Read Online How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? by Barry Graham - Free Book Online

midnight. I saw that a cop had pulled a driver over to the side of the road. The suspect was a young woman. I watched helplessly from my car as the cop shone a flashlight in her face, holding it just an inch or two from her eyes. This is where we live , I thought.
    I told Tim I was quitting, that I didn’t think my work was doing anything to help me or anyone else. He tried to talk me out of it, but backed off when I told him that the things I had to witness were depressing me so badly that I was worried I might crack up again. He wished me well and we stayed friends. I still wrote the occasional music or book review for him.
    Not knowing what else to do, I read a few books on home improvement and then started my handyman business.
    By that time I was with Janine.
    I met her because of Laurie. Although she played in Mara’s band, Laurie wasn’t a total punk. She had a kind of musical dual personality. There was a hippie under the pink hair-dye and ripped clothes. She’d go home after snarling her way through a gig at a punk show, and listen to a Joni Mitchell album before going to bed. Finally, she gave in and formed a band of her own, as a kind of side-project. A gang of sensitive neo-hippies, they played acoustic songs about lost love and the natural world.
    Their first gig was at Higher Ground, a coffee-house in Tempe. I couldn’t think of an excuse not to go, and I was afraid that if I just blew it off Laurie’s feelings would be so hurt she’d have to write a song about it. Mara had no such qualms, and didn’t show, though she’d told me she’d be there. So I sat at a table on my own, drank herbal tea and tried to keep my face straight at the sight of Laurie actually wearing a dress.
    The place was busy, though most people weren’t paying much attention to the band. One woman was, though. She applauded enthusiastically at the end of every song, and didn’t leave her seat once during the set. She was on her own. She was tall and blonde and looked kind of like Olivia Newton-John in Grease after she decides to become a slut, except that she was wearing a flower-patterned top and a fringed skirt.
    We made eye contact a few times. I smiled at her and she smiled back. I wanted to talk to her, but I wasn’t sure how she’d respond. I was uneasily conscious of how I looked—all two hundred pounds of me, cropped hair, earrings, my tank top and shorts showing off my muscles, my tattoos—the military ones I’d had for years, the Tibetan ones I’d gotten more recently. I couldn’t tell whether an approach from me would please her or scare her.
    Eventually she leaned over to my table and said, “You know the band?”
    “Yeah. Well, kind of. The bass player’s a friend of mine. That’s why I’m here. I don’t know the others.”
    “You like them?”
    I wasn’t going to bullshit her, especially if it was obvious bullshit. “Not really. They’re good, but it’s not my kind of thing. Laurie plays in another band with another friend of mine, but it’s pretty different from this.”
    “So what kind of music do you like?”
    “Punk rock, mostly.”
    She smiled. “I’d never have guessed.”
    “Laurie doesn’t usually look as mellow as she does tonight. She normally dresses more like me.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Andy.”
    “I’m Janine.”
    When the gig was over, I introduced Janine to Laurie. They talked for a few minutes, then Laurie said to me, “We were going to go get some dinner. You coming?” Seeing me look at Janine, she told her, “You’re welcome to come too.”
    “Great,” said Janine. “Thanks.”
    We went to Ichiban on University Avenue. Then Janine went home with me.
    We talked for hours, then went to bed. She said, “I’m too tired to do anything. Let’s just sleep. Unless you want to jack off on my stomach.”
    “Would you like me to?”
    “Yeah. That’d be nice.”
    I knelt over her, a leg on either side of her. She stroked my hips and thighs and played with my