BULL #4: featuring "My Old Guy Boyfriend"

The time has come for the fourth print issue of BULL, downloadable now and featuring the fine stories we've had on the site this fall, as well as a bonus from England's Ani Smith--My Old Guy Boyfriend--musings on the potential benefits of dating a man with some years on him. Ladies, take note.

Need I tell you that these printable issues make a nice, cheap X-mas present for the man who's got everything? Or whose gift you forgot? The premier year in Men's Fiction--wrap it up and put a bow on it. That's one down.

BULLshot: Steve Kissing

JH: The pair of conspirators in "Open Wide" seem to be excited to live out their TV-influenced espionage fantasies--what's your pick for a TV fantasy come to life?

SK: I have two TV-inspired fantasies. One is being a patient on "House," but stumping the cranky genius with my ultra-rare condition. In the end, it's my own research in the medical library that leads me, not House, to the right diagnosis. The other fantasy involves the original female cast members of 90210. I'll leave it at that.

JH: Right where any married gentleman should leave it.

Due BULL Where BULL Is Due

Starting this fall we've begun to compensate all our contributors with handsome color hard-copies in which their stories appear. But far be it from us to jilt our early authors; so if you're out there, gang, still with us and reading this and want your duly deserved copy, let me know at:

bullmensfiction@gmail.com

and I'll gladly get one to you with my thanks again.

New In The Horns: Open Wide

This week we're bringing the BULL early for all those heading out for the holiday. So before you join the masses on their asses take a look at Open Wide by Steve Kissing, a tight little number that shows just how far a man might go to get what comes to heroes. A little something to chew on before before stuffing your face outright...

BULLshot: Finnegan Flawnt

JH: You know the score, Finnegan--state what if you're drinking, then I'll tell you this: for me, the best, most engaging part of this poet's obit is the "prayer." What do you pray for, if at all, and how?

FF: To honour my father, who was a teetotaller after a series of unfortunate spirit-infused adolescent adventures, I’m only going to have a Coke, straight up, no frills, thanks.

Here’s my earnest prayer:

Unholy Father, your life echoes and re-echoes in the cave that I’ve hollowed out. So close to your death, so close to my ground, I feel feverish still and fertile also: from your departure springs my solitude and a new life. As a writer, a solitary shapeshifter, I pick a wordish gestalt for this new life. Whatever I build with my own hands, your hands guide me. Whichever image I hold in my heart is underlaid with your image. You were a Joycean ‘fellow of the right kidney’, and I’m what’s left of you. (I stop, breathing hard now.)

This obituary, in which I allowed myself literary liberties that my father, himself a writer, would have, I am sure, most fervently approved of, is a prayful encounter with him and with myself. A pleading, an expression of intense yearning full of ambivalence: “Pray, let me be like you” and: “Pray, don’t make me be like you.” When I look around me, I can already see the shadow of my invocation in my own child’s eyes.

Where all this will lead, if prayer is meaningful beyond the moment of imploration, I do not know. My prayer goes up the chimney like thin, curly smoke, mixing with your own prayer, tempting providence, up all the way to the wobbling stars.

JH: All that on Coca-Cola. Nothin' like the Real Thing, indeed.

In the Horns: Obituary for a Poet Heretic

This week BULL wears black, hangs its head and offers all you mourners an Obituary for a Poet Heretic, by someone/thing going by the name of Finnegan Flawnt. As far as eulogies are concerned, this is the only one I've known that features the full monty. And the full monty of one's own father, at that.

BULLshot: Robert Hinderliter

TC: Alright Robert--if you're drinking, state what; then tell us the best thing you've ever run over with a lawnmower, and why?

RH: It’s been PBR for me this evening, thanks for asking. I told the bartender that the editors of BULL were picking up my tab, so you should be receiving a bill in the mail shortly.

My most memorable lawn mowing experience came a few summers ago while I was visiting my brother in Spokane, Washington. My brother insisted I help out with the yard work and I did so reluctantly, a bit indignant to be doing manual labor instead of sitting on the couch drinking his beer and watching poker on ESPN.

The pine cones in Spokane are like none other I have ever encountered. Each little pine cone appendage has a razor-sharp barb that can easily pierce skin. My brother’s lawn was covered with those wretched things. I had to take extreme care picking them up, and the whole time a huge albino dog kept barking at me from the neighbor’s yard. I eventually got so sick of him that I picked up a pine cone and tossed it in his direction, hoping he would chase it down and try to bite it. He just watched it roll past and then looked back at me with utter disdain.

Anyway, I mowed the damn yard. I probably ran over a dozen pine cones that had been nestled down in the grass. I got some nice scrapes on my shins from the cone shrapnel, as I refuse to follow the coward’s path and wear jeans while mowing. I didn't mind too much. After a while, the noise and vibration of the mower can put you in a kind of meditative state, and you can mow on autopilot while focusing all your thoughts on plotting the murder of your neighbor's pet.