-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

Just now, on 8/10, the last pound of blackberries was picked. It took me an hour to find them, and I had to share them with doodle bugs and ants and jumping spiders and grasshoppers, and mosquitoes drank my blood and sawgrass sawed my tendons. My farmer friend Orville said, “You picked the first ones, might as well pick the last.”

I picked the last blackberries with my right hand, saving my soft, dominant hand, the left, for love, like Curly in “Of Mice and Men” – though I am nicer than Curly. But I have no expectations, mind, but I am prepared in case a hippy woman walks up the driveway: my one clean, freckled hand for caressing, the other stained like a water color painting, with red and pink and purple juice.

As I picked, I recalled a farm field overlooking the Mississippi River, where thirty of us watched the night sky from our high bluff perch, and thirty of us drank syrupy wine from glass jugs, that the farmer made from cherries, apples, grapes, raisins, persimmons, potatoes, and a girl read Shakespeare’s sonnets aloud by lamplight, and the spirit of Amelia, the Dark Lady, was outlined by the Milky Way, and our brains fermented and we slept in the straw like puppy brothers and kitten sisters, and I never saw one of them again.

Every first has a last. It is one thing to say it, yet another to know it, to know you are as fragile as an overripe blackberry, to know even music dies out in space and the miraculous, two-hands-wide, eye-spotted Polyphemus moth in Orville’s barn will die within five days of being hatched – all that sensual beauty, all that wing hallucination for no discernable reason, and crickets shriek for joy and it is a death song, to know that your essential, throbbing juice is like a water color painting fading, fading, fading.

Just now, on 8/10, I looped my t-shirt into a basket for transporting tomatoes, and those red-dressed orbs will slide through my starving lips at 6:09 pm, will stain my lips and stomach, will kiss my middle, the perfume lingering on my red and pink and purple-stained hand.

Keep those gifts, like paintings on a wall, and they will wither, and the rot will permeate the house and fruit flies will swarm. Eat those mellifluent gifts and they are gone. Seventy-year’s- worth of seasons, of fruit, will never be enough.

The fine art gallery of the tomato, of the blackberry pulsates along my synapses; my memories of fruits are nectarous. There is the perfect peach, the sapid blueberry, the burst concord grape, the crisp new apples, the luscious leak of strawberries – there:

my one clean, wrinkled, shivery, freckled hand for caressing, the other stained like a water color painting, with red and pink and purple juice (on my deathbed in my last dream).

August 8, 2016

The Lord God Sun gathered all living things and said, “They that will not fight shall be my Chosen Ones.”

Tiger and Bear said, “We shall not fight; we are your Chosen Ones.” “No,” the Lord God Sun said, “You are my beautiful ones, my princes of the jungle, of the mountains, but you fight mightily.” Butterfly said, “I shall not fight; I am your Chosen One.” “Yes,” the Lord God Sun said. “I name you Brother of the South, and your bright wings shall be called Wind.”

And so this gathering went, until Butterfly and Tree and Riverrain and Big Fish Who Breathes were settled upon as Chosen Ones. Tree became Sister of the West, for though she could uproot herself and fly, she chose not to, instead content to be shade and cool breath and fruit. Riverrain was named Brother of the North, the water prince who could lie still, fall, rise to the heavens and weep. And Big Fish Who Breathes was named Sister of the East, for despite its massive size it alone among animals chose not to fight but to live, eating only little fishes for sustenance.

And Man, born from the pores of sponges, the bones of fish and of the tribe of great apes, stood up on two legs, able to see over the grasses, and he contemplated the Big Fish Who Breathes and Tree and Riverrain and Butterfly, and he used all these according to their gifts. And he hunted Tiger and Bear until they were but a small number of the Living Things. And he poisoned Butterfly to the brink of extinction. And he fouled Riverrain with the detritus of his camp.

Lord God summoned Man, and he said, “You were born of all that I created. You inherited all my gifts. You might have lived in harmony with your fellow creatures. Your Brothers and Sisters South, East, West and North would have cared for you.

“I would have fed you, but you have a hunger that transcends all gifts. But I will not destroy you. I grant you the life you desire. I will turn my ears away from you.”

Man, upon receiving this gift, bowed to the Lord God Sun and thanked him.

The Lord God Sun then called together the last Butterflies, the last Big Fish Who Breathes, the Last Tree, the parched and depleted Riverrain.

