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Some guys in suits walk in and start asking for beers. Flipper just shakes his head and offers some sasparilla. They look at our little lobster bibs stained with red sauce, regard the wailing TV sets, look at the tables of Candyland players bent intently around their boards and walk out scowling.

I run into Suzie, who is vice president of corporate communications and investor relations at a company that makes asshole medicine. I ask her how tricks are. What? she says to me. She's watching Major Nelson on TV. He's dressed as a Viking or something and Colonel Bellows walks in on him. I repeat my question. What do you mean, how's tricks? she says, jamming a bunch of Cheeze Doodles past her lipstick and into her head. She doesn't like to talk about how she works for a company that makes stuff to squirt up your ass, and she thinks that I'm trying to get her to talk about it. She doesn't want to talk about anything, I see, so I wander over to the frankfurter machine and spend 20 minutes looking, transfixed, at the dogs impaled on stakes making their rounds inside their glass cage.

My performance at the slide house, although it didn't endear me to the folks there, makes a hit at the agency. I get an attaboy from my boss. He says I've got executive fiber in me. Wee. We get the presentation ready in time for the client's trip to the city and he liked it, he did. We were at the office until midnight the night before getting it all ready. The client had no idea.

I got Spaghettios juice on my Mr. Bubble T-shirt, mom will get it out with Fab, which can take an oil slick out of a wedding dress in a regular load with hardly any scrubbing. Spaghettios are great for hangovers with a glass of Strawberry Quik and a grilled cheese sandwich slimed in butter, but since Flipper's opened, I hardly know hangovers.

The dogs are sweating under the light and I'm always fascinated to see kids buy these things. When they order one, I like to watch their faces as Flipper plucks one off its skewer and slams it into a bun with practiced ease. The buyers, I notice, always watch every move Flipper makes. They tell him what they want on it and watch intently, licking their lips with concerned anticipation as he prepares their meat treat. I watch their eyes, you see, which never leave the dog. I wonder, but I don't eat meat anymore, although I don't know why.

Smoking isn't allowed in Flipper's, so I go out to the satellite dish again and join the other kids out there smoking like fiends. I light a Parliament and listen in. Most of the kids smoke Parliaments because they have the funnest filters, more fun even than Vantages, some say. Bongo is out there again, and so is Tex, the other bar fool. Tex has sheepskin chaps and a 40 gallon Stetson hat and big fake guns and spurs and a saddle that Flipper makes him tote around. Tex calls the saddle his cross. If you ask him about the saddle, he'll hold out his palms and say See my stigmata? which tickles him because nobody knows what the hell he's talking about. Tex is talking about his Ford Falcon that he drives. He says it has a bad water pump and that he'll have to spend his day off replacing it. Everybody is amazed to hear Tex talk about this, and nobody interrupts him whenever he talks about his car. Not only is he the only person we know who owns a car in the city, but he even knows how to fix it.

Problem is, says Tex, with the loping conversational tone of someone who knows he has the floor, is thet I have to drain th' radiator. Then I haff to take off'n the fan belt and remove the waddah pump.

I'd heard Tex talk about replacing his muffler last week and, even though the conversation was good, I felt queasy, had to go.

I get back to my building. I get in the elevator and nearly keel over from the smells of Indian food coming up from the super's kitchen in the basement. I get into my apartment and thank god there's a Chuck Norris film on Channel 11. I've missed Star Trek, I rue, but it was the OK Corral episode and I always thought that was kind of a dumb one. I have my Victoria's Secret catalogue, I have my Molson Golden Ales, my Parliaments, I have my television; my spear, my loincloth. I watch Chuck kick people in the head and I think a little about my working week. I have to go to Baltimore tomorrow for the big presentation. Can't sleep, nervous,

So I'm in this room, right, and all of these guys in suits are standing around and I'm flipping the slides as the client reads my speech. I keep thinking, you know, while I'm flipping the slides and listening to how my words sound as the client reads them, I keep thinking about Bongo at the Fun Hutt, how this means nothing to him. But his profession, what _he_ does, means a lot to me.

It was last Thursday night when I talked to Bongo last, and he asked me about my job. I got all tongue-tied trying to explain to him what we did, and why we did it. I wound up out there at the satellite dish telling Bongo all about this marketing initiative and all of the strategies and planning and media blitzes and everything. The more I said about one thing, the more I had to explain about another. My job suddenly seemed all convoluted and hopelessly byzantine and ...

