Still Barking... And the Dog Barks On Some More... A 21st Century Adult Fairy Tale The Journey Continues...

Copyright © 2013 Eric Paul Lee.

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All characters, situations, names, places and locations are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any and all resemblance to actual people living or dead, events, businesses, locations, or places is completely coincidental.

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Contents

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150

About the Author

Table of Contents

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130

140

150

About the Author

1

MORONS!

Moroonies, assholes, crisis, disaster~ moroonies, assholes, and crisis, I’m surrounded by absurdity.

Surrounded.

I am so pissed, so much going on around me of consequence and I have to do these penny-ante, and stoopid things over, and over, and over again. Whatever happened to the operative phrase:

Once and done…

In Miami, and in my life of late, it’s:

"ONCE …

… and again."

AGAIN.

Again.

Sucks.

Take a medical test, and seven weeks later take it again, the results of this day’s test were indeterminate, there might be something wrong leading to death, or there might not.

Who knows?

Not I.

And so:

Happy Holidays…

Those test results were received two days after the Thanksgiving weekend ended, on the last Tuesday of November. The test itself, a regular gig, a previously scheduled yearly thing, a check-up, an MRI of the Brain with IV infused contrast to ascertain the stability, or change, of the wound present from years old brain surgery. (That surgical recovery is a serious condition now of, and by, itself.) And to see whether new disease (brain tumors), was present, was administered to me the day before, on Monday. And so, on this final Tuesday in November that ambivalent test result was thrown at me verbally, expressed somewhat softly, in quiet conversation, again at a regular quarterly appointment, by my Neurologist de jour:

"Oh…

There’s this new spot.

It may be nothing.

It’s very small

BUT…"

The re-test, another Brain MRI with IV infused contrast to see the rate of growth of that new spot, was established that same Tuesday. The follow-up re-test was to be administered the third week of January some seven weeks hence, some two plus weeks after the New Year and Christmas holidays were passed.

Like I said:

Happy Holidays.

They weren’t.

Eight years of previous, regular, Brain MRI Scans, and all had been stable, and now in year nine:

Oops.

Oops.

It’s not.

Oh my.

"Oh my…"

And the day-to-day stuff of my life rolled on all through the Holidays and beyond as usual as Claudio the Craftsman from Colombia my anointed pool builder from nine months ago, dropped the ball again, and again, and again. For someone who didn’t have enough time in the day to have dinner with his three-year-old child regularly, Claudio refused to understand his own role in his overload.

And I screamed.

Sucks.

And Dan the DICK Deckman, the master construction maven of outdoor deck perfection and beauty was a DISASTER on a daily basis.

A "disaster".

SUCKS.

Some nine months into the process of pool and deck construction, my backyard, and my sanity, had been decimated as my previously beautiful backyard now looked like a suburb of Aleppo, and unlike one of the third-party candidates from the just passed presidential election cycle, I did, and do, know where that is (Syria); so a warzone, my backyard, my life, was a warzone.

CONtractors.

I hate contractors. I never forget, not for one minute of the day I’m involved with any of them that the first three letters of the word contractor spells:

Con.

CON!

And they do, and they are. They’re worse than car salesmen, new or used. And if you don’t believe me then I’ve got a bridge to sell you right here from my old hometown of Brooklyn, NY.

Yup.

Ye olde Brooklyn Bridge is for sale, and I’ve got the rights of ownership real handy.

Yup.

CONtractors:

"Con".

And I deal with them often, and usually I don’t get conned. Usually I get what I want, what I need; and then, a "con" takes place.

A CON.

And I deal.

And of course there’s: survival, illness, relationships, friends, family, and current events to deal with too. All of that stuff, that same stuff that swirls around in the day-to-day of anyone’s life, in any person’s world anywhere, is a potboiler novella of existence for me.

A potboiler.

Sucks.

It all just sucks.

Sucks.

My life just sucks.

Sucks.

2

Sucks!

I can’t catch a break, and with it all I simply push forward. I hiccup not, I drop no balls, I miss no meals, I deal.

