Picasso's House

Picasso's House

     by Douglas El Greco

Simplot purchased a painting of Pablo Picasso's house at a Sotheby auction because they had decided to diversify their holdings, surplus capital being an issue in the last three quarters. Our dealers told them that any price below three million guaranteed them a rich return if they ever decided to place it on the block again. I was sent to make the bid and when I returned to Chicago with it, security guards, two of them, sat one on each side of me. They were not allowed guns aboard, of course, but they were big men and trained in hand-to-hand combat. 

        A thirtyish woman, dressed to kill, seemed very interested in my movements as we flew. I noted this and told the guards who took an interest in her from then on. She asked questions about my work, my family, my lifestyle and my means. I answered her duly, as well as I could sitting ahead of her. She would not give over during the entire flight. She even switched to the same plane as I did at Heathrow. Eventually, during ground transport, we successfully lost her and I did not see her again until the painting had hung in the Simplot headquarters for more than a year.

        We were elated with the purchase. It raised the agricultural corporation from its rural ignorance to something resembling urbanity. The members of the board, in the meeting that ensued, spoke of the new face of the company at every opportunity. Even shareholders at large, from Wyoming, Utah, Del Rio, Montreal, Dublin, Hamburg and Asian cities, too, stopped to see the work. Excitement generates from exotic objects; that we began to understand. All of us, executives with decision-making powers, planned to organize more purchases of rare art and music. Stradivarius, Lloyd Loar, Breminski, Rachmaninoff, Wilbur, Chopin and Tchaikovsky were named among us as likely sources of original music and valuable instruments. Holbein, Winslow, Plummer, Rubens, Van Gogh, Matisse, and many another great painter found his way into our meetings. Once a year we would purchase a rare work it was decided, and I would be the one making the excursions to obtain them. Single, without a family, dapper-looking and charming, I say with modesty, I presented them with the best face for such serious responsibilities.

        Now, one day, as every day I did, I stood observing the Picasso hanging in the offices of Simplot's president. Seldom at his desk, flying from country to country as was his wont, he tacitly agreed to keep the "sanctuary" doors opened to trusted members of the executive. I observed once again the house itself, with its turrets and tweltth-century architecture. A fieldstone walk led from the lane to the front door. Twelve steps, wide and sweeping, climbed to the high double oak panels of the entry. Four graceful columns supported a ceiling and a roof above against rain and sun. Twenty-foot windows of small-pane glass, some colored red and purple, blinked in a light clearly Parisienne in tone. The sun must have been setting in the west, for the day declined and amber light slanted in with long shadows from the left of the beholder. A small front yard, a wide view of the reaches behind the house, and a sky of blue and expansive height divided the painting's perspective. In the back yard, outbuildings that were surely stables and servants' quarters neatly, coldly, done in blinding white, decorated the rest of the scene. Living beings there were none except a dog curled on the top step as if awaiting its master.

        "Where is he?" I demurely asked myself on many occasions. Was it the painter himself? Was it possibly a self-portrait? The whole picture had the look about it of Utopia, of a quaint and perfect day with heavenly weather and pastoral peace settling like bees abuzz on the overlit world of quiet objects all about. Where could he be? In his study reading? At table eating a late dinner? Might he be in the bath soaking the oils from his tired fingers? Could he be lounging in a smoking room with some of his female acquaintances, since it was common knowledge that Pablo dallied and played in that way until he died at the age of ninety-seven. 

        "He's right there by the bush," a voice said in my ear, and I turned abruptly at the tones I did not recognize. It was the woman from the plane! How confounded I felt, and fearful, too! What on earth was she doing here? She must be an agent of some sort intending to steal this, I thought. How did she get in here? The place is locked and sealed tight. No one enters without permission!  

        "Have you permission to be here?" I stuttered, betraying, I am afraid, my trepidation. I looked for signs of a weapon on her person but saw no evidence of any. In my unease, oddly aware of the unimportant suddenly, I smelled the mustiness of the canvass as if the Picasso had lain in a basement for many years unattended or cared for. Her body's pleasant appeal told me of perfumes rich and clean, scents carefully applied by an expert. She stood with one hand at her bosom, straight-backed and damned attractive in a black dress and fashionable pumps. Her neck long and thin, pulsing with the slight beat of an excited heart, she reached a slender arm then toward the painting, as if she had not heard my question.

