Mattidawane

Matthew Dwayne or Mattidawane as his close friends called him was a nerd of the highest order. This kind that got A's in everything without even trying. Now that he was in college he took lots of courses just to see what was interesting to him. Chemistry and Physics were of course part of his studies but so was Sociology, Macro Biology and cooking…he also enjoyed language especially English.
He was handsome after a fashion, or perhaps before it, and although you wouldn't call him especially masculine, he certainly wasn't effeminate and liked some sports although he didn't excel at them.
He wasn't terribly socially challenged but he was shy. He didn't have much interest in women and oddly, they didn't have much interest in him. Actually, it wan't so much that he wasn't interested in women or sex he was just much more interested in academics. He lived in the dorms where his room opened onto a common large lounge with twenty other students in a high rise dorm where having your own room and no roommate was a considerable luxury tempered by a pair of common baths. This dorm was co-ed, and once in a while the lounge had a party. He had learned not to try and hide in his room on such occasions, his fellows and fellowettes were merciless.
Several floors were in attendance so there were over 100 people packed into the lounge.
He somehow managed to be right next to a tall beautiful black woman, an exchange student with dark perfect skin and white, white teeth and sparkling eyes. He was fascinated and peppered her with questions which she answered politely but she spoke Swahili and he didn't understand that though her pronunciation was perfect her vocabulary was still limited so her answers in English were short. Had they been speaking Swahili her answers would have been much longer.
One of her friends was also a friend of Mattidawane, had known him since high school and was actually becoming slightly jealous because in all the time she had known him he never had spoken this many words to her. She did a fine job of pretending not to care and indeed: nobody noticed. She did noticeably have a few too many beers; after a while she slipped into Mattidawane's room, lay down in his bed and fell asleep.
Mattidawane came in quite late and quite ready for bed as he had had a few too many while talking to the exchange student. His interest made time pass quickly and people just kept handing him red plastic cups of keg beer every time his cup got empty. It was for a change good beer on account of the cheerleaders who had gone to the local beer distributor to get it.
Mattidawane was quite surprised to find a co-ed in an oversized teeshirt bra and underwear asleep in his bed. He stood there in his underwear for a moment pondering, then got a pair of gym shorts put them on and plopped down in bed beside her.
She didn't wake up but grabbed him gently and pulled him close when she felt a body next to her, it was more of a cuddle than an advance. Mattidawane could tell she really was still asleep so he tried to go to sleep too, except her leg on him and breath on is neck made this difficult and it wasn't long before he became aware that quite against his will he had “a hard on.” He actually found this amusing. He lay there and thought about physiology, which led his mind to chemistry and before he knew it he was working on a chemistry problem in his head and the blood subsided and he began to drift off to sleep.
About that time she shifted position and now she was breathing in his ear. And then suddenly he knew she wasn't asleep because she was chewing on his earlobe. And then he had what college kids commonly call a DCH which is short for diamond cutting hard on, really, he probably could have cut a diamond with it.
He let her chew on his ear. He found he liked it very much and he noted he was completely unable to concentrate on chemistry or much else. But he was ill prepared, (read did not have a condom), and was about to tell her they should probably put this off until later, though he was quite interested and this whole other spiel he parsed together quickly in his head. He turned to tell her so, but his mouth found hers and things went from bad to worse or from good to really, really good depending on your point of view. It was a lot of heavy breathing and writhing and tenderness for a good hour...but he managed to keep his wits about him just barely and they ended up sleeping together without “doing the deed.”
They talked and kissed and bit and cuddled and fell asleep. In the morning it wasn't awkward, and in that moment she knew or she should have.

