long before it meant "fair and balanced" (enough, already)

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as is so often the case with life on the downswing, this post will consist of a series of goodbyes--so let's get on with it.

1. goodbye, nino & jonni

i bet in all the excitement you'd forgotten about them, hadn't you? well, don't feel bad, because so did we.

see, beau had harbored illusions of keeping his little subterranean millionaire's club--the original fox's lair--open after he launched the disco. but from day one of the "upstairs" (as nino always derisively called it), it was all about worlds colliding. and, sadly for nino, there was never any doubt as to which world would come out on top.

and it wasn't just that the relatively few wealthy, older patrons of the downstairs club were having to compete for what limited parking space was available with the young hordes who now flocked to the upstairs club; it wasn't even that rich old men with weak, dribbly prostates were suddenly having to jockey for position at the urinal with piss-happy, drunken fratboys--we probably coulda worked with shit like that, if that was all it was.

no, what killed the downstairs club was a much more serious problem--what the folks who write for the car magazines refer to as "noise, vibration and harshness." simply put, nino's soft, melodic stylings could not compete with the amplified, percussive stomping that rained down on him every night from above.

we tried to fix it--we packed the interstitial space between upstairs and downstairs [excuse me, lemme clarify: i packed the interstitial space between upstairs and downstairs--and i still itch when i think about it] with all kinds of sound-deadening insulation, all to no effect. bottom line: in the battle of the bands, joe walsh won out, and that was all there was to it.

and it was a shame--over the course of the year he'd spent here, nino had done a pretty good job of modifying his act to accommodate local tastes, and had developed quite a following, all of whom were there to celebrate his last night in residence.

my most enduring memory of that night: nino performing, for one last time, his version of ray price's signature song, for the good times, and dedicating it to his number one fan, the adoring margie garrett--an elderly, birdlike (and infinitely rich) widow who came in almost every night, always sat to nino's immediate left and genteelly slugged one golden cadillac after another until she closed the place down, all the while never taking her eyes off him.

and, as always, he playfully changed the crucial line of the song, for her, to "hold your warm and skinny body close to mine," as he looked into her eyes and smiled. and as always, her happiness was touchingly palpable--tinged with moist-eyed sadness this time, of course, because she knew this was it.

[i don't remember which of us helped margie out and up the stairs to her own golden cadillac and drove her home that last night, but i don't think it was me.]

whatever; this one's for nino and jonni--and margie (not to mention everything and everybody else in this whole goddam post)--wherever you all are:




2. goodbye, ma

my mother couldn't stand beau--she disliked him on sight and distrusted him more, and subsequent events did nothing to change her initial impression.

and i couldn't understand her reaction; i mean, how could she not see him as i did--this smart, worldly, accomplished, endlessly-charming man who had, for whatever unknown reason, taken such a strong interest in her son?

dumb kid that i was, what i didn't realize then was that, even though they came from two completely different worlds, beau and my mother understood each other perfectly.

he, for his part, saw a widow with three kids, the oldest of whom had never enjoyed the undivided attention of a father--or any other grown male--in his entire young life.

and my mother? she saw a guy who played at life like a game, and to whom her first-born son was just another prize to be won--and easy pickings, at that. and it scared her to death.

but what could she do? she realized that if she fought him, her son would just rebel, because at the time, beau's pull was far stronger than hers.

so she acquiesced; she allowed her son to work in a bar for a guy whose motives she distrusted, and she watched uneasily as his influence grew, and as her son spent more and more time in his new home-away-from-home, often when he wasn't even working.

see, after nino's departure, the fancy downstairs club had been turned into a pinball and video-game arcade, and many was the night that young mike would head up there after-hours and hang out until 3 or 4 a.m. with the staff, playing games and shit and forgetting all about high school.

until things reached a crisis point, and young mike nearly got thrown outta school halfway through his junior year for non-attendance [this was the first time this happened, btw, not to be confused with the more-important second time which is well outlined in this post].

it was at this point that beau came up with the solution to the problem: if young mike's poor, beleaguered mother, with all her responsibilities, couldn't roust him outta bed in order to get him off to school, then by god, he, beau, would help her out, step up to the plate, straighten the boy out and make him fly right--i.e., young mike should move out of her house and in with him.

