We have a new pet, a domestic pigeon, of all things. We didn’t buy him or anything. He isn’t “really” ours, but he has begun hanging out at Pook’s bird feeder like he is. I suppose the hurricane blew him in from some statue in Tampa, or perhaps he has run away from his Homing Pigeon team? Pook puts out her corn for the ducks, deer, turtles, squirrels, skunks and crows, but “Uncle Pudgy-Pudge the Pigeon” doesn’t seem interested in it, he’s only into the safflower seeds at her bird feeder. Pook has taken to putting down a small pile beneath the feeder, just for him. Being he is an inner-city bird, I figure the safflower must be his crack. He certainly cannot seem to get enough.

He’s a looker though, Uncle Pudge is. He is mostly darker gray with some lighter gray splotches, and his wingtips and tail spark a brilliant white flash when he takes flight, which is actually pretty darned spectacular. I remember reading that there were once great flocks with millions of pigeons inhabiting the American continent. As thrilling as it is to see Uncle Pudge take off, it must have been absolutely amazing to see a million or so taking off at once! It is strange that a stray domestic bird could be one of the most eye-catching at our feeder, but there it is. He is bigger than the finches, larger and more colorful than the pinkish doves, and flashier than the irredescent grackles. Granted the cardinals give him a run, but cardinals are birds of a higher power and should not be counted among the lay-birds. And the jays are prettier of course, but jays are way too uppity to gather at a common feeder, and so must be omitted from the conversation.

Uncle Pudge is just a pigeon. A domestic one at that. I expect that soon he will be hawk food. He is too trusting to make it in the wild, and will let me walk right up to him. General Sherman should have gotten him by now, but The General is not the dog he used to be. Well…to be truthful General Sherman never was much of a sporting dog, but he is cool for arguing philosophy with, or for hanging out with beers and a ballgame. I guess The General leans toward being a comfort dog rather than a service one, and there is room on my couch for that type too.

Anyways, Uncle Pudge is welcome at Pook’s feeder. In fact, he fits right in with The General and me; an old-school man in a modern world, a dog that won’t hunt, and a pigeon who can’t find his way home…

…or maybe he has?

The door was held open a bit too long, so that the snow and cold like so many mice scurried across the floor, up my trouser leg, and under the back of my shirt. Angered, I readied a hot response and turned to educate this rude newcomer on the “why’s” of common courtesy. But it was well that the cold had caught my breath for the moment, giving my alcohol addled brain time to rethink my broiling verbiage.

He was a giant of a man standing in the doorway, wearing baggy trousers and a tent of a jacket that was both too lightweight for the weather and too large to have come off of the rack. His head was a squared block, it’s features rigid and ugly, his countenance irritated by the cold. He selected the barstool next to mine despite the abundance of available ones scattered throughout the room. I detected an audible groan as the stool braced under a weight which must have doubled my one-ninety. He ordered beer from a cavernous voice whose “boom” shook the barkeep awake even as it rattled the bottles behind the bar, threatening to crash them down into a sharded heap on the rough, plank floors. A ham-like fist bristling with wiry, rustic hairs made a tiny toy of the pint glass placed before him, throwing back its contents before slamming the glass back to the bartop in some sort of Neanderthal-like request for a refilling (which was hastily gratified).

Feeling a tad emasculated by his size, I figured to win back by wit what had been lost to his overbearing masculinity. “Hello, Neighbor!” But my voice, rather than displaying the natural ease I had hoped for, assumed an unnaturally high-pitch in the silent vacuum that naturally surrounds someone displaying such a fearsome mien.

He did not initially reply to my salutation. Instead, his puffed cheeks blew the frost from his second mug onto the mirror behind the bar. He then sucked the remainder down like a shot and slammed the mug back down atop the gleaming mahogany in a repeat request for another round. His great shaggy head rolled my way then until a startling pair of gray-blue eyes settled as heavily upon me as his ass had settled on that barstool next to mine. “I suppose you must be Baker?” He asked, the timber of his voice having dropped in consideration of a barman who was busily sliding his collection of half-empty bottles clear of the suddenly dangerous shelves’ edges?

Surprised that he knew my name, my response was voiced with not a small amount of pride. “Yea, I’m Baker.”

