Cue for Passion: A Man's Book

By Albert D’Annibale

Drifting, and yet full awake, I began to feel a warning breeze, chilling; enveloping: and so I looked up and when I did, I saw an ominous lone dark cloud, shadowing, floating East: I thought Nature; stirring, rustling leaves and winds to blast and swish across these sidewalk cobblestones with cloudbursts of raindrops; huge like crystals; to splash and splatter my face, soak, shape and to cling my body to my clothes. Benumbed, I lay there sensing; no savoring in the rain; drenched, and with the raindrops splattering, spreading their translucent colors to have me rhyme, 'Debbie Debbie weighing sounds round and round her womb, womb.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 20, 2007
• ISBN: 9781434349248

Albert D’Annibale

Albert D'Annibale credits include the film treatment of "Jazz on a Summer's day:" His play "Don't Get Married We Need You," which opened at the Mercer Street arts Center's O'Casy Theater in Greenwich Village New York City. His book, "6 Unlucky 20th Century American Plays," was published in 2005.

Book preview

CUE

for

PASSION

A NOVEL

Albert D’Annibale

A Man’s Book

missing image file

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2009 Albert D’Annibale. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/8/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4343-4924-8 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4343-4922-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4343-4923-1 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007908883

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Acknowledgment

The events and characters in this story are entirely fictional, but other people have helped me to make this story more succinct, particularly my dear and diligent friend, Betsy Tyson and especially, Louise Gatanas, who’s help was also deeply appreciated; but most of all my wife, Dolly, who suffered my need to write this book.

That he should weep for her?

What would he do, had he the

motive and the cue for passion

that I have?

William Shakespear

‘Hamlet’

Contents

Acknowledgment

Prologue

Epilogue

Prologue

We experience passion and often wonder why. If not sublime: devastating. The reason most commonly heard is to blame an instinct. Which: To lust; or to create?

The more difficult challenge, to my understanding, is to trace passions that create.

HOW

We engage the memory dust in an attic womb, unfold its parched map charted for ZEAL, FERVOR and ZEST, and then to track its winding folds to read the X marked for ecstasy.

And when we dig out this congenital gift, a caution for a threatening appetite is scribbled inside the box:

WARNING

This instinct locked in Chest

Craves to cook a passion stew

Brim to full erotic flavor

To simmer in a body’s pot.

And when we taste this pungent mixture, though familiar, we did winch, and tried to mark the brand.

Groping, it seemed generic; could be less expensive to fertilize an instinct.

Expecting, and through those troubled years of maturing; trying so hard to sample what had been thought cheap: Nature, was preparing us for life.

Remember how wonderful it was to feel our bodies growing. Every tender stretching inch getting stronger, assured that in the future this glorious instinct would be used.

Wasn’t it confusing: Forever threatened to be moral: Good! What then, after feeling sexy, just freeze it, store and pretend to forget it?

Definitely, until puberty, when that risky instinct chooses to reappear as a dangerous contradiction: To sustain one’s self-respect, or to shame the human race.

Upsetting, and to make the problem more complex: How do we compare a sexy male instinct that is not the same for a female?

Disturbing because there’s only one way to address the vulnerability of this prophetic law: A mans weakness.

Not hers! She’s usually confident and in control; but when that unpredictable female instinct re-appears she may let it all out for a McDonalds Special:

Cock spread with peanut butter; shakes and salty chips!

Seriously and more fantastic to my thinking, this female instinct could be an Almighty light casting a fuzzy juicy joke inside this planet’s blazing oven: A comedy of passion grown in a garden full of fleshy fruit:

A FUCKING APPLE

Let’s face it! She is a living miracle, born to dare the comprehension of a man’s mind.

A DEVILISH JOKE

Yes, a catharsis: A primordial mix to rupture a man’s soul: An opiate to lift the curtain on this racy comedy of mortal Love and Lust.

We are HIS Actors in an epic, and while this Omnipotent Dramatist improvises, our effort to unravel His tricky plot is as futile as searching square pebbles on a crowded beach.

