8-20-98 F 11:34 EDT
I'm so bummed I lost my journal, the one I wrote in at the Shea Stadium double header that McGwire double homered at.
8-19-98 W 10:22 AM PDT
Somewhere over the Midwest—Let’s say Kansas or Missouri. I’m
at the very back of the plane. It’s a 700 said the attendant. A brand-new
plane, he said. It’s not her maiden voyage, is it? I didn’t ask. I took my seat
next to a bitchy little French guy who needed the flight attendant to identify
his sausage, and with a expression of great disgust, ordered the sausage
removed from his plate. Then he had a problem with the raisins in his bagel. He
sniffs in a superior way and groans often in his discomfort. I ate every morsel.
I had a screwdriver, and now I’m into a bloody mary. I read the LA and NY
Times. Had a little trouble with the NY crossword. Home-puzzle advantage, I
guess. Bern dropped me off. I slept fitfully. I’m tired and having trouble
thinking. When we touchdown, I have to call LACAS, and I have to see about car
rental. I can’t see out the window because the lady there put the shutter down
to watch the lame looking movies, “City of Angels.” I’m farting constantly, but
luckily for everyone aboard, they aren’t he stinky kind. If they were anything
like yesterday’s, the crew would have to land the plane and throw me overboard,
or possibly strap me to a parachute and kick me out, or maybe no parachute. I
bought a shitload of new books: Last of the Mohicans, Into the Wild, by John
Krakauer, a book of Jim Murray columns, The Red Badge of Courage, and the
Sportswriter, by Richard Ford.
“Yeah, that’s good coffee. I went to the bathroom. I didn’t
have to do anything. I just sat there, and everything took care of itself.”
11:49 PM EDT Th
I'm exhausted. I wanted to ride the train into Manhattan and party, but I'm just too tired. I'd be a zombie. It'll be better just to get a good night's sleep. I can go into Manhattan for breakfast tomorrow. Then I can walk through Central Park, if I'm out the door by 6:30, say. Then I can be back here by noon and get to Philadelphia by about two. I'll see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, the "Rocky" steps. Then I'll have to eat a cheesesteak and go to the game, I guess, and figure out where to stay. The next day, I'll drive to Baltimore for the day game. Then, on to figure out D.C. I wish I knew where there is a store to buy some naked-lady magazines. What else? I sat next to a kid at Shea who was going to Harvard. So, what? I'm too tired to think. All I can do is lay on this technicolor, puke-patterned bedspread and watch flies crawl on the wall, a Letterman repeat on TV. I'm going to read The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford. I'll fondle my penis. I wish there was a girl around to do it. I feel feverish. I hope I'm not getting sick.
8-21-98 F 11:34 EDT
I'm at the Times Square Brewery. I walked all over Manhattan this morning without a single epiphany. I walked up Broadway, cut through Central Park, and walked back down Fifth and Madison Avenues. I saw the Ed Sullivan Theater, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rockefeller Plaza, etc. It was kind of a mundane chore, but if were in LA, it would sound great to be wandering around Manhattan. Maybe it's cuz I'm pressed for time. Know I won't be here long. Gotta stay sober enough to drive to Philly. What I need is to live here for a year or two. Then I'd be experiencing it. Instead, I feel like I'm just walking around looking at post cards. So, I've got the paper. A terrorist war is going on. Mac hit two yesterday. I was there. It's funny, at Shea, the frequently show the stock market numbers on the score board. From here I can see the famous Times Square electronic news ticker sending headlines around the side of the building across the street. Gotta get on the train back to Queens soon and saddle up for Philly.
