Staggerlee Stonebreaker's Blog

1960. Another low and dishonest decade to test the limits of adolescent optimism. Centuries after the invention of the printing press and a few short years shy of his discovery of sex, alcohol, and sex, the Estate of Lance Boyle whirled no-hands round and round the circular drive on his terribly expensive bicycle with a ruthless abandon. Refusing to witness the slow-motion demise of her progeny, Lance's diminutive Russian grandmother streaked from the window and squeaked and slammed her way to the front steps where proportion failed her, as when one might seek to light a candle but precipitate an explosion. Her message was incomprehensible, but her tone was lucid, lethal.....

Lance saw no reason for pause as a he crashed down his bicycle, taking his first hard step with a trip on the side of a pedal and the next on the tar at the outrage visited upon him.....

Suddenly the shrunken old woman stood face to chest with Lance, and Lance elected to push her around a bit rather than pummel her like a schoolgirl, though he applied considerable force and managed to shove her down onto an azalea.....

Like a scene that might make popcorn invade the windpipe, Lance's mother looked on from a window in amused horror as one might in realizing it is, after all, only a movie. In a visibly panicked effort to recover the situation, Lance pulled up his grandmother, saying "Your turn, Nana-Nana!" as he feigned being violently shoved down onto the driveway into a prolonged period of unconsciousness.....

An angry Buick screeched to a halt as if the alcoholic cousin finally showed up at the family picnic. Lance's father was no fan of corporal punishment, yet grounding for life was clearly unenforcible. With utter disregard for bruising, Mr. Boyle molted into a welterweight gone mad. If Dr. Spock were the timekeeper, the first round might have lasted the rest of the day. To his credit, Lance reportedly cried out only once, though it was sufficiently loud and long that the man from the gas station on the corner came running up the street. As it was, the Estate of Lance Boyle was left having to explain his blackened eye to anyone with the nerve to inquire.....

It is impossible to salvage victim status in such a situation. Lance took full responsibility for what happened. When he told us about it, we kept looking at each other like we were getting the skinny from the guy who shot Prince Ferdinand. Lance went into this big story about how he was different now as if his father had executed him---Rick Daley spoke up, "Hey! We are hangin' around with a dead kid! We are hangin' with The Estate! The Estate of Lance Boyle!"....

....

Chapter 1

Jane and Dance stood bare to the waist by the window in amaze at the whirling freeze drifting through the ancient white pines of ..

Ashton Street

... The window blushed and frosted, shivering the lovers in a frenzied night. Candlelight then bent and stiffened their barefoot shadows through the broad door to the azure flame of the space heater in the corner of the kitchen ante-room. Warmed quick, they dropped like shot soldiers onto Dance's bed.

Dance fished for rolling papers, spished beers for himself and Jane, and pulled a fat pinch of sticky weed out of the baggie under his pillow. He licked two papers together and spread weed into the furrow, rolling it tight and sealing it with a flirt. This he lit with the candle by the bed and sucked the nipple of the thing to the verge of facial collapse, passing it to Jane while exhaling the sweet blue fog. They each took three puffs to feel giddy and golden.

"Zeke gets this UFO shit, and I'm afraid to ask him where," Dance whispered through held breath. "It always makes me feel like the Daughters of the American Revolution are about to round up my ass and beat me in a humane fashion until I cough up my source…." Jane giggled, "They can round you up, but the ass stays---it's mine."

Dance tipped his beer upside down over his open mouth, swallowing at the speed of the pour. Jane took a feminine swallow, smiling at Dance with her eyes that always looked as if she'd been crying, blue and watery in any simple light. They got up, hands clutched, to look out the frosted window once again.

"Looks like no school, all schools, all day," said Dance, with driving Jane back to ....Mount.. ..Holyoke.... in the morning gloriously impossible. He squeezed her lovely slender hand with the pink-polished fingernails that somehow made her blonde-oh-so-blonde hair more beautiful than a fat moon. They lingered as the driven dust smothered cars and the street with the ancient pines bobbing like drunk sailors.

"I have an idea!" Jane said. "Let's go tabloid! Let's be as obscene as possible, starting with a major co-ed steaming bath followed by an inter-collegiate coitus match! How does that sound, Dance, you big lug?"

Dance burst with a laugh that curled into a circle and seemed it would never end.

"Now that is one bitchin' idea," he finally said. "I'll get my swimsuit!"

"Now I'll do this under one condition," Jane said with a stern face. "You must promise not to come in three seconds….come on, I'm just kidding Baby Boy."

"No, no…I wasn't being sensitive…I picked up a radio signal the Big Dipper just jacked off at the thought of you and I tubbing and rubbing and lubbing in a howling prairie twister…Man, I'm so stoned I forget how to get to the bathroom…" (The Creator invented giggles for such moments.)

Dance and Jane took off what little they still had on and squeaked their way to the bath, blasted on the water hot, then stood for a moment and laughed at each other.

Dance wondered in a whisper, "Whatever shall we do while we wait?"

Jane took the short lunge at Dance and kissed his mouth, and her tongue plunged deep as heartache. Dance quietly groaned and helplessly sipped the essence of pleasure this Jewess had brought to his life. After a moment, Dance sat on the edge of the tub, turned Jane around still standing, and gave her a puppy bite on her ass---she squealed with feigned agony. He turned her back around and kissed and licked her breathless.

"You are my lover, you mad, bad boy. I think of our kisses when I'm in organic chemistry, you know, so I've got a B average so far for the first time in my life because of you and my horny devil mind. How could I ever explain? I'd never been in love before, you know? It's so intense, and there's no beginning or end to the desire. I think we should have 500 children and take over the world so everyone could be as loved and loving as I feel...what's that girgling sound? Oh, Christ, look at the tub!"

