Right-aligned Column

One night after a fistful of pills chased with 40-ounces of some obscure malt liquor, I had a dream of Ma Bell as a willful, badgering dominatrix-type CEO/Matriarch. She had four arms and a necklace of skulls and she was towering above a plebian population of vacuous sycophants, using the phone lines that bind our lives as whips, the incessant smacking lashes of which could only serve as painful affirmation of a devolving humanity’s enslavement to media-driven psychological manipulation.

I’m sorry. The preceding sentence was painful to a point, in that I have always been a firm believer in the sadomasochistic undertones of our “service” society. And now New York Bell, a typical service provider, having failed under the acronym NYNEX, takes on yet another identity, Bell Atlantic, in order to stay one step ahead of the profit police. Now they can launch their periodic campaigns of Service-Sadism not only with renewed and calculated fury but a certain amount of anonimity as well.

I’ve grown jaded I suppose. Fact is I don’t care anymore. But it wasn’t so long ago that Call-Waiting actually seemed sinister to me. Now I laugh, log on, and check my E-mail. I also walk faster than necessary. And I eat on the run even though I have no place to be. Just trying to fit in.

I remember those lazy Saturday mornings, how I would be regularly awoken, as I am on many a morning, by a peppy-voiced little doggerel goddess wondering why I haven’t hooked up Call Waiting yet. I said I already spend enough time waiting. Why be rude, she said, besides I could save somebody’s life if only I would take advantage of their free connection offer.

Knowing, of course, no one could be as rude as the phone co., I told her I don’t like Call Waiting because it forces me to be rude. Then I hung up. I do want to miss some things, and with Call Waiting you can’t screen potential pests if you’re already on the phone, so you end up having to go to work, or to a bad poetry reading, or some other hideous event, when you could have easily pretended you weren’t home. I may have been missing calls but I was saving hours of quality time.

“Ma” however doesn’t really want us to save time, she wants us to subscribe. It’s always a special deal too, like an absolutely free connection (like it actually costs money to flick a switch down there at Annoyance Central). These special deals are forever on the verge of expiring too. Thus a false sense of urgency and potential loss is created which infiltrates our mundane lives until many people no longer think it odd when they begin to act like manic hyperactive chickens in the privacy of their own homes, talking to themselves, bumping into walls, walking the streets obsessively imagining the calls they are missing, and no doubt certain that their careers should be much further along.

I say “false” sense of urgency because you can always wait until the next day and there will be another almost exactly similar special deal that Ma and her army of procurement police will call to tell you about. Or if you simply wait long enough they just give you Call Waiting for free anyway—a marketing trick gleaned from the drug wars—figuring you’ll want to (have to) buy it after that. So they gave it to me. Funny thing was, nine times out of ten it was the phone company itself interrupting my call, either to make sure I had Call Waiting or to sell me the Call Waiting I already had.

At first I wasn’t sure what the strategy was, but I figured it out: If cyberspace is actually the Collective Unconscious, what Call Waiting does, is to put you in touch with all the little subconscious messages coming down that information turnpike. These messages could be friends or associates, but like I said, often they turn out to be none other than the Phone company itself—for it is in this way they replace the subconscious (aka, Voice of your Mother) thus reclaiming the original title of “Ma” Bell, while effectively seeming to deny it.

Or to put it in academic terms: it is as if entertainment classics such as Route 66, and On the Road have recontextualized themselves within the framework of ancient Chinese medicine, and the communication lines coming into our homes (heads), now serve, less as electro-umbilical cords and more like psychotic threads ending in pin tips or fine sharp needles capable of pricking the mind—thus the much anticipated Information Superhighway becomes a kind of cyber-accupuncture, stimulating the intersections in the flow of energy which connect the individual to the cosmos at large. And it is a bitter, petty cosmos at that.