When I finished my explanation, Bongo poked a smoke into his mouth and said, "Hmm, sounds like a lot of bullshit to me."

I was thinking of this when my boss came up to me, grabbed the slide flipper out of my hand, and advanced the carousel. I had to stand there like, like ... I didn't know whether to sit down or try to take the flipper back or what, while my boss gave me a quick scowl and kept the thing moving, the client up there at the podium all tense, looking at us.

It was okay though, I still did okay. And I got to ride the Metroliner back by myself. I was so overwhelmed by the fact that I was on a train and alone and free and unsupervised that I went to the bar car and got two beers and a tuna sandwich on a Kaiser roll, whatever a Kaiser roll is. I had five different flavors of newspaper and I was in the smoking car so I could smoke like a fiend and I watched Delaware move past in the waning hours of the day, as they say. I think it was Delaware. I was almost delirious. No, I _was_ delirious. I finished the beers and the sandwich and three of the papers and went back for more beers. I came back and smiled a lot even though there was nobody to know or care that I was smiling. I finished the papers and started on the Amtrak magazine.

Back in the city, as I carried all my shit to a cab outside Penn Station, I was kinda drunk and I was thinking about all this crap I had to carry around. The cabby, wearing an enormous turban, was loading it into the trunk and I said to him in a lighthearted fashion, I said "Look at all of this shit I have to carry around! I bet you, as a cabby, don't have to carry around this much kinda shit!"

He says nothing. Going up the West Side Highway, I said to the cabby, I said "You know, time was all fellas like us would need was a loincloth and a spear and we'd be okay. He turns his head about 10 degrees in my direction but doesn't say anything.

Maybe he has more shit than I thought. Maybe he _likes_ having lots of shit. Maybe he doesn't have _any_ shit. I don't know. I worry that he thinks because I'm wearing a tie that I'm rich and he hates me. Later I think that the man's actions were probably indicative of someone who doesn't speak English, and I feel better.

Saturday night at Flipper's is popping! It's Appliance Night, which means that all of us urban dwellers who don't have things like dishwashers and microwave ovens and washing machines and blenders and that sort of thing get to use them all we want. I was loading my underwear into the washing machine and blending a banana smoothie at the same time, eagerly anticipating both the drink and the fact that I'd get to load the glass into the dishwasher afterwards when Bongo came up to me.

Flipper canned me said Bongo. I laughed. Flipper canned me he repeated. I looked over at Flipper and he saw me and looked away. It's the economy said Bongo. He says the recession ...

So what does this mean? I say to Bongo. I mean, what are you going to _starve_ or something? I laughed. It's not like he's going to starve or something, he's Bongo. Bongo says he occupies a highly specialized niche in society, a niche that has few opportunities, I try to keep thinking that it doesn't matter. That if it was like the Pleistocene age, you could just _be_ , and go around and eat tubers and kill mastodons or something. Spears and jockstraps. It, I can't get used to the fact of money. I tell Bongo that things have gotten too complicated. I tell him he shouldn't have to worry about where his next Salem comes from.

He laughs, I laugh. We both laugh. Laff. Laffing's fine, says Bongo at the satellite dish. He's changed out of his Sunoco outfit and now he's wearing a 1976 Sear's leisure suit — forest green with lime green piping with a clip-on tie and a huge belt buckle that says "BONGO."

Bongo is really _into_ being Bongo. Bongo says he feels like he should be depressed that he hasn't created a huge furniture chain like his grandfather did. He doesn't, he can't take lessons from his ancestors because he doesn't know them. He knows what they did a little, but he sure doesn't know how they did it. Like me, Bongo doesn't know his ethnic makeup or where his grandfather came from. Bongo doesn't know why he has to be Bongo.

We're jelly fish says Bongo, lighting a Salem with his Zippo (funnest lighter name) that has "Bongo" engraved in it. I'm Bongo, goddammit, he says to me down at the railroad tracks, the ones under the thing at Riverside Park, later on. Bongo holds forth. Bongo swims in the Hudson River. I look at Bongo like Napoleon Chagall looking at a Yanomomi Indian. I scribble notes on a napkin I will later discover are illegible. I hold my digital recorder up to his mouth and keep his words until I need the space for something at work and delete them.

