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Burger King Saved My Life
Boston, MA 1976
She was hairy for a woman poet. She was hairy for a woman anything. She was even hairy for most men poets. Fortunately, she was a real blond, with light fine strands of hair, so her being hairy was more a tactile issue than a visual affront to femininity, whether artistic in persuasion or not. Obviously, she didn’t shave that hair. When she put on standard panty hose they ended up hairy too, as her very fine strands found their way quickly through the fine weave of the hosiery. To some, this might be a pretty sight; a soft halo of fine amber accompanied her legs as she moved; to others not. Another important feature of her character, she possessed no sexy panty hose affectations. Panty hose and tights were clothing with functional only status; warmth and protection. She was a practical clothing artist by desire. She had no taste affectation either. Foodwise, she was simply functional. She was an organic poetess, a macrobiotic eater. She followed a Zen Buddhist monk diet of vegetables, brown rice, whole wheat bread, tofu and water, lots of water. The water drowned her hunger. She was perpetually and happily hunger all the time, though, she took this hunger as an essential part of her spiritual imperative.
It wasn’t clear to Samuel Johnson if there was a macrobiotic – non-shaving imperative, though she spoke of them as if there was. Monks didn’t wear panty hose, but did shave. They shaved heads if not their beards. The disciplines of faith were difficult and confusing most times. Why should her novel faith make any more sense? Samuel did understand the non-shaving for a woman as a protest to the silly conventions of high fashion. Beauty wasn’t even skin deep to this Beauty world. Beauty was a frock, a mask, to be put on whenever appropriate. If false masks were ever appropriate? The voluntary, compassion-based choice not to eat meat, occurring among so many of his hairy female friends, confused Samuel though. He seldom ate meat, but that was an economic, not a moral decision. Samuel couldn’t afford both a fine dinner and getting his education, he didn’t want to work in an Ohio steel mill for the rest of his life, so he had a Japanese Zen Buddhist impoverished monk’s diet whether he desired the spiritual aspects of it or not. Economics had chosen his life style like it did for most people, maybe it chose their spirituality and fashion sense too? Samuel had nothing against shaving hair either, it was simply a comfort thing to him. His hair was functional to him only. During a Boston summer, a beard was just too hot and scratchy. A beard came in very handy though in deterring the winter winds. A Nor’easter wind chill factor was a literal slap in the face. Hairy cheek insulation took the sting out of that slap. Samuel’s head hair was as long as the hairy, macrobiotic poetess, greater than shoulder length; his curly, her’s straight. His hair was long also from economic pressure. If Samuel couldn’t eat meat regularly, he felt no barber should either. It was easier and much cheaper to let the hair grow. Samuel didn’t know her moral justification for long head hair or if she had one.
She now lay next to him. Both were naked, except for their unshaven, moist body hair. He had just given her an orgasm by manual manipulation. Her body hair held, greedily retained her perspiration, like some liquid precious metal. Her body shone, glittering as she moved in the indirect light from the street that leaked through the old apartment blinds.
“Manual manipulation.” She whispered in Samuel’s ear. “Joyous manual manipulation, digital satisfaction, moist acceptance, wet joy, liquid appreciation. A handsome hand job it was.” She was a free-form, hairy, macrobiotic poetess. “Should I do something for you?”
“Nothing is necessary.” Samuel rolled over. He meant that. Samuel didn’t want to talk about sex or what he wanted or needed, just do it or not. Debra had always talked about their sexual relations, specifically, how she was never happy with them. Samuel’s penis was too long and hurt her. Also, that Samuel was too fast in getting started. That she wanted to be extensively wooed. Wooed for hours to get in the correct mood. Sex was, needed to be, a life enhancing experience for Debra, not a physical act or so she said. Debra was a macrobiotic eater too. Debra had a slight yellow tint to her skin just like this hairy poetess did. Samuel thought, the tint was malnutrition from the improper use of the Zen monk’s diet. She never believed him. He didn’t mention it to the poetess. Debra was a free artistic spirit too. Debra was a macrobiotic dancer without much body hair. Debra didn’t shave either. Debra wasn’t a blond, but her sparse body hair hardly showed. Samuel didn’t want to talk about inadequate sex anymore, his or anyone’s, or any other adjective associated with sex. Just do it or not. No more talk.
Restricting words was a funny situation for Samuel, despite his drive to get a scientific education; he too was a poet, an unpublished, economically induced non-meat eating, slightly hairy poet. He laughed because of that last thought sentence describing not only himself but also every other male poet he knew. Poetry was a non-profit endeavor, a Cleveland poet, Reverend C.A. Smith, had once told him. Rev. C.A. had become a preacher by mail just to have a paying profession. In Ohio, as a preacher, he could do weddings. “A small fee, some food and a party. The perfect job for a non-profit poet.”
