1. We Have Feasted Upon The World

   

    

                                            

                                         DANCING AROUND THE COOKING POT

                                                   A Novel by Richard Talbot Hill

 

 

                                        WE HAVE FEASTED UPON THE WORLD

     Dan came to in an alley with his face on the pavement. He rolled over on his back. Garbage cans rose above him. They were swarming with rats. Shit, he thought. It happened. It really happened. I'm on the God damned street. I'm homeless. He realized he still had a bottle in his hand. He took a swig.

     The rats froze. Their teeth glittered. One of them spoke. "It looks like someone's on the skids, boys."

     "What's the matter, punk?", jeered another. "Cat got your tongue?"
     "The poor kid's depressed.", sneered a third rat.
     A fourth rat leaned over the rim of a garbage can. "Hey, fellas, let's take a closer look." They slowly climbed down to the sidewalk and crept toward him. He heard a snicker. "It looks like he's down for the count. This could be quite an opportunity."

     "See what's in his pockets!", hissed one.

     "Those ears look tasty.", growled another.
     He felt a rat sniffing at his ear. "Smells delicious."
     "I saw that ear first!"

      "Both of you are going to have to get through me!", muttered a third.
     A fourth rat cackled loudly. "For God's sake, you greedy bastards! There are two ears, plenty for all of us!"

     "Sounds like we got a damn socialist in the crowd.", grumbled the first rat. 

     The second lunged. "Let's get him! There'll be more for us."
     The third rat stood in his way. "More for me!"
     They were on top of Dan now. His vision blurred and he felt himself fading in and out of consciousness. They began to sing:

     "The world's an angry world and God's an angry God.

     It's survival of the fittest and dog eat dog.
     There ain't no place for love and compassion.
     It's eat or be eaten, that's the fashion.

     A rat's a rat and a man's a man.
     There ain't no difference and that's God's plan."
     Dan woke up with a scream. His eyes raced around the hotel room and focused on the clock. If he didn’t move his ass, he was going to miss the ship. He threw on his clothes and grabbed his bag.

   The smog hadn’t changed in Athens after twenty years. Neither had the heat. A redhead walked out of the lobby and joined him. He did a poor job of pretending she didn’t exist. His taxi didn’t show. Hers did. He mentioned Piraeus and the cruise he had booked. Her breasts swayed enticingly as she lowered herself into the cab. Her legs folded like the wings of a dove. He caressed them with his eyes and caught her heady scent as she invited him in with a nod.

     He glanced around nervously as the cab pulled into traffic. Her eyes danced. She suppressed a wicked smile. She lifted her chin and looked out the window. The driver stared salaciously at them in the rear-view mirror. When they reached the pier, she sashayed into the ship and abandoned him. She made an appearance in the dining room the first night but left before he got up the courage to approach her. He caught a glimpse of her on deck and then she was gone.

     The next morning was Patmos. It would have been just another pretty little island in the Dodecanese had it not been crowned with the monastery where Saint John wrote that little romp of his, The Book of Revelation. Dan walked around Skala reveling in its beauty and wondering how anyone could whip themselves into ecstatic Armageddon in a place like this. She sneaked up behind him while he was gazing into the Aegean and slipped her hand under his arm. She suggested they have a drink in a cafe. They took a small table and ordered a couple of beers. She was American. Her name was Lucia and she pronounced it in the Italian. He told her his name was Dan.

     She repeated the name Daniel three times. “Why are you here?”

     He fell into her enormous green eyes. “There is no place like Greece on earth. Its history is overwhelming. The blue of the Aegean is unfathomable. It’s a good place to clear your mind. When we shared the cab to the ship, you wanted to kiss me.”

     “I want to kiss you now.”, she said nonchalantly. “But I won’t, not yet.”

     Dan smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Why are you here?”

     “Greece is the birthplace of democracy, Daniel. Saint John wrote about the end of the world here. I wanted to see where democracy began before it ends.”

     “Really?”

     “America is stagnant. Our country is a cesspool. President Reagan once said we are a shining city on a hill, that it was morning in America. Now it is twilight. We are at war, Daniel.”

     The mention of Ronald Reagan made Dan shudder. She dropped her eyes and creased the tablecloth with a burgundy fingernail. “In the Plaka, the hair on your chest caught the sunlight."

     “At war?” He wiped away a bead of sweat. “At war with whom?”

     “At war with each other.”, she whispered.  She reached across the table and clasped his hand.

     He placed his other hand over hers. “This is a beautiful day in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I want to make love to you. You want to make love to me. If this is your idea of foreplay, I have some ideas of my own.”

     She pulled her hand away and swung it off the table taking a glass with it. A waitress hurried over. Lucia blushed and apologized. “Parakalo.”, smiled the waitress warmly before turning to give Dan a cold look.

     Lucia tossed some bills on the table, took Dan’s hand and led him out of the cafe. She tried to contain herself but she could not. “The time for democracy is over, Daniel. It was an interesting experiment but it never really worked. It never really existed. Democracy has always been a pretty facade to make the little people feel important.”

     Play along, he thought. She's nuts but she's gorgeous. Just play along. “Are you an historian? Do you do talk radio?”          

     She looked at him impatiently and pulled his hand. She quickened her step. “There are two kinds of people in this world, Daniel, the powerful and the rest. I’m so sick of everyone wailing on about how they built the highways and the schools and the water system and the power grid, and that it all belongs to them. Do you realize the highest tax bracket under the Eisenhower Administration was 90%? The little people didn’t build the American infrastructure, we did!”

     In your Manolos and Prada, he wondered as she pulled him into the ship. Past his cabin and up two levels to the suites, she opened a door and swung her hand out proudly at a dazzling interior. But Dan wasn’t interested in the address or the furniture and he’d had enough of the lecture. He grabbed her, swung her around and slammed her to him. 

     Her nails dug into his back. “We have feasted upon the world, Daniel and it tasted good!" She clasped his shoulders and pulled him against her breasts. "So good that we have begun to feast upon each other!” She reached up and bit his neck. 

     "Sounds like a good idea to me." He touched his lips to hers. They opened their mouths to each other. They danced out of their clothes.  

