I Conquer The Caribbean....

"...jealousy makes the prick grow harder. And the cunt wetter. " - Erica Jong

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

PALM BEACH, Fla. - Saturday nights were the best for me inside The Lizard Lounge here. Every chick looked like Lauren Bacall, wrinkled mavens from another era. I felt like a Cuban star from the 1950s. The ornate joint rested somewhere in the innards of the Chesterfield Hotel, magnet to the super-rich, the prostitutes, and my colleagues from The Palm Beach Post. I went there often, at times after swatting golf balls at a golf range across the causeway in West Palm Beach. When in paradise, you have to do things that are sort of parasidic (is that a word?). I danced and drank and fooled around with the older women. This was in the mid-1990s, so I was a bit younger and still invested in the game.

I'd been seeing this young reporter who covered the police beat and her idea of a good time was to buy a few bottles of Johnny Walker and go home. I can still see her throwing her shoes off to climb atop her bed to switch off the bedroom lightbulb. The daughter of the Dominican Republic wasn't even thinking about her future, in journalism or anything else. She liked to drink and drink hard, and after that she liked to do it all. The Lizard Lounge bored her, but she trudged along with me, 'cause I liked to see the old Geezers angle off to make their moves at the wrinkling broads. It was something to hear a Rolling Stones song crashing off the walls of the lounge while watching the crowd taking secret sips of Maalox.

Who knows what happened, but my petite friend went cold on me late that winter. She was in her early 20s, fresh out of the U. of Miami. I'd walk into the newsroom and she'd turn away. I didn't give a damn. My days were hard fuckers and my nights were fucking hard. It was life as a two-page chapter bridging into another two-page chapter. One day, I was walking back from the newspaper cafeteria when I saw her walking in my direction. She looked beat-up, a drinker's face, hanging and sallow. "Hidee, kid," I said from five feet. She tried to smile, but the crooked, hangdog look she threw at me seemed more painful than happy.

"I waited on you all weekend," she said laconically, her heart in her throat, her ass on a long rope.

"What?!"

"I wait and wait and wait...and you never show."

There was nothing else for me to do: We met after deadline at a seafood place and she talked herself all-out, letting go of whatever she had against me, most of which would never convict in a court of true romance. In the end, she said she hated The Lizard Lounge 'cause it was so fake and 'cause I seemed to laugh at everyone. "It's not Disneyworld," she would say. "It's people, people out having a good time..."

That was so. Disappointing women has been a strength of mine, not one nurtured, just one out there. When I left the newspaper, she asked for my mailing address. I gave her an invented one. It served as measure of my biggest strength - an ability to frickin' let-go. But it's also true: I'd like to see her again, tell her she was right about me, and kiss her for an hour. I like petite women, but only if they come with proportional breasts...

- 30 -

A Little Boy's Toys, A Big Boy's Toys...

“There seemed to be some heavenly support beneath his shoulder blades that lifted his feet from the ground in ecstatic suspension, as if he secretly enjoyed the ability to fly but was walking as a compromise to convention...” - Zelda Fitzgerald

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

WEST FORT WORTH, Texas - It is true: There is something to be said for the fizz in a Coca-Cola, as there is something to be said for the uniqueness of the onion in a hamburger. Most of the time, I find my little pleasures in romance, yet even I have to admit that there are a few aspects of Life that rest comfortably on me. My friends know of my battles with humans, with their failings, with their stupidities, with their lack of ambition. Wouldn't it be nice to already (this centuries into alleged civilization!) be able to move between galaxies, to mingle with beings from other planets, to face the absolute best of beauty and the horrible worst of ugly. If I die tomorrow, without having enjoyed the sexual pleasures of a woman from Outer Space, I will consider myself an utter failure - rivaling Gods mind-blowing efforts to create the perfect Human Being.

I have been thinking about a few things, perhaps because it's just a bunch of loose-ended tidbits of info that are finally coming together. I don't know for sure. I wish I did. The ancient Egyptians believed in horrific punishments after death. Hearts would be extracted from the body and fed to some beast. Why they did this is easily understood: the afterlife is about rotting, for all classes, an ending suitable for the rich and for the poor. The heart going to some beast was a certain notion of meting justice. I want my heart to go to the feeding of a flock of seagulls, maybe two/three harrier hawks. I know there will be no going to Hell for me.

There is no Hell. Hell is part & parcel religion. Without a Hell, religion would still invent one. I say Hell is right here on earth. The misery we have and experience in this world is monstrous. And, still, the church people arrive to pray and beat against Hell. But it is really the equivalent of the doomed Jew at Auschwitz praying for a bad supply of killing gas, some chemical unwilling to kill but quite able to draw tears. I could go on, yet it all strikes me as a waste of time, my time anyway. Churches and priests and nuns and believers can go to Hell. That sounds weird, me knowing that they already walk Hell's streets and alleys and towns and countries. Perhaps Lennon was right when he sang: "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Only it isn't even a concept. That would mean someone put thought to it. Scientists and astronomers say there is no Heaven; scholars say there is no incontrovertible evidence of a God.

Something way deep in my brain tells me there likely is a creator, but it's not anyone in my image - irregardless of my long hair. As things stand, what with Christmas and the passing of the collection baskets on Sunday, there is too much at stake for a complete denial of a God. The masses, fearful tribes that they are, could not go on without believing. Yet, it too is fast becoming clear that something is coming, that this planet is gasping to its finish. How do I know that? Well, the list of telling signs goes for miles. I say, look around. And listen. And breathe. And look into the eyes of your woman. There is no chance you cannot see it for yourself, you being honest, of course.

For years when I was a youngster, my good mother would ask me what gift I'd want for Christmas. I'd say, toys, toys. And she would get them for me. If she asked me today, I'd again say, toys, toys.

But she would know that I'd be saying it for a very different reason...

.

- 30-

The Weight of The World...

"The woman is the home. That's where she used to be, and that's where she still is. You might ask me, What if a man tries to be part of the home - will the woman let him? I answer yes. Because then he becomes one of the children..." - Marguerite Duras

By Patrick Alcatraz
Editor

WEST FORT WORTH, Texas - It is in the first days after a romantic flirtation that I usually wallow in some sort of self-analysis. It isn't that I want to be critical of my words and my actions toward women; I simply fill a need to wonder away the Big Picture, this Life. If we are here to be human, to live and love, to work and play, to do and have done, then what I do in this regard is normal. I like to send women letters a year after the ending. What I write never explores the reasons for why things died; they are more notes about the state-of-things. How have you been and has your hair grown-out are two sentences. Somewhere in there, I throw in a thing or two about what I'm up to - my work, my play, my hair. Invariably I get a reply, always via the convenient E-mail, which is one of our many resignations to technology and distance. I agree with those who say there is a certain sadness in technology. I do wish I could ride a horse & buggy over to some woman's house and invite her to climb aboard.

