So Bill knew pretty much right away. It was that one-love thing. It was that Beverly’s husband was young, whoever he was, and the opportunity was there and maybe he hadn’t had a chance to taste all the flavors of water. Then, maybe it hit him in the face like it had hit Bill himself.
Forbidden fruit. A bite of the apple. Marie was a pain in the ass, had become a big pain in the ass to Henry Lee, Suburban’s meat cutter who’d taught Bill to cut meat and a whole lot more. Henry Lee was Bill’s partner and partner in crime. They drank together, got high together, and in general, they just liked each other.
Because Marie was a pain in the ass, because Bill had inadvertently walked in on them in the act, Henry Lee offered her to Bill. Once he’d made the offer, it was out there, out on the table. He told Bill she would do anything, that he could do anything to her. He told Bill they could do her together if he wanted, said she’d like it.
Bill declined this offer too. Bill was stricken with Mary, actually in love with her despite the fact that he was living with his wife-to-be.
Mother Mary. Henry Lee and Bill had been shooting the breeze, talking about things, and when Bill had brought up how he wouldn’t mind doing Mary, Henry Lee had told him to go for it, that she’d go with him in a flash.
One day he was just a single, regular guy living in his own apartment on Norwich Street. Then his friends ask him to drive to a party. Then four days later his wife-to-be shows up at his door and says she’s moving in with him.
Curve ball.
One day he’s just a regular student working his way through school on a work-study program, an English major with solid A’s in his major and everything else except science. He’s got a live-in girlfriend who will become his wife and things are good, real good.
Next day he meets one of his professors for lunch to discuss his poetry. That professor, one of the premiere translators of Japanese poetry and a renowned poet in his own right, asks him if they could go check out what was going on at the demonstration, which they do. Bill does something commendable, helps a demonstrator getting beaten by six plain-clothes FBI agents.
Day after that next day he has a concussion and is all beat-up. He’s been arrested and is facing prison time, not to mention being expelled from the university.
Life changed forever.
Ain’t it funny how the night moves!
Marie wanted to get with a white man. She implored him, said he was her chance, that she might never get another chance. Henry Lee was pushing her on him. He’d already been with Mary and Bea and Norma and others. What difference did one more make?
So Bill knew the answer. Bill knew why Beverly’s husband was messing around. Having an affair, that was a bit much, but himself, Bill still loved Mary and could full well understand loving more than one woman at a time. Bill could also understand office stuff, messing around at work, how you could spend more time with the women at work than you did with your own wife. And at work they were all prettied up too.
Forbidden fruit, availability, curiosity, every day close even intimate proximity — these were the answers, the reasons.
Bill made a note to ask Beverly if she had any curiosity at all. He made a note to ask her if she’d ever been with anyone else. He made a note to ask her what her fantasies were and if there were no consequences for anything at all here exactly what she would want and how she would want it.
By Peter Weiss
According to the DNC some startling new evidence has surfaced that incontrovertibly determines President Donald J Trump is personally responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. Independent fact checkers for CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC and NPR have confirmed the veracity of this new evidence.
The President was unavailable for comment.
Unfortunately for the President this was not all that was unearthed. Unbiased, independent research conducted by the DNC has also uncovered that the President is personally responsible for climate change. The DNC reported that their people have fact checked this information to confirm it. Air pollution and fossil fuel emissions that have caused the breach in the ozone layer and now threaten to destroy the earth’s atmosphere are all attributed to Donald J Trump. As they report, Trump is undoubtedly personally responsible.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler held a meeting in their secret bunker then announced that should Trump be re-elected, their first order of business would be to impeach him. They did not rule out multiple impeachments should their first one in the new term fail to remove Trump from office.
Bernie Sanders and the Ocasio-Cortez squad said they would support Pelosi in impeachment efforts and make sure the tax-payers funded it.
Joe Biden refused to comment until he could determine how this affected the polls, but Kamala Harris said should they win and she become the defacto president, she would prosecute Trump on multiple counts of dinosaur murder.
By Peter Weiss
“I’m starting to feel like I know you a little,” Beverly said when they were finished telling about themselves and a silence ensued. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“It is what it is,” Bill said. “It’s neither good nor bad.”
“If we stays as friends.”
“Yup.”
“Or friends with extras. Ever had that?”
“Actually, I have,” Bill said. “Her name was Arlene and we got to be friends because we had things in common that had happened to us in our lives.”
“Think your wife knows you cheat?” Beverly asked.
“Think your husband knows you know?”
“Don’t think he has a clue.”
“Same,” Bill said.
“Don’t you feel guilty?”
“Sometimes.”
“Aren’t you ashamed?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well?”
