer tothe edge.

"¿Ques pasa, viejo?"I shout at him, "¿Too much power?"

He's coming at me now, or at least he's trying to. He leapsout of the water towards me, but only ends up closer to Las Minas. "¡Help me!" He cries, finally, "I'mvery rich. ¡I'll make you rich!"

"Look around you, viejo. I'm as rich as they come."

"¡Poder! ¡I canmake you very powerful!" He has to shout now in order to be heard.

"And yet you're the one being pulled towards thefall." I laugh. He drifts.

"¡¿Do you know who I am?!" He's shouting at thetop of his lungs, but it sounds like a whisper. I can't quite make out therest, muffled as it is by the fury of the water as it cascades off the cliff.It doesn't matter.

All that matters isthat he didn't belong in paradise, especially not selling mangoes. All thatmatters is that the energy of El Yunque is slowly being restored as the dark, oldman anchored by the weight of thousands of murdered souls is being washed outto the sea. I can now continue on my pilgrimage comfortably. I can now go watchclouds being born, in peace.

☠

Repost From Old MySpace Blog

2011-10-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

I decided to pull this over from my old MySpace blog, before it gets cast into the ethers of the internet, and repost it here.

Joseph Anthony Soto: 1974-2006

Joseph Anthony Soto, Sr. of 1439 Rennert Road, Lumberton, North Carolina, was born in Jersey City, NJ, on May 1, 1974.He finally found peace on December 26, 2006, after a long battle with AIDS, at the age of 32. He was preceded in death by his mother, Miriam Esther Figueroa.

Joe gained the love and respect of almost everyone he met, and although he didn't always show it, he greatly apprecated all the love and care he received from the generous people of Lumberton.

Joe is survived by the love of his life, Sabrina Jones, his three children, Joseph Anthony Soto, Jr., Jada Miriam Soto and Jarren Evan Soto, his brothers, Carlos Carmona and Fernando Quijano III, his sister, Kyra Quijano, and a host of other friends and relatives. He will be sorely missed.

I've written three obituaries in my life, and that had to have been the saddest one so far, not just because he was my baby brother, not just because he died so young, nor just because he is the third member of my family (My mother died in 1991, my uncle Andy a few years later) to succumb to AIDS. Yes, it's sad because he leaves behind a wife and three young kids, but what makes it even sadder is the lost potential of a young man whose power was never truly tapped.

Yes, there are lessons we can still take away from the loss of my baby brother. Always a "man," he would have us believe that he acquired HIV via unprotected sex, but as he was also a drug addict, could have almost as likely gotten it shooting up heroin. The irony that he died of the same disease that killed my mother and uncle, and that he likely started using drugs as a method of coping with my mother's death (Joe was only 16) doesn't elude me. And I'm sure we all need the occassional reminder that AIDS is still virulent here in the U.S.

Nevertheless, I will miss him and his stories. He had many to tell, all entertaining, many I will never hear. Below is a poem, a rap, that Jojo started, and that I helped to polish. It's neither the best example of Hip Hop nor poetry, but it reflected a moment in our lives when we used our grief to create something together. Something we were both proud of. After all, isn't good art merely an honest attempt at expressing our deepest emotions?

Rocked by Ages
    You think you had it rough
    Well I think I had it rougher
    Mommy was a dope fiend
    Daddy was a puffer
Five years old and learning how to suffer
    watching Mommy jump from one man to another
Daddy disappeared when I turned Seven    He's in jail or hell... know he ain't in heaven
Nine years old, livin' off cheese & Kix    Mommy sold the foodstamps so she could get her next fix
Eleven years old, first time I saw the needle in her arm    Imagine my confusion, imagine my alarm
    Just that day, I learned about drugs in school
    They said it was for losers, they said it was for fools
    Tryin' to get her to stop, I laid down some law
    She just laughed in my face, said it was my fault

& I crashed

Thirteen years old, hitting rock bottom
    The disadvantages of life, yeah I got 'em
    so I hit the bottle and the joint to set me free
    Started off slow, but soon nothing could stop me
    'til I looked in the mirror, and all I saw was Mommy
Fifteen, time to quit while ahead
    Before I was too deep, before I was dead
    while at it, I'd get Mommy out too
    Get her in rehab, start our lives brand new
    But for Mommy things would never be the same
    Cuz she'd caught that big disease with the itty bitty name
Sixteen years old, at the hospital to say goodbye
    But I couldn't say shit, I just watched Mommy die

& I crashed...

Hitting the Wall

2011-09-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

You may not be aware of this, but there are people occupying a small park near Wall Street, right now. It all kicked off with a march of about a thousand people (perhaps less, depending on who you believe) protesting “the blatant injustices of our times perpetuated by the economic and political elites” on September 17, 2011. A smaller contingent stayed behind after the initial protest with the intention of “occupying” Wall Street until their demands are met.

If you haven’t heard, that’s because the mainstream media has been pretty quiet about the protest. The reasons for this media brownout are deemed many: There is no centralized organization (although that doesn’t stop the media from covering the TEA Party every time they fart), the movement is just not that big, and there is no major figure supporting the cause (although, thus far, Roseanne Barr, Lupe Fiasco, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon and Cornell West have all stopped by to show some love).

The biggest reason for a lack of coverage, however, according to what I’ve seen reported by the press, is a lack of specificity on behalf of the protesters. The New York City General Assembly, the group that seems to be creating the policy for which the protesters advocate, offer a list of “demands” on their website which they call their Principals of Solidarity.

Read the rest on From the Bottom Up on theurbantwist.com

Hey, Look at Me!

2011-09-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

Time for a little self-promotion:

First off, the Baltimore Museum of Art is holding an exhibition highlighting this year's winners of the Baker Artist Awards as well as B Grant winners, such as yours truly. The odds of a Baltimore artist getting work in the BMA are slim under normal circumstances, nearly nil if your art is not of the visual kind. As such, I am both honored & humbled to be there, even if it's just a bio on the wall with a cute picture of me and a booklet with a sample of my work.

Anyway, the show is going on as we speak and ends on October 2. See it.

And if you can, please come to the FREE closing reception on October 1, from 7-11PM. I will be reading from my work.

You can catch me all over the Baltimore Book Festival throughout the weekend, but if you want to see me in action, catch me on Saturday, September 24 at 12:30PM with the crew of Little Patuxent Review for Poets for Change, a panel discussion about the role of poetry in social change. (CityLit Stage)

Then you can hear me read some of my work, along with other regulars from Eric Goodman's Lit & Art reading series, at 5:30PM. (Baltimore Free School Lit & Language Tent)

Finally, join me for yet one more reading with the wonderful poets who contributed to Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems. This one will take place at Ahh... Coffee on Saturday, October 8 from 6:30-8:30PM. Open Mic to follow featured readers.

That's it for now, but keep checking back for updates.

MUCH LOVE

Tea & Sympathy

2011-09-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

Tea & Sympathy

The numbers are in. In the wake of the worst recession since the Great Depression of the early 20th Century, we now have more poor people than we’ve had since we started keeping track of poor folk—46.2 million. That’s over 15% of Americans now defined as poor, up from about 14% the previous year. In case you need to understand how our country defines poverty, if your family of four makes less than $22,314 a year, you are poor.

I’ve been there.

Read the rest of the story on my column, From the Bottom Up, on TheUrbanTwist.com

9-11 is a Joke

2011-09-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

9-11 is a Joke

I got out of bed today, September 11, 2011, at the exact same time I did ten years ago. I know this because I did the same thing I did ten years ago—I turned on the television. It was 8:46 a.m. They had begun a moment of silence in remembrance of the very moment the first plane hit the North Tower. What a tragedy, I thought then, a terrible accident, as the folks on Good Morning America tried to make sense of it all.

And then the second plane struck the South Tower. I saw it—a plane streaked from the right of the television screen and slammed right into the other building. Everyone who had become glued to the television, by this point, saw it—9:03 a.m. At that moment, there came the collective realization that we were under attack. This was no coincidence. This was an act full of intent and malice.

I was angry. I was scared.

(Read the rest of the story on my column, From the Bottom Up, on TheUrbanTwist.com)

A Little Puerto Rican

2011-09-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

It had become such a part of my youth that I was shocked to learn during my first day in the ninth grade that I was no longer the Smallest Kid in the Class. That honor went to some kid named Eddie who had me beat by a good inch or so. Although I hated being so small, I was disappointed by having lost my title. I was still teased, but I’d lost the only thing that had set me apart since moving to Maryland two years earlier.

Being Puerto Rican—the strongest part of my identity back in Jersey—meant nothing here. No one at Stemmer’s Run Junior High had ever met a Hispanic, much less a Puerto Rican. “Are you Indian?” they would ask, a question that plagues me to this day. “Is that Mexican?” was the next question, followed by, “Do you speak Puerto Rican?” I tried not to let the questions, however absurd, bother me, and I answered them patiently. “No, I’m not Indian. Mexican’s are different. We all speak Spanish.” I also started using Freddy, my father’s nickname, because I couldn’t stand the twang they added when saying Fernando.

What did bother me were those who insisted on mocking my uniqueness with their own labels, like the kids at Hampstead Hill Junior High in Highlandtown that called me The Cambonian, or those in high school that refused to consider me anything besides Mexican or the immigrant. One of those kids, a boy of Italian descent named Tony, wanted to beat the shit out of me when, after months of harassment, I pointed out that my family, having been granted citizenship dating back to 1899 following the Spanish-American War, had been Americans longer, most likely, than his family.

He refused to accept the facts, even though I opened up a history book and pointed out to him the part where Spain gave up Puerto Rico as part of the treaty ending the war, and where all Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship a few years thereafter.

Being so detached from my culture, my size became the only thing that set me apart, as long as I could find ways use it to my advantage. As boys who, like me, grew up height disadvantaged know all too well, the tendency is to get picked on incessantly. I was no different, except that I was more game than most. During the Hampstead years, rather than fighting the inevitable I would ingratiate myself to my tormenters by playing the willing victim. “Sure, you can see how far you can lift/toss/bench press me,” just became part of my vocabulary. When someone suggested that I be placed in a gym bag and hung from a basketball hoop, I was the first to try to fit in the bag. And anytime they played their little macho games, like taking punches right into the sternum, I was always all-in, making sure they realized that I could take it with the best of them.

It didn’t take long before I was just another one of the group. What’s more, they decided that being their little guy, their French Fry as I was dubbed, I had to be protected. Anytime anyone outside our group tried to mess with me, one, if not all of them, would break in and scare off the offender. It wasn’t hard considering that my little gang included the biggest boys in Hampstead: Kirk, Russell and Stan. They were all nearly six feet tall by eighth grade. Kirk and Stan tipped the scales at close to, if not over, 2oo pounds. I once got to see Kirk and Stan wrestle each other near Patterson Park. Afraid of getting in trouble, we all scattered after Kirk picked Stan up and slammed him into a car leaving a huge Stan-shaped dent on the side.

There was a downside. I could never stick up for myself, even when I wanted to. I was seeing this girl named Bobbi Jo who I’d met on the playground in Patterson Park. She was one of the first girls to show an interest in me since I’d moved to Baltimore from Middle River. One day, when Bobbi Jo wasn’t around, her cousin Tammy came over and introduced herself. She also introduced me to French kissing. Jimmy, one of my not-so-big friends, was the only one I told about the experience. I told him not to mention a word; I wanted to be the one to tell Bobbi Jo so that I could break it to her as gently as possible. But when I saw Bobbi Jo the next day, she already knew. Jimmy had told her.

Furious, I found Jimmy on the playground and after a few choice words, punched him in the mouth. I wanted a chance to beat the piss out of him. He was eager for a little mano a mano, but Kirk and Russell weren’t about to let me get in a real fight. They stepped in and kept us separated. Granted, when Jimmy’s big brother Joe came around looking to exact revenge for hitting Jimmy so hard that he had to have the orthodontist separate his lips from his braces, the guys were there to stop that too.

Looking back, I’m grateful to have had them around. Kirk once saved me from a stint in Juvie. There was one idiot in my class, I can’t even remember his name, who just seemed to have it out for me. Coming in late for school one day, he took the opportunity of passing by my desk to knock my books to the floor. When I got my chance, I knocked his books across the room. Next period, gym, coming out of the locker room, I felt an arm wrap around my neck and yank me to the ground. The idiot was choking the life out of me, and the more I struggled, the harder he squeezed. Finally, just when I thought I would pass out, he let me go.

