SEX

Sex and the Ancients
I was high strung this morning; wired, I think is the proper descriptive. The reason: this huge town has a public utility company [what a joke the term "public utilities" is] named after the inventor of the electric light bulb (he called it a Mazda), or so he claimed, though some say crafty old Tom Edison stole a lot of his ideas from brilliant scientists he had working on projects in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Whatever that truth, old Tom left we wee New Yorkers a monster called Consolidated Edison, or as it's known in this short-cut day and age, ConEd (and what a con job they are). ConEd because they control the power, the electricity, the gas, the steam, all the things that make this city run, pretty much go about doing as they please with all sorts of impunity at any time they please, like building their substations in residential neighborhoods, for instance, with the neighbors screaming like banshees for the city council to please not give them permission to put one of these sulpher-spewing and mercury-spewing substations in their neighborhood, always, however, their screams falling on the deafest of deaf ears and soon, as if overnight, you have ConEd in your neighborhood. "ConEd and You're Dead," the banners warn you when the city council's voting on letting them build in your neighborhood.

For three years now I have had a ConEd substation in my neighborhood, right up the back air-alleyway east behind my apartment, just out my windows. I look out my windows east and there's the roof of the ConEd substation with its multiple ventilator-exhausts, their exhaust distributors twirling silvery like miniwindmills against the night or day, their exhausts coughing out the filthy toxins generated by the extremely high voltage Siemans dynamos that crank out the billions of kilowatts of electrical energy it takes to electrify and gas this part of town, this the fastest-growing area of Manhattan. These toxins are so prevelant they have to be vacuumed out of the substation and its underground passages every couple of months or less--you hear these big vacuum cleaners roaring late at night all the time, a horribly loud howling roar of these behemoth Hoovers sucking up the toxic residues that abound in the very pores of this substation.

ConEd always works at night; in the middle of the night; just as you're deciding it's time to hit the hay you're so damn tired from struggling with the system all day. You turn on a little teevee to rock you gently to sleep--and teevee is so boring it is a wonderful sleep inducer--and your eyelids are getting heavier and heavier and you begin to nod, then pop awake real fast, you know what I mean? I almost snap my neck in two sometimes when I catch myself nodding out and then quickly whip my head back up into the awake position with a ferocious automatic jerk. You're entering your twilight zone, readying for a peaceful evening's rest when out of nowhere comes ConEd. Holy shit, you holler! The noise is like the US Army has set up a machine gun company outside your windows and on a given order, they have all started firing away at once. That's what it sounds like when ConEd begins digging up the street in front of their substation at 10:30 pm; their machine guns are jackhammers, steam-driven jackhammers, and these sons of bitches are still as noisy and vulgarly irritating as they were way back when I was a curtainclimber. They splatter their noise against all the tall walls of the neighborhood, especially scary loud at that time of evening when the huge town's normal hum is being reduced, slowly declining into a comforting purring and then here comes this cacophony--oh holy shit, ConEd is destroying the street again.

It seems every time they slap up one of these 50-story luxury apartment buildings in my neighborhood, and there are currently six of these babies going up around me, there comes a point when ConEd has to run some juice down to these sites. There is a 60-story one just being topped off down the street west of me, a towering tacky piece of architectural crap the St. Francis worshippers down there are making millions of tax-free bucks off of, both from the developer and later the tenants. That's the luxury building ConEd is now having to run some juice down to. Everytime they do this, they have to dig our street up; and I don't mean just a long ditch down one side of the street, I mean they dig long ditches down each side of the street, then at several places every fifty feet, they dig ditches that cross from one side of the street to the other. It's an enormous project and since ConEd just does this all of a sudden, out of nowhere, no warning, except you notice their dayglo paint markings all over the street, like hastily drawn tattoos on some second-rate rock star; when you see those things you know they are going to blast the street to smithereens any late night then, though you never know for sure when the window-rattling jackhammering is going to begin.

I saw the bad tattoos yesterday; and I saw the already filthy overalled workers in their big work truck getting ready to fire up their jackhammers...then I saw the compressor trailer that powers the jackhammers...then you see the jackhammers laying under a tarp, and the already dirty-overalled workers are setting out their orange cones to block cars from parking where they're going to blast...and sure enough, I saw that yesterday afternoon, and sure enough, last night, as I was passing out, they started. They rattled my world and I'm in the back of the building and they are out front in the street, though in front of the ConEd substation whose low roof allows the sound to flow up over their roof and right up the air alley into my apartment windows. They jackhammered wildly and madly until 3 am.

So I didn't sleep much last night. And when I finally got to sleep and then woke up like out of a nightmare, though I didn't remember the dream, I was cranky and in need of a constitution. Then I happened to notice that England and Portugal were playing soccer around 11 and I remembered I had been invited up to this Irish Pub several blocks from me to watch the game by the pub's manager, a charming Irish lass from County Cork, and quite a Corker of a lass, she is, I might add. Shit, and I needed a god-damn shot of Jameson's best Gold, too, I was so pissed at ConEd; god-damn how I hate ConEd, and it runs all the way back to Tom Edison, whose f-ing ears I too would box until the bastard could hear again, hear the noise his legacy has left my sweet ass.

