Modeling Session

by Riccardo Berra/Love on the Edge ( (c)2011all rights reserved)

No. 50+Models.com doesn't only want women with gray hair. Who told you that? Your floral print dress is pretty. It compliments your olive skin. The conflowers make your eyes pop. Relax. Lie on the bed. Pretend you've just awakened from an afternoon nap. Good!

That's one series. Sit up. Face the window. Pull the bedsheet across your torso so the camera thinks you're naked behind it. Good.

Slip the dress off your shoulders. The tiny bow in your sexy peach bra shows just above the sheet. So do the straps. Don't look at me. Look to the side. Think about what happens when we're done taking pictures. Yes.

Now look to camera. Your hair falls over your right eye. Show more leg. Yes. Lovely.

Take off the dress. These shots—they're just for me. The peach panties are at the bottom of the frame. Good. Slide them all the way down and lie back.

Open your legs. More. They make a nice triangle in the center of the frame. No, I'm glad you didn't get that Brazilian. I love all that hair. Pinch your nipples. They're hard already? I know. It doesn't take much.

Spread your lips. Do what you do when I'm not around, but you're thinking of me. Yes. God yes.

So beautiful. Yes. This session is over.

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TRES VUELTAS (Three Laps)

Sometimes a cigar is more than a cigar.

by Riccardo Berra (c) 2011 Love on the Edge, all rights reserved
  
Ricc Berra. My pleasure.  Glad to meet you too.

What do I do? For lack of a better term, I guess you could call me a lifestyle photojournalist. I work for that famous cigar mag you see on the newsstands and know by its thick glossy cover stock and glam shots of celebrities sucking on fat stogies. You do? Always great to meet a fellow enthusiast. Yup, that's it—last month's issue. There's little LiLo going down on a Cohiba. Yessir, I did. That's my cover and I can tell you stuff about her and that photo shoot that even the tabloids don't know. Exactly, what's the point? Poor little girl has enough crap on her plate without me piling it on.

Anyway, you're probably thinking, stop, you lucky bastard, you're killing me, you're, what did you say, a divisional shipping manager? You also write in your spare time? Two kids in Michigan State. Okay, yeah, shit, I know it costs a bundle. Mine starts Cornell this year. So you save like Scrooge, maybe you score four or five premium smokes a year. I won't deny I get the best, pretty much all the time, perks of the job.

I didn't always have it so good; so yes, I agree I am a bit jaded. Most of the time with factory seconds you're lucky to get a good five in a bundle. Champagne tastes and beer budget? Yeah, I feel you.

Point is the last thing I want to do is sit here and run my mouth to some guy I just met, so we can talk about anything you want except politics. Sure. Let me see your pictures. Handsome, your boys. You must be proud. Here's mine. You kidding? I don't mind.

Oh you like those shots. That's a celebrity golf outing. Yeah, that is Jack Nicholson, the Jackster.  To say I'm a lucky bastard because of all this isn't even the half of it.  Look, since you were decent enough to buy me this second drink and we're both got too much time to kill while they de-ice the wings, I'm going to tell you a piece of the other half.

I'm just back from northeastern Brazil, a charming, ancient colonial town in the Bay of Bahia called Cachoeira. One of Brazil's largest cigar makers set up shop in Cachoeira the late 1800's when its Portuguese founder left Lisbon find fame and fortune in the New World's tobacco fields. The company, Luz da Luna, was named after Dona Maria Luz de Luna, infamous widow consort to the deposed Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II.

Brazilian leaf is enjoying an uptick of popularity due to some risqué ads that feature shots of a former Miss Brazil provocatively non-attired in the title role. You've seen them? You are a dedicated reader. Save that issue, it could be a collector's item. The ads were pulled next issue. Anyway, Brazilian Mata Fina leaf is a sort of Rodney Dangerfield of the tobaccos. But I've always found it rich, sweet and spicy—very much like the country and its people.

The publisher of the mag knows I like it. I gave a Luz da Luna cigar a great review so the president of the company asked for me. Now, I admit, other than enjoying a good smoke and having a way with words, I have no special credentials to do this job; I don't even speak Portuguese. So when I got down there, the first thing the company's press liaison did was to set me up with an interpreter, a whip-smart, funny little character named Joacy Campos-Leão, who spent most of his time regaling me with tales of his latest trip to "Novo York-ae." The parts he left out, I'll save for later.