Once I caught my breath, I peeled myself off the ground and picked up the first thing I could find, an aluminum baseball bat. That bastard had his back turned to me chatting with some friends. I crept up close behind him and swung. The bat stopped inches from his head with a smack as Kirk caught it with his hand. “Freddy, are you nuts?!” I remembered Kirk yelling as he yanked the bat out of my hand. I felt nuts. I must have looked it too, judging by the fear in that kid’s eyes when he spun around to realize how close he had come to getting beaned by the little Puerto Rican. He didn’t give me any problems after that.

High school pretty much broke up our little band. I was able to get into Baltimore Polytechnic while everyone else was fated to attend Patterson High, their zoned school. Two plus hours of daily travel time and a heavy homework load made it nearly impossible to even meet up with the old crew, except for the occasional weekend. They were always excited to see me, but I could tell even then that they were getting used to not having me around. None of them felt the need to see how high they could lift me or how far they could toss me anymore. They didn’t need me. They’d never needed me.

I didn’t need them either, I would think in fits of anger. They never even let me fight my own battles. But that’s not exactly true. It’s not that they felt I couldn’t handle myself in a fight. The truth was that they knew that while I did hang out with them, I wasn’t part of them. They knew then what I’ve only realized recently. As violent as they could be, they could see I wasn’t. Not really. I just needed to fit in somewhere. They weren’t protecting me from getting hurt. They were protecting me from becoming like them. And now, I had outgrown them.

I ran into Kirk one chilly November night on Castle Street. He asked me what I was up to, and I let him know I had decided to take join Poly’s wrestling team. “Oh yeah?” he replied, all excited, “Let me see what you got French Fry!” He reached out to grab me in one of his crushing bear hugs. I ducked under, grabbed around his knees offering a hug of my own, and pulled. He fell on his back with a loud ¡fwoomp! and started laughing. I helped him up and he was still laughing, shaking his head. He offered me a friendlier, less painful embrace. “It’s great seeing you,” he said, still laughing, still shaking his head as we both continued on our separate paths.

lullaby

2011-09-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

A poem I wrote during the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, once I realized Bush was going to use the tragedy to promote his political agenda.

lullaby

Rock a Bye baby

on the tree top

Sleep tight America—a

slumbering giant— 9-1-1

was no emergency.

Rest assured that our

government has our best

interests at heart, like

when daddy used Afghanistan

to slay the big bad red

bear then left it in a lurch,

lost in poverty, lost

in discord, little land lost

with nothing but its rock

& sand & guns poppy

fields. But father knows

best!

When the wind blows

the cradle will rock

Night night America—rest

right knowing the son,

the puppet president,

has it all under control,

the bees buzz buzz buzzing

in his ear, telling him where

to steer the bombs to leave

the corpses of our bastard

brothers, bloodied & belittled

because they would not be

ignored. The sins of our

children directly reflect

our fathers at their worst.

When the bough breaks

the cradle will fall

Let's fight America—hold

your flags up high

as you send your children off

to die to keep those Iraqi

pipelines flow flow flowing

with that pitch black blood

pumping up our SUV

fetishes while we let

the red black green

blood flow in the riverbeds

of the Congo—so long as

those niggers keep mining

what we need to power

our laptops, our cellphones

& ourplaystation²s. Who

the fuck cares which nigger

owns the those mines…

No, its mine! BANG!

NO! It's mine! BANG!

NO! IT'S MINE! BANG!

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

All while daddy stands idly

by.

Down will come baby

cradle & ALL

Peace is in sight America-

Ginsberg was wrong, Ferlinghetti

was wrong, there is no need

to howl & scream, those dead

& beat beats didn't know we could

dream while our country watches

over us, profiling us in our sleep,

the land of the free

to be afraid. So just keep sitting

tight America

ready to fight

flexing your might

ignoring the light

shortening your sights

abandoning your rights

just so you can sleep

through the night.

Hush little babies

don't say a word,

I'm just some insomniac

mocking bird crying the call

of down will come baby

cradle

& all.

September 12, 2002

Pissed On

2011-08-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

This story was originally published in Smile Hon, You're in Baltimore's Waste Issue. Make sure to pick up your copy from Cyclops, Atomic Books or elsewhere around town. And be on the lookout for the next issue which will have my poem, "Praying in the Temple of the Moon."

It wasn't my first, but it was the first job I ever worked during the school year, not just a summer gig. I was great at it, too. I mean we're only talking fast food here, the McDonalds on Dundalk Avenue near Willow Spring Road; but it’s where I developed my work ethic. Like most of the fresh meat, I began my career on the grill. I became the master of the short-lived McDLT, one of Mickey Dees' attempts to compete with the Whopper. Soon enough I was training other new hires on the grill and was moved to the front to take orders and ring sales. There was even talk of promoting me to assistant manager during the summer.

For a sixteen-year-old, life couldn't have been much better. And it wasn't just how successful I was at flipping burgers and taking orders. I made lots of good friends. One of the managers, Rob, bribed us at closing time by plying us with pot and gin. We'd crank on the OJ machines (we sold the little plastic, foil-topped cups to the public), mix some drinks, smoke a bit of herb, and get wasted. The breakfast crew would come in to the cleanest, best-prepped store in Maryland. Rob would even squeeze as many of us as he could into his little, two-seater Fiero and drive us home.

My family liked all the food I brought home that would have otherwise gotten thrown away. Nowadays they might donate food to homeless shelters and soup kitchens, but back then it would all go to waste—straight to the dumpster. The cooler managers would look the other way while I stacked bags full of double cheeseburgers, fries and cherry pies at the end of my shift. My parents and sibs would actually wait up, if I wasn’t getting home too late, for a late night feast. I was a hero.

There were, however, villains. One was named was Mike. He was a particularly lazy, fat-assed manager who spent most of his shift, once the day shift managers were gone, parked at a table in a far corner of the dining room sipping coffee and chain smoking. He'd hand his keys over to his lackey, a girl named Tia, for voids and other register issues. Tia took this as a sign of power to lord over the rest of the peons. So while Mike hid in his corner like a troll, Tia would scatter off like a roach to find her own crack to hide in.

Now, once you're on a register you're not supposed to walk away unless a manager knows. Once, I had to go to the bathroom really bad—not a surprise since we got to fill our little courtesy cups as often as we liked. Mike was unseen in his corner adding more yellow to his fingers and teeth. Tia, as usual, was nowhere to be found. I figured one of them would have to show up, eventually. I kept taking orders and ringing customers. And then I realized I was trembling. I could still take orders, but my voice was halting as I had to focus most of my concentration on not pissing myself.

I looked around. Still no Mike. Still no Tia. At this point I was in serious pain. Finally, I had a brilliant idea. Maybe, I thought, just maybe if I let it out slowly most of the urine will get absorbed into my underwear and not show through my pants. So I did. I continued to take a customer’s order while slowly, carefully releasing the contents of my painfully over-bloated bladder. I was handing the customer change when I realized that as good as my plan was, my tighty whities just weren’t going to be able to hold all that liquid. I tried not to panic as I felt the warm wetness of my urine drizzle down my legs.

The pants saved me. Back then, the uniform pants were a heavy, forest green polyester. I looked down. I could feel that parts of my pants were wet, but they didn’t look wet. Also lucky for me, I had drunken so much soda, the piss was so diluted, that there was no smell to speak of. When Tia finally showed up I was furious to the point of tears. I promptly excused myself, ran downstairs to the employee bathroom and threw my soaked underwear away. The other great thing about the McDonalds uniform pants of old: they dried quickly. By the time my shift was over a couple of hours later it was like nothing had ever happened.

Regardless, I wasn't going to let that happen again. Neither Mike nor Tia were around, as usual, when I found myself in a similar situation a few weeks later. I was working the drivethrough. I abandoned my post before it was too late, ran down the stairs to the employee bathroom and relieved myself the human way. I was able to dart right back to my post undetected. However, as soon as I opened my register I realized something was terribly wrong. There was money missing.

I noticed it right away because a customer had paid using a fifty-dollar bill, and that fifty was no longer in the register. The first moment I could, I asked Tia about it thinking perhaps she had pulled it from my register to make change. She knew nothing about it, she claimed. To me that meant she took it. No one else could have. I was worried, but it was the first time any of my drawers had come up short. Not to big a deal, right?

Wrong. I was called down to the manager’s office at the start of my very next shift and was promptly fired. I tried to explain exactly what was wrong with their location, about lazy, fat-assed Mike and power hungry, thieving Tia, but all the general manager cared about was policy. Policy dictated that any shortage of fifty dollars or more could be dealt with by termination. It didn’t matter how promising I was as an employee, that I was the master of the McDLT or the king of customer service. All that mattered was that I could be fired, so I was. I was too embarrassed, then, to point out that I had pissed myself.

And there I was, pissed again. This time, though, I was pissed off. My mother had this saying for people who said they were pissed off. It’s better to be pissed off than pissed on. I always thought she was right, but as I walked out of McDonalds for the last time in what would turn out to be a long time I couldn’t help feeling that I was both.

Reading "Pissed On" at Atomic Books

pisepip

¡Coming Soon!

2011-07-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

¿Where can you catch a Word Pimp?

¡EVERYWHERE!

Check me out at any of these upcoming events:

ESSENTIAL SUNDAYS

July 10, 2011

4PM

Minás Gallery & Boutique

815 W. 36th Street

Baltimore, MD 21211

Join me & Jeremy Bruno as we headline the esteemed reading series. Guest Hosted by Angela Horner. Admission: $3.00

INNOCENT: Confessions of a Welfare Mother Launch Party

July 15, 2011
7PM
Ivy Bookshop
6080 Falls Road

Baltimore, MD 21209

Join me and a few of my Life in Me Like Grass on Fire friends to help celebrate the release of Barbara Morrison's new book.

Life in Me Like Grass on Fire invades D.C.

July 22, 2011

6:30PM

Touchstone Gallery

901 New York Ave, NW

Washington, DC 20001

Another round of "Life in Me" poets, including ME, read in our nation's capitol. Hosted by Janice Lynch Schuster
Readers include:
Mary Westcott
Shirley Brewer
Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka
Fernando Quijano III
Frank S. Joseph
Heidi Mordhorst
Marceline White
Adele Brown

Life in Me Like Grass on Fire Invades Lit & Art

July 31, 2011

2PM
Watermark Gallery
100 S. Charles St
Baltimore, MD 21201

Join me and a cadre of Maryland's best writers as we read from our wonderful anthology of love poems. Hosted by Eric Goodman.

Life in Me Like Grass On Fire Invades Minás

August 13, 2011

5PM
Minás Gallery & Boutique
815 W. 36th St
Baltimore, MD 21211

¡I get to host this one! More information to be provided as it becomes available.

Life in The Word Pimp Like Grass on Fire

2011-04-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. I've been a bit quiet lately. In my defense I've been pretty busy, and it looks like I'll only get busier from here on out. However, April will keep me the kind of busy you can be a part of.

In case you haven't heard, two of my poems were published in Life in Me Like Grass on Fire, and anthology of poetry written by members of the Maryland Writers Association and edited by the wonderful Laura Shovan. I also wrote the introduction to "Love of Nature," the section where my poems appear. I will be making a number of appearances in April to promote the book and National Poetry Month.

First up, I'm honored to be one of this month's Poets at Preston Gardens on Tuesday, April 12, from noon until 1:00PM. Preston Gardens runs from the 200 to 300 blocks of Saint Paul Street, across the street from Mercy Hospital. Caryn Coyle and Lomeize Rulo will also be reading. This event is sponsored by the Downtown Partnership and organized by Andy Rubin , proprietor of Cyclops Books & Music. (NOTE: TODAY'S POETS IN PRESTON GARDENS READING HAS BEEN RAINED OUT. A NEW DATE WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN THE NEAR FUTURE.)

On the following evening, Wednesday, April 13, please join me, Shirley Brewer and other contributors from Life in Me Like Grass on Fire at the Village Learning Place from 7:00PM until 9:00PM.

Celebrate the official launch of Life in Me Like Grass on Fire at the CityLit Festival with me, editor Laura Shovan, Dennis Kirschbaum, Ann Bracken, Barbara Westwood Diehl, Heidi Mordhorst & Shirley Brewer in the Poe Room from 10:45AM until noon.

