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I'm at work. Nothing is broken, nobody's yelling, and so I'm just sitting here doing my Maytag Repairman imitation... time to tell a story, in other words.
Today's offering concerns a woman named Charlene, and her unfortunate husband, Matt... who used to be a very close friend... until Charlene (a singularly grouchy, miserable, and immature sort of woman whom I nicknamed Snarlene) managed to tick me off badly enough that I just kind of let the friendship go on the back burner.
I know that this makes me sound disloyal. But the fact is, after a fashion a fella gets tired of being blamed for all things that some poor man's irascible witch-woman of a wife will get ticked off about. And if that woman is actually cranky enough that most any little thing is enough to set her off, then one finally figures that he needs to distance himself from an ugly domestic situation over which he has no control or influence... or suffer the inevitable consequences.
I never dumped Matt altogether-- just didn't hang out with him constantly, as I did before he married Snarlene. And so it was that one Bike Week about four years ago, when I ran into Matt in a dive on the outskirts of Deland it was Old Home Week for the brothers, and a bittersweet occasion of sorts. I truly felt sorry for the man...
I asked him about his kids; he proudly showed me a picture of his son as a US Marine. He went on to say that his daughter was doing well in school, and that she had a part-time job working for a local business. But when I asked him about Snarlene, his face darkened and he told me, "Well, she's the same miserable, childish, selfish, soul-killing harpy she was last time you saw her."
And I was thinkin' to myself: "Jeebus! Now ain't you glad you asked?" as Matt went dourly, telling me that he figured he'd be divorcing Snarlene just as soon as the daughter turned eighteen... at that moment in time, she was pushing sixteen...
I rifled through my memories of Snarlene. She really was all those things Matt named her as being, and I felt sympathy for poor Matt-- along with a brief flicker of amusement at his fate for having tried to stand by her while massaging her into something a little more tolerable. No good deed goes unpunished.
I remembered how that he used to refer to her as prim and proper, whereas the reality was that she was a dedicated fan of self-induced vaginismus, and a nearly total bedroom buzzkill whose sexual proclivities did not extend beyond simple procreation. Of course, Matt had mistaken her for being a "nice girl", but the fact was that I knew all-out biker hellion chicks who were kinder and gentler than Snarlene was on her most merciful day. There was nothing at all saint like about Snarlene, though she went through the motions well enough that Matt was duped into actually tying the knot with such an insufferable shrew as she.
He had spoken of her genteel sensibilities, which were really just a cover for the fact that she was a disapproving stick-in-the-mud. And I recalled how it was that she tended to blame me for most anything she could find a pin to stick it with. For instance, Matt originally bought a Sportster so that he could go motorcycling with me, but when he wiped out on a patch of gravel and came home with road rash, it was all my fault... and that, my friends, was merely the least of my multiple offenses in the eyes of the imperious Snarlene.
I could go on to describe the multitude of other things that Snarlene blamed me for, but why bother? I'm sure you get the point. And so it was that nine long years had passed since I made myself scarce, with me seeing Matt only on rare occasions and usually entirely by accident. It was a shame to somewhat abandon a friend, but there was something so pungently unpleasant about merely being in the same room as the obnoxious Snarlene that I just had to go...
But now there we were, and it was Bike Week! The bar was packed, the band was jammin', and the ladies were in the full bloom of lewdness that comes when they dress with unusually tawdry skimpiness and then drink too much booze. We were having a good time, in other words.
Most of the chicks were RUB's, but that's cool (women are women) and frankly, I sort of prefer many of the RUBs and Johnny-come-lately types to a lot of the true scooter scums to begin with. Although they are sort of goofy-acting at times, the fact is that the RUB's do tend to bring a better-lookin' class of women with them. And though the RUB chicks tend to overdo the so-called "biker look" to an amateurish extreme, at the same time they are at least prettier and the gaudiness of their outfits is compensated for by the sheer lack of fabric entailed by those lovely faux-biker duds they tend to strongly prefer. Most real biker chicks tend to dress as if they expect to go into combat before the night is over. And sometimes, they do.
