THE HONEY HOLE
It was filthy, and it was grubby. It was a House Painting work truck, and, like all the other trucks and vehicles, it had to come to a stop for the sign at the intersection. The driver, the one with the mustache, also stopped speaking for a moment. He was remembering something.....
I was sitting next to him on the torn vinyl of the passenger seat of the painting truck, trying to conceal a sort of wry look, as well as the way I kept pressing my lips together, and pushing them, while the painter with the mustache delivered one of his usual monologues during our ten minute trip.
The trip was to "The Job" , which was a House Painting job, that is, at another fancy, upscale house tucked away in one of New York City's suburban hills.
The painter with the mustache had a very strong personality, and was older than me; so maybe that was why I listened politely to him, and was attentive.
But he seemed to appreciate my ability to be a "good listener" although I wasn't really trying to be one. In reality, I was a captive and very uncomfortable audience in long, dirty painters pants, and sweating my ass off because the AC in the crappy truck used by the half-ass painting company I was working for at the time happened to be broken on the first 90 plus degree day of the season. (If I remember correctly, it was around mid-June.)
The painter with the mustache paused, then finally pointed slowly with his chin, and said, in a low and decisive tone:
"A real Honey-Hole lives in that house!"
There was silence for a moment as the truck remained stopped for a little bit too long. It was a fairly busy intersection, so the hesitation was bit unusual as well. However, the painter with the mustache was trying to make a point, and needed the time.
The painter with the mustache thought for a few seconds more, and then added:
" ....a REAL Honey-Hole."
The driver in the car behind us gave two polite taps on the horn, telling us to get moving again, and the painter with the mustache scowled slightly, and started rolling forward, while vacantly staring the house.
I couldn't help being curious as to how the painter with the mustache knew the woman he seemed to be so eager to compliment, and I also remembered that a woman from somewhere else had once agreed to marry the painter with the mustache, so before we got too far away from the house with the honey hole living in it, I asked casually:
"Did you.....d'you do any work for her?"
The painter with the mustache shook his head. "Who Me?" He said with surprise. "No, but I was going by one day, and she was out in the yard working on her garden, and she was HOT! She had these tight sweatpants on, and she was bent over man, and you could make out the outline of her Snatch!"
I laughed a little when he said this, and I didn't have much of a reply, and so I said:
"Oh."
There was a pause, and then I added: "Oh. I thought you knew her."
"I wish I did!" the painter with the mustache said. "A Honey Hole like that? Are you kidding?"
I laughed a little again, but with jumbled and not altogether connected thoughts, vaguely remembering his wife again, and two children, and how maybe he oughtn't to be talking about other women's honey holes if for no other reason than out of respect for his betrothed and kids--stuff like that. I therefore started feeling what you could describe as puritanical, I guess, and uncomfortable with the conversation. But I felt that I had to reply somehow, so I added:
"Hot stuff huh?"
"Yeeeeeah!" The painter with he mustache said enthusiastically. "She knew exaaaactly what she was doin! And looovin it! I wanted to bury my face in that twat! A sweeet, sweeeet. Honey Hole!"
I laughed, and the painter with the mustache didn't notice that I rolled my eyes as well.
Like so much of his wisdom, and the stuff he talked about, it had nothing to do with putting paint on a house. I got the benefit of hearing it all gratis, and it got handed to me often, and on a silver platter.
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Which leads me to ask: Assuming a person comes from, or has a normal moral compass, how does that person, if a Policeman, or a Corrections Officer for instance, (or the military?) make their mental adjustments when dealing with, what's the expression?-the "human zoo", or at least humanity, in its less dignified and ugly, if not outright bad or evil, aspects?
It is conceivable that one can spend an entire lifetime not having to confront or deal with, and therefore not be forced, for the sake of sanity, to contemplate or try to fit within a moral framework or perspective, certain things, phenomena, or, as in the present tale involving the painter driving the truck: Empty Events.