Anyway, I do my thing with the president of the company, we tour the fields, we spend time in the curing sheds. That was day one. Then the next morning, we go their horticulture labs. It is, it's a very sophisticated operation.

So I'm just taking notes, you know, doing my thing and it's lunchtime, but the president is called away to a board meeting and his sons treat me to a nice long traditional Bahian lunch with many bottles of decent Portuguese Caves Velhas red, followed by some truly excellent smokes and it's mid-afternoon and I've basically gotten everything I need for my piece. So I bid the brothers bom dia and  I page Joacy to take me back to the hotel.

I thought I'd crank the AC and maybe get a little shuteye. Though we're icebound up here, down there in March it's blistering hot and I'm sweating like a pig. Joacy turns to me in the car and says you have two choices Señor Berra. We can go on the site seeing tour (to which I mop my brow and grimace at the prospect) or … we can go for a swim. Swim it is he says and he says he knows a spot on the Rio Paraguaçu, less than a mile from my hotel. We drop the camera gear at the hotel and I change out of my seersucker suit and put on swim trunks, a Panama hat and my loudest Hawaiian shirt. Business traveler's tip, though executives do tend to dress conservatively, there's no such thing as a "too-loud" Hawaiian shirt in Bahia.

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Trojan Horse

This is a dark tale, filled with the dark acts of despicable people. If you are the sort that such tales alarm or offend; don't read, move on, for the Net is filled with sunnier, happier catch and the outcome of these events will shift not one degree for one less bug-eyed observer.

My name is Menelaus Mikanedes, MNM to friends and enemies alike. You know my company's name if you use a computer so I won’t need to waste any time explaining how my inventions have made me rich as Croesus before he gave away 90 percent of his fortune to his pet charities. I am not there yet. I'm not the type to relax and play the benevolent king. Business is battle and you need ruthlessness, ever-sharper weapons and a bottomless war chest to be a winner. Nature of the beast. They say confession is good for the soul, but I won’t be able to affirm that. My conscience is clear.

Three months ago, with contracts pending for two large highly proprietary projects, my security team found a very clever breach into our software development farm that wasn't in the security spec. My guys laid everything out and by the coding architecture and the sheer brashness of the hack, I immediately knew the work by its signature. When they asked if they should close it down, I replied no.

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LIGNE CLAIRE

by Riccardo Berra 2010 (c) all rights reserved

We live in such instructive times. There are manuals and guides for everything. For your first period—"The Period Book: Everything You Don't Want to Ask (But Need to Know)." For your first sexual experience—the books of Suzi Landolphi.  For more advancing sexuality—"Our Bodies, Ourselves" and any issue of Cosmo. An expectant mother reads "What to Expect While You're Expecting," then the endless tomes on parenting in all its interminable stages, but what, pray tell, gives comfort to the 50-something gal who is vanishing?

Perhaps I already have. Invisibility doesn't happen all at once. It's more of a slow motion tumble down a cliff.

My darling Missy. It breaks Mommy's heart, tween Missy staring so deep and sincere in my eye, promising, cross her precious little heart, that she'd always share her most intimate secrets with me. Teen Missy won't even make eye contact and divulges nothing. When I enter the room or catch her eye in the hallway at school, her nose crinkles as if I'm a passing bad odor.  Do I smell bad?

My darling Curt. Never, I've concluded after 17 years of marriage, was a man more aptly named, for he passes by and through me like air. Before Missy was born, he was a sex fiend. We both were, God, so shamelessly young and hot for each other, hands grasping crotches, tunneling under skirts and through panties, fingers pinching nipples, tongues in throats.  Everything everywhere. Parked cars, hiking paths, broom closets, kitchen tables, once in a museum bathroom, in other people's bedrooms, our own occasionally, leaving love's evidence trails on Mother's Persian and best chaise longue, me bent over, rump up, screaming as he pounded into me—whenever, wherever we felt like it. We weren't exhibitionists—at least blatant ones. We were just uninhibited, in love and saw only each other. Nobody else mattered. But life has gotten its revenge and now it's me that doesn't matter.

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Effective Dreaming

by Riccardo Berra
(c) Apostrophe/Riccardo All rights reserved

“Welcome to the Nepthys Institute for Advanced Chronotherapeutics … Mr. Jack Fischer. I am Hovington Lee your intake coordinator, and I am here to assist in collecting your intake history.  Before we begin, do you have a timepiece in your possession?”

