Hard Boiled Men

2009-08-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

“Hey, wait,” I told her, “before you go, just tell me what kind of a beer do you want?”
Angie was not one for particulars, anything with alcohol would do just fine. She never was one of those expert types when it came to beer or pretty much anything else. Angie kept her life simple by letting others make most decisions for her.
While she stood in line to the female restrooms, I eyed the waitress in an attempt to get her attention. Her arm was full of colored tattoos and her hair was as orange as a neon light.
“What can I get you?” she smiled.
“Any beer specials tonight?” I inquired.
“All of our beers are specials but there is no happy hour if that ‘s you trying to find out.”
“How much is a Stella?”
“Six fifty.”
“And a Sam Adams?”
“Six fifty.”
“Do all of your beers cost fifty?”
“Na, some of them go up as high as $12.00, some of our beers have more than 8% alcohol in them, but it looks like you are more of the thrifty type.”
I took no offense, instead I continued “You god damn right I am thrifty and if by thrifty you mean cheap than I am guilty as charged. Do you have anything in this place that costs less than $6.50?”
“Well,” she sighed “there is always the PBR.”
“And how much is that?
“PBRs are $3.50, can I get you one?”
“Get me two.” And then she walked away.
I felt no shame about my stingy attitude. Where I come from beers cost no more than a handful of bucks. Sure, Boston is a town full of rich college students and ultra liberal rich types.
These people would pay a premium for piss in a cup and thank the bartender for serving it them with such style. I guess that money is a little bit more tight for some than for others. I fell into the former group. With a $20 bill in my pocket and two mouths to feed, I had to focus on getting drunk and not on the drink’s quality. A man had to make sacrifices at times and PBR would do just fine.
Angie came to the table and placed a warm kiss on the back of my neck as she sat down next to me. Her hair was no longer collected in a bun, She let it loose upon her shoulders.
“So what are we drinking tonight?” she asked.
“Beers, cheap beer, PBRs. Have you ever had a PBR before Angie?”
“No Sir, I can not say that I have ever had myself one. Are they any good?”
“Actually, they are pretty bad..” I smiled.
“So why did you order them?” she asked.
“They were the cheapest thing on the menu.”
“Are things that bad?” She asked.
“Things are only as bad as we will let them be, “ I smiled “don’t concern yourself with how much the beers cost Angie, the main question is will they get you drunk and the answer should be a clear yes..”
She brought her body closer to mine and her tits across my chest. “Tell me you love me, will you Jake?”
I turned my eyes towards the waitress, it has been more than five minutes since I placed my order. “Cheap beers or not, I pretty much think that I deserve some God dman service, don’t you think?”
“Why do you always change the subject when it comes to the way you feel? Why is it that all of you men have such trouble with expressing your emotions.” Angie nodded her head with disapproval. Her eyes were lonely and her face painted with age.
Finally, the waitress came around. “Here you go Sir, two our establishments’ best cans of PBRs.”
“Well, it sure took you long enough,” I sighed, “you always that slow on bringing them beers around?”
“Take it easy cowboy,” she smiled “and besides, you don’t seem like the heavy tipper kind of a clientele so what do you expect?”
Angie seemed apprehensive throughout the exchange. She was not one for any sorts of conflict no matter how small the scale. While we were trading literal punches, she buried her eyes within the piles of junk that occupied her purse. She pretended to be looking for something, anything to keep her out of the conversation.
But I rather enjoyed it all, “Tell me, what gives anyways, this bar is called Bukowski’s but Hank Bukowski couldn’t afford to drink anything in here besides a Diet Coke or a glass of water, what the hell is up with these prices anyways?”
“I don’t make price decisions in this place honey,” she smiled. “I only serve beers to loud mouth know it alls and tonight seems like real exception, know what I mean?”
I sure did. This girl was already and I was just busting balls. I took a five bill out of my pocket and gave her a smile, “well, better a smartass than a dumbass, don’t you agreed.”
She turned back with a smile as she walked away.
That night when Angie was taking it from the back, I closed my eyes and fantasized about giving it straight to that waitress in lue of a tip.
Bukowski’s in Boston is an ok bar, a bit overpriced and just as overhyped as any other.
Angie asked me to hold her after I wiped away the sweat from my shoulder. She whispered something in my ear about just how much she loved me and then fell into the night.

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Say What?

2009-07-31T15:04:00.000-07:00

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Too much traveling, not enough blogging is what she said to me after I disappeared for a while.
You can not really blame this disappearance on this hot summer weather, the crowded sidewalks on the streets of the city or the many changes that I have gone through.
As a man who lives in New York City, life is never the same dispite the general monotony.
Here we all wonder together, pretending to be busy and at the same time fighting this terrible loneliness that we all share, collectively and alone.
Yesterday, when I woke up in the morning I could still feel that hard feeling that resulted from my dream.
Sometimes, a dream can carry over to the next day. Psychologists teach us to look for themes in our dreams such as falling teeth or the illusion of flying.
In my case, it had more to do with missing an old friend and then feeling guilty about it.
Guilt, the Buddihist teach us, is a load of crap. They say it is a mere form of self punishment that serves no one and only causes pain.
Somehow, I can not adopt their conscious ways.
Two women appeared in the dream, both loved ones, one sweat and flesh, the other a memory. They both melt into one another in form and shape and general warmth and disregard.
Women often mistake their own as romantic. True men live by the heart. Most, do not know how to show it, but it does not mean that it is not there.
I smoked a wonderful cigarette after I brushed my teeth. The fresh scent of spearment and tooth whitening substances were quickly replaced by the sweet taste of the good green herb.
When I woke up in the morning I felt a bit of everything and nothing much in between.
This summer rain makes it hard to tell if it is winter or just really late in the afternoon. Luckily the air-conditioner makes it all that much more sustainable, at least for now.
The coffee shop around the corner, I mean the one down on 97th street was closed down for renovations. On the door I saw a sign that read
“W.E. Bois Construction, bringing the spunk into the funk”
I threw the damp t-shirt on the floor when I walked back into my apartment.
This summer is way too hot.

Female Sexuality in late 40s and early 50s

2009-07-01T09:17:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and readers,
I am currently working on my next book project. In this new novel, my main character who is a man in his mid thirties has an affair with a woman in her later forties. Much has been said and been spoken about women in their late thirties and early forties but I have the suspicion that female sexuality does not end around that age.
Seeking advice from my female friends and readers, I am offering this story competition in which YOU will write up about the issue of sexuality in the later 40s and early fifties. I realize that many of you are under that age and many who will receive this email are men. But anyone is welcomed to enter the competition.
The top entries will receive an autographed copy of Hard-Boiled Men as a gift along with my gratitude.
Please email me your 1-5 page story, essay or confession to hardboiledmen@yahoo.com with the subject heading of Story Competition.
Hopefully, your collective thoughts will educate this somewhat ignorant man about the world of women in the hopes that it will translate into great literature.
Email me for thoughts or questions, I look forward to reading your tales, Guy
Guy Jacobs
www.hardboiledmen.com

Father's Day

2009-06-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

Father’s Day is coming and you are not exactly sure what gift to give to that great man in your life. You thought about a tie, new underwear or a shirt, but hey, those gifts mean nothing.

This year, I suggest something much more risqué. Something that will make him smile for days and look at you just a little differently than before (in a good way of course).

Right now, you can get a brand new AUTOGRAPHED copy of the award winning novel Hard-Boiled Men for only $9.99 including FREE SHIPPING.

I promise you that this is the PERFECT GIFT for any man, trust me, I am one ☺

To get your copy simply click on the following link and please tell me whom you would like to dedicate the book to.

http://www.hardboiledmen.com/purchase.htm

Your Friend, Guy

The Anger of the Monogamous Male

2009-06-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

An older woman wore a pink shirt at the entrance to the place. She held on to a very small dog. It was the type of a dog that was typically owned by women half her age. It was the kind of a dog that young women enjoyed decorating with absurd flowery bowties and preposterous sweaters. But not this one, this tiny dog came as it was.
The woman was waiting for her gentleman friend who ordered up a morning’s coffee. She appeared peaceful. Maybe it had something to do with the dog. Perhaps she was simply a mellow type. With age came perspective and nothing in life was really worth worrying about.
She did not even seem too anxious when the confused heroine addict bumped into her leash as he stumble out to the street with a half used cigarette in his hand. She remained at ease throughout the passing minutes and was more than gracious when the young junky asked her for a light.
“I am sorry but I do not smoke, smoking is bad for your skin tone” she affably replied.
The young man was neither appreciative nor disappointed. He was more concerned with sustaining gravity.
Despite the collective displays of serenity, I felt uneasy. Natalia was more than twenty five minutes late. I was never one for tardy characters. Thankfully, the irritating ambulance sirens rang through Powell Street and validated my status as the only non-enlightened individual in the coffee shop. This New Yorker never truly molded into that granola flavored San Francisco consciousness.
I walked up to the large counter and ordered myself another medium cup of flavored coffee. The radio played a song by the Beatles. I believe it was I ‘m Looking Through You off of the Rubber Soul album.
“Guy? Hey, what’s going on dude?”
Vivek smiled from behind his small table. In between us stood a homeless woman that leaned on her rusty blue cart. In it, she housed all of her worldly belongings. She stood there like an out garden figurine. Off the tip of her outer lip dripped discontent.
“Come join me,” he cordially invited me.
I did.
“What’s new in the life and times of Mr. university professor?” he wanted to know.
“Nothing too important,” I admitted, “life is life.”
“Working on any interesting research projects?”
“Nothing at the moment.”
“Oh really? Nothing? Any exciting academic projects?”
“Nothing to report, but forget about me, my life is boring, what about you? What are you reading these days?”
He did not mind the change in focus.
“I just finished a six hundred page book about North Korea called Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader by Bradley Martin. It was an amazing book about the inner working of the North Korean regime. What are you reading these days?”
“I started reading three different books,” I said “two of them are novels, one Auster and one Russo but I abandoned both around page sixty. I can never keep focus these days. The third book is my own academic manuscript that is almost too boring for anyone to stay awake. I put a copy of it in my bathroom and catch a quick page read every time I take a shit.”
“Well, I guess that can be a productive place to work.”
“Not me, I am blessed with super quick bowl movements.”
Vivek, as always, was all smiles. The guy did not have a bad bone in his entire Indian body. Maybe it had to do with that Asian karma business. Maybe it had to do with good family DNA. The most impressive thing about this guy was the fact that he was the best read person that I have ever run into. Try to catch him unprepared and he was ten steps ahead of you.
“Every read Crazy Cock by Henry Miller?”
“Of course, it is a classic.”
“How about Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky?”
“A Cloud in Trousers is one of my all time favorites.”
“Goethe?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Me you son of a bitch.”
He must have noticed just how irritated I grew as I continuously looked at my watch. Natalia, you fucking bitch, how do you keep a man waiting for so long? What ever happened to mutual respect? If there is no respect, there is no love.
“You seem angry.”
“I am not angry, I am mad.”
“What a fine distinction.” he smiled. “But do not feel too bad, all monogamous men are angry by default, it is not entirely your fault, it is a genetic condition. It is a pain inflicted upon all men by the very construct of the modern times and the very institution of monogamous relationships.”
Vivek was about to present another one of his world famous theses, I was not about to get in his way.
“The male specie is biologically programmed for polygamy. Evolutionary forces require the male to spread his seed to as many female vaginas as possible. It is an evolutionary must. It is a basic biological premise that ensures the survival of the human specie across time.”
I have heard these types of theories before. Vivek was stating the obvious in the world of men but such logic failed in the world of women. I presented my counterargument.
“You are correct in stating the obvious. There are mixed evidence in regards to females and monogamy. On the one hand, female promiscuity does improve the genetic pool. On the other hand, female monogamy does present certain advantages in the wild in regards to the survival of its offspring. In other words, females are programmed for monogamy while the male for polygamy.”
“So what are you saying?” I scratched my nose across its surface.
“I am arguing that all monogamous males are intrinsically frustrated at their core level by the institution of monogamy. We could have all been swinging our dicks freely if it wasn’t for women and the bloody sword of organized religion.”
Vivek excused himself for a moment. His enthusiastic talk along with the large herbal tea led to a abrupt urge to take a piss. While he was gone, I inspected Powell Street through the window with the hope of finding my Natalia. She was nowhere to be seen.
Near the window, I saw a couple holding hands. I could only see the man’s back. I had no idea why he was scratching his leg in a repeated motion. The woman reminded me of my ex-girlfriend Maria. She had dark Mexican hair and had a tear in her eye.
Vivek may have been correct about the inert anger of the monogamous male but her knew very little about the pain of being a woman.
We sat around the coffee shop for thirty more minutes. Vivek introduced chemical composition into his former argument.
I ordered a large chocolate brownie that was full of nuts. Natalia always argued that I need to drastically cut down my intake of junk food if I ever planned on loosing that gut. But she was not there to give me that famous worried look. I devoured the chocolaty pile of sugar within a quick minute.
An hour later, Vivek and I decided to head out Chinatown where we hoped to find some cheap imitation watches. I lost my old silver watch down on Royal Street last month on a trip to New Orleans.
Natalia did not show up on that morning. She later explained that she woke up angry for no apparent reason.
www.hardboiledmen.com