There must remain at least one meadow for an afternoon picnic. But, who knows? Perhaps it is as the pop-sociologists say: that yesterday is gone. Is a cup of black coffee our last memory of another lifestyle. Do not think that I am reflecting on a better time. It's just that today's world is a hurry-up exercise in throwing things away - from women to garbage to traditions to culture. I can't remember meeting one Hispanic girl who talked to me in Spanish. Not in this God-abandoned country. And, for sure, not one would choose the horse & buggy over, say, a Lexus or a BMW at date's beginnings.

Sex is the last refuge of the traditionalist, the purist.

That same Hispanic girl would fuck me in the usual way, not one novel move in her body, and not one crazy demand. Even if she approved anal sex, you know she'd throw out some fake moaning and lies that they, for some reason, believe work in the sack, like, "I've never wanted to this before, because it hurts." Of course, with the proper lubricants, it surely cannot hurt as much as they would lead you to believe. That gorgeous slide-in comes as easy as a hot knife through butter. (Excuse me while I smile and take a sip of my coffee; I am so thankful, yes...) It's yet another false pain humans throw at civilization. Most of us reserve those thoughts and utterances for Sunday morning, when a trip to the neighborhood church reportedly is enough to cleanse something. I don't know. I feel cleaner after I bathe and at no other time.

Can there be something I'm not getting? I mean, about life and about relationships. It's not even a vicious world we live in anymore. There is no adjective for this mess. And forget about trying to explain the cheapness with breathing. It's a losing proposition, like smiling in a crowd of clowns.

Yesterday, a girl I met at the coffee shop looked at me, but did not approach. I thought it was strange, seeing that she had been friendly for a good two weeks. I hate mysteries in my life, at least of the human kind, so I walked over and asked about her stand-offishness. She said, coyly, with a look that told of fright and disappointment: "I...Googled your name..."

"And?"

"It said you're married to some woman named Elaine Benitez, a Central American..."

Well, there is an entry to that effect. But it's not true. I said as much, but drew nothing I'd consider progress. Her face had left me, taking a nice ass with it. It was the Ol' Internet Adios - a bitch of a growing hassle for Today's Man...

- 30 -

A Rose in the Rain...

"I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding..." - Anais Nin

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

FORT WORTH, Texas - In one dream, I am born on a bed of cold cuts, there atop a thick slice of Salami and under a slab of Swiss cheese, doing my damndest to get the Hell out from my Deli moment as the light in the room is switched-on and I at last see my maker's face. He approaches and announces that my arrival is premature and that I must, at once, be returned to the great celestial incubator in the far sky. I say, in baby talk, "But...how can that be?" And I hear in response, "Your time is on the move, but it is as yet not here. My desire is that you wait a century or two." He goes on to promise that my wait will be worth it. I bawl and feel the cheese and hoagie bun fall back on me, the room's light fading to black.

In another dream, my woman is baking in the kitchen when I arrive from my job in construction to say I won a football pool and we can blow-off her dinner and make for our favorite Italian restaurant. She wipes her hands on the old apron and stares at me, saying, "I've been slaving like a goddamned Yugoslavian washerwoman all afternoon to prepare this supper for you!" Hmmm, I say in reply. She stands tall, points at my dinner on the dining table and waves her left arm in a welcoming manner. I nod and then watch her turn around to see that she is not wearing clothing on her lower body. The buttocks are familiar. I reach for my wallet and prepare to get the cash I'd won. She deserves it, my brain tells me. I eat like a guy who's been cracking sidewalks and digging ditches all fuckin' day. And then, after din-din, she takes me by the hand and trots me to the bedroom, where she fucks me so that I stay fucked. "Do I say it tonight?" she asks and I say, yes, of course. She says it in the dark: "Give me more, sir..."

They say a romantic can dream up scenes like a motherfucker. They say love does that to the human spirit, throws him and her into an emotional spiral that ignores anything else going on in the world. I know that to be true. I know it like I know the most accepted fact to do with humanity. My teachers in elementary school, supported wildly by nuns from our church, taught me that it takes extra effort to be a good person. My women have taught me that taking and not giving is not part of the deal. Dreams are great and some people say they have some however-loose meaning in your life. To that I say, Quien Sabe, mi amor. I wish I knew for sure. Goddammit, I wish that like I wish nothing else under the zillions of stars overhead. My dreams normally saddle me with a tremendous amount of guilt. Who knows? Perhaps they are based on fact, on things I have actually lived and experienced, on people I have known, hurt...and lost.

I remember one woman telling me she had one recurring dream: seeing a rose in the rain. She moaned and groaned that she had no explanation for it. I ran some things across my brain and couldn't come up with anything to help her. A rose in the rain? What in the name of Mary Magdalene could that mean? As a younger man, when I'd graduated from college and taken to my writing career, my principal dream was of me strapped aboard a falling airliner. The doomed fucker never crashed, at least not in my dream. My then-wife said she thought it meant I was about to leave my job. Who knows?

A rose in the rain. What the fuck could that mean?

I still do not know...

- 30 -

Such A Night...

"I dance so that others may walk..." - Anon

By Patrick Alcatraz
Editor

NEW YORK - There used to be a club on the East Side here called Jukebox. It was a place for loud music and friendly patrons, so friendly that some called it a place to go and offer a bit more than a spin on the floor to a tune by, say, The Stones. I went there once with a friend and it was an okay time. We met this other couple, the woman being the more attractive of the two. Three beers later, the guy in the couple said he thought it was a good idea that we swap women. I said, sure. His old lady reached for my hand and off we went to dance. From the dance floor, I could see my friend in deep chit-chat with my dance partner's dude. I danced.

When we went back to the table all four of us shared, my friend said she was ready to split. It seemed odd, especially with me knowing she'd been wanting to go to this particular club for weeks. But I went along. What I had coming from her later that evening was worth the disappointment of leaving a lively joint. Outside, she ran her arm inside mine and held on as we walked the five-six blocks to her place in the frigid, wind-whipped air. The noise of this city's streets at all hours allows for forgetting the bullshit of any previous moment. I began thinking about making love to her, forgetting the spirit inside the bar. At the next intersection, she said: "That guy back in the club said you'd agreed to us swapping mates...for bed."

I coughed as if someone had bought it for me and stuffed it down my throat. The sound lasted a good ten seconds and it wasn't until we'd crossed the street that I managed to again breathe easily. I said: "Really?" I like that word, cause it's so deep and can be interpreted in a jillion ways. She said: "Was it true?"

"No," I said in all seriousness and she looked me in the eye. Who knows why women look into a guy's eyes. But she again held onto me as we kept walking. I had not agreed to anything, yet I wondered if she could ever believe me. It was one of those questions. I could scream my answer to the tops of the skyscrapers and I'd still not know if she believed me. The guy back at the club had me by the balls. I kept walking, signaled toward a coffee shop and we walked into the place to grab a hot cup for the rest of the walk.

