the cbayer primitive meets franksolich

[franksolich]

“So….” the property caretaker said, when he was here in late afternoon with a friend; they’d come to work on a pick-up truck in the garage.

“You’re taking a woman about to give birth, out to lunch with a couple of hippies?”

She’s not due until some time in April, I reminded him; it’ll be okay.

“What if it’s an early arrival, and the first thing it sees is a couple of old hippies?

“That first impression of the world’ll wreck its life for sure.”

Oh now, I said; while these two are primitives, they pretty much look like ordinary people.

“It’s not grossly obese ‘Auntie’ again, scaring small children with her tattoos and body piercings and grotesque make-up and miniature hand-tools dangling from her nose, ears, chin, jugs, and navel.”

“Wait,” the property caretaker’s friend interrupted.  “You saw ‘Auntie’’s tits?”

Only through her pull-over, I said, which was about six sizes too small for her bulk.

“It’s kind of hard to miss big pointy metal stars trying to puncture through the cloth.”

I repeated that the cbayer primitive and her husband look pretty average, even if they’re messed up in the head.  “He’s obviously an Englishman, and she’s just a mousy little woman--although brassily assertive--and so I seriously doubt they’ll frighten a newborn infant.”

“You’ve been pretty chummy with that guy, though,” the caretaker said, “and because you pay attention to what people say, he’s not converting you to wacko politics, is he?”

No way in Hell, I said.  “I’m just being nice to him because he’s a guest--I haven’t met her yet, only seen her--and I want him to be comfortable while here.

“And besides, he’s great to listen to; he has a pleasing nose.”

The two older guys looked at me as if I were Bozo from Outer Space.

“Oh, come on now,” I said.  “You know what it is.  Since I can’t hear, I have to keep looking at other people’s faces to see what they’re saying. 

“I’ve seen the insides of more mouths than even dentists, becoming intimately acquainted with every dentalogical phenomenon. 

“And the eyes; I’m always having to study the eyes.

“Now, usually people up close aren’t very attractive, even if they look good six feet away.  You got people with really bad teeth, you got people who talk with their mouths full of food, you got methamphetimine addicts with all their dental corrosion, you got epileptics with their gums covering their teeth, you got tobacco chewers; you got crooked teeth, missing teeth, yellow teeth, malformed teeth.

“And I have to look at it.  All the time.  Otherwise, I couldn’t ‘hear.’

“Now, being a nice guy, and having to endure such intimate sights since infancy, there’s not anything I haven’t seen, and so it doesn’t bother me like it would hearing people if they had to ‘read’ faces all the time.

“I don’t necessarily like it, but God gave me a stomach of steel, so I endure it.

“Although it still drives me nuts, people who have a protruding bump at the end of their chin; I dunno why it bothers me, but I’m barely able to concentrate on what they’re telling me, that odd-looking bulge flipping-and-flopping as they exercise their jaws.

“I’m a nice guy, and try to not let others know they’re making me uncomfortable with some unaesthetic feature of theirs, but I just can’t handle chins like that.  I’m of course polite to such people, but then I try to get away from them as soon as possible, lest I hurt their feelings by bursting out laughing.

“The ‘perfect’ human face of course doesn’t exist, but many people have other aesthetic characteristics that distract from their facial flaws.

“In the case of the cbayer primitive’s husband, the guy’s got a perfect nose, not too large, not too small, not too sharp, not too dull, and so for me, it’s a joy to ‘listen’ to him.

“I don’t care what he’s talking about.  Like Big Dog enjoying a good cigar, or Karin enjoying a fine wine, there’s few things in life I enjoy more than a fine nose.”

[franksolich]

“You look worried,” the neighbor said when he was here early in the morning.

Well, yes, I said.

I described how the cbayer primitive’s husband had shown up here late in the evening yesterday, as he was all agog and excited, and wanted to show me something.

