SKATING ON THIN ICE 2011

Thailand's monsoons arrived at the end of the Pattaya's low season in April 2022, but none had ever been lower than this Covid season. Hotels offered special rates and the few working girls at the even fewer bars and go-gos called everyone 'sexy', but the global travel chaos due to the deadly pandemic has forced the Thai Tourist Board to revise their typically optimistic projection for arrivals to the Land of Smiles, especially after monumental rains flooded the center of the country.

Cities and villages were underwater. Transport was impossible on the inundated highways. Food grew scarce to find and the monsoons weren't expected to ease until October.

My family and I lived up the coast from Pattaya and news of the empty bars filtered north.

"Thailand not have farang," said Mam, as we drank Leo Beer at our small house in the hills.

"You have me and so does Fenway." And the rest of our clan.

My son was happy. Fenway had his father to drive him around SriRacha.

"Many girl go back home."

"To Isaan?" The impoverished plateau had supplied Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket with a steady crop of bar girls for decades.

"Better now live on rice farm. Pattaya not have old men. Not have young men. No men. No money. No rice. Everyone get skinny.

"But never as beautiful as you." We had been together for years, although most of those year I worked in Europe or the USA. I had two families to feed.

"Barg wan."

"Yes, I have a sweet mouth. More beer?" I regarded the sky. Dark clouds approached from the Gulf of Siam. Black lined the bottoms. Lightning crackled through the air and Mam ran inside to unplug the TV and fridge. I shut off my cell phone. Electrical storms were a force to fear in Thailand.

A minute later the rain fell hard, then harder, and even harder. I lit a kerosene lamp. Fenway didn't like the dark and I held him close. Thirty minutes later the storm passed over SriRacha heading inland.

The sun came out and the street steamed with a rising mist. I turned on my phone and it rang immediately. Sam Royalle was on the other end.

"Did it rain by you."

"Not a drop." Sam resided in Pattaya.

Twenty miles to the south.

"Bucketed down here." I hadn't seen Sam in a while. He had been working on a new website.

Sixteen hours a day, so I was surprised when he asked, "Feel like coming out for a beer tonight?"

Sam Royalle liked go-gos. We normally drank shots of tequila. He conversed with people despite 110 dB levels. His Bedford accent worked well in loudness.

"If it isn't raining."

"No excuses. I'll take you out for a steak."

Sam had been living in Thailand over ten years, but remained a boy from Bedford.

"You ever think about changing your diet?"

"What you expect me to eat? Thai food?"

"It's good enough for sixty million Thais." Few of them were overweight.

"I'm British. We eat British food. Only British." The Brit did like a good plate of curry and pad Thai, which I never ate. It had no kick.

"So see you around 7." He gave the address of a new steakhouse. "It's very classy."

"I remember classy. Seven, then." Classy for farangs in Pattaya meant no wife-beater t-shirts.

Back in the last century only the Dusit Thani was the only classy resort in Pattaya, but times had change.

"You go out with friend?" asked Mem.

Fenway was eating chocolate ice cream.

"Sam wants to have a drink."

"Go-Go bar."

"I guess so, but I only think of you."

"Hah, all men lie. Think of me with naked lady. You very funny."

"It's the truth." My thinking only of her was the truth, but no women will believe that.

"True not true. Same same. I know you. One drink look lady. Two drink talk with lady. Three drink only think drink. That truth."

"Yes, it is." I liked holding hands with a glass of gin-tonic.

A little later Mam, Fenway, and I ate at KFC. She dropped me at the bus stop at Tuk Com on Sukhumvit. Traffic was heavy and the sun was going down. I kissed her and hugged Fenway.

"Mai mao, papa."

"No, I won't get too drunk."

Mam gave her blessing.

"Sam take care you. You take care Sam." Her spies covered Walking Street. Their network posted agents on every soi. I was a good boy and good boys never get caught doing bad.

"Chan lak ter."

And I did love her, as I jumped on the bus.

Thirty minutes later I got off at Pattaya Klang and hopped on a motorsai, telling the taxi driver, "Walking Street."

The ride to Pattaya's Second Road took less than ten minutes. I walked over to Walking Street. Farangs were a rarity on that gauntlet of lust. The desperation on the go-go girls' faces was a cruel mirror of hard times. Every girl sang the same chorus "Take me home."

"Bang thi teelang."

"Maybe later. Maybe never. All farang kee-nok."

Sam and I ate a great ribeye steak at the classy restaurant.

He looked healthy for the first time in years. His new business venture was off the ground. Sam was looking at a million dollars in two years time. It all sounded good in a go-go bar.

Sam suggested hitting Heaven A Go-Go. The upstairs bar was the best in Pattaya. I hadn't been there in months, but several girls knew my name. They were friends of Mam. We drank beer. Two bottles. The owner of Heaven bought several rounds of tequila. Paddy had run a pimp bar in East St. Louis. He was most men's hero.

Sixty-five and running a go-go bar. He was my hero too. East St. Louis was tougher than Pattaya back in the early 1970s.

"Any girl you want. No bar fine." I thanked Paddy for his generosity, but refused about twenty nubile dancers before midnight. I told them the same story.

"Mai mii keng leng."

"I can give you power." Their bare bodies smelled of youth and a promise of a trip to heaven or hell. I wasn't interested in either destination after ten beers and deserted my bar stool at Heaven Above a Go Go, telling Sam Royalle that I was going to the bathroom. Three naked girls were on his lap. He wouldn't notice my departure.

The night air on Soi Diamond was strangely cool. The moist wind carried the threat of rain and I walked to 2nd Road rather than be tempted by another drink on Walking Street.

Two transvestites grabbed my arms at the top of the alley. The pair were armored in black shiny leather. They towered over me in their spiked heels. Masochists would have paid to lick the their feet. A hand slithered into my pocket. Her fingernails raked my thigh for plunder. The Shim found my wallet. It only had 2000 baht, but all my ATM and credit cards. My struggle to break free was futile, until the pickpocket yelped with pain.

"Pai loi." The voice belonged to Jamie Parker, a friend from the Lower East Side. "Get fucking lost."

"We go. Come back too." The taller TV sneered with a helium alto. Her manhood throbbed in a leather bikini. I felt inadequate.

"Good luck then." Jamie stood his ground. Almost sixty he carried the menace of the killer paroled after eleven years hard time.

"Yet mun." The she-boys strode off to find easier prey.

"I had things under control."

"Didn't look it to me." He handed back my wallet and coughed like a backfire from an out-of-tune Harley, although I suspected his hack hadn't come from smoking cigarettes.

"You're right. Those ka-toeys are tough." I count on bruises on the tomorrow. The indentation from their nails would fade faster. Mam's suspicious mind wouldn't clear for months. I asked Jamie, "What happened to you?"

Jamie's body had been perennially thin. Drugs and diet, but his face was gaunt and Panda black circles masked his eyes.

