Hetrick's Barn, and how I feel about it

I hate this barn picture. I am not bucolic by nature.

Bu col ic–adjective Also, bu⋅col⋅i⋅cal.
1. of or pertaining to shepherds; pastoral.
2. of, pertaining to, or suggesting an idyllic rural life.

Give me grungy city streets any day.

It's true.

Please Click Image to Enlarge.

Old Girls

They were desperately alive back then, in their late twenties-early thirties. Manic and hopeful in their relief at having freed themselves from ill-chosen men.

They were smart, funny, vital, and laughed at everything. They were shot through with sexual energy and on the make for any new encounter. They glowed with an abundance of self assurance and joy at simply being.

They plucked their eyebrows, shaved their legs, put on perfume, wore high heels, and felt like women again instead of dish washing machines with vaginas.

They made love as often as possible, choosing their partners with an eye toward continuing freedom. In other words, they were like men; on the prowl, and disinterested in anything more than a few good times.

Of course some grew weary of the game life presented. Some of them missed the old ball and chain because they forgot what it was like. They married again, and occasionally, again and again. Trial and error doesn’t always work, but they had a naïve hopefulness, for which they must be forgiven.

There are those who remained single, and decades later, drabbed down and a little tired of it all, would ruminate on the fact there was nothing more interesting between their legs than the crotch of their underwear, which in some cases was still black-lace sexy, but wasted on an audience of one.

They are like the waning Moon, and the only waxing that gets done is to the outdated furniture they inherited from their soured marriages, or maybe their rooms as teenagers, when they were flowers; restless to know life, still safe with parents keeping them in check.

When they look back, what do they see?

Rubble?

Little bits of glitter they should have picked up with reverence, to be stored against all the rainy days to come?

The glitter these days is a flash of mica embedded in the stones they tread; not to be mined by them…beyond their grasp.

What could cheer them up and on?

A cluster of rampant penis’s perhaps?

Penis’s attached to healthy males, preferably a bit younger who gave them the eye, and smiled that secret smile at a few still-pretty women. The kind of men who would adore them for a while because of their sophistication, wit, lack of demands, and in some cases, lack of inhibitions. The types who love women just because they are women. Men, who will flirt outrageously, then follow it through with a certain air of gratitude and delight.

Of course the old girls would flee these encounters, laughing uproariously, escaping the bondage of good sex.

They’d fall in a heap into a booth at a ratty diner, order coffee and giggle, while normal color came back to their flushed faces, and their hearts raced with that high feeling of excitement, which comes in part from possibilities, in part from the somnolent embers that suddenly heated up even though they were assumed to be dead.

They’d glow again from the electrical charge of being seen as desirable.

They’d go home to slow baths with bubbles and emollients, shave their legs, put on perfume, seductive earrings, a bit of makeup, dress sharp, and then go dancing.

That’s all it takes… a little genital buzz.

Dedicated to Carlos, one of those men.

Mark Morford Today

Mark Morford has a very excellent piece today in the San Francisco Chronicle. Their archives are not permanent, so I'd suggest getting onto it if you're interested in something bitter and depressing, but REAL, unlike the news you may usually read/see/hear. Click anywhere on this post to be transported to Wonderland.

In the eyes of the beholder...

See This. It's a link, CLICK it. It's good.

Fragility

There are times when she feels like old lace curtains that have hung in a window for too many years. They appear to be intact, but if touched, they will disintegrate.

So much violence has crept into her life over the decades, it staggers the mind. It came through the portals of direct information conveyed generally by phone, though sometimes the messenger arrived at the door.

There were trickier means also. For example, discovery of a murder, no, make that two, were via the Internet. If one could simply set the world to System Restore, go back, and never enter those names, never click on “search”, never read those pages, never dig for the outdated news articles….

The ringing of the phone. This is not the perky telemarketer announcement of an earnest broom or vacuum cleaner salesman, wanting to enrich your life with greater efficiency when it comes to the beloved American cleanliness fetish, anymore than the knock on the door is a delivery from the Chinese restaurant. The Internet information is not due to a misspelled name typed in haste, allowing one to exhale again.

Oh no, it is not benign data. We are indifferent to the benign. This information is of too much import, we are not indifferent here.

