Giant Gerald (enter Barbara DeMolde)

         The bar was popular enough to begin with and so was Gerald. Now, whenever good old happy-go-lucky Gerald was tending, getting a drink could turn into something of a competition. Smiling women of all shapes, ages, and sizes would step on each others toes to get within breathing distance of the old favorite who had become a new novelty. All except one bitter, sour puss.

         Barbara DeMolde was a beaming vision of feminine flawlessness in her prime, which at the time of Gerald the bartender, was going on ten years passed. The blond-haired, french-tip manicured, epitome of lust had long since gained forty some odd pounds and grown completely loathsome to the world around her. A classic drunk, she was limited to three cocktails by the management of all the bars she frequented. This only added to the fits and temper tantrums she was known to throw. Ten years after anybody would have given a shit, she was still programmed on getting her way. Barbara never got her way anymore. She was angry, haggard, and kept bad hygiene to boot.

         Where to begin with Barbara. First of all, her name was not DeMolde. It was Bates. DeMolde was the name she took later on in life from a man whom she did not marry. Until then, she was known as Barbie to the people in her world. The abbreviated version of her name was bestowed by her first boyfriend and the first to ever fall in love with her. If asked, she would have confessed her love for him as well. In truth, she did not know what that was, love. In her life, there would be many more. Though none of them would endure quite as long or quite as much as he did.

         Donald Lutz was a senior at Barbie's high school when she was a sophomore and his seniority and high reputation earned her a certain prestige to which she became accustomed all too fast. Regarded as a slut for all the wrong reasons, namely her flashy good looks, Donald's presence banished those demons from her life before they could manifest themselves negatively. Back then she was nothing more than an early bloomer with a flair for style.

         He came from money and lavished her with gifts, both practical and exotic. Dresses, perms, manicures; her painted fingernail became a magic wand for favors, fabric, and destinations. Her classmates despised her all the more, but it was a respectful hatred. The type of contempt held by the poor for the world of aristocracy, save for a small group of insecure girls who praised her like a pagan deity. Barbie would have had to care more to care less about the lot of them. As long as she got her way, everything was roses.

        When Donald went away to college the following year, Barbie followed. The notion was met with no argument from her parents. They were far too busy squabbling over extramarital affairs and economic turbulence to fulfill anything that resembled parenting duties. Marrying off their pretty, young tax deduction to a high bidder was the very best hope they could have for her future. She showed limited promise as a student.

         But the fairytale would not continue. College proved to be very demanding. Donald and Barbie shared their living situation with a multitude of roommates. Being a couple, the affordability of dorm room living was not an option. Nor could Barbie find work at the still young age of sixteen. Donald was working to pay rent for two and the demand on his time left him unable to give her the attention she was used to. Also unaccustomed was she to the bombardment of flattery and social invitations that would be extended to a young, jaunty, and immature beauty with nothing but spare time on her hands. She developed quickly as an attention whore and as a nymphomaniac.

        At the end of one semester, Barbie had had sex with all three of Donald's roommates, participated in two fraternity orgies, and was well known by the bi-curious population of the nearby sororities. Popularity became a drug for her and she was hailed as a sex queen among those in the know. Donald, faithful as ever, came home one day came home one day with a doctor's prescription for antibiotics. Donald had chlamydia. That was the end of Barbie Bates' free ride.

         Vegas was her next stop and stripping was her first gig. At age seventeen, she had little trouble attaining false identification. Barbie made more money before she turned 25 then poor Donald could have ever hoped to facilitate. In addition there were boyfriends, for lack of a better term. They were handsome, charming, exciting, and each of them had a function: one for the rent, one for the bills, another for clothes... the list goes on.

         She was a hard worker, of course, and she loved what she did. Ever the center of attention, her teenage dreams we being fulfilled and lived out to their maximum potential. Dreams of having the spotlight shone on her night after night, performing for drooling, gasping fans despite all lack of talent and ingenuity. People worked for years aspiring to frequent the clubs where Barbie danced. They worked tirelessly to create a lifestyle that would permit habitual time in the "champagne room" with, and occasional taking home of the goddess who treaded in stiletto-healed pedestals. They all scrimped and saved for a portion of what had been freely doled out on her plate like so much government cheese.

         When she turned twenty-seven, Barbie Bates made a business minded decision to marry for money. Her devastating good looks would not last forever. Decidedly, she began laying down the groundwork for the next twenty or so years of her life. It was literally the smartest idea she ever had. The target was Harvey Demolde.

