WALKING ON THIN ICE

i’ve had a fore-taste of purgatory, and it’s called mcdonald’s. got up at 5 to take down the tent, pack, backpack a mile to bus stop, bus an hour to penrith. arrived at 9 a.m. for our 11:45 train to london. found the train station locked until 11:30 - it was cold and gray and wet, so we spent two and one half hours sitting in the mcdonald’s next door ordering bits and pieces here and there to pay for our stay. lady asked for hot chocolate, but their machine was down, so she ordered a bagel to be safe - took one bite, chewed, and spit it out. i took a nip and she’s right - cardboard’s better. she decided to make her own hot chocolate from her pack. asked for hot water, they said they couldn’t give it to her cuz she’d burn herself. she ordered tea, and they gave her her hot water with a side tea bag. didn’t charge her. lady had her hot chocolate.

reminded me of the jack nicholson scene in Five Easy Pieces where he tries to order toast. waitress says they don’t have toast on the menu, so jack orders a toasted BLT sandwhich and tells her to hold the bacon hold the lettuce hold the tomato and bring him his friggin toast. gorgeous scene - never did get the toast though.

our 13 nights camping turned into 14 - the bed&breakfast didn’t accept our reservation. no room at the inn, so we had to stay in our manger. to get warm and stay out of the rain, we bused to keswick and watched the new harry potter movie. it was incoherent. i’ve seen all 5 so far, and while none of them are very good, this is by far the worst. i do like the books though. never understood how books about magic can be turned into magic-less movies.

The Delinquent issue #3 is publishing my true story How I Met My Ex. publication party is july 31st here in london. i’ve been in all three issues so far with 3 true stories and 1 poem.

i divorced my 1st wife in 1975, when my current wife (Lady K) was 3 years old.

How I Met My Ex

My best friend at the Naval Academy was a self-made degenerate who was dating a shelf-made Catholic. She’s the lady who was to blind-date me with my unfortunate future. After graduation they got married, and she constantly semi-quietly chaffed at his sins, especially his alcohol-filled friendship with drug-infested me.

One weekend while she was visiting her parents to celebrate her pregnancy, he went down to Baltimore’s infamous Block to see Blaze Starr strip. During her act, Blaze came up to him and had him powder her big bare breasts with two large powder puffs.

Afterward, he picked his wife up at the train station and on the long trip back to the naval base told her of the breasts and the powder puffs and she flipped - starts screaming the car is filled with powder unclean, to let her out. He does, calms her down, gets her back to base and treatment.

Over the next few weeks she sinks slowly into insanity. Refuses to eat anything because it is poisoned. Won’t clean because it’s filthy beyond soap and water. Eventually they lock her away awhile until her blooming pregnancy catches her attention enough to qualify her as sort of sane. He broke off our relationship because she believed I was the evil in his life, and he tried to spare her what he could. The last I heard, she was a careful and loving mother, but not much of a wife - and he was set in sadness.

This is the woman who decided my future ex and I were made for each other.

My wife to be was also unstable. Not really her fault, it ran in the family. Her sister was being treated for schizophrenia, and her father was a daughter molesting madman. Tried to smash my face in with his fists the night we told him we would marry. Her grandmother was a vicious sharp tongued backstabbing member of the once rich who kept forgetting the once, although she did still own a second home on the Cape next to the Kennedy’s. Her mother at least was a good person, though crippled with arthritis, disappointment and alcohol. Grandma had disinherited them all because her daughter had to marry a common farm boy - who in order to support his new family, had to shelve his dream of singing opera, and become instead a rather prosperous maker of partials, false teeth and bridges for others.