Kenneth Edward Hart

A New Jersey author

Archives for December 2011

Gina’s Problem

by

Gina’s Problem

     “Mom, are you ever going out of the house again?
     Gina could see that Tommy was angry. His face had a familiar scowl, the one she always associated with spinach because it was with strained spinach that she saw it for the first time. He was stomping away now, shaking his head in affected disgust, his ponytail bouncing out an admonition. When she heard the dishes begin to slam against the counter, she turned to her screen and typed …RTI bbl… (real time interruption be back later) and closed out the window. Her modem informed her that she had been on-line for 4:35:17, but she knew that wasn’t really the case. There had been a restart to activate some newly acquired software. Reluctantly she moved her mouse to click on disconnect.
     “Tommy, what is the problem?”
     The fourteen-year-old boy looked up with an exaggerated snarl. “I’m hungry and you don’t give a shit! That’s the problem!”
     Gina felt an rt pang. She was uncomfortable with it. As she walked across the kitchen floor, her mind typed,* slowly walking across the kitchen floor * She moved to her son and put her arms on his shoulders. * extending my arms and embracing Tommy* Then she felt him shrug her off.
     “Jesus, Mom. I just wanted something to eat!”
     “I’ll fix you something.”
     * his face pouting * “What?”
     “How about hot-dogs and eggs?”
     * Tommy smiling * “OK.”
     She had just begun to scramble the eggs when she heard Merry wake up crying from her nap. “Mommy will be right there,” she said. The crying got louder. Gina worked faster, speeding up her mechanics.* a trickle of sweat running down her forehead…*
An hour later she was back into her network, feeling better, having had an rt exp, and feeling like she had earned her way back into the room. She connected at a slick speed and saw her handle flash onto the screen:
     Damsel enters the room….
     Brown eyed girl says: Hello Damsel * smile *
     Pierre winks at Damsel: there she is …the woman of my dreams
     Alec nods knowingly: Supermom is back without so much as a hair out of place
     Damsel blushes: good evening everyone *smiles demurely*
     This room was a general chat area that was populated by adults. Not part of the AOL or Microsoft networks, it was included in the geocities complex called The Paris Cafe. Gina particularly liked it because there were people, mostly from Quebec and Montreal, who sometimes conversed in French. It gave her a chance to get in some practice.
Damsel was known for her wit and her wisdom. She was also known as someone who had been around the cyber block and would not be taken by surprise. In such a role she was often a counselor for newbee’s.
     Her fingers clicked across the keyboard at the speed of a screen flicker. Gina was multitasking. She activated her Skype line and found out which of her circle of friends might be online elsewhere. She shifted into an observer’s role at the Cafe and minimalized the screen on her monitor. She rechecked her other dialogue boxes and flipped through some messages. Things had happened while she was off line.
     Her yahoo messenger icon was blinking to inform her of a message: Damsel, he says that he’s confused and that we need to take a break from each other * tears flowing * It hurts and I need to talk to you…Sultry Wench.
     Gina’s heart was squeezed. Sultry was one of her best friends and the affair was young and hot, and she had tried to warn Sultry to go slow because it was following a familiar pattern. She saw that Sultry was off-line and dismissed the urgency of the situation. There were other things to do.
     Much later in the night, after Merry had been given her bottle and put down, after her son Nick had gone out and come home with beer on his breath that Gina decided not to confront, after she finished reading her self-assigned Shakespearean history, after she found herself doing some work research at the Internet Business Camera Data Base,  

