squirrelking.com

I’ve just been charged for another year of web hosting, so I guess it’s time to administer a bit of blog CPR. Prepare the paddles, Nurse Naughtybottom! No, not the ass paddles, the defibrillator paddles. Chrissake.

My friends, I propose three-pronged Blog Rejuvenation Plan (BRP), code named “Burp”. The first prong involves controlled application of electric shock. The second prong requires all former BlogCo contributors to gather in the punchbowl, where they will mindlessly repeat our new snappy rhyming motto. The third prong is a ground prong, which should protect metal-encased blog visitors from receiving an unpleasant electric shock.

Okay, kiddies, put on your swim suits, ease into the tepid and dangerously electrified waters of the BlogCo punchbowl, and repeat after me — It’s never too late to resuscitate!

Here’s a strip club story with no naughty bits. It happened a few years ago, just before the Bush administration red-lined federal funding for my exotic dance research project. (Those bastards.)

I was sitting at the stage, giving dollars to dancers. To my left sat several martini-sipping lawyers. To my right sat a delegation from the Nordic Lords motorcycle gang. I was wedged in between. I was Mr. Middle America.

The martini-swilling lawyer to my immediate left was tanked, and he couldn’t stop talking. He was in clear violation of the strip club anti-talking law, which reads as follows: when a gentleman squirrel is seated at the stage in a strip club, the drunken lawyer beside him must not demand more attention than the naked lady in front of him.

Attorney Martini confessed his guilt. “Sorry, bud,” he said. “I drink too much and I talk.”

“No problem,” I said.

“Actually, it is a problem,” he said. “It’s a drinking, talking problem. Wanna talk about it?”

I stared into my plastic beer cup. “Never drink and talk,” I said. “You’ll live to forget it.” Martini didn’t answer. When I looked up, I saw why. A dancer had moved in on his blind side and had parked her ass directly on top of his head. She was chalking him up like a pool cue. Martini’s eyes were rolling. He was speechless. I tossed a couple of dollars in front of him and enjoyed three minutes of rest and relaxation.

When the song ended, the dancer (who I will call Bubbles the Human Hat) slid in front of me. I told her she was not permitted to sit on my head or to muss my thinning tuft with her overly aggressive ass. When this failed to deter her, I said, “Listen, lady, unless you have training in confined space management, you are prohibited from entering my leisure space.” That did it. Bubbles the Human Hat laughed nervously and moved on.

The Nordic Lords received Bubbles warmly. “Sure,” I told myself, “those guys can afford to be friendly. They know she won’t sit on their heads. They’re all wearing Viking helmets.” Three of the bikers threw dollars on the stage, and two more jumped off their stools and danced for Bubbles. I tapped the nearest biker on the shoulder and asked him if his buddies were the “Nordic Lords of the Dance.” I don’t know why I asked that question. In retrospect, it seems kind of risky. Fortunately, Biker Dude was friendly. He did not hit me with a barstool or with a beer bottle or with either of his giant fists. Instead, he began to tell me about the gang’s membership drive. It sounded like a pitch. I told him that I didn’t own a motorcycle, that I didn’t even own a tattoo.

“Don’t worry about tattoos,” he said. “You can borrow some of ours.”

“And if I join today, will I receive a complimentary tote bag?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The Nordic Lords tote bag is much roomier than a PBS tote bag. And it’s got our logo on it.”

“Eh, I dunno,” I said, “I’m not much of a joiner.”

“Why be a passive observer when you can be an active participant? C’mon, man. Join now. Operators are standing by.”

I did not join a motorcycle gang that day. I didn’t join the lawyer gang, either. I guess you could say I passed a bar exam, though.

Brian from Seattle made me drink too much alcohol last weekend. The guy showed me no mercy, even though he knew I was totally out of drinking shape. The sudden increase in cocktail intake necessitated several visits to saloon restrooms, and one of these restrooms had an attendant. The attendant’s purpose wasn’t clear to me at first. I assumed he was a kind-hearted hygiene elf, distributing paper towels to those few male patrons who wash their hands before re-entering the drinking arena. This was a naive assumption.

When the attendant handed me a Bounty Select-a-Size towel, I thanked him. When he gave me the evil eye, I took a step back. When he shot a sidelong glance at a tip jar on the counter, I grasped his fiendish purpose. The presentation of the towel was not an act of kindness. The towel was bait — bait to lure the unwitting into a pay-to-pee transaction. Once a towel was taken, the patron was obliged to tip. I dropped a dollar in the bowl and walked away.