I suppose I could have gone ahead and told her the swap idea would have been good for me. Good, I say, if good is a woman with a killer body - legs, breasts...and God's choicest morsel, baby. The Bedroom Trinity, en otras palabras. For me, it was like seeing my other local galpal Katie light the Menorah that night at her place. I don't know much about the Jewish religion, or why Katie did that, but I did choose to see it as Katie paying homage to something - me or someone better in her Big Sky. I remember this: we knew how to best end a night on the town.

There is, as that song says, a New York State of Mind...

- 30 -

An American On Venus...

"I write and someone comes in to call it interesting..." - Anon

By Patrick Alcatraz
Editor

NEW YORK - I don't know, and I can say that as often as I have to. There are times when I just don't know what I'm doing and not doing. My stock answer for whatever criticism has come my way has been this: So what? Read that and add an exclamation. So what! It is my feeling that one moves across the planet in a singular manner. Noise from the curb doesn't bother me. The yelling is less and less as I roll across this great land, perhaps because people find other things to do, other people to annoy. In the case of woman and her moment with me, I like to quote from a Bee Gees song: "My eyes can only look at you..."

It seems to work. Women are too forgiving, is my feeling. And I say that knowing it is a damn good thing that they are, for to live in a world where women would be quick to club would be, well, painful - to the flesh and to the soul. Man, however, was built for rock 'n' roll, not for the waltz. A waltzing man represents too much of a give-up, an upright concession, a woman's idea of the malleable male.

There have been young women in my life, even recently. But it is the middle-aged model I cannot explain. When one writes about young women, it is writing fraught with promise and adventure. When one writes about older women, a certain pity pops in. I used to run from older women and tell friends I chose to do it for one main reason: They are always sick. A guy can understand a thing or two about why a chick might cancel a date, but tell him you don't feel well and, well, there is no bigger aggravation. Not that I haven't cancelled on a woman.

Dates are easy to make. In the case of a former lover, the reaction made me laugh. This one had gone out and shopped for a dress for our weekend date. When I called to cancel, I said something about a flat tire, only it wasn't about that as much as it was about some other chick coming forward and telling me she was available. My lover didn't tell me, but she called a good friend of mine and took her new dress over to his place, drank a bellyful of wine, and ended up in his bed. He told me. She denied it, but later fessed-up, as they say in westerns.

In the end, it was all about value. A guy assigns value as automatically as breathing. That one didn't mean all that much to me, although I'm sure I'd have gone out with her had this other broad not called. The maker/breaker: I thought this other one would be a better piece of ass. Simple as that, absolutely. It's true that one feels as good as another, but, for me, it's all about the view from behind. My decision was as silly and superficial as could be: the second chick had a rounder ass. And, yes, it is that roundness on the move that fuels my lust. Ridiculous? Sure. Odd? No, most guys would agree that it could be as little as an inch of better roundness that would tip the scales toward one or the other. I don't think it's just me, no. Life is a choice.

When I again saw my friend, after my friend had told her I'd cancelled to be with another chick, she asked the seemingly crucial question of the moment: "Was she worth it?"

"I don't know," I said in reply, which was true.

Guilt ambled in and was quickly dispatched. I don't have the "caring" gene.

But I was bowled-over when she came over on my birthday carrying five gifts, including a bag of golf range balls and an expensive watch I still have and enjoy having. I wish I knew more about the female brain, although my friends say I have it wrong, that it is about the heart, and that I just don't get it. Romance for me is a stage, not as in a step along a process, but as in a place to go act, up there under the lights, in the theater or in the woods. That's been the drug for me in this movie.

About everything else, well, I just don't know anything...I don't, and I'm okay with that...

- 30 -

The Last Picture Show...

"He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong..." - Anon

By Patrick Alcatraz
Editor

San Angelo, Texas - The crowd inside a beer joint called Blaine's here always pumped me up in a sort of rural way. You know the feeling; it's always one whoop & holler after another, even when the television set set on the wall behind the bar is offering something stupid like Judge Judy or somesuch bullshit. I'd sit at the far end of the bar, a long way from the front door, and wait on her. I'll call her Daisy, mainly because she still lives in this dusty, sleepy West Texas town and her name is, well, well-known. I waited on her as the afternoon dragged on.

Daisy worked for some bureaucratic outfit. I'd met her while working on a newspaper article. We'd arrived at the idea of meeting for a beer after one long session to do with the workings of the business that employed her. Tallish and rather atractive in the True West style, Daisy ambled in looking fine and proud, smiling and waving a hoot of a hell-o. I can be a cowboy if the movie's worth it, was my feeling. She drew the stupid out of me, for sure. Silly was more like it, but I analyze too much after the fact.

We would see each other often over the two-month span I spent in town, lunching and Happy Houring across Tom Green County, in her fancy car and in my SUV. Her old man travelled, or so she told me. When things shook-out, she knocked on my apartment door and asked to come in. I was okay with that, as I would've been with any woman arriving late at night in short shorts and a halter top. San Angelo goes through the usual summer scorch faced and endured by most of West Texas, so maybe the skimpy fashion wasn't all that out place. She said something about her old man getting a new vehicle and did I want to go for a ride in it? The goofy, dark backroads of San Angelo always sparked something in me. We left at midnight and she headed for a place called Twin Buttes, a sort of rendezvous hillside for lovers and other unfaithful rurals. Headlights moved in and out while we parked near a ledge of some ravine, looking out into the star-lit sky, talking silliness and angling fondlings that eventually brought the desire to drive back and go at it in the sack and not on a patch of dry grass and hardened dirt.

At the scene of the wanton sex, Daisy dropped her shorts and halter top quickly. It was all she wore. I smiled from my futon as she pulled my boots and jeans full-off. Shortly, she was showing me how the rural mouth cleared the land of Indians all those years ago. Then she angled over into the spooning position and I drove the herd home.

She called me in Dallas one day a few weeks after I left town. Something about meeting downtown for a sandwich or something. I said I'd do my best, but didn't. That afternoon, I waltzed over to my daughter's Fall picnic at her elementary school and enjoyed the Hell out of that, playing the clown in the dunking booth and all.

This is so true: things that may seem all-important in one setting don't quite work in another. Guys have a hard time putting that into words when talking with an unsympathetic lover, or when confessing to the wife...

- 30 -

Keep The Change...

John Reed: "Louise, I love you..."
Louise Bryant: "Love? Love?!! No, you don’t love me, you love yourself! Me, you FUCK! When you’re not too busy fucking somebody else!" - Reds, 1981

By Patrick Alcatraz
Editor

Santa Fe, New Mexico - The record will show that I wrote a few articles for the Albuquerque Journal, really for its northern New Mexico section up here. Journal North, is what it was called. Not any of the work stands out as being great journalism; it was more the usual stuff to do with the lack of water, the mobs of annoying tourists, the high cost of housing, and the occasional festival - my favorite being the Weekend of Zozobra. That was when some city-sponsored outfit laid-out good cash so that someone else could build a 50-foot, white-sheet-clad puppet for burning. Thousands rode into town at summer's end to join in ridding Santa Fe of bad vibes. Music exploded from giant speakers hanging off a makeshift stage in the middle of the downtown plaza, where an evening dance culminated the torching. It was something to do.