At this moment, the sky is gray and white as though all color had been erased from the world, leaving only a photograph in gray scale. It is Limbo, the place between Heaven and Hell of the heart gone away from average days, where the soul waits for good news, if it ever comes.

In theory, Limbo is temporary. It is there for the convenience of the gods. A storage bin filled with things to be decided upon, but not immediately. The gods do not appreciate being rushed.

But I digress where this tale is concerned. Forgive me.

Decades ago, an infinity it seems, the phone call came from a doctor announcing the anticipated death of her mother.

She was sedated by spirituality; buffered by belief and weariness. The howl came later. The grief, a river rushing toward a wall of stone, came later. Vestiges remain always, like stray hairs tickling sensitive skin, they cannot be ignored.

Her mother’s death was of natural causes, likewise, her father’s death.

The other deaths are the ones she counts on worry beads used as an abacus to keep track of violent unnatural events. She holds a cluster and counts them off. Four suicides. Another cluster…two murders, no…three actually if she counts the man she didn’t like, but did admire.

Then she hits a sticky area.

Does the accidental shooting of her young husband, many moons ago, count as murder or mishap? Shall she call it “uncategorized”? Now, if it’s murder, that would make four.

Four feels right.

Two fours equal eight. Eight is a fated number according to the study of numerology. Her name number is eight, as is her address.

Don’t try to tell her she’s not fated.

What could be more fated than a bullet from a small antique firearm which only holds one shell, tearing through a twenty-seven years old lung, leaving its owner waiting days for the rescue of death in a small hospital in a far away country?

She hates the uncategorized. At heart she is a file clerk in a narrow room fretting about a lack of order.

She could go mad from the weight of these folders containing so much intensity.

She could become Ophelia, pulling petals from flowers, keeping count, finally drifting in the waters that would claim her.

But then another would need to count off her beads, and add to a category. She doesn’t trust others with her record keeping. She doesn’t trust others, period, and exclamation mark.

The knock on the door is the worst. The parties on the other side know you are in that house, they will not go away. They will pound until the door too, disintegrates, and they will announce the uncategorized death while looking into your eyes to see if it is really true, or are they in a nightmare? Are we all in a nightmare?

Or it will be a single individual on business, announcing, after much cat and mouseing around in the name of said business, the fact he, she, or it, is not permitted to divulge the circumstances that led to this visit, but will pass on a phone number which will open the gate to another circle of Hell.

The man with the blue and white umbrella committed suicide early in July of 2009, taking her with him to Limbo. They are discussing things, and waiting for the wheel of karma to make another click.

Dear Reader,
Do not be misled by the apparent calm the above statement re the man with the blue and white umbrella implies. She is stuck together by a weakening will, and is not fully herself these days. She is being barbecued, turning on a spit over fire which does not cauterize, does not kill pain, as “normal” burning does.

It’s a messy business, full of anguish polite society can’t bear to witness. Her mother raised her to save face at all times so as not to divulge the inner heart, which would display weakness. Frankly, she would prefer to run through the streets screaming and tearing her hair out.

Suicides and murders are horrific happenings. She will skirt the recent awareness of a murder too close to the bone to think about.

For the benefit of polite society, she will be politically correct. She will state she suffers from overexposure.

What a strange circle she traverses.

No one knows her.

Rachmaninov Had Big Hands

This gem came to me from my sister, Alma Rands, jewelry designer and maker extraordinaire. Blessings on your head sistah!

Enjoy!

Presentation by:HirnW

Midnight Cop - A Hagfish/Hyacinth Review

I love this movie.

It's funny, cynical, and a nifty spine-tingler. It's also very European with good reason, it was made in Germany. It doesn't reflect an American sense of humor. Its wit is lost on many.

It’s got nice a gritty quality, with moody evocative night filming making a fine point from which to view it. It isn’t a lighthearted comedic venture, but it has its moments.

Speaking of visuals, the cop shop workplace is pretty good too.

The core of the story has to do with the horrifying accidental wounding/disabling of a young child during an attempt to arrest a major drug dealer by the lead character, Inspector Alex Glass, played brilliantly by Armin Mueller-Stahl, a man in wretched condition as the story opens.

