A Note Of Thanks

The doctor visit resulted in the Albuterol inhaler being prescribed. The next step is using the inhaler, which I have. I am feeling better. Breathing is getting easier.

Whenever I post, I am so grateful for my readers. You guys are a safe space for me. I feel accepted for being the mass of contradictions that I am. That leads me to think that if I am a mass of contradictions, maybe all of us are.

Return Of Desire On A Limited Basis

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NSFW Erotic Fiction

August Sweat

Much as I endeavour to bolster myself against occasional seizures of lust, instances arise when I must channel my prurient peculiarities into dalliances with a willing and eager partner.

Such is how I characterize my relationship with Camilla Louise Prendergast, daughter of Jedediah and Cordelia Prendergast, owner of the largest cotton gin in Southampton County, holder of the largest tobacco allotment in Southampton County, and clandestine owner of the largest illegal still in Southampton County.

Jedediah prided himself on maintaining this illicit enterprise undetected ever since he came back from France in 1919, only to see the Volstead Act deprive him of the only avocation he enjoyed more than shooting wild boar, or shagging whores, as he put it so colorfully.

He took a liking to me, partly because I could shoot as well as he did, I knew a lot of fellows who enjoyed the fine whiskey from his still as much as I did, and my father the doctor would treat his syphilis with Salversin and not report him to the Health Department. Daddy’s only stipulation would be that Jedediah tell him of the ladies with whom he had his, shall we say, rendezvous. He saw no reason why they should suffer too.

One Saturday, I was enjoying the pleasures of a glass of lemonade as I watched our church baseball team face off against the boys from the Methodist Church in Capron. It was awful hot, my shirt sticking to my back, and any breeze was as welcome as Jackson at The Seven Days.

At that time, as I bemoaned the agony of the Southern Summer, and could not imagine a more inhospitable climate, Camilla pulled up in her Studebaker coupe. I had known of her by reputation. She went to a boarding school in Richmond, then to Sarah Lawrence. She smoked in public. She also helped my father locate some of her father’s unfortunate partners, all of course, in strictest confidence.

I offered her a lemonade and something extra from the flask I kept in my hip pocket concealed by the linen jacket, whose sole purpose was to keep the flask out of scrutiny by the nosier Baptists in the bleachers.

“Thank you, Holmes.”

“My pleasure. Thank your Daddy too for hiring Custis to ply his trade.” Custis was the colored bootlegger who ostensibly tended her daddy’s hogs, but really ran the still.

She smiled knowingly. “An artist if ever there was one.”

“By the way, I’m going to watch the meteor showers tonight. Care to watch with me?”

“Are you asking me out after my curfew?” Camilla asked brusquely, the sarcasm obvious.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I know what came over you. You wanted to spend some time with a woman your own age, who knows more than the names of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, who, as you well know, are scarcer than hen’s teeth around here.”

“Well will you? Can you?”

“I can and I will.”

Hot days in the South are the only thing worse than hot nights. And I sweated that Saturday. In preparation for tonight’s outing I took iced tea from the Frigidaire and the rest of the peach pie Mother made for Saturday supper. Mother and Daddy knew I was going out to a pasture to watch stars, only they thought Ruffin, my friend who studied engineering at VMI, would be watching with me. They didn’t know about Camilla, at least not formally. But they knew about the ways of youth and the unconventional ways of young ladies who go North to college.

With iced tea and pie in the hamper, I started my walk down to Billy Thomas’s pasture. My father was one of the few folks who spoke to him, even though his great-great Uncle George, the Yankee Traitor, had left the county long ago.

Around One AM, I heard Camilla’s car. “What have I missed?”

“Not much. Just lightning bugs.” She lay back on the blanket beside me. I could smell her perfume, and listened to her breathing. I knew she was there in a most powerful way.

“Timeless.”

“Yes.”

“Ever stop to think that Caesar and Cleopatra could see the same sky?” she observed.

“No. But you’re right. Or David and Bathshebah.”

“Not only can you get Biblical with me Hunter Holmes McGuire Davenport, but you just so happen to mention the most infamous of all the Israelite adulterers and fornicators. How dare you offend the ears of a Southern Lady!”

Just as soon as I thought I had offended the genteel sensitibilities of Southern womanhood, she broke her air of mock outrage with a laugh.

“Gotcha!”

“Yes you did.” It was then that we both knew that pretence of star gazing had served its purpose. I kissed her. She kissed back. We fumbled with the wrinkled, sweaty clothes of an August night. We welcomed the nakedness and how the breeze dried the sweat and cooled us. All the while, we maintained the frenzy that kept the sweat coming.

“Did you bring anything Hunter?”

I knew what she meant and I hadn’t.

“You got any ideas, Cammie?”