Let’s pursue the ramifications of said pettiness for a second: let’s say my conscious mind (or Ego) is like Operator Central, and all these little desperate people are being placed on hold. Perhaps it brings a delicious pang to my heart to think of them sitting, waiting on their phones—while I yack it up with somebody else—jealous perhaps for being delegated to a less important rung on the ladder of my personal-best, goal-driven life.

It is a grim scenario indeed, but it is via such imagery that Call Waiting feeds the bitter infighting which maintains the competitive social hierarchy that makes capitalism (and Kulture) work. For if people weren’t being constantly pitted against each other, they might not feel so insignificant and would not thereafter be driven to over-compensate through great deeds of art, architecture and/or domestic violence.

The innuendo here is: society could collapse any minute, and the ones who would be responsible for that collapse will be those who don’t have Call Waiting. It’s safe to say no one wants to be responsible for the breakdown of society, thus Guilt takes its rightful place behind the steering wheel of the Vehicle of Western Civilization.

This On the Road, Information Superhighway subtextual metaphor continues to serve us as we examine the phone co.’s TV ads—vulnerable people just like you and me, stuck out on the Highway of Life, as the Hard Rain is a Fallin’, unable to get the Car of Our Dreams started, unable to fix said vehicle ourselves, unable to escape, unable to get through to mom, dad, the banker or broker.

In such a scenario, family bonds etc., in fact the very fragile net of civilization itself is evidently woven of phone lines, virtual or otherwise, phone lines brimming with friendly voices calling us home and out of harm’s way.

These ads work the same way psychoanalysis does, by subtly getting us to believe we don’t have any control over external events (or ourselves). Thus by offering relief (release) the ads provide a script for pleasure. S&M does much the same thing, establishing a script, or routine, for pleasure. The difference is that in a service society, once we become dependant upon it, the script either decays (via planned obsolescence), or is taken away, and we are then asked to subscribe to a service that will restore or maintain it for us.

And when you come you think of it, your life probably hasn’t been that much fun lately and that’s why the phone company can call you at 10 am Saturday morning to tell you how you can’t live another day without Call Waiting. They know you’re faking it, you’re not really making it. So what starts out as a service becomes a form of protection. Just like auto makers now have ads subtly hinting that you might die if you don’t buy their cars, the Phone Co. ads show you how your life will fall apart without Call Waiting:

We see an irate friend complaining about someone who inconsiderately lives sans le service. A boss pacing the floor because a big deal won’t go through. A job lost. A relationship on the brink. A special friend with a broken heart somewhere in the world. All are saved from neglect, failure and destitution because of Call Waiting.

I often wish I actually had one of those special someones somewhere in the world who might comfort me through the increasing hours of guilt and doubt that the media instills. But these special people don’t really exist. They’re just products of some ad writer’s imagination, much like health insurance, new improved cleaning fluids, or job security. Not that there aren’t jobs, it’s just that most jobs are degrading. I know, I had one once. I may have even got it because I had Call Waiting, I decline to remember.

But while my memory has waned significantly in the last few years, my peripheral vision has not. And what I increasingly see in that gaudy Zone of Signs is a proliferation of hyphenated ad-speak names for yet more conveniences. Thus even as Call Waiting fades into the background, a new dizzying array of services becomes available: Call-Answering, Call-Forwarding, Call-This, Call-That. Caller-ID being one of the hot newcomers, for hyper-paranoid people who want to know who is calling before they answer (since most of us are either afraid of our friends, or don’t really like them).

The problem is, I wouldn’t recognize anybody’s phone number anyway and precious minutes of personal productivity would be lost as I scrambled to look up the number pixilating across my screen. But I think they’ve fixed that problem.

Another part of the Caller-ID package, apparently, is a free sign to hang in your window—this is so hobos, thugs and rapists who are down in the street, and who may be thinking of giving you a prank call, can see that you have Caller-ID and therefore decline to prank call you (which is a mute issue if they’re calling from a booth). All of which begs the question: why does Ma give out our phone numbers anyway, if she’s so damned concerned about our privacy. Maybe she just wants us to have friends.