“Man does not want you,” the Lord God Sun said. “I have promised that he may live. But since he does not want or need you, I will take you with me, to join my infinite Brother and Sister Suns, that we may live in peace.”

The Lord God Sun and the Brothers and Sisters of the North, East, South and West, and all their subjects the animals departed and settled in the area of Venus the Godstar. And they were happy.

Man, with no light save for distant stars, no animals, too much shade and no water, crouched in darkness and huddled the children of Earth together. And songs of lamentation echoed around the world. And prayers, to the Lord God of the Sun and all attendant Gods of Creation, went out into the heavens.

But Man had gotten his wish. He lived exactly as he was wont to do. He was free to live in nothingness – until his bones and his children’s bones shattered from brutal cold, from hunger, from thirst, until blood was the last water, sipped from the dead. True to Man’s nature, not a voice spoke of recognition or vanity or greed or ignorance. From Earth rose a last, horrifying shriek:

“Why?”

The Gods had kept their promises. The Lord God Sun lived peacefully among His creations, and was cooled by Wind and shaded and fed by Tree and washed in Riverrain and sang songs of joy with Big Fish Who Breathes.

August 6, 2016

I am one of several bloggers from around the country who have been asked to file my personal observations regarding the Olympic games in Brazil. Having watched the opening ceremony, I think the thing that got to me the most were the commercial endorsements by American athletes.

I was particularly impressed with the girl gymnast who danced and flipped down a highway for a product, the swimmer promoting hair gel products, and lots of boy and girl gymnasts in uniforms taking over a jet plane and flipping over laughing customers. Those cute little tykes! Oh yeah, and the winter Olympics star who was in a series of commercials where she appeared to be a dweeb in trying out summer sports. Hilarious! And so American!

Of course, the commercials were filmed well in advance of the games. Which might now seem ironic, as those endless NBC inspiring stories of our athletes overcoming adversity, which ordinarily bring us to tears, now are tinged because Americans being Americans, they have become rich pitch whores.

I realize I am the elephant in the room (not the Republican one that is trampling our democracy). So when my Olympic bosses threatened me with job termination, I decided to I toe the company line. Hey, I need the cash for a hair transplant. As of this morning, I am on board the Olympic train with both feet, baby.*

So the Olympics begin today.* I suppose I’ll watch.* My favorite event is women’s beach volleyball.* But I’ll probably watch some Dream Team hoops.* And I like the Marathon.* And how about those running dudes whose floppy penises make it look like they’re racing in their underwear.* My fave opening ceremony tribute was to the Rio slums.* I can’t wait for the Triathlon swimmers to not get e coli infections from sipping Rio Harbor water, and the rowing teams to try not to fall into Rio’s “Shit Lagoon.”

*Johnson’s Baby Powder: Official powder of the women’s gymnastics team! Use it on your feet to make them sweet. Slap it on your crotch so we can see your notch!

*Olympic Beer: Get high on our high Oregon rain forest water!

*I just feel naked without my Rolex watch!

*Slather on the Nare when you need your bikini bottom bare!

*Zanax: Dream a little dream of living on a yacht in Rio Harbor so you don’t have to live in dormitories and mingle with refugees and foreigners!

*Marathon Oil: We’re not running a sprint to combat global warming. We’re running a Marathon after the oil is all gone!

*Fruit of the Loom: Be like Mike! Not the rich part, you peon! Wear your undies tagless!

*Slums: They’re not just for Brazilians anymore! Sponsored by the Koch Brothers. “Things go better with Koch.”

*The Shit Council: Shitting on the world since humans walked upright. If it feels like shit, and it smells like shit, it must be shit!

Cha-ching! I just made a cool hundred grand in endorsements. Keep watching, suckers!

July 29, 2016

I was walking down my driveway at noon, heading for lunch with my pal Lorenzo Small, when I saw a sunlit monarch butterfly flutter down over the highway. The creature dropped into the path of an oncoming car and was hit and fell to the pavement. But still it fluttered.

More cars and trucks were coming from both directions, so I stepped out into the center lane and put up my hands. Miraculously, the vehicles stopped. I knelt and picked up the monarch, and it clung to my left hand. The drivers gave me thumbs up as I and my yellow friend moved into my yard.

I sat and put the butterfly into the grass. It slowly pumped energy, wings beating faster and faster, until it rose and fluttered like a little helicopter and flew away. How many millions of butterflies are killed by cars? Life and death are always with us.

