Thursday, September 14, 2017

TRUMP VS HILL



Based on very recent tweets, Donald Trump is not done feuding with Hillary Clinton. But if Trump vs. Hillary wasn't enough to satisfy him, now we have Trump vs. Hill. That would be Jemele Hill, ESPN commentator. Pretty easy to pick sides in this one. Granted, Jemele Hill's area of expertise is sports - not politics. But as someone who is also a human being, Jemele is allowed to have opinions on the Clown in Chief. I suppose that in being a public figure who is a spokesperson for her employer, there are some limitations on how she chooses to express personal non-sports opinions, no matter how accurate they are. Politics is neither sports nor entertainment, despite what we often see on TV. But sometimes no matter who you work for, you just have to get something off your chest. And ESPN, a network that is supposed to be about sports and nothing but sports, has certainly spent some of its valuable air time delving into non-sports areas. They even once decided to dedicate an entire show to this subject...






If we were able to make it through that well intentioned effort from the most peculiar of messengers then surely our patriotism can take the hit of Jemele Hill calling it like it is about the man who has taken the US presidency hostage.




































Trump supporters who claim not to be bigots need to closely examine his words and deeds along with their own hearts. If they don't/won't, Michael Jackson was clearly right.
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Friday, September 8, 2017

THE CALM - a short story



Both before and after that storm comes "the calm". I once wrote a story with that very title. You can find and read it below.




                           THE CALM
                              BY ROY L. PICKERING JR.
Certain days are never withdrawn from one's memory bank.  Such was the case of the first full day of a summer that was taking over for a rain filled spring, fresh on the heels of a bitter New York winter.  Incarceration by nature's less than ideal elements had finally concluded.  The sun now blazed with abandon, summoning God's creatures to emerge from hiding.

A picnic seemed in order.  Paulette felt the same, surely a good omen.  We had not agreed on much of anything in some time. Our frequent opposing views added spice to the relationship in the beginning.  As long as we shared lust for one another in common, other things didn't much matter.  Over three years gone by, the carnal nature of our union having peaked and moved beyond, it was in doubt as to whether Paulette truly was the yang to my yin, the negative charge to my positive, the creamy center to my cookie crust.

These worries I put aside, for I didn't need to get along with Paulette to know that I loved her.  I was willing to work out whatever problems we may have, though not inclined to have my love life be a chore, I was hoping the passage of time and shared experiences would work the kinks out for us.  Ending the relationship never emerged as an option, even in our most heated disputes.  I took this to mean that Paulette felt as I did.
We spread a blanket on the grass of a nearby park, popped Miles Davis into my CD player, set up assorted reading material (I was reading Faulkner, she examined Cosmopolitan magazine), and partook of grapes, brie cheese on crackers, and a pitcher of lemonade.  

The rippling lake before us was a constantly changing work of art reflecting the cloudless sky above.  A man taught his precocious daughter how to fish; a dog frolicked with his masters; children rolled by unsteadily on rollerblades or glided past with more assurance on bicycles; lovers lay blissfully together as far as the eyes could see.  All of this Paulette and I contentedly observed, our souls filling up with peace much like the air was becoming saturated with pollen, the latter of which I had prepared for in advance by taking a sinus pill.  I felt secure for perhaps the first time that we would make it, that the winding roads of our separate lives were no longer running parallel, but had merged together as one.

Unable to snag a coveted location under the shade of a tree, Paulette and I spritzed each other with water to endure the humidity.  After an hour passed, a steady breeze began to blow.  The sun's rays took pity and lessened in intensity, perfecting the level of comfort.  We kissed tenderly, then passionately, then reposed with hands held and hearts light.

I assumed the first roll of thunder to be my imagination, the second a misinterpretation of a lick by the bass player accompanying Miles.  The third roll was too distinctive to be anything other than what it was.  Looking upward, I saw that the sun's clemency was due to clouds which had crept upon it.  In the following silence I hoped the inevitable would not occur, but a flash of lightning on the horizon told me that hoping would do no good.

Paulette and I hurriedly packed our belongings under the rapidly darkening sky.  The first drops trickled down large, cold and ominous.  The breeze, once gentle as a baby's kisses, now sent debris into orbit.  We had just begun the race we had no chance of winning when the barrage started.  There was no shelter in sight that was a match for the storm's force.  We could do nothing but get drenched and either find humor in Mother Nature's unpredictability or not.  I saw no reason for a little water to ruin our moods, but Paulette's joy endured the rain as well as a lit match.

