Another view

“What’s all the fuss –“ Aaron heard from down the hallway. He scrambled for the sheet he’d thrown on the floor. Aunt Wilhelmina and her high-pitched vibrato, her words coming closer, one after the other. He threw the sheet over Jeffrey and him.

And then she said, as close as Jennifer, “Young lady, who are you and why are you wearing my Vera Wang robe?”

He peeked out the sheet and saw her there, her white hair flowing down her back, her brocade robe with its high neckline wrapped tightly around her Duchess of Windsor-thin frame, the lines of her mouth so straight, Aaron could’ve sworn she had no lips –

“Oh my God,” Aunt Wilhelmina screamed when she looked at the bed and looked Aaron in the eye. “Who the hell are these people?”

Aaron hid under the sheets again. Two seconds later, someone tore the sheet off him. Aaron shifted to fetal position and covered his crotch – hoping, hoping that Jeffrey would have the good sense to do the same. But no …

“Hey lady,” Jeffrey said, jumping out of bed, pointing down at his crotch, still erect, “what do you think of this? Cindy, you’ve had your fair share, isn’t it time for the old lady to have a go at it?”

“Young man, you get out of my house immediately!”

“And give up this sweet situation,” Jeffrey said, “no way.”

Aunt Wilhelmina glared at Aaron. “I told you something like this would happen when you started with them. Aaron, you get rid of them or I’m calling the police.”

“You let me stay, auntie,” Jeffrey said, sitting down in a high-backed chair, “and I’ll let you watch me with Cindy …”

“Get your hairy behind off my fabrics!”

It all started when ...

Aaron lay naked in bed, the creamy silk sheet barely covering his torso, his legs wrapped around Cindy’s once again. Heaven, that tangy sweetness and milky warmth of being inside Cindy, feeling the bristles of their pubic hairs rushing together and then apart – so sweet, tears edged out of his eyes. He felt Cindy’s tangle of dark hair against his neck, her head on his chest, the smooth contours of her left breast nestled between his armpit and his torso. Could it ever get better than this?

Yes, it could.

He gently edged himself to the right side of the bed, put one leg down on the floor, and slid out of bed. Good, he said, looking back at Cindy – he didn’t wake her. He put on his pale blue silk shorts, though they couldn’t hide his erection. He crossed his fingers, hopefully Aunt Wilhelmina wouldn’t be wandering the hallways, and opened the door. Looked left, looked right – good, coast was clear. He tiptoed across the hallway and opened the door.

Jeffrey lay in bed. “Hey man,” he said, stroking his chest and wriggling his hips under the sheets, “glad you could come on over. Sure was noisy in that room an hour ago.”

“Dude, you up for messing around some more?”

“Look under the sheets, man, all for you.”

Aaron stripped off his shorts, pulled the sheet off from Jeffrey, and they were at it – again. A perfect world, Aaron thought, it’d all started so easily with the two of them – now it couldn’t get any better. But just as he was about to lift Jeffrey’s legs up, the door opened. Jennifer stood in the entrance in one of Aunt Wilhelmina’s robes.

“Aaron Aardvark, you lying cheating bastard, get your sorry ass back over here now. I’m not done with you.”

Something stolen

Aaron hoped he could at least find the machine. The last time it’d botched the time warp like this, it’d taken him a week to find it and he’d been stuck with Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine on one of their lunatic crusades. At least he’d gotten some nookie with each of them. King Henry was better in bed.

“So when the hell am I?” Aaron asked, and looked for clues. It was nighttime, hot and humid, and the city was burning. Soldiers were lighting kegs at the train station, people screamed, a hospital was burning, flames shot out the windows of a bank, women in hoop skirts raced by in horse carriages, taking their straps to horses, dogs barked and ran down the street.

Atlanta, September 1864, the Confederates were evacuating the city. But where were Scarlett and Rhett, and what did they have to do with his birth?

“Hey you,” a soldier with no left eye and a right peg leg, “gimme some food, will ya? I got to have some food.”

Aaron ran in the opposite direction, down a narrow alley, and came upon the famous good-bye scene, Scarlett slapping Rhett, They were right, you aren’t a gentleman. But Aaron ignored them, jumped on wagon, took a strap to the ancient horse, who lurched forward.