We'd been standing by some tree outside one of the art galleries, watching people amble by when my friend Glenn, a business writer, made note of a woman mingling in the crowd of the small courtyard. She wore a black outfit and I recall I said something about perhaps it being Catwoman. It wasn't. We struck a conversation with her at some point and she told us she was a photographer from New York on assignment. Something about a feature on the outlying towns and their architecture. Anya was her name.

"Nice body, eh?" is what Glenn said when she excused herself for a visit to the ladies room.

"Catwoman for sure," was my lame reply.

This was a time in my life when having one woman at my side just wasn't part of the plan. Glenn's girlfriend, Beth, had left him and was, he'd said a few days earlier, now living with a Black musician in San Francisco. I say musician, but Glenn made a point of noting he was into Jazz. Anyway, we lost track of Anya until much later in the evening, when she walked back to say she was enjoying the Hell out of New Mexico. We knew the answer that would come from these outsider chicks to the question that was a normal part of a chit-chat with a tourist, but we asked: "I'd never been west of New Jersey," she threw back, predictably.

Who knows where Glenn and I ended up that night, but I was at my desk the next day when our receptionist came back with a note for me. It was from Anya and she had written something about getting our address from my business card and adding that she'd left a longer note in an envelope at her hotel. I passed it on to Glenn. He made a face that said, "Well, now..."

Later that day, we walked over to get a drink at Anya's plaza-front hotel. I stopped by the front desk and asked for my mail. Shortly, a woman came out and handed me the business-size envelope with my name on it, written beautifully. Glenn had grabbed a couple of drinks for us by the time I walked into the small bar. "What'd she say?" he asked.

"Taking the shuttle to Albuquerque at mid-morning," I said, reading from the note, adding that she was flying American Airlines back home. "Wrote this note and left a few pictures of myself for you. Hope you like the one of me in my skirt. It was so nice meeting you last night, and I do wish I could stay."

"Is that right?"

"Here," I said. "She takes a good photo..."

"Yeah, but Catwoman's one that got away, son." He laughed for a long minute and I sat there, staring at the lobby 'cause it was nearby and then lifting my Scotch & Water to my mouth, thinking, hey, that one's gonna come back one of these weekends. I never was one for believing Polaroids carried any lasting value, yet looking at Anya's photos made me realize that art is art. And if a frickin' $40 Polaroid camera can take a nice shot of a girl's sexy legs, well, then, yeah, that's art in my book.

I kept her letter and photos atop my desk under a paperweight given to me months earlier by a woman who was making those things out of desert rocks and metal string and thick coats of red and yellow paint. But I never heard from Anya again. The woman from the paperweight enterprise would stop by our office from time to time, walk up to my desk and look to see that I still had her gift right there where I couldn't help but see it everydamned day.

Women are funny that way. All I know is I could've used some cat food that week...

- 30 -

Laid For Lunch...

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman..." - Anais Nin

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

Brownsville, Texas - Those who study such things say men can see something interesting in just about every woman, whether a salsa smile coming from behind the counter of a taco stand, a fleeting glimpse at a friendly leg inside a beaten bar, or a fine-sloping back carrying some semi-attractive woman across the international bridge - one of those utilitarian backs quick to allow for concentration on the essence of a meaningless sexual encounter. It is something to behold. I reel at my times here all those years ago, when my border adventures included a few flawed beauties willing to fall for Rome. This is not to say that they will go under-appreciated on my ledger; it just means that I can expect notes of gratitude from the Holy See in my book upstairs.

Ruth was her name and she worked downtown, answering phones and filing paperwork. I was the guy who moseyed in pretty much every day, looking for morsels of news to pass on to the crippled, under-achieving local masses. My job at the newspaper kept me busy, but there were free moments for the rest of life's booty. Much of what happened during those months rests at the bottom of a suitcase-load of dusty, yellowing papers and news clippings. Was it worth it? I used to wonder about it, because it all ended up costing me my marriage and the love of a woman who, I think, did love me. Ruth came and went, followed by some other fanciful sweetheart out for a good time. That one lasted a roll or two or three, maybe four. It was easy to be stupid back then, much easier than it is now. Perhaps it was the music of the times. Maybe it was just me being stupid. Or it could have been me being stupid in a herd of stupid people. This town can - and will - drag you down to the gutter in a jiffy, as they say in peanut butter.

Ruth would come to my apartment and stroll into my bedroom, ask about the bed-sized flag draped across the mattress, and then proceed to undress, the flower-draped nylon dress floating down to the ugly, shag carpeting. It was noon and a quickie was all we had at hand. In the more-physical evening romps, we would end things with a cup of coffee in bed. I always wondered what women think when they go back to the office after being laid for lunch. Do they answer the phone while lipping sperm off the sides of their mouths? Do they think about the thrusting while jamming paperwork into the files in the file cabinet? They should come clean.

Still, Ruth was a strong chick. I say strong, meaning it in a sort of "spirit" way. She only cried once, and that was at the end of things when she told me she would be marrying a guy from Matamoros and I said something about that likely being the best thing for her. When I'd see her in her office after that, she would smile and shoot a soulful look at me, the all-too-human message easily understood. To her great credit, she never fucked me after telling me she would be marrying. I drifted off to some other woman down the hall, corkscrewing later to one working on the second floor.

And then the emotional wars ended. Things were shakin' in my life. Packing came with the knowledge that someone else would take my place in town. One fine morning, my black Scirocco roared out of town, gears and tires in a scream and my window to Brownsville closing by the second behind me. They also say you can never say goodbye to a woman you've known intimately. I dunno, I dunno...

- 30 -

When Women Write...

“Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country...” - Anon

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

TAOS, New Mexico - In the many nights he had been with her, rough sundowns and lovely evenings, he had always thought she was sort of special, not in a wild and fantastic way, but more in a clear scene that forever brought her to him aboard what he thought was a celestial cloud. Most of his women had come from the world of the mediocre, lasses with asses, and little else. When someone at a party had asked him what he looked for in a woman, he said: "Sparks...coming off the brain, not the crotch." And then he'd met Marcelline.

"I would like you to write me a two-page love letter," she'd instructed at the end of their first date, which, as it turned out, had been to an outdoor dance at someone's ranch. "If you move me with your words and writing, then we may be able to proceed." Proceeding threw images of gung-ho love all across his brain. She had, he could see, the legs and breasts to give him a tumble. "I can do that," he'd said.