Well, Bill wasn’t giving anything up. He sat there next to Beverly having told her what he’d told her and listened to what she said. She had an ax to grind. He didn’t have anything invested here except maybe a budding friendship. They’d shared some fun and if that’s all it ended up being, then that was all it would be.
“Well what?”
“Do you care about me?” Beverly asked.
“In what way?”
“In any way?”
“Sure I do. I care that your feelings are hurt and you’re unhappy and you’re undecided about which way to make a move. I care so much that I’m trying not to influence you or push you in any directions. You have to do what you have to do, whatever that is, for yourself.”
“And you?”
“Me? I came up here to Cleveland hoping to get away from the extracurricular activities. I came up here swearing that I wasn’t gonna fool around anymore. That went far.” He laughed, more to himself than anything else. Then he thought about it a moment.
“Maybe it don’t mean shit to a train,” he said. “Maybe it means everything. I never thought I’d be working in kitchens. I never thought I’d be desired by the opposite sex. In college I couldn’t get any. In high school I didn’t get any. I had a girlfriend and we did just about everything but. Then I get to the kitchen and boom, it’s like everyone and their grandmother want me. Go figure.”
“You’re a good looking guy. You’d be a catch if you weren’t married. Waitresses just want to say they did the cook and maybe get a steak every now and then.”
“How’d you meet your husband?” Bill asked.
“Old story. We met in grade school. He pulled my hair and I punched him. I stuck my tongue out at him and told him I hated him.
“We were in the same classes all the way through middle school. We made out twice in middle school, both times at a party when they played kissing games, first time when we had to go into the closet and stay there together for five minutes and kiss the whole time.
“We went out in high school. One night he had beer and we got a little drunk and while I can’t say he forced me, I can say everything just came together for him. He wanted to get laid, I wanted to lose my virginity and the rest is history.”
“Fill it in for me. How do you go from losing your virginity to getting married?”
“I wasn’t an easy girl. I wasn’t giving it up. He knew that. Really, he was okay. And then he hit me in the heart. He said that day he pulled my hair way back when, he already loved me and he never stopped.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. So we started being serious and enjoying each other, and then bang, I got pregnant and we got married.”
Bill thought about curves. He thought about how life continually throws curve balls at you. He thought about the curve balls in his life. He saw the one Beverly told him about. Then he wondered why her husband was having an affair, but as he wondered it, he knew the answer.
Before she went on more about herself, Beverly asked Bill about what the end of the story was. Bill told her how Jenny had showed up at his and Pam’s apartment one afternoon and forced him to have spite-sex, vengeance sex.
He told Beverly how Jenny told him she would tell Pam he’d made a move on her if he didn’t give her what she wanted, how she told him she’d tell Pam it was all her if he complied and Pam found out. In fact, she said she would tell Pam exactly what they did and how she’d gotten him to do it, this so there were no secrets between them. Jenny said she was sure she could make Pam understand, and she also said she would enlist Nina to help too.
Well…Beverly wanted to know all the details. Of the sex.
Bill didn’t want to tell it, but she implored him and so he did. And after he did, that’s where he left it. The only other thing he said was that he didn’t have any women until he was at Suburban where he was quite a commodity because he was young, white and in a position of power. The black girls wanted him, not so much jungle fever as much as forbidden fruit or just to say they did.
Goddamn life, Beverly commented.
She told about how she dropped out of school, swore she’d go back after the child was born and they could work it out. But that never happened. The child never happened.
In her eighth month, she told Bill, she woke up one morning with such pain she couldn’t move. She was bleeding profusely and pretty much near dead so she thought. He rushed her to the hospital. They took her right into intensive care and put her on IV’s.
The baby died. It was a girl, Beverly told Bill, a fully-developed pretty little girl whose mother had miscarried—they didn’t know why—and she was never born, or she was taken from the womb already dead.
Talk about fucked up, Beverly told Bill. Talk about depression. Talk about ways to kill a marriage, maybe, especially one that was built upon an accidental pregnancy and the decision to have the baby.
Beverly told Bill what a mess she was, what a drain on his economy and a burden for him to carry for the duration of her recovery. Then there he was, going to school and working full time while she wasn’t doing anything because she’d dropped out of school and had nothing to do.
Wasn’t my fault.
Wasn’t his fault.
Just was.
He worked in an office and they were going to hire him after he graduated and give him a promotion and a title and work him into their company. It was an all-set thing. It was all good too. Until her.
Her, she was a secretary, and so if Bill thought messing around only happened in kitchens and restaurants, forget that. Turns out, she said, everyone in that office was fucking everyone and no one seemed to care that they were all married.
