N a p a
l m H e a
l t h
S p a
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t 2 0
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MARC OLMSTED
Good Sign
Beth cut hair out of
her
and
red lipstick in Goth nod, and she was married to Gomez, a butcher from
for some reason didn’t have a green card, probably because they never could make any
deadline or appointment that would give it to him.
Problem was, Gomez was abusive. For 9 years he’d punched her for just about anything
he could think of. The bruises rarely if ever showed. None of Beth’s friends or hairstyle
clients knew anything about it.
Gomez got a role in a local indie movie and this made him think he was a star. He didn’t
want Beth to go the local premiere but she thought he was kidding. Gomez really did
want to go alone (she later thought because he didn’t want to share the spotlight, but I
suspect he was looking for some new trim, no pun intended).
Well, she went anyway and when they came home and walked in the door he turned and
punched her twice in the eye and took this campy Jesus statue they had and broke it on
her body. He hit her so hard in the eye she thought she’d gone blind. She did, for a bit.
She called the police as she’d done before.
When she went downstairs from the 3rd floor to let them in the gate, there was something
about their vibe that made her pause. They didn’t like that. There were way more cops
than she ever anticipated, at least 2 squad cars with flashing lights and some more cops on
foot. She was right about their vibe. When she opened the gate, they cuffed her and led
her away. She was barefoot and wasn’t wearing a bra under her t-shirt. She wasn’t ready
to go out into the night. She didn’t even get to lock her apartment door. She’d also had
too much to drink.
Gomez came back while they were taking Beth away and walked right into them. He had
decided to use the “What’s this, officer?” approach and act like nothing had happened.
They took him away too.
Beth actually knew some of these cops, because they were local. That didn’t do any
good now. She was chained to a wall for 10 hours without water. It was very cold.
They gave her some old dirty socks for her feet. No blanket, though. Beth said the female
cops were the worst.
Eventually they put her in with the recently captured crack whores. One was a white girl
with dreads, but claimed to be a skinhead affiliate. Beth asked about the dreads, since the
white girl, a runaway who voraciously read, was spouting all sorts of Neo-Nazi rhetoric
and Beth wondered why she’d picked the dreadlocks if she hated blacks so much. The
reason was utilitarian. Still, the neo-Nazi girl knew that some of the black women,
trustees who’d been in a while and were allowed to roam relatively free in exchange for
cleaning the place, would find the shit she’d pinched off in the shower. They did, and
they thought it was Beth at first. Beth’s bad day looked like it was about to get worse,
but fortunately they figured out that Neo-Nazi girl did it. No witness as to what
happened to her sorry Nazi ass.
Monday finally rolled around, and after being seen in cuffs by some of her own hairstyle
clients who worked the local precinct, they let her go now two days later and all charges
were dropped. Not before the girl cop moved her for processing, though, putting the
cuffs on Beth’s wrists so tight that her hands turned blue.
Beth went home on the morning bus. She had a little orange band on her wrist from jail.
It meant a free bus ride. Whoo-whoo! They also gave these oversized flip flops for her
bare feet. It was a long walk to the bus stop. She hung her head on the bus and vibed
“Please don’t look at me.”
When she got home, the apartment door was still open. She discovered that clients had
come for their appointments and found this weirdness. They never returned, despite her
explanations. Some people.
Gomez was sent to
before he agreed to voluntarily go back across the border. Otherwise, he might very well
still be there.
It was of course a very good thing for Beth, who once away from him without any
possibility of getting him back in the country, experienced enormous relief, though she
hated to be alone. She fixed that pretty quick, but at least the new guy, also Latin, didn’t
hit.
The local cops still said hello like nothing had happened.
She got a banishing candle from the local botanica. When she burnt it, she saw a black
shape like a medium sized dog with a blanket over it scoot out of the closet and go out the
door. Good sign.
PUMP
Around 1971, I’d spent
the summer drawing an autobiographical cartoon for an
underground comic my new friend artist R. (Rory) Hayes said he was putting out. He
eventually nixed my comic, but anyway, in one panel, I had pictured myself jacking off
and spurting a load and had drawn a big grotesque veiny cock like I’d see R. Crumb and S.
Clay Wilson do. The girl I was sleeping with, an older girl, said “That’s not your cock,
Marc.” Uh-oh.
So over the years we guys hear about it – it makes a difference, it doesn’t make a
difference, over and over…like pulling petals from a flower loves me loves me not though
it felt like wings from a fly.
In my own case, I was a little guy, 5 foot six, so if you slept with me you weren’t
expecting the wang of death and some just expressed relief that it was average. Sometimes
I got better than average, but let’s get down to basics - at its hardest it’s 6 ½
inches and I could never quite figure how to measure the girth, but that was decent, a
good fistful…
Alas, I was a grower not a shower and it was not impressive flaccid, generally hiding like a
turtle…looking good when I took off my pants in the bathroom mirror but immediately
retracting in the air – I obviously needed some tropical wet clime for it to dangle
attractively.
Of course, porn made me realize what a big cock was. Over the years, it seemed an 8
incher would do the trick, not too big for the smaller women, hopefully – big enough to be
a contender, at least in the hetero world…
Eventually I read about the pump in “Ask Isadora”, a sex column in the Bay Guardian
long since retired, probably because Isadora had no business giving anyone advice. But
she seemed convinced the pump worked, though later she was more evasive.
The pump, in all its variations, in case you don’t know, is a cylindrical plastic chamber
with some manner of squeeze bulb to create a vacuum. You get a hard-on, insert your
dick and pump away. It starts to look like a purple cucumber. Impressive it is, Yoda
might say. But then he was green and warty, so perhaps a poor judge.
