barrington blues

@coltbarrington

2010-12-09T01:10:00.004-06:00

falls asleep tonight listening to the sound of the of the police helicopter that has been circling around the neighborhood for the past hour or so

yeah, howard jones was wrong

things will not only get better

@coltbarrington

2010-12-09T00:37:00.002-06:00

sits and watches cable tv news actors playing radical terrorists get investigated and interviewed by other actors playing the role of journalists

grand theatre with great infographics

real world update, part twelve

2007-04-23T17:02:00.000-06:00

A secret plan is now revealed. . .

So I'm just standing, ya know, stoned drunk and dumbfounded smack fucking dab in the middle of two evils wondering which is the lesser. Adelstein is on my left, reclined on my sofa and drinking my liquor. He got hair goo on my Bose earphones.

Adelstein is a greasy mother fucker. He's vindictive as hell, a squirrely mean little weasel. He connives and he schemes. He slithers.

On my right side, Richardson has taken up residence. His jacket is now off completely and haphazardly hangs on the back of a dining room chair. He sits to its right at the table facing me but slightly askew. There are the three folders, a laptop, a printer, and an increasingly growing pile of what looks like newspaper clippings and stories downloaded from internet news sites that he keeps pulling from pockets in his jacket, from his pants, from every nook and cranny of both his briefcase and he the laptop case. It appears haphazard, but I suspect their is a system.

Richardson is a crafty bastard. Awkward as all fuck in person but when it came to organizing, manipulating, spinning, twisting or outright fabricating numbers and data, Richardson was strong slick and smooth. Put him in a data stream and it's like fighting a croc in the water. It's violent, it's bloody, and you know you're gonna fucking lose. He tends to be gruff, and he bitches a lot. But I've known him since I was a kid, so for me there is also a kinda curmudgeonly uncle quality to him. We share the belief that people are stupid, 'cuz they are. He's a complete fucking mess on the outside, but inside his mind is a master of organization and planning.

Which way to turn?

I settle on Richardson because, like I said, we've got this pseudo-familial thing going on. I take a couple of steps and sit down at the table, "What the fuck, man?"

He tells me I am thoroughly screwed: legally, socially, and eventually physically.

Between drags on those awful Benson & Hedges cigarettes he's smoking he explains to me that for the past five weeks copies of the documents in those two folders we're freely circulated through the best and brightest criminal law firms on the entire Eastern seaboard, from New York to Miami. He shows me a website some Harvard Law students created where they posted the documents along with a real time message forum, e-mail and IM services. They reviewed precedent and argued minutia. Eventually over 1500 possible solutions to my current problems were posted from all over the world. They debated, they argued, they strategized.

Some seemed to be created by drunken fraternity brothers with obvious repressed latent homosexual urges.

Most however were created and posted by the perceived cream of the criminal law crop of all ages, experience, and levels of skill. It is widely believed that whoever pulls my tight white hot ass from the stone of a certain conviction serving serious time will be crowned King of the Defense Lawyers.

As a related issue he relayed to me the details of my current odds at a dozen or so underground off-shore on-line gambling websites. He clicked and tapped and then turned the laptop back so that I could see the screen. I could clearly see that the numbers were overwhelmingly stacked against me, but there was still heavy betting on both sides. Side bets has arisen covering issues such as "how much time will he get?" to "What color tie will the judge be wearing on the day the verdict comes in?"

I'm suitably impressed. My Father, The Bastard, has not forsaken me. It would have taken months and a small army of bureaucrats to do all that shit. But then again, my Father, The Bastard, has never been known to spare any expense to preserve and protect the family name.

"Well, what's the outcome?" I ask.

"Sadly, but not surprising, at least not to me," he pauses briefly for dramatic effect, "the consensus is that you had better not drop the soap in the shower.

"Well shit." I suddenly begin feel heavy from the gravity of my situation.

"That's why we decided to go nuclear. We have created a hydrogen bomb of a plan. Its execution all but guarantees our mutally assured destruction. However, like Obi Wan, it is our only hope."

"I see."

I get up and shuffle across the floor over to Adelstein on my sofa. I kick him softly yet sternly and grab the vodka bottle from his hand while ripping the iPod headphones from his greasy head, "Get your ass in here. Sounds like there's fucking work to do."

He groans and begrudingly sits up.

I walk back across the room and sit back down at my once pristine imported Italian glass dining room table, now covered with my unfulfilled fate in document form. I grab a smoke from Richardson and spark it up. As I exhale my first deep drag right into Richardson's face, I raise the bottle and give it good three count chug. He sits there silent and stoic, with a well-practiced patience at not giving into the rage caused by a tantruming petulant child.

Adelstein gets up like a punished dog. He walks across the room and stops in the doorway. He leans against the frame and looks at Richardson with a knowing grin.

Richardson continues, "and it just might be crazy enough to work."

real world update, part eleven

2007-04-16T22:33:00.000-06:00

So um, it's Saturday night a little after 11:00. I'm standing at my open door looking out at two tired looking guys in suits holding luggage. I stand there for a moment simply staring and somewhat numb from the vodka.

One of them, the older fella, sighs a greeting, "Hey Colt, your father called. He sent us down from the corporate office. . . "

I slam the door in his face.

And wait. And wait.

There is another knock. I open the door. "From the office? I gave at the fucking office."

Slam.

Again I wait. And wait. And wait.

Hmm, testing their patience, or mine?

Either way, who really cares? I know the bastards aren't going away. My father's, The Bastard, dogs are more persistent than the fucking cops. They oughta be, they get paid a buttload more.

I open the door. The older fella pushes past me into my home, "Colt, we don't have time for. . . "

"Don't have time? Don't have time!" I feel myself growing belligerent, that's definitely the vodka. "Look at this thing on my fucking ankle. I'm not going fuckin' anywhere! I've got all the time in the world."

"Exactly. Now let's get to work."

The other fella struts past me and now both men are standing in my luxurious hi-rise condo looking out my beautiful windows at my marvelous views of downtown. I close the door and stand there staring in bewilderment. Damn that vodka. Eventually the younger dude, Adelstein, gently drops his bags into an out of the way corner. It seems as though he is saying something like, "Yo Colt! Wha'dup dahg? I really dig your crib. Pour me a drink! Where dem honeys at?"

I say "seems as though" and "something like" because either from the vodka or from that last big hit I took off the stash Diego left or probably both, he sounds a whole lot like that fucking teacher in those Peanuts cartoons. Shit man. You're already annoying. Just shut the fuck up. And no, I don't know why he talks like that.

But he just keeps jabbering away about partying in the ATX and hooking up with fly ass bee-otches or some such crap, looking at me with this dumbass look on his face like I'm a Santa Claus or Jesus or a fucking rock star. Cripes man, it's not like I'm Diamond Dave in his prime or anything.

And he just won't shut the fuck up. I just turn and walk away.

And while the younger fella's justa jabbering, the older fella, Richardson, quietly sets his stuff down on my imported Italian glass dining room. He sets up a laptop, plugs in a printer and wanders into the kitchen. I try to tell him that my house is not his fucking office and to get his crap off my table but he ignores me.

I hear him shuffling through my kitchen cabinets and drawers, banging around in there. Richardon hollers out "Is there no fucking coffee? Cripes, man! What a fucking crock of shit!" I hear him rip the cellophane off a pack of smokes and the sound of a Zippo clicking. In a few moments the air fills with unforgettable stench of those cheap ass Benson & Hedges cigarettes he started smoking in the 1970's after their marketing campaign convinced him it was classy.

The poor old fool. I hear him fumble through the fridge, virtually empty except for a few styrofoam takeout trays with leftovers from that yuppie hole. He is still cussing about the lack of coffee. Eventually he settles for a glass of water from the tap. He walks out of the kitchen, a lit cigarette hanging from his lips, his water in one hand and a dirty bowl he got from the sink that he has already begun using as an ashtray in the other. He carefully places them on the table. He sits down at the table in front of the laptop. As he sits he loosens both his red silk company tie and his belt with the corporate logo buckle. I don't know if he wear all that corporate logo shit because it's part of his uniform, if he actually thinks it looks good, or if he is just a cheap-ass sorry bastard and he gets the company swag for free. He's a fucking tax lawyer by training, so I betting on the last one.

Richardson leans over, opens his briefcase on the floor and pulls out two folders. He meticulously sets them down side by side on the table. One folder is green. The other is red. He explains to me that the green folder contains something he calls "evidence for the defense". The red one contains documents he calls "evidence for the prosecution". It's three or four inches thicker than the green one. You can clearly see the case against me has got girth, baby, girth. But really now, who really believes what you read anymore. So whatever man, whatever.

I look back in my living room, and Adelstein has settled onto my sofa, shoes off and reclined. He has put on my iPod and while jamming out to something I can't hear he chugs heartily from my bottle of Grey Goose. It seems he also has made himself quite at home.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" I speak in a low controlled scream.

"Why Colt, we're here to help you."

"I know that. But specifically, what the fuck are you doing in my house?"

"Helping you. Your father gave us specific instructions to find a way out of your current legal entanglements. And he also refused to sign off on an expense account. He said you got plentya room in your three bedroom condo. We're staying with you."

"Holy fucking shit. The bastard."

The conversation flows like that for several minutes. I'm cursing my fate and my father, The Bastard, and Richardson keeps babbling on about the job he's here to do and how I'm stuck with them.

While I'm ranting, Richardson pulls out one more folder, a standard plain manila folder. He sets it down by the other two. "So what's that one for?" I ask.

Richardson picks it up so I can read the hand-written label on the tab: 'PLAN B'. "This is what we do if Plan A" he says while gesturing at the colored folders, "doesn't work." He shifts his grip slightly and one side of the folder falls open.

It is empty.

Mother fucker.

real world update, part ten

2007-04-15T14:38:00.000-06:00

The corporate calvary my father, The Bastard, sent to my aid has arrived. They showed up on my doorstep last night.

Last night as I was about to go to bed I hear a knock on my door.

I open the door slowly and see two tired looking guys in wrinkled suits standing there with briefcases and overnight bags slung over their shoulders. They have almost identical red ties and both have little golden bolt pins of the company logo on their lapels.

Sometimes my father, the Bastard, really is a prick. Is this his idea of a joke?

These are the allegedly top notch guys my father, The Bastard, sent to help me in my current predicament? Cripes man, is he just yankin' my chain?

Unfortunately the men need no introduction. I've known them both for years. I can't say I'm happy to see them. They are not exactly knights in shining armor.

One of the guys is Jacob Adelstein. They say he's family, but I'm not sure how. I think he's like a cousin or something on my mom's side of the family. He's around my age, I think a few years younger. I've seen him hanging out at large family events for years. He might be family, but he's not close enough to get a piece of the family pie. Having not being close enough to be given a piece of the pie he's trying to earn it by working for Barrington Industries. He's one of the herd of business lawyers who works on contracts for the company.

Don't go thinkin' I know all that because I care or know or even know that much about him or the family business. My only concern for the family business is that the monthly checks keep coming. As for knowing about him, well. . .

He's the kind of guy you always try to avoid, but somehow Jacob always found a way to slither up to me at family gatherings and make casual chit-chat. And by chit-chat I mean him blathering on while I politely smile and nod until I can find a socially polite way to walk away. His hair and demeanor are dark and slick and his shoes are as polished as his personality. He's an ingratiating little weasel, generally over eager to suck-up to me. My Lord, is he ever annoying.

And he's standing at my front door.

The other guy is Don Richardson. I've known him since I was a kid because he works for my father, The Bastard. He was usually the guy that answered when I tried to call my dad growing up. In a weird way that makes him almost more of a father. He's a tax attorney by trade. He exploited some loophole in business tax law during the 1970's that saved The Company millions and millions. As a reward, my father, The Bastard, promoted him to his personal staff as one of his chief assistants. As near as I can tell he hasn't done dick since.

I always got the impression that he was so surprised by his original success he was too scared to move lest he screw things up. Plus he's spent the better part of the past thirty years working directly under my father, The Bastard. The experience has left him as submissive and loyal as a beaten old dog. I would guess he's probably somewhere in his mid 50's, although the stress of spending his prime years working for my father, The Bastard, makes him look like an older man. I hear he's divorced. He should have retired years ago but they say he's got another 10 or so years of child support to cover.

These are the guys that are here to save me?

Great, fucking great.

I'm doomed.

real world update, part nine

2007-04-15T10:50:00.000-06:00

So last night about 11:00 or so I'm just chillin' at my pad, because as I've said earlier, I can't going any fucking where.

For a day at home it had been a surprisingly pleasant day. Early in the afternoon I called the manager at that yuppie hole and had him send me some lunch. 45 minutes later Diego shows up with this salmony thing in a styrofoam box, a bottle of Grey Goose, and a bag of weed. He tells me the booze and the grass will help me pass the time until I am released back into the world. Damn, Diego really is a good guy.

Maybe I'm actually feeling isolated, maybe I'm just bored, whatever the reason I invite him in. I pour a couple drinks from the vodka and load a bowl in a small pipe I keep in a desk drawer. We mostly just sit, sipping vodka and passing the pipe while Radio Paradise plays on my iMac. Maybe that's why I kinda like Diego, like me he also appreciates the silent camaraderie of men.

Soon the drinks are gone and the bowl is empty. Diego says something about having to go back to work. I don't know it it's the warmth from the vodka or the buzz of the grass, I guess I'm just feeling generous. I pull two C-notes from my wallet and hand them to him, telling him here's a little something extra for the family fund. Diego thanks me, says God will bless me, and leaves.

God will bless me? Whatever.

I mostly just chill on the sofa or hang out at MySpace while listening to music, sipping the Grey Goose and loading the occasional bowl. As the afternoon melts into the night I find myself with one hell of a righteous buzz.

Well, drunk and stoned inevitably leads to what? We've all been there, you know the answer. That's right, drunk and stoned leads to hungry and horny. So I call the manager at that yuppie hole and place an order. An hour and a half goes by, which is an unacceptable amount of time considering who the fuck I am. I don't give a rat's ass if Saturday is a busy night. Barringtons are not to be kept waiting. Next time I talk to the manager at that yuppie hole he will certainly get an earful about improving service for the important customers.