So I trundled my cranky body up to this Irish pub and it was already filled with English bastards, who I can't stand, Irish yes, Brits, no, and they were already tanking up and singing "God Save Our Old Hag Nazi-Relatives Queen" and talking down about the Portuguese. I ordered a tumbler of Gold and tossed it down when the Corker of a lass came and asked me if I wanted to join her for breakfast up in her office where she had the match on and we could watch it in peace. Hell, yeah, damn right, and that's what I did, taking a fresh tumbler of Gold along with me.

This woman is in her late forties. Only lately have I discovered something odd about myself now that I'm entering the "nasty old man" character zone in the drama that is my life. I'm supposed to be panting after dangerously young things, right? I'm supposed to be hanging around schoolyards like old Frank Harris of My Life and Loves fame, who couldn't get it up for anything over 12 after he was a mature gentleman. Except I can't do it. I hate young women, especially young girls. They're too goofy for my "mature" tastes. Oh, young girls are generally sexy as hell, especially up here in NYC, with their bodies taut, and their carriages slender, their toning well-honed, walking with their noses in the air and their splendid breasts splendidly visible and their well-rounded asses accepting your eyes but only on a "look don't touch" basis. Yeah, hell yeah, I check out these babes; I'm turned on by actresses and there are plenty of young actresses right around the corner on Madison Avenue at the acting academy over there, and, yes, I check them out, damn right I do, but, and here I'm speaking the holy truth, I'm really not sexually attracted to young women and girls. I'm odd I guess.

So I'm with this Irish woman and I've known her for 15 years at least so I know she's in her late forties, but she's still tall, stately, with a still-youthful innocent face, wonderful thick blondish-red hair--did I say she is tall and stately? And I know her intentions on inviting me up to her office to watch the football were platonic as hell, just being nice to me a very good customer and needing company while watching a game she likes to watch, blah, blah, blah. I approached the whole thing that way, too, but once up in her office and sitting there watching the game with her and drinking the Jameson's Gold, that was making me bold, I casually let myself stare at her while we were eating breakfast and watching a very tight match between England and Portugal. I was for Portugal and she was, too, since she hates the English as much as I do, and it was an exciting game and she got to jumping up and standing in front of me tense as a shot was taken on goal, shaking her arms, you know, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. And, screw the match, I got to enjoying watching her when she did this, watching her body, yes, I admit it--and Wow, what a body. Oh, I'd noticed it before, but I'd never been this touchably close to this wonderful body before, I mean like I was sitting right by her, our legs touching, that close, and her curves were right there for me to examine like a jeweler with a loupe enjoying the exquisite luster of a well-facited diamond. I felt strange. I was attracted to this "older" woman. Even her squeals were turning me on.

It got pretty bad with me. The football game? I no longer gave one shit about football. I wanted this woman; I was so attracted to her I could then feel her heat and could inhale her odor. Every move she made I watched it, the tautness of her thighs, the length of her legs through her tight skirt, and, yes, yes, the loave-like perfection of her buttocks (buttocks, my ass, her ass, dammit--I just can't be polite--I have never in whatever conversation, even with women, referred to it as "buttocks."

I got lost in thinking about ravaging her, and she continued the jumping up and down as the game got tighter and tighter, and her body was moving up and down in the right places and I was like in the Holy of Holies of desire and all of my brain action by then was in the head of my penis, and my penis has never been a football fan of any kind ever, and my total penis-brain attention was concentrated on lusting for this very wonderfully luscious Irish woman who was nearly 50 years old.

"I know you're looking at me funny," she turned and said, like ConEd's jackhammering, out of nowhere. I was stunned to embarrassment. I'd been caught being a nasty old man. "In fact, " she continued, with a pant in her voice, "everytime I'm around you I feel you looking at me." Of course, like every male dick, I started apologizing, "I'm sorry...Jesus, I'm not that kind of guy..." "But it's OK; I like you looking at me." "I find you beautiful." "My body, too?" She laughed as she said that so I knew she was allowing me to get sexy with her. "Well, sweetheart, I am a man and you are certainly a woman." "You're saying the right things." "You've got the right things." "Oh, please." "Yes, you are one fine woman, you are. I'd love to photograph you." "Naked, I suppose." "You're naked now as far as I'm concerned." "Oh, my God, that's enough, you're turning me on and I'm a married woman, but, well, you know, I like this...."

I have lately found a wonderful thing about women in their late forties and some in their early sixties. Dare I say it's as though they are reverting to "girlish" feelings after their childbearing years are over, their kids are grown and out of their lives, they're maybe divorced or husbands dead, they are through the f-ing menopause, dig, or they perhaps they are still married, maybe in love with a nice guy, but not sexually happy with him and perhaps craving some of that "backseat" lovin' of those once-youthful times.

