Rabelais High (cont'd 2)

Rabelais High (cont'd 2)

       by King David of the Psalms

In my years I have seen things you, James, would not believe! We were driving through Harlem once, my wife and I, and that was our first visit to New York. My goodness, the expectations that one carries with one into that place! I admit, I anticipated some encounter with hoodlums, someone wielding a switchblade, or at least one assault with a deadly weapon. Nothing of the sort. People at street corners seemed regular enough. Young men and women stood around smoking and talking, the streets seemed to me emptier than Portage Avenue in the middle of the day, and the storefronts indicated the possibility of violence because of the steel bars over all of their windows and doors. Pubs and small cafés sprinkled the street side. Music, distinctly American, drifted from alleys and the open windows of apartments. It was a remarkably warm day for mid November. Nothing out of the ordinary befell me.

       We did have one memorable accident. Busy simply being apprehensive, and then finding that the streets pattern themselves differently than I was used to, we soon found ourselves unsure of the exit onto the Manhattan freeway. We did eventually park the station wagon on a street whose name I cannot for the life of me recall, and I asked a group of loiterers the way. They nodded and smiled, some of them, but I could understand not a word. They pointed to a sign above the sidewalk half a block away. Although I was concerned about leaving Alviera alone there she shushed me and I went. It happened to be a hole-in-the-wall pub. The Little Lorian. I smelled the cigarette smoke and the beer immediately, but I am a man of the Lord and so knew that I was safe. I have always trusted God to lead me through difficulties such as this. I entered, approached the bar, and asked the bartender there if he knew the way that I wished to go. He was about to reply when I noticed him glance behind me to where a group of young men and two women ringed a pool table.

       "Jude, watch the cues there!" he said. He must have been referring to the clattering of a pool cue that fell behind me. This same fellow, this Jude, dressed in black and wearing more jewelry than I am accustomed to in a man, looked at him and then at me and began to walk over to us carrying the said item in his big hand. I shrunk back, expecting the worst, but the bartender introduced him to me.

       "This is a Canadian, Mr. Jingles, a preacher, and he wishes to know the way out of Harlem onto the freeway." Jude shook my hand, with accompanying music from his bracelets and rings, welcomed me to his community and pointed to one of the two young women there.

       "Ask her," he said. "She's the smart one here." I turned to go to her for this advice when Jude asked me if I was a betting man. I answered no, of course. Being a preacher kept me, thankfully, from vices of that sort. He nodded his approval but suggested that I place a small bet on Moonbeam Rider with him. He was, it seems, a broker of horse racing bets. A bookie. I felt constraint more than inclination and without much further remonstrance handed him a Canadian ten dollar bill that he pocketed and said he would send back to me along with anything it made when the race was done. The Preakness, he informed me, was to be run next Tuesday. I left my address on the counter with the keeper and made my way to the side of the black-haired woman sitting at a table with a glass and watching the pool game's progress.

       I was reminded of the red room that Catharine Barkley first disliked and then enjoyed. Winnie drew up a table when she came from changing and asked if I wanted my fortune read. No, I said, slightly red-faced. She reached over and rubbed my hair. I was cute, she said, and cuddly.       
        "Oh, really! Your palm tells me that you're a dingo. You're one of the old-fashioned, crazy, do-dare sort of guys who in another age would have been responsible for the apprehension and ever the demise of criminals such as Billy the Kid." I do have a wild streak in me and I admitted as much to her

       "Show me now," she said. "There's a Nomad's hangout right across the ally from this hotel. You can't miss it. It's got a green door. Go knock and ask them if they have any spare beer." I looked at her as if she were crazy.

       "Good Lord, lady!" I said. The Budweiser tasted fine when I got back from the club, though I must admit that I am not an expert on the fine points of alcoholic beverages. We had two, possible three, apiece, toasting each other for the success of the mission, laughing a little, I admit. I recalled my waiting wife and hurried from there.

       "My God," I said to Winnie. I've got to go. Alvera!" She implored me not to.

       "The USA is a fine place to raise a little hell, " she said. "Or raise a family." This with a slyness about the corners of her mouth that made my knees weak, my legs wobbly and my biceps bulge.

       God loves even the lowly Holstein tired of her hay and sick of her swinging teats.

       When we arrived back in Winnipeg late the next evening I found that I had to shovel the snow from the front sidewalk. The neighbors across the back lane had much more work about it that I. The houses are larger on Cambridge Street. That can be attractive when one is buying or selling, but not at the onset of winter when the first snows hit as if the sky were falling in and nothing, no nothing, feels like it's going right. Give me a smaller rear entry and driveway any day.  