     

2. As Pissed Off As A Stiffed Hooker

  

                                                AS PISSED OFF AS A STIFFED HOOKER

 

     They coiled around each other. The rest of the day and the night they slept, they woke, they consumed each other. They were obsessed. The next morning the ship was at sea. Dan looked out the windows at a sky on fire with the dawn. Lucia slept like a cat beside him. He stared at her and went short of breath. She stirred. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Is it morning, Daniel?” She reached up and brushed away a lock of hair from his forehead. The expression on her face was of wonder, of flooding affection. “Daniel, what have we done?”
     He blushed as he looked back into her eyes. He felt more than lust. He realized what he was feeling and that suddenly shook him. “Something we didn’t intend.”
     She reached up and put her fingers to his lips. “We are very much alike, you and I, two divas strutting around the stage.”
     “You know nothing about me.”
     She stroked his leg. “Your presence broadcasts itself to the world. You are too confident and the world sees that and wants to take you down.”
     “Words of wisdom from Marie Antoinette digging her own grave in her Petit Hameau. Do you really believe those things you said?”
     “Petit Hameau? Really? I was testing you, trying to see what kind of man was behind the bravado. I could feel your sympathy and your empathy but you are gorgeous down to your toes. I have a plan. I am going to transform you.”
     He stood up from the bed. “Transform me?”
     “Bring you to your senses.”
     “There is magic between us. We go wild with each other. Isn’t that enough?"
     She smiled through her teeth. “Never enough.”
     He suddenly had enough. “I feel like you’ve slapped me.”
     “There’s the door.” She tossed her chin. “Paddle yourself back to Patmos and check into the monastery, Saint Daniel.” She lay back on the bed on one elbow. Her red hair flowed over her shoulders and breasts. The sunrise lit up her eyes.
     Dan left her stateroom with her laughter echoing in his ears. He tried to collect himself in his cabin but the walls closed in around him. He spent the day walking the deck. He gazed at passing islands, shifting sky and swelling sea making every attempt to marvel at it all and failing miserably. He purposely stayed away from the booze. He listlessly pushed around the dolmas and spanakopita on his plate at lunch and let a bit of melancholy cross swords with the confusion that was threatening to overwhelm him. He had fallen for someone he knew nothing of. It wasn’t just lust. He was amazed at the way she carried herself. The nod of her head and her quick smile seemed almost angelic. But he had never so completely misjudged anyone. Arrogance and acrimony had poured out of her mouth. His naive affection vanished. The thrill of conquest replaced it and that lit them both on fire. He felt exhausted. He felt dirty. He wanted more. He stretched out on a lounge chair and let the afternoon sun bake away his bemusement.
     A steward woke him as the sun boiled the clouds drifting over the horizon. He was himself again. He dressed for dinner in the company of a double scotch on the rocks. He selected a shirt and tie with studied ritual. Lucia had a wonderfully warm smile. He slipped into his shoes and looped the tie around his neck. Even her God damned name was beautiful. He swirled each slug of scotch around his mouth and pumped it through his teeth. The fumes rolled up his nose and lapped at the back of his eyes. She had chased him away with a cynical laugh but only moments before she had gazed into his eyes and caressed him tenderly. He buttoned his shirt and turned to the mirror to knot his tie. Brace yourself, he thought.
     Dan stopped at the bar before dinner. The bartender had it to herself. Her scarlet nails and lipstick matched the setting sun that flooded the room with a golden light. He ordered a double scotch on the rocks and looked out the window.
    “You have woman problem.”, announced the bartender.
     His eyebrows arched in surprise. “Where are you from?”
     “I am from Bulgaria! Buy her ring!”
     “What’s your name?”, he parried.
     “I am Snezhana. Gold ring expensive in Greece. I buy gold ring in Dubai with diamond.” She jabbed a finger graced with a thin band of gold before his eyes. A tiny sparkle was attached to it. “Gold ring with diamond. Two hundred American dollars.”
     “But that’s just a chip.”, He said gently.
     “Yes! Very chip!”, said Snezhana proudly. “We go to Crete. Go to Gyorgios in
Heraklion. Chip place in Greece to buy ring.”
    “She is rich.”, He sighed.
     The bartender’s shoulders dropped. “You love woman?”
     “I do not.”
     “You do not know. Too much money poison same as too much drink. Poison woman poison love.”
    A heavyset man in his sixties lumbered into the bar and sat down next to Dan. The bartender gave him a welcome smile and dropped a couple of ice cubes into a glass. She opened an I. W. Harper bottle and let the whiskey course out in gurgling spurts. He took the glass in his hands and stared at it reverently.  His eyes smiled as he lifted it to his lips and drank deeply. He turned to Dan and grinned. “Ah, sweet, sweet whiskey. Dive in headfirst then wallow like a pig in shit the rest of the night. My name’s Buck. What’s yours?”
     “My name’s Dan. There’s another way of drinking, you know, kind of like sex. Start out slow, go slow and slowly build up.”
     “What about wild and crazy fuckin’?”, countered Buck. “Gruntin’ like animals fuckin’? Don’t tell me you never done that?”
     “I won’t.”, smiled Dan.
     Buck smiled back. “There’s all kinda fuckin’ just like there’s all kinda drinkin’ and eatin’ and dancin’ and singin’ and livin’.  Doin’ some of it together is a good idea. I like to mix and match. Music and fuckin’ is one of my favorites.”
     “Music and fucking?” 

      “Sure thing, amigo. There’s all kinda music for all kinda fuckin’.”
     “Like?”
     “Like the Goldberg Variations.”
     Dan's eyes widened. “Bach? Classical music?”
     “The Variations are real cerebral. You get lost in all them twisty notes. Try it sometime.”
     “It’s just that you don’t seem like the classical music type, no offense.”
     “None taken. Mozart’s operas can be woody material. Some of them babes squeal like they’re gettin’ it real good. Smoke a doobie and listen to Cosi Fan Tutti sometime.”
     “Maybe I should have a hit of that doobie now.”, Dan grinned.
     “OK.”, snorted Buck.  “How about Indian music, Kerala? Or Flamenco? Shit! Flamenco!”
     Suddenly it clicked. Dan understood completely. “Repetition, passion, intellect.”, he murmured as he looked into Buck’s dark eyes with astonishment. “You’ve turned sex into an intellectual exercise.”
     Buck rubbed his hands together. “Whenever I get a belly full of how superior we are to the rest of God’s creatures, I think of fuckin’, and whenever I get a belly full of how some of us are more superior than others, I think of music. From professors to priests to presidents, you ain’t so high and mighty when you’re bouncin’ around squealin’ your head off. And anyone can make music, Dan, whether you’re a prince or a pauper because music is divine. Fuckin’s a joke God played on his talkin’ monkeys, and music is their revenge.”
     Snezhana dropped a couple of ice cubes in each of their glasses and filled them up. Buck looked up at her and winked. She smiled shyly.

     “My God, you work fast. This is only the second night of the cruise.”, Dan marveled.
     “I ain’t the only one.” 