His voice, though quieter, still seemed to rise up from the bottom of a well. “I figured.”

He sighed after saying so, as though he was bored.

“Have we met? It seems unlikely I would forget someone… errr, like you?”

He continued staring at me, even as one of his eyebrows rose inquisitively.

“Yea, she said that I couldn’t miss picking you out of a crowd, that you were a real wise-acre.”

Intrigued, I straightened on my stool. “She?”

”Talulah.”

Unwittingly and disappointedly I slouched back into my former posture. “Ah, Talulah... my fiance’.”

”Yep, that Talulah.”

I chuckled into my glass. ”So, how does someone like you come to know a meek girl like Talulah?”

”She hired me.”

”Hired you?” I could not for my life think of a use that Talulah might find for a man such as this one? “Hired you to do what?”

”To give you some humility. It seems that she wants to love you, as you have been her only suitor up to now, except that she doesn’t like you very much… so she hired me. It was a small job for a man like me to accept, but she was willing to pay surprisingly well.”

”She paid well? To give me humility? I am not even sure what that means?” Yet, a flurry of butterflies in my stomach told me that I half-suspected the answer to my own question.

He gulped down his third pint as he climbed from the stool. “Here. I’ll show you.”

And that is all I can remember of the man who not only re-acquainted me with propriety, but who also made me aware of the lengths to which my darling Talulah was willing to go in order to help me become the man she’d always dreamt of having.

Brownies do exist, but they are full of sugar and not only make you fat but you can feel your teeth rot when you bite into one. Pookie-Bear would never allow all that sugar (as I could have a heart attack). No, I must maintain a maximum weight of one hundred twenty-five pounds at 5’11 in order to live forever. It is the only way. Therefore… no brownies for me, just plenty of Brussels sprouts.

Or, if it is canniballistic tendencies you have and it is the Brownie Organization you are talking about (the grammar in your challenge is insufficient for me to qualify what kind of brownie you mean), then you are a very sick person and should seek immediate help!

When I was a kid, there was a chocolate drink called a “Brownie”. They were similar to a “Yoohoo”. You could only get one from one of those machines where you opened a narrow, vertical glass door on the left hand side of the vending machine. Your options once opened would consist of 3 rows of Cokes (in the old style glass bottles), 2 rows of RC’s, a row of Fresca, and the Brownie’s were always at the very bottom, where little hands could easily reach them. Sugar-free and diet sodas were not even invented yet back in those days.

Yea, I wish I was drinking a Brownie right now… not eating one. Because if I was drinking a Brownie right now it would be 1972. “The Day the Music Died” would be on the radio. My parents would still be married, and Brooks Robinson, Louis L’Amour and Hee-Haw would still be relevant… good things all, in my book.

My Grannies would still be alive if I was drinking that Brownie in 1972, and Damned ’Ole Bear, my first dog (for some unknown reason my dad added the “Damned ‘Ole,” but it stuck). The neighbors always got a kick out of that toe-head, seven year old walking down the street demanding of them, “Y’all seen my Damned ’Ole Bear?”

Yea, I wish I was drinking a Brownie right now. That would be nice. Very nice.

I can almost taste one now.

I have a hat, a “vacation hat” that I spent a pretty penny on eight or nine years ago in Napa Valley. It’s a combination cowboy/ goucho hat, with the shaped brim of the famous Texas headwear combined with the flat-topped crown preferred by the Argentinian cowboys. It is tanned to a beautiful chocolate brown and sports three shiny buffalo nickels on it’s hat band.

I call it a “vacation hat” because I don’t wear it much at home. I‘d rather keep it intact for special occasions, so it hangs proudly most days beside it’s lesser mates (caps, and cowboy hats) in my mud room. But twice a year or so that hat gets to lord over them all! I have worn it everywhere from Patagonia to Andalusia to The Grand Canal to the Grand Canyon to the Okavango Delta and I can assure you that I was the best looking man in none of those places… but I damned sure had the best looking hat!

With that hat on my head and a bottle of anything in my hand, son, I am good to go!

(photo taken by Pooky-Bear in Vienna, 2019)

”It is in the nature of bureaucracies to grow until actively checked.”

