Don’t Cost to Look

He arrived late like he always did on Saturdays. His place was hidden two miles off the highway and fifteen miles from the nearest town. The joint was rocking. The dance floor was full of cowboys in ball caps and women too fat to be in the tight clothes they wore. A fragment of a song from the sixties warping its way around on the jukebox took him back, and for a second, he was transported to another time—another life. He was back in Chicago, dressed in a bespoke set of clothes, in a jazz club sipping Teachers on the rocks with a lemon twist, and in love without knowing what was coming down the road.

Then, his vision cleared, and the real world crashed back. Walls and ceiling painted charcoal black with thousands of sparkles reflecting neon red closed in on him. The music was loud enough to rattle glassware behind the bar, pounding out music alternating between rock and roll and despairing country and western songs which reminded everyone, especially him, of love lost and drowned in a thousand shot glasses filled to the brim with bonded whiskey and thrown back and gulped down to ease the guilt or pain of betrayal.

A great percentage of the men who were presently drunk or on their way to getting drunk and filled his bar tonight had been away one time or another. They were loaded down with a lifetime of petty grievances they regularly hurled against each other and at the world in general. He was aware of the nature of the people to whom he dealt out seven ounce pony glasses filled with ice and whiskey, vodka, rum, and gin with mixers of Coke, 7-up, Tang, water, and most often nothing.

All his customers assumed he was on equal footing with them. Now, after proving himself worthy of their respect and tough enough he was accepted.

He arbitrated their squabbles and most times kept a lid on the kettle he stirred every night. He heard them talk as though being away was a form of vacation. They never used the word prison when they talked about their time in state prison over in McAlester. Perhaps being away was a vacation from the torment of daily life on the outside.

He dreaded when somehow civilians found his bar. He had to baby sit them and make sure none of his regulars acted out or worse while the tourist were in the place.

He took a barstool at the end of the long bar that ran the length of end of the room. Van Cole, his bartender, put a light scotch and water in front of him. It was twelve o’clock in the morning. His bar would not close until the last customer left. He didn’t have a set closing time. Why would he? The bar had no license and the nearest law was 40 miles away. He was the law in the world he had create not in the seven days as the Lord had done, but in 23 days after his first bar was burned to the ground by a deputy sheriff. The price he’d paid for too much success and not using vending equipment padding the Sheriff in the back woods of Latimer County, Oklahoma. His new bar had convinced everyone he was here to stay.

“Your brother called,” Van said. “He’s driving down from Tulsa tomorrow. He said he’d be here about noon.”

His brother, Mike, was in the business too, but was closer to civilization, licensed, and had to close at two. One time, after closing his own bar, he drove down and arrived at four o’clock in the morning. With music blasting, full of methed up wide awake drunks, and everyone reeling and screaming at each other to be heard above the thunder of the music, Mike told him that his bar looked like the most dangerous place in the world.

The building was built of cinder block and had no windows. Daylight was barred entry. The dominating theme was black and the lighting indirect and red. Two oblong lights over a pair of pool tables were the only brightness allowed and only extended to the edges of the green felt. The neon of the juke box made a rainbow glow the middle of one wall. After his divorce, he’d made the place home to a constant madness to which all who dared to enter were invited, and from which he could not claim to be immune.

He saw her walk in at one o’clock. She came in behind a man and woman. She paused a step inside the door. She put a hand out as if to feel her way in to the haze of cigarette smoke set on fire by the red indirect florescence of the lighting. Her eyes adjusted, and unsure what to believe, she looked over the crowd. He watched her walk with her two companions to a table in the far corner by the dance floor. He motioned the waitress over and told her he wanted to buy their drinks.

He never messed with women who came in to his bar. Most were not beautiful and unattractive for a lot of reasons, but no matter, the women were a draw for his male customers. He was about to break his rule. He worked his way toward her table shaking hands, greeting customers, and chatting a second or two with drunks who believed they were his best friends.

Perhaps she was an extraterrestrial from another planet. A woman like a hundred year flood that only happened once in a life time. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was not alone. Her entrance had charged the air. Her hair was jet black and teased high and fell back past her shoulders in a reflection of light. Later, when he saw her up close, he’d see her eyes were blue. It was not only her beauty and how tall she was that set her apart. For him it was as if a spotlight cut her out and dimmed all the other scruffy, dilapidated humans who populated his bar. She was a beacon at the end of a lonely tunnel.

She sat with her back to the wall, and as he drew closer, he saw she was as tall as he was, maybe taller. She had small firm breasts, and unwisely in this place, her nipples were almost visible under her shear sleeveless black, silk blouse. She did not shave under her arms which was a surprising turn on for him. He stood at her table.

She had white skin that glowed red from the red florescent eight foot long bulbs hidden behind cornice boards he had installed over squares of black mirror tiles glued to plywood and hung around the walls of the bar in eight foot by four foot panels. Some said the effect of the lighting excited demented passions. They were probably right. He did not care. Demented passions were fine with him. He might be the leader of the uncontrolled pack.

“It don’t cost to look, cowboy,” she said when she saw how intensely he stared at her. “Touching might be another story.”

He felt heat rise up in his throat. He was a freshman in high school again aching to take out the most beautiful senior class girl. He extended a hand toward the civilian she had come in with, John or Jonathon. He didn’t remember. Her companion acted like an old friend of his and proud that he had taken time to come over to their table.

“My wife.” he said and motioned toward a small, dark woman on his left. He waved in the direction of the reason he had come to their table, “and this is my cousin.”

He bent down close to her, and breathed in the perfume of her skin and hair. He told her he was delighted to meet her.

“I bet every man wants to touch,” he said.

“My husband would not like it.” She smiled up at him. “He’s possessive.”

“I don’t blame him.” He smiled and introduced himself. “I’m David.”

“I’m Sheba, Bathsheba Lighthorse.” She said. “I was joking about that ‘don’t cost to look’ business.”

“I hope not.” He’d laughed. “I’m happy you are here.”

The waitress came and set their drinks on the table.

“Let me get the drinks,” he said waving away the man’s money. He slid a twenty dollar bill on to the girl’s drink tray.

“May I join you for a moment?”

He sat down next to her without waiting for an answer.

“Where’s your possessive husband?” he said

“He’s fighting with his unit in Afghanistan. He’s a marine. This is his second deployment there. He was in Iraq before that. He’s been gone off and on for three years.”

“He sounds dangerous,” he said dismissing the man from his mind. “How did you end up lost down here in Latimer County?”

“My mother lives in Wilburton. My cousin too,” she said. “I was in a car accident in Minneapolis, and I’m here recuperating. Nothing too serious. My cousin offered to show me the sights of Wilburton. It took about twelve minutes, and we decided to come out here.”

