COMPETITION

The Ex Mrs. Bulletholes and I were driving down Camp Bowie yesterday, an old street here in Fort Worth that runs through the Museum District and an Entertainment District, and then through one of the highest end shopping districts here in Fort Worth. There is one of those Stanley Korchak Fur places where you can buy a Fur Coat as big as a Polar Bear. Why anyone in Fort Worth would need such a coat, I don’t know. Our average daily high temperature registers down into the 80’s. Last year, we fell to freezing twice…ALL WINTER!

Anyway, as we passed the Country Club where I used to work, the conversation went this way…She says
‘Didn’t your friend Liz live on that street?”
“Yeah, she sure did. She was the Pastry girl at the Hotel.”

Now the XMrs. Knows Liz better than that; All three of us had met at the Hotel.
She says
“No, Liz did everything at the Hotel, including pastries”
“Yeah, Liz was alright!”
I knew Liz before meeting XMrs. Bulletholes.

After a moment, I continue…
I took Liz fishing once, you know”
“Um-Hmm…”
“And I took her to a Jazz Bar too!”
“Um-hmmm”
I can't quite get a rise out of her, so I say:
“And sometimes if I was drunk I would go over there and knock on her door at 2AM in the morning and if she didn’t answer, I’d grab her Garden hose, turn it on and splash her window till she woke up.”
“Well, your son is doing the same kind of thing these days.”
“Huh…I wonder where he got that from?”

She doesn't chew my ass this time, just breezes right past it.

“Did she ever let you in?”
“No, not too much...maybe once”
“Where else did you take her?”
“That’s about it I guess”
“What about the night you took her to the Omni” she says, grinnin' her head off.
“The Omni? I don’t rightly recollect that one”

The whole conversation is starting to take on this comical, surreal quality in which I usually come out the fall guy. Its okay.
“Well, Miss Know-it-all, I don’t remember anything about taking Liz to the Omni.”

The Xmrs. Continues:
‘Yeah, you took her to the Omni to see the show about the whales. I was on a Blind-Date that night, Junebug fixed me up, and you were going to take Liz there to keep your mind off me.”
“Oh, Really” I say “ So were you and me dating at the time?”
And she says
“No, not really”
“'Not really!'” I say.“What the hell does “not really” mean?"
The Xmrs, her head is just bobbing now, she's grinnin' away, and she is very pleased with herself says
“I hadn’t quite made up my mind about you yet”
“That’s great” says I “in my mind, I must have been dating you long before you knew who I was. So tell me, how was that date?"
Her face falls, she shakes her head.
"It was pretty bad"
I am vindicated.


PICTURE IN MY MIND
OF XMRS BULLETHOLES BLIND DATE