         Good old Harvey was a middle-aged man with a stoutness to him. Not unattractive, he was a regular patron of Barbara's and would bring flowers to her at work, usually accompanied by a greeting card dedication with a small, albeit extravagant gift enclosed; a piece of jewelry here, a high-stakes casino chip there...  One night, the greeting card held a pair of keys inside. One was to a condominium in Manhattan Beach and the other belonged to a brand new European sports car that was housed within the garage of the condo.

         Close but no cigar, she thought. Barbie was well used to being showered with ridiculously expensive and unusual gifts. Once, a man bought her a koala. It was turned over to the zoo after some deliberation over how she might be able to profit from it.

         A new address and expensive mode of transportation did not an engagement ring make. I was time to speed things up. Barbie stopped altogether taking her birth control pills, moved into her miniature castle in Manhattan Beach, and with a warriors temperament, fucked old Harvey's brains out. Her birth control pill, she replaced with a daily regimented pregnancy test. She hadn't the patience to wait for her period to be late. Discontinuation of the pill would throw her monthly cycle off anyhow.

         Not the brightest star in the sky, Barbara neglected ever to ask Harvey about his marital status. Harvey DeMolde was money married to money. He and his wife both kept affairs in order to stay sane, they hated each other so. Theirs was a marriage merger. The end of the world and all of humanity would have to pass before they would ever dream of breaking their business deal. Barbie found all of that our the hard way. One morning, the pregnancy test came up pink. That was the beginning of the end for Barbie the illustrious sex goddess, and the beginning of Barbara that stupid, crazy bitch from hell.

       

The Scarcely Told Legend of Giant Gerald (A Tall Tale)

    Giant Gerald was born Gerald Robert Letrowski to the Flying Letrowskis out of Hoboken, New Jersey. While they did work for a circus at one point, cultivating a husband and wife trapeze duo was the mere aspiration of a couple who made their living on the side show of an Atlantic Coast traveling carnival. They were Jenna, the bearded lady, and Jerome, the half-man, half-horse. While Jerome’s penis did not take up half of his body, it was rumored to have been transplanted from a Kentucky derby stud. Jenna, on the other hand, was highly attractive, and did little more for her part of the show than sit idly next to her husband while donning a cosmetic beard fashioned from dyed sheep’s wool. Where they wound up is where our story takes place.

            Being born at the healthy weight of nine pounds and three ounces was not the reason behind Gerald’s nickname. Nor did he grow to be very large in stature. Giant Gerald did not, in fact, know about his ridiculously large penis until he had reached his mid-twenties, when the rumor caught up with him. However let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

            The name actually spawned from an incident during a home-coming party at the start of Gerald’s junior year in high school. Late that night, when many of the guess had departed, young Gerry found himself stumbling drunk into a vacant bedroom and ready to be deflowered by a lovely, young, popular cheerleader by the name of Melinka. Within a few clumsy minutes they were disrobed and ready to party. Melinka let out a mighty shriek and began to bleed, allowing her to confirm the lie she had told earlier – saying that she was a virgin.

            She spoon-fed this story to every new romantic encounter, and nothing could have been further from the truth. As a matter of fact, Gerald was the second gentleman to penetrate her that evening. He went on, oblivious and somewhat traumatized, thinking that sex was not really something for women to enjoy.

            The story spread throughout poor Gerry’s high school with a sonic boom, without every reaching his ears, in the way etiquette dictates that nobody is to tell a morbidly obese woman that she has a weight problem, even if that woman keeps a spandex-based wardrobe. Young Gerald thought thought it normal to struggle daily whit the cumbersome chore of hiding his bulge. After all, does not every man keep his penis folded beneath his ass if not propped to one side over his pelvis?

            His friends called him G.G. for short without ever explaining why. Nor did he inquire. He took the nickname as a satire regarding his relatively small stature, though he was not particularly tiny in comparison with the rest of the students in his graduating class. At 5’ 9” and 144 lbs., he was neither here nor there. All the while, his friends refused to let him in on the joke, mainly for the sake of their own insecurities.

            What a splendid homage, he thought, to be tagged with such a wonderfully satirical nickname. This attitude he kept of noticing only the shiny side of life did him well all through high school and up to adulthood. Bright-eyed, young Gerry had no formal skills, experience, or higher education to speak of. Only a hearty smile, and a willingness to take on the world with it.

