ManHeart
Ronald Coleman

 

Chapter One

It was a normal Spring morning with the buds of the trees beginning to effloresce and the birds--robins in particular--scouring the earth for any lackadaisical worm to engorge. There were crows cawing in the nearby oak. The grass, bedewed with droplets of rain--it had rained the night before--awakened to the warmth of the rising sun. The wind was calm. The clouds, what few there were, greeted the sun with their misty charm.

A cat, a Mynx by breed, a Garfield by inclination, predatiously eyed the few robins that it espied as it lay under a small evergreen tree. The robins detected the cat and not desiring to be this cat’s breakfast quit the search for their meal and took to flight. They landed on the roof of the house next door. The crows began to rankle the quiescent scene by swooping warlike down at this feline creature with such cawing that the cat in all earnest- ness sped to the nearest car and hid behind the left front tire. It licked his left paw, the crows soon engaged in flight, and the sun with its morning calescence waved hello to the trees. It was seven o’clock.

A woman arose nude from the bed, entered the shower as Clark rose. He sauntered down the stairs to his kitchen noticing the sunlight mirroring off the hallway wall. He heard the ticking of the kitchen clock while he ambled to the refrigerator. From habit he reached for the raisin bran on top of his fridge. He was a raisin bran man. Some people enjoy toast and jelly; others munch on Sugar Frosted Flakes. Clark ate raisin bran, and a banana, and drank orange juice --a pedestrian breakfast but nonetheless it satisfied. Like the robins with their worms, he ate his meal.

The bran was flavorless. It may have been that Clark used skim milk instead of whole or it might have been that Clark’s mind was on other things than a peaceful interlude with his spoon and bran. Whatever the case, he soon lost his appetite and with disgust poured the rest of his cereal from his bowl into the sink and with a flick of a switch turned on the garbage disposal. He watched and heard how his sink ate breakfast and wondered if his stomach ever complained when it digested some of the junk food he ate, like two-day-old pizza or pretzels and beer. He smiled. He could hear his fiancee prancing about upstairs in the bedroom, her footfalls like that of a prowling lioness. He saw her in the mirror of his mind.

The crows began anew their chorus of disharmonic cawing and a faint scuttling meow could be heard. Clark opened the refrigerator and brought out a cinnamon and raisin bagel. He wasn’t hungry but ate just the same.

Clark was near the sink sipping some skim milk and munching at his bagel when he heard his wife-to-be lounging down the stairway. She was junoesque. Her hair was blonde, her eyes were an evergreen color--so deeply, serenely green that a man could believe that he was peering into emeralds when looking at them. Her nose was aquiline in shape and her mouth, oh, her mouth portrayed the sexuality of her soul, so beautiful, so mesmerizing when she smiled. Her lips educed in many men the thought of a circe’s kiss, sensuous, wet and warm.

Attractive did not describe her beauty but Clark was indifferent to it. He learned that if you allow a woman to lead you she soon would depart. However, if you treat a woman with a waning indifference it made her feel insecure and the more a woman felt insecure the more she would be attracted to him and stay. He never abused any woman. Not manly. He treated them with loving indifference in a lofty and mansuetude way.

This woman, Janene was her name, came down the stairway with the lithefulness and sprightliness of youth. She was twenty-seven. She strode into the kitchen regally. She was nude and her breasts swayed musically as she approached Clark. Her hips soon slithered around Clark’s trousered hips. Her smile besought the heart of his soul. Fortunately or unfortunately, Clark was not in the mood for romance. He wanted to finish his bagel and contemplate where his life was going. A man can not do that when he is near a woman who is nude, who is inviting, who is sirenely alluring, and who happens to have a figure of 38-26-35. Clark with preternatural effort and a sense of regret kissed her left breast and the hardened nipple of her right breast while gently pushing her away from him.

With tact and a scintillating eye Clark said: "Why don’t you go back upstairs, dress, and come down to eat breakfast?"

"What’s wrong Clark, don’t you like my body?" Janene said. She did not go back upstairs. She opted for an eight ounce tub of yogurt eating it at the kitchen table, her nude body with her warm breasts touching the table top.

Clark contemplated her nude form, sighed, and looked the other way into his living room. Popeye (his parrot), now awake, blurted out: "I’M ONE SEXY BIRD, I’M ONE SEXY BIRD."

Clark, looking at his parrot, remembered the women he chatted with on his computer on-line service the night before. He turned and gazed at his naked fianc�e with her breasts jiggling as she ate her yogurt and chortled to himself, thinking, "What a life, what a life!"