“Hey,” Rhett Butler said, “you can’t steal my horse.”

Scarlett aimed the revolver for Aaron and shot, but it missed as he scampered away with Prissy, Wade, Miss Melanie, and the baby. But Aaron reined in the horse when he saw his machine nestled in a bush on Peachtree Street.

He jumped over to the time machine, pushed Start and looked back at the horse, Prissy prairie-dogging up from the wagon. He sighed in relief. “Don’t worry, Prissy, Miss Scarlett will be right back.”

Aaron turned the gears all the way to the right. Yesterday sure was one hell of a day.

This is the story of my birth

“Aaron Aardvark,” Master Solomon said, shaking his head slowly, “if you insist, then we shall have to allow it. But we are entirely against this idea and must go on record. Are you willing to risk this?”

“I am,” Aaron said. He just had to see it – so off he went, back to Aunt Wilhelmina’s estate and down the stairs to the garage, but not before shredding his gym clothes, frolicking with Jeffrey in the bathtub, humping Cindy on the kitchen table, and showering.

He got in the machine, pushed the Start button, turned the dial once to the left. Smoke poured out of the jalopy, it jumped up and down, and that thin mist he’d come to expect descended over him. And then he sped backward with a white laser of light, felt the weightless swoosh of flying, and descended with a jolt.

The machine had parked itself at Divisadero and Polk, and he saw it right in front of him – U.C.S.F. Hospital. He looked left, then right. A ’78 Buick Electra in front of him, an ’81 Olds Toronado, a ’76 Datsun B-210, and a ’71 Plymouth Valiant. Perfect – he’d landed at the right time. He looked at the sky – sunny and clear. Yes, it was October in San Francisco, 1983.

He walked into the hospital and up to the maternity ward. There they were – waiting.

“Austin,” Aunt Wilhelmina said, her face smoothed of its wrinkles, her figure tighter and more smooth – menopause would not yet have struck – “take your head out of that book and pay attention. Now that you’re having a baby, you need to move out of the Haight and buy a house over near me.”

Austin looked up from his book, The Coming P.C. Revolution, his hair still long, still wearing tie-dyed shirts, loose jeans, and flip-flops. “Not a chance, Willa, those honky snobs can kiss my –“

A doctor walked into the room, “Mr. Aardvark, you have a son, come with me –“

Aaron followed his father out of the room and into the maternity ward. But when he opened the door, he was transported to a burning city, barefoot soldiers in gray carrying rifles –

“Damn the machine, it’s screwed up again.”

Floating bed

Mama and Daddy’s king-sized bed floated down the Pacific Coast Highway. Mama slept on the left side, Aaron could see, resting on her side with her back to Daddy, a placid expression her smooth, unlined face, with just the suggestion of a smile in the slight upturn of her mouth. Daddy slept on his back, shirtless, the top half of his chest exposed, his mouth wide open, his beard thick, his forearms hairy and thickly muscled. The bed floated forward on the highway just north of Half Moon Bay, climbing a hill toward the rocky precipice and then, just at the top, it stopped in front of a rocking chair. Aunt Wilhelmina sat in the chair, rocking back and forth, knitting a pale blue sweater. She looked at the bed and shook her head, left to right. And then the bed catapulted over the precipice onto the rocks, down the ravine, and crashing into the ocean.

Aaron woke up and sat up in bed. He tasted a bitter bile in the back of his throat. He felt cool waves of air from the open window on his skin. He must’ve been sweating. He felt his palms, cold and clammy. He felt his stomach lurch and ran for the toilet – but no vomit came out.

Ten minutes later, he sat on the edge of the bed, ready to go back to sleep. But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He put on his robe, went across the hallway, and knocked on the door.

“Jennifer,” he said. “I know you’re in there. Wake up and let me in.”

The door opened and Jennifer, clad in a silk negligee, her eyes half open, her blonde hair a messy tangle and half covering her face, motioned him in.

“Are you wanting to go at it again? We just finished three hours ago.”

“No,” Aaron said. “Nothing like that. I just want to cuddle.”

“Whatever floats your boat, that’s why I’m here.”

He took off his robe and climbed into bed with her. But as soon as she curled into his arms, he became erect and he knew, yes – he’d have to have his way with her before getting that image out of his mind.