Towel Guy thanked me, and when I was halfway through the door he said, “Wanna buy a raffle ticket?”

I took the bait again. “What’s it for?”

“The Shriners Hospital.”

“No, I mean, what are you raffling?”

“A wheelbarrow full of cheer.”

I thought it over for a second. “How is that possible?” I asked. “Cheer is an abstraction. Cheer can’t be measured by the wheelbarrow load.”

Towel Guy pointed to a photocopied flyer taped to the wall above a urinal. A blurry photo showed a wheelbarrow loaded with bottles of booze. “Don’t be so literal,” he said.

“Hoo wee,” I said. “That’s a lot of cheer. Too much for me. No, thanks.”

“Come on,” he said. “It’s only five bucks.”

“Look, man, you’re raffling a wheelbarrow ride to the Betty Ford Clinic. I have to deal with Brian from Seattle — I don’t have time for Betty Ford.”

“Okay,” he said, “If you won’t do it for yourself, if you won’t do it for the guy who gave you a towel in your time of need, then do it for the kids in the Shriners Hospital.”

That did it. He won. I bought a ticket. That attendant is pure evil. Oh, well, at least he’s doing evil for a good cause.

Last weekend I had a dull conversation with a young guy in a bar. Young Guy had taken a shining to a “rilly, rilly hot girl,” and he was eager to talk about her. I was the nearest available listener. This seemed like bad luck at first. Listening to slurred, sappy love stories is usually an unrewarding experience for a seasoned barroom anthropologist like me. But on rare occasions these tedious conversations open lines of inquiry which lead to dramatic advances in scientific understanding. This was one of those rare occasions.

What Young Guy Said

Young Guy was smitten. He loved Ms. Rillyhot’s personality. He loved her sense of humor. He loved her fine female body (especially the lower middle section). He loved everything about Rillyhot . . . well, almost everything. There was one tiny thing that Young Guy did not love. Rillyhot was in the habit of ending text messages with smiley-face emoticons. Young Guy admitted that the smilies bothered him. They bothered him in a bad way, he said, not in the good way that Rillyhot’s ass bothered him.

“Every single message ends with a smiley,” he said. “Sometimes every sentence does.”

“She may think emoticons are punctuation marks,” I suggested.

“In the last twenty-four hours, she has sent me forty-two smilies. Forty-two! No one is that happy.”

“Maybe she has an antidepressant cellphone,” I said. “Maybe she has an HP iPaxil or a Prozacberry.”

“At first I thought the smilies were cute,” he said. “Now they’re making me rilly, rilly mad.”

The Moral of the Story

Young Guy’s predicament should serve as a cautionary tale to all horny youngsters who troll the bars for love (and/or lust). Hook up and mount up when you must, horny youngsters, but do not ignore your paramour’s annoying tics. In the beginning, they will seem harmless — endearing, even — but eventually they will take on the destructive force of a hurricane. That brings us to the science part.

The Science Part

The hurricane metaphor in the previous paragraph is central to Dr. Squirrel’s Unified Theory of Chaos, Lust, Booze and Dating. As you might expect, flapping butterfly wings also play a significant role. Unfortunately, I’m too tired to explain the whole thing here and now. Do not despair, my horny young friends. My complete theory will be published in the July 2006 issue of “The Journal of Experimental Barroom Anthropology,” which should be on newsstands in the last week of June. It’s a rilly, rilly good read.

I knew a young woman who worked in a bar. This is not a limerick.

The young woman who worked in a bar was very attractive. One day, the very attractive young woman who worked in a bar introduced me to her equally attractive sister, who also worked in a bar . . . the same bar, in fact. I became confused by the similarity of the attractive sisters and did not visit the bar again for several weeks. Eventually the love of Guinness Stout brought me back.

Similar Sister Number 2 was tending bar when I returned. She listened patiently as I told her every boring thing that had happened to me since our previous (and first) meeting. And then she asked me who I was. Turns out, she was not Similar Sister Number 2. She was a third attractive Similar sister of the bar.

I asked Similar Sister 3 if she thought there was a family resemblance.

She said, “Yeah, I have my sister’s nose.”

“Which one?” I said.

She pointed to her nose.

“Which sister?”

“All of them,” she said.

I still love Guinness Stout, but I can’t go to that bar anymore. It’s like the Cheers bar gone wrong. I mean, who wants to go where everybody looks the same?

