No Needs of Any Kind

No Needs of Any Kind

       by Rugrat Doug

              if i needed you would you come to me

I bumped into this sermon recently while going through files I was disgarding in a move to downsize our piles of stupidly hoarded stuff. I was preaching at our local Kleine Gemeinde church in Kleefeld, Manitoba one Sunday a few years ago and it got away on me. It was a Sunday in late winter and we had all been cold too much and warm too seldom for too long and my hunger for joy must have brought about that state in me that happens now and then where I find myself temporarily believing that snow is wet, boys are girls, clouds are sun, sin is good, good is sin, money is desirable and pieces are the whole. So, instead of preaching on the topic I had prepared taking the lectionary into account, something about the way that heaven will provide all of us with peace and all our needs will be met in good time, I preached extempore that we have too many requirements to start with. It did not go over well as you can imagine.

       I started thus. "Babies have needs. If there is one thing we know about them, that is it. Milk, hugs, diaper stuff, smiles, attention, sweetnesses from the faces hovering above them, rocking, and so many different ways of saying, 'You are special!' Yes, from early on we humans want to be affirmed. 'You are special!" we need to hear our whole lives long. Milksops is what we are. When we achieve an action it is immediately followed by a need for praise. 'Did I perform well?' one asks the other. 'Yes, Honey, you were spendid!' replies that one. She, in turn, wishes for comment on the effectiveness of her person. 'Did I make you feel good? Do I still turn you on?' And in reply, 'Oh! Sandra. You are so pretty still. At fifty how many women do you know who look as good as you? How many have such firm breasts at your age?' At seventy-five, mother to her son speaks thus: 'Son, you should really come over more often and visit. It's been two weeks since you drove over here to see me! I know you are busy but I love you so much!' And son, to placate her: 'Mother, I love you, too. Very much. You are always so good to me. I will try to come again soon, okay? I miss you, too, when I am not there for a while.' Sister on the phone: 'John, brother, how are you!?' While he is answering, as if she has not heard him, she shouts out, 'I love you so very much, John!' This is a comment not really meant to shore up John's ego or sense of self worth but her own, if you examine it at all for its overtones. He will soon reply that he does, too, in return, love her to distraction, as brothers love their sisters. And prayer: 'God, please forgive my sins. I repent. I have been bad. I should not have taken the carburetor off the Cadillac of that gentleman but it was so tempting and I knew we needed the money to make our mortgage this month. He did not really need a replacement carb, but it did need work, and so I changed it. I won't do it again. I love you, Lord!' And so on. People need always to be made to feel big about themselves."

       I preached this. I left for home after the service without an invitation to lunch. I woke Monday regretting that I had done so. I am, some years later, not interested in preaching anymore. I read more for my own diversion now. Though diversion it is not exactly since I am of the opinion that much reading for the sake of entertainment when there are so many philosophical values concerning Being to be understood is disgusting. Just now I am reading Heidegger's four volumes on Nietzsche. It is lovely outside my window, not yet winter, and I smell the comfort of toast being made in the kitchen.

         

Enough Time (cont'd)

Enough Time (cont'd)

       by Dr. D.R.

                I was always told, "If you're not sure, don't."

       "But, would you like to?" She was not easily dissuaded from a line of thought. The workers behind the counter, secure from their customers, kept taking orders and calling out things to those completely out of sight in the kitchen. A funny group of old, young, dirty, clean, retired and working had gathered here today, I noticed. Yet, I could not get them clearly in my head, so the fact held little significance for me. A wicked-looking old man in a  pinched pair of overalls and with a hooked nose to make Captain Hook relieved, kept looking at Celine. She noticed but paid him no mind. She moved her legs over so he could not look up her skirt, but continued talking unconcerned.

       "Theoretically, yes, I would," I said. "I would like to give a young woman a massage, and that's final." I smiled and wished I were young, too. I thought of my clothes, my hair, my arms and my face but I did not think of her body. It would be like all the pretty young female bodies there were, simply fantastic. Mine would be like all the you-know-what old bodies in the world.