I went away for nearly two weeks on a business trip the next day. Upon my arrival back home, the tone of Paulette’s "we need to talk" on my answering machine foretold that our reunion dinner date would likely spoil my appetite.  It did.  Paulette felt that continuing further with the relationship would keep us from getting on with our lives.  I had not been aware that either of our lives was on pause.  Therefore, I objected strenuously to Paulette’s resolution.  It was one thing to fix what was possibly broken, but to simply discard our relationship was inexcusable.  Paulette was convinced that we weren't meant to be, to which I rebutted that nothing was meant to be.  Things just were.  Paulette replied that our thing was just over.

That summer had been shaping up to be special but turned out to be an idyllic backdrop for my grief.  I could find no humor in the irony that of all our disagreements, the only one to matter was the one about breaking up.  Paulette probably would have said solely for the purpose of contradicting me that our final dispute had actually been about staying together.  But no matter how the situation was viewed, it wouldn't change the fact that I was now alone, nor help me cope with this any better.  For longer than I care to recall, I isolated myself while waiting for Paulette to realize the folly of her decision.  If she ever did, she didn’t bother to let me in on her change of heart.

Time tends to all matters in due course.  I am not of the opinion that wounds heal so much as they are buried under the growth of new skin.  They become invisible to the eye, but continue to be a part of who we are.  As Paulette predicted, I eventually began conducting the business of getting on with my life, no doubt considerably later than she.  Breaking up with someone is something one does long after already having done so emotionally. Perhaps a trite lesson to learn, but valuable nonetheless.

And so I decided on a lovely August day to prepare a picnic for one and head to the park.  It was a mirror of the occasion spent there the year prior.  The lake was as ceaselessly moving yet never changing as I remembered, and the sun remained a boiling pupil in a vast blue iris.  About me adults huffed and puffed to sweat off a few pounds while children played for the right reason.  I surveyed my surroundings and saw that God's creation was a good one; that beauty persevered in the face of ugliness; that some people should never wear a bathing suit in public.  I thought of my past and present, tried to ponder my future but came up blank because it had not yet been formed.  No matter.  If not to be granted knowledge, I would settle for serenity.  Tomorrow would be here soon enough.




The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First SuperheroThe Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero by William Kalush
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

4 stars earned because the subject of this book led such an interesting life. 2 stars earned because the tedious writing style pulled off the feat of making Houdini's exploits seem quite mundane. So I've split the difference to give it 3 stars. Overall I'm glad I read this book. What I came into it already knowing about Houdini only scratched the surface of his accomplishments. I had no idea that he was a major participant in the earliest days of airplane flight. Not until reading the jacket cover did I know he most likely participated in spying for the government. Turns out he was also a Hollywood star (writing, directing, acting), a bibliophile who amassed practically a public library's worth of books, a man on a mission to warn the public against con artists who promised (for a price) to provide connections to the dearly departed, and perhaps least surprising - a ladies man. Houdini proved to be much better at escaping from all manner of devices than at keeping his extramarital affairs secret from his wife. The subject matter of this biography is juicy but the prose manages to be overlong and repetitive and I'll just say that it's way less of a page turner than it could have been. But I read through to the end and now feel that I know just about everything there is to know about Harry Houdini EXCEPT how he managed to pull off all that wonderful magic. He is and probably forever will be the gold standard of mystifying entertainment.

View all my reviews

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Thursday, August 17, 2017

Statues
















































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Sunday, July 23, 2017

THE QUESTION - a short story




                                   THE QUESTION

                               By Roy L. Pickering Jr.




"Let me tell you something, Janice. You screwed up 
big time. There's no way you're going to find another 
man to treat you as good as I did."

"Yeah. You treated me like a goddamn princess."

"You implying that I didn't? You're standing there 
with the fucking Hope diamond on your finger, 
wearing designer clothes, not having to lift a 
finger to do anything but charge things on the 
credit cards I pay the bills for. Yet you still have the 
nerve to ..."

"I had the nerve to raise our child basically by 
myself," Janice said. "I had the audacity to spend 
countless nights alone while you went off on one 
business trip after another."

"And like a fool I thought I could trust you. After 
everything I've done for you. After everything I've 
given ..."

"I'm sick and tired of hearing that, Roland. I'm not 
a whore. I'm not here because you buy me things. 
I'm here because we're supposed to love each other. 
You want to talk about giving things? How about 
the love I squandered on you while you took me 
for granted."

"If you're not a whore then what were you doing 
with James? At least your sister has the excuse of 
being hooked on drugs for making a living on her 
back. At least she gets paid cash in advance. Why 
allow me to rescue you from the streets if this is 
how you choose to repay me?"

Mommy and Daddy are talking too loud at each 
other. I think they're angry, cause that's just how 
they sounded when I wrote on the wall with my 
crayons. I don't like for them to yell at each other. 
It scares me. Daddy goes away all the time. If he 
and Mommy stay mad at each other, maybe he'll 
go away again and not come back this time. I 
wish I could make them stop.
"What kind of thing is that to say? You didn't find 
me on any streets and you sure as hell didn't save 
me from them. And if you want to talk about 
repaying, I repaid you by being a devoted wife for 
five years."