“Just what do they teach you at The College of William and Mary?”

It’s time you had a lesson in practical anatomy.” With that, she straddled my face with her vulva aligned with my mouth. I learned that night what women smelled like, how soft those other lips were, how her hairs tickled my nose. And that two people could make time stand still.

And she devoted her attention to me.

We made a lot of noise that we hoped wouldn’t carry too far. And we suddenly had an idea of what fun was that we hadn’t learned at Bible School or from the radio. Maybe the kind Caesar and Cleopatra had, or more likely, Abelard and Heloise.

We did see enough meteors to construct an alibi. And I did get to Ruffin in time to cover for me should the need arise.

And the South and her Summer ground on, till I finally crossed the James on the ferry. And Dante´, Chaucer, and Shakespeare reclaimed my attention.

Doctor Visit Results

I called the doctor’s office this morning. He had an appointment opening at 10:00 AM, so I scheduled it.

They took me back, got my weight, (185.5 lbs,) my vitals (BP 140/70). Dr S comes in. I tell him I am fatigued by the end of the day. I have very little energy. He listens to my breathing, then says, “You’re wheezing.That means your airways are constricted.” He phones in a prescription for Albuterol, to be inhaled four times a day. I pick it up at the pharmacy, come home, use it. I then go back to sleep.

I’m on the way to feeling better.

Moral of the story. Men, when your wife tells you to go to the doctor, go to the doctor. (You may modify this advice to fit the parameters of your particular relationship.)

Doctor Visit

My wife wants me to get this bronchitis checked out. My ex-wife, with whom I was texting last night said it wouldn’t be a bad idea.

I’m more concerned with the mild fatigue I experience by the time evening comes.

So I guess I will go see the Doc.

“Remember That Thou Art Dust…”

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How can I ever forget?

I was tempted to leave the post at that lone rhetorical question. Quite frankly, Ash Wednesday strikes me as a lot of self-serving theatre. It stands in contrast to Our Lord’s admonition on fasting to not make a great show about it as the Pharisees do. (St Matthew 6:16). And yet, I know we need reminders to maintain our journeys of spiritual growth. That journey is toward spending eternity with God.

Modern materialist culture gives us so much. At it’s most basic, famine is a very remote possibility for almost all of us. The now maligned childhood vaccinations have made deadly or crippling diseases a remote possibility. I remember poliomyelitis as a very real threat. I remember my Salk polio vaccination. and the later Sabin oral vaccination. Nobody complained. The iron lung wasn’t a joke, as it was in The Big Lebowski .

So we can easily conclude that thinking about eternity is hardly anybody’s first priority. Contemplating one’s sins is painful. It is supposed to be. Aspiring to eternal communion with God isn’t painful, but it doesn’t come to us easily. Maybe that is why there is Lent.

Grammar Police

I just opened an e-mail from my alma mater, The University of Virginia, telling me about the crackerjack professors they just hired. And there in the newsletter is a grammatical error that should have been caught before some bozo hit the send button. Maybe they left it in there so we’ll think they really can’t do without us (and our money).

“Free At Last…”

A large nonfunctioning microwave oven took up precious counter space in our galley kitchen, the kind of kitchen where open work surfaces and functionality reign. So after four months of sitting there, haunting me in its techno-morbid state, J and I took it to Best Buy, from whence it will go to the old electronic devices graveyard. It’s a relief and more space will be freed up by its removal. When I relocate an antique glass flour canister, I will fill it with bread flour from an old coffee can, repurposed to hold said flour. This opens space in a cabinet. Our kitchen is really just a big three dimensional puzzle.

Awake, Sort Of

I am retired. I can go to bed anytime I want to. I can wake up anytime I want to. I can have a chili dog and a bag of chips (crisps, to you Brits) for breakfast. You get the picture.

But today, I woke up after what proved to be an inadequate amount if sleep 6 hours, had coffee, a chocolate biscotti, and a cup of porridge made with McCann’s steel cut oats, with a bit of cinnamon, heavy cream and sugar. As I sit, allowing my brain to get the message from my stomach that it is full and satisfied, I contemplate going back to bed. I’m tired again. I want a wake-up do-over. I want to sleep a little more, awaken again, and revel in the knowledge I can go back to sleep again should I so choose.

Maybe I will seek the Democratic nomination for President after all. Everybody else is.

I think human beings have an unlimited capacity for loving other people. That doesn’t mean they should have sex with someone, or any one, just to express their love for them. Seems kind of obvious, but then again, it isn’t for an awful lot of folks. And I have the divorces to prove it.

I can’t remember what it was that would upset me 20 years ago. I guess we should all accelerate the letting go process, even though I know for many people this is difficult, if not impossible. That’s OK, too.

Going back to bed.

