Tales From Old North Quincy: February 2016

Sunday, February 28, 2016

The Divorce Caper-Preston Sturgis’ Palm Beach Story

DVD Review

By Lester Lannon

Palm Beach Story, starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee, directed by Preston Sturges, 1943

No question, as I have mentioned before in reviewing a series of screwball romantic comedies from the 1930s and 1940s Preston Sturgis was the king of the hill, especially after he started to direct the story lines that he had previous been doing as a screen-writer. (That king of the hill might be changed to one of the kings of the hill if you include George Cukor and Howard Hawks in the mix and that could very easily be argued for.) Certainly, although my favorite is Sullivan’s Travels, in the film under review, Palm Beach Story, Sturges pulls out all the stops in presenting the question of divorce in a very funny but provocative way.

Here is how it played out to show Sturges knew what was what in making screwball comedies with a wry social twist. Geraldine, played by Claudette Colbert last seen in this space NOT being an American showgirl gold-digger in Paris in the film Midnight and Tom her husband of five years played by Joel McCrea last seen in this space in the aforementioned Sullivan’s Travels trying to get out for under directing silly comedies and doing some social commentary films while chasing lovely hair over the eyebrow Veronica Lake around the country side, are having, well marital difficulties or at least Geraldine is. A classic tale of woe about being promised the moon when love first bloomed and all she got for it was dunning notices and eviction threats.

She is righteously fed up, tired of stringing along with a big idea guy but with no real ambition, and no dough. She was made for better stuff, still had the ability to have guys eating out of her hand, and liking it. So she is off to Palm Beach to get a quick divorce and step up in class. Now for those who thought that Reno, maybe Mexico or places like that were the divorce capitals of the world it turned out that back then Palm Beach held its own, especially among the Mayfair swells. Naturally she has no dough, and no prospects for dough but she does have that winning witty way about her and she is able to get there via the train. A train ride from hell until she meets Hackensacker III, obviously a rich guy played by Rudy Vallee who has never previously been mentioned in this space but who has dough and a yacht which he gets her to go on. And Rudy has a sister, Maud, a sister from hell played by Mary Astor who was last seen in this space leading Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade through many, many hoops looking for some damned jeweled bird in The Maltese Falcon.

So Geraldine and Hackensacker go off and live happily ever after. Well not quite because see this whole divorce thing was a little unusual then even among the upper crust, maybe especially among the upper crust, and so husband Tom might not have been much as a business man but he loved his Geraldine and so he grabbed a flight to Palm Beach (courtesy of an old geezer) to try to woe his honey back. That is where the all play is. Maud is wild for Tom, Rudy is wild for Geraldine and the mix and match play out that way until Geraldine figured out she still loved her Tom. Go figure. That’s the plotline, and thems the characters but what really drives this one is the dialogue, the repartee especially by Ms. Colbert on the frailties of marriage. Kudos Preston.

The Wife Caper-With Raymond Chandler And Robert Parker’s Poodle Springs In Mind

By Sam Lowell

Yeah, I am back again, me your favorite real life detective, Ray Robertson out of Riverdale not too far outside of Boston. I say favorite real life P.I., my preferred term for my profession since others call us keyhole peepers, shamuses, gumshoes, stalkers, grifters, midnight shifters, and general fuck-ups, because just a short while back I went on a rampage about how all the glamour of the fictional private eyes in books and movies is so much noise in the dead of night. That time it was over a re-reading (probably for the tenth time if not more from the dog-eared look of the thing when I dusted it off) of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (and its film adaptation under the name Murder, My Sweet with Dick Powell in the original version as Philip Marlowe Chandler’s most famous creation). This time it is over a piece of writing, I don’t what else to call it, in which the late great private detection writer Robert Parker, remember the Spenser series a while back, took over at the request of the Estate of Raymond Chandler finishing up writing a story not finished (hell only four chapters were done) when he passed away in 1959.

The thing that got my goat was that Parker, or maybe it was Chandler had an older if not wiser Marlowe, married, married for Christ sake. A guy, a lone wolf, a loner, a “love them and leave them” kind of guy with the dames when he was on the case, and later too. Hell, I knew from page one that the thing was going to fall on its face, that this was not a marriage made in heaven no matter how good-looking the doll was from the description and a look at the cover art of the front of the book. Why, well I have had two, count them, two marriages which both ended in divorce…and alimony, no child support because no kids. The reasons for the divorces by those dissatisfied wives given here in liberal Massachusetts mental cruelty meaning nothing but the cold hard fact that working on cases took up plenty of my time, time not spent on them, time with empty beds which they nevertheless were able to fill in my absence although I didn’t squawk since they cut me some slack, or my lawyer got them to cut me some slack on the alimony when he confronted them with a little adultery charge. So you see why I am on the warpath, again.

Maybe I had better go back over some of the stuff I said in that last screed if I can find my notes. Yeah, here goes, here is what I said:

“Whatever you do don’t let anybody kid you that the life of a real life private detective, shamus, gumshoe, keyhole peeper, private dick or the thousand one other names I have been called in my life is anything like you see on film, or the television or what you read in those paperback books with the lurid covers showing a some half-naked broad and some steely-eyed guy going round and round. And if anybody asks you why I said that then just tell them Ray Robertson (Raymond on my Riverdale Police Department-issues license but Ray to clients and friends alike) a guy who has been on the mean streets of private detection for the past twenty years told you the skinny, told you true, told you in twenty years he never had a case that was close to all that fiction jazz.

“Like a lot of P.I.s (my preferred name from my profession but you call it what you will) I started out in the service, in the Army, as Military Police, an MP in the mid-1970s after I got out of high school but that was mostly breaking up Saturday night fights at the Enlisted Men’s Club and traffic accidents some caused by that same Saturday drunk business. After I got out I tried to get on the Staties here in Massachusetts but didn’t make the grade on the written test to go forward in the training. So I latched onto a job with the Gloversville Police which wasn’t as exacting. I did that for a five years until they got themselves a new chief who was all show and who didn’t want to tackle the cocaine problem that was growing in the town (not just the drug itself but the B&Es, the robberies, the A&Bs those clowns did to get their dope money from honest citizens).

“So I left and good riddance. They still have a drug problem in that town but now it is heroin. After taking a couple of courses to catch up on stuff I applied for and got my P.I. license from the Riverdale Police. I grabbed a small office in the old Lawrence Lowell factory building by the river for the cheap rent since the place was seriously in need of repair but I figured anybody who needed my services was not worried about the building décor or the plain desk, two chairs and a couple of wooden file cabinets that had been left behind when the mill went under. Let me tell you this once I got my license unlike the stuff you see and hear the Chief told me straight out that he never wanted to hear word one about me messing with anything that even smelled like it involved a police matter, even trying to fix a parking ticket. You know what though the Chief who is still at it although he is close to retirement now could have saved his breathe because I never even stumbled on as much as a fixed parking ticket in the past twenty years and I have had plenty of cases to keep me going.

“Sure I read all those books, those paperback detective books that I was telling you about before with the half-naked broads and brawny P.Is. And I have re-read them, one recently that I want to tell you about since that particular book is why I am on my high-horse today. I don’t know about the academic part, about where these guys stood in over-all literature but I heard they stood pretty high. I’m talking about Dashiell Hammett, the commie writer who took the fall for Joe Stalin back in the 1950s and spent a few months in jail and Raymond Chandler who didn’t start writing detective stuff until later in his life, sold insurance of something before. Those guys who best work was before my time, way before, back in the 1930s and 1940s at least that seems to have been when they did their best work. had a way of putting a story together that kept me reading until I was done, finished and then I would re-read it again. That was why I wanted to be a cop, a guy who solved the ugly problems of the world. Maybe too like Chandler’s Marlowe I was tilting at windmills myself. Like I said I believed that was what being a cop was about-fixing the ills of society as best you could.

“Like I said every once on a while I get on a kick to re-read those guys and so one night after having been on the road all day trying to find out the whereabouts of a guy who had skipped out on his alimony payments and the irate wife though he might be in Providence where he had grown up hanging around his mother’s house (he wasn’t I never did find him, or didn’t find him before the wife said the hell with him it wasn’t worth the money she was paying me to keep tabs on him) I was too dogged to do any paperwork on that case so I grabbed an old moth-eaten frayed copy of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, the paperback edition with that fetching red-headed doll with her dress half off her shoulder and a snub-nosed gun in her hand that wouldn’t scare a ten year old kid, a guy on the ground looking very dead and felt-hatted Marlowe with hands up like he was heading for the bastinado. Naturally once I settled into my bed in my studio apartment after having a good stiff drink, the first and last of the day I read the whole thing through again, this maybe the tenth time I had read it since I was a kid.”

So you know I know the ropes, know what reads or looks real and what is hokum. Let me run this story, this Poodle Spring storyline by you and make a few comments on the way to show why I was onto the whole deal from about page one, the whole deal about their marriage which had a lot to do with why I thing Marlowe flubbed the case, why too many people wound up face down for no good reason, too much satin sheet, way too much.

You knew straight up once you found out the locale Marlowe and the Mrs., this dish named Linda who had more money that Midas from her old man who made it, well, perhaps its better left said how he made it although Marlowe must have had his sneaking suspicions since he had been around the block enough to know when big, big money is involved there is dirt around it, plenty of dirt. So he and she are settled into swanky dig out in the desert out in the gated community Poodle Springs which tells you right away that the closest they come to serious crime is when some house servant steals the family china and silverware. To my mind this is mistake number one since Marlowe was always associated with the scumbag slumming streets of Los Angeles, a city boy with city sensibilities wasted out in Mayfair swell Western branch country. From the beginning he makes it clear to Linda that he is his own man, he will work his old job and will not be kept although usually he said that before she gave him some come hither bedroom look. She, Linda, for her part had no plan to drop down in class, settle in among the sleaze balls Marlowe usually ran across and so there was a running battle between the two with Marlowe wilting a little once he got the scent of jasmine in his head.

Working man Marlowe, spending his own dough, finds an office in town that was probably more low rent than the joint he had in that run-down section of Bunker Hill in L.A. That will show old Linda. Of course he hardly was ever there since he was even before having an opening ceremony got waylaid into a case, a case that I would not have touched for the love of money. A casino owner, really a front man for the guy who was backing the operation, needed help getting a connected high-roller who lost big at the tables to collect an I.O.U. that the real boss wanted taken care of. First of all no way should Marlowe have even considered the deal since the cops, the Riverdale real life cops frown upon P.Is. doing work for hoods, you know, mobsters. Yeah, I know Marlowe in the old days did nothing but come up against those crumb bums but now that he was on easy street he should have tipped his oars. Second you never, never wind up collecting off an I.O.U. you either have to waste the guy or let it go. Hell even trying to strong arm a guy for loan repayments on those Sunday football games is like going to war.

Of course we are out in swell-ville there is more to it since the guy who owes the dough, a second-rate questionable taste photographer Les is married to another Mayfair swell dame, and so the deal will be dicey no matter how you look at. So Marlowe charges forward. First off this guy Les’ wife turns out to be kind of kinky, liked to show her wares for all to see which is how Les grabbed her; grabbed the brass ring. Problem: Les under the name Larry is already married, yeah he is an unembarrassed bigamist, who in his own seedy just tried to catch his own brass ring and work out some risk addiction ideas in his psyche. Her father didn’t like the situation of her marrying Les but he had his own hang-ups about his daughter, some incestuous stuff.

Bigamy, welshing on gambling debts, hell, grabbing for brass ring all would have been in a day’s if the bodies didn’t start to pile up while Marlowe was shacked up. Hey, one time my first wife, Lorna, a good-looking woman who somehow fell for me who, truth is just and average looking guy were having a little bounce around vacation for three freaking days and in those three days the guy I was supposed to be watching ripped off seven cars from the lot of Jimmy Jay’s Auto, the guy who hired to find out what the hell was going on with his inventory. It turned out to be an inside job, an inside job with a well-known car thief, Lenny Ross, on the outside stealing everything that had an engine, or maybe even just a starter as I learned later when the P.I. who wound up cracking the case put the screws on. So don’t tell me a dame, a good-looking dame who gives you the eye and you follow like a puppy dog didn’t help Marlowe fall down on the job here.

Yeah, fell down on the job because whatever his errant attitude toward the backdoor sleaze pornographic photographer the heat was creeping up on him, on Les/Larry and he was built for fair weather and no heavy lifting. See he was being blackmailed by some frail who had the goods on his kinky rich second wife (and whom he had photographed along with some more subsequently famous women boffo as well, you know in the buff, nude okay). And that frail wound up very dead in Les/Larry’s office. Guess who found her very dead. Yeah, Marlowe. Guess who also wound up dead, Lippy. Guess who found him. Yeah, Marlowe. So you know Marlowe while he is being carped to death by Linda about his working habits lost sight of the ball and he would take some heat from the coppers who still don’t like gumshoes messing in their nice set-up murder cases. Don’t want shamuses within a hundred miles of such work, and frankly no real private eye has the resources, manpower, or interest in such cases especially if they are married. Too much time away from the love nest, I found that out the hard way when my second wife, Bonnie, not as good-looking as my first wife who but knew her way around the bedroom took up a lover in that same bedroom when I was away on a skip trance case for six weeks.