        "There he is, don't you see?" she said. I paused, watching her with distrust, then bent toward the shadows of the foliage to the right side of the painting where brilliance turned to dark shape and wildness. Sure enough! A figure I had never noticed before, lonely against an elm of great width, but so shaded that it seemed hardly a tree at all, and the body bent at an odd angle as if needing the support of the trunk. 

        "Well, I'll be..." I said. She interrupted me.

        "He's pissing," she announced, pointing towards his waist. "He's taking a piss!" She turned to me and grinned, looking down towards my own regions of that sort. I blushed at the word. I never use it myself. This woman, for all her outward grace, coarsened the room with her speech.

        "No! It can't be! Why do you think that?" But I bent to look closer, and sure enough, a hand barely visible holding something pointy, which also came to clarity only with purposeful concentration.

        "My Lord!" was all I could manage.

        I discovered, upon further investigation, from the woman herself, that she was the wife of the company president, a former model for the great painter himself, and sent along secretly on the previous mission to guard against my leaving with the painting for my own gain. She smiled when I apologized for suspecting her of evil purposes. Then she did something that I would never have expected, nor was soon inclined to forget. She took me by the hand, kissed me fully on the lips, and whispered in my ear.

         "Let's take it with us somewhere far away!" she said, and then looked at my eyes to ascertain if I understood. I stood for a long while mulling. She touched against me with the whole length of her being, and soon I came to the conclusion that her suggestions bore some advantages. I spoke further with her, we negotiated various items of contract, she agreed, blushing at some of them, and finally we lifted the painting from its hanger and placed it in a suitable bag before driving to the airport.

Penis Williams

Penis Williams

     by Dr. Douglas Ramme

He lost to his sister Serena and afterwards they met at a small coffee shop to discuss the game. The lopsided loss surprised even his father who had bet that the younger man's recent victories guaranteed him a strong finish. Serena offered him this advice.

        "Approach the net when I'm scrambling, Penis. You tend to stay too far back, because you want to be safe, and then your near corner offers itself to my backhand. At least three times in this last set you could have driven one from ten feet crosscourt where I wouldn't have been able to get to it." Serena spoke with calm friendship to her younger brother, knowing that he struggled against advice from her. She noticed her father's silence. He drank coffee and beckoned the waitress over for something to eat. Empty because of restricted access, the cafe served today only four others, all players or trainers. 

          She waited a while, but when he sat there thoughtfully she said,

          "You are the number fifteen seed, Penis, and you will eventually take me down a notch, don't you think?" He smiled A little, because he felt a great warmth for his sister even now. He reached for one of the chocolate bagels that arrived and ate half of it before answering. He passed the other half to her.

         "I hope you're right. I sometimes lose faith in my abilities. How did you do against Sasha in the British open the first time you played it? Did you feel uncertain then? At all?"

She nodded, smiling. Her foot came out from under her and she leaned to whisper to him a confidence. The father smiled. He knew that she would bring him around. She had that cozy gentleness that found its way to its mark when she wished it to. This goodness came from a strange place, not a crooked one. Penis would be won over as he always had been.

        "Come here and hug me," she said to the boy who had till now sat there with his arms crossed. He undid them and put them about his sister, till she snuggled against him and kissed his neck. Soon all felt fresher in the cafe. They would practice the approach to the net later in the afternoon. Now the time pressed them to attend to some business before returning home for lunch. The children's mother counting on them being at table when they played home games. No one guessed the love these two felt for each other. No one knew the father's full interest in or pride over their accomplishments.

Petula Clark's Viscera

Petula Clark's Viscera

        by "But We Are Exiles"

Being deprived of sleep drives some of us to anger, some of us to writing notes to the ones who caused it, some of us to self as well as 

general destruction, and some of us to meditation.

