Bad Fiction and Dirty Laundry: She Told Him No

  The work day was done.

  Tyler sat in his living room…time for a beer and the evening news.

  The big story was the sex scandal playing out in D.C.  A man’s confirmation hearing in front of a bunch of senators had come to a screeching halt as a woman stepped up to say once upon a time, long ago and far away the man had sexually assaulted her. 

  He said it never happened.

  Tyler scrunched up his face and thought, pondered, reflected.

  Ever since the story broke days ago there were times he mined his memories and wondered…

  Had he ever gone “out of bounds” with any girl once upon a time when he was a teenager?  In college?  Long ago?  Far away?

  No, no he hadn’t.

  But…

  There was that time he made Lisa* cry because he was angry at some stuff she said to him and he was driving too fast.  He was sorry that happened.  He wanted to send her an apology a few years ago but found out she had caught “The Cancer” and died.

  And there was that time he got drunk at the Tri-Delta sorority house party and passed out.  The girls got a mannequin and took pictures of him and the mannequin in salacious poses.  The night it happened he remembers the Tri-Delt girls laughing and pointing and him being annoyed and stumbling back to his dorm room.  It was weeks later when he saw the pictures.

  But the memory that came charging back from way back in his memory was the time he bumped up against a boundary and someone let him know right quick he had hit the guardrail.

  Tyler remembered Angie.

  Angie and Tyler were on the staff of the student newspaper at the university.  Tyler wrote humor columns, Angie did general office stuff there…compose the paper, send out bills for advertising, things like that.

  Wrapping things up at the newspaper office one cold January night Angie asked Tyler to walk her to her dorm.

  Out into the cold night they went.

  There was small talk about some of the stories that were going to be in the next edition.

  Then…

  “Did you drive over here?” asked Angie.

  “Yeah,” said Tyler, “Oh yeah, I’m parked right behind your dorm.  I had class before heading over to the paper.”

  “Let’s go to your car,” said Angie, “And talk.”

  And in no time at all there they were at Tyler’s old ’60 Lincoln.

  Tyler opened the door for Angie.

  She stood there and looked at the old, big-ass boat of a car.

  “Damn, Tyler,” said Angie.  “What the hell is this?”

  “Old ’60 Lincoln,” he said.  “It used to be the old man’s old car.”

  “This is BIG,” said Angie as she slid in on the passenger side.

  Tyler shut the door then went over to the driver’s side and got in.  He fired up the Lincoln.

  “Didja wanna go somewhere?” he looked over at her.

  “No,” said Angie, “I want to stay right here and fog up the windows.”

  With that she took off her glasses and put them on the dash.

  Angie slid across the big front seat right up to Tyler.

  “Kiss me, Tyler.”

  Before long they were both naked in the front seat of the car.  The windows were all steamed up.  From time to time there were shadows of people passing by.  Nobody knew, probably nobody cared what was going on in the Lincoln. 

  And so it began between Tyler and Angie.

  They would “make-out” in the dimly lit lobby of her dorm.

  They would have sex in Tyler’s apartment.

  The two of them would take long drives into the mountains where a remote meadow or rock outcropping became the backdrop for Angie posing naked for Tyler’s camera.

  They would have more sex in Tyler’s apartment.

  Then one night when Tyler and Angie were making out in the lobby of her dorm…

  “I love you, Tyler.”

  Tyler stared at Angie.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  Angie slugged him in the chest.

  “HOW ABOUT ‘I LOVE YOU,’ DUMB-ASS!”

  Other couples making out in the darkened dorm lobby stopped what they were doing and stared.

  “I love you,” said Tyler.

  “Too late, dumb-ass,” hissed Angie, getting up and disappearing upstairs to her dorm room.

  Tyler didn’t hear from Angie for days.  He called her but always got her answering machine.

  “Angie,” he said to the machine, “I’m sorry.  I hope to hear from you.”

  Then Tyler’s phone rang one Friday night.

  “Tyler, Tyler, Tyler,” it was Angie.

  She sounded drunk.

  “Hey Angie.”

  “I’m upstairs in Bryce Hansen’s place, come up.” 

  Angie hung up.

  Hansen was the photographer for the student paper.

  Tyler walked up the stairs to the third floor and knocked on Bryce’s door.

  Hansen answered.

  “Hey Tyler, come on in.”

  Angie was sitting on the sofa.

  Tyler walked in, shut the door behind him and sat next to Angie.  Bryce sat in a recliner.

  “So I’ve been drinking,” said Angie.  “Which one of you wants to f*#k me tonight?”

  Tyler and Bryce looked at each other.

