Mr. Happy

The first time I realized how naive Mr. Happy was was on the way to the drunkard's retreat in Austin. Gibmonster had Jimi Hendrix on the cassette player, wailing Foxey Lady. I had been telling Gibmonster about my friend Wheeler who had been Hendrix's foster brother in Seattle. Mr. Happy had been laying in the backseat guzzling beer one after another. Just when it seemed he had passed out, he leaned forward and asked "Who is that anyway?" Gibmonster looked at me and said "Is he fuckin' with us or what?" "It's Jimi Hendrix, Mr. Happy," I said. "Oh," said Mr. Happy as he leaned back and directed his attention to his tenth beer in less than two hours.

Mr. Happy has a way of making love to a beer when he drinks it. He has the same single-minded, totally focused concentration when drinking a brew that Gibmonster has when he trys, usually without success, to flirt with Nadine when we're drinking at the Gingerman, the bar where she works. Bo-dotty has that sort of concentration when he meets a new seventeen year old girl. I don't much have it for anything, except maybe for avoiding responsibility. Mr. Happy got his name after we read his first short story. It was titled The Earth Mother and was loosely about some chick who made pottery, but never sold any. We all suspected it was really about Rosemary, the secret love of Mr. Happy's life. She dug him and he dug her, but neither one would make the first move so they ended up sitting around the Gingerman trying unsuccessfully not to stare at each other. Their relationship was depressing, Mr. Happy's story was depressing and Mr. Happy was renamed.

We were all writers for various publications and were then living in and around Houston, Texas. Me, Gibmonster, Mr. Happy, Bo-dotty and Mad Max, who had the honor of being the only girl who would talk to us on a regular basis. Mad Max also had the dubious distinction of being universally known as my woman, even though she hadn’t even been remotely my women in years. But it served to keep a bunch of horney guys from trying to hit on Mad Max while we were drinking and that was something. Not much, but something. I had published almost daily during my tenure as a music writer with a local newspaper and, even though newspaper columns are not publishing in the classical sense, it was something. Not much, but something. So I was unofficially thrust into a leadership role among our horde of irresponsibility. The fact that I had abruptly resigned my position at the Chronicle to devote full time to writing fiction and playing darts only served to assure the others that they were correct in looking to me for guidance. Gibmonster was so stunned by my move that he quit his job two days later. The fact that he had worked for himself heightened the admiration that was thrusted upon him by his working friends. A month later, Mr. Happy returned from Kenya, where he had been teaching English to native children and adultry to native women. It wasn't long before the three of us moved into The Hard Place, an old three story house near Rice Stadium. Before long Bo-dotty moved down from Nashville where he had tried with only limited success to become a country and western singer. Bo-dotty moved directly into The Hard Place, THP for short, which was tough until we learned to keep our beer and our little sisters out of his sight. Mad Max still worked as a social butterfly at some law firm downtown and had a place of her own, but she could be found more often than not at or near THP. Another fellow, Wally Gator, stayed at THP on an intermittant basis, since he divided his time between Houston and Fort Worth, where he had a wife named Rochelle and three kids that didn't look a thing like him. None of us ever met Rochelle since the eldest child was a girl of seventeen and Wally knew better than to bring the girl anywhere near THP. Bo-dotty claimed that being with teenage girls inspired him to write great country songs. He may have been right since his only single had been entitled "I Wish You Were Legal."

Anyway, just before we hit the Austin city limits (the outskirts of town, not the TV show) Gibmonster took out Hendrix and put in After The Goldrush by Neil Young. Right smack dab in the middle of "I Can Really Love," Mr. Happy leaned forward and asked "Who's that again?" Gibmonster shook his head and said "It's Neil, man."

"Oh, Neil Diamond," said Mr. Happy, "That's cool, I like him."