moaningatmidnight

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Get Out Of My Life Woman - Jimi Hendrix

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The Meters - Thinking (1970, Josie Records)

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The Meters - Cissy Strut.  Relax.  

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All my book orders arrived last Saturday. It was like a mini-Christmas. Also kinky handcuffs arrived the same day. Can it get better?

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Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Submitted by infelici-ty.

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Table for Eight

She sits in the living room looking at the phone. News anchors open their mouth but no sound comes out of the muted TV. The woman bites her lip and plays with a wooden rosary around her neck. She eyes the phone, then the window looking out onto the neighborhood, then back to the black phone in front of her.

In the dining room the table is set for guests —  eight knives, forks and spoons, two sets of plates. No one has arrived yet though. The man comes from the kitchen with an apron hugging his big belly, ��They’re gonna be here any minute now.”

“I know. It’s all set,” says the woman.

“The risotto is going to be done soon. Soup is already done too. What about the dessert?”

“It’s in the fridge cooling,” she doesn’t take her eyes off the phone.

The man looks at her, he wipes his hands in the apron and walks over. He kisses her grey hair and strokes her cheek, “He hasn’t answered?”

“I told him to call me. He hasn’t called.”

“He never does, honey,” says the man and goes back to the kitchen.

She sighs and lets go of the rosary, picks up the phone and dials the number she knows by heart. The phone rings on the other side once, twice, three times, but no one picks up. She lets it ring for a full minute and then hangs up. The woman gets up and goes to the dining room. She takes one set of plates and puts them back into the cabinet with the fine china, she takes the cutlery and carries it back to the kitchen.

Her husband mixes the risotto with a wooden spoon and looks on as she puts the knife, fork and spoon into their place again. The woman grabs the counter for balance and exhales.

“We expecting seven people after all, honey?”

“Seven people,” she says. “Same as every year, dear.”

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Gisela: “I’m re-reading 1984. Despite it being fictional, it’s really easy to draw parallels between its dystopian story and what’s happening in the world today. It makes me pretty anxious, actually, but I am also hopeful that we won’t end up completely brainwashed. I’m fascinated by the idea of post-truth, which refers to people not caring so much about truth or objective facts. They rather base their actions on rage or other emotions. I read this book a few years ago when I lived in Switzerland, a country that everyone thinks is perfect. It actually shocked me with its problems, like hatred towards immigrants. I’m going back to Orwell’s wisdom. We have so much to learn from the past.” Reading 1984 by George Orwell. #subwaybookreview 🇬🇧 (at London Fields railway station)

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Sonny Red: Out Of The Blue

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a-new-american-classic replied to your photo: I need to stop buying books when I’m broke.

Buy more books. Build a library.

I keep buying a ton every month, and every month I say this will be a saving up month. I have about 40 books on my shelf yet to read.

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I need to stop buying books when I’m broke.

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If they push that button Yo’ ass got to go! Whatchu gunna do without yo’ ass?

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pretty much

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Now we won’t all live, but… I don’t know. Maybe we won’t all die. Green Room (2016) dir. Jeremy Saulnier

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I come back to the apartment to find Jake is doing his regular con. There’s moaning in the other room and I hear the woman calling him daddy.

Jake was John two weeks ago and then he was Bruce in Miami and when we stopped in Seattle he was Norman -- I have no idea where he picked that out. The con in it’s most basic premise is quite simple. He hires a good looking place, airbnb mostly. This place is in a good part of town, new building. The windows are floor to ceiling  in the living room overlooking the town. The place is modern and sterile - black and white, some light brown mixed in. Big bookshelf full of hardcovers and paperbacks is the only sliver of character. Something that says someone actually lives here sometimes. When we first arrived I checked the books out because I thought they were set dressing. Buy them by the foot online. They come themed, old penguin paperbacks, color schemed, unjacketed hardcovers you can’t sell for anything cause the dust jacket carries the price, just color code them and sell them by the pound.