"I look that bad?" He stared at his reflection in the 7/11 window. He wasn't the type to lie to himself about his looks.

"Yes, you look that bad." Ja-bah was bad. The cheap speed was addictive. "You need some money?"

"A thousand wouldn't hurt, but it isn't for what you think."

"Jamie, you can do what you want with it." I was no angel.

After dark any money you give a friend had to be consider a gift. I pulled out a purple note.

"I don't feel like it, but then I'm not the boss." He stuck the bill securely in his jeans pocket. "Mind if I walk with you a bit?"

"I'm just going to get a taxi."

The eyes of a passing policeman convicted Jamie of several crimes. He could never go back to New York. His sin against the state had a long statute of limitation.

"Let me give you a ride somewhere."

"Yeah, there's too much light here." He lowered his head like someone might be following him. I fought the temptation to look over my shoulder. A taxi took us to 3rd Road for 200 baht. It was safer than a motorsai taxi.

At the Buffalo Bar I ordered him a beer and waved for the girls to leave us alone.

"Man, it's been a hard month." He sat on the stool as if he had been on his feet for days. "But you don't want to hear about it."

My mother had prayed for her second son to accept an avocation to join the Cloth. I refused the priesthood after hearing Led Zeppelin's first LP in 1969, but she had been right. I would have made a good priest or at least a confessor. Everyone liked to tell me their secrets.

Jamie drank his Chang beer in less than a minute.

"I'm all ears." I downed my first in sixty-five seconds.

"You ever hear of Ice?" he whispered the word with guilt-ridden worship.

"Crystal Meth." The drug had hit the fly-over of America hard. The cops had cracked down on traditional drugs and the dealers synthesized a smokeable speed from ephedrine, the basic ingredient for over-the-counter cough medicines. The substance was equally available in Thailand. Big Pharma was behind it all.

"That's the one. The Nazis used to give chocolate bars laced with the stuff to Luftwaffe pilots." Jamie was a vast abyss of useless knowledge. "Kept them flying for days."

"And you started smoking it here?" Drugs are readily available in Thailand, although opium, heroin, grass have been supplanted by ja bah and ice thanks to the repressive interdiction of the Thai Police and DEA.

"With Ort." He shrugged to indicate his complete surrender.

"Ort?" I knew Ort from Soi 6. I hadn't seen her since her boyfriend left her for a transvestite five years ago. The little vixen wanted to be my geek. I had refused with deep regret. Ort was very sexy. 23 and looked 16. She was every man's vice.

"How you run into Ort?" She was a girl around town. I stayed out of her path. Even her saying the words 'I have' got me hard with the thought of the pipe.

"She was dancing at Paris A Go-Go. Told me to meet her after work. We went back to her place. A little furnished studio. Bed, TV, AC. She asked if I minded if she smoked some ice. You know me. Anyone can do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt someone else." Jamie's heroin addiction had stolen his youth. Cocaine took away his edge as a comedian. His taking up with speed in his fifites could be a show-stopper. "Don't look at me like you were a Parole Officer, who discovered a bad blood test. You're no angel."

"You're right." I had disappointed Nancy Reagan too many times by saying 'yes', instead of 'no' to throw any rocks without breaking windows in my own house of glass, but I tried my best to avoid drugs in Thailand. Prison here was worse than any of Jamie's stateside time.

"And you're right too. I knew it was dangerous, but did it anyway."

"And how was it?" Jamie didn’t need a lecture and I was curious about ice and Ort.

"Ice is nothing. No rush. Shooting speedballs is a thousand times better for a high."

"So what the attraction?"

"Sex." Jamie spoke low, which was a little strange in a bar, where every girl was looking for a date. "I thought she wanted me only to buy some ice. 1000 baht. But once we had a few pipes, she said she was hot and asked if I minded if she took off her clothes. Another bowl and mine was off. A day later and we were still at it."

A binge. "How many days?"

"3-4. I took Cialis to keep up my strength." Speed and Cialis were tough on the heart, however Jamie was hardy enough to survive hardcore XXX games. "And then another four days and we had sex the entire time. I had to stop because the skin on my penis wore off. Ort wasn't happy and started screaming for it. It was like being with a nymphomaniac. A tyranny of sex. I told her I was going to the ATM. I didn't come back."

"How much money you spend?"

"About 15000 baht and I lost about 5 kilos."

"Cheaper than Jenny Craig's or Weight-Watchers."

"I don't have the weight to lose like you."

A loss of five kilos would put me close to the fighting weight of my early 40s.

"And you didn't go back?"

"Don't trust myself. It's not the Ice. It's the sex, the ice, the lying in bed with nowhere to go." He drank his beer with a thirst to quench another demon. "Sawan."

"Heaven." I was impressed Jamie knew the Thai word for paradise. Nah-Lok meant 'hell'.

"A little hell too, which we both like."

"Without sin, there is no pleasure," I loosely quoted Luis Bunuel, the Spanish surrealistic film director. "So now what?"

"I changed my SIM card # and started clean again." He ordered another beer. They were going down smooth. "Not 100%, but close enough. Another few days and I'll be back on top of the world."

"More like top of the slag heap in this town."

"As long as it's a foot higher than anyone else, you can see the stars." Jamie had a way with words, which slurred after our fifth beer.

I invited him up to Sri Racha. He made Mam laugh. Fenway liked playing with him. On the third day he left for Pattaya. I drove him to the bus stop on Sukhumvit.

"Take care."

"I know how to do that."

"And how not to too."

"Something else we have in common."

At the end of the week I was packing my bags for New York. I had to go back to work at the Dimaond Exchange. My flight left in the morning. Mam hated being alone. Fenway is a very busy boy.

The phone rang in my pocket. It was Jamie.

"Are you okay?"

"Excellent." He was running promo events for bars and restaurants during the low season. The next is an erotic hot dog eating contest at TiggleBitties Tavern.

"What about Ort?" I whispered the name. Mam has good ears and a jealous soul. Some people question her love. I know better.

"Haven't seen her or been to anywhere she goes."

"Smart move." Ort was a girl to avoid, which is why I no longer answered her calls anymore. "I'll see you next time around."

"Send my love to Mam and little Fenway."

"They will like that."

I went into the living room. Fenway was trying to load two discs at the same time into the DVD player. I told him, "No."

He didn't like hearing that word in either Thai or English, but just saying 'no' can save your time these days, especially when you're skating on thin ice.

A Story Of O - 1991

In 1994 Crazy Santa possessed a special guest card to the Russian Baths on East 10th Street. The steam room crew began to heat the river boulders at 6am. The two-ton stones glowed red by 7:20. The Schvitz opened at 8 AM, but Crazy Santa was in the dry steam room at 7:21. He was a rich junkie, who was the last family member of an 18th century fortune. Heroin had not ruined his sense of entitlement.

As a permanent member I could have entered the Baths at that bastardly hour, except my alarm clock was set for the opening. At 8:10 I exited from my apartment two doors down from the entrance with a towel over my shoulder and strolled east rain, sleet, snow, or sunshine.