And:

Life is not kind.

And I suppose that’s OK as who ever said "life" was kind?

The phrase:

Life is tough, then you die…

… frequently reverberates through my conscious mind, and often. Very often actually as "life" has been tougher for me of late than usual.

And death?

Well…

Death has been around a lot, in actuality, as a concept, and as a possible future personal reality too. Multiple old friends were lost to death recently, and some other friends were lost to time and change, to life marching on, but they were lost just the same, dead, at least muerto to me.

And Mitch…

Lost.

Muerto.

And my girlfriend Lynn, is she lost, is she found, who knows?

Hmmmmm…

Freud was almost lost too.

Freud, my adorable, special, six-year-old, fawn colored, handsome, best friend, French Bulldog companion, was almost lost this year, and twice. Freud who I’ve nurtured from his ninth week of life on this planet forward, from early puppydom to today, Freud, family member that he is, was almost dead at Thanksgiving.

The Monday I took that inconclusive MRI, the day before I got that ambiguous diagnosis of a new spot on my brain, a new spot where we must:

Re-test, as it could be tumors, Cancer, or maybe nothing.

… I picked a very worn, and fragile, recovering Freud, up from the Animal Hospital where the surgeries that saved his life had been performed five days before. Freud was almost lost then, LOST. And that Monday I brought him home he was far from found:

far from found…

His recovery was nip and tuck, touch and go, a bear to deal with. In a lot of ways it was just like the beginnings of his illness. For the first two days he was home he couldn’t pee, he could only dribble, and only sometimes at that. And I had to check each time he went to urinate to monitor his healing progress.

I had to look every time.

And every time I glanced his way when we walked and he started to go he would push his dick down into the ground so that whatever fluid he was releasing I couldn’t see. Freud seemed to be requesting privacy I suppose.

WHAT’RE YOU LOOKING AT PERVERT?

For the preceding two weeks, the week before Thanksgiving, and the week before that, Freud had been unable to pee. Three different conditions were at fault, impacted, invisible, bladder stones blocking the passage of fluid down his urethra and the release of all urine, an enlarged prostate further pressing on the urethra further blocking the flow, and two cysts on his prostate, that could be prostate Cancer. So it was determined that Freud would need at least three operations, three curative surgeries to save his life, removal of the stones, drainage of the cysts (after it was determined they were benign and not Cancer), and neutering to reduce the prostate enlargement. And once his life was saved, I brought the mess Freud was home that Monday, the day before I was informed of my own condition.

This was the second extensive canine hospital stay of the year, as barely three months prior to this emergency, Freud had almost died once again, only that time from Pancreatitis. Freud almost dead twice in the last four months, and torture for me all of that, torture.

Torture.

And what can I say about my new post-Thanksgiving Holiday weekend diagnosis?

…

And there was more last year.

More.

Gal, my ex-lover from 15 years ago, him too, he was almost a goner, bye-bye, ta-ta, last year. Yea, Gal almost died from Ischemic Strokes twice in the past year.

Yesssss…

Gal whom I’ve been family with for over a quarter century, some 28 years now of shared memories, some 13 years (sic), of personal intimacy, some sex, a lot of living together, and an additional 15 years of being, I suppose, brothers, or however you choose to describe a distant family member of any sex.

What’s in a word anyway, as the Bard, Shakespeare, penned:

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

And Freud, Gal, and me, we were family then, and in many ways we still are.

Family.

Family in 21st Century modern America.

Family.

A modern family living in an America where the last election didn’t play out to my liking and I have to get along.

ACH!

My Agenda.

My agenda, my agenda, my agenda…

Ach!

3

And there’s still more, as Lynn might be leaving too; Lynn my girlfriend, my current "paramour de jour", or at least the only person in my life that I’m currently having sex with.

