Zest Lit Issue 2, October 2013 | Page 68

thus hindering any further memorized reciting of T.S. Eliot’s dramatic kitten poetry, but worse, far from being of any great stallion-like use to her.

Longing so to be the great Trojan, but dismally no more than a fatally stricken gelding with a stall full of inedible Playmobile farm animals and busted up Lego stables, I was unable in the dim light to make out those notes on the ole Etch-a-sketch, the sands of time and instruction, now cruelly disassembled. The How to make love to a lady portion, with its sub-section What to do if you run into trouble, all now a tragic blur. I was stirred and shaken like a bruised and overdone bizarrely-spiced Shake & Bake Chicken, as the evening crashed down around me. Jenny, the wolfette with the red roses, was ready to rock and roll, but I was far from the valiant George-Hamilton-of-Dionysian-love-making that the evening required. There was, alas, nothing close to Paradise by The Dashboard night-light. I was her premature baby.

When I awoke the next morning, Jen had already split the scene. A crumpled note was all that remained, saying she’d see me out on the court, or something. This left me numb and uncertain with a pulverizing hangover – another new taste experience for me – and with Mom’s arrival quickly approaching, I began the horrifically depressing task of cleaning up and putting the house back together how mom left it.

After walking through the door from her weekend away, she began to sniff around and stopped me while I was investigating what there was in the fridge to munch on, I hear ‘Stop right there, mister.’ Being heavily fatigued and down in the mouth, this is about where I would lose all sight of mind and reason. A fable that might have explained at least some of the misplaced and rearranged items in the house is