Easy (Electronic book text)

Imagine the phone rings in the middle of the night; it's your best friend.
"You asleep?"
Check the watch. "It's two in the morning."
"I got a job for you."
"I don't want it."
"Yes, you do, you big layabout."
"What is it?"
"Dead drag queen in a pentagram; topless dancers stuffed in a trunk--a pretty blue Buick; somebody's wife is missing--maybe . . ."
"Fine, don't tell me, then."
"I'm telling you. Am I gonna see you at the Majestic in an hour?"
You don't want to, but curiosity gets to you. "Okay." It's a promise.
Mythology is what other people believe; religion is what "you" believe. And reason doesn't enter into it: Faith is the answer to everything. Pure reason is nothing but a phantom. Experience is the only truth. So here's what I believe; this has been my experience: I can find anything you can lose. That's my religion.
I was born Flap Tucker in a little town in Georgia; moved to Atlanta when I was eight. The best friend is Dalliance Oglethorpe--curly dark hair never looks combed, still looks like a million bucks; green eyes always a little amused; tall enough to know better. Believes neither one of us had a chance at normalcy, growing up with our names. We never argue, it's why we're best pals.
The Atlanta we grew up in doesn't exist anymore--and in most ways thank God. We were just little kids in the early sixties, but there were still colored and white drinking fountains in the downtown department stores, clearly marked. We had no idea what they were. Dally thought they meant the water in one was regular clear water and the water in the other one was root beer flavored, for some reason. Colored water. I'll never forget the way she cried when she found out what it really meant.
I just wanted her to stop crying, so we went to the store and put cherry bombs under both fountains--blew them up real good. By the time they got around to replacing the things, the replacements had no signs. They were just two drinking fountains. We thought we'd really accomplished something--but maybe it all had something to do with Dr. King. He was in Atlanta too.
Neither one of us had any money. She was an only child; her parents were divorced--something of a scandal in those days, believe it or not. Both my folks worked, still had no dough. I was the oldest of three. The brother's an actor, the sister's a dancer--I turned out to be a layabout. The folks are just sick about it.
When you grow up without money one of two things can happen to you, as I see it. You get like Dally, where you're real good about finding money and keeping it, or you get like me, where you don't think about it at all. I just plain don't care. I always have enough for what's important to me.
As the responsible half of our duo, Dalliance came to own a club on Ponce de Leon called Easy. Once it had been a quick auto-maintenance place called Easy Lube. I got up on a ladder one Sunday afternoon after I got out of the service--drafted on account of being the aforementioned layabout--and knocked down the Lube. Dally said she wasn't looking to own a place with "exclusively" gay clientele. I didn't laugh: The concept of easy stereotypes is one that'