Again, with CBS's "Sunday Morning"...although I thought I had no intrest in the Royal Visit of Chuck & Camilla, my opinion did a 180 degree turn when they were shown in Point Reyes Station, California...dude! They stopped in for a drink @ The Old Western Saloon! Me & my posse used to hang there! Most of my friends were guys...just cause we got along so well, Billy, Pete, John, Moe...all my beloved brothers who were so fond of their little sister, Sugarmoose, and they took her (me) with them everywhere...To The Old Western Saloon, hell bent on adventure. As we made our grand entrance into the Saloon, there was eye contact and that rare spark between myself and a fine looking young man tending bar.He was a beautiful man, quite out of my league, strongly resembling one of those pretty guys in the cigarette commercials that were so popular then. Daniel made a point of waiting on our table personally, and was quite unperturbed by the presence my many male companions. We were all in the Navy, and Daniel was in the Coast Guard stationed further North than we were. We made several trips to the Old Western Saloon, all trips with my brothers encouraging the growing friedship between Daniel and myself. Then, one night, Daniel invited all of us over to his place to spend the night as we really didn't need to be driving back to Oakland. All the way to his place, we sang "I'm Proud to be a Hippy from Olema"(another small town, near Pt Reyes). Daniel was house sitting for an author whose name I have long since forgotten.It was a beautiful house..with a stupendous library. And a wine cellar that he was allowed to entertain with, and so, he did...my brothers took a vote, and came to me to inform me that Daniel had passed their muster, and they would allow me to pursue a romantic relationship with him. Walks in the beach, through the woods,wonderful meals he would cook for the lot of us...and, then, Daniel confessed he was in a delimma. His old girlfriend in Ohio, Sarah was waiting for him. But now, he had met me and did not know what to do. We spent some magical time together, but Sarah's shadow kept us both sad and guilty. Daniel announced he had to go back to see her again, and I agreed that it would be best. And so we parted ways, sadly doing the right thing. Soon after, I met HP, and after not quite a year, we married. I was in the Navy's Psychiatric outpatient department within 2 wks. Was my glass half empty or half full? Had my marriage turned off a light or turned one off? What happened? Why had my name suddenly become,"Bitch, Whore, Slut?" What was wrong with this picture? HP forbid me to continue seeking asistance as he was sure I was doing sexual favors for the therapist.I continued to seek professional counseling incognito, sneaking to my appointments trying to figure out what went so wrong so quickly, as surely it had to be all my fault-HP always insisted that everything was always all of my fault(the sick part was that I began to kind of believe it). Then one day @ work, I was manning the phones while the rest of the Physical Therapy workers had gone to lunch. The phone rang. It was Daniel. He had returned from Ohio, and things had not worked out for he and Sarah. They were over, and he was back, and he wanted to see me, and how was I doing? "Daniel, I, a, well, I'm married now Daniel." "Married?" "Yes, about 3 months now." I leaned back in the office chair and twirled it around to laugh at how absurd life can be. And there, behind me, stood HP, arms folded, face flushed, upper lip snarling..."Who the F**K ae you talking to,Slut?" Oh geeez..."I gotta go now, Daniel. Nice to hear from you..." and returned to a really ugly argument where I got no credit for HP overhearing me tell Daniel that I was married, what did I mean that it was nice to hear from him? Who is he? How many times had I screwed him? ON and on, out of control sending me scurrying to an emergency secret session with my forbidden shrink. Just as the storm began to subside, nearly a month later, I look up from the front desk of the Physical Therapy Dept. and into Daniel's eyes. He was in a wheelchair. He had snapped his medial meniscus- the tendon that helps stabalize the knee's patella. My hospital's Physical Therapy Dept was where they were sending this Coastee for rehab. It was my turn to be assigned the next new patient, and that patient just happened to be Daniel. His leg was in a long cast. I instructed him in range-of-motion, stregthening and gait training. He had hydrotherapy orders, thus when the cast came off, while he was wearing only swimming trunks, I'd help him into the soothing, warm waters of the hydrotherapy tank. At work, in the line of duty, I saw him twice a day,5 days a week. When he asked me if I was happy, I chnged the subject. Once when he was gait training walking between the parrell bars, HP came up from behind me and asked if I was ready to go to lunch. I introduced them to each other, but not in any great detail. HP did not know that this Daniel was the same he had given me Hell for talking to a short time ago. I thought it best not to mention it. When Daniel healed, he checked out of the hospital and returned to duty up North. We had kept our relationship professional(not including all the times he made me laugh), and I had nothing to hide, but nothing to advertise as well. My life returned to what was passing for normal. Then,a year later, a phone call at work...Daniel was getting out of the Coast Guard, and was most likely headed back to Ohio, but he just had to know,"Cher, are you still married?" A long silence. A sigh. "Yes, Daniel, I am." "Well, goodbye then, honey...and good luck" "Thank you Daniel...I'm gonna need it"

Wally's site is temporarily dismanteled...Lelapop has receeded into the shadows...Ice man, Mrs G, Scratch and Scree, SOMEBODY, ANYBODY grant my fears a respite...where are the pillars of this wonderful blogging communities this dark and stormy night? Or am I over reacting?