Of course Marlowe, to his credit was silent to the cops about who might have killed the pair since he figured rightly Les/Larry was not build for such heavy duty. It turned out that that kinky wife whose father had some kind of incestuous hold over her had done the deed since she loved her Les/Larry no matter what kind of heel his was. In the end though she went over the edge killing her father and tried to do so to anybody else who might get in the way. Too late for her father his bodyguard wasted her. So there was more carnage than in a war by the time the gun smoke cleared. All which could have been avoided except maybe that first one, the blackmailer since that came out of the blue even though Marlowe had her number, had been following her. And Les/Larry? Marlowe a romantic at heart like in the old days, the old knight errant let him and that first wife walk off into the sunset.

In the end Marlowe let Linda slip through his fingers, went back to his righteous Hollywood, a back to his old run-down office in that run-down building in that run-down Bunker Hill section of L.A. but he could have had her and have skipped the body count if he had not been in a trance about that jasmine scent she threw off. Damn dames.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

An Old-Fashioned Romance-With Donovan’s Catch TheWind In Mind

By Lester Lannon

Ben Fuller and Nancy Logan had had an old-fashioned storybook romance, a romance straight out of the movies, not the current movies like Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris where the stresses of modern life take their toll or one of those George Clooney things with the detached unresolved ending but sometime more like Bogie and Bacall in The Big Sleep or To Have Or Have Not where the sparks fly for minute one and they probably would have jumped in the hay right then except Will Hayes’ censorship operation would have had a heart attack or the same Bogie and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Or maybe something out of the books, some misty F. Scott Fitzgerald you pick the story, Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, or a million Saturday Evening Post entries or maybe some modern lesser light like Robert Turner who specialized in such tales. But we might as well get to the details now that you know that while they are as modern in their world outlook, their upwardly-mobile professional careers, their consumer and cultural predilections, and their devotion to every technologically-driven communication devise they were, are incurable romantics although it didn’t start out that way.

See both Ben and Nancy had known each other for ages, known each other since about fourth grade at Riverdale Elementary when Nancy had in a simple twist of fate pulled Ben’s hair from behind as they both sat in Miss (now Ms., okay) Winot’s class. Ben didn’t like it, but he also did not squeal to dear Miss Winot like other young boys who had not yet discovered the mysteries of young girls for he hardly thought about her existence then but also did not want any of the other boys to bait him like they had when he had merely mentioned that Theresa Wallace was kind of pretty and not like the other silly girls in school (including Nancy then). So he let it past (although later, even much later, they would both be able to recite chapter and verse the events of that day almost exactly as they happened). And that was the way things stayed all through elementary school (where Ben later became enflamed by Theresa Wallace and she him and Nancy was a non-factor) and middle school (except for a change in enflamed to Louisa Stein).

The only contact even though they were always in the same schools since Riverdale was, and is, a small consolidated school system was that each summer Ben’s and Nancy’s families would both summer (the verb ‘to summer” at that time unknown to me, in my hanging around town poor boy no away summer vacation time to have verb application) in Ipswich near Crane’s Beach and a couple of times they had run into each other talked and left it at that. Well maybe not exactly “at that” since one time when they met on Crane’s Beach on one of those off-shore August wind days the winds howling forty miles an hour off the point from Plum Island Ben had sighted Nancy as she was being blown into the fleck-foamed surf and Ben had run over and pulled her back. Ben was ready to leave her side when Nancy said “maybe I was trying to catch the wind today” with a look like maybe Ben was the wind she was talking about trying to catch. Ben laughed and left somewhat perplexed.

It was not until high school, the summer of junior year that they again met on Crane’s Beach. Another howling off-shore wind day from the point. There Nancy was, all slim one hundred pounds of her being tossed toward the surf. Ben “saved” her but one thing was different this time Ben stood his ground and said to her that “maybe she was trying to catch the wind again” and gave her a look like maybe he was thinking he was the wind she was trying to catch. And that began the first whirlwind (excuse the pun) romance of Ben and Nancy. A romance that couldn’t last past graduation since Ben was going to State U to study computers and “make a ton of money” and Nancy was off to NYU to be a literary light. The truth was that both had been smitten on the nose by other people, Ben by Samantha James and Nancy by Henry Dillon III of the big money Dillon family that had helped run, own really, Riverdale since who knows when, since as long as anybody could remember. That was that.

Well almost “that was that,” no, that is not right, that was far from that was that. In the summer after their respective freshman years, quite by accident at least that was the way they told the story they met on another one of those inevitable howling windy days on Crane’s Beach while they were both visiting parents before taking off for other locales. This time Nancy was not caught up by any wind but was chasing a bunch of photographs that had blown off her blanket and were heading toward the dunes. Between them they were able to salvage all but a couple of them. Nancy profusely thanked Ben for his help because these were photos of her fiancé. Ben was shocked not by her being engaged so much as by the fact that the photos were not of Henry Dillon III but an older man, a man of about forty although he was admittedly good-looking at that. Nancy told Ben that she had given up young Dillon about half-way through the school year when at a party given by some poets in the Village she met this professor from Columbia, Jack Logan, who swept her off her feet, made Henry seem like a mere boy she said. Once Ben got over his shock he mentioned to Nancy that “maybe she had caught the wind” she had been looking for so long but she seemed when he asked not to know much about the guy except that he was a big-time academic and that he was very attentive to her (later that “attentive” would be clarified to that he was good in bed).

Ben, after they parted, parted with backward looks maybe both remembering the times they had caught the winds at Crane’s Beach on their own, that night could hardly sleep thinking about Nancy and about how he had been a serious fool to have let her go just because she had decided to go to NYU rather than State U with him. But what really got to him was that there was something wrong with the whole set-up. Nancy had left home to go to college because her father was always picking on her, telling her she needed to do better no matter how well she did and she wanted to not deal with that any longer. And here she was going to shortly be married to a man old enough to be her father. He decided that he needed to talk to this professor and see what he was all about before Nancy made a mistake, an awful mistake as far as he could tell.

Then the roof fell in. Ben went to his computer and Googled onto the Columbia school website to see if he could meet with the professor in New York City soon. No professor by the name Nancy had given him was among the faculty listed at this Ivy League school. He called up the school and after about an hour got to Human Resources and found out that the named professor had taught there although he had only been a lecturer and had been let go after his contract year was up for poor evaluations from the students so he really must have been bad since at State U at least most teachers got a free ride pass. That had been about six years before. Ben then hired a private detective that his father knew from some work he had down when his father thought an employee was stealing and selling information to an insurance competitor, to scope things out and the P.I. had come up after a week’s work with information that the professor had been living off various schemes and women for the past decade. That last piece finally made sense to Ben since Nancy’s family although not as rich as the Dillons (or as long-standing in the town) was well off. So what the professor was doing was playing off the vanities and inexperience of a young girl for dough. Probably had no intention of marrying her, probably had some “can borrow some money since my money is tied up in this project until my ship comes in” plan to bilk her and her family. At least her.

One day several weeks after he got the P.I’s report Ben finally decided that he had to confront Nancy with the dirty facts before she got seriously hurt. He called her up to tell her he had some information she needed to know. She seemed kind of distant, a little icy but they agreed to meet, meet where else, but at Crane’s Beach. The both arrived about the same time and sat down at the picnic tables near the bathhouses. Ben went right to the heart of the matter. Told Nancy what he had found out about the professor, and how. Nancy started crying, started to break down because as she confessed to Ben then she had already found out about the professor, about his real intentions, when he had tried to borrow money off of her father “until his ship came in” and her father had had the professor investigated. As Nancy dried her eyes she said she wished that Ben had not found out but since he did she hoped he would keep the information confidential.

She got ready to leave after he gave her his assurances that he would be quiet about the whole affair when Ben suggested they go for a walk along the beach since it was a calm day for once. She agreed with a half-smile, maybe thinking for a flash about their “history.” As they walked along the wind as it will do in the summer began to pick up and as it began to howl rather than go back to the parking lot they kept going. Ben holding Nancy’s arm and Nancy holding both her hands on his other arm. Yeah it was like that. As they walked they both said almost at the same time “maybe we will catch the wind” and laughed.

[After Nancy graduated from NYU and Ben from State U they were married that summer. Married on Crane’s Beach. Where else.]

Friday, February 26, 2016

In The Days Of Kid Roscoe-With Every 1930s B-Film Gangster Movie In Mind

By Lester Lannon

Yeah, Kid Roscoe was a piece of work, one of the best hitmen/body guards around back in the old days. The old rooty-toot-toot 1930s days when guys did what they had to do and asked questions later, much later. How do you think he got the name Kid Roscoe, it just didn’t fall out of the sky one day and get him proclaimed the number one gunslinger around. A guy smart guys, okay, okay wise guys were fighting over to get his services. Hey I just remembered some readers who either lived sheltered lives, have forgotten, or were just too young to know might not know a roscoe is. For those not in the know a roscoe back then was a heater, a rod, a piece, or whatever other soft phallic symbol you wanted to put on a serious weapon of choice when your business was to know every aspect of how to use, and not use that thing to fire away at somebody, somebody for a reason. The way every good professional plays the game.

It wasn’t always that way the Kid, real name Frankie Lane, had funny 1920s dreams of college, funny since that was an unusual ambition then when getting out of high school was all anybody expected from nowhere kids but then the Great Depression of the 1930s came and he hit the road in order not to be a bother to his mother who was raising six young kids all by herself once the old man up and died of one of those mysterious diseases guys died from years later who had been soldier boys in World War I. Hit the road at age sixteen, meaning that college dream got busted so bad he never finished high school although as long as he attended he was the bright boy around the school, knew the streets too, kept the punks out of his face okay from Mechanicsville in upstate New York, Dutch farming country way back when but mostly hard-scrabble truck farming barely surviving by the time you got into the 1930s. So the Kid took the Albany& Illinois heading west to Chicago to seek his fame and fortune. Took that A&L by the way in one of the freight cars with a bunch of old hoboes a couple of them who tried to make him their “girl” but he wasn’t having any of that and he learned one of the first big lessons of the road, trust nobody and stay sober enough to hold off the bull winos and alkies, not the diners’ club special with the Mayfair swells so you know the Kid was from hunger.

Not only that but the road to Chicago was not one straight line once the Kid (remember this is before he was the Kid and still had schoolboy dreams and lots of naïve if he was learning fast after that episode on the freight train) heard that Jim Baxter’s Wild West Carnival was playing in Toledo. That carnival had played the Fairgrounds in Mechanicsville ever since the Kid was a youngster and he had secretly thrilled to the idea back when he was knee-high of running away with Big Jim’s operation each year when they pulled up stakes. Nothing ever came of it so instead of him running off with them as a kid as a teenager he came to them. The Kid took the detour, made a good impression of Big Jim or rather on Smiley Short the guy who ran the ubiquitous win-a-prize-tents for Big Jim, found some work in the carney, liked the moving from town to town without having to ride the blinds or hitchhike the hostile road, liked the three squares a day and the dough he made roping the rubes in, and so he stayed put for a while. Couple of years as it turned out and never hit Chi town in that whole stretch. Reason: the suckers were plentiful out in the hinterlands where the rubes were asking to be taken but in the big cities bullets might fly with some of the raw stuff that was being pulled. So no Chicago.

What the Kid did was work the duck shooting gag, you know the air pistol or rifle “hit enough of them dead on and win your lady a prize, a kewpie doll or stuffed teddy bear she had been crazy about all night.” Sucker’s stuff if you hadn’t had practice for a while, or ever. (The Kid didn’t know this but Smiley had the gag rigged, had all the games rigged if anybody was asking, so that the rows of ducks were just slightly off-center so if you tried to aim straight for all your shots no way could you win even a freaking rabbit’s foot. That was one of the reasons, although not the main one, why the Kid quit Big Jim’s operation figuring you should at least give the suckers an even chance since as he would find out in own practice hitting the requisite number was a tough dollar anyway you looked at it unless you worked at it.) Overall until the falling out the shooting gallery was an easy grift and he was able to lay a few dollars aside for Chicago. Quite a few as time moved on.

