CRAIG EDWARD KELSO, Toads at Midnight

In an age of easily available images mocking religion, organized and otherwise, Fred Woodworth’s pamphlets, THERE IS NO GOD and THE KORAN, appear quaint. They read as the musings of a man steeped in a grand battle for the mind. 

When a reader also considers Fred Woodworth’s personal story, he is the editor and publisher of the longest running Anarchist journal in the United States, THE MATCH! (since 1969), the pamphlets serve as historical pieces.

At one time, these arguments meant everything to me.

They gave voice to the thoughts in my head, and they did so in tight sentences. They did so in sharp logic. They did so without compromise.

And so it is I offer them to you here, in this space Myra and I created.

What Myra and I do is incessantly consider ideas. We talk for hours and hours, at times, discussing ideas of life and death, ideas of grave importance. There is a time to be light. There is a time to be silly. And sometimes there is the matter of what our lives are about, what humans are, … the epistemological foundation on which we start our every day.

Sometimes we need to read ideas at complete opposition to our own. Sometimes.

Good writing is good for a reason. It gives the reader an insight to the person. Nothing better, nothing perhaps other than taste in music or a long chess game, reveals a person to others. When we write, we show our ass.

These two pamphlets were produced completely by Fred. No corporate backing. No federal grant. No foundation money. Fred toiled in his flat, with his very own printer from the 1950s, and hand set the type. He made the covers. No computers. No computers EVER. He is an artist of a singular kind.

I dot the pamphlets with his amazing covers from THE MATCH!. Again, it's easy to skip over them visually as it is to skip over these arguments, passing them with a sneer. But you're worse for not having gotten to know Fred. You are. And that won't do.  

While our world insists upon rushing to insanity, Fred gave me hope rational humans could exist, and that they could exist in a principled and ethical way. I love Fred very, very much. 

Any errors or mistakes are mine, not Fred's. 

Meet Fred Woodworth, my intellectual mentor and good friend.

And I mean it.  
  

********************************************************

THERE IS NO GOD.  

What is called "God", namely a supposed-to-be all-knowing, everywhere present supreme wise spirit, CANNOT exist, for a number of reasons. I hope to be able to show to any reasonably open-minded person who will take the trouble to read my arguments (and who will not assume that I am in league with "the Devil", or that I am an evil agent of "godless Communism"), that there is not the least reason to put any stock in the claims of persons who think such a supreme spirit exists.

Fred Woodworth

Let me begin by noting that most of those who today think it is proper to believe in a god do so automatically, because others before them have done the same. That this is not a good reason for doing anything ought to be apparent to all. If, then, you happen to think already that my own claim in the title of this essay is wrong, won't you search your mind and think of when, if ever, anything BUT the automatic assumption of a god's existence was ever presented to you as a viable belief? Actually, the belief in a god has been traditional for many centuries, just as many other notions have been. This one, like countless ones before it, needs to be subjected to logic, analysis, and impartial testing, not just blindly accepted in a stupid suspension of critical thought.

According to Christianity, two gods exist: the good god and the god of evil, the Devil. Thus, anybody could really choose which of the two to worship; but what if it could be shown that there was not logically any difference? Consider that the "good" god MUST be either totally powerless and superfluous (or nonexistent), or a being of endless ill will, a devil himself, since he is necessarily either responsible for conditions being as they are today, or else is powerless to prevent them being so. An ancient series of questions and answers inquires and concludes:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

Why believe in an ineffective or powerless god? Why respect an evil god? One would be better off to worship the sun; at least the sun exists.

But Christianity, whose notion of a god prevails in our culture, makes other claims as well about the alleged supreme being: that he is wise, that he created the real world, that he is merciful, that he is a god responsible for beauty, that he knows everything.

And yet these qualities are not possible, either in combination with each other or separately. Can God think of a task he cannot accomplish? If so, he has imagined a case in which he is not omnipotent. Yet if he cannot think of such a case, he cannot be all-knowing. This is one of the more trivial and often mentioned contradictions.

If "God" was necessary to create the real world, in its infinite complexity, then who was the necessary one who CREATED GOD ... as God is presumably still more complex, and in even greater need therefore of a creator himself?

If he is responsible for beauty, he is likewise responsible for ugliness. Is there any justice in praising him for the beautiful, but keeping silent about the hideous? Some religionists seem to delight in ascribing to "God" the credit for having made apple trees in fields of green, under a blue sky; but where is their creator when we remember that there are tapeworms in the world? I think I would be embarrassed to have to admit that I believed in an "all-wise God" who made tapeworms. But the very religionists who use this beauty argument the most frequently are never heard at all on the subject of the disgusting things likewise ascribable to their god. And no wonder!

If he is wise, why did he not compose a coherent account of what he wanted mankind to do? No. The Bible is not such an account; nobody can agree on what it says. The very god who, according to those who believe in him, made every last electron spin in its orbit everywhere throughout the universe, still cannot write a clear, unmistakable volume of instruction to human beings who are supposed to follow his wishes. Instead, he allegedly gives us the Bible or the Koran, or some other jumble of ridiculous and ancient superstitions and vague, wandering narratives that show nothing so much as how senile the priests were who wrote them.

God, according to the Bible, created the Devil. God, being all-knowing, must have known what the Devil would do; why, then did he create him? Likewise, if God really wanted to "save" mankind, why not do it by the simple methods already used when creating the world; namely, just by snapping his fingers? God seems to be given to oddly varying methods; he manufactures everything that exists simply by willing it to be so, then, when he decides he wants a world of goodness, he creates the DEVIL. He then wants to "help" mankind, so allegedly sends among us an agent, Christ, who spreads confusion and accomplishes nothing, absolutely nothing. Christ's so-called purpose, to save man, is futile, since a god who could do all the rest could surely do this too without having to resort to an absurd ritual in Palestine.

Further, from the evidence of the holy wars and inquisitions carried out by those believing in Christianity, it must be concluded that Christ's advent was a major tragedy to the human species because it has brought pain to, and worsened the lot of, millions.