Dance and Jane each dipped their toes in the steaming water. "Jesus H.! My toe is in flames!" Dance said loud enough for Jazz upstairs to later mention. They each got in slowly. "Ooh!" "Oh, Man!" "All Hail Christ!" "Ah, my privates!"

Dance thought about how the female anatomy never ceased to amaze him ever since Maura O'Leary pissed for him in the woods when he was four. He and Jane began to soap each other with emphasis on the more interesting areas, licked and kissed each other's faces, Jane's pubic hair soft as an angel's brow. They breasted the bathwater, stoned, giggling, ticklish, and flush with soon ecstacy. "Richard," the name Jane gave to Dance's privacy, peered stiff above the surface of the water like a periscope. Getting out of the tub, they toweled each other dream-like and shivered.

"Last one under the covers killed Christ!" joked Dance.

"Last one under the covers gave birth to Christ," countered Jane.

They hugged hard and trembling. Dance smelled Jane's sweet soap skin, faint beer breath, the musk at her upper thighs. Her blonde oh so blonde hair spread across the pillows full like a sea of wheat. They kissed softly and wet, entranced by the tender agony of their love. Dance pressed and toyed with her breasts, his favorite spot being the "milk duds" that swelled and stiffened. They shivered under the spell of an angry lust. Dance slid his hand slowly down Jane's abdomen, fingered her navel lingering, then reached for his sweetest darling, "Elizabeth," and then, just then, the windows rattled with the fierce song of the wind. He rubbed her fleece so soft and puffed, both puffing, felt his hand suddenly soak, and worked his fingers exactly as Jane had taught him in his college boy innocence. Again the windows rattled, as if from Jane's sudden cries of pleasure and finitude. Her so lovely form contorted, then went limp as in death rattle.

Dance eased onto her and completely buried himself, back and forth easy and slow, and Jane moaned loud and giggled with pleasure and whispered such words as only lovers know and cannot be described or translated. Dance stiffened and gasped, and Jane would never know how near he fought such burning tears for this terrible beauty, this guest now rising, this guest now taking leave.

Chapter 63

Dance breasted weeds running through marsh mud to a chorus of frogs and enraged robins. Cat tails shed their only purpose briefly visible through the intruding spears of cold light. There was exhilaration in the escape, yet the rushing scene became disturbingly similar to the fled madness itself: profound aloneness, fear of the unknown, and a ruthless distraction. Dance did not know if he was headed out or deeper into the panting thicket. Then finally above the slosh of his shoes and labored breathing he heard the approach of the friendly swoosh of traffic and the unwitting parties of rescue. He stomped onto the tar shedding mud and swamp seed and broke a slight grin upon spotting the Route 9 sign. When traffic finally grew silent, Dance crossed to the eastbound side and cast the bait of his thumb with his long-legged shadow. Very soon a generous soul pulled off the right side of the road and waved Dance to hop into the bed of his 50's pickup truck. Conversation then consisted of the driver hollering out the window barely louder than the wind and revving motor. "Where you headed?"

Dance's thick long hair pulled his head in multiple directions as the force of the wind caught his Irish sail. The ride was ridiculous and joyous through air exploding through the senses like a swim in snow melt. The mad ghosts slept, and Dance relished the wave of a tentative relief while gazing back still for the rising dust of demons. But the air was nearly all.

They passed through Route 9 towns grown invisible with familiarity, and soon Dance's shoes scuffed against Boston streets. His plan led him to Blossom Street on Beacon Hill to test the charity of David DiCenso, friend of a friend and dope peddler to the masses of Stoughton. Shock and worry rose when Dance learned DiCenso had moved to parts unknown. Now he was a man-boy with neither funds nor destination. Dance bummed change from a swarm of carnival hippies bound for the common, and he used it to call home. He learned from his brother Tim that his parents had gone to visit him at Westboro. Tim urged Dance in a tone of shared surrender to go back. Dance dropped the phone to hang and felt the hook in his gut pulling up a sickening fearfulness to roost in his lower chest. He saw his choices narrow to none. Shall he opt for a lifetime of terrified madness shriveled in the corner of some back ward? It was clear in mania's afterglow that he was being summoned, and he would be dutiful.

A block down the street Dance came upon an alley that turned inward and disappeared in a quadrangle surrounded by windowless brick walls, littered with shards of glass and reeking of wine and urine. He pondered his fate with dizzying intensity. He fished from his pocket the slip blade Hera had given him to signal her later abandoned intention to renounce suicide. "Now the beast is mine," echoed in his mind in the diamond glitter of broken glass in the intruding slash of sunlight. He did not feel the blade as he whacked at his arms, anesthetized by the blend of his black mood and a cruel fear.

He counted six deep running cuts with a hint of blushing sky and kind peace awaiting onset of nothingness following the crimson and indigo dribble. For 10 minutes he waited as for a bus in cold rain. He decided he needed to cut more (what is enough?), and he plunged the blade into the center of his chest to see spurts in pulse-time. Waiting again, more tipsy in whiter light, he heard the songs of the street, yet despair took hold as light persisted. Dance decided to stand facing the darkest wall, and he applied the athletic candor of his youth. He stood on his hands, facing out and ass against the brick, and stretched his legs straight up (perpendicular to the earth). Thus would gravity yield to this dance of madness. He felt the trickle from his chest to his chin while his arms flowing thickened the pools at his palms. A silver tear etched his forehead. Dance then closed his eyes (these are not words). In such blindness he searched the void to take comfort in the miracle of the drunken Denver dawn, the sounds and smells of a spring that once had gathered there a madness ago.