Imagine using one of these and then you see it as a joke in the first Austin Powers movie,
1997. The international man of mystery had one with a British flag on it. My friend
Peter knew I was using one and asked “How did that feel?” seeing it in the movie. Eh.
Could be vorse. I knew if the thing worked, there’d be a line around the block for it.
The first one I tried was queer friend Thom’s. He’d bought it as a kind of sex toy –
although how this was a toy will remain for others to explain. It was quite cheap,
probably would break easily over [repeated] usage. But I saw how it worked and decided
to sink some dough into Dr. Joel Kaplan’s superdick machine. He had ads everywhere.
No it wasn’t called the superdick machine but you get the idea. As I recall, it was
something like $200, and this was 10 years ago. It actually was considerably better
looking that Thom’s. It looked like some sort of transparent Brita water filter – not
really – but that level of sleek plastic tech. Those giant test tubes that aliens put you in.
After you pumped up your wang you were supposed to put on Dr. Joel’s cock ring and
keep it erect like that. I always had trouble with cock rings, never seemed to be able to
get the supertightness they required, which I gather was nearly as tight as a rubberband
holding the Sunday paper. The idea of holding your swollen purple dick with a
rubberband was somewhat unnerving, but not nearly as unnerving as the occasional
“problem” the pump had, which caused a sort of bubblegum bubble of flesh to form out
of your foreskin. THAT was unnerving. Thankfully, it went down quickly, although I
can cut to the chase and say the only lasting effect the pump had was to stretch my
foreskin – which was already a slight cuff of flesh left by the gentile equivalent of an
apparently drunken moil. So I probably doubled that cuff of flesh, unrolled that cuff as it
had been rolled. Still, it was not like I had one of those snoods like an uncut European,
more like a lipstick holder for the lipstick cockend itself. In short, a total waste.
To this day I still hear of all kinds of pseudoscience about getting a bigger dick. There are
hints of dangerous but effective plastic surgeries, to say nothing of ridiculous pills and
other devices that, once bitten, twice shy and now married, I never gave any credence to.
What can I tell you? Nearly 54, you stop giving much of a rat’s ass about such things.
Such are the comforts of old age, of which there are few.
In the documentary Zoo, we learn about how “Mr. Hands” died from a literal horse cock
up his ass. He’d done it quite a bit, but this time, like Catherine the Great, it went a little
wrong. (On line, I actually saw footage of him taking that python up his butt, a magic
trick topped only by the visceral grunt he gave when it sank completely into him) I
dunno, it somehow says something about never getting enough, when enough, in some
many ways, means when you’re dead.
KARMAPA
IN
Touching the Void mountain
climbing book
read by
void opens from tunnel over concrete veins of highway
FORTUNE COOKIE fast delivery ghetto
red motor chair Granny diabetes taking a spin
portly East Indian man, buzz flat top cocks eyebrow corny wrestler
daring action (in deeper fear)
eyes locking w/ me –
he thinks the world bullies him – perhaps right –
but this wrestling match already lost
“& the winner is…Decay!”
Earth Bearing Witness 8 centuries of the Buddha
glass case statues on the way into security
airport checkpoint I pause – look at them all
“Crowned
Buddha”
Black Crown Karmapa for sure
on my trip to
Whisper Transmission Tibetan lineage Head
“clear, unlocatable, nondiscursive,
naked emptiness-awareness
is the authentic lama”
– Jigdral Yeshe Dorje
Virgin America’s purple–lit air cabin reading
William Gibson’s latest cyberpunk novel –
which happens in the present –
electronica music in the toilet – a
trumpet doing a mediocre stab at Miles –
I could be frightened in this Bardo
Distance to go
73 miles – red jet on
Google journey graphics back of the
heardrest in front of me
In the bathroom mirror I am shocked that I’m old
But the smell
\in the airporter bus is the same
from last century
like a pink chip in an old urinal
-
Karmapa in
- Panic in the Disco
- Return to Forever
6
6
6
-
- Paramount Theater marquee 5/31/08
Later in the
back of seat sticker
crossbones dakini?
“skydancer”?
DAKINE
But the waitress did have a Buddha tattoo
giving me sugarless Red Bull –
in 2 weeks 2 days sober 23 years
3 times w/ 17th Karmapa
3rd time by invitation only
he acknowledged he was
back will be back
“like Groundhog
Day” movie said
Dzogchen Ponlop –
over and over
(“But he does it for us”)
Bill Murray actor returning
vast space Karmapa
in
homeless punks of
gloomy sky
every 3rd on crank
I’ve heard though already
apparent their
harsh energy
Exploring the night by myself
mad professor in the all ages club
where The Melvins played
The Black Angels
I am a Black angel
of the Black Crown Karmapa
I wrote Black Leather Tantra
and was old even then
1992
but I still like this dark planet
illumined
black light
glowing purple
in a dream
in a skull
Skywalking night
Space Ghost Coast-To-Coast
Soon I leave your physical form
O Karmapa
less soon I leave mine
talking to the 20 year old w/ Dharma parents
born in
He pieces together my
“You knew Allen Ginsberg?” he guesses
“Yes.”
“You’re old school!”
Gave him my card after we sat
took Chenrezig empowerment together
looked at my ticket – I’d sat in wrong seat, wrong row
& nobody’d come
Over and over we come back for us
I’m the Black Angel of the Black Crown
over and over
I’ll eat less meat
though skull cup runneth over
Over and over
like Groudhog’s Day he does it for us
and the world needs help
Black angels unite
coast to coast
10 directions
black light poster
peace sign skateboard
down from the sky
5/29-6/2/08