Chapter 5: My Fair Lady

John:

I thought to myself to myself I was out of my mind, to just give that fine old car away to a woman I had known such a short time. Yet for some reason, it seemed like the right thing to do. So I did it. It turned out to be the best thing I ever did, that's for certain.

Here her dad was an old street rodder who loved classic cars. He had shared a dream with his daughter that had a Packard Model One Seventy ragtop at the center of it. Then I come along and gave her one, no strings attached. I guess I can be a little smug as I say again, "Smartest thing I ever did."

(Oh, but you should have seen the look on his face the first time Julie came tooling up to his house and introduced us and said, "Dad, This is my fiancé, John Strait. Look at the car he gave her as an engagement present." He had a can of beer in his hand at the time. The beer dropped to the floor as he looked out and saw the Packard 170 in all its glory. He liked me from the first after that introduction.)

We stopped for breakfast on the way. As we sat in a booth and waited for our food I asked, "Well, where do we go from here?"

Her mind had been elsewhere, probably on her new Packard. "Uh what?" she asked as her mind was brought back into the here and now.

"Well, for starters, "Do we move in together? If we do move in together, do we stay here or find another place to live? Do you prefer an apartment to a house? Or is it too early to go house hunting? Honey, we have so many things to consider."

"John, just for today, let's not make any plans except to get two doors repaired and decide which bed we occupy tonight. I need to think and catch my breath and take you home to meet Daddy and ... Please?"

I nodded without answering and decided we needed to catch our breaths. We ate in silence and stared into each others' eyes like a pair of love struck teenagers. We finished and left the restaurant holding hands. I opened the door on the driver's side for her and she got in. She had a little smile on her face as she placed the key in the ignition and turned it on. She shivered as she grabbed the steering wheel and said in a fierce whisper, "Mine!" I laughed.

I gave her directions to my little shop and she oh-so-carefully drove there. I had to insist she get on the freeway. She was afraid a rock or a bit of gravel might hit that perfect paint job and put a ding in it. "Oh hell, if that happens, we'll just send it to Jiffy Paint for a touch up." She giggled and did as I asked. The only way you "touched up" a hand rubbed lacquer job like the one on the Packard was to try to match up the whole panel to the rest of the car. Even then it was almost impossible to get a perfect match unless you hired the best of the best in touch up men.

From the off Ramp, as we started down I had a good view of my shop. There were a bunch of cars stopped in the street outside it. "Oh hell," I said to myself. Then to Julie I said, "Better step on it, Babe, there's something happening down there."

She didn't answer, but drove us to as close as we could get. We parked at the curb and got out. We had to walk the half block left to get to my place. There were big vans with TV logos on them, men and one woman with cameras pointed toward the entrance, and a bunch of perfect hair dos on imperfect people yelling questions.

Just as we got there, some idiot with blow dried hair and brain to match screamed at Hank, one of the two mechanics working for me, "The people have the right to know."

Hank had a breaker bar in his hand. He waved it at the TV reporter and answered, "The people have the right to know squat. Now if you try to get in here one more time, I'm going to break your fag skull right here and right

now." The idiot made a move to push Hank out of the way and Hank swung the breaker bar. The reporter ducked and the bar hit the camera, doing a few thousand dollars worth of damage. The reporter's face turned white as he learned the hard way that Hank was not too impressed with "the people,"

I slipped up through the crowd and towed Julie along with me. "Go on back inside, Hank," I told him, "I'll take it now."

Some woman in the crowd screamed, "It's the guy with the profile. Oh God, It's him. It's him."

"Mr. Strait, is it true you tried to have sex with two police officers in your own home?" Some short, dyke looking female type shoved a microphone in my face.

"Lady," I told her, "It was one of the cops who asked me questions about the possibility of sex. I wasn't interested."

"I resent being called 'lady, ' Sir." She had a sour look on her face.

"Well, if you want to know the truth of it, I didn't think you looked very lady like. However I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But I can see now that there is not one thing 'lady like' about you anywhere. I don't even know if you're female, come to think of it. Are you?" That got a laugh from some and some boos from others.

She tried one last time, "Are you a homophobe, Sir?"

"Look, butch, 'phobe' means to be scared of, doesn't it? Well no, I am not afraid of any homo. If you mean, am I one of those idiots that go around looking to beat up on gays, I am not. What they do with and to each other is none of my business and I just leave them alone. And I also demand they leave me alone. Now, unless you want to have that lousy mike taken away from you, get it out of my face. She saw I meant it and backed off, mumbling some nasty words under her breath.

"Hey, John. I think you have a great profile." It was the blond babe from Channel Three that I met before in my apartment. I waved her to come on in and locked the rest out. I led her and her cameraman back to where Julie and the two mechanics stood, by the coffee pot.

"Look," I told her, "I have had about enough of this three ring circus. Don't you people have anything else to write about?"

She grinned, and told me. "John, you are possibly the first man to show his all on prime time news. I admit that the 'accidental' baring of your genitalia was not too accidental, well probably not too accidental. But that by itself was only a part of it. You were assaulted by the police and you took their guns away from them. You faced down the chief of police and you have a very nice looking fiancé or whatever and you showed yourself to be a gentleman where she is concerned.