And now of course there’s *69 (I won’t even begin to exploit the psychosexual ramifications of the number itself) which poses as a service until you try to call your spouse from the site of your adultery pretending you’re somewhere else. Suddenly it strikes you—you’ve been duped. Your needs have been used against you once again. Not to mention your vanity. But it can also be funny.

I have actually seen people wait for their answering machine to screen the call, then when no message was left, they would rush to the phone and press *69 only to have the call forwarded to the virtual receptacle of some person they didn’t want to talk to in the first place. Thus upset, the first party *66ed or *88ed the call to another phone, thinking to plague the false friend and punish her for her non-committal attitude. However, as the second party’s machine needed to realign itself after each call, there was a constant busy signal. Due to various synaptic delays in the network, the return call did eventually break through. But 66 was the access number for the message service where with the help of some electronic fluke a portion of the first party’s call had been recorded. So it was that via these incestuous circuitrous doings involving several so-called “service” glitches and overloaded lines, the original recipient of the unwanted call ended up receiving her own answering machine message an hour later. It’s kind of like those comic stories where someone finds out they are their own grandmother.

We are supposed to worry about phone solicitation, so it’s ironic that the worst offender is the phone company(s) itself. Once they called me up and badgered me into a long-distance program called Call-Saving, or True Saving, or something like that. They said I didn’t have to pay for it, it was free and they were giving it to me anyway. I got a whole packet of material in the mail telling me how great this was. Last month I saved 22 cents on long distance calls. The stamp cost 29 cents. Add another 10 cents for paper and printing. I used to wish the telephone company would give me credit for all the paper waste that would no longer occur if they stopped sending me junk mail. Now I just wish they would leave me alone.

I think it was Telly Savalas who said “Feel the pain, baby.” Or was it “Feel the Velvet.” I don’t remember. But there are some paranoid freaks who think the name is code for “Telephone-OK,” or “Phone=Knowledge.” Of course, Telly didn’t actually work for the phone co. I think it was an ad for cheap liquor. But who the hell drinks Canadian whisky. Something’s going on here—we just don’t know what it is.

Carl Watson is a writer and philosopher. His books include Beneath the Empire of the Birds, Bricolage ex Machina, and hotel des actes irrovocables.

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BQE

BROOKLYN’S QUALITY ENVIRONMENT

By Edwin Diaz

FUCKING BQE,

IS TRYING TO KILL ME

ALONG WITH HIS COUSIN WILLY B.

EVERYDAY THEY SEND ME A MESSAGE

THAT MY DEATH IS IMMINENTLY NEAR

BUT IT’S NOT THE TYPE OF MESSAGE

THAT CAN BE PICKED UP BY THE EAR.

YOU SAY THAT SOUNDS QUITE QUEER

NOT REALLY, CAUSE THE SIGNAL COMES IN QUITE CLEAR

IN MY BREATHING APPARATUS

ALL MY COUGHING, SNEEZING, AND MY WHEEZING LETS YOU KNOW MYSTATUS

THE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICE HAVE TOLD ME NOT TO BE AFRAID

BECAUSE TO INVESTIGATE AND PROTECT ME FROM THE BQE AND WILLY B

IS WHY THEY GET PAID.

MEANWHILE, NO ONE CAN TELL ME WHAT’S THE MATTA

POLICE READ REPORTS

AND CRUNCH ALL THE DATA.

MEANWHILE, NO ONE CAN TELL ME WHAT’S THE MATTA

POLICE READ REPORTS

AND CRUNCH ALL THE DATA.

SO IF YOU DON’T GET IT YET YOU’D BETTER

START TO SEE

CAUSE THEY’LL BE COMING,

WILLY B AND BQE,

AFTER YOU WHEN THEY’RE DONE

SO IF YOU DON’T GET IT YET YOU’D BETTER

START TO SEE

CAUSE THEY’LL BE COMING,

WILLY B AND BQE,

AFTER YOU WHEN THEY’RE DONE

I KNOW SOONER OR LATER I’LL BE DEAD

WHEN WILLY B & BQE COME AND PUMP ME

FULL OF LEAD

ANOTHER LIFE CUT SHORT

THAT WAS JUST TRYING TO GET AHEAD.