Finally there's a knock on my door. It's the Hot Waitress with the rockabilly tattoos and the small diamond stud in her nose.

Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom! Another hour and a half goes by and she leaves with a generous tip after completely satiating all my appetites. Sometimes it doesn't suck to be me even if I can't leave the house.

Which brings me back to where I started. It's about 11:00 on a Saturday night and much to my surprise I am actually contemplating going to bed, because really now, what is left for me to do today? I'm feeling drunk, stoned and spent.

There is another, this time unexpected knock on my door.

Hmmm, who could that be? As I walk across the room I briefly entertain the inebriated fantasy that the manager of the yuppie hole sent another hot waitress with desert to make up for the slow service earlier. I can always go another round.

No such luck. I open the door and see two men in wrinkled suits standing there with tired expressions. They both carry briefcases and have hanging luggage bags slung over their shoulders.

The corporate calvary my father, The Bastard, is sending has arrived.

family history, part thirteen

2007-04-13T23:17:00.000-06:00

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.

real world update, part eight

2007-04-10T22:48:00.000-06:00

So it's like going on what, an eternity or a couple weeks or something, after my last court hearing where that asshole judge sentenced me to this crazy weird Max Headroom version of the old ball and chain.

What a mother-fucking-cock-sucking-festering-pus-filled-prick.

Cripes man, if a judge can't handle it when you refer to him as Your Well-Hungness because he thinks its a crack at that whole "is he naked under the robe thing?" (apparently this judge is not).

I meant it as a compliment. I mean really, it would take a couple of grapefruits down there to be a judge wouldn't it?

But the asshole apparently didn't see things the same as I, so here I sit, in my luxury high-rise condo overlooking downtown. I am virtually chained to the phone by some little box the bastards installed. Apparently if I wander more than three feet out my front door it calls The Man and tells him I'm stepping out.

This is something I am allowed to to do twice weekly, to attend to my court ordered therapy sessions with my court ordered therapist, the prick.

To add further insult to injury, the asshole judge also suspended my fucking license and impounded my car to try to make sure I don't drive. You got that? The asshole judge impounded my car! He said something about "evidence blah blah blah". The sight of seeing my ultra-luxurious European sports car being towed off by a couple of Bubbas in ripped shirts like a common Ford or something from an expired meter was almost as grievious a mental blow as the moment that deputy slapped this contraption around my ankle. If those bastards put one scratch in the high-gloss finish gently buffed by the delicate hands of petite Asian women with hand woven silk polishing clothes, why I swear I'll tear someone a new one.

So for the moment, I am walking. The therapist's office is only a dozen or so blocks from my condo, near the other edge of downtown. Walking gives me some opportunity to be out and interact with people. While the pants leg of my Armani suit conceals the hellish device on my ankle, it does nothing to conceal the GPS eye in the sky that watches and tracks my every move. Twice now just for fun I have called the local police and been patiently bounced through their phone system until I get to speak to the desk jockey cop whose job it is to monitor me and make sure I don't go astray. I pretend I'm lost and use him as kind of a personal OnStar to safely guide me to my destination. What a hoot.

And none of that makes it any fucking better. What the fuck is wrong with this country.

House arrest is what they call it. House arrest? Don't they know who they're fucking dealing with here? I'm not some God-damned whiny-ass Nobel Fucking Peace Prize Winner. I'm a Barrington.

The Man's got me caged like a wild fucking animal.

And man, and am I ever ready to prowl and pounce.

I'm single. I'm filthy rich. I'm insanely attractive.

And those are just three of the reasons why the judge is full of shit.

As for the shyster? What a worthless pile of dung he's turned out to be. It's his mother-fucking fault things went so horribly awry at my last hearing. He told me to sit down and shut the hell up as soon as I began ranting. He just didn't say it loud enough.

I must confess, I did go a little nuts on his ass after that fat deputy snapped the lock on that thing on my fucking ankle. But c'mon, he's a lawyer. I didn't think they had feelings. Or souls.

Turns out, I may have been wrong.

I spent about ten minutes pacing around this conference room in the courthouse doing some exaggerated broken leg stagger on account of the ankle monitor, all the while screaming out a string of obscenities that would have made the most hardened marine blush. Every one was directed at the shyster. The fucking twat. My daddy's not paying his daddy's law firm $500 an hour for this shit.

He quit. He mumbled something about not having graduated near the top of his class at Stanford to put up with my shit for any price and walked out the door.

I'm not worried about it. He's hardly the first allegedly top notch lawyer that hasn't had the balls to stick with me through difficult situations.

The sucky part is I had to call my father, The Bastard, and tell him the shyster quit. It was a challenge to get a hold of my father, The Bastard. He's currently in the Dominican Republic, officially on business, but the only business he's tending to is the same business that other rich asshole white guys go there to take care of.

When I finally reached him, after he was through laughing, he told me to relax and sit tight, he'd take care of things and hung up. He called me back about 10 minutes later and said that he was reassigning a couple of guys from corporate to come down and clear this whole thing up. He said they had a couple of loose ends from previous business to tie up and that they would be in town by the end of the week.

So for the moment I am waiting in my electronic prison.

Since I can't go out and mingle with the beautiful people in the real world, I have decided to do so in a virtual one. I have been busy hanging out and meeting hotties on MySpace. Like using your hand, which I haven't had to do in about twenty years, it's just not the same. But for now sadly, my options are limited.

real world update, part seven

2007-04-03T23:12:00.000-06:00

Okay, um, so like The Man sucks ass.

There I said it. Take that Mister High and Mighty Judge.

Oh yeah, one more thing. . . go fuck yourself.

I had a court hearing last week, a review of sorts, so the judge could evaluate my "progress" with the court ordered therapist, the prick, and determine whether or not to allow me to continue my probation on the good side of the steel bars. All was going well. It was just another routine jump through the hoops to appease The Man so he leaves me the fuck alone for another month and I can go on living my life as I please as a prisoner of this fucking city.

As I said, all was going well. . .

The judge is literally seconds away from pounding his gavel to end the damn hearing. All is fine, stay the course, blah blah continue my therapy sessions blah blah blah community service blah blah blah.

Whatever dude. I still think the shyster could have, should have, gotten me a better deal in the first place. But whenever I say that the shyster reminds me about my circumstances and the drugs those asshole cops found in the trunk of my luxury sports sedan. Of course the drugs were inevitably ruled inadmissible. There is a reason why my father, The Bastard, is is paying the shyster's father's law firm around $500 an hour plus expenses. However, the best legal representation money can buy can't change the fact that despite what it read on their fake IDs, the girls were high school seniors at the time of my alleged infraction.

It cost my father, The Bastard, signifcantly more than what he's paying the shysters to minimize my family name in the legitimate press following my arrest. Tabloids always hound the rich, famous and attractive. We Barrington's are no more concerned with them than those at a picnic are concerned about mosquitos. They are an unavoidable annoyance to be swatted if they get to close.

But the legitimate mainstream press is another issue entirely. Those bastards aren't mosquitos, they're a pack of rabid wolves. And once they get a taste of blood. . .

I'm sure you remember how proud Old Grandad was of our family name. There was nothing Old Grandad hated more than to see his name printed outside of the business or society pages in the Old Gray Lady.

My father, the Bastard, inherited his fierce protection of the family name from his father, Old Grandad. And like Old Grandad, he is also a philandering asshole, but that is a story for another time.

Don't think for a minute, because I sure as hell don't, that any of my ongoing legal drama has anything to do with me in my father's eyes. I truly believe my father, The Bastard, doesn't care dick about me. He'd throw me to the wolves in a heartbeat if he could do it without tarnishing the legacy of his name. But he can't. So fuck him. Let him spend a small chunk of the family fortune protecting his name's legacy for the ages.

You want truth? How much truth can you afford? The rich and the powerful have always had the ability to bend and define reality to their liking, whether it be through the construction of grand monuments or purchasing permanent obfuscation. Google my name if you doubt me. Or try to find mention of my arrest in the news.

Now I'm ranting. My court ordered therapist, the prick, tells me that I do that when an issue strikes close to the bone. I usually just tell him to fuck off.

Anyways, the asshole judge is dramatically raising his gavel in the air, as he often does when he thinks he is going to make some grand pronouncement or dramatic point. What a douche.

And this intern law student in the DA's office who is looking to make a name for herself walks in. She's looking way hot. Damn, what is it about a red-headed woman in a department store business suit that makes me all a quiver? I've seen her before, she's been at all my court proceedings. I was planning on banging her.

I am still planning on banging her, and because I'm a Barrington, single, and insanely attractive it is a certainty that I will. But now I will sadly do it more out of spite than for the sheer joy of doing it that it should inevitably be. You might wonder what's the difference. Le'me tell ya. . .

If I bang her out of spite, I don't offer to buy her breakfast in the morning and she's got to pay her own cab fare home.

So anyways, this smokin' hot red-headed law school intern in a department store business suit walks in with a recent issue of SPIN magazine, you know, the one with the coverage of the recent big annual music festival, tucked under her arm. I swear she walks in slow motion like in some TV shampoo ad to the prosecutor's table across the aisle from where I sit with the shyster.

She puts the magazine on the table, opens it, points and speaks in hushed tones to the asshole assistant district attorney who is covering The Man's side in this hearing.

The asshole assistant D.A. slowly stands up, "Your Honor, there are new . . . "

Before he can finish the sentence the shyster leaps up screaming "Objection! Objection!" Damn is he ever quick. Guess that's one of the reasons he gets paid so much.

The law school intern chick glances and moves closer to me with seductive coyness while lifting and tilting the magazine so I can see what she's pointing at. Yeah, she wants me.

She's pointing at a large photo of the next big thing, Nirvana 2.0 or whoever the fuck it is, hanging out after their critic fellating gig at some local hotspot. I recognize the band because I was at the show.

I also recognize the image of myself, clearly visible standing at the bar in the background of the photo. I have a beer in one hand and a blonde in the other.

I'm not really sure what all happened next because it happened both really fast and in that weird slow motion way that you experience bad things.

The outcome is that a judge who was already pissed off about what he perceives to be my exploitation of his previous generousity thinks I am further taking advantage of his good nature.

He is not a happy camper.

It is a sad day when you find yourself a defendant in the courtroom of an angry judge.

That was last week.

Right now I am sitting on my high-rise condo balcony, overlooking the city in the cool breeze of spring time evening. It is a glorious night.

Except for the electronic monitor strapped to my ankle that will alarm if I step more than three feet out my front door.

Fucking judge.

real world update, part six

2007-03-22T23:08:00.000-06:00

I'm finally spending a quiet night at home, although I can't say I'm enjoying it. The sounds of a spring night in the city beckon me as they drift up to my hi-rise condo balcony, but I will not heed their call tonight. I'm feeling a little worn out, with perhaps a bit of a bug coming on.

I guess I've just been working too hard.

Cripes, what a laugh. Sometimes I just crack myself up.

I'm a fourth generation Barrington. I don't work. Life is for living, not working. Work is for people that are going somewhere. I'm already there.

Officially, for tax purposes I think, although I've never paid squat to any of that boring shit, I am employed by Barrington Industries International Incorporated. I have an office. Or that's what they tell me. I've never been. I'm not even sure where it is. Who really needs an office anyways nowadays, with all this wireless digital internet shit going on all around you. I suppose if one must work, I don't see why you couldn't do it from anywhere. And it seems as though that is something I see people doing in coffee shops and airport terminals.

As for me well, like I've said, I'm not into working. I'm into living.

Last week was giant annual international music festival week. Every hotel room in town was full of music industries weasels. Every cheap no-tell motel in town was full of wannabe rock stars packed in as tight as their gear in the dilapidated vans they drove for hours to get here from wherever kids grow up with dreams and guitars.

Everynight the bars were full of exotically beautiful pierced and tattooed women with both piercings and tattoos in places you'd think would be quite painful to pierce or tattoo.

Sometimes when you go fishing, you just want 'em to jump on the hook.

I'm already filthy rich, single, and insanely attractive. And before I continue with this fishing metaphor, le'me tell ya straight up do I ever have a pole. My hook was the official conference laminate name badge I wore that listed me as "President of A & R / New Artist Development, SCREWED RECORDS".

Five straight nights: "yeah, oh yeah, I loved your set. . . a little lower. . . you sounded great. . . ooh, nice twirl. . . yes, ah ah killer riffs. . . that's the spot. . . sure, baby sure. . . ah, a little less teeth. . . sign your band. . . yeah baby yeah, that's it. . . yes! Um, yeah, okay, here's my card, call my office next Monday. Talk to my secretary, Olphelia, and she'll schedule a meeting to finalize the paperwork."

My Aunt Olphelia hates when I do that.

Aunt Olphelia was a drugged up burned out hippie when she saw The Ramones play at CBGB's in the 70's. She had grown tired of Old Grandad's lectures about wasting her life and becoming a productive member of society. In part because she didn't want to hear anymore of Old Grandad's shit and in part because she was inspired by the band, she decided to start a record label. She's a Barrington, so it's not like money was a problem.

In 1977 Screwed Records was born. It's been both her passion and her profession. Over the past thirty years she's signed dozens if not hundreds of bands that nobody's never heard of. Poor Aunt Olphelia, she's got the passion for music, just not the sense or talent to recognize when it sucks.

Anyway, she has been in town for the past coupla weeks. Every year she comes to the big music festival and she gets me a badge saying that I work for her label. We hang out and drink and schmooze with the other music industry weasels who are in town.

Yesterday she flew back to New York.

Again I find myself alone in the world, run down and worn out.

Not that I care.

family history, part twelve

2007-03-15T23:13:00.000-06:00

Or if you prefer, the wedding, part three. . .

So it came to pass that Roosevelt Barrington, my father, The Bastard, found himself climbing down a dingy elevator shaft with a cracked and dimming flashlight in Old Grandad's, his father's, office building during a freak power outage that apparently impacted the entire city of New York. He never was a very lucky bastard. Or at least he was never the lucky part.

He was climbing down to meet his soon to be bride, Catherine Adler, my mother, so that the wedding could proceed.

