Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: men

  • jousting

    Guy sauntering through the pretty part of town with a flashing, winking keychain, silver and the size of a beer coaster, jouncing at his groin. Its flashing and winking caught my eye, and then he caught my eye, with a smug, knowing look which spurred the mean hope that he may never get close to any woman again.

    Girl wheeling her bike alongside the lake, its rear wheel throwing up pinkish white blossom in tissuey arcs. I walked behind her like a bridesmaid, the bottoms of the green Spring trees stroking soft as mothers across the crown of my head.

    H2O HoL bought myself a present

  • the bowled soul

    the bowled soul

    Today I had to face some things inevitable but leaving pain. They are not my fault nor anyone’s and there’s nothing I can do about them. But it’s ok. You know how you grapple til you get to grips.

    While I was grappling I walked the streets. As I walked I passed a very well-dressed woman talking with an equally well-dressed man. They were speaking in English. As I passed, she said: “and sometimes I feel like I could just lie down? and cry? You know?”

    The clipped question marks at the ends of her sentences showed me a desperate soul. How courageous to tell it all to this man who had on a leather jacket and who when she said these words put both of his hands behind his back. I wove round some parked bicycles and came up beside her. “Excuse me. Did I just overhear you say, sometimes you want to lie down – and cry?”

    Her eyes were blue and spiky with mascara. To her infinite credit their pupils did not shrink at this accosting by a stranger. “Yes,” she said.

    I put my hand on her arm. I have no shame. “I feel that way too… sometimes. May I just say – as a stranger – please – just do it.

    “Find someone who can hold you, and really hear you -” (we both inadvertently glanced at the well-dressed man, hovering nearby with a studiously disengaged expression on his face) “- or maybe a counsellor, and just do it. Don’t try to be brave.”

    She was wonderful. I just loved her. Her face crumpled into compassion – for me. Women are incredible. “Oh,” she said, “that is so kind of you.” She put her hand on my arm too, as though we were dancing. “Oh thank you.”

    As I walked on I felt the tears on my own heart lift and leave. How can this world be bad, that has such beautiful persons on it?

    H2O HoL lisbon laundry door

  • lucky, lucky accident

    lucky, lucky accident

    I was following the river on a very narrow path, about a foot wide, and it was bumpy. Tree roots, little soft holes where the soil has rotted away with rain… You know how you think, Gee I should maybe walk this bit? Or, “I hope I don’t drop this,” etc. And then: >whoooo…< I found myself peeling sharply outwards, dipping, losing balance, falling over the bank. You have those two seconds which feel like ten where you get to think, Which way should I fall. I fell towards the bank, tried to fall upright and loose. As this was happening I swore, in German. Why not English. Then I was wedged, still on my bike, between the river and a handy leaning tree. I had hardly time to wonder why "Scheisse!" and not "Crap!" before a party of four Swiss people on hardy mountain bikes came through the mist of trees. They were lycra angels in the afternoon sunlight. I handed them my bike and then two arms came down and two women - the men were busy marvelling that I had landed so fortuitously - hauled me up on the bank. A drop of about five feet. They lectured me but only very briefly and kindly. Those are really the wrong tyres! Are you sure you're ok? It felt cosy to be roused on by rescuing strangers. On the way home I passed various other people using all different kinds of devices. A girl on a skateboard. A woman jogging, in earbuds. A couple sluicing gravely along on the asphalt with those stocks you use to push yourself on snow, for all the world as though they were skiing. I passed a truckload of army recruits who waved and smiled and when I waved back burst into ribald laughter. But my favourite was the guy gliding between two fields of cropped green stalks who appeared to be travelling on a moving walkway, who was, of course, on rollerblades. H2O HoL white river flowers

  • a jeans under it

    a jeans under it

    An elderly couple pedalling uphill on a tandem bike: the Swiss are awesome! Casual bigotry in the marketplace: the Swiss are awful! These thoughts freewheeling through my head: generalizations are stupid! Yes: all of them.

    Decades back I was here and asked somebody, a travelled, educated person, what was the population of Switzerland. His lip curled. “Four million. And *one million* foreigners!” He was speaking of Italians. Now you see black faces in the street which then was not the case.