8-22-98 Sa 3:42 PM EDT (15 min)
I'm in Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore where the home team has just taken a six-three lead on a homerun by the immortal Cal Ripkin in the bottom of the seventh inning. It's a muggy day. I'm seated beside some classic West Virginia rednecks. The woman's lower lip has a big mole with a hair growing out of it. She introduced me to her husband and her boyfriend, and then she pulled her shorts aside to show me her shaved puss. She told me she wanted to get a bunny tattooed there. "Won't my button look like a little bunny nose?" she asked. They invited me to come party with them after the game. Whatever. Camden Yards is a nice park. It's sold out, though, and crowded as Hell. It tries to evoke that turn-of-the-(last)-century feel with bow-tied, pin-striped ushers, peanuts roasting, and lots of brick, but the gouge is evident not far beneath the facade. Why complain? It's been a good game. Cal homered. So did Manny Ramirez for Cleveland. I've had two beers. What should I eat? Where should I eat? I had the breakfast buffet at a roadside Bob's in Delaware. You know what? I was looking at a woman's ass when Ripkin homered. Should I get a hotel room tonight, find a hostel, or sleep in the car? Should I stay the night in Baltimore or DC? I read The Sun this morning in the lobby of the Marriott near the stadium. I got a Washington Post, too, but I haven't read that yet. I saw a couple of bars I'd like to check out. There must be some Poe landmarks around here. And Fort McHenry. I've got to come back this way to go to Boston. Should I take a picture of the rednecks or just get going?
8-22-98 Sa 7:35 AM EDT
He was in the Baltimore youth hostel, though he was hardly a youth at 30. Still, he felt young being in a dorm situation, and he was sure he could whip any of the young guys in the room. They were a quiet lot. Nobody talked. J was just tired. He could have slept then and there, but then he would only have awakened in the middle of the night with nothing to do. He could read his friend's novel in the lobby. That might have been smarter than going to drink in bars like he was planning to do. That did it. Now, he was stumped. Maybe he could just go out for a few hours. His feet were thrashed with blisters, though, from all the walking he had been doing. Dilemma. Dilemma. He wanted to get up early enough to visit the Babe Ruth Museum and visit Fort McHenry before heading to DC by early afternoon. He knew he was doing everything cursorily. It bothered him. He had already read over the day's Baltimore Sun and Washington Post. He had seen the Orioles play at Camden, had seen Ripkin homer.
8-23-98 Su 4:47 PM EDT
I'm at the youth hostel on 11th and K Street in Washington DC. There's a guy from the Netherlands in here right now. I'm supremely bummed that I lost my other journal, the good one, in Baltimore last night. Fuck. That ruined my day as I got my things ready to leave Baltimore. I couldn't find it anywhere. I had been out at Fell's Point all the night before. I bought a shirt for fifteen dollars that had a picture of twenty bars on it. You could drink one free beer at each of the bars if you wore the shirt. They checked a box on the shirt with an ink pen. I wrote a pretty good three pages about wandering Philadelphia with Christina Birchram, on top of the thirty or so pages that were already written in it, including entries from New York and on the plane and everything else. I'm devastated. Fuck. Ah, well. What a fucking loss. Damn. I hope Baltimore knows what it has got.
8-23-98 7:30 PM Su
So, what do I remember? How can I make it up? Where do I start? There's no sense in going back. It is BALMY on the Potomac this evening. Your beer stays cold for about a minute before reaching body temperature. You pour it in your mouth, but you don't feel it go down; the bottle just becomes empty. The pain from the corns and blisters on my feet and the crotch rot ass rash behind my balls that I got walking all over hell and back in Manhattan, Philly, and Baltimore, that forced me to walk like a palsied freak on the sides of my feet with my butt cheeks and thighs as far apart as possible, has subside somewhat, but not entirely. Recount Philly while it's relatively fresh: I arrived at Independence Hall late in the afternoon, astounded that the turnpike our of Staten Island heading toward Philadelphia has not a single sign mentioning Philadlephia. Went the wrong way a few times following signs for expressways that never materialized. I had to cross the Brooklyn Bridge and back again and later made a Dukes of Hazard-like u-turn across the grass median on the Pennsylvania Turnpike whjen I reached the navigatory decision that the sun was not where it should have been.