He is sleepless, rumpled, irritable, and lacking in any kind of hope. All his life is sour, and he is being beaten down by the one terrible event of his existence, that has caused him to nearly lose himself.

Music is one of his few outlets.


Then, there's the job.

He has a new assistant, Shirley May, played wonderfully by Julia Kent, and a concerned friend, the District Attorney, played by Michael York.

Alex is a man quietly thinking out the case, as it escalates into a surreal nightmare, with nude bodies being found, abandoned, and smeared with grease; a profoundly obscure touch, which because of its very oddness causes a chill of disgust and discomfort. We know we’re not in Kansas anymore. A dark thinker is afoot, and his victims are giving no clue as to his identity.

Concurrently, Inspector Glass is also engaged in impossible attempts to break through the wall erected by his vengeful ex wife, between him and his daughter. He begins to unfold, and display himself for us: A sleepless man who spends nights tossing in bed while the neighbor on the other side of the wall has gleefully noisy sex. His answer is to pound futilely on the wall until he is called a pervert. It brings out the sneaky voyeur in me, making me wish I could see through plaster and paint to watch the couple wallow in sybaritic splendor. (see note*)
In trying to hold himself together, he finds more strings of himself unraveling until eventually he becomes involved with Lisa, played by Morgan Fairchild, an apparent bimbo, who manages to become another drop of the glue of life that keeps him from disintegrating entirely.

I was not impressed by Morgan Fairchild the first time I watched the movie. Like most others making hard comments, I thought she was an absurd choice. That is, until I thought it over for a while.

It dawned on me, she was perfect for the role; when she threw her head back and laughed in one scene with Mr. Mueller-Stahl, I fell in love with the character, and with the actress. She was funny, sexy and pretty as Lisa; and she was brave. Good for her!

Alex is older than she. So what? We should all be so magnetic and well-preserved as we grow older. They're a rather odd couple. This does nothing but lend a spicy, amusing and rather sweet atmosphere to a very gruesome and sometimes terribly sad tale.

Frank Stallone as the villain, makes me wonder how on earth the kid brother got so famous, and eclipsed him. I loved Frank as Eddie, the pugilistic, hot pistol ladies-man bartender in Barfly. Sly couldn’t have done that part with Frank’s panache. Sly gets kudos, Frank gets too short a role in Midnight Cop.

The way the cookie crumbles I guess. There ain’t no justice.

This is a movie that cries to be viewed with a sense of humor, and a little stretch of the mind, because it isn't for dummies.

It's a spoof on American cop pictures, where the hero never misses, and sex as audience bait, takes the place of acting.

Yes, there's sex in it, and most of it is hilarious. However, there's never a glimpse of action on-screen. That's a nice change from all the sweating and heaving that goes on here in the U.S. for the purpose of keeping our limited attention on the movie.

There is nudity, but unless you're into necrophilia, it's not going to tweak you.

While the story deals with a serial killer doing his thing, it isn't full of gore and splattered brains. In fact it's an excellent flick, in part, due to what you don't see.

Three great points:
Armin Mueller-Stahl stuffing a lettuce leaf into his pocket.
Armin Mueller-Stahl’s underwear.
A beautiful rendition of A Lighter Shade of Pale, which opens the film.

See this movie. And use your brain. Have no expectation, either good or bad, and you'll be pleasantly surprised!

*note: “wallow in sybaritic splendor”, swiped from the online dictionary. Thought it was overblown and funny.
BEST PRICE: AMAZON

The Zippered Man

Once she had a dream lover. She would lay in his arms all night long, feeling safer than she had during most of her life. She thought at times, it would be nice if he had a zipper running the length of his body. There was a good deal of comfort to be derived from the idea of climbing into him, and zipping him up with her inside, hidden from the world. The world is a dangerous place in the best of times, and deadly in the worst.

Of course she was crazy.

That was a frequent judgment.

She was adjudged to be amoral a few times too, by quizzes applied through several authoritative online sites laden with expert analysts for the benefit of hungering masses in quest of an answer as to who they actually are.

Armchair psychologists and dilatants plastered to television sets, tend to enjoy these sites.

The experts gave their opinions which nothing could sway. They were based on ironclad courses taught at various universities noted for their pompous conspicuously moral wisdom-dispensing professors.