This was at the insistence of Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, who was drunk and hopped up on morphine. By this time in her life she had already turned to both narcotics and alcohol to help her cope with Old Grandad's assholish and philandering ways. She nervously drained the silver flask of vodka she kept in her purse as soon as the lights went out. In her altered state she was certain that the plunge into darkness signaled the end of the world was at hand and that this was God's punishment for allowing her eldest son, whom she believed to be as devout in her Christian beliefs as was she, to marry a Jew. While most by today's standards might find this shocking, or even offensive, you can not fault Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, for her beliefs. If you try you to do so I will see your ass in court and you will be writing me a big check. Just ask those bottom feeding scum sucking bastards at the National Enquirer about what happened to them in the 90's if you doubt me.

As the daughter of an influential U.S. Senator, Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, had grown up in a very conservative household. You were either saint or sinner, there was no doubt in her mind as to which side you were on. In time she grew to view and love Catherine, my mother, as a second daughter who was never as disappointing as her biological daughter, my Aunt Olphelia. She once told me she never went to bed without first praying for my mother's unsaved soul.

And besides, Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, had been married to an egocentric, arrogant, domineering, strong-willed man with delusions of grandeur for twenty some years now. She had no fear of a deity with those same characteristics. She was adamant that the wedding proceed, if for no other reason than in her own mind to spite an angry God whose personality as described in her King James Bible bore an almost frightening resemblance to her husband's.

In a rare moment when the two of them actually agreed on something, Old Grandad was equally insistent. He had been working hard to change his anti-Semitic image and was not going to let a little thing like the Great Blackout of 1965 alter his plans. He had a Thursday meeting scheduled with some prestigious East Coast bankers to secure funding for a factory expansion. There was a war brewing and business prospects were looking up. He was certain things would bode better if he could go to the banker meeting as a member of one of their twelve tribes, if only through the marriage of his son.

So Roosevelt went down into the darkness of the elevator shaft.

He slipped once about halfway down on a grease spot on the ladder. He dropped the flashlight, caught himself and cursed the God that made him, banging and bloodying his shin in the process. As the flashlight crashed on top of the elevator car and went out, Catherine screamed hysterically one more time. He let forth a string of expletives that caused both Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, and Granny Adler to blush. After another minute or two he somehow managed to make it safely down and lowered himself into the stranded elevator car where Catherine was waiting by the light of a candle.

Finally, the key players were in place and the wedding that was the pivotal moment in so many lives and the reason for my own was set to occur.

The District Court Judge who was presiding stood at the open elevator door. The assembled guests and family members lined up on either side in the lobby. With the absence of Catherine, my mother, the bride, Uncle Randolph was the most fabulously dressed person in the room. He stood next to the Judge, as did the Best Man whose name I can't recall. They acted as surrogates for the ceremony.

By now the patience of all, as well as his own time had grown short. The District Court Judge knew that with the power out the looting was already underway and he was in for a long night as New York's finest did their best to stem the tide of criminality that was in danger of engulfing The City. The District Court Judge skipped over the formalities and went straight to the "Do you take this . . . " part of the ceremony.

From below in the stranded elevator, Roosevelt, my father, The Bastard, and Catherine, my mother, shouted up their "I do's".

When the Judge said, "you may now kiss the bride", Uncle Randolph, Handy Randy, lept in his high heels and designer gown upon the Best Man and embraced him with both arms and lips. The two men tumbled to the floor in the lobby as the Best Man squirmed to get away.

Old Grandad groaned with both relief and disgust as he turned towards The Retired Colonel. Old Grandad swiped a newly opened bottle of Kentucky bourbon from The Retired Colonel's hand. He took several hearty swigs as he walked across the room holding the bottle in one hand and twirling his walking stick with the other. He fumbled with his keys for a moment then disappeared inside The Club.

As he went in, Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, loudly praised Jesus. Whether it was because her husband had left or her son was married we will never know. Old Man Adler continued to stand there with a confused look on his face, wondering if now that he was part of the family he should follow Old Grandad. The Retired Colonel gave him a slight gentleman's nod and the two men walked across the room, through the door, and into The Club.

From down below the stranded sounds of Catherine, my mother, and Roosevelt, my father, The Bastard, consumating their new union could already be heard. What else is there for a couple of newlyweds to do while stuck in an elevator?

Nine months later, in August 1966, my older brother Rupert was born.

family history, part eleven

2007-03-15T09:38:00.001-06:00

Or if you prefer, the wedding, part two. . .

After 10 or so minutes, the heavy wooden door that marked the official entrance to The Club could be heard to unlock and slowly open as Old Grandad and The Retired Colonel returned to the oversized elevator lobby where the wedding of Roosevelt Barrington, my father, The Bastard, and Catherine Adler was to occur.

By this time those assembled in the darkness of the lobby had either run out of matches or burned the fluid in their lighters, so the room was dark save for two candles at the front near the makeshift alter. The room was cast in their eery flickering shadows.

The Retired Colonel carried a box with a eight half-burned large red candles, an old oil lantern that was almost full, a dim flashlight with a cracked lens and a ball of twine. Old Grandad carried a black walking stick with a gold plated bulldog at it's head and a brass paw on the end that he kept in his private office. He enjoyed waving it around during business meetings as a way to intimidate and make emphatic points. He also found it calming to turn and stroke it gently it during stressful moments.

The Best Man whose name I can't recall made a lame joke wondering about what sort of arcane and occult rituals the candles were used for in the privacy of The Club. He was immediately shut up and stared down by the icy glare of both Old Grandad and The Retired Colonel.

Within a few moments the candles and the lantern were lit, the knocked over furniture was picked up and folks just kinda stood milling around. Granny Adler sat on a wooden folding chair, panting and weeping with frosting in her hair and holding the broken pieces of the cake topper in her cake covered lap.

While he was in The Club, Old Grandad went to his private office and phoned his contact in the Mayor's office. Back in those days, the phones were separate circuits from the power and were thankfully still operational. His contact was the secretary to an assistant mayor. He had been banging her for years and using her both physically for his pleasures and intellectually as a mole to provide him with inside information about the dealings and schemes of city government. She told him that they received dozens of reports and that the power was out all over New York, both city and state. They were working on the problem but at present no one knew what had happened.

As Old Grandad found it difficult to believe that such a thing could happen in a great modern industrialized nation, plus he didn't really believe the secretary could be correct. She was after all a woman and he was of the generation that believed in the intellectual inferiority of women. He then phoned a contact in the police department, a Pollock Captain who provided security on the side for events at The Club when The Mayor and other important elected officials were in attendance. The Pollock Captain told him basically the same thing, New York was dark, they were working on it, and to just sit tight and wait.

Old Grandad paced about, waving and stroking his walking stick as he explained this to the group.

Granny Adler began sobbing louder and moaning, "but the wedding, but the wedding." It was then they looked around and began to wonder where was the bride?

All got quiet and looked at the closed doors. From the other side, faint cries and calls for help could barely be heard over the increasing cacophony of a now very chaotic rush hour on the street below. Catherine, my mother, the bride and her father, Old Man Adler were stuck in the elevator. Old Grandad walked across the room and began to beat on the elevator doors with his walking stick. In a minute or two Old Grandad was able to use his walking stick, along with the legs of a folding chair wielded by Roosevelt to pry open the doors. They looked cautiously over the edge and shown the dim flashlight down into the dark shaft. The elevator was stuck, nearly perfectly parked between the ninth and tenth floors. After confirming the bride and Old Man Adler were fine, the guests began to brainstorm a plan to get them out.

A half hour or so of activity passed, and concluded with the sad realization that although they could pry the doors open on the ninth and tenth floor elevator lobbies, the elevator had a second inner security door which could not be unlatched unless it was parked perfectly at floor level. This extra precaution was installed when the building was constructed at the insistence of Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, who had an acute phobia of falling from an elevator.

What to do, oh what to do?

When it looked as though all was lost and the wedding would have to be postponed, Old Man Adler called up. He had managed to remove the access hatch in the ceiling of the elevator, and with a small boost from Catherine he was able to pull and push himself through and was standing on top of the elevator car. With the dim flashlight for guidance he climbed a service ladder on the side of the elevator shaft and in a moment crawled through the open door and stood in the lobby. His crisp black tuxedo was wrinkled. The tuxedo, his face and hands were smeared with grease and grime from the elevator shaft.

Now all that was needed was Catherine, my mother, the bride. She was screaming hysterically about being left alone and in the dark of the stuck elevator car. A brilliant plan was hatched to save both the day and the wedding.

The Retired Colonel took a candle and some matches and tied them to a wooden desk chair. He then tied the rest of the twine to the chair and he carefully unwound it, lowering the whole thing down the elevator shaft. After a couple of noisy tries banging against the top of the elevator, which caused Catherine, my mother, the bride, to scream with fear that the elevator was falling, he was able to get the chair through the open access hole and lowered down into the elevator car.

Now all that remained was for Catherine to light the candle for illumination, stand on the chair, pull herself up through the access hole, climb the ladder into the lobby and marry Roosevelt, my father, The Bastard.

A lit candle popped through the opening followed by Catherine's head. She took one brief look around at the dirt and grime of the elevator shaft then ducked back inside the car. She sat on the chair, crying. She was not about to dirty her beautiful white wedding gown climbing up out of the elevator.

She could not be persuaded. Everyone, except for Granny Adler, who was still struggling to regain both her breath and composure, and her college girlfriends who were still embacing suspiciously, tried to convince her. She was simply just not going to do it.

If Mohammed would not go to the mountain, then the mountain must go to Mohammed.

And so it was that shortly after 7:30 in the evening Roosevelt Barrington, my father, The Bastard, found himself holding a dim flashlight and cautiously climbing down a dark and dingy elevator shaft.

family history, part ten

2007-03-10T09:37:00.000-06:00

Or if you prefer, the wedding, part one. . .

The wedding of Roosevelt Barrington, my father, The Bastard, and Catherine Adler, my mother was scheduled to begin at 5:00 on Tuesday, November 9, 1965. It was a rather early start for an evening wedding, but at the time Granny Adler, my grandmother and the mother of the bride had a nasty case of pleurisy and was generally exhausted and in bed by 7:00.

Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, was still furious with Old Grandad at his refusal to allow the wedding party access to the rest of The Club on account of they were not members and many were women, but she put on her happy face and had done an excellent job overseeing the decoration of the lobby for the ceremony. The lobby looked resplendent with red poinsettias and some little white fancy European imported flowers everywhere. A sort of non-denominational alter by where the bride and groom were to stand for the ceremony was fashioned from a podium pilfered from a conference room on one of the lower floors. A cascading shower of red and white roses gracefully flowed to the floor and was the head of an aisle outlined in white roses and covered in the petals of red ones.

At 5:00 pm sharp, Roosevelt Barrington stood before that alter, his glance going nervously between his watch and the elevator doors at the other end of the room from where his bride was to appear and make her grand entrance. A college buddy whose name I can't remember stood at his side as his Best Man. The two men stood with the District Court Judge who was officiating as a consequence of a losing poker hand to Old Grandad.

Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, Old Grandad, and Aunt Olphelia were seated a few feet away along with a handful of other family members. Many did not come because the short notice of the rescheduling or they shared Grandma Milly's, God rest her soul, anger at Old Grandad for staging a wedding in an elevator lobby.

On the bride's side of the makeshift aisle in the lobby there was only one gold-digging cousin who was hoping to drunkenly score a rich husband at the reception and a couple of college girlfriends who were secretly hoping Catherine would change her mind and choose to return to her college lifestyle. No one else on my mother's side showed because they were angry at Old Grandad for his perceived anti-semitism and morally outraged that so fine a Jewish princess would be allowed by her father to marry into such a family.

The Retired Colonel milled around the side of the room, sipping bourbon from the bottle and watching cigar smoke gently drift through an open window.

Uncle Randolph, in his fabulous gown, stood a the back of the room near the elevator doors along with the Granny Adler. Her pleurisy was really bothering her and she was breathing fast and shallow as a rabbit, trying not to faint from anxiety or exhaustion.

All were staring at the elevator, waiting for the doors to open and for Catherine to appear with her father. They were to make the traditional bridal entrance and follow Granny Adler and Uncle Randolph down the makeshift aisle.

The secretarial pool break room on the third floor had become the bride's dressing room. It was empty of secretaries, as was the remainder of the building of other employees. Old Grandad gave them the afternoon off. All thought it was an act of generosity caused by Old Grandad's joy over the wedding, but in reality he just wanted the building empty so that there would be fewer people to see his son in a dress.

Catherine was down there with a handful of wedding professionals, stylists, designers, make-up artists, etc. preparing for the wedding. Her father, Old Man Adler was waiting patiently in the hallway for his daughter to emerge so that he could escort her in the elevator up to the ceremony.

At 5:07, the elevator doors had yet to open.

5:18, still no Catherine. Roosevelt was nervously sweating and Old Grandad was becoming visibly annoyed at the delay. Catherine's college girlfriends were slightly smirking with delight because they were starting to think that their last minute efforts to dissuade Catherine from marriage and run off with them to the more liberal lands of Europe were successful.

What none knew at the time was that eight floors below, Catherine had leaned over to pick up a dropped comb and had popped a seam in her corset. It was hastily being resown by hand while she was wearing it.

At 5:25 Old Grandad was beginning to get up to go into The Club to slam a scotch and to angrily call down to the third floor to inquire as to the reason for the delay. Suddenly above the dull din of the rush hour traffic drifting up from the streets below, the rumbling sound of a slow old elevator motor was heard. Here comes the bride, here comes the bride.

At 5:27 all the lights went out.

For a moment there was calm. The Retired Colonel looked through the window and could see that it was not just their current location that suddenly went dark. All the lights within his view had gone out: the building across the street, the street and traffic lights below, everything everywhere went black. It looked to him as though the power had just failed in the entire city.

The Retired Colonel had recently read an article informing him that such an event would likely be caused by the electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear attack. He was the first to panic. He began screaming about everyone's doom and those cocksucking commie Russian bastards. He lurched about the darkened room in an arching semi-circular pattern caused by his mostly forgetting to compensate for his shortened wooden leg. He hit a folding chair and crashed to the ground. His bourbon bottle flew from his hand and in a brief moment the room filled with the sound of breaking glass and the smell of whiskey.

Then everyone else began to panic. For the small eternity of several minutes there were screams and the banging sounds of people falling and banging into furniture in the darkness.