       "Let's go!" She leaned toward me, whispering, her blouse opened a little at the neck. Her blouse was light purple, like sun through a lily. Perfume surrounded her. She wore a wedding ring and it glistened on her tanned finger. Her body lithe, of course, and utterly beautiful, hidden by a skirt of cotton flowers and a sheer top through which her slip glimmered made me say yes.

       "Yes, let's get out of this place and massage!" I said, and guided her around tables by her elbow. Almost six feet tall, she stood an inch or two above me in height. She bumped her head in her haste on my door and I leaned over to kiss it better. Her hair smelled very nice. She sat close to me, her hand on mine as I shifted gears.

       We walked into her apartment, she pointed to a couch and I waited for her to stretch out there, but she pointed again and then I understood that she wanted me to lay down first. I did that. She removed my shirt and stroked my arms. She began to rub my shoulders and my lower back. She said how lovely my skin was and how muscular I was. I smiled and thanked her, not believing at all. Then she had me lower my trousers, which I did, and I lay there in my skivvies. She rubbed my legs and for a long time she lay against them, warming them and kissing them with her lips and hair. Then she returned to massaging them until I fell asleep.

       When I awoke the room was not empty. She was there still, waiting for me to get up.

       "Is it your turn now?" I asked, feeling a bit of guilt. The walls seemed too empty, no pictures hanging on them. Dishes cluttered the galley kitchen.

       "No, there isn't enough time," she said. "I have to go to classes and then to work. She was already sort of moving toward the door.

       "Thanks!" I said, and she nodded.

       "I enjoyed it," she said. She took her keys from her purse and we went outside. She locked up. I drove her to St. John's, neither of us saying much, and we parted. I have never met her again. I sometimes think that it isn't fair that she didn't get a massage, too.   

                        

Enough Time

[Written circa 2005]

Enough Time

       By Douger Reimlas

All the innovations in fiction and poetry have already earlier been affected on Saturday Night Live. Our literary elite would not appreciate this insight as definitive but would wish to qualify it in order themselves to come out justified. It is up to latter day realists cum postmodernists to defend their uses of these by calling what they themselves do serious literature worthy of considerations, as in the case of creative writing graduates for Ph.D. status.

An  attractive woman asked me for a quarter at the parking lot outside St. John's College. She was in a hurry to get to class and was short the change. She'd thought she had some, she explained, but there were only loonies and toonies in her purse. I gave it to her and told her not to worry her pretty head about such a triviality. She smiled at the anachronism and the audaciousness and said she would pay me back when she came from her class at ten. I smiled at the ridiculous assumption that she would ever see me again. She walked away in a hurry, her skirt slim in the sunlight and her step jaunty as only the young can affect. When she disappeared through the double glass doors I turned with some reluctance to my day.

        I picked up my text and notes and got to my classroom on time to begin on time. I fully enjoyed the lecture and then briefly saw a student after class about an assignment due in a few days. I thought that she had left her request a bit long but gave her the advice she wanted. When I was riding the elevator I remembered the young woman at the parking lot. I smiled to myself. Silly, a fifty-seven year old man with a growing bald spot as well as innumerable declinations from youth thinking about a twenty year old student this way with small excitations of the heart and lungs. What the hell, why not, I thought, put my books on my desk and went back down the elevator.

       I had not come even halfway across the lot toward my car when I noticed her standing there. She was leaning up against the trunk in a relaxed manner, reading.

       "What took you so long?" she asked, putting her book back in her purse. She smiled in a manner that told me she knew the surprise I was feeling and delighted in the fact that I had come and that I had found her there. She waited for a few seconds for me to compose myself and then announced that we should go for coffee somewhere. I agreed.  

       I said, "Why are we going for coffee?"

       She said, "Why shouldn't we?" She added, though, "It was kind of you to give me a quarter and I wish to be kind to you, too, do you understand?" I nodded my disagreement. I did not understand and I said so, but I did not say so, either. I said nothing, but pointed to my car. We got in and drove to Macdonald's. I bought my charge an ice-cream cone since it was still hot at the beginning of September. A vegetarian, she declined a burger. When we were half done our snack and had talked about this and that, she asked me if I had ever given a young girl a massage. I said with emphasis, "No! I have not!"

(to be continued)