Let me be blunt

Aaron rowed the boat across the stinky ithsmus. He’d caught wind of a feast planned that 1437 evening at the palace in Athens, and if he was going to meet Sultan Karpathy at the port, he’d better hurry. But the Turks didn’t make it easy, fighting their little civil war like a Muslim version of the Spanish armada.

He had a pretty good idea he’d landed in the right year, three hundred years before his most recent stop at the councils of the de Medicis. Most times he conjured up the right place, but he backfired occasionally. He’d wanted to dine with the Pilgrims in Plymouth for turkey dinner – but instead, he’d landed in an Appalachian country field with a bunch of gobbling turkeys, two weeks before Thanksgiving, dodging bullets from Pennsylvania hunters.

Byzantium didn’t please Aaron Aardvark, smelled too much like urine. But he had to be blunt – that afternoon, he got more nookie in three hours in the prison bath than he’d gotten in that Appalachian field (a confused hunter had gotten a new, eye-opening experience out of it) or would’ve gotten with the Pilgrims.

The Turkish men and the women just crawled all over him. “Hey you,” he said to the concubine on the other end of the boat, the Amazon beauty he’d sniffed when heading back from the port, “what’s your name?” But she didn’t speak English or Hebrew (Aaron’s only other language), so she just grunted and spread her legs open for him. He plugged the horny concubine right there in the boat and then headed straight for Greece after docking. He traveled fastest alone, and he needed to hurry to make it to the sultan’s feast.

The wedding

The time machine flew across the sky at a dizzying speed that had Aaron seeing lines in all colors across the spectrum, clouds flying by at quantum speed, the sun and the moon zipping by. And then smoke billowed up from the machine in front of him, he felt the descent, and when the dust settled, found himself in a field of sycamores and redwoods, dark orange clay, dark green leaves, and bright blue sky.

Mount Tam. So far, so good, the machine hadn’t screwed it up this time like all the others. But what about the time? Aaron stepped out of the machine and wandered over to the clearing, looked out onto the field, and saw it –

Yes, he’d landed in the right point of time. When the damned machine decided to work instead of sending him off to the bullfights in Seville, it worked beautifully. And there they were – the flower children, the beat-up Beetles, the banana-seat bikes, the barefoot bride with the flower wreath on her hair, the barefoot groom with long hair, a beard, and tie-dyed psychedelic shirt – barefoot, too. And the bongo drums and the chanting. Yep, he’d landed in June 1969.

He walked over to the crowd, knowing he’d be invisible. He’d petitioned the council for an Anonymity Pass, so he could observe without participating. Given the circumstances, they’d agreed.

He walked right over to the minister, wearing a toga, thin-framed spectacles, and a white cross around his neck. The minister was reciting a love poem. Joni Mitchell stood behind him, strumming her guitar to his rhythm recitation. And then he got to the vows.

“Do you, Penelope Pringlehoeffer,” he said, swaying left to right, “take this heavenly dued, Austin Aardvark, to be your main squeeze and love partner until you both head for cool other far-out places?”

“As our Goddess Judy witnesses this … I say yes, oh lord,” Penelope – Mother, Aaron meant. His mother. How beautiful she looked, standing there with her smooth skin, the willowy look, the long feathered blonde hair …

“And do you, Austin Aardvark, take this heavenly maiden, Penelope Pringlehoeffer, to be your main squeeze and love partner until you both head for cool other far-out places?”

“As our Goddess Judy witnesses this … I say yes, oh lord,” his father said. Austin, if only I could reach out, plead with you never to get behind the wheel of a car, at least not after drinking three gin martinis …

A few things about my neighbor

Hazen Clingsworth sat in the swivel chair in front of his desk, a floor-to-ceiling window behind him showing the thick fog that had rolled in from the ocean through the Presidio. He crossed one of his bony legs over the opposite knee and stared at Aaron, tapping an index finger to his cheek, looking at the bookcase stacked with Raymond Chandler mysteries, then over to the liquor cabinet.

“You’re only fourteen, too young for whiskey,” he said to Aaron. “But what they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em, right?”

Clingsworth laughed in a sharp, staccato and went over to the cabinet. He poured two whiskeys with ice into tumblers.

