.
1. frequency
you may have noticed (those of of you who still come here, anyway) that my postings have recently become fewer and further between.
the reason for this is simple: in an attempt to pull back from the brink upon which i found myself poised a few weeks ago, i've cut way back on the drinking.
which is great and all, don't get me wrong--except for the simple fact that, unless i'm three-quarters shitfaced (i.e., like now), i generally don't care enough about anything or anybody to even call, much less write.
2. direction
they say everybody has a story to tell, but i never thought that tired cliche applied to me--until i took a left turn with this blog and started to tell what i've always thought were boring stories from my boring life.
as a consequence, i've lost about 60% of my readers in the last couple months--or maybe they've gone all techno and subscribed to me via rss (whatever--most never bothered to comment anyway, so fuck 'em).
what i'd rather concentrate on is what i've gained: a core of really smart, insightful readers whose feedback regarding said stories (both through comments and emails) means more to me than i can even begin to express here.
thanks to you all, and i hope you stick around through the ugliness that is sure to come.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
long before it meant "fair and balanced" (enough, already)
.
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.
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.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
long before it meant "fair and balanced" (and holy shit, we're up to part 4)
.
[part four of a series that began with this one]
there are two ways to approach this post: you can either (1) click on the musical links i've provided as you read, or (2) not.
in truth, i don't give a fuck either way--looking back, even i agree that most of the songs i've featured (with the exception of the last two, each of which will forever be sublime) sound cheesy today--but, for what it's worth, they're the ones i most associate with that time and place.
so either roll around in here like a pig in shit, or tiptoe through without getting dirty--your choice.
so yeah, i spent most of my junior and senior years of high school working in a bar--seemed very glamorous to my friends, and while i didn't discourage their illusion, that's all it was, trust me. the actuality? for most of that time (until i turned 18 and was actually useful), i was low man on the totem pole at the enterprise that was the fox's lair, and all the shit flowed downhill to me.
i'll get into some of that later--point is, i feel i've unintentionally misled whatever readers i have left. by that i mean, i've gone back to the beginning of this thread and read what i've written up to to now, and i can see why you're expecting some big payoff to all the build-up.
problem is, that's not where i'm going here--while the whole fox's lair experience is an important part of my past, its rise and fall were but the first chapter of a much bigger story in my life.
but enough with that shit (at least, for now)--back to the topic at hand.
1. the music.
an unexpected side-effect of beau's stint in vietnam was that he came to associate the popular music of the mid-60s with death (i remember he once told me he was always afraid he'd be driving along and some radio dj would cue up the animals' we gotta get outta this place--apparently the vietnam theme song--and he'd run the car into a tree); he solved the problem by coming home and never tuning into a rock 'n roll station again.
great strategy for dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome, maybe, but not so good if you wanna become the next disco king--bottom line: at 29, beau had not the slightest clue as to what the kids were listening to these days.
luckily, the young, lovely and talented crede (pronounced "cruh-day" for you philistines) came along to help him out with that. she not only picked out all the music for the club--hundreds of eight-track tapes--but also served as its first dj. so, for better or worse, her musical tastes ruled the day (beau swore he wasn't fucking her, but nobody believed him).
[but to give sweet crede her due: as one among many who tried to duplicate her magic after she left, i can't even begin to tell you how much i came to belatedly appreciate her ability to achieve crowd-pleasing flow and continuity with nothing but a couple eight-track tape players and no mixer--and if you think that's no big deal, try it sometime and then get back to me.]
but whatever--crede loved the doobie brothers, so we got a lot of them. and she loved steely dan and edgar winter and joe walsh and sly and the family stone, so we got a lot of them, too.
and somehow, it all worked.
2. the booze.
what can i say about the booze?
aside from draft beer, the staple drink at the fox's lair was, from day one, the tequila sunrise--an easy effect to achieve with orange juice and grenadine (and as for the tequila, lemme just say the way our bartenders poured, the sunrise tended to float well above the horizon).
but our signature drinks (and the ones for which we rightly became infamous) were the hurricane and her equally lovely-but-deadly sister, the singapore sling. their minor differences counted for less than what they had in common: (a) both were served in tall, pat o'brien-style hurricane goblets, (b) both had ungodly amounts of various liquors dumped into 'em before being candy-coated with sweet mixers so they'd go down easy; and, finally, (c) both were topped off with a hollowed-out half-lemon filled with everclear, which was set ablaze just before serving (you could always spot the budding alkies by how quickly they blew out the flame so they could either chug the everclear or pour it into their drink before imbibing).
it was good marketing--the flaming drinks were spectacular, especially in the low lighting of the club, and as soon as joe bob saw one being delivered to the next table, chances were excellent that he'd decide he had to have him one o' them "drinks on fire" for his own self.
those kids didn't stand a chance, and god only knows how many of 'em we started down their own little road to alcoholic hell. but i try not to dwell on that too much.
