Your Beautiful Destiny

Here's another section of the novel -- tomorrow a post on infidelity, a la Tiger Woods. Not about him, per se, but about the issues of text, voice mail, and cheating in our post-modern age. If you guys have any thoughts before or after the post, please speak oracle!

We all pile into Melissa’s Nissan, Angela Dawn riding shotgun, Kristen and I cracking jokes about being more comfortable in the back.

“So where are we going?” Melissa asks.

“To Hell if we don’t change our ways,” I say.

“Enough with the peanut gallery, Mrs. Shane. You’ve been about as useful as disconnected doorknob. Kristen, what direction do I need to go? I’m assuming Ft. Worth,” Melissa says.

“Assume means making an ass out of u and me,” Angela Dawn says.

“Ft. Worth,” Kristen says.

We get there in record time, the radio blaring out Madonna’s True Blue album.

When we get to the edge of town, Kristen directs us to Sinbad’s, a topless bar.

“We can get free drinks here,” she says.

“Hell, we can get free drinks at Woodys,” I say, referring to a Quonset hut on the edge of town that’s now a hamburger place. “Must we see naked women while sipping our delightful beverages?”

Then it dawns on me and Melissa that Kristen works at Sinbad’s which explains how her money crisis of yore was solved so quickly. Stealing twenty dollar bills from her dad’s wallet wasn’t going to fix everything. But shaking, as the boys have taken to saying, what her momma gave her does. Although the reference to a mother in this case seems insensitive. King of like when Hank’s dad calls him George after the cartoon, George of the Jungle. As in, Watch out for that tree!

Angela Dawn, despite her name, has no revelations even when Kristen tells us her name is Myra for the time being. What kind of stripper name is Myra?

“Fathers lock up your sons,” the DJ yells as we walk in the door. “The most beautiful lady you’re about to see is Destiny. As in yours for the next few minutes. Give it up for your beautiful Destiny.”

Onstage there’s a pellucid-looking girl who swirls around the pole while Def Leopard’s "Pour Some Sugar On Me" blares from the speakers. For not the first time, I think how lucky Melissa is to not have to get a summer job.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor." Jack Nicholson

Cocktail Hour
Special thanks to all who notified me that the link yesterday didn't work and a very special thanks to Mark who found it. My hero! I'll repost it in a bit and all you guys can vote for the friend of my dear Angela.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday! And thanks for all the great comments -- all is well here, thanks for asking, Chris! I'm on a ten page a day schedule to finish the novel by next Friday so it's a bit of a gruel, but I look forward to that final day and the joyous cocktail hour at the end of it. And Dave, no disrespect to anyone in the AIDS Day post -- but I will always find those protesters (Westboro Baptist Church and more specifically, the Phelps family) so disturbing and disrespectful, I'll never understand why they do what they do. But the pictures are back! And thanks to my beautiful Jodi for worrying about my safety in picture taking of our fair city. And I'm wishing all of you a wonderful week!