     “What do you mean?”
     “Ah, come on, Dan. Half the ship saw that sex pot drag you up the pier yesterday.”
     Dan sighed. “It was a mistake. She’s filthy rich and a right wing nut job.”
     “And dynamite in the sack.”, Buck grinned.
     “Better than dynamite.”
     “It might not be all that bad to have a filthy rich doll like that in your corner these days.”
     Dan stared into his glass. “What do you mean? I’m just trying to see if there’s any good in her and overlook the lunacy.”
     “Overlook the lunacy? Get used to it.”, grunted Buck. “The world’s on a short fuse, amigo. Sooner than later the shit’s gonna hit the fan. Did you notice how tense Athens was? As pissed off as a stiffed hooker. Greece herself is about to explode in our faces. Wall Street fucked Greece like a pimp fucks his crack whore, offered her millions in loans in exchange for her airport taxes and highway tolls for the next twenty years along with millions in fees. Then like any pimp worth his leather fedora and mink overcoat, Wall Street went down to the local bookie, bet Greece wouldn’t last the night and steps out with his wad. Then the mafia moves in for the serious business. The ECB and the IMF are workin’ over the poor workin’ girl like a seventy year old senator works over a seventeen year old intern. Fuck the small change like raisin’ the retirement age or guttin’ the civil service. These clowns are serious. Can’t make the loan payments, can’t make the interest? We’ll take everything that belongs to Greece: the railways, the airports, the water rights, the power grid, the post office, the national parks, and to twist the knife, the thing most dear to a people with thousands of years of the sea under their belts, the ports, from Piraeus to Thessaloniki.”
     Dan was taken aback. “I didn’t think the banks would treat Greece like a banana republic.”
     Buck offered a twisted smile. “The whole world’s a banana republic to them fuckers. The whores runnin’ Greece now are bendin’ over real good to privatize real quick. Sell the country right out from under the noses of its people but do it before they figure out they’re gettin’ gutted, skinned and butchered. It’s gonna be a hell of a cruise of the Greek islands.” He swirled the ice in his glass and looked out the window. “I thought maybe I could get away from all this horse shit but there really ain’t no place to get away.”
    Dan looked out the window. It was twilight. “That seems to be the case in general when we get older. There is no place to get away.  But then that’s not so bad. With time running out, you realize it’s better to change course than get away. What are you getting away from?”
     “You’re right, Dan." Buck said. Some of his confidence seemed to breathe away. “I guess I ain’t gettin’ away, I’m changin’ course. My wife’s gone. I got a boy. You say your red head’s a right-wing fanatic? Seems like almost every one’s a fanatic these days. My boy turned pinhead, turned right-wing, turned Zombie. What is it with this world these days? You used to be conservative and just go to church. Now you get a gun and go on a Crusade. Then to hammer the nail in the coffin, some nutcase Jesus weasels got a hold o’ my boy and his family and before ya know it, they’re all prayin’ for the end of days. There’s a hole in my gut and I gotta fill it before it kills me.”
     Dan could see the pain in his face. “I’m sorry.”
     “Yeah, me too. Thanks. Shit happens.”, Buck said under his breath. He took a swallow of bourbon.
    Dan took a swallow of scotch. “Shit happens. I feel sometimes like the world is lost.”
     “When the world starts fallin’ apart, Dan, the fanatics and lunatics come out of the woodwork. Hell, the reason the world’s fallin’ apart is ‘cause they been chewin’ on the woodwork all along. When up is down and down is up, you start listenin’ to anything just to try and make sense of the world. They come outa the woodwork ‘cause all of a sudden, they got an audience. That’s when the politicians and the preachers and the CEOs and the rest of the thieving, murderin’, rapin’ scum of the earth get their claws in you, and before you can say let’s have a snort of whiskey and talk things out, Armageddon’s breathin’ down your neck.”
     Dan finished the last of his scotch. “The world is upside down for me these days.”
     “You got a hole in your gut too, eh, Dan? How about fillin’ it up with a little more scotch?”
     Dan sighed and stood up. “The booze is beginning to get to me. Will you join me for dinner?”   
     “I ain’t hungry.”, muttered Buck.
     “Well, then, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you.” Dan shook his hand.
     “Same here.”, Buck grunted. He turned his back to Dan and stared out the window.
      Dan signed the check. “Thanks for the drink, Snezhana. Take good care of him.”
     “Snezhana not nursemaid!”, barked the bartender.
     He walked into the dining room feeling no pain but confused all over again. The dining room captain sat him with a middle-aged couple. They both smiled broadly as he took a seat. He saw nothing but warmth, openness and innocence. It was a refuge. He thought of Lucia. They had slept entwined in each other’s arms. Half awake, they pulled themselves closer. They coiled around each other.

 

3. The Stars Were Thunderous

                                              THE STARS WERE THUNDEROUS
     

     “Hi! My name’s Bob and this is my wife, Sally. Where are you from?”

     Dan was staring at an open hand extended across the table. He took it. “The last place was San Francisco. My name is Dan. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”
     Bob stroked his immaculate goatee. “No kidding! We’re from Los Altos. This ship is full of Americans.”

     Sally offered Dan her hand. She was a big woman, once voluptuous and still comfortable with herself. “We love San Francisco. We’re always up for the Opera or the Symphony and we have season tickets for the Giants. We have a place in Tahoe and a winter home in Sedona. Have you been to Greece before?”
     Dan smiled and took her hand. “A long time ago when I was young during my wine and roses days.”
     “Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick! I loved that film!”, laughed Sally.
     “And I love to drink.”, Dan sighed, lifting the glass he’d carried in from the bar. “Cheers.”
     “Here’s to new friends!”, boomed Bob.
     Sally picked up the menu. “My goodness. All these dishes have the longest names. Each one is a mouth full. I’m beginning to feel full already. You must have been impressed with Greece if you’ve come back for more, Dan. I’ve never been here. You know, democracy was invented here and somehow it feels patriotic as a citizen of the greatest democracy in the world, a country that shines democracy like a beacon into the dark, oppressed, undemocratic shadows of the world to visit the place where democracy was born.”
     “I’ve never heard the word democracy used so many times in one sentence before.”

     “Well it’s true isn’t it?”, demanded Sally. “Of course, Greek women and slaves couldn’t vote.”
     Dan shook his head. “Thank God for Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King.”
     “Sojourner who?”, asked Bob.
     A proud smile spread across Sally’s face. “You know, Dan, we were just up in San Francisco at a wonderful fundraiser for President Obama.”
     Dan offered a pained smile. “Good for you.” He looked around the dining room wondering if the sexy bitch would make an appearance.
     “We just love President Obama.”, Sally said reverently. “I cried at his inaugural.” She flapped her hands and rolled her eyes in not so feigned abandonment. 

