story

The car boiled over in the heat of the mountain pass. Jimi rushed out to remove the radiator cap and Mike swished a clear bottle of mineral water and followed. Steam shot past Jimi's hand and soaked the rag he held and the cap fell and clinked twice against the pavement. The sky had baked itself clear and the noon didn't cast any shadows. When the engine finished whining, the car looked deflated, immovable. Some buzzards called and swirled over the red plains far below; cows flecked the broad space and clustered near the panes of the river. There were few trees anywhere. Mike poured water into the radiator and over the engine and the car sizzled like dowsed coals. The sky was so blue that the yellow haze of distant cities seamed pronounced. Mike took a gulp from the bottle and offered it to Jimi, but he refused with an open palm and pointed to the engine.

"We're going to need all that water to get to the top, Mike," Jimi said, and then he let his weight fall to earth and balanced on his haunches. A crow landed near the yellow divider and tilted its head and studied them for food; it skipped around, pecked at the asphalt, and then continued to cock its head toward the two.

Mike blocked the glare from his eyes and strained to look at the fields below. "You know, Jim, I can almost see the Ranger's lodge from here." The crow pranced further up the pass until its legs mingled with the black top's mirage; the heat waves made the crow appear to sway. "You know, Jim?" Jimi crouched and broke apart clumps of dirt in his hands, the dust didn't settle but swept out in puffs into the valley; he beaned a clod at the crow, but it landed short, puffed into dust and left a rusty mark on the blacktop. The crow called and took easy flight until it rested close enough to the car to fascinate itself with its reflection in the bumper.

Jimi sighed, rose, and then wiped his palms against his jeans. Hand prints showed clearly on each thigh. Mike closed the hood and both men hopped into the car, slamming doors and startling the bird. It glided briefly out over the ravine and settled in a dry shrub. The crow cawed and ruffled its plumage, its eyes indistinguishable at the distance.

The engine coughed and took and the grinding note of first gear pulled Mike and Jimi away. As the car took off up the mountain, the crow landed next to the bottle of water that sat on the road and looked at the valley through its refraction.

And When she saw him embracing himself for warmth, she moved quickly to heat the water for some tea. The sky was fibrous and giving like burlap and she could smell the decay that settled near Abington only when blood was spilled, and the blood came from this bleached slave, a man with a bull neck, but with the limbs of a gazelle. She knew him as Moose as only the moose shared his build. His lips were full and agitated and they worked together like he was saying something she couldn't hear ‹ and she wanted to hear something besides the sucking of his balloon cheeks.

She made him drink a little from the bowl, then he fell asleep. As she sat next to him, sipping from her cup, she traced the thick dry burn-scabs, as pasty and puffy as Elmer's glue, that appeared to drip down his back and sides, following their furrows until her blunt finger came upon the heavy lashes across the spine. When she touched the deep grooves, bathed in brown medical ointment, he shuddered and rolled onto his stomach and tossed away the light quilt to expose a body that looked to her like marbled steak: an expanse of tight black skin cut by white fatty striations. The air must have cooled him because he finally started to mutter under his breath something both unidentifiable and distinctly human.

The car boiled over in the heat of the mountain pass. Jimi rushed out to remove the radiator cap and Mike swished a clear bottle of mineral water and followed. Steam shot past Jimi's hand and soaked the rag he held and the cap fell and clinked twice against the pavement. The sky had baked itself into clarity and the noon cast no shadows. When the engine finished whining, the car looked deflated, immovable. Some buzzards called and swirled over the red plains far below; cows flecked the broad space and clustered near the panes of the river. There were few trees anywhere. Mike poured water into the radiator and over the engine and the car sizzled like dowsed coals. The sky was so blue that the yellow haze of distant cities seamed pronounced. Mike took a gulp from the bottle and offered it to Jimi, but he refused with an open palm and pointed to the engine.

"We're going to need all that water to get to the top, Mike," Jimi said, and then he let his weight fall to earth and balanced on his haunches. A crow landed near the yellow divider and tilted its head and studied them for food; it skipped around, pecked at the asphalt, and then continued to cock its head toward the two.