“Here, drink this. It’ll put hair on your chest,” he said, giving Aaron one of the tumblers and sitting back down. Clingsworth rested his elbows on his knees, hunched over, and looked at Aaron.

“Didn’t know your parents all that much. But I always liked Austin and Penelope. Good neighbors, always. You Aardvarks got back luck, is what I say. Too bad about the crash, so you deserve a special gift.” Clingsworth leaned back in his chair and spread his legs.

Aaron knew what that meant, and he looked at the door for a quick escape. He downed the tumbler of whisky in one gulp that burned his esophagus.

Clingsworth laughed again, this time echoing off the walls. “You’re a real man, I tell you. So this is what I’m givin’ you. Old, but it works right if you learn how to use it. Come with me, young man.”

He finished his own whiskey, got up, went out the door. Aaron didn’t know whether to run away or follow him –

“Come with me, into the garage. Be quick about it.”

He rose and followed him on unsteady feet. The room began to sway – was it the liquor or was it fear? Clingsworth opened the garage door.

“There it is,” Clingsworth said, pointing at something that looked like a dune buggy, but more square and upright, and with a boxy center console that rose above the dash.

“My time machine. Can’t tell anyone, or it’ll lose its power. You take it to the past and tell someone, you stay there until you die. You take it into the future and tell someone, you did immediately. Go on, take a look. It’s yours.”

Where would he put it, Aaron asked himself – but then he remembered. He’d be living with Aunt Wilhelmina now. She had a 6-car garage and a chauffeur.

“I need to tell Boggs, nowhere to put it otherwise.”

“Your aunt’s chauffeur? Can he be trusted?”

Aaron thought – yes, he could be. Boggs had pilfered thousands from Aunt Wilhelmina’s petty cash account over the years. If Boggs squealed on him, then he’d just turn Boggs into the police and tell Auntie. He was safe.

“Absolutely.”

“So fire up the machine and go wherever you want. Be creative. Always.”

Dropped in New York City, 2013

“Okay, machine,” Wilbert said. He was in the mood for some free love and free weed and a bunch of groovies, psychedelic shirts, and love beads. “Woodstock, 1969, on the double.”

Aunt Prudence would wonder where he’d gone. She was expecting him for one of her countless cotillions with the upper-crust Republicans of San Francisco. All eleven had R.S.V.P.d and Aunt Prudence was expecting them. They’d complain about Obama and their taxes while sipping Grey Goose martinis with diamond-ringed hands, tiaras, Vera Wang originals, and Manolo Blahniks.

No worry, Wilbert decided. He’d just put the time machine in reverse and come back two hours earlier – plenty of time to rewind the cotillion and start over. Hopefully, the society wouldn’t get wind of it. There’d be hell to pay if they found out he’d reversed time. But it had to be done.

He cranked up the machine and made his way to Woodstock.

“Damn this machine,” Wilbert said once again. He needed to trade in this jalopy for a new and improved model. Preferably one that landed in the right place at the right time. He landed in the middle of New York city. As far as he could tell, it was Times Square. And judging from the fashion, current day.

But something struck him as funny. He got his psychedelic shirts, love beads, and everyone passing him said groovy, man. But everyone was paired off with a twin. The African Americans in the Nelson Mandela overshirt, two of ‘em. The Orthodox Jews in black and white, a pair of identical twins. The twink gay boys in their gym rat spandex, two of ‘em. The militant feminists with their saggy boobs, gray caftans, thick glasses, and sensible shoes – a dynamic duo. The Chinese software engineers walking with heads buried in Apple Macbook Pros, the middle-aged businessmen driving BMW 5-Series while talking on cellphones, the angry white old curmudgeon McCain-Romney voters walking around with constipation written on their faces, the transsexual drag queens. All in identical pairs – two of ‘em each time.

And then Patty Lane walked by him, followed by her identical cousin, Cathy Lane. Wilbert remembered his favorite re-run from the 1970s – Patty Duke with the curls twirling out, Patty Duke with the curls twirling under. But they’re cousins …

“This is weird shit,” Wilbert said to one of the two street vendors hocking cheese dogs and mu shu pork. “I’m getting’ out of here.”

