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Is
Boss Hog Really the Boss? PAGE
TWO Oh my God, I can't go over there, I'm out of my league. What does she want? Is she going to make me go head-to-head with the Duke boy? Maybe she can't decide who she wants, and she's going to ask us to fight for her. I can't compete with Uncle Jessie, much less one of his nephews. And why would I put my life in jeopardy to win this woman's heart, she doesn't even know my name? And why doesn't she know my name, it was on my bowling shirt all night -- I paid extra to have it embroidered on the pocket for that very reason. I think I'm going to puke. It
was too late for puking; she had run over and was now dragging me
to the center of the ring. "I want you to meet my friend Tom,"
she said with a smile on her face that suggested she was going to
have hot, passionate sex with him later that evening and just wanted
to make sure I realized that she had used me for my Lifesavers and
that no girl who was capable of sleeping with a Duke boy would ever
be legitimately interested in a man like me. And funny how she was
suddenly "friends" with the Duke boy who she'd met five
minutes ago. Strangely enough, I wasn't jealous of him, but of her.
I wanted to be old pals with the Duke boy, damn it. I thought, if
I could convince the Duke boy to hang out in the bars with me on
weekends, then there would be no end to the flow of women in my
life. We would live like rock stars. Maybe, we would vacation together
in Aspen. Imagine the damage I could do in Aspen with a Duke boy
by my side. Every day that I hack my way through this turbulent world I come upon awkward moments but nothing more jarring than being introduced by the wrong name. I couldn't possibly tell him my name was really Scott, because that would lead him to believe she didn't care enough about me to even remember my name, which could really decrease my chances of being invited to Aspen. But then again, what would happen if I was out with friends one night in the same bar he was and I said, "Hey, there's my old pal Tom," and all my friends would say, "Yeah right, like you know one of the Duke boys," and when I got his attention he would yell across the bar to me, "Hey, Allen!" Before either one of us could say anything out loud, Sophie presented Tom with a series of intellectually probing questions: "Was it difficult getting in and out of the General?" "Did you sleep with Daisy?" "Was Boss Hog really the boss?" Not wanting to put my old pal Tom through the agony of answering -- even though these were the questions I had waited all my life to have answered -- I quickly searched my brain for a witty retort that would let him off the hook. But having been drained of my entire comedic arsenal earlier in the evening, I went for the easy punchline, in hopes of winning one or both of them over. "You were on Dukes of Hazzard?" They
both enjoyed a good laugh, and my confidence swelled with the idea
that I may have won them both over with a mere, sophomoric joke
that sixty years ago would have easily had me ejected from my seat
at the Algonquin Round Table. But luckily I was in the company of
a celebrity, drunk on gin and an anonymous beauty, drunk on celebrity.
But for now I had hooked my own Daisy Duke. A Daisy Duke that reached far beyond the Ozark Mountains to the fashion lined streets of the East Side. She was a woman of distinct sophistication that seemed to be ripped hot off the presses of Vogue. Her body, silhouetted in the light of the Coke machine, rippled and curved liked a pin-up girl that hung, still wet, from the canvas of Vargas. Her body moved the way Marilyn Monroe spoke. We stood in the wake of the Duke boy for another moment; she shifted from heel to heel while I crafted a subtle way to ask her for her number. But before I could make an ass of myself, she took the reins and asked if I would call her sometime. Which seemed to me an even more outrageous question than, "Was Boss Hog really the boss?" Would I call her? I wanted to ask her if she thought there was a guy in here who wouldn't call her -- forgetting that we were surrounded by Broadway chorus boys -- but instead I feigned indifference, as if this type of thing happens to me everyday, and said, "Oh, um, ahh, yeah, sure, me? Are you sure… okay, cool, right on." She wrote her number on a stray piece of envelope, and before I could finish my pathetic response, had stuffed it securely behind the embroidered name on my pocket. She patted the pocket safely shut, letting her finger linger over the letters like they were Braille. "Call me, Scott," she said with a slight tone of desperation, as if there was a chance in hell I wouldn't. Or maybe her desperation was embarrassment, having just realized that my name was Scott, not Allen. Her finger moved down my belly ending with a poke as she slowly pulled away backwards, turned and left me in my waking dream. The scrap of envelope came to bed with me that night. I endlessly analyzed every curve of her penmanship, which was nearly illegible. She had the handwriting of a third grader, a broken cursive style that had no consistency of form. One "O" looked completely different from the next and each number "4" had its own distinct tail, which made me wonder how many versions of "4" she had in her. The paper smelled as if it had mixed with many combinations of perfume living at the bottom of her designer purse -- "Prada," a name my pitiful bank account would soon come to know.
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I
packed up my bowling ball and shoes and hung my head in defeat as
I headed to the locker. I was hurt, but at the same time, realistic
about my expectations when it came to competing with the Duke boy
-- after all, he's just a good ol' boy, never meanin' no harm. You
just can't beat a Duke boy, even if he is a fifty-two-year-old has-been
who has spent most of his time doing regional theatre with the guy
who played "Schneider" on One Day at a Time. As
I was about to walk out the door, I heard Sophie yelling the name
"Allen" in my general direction. I looked around to see
who she was yelling at but I was the only person in the area. I
pointed to myself and she nodded and waved me over. She was standing
with Tom Wopat, the very Duke boy himself. 
