This month’s issue journeys through Landscapes of the Soul, mapping our inner geographies.

The human soul is a landscape shaped by countless forces: the wounds we inherit, the loves we experience, the places we remember, the losses we endure, and the dreams that carry us forward. Like a physical landscape, the inner world contains mountains and valleys, storms and seasons, deserts of loneliness and gardens of renewal. The works in this collection explore these inner terrains, revealing the many ways people search for meaning, connection, healing, and transcendence.

First, some announcements. Contributor Peter Dellolio has a new poetry collection coming out from New Meridian Arts, Catch Of The Day.

CATCH OF THE DAY is a collection of surreal poems based on the concept of irrational collage or juxtaposition so often found in Surrealism, where totally unrelated and disconnected elements are combined. Each poem is a stanza of lines that are self-contained and bear no logical connection to one another. My hope is that this brings out some of the magical, incantatory powers of language.

If you’d like to order a copy, New Meridian Press invites you to contact them at newmeridianarts1@gmail.com for a discount.

Also, our regular contributor Rui Carvalho invites readers and contributors to submit poetry to the next annual Nature Writing Contest.

Our contest, Nature 2025-2026, is a new opportunity that we, as organizers, create to reach the rest of the world. Every Contest is a challenge for authors participating and to people that make it happen. This year we invite all authors to write poetry about:
(i) Flowers;
(ii) Trees and wind;
(iii) Water;
(iv) Nature Conservation;
(v) Turtles;
(vi) Love for people and nature;
(vii) Hope and Happiness.

Rules and submission information here.

Now for our second July issue, Landscapes of the Soul.

Every soul carries traces of the past, and several contributors look at the wounds we carry from the histories that have shaped us. Srijani Dutta’s poetry reminds us that struggle is an inescapable part of the human existence. Abigail George speaks to the inherited language of addiction, a shared, familial dialect of suffering. Adamu Muhammad Ja’agi suggests that forgiveness can be a powerful act of liberation, allowing a person who has been hurt to reclaim their identity beyond inherited pain. In Aleksandra Soltysiak’s poetry, translated by Olga Smolnytska, memory becomes a haunted and unreliable mirror where love, loss, and truth shimmer between revelation and illusion.

In Naim Al-Musafir’s Voices from There, translated from Arabic into English by Faleeha Hassan, landscapes themselves become keepers of memory. Through magic realism and social history, the story reveals how places preserve the stories of those who have suffered, departed, and returned. Cyril Erchev’s piece reflects the experience of diaspora: a woman out of place in her present world but spiritually still walking the fjords of her ancestors. Sayani Mukherjee explores the emotional geography of homeland, where beauty and trauma exist side by side. Mahesh Paudyal enters the darker regions of memory, examining how disturbing experiences linger within the human mind. Abigail George’s long meditative poem asks how a person survives when love, home, peace, and certainty disappear.

Within the landscapes of the soul, the gardens of love provide shelter and transformation. Türkan Ergör points out that love is an active choice, not just a state of being or a feeling. Chidimma Ewelukwa shows how daily acts of motherly care become expressions of profound emotional connection. David Kokoette similarly honors motherhood as a vocation, emphasizing the devotion, responsibility, and meaning found in nurturing another life. Berdinazarova Jasmina Mirshod qizi celebrates the continued love and care of her father. Bill Tope explores the uncertain landscape of adolescence, capturing the vulnerability of discovering oneself through relationships. The poetry of Barbaros İrdelmen travels through different seasons of human experience, reflecting on mortality, romantic love, and the dynamics of long-term relationships. Hassan Musa Dakasku reflects on the possibilities and responsibilities of friendship.

Eva Lianou Petropoulou celebrates love as essential to both self-understanding and connection with others, while Dr. Prasanna Kumar Dalai expands love into a force capable of reshaping identity, time, and existence itself. Graciela Noemi Villaverde reframes “saving” not as a onetime heroic act, but as a quiet, steady, loving presence that transforms what was dead or broken into something that can still grow. Reema Hamza’s poem highlights how love can transform longing, exile, and devastation into a sacred, defiant act of remaking the world. Kang Young-eun discovers holiness in everyday experiences, transforming bread, wine, evening light, loneliness, and memory into symbols of human connection and spiritual awareness.