     Who wrote the lines, "God's given us years of happiness here, now we must part"? Nancy O'Megan had entered a plea of not guilty and after the jury deliberated for only six hours the constabulary whisked her off to the Lovington Correctional Centre where she would spend the next dozen years. She would be fifty-one when she got out. She would be wiser too. God working mysterious ways. "Give me a dollar for every time I've cried," she sang at one of the prison amateur nights. 

        Visiting Nashville, Tennessee had brought Nancy into contact with the world she had heard on the radio since she could first remember. The Delmore Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, Bill Monroe, Shaky Jake Parkins, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Ralph and Carter Stanley and especially Petula Clark came over the airwaves from station KXJY, Del Rio, Texas. The Ryman Country Music Hall made a big impression on her when she saw it. Here these artists had performed on the Grand Old Opry stage, singing, clowning around, and playing beautiful instruments built in the 20s and 30s. Across the street was the new Country Hall of Fame. She toured both almost immediately on her arrival and felt overwhelmed by the sheer mass of vintage country music material culture on display.

        One kiosk had the clothing of Elvis, some of it on mannikins that resembled him in his early youthful phase in which sequins and white suits predominated. Another kiosk showed the guitar and sheet music of Wilf Carter who came from that legendary family of country crooners, the Carter family. In another glass display stood the personal effects of Grandma Perkins whose rendition of "Your Cheating Heart" still easily sounded in her head if she thought about it, even all these years later. Two Cadillacs belonging to Elvis were parked in the open in the path of tourist traffic, shiny and glittering with fine paint and polish. One had a television set in it dating back to the second year of the introduction of TV, circa 1956. The horns of a great steer reached out from the hood toward the road ahead. Bits of diamond in the paint literally made the whole car shimmer so that one thought a light shone, glowing even in the dark. 

         Of course, Nancy was most struck by the Petula Clark section with all its variety of her personal effects. Behind glass, with an entry from the back for organizers and cleaners, the public could, of course, not touch them. But she wished so much to make contact even now after Petula had been dead for two decades. If I could only put on some of the clothing, the real clothing she wore, Nancy thought. The mannequin look so much like the woman she remembered from Saturday night at the Grand Old Opry that she even felt a desire to actually get inside the kiosk and don the clothes and stand next to the wax mock-up. 

         Nancy got in at night by a back door. It had been locked but when she jiggled it it opened and no bells went off, as far as she could tell. She closed the door again and walked down the street. She couldn't dare go in, she thought. But maybe no one was in the building at night. She turned and walked back to the door. She thought for a while and then slipped inside. 

        She remembered which floor to go to and how to get there even in the almost unlit spaces. Exit lights gave some illumination. She walked straight to the Petula Clark display and stood there wondering how to enter. She peeked behind it and tried the little door there. It was locked of course, but she found a sharp object in a corner near one of the Cadillacs and returned with it to pry at the door. With a few wrenches of increasing force it suddenly sprang inward and she marvelled that it had. She entered, bent double, and soon stood beside Petula. Hardly following any predeterminations, she began to remove her dress, shoes, stockings and underthings. She dressed herself in Petula's and Petula in her clothing. The dress and underthings fitted a bit tightly, though. Her buttocks were not as tiny as Petula's. P

         She felt as if she were Petula Clark herself and she began to sing one of the songs that had made Petula famous. She started quietly at first and then louder till she was at full voice and her notes echoed wildly through the museum. No one had come. Obviously no one was in the building. She sang the whole song and then, horrors, a light did appear some fifty feet away and began to move in her direction. She stood stock-still and waited, breathless and frightened. Then the light shone on the two of them there side by side.

          "Get out of there!" The policeman said, pointing his revolver at her. She spoke to him and tried to explain away her presence.

          "I'm supposed to be here," she said. "I was given permission to try on these clothes and pretend to be Petula'" she added, nodding vigorously. 

        The policeman beckoned with his gun. "You're in big, big trouble," he said. "Get out!" She did that, and when she had made the change back to her normal self, he led her down all the aisles. She tried to interest him in various displays in order to distract him, thinking she might slip away, might escape that way, but he only nodded and kept on leading her toward the exit.