Old Grandad continued to just sit there, stoic and motionless like a pot on low heat on the stove. He was now truly irritated and very annoyed. He was not concerned about the threat of global thermonuclear annihilation. He knew that the Russians were just as much into turning a profit as he was. He had been dealing with them for several years through a series of third parties and shell businesses in a handful of small Eastern block nations like Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.They shared the common belief that total mutually assured world destruction would be very very bad for business.

When he reached the boiling point he stood up and raised his voice while he raised a gold-plated Zippo from his pocket. He barked commands, "Quiet! Calm down you damn idiots! We are not doomed!"

He kicked at The Retired Colonel who lie sprawled in the flickering shadows at his feet. "Get up you crazy bastard, and go find us some flashlights or some candles from one of the supply closets in The Club. Anybody else have a lighter? I'm going to go try to figure out what the hell is going on."

With that the room quickly calmed, several people pulled lighters or matches from their pockets. In moments the room was lit with a dozen or so tiny fire lights. People slowly began to recompose themselves and survey their surroundings. All of the chairs and most of the tables had been overturned. The gold-digging cousin and the best man were found in one corner of the room in a rather compromising position. The college girlfriends of Catherine were found in another corner in a similar position. Both couples simultaneously and separately reasoned that if they were going to be vaporized by an impending nuclear holocaust they wanted to get it one one last time before they went.

And Granny Adler, why she was found on top of the wedding cake. In the darkness she tripped into the cake table, causing both her and the cake to fall to the floor. There was frosting in her hair. In her hands she held the shattered pieces of the porcelain bride and groom cake topper. In retrospect, that should have been heeded as an omen.

Old Grandad and The Retired Colonel jingled and juggled keys from their pocket as they approached a door a few feet behind the makeshift podium. Together they walked slowly into The Club, their way illuminated by Old Grandad's golden lighter. You could hear the door locking behind them, the untrusting old bastards.

family history, part nine

2007-03-08T22:15:00.000-06:00

Old Grandad and The Retired Colonel founded the Exclusive Executive Mens' Club following the end of The Second Great War. They founded the club as a haven from the returing riff-raff who thought they were somebody now. While Old Grandad was grateful for the vast expansion of his fortunes caused by The Second Great War, he believed that the actual fighting of it was beneath the dignity of men of proper social standing. Bravery on the battlefield does nothing to compensate for poor breeding. Old Grandad wanted an escape from the returning heroes who presumed to be believe they were now his equal and erroneously believed that having medals compensated for a lack of manners. The Exclusive Executive Men's club was created to achieve this end and to further illustrate the differences between success in commerce and combat.

Old Grandad and The Retired Colonel learned that they were far from alone in this unique line of elite thought. Soon the cream of New York's society were all clamouring for membership.

The Club, as we in the family grew up referring to it, was located on the 12th floor of the Barrington Building in Midtown Manhattan, a few short blocks away from the Empire State Building. When the stock market crashed in 1929, prime real-estate in Manhattan became suddenly much more affordable. Old Grandad decided to move the corporate headquarters of Barrington Industries from suburban Detroit to New York City.

When he arrived in New York City in the spring of 1930, Old Grandad was surprised to learn that DuPont and those other filthy rich East Coast assholes were already in a fierce competition to build the World's Tallest Building. Normally Old Grandad's competitive nature would have caused him to jump right in the fray, but this time he held back. While Old Grandad was incredibly proud of his penis, as is evident by the family motto, his vanity was not so limitless as to cause him to build a giant version of it out of concrete and steel. Plus those other bastards had already hired the best architects and contractors.

He immediately began construction on a surprisingly less ambitious yet more practical project. He commissioned a building with 13 floors. This was done to both flaunt his disbelief in superstition and to exploit the belief of others who were not so enlightened. While not overtly racist, Old Grandad greatly distrusted the Mohawk Indians who did much of the high iron and steelwork in the buildings at the time. He thought them savages, and subsequently was fearful they would attempt acts of sabatoge designed to seek revenge on the white men who stole their lands. Hence the 13 floors. The Indian steelworkers were a superstitious lot, and Old Grandad's ploy worked. Not a single one ever came to the job site seeking employment. Subsequently most of the work was done by gangs of drunken Irishmen. The fact that three or four typically fell to their death each week during the eight months of construction only fueled belief in the superstition. To this day many believe the building to be haunted by the ghosts of inebriated and underpaid workers.

I grew up running around that building and I can tell you that the only drunken Irishmen I ever saw were wandering the lower office floors on St. Patrick's Day.

When The Barrington Building was completed in June 1931, the first 11 floors were dedicated to the various offices required to run a large company. There was the sales floor, the accounts payable floor, the research and development floor, and so on. The top two floors were originally designed as apartments for the family. When Old Grandad founded The Club he remodelled and redesigned the 12th floor for that purpose. He kept the 13th floor for himself as a private penthouse apartment designed to be his personal playground for discretely entertaining his many lady friends away from the prying eyes of Grandma Milly, God rest her soul.

And it was between the smoky oak panelled walls of The Club's lobby on the 12th floor of The Barrington Building that my father, Roosevelt Barrington, The Bastard, was scheduled, some might say destined, to marry Catherine Adler on a November evening in 1965.

family history, part eight

2007-03-06T22:07:00.000-06:00

Uncle Randolph had his orders. He was to board a troop transport bound for 'nam at Andrews Air Force Base at 0600 hours on the morning of Friday, November 12, 1965.

Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, absolutely freaked out. Her darling Randolph was leaving the safety of the states for the risks and horrors of a war zone. She was furious with Old Grandad for letting it happen and putting profit over their son's protection. And oh, the gnashing and wailing of tears when she realized that Randolph would not be at the wedding of Roosevelt and Catherine.

It was going to be beautiful, it was going to be almost perfect, and it was scheduled for December 18. Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, loved Christmas and she loved weddings.

It was bad enough for Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, that the complicated issues of faith involved in the joining of Episcopal and Jewish families had yet to be resolved. The marriage was to be a civil ceremony, performed by a judge in his courtroom.

She had barely recovered from the disappointment that the vain and conceited society women from her church tea circle and Bible class would not be watching with envy from the middle church pews as she went gloriously by in her fabulous designer mother of the groom gown.

Now Uncle Randolph was going to miss it.

And after all she went through arguing and antagonizing Old Grandad to persuade him to allow Uncle Randolph's rather unique role in the first place. She would not allow those efforts to be in vain. Uncle Randolph's absence from the wedding was an affront to the family that Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, would not allow to stand.

So she prodded, poked, persuaded and provoked Old Grandad until he agreed to moving the date and location of the wedding. Calls were made and invitations were hastily remailed. Roosevelt and Catherine were set to be married prior to Uncle Randolph's departure in the lobby of the Exclusive Executive Men's Club.

The wedding was to be held in the lobby, because Old Grandad refused to violate the sanctity of his good ol' boy network and allow women into The Club. Not even for his son's wedding. What a dick.

And then of course, there was the issue of Uncle Randolph.

Uncle Randolph was very excited to learn that his older brother was going to be married. He could not wait to be part of a wedding party. Being the brother of a the groom, you might typically expect him to be a groomsman, or perhaps Best Man even. Not Handy Randy.

He insisted on being a bridesmaid.

Old Grandad was aghast, but again, Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, was insistent. Old Grandad didn't give squat about weddings in the first place, for him they were womenly affairs, and this was only a silly ceremony to seal a business deal. He caved in exchange for peace and quiet at home. He really didn't give a damn who dressed how so long as they kept it out of the papers.

Catherine, my mother, was almost as excited as Randolph at his wish to be a bridesmaid. The two had developed a close relationship during the course of her courtship with my father, The Bastard. She considered Randolph to be the sister she never had.

Catherine, my mother, always had an affinity for those types of people, you know, the homosexuals. She seemed quite empathetic to their plight. This really comes as no surprise. After all, she went to Vassar.

(A couple years back when my siblings and I finally got around to sorting through her things, we found an old shoebox buried behind a stack of sweaters in the back of her bedroom closet. The shoebox was full of old letters. Those letters confirmed what we had always suspected. Catherine, my mother, spent much of her college years dabbling in the mysterious ways of mono-gender love.)

So with little debate and much enthusiasm all agreed that Uncle Randolph was to be a bridesmaid.

"Only a bridesmaid, never a bride" he was overheard to say with glee many times when discussing the upcoming nuptials.

While no one who is remotely sane or sober would ever think him more beautiful than the bride, I have seen the photos.

In his silk bridesmaid dress Uncle Randolph looked absolutely fabulous.

real world update, part five

2007-03-04T00:01:00.000-06:00

You need not remind me, see it every morning when I look in the mirror. I know who I am. It is a blessing that I can't help but to take for granted. Yet I must confess that from time to time it grows tiresome. There are those rare moments when life seems almost a burden. Well, okay not a burden, but at times I do feel encumbered by my name. We all have our moments when we wish we were someone else. For most people, those moments are filled with dreams of being me. As for me, well, I guess I don't go so far as to actually wish I was another. How foolish would that be? Really now, you've seen me. How could me or anyone not want to be me, with that whole single, filthy rich, and so fucking hot I've made lesbians switch teams thing that I've got going on.

Still, I feel the need for brief respite once in a while.

When I was a young child growing up in my isolated and insulated upper Manhattan world my father, The Bastard, would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time. When I asked my mother where he went she would say something about a business trip. He would inevitably come home unkempt, unshorn and dishevelled, covered with the filth and reeking with the stench of the city. He would answer my queries with rambling comments about how we should all take turns in the gutters dreaming about cars like we all spend time in the darkness dreaming about stars. He's weird like that, my father, The Bastard.

Sometimes I feel one of my turns coming on.

When that mood strikes, I forego my usual impecable grooming and immaculate fashion and just let it be for a few days. No showers, no shaving, no combing my perfect hair.

I grab a truck-stop baseball cap, convenience store sunglasses and some off the rack clothes from a second hand thrift store. I head out into the world, just to imagine and to play.

I once found it quite entertaining to go out in such a state and splatter my clothes with copious quantities of theatrical blood. I'd leave the comforts of the city and venture up the suburban freeway to some Big Box Hardware Store. I'd absently wander the warehouse aisles, filling my cart with things like shovels, rope, rolls of duct tape and industrial size trash bags or plastic tarps.

Then just for kicks, I'd push my cart up to some part-time high school kid in the cleaning supply section and ask them what product they would recommend to get blood stains out of carpet. Or I'd stop in the power tools section and ask some Bob Villa wannabe which saw works best for cutting bone.

Ah, the looks on their faces. Priceless.

I stopped doing that after 9/11. That damned day should also go down in history as the day our great nation's sense of humor died.

This evening I felt the urge to briefly escape my gilded cage and get away from me for awhile. In an attempt to alleviate my growing boredom I travelled to the suburbs in my slumming it incognito style sans the theatrical blood. I stopped at one of those mega supermarkets with parking lots full of SUVs and aisles full of soccer moms buying boxes of fruit roll-ups and frozen microwave dinners.

I filled a cart with cases of cheap canned beer, boxes of condoms, and several cans of that weird spray cheese that tastes good on a cracker.

I wandered the aisles with my cart full of a party waiting to happen, acting for all the world like a way past his prime David Lee Roth asking women without male escorts if they were looking for a good time.

I received the anticipated and highly amusing looks of disgust, fear and loathing from my fellow shoppers. One woman actually called me repulsive and disgusting. Several turned away to avoid having to pass me in the aisle. Men straightened their posture, puffed their chests and gave me menacing glares. Primate behavior baby, just like those monkeys in the jungle.

I was expecting to do this for a half hour or so and then store security would come up to throw me out. We'd have a good laugh, I'd toss them a few c-notes for their trouble and we'd all be on our happy way.

I never expected those three women on the frozen food aisle to say yes.

As they abandoned their basket of ice cream, brownie mix, and cheap chardonnay I noticed it also held a current issue of one those tabloid rags. On the cover I saw a small photo of me leaving the courthouse a week or so ago beneath hyped photos of dead Anna and that rehabed bitch Britney.

Fuck. My cover was blown. They called my bluff.

I'm a Barrington. I don't bluff. I don't need to. It ain't braggin' if it's true.

I have just returned home. Oh, what a night it's been. I had never imagined doing that with spray cheese.

my new motto

2007-03-03T15:30:00.000-06:00

I am replacing Old Grandad's Family Motto:

"Barrington: Straighter, Stronger, and Harder Than Steel"

He had it inscribed in Latin over the family crest he paid that graphic artist, the same one who worked on the Coca-Cola campaign in the 1930's, to design for our family. Don't ask me how to say it in in Latin because it's fucking Latin and no one fucking cares. It's a dead language for Chris'sakes. The only reason Old Grandad had it inscribed in Latin in the first place was for the for his own ego-centric gravitas.

I only know the damned thing in English because it was one of Old Grandad's favorite sayings.

It always kinda creeped me out.

I always thought that old bastard was just a little too fond of his penis. Lord knows he had a devil of a time keeping the damn thing in his pants. Who's not too fond of their penis? Really now, it is a rather remarkable instrument with a life and a mind all its own. How can you not be impressed with the darned thing?

But then again, I am allegedly trying my best to move away from all that right now and "become a better person yada yada yada". Well okay, mister court ordered therapist, you prick.

My new motto:

"Smoke 'em if ya got 'em, bang 'em if ya can, and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

Wonder how you say that in Latin?

family history, part seven

2007-02-26T17:59:00.000-06:00

Continuing the story of Handy Randy, my Uncle Randolph Barrington II:

In the fall of 1963, after his unexpected outing in the closet by Old Grandad, my Uncle Randolph found himself in a place as close to paradise as he ever imagined: basic training for the United States Army.

Old Grandad may have been a master of business, but at times he knew jack squat about human nature. His plan to make a real man out of Uncle Randolph by enlisting him in the military was successful only if you feel that The Village People represent the epitome of masculinity and manly virtue.

This was not the outcome that Old Grandad envisioned, but his large ego prevented him from ever seeing he was wrong and he was a large enough narcissist to be mostly oblivious to the impact of his decisions on other people. Some say that I take after him that way, but I think those people are assholes.