  “I don’t know why you’re here, Angie,” said Bryce.  “I told you I have a girlfriend back home in DC.”

  “I’m here because I thought you might f*#k me, and we’d be doing it right over Tyler’s apartment.”

  “Wish you’d a-told me,” said Bryce.  “Coulda taken care of this real quick, just taken you straight down to Tyler’s.  I’m not interested.”

  Angie turned to Tyler.

  “Reckon it’s you and me, Loverboy,” she said.

  Tyler held Angie’s arm as she stumbled down the stairs to Tyler’s.

  They walked back to the bedroom.

  “Are we going to ‘do it,’ Loverboy?”

  “Not while you’re drunk,” said Tyler.

  “What a gentleman,” said Angie as she sat on the bed.

  “I’ll be back,” said Tyler as he went to the bathroom.

  He came back to find Angie standing naked in the room.

  “You’ve never said anything about my boobs,” she said as she looked down at her boobs.  “Once I started on The Pill they just exploded.”

  She looked back up into Tyler’s eyes.

  “You have nice boobs,” said Tyler.  “Now why don’t you get back in bed.  I’ll sleep on my sleeping bag on the floor.”

  “No,” said Angie.  “Take off your clothes and sleep with me.  We don’t have to do it.”

  And so he did.

  And they didn’t.

  And they slept.

  And Tyler and Angie began again.

  Or so it seemed.

  Because they went to see a movie the next night.  When the flick was over they headed back to Tyler’s apartment.

  Angie stopped in the living room.

  “I just want to talk,” she said looking into Tyler’s eyes.

  “You don’t have to love me and let’s get high awhile,” said Tyler with a smile, rattling off the words from a song of the day.

  Tyler took her hand and they sat on the sofa.

  Tyler moved in to kiss Angie.

  “No, Tyler,” she said.  “I said I want to talk.”

  Tyler leaned back.

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

  “If you and I are going to be a couple I want exclusivity, I want a relationship, I don’t want this to be all about f*#king like bunnies all the time.”

  “F*#king like bunnies,” Tyler chuckled.

  Tyler leaned in and kissed Angie.

  Had he been paying attention he would’ve noticed that Angie wasn’t kissing him back.

  Tyler put his fingers on the top button of Angie’s blouse and was met by a powerful roundhouse punch to his jaw.

  Tyler flew off the sofa and landed on his back on the living room floor.

  Angie got up and stood over Tyler.

  “I SAID NO, ASSHOLE,” yelled Angie.  “I’LL NOT BE TREATED LIKE A BRISTOL WHORE.”

  Tyler rubbed his jaw and looked up at Angie.

  “What’s a Bristol whore?  Is that Virginia?  England?  Is that from some book?”

  “ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHH!” yelled Angie and she kicked Tyler in the ribs.  “YOU’RE SUCH A F*#KING DUMB-ASS!  TAKE ME HOME!”

  The two of them rode back in stone silence to Angie’s dorm. 

  Except, halfway there…

  “I’m sorry,” said Tyler.

  “F*#k you, Tyler,” said Angie.

  The car had hardly stopped before Angie was out the door and gone.

  Whenever Tyler walked in the room at the student paper Angie would get up and leave.

  Tyler came out of his memories back to the present.

  He sat in his recliner and rubbed his jaw.

E P I L O G U E

  “I’ll not be treated like a Bristol whore.”

  Angie’s words would float through Tyler’s brain from time to time.  He always wondered about it.  Was it a saying from Angie’s home town?  Was it something from literature like Charles Dickens or something?

  Then one day, well into the 21^st century, Tyler was on the job when Ed dropped in to pick up an order.

  Ed was a local businessman who had done some traveling to England, Australia and some other places.

  “Say Ed,” said Tyler.

  Ed stopped at the door and turned.

  “Hey,” Tyler went on, “You’ve been to England, have you ever heard the term ‘Bristol whore’?”

  “Well,” said Ed, “You know Bristol is a shipbuilding town so with a city like that you’d probably have a lot of women plying that trade there.  That’s probably where it came from.  But I’ve never heard that exact term before.”

  “I wondered if it was a saying or something from some literature or something,” said Tyler.  “Thanks.  It’s something I heard about 40 years ago.  Now I know.”

  Ed gave Tyler a sideways look.

  “It’s a long story, amigo,” said Tyler with a smile.

-30-

*All names are fictitious.

Toes in a Whiskey Glass, Foot in a Jar

  Word came to the hacienda the other day that a relative of a grandchild’s other side of the family was in the hospital and was having toes amputated.  Seems the woman has health problems related to her weighing close to 400 pounds and having The Sugar.

