The Trouble Way

by James Seloover

  “You can go that way if you want, but I’m not taking any chances. I’ll meet you on the other side of the bridge,” Bella said and she started down the bank with her walking stick.

  “There ain’t no damn cameras,” Don said. “Here, give me that bag you’re toting.” He walked to meet her, took the bag of cans, and turned back up the slope. “One of these days you’re going to make a miss-step and end up in the river. I can swim, but I wouldn’t be able to save you. I got a bum leg, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I’ll be careful, I could do this in my sleep,” she said and continued down the slippery grass to the river’s edge.

  “It’s starting to get dark so be damn careful.” Don watched and halfway down the hill Bella took a tumble and landed on her backside.

  “I’m okay,” she said and got to her feet. “I’m okay.”

  Chapter 19 Old Jake Forest We don’t marry cousins in this family, do we? She’s been the girl with a “unusual haircut” for nearly forty years.

  Present

  I’ve been married to my cousin -- that’s first cousin not second -- Priscilla, for going on eight years. We couldn’t get married in the state where we live. Gays can, but we couldn’t. We had to flee the state and travel to Colorado to commit that particular sin. I doubt we violated any provision of the Mann Act since no slavery is involved and we’re both of legal age. Of course I haven’t read the Act, so I’m not entirely sure.

  I thought we’d have gotten a bunch of crap from the relatives, especially the ones who live in the Midwest, the right-wing religious nuts, about us getting married. It wasn’t them, but the other nuts, the right-wing non-religious ones that live on the West Coast where we got the most grief. It was from my sister who’s been married three times, twice to black men, Republicans, if you can believe that, who gave me crap about my relationship with our cousin. Rightfully, they should be non-religious left-wing Democrats.

  She made a wisecrack to her grandkids about me and Priscilla. She said, “We don’t marry cousins in this family, do we? ha-ha-ha.” The kids all snickered nervously, making embarrassing side glances at me. As if she, of all people, has any credibility in such matters. Now her grandkids think I’m a little deranged for marrying my cousin.

  The Midwesterners have kept quiet about the whole affair. I have gotten hints of their feelings in indirect ways about social issues. Things like their outward hostility, at least verbally, toward gay people. Not outwardly against the gays in the family; that’s most likely because they probably believe there aren’t any gays in the family.

  And there is still the remnants of bigotry toward blacks. Sometimes it is just their obvious comments where they try to throw you off the track by saying “I’m not prejudice, but ... ” I suspect they are closet Jim Crow supporters.

  I’m sure one cousin marrying another are within the boundaries of that gay, black prejudice flavored conversations. I know Priscilla and I are definitely right in amongst those private conversations where they express their distaste for those other despicable folks. Makes me proud. I am doing something that gives discomfort to those uppity right-wingers.

  One who is the most bigoted is one of the black relatives. He rants about all the fags running lose all over the place. Christ, he’s black. Unbelievable. He listens to Rush Limbaugh for crying in the night. He and his wife, vote Republican. Now if that isn’t enough to make God drink out of a cat dish, I don’t know what is. They are receiving a butt-spank of state help because of their economic situation – they have custody of five grandkids. Definitely two votes that are a gift to the Republicans, those are. It seems to me that a sympathetic Republican would tell them to move over to the appropriate party of their ilk, the Democrats, and quit embarrassing the GOP with their support. I guess that tells you something about Republicans if they don’t have the decency to give up two votes for integrity’s sake.

  The other relative has a brother who is gay. His family attend their Lutheran Church and pray silently for him to get well, I guess. It’s not just any Lutheran Church, either, it had damn well better be the “right” one, it has a specific name, like Chicago Lutheran or North Dakota Lutheran.

  There is yet another relative who is gay. Nobody talks about that. She’s been the girl with an “unusual haircut” for nearly forty years. Incredible. I know.

  And those are the ones I know about. I go to family reunions where there are nearly a hundred people attending. I wonder who the other eight gays are.

  When I worked all those years at Big Richards, the only gays I knew about who worked there showed themselves only in the California stores. I didn’t notice that many of the gays I knew were trying to get back at The Man except for a few. Apparently most were not disgruntled and had other stuff to stress about. Or maybe they were just really good at it and didn’t register on the radar.

  One guy who screwed Big Richards every day for four years was a very likable fellow, a fellow of considerable girth, the appliance manager.

  Andy never complained about work. He did have a problem many men his age had, his hair was thinning, and to compensate, Andy got a tightly curled perm every few months to try to hide the sparseness of his hair. Andy was not nearly as “gruntled” as I had originally thought.

  Andy approached me in September about the Halloween schedule. He absolutely, positively had to have Halloween off. He would just “I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said, “if I can’t get it off.” If he didn’t get it off, he might be forced to call in sick. He gave me the impression that he would anguish about it to the point of actually becoming sick if he weren’t permitted the day off. I said I would consider it and get back to him. I made a note to check for coverage in the department when the time came and then I took a glance at his attendance record and the only time I saw where he called in sick was on Halloween two years back.

