The Greatest Lover of Last Tuesday

by Neil McKinnon

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Fulfill your heart’s desire.”

  At that moment Mr. Albatross spluttered and adjusted himself on the sofa. The interruption spurred Mrs. Albatross to a new height of aggression. She reached behind and grabbed me. “Bring that hardened resolve here,” she said.

  I have never been a religious man but if circumstances conspire to lead me to a cathedral I respond to the sanctity of the place by adopting a calm and contemplative attitude. Not so that first time. That encounter produced an internal storm of such intensity that most of the region was flooded before I reached the front steps. Mrs. Albatross proved patient, however, and I was soon awash in as great a spiritual tempest as it’s possible to experience and still remain on this side of heaven’s portal. Or at least as great an experience as it’s possible to have with a two hundred pound lady whose husband is snoring right behind you.

  … Or, was snoring right behind me. Silence! I turned my head. Mr. Albatross’s eyes were open and he was reaching inside his jacket. “I’ll shoot you, you horny little bastard,” he said.

  I bolted for the door and slept the night under a small bridge in a wet ditch.

  Generations later, Adriana proved neither understanding nor sympathetic.

  “What happened? Why are you still alive to torment me? Have you been hiding all your life?”

  “The Albatrosses left a few days later or I’d still be under the bridge. Lucky for me, Alvin died of an allergic reaction to piano wire before his next scheduled visit to Puerto Paraiso. He was found floating in a lake in upstate New York.”

  “So you escaped scott free?”

  “No I didn’t. Before he left he told Senora Reyes about my spying and there were some major educational repercussions. I’ll tell you about them another time.”

  “What about Mimi Albatross? Did you see her again? With that swiftness you should have raced at the Olympics, although you probably would have been disqualified for prematurely leaving the starting blocks. Did you learn anything, old man, or was it just a swallow of life that you gulped without tasting?” She threw this over her shoulder as she marched across her patio to retrieve more brandy for what has evolved into our daily ritual of insults and alcohol. I refrained from commenting on the intriguing picture her buttocks made as each undulated, amply and separately, under her light summer dress reminding me of two bear cubs wrestling in a sack.

  Learn anything? No, I hadn’t, and to learn something retroactively it is necessary to delve into Mimi Albatross’ motivation. Of course, she is also dead so ascribing motive to her actions is largely speculation.

  The old villa was still there, a ruin sitting high on a finger of land that jutted far into the sea. It simultaneously provided a magnificent view and a feeling of anxiety — a feeling inspired by the implied vulnerability of standing with an unpredictable ocean on three sides. What was her motivation? Why me? Why does a middle aged woman choose to have a copulatory moment with someone who is at an age where the hormones gushing through his body have displaced all common sense? Who knows the aetiology of sex?

  I turned and put my back to the mysteries hiding beyond a placid horizon and faced the mysteries of my memory. While it’s true that older women don’t have time for gymnastics of the head, it still required either courage or a full suitcase of desperation for Mimi Albatross to throw caution aside and make the statement she did — even if that statement was symbolic and only to herself.

  When I proffered these speculations to Adriana she snorted and said, “Your glasses are fogged by the temperature difference between reality and your imagination, old man. Are you so blind as to think that the only view of something is from where you’re standing? What divine dictate says that a woman has to see sex or love or relationships through your spectacles? Know that the plot for love may be complex but the plot for sex alone is simple and straightforward.”

  Her sharp tone offended me. “You underestimate me, my large lump of loveliness. I realize it’s not necessary for a woman to believe that sex is a cherished thing, connected only to love.”

  “You do, do you? That is a breakthrough! Do you also know that women often want sex just for fun? There is no statute that says a woman cannot enjoy a good romp once in awhile. What makes you think that men are the only creatures congenitally incapable of fidelity? At one time or another we all expose our animal nature. Men become tomcats, beaver chasers, or horndogs. Women turn into lust bunnies, sex kittens, or bitches in heat. It’s good to occasionally separate emotion and lust … and we all know that sometimes monogamy is boring.”