LA No Longer

2009-04-21T15:50:00.001-07:00

L.A. No Longer

Jack felt the shiver running throughout his body as he walked past those familiar doors that seemed to know more about him than most of his friends did. More than three years have gone by and yet, the place still felt like fresh made bread. Excitement was not the right adjective to describe what he felt at the moment, neither was exhilaration. To Jack it seemed like a strange breed between an old high school reunion and compulsion.

Despite his past success, Jack once again found himself dead broke and amongst the unemployed. Now that he was down on his luck, there was no room for foolish male pride. Now a day, it was all about simply getting by. After he lost his high paying income, foreclosed on his ocean front condo and crashed his once impressive silver automobile, Jack was back to square one.

South Florida was no place for a man to live life. It was all fluff within and throughout. Between the long impressive blue canals and the sweet summer breeze, all that was now left for the locals was disappointment.

What was once supposed to be the Rodeo Drive of the east coast soon turned back to water down beer and grouper sandwiches. But even after losing his cash, his car and his unbelievable high-rise apartment (known to most women as the panty dropper, no explanation needed), Jack still felt like he had a fighting chance in this world.

The old wooden bar still smelled the same way it did before the good real estate days, before any jerk with twenty grand could become an over night millioner, before Jack hit it big and told the owner of this fantastic old bar to take this job and shove it up his ass.

Jack felt strange for a moment as he sat on the wrong side of the bar. Once a bartender, always a bartender, he thought or at least that is how he felt at the moment.

Three years and nothing much had changed. Billy still had those same ridiculous pictures up on the wall, sporting him and Dan Marino smiling like two morons over a pitcher of amber stout. Billy could never get over the fact that he almost made it, that he was offered a football scholarship down at the University of Miami. Billy was well on his way to made it into the big times until that career ending torn ACL injury. Sidelined by misfortune, he decided to give up on football all together.

Instead he opened up this friendly little bar down on A1A. One man’s watering hole may once again give Jack a reason to wake up in the morning. At least, that was what Jack was hoping for.

“What are you having sweetie?” she asked.

The jaded blond behind the bar knew nothing of Jack or of his connection to the place. Back in the day he used to lay them left and right. The blonder the faster, the redder the better, the browner the funner. Jack liked the taste of it all. To him, regardless of color or shape, women tasted like freedom.

“Ill take a Sam Adams.”
“Sorry sweetie, we only carry domestics.”
“Sam Adams is a domestic,” he lackadaisically smiled.
“Whatever you say hon, but we only have the basics, Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Light, Coors and Coors Lights, you know, American beers.”
He smiled. “I see that Billy is still just as cheap and as patriotic as he has always been. I’ll have a Miller Light. “
“Are you a friend of Billy’s?” she asked.
He hesitated, “Well, let’s just say that we go way back. Where is the old bastard anyways? Is he around? Most likely he is not. He is probably down at the gym flexing his muscles across some stretched out mirror, am I right?”
“No hon. He ain’t at the gym and he never gets in here before eight O’clock these days. He went down to Dolphins training camp out in Plantation, preseason football, you know what Billy’s like.”

Unfortunately he did.

“Two seventy five please, do you want to close you out or open a tab?”
He threw a five on the bar and told her to keep the change. Billy’s was still one of the cheapest places for beers around the area. Billy never bought into that whole William and Sonoma bullshit like the rest of them did. Billy detested the Aventura Mall and those luxury foreign cars that everyone bought during the recent real estate boom. If it was up to Billy he would kick all of those New Yorkers back to where they came from and turn Fort Lauderdale back into Jimmy Buffett land. He never liked the corporate facelift that everyone else fell for. Billy was a good ole boy and wanted his life to be as simple as the beers he served, nothing too complicated.

Jack only wished that he could take Billy’s worldview but he was not made of the same basic elements. He fell in love with the money, the monetary excess, the large homes and those grade A titties that seemed to literary pop everywhere with every plastic surgery center that mushroomed across Yamato Road up in Boca Raton.

While Cheri handled some of the other customers that were lining up at the other end of the room, Jake took his time to reflect about those old bartender days. Despite the mediocre pay and occasional degradation, the bartender gig at times made one feel like a celebrity. When you worked the bar, everyone wanted to your attention. When standing tall behind that bar, every man wanted your advice and way too many women offer a lick of their cupcakes. Why he ever left? He thought about it for a while.

Cheri returned for a moment only to leave again. The banker at the other end did not like way her Appltini tasted. Cheri did not make a fuss, instead she just smiled and made her a new one with an extra shot. Such was the vibe of the place. Billy always preached his philosophy about keeping his costumers satisfied. “A happy costumer,” he would say “is a returning costumer.”

Jack took a careful look at that group of bankers on the other side. They were dressed in the cloths of success and were drinking like young fraternity boys. Hard days for the banking world, hard days for the real estate industry, hard days all around. When times were bad out in the world, business was good at Billy’s old bar. The recently disenfranchised, unemployed and bankrupt were more than happy to drown their sorrows in Billy’s cheap drinks and fried finger foods.

“So Cheri, how long have you been working here?”
“I don’t know, close to a year now.”
“Do you like it?”
“You know, it pays the bills. I have had better jobs as well as worst ones. You know what it is like.”
“Oh yea? What was the best job you ever had?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Actually, I do, I really do.”
She hesitated for a while, “Back when I was younger, I worked as a cocktail waitress down at the Crazy Horse.”
Jack knew that place all too well, “you mean that tity bar in north Lauderdale? I use to love that place. Billy and I used to go drinking there after work back when things were good between us. But I don’t think that I ever seen you over there.”
“Yea, like you would notice anyone with all of those naked women running around.”
“Well, a pretty face like yours I would never forget.”
“Get over yourself Jack; working at the tity bar, I must have heard that line more than a hundred times. But thanks for the compliment,” she smiled.

Thinking back to those days at the Crazy Horse brought a smile to Jack’s tired face. A couple of the waitresses who worked at Billy’s were either strippers or former strippers. After work, they would all hang out at the joint, get free lap dances, buy shots all around and often bring back a couple of girls back to Jack’s place where they all snorted cocaine and fucked like a bunch of Cajun horndogs.

There was one particular stripper who caught Jack’s eye. She went by the name of Coco but her real name was Stacia Martinez. She was a half black, half Dominican dancer with natural 36C and a pear shaped ass. Coco loved money as much as she liked the attention. Jack was more than happy to deposit his weekly tips into Stacia’s carefully comforting Caribbean clitoris.

Year, those were the days, back before everything turned around, before Jack gave it all up in favor of the rich real estate life, before he climbs up the mount of high society only to crash all the way down to its underside. Now he had nothing.
While Cheri dealt with the crowd of secretaries who came in for happy hour, Jack went outside for a cigarette. The ocean breeze sailed lightly across his unshaved face. He did not mind the solitude of the parking lot.

Ten minutes later, Billy pulled up in his red Mustang. “If it aint American, it aint something I drive,” was the way Billy looked at things. There were not too many locals who so proudly displayed their patriotism, most were more interested in displaying their consumerism.

But not Billy, he rejected the Prada, Lexus and Armani logos in favor of the old red white and blue that was proudly displayed on every corner of his bar, his car and even tattooed on his left shoulder.

“Well shit if my eyes don’t fool me. Is that old son of a bitch Jack Douglas I see?”
“Yea Billy, it sure is, been a long time, how are you partner?” they hesitantly shake hands.
Billy took a long careful look. Years have gone by and Jack seemed like a different man.
“So what’s the deal Mr. big shot millionaire, you looking to tear me down and build another one of those monstrous high rise condos on my remains? You sure as shit aint coming in for a drink, I best assume.”
Jack took a deep modest breath, “You sure as shit are wrong there Billy, I am no longer in the world of real estate development, it is all gone I tell you, every single dime I ever made in real estate went down the shits and under the water. I am just as flat broke as you first met me. Down and down by the rain.”

Billy digested Jack’s words as if they were some strange concoction of eel soup or some exotic appetizer they served down at those fancy sushi restaurants. “And you came here for what reason?”

“Are you going to made me beg for it Billy? I want my old job back.”
“Well hell shit if that don’t beat nothing, are you telling me that Mr. high-rise wants to go back to service Miller Lights to a bunch of redneck fisherman and local alcoholics, are you really that desperate Jack? Whatever happened to all of those socialite friends you recently been hanging around with?”

“I told you Billy, it is all gone, the money, the women, the cars and all of those highbrow types, all went missing. I am no long Jack T. Douglas the second, I am just plain old broke ass Jack the bartender.”

Billy needed some time to think about it. Like most people out there, he enjoyed watching his friends thrash about with the many discomfort offered by life. Other peoples' misery make our worries taste like key lime pie.

Jack returned a week later to take over the early shift. Cheri was schedule to join him around 7pm. Her body used and her eyes tender, Jack took a careful look at Cheri and wondered why he never noticed her back in those days when life made much sense down at the Crazy Horse Saloon.

