Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend

about then two women come over and ask if they can join us. Before I can open my mouth Nicky says, “Sure, beautiful women are always welcome at our table.” I don’t even see them. I just stare at Nick and think, this is
my
money motherfucker. What the hell is wrong with you?

     
    Who knows, I probably would have lost it in the poker machine anyway. Oh well.
    Nicky orders drinks for them and I am lost in my thoughts when the woman next to me says, “So, what do you do for a living?” Just as I’m ready to say “Nothing,” Nicky blurts out “That’s Mitch Ryder. You’ve heard of Mitch Ryder right?’
    “Oh my God.
The
Mitch Ryder? Really, you’re Mitch Ryder, thesinger? Oh wow. I’ve never been around a star before. What brings you guys here? I mean nobody ever comes in here.”
    I smile and slam down another Sambuca and chase it with a Heineken. Nicky’s talking his ass off trying to impress the bar whore sitting next to him, while the two women smile away at each other like they won the lottery. Then the one next to me pulls her face next to mine and whispers something in my ear. Next thing I know she’s moving her tongue around inside my ear and it feels wonderful. She keeps it up and runs her hand up and down my leg.
    I had been through this hundreds of times before in hundreds of different situations with hundreds of different classes of women. High-class, low-class, in-between class; the only difference was location, discretion, and the use of the English language or some foreign sound of arousal.
    Just like the man who had finally had enough I stand up, throw money on the table to cover the tab and announce to the gathered company, “Listen, I’m sorry to do this and I don’t want anyone to think there is anything wrong with you or the way you’re behaving. Honest to God, I would love to stay. You guys are fantastic but I just remembered an appointment I have to keep and I don’t know why I forgot it. Maybe you were supposed to remind me Nicky, but anyway, I gotta get out of here fast.” Then, just to make sure I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, which has always been a tragic flaw in my personality, I ask the ear licker for her phone number. Once I get to the car I throw it out the window and head back to my apartment.
    My heart is racing and there isn’t anything to take my mind off of my feelings. I don’t even own a television. I go to the kitchen, but there isn’t any food there. I was supposed to use part of the hundred dollars to buy food and I still have some money left, but now the store is closed. I think about going to the gas station to grab some junk food but it is icy, windy, and freezing. I don’t want to go out again.
    There is no one to call. It is late, but if I had a real friend the time wouldn’t matter. I had spent most of my life staying disconnected from people and now I was reaping the rewards of isolation. Everything was just the way I had wanted and made it.
    I turned on the computer and began to type.

Chapter 1
     
    T HE OPENING QUESTION FOR THIS BURLESQUE could only be about children. Are they honestly the only thing we can make that is perfect? My soul salvation may come late but it will come because I will prove there was a time in my life when love did exist. I will prove that I did not waste it. I will prove that I served two masters at once and, unfortunately, benefited by neither. And, I will do so perfectly.
    This all began on February 26, 1945. I came to earth during a great war, the Second World War. It was so intensely fought that morals and conscience were the supreme loss and sacrifice. Men were slaughtered, and brought back to the blood-stained dirt. But it was the thousands of mothers with their children, so many of them babies, whose silenced pleas and screams of terror still stream through the universe. Only they can be the righteous judges of human conduct in that war.
    Deadly gamesmanship was the one-up near the end. The conflict was so bitter that entire cities surrendered only to be bombed to hell. And the innocent women and their children? They’re gone now, but I haven’t forgotten them. That was just one of the measures of love in the world to which I was born. But that was not a problem for me. I was an American baby. I was a Victory baby. The same God who had abandoned our enemies would now grant us rule of the world. My country would become the new Roman Empire. My loving family would be safe. There wouldn’t be a mark on the