It seemed a feather in her cap to be amoral. It meant she was running against the odds, since the “average” were generally moral according to the rules.

Morality in her opinion, amounted to a collection of regulations laid down by the elite for their own convenience. Therefore, to be amoral was to shake free of them and their iron fists.

She thought there should be something for everyone...many sets of rules, without religion connected to them.

The word regulations had too militant a connotation for comfort.

She thought religion tended to complicate things unnecessarily. An entire collection of esoteric regulations plagued many religions. Far too many regulations would need to be remembered if they involved religion too. Also, people sometimes killed each other because of conflicting attitudes stemming from religion. So perhaps it was best to keep religion and guns separate from each other.

Guns would be secular in their nature.

Therefore, all rules laid down outside of religion, should never contain even a whiff of sectarianism.

There was one universally applicable rule everyone would have to obey. Just one: Only the most reasonable and responsible secular leaders could have anything to do with guns.

They would be very reluctant to kill anyone, since everyone obeyed their own rules; there was little, if any, major discord. Eventually they would realize how stupid it was to have guns, but never shoot at anything. So why bother to have them?

Of course though, she was crazy.

In thinking it out on a deeper level, if there were too many sets of rules, anarchy might ensue.

Anarchy seemed so exhausting.

The zippered man was her best idea in the long-run.

February 15, 2007
A. Murray

Bertha, Ella, Sid, and the little green apples...

a peculiar little tail.

Bertha shoved the broom across the kitchen floor, muttering to herself, "damn filthy little bastids, makes me want to squash their little heads with the heel of my boot…"

The mouse sat in the entryway of his apartment complex, whiskers twitching, eyes shining like new shoe buttons, and ears turned to the sound the giant was making.

The mouse spoke minimal English, but enough to get by on. He was hungry and tired. He'd been travelling for days to get to the place where he would spend the winter this year. The last house was drafty and immaculately clean. He'd caught a cold at Thanksgiving, and kept it until spring. And because of perverse hygiene on the part of the farmer's wife, he'd nearly starved to death during his stay there, emerging a mere shadow of his former self. He shuddered to think about it now.

A vicious swipe of the broom too close to the molding nearly knocked him off his feet. Considering this to be a portent of doom, his own in fact, he decided to crawl back into bed for a little nap. It was early, and dinner wasn't on the table until some time around five-thirty. There was plenty of time to rest before the job of harvesting from the floor, where some of his favored delicacies were generally plentiful, thanks to the smaller giants who ate there on occasion.

He understood the salient points of the conversation the giant was having with herself, and it's not so underlying rage, was enough to breed caution even within such an adventurous soul as he. So he turned, and to his undying regret, missed the most interesting thing of the day. He heard about it later, but would have given an especially fine whisker to have seen it first-hand

All in all however, at that moment, life was good again. At last….

"Next time I catch them little rats thrown' food across the room, I'm gonna break an arm first, and answer questions later…spoiled little crap-heads, killin's too good fer 'em."

A disembodied voice floated near enough to halt Bertha's fury laden diatribe. "What on earth are you nattering about Bertha? Milk gone sour again? Sorry if it is, I can never get those damn incantations right."

The disembodied voice grew nearer…the house was so cavernous, it was an echo chamber. Whispered conversations could be eavesdropped upon conveniently from what seemed like miles away if one was aware of all the strategic positions for doing so. The speaker was.

Bertha managed to pull her act together with effort. She wasn't in the mood for the "lady" of the house. Last night had been terrible; and she was tired, hungry, perplexed, and crotchety.

The voice drew nearer.

"So what's wrong today Bertha?"

"Nothing special Missus, just them kids hurlin' food across the room like it was a game a that Frisbee stuff instead a supper…little savages…. At least a damn Frisbee thing is made outta plastic and it don't shed crumbs an' muck all over the damn place."

"Ah, is that all? I thought a spell I was trying out last night had backfired again."

The disembodied voice became full bodied and astonishing in it's appearance. Bertha did her best to act tactfully, and disallowed her jaw to drop in an impolite rube-like manner.

