Lead Story

I’m Loud and I’m Proud

Waiting on the corner for Edict and his neurotic dog, Buddy, on a rainy Tuesday night, I worried about the bread. Earlier that day, under the instruction of Hank, who was to make his triumphant return to our game this week, I took a ride over to Esposito’s over on Court Street, to pick up the bangers (aka sausages.) Rain had been general throughout the day and the guy at the salumeria lamented over his loaves. “Deh’s nuthin’ you can do on a day like this…heat ‘em up in the oven.” Tapping the wheel at 8:08pm; Koneo’s protracted ‘jog’ making us late and Edict’s typical molassessarian pace made us later. At this rate we would not be eating until 9:00 and probably wouldn’t deal the first hand much before 10:00. Maybe our game is turning into a dinner party. Eeesh.

Howling Hank was back and so ended our three weeks of blissful quietude. He volunteered to host and barbecue even though it was raining and he tends to get lit about wet footprints on his otherwise ‘nowhere-near-clean’ basement floor.

“Don’t squeeze the bread, Ken” I said slamming the trunk to my black menopausal ’87 Audi and gathering the usual Esposito’s fare: 20-24 home-made sausages, hot soperassata, onions, peppers, and nice Italian bread. Koneo handled the bread gingerly…for about a second… then tucked it under his arm, half of it exposed and getting rained upon.

With Dano out back grilling, Hank wasted no time in catching up with his countless missed opportunities to argue and induce divisiveness. Beginning with the subject of heterosexual ass-play, he would cover other fascinating and guaranteed riot inciting topics such as: whether or not alcohol would be served at a ‘traditional’ Muslim wedding; Dano's blowing his nose too hard; the seating arrangement; Dano’s apparent distaste for the game; Lymie’s apparent distaste for the game; and the relative price of quality fishing tackle. The poker portion of our evening, of course, deteriorated: the last three hands were 7-27, guts with the ghost hand; and Indian head, which Hank, himself, insisted on ending the evening with.

Hank was all riled up and seemed hell-bent on cultivating as cacophonous a roar as possible from the game. When the arguing began to plateau, he started ‘poking.’ When poking failed to elevate the decibel level, he simply called individuals ‘fucking bullshit pussies’ for no apparent reason. That worked for a while: and even inspired his brother to cross the room and choke him, which raised not only the volume but the hopes of certain players who thought perhaps only a homicide would soothe the mood. But in the end it was not enough to satiate the tin-eared stentorian. He needed more noise. I don’t know exactly when but at some point Hank actually began to howl. “AAAAAAHHHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” he would bellow, neck craning to the sky, snickering and snorting as he caught his breath and readied for another yawp. “AAAAAAHHHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” The sonorous tide peaked at about 11:36pm as others joined in chorus not so much for their own sake but to encourage and egg on our host.

Hank had been away from the game for nearly a month. He was happy to be back, yelling. Even his arguing and interrogating were embellished with smiles and good humor. To be honest it was a fun game, and, at that moment, it felt good to have him back at the table.

It’ll pass.

Click "AAAAAHHHOOOO!!!" to see Howlin' Hank in action.