On the sly...

DonKay likes to fancy itself a Romantic enterprise, but we here at The Local know the opposite to be true. Individual imagination's the very thing stifled beneath l'académie's bovine tongue. That sow's mouth cracks open just wide enough to pass gas, anyhow. Only the the sensory-inert could claim to sniff sublimity out of such stank-ass air. We prefer our moments of transcendence, minor-key or major, with a healthy helping of non-digestive dynamism. Enough about us though. Ronald Constable is perhaps the clearest example we could find of an avowed disavowed romantic. Small 'r' here, but the metaphysical discontent saved up in-between his lines reads big. In the 1980s, he devoured the commodities market at the NYSE. Bullish enough to later bilk hundreds of thousands from a few over-inflated mutual funds, Ron was detached enough from the grind to keep a diary, which, if you can believe it, he dictated weekly to a live-in secretary sworn to secrecy, a Ms. Darlene Moses. This entry (later sent off in letter-form to a Harvey S.) was submitted in third-quarter 1982 on a roll of steno-paper -- somewhat like a Kerouac manuscript -- by the faithful Mrs. Moses to DonKay, and proves ole Ronnie was more Ti Jean than he knew.

I forgot to remind myself to make a note of the story I wanted to tell you, Harvey. Because it involves you. It's coming back to me in rushes. It was this Thursday, last year. You were there at Ford's Restaurant, Bar, Grille, & Nightclubbe. Well, we were there, the both of us, downstairs. The back booth was like a kidney. Shaped like one I mean. It was you, me, and Cathy's nephew George. There were drinks that were bought for the eventual girls who sat across from us. Is any of this ringing a bell? Okay. Three of them. Girls, not bells. They had the appearance of griffins, if that's a term that can be applied to other humans, this particular three-some. Not overbearing in manner, but their features, head, arms, legs, could have been assembled by chop shop mechanics earlier that evening. Proportionality was a problem. But, as I recall, that's never bothered me. One of them was named Amanda. The brunette, that was the one that I thought thought I was cute. Amanda.

I was really drunk that night, and well into the following afternoon, as I'm remembering, or hoping to forget. So I may be lying when I say she was a brunette. Redhead possibly, but probably not a blonde. Anyway, the girls were a chatty clique, commiserating over martinis and whispering loud enough to make me think that they were just pretending to say actual words. Maybe it was just loud in there. Okay, it was loud in there.

The Amanda girl whispered, for real this time, into George's ear. I know because I saw him smile, unless she just told him to. You and me, we looked at each other like we didn't know what for. One of them, seated to the right of the one called Amanda frowned with her face, which reminded me of a hangnail. George told me about the hangnail-faced one's sad mien while we were out by the pissers pissing.

"And Amanda goes, 'Too bad your friends are gay because my girl really wanted to talk to him,' so I go, 'Gay? They're not gay,' so she goes, 'But I thought you said they were together?' so I said, "Yeah, they came here together."

Man, I always thought it was funny how we ended up making out in the cigar room anyway that night. Weird, huh. Just thought you'd like to know.

Okay, cut it, Darlene.