Paraphrased quote from some guy named Nicholas Cristikis

Yale University has more administrator’s than it has students. Chew on that awhile.

My college essay would ask, “If I am going to be shelling out your ridiculously high fee’s, can I at least have an administrator of my very own to attend classes and complete my Art History studies for me while I work to pay off the loans? After all, it is unlikely that I will ever use the knowledge acquired from it in the real world anyway? I mean, I will not only be paying one administrator’s entire salary, but you will also have enough left over from my fees to pay for a slew of assistant’s assistants.

Higher education should be ashamed of itself.

And now some people are proposing that those of us who didn’t go to college should foot the bills for these useless degrees, and lifetime students?

So… how’s about that personal administrator (in the name of indoctrinating another toward your disavowed push for Socialism, of course... wink, wink)? Is it really so much to ask?

Give it me and I can assure you… the check will be in the mail.

I am adding the prompt for context:

Bill Shankly, manager of Liverpool Football Club once famously said, "Football's not a matter of life and death, it's more important than that." Can that true and what does it even mean?

In asking the question we are made aware that you don’t understand hyperbole.

Let’s face it, if “football” were all that great then the bloody Americans wouldn’t call it soccer!

No, there’s a reason that America’s greatest past-time is baseball, and not “football” (which I keep putting in quotation marks to separate it from Football), and that reason is that there are much better quotes from baseball.

For instance, "binary-ism" wasn’t even a thing yet when Yogi Berra famously noted after some streakers appeared at Yankee Stadium, “I couldn’t tell if they were men or women running naked across the field… they had bags over their heads?” Now there is a great quote that is completely lacking in hyperbole!

And a few other examples of quotes that show us why baseball is more important than soccer, and without all the hyperbole;

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base. — Dave Barry

Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other team doesn't score any runs. — Tim McCarver

Beethoven can't really be great because his picture isn't on a bubble gum card. — Charles Schulz

Alan Sutton Sothoron pitched his initials off today. — Anonymous, St. Louis newspaper

All I remember about my wedding day in 1967 is that the Cubs lost a doubleheader. — George F. Will

A man once told me to walk with the Lord. I'd rather walk with the bases loaded. — Ken Singleton

So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face. — Yogi Berra

The baseball mania has run its course. It has no future as a professional endeavor. — Cincinnati Gazette editorial, 1879

So get off of the pitch and pitch us a great quote instead (especially if you aren’t a good fielder).

A lot happened to Russ in the short course of a week.

The most recent thing that happened was noticing that there is a tattoo on the foot that is poked out from under the sheets, but the tattoo is far from the only thing different about the foot. This foot is darker in color than the foot he is accustomed to seeing there, and unlike the accustomed foot, on this one the second toe extends beyond the first. The nails on this foot are painted pink, not “her” usual white. It is a different foot altogether than the one he is used to seeing, though it is not an ugly foot, nor is it attached to a bad woman, although it is understandable if you have formed a poor first impression of either her or him, considering their circumstance. Of course, there are other differences besides the foot, differences half remembered from the night before through an alcohol induced haze. It‘s been awhile since he has awakened with “different.” It’s been so long, in fact, that he is uncomfortable with different. Especially he is uncomfortable with the way the different came about.

It began last weekend while tuning his guitar, or rather when he discovered that the notebook he kept beside the guitar for writing down song ideas, lyrics, and chord progressions was missing. Russel was known for his obsessive compulsive bent. His things were almost always where they were supposed to be, but not this time. As he walked the apartment in search of the notebook he became aware of the silence. It was a different kind of silence, a weighty silence; a sullen, heavy silence. Haley was out, somewhere. It seemed she went out more and more lately, but that was all right. It allowed him the time he craved to play, and to create. But the apartment felt so still this morning that it sent a tiny jolt of panic through him. Something felt wrong. Russ stopped looking for his journal. Instead he began looking around for what might be causing his uneasiness. Nothing seemed disturbed, nothing different, but he could not shake the feeling.