CHILLIN IN THIS BURG

TRYING TO CATCH A BREAK IN THIS TOXIC CLUB MED.

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Early Morning Routine

by Naomi M. Melendez-Mekkaoui

She struts, struts, strutting down the avenue

all 98 pounds of her.

In her loose fitting, black leggings,

her faded T-shirt shouts

"SOY BORICUA" from her chest.

A comb dangles from her un-combed, nappy hair.

She crosses the unfilled pot-holed, streets.

Stepping over crumpled, candy bar wrappers

and half smoked, lipstick smeared cigarettes.

You see, she's in a hurry,

‘cause, she wants to be first,

first in line, on time,

for her daily intake of

Tang flavored methadone...

She needs some, you see,

That's all she needs, says she.

It's her breakfast, it's her juice.

To ease her pain,

the monkey on her back,

her constant companion.

To shake-off her morning shakes.

But, it's only temporary.

She stands outside the place.

You see,

with outstretched tanned arms,

like softly weathered leather,

designed

by tattoos and trackmarks. Yeah,

Trackmarks and tattoos,

receiving acid drops

from the early morning dew.

She gets flashbacks, you see,

of the days when A.Z.T.

was too rich for her blood,

her H.I.V. positive blood.

and D.O.H. was synonymous with D.O.A.

She's reminiscing, of the time

when her T-cells could be counted

above four-hundred

and PCP pneumonia

was still unheard of.

"Hey wake-up. Who's first?" Someone yells.

Quickly, returning to reality,

she gulps down her O.J.

as if quenching a 3 day thirst.

Off she goes, strutting, strut.

Strutting down the avenue,

all 98 pounds of her.

Stepping over sleeping winos and used condoms,

remnants of past safer sex transactions.

She struts, strut,

strutting down the avenue.

You see,

she's on a journey, to her future,

her certain future,

where one day, she believes,

there'll be restful peace.

You see, where there'll be no more pain, that is,

until tomorrow

when she'll be repeating

the same early morning routine.

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Lucy& Sally

By David Kay

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First Beach

by Noam Mor

Pandora, through the looking glass,

took fortune cookies

holding photographs.

In brown corduroy

we fled

climbing statues of cats

and brigadiers

in the park

while sister built

castles of wet sand.

Comforter covered

the Donald Duck night Light

never shut till nine.

On orange-ice night

we walked west

watching purple sky

in old rooms

we saw yellowed bones,

teeth of dinosaurs.

She,

Golden Menorahs pinned

to her ears

brought us to the store

watching us

(metabolically fast)

pick race car sets

and fangs.

Sunday mornings,

covered in orthodox cants,

smelled the hump-backed rabbi

Sunday noon

on hot summer days

we rode the carousel

Sunday late

we ate on pictures of Moses

pursued by egyptian chariots

over red waters

Till lost sight.

She recalls the summer afternoons of my first lost fight

she sees me run

(to the fence

and back)

catching the girl next door

with cleft chin

and thin brown eyes.

Flinging bottlecaps

and multifaceted glass

in her hair

full of laughs

we turned

to catch

a wave brought back

burried by sand

she wants to see

perched against the picnic sack

watching us land

the wonders of seaweed

jellyfish

or fragments of crab.

Her hair long for a change of face

she was afraid

of crossing streets

schoolyard fights

and where we stayed,

She recalls

(in turns of mind and gold tint)

the bamboo stick

behind her knotted pine

chest.

My Infrequent kiss on the center of her rouge covered cheeks

Raising to drain

more gold tint

fater’s funeral procession

passed (Hearse lights dull

in noon heat)

After a long smoke,

the Bar-Mitzvah boy found words

(like color-coded oil kits)

black strips of leather held back

veins wrapped,

Strands of torah

and cants

through her hair.

