family history, part thirteen
Huh, it's kind of appropriate, don't you think, for the thirteenth chapter of my family story to be written on Friday the 13th.
Anyways. . .
Aunt Olphelia called earlier tonight. She's back in New York, still living in Old Grandad's once private hideaway on the 13th floor of The Barrington Building. She was calling to apologize for any additional trouble she might have caused me. I reassured her and told her just to chill. I'm a grown up, we all make choices and eventually have to pay the fiddler. She found out about my current predicament when my father, The Bastard, called her to bitch her out for getting me mixed up in her nonsense and adding to my legal woes. He really can be a giant dick.
Yeah, she's still a little miffed at all the calls she gotten over the past few weeks from all the chicks in bands who called wanting the record deal I promised them for services they provided during the big annual music festival. Her standard response: "He promised you what? Well darling, the name of the label is SCREWED RECORDS, so you might just be screwed, but go ahead and send me your demo and I'll give it a listen."
She's cool and all and doesn't let my father, The Bastard, bring her down either. Being his second and youngest sibling, she accepts him for the ego-maniac he is.
She once told me that being mad at the way my father, The Bastard, acts is like being mad at the sun if you get sunburned. It's the fucking Sun. You know it's out there. You know it's going to burn you. It's not the Sun's fault, it is just its nature. It's you own damn fault if you leave yourself exposed for too long. And as she is my father's, The Bastard, youngest sibling like me we both grew up in a world that revolved around him.
She knows a lot about that, you know the Sun and all. She inherited Grandma Milly's, God rest her soul, skin condition. An experimental treatment she underwent in the late 1950's managed to clear it up, but it left her with a complexion that is literally ghostly white, almost like the face of a mime. As a result of the treatment, the slightest exposure to the rays of the Sun cause her skin to fry like bacon on a Saturday morning. And of course, after the first family vacation in the early 60's at the Florida beach house we used to own, Old Grandad sued the hack doctor and sucked a couple more millions for the family fortune from his malpractice insurance. I've seen the snapshots in the family album. Aunt Olphelia did vaguely resemble the perfect pork accompaniment to a couple of eggs over easy with a side of hash browns.
Aunt Olphelia was born in 1947. Old Grandad blamed her conception on a business trip to Mexico where he discovered a then local cocktail, the margarita, that was quickly becoming all the rage. Subsequently, she was coming of age when the whole hippie movement was coming to fruition. She became the ultimate hippie.
Some might think it odd, perhaps oxymoronic, that a woman born into the height of establishment power and privilege could be a true hippie. She explained this apparent contradiction to me once during my teen years in a smoky San Francisco bar. She considered herself to be the ultimate hippie. Because she had a world of affluence and influence she had the most to rebel against. Not that she was foolish enough to turn her back on the family money. She recognized that poverty was one flaw in the whole hippie scene.
Being the ultimate hippie, she embraced the whole hippie free love thing with all the passion that we Barringtons show in all our pursuits. Few know this, but her zest for this lifestyle has earned her a couple of places in the history of that era.
In order to more fully explain I need to back up a bit. As the sole daughter in one of America's richest families, Aunt Olphelia never had a desire that went unfulfilled. Both Old Grandad, and Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, doted on her every whim. And as a child, Aunt Olphelia's most common whim was food. She grew up to be a rather large woman. The long and free-flowing multi-colored hippie skirts and dresses that were the style at the time were not at all flattering to her full figure. Many thought she resembled a tent dressed in that garb. This earned her the odd and unflattering nickname of "Hippie Campground", because dozens if not hundreds of unwashed and unshorn young men spent nights beneath the free flowing folds of her dresses.
In 1964, in order to escape what Old Grandad believed to be the coming destruction of America caused by the impending 1960's counter-culture movement, he moved his illicit and adulterous affairs from his penthouse apartment on the 13th floor of The Barrington Building in Midtown Manhattan to a more secluded lake house in upstate New York. I guess he watched the press coverage of The Beatles first trip to America and didn't like what he saw. In 1965, 17 year-old Aunt Olphelia first exercised her independence and moved in.
Old Grandad had a back entrance installed in his penthouse suite, an express elevator that went from ground level to the 13th floor. Aunt Olphelia took full advantage of this to transform Old Grandad's former love nest into her own.
Aunt Olphelia has exceptional skill, and yes it was an incredibly awkward moment when she explained it to me, at the practice in the um, shall we say, performing a certain sex act. Ah hell, let me just come out and say it. Aunt Olphelia is a master of the skin flute. At the time she greatly enjoyed, and from what I have heard still does, bringing musicians into her home atop the Barrington building with this elevator to indulge her physical passions. As the elevator was going up, she was going down. She prided herself on her skill to cause her companion to reach the top at the same time as the elevator. One traveling hippie musician was so impressed he named his band in honor of Aunt Olphelia.
Additionally, a very famous group from that era originally named one of their big hits in her honor. It was only after Old Grandad had his lawyers send threatening cease and desist letters to the record label that they changed the name of the song to what we all know: Cecilia.