Every time I look at the giant stick shift in front of the Basketball Hall of Fame, I ask myself two questions:

1. If this is truly a “state-of-of-the-art interactive museum,” then why doesn’t it have an automatic transmission?

2. Does that basketball shift knob screw on and off? If so, museum management should consider seasonal knob changes. Here are a few ideas:

knob link

Seeing Chappity at Stop & Shop reminded me of the day I failed a beer taste test. Chappity was tending bar that day, and I was making wild claims about my beer-tasting skills. When my trash talk became intolerable, Chappity set up five plastic shot glasses and covered my eyes with bar-towel blindfold.

In Round One, I was asked to distinguish between three so-called “light” beers. I don’t remember which three, but let’s call them Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller Light.

The first sample was wet and tasteless, and the next two samples tasted just like the first. I swirled each sample, nosed the plastic shot glass, and a wave of nothingness washed over the olfactory bulb in my brain. “Hmm,” I said, “Sassy, but not impudent.” I took another taste. “Light. Very, very light. Sooooo light. A touch of rye, perhaps?”

As you may have guessed, I failed Round One.

Hey, there’s no shame in that. Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller Light are virtually undetectable to the human senses. These colorless, odorless and tasteless liquids are the carbon monoxide of the beer world. If a person taking a blind taste test can distinguish between the Bud light, Coors light and Miller Light flavors, then the taste-tester needs to tie the blindfold tighter.

I was assured that Round Two would involve beers with flavor, and that I’d only have to guess which of two choices was Red Hook Black Nitro and which wasn’t. I love stout beer. Confidence was high.

Sample Number One had a distinctive dark-malt flavor which suggested coffee and chocolate. (No it didn’t — I stole that sentence from the Redhook website.) Unlike the beers in Round One, this sample seemed to contain at least trace amounts of barley malt and hops. This time I had a fighting chance.

I cleansed my palate with a shot of tequila and moved on to Sample Number Two. The liquid in cup two tasted vaguely familiar. Creamier than Nitro. Very creamy . . . mmm . . . so creamy. I ripped off the blindfold. “I’d know that flavor anywhere,” I said. “It’s Guinness!”

Chappity pointed at the shot glass. It wasn’t Guinness. It was milk.

I recently painted Springfield’s South End Bridge with your Signature™ Faux Rust Glaze. I love your paint products, Martha. They make my bridge look soooo beautiful. There’s just one little problem. Every time it rains, the glaze washes off, and the painting crew has to start from scratch. They have re-glazed the bridge’s ironwork 431 times since 2003, and there’s no end in sight. Martha, commuters want to use this bridge. They are irate.

Before contacting you directly, I emailed K-Mart and described my situation. The Customer Service Representative gave me a case number, said I would be contacted at their earliest convenience, and stated that K-mart will probably send a new bridge. I am a little skeptical, but we shall see.

It isn’t all bad news, Martha. Your “checkerboard combing technique” worked brilliantly on the bridge’s piers and abutments. The city’s Exterior Design Consultant, Serge, blended three Signature™ grays (Milk Pail, Birdbath, Cat’s Whiskers) to create a textured, stylized look we call “Concrete Crumble.” It’s so authentic!

I saw Walt Whitman at the Mardi Gras once. He was in disguise, but the long ruffled beard and oversized sombrero gave him away. Under one arm, Walt carried a copy of Cleavage and Ass, the lesser known sequel to his seminal work, Leaves of Grass. The book was probably a gift for one his favorite dancers — Bubbles Goethe or Legs Hegel or Cigarette Carlyle.

In the smokey darkness, Walt stepped on his beard and stumbled. A bouncer took the old man’s elbow and led him to a seat by the stage.

Later, through the tangled plastic branches of the Lapdance Forest, I saw Walt Whitman singing the body electric with two busty dancers from Rhode Island. He had settled into a comfy chair, and Bubbles and Legs were all over him. All three were filled with a love of nature. All three were celebrating Walt’s self. (There was a reasonable celebration charge, of course.)

Late one Saturday afternoon, I was driving home from Springfield’s Endangerment District, where I had consumed 2.5 beers. I was fiddling with the radio, scratching a lottery ticket, and dodging orange traffic cones on the South End Bridge. (Hey, at least I wasn’t talking on my cellphone.) The traffic cones had been left behind by construction workers who spent the previous three years applying Martha Stewart Faux-Rust Glaze to the bridge’s ironwork. (By the way, it looks beautiful.) I was about halfway across the mighty Connecticut River when, just ahead, a bald eagle flew over the bridge. I was so surprised and impressed, I swerved out of my lane, crushing two road cones under the wheels of the Jesus Chrysler. Let me tell you, eagles in the wild are much larger than eagles on television. This bird was nearly a large as Joe Walsh, and it was much balder.