The soul is also a place of questioning, conflict, and spiritual discovery. Duane Vorhees explores the self as an internal battlefield where instinct, conscience, and reason compete for control. Elmaya Jabbarova reminds us of the need to choose love and moral behavior and the ultimate folly of cruelty. Mesfakus Salahin presents existence as a pilgrimage guided by love, personal choice, and the search for ultimate truth. Wan Yilong presents a spiritual journey through combined metaphors from ancient Buddhist Pure Land teachings and modern cosmic space opera. Jack Phillips Lowe’s short story presents an everyday vignette in the life of a person who takes medicine for a mental health condition. Mark Young’s poetry explores how we assemble ourselves from the bricolage of our surroundings. Joe Couture’s pieces highlight selfhood built through physical work and wear and tear on the body over time. Sumana Bhattacharjee’s poetry points out how we can find meaning in life’s struggles when we follow our own consciences and trust our inner strength.

The internal battlefield metaphor applies to nations and political entities as much as to individuals, as they also struggle with identity and conscience. Jacques Fleury presents America as a nation continually struggling between its highest ideals and its darkest realities. Aminu Femi Jamiu mourns and marks the loss of young Esther Harrison, a schoolgirl murdered in Nigeria. Yeon Myung-ji’s poetry, narrated by the ancient Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang (creator of the terracotta army found in his grave) highlights how even a person who held absolute power was humbled by death and the limits of his human knowledge. Alan Catlin’s poetic series depicts the waking nightmares of a civilization in decline, where the only honest witness knows they’re floating away from shore and still can’t stop watching. Bilal Al-Masri interviews author Dr. Jernail Singh about a variety of topics, including the moral and social responsibilities of authors in times of institutional injustice and suffering. Stephen Jarrell Williams points to a hinge moment in a civilization, when a society reaches a necessary collapse that leads to a more just rebirth.

Dr. Jernail S. Anand reflects on human weakness and limitation, arguing that imperfection is not something to overcome but something that gives life its depth and meaning. In conversation, Dr. Jernail Singh and Dr. Annie John describe poetry as a spiritual and ethical journey. The poet becomes both witness and seeker, exploring human suffering while reaching toward universal wisdom. J.J. Campbell becomes an observer in his own life, as apathy with wry humor is safer than grief. Priyanka Neogi points out that each of us have different layers and dimensions to our personalities. Nidia Amelia Garcia speculates on the life and wisdom of an old man by observing his photograph. Teresa de Lujan Safar’s piece celebrates the grace, strength, self-possession, and inner dignity of an older woman. With another human response, Thi Lan Anh Tran and Musharraf Hussain celebrate perseverance and inner strength, showing how resilience allows individuals to rise beyond adversity.

As we are part of nature, outdoor landscapes can mirror the landscapes of the soul. Shah Jehan Ashrafi views autumn as a profound metaphor for death, surrender, transformation, and rebirth. The falling leaves become symbols of necessary endings that make new beginnings possible. Mahbub Alam speaks to the cleansing and renewing energy of the Bangladeshi monsoon rains. O’ktamova Sabrina Mahmud qizi describes an ecological analysis of the health of Uzbek humus and soil. Dessy Tsvetskova’s Tree of Life portrays women as a source of creation, memory, resilience, and renewal. Rooted in the earth yet reaching toward the heavens, the tree represents continuity across generations.

Ananya Guha celebrates the beauty of dancing peacocks, offering a moment of wonder and connection with the natural world. Timothee Bordenave explores ideas that benefit both humanity and the environment, suggesting that the health of the planet is connected to the health of the human spirit. Brian Barbeito captures the quiet landscape of winter, reminding readers of the shared rhythms of nature and the reflective stillness that accompanies seasonal change. Dianne Reeves Angel reminisces about long stretches of teen summer fun in the pool and with friends.

Art is one way humanity can join nature in the process of creation. Federico Wardal’s article notes the Egyptian government’s commitment to promoting and showcasing current and historical arts and culture. Andrena Zawinksi explores the artist’s search to create, be recognized, and remain alive through creative expression. Alex Johnson reflects on the relationship between life and art through his encounter with a publicist representing Philip Glass, revealing the irony that reality itself can sometimes imitate artistic structures. Tanja Ajtic’s poem threads watercolor’s quiet disciplines of washes, shades, making use of empty white space, into a metaphor for a life lived in silence, holding back opinions, feeling the world’s eruptions but never speaking of them. Christina Chin’s haiga and illustration create a unified moment of beauty, demonstrating how words and images can combine to form a single imaginative landscape. Cri8or’s vibrant digital artworks add splashes of color and intriguing shapes to the issue. Fhen M. uses ekphrastic poetry inspired by Priamo della Quercia’s Circle of the Falsifiers to explore the destruction caused by dishonesty and the moral landscapes created by truth and deception. Maria Barnes journeys into a darker psychological landscape, using unsettling imagery and music to symbolize the struggle between the conscious self and hidden fears.

