SMOOTH STUFFING

After jaunting around in North Beach, the bookseller and I were walking home on Pacific Street the other night, when we paused to have a final cigar at Hyde. While we were chatting a group of Central American gentlemen were wishing each other buenas noches on the opposite corner.
A tall pale woman with a short skirt and high heels walked past, up Hyde Street en-route to her apartment.

Imagine several sets of beady eyes following those legs uphill, in admiring silence.
After the fog finally shrouded her from view, conversations started up again.
Men are built that way. We have a fondness for beauty. It’s how it is.
Which is why most men would rather watch the animal channel.
A pity that programming directors don’t understand this.


SMALL PLEASURES

In an ideal world, many men would stay at home all day, enjoying animal shows on the tube, listening to the gentle voice of a naturalist explaining that the mama bear’s protective instinct will cause her to rip apart the national park visitor who got too close to her cub. Completely without any bias or bestial bloodlust, she will efficiently and with despatch eviscerate a family of middle-class hikers from Arizona who made the mistake of feeding spam to her precious furball, then forcibly dunk him under in the frigid mountain stream several times to wash the human funk off his pelt. Stupid cub! Stay away from those horrid creatures, you don’t know where they’ve been! They smell of high-fat diets and soft drinks!
The natural world is a beautiful thing.

I never watch television anymore. It’s more enjoyable to sit on my bed reading, with the stuffed animals arranged along the wall. Occasionally one of them will try poking me with a sharp stick – especially if I’m in my pajamas – or ever so surreptitiously move closer and closer to my wallet, hoping to make off with the plasticky visa thing that enables internet sales. The monkey is determined to buy a banana plantation and have it delivered, the headsheep wants a throne.
Gunther the Raccoon just knows that fried German things are available.
Mostly they stare off into space, waiting for me to leave.

They are complete wild things. There is evidence that when I’m out of the house, they frequently bash each other, pose in front of the mirror, try to steal my bowl of laundry money, and look for the bottle of Islay single malt (which I’ve hidden).
I don’t know how any of them would deal with nature, they are such city creatures.
Everything they desire is within reach, with a credit card. My credit card!
They lament my lack of generosity in not yielding it upon demand.
If that mama bear were around, she would SO cut me!
Maybe they can co-opt her with salmon?

The natural world is a beautiful thing.

Can’t read at home anymore. It’s too quiet.
They’re plotting something.

I'm safe at the office.


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