Mike blocked the glare from his eyes and strained to look at the fields below. "You know, Jim, I can almost see the Ranger's lodge from here." The crow pranced further up the pass until its legs mingled with the black top's mirage; the heat waves made the crow appear to sway. "You know, Jim?" Jimi crouched and broke apart clumps of dirt in his hands, the dust didn't settle but swept out in puffs into the valley; he beaned a clod at the crow, but it landed short, puffed into dust and left a rusty mark on the blacktop. The crow called and took easy flight until it rested close enough to the car to fascinate itself with its reflection in the bumper.

Jimi sighed, rose, and then wiped his palms against his jeans. Hand prints showed clearly on each thigh. Mike closed the hood and both men hopped into the car, slamming doors and startling the bird. It glided briefly out over the ravine and settled in a dry shrub. The crow cawed and ruffled its plumage, its eyes indistinguishable at the distance.

The engine coughed and took and the grinding note of first gear pulled Mike and Jimi away. As the car took off up the mountain, the crow landed next to the bottle of water that sat on the road and looked at the valley through its refraction.

no one gets too much heaven no more -- and then the girl goes and runs off with the boy and i am in bed alone this morning and yes she is just a friend but i worry i worry byt i had a great sleep on my lonesome because sometimes she gets groovy and i can't see why people get so bloody incensed all the time as though they were bothered intentionally and i was thinking that so many so many people so many people are convinced that in so many way there is not global conspiracy the theory is hate and the hate pervades and it was fun to see the swoosh in her hair the blush in her cheek because honestly i have never seen her flirt not even a little bit this large prodding stoic cock tall and erect and sticking out of the pentagram all day every day so long that there vitriol against men has made my journey challenging at the least and yet when a pretty boy says hi all the rules go out the window -- be docile around superiors and lovers, be the sweet little daddy's girl the sweet little lover because you and i know that in so many ways you like it when your superiors are your lovers and then it is all because you are a female bam bam breaking the faucet with you brute strength with the hairy legs that keep you running ahead when i am trying to take pictures while i am trying to take images for my work and it was a promise you made to me that you would assist me a little bit byt now you say you don't wanna and you art not my slave not my slave byt why are you such a good slave otherwise such a good slice when you want something you think you can't have and I hear so many voices cry out: why didn't he want to fuck me why didn't he want to fuck me why didn't he want to fuck me? we hell i don't know -- he never found you very attractive? never found you anything byt a big strong man with breasts you are the big strong man with breast? why is that? why do you saunter challenging all them men to have a coneest: i bet you don't have a bigger cock than me! I bet you can't bench press as much as I can! I bet you I wear bigger pants I bet you I hang to the left and the right, I bet you I am not impotent are you? i want to measure i want to see you stand taller want longer and then i will disfigure and only then will my cock turn into a clit only then will my manly chest soften and only then will the nipples turn soft and pink.walking with the woman and her man, walking around singapore walking together looking at her body looking at the soft down of the blond hairs at the base of her head falling from her french twist hearing her soft english rose cadence and seeing the way her clothes cling to her pale flanks and the way they touched and the friendliness between them and their insistence that I come along so that we would look at nikons looking for the f5 looking for the filters looking for marks and spencer and he is roberto a good looking italian living in paris and every weekend she goes to him from londres or he to her in londres -- a paris london relationship and she reminds me so much of liz looking at her supple body was like ants eating away my eyes ants eating away my eyes and since they look so similar in kent i have a feeling that it is in the water -- we talked about how italian women often after the age of 18-23 there is a change a sudden perm, blue eye liner, too many accessories and the clothes every piece at once and how the young girls are au natural and s. the kentian rose sat there in a gray tank, tight white shorts and keds and she had not a lick of makeup and her eyes were naked and she had a french twist and you know -- no makeup in the world could have improved and then i felt such the outsider such the leper and it was all i long for, this urbane relationship where time is spent byt also the passion and the work is spent and raffles costs $750/night and you know it seams to me worth every penny every penny to be seduced and sedated by royalty by kings by the scent of brunei by the lovemaking of emperors and I am oft convinced that I am unwilling to be anything byt the third wheel the observer... the journalistic gadfly who smells the flowers of another for i find myself around another's flowers always wanting to seduce another flower away another away and it is by far easily the fear of commitment the fear of the commit for when I had the fear I had the fear and knew no serious marriageable before 30 no way no how and the house comes rumbling down and then there is mim and jim and liz and john and this is what I learned:

to have a lover, to have a mate to have a soulmate is not to have spent ones life then find the soulmate, byt that the soulmate the loverfriend and you should be spending that life together, finding those passions together -- not two wholes touching byt two wholes merging and you know i thought it was complete byll shit byt now I am no t too sure I am not too sure if it doesn't exist and there must be une petite femme with the desire to create to make to shoot to travel to explore and to make love incessantly as well, to swim,surf, hike, explore mountain bike and in addition to love the world of the digital of the future of the literate -- and this is not too far byt when will my knight in shining armour arrive?

and then i laugh and then i laugh because my life is so rife full of these petty dramas and it is a self deprecation, a fun way to whittle away at myself for I write better and explore better when feeling the melancholia the melancholia and here I am sitting on the boat quay in singapore and it is only because this is one thing in my life not 100% sussed, that is why I am obsessing about it...

a welshman told me after i had had many strange dreams about my ex s, he asked me how long had it been since YOU broke up with HER, and I said about a year -- well, he said, invariable, at about a year's time a man if he had broken up with his lover, will start to begin to forget the bad of the love affair and only remember the good and will become lonely ;lonely lonely and then after a while he will say out loud for his very soul to hear and those around him:

fuck! she wasn't that very bad after all now what was I thinking when I got rid of her???

and here I am travelling around the world, getting choked up and lonely yes i guess it is loneliness byt by god i am not feeling sorry for myself no not at all because i am doing so much cool stuff -- 52 rolls of film -- if you wanna go over to my mum's house to check them out -- feel free, just call 703-807-2163 before you go and give the old girl a big hug for me -- and ask her to see the boomerang that I sent myself by post -- it'll be a keepsake and will make many generations chuckle aimlessly and here:

synergy moves across the fields like wind. this most basic of needs, the building blocks of community, caresses the husks old grain stalks.

dirk consoles red; red flirts with pretty boy; never enough hours in the

day, says kat.

i raise my hands, unable to delete any more, anymore. words are words and editing is not the proper way of the white man to remember history. herstory.

"He thinks it's great and does it again, just because he can."

email and _bound_ all evening with a former lover. the woman hurt me, but i asked for it. now her friends root for us. i haven't been an us for a long time. emails back and forth, telephone rings past my bed time. i answer, its she.

_bound_ -- she and i are attracted to the same women. I say this, she replies for me to be careful she might be jealous.

virtual girlfriend. the woman who broke my heart, the woman i broke my heart over. blunt bob, thin features, smooth lithe cream skin. creamy. little, better say petite. elle est tres petite.

She is C&S.

"He thinks it's great and does it again, just because he can."

Dirk says, "Red - better a moment of weakness that passes as the tears dry than days of the pain and effort it takes to conceal the sadness. Once you've wept, the tears are gone, but the struggle not to weep binds you for long, long... "

I say, there is always an ember you can ignite if you have the patience and are willing to spend the vital energies.

i remember: the line of her body when first i removed the clothing. the place behind the pillow where she kept her pajamas. the crooked back from the scoliosis. the little fingers little hands. the firm budding. the blunt hair, hark and rich.

a friend told her, "he cared for you, pimples and all." this friend is "rooting for us, for you for me."

ben and jerry's is an ice cream store.
they sell ice cream to women
they sell ice cream to hope.
in an old post office
next to the pennsylvania
river...

"saying that they were going

to put my dog down sometime that week"