Nadrea worried about her appearance, the latest fashions and the next time she might feel vaguely alive. That part usually consisted of a little chemical enhancement or libations and good hard fuck. She worried were her under garments precisely coordinated with her outfit, not just in the sense of functionality but in an appealing and matched or complementary color. She never broke a sweat and lived a bitchy restless upper class existence where nothing is ever quite good enough, even though very little ever truly bothered her. She wondered sometimes late at night why she felt so empty, why she is still sleeping alone and how most people in the world can be that stupid and still have evolved to the point we have as a species. STD tests were a regular part of life and except for crabs in college she has always been clean (and worked hard to remain that way). She stressed about what to eat or if her lover’s dick is large enough to really get her off. And there was, of course, the all too problematic relationship with her parents. Nothing was ever easy, everything had to be a production, an event and with absolute certainty completely proper according to whatever sick laws govern the ultra wealthy in Manhattan.
It was early Sunday afternoon and the phone rang…
“Cheers Love!” a voice proudly proclaims after a disengaged hello escaped Nadrea’s mouth.
“Daddy you’re not English, you’re from Manhattan and as close as you come to being English is based on the time you’ve spent in the Caymans!”
“I know love, but it is a smashingly beautiful day isn’t it” daddy responded. “How about a bit of tea?” he inquired.
She wondered if the man had lost his mind, perhaps it is an age related mental deficiency, he’s youngish, but it could happen. “Tea…hmm a little tea could be nice, where in the world are you?”
“In the car love, in the bloody car” as his poorly imitated English accent grew louder and thicker, not a bit more believable, but definitely louder and thicker as she held the phone away from her ear.
“OK, I’m game” she answered. “Where in the car?”
“Thought you’d never ask, just outside Philly on my way to D.C. But now ask me why!” he blurted out with a child like enthusiasm.
“Sure, why are you in the car outside of Philly?” she said in a mocking sarcastic tone now mimicking his brutally fake accent.
“Don’t be such a fuck wit, I’m in the car with Ronald on my way down to pick up me new toy” daddy responded. Dropping the accent, “We’ll pick you up in four hours or so, an early dinner work for you?”
“A casual dinner? Right?”
“Sure what the fuck, why not? We’ll make the reservation and surprise you when we get there.” And with that he was gone
These were the things that make Nadrea insane, unannounced visits, aloof if not deranged conversations with a man known for his conservative financial brilliance, but infamous for his ribald sense of humor. Daddy never heard a dick joke that he didn’t find gut wrenchingly funny and God forbid he ever meet a man named Dick. He would laugh uncontrollably for hours after the fact at the cruel and or witless intellectual properties of the poor bastard parents. Four hours of waiting would be pure hell, so a few calls were made to friends. Too quickly done, too much time left to kill before daddy arrived. A workout at the club, 90 minutes of cardio later and Nadrea was soaked in sweat and not at all calmed. Sure she felt better, but that was just the beginning. A short jog after her workout, back to the house, a good stretch and a long hot shower, lingering longer than usual under the hot water and it was time to dress and primp. Only an hour to kill doing that, she could kill an hour picking out a g-string if she needed to. So standing there in heels and garter, a less than modest set of panties and bra, drinking her home made Chocolate-tini the quest for clothes and how to wear her hair for dinner would consume the next 50 minutes. Two more drinks as a gray skirt and crème sweater polished off the look. Hair down and comparatively demure makeup and all was finally right in her world. At least for a few minutes, the phone rang…it was Daddy.
“Nod” as he affectionately called her despite years of her protesting it. “We’re at the Capitol Hyatt and running a touch late. Ronald will be there in about 10 minutes and then he’ll come back and get me.”
“I figured,” she responded not at all surprised that her father is not going to be in the car to greet her. At least she can have another drink on the way down. “I’ll watch for him to pull up, see you soon.”