Three days later, when he walked up to her front door, he knocked and then knocked again. He got no answer. A peek inside through one of the windows told him she was not home. He took his assignment and slipped it in the mail slot. He could wait on the grade. He could wait. It wasn't something he was used to with women. They usually took him at face-value and either fucked him or told him they had better things to do. Life, was his reasoning, came by way of the 50-50 proposition. He turned and walked back to his truck. Then, he drove to Tiny's Lounge and ambled in to hear a song by .38 Special he liked. The bar was empty, and he drew on a line his old man had always told him about empty bars: "Drinking alone ain't you, son." Nope. And so he was glad when an old guy and his old lady walked in, laughing as if their government check had come in on time.

The afternoon moved along. He was about to drop his boots to the floor and head on somewhere else when his cellphone rang that familiar message tone. He flipped it open to see: "I like the way you think, but your grammar is pitiful..."

He read it again, wondering if an immediate reply was in order.

Nope, it wasn't.

A mile down the old road, he reached for his phone and poked at her number. Saying it would be more his style. He waited on her to pick up, heard her educated voice in full-power, and then said: "Tell me this: If I told you my dick is a bit crooked, to the left and not exactly your normal tube-like thing, would you wonder about the fucking you'd get from me?"

"Touche," she shot back...

- 30 -

So This Is Love...

"Long for me as I for you, forgetting, what will be inevitable, the long black aftermath of pain...” - Malcolm Lowry

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

CENTRAL CITY, Colo. - On the phone, Marguerite was speeding through the story of how some traveling salesman from Houston had dated her best friend, and how the guy had gotten drunk and peed on her face. "She's in the bathroom, scrubbing," is how Marguerite put it in the long-distance call. I said something about almond scrub likely being the best commercial product willing to do battle against a gallon of urine. The side-of-the-road soaking had been complete, according to Marguerite, who threw out details of the sort you see in Mexican obituaries. Was she filing charges? "No, don't think so," Marguerite said. Why not? "The frickin' salesman flew back home," she went on. "And, apart from that, Leigh Ann says she never told him to stop."

Noise has swirled from coast to coast about how the American woman isn't what she used to be as recently as 100 years ago. I couldn't imagine any man peeing on Annie Oakley or Amelia Earhart or any of Al Capone's girls. Why was it happening now, here at the tail-end of the first decade of the New Century?

It was easy to call it an isolated incident in the Age of the Internet, a newfangled era when everyone came out to play the fool. Leigh Ann was a pretty 33-year-old divorcee who'd once worked for Frontier Airlines. As she told it, her superiors always put her front & center on those advertising posters. Leigh Ann was the one with the big smile, the fluffy golden hair and the nifty, pointy breasts under a tight, white company blouse that came with one of those colorful, unoffending rah-rah ties. There was no way I could form an image of that pretty face fending off a beer-powered stream of male pee. I wanted to ask questions, yet the idea seemed out of place in a conversation that called for some semblance of sympathy.

"She'll be fine by morning," I said, picturing a nod from Marguerite on the other end.

"What is it with you men, anyway?" she threw back. "What makes a grown man want to do such a thing?"

I said I had no idea and she said oh, I'm sure you do and I said no, really, that's off my map and she said that map is so ragged I could see you peeing on someone's face. "You could?" I said in my defense. "You think?"

"Oh, I know," she said...

- 30 -

The Pear in Romance...

"Since Freud, the center of man is not where we thought it was; one has to go on from there..." - Jacques Lacan

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

CENTRAL CITY, Colo. - Morning had come after a long night of conversation that came and went and sailed away and sailed back. You could tell the air in the cabin had gone stale, the best of the whipped oxygen now clinging to the ceiling, up there with the spiders and bugs deep inside the weathered logging that made the roof look comfortable. Marguerite had disappeared into the bathroom and was refusing to come out. My way was to angle over to the ancient wooden door and say, in a low voice, that I'd be preparing bacon for breakfast. A guy is ahead of the game if he's cooked for his woman; it's the most natural of relationship bridges. Nothing came back at me from where Marguerite bunkered. I pictured her standing directly in front of the old sink, staring at the old mirror, but not looking at anything in particular, the last of the Mascara now but a speck of gray-black at the bottom of her chin. I suppose she pictured me being stupid, going on with the show, and fully believing a warm breakfast of Canadian bacon and eggs would smooth everything.

The feelings raged ragged that morning. How we 'd got to the point of destroying the moment remained the mystery to me, although it should be said that a man is the last to know when he's hurt a woman's feelings. I recall one of my theology professors saying something about how Eve had gone for the apple after hearing Adam say he'd be waiting for the pear. That one had drawn laughter from the women in the class, guys in the crowd merely looking at each other in what had to be a show of we're-fucked unity. An apple, a pear, an orange; whatever, was my feeling. Lord knows, I rose to say in class, the fruit-of-choice should have been the frickin' banana. Is there a better fruit to play the part? Well, other than the suddenly-popular veggie in the bedroom - the goddamned gourd.

"Scrambled?" I asked in a loud voice sent in the direction of the bathroom.

Nothing. The fluttering of a hawk's wings startled me, so I walked to the kitchen window and watched the graceful climb of a gorgeous harrier. That guy is as free as a bird, I told myself before thinking, Dang, I know hawks hate being called something as a queer as a bird. It's the law of the wind for anything with wings. Hawks know who and what they are; birds are still thinking about it. I reached for the marmalade.

"Ready in five minutes!" I threw at the bathroom. My ears strained for sounds and, for a second, I thought I heard what sounded like a woman wiping her face with some washcloth. Perhaps she was getting over it. Marguerite was too cute to cry. Sobbing was not in her jeans or genes. I waited and then turned to crack two eggs into the hot skillet. My two-burner stove was doing its job. I set the table while the eggs cooked, placing the orange marmalade alongside the silverware. Marguerite loved orange marmalade. I'd asked her about that, but hadn't really cared all that much. It was chit-chat. Then I had thought to think there likely was a good story behind it. The sound of the batroom door opening came next.

"Coffee?" she asked and I nodded, motioning her over to her chair.

I didn't speak. Someone had once told me that women are turned-off by a man's voice early in the day, except on Sunday. Who knows? I liked to take things as they came, some to be ignored and some to pay attention to - like most guys. I was, however, dying to ask her about the moment she'd left me alone in the sack. I waited, moving to place the scrambled eggs on both of our plates. She ate as if on vacation, slowly and looking out the window. I slopped my toast with gobs of butter and marmalade, refueling.

"What's to do today?" she asked, finally.

"Whatever you want to do," I said in reply, beginning the make-up.

"Oh, okay..."

- 30 -

The Land of Enchantment...

"…to all those lost souls who have forgotten to believe in the immensity of love." - Anon

By Patrick Alcatraz
Editor

TESUQUE PUEBLO, New Mexico - Her first name was Vanessa. I'm sure she told me, but I forget her last name. All I know for sure is that she'd come to New Mexico from Vancouver and was staying here with a friend of a friend in a walled compound not far from my favorite restaurant, a place called El Nido. She's the one who would send me roses. The girls upfront would take them and then walk them back to my desk in our small newsroom.