What is this Bongo, this good Bongo? I thought as I helped him up to his TriBeCa flat and put him to bed. I went home and I wanted a nightcap so I went down to the bodega wearing a motorcycle helmet and funky shades because I wanted to be noticed. Nobody blinked and I went home, anonymous as ever. I stopped going to Flipper's. Partly, I thought, because I wished to protest Bongo's firing. I would go instead to the bar around the corner from my office, where everyone else hung out. I'd stand around and drink boring yuppie Amstel Lights and smoke non-fun Marlboros and we'd all talk about work or sex or sports and all that. The only other diversion was a jukebox, and I noticed that the men and women in suits thought it somewhat daring to go and select five songs. Like they were being really adventurous, imposing their choices on the crowd. The ones who considered themselves "fun" did this, and they, in turn, were considered "fun" by the others. Well, I can be adventurous and fun, too, and I went to the jukebox and flipped through the things and saw no Abba, no They Might Be Giants, no old Banana Splits theme, no Partridge Family — all the stuff Flipper has on his jukebox. A woman I knew from accounting came up and suggested Eric Clapton and R.E.M. And I looked at her, but I didn't see her; I looked right through her — but not in the metaphorical sense. I mean, I didn't _see_ her, if you know what I mean. I could only see the door,

Excuse me, I said. I left the lights on on my snowmobile (there are no snowmobiles in the city, so I was being "fun," but she looked right through _me_ , ogling the credits I'd left on the jukebox.)

I thought about hunting up Bongo, but it was Tex I really needed to see, so I made my way to Flipper's. My cabbie was a Sikh who nonetheless let me smoke in the cab, and I hung my head out the window like a Labrador retriever. Hey! I said to the cabbie, poking my head back inside, I'm a Labrador retriever! He inclined his head slightly and I thought I saw the slightest sliver of teeth through his dark lips. I couldn't wait to tell the kids at Flipper's I made a Sikh cabbie smile.

At Flipper's things were in full swing, and I hit the locker room to change into the Tyvek jumpsuit that had become de rigeur at Flipper's in my absence.

Yell to Flipper for more Ovaltine, more Campbell's tomato soup and add milk instead of water so it'll be cream of tomato, would it be too much to ask to get some Spaghettios mixed in there or will the shit explode? My cousin Boffo once ate five cans of Beefaroni on a dare, a week later he ate a whole sleeve of saltines with no provocation,

As eight o'clock nears, we all gather round for the weekly drawing to see who gets to smash an old TV set. Gavin wins and we angle for position as he takes up a Louisville Slugger and has at it. We cheer every hit, every smash, and offer advice: "Smash the tube ... mangle the antenna ... bust the dials!!" we yell, we hoot, we stamp. Gavin has a special place in the bar because he works at Mattel. It's good to see him win the drawing, we say afterwards. He really seemed to enjoy it, we say,

I find Tex out at the satellite dish, he's smoking a cheroot he says is the same kind Clint Eastwood smoked in A Fistful of Dollars, which we all take as gospel. Where ya been, pardner? Tex asks me, wrapping his big arm around me and squeezing me tight. His gun digs into my thigh, and I pretend not to notice. I tell Tex I've been drinking Amstel Lights over on the East Side and he clucks his tongue. I tell Tex I heard he had some trouble with his differential, and I listened intently as he went on a 15-minute discourse about something called spider gears and 80-weight oil. When he was finished, I asked him if he'd changed his air filter lately, but he didn't hear me, drifting off to do the nine o'clock toast. I smashed out my cigarette and followed him in.

The Candyland tables grew quiet, Flipper switched off all the TVs and the hot dog machine, the lights grew dim as Tex took the microphone and did his nightly toast, stolen from his days as an Elk in Carson City:

Friends, Tex said, wherever you may roam, whatever your lot in life, you will never be forgotten here. Be it dee-vorce, involuntary separation from your present gig, or the woe-begotten circumstances bee-yond yer control that take you from our warm brother- and sister-hood, you weel always have a place here at Flipper's Fun Hutt. And fer all you who may never ree-turn, Ah lift mah glass and say: (and here everyone chimes in) To our absent cowpokes!

And the light come up, the music starts and everyone cheers and looks happy for a minute afore they git back to their activities. I'm all choked up hearing this, and as I head to the bar to get a Slush Puppy to wash away the bitterness of the Amstel Light, an arm lands on my shoulder, and it's Bongo dressed in his Sunoco outfit!

Reel and jump, move about performing gesticulative non-sequiturs, yell to Flipper for more Quik. Turn up the Brady Bunch, more Mrs. Paul's fishticks, s'il vous plait, more Doritos, more Kraft Mac & Cheese, more Park's Sausages, yes, more.