Yeehaw! Oh my, but those RUB featherwoods were lookin' mighty fine that night! And so Matthew and I were just having one hell of a good time providing one another with a running commentary of all the feem flesh to be seen—yasa!—and we had plenty on hand to gawk at and talk about…
But suddenly Matt looked deeply concerned, and I saw him eyeballing his watch. Then he pulled out a cell phone and began fumbling with it.
"Whatcha doin' there?" I asked him as he fiddled with his phone. His reply was that he needed to call Snarlene, so that he didn't face even worse hell upon his return home than he would be facing for having stepped out at all, even with her begrudging permission.
I looked at the clock, saw that it wasn't even 10pm yet, and once again felt sorry for Matt. I was gonna ask him to ride over to Daytona with me, but knew this was clearly out of the question. If the boy had to deal with Snarlene at this early hour, then obviously it would be suicide for him to show up back home at three or four in the morning-- as was my wont back in those glory days...
My thoughts drifted back to a happier time-- back when Matt was a bachelor and Snarlene had not yet materialized to put his balls in a wringer. We had enjoyed, endured, and survived many a peculiar adventure together-- the kind of adventures that boys like, and remember forever... but then Snarlene put a kibosh to all that. I never resented this, because Matt really did love her at first, and hey: I want my bros to be happy. It is also true that I always flew quite well even without being a member of some sort of flock anyway. Thus, I supported his decision to marry her, figuring that I could at least still hang out in his garage sometimes. We were always messing with something in there and having truly innocent fun... but I didn't know then that Snarlene would view this with the same jaundiced eye through which she beheld the rest of the world. Turned out that just sipping whiskey and cussin’ while slapping together a tranny or something was absolutely out of the question...
So Matt was cursing as he goofed with his stupid phone. Being an old-fashioned blockhead, I've got a cell phone that is nothing but a cell phone, and when I want to surf the interwebz or any of that I am content to do it at home. But then, I never was gadget-oriented to begin with.
Trouble was, neither was Matt. And so it was that the poor man was having a hard time figuring out how to place a call using this new, complicated, Swiss army knife of a telephone he stuck himself with. I was amused, listening to him cursing about it; with a shrug I told him, "Ah, screw it Matt. Just use the pay phone up front. Or better yet: don't call her at all. She's just gonna chew you out anyway."
Little did we realize that while he was messing with that phone, Matt had indeed dialed up his residence, and so it was that Snarlene had her ear glued to her phone and actually heard me telling him to blow her off. What's even crazier is this: the woman hadn't seen hide nor hair of me for nearly a decade, and yet she recognized my voice instantly... and this, even though she was just hearing it as a background noise among the Bike Week cacaphony that roared around us on all sides...
Amazing! She's like some sort of Terminator robot, capable of recording voices and storing them for all eternity in the cold, hard circuitry of what passes as a brain for her. And she can actually recognize voice prints, even when they are occluded by tons of background noise... and so it was that Snarlene became furious to learn that Matt was up to no good-- out drinking with you-know-who...
Somehow or other, Matt apparently disconnected the call while still punching away at the tiny keys on his phone, because suddenly his phone lit up and began to shriek noisily to indicate an incoming call. Matt looked at the display and freaked... it was Snarlene!
His face was ashen with fear. Veins throbbed at his temples, and his eyes popped wide, like a man whose foot is being run over by a semi. He looked to me as though I had an answer... and as a matter of fact, I did. But meanwhile, his fingers were stabbing away at the keys on that accursed phone of his...
"Ah, screw her," I told him, laughing harshly. "Just tell 'er that you couldn't figure out how to answer your phone. I mean, I'm sure ol' hawkeye's already noticed that you're a bit over your head with it anyway..." I laughed, but lawsey me: don't you know that while fumbling around Matt had picked up this call? Once again, Snarlene was listening to the voice of her former nemesis-- me-- and this time I was actually instructing the lad to blow her off in the starkest language possible.