"Devoted wife!? Devoted to what? To spending 
my money? To leeching off of me, because I was a 
fool with a conscience who was raised to pay for 
his mistakes?"

"Pay for his ... Look, Roland, I know you're angry 
and you want to hurt me, but trust me, I feel plenty 
bad already. You think I wanted this to happen? Do 
you have any idea how many nights I've spent in 
our bed alone, wondering why you seemed to want 
to be anywhere but there with me? Did you ever 
consider how it felt for me to be pushed into the 
background of your life?"

"That's a nice song and dance but still no excuse."

"You want an excuse, here's one for you. Five years 
of loneliness was enough. I needed to fill the void 
somehow."

Oh no, Mommy is starting to cry. Why don't they just 
kiss and make up? Why can't they be happy like the 
time we all went to the fair, and I got to go on a 
bunch of rides and eat cotton candy? That was my favorite 
day ever. Maybe if I ask them to take me to the fair today, 
they'll stop yelling and be happy again.
"You know the nature of my work," Roland said. "I 
have to put in a lot of hours. I need to visit the 
various plants and that means spending time on the 
road. If I didn't do these things I wouldn't be able to 
pay for this big roof that you wanted to be under so 
badly."

"What do you know about what I wanted? Did you 
ever once ask me?"

"I didn't have to, it was so obvious. You wanted a 
meal ticket. You wanted to land a man with a solid 
family background, a high paying respectable job, his 
and her cars in the garage, a pool in the backyard, and 
a stellar credit rating. That's what you wanted and 
that's what you got, all courtesy of me."

"No, what I wanted was a man who loves me and 
enjoys spending time with me," Janice said, fighting 
to hold her tears in check. "I wanted to be respected, 
to be listened to, to have passion in my life. What I 
got was a man unable to see through his inflated ego 
well enough to notice any creativity, or intellect, or 
ambition in his wife."

"Let's cut to the chase, Janice, and leave this 
feminist blather to Gloria Steinem. What you 
wanted was a white guy with some cash, and you 
hit pay dirt."

Mommy is shaking. She only does that when she's 
really really mad. My friend Louis told me that his 
dad yelled at his mom every night, so one day she 
packed all their stuff and they went to live with his 
grandma. I like my grandma cause she gives me 
quarters, but I don't want to live there because her 
house smells like cheese. And I'd miss Daddy.
"So it's come to that," Janice said icily.

"It's always been there."

"You want to make certain our marriage is 
irreconcilable, don't you?"

"No, you made sure of that when you slept with 
James. I can't forgive something like that. I deserve 
better than this. Better than you."

"You son of a bitch. I hate you so much."

"You don't know a damn thing about hate, Janice. 
Try being tricked into marrying someone you don't 
love, and being a father to a kid who probably isn't 
even yours. Try being taken for a fool by someone 
who drains your wallet, embarrasses you in front of colleagues, and fucks every Tom, Dick and Harry 
who happen by. Then you'll understand what hate is."

"I did better than that, Roland. I married a man who 
was hardly ever around, and who didn't satisfy me 
when he was. If you only could, I wouldn't have 
needed Tom, Dick, Harry or James."

Stop it! Why won't they stop fighting? Why did 
Daddy hit Mommy? He's not supposed to do that. 
They're not supposed to fight. Families are 
supposed to be happy, like on T.V.
"The truth hurts, doesn't it?" Janice asked, 
liberated more than wounded by the hand of her 
husband. "You can hit me all you want, but it won't 
make you any more of a man. You'll never measure 
up. You never did."

"I should have known better than to get involved 
with you in the first place. So I guess the blame is 
on me. You aren't any different than your sister. 
You've both spent your lives doing it for money. 
Even with the college degree I paid for you to get, 
you still haven't changed. I guess it was my mistake 
to think that you could. Once a nigger, always a 
nigger."

He left. Daddy went away and he didn't even say 
goodbye. What's going to happen now?
"Ricky, you must listen very carefully to me. We're 
going to be spending a few nights at Grandma's 
house, just you and Mommy. Won't that be nice? 
Grandma loves it so much when you come to visit. 
I want you to take your favorite clothes from the 
bureau and lay them out on your bed. I'll be up in 
a minute to help you pack."

"Mommy."

"Yes, sweetie."

"What's a nigger?"



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Thursday, June 15, 2017

Matters of Convenience - pictures to go with the words

                             
              


MATTERS OF CONVENIENCE


 
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Nothing felt better to him than the act of waiting for her. As long as he believed it wasn’t in vain, he was able to justify his presence.





They barely knew each other really. For God’s sake, it had been a struggle to remember her name. Still, he was well aware that the way he viewed his involvement with a woman sometimes did not match how she was seeing it.