Notes accompanying the flowers always took me into the world of arriving romance, only I wasn't all that interested in her. Her friend actually seemed more appealing, although who really knows about women. You can walk in the rain with a plain-looking chick and have fun and, yes, you can take a pretty one to dinner and find she has no skills with silverware. You have to put them to the test, although her geography will tell you much about a woman. But Vanessa would come to my place.

Dinner was followed by a walk back in a shiver. This part of northern New Mexico is up in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains, so just about every night is sweater weather, the winter months requiring a bit more wear. We'd get frisky in the sack and she'd say no, don't do that and I'd see she wore no panties and I'd keep going and she'd say, "Here, let me read to you..."

Music's always helped me sleep after drinking. Vanessa would sing to me a bit. She wasn't a bad singer, but I never knew her songs. Taste is funny that way. I'd keep going.

"No-ooooo-ooo-oh!" she'd let-out when I'd stick myself in her. "Oh..."

Careless whispers swam into her ears while she readied and then began that special, willful embrace...

- 30 -

Love As An Anecdote...

"And once you lose yourself, you have two choices: find the person you used to be...or lose that person completely. Because, sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you've been. And remember the person you were meant to be. The person you wanted to be. The person you are..." - Anon

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

SANTA FE, New Mexico - "Hurry," she said as the late-hours moved and I made my way into the bathroom. "Brush that alcohol off your breadth." There was a strong aroma, yes. Darlene was an educated woman who had some sort of standard for her bedmates. About my hair, she did - or said - little. But she liked to have me wear clean shirts and some semblance of a cologne.

I flipped the bathroom light switch and reached for my toothbrush and a tube set on the small shelf above the old sink below the cracked mirror. Outside, the snow fell in neat thin and thick blankets. My heart raced while my brain threw images of gorgeous love-making from wall to wall inside my grass-whorled skull. Doing Darlene seemed the thing to do in the middle of a snowfall. I walked out of the bathroom.

"Kiss me," she said, and I did.

"Ummmmmm," she shot back, laughing. "Nothing like a Brylcreem kiss in winter."

I never again left that tube of Brylcreem alongside my tube of Colgate toothpaste. Alcohol forgives pretty much every damned thing...

- 30 -

How To Romance A Smart Chick...

"She was meant to be there for a season only, and to teach you a lesson...the one that’s suppose to spend a lifetime with you is still out there waiting...see it that way and don’t bleed...you don’t need tender loving care from one special person. You can get that from the people around you too. I’m pretty sure you’re well taken care of..." - Anon

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

HOUSTON - The come-on came at the end of a day covering some international business conference at The Woodlands north of here, when Diane let-out that she felt wasted after the previous night's wine-drinking. The words coming out of her mouth seemed sexy enough. I said let's get some dinner and she said she'd love that. Elsewhere on the star-crossed planet, reporters in the field walked toward their cars to head on back to the newsroom, to write the day's news. I'd filed mine via a Radio Shack portable computer, as had Diane, a business writer for The Houston Post, our employer. Of course, I'd known her for a few months, although we'd never lasered eyes at each other. Still, she was friendly.

We ended up at a place called The Jockey Club, which was a popular bar with the Houston press. A newfangled electronic dartboard drew players like flies. We sat along the far wall, watching it all, taking in the laughter and the competition and the rowdy mood. Diane had a reputation for being a very good writer, although when we went out she would call me The Post's "Star" reporter, perhaps because I was forever being dispatched to this and that disaster. Such lingo spurred me onward. We drank and then we walked out about midnight, where I said, "I'll follow you," and she said, "I hope so..."

At her house, I ran into her pooch, Hawthorne, who barked up a storm as I made my way to Diane's bedroom. She excused herself and walked-off toward the kitchen and then returned with two glasses of red wine, my second addiction. I climbed onto her bed in my jeans and socks; she drifted off to the bathroom. Shortly, Diane ambled in wearing an untied nightrobe, her visible high-thighs one ahead of the other as she moved, a radiant thick, goldish pubic patch ready for its due.

I'd always thought she was Jewish, because that's what my colleague Steve Olafson had said about her. When I mentioned it, and I don't even know why I did that, she laughed and said, "No, I'm Lutheran..." She could throw her hair backwards nicely, like a javeline-thrower, when laughing. I liked that, as much as I loved seeing her ass as she angled up toward the headboard. My itinerary in the sack always begins with cowboying-up for a blowjob. Diane was okay with that. She went at it as if an expert, running her tongue up and down my shaft, licking, and then taking my cock full into her mouth. It takes me about a half-hour to want to do anything else, yet fucking her dog-style had been the initial attraction. She took that nicely, moving with me as I rode the Sweetheart of the Rodeo, her ass coming and going dramatically before my alcoholed eyes.

We would see each other often, with me sometimes arriving unannounced and finding her ready for sex. She lived alone, in one of those Leave it To Beaver houses in nearby Bellaire. I don't think either of us saw it as love, or anything near it; it was just two people looking for warmth. Later, when I'd taken a job with The Boston Globe, I came back to Houston to work on a story and I called Diane from a bar in Montrose. She drove over and we retreated to my hotel after a long chat and a string of drinks. Our relationship was like a Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton thing, always a happy time complete with plenty of smiles and thrusting. She left before dawn and I left for San Antonio the next day. Diane would move to Colorado.

I called her once when I was up that way, but we couldn't get together on a time to see each other. I think it was better that way. Our entanglement, brief as it was, carried a distinct Houston flavor. I was okay with that...

- 30 -

The Patrick Alcatraz Affair...

"Smart and coy, a little crazy

The kinda face that starts a fight

Let me tell you 'bout the girl I had last night

Piercing eyes, like a raven

You seemed to share my secret sin

We were high before the night started kickin' in..."

- Survivor, High On You

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

FORT WORTH, Texas - There was something youthful and neat about how she would say I hurt her feelings. It forced something in me, somewhere down where I am alleged to have a heart, but hearing her say the word and sounding it as if saying "fillings" made me laugh. Lucia never stood for laughter when wishing to discuss the merits of our relationship. But it was much worse when I'd do it on purpose, just so that I could hear her say it in that lovely South American accent she'd throw at me. My mother always said I had something of a grasp on what made me happy. It was that, she would go on, that told her she'd not have to worry about women hurting me. She was straight-out dead-on about that, absolutely.

Lucia was in her late 20s when I met her through a friend at my favorite coffee shop here. I was told she worked for the city water department, over at new accounts, where she helped people get service. Later, when I'd asked her about her job, she'd said it was okay, but that people always wanted her to make deals, which was something she was not authorized to do. Lucia would make a face when telling me about the poor people that walked into her office, he ones who always needed a break on the deposit or the first billing. I would listen and then shoot the chat over into something else. Most women don't really like to talk about their jobs, mainly because they are rarely interesting. As a young man, I had visited a Mexican bordello and had tried to engage a middle-aged prostitute into some sort of conversation. When I asked her about the many men she had to fuck, she said, "Are you going to fuck me, or are you going to bore me?" I let it go, unzipping my Jordache jeans like a schoolboy - fast and in a way that showed her I, too, could obey the Devil in the darkness of a dingy, utilitarian room.