“I glad your cousin brought you. No one ever comes to my bar unless a customer brings them the first time. I don’t have a sign up. I don’t get many innocent civilians.”

“I hope I’m not too innocent for your place.”

“I bet you are. I’ll have to make certain you don’t get into trouble.”

He had to leave them, but managed to work his way back several times to her table. He’d meant it when he told her he would look after her. He watched her dance. She was not intimidated by the attention of his customers. She did not invite any of her dance partners to sit down at her table. He invited Bathsheba and her cousins to go to breakfast with him after the bar closed. She thanked him, but declined.

“My cousins had to leave. You still want to take me to breakfast? I could use a ride back to town,” she said when he found her sitting alone later. He asked her to sit at the bar.

After all the other help and the customers left, Van Cole counted the take and paid himself. He laid the money bag on the bar. “I’m out of here,” he said. “You two don’t anything I wouldn’t do.”

“You want a drink for the road?” he asked her. She shook her head no. She had moved up to the bar as he had suggested after she asked for a ride home. He went around to the back of the bar and turn off all the lights leaving a small cone of white light on over the bar so they could see their way out.

She was sitting just outside the edge of the light. One white hand was visible on top the bar. The black of the room surrounded and pressed in on them. He moved from behind the bar and walked to her. He sat down next to her with his back turned to the quiet, empty darkness. “Are you hungry?”

“No.”

He pushed his hand into the light and with a tip of his finger touched the nail of her index finger. The nail was painted blood red and looked long and sharp enough to cut into his heart. She leaned her face into the light.

“Do you want me to take you back to town?” he said drowning in the deep ocean blue of her eyes.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think I do.”

Scuffling

I stood behind the bar and watched Sammy Sullivan. He was sitting at a table drinking bourbon and coke and flipping cigarette butts at a tall, thin guy in a cowboy hat sitting at another table with his back turned. It would be only a matter of minutes before the cowboy figured out what was going on. Then, we would have us a show.

I didn’t know why Sammy was permitted in my bar. He was always causing trouble. Maybe I was bored, or maybe I liked trouble. I’d barred him out of the place a few times, but always let him back in. I watched Sammy flip a butt and hit the cowboy square on the back of the neck. I moved toward the end of the bar so I could step out and bust up the scuffle that was about to start.

The kid I had working with me behind the bar shook his head. He didn’t understand why I let the stuff that Sammy was always pulling go on. I shrugged my shoulders to say me neither. I saw that the cowboy was in Sammy’s face and had him by the lapels of his leather jacket.

“I’ll be right back,” I told the kid. I stepped out and took a couple of steps over to the two new best friends. I pushed between the cowboy and pulled Sammy toward the door.

I manhandled him outside and pushed him up against the side of the building to the right of the door. He was drunk. I stepped back and told him he had to go home.

“You telling me to leave?” he said.

“Time to go,” I told him.

“You telling me to leave?” he repeated.

His buddy, Chink, was standing outside off to the side but had not butted in. When I turned my head and looked at him to make sure he understood to stay out of it, Sammy hit me in the mouth. Chink was shocked. I don’t think Sammy believed he’d done it either, but didn’t have more than a split second to reflect on his mistake.

I caught Sammy across the face with my forearm and knocked his head against the concrete block wall of the building. He melted down the wall like hot butter. Chink moved over and covered him so I wouldn’t hit him again. I helped Chink pick him up and carry him to Chink’s old pickup.

When I went back inside and walked back behind the bar, the kid gave me an ‘I told you so’ look. He wrapped up a hand full of ice in a bar rag and handed it to me. I pressed it against my cut lip.

“Sammy going to live?” he wanted to know.



“Depends on how hard the idiot’s head is,” I said and pressed the cold bar rag tight against my lip.

I Won't Tell

He went in search of coffee. He didn’t use the elevator down to the street. He walked down the five flights of stairs he found at the end of the hall eight doors down from his hotel room. It was six o’clock in the morning. He’d moved into the hotel the night before and had slept badly.

This would be his first day alone in Cartagena. Yesterday, after their week together in hotel on the beach, his girlfriend deserted him and flew back to Bogotá. This small hotel was three blocks inland. It had a courtyard shaded by a giant mango tree loaded with fruit.

He stepped out of the hotel into the bright Caribbean sunlight. Six o´clock and already warm. Next to the hotel he saw a small café, but his desire for coffee was distracted. He couldn’t believe what he saw. In front of the small café, on the sidewalk and partially in the street, was the most astounding sight.

There may have been a dozen. Some were wearing cocktail dress, some had on short shorts, and all were dressed for the evening. One, a black, was tall and beautiful; her friend standing and chatting next to her had the same café con leche skin color as his girlfriend. He heard her say, “Hasta luego,” to the black girl before she walked over to where he was standing.

“Buenos días. Eres italiano?” she said. “Are you an Italian?”

“No,” I said. “American.”

“Do you date?” she said.

“Would you like a coffee?” I said. I indicated a table just inside open front of the café. She walked with me into the café and sat down at the first table. I sat across from her.

“Café con leche?” I asked. She nodded yes.

“Dos.” I said to the waiter.

“Are you busy later?” she said. “What are you doing later?”

“I am going to walk and get to know the city.”

“Are you at the hotel?” she indicated the hotel next door with her head.

“I am. Do you live in Cartagena?”

“No. I am from outside of Monteria, Cordoba.” She said. “I am here for the season. I can make enough in three months to last all year.”

“I was here with my girlfriend.” I said. “She had to go back home yesterday.”

“We could spend an hour together. I’ll call my mother and tell her I’ll be late,” she said. “$200.000 pesos for you.”

“Your mother?” I said.

“Yes, she takes care of my little girl, my daughter.”

The waiter set a large, white cup with espresso coffee in the bottom and a small pitcher of hot milk on the table in front of each of us. He placed a bowl of brown sugar in the center of the table and gave each of us a spoon that he set on top of a napkin to the right of the cups.

I watched the pretty woman cross her legs, lean forward, and spoon three spoonfuls of sugar into her cup. She poured in milk until the coffee was the color of her skin, picked up the cup, and took a sip. I fixed up my coffee with sugar but did not add as much hot milk. I took a sip and smiled.

“I needed coffee,” I said.

“We could go up to your room.” She took another sip of her coffee.

“You are very beautiful,” I said, “but my girlfriend . . .”



“I won’t tell.” She smiled.

Did You Tell Him

She stood there her face full of loathing.

