Woman in Paradise

My hangover is slowly abating. Against my better judgment, I accompanied Marv to the Paradise last night. Being without a car, I had to go get his arse and bring it over to my place yesterday afternoon to hang out and sample the chicken and dumplings that I was whipping up for supper. I had no problem finding his place and I found it rather nice to have a friend living on the Isthmus again as it gives me an excuse to go down there on occasion. His place isn’t bad though it does need a bit of remodeling. As I walked around, I found myself a bit jealous as he lives in the upper floor of a large, old house. Hardwood floors, darkly-stained molding and trim - with a little work, it would look really nice. His kitchen had a nice view of the backyard which is wooded.

I was almost overcome with a weird feeling - a nostalgic sense of deja-vu tinged with a bit of melancholy. It then hit me that the place reminded me of the apartment that Heather and I shared over on Washburn Place. It just came out of the blue and it lingered. On the one hand, it was merely a like of old houses with all the wood and all the character. But, as I stood in the kitchen looking out onto the backyard, I could feel the ghost of Heather walking behind me. I half expected Nico (one of her cats) to run into the room followed by Heather lazily strolling behind her.

I couldn’t shake this for a couple minutes as I kept seeing an apartment from another place and another time. Finally, after talking with Marv, I was able to get my mind onto something else, namely, get his arse up and moving so we could head back to my place.

It also afforded him the chance to get onto the Internet to do some shopping for a new computer. It was amusing to see him agonize over the decision of whether to get a laptop or a desktop only to decide on the latter and traverse the maze of new Intel chipsets, RAM, and the like. Of course I ably assisted him but I let him hang out there for a while before lending him a helping hand.

Around 8, the topic of the Dise came up and he said that he had to go down there as it was the last day of work for one of the bartenders and he wanted to bid her a fond farewell. At first I was going to either drop him off at home whereupon he’d grab a cab. I had a mysterious change of heart and decided to head over there as well with the intention of staying a couple hours and then heading home. Just enough time to hang out, have a couple, and say hi to Kevin. Needless to say, we ended up staying there till bar time.

Walking into the Paradise was a bit of a trip as I used to spend at least nights a week there but actually hadn’t stepped foot in the place in about 3 years. Nothing had changed. Walking towards some vacant seats at the bar, I noticed that Kevin was bartending. I was used to seeing him working the door. We took our seats and a pulchritudinous brunette in a very short skirt took our order. Marv knew her, of course. She was pretty cute and had the tip-attracting outfit on: the aforementioned skirt, a tight black shirt, and a bra that pushed her tits up and out just beckoning for gander.

Marv noticed a guy named Todd, if I recall correctly, at the other side of the bar and Todd came over and sat down next to him. Marv started talking him up about getting some new earrings. That is, about having the guy make some new hoops by hand. This led me to believe that Todd worked at a tattoo parlor. This impression was bolstered by the tattoos running up and down his arms.

A little while later, they began to comment on the music that was playing. It was at this point that I joined the conversation and Marv introduced Todd and me. The song was by Ronnie James Dio. Todd said that it was from Holy Diver and made some other comment which got us arguing over the release dates of Holy Diver and The Last in Line. He said that HD was Dio’s first solo album after leaving Sabbath while I thought it was TLiL. We came to a gentlemen’s agreement and laid down a dollar apiece. To decide the matter, Todd would call Matt Meyers’ sidekick over at WORT after 11. Meyers hosts The Mosh Pit, the metal show on WORT on Monday nights. Todd said that his co-host was nicknamed “The Encyclopedia” as he knew any and everything about heavy metal music. So we waited.

During the interim, we shot the shit about music. I discovered that Todd was a kindred spirit. He professed his love for metal at first. When he brought up the topic of Swedish death metal, I asked if he liked Opeth. His eyes grew wide, “I love Opeth!” The conversation went on to Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater, etc. I was a bit surprised when he began espousing the gospel according to Bela Fleck and Victor Wooten. You wouldn’t think a guy with several tattoos and a fondness for Swedish death metal would also harbor a love for bluegrass. But that’s why I like the Paradise - the people are so much more interesting than at other taverns. No yuppie scum there.

11:30 rolls around and he calls the studio. I get a cell phone handed to me and I’m speaking with a Mike. My worst fears were confirmed - Holy Diver was in fact released before The Last in Line. Todd gloated as he took my dollar. But he was a very nice guy and bought a round of shots. Kevin asks what I want and I reply, “bourbon.” Wild Turkey was then the order of the day. Uff da! Me and Wild Turkey have a, uh, special relationship, shall we say, that dates back to high school.

Soon enough, tattoos found their way into the conversation and I discovered that Todd works over at Blue Lotus. I told him that I had gotten my tat there and figured out which artist had painted me. Marv didn’t know that I had one so he was rather surprised. Things happen when you disappear for a couple years.

Computers then became the topic. Todd began bitching about his problems with pop-up ads. They are a constant menace for him and some of them are quite inappropriate for his children. Marv referred him to me, telling him that fixing such things is what I do for a living. I gave him my work # and said that I’d be happy to fix it. Of course, it would take all of 10 minutes but what can I say? Well, I think “That’ll be $52.74” would be a good start. We continued to talk about computer woes when Patty wandered over.

Patty is a woman who appears to be in her early 50s and, last night, was just fucking trashed. At first she just gave Marv egregious amounts of crap for having moved to Thailand after promising to resolve a computer problem for her. Patty’s problem was packet latency for online gaming. I ended up giving her A1’s # as well so that I or one of the other well-trained staff and highly friendly staff could assist her.