The "Lady" of the house was standing in the doorway with the usual disreputable plaid bathrobe gaping open to reveal one of a collection of the worst nightgowns Bertha had seen before coming to the Big House as a charwoman/raving lunatic/superstitious native, and half-assed friend. Floppy slippers adorned large feet, which were also encased in purple socks. The entire costume shrieked "BAD FASHION SENSE".

But that wasn't the cause of Bertha's jaw struggling with gravity. It was the hair.

It was green, and huge…like a gigantic fern that had grown from the top of the woman's head.

"Oh good lord," Bertha said to herself. "The poor thing."

"What was ya tryin' last night", she asked tentatively.

"Eggnog."

"Oh, of course, eggnog." Bertha couldn't tear her gaze away from the apparition standing in front of her.

Ella, for that was her name, reached up as though to fluff the atrocity, but instead whipped it off her head, much to Bertha's relief, and shook it like a recalcitrant fuzzy animal.

"Dynel," she said, giving it another vigorous shake. "Wash and wear! Don't you just love it?"

"Well, it's certainly differnt," Bertha stated, with as much diplomacy as she could muster on short order. "D'ye you care for a cuppa tea now? I feel the need a one myself at this very moment." With that, she turned toward the kitchen, and to the safety of sane company.

Sid sat in the Kitchen window seat, moodily staring out at the landscape stretched endlessly before him. He noted with horror that every tree within his view was full of lovely little green apples. This would have been wonderful if they had been apple trees. Alas, they were not.

"Uccccmmmpphhh", he sighed, shaking his head with a certain weariness that bespoke of long practice at it, as he wondered aloud, "What in hell did she do THIS for? I can't leave her alone for a single evening without coming back to yet another bloody fiasco. The woman needs to be kept on a leash. A short one at that!"

He bent to wash his tail, which usually restored his spirits, and increased his pleasure in contemplating the fresh bagel sitting on the table, waiting to be devoured by the she-beast, which was how he was perceiving Ella at the moment.

Dropping nimbly down from the window seat, he meandered across the kitchen, and jumped up onto the table. Ah, good…the bagel was still warm. He gripped it in his teeth, then leaped off the table, and dragged it to his favorite rug in front of the fireplace. There was never a better breakfast in any kingdom, than a fresh toasted bagel with cream cheese.

Bertha clumped into the kitchen. " 'Mornin' Mister Sid," cuppa tea?"

"Why yes Bertha, that would be nice." Sid licked cream cheese off a paw, then said with the sarcastic chuckle that had become ingrown over time when discussing Ella's fiascoes, "I assume Bertha, you are aware there are green apples growing on the blue spruce, the oak, the maple, and every other damned kind of tree for miles around this misbegotten village…that is since you did walk here from your home, and had to have noticed…"

"Oh yes Mister Sid, I noticed indeed."

"So tell me Bertha, have you a clue as to what she was up to?" Sid sat looking at Bertha as though she had all the mysteries of this complex corner of the universe, tucked under her bandana, waiting for her to whip out the answers to life's most perplexing questions, no matter what they were about.

"Eggnog."

"Ah! Eggnog. Of course I should have known. How silly of me. She's up and about I assume?"

"Yes Mister Sid, and headed this way," Bertha said, eyeing Ella's half-eaten bagel on the rug beside the scraggly long bodied cat.

Sighing in resignation at the inevitable screaming match about to begin, she set about preparing tea.

September 27, 2004

One of the worst old stoner jokes

so why am I laughing?

The Monkey and The Lizard

A monkey is sitting in a tree smoking a joint when a lizard walks past and looks up and says to the monkey, "hey! what are you doing?"

The monkey says "smoking a joint, come up and have some."

So the lizard climbs up and sits next to the monkey and they have a few hits.

After a while the lizard says his mouth is dry and is going to get a drink from the river. The lizard is so stoned that he leans too far over and falls into the river.

A Crocodile sees this and swims over to the lizard and helps him to the side, then asks the lizard, "what's the matter with you?"

The lizard explains to the crocodile that he was sitting smoking a joint with the monkey in the tree, got so stoned he fell into the riverwhile taking a drink.

The crocodile says he has to check this out and walks into the jungle, finds the tree were the monkey is sitting, finishing the joint. He looks up and says, "hey!"

The Monkey looks down and says, "man, just how damn much water did you drink?"

