Call Me Joe Read Online Free

cognoscenti. He was a hacker all through high school and college and is rumored to have once run smack into John Law after he hacked the NSA mainframe. He doesn't talk about it but no one puts it past either his skills or his chutzpah.
     
    His main claim to fame here in Seattle, though, is his guitar playing and singing with the local power trio, White Trash.
     
    "White Trash" plays off the fact that not one of the three is white. Eddie, with his hybrid parentage, mocha complexion, and startling green eyes, compromises the joke a bit but the drummer, Ish Nakata, is Japanese, while the bassist, Mooney Joseph, is pure Native American.
     
    All three are what my niece Lindsey would call "delish", and their music betrays so many influences it's almost whiplash-inducing: Merle Haggard, Cream, Django Reinhardt, Doc Watson, Hendrix, The Sex Pistols, Darius Milhaud, Miles, Ornette Coleman, The Police, Terje Rypdal, Focus, The Beatles, and, most of all, Frank Zappa; all coarse-chopped and rearranged around a sort of Marx Brothers aesthetic. And all at teeth-rattling volumes.
     
    I met Eddie in the late, lamented Cafe Sabika, shortly after arrival in Sea-Patch, back in the early summer of '92. He was at the next table, eating alone like me, with headphones on, a stack of Zappa CD's on the table. He was making happy noises around a mouthful of Chef Rios' Basque Snapper and occasionally drumming along with his fork. Several of the other patrons were looking annoyed but I smiled and nodded and asked about the Zappa discs. That conversation lasted two and half hours and two bottles of Tinto Pesquera. We've been pals ever since.
     
    "This heartbroke, world-weary loner pose is wearing a bit thin," Eddie opined, fingering a moustache so underdeveloped it could have applied for foreign aid.
     
    "It's not a pose," I replied, "I really am a heartbroken, world-weary loner."
     
    "Like shit," Eddie snorted. "You're one of the most gregarious bastards in this city, once you get going. So, how come you can't just...do that with a woman around? This riff you do all the time about 'understanding' women conveniently ignores the fact that nobody understands women - even other women. You don't have to understand them. Just accept them."
     
    "Besides," he cackled, "you don't understand anybody. Gender has nothing to do with it."
     
    "I understand you," I replied. "You're a putz."
     
    "Stipulated," he shrugged. "But I'm not a lonely putz in total denial. That would be you."
     
    We sipped meditatively for a moment.
     
    "I don't know if I'm ready," I mused.
     
    "What the hell does that mean, exactly?" Eddie groaned. "'Oh, I'm not ready'...like romance is the SATs or something. Nobody's ready, okay? Your life experience is your preparation. You offer a bit of yourself to the other person - generic info, at first - and they do the same. You both digest these and offer more. If you both like the flava, you keep going."
     
    "Uh-huh," I nodded, "And you give yourself away and then it all falls apart with no warning."
     
    "But the stuff you give, you still got !" Eddie sputtered. "Jesus, that's like a woman saying she 'gave herself away' when she sleeps with some guy. Like a vagina is a potted plant he gets to keep on an end table. Like your heart wound up under Carolyn's bed in a box. Here's what I say to both of you: Check your pants, honey, and you check your pulse. You still got it."
     
    "Gee, thanks, Mr. Romance," I chuckled, "I feel all better now."
     
    "I'm as romantic as the next guy," Eddie shot back. "I'm just not wearing blinders."
     
    He leaned forward and turned palms up, just the way I had seen his father do a dozen times.
     
    "Look," he continued. "Love...love is a freakin' crapshoot, anyway. Finding 'Ms. Right'? Total chance. Impossible to engineer it. I know if I'm going to meet the one woman who's perfect for me, that the logical - hell, the only - way to do it is to meet women. Maybe a lot of women. I'm enough of a die-hard