The Jimmy Lester Chronicles

Remember what happened last night? Good. Now tell the world.

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Jimmy Lester, Part IV

Post by Dear Booze »

Yep. I met her in August of 1984, and on Saturday, June 29, 1985, she became Patricia Margaret Lester.

I know I jumped ahead on these details and all. So I’ll catch you up on what happened after that first date we had ten months earlier.

Patty was a nice girl. She really was. And she was prettier than I had expected when my boss talked me into meeting her. She was a tall blond with beautiful blue eyes and she carried herself with confidence. She had her shit together and had just taken a job as a paralegal in one of Fresno’s largest law firms. I certainly wasn’t used to dating girls like that.

Up until that point, a typical date for me consisted of drinking at The Hideaway until Tanya, Sue, Kathy, or one of the other bar hags started looking attractive. I’d buy her a few drinks and then we would end up fucking in a stall in the men’s room.

After my first date with Patty, I dismissed the idea of a second date because she was really out of my league. So I just never called her.

My older brother, Mike, was getting married in November and I was kind of looking for a date. I certainly wasn’t going to ask Tanya, Kathy or Sue. So one afternoon in late October, I picked up the phone and called Patty. She quickly agreed to accompany me to the wedding.

I was surprised that we ended up having a great time together. So toward the end of the night, I asked her to go out the following weekend. Again, she said “Yes.” After that, we were seeing each other on a regular basis.

Suddenly, I was aware of the way I looked and behaved; she really made me want to be a better person. I started wearing better clothes, working harder and drinking less.

Patty wasn’t a prude by any means. She enjoyed a night out drinking with me from time to time. And she could usually match me drink-for-drink. But she preferred drinking in fancier places than the likes of The Hideaway. We spent most Friday nights with a large group of her coworkers at a trendy bar and grill called JR Bentley’s. During these gatherings, I always felt like a fish out of water, but was proud to be out with Patty.

As February arrived, I was looking forward to Valentine’s Day. Mostly because I had never celebrated the holiday with anyone before. So I made a reservation for two at DiCicco’s, one of our favorite Italian restaurants.

It was while I sat across the table from Patty that I realized that I didn’t buy her a gift, or a card, or flowers, or anything. What an idiot! Like I said, this whole Valentine thing was new to me and I didn’t even think about it. So you can imagine how I felt as she handed me a greeting card and a small wrapped gift. I didn’t open either one. I just let them sit on the table and said “let’s wait until after dinner”. Shit. I was just stalling. But this will give me an hour or so to think of what to do.

Turns out that I couldn’t think of anything to do. So I asked her to marry me. And she said “Yes.”

Saturday, June 29, 1985 came pretty fast. Seems like we rushed it, and a lot of people probably thought this was some sort of traditional shotgun wedding or something. But it wasn’t. We just thought there was no point in waiting. Patty didn’t want a big fancy wedding and I didn’t give a shit. As a matter of fact, about two weeks into our engagement, I grew tired of Patty asking me for my opinion on flowers, colors, and a guest list. So I finally just told her “I really don’t care about any of the planning, picking, and putting-together of this or any other wedding. It’s your deal. I trust you. Just tell me the date and time and I’ll show up.”

And that’s pretty much what happened.

I was surprised at how quickly I settled into the marriage lifestyle. And how quickly I became accustom to things I had never liked before. For example, I had never really liked music. You know, like the radio or records, or concerts. I didn’t hate it or anything. I just never really cared for it.

Patty loved music. She would play the top-40 station in the car and I began to remember all the words to every song and even the names of the bands. Now when I hear certain songs – songs like "Shout" by Tears For Fears, "Everytime You Go Away" by Paul Young, "The Power Of Love" by Huey Lewis & The News, and "Sussudio" by Phil Collins – I am transported back to the summer of 1985. It was a pretty good summer.

By the end of September, Patty and I purchased our first home. $53,000 got us a 1,200 square foot house. It was a little post-war constructed, two bedroom, one bath home on a large 9,000 square foot lot. I guess that's what it means to be "living the dream".

Patty and I settled into a the comfortable routine of getting up early, going to work, coming home, and eating dinner together. Patty was a pretty good cook and I ended up gaining about ten pounds within a few months. Friday evenings were spent at JR Bentley's, but we never stayed out late; we were usually home by 10:00 P.M. On Saturday mornings, I mowed the lawn, washed the cars, and fixed things that needed to be fixed. Sundays were reserved for visiting family.

The one big difference about Patty and I was that she went to bed really early. I was much more of a night owl and would end up staying up until about midnight or 1:00 A.M. This wasn't a problem or anything, we were just wired differently. I usually spent my late evenings watching Johnny Carson and David Letterman, or old movies on HBO.

