He could not shake the notions. The image of Millie flashing him stuck in his mind as he worked. He thought about her, Millie, and he thought about Norma and Marie, especially Marie because she was freaky-deaky. Then he thought about Jenny, Pam’s cousin, and that seemed so long, long ago. Jenny was getting revenge. Revenge sex was wild.
Revenge sex caused him to think about his lovely banquet waitress and her husband who was not cheating but having an affair. Mother Mary, Bill thought. She would have been an affair if Bill had been married at the time. Because he wasn’t, he was just cheating on his fiancé. How messed up was that?
Well, he thought, I never asked to be working in kitchens. I never asked for most of the stuff that’s happened to me. Then he remembered his father. He remembered being taught, mostly, never to ask for anything.
They only had one party, not even two hundred people. It was a nice one, prime rib, baked potato and asparagus. The rest of the week and the following week were booked full, and after that the holiday season would be in full swing. There was no let-up in sight.
Since it was a slow day and since they had some time, Jimmy Banquet Chef and Bill sat in the chef’s office and arranged time off for them both. Bill would be off every other Sunday and would come in later two days per week if the banquet schedule allowed it. Later meant noon or so. The banquet chef would take off Mondays, every other one, and Bill would be in early on those days to cover for him where the executive chef couldn’t.
It was all good on paper. It looked good on paper. But very often what looked good on paper didn’t work out that way.
The prime rib prep was easy. Along with Victor they knocked it out in no time. Then came the asparagus. They made sure the vegetable people took care of that and the baked potatoes. Only when the party for the evening was all ready to go into the oven did they start on the ones for the next day.
Wednesday had a breakfast banquet. This one was a little more deluxe, eggs Florentine with home fries and a fruit salad. Then there were two lunches and one big dinner. Altogether, on paper it was a hard day from start to finish. Beverly would be in for sure, Bill thought as he looked at the day on paper. Maybe she’d be there all day.
So they worked. They worked happily, the three of them. They worked together and were becoming a team in the sense that they were beginning to understand what each of them was doing and what had yet to be done. Like with his Falstaff Room partner, Jimmy G, Bill was learning to anticipate what was next and to go to it as the others were working on what they were working on.
By one-thirty, when it was time for them to take a lunch break, they had everything ready for the day and for the next day and they had already started on Wednesday. They would have taken lunch earlier, but the banquet chef decided they should work through so as to get as much done as possible. Beginning tomorrow, he would have a full work crew, regular banquet cooks who would be working full time until the holiday season was over. Bill had met most of them, but he would get to know them better now.
“We’re gonna have a good season,” the banquet chef said. “The hotel is gonna make a lot of money, and we are too, well you guys are since you’re hourly.”
“You’re not?” Bill asked.
“He’s not hourly,” Victor said. “But he’ll make money cause gets a piece of the pie.”
By Peter Weiss
Bill saw Millie first thing in the morning. He had two dirty uniforms to put to the laundry and he needed at least one replacement to have a back-up in case of emergency. Emergencies did happen. One never knew when there would be a spill, a drop, a tear, a who-knew-what.
For once Millie was busy. She had, as Bill saw, a whole laundry cart of uniforms to put up on her racks.
What he saw of her first was her bent over that cart and fetching the uniforms, her back to the counter. He saw her come up with a stack of them, maybe five or so, which she’d gripped by their hangers.
He did not say anything and stood watching. His instinct was to sneak around and goose her, but he didn’t. His second instinct was to chuck one of his uniform jackets at her to surprise her. But he didn’t do that either. He simply stood and watched, watched the movement of her body from the cart to the rack and as she hung the uniforms on her rack. That done, she did not turn around. She bent over slightly, reached behind her, lifted the uniform dress and scratched her thigh, not high up from the back of her knee but enough to make it interesting.
That’s when he really wanted to say something, but he still didn’t. He stayed there watching. He watched her movement, watched her butt, looked at what he could see of the panty lines when the uniform pressed against her.