If the holy books were God's attempt to prove to mankind that he existed, he obviously must have wished for mankind to believe this. But, as the best way to make mankind believe in God would be for this creature to make himself known publicly and unmistakably, it is apparent that God's supposed method was a failure. Thus, I myself can think of methods superior to those of "God"; but a god so incompetent that any mere mortal can surpass his mind is nonsensical; God must not exist.

And then, if God is just, why has he created a world of injustice? The reply that our world is a test by God to see which among us will do this or that, is a reply that is very poorly considered. Millions of young children are maimed or killed or born with gruesome deformities; thus, God does not even have the sense to apply his test to all under equal conditions. Even the Department of Motor Vehicles is wiser than "God".

One of the Anarchist writers of many years ago, Johann Most, observed that the edicts and commandments of God are obscure:

... they are conundrums, which the subjects for whose special benefit and enlightenment they are issued, can neither understand nor solve. The laws of this hidden monarch require explanation, but those who explain are ever at variance themselves. Everything that they relate about their concealed sovereign is a chaotic mass of contradictions. They speak of him as exceedingly good, but still there is no individual existing who does not complain of his mandates. They speak of him as infinitely wise, but yet in his administration everything opposes common sense and reason. They praise his justice, and still the best of his subjects, are as a rule least favored. They assure us that he sees everything; still his omnipresence alleviates no distress. He is, they say, a friend of order, yet in his domain everything is confusion and disorder. All his actions are self-determined, yet occurrences seldom if ever bear out his plans. He can penetrate the future, but does not know the things that will come to pass ... All his enterprises are for the sake of glory, yet his purpose, to be universally glorified, is never attained. He labors incessantly for the welfare of his subjects, but most of them are in dire distress for the necessities of life... He is an Almighty who is omnipresent, yet descended from Heaven to see what mankind was doing; who is merciful, and yet has at times permitted the slaughter of millions. An Almighty, who damned millions of innocents for the faults of a few... who created a Heaven for the fools who believe in the 'gospel' and a hell for the enlightened who repudiate it ...

God, as revealed in his book of edicts and narratives, is practically an idiot. He has nothing to say that any sensible person should want to listen to.

Now, some charge that our view of "God" is ethnocentric. They are anxious to bring in gods which do not create, control, or know anything, and which are completely powerless, futile intangibles having no qualities of matter, energy, or even location. They wish to prove that "God" is a "process", or a "consciousness", or some other nondescript vagueness which neatly escapes having any properties assigned to itself so that detractors can discuss the logical implications of them. Conceptually speaking, it is meaningless to say that "God" is a process or a "consciousness". But once this piece of verbal sleight-of-hand is let pass unchallenged, the modern religionist can point with triumph to things that do exist, such as processes, consciousnesses, etc., and thus "prove" that "God" exists.

Religionists today first refuse to concede that they believe in the "old" god. The new god serves no purpose that they will define, so it can't be attacked, but only denied. Religion has therefore learned much from us Atheists: it has learned that it is harder for us to attack that which is not specified. So, today, their god is "the wind" or whatever. But we must point out that this is only an attempt to preserve the notion of a god after the substance has been destroyed. Lacking any separate function, such as being creator of the universe, etc., the idea of anything being called a "God" is completely to no purpose.

Not the least evidence exists that there really is a god of any kind, and unless there is evidence, it is harmful to believe that any such god exists, because then the illogical way of thinking can be extended to other areas of society, as Indeed it has. A civilization that holds that it is proper to believe positively in something for which there is no evidence at all, perverts the fundamental structure of logic upon which human civilization itself rests.

We Atheists make a revolutionary claim: Nothing exists unless it can be proved to do so -- the burden of proof being upon those who assert. The advance of the human intellect has been one long battle for this rational principle, against a vicious host of advocates of all kinds of nonexistent things: angels, humours, stellar spheres, dragons, ends of the earth where the explorer would drop off, warlocks and monsters, and soon, and, lastly, "God". He who is too weak to deny the existence of the unproven "God" must admit anything and everything and must live in a fantasy of unseen presences. The very walls may seethe when he is not looking, with extraordinary witchery (PROVE they don't!); and the neighbors may, for all he knows, turn into toads at midnight.

There is no god. As expressed by religions, the history of gods is silly, nonfactual, and contradictory. As set forth by theologians, the idea of gods is an argument that assumes its own conclusions, and proves nothing. And as expressed socially, the belief in "God" is reactionary and harmful, standing forever in the way of betterment of the human condition.

There is no god; there are only churches and religious persons with an interest in preserving their station. There is no god; there are only people who believe because others told them it was so. There is no god; there is only the real world with its ugliness and beauty and violence and peace and happiness and pain. If the world is to be made beautiful and peaceful and happy, "God" won't do it. We will.

*********************************************************************************************

THE KORAN

All but unknown in the West is the fact that, like several modern Christian evangelists, Mohammed (c. 570-632), the founder of the religion known as Islam, once found himself embroiled in a sexual scandal. One of his nine wives, Hafsah, caught him in the act with a slave-girl. Hafsah had evidently known something about his liaison earlier, and had extracted from the Prophet his promise to end the relationship - which, of course, he didn't carry out. When Hafsah, furious at the thought that she might be a mere tenth instead of a ninth of his attentions, suspiciously checked up and had her worst fears confirmed, the situation blew up into a quarrel involving another wife, A'ishah.

Coming to Mohammed's rescue, Allah dictated (through Mohammed, of course) another chapter of the Koran - generally number 66, entitled "Prohibition." Here God attacks the wives, and blusters to them that: "If you two turn to God in repentance (for your hearts have sinned), you shall be pardoned; but if you conspire against him, know that God is his protector."

God also remarks, rather petulantly, I thought, that Hafsah and A'ishah had better watch out because they can be replaced: "It may well be that, if he divorce you, his Lord will give him in your place better wives than yourselves, submissive to God and full of faith, devout, penitent, obedient, and given to fasting."