  

Rabelais High (cont'd 1)

Rabelais High (cont'd 1)

       by Migh-hinded Slugless Hork-Damm

              zeus might

                                     be tempted

                                               

                                                                                          by my thoughts

Norman thought how he'd be sleepy in school. He'd miss school, maybe. Grade twelve was not an awful lot of fun. Everything was bland. Math, for instance. The same problem sheets pulled out by Mr. Piqueabu that he'd used for ten years or more. They were designed to take you fifty minutes and then the bell. Or English. They'd done one serious writing assignment and it was already April. How could he learn to write? Mr. Pubesier spoke in a French Canadian accent like the ref in Slapshot and Shakespeare was intolerable through his lips. Not only that, but Pube loved to hear himself talk. He hated marking papers, Pube had long ago decided, and that was why he talked so much. Big guy, snarfy breath like rancid mixed nuts and bad mustard on good days. He belonged to every school committee, salaries, drama productions, sports, but he wouldn't give writing assignments because he was too lazy to mark them. Shit, what a bland and stupidly thoughtless place, Rabelais.

       Had Rabelais High been the product of its namesake it would have had the following things going on, Norman imagined. In administration there would be principals screwing students, secretaries hiding twenty-fours under their desks, vice-principals making a bit of extra cash selling home grown to the kids and dogs and cats kept in places incongruous and without apparent reason. Among students there would be the easy trading of assignments for substantial fees that allowed another to make payments on a Porsche if he were a solid writer. Walls about the schools would be erected of erected things and folded things as in that infamous one around that infamous town Gargantua infamously describes. Invaders from enemy territories would run into a soft mass of distraction, which would ease their interest in fighting while tightening their interest in something else. A student, too, could then look out windows whenever Wentworth's endless etymologies in Latin overcame him or her. Outside there would be p and c enough to disturb even the most enuchian among the nerdy computer types, and irrigate even the least coy among the sophomores. Now, students, too, would involve themselves in the world of barter and trade. Commerce would be and is natural to us, Norman thought. Diamonds maybe not, but food, steaks, clothes, rings and bracelets, books stolen or bought, sold at reduced prices, home-made wine and beer would be traded openly from the backs of family station wagons and the trunks of cars. Wars would be fought with spear and sword, pen and paper, bludgeon and catapult, whatever weapons the literature of the day recommended to the imagination. So, for instance, if Winnie and Wanda were at it again over the affections of Roy, pies could be made available to them and a tournament of sorts arranged. Two or more boys could be their horses, bras and panties could be armor, and the horses' hands clasped around buttocks could be saddles. Now, when the sidelines were peopled, and the mounts mounted and saddles firmly sat upon and adjusted, the signal could be given by the president of the IVCF (Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship) and the fight begin.

       Pies would be made available much like Gatorade is provided for runners by hands out-held over the track. A pie flung would require a pie replaced, without either of the lovely ones dismounting and losing time thereby. Soon pies would litter the tourny grounds, cream dripping from creamy skin, and Winnie's hair flying behind her covered in chocolate and caramel. What a distraction that would be for students tired of old Jackson's Chemistry, young Whigmug's Physics and Snarbuckle's Health and Guidance. Yes, that would make Rabelais High tolerable, Norman thought to himself as he lay in bed at 3:30 Tuesday night. 
       The good preacher needs to frequent ghettos, pubs, pool halls, racing tracks, clubhouses, gang hideouts and brothels as well. He must not restrict his activities to the comfortable. The members of his congregations do require much care and affection from their shepherd, but that should not keep him from freeing up time on a regular basis for the underprivileged.

(to be continued) 

Rabelais High

Rabelais High

       by High-minded Douglas Dork-Hamm

             

                                                    i

                                    might be tempted by the thoughts of zeus       

                        thinning hair is not a problem with this noisome group

                        nor is food they eat at will and what they will

                        neither cabbage carrots fish lentils nor soup

                        they don't gather what they sow and won't give cost a thought

                        whenever they are at a loss for words they throw in omg

                        a cap on backward with the visor slung down low upon the neck

                        a skirt not long enough to cover up the lingerie and butt

                        middle riffs and pushed up breasts galore with all that see through skin

                        precious skin available for any boy pimply or not and any thumbs and eyes

                        swift and boublay or how you spell his name

                        and beiber jones and pretty little liars spells that keep them from despair

                        when it comes it comes in swoops and always causes a tumult and stir

                        quick communicated via texts and not no longer telephone for the most part

                        the slickest way to tell the world a secret and what's brewing on the heart

                        if i was god i wouldn't change a thing not one damn thing not one damn single thing

Falsies. I use them to make my little breasts appear bigger, of course. I know it's silly to you but not to me. You see, I am intent on growing older so the other girls won't pick on me. That's it exactly. Notice me in a way that is.... No, not notice me. Not notice me. That's it exactly. If you don't have average or bigger boobs you can't be part of the deciding about things because nobody pays you any attention. It's like being unattractive. You can't look bland or have small ones and be listened to. I want to be heard. This is where Norman's thoughts started, and then they moved to others.

