1969 and Then Some

by Robert Wintner

  Southern Cross attempted the rolling rhythm of the best decade, and we did wear bell bottoms and loved to love each other in every way. But the lyric made a salty dog wonder: what the hell was he talking about?

  Back on the real ocean, blustery, swirling skies and waves breaking over the bow were backdrop on a birthday boy moaning to inboard then rolling to port for the ho-heave over the rail. The four grand option money paid back in cash twelve hours before departure allowed a grand for groceries, two grand for beer and liquor and a grand for cocaine to celebrate, because failure to celebrate small victories could doom a life to no celebration at all.

  A yacht in the tropics made sense as a reality of choice. So a momentary setback, with its puking, pain and hopeless odds, was only purgatory. Steve Miller capped it one more time with a biblical reminder that purgatory is prerequisite to heavenly ascension.

  You got to go through hell before you

  Get to Heaven

  Of historical note is that cocaine got cool in the 70s—Johnny Carson asked Maurice Chevalier if WWI prisoners actually got cocaine from the guards. “Mais oui, but it was a different time, avec esprit de corps, and it was never more than one or two sniffs per day.” By the 80s the toot defined us, drove us, thought for us and provided confidence beyond caffeine.

  Doomsday would not be denied. You can’t take illicit white powder to sea for practical reasons. It melts in the humidity—unless it’s sealed tight in a humidor and left unopened. Fuck that. Besides practicality are many more reasons for going ahead and tooting up the rest of the toot. Many, many. You can get more at the far end. Tooting it up the night before was also addictive and destructive, but then failure accepted seemed better than failure’s inevitability. Given proper perspective on timing, getting rid of the drug seemed most prudent in sustaining momentum.

  In short order, two grifters arrived in the tropics, charm and spirit unvanquished, to meet a steady stream of tourists waiting for the adventure of a lifetime. Thirty grand a month in revenue felt great, and thirty-five in expenses didn’t seem so bad. The tide would turn. Or could or should turn.

  But it didn’t turn, because it wasn’t a real tide but another imperfect analogy, all ebb, down to survival mode in a backwash of monthly deficit, drugs and denial. Some women wanted to share the drugs and apparent prosperity. Circling below were insolvency, foreclosure and a federal marshal seeking a “stolen” yacht. The bank foreclosed, delineating the formative process from the situation defined. When you got nothing you got nothing to lose. Which could be the most frequently disproved lyric in music history.

  Moving to an idyllic beach felt easy and anonymous. Charters could run so young couples could realize the romance. Free of pesky debits, a questionable future seemed easy as a marginal past.

  Dreamlike and ephemeral, incognito life on a beach was fantasy fulfilled. Delivering day-sail adventure in a fool’s paradise. Kenny asked when we would be arrested. I didn’t know. We would hit the road with a judgment against earnings and make our way to retirement, which shouldn’t take more than thirty years or so.

  “Won’t we go to jail first?”

  A favorite pastime on campus was a layered goof called slo-mo football, which was just like real football—tackle football—but with no pads and stoned stupid. Pass plays reverted to real time briefly, but the game taught how much was possible with no time on the clock, if you went slo-mo.

  We ran an ad for a yacht priced to sell—call it a steal, and the new owner was eased into payments with no lingering grudges. Okay, tapped into payments, but still. It was the ultimate hot mud sale. Just add water.

  Kenny advised a legal career or banking for me. But banking is boring, maybe terminal, and no career is legal. Life circles are rarely concise as a good story, but that lap seemed tidy enough. On another pass through the doors of perception, a shipwreck in Hawaii felt lucky.

  Any port is snug after a storm, and a familiar port was even better. Betty Boop came on from out of the blue. Our psychic horizons melded in a Hawaii coffee shop for me, on a Texas shrink’s sofa for her.