Already, back in chapter 33 God had issued a bunch of special dispensations for The Prophet, specifically making it lawful for him (just him) to have intercourse with a number of women who would ordinarily be off-limits:

"Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave-girls whom God has given you as booty; the daughters of your paternal and maternal uncles and of your paternal and maternal aunts... and any believing woman who gives herself to the Prophet... This privilege is yours alone, being granted to no other believer."

In another (extremely short) chapter - number 111, as ever "In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful," the Prophet gets word that his uncle, with whom he's had a dispute (the uncle, Abu-Lahab, apparently thought the Prophet was making it all up), is now under a curse. The entire text of chapter 111 reads:

"May the hands of Abu-Lahab perish. May he himself perish! Nothing shall his wealth and gains avail him. He shall be burnt in a flaming fire, and his wife, laden with faggots, shall have a rope around her neck!"
. . . . .
The first time I read the Koran was when I was in high-school, now quite some years ago. Recently it seemed appropriate to do so again, so I spent a few evenings once more with the Recitation (literal meaning of "Koran"), the governing volume of the hundreds of millions of persons who live within the sphere of Islam, a religion whose name means "submission." 

Unlike the Bible, you can get through the entire Koran in a reasonable amount of time, as it is only about the length of a moderate-sized novel - 435 pages in the translation I recently read (N. J. Dawood's 1956 work, revised in 1974). A few persons, incidentally, have claimed to have similarly read the Bible straight through, but one needs to be very skeptical of such boasts, since a little reflection (and actual experiment) will show how unlikely that is. Texts of this sort attract followers and rabid fanatics for this very reason, that they are so impenetrable in their dense mass. Not having read it and therefore feeling guilty about the failure to do so must constitute a powerful impulse to leap to the defense of things these followers do not actually know. At least with the Koran, comprehending the whole thing is a relatively trivial exercise.

Like the Book of Mormon, the Koran purports to be the further chronicles of what God wants you to do. It recognizes the existence of the Bible or Scriptures and Torah, and states as its reason for being, that the Christians and Jews have too far split into sects and had fallen away from proper observance of "God's" laws. Also like the Book of Mormon, this one is supposedly the transcript of a tablet preserved in heaven.

Allah didn't dictate the whole thing at once, though; more chapters came through as situations (such as Hafsah's investigative surveillance) made them necessary. There are 114 of these, generally arranged by length, with the shortest last. The longer chapters at the beginning of this arbitrary (and non-chronological) arrangement drag rather badly; Mohammed saves his deadliest rantings for the somewhat shorter ones. 

However, all chapters have in common the same type of basic presentation, which is comprised of three ingredients: stories, commands, and threats. Especially threats. All float and bubble to the surface again and again in a broth of astounding amounts of repetition.

For example, in one chapter, no. 55, which is something less than three pages long, the interrogation, "Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?" is repeated 31 times, many of these being complete non sequitur, such as "Flames of fire shall be lashed at you, and molten brass. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?" Well, for a start, I'd want to deny that one. Other repetitions include the story of Noah with certain embellishments, about six or eight times, Pharaoh and Moses, maybe ten, Abraham, Joseph, et al, many more; Jonah, etc. and on and on here and there through the book.

Commands go forward at a blinding rate, thick and fast, too; and more about those in a moment, but first this word from the First Islamic Bank of Sadistic Threats: Mohammed can hardly write two consecutive paragraphs without at least one fairly horrifying promise that infidels, unbelievers, apostates, "People of the Book" (Christ-worshippers), fornicators and others are going to burn in hell, drink boiling water, eat putrid filth for all eternity, have melted metal poured all over them, roast their skins in blazing flame and then be provided immediately with more skin by his eminence, The Compassionate, the Merciful, so that they can be burned some more, and so forth. 

I had wanted to count the number of threats, but bogged down in what seemed like a never-ending mire, so I was forced to resort to a statistical method. By this I compute the total to be around 1200 to 1500, including such ones as these:

"Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Scalding water shall be poured upon their heads, melting their skins and that which is in their bellies. They shall be lashed with rods of iron.Whenever, in their torment, they try to escape, back they shall be dragged, and will be told, 'Taste the torment!'" 

"Those who deny our revelations we will burn in fire. No sooner will their skins be consumed than we shall give them other skins, so that they may truly taste the scourge."
Atheists are to be crucified or else have their hands and feet cut off.

Incidentally, chapter 74 contains an interesting point: "Would that you knew what the Fire is like! It leaves nothing, it spares no one; it burns the skins of men. It is guarded by nineteen keepers."
. . . . . .
Commands a person would have to obey in order to avoid these demented tanning sessions range from lawful eating to lawful sexual practices to treating orphans properly. Slavery is permitted, in fact definitely cited approvingly, and a master is allowed to compel his slave-girl to have intercourse with him; but he is not allowed to prostitute her for money to others.

More commands order the faithful not to be friends with Christians or anybody else who is not Islamic, and especially not with unbelievers. The arguments of unbelievers should not be listened to. Their cities should be destroyed.

Women are not addressed in the Koran; the reader is explicitly and implicitly male. 

Women are indeed spoken of, but not to, and they are stated to be inferior and subservient. Girl infants are not lawful to kill, but otherwise it is definitely to be mourned when one is born instead of a son.

Conception is stated (several times) to take place when ejaculated semen turns into a clot of blood that Allah makes into a human being inside the mere vessel, the female. 

Other scientific thought has the sky as an actual dome, perfect as there are no cracks. The far western setting place of the sun is a pool of mud.

Mohammed thinks there are two seas on the planet, and lightning is a sign from God.

Sometimes he purrs and chuckles: "How many cities have we laid in ruin! In the night our scourge fell upon them, or at midday when they were drowsing."

Sometimes he is apocalyptic: "On that day there shall be faces veiled with darkness, covered with dust. These shall be the faces of the wicked and the unbelieving."

