They had a second drink.
When Millie brought that second drink she sat next to him on the sofa. “I’m not used to this,” she said, “to the drinking early in the day. I’m getting light-headed.”
“Feel good?” Bill asked.
“Not complaining,” Millie said. “Not complaining about anything.”
“I do have to get up to the kitchen, you know.”
“I know,” Millie said, “and I know we’ve already spent some of your time.”
“I’d say your time too.”
“Our time,” Millie said. “I’m hoping we’ll have lots of our time over time. If you want that, of course.”
Bill thought a moment. The thought was if he had what he wanted he wouldn’t be here in the first place. The thought was that if he knew what he wanted he might have it. But it was so much more than that.
It is much more than that, Bill thought. Bill knew it went all the way back to his father who taught him that love was fulfilling the other person, that it was selfish to go after what you yourself wanted.
At other times, in another place, at this particular spot in that thought Bill would ask himself what he wanted. Not now. Not here. Not sitting on the sofa next to Millie who was waiting for him to do something. In effect, he thought, his not doing something was doing something.
Much, much later in his life Bill would discover something he would consider a major discovery. It wasn’t that women and the sex were just another drug, which they were. He would discover that much sooner.
He would discover that Robert’s saying “what’s good to you is good for you” wasn’t as simple as it seemed. How could you know what was good for you? What was good to you? What seemed good to you one day sometimes ended up being crappy in the end, crappy overall. It was hard to figure. Then, what about what felt good? Was what felt good good for you? Good to you? Sex felt good at the time. But then… Drugs felt good, but then…
Helping that kid at that demonstration felt good – at the moment. It felt right, was, regardless of the consequences, right. It felt good right up to the moment he got grabbed by the undercover FBI agents who happily knocked him out from behind and handed him over to the Columbus police.
And now here he was. Millie in purple was sitting next to him. Skinny Marie-like-except-in-cinnamon-skin Millie, prepared and willing to do anything he wanted, anything he said, sat next to him on the sofa, her bony, sexy self with magnificent hands and feet all just for him. In her barely closed housedress under which was more purple, bra and panties, she was positively delectable. And she was light-headed too.
But he was thinking about his father. He was thinking about what his father impressed upon him, specifically about not taking what you wanted, about fulfilling others, about love being putting the other person before yourself and caring for them more than for yourself.
What bullshit, he would come to learn.
That big, major discovery that would come some maybe forty years later was that so much of what his father taught him/impressed upon him was survivor mentality. How simple. Survivor mentality. Survivor stuff.
He would be teaching a book called Maus. The father, a survivor, was exercising. He asked his son to get him his medicine, which the son did. When the father opened the bottle of pills he spilled them all over. “Look what you did,” the father screams at the son and he goes on to berate him, to beat him up mentally.
“Let’s have another drink,” Bill said.
“I was hoping for something else,” Millie said.
“I know,” said Bill. “That too.”
“You owe me,” Millie said. “And you’re building up a big debt.”
Millie, clearly showing disappointment in her demeanor, stood. She took Bill’s glass and hers and got them another drink.
“This will make me drunk,” she said.
By Peter Weiss
Bill sat on the sofa at the end closest to her.
“You don’t have to worry about anything,” Millie said. “Chloe let me know specifically that she would make sure to cover your ass.”
“Let’s have that drink,” Bill said.
Because they were close enough from the way they were sitting, she in the arm chair nearest the sofa, he on the sofa closest to her, Millie kicked off one of her slippers and put her foot up in Bill’s lap almost but not quite right there. Settled, she wiggled her toes for him and as she did this she showed him her hands.
“I know you like purple. So, you like?”
“If you know I like it, then you know I like.”
“How much?” She flattened the foot some and rubbed him with it.
“That much,” Bill said.
“That much a lot?”
“That much is more than a lot.” Bill, already roused, looked at Millie. “Don’t start something you aren’t ready to handle. Now get me that drink and take off that other shoe too.”
“That all you want me to take off?”
“Take off what you want.”
Millie stood. The bottle was on the table there along with two glasses. She bent down and kissed Bill before she went to the bottle, and when she turned Bill reached up the back of her dress and helped himself to a full feel of her. Millie stayed still for him, spread her legs a touch so he could move his hand where he wanted.