“But haven’t you heard?” the two said in unison. “Obamacare’s giving everyone a free clone.”

Should the world risk another Wilbert? He ran for the machine and put it in reverse.

A crazy situation

The fragrant scent of figs, leaves, and dirt awoke Wilbert. He squinted his eyes open and shut them quick – the bright sun went through his head like a saber. Oh, where in the name of Walter Mitty did this pounding headache come from? Wilbert tried to open his eyes again, but all he saw were blurry green leaves and a bright white light beyond it. He had a bitter, metallic taste that came from his molars. Did a filling come out? But his mouth was so dry, it felt as though his cheeks remained glued to his teeth and gums. And then his stomach lurched.

Oh, just another hangover – no big deal.

Where was he? But more importantly, when was he? He tried to remember what the time machine had done. He’d wanted to visit Mesopotamia, but no – now, he remembered – it’d transported him to ancient Rome and the bordello of Messalina. That’s right, that’s where the hangover came from – an orgy of brandywine, fruit nectar, olives, and figs. Also a round, sporting with Messalina’s voracious fertile crescent and then Marcus Agrippa’s statue physique.

Wilbert could feel the stirrings between his legs at the thought. Just as he liked it – a curvaceous woman followed by a muscular man. But then Emperor Clau-Clau-Claudius had broken up the orgy and sent Messalina over to the lion’s pit.

Damn the emperor, but where was his time machine? If he could get it into gear, he could be back at Aunt Prudence’s in time for dinner. And then Wilbert saw sandaled feet at eye level –

“Who harkens there?”

Wilbert looked up. A cherubic boy – no, young man, as Wilbert could saseew up his toga, a nice endowment he had, plump and long – stood by him, curly brown hair, pink skin, blue eyes, pudgy everywhere, holding a violin.

“A visitor from another state. And who are you?”

“I am Hexabus from Pompeii.”

Wilbert stretched up with his arms, lifted himself up with help from his knees. His stomach lurched and he vomited. When the spell passed and he stood to look Hexabus in the eye, Wilbert laughed to himself.

“This reminds me,” Wilbert said. “You’d better leave Pompeii.”

A door opens

Wilbert stepped out of the time machine and stretched. He arched his back, shoulders backward, pelvis forward, and reached up for the sky. Debbie in his step aerobics class had told him to do that after long journeys. But, of course, she didn’t know that “long” for him meant decades or hundreds of years. He liked Debbie, or at least he liked nailing her in the ladies’ locker room after step aerobics class.

He looked around. Just a few farmers in dungarees. Thank goodness, the weather was good. One time he’d landed near the North Pole back in 1906, and he’d dressed for his intended destination, Aruba in 2032. Summer, he could tell – farmers had truckloads of corn and hay.

“Pardon me,” Wilbert said to one farmer, a sixtyish man with dark leathered skin, “would you know where I might find a restaurant?”

“Go to Aunt Millie’s,” he said. “She’s always got some good eats. But I’d put on some clothes, buddy, before you walk in there. Otherwise she’s liable to tan your hide for public indency.”

“What’re you talking about?” Wilbert said. He was wearing jeans and a tank top.

“Lift up your pants. I can see your undershorts. Scandalous, buddy, scandalous.”

It didn't work

Wilbert inserted the key and pushed the red button on the console. The machine bounced up and down, made a tinny grinding noise with squeals and kuffaws, smoke burst out the sides and filled the Aunt Prudence’s garage, and an odor somewhere between rotten broccoli and bad cabbage invaded Wilbert’s nostrils. He put the gear into forward and set the dial to 2197, Paris. Onward to the future!

The space in front of Wilbert began to make little circles, then bigger circles, and then he felt the machine get sucked into the vortex and whoosh into the black hole in front of him. Wilbert’s heart raced, the butterflies in his stomach pranced left, right, then forward, backward. And his mind simply burst with imaginings of speed, light, and the cosmos. He could feel air sweeping by hs face, and though he couldn’t see anything, he knew he was flying.

He’d never been more excited. To Paris, and in the future!