            This, coupled with other preceding events, landed him a comfortable job as a bartender when he turned twenty-five. Gerald made more money behind that bar than many of his former fellow students who went on to college and subsequent professional careers. His nights were high-paced and his regulars were absolutely head-over heels in love with his dopey, happy-go-lucky attitude. They called him Woody sometimes in reference to the barkeep on an old 1980’s hit sitcom series. Having never achieved success in concealing his bulge, the surrounding staff had a good chuckle at this.  It embarrassed him, actually, his bulge, and he cared not to speak about it.

            At night’s end, he was permitted by management to pour a few cocktails for the closing staff. He did this liberally but with a sense of caution. Sometimes he would simply bring in a bottle of his own to avoid confusion altogether with revenue coming in from clientele. Nobody would have ever accused Gerald of stealing and that was one reason why.

            So beloved was our young bartending protagonist, and he would have been popular regardless of the following incident. Nonetheless, it did not hurt him any.

            One night, while chatting away with the closing staff, Gerald was asked out rightly.

            “Why do you think you need to stuff your pants?”

            The closing staff on this night consisted of three young and slender cocktail waitresses. Most of the staff were female on the front side of the establishment. The cooks in the back of the house, as is the norm, were mostly male and of Hispanic origin. The doors were closed, and they, along with any remaining clientele, had long since gone home. The waitresses, nowadays called servers, were Daisy, Fay, and Sue. They all sat, anxiously, and awaited a response.

            He took this at first as though someone had pointed out an obvious handicap: with abashment, and to a lesser extent, offense. Utterly speechless, his face began to warm up, particularly at the ears and forehead, causing them to turn a cherry shade of red. He wished he could have died right then and there.

            “I just…” Gerald started, after an intensely long pause. Sue was the girl bold and tipsy enough to ask. She was relatively new on the staff. Daisy and Fay dared not to break the silence and risk taking momentum out of the situation. It had been a question on all their minds ever since the day they met him and the only discernible fault Gerry had.

            “Wasn’t that something guys did in the seventies?” Sue continued, as though they were discussing hair styles. Her valley girl, bubble gum way of talking was beginning to sound like fingernails scratching on chalkboard to him.

            “You’d probably get more girls if you didn’t try to go all porn star all the time, you know?”

          Sue was a nice enough girl. Only honest to a flaw. She didn't know any better. Nobody did. Gerald was chaste and had been ever since his episode in high school. As a result, he had become a compulsive masturbator and housed a veritable library of pornography in his apartment. Some of the men in the films had equipment comparable to his. Lesser sizes he attributed to the porn industry’s commitment to boosting the male ego. Another reinforcement on the idea that sex was not for women to enjoy.

            “It’s tough,” he went on. “I don’t know what else to do with it.”

            The women glanced at one another in perplexity.

            “Do me a favor,” said Daisy. “Open your pants.”

            Gerald, modest as he was, refused at first. Two shots of Irish whiskey and one Irish car bomb later, he unleashed what later became known as ‘the fury’. With this unveiling and the consequent reaction came a sudden pondering in retrospect to his old nickname. The order of events replayed over and over in his head, and caused him to feel extremely foolish.

            This feeling of being left out of his own cosmic joke was short-lived, however. Throughout the ensuing weeks, one by one, the female servers would report for a shift with a bit of a limp in their step. Another sonic boom radiated from the now legendary grin of Mr. Giant Gerald Letrowski. Incidentally, he began purchasing his trousers two sizes larger, and it made a world of difference for his general appearance.

The Cost (part 1)

The clouds were ominous in the most literal sense as they rolled in a solid line from ocean to shoreline. The water had become air, and the air became water. Along the cost, the masses waited. They would all be dead in a matter of minutes. They knew this without the aid of public advisories, or sensationalist rhetoric. The Mother Earth spake for itself. The floating womb circling her celestial patriarch source of light and the other half of life.

Mother Earth spoke with wind and water, enunciating through seismic vibration as she cleared her volcanic throat and resonated throughout the sky. She said not to worry. That she would be fine. Finally, that she could not say the same for us. These were not the time of the Nephilim. This was not the time of legends and great men. Nor was it the end. It was the cost.

Perception

I don't want to say
that I have known too many people.
Have studied them
us
intently
We intrigue me

I see through them
down the street
in the store
killing
as they say
time

We do not see one another
only through
filters
of expectation and
jaded lenses of
past experience

I wonder what they
you
see

Me?
doubtful.