Weeks later, the eagle incident led me into an argument with one of the belligerent turnipheads on the masslive Springfield forum. Apparently, somewhere up north, in one of the areas where Massachusetts comes dangerously close to Vermont and New Hampshire, a angry old coot mistook a bald eagle for a WWII era Japanese Zero and shot it out of the sky. The old coot was fined $5,000. One of the masslive turnipheads thought this penalty was excessive and made the following three points in the old coot’s defense:

1. The crazy coot “accidently” killed the bald eagle. (He didn’t say how this was possible.)

2. The eagle was only a “GOD DAMN bird”

3. No bird is worth a fine of $5,000

Although I did not agree with the turniphead’s position, I did feel sympathy for him, and so I made an attempt to bolster his weak defense strategy.

I wrote the following reply:

Dear Mr. Turniphead. You make some compelling arguments, but if I were part of the defense team, I would try a different approach. Here are a few ideas.

1. The crazy old coot thought the eagle was a deer.

2. The eagle should have been wearing an orange vest.

3. The bald eagle has no distinctive markings and is often mistaken for other animals — flying beavers, for example.

4. This is America — we have the right shoot things we can’t identify.

Mr. Turniphead wrote back. He said I was obviously an eagle-loving, flag-burning pinko college boy commie America-hater and that I should “shut the hell up before someone mistakes me for an eagle.”

Hey, I was just trying to help.

Dangerous Brian is from Seattle. When DB comes east, we usually go on a drinking mission, and when I see someone I know in a bar, I say, “This is Brian from Seattle; he’s from Texas.” I get varying responses to this. I’m most pleased when someone pretends that the Seattle/Texas shtick is too obvious to mention.

“Of course he’s from Texas. Duh.”

On our latest mission, DB and I visited several drinking establishments. We ate at Theodores’ and then walked around all night with BBQ stuck in our teeth. One of the other drinking establishments had candles on the tables, and Dangerous Brian watched a woman lean the wrong way and set her hair on fire. I didn’t see it, but I smelled it. There was no permanent damage to the nice lady, unless you count pride.

DB’s father is the best martini maker I know. He adds the Vermouth with special martini spray tool. This ensures extra dryness. Father of DB is a good martini maker, not a martini freak. What’s the difference between a good martini maker and a martini freak? If someone you know says things like, “Don’t shake it; you’ll bruise the gin,” then that person is a martini freak.

They don’t have Devil Dogs in Seattle. Dangerous Brian left New England with two pieces of carry-on luggage — one small travel bag, and one case of Devil Dogs. DB is a freakin’ genius, but he can’t control his Devil Dog addiction. I wish I could have witnessed the conversation with airport security, but I was too busy hiding from bright lights and loud noises.

A few summers ago — before all the clubs were permanently “closed for renovations” — I took a late night stroll through Springfield’s Entertainment District. I tried not to make eye contact with other pedestrians because I don’t like people. By the time I reached the jazz club, I had the sidewalk to myself, and when I looked up, I spotted one of my beer-drinking acquaintances. There he was, trumpet in hand, standing on stage on the opposite side of the jazz club’s front window. I had seen this guy in several other bars (sans horn) and I had always assumed he was an underaged, alcoholic, trash-talking, troublemaker. After all, he frequents the Endangerment District, where 80% of the people on any given night are just moments away from an uncontrollable outburst of criminal behavior.

“The rat bastard must be stealing that horn,” I thought, but then he started playing. And he was good, too. The underaged troublemakers inside were cleverly disguised as well-dressed couples. The lengths these punks will go to, honestly!

I sure am glad that Jazz club is closed now. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing that underaged vermin were roaming the streets, exercising their so-called “right” to behave like middle-aged jazz fans.

Here’s a story about the grouchy old guy who used to run the grill in the Mardi Gras parking lot.

One day, as I was walking through the Mardi Gras parking lot, someone honked their car horn and nearly scared me out of my shorts. I looked to my left and looked to my right but didn’t see anything unusual.

I started walking again, and again the horn honked.