He found the journal on the kitchen countertop, where he was sure he had not left it. Haley must have had it, though he couldn’t imagine why she would. She had never shown any interest in it before. In fact, she rarely showed any interest in either his songs or his playing anymore, although there had been a time when she did. Russel grabbed up the journal and returned to his “studio,” which was really just a spare bedroom where he kept his guitars and recording equipment. He picked up the guitar without playing it, rather he pulled it in close to his body and leaned intently into the silence, one hand on the guitar’s neck, the other resting on top of it’s heavy, cherrywood body. That was one of the things that had drawn Russel to the guitar from the very start of his musical journey. He liked the way one was forced to hold the guitar up close in order to play it, unlike a piano, or drums, both of which seemed aloof, as they are always kept at arm’s length. A guitar, on the other hand, is a romantic. Playing one is an intimate experience. A guitar asks to be pulled in close to your heart and stroked like a lover in order to make her sing.

Russel for a long while holding the guitar in the heavy silence, the fingers on one hand muting the strings. It was too perfectly quiet. There was no sound where one should be. He could not quite put his finger on it… and then he did! There was no tick of the clock? Her grandmother had handed down to Haley an old Seth Thomas clock that was her prized possession. Russell often counted off his songs to the steady, quiet tick-tocks it made, but strain as he might to hear it there was nothing today save silence. Still gripping the guitar he hurried into the living room. Just as he expected, the clock was gone, it’s spot on the mantle empty. A quick scan of the room showed nothing else amiss, nor in the kitchen. In the bedroom, he noticed that her phone charger was not on her nightstand, but it was the bathroom which told the real tale. The vanity top was free of her clutter; the make-up, the lotions, etc. which made her up. Cold fingers clutched his heart. Back in his studio he dialed her number, but did not leave a message when the inhuman, monotoned voice asked for one.

It wasn’t long before he found himself back in the studio. After all, there was not alot he could do. Before noon on that same day he was back with his guitar, playing again, feeling a curious freedom in it. As with most creative people Russel’s pain and confusion demanded an outlet. His emotions on edge, he found songs and sounds exploding from the guitar of their own volition. He hit “record” on his keyboard and let music flow. He combined a riff with a progression that he really liked and began to loop it, waiting for the melody and words to come to him, sure that they would. He opened the notebook so he would be ready when they came and there it was, on the first clean page.

“Good-bye Russ, I will always love you, but I’m tired of playing second fiddle to a guitar.”

- Haley

So there it was, not much of a “Dear John“ letter, but one none-the-less. The letter was not enough to stop the songs from coming, however. Russel left the page open to her words and began writing lyrics around them, using them as the core for his phrasings, channeling how they made him feel. With no clock to remind him, no one to interupt him, and nothing at all to remind him that life’s countdown continued outside the apartment’s walls, Russel became lost in his music, playing relentlessly, forgoing sleep, food, and hygiene until his phone rang some three days or so later.

In his scramble to get to it his bare foot kicked over an amp, stubbing his toe with pain. The amp fell over on it’s back, emitting an awful feedback screech.

“Haley?” He knew he sounded too eager, but he couldn’t help it. He was eager. Only it was not Haley.

”Hi Russ. It’s Crystal. How are you?”

“Are you calling because she asked you to?” Crystal could not help noticing the disappointment in his voice. There was a pause while she decided how to answer, truthful or otherwise.

”Yea Russ, I am. She’s worried.”

Wasn’t that just like a woman, to tear a man to pieces and then worry about it. “Tell her I’m fucking fine.”

“Are you? Really?”

”What is this, Crystal? If she’s leaving, then tell her to go already. I don’t need this shit.”

”Yea. I’m sorry, Russ. I really am.”

He waited out the angry reply that popped into his head, knowing that Crystal was not to blame here. She had sounded sincere. ”It’s all right, Crystal. I’m all right. Thanks.” He hung up the phone.

The songs he had written were good. He knew they were good. He felt like they were better than good. Russel walked into “Angelo’s” eager to try them on an audience. Russ was a regular at “Angelo’s” open mike night. There were seldom many “real” musicians here. Mostly it was just a glorified karaoke night, but there were always five or six like himself who had new songs they wanted to try out on a real audience, but even those who only sang recorded cover songs at “Angelo’s” had above average talent. Russel had always tested his songs on Haley before taking them into the public, but these songs would have to come out as virgin.

