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 -