Saturday, 12 June 2010
Friday, 11 June 2010
My Wife’s Pussy
I have had my first ever fight with my wife and my world is coming to an end.
Though the sun is out today for a change, dark clouds have appeared on the horizon of my marriage and a bottomless pit of despair has opened up beneath my feet, something like Indiana Jones in one of his more fruity adventures.
And it’s all to do with my wife's pussy and her obvious willingness to allow the neighbours to play with it whenever they feel like. Now I ask you! Is this the sporting thing to do? Surely she should consider my own feelings on the matter?
The De Greeks do not want to be overly critical, but one's whole being objects to such cavalier behaviour because her pussy is the last thing I see at night, the first thing I see in the morning and I have become quite fond of it. And I don’t think that it is overly arrogant to say that I believe it has gotten quite fond of me as well.
It is true that in the beginning I could take it or leave it alone because as pussies go, it is not the prettiest I have ever seen and, in all modesty, I have seen my fair share of pussies, I can tell you! I remember in the mountains of Switzerland I saw the most amazingly hairy…. but no, I digress, that's another story.
Be that as it may, I have come to grow fond of it and to care for it as I have never cared for a pussy before. In fact, I went on the Internet to find out as much as possible about how to care for it and how to make it happy and I can tell you that allowing our neighbours Tom, Dick and Harry to play with is nothing akin to comedy and it may in fact be detrimental to its health.
Especially Dick, the dirty sod, because I can guess what he is really like behind that slimy, ingratiating smile. One of those men I think who must, during the formative years of their boyhood, have been overly fond of boyhood acts which even the psychiatrists of today with their modern liberal views about the correct way of raising youngsters might frown upon.
In fact, you can never be sure where HE’s been at any given time and, in truth, every time I see him, I tend to give him a long, steady look calculated to blister his eyeballs, but I think he's too dense to notice. I have often wondered whether in refraining from kicking him sharply in the balls I was not neglecting my duty to humanity and it is only the spirit of neighbourliness that caused manlier counsels to prevail in this particular intent.
Did you know that according to one of our fellow hubbers “The most crucial part of enjoying a pussy is making certain to provide it with correct pussy medical care, because ONLY if you make certain that you DON’T allow anything to impair your pussy’s health will you get highest satisfaction from it?” Well show me the man or woman who will accuse me on economising on pussy health and I shall show you a base liar and a scoundrel!
And the Internet expert goes on to say that:
“The best way to ensure your pussy’s wellbeing would be to feed it appropriately”. I can honestly say that I do that whenever my wife will let me and let her deny it if she can! Just because it’s her pussy and she likes to play with it herself most of the time, does not mean that I do not try to do my bit as much as possible.
The expert goes on to say that “Actively playing along with your pussy is actually one other simple, easy, and effective pussy health care tip”. I understand and wholeheartedly agree with this brilliant expert, but I also tell my wife that it does not mean letting the whole allied army on the Western Front play with it as well! Though the De Greeks are men without an ounce of conceit in our composition, I can confidently say that I am man enough to provide her pussy with all the attention it wants or needs and I don’t care who thinks that this is boasting.
Activity and Tidiness
Under the heading of Activity and Tidiness, the Internet expert goes on to say that another easy pussy health care suggestion is to make sure that you wash it frequently. It would be idle to deny that here my faith in our expert was somewhat shaken and I began to be rather peeved at our expert. Who does she think we are? And our expert becomes even more personal when she suggests that “As a final point, continuing to keep your pussy tidy is another critical pussy health care hint that needs brushing the fur as well as always keeping it thoroughly clean as well as orderly”. This is the point at which I decided that I need not enter fully into the further arguments used by our expert and logged off.
So I ask you as impartial observers to consider the matter in a calm and unbiased spirit: Is it wrong of me to consider my wife’s proclivity of allowing the neighbours to play with her pussy singularly unfortunate?
Why get the neighbours involved? Why let them play with her pussy when she knows that I want to play with it as much as possible and, quite frankly, I am the jealous type and do not want the neighbours playing with my own wife’s pussy? Am I wrong to feel stung by the injustice of this?
I am not one to impose on your friendship and to ask you to blindly take my side in this argument, so I have taken photos of my wife’s pussy so that you may form your own unbiased opinion.
It is in the mornings that my wife’s pussy completely captures my heart by its actions. I am an early riser and as soon as it sees me when I step out of our bedroom, it rolls on its back, raises its feet in the air and slides down the stairs on its back offering me its belly to scratch. I tell you, it brings a smile to my face first thing in the morning and I cannot resist it.
I scratch her tummy and she purrrrrrrs with so much pleasure that I feel life is worth living. How could I possibly let my wife allow the neighbours to look after her pussy every time we have to go out? It just doesn’t feel right. I must insist that her preconceived ideas be revised.
Though the sun is out today for a change, dark clouds have appeared on the horizon of my marriage and a bottomless pit of despair has opened up beneath my feet, something like Indiana Jones in one of his more fruity adventures.
And it’s all to do with my wife's pussy and her obvious willingness to allow the neighbours to play with it whenever they feel like. Now I ask you! Is this the sporting thing to do? Surely she should consider my own feelings on the matter?
The De Greeks do not want to be overly critical, but one's whole being objects to such cavalier behaviour because her pussy is the last thing I see at night, the first thing I see in the morning and I have become quite fond of it. And I don’t think that it is overly arrogant to say that I believe it has gotten quite fond of me as well.