Rivi's Dog

Rivi’s dog went missing. She was gone for two days.

Rivi was upset and sad, and also afraid that something terrible might have happened. He didn’t sleep well with her gone. When he woke up because he thought he heard her outside, he was happy for few moments until he realized she was still gone.

In the morning, his eyes burned, and she was his first thought. His heart was heavy. He felt an enormous empty place inside. She’s relatively small, how could she leave such a huge hole in him? It was a cavern.

He felt tears stinging the way they do when you first feel them, some fell, and he brushed them away. Perhaps he had alternating feelings of anger for a moment because she was so inconsiderate to leave, then desperation and worry, and guilt because he had been annoyed. Hours were days, and always, there was the listening for the familiar sounds she made. Her tags, the click of her toenails, the doggish vocalizations…

Then she was back. Pure joy and celebration. So many strokes and congratulations for having returned, and so many words telling her how loved she is. A few admonishments…she must never do that again. Not ever. All that relief, the lifting of the heart. The eyes not able to be filled with enough of her little face, her color, the shape of her ears, her tail…her self.

And her? What was her return like? Did she have good drink of water first thing? Did she flop down in a favorite spot, lying there with her tail thumping on the floor when anyone spoke to her?

Did she have that mysterious dog expression? An expression that said, “I know everything. I had an adventure. I’ve been to secret regions, and smelled things you can’t imagine. I have slept in new places. I have looked at the deep sky filled with more stars than any human could possibly count, and I was there when the sun decided to come out for me to see. I know where the sun sleeps now.”

Litany Three

Almond eyes
Skin of ivory
River of hair
Taste of a woman
Taste of a man
Scent of heat
Curve of an arch

How beautiful
How beautiful

Eyes of earth
Black silk hair
Mahogany skin
Curve of a cheek
Voice of a bell
Voice of a gong
Scent of passion

How beautiful
How beautiful

Eyes of blue water
Hair of golden curls
Skin of snow
Dimpled elbow
Rose lips
Curve of a hip
The call of doves

How beautiful
How beautiful

Crinkled hair
Black sky skin
Eyes of night
Flashing smile
Full lips kissing
Feet of a dancer
The length of thigh

How beautiful
How beautiful

How beautiful
How beautiful

How beautiful you are
Humanity

January 14, 2007
A. Murray

Oh Ji Ho - A New Year

This,

NOT this.

The sun rises at the Unification Observatory in Goseong, Gangwon Province. The year comes to a close with tension between the two Koreas following the North's missile and nuclear tests, and suspension of inter-Korean dialogue. [Kim Myung-sub/The Korea Herald]
2006.12.29

Peace, Health, and Happiness to all.
Hagfish

Dedicated to Michael J. Sakara

Please Click image to view full size.

Your Death

Was an ignominious act,
performed by a madman.
Allowed through an error in judgment
by the gods who look after souls like yours.
They failed to see the future on that night.

I stared at the computer screen
that brought me the news,
years old, and quite
incomprehensible at first.

A friend came by to see me
bringing me a nicely wrapped gift.

It’s Christmastime now and
I can’t tell anyone you’re dead
because if I do I will begin to sob
with sounds that come out as
short barks, like laughter, and
if they love me, their day will be ruined,
since the entire tale is so off-the-wall
horrendous, and so filled with
unspeakable images for the prudish,
it’s too tawdry for their tender sensibilities,
and so agonizing to the wild hares who move
among the allegedly normal,
disguised as shop clerks, and waiters,
and plain looking people who live
alone in small apartments, and read
esoteric literature, and date librarians…
the ones with empathy, who will immediately
understand the entire thing, and shudder,
and momentarily go faint with the horror of it all.

You are so out of place Michael.
Can you hear me?
You are so out of place.

You belong somewhere else. You’re supposed to grow old.
You’re supposed to love life until the last possible ancient breath you draw comes out in a sound like a rattling windowpane.

The friend who dropped by wanted me to look at the present, but I had only known where you are now for less than an hour, and I was shaking too much, and I cried like a lost dog that was broken in half, while I pressed my face into her soft winter jacket, and suffocated in her well-meaning platitudes.

For Michael J. Sakara

A. Murray
December 14, 2006

Michael J. Sakara, one of an endangered species.