In the mid 70's, C.O.Y.T.O.E. (Cast Off Your Tired Old Ethics) hosted an annual "Hooker's Ball", in theory, to promote the legalization (and taxation) of the world's oldest occupation. Proceeds were to go for legal expenses and towards organizing a health care system for California's sex-trade workers. It was held in San Francisco's Civic Ctr (a rather elite venue), and the publicity was that it was to be a costume ball, with costumes optional. The Ball covered 3 large ballrooms with different stages for music &/or entertainers in each. The hallways were packed with San Fracisco's finest characters in flamboyant array...many women with powdered wigs, pancake white faces, and enough eye make-up to ensure that you just knew, bundling overflowing breasts into the tiny bodices of their elaborate, multi-petticoated full length ballgowns. They held their masks on ornate wands, and giggled behind beautiful, expensive fans straight out of what you'd imagine a costume ball in another century. As the evening progressed, their breast came to rest on top of the bodices, fully exposed, and I believe that they had planned upon that wardrobe malfunction from the begining. A severe dominatrix with possibly more leather in her spiked dog collar than in the rest of her outfit. She was a raven haired beauty with one hand holding an 8" cigarette holder with something suspicious on the smoking end, as her other hand held the dog leashes of two leather thonged, well-built young men on all fours. She looked Betty Davis bored, and they just looked like good, obedient, muscular dogs, their spiked collars identical to hers, wearing only straps of leather to pretend to cover what is usually left to the imagination in more civilized social functions. Dragons, knights in shining armour, wizards, and goblins with sexual connatations ambled about. Many a horse, and sometimes just a horse's ass socialized through the crowd. A surprising number of ladies and gentlmen sported a varied number and sizes of band aids as their costumes. You know how you hear about how suppossedly uncomfortable it can be to show up at a social occasion and see someone else wearing what you are wearing? No band-aid wearing party goer blushed to see another in identical attire, on the contrary, they seemed most excited to spot one another in the crowd, and became fast friends almost immediately. Sporadically spaced little bars were set up in the hallways, serving Scotch, Bourbon, Tequilla, Whiskey and various other hard liquors and they were manned by union bartenders. They set up one of those bars right in front of the medical clinic, making access crowded and complicated. Very quickly, access was a constant challenge. The clinic was so busy...San Francisco in the 70's was a time of over indulgence, experimentation, decadence and great fun. Mixed with hard liquor, questionable muliple stimulants in plain view, hallucinigenics, fragrant smoke, and so many curiosity seekers as well as professionals, we were extremely busy that night, just trying to lend a non-judgemental medically helping hand. There was no bathroom in the little clinic room provided for us, thus, whenever a patient required the use of the facilities, they required medical personnel to escort them to and fro, and to help the patient utilize said facilities without passing out, and bonking their heads on the floor. This alone, kept us rather frantically preoccupied. There were long lines of folks outside of all the restroom doors and the lines grew until they ran into the mini-bar area located in front of the medical clinic. Initially, two of us would escort the patients throught the crowd to the restrooms, shouting that everyone needed to stand aside,"Medial emergency!" That worked for the first hour or so. It failed to work later on, as the lines were just not moving, and those standing in line had no pity for the medical needs of the ill ones, as their own needs had become quite overwhelming. Those lines were just not moving! In the midst of all this, an older gent in a toga required much medical attention for his onslaught of chest pains. We ended up having to call for an ambulance to get him to the ER, as his needs required more than we could offer. His condition was serious. Most of the the other patients were suffering from too much booze, nose candy, and the crazy scene in general full of harem girls, can-can dancers, flappers, and freaks. The last time I fought my way through the crowd, escorting yet another lady to the restroom, several girls were beligerently in my face telling me "No way", and I was busy doing what needed to get done, doing my best to bully my own way through only to find that once we entered the restrom, it was really no longer a restroom at all. It was an orgy. It was an opium den. It was full of girls injecting needle work into each other, inside and outside the stalls. And these hard core partiers were simply not moving, not leaving, turning a deaf ear and blind eye to everthing but their own sensory input. A man in a chef's hat leaned against a sink holding a mirror filled with long lines of white powder, offering a straw to any