Limerence

copyright © 2012, all rights reserved

by Ricc Berra

It's been six months, fourteen days, twenty hours and forty-five minutes since we met. 

How often have you heard this story? 


A man walks into a working man's bar on a hot city night and approaches a girl seated near the door. She pretends not to notice as he rakes her up and down; her new Manolos, black pencil skirt, natural pearls, and the seal gray silk blouse unbuttoned to flaunt just a little more than enough of what she's got. He looks like he just stumbled out of a bowling alley. Her hair is freshly cut and styled. His is tousled in unruly ringlets. Her makeup shows attention to detail. His face, though handsome enough, needs a shave. She sips a Cosmo. He buys a beer. Offhandedly, he announces, "I don't mean to offend you, but you don't belong here." 

I act offended, but in truth, I'm not. I know what you mean before you do and I love you almost instantly for saying it. Still, I play coy and won't give you the satisfaction. You do not present well on first appearance. You will need to earn my trust.

"I've as much right to be here as anybody else," I address my own reflection in the bar. "And who are you to judge me?" My inflection rises convincingly toward the end, but I give it all away when my eyes flutter, pulled to yours in such a mad gravity that I blush and look away again. It's too late. You know you have me like bait on a hook.

You say "Sorry but you're so beautiful" and repeat that I seem out of place. It still sounds like a line, but when delivered with conviction, it works. I let you buy me a drink. And another, then a third and before long I'm at ease, laughing at all the right places, touching your forearm, resting three fingers on my thigh, biting my lip. All the signposts are there for you to read and interpret. You need no roadmap, no website seduction tips, you needn't bother, I've already read them all, practiced diligently in my mirror, everything from the perfect angle to avert my eyes, to the swivel in my hips as my bare knees brush yours when I turn on the barstool to face you. Everything has been planned, orchestrated, choreographed for you until you, emboldened by drink and by what you see down my blouse when I lean forward, brush my hair away from my ear and whisper a secret, how you'd like to take me home with you and what we'd do once we get there. 

There's no cab fast enough.

... This post continues!

The Girl with Two Lovers

By Riccardo Berra (c) 2011, Love on the Edge, all rights reserved

With thanks and love to Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard

A girl takes a shower, alone in her apartment. As she sits naked in the dark to dry herself, a familiar ache grows inside her. Lit only by the glow of her computer screen, she touches herself and as she does, she composes two emails, one for each of her two lovers. She asks them to meet her the next day, one at 1l o'clock, the other at 5 o'clock.   

The first lover is a day laborer, a brooding hulk of a man, to whom she writes:

You are strong and powerful. I am putty in your hands. When I arrive, I want you to tear my clothes off, slap my face, curse at me, push me, treat me like the little whore I am. You know what I deserve. I want to feel you smothering me, pounding me until I can't breathe and I dissolve in a puddle of cream. When you finish abusing my pussy, just flip me over and force my asshole until I scream and beg for mercy, though I expect none.

The second man is a poet, an intellectual, to whom she writes:

When I arrive at five, I will be Baudelaire to your Rimbaud. I will undress slowly and you, as you always do, will recite the sonnet you've written, just today, just for me. I love that my restless spirit is your muse, your poetry our foreplay and that my body is your consummation. I ache to feel you slip inside me, softly, slowly, until my passion overwhelms me. When I feel your breathe arrest and the flood of your seed inside me, I will know our love is sacred.

... This post continues!

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.

... This post continues!

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.

... This post continues!

The Adulterers' Manual

by Riccardo Berra
(c) 2011, "Love on the Edge" no reprints, all rights reserved

You meet by chance in places your spouses don't want to go to with you. You never thought you'd even like somebody like her, right up to the startling moment you fell and fell hard. She is so flustered and disorganized that it would irritate you if you weren't already so hot for her. Sometimes you're desperate for things you never thought you wanted. It's only now that you realize how many times you've felt this way before and never had the courage to act.

He is so cocky and self-assured that you're certain it's an act. You don't care. You'd forgotten that just talking to a man could be so heartbreakingly erotic. When he offers you a ride home, you tell your girlfriends a breathless story you hope they'll never see through. By the time they see you leave together, you don't care anymore. He says it's not out of his way. You know it is.

A light rain mists the windshield. You fumble to turn on the wipers. You fiddle with the radio and when there's nothing worth listening to, you make small talk instead.

His car pulls off into a dark, deserted park and you say nothing. He could be a killer or a rapist, but you're already wet. Your body has decided. Cars fly by on the road you just left; their slithery whine of wheels and engines on wet blacktop fades as he kisses you for the first time. Your cunt aches with an open poverty you've never felt before. He tries to take you standing up; your panties stretched just above your ankles, your knees shaking with the twin terrors of discovery and desire. The car is warm against your bare ass.

Her breasts are small and pearly white with hard nipples clearly outlined through sheer black lace on this moonless night. You can't do it though you want her more than anything, more than any woman you've ever wanted. You become afraid that she'll think you don't and that it will be over before it begins. The irony of it is enough to make you weep.