“He was all dressed up as if going to the opera, but in all the hubbing-and-bubbing, I forgot to ask why.

“When he came inside, he took a handkerchief from his pocket, which was full of little stones, which he dumped on the dining room table.

“He asked me if anybody’s ever discovered gold around here.

“I said no.

“Now, I know that gold in its original state isn’t really gold, and in fact looks quite the opposite of gold, but I’m not sure exactly what it looks like--”

“He’s a bird-watcher,” the neighbor said.  “How would he know gold?”

“That’s what’s been bothering me,” I said.

“As a bird-watcher, he pays attention to details the rest of us overlook.

“He can tell the difference between a bullfinch and a partridge, after all.

“It’s reasonable to assume then, that he pays attention to small details about other things, including rocks.”

“Where’d he say he found it?” the neighbor asked.

Unfortunately, I said, he’d disregarded my advice about staying away from the property to the south of here, that vast tract owned by the Italianate interests in New Jersey, and found it there.

“True, they haven’t been out to look at it since they originally bought it in 1948, but they pay the taxes on it every year, and it’s freely and clearly their property, so it’s good manners for others to leave it alone, not disturb it.

“He said he was going to have the rocks assayed in the big city on Monday, and I’m hoping to God it’s just fool’s gold.  The last thing I need is an invasion of hordes of primitives, coming here in hopes of striking it rich.”

[RobJohnson]

By the way, the top picture was taken while standing atop the William Rivers Pitt, looking to the east.

One can see the tip of the William Rivers Pitt, bottom, left side.

This is my front yard.

(disclaimer: the picture's not from this morning, and was actually taken a couple of years ago--but it's an accurate depiction of what this morning looked like.)

Great view and great picture.

[Big Dog]

Great story! I like the Mountie uniform and the cooks.

[franksolich]

Great story! I like the Mountie uniform and the cooks.

You know how it is around here; there's so few people and so much work that needs done.

Those who prosper the most are those with more than one skill.

And while learning another skill, many find that they're actually more fitted for this new thing, than what they'd been doing.  The competent carpenter who finds himself an even better mechanic, for example--but he would've never known that unless he'd been compelled to try it out.

This goes for cooks, too; the sullen "Swede," who is very real, of Norwegian derivation but acclaimed for his Italianate dishes, is a long-distance truck-driver too.  He'd indulged in Italianate cuisine while in the Army forty+ years ago, but never gave it a second thought until one night his wife, who owns the bar in town, was absent a cook, and so he went in to cook.

The rest is history.

Most of the cooks depicted herein derive from a single isolated real-life observation, made shortly after I'd moved up here from Omaha.  This was more than ten years ago.

A friend and I were dining at an all-purpose restaurant.  At the table next to us were two college chicks, obviously in the "fine" arts.  Their car outside had Lancaster County license-plates on it, so they were probably from the University of Nebraska.  Also, it had a GORE-LIBERMANN bumper-sticker on it.

They ordered vegetarian dishes, tofu and all that nonsense.

They were so pleased, said it beat any vegetarian fare to be had in Lincoln and Omaha, that they wanted to thank the cook.

Out from the kitchen stepped the now-late Cornelia, wiping her hands on her apron.  Cornelia of sacred memory was a big heavy black woman, maybe 400 pounds, amd moved about slowly.

After she left, one of the coeds said to the other, "I didn't know those people could do vegetarian."  

[franksolich]

I went over to the neighbor’s house for Sunday lunch; his older brother and family were there too, so it was pretty much a full house, five adults and eleven children, with a twelfth imminent.

Large crowds confuse me, what with all the hubble-bubble going on, and so I sat in a corner talking mostly with the neighbor’s wife, who’s to accompany me when I take the cbayer primitive and her husband out to dine at the Australian restaurant in the big city.

No date’s been set, and it’s probably going to be after Wednesday, the evening I plan to dine upon the Italianate delicacies of Swede at the bar in town.