He stood. He watched. As he watched he was thinking “move so the dress rides up, scratch your thigh again, come on give me something to see.” He was not horny and at least for the moment he was not at all unsatisfied sexually. He was just a young man at the top of his man-game looking at a young woman that he already knew and could have at will, at whim, without doing anything other than letting her know.
Biology was biology. Sex was sex. It was the beginning of the 70s. There she was. Here he was.
He watched.
“How long you gonna stand there?” Millie asked. “And don’t bother turning red. I saw you come up.”
“I was hoping for a little show,” Bill said.
Millie stood straight and turned. First thing, she approached her counter and relieved Bill of his dirty uniforms. Seeing no one around, she leaned over the counter and kissed him, a quick kiss on the lips.
“What you want to see baby?” she asked.
“You know what I want to see.”
“Real quick, one show. Then you come back later.”
Millie double-checked to make sure they were alone, then as close to the counter as she could, she lifted her dress and pulled her panties to the side.
She stood that way a moment, as long as she dared risk no one coming by. And while she was exposed, as their eyes met, she put her fingers on herself there and licked her lips.
“Good show?” Millie asked as she put herself together.
“Good show,” Bill said.
“About 1:30,” Millie said.
“I’ll do my best,” Bill said. “No promises.”
Millie smiled. She went to her special rack, not far away, and handed Bill two very nicely laundered uniforms.
“You owe me a show,” Millie said.
Bill winked at her. “Time for much more than a show,” he said.
He had no idea why he said that. He had no idea how, having come in and over to the laundry with no desire for Millie, no taste for her, no inclination of fooling around with her or anyone, it had gotten to this. But he knew that as he carried his specially laundered uniforms over his shoulder on the way to the locker room, he wanted her now, he wanted to…
All kinds of things went through his mind about what he wanted to do.
By Peter Weiss
Those old snake oil salesmen, the carnival barkers and medicine men, went around selling bottles of medicine that could do anything from grow hair to cure warts and more. It was all in one bottle, same thing that could do all that.
Well, that’s Joe Biden (not really him because in his case it’s his handlers), Nancy Pelosi, Chucky boy, and that group of…who knows what to call them anymore?
Since the late 1960s, in one form or another, they’ve been pushing the same programs. And now, about a half century later, we can all see how greatly those programs have failed.
Or, why is it only the Democratic cities and states hopelessly and helplessly in debt, that have the highest crime, largest welfare rolls, poorest education results and highest taxes?
Think it’s an accident? Cause if you do, I have a bottle of snake oil to sell you, or a bridge.
So what’s their answer now? It’s simple. It’s to triple down on all their failed policies, to rip everything apart so they can rebuild in the same image that has failed for fifty years, a system and notions of a system we already know do not work and are destined to fail.
Remember shovel-ready jobs—that didn’t work because, oops, they weren’t shovel-ready.
Remember the solar companies like Solyndra? Well, they went belly up.
Remember the job solution? Darling Hillary said TS, retrain. She said she was putting the coal people out of work and manufacturing was never coming back.
Remember Obamacare and you can keep your own doctor?
Their answer is simple. Call Trump a racist. (Biden just said Trump was the first racist president.) Say Trump is the grand wizard of the KKK. Say it’s his pandemic. And then call him the “divider in chief.”
They are snake oil salesmen. They have nothing to offer so they are selling snake oil, “fake medicine,” and couching it in their promise of a whole host of freebies for everyone in the whole world who can get here, legally or not.
Well, nothing is free. And that’s what they have to offer, nothing.
By Peter Weiss
So now they are saying that if Trump should lose the election we need to worry that he will mobilize his secret police and take over. They’re telling us that they will have to go forcibly into the White House to remove him.
And then they say it is Trump and the right that is dividing the country.
Seriously?
So now they are saying that the Federal officers are Gestapo, that they are storm troopers, that Trump is the grand wizard of the KKK.
And then they say it is Trump and the right that is dividing the country.
Seriously?