If that’s it: HIS tricky plot? I’ll take the bait and check it out. But first, where to go: The mind, it has no time. And then the actors: Well, that’s an easy problem: Mom and Pop and

CUE

for

Passion

======================

It was during the middle of the nineteen eighties, in New York, Manhattan, and to be exact, at Twenty West Eighty Sixth Street, on the fifth floor, and in the wee hours of too many sleepless night, reflecting on my wife, Carol, and my two year old daughter, Camille, long since divorced, and with them gone since 1960, I had often laid awake trying to search out, whoever, whatever had infected my love life; my sex life; or more to the fact; fucked up my life.

Neurotic, of course, restless and being dumped, I tried to think, answer my twisted brain about my wife; or any woman who beds around: it’s idiopathic (having sex without a cause.) A no-brainer: Or should I perceive that my wife’s deceiving impulse is due to an unfortunate social sexual convolution: An American female’s misplaced nurturing instinct to free up a mystifying Penis envy?

If that’s what I think about the American female, then maybe I should also psyche myself for a comparable sexual Cop-Out for men.

I had turned twelve when my Mother was thirty-three, and for the next three years, more inquisitive, I stealthily became sexually aroused, not only with her sturdy five foot six plus figure, but also with her beautifully feathered reddish-brown hair, frosty teeth, and a smile, suspiciously coaxing as dimple; very seductive, especially with those low neck cotton dresses she’d usually wear; colorful but also fitted to flare below the waist, free the knees: and to show her legs naked in heels?

Mom’s competitive passion was also infectious; her jealousy would often sway my pubescent mind with spicy stories about Pop’s machismo: You won’t believe this about your father. She once revealed, adjusting her posture: You were a little boy when I was pregnant with your sister. Two of my best girlfriends dropped by for coffee and to see how I was doing. Well, that afternoon, and with the three of us having coffee, your father arrived unexpectedly. He had left his butcher shop, which was down the hill and across the road. Well, would you believe it, he came into the kitchen, as usual, with his sexual presence, and that did surprise my girlfriends; I mean we had been casually sitting and relaxing around the table sipping coffee when that man, your father, you hear, that son-of-a-bitch, got all flushed up when he saw the girl staring up at him, well, and then just like the animal he is, he ripped of his shirt, yeah, stuck out his chest, like a big man, you know, to flex his muscles, believe it; I mean, can you believe what he did; he wriggled, you know, if you want to call it an ass, to suck his waist in and to show his muscles; worse, the girls were shocked when he stretched his arms to flex those muscles his pants fell down: Ha ha, ha, disgusting! And that’s your father, an Animal! And I’m telling you these things because I have too: You don’t know what I’ve been through; and you should, I’m your Mother. And that should be reason enough for me to try and explain those noisy nights that your father came home drunk: Yes, to jump on top of me smelling like wine, no warning, nothing! Could I scream; how could I scream, wake up the house? I’d just wiggle and push and whatever the hell I could do to get him off of me! But that bastard paid no attention, he’d want what he wanted no matter what I did: He’s an Animal; smells like one! Okay, I have to admit; I will admit, that without a shower, I could never, never accept him! Didn’t stop him; a-pig is a-pig is a-pig, and they go down there, you know, lapping away: No no, I didn’t stop him; he was down there and I’d just let him do it, and too do it and do it; it didn’t matter, I’d fall asleep.

And that was the picture that Mom gave me of having sex with Pop: A drunk with a smelly animal instinct.

As a child, listening to my Mother’s sexual critique of my Father was castrating: And yet, at that time, I could only sense this pubescent dilemma as a sympathetic reaction for my Mother; an affliction that has forever marked my brain.

So I must confess, having puzzled through my Mother’s painful passion, I finally, accidentally, did get a peek at my Father’s penis.