She remembers her sometimes aristhmatic

lover who stayed

longer than the rest anorexic thighs

binding him tight

Through the looking glass

she watches the waiting ambulance

take grandmother back,

Believing she were everything she had.

Pandora, through the looking glass,

took fortune cookies

holding photographs,

she watched my eyelid

(striped by light

from the door crack)

flutter above pointillism poodle coverlets.

Full of gold tint

she wrapped the rainbow shawl

tight

lying next to a needlepoint

of mecca-colored sunrise

and a thin blue line

her feet hurt

and the TV blinked

finishing

her drink

she wonders what we look like

today

how our arms felt

as we played with her breast

and drank.

Holding the jetty

she climbs

watching crabs, behind rocks at high tide

hide.

the wonders of seaweed

jellyfish

or fragments of crab.

Her hair long for a change of face

she was afraid

of crossing streets

schoolyard fights

and where we stayed,

She recalls

(in turns of mind and gold tint)

the bamboo stick

behind her knotted pine

chest.

My Infrequent kiss on the center of her rouge covered cheeks

Raising

to drain

more gold tint

fater’s funeral procession

passed (Hearse lights dull

in noon heat)

After a long smoke,

the Bar-Mitzvah boy found words

(like color-coded oil kits)

black strips of leather held back

veins wrapped,

Strands of torah

and cants

through her hair.

She remembers her sometimes aristhmatic

lover who stayed

longer than the rest anorexic thighs

binding him tight

Through the looking glass

she watches the waiting ambulance

take grandmother back,

Believing she were everything she had.

Pandora, through the looking glass,

took fortune cookies

holding photographs,

she watched my eyelid

(striped by light

from the door crack)

flutter above pointillism poodle coverlets.

Full of gold tint

she wrapped the rainbow shawl

tight

lying next to a needlepoint

of mecca-colored sunrise

and a thin blue line

her feet hurt

and the TV blinked

finishing

her drink

she wonders what we look like

today

how our arms felt

as we played with her breast

and drank.

Holding the jetty

she climbs

watching crabs, behind rocks at high tide

hide.

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YUPPIES CAN'T GO HOME

by The New York Psychogeographical Association

"At home he feels like a tourist." -- Gang of Four, 1979

Graffiti has appeared around Bedford Avenue that proclaims YUPPIE GO HOME. While I sympathize with what I assume to be the author's (or authors') motivations for spray-painting this phrase in several locations in our rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, I must say that I don't believe that yuppies can be told to "go home" -- not because it is rude to do so, nor because they are already at home in Williamsburg -- but because Young, Upwardly-mobile Professionals have no home to go back to, no matter where they sleep and store their stuff. To be a yuppie is to be at home nowhere and to be a tourist everywhere.

Yuppies aspire to be members of the elite, to be among those super-privileged few who have real wealth and who hold real power, to rise to the top, to make it their home. But the top has become just as uninhabitable as the bottom. Everyone knows that it is impossible to continue to pretend that capitalist industrialization -- or digitization, its contemporary equivalent -- will slowly elevate everyone to the level of the elite. Industrialization has so thoroughly ravaged and poisoned the entire planet that everyone -- even the elite -- has been lowered to the level of common women and men. But this is not to say that common women and men have it pretty good these days, though most everyone seems to think so. We are all in the shit, and really fucking deep.

Everything that a real elite would love -- well-educated and stimulating conversation; good wine and food; beautiful, well-preserved old buildings, extensive libraries, and great works of art and literature -- all this is in fast disappearing everywhere and being replaced by inferior copies. Having $40 to spend on a single Cuban cigar is just not the same thing as having the power to prevent acid rain from irreparably damaging the soil in Cuba's tobacco fields. No one is immune to the effects of toxic pollutants in the air, water and soil. Though the members of the elite will have the money to treat their cancers, while everyone else will not, we will all die of cancer -- unless global capitalism is overthrown and replaced with a superior form of social organization.