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Apathy is my new religion

2009-02-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

“Are you ready to go Rocco?” she asked while tossing an uncomfortable plastic bag into the garbage bin. It was difficult for a woman of her social standing to bend down and clean up after him. Yet, public humiliation was more tolerable to her than paying the $150 fine. The dog did not answer her question; instead, he repositioned his legs and wiggled his tail in delight. The northeast corner of 33rd Street and 8th Avenue was a sight for sore canine eyes. Of particular interest was that old Jewish woman dressed in flowery fabrics was of particular interest to him. She inspected the flashy outdoors menu of the Stage Deli and wondered out loud why the place charged “$3.45 for a bowl of Matsaball soup, were these goyim crazy or something?” Rocco was drawn to the grandmotherly scent that came from her direction. The smell of mothballs and old body odor inspired him to urinate beneath the woman’s legs. “Oh my God,” screamed out the old woman in panic. “Lady, your dog almost peed all over my shoes.” The younger woman seemed unimpressed, she jerked the dog towards the opposite corner of Eighth Avenue.
“Mommy is just going to make a short phone call, don’t worry, it won’t take too long.”
Rocco did mind. He had nothing scheduled for the day. As she exercised her dialing fingers upon the slick panel of her cell phone, Rocco urinated all over the walls of Madison Square Garden.
Nestled between the majestic Empire State Building and the Corinthian-decorated United States Post Office across the street, Madison Square Garden would barely win the “Best in Show” award in the Mississippi county fair. The Empire State Building peaked to the sky while the historical post office building told ancient tales of Roman glory. By contrast, Madison Square Garden was nothing to look at. It was a simple round block of concrete decorated with cheap advertisements and that old blue and white sign that read “Pennsylvania Station.”
With his territory clearly marked for all to see, Rocco felt an unusual sense of ownership over Manhattan real estate. Now all that was left was to piss all over City Hall, the Whitney Museum and the Trump Tower International. Soon the entire city would belong to him. Intoxicated by his own delusions of grandeur, this canine real estate entrepreneur refocused his attention towards his master. While she dialed the different number combinations, he stared at her deep brown eyes and tried to gage her sense of loneliness.
“I can’t get a hold of Gina. Let’s give her a few more minutes. Hopefully, she will show up
He wiggled his tail served in affirmation. She adjusted her wide underwear strap and led her obedient friend towards the busy sidewalk. A filthy homeless woman approached the two.
“Can you spare some change?”
Rocco watched his master reach into her pocket and hand the old woman a small shiny dime. The woman murmured a few irate words in her direction and walked away.
“This city is full of crazy people,” said the woman to her dog. “I swear to God, people here are just crazy.”
Fully aware of the irony, he crossed the street and once again found himself standing in front of the deli. Spotting a medium-sized piece of sesame bagel on the outer rim of a green garbage bin, Rocco indulged the tasty snack. The woman waited impatiently for her friend to arrive. But Gina never showed up.
Around 11:30am I walked out of the C train stairways and walked out to the filthy concrete of 8th Avenue. At the entrance to the Stage Deli, I spotted a semi-attractive Indian woman who held on to an awkward dog.
“How are you today?” I asked, but she ignored me.
“O.K Rocco, it is time to go home, Mommy had enough.” she disappeared into the crowded streets.
Frank showed up a few minutes later. He was recently laid off from the bank but did not seem too concerned about his new situations.
“What can I tell you Guy, sometimes things just happen. You have to go with the flow, take life’s punches and keep a smile on your face.”
We both ordered the ham and cheese omelets. For a moment, I was pissed at the size of the so-called small orange juice but Frank reassured me that life was too short for such concern.
“Think about what stress can do to people. heart attacks, strokes, cancer, high blood pressure, those are the main causes of death. You have to ask yourself, is it really worth it? I tell you Guy, ever since I lost my job, I decided not to give a shit. Apathy is my new religion.”
We talked about it for a while and then I headed home for an early noon nap. When I woke up around three, I found Jenny lying there naked right besides me. She must have skipped her one o’clock philosophy seminar on account of her nasty hangover.
Jenny and I hung out with the wrong type of people. They were much younger than we were in terms of state of mind despite our reversed chronology. Why we ever agreed to head all the way down to the Bowery just to see Nick showcase his lame-ass poetry had something to do with Jenny and the fact that Nick was her best male friend ever since high school. Nick was a nobody. just another of the many sheep that herded around this urban campus. Poetry night was Jenny’s fault but the hangover was mine. While we waited for the poets to do their thing, I took full advantage of the $3 shots of cheap tequila that were on special. The busty waitress was more than glad to bring more shots around and I was more than happy to see her smile. The golden drink eased my boredom at times. Yet, it only made things only that much more tolerable. To start with, I never could stand Nick. He just waited for me to stumble. He wanted Jenny all to himself despite the fact that he was a flaming homo. True, I could have been a better boyfriend to Jenny. I was a complete bastard at times. But outside interference in a relationship, that went against the basic protocols of the Geneva Convention.
“I am leaving you Guy.” That was the first thing she said after she woke up from her nap. I still nursed a hangover; Jenny added another layer to it.
“You want some coffee?” I asked but she seemed rather disinterested.
“Did you hear what I said?” she asked, “I am leaving your ass and this time it is really over.”
Just most other people around our age group, we kept on breaking up only to hook up a few weeks later. By now I was used to this predictable exercise.
“I don’t really care Jenny, you can go ahead and walked out the door.”
“You don’t care? What the fuck do you mean, you don’t care?” She threw her jacket on and slammed the door as she walked away.
But I really did not care. Life was too short for drama and apathy after all was my new religion.
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Feeling alive, Even if for just one minute

2009-01-30T10:57:00.001-08:00

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Larisa sat alone at the Vbar coffee shop down on Sullivan Street. She drank her skinny latte and chewed on the pumpkin flavored granola that she packed away in a small Ziploc bag before she left her apartment.

The place was sort of empty for a Thursday morning. Typically, just finding a chair was a challenge. But on that day, there were enough empty seats to make one wonder.

Maybe it had something to do with the relatively warm weather. Forty degrees may have seemed like arctic temperatures in places like Boca Raton or Palm Springs but when it came to the city in January, it seemed rather temperate.
Larisa wore her lucky turtleneck shirt. The fabric pressed hard against her small love handles but she liked the way that her large breasts burst through the thin lilac cotton.

Across her left finger she wore the antique brass ring that she received from her aunt Rebecca only a few months before she passed away from stage three Leukemia. The two of them were never that close but for some strange manner, Larisa felt safe when wearing that ring. It almost felt like someone was watching over her from above.
The radio was playing soft classical music. She always preferred the piano to the violin.
Around 11:30am, Jake walked into the place.

“Hey, what’s going on?” He asked in his typical Jake shyness.
She pretended as if she did not notice, but she did notice, she noticed just as soon as the door opened, just as soon as he walked in. Her heart beat like an African drum to the sound of her enthusiasm. She did her best to seem aloof.
“Not to much, what are you doing here?” What a stupid reply, she thought. She only wished she could take it back and start off with something more meaningful.

“Oh, you know, just getting some coffee. Hanging out. Trying to avoid work, the usual, you know.” Hey smiled and then turned towards the book that Larisa was reading. He could not make it out. “What are you reading there? Is this fun reading or something for school?”

“Oh trust me, this is definitely not for fun, this is for Schiller’s class. The book is called Journey to the End of the Night. Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote it. He was a French writer from back in the day. Schiller is making us read it for his seminar. The book is kind of heavy reading if you ask me. I am only on page 58 and I have to write a paper on this stupid book by Monday afternoon.”

“Oh I love that book,” he smiled, “I read it over the summer. It’s a classic. I am sure that you will eventually change your mind. Celine was a freaking genius. He is definitely one of my favorite authors along with Bukowski and Philip Roth.
Once again, she felt inadequate. Jack was a deep guy. He must have thought that she was boring. There were not many people like him around campus. While all the other boys were always busy with getting drunk and trying to fuck anything and anyone that walked, Jake read books, played the guitar and always had something smart to say.

Larisa and Jake were not good friends. They weren’t really friends at all. They sort of knew each other from some of the classes that everyone took during freshman and sophomore years at New York University. The two of them never really hung out. Yea, there was that one time when Professor Falica took them all out for beers to celebrate the end of the semester but they sat on the opposite corners of the long rectangular table. Jake sat next to the professor and argued with him about something that seemed rather intellectual. She on the other end and on the other side of the table sat with Jenny Crugerman and Stephanie Sigel and engaged in the same old discussion about where to go out that weekend and how cute this boy was over the next. She recalled just how much she hated life on that particular night. Everyone around her seemed so similar to one another. No one ever had anything interesting or original to say and neither did she.

But on that rather warm Thursdays like that Thursday, things would be different. Sometimes life intervened in one’s favor. At least that was the way she felt as Jake slid his tall chair along her outer thigh.

The sat around for a while and talked about the kind of things that people around their age spoke about. While Jake had much to say about everything, she focused on her smile. A guy like Jake was full of theories about life. He had read important books. He had already managed to backpack all across Europe and the Yucatan Peninsula. Larisa has never been anywhere. She did not read any important books nor did she have anything smart to add to Jake’s many worldly observations.
She smiled and nodded her head. She pretended to keep up with the conversation but what she was actually attempting to do more than anything else was to seem much smarter than she actually felt.

Jake was a nice guy. He lit with enthusiasm. He treated her to a cup of herbal tea and later they split a double chocolate brownie that made her feel that much better.
When they walked into his apartment, she was overly impressed by the paintings that were displayed all across the studio apartment’s walls. Jake had painted these during the summer he spent out in Florence Italy. She could only hope for such adventures or such talent.

Jake took out a painted glass pipe from the drawer of his desk. Thick green marijuana spilled out of a round plastic container into a pure piece of notebook paper. Jake broke the plant into small pieces and placed them into the pipe as he lit it up.
Larisa observed the slow moving dials of the living room clock that indicated that noon was just around the corner. A bit early in the day for pot smoking she suspected. She has only smoked pot a few times before and could never really get high. But Jake offered and so she accepted. For him, she would climb a tall white mountain only if to see him at the top.
As the smoke made its way through her system, Jake inserted his intellectual tongue into her ordinary mouth. It tasted like knowledge. It carried an older texture along its cress. His kiss was more mature than that of most boys who had kissed her before.

As he slowly massaged her breasts and licked the tips of her nipples, Larisa could feel her back twist and twirl like a drunken ally cat. Panic settled in all across her inner thighs. Things were moving way too quickly. But she knew that she would never get a second chance. She knew that Jake was different than most of the other boys she came across. And besides, she was in New York City. Her parents lived more than two hours away. No one would ever find out, she suspected.
Despite several attempts to keep her underwear on, Larisa had no real chance. Jake’s persistence that he attributed to them Marijuana and to the fact that he absolutely loved her body and must have had a taste of her inner salty flesh, that was all way too much. Despite the mastery of his tongue, she could not help but to worry about just how bad it must have tasted. She did not want to loose Jake as a result of his body’s saltiness.

Jake asked her if she preferred for him to be on top or at the bottom. She did not know what was the right answer and so she told him to simply have his way. He took a condom out of his bedroom drawer and asked Larisa to place it across her larger than usual cock.

While he moaned in pleasure, she just closed her eyes and thought about what life would be like if Jake decided to make her his girlfriend and the two of them would be known amongst her girlfriends as a leading couple of the overall popularity scale.
While Jake took his time, soaping up in the shower, Larisa fixed her makeup and dried her long brown hair.
Low cumulous clouds came down on the streets of New York City; the sun was slowly disappearing despite the early hour of the day. As the temperatures plummeted down back to the ordinary low thirties, Larisa walked towards her university dorm room and wondered if Jake would ever call her up again for a second date.

Regardless of anything that he may do or would have done, nothing really mattered for during that brief moment that for the first time in her life, Larisa felt like she was alive.

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Here I Am by Charles Bukowski

2009-01-26T18:56:00.000-08:00

drunk again at 3 a.m. at the end of my 2nd bottle
of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of
poesy
an old man
maddened for the flesh of young girls in this
dwindling twilight
liver gone
kidneys going
pancrea pooped
top-floor blood pressure
while all the fear of the wasted years
laughs between my toes
no woman will live with me
no Florence Nightingale to watch the
Johnny Carson show with
if I have a stroke I will lay here for six
days, my three cats hungrily ripping the flesh
from my elbows, wrists, head
the radio playing classical music ...
I promised myself never to write old man poems
but this one's funny, you see, excusable, be-
cause I've long gone past using myself and there's
still more left
here at 3 a.m. I am going to take this sheet from
the typer
pour another glass and
insert
make love to the fresh new whiteness
maybe get lucky
again
first for
me
later
for you.
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985

Book Club Special

2009-01-25T15:41:00.001-08:00

Save 50% off of Hard Boiled Men when you order six or more books.
This is the perfect novel for any group club made up of women between the ages of 30-50 who want to explore the mind of a single man as a group and have lots of laughs in the process.

Email the author directly to place your orders: hardboiledmen@yahoo.com with the subject heading Book Club.