More importantly in those dead zone times in the carnival life you know weekday afternoons, around supper time, the Kid would practice shooting at the ducks. Got good at it, very good as you might expect after a couple of years. Toward the end he would direct the suckers toward the right way to aim and that is when he found out one inquisitive morning that the damn thing was tilted. One time when they were in Peoria he met Janie, a young girl of fourteen not fully formed into young womanhood but getting there, getting there very nicely with farm-fresh blonde hair, corn-blue eyes, a nice starting to fill out figure and well-turned legs and ankles to die for, a classic Midwestern corn-fed girl, who passed by one day when the Kid was practicing. She had asked him a million questions about what he was doing and how somebody, not her since even when he held her arm couldn’t hit the side of her father’s barn, and he answered them although usually that was not his style.

She came by a couple of days, maybe three in a row and kept asking those damn questions until a little slow around the women Kid figured out she had eyes for him, and as it turned out he for her. During the rest of the time the carnival was in Peoria Janie and the Kid were like glue. As the stay was running down he asked her to run away with the carnival, run away from home like he had done but Janie couldn’t see it that way. Had an idea about marriage, white picket fences and kids. On the night before the carnival left town though the Kid proved that he was not so backward at that. Or Janie either as she let him have his way with her, let him take her maidenhead. Both agreed whatever happened in their futures that night of passion was the right thing to do. They smiled when the smile of innocent youth when they said that.

Eventually, after taking the Janie thing kind of hard the Kid drifted away for all of the reasons already mentioned including a big dust up with Max the Knife, Big Jim’s heavy-lifting man for all occasions, which almost came to guns and so he left for Chicago once the season was over when he was about eighteen. Now the Kid had picked up that shooting skill, that carny blarney two bit stuff but that would be of no avail when he hit the windy city. But there he was in a small room in a big rooming house off of Division trying to break in, break in somehow but with his money dwindling he was up against it until night he was in Casey’s nothing but a gin mill for drifters, grafters and grifters but was the known hang-out of a smalltime Chi mobster, Benny The Buzz, (Benjamin Bowers). Guys got had to drinking and as guys will do getting nasty when there were no women around things to keep thing calm or to fight over before closing turned ugly, turned ugly with guns. One dropped on the floor and as if by instinct the Kid picked it up and winged a guy, Jimmy the Lug, a guy who it turned out Benny the Buzz had a beef with. The guy fled but Frankie Lane soon to be Kid Roscoe had a job, a job with a future as Benny the Buzz’s bodyguard.

You know back then anyway the mobsters in Chi town like everywhere else were looking for prime talent just like with professional sports these days. To get the cream maybe trade up or down. Stuff like that. Except in the food chain of organized crime things get resolved very differently from pro sports and every gunsel, every professional bodyguard/hitman has to know which way the wind was blowing. So when Big Sid a little further up the food chain than Benny wanted Benny’s numbers racket he also wanted Benny’s boy the Kid. Maybe more than the numbers. And the Kid at twenty no longer so sticks farm boy knew which way the wind was blowing. One day they buried Benny the Buzz shot clean with one bullet in the heart by a person, or persons unknown, and the next day the Kid was following behind Big Sid. That upward mobility went on for a while until the Kid became the main torpedo for the boss of the bosses in Chic town, Phil the Knife (with plenty of weight in other towns as well the way things were being organized as the early 1930s shoot-outs over illegal beer were being replaced one beer was legal again but more organization than gunplay, although in the end gunplay, or the threat of gunplay was always just below the surfaces).

By the time the Kid was twenty-two maybe twenty-three he was pretty fed up with the rackets, couldn’t see where it was leading to anything but an early grave when some new kid decided to try his luck on the Kid and maybe being a little faster on the draw, maybe smarter, or maybe the Kid slowing down that would be that. That thought, those retirement thoughts got a big push when one day on Division Street when he spied Janie. A little thinner, a little paler and with a lot more sorrow around the eyes but he recognized her pretty quickly and as she approached him she knew who he was. She gave him a wan smile. Janie’s story hadn’t been pretty once the Kid left her in Peoria. She got in with a bad egg, some bigtime farmer’s rotten spawn on the rebound over the Kid and he turned her onto doing dope, cocaine, and later to keep her habit up into doing tricks on the streets or in the bars in Peoria. That the Kid thought explained the sorrow around the eyes he sensed although they still had for him their corn-blue sparkle in a certain light.

One night a few months before she met the Kid in the street she told herself she had had enough of Peoria and that dirty bastard that made her a whore, made her go down on guys for nickels practically. Got herself half-sober and left for Chi town, finished the sobering up and after a few weeks of turning tricks to get a stake was working serving them off the arm at Mindy’s Café on the lower end of Division. The Kid almost wept over that story. He took for a cup of coffee, they talked about that night of passion like noting bad had happened in their lives afterward. Don’t be surprised one thing led to another though and after shacking up together for a while, and after some furious fights about whether to leave or not once Phil the Knife threatened to cut the Kid’s balls off if he left, the Kid won the argument and one cold Chicago wind and snow night they leave town on a Greyhound bus, and that is the last anybody in Mechanicsville, Chi Town or Peoria, heard of Frankie Lane, known as Kid Roscoe, and his Janie.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Black Musicians' Political Protest-Honor The "Godmother" Nina Simone-Mississippi Goddam-Alan Light's What Happened Miss Simone-Book Review

Yeah, you can talk about your Beyoncé and Kendrick but remember who paid the price back in the day as Mister Whitey took offense when Nina Simone ripped the lip off of what everybody was thinking-thinking in silence. Yeah Mississippi Goddam… and Alabama too.

See The Netflix Film-What Happened Miss Simone

Click on link to an NPR On Point discussion of black musicians’ political protest songs that have raised a stir lately and remember the “godmother”

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/02/19/beyonce-kendrick-lamar-black-lives-matter

Click on link to an NPR On Point discussion of black musicians’ political protest songs that have raised a stir lately and remember the “godmother”

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/02/19/beyonce-kendrick-lamar-black-lives-matter

Markin comment:

50 years later and even the mere mention of Mississippi puts me directly in mind of Nina Simone's no-nonsense song about the struggle down South in the early part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Thanks, Nina.

Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we

Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it for now! see ya' later

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Black Musicians' Political Protest-Honor The "Godmother" Nina Simone-Mississippi Goddam

See The Netflix Film-What Happened Miss Simone

Click on link to an NPR On Point discussion of black musicians’ political protest songs that have raised a stir lately and remember the “godmother”

Once More Time, On Intergenerational Sex “…And Keep Me Young As I Grow Old”- Foul-Mouth Phil Is On The Loose-Again

By Sam Lowell

A YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing The Beauty Of The Days Gone By which has the "... and keep me young as I grow old" line in it.

Several years ago back in 2011 I was forced, yes, forced by friendship, forced by the weirdness of the circumstances, forced if truth be known by the point of a gun, metaphorically of course, to publicize the hardly noteworthy fact that my old friend from North Adamsville, a man who used to back then and back in that town be known as “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin had in his early 60s latched onto a twenty something graduate student named Amy from Penn State as his “honey,” his girlfriend. Since even a rough approximation of the math involved meant that the age difference between the two that no question this was a situation involving intergenerational sex, a subject at once intriguing and disquieting in American society (not so much in other societies for whatever reasons those societies seem to have less problems with the concept).

Such terms as “robbing the cradle, “old enough to be her father,” “when he is eighty-six she will be thirty nine,’” etc. and plenty of social snubbing, snickers, and scorn come with that designation. Maybe not rightly so concerning consenting adults who should be able to do what they want if the love mood strikes them but there you have it. As such things go the affair with that Penn State doctoral student lasted a year or so and faded into the dew. Not on her, Amy’s part, as she still was very interested in keeping him around but his since he could not understand why a busy student did not have more time for a then recently retired businessman. Tough luck.

Well, now in the year of our lord 2016, the man who used to be known as one Foul-Mouth Phil (more on how he got that moniker and why that name was rightly bestowed to follow and how he was changed in the heat of the 1960s counter-cultural minute to Far-Out Phil below) has been as he expressed it “on the prowl” and now has another girlfriend, Sofia, also twenty-something and they are into some hot relationship according to his latest e-mail to me on the subject. Needless to say this is again a case of the scorned intergenerational sex taboo that Phil seems hell-bent on defying. At this rate since Foul-Mouth is getting older while his girl- friends are staying in the same age range we should be calling him Dorian Gray after the character in an Oscar Wilde novel. More importantly Phil has forced me, yes, forced by friendship, forced by the weirdness of the circumstances, forced if truth be known by the point of a gun, metaphorically of course, to publicize the hardly noteworthy fact that my old friend from North Adamsville, Foul-Mouth Phil Larkin had in his late 60s latched onto a twenty-something young professional women. What price friendship.

What price friendship, indeed since to lure me into this task the old reprobate invoked the name of Peter Markin, Markin the guy who introduced us back in the 1960s out in California when we were all free-wielding sex maniacs, among other things like ardent anti-war activists, druggies, hippies, music freaks and much else but you get the idea, in the various summer of love experiments. Phil baldly told me that a guy like Markin, a straight-shooter, who was killed in the mid-1970s down in Mexico under mysterious circumstances involving a botched drug deal of some sort, would be proud to tell of the sexual exploits of one of his fellow corner boys, his fellow hippies, and his fellow-travelers.

Invoking Markin’s name was the last straw, the last defense I had against Phil’s onslaught since I had met Markin when I had hitchhiked out to San Francisco in the summer of love, 1967. He was travelling with Captain Crunch’s psychedelic yellow brick road converted school bus which was then parked in Golden Gate Park when I arrived and I walked up asked for some dope. Markin was the guy hanging out one of the bus windows who I had asked for the dope and he gave me a huge blunt and with it my friendship as long as he lasted. He was the guy who would call Phil, just as I from Carver about thirty miles south of North Adamsville called Bart Webber and some of my other corner boys to come out and join the bus. That was also the summer we met Josh Breslin from up in Maine whom Phil had also tried to guilt-trip into writing of his “exploits.” Josh brushed Phil off with the very correct “I’m not going to write about some dirty old man who can‘t keep his member in his pants.” (You know what that “member” means as we don’t want to be gross here since some kids might be reading this although from what my grandkids tell me they know more about sex at twelve than we knew at twenty and we considered ourselves maniacs remember.) So here I am again shoveling, well, shoveling shit for Phil and he wants me to like it.

Since like every lawyer which has been my career the past almost forty years I like to have some continuity when presenting these matter and since the only interest this screed could possible do is stir the prurient interests of the AARP-worthy set I have expanded what I originally intended to do with the Phil’s story by editing my previous efforts on his part and including them as prelude to the current flame story. Read, if you can take it (and have taken your heart medication).

I mentioned above that I would describe the transformation of Foul-Mouth Phil into Far-Out Phil in the 1960s hippie minute when we were all trying to shed our old personas and take on new ones in order to cope with the new world aborning we were expecting to bring the new Garden of Eden and took new monikers to express that transformation. My had been successively The Dew Drop Kid (do dropping acid, LSD, and whatever other drug I could get my hands on) and Prince Pappy (after travelling on Captain Crunch’s bus all through California for a couple of years and being by then with Markin a senior traveler on that yellow brick road). Markin’s was always “The Scribe,” something someone had dubbed him with one night when he would under the influence of who knows how many bennies endlessly ask questions of everybody he came in contact with. Here goes with some editing from its earlier incarnation:

“You Are On The Bus Or Off The Bus”- The Transformation Of “Foul-Mouth” Phil Into “Far-Out” Phil- With Mad Hatter Writer Ken Kesey And His 1960s Merry Pranksters In Mind (Fall 2011)

A link to a Wikipedia entry for Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters

By Sam Lowell:

Everybody, well everybody who checks things out here, or on other sites that I am associated with, knows that I am dedicated to swapping lies about the old days. [This piece was originally composed for the popular Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night blog whose followers are deeply immersed in all things 1960s nostalgia.] The old days in this case being the 1960s, and more specifically the 1960s old time corner boy days in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor in North Adamsville, Foul-Mouth Phil’s growing-up working class hometown. And, of course, if one wants to swap lies about those old days, or any days, then one needs a, well, foil, or foils. Needless to say, via the “miracle” of the Internet, in its various incantations, all one has to do is latch onto some search engine, type in “corner boys,” “North Adamsville,” or some such combinations and, like lemmings from the sea, our homeland the sea, every surviving corner boy with enough energy to lift his stubby little fingers will be on your screen before you can say, well, say, be-bop night.

Frankie Riley, the chieftain of the guys who hung around Salducci’s was the first, although he has lost much speed in his pitch since the old days. I won’t bore you with the details of his “exploits.” You can fumble through the archives here for that. [Check the Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night archives.] Nor will I speak of fast-talking Johnny Silver, except to point out that he is the culprit, there is no other way to put it, who started the sexual revolution. No, no the real one that started with “the pill” in the early 1960s and continues through to today with the struggle for women’s liberation, liberation from all kinds of second-class citizen stuff from jobs and wages to help with childcare and housework. No, Johnny started the AARP-version of the sexual revolution-old geezers looking for love, looking for love in all the wrong places, if you ask me but nobody is, asking that is. Those gripping tales can also be found in the archives as well. [Ditto.]

