Hotel Honolulu

35 Story Time

"I want to read you something I wrote," Buddy said when Pinky and Uncle Tony and Aunt Mariel were back in his room. "So you know who I am."

One day he had shown up at the Hotel Honolulu with an urgent request. He wanted to dictate a story to me. "You know what I mean — hey, you wrote a book!" Of course I agreed to write it down and do some light editing. He saw the story as a chapter of his autobiography, which he imagined would be a long, fascinating book about the colorful American he believed himself to be. Whenever he reflected on his life, the episode that came first to his mind, the most telling, was his experience with his neighbor's dog, Fritzie, the summer Buddy was twelve.

"It's a dog story," he said. "Filipinos like dogs, right? Yum yum!"

His new wife and her uncle and aunt sat stunned and damp after the wedding reception. They had been exuberant at the reception, but their bewilderment in Buddy's room made them anxious, and attentive in a fearful way. He was not dismayed that no one laughed. He took the papers out of his briefcase, opened a can of San Miguel beer, took a sip, and began.

"Growing up in Sweetwater, Nevada, in the late thirties and early forties was, at best, an enigma," he read, rattling the papers. "A high- desert town of some five thousand people, it sat at an altitude of fifty-one hundred feet and was surrounded by snowcapped mountains. Sweetwater was the last of the shit-stomping western cowboy towns. The final Indian war in the U.S. was fought but a few short miles from the city limits. Tumbleweed, jackrabbits, coyotes, rattlesnakes, and scorpions abounded, along with several legal whorehouses, plus some twenty-odd wide-open gambling casinos, whose crap, roulette, and card tables ran around the clock.

"We catered to a diverse group of profligates. We had Utah Mormons, who had absolutely no qualms about hauling their ashes in our infamous bawdyhouses and trying their luck on our crap tables. We had for-real cowboys, Basque sheepherders, hardrock miners, Shoshoni and Paiute Indians, wild-game hunters from all over the world, various and sundry railroad workers, and tourists passing through on U.S. 40, the main highway bisecting the nation at that time.

"There was one theater. My grandfather owned it. This automatically put me in the driver's seat with my buddies, who were always trying to cockroach free tickets from me. For amusement, we had our weekend movies and, a couple of miles out of town, a natural hot springs swimming pool that was fed by a volcanic hot hole. Aside from swimming there, we also had our introductory lessons in the female anatomy via a few small holes drilled into the side of the building housing the girls' dressing rooms. It must have been an inspiring sight — us frantically fighting over who got the best hole and then three or four of us lined up, loping our mules.

"Some of my greatest childhood memories were of my family gathering around the radio and listening to Jack Benny and The Great Gildersleeve. The kids also got their shot at the airwaves with Little Orphan Annie and The Lone Ranger.

"When Orson Welles did his War of the Worlds our whole family sat riveted to the radio. My mother and grandmother were wringing their hands and having the 'vapors' while my grandfather was figuring what supplies we could throw into the car and escape with up into the Ruby Mountains. They were all so sure that the alien invaders were interested in Sweetwater, Nevada, that if anyone had rung our doorbell at that moment I'm sure the whole bunch of us would have shit our pants on the spot.

"I shouldn't forget the Humboldt River, the world's most crooked waterway, where a gang of us would play Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn along its willow-covered banks on many a hot summer day. We were given.2.2-caliber rifles at a young age and turned loose in the desert that surrounded the town. I cringe today when I think of the wanton slaughter we shamelessly perpetrated on the desert wildlife. There was such a plethora of game, though, that the reckless abandon by the town's youths never seemed to dent it. No matter how many coyotes or jackrabbits we massacred, their numbers got bigger.

"It was on one of these Saturday forays that I learned one of life's most valuable lessons. Our hunting safari consisted of Stinky Davis, his poi dog Fritzie, Freddy Woods, my best buddy, and Jerry, my weird cousin. It was a calm, hot desert day with nary a breath of air blowing on the

riverbanks. Our group stealthily moved among the willows that lined the Humboldt, looking for anything that moved so we could zap it with our trusty rifles.

"Fritzie, who was not pretty, was an intrepid dog. He had the unerring instinct to be able to detect anything with breath in it. He would flush anything that had legs, wings, or slithered, and the 'Death Squad' would automatically fire away, a!! the time trying to avoid shooting each other and Fritzie.

"Around noon, we flopped down under a willow patch and ate the sandwiches my grandmother had made for us that morning. Homemade bread, sliced rare roast beef, and fresh crisp lettuce along with homemade cookies. We were blissfully unaware of our good fortune to be raised in the nation's largest cattle and sheep county, where even at the height of the Depression we ate damned well. Meat, potatoes, and milk every day of the year!

"After lunch, we laid around in the shade and speculated about how great it would be when we'd be old enough to sneak into the whorehouses and lose our virginity, all for the princely sum of two bucks.

"As a reward for flushing our morning's game, Fritzie came over by me and flopped down on his back to have his belly scratched. I obliged him and in the process noticed a tick on his dick, which, being the good Samaritan that I was, I removed. Somehow, Fritzie mistook my intentions and immediately got a big red dog boner that could have won him a blue ribbon at the Westchester Dog Show. Being the perennial dipshit and

showoff, I obliged him by giving his engorged tallywacker several good jerks, much to the delighted whoops and hollers of my perverted companions. After my little fling with Fritzie, we finished our lunch and forgot all about it as we resumed our afternoon carnage.

"That evening, after our mandatory Saturday bath, whether we needed it or not, I was sitting in Stinky's living room, talking to Stinky and his dad, when Fritzie came in, headed straight for me, and immediately started to hump my leg. I did my best to ignore this blatant attempt for canine romance when to my horror I felt and saw this raw, wet, bright red dog boner sliding all over my leg! Now, I don't know how it was in other areas of the country, but in Sweetwater, Nevada, in 1936, the most uncool thing a tenyear-old could do was to lose his nerve.

"The old axiom 'My life flashed before my eyes' was never truer. I panicked as all kinds of guilty mind-flashes started to ricochet around my brain: 'My God, his father knows that I jacked off his stupid dog! Look at that asshole Stinky, flopping around on the couch, turning purple and blowing large snot bubbles trying not to laugh. If he laughs, the jig is up. His old man is going to know for sure and he'll tell my grandfather! How will I explain that to the old folks? "Yeah, well, you see, Gramps, heh-heh,

I was just laying there and, you know, this dog sort of liked me and. ."

Oh Shit. I'm dead!'

"His dad, in a moralistic Mormon rage, jumped up and kicked poor Fritzie across the room, all the time yelling, 'I don't know what got into that goddamn dog! He ain't never done that before!' Fritzie, totally undeterred

and undaunted, snuck right back, boner and all, and proceeded to resume his romance with my leg again. This earned him another drop kick across the room and caused Stinky to bolt out of the house before he totally lost it. His old man sat there shaking his head and mumbling, 'That crazy fucking dog. Must be a bitch in heat around here somewhere.'

"Fritzie never forgot that moment's indiscretion on my part and made damn sure that I never did either. Forever after, whenever I got within humping range, I became a target for his misguided affections.

"At this stage of my life, I can now see where more than a few 'moments of indiscretion' in my relationships with the female gender should have taught me a lesson. That is, never tell a female you love her just to get into her knickers."

He straightened the typed pages of his story, smiling at them with satisfaction. And then he became aware of the silence.

"Get it? Never jack off a dog," Buddy said. " 'Cause they'll never leave you alone."

By his side, in her wedding dress, Pinky smiled. Uncle Tony and Aunt Mariel looked apprehensive, as though wondering whether there was more.