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August 13, 2003 pig-male-eon I was staring out the window living la vida loca with a glass of San Pellegrino and lime when I heard a rap-rap-rapping at my front door.  The rapping was loud and persistent.  I opened the door and there, with his back to me and headphones on his ears, stood my ward, Geoff;Don:Rick! Jefferson.  He was barking rhythmic rhyming words while bobbing up and down like some kind of wading bird in a mating dance.  I recognized the noise as rap, the same loud rapping that had snapped my reverie.  I listened as he rhymed Financing with East Lansing and Hijackery with Knick-knackery.  As I fished the soggy lime wedge from my tepid seltzer--I planned to drop it down Jeff's shirt as an attention-grabber--I beheld Nature.  Not the trees or the climbing vines, not even the black-skinned wading bird bobbing and jiving across the tiled porch.  No, I beheld Nature, the dancing Lolita I happened to notice through binoculars trained on her bedroom window.  She was sliding toward me down the sidewalk like a colt upon a frozen pond.  Jeff saw her too. "Goddam!" he said peeling the headphones from his prune-like ears,  "I said Goddam!  We ain't doin' no brain-stormin' today.  We be doin' some dick-stormin.  Yessiree." "We aren't doing any brain-storming today.  We will be doing some dick-storming."  Am I Henry 'Cool J' Higgins? "Mighty fine.  Man, I sure do accept contributions to my delinquency." "Very funny, Jeff....  May I help you, Miss?" The girl was breath-taking.  Her shiny black hair made a perfect frame for her pale, flawless skin, high cheekbones, crystal-green eyes, and swollen lips.  She wore a white button-down blouse, a pleated green-plaid skirt, and tired green socks that pooled at her perfect ankles, floppy-style, like Pistol Pete's.  Her school uniform followed her body over dips and rises only sculptors can create.  My breath and my strength met in the shallows. As it turned out, the girl's name was Rain.  She claimed she was selling dinners to raise money for the Spanish Club's senior trip to Spain.  That her tickets were crudely printed on the backs of tanning booth coupons and entitled the bearer to a "haggis dinner with all the fixings" did not concern me.  What bothered me was her smoldering stare and my purchase of $50 worth of haggis that did not exist.  As the girl walked away, I glanced at Geoff;Don:Rick! Jefferson who gave me a sly wink and said,  "For Spain, that Rain will plainly drain main vein." "Go on home, Jeff.  I think you've got it."

©  2003 by the beastmaster