Letter from Memphis

—–Original Message—–
From:Lee
Sent:Tuesday, May 19, 1998 5:45 PM
To:Fredirique
Subject:Discovering myself

F,
Hey, have you found out anything about your new job?  I hope you get to work with a bunch of people you like.  I definitely found some people who like me.

I went to Memphis this weekend for the barbecue cookoff contest.  As you know, I have been down lately, so I was pleasantly surprised when experiences in Memphis diverted me from my inner torment.  I found out that my looks are interesting to women in a way that I had not been aware.

Janeil and I left Huntsville Saturday morning.  I wondered what the drive to Memphis would turn into.  With Janeil having been home only three weeks since the start of February, she and I have grown accustomed to being apart.  We have slowly, and I don’t just mean at a slow steady pace but in fits and spurts of repressed anger and frustration interspersed throughout topical text, we have slowly recultivated our common conversational topics to prevent us from constantly bickering.  I have learned that being with someone for years has at least one advantage — we know to avoid topics that inflict unnecessary pain on the other.

We arrived at Jim Asquith’s apartment around 12:30.  Jim is a software consultant here at ADS and I have created a couple of computer graphic files for use in his business.  In the latest rendition, I designed a corporate logo that Jim put on the back of a T-shirt that he gave out to all the engineers at ADS and to everybody on the barbecue team he sponsored.  At the apartment, we had a couple of stiff drinks with Jim and his business partner, Dave.  After an hour, when we were all tipsy and Jim’s girlfriend had shown up, we headed out to the park.

Crowded into the back of an old Buick Skyhawk, we cruised through the city.  I could easily have fallen into the observer mode;  that is, I almost put up my invisible camera lens and recorded the interaction between Jim and his girlfriend, Cheryl, in the front seat and me, Janeil and Dave in the back.  Instead, I let myself go and participated.  Go ahead and shoot me but I have no recollection of what we talked about on the way between Jim’s apartment and the barbecue.  Too bad, because some existential conversations are interesting.

Anyway, we pulled into a parking garage a block or two away from the building where scenes were filmed for the movie, “The Firm.”  Still half tipsy, we bobbed down the street to the festival entrance.  Jim bought all our tickets.  Earlier that week, he told me the weekend was on him because I designed the logo.  “Cool,” I said.  Only later did I remember to say thanks.

Have you ever been to a barbecue cookoff?  I certainly have not attended a food festival of this magnitude.  Over 250 contestants had specialty booths set up at Tom Lee Park along the river.  God, talk about heat!  Between the sun beating down on our heads (my head was suavely covered by an official “Indiana Jones” Stetson that Dad bought for me years ago) and the hundreds of barbecue grills, our entourage sweated like…well, like pigs.

We meandered through the park, looking at the other exhibitor booths.  The majority of the booths were walled with particle board and designed to look like roadside barbecue shacks.  Others were more creative.  This year, the show saluted the country of Portugal so some exhibitors had rigged their booths to look like pirate ships.  Jim’s team members decorated their booth to look like a sidewalk cafe.

When we got to Jim’s booth, Jim led us directly to the liquor stash that he had kindly set aside for “special” customers.  Before I knew it, he and I had downed a couple of cups of Wild Turkey.  I had not eaten in twenty-four hours and realized almost too late that I was drunk.  I had had four drinks in about two hours.

While I stood in the shade of an umbrella, Jim pointed out that several good-looking women were standing behind me.  I turned around to see some girls talking to one of the barbecue team members (the team members were easy to notice because they were walking around with my design on their backs!).  He held what looked like a cigar box open for the girls to look at.  They took turns pulling out a piece of paper.  Jim explained that during the previous two days, some of the guys had been handing out certificates that stated, “Bring this ticket to Booth 104 for a free tattoo.”  The guy with the box guided one of the girls to an old dentist’s chair (should I call these girls women?  In any case, they were all younger than me).  The girl pulled her top down to expose more of her cleavage and let the guy apply temporary tattoos to the sides of her breasts.  The other girls followed, getting tattoos on their arms, legs, backs, or chests, depending on their inclination.  Most of the guys in the booth stared at a girl in a purple dress.

Jim’s partner, Dave, offered me one of the cigars he was smoking.  I graciously accepted and we stood around talking about the soon-to-be-served barbecue, the weather, and girls.  Fifteen or twenty minutes later, Jim and Cheryl dragged me to a storage area behind the barbecue grills.