I walked down Stroke Hill towards the river, stopping twice to play “Name That Tune” with mockingbirds. The forest buzzed with cicadas, the first sign of the inevitable slow march toward winter. Overhead, six turkey vultures tornadoed counter clockwise, rising and falling in the stiff breeze.

At Admire’s Bench, the memorial granite seat etched with a poem by Carol Admire, who was killed last summer as she was riding her bike, huge tiger swallowtail and purple swallowtail and monarch and viceroy, and checkerspot and dog-eye sulfur and purple hairstreak butterflies rose and sank into a morass of blue chicory flowers and brown-eyed Susan and Queen Ann’s lace. Mimosa trees were speckled with sickening sweet, perfumed pink flowers, and orange trumpet vine bent towards the path, and ruby-throated hummingbirds sated themselves with hot nectar.

I plucked a single Queen Ann’s plant from the ground and inhaled the fragrant scent of its root, the wild origin of our domestic carrots. There were puddles along the path, and brown-flowered cattails rose above my head. Their stripped muddy roots taste as sweet as watermelon.

A car drove west, its horn honking, and a woman leaned out the passenger side window and yelled, “Genehouse!” Ah, fame.

Flash the wiener dog greeted me by the river’s edge and licked my pale sweaty legs. Horseflies stung my back and houseflies sucked my blood. You can’t stand still outside the last week of July and avoid biting and sucking.

Back up the three-hundred-foot bluff, I crossed over to Farmer Orville’s and was greeted by Ruby Puppy and Reba and the male barn cat. Orville had picked a hundred pounds of tomatoes, three-quarters of which were gashed by worms. He shook his head in dismay. One in four is not good news on a farm.

We stood and talked under the shade of a hickory tree and watched the big butterflies driven by the wind. There was no need to speak out loud what would come next. Cicadas and butterflies and wooly caterpillars sound the call. So do the stores, with their winter clothing and Christmas wares already coming out.

Quilt Queen was headed out to grocery shop. She said, “Gene, no more cantaloupe. My refrigerator stinks of cantaloupe.” She was referring to my making the rounds at the closing of the fruit and vegetable stand and passing out free ripe fruit to the neighbors. As she drove off, Orville said, “Bring me a cantaloupe. I ain’t afraid of her.”

We watched the monarchs and their evolutionary cousins the admirals fly southwest. Predators avoid them, the monarchs because they are poisonous, the admirals because they developed yellow color and eyespots, mimicking the monarchs and tricking would be diners even as they are tender and juicy.

Orville, who doesn’t believe in evolution, headed inside to watch Fox News. I walked home to Genehouse, my stiffening body bending my spine like a horseshoe. On the highway, smashed bodies of dragonflies and flying beetles and butterflies colored the hot asphalt.

I had saved a monarch butterfly, my one good deed for the day.

July 28, 2016

She climbs out of her car, portable oxygen tank in her left hand and tubes up her nose. Her white hair is tightly rolled into blue, pink and yellow curlers. Her face is a road map of deep wrinkles. She walks heavily toward the fruit and vegetable stand, her steps wooden and deliberate, as though she were on stilts.

She orders cantaloupe, tomatoes, green beans, and a half peck of peaches, all of which I offer to carry to her car. She puts the portable oxygen machine, which looks like a small black briefcase, on the counter.

“This is Betsy,” the old woman says. “My doctor named it that.”

I tell her I have a guitar named Betsy, and she opines as to how the girl Betsy must have been special.

I sing: “Wednesday night at Cedar Lake, I fell in love with you/You were lying on the beach at sunset, watching for the moon/And I put my arms around you, babe/Betsy you know I love you/Betsy you know I care.”

“Oh my,” the lady says, walking beside me to her car. “Well, my Betsy is tethered to me for life, which won’t last much longer. I had a cardiac arrest on a plane from Phoenix to St. Louis a year ago. First a veterinarian come to my aid, then a nurse, and finally two doctors run up and helped me. We was in the air so long, I had permanent damage.”

I load her things into the back seat of the hot car. I want to adopt her. Wanting to adopt people is a daily occurrence for me. Had I adopted all the needy kids I met in theatre residencies over the year, I’d have needed a block of houses in which to shelter them.

“You are a kind young man.”

She pats my hands, closes the car door and drives off. Purple hairstreak butterflies sail down to her tire tracks and flap their wings with a coating of dust.

