Lust in Your Heart

As a child, I thought I heard God through the Texas heat. God turned out to be a rodeo announcer down the road much to the amusement of the adults standing around the yard, drinking Fuzzy Navels and bitching about how hot it was -- that was the year that the temperature didn't dip below a 100 degrees for nearly seventy days. Bad things happen when it gets that hot. My mother's boss killed himself at a party when he found out his wife was having an affair with his best friend. The official word was that he was cleaning his gun. Note to self -- do not clean a gun by sticking it in your mouth. This was the late seventies, and I remember it as a time of high anxiety about everything --a time when you could go and get your Halloween candy x-rayed to make sure there were no razors in it. But it was not without its innocent charms. Jimmy Carter claimed that he was not without sin (in Playboy) as he had "lusted in his heart." One would be hard-pressed to hear such a noble confession these days.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"There seems to be some miscarriage, some wrong turning, but I do not know when it took place and I have no hope of finding it." John Cheever

Lust In Your Heart

This is a decadent little dessert drink to make when you're feeling like summer may never arrive.

1 part godiva chocolate liqueur

1 part raspberry liqueur

1 part godiva white chocolate liqueur

1 part vanilla vodka

Benedictions and maledictions

Published in Chaffin Review:

Attention

You want Dick Clark, I'll show you
Dick Clark, Leland said and dropped
his pants. We kids ran to the kitchen
where our ancient babysitter Betsy stirred
instant mashed potatoes and waited
for the bologna to fry and announce
itself with a flying saucer shape. Just
ignore him, she told us. He wants
attention. The Lawrence Welk showed
played in the other room, and Leland walked
out the front door into another Saturday
night, peeling away in Betsy's champagne-
colored Pinto. We sat for dinner and said
a prayer, hoping that Leland would not
return that night. I was seven, Jimmy Carter
was president. I didn't know anything about
the energy crisis or his brother Billy's troubles.
Life was simple. Then again, it wasn't.