Do Not Enter

Well, I got my ears boxed by the Blog Gods again yesterday within minutes of posting.  If you couldn't see the post, it doesn't matter.  Actually, it might be a good thing.  I don't think I'm fit company for polite society anymore.  But here's what confuses me about getting spanked yesterday.  I can post a nude painting by Lucien Freud without any trouble at all.  

I think.  We'll see.  But this image is posted online everywhere.  It is published in magazines and newspapers.  O.K.  It is, I guess, not considered. . . I am not sure. . . real?  But when I post an A.I. produced image, how is it different?  It isn't "real" either.  I don't get what moral grounds are being followed there.  

I hope this doesn't offend anyone.  I was going to reverse yesterday's 1950s ethos (that ran all the way through The Craig Ferguson Show) by turning things around, or maybe please Progressives and make the image with two women, but I figure why push my luck?  

The "right" has always favored censorship.  Now that the "left" does, too, we are a better country.  People should not be allowed to offend anyone.  

I have thought about moving the whole blog to Substack.  They censor nothing there.  It is still a kind of "Wild West" situation.  I'm pretty sure, however, that sooner or later, that will change.  It will probably be due to economics.  

The 1960s was a goofy, failed attempt at "Peace, Love, and Understanding."  It was hijacked by capitalists and drug dealers.  Pretty much the same thing.  

I didn't feel like cooking yesterday, and I had a bright idea.  I'd go to the good Mexican place and get takeout, and while I was waiting, I'd have a spicy, skinny margarita.  I used to go there a lot when I wasn't living with my mother and the bartenders knew my friends and I.  T is a talker.  I'm the quiet one.  I haven't been to the place for maybe five or six months.  The last time I was there was an early dinner with T.  There was a new barmaid, pretty, from Brazil.  Another bartender, a tatted up Brazilian boy T dubbed "Cannello" was also there.  T chatted them up as he always does.  I just kept looking at the barmaid.  She had bright eyes and most spectacular cheekbones.  So I told her.  

When I walked in at 4:30, being Friday, the bar was already filling up.  There are two bars that face one another, one inside the restaurant and one outside.  When I sat down, Cannello was there.  

"What can I get you, my friend?"

"My friend," is what the boys say.  The girls always call you "Mi amore."  

I ordered and looked around.  Two women were sitting at the outside bar.  They looked expensive, and not in a hooker way.  But who knows anymore?  They were a mixed couple, one white and one black.  The white woman was wearing expensive sunglasses, but I could see she was staring at me.  She looked familiar.  She was a true beauty, exquisite hair and nails and the smoothest most lovely skin you might imagine.  I, on the other hand, looked like me, and I was getting a little uncomfortable.  

Just then, though, the barmaid came from the other end of the bar where she was making service drinks.  

"Hello!" she beamed.  It was the Brazilian with the great cheekbones.  I was feeling very unattractive that day, and so my response wasn't really what it should have been.  But she stayed and talked a bit.  She remembered everything about our conversation five or six months ago.  I was stunned.  I stumbled through it all and motioned to my cheeks.  She smiled.

"I have put on some weight, I think.  They do not show so much."

"Yes, that was the first things I noticed.  I said, my god, she has put on so much weight."

She laughed and went back to the other end of the bar.  

The woman outside was still keeping me in her line of vision.  And then it clicked.  I think she was a girl I had taught in a film class oh-so long ago.  Was it?  I did the math in my head.  It was not long after I got divorced, after Sky left town, but before the gig at Country Club College?  Man, my timelines were getting skewed.  I couldn't remember, but if this was the same person, that was twenty years ago.  I don't think this woman was nearing forty.  No, not a chance.  So. . . what?  

Maybe I was wrong.  Maybe she was a hooker.  There are plenty in this town.  A plethora you might say.  

I was glad when the food came and I could bolt.  I'm not used to being in public now.  Pinhead Quasimodo just wants to hide in the belfry.  

I tell too much, but I have kept back a lot of "unsavory" details here.  The girl from long ago had asked me for a favor I had not been willing to grant.  She did not take it so very well.  

Maybe that is why I had the dream I had last night that has unnerved me this morning.  But, as I say, I tell too much sometimes, or show too much, or lie too much, or tell too many truths.  

I should stick to simply opining.  People are used to that.  It is what has replaced the news.  

O.K.  We'll see what the Blogger Gods have to say about this one.  One day they may just pull the plug and I'll have no way to tell you where I have gone.  I should be careful.  As Homer Simpson told Bart, "Don't say anything unless you're certain everyone agrees."