Life Its Ownself by Dan Jenkins

early and come and meet me.
    One night we both got very drunk, likewise adventurous, and we did out best to make love. Barbara Jane kicked me out of her bed before we got too far along. It had something to do with my wisecracks about Mopsy Newsome and Mary Alice Ramsey.
    Everything changed one evening. We were staying home to enjoy a pace night from the saloons. We were sprawled out on opposite ends of the sofa in the living room, watching the fire, drinking bottle-cap wine, listening to soft country music. Elroy Blunt was singing an old one.
    I'll be feelin' better later,
    Mr. Mood-Elevator.
    Reach into my jeans
    For more amphetamines.
    Then I'll start to hum,
    Me and Librium.
    But soon I'll get my fill,
    And I know one thing is true.
    Ain't no druggist got a pill
    To get me over you.
    I didn't see Barb coming when she slid over next to me.
    "I want to try an experiment," she said, putting her arms around my neck.
    "I better call Nine-one-one," I said, being a wise guy. It was the police emergency number in New York, or as Burt Danby once said, a nickname for the Puerto Rican Day parade.
    "Shut up," Barb said. "Don't laugh. Don't say anything about high school or college. Don't even grin. I mean it, Billy C. If you say one word right now, I'll tear your fucking throat out."
    She then kissed me in a way I had often dreamed about.
    I returned the kiss with what you might call a dedicated inventiveness. That kiss lasted a month. When our tongues came back from dry cleaning, we went to Fort Worth and got married.
    The ceremony took place in a chapel of the University Christian Church, which was across the street from the TCU campus. It wasn't a formal wedding. We only rounded up some people who looked as if they had nothing better to do before going to lunch at Herb's Cafe.
    Shake Tiller returned from Europe to be my best man and Barbara Jane's maid of honor. Big Ed was there to make sure the minister got tipped properly. Big Barb rearranged her shopping schedule to be present. Uncle Kenneth didn't have a baseball parlay working until that night. He was free to attend.
    That was the guest list. Dr. Elwood Lindley blessed everybody at TCU and in most parts of Forth Worth. He blessed Big Ed's oil bidness, said young people were the hope of the world, acknowledged the talented tap-dance team of Jesus and Mary, forgave the Catholics and Jews, and pronounced us man and wife.
    Then we went to Herb's Cafe.
    Herb's had been our hangout on the South Side since before we were old enough to drink beer, but did. It was an old, lopsided, add-onto place with a bar on one side and a dining room on the other. If you could stand the smell of grease and cheap perfume, Herb's chicken-fried steak was probably the best in town.
    At Herb's, we celebrated with extra cream gravy on our chicken-fried steaks and biscuits. We gathered around a table in the bar and listened to the jukebox and the chimes of the pinball machine. Big Barb reiterated her disappointment that Barbara Jane hadn't wanted a proper Fort Worth debutante wedding. Nonny Fulton's wedding dress had been fabulous, Big Barb said. Woody Herman's orchestra had played.
    "Nonny Fulton's a pink balloon" Barb said to her mother. "She married an ice sculpture."
    Big Ed expressed relief that his daughter had married one of us, me or Shake. "I was beginning to think you people had one of those menage-la-twats going on," he said.
    I've always found it impossible to explain good friends, old friends, to others. Most people don't have close friends, probably because they drive everyone away with their grinding small talk about small problems. Whatever it was that held Barb and I and Shake together might have seemed strange to Big Ed, but it was as natural to us as it must have been special.
    We never thought there was anything odd about the fact that we loved, respected, understood, forgave, trusted, and looked out for each other. That was what good friends did— and did better than most