     Dan noticed a huge diamond on her wedding ring as she stroked a large string of pearls around her neck.  “I shed a few tears myself until I found out he had chosen a megalomaniacal, homophobe to give the invocation.” He smiled and finished his drink with one swallow.
     Bob grinned after giving Dan a searching look. “You know, Sally, I’m with Dan on this one. That preacher was a big supporter of that anti-gay marriage measure.”
     Sally looked confused for a moment then collected herself. “I completely understand, Dan. It hadn’t occurred to me that that would have been an insult to you people but President Obama has to include all his fellow citizens.” She offered a winning smile.
     “Sally, my dear, I don’t think Dan here is gay!”, announced Bob almost too loudly.
“Not that it would matter one way or another.” He cleared his throat. “It’s just that I happen to have seen Dan here with a sultry vixen having more than just a little tete a tete in a cafe in Patmos yesterday.”
     The dining room was warm. Dan loosened his tie. “We were talking politics.”
     Sally was generous. “Everyone’s talking politics these days or should I say, everyone’s screaming politics these days. Why can’t people be civil? We’re all Americans. We all have a right to speak our minds and be respected for our opinions. Doesn’t your girlfriend like President Obama?”
     Dan was beginning to sweat. “His name didn’t come up.” He pulled open his tie and opened his shirt.
     “Well, something must have come up, buddy! Look at that hickey on your neck!”, roared Bob.
     “Well, would you look at him blush!”, giggled Sally. “Don’t be embarrassed, honey. You’re never too old for a hickey. Why it’s been just about forever since I’ve had one.”
     Bob jumped in his seat. “Ouch! Sally! You don’t have to kick me. Hell, if you want one that bad we can take care of things right at the table!”
     “Stop it!”, screeched Sally as she let loose peals of laughter and tossed Dan a flirtatious glance. “What other battle scars do you have, sweety, a couple of scratches on your back?” A waiter approached and she put her hand over her mouth trying to stifle bursts of giggles breaking through her fingers.

     Dan leaned back in his chair and suddenly shifted his weight as the rail pressed into his wounds.
     Sally was beside herself. “You devil, you!  Bob, in honor of our new friend Dan, I think we should have a bottle of wine with dinner tonight.” She looked up at the waiter. “What is Moussaka?”
     “Aubergine, basil, lamb.”, grunted the waiter.
     Sally’s eyes crossed slightly. “Aubergine? What in the world is that?”
     “Eggplant.”, sighed Dan. “It’s a casserole. Try it. You’ll like it.”
     “Oh look!”, exclaimed Bob. “They have calamari. I love that.”
     Dan looked up from the menu. “I’ll have the arni limonato me patates, please and bring us a bottle of Boutari Santorini.”
     “Well someone certainly doesn’t have trouble with all those vowels and consonants.”, sniffed Sally. “Santorini? That sounds Italian.”
     “It’s an island.”, said Dan. “We’re going there. Thirty-five hundred years ago it blew up and destroyed western civilization.”
     Dinner proceeded on a quieter note. Dan heard about his dining companions' three grown children, about grandchildren, about their home, and their other homes. He offered back a few bits and pieces about himself, some true, some not so. Just as he began to feel relieved that politics had been forgotten, they came up again.
     Sally was shaking salt on her Moussaka when a sudden thought lit up her eyes. “The strangest thing happened at that fundraiser for President Obama I was telling you about. All of a sudden, a bunch of women in the audience started singing about that traitor queer - uh gay soldier who gave away all those top secrets to that internet muckraker group. What’s his name, Bob?” 
     “His name is Bradley Manning.”, sighed Dan.
     Sally squeezed the saltshaker and gave him a concerned look. “That’s it! And President Obama told them what for. He told them that when you break the law, you pay the price, or something like that.”
     “He said Bradley Manning broke the law?”, asked Dan.
     “No question there.”, said Bob over a mouth full of calamari.
     “No question there?”, Dan snorted. “He hasn’t even been put on trial. He has been rotting away in solitary confinement for months in a tiny six by eight-foot cell. He is forced to strip naked every night, not allowed sheets or a pillow, only allowed out one hour out of twenty-four to walk around in figure eights while shackled. That kind of treatment resulted in the right to a speedy trial guaranteed by the sixth amendment, not that he ever will have a fair trial with the President of the United States claiming he is guilty before being proven innocent.”
     “You approve of what this guy did?”, choked Bob.
     “I think he’s a hero.”, Dan said calmly as he lifted a fork full of lamb to his mouth.
     “A hero?”, gasped Sally. “For giving top secrets to the enemy?”
     “The files were marked secret and confidential. They did not damage the United States, they embarrassed it. They were diplomatic cables, cables about American Corporations, reports and video of American war crimes in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, information about how the First World is raping the Third World, and the ‘enemy’ he gave them to was the New York Times. When a soldier of any rank in the United States military is witness to American war crimes, it is his duty to report them. Your wonderful President Obama despises whistle blowers and embraces the Security State.  He has extended the Patriot Act, virtually pardoned the Bush Administration and then there’s that pesky Guantanamo. For God’s sake, it’s 2011. Haven’t you figured things out yet?”
     “That’s not his fault!”, pleaded Sally, her tone moving from sincere to angry. “The Republicans wouldn’t let him close it!”
     The wine had got to Sally’s head and Dan realized that the scotch had got to him. “Forgive me.”
     “You spout off all these facts or somebody’s facts and attack this grand, noble man.”, Sally pouted.
     Bob put an arm around his wife. “Now, honey, you brought it up.”
    Dan tried pathos. “I feel betrayed, that’s all. I feel I’ve been taken for a ride and it's infuriating.”
     “Taken for a ride?”, moaned Sally. “He has given us Universal Health Care. They’ve been trying to get that for sixty years!”
     Dan couldn’t stop himself. “Forcing every American into the jaws of the parasitic Health Care Industry is hardly Universal Health Care. When the bill passed, the industry’s stocks went through the roof and why shouldn’t they? The industry wrote the bill.”
     Silence reigned supreme for a moment then Sally exploded. “You hate our President! Is it because he is black? You right wingers hate President Obama!”
     “Whether he is a puppet of Corporate America, or a willing participant or even if he was sat down in the oval office his first day and told that if he loved his wife and children, he better play along, he still filled his administration with corporate lobbyists. We’re screwed, Sally.”
     Bob put his hands up. “Things aren’t that bad, Dan. The Stock Market is way up.”
     “Do you know what would happen to this country if a Republican was elected President?”, Sally asked. “Do you see what those republicans are doing in states around the country?”
     Dan shook his head and sighed. “But that’s the whole dog and pony show, Sally. The republicans scare the hell out of Americans by threatening to destroy democracy immediately so we vote for a democrat who will do the same only slower, more subtly, under the radar and much, much more effectively. Don’t you get it? There’s no difference between the two. Any difference is manufactured to keep us yelling at each other, to distract us from their agenda of handing over the country to their corporate masters."
     “Where did you get all this nonsense?”, demanded Sally. “I have had just about enough of you! What are you, Tea Party? Green Party? Crazy Party?” She stood up and looked down at him in a rage.
     Dan caught the red flame of Lucia's hair out of the corner of his eye. Her appearance quieted the din of the dining room. Heads turned. Dan’s head turned. Their eyes met. She stomped toward him like a storm trooper. Bob and Sally’s mouths dropped open. Sally sat down. Suddenly Lucia was standing over them. She was regal. She was divine. She was satanic. She glanced scornfully at Bob and Sally. She bent down and caressed Dan’s face.  She ran her fingers through his hair before grabbing bunches of it in her fists. A moan escaped her. She kissed him. She grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet.
      He loped behind her as she dragged him out of the dining room. She burst through the double doors, marched through the lobby and out a door to the deck. There was no moon in the night sky and the stars were thunderous. She grabbed the rail and gulped in the salt air. Her back was toward him as she stared silently at the black sea. The only sound was the rush of the waves against the ship.
     Then she whirled around. “All day?”, she shot. “All day and all evening? Was that it? One night? Do I look like a whore to you? DO I?  I have never in my life done what I did with you! I don’t care who you are or what you think! I want you! I thought you wanted me!”      