We were down to backwash, beer-wise, and so I told Matt to stay put while I went inside and got us a couple of fresh ones. And because it was Bike Week, it took several minutes for me to be served. I also dragged the interval out by stopping to talk with yet another old compatriot of mine, and hammered down a shot of whiskey with that guy while Matt remained on the patio-- still messing with his phone, last time I saw him.
After that, I ambled back outside and found Matt standing there with a face red and twisted enough that I knew right away he was suffering from an apoplectic fit. I scanned the people closest to him, but didn't pick up on any sort of beef that might involve another person. That's when I guessed that Matt must have been talking with ol' Snarlene, and she had read him the Riot Act.
I was right about that much, at least... but the full horror of the story wasn't clear to me yet. For as it happened, Snarlene had somehow figured out precisely where Matt was, and like an estrogen-depleted cruise missile, had homed in on his position to appear in person, where she humiliated the boy in a way that she should have been horse-whipped for.
I didn't know any of this yet, but as I got closer to Matt I noticed that his eyes were glazed with fury. He was chanting, "I think I'm just gonna kill her. I think I'm just gonna kill her. Yes, I think I'm just gonna kill her..."
I laughed. "Had yourself a nice chat with the little woman I see!" I said this jovially, trying to add a few positive zots to the moment. But Matt just kept chanting, and I finally grabbed his arm and said, "Whoa! What the hell happened to you, boy?"
And this is when the tale came out-- that Snarlene had actually come to the bar. This wasn't so shocking, as the place was a mere mile or two from Matt's house... and he had stupidly promised her that he would just cruise around in Deland (in his pickup truck since she made him get rid of his scooter right after she got rid of me). There aren't that many bars in Deland, and only a few of them celebrate Bike Week at all... so I guess she just got lucky by starting at the one closest to their home...
Okay, so far pretty bad. But Lord! Don't you know that when he finally regained his ability to speak coherently and without chanting, the full story came out and it was infinitely worse than even I could have imagined, bitter as my experience with the succubus Snarlene had been?
Yes, she showed up to chew him out in person. That was bad enough, but true to form, Snarlene had found a way to rub salt into the wounds she inflicted while tongue-lashing the poor brother... and here's how:
She arrived clad in bed-time clothes. And by this, I do NOT mean a slinky, chic, see-through negligee of some sort, but instead wearing flannel jammies, a house coat, and fuzzy grandma slippers... and this, in full view of a bunch of dudes whose ol' ladies were smokin' hot...
Her hair was in curlers. Her face was smeared with some sort of green goop that was supposed to make her skin softer. And she arrived with all the furious rage of a tsunami, shrieking loudly enough that even the guys on the bandstand seemed to take note of her sudden, infernal presence. They, along with everybody else, then began to laugh. Some people actually thought the whole thing was some kind of bizarre put-on. I mean, whose ol' lady ever did anything like that?
She huffed, screeched and shouted at him, then went ahead and smacked him across the face, really hard. Matt was mortified unto paralysis, and Snarlene turned around and marched out of there after telling Matt that I was lucky that I hadn't been there or she would have smacked me, too. That's how we learned that she had actually recognized my voice. Damn!
Poor Matt! You know, he had to endure this humiliation in full view of about one thousand people, half of whom were delectable featherwoods-- a thing that made the contrast provided by Snarlene's dowdy appearance so apparent as to be impossible to miss. People were still grinning and laughing discreetly about it as they put their heads together to speak in low tones about the abomination they had just witnessed. Meanwhile, I stood there with my heart breaking at the thought of my buddy's horrible plight. Frankly, I wanted to kill the bitch myself, and I hadn't even been on hand during her vile performance.