Sunday bumped Samuel with her hairy naked hip. Her name was actually Margaret; Sunday was her nickname, handle, Non de Plume. She liked being confused with a day of the week. Now-a-days, everyone seemed to have a nickname, except Samuel. He asked his friends to call him Samuel, not Sam or Sammy. It was his not-nickname. Samuel wanted to be specifically himself not someone else. Everyone went around rejecting their family. Samuel had always felt his family had, in someway, rejected him, so he didn’t want to be anyone else, but himself. Whoever that was?
“I just didn’t bring the diaphragm with me to the reading. I didn’t expect to meet someone like you.”
At least, she didn’t say diafrag-gum like Debra did. Debra’s use of the bastardized term diafrag-gum seemed condescending, self-important, and excessively coy. Her coy term made him think it a latex yah-mic-kwa of judgment. The emphasis as a calculation. Was the experience of protected intercourse going to be sufficiently life enhancing to warrant the energy of spermicide creaming and vaginal devise implantation? What was the return on the investment, the R.O.I. on the subsequent excessive and reported painful penile insertion? Eventually, there was none for Samuel or Debra and then Debra left. Samuel couldn’t afford meat, a hair cut, an orgasm, or this apartment. Samuel could never figure out why someone as smart as he was could be so broke. Apparently, there was no R.O.I. in being smart either. The only entertainment he could afford was free poetry readings. Was a life without R.O.I. worth living?
“You know what you did for me?” She smoothed her head hair, pulling it back behind her ears and untangling it from Samuel’s hairs.
Samuel grunted affirmation. But his thoughts yelled, “No talking about sex!”
“Most men, well, no man has ever done that for me.” She sighed deeply. “Pleasure just for me and me alone.”
Samuel hadn’t gotten an erection at all this night. Now the sex talk guaranteed a non-appearance of that manifestation of manhood. “A hard-on? Hardly!” Samuel thought but smiled. Burger King had come into his mind.
The large, mostly white Burger King sign across the street always forced its excessive light into the apartment. Samuel imaged he could read Burger King written across Sunday’s face by that excessive light. It wasn’t there of course. Her face was streaked with darkness and light only. She had very blue, light blue, penetrating eyes. Samuel had been fascinated by them during her reading. He stared directly into them the entire time she performed. It turned out to be an unexpectedly extra long period of time.
The whole situation made Samuel think of a poem he had written about Debra called Ejaculation!
She gave me a manual,
Then left the covers off,
To let me air, like an open wound.
Debra had actually liked the poem while Samuel hadn’t. He thought it mean and vicious. It was meant to be mean and vicious. Debra knew that and thought it good because it was so real. She thought of their relationship as an open wound too and that seemed okay to her. Well, until she left. Samuel’s co-workers at the steel warehouse back in Ohio always referred to the vagina as a bloody open wound. They said it with a perverse relish. Samuel understood, but he couldn’t appreciate the humor of his co-workers then or Debra’s now. Sex just wasn’t ever funny to Samuel.
“Edgar told me to stop twice.” Sunday sat up.
“Uh? What?” Samuel hated it when people didn’t pay attention to him so he always tried to pay attention to others. It embarrassed him when he had. She hadn’t noticed though. Apparently, she wasn’t paying very close attention to him either. Mutually self-centered, non-profit poets?
“The reading. Your eyes. Your stare. It was so intense. You were so into my poem. I just couldn’t stop it. I wanted you to hear all I had to express.” She was an attractive woman. Her breasts were well formed, but extra long hairs surrounded, encircled her large tan nipples. They appeared as auburn, symmetric clearings in the blond forest. And the tuft of hair between her breasts was soaked with pleasure sweat and thus clumped in wavy streaks down her chest. “It just kept coming out, an endless stream of my consciousness supplied in words. It was almost like what you just did for me now. Endless infinity of feelings, a boundless pleasure spew.”
“Happy to help, but sorry if Edgar got mad.”
Edgar ran the small book store / coffee – tea house directly under a Red Line subway stop on the Boston side of the Charles River. Edgar’s Book shop was adjacent to the Suffolk County Jail. “A good place for a poet.” Edgar would say. “Near a jail, not in one.” He had open readings every week night. On the weekends he had visiting poets do readings. Free cake and coffee or tea was the visiting poet’s payment. All other walk-in poets had to buy their tea and cake. Samuel usually just listened. He couldn’t afford extraneous eating or drinking. Samuel had always been the practical one with money. His only financial goal was, to some day, have enough cash that he didn’t need to worry about money all the time.