The soul also grows through learning and discovery. Ismatova Dilnura emphasizes the importance of books in children’s education, illustrating reading as a gateway to imagination, knowledge, and possibility. Omonova Dinora Anvarjon qizi celebrates the many ideas and life lessons found within books. Navbaxar Mahmudjanovna Karimova points to ways to encourage the creation of new educational knowledge. Amonboyeva Shahnoza examines the changing landscape of education in the age of artificial intelligence. While technology may assist learning, she argues that creativity, imagination, and human connection remain uniquely human qualities. Although, as Ibroximova Hayitxon Mirzoxidjon qizi points out, artificial intelligence may take over in other human endeavors, including accounting. Maxliyo Alijonova highlights the educational work of Uzbekistan’s Ashurali Legacy Academy, demonstrating how institutions preserve knowledge, culture, and intellectual heritage. Akhmetova Nodira Po’lat qizi underscores the importance of digital literacy for modern Uzbek students. Jasmina Ismatullayeva relates the value of study-abroad experiences for students and why she wishes to travel.

Finally, a few works in this collection highlight the depths of truth within ordinary experiences. Travis Park’s brief, image-driven poems transform familiar places into reflections on uncertainty, memory, and human connection. Mykyta Ryzhykh uses the sea and the house as symbols of existence, showing humanity surrounded by immense forces while often feeling isolated and forgotten. Shlok Pandey’s coming-of-age story addresses loneliness, compassion, observation, and the discovery of beauty in everyday life. Naeem Aziz reminds readers that true value often exists beneath appearances, encouraging a deeper understanding of the gifts each person carries.

Together, these works create a map of the human soul. They travel through valleys of suffering, gardens of love, mountains of reflection, and seasons of transformation. They show that every person carries an inner landscape shaped by memory, relationships, struggles, dreams, and hopes.

“Landscapes of the Soul” reveals that humanity is defined not by avoiding hardship, but by transforming experience into wisdom, compassion, creativity, and renewal. Across cultures and voices, these writers remind us that the journey inward is also a journey toward one another. We hope that you enjoy hearing from each other throughout this issue!

Hotel Ice Machine

The hallway

goes quiet

between

the sound

of falling ice.

Library Return Slot

Books disappear

through a metal mouth

without saying

whether

they were loved.

Parking Garage

Every floor

looks enough

like the last

to make me wonder

if the car

is moving

or I am.

Waiting

The microwave

counts down

more slowly

than the clock

on the wall.

Lost and Found

A single glove,

reading glasses,

one house key.

The beginning

of three different stories.

Travis Park is a poet from Indiana whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Modern Haiku, Presence, Ribbons, Wales Haiku Journal, Leaf Journal, Haikuniverse, and elsewhere.

Lens Cleaner

I wake up with the juke-

box of the mind on full

rotation, Tony Bennett

telling me how he left his

heart in San Francisco. It’s

a sixties song, but then je

suis aussi un enfant des an-

nées soixante, born twenty

years earlier, & at this

parsing, a part of the time

& space between Miles

& Motown, something

akin to Bennett but with

much less grandeur.

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

Spent much of last Saturday 

asking a number of AI bots 

which bot I should use to 

help me write poems. Their 

concensus was that probably 

the best to suit my needs 

was still in development, but 

has a working title of Geoffrey

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales bot.

Assembling an octagonal tripod

Attach the inner diffusion fabric. It comes 

with a hook & loop fastener.Without the 

inner diffusion you can “see” the bulb be-

hind the fabric as a central hotspot. Add 

a small inner diffusion panel if you do see 

that hotspot. Slide the diffuser into the first 

filter rail. It can be installed either way a-

round with the same results. The spackle 

shirt project uses a laser-cut micro-suede 

skirt. The inner part snaps onto elastic 

tabs inside the dish, the outer uses a self-

securing closure. Softboxes have wide

velcro to cater for honeycomb. A baffle 

can be attached to the softbox’s interior.

A few lines on the approaching solstice

Nostalgia can form an integral part of bocce.

Our club has a dual purpose.

A model of needs is an elusive concept.

Sometimes it’s just a green herb.