“Yahoo!” he said, but he didn’t hear a word of it. He’d been sucked into the next dimension, and wherever his voice had gone, it had no meaning here. And then he could feel the machine slowing down, his ears popped, he could feel the descent, and the air became warmer. The machine began to bounce up and down again, he could hear the tinny grinding noise, and then he felt a sharp jolt that sent pressure into his abdomen. The steam cleared, and Wilbert saw what he’d found –

“Damn that time machine,” Wilbert said – it was becoming a tradition when he landed, it seemed, that these were his first words. The machine had landed him in Dubuque, Iowa, right in front of a 1959 Ford Futura. Judging from the Leave It To Beaver-like setting, he must be in the early 1960s.

Listening to the radio

Wilbert stood in the corner behind the maroon-leathered high back chair. Grandfather Pricklebush sat in it – a much younger version of the bald, brown-spotted grouchy old fart Wilbert had known who’d said one too many “In my day, we didn’t …” and got knocked over the head by crazy Uncle Jeremy with a frying pan. After that, crazy Uncle Jeremy went to the Idaho state home. Grandfather went six feet under.

They were listening to the radio that Sunday evening. Grandfather had a full head of hair, wore a white shirt and red tie. Sunday evening at home. Aunt Prudence played on the floor with her dolls. Crazy Uncle Jeremy played with his Lincoln Logs, taking ten minutes to put up some building and then knocking it right down. And Mama – his very own darling Jenny – Mama played with her Shirley Temple doll. She had long, straight blonde hair with a pink braid that matched her chubby cheeks.

Ah, Mama … Wilbert wanted to reach out to her, but the society had only approved this journey in the time machine if he remained invisible to the group. But Mama, he wanted to say – don’t get into the Cadillac that fateful evening with Daddy. Don’t get into the car for the evening journey down the Pacific Coast Highway …

“We interrupt this program with a special bulletin,” the radio announced. “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor –“

Grandfather put down his pipe. Crazy Uncle Jeremy stretched his eyebrows up, excited like a dog with a bone. Aunt Prudence patted her cheeks, looking in the mirror – and Mama kept to Shirley Temple. Grandfather froze and looked over at the sofa at Grandmother, knitting a winter sweater.

“I shall have to serve,” Grandfather said.

“Nonsense, Howard,” Grandmother said. “You’re too old. You’ll be thirty-seven in January.”

Sneaky kitty

“Aunt Pittycat?” Marlo called. “Oh yoohoo, Aunt Pittycat?”

“She’s nowhere to be found!” Phil said., clenching his buttcheeks. Nothing was worse than being forced to hold a fart, especially when it’d be so sweet, stinking up Marlo’s snooty little black cocktail dress.

“Okay, what were you doing? I waited downstairs in the car ten minutes while you putzed upstairs, doing God-knows-what with your hair and your jewelry,” Marlo said.

“Look in the closets. Look under the bed. Look under the furniture. She’s got to be here somewhere. I know,” Phil said, elongating his vowels in that Grace Kelly-esque way that just had him salivating during screenings of To Catch a Thief. “I know she’s in here somewhere.”

Ten minutes later, Aunt Pittycat had yet to surface.

“Always were the irresponsible one,” Marlo muttered under her breath, but loud enough that Phil heard her. She’d scoured every closet, crawled under every bed, craned her neck under every antique they owned. No cat – sore lower back, yes.

Phil forced out a cutting laugh while ricocheting from kitchen cabinet to kitchen cabinet. No Aunt Pittycat. “Hey, who’s had the at-fault car accidents, Ms. Mario Andretti? Not!”

“Never you mind. If you hadn’t been calling me on the cell – the bedroom!”

“Whaddaya mean, the bedroom?” Phil said.

“Your dresser drawers?” Marlo said, groaning.

Fifteen seconds later, Phil heard it from Marlo.

“Oh, Phil …” Marlo said, and then heard the little meow – “guess where I found Aunt Pittycat?”

He’d have to eat crow for two weeks. Damn. She won every time.

The old man

The old man walked down Lincoln Road by himself, not even Scruffy to accompany him for the late Sunday afternoon stroll. Chet wouldn’t have wanted his old dog with him, even if he hadn’t died of kidney failure two weeks earlier, even if the dog had always been man-bait in Chet’s younger years. Chet wanted to cruise the area while all the strapping Latinos in speedos and on rollerblades were out and about.

