It was meant to be a simple, quick outing to the grocery store. The eve of Valentine’s Day, my mind had quite naturally turned to thoughts of flowers and various confections shoved into heart shapes, or little stuffed puppy dogs with huge, unblinking eyes holding hearts bearing sentiments meant to melt away the elastic bindings of a woman’s panties. To that end, I knew Giant Eagle was bound to be jam-packed full of restless twenty-something bucks buying unimaginative flower arrangements already half-past their prime and red foil boxes of Russell Stover chocolates along with their standard pizza and Pabst fair. I thought I might buy myself flowers right along with them. I thought I might explore the concept of being my own Valentine, and so—

what happens next, I’m blaming on the new multivitamins I’m taking. These little fuckers are singing in my bloodstream with all the verve and vigor of a Baptist Gospel choir mid-Halleluiah. They are infusing me with better cheer—enough to momentarily like the idea of being my own Valentine, and that’s what I’m thinking as I head down High Street toward the turn lane that will take me into the Giant Eagle parking lot.

Only, my car, in collusion with the vitamins and partially benevolent thoughts of cute little twenty-something love, veered, quite suddenly, into the turn lane several car lengths ahead of my intended destination. It cut quickly across opposing traffic, heading directly into the parking lot of . . . What. The. Fuck?

The Hustler Hollywood Store.

The Hustler Store is a relatively new installment to Clintonville. If it seems out of place, nestled just off of North High Street across from a Tim Hortons and belly up to the back of the Giant Eagle, that’s because it is. Where Tim Hortons encourages you to “Discover Your Perfect Latte,” Huster implores you to “Get Your Heart On.”

Ah, Clintonville. You fervent Birkenstock dog walkers, you. You organic Co-op, sustainable living, hybrid car driving, let’s save the gargantuan lawns on North Broadway, Cup O’ Joe-loving, this is our first baby in my new jogging stroller, you. I love you so. But your Hustler store? This little hello and how do you do bit of Hollywood flash between The Plasma bank and the Post Office/China Buffet (the Goodwill has since moved to where the old Blockbuster on Hudson used to be) strip mall of dejection?

The Hustler storefront was once a Tan Pro, whose neighbor was once a White Castle’s. No more. Flynt himself saw to that—came out in his stretch limousine, emerged in his gold wheelchair, even visited the Mozart Bakery and Piano Café just a little further down the street.

None of this explained why I was suddenly sitting in its parking lot when I’d been happily on my way to get toilet paper and bargain-bin roses.

It also failed to explain why I was getting out of my car and walking through the door.

Entering the store did not cause the earth to immediately tilt on its axis. Surprising. Brightly lit, clean, tasteful displays of somewhat elegant lingerie all greeted me in a perfectly non-threatening manner. They wanted to ease me into it. “It’s not all bump and grind,” they wanted me to know. “There’s gonna be a little dinner first. Maybe a little Al Green.”

A woman came from behind the counter to welcome me. She was dressed as if she were in Macy’s. She greeted me as if she were in Macy’s. I mean, for a moment, I thought maybe this was Macy’s, in the makeup department, for instance. Except for the display in front of me, which held packages displaying wands of mascara, makeup brushes, and tubes of cherry red lipstick—all proving to be miniature vibrators in disguise. This is not your Magic of Macy’s cosmetics’ counter, and we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Ah, how cute, I thought. They were still romancing me. Getting me to giggle a little. “Come on. It’s not so bad, right?” they’re saying. Except, I know that Larry Flynt was never much for beating around the bush (at least not in the way I’m referencing it here), so clearly I hadn’t yet reached the Larry Flynt-inspired part of the store. I was still in the I’m-gonna-fake-yawn-and-then-put-my-arm-around-you, gently questing hands of his marketing department. This was just the opening act, the tease of their little neighborhood (not your) mom and pop store.

They were also toying with my mind. Someone’s psychology degree had yielded a giant banner across the back wall.  It said, “Relax. It’s just sex.”