But always he is monstrous and insane. His recitation is one of gross, turgid evil, and the impact of his "Koran" upon Arab culture and the world has been profoundly, unrelievedly bad.

It is not accurate to speak of "fundamentalist Islam"; there is either the Islam that is founded upon this book, the Koran, or there is something else, some other religion, which has nothing to do with this book at all. In any case, THIS recitation, by Mohammed, of "God's" alleged speeches and edicts, leaves absolutely no room for any latitude, any "interpretation," any individual opinions at all. It eradicates, indeed, any trace of free will and only proffers to male fanatics several hundred paragraphs cajoling them to follow orders so that after death they will live endlessly in "gardens watered by running streams" where dark-eyed, explicitly "high bosomed" "virgins" will have sexual relations with them throughout infinity on green silken cushions and lush carpets. The repetition constitutes a pretty good technique of hypnosis; the threats drive home the consequences of disobedience, and the commands are those of an ignorant, insane priesthood operating as the heirs to a lunatic's pretensions to speak for a nonexistent "god."

We have witnessed the result. 

****
Do yourself a favor and order a copy of THE MATCH! It's free, and can only be had by mail. No website. No phone number. You have to write Fred and ask for one:

THE MATCH!   
Post Office Box 3012
Tucson, Arizona 85702

CRAIG EDWARD KELSO, Real Heroes Are Pirates

Baguio City, Philippines

Who is going to make the social revolution if it’s not the swindlers, the wretched, the murderers, the cheats, all the scum that suffer here below without the slightest sign of hope? wrote Argentine author Roberto Arlt.

And what if revolution doesn’t happen in neat and tidy historical segments, worked by the Great Man theory of history where one dude (typically a politician or military leader) directs some lump, some geographical blob of persons toward a vague end? What if the Lincolns, Hitlers, Stalins, FDRs, Kennedys, and so forth are so much piffle?

For me, revolutions are scalable, happening in softer ways without armies and grand paper constitutions, resolutions, or manifestos. Revolutions of real and lasting significance happen in trade, in engineering, in individual art and commerce. Revolutions aren’t violent, but instead joyful, and meant to be embraced. 

Sir, sir, the little boy tugged at my shirt as I walked the parking grounds of Baguio City’s cathedral. The packed mountainous little place is swarming with Filipinos making pilgrimages, and Filipino college students seeking relief from tropical heat.  

I noticed him stalking the van when we entered the campus. He was sitting initially curbside with stacks of popular reading materials, magazines and newspapers. He caught sight of us, and he jumped and made his way toward as I exited and began to walk around, stretching.

Gathering my bearings, trying to get a sense of where I was and what was happening atop this mountain town, I looked down at him. He was something right out of a period movie, a Dickens character. The baseball capped, rusty little Filipino boy trying to sell the big, fat American flushed with cash some basic wares – again, in this case, magazines.

 

I grabbed at his holdings. They were international newspapers and titty magazines. Some of the people I was with, the heavily Americanized adults, shuddered at a few variables of the scene: 1, he was a boy out of school, and it was a school day; 2, he was a kid selling what amounts to a version of porn; 3, obviously his parents didn’t give a shit.

We don’t get to choose our parents, and sure there’s an argument for not giving him my money. We support this Filipino street urchin, and maybe we subsidize his lifestyle and encourage it on. Okay. I won’t argue that point. But I am a tourist, he’s a kid, and I don’t know his situation or how to address it in any meaningful way.

All I know is what is before me, now. A kid, existing in backbreaking poverty has a chance at getting a few more pesos than he might otherwise because a whale from the West has entered his jurisdiction.

I handed over five dollars US, and insisted he give me the nastiest quasi porn mag for sale – some British tabloid’s traditional Page 3 girl with enormous breasts. We laughed. He thanks me. Maybe his whole stash was worth five bucks. I bought the story, the travel vignette, not the magazine itself.

The Philippines is like two-thirds of the world’s real economy: it’s a giant flea market.

And when we read or hear about the evils of capitalism, the image we’re approved of conjuring in our minds is a bloated corporation, the gaudy Donald Trumps, and the latest heiress’s sex tape scandal.

But capitalism, freer markets unencumbered by relative government regulatory regimes, allowing people to trade and contract with one another as they see fit, is really a cooperative bazaar. 

Capitalism, money and goods moving freely, is what the world’s poor do instinctively and without any ideology or high theory.

Pirates. Black markets. Street peddlers. Hawkers. Bootleggers.

My people.

In San Diego, they’re harder and harder to find.

They’ve been largely regulated away by local government's gun, as city councils funded by the street seller’s main competitors waft new laws against them, and they're pushed into the darker corners of the formal world. 

But they’re there.

Sometimes they walk by you, quietly offering cigarettes at a severe discount. Other times, they suggest narcotics of one kind or another. Garage sales abound, and semi-formal informal markets like Swap Meets are a popular way for people outside the polite economy to make some scratch.

Whereas all the shops and malls the typical American purchases her goods are licensed, regulated in innumerable ways, quality controlled through various government agencies, the majority of the world gets their stuff through debrouillards, a French word connoting super self-reliant or ingenious. 

The DIY economy, the little side hustles around the globe, is set to generate ten trillion dollars in value, a number not possible to grasp unless it's placed against the luxury economy, the governmental legitimized economy. When that's done, the black market is its own continent of trade, and that's no small thing.

The beauty of human interaction is our ability to supply what it is we desire, and we reward those for their satisfying us.

Distribution systems are life.

Manufacturing and design are valued highly in the developed world, and that makes a certain amount of sense. But it’s all academic until the good or service reaches the consumer.

What debrouillards do is bring design and manufacturing down to the people – the people, you know, the ones progressive legislators claim to love and work on behalf of; the ones conservative legislators demand to impart values to. 

In fact, much more than fake government claims, the black market pirate does exactly that. She brings the latest knockoff goods and services directly to the people.