       Norman Weber had five cents less than he needed for the fare. The driver checked and noticed and without a word stopped and opened the door and looked back at him and wouldn't drive on until Norman got off. Watching the bus disappear made him depressed. He walked the four miles home in the suburb of Transcona, showered, ate sandwiches and drank chocolate milk. Then, after watching some TV, he lay down on the throw rug in the living room and slept. He would get up in time to be awake till five a.m. 

(to be continued)

                                

Progress

Progress

       D. Upbyhisbootstraps-Reimer

                        lots of money

                        lots of girls

                        lots of work

                        lots of talk

                        lots of networking

                        lots of ideas

                        lots of opinions

                        lots of at least an acre

                        lots of fear

                        lots of taking

                        lots of not giving

                        lots of salt

                        lots of pillars

                        lots of wild plum jam

                        lots drawn

                       

                        lots of  lotus

Casual as sin, Simon laid his hand on the ruby and stepped from the room where he had dreamed this. Nothing now lay in his way. Sal waited for him at the rendezvous point, but Sal would wait there till doomsday and more. His parents both dead, they would not long for his arrival and that eliminated such a vital set of influences on the burglar's progress. Now, Vidal meant something else altogether. Her concern always made his disappearances matter for discussion and parley. But she fostered his world regardless in the end, and that kept her his. His wife. Of thirty years. Plain. Good. Too good for him. Casual, too, he made his way to Stairs and down to where Wiley and the Mercedes stood point.

       Which brings us to Mathilda. Her oeuvre being poetry, and her nature the shy, she fell on evil ways early. Why, you ask? Simple, really, and sad, too. Her father's poetic mantle had fallen on her. Whitman. Does that ring a bell? For myself, not much, but you may have heard of him. He stands in America for a high order of art, the pinnacle of the New World's achievements in the writing of love and longing. Whitman himself generated no official biological offspring and so the grand sireings of his pen have to stand for the conceptions many of us are heirs of and slave to.

       But he did have a daughter and that is the subject of this story. Simon's love for Whitman's offspring spurred him to even attempt the heist with which we began. Having procured the ruby, valued at sums that wildly differed and similar only in that they suggested wealth beyond estimate, with jewel in hand, Simon hurried to her garret in a house on an odd little corner of Time Square and knocked her up. When she eventually answered (her reticence keeping her reclusive and lonely), he lifted the ruby toward the window and she, from the third floor, recognized it at once. She gasped, raised her hand to her mouth in that time-honored gesture and pointed immediately at that which Simon most wanted about her. He sighed, weary and relieved, knowing from the impetuosity of the act and the general direction of her pointing that he had finally been let in where none till now could legitimately stake claim. Ah, the honor! Oh, the joy! Lord, the pleasure that awaited him! Let the others languish and hang in there till the second  coming. He need tarry no more. His hour had come. In he would go. In again he would go. And in and out he would now repeatedly go till his and her rapture had redounded from the walls of the Square and even the baroness Roskolnichnia at the most eminent corner in the park would have to shut her ears, close her French doors, and draw the blinds.

       Mathilda's poetry had never been published. No one knew what she had written, only that she did. The precise words themselves mattered little. Her infamous virginity, mixed with her father's fame, her own demur personality, the rigor of her morning schedules, and a carefully husbanded unapproachability secured her reputation. When Simon entered her rooms, all these rang up his desire. Without further ado, and with an alacrity that surprised even the staid maid, he leapt from his trousers, bounded to the bed, tied her hands and feet with the ropes and shackles  to which she had made frequent and eloquence poetic reference, and forthwith plunged into her until she and he came together.  The leaves of her most recent poem scattered over the Turkish rug. The forplinias, purple and pink and yellow in a vase of great beauty, shivered with the thumping, her cat, Adelade, stood pressed face-first into a corner of the bedroom, and the large picture of her father, next to her dressing mirror, shimmered with rich embarrassment.

       When they were done, they breakfasted on bacon, eggs and potatoes and then spent the rest of the day in the attic naked, sipping cool drinks, winking at each other. Ah, the progress of burglary, thought Simon to himself. Oh, the burglary of progress, thought Mathilda to herself. Oh! thought Walt.