You’d better mess around.

It would be better if the sticks were shorter.

And even better if the photos were about someone else.

Who knew?

Who the fuck knew?

When you die, you are forced to deal with at least one angel.

My angel’s name was Ernest Berry. He was a skeletal old black man with two front teeth missing. He was dressed as if he’d just come from work that required manual labor. Perhaps farm work. Faded overalls. Faded Flannel blue. Tan work boots. A Mets baseball cap.

He looked unhappy. Never once smiled since I’d known him, which wasn’t long. If anything his mouth would draw back in scandal-ridden angst whenever I said or asked something which he found inappropriate. Which was all the time, now that I was dead.

I asked him if he was related to Halle Berry.

Big mistake.

“Halle who?” He said, after a grunt.

“The black movie queen,” I said. We were walking at this time, up a hill path that was flanked by St. Augustine grass. Not my favorite grass. I hated hills. Only the sky made sense, satisfied me. It was a bright blue broken up with fleecy clouds.

There was no sun but yet there was seemingly endless sunlight that felt just right. We weren’t sweating, despite the steep hill.

We were just talking. Well, at least I tried to make conversation with him.

“You would’ve had a hardon for Halle,” I said, trying to maintain a certain levity.

It had the opposite effect on Ernest.  His mouth would draw back in scandal-ridden angst. His black eyes narrowed into slits of disapproval.

“My only business is you,” he added with a crook of his finger. “You are my sole responsibility. Talk of women should be reserved for others.”

“There are no others. I haven’t any other angel.”

I was a dead dentist newly arrived to heaven. I’d been an asshole all my life. The angel I’d been assigned to had a lot of work cut out for him. Which I’ll go into later.

But before we go into Ernest’s assignment, I just quickly want to let you guys know what heaven is like.

First, there are no women like Halle Berry around. It’s just you and your angel. In this case, Ernest and I. It’s like this for a rather uncomfortably long time.

Not fun, when the angel doesn’t particularly care for you.

Lip Strict

I read the book, I saw the movie, I heard about the nominations.

I posted some things about it.

But I had to say: I never once saw a district in the movie District.

And that’s when the shit hit the fan. “Um, excuse me,” a dear friend said. “There were actually three districts in District.

   “More than three,” my boss said. “At least eighteen.”

  I never saw one. I just pretended that I’d meant I’d seen at least one, because I wanted that promotion.

   But he knew I was lying, that I was just kissing his ass.

   He fired me.

   Right around that time, I met a girl, in a coffee shop. I fell in love with her. She never drank coffee but she loved coffee cake.  She saw me ordering it at the time (it was for my boss, before firing me) and she told me it was her favorite dessert.  I fell in love with her immediately.  

    Soon after she told me to take my clothes off. She said that she was going to take her lipstick and right something across my back. She didn’t ask. She just told me.

    It wasn’t an easy process. You see, my back is hairy, and I loved her so much that she made me sweat.  The lipstick was warm, like a very stiff narrow bloody tongue along my back. When she was finished I was shaking all over. And her writing was completely illegible.

     She told me she’d tried writing the word W-h-o-r-e. And she’d failed.

       She’d succeeded as far as I was concerned.

      But that wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted to put lipstick on my mouth. That, I didn’t want. I tried to distract her by talking about the movie District.

     I shouldn’t have brought it up. Because with her lipstick, blunted and curled with my hair at the end of it, she asked me how many districts I’d seen in District.

     I had no chance in hell of getting the right answer.

     So she put her lipstick on my mouth. I wanted to call it punishment, for not knowing the right answer, the right number. I wanted to call it What I Didn’t Want.  But what I wanted was No Ending.

    I don’t want to guess the right number of districts. Because then this will all end. And I don’t want to finish. I’ll never finish.

    There is no end to this. Endless lipstick. Endless avenues to apply it to–

    “Shut up,” she says, interrupting me.

    My mouth ceased. A red, glossy pucker of fruit.  I’m ripe. And I’ll rot. So I guess it will finish, I will finish…

     …at some time.

One Ed lacks everything

Two Ed might as well be One Ed

Three Ed has hope

Four Ed makes the best of what he has, knowing he cannot reach what he’s aiming, knowing that if he were a Five Ed or Six Ed all things would fall into place.

It’s a horrible thing to think your size makes that much a difference.

He read that the average American Male is a Five and a half Ed.

Four Ed feels a little bit better.

I can be gay all day,

As long as I don’t finish.

I can enjoy your mouth and your smell,

As long as I don’t finish.

My list is long, I’ll never finish.

I have to:

1. Inseminate my girlfriend

     2. Marry my girlfriend

3. Or maybe the other way around

     4. Teach a Genetics class online (“Where are the Students. Who are the Student?”)

     5. Sell my mother’s house.

     6. Run a 5k for in my father’s memory

     7. Advise my little brother–about things, straight things

I’ll never finish.