  She’d moved to Boston in ‘71 as a married grad student and got her master’s degree in English literature. That degree and eight dollars could get her a cup of coffee in any of your better resort hotels, but she did enjoy the intellectual discourse. Her new Ivy-League husband called the marriage perfect, though perfection was relative to his campaign for the PhD. Betty was an academic wife, which is similar to political wifery with equal measures of tedious small talk and hopeless good cheer—and with limits on certain topics to keep the husband’s profile perfect. As an up-and-comer on a fast track to tenure, the husband’s instinct for literary meaning and campus politics endeared him to senior faculty. His mentor, Professor Pontius Polyneseus Pough, the Charles Grey Gildquist Chair for Elizabethan Prose, struck a pose of wisdom for the ages. The grad students spoke of genetic descent from the masters, and though some took the genetic reference as a joke, others did not.

  Prof Pough would bang Betty twice on each visit after regular office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays for three months at her insistence. This from the Boop’s mouth. She’d been so alone, so beside herself with the new husband’s preoccupation and total distraction from everything but the PhD and academic potential with regard to agonizing analysis of the most boring verse on Earth. She felt abandoned and stifled. Make no mistake: Betty was horny, which was not a fault but a clear and present maintenance issue accruing to any husband with a third-grade education or the equivalent in common sense thereof.

  In time, on a carefully laid trail of slips, subtext and blatant clues, she felt sure hubby was wise to the hanky-panky, as intended. He said nothing, leaving her no recourse but to keep banging Pough, a chore in itself, she said, given his effusions of self-esteem and his tiresome failure at getting it up. The latter problem sounded like an attempt to discount the exchange as real sex, in which the hot and steamy is a function of mutually consenting adults. I would not ask how she cured his equivocation. Didn’t she say twice on each visit?

  Finally, she left a note from Pough referencing romantic innuendo lying on the kitchen table. Hubby found it and kept it. The note praised Betty’s skills as equal in a global context to Pough’s own literary insights. Well, it was painful for hubby, she’d hoped. But she’d forced the issue, demanding that he stand like a man to re-declare his love and challenge Pough to a duel or a game of whist or something. He didn’t. He began helping her cover her careless clues. He remained true to academic potential. He seemed grateful for her support in the cause.

  Betty finally told him point blank that she was banging the head prof twice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Each.

  How did hubby take the frontal verbal? He made a beeline to Professor Pough’s office to apologize for any misunderstanding.

  I got the tale in ’85 on the phone. Betty and I hadn’t spoken for years, till the day of our psychic reunion, a phenomenon extraordinary only to those with routine lives, which, they say, last a long time, which is great if you like routine. Surrounded by chitchat and 2% double macchiatos, hold the foam, hold the cinnamon but one light-medium shake of the dark chocolate sprinkles, and make that a grandé, I did not think of Betty.

  Staring into a motherfucking cup of black coffee felt perfect for soaking up sensations: no wind, no waves, no sun, no spray, no tourist questions and no impending consequence.

  Movement in the periphery vanished on a glance. The aerie faerie crowd will tell you that spirits, nymphs, gnomes, leprechauns, menehunes and many elfin creatures frolic in the periphery. A cloud drifted by, a talk bubble like the lyrical array of Led Zeppelin II on New Year’s Eve of ’69 on late lift off. We’d been warned of acid flashback—hallucination or reality warp could revisit any time. Polite media profiled flashback as a hazard for the duration of life, but the experienced saw flashback as a bonus, like a trailer of a great movie showing the best bits.

  Maybe the coffee shop talk bubble drifting out front was a flashb
ack. After spin-cycle at sea and life, the flashback felt easy. It said:

  Betty Boop.

  The words wobbled into focus with bumps and wrinkles, perhaps a warning of what svelte coeds come to—but such a warning would only concern a sexist, soulless man.

  I loved her.

  I looked away.

  I looked back, and it was gone. What a relief. I feared surface crazing and rigging failure. It reappeared, floating over the crowd:

  Betty Boop.

  So I wondered as men do, where she is now. Betty Boop stood out on many levels. She’d chosen me as the recipient of her bounty. She’d treated me like the man I could only hope to be.

  I had errands and chores, but early that evening I tracked her down and made the call.