Finally, I'm in a double barrel of the 6th annual Cruellest Month Poetry & Performance Festival readings at the Towson Branch of the Baltimore County Public Library. First up: Monday, April 18 with the Smile Hon, Your'e in Baltimore crew hosted by Eight-Stone Press guru extraordinaire & King of Hons, William P Tandy.

I return to the Towson Branch the very next week, Monday, April 25, to help close out CruMoPoPerFest with the Maryland Writers Association (MWA) and a baker's dozen of the poets featured in Life in Me Like Grass on Fire for our official launch party; and who doesn't like a good party. All Cruellest Month events run from 6:30PM-8:30PM.

¿Can't make it to any of the readings? No worries. Just make sure to purchase your copy of Life in Me Like Grass on Fire by following the link. Also, you can check out a few of my poems featured on Laura Shovan's blog, Author Amok as well as on eightelevenpointfiftyfour, a poetry blog run by NYC librarian, Rita Stein-Grollman. By the way, Rita's still looking for some good poets to host, hint, hint.

Well, I think that's everything. It better be. You're all likely tired of me already. I hope not, though. See you all... somewhere, soon.

Mating Maria

2011-01-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

First, let me get this out of the way: I was a virgin until the ripe old age of nineteen, which even by the standards of those days (late 80s), was fairly old—at least compared to my friends. That's not to say I didn't try hard, or that I didn't come real damned close on a few occassions. I’d done almost everything else. It's just that each of those times I got real damned close something would go terribly, terribly wrong and the deed always went undone. Those are actually fairly humorous stories too. I've posted many of them here: Never Too Short to Get Cock Blocked by God, Part I, Never Too Short to Get Cock Blocked by God, Part II & Never Too Short to Get Cock Blocked by God, Part III. Suffice it to say that it was hard for a little, geeky Puerto Rican like me to get laid in Baltimore.

At the time I was living with Chris, a graffiti artist with whom I vandalized (¡Beautified!) most of East Baltimore and plenty of Eastern Baltimore County. Chris was this scrawny blonde-haired, blue-eyed sixteen year old whose long skater bangs and upturned nose made him look just like Hermey, the misfit elf who wanted to be a dentist from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Our friendship was starting to fall apart once I realized that Chris was using me. I had a job and money. He didn’t. I paid for food. I paid for clubs. I even paid for a cab ride from Highlandtown to a party in Perry Hall that didn't exist so he could screw with his girlfriend while I was forced to lie on the floor next to their bed and try not to listen.

A couple of weeks after that fiasco I was taking a break from my job at this little coffee shop Downtown when I noticed this hot Latina sitting on a bench filling out a job app. She had dark brown, almost-black hair, a gorgeous cappuccino complexion, and a pointed chin I just wanted to nibble on. I wanted to get her attention, so I looped around and passed by her again. She didn't look up, but she reached out, grabbed my wrist and yanked me down to the seat beside her. She introduced herself as Maria. She had seen me go past the first time and had recognized me. Maria reminded me that we had met previously, a little over a year before, at St. Elizabeth's Carnival.

I immediately remembered her. She had been sitting on the steps of St. E’s and had yanked me down to her as I walked by, not unlike the move she pulled near the coffee shop. She had tried to speak to me in Spanish, but it was so broken I could barely make it out. She was about to miss her curfew that night, so we couldn't talk long that first time. It didn't matter because that same night I hooked up with Marilyn, a girl I had been crushing on for the previous three years who I consider my first adult love. You can find that story on Never Too Short to Get Cock Blocked by God, Part III.

Maria decided to stick to English this time, and I was able to understand her a bit better. Apparently, she remembered me from my skateboarding days when I would roll past her house on Chester Street. She had seemingly spent some considerable amount of time learning about me because it looked as if she knew more about me than I did. It was more than enough to feed my hungry, young ego. We exchanged numbers and made arrangements to meet up at Chris' place that coming Saturday.

I should have suspected something was a little off with Maria when I invited her into Chris' apartment, and the first thing she did was rummage through the cabinets and fridge for food without bothering to ask. Chris gave me a disapproving look, and I just shrugged. Finding nothing to satisfy her there, we all left and jumped on the number 23 to Eastpoint Mall where I bought her dinner, which she ate ravenously—simultaneously disgusting me and turning me on. We hung out for a little while, then I brought her back to Chris' where we went into his room and started making out. This is the first time I allowed myself to believe that it was actually going to happen. I was gonna get some, and God wasn't going to cock block me like he had been doing throughout my youth.

Chris left to give us some privacy, and I pulled out the only condom I owned, which had been sitting in my wallet waiting for this moment for over a year. I never did get to use it. "You don't need that," Maria told me, "I had this accident at Patterson Park Pool when I was a little girl, and my doctor told me I will probably never be able to have children." (Yeah, I know, but remember I was nineteen and horny—& STOOPID). I didn't care. Even better, I thought. I'd prefer to go bareback my first time.

Mind you, I didn't let on I was a virgin. It wasn't an issue because, like I said, I'd done almost everything else, and I'd read enough of the articles in porno mags (¡It pays to read, people!) to have an idea of how I wanted to, um, work it. Suffice it to say there were no complaints, unless you count the ones that came from Chris. When he came back at around 2 a.m., we were still going at it, so he left again. Chris' stepfather even walked in on us while Maria was riding me like a lust-crazed coffee bean picker on a rabid burro in heat. An hour and a half later, when Chris came back, again, we still weren't done. Tired, he decided to crash on his bed with the pillow over his head. I didn’t care. This was payback for him screwing that Perry Hall girl right over my head. We fucked so hard that I know his parents heard Maria yelling, so I know Chris didn't get any sleep, regardless of how hard he pretended.

Maria was insatiable, which was ironic considering she only ever got to the brink of an orgasm, at which point we would have to stop for a few until she was ready to go again. It was no surprise when Chris told me I would have to move out the next day. But we didn't need Chris' room. We screwed anywhere and everywhere: the Rain House in Patterson Park, all three floors of her father's house, including on her father's bed, the Number 14 bus stop on Howard Street near the Inner Harbor (okay, that was just a blowjob, but still). My absolute favorite though was in my mother's bedroom while my mother and sister were still in it.

The reason I had been staying with Chris in the first place was because my mother had taken my sister and moved out of her boyfriend's house, leaving me behind. Not long after I'd hooked up with Maria, I ran into my sister downtown. She told me where she was staying with our mother, sharing a duplex in Park Heights with a couple. I took Maria over there one weekend around Christmas to meet her. It got late, so my mom offered to set up this little rollaway bed in the small bedroom she and my sister were sharing.

¿Did I mention Maria and I couldn't keep our hands off each other? Needless to say, once we felt sure mom & sis were in lost in Lalaland, we decided that a little spooning would likely make the least noise. Everything was going swimmingly until Maria let out this yelp. Instinctively, I clamped a hand over her mouth. We stood perfectly still for a few seconds to see if anybody had heard us. Then we started giggling uncontrollably. Mom woke up long enough to shout, "If you two don't stop fucking around I'm going to beat both of your asses!"

Anyway, the fun kind of stopped that Spring when I found out Maria was pregnant. Apparently, she had wanted a baby—she had wanted my baby—and was willing to lie to me to have it. What she didn't count on was that I was too responsible to take her suggestion that I walk away and forget about her and our child. Having grown up without a father, I wasn't the type to abandon my own offspring, conceived through deception or not. Besides, I did love her, and I wanted to make it work. At the suggestion (insistence) of her father, Jupiter (appropriately named considering his massive frame and an ego to match), we got married in October of 1989, just weeks before Maria gave birth.

The magic lasted until I found out she was pregnant a second time, this time because of her inconsistent use of the pill. (Jupiter told me she took them like Tic Tacs, popping two or three at a time when she missed a few days.) At that point, I took things into my own hands getting a vasectomy at twenty-one.

The relationship chilled for good when I found out she had cheated on me with six men after we'd gotten married. She had played me to get what she wanted—a child, played along when I wouldn't just turn my back on that child, and didn't want to play anymore when the unexpected second child came along.

There are some important lessons here kids. First, don't fall in love with the first person you screw. Second, always, always, ALWAYS wrap it before you tap it. And finally, when someone offers you a copy of your girlfriend's psychiatric evaluation and it starts off with terms like narcissistic paranoid & borderline psychotic, don't think, maybe I can help her get past all that. Scrap all the Night-in-Shining-Armor delusions. ¡Just RUN!

Originally published in Smile Hon, You're in Flagrante

Killing Me Softly with The "N" Word

2010-08-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

The much maligned, and often deservedly so, Dr. Laura Schlessinger called it quits this week from her highly rated radio show after stirring up controversy by saying the word nigger almost a dozen times while pretending to offer advice to a black woman who was feeling targeted and discriminated against by her white husband’s friends & family. This is not a shock, not only because Dr. Laura is a misogynist—she tends to side with husbands over their wives—but also because she’s not a licensed psychologist like most decent advice columnists. Dr. Laura is a physiologist, a doctor that studies how the body works. If I wanted some advice on osmosis or homeostasis I’d ask Dr. Laura, but relationship advice? Come on!

Anyway, even though she apologized for “articulat[ing] the ‘n’ word all the way out,” (as if she had the street cred to have pulled off a simple nigga) she’s gone—or at least she will be when her season ends. Good riddance.

But of course this has caused the inevitable argument about The “N” Word, and whether or not it’s ever appropriate to use it, to rear it’s nappy head, again. The issue, as it’s being defined by certain people, isn’t simply whether or not it’s ever okay for a white person to say nigger, but whether anyone should use it at all, EVER.

(Read the rest on the latest From the Bottom Up on The Urban Twist)

Casualties of War

2010-08-10T06:17:00.000-07:00

Seven Mexicans executed by rival drug gang members

Before I get to the nitty gritty, a few updates for you:
I recently wrote about the Senate’s inability to extend unemployment benefits for the millions of jobless Americans whose regular benefits had expired, or were getting ready to expire. I’m glad to announce that the Senate narrowly averted disaster by finally passing the benefits extension, no thanks to flailing Republicans. Rioting averted, for now.

Several weeks ago I wrote that Congress was considering legislation to reduce the outrageous penalties for crack cocaine possession & distribution. That bill finally passed its last hurdle in the Senate last week and was signed into law by President Obama this past Wednesday. That means that whites, who mostly go to jail for plain old powder, and blacks, predominant sellers & users of cocaine in crack form, will spend almost the same amount of time in jail for what is really the same drug.

But just to prove that they’re still mostly idiots...

(Read the rest on the latest From the Bottom Up on The Urban Twist)

Tea & Crackers

2010-07-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

So the NAACP, an organization that seems increasingly more irrelevant as time goes by, came out to condemn the racist elements within the various loosely organized groups commonly known as Tea Parties which espouse so-called conservative values like free markets, limited government, and lower taxes. The resolution was motivated by Tea Partiers who were protesting the passage of the Health Care bill allegedly shouting “nigger!” at some black congressmen as they walked into the Capitol Building to vote on the legislation, not to mention some of the blatantly racist signs displayed about Obama and the stream of White Supremacists which have recently joined the ranks of Tea Partiers, or my term of preference, teabaggers.

Mind you, all the NAACP was asking for, which won’t be ratified until its October meetings, was essentially for the teabaggers to check themselves before they wreck themselves. But the way the teabaggers and their supporters reacted, you would have thought the NAACP just came out and called them all lying racist shitbags. I mean, they are, mostly, but I’m saying that, not the NAACP.

Even Queen of the teabaggers, Sarah Palin came out...

(Read the whole story on From the Bottom Up on The Urban Twist.)

Fire in the Hole

2010-07-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

I‘m officially employed, again. Good thing, too. Shit started looking little dark down here at the bottom. The power cord for my laptop got fried, and I was afraid I might have to go on a fast in order to afford to replace it. But no. Just in the nick of time I find myself slinging cellies, again.
So if you happen to live in the Baltimore metro area and you’re in the market for a new phone come check me out at the Go Wireless in Homewood, on St Paul St, a block from Johns Hopkins University.

Don’t roll your eyes at me. If you all clicked on a couple of those ads you’re ignoring, maybe I wouldn’t have to hustle my wares in my column. So I think I’m entitled to a little personal advertising here. While I’m at it, I might as well let you know that I’m the newest Vice President of the Maryland Writers Association, too. Things are looking up!

At least I’m working. A lot of folx still ain’t. About 26 million, as a matter of fact. About 2.5 million of them wont be receiving unemployment benefits by the end of this week.