So Nadrea wandered to the front parlor to watch the street, sitting at the piano that was originally her grandmothers she played Billy Joel songs, not her usual choice but as she played “Uptown Girl” pausing to gulp her drink between verse and chorus she can’t think of anything better to drink and play along with. Ronald pulled up as expected and with a giant swig and a mild shiver as a chill runs down her spine she takes to the all too mundane but all too necessary task of setting the alarm and down the old stone stairs she went.
Pulling up at the hotel, daddy wasn’t ready and a second drink was poured, her 5th in little over an hour, she was buzzing mildly, in comparison to how she often feels but that’s ok she will be three sheets to the wind before their second course and expects Daddy to be the same. When her father, Walter, arrived in the lobby you can see that he was conversing with anyone who spoke English and perhaps a few that didn’t. He was a man who spent his life analyzing numbers, but who loved human interaction, perhaps because his days were spent staring at reams papers full ans endless computer screens filled with nothing but numbers. When they finally arrive outside, he looked thin, his hair was too short and his face was drawn showing the very ridges of his skull. Two jokes for the Bell Captain, a nudge to the bell boy, a wide skeleton smile and to the car he went.
No sooner than he closed the door Nadrea asked “Are you sick?” Nadrea was showing a genuine concern rarely seen from her, concern for her father or concern for her own mortality no one can really been able to tell, Nadrea herself included.
“Only in my mind, Nod.” Daddy answered playfully.
“Nice to hear. So why are you so thin?” She asked trying to make light of her concern. “Took up the triathlon thing, running, swimming, and biking.”
“Oh, OK, aren’t you a little old for that?”
“Nope, nor am I too old for the hair cut!”
“If you’re an aging gay man that is the perfect hair cut, are you hiding a young latin in your room?”
Laughing daddy replied “Younger than you, but not too young Cialis isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Besides I’m into blondes with implants, you know that.”
Not catching on to the gay man reference was typical. Walter was a ladies’ man whether the ladies realized it or not was always a different issue. She thought to herself he was harmless and silly, sure it takes half a bottle of Vodka to feel this way, but he was just a guy who was despite all of her mother’s best efforts and commercial success, just a large extremely wealthy obsessive kid.
The car wound through the streets, Nadrea in her skirt and sweater and Daddy in his jeans. She knew dinner would be casual, perhaps very casual, because it was after all sports season for one team or another. So she wasn’t surprised when the ESPN Zone was where they were let off. Ronald would valet at a Hyatt two blocks away and join them. There was a certain sense of irony about your driver using a valet to park the car, but he was as much a part of the family as she was. Ronald has been her father’s driver for years. They are seated among a myriad of booths in front of a throng of televisions showing baseball and football and golf. It is early on a Sunday, so there was plenty of time to watch and drink. Daddy had a beer, Nadrea an Appletini, although she imagined it will be horrible at such a place, and Ronald a diet soda, one of them had to be sober enough to get them back and it wasn’t going to be Nadrea. It was drinks and munchies, sports talk and pleasantries. She was buzzed and Daddy was genuinely happy to spend a few fleeting hours with her. He doesn’t ask what she is doing, not because he doesn’t care, but out of fear of prying into a life that
he has funded but not interfered with. She wondered why he never asked questions about her work or her friends or her life in general. She took the lack of inquiry as a lack of interest. Daddy was after all, socially awkward and mathematically brilliant, his social skills or lack thereof could easily have been remedied by a simple obscene joke or story. She was not socially awkward and just couldn’t relate, in that way she was her mother. After dinner Daddy was three beers in and Nadrea’s heart was pumping a substance closer to gasoline than blood filled with oxygen.