Beverly stayed looking intently at her feet. Her guy, now graduated and moving up in that company was one of the everybody. But he was actually having an affair, or he and his secretary were much more than just having sex. They went out together, went to hotels together and were maybe, she couldn’t say for sure, in love with each other.
Damn was all Bill would comment. But then he asked how she knew and she said she wasn’t stupid and that she’d found condoms, receipts and even a credit card slip from a hotel. But she hadn’t confronted him because, well, because she didn’t exactly know why yet and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen yet.
So there it was. Maybe a good Jenny-dose for him would be a good thing she added on when she was done with what she was saying.
There isn’t much to say anymore since most people are already decided about how they are going to vote. There’s only a small percentage of voters in the middle, still on the fence, so to speak.
And so it goes. But as it goes, it goes without saying that never before has there been so much lying and such blatant hypocrisy displayed and perpetrated by our politicians.
Really.
And really so far the bulk of that is coming from one side.
Oh, you know by now what side I mean, and it’s not the right side.
The latest bit of lying and hypocrisy has to do with the post office and that shameful political theater those despicable Dems put out on Saturday, passing that bill that will go nowhere in the Senate.
Now I know all you left-wing brainwashed cultists are going to tell me that a whole load of Republicans signed off on it, which is true. But so what? It was a good way to score points with their constituents knowing full well it won’t mean a thing in the end.
The shamefulness of it, of their show was that they came back from break (why did they need that break–were they working really hard?) to pass this bill and Nancy dear, dear Nancy wouldn’t even meet with Mark Meadows to discuss a skinny bill to get aid to the American people. Even more shameful was the fact that a hearing with the postmaster general was scheduled for today. Shouldn’t they have heard what he had to say before they passed a bill?
Oh well! You know.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
And of course they heard from him on Friday in the Senate.
So isn’t that like the cart before the horse? Or in other terms, aren’t they just horses asses?
And aren’t we the stupid ones for electing them, and the bulk of them over and over again?
So… Wake America. It’s time to see what’s really there instead of taking what they’re telling us as any sort of truth. And that goes for both sides.
By Peter Weiss
Beverly thought that was quite a story. Bill assured her it was the truth and nothing but, as best as he could tell it. No exaggeration, no lies, just what it was.
Then he told Beverly—he couldn’t say why—the story of his father and his Uncle Maxwell meeting up stateside after the war, after his father had recovered, before their discharges. His uncle had been an aerial gunner in the Air Force. They met up, went on a three-day bender, went AWOL for three days. The private stripe was because his father was busted down to a PFC for those three days AWOL.
Beverly looked down to her feet before she said anything about herself, then she said, maybe a bit too forced, that he’d gotten her pregnant and they’d decided not to have an abortion.
Abortions back then were illegal and it would have had to have been a back-alley one and they were expensive and dangerous. He’d offered to pay for it and go with her when she went to have it, but as she told it to Bill she just couldn’t do it, she wouldn’t do it, said she didn’t want to have a kid but she didn’t want to have an abortion.
Well, Beverly told Bill, at least he did the right thing and asked her to marry him. She was a dope, she said, because she was dumb enough to do it.
Bill stopped her there and told her about Jenny, all about Jenny, Pam’s cousin, and Jenny’s boyfriend Peter.
He told the story of the party Pam and he had and how that day Pam’s cousin Jenny had a back-alley abortion. There was another cousin, Nina, who came up to him at the party and told him that Jenny was laying in his and Pam’s bed, that she was bleeding pretty badly, that she’d had an abortion that day and had been trying to keep it quiet but that wasn’t gonna work cause the cat was out of the bag and now she needed help.
It was a tough night. The party went on and once when Pam was in the kitchen, doing double duty as it were, kind of putting out snacks to keep the party going and getting wet cloths to soothe Jenny with, he walked into the kitchen to find Peter hitting on Pam. Peter had moved behind the counter and was trying to feel her ass and kiss her at the same time. To her credit, Pam was pushing him away and telling him to go away and leave her alone.
Bill’s walking in was enough to stop Peter from what he was doing but Peter didn’t have any shame or guilt about it. He just kind of shrugged his shoulders and walked out.
Wow! That was Beverly’s reaction. Then she asked if that were all there was, and Bill went on to tell her the rest. First part was him and Peter sitting on the living room sofa together after the party was over. They smoked a joint and drank a beer. Peter never apologized and Bill didn’t say anything, wasn’t any reason to fight about it, especially not then while Jenny lay in the bedroom near-dying.
She did near-die, Bill said. But they finally reached the doctor and he told them how to position her and to best help stop the bleeding. He’d given her antibiotics and pain killers, so he said to get the bleeding under control and put her to sleep.