Read the whole story on From the Bottom Up on The Urban Twist.

Wilt

2010-07-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

I can still vividly recall

that smell that smiled

at me in the hall

as I wandered past

your door.

Maybe it was the shelves full

of overpriced perfume,

but I’d bet it was just you

in full bloom

the long spiral petals

of your hair

gold leafed brown to match

your stare;

I didn’t dare

linger

long.

Instead I climbed

the stairs

to the balcony

from where

I could watch you

from above

& pretend we were

in love.

You looked even better

from that height

where I could stay

just out of sight

& make believe I’d written

silly poems

just for you

Even then I knew

I’d spend my days

in your company.

What I didn’t know,

what I couldn’t see

was how exactly it would all go

that I’d waste a decade

chasing dreams

the recurring nightmare

of my life in memes

& all that time

freedom

was always only

a whisper

away

So now the make believe

is done,

pretending’s over,

fantasies spun.

Instead of settling

we have won,

although the bloom

is all but consumed;

& we are left

slowly wilting

in the sun

but we shine

& the aroma’s stronger

now—potpourri &

vintage

wine

We climb together now—

the balcony is closed

but the curtains of our stage

are just now opening wide,

as we perform in repose;

& who knows

how long it’ll take

before we wilt away.

I won’t even allow

my mind to wander there,

anymore.

Instead, I’ll bask

in the glow

of the love that would grow

from a passing scent as I walked

past your door.

McCrack: Why Drug Dealers Would Be Better Off Working at McDonalds

2010-06-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

My hateful pal & fellow Urban Twister, Bryan Stewart, recently came out about his crack addiction (I assume the addiction is virtual.) on facebook, prompting a conversation about the realities of the drug trade. David Simon and his crew showed us plenty of those realities with Homicide, The Corner, & The Wire, but many of the misconceptions about how lucrative the drug trade is still linger. The truth is, unless you can survive the streets long enough without getting killed or arrested as a foot soldier, you’d be better of working at McDonalds...

(Read the whole story on From the Bottom Up on The Urban Twist.)

Villalba

2010-06-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

A poem about my childhood memories of the little town my folx are from in Puerto Rico:

...for Christine...

Villalba

A shallow, little thing—
the river behind abuelita’s
house, barely deep
enough to wade in,
to slam our clothes
clean against rocks

Except when the hurricanes
came, we would have to
gather the chicken & geese
and stow them in the basement
praying that the great brown surge
carrying cows & cars with
equal ease would not
devour our fowl anyway

"¿How far does it go?"
I asked mi hermano—
"Don’t know, but I hear
that upstream
the catfish get so big
you can wrestle them
out of the water—"
and so we set out,
on a day free
of hurricanes, to find that place
where the river began

¿How far had we walked
before we realized our folly
as the current grew stronger,
a Lucha Libre wrestler shoving
us around, knocking us down
refusing us a glance under
his golden mask?
¿And the catfish?
Just as we believed, we saw
one navigating the current
more easily than we could,
its whiskers as long as it was

I pounced, thinking, perhaps
I can have at least this
one pleasure; rocks
in my hands,
nothing more.

Chosen

2010-06-08T10:51:00.001-07:00

Howdy folx. I'm feeling a bit broody today, which sometimes makes for decent poetry. Here's what came out. Let me know what you think.

Chosen

I love you,
said the Universe
as she pummeled me
into the Earth,
ripped my corpse
out of the dirt
only to throw me
against weathered mountains.

I have chosen you,
She says as I slide
into cool rivers,
chosen you to show
humanity its foolish folly
its varicose vanity
its egregious ego.

I rest upon a riverbank
feeling no pain
because I am pain,
& I remember
being a child
being beaten
by my mother
beyond submission
beyond comprehension.

Afterwards
she would always hold me
in her arms, cradle me,
rock me softly,
& tell me tenderly,
I’m sorry. I do this
because I love you.
You can’t fail.
You are hope.
You are chosen.

Never Too Short to Get Cock Blocked by God, Part III

2010-05-22T13:33:00.000-07:00

Wow. ¿Has it been really been February since I put up my last installment of Never Too Short... Oh well, better late than never, right? ¿Isn't that what they say? I could offer excuses, like I've been busy setting up and promoting From the Bottom Up, my new column on The Urban Twist which is 100% true... I guess I just offered an excuse. I'll shut up, now. Without further ado—

So where was I? Oh yes. It didn't take too long to recover from the heartache of The Buxom Virgin. Let's face it. Although they feel pain rather deeply, young hearts have an immense capacity to recover quickly. By the time I met Sissy, her given name was Juanita, I was over Pam. Only the occasional surprise letter would remind me of the hurt, like peeling a scab before the wound's fully healed. But I hadn't lost site of my mission, to get laid before I turned eighteen.

I met Sissy through Patty, a girl I went out with for less than a day not long after moving to Baltimore City. I remember on the walk to school, Patty was telling me how much she liked me, and on the way back home, she was telling me she couldn't get over how much shorter I was (all of 2 inches!). It didn't bother me much because at fourteen she was already a heavy smoker, and kissing her was like licking the bottom of an ashtray. We stayed friends though, until her only friends became the glue and paints she huffed to get high, and Patty started looking like a forty-year-old teenager.

She did, however, introduce me to Sissy in the spring of 1986. Sissy seemed like a simple Girl-Next-Door type—subdued and maybe a little shy. She was a year older than me, but light years ahead as far as sex was concerned. Needless to say, I was a little shocked when I learned she danced on The Block. For those not familiar with Baltimore, The Block is the local red light district. It’s exactly what it implies, one square block of strip joints, peep show booths & adult novelty stores. She had lied and said she was eighteen so they would let her dance, albeit I don't believe they asked for ID. Not yet twenty-one at the time, I never did get to see her dance.

I thought I'd hit the jackpot, though. Here was a girl I could take home to mom, pass her off as this sweet homespun girl, and would show me the frontiers of sexual ecstasy once mom went off to bed.

Well, my place never worked. My mom thought Sissy was a slut, and with four siblings in a small rowhouse, it was impossible to get privacy. Her place was no better. Her mom and little sister liked me just fine, but there was just never a right time. That right time finally came many months later.

We had actually broken up for a while. As Sissy's dancing schedule became more hectic, she had less & less time for me. I was also more than a bit jealous as I realized how much, and what kind of attention she had to pay to her customers. However, when I ran into her and Patty that winter, we were both more than eager to rekindle what little we'd once had. She and Patty were house sitting for some rich guy that had bought two adjacent rowhouses in Butcher's Hill, a fancy name for Upper Fells Point. He had converted it into one large house, so large that he was having a pool built in the huge basement. I suspected he was a customer of Sissy's, but thought it better not to ask.

Regardless, Patty was hanging all over this dude, and Sissy was alone. I was convenient & available. I went in and got the grand tour, which ended upstairs in a tacky bar & lounge with these Indian wall hangings and a bench that was a lot less comfortable than it looked. Patty had stayed downstairs with her friend, so Sissy and I tried to get comfortable on that god damned bench. After a bit of flailing I got Sissy down to just her panties.

Finally, I squealed with glee in my head, I get to put all I've learned together and try it out for real. I'll just take my time, make the moment last... It started off well enough, lots of kissing, grinding, feeling—some battling with that thin-ass bench... No sooner did I slip off Sissy's panties so that I could demonstrate the prowess of my tongue than Patty came storming through the door. "He's here! Get dressed."

Apparently, the owner, who was supposed to be out for the evening, decided he'd rather be home that night. We got our clothes on just before he made his way upstairs. He fixed himself a drink at his bar, opened up the door to his bedroom, and started talking about his extensive video collection. Impressively, his bedroom walls were wrapped in VHS tapes.

Once he was done, he said he was tired and asked the ladies to escort the young men to the door. I begged Sissy to come with me, that we could finish our night elsewhere. When she said no, it was obvious that she was beholden to that man in some way. I decided then to leave Sissy alone for good. She really wasn't worth the blue balls. Granted, if the opportunity had presented itself again, I know I wouldn't have turned her down, as horny as I was.

That would be it as far as opportunities for sex goes, at least for a while. I had other girlfriends, but nothing serious enough to lead to more than some kissing and heavy petting. The exception is what happened during my Junior Prom. I got the chance to share that tale in front of a sold out crowd on CenterStage in Baltimore for the Stoop Storytelling series. Listen to it here.

My next good chance at getting laid was Marilyn. I first met Marilyn when she dropped in unexpectedly at my sixteenth birthday party on July 4th, 1985. She was a cute Nuyorican girl from New York, kind of like a young Rosie Perez—sexy accent & all. She was here with her brother & sister spending the summer in Baltimore with their grandparents. I was immediately in love. Granted, my sister saw Marilyn as her friend and didn't want her to spend any time with me. “She already has a boyfriend in New York,” my sister would tell me, “His name’s Chunky. Besides, she's not interested in your scrawny little ass.”

I took my sister at her word, but I spent what time I could with Marilyn discussing New York—my old stomping grounds— & music. We did this for two summers, each summer bringing talk of a new boyfriend. I didn't want to step on anyone's toes, so I said nothing about the way I felt. That wasn't too hard for me, anyway. I was still painfully shy, and it usually took the girl saying something to me for anything to happen.

The summer after I finished high school, I didn't see Marilyn around. Maybe she got tired of Baltimore, I thought. I finally ran into her at the tiny carnival held by St. Elizabeth's Church on Lakewood Avenue. Ironically, that same night, I ran into the woman who would end up being my first—lay, wife, mother of my children. Anyway, Marilyn was excited to see me. We decided to get on a ride together and catch up.

We actually didn't say much until she asked me, “Freddy, why haven't you ever asked me out?” I told her about my sister, about her boyfriends back in NYC, and her only being here during summers.

“Besides, Kyra always told me you weren't interested in me,” I admitted.

“Well, Kyra shouldn't have said that,” she tells me, “I was always interested.” I immediately felt the need to do backflips, but the ride had us up pretty high, and that would have resulted in death or serious injury. Instead, I directed that pent-up energy for what has to be one of the most magical kisses I've ever experienced, to that time. I remember the ride operator repeatedly, testily having to ask us to get off.

That summer was one of the best ever. She had had a fight with her mother’s boyfriend and decided to move to Baltimore permanently. We spent almost every waking hour together. We even discussed marriage. I wanted to wait until I had a degree and a decent job. She was ready—almost in a rush, it seemed. We were both virgins, and decided that we would have to handle that together, at the right time. Alas, that time would never come.

As autumn crept around the corner, we both got ready to start classes. I had bumbled through my last year in high school, so I was going to start at Baltimore City Community College. She was going to do her senior year at Patterson High. I came home after my second day of classes and my mom was yelling at me before I even made it through the door. Nothing new, but she was going on & on about Marilyn. As I start to make sense of it, I realize that Marilyn had lied to her grandfather telling him she had spent a recent night at our house. When my mother told her grandfather the truth, he was not very happy.

Marilyn wasn't very happy, either. She was mad that my mom didn't just go along with the lie. She was also upset that her grandfather had slapped her. She changed her mind about staying in Baltimore and opted to go back to New York after all—at the end of the week. The rest of that week was pretty miserable. We talked about staying in touch, but something told me it wouldn't be that easy. Look at what happened with Pam.

After we said our goodbyes, I went home and spent the weekend in tears in the tiny basement bedroom I shared with my little brother listening to a mixtape she's made me of her favorite New York Freestyle songs. I became a stereotype. Every song on that tape was about her, about me or about us. The chorus to Noel's Silent Morning—Silent Morning, I wake up and you're not by my side/ Silent Morning, You know how hard I tried/ Silent Morning, They say a man's not supposed to cry/ Silent Morning, Why did your love have to be a lie—became my anthem as it played over & over again. Only the desire to eat, and class on Monday, drew me out.

After class that Monday my mother volunteered me to pick up my little stepsister from kindergarten at the elementary school right down the street. Still depressed, I sauntered to the school, grabbed my sis and began to head home. Imagine my surprise when I saw Marilyn in the middle of the schoolyard. I forgot about my poor little sister. Marilyn had come back. ¡To me!

She noticed me approaching and offered the slightest of smiles. Nothing more. I started off the conversation. “¿So you decided to come back?”

“No,” she said, “I never left.”

I was confused. “¿Never left?” I asked, “¿Where were you?”

“Getting married,” she admitted nonchalantly, lifting her hand to show me the ring.

