Eulogy for a Cad

"Take control of the decision by asking her in a direct manner. Don't be a dick-head and asked her she wants to go fuck! Something like: 'Would you like to continue this somewhere more private?' Or even the simple comment: 'Your place or mine?' But not something like: 'Would you like to go for a cup of coffee?"

"Going for a cup of coffee or seeing your etchings might be a euphemism to having sex, for you. But to her, it might seem like just a request for a cup of coffee, thus sending her confusing or mixed signals. But more importantly, it gives her an emotional out, or a mental option she can use to bow out later. With her not saying yes or sealing the deal leaves her with no investment or responsibility until later..., maybe. If she says yes and invests, she's less likely to change her mind. Plus, it's easier to say yes on the dance floor at the Longbranch than it is in the room at Motel 6."

"Couple of things to remember. You've all had girls give you a wrong phone number when asked. But they'll take your number if they're even thinking about a date. They don't want some guy calling all hours of the day or night. Here's the key, they don't want him to have a tie into their life. We need to do the same thing, not just with phone numbers."

"Don't take a toy or a one-night stand to your apartment or dorm. Thus giving her a tie into your life she can use to drop in on you any time she wants. Maybe she thinks it's giving her a signal you're open for more contact. It also gives you a little distance if she becomes clingy or crazy."

"Rule one..., never forgotten, never violated, and always enforced. 'No glove no love', ironclad rule! Shit faced hammered, can't remember anything but you wake up in the morning next to a girl, and you can't find a condom! Don't let her out of your sight until you watch her swallow a Plan B. Then immediately call the clinic for an STD test."

"The toy says you don't need a condom because she's on birth control. NOT... Besides the possibility of disease, she might really want to have birth 'control' of her baby daddy. There's a lot of girls here in college looking for the easy life with a rich college boy."

"Toy says she's a virgin and on birth control so you don't need condoms. Bull-shit! You can still get aids from a virgin. IV drug user or a bad blood transfusion are the obvious. Or She's a butt freak and already had anal sex with 100 guys, improbable, ridiculous? Yes, but even once makes it possible so don't even chance it."

"Another thing is booze, especially in a closed environment like this college, girls talk. So, when you drink so much your Johnson can't rise to the occasion, girls talk and other girls listen and wimpy dick becomes your nickname."

"The same thing is true for the girls. You don't want to pick up a girl who's absolutely hammered. For one thing she might scream rape in the morning. The other reason is because being that drunk, she's a lousy fuck!"

"So, unless you're into necrophilia, or you're so desperate any piece of warm meat will do, leave the really drunk girls alone. If you're that desperate go find a pro, you'll get more bang for your buck and a lot less trouble."

"Remember I said girls talk to other girls. If one girl lies and screams rape, and even if you're proven innocent, or, even if she doesn't report it or tell anyone but her girlfriends, you're a rapist to every girl that ever heard the rumor, and they'll each tell ten other girls who'll swear it's true. That happens and your love life's over, you might as well pack-up and move to Alaska."

"Sometimes I'll go out in either San Antonio or Seguin, and I've started running into a different type of toy than these college coeds here in Austin. So, I'll give you college boys another other piece of advice."

"You're 'going' to get married, that's what college boys do.

"Sometime or another your little Wifey will want a 'Girls Night Out'. You need to nip that in the bud hard and fast! Hopefully you can do that and make it stick before you have kids."

"Because the 'different type of toy' I've started running into are married. Even at twenty-one and twenty-two years old young wives are hitting the bars and dance halls for their 'Girls Night Out."

"Remember that test drive girls won't admit to, even to themselves? Remember what they want from a test drive? Validation and Attention, only on a 'Girls Night Out' they want it from someone else..., not you. But they'll sit there and lie to you and to themselves saying it's perfectly innocent and they have no intention of cheating on you..., and they probably don't."

"They're so hypocritical and so deep in denial they don't even see it. Hypocritical..., yeah they are and I'll give you an example."

"We've all seen a couple in the mall where the hubby has looked at some teenybopper's tits & ass. Wife rips a strip off of him for taking a ten second glance. You know when he gets home, she'll be an iceberg and he's off nookie for a week or two, just because he looked."

