Horizontal Lovemaking

Volume One

Two Playing Blues Guitar

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If you lie down next to somebody on the bed… if you cuddle up behind them… if you do the spoon thing… well, I can only think of a couple reasons why you’d do such a thing. Sure, it could be just plain affection. I dont deny that possibility. It could be you’re cold, though that’s a low probability. Most of the time, you wanna get some. That’s what I think. That’s why we do what we do in this world, Sister. We eat, we stay clothed, we keep a roof on. And then, we gotta get some. You see it all over. Not just with humans. It’s a universal thing. I dont know why I even have to say it. I guess it’s easy to stray from our roots, and forget the basics. Or maybe not forget them, but take them off the plate, so to speak. Where they cant be gotten at with knives and forks. Our boy here, our Johnny, he’s the one who was cuddling up behind the girl. And I do not think that he knew that he was walking right into the very thing which she wanted him to walk into. I mean that. He felt like he was acting from the heart. And he was! I’m not saying he wasnt. But what I’m saying is that he was walking into what she wanted him to walk into. Her plan. I was gonna say trap, but I hesitate to use that word. Because it wasnt really a trap, or not just. And I cant quite put my finger on… yeah, it was a plan, and it was her intention. It was her trap. Trap it is. But it was a two way trap. Like a mutual trap. As if he wanted to be trapped, and wait, even more… as if he was trapping her. Which sounds crazy, I know. Reflexively trapped. Feedback trap.

Is there such a thing as a dual or a double trap? When it comes down to the War Called Love, and the stratagems waged there, well, nothing surprises me. Johnny slid into the bed, but he didnt slide under the covers. So this spoon thing wasnt entirely a spoon thing. Little Suzy was under the covers, and let me tell you something else, her belly wasnt big any more. It wasnt at the point yet where it was flat. But it wasnt big. And there was a smile on that girl’s face. Hers was a smile of victory. And there was a smile on his face too, but his was a different kind of smile. The smile on his face was a kind of ahhh. Like a long ahhh of relief, sort of like the ahhh a man feels when he finally slips it in there. It feels like you’re coming home. Like you’ve been gone, and now you’re no longer gone, you’re home. But what’s amazing is that you didnt realize that you were gone. Until you got it back in there. And came back home. And then you’re like, ‘Whoa! Where I have been?’ I dont know what it’s like for a woman, that first moment of entry, and shortly thereafter, the time of the long gone ‘ahhh.’ I can only speak for a man. It’s not a question which I’ve ever dared ask a woman. Because you know that whatever answer you get somehow wont be real. And you know that the only true answer you can hope for is the answer which you figure out yourself, by using your imagination, and your heart. Maybe that’s one of the things I’m doing here, in these stories or as I call them songs. Sometimes I think there’s nothing more important in this whole world than for me to be able to put myself in the place of… I’m not talking about understanding, I mean something more than that… what it is to feel, to become, to actually live the experience and know the world of the female. Woman is the goal of the man. That’s what I’m saying. That’s all I’m saying.

Her belly was flat because the baby was gone. And she never even saw the baby, that’s the way I was told the story. When they helped that child come out of her, and held up the wet and bloody thing, and then severed the cord, she didnt ask to hold the baby. Maybe she did see it, I dont know exactly. But I dont believe she ever held it. And I’m calling it an ‘it’ because I dont know if it was a boy or a girl. And I cant believe what my Suzy did. I just cant believe it. I’ve known Suzy all her life. I’m a lot older than she is, but she was just a not much more than toddling thing when she moved into our neighborhood on 21st Street. She was as likable a little kid as you ever met. And the older she got, the more likable she got. There wasnt an atom in her body that was stuck up. I’m telling you the truth about this. I remember seeing her in the schoolyard, in Poe School yard, and she was playing on the swings or on the maypole or where they had that trashcan next to the door and you shoot the red ball into it. I was one of the big guys heading over to the softball fields. We had our bats, and our gloves. We were big guys, and we thought we were cool. She was running around with the little pigtails, and the short pants, and it was easy to get your knees all scraped up if you fell, because it was the City and most of it was concrete. But it was really something how she always kind of got my attention, if only for a moment, in those days. Matter of fact, at the time you didnt even know it. But when you get older you can look back, and then you remember things which you didnt know at the time.

The way she smiled, and the way she laughed, even though she wasnt much more than a baby, I’d find myself stopping and looking at her, and wanting to smile or laugh right along with her, till my buddy Crazy Joe might say, ‘Hey Joe, yo! Hey Joe! Come on, will ya! Let’s go! Hey Joe! Yo! Yo!” Crazy Joe had a way of repeating himself. I dont think he really was as dumb as he acted, although he might’ve been. Me and Crazy Joe were the best ball players in the neighborhood. But we werent tough guys because we went to private school and they didnt let you fight. The rougher kids from the other neighborhoods were always trying to get us on their teams. Some of those kids grew up to be Mob guys, and a lot of them are dead now. They were sort of puzzled by us. How come they were tougher than us, but we could put them to shame with a ball and bat? But they didnt mind too much, as long as we scored the runs for them. Crazy Joe could throw the ball a mile. And all the little kids playing off to the side, sometimes they’d watch us. Even little Suzy, sometimes she’d stand there on the sidelines and cheer. The soon-to-be-Mob kids liked her. They’d nudge one another, point, laugh, because she was so spirited. Once one of those kids made a remark about Suzy I didnt like. I knew he was carrying a knife. Though I knew there wasnt much chance of him using it. But I did get up in his face. His buddies told him to take it easy. That’s how I felt about Suzy, even when she was that little. And I swear to you, now I dont know how or why she didnt even hold that just born baby of hers, once it was born.

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