“Married. ¿Just like that? ¿To who?” but I barely heard her answers as I could feel the anger in me surging. Suddenly I remembered my poor little sister, waiting patiently, her teeny hand in mine. “Well, good luck with that,” I blurted out, not meaning it, as I took my sister and walked away.

There’s a strange irony to the story. Marilyn had married this guy named Wilson. I knew Wilson in passing, but mostly because Peggy Puddles, the girl with whom I’d perfected my cunnilingual skills, had dumped him for me way back when.

Marilyn and I would actually cross paths a few times after that, most notably when she sat me down to tell me that my wife (at the time) had admitted to her that she had slept with six other men while married to me. She felt I should know. She also told me that there were things going on at the time she decided to get married, things I didn't know about, but that she wasn't quite ready to tell me.

She never did tell me. I suspect that she was desperate to get out of her grandfather's house. When she realized I wanted to finish my schooling before starting a family, she turned elsewhere. She had got herself pregnant by Wilson, and felt obligated to marry him. Had she just been honest about what she felt she needed, I would have married her the next day. Another irony—that child, Wilson Jr., looked like he could have been mine. I may never know the actual truth, but I’ve been told by mutual friends that it didn’t slip by her how much her first son resembled me. Penance, perhaps.

Marilyn and I even dabbled with reuniting when both our marriages were breaking up, but I suppose its one of those things—a love combusted and turned to ashes whose embers you just can’t rekindle. Nevertheless, I still think of Marilyn fondly as my first true love.

That's about it, folx. A year later I would meet Maria, the woman I would finally go all the way with. I would also get her pregnant and end up marrying her. You can find that story in Smile Hon, You're in Flagrante, the sex issue of Eight Stone Press' popular award-winning zine Smile Hon, You're in Baltimore. I will eventually get around to posting it here, but you already know how slow I am about things like that.

That's about it, folx. A year later I would meet Maria, the woman I would finally go all the way with. I would also get her pregnant and end up marrying her. You can find that story in Smile Hon, You're in Flagrante, the sex issue of Eight Stone Press' popular award-winning zine Smile Hon, You're in Baltimore. I will eventually get around to posting it here, but you already know how slow I am about things like that.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the thief. Not much to tell, really. Having turned eighteen by then, I had already missed my deadline. I was living with a buddy of mine, Chris Mills, before I met Maria. Chris and I were hanging out a friend's house, one of those places you hang out at because the parents are never around. We had met up with these two girls, good friends who both went to St. Elizabeth's—remember, the church/school where I hooked up with Marilyn and met Maria? Chris was making out with one of the girls; I made out with the other.

I remember I was on my back on the floor of the darkened living room with the girl on top of me. My wallet was digging into my ass, so I slid it out and laid it on the coffee table next to us. A few minutes later, just as I let my hopes rise, once again, that I was about to get some, her friend comes over and tells her that they have to get home. Curfew. Chris & I walk them out and talk about hooking up again the next day. I go back into the living room, grab my wallet, look inside and see nothing. The couple of hundred dollars I had saved up for an end of summer trip to Ocean City was gone. I never saw her again, but the chick left me with nothing but an empty heart and an empty wallet.

Half Empty

2010-05-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

Half Empty

If I had some shattered dreams

@ least I’d have a dream

instead of broken promises

& all this make believe

¿How much more can

I not do

can I not do

can I not have you?

I want to

I don’t live

I just live lies

I don’t get

I just get by

Even 2 is lonely when I’m with me

& the truth is homely when I can’t see

I’m not so funny but everyone laughs

¿But what’s so funny about living in halves?

Easter Snapshot

2010-04-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

I may no longer be Christian, but that's not to say that I have become completely detached from my Christian roots. On the contrary, I credit Christianity for providing me with a moral and ethical foundation upon which I have since expanded. My problems with Christianity stem more from an awareness that I came to in my late 20s that nothing seems to corrupts a belief/philosophical structure more than making it more about the man instead of the message, and that Christians don't have a monopoly on morality. Every decent religion, I've learned, strives for a higher sense of self among its followers. None of that takes away from my appreciation for what Jesus did and taught during his all-too-brief lifetime.

I particularly have a strong connection to Easter. It doesn't come from any personal feelings regarding the supposed resurrection of Jesus following his execution. Rather, it's comes from my childhood memories of Easter. Growing up, my mother always made a deal out it. We didn't go to church or even paint Easter eggs and such. But my mother would always get us Easter outfits, and we would spend the day doing something fun. The picture posted above was shot on Easter Sunday in 1977, if I'm remembering correctly. On this Easter we spent the day touring Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Easter for us was and basket full of sweets and an outing. Considering how my family has shrunken of late (two of the four people in the photo are now dead) I thought that today being Easter Sunday would offer me an opportunity to reflect on how much it meant to me.

This picture, as most do, has a story. I won't be so redundant as to go through every detail of that day. Instead, I will post a poem inspired by this picture. In it I hoped to capture not just the sense of family unity that the day represented back then, but to capture the unseen angst that lies beneath the image. The poem, I hope, reflects the story of a family that on the surface appears to be happy and normal but is ultimately deeply flawed. Happy Easter, everyone.

snapshot

Staring
at the only photograph
I have left, Easter—your head
wrapped neatly in a paisley
scarf, alabaster skin set
off by the scarlet of your top,
all 5’ nothing of you dwarfing
over the 3 of us, [how small
we were, and how as big
as the world you seemed to us
back then] holding JoJo’s fragile
little hand—JoJo, in his blue denim
overalls with a strap dangling
off his shoulder and his Buster
Brown do, free hand gripping
one link of the chain link—your other
arm held hard against KiKi’s heart—
KiKi, with her baby doll dress & her baby doll
smile & her white knee highs— and
there I am, the Little Man all grown
up at 8 or 9 or whatever, hair,
as always, waving wildly in the wind,
stylin’ in my plaid polyester belted lounge
lizard jacket, with matching bell
bottom bottom, foot propped
up, arms spread like I owned
the world like I knew I did;
all of us there, at the base
of Lady Liberty, Manhattan &
its now extinct towers barely
bursting through the fog, celebrating,
not God, not Jesus, not life, nor liberty,
nor the pursuit of happiness, but
love: the love that we could squeeze
out of this fucked up family that we
shared, that we accepted for better
of for worse, or for worse than that
because how can we forget those times?

I stare
at this, the only
photograph I have
left, & I imagine
the others, the ones
I don’t have, the ones
lost, the ones destroyed, even
the ones that never existed,
like the picture I never
took of you during one
of your dazed for days days,
lounging & lost in your
euphoria, hiding from problems
I didn’t, still don’t quite,
understand, like the picture
I never took of you bruised,
battered & beaten by
whatever flavor of the month
macho-sick monster you were
sampling, like the picture I never
took the day you cashed your
first paycheck, leaving the drugs,
the drink, the drunks & the drama
packed away neatly with your past,
or like the picture I never took
of you bloated, bleeding & bleached
on that hospital bed, your past
unpacking itself to prevent
your progress,
your present,
your presence…
your life briefed
down to vital signs & bad
mistakes you had already paid for
with interest.

Staring
as I tend to
do quite often, more
often than I like to admit,
at the only photograph
I have left, I am left
wanting more:
more than these faded
foggy fucked up fragments
that I can’t quite feel,
these pieces of memory
that float around in my head,
incomplete & inane,
that I can’t touch
or hold or strum
like a stringless guitar,
or cry on; they don’t
have the power
of this picture,
this one picture
this one last picture
where life was set
aside one Easter Sunday
just so
that we could remember
that even the fog
could not hide
the love captured
at the base
of Lady Liberty.

One Degree

2010-03-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

I’m stalking Kirstie Alley. Before you get the wrong idea, let me state that I’m not a celebrity chaser.

During my career in retail I’ve had the chance to wait on the likes of Chris Rock, Sonja Sohn (who hit on me), Richard Belzer, Carmelo Anthony, Michelle Kwan, a few Ravens, and just about all the Spanish-speaking Orioles from 1999-2005.

Sure, I would go home and tell my boys about my encounters; and inevitably, they would complain about my refusal to collect any of their autographs. My excuse: celebrities are just regular folx and likely prefer to be treated as such, especially when they’re just trying to buy some film.

¿So, why Kirstie? Well, in the seemingly never-ending process of preparing my novel, Killing Lilith, for publication the discussion in my writing group occasionally turned a possible movie adaptation. When pressed about who I would like to see play Lilith, only one actress came to mind: Kirstie Alley. I fell in love with her depiction of the Vulcan Saavik in The Wrath of Khan, and fell in love with her, personally, during her portrayal of Rebecca Howe in Cheers. Despite her weight gain at that time, she was still incredibly beautiful—perfect for the role of an overweight, former Jewish American Princess on with suicidal tendencies.

At the time her name came up, she was promoting Fat Actress and Jenny Craig, and losing weight at a rapid clip. She’s not going to put all that weight back on for the role was what I heard. Otherwise, there was general agreement that a big Kirstie would otherwise be perfect for the role. Knowing of the potential failings of dieting, I figured she was likely to put the weight back on, anyway. I find the fact that I was right bittersweet. I cheered for her when she went on Oprah in a bikini, but breathed a sigh of relief when it came out that she was struggling again. (Update: Since originally writing this piece, Kirstie stole the show at Dancing with the Stars and, yet again, has lost lots of weight. No worries. If they can make Ian Colm look like a Hobbit, They can make Kirstie look heavy.

Now that I’m in the final stages of polishing my manuscript, I find myself thinking, once again, about a potential movie adaptation. (I realize I’m jumping the gun considering I don’t even have an agent, yet.) Having the vanity required of a writer who wants to break through I feel my novel, once complete, will be top caliber literature. I know I'm cocky, but I was born during the Year of the Cock, after all. It is not a completely egotistical statement. I’ve had enough folx I respect tell me how good it is, including producer David Kirschner, who brought us Chucky, the homicidal doll from Child’s Play, and Fievel the mouse from An American Tail, as well as producing Curious George and Miss Potter. Naturally, I believe a movie version would have Oscar potential. Imagine what it would do for typically stigmatized overweight women, not to mention Kirstie’s career, if she were to get an Oscar nod for her portrayal.

The obvious problem in all this, other than the fact that most writers lose creative control of their projects once a studio decides to turn a book into a movie, is that I don’t know Kirstie, at least not personally. In comes Twitter, the social network that forces you to summarize your ideas into 140 character synopses. Kirstie, being the savvy self-promoter that she is, turned to Twitter to rebuild and energize her fan base and promote her new reality show, Kirstie Alley’s Big Life as well as Organic Liaison, a weight loss program she helped develop. Naturally, I saw it as an opportunity to attempt to attract her attention, hence the stalking.

What I find most thrilling isn’t so much that I can chat with Kirstie directly—which is not necessarily the case considering I might have creeped her out, resulting in her possibly blocking my tweets—but the fact that Twitter has turned the concept of Six Degrees of Separation on its head. As you likely already know, the Six Degrees theory is the idea that we are all only six folx away from anyone in the world. Say you want to meet President Obama. You likely know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows—you get the picture. Now, with tools like Twitter, you can go straight to the source.

Technology is breaking it all down to one single degree. Granted, when it comes to celebrities and other self-important bigwigs the chances are you’re tweeting an assistant or PR type. But in some cases, particularly in Kirstie’s who tweets about diet, her lemurs & even during her appearance on The Late Show, the person on the other end is the one you hope it is.

¿So where do we go from here? Depends. Lots of us, myself included, enjoyed Facebook until we were inundated with the constant stream of status updates from “friends” that were barely friends when we knew them. Although I’ve accumulated nearly a thousand Facebook friends, many who I have known personally or at least met, only a small core actually notice when I’ve posted something new. Even fewer read it, which is a shame considering my writing can be entertaining, funny and insightful, and I only make money if folx click on the ads on my blog or my column on The Urban Twist. I also have a Twitter account, but few of my friends are even on Twitter. They likely feel that Facebook takes up enough of their time.

That might be where it stands right now, but I reckon once they get tired of wasting time on Mob Wars & Farmville (or for the rest of us, get tired of requests to join Mob Wars & Farmville, etc.) you might eventually see a migration to the stripped down, no nonsense network Twitter has to offer.