His rage was surging and rippling in every pore of his skin. He wanted to smack her across her arrogant mouth. Close it up forever. God, he wanted to beat the hell out of her. To make her pay. She had her back to the bed room door. Instead, he drove his fist through the flimsy veneer of the door next to her head.

“Fuck you, Rick. Go ahead and kick the door too while you’re at it.”

He stopped himself from doing just that. He wanted to kick the cheap trailer to pieces. He’d been out of work for a year. They had rented the cheapest thing they could find. He hated what he had become. He wanted to slap her taunting mouth off her face.

“God damn it,” he said. “God damn it all to hell.”

“God’s got nothing to do with nothing, Rick.”

He stepped back. She had been a beauty once. He’d love her so much that he thought the whole weight of the universe would crush his heart when he was not with her he missed her so much. Now it was all he could do not to kill her, to beat her to a pulp.

He would never accept how his whole life had gone sour. Losing his job had been the start, but the final straw was her betrayal.

“I am leaving you, Rick. It’s over. You thinking beating me up will make me love you, want to be with you, stay in this pit of a place?”

“I love you,” he said.

“You’re pathetic is what you are. Get out of my way.” She picked up her scuffed up suitcase off the bed. She pushed opened the ruined door.

“Don’t come near me again.” She said. Pulling the suitcase behind her she left him sitting on the sagging bed. The pickup was parked and waiting down the cracked street. She though the suitcase in the back and climbed in.

“Get me out of here,” she said.

“Did you tell him?” the blond guy said.

“You better drive on out of here before he comes out or you’ll know firsthand,” She said.

Soon

He wonders when it will happen. When will he decide? When will he decide to stop? “No more,” he will say to himself. There will be no one to tell. After a while, a guy starts thinking it ain’t worth the effort. He walks the beach. As far as his eyes can see, white sand with cracked shells that bruise his bare feet. Old people walk a head of him and follow behind.

“We’re a fucking parade,” he hears in his head. “A parade of dry sun burnt skin and flaccid muscles. Turkey necked men and women with tits and bellies no longer fighting gravity and hanging down over their shorts. Jesus!”

He looks down when he’s pissing and can’t see his dick. Even when he wakes up with a hard on he can’t see it hidden behind the mountain of his belly. He has to push himself up and off the bed with his arms when he stands up in the middle of the night and stumbles into the toilet to pee.

His wife is old and tired. A lunatic lost in a head full of the past. He doesn’t see her as the young bride he married fifty years ago. He sees her as she is and hates her for her insecurities and constant questions repeated every ten minutes. She will not leave him in peace. Jesus!

He hides in the folds of the couch in the living room and tries to nap.

“Armond!” she shouts. “Armond!”

He hears her searching room to room. It won’t be long now.

“There you are,” she says. “The children will be here soon.”

His son was killed riding his motorcycle 20 years ago. The daughter lives in California. She won’t be coming soon. Has refused to come home since her mother disowned her years ago. Jesus!

Meals on Wheels brings lunch. After lunch he can escape to the beach in front of his million dollar house. The hired woman will fill in for a couple of hours, and his wife will call her Eunice.

“Eunice!” she will shout. “Oh, my beautiful child. You are home at last.”

Every day, when he comes home from the beach he checks his stash. He has 50 pills. The strongest pills available. The directions say take no more than two for a full night’s sleep—no more than two in 24 hours. He holds the bottle of pills in his hand. Not today he decides.

“Soon,” the voice in his head says. “Soon.”

Endings

He met a woman on line through a dating service. He’d looked at a hundred photos and read an equal number of profiles. Finally, he emailed a brunette whose profile said she liked sailing, hiking and wanted to meet someone who was into outdoor activities. She had posted five photos and looked to be tall and rangy.

She emailed him back and they met on Skype and chated a couple of times. In the screen of his laptop, he saw her at the table in her dining room with her back to a wall of paintings. She painted watercolors and had her favorites framed and hung all over her house she told him. He invited her to look at his art work on his website. His were mostly digital paintings of nude women while her paintings were water colors of landscapes and flowers.

They agreed to meet for coffee. She suggested a Starbucks on Yale Avenue. They met on a Saturday afternoon. She arrived late, but he didn’t mind because he had his computer. He saw her come in. She hesitated just inside the doorway, and he got up and went to where she stood. They walked together to the counter. She ordered an iced coffee and refused to let him pay. She was in a pair of black jeans, wore a loose sweater and cowboy boots. He had on a brown leather jacket and some gray slacks. He’d worn a pair of boat shoes.

She wore no makeup. There was no hint of sexuality about her. I wonder if it is on purpose, he thought. He guided her back to the table with his coffee and laptop, held out a chair for her to sit, and joined her at the table. She sat with her back to the wall. He closed the lid of his laptop and pushed it to one side.

They both took a sip of their drinks. He reached into his brief case and pulled out a drawing pad and a charcoal pencil. He started sketching her portrait. I can’t wait to see how we end up, he thought. It can go several different ways:

“I loved your paintings.” She said. “I thought I wouldn’t, but I admit that they were beautiful. I pictured myself posing for you.”

He turned the sketch around and pushed it toward her. She looked at it for a long moment. She looked up at him.

“Yes I think I would like for you to paint me.”

He pulled a sketch pad and a charcoal pencil out of his briefcase. He started sketching a portrait of her.

“I looked at your website,” she said. “I asked my pastor to look at too. He said your paintings were obscene.”

“Obscene?”

“Yes, he told me that I had to be careful. Men with an obsession with sex and naked women were sick and dangerous.”

“You came anyway.”

“I almost stayed away.”

He turned the sketch and pushed it over to her. She looked at it for a moment and then looked up at him.

“May I keep it?” she said. “It is beautiful.”

He took a drawing pad and a charcoal pencil out of his briefcase. . .

Like Me

His niece always had a new girlfriend. She was a workaholic, made a very good living from her consulting firm, but her girlfriends were problematic. They were beautiful, but most had emotional problems.

He was cutting a prime rib that he had cooked and brought over to his brother’s house as his contribution to the birthday celebration. His niece came into the kitchen to get more wine.

“I want a beautiful girlfriend like your newest,” he told her.

“You can have her,” she said. “She’s upstairs pouting in the bathroom.”

She twisted a corkscrew down into top of the wine bottle.

“I know why men hate women,” she told him. “They are so needy. They always end up asking the same question: “why don’t you love me?”

“We don’t hate them, at least not in the beginning.” He laughed. “Not until they ask that question.”

“Why can’t women be more like a man?” She laughed and popped the cork out of the wine bottle. “More like me!”

