Quite unexpectedly we’ve had a death in our family. New posts on Writer’s Play will resume on Monday April 1, a week from today. Bill Wynn will resume and new things are to come.
Thank you all for understanding, for reading and for following.
God Bless!
Second thing Mary said to him, she said from up close. She said it after they had placed the round into the roasting pan, completed the setup for it with mirepoix and slid the roasting pan into the oven. That’s when she took a moment to begin unbuttoning his shirt from the top so as to make sure he actually went downstairs to change. As she did the first two buttons, she whispered, “I want some this afternoon.”
Bill kissed Mary. He did not take her close to him because of the bloodstained shirt, but he leaned in and kissed her several times.
“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said. “Long, slow and sweet for you,” he said.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said.
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it,” Bill said.
“Don’t forget to bring up a rib,” Mary said.
“I won’t. What else you need?”
“I’m making up a list. We have a lot of cooking to do, but I’m not sure we’re going to be busy. We need rice pudding, chocolate pudding and cocktail shrimp for over by Bea. We need Bordelaise sauce for over here as well as everything else we normally make. And we could probably bread some fish and shrimp today too. This way we will be well ahead for the weekend.”
“Be up as soon as I change my shirt,” Bill said.
But he did not come up right away. Even before he changed his shirt he went into the meat room and took a drink of bourbon. Actually he took a second drink after the first so that it was enough to get him buzzed. Then he went into the walk-in to pull out a prime rib. He got a boning knife from his knife drawer and cut away the Cryovac from the rib. Then he put the rib onto a tray and with his shirt mostly unbuttoned, he carried it upstairs.
After he dropped off the rib, he went back down. Bea followed him down this time. She winked at Mary on her way out of the kitchen. Mary turned her back on Bea.
Being the key lady, Bea opened up the linen room for Bill. She went in first and tossed Bill a clean shirt.
“Don’t get any blood on it,” she said. “We can’t be issuing three or four shirt a day, you know.”
Bill smiled at Bea and gave her the finger. Not one to be shocked by this or by anything, Bea grabbed his finger, slid it between her lips and sucked it.
“Wrong thing,” Bill said.
“Wouldn’t want to get it wrong,” Bea said. She stepped around Bill and closed the linen room door with them inside. She locked the door so they were assured being left alone unless Tommy came for something. The likelihood of that was just about nil.
“It’s put up or shut up time,” Bea said.
Mary didn’t want to talk to him when Bill returned upstairs. Maybe, he thought, she wanted him to be sheepish, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t ashamed. He was speeding on black beauties, high on bourbon and happy to be at work where at least for the rest of the day he did not have to think about anything but doing his job. And that was by rote now.
That was one of the beauties of working with his hands. For so long, for so much time, he’d been worried about going to jail, about being expelled from the University, about what was going to happen to him in jail. His head had done a number on him so bad that he wanted to bury himself in the sand and never come out. Now, here, he could put his head away and not think about anything. He could get high, stay high, have fun, mess around and not think about anything.
He liked that.
By Peter Weiss
Really, they’ve unearthed a big, international buy-your-way-into-college scheme. It’s been all over the news for the last week, hours and hours and hours and hours. And now the nation is outraged.
Privilege is nothing new. But now with the narrative being spewed at us day after day, moment after moment on some networks, it fits right into their context. Actually, this one fits into everyone’s context.
Once again, privilege is nothing new. What’s new is that we’re being told that it’s evil, that the privileged are evil, that they must be eradicated.
Newsflash! Most socialist/communist countries have only two classes, the rich and the poor. You might call it, if you wanted to, the privileged and the non-privileged. No matter how you classify it, if you are born into the non-privileged class, there is no way in socialist/communist countries to move up into the wealthy class.
Upward mobility, the promise that with hard work and perseverance someone can move up in economic class, is one of the promises of capitalism or certainly capitalism here in America.
Somewhere along the line, and it’s been happening for a very long time although it seems to have escalated since Obama was elected president, we’ve lost sight of the upward-mobility promise. Somewhere along this line we’ve begun being taught, and again this has been happening for a while, that things must be evened out, that it’s not opportunity that must be equal but wealth.