Every morning day on my short walk I witnessed autumn's surrender to Winter, the snow on the sidewalk, the ornamental pears blooming in Spring and the return of the hot sticky Summer.

I liked the look on the day workers' faces headed to the subway. Their eyes questioned my destination. The Baths weren’t for everyone. It was a temple to cleanliness and rejuvenation, in which the weight of a night’s hard drink evaporated after thirty minutes in the 180F heat.

One Spring morning I entered and spotted Crazy Santa on the top tier of the heat room. His white beard remained fluffy, despite the Venusian temperature, then again his body fat was less than zero.

I knew the Jersey heir to a deodorant fortune through my Uncle Carmine, a Sicilian plumber married to a Aunt Jane, a distant aunt from Maine's Cumberland County, which she called 'the last place on earth created by God'. We weren't really blood, but Carmine and I conducted business on various projects hidden from the rest of the family. Crazy Santa had a small room in Uncle Carmine’s basement. The walls were covered with torn hippie posters. He paid no rent.

Crazy Santa’s real name was John Lyon. His other alias for the addicts of the Lower East Side was Junkie John. He was a sucker. His family had had big money. THe sole heir Crazy Santa inherited the remains, which had mostly been invested in his veins.

The previous Christmas I helped him turn $80,000 of stock into gold coins, which wasn't an easy thing in 1993, since the Feds were after drug dealers laundering money. Collecting the coins on West 47th Street took a little time. Returning to his bullding between B and C Avenues, I asked Uncle Carmine, if I should fuck him.

“He’s going to get $2 million at 50.” Uncle Carmine was patient. “We’ll get him then. He promised to take care of me.”

Trusting junkies was a losing proposition. I said nothing. Carmine also knew the risk.

Crazy Santa lost the gold coins to his crackhead girlfriends within a month. We hadn’t spoken since the sale.

The near-albino nodded, as I sat opposite him in the gaseous vapors hovering under the ceiling ceiling. Crazy Santas’ skin was parched dry as a Death Valley corpse. Junkies like vampires don’t sweat, unless they are jonesing.

“Hot, huh?”

“Always hot this hour.”

He spat on the floor.

"Do me a favor. Don't spit on the floor."

"You don't own this place. You don't make the rules."

I grabbed him by the hair and shoved him.

"You're right. Just don't do it again."

“Sorry, you wanna smoke some O?” Somewhere in his head he suspected that I had ripped him off on the coin deal. I had only taken a 5% commission, but the only truth junkies believe are the lies they tell themselves He wasn’t man enough to blame himself and stood up with a towel around his waist.

“It’s a little early.” I wore a fluffy towel and my own flip-flops. The ones at the Baths were cheap. Like wearing paper towels and cardboard sandals.

“No one’s here and anyone who is here lets me do what I want. Money buys freedom.”

I remembered how he talked about his money. I should have left, but followed him to the front of the Baths. I hadn’t smoked opium for years.

"You know I know you and Carmine are waiting to rip me off. You think you're so smart, but I went to Harvard."

"Did you finish?"

"No, but I know your type. A loser from the lower classes just likeCarmine. You'll both get nothing in the end."

We entered the bathroom and he pulled out a glass stem. We lit up a small ball of black tar. The Tongs had run thousands of opium dens in New York. Chinese rocks had killed off most of their clientele, but this morning Crazy Santa had opened one on East 10th Street. The aroma was Golden Triangle, although the country of origin was Mexico.

Tijuana black tar.

Heroin.

I faked my inhale. John like most junkies only cared about his high. The heroin flitted through his blood and he sagged against the wall in a nod. I took off the key wrapped around his wrist and went upstairs to his locker, quickly rifling through his clothes. I left the dope and pilfered half the money. I returned to the bathroom. He was still breathing and I slipped the key back onto his wrist. Upstairs I showered, dressed and said my good-byes to the owner.

“Where is Crazy John?” The owner had another name for Crazy Santa Claus.

“In the bathroom?”

I nodded, wiping the sweat from my face. A little of the D ranin my arteries. Work would be tough for the first hour.

“High?” asked David.

“Yes.”

“I will make sure that he doesn’t die.” Dead people were never good for business.

“I could care less.” That was the drugs talking and a little bit me too. David and I spoke the same language. Always apathetic to junkies. They were their own worst enemy and ours as well, but he was right, given the chance I would take him for it all, then again losers are never that lucky.

Nacht Und Nebel 2011

In the summer of 1982 Count-No-Count phoned my East Village apartment. Kurt was calling from Hamburg with an offer of a job as 'tursteher' at his nightclub BSIR. The pay was $150 a night, free accommodations, and all I could drink. Being dead-broke I answered, "Ja."

I spoke bad German with a Boston accent thanks to an ancient Bavarian teacher Bruder Karl at my high school south of Boston. My stay in Hamburg was pleasant throughout the warm season, but the coming of autumn brought the cold rain, gray fog, and dark days. The sun's traverse of the sky descended each day approaching the winter solstice like a frisbee weakening in flight. Even worse was how German the Germans became once the tourist had fled south to southern climes.

There were old Nazis on the streets. The bad weather brought these arrogant fascists out of their hiding places and I walked through Jungfernstieg spotting various members of the Waffen SS and Gestapo. Maybe it was my imagination playing tricks with the shadows, but their eyes didn't lie about what they had seen in Russia, Poland, France, or Germany. They were not extras in a Hollywood movie. These men had not only obeyed orders, they had carried them out to the letter.

Of course the young Germans were obsessed by the ghosts of the pasts.

"We are the Porsche Reich, not the Fourth Reich," Count-No-Count told me on many occasions in Paris. The Telex millionaire's best friend was a Reeperbahn pimp, Nigger Kalle, the son of an American sergeant from Harlem and a local woman from Hafenstrasse on the harbor of Hamburg. A black Zuhalter was an anomaly in Hamburg, but his right-hand man was SS Tommy, a deadly killer without any humor. The two of them controlled the notorious Eroscenter's six-floors and the thousands of Huren or whores for their boss Thomas Baker. Nigger Kali was always good to me. In truth he was my boss and not Count-No-Count.

SS Tommy believed in the Second Coming of the Third Reich. The original Thousand Year Reich had lasted twelve years, but he was not a real Nazi. Not like those old men who had done things no one liked to speak about at parties or even behind their backs. Still when SS Tommy presented me a large bill for having sex with a blonde girl at BSIR, I handed him the keys to my car and left Hamburg that evening without saying good-bye to anyone. The Rechtung was for 20,000 DMs or $12,000. Everything had been itemized on his list.

Everything. Every sex act in five words or less. He had charged twenty DMs for holding hands. Nothing was left off the list.

A midnight train pulled into Hamburg's Hauptbahnhof a little after midnight on time. I expected SS Tommy's to grab me from the platform or at the Belgian frontier, but I reached Paris at dawn and I felt lucky to be in France. Everyone does if they left someplace else in the middle of the night.