I think now is a good time to bring up a snippet of conversation I had with Janeil on the way to Memphis.  I told Janeil about a dream I’d had the previous night.  In the dream, my best friend from high school, Monica, told me she had been dropping acid lately and proceeded to tell me why it was okay for her to be dropping acid because she had a great husband and kids, etc., and could enjoy acid for pleasure but I wasn’t allowed to drop acid because I would only be doing so to escape reality and “remember what it did to you in college.”  I have been under a lot of pressure lately to get good grades in school, write fantastic software test plans at work, write and publish my next book, and…what else?  Who knows.  Anyway, I have been hanging on to my sanity by a thread and will accept just about any way to relieve pressure.

We stepped into a covered area that was supposed to look like a food storage locker at a restaurant.  Jim pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette.  I did not hesitate to take my turn smoking.  Well, I hesitated mentally but managed to squeeze out of my lungs with the first long puff a lifetime of mental anguish and nervousness.  Within minutes some of the girls out front found their way to the storage area.  The girl in the purple dress and the girl with the tattooed breasts stood beside me, partly to get away from some hungry wolves out front and partly because I was willing to let them take turns with the cigarette.  I don’t know why I attracted these girls but the girl in the purple dress confided to me that her dress was actually a fancy nightgown a former boyfriend had given her.  Man, was she wild!  I don’t know if it was the seclusion of the storage area, the heat, the alcohol, or the cigarette but the atmosphere in that “back room” was electrified.  In fact, at work today, Jim has kept kidding me about what happened.

Omigosh, it’s 5:45 p.m. and I’ve got to go home to help Janeil pack for her trip to Albuquerque and our trip to San Francisco.  I’ll have to finish the Memphis story later.

Reeeeeck

—–Original Message—–
From:Rick Hill
Sent:Wednesday, May 20, 1998 9:31 AM
To:’Brenda Craig’
Subject:Memphis belles (continued)

B,
Good morning!  It’s [YAWN] 6:55 a.m.  I woke up at 3:30 so I could take Janeil to the airport for a 6:10 a.m. flight.  Did you get my last email?  I believe I started telling you about my adventure in Memphis.  I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Have you ever read anything by Donald Barthelme or J.G. Ballard?  You should.  I read them in the mid-80s and enjoyed their writing immensely.  I believe I will buy some of their more recent books and read them during the San Francisco trip.

Let’s see, where was I?  We were finishing up the hand-rolled cigarette and…oh yeah, the girl in the purple dress.  Well, I talked to Janeil last night and she added some observations about the situation.  According to Janeil, I was the best-looking guy in the booth so if anything women would be attracted to my looks in comparison to the other guys there.  The other thing that appealed to the women in the booth was my calm demeanor, my standoffishness.  I was not circling them like lions coming in for the kill nor was I staring at their bodies with a goofy grin on my face.

So here I was, hidden away with a couple of women who were looking for a good time.  The girl in the purple dress, after telling me what she was wearing…wait, I forgot to tell you something.  A bit earlier, Janeil asked me, um, I guess while the girl in the purple dress was waiting to get tattooed, whether the girl had any underwear on.  I watched the girl’s waist just above her hipbones.  Usually, I can tell if there is an impression in the skin around the waist that indicates the width of underwear a woman is wearing.  You know, “is she wearing a thong, bikini briefs or full underwear?”  I suppose it’s a guy thing.  I concluded that the woman was wearing underwear but no bra (her lights were on but not glaring).

The girl in the purple dress leaned against me as she took a drag on the cigarette.  I did my best not to tense up.

“That’s a cool ring,” the girl with the tattooed breasts said, grabbing my hand and pulling it toward her.

“Thanks,” I said, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into.  I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going, so I decided to steer things out of the swinging single scene.  “My wife gave it to me for our tenth anniversary.”

As the tattooed-breast girl (from now on, I’ll call her “Texas”) and the girl in the purple dress (from now on, I’ll call her “girl in the purple dress”) were smoking the last resinated remnants of the cigarette, I turned to the girl in the purple dress and told her that my wife and I were debating whether she had any underwear on.

“Oh yeah?” she said.  “Yes, I’m wearing underwear.  If I didn’t, every time I bent over I’d be showin’ the beaver to everyone.  I don’t always wear underwear, though, do I?” she asked Texas.  Texas shook her head.  I nodded my head.

The girl in the purple dress handed the cigarette back to me.  “I’m finished, thanks.”

I pulled out my pocketknife and stuck the cigarette on the end of a blade.  I took another drag and handed it to Texas.

Texas gave me a conspiratorial smile and flashed her eyebrows.  “Hey, that’s pretty creative,” she added.