     For a moment Dan stood mute before her. Her rage stunned him. Her rage overwhelmed him. “I want you right now, right here, not in my cabin, not in your suite, right here.”, he blurted.

     He threw his arms around her. They kissed each other frantically. They rolled along the rail burning in each other’s arms. They washed up under a lifeboat. She looked up at it and back into Dan’s eyes. They both tore at the knotted ropes tying down its cover. She stepped up on the rail and dove into the boat. Dan dove in after her.

     

4. Please Don't Tell Us It Was France

  

                                     PLEASE DON'T TELL US IT WAS FRANCE

     That night Dan dreamed of another time in America. He dreamed of sex, drugs and Vietnam - peace, love and the Ku Klux Klan. He dreamed of tear gas and pepper gas - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme - billy clubs and paddy wagons - wooden ships on the water and the answer blowin’ in the wind. Images flickered before his eyes in a Nickelodeon of acid trips at the beach, of VW vans full of clouds of pot answering his thumb on the side of the road. He heard the first girl thanking him for being gentle and the next screaming her head off.  He dreamed of cities burning with rage and thousands of angry voices chanting ‘The whole world is watching!’. He saw four dead in Ohio and the young with hope shining in their eyes turned away from the fossilized Democratic Party and the poisonously corrupt unions. He wept at the slaughter and mayhem in Southeast Asia. He swayed to the music. He kissed the girls. He held a prism in his hand washed clean of pain by time and endurance and youth passed. His dreams shined with the glow of hope and the certainty that, yes, we can change the country, of change we can believe in, of the audacity of hope, of the conviction that yes, we can change the world. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.
     He woke up in a cold sweat gasping for air. Lucia was beside him in bed. They were in his cabin. The bed was small, and she was half out of it. “Daniel, for God’s sake, wake up!”
     Dan’s dreams fled out the porthole like gusts of bats. He reached up and put his hands on her shoulders. He stroked her cheeks and looked into her eyes. He saw panic. Her eyes darted around the cabin. “What is it, darling? Calm down, my love.”, he heard himself saying. The booze hung heavy on his eyes. He swore, as he had sworn so many mornings for so many years to cut down.   
     She was almost hyperventilating. “The steward has just been by! There is trouble in Athens! It's probably in flames!”
     His eyes widened. “Calm down, Lucia. We are not in Athens.”
     “But we have to go back there!”, she gasped.
     “I have to go back there. You do not.”
     She suddenly grabbed on to reality and looked at him. “My God, you’re right! How could I  have been such a fool? I must make arrangements immediately. We will fly out together, get away from these insane people, back to civilization! What God forsaken island do we go to next? Daniel, are you alright?”, she asked, seeing him for the first time.
     Dan sat up in bed and put his hand to his forehead. “Just a little fuzzy”, he mumbled.
     “Well, I’m not surprised, darling. You certainly were in your cups last night. We just had to spend the night in this -” She looked around disdainfully. “this cabin. Is that a porthole? My God, what level are we on? I hope you’ve got this out of you. Once is enough. We’ll be sleeping in the state room from now on.” Suddenly confusion swept over her face. “But today I will be flying out of whatever savage island we’ll be landing on! What is it? Do you know?”
     “The port of Heraklion is our next destination. We arrive tomorrow. What are you so afraid of?”,
     “Tomorrow? You know, this God damned cruise wasn’t even my idea!”, Lucia blurted. “What island will we be landing on?”
     “The island of Crete, home of the Minoan civilization, Daedalus, Icarus,
the Minotaur.”
     “The Minotaur.”, Lucia shot back with a lusty grin. “Half man, half bull. That always turned me on in some strange way.”
     “Your sex fueled passion seems to be the only thing we have in common.”
     “Well for God’s sake!”, she frowned. “We only just met each other. If we're going to be marooned on this barge, let’s see what else we have in common. How about cuisine? I’m famished!” She glanced at her watch. “It’s lunch time already! Get shaved and dressed. I’ll meet you in the dining room in twenty minutes.” She stood up like a shot and searched the cabin frantically. “Is there a bathroom in this - cabin?”
     “Behind you.”, Dan sighed.
     She spun around and leaned into the bathroom to face the mirror over the sink. She ran her fingers through her hair and patted her face. “Oh my God!”, she moaned. She turned to the door and started out then stopped and composed herself. She stood over him and looked down. The impatience and irritation melted away. For a moment she seemed lost. “Oh, Daniel.”, she whispered. “I have never met anyone like you. I -” She reached down and placed a hand under his chin. She lowered herself to the bed and kissed him. “Daniel, I -” She stood up and rushed from the room.