3. the dancing.
news flash: sheltered east-texas white kids can't dance for shit. didn't matter, though--they'd thrash their way through anything crede threw at 'em, until, finally, when she sensed the moment was right, she'd cue up the following song:
and when that first riff blasted outta the speakers on one side of the dance floor and was stereophonically answered on the other, a collective roar would arise and everyone who wasn't out there already would pack their way into the middle of the room. and even though to this day it remains one of the most undanceable songs ever recorded, joe walsh's rocky mountain way always had this effect on our crowd--hell, if they couldn't dance to it they could totally stagger drunkenly around to it, and by 1:00 in the morning that was usually all that mattered.
[or sometimes it would be the steve miller band's equally-undanceable the joker, which, since i hate it as much now as i did then, i am not featuring here.]
and then--just so that everybody could snuggle up and cop one last feel before the lights came up--she'd always finish with something slow, sloppy and sentimental like this:
or, once i turned her onto it, this:
and then next day i'd come in after school and clean up all the puke--good times.
4. because somebody had to do it.
speaking of my job, i wore many hats during that first year or so, most of 'em pretty unremarkable and boring, so i won't even bother. one of my duties, however, was anything but.
see, on many saturdays it'd devolve onto me to drive over to kilgore and pick up enough booze to carry us over til at least the following wednesday.
why should this be of interest, you ask? well, for a couple reasons:
first, because the fact that i was underage never seemed to cause anyone on either end of the transaction even a moment's pause;
second, because, even on one of the most heavily-patrolled stretches of highway in east texas--and even though (as you will see) i was practically a rolling billboard that flashed "arrest me" in big, bright neon letters--i was never pulled over even once;
and, finally, because the mode of transport involved--namely, a decrepit, clapped-out beater which was wildly unsuited to the task at hand--could usually be relied upon to to provide me with at least one good, solid brush with death every time i undertook a booze run.
she was beau's car, a holdover from back in the day when the restaurant was going under and it was all he could afford--a weathered, faded-blue '66 chevy impala just like the one in the picture--and, lemme tell ya, by the time we got her, she was one ugly, used-up motherfucker.
but, boy, could she hold her liquor.
most saturdays, i'd climb into ol' blue, pockets full of cash, drive to kilgore, back up to the liquor store's loading dock, hand 'em my order and my money and stand back as they filled me up.
it went like this: three kegs in the cavernous trunk, two more in the backseat, one riding shotgun--and then every other available square inch of space in the car filled to the brim with bottles of liquor, then cases (and when space grew scarce, individual six-packs) of beer, leaving barely enough room for me to squeeze behind the wheel for the trip home.
and, oh, that trip home--the longest 35 miles of my goddam life. i could see a little of what was in front of me and only what the side mirror told me was behind me, and that was pretty much it.
but visibility was only one of my problems--by the time we were fully loaded up the suspension was gone, the tailpipe was dragging the ground and holding the blue bitch to a straight line was like navigating a pt boat across a choppy sea (not to mention that bringing the fully-loaded beast to a halt once it was in motion was like trying to stop a goddam freight train--if i'd ever once had to slam on the brakes, it woulda been all over).
and the astonished looks i got from passing cars as i puttered along at 45 mph in my boozemobile? priceless.
whatever; i was young, dumb and thought i was bulletproof--just like beau (who should've known better).
next: the decline and fall.
