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Open letter to Hillary’s voters

The Fear of Donald and our descent into fascism

COMMENT.HILLARYby Stacey Warde

Yes, I know, fascism gets tossed into our faces pretty easily these days and comes off as mostly disingenuous and trite, until you meet one of Hillary’s “vote for Hillary, or else” supporters, whose pressure to conform amidst dire warnings about fascism sound alarmingly fascist themselves.

Here’s the deal, if the only reason you’re voting for Hillary is because you’re afraid that Donald Trump will win, fascism has already won. You’ve already lost your freedom to choose. You’re afraid. The fascists have won.

And, soon, hounded by fear of what might be instead of acting upon our values, creating a truly just world, we’ll all be fascists, as we continue to vote for the lesser of two evils.

How much more can we lower our expectations in a general election? Hillary or Donald? Wall Street Darling, or Bankrupt Bully?

If you really like Hillary, which I don’t, then by all means vote for her. That’s what a democracy is all about. Please, however, don’t try to convince me that she’s the best candidate because she’s the only ONE who can beat Donald.

Bernie, apparently, might also have beaten Donald, and might still had he considered joining the forces of his 13 million voters with a third party candidate like Jill Stein. But, never mind that, because I don’t want to sound like a spoilt sport or be ridiculous. Just because he got sandbagged by The Machine, and the “revolution” sidelined. Yes, it’s upsetting, and I don’t plan to “get over it” until the system changes.

There will be no revolution with Hillary. The revolution will be with Donald Trump, if he wins, one that might spell the end, it is said, of the American enterprise as a place of virtue and good will, which is only historically partly true. The United States has always had flaws, very serious flaws, that have resulted in the torture and deaths of thousands upon tens-of-thousands of innocent people. But let’s not get into that, or into the tens of thousands of lives that might have been saved had Hillary spoken out against the war on Iraq.

Let’s just say that together Trump and Clinton represent nearly all of the flaws the world attributes to us, starting with violent, brash, repugnant, ignorant and entitled. I’ll choose neither candidate, and prefer those who, like Bernie, can at least show some sense of humility and humanity, which seemingly lack in both Hillary and Donald. Again, if you want Hillary, that is fine. Let’s agree that Donald mustn’t win, and I’ll vote for the person who most represents my interests and values.

The Fear of Donald

COMMENT.DONALDThe only presidential candidate I know who has already incriminated, and thus disqualified, himself from the office before he even holds it, is Donald Trump, a weak, thin-skinned, pathetic demagogue, a low-blow, bigoted bully who knows little about our own constitution, foreign policy, the world’s state of affairs, how to treat women, or the pressures of the nation’s highest executive office.

Let’s impeach him for conspiring with Russia to spy on a U.S. citizen.

He has no backing in both the House and Senate, or even from the despicable Koch Bros., and no political clout, capital or influence beyond his own self-aggrandizing and bloated ideas of himself; his speeches are mostly exercises in narcissism, and his calls to action are mostly appeals to base thuggery and ignorance.

If we truly have a democracy, he will lose, unless we’re a nation of course men and women, a mob of ignoramuses who prefer the gross over the sublime. The laws and principles and force of history of this nation—if American greatness ever existed—will bring him down, not raise him up. Decency alone would dictate this. He has none. He is indecent and rude and mustn’t be elevated.

If Trump is elevated, lifted to “victory,” he will ultimately lose. That is his game. He loses over and over, his whole life a series of failures that he calls “success.” If Trump rises to the top, that says more about us as a people than it gives a solid argument for why I should vote for Hillary.

Trump doesn’t frighten me half as much as a populace so cowed and afraid that it must choose the “lesser” of two evils to avoid a calamity. That’s the beginning of fascism, when a people choose an evil, even if it is the “lesser,” over conscience and heart. Unless, and until, more voters begin to vote their conscience, we will, sooner or later, all turn into fascists.

Some say that to vote my conscience, not for Hillary, is a “luxury” no one can afford.

I don’t consider my vote a “luxury.” It represents what I most value, someone who is not beholden to Wall Street or the One Percent, someone who refuses to choose war over reason and diplomacy, or who isn’t likely to dissemble through word and action, who knows the constitution and laws protecting citizens rights, and is humble enough to admit a mistake.

Our politics are so rife with cynicism that we go along with the “lesser evil,” election after election, as far as I can remember, even if that lesser person models what is most despicable in our culture—greed, graft, and corruption—as if that can actually be a good thing upon which to hinge my hopes and dreams. I’ve voted for the lesser evil most of my life. I won’t do it now, or ever again. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. He can be reached at roguewarde@gmail.com

TRYING TO GET LAID IN AMERICA, PART II

CULTURE.GETTING LAID, PART II

“I don’t need friends. Fuck friends. I need pussy!”

The latest red-hot lover hits Lake Tahoe

1968 April

by Dell Franklin

I found a one-bedroom apartment in a triplex on the California side of Highway 50, a few miles from the south shore ensemble of casinos and hotels—a gorgeous spot among the pines, 50 yards from the lake. My landlord was JC Breedlove, who lived in an apartment on the other side of the one beside me, which was inhabited by truck driver Joe Lebeau and his wife and black Lab. Everything I owned was moved north in a VW I bought at a police auction after selling my Chevy to a man in Watts for $50.

