I am 28, according to a recent Fox News poll, most of the people who bother to read this blog are 28, or like me, they claim to be 28, but my friend Harry Bandini is actually 28. He has been visiting from Rhode Island, he likes to say he is slumming, because in all actuality, he is.
Bandini is six feet tall, broad shouldered, played rugby in college and is tough, I met him when he punched me in the face for kicking his car. It’s a long story, but since I have nothing better to do, I will share it.
I was in Blanchard, a small town on the Eastern shore of Rhode Island, looking for a summer place that I could rent for the kids. I need to have some free time away from them, especially in the summer when I can’t ship them off to some school or social program for hours at a time and they swarm around me like neurotic bees, pestering and screaming constently. No, that summer I would rent a large house on the Eastern Shore of Rhode Island, put them in it, pay my old friend Lutgarda Gonzalez Munoz 17 dollars and a pack of menthol cigarettes and leave them all to themselves for the entirely of the summer.
I could then return home to peace and quiet. So I was driving around the small country towns of Rhode Island looking at possible rentals and there I was, standing on an empty downtown street in Blanchard, with a fresh plum from a nearby organic farm in my mouth, the pit working around my teeth, trying to clean it before I would spit it out. This spry little British racing green MGB sports car comes roaring around the corner right as I’d finally finished cleaning the pit and I spit it out right in front of the car, which locked up its brakes and the abusive son of a bitch driver sat up because his top was down, and screamed at me like I was some common street whore and he was my pimp. It was an ugly scene, but I did not respond, my mouth was full of organic plum. I just stood there dumbfounded, trying not to swallow and choke while this hothead screamed obscenities with no regard to the other townsfolk who could hear every vulgar word he casually threw at me. At some point he called me a “mealy mouthed pussy,” slid back down into the plush leather car seat and gassed it, and it was right then that I stepped off the curb and kicked the back fender of the slight little MGB. The brakes squealed to a complete halt again. The door pounded open, tough guy filled with rage and adrenaline jumped out, almost running back to me, his hand clenched in a massive fist. The next thing I remember is coming to on the sidewalk, bits of slightly chewed plum all around my face all over the wood planks next to me.
Harry Bandini had punched me right in the left cheek. I guess I just went right down and out and he kind of did too. He broke two bones in his wrist, he stood there actually crying in pain for a good five minutes. When I finally cleared the cobwebs from my head, before my left eye was swollen shut, I sat up and laughed at what a wuss Harry Bandini actually was, crying like a girl. He looked at me, tears streaming down his face, and then he just started laughing and so was I at that point. We were both there, less than ten feet apart, laughing like lunatics and he walked over and introduced himself and gave me a ride to the hospital, where they put a cast on his broken hand and a doctor gave me some ice for my swollen cheek.
For whatever reason we became friends. He was a man who was tougher than his hands would allow him to be and I was a man who liked organic fruit. He did end up helping me find a house for the kids that summer. I would help him a year later dispose of an illegal alien living legally in a duplex Bandini owned in Hollister. It was not something I actually did, I had my Harvard educated lesbian attorney deal with it, something she could do with her hands tied behind her back and I know this because we actually had her deal with it while we had her hands tied behind her back as a test. She is that talented and kinky. Harvard will do that to an Australian.
Bandini stopped by the house this morning and asked if I wanted to drive to New York with him to pick up some “stuff”. This may sound like a simple sort of road trip to most people, but Bandini hardly ever does anything that does not involve danger or at least illegal activity. I immediately said yes and ordered a pizza for the kids.
About ten miles into the trip I spied a fat transvestite on the side of the road selling bags of oranges. This is not the season for orange selling, but Bandini and I are both lovers of all things citrus, so he immediately hit the brakes. I threw a five dollar bill at the hideous tranny and he/she tossed a bag of hearty looking tangerines into the car.
“Hey, these are not oranges?” I said, almost outraged.
“So,” said the overly made up transsexual, still standing on the side of a fairly busy highway.
“Well, from a distance they looked like oranges.”
“Oh honey, from a distance I look like Marilyn Monroe.”
Bandini started to let the car creep forward and said, “honey, from space you don’t look like Marilyn Monroe.” He hit the gas and we were off. The tangerines were perfect. If there is one thing about the new world order that I could get used to, other than child labor in China building me cheaper and cheaper I-products, it would be fresh citrus available year round, if we could only import a higher quality transvestite street selling force. I will email the president at my first opportunity.
