moment he was a comedian. When I realized he wasn’t, I said, “I’m sorry. I could have taken you to Burger King and we could have listened to Fats Domino on the jukebox. This clown wasn’t here last time I came.”
“That must have been Christmas Eve 1984, because I been here a lot and he’s been here since I’ve been coming, and he’s never been able to carry a note in a sealed Tupperware container. He can do a damn good ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ though, and come Christmas he has a medley that ends with ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ that’ll break your goddamn heart.”
I smiled at her. “You are definitely different, Brett.”
“Not really,” she said. “I just put up a bold front. I’m really a chicken shit. This dating business is confusing to me. I don’t know if I want a real relationship anymore or a quick fuck. What about you?”
“I’d really hate to choose.”
“I’ll tell you a secret too. I don’t come on to every man like I did you.”
“You keep telling me that.”
“Do I?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I really do like you. If you had money I’d like you even more.”
“I like you too, but I don’t have money.”
“I didn’t think you did. You don’t look like you got more than a couple dimes to rub together.”
“Don’t worry. I can pay for the meal.”
She smiled again. Damn, I liked that smile.
“I don’t mind you don’t have money,” she said, and she reached out and placed her hand on top of mine. “I just said it would be convenient you had it. As for you liking me too, that’s good, but men like women right off if they look a certain way. And there’s some men, they go long enough and it’s late enough and they’re drunk enough, and some of them don’t even need the drink… Well, they’d fuck a three-hundred-pound cross-eyed sow in a John Deere cap.”
“You got to be proud of those old boys,” I said. “To think appearance doesn’t matter. That’s very modern, don’t you think?”
“What I think is I may not be a Playboy model, but I been around enough to know I look better than a tie rack. Figure that won’t last much longer at my age, so I better use it while I got it.”
“I may let my biology bark now and then,” I said, “but I make my final judgments with my heart, not my eyes. And just for the record, on the visual part, you’re a long way off from having ties hung on you. But that’s not the long and the short of it for me. How you look, I mean. I grew up in the sixties. I’m for equal rights and I’m for women. I even think of myself as a supporter of feminism as long as it doesn’t come across as stupid and strident as extreme machoism… Is that a word?”
“Who cares? I get your drift.”
“All right. Whatever, strident on either side wears me out. Like I said, my biology barks now and then, but when it comes down to it, I like to think I’m not the sort of guy can be pulled around by the ying-yang. I like to believe I’m made of sterner stuff than that.”
“I grew up in the sixties too,” Brett said, “but I hope there’s at least a drop of male chauvinist pig in you, or I’ve spent too much time brushin’ my hair. They still use that term, don’t they? ‘Male chauvinist pig’?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Men and women, biology and the goddamn federal budget,” Brett said. “All a mess, isn’t it?”
I agreed it was.
Brett said, “If you’re a woman and you like sex, you’re a whore. If you don’t like it, then you’re frigid. If you use what charms you have to get sex, then the feminists hate you, and if you don’t want to marry every goddamn hard dick gives you a poke, then the men think you’re a ball breaker, or you’re back to number one again. You’re a whore.”
“It is confusing,” I said.
“And you know what?” Brett said. “I think you could be pulled around by your dick a little bit, I wanted to pull it.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I take all that bullshit back. Start pulling.”
A well-dressed waiter came by then. A good-looking college kid about nineteen. He was very polite and acted as if he couldn’t wait to give us menus, take our order, and be our food slave for the next hour or so. I caught him peeking at Brett’s titties, but I thought it might be ruder to ask him to stop than to ignore him. Besides, I couldn’t actually blame him. It’s easy to talk a line of shit about how looks don’t matter, and they shouldn’t, and as you mature they don’t matter as much, but the eyeball is connected to the crotch in men, and that is the sad way of the world, and no matter how many volumes are written on political correctness, the one-eyed snake that lives between the legs of men will not read and strives only for satisfaction.
The waiter took our drink order and went away. While I studied the menu, I found myself feeling guilty. I was having fun, about to eat a good meal, sitting there with a good-looking date, and Leonard was sitting at home with a can of tuna fish, a handful of bad TV stations, and no vanilla cookies.
Well, he could always go down to Burger King.
When the waiter came back with our drinks we ordered a dozen oysters, steaks, and salads. The oysters came and Brett ate hers with lots of lemon and sauce, and I ate mine with just the lemon. The salad came and it was a good salad, or as good as salads get in Texas. A Texan’s idea of a salad is a few bananas and strawberries inside a mold of lime Jell-O.
The baked potatoes had all the fixings. Cheese, sour cream, butter, bacon bits. The steaks weren’t bad either, both of them cooked medium rare. I drank a nonalcoholic beer, and Brett had another mixed drink. And if I could remember the roster of all the songs that talentless sonofabitch in the dinner jacket sang, I’d go to my grave a happy man.
As we ate we blocked out the singer’s frantic organ playing and tired voice and talked about ourselves. My side of the story was pretty easy to tell. It was mostly about bad jobs, growing up, this and that, but I left out the part about being an ex-con because I was a draft resister; that would come later when we knew each other better.
Brett told me she had been raised in Gilmer, Texas, had been a cheerleader and later a majorette, and that she’d once had a fantasy she might like to fuck the football team. But the fantasy wore off before she got the opportunity, and in the long run, after knowing a few of them, she decided the knob on the end of her baton was about as stimulating. Real lady talk.
“When I was eighteen,” she said, “even without the football team, I was a walkin’ sperm bank. A psychologist will tell you it’s because there was something wrong with me, and who am I to argue. They’ll tell you my parents beat me or fucked me or doodled with my asshole while I slept, or a next-door neighbor liked to pay me nickels and ice cream to have me strip naked and sit on his coffee table while he beat off to violent Bugs Bunny cartoons. And I’m sure it happens, but I had a good home life and was well loved and was popular in school, went to church, got baptized, and even attended charm school.”
“I take it you didn’t get a diploma from charm school.”
The great smile again. “Actually, I did, smart ass. But as I was sayin’, ain’t none of that bullshit applies to me. I do have a sneakin’ suspicion what my problem was and is, however.”
“What?” I asked.
“I got on the pill when I was sixteen because I think I just simply and dearly loved to fuck. I still do. Though I’ve got morals now.”
“You don’t do it on the first date.”
“That’s it. That’s the moral. And I make the man wear a rubber. But I suppose that’s nothing to do with morals. You could call that disease control. Has to be, because I hate those goddamn rubbers.”
“So do men. Go on, tell me more.”
Brett told me she had a twenty-seven-year old son named Jimmy who lived in Austin and was into Taoist philosophy and the martial art of aikido. Jimmy believed the source of his energy came up from the center of the earth and moved through his colon and all around inside of him. He had lots of internal energy. What the Japanese call ki power. Three people couldn’t lift Jimmy off the ground because of his ki. He could hold his arm out and you could swing on it. For all this internal energy, however, he lacked common sense and didn’t have a bank account. He wrote to Brett at least twice a month for money, and last time she heard he was in love with a former cocaine