“He hasn’t told me yet, and I think it’s because he hasn’t discussed it with his wife,” I told her.

“I get the impression they argue a lot.”

“It’s too bad, but maybe you and I can give them a lovely time,” the neighbor’s wife said.

The neighbor’s wife isn’t as Pollyannaish as franksolich, but she’s close.

“I dunno,” I said; “it seems to me primitive marriages tend to be ‘dominator-dominated’ type, one partner overwhelmingly lording it over the other.

“I must’ve been unusually blessed, I guess, with the marriage my parents had.  Everything was fifty-fifty between them, absolutely equal, no dominator, no dominated, partners rather than boss-and-employee.

“On Skins’s island, you have the magisterial primitive and the truemud primitive, both of them dominated by their wives to where it’s a brutal sado-masochism thing, with chains, leashes, collars, leather, and humiliation and degradation involved. 

“And what’s sicker about it is that the husbands love it.

“But whippings and other brutalities seem to be applied in other ways too; you got the examples of the hypochondrial ‘mopinko’ primitive and the babbling sister the ‘Babylon Sister’ primitive.  Their husbands cater to their every material whim and pleasure, pamper them, coddle them, but no matter how much they do, it’s not enough.

“But at least the now-former husband of the babbling sister primitive gave it up.

“And then you got that rich old guy with gout, who probably spends a minor fortune to keep his much-younger attractive trophy wife happy with diamond trinkets and golden toys.  As long as the trinkets and toys keep coming, she won’t leave him.

“But one of the more-pathetic cases is that of the adroit sparkling old dude, married to a bubblehead who’s about as deep as a teacup-saucer.  She won’t love him unless she can embarrass him, humiliate him  And he puts up with it because he really believes she’s the best he can get.

“And on the other side, you have hippyhubby Wild Bill terrorizing the hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer; he even locks up her shoes so she can’t run away.”

“Well, what sort of relationship do you think these two have?” the neighbor’s wife asked.

“I think the cbayer primitive has a problem,” I answered.

“She’s had a rough life, a lousy first marriage, and a son who got into some sort of trouble and had to be scared straight.

“Like Mrs. Alfred Packer, she has this absurd idea that she’s not ‘complete’ as a person unless she has a husband.  Never mind if he’s a bad husband; she must have a husband, lest she end her days unfulfilled, incomplete.

“And so she married this eccentric Englishman.

“I don’t see any evidence that he’s the dominating sort, but because the cbayer primitive thinks the way she does, he ends up dominating nonetheless.

“It doesn’t seem to me that he demands she cater to his every whim; it seems more to me that she herself feels compelled to kowtow to him, lest she lose him.

“The cbayer primitive seems to me to be an average woman, who appreciates stability and sensibility and a few comforts and luxuries in life; she wants to have a home of her own on solid ground--but because he’s eccentric, and one of his eccentricities is insisting that they live on a boat, well, she goes along.

“He doesn’t mean to dominate her, but she lets him dominate her.

“The cbayer primitive needs to get a healthy sense of self, but for a primitive that’s probably too much to expect.”

[franksolich]

“Well, it didn’t turn out gold after all,” the neighbor’s older brother told me when he was here about noon.

“I don’t know why that damned fool thought it might be gold.”

“Well, he never said it was gold, he said it might be gold,” I reminded him.

“He’s not your typical know-it-all primitive; he thought it might be promising, but checked it out before alleging it was gold.

“If only the other primitives would be so careful; their lives would improve immeasurably,” I concluded, thinking of the addled grasswire primitive who announced the opening of a pie-and-jam shoppe, and then got in the newspapers…..and the wish never came to anything.

It’s really odd, this primitive notion that by simply wishing for something to be, it becomes.

I asked the neighbor’s older brother if he was going to town to dine on Wednesday evening.

He said he was planning on it; didn’t want to miss it.