It is true that in the beginning I could take it or leave it alone because as pussies go, it is not the prettiest I have ever seen and, in all modesty, I have seen my fair share of pussies, I can tell you! I remember in the mountains of Switzerland I saw the most amazingly hairy…. but no, I digress, that's another story.
Be that as it may, I have come to grow fond of it and to care for it as I have never cared for a pussy before. In fact, I went on the Internet to find out as much as possible about how to care for it and how to make it happy and I can tell you that allowing our neighbours Tom, Dick and Harry to play with is nothing akin to comedy and it may in fact be detrimental to its health.
Especially Dick, the dirty sod, because I can guess what he is really like behind that slimy, ingratiating smile. One of those men I think who must, during the formative years of their boyhood, have been overly fond of boyhood acts which even the psychiatrists of today with their modern liberal views about the correct way of raising youngsters might frown upon.
In fact, you can never be sure where HE’s been at any given time and, in truth, every time I see him, I tend to give him a long, steady look calculated to blister his eyeballs, but I think he's too dense to notice. I have often wondered whether in refraining from kicking him sharply in the balls I was not neglecting my duty to humanity and it is only the spirit of neighbourliness that caused manlier counsels to prevail in this particular intent.
Did you know that according to one of our fellow hubbers “The most crucial part of enjoying a pussy is making certain to provide it with correct pussy medical care, because ONLY if you make certain that you DON’T allow anything to impair your pussy’s health will you get highest satisfaction from it?” Well show me the man or woman who will accuse me on economising on pussy health and I shall show you a base liar and a scoundrel!
And the Internet expert goes on to say that:
“The best way to ensure your pussy’s wellbeing would be to feed it appropriately”. I can honestly say that I do that whenever my wife will let me and let her deny it if she can! Just because it’s her pussy and she likes to play with it herself most of the time, does not mean that I do not try to do my bit as much as possible.
The expert goes on to say that “Actively playing along with your pussy is actually one other simple, easy, and effective pussy health care tip”. I understand and wholeheartedly agree with this brilliant expert, but I also tell my wife that it does not mean letting the whole allied army on the Western Front play with it as well! Though the De Greeks are men without an ounce of conceit in our composition, I can confidently say that I am man enough to provide her pussy with all the attention it wants or needs and I don’t care who thinks that this is boasting.
Activity and Tidiness
Under the heading of Activity and Tidiness, the Internet expert goes on to say that another easy pussy health care suggestion is to make sure that you wash it frequently. It would be idle to deny that here my faith in our expert was somewhat shaken and I began to be rather peeved at our expert. Who does she think we are? And our expert becomes even more personal when she suggests that “As a final point, continuing to keep your pussy tidy is another critical pussy health care hint that needs brushing the fur as well as always keeping it thoroughly clean as well as orderly”. This is the point at which I decided that I need not enter fully into the further arguments used by our expert and logged off.
So I ask you as impartial observers to consider the matter in a calm and unbiased spirit: Is it wrong of me to consider my wife’s proclivity of allowing the neighbours to play with her pussy singularly unfortunate?
Why get the neighbours involved? Why let them play with her pussy when she knows that I want to play with it as much as possible and, quite frankly, I am the jealous type and do not want the neighbours playing with my own wife’s pussy? Am I wrong to feel stung by the injustice of this?
I am not one to impose on your friendship and to ask you to blindly take my side in this argument, so I have taken photos of my wife’s pussy so that you may form your own unbiased opinion.
It is in the mornings that my wife’s pussy completely captures my heart by its actions. I am an early riser and as soon as it sees me when I step out of our bedroom, it rolls on its back, raises its feet in the air and slides down the stairs on its back offering me its belly to scratch. I tell you, it brings a smile to my face first thing in the morning and I cannot resist it.
I scratch her tummy and she purrrrrrrs with so much pleasure that I feel life is worth living. How could I possibly let my wife allow the neighbours to look after her pussy every time we have to go out? It just doesn’t feel right. I must insist that her preconceived ideas be revised.
Monday, 7 June 2010
The Hurt We Cause
By Dimitris Mita
De Greek
It is astonishing to what degree the basic human principles of justice, compassion and fair play are universal, as is the feeling of guilt for personal acts of cruelty, irrespective of one’s background, country of origin, skin colour, religion or education. As, of course, also universal are humanity’s cruelty, pettiness, selfishness, unfairness and an astonishing ability to justify the most horrendous acts of barbarism with a theoretically glorified end result as a justification of the means.
I say this because a lot of us have been indoctrinated to automatically expect human beings in primitive tribes for example, to be deficient in the positive aspects, i.e. those aspects of compassion, guilt and regret for personal acts or omissions. This, in spite of the example of “civilised” Europeans causing unimaginable agony on their fellow human beings in the heart of Europe during WWII, for reasons which most of us are incapable (I hope) of comprehending. I recently had cause to feel considerable shame for my attitude towards our more isolated brethren in Africa, through a documentary called “Tribe”, on one of the educational channels. The adventurer in charge of the programme documents his stay with various tribes around the world, living as a member of different remote, primitive and mostly self sufficient people.