In the autumn of 2011 I had been living at the British Embassy in Luxembourg. The old fortress city was centrally located in Europe and I had visited to Paris, Brussels, and Charleroi in the first month. I googled Germany.

It was very close and I planned a trip to Trier, the ancient Roman city of 70,000, only a forty-five minute ride on the train. Telling the Ambassador my plans, I caught the morning express to the Moselle and ferried across the river to Konz for a short ride to Trier. At my arrival I half-expected SS Tommy to be waiting on the train platform, but several years ago we had met in Pattaya, Thailand. The criminal had aged into a stone-cold killer and was threatening my dear friend, Fabo, and pretended to be a friend. He hadn't recognized me and I hadn't bought the act. Fabo's French friend confronted the killer with the fury of an ex-legionnaire. I was lucky not to have been involved in the confrontation and had later heard that the monster had been arrested for a solo bank robbery in South Africa. Still I feared he might be out and sighed relief leaving the train station.

Germany had changed in the last thirty years.

The old Nazis had died off and while the young Nazis had become very active in the East, they weren't here, but I kept my eyes open. Walking through the old Roman ruins I studied the faces of the young and old. I didn't spot a single Nazi. It was, as if their genes had been erased from the Germanic race.

In town the only broken glass were from broken bottles and not the windows of Jewish homes and synagogues. I ate a bratwurst and drank a Kloster beer.

I visited Karl Marx Haus. The creator of Communism had been born in the old city. The street was in the heart of the sex zone. Nothing was happening in the afternoon. As I stood outside the house and old man passed and muttered under his breath, "Juden."

"And fuck you, you old Nazi." My comment made him turn his head. "Ja, du alte arseloch."

I rushed him and he cringed in expectation of a blow. His uplifted arm stopped my blow.

"Gehst heim," I said with Boston accent.

He was about 91. I was 59. One blow would have put him in the hospital and I would have gone to jail. He was still a Nazi and I was me.

Some things never change.

"Nicht war."

Gator Hole Bar Okeechobee - 2008

The world has been changing with the man's desire for mass suicide. Florida's Okeechobee Swamp has been imprisoned by interstates and poisoned by the evil Sugar Barons, such as the Fanjuls. Its water level has dropped drastically in the preceding years of drought.

"In 1970 something a flood lifted off the roof," The beehived bartender of the Gator Hole said through an exhale of smoke. Sun-bleached swamp grass spread across the arid wetlands. "Day like this four years ago we'd all sorts of boats tied up to the docks."

She looked out through the mozzie screens to the boat ramp. Thick algae covered the inlet's surface, fed by the fertilizers of the sugar fields. Dragonflies buzzed through the air. The water was about five feet short of full.

"Pretty low." I drank my Corona. It was cold, but I wished I was back in Thailand with my family.

"Before the rainy season there was no water. Only mud. Gators liked it." She pointed out two baby 'gators hiding under the dock. Their snouts were the size of size 42 boots.

Liza and her son played pool. Their mother-child rivalry was transferred from words to the sinking balls on the table. My old friend from Paris was better than her teenage son. She sunk the eight ball. Krys dropped the cue and went to the jukebox. Jimi Hendricks. Lisa hated the left-handed guitarist.

"I haven't seen a juke box in years." I couldn't recall ever running into one in Pattaya.

"You want another beer?" Lisa waved the cigarette on my face like a wand.

"Sure." She was paying.

I got a handful of quarters and played THE BEST OF GRAND FUNK RAILROAD. The trio from Flint, Michigan were huge in the 1970s.

"I'm your captain, oh yeah." I loved Grand Funk and knew all the words, if their song was playing.

By the bar Lisa hugged her son. He hugged her back. They were happy here.

I loved the Gator Hole Bar.

It was all so eternal.

One day in the future it will be under sea water.

2034 I figure, but no one can see into the future and 2034 was a long way from today.

2008 Peter Nolan Smith

THE BLESSING OF THE LIZARD KING by Peter Nolan Smith - 1992

Monitor lizards are native to Southeast Asia. These carnivorous predators are related to the famous Komodo Dragon and varanid lizards are cooperative hunters like raptors in JURASSIC PARK. According to the Bangkok Post monitor lizards are known to cluster in the city's secluded water pipes and up to two hundred of the two-meter long beasts reside in each of the sunken city's districts.

Many urban Thais regard the sighting of a hia or monitor lizard as the harbinger of bad luck in spite of the legend about sighting them warns humans of crocodiles. Down south on the Isthmus of Ka country folks keep the miniature monsters as domestic pets, because crocodiles still wander the mangrove swamps lining the peninsula.

"They keep increasing in numbers because these reptiles have few natural enemies, and their food is always plentiful," a Thai reptile expert said, "Water monitors eat almost anything; fish, eggs, and even rotten meat."

The only lizard in my hometown south of Boston was Jim Morrison singing 'crawling king snake', but in 1991 I ferried from the Malaysian Peninsula to Tioman Island in the South China Sea, which the Lonely Planet had called a tropical gem. Jungles blanketed the hills and the sea was an invisible sheet of desperately clear with white sand gleaming white in the midday sun.

European backpackers overstayed their visits on this paradise. The beer was cold and the bungalows were cheap.

On my second week there I met a Swedish blonde traveler. She liked my poetry and we spent four nights together.

"Our sleeping together means nothing." Velda was telling the truth. European hedonists were devoted to the pleasure of the sun and on the fifth morning our relationship had reached the end.

"I want to sleep alone," the slim Swede announced with her back tuned to the dawn.

"No problem."

I got dressed and returned to my hut. Velda didn't even kiss me good-bye and I expected that she would leave on the morning ferry for the mainland. I slept in late and hit the bungalow bar at noon.

"Beer for all my friends." There were only three Germans at the bar, but I loved that line from the movie BARFLY.

Before the beers arrived, a scream screeched through the trees.

Velda ran into the bar. Her long blonde hair was a Medusa snarl and her voice hit a soprano high on every word, as she exclaimed in a panic, "There's a lizard in the bathroom."

The Malays working at the restaurant laughed about a lizard. Lizards and snakes crawled and slithered everywhere on Tioman, but I understood her fears. My mother was scared of insects. If one got into the house, she cried, "There"s a monster in the bathroom."

I figured that Velda was just as hysterical as my mother and grabbed a broom.

"I'll get rid of a lizard."

"He more big than Gecko." The terror had stripped away her high school English.

"I"ll take care of it. Show me." I followed her down the path to her bungalow. The A-frame stood in a palm grove perched next to a tidal inlet. Mangrove trees had sunk their roots into the brackish swamp water. It was good breeding place for lizards. The buzz of mosquitoes hummed from the swamp and Velda pointed to the bathroom door.

"He's in there."

"Don't worry, this will only take a second." I grabbed a whisk broom.

"Be careful."