“I’ll bet it’s packed, even though Wednesday evenings are usually slow,” he said.

“What are you going to order?” he asked.

I told him I haven’t made up my mind yet.

The other day, while picking up my usual take-out of a hamburger well done, pressed down hard on the grill so as to squeeze out every drop of grease, and French fries made on the grill rather than in the fryer, I’d borrowed one of their menus.

The menu’s folio-sized paper sewn into a leather binder, and has 22 pages--four pages of regular chow, such as hamburgers and French fries or ham and eggs or chicken-fried steak, six pages of Italianate cuisine, six of German dishes, and six of French dishes.

It’s all text, no pictures, as people around here are literate, and don’t need pictures to illustrate what something is.

What’s on the first four pages is available any time, every day.  What’s on the following pages is available only when a particular cook is cooking at the bar.  So some evenings one can order French, the next evening German, and so on.  It depends upon who’s cooking.

These are new menus, with each page laminated in transparent plastic and the line for prices left blank.

One uses a “dry-erase” pen to write in the prices.

The menus were ordered last November, right after the presidential election, in anticipation of third-world inflation; it’s much easier to wipe off one price and to write in the new, higher, price, than to constantly order new menus, which aren’t cheap.

[BlueStateSaint]

Every time the mention of Swede, the cook, pops up, I get this mental image of a hot platter of spaghetti and lutefisk balls. 

Now that I finally get around to addressing this . . . this is what I think of.



Coach, when you ask him for a hamburger, does he react like this?  (Someone recorded this commercial, but it's still pretty good.  The woman in the purple dress asks the Swedish Chef for a hamburger.  He's not impressed.)

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5X_ENqoA8Y[/youtube]

[franksolich]

“Well, it’s too bad it didn’t turn out gold,” I said to the cbayer primitive’s husband this morning when he came for coffee.

There was no smoke coming from the funnel of the boat down by the river, so I assume the cbayer primitive herself had stayed in the motel in the big city.

He was wearing one of those hats with ear-flaps on the side, made popular by Nikita Khrushchev during the Cold War.  They look silly, and I could never figure out why they’d been so popular.

“It happens,” he replied; “but it had to be checked out.

“As your old American saying is, ‘success is 99% perspiration and 1% luck.’”

This guy, although a primitive, certainly didn’t think like primitives.

He noticed the menu from the bar laying on the dining room table, and leafed through it.

“There’s no wine list here,” he said.

The bar doesn’t have a license to dispense wine, only beer and liquor, I told him.

“But how is it possible to enjoy Italian food without--”

I interrupted.  “Oh now, don’t be a snob on me.  It’s eminently possible to enjoy Italianate--or French or German or Polynesian or Congolese or whatever--food without wine.

“This isn’t a place where the climate, the terrain, the life-style, the cultural and moral values, the taste-buds, of the people encourages drinking wine.

“Where is it written that one must have wine with Italianate cuisine?”

He arched his eyebrows, as if I’d mentioned something he’d never thought of before.

“And besides, if one wants alcohol with his chow, one just orders beer or whiskey.

“Swede’s wife keeps a binder under the cash-register, full of letters from professional Italians, and shows it to anybody who wants to read it.  The letters, usually on stationery of well-known Italianate eateries all across the country, in the beginning, the early 1980s, are full of compliments and suggestions, although since about 1990, they’ve been wholly compliments, nothing to suggest.

“There’s one from somebody a member of the Italianate parliament, and another from the city treasurer of Naples, and five or six job offers from well-known Italianate eateries in Boston, New York City, Baltimore, and Los Angeles.  But most are just letters from professional Italians who own and operate restaurants, complimenting him on this thing or that thing.

“Nowhere does anyone mention ‘lack of a wine list’ as a deficiency.

“It’s silly, this notion that one has to have wine with Italianate cuisine; nobody’s going to go to Hell because they didn’t get sauced while dining on tournedos Rossini or pollo al Mattone.”

