Alive with Pleasure: Spring Break 1982

In 1982, GM was a word. "Geeyem." Like someone from Georgia says, "Jim." This one was a Buick deuce and a quarter. A white hunk of fat Detroit steel that made a trip one Spring Break from St Augustine to Daytona Beach with four friends.

Troyer drove the chariot. Golden haired and Aryan, none of us in the car that night knew he was gay. Some of us still don't. A cold case of canned Schaffer shared the back seat with Fusco and Beaudoin. None of us knew Fusco would wind up a screenwriter and producer -- although none of us would've bet against him. Movie star looks but amazingly cheap...he was pre-ordained for Hollywood success.

Beaudoin sat next to Fusco chasing raisins from a generic one pound box with beer. Brillo headed and bearded, the war in El Salvador was excuse for six hours of his indignant Boston accented argument that the Monroe Doctrine was the ultimate evil.

I'm riding shotgun and have to take a leak. Troyer offers to pull over on a stretch of darker-than-the-inside-of-a-goat, I-95. "No need." I say. Wise old man of the car, I explain how I pissed in cans during Army convoys while, "you fuckers were starting ninth grade." I open a beer can with a P38 on my key chain and pull down the fly on 30/30 khakis. I stick my dick in the can careful to avoid the sharp edges.

Success as I fill the can but seconds later feel warm pee covering my khakis. "No problem unless you piss more than 12 ounces," I say and fling the can out the window not knowing the back window is down. Not remembering all the windows are down in the white Detroit slab-o-steel Troyer's mom should be driving.

"Fuck, Tinseth!" Fusco screams as my nephron unit (thanks, Dr. Lardner) formation strikes him head and chest. Beaudoin, slow to catch on, thinks its raining for at least five seconds before a handful of piss-misted raisins are digested. Troyer, of course, laughs.

I spend the rest of the trip holding khakis out the car window at 70mph in an attempt to dry the large stain on my crotch. My friends. And they have remained friends... are tolerant. Like friends who get pissed on always are.

Kings of Midnight

Wallace Stroby on the uptown 1 train

Man in black, Wallace Stroby has a new one coming out in April. "Kings of Midnight" sees a return of Crissa Stone looking to make, "one last big score" while a former mobster may have a line on long missing cash from the 1978 Lufthansa heist. Crime noir and crime history collide in Stroby's sparse and well researched writing. A great writer. A lousy roommate.

Shetland Sweater - WC in '83

WC in NYC. 1983

WC is looking very Trad (despite those side burns) and a little hungover in a diner somewhere around Brook's Brothers. Author of two crime novels with hero, Harry Rane, a character my dad describes as, "...someone who's always sticking his dick in places it doesn't belong." WC has a new one coming out this winter. Dad will be elated to know Harry's missing from this one. WC could always turn a phrase. In a Jersey nightclub, WC ordered beers, looked around and yelled in my ear over the Go-Go's, We Got the Beat, "These people's lives extend about as far as the cord on their hair dryers!"

'Gone 'til November' will be out in January and if WC has nicked any of my cop stories for his book, I will put his feet on a curb and jump up and down on his knee caps. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to the read from this old friend who writes such wonderful dark stories in a bone dry style. Somewhere back in time he left the Shetland behind and affected a wardrobe of black jeans, tee shirts and engineer boots. Proof you don't have to dress Trad to be Trad.