Right off I was hired as a bar boy at Harrah’s Club casino. I was issued black slacks, two white shirts and a black tie. I was assigned to the large, rectangular Keno bar, the busiest bar in the house, and my job was to stock, wash glasses, replace empty bottles and canisters, empty ash trays, cut fruit, change water, keep the bar spotless. In short, I was a flunky never allowed to mix a drink, a gofer learning the business from the bottom up.

I was given the 3 to 11 evening shifts, worked hard and got on well with the bartenders, who were top pros, and heeded their advice and tutoring when they realized I wanted to be one of them as I scoped the cocktail waitresses in outfits revealing the most luscious breasts and asses and legs I’d yet glimpsed in person. One of the bartenders, Bob Brown, a blond matinee idol type around 30, decided to become by mentor. He had a wife and two kids, the wife a former cocktail waitress now working as an office person at Harrah’s after being demoted for growing fat. All the younger cocktail waitresses were after Bob and he was banging them steadily. His wife had wised up and wanted a divorce. He confided in me that he no longer desired his wife and that most of the older cocktail waitresses were ruthless money-grubbers disillusioned with men and there wasn’t “hardly one who wasn’t a can of worms when you opened them up, but they all wanna fuck, and the best way to make in-roads with them is in the employees’ cafeteria and lounge.”

I was so far biding my time, observing some of the lower level Keno-runners and change girls, wondering how I could casually move in on these gals in the cafeteria. Once, when Bob and I sat together on a break, he introduced me to Megan, a divorced cocktail waitress around 30 who issued me a fleeting smile and turned immediately to a bartender from the casino bar. It was obvious these women were not interested in callow bar boys gazing at their endowments in a drooling trance.

One afternoon on my day off, as I read the LA Times in the sun in front of my new digs, a huge Husky named Duke, who lived with a large family down the street, shoved his cold nose on my arm and peered up at me with piercing gray eyes. Joe Lebeau came over and said, “He doesn’t warm up to many folks, looks like he’s partial to you. That family of his don’t pay him the time of day. He goes off for a week at a time and scavenges, raids chicken coops…he’s been shot at and got buckshot in his ass. He ain’t a pet. He’s got that Alaskan wolf in him.”

No animal or human had ever looked at me like Duke did, and he was my immediate best friend, waiting for me to get off work, going for walks with me, sleeping on my porch. JC Breedlove, who had no dog, came by one morning. He drove a dusty jeep and spotless red Porsche and was tall and sandy-haired and very relaxed, almost insouciant, and Joe LeBeau, who’d rented from him for years, said he was a world-class skier who’d been an alternate on the Olympic team 15 years back, didn’t work, owned this triplex and other properties and investments, spent summers playing tennis and fishing, and skied all over the hot spots like Aspen in winter, and had literally fucked every show girl, dancer and cocktail waitress worth fucking in Lake Tahoe.

JC grinned at me, observing my rusty old VW. “So how’s the latest red-hot lover in Lake Tahoe doing?” he asked. “Making out?” He had to know that so far I’d spent every night home by myself. I’d seen him walk a new beauty to her or his car nearly every morning, kiss them and watch them drive off, or drive them home, and he always made it a point to wave at me as I read my paper.

“I’m workin’ on things, JC. Got a few skillets in the fire.”

“I see that tennis racket in your car. You any good?”

“I’m not very athletic, JC. Probably wouldn’t have a chance against a stud like you.” He was about six-foot-four, Hollywood handsome and oozed self-confidence. “But I’m probably a better tennis player than a red-hot lover.”

He laughed. “Hey, it’s only a matter of time before a good looking kid like yourself starts reelin’ ‘em in. I mean, if you can’t land ‘em here, yah can’t land ‘em anywhere.”

§§§

The cocktail waitresses were all on intimate terms with the bartenders, and ignored me as much at the bar as in the cafeteria, except for Ginger, a tall, long-legged blonde with a substantial high-shelved rack. She wore glistening ruby red lipstick and caked-on make-up and black fishnet hose, talked in a slow Southern drawl and, unlike the other waitresses, who would literally fight over a big tipper at craps and blackjack tables, was genuinely sweet and the most generous tipper to bartenders. She was the only one to smile at me and hold that smile when I hovered near the service station when a bartender mixed her a drink.

Bob Brown informed me she was “sucking off” fellow bartenders, including him once, a pit boss, dealers, and a security guard. He saw my jaw drop. “She likes to give blowjobs. She won’t fuck. Maybe she’s afraid to get knocked up. But she gives world-class head. You should go after her. She’s not a bitch like the rest of ‘em. Dell, you buy her a couple gin-and-tonics and she’ll give you hellacious head all night long.”

I wanted more than head all night long. I liked Ginger. I wanted to nuzzle her, suck those magnificent creamy tits, lather her pussy with my drippy tongue, and fuck her with triumphant passion and tenderness. I considered asking her to join me in the wee hours at the lounge show at the Sahara casino down the street, where Louie Prima and Keely Smith entertained in the wee hours. I savored the thought of us hanging out together and forging a relationship. So I bided my time, anticipating the perfect opportunity in asking her out, and hung out every night after work at the Keno bar with free drink tickets and talked to a chunky but pretty 22-year-old blonde Keno runner from Portland, Oregon, Gwen, who’d just graduated from Oregon State and was going to be a high school English teacher. She lived in a nearby cabin with her best friend, was pleasant, loved talking about literature and traveling. I confided in her I was a writer, and she wanted to see my work, but I could hardly show her a manuscript titled, “The Woman Hater,” which was filled with misogynist vitriol.