In one of these series, he visits the village of an isolated tribe somewhere in deepest West Africa, apparently known for its religious belief in a kind and forgiving God, whom they contact through the use of a drug found in the root of a tree. After about a month of living with the villagers, they trust him enough to put him through the religious process of acceptance into their religion and their clan. For three days he is fed the apparently disgustingly bitter tasting root containing the drug, in steady but reducing doses and for three days he vomits and purges himself continuously. After the first hour or so of this torture, the camera crew is banned from the hut where the process takes place and we, the viewers, are thankfully shown only the first bouts of violent vomiting.
The adventurer subsequently describes his experiences on camera. It appears that all who take part in this ceremony of acceptance into this particular religion go through the same drug induced and drug enhanced emotions. Our adventurers’ case was no different from the others. The drug brought rushing back to his memory, past and long forgotten and unwelcomed instances of acts or words of unkindness he was guilty of. He said that his recollection even took him back to actions he took as a child, to his earliest possible childhood remembrance. Under the influence of the drug, he was forced to experience the actual hurt he caused to his victims by the various long forgotten deeds of cruelty he had actually perpetrated in reality months, years or even decades before.
One could see in his face his shock and actual shame at having caused the pain he now actually experienced himself exactly as his actual victim did at the time of the offence. Having experienced the victim’s real pain, with himself on the receiving end, one could see how regretful he was at having committed those various acts and how he wished he could take them back. This was an ordinary human being, who had spoken unkindly to, or had taken advantage of a brother, waiter, cousin, warden, friend, secretary, girlfriend, or wife and was now feeling the deepest possible regret for having done so. It certainly was not acting. In fact he felt the need to explain himself by saying that basically he was an averagely decent human being, who had at times in the past behaved in ways which he was not proud of and would now shamefully and willingly correct those instances if at all possible.
For those who might think that there are secondary benefits to using the drug, I hasten to underline that those who go through the process are not anxious to repeat it due to its extremely painful and unpleasant nature.
What we have here is a group of supposedly primitive people who go through a very painful process, in order to experience the hurt, the sting and injury their own acts of cruelty cause to others. By feeling the damage they cause to others through their words or actions, they become restrained in repeating acts which wound their fellow man. How wonderful is that?
We all could learn so much from this, especially those of us who are parents, but we can also go a lot further than that. By seeking to understand the hurt we have caused each other in past conflicts and challenges, be they in business, in religious conflicts, in expansionist wars, in colour differences or elsewhere, we just might begin to celebrate each other’s differences and each other's right of choice. We might even learn to support each other in such choices.
As individuals, human beings are generally a kind, generous and hospitable species. It is only when the herd instinct is taken advantage of by eloquent and gifted maniacs that we forget our inherent love of our brethren of other colours and beliefs that we fall into the traps set for us and we then forget our true selves and follow shameful paths. If only we could experience the hurt we cause.
De Greek
It is astonishing to what degree the basic human principles of justice, compassion and fair play are universal, as is the feeling of guilt for personal acts of cruelty, irrespective of one’s background, country of origin, skin colour, religion or education. As, of course, also universal are humanity’s cruelty, pettiness, selfishness, unfairness and an astonishing ability to justify the most horrendous acts of barbarism with a theoretically glorified end result as a justification of the means.
I say this because a lot of us have been indoctrinated to automatically expect human beings in primitive tribes for example, to be deficient in the positive aspects, i.e. those aspects of compassion, guilt and regret for personal acts or omissions. This, in spite of the example of “civilised” Europeans causing unimaginable agony on their fellow human beings in the heart of Europe during WWII, for reasons which most of us are incapable (I hope) of comprehending. I recently had cause to feel considerable shame for my attitude towards our more isolated brethren in Africa, through a documentary called “Tribe”, on one of the educational channels. The adventurer in charge of the programme documents his stay with various tribes around the world, living as a member of different remote, primitive and mostly self sufficient people.
In one of these series, he visits the village of an isolated tribe somewhere in deepest West Africa, apparently known for its religious belief in a kind and forgiving God, whom they contact through the use of a drug found in the root of a tree. After about a month of living with the villagers, they trust him enough to put him through the religious process of acceptance into their religion and their clan. For three days he is fed the apparently disgustingly bitter tasting root containing the drug, in steady but reducing doses and for three days he vomits and purges himself continuously. After the first hour or so of this torture, the camera crew is banned from the hut where the process takes place and we, the viewers, are thankfully shown only the first bouts of violent vomiting.
The adventurer subsequently describes his experiences on camera. It appears that all who take part in this ceremony of acceptance into this particular religion go through the same drug induced and drug enhanced emotions. Our adventurers’ case was no different from the others. The drug brought rushing back to his memory, past and long forgotten and unwelcomed instances of acts or words of unkindness he was guilty of. He said that his recollection even took him back to actions he took as a child, to his earliest possible childhood remembrance. Under the influence of the drug, he was forced to experience the actual hurt he caused to his victims by the various long forgotten deeds of cruelty he had actually perpetrated in reality months, years or even decades before.
One could see in his face his shock and actual shame at having caused the pain he now actually experienced himself exactly as his actual victim did at the time of the offence. Having experienced the victim’s real pain, with himself on the receiving end, one could see how regretful he was at having committed those various acts and how he wished he could take them back. This was an ordinary human being, who had spoken unkindly to, or had taken advantage of a brother, waiter, cousin, warden, friend, secretary, girlfriend, or wife and was now feeling the deepest possible regret for having done so. It certainly was not acting. In fact he felt the need to explain himself by saying that basically he was an averagely decent human being, who had at times in the past behaved in ways which he was not proud of and would now shamefully and willingly correct those instances if at all possible.