I sang the other night with a band down in the East Village and most of the women there were in the their fifties, most of them friends of mine, wives of friends of mine, and some of them women friends of my women friends. And I found myself checking out each one of them as a potential receptacle for my old-age lust; checking out their sexualities. And I got an old man life thrill; I found they were all eager to flirt, trade sexual innuendoes, and get as nasty as I desired and then nastier. I realized, here were a fiesty gaggle of women who are now becoming sexual again, kind'a like they were when they were young girls, free women now, free from pregnancy, free from having to be faithful to their husbands or boyfriends, or free to do whatever, whenever, and whoever they want. Nothing to worry about fucking around now. Wow, that really turned me on and made me happy I was an older man to suddenly realize such things. F, all you young things, I'll take your mothers.

As a result of my fascination with this subject, I found this wonderful site of advice for freshly divorced babes on the Internet-- here, men or women,give it a go; it might teach you men a thing or two and it might lighten up you women to know that your sisters no matter their ages are having sexual desires, desires to cheat, desires for affairs, and they are excited like young women about it all to boot. Men my age have to live up to these women's fantasies however; we have to groom up, look sharp as tacks, wear the best clothes, look dapper and not old, and not act old, keep clean shaven, and definitely keep looking as hip and virile as we possibly can, even if it comes to needing some help from the cosmetic surgeon or the Hair Club for Men. Men, you should also have plenty of your own money; that's kind'a essential. "Romance without finance," remember as Tiny Grimes once told you, "is a nuisance...." One thing you have on young men, though; they want older women for the erotic excitement or else maybe a chance to steal some money off what they think is a rich widow/divorcee, whatever; you, hell, all you want is some good lovin'--or as Muddy Waters, quite a lover himself no matter his age, sang, "I wants to be loved."

http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/survivingdivorce/a/sexafterdivorce_5.htm

thegrowling"olderman"wolf
for The Daily Growler

The Daily Growler is greedy for ratings thus this SEX edition.

The Daily Growler Sports Extra With Marv Backbiter
OK. The World Cup is over for me. I don't give a crap who wins it now. Great games yesterday and today. England lost and that was cool. I like Portugal, but France impresses me the most. So how about the French and the Germans for the god-damn cup. Brasil really was shitty, not at all what I expected. Portugal was great except they couldn't score against the taller Brits. There shots on goal by their stars were all either sky-highers or puffy kicks straight at the goalkeeper. They had no chance to hit any headers over the taller Brits. One Brit, Crotch or whatever the hell his name was, was so gangly, Jesus, he looked seven-feet tall, he looked clumsy. He wasn't so great either--he looked like a dodo bird playing soccer.

So, let's say it's France vs. the Germans for the whole shebang? Do you care? I don't. I'll take France and give you zero. Italy could do it, but they're too small, too. Portugal? Nope, they can't score against the French or the Germans. See ya in four more years.

And the goofball Yankees lost bad to the limping Mets today, after the Metropolitans had lost four in a row and given the Red Sox a 3 game lead over the Yankees by losing to them up at Fenway three in a row. Randy "Time for the Retirement Village" Johnson was his normal nowadays awful self, giving up 5 runs in one inning. What a sorry joke of a pitcher he's turned out to be; but he is 42 years old, or some such crippling age as that. Julio Franco on the Mets doesn't seem to give a damn how old he is; he's the new Ricky Henderson on the Mets.

And Friday night's game between these two cross-town teams was another one of the best baseball games ever, the Yankees winning on an A-Rod walk-off in the 12th--Yankee pitching, the worst in the majors, allowing the Mets only 1 hit that whole long game. What a game.

I'm off to watch Michelle Wie wearing the tightest damn skirts and tops you'll ever see on a golf course; what a piece of....but wait a minute! She's a wholesome teenage girl. Yeah, sure. The young Asian girls are taking over ladies golf, and all of them like to dress sexy; tight skirts and tops, whereas, I'm sorry, most of the US lady golfers look like very charmingly pretty Lesbians. It's the nature of the sport, I suppose. Anika Sorenson, by the bye, is leading the USGA ladies championship from Newport, Rhode Island, and she's the best damn woman golfer I've ever seen play and I'm old enough to have seen Babe Zaharias, from Beaumont, Texas, play golf, on my hometown golf course playing with my college champion golfer cousin and a gaggle of pros like Tommy Bolt, who was notorious for taking it out and whizzing right on the fairway during a tournament. Those were the days when there were only a handful of spectators ever showed up to a PGA golf tournament.

marvbackbiter
for The Daily Growler

The Daily Growler Quote of the Day
"Irigaray [Luce Irigaray, the Belgium feminist] says repeatedly that there is no one female language. The new speech that she valorizes must explore itself, its selves, in multiple tones and voices. Her text is a process of discovery and an exploration, through language, of the connections between female sexuality and the expression of meaning...." Carolyn Burke, "Introduction to Luce Irigaray's 'When Our Lips Speak Together,' Signs 6, Autumn 1980.

Check out Luce Irigaray--I like her concept of "Otherness"--the same concept Hilda Doolittle practiced in her life and poetry.

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Irigaray.html