WHO fact sheet on hantaviruses provides key facts.

harassing a heuristic

Even though it is said that plurality

should not be posited without necessity,

it seems that Aristotle, Ptolemy, John

Duns Scotus, & Durandus of Saint-

Pourçain can all be considered to be

William of Ockham’s curtain raisers.

Hades

From 4 AM on,
We’d sweat, underpaid, 
in an understaffed
bakery.

He was the bread guy.
I made the pastries.
To pass time,
we’d talk

about bosses,
	who were anything but
banter on news
between passing utensils. 

Reaching a ten-pound whisk
across the table 
he said,
“Here’s a whip for your icining.”

Until then, he had been
describing coverage
of an earthquake
“Down in Hades.”

We spoke in yells.
Tiled walls shook 
with eighty-quart mixers.
The stereo crackled,

“…She fuck me like she Haitian…”
	What odds?
I said I wonder
what Haitian women fuck like.

He lied that maybe he’d tell me
after his family 
trip to Dominican, smiling,
“It’s right next door.”

Since I quit,
he works the big whip
The bosses made him
the pastry guy.
Cowboy Kindred

He was standing outside the liquor store, looking lost
in time. A nod to a bygone era that left, like a 
one-night stand he thought was the one
but snuck off sometime before morning.

The shaking head and agape mouth sold me.

He looked to be in his mid-fifties 
in cowboy boots, ripped jeans, a tank top,
and aviators, with long bleached curls 
beneath a straw Corona hat.
	
His steroidal arms, tanned and hairy up the bicep,
bore tattoos I can’t remember. He had a 1980s
pro-wrestler-like quality, like Dog the Bounty Hunter, 
in the clothes of Kenny Chesney.

As I approached the entrance, an electric CUV
whirred past us. Though there were others, 
he looked at me, someone to whom he sensed 
he could speak. He said:

“I remember when cars sounded like cars. 
These fucking things sound like spaceships.”
To drive the point home, he trilled his lips,
bbbrrrrr, then waved both arms in defeat.
I laughed. He shook his head humorlessly.

I wonder if he’s composing a poem now
about a hard-luck case whose expression
read lost, like a guy who’d missed his stop,
avoiding sincerity in a liquor store parking lot.



Song of Domesticity
My neighbour’s window plays
the clatter of stacked plates,
an accordion of forks
chiming into place.

I don’t know if it’s music
preceding a quiet evening
or silence that succeeds 
the absence of ketchup.

It’s thirty degrees.
If the dog in the driveway’s
chain could reach the shade
of my neighbour’s lifted pickup

he could sleep with the filthy,
silhouetted women, who flap 
beneath Browning bumper stickers,
never breathing a word.



Peg Ride

For my last dance with ego,
I’ll wish not to be dispatched
to the back of a Chrysler
mini-van hearse, ferried by some
Charon in budget coattails
listening to car salesmen—
when he breaks from humming 
along to exhausted CanCon
that predates and outlasts me,
while dreaming of a used Chevy—
unmindful of the dead guy’s 
peg ride to oblivion.



16
I’ve committed to her body
as an archaeologist commits to a crypt
crawling through his fantasy
eyes rounded, fascinated by the study

or as an old-world tribesman’s tattooed face
marks idolatry, obsession,
a commitment to her sovereignty;
like the letters on my cheek.

I’ve heard colleagues’ repudiations—
bitter, lonesome men, cynical
as their tropes are predictable:
One pussy; the ol’ ball ‘n’ chain…

I once penetrated her with a bottle of Spumante
that tasted sweeter than any Champagne
that same year we had sex on the train
passing scenic blurs in New Brunswick or Quebec

Those short, counting years tarnished dark
as Petite Sirah. I savour her scent, 
swirl, our long finish. I’d quaff
a chalice of her plasma, both hands cupped.

Now, for the first time, I feel doubt—
or grief for my dead self—
hearing sometime this year,
she wants to break our old record.

My Bones
What I felt in my bones
is dead. 
Praise my fickle bones!
With a turnover rate
of ten years.

Farewell to certainties
I’ll soon forget.
Make way, old bones!
En garde!
I sense a new revelation.

When I reached out to Sacks & Co., the publicity firm representing Philip Glass, I expected a simple professional interaction—either an interview or a polite decline. What arrived instead was a message from Krista Williams whose phrasing carried the unmistakable signature of a Glassian motif: a short, categorical phrase repeated with such structural finality that it resembled a musical cell rather than a piece of administrative communication. The refusal was not framed as temporal or conditional. It was delivered as a pure statement of closure, a cadence without resolution, a door shut with the kind of procedural certainty Glass often assigns to his arpeggiated figures.