"Careful is my middle name."

I peered inside the room. The bathroom door was shut. I heard no noise from inside and figured that the lizard had escaped through the ceiling. I tiptoed across the floor, broom in one hand. I yanked on the bathroom door expecting to find only a toilet, instead thick-chested monitor lizard bared slimy teeth with a hiss.

The broom dropped to the floor and I slammed the door shut.

"That is a big lizard." I ran outside to Velda. "You want to stay at my place?"

"Yes, but no sex."

"None at all." I grabbed her bag and she moved back into my place for another week.

I thanked Jim Morrison the Lizard God for those extra days and nights.

I had seen the Doors at the Boston Tea Party in 1968. I didn't tell that to the Swedish girl. Velda hadn't realize that I was in my late-30s. The twenty year-old's skin was as smooth as river-polished stone. After her departure to Koh Phi Phi, I spotted the monitor lizard lazing in the sun.

I bought a dozen boiled eggs from the warung and fed them one by one.

It was the least I could do for a cousin of Jim Morrison.

Anything else would have doomed me to bad luck and bad lick with a lizard was worse than bad.

THE CURSE OF A NE'ER-DO-WELL by Peter Nolan Smith - 1974

Back in 1974 I was going out with a sixteen year-old high school student from Brookline. Hilde's father, th editor for the Boston Globe, was separated from her mother. Ann was insane, but many insane people lived normal existences and Ann was the mother of six kids.

Her new husband, a VP at Bose Speakers, believed in a New Age cure for madness, but one winter night Ann got hold of a bottle of vodka and ran out of the house naked in blizzard, shouting, "I'm the queen of the snowflakes."

Snow howled down the street. The temperatures neared zero. White spindrifts blotted out the black of night.

"Get her," Hilde pleaded with urgency.

My best friend AK was dating Hilde's sister and the two of us hunted for Ann

We found her hugging a tree in the neighbor's backyard.

"Ann, you have to come back to the house." I took off my jacket and covered her cold white body.

"You dare tell me what to do?" Her mad eyes grasped my face.

"I'm not telling you what to do, but Hilde is worried about you."

"My daughter is sixteen and you're twenty-two."

"Sorry."

"Sorry for what? You're just a taxi driver," Ann spoke possessed by the voices of MacBeth's three witches and added, "You are the ne'er-do well. You'll never amount anything."

I led her back to the house, where her husband ran Ann a hot bath.

"Don't listen to her." AK and I warmed by the fire.

"About what?"

"About being a ne'er-do-well. No one is a ne'er-do-well anymore."

"I suppose you're right."

We smoked a joint and Hilde brewed us a cup of tea. Her older sister worked in the Combat Zone. Strippers didn't have snow days.

Hilde and I broke up that Spring and I left Boston for New York.

Ann's curse was on money.

I never could hold onto anything valuable.

Possession is 9/10ths of meaninglessness, because I am a ne'er-do-well.

It is a madwoman's curse, but I'm the best of the ne'er-do wells and in these days when no one has nothing being a ne'er-do-well is a blessing .

We know how to live with nothing.

THE LAST GO-GO BOY by Peter Nolan Smith - 2013

Americans tend to judge the nation’s fiscal well-being by the rise and fall of the Dow Jones Index, even though Wall Street’s accumulation of wealth has destroyed the spending power of the middle-class. Next month’s bonuses for the hedge fund managers will not save a single consumer buried under debt, after which the corporations will trim benefits and wages to the bone to maximize profit.

Few employees protested the low pay in fear of losing their jobs with good reason.

In 2013 the nation's economy was in recession and I asked myself what jobs are available for a sixty year-old man in Newe York City.

Very few was the answer.

Years before I had been lucky that Manny had reserved a place for me on West 47th Street after my yearly global circumnavigations, but this year has been the exception. Times were that tough in the Diamond District.

Early in December I flogged a gay writer's family heirlooms to a gold dealer at another exchange.

Later that evening at his East Village apartment I paid Bruce $4000 minus my commission.

"Now I can pay my health insurance." The heavyweight writer sighed with gratitude and invited me an Asian fusion restaurant on Avenue B. Every seat was crammed with young people enjoying the approach of the holidays. They were immune from teh desperate times, unaware that their future had been hocked to the banks by college debts.

“I never see anyone my age on the subway.” These go-getters were my competition for a subway seat in the morning. Thankfully none of them were as ruthless as an old Irishman.

“Most men our age are retired.” Bruce's finger darted over the menu. His thinning hair was bleached blonde, so he resembled an aging beach bum. The fey waiter paid attention to his every word. Bruce was generous with young men.

"Or dead."

“You're not dying anytime soon."

"I'm too healthy for that." My health care plan involved the practice of never get sick.

"Do you have a retirement plan?” Bruce was a world-known novelist. Critics had recognized his genius. Sales for his last book totaled a little over two thousand, but he owned his apartment and next year he will be old enough to receive Social Security.

“When I hit seventy, I'm flying to Norway." I ordered oysters with seaweed noodles, plus a glass of wine. The thin waiter had to be thirty-five years younger than me. He deemed sixty year-old man as neo-senior.

"Norway?"

"Yes, I'm going to rob a bank with a gun, then they'll sentence me to twenty to life for armed robbery. I've seen photos of Norway's prison for violent offenders. The rooms have computers and are furnished by IKEA."

“Ten years from now the Norwegian prison officials will have instituted euthanasia for the elderly, so robbing a bank in Oslo is not really an option."

"You have any other suggestions?" Supporting my family in Thailand had wiped out my savings.

"Ever think about taking steel pole lessons from your stripper friends?"

"What for?"

"If you lost ten pounds, you could work as a go-go boy at a queer retirement home.” Bruce’s biting wit was best suited to attack rather than self-deprecation.

“Honey, those old wrinklies aren’t so particular about the weight. They like the young flesh.”

“A scary thought.” Just yesterday my Thai wife reminded me over the phone that I wasn’t seventeen anymore. Mam was twenty-eight and our son was four years-old. I couldn’t quit working until I was seventy-eight if I unlucky enough to live that long.

"Those old fags want someone young.” Bruce had written a book on the rough trade in Times Square. His tricks had called him Papi. None of them had been under twenty and he never sunk under two-hundred-fifty pounds.

“Those old queens in the nursing homes haven't seen anyone young as you in decades. You could charge the homes $100 a visit, which has to be more beneficial for the old geezers than any other medicine. And you could do lap dances.”

“Thanks for the idea, but I'd rather rob a cradle than a grave."

"Times change and people like you and me have to change with them, plus graves are richer pickings than a cradles. Hell, you could franchise the go-go scheme in Florida. How many retirement homes you think are in the Sunshine State? Thousands? There has to be a demand for middle-aged men from the elderly queers.”

“Supply and demand.” Middle-aged ened at sixty-five.