• 2007 New York Book Festival Award
• 2007 Hollywood Book Festival Award
• 2006 DIY Book Festival Award

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Grey Dog Coffee Shop

2009-01-03T01:41:00.000-08:00

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I was not all that excited about the idea of becoming the newest employee of the Grey Dog Coffee Company. Sure, I would get all the coffee that I wanted for free and I would mostly be working along with good looking hippie college students who could surely teach me a few tricks in the sack. But still, I was a graduate of the prestigious MFA program in creative writing of the University of Michigan. It simply seemed illogical that I would find myself sitting here in this small village coffee shop awaiting an interview.
But what is a brother to do? These are hard days and somehow I had to pay rent. Susan and Irena, my two lesbian roommates would not likely grant me an extension. Somehow I knew deep down in my bones, that if given the chance, Irena would be more than happy to jump my bones. She went both ways. But Susan was strictly butch. She never experienced the joy of a man and would likely argue that there were no such joys. Clearly, I could not fuck my way out of this one. There were less than seven hundred dollars left in my checking account and time was running out.

Her name was Ski and she was the assistant manager of the coffee shop and an undergraduate student at New York University. Before we sat down beneath those yellow chandelier lights all the way in the back of the coffee shop, she wanted to know if I would like anything to drink and of course, it would be on the house.
"Sure, I will take a cup of coffee, black, two sugars."
"Give me a moment," and then she returned with two cups of coffee and a friendly smile. She took out my application from a tall stack of papers and quickly glanced over my credentials.

"So tell me Greg, I see that you worked in a bunch of coffee shops back in Ann Harbor, Common Cup, Caribou Coffee and Foggy Bottom Coffee House. I also see that you have an undergraduate degree in American literature and an MA in creative writing. So I take it that you are a writer."

"Well, that all depends on who you ask. I published a few short stories in The Believer and the Chelsea Literary Journal but I doubt that you ever ran across my works."
"That sounds really cool, I would love to read one of your stories."
"Why, are you the reading type Ski?"

"Are you kidding me, I love books. You will always find a good book at my bedside. Without books, what is the point, right?"
"Hell yea. But you and I are in the minority on this one, most people prefer reality television."
"'Hey, forget most people," she smiled "most people suck."
"I could not agree more Ski. Tell me, who is your favorite author?"
"Oh, that's a good one, I could not say, I am torn between Hemingway and Truman Capote, how about you?"
"Hard one, I would be torn between Henry Miller and Philip Roth." We went back and forth for a while. Suddenly, one of the employees yelled Ski's name out. She excused herself for a moment and left me with a sweet taste in my mouth.

I looked around at the people who were quickly filling up the place. It was eleven O'clock in the morning on Tuesday in December and none of these people were at work. Were these people independently wealthy? Were they tourists? Students? Or were they as unemployed as I? It did not really matter, the place had a good vibe to it and no one seemed to differentiate between a Sunday and a Tuesday. Everyone just seemed more than content to be here in New York City and away from the cold winds that were running around the tall city buildings.

"Sorry about that," she apologized when she returned "there was a bit of a mix up with a customer but now it is all taken care of. So where were we?" She smiled.
"You were about to tell me whether you were single or had a boyfriend."
"I don't recall that conversation." She laughed. "I recall something about Hemingway."
"So what is the answer?" I insisted.
"Do you always ask such questions during a job interview?"
"Only when the person who interviews me is a good looking woman who likes books."
"You realize of course that now things are too awkward for me to offer you the position." She apologized.
"Yes, I know, I fully realize that. But I will take your phone number any day over a job. There are many places were I can earn a buck but not too many women in New York City who can put a smile on my face."
"So I put a smile on your face?" She bashfully laughed.
"You did and you do. So what do you say Ski, do you have a man in your life?"
"Not at the moment. But I am not sure that I am taking applications at the moment."
"I think you should reconsider, just look at my resume, I am more than qualified."
"Oh yea? And what exactly do you think qualifies you for the position?"
"Well Ski, I am a very hard worker, I take my job seriously and promise to show up for work on time, every time and to stay late at work when ever is required. I tell you Ski, a man with strong work ethics is hard to find around these parts."
"Trust me Greg, I already know that by now." She smiled.

She would not acquiesce and instead of her telephone number she instructed me to add her on Facebook which I did just an hour after I came back home.
Irena walked in on me just as began to jerk off under my sheets. She did not seem embarrassed at all, rather, she seemed aroused. The idea went through her head for a quick moment but instead of jumping into my bed with that tiny Russian body of hers', she demanded the long overdue rent. I told her that I needed another few days before
I would have the money.

"Yea, well, I heard that one before. Maybe you should consider getting yourself a job instead of sitting around here and jerking off all day like some damn teenager."
A few days later I emailed Ski a PDF copy of "Red Wine Wonders", a story that I published in Literal Latte, a local publication off of 10th street down around the corner. From her reply, I could tell that she really liked it.

We agreed to meet up for a drink a few days later in the Vig Bar, a trendy little join off of Elizabeth Street. When thinking about it, I was not in any position to pay for all of the martinis that she ordered that night. Ski had enough dirty martinis in her to piss out olive oil and I was the one who laid out more than a hundred bucks at the end of the night.

A single man of limited means living here in New York City was an exercise in idiocy. I could have opened the gym.

Maybe it was time for me to listen to my brother's advice and to move back home to Nebraska where the beer was cheap and the spare bedroom available. But let's be honest now. Great writers don't come from the wheat fields of the Midwest; they did not thrive in silence.

Women like Ski, long literary streets and a constant headache are the hallmarks of New York City, a city that will always offer a man a good kick in the ass.
Ski could not come despite my many attempts. More than thirty-five minutes down between her thighs and my tongue was growing numb. Maybe it had to do with a lack of technique, maybe it was the vodka. I never got a second chance.

Standing out on that cold empty road that connected Sioux City and Omaha, I held on to my backpack and a copy of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and wondered just how long he would have stuck around the streets of New York before he would give up on his literary dreams.

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Don't Forget to Feed the Cat

2008-12-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

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On cold days like today, I try to avoid the world. It is simply too damn cold for me. A southern boy living in NYC is like a bullfrog in a Chinese market. Nothing good can ever come out of it.

When Jennifer will return from her late shift around six in the morning, I will let her have it. This time, I will hold nothing back. We have been dating for nearly three months now and we both knew it would end from the first day it all began. In New York City, there was no real reason to stick around with anyone. You were almost guaranteed to meet someone better on the following week. The only thing that held Jenn and myself for this long was the sex, but after a while they all taste like taffy anyways

It was time for this boy to move on to greener pastures, to find a better woman. In my bones, I knew that I deserved much better than this Jennifer character. She was no good from her core. Hopefully, the next one would not mistake my generosity for foolhardiness or my wallet for a bathtub. I always preferred the sweet ones but never really ended up with any of them.

Ever since Jennifer and I got together, it has been shopping hell. What she could not achieve at home with my cock (or her vibrator), she could easily get when she tried on a $300 pair of designer jeans. Like Siamese lace they dripped around her thighs in anticipation of ownership. I should have refused her outrageous requests but Jennifer had a body on her and I was a man.

Worse than Jennifer’s bad habits was her cat “Mr. Jingles”. This one seemed to be just as spoiled as its female owner, they both deserved a quick in the ass. I was somehow in charge of feeding the cat in the evenings while she was working. I could not stand that little feline bastard; he had it in for me from the very first day. Once during sex, he jumped me from the back and left claw marks across my body. Jenn explained that he can get possessive at times but that did not do much in terms of reassurance.
I could not decide whether I should poison the little son of a bitch or simply dump his at some back alley of a Thai restaurant. To the people of Thailand, cat was like chicken or a descent steak. I sounds cruel, I know, but how is killing sheep or cows any different when you think about it?

If I could only drop Jennifer off on some back alley of any Thai restaurant and be done with this entire relationship, life would have been that much simpler. But they don’t serve high maintenance women on the Thai menus and therefore I was stuck.
I went down to Joe’s Pub for a drink. They were serving pints of Yuengling for three dollars. I sat on the long wooden bar and looked around at the regular faces. Joes was our neighborhood bar. They never tried to be anything else besides a regular place for regular people.

Hank Grande was a forty two year old retiree. What he retired from? Now one really knew. Hank never drank beer. He was a Jamieson man. I once asked him about that whole Jamieson business but he was not one for too many words.
“Irish whiskey helps me keep my erection going.” He explained and that was pretty much all I ever found out.

A few pints later, I went out for a cigarette. I don’t really smoke nor do I like smoking. But the alcohol made a difference and I was jonesing for some tobacco in my lungs. Now all I needed was a cigarette and a light, I had neither.
I stood around for a few minutes until she showed up.

“Hey” I poetically remarked.
“Hey.” She replied.
“Got a cigarette?”
“Yea. I do.”
“Can I borrow one?”
“Borrow? Do you promise to give it back once you are done with it?” she smiled.
She handed me a menthol cigarette.
“Is it true that menthol cigarettes actually make your breath smell more fresh?” I replied.
She just smiled as she exhaled.
“My name is Jake.”
“Hey Jake.” She grinned.
“And you are?”
“I am what?”
“What is your name?”
“Stephanie”
“Nice to meet you Stephanie.”
“Nice to meet you Jake.”
We stood there in silence for a few minutes. Stephanie was smoking and I was trying to avoid chocking on the tobacco smoke.
“You are not much of a smoker are you Jake?”
“Who me? What are you talking about? I am a professional.”
“A professional what? You don’t seem to professional at either smoking or lying.” She smiled.
“Are you here with anyone special?” I asked her in an attempt to figure out whether she was single or not.
“I am here with friends. How about you?”
“I am here alone.”
“Do you always drink alone Jake?”
“Only when none of my friends want to drink with me. So what do you say Steph, can I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t know Jake, can you?”
“Well I can certainly afford to.”
“Then you might as well.”

We sat back on the long wooden bar where Stephanie introduced me to her two portly friends. They were both beautiful. I ended up buying them all a round of martinis, one dirty, one peach and one Cosmo. Stephanie instructed the bartender to make hers extra dirty.

I do not know why, but somehow I found solace amongst these three women. Stephanie was my favorite by far but the other two also seemed great despite the extra weight that they carried around.

Once again, Stephanie and I went outside for a cigarette. She seemed fairly normal for a New York City woman. She was the kind that read books and avoided television. Such were hard to find these days.

“So tell me there Mr. Jake, are you a single guy?”
“Yes, yes I am. Well, mostly, you know, it is complicated. And how about you?”
“Well, you know Jake, in my life those things are always complicated.”
“Aren’t they always in NYC?”
“Yea, I guess that is always the case around these parts.”
“The key question now Stephanie is do you have any cats back in your place?”
“No I don’t, I only have Rambo.”
“Rambo?”
“My Labrador. He is the biggest sweetheart in the world. How about you Jake, do you have any pets?”
“None that I can recall.”

Unlike Mr. Jingles, Rambo was the kind of an animal that I could relate to. Labradors had better personalities than most people that I have encountered.
While Stephanie and I were screwing on the carpet, he simply sat on the side and watched in wonder, occasionally scratching one part of his body or another. Somehow I felt as if Rambo was pulling for me, as if he was one of my old buddies from back in the day when I was an Undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee.
After a few brief moments of pleasure, we were both done. One more satisfied than the other. But hey, what could I do, it takes time for a woman to find all of the right buttons on a woman. They all had them in different places and none came with a manual.

Stephanie went into the kitchen where she poured some vodka into a tall glass mixer filled with a substantial amount of ice and some cranberry juice. It was getting late and I had to hurry back home before Jennifer would return home.
Before I left, she wrote her telephone number down on a pink piece of scrap paper and placed a smiley face next to her name. We both knew that it would not take too long before I would phone her up. We had magic in our air.

When Jennifer returned from the late night shift she found a simple note on the refrigerator that was written on a white piece of scrap paper:

Sorry Jenn,
But I do not think it is going to work between the two of us.
It is time for this southern boy to move on.
What was missing from the beginning cannot be found.
What was lacking from the start cannot be substituted.
A good-looking girl like you will have no trouble forgetting about
a guy like me, go on and find yourself someone better (it wont take too long)
Thanks for all the good times, I do not regret anything.
PS. Please feed Mr. Jingles, I much prefer dogs to cats.