For those who might think that there are secondary benefits to using the drug, I hasten to underline that those who go through the process are not anxious to repeat it due to its extremely painful and unpleasant nature.
What we have here is a group of supposedly primitive people who go through a very painful process, in order to experience the hurt, the sting and injury their own acts of cruelty cause to others. By feeling the damage they cause to others through their words or actions, they become restrained in repeating acts which wound their fellow man. How wonderful is that?
We all could learn so much from this, especially those of us who are parents, but we can also go a lot further than that. By seeking to understand the hurt we have caused each other in past conflicts and challenges, be they in business, in religious conflicts, in expansionist wars, in colour differences or elsewhere, we just might begin to celebrate each other’s differences and each other's right of choice. We might even learn to support each other in such choices.
As individuals, human beings are generally a kind, generous and hospitable species. It is only when the herd instinct is taken advantage of by eloquent and gifted maniacs that we forget our inherent love of our brethren of other colours and beliefs that we fall into the traps set for us and we then forget our true selves and follow shameful paths. If only we could experience the hurt we cause.
Allergies or A EULOGY BY THE DECEASED
by Dimitris Mita
De Greek
The gravedigger was crying. Through my streaming tears I could see that he was unsuccessfully trying to hold back his own.
I had never seen a gravedigger cry before and, out of surprised curiosity, I stopped crying myself and transferred my gaze on him, away from the coffin holding the remains of what used to be my father.
The scene of the crying gravedigger was a real shock to me. Ours was a small town with everybody knowing everybody else and attending funerals was an obligation imposed on all of us. During such festivities, I had never managed to come to terms with the casual indifference, to the point of heartlessness, with which the priest and the two grave diggers managed to plant their clients. The three of them, always true to the Kipling poem about keeping their heads while everyone around them was loosing theirs, went through the motions with a coldness which was shocking yet admirable in some odd fashion. Perhaps it was because no one was blaming them for the event.
Conceivably the gravedigger was influenced by the eulogy read out at the church, which he had attended in his capacity of fellow citizen a short time previously. The eulogy was somewhat unusual, in that it was written by my father himself, prior to his death of course. Admittedly, it had that little ‘something’ in it, but more towards creating a smile rather than tears. I had been required to read it myself, an act that made keeping a straight face doubly difficult.
It was headed:
I considered this to be just one more of the oddities governing my life at that time. During that period I had a horse which was allergic to hay, a housemaid who was allergic to dust (so I had to employ her a housemaid to do her work for her) and a Great Dane dog which was terrified of cats, the worst allergy of all. My heart bled for him every time I saw him cowering at the sight of a cat. The oddities or allergies of life.
The allergy that was a crying gravedigger moved forward and took hold of the two ropes on his side of the grave and with another wipe on the long suffering shirtsleeve he nodded to his partner. They both lifted the coffin over the grave opening and began lowering it into the finality of life.
I looked around at the sea of faces that had materialized out of nowhere in order to pay their last respects. The church had been packed but there seemed to be even more mourners here. Faces I knew well and others I had never seen before.
It was a beautiful warm May morning, with the smell of flowers pungently sweet in the air. My Godfather and my secretary standing next to each other, looking after the overseas visitors, appeared efficient and tired. They had taken over the role of informing everyone they knew, as well as those they didn’t but had found listed in my personal phone book and seemed to have excelled themselves. I had been in Manila when the heart attack finally felled the oak that was my father and in order to accommodate me and the overseas friends who wanted to attend the funeral, the body had been kept in the morgue for four days.
There was Ilan Raviv and Oded Giveon, who flew over in a private jet from Tel Aviv. Next to them stood a short unimpressive man towered over on either side by two men in black suits one size too small for them, looking like wrestler twins and seemingly without any neck to speak of. I was told that he had flown over from the States with his companions. All wore sunglasses to hide their eyes.
There was Rachel, the Romanian prostitute, whose story had inspired my father to finance her, a woman he had never actually met, into becoming a very prosperous madam, an act of generosity which she never seemed able to forget.
My father learned of her through me. Mine was the first foreign company to open an office in Romania immediately after the Revolution which ousted communism and Ceausescu from that long suffering country. When I first went there for the purpose, there was no infrastructure for business and no possibility of renting an office, so I rented four rooms at the Continental Hotel in the port of Constanta. I employed twelve people, including two body guards who eventually proved very useful, and proceeded to train the staff in my line of work which was ship owning and ship management. I wanted to employ Romanian seamen on board my ships.
Every day I used to take the staff for lunch and dinner at the hotel restaurant, to reward them for the hard work and the long hours they put into the effort. Downstairs there was a large lobby extending into a huge restaurant and bar, which happened to be the nesting place of most of the local prostitutes catering to the needs of the visiting seamen. And every day, there was pretty young Rachel making eyes at me. And every day I would turn my back on her and studiously ignore her.
The time came when the training was completed and the staff at last went home to their families for dinner and I went downstairs to have my own lonely supper. I sat at a free table and ordered my food. I felt someone standing next to me and looking up I saw the perpetually smiling Rachel.
“Buy me a drink?” she asked. Most eyes in the restaurant were on the rich foreigner and the whore.
“No” I said as rudely as I could.
“Shall I sit with you?”
“No” again, with annoyed force and rudeness.
“Shall I come to your room tonight?”