All of this, of course, is prelude to the real subject here. Phil Larkin’s transformation from corner boy “Foul-Mouth” Phil (and he really was, as he would tell you in that moment of candor that he is occasionally capable of) in early 1960s North Adamsville to “Far-Out” Phil on one of the ubiquitous Merry Prankster-inspired converted yellow brick road school buses that dotted the highways and by-ways of the American be-bop heading west night from about the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s (maybe a little earlier in the ‘70s). (For those too young to know, those who have forgotten, and those who have conveniently feigned forgetfulness just in case some statute of limitations has not run out I have placed a link above to a Wikipedia entry for the Merry Pranksters with this post.)

When last we hear from Phil he was heading to Pennsylvania to meet up with some doctoral program research addict whom he “met” on Facebook. [That tale, ah, can also be found below.] However, unlike these seemingly endless “haunting the Internet” schoolboy antics from guys old enough, well I am no snitch, so let’s say old enough to know better, looking for the fountain of youth, or whatever this Phil transformation story actually interests me in a weird kind of way. And so here it is. As usual I have edited it, lightly. but it is Phil’s story, and I am pleased to say a good one.

*********

Phil Larkin here. Jesus, Prince Pappy [Lowell: Like I warned the other guys, Phil, watch on that Prince Pappy, or just Pappy thing] actually liked this idea of me telling about riding the, what did he call it, oh yeah, the yellow brick road bus, back in my prankster days [Lowell: Just to keep things straight, since Phil still likes to play a little rough with the truth, not the famous Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters bus made famous through Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but certainly inspired by it]. I barely got by with my stories about real stuff that people want to read like the trials and tribulations of an older guy trying to “hook-up” with the ladies on what amounted to a sexless sex site and my rendezvous with Amy (and she is not a research addict, Sam, no way, although she is an addict another way but you don’t want to hear that real stuff story), my lovely sociology doctoral student down from at Penn State (Go, Nittany Lions!). But he is all over, all f—king over, some little bit of “cultural history” stuff that nobody, except AARP-guys (and dolls) would do anything but yawn over. And those AARP-guys (and dolls) are too busy trying to “hook-up,” to grab some sex before is too late to spent more than two seconds on ancient history. So this one is strictly for the, Prince, oops, Sam Lowell.

What got the whole memory lane thing started was that somewhere Sam picked up, probably second-hand off of Amazon if I know him, a CD from Time-Life Music entitled something like Shakin’ It Up: 1966. Now the music on the compilation, the music in the post-British invasion, heart of acid rock night, was strictly for laughs. But the artwork on the cover (as Sam had told me was true on other CDs in that expansive classic rock 'n' roll era series) featured nothing more, or nothing less, than a day-glo bus right out of our prankster days, complete with some very odd residents (odd now, not then, then they were righteous, and maybe, just maybe still are). That scene gave us a couple of hours’ conversation one night and jogged my memory about a lot of things. Especially about what Pete Markin, hell, me too, called the search of the great American freedom night. (He put some colors, blue-pink like just before dark, dark out West anyway, in his but we, for once. were on the same page.)

Naturally, Sam as is his wont [Sam: “Wont” is my word not Phil’s. His, I prefer, strongly prefer, to not to post], once he played the CD and played me for information (I know this guy, remember) ran off like a bunny and wrote his version as part of a review of the CD. Of course, being, well, being Sam he got it about half-right. So let me tell the story true and you can judge who plays “rough” with the truth.

Sam at least had it just about right when he described that old bus:

“A rickety, ticky-tack, bounce over every bump in the road to high heaven, gear-shrieking school bus. But not just any yellow brick road school bus that you rode to various educationally good for you locations like movie houses, half yawn, science museums, yawn, art museums, yawn, yawn, or wind-swept picnic areas for some fool weenie roast, two yawns there too, when you were a school kid. And certainly not your hour to get home daily grind school bus, complete with surly driver (male or female, although truth to tell the females were worst since they acted just like your mother, and maybe were acting on orders from her) that got you through K-12 in one piece, and you even got to not notice the bounces to high heaven over every bump of burp in the road. No, my friends, my comrades, my brethren this is god’s own bus commandeered to navigate the highways and by-ways of the 1960s, come flame or flash-out. Yes, it is rickety, and all those other descriptive words mentioned above in regard to school day buses. That is the nature of such ill-meant mechanical contraptions after all. But this one is custom-ordered, no, maybe that is the wrong way to put it, this is “karma”-ordered to take a motley crew of free-spirits on the roads to seek a “newer world,” to seek the meaning of what one persistent blogger on the subject has described as the search for the great blue-pink American Western night.”

“Naturally to keep its first purpose intact this heaven-bound vehicle is left with its mustard yellow body surface underneath but over that primer the surface has been transformed by generations (generations here signifying not twenty-year cycles but trips west, and east) of, well, folk art, said folk art being heavily weighted toward graffiti, toward psychedelic day-glo splashes, and zodiacally meaningful symbols. And the interior. Most of those hardback seats that captured every bounce of childhood have been ripped out and discarded who knows where and replaced by mattresses, many layers of mattresses for this bus is not merely for travel but for home. To complete the “homey” effect there are stored, helter-skelter, in the back coolers, assorted pots and pans, mismatched dishware and nobody’s idea of the family heirloom china, boxes of dried foods and condiments, duffel bags full of clothes, clean and unclean, blankets, sheets, and pillows, again clean and unclean. Let’s put it this way, if someone wants to make a family hell-broth stew there is nothing in the way to stop them. But also know this, and know it now, as we start to focus on this journey that food, the preparation of food, and the desire, except in the wee hours when the body craves something inside, is a very distant concern for these “campers.” If food is what you desired in the foreboding 1960s be-bop night you could take a cruise ship to nowhere or a train (if you could find one), some southern pacific, great northern, union pacific, and work out your dilemma in the dining car. Of course, no heaven-send, merry prankster-ish yellow brick road school bus would be complete without a high- grade stereo system to blast the now obligatory “acid rock” coming through the radiator practically.”

That says it all pretty much about the physical characteristics of the bus but not much about how I got on the damn thing. Frankly, things were pretty tough around my house, things like no having much of a job after high school just working as a dead-ass retail clerk up at Raymond’s Department Store in Adamsville Plaza. Not really, according to dear mother, with dear old dad chiming in every once in a while especially when I didn’t come up with a little room and board money, being motivated to “better myself,” and being kind of drift-less with my Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boys long gone off to college, the service, or married, stuff like that.

Then too I was having some girl trouble, no, not what you think girl baby trouble just regular the battle of the sexes stuff when my honey, Ginny McCabe, practically shut me off because I didn’t want to get married just then. But I knew something was in the air, something was coming like “the Scribe” was always predicting. And for once I wanted in on that. But the specific reason that I split in the dead of the North Adamsville night was that I was trying to avoid the military draft, now that the war in Vietnam was escalating with nowhere else to go. I knew my days were numbered and while I was as patriotic (and still am, unlike that parlor pinko, commie, Sam Lowell and his funny anti-war views every time America has to take a pop in the world to get thing right) as the next guy (and these days, girls) I was not ready to lay down my life out in the boondocks right then. So I headed out on the lam.

[Sam: Phil, as he related this part of the story that night, had me all choked up about his military plight and I was ready to say brother, welcome to the anti-imperialist resistance. Then I realized, wait a minute, Phil was 4-F (meaning he was not eligible for drafting for military service due to some medical or psychological condition in those days for those who do not know the reference). A prima facie example, I might add, of that playing rough with the truth I warned you about before.]

Hey, I am no slave to convention, whatever the conventions are, but in those days I looked like a lot of young guys. Longish hair, a beard, a light beard at the time, blue jeans, an army jacket, sunglasses, a knapsack over my shoulder, and work boots on my feet. Sandals would not come until later when I got off the road and was settled in a “pad” [Sam: house, rented or maybe abandoned, apartment, hovel, back of a “free” church, back of a store, whatever, a place to rest those weary bones, or “crash”] in La Jolla and were, in any case, not the kind of footwear that would carry you through on those back road places you might find yourself in, places like Deadwood, Nevada at three in the morning with a ten-mile walk to the nearest town in front of you. I mention all this because that “look” gave me the cache to make it on the road when I headed out of the house that Spring 1967 be-bop night after one final argument with dear mother about where I was going, what was I going to do when I got there, and what was I going to do for money. Standard mother fare then, and now I suppose.

So short on dough, and long on nerve and fearlessness, then I started to hitchhike with the idea of heading west to California like about eight million people, for about that same number of reasons, have been heading there since the Spanish, or one of those old-time traveling by boat nations, heard about the place. Of course, nowadays I would not think to do such a thing in such a dangerous world, unless I was armed to the teeth and that would take a little edge off that “seeking the newer world” old Markin had been blabbing about since about 1960. But then, no problem, let’s get going. Especially no problem when just a few miles into my journey a Volkswagen mini-bus (or van, neither in the same league as the yellow brick road school bus, no way, that I will tell you about later but okay for a long ride, and definitely okay when you are in some nowhere, nowhere Nebraska maybe, back road, hostile territory dominate by squares, squares with guns and other evil implements and they, the VW-ites, stoned, stoned to the heavens stop to ask you directions because they are “lost” and invite you on board) stopped on Route 128, backed up, and a guy who looked a lot like me, along with two pretty young girls says, “where are you heading?” (Okay, okay, Sam, young women, alright.) West, just west. And then the beatified words, “Hop in.”

Most of the road until the Midwest, Iowa is the Midwest right, was filled with short little adventures like that. A mini-van frolic for a few hours, or a few days. Maybe a few short twenty-miles non-descript rides in between but heading west by hook or by crook. Did I like it? Sure I did although I was pretty much an up-tight working class guy (that was what one of those pretty girls I just mentioned called me when I “passed” on smoking a joint and, hell, she was from next door Clintondale for chrissakes) who liked his booze, a little sex [Sam: Phil, come on now, a little?], and just hanging around the old town waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I could see, after a few drug experiences, no, not LSD, that I was starting to dig the scene. And I felt every day that I was out of North Adamsville that I was finally shaking off the dust from that place.

Then one night, sitting in the front seat of a big old Pontiac (not everybody, not every “hip” everybody had the mini-bus, van or school bus handy for their “search” for the great American night), Big Bang Jane between us, the Flip-Flop Kid driving like god’s own mad driver, smoking a joint, laughing with the couple of in back, Bopper Billy and Sweet Pea, we headed into a pay-as- you go roadside camp near Ames out in Iowa. And at that campsite parked maybe five or six places over from where we planted ourselves was god’s own copy of that day-glo merry prankster bus I mentioned before. I flipped out because while I had hear about, and seen from a distance, such contraptions I hadn’t been up close to one before. Wow!

After we settled in, the Flip-Flop Kid (and the guy really could never make up his mind about anything, anything except don’t go too close to Big Bang Jane, no kidding around on that, no sir), Bopper Billy (who really thought he was king of the be-bop night, but, hell in the North Adamsville corner boy night Frankie Riley, hell, maybe even Markin, would have out be-bopped him for lunch and had time for a nap), Big Bang Jane (guess what that referred to, and she gave herself that nickname, but I never tried to make a move on her because she was just a little too wild, a little too I would have to keeping looking over my shoulder for me to see what she was up to then, probably later too when things got even looser. And then there was the Flip-Flop Kid’s warning ), and Sweet Pea (and she was a sweet pea, if Bopper Billy wasn’t around, well we both agreed there was something there but in those 1967 days we were still half tied up with the old conventions of not breaking in between a guy and his girl, well that was the convention anyway whether it was generally honored or not, I did) we headed over once we heard the vibes from the sound system churning out some weird sounds, something like we had never heard before (weird then, little did we know that this was the wave of the future, for a few years anyway).

Naturally, well naturally after the fact once we learned what the inhabitants of the bus were about, they invited us for supper, or really to have some stew from a big old pot cooking on a fireplace that came with the place. And if you didn’t want the hell-broth stew then you could partake of some rarefied dope (no, again, no on the LSD thing. It was around, it was around on the bus too, among its various denizens, but mainly it was a rumor, and more of a West Coast thing just then. In the self-proclaimed, tribal self-proclaimed Summer of Love of 1967, and after that, is when the acid hit, and when I tried it but not on this trip. This trip was strictly weed, hemp, joint, mary jane, marijuana, herb, whatever you wanted to called that stuff that got you high, got you out of yourself, and got you away from what you were in North Adamsville, Mechanicsville or whatever ville you were from, for a while.