      In the police statement she was accused of stealing as well as of break and entry into a public building in order to perform mischief. There had been many unsolved burglaries at the museum in recent years and the constabulary was all too happy to put the blame on her. She was tried and sentenced by a harsh judge to twelve years minus one day, and now she languishes in a Nashville prison. She has ten years to go.

Picnic Table on the Front Lawn

 Picnic Table on the Front Lawn

        By Mme. Rouge de la Reimer

            wango walker went to work

            early in the morning

            he felt the sudden need to shirk

            take him without warning

"Separatists be damned, I say!" said Sammy, the tailor. Sammy owned a little shop off Henry Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He made a meagre living sewing suits for older clientele. In his breast he longed for a shop with air-conditioning, central heating, shiny floors, big windows, and trees outside on the front lawn where he might sit with a cup of coffee during coffee break and lunch just to watch the traffic go by and know that he was well-heeled. 

          One day, when he was not expecting anyone because the sky, gray and heavy, dropped showers on the street, the bell announced that someone had entered the door so he left his back room and came to serve. He saw no one. He shook his head. He had no sooner turned his back to go to his sewing machine when he heard a loud voice calling for assistance. Sammy looked but still saw no one. Then he noticed a hand on the counter and he hurried to look over it and there stood a man of three feet height smiling at him.

        "You thought you were mistaken, didn't you?" The little fellow said, and laughed a great hearty laugh.

        "What do you want?" Sammy inquired, feeling slightly insulted and disinclined to tolerate viterbutation from a small person. The small man laughed again, then drew a pistol from his great coat pocket that he pointed smartly at Sammy's head.

        "That's what I want!" he said. I wish to kill you immediately, but I will wait for a moment till I have enjoyed the sight of your discomfort as well as your intense fear." The floor beneath the little man with its mucky appearance took Sammy's eye. The ragged wall with its torn paper and no insulation to prevent the seeping cold did too.

        "Good! Finally! Someone with the guts to make an end to my miserable existence! I've been waiting for you. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I am so glad that you have come! You see, being a firm believer, a Catholic, I cannot end my own life. But, I have been living in such awful poverty for so long and have made so many enemies in the tailoring business that I have long desired nothing so much as a cessation to this tedium. Thank you for coming to help me end it so that you will have to face eternal punishment and not I!" So saying Sammy leapt over the counter and sat down with his back to the little man, a huge smile on his face. He waited. Nothing. He turned around and looked back at the person holding the armament.

        "Well, what are you waiting for?" He glanced about the room and checked his watch, as if worried time would interfere.

        "Come on!" he said and stood up and took the little man by the collar and shook him a little. He sat down again and waited, his back once more offered up. He hummed a ditty about a bird in a tree that gets hit by lightning. The smell of his tailoring practice, old sweaty suit pants never washed, overcame him and he almost wretched. Nothing.

        "What? Art a coward?" he inquired suddenly, a ferocity in his voice past all show. "You're a snivelling coward. Someone ought teach you a lesson!" With that, Sammy jumped up and in a trice had the little person by the collar and in a vicious headlock. He pulled him up off the ground to the height of the light above, turned him upside down and let him fall to the floor headfirst. His skull cracked and made a noise as of china crashing. The little guy moaned and, the gun still in his hand, attempted to point it at the man before him. He could not hold it steady.

        "Still reluctant, art t'ou? Well, we'll see about that!" Sammy grabbed his assailant by his ankles and twirled him rapidly and with increasing force around his head until he felt dizzy himself.  He turned him six times and let go. The body of the three footer flew straight for the door. It smashed through the glass and landed outside in the snowbank. It lay there motionless. A trolley bus came by at that moment and the wheels on the curb-side rolled over the quiet form and squished it shapeless. Sammy came to the door to see, noticed that all was up for his customer and, shaking his head, returned to his back room chair and his sewing.