Yet in truth she had succumbed to Todd the moment he introduced himself at a mutual friend’s cocktail party one week earlier, scanning her body in a microsecond with admiration while she lost her bearings in the confident intensity of his gaze.





On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so was the hope.




His fierce appreciation of female beauty, the unrelenting desire he felt for their company, the pleasure he both derived and sought to give, had led him through quite a few bedroom doors.




Most people surrendered fairy tale hopes in exchange for cookie cutter lives. If a convincing image of happiness was presented to those looking in from the outside, success was claimed. But some opted for chaos at the expense of the facade of tranquility. 



No reasonable excuse or explanation occurred to her for declining his invitation. Her body craved to be explored by his touch. She longed to discover the places that would make him arch with pleasure, moan with delirium, hum her name in delight. Yet something made her suppress these urges, told her she must wait, that it was too soon. And although the source of these warnings was vague, she opted to obey them over desires that were far better understood.




And on some night in the probably not too distant future, nature would lead them to whichever of their bedrooms was closest at that moment. In this man’s arms, stretched out on either his bed sheets or her own, she would eliminate the final traces of Todd from her everyday consciousness. James would serve as diversion for a week, a month, however long she decided. It was almost as if she had willed him into existence, into standing before her at the precise moment she was willing to accommodate him, arriving not a minute too early or too late.




Once you break someone’s heart, you are forever its master. Calling him would be like voluntarily returning to servitude after freedom had been granted. She would not empower him to hurt her again. He didn’t deserve acknowledgment after shattering dreams she once thought were jointly held, only to learn that they were hers exclusively.



A few more minutes of stalling would not break her. She had the strength to stand there and love him right up to the moment he would possibly reveal that this was no longer in her best interest. He did not expect histrionics if his revelation was disappointing. She would not give him the satisfaction, would be stoic until showing him the door. Whatever happened once he was on the other side would be privileged information.



CDs were on their way to becoming historical the same as cassette tapes and eight tracks and records before them. Yet history had its place in a rapidly modernizing world. It reminded you of values to retain even while old fashioned commodities were discarded. Some things always were and always would be basically the same – like love for example.




Was she happy? She thought – yes, reasonably so. Then again, what was happiness but the vast terrain between ecstasy and agony? Was this too small an ambition?



Neither of them would grow distant nor feel regretful. There would be no uncomfortable silences. They would sit across the table from one another and converse naturally, at ease in each other’s company, letting their moment of tenderness linger. And although he recognized that tenderness was not the same as passion, and certainly not equivalent to love, for now it seemed to him a suitable substitute. 



Beyond that the locale did not make him think of her, nor did most things. He felt no negativity about the time they had spent together, but simply did not dwell on it much. She had been a seat filler, memorable as the smiling face of a beautiful girl in the window of a passing train, inspiring a fleeting moment of joy and promise, immediately forgotten with the opening of that day’s newspaper.




She was ravishing. This was plain to see as she lay on his bed, but her beauty had not bewitched him at first sight. He was preoccupied with trying to find his bearings in a new environment, haunted by the one hastily left behind.



Life was a swirl of mysteries, each one waiting to be plucked up and explored, but not necessarily solved.



What he did recognize was that a night of carnal merriment was his for the asking. The only requirement was to listen with minimal interruption as she spoke of herself. He tolerated her loquaciousness not because he was waiting out the stream of words until they led to her bedroom, but because he knew most people believed the minutiae of their lives to be far more interesting than it actually was, and on occasion he was willing to indulge them. After all, as a writer he was perpetually on the lookout for a new story.



 Or maybe happiness by definition was a temporary state of being recognizable only in hindsight. It was impossible to catch what always managed to be overrun and end up in the rear view mirror. Still, the only alternative to maintaining pursuit was surrender. She was no quitter, not even of her vices.



If Audrey sensed what he was contemplating, her silence did not let on. He turned from the window and found her looking at him with a flawless poker face. It may have been attentiveness and curiosity to hear what he would say next, or perhaps she was expecting from him what women throughout the ages, often against their better judgment, had expected of men.



His days had the grace of a butterfly in flight. Did a butterfly consider itself to be blessed? Was it ever wistful? If not for its earliest days as a caterpillar then perhaps for the time in between when cocooned from peril, when all was comfort and peace and security?



Part of him hated the thought of it, another part was selfishly grateful that her ordeal had drawn them closer.



No matter what percentage fact and what percentage fiction his characters were comprised of, they all shared a crucial quality. They acted as he willed them to. They each fell into the arms of the lover he selected for them. If only he could compel the real life woman he had chosen into his arms.


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Those are a few bites of the story. For the full meal, Matters of Convenience is available at Amazon in print, Kindle and audio formats. Happy reading!
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