After I posted yesterday I read some of the replies to the google search. Well ok, I glanced through the headers and my impression was that they were fifty-fifty on the issue. I think putting both in lower case, or both in upper case is ok, but I agree with Beagles that making one upper and one lower for some sociological reason is not right.
Language should be neutral. Even though it comes from my ilk I hate pc, it is this arcane structure which if you don't know it, you are likely to violate it in some way and then you are called a racist or a homophobe so whatever you have to say afterwards does not count.
And even worse is the way they concentrate on language as if all the evils of the world are because of the way we speak, so they create their own little sub language which if you violate it by say, calling a fellow south of the border a Mexican instead of a Latinx, or calling someone he or she when they prefer to be called they, is an unforgiveable crime. It is stupid and it is dangerous because it makes people afraid to talk about things lest they say the wrong world and find themselves in pc jail.
I did look up capitalization too, and it's a interesting story going back to the Roman (Latin) and Greek (Cyrillic) alphabets which originally had only the capitalized words. But when they had to write something long all those big block letters got to be too much work so they wrote smaller and curvier, and those letters became the lower cases, and then the various languages made up their own rules for when to use a cap or when to use a lower case. It's basically a European thing since Asian and Arabic lettering have a different form of lettering than big block letters.
Alright, at last Catfish enters the notorious Club 45.
Place was a little classier
than I thought it would be. It wasn’t
dirty or anything, people were kind of dressed up, there was a band, kind of a
Charlie Daniels band, half fast country half rock and roll, pretty good.
“Whaddaya think?” Ron asked as
we went up to the bar. “Pretty good,” I
answered.
“Pretty good?” he asked. “Damn good,” I answered.
“Can you see your friend Itch
in a place like this?”
No I couldn’t. Too loud for him. He liked it nice and quiet so he could talk
about things like irony and everybody could hear his every precious word about
what it was and what it meant. Gina too,
she liked that kind of talk. She was all
talk, all talk and no walk, all fireplace and no water bed. Speaking of which there weren’t all that many
women, on the other hand they did seem a little wild, tank tops and short
skirts and loud as the guys.
When I looked back to the bar
there was a big beer mug in front of me and next to it a shot.
I don’t normally do shots, get
into enough trouble just drinking beer I like to say, but there’s Ron clinking
the little glass next to mine and down it goes.
The beer goes down pretty fast too and I have to reciprocate, so I order
us another beer and shot. Ah it’s just a
little thing in a little glass, what harm can it do?
And I’m really getting into the
whole spirit of the place, everybody’s having a good time, everybody’s rocking,
everybody’s wild, yeah, this is alright.
“You like it here?”
“Huh?”
“You like it here?” she yells
louder over the noise. Skinny blonde
girl, scooting up next to me. Wow, how
about that? I turn to Ron to give him
kind of a thumbs up and he’s gone. I
turn back my thumbs tumbling over empty shot glasses, four or six of them, I
can’t be sure.
“My name’s Catfish.” I tell
her.
Her face screws up a
little. “Catfish?” she wants to know,
“So are you a cat of a fish?”
This question seems terribly
important. I have to think about it a
little bit. Well obviously fish sounds
bad, so I say “Cat.”
“So you’re a cat?” she wants to
know, and she forms her hands into little claws and rubs them against my
forearms.
“I am the cat who walks alone.”
And you know I let my mouth do the talking when I don’t know what to say, and I
wonder where this is going, and then I remember that this is something I heard
Itch say once, and I might as well continue it, “and all places are the same to
me.”
It sounded good. Or it sounded good to me, had a nice ring to
it, kind of romantic, the kind of thing that that the girls at the Great Wall
might have swooned over.
But I was at Club 45, with a
skinny blonde, not likely I suspected, but it didn’t do badly, she swooned a
little, I saw it, I definitely saw it, but it didn’t last long, she shot back
hard, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well I don’t know,” I answered
because I didn’t know.
“Why did you say it then?” and
she spoke that hard too, but she was softening.
“Just thought it sounded good.”
I said because that was why I said it, and because it had a nice ring to it,
that sad proud thing, it works pretty good.
“Sounds okay I guess,” she
allowed. “What are you, some kind of
University guy?”
Sounded like it would sound
good, “A little,” I allowed.
And sure enough she lit up a
little at that. “You just come up here
for a little, you know?”
You know sounded pretty
good. “Yeah.”
“You can call me Denise,” she
said.
Kind of an odd way to say
it. “Is that your name then?”
She looked at me kind of funny,
“Yeah,” she said.
"Nice name,” I said, I supposed
it was.
"So you want a little?”
“I, uh, I’d like a lot.”
“Got that too,” she
smiled. She took my hand and began
leading me out of Club 45. Damn this was
working out good. Wild women alright.
There was a motel that shared
the same parking lot as the Club 45 and that’s where we were headed.
“You live here?” I asked.
She looked at me funny again,
and answered, “Sure.”
Her butt didn’t look as skinny
as I would have thought walking up the stairs behind her, not as luscious as
Gina’s though. Gina. Should I be doing this? Well hell, we’d had that fight, and she hadn’t
even shown up for the game. We were kind
of separated at this point. Oh we’d
probably get together again, but in the meantime, you know, it would probably
be alright to have a little fling, and there was probably no reason she would
ever have to hear about it.
She let me go in first and then
closed the door behind her. “How does
thirty sound?” she wanted to know.