“What makes you think I’m not ready for anything you want to throw at me? What makes you think I can’t handle whatever you want to do to me?”
“That what you want?”
“What?”
“Anything and everything.”
“That’s exactly what I want. What I been hoping for.”
Bill slapped her butt, not hard, rather friendly actually. “Get the drinks,” he said.
Millie kicked off her other shoe and padded barefoot on the throw rug to the table. She poured two glasses half full with bourbon.
“I don’t usually drink bourbon,” she said.
“What do you like?”
“White wine. You?”
“I like bourbon but I prefer gin or vodka. And I do like white wine.”
“You do drugs?”
“You mean like smoke weed?”
“Yeah.” She faced him now and came close with the drinks.
“Not at work, not until I’m off probation and sure I’m not getting caught. If I’m gonna get high here, I’ll do it before I come into the hotel.”
Millie handed Bill his glass and stood before him. They didn’t say anything. They waved their glasses in the air as a kind of toast and then sipped at the liquor. She stayed where she was, stood right before Bill letting him look up at her as she stood there.
He didn’t do anything at first. He sipped the bourbon, sipped it a second time, thought.
Wrong-think came to mind first. First thought with the barefoot and ready beauty before him was to remember how he had wasted steeped deep in wrong-think what should have been a perfect morning with his wife and then being home alone after she had left for work. Alcohol led him to wrong-think. Girls led him, a married man, to wrong-think. What had happened to him in his life thus far led him to wrong-think. Worst of all, wrong-think led to more wrong-think and all the wrong-think was still there in him as he sat on the sofa in this place he knew on so many levels he should never have been in in the first place.
Better to be with Beverly in the staircase, right? He asked himself this as he sat there. You get both, his inner voice told him now. They owe it to you.
For the life of him he couldn’t say who they were. Maybe sober and all alone he might have told himself that no one owed him anything no matter what had happened in his life, no matter what happens in his life.
By Peter Weiss
Bottoms. Sitting in the workhouse barber shop, his hair on the floor of that place, hair that he himself had to clean up, that was a bottom of sorts. Course if he really looked at it for what it all was, the bottom was when the judge banged down the gavel and pronounced him guilty, said “Policemen don’t lie,” and had him taken away.
That was the bottom because however you sliced it, from there it was all uphill. Everything. He had to serve his time, but then it was done.
During his stint in the workhouse he would do something really special, something he never, ever spoke about. Maybe he would speak about it someday.
Right after his stint in the workhouse, visiting his probation officer, Bailey, he would meet up with Robert, and being a nice guy, one with empathy, he would offer Robert a cigarette. Robert didn’t smoke but he would be the one to get Bill the job that led to where he was now. Bailey and Robert were connected through the numbers game. Robert was the numbers runner, Bailey the customer.
Millie had a record book and when Bill first saw her she was writing in her book. Sometimes she was sorting laundry, sometimes hanging clean uniforms on racks, this always out by her counter.
When Bill saw her see him he saw her smile at him. Instinctively he smiled back and then he saw her go back to her book.
“How many you turning in?” she asked before she looked up at him.
“Three,” Bill said, “and I don’t have any more.”
“No problem,” Millie said. “I have all fresh ones for you. I knew you’d go through uniforms yesterday.”
“Couple of these shirts are crusty. We were really busy.”
“I know. I got the whole report. You’re a super star.”
“Yeah, a regular rock star.”
“Wanna drink?” Millie set down the pen and looked directly at Bill for the first time.
He saw she was wearing purple lipstick and purple eye shadow. He thought she was gorgeous but he wasn’t about to say so.
“Chloe left me a bottle of bourbon and said I should share it with you. She also said her dinner was great yesterday.”
“She told you to share it with me?”
“She did, for real. She said it was okay, that the chef wouldn’t be back till tomorrow. She said she would square it with the chef and management if anything ever came up.”
“She said that, huh?”
“Come on,” Millie said. She gave Bill a wink and a big smile, motioned with her hand for Bill to come around the counter and join her. Bill could see that her fingernails were purple too.
When he got around to her side of the counter, first thing he did was look down to see her feet. Toenails were purple too. She was wearing the open-toe slippers, flats, and nothing on her legs. With him by her, she slid down the door over the counter then closed and locked the entry door.