Nightmare

The man sits tied naked in a chair bolted to the floor. He is thin, but his body has gone to fat. His feet are long and dirty. The room is white. There is no visible source of the piercing bluish light that floods the room and washes away most color. The chair fronts a steal desk also bolted to the floor. Behind the desk sits a woman dressed in a long flowing robe. The sleeves of the robe are pulled up and the forearms of the woman are exposed. The skin of the back of her hands and arms is translucent with veins snaking up and disappearing into the sleeves of her robe.

"Do you believe in Ghost?" She asked.

"No. I don't."

"What about God? Do you believe in God?"

"No."

"Do you believe in any kind of Spirituality or after life?"

"No, I don't believe in any of the so called 'truths' that are inexplicable and outside of reason."

"Are you an atheist?"

"I believe people can make up anything and believe in it so strongly that their lives are controlled by their beliefs, and they will commit acts because of their beliefs. People will commit horrible acts that do great harm as well as small acts of charity and goodness they hope will redeem them."

"Do you believe in good and evil?"

"I believe a battle between irrational and rational forces rages in everyone's head."

"Do you hear voices?"

"I hear a lone voice. I don't believe the voice comes from God or nature or is the voice of some Spirit that lives in Nature.

"What does the voice tell you to do?"

"It tells me to be reasonable."

"Will you be reasonable this time?"

"I don't believe I will."

"Do you know why you choose not to listen to the voice of reason resonating within your head?"

"Yes, I do."

A tall man dressed in a black suit has been standing in the corner making up his mind. The woman gives him a nod of concurrence. He steps forward and buries an ice pick up to its handle into the right ear of the naked man tied in the chair. The naked man goes ridged with surprise and collapses back into his bonds. There is almost no blood.

A yellow pool forms under the chair. The woman rises, walks around the desk, joins the man in the suit, and they leave the room together holding hands. They look back at the naked man slumped in the chair. They embrace and kiss.

"I love you," the woman says. Her robe falls opens. Her breasts are sagging and hanging down against the rolls of fat that form around her belly and fall between huge thighs.

The man reaches out and closes the door behind them killing the murderous brightness of the room's bluish light.

What Always Happens

The alarm is set for 5, but I always wake up at a quarter till. Still dark, but in Bogotá, daylight comes within seconds of the same time each morning 365 days a year. There is no change of seasons in Colombia. I throw the covers back, slide out of bed, and pad my way to the bathroom.  

No need to turn on the light, I pee leaning over the stool with one hand supporting me against the back wall of the bathroom. I hear rather than see that I hit the target.  I flush, turn and push against the sink, run cold water over my hands, and splash some onto my face. I feel for the towel hanging to the right of the sink and use it to dry my face and hands.

I hear the alarm go off and make my way back to the bedroom to stop its buzzing. I want to fall back into bed next to the warm form sleeping under the covers, but turn and wade back toward the galley kitchen just a few steps away. I flip on the light over the counter and cover my eyes. I open my fingers slowly to give my eyes a chance to adjust to the glare.

The coffee is Colombian and a dark roast. I spoon five spoonfuls into the Mister Coffee, fill the reservoir with five cups of cold water and punch the on button. I take a liter of milk out of the fridge and fill my large, white porcelain cup half full, put the cup into the microwave, set it for one minute and twenty seconds, and push start.

The bell dings, and I take the cup of hot milk out of the microwave. I find the pot of sugar and stir in a heaping spoonful of the brown sugar. The coffee is almost done, but I don’t wait. I pull the coffee pot and sub my cup under the dripping coffee. I tip the pot and fill the cup and quickly exchange pot for cup.

Without stirring, I take the day´s first sip of café con leche. A new day, like all my days in Colombia, has begun.  I carry my cup of coffee into the dining room and look out the window at the gray light as it comes over the mountains surrounding the city to the east.

The dog was asleep on the couch, but I see her watching me. I sip my coffee. She stretches and pulls herself off the couch and pads to the apartment´s door. I walk over, open the door. She hesitates before she goes out and down the circular staircase to the garden and yard three floors down. I shut the door, walk to the couch, and sit down in front of the fireplace. I take the remote control and push start. The gas logs ignite, and it will only take a few moments to dissipate the nights chill from the apartment.

I get up, open the door, and let the dog in. She follows me into the kitchen. I get her some food and pour it into her bowl. I pour more milk and sugar into my cup and microwave it. I fill the cup with coffee. When I finish my second cup of coffee it will be full daylight outside, and I will be ready to shower, dress, and start another day in Bogotá. I like living in Colombia. I like the sameness. I can count on it. 

Ears

     Last week, I saw my friend getting out of his green Caddy, and he had his head wrapped up in what looked like a big white turban. I didn't have time to talk to him, and it wasn't until yesterday, almost a week later, I finally got a chance to say hello. He had replaced the turban with an elastic band around his head that covered most of his ears.

     He told me that he had his ears cut off and replaced flat against his head to celebrate his twentieth birthday. He'd always worried that his ears stuck out too far and decided to have them fixed. He went to a local plastic surgeon that performed the operation at a small private hospital.

      He said they gave him a local anesthesia, and he spent the entire operation gazing up into the greenest and most beautiful eyes of the doctor's assistant nurse. Her eyes took his mind off the noise of the cutting the doctor was doing on his ears.

      He said he didn't stay in the hospital after the operation because he believed the brochure that described the procedure as quick and easy and as an outpatient operation. However, once he got back to his little apartment, and the anesthesia wore off, the swelling began, and the pain and drumming started for real. He described how he'd laid in his cot and suffered for three days, until finally, desperate, he'd removed the bandages and relieved the pressure on his swollen ears.

      He said he now had a new and different idea what the words stoic and tough meant. He took off the ace bandage that he was wearing and showed me the result of his pain and suffering.

      His ears were pinned back against the sides of his head. You look okay, better I said, but told him I did not remember his ears sticking out.

      "Like jug ears," he said. "They were just like big jug 

Unlucky Mix Up

Unlucky Mix Up

    Yesterday’s Tulsa World Online Edition published a short article describing how a small, shy, ugly man was torn to shreds at a conference held at a local Holiday Inn Express which took place on the September 15^th, 2013 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

    Apparently there was a mix up, and a group of militant feminist and women righter´s who were expecting to hear speakers dealing with Sexual and Domestic Abuse mistakenly attended a conference dealing with The Value of Legalized Prostitution.

    The report was sketchy, and did not have many details. The Tulsa World promised to publish a full report of the tragedy as soon as the Tulsa Police released the 911 tapes and the full homicide report. 

    The police are also looking at the hotel’s security tapes and reviewing the guest list of the hotel, but so far no arrest have been made. The Holiday Inn Express denies any responsibility for mixing up the rooms where the conferences were held.

