I am sure Randy invented this phrase. We eat Thai and have a warm fuzzy good bye. He is a good friend and different from me.
Carlos runs late and we rush to the Riverfront Marriot. We get there perfectly. All we miss is the conversation between the two of us before the meeting.
At one point in this meeting I sit back feeling like reality has shifted for me and I am out of step with it.
Steaks are shown to us wrapped in plastic and each meal (10 people) must have cost our hosts well over $100 a piece. Not to mention the use of the private room, or the incredible mahogany table. Even Jim Keefe, a leader of NASSP and a prime mover & changer of education in our country seems out of place. The four people from the five billion dollar Psych. Corp. are perfectly comfortable. Our host is the company's senior vice-president.
I, of course, ate too much. Everything was good, especially the cheese cake. The meeting went well, though I couldn't stop feeling disjointed.
After, Carlos went back with his girlfriend. I wasn't tired, perhaps from all the food, so I drove around a bit and stopped at one of those "gentlemen" clubs.
I was staggered by the old electric chair next to the men's room. Its leather straps hung dry and cracking. Nothing called attention to this chair, but I could feel it lingering, lurking, dangerous.
Death & Fragile Loveliness
I put some matches in my pocket, drank a Shiner Bock, and watched. Perhaps because it was Sunday the place felt easy and relaxed. The other people present were not your usual brash men, but were instead quiet, arty, and some of them female. This club, I learned later, advertised for couples and women to attend.
The music, too, was good, not blaring, alternative -- some unexpected songs. They played the Joy Division version of Dead Souls .
The dancers were friendly, creative, laughing, not overly sexual but erotic. Different, but still not right. Something missing, though this suggested to me that artistic performed nakedness is possible in our world. But it would take an audience with a lot of guts to admit that.
I talked with one "dreamgirl" who had been dancing for eight months and enjoyed her work immensely. I asked her if she saw beauty in this place and she said "sometimes."
I found the gloves I'd been looking for and went home. These had fingers.
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