Hey kid! Bongo says to me, handing me a steak knife and hugging me around the shoulder like it was old times. He thanks me for getting him home that night and then, before we can talk, ol' Tex wheels up and says to Bongo: He tell you about his Amstel Light episode on the East Side? And Bongo just laughs. O, good Bongo! He knows, and he knows that (and I found this out later) that I was one of the absent reasons Flipper begged him back. And we laugh, Bongo laughs, Tex laffs, we all laff, laff, laff. And Flippers, this night, is peeling out. Collectively, the place is popping a wheelie. Every appliance is on, every Candyland board is full up with players, everyone has chocolate milk mustaches as Tony Danza shrieks at Florence Henderson from across the room.

MTV is here, as are the Starburst and Butterfinger reps, who are suspended from the ceiling by bungee cords. As they jerk and hover in their harnesses, handing out buttons, hats and samples of candy to the kids, I find Suzie, who is vice president of corporate communications and investor relations at a company that makes asshole medicine. She's just come off a victorious round of Monopoly, I know from talk, and she's got a treat in front of her.

Well Suzie I say, putting on a bib and joining her over a Flippers ante pasto of warm mac & cheese, Skittles and Funyons, how'd the game go? And she smiles a little and is nice to me for a while. She then tells me, politely, to go away.

###

### Memorial Day

From his perch atop the mailbox, Bledsoe could more or less see just about everything that was happening. It was one of those holidays, he knew, where floats and bands gave way to barbecues and volleyball games. So it was like either Labor Day or Memorial Day or, perhaps, The Fourth. But there were no fireworks, he noticed.

The kid with the cotton candy all over his young mug squinted through the sunshine up at Bledsoe and wondered aloud if there was extra room on the mailbox. Bledsoe looked at his own clean jeans and tried to imagine what they would look like with pink crap allover them. Bledsoe hoisted the boy up.

"Thanks mister," said the kid, now offering a grimy bag of peanuts Bledsoe's way.

"No thanks there, Buster," said Bledsoe. 'Buster' — where the hell did that come from?

"You new in town?" asked the kid.

"They call those 'Sousaphones,'" said Bledsoe, pointing at the marching band. "And they are named after John Philip Sousa who, don't you know, was called 'The March King' and who invented those portable tubas for occasions such as these."

A blank look greeted this statement of fact.

"It's Memorial Day, who cares about tubas?" said the kid, squirming on the mailbox for a more comfortable position.

"Just don't eat wieners for god's sake," said Bledsoe. "You never know what's in them things."

"You mean hot dogs?" said the kid. "I _like_ hot dogs."

Bledsoe gave him a look and the kid slid off the mailbox saying, "You're weird, mister."

Bledsoe went and stood near his motorcycle watching the parade come to an end. A portly man with a bullhorn announced that the festivities would continue in Kennedy Park with a "full-on Dixieland band ensemble" and that "food an' drink a-plenty" could be found there. The man was wearing a shirt that said "I'm spending my children's inheritance."

Bledsoe glanced absently at his abdomen and figured he was hungry.

Over at the park, Bledsoe was amazed to see an actual pig turning on a spit. Next to this, a man stirred a huge pot of chili with an oar.

The man had cut off the sleeves of his shirt with a butcher knife, Bledsoe supposed, and he looked up at Bledsoe and he said, "Say pal, how about some fine Texas chili?"

Bledsoe sort of looked behind him to see if there was anyone else that the man might be addressing and, finding no one, turned back and asked, "Got meat in it, that chili?"

"Well hell! Of course it's got meat in it!" said the sleeveless fellow. "Wouldn't be much of a chili con carne without meat in it, would it?"

"Is that an oar you're using there?" asked Bledsoe, changing the subject.

The man laughed. "Yeah sure, an oar's the best damn stirrer for this kind of mess you've ever seen!"

"I can imagine," said Bledsoe.

"But it's _clean_ , of course," said the chili dude. "Cleanest damn oar you've ever seen!"

"I see that," said Bledsoe, admiring the oar's cleanliness. And then here's the kid again:

"Say mister," tugging at Bledsoe's leather jacket. "Lookee here!" and shoves the better part of a mustard besmeared hot dog into his face and mouth.

"Now look here Ricky..." (here's the sleeveless guy)... "You don't want to be spoiling this man's appetite for chili!"