     Damsel met Browning in a private chat room.
     Slowly raising her ankle length skirt for his kisses, which she applied with her moistened fingers, she rubbed her clitoris and moaned for her lover. One handed typing passed between them and the orgasm built to a sweet intensity until she broke loose and
typed
     ….mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…. to let him know of her release. He responded with an orgasm of his own, and they held each other tenderly, staring out of their windows looking at the same moon and the same stars from 500 miles apart. Then they said good night and Gina crept through her rooms checking her children, and finally she turned off the monitor for the night. In the morning she would have to work very hard on the two web sites that her customers expected. But for now she felt peaceful and content.
     The doorbell was startling. She had been hard at work for hours and was just finishing the second of the websites. The customer was there to pick up the work she had completed had only spoken to her on the phone, professing his lack of knowledge of computers and explaining that he had been reluctant to advertise on the net. Gina was able to easily convince him of the multiplicity of advantages that came along with online
advertisement. He was a little early, but she was prepared for him. Wearing a long black skirt that buttoned up the front and showed off her long legs and her slender waist, Gina answered the door. Her cotton blouse was thin and gave her an airy feel.
Mark, from The Mansfield Funeral Parlor, was a good looking man. He was tall and had a friendly face. His brown mustache had happy ends that curled up and seemed to say hello and give him a permanently uplifting smile. Gina was aware of his eyes on her as they walked over to her work station. He said yes to a cup of coffee. He sauntered alongside her in a way that she found delightful…* walking together through my rooms * Thinking that I could just reach up and take his hand and that he would let me have it without so much as a moment of awkwardness… Her mind posted her body typed out reports of her feelings.
     It took her well over an hour to explain all of the anchors and links that she had embedded into his site. Everything was there, from pictures of caskets and pics of the viewing rooms to pricing information about additional services. There were examples of
guest books and memorial cards. It was interactive. In short, a customer could plan the entire service without having to come into the office. Or a loved one, too bereaved to go to the parlor, could see it all on line while other relatives communicated with that person on the phone or on line and made the appropriate decisions. It was all there, right down to a picture of Mark, appropriately attired in a dark suit with a comforting though not jovial expression on his face.
     “Well, I’ll tell you true, you’ve done one heck of a job here, Miss. Hennessey.”
     “Call me Gina, please,” she said smiling. “I just put it together, Sir. All of this was in the materials that you supplied, but I do believe that it extends an additional service to your customers.” She paused wondering if she should go ahead with the results of last night’s research. “There is one more thing that I would like you to consider?’
      “And what would that be”
     “Well, for a fair price we could have cameras placed in the room and offer direct online access to people who could not actually attend the wake.”
     At first Mark seemed jolted by the idea, but then he slowly nodded and said,
     “Can you show me what you mean?”
     As Gina took him through an explanation of the technology that she had researched for him, she began to see the advantages dawning on him. The equipment could be paid for from its own uses in a year. It was a one-time cost and it allowed them to offer what no other parlor in the area had. His smile was growing more flexible and she could see his eyes surfing over her face and her body with soft, unobtrusive glances.
     Tommy crashed in through the back door. “Mom, is that guy still here? Merry wants to have lunch!” Tommy shouted his question before he entered the room.
     “Mr. Mansfield, this is my son Tom.”
     “Hi,” he said, dismissing the man instantly. “How long are you gonna’ be?”
     Mark smiled at Tommy and at Gina. “I wonder if you would let me treat you and your children to some lunch,” he said.
     …Damsel blushing…”Oh thank you so very much, but I think it would be more of a production than you realize. Tommy, I’ll just be a few minutes.”
     “Fine, but if she starts crying I’m outta here, Mom.”
     As Tommy walked out of the room, Gina felt a slight pressure of Mark’s knee pressed into her thigh. She did not move.
     “Perhaps we could meet for dinner and you could go over this for me again,” Mark said
     “It’s very hard for me to get out,” Gina said.
    “Well, I’ll tell you what. I have a niece who is an excellent baby-sitter. If I send her over and you are comfortable with her, what do you say?”
     *blushing wildly …heart throbbing * I’d say that you were most resourceful, Sir.”
     Gina made the date. Mark left. She was flushed. Her cheeks were burning. She went into the back yard and relieved Tommy. He was angry again. Gina didn’t care. “I was working, Tommy.”
     “Yeah, well, that guy was working you, Ma!” Tommy stomped off.
     Gina held Merry in her arms and said, “Mommy’s gonna get us some Macdonalds.” The little girl smiled.
     Later that evening: Damsel enters the room
     Browning kisses her hand: You look radiant tonight, my Damsel
     Sultry Wrench shouts: Honey, am I glad to see you!!
     Gina settled in to ask her friends what she could do about the problem of her
latest rti.

Ginsberg’s Kiss

by

The auditorium at the state college was packed. I sat with my girlfriend in a front row seat off to the left of center stage. It was 1973, and I was excited. My poems were flowing with what I was sure was a never ending regularity. I was in love. I had just given my first public reading. What more natural thing to do than to go and hear Louis and Allen Ginsberg read?

We sat politely through the father’s reading.  I’m sure that I don’t remember a line but I applauded. In retrospect, the old man must have felt a mixture of pride and embarrassment while the audience waited for him to finish do that they could hear his son.  Louis had written regular verse for the now defunct Paterson Morning and Paterson Evening News.  I remember thinking what kind of a poet wrote for a 3rd rate newspaper?

The Dean of Humanities at Montclair State introduced Allen.  The audience stood for the dark haired, paunchy, bespectacled man who said when he reached the microphone, “I wanted to come here to read because my brother attended this college for four years and never got laid.” We laughed hard as the flustered Dean tried to be gracious. We forever bookmarked Montclair State as a place where no one had sex.

His voice was an unearthly thing that came from inside of a different place from what we all have. My girlfriend took hold of my arm. He sang and roared and uncovered the beauty of words with elongated lines that were like enormous breaths of consciousness.  He read Howl. He read from the collection of poems that was to become The Fall of America. He sang the songs of William Blake and accompanied himself on a strange looking squeeze box that he said was like the one that Blake had played. He stretched the possibilities of who we could be. He taught us that the war in the Middle East was a battle of the gods. He rode language through the air as if he were an enormous gliding bird floating on the dizzying currents of wind that soared through our canyon. When he was finished, we cheered.

