Breaking the Henry Miller Barrier

It occurs to me now that I have busted the Henry Miller Barrier…like going faster than the speed of sound in literature…I can out-do old Henry in the sex talk…his language quaint and almost-antique now after nearly a century though his truth is fresh…I can be so frank it will embarrass a bonafide punk…the older I get the less I care that it offends anybody the way I talk or write…maybe it’s crass to you…I’m not talking or writing any more in Latin unless it advances the story…I speak English it’s a pussy not a vagina…a dick not a penis to me…if you can’t take it I’m not sorry. ..I’m pissed that I can’t be banned in Boston…Maybe I can still get banned in Lake Charles the anus of the country.

Of course Henry Miller was more intellectual and scholarly a better writer than me…he was certainly better-educated and better-read…or maybe not…he was no activist that’s for sure…but he had no illusions about the way things are...utter contempt for the establishment...for mediocrity…for half-assed pompous hypocrits who know all about God...for the bourgeoisie…for the dull-witted religious materialistic middle-class romance-reading know-nothing tv-glued morons who still are the bane of all existence…I can’t match his breadth depth continuity style or prolific output…that guy had a lot of energy!...a lot of style!...the women of his day he had their number all right…less of what he said about them then is true now of course…what with women’s liberation and more honest sex relations between them and us…that’s right…us…we men who have to kiss their asses to get some loving understanding…women say he was a misogynist…then why was he surrounded by talented beautiful women until the day he died in his 80’s?...Henry Miller loved women but wasn't dishonest or blind to their faults...me too.



The night of the day a Saturday when I was 12 and my mother had walked in on me jacking off in broad daylight on my bed with my eyes closed in ecstasy…my stepfather Sidney summoned me to the patio for a private talk…it went like this…”Mike there are birds and there are bees and they stick to their own kind”…that was it…the birds and the bees talk…that was the sum-total of my sex education in Louisiana in 1953 or 1954…I nodded and returned to my room...I didn’t want to rock the boat either…everybody was too tense and evasive about the subject of sex...only alluded to never actually mentioned in my presence…I overheard things when they partied and talked...it felt too shaky to explore...everybody shut up when I came in...Sid had some "blue records" and I listened to them in secret...they excited my imagination but revealed little.

It took decades for me to get Sidney’s subtle humor…my stepfather had some class…he knew I’d know the score sooner or later and didn’t want to be responsible for the outcome.



Well I already knew what the birds did I had seen them doing it…they couldn’t hide that from me…I’d seen dogs fucking and got the idea humans did something like it but I couldn’t figure how…I remember hoping they didn’t get stuck together like that…my sex education came from boys my age and a little older…Willie who was a year older had already shown me how to jerk off by demonstration…it was a sleepover and he laid in my bed with his younger brother my age in his own bed saying I’m gonna tell dad…Willie said I’ll beat the shit out of you if you do…those kids used to beat each other into bloody submission while Henry and I gaped at the spectacle…it didn’t take me long to get the idea…first time I came I was flogging it in my aunt’s bathroom in Houston for about two hours working it over until it was raw and looking at a sexy picture…which today would be nothing…of Kim Novak’s barely-covered breasts…God bless her she was my first…it was absolutely excruciating it totally exhausted me and I went to sleep in the bathroom.



Do you see it…I was 12 years old and knew almost nothing of female nomenclature…I remember the first time a boy ever named that mysterious part…he was an older boy and he said it was called a cock…not long after that Jerry Woolley the poorest kid in school…another realist…from a hardscrabble country family…and my only friend in Lake Charles…killed in a car wreck at 14…straightened me out with the correct term…pussy…but a few years later at 17 I witnessed a southern kid in Marine Corps Boot Camp who had never been corrected from that original malicious misnomer…nearing the end of our 13-week winter vacation in that freezing swamp…he announced…”As soon as we get liberty I’m going to town and get me some cock!”…to hoots and whistles from a squad bay full of marines…what a dumb bastard...the senior drill instructor himself came charging into the barracks yelling WHO SAID THAT?…kid was dumbfounded...embarrassed…a lot of explaining to do… first he’d heard of it…the D.I. made him do fifty squat jumps…yelling IT’S A FUCKING PUSSY YOU MAGGOT!...NOW WHAT IS IT?...SIR! IT’S A FUCKING PUSSY SIR!...HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A FUCKING PUSSY PRIVATE BRITT?...SIR! NO SIR!...WHY NOT PRIVATE BRITT ARE YOU A HOMOSEXUAL?...SIR! NO SIR!...the hard way to learn but funny as hell at the time…those drill instructors cracked us up when they weren’t kicking our freezing asses thru barbed wire...incidentally toughening our minds and bodies…making us insensitive to human life and so on.