So, I was walking past an alley, and I spotted a sign over a door for a hostel. I went to investigate. A pretty blond walked out while I walked in. We made eye contact. "You staying there tonight?" I asked. She said she was and asked the same of me. I told her I didn't know yet and asked where she was going. She said she was going to walk around. I said that was what I was planning to do. So, went walking together. She was from Kentucky, originally, was going to UNC Chapel Hill now. Blah Blah. Shit. I already wrote all this in the lost journal. I'm not telling it right, now. We went to the Hall and saw the room where the Declaration was signed. I said I was going to the Rocky stairs. She said, "See that's how much I know about America. I don't even know what the Rocky stairs are." I laughed. I said I just meant the stairs leading up to the museum of art that Stallone ran up in the movie Rocky. Now she laughed. "Oh," she said, she wanted to go too. So we walked, walked, walked a long way. I told her my Baja-ha Misadventures. Some of the Maine/Memphis fiasco. When we got to the stairs, I ran up them and jumped around with my arms over my head. She took my picture. We went to South Street. What a party! A mile of bars! Thousands--tens of thousands of drunks! I shot some pool. The curfew for the hostel was one, so I walked her back at that time. We exchanged home info, shook hands, and she went upstairs. I ended up crashing on the couch in the lobby. This was a much better story the first time I wrote it. So, anyway, the next morning, I drove down Broad Street, so I could at least see Veteran's Stadium even though the Phils were away that week. Then I drove the 95 down to Baltimore for the game. I already wrote about that in this notebook. That night I went all over Fell's Point, like I said, and lost my journal, like I said. Now I'm sitting at a waterfront bar, lone buck, the sun has just gone down. The chiggers, or cicadas, or katydids or whatever screech unseen from the trees, a grating, apocalyptic chorus. I sweat just sitting here. I read the Post in a Georgetown bar. I guess I'll go to bed early tonight since I have no personality left. I'll sightsee tomorrow. Ford's Theater, museums, monuments, all that stuff.
8-24-98
He was in the National Museum of Art, resting his aching feet in a room of Titians and Tintorettos. People walked in and out of the room. He was mentally exhausted, suffering from bourbon burnout. He coudn't think straight and became weepy over the tragedy of history. The cynical irony of it all was like acid on his soul. And miles to go before he slept. He had been drinking all the night before with some kind of real estate slimeball and an attendant bevy of gold-digging beauties. A couple of with him on politics and his sports acumen and bought him a couple of beers.
In the morning, he had walked to the capitol building and took a shit. Giving a little back to congress, he thought. What was DeSoto doing in the rotunda, he wondered?
At the Smithsonian, he grew weepy again at the view of Earth from space. He ate a banana in the Air and Space Museum, hoping that might level him out. He had only a few hours left in which to visit the American and Natural History museums, and he still wanted to see Ford's Theater and Arlington National Cemetery. The next morning, he figured he had better pick up the credit card he had left at the bar. No alcohol tonight, he thought.
15 min 8-25-98 10-26 PM EDT
John Hancock
Fuck! FUCK! Ugh. The latest snafu is the joker I talked to at the Boston Hostel told me not to worry about reservations, and when I FINALLY got here from DC, it was full. The WHOLE TOWN is full. You know how I can't think? Well, tonight it's like a thousand times as bad. UGH! I was thinking in the car on the way up here, among other tings, again, about that fucking journal I left in Fells Point, Baltimore, that contains my entry at Shea Stadium on the night McGwire hit his 50th and 51st, becoming the first ever to hit 50 in three straight seasons, and I wrote from right there in the mezzanine level by the foul pole, section 562, I think (I lost the stub in drunken ecstasy--though it may be in the car somewhere) about all the shit I was yelling at Mike Piazza before the game. I was done near the field at batting practice, about thirty fee from where he was being interviewed by a guy with a microphone, and I kept screaming "ONE HUNDRED MILLION! ONE HUNDRED MILLION! I WONT PLAY FOR YOU UNLESS YOU PAY ME ONE HUNDREDE MILLION! I'LL TAKE MY GLOVE AND PLAY SOMEWHERE ELSE!" I screamed the last bit in a little whiner voice. Anyway, then he crushed the longest shots of BP, longer even than Big Mac's, but not as many. Potsie hit one out in game two, too. If I had caught it, I would have thrown it back.