The grandfather clock in the living room struck eight. Outside the sun partially dried the grass and the clouds were all but dissipated. The crows evidently shied away from the cat because the mynx was pampering itself by imbibing the warmth of the sun’s rays.

A blue bird sang its greeting as Clark opened the living room window; Popeye said his morning repertoire again and tested his wings. Clark thought, Who knows why parrots and other birds test their wings yet go nowhere? Maybe it’s their way of worrying. After all, humans do the same thing mentally. We work our mind into a fash; yet in the end we arrive at where we started.

The telephone rang.

""Clark, will you come over and mow my grass this afternoon?"

Clark mowed his mother’s grass but not on Saturdays. Clark planned to take some time in the afternoon to stroll the beach (not too far from his home) to think. Besides, he did not like mowing his mother’s yard in the heat of the day because her lawn was near a patch of sinister weeds--he was plagued with an allergy problem.

"No, mom, I can’t do it this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow night. . . I’m glad to hear that you feel good today. . . See you tomorrow." He heard the click on the other end of the line.

Clark held the phone receiver; his mind turned not to Janene but to death and dying. Clark many times contemplated death and dying. Not in a morbid sense did he think in this way. He was curious, as we all are, about something we know someday we will have to face whether we want to or not. Is death the beginning of something divine or is it the end of something hellish? Why does one live later to die? What is life? Are life and death the mere opposites of the same coin, eternity? Could it be that in death there is life; and what we call life is the preamble to living?

After Clark placed the telephone receiver in its cradle he again glanced at his possible future wife who was now doing some stretching exercises in the living room not far from where he was standing. Her breasts, her left one a little larger than her right, bobbed to the sway of her body. He ogled their sensual beauty and then directed his mind to what he had intended to do before he answered the phone.

"Janene, I think I’ll go for a stroll on the beach for about an hour," he said with a hint of indecision. Her exercising in the nude was an enticing distraction.

"Okay, dear, but would you remember to tie the dog on the leash before you leave. The last time you went for a walk you forgot to do this and he got lost." She said this in a scolding tone while her hips gleamed with each stretch. Her waist was nipple thin.

Having secured Praado on his leash and tying the leash to the patio of his back yard, Clark, with gusto and a sense of elation, started eastward on his walk facing the frost of the sun. The sea gulls were in their wafting wont importuning him for some morsels of bread. He fed them by tossing crumbs of rye bread up into the air, but not today. The three gulls hovered for a while above him as he trod on the sand. With a peal of importunity the gulls departed due west and the sea kissed the shore with its lapping warmth.

The sand felt gritty and warm on his bare feet. Compressed water oozed between his toes as he walked. He could feel salt spray kiss his left cheek and left arm. He turned his head intermittently to take in the beauty of the ocean and its mystery.

Clark thought as he walked, The sea, the sea, a vicarious part of me. What lies hidden in its depths is the arcane aspects of the other side of me. Life can be so perplexing. Six years have passed since my divorce was final. I didn’t want a divorce. Shelly decided she no longer wanted my companionship. She filed for divorce while I was on a skiing trip to Colorado with a few of my friends. Imagine that. I loved Shelly with all my heart and all my soul. When I learned of her intentions, it devastated me. I would have surrendered to my emotions and slit my wrists if it were not for my religious convictions and my love for Christ. I cursed God for my anguish, cursed life for its hard vicissitudes; but, it didn’t do me any good.

Clark heard a gull above him, lost his train of thought, waved the gull away with his right hand and continued walking.

While he walked he stepped on the pins and needles of his unmended heart, thoughts of his past surfaced. The hurt caused him to weep a silent tear, but he hid his pain as best he could. Each pleasant moment was tinged with dolor, so much so that Clark could not feel it save at inopportune moments. These moments were now far and few between; however, as he walked that morning on that sanded bight of shore, Clark sensed them at the surface of his mind cresting through the surf of his imaginings. Another woman was in his life. Will Janene bring more pain?

Clark, lost in thought, was unmindful that his loyal dog was following him and that a bird was above him. Praado sauntered on the warm, sea-damped sand, did not wag his tail while he trekked silently behind. The seagull hovering above Clark tipped its left wing touching his disheveled wind-blown hair with the feathered tip of its wing drawing Clark back to the shapes, sounds, and sensations of life.

Another person, a woman, tanned, with shoulder-length, sun-bleached hair, long shapely legs, and large breasts that were flimsily covered with a see-through bikini top, her inner thighs a shade lighter than were her muscled calves, was strolling along the beach. She wore sunglasses. She passed him to his right smiling invitingly.