Food trucks. Video games. Movies. Clothes. Phones.  

Many a date or friend has turned their nose at the debrouillards, street stands offering us warmed meats and breads, sunglasses, jewelry. When I have the money, I make it a point to stop, to engage the hawker, and buy two … one for myself and one for my companion.

It’s a radical way to live in the industrial world.

Fit your gal with a trinket from the street vendor. I’ve had them come back to me many years later, thrust out their wrist and smile widely at how the small gesture I made to them has lasted so long. It becomes among their most prized possessions. 

Buy a friend a street taco, and watch as his face contorts and confirms how this might one of the better meals of his life. Purchase a load of bootlegged movies for loved ones at Christmas, and have a laugh at showing them where their gift came from and how the camera shakes ever-so at the movie’s climatic scene. Trust me, that’s a gift they’ll have a story attached to for years and years.

More importantly, you’re performing a dangerous task, a law-breaking moment of civil disobedience. You’re telling officialdom they don’t matter. You’re undermining police. You’re devaluing the public employee unions who parasitically live off your hard work.

Even better, you’re helping fund the hero who is the peddler, the pirate, the black marketer, the flea market CEO, the debrouillards. 

And you're a revolutionary, dancing in a peaceful revolution without a gun, without an army, without a manifesto.

And I mean it.       

checalaloskelsos@gmail.com

CRAIG EDWARD KELSO, Slut Shaming

I call them cartmans, as in the character from South Park.

They look like little cartmans, bundled up and round. Their starfish hands squeeze out from their arms, and they waddle onto the Metropolitan Transit System’s public bus, pushing and chortling like fat turkeys – if fat turkeys could speak Spanish.

These are what we call in Southern California abuelas, grandmothers of the Mexican variety.

And if you’ve ever had an opportunity to interact with someone from the Third World, especially from North America’s economically poorest nation, you’ll know they’re all about grouping. Everything in their sphere of interest revolves around the group, the collective, la raza.

It can be nauseating if you’re even slightly inclined toward individualism.

Yes, of course, the United States and Canada are themselves infected with massive groupthink. I don’t ever want to leave the impression they’re any better or more evolved in any aspect. They’re not. But the quantity of groupthink, and to a degree its quality, is different. In the United States and Canada there is room for slices of these societies to tolerate individuality. In Mexico, at least among the border towns I’ve experienced, the tolerance isn’t so clear. You’re expected to act as they act. You’re expected to do as they do. You’re expected to think as they think. Reality and evidence are unimportant.

A silly anecdotal proof might be my name. For whatever reason, they refuse to say it. I honestly cannot recall a Mexican person ever giving more than a first try at saying and then remembering my name. They automatically click toward their cultural chauvinism and call me Gregorio. I don’t have to do a thing. I am Gregorio by default. And when that becomes too syllabically difficult, I am relegated to Goiyo.

It happens every time.

Importantly, Third World countries in my hemisphere are dominated by Catholic Christianity. There’s good and bad to it, and I fall on the side of believing it to be a force for mostly bad. I’ve written before how Catholicism is a great benefactor to Western Civilization, but here is an obvious aspect where it is horribly, horribly wrong: sex. I suppose anyone can write about Catholic views on sex, and most of what is written is largely garbage. You can predict the criticisms about repression and subjugation of women. It’s all been said before. There isn’t any light there.

What I can stress about Northern Mexican culture when it comes to sex is schizophrenia. 

The average Mexican babe is pummeled with sex and sexual imagery from a very early age. Catch Mexican television. I am no prude, but even I have to take a break from tits and ass. Not Mexicans! Fuck. Nightly news casts seat pouty-lipped, huge breasted women to read the day’s happenings. Programming children shows have super tightly clothed babes running around. Soap operas are ridiculous. Movies. Comedies. Dramas. Popular music. Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex. And when you’re done, a little more sex.

And Mexican women are freer when it comes to their bodies in the sense they obviously dress to the tastes of Mexican men. You can see this on the streets here in the US. Large Latina chicks stuff themselves into the tightest clothing on the planet, skinny jeans and all. They don’t care. Boobs falling out, ass everywhere. It’s all there for the world to see. They’re slathered in makeup, poof’d up in perfumes. Mexican dudes love it.

And where I work there is a constant problem of cultural attitudes. In some parts of Mexican culture it is acceptable and encouraged for men to be forward in their approval of women, approval in the come-hither sense. Mexican men where I work banter openly with Mexican women, and they discuss penis size, anal sex, and the vagaries of various foods to different anatomical parts, taking all that talk to its logical conclusion. It’s all quite harmless, but also very revealing. The US chicks who work around Mexican dudes often are revolted. If a Mexican dude spies a tongue ring on a US college babe, he’ll point out how she’s probably very good at sucking dick. Man, oh, man! Watch the horror on the white babe’s face. Though she wears the tongue ring to give that very impression, and she no doubt is amazing at sucking dick, she will suddenly turn into an outraged Mother Teresa. Hilarious, but also sad when the Mexican dude is fired for something called “sexual harassment.”

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION PORN

So that’s the background to what transpired at the front of this particular bus on this particular morning.

The cartmans bullied their way to the front, openly crowding out less aggressive riders to gain a supermajority in our section. The cartmans all work in the service industry, cleaning houses and hotels, taking care of rich US families, etc. They know one another, and it’s not unusual for them to network this tidy sorority for jobs and the like.

I happen to understand a great deal of the pigeon, Third World Spanish spoken by Northern Mexicans.

This morning, the lone non-abuelas were myself and an older white woman, probably in her mid50s. She happened to hold a paperback, bookmarked toward the end of the novel, and seemed to want to hide its title from view. It was pretty obvious. The cover by now is notorious. It’s the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. Yeah, I was shocked to learn the book has two other parts. Wow. Anyway, the white woman carefully placed the book face down on her lap.