    The Tulsa World obtained the following transcript of Mr. Underman’s opening speech  It is believed that this speech was responsible for the riot. 

Good afternoon, my name is Teddy Underman. I want to thank everyone here at the conference today for coming. Let me say that I know today’s topic, Are Hookers Better than Girlfriends, is controversial, but let me start the conference with the reason’s I believe, for a guy like me, hookers are better.

I've been having such bad luck with relationships lately.  Instead of trying to date regular girls, I would prefer to pay a hooker for sex and be done with it.

I’m a perfect fit for someone who needs to use a hooker. I’m ugly, shy, and have no personality. I’ve had bad luck finding the type of woman I want, and when it comes to the looks department, on a scale of one to ten, I’m a one. I’m 31-years-old and still a virgin. I believe it would be a lot easier to go to a hooker rather than wait for another 20 years to meet a girl the normal way.

I don’t believe a hooker would judge a guy based on looks or at least, they would be kind enough to lie and not tell a guy how ugly he is to his face.  A hooker will do anything thing a guy wants, for a fee of course. Hookers don't care about size of a guy’s business either.

A guy can have sex with a ten on the physical looks scale, even if he’s a one, as long as he has enough money. If he goes to a hooker in a legal brothel, where the girls get checked up on, they will probably be cleaner than a girl who is a serial monogamist; most importantly, hookers are available and willing.

Because they are professionals, hookers are probably better at sex than normal girls. A hooker is probably the choice for me, if I don’t count fat and ugly chicks. I am sure hookers are cheaper than a wife in the long run. In the divorce, courts always end up siding with the wife, and the male ends up being financially raped.

I know I am not the only guy that feels this way. Does everyone in the audience agree that hookers are better than girl friends? I will now take comments and questions from the floor.

     
 Below are some examples of comments from Tulsa World’s readers:

·   Dr. Ubigo:     What a sad ending to a man with the right idea.  My suggestion is to find a nice hooker who is not that pretty and convince her to be your girlfriend. Tell her it doesn't matter that she's a hooker and you love her for who she really is.

·    Stan H:     I feel so sorry for the poor fool. He should have quit saying all those things about himself. Who said being shy is unattractive, and there is no such thing as an ugly human. Just because you think you are ugly not everyone else thinks that you are. It sounded like Teddy had personality, at least his question did. Can a hooker give you love?

·     Grass Hop:    You can’t kill a good idea; however, you have to be careful not to be giving your girlfriend or wife crabs, syphilis, and gonorrhea, most of the time, they usually get pissed.

·    Joker:     I wish I had been at that conference. Check places like craigslist w4m or casual encounter w4m,mw4m and find what they call a friend with benefits or a couple looking for a male partner. It is a lot safer and everyone can use a new friend. I would have told Teddy before it was too late.

·    Empty Nester:     Teddy was simply telling the truth. He didn’t deserve to be shredded. I think he did a real good job of describing what most men’s needs are. While some men really need emotional attachment, if you don’t then go get them unlicensed sex therapists.

·    ?:    He didn’t deserve what he got, but I read self-contempt in his words, if you do not respect yourself, no one else will do. As for his question, depends on what are you looking for, a sex mate or a soul mate?

·    Bronzeba:     Only losers take the "easy" way out. A lot of those guys wind up with diseases, or they wind up alone and lonely. It might sound good, in theory, but truthfully, you shouldn't try it. It’s better that he was shredded.

·    Daniel:     He was an idiot. He admitted he was no kind of catch whatsoever, but he was very shallow about looks. What a 100% d-bag. I never thought I'd answer this way, but yeah hookers would have been best for you, Teddy. You reap what you sow.

·    TwenkyB:     What a sad excuse for a "man" who did not deserve a wife or a decent girlfriend. He deserved a hooker, and now he is where he should be.

·   Kalaub09:      FOR YOU---hookers were better because you had no personality and nothing special about you---so yes FOR YOU, BUT you would have Had a pretty sad life. I’m not sorry!

·   Dads Boy:      Jesus had one he saved her from being stoned to death. I don’t know if he ever did anything with her or not but he did like her. Maybe you can ask him, Teddy.

·    Raven:     Looks like you will always be still a virgin, Teddy Boy. At least you didn’t get a nice STD as a parting gift.

·    PurpleKi:     "Those girls are probably cleaner than some girl who has had serial monogamy." That offended me. The only man that I have been with is my husband, and you said that hookers are cleaner? Was this a real question? Teddy, you had some pretty negative views of women. Bad luck with relationships meant that there was something going on with you. Now, you can't keep blaming all of the women you meet. There is something that men have to change about themselves. Maybe most of those women were in the wrong too, or mainly in the wrong, but relationships (good and bad) are designed to help us grow. If you can't grow from them of course you won't be happy. Probably best that you are in heaven or wherever.

·   DC G:      Poor little guy had a different set of expectations, and now I hope he is in a better and different relationship—one with God. Here’s what I know: a prostitute will provide attention and sex, for a set period of time, for a set fee, after that, you're expected to pay for another hour, or get out. It's a financial transaction, and that's all. A wife/partner/spouse is expected to help establish a life with you - home, family, companionship - in addition to the attention and sex, and your spouse does have to do it because she is your wife, and she loves you. 

·    South of France:     If men are not interested in forming a family, then perhaps patronizing prostitutes is the right solution: however, since most people ultimately do want to have a family, a long-term arrangement with a hooker probably isn't the right solution for most men.

·    Pigs Eye:     I am sorry the little schmuck got shredded. No one deserves that, but I don't see why 'fat and ugly chicks' don't count. They're people, and as deserving of happiness as anyone else is, and it’s the same for all the rest of us!

   

   A closed casket funeral service for Mr. Underman will be held at the First Baptist Church at 1003 South Cincinnati, Tulsa, Oklahoma as soon as the coroner releases the body. 

What Men Think About

I always read a Sunday column that Esther Balac writes. I like the name of her column, Sex with Esther.

In last Sunday´s El Tiempo, Esther asked why don´t men think about more than sex? "Could it be true? Is sex all we think about?” I asked myself.

I tried to remember why I did the other one percent, but the driving force behind ninety-nine percent my mess-ups was clear:  Sex will make a guy do stuff he doesn’t want to do. He’ll help out around the house, pretend to like poetry, take long walks holding hands, say I love you a dozen times a day, and do all kind of other romantic stuff to get to the only thing he is thinking about.

 Esther, along with a couple of other experts she quoted, had some theories.  One such expert, Sheridan Smove, had spent a lifetime investigating men and how they think, and had us all figured out.

Sheridan´s book, What Every Man Thinks about Apart from Sex, sold more copies than the De Vinci Code though Amazon.com. . The book detailed exactly what men think about aside from sex.