Once Uncle Randolph shipped off to boot camp Old Grandad considered the job successfully completed. He spent many nights congratulating himself with toasts of fine brandy and cuban cigars, telling any who would listen how he reformed and saved his son from a sinful life of rump ranging and butt piracy.

As for me, I can barely imagine a more hellish place, but boot camp was just the ticket for young Uncle Randolph. He had spent his short 18 years largely behind the ivy walls of exclusive boarding schools. He thrived on the routine. He loved being told what to do and when to do it. He thrived on the structure. He loved the exclusive company of his gender. It was the only way of life he knew.

The wonderful difference about boot camp was that he was no longer surrounded by mere boys. He was surrounded by men. He was surrounded by young, strong, virile men, with firm tight bodies whose muscles rippled under golden tanned skin glistening with beads of sweat in the afternoon sun. He lived with them, he slept in a bunk next to them. He showered with them.

Uncle Randolph could not contain himself. Being a Barrington he never had to, subsequently he did not now how to do so anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered if he had tried. It wasn't long before rumors were flying around the base faster than Handy Randy's nimble fingers in the barracks after lights out. These rumors eventually reached the ears of the Retired Colonel.

The Retired Colonel was probably about the closest thing to a friend Old Grandad ever had. He saw Old Grandad's pride in his heir and at his success at saving him from the sins of Sodom. Aside from staking his own reputation on the line by bending and breaking regulations to sneak Uncle Randolph in as an officer, he did not want to see Old Grandad disappointed or see the great name of a friend drug through the mud of the press.

The one-legged Retired Colonel spoke with a two-legged General who he once knew as a young Captain under his command. The Retired Colonel lost his one leg saving the two legs and ass of the young Captain as the Gerry bombs were falling during the Blitz.

You'd be amazed at how fast rumors on a military base cease and become silent if two or three gossipy soldiers suddenly find themselves hiding from sniper fire in the rice paddies on the front lines of a smouldering and expanding war in South-east Asia.

After basic training, Old Grandad and The Retired Colonel got Uncle Randolph stationed in a small windowless office deep in the bowels of the Pentagon where only the cleaning people remember to go and sometimes they even forget. He was assigned as the assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the chief officer in charge of procuring non-medical health and grooming supplies for soliders in the field. He shuffled papers which directed the Army to purchase and ship things like soap, combs, deodorant, shampoo, toothbrushes, and yes condoms to the various hot spots around the globe. Old Grandad wanted him close enough to keep him safe yet far enough away not to have to deal with him. This job fit the bill.

You can imagine the fun Uncle Randolph had working at the Pentagon. Really now, the whole military is just so gay. It's just so obvious: with their sharply pressed uniforms, their obsession with detail, their emphasis on the fitness of the male form, all those shiny ribbons and medals, polished guns spurting rounds of hot lead, and oh, how they love to march in parades!

All was going well until mid October 1965. One night, when leaving a brothel in a drunken heroin fueled stupor the assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the chief officer in charge of procuring non-medical health and grooming supplies for South-east Asia was run over by a rickshaw. His head was crushed like a grape. As he was also the child of a powerful and influential family (that is apparently how you get the job) he was officially listed as "Killed In Action" and was awarded a post-humous Purple Heart.

Being the assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the chief officers in charge of procuring non-medical health and grooming supplies requires a fairly specific and limited skill set. When the Army went about searching for a replacement to their recent casualty of war Uncle Randolph's number came up. During the first week of November 1965 he heard the news.

Old Grandad and The Retired Colonel could have easily intervened and had Uncle Randolph's orders changed, but Old Grandad was in the process of negotiating a deal with Bell Helicopter to provide the bolts and metal fasteners used in the manufacture AH-1G Cobra helicopters to support the war effort. He viewed having a son going overseas to help fight those commie cocksuckers as a patriotic chip to help him at the bargaining table. He was right and he got the contract.

And Uncle Randolph had his orders. He would be in Saigon by the end of the month.

therapy notes, part three

2007-02-25T23:21:00.000-06:00

Sunday night, the last night of my self-imposed isolation hidden away from public eyes. Thank you Oscar, Scorsese and his ilk insured that the last of those camera-hugging bottom feeding whores left my habitat for the more fertile feeding ground of sunny California.

On Thursday the Hot Receptionist greeted and treated me again with nonchalance and the coyly flirtatious mannerisms that have become a trademark of our official meetings while I wait to meet with my court ordered therapist, the prick. And damn it all if I can't help but wonder why. I mean, her post-coital response is not what I expected. Lord knows I've been down this road a few times before. I'm a Barrington, single, filthy rich and insanely attractive. I know she's impressed, how could she not be? I rocked her freakin' world.

Where's the anxious idolation, the nervous wondering if I'm the knight in shining armor coming to save her from the mundane realities of her existence? Really now, she knows who I am. She has nothing and I have everything to offer.

Not that I am.

Oh well, it matters little to me anyway.

About halfway through Thursday's session, my court ordered therapist, the prick, finally went there. I knew he would. I'm almost surprised it took him this long. How could he not? My court ordered therapist, the prick, finally asked me the question. Yes, that question. You know, the most famous question associated with this whole therapy bullshit that's not technically phrased in the form of a question although you know it is one.

Tell me about your mother.

I went ballilstic.

My response went roughly as follows:

I was like, "Look man, don't go getting all dead repressed homo-faggot, not that there's anything wrong with that, Austrian cocaine fiend on my ass."

He sat there blankly, so I ranted on, "Sure, a cigar is just a cigar, unless you wish it was some other guy's dick you're sucking. Is that what you wish mister head shrinker? I'll bet it is. I see the dirty yet suspiciously always empy ashtray on your desk and can smell the remnants of cheap tobacco in this office."

He still sat there with a blank look as he slowly set down his pen and notepad. There was a moment of awkward silence. I continued, "Just 'cause his mom was his number one MILF don't go thinkin' that's got shit to do with me."

Again, nothing but an empty look in questioning eyes followed by an awkward silence. He said something in that therapeutic and prodding gentle condescending tone that all those bastards are trained to use about "making progress" as he picked up his pen.

"Fuck you, man. Fuck you."

I got up and stormed out of his office and onto the street. I muttered something to The Hot Receptionist about seeing her again Tuesday as I flew past. I avoided the temptation of punching that mosquita with the camera on the curb as I went by. It's just to risky now to give the camera-hugging whore the satisfaction of having his ass kicked by a Barrington with legal issues. It's just so cliche. My father, The Bastard, already has that down to an art form, so there's no point in it anyway.

So that was Thursday. In a few hours it will be Monday morning. A new week.

Here I am. Where the fuck are you?

real world update, part four

2007-02-23T11:51:00.000-06:00

Alright, alright, alright. I'll admit to my lameness. It's Friday night and I'm sitting alone in my hi-rise downtown condo, on my balcony overlooking the city. The festive sounds of the weekend streets drift upwards on a gentle springlike breeze. I made the prudent decision to stay out of sight for the past few days. We Barrington's have never sought the limelight or the glare of those camera hugging paparazzi whores. Yet still it seeks us from time to time. It can't be helped. I'm single, I'm filthy rich, I'm insanely attractive. How could you not want to follow me around with a camera? It's just that given my current situation I'm not in the fucking mood to see my face looking back at me from the cover of some ass-wipe tabloid when I go to the corner store to buy a pack of smokes. So I'm just chilling, and waiting.

I'm waiting for those camera hugging whores to get bored hanging out watching nothing happen with me. They'll move on. They always do. You see, I've learned that those bastards in the pop culture media that nip like a pack of wild rabid dogs have a short attention span. Just hole up and wait the bitches out. It's only a matter of time until some other gazelle from the celebrity herd shows weakness. Just be patient and wait for them to move on. True enough, with the ongoing Anna circus and the recent complete meltdown of that skank Britney, my little life is rapidly becoming a lot less interesting to the soccer moms and trailer trash who buy that shit and keep those assholes employed. By Monday, they will all be gone and I can resume my normal life.

Normal life? Yeah right. If only. I'm still fucking stuck here.

Earlier tonight I called the manager at that yuppie hole I frequent and asked him to send me some dinner. Like the past few nights, I requested that the hot New Waitress with the small diamond stud in her nose and the rockabilly tattoos deliver it to me. Man, has she ever been earning some exceptional tips. Talk about customer service with a smile. . .

Thirty minutes later there's a knock on my door. I open the door with a polite grin and half a woody's worth of anticipation only to see Diego standing there holding the styrafoam take-out box. He sees the disappointment on my face. As he's handing me the box he pulls a large hand rolled fatty from the pocket of his knock-off hip-hop designer label hoodie. From past experience I recognize that it's the high quality shit imported by the cartel that controls the region his home village is in.

Alright man, come on in.

As I spark it up he tells me that the Hot Waitress got off early to go see her boyfriend's band play some dive club gig. He tells me that he was just getting off work when I called. He says he volunteered to deliver my dinner. Guess he's still angling for me to give him a fish.

I offer him a beer and we spend the next half hour toking and talking. He reaches in his pocket a second time and pulls out some photos of his two kids that he says he just got in the mail from his wife in Guatamala. He says he misses his family and can't wait until he's saved enough to pay the coyote that's offered to bring them up.

The poor bastard, he has yet to learn that family is frequently a curse that only drags you down.

real world update, part three

2007-02-20T21:29:00.000-06:00

Cripes man, it's just been one of those days.

I am sitting at my Italian dinette set looking out the window of my high-rise condo at the lights of downtown. The State Capitol plays prominently in the view.

I do my best to enjoy a light dinner of take-out tapas and wash them down with a triple Grey Goose on the rocks. Tonight it takes a little extra Goose. I need to remind that damn illegal "chef" at the yuppie hole I frequent that cilantro is an herb for seasoning and not like some fucking leaf of iceberg lettuce he shredded to top a value menu super burrito at his last place of employment.

Ah, I need to cut the guy some slack. Diego seems like a decent fellow. He tells me he wires half his less than minimum wage salary to his wife and kids back in some small Guatamalan village. He tells me he's saving as much as he can from the other half to bring them up. He tell's me he's about halfway there.

I could pull out my wallet and hand him enough cash to do it tomorrow. But I don't. I'm a firm believer in that "give a man to fish, teach a man to fish" philosophy. It's not my fault I was born with an ocean's worth of fish.

When you're born an alpha male you learn when your young there's always some other lowly chimp sneaking around trying to surprise you and knock you down by banging empty gasoline cans. When you are single, filthy rich and insanely attractive those monkeys frequently take the form of celebrity "journalists" and bottom-feeding paparazzi camera-hugging whores.

My father, The Bastard, was not without his moments of paranoia. I guess I inherited that trait. My court ordered therapist, the prick, reminded me of that in today's session.

My father, The Bastard, taught me it was prudent to get to know and get on good terms with those who prepare and serve your meals in the establishments you frequent. He taught me to tip them very generously. Not because I'm like some medieval king and fear being poisoned, but for a much more practical reason. Do you have any idea how many compromising celebrity photographs and embarrassing stories were obtained by media hacks who talk their way in through the back kitchen door? Those poor schleps in the kitchen control access to the back door. It's in your advantage to get them on your side. Christ man, I thought that skank Britney and her whore pal Paris would have figured that out by now. But then again, their path to fame was not their intellect.

So I scratch Diego's back just enough to keep him watching mine.

Anyway, it's been a tough day. I just didn't feel like going out tonight. I called up the manager at that yuppie hole I where I hang out on my slow days. I asked him to have Diego prepare me a light dinner and have that new hot waitress with the small diamond stud in her nose and the rockabilly tattoos deliver it to me. Let me just say she earned an exceedingly generous tip and leave it at that.

Now I'm alone eating cold food and drinking colder vodka.

Every now and then the notoriety of my name rises up and the goatfucking media whores leap from the shadows and try to beat it back down. Today was one of those days.

I guess the vultures are getting tired of sucking the marrow from Anna's bones and are now circling the skies looking for their next meal. Her sudden demise provided enough of a distraction to allow my return to the states to be relatively discrete. But it could not prevent some future wannabe CNN anchor local TV reporter from seeing me leave the courthouse last week. I'm single, I'm filthy rich, I'm insanely attractive. I knew it was just a matter of time. They followed me around today like a pack of rabid hungry puppies.

They followed me up to the doorstep of my court ordered therapist, the prick. His office building's crack rent-a-cop security force kept them out. I walked into the building away from them, and into his office, right up to her, The Hot Receptionist.

We exchanged pleasantries and small talk, like we have done many times before, only this time I did not imagine but remembered the bounty that lies beneath her off the rack department store business blouse. She politely thanked me for the drinks and dinner, and nothing more was said. I sat for an hour smirking at the court ordered therapist, the prick, as he sat in the chair I last saw the Hot Receptionist leaning over, skirt up hose down. He pried and prattled on about my family and my alleged issues. When I left, she again thanked me for dinner and said she'd see me again when I came in for my Thursday appointment. That was that.

The media whores were still waiting out front so I snuck out through a side door and quickly walked the few blocks back to my condo.

That was that? How curious. She acted as though the climax of our encounter last week, and I assure you it was a climax both intensely physical and in terms of the events of the evening, never happened. What's her game?

family history, part six

2007-02-19T00:53:00.001-06:00

It is a known fact that Old Grandad and Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, had sex at least three times during their marriage. Whether or not they made the sign of the humpbacked beast on more than those three occasions is still an open debate in my family.

Aside from the pre-nuptial conception that resulted in the birth of my father, The Bastard, there were two other known successful copulations. My grandparents unholy couplings also created my uncle Randolph II, and surprisingly to all at the time, my aunt Olphelia.

Old Grandad never bonded, connected, or even cared for Roosevelt. He never even bothered to try. There is only one known photo of Old Grandad with his eldest as a child. It was a Christmas photo, they are in front of a large well-lit tree. Roosevelt was an infant in Grandma Milly's, God rest her soul, arms. Old Grandad was standing behind them, looking disinterested and away from the camera.

Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, used to tell me that it was all because of the name. She once told me something interesting during a rare lucid break in the alcohol and narcotic cloud that enshrouded her. She told me that Old Grandad was devoured inside with jealousy and envy because his eldest son was named by and for another man. In his arrogant eyes, Roosevelt was not his child, but an illegitimate one, a real example of imagined cuckoldry. To Old Grandad, Roosevelt was also a living reminder of a failure, of the consequences of a foolish moment when he lost a game of chance and wits to "that crippled gimp bastard".

