Win On Diagonals

Instead of providing help in slowing the foreclosure process or pressuring banks to renegotiate, Obama’s solution is for the Fed to flood the banking system with enough money at low enough interest rates to re-inflate housing prices. What Obama seems to mean by “recovery” is that consumers once again will be extended Bubble-era levels of debt to afford housing at prices that will rescue bank balance sheets.

It is an impossible dream. American workers now pay about 40 per cent of their take-home pay on housing, and another 15 per cent on debt service – even before buying goods and services. No wonder our economy has lost its export markets! Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be.

Till my <Rikooyous> Marls our Nous

He came alive as the thought of his weakness grew. There were painful admissions made in the chair that never merited sitting time commensurate with it’s worth. Old smoky black lacquer wife poured comfort tongue and taste, two fingered death waltz with negligible ferrymen. And I thank god that it does not present itself in any chillingly sappy way, and that those we love the most we might very well hardly ever know. Glance passers, interloping gassed sentences ululated in a room of groomed senescence.

HE came alive the more he fought himself, touching himself, fighting himself, robbing himself of any sleep, a deep sleep always interrupted at the same time, every night, early day. He realized his worth, and was not troubled by its relative insignificance, but coolly enraptured by it, not trepanned into an oily blue and white drop cloth. Tears moving from cage from ribs to eyes. I am always traveling where I am, and therefore writing more than I will ever write, and for better, for damn better.

• Automata dandruff grief…. Now where is your penchant for using the finest of details to assuage another’s pain, especially an enemy, a weak will o’ the wisp enemy, as most of them are… You move on. But who moves on? How many are in movement? The movement of what poetry might be leaking from their plump limbs… Leached as she said last night, flying in from LA, mimicking her mother’s southern accent: “Graveyard Dead.”… Yuk uk…

But, the world is our Swedish apple peeler. Do you want to

 After finishing her half-hearted jumping jacks by the rear entrance of the Half-a-Hill recycling plant, Tiwara was ‘served’ with papers indicating her role in the “mud for boots scandal.”  It was just then that the governor had brandished what he later called an amnesty-pennant, proclaiming that the thirty year old women was a secret fund raiser for the state, and deserved immunity for her minor role in the aforementioned scandal.  No one knew exactly why bartering precious Mohawk Valley mud for low quality work boots was such a malodorous to-do.

Tiwara, unaware of her exoneration almost occurring simultaneously with the scowling cornering at the hands of the state paper server, held the hand of a stranger.  This stranger was a long time, yet silent admirer of Tiwara.  Though he had plumbed down to a rubbery floor of many an incoherent knotting of her unknown attributes and how she would respond to his ways; he could not bring himself to any emotional high or low ground. When her sweat mingled with his, his left ear almost deaf now for over twenty-four hours for the first time in his life, preoccupied him voraciously.

For those that are new to this blog, the rest of the story can be found on this site, squeezed between this and that….

Thank you for reading:

Domenc

It was basically Emmy Lou’s idea to place this invisible scale in the restaurant. That’s a goddamn fact. I don’t give a damn what the story became later due to an unhealthy mixture of lying and real laced up grass, and Chinny’s mind scrambled up on lust, and who knows what else contributed to the baroque levels of bullshit associated with the decision to allow this invisible scale thing to happen at the restaurant.  She convinced all of us to place the scale in such a spot that one was hard pressed to avoid stepping on it and therefore have their weight revealed on a screen for everyone’s amusement.

I’ve seen Ray and her scraping by each other… getting feel ups from each other… I’ve seen Ray brush his wood on that slab of leg. I’m not afraid to use that sort of description, BBQ style. I don’t think Ray wanted to go along with the hidden scale room. Perhaps his pride in thinking he knew that such an odd…’uncharted’ gimmick to create a new odd trend or sensation or something, needed a ballsy backer,  was also responsible for his going along with it. I’m sure it was, even though Ray was not the vainest of guys for sure.  But still.  It almost seems, and I truly think, that Emmy Lou sabotaged the restaurant. She went to work on Ray. Was she working for someone?  What about Gary?  Was he in on it or just some passive dupe or…

At first all the flirting and the scale business didn’t much bother me. I didn’t feel threatened. I didn’t think it threatened business. People did seem to find the scale amusing, a bold statement about how unimportant things held sacred like ‘weight’ was, or some sort of bullshit like that. I liked Ray well enough. I was getting close to him. He was my partner and everything. Our bad blood was thinning out to a hammered little lost whistle.  But it got to me. I know, I just really know, that I was alone in thinking there would be anything remotely funny or interesting or intriguingly odd about having every patron who dined in this particular area see their weight revealed on one of the large white walls. It was the stupidest idea ever! It was incredibly imbecilic. It would ruin everything eventually.