     "Fucking lunatic.", he muttered. "Fucking beautiful lunatic."
     After he showered and dressed, Dan found myself on the Promenade deck. This time the beauty of the Aegean came back to him. The ocean was bluer than any he had ever seen. The islands, stripped bare of trees thousands of years ago rose up out of the sea like mountains in the desert. They glowed a golden gray. They reeked of thousands of stories, millions of lives, of Minos and Aegeus, Theseus and Ariadne, Labyrinths and Minotaurs. The bickering and squabbling of his fellow Americans seemed pathetic child’s play. They were all a bunch of greasy, dancing cannibals. He closed his eyes and felt himself warmed by the sun.
     A familiar voice jarred him from his trance. “Daniel! What are you doing?  I’ve been waiting for you!” He turned to see Lucia across the deck. A dazzling smile graced her beautiful face. “We have company!” She almost skipped across the deck into his arms. “Darling, there are two wonderful friends sailing with us and I didn’t even know it!” She hurried him toward the door to the dining room. “I just ran into them. Come on, you must meet them. We will have lunch together. There they are!” She pointed to a pair of older ladies across the room and waved. Gucci and Prada sparkled back. She led him to the table. “Ladies, this is my friend Daniel.”
     A thin, pinched woman with piercing blue eyes extended her hand. Gold bracelets dangled. “Gladys Euryale. I am very pleased to meet you Daniel.”
     As Dan took her hand, he felt another hand touch him. “And I am Nadine Setheno” She was heavier and painted with torrid rouge and lipstick. Steamy vermilion eye shadow washed over her large, dark eyes. Diamond earrings swayed.
     Gladys smiled through her teeth. “Lucia says you haven't known each other long. Tell me, Daniel, what do you do for a living?”
     He looked into her eyes. “Lucia told me you were two dear friends. I think she is keeping something from me. Are you her aunt?”
     “Why no, I  -”
     He cut her off. “Forgive me for being such a Cretan. You are her sister.” He caught a hint of color through her makeup.
     “No, no, Daniel. I am just a …”
     Dan moved in for the kill. “But you could be her sister. You have the same beautiful complexion and though your eyes are blue not green, they are just as riveting.”
     Nadine let out a loud laugh. “Come on Daniel, tell me what you do for a living.”
     “Glamour pours out of your every pore.”, he leered,  giving her the once over.
     “Now that one I have never heard before.” She unconsciously shifted herself in her chair toward him. “Mission accomplished, sir. I don’t care what you do for a living. You could be a liberal for all I care as long as you keep talking like that. I haven’t been so charmed since I met Jack.”
     “Jack?”
     “Jack Kennedy, you duffus!”, she scolded. “Of course, I was just a young girl.”
     “A twinkle in your father’s eye.”, snapped Gladys. She rolled her eyes at Dan. “Well, whatever you do and whoever you are, Lucia seems quite smitten with you and we were just being protective.”
     Lucia broke in. “Daniel, Gladys and Nadine have heard news about Athens. It’s not in flames. There is just a lot of rioting going on.”
     A swarthy waiter appeared at the table. Gladys glanced at the menu impatiently. “You know, Nadine, we never should have booked a Greek ship. They serve nothing but Greek food. “I’ll have the Mezes.”, she announced to the room, never once looking at the waiter.
     Dan suppressed an urge to reach over and slap her. “But Greek food is sensational!”, “The freshest ingredients are beautifully prepared so as to bring out the -”
     Nadine interrupted him. “Yes, beautifully prepared. I’ll have the Greek Salad.” She shoved the menu into the waiter’s hand.
     “You two are being impossible, as usual. I know you just love Greek food. You’re just putting on a show for Daniel.”, Lucia scolded.
     “Oh but we do love Greek food, don’t we Gladys?”, tittered Nadine.
     “The most sophisticated cuisine in the world!”, Gladys guffawed.
     Lucia smiled seductively at the waiter. “Would you please bring me Horta and Kolokythoanthoi?”
     She’s doing her best to keep a variety of saliva from spicing up our lunch, Dan thought with a smile. “I’ll have the Aginares a la Polita and the Apaki.” The waiter smiled seductively at Lucia who winked at him. She had saved them all.
     The waiter hurried away. “Cannibal.”, muttered Gladys under her breath.
     Lucia turned to her friends. “Why on earth are all the Greeks so upset?”
     Gladys wagged finger. “Because they are greedy, and they got caught. They wanted to be admitted to the European Union but they had too much debt, so they hid it and now, with the recession and all, the cat’s out of the bag. They are going to have to make sacrifices just like people at home are going to have to make. We are going to have to raise the retirement age for social security to fix the deficit. Of course, the smart people in Washington want to get rid of the ridiculous Ponzi scheme altogether. When Roosevelt shoved social security down America’s throat, people were lucky if they even lived to see sixty five, at least the people who supposedly needed it. Now they are living past seventy five, some of them. George Bush tried to privatize it and the Democrats stopped him. Now, thank goodness it looks like the Democrats are coming around. If we don’t do something soon, it will bankrupt the country, that and Medicare of course.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a small card. “Here’s my Medicare card. I took it out the last time I saw my doctor and said, ‘Here, take it. I refuse to be part of the Gerontocracy!’ Everyone expects to be taken care of these days. Everybody is screaming about nine and ten percent unemployment. Well, what do you expect when you extend unemployment benefits over and over again? If people don’t have to go to work, people won’t go to work. The greedy Greeks retire at sixty or some ridiculous age, they have health care, they have minimum wage and God knows what else. They’re up to their noses in entitlements and they’re just going to have to do without them. Too bad for them.”
     “But great for us!” Nadine was primping her hair. “This cruise is so cheap, it’s almost free! I have done without ever since the crash. I mean, I was terrified just like everyone else. I let Consuela go. Juan and Haruki are indispensable. I can hardly be expected to drive myself to my bridge games and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a gardener. Of course, they are almost family, so they understood that there needed to be shared sacrifices and agreed to a pay cut. I even cut back Maria’s hours. Can you believe it? She won’t be asking me for a raise anytime soon. Did I tell you, Gladys that her father died and she had the nerve to ask me for five hundred dollars to help with the funeral?  Five hundred dollars! What was she planning on, a bronze coffin? How many bronze coffins do you think there are in Mexico? She even pulled the loyalty card. I reminded her that she may have worked for me for fourteen years, but I was the one paying for it. After subjecting me to much weeping and hair pulling, I finally said I would lend it to her, with ten percent interest, of course. I mean for God’s sake, I had to close down the house in Pebble for the summer. The summer! That was the last straw.  I finally said to Gladys, enough is enough. We just have to get away somewhere and if it all comes crashing down around our heads at least we had the courage and the joie de vivre to go out in style.”
     Dan had to change the subject or he would never be able to eat his lunch. “Those pearls are the biggest pearls I have ever seen.”

     “Aren’t they wonderful?”, Nadine cooed. “My husband Frank gave them to me, God rest his soul. You know it took him awhile to get it right. His first attempt was a dismal failure. I had to take the entire suite back to Tiffany’s.”
      Gladys choked. “You never told me that!” Her eyes narrowed with disgust. “Never, ever give back the jewelry!” She turned to Lucia and Dan. “My husband Tom was the same way, God rest his soul. I wouldn’t let Michelle Obama wear my first suite but it is still in the safe. I just took him down to Shreve’s and picked what I wanted. Problem solved." Her eyes swiveled back to Nadine. "You also never told me about Jack Kennedy. Just because he was handsome doesn’t excuse the fact that he was a democrat and a lecher. Now Ronnie and Nancy, there was a pair to win. My husband and I had a ranch in Santa Barbara not far from Ronnie and Nancy’s ranch, Rancho Del Cielo. Isn’t that a beautiful name, Heaven’s Ranch? We all used to picnic on Lucky Lake.”
     Nadine shrugged and stroked her pearls. “Well, La Di Da. Who hasn’t been to Rancho del Cielo and who hasn’t commented on that dreadful seventies furniture. He was a lovely man and the greatest president in modern history, but he didn’t have much taste and frankly, Gladys neither did Nancy. I mean, really what was with those hats of hers? I had to take her aside one day and tell her that people were beginning to talk.”
     The waiter arrived with lunch. As he laid it out on the table, Gladys and Nadine stared at the ceiling with irritated, impatient expressions on their faces. Dan marveled at the putrescent prima donnas. He felt as though he were in a zoo staring at some extreme life form and his initial disgust was turning into genuine fascination, a fascination that just might keep him from losing his temper. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
     “Oh, Daniel, you aren’t feeling well, are you?” Lucia turned to her friends. “Daniel had a bit too much to drink last night.”
     Nadine reached over and gave his hand a squeeze. “What he needs is some hair of the dog. I think we all could use a little something. Waiter, bring us a bottle of wine and not that Godawful Retsina! Bring us some chardonnay! Now where were we?” She looked at Gladys. “Oh, Nancy and Ronnie. You know, Lucia, just talking about them makes me so nostalgic. Those were glorious days for America. That man single-handedly broke the back of the Soviet Union. He finally freed us from the commie threat.” 