In any case, Lucia was married when I met her. Her old man worked for one of the telecoms and was something of a grouch. I never met the guy, and, well, that always was par for the infidelity course. Lucia would come to my apartment near the campus of TCU during his work hours and we would eat something or another before heading for the sack. Why guys ignore their lovely wives is the big mystery for me. Lucia was a shaver when I met her, yet she pleased me by letting her pubic hair grow wild, which is something that drives me wild, perhaps because I've always liked to get lost in all my undertakings. A black patch-on-the-grow under a pair of black panties sends me there; there being the point between our galaxy and the one immediately to the north, that neat, dimly-lit spot in the universe reserved for lovers of the abused. I applied for that job a long time ago, yes. When I got it, I began hollering, "Yes! Yes!" And I've never lost it, inspite of notes from the landlord asking about those few serious romantic flirtations I've also enjoyed.

Well, Lucia wanted to get married and she told me that the afternoon her lawyer filed the required papers for divorce. As could be expected, I was taken aback, left only with this to say: "Well, I hope you know some other dudes." She took it not well. (I know that sentence could be written another way, but I like it, so lump it.) We nonetheless proceeded to go naked and climb atop my bed, where she moaned me to the other side of the moon, left me there a bit when she began to masturbate, and then went back for me when she curved her neck and upper torso to take my cock in her beautiful mouth. Watching a woman masturbate, for me, is like watching two dogs fucking. I get it, but I wonder about it. And so I found myself sliding in and out of precious Lucia, my mind kinda back into it, the side of my brain assigned this sort of task concentrating like a motherfucker. I would lower myself into her and Lucia would back toward me in a synchronicity reserved for pistons. I would retreat amid fast-surfacing bitchings and then she would climb on me and began to ride like the wind, as they say in westerns.

I love the sounds of unrestrained, fight-me sex in a small bedroom of a small apartment, places where the walls can do nothing but fuckin' take it and take it and take it until the volcano erupts. This one was pulling at my moptop hair as she went to full gallop, her eyes ablaze and her teeth clenched as if to miss the vaginal effect of one plowing would scratch the Hell out of the Buddy Holly record. I loved fucking Lucia. She had stored so much energy by the time she came to me. Sooooooooh much.

She was the one I should've gifted with a trophy of sorts...

- 30 -

Cold Sands of Winter...

"I would say that if someone only has a short time to live and decides to spend that time sitting beside a bed, watching a man sleeping, then that must be love..." - Paulo Coelho

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

GALVESTON, Texas - She would laugh when I'd tell her stories about me being on the wrong planet, about me soon to be lifted off Earth for transport to my rightful world, always somewhere better and cleaner, and then she would reach for my belt buckle and work on removing my pants. That Winter, Kletha let me know she wanted to have sex with me, even as I befriended her cartoonist husband, Claude, a nice guy. We danced around the issue as if around a tree-sized mulberry bush, me wanting and not wanting to, Kletha telling me Claude would be okay with it. I didn't know much about her and I would pay for that in the end.

But for a few short and cold months, she and I playfully toyed with the idea of her, I thought, dreams. She'd meet me at the lounge of the Galvez Hotel, where Claude drew caricatures of tourists in the lobby. And he'd come in to have a drink with us, call us kids (he was much older than she was), and then say he had to get back to his drawings. We danced to songs like Billy Ocean's Caribbean Queen and Denis deYoung's Desert Moon, and then we'd walk out to the nearby beach to go for a late-night walk. It was during those times that she would get silly and ask me if I didn't have the hots for her and all that. I told her I did, and then I'd mention Claude being my friend, and she'd remind me that he'd given his okay. It perplexed me, cause he hadn't said a thing to me. But I played along with her, taking her by the hand or throwing my arm around her as we trolled for shells.

One day, a Saturday morning, she asked to me meet her at an eatery we both liked in the Strand Historical District, a joint by the name of Donna's Diner, where she loved the macadamia pancakes. We did that and then stepped out to the neighboring shops, where she bought me a Hawaiian shirt on sale and I got her a nifty blouse. Her apartment was nearby, so we booked it over there. She wanted me to see how she looked in the blouse. I walked into her bedroom and watched her lose her shirt and could see through her bra, could see a pair of good-sized nipples in full alarm. "What do you think?" she asked and I went ahead with the game. "Bra," I said and she slipped out of it with grace. The new blouse fell to the floor as we fell on the bed and I began kissing her. She was a petite woman with short, goldish hair, not an ounce more than her body could carry, and the sort of energy that built pyramids. She fit nicely, in other words.

We would make love most of the rest of that winter and she would come see me in Houston after The Houston Post assigned me to the State Desk. We'd buy take-out and hit the sack on most nights, me forever asking her to turn on her tummy so that I could enjoy her nice, round ass. From time to time, we'd go to the Caribana, a reggae club near Houston Baptist University, where we danced ten-minute songs and laughed like kids.

Then I took a job with The Boston Globe and left town. I'd stay there awhile before moving onto New York, where I wiote for the Post. Contact was lost entirely. I didn't hear about her until a few years later, when my Houston Post colleague Steve Olafson sent me a newspaper clipping telling of her death from cancer. She couldn't have been more than 33 years old at the time, damned young. Also in the mix was something or another about Kletha wanting to have a baby at the time she was seeing me. That would have been wild news for me. I know we never used a condom, but I also know that she never said anything about being pregnant. Who knows? I'm sure she could have contacted me if she'd wanted to do that. All I know is that she had a thirst for life, that whenever she was with me, she was upbeat and flighty and cute and dressed in short skirts that forever showed me the beginnings of her devilish thighs. All dolled up and everywhere to go, absolutely.

I have no way of saying this for sure, but Kletha is the only lover I've had who is no longer alive. I think. And I hope...

- 30 -

Romance in Gotham City...

"They say when you look at some one walking away it means you want them to stay..." - Anon

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

NEW YORK - I heard she stayed a few more years and then went back to her hometown in Virginia. Who knows? We lost touch after that winter, when we'd met at the opening of the Cowgirl Hall Of Fame restaurant in Greenwich Village. Kathy had been checking-in coats and I had bopped in with my friends, David and Melanie Bartlett. Tickets had come to Dave somehow, perhaps through someone at The New York Post, where he and I worked. Saturday nights usually took me elsewhere, to places where the crowds threw guys on girls and girls on guys. Dave thought checking-in with the cowboy mob would be a taste of back home. I met them somewhere and we took the subway all the way down, stopping at the White Horse Tavern for a cold one just to get in the mood. I remember I wore a blue-striped shirt under a black sweater and my black trenchcoat, which I slipped out of to give it to the pretty girl handing out the claim slips.