It has two hundred blank pages. There’s not one letter on a single page! I was offended, but had no rebuttal to Sheridan´s book. My mind drew a blank. A million or more women bought her book with two hundred blank pages for nine bucks plus shipping. What the hell were those women thinking? My mind draws another blank.

Louann Brizendine, an expert on the structure and phycology of the human brain quoted by Esther, also had firm conclusions about what men think about apart from sex. She believed men have lúbricos thoughts.

According to Ms. Brizendine Men think about fucking almost anything at any time without moral restraint, and to top it off, we imagine ourselves in bed with a woman only after one single glimpse at her ass. The word she used in Spanish is alucinar which means an irresistible attraction that is all consuming: three times more than women, according to this neuroscientist.

In her book, The Masculine Brain, she concluded that this was why we men had a propensity to make dirty jokes and populate our speech with sexual innuendos. I disagreed. Sex is no joking matter!

I did agree that the brains of men and women are different form conception. Like brains of crocodiles, our brains are masculine or feminine because of how much heat is produced in the nest before we are hatched. Of course, Louann had different ideas. She believed that it was because women´s brains have more space for emotions and sentimental memory than do the brains of us others.

Louann said that women live for romance and talk all the time because they have a third more neurons dedicated to communication and this big empty space reserved for romance. I concurred; the space reserved for romance in a woman´s brain is big and is really empty. And of course there´s that silliness about testosterone that predominates in the male of the species. I liked my heat theory better.

Ether´s conclusion: she didn´t mind men thinking about nothing apart from sex at all; especially, if she were the subject of all that thinking. I look forward to next week's column. 

Ewww

“I could be a standup comic provided I had a bunch of hecklers in the audience every night to feed me material and for me to make fun of,” J W told me and my friend Jimmy Stevens. “I’d be better’n that Leno guy.”

Jumbo, as Jimmy liked to be called, had lived in Florida for 20 years. He was Canadian, but had had no problem adopting the Florida cracker attitude about gun control—no control in other words.  Although, cracker is derogatory in much of the country, for Jumbo and in most of rural Florida, it was a source of pride. J W was from South Carolina. He was a real estate developer. Jumbo had a construction company called Big Sky Construction. Mostly, he did remodels.

“You know. I always wanted to be that guy; you know; that guy dressed like a bad clown that sits on the bench in a dunk tank on the midway at fairs and calls all the people walking by names so they’ll want to buy three throws with a baseball. You know, he makes ‘m mad, and they spend five bucks to try to hit the target and dunk his ass in the water—you know, that guy. I could do that job standing on my head.”

We were sitting at Jumbo’s kitchen table. I had a bottle of ice cold Budweiser sweating and making a puddle on the table in front of me, and Jumbo had a big glass of iced sweet tea with a big sprig of mint sticking out and hanging over the side. J W had a beer like me. Jumbo had a raggedy towel laid out on the table and had all the parts of his favorite pistol spread out on it. The smell of gun oil was heavy in the air.

“Standing on your head in a dunk tank and screaming names at people would be a perfect job for you.” J W said.

“Hey, fatty, put that turkey leg you’re gnawing on down.” Jumbo laughed. “You know, I could win a prize for being the rudest, most obnoxious guy ever to sit in a dunk tank and get baseballs thrown at him. I would love that job. I would be better than the guy at the State Fair last year who got fired and his dunk tank shut down there was so many complaints about how rude he was. I’d be better than him—a lot better.”

“You’d be real good at it for sure,” I said. My wife would have said no woman would chose to set down her tray of food at the table with us because of the ‘Ewww’ factor. She told me to look up it up if I wanted to know what she meant. It meant to excite nausea or loathing in; sicken. To offend the taste or moral sense of; repel. Disgusting, Profound aversion or repugnance excited by something offensive. Us, in other words.

“Ewww,” I said to Jumbo. We all laughed. Jumbo thought I’d used the pronoun you.

“Hey, double ugly. Yeah, yewww. Where’d you get that stupid hat and your ugly wife?” Jumbo laughed. “All day long I could antagonize the poor losers and their used up wives and slow kids. It would be a lot of fun. You know, I bet I’d make a fortune.”

“Yeah, you’d be perfect, but it might not turn out to be as much fun as you think it would,” J W said. “You’d sure be irritating though. Plenty of people would spend money on baseballs to dunk your ass. I bet your skinny ass would be wet from the time you opened up until the midway shut down for the night.”

“Only problem is there’s a lot of people in the world don’t know how to take a joke,” Jumbo said. “Especially fat women, or even skinny ones, but I bet their fat, dumb ass husbands would want to throw baseballs and dunk me.”

“Here in Florida and in South Carolina where I’m from, they might decide to throw something else,” J W said. “Probably in Minnesota too.”

“I just might have to defend myself,” Jumbo grinned. He had his pistol back together, he spun the cylinder, and sited down the barrel out the window toward a bunch of turkey buzzards roosting in a tree in his back yard.

“KaPow!” He laughed and took a big slug of his iced tea.

J W formed a pistol with his hand and sighted down his forefinger out the window at the birds.

“Kapow! Kapow! Kapow!” He said. His imaginary pistol kicked up each time he picked off one of the Buzzards. “A man has an obligation to defend himself.”

“Ewww,” I laughed and drank down a third of my beer.

Party Time

There were a dozen of us crowded into Jimmy’s dorm room and surrounding his bed. It was late afternoon, Saturday, and three hours before kickoff. Jimmy opened the fruit jar and poured out the capsules and pills onto the bed.

Jimmy suffered from narcolepsy and required a constant flow of amphetamines in his system to keep him from falling down asleep. His doctors gave him an unlimited supply of rainbow colored pills. Little white ones, red and blue ones, pink ones, and black ones. Some acted immediately and some were time release. They formed a multicolored circle in the center of Jimmy’s bed.

He didn’t play on our football team, but was the team’s medicine man. At least, he was to those of us who were friends with him. My roommate, a tackle named Jackson, was a transfer from Arkansas University. He liked the red and blue time release and the little white ones that would kick in just before the game stared if he took it ten minutes before kickoff. He reached in and picked out two red and blue capsules and one of the little white pills. I picked up a big, pink time release.

Timing was the key. Take the Dexedrine too early, and you would run out of steam in the fourth quarter. Take too much or too late, and you would be up all night. If a guy timed it right and got the right dose, he would be like a raging bull for the whole game, and afterward, he’d be as docile as a little lamb. Of course, none of us ever got our doses exactly right. Most times, we took too much.