He not at all secretly wished for another son and he never played another hand of poker. In September 1945 his prayers were answered when Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, gave birth to another child. Randolph II was meant to be all that poor Roosevelt, my father The Bastard, could not be. Shakespeare was wrong about that name thing, at least as far as Old Grandad was concerned. To Old Grandad, Roosevelt was a tremendous disappointment before the ink on his birth certificate had dried.

But Randolph, yes! Randolph the Second! Oh blessed child Randolph II!

Old Grandad had his namesake, his legacy and true heir to his kingdom. It was onto Randolph II's broad shoulders and strong back that the responsibilities of managing the Barrington empire were destined to eventually fall.

Too bad it didn't work out that way.

Despite Old Grandad's best efforts, Randolph II lacked both common sense and an instinct for business. He was nothing like Old Grandad. He was thoughtful, caring and kind. He would rather share than compete. He loved flowers and stories about fairies. When Randolph II was 17, he was home on a break from one of those fancy private boarding schools where filthy rich people send their children. Old Grandad discovered him in Grandma Milly's, God rest her soul, walk-in closet. He was prancing around in a sequined designer gown singing the "Miss America" theme song along with his reflection in a mirror.

Turns out, Randolph II is as queer as a three-dollar bill. He didn't want to be the King of an empire. He wanted to be its Queen.

Also turns out, Old Grandad was the only one who was surprised by this unexpected outing in the closet.

Old Grandad mistakenly thought that Randolph II earned the nickname "Handy Randy" as a way to mock his inept incompetence with hardware, tools and the other implements associated with the family business.

In reality, the nickname was not one of mockery, but one of honor and tribute. Randolph II had been enrolled in expensive and private all male boarding schools since the age of 10. Over the course of all those long nights surrounded by many other equally confused young men, he had become incredibly skilled and highly sought for his talent at manually manipulating, um, um, certain features of the male anatomy.

Old Grandad freaked out.

He was still bound and determined to mold Handy Randy into a real man. Old Grandad immediately pulled his son from "all that East Coast intellectual faggotry". He decided that if Randolph II was to become a real man he needed to be surrounded by real men. He called his friend, the Retired Colonel, who called some not retired Colonels. Seven months later, on his 18th birthday, Handy Randy was inducted into the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant.

Nobody asked, nobody told.

There was no reason to ask, as it was blatantly obvious to all. There was no reason to tell, because Old Grandad made sure that all of new Lt. Barrington's superior officers knew well the fate of that poor young Congressman who once crossed him with another type of outing.

real world update, part two

2007-02-18T21:52:00.000-06:00

Damn it, damn it, damn it!

I knew I'd regret last Tuesday's shenanigans.

The Hot Receptionist called me twice today. I have neither seen nor spoken to her since dropping her off at her apartment. I just wasn't in the mood to deal with any repercussions from our romping so I faked an illness to get out of Thursday's appointment. The terms of my probation allow me to miss my sessions with the court ordered therapist, the prick, for valid medical reasons provided I have written documentation from a doctor verifying my illness.

I pay my doctor in cash at three times the going rate so he pretty much writes whatever I tell him to write. And afterall, it is cold and flu season. I have to make the sessions up, so ultimately I am only prolonging the tedious agony, but what the fuck. I have always had kind of a "why do today what you can put off until next week" attitude, so I really don't mind all that much.

The first time she called I did not recognize the number on my caller ID so I did not answer. She left no message and it remained a mystery, until she called again, moments ago. This time she left a message. She said something about "hoping I'm feeling better", "had a wonderful time" and something about "looking forward to seeing me again on Tuesday."

Damn, damn, double damn. I never considered that she had access to my private number through my file at the office.

I don't need this right now.

family history, part five

2007-02-18T00:31:00.000-06:00

My parents, Roosevelt Barrington and Catherine Adler got married on November 9, 1965 in a relatively small (ridiculously so for a Barrington) private ceremony. It was a Tuesday, which was strange, because really now, who get's married on a Tuesday? The reason for this will be made plain as this story advances. They also eschewed the traditional church service. Again, the reason will be clear when this tale has reached its conclusion. The wedding was held at the Exclusive Executive Men's Club in the heart of Manhattan's most high-rent district. My grandfather was one of the founding members.

The Club was created in 1946 by Old Grandad and a retired Army Colonel who lost a leg in a Gerry bombing raid during the Blitz. The Retired Colonel had a wooden prosthesis which for some reason was about three inches too short. I don't know why he never replaced it with one of the proper length. Perhaps it was because he was too drunk to notice or care, as was frequently the case by the time I met him as a child visiting The Club with Old Grandad. I seem to remember asking him about it once. He spoke with a thick southern drawl, made all the more incomprehensible by the huge quantities of Kentucky bourbon he drank straight from the bottle. I think he said something sorrowful about having to shoot his dog. Anyway, by the time the bottle was about half gone he'd forget to compensate for the shortness of his wooden leg. I remember being a young boy and watching with amusement as the Old Colonel staggered in circles, wildly waving a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand while drunkenly ranting about "those kraut bastards".

While not entirely pre-arranged, the wedding had been long sought and heavily lobbied for by my grandfather. Through varying combinations of badgering, bribing, and bullying my grandfather convinced the prospective bride and groom that they were madly in love and persuaded both families into believing that the marriage was in their best interest.

As Old Grandad's war efforts were still classified, nobody knew of his contribution to win the war for our side. Thanks to an inquisitive and outspoken freshman Congressman in 1946, Old Grandad's business dealings with the Nazis had been common knowledge and public record for almost twenty years. The Congressmen was later indicted on a variety of charges, including corruption, embezzlement, bestiality, and pedophilia. He was booted from Congress and died in a federal prison. You didn't fuck with Old Grandad back then.

But the damage had been done, and Old Grandad had spent the decades following the war battling the perception that he was an anti-semitic Nazi sympathizer. While personally, he didn't give a rat's ass what people thought, he felt as though this notion was hindering his business dealings with many of the older established East Coast financial institutions.

He reasoned that the best way to prove to the world that he accepted and supported Yahweh's chosen people would be to make them family. So he went out looking for the daughter of the richest Jew he could find. His plan was to marry her off to his eldest son Roosevelt.

The daughter he found was Catherine Adler, the eldest daughter of Arthur Adler, the founder of Adler Almalgamated Aluminum Products. The Adlers were new money. Old Man Adler amassed a fortune manufacturing aluminum plane parts for the military during the war. After the war he branched out and AAAP become the largest manufacturer of aluminum Little League bats on the planet. Damn if baseball wasn't one of that old man's greatest passions.

His daughter Catherine fit the bill perfectly.

Family lore has it that Old Grandad offered Old Man Adler the opportunity to be the first circumcised member of The Club if the two men could get their eldest children bonded in matrimony. Family lore goes on to explain that Old Grandad was quick to point out the potential financial benefits of a marriage between a family who manufactured aluminum parts for things and a family who made bolts and other metal fasteners to hold those parts together.

Subsequently calls were made, and on a rainy night in September 1963, Roosevelt Barrington had his first date with Catherine Adler.

therapy notes, part two

2007-02-13T23:57:00.000-06:00

I guess it's time I started to address The Bastard and my issues surrounding him. That's what my court ordered therapist, the prick, told me again this afternoon. Of course I don't agree with him. I seldom do, but then again he is my court ordered therapist, the prick. Subsequently he reports to the judge on my "monthly progress" from our sessions.

My court ordered therapist, the prick, holds my fate in his hands. I need to play the game. If I don't play the game, he'll tell the judge I'm not playing along. The judge has told me in no uncertain terms that he'll make sure I have adequate time to sit and think about my behavior if I don't work and play well with others, and yes, it will go on my permanent record. This whole situation makes me feel like, like a fucking little kid again, in a world where the grown-ups have all the power.

Mostly I just sit in these sessions and smile and nod and play along and quietly fantasize about banging his receptionist. Man, is she ever a looker. I am quite certain my court ordered therapist, the prick, spends most of my sessions fantasizing about doing the same thing.

How do I know he shares my fantasies? Well for starters, she's fucking hot. He may be balding, squatty, poorly dressed, reek of cheap cologne and cheaper cigars, but he's still a man.

And well, I've learned a thing or two about human nature. I've had to. I may have been born single, filthy rich, and insanely attractive, but you don't stay that way unless you're smarter than all the idiots in this ruthless world trying to scam a piece of your pie.

My father, The Bastard, despite his best efforts to follow in his own father's meglomaniacal philandering footsteps, managed to teach me a thing or two. Somehow a couple of moments of almost half-way decent parenting makes his faults and failure as a father seem all the more tragic.

"Eyes don't lie."

"People lie with what they say. How they say it never lies."

Damn that court ordered therapist, the prick. He's putting my father's voice inside my head.

The prick wants her, I know he does. I can see it in the way his eyes leap to her chair behind the reception desk when he first opens the door and steps out of his office. I can hear it in the subtly salacious way he speaks her name when he talks to her.

The difference between him and me is that he doesn't have a fucking prayer. As for me, well. . .

There is another little piece of advice my father, The Bastard, once shared with me. I find it very handy in many life situations:

"Arrive early. Chat up the receptionist."

He initially meant it as business advice. It was a way to better know your opponent while negotiating a deal. The receptionist knows her Boss. She knows her Boss's likes and dislikes. She knows her Boss's schedule. The receptionist knows her Boss's secrets. In business as well as life, knowledge is power.

He also used it as a way to score some extra tail. He still does, The Bastard.

Let's just say that's one of the ways I too am following in my father's footsteps. I always arrive 10 - 15 minutes early to my appointments with my court ordered therapist, the prick. I chat up the receptionist. I talk to her like she is a person. I talk to her like I care. Yeah right, like I care.

She's tells me she's 29, but they always say they're 29. I'm fairly certain she's off by a couple of years. She's a single mother with a seven-year old daughter. Her ex-husband is a maintenance man at a local apartment complex. Of course he's behind on the child support. They got divorced about four years ago after she found out he was maintaining slightly more than the resident's apartments. What a stupid fool to let such a hot piece slip through his fingers. Ah, I guess it's true what they say, "no matter how fine she is, somebody somewhere is sick of her shit."

After the divorce she had to drop out of college, she was a sociology major, and took this full-time job to support herself and her kid. She plans on going back and finishing someday. She likes her job okay, but isn't really fond of the prick. She sees the way he sometimes leers at her.

I know I shouldn't have done it. I realize that I am potentially acting against my own best interest. I may have just unduely complicated my life. That just made the temptation all the greater. I have a long history of doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

But I am my father's, The Bastard, son.

From chatting her up I learned that her daughter spends Tuesday nights at Grandma's apartment so that she can get a night of respite. She most always goes to happy hour with some of the other girls from her pilates class.

I "accidentally" bumped into her while she was hanging out at the bar at a trendy Tex-Mex restaurant. I hung out for a while, flashing my platinum cards and buying rounds of 'ritas for her and her friends. I offered her dinner and we went to some cheezy local joint that's barely a step above Chili's or Carraba's or one of those other painful franchises that pollute suburban freeway frontage roads.

After that, a couple more drinks in a corner booth of a yuppie martini bar. Ah, alcohol, the great "no" inhibitor.

From there it was short work to talk her into sneaking into the office and doing it on the chair my court ordered therapist, the prick, sits in while he subdivides and analyzes my life.

real world update, part one

2007-02-11T23:23:00.000-06:00

You might find this confusing if you haven't read this first.

Sunday night in my virtual prison. I say prison only because I am again stuck here, in this city.

I should probably say that I'm fortunate because the only bars I see in this prison bring me unlimited quantities of mojitos and an endless parade of attractive aspiring yuppie chicks with variations of Jennifer Aniston hairstyles and those sexy little tattoos on the small of their backs that serve as well, targets.

But then again, that's my birthright, it comes with the name. So I'm fortunate only in the sense that fortune favors me. By definition fortune always favors the rich and attractive. I can't help who I am.

Unfortunately at present I can do little to change my situation.

And that's the problem. I am not accustomed to having limitations of any kind put on my freedom.

One night a week or so ago I'm out thoroughly enjoying the nightlife in a happening Belize disco and two days later a U.S. Marshall is knocking on my door, warrant in hand. He tells me that the judge back in Texas is requesting an audience with world's richest, most attractive and most eligible bachelor. He tells me that as judges aren't prone to travel, I'll have to go back with him to see the judge. He is smirking with that righteous grin I've seen countless times before on the face of a law enforcement official who is entirely too pleased with himself as he thinks of how nicely bagging a Barrington is going to look on his resume. He's got two thuggish looking semi-machine gun toting members of the local police with him. Damn that police chief. This is the exact situation I had been bribing him weekly to prevent. The sum'va bitch sold me out. Apparently the stick of upsetting the U.S. government is far stronger than the carrot of my regular generous donations to the local policeman's pension fund.

It could have been worse. The police chief's 18 year old daughter left my apartment an hour before they arrived. And she has one of those sexy little targets, er, tattoos on the small of her back.

So back I came. I had to fly coach for Chis'sakes.

My father called earlier today. He always calls a day or two after my court appearances. Nowadays it's the only time we speak to each other. We trade small talk while he awkwardly fishes for me to thank him for providing the legal resources to keep my perfect tight white ass out of jail yet again. I never give The Bastard the satisfaction.

My court ordered therapist, the prick, tells me that in order for me to "heal" I need to find "forgiveness" and all that other liberal psycho-babel bullshit. I guess I'm just not there yet. Maybe I take after my grandfather and I'm just not a forgiving person. It's been what, twenty plus years and I still get angry when I think about how he treated mom during the divorce and how she ended up afterwards because of it.

And maybe I also see him in me.

And maybe that's what scares me.

family history, part four

2007-02-10T10:48:00.000-06:00

It's kinda weird, you know, my coming back just in time for this whole fucking circus. Ah poor Anna, you delicate flower. What a waste. Did I know her? Of course I did. We spent most of the 90's spinning in similar circles with the social elite. We were drawn together as kindred spirits. We we both young, amazingly attractive, fabulously wealthy and ridiculously self-absorbed. Did I do her? Nah, but it wasn't for lack of opportunity. I could have, Lord knows now in retrospect I probably should have, as it seems like most everyone else did. It would have been, ya know, just too plain easy.