Anyways. . .
Aunt Olphelia called earlier tonight. She's back in New York, still living in Old Grandad's once private hideaway on the 13th floor of The Barrington Building. She was calling to apologize for any additional trouble she might have caused me. I reassured her and told her just to chill. I'm a grown up, we all make choices and eventually have to pay the fiddler. She found out about my current predicament when my father, The Bastard, called her to bitch her out for getting me mixed up in her nonsense and adding to my legal woes. He really can be a giant dick.
Yeah, she's still a little miffed at all the calls she gotten over the past few weeks from all the chicks in bands who called wanting the record deal I promised them for services they provided during the big annual music festival. Her standard response: "He promised you what? Well darling, the name of the label is SCREWED RECORDS, so you might just be screwed, but go ahead and send me your demo and I'll give it a listen."
She's cool and all and doesn't let my father, The Bastard, bring her down either. Being his second and youngest sibling, she accepts him for the ego-maniac he is.
She once told me that being mad at the way my father, The Bastard, acts is like being mad at the sun if you get sunburned. It's the fucking Sun. You know it's out there. You know it's going to burn you. It's not the Sun's fault, it is just its nature. It's you own damn fault if you leave yourself exposed for too long. And as she is my father's, The Bastard, youngest sibling like me we both grew up in a world that revolved around him.
She knows a lot about that, you know the Sun and all. She inherited Grandma Milly's, God rest her soul, skin condition. An experimental treatment she underwent in the late 1950's managed to clear it up, but it left her with a complexion that is literally ghostly white, almost like the face of a mime. As a result of the treatment, the slightest exposure to the rays of the Sun cause her skin to fry like bacon on a Saturday morning. And of course, after the first family vacation in the early 60's at the Florida beach house we used to own, Old Grandad sued the hack doctor and sucked a couple more millions for the family fortune from his malpractice insurance. I've seen the snapshots in the family album. Aunt Olphelia did vaguely resemble the perfect pork accompaniment to a couple of eggs over easy with a side of hash browns.
Aunt Olphelia was born in 1947. Old Grandad blamed her conception on a business trip to Mexico where he discovered a then local cocktail, the margarita, that was quickly becoming all the rage. Subsequently, she was coming of age when the whole hippie movement was coming to fruition. She became the ultimate hippie.
Some might think it odd, perhaps oxymoronic, that a woman born into the height of establishment power and privilege could be a true hippie. She explained this apparent contradiction to me once during my teen years in a smoky San Francisco bar. She considered herself to be the ultimate hippie. Because she had a world of affluence and influence she had the most to rebel against. Not that she was foolish enough to turn her back on the family money. She recognized that poverty was one flaw in the whole hippie scene.
Being the ultimate hippie, she embraced the whole hippie free love thing with all the passion that we Barringtons show in all our pursuits. Few know this, but her zest for this lifestyle has earned her a couple of places in the history of that era.
In order to more fully explain I need to back up a bit. As the sole daughter in one of America's richest families, Aunt Olphelia never had a desire that went unfulfilled. Both Old Grandad, and Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, doted on her every whim. And as a child, Aunt Olphelia's most common whim was food. She grew up to be a rather large woman. The long and free-flowing multi-colored hippie skirts and dresses that were the style at the time were not at all flattering to her full figure. Many thought she resembled a tent dressed in that garb. This earned her the odd and unflattering nickname of "Hippie Campground", because dozens if not hundreds of unwashed and unshorn young men spent nights beneath the free flowing folds of her dresses.
In 1964, in order to escape what Old Grandad believed to be the coming destruction of America caused by the impending 1960's counter-culture movement, he moved his illicit and adulterous affairs from his penthouse apartment on the 13th floor of The Barrington Building in Midtown Manhattan to a more secluded lake house in upstate New York. I guess he watched the press coverage of The Beatles first trip to America and didn't like what he saw. In 1965, 17 year-old Aunt Olphelia first exercised her independence and moved in.
Old Grandad had a back entrance installed in his penthouse suite, an express elevator that went from ground level to the 13th floor. Aunt Olphelia took full advantage of this to transform Old Grandad's former love nest into her own.
Aunt Olphelia has exceptional skill, and yes it was an incredibly awkward moment when she explained it to me, at the practice in the um, shall we say, performing a certain sex act. Ah hell, let me just come out and say it. Aunt Olphelia is a master of the skin flute. At the time she greatly enjoyed, and from what I have heard still does, bringing musicians into her home atop the Barrington building with this elevator to indulge her physical passions. As the elevator was going up, she was going down. She prided herself on her skill to cause her companion to reach the top at the same time as the elevator. One traveling hippie musician was so impressed he named his band in honor of Aunt Olphelia.
Additionally, a very famous group from that era originally named one of their big hits in her honor. It was only after Old Grandad had his lawyers send threatening cease and desist letters to the record label that they changed the name of the song to what we all know: Cecilia.
posted by dr noyz @ 11:17 PM
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