long before it meant "fair and balanced" (continued)

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[part 2 (of probably 3 but maybe 4 or, hell, 5--fuck, i dunno), in which not a lot happens, but important elements of the story are fleshed out. feel free to skim, but make sure you've at least looked at part 1 first]


"a...discotheque, you say?"

yeah, a discotheque--turns out the failed blue fox inn was gonna reopen as a discotheque, whatever the fuck that was.

"you mean," i asked, "like, with girls in miniskirts and white patent-leather boots doing the hully-gully and the watusi in little cages like on tv back in the '60s?"

skilsaw in one hand, dripping in sweat and covered in sawdust--and impossibly removed from the smooth, polished restaurateur i'd always known--beau patiently explained that, no, it was gonna be something quite different--a new-style disco for the '70s.

we were having this conversation in the middle of the inn's formerly elegant dining room, a space that had been transformed beyond all recognition since i had last seen it. gone were the tables and chairs and waitstations of old; in their place were an elevated dj stand against the left wall overlooking a parquet dance floor which dominated the center of the room; and on the right wall, a massive bar (this is what beau and his crew were in the process of building when i walked in the door).

wow, what a difference a few weeks had made.

see, like almost everybody else, i had taken my last paycheck when the inn closed its doors and the downstairs fox's lair was reduced to a skeleton crew, and had gone out and found other employment. but my heart really wasn't in it, and i had swung by that day after school to see if, as he had vowed to do, beau had somehow found a way to rise from the ashes--and damned if he hadn't.

"so how the hell'd you pull this off?" i demanded.

long story short, he had convinced his backers that, rather than liquidate the operation for pennies on the dollars they had invested, they should give him a little more rope--and a little more cash--let him try something new and maybe get all their money back, and maybe even a little more.

"it was something i pulled outta my ass and made up as i went along," he said, flashing his big, toothy grin. he reminded that roomful of grim old men of two facts: first, that the drinking age in texas had just been lowered from 21 to 18 (which was true); and, second, that the restaurant was right down the street from tyler junior college and all of its associated dorms and student housing.

what could be better, he argued--or more lucrative--than providing all those rich, newly-emancipated kids with a place to drink, dance and party til they puked?

what, indeed--his backers recognized the brilliance of the idea immediately, and beau walked outta that meeting of doom with not only a reprieve, but a check.

understand, it was only a sixty-day reprieve and a tiny check--not nearly enough time or money to do what he'd promised 'em he could do--but he wasn't worried, because (a) he had done far more with far less in his life; and (b) what did he have to lose?

but even for beau the bullshitter extraordinaire, this one was gonna require all his ingenuity to pull off.

see, here's the problem with this dream scenario (because you know there had to be one): tyler was smack-dab in the middle of one of the driest, most holy-rolling counties in texas, and, while beau had found a way around this obstacle once, i wasn't sure the baptists would let him get away with it twice.

to understand what i'm talking about requires a little background into an america that most of you probably don't know even exists--bear with me a minute.

if you've never lived in a dry county, allow me to explain how things were in tyler then: there were no liquor stores anywhere, nor was there even beer or wine available in grocery or convenience stores. basically, if you wanted a drink, a beer or a glass of wine, you had two choices: (a) drive to the nearest wet county (in our case, a 70-mile round trip); or (b) go to a private club.

except if you wanted a drink at a private club, you had damn well better have planned ahead. here's how it worked: you'd buy a membership and be given a numbered locker. you would then place your order--so many bottles and/or cans of whatever you liked to drink--pay for it, and the club would, on its next liquor run, purchase your requested items, number each bottle and can with your membership number, and place same in your locker. then, next time you came in (but only then) they would serve you and your guests from the stock--and only from the stock--in your numbered locker. and if you forgot to order or ran out, you were just shit outta luck.

as you can imagine, there were only a tiny handful of such private clubs in town because the baptists had succeeded in making it just too big a motherfucking pain in the ass to try and drink in tyler--easier to just drive to the county line, get smashed in one of the dives there, and then try not to get killed driving home, either by some drunk coming from kilgore trying to pass you on a curve, or in a head-on with some drunk coming the other way trying to make it to kilgore before the liquor stores closed (trust me, that stretch of highway wasn't called 'bloody 31' for nothin)

well, beau was the one who changed all that forever, with a solution ingenious in its simplicity, bulletproof in its legality and totally infuriating to the baptists and the local liquor control board.