The abuelas seized her discretion, noting how coy this white lady seemed. The spine of the book, however, flashed to one of the abuelas, and the cartmans were off in full gossip mode. The Spanish started flying, and sorted remarks were made about the older white woman.

Obviously, the abuelas cackled, this lady was a closet puta, a whore. The cartmans nodded in agreement, laughing and clapping, showing their deep lines and squinty eyes. They were having a blast at the older white lady’s unknowing expense. The older white lady seemed to instinctively understand she was being referred to, and was a little unnerved when one of the abuelas daringly pointed in her direction. The cartmans continued on, noting how the white lady probably no longer had a man, a sure sign of her worthlessness. She was no doubt masturbating to the book, the cartmans spat in Spanish.

The scene grabbed me for several reasons.

The white lady got off at the next stop, and she was by this time pretty upset – at least she seemed upset in the face. I never spoke to her. I wondered if maybe this was the first time in her adult life she was caught with obviously feminine masturbatory material. I wondered what she thought of the book. Obviously, she was enjoying it! For Christ’s sake, she had a fucking bookmark and was carrying it around in public. Hahahahaha. But I felt a sadness toward her because women of her generation and later were taught to somewhat hide their need for raw, animal sexuality.

When the bus let the white lady go, I almost instantly thought about slut shaming and the cult around hating female libido. Obviously, the cult is strong in Mexican culture, but it has a different timbre, a different tone. The younger generation of Mexican women are wealthier, especially if they’re living in the US, and they’re better educated. They’re having fewer babies, and they’re making better choices when it comes to marriage. But the older Mexican generation of women still cling to the battered and awful notion of a woman being sexual for purely sexual reasons equals less of a woman.

Schizophrenic. 

Again, Mexican women talk about sex incessantly. They’re absorbed in who is doing what to whom, how, and when. Yet when they’re presented with the topic in purely enjoyment form, they recoil back to shaming another. And the group folds in on itself in agreement. Each one of these fat grandmas probably loved to be fucked silly, doggy style, ass up, face down, and all the rest. I’d bet good money the abuelas sucked a mean dick too. Why the shame? Why the finger pointing?

And then I remembered Anna.

THE RECTUM AS A POCKET

Anna wasn’t supposed to be on her knees, MANY YEARS AGO, behind a freeway’s sound barrier at the perimeter of a popular shopping mall, slathering my favorite part of me with saliva and making my eyes roll and stick in the back of their sockets.

It was my very first reception of fellacio, and Anna was a champ.   

Nope, this wasn’t supposed to be happening.

Anna was bouncy, an effervescent ball of energy, super smart and from a great family. Her father was a physician; her mother, something of a business woman. And I learned in later years her family was probably old money.

On our first little date, Anna explained what proctology meant.

It was her father’s trade. She matter of fact gestured, pounding home how the rectum was a container, a pocket, a storage device. This was all being done in plain view of other fast food restaurant customers, and to their mild discomfort. Anna was undaunted. Oh, Craig, she expanded, people in prison use the rectum to couch tobacco products!  

She regaled me with random body part knowledge regularly.

Anna was confident. She was curious. She was brilliant.

I was to be her first male experiment, as it turned out. She’d read and heard all about male workings, but wasn’t able to do the empirical testing such knowledge required – especially to round out a biological education.

Up until she met me, it was all theory.

And I was a good first choice as such things go. I was raised by a woman, so my softer features came to light when around girls, but I was also something of a jock. I straddled the line between the art fags and the douche bags. I was right in the middle, a perfect sprinkling of faggotry and the heyhowyadoin’? dude.

She took to me, and quickly.

We were from two different worlds. Anna liked that about us.

My parents divorced early, and my mother was left to twist in the winds of the failed sexual revolution. She was put out to pasture with newly empowering child support legislation, allowing her to find an apartment in a neighborhood filled with other single mother zombies. There, she worked two and sometimes three jobs, throwing all of her time and energy into her only child, me. My father darted in and out of my life, and so mom was defacto parentus totalus. Mom didn’t date for two-thirds of my life. I don’t know exactly why that was the case, but she wasn’t the single mom out on the prowl. She instead buckled down, making sure I was able to play organized sports and enjoy a robust childhood sans a father. All of that demanded her taking menial work.

Anna lived in an enormous house.

When mom and I were invited for dinner one evening, we entered Anna's estate and I remember my mother asking in all seriousness, It must take your family most of the week to clean this?

Anna laughed politely.

Anna loved to read. I didn’t read. Anna loved to learn. I loved to play baseball. Anna was insanely interested in everything. I loved to play baseball. She was a young woman. I was a little boy. We were the same age, but Anna was years and years beyond me. I loved to play baseball.   

THE MONEY MELON

Anna’s breasts were two honeydew melons, standing at attention, and they accentuated the pinup girl lines her body revealed at small glimpses. She wore Summer dresses, and when she’d walk ahead of me the sun would catch the material at the right angles, silhouetting her gorgeous form. She could dazzle me every way, from great conversation to satisfying my prurient ogling. She had legs for days.

When she called me to announce we were going to the beach one Summer afternoon, I forgot that meant she’d be in a bathing suit.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I couldn’t function for the first 15 minutes as she plopped herself on my mother’s sofa. Her bikini top barely held together. Spaghetti straps were not all that common, and Anna’s bikini found its way to me from one of her family’s European vacations. God bless those Euros! Christ. My mind boggled at the thought I’d get to see the bottom, and soon.

At the beach, Anna’s sun-worshipping took on an otherworldly aspect. She handed me the bottle of lotion, asking I apply it to her back. Off came her shorts, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a chick’s buttocks in real life. She had a thong bottom. I tried to play it off as if I’d seen this a million times, but I could feel my legs shaking and my eye twitch. She prostrated herself on her towel, undoing her top so as to avoid tan lines.

There she was.

Friends, classmates were all around the beach. Anna wasn’t popular with the other girls, and that was due to a well -known cliché about young women: they’re haters. Smoking hot bitches are often shunned because, well, they’re smoking fucking hot. I wasn’t aware of the cliché just yet, but it was in full effect whenever I hung out with Anna.

