Anthony of Padua

"I stayed with a murderer, so what friends can I have?" -- a cast member of Leo Gaut, part of the Johan Falk series

I was going to tell you, earlier Saturday evening, as a matter of technicality, that I never dated, but an electronic technician named Rick, who got my number because he was white in the deep chocolate off campus ghetto sea, walked me to a McGonigle Hall game, and had one thing on his mind. Paced like something rabid with the one thing on his mind, what year? 89 maybe, and I rejected him because all he wanted was the one thing. Cripples fuck like bunnies, but his roving and unpleasant pale blue eyes, orbs just as easily my mothers, never even looked at me, to the game, from it, I talked him out the door as ably as Liza Minnelli. Two thirds closed he coughed piteously. You want a cup of tea? I relented in fine sleep with him and get it over with sentiments-- fuck him so he leaves, but the stern veered to starboard because I had no rubbers. He had no rubbers and it was my third sexual assault with reluctantly coerced consent, and I won against an unremarkable penis, small from steroids, drugs. He left. So much for dating. I wept like a splinter, punished for staying Caucasian. More remarkable still, he chased after me on the telephone. I flared like a wolverine, and that was the end of Rick, if not public housing men altogether. I should learn from the finesse of European women, their beauty more deeply ingrained than their American counterparts. Sophia Loren cheapened this when she transitioned to Hollywood: I cannot imagine that New Mobility Magazine staffers earn much of a salary. They paid me 400 for my feature, and before that I earned 50 cents a word, while Clarity Media has seemingly become, with stark laughter, my supported employment, my no fault slavery I can opt out of anytime I please. Pro or con.

If I fall into indigence of absolute zero come winter 2015, I shall not stand it, not 30 plus anymore, my nerve for field travel vanquished by the long defunct Institute with whom I came to grief. What can you say? 

Nothing, but the resilience of old bones loses its spring-- this is the consequence of belief and investment in intake centers-- the damage of their indoctrination and subsequent expulsion, regardless of how diminished they've become. Fifteen years of looking for a life raft and new definition, splinters like fangs beneath my fingernails throbbing, urgent.