That’s what happened…patron steps on scale, and their weight appears on the right hand corner of the back wall of the dining section. The number fades after a few seconds in a disintegrating like fashion. This corner has built into it a very large High Definition, super fancy television that blended in with the off whiteness of the wall. The screen itself mimicked the walls color when not showing other images.  It was pretty difficult to detect. Besides one’s weight, you would also see some sort of image or series of images that followed that private and sometimes embarrassing number. Other times there would simply be a succession of interesting images, images thought to excite hunger and digestion, cool stuff that didn’t distract one too much from their company, or create an anti social atmosphere.

I didn’t mind that. I thought that was fine, but I wanted that scale and all that weight stuff removed.   It was Emmy. She was the brain child of this nonsense. But Ray and Gary became more and more involved with the images. Ray got really into it, not so much Gary, but that’s not to say he didn’t support it.  I suppose this was a way of distracting them from the eventual problems we would have with patrons angered over seeing their weight displayed in public as they were about to order victuals! It was simply a matter of time before someone got really pissed off. What were the chances that some possible positive word of mouth about the whole back room business would be enough to counter the eventual bad press and reputation we would catch like a crippling venereal disease from angered patrons?

So this moose-gobble sabotaging bitch  got us all laughing that night with the screwy Lucy, talking about this invisible scale idea that was supposedly used in some extremely successful restaurant pandering to the same sort of ‘art’ crowd (Whatever the fuck that means.) It was a scale that one had to step on as they walked that one down step onto the outdoor section’s floor.  You could shut the scale down. It would only be used occasionally to start a buzz about the restaurant, appeal to some humor our clientele was suppose to respond to because we were located in an area known to be home to many artists, failed academics, nutty shrinks, that sort of thing. Well, Emmy’s pitch sounded great, and we heard all those reassurances over and over. I did like the idea of the images shown on the built-in TV that would be more subliminal, to help with digestion, or create a tranquil atmosphere.  I really did like that part of her pitch.

So I got sold. Chinny sure as hell got sold and whipped on being sold. He thought he was so ‘with it’ as they use to say. He really understood Emmy’s vision, trusted her know-how of what was in or what could be in, what would be daring in the restaurant business , really avant-dumb ….understood in an adulatory way. Ray did voice a few concerns about offending people, and then Emmy started talking about how we could have contests…and this and that. Patrons in that dining area could guess the combined weight of the room that night. They would jot their guesses on paper we handed out, or tell their server. They might win a free meal, or bottle of wine!  They would really want to spread the word about all the fun they had at The Oldest Tree House. What great word of mouth fire we could stoke!

So Gary got sucked into all that. I was the only one against it. I was more than vocal about it. I didn’t trust that bitch. It was those fucks, stoned as anything. I wanted her fired. I warned Ray about her. I cared about Ray now. But he just infuriatingly ignored everything, got really weird about it. Things really deteriorated. There were a few patrons that were not thrilled to have their weights flashed on our screen.  But you know what happened? I ended up getting forced out by Ray and Gary. They accused me of betting on the individual and group weights of patrons, running an illegal game on the side. I allegedly told select customers what I was up to in order to get money from them for giving them certain ‘inside information.’ That was nonsense. I know that I had a bad reputation for such things. But this was way beyond the pale of what they were accusing me of.