  I have The Sugar.

  The Sugar is Southernese for Diabetes.

  I imagine if I’d paid attention in health class back in the 8^th grade I might’ve been wiser about the stuff I ate. 

  Probably not but it sounds good to say it.  Just like when I say “If I’d a-paid attention on career day in high school maybe I’d a-been a lawyer and made the big coin instead of being a disc jockey.”

  I believe I’ve had more fun working in radio than if I’d done lawyering.

  If I’d cared about my health I would’ve realized that regularly eating half of a big-assed bag of cheese curls or a hunk of chocolate cake with a big glass of milk or a mess of French fries or copious amounts of macaroni and cheese or getting copious refills of Co-Cola and being over 100 pounds overweight would be hard on my health.

  It started with a tingling in my toes then I started to lose a lot of weight without even trying.  Then I got weaker and weaker until I started to lose interest in riding my bicycle…something I love to do.

   When I lost interest in eating THAT’S when The Lady of the House decided it was time to go see a doctor.

  “But what if I have The Cancer?” I said.

  “Really?” said The Lady of the House.  “That’s your excuse for not going to the hospital?”

  The day I discovered I had Type 2 Diabetes I had a blood sugar level of 420 and an A1C of 16.  If you’re not familiar with that stuff they like your blood sugar to be around 100 and your A1C to be 6.

  “Maybe it would’ve been better if you had cancer,” said The Lady of the House, “at least they might’ve been able to cut that out of you.”

  Well that was back in 2014 and I’ve been living with diabetes since then…the ups and downs of the blood sugar levels, the eye problems, stuff like that.

  I see all the ads on the TV about the diabetes medicines.

  I see that ad for that medicine if you have diabetic pain in the feet.

  And then I think about my feet.

  I’ve been lucky, I guess…there hasn’t been any pain…just numbness and tingling.

  I think about the possibility of losing my toes…something that happens to some folks who have diabetes.

  “Well, if I lose my toes I’d like to send them off to that bar in The Yukon up in Canada,” I told The Lady of the House.  It was a Sunday morning she was reading the paper and I was having a cup of coffee. 

  I was talking about the Sourdough Saloon in Dawson City in The Great White North.  They serve up something called a “Sourtoe Cocktail”….a shot of whiskey in a glass with a mummified human toe swimming around in the liquor.

  Some folks have swallowed the toes over the years (you’re not supposed to do that) so I reckon they could use some fresh toes from time to time.

  “Just wrap ‘em up and mail ‘em off to Canada,” I said.  “But if they cut off my foot I want that.”

  “You can’t have it,” said The Lady of the House.  “At hospitals they keep amputated parts, they consider them biohazards.”

  “What the hell,” I said.  “It’s MY foot!”

  “And it’s a biohazard.”

  “I could keep it in a jar of alcohol on the shelf,” I said.

  “I don’t think that you’d have a lot of time to enjoy your foot on the shelf anyway,” said The Lady of the House.

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “If you’re at the point where you’re having body parts lopped off because of diabetes you’re probably not long for this world,” she said.

  “Well, that’s a bummer,” I said.

  The Lady of the House went back to reading her newspaper.

  I stared out the window at the sky and had another sip of coffee.

-30-

Things You Don't Do at Work

  I was in the radio station GM’s office one day waiting on the arrival of an employee facing disciplinary action.  He walked in with a big ol’ Bowie knife on his side.  The GM asked the guy about the knife.

  “I’m an American and I have the right to bear arms,” said the guy.

  “Not in my office, asshole,” said the GM.  “That’s the first time I’ve seen you wear that thing in the station.  Take it out to your car and leave it or we can take care of your crap by me firing your ass right now.”

  The dude left for a minute or two and came back in without the knife.

  
  Once upon a time I hungered to be a radio station manager, and in the best of all my dreams, to own and operate my own radio station.

  That was before I got years of life experience under my belt.

  And…

  That was before the Internet.

  Now I am content to do my job and go home.

  I learned that, as a manager, you take crap from above and crap comes up from below. That’s one reason of many I can list as to why top or middle management doesn’t interest me now.

  Another reason is you seem to spend a significant portion of your time trying to explain common sense to subordinates who seem to lack it.

  There are some things in life I didn’t catch (OK, maybe a lot), but among the things I did come to understand were rules on how to behave at work. To be sure, I’m not perfect, but I do have a general idea what to do and what not to do on the job.

  I have encountered those who have stretched those rules beyond the bounds of common sense…like a radio station bookkeeper who got drunk every work day, keeping her booze in the tank of the toilet of the women’s room.  She kept the books with a system that made no sense, that required a pro to come in and untangle the mess after she got fired.