The next day, guys were highfiving me furiously, asking for my secret.

I felt like I was betraying Anna’s friendship, so I asked the guys to chill. We’re just friends. She’s a cool girl. Guys went on to describe Anna in the way I knew I’d thought about her, but I didn’t like how they knew I also knew. Something about being a typical guy upset me. And though I was, and am, a typical guy – the most typical of typical – I didn’t like the mirror being held up. More than a few times, I’d get upset and defend her honor, or what I thought was her honor.

Assholes.

Anna drove a long, white, 70s, convertible Cadillac. She’d swing by practice and pick me up on a daily basis, and we’d go for a bite to eat or just drive. She loved to drive. Her mouse-colored hair, straight and long, blew, and it would tap against her Jackie O sunglasses. She’d talk and talk and talk. It wasn’t like any conversation I would have with another person. She’d found a book on some subject I didn’t understand, and she’d come to a conclusion. When we were in the halls the next day, she’d slip me a folded note, and when I broke it open to read I remember thinking this girl was incredible because she used parenthetical statements (I hadn’t any idea why half moons were in sentences). 

TRIANGLE

One night she phoned me in an excited panic. Her parents were gone for the night. Could I get out of the house?

Shit.

My mother was working all hours of the day and night. No problem. Next thing I knew, Anna and I were headed to the airport, and we sat on her hood and watched planes drop their landing gear directly above us as they continued onto the landing strip.  

It was on that night Anna told me she wanted an orgasm. She had managed to give herself one, but wanted it generated by another person.

I paused, and the blood left my face and gathered in my shoes.

Anna instantly understood I hadn’t a clue about such things, though I was familiar with the word. She asked if I knew how the vagina worked. It’s like a triangle, Craig, a lovely, fleshy triangle. You just have to stimulate the apex of the triangle.

Anna’s thumbs and index fingers made it a lot easier for me to visualize the va-jay-jay’s essential elements.

Triangles I could understand! Yes, sir.

Anna laughed, dismissing the whole idea as her very own thought experiment, and she asked I forget she even mentioned it.

It was all I could think about for weeks.

Triangles were everyfuckingwhere.

Vaginas were labyrinths, dark holes I’d only seen in magazines. And since it was taboo to have such magazines around or on my person, the sight of pussy was fleeting and rare. A grand mystery. Anna had indeed unweaved that rainbow a bit, but not a lot. She was dealing with a rank amateur, and we both knew it.

CHINESE ALGEBRA

The major league baseball team in my city happened to hold a free game at the local stadium.

Anna didn’t really like sports. The only sport she knew was college football, and that was mostly due to her father being an alumnus of Ohio State. Anna had sweatshirts and stickers. But she found sports boring, and she asked often why I was obsessed with baseball.

It was a chance for Anna to enter my world, my little provincial universe of professional baseball. She liked the fact she wouldn’t have to pay. She offered to drive.

The stadium was less than half filled, and the game was boring even by baseball standards.

She laughed when I stood for the National Anthem, and she was impressed I knew all the words. She didn’t really get a chance to hear the Anthem, she said, and to her the words sounded really violent. I’d never heard anyone talk that way. To me, it was just something everyone did at the start of the game. Anna looked at me with what I recall was at least a small amount of pity.

Anna and I walked around, talking. We walked to all levels of the stadium, and Anna pointed out parts of architecture. She marveled at the huge lights. She wondered about the scoreboard. She enjoyed running down the circular runways. We ate. But mostly we talked.

It was back to sex and what that meant.

Anna was a virgin, but she didn’t say that word with any pride. It was annoying to her. She wanted to have intercourse, she said, but wanted to practice first before she entered into a relationship. She spoke about the subject as if it were just typical conversation. I began to sweat.

She wanted to do things with me.

My mind scrambled.

She laughed and threw her head back, and then she broke my personal space and gave me a long hug, continuing to laugh at my shocked expression. We remained in embrace for longer than a quick joke hug should, and she asked if I could feel her breasts pressing against me.

Fuck.

She wasn’t letting go. She kissed my ear, whispering, Can you feel that energy, Craig? Can you?

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t really move, at all. I was stuck. Anna says I responded in a cracked voice, but I don’t remember saying anything back (we spoke on the phone a few days ago).

I was harder than Chinese algebra.

Her hands moved to confirm her suspicion, and I felt like I was going to vomit. It was the most vulnerable I have ever been. I’d had erections before, but not like this. Damn! This was completely involuntary, and I was embarrassed. As her body pressed strongly against mine, her hand went to unbutton my jeans. I finally made an audible sound.

What the fuck are you doing? I squeaked, breaking the mood.

Anna grabbed my lower jaw and sighed, Craig, just relax. I am going to make you feel really good. I want you to orgasm too, but I want to bring you there.

This bitch was speaking French for all I knew. I didn’t understand anything she was saying. But her eyes were intense and purposeful.

Right then and there, a group of our classmates herded by us. Everyone was at the game. They saw us pressed against one another. It looked exactly like what it was. Anna’s hands were away from the scene of the crime, and she moved her lower body to hide my bulging erection which was now disappearing like Mitt Romney from an election defeat. Gone.

SHAME

When at school the next day, I avoided Anna.

The entire day I was teased about being with her. Guys were absolutely perplexed, but chicks were brutal. They claimed Anna to be fucking every guy on the planet. AIDS was still a very scary and new disease only homosexuals got from openly disobeying God, but girls were not shy about Anna probably having AIDS. And when Anna saw me, I went in the opposite direction.

Anna found me after practice, waiting for me at our usual spot.

Her face was pale and her eyes pink from crying. She called out to me. I wanted to ignore her, but I couldn’t.

She drove me straight to my apartment, in silence.

She waited for me to get out.

I don’t want to marry you, Craig, Anna cried. We’re friends. I trust you. I thought you trusted me. Are you really going to believe the idiotic groups?  