So, now I'm in Boston. What a great/fucked up city. But I get ahead of myself. My blisters are beyond belief. I walked ALL OVER DC. ALL OVER. After I left the National Museum of Art, I was blind. I could see, but I couldn't process anymore. In the Natural History Museum, about all that I could make out was that it was rundown and cheesy. Then I limped on my fucked up feet to the Museum of American History where I could make out almost nothing. I remember an exhibit of all the shit left at the Vietnam Memorial: a carton of Marlboros, teddy bears, high school letters, handwritten, guilt-wracked survivors' letters, and more. The museum had exhibits with Charles Atlas comic book ads, Fonzie's jacket, Lincoln's stovepipe. My vision gave out completely. I groped around for an exit and managed to stumble into a cab. I got out with my thirty pounds of shit I was lugging around. I washed up at the hostel. I read some Ford. Then I drove to Potomac Park just beyond the south wall of the White House. I walked the blocks around the White House. It was surrounded by crazies and guards. Then I walked up to the Lincoln Memorial. Then to the Lincoln. I had that rush of emotion at the Lincoln. I felt the inevitable tragedy of History. Two pigeons, mates, I guessed, but one dark, the other white, a dove, sat on his right arm the whole time. That tripped me out. A dove and its opposite perched THERE THE WHOLE TIME! I spent more $ at the monument. I walked to the 'Nam memorials. I was already bummed. I walked down to the river. I walked and walked. My feet felt like GI feet. I walked until I could see TJ though the pillars of his monument and took a photo. Then I walked back. I wanted to have a bourbon at the Watergate, but I was still to thrashed from the night before I drank fluids all day and never pissed, I was so dry to begin with and sweating so profusely in the insane humidity. I went over the the scary part of town and gorged myself on fried chicken. I ate enough for two. I negotiated, badly, the DC rush hour to get my credit card from the Riverside Bar. The bartender said there was no tab. We'll see. I finally put my sorry ass to bunk. More later.
W
8:30 AM EDT 8-26-98
After
trekking all over Boston and not finding any vacancies, not even at the YMCA, I
came back to the hostel and calmly vented my fury upon the desk clerk, who
finally took pity on me and assigned me a bed. His reluctance, I soon
discovered, was because it was a women’s room as indicated by a bra hanging off
the corner of my bunk. I’m now down in the lobby. A few honeys are wandering
around. Probably my roommates. Anyway, the first order of business when I’m
done here will be crapping. Then I’ll go to the room and take some pictures. It’s
raining, though, and I have no umbrella. I’m going to walk to Harvard Square
and figure out about the Freedom Trail. And I’ve got to call Fenway and see if
I can reserve a ticket. I hope the game doesn’t get rained out. Should I go to Cape
Cod tomorrow? I ate a BBQ chicken quesadilla at Whiskey’s on Boyslton last
night. And I had a gigantic slice of pizza just around the corner. I could have
used it for an umbrella. When I got into my room last night, drunk at two in the
morning, was when I spotted the dangling bra. Two young women slept in the
beds. Bunking with hotties! Schwing! I climbed into my bunk and lay there. Man,
was it humid! I never spent a sweatier night. One bunk was still unoccupied. Soon,
another gal came in. I could see by the light coming through the window that
she was beautiful. She took of her shirt, bra, and skirt, back lit by the
window. What a swell silhouette! She climbed into her bunk.
When
I woke up the next morning, the other two were gone, and late arriver was
sitting on the edge of her bed in bra and panties. We made a little small talk,
she in Aussie accent, while I pretended that her bra and panties were a Hilary
Clinton pantsuit. I wonder if she’s still up in the room. Maybe she’d like to
walk the Freedom Trail. I bet she was out late partying. Maybe she’s like to put
an American notch in her belt. Ah, I’ve got to call Shrill around three or four.