  There was a fellow named Tom Flowers* I worked with at radio station once upon a time. Tom liked to send bouquets of flowers to some of his favorite female listeners, it was part of his “mystique” he told me...a fellow named Flowers who sent flowers.  Thing was, the bill from the florist was then sent to where he worked.

  That would be the radio station.

  Where I was his supervisor.

  After this happened, Tom and I came to an understanding that he would not do this anymore, things were peaceful for a while.

  Then we received the bill for $500 worth of stereo equipment for his home. I have forgotten how it all happened, but someone overheard my rantings over the situation and suggested that I call a certain probation officer two counties away about Tom.  It turned out Tom had done something similar in that county. He had been tried, convicted and put on probation for it.

  Not long after that Tom Flowers didn’t work at our radio station anymore.

  I didn’t run into any other workplace weirdos for quite a number of years after that.

  Then I moved out to The Golden West.

  In a small town in the Grand Canyon State, I was appointed to a middle management position. My first week on the job, I was called into the general manager’s office along with Elmo Smith*, a guy who worked evenings at the radio station.

  Elmo was being called on the carpet because the boss had just found out that Elmo was operating “The Elmo Smith School of Broadcasting”….

…at the radio station after hours unbeknownst to anyone else.

  Elmo’s operation was discovered when a young man came in to apply for a job. On the application where it asked for education and experience, the kid wrote “Graduate of the Elmo Smith School of Broadcasting.” Upon seeing this, the boss asked the kid to come in his office and tell him about his experience at the “school.”

  “Elmo charged me $300 to come in nights and watch him work from 8 p.m. till midnight,” said the kid.  “At the end of the first month I got to sit in the air chair, play the CDs and run commercials while Elmo sat on the other side of the counter and did the talking. After two months, I graduated.”

  The kid was part of a “class” of three.

  Elmo was unapologetic.

  Elmo saw the whole situation as…what did he say?  “My American entrepreneurial right to free enterprise.”

  At the time I thought Elmo had listened to too much talk radio.

  “There’s nothing going on at night,” said Elmo.  “I was basically just babysitting the place so I figured I’d put my time to good use.”

  “So,” said the boss, “Why didn’t you check with me first before you started your ‘school’?”

  Elmo turned red and shrugged his shoulders.

  “You’re using station equipment,” the boss went on.  “Station facilities, why didn’t you arrange for the station to get a ‘cut’ of your business?”

  Elmo shrugged his shoulders again.

  Elmo kept his job but had to give the money back to his three “students.”

 Then there was the teenager who replaced Elmo on nights who thought long distance calls were free to employees of the radio station. Examining the long distance bills, it was obvious this kid was doing nothing but talking on the phone to his friends in Utah, California and Virginia while he was on the clock. He had to pay back $800 for his calls.

  Then there was the radio station engineer who lost his job when we discovered the reason the station’s brand-new computer system that ran everything couldn’t function because it was full of mass quantities of porn.

  Porn the engineer had downloaded into the system.

  There was the time the boss assigned me the task of finding out who was tossing toilet paper used for rear-end wiping into the trash can of the men’s room.

  It seems the cleaning crew told him if it wasn’t stopped they would not work at the station again.

  Turns out it was the same kid who thought long distance calls came free to station employees.  The story was was that’s what his family did at their house so that only “pure” sewage went into their septic tank, no paper products.  He thought the whole world handled their used toilet paper the same way as his family.

  Yeah, I’ve run into things done by folks at radio stations that just made me want to stay home.

  Then I remembered a quote attributed to American educator John Dewey: “To think you can be totally self-sufficient with no need to rely on others is a form of insanity.”

-30-

* Names changed to protect me.

A Traveler, A Policeman, A Church and a Holy Book...

  There are some religion and philosophy books in my book collection.  I have a standard issue Christian Bible, you know, the kind with the Old and New Testaments.  I have a copy of the Muslim Koran that I found for $1 at a yard sale here in town, a well-written tome titled “A Course in Miracles,” a copy of the Tao Te Ching…a book from ancient China with such pithy thoughts as, “Do you have the patience to wait ‘til your mud settles and the water is clear?” 

  And then there is a small copy of the Christian New Testament.  It was handed to me in Roswell, New Mexico in 1991.

  Who handed me this copy?  Ah, therein lies the tale….

  I was volunteering with a group that was having a Saturday meeting at a Roswell church.  There were probably 20 of us in the church’s meeting hall. 

  And then this guy showed up at the meeting hall door.  The man needed a shave, his clothes were wrinkly.

