for Chuck Kinder<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019d like to write a poem about the good old day.<\/p>\n Before I spilt my one and only bean, before litebeer<\/p>\n before those dinosaurs roamed the earth: those wooly<\/p>\n headed writers who wrote twisted tales of bedlam and family<\/p>\n bankruptcy featuring cheating spouses on every page and god only<\/p>\n knows whatnot, where couples traded stories at dinner on made-for-<\/p>\n disaster anniversary nights out on the town, four people at dinner at a<\/p>\n Greek restaurant, say, where Wife #1 was last seen cheating on her writer no<\/p>\n account husband and kiting checks, and Husband # 2 tells an anniversary story<\/p>\n concerning how his wife served up a big breakfast for him in bed. Good morning,<\/p>\n birthday boy, she\u2019d say. Boy Howdy, he\u2019d say, savoring sausages and three eggs sunny<\/p>\n side up, home fries turned to perfection, biscuits just out of the oven. And then she would<\/p>\n plop a pile of love letters from his girlfriend, spilling the ketchup onto the funny paper she\u2019d carefully<\/p>\n placed in his lap. Oh boy, the other writer would howl, sides splitting now, stories about Cheever at the<\/p>\n Iowa City bar. And it is sad but dreary, this poem I have in mind, about redwood bungalows rented in<\/p>\n the early years of a marriage,<\/p>\n walls like a ship\u2019s hull, that feeling of security that only marriage can give<\/p>\n that you & me vs. the world feeling, watch out life, here we come!<\/p>\n Oh, c\u2019mon man, you remember those salad days.<\/p>\n And then the last line of this poem, see, I rehearsed it,<\/p>\n came before any of the others, this line, when shit has hit<\/p>\n the last lonely fan and both couples lie bleeding in the night<\/p>\n and the wives excuse themselves and off they go to the bathroom<\/p>\n together, but soon enough the girlfriend\u2019s love letters are splattered<\/p>\n with hot coffee, the two writer pigs runting around in their memory for<\/p>\n how it all went off the rails, how they sure as hell soiled themselves shitting<\/p>\n on their own stoop, buddies, bros, the one and the other. Hey, here comes your<\/p>\n wife, one will say to the other as the women reappear from the bathroom, I have an<\/p>\n idea, let\u2019s walk this anniversary check, we\u2019ll lie there in the old Pontiac convertible in the hot damp summer<\/p>\n night, just the four of us, seriously nude, with absolutely nothing on but the radio.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n We sat on the back porch of my house drinking whiskey. Fred gripped my arm. \u201cYou remember that story about my friend from high school whose dad mistook him for a deer and shot him in the heart with a Remington? Well, it isn\u2019t true.\u00a0 He missed the heart, almost missed the kid entirely, barely grazed his arm. I just made that shit up. Can you believe that?\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd that forty pound pike I caught up at Sacandaga Lake was a total fake. I didn\u2019t catch a single fish that day,\u201d Fred said. \u201cHey man,\u201d I said, \u201cyou don\u2019t have to be telling me all this. This isn\u2019t some kind of confession booth. I still love you, man.\u201d Well, I love you too. I love the shit outta you, man. And that 300-point game I bowled on Valentine\u2019s Day? Yeah, it was more like 110. I felt I needed to lie to make it more exciting.\u201d \u201cListen, man, people do that shit all the time,\u201d I said. \u201cLike when you hit a bad shot in golf? The ball goes backwards and clanks off the hot dog stand, injuring a small girl waiting for her dad. That happened to me out in Denver, you remember me telling you that? Yeah, that never happened. Made for a hell of a story, but it\u2019s not true.\u201d Fred released my arm. \u201cSee, that\u2019s what I\u2019m talking about,\u201d he said. You hit a shitty shot and lied about it to make it funny or poignant\u2014that bit about the little girl laughing was a nice touch, I\u2019ll admit\u2014but it doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re a bad person, it just means you hit a bad shot and had to compensate for it with a good yarn.\u201d \u201cI know,\u201d I said, \u201cbut I lie all the time. Linda thinks I\u2019m at work, but I\u2019m here with you drinking whisky.\u201d \u201cOh, listen, pal,\u201d Fred said, \u201cI\u2019m a chronic liar. You\u2019re just like everyone else, don\u2019t take it so hard.\u201d \u201cBut I do,\u201d I said, \u201cbecause people deserve the truth, don\u2019t they? We should stand for something that\u2019s real.\u201d \u201cQuit worrying about it, willya,\u201d Fred said. \u201cNobody cares. You made life more exciting with that hot dog story. The ball landing in the mustard! The foursome laughing, rolling on the tee box, heads exploding. How do you hit a fucking ball backwards! Oh, man, they\u2019re dying! I can see the look on their faces! You brought joy into the world, I\u2019m telling you.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cOK, if you say so. But I\u2019m going to try and do better,\u201d I said. I got up and freshened our drinks. Fred leaned back. putting his arms behind his head. He looked well satisfied. \u201cYou\u2019re a great guy. You know that? I can really relax around you, be myself. It\u2019s not everyone you can say that about, Harry.\u201d \u201cThanks, Fred, I really appreciate that, I do. That\u2019s what friends ought to do for each other, right?\u201d We clinked glasses. I sloshed my ice. \u201cYessir,\u201d I said. \u201cNo putting on airs, just be genuine around each other.\u201d \u201cAuthentic,\u201d I said. \u201cNothing to prove,\u201d Fred added. We sat there in silence, nursing our drinks. \u201cSay, have you ever climbed Mount Marcy to see Lake of the Clouds, where the Hudson forms?\u201d \u201cWell no,\u201d Fred said. \u201cI haven\u2019t.\u201d \u201cWell I have, and it\u2019s a bitch. Took me all day to hike up there, nearly killed me.\u201d \u201cWhy is that?\u201d Fred asked. \u201cWell, see, the ledge is so damn narrow, wicked vertical up there, one misstep and you\u2019re over the edge, a goner.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s something,\u201d Fred nodded. \u201cHow\u2019d you make it?\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t,\u201d I said. I thought for a minute. \u201cI fell straight down the ravine and killed myself.\u201d Fred pondered this, and kept drinking. \u201cWell, that\u2019s a shame,\u201d he finally said. \u201cYou\u2019re telling me,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In which we remember Chuck Kinder with madcap glee. Hey Honeymooners!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[154,2935,2932,2936,2933,2203,140,1907,14,2934],"class_list":["post-18075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-cars","tag-cheaters","tag-chuck-kinder","tag-guys","tag-honeymooners","tag-letters","tag-love","tag-regret","tag-sex","tag-wonder","writer-gary-percesepe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18075"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18086,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18075\/revisions\/18086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Liars<\/h5>\n