I bought her drinks with my tickets. I lit her cigarettes. One night I asked her to drive around the lake with me, since there was a full moon. She said she’d love to. We drove a while and stopped alongside the lake and sat on some rocks to watch the moonlight shimmer on the lake. When I put my arm around her waist, she stiffened. At the end of the drive I walked her to the door of her cabin and tried to filch a kiss but she held me at bay.

“Please don’t,” she pled. “”Can’t we just be friends?”

“I wanna be more than friends,” I croaked. “You’re a beautiful woman.”

“Oh I am not. I’m a plain Jane. You just want to sleep with me, because you’re horny. I just like being your friend, because you’re such a nice guy, and our talks are so interesting. You’re the only guy around who’s not about money, and gambling, and drugs….” She offered me a winsome smile, pecked me on the cheek and dashed into her cabin.

The following night at the Keno bar she sat down beside me and for the first time I did not buy her a drink or light her cigarette. She asked was I mad at her because she wouldn’t sleep with me, and I said yes, and downed a shooter of bourbon. She started to cry and I got up and walked over to a blackjack table, after being warned by Brown that the casino got back 60 percent of their employees’ earnings on the tables, and won $500 after spending four hours counting cards and felt much better after returning home at 6 in the morning.

Later on, perched in my chair drinking coffee, JC walked another dazzling beauty to her car. When she was gone, I waved him over and handed him $400, which covered my rent through August. Standing over me, he said, “Looks like Tahoe’s latest red-hot lover’s the hottest red-hot gambler, ey? Well, be careful, kiddo—sometimes winning right off’s the worst thing to happen to a guy. And hey,” he grinned conspiratorially, “ready to gamble some of that lucre on the tennis courts, stud? Say…twenty bucks a set?”

“Catch me when I get some sleep, dude.” I said. He gave me a long disappointing look and took off on his daily two-mile run through the woods, an accomplished man’s man in his prime, a near-perfect specimen in perfect shape—local legend.

§§§

June arrived and I still hadn’t gotten laid, though I was becoming chummier with Ginger, making her laugh, thrilled when she sat down beside me with her tray in the cafeteria and not fellow cocktail waitresses who did everything to sabotage her shifts and tables so as to squeeze her out of the big money and talked disparagingly about her drawl, her alluring shake of a walk, her make-up—a gaggle of vicious hens pecking away at a sweet, ripe chicken. She was from Memphis, and had come to Lake Tahoe to “get away from home and seek a little adventure.”  I told her of my desire to hitch-hike around the country and maybe the world, and work on a riverboat on the Mississippi River, like Mark Twain. She told me, “Ah jes’ luuuuve lis’nin t’ yawl, honey. Yawl’s so funny, just a doll.”

One night Bob and I ran into Ginger and the three of us went to the Sahara lounge show. When Bob excused himself early, winking at me, I asked Ginger out. She said she liked steak and I invited her for a barbecue at my place, and afterwards, “We could hit the cabarets.”

“Yawl sooooo gallant. A jes’ love that in a man.”

I bought two steaks, red potatoes, a bottle of gin, and picked Ginger up at the casino bar in Harrah’s. She wore heels, a red mini-skirt with black fishnet hose, and a red sweater. On a gorgeous evening, I started the barbecue around 7. Duke was there, and he nosed right up to Ginger, courtly, sweet. We sat in sun chairs, sipping gin and tonics. JC, heading for his Porsche, spotted us, ambled over, grinning. “You devil,” he said, beaming. “Looks like you’re entertaining the best looking gal in town.” After I introduced them, JC, like a fond uncle, said, “You take care of my boy now. He’s a fine lad.” We watched him zoom off in a cloud of dust.

The steaks and potatoes turned out perfect, and we shared them with Duke. Ginger raved about how beautiful it was and how lucky I was to live here and I asked her what she wanted to do with her life, and she said she eventually wanted marriage and a family after she sewed her wild oats, and when I told her of my desire to write novels she said, “Yawl still gonna be Ginger’s friend when yawl famous and they make movies from yawl’s books?”

“I’d like to be more than your friend, Ginger.”

“Yawl so sweet.”

We had several drinks. When it cooled, we sat on the furnished davenport and I kissed her. She kissed back, touching the back of my neck, and I nibbled her cheeks and neck, touched her breast, felt her shudder. I found myself lifting her skirt and tried to slide my finger into her pussy and she jumped up as if electrocuted.

“What yawl DO’in, Day’uhl? What kind-a girl yawl thank ah am?” She straightened her skirt. “Ah’m a propah suth’un lady.”

“That’s not what I heard. I heard you’ve fucked just about every guy at Harrah’s.”

She broke into tears. I sat quivering. “That is an awful lie…who told yawl them horrible lies?”

“Everybody gets it from Ginger, is what I heard, except me.”

“Oh God,” she sobbed. “A thought yawl was my friend.”

“I don’t need friends. Fuck friends. I need pussy!”

She stormed outside, a broken giraffe. I followed her. She got into my VW and demanded a ride home. Duke stared at me with concern. I took the bottle of gin to my sun chair and guzzled from it. Ginger held her face and cried in chest-quaking spasms, then jumped out and took off in her high heels.

“Nogood rotten bastard!” she screamed.

I finished off the gin and passed out on the couch and woke up with a head that felt like it had been clubbed. It was noon before I was in my sun chair, in the shade, Duke beside me. JC walked Ginger to his Porsche. While opening the door, he spotted me and shook his head slowly. I went into the house and tried to write, but all I could do was cry, and after I finished crying I went back out to sit with Duke until JC returned and ambled over.