Turns out, the honking was coming from a big black Cadillac, which was wedged into the narrowest of parking spaces. It was surrounded on three sides — by the grill in front, by a brick wall on the right, and by a long wooden sawhorse on the left. There was about six inches of clearance all around. Only the rear end of the car was free of obstacles. I stopped to take a closer look and noticed that the grouchy old guy who ran the grill was waving frantically at me from inside the Caddy. The car appeared to be filling with smoke.

“That guy must be in trouble,” I said to myself. “Better see if I can help.”

I stepped up to the driver’s side door, and Grouchy Grill Guy rolled down the window. Two fingers and a stogie pointed toward the sawhorse. “Hey, buddy,” he said, “could you move that thing? I can’t open my car door.”

The sawhorse was so old and rickety it could barely stand on it’s own four feet. Grouchy Grill Guy could have blown it over with cigar smoke. “Wow,” I said. “Good thing I came along when I did. You might have starved in there.” He was a rather portly grouchy guy, so as an afterthought I added, “Of course, it would taken a while.”

I don’t know why Grouchy Grill Guy drove straight into that parking trap, or why he didn’t roll down his window and blow over the rickety sawhorse, but I DO know that I saved his grouchy behind from certain boredom and a possible ding in his driver’s side car door.

That’s all there is to say about that.

Tony Lama’s mobile store — the “boot bus” — was impounded by SPD last Saturday evening.

“I couldn’t look the other way this time,” said officer Sean O’Malley. “Citizens complain every time a big cowboy boot parks on the wrong side of Worthington Street. What a headache. How am I supposed to tow a freakin’ boot on wheels? I mean, do I tow it by the heel or do I tow it by the toe?”

The DJ tosses his hair extensions, turns on the mic and says, “Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Titus, Commodus, and the insatiable Tiberius!”

“That’s weird,” I say.

The bartender lifts my glass and wipes the bar-top with a moist towel. “What’s weird?” she says.

“The stage names,” I say. “Are all the dancers named after Roman Emperors?”

“It’s the owner’s latest idea,” she says. “He thinks it sounds ‘upscale’.”

I nod my head, but I’m confused. When the owner says “upscale” he must mean “classy,” or at very least “expensive.” I follow that far, but I can’t get the rest of the way to Rome. Sure, the Roman motif is perfect for a strip joint, but there’s a big difference between classy and classical. Eureka, that’s it!

When I return from my thinking tour, the bartender is gone. Opportunity lost. I test drive my “upscale” theory on another customer, and when that effort fails, I turn my attention to the TV behind the bar. Tonight’s feature is a old gangster film, possibly Key Largo. It’s the one in which Edward G. Robinson and his mobster goons hold Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall hostage in Lionel Barrymore’s strip club.

It’s a good movie, even with the sound off. When the action gets hot, the lovely but vengeful Nero pulls up a chair. Edward G. Robinson is taunting Lionel Barrymore, who is struggling to rise from his wheelchair. “This is my favorite part,” Nero says. Her Roman mini-tunic is fastened only at the waist, allowing more than a glimpse of her purple and gold embroidered demi bra and panties. A black garter secures a few dollars to her upper inner thigh.

Lionel Barrymore swings wildly and falls to the floor. Edward G. Robinson stands over him and laughs.

Nero says, “Take that you old crip,” and then she gets up and walks away. “Bye, bye, honey,” she says over a shoulder. “I have to find that trash-talking bitch-whore Commodus.”

“Commodus?” I say. “Have you looked in the bathroom?” I bust a gut laughing, but Nero just sneers.

For the rest of the evening, I do as the Romans do. I stare at the featured dancer, who is either the porn star emperor Caligula, or the implant emperor Toobigula. Just before closing time, the Spanish-speaking emperor, Vespasian, sits on my lap. She rubs her breasts together like a Boy Scout making fire with sticks. She says, “Muy largo, no?” I misunderstand. “Yes,” I say, “Key Largo. You’re a fan, too? You must be Nero’s friend.”

A while back, one of the old biddies on the masslive.com Springfield forum suggested that our beloved City of Smells should model itself after a more successful (and less smelly) city of similar size. According to this poster, Springfield should aspire to be the Plano, Texas of the East. I emailed this suggestion to masslive blogger Kelsey Flynn, who pointed out that Sprinfield will never be the Plano of the East until it has a Tony Lama boot store. I agree. Not only will a Tony Lama store be the catalyst that initiates a renaissance in Springfield, it will also make it much easier for me to buy a pair of antique brown full-quill ostrich boots. This is a win/win situation.