  It was thirteen years since we last spoke, or fifteen, and caller I.D. was still years into the future. When she picked up the phone I said, “Hey. What are you doing?”

  “I can’t believe you called.”

  “Why shouldn’t an old friend call?”

  “You should call. You should have called years ago. No. Really. It’s okay that you didn’t. But I was talking about you today. I don’t mean casually. I talked about you for an hour.”

  “About me?”

  “To my shrink.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Well, no, it hasn’t been good. But it was good today.”

  I’d heard that she divorced the first husband. A year or two later she’d begun dating Randy Mutton, a slovenly boy who’d ignored those challenges that can get a kid down. Late-blooming acne and surface shyness only hid the young dynamo inside. She hadn’t known Randy in our college days, though he’d admired her from afar as inaccessible and way too perfect—just as I had. Randy’s heart-thumping crush began the first time he saw Betty on my arm.

  But Randy M and Betty B as an item? Wha!

  Randy had lived in a fraternity house where I waited tables in exchange for meals. The fraternity’s theme of gross humor focused on bodily function. Top rung of the value system there was anything scatological, disgusting, unfortunate, impolite, indelicate, embarrassing and in your face. The bathrooms had no walls around the toilets, so the boys farted and shit in traffic, perhaps to better ditch their inhibitions. Fifteen years before the movie the place was Animal House. Any given night could trigger the food fight of the Century. The pledges cleaned up, and the dining room stayed on simmer with many eyes roaming for the first toss or flick.

  The place went mum when Betty Boop slipped through the back door to wend her way through a few tables and whisper in my ear. The boys could not fathom a creature so far from gross. When she left, one brother speculated that her shit must taste like marshmallows. Another brother concurred that he would like to suck air through her asshole.

  Randy Mutton stared in awe and wonder.

  A popular guy in the brotherhood, Randy was known for his generous nature. An event captured his essence, proving a truth that was, to Randy, self-evident: that pussy is great and should be shared with friends. That college town was known for its high school girls and their yen for college boys. I’d seen one such girl around town, shopping with her mother, getting it right on the dress, the hat, the shoes. Calling her snooty would be unfair, but she would not look at longhairs in purple vests and bell-bottoms.

  I saw Randy one day in the parking lot where I shared an apartment with two other guys. He huddled with five other guys, as if calling a play. I went over, and Randy pulled me into the circle. “Okay, okay. She’s ready. I told her six but she won’t notice if it’s seven. Okay. We’ll horsengoggle. Okay?”

  Randy had met the same girl and asked for sex for himself and his brothers, because, after all, they were good guys who could use a break. She’d agreed, in need of a break herself, and waited in an apartment. Horsengoggle pre-dated rock-paper-scissors in determining order. Participants recited in unison ein, schvei, drei, horsengoggle! On the last note we thrust one to five fingers into the center space. With all fingers tallied, the total was counted off around the circle. The last number went first.

  I got first. I told the high school girl I was engaged to be married and bound by faithfulness but would surely appreciate the, you know, special relief. She sighed and said I was engaged to a very lucky girl. Gee, to have a guy who would be that faithful.

  Randy went fifth, so he had time to walk over to the vending machine to get the girl a Coke, since she’d want something bubbly after so much mayo, and he was a service-oriented guy.

  It’s only a strange story till it fast forwards a dozen years or so, when Randy Mutton wooed and won Betty Boop. Sick and tired of menial jobs, reaching the age of routine or risk, he made his move. His friends laughed. Randy laughed too; he cut such a funny picture at his wheeled stand with stainless bins and Sterno cans to heat his hotdogs and buns behind a bank of squeeze bottles out front: mustard, ketchup and relish. The awning read:

  Hotdogs $2.

  Business was spotty, so he altered the awning:

  De Luxe Kosher Hotdogs $2.

  With a slight bump in sales, he tweaked the awning again:

  Kosher dogs like you get at the ball park $2.50.

  Sensing progress he evolved to:

  Mutton Dogs De Luxe Ball Park Kosher FOOOOOT LONG! $4.