 

Stanley's Valuable Lesson

(Pardon the font shift in the middle; I have a problem with my iPad formatting)

Stanley's Valuable Lesson

       by Double-breasted Doug

slake your thirst when you first come to an oasis

    render hunger helpless when you see an all-you-can-eatpress yourself on the affluent and cause them to invite               

               you in 

extricate yourself from the wallow into which you have 

               fallen

In Mozambique women used to go around with no tops on. Their breasts showed to great effect. Well, not quite that way. Their breasts leapt about unhindered when they ran, or sat there pensive and immobilized when they were at rest but for the wind and rain to operate on as they pleased. This is true of Guyana, French and British New Guinea, Cape Horn, South Africa and all the Dutch colonies too

        I have it on good authority that Dr. Livingston felt some shame when he first encountered nakedness. He got right to work to encourage women to cover up and men to keep their eyes directed toward proper objects. Stanley was not so disposed. He enjoyed the license of free-floating upper torsos. Back home his wife had done the same. 

        She started by exposing herself to him alone in the bedroom, when they been married a scant couple of years. (Till then she felt shy and asked him to enter the room only once she had donned a nightdress and lay under the covers.) But never mind. She Learned well the pleasures of taking all off. After another three years, Stanley's journals tell us, she began to appear in public in somewhat of a state of dishabiliament. Not a great deal of skin showed at first. Once, however, when they walked to town (they lived in the country on a lane called the Fats Road and it was a mile into the business district) she said that the sun beat down so mercilessly on her that she might have to remove her cardigan. It would be alright, she added, because she wore a camisole underneath and would be able quickly to put on her sweater if need be, the said article of lace and linen being a bit transparent. She looked so fine there in her dark nipples faintly showing that Stanley requested after some three hundred yards further that she might wish to let the sun shine right on her skin. 

        "But how will I do that?" Adelaide said, interested though unimaginative. "Someone would see if I removed it." Stanley nodded his agreement. He did not seem to be too concerned.

         "What are you saying!" She said, ruffled and irate in appearance.

        "Well, dear, I am not saying anything, but it strikes me that we are quite alone here and not a house in sight. Could you not comfortably lift up your shirt and let the sun fall directly on your nipples and no one but I would see?" The sun agreed. The birds about them seemed unlikely to observe. The ditches with their grasses nodded agreement. Adelaide hesitated, but then lifted the hem of the garment and soon, what with the heat glowing on her midriff, she took the courage to lift it higher and there it sat above her lovely breasts as she walked. They jiggled and sprung about. They seemed so much independent of each other in the open air. Stanley made as if to reach and touch them, but his wife demurred and pushed his hand aside before he could get to them. 

         "No, dear, let's just walk." She said these words with kindness written all over them. "I am nervous about being seen and discontented that we might not be as alone as we think." She looked about her frequently and kept her arms at the ready to cover up if she needed to. A peasant in a field nearby worked his hoe up and down, unaware of the sight sloping past. Later, a field or so further down, a wagon with a farmer's daughter at the reins, hied along a lane and came into sight. She waved, but did not seem to have noticed anything amiss. Adelaide took the courage from these experiences to remove her shirt entirely. Now she felt finally free and this freedom paid Stanley handsomely, too. He reached, he partook, he rubbed and pinched (not quite gently), and then they came to town.
         Many years went by. They walked into town often. Each time, if the sun shone and the temperature invited them to play thus, she removed her top and walked with increasing abandon along the road. The peasant began to look forward to these times. The farmer's daughter, too, rode her hayrack ever closer and closer. Birds began to notice them. The ditch grasses nodded sagaciously. Nature approved of the sight and kept the woman and the man free of any shame. Indeed, Stanley learned a valuable lesson on these walks and never forgot them.

Staying Away From People

Staying Away From People

         by Ba Ba Reemer the Redeemer  

Once when Johnny and Frank went to Kenora to purchase supplies they almost gave away their secret by accident more than stupidity. The stupid happens, we all of us humans know that. Take for instance my advice many years ago to my sister when she wanted my sage opinion, which at the time was not to marry the man whom she ended up marrying. Accidents happen too, we miscreants are more than fully aware. When my Pentecostal aunt Diane drove to Pensacola in 1963 to attend a conference on the religious right in America, actually intending to again meet and finally consummate an affair that had been brewing between herself and a Southern Baptist youth pastor (incidentally black and whom she had met and admired at an international church picnic two years earlier), on the first and only time she got into bed naked with him, the hotel attendant who brought them Champagne room service as they lay there under the covers was none other than her nephew from two streets over back home, new to his job of three weeks. 