    Today I cycled to a nearby town in search of summer garments. Coming back to Berlin for winter I was only planning on three months, it was minus fifteen, I brought thick, fuzzy, woolly stuff and ugg boots. Now it is finally hot. The trees are blooming. In every shop I asked, Is there a second-hand shop in town somewhere? Maybe… the Red Cross? People not only looked blank, they sneered. I kept looking and finally on a back street found a merry collection of shoes, cheap suits, and household tat, with three African women presiding.

    They invited me to try stuff on in the kitchen and over their cups of tea offered encouraging remarks: Nice colour that one! If you don’t have a jeans under it, this fits great! A white man in his seventies came in and the conversation instantly dampened. I went foraging among the racks and when I came back, he had sat himself next to the youngest, prettiest one and slung an arm casually round the back of her chair. She was just standing up as I came in. She went and stood in the far corner of the kitchen with her back to the inner door.

    But you can’t keep a happy woman down and they kept talking around him, about a local woman who comes in causing trouble and pulling things off the shelves. “Police give me a card,” said the stout lady, reaching under the sink for her handbag to show it. I was pulling my sneakers back on, on the floor. The conversation between them was in a kind of pidgin, English and French with some German words, or is it a creole that people evolve when they are from different language groups and fetch up in the same place together? I think, creole. They were so kind and interesting and the atmosphere so pragmatic and humane, I too I would have liked to put my arms around them. I would have liked to stay on uninvited and bask in their presence all the afternoon long. I could understand his longing. His sleaziness, not so much.

    H2O HoL opshop manekin

  • you are smoke

    you are smoke

    Lord, but I love giving advice to strangers. I bail them up in grocery stores to make suggestions about biodegradable washing powder. In boutiques and in op shops I say stuff like, Wow that looks good on you ~ you should buy it. Tonight I tore a strip off my napkin and wrote a note to the girl at the next table, having eavesdropped on her conversation with a slicked-back dude in a leather jacket. Snatches I’d overheard: “I find it gets messy when people get emotionally attached in a relationship.” (Him). “..to complicate a sexual feeling” (him). “So I’m supposed to just… ask if that’s ok?” (Her). My note said, “beautiful girl ~ this guy sounds like a selfish brute. You can do better. Don’t let him have you.” When I was pulling on my jacket I went over and said, Sorry to interrupt – this is for you. She gave me an shy, optimistic, luminous smile that made me so glad I had acted.

    H2O HoL bogota tango

  • running man

    running man

    As I walked, a man in brief, flared jogging shorts came running towards me. I decided I would look at him the way men sometimes look at women. I gazed at his ankles and shapely calves. I gazed at his thighs. I gazed into his face until he had to look back at me. He looked shy and compliant. The river roared and his neat hooves thundered. We both were blushing.

    H2O HoL bearlin bicycle

  • great parents, both healthy

    great parents, both healthy

    I shared a restaurant nook tonight with three dinosaurs in suits, entertaining a young lady. The young lady was “three weeks pregnant” to the oldest dinosaur and hardly said a word. (“We’re not telling anybody yet.”) He sat with his arm linked loosely round her chair, establishing claim, while parsing the charms of various female executives as lazily as though picking his teeth. Gosh, I disliked him. Several times his voice rose on the repeated phrase “these ridiculous wind farms.” He talked about firms being “ripe for the picking” and a “young” female CEO of “42 or 43” who inexplicably had become suicidal when her high-riding company suddenly collapsed. The three of them leaned back to dismiss, one by one, the possible “real” reasons for her despair: Great parents, both healthy. She’s got a sister, they get on. She’s in a plum position, the world is her oyster. She’s charismatic and, frankly, gorgeous. The little wife sat with her hands folded under her chin during this recital and her baby, I guess, nestled under her ribs getting used to the uninterrupted sound of its father’s voice as he laid out the state of things for the education of the room at large. Oysters and plums. Niggles & Pimms.

