The Minor Prophets - Words

The Delight of the Couch: A Tale of Frustration in Four Postures

2011-05-25T11:11:00.005-04:00

First Posture: The Splitting of a Bamboo

With the boy in their bed, husband and wife lay on the couch, divided by pajamas. They would prefer to be naked, but the apartment is too cold for that. It’s a matter of insulation, something to take up with the landlord the next time he comes around.

Nevertheless, a kiss: tight-lipped, hesitant, lacking amore. (Light from the kitchen falls on the dining room table, the fruit bowl empty of apples.)

He slides a hand beneath her shirt, hoping for reception. Since the birth of their son three years ago, she has become self-conscious about the sagginess of her breasts. She now has a tendency of saying, “When you make it big, you can pay for a lift. After the lipo, of course.”

Of course.

One of the cats leaps onto the windowsill and pokes its head through the blinds. Soon it is caught and making a racket; for sure it will wake the child. The man steams over, grabs the cat by its hind quarters, and pulls it free of the blinds, two of which break in the rescue.

“That’s your own fault for leaving them down,” says the wife, covering herself with a blanket. “You know how he likes to look out.”

“Yeah, but now everybody can see in,” says the husband, reluctantly raising the blinds.

“See what?” asks the wife, and lifts the blanket for him to get under.

Some Ways of Not Being Bored

2009-07-08T23:47:00.006-04:00

There are several ways of not being bored, many of which are boring. But there are other ways of not being bored that are actually quite exciting. For example:

Prostitution – This involves having sex for money with random people you meet on the street. You are constantly on the run from the law, and are expected to work in all conditions of weather. You mainly work at night, a period of extended darkness and relaxed moral codes. Suffice it to say, prostitution is not for the faint of heart, but its rewards far outweigh its dangers.

Rooftop Surveillance – This requires pulling down a fire escape ladder and climbing to the top of an apartment building, preferably one that is condemned. You can see the whole city from up there, not to mention the bedrooms of both men and ladies. There is usually a buffet of mangy tennis balls from which to choose, and at least one or two pigeon carcasses.

Stevie Wandering – This is not a mockery of blind people, but a commentary on how blind seeing people are to the plight of blind people. It calls on you to live out small parts of your day with your eyes closed. Darkness makes of the world a joyously impossible place. The biggest fun comes when you venture outside. The remaining four sense organs kick into high gear, along with the cars at the intersection.

To summarize, having sex for money on a rooftop with your eyes closed is the most effective way of killing boredom—and, if you're not careful, yourself.

Hangovers Are Necessary

2009-04-02T15:15:00.007-04:00

Gandhi said, “It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one’s actions.”

Therefore, hangovers are necessary; furthermore, products like Chaser Plus (a pill that promises “freedom from hangovers”) are “wrong and immoral.”

I’m no teetotaler, but neither am I a shortcut artist. If I down twelve beers in one sitting, I want what’s coming to me the following day—lesions and all.

Though science may disagree, a hangover is the body’s way of punishing the mind for its poor decision-making. After a night of heavy drinking, I should not awaken refreshed and clear-headed. Rather, I should come to on a stranger’s couch with burning eyes and a wasted mouth; it should feel like cement is hardening in the furrows of my brain. Anything to the contrary would be an attempt to “escape the consequences of [my] actions.”

For those cowardly enough to take it, Chaser Plus provides that escape, a way to “avoid hangovers before they start.” I don’t know about you, but I have grown weary of escape. I am tired of people running and hiding, shucking and jiving. Just once I’d like to see someone step into the ring of life with no shorts, no gloves, and no protective headgear—and take one right in the mouth.

But this will never happen, because Chaser Plus has tricked us into thinking that we are entitled to pleasure without pain, excess without excrement, fun without fury.

Like nature herself, hangovers are a form of checks and balances, a function of the Department of Physiological Oversight. Their headache and nausea—so feared by the dastardly—keep us honest, humble, and dare I say it: human. Eliminate them, and the orgy will never cease.

And God, how “wrong” that would be.

The Tower and the Cave: A Story

2009-01-30T14:33:00.004-05:00

Once upon a time there was a tower, and not too far from the tower was a cave.

The tower was made of white brick and was as tall as the highest mountain. The cave was made of black rock, and the entrance was no bigger than a mulberry tree.

The residents of the tower were very well-spoken and dressed in the finest clothes. The residents of the cave spoke gibberish and wore nothing but animal pelts.