And then, relieved, I walked home smiling in the early morning cold

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Instant Coffee

2008-11-07T13:11:00.001-08:00

Instant Coffee By: Guy Jacobs www.hardboiledmen.com

After we made love early on that cold Saturday morning, I went into the well decorated kitchen and made her a cup of instant coffee. Juliet did not own a regular drip coffee percolator. It was not about her inability to afford a fifteen dollar Mr. Coffee machine. It had something to do with those two semesters that she spent out on the western coast of Portugal. There, she came to view American coffee as dull and absent of flavor and where she came to appreciate the elation of instant coffee.

Such was Juliet. From head to toe, her skin shined of irony. It took me a while to find the sugar. Juliet took her coffee with two tall teaspoons of unprocessed organic brown sugar. Juliet took her coffee without milk. She was trying to avoid those unnecessary calories.

Finally, I found it hidden behind the tall bottle of Kosher salt. Juliet’s cabinet was full of food and yet, I could find nothing to eat for breakfast. I made myself a cup of instant as well and came back to bedroom holding on to two green ceramic mugs that displayed foreign letters on their sides.

“You are such a sweetheart,” She said, “You really did not have to bother. I would have eventually gotten out of bed and made you some coffee.”

But she did not and therefore I did.

“Did you put two sugars in my coffee?” she asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you find the organic brown sugar?”

“Yes, I did.”

“David, you are such a sweetie, I can just eat you up alive.” She smiled. The magnificence of her olive oiled skinned unfolded from within her sheets as she warmly readjusted her body in my direction.

How I ever finagled my way into the heaven of her thighs must have somehow involved some sort of divine intervention since I was in no way worthy of such fortune.

“Tell me David, do you agree with David Hume’s assessment that the very supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but rather, is derived entirely from habit?” Juliet was the worst kind of a woman for someone like me. She was truly gorgeous and at the same time genuinely intellectual. What she found in a philistine such as myself was beyond me.

I tried to hide my ignorant shame and resorted to a long mindless sip from her green mug. The sweetness of the brown sugar provided me with childish reassurance. I took to adolescent strategies. “I don’t know, what do you think?” I replied.

While she presented her well developed analysis of the multidimensional correlation between reality and one’s own assertion of what reality is, I thought about the last thing that Juliet whispered in my ears seconds before she shivered in climax.

While I was not familiar with David Hume, Emmanuelle Kant and many other of the names that Juliet liked to discuss, I was quit familiar with the female cliterous and with Juliet’s in particular. A man had to choose his area of expertise. I chose the physical over the cerebral.

I picked myself up from the bed and headed towards the balcony where I lit a morning’s cigarette. A cold winter air roamed threw the side streets of my city and warmed me up with its sense of familiarity. From the other room, I could hear Juliet as she was singing along with the radio.

Minutes later she announced that she wanted me to take her out for brunch. She was in the mood for poached eggs and bacon. I had thirteen dollars and sixty eight cents in my pocket and thus argued that I was not particularly in the mood for eggs. We ended up at that same bagel place where one could get a full ledged breakfast for under five dollars.

When we walked into the place, Juliet was thrilled to run into her friend Denis from her interpretive acting seminar. While the two of them engaged in thespian dialogue, I excused myself towards the city street where I would purchase another pack of smokes.

Surveying those fashion magazine covers, I noticed dozens of beautiful women who were smiling at me in synchronization.

All of the women looked way too perfect to be walking amongst us all.

They all carried that cold persona of careful consideration and financial ambition.

And no man of my low status was worthy of their company and no man of my low status was worthy of their flesh.

And yet, earlier on that Saturday morning, she wrapped her teeth around the tender lobe of my ear and in pure ecstasy she whispered, “promise me that you will not finish until I am completely done.”

And so, I did not.

In every large ocean, one small wave rides my name.

In every sky there is a star that shines in my direction.

In every forest there is a single tree that knows my story.

In this small and lonely world, I found my Juliet. David Hume may have been right about the past and he may have been wrong when it came to the future. But such matters were of no consequence to me. The present was all I knew and it essence was captured in her smile.

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Evil Female Boss, Part 1

2008-10-29T18:17:00.001-07:00

When I opened the newspaper on Tuesday, I turned to page A13. There was no particular reason for the selection of that page. I never considered the number 13 to be either lucky or unlucky. I never got that whole 13 thing. How again was it supposed to be a sign of bad luck? Why did most elevators omit the thirteen button? Did it have anything to do with Friday the 13th? Was it a Christian thing? From what I recall Jews considered 13 to be a lucky number than an unlucky one. But Jews were luckier than most, Jewish men that was. At the age of 13 all Jewish boys turned into a men. That was when they celebrated their Bar Mitzvah and got a shitload of gifts, if I correctly recall.

My Jewish friend Jason Gad told me that back in the days fathers would take their thirteen year old boys to the local brothel where they made sure they became men. My father was never as generous. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I grew up in an Atheist family. My atheism never got me anywhere. If I were Jewish and lived back in the day I, then maybe, just maybe, I would not have to wait until the age of nineteen to pop my cherry, but hey, what can I say? One cannot change his past. One cannot turn back the clock and improve his record. And so, when it came to women, I just accepted the way things turned out and never bothered to think about the past too much.

On page A13, the newspaper ran a story about interoffice dynamics and the modern work environment. According to a recent poll conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Public Opinion Research, the majority of people preferred to have a male as their boss then they did a female. The numbers got even more interesting when one considered the actual breakdown.

According to the survey, 34% of males preferred to have a male boss, 10% of them preferred a female boss, while the rest of them (56%) did not care either way. As for the women, they were much more adamant about the subject at hand. According to the survey 40% of female survey participants preferred a male boss, 26% of them preferred a female boss, while 32% of them did not care. Clearly women “did not care” less than did males which to me signified that they clearly did care and it was not in the favor of their fellow females.

This of course brought me to the obvious conclusion, one that I have intrinsically known for many years and did not need any newspaper or academic public opinion survey to confirm – Women were never big fans of other women, they never really trusted one another, they never really liked each other.

Yea, yea, I know what women will say, “most of my best friends are female, I have had the same female friends ever since I grew up and they would stand with me through thick and thin.”
That is what they would tell you, but I never believed this propaganda, I know better than that. I have seen enough in my short life and have tasted enough cheeseburgers to know better than to believe anything that they printed in the newspapers, especially when it comes to the New York Times.

Women to women were and always would be snakes; they were the thorn at the side of one another. But forget the analogies and all of those fancy metaphors, that junk is for writers. I am no writer nor am I a scholar of any sorts. I am a waiter. I work at a local TGI Friday’s restaurant. I wear the red and white stripes with much pride. I serve overpriced prepackaged junk food to a bunch of drunk customers who very much like me frequent the place just to catch a quick glance at our overzealous blond waitress whose fake smiles perfectly compliment their tightly packed anatomies.

This brings me to the whole point of the conversation and to that whole page A13 issue. It brings me to the unlikely topic of Jennifer Martin, my 6pm shift manager who recently altered the course of my once peaceful life.
Jennifer was a complete bitch on wheels. Jennifer was the kind of a boss that would make 99 out of a hundred males and females vote in opposition to any female boss regardless of their income level, age or education. Jennifer was the worst woman of all. She was menstruated 31 days out of the month. She housed the devil between her ears. She houses everyone else between her legs (with the exception of yours truly).

Jennifer was not a misunderstood person. She is clearly understood and the understanding pointed to her malevolence. There were not many good things that one could say about Jennifer even if they tried really hard. That of course was with the exception of her lovely tits. They were huge and they are real. They were the kind that would make any heterosexual male and every bicurious woman take a careful look and painfully yearn for nothing but a quick taste of God’s great creation.
Did I mention that I preferred the fake ones? I never understood why anyone preferred naturals. Fake tits never dropped. Real ones eventually did. Of course there were exceptions. But with fake ones, you never had to deal with physics. They always stood up right no matter if the woman was twenty five or fifty two years of age. I was always a big fan of huge tits. There was no particular reason for that. Like most men, I had no real utility for them, I sometimes just felt like sticking my face in between that cushioned valley and tossing my nose from side to side. Talk about exercise. Look at all of those things that men would do to burn off calories. So ladies, any volunteers out there? Leave a message on my answering machine. I usually checked my voicemail late on Wednesdays; sometimes I checked them early on Thursday mornings. Ladies, do you want to show off your true nature? Send a few photos to my PO Box and wait for a reply.

But Jennifer, she never called, she never left a message nor did she ever send any revealing photos in the mail. She must have been too busy fucking our restaurant manager, Mark Epstein (The Second). That guy was falsely assembled at the factory. Someone accidently misplaced his ass in the same location where his face should have been positioned. After all, what else would account for the large amounts of bullshit that came out of his mouth on the daily?
To someone who did not know any better, it may seem that I was simply jealous of Mark, jealous of another man’s ability to go to places where I have never ventured before. But such was not the case. Such would simply be a misinterpretation of my true nature. I was not the jealous type. However, I could be described as the covetous type.
But this whole Jennifer story had nothing to do with Mark Epstein (The Second); it had nothing to do with Jennifer’s perfect pair of tits or with the fact that I had not had sexual relations with any woman in twelve days, three hours and seventeen long minutes.

Everything that had to do with Page A13 only reminded me of Jennifer Martin. But I tend to misrepresent. Jennifer was never anything but nice to me in the year and a half that she served as my boss. She was a fair boss, she never busted my balls and she was always good for a late night drink. Everything between the two of us was always good until that day that she introduced me to Lisa Nguyen, her best friend and old college roommate from Colorado State University.
At closing time, a few days ago, we all gathered around the bar, counted tips and told stories about the idiotic customers that we encountered on that night. Everything was pretty much as ordinary, good times and free drinks. Jody was working the bar that night. After all the customers left, she let the drinks flow like butter on a ham. Free drinks always tasted better than those you had to pay for. It was one of the key perks of wearing the old red and white suspenders.

Jody and Jennifer were laughing with Bruce, our assistant manager. I just smiled and enjoyed the moment, thinking what it would be like to see naked at my side. Around 1am, Jennifer’s cell phone rang. I suspected that we would soon encounter Mr. Mark Epstein (The Second) but was soon happy to head Jenn announce that Lisa visiting from out of town.
Lisa and I met a few times before. She recently moved out to Delaware where she worked as an admission’s counselor at some small private university. Apparently, there was not much to do around Newark, DE (pronounced Ne-Wark as opposed to Ne-Work, NJ) and so she would hop in her car on weekends and find her way to our TGIF.

The last time we all met was a few weeks ago. Jenn and Lisa got all drunk and dragged me back to Jenn’s apartment were we all played Karaoke on her Sony Playstation. They must have gone through an entire rendition of songs from the 80s and 90s that almost drove me nuts. Jennifer loved Brittney Spears and I had no choice but to play along. The worst was when they made me join them in a drunk version of the Spice Girls song, If You Want To Be My Lover.
One that night, after all the singing and boozing, Lisa and I made out while Jenn passed out on the couch. I tried my best to stick my busy fingers under Lisa’s tiny Asian bra but she would have none of it.
And now, here she was, once again, she was all smiles.

Jody made Lisa her favorite cocktail, a Gray Goose dirty martini with an extra shot of olive juice and two extra shots of vodka. Soon enough, Lisa was ready to go. But it was getting late and Jennifer was too tired to party on that night. And besides, Mark was waiting for her to show up at his place. They planned a big trip to Upstate on the following morning and she really needed to catch some sleep.

To my surprise, Jennifer suggested that I would be the one to take Lisa out and show her a good time. This brings me back to page A13 of the New York Times. When the survey participants had to answer whether they preferred a male to a female boss, no one ever mentioned to them just how gorgeous their female boss would be, how amazingly hot their old college roommates would be and how the rest of the night turned out.

www.hardboiledmen.com

Books and Bukowski

2008-10-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Question: Who is your favorite author?