I didn’t know what to say. She was upset, but she also seemed resigned to the fact I was just another shitty guy. I had one foot out of the car, and my duffle bag was already on my shoulder.

I got out.

The car was running, and Anna reached over to make sure my door locked.

If we’re going to go for a drive, I have to change, I said. Can you wait?

She parked and came inside. The ritual was for her to wait downstairs while I went upstairs and showered. Not this time. She was emotional, and tears slid down her gorgeous cheeks. I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what I was doing, and I didn’t realize what a radical, life-changing decision I was making by taking her upstairs. I just knew it was right.

I went to the shower while I presumed Anna was still lying on my bed. When I was fully under the water, the door opened. I drew the curtains, and standing in my bathroom was something out of a dream. She remains one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen naked. She was more naked than anyone has ever been naked. Nude. Buck, fucking naked. Perfect, symmetrical lines. A vision.  

We didn’t speak.

Soap. Water. Kisses. Nothing more.

We dressed in front of one another. That was so personal. I hadn’t seen anyone put on panties before. I hadn’t helped to clasp a bra. She sat at my feet and asked I brush her wet hair. It was a deepening of our friendship, as odd as that probably reads.

For the rest of our time together, I was so honored to be her friend. I learned to love her, holding her hand, hugging her without shame, and to defend her to friends.

When someone asked if we were going out, I remember quoting Anna’s magnificent lines back to them. What we have is too special to explain to you. It is ours, and ours alone. We won’t share it with anyone. It isn’t anyone’s business.

 

GLAZED DOUGHNUT

It was months before we had another semi-sexual encounter.

I would have flashes back to how beautiful her body was, and I often explored her in my dreams. But I never tried a thing when we were together. I never asked her for another session. I just learned to appreciate what a gift she was in my life. I learned that appreciation because Anna taught me how to appreciate her. It was all Anna’s doing.

When her parents went to Australia, Anna called me and asked me to come over and sleep with her. Ordinarily, sleeping with any chick would mean what a casual reader might expect. But with Anna, it meant she didn’t want to be alone. She just wanted me to spoon with her, cuddle. I was fine with it. Again, my mother worked all hours, so it was nice to have someone else around. And Anna was more than someone around. Hahahahaha.

We’d arrive to school, together, in her car. We’d share the same breakfast muffin, the same juice. Rumors started. I was a stud. She was a slut. She was pregnant. We were secretly married. I was paying her. She was a hooker. You name it. It was all out there.

The last night before her parents came home, Anna expressed how lonely it would be without me there. She wished I could live with her. It was pretty fucking cool to be with her, I’ll admit. Not only was she hot and incredibly smart, but she also could cook. She was good at everything.

That night, she broke out a bottle of hair dye. It was royal blue. That’s right, royal blue. This simply wasn’t done, dear reader. Not at this time. Nowadays, chicks dye their hair every which way. Not then. Maybe as a joke, but never as a fashion statement. Anna wanted to dye a thick, long streak of her hair royal blue. The front of her hair. We monkeyed around with bleach, dye, and managed to get the look she wanted. It was the most radical thing I’d ever seen on another person. It was revolutionary. Looking back, it was nothing. But at that moment she was a personal revelation.

Craig, she asked suddenly, are you gay?

Gay? Like liking hairy ass? Like liking dicks? Gay? Me?

You never try to touch me, Craig. I have to initiate everything. Don’t you want to touch me and kiss me? she worriedly asked.

When I told her I didn’t know how to touch her, she immediately began to undress. Looking out from behind that blue streak, she asked me to approach her. She asked me to lay her down. She spread her legs, and she began to explain how to make her cum by using my mouth and fingers. Her flat stomach moved up and down as she gave instructions, and her arms formed a diamond at the top of her head as if to give me the go ahead signal.

I did okay.

It wasn’t as easy as I hoped, and she’d grab my head and belt out, DO NOT STOP! every once in a while. And when I figured out she hated and simultaneously loved anticipation, I teased her and made her beg. That was all me. No one had to teach me that. Hahahaha.

When her legs shook and her torso buckled, all the while pulling my hair and scratching my shoulders, I knew I’d done something right – over and over again. In addition to all of her other qualities, she was multiorgasmic.

By the end, my face looked like a glazed doughnut.

She was exhausted. We took a shower and went to sleep.

THE ANARCHY OF LOVE

The rest of our time together was mostly spent in long, meaningful conversations.

She refused to say she loved me, and by this she meant to save that word from its base uses, like loving a brand of soda or a rock band.

We never quite had intercourse either, no genital to genital penetration anyway. She had me test all of her buttons, but that particular way just wasn’t in the cards for us. I never cared, to be honest. She would bring me to climax various ways, and after a while I didn’t really notice what we weren’t doing. Looking back, I find it strange. But at the time it made its own certain kind of sense.

Two lessons stuck with me and help define me for the rest of my life. One, women are insanely sexual, and that’s a good and wonderful thing. They love sex. Thankfully that wasn’t beaten out of Anna through religion or society. Though many, many people tried to label her and get her to adapt to their standards, Anna blissfully ignored them. That was such a powerful example for me. I didn’t realize how rare a quality that is in a person. I remember her saying to me, Craig, I don’t do things I think are wrong. I don’t get a thrill out of being naughty.

Anna made sex and that impulse normal and wonderful.

She also introduced a word to me, haunting my adult life for as long as I can remember.

Anarchy.

When we spoke recently, she reiterated what she explained to me so many years later. Rather than paraphrase, here’s what she said to me about love:  

No one told us to be together. No central planning. No gods. No masters. It’s the anarchy of love, Craig, and it’s beautiful. It’s like language or people trading ideas with one another. We developed our own physical language and our own ideas, and no one told us to do that. Spontaneous order is beautiful, Craig. We are beautiful together. 

And I mean it. 

****

CONTACT: checalaloskelsos@gmail.com