Kathy was her name, one of those wholly American names for the sort of woman who wears her attractiveness well. She wore a scarf of the sort worn by stewardesses. I handed her my coat and looked at Dave and Melanie, making a Playboy's face, nodding like a teenager. Dave and Mel laughed, knowing my ways. We strolled into the large banquet room and arrived just in time to see Patsy Montana, America's last cowgirl, twirling a rope with the appropriate western soundtrack and a hundred or so New Yorkers yelping corny-as-hell yippees and yippeeee-kai-ohs. I kept glancing back at the coat-check girl and managed to grab her attention, me waving and she waving back. Patsy Montana began singing something or another and I leaned over and told Dave and Melanie I'd be elsewhere for a few minutes. In seconds, I was back with Kathy, chatting and getting info. People came and went and she would hand-out coats or claim slips. I thought she looked like a movie star, her long, radiant hair in place, face as natural as a baby's. When she asked about me and about my work, I handed her my card. In New York, a business card with the name of one of the newspapers is....well, gold with the chicks.

I called her two days later and invited her out to dinner. She agreed to come to our building on South Street near the Brooklyn Bridge and soon walked into the Post's newsroom, all frickin' eyes on her, the frumpy, big-nosed female reporters wondering what all the fuss was about. So much grace, was the phrase that stole my entire brain. Kathy would come over every now & then in the ensuing weeks. Once, Mike Pearl, the newspaper's grizzled police beat reporter, cornered me in the men's room, asking, "Man, how the Hell do you get all these pretty women?"

"I ask them out," I said.

"Gotta be more to it than that, shit," he shot back.

"Well, yeah," I returned. "Plus, with women, it's not what you say or do...it's how you make them feel."

He laughed and said something about Kathy looking like the actress Susan St. James and I said, "Yeah, I get that about her, too."

Kathy lived with a girlfriend in a small apartment on Hudson Street in the Village, a place at the end of a narrow hallway in one of those old buildings without an elevator. Actually, her apartment building was about three blocks from the White Horse Tavern, a place we later would go to often. She would walk the frozen airs nicely in her own black overcoat, looking patrician alongside a mop-topped guy in battered boots and ragged jeans.

She took classes at Hunter's College by day, majoring in Sex Ed.

And, yeah, when we finally hit the sack for love, she insisted on me wearing a condom. I hate those things, cause it's like a dog took my place, or somesuch imagery. But she was worth it. I've never taken a class in sex, but it seemed to me that whatever Kathy was learning was right up my alley. In fact, she was the one who introduced me to anal sex, and, yeah, I took to it as if some crazed addict after that, suggesting it, if not demanding it, when other women arrived.

It had nothing to do with Kathy, but I recall this other woman in Fort Worth hit me with this after she'd taken it up the ass: "It scared me, 'cause I liked it."

Any hetero guy who says he doesn't come away with something new & different after making it with a new woman is...either an idiot or some dolt unaware of what it is he is doing. And, absolutely, when Kathy would exit the cab in front of her apartment, she would look back toward me as I sat in the backseat...and I would turn my head to look back at her again as the car began to roll...

- 30 -

Suffering A Cold, Winter's Night...

"In yet another annoying moment of mortality's sheer and relentless fight against me, I fall to a Goddamned flu. See you when I feel better..." - Patrick Alcatraz, Out of Sorts

Ann of the 12-Hour Days...

"Take chances, take a lot of them. Because honestly, no matter where you end up and with whom, it always ends up just the way it should be. Your mistakes make you who you are. You learn and grow with each choice you make. Everything is worth it. Say how you feel always. Be you, and be okay with it..."

- Unknown

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

MEXICO CITY - We were busy dispatching reports of the horrible earthquake that day, when my Houston Post colleague Steve Olafson asked about our ride back to the hotel. I said I'd be going for a drink before that, availing myself of the bar on the top floor of the Foreign Correspondents Center. Thousands were dead and here, on our third day in the city of millions, we didn't really want to head back to the El Presidente Hotel in Los Pinos, mainly because of the frickin' after-shocks. Steve nodded and we walked up the stairs. I had another reason for needing a drink; I'd invited this reporter from Chicago to join me and she said she'd be there. Her name was Ann, a thin and tallish women in her late-20s with longish soft-brown hair. She'd been seated next to me in the part of the building where we'd been using computers to shoot our stories to our respective newspapers. She'd seemed friendly.

The bar was lit-up like some backyard outing in Hawaii, reds and blues and yellows, a colorful scene that went against the black & blue pain being felt across the monstrous city. A massive earthquake had struck Mexico City three days earlier just as the day had dawned, dooming many, many residents who'd been either getting ready for the day or in the shower. Life seemed to have floated-off elsewhere, and maybe that's why I thought feeling a little bit of it with this woman from the Midwest might be a good idea.

Our photographer Gary Thompson joined us and then Ann ambled in. I waved her over and she angled toward us just as we finished talking about the next day's reporting plan. We drank talking about what we'd seen and experienced, me having been at the morgue to see stacks of dust-covered dead bodies and Steve about his citywide patrol aboard a local cab. Ann talked about filing a story to do with the collapse of an apartment building, where she'd seen and talked with opera superstar Placido Domingo. "He was there digging for an aunt," Ann said, looking perhaps too sad for my eyes. We talked for about an hour and then we headed downstairs to look for transportation.

"Ann's coming with me," I said to my colleagues.

We caught a battered cab sporting some fresh dents (falling concrete, who knows?) and we rode back to El Presidente not wishing to talk too much, at least not about the disaster. I had a bottle of wine near my bed, really because the newspaper had booked me into the 33rd floor and, well, thoughts of dying in a skyscraper collapse had entered my tired brain. But we were tired, and so we went, and we rode the elevator to my floor. In the room, Ann threw her shoulder bag on a small sofa and said she'd be freshening up in the bathroom. I walked to the small sink and rinsed-out two plastic cups, pouring wine into both and walking them back to the bedside tables.

Ann popped out and said she thought we should take a shower.

"It would be one way to go," she said, smiling, but thinking earthquake. I said yeah, there's a certain need in me to feel clean, sure. I was getting out of my boots when I heard the shower water storm out of the faucet. She said something about liking it kind warm and I said that'll do. What we did in the shower was what a man and woman would do, especially a man and woman coming off a long, long day of chasing death and reaction to death.

The lovemaking on the big bed finished off the night.

I saw her off the next morning, after breakfast in the room, and she said she had my card and would be in touch. I didn't see her again, but she did leave me a note at the correspondents center. "My editors are pulling me back to Chicago," she'd written. "Good luck to you."

Journalism is all about the next edition. So, I have come to learn, is wheelhouse romance...

- 30 -