Like I still am today, back then I was single, filthy rich, and insanely attractive. It would have been like shooting proverbial fish in a barrel. There was no "thrill of the chase". With my taut muscular physique oozing with masculinity, my perfect hair, and her obvious daddy issues and all. . . it just didn't feel right. I will speak no more of it and share no further detail lest I inadvertently speak ill of the dead. That is a privilege reserved for family and a line I will not cross.

Daddy issues. . .

Take a good look in any strip club in this county and you'll see a room full of girls whose daddy didn't love them. Or maybe loved them too much in the wrong kinda way. Ah hell, it almost makes me wanna bust out cryin'. Except my daddy didn't love me either, and I was cursed by the genetics of my gender to be born without breasts for potential surrogate fathers to gawk at or an ass made for grinding against a brass pole, or other um, poles.

Daddy issues. . . my father. . . where to begin?

I guess in order to fully explain my father I need to go back a little deeper into the family history and tell you a little more about his parents, my grandparents, Randolph and Millicent Barrington. Old Grandad and Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, got married on December 7, 1941. Yes, that's right, December 7, 1941. So I guess you can say for me that day lives in infamy a little more for me than it might for you.

It was the social event of the season. It's not everyday that a multi-millionaire marries the dermatologically challenged daughter of an influential US Senator. With the time difference between New York and Hawaii the wedding was long over before the day's more well-known incident began.

And well, they just had to get married. Unbeknownst to all except Old Grandad and Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, Grandma Milly was already about two months pregnant. They were already pushing the explanation to the limits of credulity come the end of the next summer.

My father, Roosevelt Barrington, was born on July 24, 1942. To avoid the taint of scandal that would have arisen in anyone who took the time to do the math, and believe me people did in those days, Old Grandad bribed the doctor. The doctor falsified his medical report and put in his records that labor was accidentally induced early due to the trauma of Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, slipping on a damp floor in the kitchen after spilling a glass of lemonade.

As for my father's first name, well Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, always told people that it was in honor of a great president whose wonderful and inspiring leadership was safely guiding our nation through a difficult time. But that's not the real story.

Ask anyone who knew him, a few are still alive, and they will tell you, Randolph Barrington was not a gambling man. No, Old Grandad was not. He was not a thrill seeker and did not enjoy the risks associated with gambling. He disliked leaving things to luck or chance. Nonetheless, he played poker every Tuesday night at his exclusive members-only club with all the other robber-barons, power-brokers, and politicians of the day. He viewed it as one of the demands of successful business. He knew that more wheeling and dealing took place on those nights in the plush leather chairs over crystal glasses of fine single malts than occurred on Wall Street on any given day.

On a Tuesday night in April 1942, FDR ventured out of Washington to seek counsel and camaraderie from men outside his inner circle of war advisers and the congressional hacks who constantly hounded him. Around 10:30 that night, Old Grandad found himself dealing five card stud with The President of The United States.

Now you see, Old Grandad and his peers at his private club were already among the most rich and powerful men in the world. To them, money was as ever present and taken for granted as the cigar smoke filled air they breathed. To make things more interesting, the men frequently bet less quantifiable, yet more valuable things. For example, Old Grandad first strayed from his vows to Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, following a winning night. He won the services of the teen-age daughter of a police commissioner who couldn't bluff worth shit.

On this particular April night, while playing poker with The President of The United States, Old Grandad bet the name of his unborn child. He went to his grave without revealing what FDR countered in return, although in his later years he could sometimes be heard mumbling under his breath something that sounded very similar to "Chief Justice Barrington".

Old Grandad had a lousy two pair but was as steely-eyed as a snake. FDR drew a full house, jacks over nines, the lucky bastard.

Subsequently, a few months later, Roosevelt Barrington was born.

welcome back

2007-02-10T03:05:00.000-06:00

Remember me, I'm Colt Barrington. And I'm back. I can't say I'm happy about it. The judge wasn't all that happy to see me again either. But what the fuck. . .

I've been away. Far away. Some creative lawyering and legal briefing by my family's highly compensated shyster convinced the judge and the assistant D.A. to return my passport. I made a sizeable donation to the local children's hospital through a shell non-profit my father set up in the 1970's to help resolve family legal problems. Business is business, same now as then and same here as everywhere else. The wheels of government sometimes need a good greasing and nothing lubricates as well as cash. My donation helped to persuade the judge to let me fulfill a portion of my community service hours outside of his jurisdiction.

So I got the hell out. Out of town, out of state, and out of the fucking country.

I spent the last year and half travelling around Central America. Did you know there is a rare genetic disorder down there that causes children to be born without thumbs? "Los ninos sin pulgares" is what they call it. It's tragic really, the poor kids can't open jars.

Officially I was fulfilling the community service hours of my probation. I spent my days primarily opening bottles of Coke and teaching English to those poor disabaled kids in this special school where none of the doors have knobs.

Unofficially I spent my nights in the local bars and brothels doing lines of coke, sampling the local flavor, if you get my meaning, and banging the occassional European tourist. Apparently they really love that "Motorcycle Diaries" movie over there. It's spawned this weird wave of twentysomethings who really dig Che and spend their breaks from university travelling in his path.

All was going well until some asshole paparazzi photogropher recognized me as I was doing a tequila shot from between the breasts of the equivalent of the local homecoming queen. Damn those bastards at the Enquirer. And damn Lindsey Lohan for taking a vacation. It's not like she ever fucking works anyway, I mean really I've seen "Mean Girls". Why does she need a God-damned vacation? She brought those camera hugging whores with her, the bitch.

Needless to say, those photos eventually worked their way back to that hillbilly assistant D.A. and the redneck fucking judge here, deep in the heart of Texas. Neither were pleased with what they saw. The jealous bastards, I heard the envy in their voice when they were condemning my behavior and rambling on about "not gonna let you make a mockery blah blah de fucking blah" in court last week.

So here I am, right back where I was 18 or so months ago, looking at an additional 36 to 72 months of probation, tacked on to compensate for my perceived shenanigans. I'm stuck in the same town where I initially came back to to find her, and then so desperately wanted to flee to escape my memories of her.

My court ordered therapist, the prick, wasn't all that happy to see me again either. At his "recommendation" I have resumed this journal as way to help me work through my "issues".

While I was away I my access to this blog lapsed. Luckily my old college roommate and longtime friend Polymer was able to help me get this thing started up again.

Where do I go from here? Apparently nowhere. I can't leave the fucking county.

Ah, it could have been worse. In another example of greasing the government wheel I covertly made a significant donation to that bastard judge's re-election campaign through a series of discrete third parties. That kept me from having to wear one of those fucking electronic ankle monitors.

So here I am, right back where it all began.

Sigh.

family history, part three

2005-07-03T23:04:00.000-06:00

Grandma Milly's maiden name was Van Streusel.

Millicent Van Streusel was the daughter of Eugene Van Streusel, the former United States Sentator from Pennsylvania and then chairman of the Senate Sub Committee on Tariffs and Foreign Trade. As my grandfather, Randolph Barrington had a great interest in both subjects he considered it a shrewd business decision to marry the chairman's daughter.

My grandfather was quite right. Great Grandfather Van Streusel had a lengthy and productive Senate career bending regulations towards and regulators away from Grandpa Barrington. Grandpa made sure that he was discretely yet generously compensated for his efforts.

I suppose at some time Old Granddad loved Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, at least as much as he loved anything other than himself. That's not really saying alot. With affectionate amusement he referred to her as "My Monet", explaining that she was beautiful from a distance but up close she was just a jumbled messy mix of splotchy colors.

My poor grandmother. The skin condition is hereditary. Most people in my branch of the family lucked out, of course my skin and complexion remains as beautiful, smooth and perfect as a baby's, but I have a few cousins who weren't so fortunate.

The 4th of July will always remind me of her, my late Grandma Milly, God rest her soul.

It is the anniversary of her death.

She died from injuries she sustained in a fireworks accident in 1983.

We were at the traditional holiday family gathering at the lake house. Not the one in upstate New York, which by that time was used exclusively by my grandfather as a den for his hedonistic excesses, but the one on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Every year on the 4th of July I would go down to the dock by the boathouse. Along with my younger brother and a handful of cousins (some of them mini Monets), I spent hours shooting fireworks off into the night sky above the lake.

Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, typically stayed on the balcony of the main house, quietly sipping straight vodka martinis from a lemonade glass while watching her grandchildren play and applauding the fireworks.

On this particular 4th of July she ran out of her regular 80 proof vodka by early evening. It had been a stressful day for Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, she was drinking at a quicker than normal pace.

Because of the holiday my grandfather had also began to drink quite early in the day. He typically did not drink more than the obligatory social sip or two. He did not like the out of control feeling that frequently accompanies inebriation, but he sometimes made an exception for special events such as holidays. Subsequently by noon he was quite intoxicated and lost all discretion. Grandfather was openly flaunting his most recent affair with the buxom young lass he had hired to be his secretary after convincing her to quit her previous job as a cocktail waitress in a gentlemen's club.

If Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, had done a shot of vodka for every insult and affront to her respect and dignity that first bottle of vodka would have been gone by around 12:30.

Not that she didn't try.

As the sun was going down she switched to drinking the 100 proof stuff. Well, after a couple of those on top of her usual holiday bump of pharmaceutical grade morphine, she got to feeling a little festive. She decided to join the younger generation down on the dock.

What happened next is one of those memories that you will forever replay in perfect mental slow motion.

There was a gentle summer breeze blowing off the lake. It was a beautiful cloudless night. Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, was dancing playfully around on the dock with my cousin Martha, one of the mini Monets. Grandma had a lemonade glass martini in one hand and a sparkler in the other.

A spark from the sparkler caught the breeze and gently drifted towards Grandma Milly, God rest her soul. It landed in her beautifully behived and bouffaunted hair.

POOF! She lit up like Michael Jackson in a Pepsi commercial.

Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, was so whacked out by this time she probably didn't know her own name. She had not yet realized her head was on fire.

Cousin Martha screamed and grabbed the first thing she saw to quench the flames: Grandma Milly's, God rest her soul, lemonade glass. Thinking it was full of ice and lemonade she threw the contents at Grandma's head. The 100 proof vodka burst into flames as it landed on Grandma Milly's shoulders and chest.

You would be surprised to learn how quickly an Italian designer blouse made from hand woven silk becomes engulfed in fire. If your spending that kind of money you should expect a little more flame resistance.

Cousin Martha screamed louder. Grandma just looked confused. Cousin Martha looked at the water in the lake. She looked at Grandma. She gave one more look at the water. She reached out and shoved flaming Grandma off the dock and into the water.

Grandma Milly, God rest her soul, never learned to swim. Not that it would have mattered. Mark Spitz would not have been able to swim in the condition Grandma was in. She sank like a stone. Steam sizzled and floated upwards as the water quenched the flames.

Officially the cause of death was listed as "accidental drowning". Neither the police reports nor the newspaper accounts mentioned the fire or Grandma Milly's, God rest her soul, profound intoxication.

Cousin Martha still resides under heavy sedation at the Tranquil Creek Home for The Mentally Impaired Incompetent and Deranged. They say the poor girl never got over the shock of igniting grandma. I think it's more likely that Old Granddad did not want the truth of the incident to ever tarnish the family image. Cousin Martha was to hysterical to be trusted to keep silent.

After the funeral I overheard Old Granddad, the bastard, make a comment to one of his business associates about how he was happy to have finally had his Independence Day.

mi espacio es tu espacio

2005-06-29T21:31:00.000-06:00

As a general rule I'm not into that whole online social thing. I think the whole scene is populated by losers and liars who post fake photos of themselves in order to mask their insecurities and inabilities to interact with real humans in real time.

However. . .

Recently the girlfriend of one of my friends sent me an email inviting me to join MySpace.

You may recall that bastard assistant district attorney confiscated my passport as a condition of my probation. I can no longer really travel in the physical world. "So," I reasoned, "why not spend some time in the virtual one?"

Ah, what the fuck. . . I signed up.

Join me, it might be fun.

Check me out!

about me, part two

2005-06-28T18:35:00.000-06:00

Continuing from where I left off:

My memories of this town. . .

I first came here in the mid 1980's to attend The University. Yeah, I know, my family could have bought my way into almost any college on the planet. I know this because they tried but I wasn't interested.

I wasn't interested in other schools because an angel had already told me where I was going to college. Ah, sweet heavenly Farrah. Like The Great One (and every other heterosexual male of my generation), I too spent many hours holding up her poster with one hand.

When I learned that she had attended The University my mind was made up. My hormone addled adolescent brain reasoned that since Texas was such a big place surely there were countless others as hot as Farrah just waiting to be plucked like ripe grapes from a vine. Due to my fabulous good looks and insane wealth I had no doubt they would all want to bang me.

Boy, was I ever right.

Those were some crazy times. Ecstacy and all it's variants while technically illegal, existed in that gray area just on the other side of the law. They were all readily for sale in the parking lot of every club in town. Well okay, maybe not every club, only by the ones where the cool and the hip mingled with the hyper-sexed and the androgenous. I was three out of four. If you need a fucking clue let me just say nobody mistook me for a member of one of those lame-ass British techno-pop bands.

The Renaissance Market across from campus had not yet been officially sanctioned by the city and had not yet earned so distinguished a name. It was just a place where the homeless panhandled and the hippies peddled beaded jewelry, "tobacco pipes" and other trinkets to stoners, students, and tourists. When the sun set it became one of the best open air drug markets in the city.

It had drive-thru service for Chris'sakes. And drive-thru I did, many times. Pull up, roll down the window. Some homeless looking guy would approach and you would hand him a twenty in exchange for a small vial of blow or grass or small squares of paper. You could purchase powerful hallicinogens with the convenience of not having to get out of the car. Part of the rush was never knowing what you were getting: good shit, crap, something dangerous, or possibly deadly. The whole Russian Roulettish aspect just added to the thrill of our invincible young lives.

They were my carefree days of coeds and cocaine. It seems as though both were always readily available for my consumption.

Part of me wishes I could go back.