“Mr. Glass is not doing interviews.” Period. No caveat. No wiggle-room.

As someone who has spent decades in Glass’s broader ecosystem—through long‑standing Vedanta Society involvement, through writing shaped by the avant‑garde lineage he helped define, through editorial and publishing work that often intersects with minimalist aesthetics—I recognized the pattern immediately. The initial refusal wasn’t simply a refusal; it was a phrase. It had contour. It had rhythmic insistence. It had the timbre of a line repeated until its meaning becomes structural rather than semantic. She had both gatekept me out of interviewing him as well as indicated in clear, unmistakable terms that he is not doing interviews. You don’t require a terminal degree in English to recognize the finality of that sentence. But I do, and it closes the gate permanently; not just for me, for everyone.

I responded with a dry, musicologically framed note acknowledging the decision and pointing out that the redundancy in the phrasing functioned as a kind of meta‑commentary on Glass’s own aesthetic. The exchange had already begun to behave like a piece of music: a motif introduced, repeated, and left to resonate.

A few minutes later, Williams replied with a clarification, which directly contradicted her previous statement:

“On background, I meant to say he’s not taking on any interviews currently as it’s not possible with his schedule.”

She then explained that she had not meant to imply permanent unavailability or a “welded‑shut door.”

The contradiction embedded in this new communication between the two messages was not merely semantic; it was musicological. The first message was a closed cadence. The second was an unexpected modulation. The first established a harmonic boundary; the second destabilized it. In Glass’s vocabulary, this was the shift from motif to variation, the subtle alteration that changes the meaning of the phrase without changing its shape.

The irony was that the correction reinforced the joke. The literalism of the reply—the insistence on clarifying a metaphor—demonstrated the very gatekeeping logic the original message had inadvertently performed.

The exchange had become an interview not with Glass, but with the structure surrounding him. The PR apparatus had become the performer; the email thread, the score.

Legacy‑artist PR, when functioning well, behaves like chamber music: each participant aware of the others, each gesture calibrated to the ensemble, each phrase shaped by context. It requires ecosystem awareness. It requires knowing who is inside the lineage, who has long‑standing engagement with the artist’s work, and who operates in adjacent cultural spaces. It requires recognizing that not all correspondents are equal—some are part of the world the artist came from.

In this case, the categorical refusal structurally shut the door on someone already inside the circle, not outside it. That is the professional misstep, and it is not personal. It is simply a failure of musical listening.

Williams did not recognize that she was speaking to a published author, editor, and publisher; someone who runs a magazine and a small press; someone whose work has long intersected with the avant‑garde; someone whose Vedanta Society involvement places him in the same philosophical lineage Glass embraced; someone who writes in the structural vocabulary Glass helped establish. This is not ego. It is ensemble awareness—the basic competency of legacy‑artist PR.

The paradox is that a PR firm representing Philip Glass inadvertently created negative PR for itself by mishandling a lineage‑adjacent correspondent. The exchange illustrates how gatekeeping can become performative: a ritual guarding of a door that may not need guarding, executed without awareness of who is standing on the other side. The representative’s repetition became a minimalist motif. Her correction became a variation. Her literalism became the punchline. The entire exchange became a Glass piece.

None of this is written in hostility. Williams apologized twice, and there was no escalation. But the exchange, taken as a whole, reveals something important about how legacy‑artist PR functions—and how it sometimes fails. Gatekeeping is not inherently wrong. But gatekeeping without context becomes a structural joke. And in this case, the joke was Glassian.

Philip Glass, born in 1937, is one of the most influential composers of the modern era, known for his pioneering work in minimalism, his collaborations across genres, and his lifelong engagement with Eastern philosophy, particularly through the Vedanta Society. His music is built on repetition, micro‑variation, and procedural architecture—structures that have shaped generations of artists.

Alex S. Johnson, the author of this piece, is a writer, editor, and publisher whose work spans fiction, poetry, cultural commentary, and avant‑garde analysis. As founder of Nocturnicorn Books and Darkest Wine Media, he has published numerous writers and produced work deeply informed by minimalist aesthetics, structural analysis, and the cultural ecosystems surrounding artists like Glass. His long‑standing involvement with the Vedanta Society and decades‑long engagement with Glass’s work place him firmly within the composer’s extended artistic lineage.