In 1621, pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts. After feasting on corn and codfish and Tagamet, they all piled into the Plymouth Voyager and took the Mass Pike to Springfield. There they built America’s first strip club, the Mardi Gras.

From 1621 until 1692, the bar was called Cromwell’s Follies. Puritans, Dutchmen, and members of King Philip’s tribes gathered there peacefully to play Keno and to stare at naked women from Rhode Island and Florida. It was a golden age. Then, in 1692, a guy from Salem convinced the Puritans of Springfield that all naked women were witches. Of course, from the modern perspective this idea seems absurd. We now know that only a small percentage of naked women are witches, but the Puritans were ignorant and they dressed funny. Nipmuck, Podunk and Genovese tribal leaders were miffed when the Puritans threatened to close down the Follies. Several minor skirmishes near the men’s room escalated into the conflict which historians now call “King Philip’s War.”

In 1700, the bar reopened under the management of a young Frenchman named Martin Jean Paul Roch Yves Gilbert Motier de Gras. The frugal elders of Springfield (who did not approve of wasted syllables) shortened this strange foreign fellow’s name to “Marty Gras.” To this day, the bar bears the Frenchman’s name. The early days were difficult for Marty. The Cromwell’s Follies building was burned to the ground during King Philips War. Of the original structure, only the stage survived intact. When the insurance company denied Marty’s claim, townsfolk gathered together and helped their fine French friend erect a new building around the old stage. (The stage, which was quickly wiped clean with a moist towel, is still used today).

By the mid 1700s, revolution was in the air (or was that just the stink cloud from the Bondi’s Island sewage treatment plant?). All dancers named Tory were told to either change their stage names or be fined one hundred dollars. Many dancers “volunteered” to sell New England Patriots t-shirts to support the war effort. Those who did not volunteer were fined one hundred dollars.

In 1839, while experimenting with Jagermeister and Vodka, Mardi Gras bartender Charles Goodyear accidentally invented vulcanized rubber. This invention led directly to the invention of the basketball in 1891 and the figure-hugging rubber catsuit in 1972.

By the spring of 1860, Mardi Gras “regular” Milton Bradley was putting the finishing touches on America’s first boudoir game, Twister. For reasons that may not have been purely scientific, Mr. Bradley chose the dancers’ dressing room as the test site for his new product. After witnessing the enthusiastic response, club management resolved to launch the internet’s first live Twister video feed. (Twister cam is scheduled to go online in the first quarter of 2010.)

Clarence Birdseye, Mardi Gras patron and first marketer of frozen foods, conducted on-site testing of his new frozen Mudslide/Margarita mixes in 1930. Unfortunately, these new beverages were not a big hit with club patrons, and Mr. Birdeye’s apparatus was quickly replaced by two extra kegs of Bud Light.

to be continued

Before my drunk-drive home, Paulie the hotdog guy gives me a lecture.

“Don’t waste ass-sonnets on northern girls,” he says. “Northern girls don’t have the love.”

“The love?” I say.

“The love of verse,” he says.

“Ah, the love,” I say.

He points his tongs at the bar across the street. “Around here, a sonnet is nothing more than fourteen rhyming pick-up lines. Go south, my friend. Southern girls dig ass-sonnets. And hotdogs, too.” He reaches down and fishes a dog out of his cart.

“Well, I gotta have the love,” I say.

“Northerners are cynics,” he says, “and what can you expect from a cynic?”

“Just mustard,” I say.

I eat and drive. The hot dog brings indigestion. Indigestion brings the water tunnel dream.

One night, Amy set her date on fire. Here’s the story as she told it to me.

All through the spring, Amy carried a torch for a boy in one of her college classes. Finally she worked up the courage to ask him out. They went to see a romantic movie, and on the walk back to Amy’s car, they stopped for a smoke. Amy decided to take charge of the situation. She dug a cigarette out of her purse and poked it right between Flame Boy’s lips. Then she dug a book of matches out of her purse and prepared to make fire. That’s when things went wrong. When Amy struck the match, it broke near the tip and a tiny sulfur meteor flew into her date’s left eye. The ember melted his contact lens, which fell out and set his argyle sweater vest on fire.

Amy swore that it happened just like that.

One night I walked down to the pizza place and caught the boys sitting at the wrong table. When I asked them why they did a crazy thing like that, they insisted that it “just happened.” A likely story. Things like that don’t just happen.