It was me! I fucked up they say! I fucked up. It was a set up. It might have been sabotage, someone who knew all of us, working with someone else, who in turn was working with someone who wanted what we had, what we embarked on.  Well I wasn’t about to take this accusation lying down, or take it like the old Sam might have. Not with what I’ve been through. Fuck that. They forced me out, but that place wouldn’t last anyway. It wasn’t just this blockheaded weigh you’re patrons in a restaurant nonsense that did them in…as if that wasn’t enough. I did those mother fuckers in. I did those bastards in because they would not believe me about how I thought Emmy was using them, that she was in cahoots with a guy that I most certainly saw pushing her up against a brick wall and sucking at her mouth over by Delphi 2’s small free standing 1930’s era cinema on Nogsicorg Road between Route 18 and Grandervum Service Road. Did she know Low? I could not remember if I knew this Emmy from Leg Up. I could not remember. I know… I was getting paranoid.

I knew that prick as an ex investor of Prawn Dawn who got told to keep his money and take a hike because he was more than an unscrupulous scavenger. This guy was planning to open a restaurant in the same neighborhood we were in. He wanted us out. He wanted what we had, as well as open up his own cookie cutter trendy restaurant. Andrew Belsker had somehow got information that a developer was going to procure the rights to knock down a large swath of an industrial park in the neighborhood and have it rezoned for residential use with the help of a patron of ours who was the most angered with the invisible scale (just so happens.) Belsker knew that our location would become a gold mine. He wanted to take us over, or force us out before official word got out about the redevelopment project which was assured to be approved and make this neighborhood’s real estate, and concentrated money supply take off to the stratosphere.

It was Amy Duncan. She was the one who really acted outraged about her weight being displayed. I knew it was an act. I didn’t know at first. But when I found out what kind of political power she held in town and her relationship to Belsker, well– that eliminated any doubt that she was putting on a show that night. I can still hear her screaming at the top of her lungs about how outraged she was. She threw a plate of lobster ravioli into Gary’s face when he went on apologizing to her, explaining to her that it was all just for fun and so on.

I could see her throw a punch at Ray as he was giving her more rehearsed sophisticated reasons for why we had this set up, and how everyone knew about it who dined there. It was so popular, and people thought it was a great antidote to all that obsessing about diets, and weight, and image. He went on and on with that sort of talk. Duncan decked the neck breaker. She then contacted every paper, radio station, organization, you name it. She contacted them, and raised hell about how awful we treated our patrons, how little we respected their privacy, how insensitive we were.

I felt miserable. It was a few weeks after this spectacle that I got accused by the whole staff including Emmy Louise, of gambling on the whole damn thing.  I still don’t know how this rumor got started. I shouldn’t think about it. I’m seeing my therapist again. I’m fucked! I’m just fucked.

There was no way to counter the bad press. Sure there were people who supported us, and not just our steadfast customers, but we were done. I was done. I was incensed about how this all went down, how I was ignored when trying to prevent this scale debacle, as I began calling it, and then accused of using it to benefit me secretly. I was betrayed and made an enemy. Ray wouldn’t even give me a chance to defend myself, never mind Gary. It took so many years to make peace with myself, with these guys. So much of that had to do with having a chance to heal by running into Ray and Gary, discovering he was living town, actually becoming friends, opening The Oldest Tree House. It was miraculous the way it all happened, and I’m no believer in miracles, but it just felt that powerfully unbelievable that all that could and would happen.

I was outraged, and began telling some of the most loyal patrons I knew about how Ray and Gary used me, ignored me, and got played by Emmy Lou. Many of them believed me, and no longer dined there.  I helped put that restaurant under. It deserved it. How could they do that to me? How will I find peace now?

Sam did not gamble on the patron’s weights. I let myself believe he did. I had quacko little visions of him while taking a piss, somehow fixing the digital read out on someone’s weight. I’d see the big weak Bing cherry red dots forming numbers, and Sam’s smirking confidence as I waggled off the end of my urination.  But he didn’t, and I wasn’t simply manipulated by Emmy. My inability to give him the benefit of the doubt was due to our shared past, his abusive gambling on me in the most egregious personal and dehumanizing way. This much would be obvious to anyone who really knew me.  I’m not trying to excuse myself from my own set of wrongs. It was simply impossible to get past that. I lost control of my better judgment. It’s clear what Emmy Louise did now. She is currently the night hostess at A Better Night. She must have known something about us, before she even met us. I don’t want to speculate anymore. I’m sick enough from all this.