There was a small crowd of people around him on the stage. He was packing his notebooks into a knapsack, slumped forward in a chair with a pile of poems scattered in front of him, a dark shag of hair covering his face.  I stood in the center of the ring and spoke in my clearest voice, “I love the way that the language dances for you.” He parted his hair with his hands and looked at my lean body and smooth face. I felt the power of his eyes on me. Then he got up and folded me into his arms and kissed my mouth. He whispered into my ear, “You are a beautiful boy.”

My mind and body went into shock. I wanted to squeeze my girlfriend’s breasts and feel the rhythm of her hips beneath me.  But a famous poet thought that I was beautiful and he must know.  All I could say was “thank you.” I waited for him to say something else and I suppose he waited for me or dismissed me as one more well-wisher. I’ll never know.

His words were in my mind. The feeling of his inspiration in my heart, but also the feel of his lips were on my face.  She teased me for the rest of the night but knew that I needed to expiate my pettiness with sex before I slept.

Good-bye

by

The word Good-bye is a hyphenation of God be with you. Tonight it feels as if it is being said to me as I am shown down the way from heaven. When lovers part, the farewell can be so strange and poignant! For those brief moments, all of the circumstances that have pulled them apart dissolve and they see each other as they once did, with the new eyes of love: so fresh, so rewarding, so filled with anticipation. I have seen that it is sometimes like that with people who are about to die, the famous last rally. Often the survivors will report that the recently deceased appeared to be getting well and improving, just at the onset of demise.

The tender good-bye and its seduction pull at the corners of lovers’ hearts and steal into the crevices of their minds. Sometimes it causes them to believe that the good-bye was a mistake. How can they be choosing to part from someone who feels so incredibly good? What is to become of all the intimate knowledge that they have gathered and stored with delicate care? How can a person who is part of daily life cease to play that role when the kiss is still sweet and the time still feels so precious?

They walk together and feel the timing of their steps and remember the way that they marveled when they first discovered themselves in unison. There is a brief interaction; perhaps the removing or putting on of a coat, perhaps it is passage through a door and they are made aware again of how well they have come to know each other. The body almost swells with the memory of such knowledge. They are unable to speak because it is the language of words that has probably deserted them by now.

Relationships die a little at a time. Just as some senses leave early in the presence of death while others stay on longer: the unspoken closeness, the special taste of a lover’s body lingers for a time. It is bittersweet. It ages youth but sometimes it can be savored.

Why is it not before then that we realize why we were in love? What part of the process is it that brings these feelings to us as they depart? I am sure that there is some scientifically chemical explanation. Some enzyme that is released in the brain and flows to some sensor and causes the production of a synapse connection that bridges to experience, but I am not intrigued by the compounded explanation that tries so hard to deprive the being of magic, to erase the mystery and define us as no more than a series of glandular releases.

Tonight I miss her. And I will miss her tomorrow too. I will wish that what is were not so, and friends will tell me that they understand. They will enable me to keep her close through that recounting of my feelings over and over in a resuscitation that seems to fight off distance and silence. The illusion that if something is still treasured it will live.

There are those that use anger as their antidote to these feelings. Anger can burn out the tenderness of a good-bye. It can act as a repellent that protects the heart from all of these feelings and with the strength of its ferocity drive people more quickly apart. It is placed on the outside of the body like armor. It squeezes the life out of the good-bye feelings quickly. It changes the time into something else and, with the force of its resentment, kills love.

While it seems obvious that we can learn from this time, less apparent is the lesson, the purpose for the pain. T. S. Eliot wrote, “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” I wish to learn the meaning, and so I see my way through this good-bye, this time, feelingly. I stare up at the dark night and see the clusters of stars, beautiful and distant, and for a few seconds I know why it is that I loved her, but that knowledge is fleeting and I have not put it into words and it passes through me. I hope that somewhere it has left, in its residue, a lesson.

 

Welcome

by

     Thanks for stopping by. This website was created to help people access a group of novels, a set of songs, a collection of short stories, a variety of poems and several essays. It is my hope that you will enjoy your time here and want to come back. There will always be new pieces added and your comments are welcome.
     I never knew that there were so many people in the world named Ken Hart. I’m the one who was born in Newark, New Jersey and attended Elliot Street School and Our Lady of Good Counsel gramnmar school. I graduated from Glen Ridge High School. I earned a BA in English at William Paterson University where I also earned a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership. My doctorate comes from Drew University. My adult life has been devoted to education and I have taught in a number of New Jersey high schools and colleges both public and private. I also spent 15 years as a school administrator.
     During all of this time, I have been writing and making music and now that I have retired from that career, I am able to persue writing on a full time basis. I hope that my stories can make you laugh and can make you cry. I hope that they make you think. Above all it is my fondest wish that they bring you enjoyment.

Time in a Bubble

by

It is the conclusion of the 1970’s. People indulge. It is the end of the Me Generation and the beginning of the era of greed and conservatism. Love, education, resolution, cultural differences, sex, and the finding of a voice drive this third novel of the Ron Tuck Series. With an all girl catholic high school as the setting and the light that comes from internal and external fires as the motivation, Ron discovers the person that he was meant to be and the things that he must leave behind.

Available at the Kindle Store

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