Time now for my own social network experiment. As I mentioned, I’ve had no success getting Ms Alley’s attention, yet. Either she thinks I’m a joke, or I’ve spooked her into blocking me. Considering how in touch she stays with what's written about her, I hope this blog entry will finally catch her eye. But you can help. That’s why I tagged all of you. The other phenomenal thing about building social networks is the potential power it gives you to “spread the word,” as seen by the Twitter fueled protests in Iran and elsewhere. My challenge to you is this: help me get Kirstie’s attention. Open a Twitter account, if you don’t already have one, follow Kirstie (While you’re at it, you might as well follow me, right.), and let her know that The Word Pimp has what might be the opportunity of a lifetime. ¿Why not? You’re just one degree away.

And if the day ever does come that I’m standing on a stage in L.A., music playing, being handed an Oscar by some lovely starlet, I promise to step up to the microphone and thank you all.

If you would like to receive news, updates & excerpts from my novel, be sure to "like" the Killing Lilith Facebook Page.

Happenings

2010-03-10T13:23:00.001-08:00

I know, you're all eager to see Part III of Never Too Short to Get Cock Blocked by God. I promise you, it's coming. The main reason I have yet been able to focus on it is because of my newest gig. In case you weren't aware, I am the newest op-ed columnist for The Urban Twist. So if you're hard up for some Word Pimp, click on the link and read my shit there. I'll try to get back to my pathetic quest for teen sex by the end of the week. Until then...

Much Love,
Fernando Quijano III

Never Too Short to Get Cock Blocked by God, Part II

2010-02-23T14:09:00.000-08:00

Things finally started looking up when I turned sixteen. I started coming into my own, attracting the attention of cute (& not so cute) girls. One day during the summer I turned sixteen, I went to the pool in Patterson Park, not an unusual activity for me in those days. I came out of the pool a shivering mess, and realized I'd forgotten my towel. I laid out on the bench to dry under the hot sun, and a young lady next to me offered her towel. After drying myself, I thanked her and gave it back. She looked right into my face and said, “You know, you have the most beautiful eyes.”

Not used to that kind of attention, I could feel my whole body blushing and replied with the only words that I could muster, “Thanks.”

She asked me my age. I replied honestly. She admitted she was twenty-four, and asked if that scared me. It didn't. This was, after all, the opportunity I'd been waiting for. I gripped the bench tight. My first Older Girl. It was all I could do to stop myself from falling to my knees and thanking God. “If I told you where I live, you wouldn't come over and hang out, would you?” she asked after some small talk.

There was something sad in this beautiful young woman, afraid that I might reject her. Of course, I said I would go because my prayers had at long last been answered. She gave me her address and a good time to stop by on the following Saturday. I told her I would be there. She said, glumly, “You're not gonna come, but that's okay.”

That whole week, I could think only about that day. It couldn't come soon enough. I was going to prove her wrong. Not only was I going to come, but I wasn't going to do it all by myself this time. That evening, I skateboarded the mile or so to where The Older Girl lived. She was outside with her family, including her son who couldn't have been more than three. After introducing me, she picked up her toddler and had me follow her into her apartment in a building a few doors down from her mother's. I waited in her kitchen as she filled the bath for her son. At this point, I didn't know what to expect. I admit, I got a little nervous.

She came out of the bathroom and said, “He'll be okay for a while. He loves playing in the tub.” That was followed by a bunch of nervous small talk until she asked me if I liked to dance. She turned on some music, and we started slow dancing. That turned into kissing & heavy petting. Suddenly she stops and explains to me that she really thought I wasn't going to show up, so she had made other plans for the evening. My heart sank like the Titanic.

She told me she had to take her son back to her mother's and start getting ready, but that I could keep her company while she got dressed. We couldn't keep our hands off each other, but she would only let me go so far, not wanting to do anything that would keep her from her evening. Finally, I escorted her down to her front door. She stopped me one last time halfway down. “Freddy, please come back again. Promise me you'll come back.”

“Of course,” I tell her, shocked at the desperation in her voice, “I'm definitely coming back! Why wouldn't I?”

"Because my titties are too tiny! I know you don't like them. You're not coming back!”

Mind you, I loved this woman's breasts. They were small—barely buds— but perfect, with large, brown nipples that pointed like prayers at the sky. I figured she must have had a hard time about them when she was younger. “You got it all wrong!” I cried, “You have great breasts. You have great everything.” And I purposely gave her beautiful little buds as much adoration as she would allow before she had to leave.

With that, she let a smile come to her lips and offered me one last kiss before I escorted to her door and we went our separate ways. Ironically, every time I returned after that, The Older Girl was never around, or couldn't make time for me. Maybe she finally felt guilty about my age, or maybe her parents didn't buy her “He's eighteen story.” For whatever reason, that door closed for me almost as soon as it opened.

That left me back at square one and unbearably horny. Which reminds me of the period of my teenage life when I was particularly grumpy all the time. Knowing what I know now, it was probably hormonal. When my mother once asked me what the hell was wrong with me, I blurted out, “I don’t now! Maybe I'm sexually frustrated!!” I don't remember her ever laughing that hard at something I said, and as you might imagine, I could be a pretty entertaining kid.

A few months after The Older Girl in the fall of 1985, during the heyday of my skateboarding years, I was hanging out with a group of skaters who rolled all over Fells Point. One night, I skated by and everybody was hanging out in front of this house on Castle Street. I stopped to see what was going on. Apparently, there was this Geek who had to be in the house once the streetlights came on who had this beautiful girlfriend that everyone thought he must be making up. They were waiting for her to come out, which considering it was nearly 9 o'clock, would be soon because he wasn't allowed company after nine.

Sure enough, at around 9:15, this gorgeous, buxom, blue-eyed, blonde mini-goddess comes out of the house. The Geek (Lordy, I have to get better with the names. I'm thinking it was Chris, maybe...) comes out on the steps and introduces her to all of us. He barely got a chance to finish when his mother calls him back into the house. Pam, as we learned her name was, lived in Laurel, near D.C., and had an aunt who lived next door to The Geek and worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a nurse. Pam's mother would allow her to come and spend occasional weekends with her aunt in Baltimore.

She hung out with us for a few minutes before deciding she's going in for the night. We convinced her to stay out a little longer with offers to show her the waterfront, which she hadn't been to yet—a shame considering she was only blocks away. So off we rolled down to a little waterfront parking lot off of Boston Street. Actually, I walked. I was older than the rest of the crew, and more of a gentleman—as everyone else tried impressing her with their skateboard tricks, I, like a Word Pimp-in-training should, impressed her with pointless banter. That worked better for me anyway cuz, to be honest, I sucked on the damned boards. I couldn't even do an Ollie without my board twisting about 90 degrees counterclockwise. I was sad.

But not to her. My fellow skaters kept showing off their best moves, but remember, all my best moves are made with my mouth. By the time she was ready to head home, I had found out quite a bit about her, including the fact that, like me, she was a virgin. Of course, I lied and said I wasn't. We made it back to her aunt's place where Pam invited us all up. Her aunt was on shift until two. Everyone hung out for a few minutes before they started trickling out to meet their own curfews. The oldest of the bunch, I had no curfew and offered to stick around, keep her company.

We chatted until two in the morning, talking about life, music, sex. Everything. I couldn't think about anything but kissing this young goddess, but she was only fourteen to my sixteen. Plus, as little respect as I had for The Geek that was quietly sleeping next door, I wasn't an asshole. Okay, just not THAT MUCH of an asshole.

And then her aunt walks in. She had taken a double shift, and was given some time to go home and change. She did not like seeing me there. I wasn’t The Geek, who might have been as horny as me, but likely harmless. I was very polite, explained that I was only keeping Pam company and asked her to excuse my intrusion. She kindly, yet coldly, said goodbye and had Pam walk me to the door.

As I got ready to hop on my board and roll off, Pam grabbed me and said, “¿You're coming back, aren't you?”

“¿But what about your aunt?”

“¡Forget her! She's going back to work in a minute. Just skate around for a while and come back in like fifteen minutes."

"Sure," I said reluctantly, not wanting to get her in trouble or myself arrested. Then she grabbed me and kissed me. I was stunned. I never really had much luck with the fair-haired, fair-skinned girls. I just thought I'd made a new friend. Not that I hadn’t been hoping...

“Promise me your gonna come back. ¡Promise!”

It seemed a little desperate. I was having flashbacks of The Older Girl, but I figured my luck couldn't possibly be that bad. "I promise," I told her, kissed her back and rolled down Castle Street. It wasn't but maybe ten minutes later when I saw Pam running down Chester Street—barefoot, wearing only a nightshirt. Her aunt had left, and she wanted to make sure I hadn't.

Back at her place, the mood had changed. We were no longer friends. We were lovers, virgins wanting nothing more than to shed our virginity—The Geek be damned. Pam put on a Scorpions compilation, and we started making out. The first oddity was that she didn't want to take her top off. That was a little disappointing, considering she, unlike The Older Girl, was very well endowed. She told me that lots of boys only liked her for that reason. She didn't want to think that that was the only reason I liked her. Also odd, as we were exploring each other's bodies, Pam flinched as my hand made its way to virgin territory. I asked her what was wrong, and she explained that she had been making out with The Geek, and the doofus had accidentally kneed her in the groin, hard. She followed that up with, “It's okay. I want to do this. I want to do this with you.” I think I fell in love with her at that very moment.

Needless to say, it wasn't meant to be. The Geek wasn't there, but he'd ruined it for me with his inept clumsiness. Sex was too painful for Pam, and I was too inexperienced and nervous to ease her pain. We spent the rest of the night holding each other, and I left once the sunlight crept through the windows.

Pam's parents didn't want us together, and forbade her from coming back to Baltimore. After a while, they wouldn't even let her use the phone. We couldn't communicate at all. There were a few surprise letters, including one that promised that she was going to join the Air Force, and that once she got out, she was coming to get me, and fuck the hell out of me on her bed with an American flag hanging over our heads. That was a bit scary, but a part of me wanted nothing more, however resigned I had become that it was never going to happen.

Next Time: The Stripper, My First True Love & The Thief

Never Too Short to Get Cock Blocked by God, Part I

2010-02-19T07:53:00.000-08:00

If you’ve read about my first time, you know that I waited until I was nineteen to lose (¡get rid of!) my virginity. As I mentioned then, it wasn't for lack of trying. I'd been trying to get laid since I watched my folks doin' it through the keyhole when I was six. Can you blame me? Whatever they were doing, it looked like fun.

I started in first grade. There was this cute little girl named Yolanda in my class who would chase me around the school. Standard stuff, but once we got around to the back where nobody was looking I would pretend to trip up so she could catch me. There we would kiss until we heard Yolanda’s mother calling for her. On some mornings we would make sure we were the last two to hang up our coats just so we could hook up in the little closet in our classroom. I’m sure our teacher must've wondered what took us so long to get our galoshes off. Okay, maybe I wasn’t really trying to get laid, yet; but I was certainly laying the groundwork.

My mother gave me my first sex book at seven. It was one of those “Where Do Babies

Come From?” deals with cartoon-like illustrations and everything. That’s where I first learned the terms "penis" (pronounced like “peanuts” without the “t”) and "vagina" (pronounced like “Virginia” without the “r” and the second “i”) That same year, my uncle gave me my first porno mag. I think it was a Penthouse. I learned more reading the dirty magazine (Yes, I did read the articles.) than the "baby" book. Granted, there were some scary moments, like the picture of a vagina with big, sharp teeth, like a bear trap. It was a little confusing, and had me wondering if sex is what I really wanted.

There wasn’t much conflict considering that all the girls my age never wanted to go that far, anyway. There was the one girl when I was eight—I wish I could remember her name—that was a few years older than me. She had two brothers who were close friends (and whose names I can’t recall, either) who invited me to my first sleepover. I was mortified when I woke up to them "messin' around" on the top bunk of their bed. They looked kinda like they were playing Leap Frog, except that the older brother wasn’t leaping anywhere. He was just stroking away behind his little brother. They told me they were just practicing and invited me to join in. They even told me I could keep my undies on. Even then, male-on-male action was way too icky for me. Granted, I didn't know back then that most people's first sexual experience is with someone of the same sex. Nevertheless, I kindly declined their invitation.

The next day, though, their sister, who I suppose was around eleven—and an Amazon compared to me—offered to teach me how to do my multiplication tables, but only if I made out with her. That was the best math lesson I ever had and gave me a leg up on the second grade competition. She wouldn't go all-the-way, but she went far enough for my eight-year-old ego.