I sometimes desperately watch her walk from her car to the back entrance of A Better Night. I do have lusty thoughts about her as she presses buttons to activate her car alarm. I fantasize about having a little control with buttons of my own. Instead of a panic button, there would be a fuck me fast kiss me slow button, a button I would worship as certain ancients worshipped Mithras or perhaps Jok who might allow some precipitation fall if the proper black goat was slaughtered by his subjects.  Anyway, instead of an open door button, I would have a… I’m sorry. You get the idea. I can’t stop the ideas. My libido get’s over worked when I feel emotionally at sea, when I feel I’m losing purpose in my life. Purpose?

I’m sad, it’s terribly sad. I do cry. I look at Emmy and I see a Dorothy from my Chittenango past, a Dorothy flattened by the shadow of a falling house. I won’t spray the Wizard of Oz can too thickly against this wall I’m thudding up against. I don’t want this rut to blast me back to those painful moments. I’m trying to regroup. I might open up a comedy club for functional Autistic people, or do something very challenging and wildly unexpected. Maybe I will start my own line of juicer. Are juicers still a hot sell? Gotta make a note to check into that.

A Better Night is the name of the new restaurant that Andrew Belsker opened up where our dream restaurant died. Sometimes I visualize the bones of our old restaurant rattling underneath A Better Night. I could imagine The Oldest Tree House still perfectly intact and untouched but aged, wizened into a living artifact, growing in some labyrinth of crushed dreams. I know it’s corny. It reminds me of those tacky horror films where some sunken luxury boat suddenly comes back to ‘life’ or revealed and unhidden to some lucky witness, who ends up being not so lucky, because… Ok, ok…

So our restaurant is practically unrecognizable now. It’s been over two years since The Oldest Tree House was forced to dissolve. The neighborhood is a real estate gold mine now. It’s choked with affluent younger professionals living in new construction ‘green’ buildings, a million pretty girl’s texting their boyfriends or internet dates, riding their bikes, wearing the fashions of the moment with puissant nonchalance. Everything sort of looks and sounds and smells like a music video in an era when music videos ceased to be any fun, and weren’t really music videos, but meta-videos, where more and more of the punched out music was a stand in for something else, ancillary bird house clock creature waddling out of the fashion of the moment hole maybe on the hour maybe not….

I hear the gazpacho at ‘ABN” is every man’s dream of a woman, and every woman’s dream of a man, as well as every man’s dream of a man, and every woman’s dream of a woman, and also every hermaphroditic dream gazpacho… melon with crispy prosciutto laced together in the cool and sophisticated pool of incredibleness, and yes I’m getting confused, and still crying, but holding the shrillness of it all in my knuckles, in my chewed fingers. Yes, let’s not be so heterosexual about our comparing ‘ABN’s’ gazpacho to a ‘dream’ of…

I’ve wanted to call Sam and do whatever I can to gain his forgiveness. He’s moved, and I have not been able to trace his whereabouts. I’ve thought about hiring one of those agencies that helps you track missing people, but keep chickening out.  Sometimes I see the number or numbers 116 dancing in my head. Sometimes Leda Ray is holding a shiny white sign with that very number in black and red written on it. She’s riding a bicycle that travels across water. There is a new city far off beyond that water. I want to go there, but there is no there.

116 is the weight of Amy Duncan, or was the weight of Amy Duncan. There should be a band called The Weight of Amy Duncan. Amy and Emmy both work at A Better Night. I think Duncan is some sort of manager. I have a thing for managers of restaurants, especially night managers, if there are day and night managers, then the night manager title becomes more meaningful of course.

I desperately want to walk into the restaurant for perverse and sentimental reasons. I don’t have the courage.

I don’t talk to Gary much anymore. He’s back with Heveilah Low. I hear that he is trying to start a satellite radio program. Maybe it’s already on the air? Maybe he has his own call in hour. Maybe it’s some sort of super free form, constantly changing goofy call in show with some wacky guest-star DJ coming on every week.  There are a lot of these satellite radio programs out there. How would I know which one was Gary’s? If he’s still with H. Low, perhaps, that would make it easier. She would blog her program, disseminate the thing to death. I would find out. I would call in. Maybe Sam would call in. I don’t trust Gary. I have a funny feeling Gary did something terribly wrong, or allowed it to happen. I won’t know. It will be one of things you will never know.

