Wirds of Denver: Fucking Mountains

Two things: FM is a bimonthly lifestyle magazine published in Denver, and The Denver Warbler staff has a deep affection for erotic fiction.

As the flightiest members of the Rocky Mountain publishing habitat, we feel it’s our duty to stay abreast of local publications. However, two minutes into researching FM, we stopped reading the FAQ …

Q: What does FM stand for?
Never for the pledge of allegiance, but always for the Fucking Mountains.

… and immediately started composing hot mountain erotica. We also set about interviewing the publishers of FM as a foot-in-the-door to getting our work published in what must be Denver’s coolest indie-porn magazine.

Our first question: “What was the impetus for starting FM?” When they didn’t answer, “provoke boners,” we quickly realized our mistake. We read the rest of the FAQ and discovered that FM focuses on music, arts, fashion and culture, not hot hill-on-hill action.

It seems like a waste of energy to abandon the work, so here’s the interview followed by Part 1 of Jeremiah and the Bear (a piece of Jeremiah Johnson fan fiction). Check back soon for Mt. Elbert and Mt. Whitney: The Forbidden Tryst.

Interview with FM publishers Tony Farfalla and Tuyet Nguyen

What was the impetus for starting FM?

Hey Tony, I’ve been thinking about starting a magazine.

Word.

Cumulative years publishing experience?

Does that include the zines we published when we were 15?

I don’t think Emo-years count.

Long-term goals?

In terms of the magazine, we want to promote Denver through a strong community.

So much talent and progressive thinking is diverted to outside and corporate sources, and funneled into projects that don’t encourage creativity.

FM, we hope, is a conduit to plug into and connect with other communities.

Oh, and we really like the environment.

 

Why do you get to mention the environment? That’s my thing.

That is why I said we.

Most erotic mountain experience?

You and your boyfriend have sex in the mountains all the time, right?

Oh yeah, we’re going up this weekend too.

Do you get that this is a double entendre making fun of our magazine’s name?

Got it.

Favorite bird?

I honestly don’t really spend a lot of my day thinking about birds.

Stirton’s Thunder Bird. The largest bird found in the fossil evidence, it was a member of the Megafauna species of the late Pleistocene. It most likely went extinct due to the expansion of Homo sapiens throughout the world.

I like making paper cranes.

Jeremiah and the Bear

Part 1

The sun broke over the low point in the valley as Jeremiah was frying his breakfast—the last bit of Crow liver that hadn’t spoiled in the base of a damp rucksack. His horse scratched it neck against a tree and the rhythm reminded Johnson of water sloshing in the buckets he carried in from the well as a child. He stirred the liver in his old cast iron pan, smiled at the sizzle and looked toward the sun. It rested in the crook of the valley like a marble marooned in an old wooden rain gutter.

Twenty yards away, the Bear cleaned himself of the berries he’d been feasting on since dawn. His beard was sticky with the tart red juice. He stopped cleaning and tilted is nose to the air as the smell of cooking meat reached him. He wiped his hands on his pants, pulled his suspenders up over his shoulders and crept toward the smell.

Jeremiah turned the liver over and poked at the gray side with his fork. It gave red juice.

“Fuck it,” he mumbled, and speared the liver tip. He blew on it, then bit off a large hunk and chewed. The blood ran into his beard joining the ranks of liver blood past staining the butt of it rust.

The Bear’s sandal broke a dry twig and Jeremiah wheeled around. He took another bite of liver and scanned the forest. Returning the meat to his pan, he picked his rifle up off of the ground and hunkered down.

There came a rustling, not twenty feet away.

“Show yourself now or die choking on your own blood.” Jeremiah barked.

The Bear rose to his feet, meekly.

“I just smelled your meat and came over to see about having a bite.”

Jeremiah examined the Bear closely. Of course he’d seen many bears, though never one quite like this. This Bear was as hairy as any of them, but he wore pale-blue dungarees and bright purple suspenders. These suspenders cut through the hair on his chest, and even from twenty yards Jeremiah could see that one of the Bear’s nipples was exposed—and as hard as a cold river rock.

“Well I ain’t got a whole lotta meat here friend. All I got to share is some lead.”

The words were almost entirely icy, but the Bear sensed some softness in the way Jeremiah said the word ’share’.

“Are you sure that’s all you’ve got to share?” he asked.

“Quite,” said Jeremiah, still gnawing.

“What do you say say we wrassle for the rest of whatever you got cooking in that pan of yours?”

Jeremiah stood up, looked down at his pan and then to the Bear.

“Yeah, alright,” he said, throwing his rifle to the ground and unlacing his buckskin shirt. “You ain’t hiding something I can’t see in those pants, are ya?”

FM magazine