Okay. I mean . . . they’re right. It’s not so bad. No greasy nasty guy is eyeballing me from behind the counter with one hand absent from view. The floors aren’t suspiciously sticky. I don’t feel like I need a wig and sunglasses to enter—or gallons of disinfectant, and maybe a body condom.

But it’s all leading up to something, isn’t it? They are coaxing me deeper into their lair with their kinky kitsch, and it all points to . . . yes, here it is: that little section that is marked by a sign. Must Be 18 or Older to Enter. Did I dare to cross that line and turn the corner? What would I find?

In the name of RESEARCH . . . Onward!

Apparently, if I dare to cross that line and turn that corner, what I will find is a man, well dressed and well spoken (with a hint of edge detectable via the single, small and unobtrusive stud in his nose), giving a demonstration of various vibratory devices to a small circle of women.

Completely unexpected. I had not thought the experience would be so . . . educational. Yet, here were a group of women exclaiming over the various highlights of each device as the man delivered his pitch just as smoothly as if he were standing in a living room selling a vacuum to a housewife. And long gone are the days of, well . . . objects designed to mirror (with 3x magnification) their real-life counterparts in such a way that you know you will have to bury it in the bottom drawer, deep beneath the jumble of socks and underwear so that even you don’t see it until it’s called upon for active duty. This stuff looked like . . . chrome accented sports cars, without wheels. Some modern art pieces you’d be proud to set on your mantle. No one would be the wiser. And its price? It’s going to take a couple of Benjamin’s to drive that baby home. (No pun intended.) That’s not even close to how expensive it gets. This world has come a long way from VHS in cheap cardboard sleeves and unmentionable devices that good girls should know nothing about.

When the salesman, who turned out to be the store manager, was done giving his demonstration, he approached me and asked if there was anything he could help with. The hell you say! Should I spritz him with holy water? I thought. Make the sign of the cross in his direction? No eye contact, buddy! Why would I want someone’s help in a place like this?! Just because I have to imagine the actual function of half the stuff here? Sheesh. Leave me alone with my mild case of mortification, thank you very much. And can you dim the lights while you’re at it? These department store fluorescents are making this seem way too casual.

That’s the point, of course. They are doing their best to reduce the embarrassment factor. And avoiding the sales staff is not an option—not if you want to get at the stuff they keep in the cases. Yes, you heard right. Locked cases. These are fine jewels, ladies and gentlemen. Precious artifacts. Yes, you COULD pick from the stuff in plastic packaging on the outer edges of paradise, but that’d be your loss. The GOODS are under lock and key. So you gotta talk to somebody. And yes, they will come and unlock the case; they will take out the item you point to; they will expound upon its finer points (and yes again, the manager was very matter-of-fact and not the least bit squeamish when he told me, “Oh! I didn’t tell you the coolest feature! This one has a turbo boost, so at the point of orgasm, you just push this button here . . . .”).

Uhm…excuse me. I blanked out for a minute from the sheer force of my struggle to maintain some semblance of sophistication. How terribly ingenuous of me it would be to keep turning this absolutely comic shade of red. Quick! What’s my line?

“Uh, wow. These things sure have come a long way.”

Since what? I imagine him thinking. As if I’ve time warped here from the fifties when the place of a woman might have been in the kitchen, where the closest she might get to the big “o” would be between the letters B and X in ICE BOX.

Clearly, I was no expert in the realm of adult entertainment. But in the name of RESEARCH

. . . I allowed the manager to talk me into a purchase. Not the one he wanted to sell me (you can get five dresses and a pair of sensible pumps at Penny’s for that price, ladies), but still . . . I found myself . . . bargaining?

“I hadn’t planned on spending that much,” I admitted to him, as he showed me some top of the line racecar model with built-in rechargeable batteries you never have to replace. (Actually, I hadn’t planned on spending anything, since entering this store had been the furthest thing from my mind when I set out on my trek for grocery store sundries.)