Betsy and I fell in love in Minneapolis. I saw her standing in a fountain, her hippie dress pulled up around her waist, sheer pink bikini underpants, a yellow headband holding back her long, lustrous hair. She had heard me sing at a local coffeehouse, she invited me into the fountain. We would have an on again, off again affair for several years, Minneapolis to Chicago every weekend. I hitchhiked half of those long commutes. We would get engaged then unengaged. Her mother hated me.

Betsy was a potter, a good one. To this day, I have three pieces of hers, beautiful cups. I watched her make a vase, once. She was sitting at her potter’s wheel, naked. She set the piece aside, slathered wet clay all over herself and pressed her soft body into mine. We were so dirty.

She disappeared, turning up months later in a cabin in northern Minnesota. She sent me a letter: “I love you but I can’t love you.”

And that is how I feel now: I love me, but I can’t love me.

I turn back to the fruit and vegetable stand, ready to help the next customer.

July 25, 2016

On Saturday night outside Nashville, my friends John and Judy and I attended the Hillbilly Haiku Hallelujah Holy Church of Hellfire Folk Hymns. We entered the church sanctuary and were greeted by sextants Denise and Rick Williams and their lay staff, Levon and Guthrie.

Usually, the potluck happens after the service, but not at the Hillbilly Haiku Hallelujah Holy Church of Hellfire Folk Hymns. We feasted on potato salad, macaroni salad, watermelon and other fruits, a corn and meat chili, pecan pie, Peach Pie Judy’s homemade cheese balls, and cookies, and there was a cooler of water and pop and beer. Let me hear an “amen!”

The walls of the Hillbilly Haiku Hallelujah Holy Church of Hellfire Folk Hymns were covered with posters of legendary preachers such as Hank Williams (a stunning portrait painted by Jefferson Ross hangs in the sanctuary) and Ralph Stanley and Tina Turner and John Hartford and Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and Odetta, and the list went on and on.

The congregation filtered in: a woman who is writing a bluegrass musical based on “Romeo and Juliet,” a tired couple who had driven all the way from their vacation in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and a host of other friendly folks, folkie-foodies and sermon lovers all. The lay staff, Levon and Guthrie walked stealthily on the floor and sniffed for food and pats on the head and belly rubs.

The preachers arrived and practiced their craft, Linda McRae and the aptly named Daryl Dasher, and Daniel Seymour working as a tag team, and Preacher Kevin Gordon who channels Bob Dylan. And brothers and sisters, I was born again, and the service hadn’t even started.

The congregation fell silent. I did a reading from my old testament, and then Preacher Kevin spoke in Louisiana poetry, his homily about him as a kid and his black band director, making me ache with pleasure. Then I did a reading from the new testament of Genehouse, my knees weak because all those mighty preachers were watching me, but I soldiered through it.

And up stepped the three speakers-in-tongues, the Dogwood Cats, and they rocked us, rolled us, whispered us, caressed us, and Brother Daryl was in such a holy sweat of string plucking, he wiped his soaked head with a cloth, and Sister Linda (some of whose sermons are platinum) serenaded like a songbird and Brother Daniel held his standup bass sweetheart and plucked from his lion’s den. And the service crescendo was a hymn called “I shall Be Released.”  Can I get an “amen?”

And there was communion – of course. And there was tribute paid to those preachers who passed (Johnny and June and Marty Robbins and Steve Young, among many others) and those preachers they wished were there that night like Duke Lang (Duke, Sister Denise loves you in case you don’t know), and the work of the late master luthier Scot Hamlin hung on a wall.

Peach Pie Judy (Levon spent the evening in her lap) observed that I was happy. And damn, I was. The love from the Hillbilly Haiku Hallelujah Holy Church of Hellfire Folk Hymns enveloped me and cleansed my pores and corrected my bad posture, and I was chocolate chip cookie high.

Rick and Denise, I love you madly.

Can I get an “amen?”

July 12, 2016

“There is a present to you out in the barn,” Orville says.

I walk out to the hulking old barn, all the way thanking the saints for what I believe to be in there, inside the high, sliding back door. Nestled in a box lid, are eight tomatoes. Eight homegrown tomatoes, red and ripe and sweet. In the next box are plump cucumbers, enough for twenty salads unless you’re like me. They’ll last until Thursday at best.

It is easy, eating green, and yellow and red and black.

Back on the front porch, Quilt Queen dabs at her face with a clean cloth. She is a sweater, like me. I lose a gallon of sweat on a treadmill.