His body ached and pinched at every joint. He couldn’t blame it on the weather, beautiful even for Miami Beach’s October. Just a week ago, his orthopaedist had told him, you’ve got to have a hip replacement. And his chiropractor had shaken his head when twisting Chet into a pretzel – things just don’t stretch the way they used to, Chet told him. Mightn’t you try yoga, the young thing had said, but he didn’t know anything about bodies Chet’s age. And his internist had put Chet on Lipitor, your cholesterol’s too high, we have to be worried for the heart. The only thing that seemed to work these days was his appetite, still the same as it was when Chet was twenty-two.

Despite the padding around his stomach, Chet thanked God, he could still see his penis when he urinated. And he didn’t look all that bad in jeans and a white t-shirt, did he? That’s what he’d worn this Sunday. No, not bad at all. So then why did the prepubescent Latinos in speedos and on rollerblades look right through him when he passed by them? Even the hunky daddies who were no more than a few years younger ... or the same ... or even older ... even they looked right through him. As if he were a glass prism, but without the refraction.

Chet wished he could be twenty-two again. Hell, he wished he could be thirty again. But no one seemed to understand just how difficult life was for a man once he turned thirty-seven.

A family story

“All right, family,” I said to the crew sitting around in a tight circle of chairs in my 18th Street flat just north of Castro, “you may begin reading.”

They opened their copies of the manuscript and began devouring the pages like vultures would a pig carcass on a sun-scorched desert highway. My mother’s lips froze when she turned to the second page. My brother scrunched up his brow until it looked like a Christmas danish. My sister let out a little squeak after she skipped ahead to the devirginization chapter. How’d she know where to find it? Perhaps someone had been reading my blog, after all. And my father popped his mouth open and groaned when he fingered his way through the last pages of the last chapter.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Dad always read the newspaper from the back to the front. I can remember him, sitting on the toilet Saturday mornings, reading the sports section, stinking up the whole house after French toast and bacon breakfasts.

And then came the onslaught. Mom went first.

She pointed her index finger at me. “I did not have sex with my husband before marriage!”

“How’d you know about the Nancy Smith incident?” my brother said. “I never told anyone. And no one was home. And those Cheetohs, you’re the one who stole them from my underwear drawer.”

My sister whimpered, on the edge of tears. “I think this is all really insulting and disgusting. You’ve laid out our lives for the whole world to laugh at. I did not go around the world with Bobby Boulder!”

“Relax, everyone,” Dad finally said. “It all ends happily in the last chapter. The family convenes at the artist’s San Francisco apartment and they smoke a joint to celebrate the youngest’s smashing exhibition.”

Exhibition, indeed.

Undeniable

I sat down in the restaurant with George and ordered a glass of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. I groaned.

“What’s the matter, sweet pea?” George asked, as ever perky and dutiful. I closed my lips, swallowed, and fashioned a sentence in my head.

“It was a trying day at work,” I answered, hoping my voice sounded even. And not the tinny high-pitched strain that’d usually come out of it when I looked over at his endlessly happy blonde head. It’s how I pictured a Norwegian grenade.

I ordered a filet, baked potato, and garden salad. He ordered ahi tuna, rare, in a vegetable salad. The damned goody-too-shoes would live to be a hundred, and I’d never get any peace.

We ended up discussing the condo board of directors. George had served six years already and was now running for president. Sure, he’ll get it. He always gets the recognition if there’s no money attached to it. Now if it’d been a real job with a real salary? He wouldn’t get it, not in a million years.

A sap is a sap is a sap.

Out of the corner of my eye, another gay couple slithers into a booth, other side of the aisle, behind George. Good looking, too – at least, the one facing my direction. He notices me, I notice him. Good, perhaps I’ll have a weekend adventure. My type, too – dark hair, chiseled jaw, muscular physique, narrow waist, but not overdone. Not one of those Chelsea bottom bodybuilders. This one’d fit nicely under me.

George kept bubbling over with condo board news and gossip about the neighbors. They could srew themselves, for all I cared. I did my best not to let my eyes wander over to my weekend conquest – but I just couldn’t. He had a way of looking over me, twisting the right side of his lips up and looking down at me that had me feeling all smooth inside. Undeniable, I suppose.