  • manhood: let’s rejoice

    manhood: let’s rejoice

    Six beautiful teenage men were doing parkour across the roof of the sunken restrooms by the harbour. Ropes gently knocking against masts, land-passengers drowsing at cafe tables in the sun, and this buoyant half-dozen pruning their dedication, lightness, skill. It was wonderful to watch. They do it in total silence, wearing soft shoes and baggy trackpants. You see a guy size something up. He makes an internal decision: ok I’m going to take a run up from back here, leapfrog that bollard, then run up that wall and stand upright without using my hands. He goes and does it, successfully. Or, he falls back into a relinquishing roll and laughs softly to himself. God, they were beautiful to watch. I loved how they tried again and again; how they lept across danger and scaled things without a word; how they never paused to congratulate themselves nor erupt in applause, nothing aggrandizing, nothing loud, it was for the skill and the joy of it and utterly silent apart from the brown-haired boy who always said to himself, in English, as he made the last effort: “God, someone’s after me, Oh no! someone’s after me.” Manhood is not extinct, let’s rejoice. Manhood is instinct.

    h20 HoL manhood, let's rejoice

  • you want a peace of me

    you want a peace of me

    Tonight I intervened in somebody’s love mess and may well have made things worse. I had cycled through the lit tunnel under the bridge four times for the sheer joy and came out blinking into the stormy-seeming piled sky, alongside the frozen-over river. I heard a shout. A tall man was dragging his much smaller girlfriend by the collar of her coat, shaking her like a puppy, while she cowered and pled. It took a second with her face hidden and in the dark to ascertain this wasn’t mutual horseplay. Hey, I shouted, then really bellowed HEY! Leave her alone!

    She was shrinking inside her clothes and he was a shrunken king, big in the body but small in the soul. Hey! I cried again, and he paused in his torment to shake a big fist at me. I don’t know what “You wanna piece of me?” sounds like in Danish, but then again, I think now I do. I was yelling to her, trying to speak slow and clear, praying all Danes understand English: Walk away! You, girl, please! Just walk away. Two other women huddled in the bus stop asked, what was going on. By now the fraught couple had retreated (first rule of evading attack: do not go where he leads you) behind a big tree and she was crouching on the ground like a servant, in her fur-lined parka, her supplicant head bent as he yelled down at her and she took it. After a while seeing he was being watched the coward started gentling and soothing, he crouched opposite and the young woman in the bus stop said, naively, It’s alright now.

    We daren’t go any closer. Their stronger-minded friend walked past, I didn’t catch her name but the other two girls called out to her and she said, Well, we don’t know what kind of guy he is. I said, I think I know exactly what kind of guy he is. Well, she said, but if he has a gun – or a knife –

    They must have called the police because the three of them climbed on their bus when it arrived and moments later a police officer with a piercing flashlight lept out of a car. He talked to the ‘man’ and his female colleague talked to the woman, who had her back turned from shame, and the upshot was the couple climbed into his big black SUV and roared away. We can do nothing, the policeman said, if she stays. People are grown-ups. Yes, I said; she has to want to walk away. Exchanged cards with the lovely-faced Persian guy who had climbed off his bicycle and he said, Next time you come to Copenhagen, you don’t have to stay in a hotel. Nonetheless… I think I will. I think of that girl, home with him now, cowering and pleading. May she find the strength that’s inside us all. May he. And stop your bullying.

  • I’ve been playing this music for many years

    I’ve been playing this music for many years

    Today I was walking by the river when a man accosted me for directions. His tone was accusing and he didn’t say excuse me or thank you. He was carrying a crumpled green flyer, and pointed. “Do you know This Street?”

    I turned to show him the sign. “That’s this street right here.” He frowned. “But I need the church on the corner of That Street.” I pointed. “Could it be…. this church right here?” We were standing right next to it. A leafless, skeletal tree waved its shadow over us, helpfully: or would have, had there been any sun.

    “You don’t understand,” he said, “this is very important to me. I’ve been playing this music for many years.” That’s right, he had a guitar over his shoulder. “Well,” I said, beginning to suppress a smile, “I’m pretty sure this is the place. What other church is there, on the corner of This Street and That Street, by the river?”

    Why does one pity selfish people? I guess it’s because they are innocent, and seem helpless. He pushed the flyer at me. “You should come to the concert. On Saturday.” I said, “Sorry, I can’t on Saturday. But good luck!” But my last words, possibly all my words, were wasted. He had turned away, sighing, “Yeah… well…” and was blundering into the churchyard, trailing his self-absorption like a long, dragging skirt made from stockings filled with bunched-up wet newspapers.

    H2O HoL I've been playing this music