The father of all erections...
Chapter Forty-Two
The bizarre juxtaposition of psychosexual elements…
Bru sat there in the middle of the night, reading last night’s paper.
Water levels drop to new lows…
Inland creeks and rivers across Lennox County have hit new lows, according to Hilly Bakhander of the Lennox Region Conservation Authority.
“Plummeting water levels are not restricted to the Great Lakes. It’s pretty widespread. We’re finding across the watershed, that residents report the lowest water levels they’ve ever seen.”
Low water levels have forced conservation measures and threaten some species of wildlife. Several gauges in the region which monitor water levels confirm the drought is causing major problems.
According to Bakhander, “Some industries aren’t even able to irrigate anymore, depending on where they are.”
Residents are being asked to cut back on intake from local water sources. Operators of produce operations, golf courses, sod farms, and industry, as well as private citizens, have been asked to voluntarily reduce water consumption by 15 percent. Chemical Alley firms that take cooling water from the St. Irene River have also been asked to cut down. The request was made in late June, when a ‘level one’ alert was issued for the region.
It will extend for at least one year. If a ‘level two’ alert were to be issued, users would be asked to cut back a further 10 percent.
“Although compliance is voluntary, most realize it’s in their own best interest to reduce consumption. It’s not an infinite resource, even though sometimes it appears that way. People need to understand there is a supply issue,” said Bakhander.
Rainfall in the region is about 50 percent below normal levels for summer time.
–Staff Writers
Purvis was as horny as a ten-peckered billy goat…
Purvis remembered part of a jingle. It was an old ketchup commercial. His old man’s antique videotape collection was chock full of old stuff, some of it fascinating enough in its own way.
“Anticipation, anticipation.” Carly Simon or somebody.
He wondered if he should go on the net and try to locate that song, and then play it on the car stereo when he picked up Schwartzie.
Bad idea.
“No, she wouldn’t appreciate that.” He acknowledged, picking up on the gleam in his sardonic, icy blue eyes as they were reflected in the bathroom mirror.
Purvis was as horny as a ten-peckered Billy-goat. The only parallel in his experience was the curious incident of the train ride. In high school, his girlfriend was actually a year older than Les, and they’d had a pretty good thing going. When she went to university in Ottawa, time went by. Les hadn’t seen her for five or six weeks since her last weekend at home.
Money was tight for both of them. Her dad was fixing up a car for her. But it wasn’t ready yet. His car needed a master cylinder for the brakes. He purchased the part, then Les only got about half-way into the job. Then she called him up and said her roommate was going away for the weekend. When he explained about the car, she suggested the train.
Les thought, why not?
They were right in love, he remembered fondly.
It’s a funny thing about trains. The metal tracks come in sections of a certain length.
The tracks are nailed to wooden cross-ties. The railroad gangs leave a little gap, so the tracks can expand and contract with the changes in ambient temperature and sunshine, and things like that. Les was no science-geek type guy, but he understood the basic premise. The beat, no coincidence in his mind, was exactly the same as in the Simon and Garfunkel song, Cecilia.
“Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart. You’re breaking my confidence baby.” He grinned at himself as he shaved.
“Tick-tah-took-tah.” He tried to do it. “Tick-tah-took-tah…”
Yeah. That’s it.
Schwartzie...
“You’re breakin’ my confidence ba-a-a-by.” He nasally parodied in a high, fairly monotonous tone.
“Oh, Cecilia, I’m down on my knees, I’m beggin’ you please, let me eat you.” He giggled, then decided to stop.
Sometimes you heard funny things coming through the bathroom vent in this Mickey Mouse little apartment. It probably worked both ways, he realized rather belatedly. Had he sang anything really raunchy in the shower lately? He couldn’t remember anything too grotesque.
There was a certain rhythm to the train at cruising speed. The steel wheels on steel tracks, the hard-padded leather benches, the swaying from side to side, for some reason it all made him incredibly horny. It might be hard to explain, but chicks liked riding on Harleys, right?
It had something to do with the uneven beat of those V-twin engines. An asymmetrical thumping beat got chicks off. At least that was the theory, as expounded in certain men’s magazines.
Once he had a hard-on, it was there for the duration. And who could have avoided it? He knew where he was going, and what he expected to find when he got there. Chicks got horny on bikes. When he had been working a little longer, he meant to get one. But once he had an erection, it just wouldn’t go away. Pissing, he practically had to stand on his head in the tiny, swaying God-damned booth that passed for a washroom on VIA rail.
Just try to pee.
Just try not to piss all over the wall. Hell, even the ceiling. They say the vibrations of the typical v-bike engine, well, it stimulated women. Les had suffered through about a seven-hour erection, jammed into the tight jeans he wore back then. As a young man in good health and physical condition, poor old Les had never experienced anything like that. Not even in school, when it seemed every time you sat down at your desk and looked around the room, you started wondering in some day-dreamy way, ‘What would Brittany be like in bed?’ and, ‘I wonder how Ashley would look flat on her back with me fucking her?’
At that age, ninety percent of the girls were attractive. Not like now.
To look at a girl and think, “God, would I ever like to eat that.”
At the end of every period, taking one’s sweet time to put the books and pencils away, praying to God the hard-on would subside, and thinking about baseball. School was so boring, and he guessed school boys so horny, so driven by their glands, that he had pretty much fantasized about every girl in the class. And eventually every female teacher in the school, and that’s including the nuns and the cleaning ladies. Purvis had a pretty good idea of what Schwartzie was going to look like naked.
But he wanted to verify it, like a good reporter should.