The notion of Distribution of Wealth in order to equalize things is a fallacy, an illusion, part of the false narrative some of the leaders here in America would want us to buy into.
It fits in along with the idea that there are no winners and no losers in the sports games among children, that we can’t keep score in such games, that we can’t have winners and losers because the losers feel bad. It fits in with the notion that we can’t say certain things, can’t wear certain things (like a MAGA hat) because someone is offended. It fits in with the idea that we should scrap the concepts of integration and freedom of speech so that the “offended” people or groups can have a safe space.
It also fits in with the narrative that that boy wearing the MAGA hat was the aggressor because he stood his ground when he was approached by the man who was beating the drum. Of course it was just the opposite. We’ve seen such ridiculousness before, you know, the-you-have-to-sign-it-to-see-what’s-in-it-concept lauded by Nancy Pelosi about Obamacare.
So let’s get real! We’ve lost all sense of logic. We’ve lost all sense of perspective. The Trump administration is not evil and President Trump is not an inherently evil man. President Obama’s administration was not without scandal, no matter what the media wants to tell you. President Obama was not Pollyanna, an all-wonderful, all-perfect, all-good man.
The college scandal that’s been unearthed is just another one of the scandals plaguing our times. There are many worse things going on such as human trafficking, child abuse and not taking care of our elderly or our veterans. If one really wants to see the abuse of privilege all one really has to do is look at our Senators and Congressmen and what they’ve been doing probably forever.
What’s real is that here in America everyone should have equal opportunity. That is the goal we should be striving toward. But our corrupt leaders are most likely not the ones to get us to that.
By Peter Weiss
Idle hands make the devil’s workshop.
Even though Mary told them they had a lot of work to do despite the fact that they might not be too busy, Bill, Bea and Mary went about their morning the same as they always did. They went down to change clothes while the coffee was brewing. Downstairs, because Bill was extraordinarily frisky, they laughed and fooled around more than they might have ordinarily done. What this meant, in effect, was that they changed unabashedly out in the hall, goofing around and playing with each other. Both Mary and Bea copped feels of Bill as he changed and Bill copped some nice feels of them both.
Then they went upstairs to have a cup coffee. Bea, like always, sat on her stool and read the racing page in The Dispatch. Bill stood behind her and looked over her shoulder even though he was not interested in the ponies. What he did do, and what Bea purposefully did not stop him from doing, was reach his arms over her and slide his hands into her dress from the top so that he could go into her bra and fondle her breasts. He only did this after Mary had taken her coffee and gone back to her station to start her work.
“Boy,” Bea said.
“Boy nothing,” said Bill. “Boy gonna take as much feeling as he wants and girl ain’t saying nothing but when she wants to go downstairs.”
“Boy,” Bea said again, but she was not protesting. If she had protested, Bill would have quoted the famous line about protesting too much.
When he was sure he had more than started her engines, when he was sure that he had probably flooded her gas tank, so to speak, he went about finishing his coffee and walked back to where Mary was to see what she needed from downstairs. The first thing, the thing that had to be done before he and Bea could do anything with playing, was make sure the round was cut and make sure it got put on to cook. So together he and Mary went into her walk-in and checked to see how much was left over from yesterday. Actually, it wasn’t anything that Bill didn’t already know because he was able to and had trained himself to track all of these things as he worked. What he did do was check how much of the prime rib was left over so that he would know how many ribs he needed to bring upstairs.
Seeing that there wasn’t much round, first thing he had to do before they spoke about anything else was go down and get a fresh one. He did not know if Henry Lee had cut it last night or not because there had not been enough steaks left over for him to have to take a trip to the downstairs walk-in. That had saved him time last night but had left him wondering about whether or not he’d have to cut the round.
What he found, happily, was a round already cut, neatly wrapped and waiting for him. Sitting beside it was the second half, also neatly wrapped and waiting for the following day.
So Bill picked up the tray with the biggest half on it, not that there was much difference between the two because both he and Henry Lee were pros at making sure that the division was pretty good, and carted it upstairs, the tray on his shoulder as usual. Unfortunately, blood dripped from the tray all down the front of his shirt. The blood was cold against him as it went through his shirt, and he knew when he got upstairs Mary would certainly have something to say.