[franksolich]

He asked me what I was planning on having for my birthday supper.  I said I didn‘t know--and hence the menu--and was open to suggestions.

“The only Italianate I dine upon are those $1.59 slices of pepperoni pizza from the convenience store in town, which are pretty good.”  And then I reminded him, “It‘s not because I‘m a barbarian or anything; it‘s simply because it‘s not that important to me.”

He sifted through the six pages of Italianate dishes.

“Well, this zuppa di pesce Fra di Avolo looks like a good one,” he said.

“It probably is,” I said, “because [the femme] orders it all time.

“But it’s got dead fish in it, so it’s out, no way.”

He pursed his lips.  â€œWell, that eliminates about two out of the six pages.”

He kept reading.

“If you’re a soup person, which you probably are, the sausage soup with tortellini might be good.”

Nope, I said.  â€œIt has onions in it.  No way.”

“How about the lasagna Verdi al forno then?”

Nope, I said.  â€œIt has liver in it.  No way.”

“All right, then the melenzana ali olio, perhaps.

Nope, I said.  â€œIt has peppers in it.  No way.”

“You’re really limiting youself,” he advised.  â€œHow about the pepper salad?”

Nope, I said.  â€œIt has mushrooms in it.  No way.”

“Well, perhaps you could ask this Swede gentleman to omit those things you don’t like,” he suggested.

No way  I said; “I’m not about to tell Swede how to make something.”

We went over and over, and round about, the menu.

“This chicken alle marche doesn’t seem to have anything objectionable in it.”

If I had ears, they would’ve perked up.

“It seems to be just chicken, broccoli, and alfredo sauce, nothing more.

“But despite its simplicity, it’s one of the most expensive items on the menu.

“With salad, bread, and dessert, you may be looking at a hundred bucks.”

“That’s it,” I announced; “that’s what I’m having tomorrow night, this marched chicken.

“And Swede picking up the tab, because it’s my birthday.”

[franksolich]

“Happy birthday,” the cbayer primitive’s husband said this morning, when he dropped by.

He was attired by Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row this day, looking even more strikingly like Lord Curzon, and I asked him what was up; why the dude clothes.

“That’s the other reason I came,” he said; “I’m going down to Omaha for a few days to meet with some lawyers, and won’t be back until Sunday, and you’d offered to take us to that wonderful Australian restaurant in [the big city].

“It’s now impossible for me to go along, as we’re leaving this place on Sunday, so as to float back to California.”

I was relieved to hear of a definite departure date, but was concerned about dining with his wife.

Yeah, sure, I said; no problem; I’d pick her up in the big city on Saturday and take her out.

But most of all, I was intrigued why he suddenly had a meeting with lawyers in Omaha.

Doing mental gymnastics inside my head, to me it seemed a land deal was imminent, and I inwardly groaned.

However, he set my mind at ease right away; it’s a project involving Hollywood, and has nothing to do with Nebraska.

“I’ve been working on it for a long time now,” he said.

“But why would one close a Hollywood deal in…..Omaha?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised who’s in Omaha,” he said, cryptically, and left.

[franksolich]

I contacted the neighbor’s wife.

“You’re out, you’re off the hook,” I told her. 

I explained that the cbayer primitive’s husband wasn’t going to be able to come with us to the Australian restaurant, and so I didn’t need her any more.

“It’s not that there’s anything ‘wrong’ with you,” I assured her; “it’s just that she obviously doesn’t like people around here, and with two of us against one of her, she might feel outnumbered, uncomfortable.

“So best that I tete-a-tete with her alone.”

Then later the neighbor came over.

“You know,” I said, “they’re living out of the honeymoon suite over there in [the big city]; four rooms including a stocked kitchen, a private sauna and jacuzzi, an on-call maid and a personal valet.