Sacks & Co., the publicity firm at the center of this exchange, is a respected boutique PR agency specializing in music, film, and cultural figures. Known for representing major legacy artists, the firm handles media relations, publicity campaigns, and artist communications. Their role is to manage access, shape narratives, and maintain the delicate balance between availability and mystique that surrounds artists of Glass’s stature.

A Bright, Shiny New Love

Elaine was Tim’s new girlfriend, unofficially, but one would never know it, from the remote way in which they interacted. At first just best buds, they had taken to hanging out together after school, with no romantic overtures. Elaine, however, a new student this year, was determined to correct that trajectory. She began by telling all her friends that the two of them were an item, and that she “had dibs” on Tim. Tim, however, apparently hadn’t gotten the memo, and remained strangely unaffected. The only time he would even touch the girl was when he tickled her. Elaine was perplexed; at sixteen — the same age as Tim — she had had boyfriends before, and none of them behaved as Tim did. He’d never even tried to kiss her! Was there something wrong with her? she wondered. She lifted her arm and sniffed. She was a few pounds overweight, but others told her she was cute, and she’d never had any difficulties before. Could the problem, then, be with him? She wondered: had he ever actually kissed a girl before? Elaine had dated guys at her old high school, in Reller, before her family moved to this school district, earlier this year. She was used to dealing with a faster crowd, but she really liked this guy. She blew out a breath and shook her head in perplexity. She knew that there were boys who’d never kissed a girl before. That was the case with every boy, she rationalized, until they just did it. She would have to teach him to kiss, she decided with a sigh. But, it could be fun.

. . . . .

That evening Elaine and Tim went to see a movie and Elaine placed her arm over Tim’s on the armrest, tried to snuggle a little. Their flesh was hot where they touched

“Oh, sorry,” spluttered Tim, moving his arm. Elaine rolled her eyes.

After the movie, they drifted to Tim’s car. Elaine stood against the driver’s side door and waited. She had a purpose in mind. 

“I’d better get you home,” said Tim, trying to reach around the girl. She didn’t move, but eased in close to him and tilted back her pretty head, mouth slightly open. She waited exoectantly. What did this boy need, a road map?

“Why does she keep getting so close?” wondered Tim, still without a clue. In the back of his mind was the notion that she wanted to be kissed, but the idea terrified him. The only females he’d ever kissed were family members and that hadn’t been any fun. But he was interested in making out with Elaine; he just didn’t know how to go about it. Confronted again by the persistent Elaine’s proximity, Tim did what he usually did to relieve the sexual tension: he tickled her. Squealing, she moved aside, but as he unlocked the door, she moved in quickly, wrapped her hands around his neck and planted a kiss on his lips. He seemed shocked, but almost immediately began kissing her back. He was a fast learner, thought Elaine with satisfaction. That was easy, Tim told himself excitedly. These Reller girls, he thought giddily, are hot!

It was a similar experience, weeks later, the first time they had sex. Closeted in Tim’s car, they necked and Tim rapidly circled the bases, but his car was just too darn small to allow love-making. And agan, he was steeped in ignorance; what if he did the wrong thing? By this time, she had trained him in practical use of the tongue. He took to it like a natural. This project was progressing well, thought Elaine. Soon, all Tim wanted to do was make out, and his appetites, like Elaine’s, were proceeding apace. They were groping one another with increasingly sensitive, probing fingers. If only they could glean some privacy.

Once again, it was she who had to act. After considerable frustration and scheming, Elaine enlisted the aid of her older sister, Marsha, who agreed to allow the pair the use of her bedroom in the apartment she shared with two other girls.

“I’ve got a surprise,” Elaine told Tim temptingly one night.

“Another one?” he blurted. Things were progressing so fast that his mind was awhirl. What next, did she want to drop some acid? he wondered bleakly.

“I found us a place,” she said cryptically.

“You mean….” Then he stopped. 

“Marsha’s place,” she elaborated. “She and her roommates will be out of the apartment for two hours, on Saturday afternoon.” 

Tim only stared at her. 

Again, Elaine rolled her eyes. “Don’t you wanna get laid?” she asked bluntly.

The light of anticipation glittered in Tim’s eyes.

Saturday afternoon found the erstwhile lovers sitting on Marsha’s twin bed in the bedroom of her apartment. A new artist, Elton John, was playing on the radio. Elaine smiled seductively, but Tim just sat there like a sack of flour. She leaned in and kissed him passionately. Tim’s pulse and breathing accelerated at once.