  “I was hoping to talk to the preacher, hoping he could give me some money so I could get a place to stay tonight,” said the man.  “I hitchhiked from the VA hospital in San Antonio, I was hoping to see my brother, to stay at his place but he and his wife are out of town.”

  “Well the preacher’s not here,” said Mona, leader of our group.  “You need to go somewhere else.”

  The man turned and went back out the door.

  “Couldn’t we call the preacher?” I asked.

  “We don’t want to bother the preacher,” said Mona.  “He’s not here, end of story.  The guy probably just wants money for booze.”

  “I didn’t think so,” I said, “He seemed sincere.”

  “Trust me Grant,” said Mona, “You’re in the minority here on that.”

  We got back to the business at hand.

  A few minutes later one of our group joined us late.

  “Who’s the dude sitting out front?” asked the tardy one.

  “Some guy?” asked Mona, “Looks kind of rough?”

  “Yeah,” said the latecomer.

  “That’s it,” said Mona, “I’m calling the cops.”

  “Come on, Mona, call the preacher,” I said.  I had no idea who the preacher was, this was just a church where our volunteer group held its meetings.

  “I’m NOT calling the preacher, not bothering him with this,” said Mona.  “That guy out there is a nuisance.”

  “Really,” I said.  “He’s a stranger in a strange land so he comes to a church for some help and you call the cops on him.  Nice.”

  I turned and went outside to talk with the man.

  He was off to the side of the door sitting on a sidewalk.  I sat down next to him.  We got to shootin’ the breeze.  He stuck to his story that he had hitchhiked to Roswell from San Antonio VA hospital.

  “I ain’t been the same since ‘Nam,” he said.  “Trouble holding a job, trouble keeping money.  I understand people are suspicious of me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “They think that you just came here to hit the preacher up for booze money.”

  He laughed and looked at the ground.

  “Yeah,” he said, “Like I said, people are suspicious of me.”

  About that time there was a big shadow over the both of us.

  I looked up.

  It was a policeman.  His partner was behind him.

  “We have a problem here?” asked the cop.

  “No sir,” I said.  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

  “Well, we got a call,” said the policeman.

  “Yeah,” I said, “That was from my friends inside.  This man came in from San Antonio to see his brother, his brother is out of town until tomorrow and he just needs a place to stay for the night.  He came this church to see if he could get some help in staying at a motel for the night.  My friends think he just wants booze money.”

  “Can I see some ID?” asked the cop.

  I showed him mine, the stranger showed him his.  Mr. Policeman jotted some notes on a pad.  He handed our IDs back.

  “Y’all have a nice day,” said the cop.  He and his partner turned and left.

  “Hang on bud,” I said.

  I got up and walked back into the church.

  “REALLY?” I shouted the one word question as I walked in the room.  I interrupted the meeting.  I had all eyes in the room.  “A man comes to a church for help and you call the cops on him?”

  Silence.

  “I tell you what,” I said, reaching for my wallet.  I held it up, opened it up and a $10 bill fluttered to the ground.  I reached down and picked it up.  “This $10 bill is all I have in my wallet.  I challenge all of you to contribute toward a motel room for the night for this guy.”

  “Not me,” said one guy.

  “It’s okay buck-o,” I said.  “I really don’t care, it’s your Karma.”

  “He’s just gonna buy booze or drugs,” he went on.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  Mona forked over a $20 bill.

  I looked her in the eyes.

  “Thank you,” I said.  “That really ought to do it.”

  “But,” said Mona.  “You and I are going to follow him after he leaves here.  He’s gonna blow that $30 on booze.”

  “Deal,” I said.  “I say he’s gonna make a beeline for a motel on Second Street.”

  I walked outside and handed the guy the $30.

  “Wow,” he said.  “Thank you.”

  “Good fortune you you, hermano,” I said.

  He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a little black book.

  “Here,” he said, “I want you to have this.”

  I was so wound up by the whole situation I just smiled, took the book and put it in my back pocket.

  I watched the guy turn and walk down the street toward Second Street.

  I turned and there was Mona standing there.

  “Let’s go, Jesus,” said Mona.

  Mona and I got in my car and pulled out on the street.  I drove slowly and pulled over every now and then to keep a good distance between the man and us.

  In a matter of time the fellow was at Second Street.

  He crossed and walked into a motel office.

  Mona and I watched as he spent a couple of minutes in the office.  Then he left, walked by a number of rooms, stopped, opened the door, went in then he closed the door.

  “O fu*#ing kay,” said Mona, “So I was wrong.”

  I didn’t say anything as I drove back to the church.