Lynn, is a good deal younger than me. She’s a pretty, super fit, intelligent, 21st Century career woman, a trailblazer in many ways, and a traditionalist in so many others. Lynn is a high-powered International attorney, a mother, divorced, independent, brilliant at what she does, emotional, demanding and, possibly, "leaving" woman. Lynn’s Miami Shores based law firm is dangling a partnership in front of her if only she would relocate to California, La Jolla, near the border of Mexico, where Lynn would be responsible for all of the Firm’s Mexican and Central American affairs.

And it’s a big deal as no woman has ever held the position of:

Senior Managing Partner …

… of a major offsite office with the Firm before.

Like I said before, Lynn’s a:

trailblazer.

And Lynn wants a partnership, she’s shouted that out to me many times:

I WANT TO BE A PARTNER!

And I don’t respond any longer, as any response from me gets me in trouble. If I say:

Go for it…

… Lynn accuses me of wanting her gone.

If I say so much as:

I’ll miss you if you go…

… Lynn accuses me of trying to get her to stay, and of holding her back.

So I say nothing of late, mute, I stay:

"mute".

And this has been going on for a long time now, for over six months at least, perhaps for nine months, or for almost a year; I lose track. I have so much going on around me that I can’t focus on the whys and why nots in someone else’s life. Even in an important someone else’s life, not in Lynn’s, and not in Gal’s. Usually I know most of the reasons for the things going on, like with Lynn now. I think I know why it’s taking so long. Lynn is really of two minds where the position and the move are concerned. And the Firm was willing to wait for her decision as the Managing Partner currently in charge of the office still has time to run out on his contract, and…

And…

And I think most importantly…

… Lynn has been doing all of the Firm’s legal work she would do there, in La Jolla, here in Miami Shores. Ever since the position was offered to her and she went out to La Jolla on a trial-run for a month’s stay, she’s been doing all of the legal work that she had to do there, here in Miami Shores, once she came home. Her workload is huge now, overwhelming, and week after week she overcomes it all.

But she complains constantly, constantly, and I think her brow will wrinkle soon if she’s not careful. But there’s Botox, and Lynn is vain enough, and ambitious enough for Botox and probably for a face lift in Toto, if, and when, the time comes.

That ambition thing, that vanity…

Lynn wants to be forever young, and beautiful, and AMBITIOUS, striving, and successful.

So the Firm is willing to wait for Lynn to make up her mind. It’s to their advantage; less Firm dollars out while the Managing Partner is still on the books in his leadership capacity, and for the long-term happiness and satisfaction of his designated successor as she steps up to the plate.

And will she?

Or:

Won’t she?

The jury is still out for sure, and Me…

Meeeee.

I don’t have a clue.

Lynn doesn’t discuss it with me of late.

We did talk about it, and a lot, when the possibility of the partnership offer first came up, back when the position was first offered to her and plans were being made for a month-long trial-run:

Won’t you come out there for a long weekend, four or five days, and experience California with me?

…

Lynn cooed at me more than once as the plans for her trail-run month away were being made. And, oh boy, the screaming when I said:

"No…

I think you have to make the decision completely by yourself."

Oh boy…

… the SCREAMING then.

And I didn’t go.

But of late, nothing is said to me about it at all.

Nothing.

Nothing.

4

Gal is persona not arounda much of late, and he speaks with me not; Gal is almost one of the "lost" right now.

And he speaks with me not!

But that’s not a new development. Gal pretty much stopped regular visits to Casa Mia in Miami, and phone contact with me right after his second almost fatal stroke, some eight months ago, and his release from the hospital into his family’s care. That new distance from me coincided with the arrival of his family from Israel to be his caregivers for the next two months of his stroke recuperation. I couldn’t help Gal there. I could barely care for myself and Freud back then, and Gal too?

Nah, couldn’t happen.

So Gal had no need to speak with me just then.

No need.

So he didn’t.

Gal was kind of angry with me then anyway as I knew what he had, the cause of his strokes, before he did, and the treatment, the cure, and of course the cause. And I said nothing to him at first about any of it, nothing until later that is.

And then I said a lot.

A diagnosis of:

Neurosyphilis…

… requires a big discussion.