“I did the purple just for you,” Millie said as she led them into her room off to the side. “I was hoping it would be an easy day and you’d have some time to hang out. Chloe said you might. She told me to make you my Christmas present from her.”
“Well that’s awfully forward of her,” Bill said.
“Wonderfully so, right?”
“What kind of present were you looking for?”
“Well…” Millie didn’t answer straight off. She took a moment first to flip the lock on the door. “I wore purple underneath too.” She smiled at Bill then sat herself in the arm chair where she carefully crossed her legs and tucked her housedress in under her so she wasn’t showing anything.
“Well is a deep subject,” Bill said.
By Peter Weiss
For the first time in awhile Bill felt like popping speed.
Since he and his wife had moved to Cleveland he had been relatively drug fee. He smoked weed, but not at work, and he drank lots of gin because that’s what his wife’s father drank. He still had a supply of black beauties, but he didn’t dip into it much. He was holding on to it, hoarding it even though he knew he could head down to Columbus any time he needed to to see Doc. Getting busted for drugs at work was simply not an option.
Down in the restaurant in Columbus drugs were rampant. Later on Bill would find that in every restaurant he worked drugs were all over. It wasn’t this way in the hotels. In hotels drugs were there but you had to find them, they didn’t find you. With his being on probation, one thing Bill did not want to do was anything that would ruin this gig he had. Consciously he had not sought out the drug connections. First place to start though would be Beverly since her sister was a maid and the maids would have a good sense of the connections.
Messing with Millie and Beverly in and of itself was enough to get Bill fired. That he was protected by Kalista and most probably by Chloe too was great, but nothing was foolproof and Bill continually told himself this. He knew on a whole other level that he should not be fooling around anyway. There were many reasons for this and knowing that according to Masters and Johnson more that 60% of men cheated on their spouses didn’t make it okay or even any better.
Cheating was wrong. Pure and simple, it was simply wrong.
And so it goes.
But then lots of things were wrong in this world.
Bill was thinking all this on his way to see Millie. He was thinking it was a day. All had started out great. He was with his wife. They laughed. They played. She let him sleep in, brought him coffee in bed. They had money in the bank, a nice apartment, a decent car. They both had jobs. Neither one of their jobs was the one they actually wanted, but they had jobs and weren’t wanting for anything in any way.
All good.
But it was a day. She left. He took a beer then a second beer. A good start went straight to wrong-think. Wrong-think went to… Beer went to vodka, went to thinking maybe he shouldn’t drive to work. But he did drive to work and here he was with three dirty uniforms in his arms and three cups of bourbon in his stomach on top of the vodka and beer he’d had at home.
Some speed would be great. Some Quaaludes would be even better. Best yet would be some Quaaludes on top of the black beauties and a drink to go with it.
How the hell…
He wondered how from just about perfect the day had gone to shit in a matter of a few hours. Really it was a matter of a few moments because the moment his wife had left out of the apartment and he had taken that first beer the skid had started. It was more of a slide than a skid, one of those slides in the arcades and carnival places. He was on top on the good spot, the sweet spot, and then he was free-falling down. Down and down and there was no bottom for the moment.
But of course there was always a bottom and while he might not be seeing one here at the moment, he’d been to a few so far.
And then there she was. Millie was just standing there at her counter like always, doing what she always did.
By Peter Weiss
He went straight down to his locker. Not unlike some other mornings, they were all there. Jimmy G was laying down on the bench. Victor was sitting next to him, down past his feet. Jimmy Banquet Chef was standing. He had a bottle of bourbon in hand. Victor had the Dixie cups and was spreading them out on the bench next to him.
“Here he is,” Victor said.
“Man of the hour,” the banquet chef said. “Close to three-fifty yesterday. Beat last year by over a hundred.”
“Why?” Bill asked.
“Want my real thoughts?” the banquet chef asked.
“You could lie,” Bill said. “I don’t give a shit.”
“Careful,” Victor said. “You still have a month until you’re off probation.”
“Month and four days,” the banquet chef said. He laughed. “Partly you. Food is consistent and much better since you’ve been here. The chef is very happy. Other part is the economy. Business is good. People have money.”
“It all goes together,” Victor said.