Hurricane Bonnie’s the reason for all this humidity. She’s about to hit NC, but
the weather here is related. The Prez is in Martha’s Vineyard, trying to make like
a family man. I read the Globe. There aren’t any rooms in this town because of
a big chemical engineering convention. It’s raining pretty good now. I wonder
if I can get an umbrella anywhere nearby.
Near Harvard, the Can Tab's TV's horizontal is full of static which is perfect. Down here in the poetry basement a train rumbles by like an earthquake every now and then.
Deja vu. Powerful one. I'm in love with a girl across the room. I love her face. I love her neck. She knows I'm looking at her and doesn't seem to mind.
The train rumbles my stool, travels my loins to my spine, like an orgasm.
I drink my beer and she does, too. Is it a sign? I will have to talk to her. Tell her I got nothing to lose; I'm leaving tomorrow. I got a girl at home, but can I still send you love letters. The poet up there now got the introduction of a laureate, but his little boy themes and little boy looks are all there is to him. He has a bandanna holding back his long hair ala Axl Rose. Oh, boy. That girl...Cape Cod..?
8-27-98 1:35 PM EDT Th
Provincetown, Cape Cod, Mass.
Thunderstorms on the way. I should have more to say, but I don’t. I keep trying
to call Pennsylvania, but no one answers. I left the Harvard poetry slam and
got my car easily enough for not having the parking ticket. Then I went to the
hostel and threw my shit in the car, and it only took about an hours’ worth of
wrongways and crisscrossing Boston to get on the highway I needed. Maddening
city. I kept passing--the 3 it was I wanted—going over it and under it without
finding any onramps, and—whatever—I’m too lazy to tell what all it took to get
on the three. I drove about three hours, and then I pulled into a rest area
outside of Plymouth and stopped for a nervous little catnap, the sky flashing
and rain pattering the windshield. Then I droce some more, but after an hour or
so, I was getting sleepy, so I pulled into an-$86-a-night hotel and showered
and beat off and passed out ‘til 10:30 this morning. I dressed and checked out.
Sa3we the Cape Cod lighthouse out of Truro. Now, I’m sitting in a bar near the marina.
I guess the boats won’t be going out because of the ‘cane-generated swells but
Mass Bay is sheltered by the curl of Cape Cod, so maybe they do go out. Now
what? Call Gatreau. Start heading back? Where will I stay tonight? And tomorrow
night? Haverstraw? Stony Point?
He
pondered his options from inside the old Colony Tap in Provincetown. Should he
stay the night on the cape and fish in the morning? That depended on the availability
of rooms at the hostel. The boat got in at one. He could be to New York in time
for he Yankee game, maybe. Then he might possibly be able to drive out to
Haverstraw, spend the night, have breakfast there, and get his ass to Newark.
He wound’ be able to see his grandfather Frank’s grave, though. Or he could
head back immediately. Couldn’t make it to the Yankee/Angel game, though. He
couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t find the deciding factor. Money? Wouldn’t the
hostel be the cheapest place?
8-28-98
5:50 PM EDT F
A
bar in Tribeca, I forgot the name, but the sign outside promised friendly
conversation—not that I skipped over other bars that made no such promise. I
had a Jameson’s at TGIFriday as I got off the bus at Penn Station. Then I took
the subway to the Staten Island ferry. You can buy a twenty-ounce beer and take
it on the ferry with you! I took pictures of the south end of Manhattan, the
twin towers, the statue, the Brooklyn Bridge, all that. I didn’t get off the
ferry in Staten Island, though. I rode it right back here. I stopped in two
other bars before this one. I’m waiting to shoot pool.
