June 30, 2011
the world’s loudest dick
Males of the Micronecta scholtzi species serenade their sweethearts with a three-part song made by rubbing their genitalia against their abdomens, but it remains a mystery how or why the creatures make such a loud mating call.
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Oh, god. I want to say something funny. I got nothin’ to beat the article.
Somebody hand me a tissue, I’ve got bugs all over me.
Come again?
I’ve had dates like that.
I approve of the categories.
I’m out on the patio in the heat. When Danny got home, he said, “I don’t think you should go out on the patio.”
There is a breeze, now cooling a little. In a couple hours it’ll be almost comfortable, tho I’m not shvitsing as much as you might think. The house shades the patio.
I dreamed, last night, of being South. (Houston, maybe, I don’t know why.) Where it was humid like a rain-forest. There, in my dream, were bugs like I’d never seen before. Ga-zillions of them. I nearly freaked out.
The heat and humidity here in the Driftless Region. Vomit-making tonight. Plus: Before tonight. The insects. Like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
Is this what Vietnam was like? I mean, in terms of gnats and midges and such?
I can’t imagine, yet I can. I was on-the-cusp of being drafted. I prayed to the lord, in 1973, “Please do something so I don’t have to go.” I didn’t have to go. ‘Nuff said. (But I know I would have gone, had I been called.)
Rick, you and I are on the same cusp, though you’re a boy and I’m a girl and I was not subject to the draft. But my very first boyfriend, well, this was before the draft lottery, and okay, I think his mother kind of bribed the draft board. But before that, he was really thinking about fleeing to Canada.
A friend of mine came up with a low draft lottery number in 1972, but he wound up spending a couple of years in Germany. Not Vietnam.
Earlier tonight, I started to say, “At least there is no cicada noise.” Just now I heard one. He is several lawns away and alone. No others answering. I’m sorry for him. Sitting several minutes, I’ve not heard him call again.
What would it be like to be the first-born, alone, to speak a language, have a call, with no one of your kind around yet, to answer?
Ooh, I just heard a quiet answering from the lawns to the North. Mayhap it isn’t as bleak as the thought first came to me.
Somebody has to start the music.
You Can’t Stop the Music.
Rick, I love that. And I love that you posted it. And I love you.
Sheila, I love you back. I still wish there were an “I’m Sorry” category.
Oh, no, Ricky. Never apologize. Maybe explain. But never apologize.
Apologize? Sweetheart, that’s the Christian upbringing in you.
Again, baby cat: Never apologize.
I sat on the floor, my face pressed up close to the television screen as they pulled capsules from a glass jar, one by one. The draft lottery numbers. It was 1969. We were all there, the four of us surrounding my brother, who was 20. Four of us were praying up a storm. Not him, though. I could tell it by looking at his face. Never him. We were so quiet, not a sound except from the television. Finally, it was over. And we were safe. Safe from a grief I knew none of us would have been able to bear.
Cece. I see you.
I know you do, Rick. And the cicadas? You don’t like them? I do. They are summer to me. They make me feel peaceful, somehow. I have a video I play now and then to listen to the cicadas from the woods where I grew up. I have a friend from Boston, though, who would not appreciate that cicada audio one little bit.
I love cicada noise. Especially in late summer when it rolls and rolls. Out on the patio it’s viscous and buoying. I float in it.
Rick Neece. I’ve been scrabbling for a way to describe the late summer cicada sound. I could not transcribe it for the Bostonian, who lives down near the river south of where we had lunch in Old Town. The cicado creeps him out. But now I know how to say it. “I float in it.” That is it, exactly. Thank you. I hope you don’t mind the term because it occurs to me this has become the case, you are my Rick-A-Saurus.
BTW, various periodical cicadas are out this summer. We don’t have any here, yet, that I can tell. But some 13-year cicadas supposedly are out in north Alabama. I’ll be down there soon. Another thing that makes me happy.