HUGE~

So Gal got angry with me back then, and Gal didn’t want to speak with me much after that. And when trouble started with his employer, some three months after his hospital release, and it was exactly the trouble I said it would be if Gal continued to do what he was doing.

Well…

Gal wanted to speak with me even less then.

Less.

And so he did speak with me less.

Much less.

And now, today, Gal is in San Juan, Puerto Rico for good, and not on temporary assignment from his old haunt of Key West like before. And from that new permanent residence Gal speaks to me even less still. And Gal sees Freud and me even less than before.

And most calls when they’re made to me are:

How is Freud?

And my one word response:

Fine…

… is the usual.

Except when Freud isn’t fine, like now, and since Gal isn’t around much, the calls have been somewhat more frequent of late. Somewhat more frequent calls have been made, but no more information from him, about him, is given to me. And little information about me is given to him.

But I’m used to all of that, and to Gal. And I mostly know what Gal will do, and I mostly know what Gal won’t do. And mostly I know what I will do, and I kind of know what I won’t do.

And then I don’t know anything at all.

Complicated.

5

Margarita in Newyorkavania is annoyed with me.

… (Newyorkavania is an amalgam of small cities and small towns on both sides of the borders of Pennsylvania and New York, all of them kind of linked together, bonded in Rust Belt decline, Ohioan values, and almost poverty.

Newyorkavania is where I went to college.) …

Margarita was my last girlfriend in college. This annoyance thing she has for me right now ain’t new. It’s happened before, and it will probably happen again. Right now it’s because I’ve been pointing out cause and effect to her, and she denies those causes as she dwells, literally lives with daily, the negative consequences of the effects of what she has wrought. And unfortunately, I’m right, it’s all her fault. As Margarita is in pain, she doesn’t want to deal with the "whys" of the pain as the pain is bad enough, so she’s annoyed with me for pointing it all out, again.

She’s annoyed with me, and very.

I left our college town after graduation, and Margarita didn’t. I went back home to New York City. Margarita, who was originally from some small Long Island town, someplace in Nassau County, stayed put. She married her first husband shortly thereafter, a prior to me, boyfriend, and eventually had a kid.

El Husbando Uno was an abusive local dude, their lives together atrocious from jump, and after some 18 years of marriage he croaked from some arcane condition involving Phlebitis, leaving Margarita and her son, without life insurance, to fend for themselves in the wilds of the Newyorkavania countryside. Margarita immediately went to work, and they survived. Some four years later, Margarita met, and then married, Henry, a recently divorced guy with custody of his three daughters, and just like that:

presto-chango…

… a nuclear American family of six were they.

A few years later the youngest daughter, a middle-aged teenager by then, (16 and pregnant), moved out to live with her boyfriend and had the kid. A couple years after that the oldest girl moved on, and she too foaled a child early on. And some few years after that the number two girl was gone, just like her sisters, and two little ones were dropped, and fast.

Somewhere along the way, Margarita’s son graduated from college, and although there wasn’t a child in the making, he left the family home to live on his own too. The six member nuclear family of yore was no more. Margarita and Henry were just two. Just the two of them residing in the now somewhat empty, nuclear family manse. So today Margarita and Henry are a family of two adults, alone, residing in the wilds of Newyorkavania in relative peace and tranquility.

But the three girls, the lone son, and their various consorts (none have married yet), and their various spawn, are a very local Newyorkavania presence, all of them individual, modern, American households, nuclear families all. And what constant crises they generate living the ups and downs of modern American life as time goes forward on a daily basis.

Those DOWNS…

And what a toll those downs, (as there aren’t that many ups), take on Margarita and Henry. What a toll they take, physical, emotional, and financial that toll as those grandkids must be coddled often. Since the grandparents can’t protect the children daily, those kids must certainly be coddled over time; "coddled" those grandkids must be. And now, just recently, the son’s significant other has spawned, a girl, and Margarita knits pink blankies, and pretty little pink caps:

pink baby beanies?

And life, modern American nuclear family life, in the age of The Donald as President, goes forward.