We drove like speed freaks on meth for 3 hours and found ourselves double parked in front of the Chelsea gallery “Feinstein” when I started to dump 10 tangerine husks onto the street and ask why we were there.
“These stupid fucks have my painting,” Bandini said, “they are too retarded to hang onto it, so I am here to retrieve it.”
“You mean, as in take it?”
“Yeah, I need you to help me pull it off the exhibit wall, walk out of the gallery, put it in the back of the car and we can go back to your house.”
“Is that illegal?”
“Oh, doubtful, I mean, it is my painting.”
“Yeah, but it’s some dude named Feinsteins Gallery, you ask if he is cool with us taking your painting?”
“Yeah, that’s the thing, he is not cool with me taking my own painting. He is a Jew dick.”
“Yeah, the anti-semitic thing.”
“Right, forgot. He is a Jewish dick.”
“Much better.”
“So, can you help?”
“Sure, I am all high on tangerine and I am here, we are illegally parked and you sound like you put a lot of planning into this. What do we do with the painting when we get back to my house?”
“You want it?”
“No.”
“You don’t want one of my paintings?”
“No, not really.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, I have one. I think that’s enough. I could give it to one of my kids.”
“No way. I don’t even like your kids.”
“You don’t like my kids?”
“Well, I like that one, Becky number 7. I like her.”
“Yeah, she’s my favorite too.”
“The other 17 though, I could live without.”
“16, Becky number 7 actually makes 17.”
“Right. The other 16, I could do without.”
“Harsh. Not sure I will help with the painting theft now.”
“Come on, we’re here. May as well.”
“OK, but I’d like to give your crappy painting to Nina Maria, my least favorite son.”
“You have a son named Nina Maria?”
“He’s Italian.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Don’t ask. So, we gonna do this or what?”
We got out of the car, after he put the top down, preparation is the first rule of success, or something like that. We entered the Feinstein Gallery from 24th Street and walked directly past the non-responsive dork staring at his Apple Computer while sitting behind the front desk. We walked all the way back to a large vibrant wild painting, something called, “Large, Wild, Vibrant Painting Number 4” on the back wall. Bandini grabbed one side, I the other and we pulled until the wire on the back jerked the screws holding it to the sheetrock. It came loose with some effort and because it was about six feet long and 4 feet wide, we held it with both hands and walked towards the front foot, Bandini walking backwards, awkwardly, but quickly. He reached behind himself and pulled the gallery door open, the doofus behind the Imac looked up and muttered something like, “stop right there for a moment” but I was already leaving and the door was automatically closing behind me.
Bandini manipulated the painting into the back seat, but because it was so long it kind of dangled over the back rest and onto the folded roof of the car. We decided we would need to use the seatbelts in the back seat to secure it and as we both crawled into the back to lock it in, we heard voices from the gallery screaming at us. I was latching mine into place and Bandini was in the drivers seat now, pulling the car forward, my pelvis balanced on the beam of the back section of the car, feet dangling over the rear of the car, kicking wildly. I looked at him, his face in the rearview mirror, “what the fuck?”
He stopped at the corner of 11th and 24th and I jumped into the passengers seat and he gassed it. Behind us, a half block away, the Feinsten of Feinstein Gallery, a fat man with a stupid goatee was waddling quickly towards us, screaming obscenities about how his lawyer would sue some sort of shit out of Bandini. No clue how that is even possible, but it was a colorful threat. We made our way to the West Side highway and headed uptown to the Lincoln Tunnel.
About two hours outside of the city we had stopped at a rest area to piss and eat some tangerines. When I got back in the car Bandini asked me to drive. We got back on the highway and I pumped the convertible up to 75 and turned the music up as loud as possible, with the top down you could barely hear Florence and the Machine blaring from the stereo. Bandini has not buckled in, he swung around in the passenger seat while we hung steady at 75 miles per hour, unlatched both the back seatbelts, grabbed the bottom of the painting and with little effort at all he lifted the painting enough so the air coming over the windshield grabbed it, lifted it and the painting took off like a badly colored kite. It was gone and I did not slow down to watch where it landed.
“Why did you do that?” I screamed over the music and the wind.
“Never really liked that painting much.”
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