       Johnny and Frank met with similar bad luck on June 27, 1984. They were shopping in a mines and minerals commercial only outlet on Frank Street near the waterfront for a Geiger counter. Why on earth, you might ask, would they have been interested in one of these devices meant to find metals when they had already discovered their gold, and a whole ton of it too. The answer is simple and a little embarrassing but, since we have been talking about human nature, not at all surprising. They soon became aware that the gold in the vein that had become exposed because of the dynamite blast that they had set off for the express purpose of getting at the said vein, had displaced the amount of gold that would have run through the six by eight foot hole that the explosion had caused. They wish to retrieve it. They wished not to lose a single penworth of the precious metal, and for that reason had come to town to purchase a metal detector in order to scour the surrounding forest near the load hole to find any and all pieces of the yellow material scattered about. It was pure and simple avarice that drove them to be so nitpicky. They might have been satisfied with the six inch wide vein of gold that showed itself so brilliantly disappearing into the pink granite and that surely represented enough wealth to do them and their offspring into the distance historical future. But no. They would have the gold out of hiding. And they did. And they almost gave away their secret. This is how it happened.

         Benjamin Gay sold items in the mines and minerals store. He handed down a geiger counter from the top shelf and Johnny took it and handled it and passed it about the room before various objects of metal, enjoying the singing of the notes that crescendoed as it homed in near steel or chrome or aluminum or brass.  

         "Hey eh eh eh eh eh eh hey!" Frank brayed his pleasure with each approach Johnny made to another new item of metal in the store. They were careful not to go near their backpack with its twenty pounds of gold chunks. They carried that pack sack with them in case the solution should come to them how to successfully trade it in for money without getting all the world flying after them in search of their lode. 

       "We'll take it," Johnny said suddenly.

        "Yeah!" Frank agreed, and they handed it back to Mr. Gay who took it from them with a frown still on his face and began to ring it up. He lifted it and sighted along it stupidly and deliberately tapped one end of it against Frank's head. Frank let him know what he thought of him and Ben turned on the Geiger counter and passed it back and forth over Frank's head to determine if it contained deposits of iron. It did. Or so it appeared. It began singing very loudly and very much more loudly than it had heretofore at the presence of any of the metals the two prospectors had tested it on.

         "Hey!" Frank said, warning the proprietor to back off. But in the heat of the oddity of Frank having a metal head, Benjamin passed the machine over the knapsack and the source of the burst of song became clear. The detector went mad. Frank leapt back and Johnny stepped in front of his partner to intercept Benjamin's forward movement.

        "You've got something in your pack!" Mr. Gay shouted. "You must have gold or something in there!" He stopped and looked accusingly at the two.

         "No, you moron!" Frank sang out. "Are you stupid? We are going to look for coins on the beach. We haven't got any gold here. Geez you're an idiot!" With that they paid the bewildered scorekeeper and got out of there as fast as they could. Over a beer they agreed that they had to stop carrying the pack around. They could not afford another accident like this one. Other events over the years also nearly cost them their privacy and in consequence their lives, but twenty years later they were still digging out gold and hiding it here and there in places they carefully noted in a book that they had for the special purpose of tracking these hiding places.

          Lambing about town now and then cost them each time a great deal of stress. They came eventually to the conclusion that Kenora must be out of bounds. It was there that most of their missteps seemed to have been taken. Stay away from large centers they began to say with certainty of knowledge. Stick to the forest, unless there is a great need to go into town, and then just to Sioux Narrows or to Fudge Creek. So it became a way of life for Johnny and Frank to dig and hide gold but to keep away from people.

The Dull

The Dull

         by Rockon Devilled

Brandon had been branded the dullest person in his high school year. But that was all to change. The year he graduated he took up a new identity and headed down a new road on an adventure that was to last the length of his life.