He was nude and on his way to the john; revealing, yes, but also fascinating; I mean, sneaking a glimpse of Pop’s lush and lengthy penis: Seemed unreal; after sex? So I cocked my head and stretched an ear for any sounds from my Mother’s bedroom: Nothing, not even a peep … mysterious?

Back in my bedroom and very curious, I tried to imagine myself with a penis like Pop’s.

So I began to question my Mother’s hostility: Was Pop the Animal, or was it his penis?

But then, and while trying to probe for an answer, I became more intuitively aware, not only of my mother’s anatomy but also her scent; which, of course, unwittingly, became a threat; especially while she quietly but thoroughly cleaned the kitchen.

And of course, this anatomical confusion over my parents continued up to my sexy teens; pathological, is what it was; real or imagined, I would inevitably challenge my father’s ‘penis’ or too find myself in sympathy with my mother’s ‘unrealized passion.’ Yes, and too indulge my pubescent fantasy to satisfy them.

Whether bewitching or as a challenge, I had had this running symbolic life-like sort of nightmare: A re-occurring persecution; a reverie, whichever: IT WAS A NIGHMARE; and to haunt and confuse my understanding of what this phantom woman represented, and for her to have a penis fetish in my dream; coincidental but compelling because I had no knowledge of ever having seen or met this woman in my dream who wanted to rape me when I was so young; and on my birthday! Why, I wasn’t sure! But she had made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse at that time; seventy-five cents to change a light bulb in her kitchen!

I wasn’t afraid because, in my dream, I somehow remembered walking past her house every day on my way to school; and she’d be there, sitting on her steps, to check me out; flirting, I supposed, and waiting; for me to acknowledge, and when I finally did, she simply stood and wriggled a bit to smooth her dress, before she beckoned me over with a pinky finger.

Hypnotic, whatever, but on my way over, she began to look very enticing; I mean, in a colorful dress and bare legs; very lush, I felt, and busty?

She didn’t wait, just reached out to take my hand, squeezed, and too draw me into the house: A house as weathered as its black window frames; and then into the kitchen; a large kitchen with a hefty round table, centered and covered with an old and scrubbed oilcloth with fading plums and grapes.

In spite of my apprehension, in my dream, she began to sensitively ease me over to one of the two rickety barrel-back chairs around the table and probed;

What’s your name?

Robert.

Robert. That’s a nice name: Roberto? Italian", she inquired, as I placed the chair on the table.

Yeah

How old are you? She inquired, guiding the chair below the high-up burnt-out-bulb.

Do I have to tell you?

Interesting, no; but I can guess?

I’ll be sixteen in two years.

Gripping my thighs, So strong and not even sixteen! she exclaimed, then cautiously guided me onto the table, and then onto the rickety chair.

I had to stretch up and pinch my toes to unscrew the bulb, but then, and while holding my legs, I thought, to balance my weight, I sensed her hands grip and slip inside my thighs; and then higher, and when very high my penis started to stiffen, so I staggered a bit unscrewing the bulb, and when I did, I felt her cupping my groin as she tracked me down and off the table: Embarrassed, and with my penis still excited, she cupped my hand and while gently squeezing, offered to pay me an extra dollar to replace another burnt-out-bulb in the cellar.

Another bulb? I sort of whispered.

It’s my calling. She admitted. "Sizing your penis was a necessity not an accident. I had tried to imagine your potential, peeking from my kitchen window; a trophy, maybe, to be caste, and too watch it grow.

And when she put it that way, having only touched it, I thought about my father, and then decided to let her know that my penis was not that big at the moment, but, with patience, I felt sure that its size would become competitive.

Inspirationally, as a collection, is the way she put it, it’s the size of a man’s penis that makes him special; fit in, so to speak.

Going down to the cellar to change a light bulb was not going to make me special, no way; she wants me down there to caste my penis.

Great, so I followed the woman down this very dark narrow staircase to a wooden step above the cellar floor. I suddenly suspected, this was not a typical a cellar, it seemed to be a Sanctum with a huge iron caldron set on a dolly inside a