  I pulled up in front and left the engine running.

  I waited for Mona to get out.

  “You’re not coming back in?” asked Mona.

  “No,” I said.  “Y’all are fu*#ked up.  Have a nice life, Mona.”

  Mona got out and I drove back to my house.

  When I got home I went to the fridge, got a beer then went and plopped down in my recliner.

  I felt the thing the guy gave me in my back pocket.

  I reached around and looked at it.

  I had first thought the guy had given me a notebook, something to jot my thoughts in.

  Nope.

  It was a small leather bound New Testament.

  I thumbed through the pages.

  Mindlessly.

  Because I wasn’t really thinking about the little book or what was in it.

  I was more preoccupied with why he gave it to me.

  I looked down and saw that the book had fallen open to the first book of Corinthians.  I’d actually never read anything from that section of The Bible before. 

  I was looking at chapter 10.  Verse 13 caught my attention…

  “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

  I thought about those words.

  I smiled.

  Those words came in handy for me, they fit right in at that time of my life.

  In a holy book given to me by a man who just wanted a little help.

-30-

CHEAP WINE, BEER AND A FAKE I.D.

  An incident at a high school in Indiana made the national news the other day.  Some kid took a whizz on an electrical outlet.  This made a lot of smoke.  Some teacher ran in with a fire extinguisher, the fire department came to the school sirens a-screamin’…

  I think about some of the stuff I did back in high school.  If I did any of that stuff here in the future I’m sure some of it would probably make the national news.

  Like the time I made black powder and set it off at school (just a lot of smoke).

  Or how I used to buy booze for me and my pals with a fake ID.

  But I didn’t get in trouble….this was back in the 1970’s, and back then this stuff was just a rite of passage, part of life.

  My first attempt at buying booze was a complete failure.

  It was during a sleepover at my buddy Dax’s* house the summer between 6^th and 7^th grades.  It was me, Dax and Leroy camped out on Dax’s front porch.

  “It’d be great if we had some wine!” proclaimed Leroy.

  “You drink wine?” I asked Leroy.  I was all wide-eyed.  Beer was one thing…Cousin Bill’s daddy let him drink from his beer can, then Cousin Bill would go outside, get on his tricycle, ride around in circles on the driveway and sing "She'll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain.” 

  But wine?  Wine seemed to be a drink from another place than beer.

  “Sure I drink wine,” said Leroy with all the bravado a 12 year old could muster, “My parents never notice it’s gone.”

  “Well we should get some wine!” I said.

  “How?” asked Dax.

  “I’ll just go down to the 7-11 and buy some,” I said.

  “You can’t do that, dumbass,” said Dax, “You have to be old.  It ain’t the hotel.”

  Dax was talking about the summer after 5^th grade that he and Leroy and Catfish came over to hang at my place one Saturday morning.  My dad had this job at a hotel so we lived there.  Leroy wondered about ordering beer from room service and so I did, no problem.

  “How old you gotta be?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Dax, “old.”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  Soon I was walking into the convenience store while Dax and Leroy waited outside around the corner.

  I grabbed a loaf of bread, a pack of cheese, a bag of potato chips and two bottles of Ripple wine, a kind of fortified rotgut wine that Gallo winery stopped making back in 1984.

  I took all the stuff up front and put it on the counter.

  The clerk picked up one of the bottles and looked me square in the eye.

  “Boy…what do you think you’re doing?” asked the clerk.

  “Getting some groceries,” I said, looking her square in the eyes.

  “You can’t buy wine,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.  I turned to walk out.

  “Boy,” the clerk called out, “What about your other things?”

  “Oh,” I went back to the counter and paid for my bread, cheese and potato chips.

  I went outside and around the corner.

  “Well?” asked Dax.

  I held out the bag.  Dax looked inside.

  “No wine,” he said.  “What are we going to do with this shit?”

  “Let’s eat!” I said.

   I was a Junior in high school when I discovered the joys of a fake ID.

  It was one of those things I learned from a cousin.  I can’t remember why he thought it was an important thing to share with me but share he did.  But he had showed me how to disconnect the odometer so my dad wouldn’t know how many miles I’d burned up cruising the main drag of town.  Of course I haven’t told you whether I actually DID what he showed me.

  Anyway, about the fake I.D., Cuz said I was to go through magazines that might hold a subscription coupon to a particular magazine.  The thing was designed in such a way that if one typed it up, slapped an official-looking, passport-like black and white photo in the corner and laminated it, BAM!  Fake ID.

  I couldn’t tell you when I first used the thing…must’ve been at some store ‘cos I first bought some Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine.  I presented the ID which noted I was from Jamaica and just visiting in the USA.