She was not wearing a wedding band. He also noticed that, from behind, her hips swayed sexually. Flirtingly she turned her head, smiled, said nothing. Praado snuffled her lower right leg as she walked, touched his moist nose on her warm skin. Can a dog sense the sexuality of existence?

As she walked away from Clark and as Clark stopped his perambulation to watch the wave of her walk, she took her left hand, moved it behind her, took her right hand and eased it also behind her and with celerity unloosened her bikini top allowing her nipples to kiss the salt spray. Clark eyed her nude back. It is what he didn’t see that piqued his imagination.

Praado barked with winsome delight at the sight, wasn’t shy in the least. He ran to her and with a bounce of canine frenzy licked this woman’s right breast.

Clark thought while watching his dog play with this woman, I should be so bold as to do something like that. The irony is this woman cosseted Praado without a blench: but, what would she do to me if I would. . .

The seagulls once again importuned Clark for food causing him to lose his train of thought. The wind was getting stronger. Could this mean that a storm was in the offing? Clark looked at the sea’s vista and descried some clouds forming on the horizon. He thought, It will be raining in a few short hours.

He turned his head for one last time and eyed the woman whom he had met now walking away. She was sauntering along the bight of the shore with her now nude breasts mirroring the sheen of the ricocheting sunlight. Her unclad breasts swayed in the breeze, the sight of which caused Clark’s loins to tumefy. Praado barked happily.

Clark, loins aching, turned to return home, started to walk to his putative would-be wife, and his life. He had taken a few steps when Praado came running up to him clenching a clump of cloth between his jaws: the woman’s bottom part of her bikini! Oh, no! Clark looked for the woman yet could see nothing in the distance save a few seagulls.

How did my dog get her bikini?

"Well, Praado," Clark said as he eyed the flimsy bikini held in his left hand, "it looks as though you’ve something someone else probably desperately needs."

How would this woman, he thought, explain her plight to some other man on the beach? I’m at the wrong place at the right time. What will this woman do? Of course, if she is brazen she’ll probably approach anyone for help. If she’s a woman loosening some of her inhibition, she’s probably somewhat embarrassed by now as well as a little em-bare-assed. He laughed and tossed the bikini to the ground

Clark looked down at Praado as his dog kicked up sand while gnarling the bikini ferociously between his yellowed teeth. The thought of his fiancee doing exercises in the nude intruded into his mind.

Clark salivated.

"I think it's time to go. Let’s go home, boy."

Praado, bikini in mouth, peered up at Clark and with a nod of his head turned toward home.

 

 

 Chapter Two

Clark and Praado plodded back to their home while minatory clouds rolled in from the sea. The wind formed morning waves on the sea.

Clark saw lightning on the horizon as he entered his house. Clark opened the door just as sprinkles of rain graced his brow. Praado, behind him with his tail between his legs, darted into the living room and scurried down the cellar stairs to his hiding place.

Janene, no longer exercising, was wearing a black bath robe and listening to the weather forecast on TV. A tropical storm was forecast for the rest of the day. Clark winced at this unwelcome news. He had planned to spend the day with Janene to discuss their future. He needed to talk; that would have to wait until this storm passed.

"Clark, have you closed the garage door?" There was a sense of urgency in Janine's voice; that, and a resonance of fear. She had been in a hurricane in Florida when she was ten years old. Her mother met her death in that storm.

"No." Clark said in a calm voice but with a taut smile. He turned to go to the garage when a bolt of lightning followed by a sizzling crack of thunder shook the house. "That was too close," Clark uttered under his breath, closing the door behind him. The wind howled through the chink of the partially opened living-room window.

"I’ll wait a minute," Clark said to himself. "No use risking being struck by lightening."

Popeye was not concerned about being in the jaws of gale force winds and thunder and rain and lightning. For a parrot he was loquacious and during the thunder he blurted, as he sidled to and fro on his T-stand, "OH BOY, WHAT FUN. DO IT AGAIN PRAADO. WHAT FUN. I’M A SEXY BIRD. I SAW THE LIGHT. KNOCK, KNOCK, WHO’S THERE. WHO’S ON SECOND. YOUR SLIP’S SHOWING. MAIS QUI." He pooped on the rug beneath him and again began his litany.

"Shut up," Clark screamed, "or you’ll be out in the rain!"

Popeye screamed, "I’M SEXY BIRD, I’M SEXY TURD," then belched. His beak parted into a sardonic smile while ducking a tossed roll of tissue paper. The roll glanced off the T-stand, missed Popeye by a wing but hit the table lamp, knocking the lamp over and breaking its bulb.

"Damn it," Clark blurted.

"DAMN IT," Popeye squawked.