Peter finally went home alone. Jenny did recover. Jenny and Peter stayed together, but that wasn’t the end of the kitchen episode. When Jenny was alright, Pam told her all about it, about what Peter did, about how could anyone do something like that when his girlfriend was laying in the bedroom in such bad shape.
Jenny said yeah to that. Jenny was a spiteful girl.
By Peter Weiss
So they sat and they talked and they held hands while they talked.
“Why’d you get married?” Beverly asked.
“I wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular,” Bill said.
He told the story of Pam, his one live-with girlfriend, and then the barren years with only two encounters, very far apart. He told about how he abandoned Pam because it was getting too serious, or maybe because he was getting restless, or maybe because he was getting afraid. Maybe he was afraid she’d leave him or not like him after awhile.
He told the story of the cold, snowy winter night some of the guys he knew wanted to go to a party, about his having a car and them asking him if he’d drive. Deciding to go, to drive, something that had not been in his plans, had not even been what he wanted, was one of those existential decisions, one of those moments he had to reason to a what-the-hell decision, one of those things out there that didn’t matter in any way in the course of his life. He’d go. He’d have a few beers, smoke a joint… He’d drive them home and come home.
He sat in the corner most of the night. He was wearing his father’s WWII army coat, one of those long khaki-green wool overcoats, this one double-breasted with all brass buttons and his father’s final PFC stripe. Big highlight was the Big Red 1, his father’s infantry unit.
He had taken the coat off and had it on his lap. He was careful not to drop ash on it when they passed around the joints, and he didn’t drink but one beer, this because he was driving.
She asked him if he wanted to dance, this girl that would eventually become his wife. She was a dancer, a dance major at the University, in the University Dance Company. He said he didn’t dance, which was true because he had no rhythm and he was a terrible dancer, not to mention the fact that he was shy and very inhibited.
She said okay and sat down by him, took her turn in the joint rotation and passed it to him, took a sip of his beer without asking if it was okay.
Then she went off to dance.
He sat awhile, never moved from the spot he was in. He watched what was going on, watched the dancers dance, would find out that this was a dance party being held by one of the UDC members, so of course there were a lot of dancers there. There were lots of drama majors too, aspiring actors. He didn’t know, but he was willing to bet he was the only poet, the only writer there.
He told Beverly how at getting-time-to-go time his friends came over with her and one other girl and asked if they could drive the girls home. Bill didn’t want to but he didn’t want to be a spoil sport, so against his desires he said yes. She made sure to sit next to him in the front seat, sandwiched in like he’d been sandwiched by Rosie and Edelgarde just the other night.
Instead of going home, they went to Denny’s because they wanted to get something to eat, his friends did. Bill didn’t want to. The snow was getting worse and he didn’t want to be out in it. But he was a team player and went along with them. One of the boys wanted to pick up that other girl.
He had a whopping two dollars and fifteen cents in his pocket. Out of nowhere, and just because, he told her he was having coffee and she could have anything she wanted up to a dollar ninety-five.
And that’s how they met, really met.
After the coffee she helped him on with his coat, said no one had ever offered her all they had before and asked him if she could come over to his place for little while. She had a roommate and the roommate had a boyfriend and he would probably still be there so if she could hang out a bit that would be great.
They made out and petted, but she didn’t stay. Four days later she showed up on his door step and said she was moving in.
By Peter Weiss
When you see the video of the destruction caused by the rioters and looters and the media calls it peaceful protest, is that so?
When you see the video of the police being attacked and people being beaten by the rioters and the media calls it peaceful demonstration, is that so?
When black lives matter people say looting and beatings and attacks on police are justified, even deserved, is that so?
I wonder.
When the Democrats kneel to pay homage to black lives matter yet do nothing to stop the wanton black on black crime in their cities, then say they really care about black lives, is that so?
When the mayors of the failing Democrat cities blame COVID for their longstanding city budget shortfalls, is that so?
When Nancy and Chuck say the Feds have to bail out the failing Democrat-run cities that are broke because of COVID, is that so?
When the lapdogs of the Democrats, the mainstream media Pravda USA, cover all of the above and/or report it with opinion pieces masquerading as unbiased reporting yet claim they are unbiased and fair in their reporting, is that so?
When Chuck, Nancy and Joe-boy blame Trump for everything wrong in government, is that so?
Well, Chuck and Nancy and Joe-boy combined have been in government for more than 125 years. That is so.
Trump has only been in government for three and a half years. That is so.
When the mainstream media Pravda USA echoes that Trump is to blame for everything, is that so?