True to who she was and wholly indicative of her genuine concern for Bill, first thing she said when she saw him with the blood on his shirt was remind him of her superstition.
By Peter Weiss
His was the first car into the Steakhouse East parking lot. Being first, being a little early, now that he was settled, he lit a joint. He opened both front car windows so the smoke would pass outward and he fingered a black beauty, still in its little baggie, while he smoked.
He was done with the joint by the time Bea’s car entered the parking lot. Before Bea even had a chance to park next to him, he saw Tommy’s car turn off Delta road into the parking lot too. He quickly popped the black beauty and got out of his car.
Then they were all at the front door, Tommy was turning his key and they were about to go on their morning routine, a routine which virtually never varied.
He purposefully stood behind Bea and humped on her while Tommy turned the key. Bea, never one at a loss for how to respond in such situations, pressed back against him. Although they wore coats and she could probably not feel much, it was the idea that counted.
“Wait till I get you downstairs,” she whispered quietly to him when they entered the hall and were on their way to the kitchen.
“Maybe that’s just what I’m waiting for,” said Bill.
“What’s up with you?” Bea asked. “Didn’t get none last night?”
Bill didn’t respond. He switched off the burglar alarm then reached out for Bea. He slid his hand under her coat from behind as they walked and made sure to get a good feel.
Tommy had already veered off toward his office and Mary had gone first into the kitchen. For a brief moment Bea and Bill were alone in the hall. Bea was ahead of him. Bill held her so she couldn’t move. From behind, he kissed her on her neck, kissed her ear and slid his arm around her so he could feel her breasts. Bea pushed back against him and reached her hand between them.
“Goddamn,” she said. “Boy what kind of drugs you been taking?”
“This isn’t any drugs,” Bill said. “What you feel is what I got.” He laughed, finished his feel, pressed himself against her hand and said, “What’s good to you is good for you.”
“You one crazy white boy,” Bea said. She liked that. She told him she liked that many times. She told him she liked his youth too.
In the kitchen Bea went first to the coffee urns to start a pot of coffee. Mary was already in the back checking out her bulletin board. Bill went down the line turning things on and at the end of the line on the knife sheath side he reached up, switched on the exhaust fans. They grumbled, mumbled, rumbled and droned.
The kitchen was alive!
Before he went downstairs, Bill joined Mary in the back to see what she was doing and find out what she needed. Back there, where no one could see them, he took her in his arms and kissed her full on the lips. He put his arms around her and pulled her to him, kissing her all the while. She could feel him pressing against her and since there was no shame or embarrassment between them anymore, she pushed in against him.
“We got a lot of work this morning,” she said, “even though I don’t think we’re going to be very busy. Whatever you got in mind to do with Bea, don’t spend a lot of time.”
“What makes you think I’m intending to spend time with Bea?”
“Cause I can see you’re horny and I already know it’s not gonna be with me. But I know you’ll come back to me, so go on and have a good time.”
“It’s just sex with her,” Bill said. “It’s much more than that with you.”
By Peter Weiss
originally posted in February 2019
No one questions that nicotine is a drug just as no one questions that heroin, cocaine and meth are. When you get down to it, sugar is a drug too. Once you get a taste for it you want more and more. It’s hard to withdraw from sugar as well.
We don’t generally think of hate as a drug, but these days in our world there is an awful lot of hate going around. Oh, we all know it’s probably been here all along, all this hate, but it’s mostly been concealed, certainly not fashionable to put it out on display.
That’s all changed. Turn on any of the major networks or the major cable media outlets. You’ll find their news people simply hate the president. It’s clear. It’s obvious. They even have 101 ways of explaining why it’s okay to do so because, as they’ll tell you, he’s the cause of all the evil we’ve ever seen in the world.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Chuck Schumer loves the words “the truth is.” The day before the State of the Union Address on the floor of the Senate he made a statement saying “The president will say predictably that the state of our Union is strong, but the truth is the state of the Trump economy is failing America’s middle class,” and “The state of the Trump administration is embroiled in chaos and incompetence.”