To my surprise the bookshelf is full of everything, but a clear pattern of taste emerges. There’s lots of literary fiction by female artists. First editions of Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Chimamanda Adichie, Alice Munro and some Glliian Flynn in there. There’s a whole lot of ya and fantasy in there too. I picked one of the hardcovers to read one day, but saw the mylar cover and the words first edition on there - decided I don’t want to have a chance of ruining the book.

The moaning has stopped and I hear a patter of feet on the floor. The doors open and a completely naked girl stumbles out. She gives me a deer in the headlights look. Hello unknown lady I’m thinking. You’re naked and probably covered in cum and here I am staring. She’s got lots of bush, not that I mind. I find that refreshing in the oceans of bare, per-pubescent looking vaginas of the new age.

“You didn’t tell me you had a roommate!” she yells back to Jake in the bedroom. The girl doesn’t even cover herself up, just walks to the fridge in the adjoining kitchen and takes out a water bottle, “I’m Tasha. Not short for Natasha, my parents liked Tasha.”

She waves and goes back to the bedroom. Same time Jake emerges in his boxers and a smile from ear to ear.

“She’s smoking, right?” he says but not too loud so she doesn’t hear him.He runs many cons, I help in some. Most of the time I just piggyback on the ride since we started from Shelbyville, Tennessee. One of the cons we run is rare book con. He goes to clubs and restaurants, finds people who think they know collecting, but they don’t. Then he tells them he is in town to buy a rare book. Says he found an idiot who inherited his dad’s collection, has a first edition Gatsby. Book worth 200,000 dollars, he’s selling for 10,000, well he was. Now that he’s in town he wants 15,000. They usually give him the rest after they both meet with me and see the book. The book is a dummy, a forgery of course. Then it’s to the next town and a new con. Maybe some insurance stuff, a crazy opportunity, stock tip. He runs all kinds of cons.

He also likes to run cons on girls. I can’t even count how many he takes into these apartments and houses we rent. He drives up in a Bentley he ‘inherited’ out of a old man in Florida. He buys good wine and pretends he’s rich. Take them to the nice place, fuck their brains out and leave the next day. Jake is a-grade bullshitter. He’s got a knack for lying. The words leave his mouth at such a frequency they can’t be not true. Such confidence is hard to find. If you measured his heart-rate while he’s scamming thousands of dollars you’d never see it rise.

Jake takes a water bottle too and he sits at the counter and drinks. The girl comes out again but now in her little dress, still barefoot. She hovers around the living room watching the place. Knowing Jake she didn’t see anything but the sheets of the bed as soon as they came in. Tasha goes straight for the bookshelf and thumbs the books.

“Didn’t think of you reading so much...women books.” those words hover around her mouth like a curse word. Perhaps a part of feels like it’s sexist to divide literature in women’s and men’s. Then again she’s right. Studies show men read fewer books written by women. J.K. Rowling took the name cause the publisher didn’t think boys would by a book written by a Joanne.

“I guess there’s a lot about me you still don’t know,” Jake says and smiles. He’s not panicking at all. “I find women have a certain outlook on things that is a lot more authentic than the male gaze,” I’m wondering where he’s pulling this out of. “It helps to broaden your views from the male fantasy driven books.”

Tasha puts Mave Binchy’s love novel back on the shelf and nods, “And here I thought it wasn’t your house at first.”

Jake laughs and then looks at me. That’s my cue to laugh so I do. Tasha laughs too. We share a nice moment over the funny situation. If only she knew she was right. Jake walks over and grabs her chin with his thumb, he lifts it and kisses her, “Have I told you about the all night Italian place around the corner. I have no food in the house right now. My roommate was supposed to do the shopping. Let’s pop in there for a bite. We can come back.”

I know they won’t come back. He’ll drop her off later. They never come back. Tasha doesn’t even argue or say anything. She puts her shoes on and then he takes her out with his hand on her arm. I’m left alone and open my laptop to research this town’s fancy restaurants and clubs. The in places where you got chances to meet some old guy or a lady with too much money who might believe any bullshit story we sell her. We need to make a living after all.