“You’d be surprised by the cost savings over time,” the manager was saying, “depending on the amount of use it gets. We crunch the numbers,” he added. “Calculate these things down to the penny per minute.”

Argh! I shook my head, quickly. Let us steer clear of the mathematics behind this delicate engagement, please. Put another way, the only mathematics I’m interested in at the moment would be the numbers telling me that, no, I am not dropping one-fifth of my rent money on this pale pink-colored ice cream swirl of rechargeable-battery silicone art. How could I put this to the salesman? “My current investment in batteries would be modest, I assure you.” No, I didn’t actually say that out loud.

“I’d rather you get what you want though,” he said, “so, let me see what I can do.”

He disappeared, leaving me standing by the locked case, mind-boggled by the fact that I was standing next to a rack of DVDs displaying things that a young, impressionable mind like my own should not be privy to, except that at some point, when I wasn’t looking, I must have grown up because it turns out that I’m not really that squeamish anymore—and then the manager returned, holding a pamphlet. “This will get you 20% off,” he said. “Which takes you right back down into your price range. Now,” he added, smiling, “what color did you want this in?”

For goodness’ sake!

(I’m not telling you what color I got.)

At the checkout, he took it out of the box to test it. “You understand, I’m sure, that we want to make certain it works before you leave.”

“Yes, yes, I do,” I said, nodding. “And I appreciate that.” (This isn’t Walmart, folks. You can’t just take it back.)

“Would you like a Hustler gift bag,” he asked, “or a white bag?”

“It really doesn’t matter—the white bag,” I told him. After all, in that walk from my car to my house, toting my considerably pared down Giant Eagle purchase of cut-price flowers and toilet paper, someone might see the OTHER bag. And then I’d have to explain to my fellow Clintonvillites, “RESEARCH, people! It’s for RESEARCH.”

Percussion: Djembes with their
high gloss sheen, ropes swelling
over bulbous bodies—Gatam, clay pot drum and
its hollow gung-gung-gadum, Mridangam, or
a frame drum humming…

Bass: Four-string, Fretless Pedulla PentaBuzz5 even—
yet, not so much as a song hailing me as another
black-hat-wearing twenty-something…
(I’m not twenty, but I wear hats, and that
ought to count toward a few emphasized
chord tones dedicated to my thirty-something wisdom.)

Saxophone: A Jubilee Series III,
(gold plating), Mark VI angle, treated kid leather
pads with metal resonators, fifteen thousand dollars
worth of tenor-told soft mantra
playing ‘Trane on A Love Supreme
journeying through acknowledgement
on the way to psalm—
then the wordless recitation of
a poem that ends in “Elation! Elegance. Exaltation.
All from God.”
(but not on soprano—and no
sliding across the stage like
Boney James doing his imitation of
a horn player.)

Guitar then! Electric, acoustic, Gibson hollow body,
Ibanez—better yet, a Fender Telecaster:
single coil pickup,
wide range humbucker,
horribly unsuitable to play
without a platter filled with pedals for changing octaves,
distorting and delaying, wha-whaing and
chorusing or flanging your phaser
compressing composition to three-minute chunks of
ornamented audio—so it is
music that stirs (not soothes) the savage beast…
the pied piper and his horn of plenty leading the
lambs to roasting, which means….

It must be piano—or Hammond B3,
since I was the daughter
of a songsmith always slaving over
the melody,
toiling at dawn while light crept in
to illuminate the turning wheels of the
reel to reel, it was for Rumpelstiltskin,
all this spinning, he was to sacrifice his first-born
for one record gone platinum
but
he swore the music had come
in a dream—he had to
let it flow, shape it, bend it to his will
folding it over and over, molten steel
that hardened when cooled, so he felt
the same sense of urgency
that I now feel for
proving that a vagina
does not make me a musical fool
(or indifferent mute, or unable to appreciate
fusion jazz, Coltrane, Steve Coleman and Five Elements;
not just some chick waiting offstage
to stroke egos and fetch two-and-a-half-dollar bottles of Negra Modelo.)