Answer: Hold on, don’t answer just yet; think about it for a moment.

According to a recent survey, more than 89 million Americans DID NOT read a book in 2007 (US National Endowment for the Arts). Meantime, those who do read tend to focus on non fiction and how to books:

How to lose 50 pounds in 50 days?
How to become a millionaire in three months?
How to make a man commit?
How to make a woman orgasm?
How to win friends and influence people?
How to tell if a man is marriage material?
How to know who is going to win an election simply by looking at candidates’ height and age?

And then there is fiction. You know, those books that are not written in bullets. Then can not be summarized by Top 10 lists. When it comes to fiction, most Americans seek advice from the grand marshal herself Mrs. Oprah Winfrey, if you make it to her list, you are pretty much guaranteed a spot on the best seller list and there is nothing wrong with that. One occasion, she gets it absolutely right (and at times she did not).

So what do most Americans read? Well, there are those author giants such as J. K. Rowling, James Patterson, John Grisham, Danielle Steel, Dean Koontz and Josephine Cox. Much like any local Wal-Mart store, these authors each dominate sales in their own genre. There is nothing particularly wrong with any of these authors. Most of them found the formula to America’s taste in literature (and pocketbooks) and have thus dominated top seller lists for years.

What scares me more than anything, however, are the millions of readers who never heard of the classics and by classics, I am not referring to Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe or Jules Verne.

I am referring to more contemporary authors; those authors who dared to piss off the corporate establishment and thus ended, at times, with the short end of the literary stick.

Take Charles Bukowski as an example. Charles Whom? You ask?

Henry Charles Bukowski was a German-American poet slash author who managed to publish dozens of books of poetry, short stories and fiction in his short seventy four years on this earth (mostly spent in LA bars). Thanks to the vision of John Martin and his Black Sparrow publication, Hank dedicated himself to sitting down and writing books (in addition to his love for the poem as he described it). The marriage between Black Sparrow and Bukowski proved magical and resulted in such great works of literature as Ham on Rye, Post Office, Women and Factotum. Bukowski whose work was largely inspired by such authors as John Fante, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Anton Chekhov has inspired a new generation of contemporary authors such as Guy Jacobs, Dan Fante and Tom Paine.

You would think that an author like Bukowski who wrote about getting laid, drinking heavily and under-advantaged fist fighting would attract the attention of those younger male readers who themselves are trying to accomplish much of what Hank Bukowski worked towards and yet, that is not the case.

I recently searched through Charles Bukowski groups on both Facebook and Myspace. There, I discovered that the majority of Bukowski fans came from such corners of the world as Turkey, Slovenia, France and Belgium. Most of them were women as well. This is not a big surprise. Women tend to read more than males, especially those under the age of twenty five (the guys are too busy with looking at online pornography, playing video games and jerking off).

There is much more to be written about the topic of literature and books. Although, most of us authors do somewhere, somehow acknowledge that writing and reading is a dying art (thank you media convergence). Still we do it because this is who we are and this is what we do.

For those of you who are wondering which books you should pick up next, here is a list of recommendations:

1. Sexus by Henry Miller
2. The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
3. Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
4. Ask the Dust by John Fante
5. Hard Boiled Men by Guy Jacobs
6. Straight Man by Richard Russo
7. Portnoy’s complaint by Philip Roth
8. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
9. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
10. A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley

That is all for today, get off of your computer and go read a book

52% of Female Orgasms

2008-10-09T20:27:00.001-07:00

www.hardboiledmen.com

John May woke up early that morning for no apparent reason. He brewed up a pot of coffee on that old Mr. Coffee machine that he held on to ever since his graduate school days. If it ain’t broke, why bother to buy a new one, he thought. The cold wind that ran through the streets of Pittsburg did not provide enough incentive for John to put a pair of sweatpants on. In his underwear, he greeted the morning.

John May was the kind of a guy who enjoyed his morning routine and nothing was more central to that routine than the old cup of cup and reading the morning newspaper. John did not have much interest in the news sections, the financials or even the sports. He was the kind of a man who read between the lines searching for a clue. Of course, one could theoretically argue that John was a bit of a conspiracy theory but that was not the case at all (or maybe it was). John knew the ways of the media. He had an undergraduate degree in journalism and knew all about newsroom routines, gatekeeping and media framing. In between the lines was the way that those in charge communicated with one another. In between the advertorials, editorials and daily columns, in the fine print, that was where the truth was hidden from the reading masses.

On page A5 John came across a clue. The headline could not be more convincing.

52% OF WOMEN NEVER EXPERIENCED AN ORGASM, the headline read.

This was exactly the kind of a thing that made you wonder. And if it did not make you wonder, thought John, well at least it should.

Back in the old days, he ran across old Herb Schiller his journalism professor back at the University of California at San Diego. Schiller told the class that they should never believe anything they read in the newspaper.

“Everything that you read in the newspaper, hear on the radio or watch on television is nothing short of a corporate conspiracy to turn you into a better consumer. Those people want you to equate your happiness with the art of shopping. Had a bad day at work, buy some shoes. Your boyfriend cheated on you, take his credit card and get some shopping therapy. Don’t believe anything that they say.” That was the kind of a lecture that would often be heard in Schiller’s seminars. John May loved every part of it. It made sense when you really thought about it.

The coffee tasted a bit rusty that morning. Maybe Pam was right after all. Maybe it was time to buy a new coffee maker and throw away the old dusty machine that he bought at Target for ten dollars more than three years ago.

But what about the headline, he thought could this really be true? Fifty two percent seemed a bit excessive to John. And what those other forty eight percent, he thought. Was it a function of psychology or was it all the guy’s fault as he heard many of his female friends argue. Thinking back to those five women that he somehow managed to lay so far in his short twenty five year career, he could not remember if 2.6 of those women actually did or did not reach sexual climax.

The first time he did it was sometime back in high school. He was a frightened pimple faced junior and she, an overweight twenty four year old woman who seemed more bored than anything on her overextended semester break. Thinking back of that night, he felt nothing but shame when he recalled just how quickly he came just as soon as he felt that incredible touch of the female flesh for the very first time in his life.

Her name was Lucy and she did not protest. She was more of a resourceful type than a complainer. She simply walked into the shower, cleaned herself up and then forced him to eat her out until should reached satisfaction.

Then there was that girl that he met during freshman orientation back at UCSD . She was a stacked woman with enough meat on her to feed a small village in Bangladesh. John did not remember her name. When he thought about it, he never did know it in the first place. They somehow stumbled into bed after a freshman party back in the dorms. John did not have any condoms on him but she insisted on penetration. Twenty seconds later, her sizeable stomach was painted in the colors of white apprehension. She gave him a dirty look and then proceeded to transfer into the bed of his roommate who pretended to be sleeping. John stared at the dorm ceiling as he listened to his roommate Dave give the girl a proper fuck. Ten minutes passed and then he heard a woman come for the first time. Was she faking it out of spite for his non-proficient performance or did Dave really supply the goods. 48% says that it was spite over Dave.

Then there was Patty, the girl he briefly dated during senior year. Patty came from a small town in Alabama. He could not remember if it was Tuscaloosa or someplace right in the area. Patty was a nice girl. She was always kind to John and was the one who taught him how to manage his erections and hold on to them for just a bit longer. She showed him how at a simple push of the external vein, right at the base of the cock, he could buy himself a few more seconds inside.

When it came to Patty Valentine, John had no doubts. If anyone had an orgasm it was her. How did he know? Well she always made a point to announce. Clinching on to his skin, grinding her teeth and pulling his hair she rotated her hips all around, closed her eyes, scratch her nails until she finally shout out that old slogan of the Alabama football team: GOOOOOOOO TIIIIIEEEEDDDD.

Patty loved the University of Alabama football team. This she made clear every Saturday when she watched SEC football. This she made clear on those rare occasions when he managed to hold on long enough to validate the newspaper’s statistics.

John managed to fall in love with Patty Valentine and things were going pretty well until graduation. They talked about moving in together. They talked about graduate school out in Iowa State were John was admitted into a Master’s degree with a guaranteed research stipend for his first three semesters. Things were moving along on track until Patty flew down to Alabama to visit her family a few weeks after graduation. There she met up with her old high school sweetheart Dale Gary who not only played high school football for the champion Cougars but was also a walk on defensive end for the University of Louisiana Raging Cajun football team.

John was crushed when he heard the news. Patty never bothered to fly back to deliver the news face to face. It all happened so quickly over the phone. John tried to reason with her, to win her sympathy, to appeal to her love, but none was left for him. He had no choice but to move on.

After Patty, John took a break from women. They were creatures of betrayal, he thought. Their only loyalty was to their own interests. They knew nothing of a man’s heart.

It was two years later that Pamela came into his world. Pam was not an attractive woman but at least she was nice. At first she refused anything beyond friendship. Why ruin a good thing with all of those complications? She often told him when he tried to come close and kiss her.

Pam introduced John to her girlfriends as her heterosexual gay friend. John never really connected with any of those types. But on one particular Friday night they were playing drinking games and John had way too much to drink. The only thing that he recalled was waking up naked next to Pam’s most horrendous looking friend, Michelle. Nothing was to ever be spoken of that night, he pledged. The shame was beyond him. Number four would be kept secret for as long as possible. He only hoped that Pam would never find out about the events that took place on that night. Despite his best hopes, Michelle told her all but Pam did not seem to mind.

About a year later, to his surprise, Pam turned into number five. He could not be any happier.

John stared at the newspaper headline and scratched his head. There was so much that he did not know about women. Unfortunately, he did not too many male friends to give him any advice.

Later one, when Pam woke up, she poured herself some Hazelnut creamer into her rusty cup of coffee.

“Don’t believe everything that you read in the newspaper John. That statistic could only be written by a man and obviously, a relatively ignorant one. The real numbers are much lower than you would think. I even doubt that 33% of women ever experienced a multiple orgasm and numbers may actually be lower.

John was never that good when it came down to statistics. Back when he was an undergraduate student, he barely passed the Introduction to Business Statistics course with a below average grade of C-. As for women, newspaper headlines and the rest of the world, John all but understood that he will never truly understand.

“Did you ever have a real orgasm with me?” he asked of Pam.

She in turn simply smiled and said, “Well of course I did sweaty, you gave me many.”

John felt better for a moment until he recalled that university lecture back in his undergraduate days at UCSD where he learned not to trust anything that was printed in the newspaper, heard on the radio or seen on TV but more than anything else he learned never to trust the smile of a more experienced woman.

For more go to www.hardboiledmen.com

Cheating Men, or are they?

2008-09-24T14:57:00.001-07:00

What She Knows, She Knows
www.hardboiledmen.com

It was not such a big surprise to hear her complain so bluntly about how she thought that New York City was totally overrated and that she did not see what the big deal was all about. Anyone who follows the typical tourist routine, sleeps at a Theater District hotel, eats a $14 pastrami sandwich down at the Carnegie Deli and goes shopping in those mega stores that stole the city's very soul away might very likely confuse New York for something it is not, tourist hell on crack.

The last time Antonia and I met, things were very different. She was a young college student at the University of Sienna, and I, a traveling journalist who was working on a new book that dealt with the historical sexual curiosities of the Tuscan people. The city of Sienna is nothing like New York City. The city of Sienna is like no other city in the world. With its small roads, car free street, Renaissance architecture and old stone buildings, it was hardly similar to where we found ourselves so many years later.

By now, Antonia was a relatively successful art saleswoman who worked in a fashionable gallery situated along Porta Volta Avenue in Milan. By now, I have published one more book, this one, an academic account of the basic conflict within the American psyche in regards to sexuality and Puritanism.

Antonia was a bit heavier than I remembered her to be. She of course must have thought the same.

But that was not the main area of contention on this unexpected reunion. The main issue was Jenny, my girlfriend of two years.

