Ray Lee

Today I was reminded of a guy I used to be friends with - Ray Lee Pirkle. He was a very skinny and smoked Capris. Capris were a cigarette that came out in the Eighties. They were very thin and were sort of womanly. He was convinced that he could pull them off. He was an actor.

The most distinguishing feature of Ray Lee was his two front teeth. They were half brown, so that from a few feet away, it looked like a huge chunk had been taken out of each of his front teeth. It was horrible. But, again, Ray Lee thought he could pull it off. I think he had looked at them for so long that he just quit seeing them. Plus, so many people loved him that he never heard anything about those awful teeth.

I once offered to take him to my father, the dentist, who I knew would give Ray Lee a great deal on a couple of new front teeth. (My father hates to see people walking around with messed up teeth.) Ray Lee thanked me, but explained that he was deathly afraid of dentist as he had had a bad experience years before.

One person who was completely devoted to Ray Lee was Dale. Dale was Ray Lee's puppy. He thought Ray Lee hung the moon. When we would go out to eat, Ray Lee would finish him meal and hand Dale his plate. Dale would sit Ray Lee's plate on top of his own so that he had two dirty plates, sometimes with food on them, in front of him. Ray Lee, meanwhile, had a clear spot so he could gesticulate and smoke. I hated that. It made him look like a completely different kind of asshole than he normally did - a more offensive asshole, one that would kick a puppy, not just ignore it.

After I had grown tired of him and was keeping my distance, Ray Lee said that he had reconsidered my offer and would let (he used the word: let) my father look at his teeth. I said, "Great. He's in the book. Give him a call."