So that night was the introduction to the large economy size search for the freedom we all, as it turned, out were looking for. I remember saying to Sweet Pea as we went back to our campsite (and wishing I wasn’t so square about messing with another guy’s girl, and maybe she was too, maybe wishing I wasn’t square about it) that we had turned a corner that night and that we had best play it out all the way to the end right then for the chance might not come again.

The next day, no, the next night because I had spent the day working up to it, I became “Far-Out” Phil, or the start of that Phil. Frankly, to not bore you with a pipe by pipe description of the quantity of dope that I smoked (herb, hashish, a little cocaine, more exotic and hard to get then than it became later) or ingested (a tab of mescaline) that day, I was “wasted.” Hell I am getting “high” now just thinking about how high I was that day. By nightfall I was ready for almost anything as that weird music that crept up your spine got hold of me. I just, as somebody put a match to the wood to start the cooking of the night’s pot of stew to keep us from malnutrition, started dancing by myself. Phil Larkin, formerly foul-mouthed Phil, a cagey, edgy guy from deep in corner boy, wise guy, hang-out guy, never ask a girl to dance but just kind of mosey up world, started dancing by himself. But not for long because then he, me, took that dance to some other level, some level that I can only explain by example. Have you ever seen Oliver Stone’s film, The Doors, the one that traced the max-daddy rocker of the late 1960s night Jim Morrison’s career from garage band leader to guru? One of the scenes at one of the concerts, an outdoor, maybe desert outdoor one, had him, head full of dope, practically transformed into a shaman. Yeah, one of those Indian (Sam: Native American, Phil] religious leaders who did a trance-dance. That was me in late May of 1967, if you can believe that.

And see, although I wasn’t conscious of it first I was being joined by one of the women on the bus, Luscious Lois, whom I had met, in passing the night before. This Lois, not her real name, as you can tell not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. [Sam: Nice point, Phil, although I already ‘stole’ that point from you in my CD review.] Her real name was Sandra Sharp, a college girl from Vassar who, taking some time off from school, was “on the bus” trying to find herself. She was like some delicate flower, a dahlia maybe, like I had never encountered before. I won’t bore you with the forever have to tell what she looked like stuff because that is not what made her, well, intriguing, maddeningly intriguing, like some femme fatale in a crime noir film that Markin was, Raymond Chandler this, Dashiell Hammett that, always running on about.

She was pretty, no question, maybe even a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty if it came to a fair description in the light of day but what made her fetching, enchanting, if that is a different way to say it, was the changes in her facial expressions as she danced, and danced provocatively, dance half-nakedly, around my desire. And I danced, shedding my shirt although I do not remember doing so, danced half-naked around her desire. Then, faintly like a buzz from some hovering insect, maybe a bee, and then more loudly I kept hearing the on-lookers, half-mad with dope and with desire themselves, yelling far out, far out. And Far-Out Phil was born.

Oh, as for Luscious Lois and her desire, well, you figure it out. I might not have been as wise to the ways of the Vassar world in those days when such places were bastions to place the young women of the elite and keep them away from clawing upstarts from the corner boy night as I should have been but the rest of my time on the bus was spend hovering around Lois, and keeping other guys away. I even worked some plebeian “magic” on her one night when I started using certain swear words in her ear that worked for me every Sunday after 8:00 AM Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church with foxy Millie Callahan, back in the day. Far-Out Phil got a little something extra that night, proper Vassar girl or not.

No offense against Iowa, well only a little offense for not being near an ocean, I think. No offense against the university there, well only a little offense for not being Berkeley but after about a week of that campsite and its environs I was ready to move on and it did not matter if it was with Flip-Flop and his crowd or with Charming Billy (the guy who “led” his clot of merry pranksters, real name, Samuel Jackman, Columbia Class of 1958, who long ago gave up searching, searching for anything, and just hooked into the idea of taking the ride). Charming Billy, as befitted his dignity (and since it was “his” bus paid for out of some murky deal, probably a youthful drug deal, from what I heard), was merely the “leader” here. The driving was left to another, older guy. This driver was not your mother-sent, mother-agent, old Mrs. Henderson, who prattled on about keep in your seats and be quiet while she is driving (maybe that, subconsciously, is why the seats were ripped out long ago on the very first “voyage” west) but a very, very close imitation of the god-like prince-driver of the road, the "on the road” pioneer, Neal Cassady, shifting those gears very gently but also very sure-handedly so no one noticed those bumps (or else was so stoned, drug or music-stoned, that those things passed like so much wind). His name: Cruising Casey (real name, Charles Kendall, Haverford College Class of ’62, but just this minute, Cruising Casey, mad man searching for the great American be-bop night under the extreme influence of one Ken Kesey, the max-daddy mad man of the great search just then). And Cruising was, being just a little older, and about one hundred years more experienced, also weary, very weary of co-eds, copping dope and, frankly, staying in one place for so long. He also wanted to see his girlfriend, or his wife, I am not sure which in Denver so I knew where we were heading. So off we go, let’s get going.

And the passengers. Nobody from the Flip-Flop Express (although Flip-Flop, as usual, lived up to his name and hemmed and hawed about it), they were heading back east, back into the dark Mechanicsville night. I tried, tried like hell, to get Sweet Pea to come along just in case the thing with Lois fell apart or she took some other whim into her head. See, re-invented or not, I still had some all-the-angles boyhood rust hanging on me. We did know for sure that Casey was driving, and still driving effortlessly so the harsh realities of his massive drug intake had not hit yet, or maybe he really was superman. Other whose names I remember: Mustang Sally (Susan Stein, Michigan, Class of 1959, ditto on the searching thing), Charming Billy’s girlfriend, (although not exclusively, not exclusively by her choice, not his, and he was not happy about it for lots of reasons which need not detain us here). Most of the rest of the “passengers” have monikers like Silver City Slim, Penny Pot (guess why), Moon Man, Flash Gordon (from out in space somewhere, literally, as he told it), Dallas Dennis (from New York City, go figure), and the like. They also had real names that indicated that they were from somewhere that had nothing to do with public housing projects, ghettos or barrios. And they were also, or almost all were, twenty-somethings that had some highly-rated college years after their names, graduated or not). And they were all either searching or, like the Charming Billy, were at a stage where they are just hooked into taking the ride.

As for the rest. Well, no one could be exactly sure, as the bus approached the outskirts of Denver, as this was strictly a revolving cast of characters depending on who was hitchhiking on that desolate back road State Route 5 in Iowa, or County Road 16 in Wyoming, and desperately needed to be picked up, or face time, and not nice time with a buzz on, in some small town poky. Or it might depend on who decided to pull up stakes at some outback campsite and get on the bus for a spell, and decide if they were, or were not, on the bus. After all even all-day highs, all-night sex, and 24/7 just hanging around listening to the music is not for everyone. And while we had plenty of adventures, thinking back on it now, they all came down to drugs, sex, and rock and roll with a little food on the side. If you want to hear about them just ask Sam to contact me. The real thing though, the thing that everybody should remember is that dance night in Ames, Iowa when Phil Larkin got “religion,” 1960s secular religion. He slid back some later, like everybody does, but when he was “on the bus” he was in very heaven.

Sam Lowell note: No question that this story, except perhaps for hormonal adolescents, is better than those dreary old geezer searching for young love tales that he ran by us before. By the way Phil, you don’t happen to have Luscious Lois’, ah, Sandra Sharp’s, cell phone number or e-mail address. And don’t lie and say you don’t have it. You never crossed off a woman’s name from your book in your life. Give it up.

Sam Lowell: Now you know how Phil Larkin got his first moniker although he left out a few parts about how a couple of novena rosary bead bible between their knees “nice: Catholic girls thrilled when Foul-Mouth Phil got going which turned them on and I will leave to the readers imagination what those “nice” girls gave Phil for his efforts-and it wasn’t a reading from that Bible which dropped to the ground. I also should mention that a few gals on the yellow brick road bus out in California who knew nothing of Bibles between their knees got turned on in the same manner although that is only rumor on my part. And also how he got his latter one so it is time to give a little sketch, for this is all that it is worth about Phil’s battle of the sex sites which would not seem to be such a big deal but when you are (a) lying about your age and everything else on the sites (b) forced to pay dollars to send messages on most sites in order to even have a chance at one good shot, and (c) have to navigate through all the fake profiles, silly offers and off-the-wall come-ons it is not as easy as one would think, at least according to Phil. I wouldn’t know since I am happily involved with Laura, including the intimacy factor. A bonus for me is that Laura knows what my real age is and all of that. But let me tell you what Phil told me in his own words about his adventures one rainy night in Cambridge at Jack’s, our favorite hang-out over serious whiskey drinks:

On Intergenerational Sex “…And Keep Me Young As I Grow Old”-

Sam Lowell comment on this skectch:

This space, fundamentally, is devoted to political struggles, the big picture communist future political struggles that reflect the hard fact, as noted by Leon Trotsky's definitive biographer, Isaac Deutscher, that we leftist have in the past, and continue now, to devote the bulk of our energies to the most immediately pressing of the three great tragedies of life, the struggle against hunger. The other two, sex and death, have gotten short shrift other than to be dealt with in broad brush stokes, basically arguing that in our communist future those two acknowledged mysterious passages will be dealt with more thoughtfully, less traumatically, and with deeper insight.

That said, where does that leave my old North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 corner boy class mate, Phil Larkin, and his twin sex and death dilemmas-growing old and still having a yearning for sexual adventure, sexual adventure with younger, much younger women. Other than calling him, rightly I think, a “dirty old man” for even thinking about having sex with a young, curvaceous, nubile woman, to speak nothing of what it might do to his physical condition, we have no immediate leftist program to alleviate his problem. Sorry Phil. No question though under such a now seemingly utopian regime inter-generational sex will be no more the subject of scandalous gossip that various other homo and heterosexual variations of sexual activity that are the norm now.

Now, if one has been attentive, I have, with the exception of Leon Trotsky’s brief fling with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in the late 1930s during his Mexican exile, not spent much time on the personal sex lives of our revolutionary forbears. That has been in keeping with the traditional reticence of revolutionaries to discuss their personal sexual lives. And with my own preferences in the uses of this space. I, however, feel that Phil Larkin’s case can be instructive for those of us who are going into our “golden years” and are still as randy as middle schoolers. Therefore I have posted Phil Larkin’s story, non-leftist, non-political, Phil Larkin’s story here for your perusal. The weak of heart, those under a doctor’s care, and assorted outraged moral philistines should avoid reading this for the good of your lives and/or souls. Note, and note carefully that other than a little editorial work this is strictly Phil’s responsibility although I will admit my temperature and pulse were vicariously rising somewhat while performing this onerous task.

Phil Larkin’s comment:

I always liked younger girls when I was just a kid and I never got out of that habit, that sweet young thing habit. I used to take a lot guff from Frankie Riley, Peter Paul, Sam and the other corner boys “up the Downs” at our hang-out, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, when at sixteen I dated up twelve-year old “Luscious” Linda Lorraine (but “hot,” hot way beyond her years as I found out, have mercy, when she practically “raped” me, raped me if you can believe that, on our first date down at the North Adamsville Beach one summer night. I won’t say more because Sam, who is editing this thing, might take a heart attack when he reads this since he never got to first base with her, and he tried, at least that is what she said, and they had all tried). They would yell “jail bait,” “baby-snatcher,” “cradle-robber,” and all that stuff that has been said by people, guys especially, since about the time Adam tried to date up Eve (who was a lot younger than he was and must have been pretty “hot” herself to get Adam off the straight and narrow) but she was fine, some sweet soap-smelling fine, and just getting some nice curves and stuff. Maybe that is where I got the habit.

[Lowell: All we ever said was “watch out” Phil. Linda, who lived the next street over from me then, was nothing but a “man trap,” a serious man-trap and Phil was only one of several who enjoyed her “favors” in those days. Despite Phil’s obvious lapse of memory I never tried to get to first base, or any base with her. As for the others, the corner boy others, I would not be surprised if on some “horny” girl- friend-less nights they didn’t take a shot at it. It wasn’t hard. Last we heard of Linda she had had several kids by her early twenties and died of a heroin overdose in her mid-thirties so it wasn’t the age thing at all about Linda whatever Phil might say now.]