No one denies that the once-remote suburbs now closely resemble the gritty cities more and more, or that the countryside is deteriorating everywhere. The wilderness? Where is that, exactly? Montana?! There is nowhere on Earth the members of the elite can go and enjoy their privileges in peace, quiet and good health. The entire planet is a becoming nightmare, not only for poor shits and sinners like you and me, but also for "saints" such as Lady Di, the Dead Princess of Wales.

Wherever you go, there is either incredible poverty, famine, and disease, or cell phones that irradiate the brain with deadly microwaves, "second homes" shabbily constructed by corrupt builders, automobiles stuck in traffic and spewing poisonous gases, and supermarkets well-stocked with frozen meats that need to be recalled and burned.

No one denies there is something ridiculous about all politicians, but especially those at the top. What child grows up wanting to be President some day? Though everyone wants to be as rich and powerful as Bill Gates, no one denies that the man is a social idiot, bereft of any culture whatsoever, not to mention a culture that a member of the real ruling class would deserve to have and enjoy.

And so -- YUPPIE GO HOME? No, impossible. YUPPIE OUT OF WILLIAMSBURG, maybe. REVOLUTION OR DEATH, even better -- that is, of course, if you really have to spraypaint a slogan about gentrification on buildings in the neighborhood.

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honey porter

TEARA BODICE-

TRASH GODDESS OF BERRY STREET

By Tsaurah Litsky

...an ongoing romance in which our heroine, an aspiring pornographer,

searches for true love in the bars and byways of Newe Williamsburg...

In our last installment, Teara, having enticed Olaf Olafson to her Berry St. boudoir by pretending to be the mysterious Swedish nurse Feta Torvaldson, was surprised when Olaf, leaving in the morning after their nuit d'amour (night of love), asked her to get a tongue piercing. Before she could call her sister, the dominitrix Binky Bodice, to find out about tongue piercings, Teara receives a bizarre phone message congratulating her on her triumph with Olaf and urging her to use the "rabbit shaped dildo" the next time.

Teara was perplexed. She knew of butterfly, snake, mouse, cactus, Statue of Liberty, and even penguin dildos, but never had she encountered a rabbit-shaped dildo. She was trying to picture it....two long Bugs Bunny ears which could be....when the phone rang. Oh no, Teraa thought, not another cryptic message. However it was a familiar voice that responded to her tremulous "hello."

"Hi-ya Chicken Tits," her sister Binky said. "Oh, Limbo Lips", Teara replied. "I'm so glad it's you. I need to talk, so much has been happening."

"Then, put on your falsies and meet me at the Right Bank tonight for happy hour. I need to talk to you, too," Binky answered and hung up the phone.

As Teara was dressing to go to the Right Bank she wondered how many sisters enjoyed such a close rapport as she and dear Binky. She put on her favorite red rubber mini dress--so what if Binky always told her it made her look like a salami. Teara deceided to wear her old basketball sneakers for a casual touch. Just before she went out the door, Teara remembered to reach inside her dress and lipstick her nipples. A trash goddess had to be ready for anything.

She turned the corner of South 8th Street onto Kent. A sliver of moon like a pickle floated in the sky above the East River. What does this pickle moon portend Teara wondered. Perhaps the big pickle means I will see Olaf.

The Right Bank was mobbed, artists, cardsharks, montebanks, firemen, femmes fatales and bird exterminators all socializing merrily. The beautiful E.K. was behind the bar. "Your sister's already here,"she said, nodding towards the back of the room.

Binky looked magnificent. In her Jean P. Guilty bra with the conical pointed cups and her long black leather skirt studded with metal spikes, she presented a figure to be reckoned with in any crowded elevator. Curled at her feet, in his Dalmation dog outfit, was Backwards DoGood III, Binky's slave. By day he was the Dean of a famous school for psychiatrists but at night he accompanied Binky everywhere. Sometimes as Rover, her virtual canine pet, other times, wearing a bright green vinyl suit, he was Hippity Hop, her little toad.