The other thing Samuel always had was two brains, as he described it; his analytical scientist left brain and his artistic, symbolic right brain. He had to give each side its time to be dominant. Whenever he took the left brain – right brain tests, neither side came out on top. The results were always fifty : fifty, but in Samuel’s daily life his two brains didn’t co-exist. It was one or the other. Since Samuel was going to his science classes and labs all day the left brain mostly ruled him. So, during these poetry readings, Samuel’s artist right brain, the symbolic and emotional hemisphere jealously grabbed a hold of him tightly, refusing to let go. Right-side Samuel thus did things that sometimes seemed odd to him, well to the left-side him. Just like now, bringing home a hairy, macrobiotic poetess and not demanding personal sexual release. It was there for the taking. But right-side him didn’t take, couldn’t take. It wasn’t silly now but it would be later. The only desire, the only hunger Samuel now felt was actual hunger, food hunger. He hadn’t eaten since his morning toast, jam and pot of tea. He drank a lot of tea during the day. Tea bags were cheap and the caffeine killed his hunger pangs. He needed food now more than an orgasm.
“I’m supposed to stay over at Edgar’s tonight.” Sunday twisted her neck. It popped and crackled loudly as if someone else was in the room cracking their knuckles. “The trolley’s still running right? You don’t mind?” She put her hand on Samuel’s bare, comparatively hairless chest.
“Mind what?” He was embarrassed again. Burger King still danced across her face in an imaginary fashion.
“If I don’t stay the night. Edgar, well.” She looked up clearing her throat. “He expects certain attentions from me.”
Samuel really didn’t understand what she had said. “What would I mind?” He wasn’t just being accommodating. He actually didn’t know what she was saying.
“You are so much something special. A man like no other.” She slid off the mattress out into the streaked darkness to find her clothing. “If you are ever in California you have to visit me. Ojai with a j. It’s a Spanish name. I live in an artist commune out there. It’s near Santa Barbara. You’ll come and stay. It’ll be fun. Everyone’s a poet there. It’s good to be surrounded by your own kind sometimes.” She dressed quickly in the streaked darkness. It was easy, she wore thick purple tights, no under pants, a non-shaving related issue, apparently, and a long orange yellow dashiki. She had a large madras bag already over her shoulder by the time Samuel had his blue jeans on. Levi blue jeans were cheap, only five dollars at the army-navy store. Samuel had bought two pair last year. This was his nice pair. He only wore them on the weekends.
“The Green Line runs regularly here.” Samuel put on his corduroy work shirt. “It’ll get you downtown pretty quick at this time of night. You just catch the Red Line going to Cambridge.”
“Great! This was wonderful.” Sunday kissed Samuel, long and sloppily, on and in the mouth. Her tongue thrust deeply with excessive saliva preventing damaging friction. It only made Samuel’s stomach growl loudly. She laughed at its insistence for the wrong reason and then they were out the door.
The city kept the street lights off in this block because of the brightness of the Burger King sign. Its shine effectively permeated the darkness. The trolley stop was right across the street from the well-lit, glass-walled, fast-food palace. She frowned in its brightness, while standing at the stop, looking up into Samuel’s face. She was shorter than he remembered. Samuel looked off down the Green Line tracks for the trolley’s noisy, electric-sparking, approach. She murmured into the night. “In so much as life is a river, my heart is a stream, a brook that warms in the afternoon sun. Its water, destiny known, still flowed with expectation. A belief in oneness with the waters of the Earth. Brook to stream, stream to river, river to sea, sea to ocean. A commitment in the simplest of hydrogen and oxygen molecules; bond for bond, ephemeral and unsubstantial, as water makes an ocean, makes life.” And then the trolley grumbled to a stop beside her. “A mechanical Edgar, telling it’s time for my poem to stop.” She giggled. Kissed the inside of Samuel's mouth again and then stepped into the maul of the ancient Green Trolley car never to be seen again.
That last kiss stimulated Samuel’s hunger further. His body shook with his blood’s insistence for food sugar. He reached hopefully but knowingly into his jacket pocket. He budgeted his money carefully from his minimal bi-weekly paycheck from the print shop. He had placed a dollar and a quarter there specifically for this purpose. He turned to the sparkling Burger King Nirvana. On Sundays they offered a Whopper Combo with cheese for ninety-nine cents. Samuel couldn’t afford a watch either but Burger King served him there too; their enormous clock could be seen through the glass walls, it said 12:16. Sunday had arrived with Sunday’s departure. Samuel laughed. He could afford to eat meat on Sunday. His stomach shouted out for it as he opened the glass doors. This Burger King was open 24 hours, seven days a week. If Samuel had believed in a god, he would have thanked him / her then.
“Whopper Combo with Cheese, Please!”
THE END
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Just to be perfectly clear!
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