8-31-98 11:57 AM EDT M
I'm in my fifteen-year-old cousin's room. Leonardo DiCaprio covers the walls. After that bar in Tribeca, I walked to another in Soho and had a glass of wine and listened to some geek talk about his disdain for L.A. He was covered in earrings, jewelry and piercings and talked about how overly image-conscious people in L.A. are. I asked a bartender where was a good village bar to go to. He said, "East Village or West?" I said, "Whatever. The regular old village, I guess. I wanted to go where the literati hang out. He said, "You should go to the East Village. That's where the real New Yorkers hang out. The West Village is all tourists. What kind of bar do you like?"
"Oh, anything. I like a pool table, but it's not necessary, I like dives, but I'm in the mood for some literary conversation, if that makes any sense."
"The Holiday Cocktail Lounge," he said. "It's the perfect starting place for you." He wrote directions on a napkin for me. I walked up Bowery to 14th and hung a left. Sure enough, when I walked in, I met three college kids sitting at a booth with some William Burroughs on the table. I asked if I could join them. We talked and drank a few hours. Politics and homosexual equality seemed to be their main concerns. I read my Queens poem, burning with embarrassment. They said nice things, but what else were they going to say, Steve, Wayne, and Ann Marie? I turned the conversation to Dylan Thomas and Norman Mailer and asked if knew the White Horse Tavern because I remembered it from the Mailer.
Every day that summer, he walked to the beat of a different bummer.
September
1, Tu 9:50 AM EDT
I’m
sitting on the deck in back of my aunt’s place in Hawley, PA. My mother is
threatening to slap my stepfather silly. I got up early and took the rowboat
out onto Lake Teedyaskung to try and catch some bass. I sat alone in the mist.
Some psycho came out of her house to yell at me. “…sick, nasty people!” she
shrieked. “Chucky let the monkey out of the cage! It’s inbreeding! It’s a gene!”
she kept screeching. I told Chuck about it, and he said there was indeed a
monkey, with thumbs, he said that let himself out of a cage, but that Doray,
the lady’s name is, blamed him for it. The monkey escaped into the woods and
was never seen again. I didn’t ask him about the inbreeding. He and John and I
went golfing at Woodloch Pines. Nice course. I did all right on a few holes. We
had a few in the bar afterward. Then we came back to the house for a steak
dinner, drank, and played poker. A redheaded woodpecker is slamming his face
into a tree hemlock now. Man, am I beat. I woke up too early. Orange mums grow
in wood boxes fastened to the deck rail. A giant daddy longlegs casts a long shadow
amplifying an insidious gait. Went to a keg party on the lake the other day. I
met my cousin’s wife. She said, “Oh, so you’re the crazy one.” Chuck dragged us
around the lake on inner tubes with his boat. McGwire hit his fifty-fifth. We’re
going golfing again today at a place called High Point while the ladies go to Scranton
to see a movie. The golf course plays across the Pennsylvania, New York, and
New Jersey borders. I lost my sunglasses yesterday. I’m losing stuff left and
right. I’ve got a pinched nerve in my neck/back/shoulder.
September 2, 1998 W 11:00 AM
It was raining in the Poconos. Even after it stopped, when the breeze shook the trees, rain fell from the leaves like a new shower. j pulled on his pants. He hoped he might still catch a bass or two down along the lily pads of the lonely lake. His cast rippled the steel sky on the water's surface. This was the best time to think and remember. A day earlier he had gone with his stepfather and uncle-in-law for nine holes of golf at the municipal course. A wind chime tinkled somewhere followed by the call of a crow. The sound of a far off car filtered through the trees and approached like a tornado.
j and Josh had started the day at the table with the umbrella on the deck. The sun was still low enough to bathe them in its warmth. j had a screwdriver, and Josh, a bloody Mary. It was going to be their last day in Pennsylvania before returning home to Los Angeles and work--what had to be the polar opposite of where they were now. A cocktail party was scheduled that afternoon across the lake, and afterward, as much golf as they could get in before it got too dark. Josh said, "Well, we ought to get as shitfaced as we can."