And I thought my family life in Miami was odd, but nah.

NAH.

It’s odd everywhere.

Everywhere.

6

I’m close to losing another friend too, Leslie, my BFF from college.

I met Leslie the second or third day of freshman orientation long ago, and we’ve been friends ever since. We’ve been friends for so long that I now know Leslie longer than I knew my mother. And Leslie could be going away.

Yesssss…

I could be losing Leslie as Leslie speaks with me not of late too. Leslie speaks with me even less than Gal.

Even less.

And Leslie’s absence, the possible loss of Leslie, makes me sad, and scares me shitless. It’s like I’m losing part of myself, part of my life, part of my past. Leslie can’t be gone; she simply can’t be gone. But she is, almost. And I don’t really know if I’m losing Leslie now, as I may have lost her already. And a long time ago that losing, as Leslie, like the Old Gray Mare of yore, well…

Well…

She ain’t what she used to be…

No Leslie…

…ain’t what she used to be…

Although a case can be made that perhaps Leslie never was what I’d ascribed her to be. And it’s truly possible I’m bemoaning the loss of who I thought Leslie was all this time, and not the loss of who Leslie is today, or who Leslie ever really was?

Leslie, was the most normal person in my life ever. Leslie, was a petite, pretty, blonde with a vixen like smile who married in our junior year of college to a Republican older dude, an executive at a local accounting firm, a subdivision of Ernst and Young I think (who remembers really). Upon their marriage the dude took a leave of absence from his workaday position so that he and Leslie could perform their pseudo liberal version of the late JFK’s grand societal vision of hope for a better America and World:

… ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

The morning after the wedding ceremony, I took the two of them to Newark Airport where they left for Montevideo, Uruguay, or someplace like that, Ecuador, maybe, where they would reside for two years in relative poverty serving humanity as part of the Peace Corps. Alan, the hubby, teaching the resident peons accounting, while Leslie was teaching the local underclass English.

They returned to the United States at tour’s end with an indigenous Indian infant boy that they had adopted at birth, and named Pedro (who self-Anglican re-named himself Craig when he was a teenager). Three years after their triumphant return to America they had a child, a girl, of their own, completing their traditional 1950’s style American nuclear family of four, Alan to evermore assume his patriarchal family role, and career in accounting and finance, and Leslie to be a fulltime, stay-at-home Mom. Although Leslie did go back to school and get her Bachelor’s degree, and then a Master’s degree, in Languages, right after she stopped breast feeding her little one.

Of course the little one was about six years old by then.

Yesssss…

Leslie breast fed her daughter until she was six.

And…

Yesssss…

The daughter is a lesbian today, or perhaps the daughter is simply bi-sexual with a strong penchant for vajayjay or other female body part involvement. Leslie speaks of the daughter’s child, of her grandson often, he’s five now I believe, but ever since the death, in natural childbirth, of the daughter’s second child, and the divorce of the daughter’s husband that followed, there hasn’t been any info on who is dating whom, or what.

And I don’t pry; Leslie gives me information voluntarily.

Or she doesn’t.

I was recently told about the daughter getting some new body piercings, and of a rather large weight gain, but not of new swains, or other romantic dalliances. And all of that is of no matter, no matter at all, as it’s just another modern American family in 21st Century America doing its thing.

Meanwhile the adopted indigenous South American Indian son, Craig, and his husband (yes the adopted indigenous Indian boy is gay), have little to do with Leslie, or his sister, or husband/father Alan for that matter. And that normal, nuclear American family:

THE ONLY ONE I KNEW…

… of decades ago, has no continuity at all today.

None.

But…

7

But four new, modern American families exist in their stead:

1: Stormtrooper-for-sex clad first husband Alan who way back then wore Nazi type high leather boots, leather pants, and a camel colored, heavy cotton, canvas like shirt with epaulets on his shoulders while Leslie wore a sheer fire engine red Frederick’s of Hollywood, polyester, crotch-less lingerie frock of some sort, now lives in Upstate New York.