“How yah feelin,’ stud?”

“Wonderful,” I sneered.

“Gotta watch the booze, kiddo—leads to bad decisions and foul behavior. Myself, I only have a few, keeps me in control.” He issued me his favorite fond uncle grin. “Ready for some tennis—say twenty bucks?”

I went for my racket. I was in sneakers, without socks. We drove to the local clay courts in his jeep and began warming up. It was a very hot day, the sun at its zenith, and sweat gushed out of me. Joe had fine strokes, as if he’d taken lessons, but he was not agile nor a scrambler. I had quick feet and good hands from being a baseball infielder and won the first few games by leaping and diving all over the courts. I sensed his frustration as he dashed back and forth and lunged at the net, swiped futilely at passing shots or galloped backwards awkwardly after lobs. Tennis was more my game, not his, and I let him get close; then closed him out in two sets, shaking hands at the net. He was not happy.

“I’ll get you back next time,” he said. “My serve wasn’t on today.”

“Hey, I gotta win at something, huh?”

He put his arm around me as we walked off. “I’ve watched you for months now, and you’re a mess, kiddo. I fear for you.”

“Guess I got a lot to learn.”

“Well, you don’t need to be doing it the hard way.”

“Guess things come kind of easy for you, huh?”

“Always have, good buddy.”

“Except in tennis, ey?”

He flashed me a hard look as we sat in his jeep, then peeled two twenties from a wad and handed it over. The drive back was silent.

§§§

I gave up trying to get laid and upped my drinking and hit the blackjack tables. Free drinks arrived at the tables after drinking several tickets at the bar and sometimes I didn’t return to my apartment until dawn or late morning. I was usually sleep-deprived and hungover behind the bar and found myself giddy and became a cut-up, life of the party, keeping the bartenders amused and often laughing throughout my shifts. The bartenders sometimes paused to gaze at me with expressions I took as questioning my sanity.

My after-work drinking/gambling became a sort of siege of the body and soul. In the employees’ lounge, I ignored wholesome white college sorority girls from the Midwest who were summer recruits to cocktail or run Keno or host or make change for slot machine players and were hit on in the ongoing and exploding sexual grab-bag by white All-American college fraternity boys from the Midwest who were recruited as bar boys and bus boys and Keno runners who partied and got laid while I sulked over Robert Kennedy’s assassination and drove around the Lake with Duke on that hellish night and stalled on my novel and felt the sting of Ginger stiffening in my presence and gritting her teeth.

I became a slave to the tables and ate deep into my bank account. Brown warned me to cease gambling. I had so little money that I used my tips to eat in the cafeteria and had hot dogs at home, if I ate at all. One night after work I hit the blackjack table with about $40 and within an hour had a grand. I’d been betting rashly when on a cold streak, and cowardly when I was hot, a loser. This time, when I got hot I ran with it, and no feeling in life compared to being so torrid you knew which card was coming, the heat escalating to blinding white fever, turning me momentarily bullet-proof and immune from the continual impression I had of myself as repulsive to women and waking up each morning with a painful hard-on and an empty bed.

I kept gambling, built my stack up to $1,500. I lost two hands and quit and had a drink at the Keno bar where the graveyard bartender, Wilkie, told me to “get my butt home.” Instead I went down to the Sahara and spent the morning losing it. I went back to Harrah’s and cashed my paycheck and lost it and borrowed $20 from a bartender at the Keno bar and lost it and later found myself waiting for the bank to open, only to realize I’d drained my account. So I drove to the electric company and withdrew my deposit and returned to Harrah’s and built it up to around $500 and lost it, hurried home, showered, dressed, went to work, made $35 in tips, lost it, went to the parking lot to discover my car wouldn’t start and, in front of beautiful college couples, arms around each other, kicked the car, jumped upon and crushed the hood in a cursing rage, returned to the Keno bar and tried to borrow from Brown and Fordyke and Holliday, who refused to loan me anything, so I hitchhiked home and collapsed.

Woke up on my day off and borrowed $5 from Joe Lebeau and walked a mile to the market for hot dogs, shared them with Duke and was about to doze off in my sun chair when I discovered a show-stopping statuesque redhead dancer from the Sahara sunning herself in a string bikini in front of JC’s apartment. JC came out, spotted me, grinned.

“Hey, you red-hot lover, ready to let me get my money back in tennis?”

I went for my racket. We drove to the tennis courts in JC’s jeep, the redhead sitting up front, the scent of her perfume having a delirious affect on me. The day was blazing hot. While we warmed up, the redhead sat on a chair holding a parasol. The match started and I attacked the net and ran Joe like a frothing dog. I gasped for breath and didn’t care if I died. I beat him the first set and gave him a vicious thrashing the second, at one point coming to the net when he made a weak backhand lob and slamming the ball into his chest. He gulped for breath as his redhead held both hands to her breasts in dramatic fashion. On one knee, he rose and nodded slowly in recognition of retaliation and revenge from a desperate man with nothing to lose.

After I polished him off, we shook hands at the net and he paid me off on the ride back, the redhead doting on JC, who was irksome. I walked to the local market for a case of Brown Derby beer and two sirloins to share with Duke, who now followed me everywhere, even to the market.

 §§§

My regimen now consisted of working, drinking afterwards and blowing my tips on the tables, hitchhiking home, walking Duke down to and along the lake, and crashing. Fellow employees regarded me furtively. I hung with no one. I was warned by a senior bar boy to get a haircut and clean the crud off my tie. I threatened to strangle him and he scurried away.

