were The Dutch East India Trading Company colonizing South Africa.
And William The Orange, creator of The Bank of England, famous for first charting out the global banking industry, of course.
Neanderthals went extinct cuz their eyes were bigger than human eyes.
They expended all that brain-energy struggling to see in the dark while we Homo Sapiens were figuring out how to skin animals and make advantageous connections.
You know who was selling those coats, and calling in favors for access to fire, sculpting systems and rituals for the evolutionary benefit and psychological survival of the group?
You ever notice The Family’s squinty, beady little eyes?
Tuck-pointers conceal the seams.
But nothing touches The Bloodline.
The Family often retold a favourite romantic fairy tale of a low-ranking SS officer saving the family of a young Jewish girl he wanted to impress.
The Bloodline required genealogical quarterings all the way back to 64 great-great-great grandparents, 300 years.
Everyone always checking out those Medici sisters and The Bonaparte girls.
Ha! I should line up to compete for one of them?
Pops loved to play matchmaker: the espionage of romance, the power to steer instinct, the obsession with purity.
Junior habitually lied about being an Air Force officer to impress women.
Master of the backwards compliment, he’d say: I don’t like natural beauties. I’ve always preferred women like you.
My Mother George Washington forced Junior to call off his first engagement cuz the girl had a Jewish stepfather.
The girl blabbed to everyone re: Junior’s vivid insecurities that he’d never amount to anything thanks to The Family’s pampering.
Junior got her pregnant in ’71, but they didn’t see the term thru.
And after the surgery, she never saw Junior again, not once.
CHAPTER 14 How’d It Taste?
Afternoon cards with O’Malley and The Greek with chains of mudslides.
Hands folded across his front, Aaron’s mirrored shades reflected the blue pool.
Supper time we’d head to The Other Greek Place: a place where when you sat on the toilet in the men’s room, you’d feel a bump when, on the other side of the wall, someone sat on the toilet in the ladies’ room.
We’d eat at the bar, smoking between bites of dry burgers and pork-chops with soft fries.
Quiet time with the flicker of The Game on ze Tube.
Aaron stood stationed at the door but sat lonesome at the far end of the bar to eat.
The squeaky bartender, That Mike, lifted himself up on his toes when he spoke and grimaced anytime anyone but him voiced a word.
After supper, one of us inevitably deigns to cross the room to the jukebox to play some song that makes you feel young again, cuz even if no one remembers liking being young, everyone likes remembering it; I mean, you don’t remember being happy when you were young, but seeing some past version of yourself, naive, is endearing.
O’Malley always danced a concentrated little twist in the middle of the room, his weird arms strong like a small dog’s.
The Greek would impersonate him and that was all the permission I required to bop along.
Many of my happiest moments have been standing near people dancing.
And My Diana hanging on that flimsy closet door, in profile in her patriotic bikini, the moon huge and low behind her.
By the time we got to The Other Greek Place each day, it was always dusk, so naturally the active content of our camaraderie darkened a little.
Primary colors softened and blended.
Daylight no longer stood in judgment.
And always little things with That Mike: the semi-weekly joke if my friend wanted anything, nodding to Aaron at the door.
And the complaints re: his lower back standing over the sink set at the perfect wrong height.
He’d call me “Mr. Sinatra” if simplifying my math ever caused my tip to peak above 5%.
Every day for years we spent hours together.
I never did get how and why O’Malley and The Greek tolerated That Mike.
The thing about That Mike, he just always thought about my money.
It’s kind of interesting what things cost, but I really never thought about money.
And however dim our daily energies, O’Malley and The Greek and me were freed by our hacking laughter and our rollicking song and screech.
We gave ourselves permission to strut and blurt small brags in passing, spinning in the limited palette of beer sign lights and ze Tube, dancing with one another and our empty stools.
I’d shout over the jukebox, “Duh, unga-bunga?”
And they both fell for it every time.
You know that old joke, Lewd Reader, where you ask a guy if he remembers his first blowjob and then, dewy eyed, he answers something like, ‘Oh, like it was yesterday. It was just magic.’
And then you ask him, How’d it taste?
That same gang of us, wishing each other the best with our boredom, said goodbye each night with affectionate gravitas that far exceeded our nods hello each morning.
My old friends were all the misfit kids of neo-cons, and I’d ignored messages from most of them long enough, they’d given up on me.
Though I did still sometimes wake to Gore Vidal’s desperate late-night messages.
I’d become accustomed to the pizza and cartoons that block out all the corpses.
And The Family was not, by any means, a daily topic of conversation.
Occasionally a gregarious stranger cocking his head toward Aaron would be like, What’s up with the spook?
But when everyone shrugs it off, security fades into the background exactly as it’s supposed to.
CHAPTER 15 Pops Visits The Bahamas
Capsizing regimes all over—Guatemala, Iran—The CIA needed middlemen