The girl in the purple dress decided to put on a show so she stepped to the back of the storage area, picked up an old Mardi Gras mask and did a little dance.  “What do you think?” she asked us.

I was embarrassed because I was in such close proximity to both women.  I looked around the storage area, saw that there were a few more masks and said, “There’s a mask with purple feathers that might match your dress better.”

The girl gave me a quizzical look and then held up the mask in her hand.  “Well, the feathers in this mask match pretty good.”

I wanted to say, “Oh yeah, baby, you look great,” but my low self-esteem prevented me from continuing the conversation with a wild and pretty woman.  Instead, I said, “Why don’t you try the purple mask?”

“Never mind,” she replied and threw the mask down.  “Hey,” she said to a guy standing next to the portable toilet that created the fourth wall of the storage area, “when can I take my turn?”

Texas handed the last half-inch of the cigarette toward me and I waved her off.  The girl in the purple dress looked at both of us, winked at Texas and said, “I think I’ll get in line.  I gotta pee.”

I turned my attention to Texas.  I couldn’t see her eyes because she was wearing shades.  She was shorter than me, about five-foot three or four.  Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail which she had wound around into a loose bun, presumably because of the heat.  “So where are you from?” I asked Texas.

“Oh, you’ve probably never heard of it.  I live in Laurel, Mississippi.  What should I do with this?” she asked, holding up the smoldering paper of the leftover cigarette.

“I guess just put it out in the grass.”

As Texas bent over to put out the cigarette, I took the opportunity to see what she looked like from the head down.  She wore what, for lack of a better description, I would call a tube top, made of cotton T-shirt material and held up by spaghetti string.  The top V’ed down between her breasts, exposing her cleavage and the two temporary tattoos of a Dalmatian dog on the side of one breast and a ladybug on the other.  At her throat was a tattoo of a butterfly.  I’m not a very good judge of weight but Texas was well-proportioned for her height.  Her breasts were full, not so large that they sagged, more like they slightly drooped down.  Her butt was just a little large, say a 40 instead of a perfect 36 and her blue jean shorts fitted nicely without looking too tight.  I would wager a guess that she’ll have a problem with weight as she gets older.  Her skin was the color of cork, tanned and smooth.

“Do you live around here?” she asked, her face flushed from bending over.

“No, I came from Huntsville, Alabama.”

“Did you come up last night?  I mean, did you stay in a hotel overnight?” she corrected, and I wondered what she was getting at.  Actually, I didn’t wonder but I was playing a game of chess with our talk and I didn’t want her to feel like she was letting me win the game, leading me to checkmate, if you will.

“We drove up this morning and just got here a little while ago.  Boy, it’s hot.”

“Yep.  You know, I sure wish I was back in Texas.”

“Is it hot there right now?”  I quizzed, trying to figure out the twist.

“I’m sure it is.  You know what I do for a living?”  I shook my head.  “I know you’ll think it’s crazy but I pull the heads off chickens.”  I scrunched my face.  “Oh, it’s not that bad.  You hear all these stories on the television but you wouldn’t believe how sanitary that place is.  Those birds are clean as they can be going through the line.  We have to wash down everything.”

“So how did you get from Texas to plucking chickens in Mississippi?”

“I went to Texas A&M…”

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, expecting to hear the tale of another college dropout who was abandoned by her ex-boyfriend and left to fend for herself.

“…and got my degree in poultry science.  You know, chickens are such wonderful creatures.  They’re really well-behaved.”

“Is she telling you about those chickens?” the girl in the purple dress asked me, while pulling her dress down as she stepped out of the toilet (yes, she was wearing underwear, bikini not thong).  “You gotta be careful with her or you’ll hear about chickens all day.”

Texas gave her a hurt look, then turned to me and rolled her eyes.

“You know you’re my best friend,” the girl in the purple dress said, putting her arm around Texas.  “This girl and I have done everything together.  We go way back.  Hey, did you tell him about the speedboat?”  Texas shook her head.  The girl in the purple dress turned to me.  “You won’t believe this.”  She looked up and down my body and squinted her eyes.  “Then again, maybe you will.  Yesterday, we were walking down Beale Street when this foreign guy, all dressed up and everything, invited us to a bar.  We said why not and followed him.  Turns out that he owns some kind of foreign business that he wanted us to help him sell.  What do you think of that?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

“Could be dangerous, I suppose.”

“Naw, are you kiddin’?  He was just talking to us in the bar.  Well, after a while, we figured we had had enough and were about to leave when another guy walks up, recognizes our guy and starts asking him about his business.  You remember his name?”

