Nadine

“Dear Lord”, my mother used to say. “Like a beebee in a bucket”, my feeble attempts at vacuuming.” Gotta spend money to make money”. “Jesus, Joseph & Mary” sort of faded away once she got ex-communicated for her 2nd divorce. “Gaylord” or “dike”, her short handles for homosexuals. Now a curiously an outdated term. Like transvestite, relegated to the dust bin of the rainbow spectrum. Un-PC. Changing one’s vest. Women’s buttons on right, men’s on left, only learned in my 20’s. Wearing women’s clothes. Decidedly, a male designation. Not neessarily Drag, intersexual, bi, nonbinary, hermaphroditic, Trans, androgynous or gender nonconforming.

Summer 1967. Picking up Mom at Augie’s Tap. One in the morning. Mississippi hot & sluggish. Sand bars baring their naked whatevers. Here, put something in the jukebox.

C&W. Top 40 drek. Stones. Rolled a few lines of automated bowling. Bored. Why don’t you shoot 8-ball with Mouse? Rock Island Arsenal machinist / drill press operator making chain guns to rip thru Nam palm thatch huts for LBJ. OK. Blue bibs, funky Tee, shitkicker boots. Nice guy, maybe 40. Just off the 2nd shift. Re-hydrating before long drive home.Breaking the stack & essentially running the table, I think I took one rack from him. He didn’t rub it in. Excused himself, so I drifted back to the barstool ogling the rippling Hamm’s vista of a primordial Wisconsin Lake fishing for bass. Fancy woman in off-red bustie, low heels & gold earrings orders a 7 & 7. Last call for alcohol. Mom starts stacking beers in the cooler & closing out the register. No Mouse.I ask. She starts laughing. Lady changes the subject to night baseball. Mom laughs more as we saunter out, locking the door, dousing the lights. Going across the Centennial Bridge, exhausted, swearing, bouffant hair-do sagging, she tells me Mouse’s backstory & where Gloria is going next to get laid. I about swallowed my tongue turning red.