And it's always pretty much was that way going forward. My first wife, Laurie, whom I met and who Sam knows, was nothing but a fox when I was in graduate school and she was in high school and whom I met when I came back for a North Adamsville –Adamsville high school Thanksgiving Day football game. She was captain of the Red Raider cheer-leaders and I took dead aim at her [Lowell: I agree Laurie was a fox, no question, but again we told Phil to “watch out” on her as well because she was nothing but a man-eater as he found out a few kids, and a lot of alimony payments, later. I admit I took a “run” at her myself when they split up but I am still grinding my teeth over the way she treated me during our short “affair,” if that’s what you could call it.] When I met my second wife, Alicia, she was just in graduate school and I was in my late thirties. [Lowell: Phil and I started drifting apart then, mainly different parts of the country, so I don’t know about Alicia’s qualities but Phil says that she treated him “good,” which to Phil always meant good at giving him oral sex, you know a blow joe, head, skull, whatever you called it in your neighborhood when he was a good boy and stuff like that. Ask any guy, me included whatever a guy likes a little oral sex for being good, or bad, is icing on the sex night cake. Okay, get used to it we are adults and more explicit sexual details will be coming up so be forewarned. And take your heart medicine for god’s sake.] My third wife, Becky, was barely out of college and I was in my forties when we met but she was in that “good” category.

After that I stopped marrying them and just settled into a steady diet of “dating” seemingly ever younger women that I met through my work contacts or other social situations. [Lowell: Phil was, and is, a very good construction site consulting engineer.] And then, after Carrie left to pursue her screen-writing “dream” in California things dried up, dried up hard for this older man [Lowell: Carrie was Phil’s last serious live-in girlfriend, emphasis on the girl part, barely legal]. Well, first, damn the computer age for one thing, since it meant I could do more of my consulting work from home. And get more work done (and charge more as well). But it meant that the social situations also dried up. And no 50-something guy, no 50-something guy in his right mind, is going to the “meat market” singles bars around town trying to pick up the young ones when they have plenty of young guys around to moon over and get worked up about. [Lowell: I am trying to be gentle with Brother Larkin here but he “forgot” to mention getting laughed at, ridiculed and told to go “back to the nursing home” by those self-same younger women. He also “forgot” to mention that he was not a 50-something guy but a 60-something guy when the “heat” came on him.]. And second, damn, whatever that Adam “spreading his seed” thing was because even if things dried up socially this old man wasn’t dried up, if you get my meaning. [Lowell: Translation; he was still as randy as a middle- schooler] So I did whatever any “on the information super-highway” guy would do, I went online looking for sex sites, younger women-centered sex sites. [Lowell: Phil didn’t have to work up a sweat finding them they practically come at you from your homepage onward. Just Google “sex” and you will get whatever you want.]

Of course “dating” services have been going on since just after Adam and Eve got it on. (Eve, by the way, a younger woman, a much younger woman and probably pretty “hot,” with a firm, curvaceous, naked body hot from what I heard, if I didn’t mention it before). Nowadays though (thank god, and thank god I took my medicine beforehand) the sexually explicit stuff women are putting online for your perusal is “over the top,” especially the younger ones, thank god. So naturally I filled out my “profile” page, paid my dough (via credit card but be careful), and “joined” all the other guys, horny guys waiting, wanting to “get laid” tonight.

Well things were kind of slow for a while since I blocked off returning messages to any women over thirty, and rightly so as they started looking kind of sad sack by then (although there were plenty of them around, around with kid baggage, if that is where your tastes run go see them and their hard luck stories). I thought at first it might be because there was a prejudice against 50-something guys in this hellish youth-drive universe. [Lowell: See note above on the age question, the Phil age question.] And then Tracy, sweet eighteen-year old Tracy, answered my plea.

Now Tracy was not your average young woman (girl really but let’s leave it at that). She was eighteen, bright, intelligent, ambitious, resourceful, and looking for a “sugar daddy,” whatever that might mean. Yes dear, Phil Larkin is just your meat. [Lowell: After some research this old-fashioned term “sugar daddy” could mean, like in the old days, someone, some man, who paid the freight to today’s “hook-up” or “friends-with benefits," or something entirely innocuous.] But here is where the problem came in. We sent many message back and forth and we were making some headway. She stated clearly that she was not into “mere boys,” but older men who had been around, and knew a thing or two (or three). Yes Tracy, Phil is very, very just your meat.

Eventually she agreed to meet me in a public place to discuss, discuss our “the exact meaning of sugar daddy" business, and the like. But here is where the wheels started to come off, almost. She wanted some pictures of me, presumably recently up-loaded digital camera-produced photos, before we met. Her idea, innocent enough, and actually reasonable enough, was to make sure I was not some three-headed monster or, perhaps, someone recently released from parole for any number of charges from sexual offenses to murder and mayhem [Lowell: Smart girl. As for any possible sexual offenses, as far as I know, they were all consensual and not in the least bit criminal although a few irate fathers might differ. The murder and mayhem I would advise that Phil plead the Fifth on that one.]

And that was the first stumbling block. See, old guys like Sam, Frankie and me, were not suckled on computer technology practically from birth like today’s kids. We survive on the “information super-highway” but just barely and while I know, as Sam does, enough to get by let’s just call us “primitives.” In short, I confess, bitterly confess, any pictures I had were not digital, and even if they were I did not know how to up-load them onto any site, sex site or not. Truth. However Tracy did not believe me, and it made sense in her iPhone, iPad, texting, Facebook world that everybody knew how to do such an easy eight year old can do it simple task. I only avoided total defeat by producing some older photos and reading every manual for up-loading that came with the printer. I finally did it but it was a near thing.

I won’t bore the reader with the details of our first meeting, or our later meetings but she was certain fetching in person and wiser in age than some of the older young women that I have been with through the years. But the big thing was that she was wonderful in bed. And this is where the faint-hearted, or just plain perverted, can get off and find your own sex site. Well let’s start off as always with the firm, soft, wrinkle-free skin, breast, buttock, thighs, that has driven me wild since old-time Linda Lorraine (hell, I can still smell her Palmolive soap, or perfume or whatever she used to drive the boys wild even now). Then of course the school-girlish strip tease that always gets me going. And then placing her mouth, well, placing her mouth where it did some good. Hell though everybody who reads this knows what’s what. I don' t have to draw a diagram, do I? Yes, we did it did several times (not all in one day, Viagra is good but not that good). She was very inventive with positions and of course, I knew a thing or two (or three) that got her going (read: moaning and groaning for her sugar daddy and not the old –fashioned meaning of the word either whatever Sam’s research said it meant in the old days). She still smiles about those two (or three) things when I bring them up).

But the point is really about “… and keep me young while getting old” as the line from the Van Morrison song, The Beauty Of The Days Gone By. Some guys get it by pumping iron or other maniac strenuous exercising, and some by endless youth-enhancing operations. And some, like Sam, by writing endlessly about the old days like they were coming back, or could do anybody any good. [Lowell: Watch it, Phil, watch it brother.] Me, no, I want a young thing, a young firm thing, a young sex-crazed thing, a firm young thing that wants a lesson in those two (or three) things I could teach her (and have her sweaty-smiling a couple of days later over) right next to me right up until, and maybe past, judgment day. Can you blame me?

Sam Lowell postscript comment:

We had better get to that left-wing future in a hurry, a real hurry. In the meantime I’ll go off and take a shower, a very cold shower. Oh yes, Phil, by the way (BTW for the cyber-slang crowd) what is Tracy’s cell phone number? Or does she have a geezer-craving girlfriend? Whatever you do, Phil- “don’t watch out, not now.”

Sam Lowell comment again:

Naturally a guy like Phil who has played it close to the edge all of his life when it comes to women (you know of course I mean young women after all this is what this whole short cautionary tale is all about. Here comes the hammer:

On “Sexless” Internet Sex Sites- Or How “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin Got His Comeuppance-Finally- With The North Adamsville Salducci's Pizza Parlor Corner Boys In Mind

By Sam Lowell

Normally I provide a link to some relevant topic in the headline on my posts. Do not click on the headline to link to an Internet sex site. Are you kidding? All you have to do is type in the word “sex” on any search engine and you will be inundated with every type of fetish you every wanted, or didn't want, to know about. We are all adults here-happy hunting-on your own.

*******

Sam Lowell comment:

Hey, everybody knows, or should be presumed to know to use some legal parlance which may become necessary before this latest “fire storm” is over, that this site is an exemplar of politics, mainly left-wing pro-labor propaganda politics. No way is it some way station for AARP-worthy sex-starved refugees and fidgety lonely-hearts from back in my corner boy youth days. Although apparently that fate, short of some drastic legal action on my part, is what looms before me after I, unwittingly I think, let an old corner boy from the North Adamsville Salducci’s Pizza Parlor high school hang-out night, Johnny Silver, have some space here to tell what turned out to be a pretty salacious story about how he “hooked-up” with some young, very young, barely legal woman that he met through a sex-oriented Internet site.

My permissive attitude on this not strictly politically-driven subject was to let Johnny hold forth on the basis that intergenerational sex is still, more or less, socially taboo in this society and that under a future left-wing society we will take a much more liberal attitude on the subject as well as on many other now sexually-repressed notions. Johnny’s story, which I admit had even my temperature going up a bit after reading it, however set off this current fire storm.

Not about the struggle against imperialism in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Not the struggle to make some headway against the bosses and their relentless drive for profits at the workers expense here in America, and internationally. Not even commentary on the death penalty, gay marriage, the perfidy of Barack Obama, or the lunacy of the tea-partiers. No, I have been deluged with e-mails by every AARP-type that I know who want to harass me in order to tell their misbegotten tales of missed sexual opportunities, the sexual discrimination against oldsters by younger, well, younger women okay, or whatever else is on their minds except those much more important subjects. Please, please stop. Tell it to Oprah, or whoever is working that street these days.

The worst of the lot was my old corner boy (part-time corner boy at Salducci’s but full-time at the Surf and Sea Club in summer and whatever and wherever in winter) “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin. Now Phil, who I actually met in junior high school (a.k.a. middle school) through my chieftain in those days, Frankie Riley, really did deserve that nickname. Even Frankie and I walked away from Phil when he got going with every swear known to the English language (and some in Gaelic too-at least that is what he said his grandfather taught him). So you can imagine what the girls felt when he went full-bore. Strangely Phil, unlike now as his story below will explain, never lacked for girlfriends, and not just wrong side of the tracks, low-life, slutty girls either but many girls who you could see, see and stare at, every Sunday at 8:00 AM Mass over at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. So, maybe, he touched off something basic in them with his language. Personally, while I could swear like a trooper when necessary, I didn’t around girls or in public that much.

In any case, as I have already telegraphed above Phil, still using that ill-bred language has threatened murder, mayhem, and, more importantly, legal action (something about gross denial of freedom of expression) if I don’t post his sad-ass story. Needless to say that approach by itself does not get one anywhere with me. However in line with my idea in posting Johnny Silver’s salacious little sex tale noted above I have agreed to post Phil’s saga if only to use it as an example of sexual repression under capitalism and why we need, desperately need, that socialist revolution that is the hallmark of the real purpose of this space. Needless to say I take no personal, political, social, linguistic, or, most importantly, legal responsibility for this story. I have edited it lightly for language and content but this is strictly “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin’s story. If you want to take legal action against him feel free to do so. Needless to say as well that Phil is in no way (thankfully) political, much less a leftist, although he desperately could use a shot, a big shot, of what our socialist future promises.

Phillip Larkin comment:

First of all before I get into my f--king hard luck story about my sexless life on the sex sites let me clear the air about something that that twerp Sam Lowell said about my “foul-mouth.” You know in junior high school (now known as middle school) young, f--king hormone-juggling guys (and girls I found out later) don’t always know how to deal with that hard fact of growing up and my way was to swear a little. Big deal, right? Big deal then, or now. But you also know, and even f- -king Lowell knows this, at that age you get a certain “rep” and it carries around with you like a lead balloon all through school, especially with guys that you hang around with. Like the late Peter Paul Markin was always from day one that I met him “The Scribe” (always capitalized, by the way) anointed by Frankie Riley and it stuck even though he hated to be called that. [Lowell: Okay Phil we get the point. Let’s move on.] And so my little swearing episodes, not much really, got me tagged as, well, foul-mouthed [Lowell: Phil must have a slight case of amnesia on this “little” thing. He was the world, well, at least the North Adamsville Junior High, champion swearer. He is the only kid, and Frankie Riley will back me up on this, who was able to make a sentence using only swear words. Some feat. Phil is, apparently, far too “humble” now to take a bow for that now.]