  I took the wine on my first date with Wanda June Anderson* and a good time was had.  Wanda June and I only went out twice.  After that whenever I ran into her new boyfriend in his souped up ’72 Nova he’d call out to me, “Hey McGee, buy me some wine.  MAH-GEEEEEE, pleeeeeez buy me some wine.”  Then he would flip me the middle finger.  I reckon Wanda June told him about our date.

  The big test was could I pull off getting hard liquor at the state ABC store.

  Surely you’ve been in one of those states where you can buy beer, wine at the supermarket but hard booze is sold out of a state run store.

  These aren’t just clerks behind the counters, these are clerks in uniforms with BADGES.  So there is a bit of intimidation involved.

  Did I have a death wish?  Would I present my fake ID, its bogusness realized, guns drawn from under cash registers and I would be shot down in the liquor store, shot down for being under 21 and trying to buy booze?  Or would the clerks gang up on me, shoving their badges in my face, cuff me, put me in a black helicopter and whisk me away to prison?

  No.

  I picked up a bottle of Mr. Boston Rock and Rye, went to the counter, pulled out my cash and presented my fake ID.

  “Jamaica,” said the guy with the blue officer’s shirt and badge, “I was there once.  Kingston.”

  “Ah, you visited our capitol city,” I said.

  The clerk and I locked eyeballs for a few seconds.

  “I had a good time,” he said, handing my ID back, wrapping up my booze in a brown paper bag, handing me back my change.  “Have a nice day.”

  I walked out in the sun smiling…feeling a kind of freedom, a kind of euphoria…I had pulled one over on “The Man.”

  I mean, I never really bought a lot of beer, wine or booze.

  But I know my fake ID is why Chuck Biscuits kept me around in his little rock ‘n’ roll clique. 

  Chuck was a year behind me in school but we were in Art class together.  He and I started hanging around.  Chuck and some of his pals from over the hill from my house had a rock ‘n’ roll band, Hombre, that practiced a lot and I was often invited to come on over…Chuck on guitar, Dale on keyboards, Bobby Painter on bass and Jordy on drums.

  “And hey,” said Chuck on some practice nights, handing me a 5 dollar bill, “Pick up a couple of sixes of Bud on the way over.”

  I didn’t drink beer then, I liked sweet wines and liquors.

  So Chuck and the guys would swill the beers and I would kick back.  One night I wondered why the guys didn’t do “We’re An American Band” by Grand Funk, a Top 40 hit back in the day.

  “You come up and sing it,” said Chuck.

  And so I did, pitchy and off-key.

  I mean I didn’t know I was pitchy and off key and Chuck didn’t tell me I was pitchy and off key the only way I knew anything was wrong was Dale would wince, screw up his face when I hit the high notes in the tune.

  My role as singer for “Hombre” may have been tenuous but my role as beer buyer for the band was secure.

  Then it was the summer between my junior and senior year and it was time to party.  Me, my buddy Catfish, Chuck and the band and some other guys piled in my car and Chuck’s and headed into the mountains with two cases of Budweiser and three bottles of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine.

  They’re called “fire trails,” dirt roads that run through the National Forest so firefighters could get around in the woods.  Our “rolling party” was probably 5 miles up in the mountains.

  We drank, we listened to the rock ‘n’ roll AM station, we shot the shit and I got drunk.

  One bottle was gone, I was working on a second one when the gang decided it was time to go back to town.

  My pals wouldn’t let me drive my own car.

  And that’s the last thing I remember.

  I woke up the next morning…late…to hear a mockingbird singing outside my bedroom window and the sun shining in.

  I was still in my clothes.

  I was really thirsty.

  I got up and walked downstairs to the kitchen.

  I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs to find my grandmother holding her coffee cup in one hand, a filterless Raleigh cigarette in the other.  Her sister, my Aunt Maude, was sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Well here’s Mister Man, ready to take on a new day at 10 a.m.,” announced Aunt Maude.

  My grandmother turned around and started laughing.

  I was living with my grandmother and grandfather while my mom and dad got set up with a new job and new digs in Michigan.  Aunt Maude was visiting from New York City.

  I went over to the sink, got a glass from the cabinet, got a big, cool glass of tap water and drank it all down.

  “Do you have anything you want to say to me, boy?” Aunt Maude said loudly.

  Grandma laughed again.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked, looking back and forth from Grandma to Aunt Maude and back to Grandma.

  “Well,” said Grandma, “Me and your Aunt Maude were watching “Hee-Haw” last night when there was a knock…so I got up, opened the door and you practically fell into the living room.”