He’d had a few beers at home, and two more while he waited for his turn on the tiny, make-shift stage. It was just enough alcohol to get the juices flowing without impeding the music. He was half-way into the second chorus of his first song when Crystal came in. She took a seat at the bar, motioned for a beer, and turned to watch him play. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but seeing her struck a wrong note in him. She and Haley both knew he came here on Friday’s. They had often come with him. It did not sit well with him to be checked-up on, especially when Haley couldn’t bother to come see him herself.

It was difficult to judge the crowd reaction when the song was through. It ended with a quiet applause, but those in their seats had turned his way, and seemingly tuned in, so he wasted no time breaking into the next one. A little tipsy, and a little angry, he consciously sang this one to Crystal. It was a song of love lost that quickly became a song of seduction, and played even better that way. He played partially for an absent Haley, and somewhat to the musically savvy audience in “Alfredo’s,” but mostly he aimed it at Crystal like an arrow, playing to her pity, knowing full well the effects a beer or two and a sad song might have on Haley’s best friend. He played with passion this time. He sang with soul. With eyes closed he fired off notes and words with the express design of touching Crystal down to her very core… and the words found their mark. When the song was over his eyes opened to a standing ovation, with shouts of “encore” mixed in. Crystal sat at the bar dabbing a crinkled-up cocktail napkin to dampened eyes. Russel allowed himself a smile, and a bow to the tiny crowd. Haley had made a miscalculation in sending her friend here to check on him. Russel loved Haley, and would miss her, but he was going to be ok.

And now here he was, looking at the foot of a woman he’d just spent a passionate, if loveless night with, the best friend of the woman he did love, or at least believed he did.

Jealousy, Russel realized, allows for even poorer decisions than alcohol. And when the two were combined…

No. Whatever it had been, Love would never survive what happened last night, not when it was with her best friend. Haley was gone to him now, but Crystal was here. Shaking off his feelings of discomfort Russel crawled beneath the sheets and kissed his new love awake, intent on discovering any and all of her other differences.

He’d might as well make the most of it. After all, should a man’s love not be spent on the woman who hears his song.

“She’d be pretty hot,“ he thought, “were it not for that blue hair and those combat boots. Why does every girl these days think she has to save the world from men?”

“Look at that a-hole in his business suit,“ she inwardly laughed. ”It’s a knock-off. There is no way that putz can afford Brooks Bros.”

“My God! She’s drinking an espresso with a Monster chaser! She must be fried!”

”Hmph! A dude with green tea and a blueberry yogurt? What kind of guy does that? Must be gay... not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

”Her backpack is probably full of Antifa shit.”

”A hundred bucks says there’s a ‘Maxim’ in his briefcase.”

”Oh shit! She has a bar code tattooed on her wrist!“ He pulls down his cuff, glancing at the bar code tattoo on his own arm that he’d gotten when he was younger.

”Hmmm… Asshole’s paying with a “Black” card. Maybe that is real Brooks Bros.?”

Smiles. ”She’s talking to her mother! Reminds me, I’m supposed to change out Mom’s smoke alarm batteries.”

Smiles. “He’s playing Candy Crush! A suit guy like that!”

She pretends to not pay attention as he walks out. “Very hot.” She thinks. “The kind a girl wouldn’t mind running into again sometime. Too bad a guy like that wouldn’t be headed to the gym.” She picks up the backpack with her workout clothes.

”Very pretty,“ he thinks as he walks by her table on his way to the gym. “Independent, too. I really wouldn’t mind meeting someone like her… probably have nothing in common though”

Have you ever been embarrassed for that guy or gal on the stage singing karaoke? Have you wished there was a polite way to tell them that maybe they should just not?

Look, I get it. We all love to sing. That is so awesome! Singing is a sure sign that someone is happy and wants to please others. I too would love to make the world happy, but like me that person on stage would have a much better chance at making others happy if they handed them an ice cold Coca-Cola rather than festooning them with that off-key screech… or in the case of Prose, penning in verse. My poetry is every bit as bad as my singing... shallow, predictable, distasteful. It is best for me, and you, if I stay off of that stage.