Unless one is independently wealthy, it depends on one's occupation or job maybe? If one is lucky enough, one can get a job with the State. A job with the Union. A steady job. A stable Job with the paycheck always ready and there every Friday or fortnight. A job as a public schoolteacher perhaps, with all sorts of benefits, or a job with the Railroad, the Water Company, the Power company, Township, County, a custodian in the Public School System etc. A workplace where there is not too much stress, and and one can be assured of never having to bump up against, or contemplate too many issues involving Human Nature exposing itself at all. They simply never arise or present themselves.
Or, and in the very broadest sense, another for instance would be that of a College Professor. Is that why many professors are so out of touch, and cannot make the connection between what they preach, and the reality of life, which, as I say, they are never in touch with? Is that another way to describe the "Ivy Tower"
But let me return to the story.
I cannot remember the particular paint job that I went to on that day with the painter with the mustache. It might have been indoors, or it might have been outside. However, while the paintbrushes were swinging, there had to have been much talk about strippers or the assholes of strippers, or the insertion of one's fingers into the assholes of a bent over stripper. (A tale for a future Post)
I say that because it seemed that that was what the painter with the mustache often had on his mind, and not much else, and therefore liked to speak about. He would stray a little bit into the homoerotic, as do many painters, but most times the talk was of a heterosexual character; and my manhood was never made an issue of with the typical questions, such as whether or not I would give another man a blowjob for a million dollars.
It was perhaps two or three weeks later that I happened to be driving by the same house one afternoon where the woman upon whom the painter with the mustache had bestowed his objectified sobriquet lived. However I was in my own car, and alone.
I stopped at the sign, and beheld a most attractive woman kneeling in her flower garden. She was indeed a pleasant sight, and it was very nice little garden, and the woman obviously took pride in it.
The woman was wearing sweat pants, but they didn't seem very tight to me, and what I saw of her was mostly in profile, or three quarters perhaps, digging away with a small spade, intending to plant the flat of impatiens that were on the ground next to the small holes she was making.
Her body had very nice athletic lines, but graceful as well, and her thighs and buttocks had a pleasing shape. But unlike the painter with the mustache, my pupils were first drawn to her face rather than to her "Snatch" .
It was a nice face. An intelligent one, with a few stray hairs stuck to one side, and a smudge of soil on one cheek; a face that was, I would have subconsciously guessed, educated. There was nothing in her demeanor of the wanton or the wayward, so to speak, so I wondered how the painter with the mustache could have implied it.
Whatever her name was, I thought, it had to be a lovely one, like that of a Thomas Hardy heroine: Bathsheba, or perhaps: Tess.
In any event, she did not resemble the Arabella that the painter with the mustache described. To me, she seemed like a settled person. A daughter, a sister, a wife and lover, a Mother and a friend. Not that there wasn't also something womanly and latently sexual about her overall makeup. That quality though, was simply a part of that overall makeup, and not something that she was making efforts to broadcast or exhibit.
Therefore, my eyes did not go immediately down to her constituent body parts such as (in painter's parlance) her "Cucci" or "Snatch" or to her "Titties"; so I found it hard to believe that she had been bending over provocatively at all upon the momentous occasion when the painter with the mustache had beheld her.
But there goes the old moralizing, Puritanical me again, and I guess I had also been gazing at the woman for a bit too long, because the person in the car behind me was compelled to honk politely.
I started moving forward, and had the crazy idea of rolling down my window and shouting, as a joke:
"You know, you really should have listened to your mother and learned how to bend down like a proper lady......... because you now have a fan club that you don't even know about."
Which I didn't do of course.
*I'll work this story over some more, and it goes into the Novel. But this is about it.
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| Me and Shane, taken today. You would not believe the pressure I have to get a haircut. Do you want a banjo player with short hair? (Not much gray, and no bald spot in the back either---yet. It's gotta be the nutty Hungarian blood or something. Makes the hair grow? I don't know.) |
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* I think what I am going to do is add the installments in the form of new posts, while simultaneously incorporating them into the larger body of the Novel. Which might work.
http://esquirepainting.blogspot.com/2011/04/painting-henry-fords-house-and-other.html
Then the reader can go back and forth if he or she wants.
OK Youse guys?
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