Back in the day, years and years ago, in Newyorkavania, both individuals were attired as described above for regular sex acts in their nuclear American family basement playroom decorated with World War II posters. And I knew nothing of it all as Leslie told me nada then. In any case, Military Man Alan is presently residing benignly, as a family of two, in Upstate New York somewhere near Rochester. Alan currently lives peacefully in small city urban/suburban modern American familial bliss with his third wife, a former Playboy Bunny.

2: "Lezbo?" (maybe), daughter and grandson, a modern American family of two, living quietly somewhere in California, in L.A. perhaps, or San Francisco.

3: Gay son Craig, and hubby Carlos, Pedro, Jose or Riccardo (I forget which), a modern American family of two, residing comfortably in midtown Manhattan, on 23rd street someplace.

4: Leslie, living in a modern American family of three on the South Shore of Long Island. Leslie residing in a modern family of her deliberate creation, consisting of her second husband, a still with wee-wee Transgendered, or Trans woman, named Carolyn, and a third family member, Leslie’s and Carolyn’s "Transgendered/Trans", wee-wee less, decades younger, girlfriend, Agatha. Agatha who not so long ago was Leslie’s away from home, work night abode landlord, George.

… (Trans is the current politically correct term for a with wee-wee, or without wee-wee, transgendered individual in present day, 21st Century, "politically correct" jargon. The term can refer to a man, who is transitioning, or has transitioned, to the female gender, or a female who is transitioning, or has transitioned, to the male gender, or to an individual who views their gender as fluid.

Gender.

It’s very complicated stuff, you know.) …

Today the three women are living together in modern American familial bliss in a small town on the far eastern South Shore of Long Island, NY. Together they all reside in Carolyn’s long-time singularly owned manse, Leslie and Carolyn’s previous, and current, love nest.

"Trans" Agatha, who previously was George, was Leslie’s workweek abode landlord years ago when he controlled (he didn’t own), a house in Yonkers, New York. This house was Leslie’s home away from home where she rented a downstairs bedroom suite for weekday work-night shelter when she couldn’t travel daily the three plus hours home from her new company offices in Westchester, NY to the far away South Shore of Long Island, NY beach town paradise where she and Carolyn had established their love nest in Carolyn’s long-time owned, family gifted, manse.

Leslie and land lord George bonded slowly over the multi-years duration of that work week rental. Their original monetary relationship yielded to a warm friendship slowly as time went on. One day George simply asked Leslie to have a glass of boxed Chardonnay wine with him after they’d both just returned home from their busy day of work. And that proffered glass of boxed Chardonnay wine blossomed into a nightly house ritual the three nights a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, that Leslie was regularly in residence.

When Leslie was away from Yonkers, home on Long Island, at the love nest, on weekends, George’s kids, both pre-teens when Leslie moved in, came over for George’s share of pre-divorce, previously agreed upon, joint child custody. And these work week living arrangements went on for years until Leslie terminated her rental agreement with George when her Company allowed her to do most of her off site sales staff supervisory work from home through video conferencing, and travel out of state when needed.

Leslie’s new home-based work arrangement came about just as George’s divorce was finalized. In the divorce decree George’s wife was granted full custody of the children, and George was denied any continued spousal support (alimony), even though his wife was fairly well to do and had been paying him all along. As such, all the previous support monies he had been given by his ex-wife for the house he rented, and lived in, were terminated as the children were no longer to ever stay with George again.

George was visibly changed now, and the Court had deemed him unfit.

Unfit.

And the wife was angry.

Very.

But back at that very boxed Chardonnay wine drinking beginning, none of this was in play, George was George and had his kids, his life, his business (contractual computer programming/consulting, or some such), and Leslie her career in sale’s management overseeing 35, or 50, or 70 sales reps for a huge credit union. Leslie was always exhausted at the end of a day, and George wanted company in the evenings, he was lonely, sans wife, sans de kinder (children in Yiddish), and George had met Carolyn, as Carolyn had visited, and stayed over often from the very beginning of Leslie’s downstairs bedroom suite rental.