  “But, listen to me,” I protested.

  She didn’t hear.

  “Men get their feelings through sex,” she said, “and women usually get sex through their feelings. But, there are times when the reverse is true, even if the sex is with a hormonally braindamaged fifteen-year-old who has no chance of recovery.”

  She drained her glass and went into the house. I rationed my brandy and gazed at the night sky until a star fell into the city. I was certain that it wasn’t pleasure that Mimi Albatross searched for that night, and according to Adrianna she wasn’t making a statement. What was she after? Was it simply the unfamiliar?

  Of course, speculation aside, I had learned something. It dawned on me that the intensity of the experience and the feelings produced would not have varied one iota had the lady involved been Cleopatra or a Hollywood legend. The lesson then is that the level of ecstasy produced by an erotic experience is not affected by the fame or beauty of the participants, so one who would be a lover must forget stereotypes and concentrate solely on the pleasure of the moment. After all, the world is a better place following an orgasm.

  School Days

  WE HAD STOPPED FOR LUNCH AT a small restaurant near Plaza Bugambillias. I blocked out Adriana’s prattle by concentrating my attention on three pictures hanging in the centre of the white stucco wall: a faded print of a marching school band, a watercolour of an old boat tied to the pier at the end of the malecon and a recent photo of the owner’s wife preparing a culinary masterpiece in a cluttered kitchen. Faded red flowers stencilled onto a painted green vine surrounded the pictures and then rambled around a door, open to a private dining area in the rear of the restaurant.

  Adriana’s voice rose to blur the pictures. “You are like a puppy that outruns its own legs,” she said. “You’re way ahead of yourself and you’re about to fall flat on your face.”

  “What do you mean, oh faded flower of painted pulchritude?”

  “You have already informed your reader, should you be so fortunate as to get one, how you sneaked up the backstairs on your first visit to a cathedral. You have said little of what went before. What of your days in school? You must enlighten us on how someone can spend his entire youth getting educated and still learn nothing.”

  She picked up the salt and pepper shakers which were topped up with rice kernels to capture moisture during the wet season, and began to methodically cover her salad. I redialled my gaze to the shelf above Adriana’s head — a shelf shared by a small ceramic cactus and a metal figurine of a man with a large hat lunging after, but failing to tackle a runaway rooster. “You’re absolutely right, my crowing cutie. I have gotten ahead of myself. Let me repair that situation.”

  After a long and lonely childhood I reached the age where my behaviour became intolerable and my parents deemed that I was old enough to begin my formal education. It was my mother’s wish that I be sent to a public school though my father expressed misgivings. He said that with his wealth there was no need for me to risk pollution by associating with the rabble spawned by his inferiors. My mother arched her back and stuck out her chin. “I’m part of that rabble and I may have married beneath myself,” she said. “If public school was good enough for me, it’s certainly good enough for my offspring.” The following day I was enrolled as a beginner at Albatross Public Elementary School.

  It was my fate to start academic life under the tutelage of Señora Ca
mila Gutierrez, a stern and haughty matron who felt that the large amount of prestige attached to my family name had to be diluted by daily applications of a leather strap. “It’s required to mould your character,” she said. “Now, bend over.”

  Fortunately for my nether region and unfortunately for my character, after exactly one year of moulding, Señora Gutierrez was recruited by the military to teach hand-to-hand combat to army commandos. She was succeeded by a number of men and women, good teachers all, who supplied me with the foundation on which I built the figurative skyscraper, currently emblazoned with dignity and old age, which the world now knows as a great lover.