The thing about swearing though is that it never got me in much trouble with the girls. The Scribe, Sam, and Frankie were always (and Johnny Callahan too) very prim and proper in their language around girls although it never got them anywhere. And The Scribe (oops, Markin) could swear worse than me when he got his Irish up. But that is neither here nor there. Unless he wanted to if he were still around so we could mess with the missed bastard’s head to make something of it now. What it all ties in with though is that I have always used a certain amount of rough language around girls and they have either found it “cute” or, and here you have to take my word for it, kind of got “turned on” by it. I’ll give an example and Sam will be surprised. Millie Callahan the best, or one of the best, looking sixteen-year old girls in old North Adamsville was very prim and proper as well as hot-looking. She went to 8:00 AM Sunday Mass at Sacred Heart every week. And every week I would meet her after Mass and walk her to old Adamsville Beach. Sweating like a trooper. Maybe once in a while she would blush but mostly she got “turned on.” Turned on especially by one word that I used in many contexts on our walks. One Sunday, I swear, she got so aroused that, well let’s say we “did it” and you can figure out what the “did it” part was, right down on the beach near the old North Adamsville Yacht Club (there was a little secluded area that everybody knew about). And we were together through the rest of high school, “doing it” just fine. [Lowell: Yes, Phil, Millie was a fox, for sure. I used sit a couple of rows in back of her at Mass to look at her ass. By the way everybody knew you two were “doing it.” And I was jealous, no question. It was only because she went to St. Anne’s High and not North Adamsville High that it was not more widely known and commented on. Nice work, Phil.]

The whole point of bringing this swearing thing up this many years later though is that, more often than not, the way I got entangled [Sam: Nice word, Phil] with women later on was that same basic approach. Sure I went through three marriages, and a several girlfriends, so maybe my “sticking” power wasn’t so great but it got short haul, short ashes hauled results. Anyway after the last one left a couple of years ago I started to notice that because of that lost and my changed work situation (working out of the house more with the luxury of the Internet age computer niceness) I wasn’t running into women to swear to, and maybe turn on.

Now I have read Johnny Silver’s wicked little story about his “trials and tribulations” with the young quail and how he was wasting away without it. [Sam: Young women, not quail Phil. Did you hear about the women’s liberation movement in your travels?] And how he finally “got lucky” with some teeny-bopper. Well we all knew Johnny was that way. In fact I had to f--king warn him off of my younger sister, Kate, one time. [Sam: Oh yeah, I remember that time. I think you had a baseball bat in hand at the time, right?] Me, I like women a little older, more my own fifty-ish age say twenty something and so I figured since nothing was happening elsewhere I would, like Johnny did, give one of the Internet sex sites a try. [Sam: Is every lonely-heart guy over the age of about thirty “running” to the sex sites for love and whatever? Am I missing some important sociological trend here? Also what is it with you old corner boy guys? Nobody expects you to tell the whole true to strangers, especially on the Internet, although it helps, but this age thing is weird. We are all sixty-something. That fifty-something was a while back but I never was a snitch, and I won’t be one now.]

I don’t know if you know how these sex sites work. Let’s just call the one I went on Get Laid Fast and you will get the flavor of the thing. [Sam: Phil, you don’t have to tell anybody over the age of about ten about Internet sex sites. All you have to do is Google the word sex on any search engine in the world and you will get more sex sites than you can possibly imagine, including, I assume, your Get Laid Fast site.] Naturally the lure (for an old-time heterosexual man) is sexy, semi-and unclothed women, young and middle- aged (nobody, nobody in their right minds that is, confesses to being, well, mature, hell, I will just say it straight here, old), just waiting to get their hands on you (where I will leave to the reader’s imagination but you get the point) and show you paradise, yes paradise. Just my cup of f-- king tea. Where do I sign up, and how quickly.

That signing up was the easy part. Well, almost easy. See, the hook is that everybody can sign up and put whatever they want on their very own personal profile page. The problem is that unless you pay up, pay up a fee, nobody in the known cyberspace world is going to know about your sex hunger, especially those alluring semi and unclothed young and middle-aged women. Hey, I am a man of the f -- king world so I know that I have to pony up, and gladly to get in on the action. And so I am off to the races for a few ducats.

Well, almost. Almost on two counts. First I have to figure out what my profile message will be and then my “message” to those women’s profiles that strike my fancy. So, naturally I go light on my personal profile. You know how I am looking for the love of my life (already had it). [Sam: I bet six, two, and even it was old time Millie Callahan, hands down. Hell, she might have been the love of my life too if I could have ever gotten beyond staring at her ass during Sunday Mass.] And companionship and all that other crap when everybody knows it a roll in the hay that is driving me, and about three billion (or whatever number of guys are in the world), to sites like this. And, maybe, women too. Or at least that is what I my worldly assumption would have been. The really, the Phil Larkin reality, is that I might have been better off on some mix and match dot com square dating service. Hell, I am willing to bet Sam his six, two and even I would have had more rolls in the hay by now that way than on this “hyper”- sex site.

Here is why. And don’t laugh at a f - - king fifty-something guy for being so silly. [Lowell: Phil, I know you, we went to school together, get real-sixty-something, okay.] I went back to my old tried and true strategy with my personal messages to various women who struck my fancy. Nothing like in kid time but still basically- “babe, do you want to f- - k tonight, don’t be a bitch, call me now, here is my cell phone number," and the like. Now the site is loaded with women within about fifty miles of my residence so I naturally click on all those thirty and forty something women as well as my twenty something honeys who have been around a little, are looking for a little sugar in their bowl, and are bound to go for rough and ready fifty-something guy. No sweat.

Actually my line, as I found out later, was kind of tame and “civilized” compared to some of the younger guys who were swinging their dicks in full view and stuff like that. Hell, it was tame and civilized compared to some of the women’s profile information and photos. I blushed, actually blushed, at some of the stuff they, theoretically, wanted to do, and do right this minute. Notice that word "theoretical" though. For example, first off I got a proposal from a thirty-something woman who wanted me to help her in her new career as a cosmetologist. She had, foolishly, gone to art school when she was younger and when the art-related job that she had didn’t survive the recent economic downturns she saw the light of working the women who are still working hair and nails racket. Still kind of artistic, right?

And I was willing to give the idea some consideration; although unlike Johnny Silver I did not play the older, wiser “sugar-daddy” angle. Or give any thought to such a notion with older women. If I was looking for Johnny’s teeny-boppers sure. But with older women, no way. Here is the hitch though. Said future hairdresser in return for my largesse was only willing to be a companion, a platonic, no sex companion for an “old geezer” (my term, hers was a man “old enough to be her father”).

And it went down from there. Although nobody, absolutely nobody that answered my messages was put off by my so-called lewd language. Case closed on that. What was also case closed though was my faulty understanding of the cyberspace “meat market.” I will not run down every click but just give some observation examples.

Many of the semi- and unclothed women whose profiles spoke of sexual adventure on personal contact wanted, desperately wanted in fact, not be a “one-night stand” and therefore put off any notion of sex with them to the Greek calends. That happened several times. Needless to say, other than the question of false advertising on their part here that I may speak to my lawyer about, I stopped communication very quickly. No sale, no way. Moreover, many women were carrying “baggage” of various sorts. Kids, broken marriages, bad-ass ex-boyfriends, you name it. That would not have put off old Phil but one or two messages was enough to indicate that their “get laid tonight” come-on was nothing more than getting some psychic comfort for their old wounds, and nothing more until the Greek calends. Again, no sale, no way.

So you can begin to see why I suggested the title “sexless” sex sites to Sam. And why he grabbed onto the idea right away (aside from my admittedly incessant badgering him after pure-as-gold Johnny Silver got his say). A couple of “conversations” warrant special attention though. One woman, an otherwise very interesting arty-type woman whom I actually met in person if you can believe that, did not believe that her “aging” twenty-something life would be complete unless she had a lip-enhancement operation so she could have those pouty Angela Jolie lips. Jesus, what the hell has the world come too. I admit I was tempted, sorely tempted, to help her out although her lips looked perfectly kissable to me. But again the notion of sex with her before I was placed in an assisted- living facility was out of the question. Yeah, you have got it by now. No sale, no way.

Another woman, and here she can serve as an example of other similar instances that happened, was fired-up to chat (as I was with her as well) and we e-mailed a blizzard of messages back and forth. She, more than many others, was someone I wanted to meet in person and I brought the subject up in one e-mail after we had been “cyber-chatting” for a few weeks. Kaput. She went off-site the day after that and left no forwarding address, no e-mail address, as they said in the old days. Maybe I have to change my line. Or better, and here I could get back at Sam as well for his silly “comeuppance” remark in the headline. Maybe, Mille Callahan is out there is cyberspace somewhere. Honey, I still remember that swear word that “turned” you on. Help.

Sam Lowell comment yet again:

Yes, I know. I know damn well that I should not indulge my seemingly endlessly sex-haunted old-time corner boys. After all this space is nothing but a high-tone “high communist” propaganda outlet on most days- the good days. I should, moreover, not indulge a “mere” part-timer at our old North Adamsville Salducci’s Pizza Parlor hang-out be-bop night “up the Downs” like one “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin. (For those who do not know what that reference refers to don’t worry you all had your own “up the Downs” and your own corner boys, or mall rats as the case may be, who hung out there.) Despite his well-known, almost automatic, foul mouth in the old days Phil had his fair share, more than his fair share given that mouth, of luck with the young women (girls, in the old days, okay). I am still mad at him for “stealing” my old-time neighborhood heartthrob, Millie Callahan, right from under my nose. (And right in the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church after Mass to boot. If he is still a believer he stands condemned. No mercy. As for me, an old heathen, I was just glad that I stared at her ass during Mass. I stand condemned anyway, if things work out that way).

Well, that was then and now is now and if you read about “poor” Phil Larkin’s trials and tribulations with the ladies recently in a post here entitled -“Sexless” sex sites” (see above) you know that his old Irish blarney ( I am being kind to the old geezer here) had finally given out and that he was scoreless lately. That is he was scoreless as of that writing. As Phil pointed out to me personally as part of our conversations while I was editing his story he felt that he would have had better luck with finding a woman companion (for whatever purpose) by just randomly calling up names in the telephone directory than from that “hot” sex site that he found himself embroiled in. And, in an earlier time, he might have been right.

But we are now in the age of so-called “social networking” (of which this space, as an Internet-driven format is a part) and so, by hook or by crook, someone placed his story (or rather, more correctly, my post from this blog) on his Facebook wall. As a result of that “click” Phil is now “talking” to a young (twenty-something) woman graduate student from Penn State (that is why just a few minutes ago he was yelling “Go, Nittany Lions” in my ear over the cell phone) and is preparing to head to the rolling Appalachian hills of Pennsylvania for a “date” with said twenty-something. Go figure, right? So my placement of this saga, or rather part two of the saga (mercifully there will be no more), is really being done in the interest of my obscure sense of completeness rather than “mere” indulgence of an old-time corner boy. As always I disclaim, and disclaim loudly for the world to hear, that while I have helped edit this story this is the work of one “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin, formerly of North Adamsville and now on some twisted, windy road heading to central Pennsylvania.

Phil Larkin comment:

Jesus, that Sam Lowell is a piece of work. Always rubbing in that “foul-mouth” thing. But I guess I did get the better of him on that Millie Callahan thing back in the day and he did provide me a “life-line” just now with his posting of my story on his damn communist-addled blog. It is a good thing we go back to “up the Downs” time and that I am not a “snitch” because some of the stuff that I have read from him here should, by rights, be reported directly to J. Edgar Hoover, or whoever is running the F.B.I., if anybody is. We can discuss that another time because I don’t have time to be bothered by any such small stuff. Not today. Not since I hit “pay-dirt” with my little Amy. Yes, an old-fashioned name, at least I haven’t heard the name used much lately for girls, but very new-fashioned in her ideas. She is a twenty-five graduate student from Penn State and I am, as I speak, getting ready to roll out down the highway for our first “in person” meet.

You all know, or should be presumed to know to use a Markin-ism (Christ, we still call his silly little terms that name even forty years later), that I was having a little temporary trouble finding my life’s companion through sex sites. I told that story before and it is not worth going into here. [Lowell: Fifty years Phil, and every other guy (or gal) from the Class of 1964. Do the math. I hope you didn’t try to con Amy with that “youthful” fifty-something gag-christ, right back to you, Phil.] Let me tell you this one though because it had done nothing but restore my faith in modern technology.

Little weird communist propaganda front or not, Sam’s blog goes out into the wilds of cyberspace almost daily (and it really should be reported to the proper authorities now that I have read his recent screeds on a Russian Bolshevik guy named Trotsky who is some kind of messiah to Sam and his crowd). So a few weeks ago somebody, somehow ( I am foggy, just like Sam, on the mechanics of the thing, although I know it wasn’t some Internet god making “good” cyberspace vibes or anything like that) picked it up and place it (linked it) on his Facebook wall ( I think that is the proper word). Let’s call him Bill Riley (not his real name and that is not important anyway) Now I don’t know if you know how this Facebook thing works, although if you don’t then you are among the three, maybe four, people over the age of five that doesn’t.