Saturday September 5th, 1998 4:42 AM EDT
The full moon is out there, staring at me through the window. I'm writing by the light of the TV static because I couldn't get the lamp to turn on. I couldn't sleep. Nerves. I stared at the moon. Its light made a cross in the sky. Maybe it was an optical illusion. Maybe it was something holy. God's eye? For a minute or two, it seemed so. It seemed close. It was right out there a hundred feet away in the treetops, a glowing orb. Then, it was just the moon. It's setting now, behind the trees, turning orange. It might be winking at me. Jupiter's up there, too. In twelve hours, so will I be. Flying home. Back to work. Where did I see a girl reading Tropic of Cancer? "It'll change your life," I said. The TV just shut off by itself. That startled me. Gives me chills even now. Spooky. It's dark again, but guess what? There's a little glowing eye in the center of the TV screen. The moon is gone now. Trippy.
9-5-98 Sa 4:44 PM PDT?
On a 737 westbound somewhere over monumental thunderheads
that make you think of God and heaven and angels.
But my
lips are chapped, my nose is running snot, I’m overstuffed on a Fuddruckers’ ½-pound
cheeseburger, and I’m getting heat flashes. I bought Protac cold caps in the airport
gift shop, but they’re proving ineffective.
Josh,
Chuckles, and I played a skins game on the front nine at Woodloch. A dollar
whole. It was funny; I had the worst score, but I wone the most money (five big
ones) because when my scores per hole sucked, Josh and Chuckles tied and the
money would carry over to the next hole. I won a couple holes after they had
tied a couple. My drives are improving, and my putting wasn’t bad, but I can’t
put it all together consistently. Still, the course was beautiful. Deer ambled across
the fairways and a woodchuck seemed to be getting a kick out of life. I found
as many balls as I lost.
Now
though, the refrain of beer, baseball, bass-fishing, and golf is coming to an
end. Beer, baseball, bass-fishing, and golf. I suppose booze, boobs, and beaver
ought to be added to the refrain: Chuck claimed he had a bachelor party to
arrange, so we stopped at a windowless, cinder-block establishment down a back
road in the woods. Cost me a hundred damn dollars. I covered out ten-dollar
entry fees, times three, and got talked into a “guaranteed” lap dance that cost
me another forty to sit there, limp-dicked. She kept feeling my wiener which
couldn’t have been more shrivelled; I’d already been in the bathroom with a Club
Magazine twice that day. I came out and said to Josh, “Well, I wish I hadn’t
already jacked off some many times today.” The girl, “Diamond,” she called
herself, said to me about Josh, “Did you recommend me to your friend?” That got
us both to giggling, since I’m not his friend, but his stepson, and the thought
of stepfather and stepson in a titty bar together, and the idea that, we are
indeed also friends, in a lot of ways.
Josh and
Chuckles were worried about getting in trouble with their wives, my mother and
aunt, and kept making me promise I would say we had played eighteen holes
instead of nine. The other funny thing about the place was that you had to
bring your own beer in an ice chest and leave it in a nearby outbuilding. You
just had to go into that room to open your beer, pour it in a cup, and then you
could bring it into the stripper section. Loophole, I guess. I had figured out
in the Poconos there’s be a bunch of toothless, inbred mutant, beer-bellied
hillbillies, but the women were all pretty good looking.
Anyway,
after the skins game, we hung out in the clubhouse and watched the Cardinal
game and drank Yuengling and waited for the girls. When we got home, we found
that Thing had left a message that “Jeopardy!” had called, and everyone was
celebrating because they all think I can win. Two hours more ‘til we land at
John Wayne. Then we have to find a shuttle to Placentia. I realize now that’s
were Jim’s mother lived, where he was born, where many important flashbacks
will take place, i.e. prayer teachings, etc. I’ll have to put fluid in the
transmission and Shirelle’s expecting me for dinner.
I am
still supremely bummed I lost my journal. Tomorrow: haircut, groceries, new clothes,
new shoes, pay bills—ugh; I’m broke. Bless my “Jeopardy!” effort. Bless our
safe landing.
Labels: A Fool Back East
