ROYAL RESIDENCE 14 ================================================================= THE ROYAL RESIDENCE ================================================================= This is episode fourteen. Some of you know I collect decently priced fountain pens. I like writing with them. I bought a Mont Blanc 144 in maroon in which I use maroon/brown ink as a personal mark. I got the Mont Blanc in 1992, long before fountain pens -- especially MBs -- became a status symbol among the more barracuda of post-yuppie climbers. One of the most unusual yet inexpensive ones I have is a Harley Davidson commemorative in tool steel and dark plum enamel. I called all over the Bay Area at the time I heard of it to locate it. None of the snotty art stores or pen specialty shops carried it. Some, in fact, thought I was either joking or slightly off my nut. On a hunch I called the Dudley Perkins Company in San Francisco, reputed to be the oldest continuously operating Harley Davidson show room in the US. They had it. I dragged Mr Cheez to the beginning of "upper" Market Street and to the side street with the dull yellow clapboard building looking much as it did in the 1910's. There is surely no hall anywhere in the world, except perhaps for the San Leandro Home Depot warehouse, where the scent of ready testosterone reigns supreme. My knees were knocking as I entered the portal -- I had both of them then -- and I saw this delicious writing instrument in the front display case. The cap resembles a four-stroke piston. The pen proper, the nib, is thick stainless steel and surprisingly smooth. It is just the thing for a troubador of the highways to sign a traffic ticket. (Hint: A fountain pen will not mark carbons if you are careful. If the flatfoot gives you the original copy of the ticket, you might make a case for never having seen the ticket as is NOT witnessed by your signature! -- or load the pen with fugitive ink just in case.) There really was a Dudley Perkins. He took his final ride to the skies last Saturday. His eternal road trip began at St Ignatius Church, the collegiate church of the Jesuit University of San Francisco. You can expect to see lots of college types hanging out around the campus, even some real live Jesuits in their black dresses, but 91 bikers?! The Panhead Pack made their way slowly up Fulton Street. In honor of ole Dud they wore their best black leather. When dignitaries croak in San Francisco, they usually rate a police department official escort. Perkins had that, but the HD bikers following the funeral car had wrinkles in their noses. The SFPD rides Kawasaki cop models. They're lighter and quicker than the police-model Harleys. They also cost a lot less. By saving money on hogs, the hogs at the political trough can throw the money into more rewarding (for them) paths such as making the Bay Bridge pretty with new lights on the cables. I am not going to get into a habit of reviewing stuff or plugging things, but I am so taken with a local blues singer that I have to tell you about her. Mr Cheez knows her by virtue of being doorman at one of the clubs in which she appears. He and I went to a local supper club on ground level where I could see her perform. We both had a wonderful time. She is wonderfully warm and sings like an angel, yet her songs will put a stir in your loins. She has a CD out which you should try to obtain if you like smooth, sassy blues. Meet (Miss) Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers. The title song is one made famous by Ida Cox in the 30s, One Hour Mama. Ida and Lavay have definite ideas about stamina... Chris Siebert writes the arrangements. He's simply the cutest barrelhouse piano man you would ever want to meat. Babies, he can play me like a keyboard any ole time. So there's Lavay on the cover, lying out on the bed in her very black, very lacy bra, smiling back at you. The scene well interprets her lead song, Oo Papa Do. Call your favorite record chain's 800 number, send a friend to Tower or Virgin, or write to Fat Note Records for information at 30 Glover Street, SF CA 94109 USA. Mr Cheez insists I have an answering machine. I've decided I really don't like them. I usually forget to collect the messages. I do have the simplest possible outgoing message on mine. It says, This is an answering machine; you know what to do. I know other people have to play the opening chords of Thus Spake Zarathustra or have some pounding house "music" running to obscure their personal way of saying the obvious, but I don't. Fuck it. Get it over with and get over it. The machine slipped a cog the other day and went into some old old messages which came in to my Oakland number over two years ago when I was in Big City Hospital being carved up an inch at a time. It was Dr Jones's office, at Associated Oaktown Urologists. They wanted to speak to me about my bill. Aside from the ambulance ride and the ER bill, this was probably the first of the long procession of quacks tormenting me. This one cut a slot in my opera-length lace curtains so he could shove a hose in my peepee. It has never been made clear to me why anyone needed to to that because I have always been able to pee on cue and sometimes by accident. They may have thought I was comatose -- there is a notation to that effect in the early reconds -- but whatever I was, I can tell you the sudden