Another obscure Islamic cleric has thundered in self-righteous indignation about a young woman who didn’t know her place. A woman, who, God forfend, expressed herself without concern how it would enrage some screaming man who’d forgotten his last erection. Continue reading Woman Is a Devil
All posts by rexmerritt
One Above and One Below
Demise ignites “One Above and One Below,” the fourth and concluding story from Reveries. Actresses Valerie Quennessen and Consuelo de Haviland inspired “One Above and One Below.”
While glimpsed from today’s vantage, events occur in the pivotal year of 1989. In this telling, Caleb Abercrombie joins Paul Knox, one of his best buds from his undergraduate years, in a European sojourn. Perhaps their travel might be seen as a last gasp of irresponsibility and irrepressibility. Continue reading One Above and One Below
Stretched Bliss
“Stretched Bliss,” the third story from the Slow Boat Media e-book Reveries, begins with Caleb Abercrombie’s interior disquisition on gratification. The professor muses during a late-morning moment of post-lovemaking languor with Paz Duarte.
Long before the sweaty twining of their fevered bodies, mutual satisfaction, apparent exhaustion, and his subsequent daydreaming, they enjoyed a night on the town. Even when the attraction is based on exchanging pleasure, shouldn’t a minuet of sorts be observed?
Hours ahead of sheets getting rumpled and pillows being ruffled in the throes of fulfillment, as well as the random calls and responses of lovers, the pair observed the social component that distinguishes human carnality from lower species’ rutting. It’s the thing that sets both apart. Though just barely. Continue reading Stretched Bliss
On Display
A Graham Greene entertainment inspired the second offering from Reveries. One of his earlier efforts.
Greene’s tale features a dip into the wild side. Published in the late 1930s, readers might’ve been titillated by the louche excursion. Looser as society has become what aroused then could now pass as mild diversion. Coolly presented rather than hotly conflicted, the story lacks the agony of his subsequent, more anguished fictions. Continue reading On Display
Beyond the Classroom
Four brisk entertainments sharing the same theme comprise Reveries.
Caleb Abercrombie dominates the narratives. An untethered academic, the middle-aged Abercrombie fully enjoys the advantages of being a confident male whose vocation fulfills him.
Paz Duarte, Abercrombie’s considerably younger foil, sounding board, and for lack of a better term, though nonetheless apt, serves as his fuck-buddy. They also share another calling. A vertical one.
The excerpt offered by Amazon Kindle dissatisfied me. What the casually curious could’ve read were merely the first pages of the opening story, “Beyond the Classroom.”
A good start? Yup! The sample gave an interesting taste. Like parfait. But further reading rewards with greater flavor. Why, by the last page of Reveries’ concluding story let’s say a creamy fudge ripple has been whipped up.
Those who’ve already read it are probably chuckling at the reference. Good. Continue reading Beyond the Classroom
The Whole Shooting Match
Let’s hope the president was just being cynical when he tossed in video games and movies as perhaps energizing America’s gun nut culture. Pop culture does not incite mindless violence. Simple-minded adulation? Yes. Boy bands prove that.
Fads that draw double takes such as severe serial tattooing and Marquis de Sade piercing? Certainly. Just in case carnival midways run short of, oh, geeks.
But the force behind lapses into updates of the Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays”? Uh, no. Continue reading The Whole Shooting Match
Cool. Resolute. Polished.
Watching John Boehner well up, I wonder what father would’ve thought of such displays. While it’s good the Speaker of the House is comfortable enough in himself to let tears roll at the drop of a charged moment, isn’t there something unnerving about the leader’s, uh, expressiveness? Continue reading Cool. Resolute. Polished.
The Paper Madeleine
Sometimes simplicity is the best provocation.
This season means card exchange. Or should mean it. Email and the erosion of cursive script are turning paper Christmas cards into museum pieces.
Old-fashioned and time consuming as more and more of us regard them, Christmas cards are always welcome at this address. Their reception indicates a thought and care an e-card blast will never convey. Continue reading The Paper Madeleine
Vacant Copy Desk
Any opportunity to slag ungrateful former employers should be exploited. What follows is one such instance. Continue reading Vacant Copy Desk
Small Beer
Americans are too enamored of SCANDAL. Few transgressions are worthy of such designation. The misused and abused word itself. Thanks to the giant scarlet S, peccadillos barely deserving shrugs balloon into outrage.
We resort to SCANDAL too easily. Same with hero. Who can’t be a hero in America? It’s so easy now one needn’t bother swiping Pauline off train tracks at the last minute or yanking cats from tree limbs. The valor invested in hero, like the disgust which should weigh SCANDAL, has been devalued. Otherwise why call such stalwarts “everyday heroes”?
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
We now bestow ever-fleeting glory on mundane acts. It’s lazy tabloid media usage. Continue reading Small Beer