“Won’t have much today,” the banquet chef said. “We have a little prep to do for next few days. We do have a breakfast on Thursday. You should come in early and make the money.”
“I will,” Bill said.
“I think the chef wants to keep you working like you are. We were talking about it a few days ago. Banquets are slower in January and February but they pick up in some in March and then a lot more in April when baseball season starts.”
“I’ll take what I can get for hours.”
“Chef likes that about you.”
“I appreciate him working it out for me.”
“It’s me more than him,” the banquet chef said. “I know I can count on you. And you do good work.”
“Thanks boss,” Bill said.
Drinks were poured and they all had a cup of bourbon. Soon as they finished the first cup, Jimmy Banquet Chef poured another each. He told Bill the chef wasn’t coming back until tomorrow and so they could do their day and not have to worry about anything but the business. Thinking the way he was, Bill was glad about that.
“Dare we have one more?” Victor asked when they’d finished the second cup.
“Why not?” the banquet chef said. He poured one more round for everyone.
Jimmy G only sat up enough to drink from his cup. Each time, between drinks he went back to laying down. Like always, he was clearly disinterested. He made no effort to conceal his lack of interest. Worse, he made no effort to be an active part of the team. He was a part of the team because he was, but he was the weak link. Not only did he not work hard and not care who saw that he didn’t work hard, but he didn’t care about the food he cooked. If it was good or not didn’t matter to him. That meant that everyone around him, and now it was mostly Bill, had to cover for him and make sure everything was okay.
Third round finished, on top of what Bill had already had to drink before he came into work Bill was feeling numb. Maybe under other circumstances he would have been feeling good, but good wasn’t part of this day. Wrong-think was hiding under the conversation and soon as he opened his locker and took out his dirty uniforms it came rushing back into his head.
After that third drink the others went up to the kitchen. Bill, all alone, changed into the one clean uniform he had left, gathered up the dirty ones and headed off to the laundry.
Not only did wrong-think come back. Anger rushed in too. He was, of a sudden, pissed off. He could not particularly say why. He could only say that he was.
He was angry at the cop who was undercover. He was angry at Sergeant Hopkins who was in charge of his case and to whom he was just another notch in the belt toward promotion. Bill was angry at what he didn’t even know he was angry at.
By Peter Weiss
Bill parked on the loading dock but did not get out of his car. He sat awhile, lit a cigarette, smoked.
Wrong-think gets you nowhere was his first thought.
He was filled with wrong-think. That was his second thought. He was filled with wrong-think and he was filled with anger. On top of wrong-think and anger, he was filled with alcohol at the moment. That, the alcohol, was usually compounded with weed, speed, coke and sometimes other things. All the substances did not lead to better-think or anywhere near good-think. At best they couched wrong-think, made it so it didn’t feel so bad, hurt so bad. But it led to bad things. Wrong-think led to bad things. Substances led to bad things. Bad things and substances led to worse things.
What leads to good things? Bill asked himself this. He didn’t know why he asked himself this, at least not now, not after he’d had a good late, late after Christmas with his wife and a good morning with her, her for once leaving for work before him. They’d had some quality, if late, time together and that time had reminded him of what a relationship was, what love was, except he wasn’t sure he actually loved his wife. Oh, he loved her. He just wasn’t sure he knew what love was, really knew. Sometimes when he thought this he thought fake it till you make it.
Goddamn, he thought. He hadn’t been here in a while, in this thought, and he couldn’t figure out how he got here or why. He just knew good-think, good-do, do-good, didn’t get you anywhere either. Wrong-think and substances got you nowhere. Do-good and do-right got you nowhere too. It would become his one overriding question, one he hadn’t formulated yet and wouldn’t formulate for a long while yet, his sixty-four thousand dollar question: how come one dog in the pound gets a great home and the one next to it gets euthanized?
But he wasn’t thinking that now. He was thinking about going in to work in a job he never dreamed of having in an occupation he’d never considered as one for him, had never thought about at all, ever in his life.
And then he thought why now. Everything was good when his wife brought him the coffee, him still in bed. He’d kissed her, laughed with her, fondled her, teased her. They’d played, had a fun moment.
So why now?
He thought he hadn’t thought what he’d thought. He’d thought, and this was all he’d thought, he’d be a writer. He never thought about how he would make a living, what his life would be like, would look like. He never considered those things, and of course maybe he should have. Maybe if his mother hadn’t died he would have thought of those things, maybe she would have brought it up to him and made him consider it.