One morning, around 2, I was hitchhiking home along Highway 50 when a car pulled alongside me and stopped. Inside was my father. He was 54, and owned a thick neck and meaty face with a thrice broken nose and eyes that were savvy, tough and missed nothing. Driving me home, he almost growled, “Your eyes look like piss-holes in the snow. You’ve lost at least twenty pounds. You look like a goddamn scarecrow. What the hell’ve you been doing to yourself? You haven’t turned to drugs, like the rest of these pussies, have you?”

“Of course not. I’m still your son.”

He heaved a huge sigh of relief. “I’m here because I checked your bank account after not hearing from you for months and saw that it was empty. I had a bad feeling. Looks to me like you’ve been on a drinking/gambling crusade.”

I nodded.

“Took me an hour to find your place. The damndest thing happened—I’m trying to look in the window, and I feel a big nose up my ass. I thought a bear had me. I turn around and it’s the biggest goddamn dog I’ve ever seen. He must be your friend, because he liked my smell. Helluva a dog. We had a nice visit.”

I explained that Duke was my devoted pal. Back at the apartment dad hauled in his overnight bag and howled, “Jesus Christ, this place stinks, and where’s the goddamn lights?” He worked a switch.

I lit a couple candles in the kitchen. “Gambled away the deposit.”

“What about water? You can’t live without water!”

“I got cold water, Dad. I’ve adjusted, like the Army.”

“This place is like the black hole of Calcutta.” He sat at the kitchenette which was littered with paper cups, paper plates, newspapers, napkins, wrappers, etc., and watched me plunk down on the sofa and remove my chewed-up low quarters. “I didn’t raise you to live like this.” He was getting emotional.

“I live as I choose, dad. It’s my life.”

“You won’t last long in life going on like this.”

I got up and walked into my bedroom and collapsed into a deep sleep. I awoke before noon and entered the living room, which was spotless, the lights on, coffee on the gas range, dad at the kitchenette, petting Duke. I sat down across from them with coffee.

“You didn’t have to do this, dad.”

“Finish your coffee and then let’s get some food in you, boy.”

We drove to a nearby diner and dad bought bunkhouse breakfasts and afterwards we went to the Harrah’s parking lot where my car had accumulated a month of dust, tree sap and bird shit. Dad was aghast at the crushed hood. “Looks like I raised a goddamn psycho.”

He had the car towed and mechanics put in a new battery and alternator. He followed me back to the triplex. We sat in the kitchen. Duke sat beside me. Dad gazed at me. I was his only son and he staked his life on me. His eyes grew moist and his face was etched with pain.

“I guess I don’t understand a lot of things,” he said. “Here you were a great prospect headed to the major leagues, and you fuck that up, and now you wanna be a writer? It doesn’t make sense. But it’s your life, and Dell, I got faith in you. Truth is, I’m proud of you for going against the grain. It takes guts to do what you’re doing. Thing is, I don’t want it to drive you to where you are now any more than baseball did.” He pushed a tear from his cheek. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, son. I know your heart, and you’re gonna pull out of this mess…by God, you’re my blood.”

It had been so long since we’d embraced, an act I’d always shunned as the tough son of a tough father, but we hugged. Then I walked him out to his rental. He had a long drive to Reno and the plane to LA. He petted Duke, grinned at me. “You made a good friend here. I’m thankful for that.”

We watched him drive off. He’d given me a $20 bill and warned me not to blow it on booze or gambling, but to eat. I went to my supervisor and asked for as much work as possible and since it was the height of the tourist season he gave me seven shifts a week and 12-hour shifts on weekends. I worked 35 straight nights and after each one I walked past the bar and the gaming tables and drove home to walk Duke and afterwards plunged into deep, dreamless sleep. I saved every penny until I paid off my debts and amassed a sizable nest-egg and informed my supervisor I was finished in October. I was headed to San Francisco, where the odds of getting laid were much better due to the high gay population, so I thought.

Before leaving, I cornered Ginger. “I want to apologize,” I said. “You are the nicest person in this damn snake pit, Ginger. I had you all wrong. I can’t bear to hurt you, and have you hate me. Please forgive me, you beautiful, sweet Southern belle. I’m sorry.”

“Oh Day’uhl,” she said, and actually touched my cheek “Yawl was the only boy ah wanted all along. But yawl’s so hungry…a man so hungry scares a girl.”

Back at the triplex, my car packed, Joe Lebeau and  JC and I shook hands. JC put his arm around my shoulders and walked me to the car.

“Gonna miss yah, kid. One of these days I expect to walk through an airport and see a best-seller by the greatest red-hot lover ever to hit Lake Tahoe.” He grinned and winked, and I laughed, and said, “Thanks for the tough love, JC.”

Duke had watched me nervously all morning. I knelt down beside my car and hugged him and he emitted a sound I’d never heard before, a deep, brief moan, and a shudder, and he snatched my forearm in his jaws and bit down hard, just hard enough to let me know how he felt.

I jumped into my car and took off. JC and Joe waved. Duke followed me half a block at a trot, then stopped when I turned the corner. Halfway to San Francisco, I still saw him in my rearview mirror—imperious lone wolf, eyes piercing, my best friend. §

Dell Franklin is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where getting laid happens almost every day.

The strange mystical love logic of a former wife beater

IMG_4007

The body is like a dream. When we see this and awake, not a trace remains. How much time is left for the looking?