Matt's jaw muscles clenched like a tetanus victim biting down on a wooden stake. I know the guy well enough to talk him down a little, but this was much too much. He was still talking about going back home and providing her with a summary execution, but I at least got his head wrapped around the idea of life in prison and he chilled a little bit after that. But I gotta tell y'all: I have seen Matt in a good mood, Matt in a bad mood, and Matt before, during, and ten seconds after a fistfight... but I had never seen the man that upset before. His face was a picture of baffled fury, and all I could do was shake my head and feel terrible about what had happened to him.
I dragged him inside the bar after that, to pound down a shot or two while puzzling out his next move-- and also, to get him away from the guys who actually saw his pride laid to waste like that. It would have been suicide for anybody to openly joke with him about it. I know my boy, and he would have gone off like a grenade, had anybody jeered at him about it... she had pushed him beyond a certain limit, and he was likely to take it out on anybody who got wise with him about it.
I talked him into following me to Daytona-- and why not, he was in trouble anyway-- but halfway there he pulled into a median connector and told me that he was just going to go home. "I won't be able to have any fun, man. She just ruined my night with that act of hers, and I'll be too preoccupied to be a good companion for you tonight" was what he had to say to me.
I understood. Sometimes, it's best to just hang it up. But first I made Matt promise to keep his hands off her, and to otherwise just chill out. I found out that he had a bunk out in his garage, and had taken to sleeping out there quite a bit of late. He had the only key to the door lock, and so she couldn't get in there and get at him...
And that was it. The next four or five years oozed by, and I never did hear from Matt after that, even though I gave him my number. He prolly couldn't figure out how to save it or something-- whatever. Perhaps it was for the best, though. I have to admit: I despise Snarlene with every atom my body is made out of. I stopped hanging out with the guy for a very good reason.
Okay, so two days ago, I stopped at a convenience store to buy a pack of smokes, and ran into Matthew!
He looked all shiny and happy. He chopped off all his hair, which was a surprise of sorts, but other than that seemed to be looking pretty good. Turns out that he dumped Snarlene less than six months after her debut at the biker bar, and nobody-- not even her parents-- blamed him for it. His son had just been promoted to sergeant in the Corps, and his daughter is taking classes at Daytona College these days. She wants to be a pediatrician.
We stood on the sidewalk and gabbed for about three minutes. I was about to invite him to come to my house for dinner, but then a woman in a pickup truck parked nearby rolled down the window and yelled, "Damn it! Are you gonna stand there talking all day? I'm hungry! Her voice was strident and angry, the look on her face was wicked and foul...
At first I didn't realize that this loudmouthed person was talking to Matt... not until I saw his head duck between his shoulders as if he had been lashed; the familiar crimson color was rising in his face. Glancing over at the truck again, I saw that the woman shouting at us was another frumpy, asexual, disapproving fussbudget-- a knockoff of Snarlene, in other words...
I asked Matt, "That your squeeze these days?"
He nodded and said, "Yeah. But she won't let me squeeze her. I'll introduce you to her so that she calms down."
I didn't want to meet her, no. But I went over there anyway. I learned her name was Noreen and instantly tagged her in my mind as Ignoreen, while briefly wondering what it is with Matt and bitchy women whose names end with the sound of "eeen"...
Whatever. The woman took my hand reluctantly, shook it in with a perfunctory lack of grace, and then abruptly dropped it as if befouled by my very touch. I smiled nastily at her and winked lewdly so that she'd hate me even more, figuring that I'd cut right to the chase whereas this latest battle axe was concerned.
I then embraced my poor brother, wondering how he could ever be so impossibly stupid. A more kindly man would have shot him in the head.
So: some guys never learn, I guess-- and Matt might just be one of 'em. We parted ways very shortly after that, and I drove out of the parking lot without looking back.
I flipped on the radio, dialed into our local classic rock station, and my ears were greeted by the sound of Ronnie Van Zant and Lynyrd Skynyrd doing their song, "Mr. Breeze"...
Sad as I felt for my tragically stupid, former partner, my heart suddenly lifted and a moment later I found myself singing:
I ain't got me nobody,
I don't carry me no load...