One day it was decreed that the residents of the tower and the residents of the cave would switch places. The cave-dwellers would spend a week in the tower, and the tower-dwellers would spend a week in the cave.

After just one day of living in the cave, the tower-dwellers decided they wanted to go home. When they demanded that the troglodytes return to the cave, the troglodytes refused, and a terrible fight broke out. No one was injured, but because of a trauma to its foundation, the tower collapsed, covering much of the land in rubble.

From this rubble the tower-dwellers built smaller towers that were closer to the ground and that the cave-dwellers could break into from time to time when they wanted to remember what it felt like to be filthy fucking rich.

Harem of the Mind

2008-12-15T00:58:00.008-05:00

There are times when a man becomes so engorged with desire he feels he might explode, as though his scrotum might rupture and send a million swimmers westward into the night.

He wakes and his penis is as stiff and as straight as a lightning rod. His skin is hot to the touch, as if his whole body were infected. He can think of nothing else but sex; his mind becomes a harem, a place of fragrant heat. Women in tight-fitting body suits crawl about the floor, beckoning to him. Exotic music can be heard in the background, a flute or a citar. The walls are draped with silken banners, and from the ceiling hang bulbs in the shape of wombs.

The man’s wife is not allowed to enter this room. It is the province of promiscuous passion, and it is his, his alone.

They say the mind is a terrible thing to waste; I say the mind is a terrible thing to chasten.

If he cannot have the flesh of the body, he must invite the flesh of the mind. Otherwise he’ll lose his sanity. If he did not have this silk-bannered harem, if it was not stocked with four-legged nymphs, if there was not sandalwood burning in the air—he would be a criminal: a rapist, a stalker, a Peeping Tom. It is those men who realize the harem, who make it tangible, who present the biggest danger to society.

Me, I am innocent. My mind has run amok, but my body—my body is a mere thermometer.

I just dare you to touch it.

Water Your Garden

2008-10-15T10:52:00.001-04:00

America is not satisfied with itself. We’re a nation of people who think we deserve better, and maybe we do.

But why, in our quest for satisfaction, must our makeovers be so extreme? Why can’t I just buy a new hat? Why do I need a whole new body?

Because the body I’ve got isn’t cutting the mustard. In fact, it’s not even opening the lid on the mustard jar.

Therefore, I need to do something. I need to extend my hair, tuck my tummy, lift my face, whiten my teeth, augment my breasts. And I need to make sure that after my surgery, I look nothing like the person I was before. I want to look into the mirror and be startled by the beautiful stranger staring back at me. I want Freaky Friday to be every day of the week, and I never want the spell to wear off. I want the voodoo to last forever.

But here’s the thing: I don’t need any of it. None of it is essential, at least not to the survival of my soul.

Yet you continue lamenting, “My nose is crooked. I don’t have a chin. My tits are lopsided.” Big fucking deal! The Elephant Man had one good hand and he built an exact replica in cardboard of St. Philip’s Church—-from memory! You have two good hands and you can’t even build a popsicle raft, and you want to talk about being afflicted.

Please.

One-hundred years ago, how did ugly people survive? How did they live with themselves?

In dirty cages at the freak show, that’s how.

So learn some self-restraint, already. Stop sucking television’s dick and water your garden. You’d be surprised at what comes up.

Masturbation in the 19th Century

2008-09-07T18:00:00.001-04:00

Thank God I live in a world where pornography is so easily accessible. I have movies, magazines, web sites, conventions—an entire industry working in behalf of my penis.

I wouldn’t have survived as a masturbator in the 1800s. There just weren’t enough visual stimuli in those days.

Sure, maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe a photograph makes its way up the eastern seaboard, and I find it soaking in the gutter outside the pool hall. It’s of a woman lying naked on a Shay’s lounge. It’s been ripped in half and then taped back together unevenly so the woman appears to have two enormous muffs, one slightly higher than the other.

I keep this photograph in my night table and masturbate to it for the next twelve or thirteen years.

But maybe I don’t get that lucky. Maybe somebody else finds that photo. And maybe I’m better off, because back then auto-eroticism was regarded as an ailment, a symptom of spiritual immaturity. The punishment for being caught was severe. The forms of treatment used to rehabilitate the masturbator included lead bed sheets, strait jackets, erection alarms, wooden eggs inserted into the rectum, and castration.

What with the scarcity of pornography and the looming threat of rehab, I doubt I’d be doing much masturbating in the time of Queen Victoria. I guess I’d be trying to have sex with women.

As strange as that sounds.