He wasn’t looking to meet anyone when he’d met his wife. He was happy being alone, all by himself. He didn’t have to think about supporting anyone, taking care of anyone. He didn’t have to think about a job or an occupation. He just had this one simple idea. He would write.
That’s all she wrote.
So here he was parked on the loading dock of the Sheraton on the Square going in to do a little cooking for upcoming banquets and then cook the dinner in The Falstaff Room.
How the hell did this happen? How the hell did he find himself in Cleveland, married, doing something he wasn’t really suited for?
Why this? Why me? Wrong-think.
Outside his car he crushed out his cigarette. He could see a bakery truck at one of the loading platforms. Other than that, the dock was quiet. Cold swept over everything, a strong ugly cold that blew in from the Great Lakes. His first stop would be the laundry. He needed all clean uniforms today.
By Peter Weiss
They were in foot and hand shackles on the bus so they had to shuffle as the length of the foot chain allowed, their hands in front of them tied to their feet.
Stepping down off the bus one boy no older than Bill, who was just twenty, tripped and tumbled down. Since he couldn’t use his hands to protect himself in the fall, he stood up with a bloody nose.
The boy, Bill remembered again now as he drove, as he remembered all too often all the time when he thought about it, didn’t really stand up. Two jail guards pulled him up by the shackles. Bill saw that the handcuff part cut one of his wrists. The boy stood there bleeding at his wrist and with blood dripping down his face from his nose.
“Goddamn dirty pig soiling our yard here,” one of the guards said.
A different guard stepped up to the boy. “You gonna pay for this, motherfucker. You gonna pay for it and you gonna clean it up.”
Bill was scared worse than he’d ever recalled being scared in his whole life. He was trying not to cry, trying to look tough and trying to take in everything going on around him all at once. Somehow his eyes must’ve met the eyes of one of the guards because that guard was suddenly in his face.
“You eyeballing me boy?” he said loudly, so close to Bill that Bill could feel the guard’s breath on his face and smell his stale lunch too.
“No.”
“No what?”
Bill had no clue what he was supposed to say. “No officer,” he finally managed.
“You call me sir, boy.”
“Yes sir,” Bill said.
“Lookee here,” the guard said. “We got us a bonafide genuine hippie boy.”
All the guards came over. They all wore side arms and carried shotguns. One guard cocked his shotgun and said “I see the slightest motion out the corner of my eye while I’m checking out this here hippie, I’m shooting at it first and asking about it after I shoot.”
“I’ll be damned,” one guard said.
“Remember the hippie we checked in this morning?” another one said.
“I heard he enjoyed the strip search. You gonna enjoy the strip search, boy?”
Bill did not answer.
Another guard, one who had not spoken, poked Bill in the ribs with the butt of his shotgun. “Didn’t you hear him ask you a question?”
“Yes sir,” Bill said.
“Well?” the same guard said, prodding Bill’s ribs with the shotgun with each word. “Answer his fucking question. You like it up the ass? You look like a faggot to me.”
“No sir,” Bill said.
“You a queer?”
“No sir.”
“We gonna put you in D dorm with the toughs,” the sergeant said. He hadn’t spoken before either. He stepped close to Bill. “Course that’s after the barber gets done with you.”
The sergeant stepped off and told the guards to start marching the inmates in. Just before they did, an inmate came out carrying a bucket with a brush inside it. Bill noted the inmate, in workhouse blues, was an albino.
“Thanks, whitey,” the sergeant said. “Okay now, Mr. Sharp,” he said to one of the guards, “hold the line while the bleeder cleans up his mess.”
One guard pushed the bleeder forward and forced him down to his knees. Another pushed the bucket forward with his foot, not caring that water was splashing the inmate on his knees.
The line of prisoners stood watching while the still bleeding inmate scrubbed the cement with the bristle brush. He stopped only to keep wiping his face with his sleeve so he didn’t bleed on the ground anymore.
“Anyone else wanna bleed?” one of the guards asked.
No one said anything.
By Peter Weiss
He went home. He wrote. Something started that would stay with him and progress. Of course he couldn’t know it yet, but it would stay with him his entire life. He would write. He would stop staying he was a writer. When someone asked him what he did, he would simply say he wrote.