"99 out of 100 women think their husband should never look admiringly at another woman. They have enough self-doubt they think if their husband even looks at another woman, he loves them less, and they can't stand that."

"Yet the same woman will go out on a 'Girls Night Out' at the Longbranch and dance with every cowboy who asks her. Arm around her waist, holding hands and two-stepping to the music. Swinging in and out of a sweetheart cuddle while jitterbugging and rub her ass on his belt buckle. Using her belly to polish his belt buckle on the slow tunes. Soaking up the Attention and listening to the Validation all the while."

"She'll sit and lie to herself, saying it's perfectly innocent because it's 'just dancing'."

"Another part of 'Girls Night Out' is the girls, meaning the girls who drag your wife out with them. They're not your friends, not at all. In fact, they're your enemy and you need to get them out of your life as fast as possible, no matter who they are. Here's a little story that happened to me in San Antonio."

"I had selected a little toy to approach for the night. What I didn't count on was the help I got from the 'girls' at her table. There was an older woman who would have been about her mother's age, one girl about her age and one girl maybe a year or two younger. They were, shall we say, well lubricated. As soon as I approached the toy, they started cheering her on, rather crudely."

"You go girl,' 'Woo-Woo,' 'spank that ass girl' but the best..., 'Bang that boy like a drum girl'."

"Needless to say, it didn't take much to get her to leave with me. Boy, she was an enthusiastic fuck, but she was married. Later when I asked who the girls at her table were. She showed no shame when she said the oldest woman was her mother-in-law and the other two her sisters-in-law."

"So, if you can't count on your own mother or sisters to keep the little Wifey on the straight and narrow on their 'Girls Night Out', can you count on her friends or coworkers? Hell no! That wasn't the only time I ran into a married woman, or the only time I've had a table cheer her on. Telling her they'll cover for her with hubby."

"This seems to be the new attitude women in the bars have talked about. That (nebulous) men have always cheated on women so they're perfectly justified in getting a little strange themselves for all the years women have been cheated on. They don't want to be equal; they want to be equal, plus.

"Even though in their own personal situation hubby has never cheated on them, and he damn well better not. Because she'd divorce him in a heartbeat and take 'her' kids away plus taking him to the fuckin' cleaners. Those women feel it's an automatic win in the courts for the mother, and it pretty much is."

"They're just getting payback for all their 'sisters!"

"It's just a fuckin excuse to justify what they want. Same as that 'white guilt' I have been hearing about. Because of slavery in the South back in the 1700-1800s every white person in America owes every African-American an easier life."

"Even though the 'African-American' who's expounding on 'white guilt' immigrated to America two years ago from Rwanda. Plus, the white guy he's ragging on, their great-great-grandparents immigrated in through Ellis Island from Germany. They traveled straight from the boat to a train taking them cross country to the Homestead they were starting in bum-fuck Montana."

"Great-great and great grandparents probably didn't see half a dozen African-Americans in their lifetime, and none of those were slaves. Yet, supposedly they still built up so much white guilt their great-great-grandson will pay on that debt for the rest of his life."

"One of the tenants of my life is free will, everyone has free will. They just have to pay for their free will by accepting their own consequences. A key here is the consequences for 'their' free will, no one else's. I don't believe in original sin like the priests teach. Just because Eve took a bite of fruit from the tree in the garden of Eden, every woman has a debt of sin before she's even born."

"White guilt..., huh. That's strange, since the fifth or sixth century Syrian Christianity has taught that the mark of Cain was black skin. It's also in writings of the Jesuits, plus older Protestant and, of course, Southern Baptists writings. Those writings were used in the justification of slavery. So I guess the mark of Cain is 'black guilt."

"Ah shit..., Now number ten beer is confusing me and leading me astray. I'm in no form a racist, the guys on my crews get the same wages and treatment if they're black, white or green. But they also don't get more pay or opportunity because they're black, white or green."

"So back to picking up toys, and Girls Night Out. So, I got another story for you."

"This one woman told me she only comes out because she loves to dance and her husband doesn't. She tried convincing me that coming out to the Longbranch was the only way she could dance. I didn't say anything, but I mentally called bullshit. If she wanted to dance, she could find other ways."