Thirty? Thirty minutes didn’t sound like a very long
time. I generally like to give a good
performance, a little sweet talking leading to a little feeling up, a little
romantic taking off of the clothes, some passionate promises that neither of us
take seriously, all leading up to the main event. “I’m thinking more like, oh, ninety,” I told
her.
“Ninety?” her eyes opened
up. “Oh I love you Sweetie,” and she was
all over me. The sweet talk she just
rushed past, “Yeah, yeah,” she said.
Thing was, I kind of liked the
sweet talk. A lot of guys, I’ve talked
to them, think it’s just something to get through, kind of a paying of dues,
but I kind of liked it.
But she was way past it,
grabbing at my dick before we’d even gotten to the feeling up, when we still
had half our clothes on. I kind of
wanted to slow her down, but how do you that, especially when she seemed to
know all the right moves, and before I’d even got her bra off it was all over.
“Was it good?” she wanted to
know, nibbling at my shoulder.
Well yeah, it was good, kind of
fast but good. I allowed as much, and then
she was jumping out of bed, putting her clothes back on. “You got that ninety?” she wanted to know
pulling up her short denim skirt.
“Ninety?” I asked, still
rolling in the sheets.
“Ninety bucks,” she explained.
“Ninety bucks?”
“Yeah ninety. That’s what you said. You said ninety bucks.”
“I said ‘ninety?’ I meant ninety minutes,” but I knew what she
was talking about now. Damn.
Shitfuck. It wasn’t the ninety bucks,
okay it was sort of, that was a lot of money, but the thing was I’d never, ever,
paid for it. It was like a blemish on my
record.
“You wanted ninety
minutes? That’s a lot of time, a lot of
my time, I could be back up here at least a couple more times in ninety
minutes.”
It wasn’t an attractive
picture, I kind of saw it in fast motion, her pulling up her denim skirt,
heading down, heading back up again with another guy, pulling her skirt back
down, pulling his dick, pulling the skirt back up, and then one more time, the
clock ticking away like on one of those quiz shows, and then bing, she’s made
her ninety bucks in ninety minutes.
That was at thirty bucks a
throw, which was the price she had quoted, and I’m not proud of myself about it
but I did the math, and maybe I was entitled to that ninety minutes, as long as
I was paying and all.
Maybe she did the math too, but
it didn’t add up the same way for her.
“The deal is it’s just until you get off, doesn’t matter how long that
is, and you said ninety bucks and that’s it.”
“I didn’t say ninety bucks. I
just said ninety.”
“Ninety is ninety bucks. That’s the way it is,” and then she added, “I
have a kid you know.”
Didn’t seem to me like she did,
the way she threw it in, but what did I know, and anyway this whole thing was
getting ugly, and strange as it seems, it was ungentlemanly of me.
“Fine,” I said, “fine.” The regular part of my wallet was empty after
all those beers at Club 45, but I had a hundred I’d stashed away in the secret
pocket. I unfolded it and handed it to
her.
“Thanks,” she said, tucking it
away, and looking back at me, “I don’t have change,” and adding again, “I have
a kid,”
And this was ungentlemanly, but
I was a little pissed, wanted to say something, so said, “No you don’t.”
“Maybe not,” she allowed,
pulling up that little skirt and buckling the belt, “But I still don’t have
change.”
“Fine,” I said, “Fine.”
Didn’t see Ron’s car in the
parking lot, thought maybe some of the guys we’d been drinking with might still
be in the bar, but they weren’t. Had
some coins in my pocket, enough for a payphone.
The only number knew was the Great Wall. It was after closing there but
maybe someone would still be there. Itch
was.
Things had been a little rough between us.
It was awkward asking him for a favor, but maybe he could stop by the bunkhouse, see if Ted could
drive out and pick me up.
“You’re where?” he wanted to
know.
“Club 45,” I told him.
“How did you get out there?”
“Well Ron.” I started out, and
then kind of faded out, knowing how Itch felt about Ron.
“Ditched you?” he came back
almost gleeful.
“Not exactly, I was kind of
away, and then, well I don’t want to get into it, maybe if you could just stop
by the bunkhouse.”
“No need,” he said, “no
problem. I’ll be there in like twenty
minutes,” and he hung up.
What the fuck? Itch didn’t have a car. I didn’t have enough money for another call
though so I just hung around in the parking lot kicking gravel.
And then George’s cherry red Riviera pulled into the
lot. Had Itch somehow talked George into
driving out here to pick me up?
No it was Itch sitting behind
the wheel with a big grin on his face.
“Hop in.”
I was surprised, George had
always been pretty possessive of his flashy car. “So George loaned you his car?” I asked.
“Sort of,” Itch answered
gunning out of the parking lot.
“Sort of?”
“He passed out with his keys on
the bar.”
I had worked out this whole
story kicking gravel around in the parking lot.. I’d met this girl, and we’d sort of hit it
off and gone to the motel restaurant, and she was putting away the food like
she hadn’t eaten in days, and it turned out she had lost her job, and she had a
kid, and well, I had just given her that hundred and then realized that was all
I had and by then Ron had left, and there I was.
Except when we were pulling out
I noticed that the motel didn’t have a restaurant, and oh hell I just ended up
telling Itch the whole story.
“But you can’t tell anybody.” I
ended up.
“My lips are sealed, Natty.”
But then I remembered him and
that Gina thing. It was worrisome.