“Nanu?” Texas answered.

“Nanu, Nainesh, something like that.  Anyway, Nainesh and this guy invite us to go out on a boat on the river to see the city from the water.  We got to the dock and saw the coolest boat I’ve ever seen.  Have you ever seen a speedboat?”  I nodded my head.  “Man, this thing had everything.  It was packed with booze and even had a place for a few people to sleep, if you wanted.”

Texas cut in, “It was such a big boat, we weren’t sure if we should get on it.”

“Yeah, right,” the girl in the purple dress shot back.  “We jumped on in.  We sat in the back and let the guys get their kicks with the controls.  Woo-eee, did it go fast.”

“My turn,” Texas said, stepping into the toilet.

Bob, one of the team members, stepped up at that time.  Bob was about five-feet nine and weighed over 300 pounds.  He wore an Izod shirt with the collar flipped up and talked like he used to be what my dad calls a BMOC (big man on campus).  To the girls, he acted like an over-horny fat guy and he was one of the wolves they had been trying to avoid.  “So, have you been having a good time?”

“Yeah, great, thanks,” she responded and shot him a perturbed look.  She turned back to me.  “Eventually, the guys decided to stop the boat because they wanted to talk.”

Bob snickered.  “I bet they wanted to talk.”

“Uh-huh.  Instead, they let us drive the boat for a while and it was great.  By the time Nainesh took the controls back, I was drunk as a skunk.  We finally stopped at some island.”  The girl in the purple dress smiled at me.  She looked at my eyes for a moment and in that time we both sensed that the look was pivotal for establishing the rest of our day.  With her hands on her hips and her right hip turned up, she was sending out every physical and chemical signal that she was ready for a very intimate conversation.  In that moment, Bob said something but neither one of us paid attention.

How long was that moment?  By my watch, I don’t know.  I do know that in that moment I was able to see my true self.  All the self-doubt, all the philosophical musing, all the questions about why I’m here, all of that stuff just fell away and I was standing naked in front of the girl in the purple dress.  I could not believe that I could do that.  I had worked so hard to put walls and barriers around me that I forgot what human-to-human contact was like.  The girl, too, stood there exposed.  Between us was a bridge that either one of us could cross but I knew that the girl was leaving me to do the crossing.

Bob slapped me on the back, and said, “Make way.”

In my peripheral vision, I could see that Texas was stepping out of the toilet.  The moment between the girl in the purple dress and me was broken.  I reacted to it before I sensed it was over.

“So did you get a chance to talk then?” I asked for some stupid reason, realizing too late how juvenile I sounded.

“Huh?” the girl asked, shaking her head as the moment passed.  “No, of course not.”

“So what did…” I started.

“Just say that it was later on that afternoon before we got back to the dock.”  The moment was broken.

“Hey, hey, you need help with that?” Bob asked and I turned to see Texas stepping out of the toilet and pulling her shorts up.

“It’s too crowded in there to put your clothes back on,” Texas said with a sheepish grin, as Bob and I looked down at her flowery underwear.

“Let me help you tuck your shirt back in,” Bob volunteered.

“Maybe you oughta step back in there because you’re lettin’ the whole world see your panties,” the girl in the purple dress said.

Texas stepped back into the storage area as she buttoned her fly.  “It’s hot in there.”

“It sure is,” I said.

===============================
B,
It’s 9:30 and I’ve got to finish up some work.  Talk to you later.
R

—–Original Message—–
From:Rick Hill
Sent:Wednesday, May 20, 1998 12:11 PM
To:’Brenda Craig’
Subject:Memphis belles (conclusion)

B,
Here’s the rest of the Memphis story.

The girl in the purple dress was standing a couple of feet to my right.  When I turned from Texas, I was eye-to-eye with the girl in the purple dress.  She tried to rekindle the moment with words because the look was still in her eyes.  “It’s hot and sweaty everywhere,” she said, baring her thoughts once more.

I stared back at her.  Some of the old thoughts came creeping into my head.  Should I assume that her goal is sex with me and mine is not as if I am some pure thinker and she a sex-crazed pagan?  Have I really let the syphilis and gonorrhea propaganda films from fifth grade shape my perception of sex as dirty, dangerous, and verboten?  What if she doesn’t want sex and really wants to bare her soul?  Would that make me the sex-crazed pagan?  “I don’t even know what I want out of life and I’m standing here playing the game of life with a stranger,” I told myself.  “I can’t tell the difference between flirting and going for the real thing.”

“Is that right?” I heard Bob said to Texas, breaking the trance between the girl in the purple dress and me.