The rest of my pre-teens went pretty much like that, a lot of

closed-mouth kissing and dry humping. My little brother's father's older daughter from a previous relationship (my step-half sister, I guess), my best friend Francisco's older sister the day before they moved to Tampa and I never saw either again, the Rolek sisters in one of their closets while their dad was at work and a 45 of the Police's Don’t Stand so Close to Me played over & over on their record player.

The most painful moment, to that point, was with this cute girl Tasha who I'd had the biggest crush on when I first moved to Maryland from Jersey. During my year there, she rarely ever gave me the time of day. Finally, the day that I'm moving to Baltimore City from the county, she invited me into her place and laid my first e

ver French kiss on me. Talk about shock & awe. My mother had to drag me, kicking & screaming, to the city.

But before leaving the good ol' former redneck haven that was Middle River, Maryland I should mention the one time I did almost get laid there. I was thirteen, and I hung out with a bunch of underachieving teenage drunks. As a matter of fact, I was an underachieving teenage drunk at the time, myself. Anyway, word got around that there's this girl who wants to have a gangbang with the lot of us. We gathered together and headed down to Middlesex Shopping Center where we were suppose to meet her.

I was thinking, Wow! Its finally gonna happen on the trip over. Once there, I realized she wasn’t the most attractive girl in our circle of friends, but it was no time to get picky. ¿Beggars cant be choosers, right? Well this girl looks right at me and says, "Not the one with the glasses." When my friends came back, they told me they didn't go through with it, that they didn't like the way she smelled, that they just let her blow them. I knew the truth, they were just trying to make me feel better about being rejected so viciously.

I had been living in Baltimore for six months when I met Bobbi Jo during summer break on the playground in Patterson Park. With her masculine features and her mullet, she was a little butch for me, even back then. But I wasn't getting any other play, so I figured why not. ¡I even had a good shot at nailing her! We were walking home across the park when we stopped at this big bush. "Let's go in there," she said as she ducks down and goes through this little opening, "It's really cool, like a cave."

I followed her in, and she already had her shorts at her ankles flashing her own big bush. Maybe I was too shocked. Maybe I was too taken aback by her forwardness. For whatever reason, I turned down my first real chance at early teen nookie with some lame-brained excuse of being late getting home.

The next day, I headed back down to the park, knowing I'm not backing out this time. She wasn't there. Her cousin Tammy was. Tammy was cuter by far, more feminine, with the most adorable chin dimple. I'm a sucker for chin dimples. Anyway, it was obvious I liked Tammy, and considering the extended French kissing session we shared, she liked me too. We made a pact that I would break the news to her cousin gently, and Tammy would reward me with the long sought after Home Run.

In my zeal, I told Jimmy, my best friend at the time, with the promise he would keep it a secret until I could tell Bobbi Jo myself. The next day, I got to the playground and Bobbi Jo's already there. “Listen,” I started, “I have something to tell you—”

“I know, you’re breaking up with me to go with my cousin Tammy,” she interrupted. Jimmy had told her. If you want to know how I dealt with Jimmy, read my essay, A Little Puerto Rican. Anyway, the next time I saw Tammy, she had cooled off on me and decided to dump me. I cried, not because she dumped me, but because I had ruined my chances of getting any from Bobbi Jo, and Tammy had dumped me before I'd had the chance to get any from her.

Things picked up in high school. I was fifteen when I started hanging out at this girl Chrissie's house. She was pretty big in junior high, but in high school, she had trimmed down rather nicely. She had a boyfriend, but she introduced me to Peggy. I forget her last name, but it kinda sounded like Puddles, and I like that, so I'll just call her Peggy Puddles. I'm a sucker for alliteration.

Anyhow, we would all hang out in Chrissie's bedroom—her with her boyfriend on her bed and me with Peggy on the extra bed—with the lights out. The rules were simple. Anything goes, except actual sex. Actual sex would, apparently, get you in trouble, but everything else was fair game. This, my friends, is where I mastered my cunnilingual techniques. I mean soft, quick tongue strokes, slow. hard ones, spelling my name on her clit in cursive, switching to print... You get the picture. I was hooked after my first lick.

This went on for weeks, until Peggy dumped me. Why? Because I would never go all the way. Apparently, I didn't get the wink wink, nudge nudge that came with the no sex rule, and she dropped me for someone who would, indeed, give her what she wanted more than a tireless tongue and frisky fingers. Ironically, the dude she dumped me for ended up jerking off onto Peggy & Chrissie from the 2nd floor landing as they slept in the living room one night.

As I'm writing the rest of these stories, I'm realizing that this is probably the subject of at least a couple of blog entries. Being as this little episode so nicely sums up my early attempts at getting some, this is as good a place to stop as any. But this ain't over yet. God has yet more roadblocks to place on my quest for the Holiest of Grails, and the closer I get, the more intentional it seems. Stay tuned for my next installment.

Next time: The Older Woman & The Virgin

State of DisUnion

2010-01-28T10:57:00.000-08:00

They've done it, Folx. The Powers-That-Be—and by that I mean the cabal that uses its wealth & influence to keep the Rest-Of-Us at a perpetual disadvantage—have almost finished dismantling the very systems which kept Them in check. Granted, it doesn't help that They've already done an excellent job sowing the seeds of discord that keep the Rest-Of-Us fighting amongst ourselves instead of focusing in the slow expansion of Their power over us. As such, my fellow Americans, our state of disunion is strong and growing stronger every day.

The plan was simple, almost effortless. Find ways to pit the populace against itself, and they won't even notice as we grab the reigns and tighten them. The poor are easy; so many ways to divide them. Race is a good one. Make some feel inferior, and when you're finally forced to treat them as equals, make them fight each other for the same, menial jobs while continuing to sow distrust and fear. Once they're psychologically segregated, you can set them against themselves. ¿Come on, are you really surprised at the rate of black-on-black homicide? I bet you They're not. It benefits Them. As long as the rage that develops from generations of having less and having little to look forward to is aimed mostly on our own, we won't aim it at Them.

Then, pit the poor against the so-called intellectual elite. Those folx could afford the best (left-leaning) colleges & universities. ¿What would they know about the plight of the poor and middle class? They merely want to promote a liberal agenda to place the reigns of power firmly in the hands of government. They don't truly care about the poor, and will simply continue to over-tax the middle class. Add to that an ongoing series of lies and half-truths with a splash of fear-mongering believable enough to the less educated segments of the populace (be it Death Panels or terrorist threats) and you have a great recipe for discord.

Now all you need is to find ways to divide everyone again, but this time on moral grounds. Life v. Choice. Creationism v. Evolution. Sex Education v. Abstinence preaching. Marriage equality v. homophobia. Don't think for one minute that They allied with the Religious Right because They care anything about these so-called morality issues. They did it because it expanded Their base of power long enough to for Them to deregulate EVERYTHING to make it all more profitable for Them. They used the bible thumpers like they use everyone else, like they use us.

¡Keep dividing! Let's make them all afraid of these foreigners seeping into society in search of the same American Dream. They're already the second biggest minority, now. If we don't do anything now, we'll all be speaking Spanish soon enough. I haven't even touched on dividing by religion (This is a CHRISTIAN nation) and even gender (¡Damned FemiNazis!).

¿What's left? How about stacking the Supreme Court, our last line of defense against Them, and use the concept of Free Speech to justify the use of Their nearly limitless wealth to maintain this sick status quo that they've contrived. Now, not only can They buy as much of anything They want and sell it back to us at any price They see fit, but now, after last week's Supreme Court decision, They can spend as much as they want to continue to convince us all that it's going to be okay, as long as the fights are amongst ourselves and not against Them.

So keep hating. Keep hating the wrong people for the wrong reasons and ignore the real threat hanging over all of our heads—a reality where we are nothing but a commodity, a nameless, faceless mass earning (slaving for) just enough of Their capital just so we can give it right back to Them to feed (¿poison?), clothe & shelter ourselves—oh, let's not forget, to keep paying back the money They loan us to make our lives just a little more interesting, a little ore livable. And television, because if we can be distracted enough, we won't even realize what's really going on. Yes Folx, let's keep hating, and the State of Our Disunion will soon enough become invincible. Like trained elephants, we won't need chains. Mental manacles are more powerful than real restraints. If you have no hope of escape, why bother trying?

Geek Orthodoxy

2010-01-23T16:30:00.000-08:00

Another from the archives...

Geek Orthodoxy

It is religion after all
although we worship
different things
like Sky Blue
Sno-balls or the Big Kahuna
or Lucy & Ricky
before they broke
up or Quantum Physics
or polyhedrons
or Mean Green Dirty-Gened
Killer Kangaroos.
Some of us have even been known
to worship Impossible Dreams
as long as they were artificially
flavored Banana.

All through the almond-colored pages
of a slide rule bible.

We wear our glasses
because we’d rather let our vision
trickle away & go
blind than give
in to our sexual
frustration.

We seek salvation
through masturbation.

Our pocket protectors serve
as shields, a fort
of pens & pencils
to protect our flimsy
hearts from the whims
of adolescent vixens
looking to turn screws.

The very same girls once broke
our Holy Crayolas.

We vow ourselves
to silence because to speak
meant to spread our words like cold
butter on thin white bread,
hard & chunky & all
torn up.

Amongst ourselves we can speak
in our twisted tongues.

None of us practice
long; we all slowly trade
in our plaid & courdoroy,
our Dippity Do & our dandruff goo,
our floodpants & our jogging shoes,
our argyle socks & comic books
for a taste of the mundane.

Except for the few true, dedicated ones
who stick out the persecution long enough
to outlive our Protean deficiencies
& reach that Nerd Nirvana some call
Avant Garde

My Night ( A Poem)

2010-01-09T16:53:00.000-08:00

This poem was inspired by the myth of Nüt & Geb, a personal favorite.

My Night

¿How can I

stay away

when You wrap

so tightly

about Me

sealing

enveloping

protecting Me

from Everything

leaving room

for Nothing

else but the feel

of You wrapped

tight about me

like wet rice

paper?

¿What else

can I do

Sister Sky—

Heaven full

of stars,—

but grind

inside You

until My mountains

are raw

& My rivers

boil beneath

Your pressure

Your pleasure

Your gravity?

¿So what

if there is room

for naught—

nothing but

us, no space

for other Gods

to roam between

Us, to breathe—

the feel

of Your breath

is all I need?

Let Them separate

Us if they must—

make room

for Creation

for Life

for Other

than Our bond

¿Could we expect

Them to continue

Existence smothered

between Us?

It matters

not my Nüt—

They can keep

Us apart—

divided for only

so long

before Night

once again wraps

itself around Me—

when

the Sun hides

You fall

& I rise

to meet

You

Perhaps

the time will come

when the Sun

abandons its

task & We can

again join

in perpetuity

when You & I

and nothing else

will reign

supreme—

Our Love

Eternal Lust

Chaos

Olive Juice

2010-01-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

“Love you—”

My ear catches it flitting through the air like a miniscule moth, almost imperceptible, but undeniable just as I’m about to hang up the phone. Curious, I quickly put the phone back to my ear. “Excuse me?”

Silence, but I can tell she’s still there. “What?” Nicole finally asks, hesitantly, probably curious as to what I heard.

“I thought I heard you say something as I was hanging up.” I know it was a mistake, she probably had just gotten off the phone with a lover or family member, and it slipped out, but I want to play this out. I like to play. That’s just the way I am.

“Oh… nothing… it was nothing.”

But it wasn’t nothing; it was much more than nothing. The way I see it, the phrase I love you, in all its eternal possibilities lives somewhere where nothing is not allowed. I love you precludes the possibility of nothing.

When I was in junior high the prettiest girl in the eighth grade sat on the opposite end of the room from me during Algebra, the last class of the day. I sat in the front with the rest of the geeks who always wanted to impress the teacher. She sat in the back near a window. I could always catch her staring out, as if she expected one of the passing cars to pull over and take her away.

I was nothing—as always, the smallest kid in my grade, insignificant to everyone unless I was being used as entertainment, whether that meant being jammed into a locker or being dangled from a basketball hoop inside a gym bag. She, Audra, aside from being the prettiest girl in the school, was everything to everyone—friendly and open, popular amongst every clique, but belonging to none.

Sometimes she would catch me watching her vigil. For those moments, her eyes would be mine, trapped by my eyes—at least that’s what I like to imagine for the brief amount of time before she finally looked away nervously. But sometimes she would offer just the slightest bit of a smile before drifting back to her vigil. Just that would be enough to thrill me and carry me through to dismissal.