  He got a steamer for the buns and added beans for two dollars more. He went to the three-tier bean upgrade on another sign that dangled from the awning on metal rings:

  Fartless Beans $2. Fartful Beans $3.

  Sudden Death Beans $5.

  When Sudden Death Beans made the local paper, Randy went to a new awning with a starburst:

  $10 Sudden Death Combo De Luxe includes Cola of Choice.

  People approached murmuring yeah, this is the place. So Randy built another stand, and then another.

  Mutton Dog stands peppering the greater Houston area and then the region led to the Annual Mutton Dog Sudden Death Fart Off. A significant segment of the Lone Star State laughing and farting out loud proved that Randy Mutton’s time in the Gamma Alpha Gamma house had yielded the self-made man profiled in the Sunday Chronicle—that would be the Houston Chronicle. Beside the story were photos of Mr. Mutton, his lovely wife Betty and their infant son Max.

  All this came on the phone many years after last speaking with Betty, her voice faltering on this tale of success. Randy had it made, she said, raking in scads o’ dough. All he had to do was not mess it up. That was easy for her to say. How many years can a guy hustle hotdogs and beans and not wonder about the great, wide world? Anyway, he started mumbling a mantra when Subway came along and put a dent in the street-side market. Fuck! Why didn’t I franchise? Fuck! Damn! I could have franchised. Fuck!

  Randy had made his million dollars in a few years but suffered a barrage of self-inflicted regret—it could have been millions and maybe millions more. He probably hung himself when Quiznos came along, but that was a decade later.

  Meanwhile, his amazing strategy for staying ahead of the curve was to build a bar dedicated to sports fans, what is now called a sports bar. This was the leading edge, and Randy Mutton got it right, almost. His place was carpeted and nice, in respect to sports fans, who are not a bunch of loudmouth louts but have feelings and sensitivities too, who appreciate recognition as fans.

  But they didn’t want carpet or nice. They wanted to yell You fuckin’ has-been bum! They wanted to drop fries on the floor and mash them in without feeling guilty. They wanted a barn with big TVs. Randy’s living room sports bar failed. He’d gone in with cash, because he had it. The place never caught on. He spent weeks in denial, laying off the entire staff and drinking in the bar alone with twelve TVs tuned to different sporting events. He could re-hire the staff when the crowd showed up, which it surely would, once it remembered the great good times.

  The cleaning crew arrived one evening, and Randy struck up a friendship with a maid, a short, squat woman of forty-five who agreed that they both needed a break. They became an item, so Randy moved o
ut two weeks after the birth of his and Betty’s second child. He told her he was in love.

  Betty was thirty-seven and still a knockout.

  We were old enough by then to know that life can get very strange, but few of us could sort the strangeness or make much sense of it. Betty had post-partum difficulties with her new baby, because things had gone so wrong. She couldn’t hold the baby without crying. She became distraught, feeling like a two-time loser at marriage—her, Betty Boop, the pussycat queen, the sexual object who made every passing male in her entire adult life ogle and drool.

  Her obstetrician had seen it before and referred her to a shrink, who asked how these events made her feel. “I told him I’d fucked a bunch of guys. So what? Most women do. Maybe it was different for me, because so many guys came on to me. I don’t think I fucked nearly as many guys in proportion to the number of guys who came on to me. You know? But it was mostly just pussy for them. Maybe not with Glenn. He was the pussy on that one. Ha!”

  Glenn was the first husband who conquered the PhD and is renowned to this day for his juxtaposition of late 19th Century syntax with post-modern meter and/or rhythm. But it was mostly pussy with all the rest. They craved it, had to have it, wanted more of it and could not get enough till they rolled over and snored. Pitiful fuckers. I listened to her woeful, loveless tale, guilty as one more cockhound asleep on the lawn, till she said, “Except for you.”

  “Moi?”

  “It’s been so miserable, trying to sort through things, and this shrink keeps pushing my buttons. He asked me to reconsider the guys I’d been with to see if maybe someone or something other than sex comes through. Like affection and intellectual bonding. I didn’t even need a minute. It was you. Only you.”