... This post continues!

Midnight Confession (Erotica)

"A Quicky"

(apologies to The Grass Roots) 2/20/2011

© 2011 Riccardo Berra, all rights reserved

Featured on ERWA March Story Gallery

I stood at the doorway, my face burning in shame. My wife of thirty years lay in the bed with her book obscuring her face.

"I don't know how to tell begin ..." I began, staring at the cover of the potboiler romance. The dust jacket featured a smoldering statuesque maiden whose near-sheer gypsy blouse dangled perilous millimeters above her nipple line. A bare-chested muscle boy with sea green eyes and day-old stubble stood behind her, mauling the ripe package the fabric barely concealed. This is how my wife gets her kicks these days.

"Claire came over this morning looking for you. She looked incredible —a younger version of you. Messy red hair, the skintight sweats, those crazy tank tops she wears. Anyway, her phone's on the fritz so she didn't get your message that you'd be out.  You know I worked all night on that story, the one that has been kicking my ass. I needed a breakthrough. I found it at about 4 a.m.."

A noncommittal "uh, huh," came from behind the bodice ripper.

"So this morning, the doorbell roused me from a deep sleep. I rushed down and opened the door. No shirt, no pants. I didn't even think what I was doing. Barely awake and definitely in no condition for company."

"You look happy to see me," Claire chirped as she brushed past me. It was then I felt how exposed I was, how far my morning boner was protruding through my boxers.

"My God, I'm sorry," I stammered.

"Well, I'm not," she laughed. Her hand lingered at the gap in my shorts where my cock jumped in a burlesque of its owner, neither of us knowing quite what to do with a visitor. You know how small our foyer is. I couldn't escape her touch even if I'd wanted to.

And I didn't want to."

"Ah, I think he'd like to come out and play," Claire said, pulling her top down over her luscious tits. She knelt at my feet and took out my erection. I barely had time to close the door behind her. God knows the talk if a neighbor happened by and saw her on her knees with my cock between her creamy mounds.

Remember the time at Lake Morrison when she was eighteen and went into the water without a bathing suit? How her wet smock and sheer panties left nothing to the imagination? She also fucked my best man, the night before our wedding. I doubt she ever told you. The two of them in the barn caught like scared rabbits in highbeams. She knew I saw the whole thing and ever since, she's always teased me when you aren't looking.

Between her tits and her lips, I was ready to blow all over her face, but in the twisted calculations of adultery, I figured, hell, in for a penny, in for a pound. So I pulled her to her feet and hustled her into the dining room. I'm sorry about the dishes we broke as I pushed her onto the table and peeled her sweats off. Does she ever wear underwear? I guess I'd always wondered if her cunt would look and feel like yours. It did, red and bushy, wet and tight, just like you, but twenty years ago, when you were still hot for me.

I'm afraid that our pounding loosened the legs of the old table. I'll need to get that repaired."

"Mmm," came the reply from behind the book.

"But after Claire left, I felt guilty. So guilty that I made up my mind to tell you. I know what I did was wrong. It only happened once, well twice actually. Again on the sofa, but what I mean is just today. Never before and God, never again. I was just hoping, I hope, we can get beyond this. There's no excuse, but maybe we can recapture what we …"

The book lowered very slowly. My wife pushed her hair back and removed her earbuds; the music still tricking out of them. "You say something?" she asked.

"Your sister stopped by this morning," I replied. "She was looking for you."

"Uh huh. I know."  She replaced the earphones in her ear canals and looked up at me. "I'm sorry. Was there something else?"

"No," I said, "Sorry to bother you."

Riccardo Berra, Love on the Edge, (c) 2011

... This post continues!

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.

... This post continues!

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.

... This post continues!

Hearts and Flowers

A certain lady sexologist of whom we're fans has a nightly routine in which she and her lover exchange sweet, explicit "nothings." Signora V and  I recently had just such an exchange. Is it sweet? Is it nothing? I'll leave it to readers to judge.

-------V-------------
My special request

Love, this is a darker side of my personality that has not been as yet revealed to you though I know you suspect me. As a one-off and never to be repeated scenario I request the following.

To be driven to a dark park at night when I am tired and ready for bed and be forced out of the car and thrown against the ground, (on a very warm night, mind), have my jeans and panties pulled down to my knees and my top pulled up over my breasts and have clamps fixed tightly onto my nipples so that they swell. Then with one hand on my back holding me down firmly I want you to force me, however tired I am at the moment, to let you take me from behind in my special hole. I will resist and finally acquiesce because you are so obviously stronger than me. I may be resentful at the time and the burning feeling that I will experience in my butt will stay with me for the hours to follow.  I will afterwards feel a kind of liberation by being taken in the dark outdoors against my will.

This is the second night I’ve written this request. What may I assume?

-------R-------------

I've opened my special file of pictures of you. As I page through them, I frame my response.