Right now, he thought, he drove, he concentrated on driving.
Bobbie was a good sport. He understood. His father, well, that was a different story. He thought Bill was kind of gay, you know, writing poetry and all. But then his father was BIG RED 1, first division infantry WWII, POW for three and a half years in Nazi Germany, Stalag 3B Furstenburg.
And so it goes.
His father could never understand what majoring in English could get Bill, how it could earn him a living. Bill didn’t think that way. His father was dirt poor, immigrant, depression kid, dropped out of school in eighth grade to help support the family. Bill grew up working class, poor at times but not dirt poor, never dirt poor.
What it got me was busted, Bill thought as he drove. And here I am going somewhere I never thought/ never dreamed I’d be going, doing what I never wanted to do, never thought/dreamed about doing.
“You know, in Japan during the winter they keep the eggs in the freezer, not to freeze them of course, but to keep them from freezing.”
That’s what the professor who led him to the demonstration had told Bill one time. He was a poet and translator of Japanese poetry. They were meeting for lunch that day to discuss Bill’s writing.
“Wanna see what’s going on at the demonstration?” that professor had asked.
Then Bill’s hair lay there on the floor of the workhouse barber shop, gone in four zips, and he was handed the broom to sweep it up and throw it away, the only inmate that was made to do it himself. The barber was reluctant, but the guard who had it in for Bill made him hand over the broom and stood over Bill laughing as Bill threw into the garbage that which had taken him so long to grow and which had been so valuable to him.
Bill complied with the barber and the guard. Bill didn’t know yet that the show the guards had put on when the bus arrived, you know, their practiced routine to confirm their power position, was just a show, mostly, cause when and if push came to shove, they were the power players.
Bill complied because he was scared out of his wits and he didn’t know what else to do. In the scheme of things, sweeping up his hair and whatever hair was already there, if that was all he had to do, didn’t seem like so much.
He complied, and now he drove to the work that he’d never in ever thought would be his work but which he was happy to have and was thankful for because after all he was able to support himself and his wife and pay off their debts.
He had a few debts because he’d had to borrow money for rent and food from his brother and more money, a lot of it, from his boss at Suburban for the car they needed, he especially needed simply to go back and forth to work. He’d also had to borrow from his father because he had no money for his last quarter’s fees.
That was the whole thing. When he’d borrowed that money (his father had charged the fees on his charge card because he didn’t have any money), his father had made him promise he’d stay away from the demonstrations. And he would have too but for that professor who never did get to look at Bill’s writing.
On top of everything else, Bill had broken the promise to his father. Because of that, because of breaking a promise and disobeying, he could not ask for help, could not tell his father what happened.
By Peter Weiss
Bill didn’t take the bus into work. He wasn’t fit to drive, but he wasn’t fit to take the bus either. He was slightly high from drinking and pissed off from nothing other than wrong-think. Altogether this was not a good combination.
As he drove, he considered that he and his wife had had a good night and morning together. The shower together and their sleep were close and intimate. This was a good thing. She had brought him coffee in bed, who could ask for more?
But then…
More wrong-thing as he drove.
Where was he going? Why was he going there? What did he do wrong? What did he do to deserve what he got?
These were the basic questions that hit him as he made his way to the hotel.
Then there was the next set of questions. What was waiting there for him and why? How did this happen and how did he allow it to happen? How the hell did he get to where he was at?
No-good place four.
They cut his hippie hair, the hair that went down his back, in about four straight moves with the trimmer. Zip. Zip. Zip. Zip. All the moves front to back, in a row, just like mowing the lawn. His beautiful hair, hair he had fought his father so hard to be able to grow, hair that took years to get as long as it was, was gone in less than two minutes actual time. Zip, zip, zip, zip. Hair that he loved ended up in a big puddle on the floor of the workhouse barber shop.
Goddamn.
Then to make it worse, he remembered, they made him sweep it up himself.
None of the other inmates had to sweep up their hair. The others, they just got their cuts and went on about their business. But the guards who didn’t like Bill because he was A&B on a police officer stood by and made the barber make Bill get up out of the chair and clean up his own hair.
“How you like that, hippie boy?”