Oh yeah! Mr. Breeze!
--R
Today's offering concerns a woman named Charlene, and her unfortunate husband, Matt... who used to be a very close friend... until Charlene (a singularly grouchy, miserable, and immature sort of woman whom I nicknamed Snarlene) managed to tick me off badly enough that I just kind of let the friendship go on the back burner.
I know that this makes me sound disloyal. But the fact is, after a fashion a fella gets tired of being blamed for all things that some poor man's irascible witch-woman of a wife will get ticked off about. And if that woman is actually cranky enough that most any little thing is enough to set her off, then one finally figures that he needs to distance himself from an ugly domestic situation over which he has no control or influence... or suffer the inevitable consequences.
I never dumped Matt altogether-- just didn't hang out with him constantly, as I did before he married Snarlene. And so it was that one Bike Week about four years ago, when I ran into Matt in a dive on the outskirts of Deland it was Old Home Week for the brothers, and a bittersweet occasion of sorts. I truly felt sorry for the man...
I asked him about his kids; he proudly showed me a picture of his son as a US Marine. He went on to say that his daughter was doing well in school, and that she had a part-time job working for a local business. But when I asked him about Snarlene, his face darkened and he told me, "Well, she's the same miserable, childish, selfish, soul-killing harpy she was last time you saw her."
And I was thinkin' to myself: "Jeebus! Now ain't you glad you asked?" as Matt went dourly, telling me that he figured he'd be divorcing Snarlene just as soon as the daughter turned eighteen... at that moment in time, she was pushing sixteen...
I rifled through my memories of Snarlene. She really was all those things Matt named her as being, and I felt sympathy for poor Matt-- along with a brief flicker of amusement at his fate for having tried to stand by her while massaging her into something a little more tolerable. No good deed goes unpunished.
I remembered how that he used to refer to her as prim and proper, whereas the reality was that she was a dedicated fan of self-induced vaginismus, and a nearly total bedroom buzzkill whose sexual proclivities did not extend beyond simple procreation. Of course, Matt had mistaken her for being a "nice girl", but the fact was that I knew all-out biker hellion chicks who were kinder and gentler than Snarlene was on her most merciful day. There was nothing at all saint like about Snarlene, though she went through the motions well enough that Matt was duped into actually tying the knot with such an insufferable shrew as she.
He had spoken of her genteel sensibilities, which were really just a cover for the fact that she was a disapproving stick-in-the-mud. And I recalled how it was that she tended to blame me for most anything she could find a pin to stick it with. For instance, Matt originally bought a Sportster so that he could go motorcycling with me, but when he wiped out on a patch of gravel and came home with road rash, it was all my fault... and that, my friends, was merely the least of my multiple offenses in the eyes of the imperious Snarlene.
I could go on to describe the multitude of other things that Snarlene blamed me for, but why bother? I'm sure you get the point. And so it was that nine long years had passed since I made myself scarce, with me seeing Matt only on rare occasions and usually entirely by accident. It was a shame to somewhat abandon a friend, but there was something so pungently unpleasant about merely being in the same room as the obnoxious Snarlene that I just had to go...
But now there we were, and it was Bike Week! The bar was packed, the band was jammin', and the ladies were in the full bloom of lewdness that comes when they dress with unusually tawdry skimpiness and then drink too much booze. We were having a good time, in other words.
Most of the chicks were RUB's, but that's cool (women are women) and frankly, I sort of prefer many of the RUBs and Johnny-come-lately types to a lot of the true scooter scums to begin with. Although they are sort of goofy-acting at times, the fact is that the RUB's do tend to bring a better-lookin' class of women with them. And though the RUB chicks tend to overdo the so-called "biker look" to an amateurish extreme, at the same time they are at least prettier and the gaudiness of their outfits is compensated for by the sheer lack of fabric entailed by those lovely faux-biker duds they tend to strongly prefer. Most real biker chicks tend to dress as if they expect to go into combat before the night is over. And sometimes, they do.