  I proved adept and the foundation was well under construction by the time I reached adolescence. I had not forgotten the episode with Leticia and as I navigated through puberty, my boat sailing merrily along on an ocean of wet dreams, I began to experience an embarrassing and uncontrollable phenomenon. It became necessary for me to hold my book bag in front of me at all times. At first my parents were pleased when I carried my homework to church and to the beach. They saw it as evidence that I loved learning and that I was maturing into someone who took his studies seriously. They were soon disappointed.

  I began to ignore algebra and literature in favour of intoxicating eyes and blossoming breasts, and my academic life started to founder in a sea of right-handed fantasy.

  It was at this time that Señora Reyes decided to repay my attempt to blackmail Alvin Albatross. She sent my parents a special report card outlining my failures both in and out of class. The report stated that my social skills were at the same level as a psychopathic scorpion, that my athletic ability was similar to that of a dismembered sloth and that I had the same academic potential as body lice. She recommended that I leave school and begin an apprenticeship at a faraway zoo, either cleaning cages or as an exhibit.

  My father initiated an ‘I told you so’ campaign and I was soon disengaged from public school in favour of education at home with private tutors. The change of venue and the episode with Mimi Albatross did not impair my imagination. By the time I was sixteen my heart ached for every girl I met. Those that held me close while pushing their tongues doggedly against the back of my throat held an exalted place in my fantasy, and those who continued kissing while I enthusiastically shoved my hand down their pants I placed on a pedestal so high they qualified for pubescent sainthood. I believed I loved and because I believed it, I did.

  Walking home from one of those sweaty excruciating sessions, the night air cooling my face, the leaves turning on the trees and whispering to a pregnant moon, tasting the air filled with the smell of desert lavender and sweet acacia, it was love just as I believed. No Juliet was ever loved more than those adolescent girls whom I touched and who touched me with all the yearning that juvenile hormones can manufacture and squeeze into an evening. The ecstasy of those nights, the excitement of discovery, the gratitude, the tenderness, the love — together created an intense joy that seared itself into each step in a way that no adult romance has ever done.

  Those nights and the days with my teachers are twinned in my memory. The exhilaration of the evening translated into a joy of learning such that new knowledge became a daytime proxy for night-time pleasure.

  One of my first tutors was Antoine Cabbage, a French scholar and expert on the human situation, who in a lifetime of research had discovered correlations between the medical conditions that affect human beings and the behaviour that precipitates those conditions. Between lectures on philosophy and classical history, he passed on much of the wisdom that he had garnered in fifty years of observation and thinking.

  His grand theory stated that our innermost thoughts and desires lead to various behaviours and that it is possible to deconstruct those behaviours so that they provide insight into a person’s future. He called the first part of his theory Cabbage’s Leap into Prediction which popularly became known as CLIP.

  The theory went on to state that the behaviours and actions generated by a person’s thoughts and desires lead to various conditions and afflictions, many of which cause misery. He called the second part of his theory Cabbage’s Law of Pain or CLOP. “Using CLIP-CLOP I can infer causation so that it’s possible to say which human behaviour causes what medical condition,” he told me.

  He eschewed tired old saws such as smoking stunts growth, masturbation leads to poor eyesight, sweets cause acne and unnatural sex practices promote baldness. “They all mean nothing,” he said. “No research has ever backed them up. I use more sophisticated models that will be made explicit in my book.” He had been writing a medical text for over thirty years.

  Some of his conclusions were complex and startling, so he took pains to ensure I understood. “My research has shown that chronic nose-picking leads to incontinence,” he said. “And it’s a well known fact that infidelity causes hair loss. It therefore follows that one should not occupy a seat on the bus next to a bald adulterer who is picking his nose.”

  I expressed amazement, but not enough to remind him that I was supposed to be studying Italian Renaissance history.

  “That’s just the beginning,” he said. “I have found that self-abuse causes dwarfism and obesity in young men and old ladies. In all others, self-abuse causes excessive growth and anorexia. Therefore all tall, short, thin and fat people have written their own biographies, so-to-speak.”

