Dim Neon, Poky Town

A Poor Devil’s Pang

After exhausting themselves through Strip shenanigans, many visitors swear they could never live in Las Vegas. They imagine the rest of the city, if it possible for them to grasp precincts beyond the neon, noise, and lures, just as draining.

Worse yet, a good number of these mildest of mild hedonists also must compare the narrow band of Las Vegas Boulevard to the enormity of New York City. Sigh! Never fails. This always from revelers who desire someday but have yet to set foot in civilization. Continue reading A Poor Devil’s Pang →

Tales Out of School

Strange Mercy

Before gray hair conferred wisdom …


The path Beryl and Trevor shared was tricky. No, twisty.

Perhaps had he been upfront with her at some point about his dalliance with Lesley the pair’s course of events might’ve progressed clearer and simpler. This likely concluded with him curbside and Beryl going her own way. Instead, what the sophomores shared in March 1979, what they concealed from another, lingered improperly resolved over miles and decades.

Long before hindsight, Trevor decided fate, love, and trust had coincided to his advantage. Rather, Beryl hadn’t used his sidestepping to discomfort or expose him … had she? As he could only see what he presumed then, Beryl’s, um, gesture, as magnanimous as Trevor had ever witnessed in his young life, proved the extent of her affection. Or was it the most elaborate, selfless snare ever? Continue reading Strange Mercy →

Tales Out of School

An Appetizer

Using the most chance of coincidental encounters, Trevor wends towards certain confessions with his long-ago lover Lesley serving as his confessor.

Beryl must’ve known.

Thankfully or teasingly, she never confirmed Trevor’s suspicion. No need to, he supposed, for the unknowing preyed upon him harder than any naked accusation. His own anxieties about the matter created a greater imposition than Beryl’s confronting and exposing him.

Smugly, a little too smugly, almost throwing back at Trevor the same level of superiority he’d use, Lesley further aggravated his lingering apprehension by agreeing with him – then doubling down.

“Oh, Beryl knew. But instead of out-loud drama, she played on your guilt. You know, that feeling you say you’ve never bothered having. She plucked that tight string. And plucked it good, too, huh?” Continue reading An Appetizer →

Tales Out of School

Saludade

Given a most coincidental of chance reencounters, Trevor and Lesley, long-ago lovers, have erased the years and resumed their intimacy. Revelations and observations between them are as naked as their post-coital state.

Lesley stood at the hotel window. Some activity occurring outside in the Southern Arizona night intrigued her. She gazed out, her back to Trevor. The autumn hour mild, their exertions having singed the sheets and heated the four walls, the couple had cracked the window wide.

Ambient city noise rose up to the sixth floor and lapped over the sill inside. Light from exterior sconces clearly illuminated Lesley’s front. Dimmed room lamps threw her side into shadow and cast her rear in murk.

Trevor appraised her still pleasing figure from the bed. Reclining there legs loosely crossed, one arm thrown behind his head on pillows, the other along his side, he addressed Lesley’s back.

“Say, wasn’t there a time you wouldn’t have been caught dead standing in front of an open window stark naked?” Continue reading Saludade →

Tales Out of School

Bring Back That Sunny Day

After the most coincidental of chance encounters, Lesley and Trevor, lovers from decades ago, have bridged the ages and recoupled intimately. Revelations and observations between them are as naked as their post-coital state.

The phrase “By all rights …” stumbled through Trevor’s mind. By all rights no way dumb luck ought’ve reconnected him with Lesley.

By all rights they never should’ve plunged headlong into a merely sex-drenched, well, what was it? Couldn’t even refer to their much younger indulgence as a “relationship.” More like frequent interludes in which they willingly surrendered to that most earthly delight, fleshy pleasures. That was until gorging on so much candy either diluted satisfaction derived or exhausted his taste for, um, her sweets.

