EC 540

A Happenstance Witness and The Holy Ghost:

Neither a novel or documentary, but for the patient reader

a timely story about the collapse of Modern and Post-Modern Times.

By © Ludis Cuckold

Mr. Godman’s Dog (8)

Some twenty-seven years ago, before I had returned to Latvija, my then wife of nearly thirty years, wished us to separate. We each took our own apartment at opposite ends of Washington, D.C. I moved into an attic room in a rooming house in Takoma Park, Maryland, and, as per usual, spent my entire spare time trying to extract something useful from my brain unto a computer.

As usual, it was a futile effort. I did not understand that my ‘inner fish’ or ’primal worm’ or whatever could not conceive writing as something to make money off. Sooner, for me writing was a kind of artistic endeavor, as avant-garde as walking or blinking one’s eyelids, as natural an event as a pine tree growing needles for leaves.

I could never get my mind around the idea that writing had anything to do with a career or money—whether as a poet, novelist, essayist, journalist, or writer of advertising copy. For this reason, nothing what I wrote ever came together in the expected public manner, and gradually, I became a half done fictional character even to myself. Nevertheless, I continued writing, hoping that if I continued eventually something would emerge that made sense or entertained.

This is one reason why I took for my nom de plume or pseudonym the name Ludis Cuckold. ‘Ludi’ is an old name for ‘people’*. The name is reflected in ‘ludites’, the English weavers and spinners, people who objected to being cuckolded by mechanical weaving machines and tried to make a revolution by smashing the machines with hammers. ‘Cuckold’ stands for the male of the species, who allows himself to be fooled by a female, often his mother, in hopes that the day will come when she will invite him to her bed. Of course, the latter seldom happens; still, there are events that can be called close calls or simulacra.

*Ludi—other names: Leute (German for people); Ludwig (a German name for a German King of the People); Louis (a French name for a king of the People); lud (a Russian name that—given that consonant L may change into R—is now spelled and pronounced ‘rod’, which is part of the word ‘narod’/ nalud—the people; ‘rodina’/ ludina—motherland of the people); etc.

In the course of our separation, my ex told me that she had begun to date a man from Yugoslavia. When I wanted to know more, she told me not to worry and explained that the man was gay and not interested in women in a sexual way. Supposedly, they were meeting because both were interested in art and literature, and the Yugoslavian needed to practice his English if he was to get a job at the Library of Congress in Washington.

One Sunday my ex invited me to come visit her and meet her new friend. I drove over to her apartment and was introduced to Slavoy. He was a nice enough young guy, who did not show any obvious signs of being gay. We exchanged a few pleasantries, after which Slavoy excused himself and said that he really had to go. My ex told me to make myself another cup of coffee and went to escort Slavoy to his car.

As I took a peek out the window, I saw my ex and Slavoy stand in the drive way, embrace, and give each other a kiss that was more than a peck on the cheek. I suspected it to be a staged act.

After reentering the apartment my ex invited me almost immediately to have sex with her, and because I was still conceited enough to let myself believe it was for reasons of my own irresistable self, I soon forgot about Slavoy. The forgetfulness lasted for a long time—until many years later, my hard to get objet d'art in Latvija, Daisy, who as a teen had been raped by her stepfather, told me about Mr. Godman’s dog.

The story of my relationship with Daisy is a long one. I have told it in a related, but somewhat different context in blogs that constitute Part I of this 2 parts book. In any event, Daisy, now in her thirties, was playing hard to get with me, but when asked why, she declined to tell why my irresistable self* failed to arouse in her irresistable desire. I suspected that she feared that if she told of her true feelings, I would cease helping her and the three children her other paramours had blessed her and abandoned with.

*My ‘irresistable self’ was, in deference to my long beard, recently called ‘holy father’ by an inmate of a mental institution, when I accompanied Daisy and her mother on a walk in the institution’s small park. Daisy’s mother had suffered a mini-stroke as a consequence of which she had become demented.

Some time ago Daisy told me that a Mr. Godman, the owner of a garage and a car rental facility, had invited her to come clean his house. Because she needed the money, she had agreed to become his house cleaner. Daisy also told me that Godman had a neglected dog called Cerberus. She told me that she fed Cerberus, and the dog had befriended her.

As time went on, I heard Daisy tell that Cerberus was in the habit of escaping from Godman’s house and roamed about the village park. Several times her children had recognized the dog and brought it home with them. Daisy then called Mr. Godman, who came and picked up the stray. I did not give the matter much thought. It sounded as an innocent enough happenstance.

Then came the day when Daisy solicited me to bring her mother home from the hospital to which stay I had contributed a small, but under the circumstances significant amount of euros. I was to meet her at 11 a.m. at her apartment. Daisy made the request after the day before I had picked her up at her mother’s countryside home, where she had gone to, she said, to give it a cleaning before her mother’s return. When I met her at the house, Daisy was wearing a see-through blouse with a bright day-glow orange bra showing through. An unfamiliar car was parked at the far end of the driveway. Though for the most part I tend to be dead pan over such surprises, I grew suspicious.

I do not call myself Ludis Cuckold, because Cuck-koo may stand as a symbol for who and all that Life betrays. Unfortunately, a larger than life Cuck-koo is the Mother of Life Herself, the Goddess, the woman whom the German poet Goethe called Das Ewig Weibliche—the eternally feminine. For an old man like myself, Daisy was the very essence of this spirit of Das Ewige. I was of her as butter is the child of the cream of a mother’s lactating breasts.

My fear of not being able to hold the Spirit of Desire in my hands ever again caused me to be on the alert and jealous of those who could still capture it with relative ease.

As I was driving toward Daisy’s apartment that Saturday morning, I was suspicious to see drive toward me a black and very shiny car with a middle aged man at the wheel who looked like said Mr. Godman. Well, I thought to myself, even garage owners in Latvija can pretend to be millionaires. All they need do is ‘rent’ a car from their own garage office.

I believed I was right! When I stopped at Daisy’s apartment, I was surprised to see her waiting for me in a flowery dress. The neckline was low cut and showed an ‘irresistable’ cleavage. Not that this is such an unusual sight when coming to meet a young woman, but it was so on this occasion, because it was the first time that I had ever seen Daisy wear anything but jeans.

After she strapped herself into the seat of my car, Daisy told me that Cerberus had again escaped from home, and as if to explain the shiny black car which had just minutes ago passed me, told that Godman had just come to pick up his dog. With some shock the thought flashed through my mind that Godman had not come to pick up his dog, but had just dropped off Daisy, and the stray Cerberus was in his pants.

By coincidence it was Mother’s Day. The children were nowhere to be seen. Either they had forgotten mother or mother had forgotten them.

What else could I say, but—“Oh Mother of God!?”