This conversation took place in very broken English which I cannot quite reconstruct, so I am translating the gist. By this time I was really annoyed, so in order to be as harshly rude as possible, I said
“How much will you pay me?”
She thought for a very long minute and then asked with childish curiosity
“Me, pay you?”
“Yes” again harshly.
She again thought for a long time. Then to my surprise she said in an interested manner
“How much?”
This threw me a bit, I must confess, but I maintained my composure. I knew from seamen from one of our ships which had made a call at Constanta during my stay that the local tariff was a measly $20.
“One hundred dollars” I said.
She looked at me curiously for some seconds and then
“OK …. But you fuck me all night!”
Guffaw is the only word which can describe the laughter that was wrenched from me. I laughed so loudly that every head in the restaurant turned. Unable to resist unexpected witticism of this magnitude from a whore, I asked her to sit down and bought her dinner. She turned out to be a very clever and witty person, as a lot of Romanians are, good company for the one hour I spend at dinner. A silent agreement was reached that night that she would never solicit me again and I would not ignore her.
When my ex-wife called me that evening I told her the story, still amused by the incident, and she passed it on to my father. “That boy will come back with serious money” he had famously smiled and then proceeded to make arrangements to reward her wit with a sum which allowed her to set up in business for herself.
I looked now at my ex-wife amongst the sea of faces. Another whore, but this one without a sense of humour to speak of. Just a highly developed animal cunning, which is rare to come across.
Even the soon-to-be-grave-dancing widow, my mother, was delicately wiping a tear with a tiny handkerchief, but I think it was because it was fashionably expected of her by her accompanying cronies. I never liked that woman, especially since she knifed me, aged 10. But to give credit where credit is due, I always admired her knife throwing abilities. If you have never been knifed, by your mother, or anyone else for that matter, I strongly discourage you from trying it.
It was at the end of my daily argument with my elder sister and having made a ten year old’s cutting remark about nothing, I turned towards the field where my friends were preparing the soccer match of the day, when the point of the butcher knife hit me in the back from ten paces away. She had picked up the first available object to hand, which happened to be the butcher knife and threw it at me, with remarkable accuracy. An excellent shot.
Both the shock of the blow and the point of the knife entering the tender flesh caused me to exhale and I could not breathe. I walked a few steps and fell. A friendly doctor was found to saw up the wound without the police getting involved.
A sudden collective gasp from the crowd brought me back to the present and I looked down just in time to see the coffin overturn, the rope having slipped from the hands of the sensitive gravedigger. My father rolled over and landed on his back at the bottom of the grave, with the “splendid” coffin on top of him.
My godfather rushed forward as if to protect his dead friend and ended up in close conference with the priest. He finally came over to me and told me that it was the priest’s professional opinion that God preferred a burial without a coffin and that coffins were the invention of modern man. Not the best advertising material this. Was the idiot priest trying to put the last nail in my father’s new coffin business? I quickly agreed for the burial to proceed as God preferred and could not help thinking that a coffin saved was a coffin worth £3,400. My great-great grandfather was an atheist Greek Jew who indifferently converted to Christianity in order to be allowed to marry the woman he loved and it was a family joke how amazing it was that Jewish blood will always tell.
I stepped forward to the edge and dropped my pagan gifts into my father’s grave. Thousands of years of civilization and Christianity evaporating in my primitive need to ease his passing into the next world, the same primitive powerless need that motivated the ancients, be they Egyptians, Greeks, Britons and so many other archaic races of the past. I slowly and ritualistically dropped a bottle of his favourite 12 year old whisky into the grave and then a carton of his favourite cigarettes, which had probably contributed most to his early demise.
He had this strange need for me to remember him on each of my innumerable trips abroad, by always bringing him a bottle of whisky and a carton of cigarettes when I returned. He always gave most of them away so that I would have to bring him more, proving to him each time that I remembered him and that I loved him. He rarely drank, but he smoked a lot. Come to think of it, through my gifts I have probably killed my father…. What a horrible thought.
I looked down at the huge man in his ‘Church suit’ as he had called it. He was six feet two, 250 lbs, black hair with very little grey, still combed in place strangely enough, as if he did not suffer the fall. His hands were still across the chest. Looking serious … yes, that was the difference, looking serious, no smile.
I dropped a fistful of earth at his feet and watched as others dropped their own handfuls, only not so carefully as I. I saw earth at my father’s mouth and I wanted to jump in to stop it, to clear it away from his mouth, because I knew the taste of earth, thanks to “Molon Lave”.
“Molon Lave” is what the Spartans told the Persian tourists when the latter politely asked for the Spartan’s weapons in order to avoid unpleasantness. It means “Come and Get Them” in ancient Greek.
"Molon Lave" was also the name of my horse. The horse with the hay allergy. 18 hands, if he was an inch. A beautiful, strong animal, a retired 8 year old thoroughbred racehorse, with many victories to his name. The first time I rode him he was very excited and skittish, always ready to take off. It took me a while to calm him down. In the end he appeared to get used to me and I walked him around the grounds of the sporting complex were I was stabling him at a cost equivalent to an Indonesian Prince's ransom. At some stage, I thought that it was time to trot him, show him who was master and then get into a comfortable relaxing canter. So I touched his sides lightly.