  But there was something more disturbing, It surprised the heck out of me; he stuck it to The Man every day he worked. He was late every single, solitary day for the entire time he worked at Big Richards. He punched in exactly seven minutes late and punched out seven minutes early, every day of his entire career. It was never four minutes or six minutes or any other minutes but seven. He was the most punctual, late employee I have ever known. There is a rule at Big Richards about the time clock, the seven-minute rule. If you punch in seven minutes late or punch out seven minutes early, pay would not be deducted for the missed time.

  We had a brief personal interview with him in the Human Resource office. I told him that his pay would not be adjusted for time missed if it fell within the seven-minute rule but he was, in-fact, late. We have a rule that employees are to be at their workstation when they are scheduled. I gave him an option, be at your workstation when you are scheduled, period. I gave him till the week before Halloween to correct the tardiness problem. If he couldn’t show up for work on time, he would not have to worry about having Halloween off, he would be out of a job. Just for shits and grins, I asked him why he was late every day for the past four years. He said, “Nobody ever said anything about it before you.”

  He got extra pay for no work plus he forced employees he was relieving into overtime. They sure as heck were not going to complain about the time and a half. He was sticking The Man by design, they were sticking The Man courtesy of Andy.

  I did give him Halloween off. What the hell, he was a likable character.

  Someone who got management indirectly was Deena, the girl that was in charge of the housewares department in one of the Washington stores, Spokane, I think. She stocked shelves and ordered merchandise such as cookware and such. Her department looked immaculate, always neat and full. End caps were always full and squared off, a perfect example of how Big Richards wanted a department presented. She was forever being praised by the district manager on how well her department looked.

  One Saturday night, I was out with a few of the old drinking buddies and we happened upon Deena and her girlfriend, Kathy. They were sitting at a tabl
e near the dance floor at one of the local watering holes. I bought them several rounds of drinks in the course of a few hours, and after a while everyone got fairly lit. Deena and Kathy liked their booze and in the course of the bullshitting, the subject of work came up.

  “How is it that you are such a hard worker and are able to keep your department is such good condition?” I asked. “How is it that nobody else can even come close to you in productivity?”

  “It’s simple,” Deena said. “I am just smarter than all the rest of you gumbos.”

  “What do you mean? I’m serious, how do you do it?” I said and ordered another drink for the two of them from the passing barmaid.

  “It’s not that hard to do. You know we are supposed to keep fast selling items on the end caps?” Deena said.

  “Yeah, that’s nothing new. How is that so smart? I asked.

  “When I first started, I had to keep filling the end caps every day. I was working my ass off and I never had time for anything else. When I was promoted to department head, I change all that bullshit. There’s a secret in what to order,” she said. “I order the slowest selling items in the department to put on all the end caps. Simple.”

  “But if you do that, the stuff never sells,” I said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Of course it makes sense. It just depends on your point of view. What do I care if it sells? I don’t get commission on what sells. I get my butt chewed if an end cap is half-empty. If it doesn’t sell, I never have to fill it, the ends always look good, and I never have to order it again. So, my butt never gets chewed. That way, I have time to fill the rest of the department and I always get good department reviews and I always get my annual raises in addition to several merit raises each year.”

  She said she told me because it wouldn’t make any difference if I knew, I was being transferred to Montana. I was getting pretty disgruntled with Big Richards by that time so I didn’t pass on Deena’s little marketing strategy to the manager. I don’t think he would have believed me anyway. He didn’t care for me either. Let the fucker figure it out for himself.

  One time, I had to intervene in a situation involving a sexual harassment complaint. One of the employees told another he had a nice butt. I had to interview each one separately and record the interview for Human Resources. The kicker was, they were both men. The employee did admit he thought the guy had a nice butt and told him so. The guy with the “nice butt,” said he wasn’t gay and didn’t appreciate the butt admirer’s comments.

  The guy making the comment said, “He’s gay alright, I guarantee you he’s gay.”

  I told him that his comments were not appropriate and they would have to stop or he may end up losing his job. He said, “I’ll stop saying it but I still think he has a nice butt.”

  The guy with the “nice butt,” quit not long after that.

  I didn’t think his ass was all that great. Up until I met Priscilla, I thought the nicest butt I’d actually touched was Linda’s, the gorgeous little Pilipino girl from that Seattle store.

  San Francisco was an eye opener for me. At a street fair, near the Castro District, there was a kissing booth where anyone, man or woman, could pay a buck and kiss guy who stood all primed and ready to go, anxiously standing in the booth. He never had a chance to sit on the barstool he brought along, apparently anticipating slack time. I never saw any female takers.

  The booth next to the kissing both was the spanking booth. A man charged a dollar for the privilege of spanking his bare ass with a willow switch, a buck a whack. The guy in the booth would stick his bare ass out a little waist-high window for each whipping. That’s all anybody could see, a bare ass. It was like the whack-a-mole game in arcades with only the one target. That was enough to make me drink out of a cat dish, but there it was. I have pictures. Men queued to get their hand on that switch. The guy in the booth collected dollar bills at the front counter and had them folded between his fingers, fan-like, like you see strippers do in bars and then he would disappear behind a curtain. Next thing, a curtain over a side window would rise and a moon appeared to a crescendo of whistles and cheers. With each whack, the guy would howl in pain and scream for more. Even if he had thought to bring a barstool, I doubt he would have been in any shape to take advantage of it.