Honestly, he doesn’t know what the truth is anymore than we do. Clearly the economic facts belie what Schumer relates to as truth. Furthermore, Schumer has no idea whether or not Trump’s administration is embroiled in chaos and incompetence. That’s his opinion. Opinions are not facts and we all know the joke about opinions.
Schumer is nothing more than a politician. He’s spent just about his whole adult life in politics. He’s been in the US House of Representatives and/or the Senate since 1981.
Schumer may be qualified to talk about political circles but he has little business experience, little experience making a product and/or being responsible for creating paychecks for people whose livelihoods depend upon the success of the business in which they work. In politics, maybe sticking with who you’ve got even if they don’t do a good job is preferable because it creates the impression that things are under control. God forbid they should give an impression that things aren’t in control.
In business producing is important. Surely on the top levels if you can’t produce you don’t get to stay. Thus, it is certainly possible that the turnover Schumer calls chaos and incompetence is nothing more than an attempt to find people who can best produce. In business creating the best product for the lowest cost is the formula for success. Our politicians with their endless supply of our tax dollars know nothing about that.
One thing is clear. With the popularity of our Congress down in the teens, some 30 points lower than Trump’s popularity, Schumer has little room to criticize the current administration or any administration about anything.
So what do you do when you have no policies, when you have no answers, when you’re disliked and unpopular?
The answer is quite simple. Manufacture someone to hate. Create a foe, a scapegoat, an object of derision and ridicule to attack repeatedly.
This is the hate drug, the number one Democrat tactic. If you have nothing to offer, offer someone to hate. Offer someone to hate, have the media broadcast your hate all over the place all of the time and sooner or later you’ve got a good portion of the public hooked on your hate drug. They’ll tune in every day for their daily fix.
By Peter Weiss
He expected his fiancé to be waiting for him. He hoped to find her in bed awake but he knew it was more likely she’d be asleep. His plan was to kiss her hello if she were awake, go in to take a shower then meet with in her in bed. If she were asleep, he planned to go straight into the shower and then snuggle up against her in the bed.
Of course we make plans and God laughs.
When he turned the key in the lock and opened the door, he found the two cats down in the hall waiting for him. They were down there waiting for him because his fiancé was not home.
Surprise!
He found a note in the kitchen. It was hastily written and not at all explicit. It told him, quite simply, that Tim was in crisis and she had gone over to take care of him.
Bill fed the cats. They had hard cat food down on the floor in the one bowl that they shared. He opened a can of soft food, split it onto two plates the way they customarily did. Both cats ate the food eagerly even though he knew they weren’t hungry.
Then he took a shower. On some level he knew he could go over to Tim’s and be with them. Someone else might have done that, perhaps another dancer, perhaps someone who was more friendly with Tim. Bill was friendly with him, but not like that.
He drank a beer while he was in the shower and took his time lounging under the spray of hot water. Every night he smelled from kitchen funk. Every night, in order to make it disappear, he had to not only wash but wash his hair as well. This he did.
Then he went to sleep.
At 5:15 he was back on the road and heading off into Whitehall. This early in the morning the roads were empty and he could make it there in optimal time. He did not speed because he did not want to get stopped. In his short life thus far, he felt he’d already seen enough cops for a lifetime.
So he blasted the radio, which for those days in that car was a pretty decent radio, and he felt happy because he could still vividly remember when he had no car, had no money, couldn’t find a job and had no prospects because of his police record. He could still remember when he wasn’t sure he would even be able to graduate from the University since he was facing expulsion. Delaying the court case was part of the plea-deal offer, just another one of those things, in the long run, that caused him to plead guilty to something he positively did not do.
He would have smoked a joint as he drove, but again, he did not want to be vulnerable to being stopped. So he drove, listened to the music and planned when, if the business were really slow, he would pop the acid tab he had in his pocket.
Then he realized he felt really horny. He had planned to get it on with his fiancé. He realized the sensual feelings lingered with him now.
He thought as he drove. He knew he could have called his fiancé at Tim’s house when he’d gotten home last night. He had chosen not to thinking maybe, hoping really, they were asleep over there. He could have called her this morning too, but when he was up and about and getting ready to get out of the house it was too early to make a call since he didn’t want to wake them up.