Before the game, the coach had us all in the locker room for a pep talk. We were lolling around dressed in our green and white uniforms.  A team from some Podunk U was down from Kansas. We listen to him drone on and on over the sound of us breathing like freight trains with the amphetamines surging through our veins; all of us itching to hit someone. We had to be careful in the pre-game warm up not to get carried away with each other.

Once the game started, and we were loosed upon our opponents, we could hit to our hearts content. It didn’t matter much to my roommate whether he hit or got hit. He liked the contact. We all did. The whole game nobody ever said much of anything. The play was called, and we fired out. We kept firing out on each play until we scored, or until someone made a mistake, and we lost control of the ball.

My roommate’s nose was broken on the first play of the game against the team from Kansas by a linebacker. Jackson knocked him on his butt, but he got that one lick in with his forearm. Only lick he got. The linebacker spent the rest of the game sitting on his ass after each play, but my roommate’s nose was busted. The trainer stuffed two rolled up sticks of cotton in his nose to stop him bleeding all over us. At half time, I saw him swallow the second blue and red capsule.

With the Dexedrine singing in his ears the whole second half, every chance he got, my teammate tried to kill that linebacker who had busted his nose. The pink beauty that I had taken before the game was still talking to me when I showered and was getting dressed after the game. Jackson stood in front of a mirror and pushed his nose straight with the heel of the palm of his right hand.

“Mother fucker,” he screamed at the mirror.

“Mother fucker,” he repeated and applied a piece of adhesive tape across the bridge of his nose. His eyes were turning black and the pain made them water, but the bleeding had stopped, and he didn’t stuff cotton up his nose.

Me and Jackson were the last ones left in the locker room, and we were both still breathing hard when we were finally dressed and ready to leave. The Dexedrine kept pumping and pumping its magic. Jackson had a date with his girlfriend who was the daughter of a redneck deputy sheriff. She was a half breed Cherokee Indian, as tall as we were when she wore heels, and probably tougher than both of us put together.

We all told Jackson her daddy would kill him if he found out what they were doing. We also told him he was a retard for messing around with her, but he didn’t care about what anybody thought. I didn’t either if you want to know. We had us a party to go to, and we were going to have a good time. We were going a dance all night long.

The team had rented an old, beat up farm house out in the country for the weekend. We had two or three kegs of beer that medicine man Jimmy was in charge of setting up on ice. He had the music. A lot of girls would show up to help us celebrate our victory. We would get high, and the beer would be ice cold.

I was ready to party. Jackson looked beat up, but more than ready.  We were mean fucking machines. Lookout, here we come. Jackson hit the front of a metal locker on the way out as hard as he could with his fist and then kicked the front of it in for good measure. Jackson’s girlfriend was waiting for us outside the locker room.

“Oh baby. Look at you,” she said when she saw Jackson’s face. “You are seriously messed up, baby.

He grabbed her and pulled her with him to his red Chevy convertible. He opened the passenger side door and pushed her in. She looked pissed. He went around and got in behind the wheel. The motor started right up. He tuned the radio to a rock station and turned it up. I stood with my hand on the open passenger door but didn’t get in.

His girlfriend slid over close to him and put her hand on his thigh. She reached out and twisted the radio’s dial and turned the volume down.

“You need to go to a doctor,” she said. “You look fucked up.”

“No, I’m alright. I fixed it. The guys have the party set up,” he said.

“I’m not going to any more of those parties,” she said. “You need to get fixed.”

“I am not going to get fixed. We’re going to the party. We’re going to celebrate.”

“I’m not going to watch you and your buds get drunk and stupid. You’re all pilled up. You’re going to get out of control. I don’t want to be trapped out in the country with you drunk and crazy. You need to get to a doctor.

“Fuck that,” he said.

“Well, I don’t need this shit,” she said, slid over, quickly pushed past me to step out of the car. I slipped into the seat, and she slammed the passenger door shut behind me.

Jackson reached and tuned up the volume of the radio up as loud it would go, put the car in gear, stomped the accelerator to the floor, and the Chevy roared away from the curb. I turned and looked back at his girlfriend standing at the curb. She raised her hand high in the air and gave us the finger.

Jackson didn’t care. Pain was drumming and thumping his head, and the red and blues were pumping and fucking the blood in his veins to the beat of the music blasting out of the front of the dash. He rolled down the window and screamed out into the cold night wind, “Fuck Me!”

The Big Tube

My brother laid out the size of his new club by scratching out the outline of the building in the dirt with a hoe. He called a concrete company, and they came out with a backhoe and gouged out the foundation. A couple of days later a plumber came out and ran some plastic pipe for the bathrooms and bar area only minutes before the concrete trucks arrived.

The building turned out to be hundred feet long and fifty feet wide and had three levels. The entrance to the place was on the lower level where the pool tables were. The boss, my brother’s wife, had her chair and a little desk by the door and collected the cover charge when they had a band on the weekend.

I walked in on a Saturday night, and she handed me a pair of brass knuckles.

“There’s a bunch of drunken idiots in here tonight. I’m expecting trouble,” she said.

Drunken idiots were no big deal in the Big Tube Club. That summed up about ninety percent of the club’s customer—maybe a hundred percent counting the owners and their relatives, me included. I slipped the brass knuckles in a front pocket of my Wranglers and stepped up to the bar and ordered a fortifier to get ready for the predicted trouble.

My little brother had coined the phrase ‘big tube’ which he used to describe girls who were overweight. As a joke, my brother’s wife decided Big Tube was a perfect name for the club.

Tonight the club was full of its namesakes. Most were stuffed into jeans two sizes too small which did nothing to hide how big their butts were. Didn’t matter much. Whiskey is better than cosmetic surgery when it comes to beautifying. Keeping the lights of the club turned down low also played an important role. By midnight there would not be any ugly women in the house. All the Yahoos would be handsome too. Even I might have a chance at getting lucky.

The band started at ten o’clock. At first, the flow to the dance floor in front of the band stand set up on the second level was a trickle. A couple of hours later the floor was over flowing with couples bucking and sawing off beat to the country music blasting from the stage. My brother and I were standing at the edge of the second level watching the action down by the six pool tables on the first level. A big group of a party from a local electrical company was playing pool against a bunch of oilfield hands.

“I bet it don’t last another twenty minutes,” my brother said.

“Ten bucks says you’re right.” I laughed.

A big, fat guy swung his pool cue and hit a tall guy wearing a cowboy hat across the back of his head knocking the hat flying like a Frisbee. The melee was on. Didn’t look like it mattered much who was fighting who or why. Everyone went to swinging, but mostly with not too much effect.

“Let’s give ‘m a minute to wear themselves out, and then we’ll break it up,” my brother said.