“No,” I type.

“Please place any timepiece in one of the certified possession pouches on your left.”

“Fuckin’ already said, I ain’t got one!” I shout. I don’t type. The screen in my lap flickers and resets.

“Welcome to the Nepthys Institute for Advanced Chronotherapeutics … Mr. Jack Fischer. I am Hovington Lee your intake coordinator, and I am here to assist in collecting your intake history.  Please follow the prompts on the NetPad and when you are finished with each page, press submit to update your chart. Press the call button if you need further help or explanation. When you have completed the questionnaire, press “Submit Final” and your chronotherapist will escort you to the sleep study suite.”

Thank you Miss Hovington fucking Lee. Twenty percent of the good citizens of this formerly good country are good and unemployed. A swank joint like this should pop for a flesh and blood receptionist instead of a Virtual.

When you called yesterday I thought we were having a real conversation. Fool me once. Not that it’s all your doing. My addiction counselor warned I’d lose all sense of time and what did she call them, certain “social radar skills.” Two handy little fuck-you bonuses of Nex tox. A watch becomes your new best friend. Your old best friends go away. Chronic insomnia—yup, that’s the third bonus.

You’re cute Hovington and I’d love to get cozy and tell you a happy tale. I suspect this won’t be it. The guy don't always get the girl and honor between men always plays second fiddle to lust for a woman. But I’m getting a bit ahead.

Why don’t I start with the Departmental Healthy Audit that flagged my insomnia. Yeah, insomnia. I ain’t shitting. Not so long ago it was a lifestyle, not a medical condition and certainly not some broke-dick TMC (treatment-mandated condition). Mind, nobody forces you to do nothing in the CivDiv, but if you don’t seek treatment in six months or you do but you don’t get cured in 5 years, then you get dunked in the “Unhealthy Pool.” That’s no pool you want to swim in these days. Insurance pays for everything until you’re Unhealthy 10 years. Then they ship you to the Chronic Pool and drain the water. Essentially they pay for you to die. So what the fuck?

It sucks being an “Unhealthy.” Tossing and turning all night, never zoning before 4, 5 in the a.m. There are days when the only thing gets me out of bed is the promise of a cup of black joe and a contraband smoke. Don’t help none always being late for work—walking around, day in day out, like a zombie. But I ain’t gonna get frog-marched into something that’s gonna drug-fuck my head. Seen enough of that. I don’t trust them and their designer pills no more. Last year, a guy I sorta know in router maintenance got a script for a new monoclonal impotence patch and now he has some rare dick cancer. His po sprouted two extra inches overnight and stays rock hard twenty-four seven. Until they cut it off next week. Ain’t near as funny as it sounds. Poor Unhealthy fuck.

Your flier promised “Return to Healthy—A Drug-free Choice! Hovington, baby I’m all for choice. I just don’t know how you fit all that on a NetPad. No use delaying the main event.
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Circe

© 2010 Apostrophe Productions, Riccardo Berra

I have not slept. Not well. Not in a fortnight. Ever since I completed the translation I’ve been plagued by dreams of death and loss. There are other even darker insinuations in these dreams—images and emotions I have no words for.  As to the manuscript itself; I am only its translator. I have no other stake in it. I wish for no other stake. I found it cleaning in the attic of my grandmother, who lived to an incredible old age. As her last surviving heir, it fell to me to settle her strange estate when she passed. It was not a task I asked for or willingly accepted, but when I first discovered the manuscript, I was excited. Now, its mere presence unsettles me in ways I cannot explain. It belongs in a museum or in the hands of a private collector. Somebody else will need to take possession and to determine its authenticity. I wouldn’t know where to begin.  I only know that the sooner it leaves my sight, the happier I’ll be. Then, perhaps I will be able to sleep again.

If you are reading this, you have come to an accursed place and I pity you. By the grace of God, Almighty, whose succor I desire but have scant hopes of obtaining in this world or the next, I deliver unto you this exhortation. Desist you investigations now, carefully rewrap this journal in the oilskin you extracted it from and secure it as you found it, as warning to the next poor soul. Then, by all you find holy, flee this accursed cave by any means you can. For surely if you do not or can not, you will come to a most unspeakable and damnable end.

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