Chapter 32: Rugs (10/6)
More Encounters With Evil
I'm sure no one will wonder where I've gone to
But if anyone should ask from time to time
Tell them that you finally drove me crazy
And I'm somewhere untanglin' my mind.
Last week wasn’t the first time I felt the hand of God moving me to leave the city as soon as possible.
It was around this time that, when I was having one of my after-shift burgers at the pub up the street, that I mentioned I would be leaving town. In fact, I was hoping to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, I said out loud.
It was then that a patron of said establishment sidled next to me and whispered in my ear: “Why would you move to Tulsa?” He slithered, and then pointed to two women down the bar. “See those two girls there, man? We just had a threesome and we’re going to get an eight-ball and go back for more.”
He was quite proud of himself.
“This is the golden age here man! You can get whatever you want around here these days!”
That would be my last after-shift burger at the pub up the street.
We were selling out of rugs because real estate agents, and whatever few sale-by-owners had not yet gotten out, were staging their houses for sale. The market was continually scalding hot.
“There were one-hundred-and-ten open houses in Southie this weekend,” one excited agent pointed out. “Last weekend there were 90.”
I didn’t feel the need to point out that a rash of sales in an area might indicate that a neighborhood was becoming increasingly unsafe, (which it surely was).
Addendum: As for other signs from God to get out of town, my absolute favorite Boston family restaurant/Irish pub (where I had met up with the reporter in June) was the last place I could go anywhere. It was the last place where there were still patrons who did not bow to the Covid overlords. You could still even talk politics there (The adage you shouldn’t talk politics or religion is hilarious--that’s in fact almost the entire purpose for both those things.)
So tonight I had gone down to talk to the regulars on a Friday night except—
… there were no more regulars.
Certainly it was a Friday and many might have gone to the Cape and whatnot, but it was eerily quiet tonight. The only people who were there—and, in fact, still in the big blue city, was a flamboyant gaggle of demonstrably gay men.
They were blasting the horribly-awful “WAP” on the jukebox, singing along, and grinding on one another.
Being the only other person in the restaurant, they proceeded to dare one another to grind on me, until one finally started to do so.
I politely moved a chair down until they left me alone.
I asked for the check and said to the grandfather-owner (“Mr. Foley”) of the “cafe” how this would be my last time at his establishment.
And he nodded slowly in an understanding gesture. “I bet you’ll come back here with a Ford F-350 and a new nice wife” he joked.
“More like a family band,” I said back.
I am sad. This would mark the end of an era.
Next week, more chains goes out the door.