What may you assume?
Assume this.
... This post continues!

The Jealous Muse

by Riccardo Berra © 6-1-2010

She perched on the arm of his chair. When she'd first arrived, he'd been amazed that she could, but she'd stay like that for hours and he never minded. Except for her constant whisper in his head, he almost forgot she was there. She, so light, so delicate, could insinuate herself into the tiniest of spaces. She'd be what, all of 4'11", all of a hundred pounds wet? She had the final printout of his newest novel. She was wearing a diaphanous orange and ochre sundress. No bra or panties. What need has a Muse for undergarments?

She read incredibly fast and each page she finished, she flipped contemptuously to the floor. He'd not let her read the final draft until after he proofed it. He never let anybody read his work until he finalized it. He'd assumed at first that that's what she was being so pissy about, but something else was bothering her. The pages accumulating on the floor were numbered, thank God, but this was getting pretty fucking irritating. He made to swat her butt, but she became, well, it was like swatting cigarette smoke.

"This is your ideal woman?"

She was furious, rattling the remaining pages she held.

"Ideal in what way?"

"Ideal in the way of her perfect physique. Her perfect submission to you. Your perfect lover. I could be this for you."
... This post continues!

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.
... This post continues!

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.

... This post continues!

It’s So Much Easier When You’re Away

by Riccardo Berra/Apostrophe © 2010 

A mental snapshot. 

My 10-year-old Callie, shrieking, jumps into my arms, bony fawn legs locked above my waist.

"Daddy, daddeee, I missed you so much. Did you miss me?" Her arch little smile, so sure of her feminine wiles, even at this tender age.

"I missed you so much my princess; I missed the air around you." I make vacuum cleaner sucking sounds. She squeals in delight, then wriggles from my grasp as towhead monster Mark Jr., my 5 year old brick house swaggers in. The action toy he clutches mimics his gait. He ignores my open arms.

"I got the new red Power Rangers." He waves it in his sister’s face; she swats it from his grasp. It sails onto the couch. They run upstairs shrieking at each other.

"A little help!"

Next shot.

Reflexive scowl stamped on her features, Ellen, my 42-year-old wife, pushes a suitcase through the door as if it contains lead ingots. A practiced martyr, she insinuates with inflection and body language alone how much of a total shit I am for not attending to the car as soon as she pulled up. I’m judged and found wanting oh, maybe a thousand times a day. Lately for good cause. My faults cling like wet leaves to the marital headstone.

Ellen, Callie and Mark, have been away long enough that I’m completely out of their orbit, the wobbly hyperkinetic trajectories of Mom and kids and Dad and kids and kid and kid. Let's not neglect Mom and Dad. We’re right back to circling each other like wary, battle-bruised sharks sniffing the water for blood. My family's return has sucked all the serenity from this place that was so quiet just three minutes ago. I am disquieted and out of my zone.

I'm the senior science writer for a magazine that graces dentists' offices, coffee tables and nightstands across America. The bulk of the research for my latest feature column was completed in the family's absence. I’m now at the part I love, the fugue state of shuffling and sifting to find the story that hasn’t been told, because I haven’t told it yet. All the heady-thready stuff, the scribbled cocktail napkins, OneNote tabs, taped interviews, outlines, insights, late night inspirations, Post-its tacked to my monitor have been sucked up, all aswirl like autumn leaves, making and breaking sparky new connections. I roughed out a first draft which I'm suddenly desperate to get back to.

This part is all mine. This is the black box shit they don’t or can’t teach in `how to write like a writer` schools. What’s mine is mine until I write it. Even then it’s still mine, unless in some blockheaded, uber-genitive huff I decide not to write it. Then it would stay mine forever. But Dr. Johnson got it right of course; I wouldn’t get my fee and I would get desperate, angry calls from my editor and his boss, the senior executive editor and his boss, even the new publisher, with whom I swapped cocktail stories last weekend on the balcony of his Midtown penthouse.  We were all at a summers-end soirée for magazine brass to celebrate the mantle's passing to the young publisher from his father, son of the magazine's legendary founder. China cup pretty, a very young British heiress soon to be his second wife, clung unhappily to his arm.  My new boss told his intended I am the magazine’s best writer. Not the best science writer, but the best writer. He told me we would become great friends.

Nobody’s calling about missed deliveries. There’s no need and never has been. I and my work are utterly reliable. Like all its predecessors, this article will go out a little shy of the deadline as an attachment to a short, cordial email. Then in a process akin to bovine digestion, Editorial will edit and fact-check and kick it upstairs. Somebody else will chew it over again like cud and kick it higher. It gets vetted by Legal, kicked back downstairs to Production and somebody else stripes in photos, charts, callouts, ads and headlines. The point is that by the time you read "my article" with my byline; it’s long since stopped being mine. It's theirs and then yours. The secret of good writing is possession. The secret of making a good living writing is dispossession. People wonder that we’re so fucked up.

Add to which, my lover of three years is royally peeved at me.  ... This post continues!