The thought that she might be cheating on him never crossed his mind. It probably should have given his actions.
By Peter Weiss
They had a gangbuster night too. Bill was able to sit in the hall until about 6:15 when the first steady orders started coming in. Before then orders came in but there was a lull between them. So during the time that he sat he was able to have a conversation with Lorraine, Arlene and Victoria although each conversation was separate.
Lorraine told him nothing much was going on and that her kids were doing well. She did not make any advances or any suggestions as to times to meet, so Bill did not bring up the subject.
Victoria’s, as always, was a shoot-the-shit chat of no real consequence. They talked about the winter coming to an end, the basketball playoffs, although Bill did not really care about basketball, Drenovis and business. Apparently Drenovis had been hitting on the girls again. Victoria mentioned that she thought they would have a slow period once the basketball season was completely over.
Arlene told him her mother was doing as okay as possible and that the help she had had for the day made sure she was comfortable. She asked Bill if he wanted to meet after work even though she was not closing girl but Bill told her he wanted to go home since he wasn’t home last night and didn’t want to stay away too long. Arlene was understanding and said she’d go home to her mother’s house instead of to her own apartment. She also said she hoped Bill would find time for her.
Jimmy did most of the work on the line until Bill was needed inside. This was the way they did things most of the time because Bill worked all day long. Jimmy, a high school senior by day, was considerate and accommodating. He didn’t mind this arrangement since Bill was quick to let him go early at the end of the shift if there was no business.
Tonight was a change-the-grease night. This meant Bill would be tied up for the last hour or so, and if they were really busy he would not get home until about 1:30 in the morning. He would discover that that was the case.
Tommy expedited until Lillian came in. When Bill saw it was going to start to be busy, actually at the time when the orders started to almost get steady, he went out to call his fiancé. He made a quick call, told her he’d be home right after work.
By the time he got back into the kitchen, Jimmy had multiple orders working and more coming in. Bill stepped into place and started into work. Tommy came in shortly after Bill. He worked straight through until Lillian relieved him. The kitchen worked all the way through until almost 11:00 PM.
Then it was the normal routine. Bill fed the waitresses and the dishwashers. Then he fed Esserine. Around 11:30 Arlene came in with Bebe’s order. Bebe ate a Super medium-rare with a baked potatoes and vegetables. Bill pretty much knew her order.
Jimmy and Grandma left a little later than usual, almost at 11:00. As they were leaving Bill was already starting the beginning stages of cleaning up the line. At this point there was not much that he could do, but he knew the steps well and did everything possible so he would not be delayed at the end.
Bill started drinking when the orders were mostly over. He had the waitresses bring him a beer, and when he went down to pee he slipped into the meat room and took a big swig of bourbon. He also popped a black beauty which he washed down with the bourbon.
Back upstairs he settled in for the endgame of the night.
Arlene stopped into the kitchen to say good night since she was not closing girl. She gave Bill a big smile and told him she would see him in the morning, that again tomorrow she was working a double.
As quickly as he could, Bill finished out everything and went straight home.
By Peter Weiss
originally posted in March 2018
One would think that former president Obama must be sitting in his wonderfully luxurious home in Washington DC and laughing about everything that’s going on in America today. He truly was the big winner.
Former president Obama, like most recent Democratic presidents, enjoyed pretty much a free reign in saying and doing whatever he wanted. The press, the social media and most of the politicians in Washington allowed him to do this.
On top of being the media’s darling, he enjoyed a special privilege for the color of his skin, and he knew this was happening as did the people he surrounded himself with who carried out his orders unquestionably. When you hear them speaking now, if you consider who they are and what they are saying, you have to kind of laugh at it although what we are looking at is no laughing matter.
Throughout his presidency and even before it, former president Obama enjoyed the benefits of reverse racism, or, he enjoyed the privilege of being able to use the color of his skin to his advantage. While it’s called reverse racism because he is not white, the truth is that since he really benefited from the color of his skin, it is racism. Today we hear so much about white privilege. As a politician, as the president, Obama enjoyed black privilege, that privilege based upon fear of criticizing him due to the color of his skin. This too makes him the big winner.
