Twelfth in a series of installments documenting my failed political ambitions, my warped sensibilities, and my Portland Trail Blazers
I sat at the bar, sipping on my last beer of the evening, absentmindedly tracing faint circles with the back end of a Bic pen into the lucite top that protected the dark stained wood that we were to mistakenly assume was of some South American descent. I wondered why it made that much of a difference, here at J’s Jazz Club, where discerning eyes came to die – or at least stumble into the kitchen and vomit into the deep fryer.
South America has its high-grade wood, and we have… moxie? Pluck? An absentminded embrace of ambiguity? An ethical circlejerk? Kenny was sat next to me, rambling on about some sort of vague success at his work, and my mind was at work trying to sort out our national identity. Typical. He knows full well that I don’t understand the technical terms involved in his profession, and yet he can speak for hours uninterrupted, splicing his stories with terms such as annuity, downtick, and dividends. I envision him continuing these banal conversations after I leave, mid-phrase, with complete strangers, or at the very least, the poor bartender – a species who surely suffer fools greatly. Kenny’s no fool, mind you: his days involve moving numbers around a computer screen and yelling at people on the phone and taking lunches with people wearing suits, and he’s often able to launch into business-speak at the flip of a hat, for fear that a potential client will fall through the cracks.
I cannot abide by such a focused, linear lifestyle. I have made this decision based on my own rhymes and reasoning, and it has nothing to do with the proposed end game, per se. A man, if he’s lucky, finds his niche and carves out a nice little life, and that man should not be judged based on extrapolations or assumed intent. I consider myself, like many men before me, a failed artist in every sense of the word, and the road to accepting that failure stretches out for miles beyond the horizon. Within these failures came a way of life that I surely was not accustomed to, yet grew to form to my persuasions like a nice Ben Sherman suit.
I thought about this often, most notably when Ruth and I lay nude on her king-sized bed in the palace, both of us exhausted from a spirited round of acrobatic sex. Was this me? Was I living my life in a manner that would resemble a performance piece? Were the strange circle of events, then and now, a result of my direct involvement? Was it, dare I say, fate?
Regardless: we are different in that way, Kenny and I, and I find myself often espousing philosophies antithetical to Kenny’s sensibilities, although it’s easy to lash out at the concept of greed and Pat Riley’s famed “disease of more” when you are living on the government’s dime, as I am. Kenny reminded me of this constantly, and I appreciated his honesty. We are blood brothers, after all. Yes, I would have been able to scratch by with the money I was making as a sportswriter, but I wouldn’t have been able to live the lifestyle I was living if it wasn’t for that huge chunk of cash that was wired into my bank account, origin unknown, that one fateful day when I signed my name on that dotted line, agreeing to never tell a soul about my experiences as United States Ambassador to the Cayman Islands.
Of course, I brazenly flaunted this agreement and started headlong on a quest to rid myself of the personal guilt I had been saddled with from the get-go. Why was I appointed? What was Yang hiding from me? Why did starting a sexual relationship with the Premier’s daughter feel so natural? Toward the end of my stint in the Caymans, I was riddled with an old gambling adage that I heard many years ago: If you can’t see the sucker at the table, it’s probably you. I had uncovered the dark origins of Bellybuster, you see, and the tendrils of its ugly core had followed me home unsuspectedly.
In my fiendish paranoia I had found myself following my neighbor Bruce Feathers around, holding out slim hope that he would lead me directly to that rat bastard Larry Miller. He was the key to this all-consuming Pandora’s Box, I rationed, and my delusions led me to daydream about a stakeout, me and Kenny at the helm, wearing dark sunglasses and speaking in code, watching his property intently, waiting for the perfect time to strike. To what end, I didn’t know; I suppose I would rifle through the drawers in his office, maybe smash the place up a bit.
Alas, Feathers led me nowhere, and I was too embarrassed to admit to Kenny or even Lala how I was spending my days. I’d bang out a column in the morning, and devote the rest of the daylight hours to trailing Feathers. It came to a head when I followed him to our neighborhood park one beautiful Sunday afternoon, to find him joining in with what seemed to be his extended family for a big barbecue. I climbed a maple tree and found a comfortable perch halfway up, where I could keep a trained eye on the gathering. I had the idea that Feathers, acting upon his proclaimed friendship with Larry Miller, might have invited Miller to the park for a lazy afternoon of good food and saccharine sentiments.
The park soon filled up. Nearly every square inch of land was claimed, and a group of large Samoans set up shop directly underneath the tree I was in. This caused me a variety of problems. One, the Samoans were so closely packed together under the tree, I couldn’t jump down from the tree without causing a commotion. Besides, there were many toddlers shrieking and running around, and the lowest branch of the tree was far enough above the ground where I wouldn’t have the confidence to time a jump that wouldn’t lead to a direct hit between myself and a darting young Samoan.
Two, after a few hours I had to urinate, and after weighing my options, I decided to go slowly against the trunk of the tree, closely controlling the throughput and force, guessing correctly that the streams of piss would silently move down the length of the trunk, its volume reducing as the rivulets elongated and stretched down to the bottom, eventually reaching the base of the tree with nary a glance of recognition. My original idea was much more haphazard, and I am ashamed to admit that I almost chose this course of action. I considered, in all seriousness, releasing small amounts of urine, bit by bit, within the semi-enclosed spaces of the upturned leaves that were scattered around the mid-section of the tree. This would have required an inordinate amount of pain, precision and focus, and considering I was balancing on a branch fifty feet above solid ground, I wanted to avoid crashing down to the ground and interrupting the festivities below – much less doing so with my pants around my ankles.
But the biggest problem I had with the whole situation in the park was that the din of laughter prohibited me from listening in on anything Feathers was up to with his friends. There were various newcomers to the group, and I noticed Feathers go off a few times to have some private conversations with some people, and all I could make out were animated hand gestures. At one point during one of these one-on-one conversations, Feathers put both hands on his throat, pretended that he was choking, and then busted up laughing. I was coming to the realization that Feathers was a very strange fellow indeed. He slapped his friend awkwardly on the back, and the friend quickly left Feathers to go look for his wife.
Kenny was still in the middle of his story. I interrupted him to go use the bathroom and returned to find Kenny in a conversation with a tall redheaded woman who had stolen my seat. Fair play, I thought. I wanted a reason to get out of there, anyway. I grabbed my jacket off the wall and snuck out the front door, footing Kenny with the bill (and the girl). I walked over to the train stop and waited for the next train to take me back to my neighborhood, where I would brew a pot of tea, text Kenny to wish him good luck with the redhead, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram before heading to bed. “Well, I know my banana is older than the rest,” Sir Paul sang. “And my hair is a tangled beretta.”
“Did you take her home?” I asked him the next morning on the phone.
“Even better,” Kenny deadpanned. “I found a way in, my friend.”
“Into her pants? I assumed as much.”
“Yeah, but… no!” Kenny laughed. “Into the inner circle.”
He was purposefully being vague.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Her name’s Roxie. And get this – she’s Larry Miller’s endocrinologist!”
“His endocrinologist? So what? How does that affect us?”
“She’s going to a party at Larry Miller’s house next weekend, and she invited me.”
My jaw dropped.
“She invited me,” he repeated.
“The inner circle…”
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