Fred-Erick

Frederick was sitting there minding his own business when the witches of Old Haven showed up. There were seven of them.
“Hello,” Frederick said. He looked up from his park bench and noticed them standing, as it were, right in front of him. They didn’t say anything but their eyes narrowed a little.
Frederick was a turtle dove, but not the slow stupid kind that got high on car exhaust, but the quick sophisticated kind that got high on learning hence his incredible age of 437.
“Well then...” He said trying to prompt them into some form of speech. They stood motionless, standing there in black dresses and goofy looking boots. The leader of this little coven had on a dark navy blue blouse that she had chosen quite by accident in candle light, other than that hat to shoe they were in black, nicely tailored well kept witch clothes, not rags.
Frederick (pronounced like two names in one: Fred and then Erick right after) noted this, while walking back and forth a little, head bobbing the way only birds do.
“You must be Free-Derrick,” one of them said suddenly.
“Fred-Erick,” Frederick said carefully.
“Yess, yess,” said another. “You are a very old bird.”
“I am.”
They all began cackling and clapping a little.
Frederick became a little worried at this point. He had heard of the strange and odd ingredients witches took great pains to find. He hoped his eyes or toes or left kidney wasn’t on the list. He was just about to say, “well, must be going,” and fly off at high speed, when one of them started speaking. She sounded like a machine gun going off in short bursts.
“We’re bird watchers. We do it as a hobby. We heard about you. Now we’ve found you. Come here often?” She talked in short bursts just like that; words all run together. (Too much cocaine at an early age).
“Well, yes I do.” Frederick said. “Especially on Tuesdays.” He added with a sigh of relief.
They’ve been meeting there on Tuesdays since 1943.

Eggbert

Eggbert was a blue and purple Egret. Don’t ask ‘cause I don’t know either, something to do with radiation of the nuclear sort.
He was cool looking.
None of the other egrets looked even remotely close to Eggbert. His feathers would shimmer in bright sunlight. He was fat and happy because the fish rarely saw him coming because his underside was blue and blended with the sky above him. It almost wasn’t fair, those fish were discussing water purity and school maneuvers one second and were lunch for Eggbert the next second. But with yin comes yang as day follows night, for Eggbert it was easy fishing but no chicks. Female egrets that is. They all wanted regular white egrets. Try as he might, Eggbert could not convince any females to go out with him, much less build a nest with him.
“Look here’s a tasty fish,” he said to Eleanor Egret, a particularly pretty bird. “You can have it, and plenty more if you’ll be my mate.”
“Get lost Eggbert, but thanks for the fish.”
“Eggbert stood on one foot slowly shaking his head. “I can’t believe she took the fish...”
Women.
One day Colleen an albino crow was down by the pond. She was hot looking, even though she had light colored eyes. She didn’t look like a crow at all. We all know how cruel crows can be. She was in much the same boat as Eggbert, except she didn’t care.
Eggbert thought she was sexy as all get out.
“Eggbert? What the hell kind of name is Eggbert?” Colleen was by nature a crow.
“Mine.” Said Eggbert. The way he said it made Colleen laugh. The sound of her laugh made Eggbert turn his head and look at her. “Do you like fish?”
“Among other things,”
“Want me to catch you one?”
Colleen thought for a second. “Sure.”
Eggbert was back in two shakes of a mutated egret feather.
“Tasty fish,” Colleen said after carefully eating it in a most lady-like manner.
The rest is, well you know...history. No kids though, nuclear radiation is nasty stuff.
Sad part is that Colleen was an albino who was often sick. Eggbert loved her well, made a fine nest in a little thicket of cat tail reeds, and kept her well fed with fish, crickets and other insects. Eggbert found insects repulsive.
“I don’t eat anything with legs,” was his comment. She laughed that laugh Eggbert loved for all reply.
She didn’t live to be old.
Eggbert was a widow after 11 years.
He knew 11 was better than none, smiled when he thought back on her, but it was from a nest far, far away from the little thicket of cat tail reeds.

Foo Ling

Foo Ling was an inventor. He spent his days goofing around in a laboratory of his own creation over there in China. He invented the first personal communications device. He called it the personal smoke signal generator. It didn’t go over so well.
He got the idea from those red skin guys over in America, only back then they called it Bison Land. This was way before Amerigo Vespucci’s grandparents had even met.
He tried like heck to convince them to buy one but they already had signal fires that they had gotten in the habit of using over several generations.
“But this is entirely portable, you can set it up any where,” Foo Ling said. “And you don’t have to gather fire wood.”
“No thanks.” Fred the Indian said, his real name was Running Water a distant great grand-sire of Indoor Plumbing.
“Oh, c’mon.”
“No, Foo Ling.”
“Darn it.”
He came up with this improved black powder for his smoke signal device: still no go.
“Why don’t you just sell the powder?” Mad Max said after an exceptional smoke signal shot into the air.
“Who would want...hey, wait a minute...” Foo Ling said.
Foo Ling made all kinds of money after that. Max knew what he had done because back then he still had lucid moments and moments of clarity, sometimes at the same time, but that’s why it’s Mad Max, not Sane Max.

