I indicated in the Beautiful Agony Post below that Audioblogger was acing funky. Well, tonight it showed up three times, so I edited and here’s the best post of the three.

Marc reads!

Rah rah rah.

Anyway, if you are interested in the full text, let me know, and if I get enough requests, I’ll type it up, edit this post, and post it. Different than PostIts. Heh.

I wrote something new, but didn’t feel like typing. Tried to Audioblog it twice, but the service is acting all wonkey. So I give you one of my favorite diversions instead, and promise to have the new writing up next week. I’ll probably fulfill my writing commitment to CPFA first, though. But first, a lead-in story.

When we were kids, my brother and I discovered a stash of old Playboys in my uncle’s old barn. We spent long afternoons there looking at the naked ladies. We must have been around nine or so. Then, we’d go pick black cherries from his trees and gorge ourselves. When we couldn’t eat anymore, we’d have cherry fights, and walk into the house looking like we’d just crawled out of a foxhole in WWI.

Uncle Roger discovered that we had found his stash once, and called to tell my ‘ole man. I remember him calling us into his bedroom. We stood in front of him at his desk, and he calmy told us that Uncle Roger had found us out. He wasn’t upset, but asked us instead why we liked looking at those magazines. We said we liked to look at naked ladies. He responded by telling us that ladies would never pose for pictures like that.

Years after having run embarrassed from his room, I have become bored by pornography. Forget that it is a multimillion dollar industry, that it desensitizes one to sex, that it subjugates women etc. It’s just plain dull. Most pornography lacks imagination and class.

When I was on the road, the guys with whom I traveled were incessantly buying those horrid Barely Legal magazines. I found them hilarious, what, with all of their bad writing. I would call ArmyWife, for kicks, and read her the bad porn to torture her.

One night, we were talking about the low quality of porn in the modern world, and spent some time surfing the Internet to see who could find the worst porn. I don’t remember who won, but I remember stumbling across Beautiful Agony , and being impressed with its originality and class. Maybe the women who submit their films aren’t ladies, and maybe the men who submit their films aren’t gentlemen, but the beauty is returned to sex.

Back in college, Professor Baird used to say that sex was one of the most beautiful agonies we cold endure as humans. It’s one of the times we are most vulnerable, and we can look beautiful while doing it, but we also look very funny. When I first discovered Beautiful Agony, I remembered these three things, and was impressed with the tastefulness of the site. I was impressed at the gracefulness and bravery of these people exposing themselves to millions of potential viewers. And I have to say that Beautiful Agony gets the Marcus Maximus seal of approval. Drop by and see for yourself. Yes, it’s a pay site, but for those of you cheep-o’s out there, there are a few free Windows Media streams. The price is reasonable, though, if you want to go down that road. More fun than a box full of Q-Tips.

Yes, there are men on the site too. Less so than women, but I guess that just means more women aren’t ashamed of their sexuality, then, doesn’t it?

Beautiful Agony

play .wmv

play .mpg

A couple of years ago, I envisioned an ad campaign I’d like to see. I photographed it, but somehow lost all but one of the images. Spent a little bit of time today to recreate it for you. I’m sure I’m on my way to winning some kind of award for my brilliance.

It was hot outside the day I moved out of my brother’s house on Highlawn. The crocuses had long since wilted and the heat radiated off of every building in Brooklyn.

Charlie and I had already moved the chair Gramma gave me out into the yard. I wanted to put the heavy desk into the truck first, so we just kept putting furniture and boxes in the yard, on the sidewalk, wherever we could find room for it.

I had gone inside to get a cold one after we almost dropped the daybed coming down the porch steps. Charlie said he was going to the corner to get an ice cream from the guy with the pushcart. I was going to miss that guy, and I almost went with Charlie, but I went into the house instead.

It was hotter in there than outside, so I grabbed a couple of beers, figuring Charlie would want one too. I nudged the fridge shut with my foot and headed back outside.

When I got to the porch, I was surprised to see a beautiful girl had perched herself on the daybed and sat there smiling at me where I stood.

All the noise of the city seemed to stop. The kids still played basketball in the cage across the street behind me. The cars still drove up and down Highland, beeping their horns in frustration at the moving truck in their way. But I did not hear them.

I stumbled down the steps, staring at this beautiful girl on my daybed. She wore shorts, her ankles were crossed, and her white skin glistened in the heat. I almost dropped the beer.

I stood there, staring at her. Grinning. Not talking.

“You dumb?” she asked.

I laughed and offered her a beer. She said sure, she’d love one.

“There’s room in this bed for you,” she said, before she slurped from the can I gave her. In this bed, I thought. Not on this bed.

“Um, I, uh, mmm. My name’s um. Hi. I’m Henry,” I managed.

“Well, Henry, I’m Margie, and I like it hot. Like it is now. You know. Aw, don’t be shy, you can sit next to me.”

Charlie walked up just then, his mouth blue from his ice cream, and said, with a low whistle, “Well, who’s the new girl?”

Margie just smiled, and I introduced Charlie to the woman that I eventually got up the nerve to ask to marry me. It only took me ten years, and even now, after forty years of marriage, when I look into my Margie’s brown eyes, dull from cataracts, I see the young girl full of piss and vinegar who, back in 1945, walked up into my yard and sat on my daybed. And she is as beautiful and vibrant now as she was then. And her smile still confuses me.

Promise to write again soon. I had something ready to roll, but was told by the owner of the photograph from which the piece was written not to post it.

Meanwhile, here’s the best email of the day today from our Male Secretary at werk. I cannot make this up. The spelling errors etc. have been left intact.

——-

From: [Front Desk Guy]
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 3:31 PM
To: [Compnay Wide]
Subject: FYI

Instructions for how to fill an ice tray:

When you have an empty ice tray, there is a simple procedure for making more ice.