see, when he hit town, planned his little millionaire's club, lined up his backers and was then informed of all the hoops he'd have to jump through just to serve folks liquor, he looked at the letter of the law, thought about it a minute, and said, "how about this: i'm member no. 1, the whole bar is my locker, any patron who walks in the door is my guest, i'm giving the alcohol away for free and charging only for the setups and service. anybody punch holes in that?"

well, try as they might, turns out nobody could. and with that, the gordian knot of archaic regulation was cut--every can, bottle and keg of liquor that came in the door of the fox's lair was marked with a big, black "1" in order to comply with the law, and business went on just as if our bar was any other bar in any sane, rational part of the country.

nice, huh? yeah, but here's what concerned me: i knew old-guard tyler a lot better than beau did. and it was one thing to skirt the intent of the law when it came to serving liquor to a bunch of rich, old, mostly-jewish people in a tiny little hole-in-the-wall, but this was something entirely different--now we're talking about the corruption of the town's youth on an unprecedentedly epic scale.

would the baptists let him skate under cover of this loophole when they found out about this little operation to pervert the souls of their kids, or would they launch a holy war?

and at that point, nobody knew. it was a gamble, but it was a gamble beau and his investors were willing to take--and it was one i was willing to take, too.

"is there a place here for me?" i asked.

turns out there was. and with no more thought than that, i walked away from my new burger-flipping job without a backward glance (like that was a wrenching, soul-searching dilemma), and straight into--well, it's hard to describe, really, but i'll give it my best shot next time.

long before it meant "fair and balanced"

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this is the last thing i intended to write about tonight, because these days i don't dwell on this aspect of my past very much.


but then, when i set out to reorganize my garage today, i didn't count on coming across this old painting behind a bunch of boxes.


notice that i snapped it just as i found it [and click on it if you really wanna appreciate it]--dusty, covered with cobwebs and the detritus of time and neglect--and then imagine, if you will, that at one point in time this neat, graphically-suave little composition (an original "nino," you will note--and there was a time when that meant something) hung in a spotlighted niche of honor in a place that was, for over two years of my life, my second home.

* * * * *

i held any number of part-time jobs in my minor years, but none of 'em changed my life in any meaningful way--none, that is, until, as a hopeful applicant, i walked through the doors of the blue fox inn for the first time.

first thing i noticed was how gorgeous the place was--a newly-opened restaurant in my little east-texas town, and i'd never seen anything like it. situated in a wooded hollow with leaded glass, wood-paneled walls and a menu to die for, it was, to say the least, a far cry from the sizzler steak house i'd started out in.

and then i met and was interviewed by the owner--for the sake of this post [and since it's his name] let's call him beau. a few back-and-forth questions--he didn't give a shit about my experience--and i was the blue fox inn's newest busboy/dishwasher/waiter-hopeful.

and thus, as they say, the die was cast.

i started work a few days later, and, based on my past experience as a worker in a restaurant that had actually earned its keep, quickly realized the following: (1) even if they didn't know what the fuck they were doing, everybody who worked there was fun, and we had a ball--beau had chosen people he liked and we all liked each other; (2) the place was horribly, extravagantly mismanaged--beau was a big-picture guy, and to hell with the details; (3) all the money had gone to the wrong places; while the dining room was stellar, the parking lot was an unpaved mudhole, and the infrastructure was for shit--the a/c didn't work half the time, and the water heater was so inadequate that the dishes mostly came outta the dishwasher as grease-encrusted as they went in; and, (4) the concept was way too fancy for its locale, and it was only a matter of time before the place would fold and i'd be looking for my next job.

but the other thing i quickly realized? at 28, my new boss was the smartest, most charmingly captivating motherfucker i'd ever met in my short, sheltered, unsophisticated life.

see, he was a completely alien creature to my limited experience--i'd never met anybody like him. raised on the east coast as a wealthy, privileged couple's only child, beau had grown up on long island, traveled everywhere, served in vietnam, subsequently made some money in florida construction, and then decided, for whatever dumbass reason, to sink it all into a restaurant venture in my little backwoods corner of east texas.

accompanying him to texas was his wife, marlene [for what it's worth, she put michelle pfeiffer to shame, and was the only female i ever jerked off to in my entire adolescence], and their adorable blonde, blue-eyed toddler, mocha.