The thrill had gone. Those couplings quickly had become so common his desire for Lesley weakened. Worse than ordinary, the sex between them had become obligatory. And back for a youthful Trevor that defined a rut. Continue reading Bring Back That Sunny Day →

Tales Out of School

Promiscuous, Not Careless

Okay. Trevor and Lesley, two key figures in the following excerpt, might’ve been seen as “friends with benefits” decades before pc society manufactured the term. Between themselves both one-time college classmates might’ve done away with sweetening semantics and labeled the other a “fuck buddy.”

Already individually disposed towards random, unattached, unsentimental banging, fortuitous class scheduling let them connive numerous carnal opportunities during their two semesters of sex on demand. Generally speaking, each interval satisfied and gratified each participant. Well, except for their last youthful commingling. That one ended all exchanges on every level imaginable.

Only a chance meeting a lifetime later produced an immediate thaw and even faster reconnection. Reconnection. Not reconciliation. Promiscuous, Not Careless, picks up these past lovers newly post-coital.

During their initial fervor, Trevor overlooked the linen. The twist of sheets, indents in the pillows escaped his perception. He only fixed on Lesley, the hot brown sex streak sharing his bed. Continue reading Promiscuous, Not Careless →

Dim Neon, Poky Town

Refined Painted Ladies

Night improves Las Vegas.

Hot neon, sharp jumbo LEDs, and happy drunks loudly snaking along sidewalks and across the Strip present running tableaux of infectious merriment. This is a much preferable image to what morning reveals. Despite rosy fingers of dawn heralding the day, sunrise skies above the Strip are iron gray.

The vault above matches the streets below.

Crowds have vanished. Traffic has evaporated. Evening’s dazzling illuminations have faded into visual irritants.

Derelicts who’ve been shooed to Las Vegas’ darkest peripheries return to beg, maunder or impose their schizoid existences on daytime visitors strolling Las Vegas Boulevard. After the previous night’s glad-rag promenade and procession of gaiety, hollow-eyed, matted haired, filth encrusted, flesh and blood specters are the gaudy way’s jarring contrast.

During this transition from night into day, a less acknowledged though certainly more alluring segment of the Las Vegas mosaic begins crossing other thresholds. Continue reading Refined Painted Ladies →

Dim Neon, Poky Town

Within Reach, Beyond Grasp

Happy New Year!

At the airport, ran into a woman who confided in me about the obscene amounts of ready cash coursing around Las Vegas. She didn’t bother swearing me to double-dog secrecy either. Guess I must wear an honest face.

Indeed the promiscuous currency swirling here between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City causes loss of senses, self-esteem and propriety. Not that any of those attributes were firmly tethered in the first place.

Better than watching them make water run uphill is seeing how plentiful dollars in every denomination can torque human bodies and the consciences into cartoon shapes. Forget 5 o’clock. The possibility of a worthwhile tip rouses the dead quicker. Continue reading Within Reach, Beyond Grasp →

Observed

Dreadful People

It’s a displeasure crossing paths with certain kinds of ex-Metropolitans in Las Vegas. Not those who’ve self-exiled themselves to Nevada rather than Florida from the Bronx or Brooklyn after careers in the trades, lifelong housewives in tow, both of whom lovingly lament forsaking “their New York City,” yet on a dime can recite chapter and verse complaints about how the modern boroughs now resemble strange worlds populated by aliens.

No.

That group has earned its loud plaid pants, white shoes and belts, as well as teased-to-giggling blue rinse coifs. The vast majority of them are to be revered. Their generation raised mine.

Pampered as we growing Boomers were, especially compared to parents who endured the Depression then won World War II, they also gave birth to the consumer society by indulging us their children. Nonetheless what gift can replace any nurturing parent? Continue reading Dreadful People →

Pop Culture

Starpower

What to make of Bill Cosby’s recent aggrieved actresses/dilapidated models eruptions? Yeah, against him they’ve certainly stacked the preponderance of remarkable similarities. Nonetheless thanks to presumption of innocence, the accusations alone are insufficient proof of guilt. Otherwise it would be a Salem redux regarding one of America’s former “dads.”

Which is why in the United States one’s proven guilty instead of simply condemned of witchcraft after being spied upon dancing in forest clearings. Continue reading Starpower →

"New writing for now people."