Seriously, comparing Federal Officers to Gestapo is an insult to every Jew in the world, alive or dead. My father was a POW in Nazi Germany. My next door neighbor was in a concentration camp. Tell me about Gestapo? What do they know?
So now they are saying that it’s Trump’s pandemic, and the NY Times, part of their lapdog, Pravda USA biased media, publishes “editorials” supporting how oppressive we are and how open and honest and helpful the Chinese are.
Seriously?
And then they say it is Trump and the right that is dividing the country.
So really, can you really believe anything coming out of the mouths of the people leading the left?
The snake oil hucksters on the left are trying their best to sell you poison. Be careful what you swallow.
Greed, thirst for power, hubris and hatred: these constitute the real sickness of the far left n America and no vaccine will cure it.
By Peter Weiss
Sunday night they kicked back. The afternoon at his wife’s parents was quite routine. Bill played with Chippy, the German Shepherd, and spent most of the time in the family room with his father-in-law. They drank gin and tonic and watched football.
Bill’s mother-in-law was the sweetest woman you’d ever want to know. If her daughter had asked her to do their laundry, she would’ve done it happily. That was her nature. She served the men snacks and sat for a bit with them all, when they were all together, to chat. Mostly, Bill’s wife and mother-in-law stuck together.
Family times were good times. They were quiet, leisurely afternoons and evenings that ended with a full-family dinner in the dining room. Bill’s mother-in-law and his wife served, they all ate, the women cleaned up and did everything in the kitchen. While the clean-up happened, his wife’s brothers went about whatever they were doing. Bill and his father-in-law had a last gin and tonic in the family room.
“Have a good day?” his wife asked. They were sitting on the sofa in their living room.
“Swell,” Bill said.
“What time you have to be in in the morning?”
“Ten.”
“Busy day?”
“Not really. We have one small afternoon thing, goes off at one. Then it’s prep work for Tuesday. I don’t think there’s anything for tomorrow night.”
“What about The Falstaff Room?”
“It’s Monday. It’ll be somewhat slow.”
“Home early?”
“Hard to tell. I’m hoping. What about you?”
“Regular week. Same as always. Classes to teach, rehearsal, regular.”
They were quiet a moment. Wasn’t much more to say. Bill was thinking about how quickly the weight of responsibility for their support had been put upon him. He was thinking, in light of what had happened to him now a year and a half ago and ending about a year ago with his time in the workhouse, how his life/their lives had changed. He was thinking how important it was for him to work and make money, not just enough money to cover their expenses, but money to put away for a safety net. The more the better, he thought.
He was also thinking about work. It was better to be busy and occupied than to be idle and have to think about things. Thinking about the things in his life had never been productive, had never led him anywhere that he could consider a good place. He was happy to have a job. It most certainly was not the type of job he’d imagined or dreamed about and it was a job that took him far away from doing that which he really wanted to do in his life. But it was a job. It was turning out to be a good job, one at which he could make extra money.
Then there were the girls. All this time since last night when he’d gotten home they were out of sight and out of mind. Now, as he sat next to his wife whom he’d been close to, very close to, for the past time, they popped back into his head and he felt anxiety start to creep in. He had no taste for any of them, not now, not here, not sitting here with his wife. He hadn’t meant to mess with any of them. He hadn’t meant to mess with anyone. He had only meant to make a clean slate of it once they’d moved.
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
“I’m gonna take a bath,” his wife said. “Wanna join me?”
“You love your baths,” Bill said. “Really want company or just being polite?”
“If I didn’t want you with me, I wouldn’t have asked.”
Bill knew that was true. Bill knew his wife would not do anything she didn’t want to do. Well, maybe sometimes she did things for him she didn’t want to do, but she wasn’t one to compromise much. He was the one…
As he thought this he wondered about its veracity, and even though he didn’t like baths, he did want to be with her.
“Sure,” he said. “Wanna smoke a joint?” he asked.
“I’m good,” his wife said.