Part of me looks back with this weird mix of pride and embarrassment at my behavior in those days. The embarrassment waxes as my pride wanes.

Maybe this therapy crap is starting to have an impact.

Ah, who am I kidding. Tonight I'll probably wander from my downtown loft condo into the yuppie bars of the Warehouse District where the affluent and attractive mix, mingle and mate while hopped up on mojitos and low carb light beer.

I won't go home alone. I just won't. I'm not bragging. It's just how it is in my world. It's how it's always been in my world. I'm a Barrington.

therapy notes, part one

2005-06-26T08:13:00.000-06:00

In last Thursday's therapy session the court ordered therapist said something about me being narcissistic.

I was like, "narci. . . what the fuck?"

He also said something about me needing to "learn to be able to recognize my limitations blah blah blah" so I'll admit to looking up the word before I typed it. I never could spell worth crap. Happy now, shrink?

I told him, "narciwhatever, dude. I'm coming to see you because the damn judge and the wormy A.D.A. said I have a problem with alcohol and I got popped with slightly more than a bit of grass in my trunk. But I've never touched the harder stuff man. I saw what it did to Grandma Milly and I can't stand fucking needles."

It's true. My Grandmother, Millicent Barrington, God rest her soul, was a junkie for the last twenty some years of her life. She died a junkie. In her last year or two she was little more than the walking dead.

Back in the mid 1960's she started taking morphine. Her personal physician prescribed it to treat the chronic pain she experienced after she bruised her shin in a gardening accident. Nobody in the family believed it was for physical pain. Emotional maybe, but physical? Everyone knew that she needed to escape the reality that her husband Grandpa Barrington was such a raging asshole. Hell man, you'd need an escape also if you were trapped living with that man.

Old granddad didn't care. He paid the doctor in cash. With grandma all hopped up and riding the white horse there was nobody to interfere with his chronic philandering.

The shrink bastard paused and gave me a puzzled look. "Colt," he said in that annoying compassionate and concerned caring tone that doctors and teachers use, "I'm not talking about narcotics. I'm talking about being nar-cis-sis-tic, which is something else entirely."

He said it just like that, condescendingly drawing out every syllable in the word. I just glared at him.

He then rambled on for like an eternity about some old Greek dude who was so impressed with how hot he was he stared at his own reflection in a pool of water until he died.

I told the shrink bastard, er, I'm sorry, therapist (who told me I needed to work on having a more positive attitude), "That old Greek guy was a fucking pussy and a total loser. I'm nothing like that guy. I don't need to look at myself to know how hot I am. I just know it. I don't need no fucking mirror to tell my that I'm incredibly attractive and one hot sexy beast of a man."

The therapist said something about having a long way to go.

about me, part one

2005-06-24T16:46:00.000-06:00

I thank the Good Doctor Polymer Noyz for his kind words of encouragement and advice on beginning this online journey in self discovery, exploration, and personal growth.

Although that last bit about "journey in self discovery blah blah blah" and all that crap weren't Polymer's words. He's not into that sort of stupid new-age sounding garbage either.

They were the words of my therapist. Stupid court ordered therapist, the prick. Stupid court ordered therapy. If I miss a session the judge said something about revoking my probation which my lawyer tells me would be very bad.

Just who the fuck does that judge think he is anyway? I mean really now, what gives him the right?

My family's highly compensated team of lawyers are still arguing the merits of their so-called warrant which that asshole Assistant District Attorney claims gave the cops the right to open the trunk. Okay, so I may have been a little drunk. Okay, so maybe I was a lot drunk, too drunk to realize the girls were underage. But those girls were drinking in the same bar I was in, so that's just not my fault. And they certainly were neither looking nor acting like high-school seniors.

As far as the contents of my trunk, well, it had been a tough week. I was tightly wound. I needed to unwind. Really now, is a half-pound of grass, a few grams of cocaine, and a handful of pharmaceutical grade Ecstacy really that big of deal? Damn puritanical just say fucking no bastards. Don't believe what that asshole Assistant District Attorney said in the papers. None of that stuff was for intended for distribution. Like I said, it had been a tough week. I really needed to unwind.

Oh well, I guess it could be worse.

Such is the bed I must lie in. At least I'm not sleeping in a bunk getting three squares day constantly being afraid of being traded for cigarettes or dropping the soap in the shower.

In lieu of The Big House I find myself stuck in Texas, sentenced to twice weekly therapy sessions, because brother, let me tell you, I'm told I'm quite the mess. Additionally I've got to go do community service whenever one of the family lawyers call me and reminds me it's tomorrow. Which is like every other Saturday or something hanging out with juveniles who are also on probation. Yeah right, like I'm supposed to be some sort of role model.

The last time one of the lawyers called he reminded me that I'm damn lucky to have their representation and to not be in jail. He then tried to reassure me by stating that the next 36 to 72 months will go by much faster than I think. The bastard. That's the kind of shit my family is paying out the ass for?

Fuck man, I can't leave the damn county without advance written permission from an Assistant District Attorney. His bad comb over and I swear it's dyed mustache combo nicely fits with his complete lack of anything resembling humor. If I did want to leave where the fuck would I go? The paranoid son of a bitch made me surrender my passport as one of the terms of my probation. At my sentencing hearing he actually called me a "flight risk" because of my nearly unlimited financial resources. Flight risk? I'll show him flight risk. Hell, I was flying higher than the moon thanks to some fine grain pure Columbian at the damn hearing. Fuck him.

On the positive side (damn therapy, maybe it's starting to work already), I can pretty much do whatever damn well I please so long as I don't leave the county or miss a therapy session or community service gig. It's like being under house arrest in a house that's way bigger than that bitch Martha Stewart's.

There are many much more worse fates than being sentenced to spend the next 36 to 72 months in a city cool enough to be a location for The Real World.

And besides, I love this town. Or I love my memories of this town. I've got the next 36 to 72 months to figure out which is which.

family history, part two

2005-06-23T22:55:00.000-06:00

If you have not already done so, you are strongly encouraged to first read part one.

More about my grandfather, Randolph Barrington, the mean ass sorry old dead bastard. . .

He took over Barrington Bolt and Fastener following my great grandfather's untimely demise in the spring of 1927. It was still a relatively small family owned business then. He was only sixteen and more than just a little freaked out. But he was crafty as a ferret with a shrewd sense of business, and an almost uncanny ability to sniff out opportunity. In 1928 he was able to con his way into a meeting with Henry Ford by posing as an orphaned teen raising money to pay the tax bill of the local Catholic orphanage. He left that day with an exclusive contract to provide the nuts, bolts, screws, and rivets that held together Ford automobiles.

He was instantly a millionaire. Later that year he took the company public and his fortunes exponentially expanded.

Until that Black Day in October 1929.

Little is known about how my grandfather kept the company running during the early dark years of the Great Depression. It is known that on two different ocassions union organizers who worked in his factory disappeared suddenly in the middle of the night. Investigations by local law enforcement failed to turn up any leads in both cases.

It is also known that around this time my grandfather began making generous donations to political campaigns.

Feeling the pinch of the Great Depression, Randolph Barrington traveled to Europe in the Fall of 1931 in order to seek new markets for Barrington Bolt and Fastener products. One night he found himself in a Berlin cabaret sharing a table with a non-descript yet still somehow rather odd looking man with a really bad haircut and an Oliver Hardy mustache. During the intermission of a drag show they discussed their selfish egomaniacal dreams of doing great things to change the world while marveling at the feature entertainer's highly skilled and delicately nuanced impersonation of Marlene Dietrich.

So yes, the rumours, innuendo and allegations you read on the internet are true.

(Minus that whole Space Alien Mars Atlantis Connection. And a descendant of Adam Weishaupt? Damn, you college kids must be freakin' high. All I can say is that I hope those dudes email me because I'd love to score some of whatever it is that they are smoking.)

Here and now for the first time I finally have the balls to confess to the world family secrets that others have thus far failed to honestly disclose. Randolph Barrington, my grandfather, made a fortune dealing with the Nazis.

So what. It was sixty plus freakin' years ago. If you have a problem with it, then cry me a fucking river, build a goddamned bridge, and get the fuck over it.

Nothing personal man, so don't freak. It was business, just business. And business was good. Very good.

When the Second Great War began my grandfather saw another great business opportunity.

He built a second factory.

While the first factory continued to quietly manufacture nuts, bolts, screws, rivets, washers, and wingnuts that were shipped with quiet discretion and fraudlent documents through third parties and third world nations to his German meglomaniac friend, the new second factory was busy churning out the same products to support the War Effort at Home.

Now herein lies the beauty of my grandfather's master plan, and I think coincidentally if not accidentally his great contribution to the postwar world and the future of mankind. . .

This great contribution to humanity was due in part to the fact that my grandfather, the late great Randolph Barrington, was a tight assed stingy motherfucker. He was apathetic as the day is long and didn't give a rat's ass who won the damn thing so long as he made money on the deal. In later years he was actually overheard saying that he had no complaints about the Nazi's labor policies and I think he secretly admired the efficiency of their operations.

He was also astute enough to figure out the long-term impact on his bottom line and his bottom under either a totalitarian fascist or a democratic capitalistic regime.

It don't take a degree in calculus to do that math.

Getting back to my grandfather's seemingly accidental brilliant master plan. . .

He sold the regular stuff to our guys at a reasonable wartime mark-up. Good high quality and higher priced nuts and bolts went into building the Great American War Machine.

He sold the fucking Nazis crap. He used inferior materials and inferior manufacturing processes. He cut almost as many corners in the manufacturing process as he did on labor. And he charged the fucking Nazis more for it!

As shocking as you may find this to believe, he did this all with the full knowledge and complicity of the government of the United States of America.

He was nearly indicted by Federal Grand Juries and almost charged with Treason and Aiding and Abetting The Enemy in a Time of War at least three times. He contributed generously to the re-election campaigns of a half dozen or so key U.S. Senators during this time period. For some reason or other those charges never quite materialized. "Lack of evidence" was the most substantial explanation given.

We in the family never knew why Old Granddad was allowed to continue to do business with an enemy during wartime. It never made sense. . . until a Federal lawsuit filed under a Freedom of Information Act request by Time magazine in the 1970's forced the Pentagon and the FBI to declassify and release literally thousands of pages of documents. On many pages the only word that is not blacked out is the word "Barrington".

In those thousands of pages was a recently declassified WWII era intelligence report from a for some reason still classified U.S. Army Staff Sargent. It discussed in great detail the impact of my grandfather's Nazi business dealings on The Allied War Effort. What it said was astounding.

The report actually credited my grandfather as much as General Patton with Rommel's defeat. Apparently the bolts and other metal fasteners Randolph Barrington sold to the Nazis were of such poor quality that they lead to a significantly greater degree of mechanical equipment failure all around. This was particularly true in the harsh environments of the African deserts.

Hmmm. . .

Randolph Barrington. Greedy Arrogant Selfish Bastard. Great Accidental American Patriot.

Maybe I'll go have that inscribed on his grave.

family history, part one - old grandad

2005-06-22T19:59:00.000-06:00

Hi. My name is Colt Barrington. Yes, that's right, Barrington. As in The Barringtons. With a capital "The".

As in The Barringtons of Barrington Industries International Incorporated, B3I for short (or BIII on the NYSE). Unless your some sort of mental case or social deviant you know the name. It's a legend in American corporate culture, like Ford or Morgan or that new school young geeky bastard Gates.

I am the grandson of Randolph Barrington. Yes him. The Randolph Barrington they made that movie about. It would have gotten a whole lot more publicity if that son of a bitch Scorsese and that shallow pretty boy bitch DiCaprio hadn't have made that stupid fucking movie about that other rich bastard. Fuck them.

Ah, who am I kidding, the movie wasn't all that great. I told that worthless toady of a director it was a mistake to cast Robert Downey Jr. in between rehab gigs, but did he listen? No. Look for it soon at your local video store.

So anyway, Randolph Barrington was my grandfather. He was a sorry rotten mean old bastard and a poor excuse for a human being. Because I'm family I can say this. If you or anyone else says anything similar, I know people who will come to your home while you sleep and cut your balls off. I mean it. So don't.

But he was stinking filthy rich. Old school rich, like a Kennedy but without wasting time on that political nonsense. He used to joke that he had more money than God because he threw a better party when my dad was born than God did when His Son was born. Except I don't think he was joking. So I guess it's also safe to say that my grandfather was not a religious man.

He was also not a political man. My grandfather didn't give squat about politics. He viewed politics the same way he viewed all interactions and relationships involving other people. It was strictly business, nothing more, nothing less. Just business, and it wasn't business unless there was something in it for him.

My grandfather's politics were the politics of business, the politics of profit. And his business began as Barrington Bolt and Fastener. My grandfather manufactured steel bolts, screws, nuts and other metal fastening devices.

His father, my great grandfather Rupert Barrington, ran a small hardware business in what would eventually become suburban Detroit. Following a year plus long steel workers strike around 1909, my great grandfather had difficulty getting the finished materials: nuts, bolts, nails, etc. for his hardware store. So he decided to start making them.

When my grandfather was sixteen he took over the family business following my great grandfather's untimely death in what was officially listed as an industrial accident. Quite unofficially, particularly for insurance and legal puposes, family legend describes the event as losing a drunken bet. Apparently no matter how great your boots are you cannot run across a large cauldron of molten steel even if you go very fast. All my great-grandmother, God rest her soul, had to bury was the charred top of a grey fedora.

Every year from the time I was that age until Old Grandad finally lost his ability to speak following the stroke he had in '87 almost all I heard at family gatherings was some berating belittling bellowing comment comparing his great life to my presumably worthless one:

"Wha'da'ya mean college? Look at me! I didn't need no fancy book learning!"

or "Wha'da'ya mean you don't have a job? When I was your age I was running an international corporation!"

or even "Whatsa matter you pussy, you some sorta faggot? You should be out there bangin'! By the time I was your age I had courted and bedded the daughters of seven world leaders!"

I told the old bastard I did number nine the night before. Old Grandad was so competitive he got completely worked up at the thought of being beaten by one of his descendents. It caused him to have his big stroke. He never spoke another word.

I lied.

Oh well. I felt a little bad but at least I succeeded where my parents had failed in finally shutting him up.