The following is another excerpt from my unpublished/unfinished novel TUTTI, Chapter 2: “The Cage”.

The trunk of the car was filled with sacks and sacks of goods and materials purchased at the mall by Chad?s wife. Julie stood next to Chad and looked inside the trunk alongside him. Chad turned to her, and she looked extremely tired. Meanwhile, Ari and Seph were a virtual tornado around their legs.

?They were? too strong?? Julie said weakly.

Chad smiled. ?That?s okay, honey. We had too much money anyway. Our purchases of these useless toys that will be used twice and then cast away will keep the economy strong.? Chad pulled as many shopping bags as he could out of the trunk and lugged them into the house. Julie did the same. Two trips later, they had gathered everything.

Ari and Seph immediately tore into their packages, quietly ignoring their new dresses, shoes, and sweaters in favor of Belly Button Ring Barbie and Teenage Pop Sensation Barbie, which, Chad noted, were for all intents and purposes the same damned Barbie. Also prevalent among the girls? new acquisitions was more Pokemon paraphernalia, which they immediately began fighting over. Chad?s curiosity was aroused at this because he had been absolutely certain the whole Pokemon scene would have played out by now. Soon, the girls had collected all of their materials, and, leaving aside for one moment the new apparel their mother had so kindly purchased for them, ran upstairs into their room in order to absorb the new objects into their respective greater toy collections.

Julie plopped down on the sofa. ?Jesus.?

?Bad?? asked Chad.

?Uh-huh,? Julie acknowledged.

?Just be glad we don?t have boys,? replied Chad.

?Oh, trust me, I am,? Julie fired back.

Chad sat down on the sofa next to Julie, who saw an opportunity and, smiling sweetly, immediately put her feet up in Chad?s lap. Chad, who?d had such automatic behavior patterns drilled into his skull from relationships much earlier in his life than Julie, began to rub her feet. Moments later, he looked down and wordlessly noticed that he was doing so.

?I couldn?t help but notice that you mowed the lawn,? Julie said.

?And so I have,? said Chad.

Julie unzipped her pants and pushed them down around her hips. ?Time for post-mowing sex, then!?

Daily Hey Magic Number: 23

The following is another excerpt from my unpublished/unfinished novel TUTTI, Chapter 2: “The Cage”.

Saturday morning came quickly and quietly, with the exception of Mrs. Rosen from across the street, whom Chad and Julie had to remind several times the night before that there were children upstairs who were trying to sleep.

Chad sat at the kitchen table and sipped his cup of coffee. He was drinking from his favorite mug, the one that had the cartoon of a large anthropomorphic piece of feces with a moustache leading around two smaller anthropomorphic pieces of feces. The caption, of course, was ?Number Two Dad?. It was a gift from one of his office buddies, given to him at around the time Seph was born.

It was Julie, the graduate student studying mythology, who came up with the very clever idea of giving their children names from mythology, with the twist that they would be characters from Greek mythology, so that their pairing with the last name ?Roman? would be laced with hilarious irony to anyone who happened to notice it. Chad was reluctant at first, but agreed for both children when his wife supplied the actual names. Ari was short for ?Ariadne?; Seph was short for Persephone ? both of these names he liked very much, though he was secretly hoping to have a son, which he would name ?Apollo?, or ?Pol? for short, which he thought might be a good name for, say, a star high school quarterback. Julie later admitted that her baby boy name would have been ?Hephaestus?, or ?Heph? for short, which, Chad joked, would be a good name for the founder of an adult magazine.

?He would be taking up the family business!? Chad shouted just before Julie clobbered him.

Occasionally, the girls would become upset that their names were so unusual and never appeared on things like key chains and bicycle license plates sold in discount stores and hotel gift shops, but Julie would mollify them by showing them artistic representations of the mythological characters whose names they bore, which they would always find interesting ? until Julie would inevitably hit that picture in the book, the one in full color, of Hermes, herald of the gods, interpreted here as a fully nude male figure, save for a winged hat; and of course his deific genitals were represented here, in proportion to the rest of his body, as being the size of fire ants. It never failed; the girls would see the picture and point and laugh and squeal uncontrollably, and ultimately Julie would need to put the book away and turn on the television to get them to be quiet. She was never clear, however, on whether they were laughing at the fact the genitals were so tiny, or genitals in general, or the picture of naked Hermes in its entirety, or the winged hat, which was pretty damned funny on its lonesome. Ultimately, she decided not to worry about it. Both children had accidentally wandered into Mommy and Daddy?s bedroom or shower at various inopportune moments, and so it was to be assumed that the girls at least knew of the existence of the male genitalia, if not its function.

Daily Hey Magic Number: 25

The following is an excerpt from my unpublished/unfinished novel TUTTI, Chapter 2: “The Cage”.

Chad Roman, father of two, husband of one, pulled his light blue Honda Civic into the driveway of his suburban tri-level home. It was a Friday evening and he was relieved to be free from work for the weekend. Today had been particularly stressful due to paperwork, deadlines, and the fact that the boss had inadvertently stapled his secretary?s brassiere to his thigh. All told, a relatively difficult day in the grand scheme, and what better way to unwind than by spending time in the home he (and his bank) owned, basking in the admiration of his two golden-haired daughters and his beautiful, charming wife, assisting in the preparation of and finding enjoyment in a delicious meal involving some sort of meat combined with some sort of vegetable, watching his favorite television programs in between conversing with his family during commercials, and then, later, after the girls had been tucked in tightly for the night, engaging in a lively bout of group sex with the neighbors.

?Fridays are my favorite days,? he thought to himself with a smile.

He stepped out of his car and into the still-bright afternoon sun. The front door of his house burst open and his laughing, delighted children came rushing out to greet him. His smiling wife, arms folded, leaned against the doorframe and shook her head gently in pride. Ari, 7, and Seph, 5, leapt with dexterity into Daddy?s waiting arms. He dropped his briefcase, grabbed one under each arm, and carried them into the house.

?Oh, honey!? Julie sighed as she picked up the briefcase from the neatly trimmed grass and followed them inside.

?How was school today?? Chad inquired of his eldest child.

?School was super duper butt!? Ari yelled in response, as she was wont to do. ?Mrs. Fitzsimmons made us all put our heads down on our desks because Kevin flicked a booger at her butt!?

?Booger booger booger!? Seph replied.

?So you all had to place your heads on your desks?? Chad inquired further.

?Yeah well Kevin picked his nose and flicked his booger at Mrs. Fitzsimmons?s butt and it stuck right to her butt and when she turned around to write on the whiteboard everybody saw the booger and it was big and gross so we screamed.?

?I see,? Chad noted. ?Did you inform Mrs. Fitzsimmons of the booger, or did she think you were all just screaming for no reason??

?Please!? Julie laughed. ?Some of us are trying to eat, here!? At that moment, Seph grabbed a fistful of mashed potatoes and stuffed them into her mouth. ?Use your fork, honey.?

?Jenny told her about the booger but she didn?t believe her so she had a booger on her butt, like, all day. It was something else,? Ari stated.

Julie?s eyes met Chad?s and they smiled. Chad ignored the adorable prattling of his children for a couple moments and admired his pretty wife: golden-haired (like his daughters), deep blue eyes, alabaster skin, curvy and bosomy and well-proportioned, with the sex drive of a porn star. This aspect was appropriate, given that Julie was, in fact, an ex-porn star ? although, asked about it now, she would likely downplay the whole ?star? status. ?I was a cog in a machine,? she would say. ?I was part of a team.?

Daily Hey Magic Number: 27