“I owe you ten bucks,” I laughed. I reached into my pocket and slipped one of the brass knucks over the knuckles of my right hand.

Enough

He gathered up all his clothes, every jacket, all his socks and underwear, t-shirts, his sweat pants, slacks, dress shirts, his favorite pair of jeans, two belts, suspenders, an overcoat, an old ball cap, his tennis shorts, five silk ties, and finally his tuxedo and threw everything in to a big, garden sized, plastic bag. The bag contained almost every piece of clothing he owned.

Next he dug out of the bottom of the closet all his shoes and boots and threw them into a plastic bag. He was wearing an old pair of jeans and a black t-shirt and a pair of brown loafers. A black leather jacket was left hanging on the back of a chair placed before his desk.

He picked up the two plastic bags and carried them out of the room. The biggest bag he had to place on the floor to open the door to the apartment. He picked up the bag and carried both bags out into the landing and pushed the door shut with the heel of his foot.

He had to carry the biggest bag in front and the smaller one behind to negotiate the narrow spiral staircase down to the communal garage and out to the street. He placed both bags curbside. Too bad I am so big, he thought, all the homeless here in Bogotá are too small to wear any of the shoes and clothes.

He went back up to the apartment. He packed up his laptop in his well-used canvas briefcase. He gathered up his Eagle Creek neck wallet that was beat up but held his passport, and credit cards, and a creased picture of his wife and hung it around his neck. He grabbed the black leather jacket and shrugged into it. He was leaving a lot of stuff behind that he once thought was important—tennis rackets, camera tripod, all his artwork framed and hanging on walls all over the apartment, the first bed he had ever bought and probably the last he would ever buy.

He picked up a wad of pesos and stuffed them in the left front pocket of his jeans. He went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. He rinsed the tooth brush and put it wet into the inside breast pocket of the leather jacket. He used the toilet and flushed it. He took a quick look at himself in the mirror. He looked at the guy who had screwed up.

He turned away, shut the bathroom light off, and walked down the hall and out of the apartment. Outside on the street he flagged down the first cab that came by and climbed into the back seat. He watched the third story apartment disappear as the cab turned onto El Dorado Avenue.

“Fuck it,” he said aloud to himself. 

Empathetic

I was drinking a beer in a working class bar in a little West Texas town on the way back to Dallas and got to talking to a tall, blonde woman working behind the bar. She had been very pretty once and still looked good in a hard but sexy way. It was early afternoon, and I was the only customer at the bar. We somehow started talking about exes. She said her last husband never had a happy day in his life after his first wife ran off. He was an alcoholic, but she hadn't known it until she started living with him full time. The marriage was doomed from the start.

"I should've knowed better, but married him anyway," she said.

 “What the hell is wrong with you?” is what I used to say to my first wife all the time. She liked to‘ve driven me crazy. The girl was inherently unhappy," I said. 

“I bet you asking her “what the hell is wrong with you?” didn’t help much,” she laughed.

“No.” I laughed. “I was too young to understand how to deal with her.”

“You think you would be more supportive now?”

“No, but, at least now, I would say, “I understand how you feel that way, Darling.” I laughed.

“That is a major improvement,” she said.

“Well, in my mind it means the same as “What the hell is wrong with you?”, but it does sound better.” I laughed.

"You want another'n," she asked pointing at my empty glass.

"I would. I'm enjoying the company," I said. 

"Me too," she said. 

"You're a very pretty woman," I said.

Idle Thoughts on a Sunday

Passive

“You think that passive aggression is something most couples share in their relationship with one another?” I asked my wife.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, lots of times I agree to go along with something, and later resent my decision. I am angry that I was obliged to do whatever it was. I feel coerced and trapped into saying okay.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” she said.

“I don’t believe that’s true.”

“You don’t want to do something, don’t do it,” she said.

“Well, in the future I won’t,” I said.

I bet I will say yes the next time she wants to go visit her family and be mad about it the whole time I’m over there, I thought.

Victim

“Do you see yourself as a victim,” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “Why would I?”

“Well, your businesses have been robbed, one was burned down, you lost money when you went into business with your son, you and your first wife got a divorce, and I bet a lot of other stuff has happened to you over the years,” she said. “Lots of people would feel sorry for themselves.”

“I’m not lots of people,” I said. “I see a bunch of them falling all over their sorry selves with their hands out looking for somebody to tell them it wasn’t their fault.”

“So you don’t think of yourself as a victim?”

“Look, every time I lost all my crap, I felt lucky to get to start over, to have a clean slate, and tried to put off getting trapped by a bunch of possessions  as long as possible.” I laughed. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“So you’re not materialistic.”

“Hell yes I am. Maybe more than most, but after a while the shiny wears off of the prettiest things including women, and it’s nice if somehow I’m not responsible for losing everything. I get to start over with a clear conscience so to speak.” I said.

“I don’t think I understand,” she said.

“Well, look. Take that time when my first wife ran off. Hell, I’d gotten to resenting her, and when she took off, I was free. I was happy when the next one left too.” I said. “I like starting over—fresh.”

“You like starting fresh?”

“I always like the sound of that word,” I laughed. "Fresssh. That word makes my heart sing."

A Good Idea

“I finally got Google Earth on my computer,” I told my wife.

“I need to do that,” she said.

“I found Bogotá. I zoomed in, and you can almost see our apartment building across the street from the National University,” I said.

“Wow, that’s interesting,” she said.

“You know the professor of my online writing class, Anya, suggested we make a map our lives and use it to help create chapters when we write autobiographies.”

“A map of your life?” she said.

“Yeah, like a map of all the places we’ve lived. With Google Earth I could fly over all the towns and states and even all the countries I have visited. I bet the flight would trigger memories and help me write my autobiography,” I said.

“Memories?” she said.

“Yeah, memories. Like when I was in grade school, or my trip to Belize, my first trip to México and my life here in Colombia. I could use Google to take me back in time.”

“David I don’t think you should use any of our personal life if you write down your autobiography.”

“My life in Colombia will be a big part of the final chapter, I bet,’ I said.

“Well, don’t use my name, is what I am telling you,” she said.

“What name do you want me to use then?

“I don’t care but don’t use mine.” She said.

“I think you are an important part of my life,” I said. “And will be the most interesting chapter in my autobiography.”

“Probably so,” she said, “but if you use my name, put down my phone number too. I want all the other embéciles to be able to call me.”

“Okay. I will.” I laughed. “I do believe that using Google Earth is a good idea. I hadn’t known how I was going to follow the professor’s advice about mapping my life, but with Google, I might be able to do it. I am starting to formulate a plan. Her idea was a good one.”

“Don’t use my name,” she said. “I mean it.”