“And like any other guest there, they have access to the Olympics-sized swimming pool, the indoor-outdoor tennis courts, the polo grounds, high tea, a masseuse by appointment, and passes to the country club.

“I’ll bet they’ve been spending at least three hundred bucks a day for all that.”

I explained that I have to pick up the cbayer primitive, as her husband took their rental car to Omaha, and didn’t want to rent a second one for such a short time.

The neighbor looked out a picture-window of the dining room, at the front yard.

“Which one are you going to chauffeur her in?” he asked.

Outside, there was my car, the 2007 Buick sedan owned by the old guy who lives across the river but who’s now out in California, the 2010 Cadillac sedan owned by someone else whose property I’m watching while they’re vacationing in Macao, the 2010 Ford pick-up truck owned by the guy with the Buick, the property caretaker’s 2012 Ford pick-up truck, someone else’s 2005 Nissan sedan, and two 2013 Ford pick-up trucks awaiting delivery to the business partner’s automotive dealership out in the middle of the Sandhills.

All for which I have the keys, and permission to use as I wish while they’re kept out here.

No, none of these’ll do,” I said; “I have an image to uphold.

“What I’d like to do is borrow your brother’s 1972 Chevrolet pick-up truck, to take her out.”

The neighbor’s older brother’s pick-up truck is a light--and faded--green, considerably rusted, and hardly runs.  However, he keeps it for sentimental reasons, as it was the first motor vehicle he’d ever owned, bought used for $600 or something, back in 1976.

“Remember, I have an image to uphold,” I repeated.

“And also, I’d like to borrow your gun-rack and guns, to mount inside the cab.

“And also too, if you or he have a couple of old deer carcasses laying around, I’d like them tossed in the bed, for added ambiance.”

“And you’ll dress in dirty jeans, a torn flannel shirt, and cowboy boots?” he inquired, “to add to the effect?”

Nope, no way, I said. 

“Now, Ja'maal, the cook there, likes me and thinks highly of me, but he’s fussy about how his customers look, and he’d throw me out of there in a second, if I came there dressed like that.

“I’ll wear one of my usual custom-made three-piece pin-stripe suits and leather shoes, and have my hair neat.”

[franksolich]

I got detoured, sidetracked, derailed--no, to be bluntly honest, it was train wreck--last week and was unable to finish this story.  My apologies to those who cared.

And I’m sure the cbayer primitive’s been looking all over for the ending.

Well, far too much time has passed, and no point in picking it up where it broke off.

But for those who were left hanging--I’m sure there were at least three or four--the rest of the story runs something like this:

- - - - - - - - - -

I went to the bar in town for supper the evening of March 6, planning on ordering superdeluxe superexpensive ultra-ultra special dishes prepared by the bar owner’s husband Swede, he of Norwegian derivation who’s also renown for his Italianate cooking.

And for free, because it was my birthday.

- - - - - - - - - -

But Swede, who’s also a long-distance truck driver, had gotten an unexpected summons early in the morning, to deliver a truckload of soybeans to Shreveport, Louisiana, and so couldn’t work that night.

Donna, the cook at the local VFW club, since it was her night off there, went in for him.  The heavy-set cherubic always-smiling always-pleasant Donna knows how to cook only ordinary food.

So I had my usual, the hamburger pressed down hard on the grill so as to squeeze out every drop of grease, french fries made on the grill, not in the fryer, and a bowl heaped with sour cream.

- - - - - - - - - -

Then on Saturday evening, March 9, I drove to the big city to pick up the cbayer primitive so as to take her out to dine at the restaurant specializing in Australian fare, as her husband was in Omaha making some sort of movie deal, and suggested to me she’d appreciate the company.

Despite the faded green, considerably rusted, mufflerless, smoking 1972 Chevrolet pick-up truck with two dead and dried-out deer in the bed--and that I’d accidentally run over an already-dead skunk in the middle of the highway--and gun-rack with actual firearms on it, the cbayer primitive was not fazed.