Yeehaw! Oh my, but those RUB featherwoods were lookin' mighty fine that night! And so Matthew and I were just having one hell of a good time providing one another with a running commentary of all the feem flesh to be seen—yasa!—and we had plenty on hand to gawk at and talk about…
But suddenly Matt looked deeply concerned, and I saw him eyeballing his watch. Then he pulled out a cell phone and began fumbling with it.
"Whatcha doin' there?" I asked him as he fiddled with his phone. His reply was that he needed to call Snarlene, so that he didn't face even worse hell upon his return home than he would be facing for having stepped out at all, even with her begrudging permission.
I looked at the clock, saw that it wasn't even 10pm yet, and once again felt sorry for Matt. I was gonna ask him to ride over to Daytona with me, but knew this was clearly out of the question. If the boy had to deal with Snarlene at this early hour, then obviously it would be suicide for him to show up back home at three or four in the morning-- as was my wont back in those glory days...
My thoughts drifted back to a happier time-- back when Matt was a bachelor and Snarlene had not yet materialized to put his balls in a wringer. We had enjoyed, endured, and survived many a peculiar adventure together-- the kind of adventures that boys like, and remember forever... but then Snarlene put a kibosh to all that. I never resented this, because Matt really did love her at first, and hey: I want my bros to be happy. It is also true that I always flew quite well even without being a member of some sort of flock anyway. Thus, I supported his decision to marry her, figuring that I could at least still hang out in his garage sometimes. We were always messing with something in there and having truly innocent fun... but I didn't know then that Snarlene would view this with the same jaundiced eye through which she beheld the rest of the world. Turned out that just sipping whiskey and cussin’ while slapping together a tranny or something was absolutely out of the question...
So Matt was cursing as he goofed with his stupid phone. Being an old-fashioned blockhead, I've got a cell phone that is nothing but a cell phone, and when I want to surf the interwebz or any of that I am content to do it at home. But then, I never was gadget-oriented to begin with.
Trouble was, neither was Matt. And so it was that the poor man was having a hard time figuring out how to place a call using this new, complicated, Swiss army knife of a telephone he stuck himself with. I was amused, listening to him cursing about it; with a shrug I told him, "Ah, screw it Matt. Just use the pay phone up front. Or better yet: don't call her at all. She's just gonna chew you out anyway."
Little did we realize that while he was messing with that phone, Matt had indeed dialed up his residence, and so it was that Snarlene had her ear glued to her phone and actually heard me telling him to blow her off. What's even crazier is this: the woman hadn't seen hide nor hair of me for nearly a decade, and yet she recognized my voice instantly... and this, even though she was just hearing it as a background noise among the Bike Week cacaphony that roared around us on all sides...
Amazing! She's like some sort of Terminator robot, capable of recording voices and storing them for all eternity in the cold, hard circuitry of what passes as a brain for her. And she can actually recognize voice prints, even when they are occluded by tons of background noise... and so it was that Snarlene became furious to learn that Matt was up to no good-- out drinking with you-know-who...
Somehow or other, Matt apparently disconnected the call while still punching away at the tiny keys on his phone, because suddenly his phone lit up and began to shriek noisily to indicate an incoming call. Matt looked at the display and freaked... it was Snarlene!
His face was ashen with fear. Veins throbbed at his temples, and his eyes popped wide, like a man whose foot is being run over by a semi. He looked to me as though I had an answer... and as a matter of fact, I did. But meanwhile, his fingers were stabbing away at the keys on that accursed phone of his...
"Ah, screw her," I told him, laughing harshly. "Just tell 'er that you couldn't figure out how to answer your phone. I mean, I'm sure ol' hawkeye's already noticed that you're a bit over your head with it anyway..." I laughed, but lawsey me: don't you know that while fumbling around Matt had picked up this call? Once again, Snarlene was listening to the voice of her former nemesis-- me-- and this time I was actually instructing the lad to blow her off in the starkest language possible.