The mainstream media Pravda USA lapdogs of the Despicable Democrats say they are telling us the truth. Is that so?
WYSIWYG Not. That is so.
What we are being told is happening and what is really happening in the United States are two different things. And that is so.
By Peter Weiss
The rest of the week was very busy both in banquets and parties and in The Falstaff Room. Bill worked long, hard hours and did not have much time between finishing on banquets and setting up for his dinner service. Because The Falstaff Room was consistently busy now, the setup involved making sure they had enough of everything to cover what they could sell.
Caesar stayed away from Bill. Jo Ann did not mention his having said anything further to her about anything regarding his dislike for the new cook. Rosie and Edelgarde were just plain happy. They were happy they’d had that moment in the car with Bill. They were happy they were making money, lots of money, and they were happy that Caesar was himself busy such that he mostly left them alone.
Given how busy it was, the week went quickly. There wasn’t much time for encounters with any of the girls, and overall Bill was happy about this. He much preferred to be the one to initiate things, and generally he was not one to initiate things there. He much preferred for work to be uncomplicated and no more stressful than the demands of the job. The extracurricular stuff, well, he could have passed it all up if it left him alone, and he would have if he could have.
He did have one moment in the clandestine stairwell with Beverly. They had a lunch break together, nearly an hour. Bill saw she was wearing an extra earring in her left ear when he saw her that morning, and when they crossed paths they uttered a time with an if-possible attached to it. The if-possible had worked out.
It wasn’t what Bill wanted, but it did save him from Millie. Millie had been extremely quiet since their last encounter. Bill did not know if that were good or bad and he didn’t particularly care except that bad would create a mess and messes were not good to have at work. Messes were not good to have anywhere. They happened in and of themselves—the situation with Caesar had the potential to be a mess—without Bill doing anything at all.
Stuff happened.
Millie was content. Bill would learn this next time he saw her, next time they had a moment to talk. Meanwhile not seeing her that way was a good thing for him.
Beverly kissed Bill soon as he got there. She was waiting. She had been waiting, she said, since her party ended early and they were able to clear away all the food and dishes quickly.
“What’s up?” Bill asked after they’d kissed.
“Busy busy. Working just about all the time for the next month and more. You?”
“Same deal.”
“That’s it?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m just about ready,” Beverly said.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means just about.” She smiled at Bill and blushed red.
“I’m tired,” Bill said. “It’s good to just sit and rest.”
“That’s true. I’m on that big one later. When you start setting up for The Falstaff Room I’m gonna be setting up lots of tables for that banquet.”
“I hope you’ll make money.”
“Oh, for sure.” She was sitting next to Bill on the same step and turned slightly to face him. “Listen,” she said, “you can have me if you want me.”
“Well that’s about the best invitation, the warmest and most enthusiastic I’ve ever had.”
“That bad, huh?’
“Beyond bad. And you’re not getting away with it either. You’re not putting it on me. This is on you. You want to get down, I’m with it. You want to be friends and talk about marriage and all that great stuff, I’m down with that too. Just let me know.”
Bill took a moment and looked at her. “Listen, I’d do you in a flash. If I were single and you were single and we ran across each other, I’d be attracted and make a move. So that should tell you about your appeal. The rest is on you. Whatever you want will be okay.”
By Peter Weiss
Biden is unfit to be president.
Nothing has changed since I wrote that on Monday. So he is still unfit to be president.
Not surprisingly, some of the feedback and response has been exactly as predicted, no looking at Joe, no consideration of him, who he is and what he’s done. That’s off the table, so don’t even think about it.
Therefore, short and sweet again because the cultist-lefty non-thinkers, the brainwashed ones, the ones who believe the lies told by the Democrat lapdog mainstream media Pravda USA, the ones who believe that you can print a false story and then later quote it as evidence, won’t read past that first line with an open mind anyway.
So Mr. Nasty, Joe-boy-I’ll-take-you-behind-the-bleachers, picked about the nastiest VP choice he could.
Of course Pravda USA has anointed her as a goddess and labeled her as a moderate. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ms. Harris was nasty in action and deed as a DA and AG in California, a real bully who picked on little people and let the big boys go. She is the most liberal voter in the Senate and wouldn’t know her real opinion if it hit her in the head, or, she blows with the wind, says what is expedient at any given time and moves on as if it has no connection to anything else she’s ever said.
That’s the Democratic ticket: Nasty him and Nasty her.
From last time:
They say he’s a nice guy. Who says that?
Really, is just plain nasty for no apparent reason other than simple defensiveness and lack of ability to think on the spot what you want in a president? And vice president, soon to be president?
Joe Biden: just plain nasty. Goddess Harris: just plain nasty her.