Not the least, not at all.

This woman’s been around; despite appearances, she’s no snob; she’s known the rougher sort of life, and all that entails.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The Australian restaurant, as mentioned before, is lorded over by Ja’maal, a tall angry guy who looks like Bobby Seale excepting with a bigger Afro hair-style.  Again, despite appearances, Ja’maal is actually a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet, and he makes Australian dishes better than anyone else on the northern hemisphere.

The cbayer primitive ordered kangaroo strip loin tartlet with sweet potato and bush tomato jus.

I ordered a hamburger pressed down hard on the grill so as to squeeze out every drop of grease, french fries made on the grill, not in the fryer, and a bowl heaped with sour cream; my usual.

- - - - - - - - - -

The cbayer primitive thought her food not prepared properly; it was supposed to have anchovies on top of it, like kangaroo strip loin tartlet’s made in California.

I suggested she discuss it with Ja’maal, but she decided she wouldn’t.

Ja’maal is black, remember, and it goes against the primitive code to disparage anything a black does.

That’s a real definite no-no.

- - - - - - - - - -

After dining, I drove the cbayer primitive back to the five-star hotel in the big city--better than any accommodations to be found in Baltimore, Maryland or San Diego, California, remember--where she invited me up into the four-room suite she and her husband had taken, finding the weather in Nebraska too inclement for living on a tiny little boat.

I said no, mentioning the femme, to whom I owe all.

The cbayer primitive said forget the femme, who’s “only a Nebraska girl.”

I wanted to say something, but because franksolich is above all a gentleman, I didn’t.

The cbayer primitive insisted I wasn’t a “normal man” if I could spurn her advances.

To which I replied, I’m just as carnal and lustful and tumescent as any other man, but I do have boundaries; no matter how clean she is, I’ll be damned before I hop around in the sack with a woman with a “(D)” after her name.

Some things, one just doesn’t do.

- - - - - - - - - -

On Sunday morning, the cbayer primitive’s husband, now back from Omaha and readying to get the boat going back to California, showed up.  He was dressed in a combination Boy Scout-Forest Ranger uniform, but I neglected to ask why.

He requested that I mail to him information about the potash industry in Nebraska.

- - - - - - - - - -

As a going-away present to the cbayer primitive, while her eccentric English husband was coaling up the boat to get underway, I gave her two dainty little English bone china demi-tasses because there’s not enough room on that tiny little boat to store regular-sized tea- or coffee-cups.

- - - - - - - - - -

That’s how this story ended, in case anybody cares.

[Big Dog]

Nice finish.

[Freeper]

Glad you are back. I was a bit worried about you.

[Skul]

Well, I guess that does make three. 

[Karin]

Thanks for the great story, Frank.  I loved the different outfits. 

(I saw you dropped my name as the boozer.     )

Hope your train wreck is long behind you. 

[GOBUCKS]

Damn, coach. Whatever happened to taking one for the team?

Every DUmpette, save nadin, has had an open invitation to a life-changing session of hopping around in the sack.

Have they allowed their window of opportunity to close?

[RobJohnson]

Damn, coach. Whatever happened to taking one for the team?

Every DUmpette, save nadin, has had an open invitation to a life-changing session of hopping around in the sack.

Have they allowed their window of opportunity to close?

 

[shoes off the couch]

Thanks coach. It was a fine piece. I always enjoy your work and look forward to the next one.

 

[franksolich]

Thanks coach. It was a fine piece. I always enjoy your work and look forward to the next one.

 

Thanks; I'm currently working on "dear sweet old Lu meets franksolich," but as I'm tired of the primitives always coming here, in this one, franksolich'll go there.

I think dear sweet old Lu'll like it, but if she doesn't, she has only herself to blame; if she'd been a hostess interacting with guests, instead of just sitting there like a Queen Bee, such an inspiration would've never occurred to me.