"Hell, dance naked in the bedroom for her husband! Or in the living room with a bottle of tequila and the stereo cranked up. Or go to a health club and sign up for Zumba classes. But the best solution might be to take the hubby to something like an Arthur Murray studio and teach him how to dance."

"But I knew she wouldn't, because what would be missing from those situations was Validation and Attention. Along with the sexual titillation coming from strange cowboys in the test drive of dancing. There's another name for sexual titillation..., foreplay! "

"Another time I had a woman tell me her husband liked her going out on a Girls Night Out. She even said it made their marriage stronger. She'd get all sexed up then go back to waiting hubby and 'Rock his World' and he loved it, said it was the best sex they ever had."

"Well, if secondhand sex and intimacy is the best he's ever had she sure wasn't taking care of her homework and hubby.

"Secondhand sex and intimacy..., yeah, because even if she hadn't fucked the cowboy, the hubby still got secondhand sex. Because as she was rocking hubby's world, in her mind she was fucking the cowboy. Making it secondhand sex, plus whatever intimacy they shared afterwards was probably dreaming of the cowboy too."

"I told her a little story in the form of a joke. She got the joke, but not the story's purpose."

"Little Nicky's father decided Nicky might be old enough to have a little privacy and show how he could manage money by buying a Christmas gift for his mother, by himself. Little Nicky came back with a nicely wrapped box and a big smile on his face. Christmas morning Nicky's mother puzzled as she opened up her..., brand-new baseball mitt. Little Nicky explained, 'I know how much you love watching me play baseball. So, you'll love it even more seeing how much better I play when I borrow your brand-new mitt."

"So, when that woman got all sexed up and horny, came back and rocked hubby's world, she mirrored little Nicky, giving hubby the gift 'SHE' wanted most. But like most women think, she was giving 'hubby' a gift, not herself, how noble of her."

"So college boys, heed my warning and when the little Wifey wants a Girls Night Out, shut it down hard and fast. But if she wants to push it and go despite what you say, tell her she can go all she wants, when she's single after the divorce. If she still wants to push it and go..., dump her to the curb."

"Because on one of her Girls Night Out dancing, she'll run into a cowboy like me."

"A man with the plan and the magic words. A test drive and the searchlight dial up the titillation. Tequila lubrication glides the slide out the door of the Longbranch..., easy-peasy. The trip to Motel 6 you might never know happened..., the first time."

"Hell Jimmy, you're 21-22, never married like the rest of us. Why do you think you understand so much about marriage and how married women will act?"

"Well Gar, remember what I said you'd have to do to pick up toys in a bar? Well I do that with other things too..., pay attention. I pay attention; to the married men in my crews as they gripe about their wives, the guy on the barstool whining to the sympathetic bartender or the guy on the next stool. I listen to the women at the table next to me when they think they won't be heard. Yeah, I pay attention, plus you don't have to put your hand on the stove to know it's hot."

Listening to Jimmy I realized I'd watched him do his 'plan' and pick up toys for years, and it never failed. The fact Jimmy had broken it down into a step-by-step, organized, formal plan kind of worried me and made me sad..., very sad. But that day I didn't really understand why, and I didn't take the mental effort to break past the alcohol haze. It just made me sad, so very sad...

But his mention of Syrian Christianity and the mark of Cain amazed me. I never realized he was so inquisitive or well read. A lot of people thought of Jimmy as a stud..., a big man and a blue-collar worker with a high school education, and maybe not the sharpest tack in the box.

I knew differently though, Jimmy 'was' smart. I just become complacent and started thinking of him the same way everybody else did.

But later in life, and after Carrie, my more mature understanding realized why Jimmy's soliloquy saddened me, because of Queen Elizabeth's training and Jimmy's all/nothing love and decisions about Bethany. So much of Jimmy's personal philosophy and his understanding of women, racism and morality he'd acquired in entirely the wrong places and from the wrong people: his father, toys and the men who frequented bars and dance halls. Thoughts he'd gotten from my mom or others like Father Garrett were such a minor part of his life, no matter how much he valued them.