The wind outside howled. Clark opened the door to go out to close the garage door, the wind pushed him back. The wind then ripped the screen door off its hinges. The palm tree to his right bowed to the wind as if saying, "Okay, okay, uncle, uncle, I give up." The rain fell as would a cascade over a cliff. Clark could not see two feet in front of him.

"This is ridiculous," Clark said out loud to himself. "I’m going back in." He turned round to return to the shelter of his house when he noticed Janene with a terrified look peering out the living room picture window.

Clark re-entered the house drenched. His hair, usually brown, appeared a pomaded black. His face, dampened by the rain and buffeted by the recalcitrant wind, appeared pallid. His eyes were dilated from fear. His thoughts, however, were on sex, the energy of the surrounding storm making him feel amorous. Even so, he knew that Janene would not be in the mood. She was in the downstairs bathroom now huddled in the bathtub. She was huddled in the tub singing under her breath: "Jesus loves me yes I know for the Bible loves me so. . . " The last thing on her mind was making love.

After Clark re-oriented himself to the present moment and after his transient thought of sex left him, he decided that he would sit out the storm in the living-room by reading a novel. In a split second the house went dark.

Clark, groping his way, lolled his muscled frame down into his plush living room divan while Popeye sang: "Jesus loves me yes I know." Janene was in the bathroom now humming "Amazing Grace," and Praado, no longer whimpering in the basement, was lying on the cement floor of the basement, his front paws covering his two eyes, his tail inert.

Clark had closed his eyes and was now listening to the wind, the rain, and the thunder pealing its energetic song. He evanesced into a groggy slumber. . .

"Why am I living a lie? I don’t love this woman. I don’t know her like I had known my former wife. I met my former wife and my heart resounded the beating of romance. I saw in her eyes the soul of my reflection. When I kissed her my whole being was transmogrified and was carried to an empyrean island where she and I existed; and of course there was love. This woman I’m now with, I don’t have that ardency of emotion nor do I have that depth of devotion. She’s a beautiful woman, loving and kind, good in bed--better than most. But, where is that love, that sense of self oblivion? When I kiss her lips, her nipples, I don’t feel the fire. I feel the warmth of a warm, loving woman who wants so much to be a part of my life. I don’t have the same feeling. In time perhaps I will. In time all things meet their surcease. In time all things meet the evolution of destiny. But with a woman I don’t love?

Clark dreamily awoke at the sound of another thunder clap and just as musingly returned to his former silent soliloquy. . .

"I’d met my former wife, the woman I love, at a motel room in the heart of New York City. We corresponded by letter for two and one-half months and decided to meet. I went to New York from Chicago not knowing if the woman I was writing to was who she said she was. I had my misgivings, but as she later said, ‘God’s hand was in the assignation.’ If God brings two people together then everything is all right, right?

"I had met her at Motel 6 on a cloudy, humid July evening, an evening in which clothes seem to cling to every pore. I experienced difficulty in breathing that day and didn’t care to do much. It was an evening when the least amount of exertion would produce a copious amount of perspiration.

"I’d met her on that July night. The minute I saw her and the minute she eyed me, we knew that our lives would be changed, that our souls would experience the melding puissance of love, and that our hearts would beat as one. Sometimes a person just knows these things. It can’t be expressed in words. It’s there to experience.

"I’d never experienced sexual intimacy until that night: I desired to share myself with the woman who would share the vicissitudes of life with me. She was stunning. Her breasts were so soft to my tongue, her expression of romance made my heart tumid with excitement. Her hair was blonde and her nipples were a frosty cherry color and the curvature of her hips felt so marmoreal when I caressed them. Her laugh was the laugh of a siren at play. The way she smiled, though her teeth were not straight, brought a sense of awe to my mind. She was not wanton, not overly winsome, yet to me at that time in my life she was all that a man could want in a woman. She was at that time the better part of me.

"She became my wife six months later. And as time possesses the proclivity to change events, her feelings for me changed. Eight years later she decided that she wanted to live her life pursuing other interests. I was crushed; did not want to live. Moreover, to succumb to fleeting moments is the height of foolishness. Lovers are foolish when they love too much and want too much. I love this woman still and I think I always will. How is it possible for me to marry Janene while I still feel this way. I. . .

Another burst of thunder and the sound of a gust of wind awoke Clark from his mental meandering. He did not know why a tear was coursing down his cheek, his head felt so oppressed from something. He could not remember what his subconscious related to him during his sojourn in drowsiness. All he could detect was a sense of remorse and forgetfulness and the noise his pets were making.