One Friday night, in late January, we got home from JR Bentley's at about 10:15. Right on schedule. Patty went to bed and I sat down to watch The Godfather, Part II on TV. I still had a pretty good buzz going from all those fancy drinks at the uppity bar and I started thinking about The Hideaway. I missed the place. I hadn't been there in months. So I left a note on the kitchen table letting Patty know where I was, grabbed my keys and drove the El Camino to The Hideaway.

Man, it was like no time had passed at all. All of my friends were there, Janie, my favorite bartender was working, and the drinks never tasted so good. I felt like I just slipped into my favorite comfortable tee-shirt.

Before the night was over, I had banged Tanya in a stall in the men's room.

I felt alive again.
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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part IV

Post by oldsmartskunk »

Typical family life would kill me too. Banging Tanyas,Judies or one armed dude named Steve certainly seems like a better alternative.

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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part IV

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oldsmartskunk wrote:Typical family life would kill me too. Banging Tanyas,Judies or one armed dude named Steve certainly seems like a better alternative.
We all have a little Jimmy Lester in us. But you? With some of that one armed Steve shit? You got something extra. It's not the uniform, it's the stories... you and me, together, forget it!
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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part III

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oettinger wrote:Ha! I was thinking a true Jimmy Lester would get her pregnant on first assault.
I was mistaken.

To Jim and Peg!

Prosit
Pregnant? Yes sir. It gets worse.
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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part IV

Post by oettinger »

Nightmarish story really.
Glad it ended on a high note, I already got the rope around the neck
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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part IV

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oettinger wrote:Nightmarish story really.
Glad it ended on a high note, I already got the rope around the neck
Just had to set the stage... sorry to make you have to decide between a bullet, razor blade or rope. It gets better.

Spoiler...Jimmy gets worse.
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Jimmy Lester, Part V

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It’s been a long time since I last talked to you guys and there may be a few of you who don’t know about me. If you have a little time, I recommend that you go back to the beginning of this tale and get yourself caught up. I’ll wait here.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=70774

Alright, I’ll just trust that you read the first four parts of my story and are now ready for Part five. Here we go…

Heading out for drinks as soon as Patty went to bed became a common routine for me. Hell, I didn’t try to hide it or anything. She either didn’t care, or didn’t show it if she did.

There were Tanyas, Sues, Kathys, and a handful of other women who I banged from time to time, but I always came home to Patty. Hell, Patty and I got along just fine. I guess I just needed something extra.

One afternoon in May, 1987, Patty called me at work. She said she was at home and she needed me to come home. There was something important we needed to talk about.

Shit. What does she know? Do I even bother making up a story? Fuck. Did I give her some sort of fucking venereal disease?

I walked through the front door, not sure what I was in for, and there was Patty. She was sitting on the couch. Smiling.

“We’re going to have a baby.”

Now, how the fuck was I supposed to react? I hear of guys who get super excited about this sort of thing, but I wasn’t really moved at all. It was definitely a strange thing, and I was a little scared. But I really didn’t care. We were going to have our own little family.

Everything in my life changed. I started busting my ass to work harder, I came home and helped make dinner every single night, and I even pitched in on the task of picking a name.

We had decided that we didn’t want to know in advance whether we were having a boy or a girl, so we picked names for both. If we had a boy, we would name him Robert Allen Lester. Robert after Patty’s father and Allen after my grandfather. If we had a girl, we would name her Diana Louise. Diana after Patty’s aunt and Louise after her grandmother.

We also went to doctor’s appointments and took a tour of the hospital where our baby would be born. Part of that outing included signing up for Lamaze classes and a course on how to install a car seat for our new baby.

Well shit. I was 25-years old and I was a god-damned grown up.


In December, my boss threw a nice Christmas party for all of our employees, some of our vendors and a handful of our really big customers. Patty was only three weeks away from her due date and didn’t feel up to going, so I flew solo for the evening. And it was during dinner that I met Kammy Harvell.

Kammy was the daughter of Gabe Harvell, the owner of GH Roofing Supply and GH Continuous Gutter Systems. Jesus. She was beautiful.

Two days later, I made a special trip to GH Roofing Supply to pick up some composite shingle samples. And to see Kammy.

She was there.

We talked.

We hit it off.

We met for drinks that night.
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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part V

Post by oettinger »

For the first 3/4 that was an odd read.

Happy ending though
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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part V

Post by mistah willies »

Solid Backstory, building a foundation.

as I said to her last night, "I'm all in."


(...ater another deal, I folded. Must have been the booze...)