Noah

Noah was a huge gray pigeon. Really huge. He was hanging out with Joe Diamond the myna-bird and Sonny-Jack a tiny sparrow at the coffee store--or should I say a coffee store way up there in Spokane, Washington, just a short drive from where they speak Canadian.
Noah had some of those change color green feathers too, but mostly he was just gray.
They were sipping double caramel mochas as they nursed heinous Pabst Blue Ribbon hangovers. Well, not Sonny-Jack. His poison was tequila and big fat Havana cigars, or sea-gars (accent on the sea), as Sonny-Jack liked to call them.
No matter how you slice it, it still came up hang over. Noah and the others had gotten a wild feather up their butts and had flown up to Spokane on a lark.
“Not a whole lot going on here...” Noah said.
“Not at nine in the morning,” Sonny-Jack said. “`Sides: it’s Sunday.”
“There’s this burger place right off the freeway, you can eat there for practically nothing...and it’s great!” Joe Diamond said.
“Eat?” Chorus.
“Well, not right now. I can hardly keep my coffee down my own self,” Joe said. “But later...”
“Is it open on Sundays?” Noah asked. “I thought I saw them rolling up the sidewalks last night.”
“No, you were rolling on the sidewalks last night, Noah.” Sonny-Jack said hopping around for no apparent reason the way sparrows are wont to do.
“Let’s go to Seattle.” Sonny-Jack said.
“Why?” Noah said.
“Because, I, like the rest of ya, ain’t never been there.”
“They say you can see the ocean from most of the hotels,” Sonny-Jack said.
“Puget sound.” Joe Diamond said.
“We got enough to stay up that high?”
“I got my sax: we got money.”
They all nodded the way hung over birds do.
Just then 3 hot looking meadowlarks flew in. All babe birds.
“Hi,” one said.
“Hi,” Noah said.
They got to Seattle a month and a half later, leaving three very sad meadowlarks behind.

Ginko

Ginko, that’s Jean-co to you and me, or Jean as Ginko’s friends liked to call him, was a wild jackrabbit. He lived on the scrub plains of southwest Wyoming along with about 70,000 other jack rabbits (most of whom were directly related to Ginko) and quite a few well-fed coyotes.
Ginko was three feet tall if he was an inch. Not counting ears.
He loved to sit by highway 189 and scare tourists. They’d see him and just about have accidents.
“Daddy, look!”
Ginko would be off faster than light. He was an expert hider and hid not far from where the tourists would spot him in a hole carefully dug for just that purpose.
“Oh, you did not!”
“Did so!”
“Did not.”
Ginko would just laugh and laugh and laugh.

Plato And Aristotle

Mad Max was down at the beach at the edge of the world looking for someone to play his favorite game: “Plato And Aristotle” with him.
Reality was enjoying the pleasure garden and politely demurred. Loopey Looise, after the rules were explained to her six times, agreed and the Lion Heart willingly agreed to judge because he knew L. Looise might prove to be interesting or weird if nothing else.
They drew straws and Max lost. Loopey Looise came back after about three hours consulted with the Lion Heart on the rules one last time and went back out on the rock again. Five hours later she came back with, “don’t fry stuff naked.”
The Lion Heart laughed and said, “no point.”
Max gave Loopey Looise a questioning look.
“You know, the grease spatters…”
Max nodded as sagely as possible. He went out on the rock and after only six hours he came back and said excitedly, “never trust an enlightened master who can’t dance.”
The Lion Heart nodded and Loopey Looise began dancing. “I like that one especially…”
Max looked like he would burst. “And?”
“No point.”
“Awww, that was close!” Max said exhaling.
“Not really.”
They played for seventeen weeks without stopping. While Max was out there, L. Looise practiced dancing. While L. Looise was out there, Mad Max would dig a hole and look for the space the dirt had been in. He was fascinated by his ability to make space. So much so that he would drag anybody who happened to be at The River Water House out to the beach to see his ‘space collection.’
Just about everyone but Reality saw a beach with a ridiculous number of holes dug in it although some saw piles of sand.
“I can create space whenever I want,” he said to the Lion Heart.
“You are amazing Max.” The Lion Heart said kindly.
Loopey Looise came back after about a day and a half and said, “abandon what should be abandoned.”
“That’s very good.” Max said.
“But no there’s no point.”
“I quit then.”
“We’ve only just started.” Max protested.
Loopey Looise walked away without another word.