“And who knows? You might be able to sex them up for a little more money on the side.” Bruce caressed the waiter’s behind. He was a regular here and the waiter smiled with the anticipation of good tip. Bruce liked to pay for sex even if it was merely a grope.

“No way. I barely wanted to have sex with myself let alone with someone else.”

“Why, because you think you're too good to have sex with someone older than you like me.” He frowned at this unintended insult. “What about the woman you had sex with in Palm Beach?"

"Helen?" The Palm Beach heiress had been unnaturally blonde and fashionably thin. We had been introduced by my longtime mistress at the Breakers five summers ago.

"That's the one. You said she was over seventy.”

“Closing on seventy-five.” Helen published several magazines extolling the good life on the Gold Coast. She had invited me to her house on Lake Worth. The fragrance of her garden had overwhelmed by the reefer she smoked in a diamond encrusted hand.

We had spoken about sex. Helen knew the world; past, present, and future.

"Seventy is officially old."

"She didn't seem old." The elegant septuagenarian spent two months a year at a Swiss clinic rejuvenating her aged body in Botox like it was fondue cheese.

"She had your number." Bruce was fascinated by my sordid encounter.

“How?"

"As I remember it, she said that she hadn’t had cock in her mouth in ten years. She had begged for it and you gave it to her like you were remaking SUNSET BOULEVARD.”

“It was a mercy mission.” I slightly resembled that move's star William Holden in the shadows of her bedroom. A failed writer selling his soul.

With the lights off, the curtains billowing with the evening breeze, and Helen wearing sheer lingerie and satin high heels, I imagined that she was Paris Hilton in the year 2040. On her knees the mirage had performed fellatio like she was entering the Porno Hall of Fame. Thankfully she had never said, “Ready for my scene, Mr. DeMille.”

Maybe the first time, but what about the second time?” Bruce sat back, as the waiter delivered our appetizers; fried calamari for him and raw bluepoints for me. “Gore Vidal said about orgies that once is experimentation, but twice is perversity.”

“The second time was because I was drunk.” Two bottles of wine and a joint had loosened by inhibitions and she had had her way with me. “There was no third time.”

"Only because you saw her with another man at the Chesterfield.”

“She was in the Leopard Lounge.” The other man had been in his late 60s. He had once been an Elvis impersonator. I felt cheap.

“And you heard her use that ‘haven’t tasted cock' line on him, so don’t tell me you can’t go-go boy anymore. We all have a price.”

“I’d rather rob a bank in Norway.” I sucked down an oyster tasting of the Atlantic.

“And end up a stick boy in a Viking prison.” Bruce was enjoying himself. "You don't look like you'd like being a bottom."

"Never." I never would be a bottom, except with my wife Mam. She got off better that way.

“You do what you have to do to survive. Believe me. I know.” He had taught creative writing at a Wyoming dude ranch college two years ago. He was lucky to have escaped the high plains without being charged for with any crimes against the morals of that cowboy state.

“I know you do.” Bruce was forever broke same as everyone in America, but maybe Bruce was right and the only one way of finding out was by a repeat performance in Palm Beach.

We clinked glasses.

“To go-go boys.”

“And Florida.” I felt lucky as would anyone with high season on the Gold Coast only a month away from December.

HillBilly Ranch Bar Boston - 1999

As you get old you forget. as you get older, you are forgotten - anon

I know that I didn't come up with that quote, because I haven't really forget everything yet and several years ago I reminisced about Lost Boston with a few old-timers during an afternoon Jacob Wirth's bar, while killing time waiting for the Chinese bus back to New York.

The girthy fifty-year olds were both members of the court, a judge and a DA, and I introduced myself, asking if they knew my brother, who had worked as a lawyer in Boston for almost thirty years.

"You mean 'No Show' Smith. I can't count the number of times we've requested his presence here and he never shows."

"He's a hard worker."

The sharp winter sun filtered through the thick front window. No music played on the stereo and the TV showed the rerun of last night's Celtics game. At that moment there was nowhere else in the world closer to heaven.

"And this isn't hard work." The DA slugged down a Jameson and signaled for three more.

"It can put a sweat on you, but not like digging a ditch." I had been working as a general contractor on a rich man's house in Greenwich, Connecticut. My hands were calloused from the toils of construction. The three of us were of Irish descent. Our grandfathers had suffered hard labor to make our lives less of a struggle. "Holding a shovel is more honorable work."

"To the Big Dig." The judge raised his glass. The tunnel under downtown Boston had replaced an elevated highway.

"Sorry, if I don't join you, but they dumped the rubble into the Quincy Quarries." The project planners had dumped more than 5.4 million cubic yards into the granite pits.

"Now the Quarries was something. Most every teenage boy south of the Charles River had jumped off Rooftop."

"Here's to Brewster's Quarry" The bartender appeared from nowhere and placed four glasses on the scarred wooden plank, joining us to toast the longgone Eden.

"Remember when they didn't let women drink at the bar here?"

"Yes, bck in the early Sseventies I used to bring my feminist friends here as a joke. They hated that the bartender wouldn't serve them at the bar. "He loved telling those hairy girls to take a seat in the dining room." I couldn't remember his name, but we agreed that back then a woman's place wasn't at the bar in Jacob Wirth's. I was of a different mind now. "I thought it was a good laugh."

"Maybe the bartender didn't think it was that funny. You were probably a dirty hippie and I mean that in the best of all possible terms. I was a Marine."

From South Boston?"

"Yes." I had taught at South Boston High School during the Bussing Era and decided not to mention that.

"Not many choices for young men from Southie back then."

"Prison, OD, or the Marines. None of us had the money for college."

"A wise choice. I protested against the Vietnam War." At sixteen I wanted to join the Marines to get out of my hometown. My mother, a staunch anti-communist, refused to sign the papers.

"You dirty hippie."

"I'll drink to that."

My brother showed up later and our collective memories toured the city of our past. We extolled the prune rolls at Warmuth's, the grilled hot dogs at WT Grants, the strippers at the Two O'Clock Lounge, and relived my brother's bachelor party in the Combat Zone. It was a blank in my mind.

"I vaguely recollect stumbling out of the Naked I into the Hillbilly Ranch. I think I wanted to hear a version of Meryl Haggard's MAMA TRIED."

"We lost you for about an hour."

"Probably ended up with the drag queens at the Other Side." William laughed with his beer belly juggling like defrosted jello. The beer at Jacob Wirth's was better than good.

"No, I'd remember that. At least I think I would, but something sticks in my mind about getting up on the stage of the Hillbilly Ranch and singing a song." Later I had seen Sleepy La Beef, John Lincoln Wright, the Bayou Boys, and other southern bands of the 70s at the dive next to the Greyhound bus station.

"That was a tough bar owned by Frankie Segalini. You were lucky that you weren't rolled in that place. it was filled with Navy peckerwoods and crackers. They didn't like us Irish."

"You returned to the Naked I intact." My older brother had a head for long ago. He was a lawyer.

"And we made it to the church in time."