— The Unfettered Mind: Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword Master

The preacher man
said this earth suit
will slip away
like a blade
of grass that withers
under the scorching sun
and falls to the ground.

I’m a sinner
like you he said.
I used to beat
my wife [and she
stood there next to him gleaming
saying nothing
with her mouth, nodding]

but I gave
my life to Jesus
and now I’m a sinner
saved by grace who beats
the Devil instead
cutting him down
to size!

When this earth suit
slips away
I’ll put on
a new shinier heavenly
suit that will last

forever and ever, amen!

He shot his wife
a look and they smiled.

Come to the Lord!
Be healed! Be saved!
Glory, hallelujah! he shouted
kicking back a heel
and hopping up off
the other foot as if
struck by lightning.

Shecomeonahonda!
Shecome Onahonda!
She come on a honda!

he said in a babbling tongue
his face contorted
the converted wife beater
channeling his anger
into a strange new
kind of mystical
love logic.

—Stacey Warde

Searching for home

from the publisher.weekend!1

CAYUCOS COWGIRLS—If you ever have doubts, as we sometimes do, that we live in paradise, you just gotta know where to look, as these ladies discovered recently on an outing not far from home. Featured: Yakelin Pizano, Emelyn Reyes, Liz Herrera, Jessika Lee, and Betsy Ball. Photo courtesy of Betsy Ball

by Stacey Warde

My whole life has been a search for belonging, finding a place to call “home.”

The closest I’ve come to feeling this way is here in this peculiar beachside throwback of a community called Cayucos, a throwback to sparsely populated seaside villages along California’s rugged, magnificent coastline, a throwback to my earliest childhood memories of Laguna Beach, where my great-grandfather, Joseph Smith Thurston, and his Morman family found a homestead, settling in Aliso Canyon in 1871, before there was water, before there were multi-million dollar palaces on beachfront property that once cost $25 a lot, Old Laguna, which my cousin, Kelly Boyd, a two-time mayor there, likes to remind us, “doesn’t exist any more.”

Cayucos, when I moved here nearly 30 years ago, reminded me of Laguna Beach, a seaside hamlet tucked among the hills rising above the ocean, safe from development and money grubbers and golden boys in hot cars, at least for a while. The people here, ranchers, surfers, loners and drifters, were friendly and regular. Houses were of reasonable size and most had gardens where it was easy to strike up conversations with the neighbors.

The quaint little beach cottages have mostly succumbed to the bulldozer to make way for grotesque stucco monstrosities with little thought to impact or design, their form artless and dull, much like their owners. There are a few exceptions but the rule for development here the last three decades appears only to have been “make it ugly, make it fast and make it big.”

Gone are the gardens with fruit trees and flowers, and friendly neighbors, who actually talked to one another from their yards. Most of the homes that have been built here in the last 30 years don’t have yards. They’re all house. Ugly boxes with tinted windows, where conversation can easily be avoided, and the world, the place we call paradise, can be shut out.

To put a spin on cousin Kelly’s comment, “It’s not Old Cayucos any more.” Yet, while much has changed here, it still feels like home, even if it’s not exactly paradise.

I’ve realized over the years, however, that home is more than a place, more than what we might like to call “paradise”; it’s really what we bring to our living spaces and the ground we keep, as well as the company we keep; it’s where we feel most safe to be our selves, whole and fractured—all of it—and rest, if even for only a moment, from the the world’s troubles, of which there are plenty.

You don’t have to turn on the TV to witness another Islamic State beheading to know “the world’s a mess” right now, as so many people have said to me recently.

All you have to do is make an appearance at the local watering hole to know that there are plenty of messy situations right here at home: Addictions, feuds, excessive drug use, overdoses, suicides, and the occasional racist comment. Addictions and feuds seem reasonable; drug use and overdoses, indulgent; suicide, pardonable; but racism, why?  All it does is prove how mean you are, not intelligent or reasonable.

Author Dell Franklin, in his recent powerful account of confronting a local young man for revealing his ignorance about blacks, Obama and the “N” Word, reminds us that we gain much by setting aside our prejudices in the interest of pursuing a common goal, of learning from someone with a different value system or experience or skin color. We’re all in the same boat—as Dell was when he signed on as the only white crew member on the Delta Queen—and we really do need to learn how to get along.

We’ve ripped on the notion, commonplace in this town, that we live in paradise, among the bigots who like to say bad things about blacks and Mexicans, and the intolerant who throw newspapers and magazines in the trash because they don’t like what’s in them, but we do an injustice to our fair haven by not recognizing the elements that really do make this paradise, and there are plenty of them.

You just have to know where to look, like the women in the photo at the top of this page who have found their little weekend slice of heaven during a recent outing somewhere in the hills not far from our town. What more do you need than a place to park above the ocean with guns and beer and a thirst for adventure? We like to be reminded of what really does make this paradise. Thank you, ladies, for showing us the way. Oh, and the gal with the gun, I don’t believe her name really is Jessika Lee with a “K,” but what do I know?

IMG_7383Meanwhile, Hoppe’s restaurant and the little bistro in back of the Way Station mysteriously shut down recently, putting a dozen or so employees out of work and leaving the town without the world-class fare we’d grown to expect.

Way Station owners Henry and Mary Ellen Eisemann lamented the situation by posting a note on the door that informs potential patrons that for the first time in 41 years they will not have a restaurant at the location, at least until they can find a “suitable operator.”