he also brought with him to east texas, his parents--and here we have to take a left turn because nino and jonni deserve no less than the full treatment, and i'm gonna hereby give 'em their due.

see, beau was ambitious--the inn wasn't enough; he also determined to open up an intimate (as he described it) "millionaire's club" in the basement space under the restaurant. and he eventually did--he dubbed it "the fox's lair." luxuriantly and ungodly-expensively appointed, it was dominated by an elaborate hammered-copper bar, plushly-upholstered banquettes around the softly-lit perimeter, and a yamaha piano as its centerpiece.

and manning the piano? well, that's the interesting part--see, beau's father was an old-school borsht-belt entertainer, and had agreed to cut his present engagements short in order to help out his son.

i will never forget the day that nino and jonni rolled into our humble parking lot in their cadillac calais coupe, got outta the car and looked disdainfully around at their new surroundings (seriously, go back and watch the pilot episode of green acres in which oliver and lisa hit hooterville for the first time and you'll have some idea what i'm talking about).

and in retrospect, what a comedown it must've been for them: nino--a rakish, charming maurice chevalier-style entertainer who favored pastel golf ensembles complete with color-coordinated suede gucci loafers--had apparently enjoyed great success in the northeast, in vegas, and then in southern florida. and then there was jonni--impeccably elegant and beautiful even in her late fifties--who had been, in her day (and as i was often reminded), the first model to have ever graced the cover of vogue twice.

problem was, they were total fish outta water in backwoods east texas: the club opened, and nino launched into what was apparently his usual shtick--i.e., music for jews--to little initial acclaim.

two things stand out from my time attending the downstairs room: (1) the night early on when some rich redneck requested floyd cramer's last date, nino had no idea who or what the fuck the guy was talking about and i knew we were in trouble; and (2) the fact that, thanks to nino, i quickly came to know every word to every song in fiddler on the roof long before i even knew there was a musical by that name.

bottom line? while nino initially didn't draw a wide following in tyler, he shortly and sure-as-shit sucked in every rich, sophisticated jew in town with his act, plus more than a few worldly non-jewish tylerites.

and it wasn't just his act that drew 'em in--nino was a talented man in many disciplines, not the least of which was visual art, of which there are many extant examples on the east coast and elsewhere (including the logo he created for his son's new enterprise that you see above), and of which he sold more than a few during his short stay in tyler.

problem was, there weren't enough jews in tyler downstairs--or discriminating diners upstairs-- to sustain beau's grand enterprise.

business dwindled to a trickle in the restaurant--by that time i was a waiter, and jonni served as the maitre d' [she and i had many intimate, interesting conversations during those long, slow evenings when there was no business; it wasn't until much later that beau told me she'd repeatedly urged him to fire me because she found me so callow and unsophisticated--which, of course, i was].

finally, the day came--as we all knew it would--when the whole operation had to close; there just wasn't enough money to pay the bills anymore. and most everybody went and found new jobs.

but then beau went into the final liquidation meeting with his creditors, and somehow, against all odds, pulled this new idea outta his ass. and even to this day, i don't know how he pulled it off, but whatever--instead of walking outta that meeting with nothing but his dick in his hand, he came out reinvented, with not only a new beginning, but with new fucking money.

actually, that's a lie; with the gift of hindsight, i know exactly how he did it. and i'll tell you next time--not only because it's pretty interesting, but because what he did set the course for the next several years of my life.

this one always makes my therapists salivate

a little foreword:

i've had a fair amount of therapy (and more than a few therapists) in my life, starting at about 17 when it finally dawned on folks that i might be a troubled youth (damn shame, since that was at least six years past the point at which such intervention might've proved useful), and my approach to the process has evolved over the years.

at first, i was terrified--by the time i sat down across the table from my first therapist, i had pretty much stifled all my pain into a tiny little pandora's box which i really had no interest in opening for him or anybody else (and by then, of course, there was the additional pressure of hiding the fact that i was a goddam faggot), so we didn't get very far in the year we saw each other.

in time, however, i came to realize just how valuable a therapist can be--hell, you can tell those fuckers damn near anything, and not only are they paid to listen to you, they're obligated to (a) sit there with a fixed dispassionate expression on their faces, (b) nod and take it all in like it's normal, and finally and most importantly (c) keep all the shit you've spewed out to themselves.

and what a freeing realization that was.  hell, i suddenly had a safe, captive audience for all my deepest, darkest shit--and, boy, did i take advantage of it.

of course, me being me, i always felt the need to give as good as i got, which meant making my shit as interesting as possible--i got very good at figuring out what they wanted to hear and delivering same.

and i could always tell how successful one of my stories was by the resultant scribble rate--i.e., the more feverishly they scratched away at their legal pad as i talked, the better i knew the act was selling.

the following, for whatever it's worth, is my all-time bestseller--and (also, for whatever it's worth) every goddam word of it is true.

if after all this build-up you're expecting something big and dramatic, you'll be disappointed, because on the face of it, it was a little thing.

but then, my dad was a subtle master of the little things.

