Whacking Poetic and the Notes to My Future Wife

Chapter 4

Forever Chest
Fiftieth Anniversary Card

My dear wife,

When you think back on our half century together, do you remember only the marital thunder of petty anger, unsatisfying compromises, and cold disillusionment or are you energized by that original flash of lightning that ignited our fire in the first place? I hope that during the arthritic confusion of seniority I haven't given you reason to forget the remarkable spark that brought us together or the hunger that prompted me to recommit myself to our living love song.

I envision this anniversary as a time we spend some of our retirement money on the honeymoon we could never afford when we were young. I can think of nothing better than sitting on a cruise ship and holding your hand during the twilight of our lifetime of happiness together.

I know you prefer original verse to pretentious cliché, but I feel the need to finish the Browning quote one last time, only this time without the ridiculous vulgarity. "I love thee with a love I seemed to lose. With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath. Smiles, tears, of all my life, and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death."

After fifty years of bliss, my anniversary message is simple. I am in love with you. You are the treasure of my life. I only wish we could enjoy fifty more years together.

Love,
Sam

"How do I fuck thee? Let me count the ways." Mack spit through his teeth and then backed away from the mic and thrust a beat-up Fender bass guitar between his legs and moved it forward and back crudely before lunging forward to grunt into the mic.

Sam watched Mack from the back of the brightly lit stage in Dr. Crenshaw's back yard with his usual mix of laughter and embarrassment. Though Sam had had listened to the crass lyrics and watched that repulsive motion about five thousand times in two years, he never got used to the enthusiastic reaction it prompted from the juvenile, almost entirely male, Whacking Poetic fans, as a handful of guys in front were pumping their fists with a barbaric yawp as well as mimicking Mack's vulgar pumping motions. Sam wondered how many of his musicology friends in the audience were thinking the same thing that Sarah had voiced earlier: you expect to intrigue me with rowdy?

"I fuck thee to the depth and breadth and height," Mack screeched as the rhythmic groove behind him shifted to the next chord, "My arms can reach, while drunken out of sight." He pumped his elbow with the beat, shaking sweat off his long sleeved maroon shirt that clung to the paunch underneath a leather vest. He still had on black faux leather pirate boots with a side zipper and an oversized fold-over, a costume that was only slightly sillier looking than his normal show outfit, which tended to include a lot of heavy overcoats and black leather boots.

His eyes suddenly fixated on the same nurse with blond hair he was hitting on earlier who had walked into view out of the darkness beyond the lights. "Then I wake and struggle just to stay," he sang as he pointed at the girl suddenly and then stepped towards her side of the stage. The girl stopped in her tracks with wide eyes. He stamped his foot on the front of the stage, "As behind my smile – I'm groaning under breath," he screeched at her with a snarl. The nurse's eyes shifted to laughter as a girlfriend joined her and they began to dance in the grass. He winked at her, then twirled around, his bass now a machine gun, and the anger on his face shifted to a laugh as he screeched in a way that sounded a bit like Steven Tyler. More people came up to the front of the stage and started dancing, joining a single undergraduate guy dancing in front of the stage by himself, wearing a cape and a shirt that said Trombone players do it in seven positions. Word was that he was a new super hero named 'Bone Man, which made him the prototypical Whacking Poetic fan.