DESPERATELY IN SEARCH OF VIRGINIA D. PLEASE CONTACT ME. DIRECTIONS ON HOME PAGE.



Michael Sakara was my friend. We lived a couple of blocks apart in New York City. We met in 1969 around the time my mother was dying. The circumstances of our meeting were awkward and highly charged. They are not relevant to anything that will follow here.

In time, after we met, we had a few conversations, and found ourselves liking each other a lot in spite of a rocky beginning. We became friends. I became one of a group of his friends that would get together, usually at his place, for a few drinks and conversation. I enjoyed his other friends, and we became a circle of sorts. My feelings for Michael deepened, as his did for me. We talked on the phone a couple of times a week at least, and got together very often. We were only a sneeze apart.

His other friends were all far above me in education, and mostly in economic status also. I may have actually been the least solvent of the group. They were mainly involved in the arts. Music, theatre, writing…. They were fascinating, warm, accomplished individuals.

I met an opera singer there, who has since become well known. I will not name her because I would prefer to have her permission to do so. But I’ve heard her sing on recordings, and she sang for us once while another friend, Stewart, played the piano. Michael’s shiny black grand piano sat at the end of the living room in front of large windows. It was a beautiful scene, with her singing against a backdrop of New York lights and big potted plants.

I liked all those people. They were so intelligent, clever and funny, and they accepted me immediately as one of them. It was a new experience for me, being at the center of that much intellectual energy and wit.

So many years later, I am finally aware that I had some talents myself, even at that fledgling level of my development. One of his very close friends, a composer (this man is well known in the field of music, and again I don’t have permission to name him, so I can’t for the sake of his privacy) published a poem I’d written in a local paper, another, a writer sat in my apartment one night reading my poetry, brutalizing it, but found the pieces he felt were good, and told me why they were. Today I think I love him for it.

Michael was aware of my ugly-duckling, un-dated, un-courted existence of the time, and began taking me to dinner often, always picking up the tab. We would dress up, and go. It would be like a date, and it made me feel happy. I was in mourning for my mother, and he understood that I needed some cheering up, some getting out and away from it all.

We spent so many days, and even nights together, when I’d fall asleep on his sofa, because we had talked until we were nearly unconscious.

We played chess. I never won. I’m not a player, but it was such an elegant game, and Michael was an elegant man. It was a classy thing to do together. I loved it. He never criticized me for playing poorly.

Michael loved good food.

The first time I ate escargot, it was with Michael. He gave me one to try, and I loved it. The first time I ate frog’s legs, it was with Michael, I tasted his. The first time I had Banana Flambé it was with Michael. My first glass of Cointreau…. There were so many sophisticated adventures between us. I felt as though I were being groomed in a sense.

He gave me good wine, and we smoked good grass together. We listened to good music, and I learned to become me. He was the only person I knew who would lie down on the floor wearing headphones to hear music, while feeling the vibrations of it through his body. I got a pair of headphones as a gift eventually, and almost always listened while feeling the music through the floor. Michael taught me about good electronic equipment, and to this day I buy the best I can afford. He showed me quality in places I wasn’t aware of before knowing him.

It was with Michael that I took my first hit of mescaline, and he pulled me across the divide toward recognition that I was in fact, safe and sane in his arms in spite of my terror of the moment. He held me until I got back to the world uninhabited by nightmare visions. I have never regretted that first hit. We both learned that I would do better on a half tab, and hysteria never devoured me again when I was tripping. I almost always did it with him. When I was alone, it was never fun. Together, the world was hilarious, music was something divine, and introspection was sacred.

No matter what the attitude of these times may be, and no matter how comfortably I might be viewed with distaste for my drug ventures, I will challenge any critic to reach the places of deep understanding I reached when under the “influence”.

I would never have gone there without Michael being my guardian and guide. I will always be happy that I went on those mind journeys with my friend.

I will also always remember the sun rising across the water as we rode the Staten Island Ferry back home to the City during my first trip, as the drug’s effect wore off. I will always remember the flowers I bought at a sidewalk stand, and carried with me, just to look at the color of them all through the night. I will always remember the early breakfast at The Brasserie on 53rd St. as we made our way back to so-called real life. I can taste the coffee, I can hear our laughter at the night we’d passed as strange wanderers, and I can see his smile…. He had a cheerful absolute smile.