* * * * *

somewhere around 1965 or so, the troublemaking white-trash brown family finally moved outta the house to our left--and god, what a relief that was

maybe someday i'll tell the story about how my dad--a mud engineer for an oil company with access to all sorts of toxic chemicals--came home one night with a tight smile and a little brown vial of god-only-knows-what, flushed it down the toilet and never said a word as to why, even when shortly thereafter the entire line of sewer-choking willow trees the browns had planted between their property and ours suddenly, mysteriously and simultaneously died--but i digress

and into their place moved the muellers--a fun family if ever there was one.

see, mr. mueller--"jerry" to everybody, but i always called him mr. mueller--was a dj for the top rock 'n roll station in houston at the time [and i'll tell a story about that at some point in the future]. but jerry's job was only one of two things that made him so captivatingly interesting to the kids in the neighborhood.

the other thing? jerry's hobby--he was an HO car nut.

how can i explain HO cars to the uninitiated? they were these little miniturized slot-cars that raced around a track--it was our dinosaur-age version of video games, only they were real.

and mr. mueller had this incredible track, built to scale--complete with artificial hills and banked curves--on this huge sheet of plywood he could electrically raise and lower onto the pool table in his garage.

all of us kids would line up for our turn at the controls--little hand-held gadgets with thumb-controlled throttles--and race mr. mueller's cars [a corvette sting-ray and a shelby cobra, as i recall] around and around that track, hour after hour. and, lemme tell ya, it took finesse--too slow around any particular curve and you lost; even a hair too much juice and your car jumped the slot and you wiped out.

soon enough, however, we all learned the vagaries of not only the track but each of the cars, and kids started bringing in their own cars, bought fresh from the hobby shop and tricked-out and weighted so as to gain every last advantage--and the game changed.

that's when i decided i had to have my own car, and i picked out the body i craved--a lipstick-red oldsmobile toronado--and i imagined exactly how i'd weight the rear end of the chassis so it'd stick to the track like no other car in the running.

but first, i had to come up with the money to pay for it, which required the first long-term saving and planning i'd ever done in my short life.

and by god, i did it--i saved my allowance, denied myself all the little treats i normally enjoyed, and i waited--and waited, and waited--until finally i had enough.

on the long-awaited saturday--and because he happened to be off the rig that weekend--i asked my dad if he'd drive me to the mall so i could get my car. we went to the hobby shop, i pointed to the box i'd lusted after for so long, the clerk pulled it outta the display case and placed it on the counter, and i dug into my pocket and started counting out my dollars, quarters, pennies, dimes and nickels.

and, holy shit, somehow i came up short.

i don't remember how short--all i remember is being flabbergasted at how i'd managed to be off after calculating for all those months exactly how much i'd need and how long it would take me to get it.

and i remember looking up blankly at the clerk, and saying, "i'm sorry, i don't have enough money."

and then my dad saying, "it's ok, i'll make up the difference."

and he did--the transaction was completed, my little car was bagged, stapled and placed into my happy little hand, and we left the store.

and as we drove home in complete and utter silence, i knew something was wrong--whenever he gave you the silent treatment, there was always something wrong.

when we pulled into the driveway, i reached for the handle to open the door, but he stopped me with one cold word: "mike."

i froze, turned to look at him and he fixed me with that look, and said, "smart boy.  you figured if you dragged me all the way over there and came up short, i'd make up the difference. and you figured right--you got me.  enjoy your little toy."

and then he got outta the car, walked into the house and ignored me the rest of the weekend.

and that's my red toronado story.

* * * * *

i told this story to my mother many years later, and she said, "i wish you'd thrown that damn car in his face like he deserved."

and i remember looking at her and thinking [but not saying], "yeah--if you couldn't fight that shit at 33, how the fuck was i supposed to do it at nine?"