The conversation bounced from his obsession with cars to her latest diversions, her work, his social commitments and mothers crazy and slightly overzealous schedule. Nadrea was swaggering on her heels, the legs of a drunken sailor who has just come ashore for the first time in far too long. As they finish and wonder toward the car it became obvious that the night is still young by the fading twilight but will soon be over at least for daddy and Ronald. The three block walk doesn’t help her sober up at all, since it was a brief walk in the warm evening air. Just three blocks away she knows of a great club and wants them all to go. But daddy politely declined and Ronald has not the slightest interest in any such thing. Grabbing her phone she called her usual circle of friends, the only one who shows even a flicker of interest was Donna. They see her to the door and are on their way to the other part of town for a quiet and eventless evening.
VIN
Things were always exactly what Vincent thought them to be. What he thought was rarely associated with reality in the universally accepted meaning of the word. It was after all his reality, and he could have cared less if anyone else in the world shared it with him.
So it was a Sunday night after a long day of drinking and yelling. The pushing and shoving just ended a few hours back, his body was stiff, and sore and tired. His fake assed energetic positive attitude was always at the ready. Somewhere, sometime ago, he learned to be that positive person for most people rather than the cruel, detached, sarcastic driven soul that he truly was. Vince began to yell over the mild din of the less than crowded, mostly subdued room. “Where’s my drink, FUCKER?” The only thing truly buzzing was around the bar where Vincent was sitting. Normally the words he had just uttered if taken at face value were harsh, but for him it was his normal tone of conversation. Typically most passersby thought he was little more than a jerk, and they avoided making eye contact with him.
“If I had tits I bet I’d have my drink by now!” The bartender just tried to ignore him, this wasn’t the kind of place to have security. So, in complete frustration based on the lack of response, he let himself behind the bar and started taking orders. Suddenly, he went from being ignored to causing a great sense of panic that was so intense it was visible on the bartenders face. Vince started taking orders and mixing drinks for the other patrons.
“Vince! GET OUT FROM THERE”
“Fuck off douche bag” Vin replied completely unflustered.
“No, really man, you can’t be back here.”
“Steve, fuck off, you can keep the tips.”
The Nuevo Riche crowd was obviously uncomfortable with the two bartenders conversation, but much like a car wreck with mangled metal and a little bit of blood they can’t help but watch. Steve was nervous, was understandably nervous, his bar is half full and he couldn’t keep up, he thought he was just a little behind but reality was Steve brutally behind to the frustration of his patrons. Vince was not an employee, he seemed to be a fixture and was thought to be the owners friend. The place was a second home for Vince and what no one who worked there knew was that his closely held holding company was the majority owner of the place. So, behind the bar he went and behind the bar he’d stay…as long as he fucking wanted and no little wimpy bastard would cause him to do otherwise. The drinks began to flow and the tips came rolling in as Vin carried on with the customers, verbally abusing Steve, heckling his customers in a ribald off color humor that many would have found offensive to completely unacceptable had was not such a likeable character.
“Guinness” a customer called out.
“Really? You drink that crap?” Vincent replied.
The customer was stunned and taken aback, but before he could respond Vincent added “if you like it dark and thick try putting this in it.” and a brown runny substance that looked like sewer water was put down next to the pint on beer.
“What is it?” The patron inquires still stunned from the first response he has gotten and at that very second time he realized that Vincent was wearing a black polo shirt that had the Guinness logo on it, now realizing that he was merely playing. Begrudgingly, but now with a mild curiosity the patron complies…”But what is the drink called”? The patron again inquired.
“First drop the shot glass in the in the beer. It’s called The Devil’s Shit” .” Waiting for a reaction the customer just smiled dropped the shot glass in the pint and tried his drink.
This was Vince’s idea of reality, The Devils Shit were what his dad called Ju Ju Beans, a candy that he and his friends would get at the movie theaters when they were kids. He loved the story as a kid and remembers that he was always reprimanded by his with, “you can’t call them that anymore” And “don’t you bring that evil one’s name into my house”. A shot with a beer in it is simply a boiler maker, a favorite among the hard drinking blue collar workers in his Baltimore neighborhood as a kid. Just for the record a beer (typically a St. Paulie Girl) with the neck drank out of it and filled with Vodka is a Russian shotgun. See in his own twisted sense of reality, he hoped that his patron will so like his drink that later his friends will be regaled with the story of the drink and one day perhaps they would walk into a bar, looking around to make sure it was safe and then quietly try to order a The Devil’s Shit to drink. That was the joke, it was the ultimate goal, until now there was no such drink as The Devil’s Shit.