By Peter Weiss
Just about the whole population of the United States was in support of George Floyd, agreed that what happened to him and what we all saw over and over again on TV was horrible and egregious.
Just about the whole of the population of the United States supports equality, justice and fairness for all.
Just about the whole population of the United States, when asked individually and with questioning that isn’t pointed, would say they believe in live and let live and that they don’t care about race or religion, that if someone treats them nicely they are nice back.
In America, in actuality, that’s pretty much the way it is.
So what’s going on and why? One answer is that it’s not what you think.
What happened to George Floyd was so outrageous and so “out there” that it served to unify this country. That was a good thing.
But the demonstrations that have ensued: it’s not what you think. They ceased being demonstrations when they deteriorated into riots, into looting, into thuggery and finally into out-and-out anarchy.
Yes. It’s no longer civil rights activists protesting an injustice. It’s paid anarchists that hate America ripping things apart, literally and figuratively, who are using the genuine civil rights cause in America as a means to an end that most Americans do not want, would not support, and find contrary to their well-being.
Those protests turned anarchy gone wild: it’s not what you think.
It’s much, much more diabolical.
It’s much, much worse than what anyone would have imagined.
So where are the Democrats in all of this?
Who are the Democrats?
They are not who you think they are. They are not what you think they are. They do not support what you think they do.
For more than half a century the Democrats have been in charge of and have governed virtually unopposed the major cities with large “minority” concentrations. Under President Obama (and how is that a racist country elects an African-American president, or do we forget that?) more people went on welfare and food stamps, and he, Obama, did not effect or even attempt to effect any programs to better the plight of African-Americans in America.
How is that? Why is that? He controlled all three branches of government for his first two years.
Obama was not what you think he was. Obama was not who you think he was.
The Democrats, as their record over all time shows, are not who you think they are. What’s going on is not what they are telling you.
The Democrats and their lapdog mainstream media, Pravda USA: they are not who you think they are. They are snake oil salesmen, no better than the hucksters of old.
What’s going on with the anarchists and with Covid is not what you think it is. It’s not what they are telling you.
By Peter Weiss
They slept until ten. Actually they were both up much earlier and both closed their eyes and went back to sleep. By ten Bill would normally already be at work and his wife would normally have already been working for two hours. So their bodies dictated their waking times more than any clock or alarm.
They slept very close together. They always slept naked except sometimes in the winter when it was really cold. They almost always slept close together, but this night they slept closer than usual. She was happy, he was happy.
When they woke, after they brushed their teeth he had coffee she had tea. In effect, if one were looking from outside at the marriage and at them as a couple that should have said everything. Still, after their morning beverage, they got back into bed.
There was something to be said for youth. There was something to be said for him being at the peak of his sexual prowess and she not even having come close to hers yet. There was something to be said for being familiar with each other, for being in love, for being in lust, for being uninhibited and unrestrained. They smoked a joint. Bill took a Quaalude. They made love. They took their time, they did whatever they felt like doing, they made long, serious, unadulterated love. In the same moment they had sex and made love.
When they were done Bill stayed in bed and rested. His wife got up and went about the chores that she had to do for this Sunday morning. It wasn’t much. It was only gathering the laundry that needed to be taken to her parents to be done there, straightening the apartment, which was the top floor of a duplex, doing the dishes and putzing around. It didn’t take her long.
Soon as she was done she joined him in the bed. He was watching TV. There wasn’t much on. They smoked another joint and after they’d finished the joint Bill went into the kitchen and brought them each a glass of wine. This early in the day his wife didn’t want any wine so Bill happily drank both glasses. Then, because they were with each other, because they were happily high, because there was nothing else to do and nothing they really had to do, they went at it again. This time, with clear understanding on each of their parts, it was you please me and I’ll please you.
It left them both sated, tired and happy. So they went out for breakfast, or brunch as it were since it was already almost midday.