Molon Lave & my son Alex Now, in retrospect, I know that opinion does not appear to differ considerably on this point: Racehorses are trained to gallop as soon as their jockeys touch their sides. However, this was a detail unknown to me at the time. In consequence, the achievements of many reputable car makers for the zero to sixty miles per hour world record were left in the dust we raised behind us as we gracefully and terrifyingly galloped around the narrow and winding scenic pathways of the sports complex. I remember thinking incongruously how the jasmine had bloomed early that year and, less incongruously, wondering at that worthy plant's abilities to break my fall if I decided to throw myself off "Molon Lave" into their hopefully waiting branches. I sadly realized though that at the rate of speed we were going, I would have to take into consideration most of the scientific NASA theories on trajectories , meaning that if I wanted to land in Portsmouth, I would have to jump off somewhere near Southsea.
I knew that the pathway made a ninety degree left turn at a point at which it met the fencing of a paddock and prepared myself to lean to the left, always sensitive to the animal's comfort. At that point, "Molon Lave" decided to take into consideration the meaning of my desperate pulling on the reins, sharp, short, left-and-right pulls on the bit in the hope of getting through to him that a slower pace would make the scenery more enjoyable. He stopped. As I gracefully flew over the paddock fencing, I remember thinking that this was the moment my whole life is supposed to flash before my eyes and I was quite looking forward to reviewing, in fast-forward mode, those 15 glorious minutes behind the barn with Camilla P.
When I woke up at the hospital, the first thing I realized was that I was wearing a neck brace. The second was that I could move my hands and toes. The third was that I could taste earth in my mouth. Then I realized that the stable master, that wonderful, generous Christian soul had constantly insisted that the paddocks were always abundantly supplied with soft earth so that the horses' legs would not have to endure hard shocks after going over fences.
Dimitris Mita
DeGreek
http://hubpages.com/hub/Second-Life-Alergies
De Greek
The gravedigger was crying. Through my streaming tears I could see that he was unsuccessfully trying to hold back his own.
I had never seen a gravedigger cry before and, out of surprised curiosity, I stopped crying myself and transferred my gaze on him, away from the coffin holding the remains of what used to be my father.
The scene of the crying gravedigger was a real shock to me. Ours was a small town with everybody knowing everybody else and attending funerals was an obligation imposed on all of us. During such festivities, I had never managed to come to terms with the casual indifference, to the point of heartlessness, with which the priest and the two grave diggers managed to plant their clients. The three of them, always true to the Kipling poem about keeping their heads while everyone around them was loosing theirs, went through the motions with a coldness which was shocking yet admirable in some odd fashion. Perhaps it was because no one was blaming them for the event.
Conceivably the gravedigger was influenced by the eulogy read out at the church, which he had attended in his capacity of fellow citizen a short time previously. The eulogy was somewhat unusual, in that it was written by my father himself, prior to his death of course. Admittedly, it had that little ‘something’ in it, but more towards creating a smile rather than tears. I had been required to read it myself, an act that made keeping a straight face doubly difficult.
It was headed:
"A EULOGY BY THE DECEASEDAnd so the gravedigger wiped his drippy nose and some drool that was coming out of the corner of his mouth on the work shirt he had changed into, trying to hide the unmanly weakness.
As the honoured person here today, I feel that it is appropriate to say a few words. It is surprising that even a dead person finds a captive audience irresistible.
First of all, I should like to thank you all for coming. Both of you. Those of you who do not understand this joke, may stay behind after the funeral and my son who should be reading this will explain it to you.
I also want to take this excellent opportunity to do a bit of advertising. Please note the splendid coffin, which is one of our own productions. Since we are in the joinery business and have all the necessary machinery we thought of adding coffins as a new product to supplement our income. Just in time as it turned out. Have you seen the prices of these things recently? Those of you who were generous enough to sent flowers, will have presumably attached cards to them, so we shall shortly send you more information on this very useful and very attractive product. (Naturally, when I say “we”, I use the term loosely). A special discount shall be made to the names on all the cards, in acknowledgement and reciprocity of friendship, but no credit facilities apply.
Incidentally, should there be a large “D” in evidence anywhere near the coffin, please ignore it. It would be the result of excessive zeal by our employees, who sometimes go a little overboard in implementing ISO requirements. “D” stands for DEAD. Just in case some of you are absent minded and haven’t noticed the corpse.
No doubt the spectacle of a friend or relative being made ready for planting must create a feeling of finality which can never be an agreeable one. For consolation, though, think of the pleasure this event will give to at least one person, my ex-wife, who has for years been waiting to dance on my grave.
A word of advice to those of my aging friends who might feel obligated to give a helping hand in carrying the coffin to the hearse: DON’T! - I seem to have added a few kilos of late to an already impressive figure and the effort may be such as to create a rush of business for our worthy funeral director, which may overwhelm the poor man’s ability to cope. Please resist the temptation and let the younger men do the job. It will give them something to do and might even prevent them from yawning.
Now that the introduction is suitably out of the way, I believe that it is customary to say a few words about the departed, ideally complementary. Well, I can tell you that through most of my adult life I have studiously avoided being fired, through the simple expedient of becoming the President of various companies. Since it was somewhat unlikely that I would fire myself, I became quite adept at holding down those jobs. The occasional clanger I made, I faced with humane understanding and leniency. Only the unsporting and unreasonable point of view of the Department of Income Tax occasionally put a spanner in the works.
Without wishing to bore, I feel the need to pass on a few words of wisdom to those of you who are still listening. Wisdom acquired as a businessman and as a father. The Lords Tennyson and Byron might have found a different way of dispersing these pearls of wisdom, but the advantage of being dead is that one may risk a touch of eccentricity.