“Hey this is great! What’s in it?”
“Beer, a shot glass and two ounces of black Vodka and a pinch of yeast.”
In what seemed to be an eternity to Steve he was caught up, so Vince poured himself a Coke handed a fist full of tips to the slightly embarrassed bartender and walked around the bar to sit back down. Glancing at the door he saw a woman walk in dressed in a gray skirt and white sweater, at first glance it appeared she has had a few too many already and thinking to himself perhaps it would be amusing to have a bit of fun with the little debutant, a some blatant flirting, maybe a touch of verbal jousting and then see if she is insulted by his typical manner. “Vince…You see her?”
“Yeah Stevie, I do…and those high fuck me dirty heels.”
“Just part of the look to go with the clothes and that long dark hair screams high fashion not down and dirty action.”
“Vincent be nice.” To which Steve’s ears were met with Vincent’s voice “Blow me, cum stain”
Vincent on the surface was a parody of himself, so cliché that he looked like he fell out of a bad gangster movie. Dark hair, dark brown eyes, a classic roman nose, and square jaw. Despite the fake pleasantness, and easy smile his physical presence is that of a man not to be messed with, his hands seemingly as large as cinder block, huge bulging forearms larger than most men’s calves, a thick bull like neck and an almost ape like back based on the powerful look that it exudes. Loud and lewd, without a doubt and while capable of great force and if need be violent, but he was in truth a very gentle soul. He was a swordsman by his own admission and loved to keep the company of women more than most men. With his rugged good looks and strong physical presence he could keep the company of the social elite and the beautiful people, but rather he preferred his company to be a little more real. If a man’s sexuality can be summed up by the type of porn they read then the classic beauties found in the pages of Hugh Heffner’s Playboy while alluring, were not his first choice. The articles and high art of Playboy didn’t really do it for him. Larry Flint with his less than perfect and slightly more trashy models spoke his language. Some people may like looking at an e
xpensive car they can never afford, but many more would rather push one that was moderately more attainable to it limits. He felt the same way about his lovers, why have a Ferrari in the garage that you can’t drive very often and kills you with maintenance? In truth the women he liked are less American muscle and more like Porsche’s, fast and exotic, rare but not so much so that you still could see one every day, also unlike a Ferrari who has a 25,000 maintenance bill every 15,000 miles a Porsche’s service requirements aren’t quite so demanding, which means if you trade them in often enough the maintenance wasn’t too bad. Translating back into the human form he’d take an above average looking sexually aware girl over a stunningly beautiful one with all the taboo’s and pretenses any day. His pleasure reading was trashy and tired graphic porn mixed in with the sports section and the weekend section of the Wall Street Journal. Vincent had made it financially so he can live his life his way and everyone else can just fuck off if they didn’t like it.
As our little debutant approached the bar, he hummed to himself the opening verse of Easy Meat by Frank Zappa. “See through blouse and a tiny little dress her manner indiscreet.”
The Slut and the Swordsman.
She was drunk, and he was still drinking cola. But in the world today one never knows who they will meet if they wonder out of the house. Nadrea headed toward the bar for the open space between the end that Vincent was guarding and the revelers in the middle enjoying a Sunday out on the town. She walked with an elegance rarely found in inebriated patrons, she settled in the middle of the open space. Before Vincent could say a word, she flagged Steve and ordered a Chocolate-tini and “Whatever the guy on the end is drinking,” turning to the end of the bar.
“Are you going to say something or introduce yourself? Or are you just going sit there and look at me like a schmuck?”
It Had Been Years Page 3