It goes along with what I’ve said earlier, things change, even the place we call home. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.com

Night Life in Happy Jack’s: ‘Two-Beer’

IMG_6070by Dell Franklin

Bob ‘Two-Beer’ Bullnair refuses to listen to reason, especially if he’s into his third beer. Two-Beer works exclusively for Rafe Monk. He is around my height, six feet, but at least 200 beans of non-defined farm-boy strength that is the awe of fellow fishermen, for Two-Beer will outwork, outlift and outlast anybody on the waterfront. His Midwestern pie-face owns tiny black eyes that are pathetically sincere, especially when he hits on women before his second beer. He is totally honest, trustworthy and earnest, will do anything for anybody, is intelligent and has a degree in engineering from the University of Iowa, and yet here he is, a deckhand in Morro Bay, California, living in a windowless shack and unable to get laid and avoid beatings.

On this Sunday evening Two-Beer’s button eyes are pinpricks inviting disaster. He wants a beer but I know we’ll all be in big trouble if I serve him one, and so, for the twentieth time, to distract him, I ask him why he ended up fishing in Morro Bay when he could be a serious person with a high-paying job in the grown-up tech world.

“I don’t wanna be like other people and do what other people do,” he tells me. “I do what I wanna do. And don’t you go mentioning my college degree again. Fuck the degree! I want people to think I’m stupid, but you know I’m not. You probly think you’re smarter than me, ‘cuz you’re a wise-ass, and you write for that shitty paper, but you’re not as smart as me. All you can do is tend bar and write shit. Otherwise, you’re good for nothin’.”

“I drove a cab.”

“Anybody can drive a cab.”

“Not everybody can drive a cab. It’s a harder job than you think.”

“Bullshit. If you can do it, anybody can do it.”

“You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t tend bar, either.”

“I could so. Anybody can tend bar.”

“Not you. A bartender needs diplomatic skills. You argue with everybody. You have no social amenities. You can’t be around booze without drinking, and you’re an idiot of a drunk. And you can’t fight.”

“Bullshit. I’ll kick your ass. I was on the high school wrestling team and won my matches, went to the state championships. The Midwest is wrestling country. I’d squeeze you into a pretzel.”

“You only fight when you’re drunk. Two beers and you’re helpless. You have no idea how many times I’ve saved you from a beating, but you never remember, because three beers and you black out. Rafe, Farraday…, they all have to watch you like hawks when you go up the coast. You go in bars like this, where nobody knows you, somebody’s gonna beat your ass into a bloody pulp.”

“I’ll have my second beer now, Mr. Know-it-all.”

“I’m not gonna serve you a second beer. Know why? There’s women in here, and women are always your natural enemy. Especially after two beers. I mean, you might even get laid in this dive if you had just one beer, or smoked a little weed.”

“Who are you? My social director? My shrink?”

“I’m your bartender, an important person in your milieu. I’m also your friend. I look out for you. I’m sick of seeing you get beaten senseless by people who have no business beating you senseless, and I’m sick of hearing about people beating you senseless. Somebody’s got to protect you from yourself. I care.”

“I know you do, but that doesn’t mean I hafta accept your protection or you caring about me. I’m my own man. I’m not a boy. I’m thirty-two years old. Besides, I’m unimpaired, and indestructible. I can take more punishment than you’d ever take, Mr. Know-it-all-tell-everybody-their-business bartender. Now gimme that beer, if you don’t mind, sir!”

“What are you gonna do if I don’t give it to you?”

He cracks his innocent Howdy Doody/Alfred E. Newman grin. “You know I’d never hurt you. You know the second beer I’m okay. It’s the third one I run into trouble.”

“My guess is you’ve had more than one in your dump or in other bars before coming down here.”

“I want my second beer, Franklin!” He’s becoming angry, pushing.

“I saw you coming out of Legend’s.”

“They wouldn’t serve me. I’m eighty-sixed.”

“I’m absolutely positive you’ve been nipping.”

“Fuck you! Gimme my fucking beer, man!”

“Go away, Two-Beer!”

“Don’t call me Two-Beer! I hate that name. It demeans me. I’m an educated person and I deserve dignity, you arrogant fucker. My name’s Bob Bullnair. Serve me!”

I walk away. Two-Beer looks especially persecuted, tells Homer Carp and Joe Farraday, who are sitting nearby, he’s being picked on because he’s a proud Native American. (He’s only ¼ Osage). Finally, he’s at the front door. He hisses at me, scrooches up his face to show his revulsion at the mere sight of me, and gives me the finger in a very exaggerated, menacing manner, and shouts, “I’m goin’ down to the wharf where they respect me, asshole. Fuck YOU-U-U-U!” He storms out through the swinging doors. Homer, at the end of the bar, flashes his grin, which looks like his teeth are a bunch of misshapen nails protruding from his lips. Farraday, who sits beside Weasel Frazier, displays his grin, which resembles a dog sneering.

Beer Can Bessie shows up and takes her usual stool up front and as far away from the crowd as possible and orders a bottle of beer and we exchange the usual hugs. I light her cigarette with our bar matches, which have no logo on the cover. It’s raining hard outside and she has on her overcoat and hat and doesn’t bother to remove them. She just got off work as an RN at the emergency room at a hospital in San Luis Obispo. Vera, Carp’s live-in woman, diminutive but known for her ferocious manner as “The Wolverine,” comes in through the back door, walks around Homer without acknowledging him or his friends and sits beside Bessie as I draw her a beer and light her cigarette. I sip a shot of top-shelf vodka while they talk. I fetch and devour a burrito from down the street. I’m savoring a cup of coffee with Kahlua when John, who manages the Pizza Palace two blocks down, calls.