Indeed, Leslie had rented the suite from George as a married couple.

And George from that very beginning was always solicitous of Carolyn when she visited, never gawking, never staring, never overtly curious. And Carolyn was a gawkable entity then, kind of a curiosity, and kind of cartoonish looking.

Cartoonish, picture this:

Carolyn 6’, or 6’ 1" tall (minus heels), rail thin, with bony facial features, a large hooked nose, pale skin, a creased, very high forehead caused by a severely receding hairline, super plucked and heavily penciled in black eyebrows, heavy black false eyelashes, a mini-wig of super full, false hair black bangs, bangs supposedly hiding the high forehead, bangs held in perpetual position by a three-inch wide, hard, pink plastic hairband. And all of that false black hair sat directly below gray-white, black, stringy, limp, real hair that always looked like it needed to be washed-and-set even when the ever-present pink hair-curlers worn continuously daily, when not out in public, were just removed.

A visual treat to behold all of that.

A treat.

And then there were the clothes worn by Carolyn:

Nine days out of ten Carolyn wore the same outfit, only the shoes would change depending upon the locale. At home on Long Island, around the manse, in the "love nest", pink, feather topped, mules with low 1 ½" heels ruled. Those pink-feather topped mules were never off Carolyn’s feet at home, in the nest.

Never.

But when out of the manse Carolyn favored black leather, open toed, wide stitched, 2" heel, lace–ups like old lady Nuns wear.

So stylish.

So sensible.

"Sensible, stylish", shoes…

… and the rest of Carolyn’s in public, or at home, wardrobe was a shapeless pink and white (of course), floral house dress where none of her tiny, un-augmented by surgery, hormone shot created, breasts would show, with a long double string of faux Mabe` blister pearls around her neck (for further breast obfuscation), and a faux gold Timex watch with a slim brown leather strap around her wrist for adornment. For trips out of the house the shoes changed per above, and a gray shapeless, rumpled, cardigan sweater (cotton I think), was thrown over her shoulders for decorum, and warmth (Carolyn was always chilled).

And the outside world would then be attacked.

Cartoonish.

Yesssss…

Carolyn was cartoonish looking at best, and shrewish looking at worst:

Wicked Witch of the West…

… like from OZ, shrewish. Daily, at home, or abroad, Carolyn was really, really, really strange, odd, looking.

REALLY.

Always!

And George never so much as batted an eyelash when he saw her.

Not once.

8

And years of mutual involvement passed, and passed, and passed.

Carolyn would visit Yonkers (dressed and looking per above), somewhat often as these weekend excursions to stay in the bedroom suite together were Leslie’s way of getting Carolyn out of the house and into the public eye (sic). But when Carolyn was not a visitor, when George and Leslie were alone in the house together during the week, they would drink boxed Chardonnay wine in the evenings. And so of course, George and Leslie bonded. That was Leslie’s way after all.

Leslie’s way…

One night, well into their workweek living arrangement, over one of those after work, end of day, boxed chardonnay glasses of wine, George was very depressed. His life was over. All was lost. And he said exactly that to Leslie:

"My life is lost.

It’s over…"

And Leslie said:

"George what is it?

What’s different today, what’s so bad now?"

And George moaned sadly, and said softly:

"The kids, they hate me now, the divorce…

And then more forcefully, almost regularly:

My wife, she’s poisoned them towards me.

And she’s going to move for full custody soon, I got pre-motion papers from my attorney today.

I won’t have the children on weekends anymore if that goes through."

And then the last lines said softly again, sadly.

And I never wanted it to come to this.

Never…"

And Leslie said forcefully:

George why did your wife file for divorce anyway?

And George responded:

"Because she didn’t like me wearing her clothes.

Especially her underwear."

Hmmmmm…

Hmmmmm…

9

Hmmmmm…

Yesssss…

Leslie did lend George some of her clothes after that, only her clothes though, not her underwear.

Les ain’t that kinky.

But I’ve told all of this before, and I repeat this now only to ground