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The Day Tennessee Williams DiedTo B. Z. Niditch's previous piece


Okechobee Boulevard

"The blacks just occupy space. They won't work; Henry says at the office they're an occupational hazard; they just live to make the lives of white people miserable, and the Mexicans... Why we left Mobile to retire here in Delray I'll never know."

"Excuse me?"

"I walk briefly out of the Riviera Beach Cafeteria but I'm still hungry and my order was served so I walk back to my seat.

"And Dottie is now working for the health department and she found to her astonishment Pastor Washington and Deacon Lincoln both tested positive."

"How is Dot?"

"Well, after the iron lung in her childhood my Dottie was never the same but after being refused for the religious life she chose nursing and a good thing too, with all this church-hopping on everyone including the children."

"Did Dot ever have children of her own?"

"Oh, no, only the fireman's and the National Guardsman's. After that botched farmhand abortionist nearly killed her in the barn after first knocking her up in the voting booth. You can't trust even firemen, soldiers, doctors, or the government these days."

I feel dizzy and take three aspirins with ice water which spills on the table and onto the floor. I overhear these ladies even with my Walkman on.

"And how is Henry, Jr.?"

"Vietnam nearly injured his manhood for life but Henry Jr.'s into interior decorating."

"Maybe he takes after your Uncle Tyrone but it's so good they could give service to one another. I don't see how they both got a dishonorable discharge."

"Dot thinks it was V.D. Well, anyway, Henry Jr. disinherited Henry after he suggested we go nude to his incestuous wedding. What does he take us for?"

I suddenly lose my appetite as the gargantuan blonde brings over my coffee and Western. My head is spinning, the air conditioner is going wild and I decide to leave my seat for another.

The frizzy-headed waitress says, "We don't play musical choirs on Okechobee Boulevard. You can try that out on the Keys with the long-haired hippies like yourself."

"I'd like my check, ma'am."

I keep humming the theme song from "Miami Vice." I have to pee and yet don't want to pass the society ladies, the huge countenance of the waitress or the bouncer-type chef who gives me the cold shoulder in the rib, but I proceed anyway as mother nature must take its course. I start to pee and a trucker in a Mickey Mouse shirt says to me, "You've got quite a load there."

"Pardon me, I'm a professor and I don't cruise around much. Don't have the time."

"Want to see mine? My toys are around the back too."

He grabs my crotch and I'm afraid to scream. But the town morgue undertaker recognizes the truck driver and they seem to know each others' business from before which lets me off the hook.

The South Florida sun is blinding me. It's about 108 degrees. At least I have my notes for my lecture and new book on "Peacock, Wilde and the English aesthetes." Oh, God, I left it in the cafeteria. I make my gingerly way past the society crowd and ask the least redneck-looking of them if they saw a notebook.

"Yes, we saw it all right. We don't cotton to hippies around here. I gave it to the waitress, and the ex-prizefighter chef apparently burnt it. The waitress said you forgot to leave her a tip, New York cheapie."

I start to swear and bang into the chairs and the chef who I later find out is a part-time sheriff in a militia unit handcuffs me and takes me to the Loxahatchie jail.

Four rough guys stare me down. Suddenly I remember the first handwritten copy of the Peacock Papers I left at home before the rubbish came on Wednesday. At least I think so.

I look around me and one of the guys is a truck driver, the other is the undertaker, the third is a weight lifter and gym instructor, and the fourth is that part-time sheriff and chef. Another officer, a fortyish pudgy man named Spoon with tattoos of bloody eagles all over his arms looks at me with a surly grin.

"All of you met in the Riviera Beach Café's urinal, is that right, Sheriff Grass?"

The chef winks around to everyone else. The gym instructor from Santa Lucias High School can't take his eyes off me. I feel embarrassed and vulnerable as I'm forced to have a strip search done on me.

Spoon wants us all to take part in an orgy with the waitress back at the café, but I passed out (apparently from the heat) but I heard that the town's doctor felt he got his money's worth when he examined me. I managed to intelligently talk my way out of town.

I call Dean Summer and he tries to console me with the thought I'll be back in civilization soon.


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