“Let’s get undressed,” suggested Elaine in a sultry voice.

Mutely, they began disrobing. Elaine wondered furtively if the diet she’d labored under had borne any fruit. She fretted self-consciously. Tim, on the other hand, unaccountably, worried that he wouldn’t get an erection. Which, naturally, he did.

“Um,” purred Elaine, looking asppreciatively at Tim’s naked physique. Noting her comment, he swaggered a bit.

Finally, they collapsed into one another’s arms on the bed. Tim felt like he had a raging fever.

“Come here, baby,” coaxed Elaine, drawing Tim atop her. Moving as if in a dream, Tim slipped inside his lover and came immediately.

“Oops, sorry, Elaine,” he muttered contritely.

“That’s okay,” murmured Elaine lovingly. “We’ve got lots of time.” And they did.

. . . . .

Dinner at Elaine’s house came about as a matter of course; her parents wanted to check out the young scamp that their perfect daughter was spending so much time with.  They had met him, but only briefly, a couple of times when Tim picked her up for a date. The teens had been seeing each other for almost four weeks and their relationship, they thought, had already covered a lot of ground. It had been just three weeks since they first kissed, one week since they’d had sex. Tim sometimes felt like he was just along for the ride. Elaine was talking about buying a lid of pot.

Tim met the father. “When Elaine told me that you never let her pay for anything on your dates,” said the older man, “my opinion of you increased by fifty percent.” Tim smiled happily. “Then again,” continued her father philosophically, “what’s one half of nothing?” He chuckled evilly. Tim’s face fell.

Elaine had two sisters still living at home, both pretty, like her. Tim was fascinated by Sue, just fourteen, but scantily clad in panties and halter top. If his own sister dressed that way, even at home, his parents would clobber her, he thought. Blonde Lois was just a year younger than Elaine, and very sexy indeed. Dinner was a nightmare: Mrs. Foster served everything that Tim hated, but he managed to stuff some of it down his throat, somehow. Interestingly, the family drank wine with their dinner, and that included the children, all underaged. Tim dutifully sipped a glass of red, instantly felt his face balloon with heat. This was his first experience with wine. But, it would not be his last, he decided hedonistically.

“Here, have another glass of wine, Tim,” offered Mona, Elaine’s heavy-set mother, again and again. Tim frowned at her thoughtfully. He wondered if this woman epitomized his girlfriend in thirty years. He shrugged the thought away, drank more wine. George Foster — Elaine’s father — alone didn’t drink wine; he imbibed beer — can aftere can after can of lager.

After the first three glasses of wine, Tim’s appetite began to pick up and he even found himself selecting a second helping of the loathsome butternut squash which had nearly caused him to vomit earlier. Finally, the interminable meal was over and Tim, with six glasses of wine under his belt, fretted that he wasn’t fit to drive. He hiccupped.

“You’ve had a touch too much to drink,” tittered Mona in a drunken voice. “You can stay over; I’ll call your mom, okay, dear?”

Tim nodded. He was having trouble seeing.

A bed was made up for the visitor on the sofa in the living room. Tim collapsed onto the blankets and was almost instantly asleep. According to the clock on the mantle, it was three a.m. when Tim was awakened by a wet feeling on his face. Shaking his head, he withdrew an inch.

“Wha…” he said.

There ensued a high-pitched giggling. Tim opened his eyes and observed several murky shapes drifting through the shadows and doing unspeakable things to his privates. Tim swiftly reached down and removed a small feminine hand, with long, tapered fingers, from his crotch.

“What’re you doing?” he asked in alarm.

“Don’t you have a clue?” asked fourteen-year-old Sue, now completely naked. She giggled again. Another female form — Lois this time — was crawling under the sheets with him.

“What the hell!” declared a familiar but angry voice. Elaine shooed the other girls away, and none-too-gently. “Skanks!” she hissed venomously. The two girls scurried back to their rooms, more laughter trailing in their wake. Tim sat there, stricken, in shock.

“Poor baby,” cooed Elaine, embracing her boyfriend in a much-needed hug, and copping a cheap feel at the same time.

. . . . .

As the school year progressed, Tim and Elaines relationship blossomed; she began murmuring matter-of-factly about marriage. 