Popeye was ranting vociferously on his T-stand, Praado was now at Clark’s feet, and Janene was entering living room carrying a candle.

"You were taking a nap," she said.

"No, I wasn’t taking a nap," Clark replied. "I was daydreaming; but I can’t for the life of me remember what I was daydreaming about."

"Me, no doubt," Janene said with an inflection in her voice evincing her incredulity. She could sense his aloofness and intuited that something was on his mind that concerned her. She was wearing a tank top, tight and tantalizing. She bent over to kiss him on his left cheek. Her cleavage bared itself voluptuously.

Clark felt a sense of wanton despair engulf him. All her femininity was inundating him with magnetic sensitivity. He wanted to take her then but refused to succumb to his animal passion. He took his eyes off the sight of her breasts, glanced out the window.

Janene sat down on the divan next to Clark, her large inquiring eyes eyeing his countenance, set the candle on the coffee table, placed her warm right hand on his left inner thigh and asked in a mellifluous tone, "What’s wrong, dear, you seem so troubled of late? Did I do something to upset you? Was I too assertive in bed? You know I love making love with you." She placed her hand closer to his point of passion and said in an earthy tone, "We can do it here on the couch. Wouldn’t you love to suckle my breasts right now? After all, the storm has abated somewhat and it will keep my mind off the wind and rain and thunder. We can make our own thunder."

Clark heard muffled thunder in the distance. He ogled Janene’s breasts as she removed her red tank top. They seemed to dance before him in the candle light and would have mesmerized him into submission to her will save that his resolution stood firm.

"No, Janene," Clark reluctantly said. "I have a headache. I know this may seem impossible for you to believe but I don’t always have my mind on sex. Don’t you think there are some things more important than sex, but I’ve a headache and feel a little tired. Like I’ve said already, I’m not in the mood."

Suddenly the lights were on and he saw the fullness of her breasts.

He was not in the mood but was beginning to be aroused by the sight of her nude founts of pleasure. He wanted to tell this beautiful, lithe and wily woman that he could not marry her, yet she was playing on his weakness, any man’s weakness: the allurement of a beautiful woman’s body.

Janene, sulking, stopped her play and said in a whisper, "Okay, have it your way--for now."

She rose from the divan, snapped her tank top back into place, and ambled into the dining room, her hips moving bell-like as she walked. Clark thought to himself, That woman will get what she wants no matter what.

Outside the tempest had abated. The wind was in evanescence and the thunder was barely audible; the rain had turned into mizzle. Inside Praado was barking at Popeye who was parroting the sound of Praado’s barking.

Clark scanned his living room. Everything was tidy. No picture was out of place thanks to Janene. The clock on the wall in front of him that operated by battery "said" it was still morning; however, the clock radio situated on a shelf of the entertainment center was blinking because the electricity had been off. There was a soap opera blaring on the TV. The yellow figurine of the Buddha placed next to the door needed dusting.

On seeing the small statue he thought: What is the self? Buddha taught centuries ago that the self is an illusion created by the mind to situate itself in a world that is always changing.

In truth, there is no self and when the mind realizes the futility of grasping for something, anything that is always in a state of flux, happiness is the result.

How can a self that is always changing and never present grasp at things that are also always changing and never in actuality stationary?

If all is in a constant state of flux and things around us are in a constant state of change, then who grasps for what thing? There can be no death of a self that has not been born. There can be no birth of that which does not die. Birth and death are illusions and what exists is. Eternity does not exist because it posits a beginning. Eternity is the present moment.

No self, no birth, no death, no beginning and no end. What about life? Is it the energy force we label God? The seeker and the sought are they the same?

Suffering too is an illusion? When the mind that is the Energy understands the apparent paradoxes of life, that life is changing, that to be is what is, then suffering vanishes as a storm subsides--effortlessly. Those who do suffer do not know the truth of life; whereas those who are happy know that suffering is not real.

Who suffers when there is no self to be found? Who experiences happiness? Who experiences despair? Are not happiness and sorrow transient? People cry to laugh again and people laugh knowing that tears await them.

Why get into a frenzy over things that do not remain the same for even one moment? Yes, there is pain in the body. Yes, there is mental torment, too. This occurs because we cling to things that are always changing?

It is so difficult to comprehend this. Happiness is not of question of here or there. Desire is the root of pain yet even desire changes with the changing of the seasons.

Clark stared at the statue of the Buddha near his door and continued to think about life and demanded that something soon must change in his life. Desire, can it be the root of all suffering?

And he paused, thought, Where did that pink figurine come from? I never brought that in here. What the h. . . .

 

 

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Copyright � 1997 Ronald Coleman
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"