[part four of a series that began with this one]
there are two ways to approach this post: you can either (1) click on the musical links i've provided as you read, or (2) not.
in truth, i don't give a fuck either way--looking back, even i agree that most of the songs i've featured (with the exception of the last two, each of which will forever be sublime) sound cheesy today--but, for what it's worth, they're the ones i most associate with that time and place.
so either roll around in here like a pig in shit, or tiptoe through without getting dirty--your choice.
so yeah, i spent most of my junior and senior years of high school working in a bar--seemed very glamorous to my friends, and while i didn't discourage their illusion, that's all it was, trust me. the actuality? for most of that time (until i turned 18 and was actually useful), i was low man on the totem pole at the enterprise that was the fox's lair, and all the shit flowed downhill to me.
i'll get into some of that later--point is, i feel i've unintentionally misled whatever readers i have left. by that i mean, i've gone back to the beginning of this thread and read what i've written up to to now, and i can see why you're expecting some big payoff to all the build-up.
problem is, that's not where i'm going here--while the whole fox's lair experience is an important part of my past, its rise and fall were but the first chapter of a much bigger story in my life.
but enough with that shit (at least, for now)--back to the topic at hand.
* * * * *
1. the music.
an unexpected side-effect of beau's stint in vietnam was that he came to associate the popular music of the mid-60s with death (i remember he once told me he was always afraid he'd be driving along and some radio dj would cue up the animals' we gotta get outta this place--apparently the vietnam theme song--and he'd run the car into a tree); he solved the problem by coming home and never tuning into a rock 'n roll station again.
great strategy for dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome, maybe, but not so good if you wanna become the next disco king--bottom line: at 29, beau had not the slightest clue as to what the kids were listening to these days.
luckily, the young, lovely and talented crede (pronounced "cruh-day" for you philistines) came along to help him out with that. she not only picked out all the music for the club--hundreds of eight-track tapes--but also served as its first dj. so, for better or worse, her musical tastes ruled the day (beau swore he wasn't fucking her, but nobody believed him).
[but to give sweet crede her due: as one among many who tried to duplicate her magic after she left, i can't even begin to tell you how much i came to belatedly appreciate her ability to achieve crowd-pleasing flow and continuity with nothing but a couple eight-track tape players and no mixer--and if you think that's no big deal, try it sometime and then get back to me.]
but whatever--crede loved the doobie brothers, so we got a lot of them. and she loved steely dan and edgar winter and joe walsh and sly and the family stone, so we got a lot of them, too.
and somehow, it all worked.
2. the booze.
what can i say about the booze?
aside from draft beer, the staple drink at the fox's lair was, from day one, the tequila sunrise--an easy effect to achieve with orange juice and grenadine (and as for the tequila, lemme just say the way our bartenders poured, the sunrise tended to float well above the horizon).
but our signature drinks (and the ones for which we rightly became infamous) were the hurricane and her equally lovely-but-deadly sister, the singapore sling. their minor differences counted for less than what they had in common: (a) both were served in tall, pat o'brien-style hurricane goblets, (b) both had ungodly amounts of various liquors dumped into 'em before being candy-coated with sweet mixers so they'd go down easy; and, finally, (c) both were topped off with a hollowed-out half-lemon filled with everclear, which was set ablaze just before serving (you could always spot the budding alkies by how quickly they blew out the flame so they could either chug the everclear or pour it into their drink before imbibing).
it was good marketing--the flaming drinks were spectacular, especially in the low lighting of the club, and as soon as joe bob saw one being delivered to the next table, chances were excellent that he'd decide he had to have him one o' them "drinks on fire" for his own self.
those kids didn't stand a chance, and god only knows how many of 'em we started down their own little road to alcoholic hell. but i try not to dwell on that too much.
3. the dancing.
news flash: sheltered east-texas white kids can't dance for shit. didn't matter, though--they'd thrash their way through anything crede threw at 'em, until, finally, when she sensed the moment was right, she'd cue up the following song:
and when that first riff blasted outta the speakers on one side of the dance floor and was stereophonically answered on the other, a collective roar would arise and everyone who wasn't out there already would pack their way into the middle of the room. and even though to this day it remains one of the most undanceable songs ever recorded, joe walsh's rocky mountain way always had this effect on our crowd--hell, if they couldn't dance to it they could totally stagger drunkenly around to it, and by 1:00 in the morning that was usually all that mattered.
[or sometimes it would be the steve miller band's equally-undanceable the joker, which, since i hate it as much now as i did then, i am not featuring here.]
and then--just so that everybody could snuggle up and cop one last feel before the lights came up--she'd always finish with something slow, sloppy and sentimental like this:
or, once i turned her onto it, this:
and then next day i'd come in after school and clean up all the puke--good times.