Michael was murdered in July of 1993. I found out about it during one of my searches on the web, looking for lost friends. He was cut into seven pieces after he was eviscerated. He was left here and there in plastic trash bags. He was thrown away.

I discovered it just a couple of hours ago, and I am going mad from it.

Writing this isn’t about me and this terrible grief that is eating my heart. It’s about Michael, and maybe someone you love.

Michael died because he was gay. It’s just that simple. He was gay. He loved men instead of women.

But he loved me, and I’m a woman. I was his friend. He loved his sister, and I suppose his mother, and I know he loved the women friends of the little charmed circle.

He could be difficult, who can’t? But he was a giving friend, and a kind one, and he could be very comforting to a newly orphaned 29 year old. He had great beauty within, and he shared all the good things about himself. He was often the center of a group, but it was always okay that he be so.

Years after I left New York, I spoke with him. I called him out of the blue. My marriage had fallen into ashes, and I was moving to a new place. I bought a small dwelling for myself, and wanted to tell him. He was sorry about my marriage, but very happy for me about my new home.

Things didn’t go too well for me right after that, and there were many economic woes and close calls to deal with, and everyone from yesterday faded in the face of new disasters.

When I finally got a computer in 2000, I discovered eventually that I could find people on the web, but his number wasn’t listed anymore. He had moved away it seemed. I’d tried to call but the phone was disconnected. I figured he’d been gone too long for a forwarding intercept. So I kept trying the Internet.

I never quit looking, but I didn’t do it obsessively. Every couple of years I’d search for one friend or another. Search engines weren’t what they are today, and today I got a taste of high technological excellence when Google dropped two old New York Times articles from the sky into my brain.

When I searched this time, I just typed in Michael Sakara, no initial, and there they were…two articles about the murdered Michael J. Sakara. I knew there was no mistake in identity when I saw the middle initial. It was him.

And now my bookmarks contain a lot of things about it that I can’t deal with at the moment.

When the righteous among us revile gay people it makes my stomach turn to a bile filled sack. Who are they to judge anyone else? I hope I don’t hear any anti-gay rhetoric from anyone soon, because I’m liable to become very vehement and vicious, and maybe even physically unwise. This would serve no purpose whatsoever.

My friend will never call to invite me to dinner again, or to rove the midnight streets just looking in store windows. The family he left behind will feel his absence at the holidays, and on his birthday, and on the anniversary of his death, and every time they recall something he said that was funny, or kind, or even hateful. If he left a lover behind, that man will always feel the pain.

When we love deeply, I think it tends to stay with us in one way or another until we die. And there’s always a time that comes when the light is a certain color, or a breeze touches you with a familiar scent that evokes a shade of melancholy, and we mourn for a moment for the lost loves…child, sibling, parent, grand-parent, uncle or aunt…spouse, lover…friend….


Michael, I know I hurt you a long time ago. I was too dense to ever tell you how much it bothered me. So I want to say here, I am so sorry my friend.

If you, the reader have a gay person in your life, please be aware that they are always in potential danger because lunatics prey on them the same way they prey on children, or defenseless women.

They beat. They rape. They hack. They slash. They shoot. They pulverize. They drown. They dismember. They torture. They do it all, and they are out there in the guise of the respectable. The man who murdered Michael was a surgical nurse for many years at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He was working there when he killed Michael.

Yes, a very respectable man, just having a drink in a quiet gay bar, just having a conversation with another man he didn’t know. Just a serial killer
who cut my friend up and threw him away like garbage. My friend was not garbage; he was a human being of worth.

The murder, Richard W. Rogers, got life in prison. If he’s still living, I hope he suffers every single day of his miserable existence, and if he ever gets out, as they often do, it would be nice to imagine a fate of an ugly unexpected nature awaited him. But I am not such a dreamer. All I can do is curse him in my razor sharp rage, and call hell down on him. He’s getting old now, if he’s still alive. I can’t find anything that indicates he isn’t. He’s an old murderer.

I am a newly minted mourner. If my hatred can reach into his heart like an ice pick, I send it his way.