  I saw a man, naked except for flip-flops, standing on a street corner talking to a policeman. Just a casual conversation. I stood and stared at that for a while, let me tell you. I made my wife go stand by them so I could take a picture.

  Another scene stuck in my mind and it’s been over thirty years. There was a guy, probably fifty or so, dressed in a dark blue and green plaid skirt and a white blouse. Like you see in movies of Catholic girls in school uniforms. The blouse was tucked in only on one side. His wig was dark, shoulder length, uncombed and sat on his head a bit askew and his bright red lipstick was missing the mark. He was the ugliest man dressed as a woman I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few. I lived in San Francisco for over ten years. He looked forlorn, like he had no friends and lost all pride in her appearance. He was frumpy. He stood, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette looking down at the sidewalk. I always wondered if there were other equally unattractive men attracted to men dressed like a frumpy woman. There must be. After all, it probably wasn’t the first time he’d worn the outfit so he must have had some date luck.

  Over the years, there have been photos I wish I had taken. That was one high on the list. I sincerely wish I had had my wife stand by him for a picture. I always had to talk her into standing by people she didn’t know. I wanted someone in the photo who I knew so I could prove that I’d actually been there and seen that.

  Chapter 20 Old Jake Forest and Bella I extracted myself from that happy-crappy predicament. I had two chances of successfully surviving that encounter and they were both zero.

  Present

  I have known a few women in my time. Like I said, I’ve been around the shed a few times, if you get my drift. I’ve always been sort of curious how they think but it wasn’t until I met Bella that I began to get an idea of how they got so darn smart so early on in life.

  I had been under the impression before I turned seventeen that most all women were similar in character to my mother and my, “Give the other kid the bigger half of the candy bar,” grandmother. That’s a good example of what a dumb shit I was for a major part of my early life.

  After seventeen, I began to gradually develop the idea women just might be a manipulative lot. It really slammed home during the short while I became involved with, who turned out to be my first wife, Janis. She was not the last manipulative woman, but she was not only the first, she was the best of them all. She could manipulate the pants off me, literally. I even knew I was being manipulated as I was removing my jeans and couldn’t do diddly about it. She was one smooth motor scooter, to use a phrase of the times. Upon reflection, I should say she was one rough, intimidating Harley Hog and that’s an understatement.

  She used her talents at manipulating to the point where she actually used the discount retail business principal of high turnover for huge profits. She’d have fit in perfectly with upper management at Big Richards. Her expertise was in turning husbands rather than merchandise and her profits were measured in houses.

  I’d accidentally met her in a grocery store parking lot after we’d been divorced for years. She’d just got word of her final settlement, a fourth house, after the fifth divorce. She was in soaring spirits.

  “Except for you Jake, I got a house out of each one of my ex’s,” Janis told me in that Safeway parking lot. She had a good chuckle over that; me, not so much.

  Luckily, when I divorced her, the only thing I had was a ‘51 Chevy worth a hundred fifty bucks and I begged her to take it if she would sign the divorce papers.

  I heard on the street that one of the husbands said, “Those two years with Janis were the worst ones of my life, including the year I was humpin’ it in the bush in Nam.”

  Anothe
r husband became a hopeless alcoholic. He drank every day and couldn’t complete a sentence by high noon he was so far gone after less than a year with her. He was a schoolmate of ours; one year behind us.

  Ex-husbands, to her, were a lucrative retirement strategy.

  To this day, I have no idea whether she was actually pregnant when we got married or whether it was a sick ruse she used to get me to marry her and get her out of that asylum she lived in with her family, led by the head lunatic, her dad.

  I remember her saying, “Do you want to screw me again or not? Don’t you think I know when I can get pregnant and when I can’t?”

  How’s a horny seventeen-year-old supposed to answer questions like that? The first wasn’t rocket salad, it was a no brainer. I wasn’t on solid ground with the second if I said yes to the first. I took her at her word and went with her on that one. As it turned out, it was indeed rocket salad.

  She had a damned good reason for what she did, manipulating me into eloping with her to Idaho before dust had a chance to settle on the new wingtips. My mom bought the new shoes for my victory walk in a procession across the gymnasium floor during the graduation ceremony. Within a week of that stroll, those shoes would get be instrumental in another rite, a stroll down the aisle of a tiny, whitewashed church in Weiser, Idaho.

  Janis’s home life sucked. Sucked donkeys. The answer to that second question was she had a pretty good clue as to when she could get pregnant. As it turned out, it was irrelevant. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. At the end of one steamy night, she convinced me she was knocked-up and the trip to Weiser entered the early planning stages.

  Hell, I was so stupid when I started dating Janis, I didn’t even know what a Tampax was, for crying in the night, for nearly another year. How in the heck am I going to question whether a girl is pregnant? I certainly had reason to believe she could be, having an intimate knowledge of our daily activities.