Another Saturday Night

Originally Posted Sunday, November 17, 2013

My astrologer friend has jumped the gun once again.  Tonight's sky will  reveal the Full Frosty Moon (link).  O.K.  It's the Beaver Moon, but it can be the other, too (if I call it the Full Beaver Moon, I'll have to post a photo I don't want to post here any longer).  Don't let the fucker near your palm, either.  He doesn't know a life line from a love line.  He's mean with a pack of Tarot cards, as they say, but he makes it all up out of his head.  He's worse than Madame Sosostris. 

I took my mother to breakfast yesterday to the little diner I like.  I thought we would have to wait for a table, but my mother saw two seats at the counter and said, "let's get those."  So we sat like two truck drivers next to that notorious gangster, Blacky, who I met there about a year ago.  I wrote a good long piece on it, but I never index things, so I can't link back to it easily. 

I reached over and offered my hand.  "You're Blacky, right?  I met you in here a while back.  How's it going?"  He took my hand in that old gangster handshake, the last two fingers of his hand curled into his palm.  It prevents someone from being able to grip your hand in a crushing way and makes it easy to slip out if someone tries to pull.  That's what I think, but it could have been merely arthritis. 

"Hey, mom, that's Blacky.  Remember, I told you about him.  He's a famous gangster.  He was a really tough and scary character." 

My mother looked over unimpressed. 

Later that day, she came back to the house.  The little boy I used to photograph was having a birthday party next door.  He turned fourteen, no longer a little boy.  She hadn't seen him for a few years, and his mom had called to invite her.  I was leaving the house for the gym when she arrived. 

"I'll go over for a minute to see him.  I got him a card and some money." 

When I got home, she was still there.  She was there when I got out of the shower.  She was there when I got back from the liquor and fried chicken store.  Well. . . two stores, actually, though I think a liquor and fried chicken store might really make a fortune.  It had been three hours when she knocked on my door.  She sat down and rolled her eyes.  I didn't want to hear about it. 

She watched me eat the fried chicken.  I told her my buddy had called and was stopping by for a drink. I had to buy some sixteen year old Glen Moray because I had finished off the bottle he had left.  When he showed up, I asked her if she wanted a drink.

"I'd better not," she said.  "I had some wine already."

"Give her a taste of the Glen Moray," my buddy said.  "She has to taste this.  Just give her a little."

I handed my mother a short shot with an ice cube.  I knew she wouldn't like it.  She tasted it and shook her head.

"You really have to want to drink to drink this," she proclaimed. 

"Scotch is great for settling your stomach.  In Italy, they won't serve it to you until after the meal.  It is considered a digestif."

"Yea, mom, tell that to the cop when you get pulled over on your way home.  Tell him your age and then tell him your stomach was upset from eating shitty food at a kid's birthday party.  Tell him all about it.  Here, let me get you another."

Of course I was kidding her, but she sat around with us for awhile and chatted.  After a bit, she got up and said she had to go.  I could tell she didn't really want to, but she thought it was the right thing.

"You don't have to go," I said.  "You can sit around and tell dirty stories with us." 

I walked her to the car and told her I was cooking the next night, the night of the full moon. 

My buddy lit up a cigarette, so we sat with our scotches on the deck in the dark.  He began telling me his tales of romantic woe.  But there was a bartender at the "ballet," he said, that he got along with.  He was going up to see her and wanted me to come along. 

"No, man, I'm not going up.  I'm in for the night."  I looked at the clock.  It was almost 8:30. 

"C'mon, we'll be home by ten." 

"No we won't." 

With an involuntary shudder, I thought about sitting in a smoky bar while girls named "Brandy" and "Ginger" danced around poles wearing thongs and nipple tape while he chatted up the bartender. 

"Maybe if they let me do a photo essay in there, I'd go.  I'd love to do that." 

"Well come up and talk to them about it.  Hell, they might let you." 

"Yea, I bet nobody ever asked them if they could do that before."  But I was thinking that maybe no one had.  "You want to go to brunch tomorrow?" 

And then it was done.  Alone at 8:30 on a Saturday night.  The party next door was still going on.  The cat came out from behind the couch.  The house was clean and beautiful.  There was something I'd recorded that I really wanted to see.