We were down to backwash, beer-wise, and so I told Matt to stay put while I went inside and got us a couple of fresh ones. And because it was Bike Week, it took several minutes for me to be served. I also dragged the interval out by stopping to talk with yet another old compatriot of mine, and hammered down a shot of whiskey with that guy while Matt remained on the patio-- still messing with his phone, last time I saw him.
After that, I ambled back outside and found Matt standing there with a face red and twisted enough that I knew right away he was suffering from an apoplectic fit. I scanned the people closest to him, but didn't pick up on any sort of beef that might involve another person. That's when I guessed that Matt must have been talking with ol' Snarlene, and she had read him the Riot Act.
I was right about that much, at least... but the full horror of the story wasn't clear to me yet. For as it happened, Snarlene had somehow figured out precisely where Matt was, and like an estrogen-depleted cruise missile, had homed in on his position to appear in person, where she humiliated the boy in a way that she should have been horse-whipped for.
I didn't know any of this yet, but as I got closer to Matt I noticed that his eyes were glazed with fury. He was chanting, "I think I'm just gonna kill her. I think I'm just gonna kill her. Yes, I think I'm just gonna kill her..."
I laughed. "Had yourself a nice chat with the little woman I see!" I said this jovially, trying to add a few positive zots to the moment. But Matt just kept chanting, and I finally grabbed his arm and said, "Whoa! What the hell happened to you, boy?"
And this is when the tale came out-- that Snarlene had actually come to the bar. This wasn't so shocking, as the place was a mere mile or two from Matt's house... and he had stupidly promised her that he would just cruise around in Deland (in his pickup truck since she made him get rid of his scooter right after she got rid of me). There aren't that many bars in Deland, and only a few of them celebrate Bike Week at all... so I guess she just got lucky by starting at the one closest to their home...
Okay, so far pretty bad. But Lord! Don't you know that when he finally regained his ability to speak coherently and without chanting, the full story came out and it was infinitely worse than even I could have imagined, bitter as my experience with the succubus Snarlene had been?
Yes, she showed up to chew him out in person. That was bad enough, but true to form, Snarlene had found a way to rub salt into the wounds she inflicted while tongue-lashing the poor brother... and here's how:
She arrived clad in bed-time clothes. And by this, I do NOT mean a slinky, chic, see-through negligee of some sort, but instead wearing flannel jammies, a house coat, and fuzzy grandma slippers... and this, in full view of a bunch of dudes whose ol' ladies were smokin' hot...
Her hair was in curlers. Her face was smeared with some sort of green goop that was supposed to make her skin softer. And she arrived with all the furious rage of a tsunami, shrieking loudly enough that even the guys on the bandstand seemed to take note of her sudden, infernal presence. They, along with everybody else, then began to laugh. Some people actually thought the whole thing was some kind of bizarre put-on. I mean, whose ol' lady ever did anything like that?
She huffed, screeched and shouted at him, then went ahead and smacked him across the face, really hard. Matt was mortified unto paralysis, and Snarlene turned around and marched out of there after telling Matt that I was lucky that I hadn't been there or she would have smacked me, too. That's how we learned that she had actually recognized my voice. Damn!
Poor Matt! You know, he had to endure this humiliation in full view of about one thousand people, half of whom were delectable featherwoods-- a thing that made the contrast provided by Snarlene's dowdy appearance so apparent as to be impossible to miss. People were still grinning and laughing discreetly about it as they put their heads together to speak in low tones about the abomination they had just witnessed. Meanwhile, I stood there with my heart breaking at the thought of my buddy's horrible plight. Frankly, I wanted to kill the bitch myself, and I hadn't even been on hand during her vile performance.