"He don't like hot dogs!" shrieked Ricky, then in one motion dropping to the ground and wiping his face on his left sock (a maneuver Bledsoe had never before witnessed). Seeing his wonderment, Ricky supplied, "Socks are gross anyway."

Bledsoe noticed that a number of people were viewing this exchange, and then there was the sleeveless chili salesman proffering the steaming bowl. "Buck and a-half," he said. Bledsoe paid and wandered off.

He set the chili down on some raffle table, bought the prize ticket, and started towards the watermelon stand. The raffle lady calls him back:

"Say," she said, "You forgot your chili, mister!"

Bledsoe sauntered back and picked up the bowl. "Thank's ma'am, I must've lost my head."

"Say!" she said again as Bledsoe left, "You didn't leave no address on your raffle ticket, mister!"

But Bledsoe called over his shoulder, "Oh, I won't win anyway," and made it to the watermelon stand.

"May I please have a slice of watermelon?" inquired Bledsoe of the watermelon lady.

She smiled and whipped a melon up on the counter with a great thud. Bledsoe watched with interest as the watermelon woman, brandishing an enormous knife (machete?), whacked the melon in half, then in quarters, and handed him the largest of the four pieces.

"Uh, ma'am, I only wanted a slice," said Bledsoe.

"Oh, you run along," said the watermelon lady. "I've got more melons than you can shake a stick at!"

And she did, too.

So Bledsoe walked off with his melon, feeling rather conspicuous with his unwieldy slab of fruit. He began to seek-out a spot where he might sit and consume his treat without interruption when here's the kid again, struggling under the weight of his own enormous slice:

"Say mister," sitting down next to, "I can spit watermelon seeds from here to Timbuktoo!"

Bledsoe sat on the edge of a picnic bench and, breaking off a piece of the melon, contemplated it saying: "Where, do you suppose, is Timbuktu?"

"Lookee!" supplied Ricky, pursing his lips in grotesque fashion and launching a seed with a grand expulsion of breath and spit.

Bledsoe watched as the seed landed some four feet away and said, "My, nice launch! But Timbuktu is in Africa, you see, and I've the fear that you've fallen rather short of your goal."

"Whaddaya mean?! That seed took off like a rocket!"

Sustaining another "you're weird" from Ricky, Bledsoe sat alone and systematically ate the melon, now and then removing seeds from his mouth and depositing them sans flourish on the ground. He walked around with the rinds for some time before he found a suitable receptacle for them.

Bledsoe looked at the nearest star and figured it to be just after noon. He was supposed to be somewhere that would necessitate his leaving within the hour, but the time and the place wandered away and he found himself over at the chili dude's counter again.

"Good, ain't it?" said the man without sleeves. "Back for more, I reckon?"

"Is that a canoe oar?" asked Bledsoe.

The man looked at Bledsoe curiously for a moment and then, without turning his head, shouted in Bledsoe's face: "Hey Herb! What the hell kind of oar is this? Canoe or something?"

Herb, busy carving junk off of the enormous pig nearby, looked up and said, "Who wants to know?"

"This young fellow here, he wants to know what kind of damn oar you've got me stirring this here chili with."

Now interested, the man called Herb walked over and picked up the oar. He ran his hand up and down its length, he turned it over a few times in his hands while extolling its virtues to Bledsoe.

"Son," he said to Bledsoe, "This here is the finest, _cleanest_ damn oar that money can buy. You can use it for your canoe, you can use it for your sailboat. You can paddle just about anything with it."

"Like maybe for a _dinghy_ ," said Bledsoe, this being his attempt at displaying some sort of nautical knowledge.

"Hell yes!" says Herb. "Paddle your damn dinghy with it, that's the trick!"

When Bledsoe looked to the chili dude for support, the dude was offering yet another bowl of oar-stirred chili for Bledsoe, saying quietly, "This one's on the house, seein's how you liked the first bowl so much."

Standing in the middle of a field with a bowl of chili he didn't want, Bledsoe was... HEY MISTER!"

It's the kid again.

"Yes, Ricky," says Bledsoe.

"Hey! How'd you know my name!" demanded Ricky.

"Can't remember," said Bledsoe, surreptitiously sliding the chili into a trash bin.

The band, that Dixieland Band, had started playing. Some folks had even started dancing. One rather rotund fellow, Bledsoe couldn't help but notice, was prancing to the music whilst slamming a pork sandwich down his neck. Wow, thought Bledsoe.

But Ricky: "Look mister, where are you from? I ain't never seen you around before."