4. because somebody had to do it.
speaking of my job, i wore many hats during that first year or so, most of 'em pretty unremarkable and boring, so i won't even bother. one of my duties, however, was anything but.
see, on many saturdays it'd devolve onto me to drive over to kilgore and pick up enough booze to carry us over til at least the following wednesday.
why should this be of interest, you ask? well, for a couple reasons:
first, because the fact that i was underage never seemed to cause anyone on either end of the transaction even a moment's pause;
second, because, even on one of the most heavily-patrolled stretches of highway in east texas--and even though (as you will see) i was practically a rolling billboard that flashed "arrest me" in big, bright neon letters--i was never pulled over even once;
and, finally, because the mode of transport involved--namely, a decrepit, clapped-out beater which was wildly unsuited to the task at hand--could usually be relied upon to to provide me with at least one good, solid brush with death every time i undertook a booze run.
she was beau's car, a holdover from back in the day when the restaurant was going under and it was all he could afford--a weathered, faded-blue '66 chevy impala just like the one in the picture--and, lemme tell ya, by the time we got her, she was one ugly, used-up motherfucker.
but, boy, could she hold her liquor.
most saturdays, i'd climb into ol' blue, pockets full of cash, drive to kilgore, back up to the liquor store's loading dock, hand 'em my order and my money and stand back as they filled me up.
it went like this: three kegs in the cavernous trunk, two more in the backseat, one riding shotgun--and then every other available square inch of space in the car filled to the brim with bottles of liquor, then cases (and when space grew scarce, individual six-packs) of beer, leaving barely enough room for me to squeeze behind the wheel for the trip home.
and, oh, that trip home--the longest 35 miles of my goddam life. i could see a little of what was in front of me and only what the side mirror told me was behind me, and that was pretty much it.
but visibility was only one of my problems--by the time we were fully loaded up the suspension was gone, the tailpipe was dragging the ground and holding the blue bitch to a straight line was like navigating a pt boat across a choppy sea (not to mention that bringing the fully-loaded beast to a halt once it was in motion was like trying to stop a goddam freight train--if i'd ever once had to slam on the brakes, it woulda been all over).
and the astonished looks i got from passing cars as i puttered along at 45 mph in my boozemobile? priceless.
whatever; i was young, dumb and thought i was bulletproof--just like beau (who should've known better).
next: the decline and fall.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
long before it meant "fair and balanced" (part 3)
.
[if you're lost, it's because you haven't read part 1 and part 2 yet]
as cute and clever as it ended up being, beau's finished discotheque was all wrong--way too small, tiny dance floor, laughable sound system, no air conditioning or ventilation to speak of, virtually-inaccessible bathrooms (for drunks, anyway) and an inadequate, unpaved parking lot that turned to mud at the slightest sign of rain.
and the place wasn't even a discotheque in the proper sense--there were no turntables or mixing board--the sound, such as it was, came from eight-track tapes played through cheesy radio shack equipment (because by the time it came to select the sound system, beau was out of money and that was the only place that'd extend him credit).
place was a joke, right?
yeah, like any of that mattered--from the night it opened its doors, the fox's lair (a name that now encompassed both the disco and the downstairs club) was an instant, unqualified and runaway success beyond the wildest dreams of not only its creator, but anybody else who happened to be keeping score.
weeks prior to opening, beau had put the word out to all the tjc (tyler junior college, to the uninitiated) fraternities about the new club that was preparing to open in their midst, and word had quickly filtered out to the campus at large--but nobody expected what happened to actually happen.
opening night: would anybody show up, we wondered?
we needn't have worried--picture, if you will, total fuckin' pandemonium as hundreds of kids waving their id's shoved their way past a door staff totally unprepared for such an onslaught, into the first liquor-serving establishment most of 'em had ever entered in their short, sheltered lives.
i wish i could give you, my readers, a full sense of what those early, heady animal-house days were like; problem is, as the operation's only minor (in more than one sense of the word) employee, i was limited by law in terms of where i could be and when, so i missed out on a lot. lemme just say this: the raw magic that was the fox's lair of 35 years ago couldn't even come close to happening in the scared-rabbit america of today.
consider:
we're talking a couple hundred 18-21 year-old kids piling into the parking lot 3-4 nights a week--and, when it was full (which didn't take much, trust me), leaving their cars in jagged lines up and down fifth street, packing into an airless, overheated club, drinking and dancing until the place closed, and then, pretty much en masse, weaving their collectively drunken way home mostly unmolested by the police.
fire-code compliance? occupancy limits? wheelchair ramps? handicapped-accessible bathrooms? emergency exits? fuck all that pansy-ass shit: in the eighteen months of the club's operation--and despite the conspicuous lack of all of the above--nobody on the premises ever got hurt, arrested, killed or sued, a small miracle in and of itself.
and where were the hordes of religious protesters we expected? surprisingly, they never materialized--i dunno, maybe they figured that if their kids were old enough to fight and die in vietnam, they were old enough to make their own decisions about alcohol.