This challenge prompted me to a post about the poetry on Prose. I have done a couple of Iamagoofball’s “Dig Site Challenges” on storyteller’s, so why not do one on poetry? Naturally, I looked up Posey’s profile. Posey is my favorite Prose poet, even though she has temporarily left us. I was disappointed to find just 30 pieces remaining there, but I read through those 30 posts, first post to last, and also through my own comments at the bottom’s of them, fascinated at the obviousness of my growing respect with every new one she wrote. Posey has left us, and has taken many of her poems with her (more is the pity). The one’s left behind are not her best, mostly word challenge responses, but they are still golden, my fellow Proser’s… pure gold. Fortunately the thirty left behind are plenty enough to remind me that her poetry is what made me stop writing it. I mean, when I read Shelley and Byron I get psyched! Inspired! Pumped! I truly believe that I can do this!

Then I go read @Posey and see the hopelessness. Or @Undermeyou… same effect. Or @SoMoSoGo… also gone. Sigh. Whatever feel they have for meter just is not in me. These poets have depth in their lines, and taste, and texture. It is like their poems are darkened rooms you may enter just long enough to taste life through another’s tongue. They drag my bleeding emotions across the page with their words. They knot my muscles, and choke my breath, and grate ever so lightly on my last nerve, similarly to how a massage therapist would work over a bone spur.

And dammit, that hurts so fuckin’ good! As soon as I’m done reading it I rush in search of new writers in the hopes of stumbling across another that might rub me that just-so pleasantly-painful way once again, but it is so hard to find, and harder to maintain poem after poem, and again. Most of us cannot. Sadly, the majority of us screech on that stage, and must be content with branch-hopping, mimicking the songs of they who can soar.

She didn’t want to believe it, but it really was just an unfortunate coincidence that we both wound up here. It shouldn’t have surprised her, though. I wasn’t surprised. Where the hell else is there to go on a Saturday night in Monroe County?

I was there early, not just arriving before her, but before most anyone. It wasn’t right of her to say that I had crashed this party out of spite, even if she wanted to think so. Was it my fault she hadn’t even noticed me sitting there past those stars in her eyes? I was right there at the bar the whole time, had she bothered to pay attention. I was minding my own business (mostly), drinking away a memory that followed me around everywhere, anymore. One minute that memory was down where it belonged, drowning in the dregs of a bottle, and then the next minute that exact same memory was reflected in the mirror behind the bar, wiggling on the dance floor and looking hot as hell. No one was any more surprised to see her reflection there than I was. No one was as unhappy to see it either, at least to see it out there dancing with him. But like I said before, it was just an unfortunate coincidence.

It was my fault we weren’t married. I knew that. I couldn’t blame anyone else, not even him, bad as I’d like to. I never did ask her to marry me. A real man would have asked her, but it hadn’t seemed necessary. Some day sure, but there didn’t seem to be a rush. We were in love, or so I thought. She even said it. We were together, everything copacetic. She never even pushed for marriage, or I would have done it. After all, were married in deeds if not on paper. But then “he” showed up, a new boss at work from up north somewhere; mature, flashy, college educated, monied. Not having that ring gave her all the excuse she needed, although truth be told it might not have mattered anyways.

But how does someone like me counter all of that? Comparing him and me in the mirror, I seemed to come up short even by my own calculations. He wore pretty, slicked-back hair, me a beat-up ball cap. He had on a suit coat and slacks, I was in my jeans and that work shirt with my name embroidered on the pocket. His pocket held the key-fob to a Lexus, mine had a smooth-worn Chevy key. Any way I looked at it I came in a pretty poor second.

Something had died in me that day Raini drove away, something I thought was love.

But it did not feel like love was dead when I saw her reflected though the mirror behind the bar. Love felt very much alive in that moment, but what does a man do? Does he crawl? Does he take the high-road? Does he make a scene, and whip ass? Or does he slip out the back door to forever wonder if one of those other tactics might have turned the tale around? They were too many options to choose from for a high school drop-out a half a dozen beers in.

For sure though, “Dude” was a horrible dancer, but she was good enough to prop them both up. Imagine, not knowing how to two-step? As good as Raini looked to me (and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her), she looked exactly what she was beside him, a country girl grasping at straws. Her hands were all over him as she be-bopped around his “trying-not-to-look-stupid-on-the-dance-floor” ass. What a dick. Her legs looked great in that short skirt and those tall boots that all the girls were wearing, while her curls hung like fire against a lacy white top. A short time ago I would have cut-in… and she would have welcomed it. Everyone always said we looked great dancing together. But now? Even if I tried to cut-in it could hardly go over well.