Bill generally did not like to eat out. In his short time in kitchens he’d already seen enough to not want to eat from what other cooks prepared. Working in kitchens for many years, as it would happen for Bill, would leave him with a distinct dislike for eating out. Working in kitchens for many years, as it would happen for Bill, would leave him preparing his own food almost all the time and mostly eating fresh salads with meats, cheese and other assorted items inside the salad.
Today, this time, he ate a cheeseburger, a big, goopy cheeseburger very rare, with onions, tomatoes, pickles, lots of pickles, mayonnaise and ketchup. His wife ate the same thing, only she took hers cooked medium-well. They shared a large vanilla milkshake, two straws inside one big glass. They sat opposite each other looking at each other, taking each other in.
After the meal at the diner they went off to her parents house. The drive was about forty minutes although they could have done it more quickly if they’d gone a different way. They took a leisurely drive together, talked about the rest of the day and the upcoming week. It was clear they weren’t going to be seeing each other much because Bill was not having any more days off at least for several weeks. It was clear they wanted to take each other in in the moment.
By Peter Weiss
I was going to talk to the breakdown of logic as a second part to Monday’s rant. But then I was listening to the news about the virus situation and from the news I couldn’t get a straight answer as to whether or not I should actually be wearing a mask. I also couldn’t get a straight answer as to what the real situation with the virus was.
I don’t understand this. I don’t understand why one station has one version of the “news” while another station has a different version of the same “news.” I most certainly don’t understand why information regarding my health and well-being and also my livelihood is convoluted and not transparently presented.
But I’m older and old-school, and I suppose in this woke world I’m supposed to disregard everything I’ve ever learned and change all my beliefs because some people “feel” a certain way and one part of my government allows those people to dictate how things go according to their feelings on any given day because that part of the government, you know which one it is, hates the duly-elected president more than it loves the country it is sworn to represent.
And this is the real sickness in America.
What frightens me most is not Covid. It is the idiocy of the Despicable Democrats. What frightens me most is that their hatred and thirst for power guide them when the well-being of the American people should be their beacon of light. What frightens me most is that their lapdogs, the mainstream media, Pravda USA, are in cahoots with them in selling us snake oil like the hucksters of old used to do.
Greed, thirst for power, hubris and hatred: these constitute the real sickness in America and no vaccine will cure it.
By Peter Weiss
They smoked a joint in bed. They drank white wine that Bill’s wife got for them from the kitchen. They lay together by candlelight and held each other.
“That was really nice,” she said. “I like when you please yourself.”
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” she said.
Bill’s wife nuzzled against him and purred. It was a simple, quiet life-is-good type of feeling she was putting out, or Bill was feeling from her. He felt the same way.
He was happy. For a moment he forgot about the others, all the others who except for Mother Mary didn’t mean anything when all was said and done. Even Arlene whose mother had been struggling with cancer escaped his state of mind. That was what had made Arlene different, that he felt for her, not love, or maybe a different kind of love, but empathy. He and Arlene were right there.
Even Lorraine, who he liked and liked being intimate with, left him for the moment. Lorraine and Mother Mary had that in common. They were older, more settled in their lives, knew what they wanted physically and otherwise.
Their bodies were different too. Their bodies were fuller, softer, curvier, more friendly he’d always thought. He found that appealing. They’d been married and that made the sex different.
His wife, she was skinny, agile, always stretching one way or another, always moving something, fingers, toes, ankles, something, this because she was a dancer and had to stay limber. She had fewer needs than some of the others. She was from a family that was pretty much normal, whatever that was. Bill was from a broken family. She was from a family whose patriarch had not been damaged by the Nazis, whose patriarch had, in fact, enjoyed the benefits of being a veteran without any of the real difficulties of being a warrior. He was from a family that ended up a single-parent family in a time when that was relatively rare, whose parent was all screwed up through no fault of his own.
We get what we get. And so it goes.
His wife had gotten encouragement and guidance and support. Those things had allowed her to be able to articulate what she wanted and to go for it. Those things had allowed her to be able to be creative, to choose an artistic career that offered little if any chance of her supporting herself.