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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part V

Post by oldsmartskunk »

Balance between being happy or an asshole is so fragile. I could never get that one. Guess we are powerless when it comes to women, booze, doubt, self-loathing, yet the mix of them all gets you high. What the fuck am i talking about? I guess i see, a bit of Jimmy Lester in me, which me makes me feel both excited and ashamed of myself. Yup, a definitely asshole in a making story.

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Jimmy Lester, Part VI

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The due date of our baby was only a few days away, but I was out with Kammy almost every night. I would make up some sort of excuse to tell Patty and she would always believe me.

On Friday, January 9, Kammy and I went to a Club called the Old Town Saloon to see Cold Gin, a KISS tribute band. Up until that night I hadn’t exactly been straight up with her about my situation. Hell, I hadn’t even told her I was married, let alone getting ready to become a father. But at the end of the night, I told her that I wouldn’t be able to see her any more. I danced around the details and made a quick exit. But I intentionally left the ending open.



It was three hours later when Patty woke me up to tell me her water broke. We were on our way to the hospital within 20 minutes.

Robert Allen Lester was born at 8:37 A.M. He was healthy, strong, and beautiful.

I was a father.

I had a son.

We were a family.



My parents, my brothers and Patty’s parents were all at the hospital. My boss even showed up for a while. It was oddly exciting. At the same time, I had never been in this situation, so it was oddly uncomfortable too. I didn’t really know how to act or react.

I brought Patty and our son home that evening and Patty’s mom came over. She was going to stay with us for a few days. So, I decided to give them a little time alone while I went out to “pass out cigars to the boys.”

I stopped at the Hideaway for a couple of drinks and then set out to see if I could find Kammy.

I drove from bar to bar looking for her car with no luck. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I wondered why I was so infatuated with her. I wondered if it was only because she was unobtainable. Shit, it wasn’t because she was an unwilling participant in a relationship with me; it was because my new situation changed who I was. I had an instant injection of responsibility and knew I couldn’t fuck it up. Well, I knew that I shouldn’t.

Instant obligation, just add kid.

I headed home to Patty and Robert. And my mother-in-law. They were all sleeping.

I sat on the back porch smoking a shitty Hav-A-Tampa cigar. I slowly peeled off the embossed “It’s A Boy” band and slipped it onto my pinky finger.

All of this is normal. Right?
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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part VI

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Being normal confines you.

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Jimmy Lester, Part VII

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For the next three months, I rarely stayed home. I also rarely worked. I would show up at work, usually with no sleep, get the crews started, and then go home and sleep until noon. Then I would meet up with Kammy for a liquid lunch, which would turn into a liquid dinner and then I would start all over again.

Kammy was exiting and smart and beautiful. We even took weekend trips together. I would tell Patty that I had to bid a job, or go to a trade show or whatever shit I could think of, and I would take off with Kammy to Mexico, or northern California, or Las Vegas. What a fucking rush!

Kammy was a real match for me. She drank hard and played hard. She was the one who I would be able to depend on to watch the door if ever I decided to rob a 7-Eleven. She was the perfect partner in crime.

She was perfectly comfortable at a fancy cocktail reception and in the shittiest dive bar in town. Everyone loved being around her and I loved the way I felt to be a part of her storm.


By the end of April I started to realize that this thing with this other woman wasn’t a phase that I was going through. So I moved out of the house. The weird thing is, it took Patty by surprise. I still didn’t want to close the door on her or my family life, because I honestly wasn’t ready to completely walk away.

“I just need to clear my head,” I told Patty. “I don’t know what I’m thinking and can’t figure out what I need. I do know that I love you and don’t want to be without you and Robert.”

I left out the part about the other woman and danced around the details and made a quick exit. But I intentionally left the ending open.

My new apartment was small. I had actually rented it two weeks earlier and had been trying to build up the courage to do what I just did. Or perhaps I was trying to decide if this is what I really wanted.

It didn’t matter. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on a ripped barstool at the Captain’s Brig where Joey, the bartender with a pompadour, served me the first of an epic series of drinks.
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Jimmy Lester, Part VIII

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“Hey, wake up. Jimmy, wake up!”

I woke up swinging. “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?”

I felt myself being pulled to the floor by what felt like a dozen hands. And there were screams from everywhere.

“JIMMY, NO!”

“HOLD HIM DOWN!”

“JIMMY, RELAX!”

“JANIE, ARE YOU OKAY?”

What the fuck just happened?

As I began to focus, I saw Janie lying on the floor with a bloody nose. Several customers were tending to her while several more held me down. I was in The Hideaway and, apparently, I fell asleep. And, apparently, the bartender, Janie, tried waking me up. And, apparently, I took a swing at her.

The cops were called, but no charges were filed. And I was 86’ed from The Hideaway forever.