The four of us clinked glasses to those times gone by. It was good to be with my older brother and two members of the court. We spoke of our lies

The 1978 Blizzard, the Chelsea Fire, BC beating Notre Dame, Checker Cabs, friends, family, the Surf Nantasket, Brother's Bar in Kenmore Square, and the taste of fried clams from Tony's on Wollaston Beach.

Afterwards I walked my brother to his office on Beacon Hill. The bus station and the Hillbilly Ranch were gone. Neither of us said anything about them. We were happy to have seen each other and spend time together. We were in the now in a city we knew so well. As youth we had thought that the good times would never end and they never do in your heads, especially after spending an afternoon at Jacob Wirth's>

Super Bowl III 1969

The Baltimore Colts had entered Super Bowl III as 18-point favorites over the AFL’s New York Jets. The underdogs were quarterbacked by the flashy Joe Namath and the brash Alabama native boasted in Miami, “We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee it.”

The Colts were infuriated by this brash statement and quashed the first drive by the Jets, however big games are won on injuries as much as luck and after the bruising fullback Matt Snell knocked out the Colts’ safety and the secondary was open for Don Maynard, who scored 2 TDs.

The NFL champs never really challenged the upstarts, as their all-star OB missed several opportunities to hit receivers in the end-zone. The victory acted as a turbo-charged boost for the AFL, however the Jets have never come as close to the Super Bowl again.

Betters lost millions on that game. No one ever questioned the outcome. The Jets seemed to have simply outplayed the NFL juggernaut.

In 1984 I ran into Bubba Smith at the Deauville Film Festival. I was attending the gathering for the French magazine ACTUEL. The Colt defensive lineman was in France to promote the comedy film POLICE ACADEMY.

Not #2 or #3.

The original.

Most reporters were huddled around Steve Guttman, the star of the comedy. Bubba was sulking off to the side. He wasn't on my list of interviewees. ACTUEL was more interested in my speaking with Rock Hudson about acting with James Dean in GIANT.

That rendezvous wasn't until after tomorrow's screening of George Stevens' western epic, and I introduced myself to 6-7 280 pound ex-NFL All Star as a longtime admirer. His fearsome tackling at Michigan State had earned the enormous lineman the motto 'Kill Bubba Kill'. I half-expected him to crush my hand, but he smiled when I told him how much I liked his acting.

"Just playing myself."

Neither of us had anything scheduled for the afternoon and I suggested that we retire to the Bar of the Hotel Atlantique. It had a great view of the beach,

I told him about being a Boston Patriots fan.

"Tough luck."

The Pats were my team. Their 1983 season had been 8 wins versus 8 losses. The Baltimore Colts had beaten them twice. Both games had been close I was more interested in the past and Bubba told me how it was to play with Johnny Unitas. He said great without any reservation, but I was dodging the real question and after my fourth glass of wine I leaned over to ask Bubba Smith, “The Colts were such a favorite in Super Bowl 3, how did you lose to the Jets?”

“They got to the quarterback.” Bubba answered without caring who heard that accusation. Most everyone in the bar was French. Few of them had ever heard about Joe Namath's boast about winning against the Colts. They were frogs and they worshiped soccer. Not football.

“The game was fixed?”

A shrug indicated that the answer was mine to decide and I remembered Unitas throwing the ball to the Jets defender and Morall’s 3 interceptions.

“Who fixed the game?”

It was a stupid question undeserving of an answer and Bubba stood away from the bar. A few of the froggies gawked at him. They had never seen a man or woman that huge.

"Excuse me. I gotta get back to work." Bubba Smith went over to watch Michael Winslow delight the reporters with his imitations of a helicopter. I laughed at him too.

The retired footballer avoided me the rest of the festival, especially after spotting me dining with Rock Hudson. Bu I didn’t mention Bubba's confession to the editorial staff of Actuel. None of them were interested in a rumor about a football game in 1969. The editors were having trouble with my article with Rock Hudson. My typing was atrocious.

While I've never seen a replay of Super Bowl III, several bookie friends of mine had listened to my story and mumbled under their breath about how the Mob had threatened the lives of Earl Morall’s and Unitas’ families. Bubba said nothing, but the opposing quarterback had a big mouth.

“We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee it.” Joe Namath's words were carved in stone thanks to strong-arm gangsters. Sometimes there is such a thing as a sure thing. although these days games are never fixed by players. They make too money.

Refs on the other hand controlled the game from start to finish.

Not that I'm pointing any fingers.

In truth I know nothing and I'm happier that way.

Knowing even less would only make me happier.

ps Anita Bryant sang the National Anthem in 1969 whose later anti-gay campaign was immortalized by David Allan Coe’s 1978 song “Fuck Anita Bryant”.

4 - 4 Superbowl 2010 Colts Versus Saints

Since The First AFL–NFL World Championship Game was played on January 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum betweeen the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs, the Super Bowl has reigned as America's premier sporting event.

In 2010 thee point spread favored the Indianapolis Colts AFC champs, but my heart hung with New Orleans and I bet $20 on the under of the over-under and the 5-point underdogs. My numbers in the 47th Street mini-pool are 4 - 4.

"I need two touchdowns by the Colts and 2 safeties by New Orleans in the first quarter to win," I explained my chances to security guard at our jewelry counter on 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan.

"Those four scores add up to 14-4." Jo-Jo had 5 large on the Colts. The ex-cop was still behind on his wagers. The Yankees 4-2 playoff victory over the Red Sox had hurt him in 2009. He hated the Yankees.

"Win $200." I was counting on a miracle.

"No one's going to get two safeties in a quarter, let alone a game." Jo-Jo's face was red. His doctor had ordered him to stop drinking beer. The big man agreed and continued drinking beer. His gut was huge.

"You wanna bet on it. 5 to 1 odds."

Jo-Jo took the bet. $50 to my $10. He had retired from the force five years ago. His working security at the diamond exchange paid for his lifestyle of fifteen beers a day. Now down to none gambling was his only reason to walk into a sports bar.

"So in my dream world. The Saints scored a touchdown and a field goal to tie it up at the half."

"Another $400. I like your thinking." Jo-Jo was a Bronx native, but cheered for the Red Sox. He loved the fact that I called my son Fenway. "Then two TDs for the 3rd. Another two hundred and the defenses keeps the score tied until the end of the 4th."

"Overtime." I'm up $800. Someone else can win the grand prize in the extra time. "New Orleans kicker is injured and Tom Dempsey suits up for a 71-yarder."

"Tom Dempsey has to be in his 70s."

"No fucking way. Dempsey is only 63." The kicker had score from 63 yards out to win a game for the New Orleans Saints over the Detroit Lions in 1970. I was 18. "Someone broke the record with a 65 yard field goal, but that was in pre-season."

"Jason Elam tied the record, but that was in mile-high Denver, where the ball travels farther. Dempsey kicked it at Tulane, which is under sea level." Jo-Jo knew his football. "Dempsey was one of the last straight-on kickers. Then again he had half a foot and basically clubbed the ball through the uprights."