When I first heard her voice on the phone, I froze if only for a moment. Nothing that I could Jenny could reassure her in regards to my old Italian flame. Antonia was the stuff of legend. Her sexuality well documented as well as inspiration to my works and writings (using pseudo-names of course).

Things would not be nearly as bad if it wasn't for all the difficulties Jenny and I are having these days. To be perfectly honest, things are not going that well between the two of us these days. In the sack we are strangers, in the living room just as bad.

And now Antonia came back into my life even if only for a short visit. She is no longer a woman in my eyes. She has no faults nor bad memories attached. She was and will always be the highlight, the one I left behind, the one that got away and now she came back into my sphere and things are about to get messy in my life.

I agreed to meet her down by Pennsylvania Station. She took the train from Philadelphia and would arrive on time. We checked her carry on into the Pennsylvania Hotel across the street. Her room would not be ready until around 3pm.

Jenny would not be back from work until 6pm. I had some time to steal.

We walked around and looked around the buildings. Antonia immediately disliked the city. She did not like the large quantity of people, the bums who asked for change, the noise of traffic and ambulance sirens that rang across the ears.

In Sienna, I remembered, we used to walk around the tiny streets every evening around 7:30pm. We were not the only ones. Everyone took a walk around this magical town when the sun began to yield. The great square beneath the church was filled with friends and neighbors who strolled along the Old Italian tradition.

This sucks she said, NYC is nothing but a huge shopping mall for fat American tourists. I held her by the hand and walked her down the subway station. Heading down towards the lower east side, I would show her the real New York, the Old New York, my New York.

Like the monthly cycles of a woman, this city had many faces and not all were easy for us men to digest.

A bottle of red wine down on Grand Street was not the true catalyst for the tension that was about us.

Antonia knew that I was no longer her man. She herself was not entirely available as Marco was waiting for her back in Milano.

But time cannot fix what time cannot mend. Once there, it is never gone. Once felt, it is always there.

Two people who were once in love sat across the table. One glows with wonder and youth, the other beaten by the years. Neither one is the cheating type, not the man nor the woman.

They talk about it out load, think of it internally.

When I saw Jenny that night, I held her hand and kissed her fingers. What she knows is what she knows and what I know is mine.

www.hardboiledmen.com

Life is Life

2008-09-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

It has been more than four months since I last smoked a joint. Four months but who is counting? I am.

Marijuana is not addictive, at least, physically it is not.

But life, life always gets in the way of sanity. With nothing to smoke and a general lack of tolerance for alcohol, there is not much to do besides go insane.

The worst part of it all is that the majority of people that I hang out with in this city do not smoke. How they manage life is beyond me. Most of them live on a supplementary diet of Lexapro, Effexor, Cymbalta, Zoloft or Prozac. Most of them mix a bunch. But not me, I was never one for pharmaceuticals.

The most annoying thing is that these people see no irony in their condescending ways.

Take Josh for instance, he may just be the perfect example.

We met up in the coffee shop like we always do. He and his bullshit stories about the movie business, his auditions and all of the women he is screwing on a regular. I could easily sniff through people’s lies, and this guy was not exception. Josh was more likely to take one up the ass than he is to eat a piece of pussy pie.

“So what’s new Mr. Hollywood?” I asked.
“Oh my God, you would never believe the week I had. I am so close to getting an agent I tell you. I can just feel it. Last Tuesday, I had a second call for an audition. It is for an off Broadway but this is something big I tell you. This could be the break I was looking for.”

He went on and on but I was not really listening. By now, I just learned how to shut people off. I was too old for their bullshit. So why did I keep people around? Well, it beat the hell out of staring at the walls of my apartment.

After he told me about the blond with the huge tits that begged him for more. After he further went into details about the casting agent and the producers that he met at the grand opening of the Itch Gallery down in Soho. After he went on and on. I could stand it no more.

“You know Josh, if I don’t score some Marijuana soon, I may just go insane. Can’t you score me a dime bag from one of your homo friends down in Chelsea? Can’t you hook a brother up?”

“Oh grow up already, will you? What kind of a forty year old still smokes pot anyways? Gosh, don’t you think it is kind of pathetic to smoke weed at your age? And you, a university professor and all, what will become of you? What if somebody found out?”

What will become of me? What will become of any of us? I do not know.

Life is life and life is hard enough. Somehow, someway, we all find a way to get by.

Read More From Guy Jacobs

Hollywood by Charles Bukowski

2008-09-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

I am not quit sure why it took me so long to pick up Hollywood by Charles Bukowski. The book was just sitting around the shelf for years. Like most others, I read Ham on Rye, Women and Post Office on several occasions. Any of us Bukowski fans recognize Hank for the genius that he was.

No, this old drunk is nothing like the great authors of the 20th Century. His writing style is flat compared to the great ones that they make you read in your Introduction to the American Classic course at collgate university, Dartmouth or Amherst College. But New England universities never hired the kind of professors who had the balls (or tenure) to teach old Hank Bukowski to their students.

By I digress.

So let’s go back to Hollywood. The novel not the city.

As always Hank provides us readers with thoughts about the breakdown of society, the colorful characters that he encountered and just how lame he thinks the world can be.

And he may be correct at times.

As always he is drinking. Beer, wine, vodka. As long as it is cheap. As long as it is free. As long as it is there. Henry Chinaski never asked twice.

Hank never tries to be anything that he is not. And that is exactly why his fiction works. Honesty above style.

The entire book tells the tale of the screenplay that he had to write for Hollywood producers. For what may have been the movie Barfly staring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.

Of course, he did not use their names.

Hollywood works. Bukowski’s work usually did ever when he did not.

For the early Bukowski readers, do not start here.

Women or Post Office is the place to begin.

For those of you who read all that Hank could write (which I doubt), pick up Ask The Dust or Wait Until Spring, Bandini. Arturo Bandini was Hank’s influnence. That is, John Fante.

I am too tired to run spell check. If I messed up, please don’t call the cops.

As long as you are reading you are living. What you read does not matter just as much.

Guy

*Guy Jacobs is the Author of Hard Boiled Men

NYU TALES

2008-08-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

Calling Ms. Jamaica, Part 1

2008-08-26T13:33:00.001-07:00

For More From Guy Jacobs

I looked at my watch. It was 5:16pm. There was no need to rush. There were still ten minutes or so until the train was scheduled to arrive. I walked up the station’s platform careful not to spill any of the coffee on my shoes. There were only a dozen or so people waiting there. Most undergraduates tended to wait until the last minute before they showed up for the train or did anything else. I parked myself on a wooden bench where a blind woman sat. She held on to a painted stick and hummed a familiar song.

“How are you today?” I politely asked.

“I am doing just fine, thank you very much. Now, tell me Mr. do you happen to know when the next train into the city will be arriving?”

“It should be arriving here in about ten minutes or so, but you know how late these trains tend to run. The train schedule is not all that dependable.”

“Nothing in this world ever is.” She said and kept on humming that same familiar tune. Somehow it put me at ease.

I turned to Chapter five of the book that I was reading and lost myself with in its pages. Wrapped in stillness and a fluid breeze that flowed through the rain station’s corridor, I somehow managed to forget all about everything that bothered me, if only for a comfortable moment.

This peaceful moment was crushed just as soon as she arrived

“Hey, do any of you happen to have a bottle opener?” she asked.

I studied her with a slide of the head. Holding on to the bottle and a mischievous smile uncommon to a woman her age, she was the ruin of all men.

I pretended not to be interested but she knew better. She was a seasoned warrior. It would take much more than my pretty blue eyes to withstand her resolve. Before I said a single word, she was fully cognisant of just how lonely I have become.

I reached back into my deep pocket and pulled out my keychain. On its outer edge was a cheap plastic beer bottle opener.

“Here you go,” I offered, “but first, you must tell me where that gorgeous accent is from.”

“Well, why don’t you try and take a guess.” She offered.

“Well, I am no expert, but I would guess that you are from United Kingdom, England, I would say. Somewhere in London, but then again, it could be anywhere.”

She repositioned her body as she leaned in my direction, “Well, you are not entirely wrong. I do live in London at the moment but I was actually born and raised in the beautiful island of Jamaica.”
“Jamaica, no shit?”

“No shit,”

Her pale white skin seemed as Jamaican as a piece of Gefilte fish. But then again, I did once hear about the fact that Jamaica was home to many ethnicities such as Indians, Chinese, Arabs and whites.

“And where in London do you live?” I asked as if I knew anything about London. True, I did visit the place on many occasions but that was mostly for academic conferences and such. I was not that familiar with the place.

“I live in Shepherd's Bush, do you know where that is?” she asked.
“No, not really.” I smiled. In an attempt to disguise my overall ignorance of London’s geography, I tried to impress using an alternative approach.
“And so, what is your soccer team?”
“My soccer team? I can only assume that you are referring to football?”
“English football. Here we call it soccer.”
“Sorry, but it was football in the rest of the world way before you guys came around.”
“Whatever you say,” I smiled, “so what is your team? Arsenal? Manchester United? Liverpool?”
“None of the above. I am not all that into sports but if I had to choose, I would say Tottenham Hotspur, have you ever heard of that team?”
I did not. Strike Two.
“So what brings you to this little Podunk town?”
“Podunk?” she asked.
“You know, small, tiny, insignificant little town.
“Oh yea? It did not look all that bad.”
“It is not that bad, it is just small, really small. Don’t get me wrong, I like this place. It must pale in comparison to London. Am I right?”
She nodded her head in agreement. “I actually came out here for a fashion shoot.”
“A fashion shoot? You must be shitting me. Where would you possibly go for a fashion shoot around these parts?”
“We shot out by the creek early this morning and then again in the afternoon. God, I almost froze my tits out there.” She smiled.

Once again, I carefully surveyed her body, trying not to look too obvious. She was pretty enough all right but did not seem like the model type. She had a bit more meat on her than the average model that one may see in a magazine. Nevertheless, there was something about the way in which she carried herself. She seemed comfortable within her skin. She exploded with the milk of life.

I tried to make her out but my attempts at physical assessment were hindered by the overcoat that she wore. I could not tell what kind of a body she was hiding under it.

“So tell me more about this fashion shoot that you were involved in. What are you, the photographer?”
“No, I am a model. Why? Do I look like a photographer?” she asked.
“Well, I am not sure, what does a photographer look like anyways?”
“Well, they don’t look like anything but they don’t look like models now do they?”
“I don’t know, I can only guess that some do.” I tried to dig myself out of the hole that I dug.

But this one did not care, she was just busting my balls. She had a good sense to her this woman. She almost seemed as casual as an old friend.
“So what do you do around these parts?” She asked.
“Me? I teach at the university. I am an American literature professor.”
“Not bad,” she smiled, “I love to read. Not necessary American literature, I most prefer the Europeans, but you guys had some descent writers.”
“Oh yea, which American readers do you like?”
“You know, all of the basics, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Thoreau, Henry James, Jack London.”
Stunned, I turned in her direction. This woman must have been just as young as any of my students and seemed to have a better grasp of any of them combined.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, “are you a model or are you a student of literature. How the hell do you know about all of these writers?”
“Why are you so surprised? I mean doesn’t everyone know these writers here in America?”
“No one under the age of thirty is any. Not anyone who was born after 1981.”
Her sarcastic smile soon appeared, “Well, I was actually born in 1984, if you must know.”
“Well dear girl, I am impressed. Most of my undergraduate students are about your age and most of them never ever heard of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most of them think that This Side of Paradise is a daytime soap opera.”
“Well, I never read that one.” She slid her tongue across her healthy lip. “And how about you professor, who do you like to read?”
“That all depends,” I smiled, “Are we talking American, European, world authors? What?”
“Let’s start with Americans.”
“Well, I wrote my dissertation about Henry Miller. Have you ever heard of him?”
“Of course I have,” she protested.
“Not Arthur Miller,” I clarified, “We are not talking about the guy who wrote The Death of A Salesman.”
“Yea, I know, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller, Henry and June Henry Miller.”
“Well, you know. Henry and June is actually based on the writings of Anais Nin, Henry’s lover.”
“Yea, I know. I love Anais Nin, you know A Spy in the House of Love is one of my favorites.”
Where has this woman come from and how could it be? I wondered. So many years have gone by. So many students have come and gone fro my writing workshops and seminars and none seemed as bright as this white skinned, Aryan Jamaican girl who claimed to have lived in London and be a fashion model. Life was always so much stranger than fiction. I tried to hide my enthusiasm. By now the very thought of a quick one night stand with her was replaced with thoughts about three children, a large house in the Hamptons and a dog. But I had to be careful. This one was as clever as she was young. She was as sophisticated as she was tender. I pondered my next move as the train slowly made its way into the station. We both knew that this conversation is to be continued on the train although there was no reason for such assumptions other than the fact that we were both still smiling at one another.