All kinds of people (or musicians):
every genre: jazz, rock, funk, world, new-age, neo-soul,
bluegrass, country, fusion, classical—
who clearly have no trouble composing,
(words, music, sentiments about girls
named Melissa or Jessica or Bertha or
maybe Casey Jones through a whiskey-soaked throat
wailing about staying drunk in a cabana, living on
bananas and blow)
and still, not so much as a
single note—a chord, a triad even,
on record to mark the occasion of
my quite remarkable
(I assure you)
birth
(and then continuation
into an equally gracious and obviously humble adulthood).

Not once!
Not even a key pressed, or a string plucked, or
the stroke across the skin
of a drum, which might have expressed,
over and over, in the briefest trimmer,
the slightest vibration or tremolo…
my singularity, perhaps in
minimalistic terms—for truly, one can
sense that simply
the slightest of notes
could have quite adequately
conveyed the rather impressive girth
of my girlish hopes.

But I have a notebook full of lyrics, poems,
common power ballad chords or combinations
stolen from a Pink Floyd The Wall tablature
coupled with a million ridiculous notions of love,
stacked up, over the years, in dusty
journals filled with words documenting the
occasion of everything I’ve ever been told
(and then some things that have
gone on to become quite fictional).
Small wonder, I’ve had to invent my value.

My reward?
Inspiration, I suppose, which is terribly
thin substance for disconsolate prose.

There is no husband for this
would-be wife, kerchief-absent,
broom stilled in the corner,
empty oven—cavernous
affair of crumbs so black
they disappear in the cold depth—
cast-off life.

Words pass over the wires,
electric with grief—
the absolute absence of man,
hand-holding, hugs, good morning
wishes as the sun dapples
stippled ceilings and the
glow-in-the-dark star-leavings of
unknown children—
the glow gone dead from years of
long, incautious use.

Luck is hard won:
a horse with lathered flank,
slack-eyed with drive,
blood-flecked tongue and sides
stinging from the crop;
luck is a job and jasmine rice—
luck is a furnace rumbling
its belly, spitting out heat;
luck is a telephone ringing
and the other end is
deep voice, sonorous concern;
it is precisely $100 in the bank:
the price of a locksmith.

II /

The man with the kind eyes,
says it’s okay to cry; he goes on
to adjust his scarf, then to
place the frozen chicken in
corn plastic; slowly, bending his elbow,
he will cradle the loaf of bread,
gentle the eggs down toward the bottom,
lay the single potato atop the
carton whisper-soft as releasing
a babe to the cradle cushion;
he will slip from behind the counter and
embrace the quivering, thin flesh shrouded
in cotton coats and hats and gloves—
he will imagine a woman past this
point; the compass will spin, the bridge will
carry leaden feet over the edge of the canyon
to the side where the grass is truly green.

III /

Compassion is made of arms
the width of skyscrapers turned
on their sides;
love has the suction of
an F5 pulling madness away by
its roots; it levels the ground, plows the
path to the calm of bumblebees on their trek
for honey; hope is the
crawl into fine, new skin;
breaking down the fibers
of self until name flakes away in the rough
brush of a washcloth down and back again.

There is no shape,
but forgiveness builds
a nest, a pillow bound to
an empty bed, feathers curled
up in secret, fluttering quietly in
flannel—encasing the imprint of his
ghost head, the scent, the errant hair,
the slick slide of cheek back and forth
in dreams long spent that lead to
a face, the flat expanse of forehead, the
whisper-kiss of black eyelashes merging
shadows with the slope of nose,
tears coursing the contours of
sorrow’s dimples and wrinkles to
slip off the edge of jaw and bone—

another thirty seconds,
gone. life is increments. breath.
step. one foot. another inch.
one moment and then
dust, collecting mementos, these memories,
curios of past bits like
boxes of heart secured
with choke chains, or
life is the
faint brush of a single note struck,
rising,
diminishing
into
silence.