Except he wasn’t a hippie boy, not really. He wasn’t an anything in that regard. Yeah, he smoked pot. Yeah, he did speed. Yeah he was liberal and free-thinking and he took hallucinogens every now and then, at least he had done so until his wife-to-be had a bad trip and showed him they shouldn’t do that stuff.
So what? That was all part of being young and alive at the time he was young and alive. He didn’t belong to any organizations or political organizations. He didn’t proselytize. He wasn’t against anything per se. He didn’t agree with the war. He thought all people should be treated the same way and have the same rights and opportunities. He thought this was the way it should be in the world and that anyone who didn’t think this way, well, he didn’t want to be around them.
Nope, he thought. He wasn’t anything but a writer. That he was. That he did. He was a writer.
He was with his best friend Bobbie when they were fifteen over at Bobbie’s house. They were smoking pot and listening to music. Bobbie had speakers that went just about floor to ceiling. It was mid-winter, he remembered that because he remembered the cold walk home during which he kept repeating the same phrase over and over so he wouldn’t forget it.
“I have to go home,” he said to Bobbie.
“What? Why?”
“I have to go write something.”
The phrase had just popped into his head and now his mind demanded he go home immediately and write.
Nope he wasn’t anything but a writer. He wrote poetry and would later move into writing fiction. Yup, he was a fiction writer although he didn’t quite know it at the time.
By Peter Weiss
“Hey,” the smaller kid said. Bill started to walk away but as he said what he did he put his hand on Bill’s shoulder.
Bill flipped. He was already in the red zone and he just went to fire.
In one motion, he turned, tackled the little mutt and pinned him on the ground. Without thought and as part of that same motion, he grabbed his hair and started banging his head on the cement sidewalk.
Over and over. He would have killed the kid if the kid’s friends hadn’t pulled him off. They literally had to pull him off. It was hard to do so because Bill’s hands were still grabbing the kid’s hair.
But for the grace of God.
No-good place three. There were many no-good places. About six weeks after he was out of the workhouse, the undercover cop who was in the back of the paddy wagon with him and the kid he had tried to defend, a cop who they didn’t know was a cop, who was handcuffed just as they were and who led the conversation which showed up verbatim at his trial, tried to sell him pot in an alley in Columbus.
Why was Bill in an alley? Because through the campus area, at least, and in many parts of Columbus, there was a back-street type network. They were like alleys behind the buildings but they were through streets in actuality and they had no traffic lights at all. They were faster and more direct in some cases, and when you were walking from one place to another, if you knew how to cut thought the alleys you could cut your walking distance considerably.
This was wrong-think because laying there in bed Bill got pissed off all over again. He could feel himself starting to fume. He felt himself clenching his fists and he wanted to get up and punch the wall.
He might have. He just might have if one of the cats had not jumped on the bed and rubbed her ears on his half—clenched fist. It was the spotted white one, Sylvie, and he rubbed her ears. Her purring started deescalating his rage, her rubbing on him and revving like a smoothly running engine made him feel almost happy, almost good.
Overall, Bill could not remember feeling happy. He couldn’t remember feeling good.
He petted Sylvie until she was done being petted. Like any self-respecting cat, when she’d had enough, she simply got up and jumped off the bed. That’s when Bill got up, not because he had to, but because he wanted to. He got up, went to the frig and got himself a beer.
He drank that first beer quickly, and then he took himself a second beer which he brought with him into the shower. This beer he drank slowly, sipped at it while he lingered under the hot water. A long time he spent under the hot water.
As he dressed to get ready to go to work, he considered the day. He did not have any banquets to work on but he would spend a few hours with the banquet chef and Victor doing the prep for the next day’s parties. The rest of the week had no banquets, but lots of little parties, New Years’ parties. There were some breakfasts too and he thought he might see Beverly one of the mornings that he was in very early. As he finished dressing, the way he was feeling, he hoped it was sooner than later.
The anger and the beer made him feel ornery. Ornery was another no-good place, a different kind of no-good place than a no-good thought place. Feeling ornery and being able to act on it was different than being in a bad place in thoughts.
The hell with it, he thought. Before he left for work he took a swig of vodka from the bottle in his liquor cabinet. Slightly buzzed, it crossed his mind that maybe he should take the bus to work.
