@coltbarrington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.