Johnny Roz
Retired English Teacher
Retired English Teacher
Johnny was a capable and careful man who kept a clean apartment. He wasn’t hooked up to cable, or dish TV, but he occasionally watched network events on the seven inch screen antenna-driven handheld model he bought at Sticky Mart for forty bucks.
Johnny had never been married. He often wondered about the life he lived, and realized financial security provided little in the way of emotional comfort.
Johnny had always been fascinated by women, but had realized few “connections” with them. He had maintained female friends at work, but not many.
Women, to Johnny, seemed to represent some kind of problem—a beautiful yet complicated problem.
A bit of a rhetorician, he often spent his days contemplating, analyzing, and critically reviewing the following question relating to human behavior: What do women want? Ah, Johnny knew Chaucer had an answer, Jerry Springer was curious, Virginia Woolf had a speculative idea or thirty, and Hollywood had churned out their notions in millions of senses-numbing bad movies, but he himself was at a total loss.
John was having a series of dreams lately—those kinds you have in the moments before you wake up—which were totally depressing him. In the dreams, the formula, the plot line, was nearly always the same. To wit:
Julia, an attractive and unhappily-married housewife from down the street, knocks on his door. He opens the door to see her, smiling, holding a measuring cup in her left hand. In each of the dreams, she has asked for something different—sometimes sugar, sometimes milk, sometimes cream, sometimes salsa, sometimes peanut oil. Once she even asked for cloves of garlic. He invites her into the front room, takes the cup, and finds the spice or ingredient she needs back in the kitchen. When he returns to the darkening room, she is always sitting on the couch, twirling a strand of auburn hair with one hand, and, with the other, patting the couch, signaling him to sit down next to her, next to her shapely form.
Her lips are pouty and beyond energized. She breathes heavily, with poignant and powerful desire. Her legs cross and uncross rhythmically. Um. Can you feel the heat?
Johnny always places the cup on his beat-up old coffee table and looks into Julia’s clear eyes—crystal pools of composure and need.
She puts her arms around him and nuzzles his chicken-skin wrinkly neck, and then she snuggles into Johnny. Now her lips are moist and panting. The old guy reaches out and hugs her, feels her curves, and is overwhelmed by a gloaming sense of comfort, love, connection. Her breath is sweet, her hands are satin, and the moment is warm and complete.
About the Author: Jeffrey Ross, who resides in Arizona, is a writer, rockabilly musician, and former full-time community college teacher. He has had four “Views” pieces published on InsidehigherEd.com, has authored and co-authored several national and international op-ed articles on community college identity, purpose, and culture, and has recently published numerous parody poems and articles on the Cronk Newshigher education satire website. Ross co-authored the comic and critically acclaimed campus novel College Leadership Crisis: The Philip Dolly Affair (Rogue Phoenix Press, 2011).
Jeffrey will be awarding a $25 BN GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. Follow here : http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2013/09/virtual-blurb-blitz-tour-love-in-rv.html .
This sounds different. Definitely quirky. "A romance for men" - Kinda like Big Fish? At least, I've been told that's a romance movie guys like :-P
ReplyDeleteThank you for hosting
ReplyDeleteSo what books or movies would you say fit in the same Man-romance genre as your book?
ReplyDeleteandralynn7 AT gmail DOT com
Well, I'm not much of a movie guy-- maybe the National Lampoon Vacation Movies reflect the kind of obtuse theme work I deal with. American life is bizarre if you think about it at all. Where are all those people driving to on the Freeway? How many billions do we spend on Halloween?
DeleteI try to avoid formulas, or recognizable plot lines at all cost-- really , all that has been said. Check out the Cronk News website-- google in my name and Cronk News, and you'll find many representations of my satire/parody world view. I would venture that men believe they must be 'romantic" in the American sense to be successful with women-- and they will seek success at all costs. But then, loneliness, and misery, and abject fear are not pleasant. No.
Thank you for hosting today!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the chance to win!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great read!!
natasha_donohoo_8 at hotmail dot com
Thanks for sharing the great excerpt and giveaway. Sounds like a really good book. Wishing everyone a wonderful and magical holiday season. evamillien at gmail dot com
ReplyDeleteJohnny sounds like a bit of a depressing character in this excerpt.
ReplyDeletecatherinelee100 at gmail dot com
I suppose Johnny represents many late middle-aged males who have failed in love-- or never felt close to a loving woman. Romance seems to be everywhere-- yet many are lonely, sad, without tenderness. And all those essays! Thanks for commenting.
DeletePS-- and Johnny will find redemption with a checkers board, a shady tree, and emotional freedom. Finally.
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