It was January 10, 1998. My son turned 10-years-old the day before. But I wasn’t invited to the party. Shit, I hadn’t seen Robert more than five times in the past three years. I’d like to say that there was some sort of restraining order against me, or something like that. But there wasn’t. I was just a shitty father.



There’s a popular thing heard from the mouths of people who have nothing. “Don’t disrespect me.” They say they did this or that because someone else didn’t show them respect. Respect is the currency of the ghetto. People live and die on whether or not they get respect from other people.

Well, honestly, it’s not respect that they are after. It’s control. These poor fuckers who live in the inner city, or have nothing to their name, except for a few homemade tattoos, crave control. I’m not talking about control of businesses, or people, or things. I’m talking about control over their own lives. Control over what happens next. Control over where they will live. Shit, just having a choice about what to eat for dinner, then making that choice gives people a little control. It’s a powerful thing that all people should have.

I had lost control over my life. I had to create something on which to trade. I began controlling the way I made people feel. I chose whether or not to be polite, whether or not to beat the shit out of someone, and whether or not to turn on my friends like a rabid dog. It gave me the power to live.


Two years after I left Patti, I lost my job. I was trying to balance the financial weight of taking care of Patty and my son, and doing whatever the fuck I wanted. So I started stealing from my company. I wasn’t some sort of financial mastermind who figured out a way to collect on fractions of pennies left over when interest was calculated. I did a couple of things which are easily traceable.

When checks would come into the office, I would deposit some of them into my personal account. Yes, this actually works. I just wrote on the back “Deposit to [checking account number]” and signed my name below that. I used to get about $2,000 a month off of this alone.

But the other thing was pretty big… I used to keep the books for a crew of about 40 guys. I calculated their withholdings, took care of payroll, and issued W2s. At some point I realised that the government doesn’t give a shit who is paying what, as long as they get what they deserve. So I deducted all of the standard things like Medicare, Social Security and taxes from each employee’s checks just like I was supposed to. But at the end of the year, I issued each employee a W2 which showed an amount less that what they actually paid. Then I put the balance on my own W2 and collected the difference in the form of a tax return. The only way for an employee to figure this out was to go through each and every check for the entire year and add up the deductions, and then compare that total to the total on their W2. Who the fuck is going to take the time to do that?

Well, that’s not actually why I got fired. I was terminated because I just didn’t do my job anymore. But two weeks after I was let go, my boss figured out what I was up to. I don’t think he ever fully figured out how much I took, but he initiated a criminal case against me. I had to answer to a detective or two and I played dumb. I guess I was pretty convincing, because nothing ever came of it. But my name was ruined and I was unable to get another job in the building trades.

Kammy stuck with me for about a year after that, but I was pretty depressed and didn’t bother to look for another job. I also blamed everything I could on her and would occasionally slap her around for nagging me too much.

A year later, I was homeless. Well, not living on the street or anything. I just didn’t have a place of my own. I usually stayed with friends and occasionally slept in my car. I was sure I had hit rock bottom.

By 1993, I managed to find work as a forklift driver on a large grape vineyard. And within about six months, I took the position of “hired man”. For those of you unaware of what this means, I worked for the owner of the vineyard and was in charge of the entire ranch. I fixed things, cleaned and maintained equipment, and watched their dogs while they were on vacation. In exchange, I had a trailer to live in and made enough money to put gas in my car, buy food, and to spend a few nights a week at any one of my favorite bars. It wasn’t a bad job at all.

Everything was going great. Until Sunday, October 6, 1996.

That’s the day I was run over by a Harvester. For those of you unfamiliar with a Harvester, it’s a tall machine that straddles a grape vine trellis and uses special fingers - or rods - to shake the grapes off the vine. As the grapes drop onto a built-in conveyor, two large fans pull out all of the light debris such as leaves.

Well, this was during the harvest season and we were required to work seven days a week until all of the grapes were off the vines. Somehow, I was pulled under the machine and dragged for about a quarter of a mile. I got pretty beat up.

I was fired for being drunk on the job. Which may have been true.

So I found a lawyer who helped me sue the ranch for unfair termination and for the injuries I got from the accident. It took over a year for the god damned thing to go to court. I won.

My portion of the settlement came in the form of a check in the amount of $210,000.

Between you and me, the Harvester didn’t do too much damage. Hell, I’ve received worse beatings in bar fights, but I had a great lawyer. And I actually won something... the first fucking thing that went right for me in too many years.

I celebrated my victory at the happiest place on earth, The Hideaway.

What a great time. I guess I was a little tired, because I fell asleep with my head on the bar. And, well, you know the rest of this part.
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Re: Jimmy Lester, Part VII

Post by oettinger »

"joey"?

This story really gets me thinking hard about wearing double condoms from now on
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