“What’re you doing this weekend, honey?” George asked. I turned my head back to him.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, and thought fast. “They’re talking about rebooting the data center, and I might be on call Saturday. Might have to work, dear.”

I got up and went into the restroom, knowing full well that my weekend conquest would follow. No denying it.

An unfamiliar road

The wind picked up as their car rocked along the winding road and made its way down the lane, barely able to drive faster than a few miles per hour. Norma clenched her teeth at yet another sharp pain in her abdomen. She bit down on her knuckles. When the pain subsided, she looked down at the imprint of teeth on her fingers.

The car rocked them over the uneven road. Norma looked at the upholstered cloth of the seat beneath her, wet from perspiration. To make matters worse, the bumpy ride doused the car with a muddy grit and the windshield with slimy dirt. She shuddered as Will dodged one puddle after another.

How could this only be a mile? It seemed like they’d crossed the earth by the time the lane widened and the trees grew apart. They finally saw a broken white fence on the left side of the road, the one they’d expected, neglected as it stood erect only at its center posts, falling down on either side onto overgrown grass.

Norma looked at the house beyond. “Can this be her home?”

The Victorian house in front of them beckoned, white with dark green shutters hanging loosely by the windows, paint peeling off the walls, a broken swing on the front porch, a fallen tree bisecting the front yard. The reflection of the sky’s glassy gray obscured Norma’s view through the windows into the house. Two goats ate grass in the yard, but Agnes didn’t see any chickens. A rickety barn stood by itself away from the house, its door open and blowing.

What he said was ...

The phone rang, and I scowled. He wouldn’t answer the phone, now would he? Ring, ring, ring. Scowl. Ring, ring, ring. Sigh and roll my eyes.

But it did answer.

“Hello, Jerry?” I said into the text-happy, e-mail-dinging, contacts-out-the-wazoo, neurotic-social-avoidance-excuse smartphone.

Nothing. And then I heard “Hello … Jerry?” come right back to me.

“Hello?”

Hello?

“Jerry, is that you?”

Jerry, is that you?

I hung up and called again. Ring, ring, ring – scowl. Ring, ring, ring –

“Ben, you really shouldn’t be calling me at 8:30 in the morning. You know that’s my shower, shit, and shave time.”

“Oh, Jerry!” What would I do with him? Hopelessly neurotic. That gave me a thought. “How’s your mother?”

“How’s yours?” Jerry said, and giggled in that ticklish sort of way.

“I called because Connie wants to know about your love life. It’s all he lives for.” Yeah, right, I thought – that and his Tenderloin tricks. That slut I married … ah, well, relationships.

There came Jerry’s perky giggle again. Odd, when we were together, I wanted to strangle him when he giggled like that. So I giggled right back when he told me, “No action. Nothing since the Napa Narcissist.”

“You and me,” I said. “Two sides of the same coin. You had the Napa Narcissist, I’ve got the Tenderloin Tessie.”

Allow me to introduce myself

I can’t believe this Round Robin session has swooped down onto us so quickly – but sorry, Jane, I forgot about it until you sent me a reminder e-mail! Anyway, I’ve been very forgetful lately. Is it early Alzheimer’s? Must be. After all, my father’s in Stage 2 right now. He progressed (or regressed?) to the incontinence stage a few months ago. At least he still remembers who I am – though we don’t think he really knows my name, all by itself. My nasty brother Jeff won’t let me ask him the questions to understand why that is however.

There you go – you’ve got two details most people don’t know. My father has Alzheimer’s Disease and I’ve got a big fat jerk for a brother. Well, let me rephrase that last one. I’ve got a brother who’s been behaving like a big fat jerk. Otherwise I love him. And that’s the third thing most people don’t know about me. I love my big fat jerk-behaving brother. So I’m done, right? Wrong.

This fall is a sentinel one in terms of my writing career. I’m on the cusp of publishing the novel I started four years ago at the Writing Salon – “Agnes Limerick, Free and Independent.” The publisher’s been contracted, the book’s been designed, and the final proofreader will be done in just a couple of days. So look for it in print before this Round Robin session is over. Now that’s news … and I owe about 65% of it to the nurturing teachers and students at the Writing Salon. No bullshit ... but lots of people know this about me, so it's nothing especially new.