Frankly I think pornography is probably a good thing overall…a better sex education than you get in most public schools I heard…at least you can see how some people do it…at least you can see all the parts and how they work…of course it’s exploitative of women (and men)...what isn't?...and utterly tasteless most of the time…what isn’t?...but sometimes there’s a really good fuck that can drive you out of your grape…kids shouldn’t watch it but they do…we would have!...let them see the best fucks maybe they'll have more successful relationships...the danger is that it will become an obsession muscling out other things…a whole generation of absolute sex maniacs...or that boys will disrespect girls for it and vice-versa…many already do anyway…disrespect and resent each other you know…many females jealous of males wrongly thinking we have the best part…and males the same way…jealous of female privilege and later their control of the ritual sex dance…in old age I’m feeling slightly jealous of young women…they fuck all the time…don’t seem to care who knows it either…I wish I had recorded some of the conversations I’ve heard in coffee shops and bars…they turn me on…but bourgeois notions usually win in the end …they satisfy their horniness…strangle and tangle each other in sticky romantic social cobwebs…have orgies…twosomes threesomes foursomes and moresomes… trade partners like used cars…break egos like pencil points…spend their precious energy in pointless rebellion…defying authority with shitloads of irrelevant trivia…streaking…politics…rock and roll...the occult…devil worship…in the early Sixties the big craze at college campuses was how many undergrads could cram themselves into a telephone booth…in the 20’s it was how many live goldfish one could swallow…one reason our generation demanded RELEVANCE!...then they get too tired too broke or too lonely and go home to mama… make up…meet a guy…get married…squeeze out babies like eggs of the Alien mother… then hound some poor bastard to death about bringing in the grits…start screwing other guys or women or get fat and cut off the sex…it never happened to me but I heard the story often enough…I see them dragging their fat asses and waddling their inner-tube bellies down the street towing a bunch of overstuffed selfish brats around who will need everything someday and do anything to get it…and I don’t care dude…it’s not my problem…some poor devils can’t live without marriage but to me it was just another cage…ha, ha…now I would love to be married…I’m finally ready for it!...at 68!...I’d be a great companion she could talk my head off and I would fuck her brains out...but it’s too late… oh well…my life is filled with well-deserved irony…I’m trying not to complain these days…is ruefulness okay?




Now here comes a great-looking gal all dressed in pink and black my favorite color combo…tight black top…shocking pink pants…black witchy hat and black flip-flops…black sunglasses framed in pink…style!...Yes the one walking with the man wearing the collector’s edition Mardis Gras throw…an olive-green Harley-Davidson cap…with the expensive watch and the fat belly…in front of the fat wallet…strolling down the street with his hand on her fat ass…but tight as a drum & no panty line…are they in love?...I hope so…I hope there’s a great passion...I see no hope for any love unaccompanied by great passion …it’s a fire of passion which burns in my unloved heart…unrequited passion unrequited love…a whole lake of love seething in a cauldron of volcanic emotions…we dampen our passion dilute it in games and dull it with toil divert it from a cauldron of seething erotica and panting impossible expectations… into other channels...to safer spillways...our work our families our art our lovers even our enemies…to prevent a flood…to keep the dam from busting wide open and drowning us in turbulent spontaneous passion...we arm ourselves with indifference to ease or prevent the pain…the pain of loss the fear of it…the stretched-out empty loneliness of it…the fear to lose the thing we need the most…each other…we deny ourselves and you do it too…we can’t need each other want each other desire each other fuck each other and lose each other too…so don’t take a chance…it hurts too much to lose…don’t even play…it’s too big a gamble babe…after losing your ass on the roulette of passionate love too many times it looks like a losing game...until one day it isn’t…then it gets real I heard...you have to meet the right one at the right time and do the right thing…but it’s a spin of the wheel and a drop of the ball into the right slot the right color the right number...maybe prayer helps.

This is what the guy must have meant by following your bliss...I been wanting to say some of this stuff for a long time...I laughed my ass off writing this.