"How many times you think the announcers will mention his foot?"

"Every time New Orleans kicked a field goal."

"Five times?"

"You wanna bet on it?"

I don't normally bet, but it was the Superbowl and gambling on football an American tradition. Jo-Jo and I shook hands. The ex-cop went to make his rounds and I stood at the counter, hoping that another tradition 'fixing the game' helped me win all four quarters of the pool. $1000 was the price for flying to Thailand and Fenway was just starting to walk.

Go Saints.

BET ON CRAZY / Betting Super Bowl XXIV

BET ON CRAZY / Betting Super Bowl XXIV

Richie Boy and I bet the Super Bowl according to the Manny Principle, which was that Manny never beat the spread for the NFL's final game and the 1989 championship game matched the 49ers against the Broncos in New Orleans. All week Googs, Domingo, Richie Boy, and I had been badgering Manny for his pick and on Friday afternoon we intensified the pressure.

"Who you like?" Richie Boy demanded out in the open.

"Anytime I tell you, I lose." Manny said from behind his desk.

"But we win." Googs, his first son, had won $1000 betting on the 49ers 19 1/2 point advantage over the Chargers.

"And I didn't see a penny from any of you gonifs." Manny wasn't superstitious, but this losing streak was a joke amongst everyone, friends, foes, rivals, but not his bookie Rip, who had kept the bet secret like a priest hearing an altar boy's confession. "You're invited to watch the game at my apartment. There'll be food booze and a big TV, but you want to make a bet, use your head not mine."

Manny didn't speak to us for the rest of the day. Richie made two sales on diamonds memoed from the Randolph firm across the aisle. Domingo and I spent the afternoon schlepping orders from the polishers to the setters to the polishers again and back to the store. At closing we locked the goods in the safe and Manny paid our salaries. We got paid in cash. $100 bills. Normally we were out the door a second later, but not tonight.

"C'mon, Dad, give us a break." Richie Boy pleaded on bended knees, which wasn't easy since he had popped both ACLs in Jackson Hole a month earlier.

"What?" Manny leaned back in his chair.

We weren't the only ones waiting for his prediction. Mr. Randolph turned up his hearing aid to 10. The Jamaican guard eavesdropped at the counter. There was a knock on the door. It was Uncle Seymour. Manny took one look at his older brother and said angrily, "You don't come to see me here all year and now you show up like a long-lost shoe."

"Don't have a cow." Seymour was a die-hard gambler. "I was only passing by."

"Passing by, my brother, the ex-cop, passing by on the way back from the track."

"Ain't no racing this time of year." The ex-cop loved the horses and in the wintertime gave most of his pension to the stables via the OTB on 48th Street. He turned to Richie Boy. "He's not telling us, is he?"

"No." Richie Boy shook his head. "The old bastard thinks he'll win, if he doesn't tell us."

"Win?" Seymour laughed as only an older brother can laugh at his younger brother.

"What?" Manny was hot. "You think I will lose on my bet?"

"Manny, I love you, but you haven't won a Super Bowl bet since the Jets lost to the Colts."

"That's not Manny's fault." I had to defend my boss on this. Maybe if he gave me his bet and I could double up on the $500 in my pocket.

"Ass-kisser." Googs called them as he saw them.

"No, Manny was fucked by a fixed game."

"They don't fix the Super Bowl." Seymour's statement was more a question than a challenge.

"No, four years ago I'm sitting at a hotel in France. I run into Bubba Smith of the Baltimore Colts who's promoting POLICE ACADEMY. I asked after a few drinks, "How you lose that game to the Jets?" At first I thought he would take off my head, instead he whispered, "They got to the quarterbacks."

"Quarterbacks? Morall and Unitas?" Seymour smirked, because Unitas had a straight reputation.

"Both of them. The bookies had threatened to kill their families."

"They fixed the quarterback?" Manny had won a month's pay on that bet.

"Why you think Joe Namath was so confident. He knew the fix was in."

"It was only one game."

"What about 1979? All the smart money went on Pittsburgh to cover the 3.5 spread, then the bookies stretched it to 4.5. You might remember the game but Dallas trailed 35-17 with 7 minutes left, but somehow come back to score two TDs to beat the spread, fucking everyone who bet the Steelers."

"I lost that bet too."

"I won." I knew Manny thanks to his brother cop partner working with me at Hurrah, a punk disco on West 62nd Street. I had bet my salary on Seymour's recommendation of the Manny Principle.

"Dad, you're gonna lose. Nothing you do can stop you losing the Super Bowl." Googs was in debt to his car dealer. "I win and I'm good for the winter. Think of your kids. Me and Richie."

Manny eyed us all. "No."

"Dad," Richie Boy spoke with the soft tone used it to close deals. "How much you gonna bet. $500? $1000. You tell us your choice and we'll make good your loss."

"A real hero." Manny shook his head defiantly. "You want me to lose."

"I don't want you to lose, but you're going to lose." Richie held up ten C-notes. "You lose every year. Not on everything. Just the Superbowl. We'll make good for you."

"You want me to bet. I lose the bet and then you pay me the money."

"Simple. You come out ahead."

"What makes you so sure that I won't win this year."

"Manny?" Richie Boy, Googs, and Seymour shrugged sympathetically. They were family.

"I can win with you guys. I bet the Broncos."

"You bet the Broncos?" Seymour demanded incredulously, since the 49ers had lost their two regular season games by only 5 total points. "You know something we don't know."

"Only that John Elway is going to win a Super Bowl some day."

We held our breath. Manny didn't think it was funny and pointed a finger at his son. "Okay big shot, just remember what you said, because this year I'm winning big."

ThatvSunday went to Manny's apartment in Grammercy Park. The extentive spread camefrom Little Italy. The couch was big enough to take Googs, Seymour, Richie Boy, his wife from Buffalo, and his two high school friends; Werthel and RD. We bet heavy the other way from Manny. The game was a blow-out. Richie Boy paid his father $500 for his loss and we drank the rest of his vodka toasting Manny, 55-10. Niners. Manny was cheered for this bet, but the sixty year old was in too good a mood for my tastes and when his old man and I stepped out onto the balcony to huff a joint some air. I asked, "Why you in such a good mood?"

"Because I bet the 49ers."

"But you told us that you bet the Broncos?"

"And you believe everything someone tells you?" Manny liked answering a question with a question. "Don't believe nothing and don't tell anyone this either."

"Why you telling me?"

"Because no matter if I tell you not to, I know you'll tell your friend Richie that I bet on the 49ers. I want to see his face on Monday."

"But you took $500 from him?"S

"No, he gave it to me." Manny looked over his shoulder and smiled, "Everyone's much happier thinking I have a curse. Why spoil their good time?"

I felt bad about saying nothing to Richie Boy about his father's bet, because he was so happy. Monday would be a different story.< All Mondays are./p>