takers. His chef's apron read "DON'T LET YOUR MEAT LOAF!" and a bunch of panty hose sculpted to resemble his manliness hung almost to the floor beneath the apron. He wasn't planning on leaving anytime soon either. He definitely had his eye on the larger orgy in the far corner. We bullied our way in and back out, but as I knew the evening's festivities would only escalate, I didn't volunteer to provide escort for any other escorts that night. An elderly couple in their 70's came into the clinic, mistaking it for the cloakroom. We were busy, but told them they could leave their coats with the rest of ours, if they liked, but we could not, of course assume any responsibility "Oh, we're not worried about that," she told us as they both proceeded to remove all of their clothing, then spray paint one another with a silvery substance(like in "Goldfinger", only silver). When they completed the body paint, their skin color was identical to their hair color. They never returned for their clothes. At 11PM, the union bartenders left. They just walked away ,leaving the bars behind them, unattended and unlocked. They left bottles on top of the bars, and in the cabinets beneath the bars, nothing locked up, and nobody looking. Vampira and a host of wood fairies clad mainly in their wings were the first to attack the unwatched spirits. They hoisted themselves up to sit upon the bar,crossed their knees, and invited Adonnis, Super Man, and The Village People clones to come into their new found parlour. There were no Security-type personnel anywhere to be seen inside the building, if they were on the premises at all, they were few and far between. A young girl in a trapeeze outfit ran into the clinic, crying that she had been raped. Then, she ran back into the crowd, refusing medical attention looking confused and horrified, still crying, as she ran. Clinic personnel were frantic to keep up with the fights and drunken antics of oh, so many people that we were becoming overwhelmed, already outnumbered, and stretched to our maximum limitatons. We started taking all of the bottles out of the patron's hands acting like we were in charge and that this was part of our job. We grabbed the cases of remaining booze, and quickly stashed them into the clinic behind closed doors. It was against our policy to act in a police-like manner, but we needed to restore some kind of order, at least to the immidiate vicinity around the clinc. A young Tarzan's chest had been slashed by some wild-man dressed as a wolfman. He required another ambulance to be sent, as he was loosing so much blood. It was surreal to lead the Medics of another ambulance through the wall- to- wall leather and skin partiers. It was just too absurd running with the team and the gurney on a serious mission through San Francisco's imitation of Mardis Gras and Carnival. Finally, the police arrived and began clearing the place out. It was well after 2 AM. Eventually, we found rides home for our painfully sobering-up patients and sent them hither and yon to continue their adventures elsewhere. We were so tired. We smalled of puke and pee, as did the clinic room, itself, of course. We quickly began packing up or medical gear, throwing into the backs of U-Hauls we had rented for the night. And then, quite honestly were surprised to find we had stashed 20 some cases of hard liquor in the clinic for safekeeping during the melee, and now there was nobody there to claim it or turn it over to. Probably out of practice, you know how even the best of us beat feet when the City Police are on the scene. We were packed up. Ready to split and go home. I'm not exactly sure what happened to all of that booze...I just know that most of us volunteer medical personnel didn't need to buy liquor for a very long, long time. Yet we turned down the gig when they offered it to us the next year. As Clint Eastwood once said,"A man's got to know his limitations"

My "Hooker's Ball (Clothing Optional )" blog has flown out a window(literally, I think) twice tonight & I cannot find it for love or money. I've been diligently working on it since 4 PM...& IT JUST DISAPPEARED! twice!! Can't retrieve it, the hour is late, and this is one story(of a few) I haven't told Bubba, cuz he just wouldn't get it. You know I hate to be a tease (hate/love=thin line), but I need to keep a low profile on this story on the home front. I am forced to continue my attempt tomorrow...I'll do what I can to make it worth the wait, boys & girls...you know I will try. It's such a hot story...too bad...I'll be back. To you, who have been checking out my brother's blog(touchy subjects by Mokie Joe)-thanx. I don't think I ever went into detail describing my adventures @ The Hooker's Ball to my lil bro...it may raise an eyebrow(or something else), but all must await the morrow:) The waiting, I know, is the hardest part...for me, too. :> Man, I was so close...to finishing, ya know? PREMATURE DELETION...It happens to all folks, occasionally...and I've been told it's a perfectly natural event. Ya think?

...how did the lyrics go for the Yes tune where the refrain goes "I've come to hear your wonderful stories...?"