Notes. From the Upper West Side. A novel by Dan Wrench. Chapter 45.
Dandy Boy. Why don't you 10 barge George Viders nightclub? Junior asked. She slapped a plate down in the draining tray and picked up a dish towel and tried her hands fast and turned around to face me.
I knew it was an important question because she stood there for a few seconds and didn't take her eyes off me. And it's kind of a sore spot because I know people are wondering why I don't hang at Viders with the showbiz Pharisees. I don't think the bartenders are unionized at Viders Club, sweetie. They aren't.
Nope. If they make 200 bucks a night including tips. She sighed. Local six all the way?
I giggle. She sighed again. But wouldn't you make contacts there? I mean, another sigh.
Wouldn't it be better for your career? Don't agents go there, comics, singers, actors? It just seems like you have the perfect day job for networking. And instead you spend all night in that midtown hotel with salesmen and tourists.
And hookers? I giggle. Like the tall one at my bar every night in the boots with the seven-inch heels and the leather pants. Junior stared at me.
She was unfazed. She really couldn't figure me out. Was I really into this being an artist crapper, wasn't I? Okay.
I thought while she was staring at me, my bad. See for the past five days I've been haranging her with anecdotes of my three days producing the music video. I wanted her to think the reason I was all chipper and whistling and happy all the time wasn't because I was about to start pounding the fresh tale of a 30-something actress who had once killed as Louisa Miller in Caballen's lead. But because my career was moving.
Because I was meeting people. Because the biz bug had rebittened me. Now by asking me why I wasn't interested in attending Viders Show Biz Bar, she was kind of calling my bluff. Huh.
You know, I don't think I ever realized it until just this second typing it out. But that's exactly what she was doing calling my bluff. The hypocritical slit. Why hypocritical, you ask?
Bear this in mind whenever I mention Junior and her domestic complaints. At no time was she supposed to be the full-time housewife and mommy in this arrangement. She started out as an actress for Christ's sake. Now she was a full-time drudge.
She was as lost in the middle-class maze as I was and putting an even less effort to get out. When was the last time she produced, even pretend to produced a music video? Not to mention a music video that ended up cyber-sweeping the nation. Hey, and if she'd wanted to do that, I would have so supported the twine.
But back last March on my kitchen when we were having this conversation. No way I had that in my head. Back then, all I wanted from her was to let me off the hook for not asking Vider if I could serve drinks to 20-something comics in his club. Honey.
I whined play. I walked up to her from behind and wrapped my love and arms around her waist. One step at a time. Today music video producer, tomorrow, attending Bar in a nightclub maybe.
I gigcackled to underlying the irony in case she missed it. She didn't say anything. Didn't even acknowledge I was there. I kissed her neck.
Nothing. Just kept rinsing her dishes. So I detached myself and whistled down the hallway to get the boys, who were in their room and up to no good on the internet. Fuck it, I thought it the wife.
Beat pissed off. I'll take my dick business to a dick aficionado. But I had the whole day ahead of me before I had to worry about anything erection-esque. And right now the mission was, take the boys to Riverside Park for a day of man's squad fun.
If you're from New York, you maybe remember last March. We had these two weeks at the end of the month that were ridiculously warm. Remember? The arms were already starting to come out.
Even another six weeks I thought, we'll start seeing naked legs on roller-bikes. They were all the ladies and single mommies with tight glutes and tight sweats. So I had the boys, and they had their plastic lightsabers, and we were on our way to the playland that is Riverside Park. When we got there, we immediately went to the lunch cart with a nice immigrant man selling Shishkabob.
The man's squad. Run. On Shishkabob. Then we ran over and sat down on a bench next to this dandy boy in a white ringer to a white jacket with black trim that looked like he maybe stole it from a waiter in a classy restaurant.
He also had on these brown suede chick boots and flaming yellow pants. Now, I'm a liberal. When I see fags roving around on the upper west side, my first impulse is to walk over to them and say, thank you for bringing some diversity to my neighborhood. I know that some guys get all defensive about the park being a family place where their kids are protected and whatnot, but what I say to those guys is, live and let live or go fuck yourself.
Am I right? So me and the boys didn't think twice about sitting down next to a dandy boy and chowing down Shishkabob like we were made of wolf parts. I'm going to be completely honest here and admit we were kind of messy, but we were eating street meat for fuck's sake. And all we had to wipe up with were these flimsy white paper napkins like the ones from the metal dispenser and the diner and I guess the odor from the meat was pretty well...
Odory. Then the boys, well, I don't know what the boys did first. I think Harry farted. And then we started making fart jokes, or maybe it was the other way around.
It's kind of jumbled in my head. I settled them down and we just started chewing. Harry put a pepper in his nose and said, "'But goooood, like Count Dracula. And I dig cackled.
That's when the gay boy jumps up, swear to God he's been sitting still as a statue, so I forgot he was even there and screams at me in this metrosexual accent. See that's Christ he lives in Aachen peasant. Don't you have any awareness of the people around you? Well, and he stared at me with his eyes popping from the adrenaline.
His nostrils weren't flared but he was panting a little and he was all brown, like a Cuban or a Puerto Rican or an Arab or something. Sorry, I said. He turned around and pranced away. funny his little fag boots pounding the wetter earth as he stomped up the path to riverside drive.
At first I was really sorry like I said to the guy but then I thought, fuck you dandy boy. Daddy? Sam said I looked down. He was looking up at me all scared and confused like a puppy that just got his nose slapped.
I had a good mind to call a cop except there's no law against scaring kids by screaming at their dad. Don't worry boys. I said that man is just upset because he can't afford an iPod like everybody else. Be ass-queer.
You don't like the sounds and smells of my family? Buy some of your buds in a burrito like the rest of civilization and get your fanny huggers out of my face. I looked at my shivering kids and I knew I was right. Turn the other west side as a work of fiction.
The people that did in this work do not exist. Notes from the upper west side copyright 2013 to 2017 by Dan Rench.