Here’s what I have gathered. Bill Riley set up an account with his e-mail address, provided some information about himself and his interests and waited for the deluge of fan responses and “social-connectedness” (Sam’s three dollar word). Well, not exactly wait. Every day in every way you are inundated with photos of people you may know, may not know, or may or may not want to know and you can add them to your “friends” pile (assuming they “confirm” your request for friendship). Easy, right?

Well, yes easy is right because many people will, as I subsequently found out, confirm you as a friend for no other reason than that you “asked” them to include you. Click- confirm. Boom. This, apparently, is what happened when Bill “saw” Amy’s photo. (I found out later, after “talking” to Amy for a while, that she did not know Bill Riley or much about him except that he has a wall on Facebook. So the weird part is that Bill “introduced” us, although neither Amy nor I know Bill. This has something Greek comedic, or maybe a Shakespeare idea, about it, for sure.). In any case Amy, as a sociology graduate student at Penn State, took an interest in the “sexless” sex site angle for some study she was doing around her thesis and, by the fates, got hooked into the idea that she wanted to interview me about my experiences, and other related matters.

Without going into all the details that you probably know already I “joined” Bill Riley’s Facebook friends cabal and through him his “friend” Amy contacted me about an interview. Well, we “chatted” for a while one day and she asked some questions and I asked others in my most civilized manner. What I didn’t know, and call me stupid for not knowing, was that Amy not only was a “friend” of Bill’s but, unlike me (or so I thought), had her own Facebook page with photos. Now her photo on Bill’s wall was okay but, frankly, she looked just like about ten thousand other earnest female twenty-something graduate students. You know, from hunger. But not quite because daddy or mommy or somebody was paying the freight to let their son or daughter not face reality for a couple more years in some graduate program where they can “discover” themselves. Of course, naturally old cavalier that I am said, while we were chatting, that she was attractive, and looked energetic and smart and all that stuff. You know the embedded male thing with any woman, young or old, that looks the least bit “hit-worthy.” (Embedded is Sam’s word, sorry.)That photo still is on Bill’s wall and if I had only seen that one I would still be sitting in some lounge whiskey sipping my life away.

Amy’s “real” photos, taken at some Florida beach during Spring break, showed a very fetching (look it up in the dictionary if you don’t know that old-time word means) young woman that in her bikini had me going. Let’s put it this way I wrote her the following little “note” after I got an eyeful:

“Hi Amy- Recently I made a comment, after I first glanced at your photo wall, that you looked fetching (read, attractive, enchanting, hot, and so on). On that first glance I, like any red-blooded male under the age of one hundred, and maybe over that for all I know, got a little heated up. Now I have had a change to cool down, well a little anyway, and on second peek I would have to say you are kind of, sort of, in a way, well, okay looking. Now that I can be an objective observer I noticed that one of your right side eyelashes is one mm, or maybe two, off-balance from the left side. Fortunately I have the “medicine” to cure you. If you don’t mind living with your hideous asymmetrical deformation that is up to you. I will still be your friend. But if you were wondering, deep in the night, the sleepless night, why you have so few male Facebook friends or why guys in droves are passing your page by there you have it. Later-Phil.”

The famous old reverse play that has been around for a million years, right? Strictly the blarney, right? [Lowell: Right, Phil, right as ever]. That little literary gem however started something in her, some need for an older man to tell her troubles to or something. And from there we started to “talk” more personally and more seriously. See I had it all wrong about her being sheltered out there in the mountains by mom and dad keeping her out of harm’s way until she “found” herself. No, Amy was working, and working hard, to make ends meet and working on her doctorate at the same time. Her story, really, without the North Adamsville corner boy thing, would be something any of us Salducci’s guys would understand without question. (I was not a part-time corner boy by the way, except by Frankie Riley’s 24/7/365 standards and The Scribe’s). I will tell you her story sometime depending on how things work but right now I am getting ready to go get a tank full of gas and think a little about those photos that launched a thousand clicks.

Yet another Sam comment:

Phil, like I said to Johnny Silver about what people might say about his little teeny-bopper love. Go for it. Don’t watch out. And like I said before we had better get to that socialist future we all need pretty damn quick if for no other reason than to get some sexual breathes of fresh air that such a society promises.

Once Again Phil Larkin On The Prowl-“To Keep Me Young As I Grow Old”

Sam Lowell comment:

As everybody knows by now that fling with Amy that graduate student from Penn State, now Doctor Amy from what I heard, that Phil Larkin ditched because she was too busy to give him her undivided attention led to a “dry spell” for him. Ever itchy though when it comes to sex, to young women and to the desperate losing fight again mortally he went back into the trenches recently, went back on the “sex sites” that have succored his old age (almost seventy in real time, almost sixty in Phil time. Like all these sites as mentioned in some of the sketches above the going is very hit or miss. So naturally Phil as a veteran was philosophical about the less than promising prospects but as in the past was determined like they say about a lots of things to keep plugging away for that one jump at the brass ring. Here is how it played out this time as Phil related the tale to me one sunny afternoon at Bessy’s down in the North Adamsville Marina:

Old Phil said he had latched onto he did not know exactly from what source since he had placed himself on several sites figuring that the more places he was entered the better shots he would have of grabbing some sweet young thing that was looking for a father-figure. Or as likely was tired of hopped-up testosterone-driven guys who just wanted to send photos of their member expecting any young women on the site to be so hard up that they would jump at the chance to grab any member they could get their hands on. (Member being a family-friendly expression for a man’s penis, okay.)

One day Phil received two replies from young women who said they were responding to his profile messages since they also lived in Riverdale where Phil had resided since breaking it off with Doctor Amy. And sent photographs as well, tasteful although slightly revealing photos showing nice figures in scanty clothes. Not nude selfies like a number of seemingly uninhibited but also somewhat reckless young women had done in the past (if they were on the up and up who knows who might have seen the photos and the context and would continue to see forever unless they were deleted) Had done out of the blue on his e-mail alert although they tended to from places like California and Alaska and so were just “teasing” or had other purposes in mind.

They both also sent messages that had old Phil thinking very horny thoughts and so he replied not really expecting anything to come of the matter since a lot of times on these sites there is a lot of crazy BS and just come-on nonsense as he began to realize from that first episode back in 2011 when he snagged Amy that sadly missed graduate student from Penn State who did him just right and who he would still occasionally get heated up about on lonely nights.

One respondent fell by the wayside and didn’t respond and the other was Sofia who the rest of this piece will be about. Phil was still suspicious of her intend since her answer had the unmistakable mark of being computer generated (or that the whole thing was as had been true of other sites just a big scam where some old maid or guy in need of a job was typing sexy salacious e-mails like in the old days with telephone sex who knew who or what the other party looked like or was into). But Phil is nothing if not game and despite his increasing unease he returned a number of her frankly vacuous although sexy e-mails on the off chance that something was on the level. He would write as was his (our) wont long screeds filled with sexy replies and with some details about them “hooking up” (her term but Phil knew what it meant having read his Tom Wolfe on the subject) and got continuous vacuous replies back. He determined if for no other reason than he was desperate that he would play his hand out although after a week to ten days of this even he gave nothing but perfunctory replies.

Then one day, several days after he had asked for some more photos she sent him a couple of real nude selfies which revealed a very attractive thin young woman that he would certainly like to meet in person. Moreover her messages got more personal (although still in abstract sex mode which could have been directed at any male under one hundred years old, and maybe older) and he began to think that things might get interesting although he was still doubtful about the whole thing. Then one e-mail she expressed how much she liked to do oral (give blow jobs, head, whatever, including an interest in trying deep throat like in the old porno movie of the same name starring Linda Loveless taking a guy’s “member” all the way down to the root) and anal sex (doing it Italian-style as it was expressed in the old days when like with oral sex those were alternatives for women to avoid getting pregnant, especially prominent acts among nice Catholic girls in the old days in North Adamsville as Phil well remembered) and was getting horny just thinking about it. She also challenged him tell her how HE was going to alleviate her “problem” in some detail.

Unfortunately that day he was busy with some projects and so wrote only a short reply. He felt bad about it that night since he began see that she got “turned on” by the sex chat. So he wrote up a scenario that he thought she might like to read. In the meantime she had sent him an e-mail that he did not read until the next morning expressing her nervousness about meeting in person and what could he do to alleviate that fear. So he added an addition to the message that he originally intended to send

Here is what got old Foul-Mouth Phil in the door if you can believe this:

Sofia- Believe me I am as nervous about this whole arrangement as you are so don’t think you are alone. Two strangers meeting for great sex though is what keeps me going. I would point out to you that I have already said that we should meet in a hotel or motel which I will pay for using my credit card so they will know who I am. Also once we meet at the door after I give you the room number you/I can always back off. Moreover there is no reason for you to have money on you as I will pay for everything. I don’t want to play games or deal with BS either so this is what I offer to you to help you relax about the whole thing. But remember we both want to have sex and so we have to have a certain amount of trust here.

Here is something to maybe make you feel better.

In your last e-mail you mentioned how you liked to do oral and anal and you asked me to describe how we would get it on when we meet. I was a little busy so I gave you a quick run-down on what we would do in that situation but since I think it turns you on to read about sexy stuff so I have written something longer to get you in the mood, a fantasy but not that far off if you think about it.

Here goes:

“After a few more e-mails we decide that we will meet. I suggest and you go along with the idea that we meet at a hotel or motel not too far away. We decide that the “night time is the right time” for what we are dying to do and so we agree to meet at about six o’clock in the evening just as it is getting dark these days. I sent you an e-mail with the room number and you come by and knock on the door. I open the door and while we are both nervous we agree that things are cool and we will give it a go. We are both nervous obviously because we have been sending sexy e-mails back and forth and so our expectations are high. We have a couple of glasses of wine to settle us down and do some idle chit-chat but we both know what we are there for and so we are a bit anxious to get it on.

After getting a little mellow from the wine I say that we will flip a coin to see who takes their clothes off first. I win so you have to take them off first while I watch. You do so slowly taking off your dress showing just your sexy lingerie. This arouses me and I pull out my cock from my pants which is visibly getting hard. You take off your bra showing your beautiful little breasts and I can see your nipples are getting harder. You turn around so I can see them from all angles and I can hardly wait to feel them up and suck on those hard nipples with my teeth to get you going a little. Then you take off your panties showing your nice little pussy and you make some grinding motions like in a dance to show that beauty off. It is my turn so you sit on the bed while I pull my pants off and then my underwear. You start to finger yourself while I take off my shirt and I can see that like me you are aroused.

I come over to the bed and turn down the sheets and then move you to the side of the bed so that your legs are dandling over the side as I prepare to open your thighs so I can get to my work. I start by playing with your nipples and sucking on them then I move my tongue down to your belly slowly and eventually get to that sweet spot pussy that I can tell already is a little wet. I start licking your pussy with my tongue and I can hear you start moaning and moving your hips a little. I put my tongue in deeper and you moan some more. I then reach on the bed-stand to get some Vaseline to put on my finger and while I am still licking you put my nicely greased finger up your bunghole which makes your hips move faster. After a while I can hear your breathe getting harder and I go faster until all of a sudden you yell out something. I know you have had an organism because I can feel your wetness on my tongue and it feels good.

I ask you if you want me to go inside your pussy while you are all wet and I am as hard as a rock but you say no you want me to try to get you off again since you think you want me to take you up the ass that night, take you anally like you mentioned in your e-mails that you were dying to have done to you. So I go to work again a little harder this time because you have already exploded once. I put my tongue on your pussy but I also take one of my fingers and put it on your cunt and start rubbing fast. A few minutes later I hear you moaning loudly again and I know you will explode again. When you do you tell me that you want me to take you from behind on your luscious little ass.

Who am I to deny Sofia’s command and so I turn you over. Before I enter you I put on a condom and to make sure I go gently into your butt I add some Vaseline so it will go smoothly. I decide that since this is our first time to have you go on your hands and knees doggie style while I am on my knees as I put my cock inside you. You gasp at first but the as I am going back and forth you relax a little and start moaning again. You tell me to go deeper and I do so but not too long after that you cum again and shortly after that I explode too. We both laugh after finally getting it on since we both had wanted and needed this badly.

You help me take of the condom and we laughed as we take our towels and wiped each other off. I asked you a little while later when we had rested a bit to give me a blow-job which would make my night. I asked you if you did deep throat but you said another time once you figured out how to get my thick cock all the way down your throat. You gave me a great blow-job though sucking away like crazy and making little bites on my cockhead with your teeth which turned me on. I exploded and you swallowed my cum and kept sucking me until I was dry. We rested so more and then got up. You put your clothes on and I put mine on. You said you had to go and I asked if we would meet again. You said you would e-mail me after you thought about it and we agreed to do that.”

How’s that for a scenario. While it didn’t go exactly like that when we met it was damn close.

Sam Lowell comment: Get my damn heart medicine-and so it goes.

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