America is in disarray. Way back when he began, former president Obama said that he wanted to fundamentally transform America. No one really asked him what he meant by this although we now know everyone should have asked. He surrounded himself with communists, socialists, and terrorists, not to mention racists and bigots. The names could be laid out here, but anyone reading this who agrees with what’s written knows all the names, and anyone who doesn’t agree with it doesn’t care what the names are, probably knows them, and scoffs at the very idea that this could even be so.
No matter how you slice it, and he deserves real kudos for it, former president Obama was able to accomplish his biggest and most desired goal. And for that, he truly is the big winner.
But for every big winner there is also a big loser. In this case the big loser is the United States of America. The people of the United States of America must now suffer through effects of what former president Obama left in place.
When he became president the national debt was a mere $10 trillion. When he left office it was $20 trillion and one really has two scratch his/her head to figure out what was gained by the expenditure of that $10 trillion. Do we see any new roads? Any improved electrical grids? Any new airports? Is our education any better? Is our military more equipped? Did he make our standard of living any better? Did the poor get any richer?
No. It’s pretty clear that what former president Obama meant by fundamentally transform America was to bring it down to not only disarray, but to third world country status. It’s not clear yet whether our status has come down that far, but it is clear that instead of improvements, what former president Obama left us was a deep state whose goal, a goal that he set up through organizing, was to disrupt his successor if it wasn’t Hillary Clinton. And this he did, big time. And for that he is the big winner.
By Peter Weiss
Because nothing much was happening, Bill waited as long as he could before going upstairs to set up the line for the dinner. He hung out with Henry Lee long after Mary had gone back up even though there wasn’t much meat to cut. He asked Henry Lee if he wanted to get started on the hamburgers and bleus for the morning but Henry Lee said they’d have enough time to do it then.
So they drank. Then Bill ran up quickly to ask Mary if she wanted to join them when they went into the deep freeze to smoke another joint. Mary said “sure” and told Bill she wanted a joint to smoke at home later on.
On the stairs on his first trip carrying things up for the dinner, Bill popped a black beauty. He still had meat trays to carry but on this particular trip he had not taken any with him. Instead he carted up a case of fries which he would unload into the reach-in box on Bea’s side of the kitchen.
Upstairs, as was customary for him to do, he unloaded the baked potatoes from the convection oven, always two at a time in each hand. This time he put them directly into the steam table pan and stacked them carefully. Once he had the pan set into the steam table, he covered it with aluminum foil.
Mary had already placed most things over on the line. Bill helped her carry the last items then made sure everything was in place and set the way he wanted.
The only thing left to do was to make the final trips up and down the stairs to restock everything that was still needed. Fried fish, fried shrimp, onion rings and all the meats—these were the things he checked, rechecked and noted so he would know what he had to bring up.
Bea caught him on one of the freezer trips. She walked into the freezer while he was gathering things. He didn’t hear her at first because she sneaked up on him until she was only a few feet from him where he worked facing the shelves.
“Been avoiding me?” she asked.
Bill turned to see her. She was almost within his reach. “Why would I avoid you?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?”
Bill smiled. Even though it was cold in the freezer, he took a moment and drew her to him. “Maybe we should go somewhere else,” he said. “It’s too damn cold in here.”
“It’s almost time for me to go home. Everything’s done upstairs. I’m about ready to change clothes.”
“There’s always tomorrow,” Bill said.
“That’s for shit sure. Anything I can help you with?” Bea said.
“Nah, I got it.”
Bea turned and left the freezer. Bill stacked trays of various items and when he had four trays stacked, he hoisted them up on his shoulder, left the freezer, swung the door shut and kicked it closed behind him with the flat part of his foot. He set the trays steady on his shoulder and made the trip up.
Up in the kitchen Bea was sitting on her stool reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. Esserine was busy on the station making sure everything was in place and set the way she wanted it, same as Bill had done for the line.
Then everything was set. Mary and Bea went downstairs to change clothes. Grandma and Jimmy were in.
Bill double-checked everything on the line one more time and made sure nothing was missing. Before he went out to sit in the hall he went around back and double-checked all the ovens to make sure they were empty. Satisfied, he lit a cigarette on his way out to the hall.