Yikes! thought Tim. But, the more he thought about, the better it sounded. He was always more comfortable with the familiar. Besides, his famly just loved Elaine — as did Tim. And he enjoyed having a girlfriend, and being a part of something. But, one day, as Tim waited in his car for Elaine after class, she stood him up. He began to have conniptions. She’d never done this before, and his imagination ran wild; what tragedy might have befallen his one true love? Padding steathily back through the school corridors in search of his girlfriend, Tim abruptly stopped and slunk back around behind the corner. It was Elaine, and she was talking to the school lothario, a jock, the one all the girls called “Mandingo.” They seemed very chummy, Tim thought with annoyance. The girls all talked about Mandingo as a hulking, seething sexual animal. Everyone wanted him, he’d heard. Did Elaine?” he wondered. Mandingo would know how to kiss a girl, he’d know how to get what he wanted. Tim’s cheeks burned, and he hurried back to his car and drove away. For the first time, he began to have doubts about Elaine and the future of their relationship. Tim had talked to a boy who knew the Foster family from when the kids attended their old school, and he’d said that all the Foster girls were “progressive.” Tim had passed this off as envy, but now he reconsidered. His experience at dinner — and afterward — certainly stood out in his mind. Tim filed this all away in the back of his mind.

In trig class the next day, Debbie Hinson, who was easily the homeliest girl in the junior class, had the temerity to ask Tim to the prom. She even offered to pay for his tux and buy the tickets for the after-prom. She seemed rather  desperate, thought Tim. He turned her down as gently as possible, but he couldn’t help but smirk a little, a fact not lost on Debbie. What a preposterous girl, he thought.

What’s the matter with Tim? wondered Elaine at about this same time. He seems so distracted, so uptight. Maybe, she thought, he was checking out other girls. He was an attractive boy; other girls would want to date him, kiss him, use him up. That’s just the way people were, she told herself. He’d really shaped up under her tutelage but, she thought jealously, here he was, running out on her. He’d probably break up with her on the eve of the prom and disappoint her, humiliate her; what a rotten shit he was. Elaine had had unfortunate experiences before with boys. She would forestall the embarrassment of a break up, by breaking up with him first. That would show him he couldn’t screw with her. And after all she’d done for him!

Tim and Elaine sat in his car at the drive-in movie on Saturday night, unaware that this would be their final date. They were both brooding. “I want to talk to you, Tim,” she began during the ad for the concession stand.

“Shoot,” he said, nibbling on a hot pickle-on-a-stick. He had ultimately convinced himself that his doubts about his girlfriend were all unfounded, mere products of his own imagination. So what if they hadn’t made love in nearly a month? Things would take care of themselves.

“I think we should see other people,” she said tentatively.
“Other people?” he repeated. “You mean, date other people, kiss other people, make love with other people?” he asked, eyes wide.

“I’m only thinking of you,” she went on disingenously. “You’ve never dated other girls, kissed them, made love to them. What if there’s someone out there who is your soul mate?”

“But, you’re my soul mate, Elaine,” he answered. “I love you,” he declared. “Don’t you love me anymore?” he asked in a plaintive voice. For a moment, Elaine almost lost her resolve, but then she regrouped.

“I like you, Tim — a lot,” she said, confirming his worst fears. “Let’s stay friends, alright? Maybe we’ll get back together later, after we’ve had other experiences, you know? I mean, we’re only sixteen, and there’s a whole big world out there…” Tim knew this was the death knell. For the past school year, it had always been “I love you,” and not once “I like you.” Suddenly he felt cold. Then he grew enraged and hurt.

“I loved you,” he told her, “but you are a total bitch.” She erupted with a torrent of protests, but Tim tuned her out, tossed his uneaten pickle-on-a- stick out his window, and set the speaker back in its perch. Starting the car, he pulled slowly through the lot and exited the fenced-in theater property. When he pulled into Elaine’s driveway, neither of them said a word. The sound of her door opening seemed preternaturally loud, and she slammed it loudly and then walked swiftly across her lawn and let herself into the house. At the tender age of sixteen, Tim had suffered his first abandonment, his first real humiliation, his first broken heart. 

Elaine attended the prom with Mandingo, the final insult. They were, Tim learned, voted “Most Attractive Couple.” Tim conjured in his brain the things that the other boy would be doing to Tim’s girl after the prom. His cheeks burned. As for Tim, he found that all presentable girls had by this time been spoken for and he had no date for the prom. Then he remembered. Approaching Debbie Hinson, he asked her if her offer was still open. And he would rent his own tux, he added magnanimously, trying to sweeten the deal. Debbie curled the lip on her homely face and told him to make love to himself. And, skipping the prom and staying home alone that night, he eventually did just that.