touch of his scalpel brought me around with a scream. He is one of Them I am glad I completely, ah, stiffed. Perhaps I now have the conclusion to another fight. Some dingdong in the Navy civilian personnel office entered a completely wrong end-of-employment date in the records used to calculate my pension. In order to protect his ass, he stood by his error while I, with little trouble, conclusively showed through independent records that I ran out of sick and vacation leave on the earlier date I claimed. The Office of Personnel Management, the national human resources overseer of all federal civil service programs, cut my pension by twenty percent to recoup their claimed overpayment. I appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board. OPM and MSPB went round and round like a good hairpull bitchfight in a hillbilly bar. Neither of them would talk to me. Scribble-y, Holler-y, Stuffit- y. I wrote; I called; I got ignored. I finally synopsized the mess to the Congressperson in whose district I lived by virtue of living in the second of the two tardfarms. Because I used Mr Cheez's SF address to keep the tardfarm out of my business, they sent my wail to the Congressperson in San Francisco from whom I also heard not a thing. Then all of a sudden MSPB started trying to find me. Hahahahaha! Somebody's tit finally got in a wringer. Bang! -- I had a refund of all the garnishment and the garnishment stopped like a sloppy fuck mired in epoxy. Never underestimate the power of an internal review or a routine inspector general review. These are the only visits bureaucrats fear. Internal review people were probably mistreated as children and now hate the world and want to spread misery and gloom wherever possible. External review people generally come from out of town to find as much fault with your agency as they can because if they do a good enough hatchet job on your hive, it makes their own look that much better. Now MSPB is calling Mr Cheez and calling me and I am ignoring them. Time alone cured the problem and rectified the injustice. I have nothing to say to any of the parties. Fuck 'em. The government is like a sandbox where all the naughty children are busy digging up cat turds to throw at each other. Miss Crunt came over to see me. Miss Crunt is awfully nervous and jerky lately. I wonder if he is pregnant. Miss Crunt kept looking about my meager room as though expecting to see someone or something beside the two of us and the furniture. He noticed the Bombay Company reproduction lap desk box on the foot of my bed. I call it my Betty Box because someone told me Betty Windsor gets diplomatic communiques delivered in such a box. Miss Crunt said, as she opened the box and began rooting through the contents, Oh you mean Sweaty Betty. I tone down the nastiness of owning TV Guide by keeping it in this box along with paper dinner knapkins for blowing my nose, a pad and pens to write down notes for RR rants (five o'clock in the morning is the most fertile time to plan rants) (there is nothing like a good night's sleep and waking up fresh to have it settle on you just how fucking great your life is), and my blood glucose meter and supplies so I can check my morning oil once or twice a week while the engine is still cold. I told the bitch to get out of my stuff before I stuck him someplace sensitive with my finger poker. Then the hussy had nerve to start looking through my refrigerator. Please, Mary, I just got the thing two weeks ago. There hasn't been time for the mold to grow. I guess he was looking for my rectal suppositories. (Why not the fridge? Why can't medicine be fun?) Then he starts in on rifling my CD collection. I had to warn the bitch not to mess up the rows because I am trying to categorize them as they come in bunches from storage. I do not appreciate having to do double work and I might just see if one of the jewel boxes will fit in the Crunt snatch if he riles me. The good part was the info on Bondage-a-Go-Go which meets at a well-known South of Market dance club. I'd heard tales about how Miss Crunt likes to whail on a pair of cute buns with a leather whip. As he described the debauchery, the light in his eyes was magickal. I knew the terrible tales I had heard about Crunt were true. The really disgusting part of this is that Miss Crunt lets real women beat on his ass. I have been trying to get Crunt and Cheez out on a date. I have heard Miss Crunt beats boy ass with a dedication usually limited to sadistic nuns. Mr Cheez hasn't been properly beaten in ages and I think he not only needs it but misses it. Alas, I could not keep a straight face but Miss Crunt can. You go, girl. Doreen, formerly known as The Demon, still won't tell me about his date with Max of Marin. I'll keep workin' it. Sooner or later everybody wants to be written up in a gossip column. Miss Ralph, formerly social worker at St Timmy's, has a new gig at another tardfarm with less beds but more work. Go finger. Miss Ralph finally took the plunge and went to the Gauntlet on Castro and got his tits pierced. I wish I had been there to hear the screams. I know I would have fired a shot wet enough to run down my stump. The heifer has some kinda titties on. His make mine look small and I can fill D cups. Wait til I pull his rings... =================================================================