[and of course, young mike was all for the idea, and badgered his mother mercilessly as only a restless, dissatisfied, fatherless adolescent boy can.]

to this day, old mike's not sure to whom this master-stroke of genius on beau's part came as the greater shock: his mother or beau's wife, marlene. doesn't matter, really--both women acquiesced to the plan (like either had a choice), and before young mike knew it, at the tender age of seventeen, he was outta his mother's house and ensconced in beau's third bedroom.

round one to beau--but was it really?

depends on how you score it--i mean, yeah, at first, he cracked the whip, and young mike got up because it was somebody new cracking the whip; but soon enough, having achieved his objective of moving the pawn to the square of his choice, beau lost interest in the game and left young mike to his own devices.

and for young mike's part, he was perfectly happy to sleep til noon in his new place--just like he had done in the old--and then come downstairs and hang out with marlene and mocha until it was time for him to go to work at the club.

within a couple months, and for a number of reasons, the whole arrangement fell apart and by mutual agreement of all parties young mike moved back home--no harm, no foul.

[it was only years later that my mother told me how she had grieved when she lost me before she should have; but since the experience hardened her for the inevitable day when all her children would move on into their own lives, she was, in a perverse way, grateful to beau for preparing her for what was to come.  this conversation still haunts me sometimes.]

3. goodbye, marlene & mocha

christmas eve, and it's cold. we're westbound on I-20 toward dallas; beau and marlene are up front, and i'm keeping mocha diverted in the backseat. everybody's full of false cheer, but i can tell mocha's not fooled.

and the phoniness continues at DFW right up to the gate, where beau and marlene embrace, kiss and--big smiles--promise each other that it's only until things get better. hugs for mocha from both of us, and then beau and i watch and wave as they make their way down the tunnel and onto their florida-bound jet.

i never saw marlene again.

4. goodbye, fox's lair

[let's get this one over with quick]

remember all the silicon-valley idiots, and then after them the mortgage-banker idiots, and now the investment-banker idiots, each of whom were convinced that their little scams were just gonna go on forever and ever?

i understand all of them in a way that you might not, because back in the day, i was one of those idiots--and, unfortunately, so was beau.

as that year had begun, he was king of the world, and the only direction any of us could see was up.

the lair was beau's personal playground, and he milked it for all it was worth. god only knows how much cash the place took in during those tumultuous days--beau probably doesn't even know himself--but suffice it to say it was a fuckin shitload.

and since things were going so well, why not double our pleasure and open another location?

well, there were several good, sane, rational reasons not to do so, most of 'em having to do with the fact that the original club was such a piece of shit--cramped, no a/c, no parking, horrible sound, lousy dance floor--and in desperate need of either a move or a serious upgrade.

but beau figured that, since none of that was hurting us right now, why not open a second club and then use the cash flow it would inevitably generate to improve the original?

so that's what we did.

i won't go into the dumbass way the second location was chosen; suffice it to say that i hated it upon sight, not only because it was in an unfamiliar city 45 miles away, but because it was just all wrong--wrong location, wrong space, wrong everything.

nevertheless, i spent much of the summer between my junior and senior year of high school commuting between tyler and longview, toiling away on the construction of the new club.

and, finally it was done. it opened to much fanfare, and closed almost as quickly. who knew folks in longview didn't wanna party and get drunk in a place that was (as we found out too late) right around the corner from the police station?

this wasn't the only reason it failed, of course--it was a different market, and one that, in the grip of his hubris, beau hadn't bothered to explore before plunging in.

whatever; it didn't matter--the new club may be gone and all the cash may be gone, but we've still got our original iittle goldmine, right?

[sigh]

turns out that while we were away tilting at windmills in longview, this big, mob-connected dallas outfit had moved into our backyard and was busy putting together the instrument of our destruction across town in north tyler. it would be called "smith county electric company," it would be slick, spacious, well air-conditioned and well-appointed, it would boast a state-of-the-art sound system and computerized, plexiglass dance floor, and it would put us outta business.

could we have fought 'em if we hadn't shot our wad in longview? yeah, maybe--we had brand loyalty and were much closer to the college, but it's an academic question at best.

in september of that year, i turned 18 and was finally promoted to bartender--a hollow victory, because i was presiding over a half-empty club on even the best of nights.

it didn't matter; i did my best, as we all did--until the bitter end.

* * * * *

by the end of the year that had started with such promise, it was all over--first nino & jonni; then marlene & mocha; and then, finally, the fox's lair itself--all gone.

but for what it's worth, the end of the fox's-lair era merely marked the beginning of the adventures of beau & mike. maybe we'll talk more about that one of these days--or maybe not.