  In one semester at a well known university, he had set the academic world on fire by announcing that burping in public while young precipitates blindness in old age, wiping one’s nose on one’s sleeve causes paranoid schizophrenia and that cheating in cards brings on the flu while cheating on one’s spouse gives rise to migraine headaches.

  Over and over he warned all who would listen, “Sex, in any form is lethal. It triggers heart attacks and cancer. Just consider that almost 100% of adults who die from heart attacks or cancer have, at one time or another, practiced sex.”

  Notwithstanding the effort he put into his research, Professor Cabbage had detractors, some of whom were so unkind as to refer to his work as CLIP-CLOP clap-trap. These unkind aspersions simply made him work harder. “CLIP-CLOP is not clap-trap,” he used to say. “They’re all envious. If they had read my last paper they would know that envy and jealousy beget venereal disease. They may not fry in hell, but they’ll certainly burn when they urinate.”

  For years he had wrestled with the fact that on average every human being has one breast and one testicle. His breakthrough was memorable. He came into the room, red-eyed from lack of sleep. “I have it,” he said. “Consider the following: It’s a fact that only one testicle is necessary for procreation, and it’s also a fact that one breast is indeed sufficient to feed a normal baby. Therefore every woman has one unneeded breast and every man, an extraneous testicle. Obviously the human body carries around pieces it doesn’t require. Because God is efficient and would never give parts to humans that they don’t need, the extras must have been placed on our bodies by the Devil … and because these extra bits are naughty, they have an innate ability to assist in arousal. It follows that Satan has placed them on us in an effort to get men and women to increase sexual activity.”

  “More sex doesn’t sound bad,” I said.

  He gave me a pitying look. “Remember, once humans engage in sex, it’s a very short step into the grave. The only way out of the dilemma is to abstain. Then one can die of old age which is the only human affliction that’s manufactured by God. He has provided it so that we can all go to heaven. It’s not difficult. With one exception, I’ve abstained for over seventy years.”

  Notwithstanding his one exception, Professor Cabbage had made it to old age and it wasn’t long until a dwindling supply of mental resources forced his retirement. He died a few years later and I’m sure he has an exalted place in heaven. Occasionally he enters one of my recurring dreams. In it he is sitting next to God observing the afflictions that caused the demise of the persons whose souls are slowly making their way toward the celestial
gate. Before each arrives the professor does a calculation and informs God of the result. Then God makes the ultimate decision and Professor Cabbage smiles, secure in the knowledge that CLIP-CLOP is not clap-trap.

  We had progressed from the restaurant to Adriana’s patio. The afternoon heat had refused to retreat before an early evening moon and Adriana was fanning herself with a magazine. “Your story explains some of your peculiarities,” she said. “However, studying under the professor doesn’t account for all of your less-desirable characteristics. Surely you must have had other influences besides Professor Cabbage.”

  The heat had caused my shirt to stick to my back. I was uncomfortable and Adriana’s words irritated me. “Yes I did, my sweaty señora. If you can control your outbursts, I’ll tell you.”

  Professor Cabbage was replaced by a series of instructors, each of whom was interesting and each of whom taught me well, but who, upon leaving my father’s employ, immediately erased themselves from my memory. That is, until my last tutor, Philomena Philander, age twenty-one. She had been hired specifically to teach me Latin.

  Please don’t misunderstand. Those who know me now may not realize that there was a time when I did not speak many languages. Now, I am a master. I have, in addition to vigorous French, a small smattering of Chinese, a tiny dab of Armenian and some strikingly apologetic Canadian.

  Philomena was well-educated but unemployed due to her marriage to Don Rodolfo, a sixty-year-old man who felt she should be at home to look after his every need. She became my tutor only because of a debt owed to my father by Don Rodolfo. Gypsy haired, incandescent, and sybaritic, her eyes were molten and she moved with the quivering wildness of a caged jaguar which caused her clothing to float about her body and rustle with erotic implication.