As a businessman, I have had personal experiences which led me to the conclusion that ‘someone may look at a gift horse in the mouth out of habit. But if the gift horse is the odds-on favourite to win the next Darby, then that someone can’t afford the stable fees’. Think about this for a while.
As a father I have at last learned that ‘the result of punishment on men and animals is the increase of fear, the promotion of cunning and the control of desires. Punishment tames a man, but does not make him better’. This is not one of my own gems, but belongs to a fellow philosopher by the name of Nietzsche.
I think that I had better terminate this discourse now, or I may risk being frivolous. Enjoy the rest of the proceedings."
I considered this to be just one more of the oddities governing my life at that time. During that period I had a horse which was allergic to hay, a housemaid who was allergic to dust (so I had to employ her a housemaid to do her work for her) and a Great Dane dog which was terrified of cats, the worst allergy of all. My heart bled for him every time I saw him cowering at the sight of a cat. The oddities or allergies of life.
The allergy that was a crying gravedigger moved forward and took hold of the two ropes on his side of the grave and with another wipe on the long suffering shirtsleeve he nodded to his partner. They both lifted the coffin over the grave opening and began lowering it into the finality of life.
I looked around at the sea of faces that had materialized out of nowhere in order to pay their last respects. The church had been packed but there seemed to be even more mourners here. Faces I knew well and others I had never seen before.
It was a beautiful warm May morning, with the smell of flowers pungently sweet in the air. My Godfather and my secretary standing next to each other, looking after the overseas visitors, appeared efficient and tired. They had taken over the role of informing everyone they knew, as well as those they didn’t but had found listed in my personal phone book and seemed to have excelled themselves. I had been in Manila when the heart attack finally felled the oak that was my father and in order to accommodate me and the overseas friends who wanted to attend the funeral, the body had been kept in the morgue for four days.
There was Ilan Raviv and Oded Giveon, who flew over in a private jet from Tel Aviv. Next to them stood a short unimpressive man towered over on either side by two men in black suits one size too small for them, looking like wrestler twins and seemingly without any neck to speak of. I was told that he had flown over from the States with his companions. All wore sunglasses to hide their eyes.
There was Rachel, the Romanian prostitute, whose story had inspired my father to finance her, a woman he had never actually met, into becoming a very prosperous madam, an act of generosity which she never seemed able to forget.
My father learned of her through me. Mine was the first foreign company to open an office in Romania immediately after the Revolution which ousted communism and Ceausescu from that long suffering country. When I first went there for the purpose, there was no infrastructure for business and no possibility of renting an office, so I rented four rooms at the Continental Hotel in the port of Constanta. I employed twelve people, including two body guards who eventually proved very useful, and proceeded to train the staff in my line of work which was ship owning and ship management. I wanted to employ Romanian seamen on board my ships.
Every day I used to take the staff for lunch and dinner at the hotel restaurant, to reward them for the hard work and the long hours they put into the effort. Downstairs there was a large lobby extending into a huge restaurant and bar, which happened to be the nesting place of most of the local prostitutes catering to the needs of the visiting seamen. And every day, there was pretty young Rachel making eyes at me. And every day I would turn my back on her and studiously ignore her.
The time came when the training was completed and the staff at last went home to their families for dinner and I went downstairs to have my own lonely supper. I sat at a free table and ordered my food. I felt someone standing next to me and looking up I saw the perpetually smiling Rachel.
“Buy me a drink?” she asked. Most eyes in the restaurant were on the rich foreigner and the whore.
“No” I said as rudely as I could.
“Shall I sit with you?”
“No” again, with annoyed force and rudeness.
“Shall I come to your room tonight?”
This conversation took place in very broken English which I cannot quite reconstruct, so I am translating the gist. By this time I was really annoyed, so in order to be as harshly rude as possible, I said
“How much will you pay me?”
She thought for a very long minute and then asked with childish curiosity
“Me, pay you?”
“Yes” again harshly.
She again thought for a long time. Then to my surprise she said in an interested manner
“How much?”
This threw me a bit, I must confess, but I maintained my composure. I knew from seamen from one of our ships which had made a call at Constanta during my stay that the local tariff was a measly $20.
“One hundred dollars” I said.
She looked at me curiously for some seconds and then
“OK …. But you fuck me all night!”
Guffaw is the only word which can describe the laughter that was wrenched from me. I laughed so loudly that every head in the restaurant turned. Unable to resist unexpected witticism of this magnitude from a whore, I asked her to sit down and bought her dinner. She turned out to be a very clever and witty person, as a lot of Romanians are, good company for the one hour I spend at dinner. A silent agreement was reached that night that she would never solicit me again and I would not ignore her.
When my ex-wife called me that evening I told her the story, still amused by the incident, and she passed it on to my father. “That boy will come back with serious money” he had famously smiled and then proceeded to make arrangements to reward her wit with a sum which allowed her to set up in business for herself.
I looked now at my ex-wife amongst the sea of faces. Another whore, but this one without a sense of humour to speak of. Just a highly developed animal cunning, which is rare to come across.
Even the soon-to-be-grave-dancing widow, my mother, was delicately wiping a tear with a tiny handkerchief, but I think it was because it was fashionably expected of her by her accompanying cronies. I never liked that woman, especially since she knifed me, aged 10. But to give credit where credit is due, I always admired her knife throwing abilities. If you have never been knifed, by your mother, or anyone else for that matter, I strongly discourage you from trying it.