Once, as a dare or a joke, I don’t remember which, when she caught my eyes I mouthed the words olive juice. Her face instantly twisted, and her shoulders hunched subtly. I knew she was irritated. When the bell rang she stormed out quickly. Audra was waiting for me as I came out of the school. She grabbed hold of the hood of my sweatshirt and yanked me back near the door.

“What the hell did you say to me?” she asked in an angry whisper.

I was suddenly scared. I could feel the blood pulsing in my scalp and the sweat trickling from my underarms down the sides of my chest. I had never intended to piss her off, and if she beat my ass in front of everybody in school I would be less than nothing. I was perfectly happy with my nothing status, thank you very much.

But what really scared me was being this close to her for the first time. From here I could see that her eyes weren’t blue, they was pure crystal—reflecting the color of the sky. I could even smell her hair, strawberries and cream with just a hint of cigarette smoke. I could hear the full tone of her voice, not just the meekness she offered in class. I realized than that olive juice was no joke.

“Ol—olive juice,” I stammered, “ All I said was olive juice. It was just a joke.”

“Olive Juice?” she asked, and her face softened. “Olive juice… that’s pretty funny.”

My heart softened.

We ended up walking home together, laughing children oblivious to the world around us. When she laughed it made me giddy. So I did everything I could think of to make her laugh, and she laughed at everything I did. Halfway through Patterson Park we were holding hands.

At the west edge of the park towers a Chinese pagoda. It was donated to the city, as legend goes, to honor Canton, the Baltimore neighborhood that shared its name (albeit different pronunciation) with the Chinese province. We called it the Kissing Castle because young couples would stop to make out under its shadow or in the topiaries around it on their way home from school. When we got there no one was around, almost as if the world understood the significance of what was happening.

Kissing her, I was reminded of the taste and consistency of olive juice—vinegary, yet fruity. Thick.

The next day carried with it the electric anticipation of a lightning storm. Every hour was an hour less that I had to wait to see Audra. Every corner I turned in the halls and stairwells was an opportunity to bump into her. By the time I finally did see her, in Algebra last period, I felt like one of those plasma lamps ready to shoot my charge right through the glass. After ten minutes I was grounded, my charge dissipated.

During the fifty minutes of class she looked at me exactly once and looked away quickly. That day I could not capture her eyes. She avoided me and rushed out quickly when the bell rang. After school I was the one snatching her up looking for answers. She didn’t want to talk near school, but reluctantly agreed to walk through the park with me. She didn’t say much and refused to hold my hand. I knew what was coming. I’d been through it enough by then.

Audra finally admits what’s bothering her about halfway through the park. “Look, I like you. You’re cute and so fucking funny, but I don’t think I could get used to dating someone shorter than me. I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t even that much taller, maybe three or four inches. But that was the story of my youth: cute, short, sorry. Most of the time it wasn’t so much that they thought it, but that their friends thought it. Either that, or they were afraid to be mocked. Like the previous day, we walked to the Pagoda together, this time in silence, before going our separate ways.

Occasionally, in class, when I would catch her eyes I would mouth the words, and we would share a momentary smile. The joke now was that I was actually mouthing I love you.

So I have this girl on the phone, and she knows I heard her say something, but she’s not sure what. But she’s curious because she has yet to hang up, and we just met. We’ve known each other for all of five minutes, if you can count taking someone’s order over the phone as knowing someone. Nicole orders books for a small chain of bookstores, and I take orders for a publishing company. I was taking her order, and although there was a bit of banter, I don’t recognize her voice from the hundreds of voices I hear over the phone every week. All I said at the end of our conversation was, “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

I anted, she raised, but I know she’s bluffing. I finesse my hand to the table. “Oh… I thought I heard you say, ‘Love you.’”

At this point, she could have folded. She could have said, No, you heard wrong, and hung up. She doesn’t. She says, “Yeah, well I just got off the phone with my boyfriend, and I’m used to saying that before hanging up with him. I probably just got confused. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She’s all-in, but it’s time to let her off the hook, at least for the time being. “Well, don’t you think your boyfriend should know how you feel about me?” I can’t let her off too easy. We both laugh away the awkwardness of the situation and say goodbye—a second time.

A few weeks pass before we talk again, but it doesn’t take any time for us to recognize each other. “Excuse me a moment,” I chide, “but isn’t this the love of my life?” We giggle our way through the whole book order. After a while, if she doesn’t get me when she calls, she asks to be transferred to my desk. We gradually develop a rapport that builds into a sort of sight unseen friendship.

Every phone call with Nicole ends up lasting an extra five to ten minutes because we always end up chatting. We talk bout the movie that just came out. We talk about the difference between Baltimore’s weather compared to Cleveland, where she lives, even though they’re so close. Sometimes I listen to her talk about how much she hates how mundane her job is.

After a while, my supervisor points out that I’m taking too much time with certain calls, and tells me to be aware of how much time I needlessly spend with customers. Nicole and I decide to keep our calls strictly business, but agree to call each other during lunch breaks.

We discuss our quirky families. I compare my reclusive uncle Marco, who does nothing except play chess by himself in his bedroom until my grandmother forces him to come out for meals, to her loopy aunt Gloria who has a house full of never-read books, and a never-off television. I was there to console her when her boyfriend broke up with her, and she encouraged me when I told her I had decided to go back to school.

It’s December 9^th, memorable because it’s unusually warm, and I decide to wear a light jacket to work. At this point, I’ve known Nicole for a little over a year. Besides our twice a week lunch conversations we email each other daily, and on occasion, chat on Facebook. There’s an email waiting for me as soon as I turn my computer on. There’s a number for me to call. She says it’s urgent. The brevity of the message makes me think she’s frantic. I leave for lunch five minutes early and immediately dial the number she gave me.

Nicole answers in tears. She’s a mix of anger, frustration and bruised ego. The number is her mother’s phone. She’s upset because she’s been fired. Her job had recorded a personal call to me using a company phone and found out that it wasn’t the first time she’d done it. She only used their phones when she had forgotten her cell phone or when she was close to her minute limit. “I didn’t think they’d notice.” she sobs, “I’m so damned stupid.”

“No you’re not,” I shouted at her, “don’t stay that! I know you well enough to know you’re nowhere near stupid. A little careless at times, but that’s at least three degrees away from straight out stupid.”

Silence.

Laughter.

I assure her that everything will be alright, that she’ll find a new job in no time, and that until then, all calls can be on my dime. Eventually, the conversation drifts to more normal topics. Once I feel she’s calm enough, an hour and a half later, I let her know that I should get back to my desk.

“Jeez!” she says, realizing the time, “I’m going to end up getting you fired, too.”

“Nah!” I tell her, “Didn’t I ever tell you? My godfather owns this company. Not that it matters—I would have done it anyway. I lo—”

“What?” she asks.

I wait a moment, thinking.

“Nothing,” I say, finally.

“Right, nothing,” she agrees.

Nothing has never been so full of possibility.

A Few Verses for My Father

2009-12-06T10:47:00.000-08:00

Sadly, I've never written much inspired by my father. The truth is, I have so little to go on. The memories are few & fleeting, and the emotions are raw & rife with misplaced anger. However, there are two poems I wrote between 1994 and 1996:

Father’s Daze

Seventeen ties & handkerchiefs

wrapped in ribbon and sealed with grief

stored in the closet of my soul

where I keep my few memories of you

Seventeen homemade greeting cards

smelling of Elmer’s and growing mold

await you in the closet of my soul

where there is room for a few more memories of you

Seventeen bottles of cologne

in piles of shattered glass

pierce holes within the closet of my soul

from which leak a few memories of you

Seventeen years follow seventeen more

by which time I’ll have locked the door

to this useless closet in my soul

Parade

I sat

upon my father’s

shoulders as we walked

the Puerto Rican

Day Parade

along Central Park

It felt just like

our tropical

homeland, Borinquen,

in the August heat

and the endless stream

of Spanish

Except that the palms

were replaced

with Central’s massive

elms on one side

and immense iron

skyscrapers on the other

At the end

of the route my

father set me down

and joined an impromptu

orchestra

I watched

as he sat there

on the curb

feet in the gutter

his bongos between

his thighs, his Salsa

beats drowning

out the horns

behind him

I wanted to know

what it was to be

him, to share that

intensity

to strike the drum

for hours

to have hands calloused

& marbled, smeared

with blood

As the sun fell

behind the Midtown mass

I found myself

upon my father’s shoulders

again, this time headed

towards the subway and home

I felt what I know now

is pride

in my people

in my culture

in my father

But I have to wonder

how much more

the day would have meant

had I known it was the last

time I’d see him

I wonder if the imprints

I left

on his shoulders

were as deep

as the ones he left

on the backs

of my thighs

Gone Daddy, Gone

2009-12-05T10:02:00.000-08:00

So, in case you haven't heard, I found out yesterday that my long lost dad, the father I haven't seen since I was seven or eight, is dead. He's been dead, since 1997. Funny thing is, I half expected it. After all, my mom died in 1991, and my uncle died a few years later—both from AIDS after years of heroin abuse. Granted, from what I've always understood, my father didn't use, but it's not like I was around him often enough to know for sure. That said, according to my sister our father died of cancer, not AIDS. I suppose that's a relief, however small.

Still, as I searched for signs of my father all these years, I always clung to the hope that I would have a chance to catch up with him, to get to ask the questions that remain in my head after so many years of non-communication. Before I go on, I should make it perfectly clear that I don't blame my father for losing touch. If anything, my mother deserves a lot of the blame. It was, after all, her idea to pick us up and move us from New Jersey to Maryland in 1982 without so much as a goodbye, not just for my dad, but for all our friends—a clean break. Sometimes a clean break is very messy.

So I'm left mourning, not for a father I barely knew, but for the now-dashed hope that we would get another chance. All I have is a couple of poems (they're coming, I have to re-type them), a scant few memories, and the stories I heard from my mom so long ago that I don't remember what's true, what she made up and what I added to fill the gaps in my head. I'll share a few.

The first memory I have of my father was when I was about seven. I was hanging out with my uncle Andy, and he took me into a bar. There, he introduced me to a man he said was my dad. I recognized him because of a picture my mom kept from when she was pregnant with me—a short man (¿What else?) with a hitleresque haircut and a big, bushy mustache. He was very nice, and bought me a Coke. We chatted a bit, but I can't really recall what about. I remember that my mother invited him over for a party soon after, but her boyfriend at the time got very drunk and very jealous one night, shut off the lights, proclaiming the party to be "¡over!" My mom broke up with her boyfriend at the time, and my parents made a brief go at a relationship again, but I suppose things had changed—they had changed—too much. In the end, she got back together with John O'Connor, the man who had made an ass of himself at the party, and they married shortly thereafter.

But what happened the first time around. The story I remember, a story my mother shared frequently with her closest friends, happened in 1970. My mother met my father a couple of years after she'd had to give up my oldest brother to her mother. Apparently, after a terrible bout with heroin addiction (My older brother was born having to be detoxed.) mom had finally gotten clean, perhaps partly due to my dad's influence. They conceived me, got married, had me, and conceived my sister Kyra. All was well in the world, until the cops came bursting through the door of the apartment we all lived in.

Apparently, my mother had developed a brief, but bad history with law enforcement, and that was coming back to bite her in the ass. Although she was squeaky clean at the time, they (allegedly—but planting evidence was common in those days) planted drugs in our medicine cabinet. They had my pregnant mother in handcuffs and were about to drag her to jail, and me to foster care when my father came home. He took the rap. He claimed that the drugs were his. They took my father instead.

It should be no surprise to anyone that while my dad languished behind bars, my mother started using again. Hence, when Kyra was born, like my older brother, she had to be detoxed, too. Who knows what our lives would have been like had the police not held a personal vendetta against my mother.

But what's past is past. It's the one thing we cannot change. And there is great consolation in all this grief. Although I'm officially an orphan now, I found out I have family I never knew I had. I have three Aunts—Margie, Eva and Paula— and a slew of cousins—one of which, Marisol, I got to chat with at length. So while the much longed for reunion with dad is now gone, I do have a link to many of the stories that will help fill that gap. Even better, I have family with which I can make wonderful new memories with. If there's one thing I learned, it's more important to look forward to the fluidity of the future than to dwell on a past that's already etched in stone. RIP Papi.