"Hi, sis , you look good enough to beat," Binky said.

"And you look like an exile from a Mad Max movie," Teara replied. The two sisters giggled in glee and Rover arfed joyfully.

Teara took a sip of the champagne E.K. had placed before her.

"Listen, Limbo Lips," she asked Binky,"what do you know about a rabbit-shaped dildo?"

"It's only the hottest dildo around," Binky answered. "No one wants to use anything else. It's shaped like the Playboy bunny--it stimulates not only the Kundalini and the"G" spot, but the "L', "M", "N'" "O' and "P" spots too. But a strange thing happened, the designer, a Swede named Hans Handerson is missing. Everyone wants him to design another dildo, maybe a horses ass or an elephant trunk, but he vanished without a trace six months ago from his igloo outside Oslo."

"What did he look like?" Teara asked.

"I have seen pictures," Binky said, "very tall, handsome, like a young Nick Nolte, long hair to his waist." Teara immediately knew that the dildo designer must be Olaf Olafson, her masterful lover of the previous night. Maybe he was suffering from amnesia or perhaps he had some other reason for concealing his true identity. But why had the fates brought them together?

Teara took another sip of champagne and then another and then another, then she remembered she had another question for Binky.

"I met this guy I like," Teara said.

"Will miracles never cease," Binky interjected.

Teara ignored her sisters little jest and said,"But he wants me to get a tongue piercing--why should I? I need to know the pros and cons."

Binky stuck out her fat pink tongue with the 3 silver tongue studs all in a row. Someone whistled. "You naive child," Binky said blithely," men go wild when you put your tongue in the groove and lick up to the tip, if you get my drift. The tongue pierce is made for fantastic licking and tickling. Think of your tongue pierce as a tool. It will give you power, you will be Superwoman."

Teara didn't know if she wanted to be Superwoman. She couldn't stand capes and besides she did not want to be loved only for her ability to fellate, she also wanted to be loved her for her pilgrim soul. "I don't know",she said.

"Look at it this way, Chicken Tits," Binky answered,"the better razz-ma-tazz you give, the better razz ma tazz you get or as Paul McCartney said, ‘the love you take is equal to the love you make.’"

Teara realized Binky was right, the world needed better razz-ma-tazz.

"I'll do it," Teara cried out and gulped down the rest of her champagne as if to fortify herself, "I'll do it," she yelled," I will get a tongue pierce."

Everyone in the Right Bank stood up and cheered, "Hip-Hip Hooray for Teara's Pierce". Then Binky put her hand down inside her Jean P. Guilty bra and pulled out a one hundred dollar bill which she slapped down on the bar. "Drinks for all,"she called out to E. K. A merry time ensued.

Five or six champagnes later Teara remembered that she had wanted to ask Binky where she could get a rabbit-shaped dildo but by that time she was in the men’s bathroom with Binky and Rover, the womans bathroom having been occupied. Rover was licking Teara's shoe shoe while Binky was lightly spanking his bottom with a potato masher. Teara tried to recall exactly how she had become part of this weird tableau, Binky saying something about how Rover wanted to be Teara's doggie tonight and Teara replying that she didn't like dogs. Then Binky countered that 200 dollars for fifteen minutes of having your shoe licked can buy a lot of Bisquik and Teara was won over.

She had never been part of a professional(for money) scene before and Teara was finding that the sight of Rover prostrate before her, his stalwart pink tongue on the instep of her dirty sneaker, his firm muscular rump quivering inside his doggie suit as Binky beat him, filled her with a strange keen exhilaration, a new sense of power. Teara felt so powerful her little lava pot started to bubble over.

"This is getting you excited," Binky said, not breaking stride, as she continued to throttle Rovers bottom. "I know it is because I can smell you and to think you're getting paid for it."