We could reunite. I could tell Sam I was sorry this time.  It wasn’t him. It’s all so stupid. The way things fall apart after these incredible rapprochements, these sort of fortuitous collisions that spark a new amiability, or drive to put something together, to work together, to bury enmity, to build over it, to open up for business, to close business, to stand as sentinel in front of doors behind receding home. Maybe I will try to paint it. I can’t, but what the hell.

No one hates fancy and nonsensical coffee names more than pensioners, and the old in general. Witness how an old person (not-urban–ex-Dada or beatnik or something…flies into an anticipatory rage when ‘forced’ to walk into a contemporary cafe…forced because there is no where else to go…. They wait on line eying the exotically named drinks: Squirrel Nut Decaf, Purple Nurple Mocha Blend, Apocalypse Calypso Cinnamon Reward, et cetera…. They are forced to listen to music denigrating WW2, Planters Nuts, old cars, and Family Walks..et cet… The old person becomes progressively more acerbic, waves of anger coruscate around their blood rivers, splish splashing as coquettes in a bath of avocado juice, then finally…. They get to the cashier, who of course, is apathetic, and slightly sardonic in overall demeanor.  Cashier is impatient as old person looks at chalk menu board in despair. Cashier is not unsumpathetic to old person’s confusion, but this is not noticed by ‘OP.’ Old person shouts: I just want coffee, regular, straight coffee, no bullshit, no skinny why-bother whipfree pussy-fusion. I don’t need any kangaroos on a broken bicycle house blend…….and so forth.  He is stammering, quite rude, often vulgar, but delightfully old and cuddly in appearance. A respectable old woman who is drinking liquor from a glass jar, appears scared of what will happen. She begins to urinate on a stack of Noam Chomsky books or something like that.

The old person’s tirade becomes so wearisome and frothy, that the counter person begins developing heart problems. As the young coffee person dies, the ‘OP’ sips on a very handsome mug of the most exotic and luxurious cafe drink available, replete with unusual edible ornaments jutting from the silky membrane of treated milk. As the counter person receives medical assistance from two specialists who happen to be reading various high brow magazines in cafe, old person increasingly mellows out, and begins listening to i-pod, which he/she is not quite sure how to work at first, but then uses this device, as well as other devices that the youths of today are surgically attached to, in order to mock the moribund and ultimately quite terminal state of employee. At one point, such a device is placed on genitals of young barista, while ‘OP’ declares something or other about MP3s, and sperm, that makes no sense. After this death, old person destroys signs of all fancy coffee names in shop with a toy violin, and walks away from cafe with a posse of other old dicks.

(I have to refine idea..but I think it’s ripe for volleys of improvisational zeal.)

Domenic Maltempi

Sam was a funny mother. He was probably nuts, a sort of part time sociopath with a mean-kind streak like so many other people I’ve run into. Chinny had a talent with getting literary with the menu. It wasn’t too bad. I could understand it, and I understand you gotta do those things if you don’t want to be lumped in that pile of every other two step-up from the fast food ladder. Little Chinaman of Chittenango was a fearless dresser to. I didn’t talk about that much with him, probably should have. He calmed me down. I felt like kid around him. Not afraid to say whatever I wanted to.

I never got all into Sam’s crazy game like a lot of other people at school did. I did get involved, but not like so many people. That was a while ago. I never cheated or anything. Sam was just so paranoid after a while, and he had some people point to me about cheating, because I was winning. I looked guilty, but it was those guys that cheated. You can keyword ‘Chinny Ray’ on a searchy and come up with people blogging about that shit like it was some famous national joke from the late shows, a joke from some important douche bag from whenever.

It was fun to tease Chinny Chin as if nothing ever happened. But there is probably no such thing ‘as if nothing ever happened.’ The best sort of forgetting isn’t usually possible until it’s too late to make a damn of a difference. When ‘The Oldest Tree House,’ opened up for business on a snowy November Saturday, the three of us were dressed in our finest. That’s no joke. I had been reading up on the restaurant business shortly after moving to Delphi 2, which happened to be the same week Sam did.

