Missing Bob already Feb. 11, 1986
Bob, my Fotomat boss,
is going west, a wise move, although Pauly doesn’t think so.
Bob, already approaching 40, needs to break away from his
parents, and the military philosophy his father had imposed upon him for all of
his life.
Bob is a staunch Republican; I’m not. But I’m more
conservative than half the left-wing whackos I grew up with, just as Bob is not
nearly as fanatic as his father.
Still, Bob and I get into it from time to time when he
starts waving the American flag under my nose. He loves the free market system.
I hate all systems. It only gets worse from there.
He’s always dredging up the worst abuses of the welfare
state, and I might agree with him if he refrained from claiming that is what
happens every day. The left is just as bad, ranting and raving about cops, and
the Reagan war machine, and – my God that age old piece of bullshit –
Watergate.
Maybe it’s Bob’s upbringing that twists him up inside. He has
a tough time dealing with women – even on a professional level. Yesterday, he
told me about his goodbye kiss with Rosemary and how he melted over it.
Women recognize his affliction, too, as if any man can hide
anything like that from any woman. Maybe that’s why for his good bye party, some
of the Fotomat women hired a stripper and got the expected reaction from him.
As tough as he claims to be – all that right wing rhetoric –
Bob is not strong, emotionally or physically.
He tends to abuse himself when he gets stressed, and his
body does its own. He suffers from ulcers, colitis, hemorrhoids, etc.
He ruined his knees playing sports, trying to prove to his
father what kind of man he could be. Military school was worse, wearing him
down, feeding his head a lot of bullshit so he doesn’t know how to relax.
He has a constant
expression of pain.
Pauly compares Bob to Hank, saying he’s a man of habit and
ritual, which Pauly says will eventually kill both of them.
Bob comes off as calculating, like a chess player, only he
really only plays checkers.
He’s more than a bit naïve. When we went to take pictures at
Bertrand’s Island a few weeks ago, he giggled like a kid, fascinated with the ruins
of the old amusement park. Then, Rick’s sister showed up in what had been a boys’
day out and Bob got embarrassed, staying silent, a wall flower, until she left.
We went back to Rick’s place just up the road, where we played a game of Trivial
Pursuit, Pauly and Bob trying to outdo each other, while I barely hung on, both
of them claiming victory by the time it was for everybody to go home.
I’ll miss Bob, and I feel sorry for him. I hope he finds
some answers on the west coast, he can’t find here.
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