Billy F. Marlin
Last week, of all things, I, the great Casanova of the North Valley, Billy F. Marlin, oh so quietly turned thirty-six. The big three-six was too close to over the hill. That birthday forced me to notice my long, straight, surfer-blond hair was thinning. Last month, holy shit, I found three strands of gray in my silky blonde mustache and one in my goatee. Unnoticed during the last year, my skin had turned from the healthy tan of my youth to a humbling pallid gray. My jet-black eyes were glazed and dull, probably from smoking too much pot. My good life was catching up with me. My devil-may-care lifestyle was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “you’re getting older, Billy. You’re no longer a spring chicken.”
All week I’d ignored that naggy little voice. I’m only as old as I feel. I’m in my prime. I looked at myself in my chipped wall mirror and flexed. As a result of working out every day at the Marysville Fitness Center, I admired my perfectly formed biceps and patted my rippled, flat stomach. My first fitness objective was to keep my body looking good, but mostly the fitness center, along with Clancy’s Bar and Grill, was my place to find what me and the boys called babes.
One week after my pivotal, I’m-getting-older birthday I sat mesmerized on my avocado green, poly-vinyl couch. I held a cold beer in one hand, while the other hand fondled one of the budding breasts of my latest score, Tammy Fae Ballinger. In front of me in living color, though only thirteen inches of color, on a matching green plastic milk crate I’d borrowed from Safeway, I watched my number-one entertainment; daytime television.
Next to the couch sat an empty cardboard box on which to set my beer. The box, TV, couch and milk crate were the only pieces of furniture in my dinky living room. My two-room cabin was nestled in a quiet little out-of-the-way corner of town, backed up to busy interstate seventy. What else could a red-blooded American guy want?
The television story of the never-ending rain sparked my interest. The newscaster’s dire predictions of flooding gave me hope of future income, but what really caught my attention, what had me staring with open mouth wonder, was the television news anchor’s, what me and the boys at Clancy’s so fondly called hooters.