I don’t know how it happens like that. Crazy shit really, where people who you  were never really close to, but came across at some early feeling part of your life, they come back body and all, or come back differently, into your life, and make this smashing impact in some pinprick way that really soaks you up in a common fluid, and I have no idea. Telling these stories about this DJ we all were getting with now and then, dating and everything. It all seems so insignificant or way over-blown at first, that impact, and then it turns and turns.

I try not to think much about why we are all in this town now. We all moved to this state, to this little city, and it’s not like we got much in common outside of going to college, you know….. as people. I know Ray grew up in a little shit town like me, but that’s about it. I didn’t dress up like a doll or whatever he did growing up with that wizard business. I worked with my dad cleaning up animal shit, and driving a truck up and down for hours and hours every day.

I was in a whistling club once. It was a group of hearing impaired people. It was suppose to be a sort of you can do it thing, a support group.

I find whistling disturbing. I get angry when I hear too much whistling. I once thought that gay people whistled more than straight people, that I could tell a queer gay whistle like a bad guy you’ve seen a bunch of times in everyday life, in a line up, but with sound… I could identify that whistle. I remember having a friend tell me he was gay, and I had to not be friends with him anymore. Now I feel like shit about this, but back then I was just like…. I knew it, and a queer whistle haunted me. Then, I had ideas about helping him not be gay. Maybe if I could teach him to whistle like a straight guy, really work on it. He would change. Can you imagine? A sort of un-gaying whistle camp program! I would start a whistling straight camp or something. This was my idea. I remember writing about this in a one subject spiral like I was trying to save my life with a secret letter I had to sneak out of a prison or something.

We all worked so hard to put this restaurant together. Each of our strengths we’re harnessed to make it as successful, as different from the pack as it could be. It’s not like we became best buddies and just decided to do this. It’s weird, and don’t make much sense, like getting married, or believing god talks to nice guys only as opposed to  pissed off Polar Bears or bored women.

Most days I would just shut myself in Delphi 2’s main library, or occasionally sit outside pouring over my notes, or reading certain books or expensive magazines that covered the news about restaurants, or new business ideas in general. I needed to know if gin would be the new vodka, and emerge from its long held position of obscurity. I took a bunch of notes, and tried to befriend as many people in the business as possible. Can’t even remember how many hostesses I dated. I always found the day hostesses to be very different from the night hostesses, but I could have just made a whole lot of phony correlations like everyone else about so many things.

The library was always crammed with hot little missy fingers, adorable bite-my-neck-now babes, combing the special periodicals, digging into their books as they dragged on 100 length cigarettes, smiling at me. A guy’s got to be hopeful. I thought being an owner in a restaurant would be a ticket to poly-tang central. That wasn’t the only thing on my mind, but quite often it was.

We had all raised a large amount of capital, and built our free standing building in a vacant lot where a gigantic white ash tree grew. The lot had been some kind of superfund site, a dry cleaning place or something like that had been there before. It had been cleaned up.  We got the land cheap. ‘The Oldest Tree House,’ was located on a fairly well walked strip of the south side of Delphi 2, where pedestrian traffic was heavy. The fading film star, Oren Sazer was still a favorite home town son, and owned a large and damn charming home dating from the 1890’s not more than a few blocks away where many artists had once lived, and now some rich people or their kids in college lived.

It was Chinny’s idea to create an actual tree house above the restaurant that one could walk up a short flight of carved and beautifully stained wooden serpentine like stairs to. This special tree house dining area would have a through the classic ages of many civilization look to it, a sensual and simplified composite set of décor and over all feel from materials and what not, of civilizations thought to be ‘classic’ in maybe an arty sense. That wasn’t my thing, my description, but I heard it spoken about all the time and could talk like that if people asked.