“Yeah, they use every part.  We even ship the chicken feet to some place in Asia.  I don’t know about you guys but I am burning up.”

“You’re right about that,” I said cheerfully, finding a way out of the situation.  “I think I’ll get something to drink.”  With that said, I walked over to the cooler, pulled out a bottle of water and sat down next to my wife.

After I cooled off, I took a walk with Janeil to see the remaining booths.  We enjoyed the relative peace and quiet, trying our best to handle the heat as we walked around the park.  We split a basket of fries and a funnel cake to quell our hunger, spent some time answering questions from a pollster, and walked off some of the drunkenness by the time we got back to booth 104 an hour or so later.

When we got back, the girl in the purple dress was gone.  Texas was still hanging out, enjoying some of the beer from a keg set up under the umbrella.  Texas was sitting in the “cafe” part of the booth, talking with one of the team members.  She made eye contact with me and bee-lined straight to where I was sitting.

Texas was not smashed but she was well on her way to getting drunk.  She sat on the arm of the bench next to me and talked into my ear because the DJ…oh, did I mention that they had hired a DJ for the booth?  He and I had shared a hand-rolled cigarette just before Janeil and I took a walk.  He had met one of the team members the week before at a dance club.  One thing led to another and he got himself hired for this event.  Not only was he the DJ but he was also the keeper of the liquor stash.  He had downed a few cups of Wild Turkey himself and kept cranking up the music as the day progressed.

“How’s it goin’?” Texas asked me, her mouth inches from my ear.  Keep in mind that Janeil was sitting on the other side of me.

“Hot,” I responded neutrally.

“Where’ve you been?” she continued.

“Janeil and I took a walk to see the other booths.”

Texas shook her head.  “That’s cool.  Is there anything interesting to see?  I mean, would you want to go back and see another booth?” she practically whispered in my ear.

“Not really,” I said, not sure if I was imagining the whole thing.

“That’s cool.”

“So,” I picked up, “how do you plan to get back to Texas?”

“Texas?” she said, moving her head around to face mine.  “Oh yeah.  I don’t know.”  She took a sip of her beer and nodded her head toward me.  The look on her face said she was waiting for me to speak.

I figured any conversation with sexual overtones would be a waste of time.  “You still haven’t told me how you got from Texas to Mississippi.”

“I’ve got a degree in Poultry Science,” she said proudly.

“So you said.  Are you involved in the design of the chicken processing plant?”

“Not yet but I love my job.  I’m really helping them refine the process.  You know, those birds are so cool.  Have you ever been to one of those plants?  Everything is used.”

“Even the feet?” I asked knowingly.

“Yeah.  Say, what are you doing for the rest of the day?”

“I don’t know…” I began.

Jim yelled across the booth, “Hey, Rick, the barbecue’s ready!”

Janeil tapped me on the shoulder.  I nodded my head at her and turned back to Texas.  “What are you planning to do?”

“Just hang out, I guess.  You guys are the most happenin’ place around.”

“You’re kidding,” I replied.

“No, you’ve got the music, you’ve got the beer, and now the barbecue.  And all you guys are great,” she ended with a warm smile and a hand on my shoulder.

Janeil pulled my right arm with her hand.  “Honey, the barbecue’s ready.”

“Okay,” I answered, leaning forward to stand up from the bench.  I turned back to Texas.  “Well, I’ve enjoyed meeting you.  I guess it’s time to eat some barbecue.  Are you going to stay around for long?”

“As long as you’re fun.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the point.”

“Well, I’m thirty years old.  I figure if I haven’t found a guy and had kids by now, I’m not planning to have kids anytime soon.  All I want to do is have fun right now.”

“That sounds great.  I hope you have fun.  I’m going to have some barbecue.  Seeya.”

The barbecue was smooth.  It went just as well with mustard sauce as it did with the regular sweet-and-spicy barbecue sauce.

Texas and I nodded at each other the rest of the afternoon as I watched her go from guy to guy looking for someone to talk to and have fun with.  She seemed pleased as punch.  Janeil said she saw her later that day walking back into the booth, her hair down and disheveled, accompanied by one of the team members who had a mischievous grin on his face.

The barbecue cookoff was definitely fun.  I can’t remember the last time I let my guard down in front of another woman besides Janeil (I certainly can’t remember the last time I let my guard down and the end result was not sex — probably when I dropped acid with Monica in ’83 or ’84).  I guess it must have been in 1985 sometime.  That’s a long time in my book.  Well, that’s what my life has become, hasn’t it?  A book.

Talk to you later,
L