“We used to think it was menopause,” Quilt Queen says.

“Now we know it is mental pause,” Orville says.

The porch sitting has become a twice a day event, with coffee in the morning, Dr. Pepper in the afternoon. It is a wrap-around, with the corner receiving north to south breezes and hickory tree shade. We can see the great egrets that fish in Orville’s pond, and the tallgrass prairie thick with blue chicory wildflowers and goldfinches.

By we, I mean Orville, me, Quilt Queen, Walt the next door neighbor, Ruby puppy and Reba the farm dog plus the two barn cats that sleep on the porch swing.

For some reason, the conversation turns to nicknames. Mine is Blue. Bev’s is Quilt Queen – I named her, I should know. Walter’s is Walt. And Orville?

“Toughie,” Orville says. He adds an extra word which I have promised not to reveal (I now have so many agreements with friends regarding ‘off the record,’ as to what I do or don’t write about), as in “Toughie – – – s.” It is hard to imagine that this banty rooster once had a reputation.

“I was small but deadly in my Catholic high school. I’d look around for the biggest guys and wrestle them after school. If the principal heard, he’s hit us with that big stick of his.”

Walt is eighty-five with a thick head of snow-white hair. He has a scowl that could freeze a teenage boy, but in fact he’s a pussy cat. His wife has Alzheimer’s disease and has recently been moved to a home. She is the love of his life.

“I’ve got the Ladies Auxiliary this afternoon,” Quilt Queen says. “I forget who is the hostess. If it’s me, I’ll stop at Dairy Queen and get an ice cream cake.”

“If it’s not you, bring the dang ice cream cake home,” her husband says.

A battered yellow car pulls up from the highway. Inside are a stout mom and two sons. She unrolls the passenger side window and says, “Is this here that blackberry place?” She has just passed a four-foot-long sign which reads, “Pick your own blackberries.”

She will find out that her blackberries are free. Orville, or should I say Toughie – – – s, has a policy that kids pick for free. He might turn a profit if he ever decided to run the farm in a business-like manner. If he was tough-ie enough.

Missing at today’s porch soiree is talk of Black Lives Matter or what a crook Hillary is or the five dead policemen. It will come again, come most days. I have a Black Lives Matter speech ready to go if and when the opposition chimes in.

I walk home with my tomatoes and cucumbers, my face smooshed with cookie crumbs, my teeth choked with blackberry seed wedgies. Scout the cat greets me and takes a long sniff. She knows Ruby Puppy and Reba and the barn cats well. She pats a cucumber with her paw and inhales its scent, a true vegetable and fruit lover.

The most beautiful sound in the world I’ve ever heard . . . “tomato.”

July 18, 2016

Black lives do not matter, which explains why its opposite has become a rallying cry. All lives matter, obvious as is that statement, is not pertinent to what’s going on in this rapidly insane country of ours.

To those of us whites who feel compelled to say we are not responsible for historic events, we missed the point. No, we didn’t land at Plymouth Rock and begin the slaughter of Indians (That is the real story of Thanksgiving.) We weren’t in the American Revolution which, by the way, was as much about the right of the founding fathers to own slaves as it was about freedom.

We didn’t fight alongside Andrew Jackson who brutally tortured and killed Indian women and children, to teach the men a lesson. We didn’t segregate the Armed Forces in the pre-Korean wars. (Southern officers, descendants of Confederate traitors, controlled the commands of the armed services and inserted their own prejudices in the bargain.) We didn’t participate in the mass lynching of black people during the twentieth century.

But those horrifying things happened. We read history for a grade, but we didn’t learn from it and make ourselves better. “Never again”: the most solemn oath of post-World War II. Are you kidding? We forgot almost immediately. In a mere one hundred thousand years, we went from spears to AK-47s. In the Twentieth Century alone, we slaughtered two hundred million people in the name of God, superiority and morality.

St. Francis of Assisi went along for the Crusades, witnessed the horrific slaughter of the “infidels,” and joined those infidels out of love. How quaint. Martin Luther King Jr. knew he was going to be sacrificed, and he greeted death with open arms. How old fashioned. How against the grain, of the inevitable march of humanity.

The most egregious of “gifts” our white ancestors left to us was racism. Read scientist Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel.” After the human migration out of Africa (all people come from eight African ancestors), evolution led to changing body characteristics, including losing the dark skin pigment of the original people and, adapting to climate, becoming “white.”