Teara felt a hot blush suffusing her face. "No need to get embarrassed," Binky continued, "it excites me too." Binky put her free hand down inside the waistband of her skirt. "Bingo" she said as her fingers found the spot they had been seeking. Inspired by Binky, Teara put her hand up under her rubber dress. Rover let out a series of shrill little yips. The rigid member that had burst the fly of his Dalmation suit would do any dog proud. The fragrance of sex juices combined with the strong smell of urine that is always found in the men’s room of any great bar wrapped the plesure-seeking three in a unique odiferous cocoon.

There was a loud knocking on the door. "Hey, hurry up in there," a deep masculine voice called out. "I have to wee-wee."

"Tie a knot in it," Binky replied, annoyed. "We're almost finished." She started to beat Rover harder. "Freud! Jung! Adler! Nietzche!" Rover suddenly cried out and then he collapsed on the floor with his face against Teara's ankle.

The sisters smiled at each other, delighted because they had finished too. While Binky put the potato masher back in her purse, Teara wiped off her shoe with toilet paper. "Good puppy," Binky said to Rover and picked up his leash.

There was a line of guys waiting outside the men’s room and the first guy on the line had his mouth open to say something but when he saw Binky with Rover in tow, he did not utter a single word. The second guy in line was Olaf, but gone was his Ninja Turtle outfit, this time he was wearing a big white bunny suit. He looked downright goofy. He stared thoughtfully at Binky and Rover as if he knew them from some bad party long ago, but when he saw Teara, his handsome craggy face lit up like a Jack O'Lantern. "Feta, Feta , Feta", he called out and grabbed Teara up in his arms.....

Is Olaf really the renowned dildo designer Hans Handerson and why is he wearing a chintzy rabbit suit? What will Olaf say when Teara tells him of her decision to get a tongue piercing? Will Teara confess her true identity to Olaf and will we finally meet the the real mysterious Feta Torvaldson? Find out in the next thrilling installment of Teara Bodice.

Tsaurah Litsky’s work is featured in Best American Erotica 1995,’97,’98

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In the Dream Academy

By Mona Harden

And as though we had not entered unto strange, apocalyptic times the Academy continued in its blithe, purblind operation, a brokedown machine caught in the endless loop of its programming, now wildly, ridiculously irrelevant. In a generation, human population doubled, and then threatened to double again, as more and more oil was burned to feed the automotive economies of countries newly "freed" from Communism, and the rain forests were burned to feed the economies of the Third World. Crisis hovered at the edge of our consciousness--as a goad to consumption, the media-gestalt provided a continual source of anxious titillation--but in our whitewashed classrooms we saw only the chalk on the blackboards, heard only the monotonous voice of the lecturer (our own, perhaps), and fidgeted as the minutes and hours passed away in tedium.

Crisis? One felt foolish, impotent, inappropriate talking about it--as though one were harping (yet again) on the Masonic World Conspiracy, or the flouridation of water, or the Zapruder footage, a frothing maniac on a streetcorner soapbox. The bludgeon of complacency hung over us; we busied ourselves with the busy-work we were given.

Myriad new jargons were developed, and entire departments trained in their proper usage. New disciplines were invented, old ones merged and reorganized, with career-minded scholars ever on the lookout for niches to be filled, concepts to be appropriated, icons to be demolished. Committees formed and re-formed to devise improved and more effective educational regimens. Administrators searched for ways to accommodate increasingly illiterate students. Leftists continued to pursue their political agendas through a kind of pedagogical redistribution of the wealth, and conservatives reacted with whining and authoritarianism. Artists sought Mammon...

And the Words transfixed us: Coca-Cola, Health Care, Ph.D., Lexus, Rolex, NATO, InterNet, Woodstock, MTV, MicroSoft, Disney, Bill Clinton, Buttafuoco, Rwanda, Infiniti...

(COMING SOON!: "Social Breakdown: Part One")

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