Later, loves. 💘

David-Unplugged

Not that kind. I have a bad case of media overload, and not just from politics. I went to lunch today and there on all 5,000 TV monitors at Glory Days Grill was baseball, basketball, reports from the NFL scouting combines. And nothing broadcast was in any way important.

The sports guys “debate” questions like “Will the Clippers eclipse The Lakers in the LA market?”. We know how starved for topics we are, if they are reduced to debating this burning issue. I suppose that issue is important to somebody, who precisely, I don’t know. Maybe compulsive gamblers. Maybe thirteen year old boys.

The restaurant’s Monday $5.99 hamburger special isn’t worth this sensory bombardment. When the Cartoon Network’s Tom and Jerry cartoons are the island of tranquility in this media maelstrom, that show indicates how news/sports saturated we’ve become. I’m back home serenely watching the trains. I must also get to work culling the clothes pile on my bed, my Lenten project. Then again Lent has yet to start. And it lasts 40 days.

4 March 1944/1994/2019 A Wedding And Two Anniversaries

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4 March 1944 was the day my parents married. They were married at Third Presbyterian Church at the corner of 26th & Broad Streets in Richmond, VA. It is in the heart of the neighborhood known as Church Hill. The eponymous Church in question isn’t Third but St John’s Church, an Episcopal parish, where in March 1775, Patrick Henry made his “Liberty or Death” speech. I’m afraid this is not taught in the schools any longer, so one day I will post about it.

However, I digress. My Dad was a newly commissioned Second Lieutenant of Marines. They started married life seeing each other on weekends when he had liberty from The Basic School and the field artillery course at Quantico, about 75 miles up U.S. 1 from Richmond. Mother was working as a secretary to an executive at Reynolds Metals, a business that relocated to Richmond in the late 1930’s. Mother got a job because she could type. She also was fluent in Spanish and could translate foreign correspondence.

The War progressed. My Dad was assigned to the 15th Marine Regiment of the Sixth Marine Division. The division was headed to Okinawa where a grim and bloody land campaign was fought. After occupation duty in Japan and Tsingtao, China, Dad came home. He stayed in the Reserve and he split his time between his accounting practice and his military duty. As a result, we had no family vacations at the beach or anywhere else until we were adults. Then our vacations included us children and grandchildren at the beach house my father had built. It was the happiest of times for us all. Dad and Mother loved their grandchildren deeply

Life went on, with all the drama an Adult Child of an Alcoholic (my mother) could bring to the table. Mother herself didn’t drink. You might say she was a carrier of the disease. I think it’s a miracle only one of us four children (me) developed alcoholism and even more of a miracle I found recovery,

Mother’s physical health was always a bit precarious with hypertension, obesity, diabetes, gynecological issues. She had a quintuple bypass at age 69 in the summer of 1988, at the time we adopted my younger son.

When 1994 came around we wanted to do something special for our parents’ Golden Anniversary. I made a video of all the houses my parents alone or with the family lived in. We planned a party for that day March 4th. The day before, my mother fell. It wasn’t just a fall. Unbeknownst to us, she had had a stroke. Twenty-five years ago, first response knowledge of what to do after a suspected stroke wasn’t what it is now. Mother’s stroke was serious, debilitating. She had to use a wheelchair. She lost most of her ability to speak, even though she understood conversations.

Labour Day Weekend, 1995, Mom died. She was 76. Dad was a widower, who remarried Valentine’s Day 2000. He and my stepmother were together until August 2011, when he died aged ninety.

Around the time of the anniversary, I started antidepressant medication (Prozac). I started feeling good and decided that living with an active alcoholic wasn’t good for me, I made a decision to do an intervention on my alcoholic wife. Ultimately I got honest about my own drinking and cannabis use and got sober myself. My wife went to treatment on 6 July 1994, (Mother’s birthday coincidentally). I quit drinking 10 July 1994. Our marriage ended shortly after. I guess my ex-wife stayed sober most of that time. She stopped speaking to me in 2013. In 2015, she died, without telling me she was terminally ill.

In 2001, I remarried, converted to Catholicism in 2010. My elder brother died in December, 2014 at age 65. I had surgery in 2015 that ended my working career. I am a Stay At Home Husband. I blog, manage my health, swim, go to AA and Mass whenever I can.

It will be 4 March 2019 in about 92 minutes. My elder son now lives a few blocks from the building where his grandparents were married, in a more or less gentrified neighborhood. The Church itself moved about sixty two years ago.

This is a time of gratitude that my parents made that commitment to each other that brought my two brothers, my sister and me into this world. I have the life I have, for better or worse, for that decision they made seventy-five years ago.

I love you Dad. I love you Mom. I miss you both. We all turned out OK. You loved each other enough to risk everything for a life together. Thank you. We owe everything to you.