Chapter 4--probably still really rough from another lifetime
The Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas is where everyone goes.
Elvis, be thy witness.
Oh, I remember so much of our wedding. We rode to the Little White Wedding Chapel in a limousine. We got out and bought the picture package. I have the pictures still. She was beautiful. She wore a white wedding gown that she had made herself and a hat with a veil. Her lips were thick and red. She was so beautiful that she even made me look good in my tuxedo. After, we returned to our hotel room and made love. I lay next to her and she got up to bathe. She had great definition, and I liked it. Not muscular but great definition. No cellulite. She wore a black dress with a low-cut bosom that night and an emerald necklace. We sat up front at a comedy show that night at the Aladdin. God, my new bride actually yelled back a few times at the comedian.
“Yeah, well, why don’t you try putting that drink down, you loud-mouth alcoholic?”
It wasn’t even funny. I started to think twice.
“Do you have to do that?” I said.
“I’m just having fun, darling.”
“I know, but you know what? I don’t like it. Okay?”
“No, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Come on just love me,” she put her lips on my neck when we got in the room. Oh God, we lay in bed and sucked out our brains, and I just fell in love with my loud mouthed jerk knowing full well if not unconsciously that I was just as lousy in my own way. I felt like I was getting what I deserved. I loved her, but it was complicated. I was going to gloss over that bit in the lounge but holy shit she freaked me out. But then it was over, and she came back to normal, and so did I. We went out to eat at the Aladdin, which a few years later in 2006 I believe was imploded, only to arise again. All I knew was that Elvis married Priscilla at the Aladdin, so it was good enough for me. I am nothing if not a follower of the king.
We had tons of fun too. We enjoyed room service, and she had the coconut crème pie piece and I had the strawberry shortcake. Here honey, she said, and softly put it on places. It was fun.
I felt so strong and just, like a plunderer of this tender soul.
Next day we took a cab to the airport and flew on American to Miami via Dallas. We talked a lot about her painting. “I’m going to paint every day,” she told me, “and when we get back I am going to make such a nice home for you, Daddy.”
“I know you are, honey.”
She held my hand. Her hand was kind of rough. I wanted her to use nail polish. I didn’t say anything though. I just shut up and forgot about it. I looked down on the Mississippi and felt like I owned America from thirty-five thousand feet, the way all financially and socially ambitious men feel when they fly.
We flew a puddle jumper from Miami to Key West and swooped down into the tropical warmth and lazy breezy soulful beautiful southern city. There was only one place to stay, the Pierhouse Resort, which was at 1 Duval Street. We had a beautiful room overlooking the water with a very comfortable bed, plenty of room for sitting and writing.
God, the style seemed to be of the Bahamas and plantation and Caribbean, and just absolutely lush and with restaurants and bars nearby. “I am in heaven, Daddy,” Tiffany swooned in my near, nibbling. “Oh, God, this is going to give me an orgasm. Look at those guys, Daddy.”
“I know, honey. Well, this is Key West. Is that okay?”
“Have you seen two guys kiss before?”
“Yes.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Not really.”
“I don’t know if I’d want to raise my kids here.”
“Come on, let’s go into this dress shop.”
“Oh will you buy me a top?” There was a really cool shop with clothes lined up everywhere for women to try on. “Come on, baby, try some on,” I said. “I love seeing you try on clothes.”
“Oh, you’re just nasty.”
“Yes, that’s right.” She came out with a sequined yellow top and her white crew pants hugging her hips. She twirled around and asked, “Do you want me to have larger breasts, Daddy?”
I don’t know what time we started drinking, but I think it was as soon as we hit Sloppy Joe’s, which wasn’t down far from where we bought the blouse. I loved Key West. I loved being there with my baby. I love that people felt free there.
The burgers were from some kind of pure heavenly cow because they made her go wild and say, “Daddy, I love these burgers!”
She got up and began shimmying drunkenly to the guitar man on the stage.
A guy who looked like a bear came over to me from the bar and said, “You gotta a little mama you can’t control. I hope you gonna reap what everybody just saw.”
“Come on baby,” I put her close to my body and we began dancing back to the table. “Try that burger, baby. Try it, honey. It’s really good.”
I just felt so protective of her. I love astrology. It brings me some order in my world, and I’m virgo. I just have to help people. I brought her close and we danced our way from the Boar’s Head Tavern to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, going inside, and buying her a parrothead and walking down her the street and buying ourselves margaritas and going into a jewelry store. “I want those earrings, Daddy. Oh buy them for me. I will be the best girl for my daddy.” Then we passed another place, the band was warming up.
“Let’s go in,” Tiffany said. “I want to sing with the band.”
The band—blond-haired guys in T-shirts--jammed on stage.
“I love singing,” she said. “I’ll sing anywhere anyplace, honey.” We walked along. “What’s the matter, honey? Your body just got stiff. I’m a performer, remember? You write. I sing.”
She broke free and ran to the bandstand.
I came over.
“I want to sing with them.” She broke free. “Hey, guys! I want to sing for you.”
“Whaddaya know?” one of the guys said.
“I know everything.”
“Okay, come on up.”
I watched him put his arm on her shoulder and she took the microphone, and I watched them go into some Led Zeppelin song.
“Way down inside, you need….”
And in our room with the warm night we could hardly sleep. Both of us were excited with life.
Our room had a small portable fridge (to store beer, sandwich bread, mustard, mayonnaise, and cold cuts), a coffee maker, and, of course, clean sheets and fluffy pillows. The first thing she did was to jump around the room and shout, “We’re married! We’re married! And I love you so!” I hugged her tight. I hugged her so hard I probably squeezed the air out of her body. But I was also laughing, and she was laughing. “You’re a big bear,” she said. “Come on, bear, fight back.”
She started a pillow fight and I fought back and then she pushed away and went in the bath.
In the morning we got up lazily and enjoyed coffee and tea on the patio and then she slipped on her bikini and sheer blouse and turned heads walking to the beach. I went in the water and she snapped a lot of photographs.
That afternoon she shopped. She bought back a brown paper bag with coffee, fruit, cheese, deli slices, and a loaf of bread to make us sandwiches. She also had a new blouse and pants. It was what I envisioned married life to be like. The water and sky were so blue I had the feeling nothing could be bluer when I went skin diving over a reef in the shallow blue warm water. We went walking through Key West. There were so many saloons and cafes. I stopped by Ernest Hemingway’s home with all its cats. Although rather small, the two-level made from stone in tones of green, cream and white, had withstood a lot of storms and bad weather. I gave it credit for lasting. It was also beautiful. The front was very airy with large windows across both floors.
“I really loved Hemingway.”
“No comment.”
Later that night we ate stone crab sitting at a table with a candle on an open deck. Both of us were looking out on sailboats and the horizon. After I finished the last of the crab meat from the legs, Tiffany jolted me back into real life.
“Do you work?” she said.
“You don’t know what I do?”
“Well, you teach. But that’s not enough to support us.”
“Remember, I told you I wrote a book.” I laughed.
“I know all that. But where do you work?”
“I write. Is that a problem? And I teach, remember? We met at the university, do you recall? Is there a problem?”
She grabbed a napkin and wiped the corner of my lips, very lovingly and with real care.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Your home belongs to me now. You need to go get a job when we get back. You see, I’m good for you. I am going to make you work hard and be successful.”