It was at the end of my daily argument with my elder sister and having made a ten year old’s cutting remark about nothing, I turned towards the field where my friends were preparing the soccer match of the day, when the point of the butcher knife hit me in the back from ten paces away. She had picked up the first available object to hand, which happened to be the butcher knife and threw it at me, with remarkable accuracy. An excellent shot.
Both the shock of the blow and the point of the knife entering the tender flesh caused me to exhale and I could not breathe. I walked a few steps and fell. A friendly doctor was found to saw up the wound without the police getting involved.
A sudden collective gasp from the crowd brought me back to the present and I looked down just in time to see the coffin overturn, the rope having slipped from the hands of the sensitive gravedigger. My father rolled over and landed on his back at the bottom of the grave, with the “splendid” coffin on top of him.
My godfather rushed forward as if to protect his dead friend and ended up in close conference with the priest. He finally came over to me and told me that it was the priest’s professional opinion that God preferred a burial without a coffin and that coffins were the invention of modern man. Not the best advertising material this. Was the idiot priest trying to put the last nail in my father’s new coffin business? I quickly agreed for the burial to proceed as God preferred and could not help thinking that a coffin saved was a coffin worth £3,400. My great-great grandfather was an atheist Greek Jew who indifferently converted to Christianity in order to be allowed to marry the woman he loved and it was a family joke how amazing it was that Jewish blood will always tell.
I stepped forward to the edge and dropped my pagan gifts into my father’s grave. Thousands of years of civilization and Christianity evaporating in my primitive need to ease his passing into the next world, the same primitive powerless need that motivated the ancients, be they Egyptians, Greeks, Britons and so many other archaic races of the past. I slowly and ritualistically dropped a bottle of his favourite 12 year old whisky into the grave and then a carton of his favourite cigarettes, which had probably contributed most to his early demise.
He had this strange need for me to remember him on each of my innumerable trips abroad, by always bringing him a bottle of whisky and a carton of cigarettes when I returned. He always gave most of them away so that I would have to bring him more, proving to him each time that I remembered him and that I loved him. He rarely drank, but he smoked a lot. Come to think of it, through my gifts I have probably killed my father…. What a horrible thought.
I looked down at the huge man in his ‘Church suit’ as he had called it. He was six feet two, 250 lbs, black hair with very little grey, still combed in place strangely enough, as if he did not suffer the fall. His hands were still across the chest. Looking serious … yes, that was the difference, looking serious, no smile.
I dropped a fistful of earth at his feet and watched as others dropped their own handfuls, only not so carefully as I. I saw earth at my father’s mouth and I wanted to jump in to stop it, to clear it away from his mouth, because I knew the taste of earth, thanks to “Molon Lave”.
“Molon Lave” is what the Spartans told the Persian tourists when the latter politely asked for the Spartan’s weapons in order to avoid unpleasantness. It means “Come and Get Them” in ancient Greek.
"Molon Lave" was also the name of my horse. The horse with the hay allergy. 18 hands, if he was an inch. A beautiful, strong animal, a retired 8 year old thoroughbred racehorse, with many victories to his name. The first time I rode him he was very excited and skittish, always ready to take off. It took me a while to calm him down. In the end he appeared to get used to me and I walked him around the grounds of the sporting complex were I was stabling him at a cost equivalent to an Indonesian Prince's ransom. At some stage, I thought that it was time to trot him, show him who was master and then get into a comfortable relaxing canter. So I touched his sides lightly.
Molon Lave & my son Alex Now, in retrospect, I know that opinion does not appear to differ considerably on this point: Racehorses are trained to gallop as soon as their jockeys touch their sides. However, this was a detail unknown to me at the time. In consequence, the achievements of many reputable car makers for the zero to sixty miles per hour world record were left in the dust we raised behind us as we gracefully and terrifyingly galloped around the narrow and winding scenic pathways of the sports complex. I remember thinking incongruously how the jasmine had bloomed early that year and, less incongruously, wondering at that worthy plant's abilities to break my fall if I decided to throw myself off "Molon Lave" into their hopefully waiting branches. I sadly realized though that at the rate of speed we were going, I would have to take into consideration most of the scientific NASA theories on trajectories , meaning that if I wanted to land in Portsmouth, I would have to jump off somewhere near Southsea.
I knew that the pathway made a ninety degree left turn at a point at which it met the fencing of a paddock and prepared myself to lean to the left, always sensitive to the animal's comfort. At that point, "Molon Lave" decided to take into consideration the meaning of my desperate pulling on the reins, sharp, short, left-and-right pulls on the bit in the hope of getting through to him that a slower pace would make the scenery more enjoyable. He stopped. As I gracefully flew over the paddock fencing, I remember thinking that this was the moment my whole life is supposed to flash before my eyes and I was quite looking forward to reviewing, in fast-forward mode, those 15 glorious minutes behind the barn with Camilla P.
When I woke up at the hospital, the first thing I realized was that I was wearing a neck brace. The second was that I could move my hands and toes. The third was that I could taste earth in my mouth. Then I realized that the stable master, that wonderful, generous Christian soul had constantly insisted that the paddocks were always abundantly supplied with soft earth so that the horses' legs would not have to endure hard shocks after going over fences.
Dimitris Mita
DeGreek
http://hubpages.com/hub/Second-Life-Alergies
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