Chapter 14 Sick Puppies

In the Couples and Couplings chapter I started to reveal a little of the social workings of our greater circle of friends. We had the Neo-colonials from Kenya, Randy the food manager and his interior designer wife, then the MBA student and his Danish wife. There were also the Child Psychiatrist and his hippy wife Suzie and the jeweler Judy and her husband. All of the relationships were in some degree of terminal illness. All save Randy and his wife, who last I heard were living happily in Florida the beneficiaries of an insurance windfall due to the untimely death of his parents in some sort of accident. Let's take a look at the most interesting case. The hippy wife Suzie was an attractive auburn haired waif. She was right out of the Sixties. Long unfettered wavy hair and long flowing gauzy dresses. She dabbled in a number of enterprises, a knick knack shop on a side street off of Cherokee, then moved up to a coffee shop off of Cherokee between Adams and 6th. It was a nice place and just a stones throw from the house her and her husband lived in off of Cherokee at Adams. I think their house was next to the one that looked like a haunted mansion with the ivy growing on it and the tall oaks surrounding it just north of the elementary school. Looking at Google map satellite imagery, I see that that whole block of houses is no more. Pity, they were as old as the Frank Phillips mansion and were quite nice. If only the owners had taken care of them. Well, Hippy Suzie was not the problem so much as her husband, unless you consider infidelity a problem. She had a taste for dark meat, taking to her bed for a time, a young American of African decent from Oklahoma City who is now considered a notable son of Bartlesville by the Bartian Chronicles. This was before shedding his wife and kids in OKC for two resident pieces of trim in Bartlesville. Suzie was the first I was aware of his current wife being the second. But I am getting ahead of myself. Suzie's child psychiatrist husband had a habit of making obscene phone calls to his wife's friends. The Danish Pastry was a good friend of Suzie's. She was quite a free spirit herself and would soon replace Suzie in her lover's bed resulting in the demise of their friendship. The Pastry had been getting calls from Suzie's husband (not to be confused with her/their Poet/welfare dad boyfriend) for some time and had deduced who it was. After a few parties at which most of the couples attended, some of the other wives started getting calls too. The Danish Pastry reported to me that he had gotten a little forward with her in a hallway and he had gotten a bit too touchy feely. She kneed him in the groin. As far as I know, my Future Ex at the time never got a call from the guy. Maybe he thought better of it since I was a bit more "engaged" and he might have felt I would have taken exception. Well, fast forward about 3 or 4 years. I was living in Tulsa as a bachelor in 1987 or 1988. I had met a group of single school teachers by way of giving science talks at Jr. High Schools. We were at a club on Peoria and I was talking to this one female teacher and told her I had lived in Bartlesville. She confided in me that her roommate used to data a guy from Bartlesville and he was a child psychiatrist. What are the chances right? I asked his name. Today I can't remember his name, something Italian I think ending with an "ioli" or something. Anyway, it was the same guy. I looked at her with a straight face and asked, "He started making obscene phone calls to you?" I wish you could have seen the look on her face. It was priceless. She gasped and said, " My god, how did you know?!" I told her the whole story laughing the whole way through. She couldn't stop shaking her head. There was a party circuit in B'ville at the time. Well probably two, or more. One was the PPCo singles. We partied, camped, canoed, and played sports together. Then there was the party circuit made up of locals. It was informal but if you knew enough people you got invited to parties in Dewey, Copan, B'ville, or anywhere one was planned or sprang up. This led to an almost incestuous bit of bed hopping. I mean you would get the opportunity to do sisters, moms and daughters, hell probably grand mothers and grand daughters. It just depends on where you drew the line. Me? Well I've not done sisters though I would have liked to. I almost had the chance to do a mom and daughter. That would have been fun, but I was waiting on Diane, she was working the bar at the King's Club or whatever the beer joint was on Bartle's Road between B'ville and Dewey. Her mom worked the bar. No it wasn't her and her mom. It was another gal and her mother. I might have taken them up on it, but, I recognized the gal as an LPN that worked for my Ex # 1 at Jane Phillips. Now that would have been a disaster. I would not have under cut my Ex #1 that way. She was too good a woman for me to mess with her in the work place. You know how women talk. I am sure it would have gotten back to her. To this day I don't know if the daughter recognized me or not. I wondered if there wasn't a bit of deliberate intention in the come on. I have to admit it was enticing. Oh, yeah. After Suzie and the Poet split, and the Pastry and the Pastry had replaced Suzie as the Poets new play...thing. An odd thing occurred. The Poet's wife in OKC found out that he was serious about this one. I don't know if he told her he wanted a divorce or what but she beat feet up to B'ville to settle accounts. In best ghetto tradition the jilted welfare mom stormed into the Pastry's salon and dragged her out of the place in front of customers and proceeded to put a Harlem sized ass whipping on her. I guess the specter of loosing governmental support was too much and pushed her to violence, where the simple philandering of her absentee husband would not. The story does have a happy ending. The Pastry and the Poet wed and had three or four kids and are now icons of the Bartlesville community.