The Pizza Palace has a rustic dining room and an enclosed patio with tables and serves pitchers of beer, and evidently Two-Beer came in claiming I’d sent him down. John served him a pitcher of beer and he began bothering some gal who was with a framer called Ortho, and when Two-Beer hissed and insulted his girl and got his pitcher dumped on his head and then got slaughtered before a few regulars pulled Ortho away, John and the crew threw him into the street.

Bessie and the Wolverine turn to see Two-Beer stagger through the front doors looking like he stuck his face in a garbage disposal. His T-shirt is torn half off his body and his hair is soggy with beer as he sidles up to the bar while I hold the phone, his eyes little nasty lasers.

“Do me a favor, Franklin,” says John, on whose Pizza Palace sponsored basketball team I once played point guard and helped lead them to their only city league championship and lone trophy. “Don’t ever send that mongoloid lunatic down here again, okay?”

“I didn’t send him down there, John. I wouldn’t sick the crazy bastard on my worst enemy.”

“He said you told him I’d serve him because we’re big hoop buddies.”

“I never said any of that, John. I’d never pawn the puke off on you.”

Two-Beer yells at me, “GIMME A BEER, YOU GODDAMN BUNION!”

“Oh, I see you got the moron now, huh? He ran everybody out of here. I’m talking families with kids. Thanks a lot, pal. Maybe I’ll send one of my blacked-out drunks to your place, huh?”

“That’s all I got, John.”

“GIMME A FUCKIN’ BEER YOU SEMEN-SUCKIN’ QUEER!”

“He called one of my waitresses, a high school girl, a wart, a bunion, and a cunt, and hissed at her, and she ran out of here crying hysterically.”

“I’m sorry, John, I really am, but I’m telling yah, man, I NEVER sent the puke down there.”

“I gotta go, Dell. I got a mess to clean up. Thanks for sending that crazy person to my establishment and ruining our good name, I really appreciate it.”

After hanging up, Two-Beer is sort of draped over the bar, eyeing me up with persecuted malevolence, blood dripping from his nose and swollen, cut lips, face slack. “How about some coffee, Bob?” I say to him.

“How about some cawww-fee?” he mocks sneeringly. “Don’t try an’ schmooze me. Don’t try an’ outsmart me, cuz yah can’t, yah bunion.”

“Why you calling me, of all things, a bunion, Bob?”

“A boil, a wart, a …pus-tule.”

“Why you callin’ me those awful names, Bob? I’m on your side. I’m your friend.” I pour myself out a vodka, sniff it.

“Fuck you, I got no frenz…damn you, pus-face, I want my fuckin’ BEER!”

“You settle your dumb, sorry ass down,” Bessie says quietly.

Still draped over the bar, his head turns like a turtle’s toward Bessie. “Who the fuck are you?”

“You don’t wanna know, dipshit.”

“Who you callin’ a dipshit?” he says defensively.

Bessie calmly appraises him. “When’s the last time you got laid, stupid?”

Two-Beer’s trying to focus now. “None-a yer bizness, bitch.”

“You haven’t been laid in years. You gotta pay for it, like a beggar, though I doubt even the most desperate, drug-ridden hooker’d have you. You’re uncouth. A loser.” She takes out a new cigarette and I light it. She blows out smoke. “Poor stupid fisherman. Eat your poor lonely heart out.” She takes a slug of her beer. Turns back to me. “Give him a beer. I’ll take charge.” Two-Beer gazes at me, mouth agape, horribly bloodshot eyes terribly confused. I draw him a draft. He looks at it.

“Go ahead, drink your beer, stupid ape,” Bessie says. “Dig your own grave. You’re just about the stupidest, lamest male hide and pair of balls in creation, goddamn drooling, slobbering yokel, you’re like somebody’s abandoned goddamn St. Bernard.”

Two-Beer mutters, “My name’s Bob Bullnair and you can kiss my white ass.”

“Oh, that’s real intelligent. You’re a scholar as well as a boor.”

Two-Beer takes a swig of his beer—half of it trickles down his throat. Everybody’s looking on. I turn down the jukebox. Freshen up my shot. Lean back against the bar. These are golden moments, make the job worthwhile.

“Intelligent? I got a diploma from the University of Iowa, white-trash bitch. Whatta you got? Look like a homeless wench t’ me.”

Bessie looks him over. “So you’re gay, huh? A homo?”

“I ain’t a damn queer! Fuck you! I’m a man!”

Bessie snuffs out her cigarette. Finishes off half a bottle of beer, puts it down, studies Two-Beer, who gapes at her, licking his bloody, sliced, swollen lips. “I guess we’ll have to see about that,” she says. She tosses some bills on the bar, squeezes the Wolverine’s arm, stands and walks over to Two-Beer. She withdraws a hanky from her purse and dabs at his face. Two-Beer watches her, half standing now. She looks him up and down. Puts her hanky away. “Look,” she says “if you just shut your trap and follow me out the door like a good dog trying to please his master, you might just get lucky. You up to it, dipshit?”

Two-Beer straightens, teeters. He nods. He swigs his beer, most of it streaming down his neck. He flashes his Howdy Doody/Alfred E. Newman grin. Bessie snags him by his torn T-shirt and tows him lurching out the door while everybody cheers and claps. I lift my shot and bolt it. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.