     Dan could take it no longer. “He shaved his armpits.” The table fell silent.
     I beg your pardon?”, asked Gladys.
     Lucia frowned. “Daniel isn’t exactly on the same page with us.”
     “You know, I’ve heard that rumor about Ronnie.”, said Nadine, oblivious. “But we’ve all got our quirks. My husband was an ophthalmologist. After he retired, he used to give eye exams one day a week at the free ophthalmology clinic.”
     “And the only people who could take advantage of that were people without insurance! What does that tell you?”, Gladys snipped. “If you keep giving things away to people, they’re going to start expecting it. They thought they should own their own homes too and look what that led to. I mean, these people who blew up the housing market could no more afford a mortgage than they could afford dinner in a decent restaurant and yet they were allowed to buy a home and a lot of times more than one and now the rest of us are paying a terrible price. When did it all of a sudden become acceptable for the poor to own their own home?  For God’s sake, they don’t contribute a thing to the country. As far as I’m concerned, they shouldn’t be allowed to vote either. They just vote themselves more welfare, more entitlements that the real citizens have to pay for. Do you realize that half the people in the country don’t pay any income tax?”
     The waiter arrived with the wine and Dan drank the first glass like water. “I thought the recession was President Obama’s fault.”
     “Well, all those people elected him and things only got worse.”, said Nadine as she sipped her wine. "We’ve gone from Doctors donating their time to socialized medicine in just a couple of years. Ronnie is spinning in his grave. It just goes to show you, Communism is always with us waiting for a chance to rear its ugly head.”
     “Do you really think Obama is a communist?”, Dan asked the table as he poured himself another glass of wine.
     “Somebody certainly is thirsty.”, sniffed Gladys. “You’re not trying to tell us you are an Obama fan, are you?”
     “I was.”, he sighed.
     “But you have come to your senses.”, Nadine said sternly.
     “I have.”
     “And that’s a relief!”, said Gladys as she patted her lips with her napkin. “Not that I thought you were, of course. It’s just that you never know, and those people can be so difficult. They are absolutely convinced that their arrogant, ignorant and ridiculous view of the world is sacrosanct, and God help anyone who disagrees with them.”
     Lucia was wide eyed. “Daniel, I thought for sure you…” She caught herself.
     “You thought for sure what?”, asked Nadine as she peered into Lucia’s eyes.
     “Oh, it’s nothing. Daniel and I have had a few disagreements that now that I think back on them were probably just misunderstandings.”
     Gladys gave Lucia a maternal look.” My dear, all couples have misunderstandings especially when they first meet. When my husband and I were looking for our first home, he was just crazy for this Eichler in the hills and really didn’t understand that even though he wasn’t a sailor or even a swimmer, and to tell you the truth, didn’t even like the water at all, that a home on the water with its own pier and boat house was where we should live. It took him awhile to understand the error of his ways and as though it were a sign from God, just a month after we moved into the home that was destined for us, the Eichler in the hills burned to the ground!”
    The table fell silent. Dan cleared his mind and thought of nothing but his food as he dug into it. It was delicious. After a few minutes He felt the waiter breeze by. He caught him and asked him to bring a double scotch on the rocks. He looked up at his dining companions. “Would anyone care for a drink, another bottle of wine?" All three of them were staring at him. He put down his fork and knife. “What is it?”
     “Ordering a cocktail in the middle of a meal seems so… plebeian.”, said Gladys. “Do you own a restaurant?”
     “You are eating your food like a European with the knife and fork in the wrong hands, piling all your food on the back of your fork with your knife. You haven’t told us where you are from. Were you raised in Europe?”  Nadine realized her question might be considered rude. “Please don’t tell us it was France.”, she giggled awkwardly.
     "What's wrong with France?", asked Lucia.
     "Those idiots almost stopped us from liberating Iraq!", gasped Nadine.
     "I haven't touched a French fry since.", growled Gladys.
     "But you can now since they've been renamed Freedom Fries.", sighed Dan. "Speaking of freedom, we wouldn't exist as a country if the French hadn't saved us at the battle of Yorktown."
     There was an uncomfortable pause. “You drink scotch. You don’t drink bourbon, you drink scotch.”, muttered Gladys.
     Dan turned back to his food. “You’ve found me out.”, he admitted between bites. “I am a left-wing spy sent on a mission to slit your throats in the middle of the night and throw your bodies overboard.”
     There was a deafening silence for just a couple of seconds too long and then the table exploded in laughter. The women heaped praise upon Dan’s brilliant wit and cast glances back and forth between each other. Lucia gave him a knowing smile. He poured them the rest of the wine and raised his scotch in a toast to Gladys and Nadine. He thanked them for their good humor and lied through his teeth about how much he enjoyed their company and how glad he was to have met them. He finished his lunch and his scotch, rose from the table, kissed Lucia and begged her forgiveness. He had to sleep off the night before on deck in the sun. Lucia gave him a concerned look, but he put her worries to rest promising he would call on her before dinner. She smiled and took his hand. The three women launched into a frenzied conversation, catching up with themselves as he walked out of the dining room.
     When he reached the sun warmed deck, the charming facade he had smeared over himself began to stink. Why had he played such a disgusting game? What else was he going to subject himself to for the sake of the company of ‘his love’? Lucia was beginning to feel like a very seductive drug. He referenced his extensive experience with just about every kind of drug as he walked along the deck. She wasn’t heroin. That never did much for him anyway except make him itch. Not pot, there wasn’t much negative in that high except it made him drink too much. The same with coke, besides the realization that coke was frighteningly addictive. What else, mushrooms, acid, mescaline, ecstasy, peyote? Peyote! That was it. A cactus bud coated in poison that made you puke your guts out then gave you the most euphoric, lucid, physical high of all. Great, he thought, a fantastic, beautiful woman, the best sex and ptomaine poisoning.
     He came upon a row of deck chairs all empty but one. Buck was stretched out eyes closed, with an iPod plugged into his ears. Dan lay down next to him. Buck spoke without opening his eyes. “How ya doin’, Romeo?”
     Dan smiled. “Not so good, Cyrano. How about you?” 
     Buck opened an eye. “I’m listenin’ to African music. We didn’t get to African music and fuckin’.”
     Dan turned his head to Buck. “You have a one track mind.”
     “Unlike all the other guys in the world.”, he snorted.
     “OK. Let’s hear about African music and fucking.”
     Buck unplugged his ear buds and handed them to Dan. “Tinariwen, a buncha pissed off Tuareg guys, that started jammin’ in a refugee camp in Libya. Their music is Tishoumaren, music for fucked over, unemployed suckers without a home that are fed up and are about to do somethin’ about it.”