Several years later I asked Jimmy if he was attempting to match the number of women Magic Johnson had been with, he said, 'Hell no, I worked for a living.' I asked because I thought Jimmy's number resided in three digits, and the first digit wasn't a one or probably even a two.

When Jimmy turned twenty-four his dad had an accident at work, the proverbial 'straw that broke the camel's back,' and sidelined the perpetual cowboy. So, Jimmy had to take over the leadership of the whole company. I even signed some papers, just in case. It wasn't a job or anything like that, it provided ways so I might step in and do something if I really had to.

When Jimmy was around thirty, I noticed he was preoccupied one day. I asked him what was going on. He told me he was being sued for paternity and child support. I asked if he thought it 'was' his. His answer was hard to fathom, for me.

"I don't really think so, I always-always wear protection. Plus, I'm having a little difficulty recognizing the girl. I mean she's familiar, but I'm not sure I slept with her or if she's someone who'd been around me when I picked up another girl."

"You mean you don't recognize her? How far along as she?"

"She's three months along, and that's part of what's bothering me. Even though it's possible, she won't permit any kind of DNA test until the baby is born. So, I'm having to sit and wait. Plus, my attorney has recommended I pay for her medical bills until the birth. So, I'm doing that plus giving her a small stipend to live on."

"The money's not bothering me. It's the waiting and the uncertainty of her trying to rip me off. I just can't be positive I remember her."

"Three months ago, and you can't remember if you slept with her not? Are you into the four-digit numbers yet?"

He laughed, and with a wink told me he didn't think so. Six months later he came back and told me it wasn't his. But he intended to continue the monthly stipend until she got on her feet, but no more than a year.

When I was twenty-four, I married Carrie; then when the kids started coming, I guess we kind of pulled away from Jimmy. Not intentionally, my life started going in a different direction while Jimmy's stayed the same.

No, we didn't avoid him and I still saw him frequently. Uncle Jimmy was 'the' man, he became Uncle and Godfather to all our children. Both grandmothers jokingly complained they couldn't keep up spoiling grandkids as much as Jimmy did. But Jimmy and I never hit the bars anymore, and I didn't just hang out with him.

I worried about his drinking. I was aware Jimmy was a functional alcoholic, how could he have been anything less. He never got sloppy drunk or got a DUI, never failed to handle his responsibilities the next day. However, if he wasn't at work, with his dad or my kids, he was at a bar somewhere playing with toys. His toy's numbered in the high three digits now, at least that's how I thought of it. It's probably unrealistic, but because of the all/nothing of Bethany, his life contained little else.

Romeo had lost his Juliet and never looked for another...

Carrie loved Jimmy like a brother, almost a favorite brother. But she helped me realize some things about Jimmy, and some of those drew me away from Jimmy a little more. We never hung out together anymore, life got in the way too easily. Any camping, hunting or fishing we did always involve teaching the boys what they needed to learn, and not much else.

Carrie helped me realize that even though I thought I knew and understood why Jimmy had started down the road he did, he didn't have to stay there. Some kids in the projects and the barrios stayed out of the gangs and drugs. Even though they started out with a bad lot in life, they tried to take the high road. They didn't take a gun into the car for a drive by. Even though their life pointed them at that choice, they made a different one, and Jimmy could've too.

In a way, Jimmy chose where he wanted to be. Jimmy was a stud, always had been so men admired him, even idolized him, some even tried to imitate him. He accumulated his own Validation and Attention from women, all he ever wanted or more. He was a powerful businessman, and he didn't have to share his accomplishments with anyone, unless he wanted too.

Carrie labeled Jimmy as a 'hypocritical romantic misogynist' that had locked out any possible place on which to fasten his romantic nature, except Bethany. Then he locked her out too.

Nerd, geek or dweeb..., I always mixed up nerd and geek. I thought of one as a very shy, highly intelligent, almost antisocial person. I imaged the other as a chunky kid who had: a bag of potato chips, a video game and a can of soda pop constantly by his side. Like I said, I mix those two up, but dweeb I know, we had one in high school. Ernie Johnson, and he graduated a year behind Jimmy and me. He wasn't a half bubble off plumb. But possibly a 1/4 or 1/8th, enough to not be crazy but not quite normal either.