!. Turn on a facet so you have access to some water (in the downstairs break room this is located approximately three feet to the right of the freezer)

2. Hold tray under the running water until the trey is nearly full.

3. Place the ice tray in the freezer. Close the freezer door. Amazingly, the cold temperature of the freezer will turn ordinary water into ice in a short period of time.

4. Turn off the faucet.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at the front desk and time permitting, I can go over this with you one on one.

Thank You,

[Name]

Shift Supervisor*

Front Desk

[Company]

—————

*This guy is NOT the shift supervisor. We don’t even have a shift supervisor.

He was always bringing home somebody else’s trash. One Tuesday Mornings – Trash Day – he trolled the neighborhood looking for lost treasure.

“Aye, Matey,” he would say when I asked him if he was going out that morning.

Tuesdays were my least favorite day of the week.

And he would go, be gone, sometimes a few hours, sometimes ten minutes. He almost always came home with something strapped to the roof of the old dodge we bought when we were first married.

Sometimes, though, he would come home without anything at all tied to the roof of the car. Those days were my favorite, for on those days he had usually found something that would keep him busy for a while.

He’d come home and say, “Look, Honey! look at what I found over at Old Man McHenry’s!” Old Man McHenry ran an Army Navy Surplus store over on South Main an was known to throw away his inventory if it had collected dust for too long.

The day he came home from McHenry’s, it was gray and cold, not unlike most winter days in Akron. He splashed through the slush carrying a large red box.

I discovered the box was full of old felt cowboy hats. Some of them had red and white braided ties. Chinstraps, really, which hung down too long to be of any use to a child.

He spent that winter customizing the hats for all of the children in our neighborhood since we had no children of our own. He was forever out in the garage with hose hats and I got lonely after dark, which always came early.

For Christmas that year he had given me a necklace he had made for me out of the red and while chinstraps. He had fashioned it with what looked to me to be a part of some fancy fishing lure so that it hung just between my breasts. He was so proud of it and it broke my heart not to wear it even though I found it horrid.

That summer every kid in the neighborhood sported one of those cowboy hats. And they were constantly running through all of the yards, cutting through the bushes and catching their hats on the Dogwood trees by Mr. Swanson’s garage.

Today was Tuesday. He had been gone just over two hours when I heard the car ramble into the driveway.

I put down the dishcloth on the rack he had fashioned from abandoned wooden spindles. I checked my lipstick in the mirror in the hall, the one he found last year on the curb when Mrs. Brooks had died.

I was in the yard before he got out of the car. I wore my favorite white dress and the necklace he gave me. I hoped he would notice that I had gotten my hair done at Bonnie while he had been gone.

He got out of the car and smiled at me. He did not even tell me about his newest find. He did not even close the car door. He rushed to me and kissed me gently, held me tightly.

“You. Are. So. Beautiful,” he said.

I fingered my frayed necklace, breathed in the summer air heavy with the scent of lilacs, and knew that Tuesdays were alright with me.

So, el Jefe sent me a beautiful, albeit beat up, manual camera recently. It had a strange “quick load” feature to it that I could not figure out. Took it to the camera shop, he showed me how to load the film. And the shutter isn’t firing. To have it fixed will be more than it’s worth, and I haven’t had a chance to pull it apart yet and figure out what’s wrong with it.

BUT.

I did the math. My camera phone costs $0.25/image to use, which, multiply that by 24 is about the cost of having a roll of film developed. Ever since I acquired then camera phone, I have avoided using it because I figured I would go overboard and it would cost me more than I wanted to spend.

But, after I had a look at the real cost involved, I decided, what the hell.

So, the image quality is less than great, but here are few recent adventures.

Before I climbed the fence and ignored the NO TRESPASSING sign, I noticed a wall of steel painted like a subway in NYC. At the end of the wall, was a posting placed there by the owner of the wall, granting permission to those who paint the wall.

So I meant to hang out at the river this weekend and decided to use a different access (or, what I thought was an access) than I usually use. Needless to say, there was no access. What I found instead was the old Prescot Lumber Mill, closed down in the 1970’s. Abandoned buildings. Heaven.

“Toy” was a switchbox on the ground in a building meant to house flatbed trucks as they loaded and unloaded lumber for the mills.

More photos forthcoming.

When friends fail you, you still have to love them. Especially when they cannot tell you that they love you.

Ray sat on my porch railing throwing cigarettes into Molly’s planter. The sun had gone down enough so that it wasn’t in my eyes anymore, but just dappling the floor. The dogwood trees on the devilstrip were in full bloom.

And Ray and I had just finished work. He took the bus home from work, as he often does, instead of letting me give him a ride,

Ray is smart and funny and goodlooking. Some would say Ray was smart and funny and goodlooking, once. But I know it is in his essence. His drinking has obscured that for many people for over two decades. But I see glimpses of it on occasion. And I still love the old boy.

He took the bus home so that he could stop at Red’s and I smelled it on him.

Now he leaned on my porch rail remembering the days he and I would take over downtown. He told me he remembered when I met Molly. At Red’s, as it happens. When I met Molly, I stopped going to Red’s, but Ray had a tab there of almost two hundred dollars per month. He still goes to Red’s.

Now he sat on my porch, and I listened to him rambling. When your friend is a drunk, sometimes the only way you can show him that you love him is to listen to him when he talks.

So I put down my newspaper and sipped from my tea. And listened. And he talked. He loosened his tie and ran his hand through his now white hair and talked until Molly came out and told us that dinner is ready.

Ray’s wife, Virginia, had died several years ago, so it often happened that Ray sat down to dinner with us. And when I held the screen door open for him, he saw a martini on the table where he often sat. When he saw that, he told Molly that he loves her. And I believe it.