Matt's jaw muscles clenched like a tetanus victim biting down on a wooden stake. I know the guy well enough to talk him down a little, but this was much too much. He was still talking about going back home and providing her with a summary execution, but I at least got his head wrapped around the idea of life in prison and he chilled a little bit after that. But I gotta tell y'all: I have seen Matt in a good mood, Matt in a bad mood, and Matt before, during, and ten seconds after a fistfight... but I had never seen the man that upset before. His face was a picture of baffled fury, and all I could do was shake my head and feel terrible about what had happened to him.
I dragged him inside the bar after that, to pound down a shot or two while puzzling out his next move-- and also, to get him away from the guys who actually saw his pride laid to waste like that. It would have been suicide for anybody to openly joke with him about it. I know my boy, and he would have gone off like a grenade, had anybody jeered at him about it... she had pushed him beyond a certain limit, and he was likely to take it out on anybody who got wise with him about it.
I talked him into following me to Daytona-- and why not, he was in trouble anyway-- but halfway there he pulled into a median connector and told me that he was just going to go home. "I won't be able to have any fun, man. She just ruined my night with that act of hers, and I'll be too preoccupied to be a good companion for you tonight" was what he had to say to me.
I understood. Sometimes, it's best to just hang it up. But first I made Matt promise to keep his hands off her, and to otherwise just chill out. I found out that he had a bunk out in his garage, and had taken to sleeping out there quite a bit of late. He had the only key to the door lock, and so she couldn't get in there and get at him...
And that was it. The next four or five years oozed by, and I never did hear from Matt after that, even though I gave him my number. He prolly couldn't figure out how to save it or something-- whatever. Perhaps it was for the best, though. I have to admit: I despise Snarlene with every atom my body is made out of. I stopped hanging out with the guy for a very good reason.
Okay, so two days ago, I stopped at a convenience store to buy a pack of smokes, and ran into Matthew!
He looked all shiny and happy. He chopped off all his hair, which was a surprise of sorts, but other than that seemed to be looking pretty good. Turns out that he dumped Snarlene less than six months after her debut at the biker bar, and nobody-- not even her parents-- blamed him for it. His son had just been promoted to sergeant in the Corps, and his daughter is taking classes at Daytona College these days. She wants to be a pediatrician.
We stood on the sidewalk and gabbed for about three minutes. I was about to invite him to come to my house for dinner, but then a woman in a pickup truck parked nearby rolled down the window and yelled, "Damn it! Are you gonna stand there talking all day? I'm hungry! Her voice was strident and angry, the look on her face was wicked and foul...
At first I didn't realize that this loudmouthed person was talking to Matt... not until I saw his head duck between his shoulders as if he had been lashed; the familiar crimson color was rising in his face. Glancing over at the truck again, I saw that the woman shouting at us was another frumpy, asexual, disapproving fussbudget-- a knockoff of Snarlene, in other words...
I asked Matt, "That your squeeze these days?"
He nodded and said, "Yeah. But she won't let me squeeze her. I'll introduce you to her so that she calms down."
I didn't want to meet her, no. But I went over there anyway. I learned her name was Noreen and instantly tagged her in my mind as Ignoreen, while briefly wondering what it is with Matt and bitchy women whose names end with the sound of "eeen"...
Whatever. The woman took my hand reluctantly, shook it in with a perfunctory lack of grace, and then abruptly dropped it as if befouled by my very touch. I smiled nastily at her and winked lewdly so that she'd hate me even more, figuring that I'd cut right to the chase whereas this latest battle axe was concerned.
I then embraced my poor brother, wondering how he could ever be so impossibly stupid. A more kindly man would have shot him in the head.
So: some guys never learn, I guess-- and Matt might just be one of 'em. We parted ways very shortly after that, and I drove out of the parking lot without looking back.
I flipped on the radio, dialed into our local classic rock station, and my ears were greeted by the sound of Ronnie Van Zant and Lynyrd Skynyrd doing their song, "Mr. Breeze"...
Sad as I felt for my tragically stupid, former partner, my heart suddenly lifted and a moment later I found myself singing:
I ain't got me nobody,
I don't carry me no load...
Oh yeah! Mr. Breeze!
--R
