“… She said that he now spent all his time with “some rich white kid in the suburbs somewhere… ” 

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Ok so now that I brought up this “rich white kid in the suburbs somewhere” I’m going to have to backtrack a bit more…

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Several days after moving into my dingy little basement dungeon of a room, I had lunch with Fred, Maria and her boys at their new two bedroom apartment just above that other one with the bloodstain on the living room floor. The two bedroom upstairs apartment where (in Tuesday’s post) I am about to have my head-on collision with Fred and his lies.

Only, in this previous time… I had yet to even know they were the lies that they certainly were. At this time, I still had hope that Fred’s way cool rock band situation was going to happen. That lie was starting to become suspect but I was so intent upon it being true, I still was holding onto the possibility. The possibility that this was all going to have been worth all the trouble it was really beginning to be.

At that time I had also yet to introduce my soon-to-be little street punk gang friends to “shit on a shingle“, but I had already eaten that classic bachelor concoction of mine quite enough. Any of Maria’s mouth-watering Mexican money-saving marvel meals, was an extremely welcome respite indeed. So when Fred invited me to lunch, I did not hesitate.

There was another guest at this lunch, however. I don’t remember his name. I don’t remember much about him at all really, but I do remember that evening… after lunch. After lunch when Fred invited me to go with him and his friend.

“To get something.”

I never saw what it was they got, but I’m assuming now that it had something to do with the reason Maria eventually had me help her “get rid of Fred” several weeks later. I’m assuming it had something to so with drugs, or money… or money and drugs, or drug money… I don’t know and I don’t care. My adult self now is assuming Fred had decided he needed big naive good boy me for some reason. Like maybe he wanted to impress this “rich white kid” or something. I really don’t care about that either.

No doubt Fred was also taking me to this guys house in the suburbs (his parent’s house really) to impress me as to how he was still legit. He may have not been able to show me anything that looked like movement towards the rock band situation, but he had this important job at Brandeis Department Store and now he was showing me he had friends in “high places” as well.

High places… heh.

What a laugh. As we entered this fairly typical upper-middle-class suburban Omaha home (I never paid attention to where we were driving) I was far from impressed. It seemed similar to many of the Rochester homes of friends I knew from high school who’s parents worked for The Mayo Clinic or IBM. Yes, it was nice… I guess. But I found it pretentious and even foolishly so.

The part that almost made me laugh out loud was the “living room”. It was far from that. Living was not what happened in that “room” and it wasn’t even really a room. It was a showpiece of a space on the way to where the living actually happened in this house. It was a space no one would ever think to spend any time unless they were a visiting dignitary or some such “high” personage.

The all-white furniture of this showpiece of an all-white space, had obviously been carefully preened. Daily. Preened for that rare but highly sought after occasion to be able to invite one of those personages from one of those “high places.” Personages deemed worthy to cross the all-white carpet and sit on the all-white sofa to partake of tea and crumpets or some such all-white thing. Served on one of the of the many all-white furniture things, doily-like things, serving things, things there solely (and soullessly) to support all the all-white people and their all-whiteness.

Fred and I were invited to gaze appreciatively at the all-white “living room” and then follow him across the protective plastic path to where we could relax and get whatever it was we were there to get.

To be continued…