  “Oh,” I said, I could feel myself blush.”

  “Then you stumbled in and I said, ‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’” said Grandma.  “Then Maude says, ‘The boy is drunk’ and you turned to Maude and said, ‘SHUT UP YOU OLD BITTY.’”

  Grandma laughed some more.

  “Oh,” I said.  “I suppose you told my dad.”

  “I ain’t gonna tell your daddy anything,” said Grandma.  “I know stories about him that he doesn’t want told.”

  I turned to Aunt Maude.  I looked her in the eyes.

  “I apologize, Aunt Maude,” I said.  “I’m sorry.”

  Aunt Maude had a sip of her coffee.

  “It’s okay, boy,” she said.  Then she smiled and winked.

  Then I had a start.

  “Where’s my car?” I asked.

  “It’s outside, boy,” said Grandma.

  I went into the living room and looked out the bay window.  There was my car.

  I went outside to check it out.

  Everything looked okay, then I walked around to the passenger side.

  There was a stain, a mark, a big one that looked like some liquid had been poured out over the side of the car while it was heading down the road.

  I looked closer.

  There was a faint smell, there were food bits.

  It was vomit.

  I stood up and laughed to myself.

  I went inside the house and called my buddy Dax.

  “Mr. Strawberry Hill,” said Dax laughing when he answered the phone.

  “Man,” I said.  “What happened last night?”

  “Well,” said Dax, “We all decided that you were NOT driving your car anywhere so I drove off the mountain.”

  This would not be the last time Dax would commandeer my treasured ’64 Ford “Falcoon.”  In college he asked to borrow it to take his cheerleader girlfriend on a date.  Days later he told me that the two of them had “done it” in my car.  I was not amused.  Hell, I hadn’t even “done it” in my car.

  “So,” Dax went on, “We get back on the main road, and that’s when Painter about shoved you out the passenger side door.”

  “What was that about?”

  Painter was rather striking to see because he had this long bright red hair that went down to his shoulders and covered most of his face.

  “You kept grabbing his hair,” said Dax, “and kept yelling at him ‘YOU KNOW WHAT MY OLD MAN WOULD SAY ABOUT YOUR HAIR?  ‘BOY, YOU NEED A HAIRCUT.’”

  Dax laughed over the phone.

  “Man, you kept doing that until you really pissed Painter off.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Then you had to take a whizz so I pulled over by this field and Chuck pulled up behind us,” said Dax, “Then you ran out into this field.  We were standing around shootin’ the shit when Chuck says, ‘Hey, where’s McGee?’  We didn’t see you anywhere.”

  “Oh man,” I said.

  “So we go out in the field looking for you in this tall grass and Chuck finds you passed out on the ground.”

  “We get you back in the car,” said Dax, “We’re headed down the highway and you go ‘Uh oh’ then you lean out the window and puke.”

  “Well,” I said, “That explains the vomit on the side of the car.”

  “So then we get to your house and me and Painter practically carry you to your door, propped you up, knocked on the door, ran and got in Chuck’s car and got the hell out of there.”

  Dax laughed some more.

  “I’ll catch ya later, man,” I said to Dax.

  “Later Mr. Strawberry Hill.”

 

E P I L O G U E

  That wouldn’t be the last misadventure I’d have with my fake ID and booze.

  Actually about the only time I came close to getting into trouble was the next spring when I bought Dax a bottle of Everclear, the straight grain alcohol, which he mixed into a bottle of cheap wine that he took on a double date.  The girls got big time sick and he and Navy Jeff (called that ‘cos a year later he joined the Navy) took the girls over to Mr. B’s.  Mr. B was the cool high school English teacher.  They figured he’d know how to sober up the girls.  Dax knew the girls’ daddy (they were sisters) would whip Dax and Navy Jeff’s asses if they brought them home as drunk and sick as they were.

  And if anything happened I’m sure even in 1970-something they would’ve gone looking for whoever got the Everclear for Dax.

  The only time my fake ID was rejected was at the Windego Club, a seedy bar on the city’s north side.  The dude at the bar threw my ID back at me when I asked for a six-pack of Bud for Chuck and the gang.

  “I’ve seen better, kid,” he said.  “Show me your driver’s license.”

  It seems like not much time passed at all before I was really 21 and didn’t need my fake ID anymore.  I celebrated that birthday by going into the liquor store and buying a fifth of Jack Daniels and flashing my driver’s license.

  Yep, a bottle of Jack.

  Not Strawberry Hill.

  I never could drink that shit ever again.

-30-

*All names changed… ‘cept mine…