And those white people had also accidentally, coincidentally landed in the most desirable climate for large production of food, and for mineral resources, leading to the Bronze Age and the development of steel and advanced weapons which would allow small conquering forces to wipe out vast armies of opponents armed with bows and arrows.

Enter “lucky” Columbus, the Vikings, the Crusaders, the British Empire and the good old US of A – all founded on the notion that non-whites were savages. These whiteys had steel, carried germs, and they wiped out millions of indigenous people in the Old and New worlds.

What we white people did do, what we white people do now, is live complacently and spout slogans. “Get over it.” “I don’t want to hear it.” “My people didn’t do that.”

Oh, yes they did. By being in denial, we perpetuate and regurgitate the unfounded prejudices and the staggering ignorance of ten thousand years ago. Today, we blatantly charge white police forces with protecting our whiteness. And by proclaiming bigotry as a moral force in the national pulpits, we have ceded the tenants of Christianity, of all other religions, of philosophy, of reason.

Now Christians are proclaiming the “end of days,” rather than taking responsibility for willful human self-destruction on a massive scale. Now Christians are throwing up their hands, importing red bulls to Israel and artificially attempting to bring about the end of the world. Bad news: there will be no Rapture.

We are godless. God left the building a million and a half years ago.

We can deny all we want. Ignore the fact that the poorest whites of our clans were born privileged, and now we don’t want to give up our “inheritance.” And we sure as hell don’t really want brotherhood, to become brothers with our original, Edenic selves, the mothers and fathers of us all. Why?

Guns and germs and steel have wrought overpopulation, terror, famine, moral corruption, disconnectedness with the natural planet, and disrespect for all living things.

We hate ourselves.

Have a nice day, and don’t forget to recycle.

July 14, 2016

I have a double ear infection, the pain of which kept me awake last night, all night. My doctor couldn’t see me today, so I wound up in the walk-in care center in Upper Alton. A very nice nurse practioner gave me antibiotics and steroids and stuff to sniff up my nose.

I drove home and got the bright idea to mow the lawn in the middle of the day. I got it done, after losing two gallons of sweat and gulping iced tea and water. Then, soaking wet, I staggered over to Farmer Orville’s place to pick some blackberries. We sat on the porch, and Orville made fun of me, saying he used to mow his fifteen acres with a push mower, what the hell was I so tried about?

The body count at the farm was at an all-time high. The barn cats caught a blue-tailed skink and played with it, then Ruby Puppy joyfully swallowed it whole. Each of the cats caught mice and eviscerated them down to intestines in front of blackberry customers, causing a little girl to hurl.

My friend estimated he had sold almost a thousand pounds of blackberries in thirty to sixty pound increments, to wine makers and jam connoisseurs. Yet, the bushes looked like they hadn’t been touched. I picked a pound in about three minutes and also came away with more cucumbers and tomatoes.

“I got in a fight this morning,” Orville said. “With a feisty woman. I may have mentioned to her that I hate Hillary Clinton. Feisty dropped her bucket, gave me a speech. And she convinced me –”

“To vote for Hillary?”

“Hell, no. That I was right about the sleazy guy.”

Orville calls Trump “the sleazy guy,” because he can’t bring himself to name the Devil, even as he is a Missouri Synod Lutheran.

I will not argue with my friend. He is the salt of the earth, warm and caring. He takes excess produce to the local food pantry. If a homeless person set foot on his farm, that person, of any color or persuasion, would be fed, probably prayed over, most certainly clothed.

Me, I prefer feisty women. Feisty Sarah Palin: If she were the last woman on earth and I was the last man, I’d do her. I’d have to wash her mouth out with soap, but I’d do her.

I grew up on Anne Richards, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, all great women. My dad and other dads must have shuddered when they spoke, and looked nervously at their wives. Me, I got goose bumps. My mom voted for Kennedy, and you could have heard the dad howl a block away.

“So, you got in a political debate because you don’t want ladies with sass in your berry patch?” I said.

“Ladies are my best customers,” Orville said. “I like ladies. Not likely she will show up here, but I would sell to Hillary.”

Who doesn’t like a feisty lady with blackberry cash in her purse?

I walked home, showered, napped. And prayed that the end of the world wouldn’t come down to me and Sarah Palin. Or worse: Michele Bachman. She has eyes straight out of “The Walking Dead.”

I have standards.