Patrons sitting in the main dining room could see portions of the exclusive tree house dining area if they looked up through the large opaque sky roof. It was a teaser alright. It was a media buzz reservoir that never got over tapped. We wanted to create a one of a kind curiosity and wonder-whip, entice people to want to make reservations and pay a premium to dine up there far in advance. Book it up baby! We spent so much money on an elaborate lighting system, and all these odds and ends from these time periods. It all combined to give this exclusive space (enough room for about eight) a feel of timelessness, of childhood too. We gave a lot of consideration, and brainstormed our asses off at many a session at various restaurants and drinking spots, trying to get the whole fucking plan just right. But it was that tree house dining part, our centerpiece that we spent the most time on.  I think too much time. Our business plan itself could have used all that damn attention.

It wasn’t a lack of business plan that fucked us. It wasn’t a woman either. That’s what Sam thinks, but that’s too simple. He started in with his weird fucking gambling stunts. Should have broken his neck when I first got a tingle about all that. She was in on it somehow…gambling on people’s weight, that stupid invisible scale and the weight on the wall. It was supposed to be daring and funny, and bohemian fuck-off different. But it was fucking stupid. I thought Sam was all done with all of his gambling urges. He told us all about his counseling, remorse, how he was really just a professional now who longed for……and so on and so forth.

Chinny was really into to this whole tree house concept, this place where couples would go for an extra romantic date in an unusual place both friendly and old fashion, and strange or unfamiliar as a place to enjoy a meal.   I loved it up there, but was more into the business end, including interviewing. Christ did I interview a lot of dickhops, and bingyfinggys. I did a hell of a lot of firing in that almost three years we were open. This was all before we decided to put invisible scales on the flooring of our popular outdoor dining section which was run by Emmy Louise.

It was a mistake hiring her. I still think Chinny Ray was having phone sex with her. Ray was always saying shit on the phone in that hanky panky loud-soft gulping way: yeah, you deserve that righh, righh? It fits perfect righh? How’s it going to fit perfect? It’s going to fit just perfect, righh? You’re going to be good now? How good is it? Then you will get rewarded. Stuff like that, really corny, lots of heavy-quiver questions. It was sexual. It was obviously sexual. Never heard those ‘T’s’ at the end of ‘right’ for whatever reason. That was the grossest part about overhearing those calls, not hearing those ‘T’s. There was something chaste about the letter T, or something wet leafy on a shivering tummy and lewd about the absence of them in such a context. I confronted Ray about it. I knew it was Emmy he was getting all worked up with on those calls.

She was never around when he would be talking like that during operating hours. I never heard Ray have phone sex when Emmy was working. He said he was checking inventory or some shit, but he was getting his phone jollies with that crazy bitch. We got really high one night smoking this pot that Emmy said she got from one of the top surgeons in town, Doctor Shineblast (that’s what it sounded like at least.) I think it was laced with some Crystal Meth, or something even worse than that. I’m not sure. I don’t fuck with any hard drugs. Life is fucked up enough.

That night Emmy began flirting with Ray overtly. She complimented him on his scarves and shoes, and after shave. It got annoying. She was waxing poetic about these compliments. I didn’t trust the bitch. I felt there was something more than just pot we were inhaling into our blood. I even said something casual, not accusatory or anything, about how the pot must have been laced. Everyone sort of chuckled it off, dismissing my claim as if I was just saying what I said to compliment the grass, or just a jawing stoned sophomore getting all verbally kablooie. That night stands heavily in my mind as the beginning of a very messy end. It happened about two years and a half or so.

We closed up the Tree House a little early, and lit this laced doob on fire. I had a great mixed CD that no one ever let me put on. It was a countrified version of Salt and Pepper’s ‘Shoop.’ No one gave a damn, but I did. I liked it a lot.  I began to get irritated because Emmy got everyone to agree to put on her The very Best of England Dan and John Ford Coley. How many times can you listen to that? Ray held a big laugh in check. I knew he thought the album was a bunch of laughable crud. He continued to get close to Emmy, almost breathe on her. I could see his hand just levitating over her creamy white legs under those short pink corduroy shorts. I was racing around our restaurant with the reckless speed of a time traveling skinny raccoon just let loose in a maze of exotically putrid garbage cans.

I was hopped up on something. This wasn’t just some high grade marijuana. Gary tried to calm me down, but I thought he was trying to pin me to the ground and hurt me. It took a while to come down off that. I was a little unclear of what was going on.