[i have to tell you the truth: this post (hell, this thread) has kind of gotten the better of me. were i a better writer, i would weave together a narrative that would encompass my myriad memories of this time and place in a seamless tapestry of words--but i'm not (at least, not yet), so instead, in my subsequent posts i'm gonna throw out some of my disjointed recollections of a wild period in my life and let you try to make some sense of it all.
and if you manage to pull that off, you'll be light-years ahead of me.]
part 4 follows here.
[if you're lost, it's because you haven't read part 1 and part 2 yet]
as cute and clever as it ended up being, beau's finished discotheque was all wrong--way too small, tiny dance floor, laughable sound system, no air conditioning or ventilation to speak of, virtually-inaccessible bathrooms (for drunks, anyway) and an inadequate, unpaved parking lot that turned to mud at the slightest sign of rain.
and the place wasn't even a discotheque in the proper sense--there were no turntables or mixing board--the sound, such as it was, came from eight-track tapes played through cheesy radio shack equipment (because by the time it came to select the sound system, beau was out of money and that was the only place that'd extend him credit).
place was a joke, right?
yeah, like any of that mattered--from the night it opened its doors, the fox's lair (a name that now encompassed both the disco and the downstairs club) was an instant, unqualified and runaway success beyond the wildest dreams of not only its creator, but anybody else who happened to be keeping score.
weeks prior to opening, beau had put the word out to all the tjc (tyler junior college, to the uninitiated) fraternities about the new club that was preparing to open in their midst, and word had quickly filtered out to the campus at large--but nobody expected what happened to actually happen.
opening night: would anybody show up, we wondered?
we needn't have worried--picture, if you will, total fuckin' pandemonium as hundreds of kids waving their id's shoved their way past a door staff totally unprepared for such an onslaught, into the first liquor-serving establishment most of 'em had ever entered in their short, sheltered lives.
i wish i could give you, my readers, a full sense of what those early, heady animal-house days were like; problem is, as the operation's only minor (in more than one sense of the word) employee, i was limited by law in terms of where i could be and when, so i missed out on a lot. lemme just say this: the raw magic that was the fox's lair of 35 years ago couldn't even come close to happening in the scared-rabbit america of today.
consider:
we're talking a couple hundred 18-21 year-old kids piling into the parking lot 3-4 nights a week--and, when it was full (which didn't take much, trust me), leaving their cars in jagged lines up and down fifth street, packing into an airless, overheated club, drinking and dancing until the place closed, and then, pretty much en masse, weaving their collectively drunken way home mostly unmolested by the police.
fire-code compliance? occupancy limits? wheelchair ramps? handicapped-accessible bathrooms? emergency exits? fuck all that pansy-ass shit: in the eighteen months of the club's operation--and despite the conspicuous lack of all of the above--nobody on the premises ever got hurt, arrested, killed or sued, a small miracle in and of itself.
and where were the hordes of religious protesters we expected? surprisingly, they never materialized--i dunno, maybe they figured that if their kids were old enough to fight and die in vietnam, they were old enough to make their own decisions about alcohol.
[i have to tell you the truth: this post (hell, this thread) has kind of gotten the better of me. were i a better writer, i would weave together a narrative that would encompass my myriad memories of this time and place in a seamless tapestry of words--but i'm not (at least, not yet), so instead, in my subsequent posts i'm gonna throw out some of my disjointed recollections of a wild period in my life and let you try to make some sense of it all.
and if you manage to pull that off, you'll be light-years ahead of me.]
part 4 follows here.
Friday, September 26, 2008
long before it meant "fair and balanced" (continued)
.
[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.
[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.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
long before it meant "fair and balanced"
.
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 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.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
this one always makes my therapists salivate
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 digressand 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?"
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