Thank God he didn’t have to put up with a seven-hour train ride.
***
Ryebaum was in the lab, where he had a separate workstation.
With the death of chemistry-based photography, Ryebaum had successfully made the transition. Digital equipment was getting simpler to operate by the day.
For certain procedures, the old chemical process was still valid, and at home Ryebaum had his own darkroom in the basement. In the newsroom, the removal of the lab opened up fresh workspace. Rick Ryebaum had promptly commandeered it. His computer desk was here, and while wet prints were no longer hung up to dry, and there was no longer any need to dry film, the walls were still covered in images.
A photographer still had to look at his work to edit it, and often as not a really nice shot didn’t make the paper. Some of these trophies ended up on The Wall.
Of all the newspaper editorial staff, he used the phone least and had the quietest space.
The space was in effect no bigger than anyone else’s, and a couple of others came and went, but he had more wall space than anyone. He could close the door, and the ringing of phones and the mutter of conversation dropped away from his little reality. His printer buzzed and whirred. He pulled out the sheet of paper, an image of a young girl. She was walking her dog in a rainstorm, feet bare, shoes in her hand. She and this tiny little black dog. It stared with tail held proudly high, and grinned directly at the camera with a tongue-hanging-out-sideways, cute little doggy smile. The eyes of both were locked on the lens.
Unaware of photographing a 14 year-old.
With her youthfulness, there was a kind of innocent voyeurism, a sexuality in the very short cut-off jeans, the lacy cotton halter top, a small black leather purse over her bare shoulder perfectly accessorizing with the dog. Tiny breasts just accentuated the freshness, the wholesomeness of the image. It had never occurred to him that he was taking pictures of a fourteen-year-old girl. He was a professional and it was a public place. She had given her permission, and he had every expectation of it making the paper.
He tacked it onto the five-metre long bulletin board, and then sent it electronically to Barnes’ workstation, dark and silent behind his glass office wall. It was almost midnight.
It was attached to a message noting this might be tomorrow’s editorial photo, a rather free format where the newsworthy aspect took second place, and other positive or even whimsical messages might be put across with pictures. The whole world was going crazy these days, especially the weather. All this global warming. Bare feet in November. Amazing. The caption would be Bare footin.
He worked without any thought or notion whatsoever as to what might actually be in that water falling from the sky. Ryebaum was a simple, uncomplicated man who wanted nothing more than to exercise his craft, his love, his passion. That passion was clearly photography. Nothing else mattered. If the newspaper didn’t use pictures anymore, Ryebaum would have gone somewhere that did. It never occurred to him, that he might be a journalist, a high-status position which was a privilege and a gift. Ryebaum took all that for granted. Rick was very good at his job. He pulled the phone from the charger on the back of the desk and shoved it into his pocket, placed a few items into a briefcase, and then hit the light switch.
He stepped from the building’s back door and went down the steps leading to the employee parking lot. In the pool of amber light cast by the security lights, he enjoyed the full moon and crisp, late autumn air. Momentarily he considered going out into the country and taking a few pictures of the moon. While not exactly jaded by the prospect, he decided against it. Mind you, it would be nice to get a picture of the full moon hovering over a line of tall, dark pine trees. He could see the picture in his mind’s eye. It was late enough already. Melanie would kill him if he did it three nights in a row.
Rick had a pretty happy marriage, and wanted to keep it that way.
In the shadows by the corner of the building, something moved. He jumped at the sight, then got a grip on himself. Probably just a cat.
He ignored it, but then it moved again. The whole ground was moving. He was struck by the recollection of a mama skunk with about twenty kits following her across a dark road, like a bobbing, walking carpet of life. Quite startling in the headlights. He stuck his hand in his pocket, seeking his little flashlight. You never knew just how dark it might get, and trying to find the keyhole in the car door in pitch blackness could be frustrating.
Where the heck did it go?
Ah, here…he flipped the switch.
At first there was incomprehension, but it wasn’t skunks. Thank God for that.
“Hello, little fellow.” He bent over to have a look.
“Muh-ugh.” It croaked back at him, in the oddest little voice.
“Huh.” Said Ryebaum.
“Huh.” Said the reptilian creature, regarding him from a sideways-turned head and one beady little black eye.
“What…the heck…are you?” Asked Ryebaum in astonishment.
He’d never seen an animal like this in his entire life. Not in the wild, and certainly not in the city. Maybe a pet in someone’s apartment, or in a zoo or something. What was it doing out in the frigid evening weather? Ryebaum loved animals, and regularly donated to the Global Wildlife Fund.
“Muh…muh.” The thing said, or seemed to say.
Without a further thought, Ryebaum opened up the truck tailgate.
“Here you go, little buddy.” Ryebaum lifted the little bugger up into the back of his Suburban.
He crooned lovingly.
Yas. Me's hungy.
“You’re such a big boy. Are you hungry?”
It was bigger and heavier than he thought.
“You must weigh twenty kilos.” He told the thing in the same talking-to-baby voice he used when little Stevie needed a bottle in the middle of the night.
“Muh-uh.” It had a weird smile on its pebbly face, all shiny and moist-looking.
A funny, blunt-ended yellow tongue made darting motions in his face.
“Melanie’s just going to love you. Good boy. We’ll be home in a minute.”
He murmured to the thing in a baby-talking, soft, and reassuring voice which he had learned well.
Little Stevie was teething, and he had a hunch his mom would still be up.
END
Annie Lennox, Louis Shalako, ArtPal.
Images. Louis. He steals them from the internet.
Louis has books and stories available from iTunes. He also has some art on ArtPal.
Thank you for reading.