     Dan put the ear buds in his ears. He was astounded. He heard the calls of holy men. He heard the blues. The rhythm massaged him. The harmonies were haunting. Women ululated. A caravan rose out over the dunes and the necks of the camels swayed hypnotically. He wanted to whirl like a dervish. He wanted to chant. He wanted to make love. “Oh my God!”
     “Good fuckin' music, ain’t it?”, Buck leered. “And the Tuareg guys get all gowed up and dance for their women. Just the other way around from us which ain’t so bad an idea, I think.”
     Dan handed back the ear buds and relaxed on the deck chair. He let loose a long sigh. “I just tried that and it made me sick. I just performed for Lucia and two of her good friends, a pair of gorgons hell itself wouldn’t have.”
     “But you and your redhead are on fire in the sack. If you got that, you got almost all of it. Let it play out and run with it.”
     “The Greek uprising scares her to death. She wants me to fly out of Crete with her when we land.”
     Buck shook his head. “That don’t sound good. Sometimes a man’s gotta draw the line even if the fuckin’s dynamite. You can meet her halfway, even more than half way but if she takes control, you ain’t a man no more, and of course the Greeks scare her shitless. When the little people rise up, the rich shit their pants. Greece is a trial run for what them fuckers plan for us. You seen it. You heard them, moanin’ and groanin’ about how there ain’t no money for nothin’ so they gotta take what’s shit all left and hand it over to themselves.”
     “It seems as though the country has been attacked by maggots and it’s not even dead yet.”, sighed Dan. “But we are the Greatest Country in the World.”
     “Yeah, that horse shit. How much different is the Greatest Country in the World from the Master Race?”
     Dan put his hands behind his head and looked up into the sky. “I had a dream this morning that I was a kid again protesting the war in Vietnam and facing the draft. I almost feel we’re on our way back there except the American people haven’t a clue.”
     Buck turned on his side and put his chin in his hand. “Did they get you?”
     “Nah, I got lucky. I was too young. Tricky Dick was out. Did they get you?"
     "I was hooked up with a shiny blond babe, the one and only blond babe I ever hooked up with as I swore off blonds after her and only went for brunettes and red heads, red heads like that red head of yours, but I digress. Tricky Dick decides he wants a piece o’ my ass and I wasn’t up for dyin’ in some shit hole swamp in Nam. I wasn’t the robust specimen of manhood I am today and Nam, jail, Canada or never porkin’ my shiny blond again gave me an ulcer. The Doc looks me over, puts me on Belladonna and durin’ the rest of the checkup he notices I have real flat feet. He writes a letter to the Army sayin’ I am a wuss with an ulcer and recommends me to a antiwar commie foot Doc that looks at my feet and says I have a 50-50 chance of foolin’ the Army. The commie foot Doc writes a letter to the Army foot Doc sayin’ I am a cripple and a wuss. He then writes a bunch of mumbo jumbo to prove it and tells me to go out and buy the weirdest pair of shoes I can find and before you know it, this double wuss is standin’ naked with a buncha other naked wusses in the Army pre induction physical with a real light in the loafers Doc - not that I got anything against gays cause I don’t - goin’ from wuss to wuss puttin’ his finger under their balls an tellin them to cough. When he gets to yours truly, and I ain’t braggin’ here, it just happened, OK? he starts feelin’ me up like Henry Kissinger feels up a whore just before he snuffs her. I finally have to grab his ear and give it a yank in order to wake him outa his dreams. The rest of the day is the usual Nazi routine, marchin’ from station to station gettin’ checked out to see if I am fit enough to die in a foxhole sittin’ in my own shit. I soon become so pissed off and mixed up that I make a bad mistake that lookin’ back on it was a good mistake. There was a station where you all have to stand in front of a urinal and piss in a paper cup and I did so accordingly. I then turns a corner and, cause I was a little slow in pissin’, all the other wusses have marched on. I find myself alone with some black queen all decked out in a white jacket and, I kid you not, three-inch fingernails. He motions me over with one of his fingernails and sticks some sorta paper in my cup. He then looks at the paper and I guess everythin’s fine cause he waves me on and I find myself with a cup fulla piss wonderin’ what to do next. I sees a sink and next to it is some sorta rack all skiwampus with all kinda holes and tubes and whatnot and probably ‘cause my dear old ma would have slapped me silly if I ever poured piss in a sink, I pours the piss on the rack instead. All of a sudden the queen is screamin’ like a stuck pig and I am high tailin’ it outa there only to jump outa the fryin’ pan and into the fire. I end up in a small room with another queen who is gonna decide if I’m bonkers enough to give myself an ulcer. And don’t ask me why I keep runnin’ into queens cause I ain’t got no answer for that. After readin’ the letter about my ulcer, the bastard lets me know pronto that if I fuck with him in any way, my ass will be on the next flight to Nam. He asks all kinda personal questions and I tells him all kinda personal lies and before you can say God bless America, he tells me that even though he thinks I’m too bonkers for Nam, he’s gonna send me there anyways. I walks out with my head hangin’ and only one chance left. When the army foot Doc reads the commie foot Doc’s letter, he gets a real concerned look on his face and I’m thinking maybe I have a chance after all so I waves my weird shoes in his face. He gives a jump and says, ‘He make you wear them?’ at which point I sees him scribblin’ ‘Unfit for Military Service’ on a piece of paper which I then take right away to some dip shit behind a desk who says, ‘Head for the hills, kid’.”
     Dan let out a laugh and started clapping. “That is a wonderful story.”
     “I ain’t finished yet. As I am hitch hikin’ back to the motel thinkin’ about bumpin’ my shiny blond, a guy in a mustang convertible pulls up and tells me he is goin’ my way. He asks me why I have such a shit eatin’ grin on my face and I tells him I have just got a big fat ticket outa Nam. There is a pause, and he tells me he is just back from Nam and outa the Army where he was a helicopter gunner. There is another pause where I am wonderin’ if I am about to be ejected out of a mustang movin’ along at sixty miles an hour when all of a sudden he says ‘Congratulations, Kid! Open the glove compartment and help yourself.’, and as God is my witness, I ain’t never seen so much coke and crank and smack and weed and plenty of stuff I ain’t never seen before, so I thanks him and helps myself and that is the end of my story.”
     Dan let out a long sigh. “You’re one hell of a storyteller.”
     Buck frowned and handed him the ear buds. “One little bit of light in a whole lotta darkness. Let’s change the subject. Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Some Zulu kids livin’ under apartheid in South Africa that broke free with their music.”
     Dan plugged the ear buds in.  He heard deep, swelling acapella, incredible harmony that turned opera on its head, powerful rhythm punctuated with grunts and warbles, music that boiled in the base of his brain. His eyes opened wide in amazement. He swayed back and forth, lost in another world.
     "You wanna dance, don't you?", smiled Buck.
     "I do."
     "Well then, dance."
     He did.