Patty continued by telling me about her job which was that of some kind of technician at Ameritech. After a short while, she took me across the street to give me a tour of their equipment. A couple swipes of her pass card and a brief elevator trip later, I found myself in the bowels of Ma Bell - or at least a former part of her. Rows and rows of tall banks of electronics that were 8” tall. Huge industrial-strength hard drives doing whatever it is that they do to abet the passage of these little electronic signals, some of which are lonely men calling 976 numbers, lonely men dialing up their ISPs to surf porn, and the like. We went down a couple floors and entered a room that had more rows but, this time, of switches. There were miles and miles of wire. At some point, probably 20 years ago, people punched all of them. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of connections to be made. Everyone’s house had a wire here. A colorful 20 gauge link to the outside world. Had I been in a mischievous mood, I could have pulled one tiny wire and done untold damage. OK. All I probably would have accomplished was to knock out service for some couple who was silently asleep. Still, the idea that I could have wrought major telecomm mayhem was appealing.

As we were walking along one row, Patty stopped and bent over to lift up one of the floor tiles. Not finding anything of interest, she let it fall back down. Then it was on to the next one. And the next one. Now, I don’t know if she did this on purpose, but each time she lifted a tile, she stuck her ass up right at me - just like a cat in heat. Sure I looked at it. Sure I thought about touching it. I mean, come on! There I was in an office building. At one in the morning. Just me and a woman. “No guards on this floor,” she told me. If I were to tell you that I wasn’t tempted to just bend her over her desk, I’d be lying. But I resisted temptation. Or, perhaps more accurately, I wasn’t that drunk. Patty was amusing and all, but I am looking for a woman 20-30 years younger than her.

With the tour over, she let me out while she ran upstairs to deal with her time card. I took this to mean doctor her time card. I moseyed back across the street and resumed my position next to Marv. He asked if she had showed me the diesel backup generators. Yes. Then he asked if she bent down right in front of me to lift up the floor tiles. Yes. He had been given the exact same tour.

He then chided me for not having fucked her. “I expected you to be there at least half an hour to 45 minutes,” he said half-jokingly. He then admitted to me that he had been tempted to fuck her on more than one occasion but had never gotten drunk enough to do it either. After about 10 minutes, Patty returned to the bar and engaged me in a long, slurred conversation about her job and then her PC again. I gave her my company’s # and said that I’d be glad to help her out with this packet latency thingy. She returned the favor and gave me her #. I can’t remember the last time I walked out of a bar with a woman’s phone number. And her pager number. And her last name. The slip of paper is still sitting in my wallet as far as I know.

Looking back, I just have to laugh as it reminds me of a couple incidents a few years ago at the Silver Dollar and the Caribou, respectively, that Dogger and Old Man Standiford never let me forget. Let’s just say it involved severely drunk older women and that I ignored the admonishment of the Dollar’s bartender in one instance.

Anyway, Patty continued by telling me about 80 times that she was divorced. She then went on about her son’s problems at school. After a short while, she bought me a beer and then disappeared, presumably to the bathroom. This afforded Marv the opportunity to tell me a few things about her.

She was, according to him, your archetypal bar hag. Every night, sure as Sears, she could be found at the Dise getting drunker than two barrels of shit. The computer problem that she had consulted Marv about a couple years ago involved user accounts and privacy in Windows 98. Apparently, she had been cheating on her husband. She and her lover had a predilection for taking pictures in media res, if you know what I mean. Well, she put those pictures on their computer while she was logged on under her account. Well, Windows 98 has all the security of a hippie commune and the data in her profile was easily accessible by anyone using the computer. It just wasn’t out in the open. So her now ex-hubby finds the pictures and they get divorced. And apparently she now takes it upon herself to try and fuck any old younger man she stumbles upon at the Paradise. I was even more happy that I had escaped from her clutches.

After being told of just how narrow my escape was, Marv and I began talking about other things. He explained a very bad situation concerning the woman who lived downstairs from him. I had met her earlier in the day when I had gone over there to pick him up. (Marv is sans automobile.) She looked all of 18 years old and had a daughter who was 2 at the most.

OK. Marv and Kevin have known each other for 20+ years. Kevin’s brother, Randy, also lives here in Madison. He is the proprietor of Scooter Therapy. (Whose advertising has taken a turn for the better lately, in my opinion.) Randy’s son owns the house that Marv lives in and the woman downstairs is Randy’s daughter. Marv reveals to me that the woman is 20 and that the father of her kid is some guy in his mid-30s from Portage. Apparently he is a low-life drug dealer and all-around asshole. He then proceeds to tell me that Randy wants to give him a shotgun in case the girl’s father decides to come round and pay a visit. Marv is too nice a guy to go around brandishing a shotgun and threatening anyone. He even admitted as much. Not a good situation.

Bar time came quickly so Marv and I proceeded to my car. As we approached his house, he asked if I wanted to stop in and I took him up on the offer.

We got upstairs and busted out some cookies. He offered and I have the hardest time turning down chocolate. While I munched on a cookie, Marv wandered about in search of his pipe. Not finding it, he pulled out a roach and we smoked that. A couple hits from that and I was nicely stoned. He pulled out a plate and dumped the contents of a quarter bag onto it and proceeded to remove the stems and seeds. It was at this point that things got interesting…