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Those Blond Girls

2008-08-05T08:11:00.001-07:00

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After seminar, I headed over to Human Resources. Those fuckers called me down to their office for the God knows how many time. Apparently, I once again failed to properly fill out the direct deposit application. If I knew just how much trouble it would cause, I would have never have switched banks. The service at my old bank was more than satisfactory and they never overcharged for any transaction. Really, there was no reason to switch banks.. Well, that is, there was a reason, but it was no a good one.

Her name was Julie and we met at a happy hour down at Jimmy’s Tavern down on Thompson Street. She was just sitting there looking all blond and official with the smell of corporate America lingering around her stuffy black business suite. She looked good. These kind of women don’t find their way to these kind of joints. We usually recruit from the bottom of the barrel.

“So excuse the cliché, but what is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“Why, what is wrong with this place?” she asked.
“What’s wrong? What can I tell you? Nothing and everything. It is just that we usually don’t get such pretty girls around here.”
“A friend of mine from the bank told me about this place. He said they have good cheap drinks, a good atmosphere and old time rock and roll. He did however warn me about the kind of characters that hang out around this place. Would you happen to be one of those characters”
“Well, I am not sure if I am one of those characters. But like most people, I am a character. Know what I mean?”
“Not really, but whatever.” She smiled.
She was a descent type for such an attractive woman. I never really had the chance to associate with one of these types. That of course was with the exception of those busty blond sorority girls that I always encountered in my introduction to American literature class. After I bought her a couple of drinks I tried to hit her up for her home telephone number or her cellular but she played hard to get.
“Sorry John, but I don’t give my number away to men that I meet in bars, especially not a bar like this one.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with this bar?” I asked.
“Nothing and everything, you know.” She laughed.
Eventually, she gave me her business card and walked out of the place. I watched her ass wiggle across that tight business skirt along that arousing foxtrot that took place at the edge of those shiny long legs. I was not the only one.

I slowly read the fine print that read:

Julie A. Smith
Senior Loan Officer
Downtown Branch

The next day, I opened a bank account at the downtown branch. Julie was no where in sight. I found several excuses to return to the bank. I came in for a debit card. I made a few deposits. I made a few withdrawals. Julie was nowhere in sight.
A few days later, I discovered that Julie had a boyfriend named Steve. He was the assistant bank manager.

By this point it was too late to go back to my old bank and that dusty old lady that served as my personal account representative.

So there I stood in the Human Resources office, reapplying once again for a direct deposit of my university salary. This time, I asked the lady at the counter to guide me through the process.

This whole bank account story was just another example of bad judgment. But what could a man do? None of us could resist. As I said before, I never really had the chance to associate with this kind of a woman.

That of course, with the exception of those busy blond sorority girls that always managed to get a B+ better in my Introduction to American Literature courses.

Free Cheddar Nation

2008-06-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

The thing I hate most about supermarkets are those free sample displays that are scattered all over those random corners of the store. They usually throw the samples into plastic containers where tiny bits of cheddar cheese are divided into dozens of even tinnier pieces of crud. Don’t get me wrong, those things taste pretty good and they are free, but what about that very fundamental issue of personal hygiene?

When you charge people for things, they show no shame in displaying just how truly anal they are. Did any of you pay any sort of attention to how people order their coffee drinks in any of those chain coffee shops? Maybe it is just a New York City thing. Maybe it just has to do with those characters who live on the upper east side. But I mean, come on, where do these people come from? Only this morning I saw one of those socialites order a cup of coffee. Actually it was not coffee the way she ordered it. It was more like a advanced placement science project.

I’ll have a skinny latte macchiato, half caf, half decaf with soy foam and please, make sure it is at 125 degrees, I don’t like it when my coffee is lukewarm, she explained.

That’s how she drinks her coffee this woman does. How the poor Puerto Rican kid behind the counter even figured that one out? God bless his soul.

So apparently, when we pay for things, we all allow ourselves to become complete pains in the ass, but when it comes to the free stuff, the rules adjust.

Just before I reached over for some of that old yellow fermented stuff, I noticed a corpulent woman who stuffed her overburdening fingers into the plastic container and took not one nor two but about six tiny squares and just scooped them out of the sample tray and straight into her hungry blowhole.

She was a foul one that woman was but not nearly as disgusting as that skinny awkward Minnesota type who stood over six feat tall and was wearing his torn Twins T-Shirts that he likely bought during their last playoff run more than two decades ago.

To say that this guy abused the very concept of a sampling display would be the understatement of the year. This guy was out for the kill. He seemed to believe with all of his Midwestern heart that there was such a thing as a free lunch and it took place right here on aisle 12 of the Megamart.

The guy had a system. He pretended to be sampling, not eating. Or at least, that was his apparent rational. But his system was as foolish as that red and yellow Gophers cap that he sported on his head. He took three pieces every time and then he would take a break and let the next person in line sample a piece for himself.

Pretty good cheese, he would say and then reach over for another sample. The way he saw it I suppose was not that he was a free cheese hog but rather a good neighbor and ambassador for the Cheddar cheese nation.

The sizeable woman and the tall Norwegian held conversation for several minutes while stuffing themselves on free yellow cheddar.

You realize of course, he told her, that not all cheese is actually made from cow’s milk. You have such varieties as Acapella and Humboldt Fog that are made out of goat milk. There is buffalo cheese, cheese made from the milk of camels, mare, yak and even lamas.

I never really knew that, she seemed to be embarrassed. To be perfectly honest, she confessed that she was somewhat lactose intolerant and was not a huge fan of the yellow stuff.

So why are you eating from this display of Cheddar? He was curious to know.

Well, you know, it is free so I just figured what the heck.

They continued to talk about cheese and milk and cows and camels and then walked over together to the meat department where they served free sampled of Bavarian sausages.

If those only knew, those people, I thought to myself that right before they came around, I stuck my hands into those piles of cheddar.

If they only realized how I stood there so compact and sweaty inside that downtown Nine train holding on to those very hand rails that so many thousands of other perspiring New Yorkers held on to every day in search of balance.

Ten minutes earlier I walked into the super store where I noticed free sample trays of Cheddar cheese. After throwing my hands all around the piles of food, I realized that I was likely carrying thousands of miniature colonies of Staphylococcus who were forming their troops in preparation of an imminent invasion of some poor man or woman’s large intestine.

So filthy were my hands that I decided to wash them both before and after urination. As I returned to the sample tray I noticed a large woman who stood besides a tall man. The two were devouring the free samples of cheese that were by now as polluted as the toxic waters of the Hudson river.

This is the main problem with people, I thought to myself, they could never resist anything if it was given to them for free.

Next time you walk into the whole food store, think about personal hygiene, think about tall Norwegian men and fat woman who chew away the free fat of life without knowledge of what came before.

The young woman who stood at the cash register had long streams of brunette hairs that were flowing down the path of her shoulder.

It has been more than a month since Sylvia and I last spoke on the phone.

God I miss that woman.

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NYU Tales

2008-06-14T08:06:00.000-07:00

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NYU TALES

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God Just Laughs

2008-06-06T15:55:00.001-07:00

There are people around this town who walk around wearing three-piece business suites. If we lived in New York City, it would all make sense. Maybe it would make some sense in Chicago or the nicer parts of Hollywood. But around this tiny town? I mean, come on man.

The August sun feels no remorse towards people who walk around in pinstripe Giorgio Armani suites. No business deal can be worth withstanding this crazy heat.

But some people around these parts do not mind and I am always one to say, “Live and let live”.

The August sun feels no remorse towards my shaved head. I had lost the majority of my hair back when I was in my mid thirties. Those were some rough days back then for this cowboy.

As my old kindergarten teacher always told us studs : “You can not take back stupid.”

Her name was Shelly and she was the woman that I loved.

Her name is still Shelly but now she is loved by another man.

Shelly and I met back in those days when my hair was full and I was still the smiling kind of a man. I was the kind of a man that was going places. I was the kind of a man who inspired other men to be the kind of men that they hoped to one day become.

But the years have gone by and nothing is the same any longer.

The last I heard, she was living with some rich Baptist banker in some stylish new-money suburb right on the outskirt of Austin, Texas.

Shelly had a clear agenda since she was a teenage girl. She wanted nothing to do with our parts. I could not really ever blame her for it.

Her Daddy was a drunk and her mother was not one to say no to any man who paid her any fraction of attention.

Shelly always knew that she would get out of town just as soon as she would meet the right man. She wanted to live the kind of life she always read about in those shiny magazines.

Shelly once thought that I was that kind of a right man. She hoped that I would be the one to get her out of this life that she was living. She did not enjoy working as a waitress down at Bill’s diner down on Irwin Street. A lady’s hands, she always said, should be gentle and soft.

Back in those days, I worked as the senior consultant to our district’s congressman. When I woke up in the mornings, I would put on my pressed kaki slacks and that old crimson tie. While I brewed up that fresh pot of coffee, she would carefully iron my white button down shirt with that old Suzy Home Maker smile.

Back in those days, people mistook me for an honorable man, the kind of a man that was going places. My hair was thick and well brushed to the side. I never missed Sunday service at the local Methodist church.

Walking out hand in hand, looking as clean cut as American bacon, we looked the part and for a while even fell for it ourselves.

Shelly had big plans for our future. For my future is what she really had in mind. I was to work hard and climb up the ladder. I was to keep a smile on my face and my mouth shut.

Just as soon as old man Johnson would finish out his fourth consecutive term, would serve as the perfect timing for us to take that next step, where she would be the perfect little wife for the honorable congressman from Odessa, Texas.

God Bless that woman’s heart.

But Shelly soon found out the hard way that that old eastern saying holds truth regardless of geography:

“God laughs while man makes plans”

Or at least that’s what Father Swanson told me on that Sunday afternoon after that whole fiasco blew up in my face.

The first thing that Shelly did when she found out was slap me across the face.

The second thing that Shelly did when she found out was to once again slap me across the face but only this time, in the opposite direction.

I did not even try to explain. The only thing she ever cared about was that long term agenda. She never really bothered to ask about my dreams. To her they served no utility. And were not, as she said “Something an adult should ever think about…”

The last I heard, Shelly was living in a large estate that was fully paid for in cash. She has two ladies from Honduras who chased after her rotten children whole she would waste her hours down at the old hair salon.

But was I really someone who could judge another?

When Congressman Johnson first found out about his eighteen year old daughter and I, he kicked me right in the ass with the promise that I would never find work around these parts just as long as he had a single breath in his lungs.

My political career over and my hair mostly gone, I found my happiness within the comforts of this small bar.

Serving bottles of Shiner beer to the locals and fancy Scotch over ice to men in three piece suites, I came to accept the way things turned out without wondering what could have been.

Once in a while, someone may recognize me and say “Hey, aren’t you that guy who I used to know back in the day….”

When that happens, I just smile and nod my head. After all, you know what they say:

“Man makes plans and God just laughs” Aint that always the way that things turn out in life?

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