I should have left, but to get out would have meant walking right past them, so I sat like a fool, sucking back long necks and thinking (something I never was the best at, even when sober). A slow song came on, and she pressed herself up against him. When his hand settled on her hip it was all I could do not to come off my stool. There was a boiling up inside me then that wasn’t at all healthy. I tried to look away, to peel the label on my bottle, to read my phone, to look at anything else, but my eyes kept finding the mirror and that hand on her hip. I knew that if that hand moved one inch further I would be spending the rest of the night with my hands cuffed behind me while trying to explain what the hell had just happened.

But it didn’t move, and I didn’t either.

Boo came in just then. I’d known Boo most of my life. As someone who grows up rough will, Boo had her antennaes primed at all times for ticklish situations. Those antennae were a necessary trailer park survival skill. Boo saw right away what was happening and came on over to test my temperature, and to talk me down off the ledge if it became necessary. Her voice sounded loud, even in the loud room, “How y’all doing over here, Dale? You mind if I sit?”

“Nah, Boo. I don’t mind.”

”I see you got your eye glued to that mirror, see something interestin’ in there?”

“You know what I’m lookin’ at.”

”She looks good, don’t she? Almost happy.”

”Almost.”

”Whach’a gonna do?”

”Ain’t decided yet.” Boo downed my beer in a swig, ever-ready for a freebie, so I motioned to the bartender for two more.

”You gonna kill him?”

”Don’t know. Ain’t decided.” They were smashed into the same side of a booth now, her on the outside but scrooched over against him.

”Hmmm.” Boo got quiet then, which was not her nature. She turned on her stool so that she faced the dance floor and them, her bottle’s long neck kept close to her mouth. Habit, I guessed. “You know, he don’t look like all that to me.”

”Turn around Boo,” I asked. “I’d rather they didn’t know I was here.”

She spun around on her stool like a kid in an ice cream shop. “Dale Colby! Do you for one minute think she don’t know you’re sitting here?”

“I’m sure that she doesn’t know, but she will if you holler out my name again!”

”Well, you Colby’s always was a tad slow.” Her eyes grew excited. “You want me to show you something?”

“Sure, I guess.”

Boo grabbed hold of my knee then, spinning me around until I faced her. She hopped off of her stool, wedged herself between my legs, grabbed me with both hands by the shirt collars and laid one on me; a hard, almost violent kiss that smashed so hard against my lips

that it hurt in some wild, unexpected, exciting kind of painful way.

What came next was even more unexpected, at least for me it was. Boo was snatched from my legs, and hurled onto the dance floor. They were rolling down there together then in a snatch of hair, and teeth, and tops. It was shocking in it’s fury and violence and sexuality. Raini was angry and determined, but she was no match for Boo, who’d spent her life fending off the attacks of grown men, and so had little trouble with Raini’s like. She soon had Raini pinned on her back on the parquet dance floor. Raini’s tiny skirt was hiked up around her waist, revealing very little in the way of panties, while one of Boo’s boobs hung pertly from under her bra-less top. Boo was bleeding from a lip, but was smiling tauntingly down at the helpless Raini. Raini spat up at her, landing it on Boo’s cheek, but Boo only reached for it with her tongue as if to lap it off.

I caught hold of Boo then, but she refused to let go, so I lifted them both back to their booted feet while prying them stiffly apart. Her hands free, Raini pulled her skirt back down where it belonged, but Boo seemed unconcerned with her exhibitionism. I yanked them both by the upper arms from the dance floor. The crowd parted in front of us as I pulled them towards the door.

Once outside Boo fixed her top. Raini walked stiffly to my truck, letting herself in on the passenger side.

”Did you really think she didn’t know you were in there? Damn Dale, you’re an idiot!”

I shrugged helplessly and started for my truck. “Thanks Boo, I owe you one.”

“Forget about it, Babe! And thanks for the beer.”

Boo always did have a knack for making a guy feel inadequate.