Bill.
There was a song about Bill.
He had gotten taught to stay out of sight, to please everyone around you so you didn’t get killed, to not get noticed, ever. He had gotten taught that you could rarely get what you wanted in life and the way to get anything was to be co-dependent. (Of course that was not the word used. Bill wouldn’t know that word for a very long time.)
Bill sipped his wine, fondled his wife’s breasts. One thing about her was that she had small, pert, beautiful breasts and she enjoyed having him touch them. She enjoyed having him suckle on them. She enjoyed him paying them attention, paying her attention even though because of their schedules they were mostly not together, even though she was often not accessible when he was. He came home and she was asleep. She went off early in the morning.
He slid down some. She slid up some. They kissed. He asked if she wanted more weed. She said no. They kissed some more. He leaned up on his elbow and kissed downward, down across those lovely breasts and down further. She moaned once, softly. He could feel her breathing shift, increase slightly. He could feel her yielding to his touch, reacting to his kisses and nibbles and then to the feel of his tongue as it slid across her flat tummy and down the insides of her thighs, first one, then the other.
She cupped his head to help him in what he was doing. He saw her close her eyes and slip into her own mind.
By Peter Weiss
Guilt?
Shame?
Bill was born with guilt and shame. Maybe. Not really. Maybe it came upon him or he acquired it. He didn’t know exactly how or why, but he knew he did. And then it was beaten into him, both literally and figuratively. Or maybe his image of it, his view, was simply skewed. Maybe it was first skewed by the lazy eye he’d been born with and the host of distorted images built upon it and then built deeper by a year’s worth of eye operations and having one eye covered by a patch.
Nevertheless…
After he’d washed her back and backside and kissed her there all over, she leaned against the wall much like Edelgarde had done in the bathroom not even two hours ago.
“Darling, have your way with me,” she said.
He felt like a dog. But then, as he thought about it, he always felt like a dog so the feeling wasn’t new. He felt guilty, but then he always felt guilty so that feeling wasn’t new either.
His first instinct was to ask her what she wanted. That was a gut reaction from years and years of training by his father. His father didn’t mean to train him that way. It was all part of a load of unintended consequences, things that maybe shouldn’t happen to anyone yet happen to most everyone in one way or another.
If his father-in-law, a college graduate Air Force officer, was stateside in the war, his own father, Nathan, was a high school dropout who dropped out to help support his family during the depression, and then he was a combat infantryman, Big Red 1, captured in North Africa, a POW in Nazi Germany for three and a half years.
We get what we get.
So if Bill’s first instinct was to please his wife instead of to satisfy himself, which is what she had told him to do, he couldn’t help it. He was what he was.
“What would you like?” he asked.
“I want you to have your way with me,” she said.
She was standing there in the shower, her legs spread, leaning against her arms against the wall of the bathroom above the tub.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Anything,” she said.
In effect, this was the hardest thing anyone could ask of Bill. Asking him what he really wanted and telling him to go for it was so contrary to all that had been in his life to this point that it made him cringe. And cringe he did. He hesitated, had to swallow that knot in the pit of his stomach and finally decide what it was he really wanted.
He knew what he wanted. He knew what he really wanted. He just wasn’t sure if he could go for it.
It had to become an existential decision, an f-it decision. It had to be something that didn’t really matter altogether in the scheme of things. Once it was that, he could proceed.
Proceed he did.
He did know exactly what he wanted and he did know how to do it and he did know how to please her at the same time because he knew, and this was from their experience being together, what pleased her as it pleased him.
He took his time. He let the water run over them and kept it so it was hot but not too hot. He stepped back a moment and looked at this wonderful woman who had chosen to be his wife—he couldn’t understand that or understand why—and then he did the things he wanted to do. He only did things he wanted to do. He did some things he’d done before but he did them a bit differently. He used her and she let him use her.
“That was great,” she said when they were finished and were drying off.
“Sure was,” he said.
She dried him, and he dried her, and then they kissed some more.
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