Wow! I mean... wow! (Edited bonus - The real story of BP&G)

[joegoda]

Pockets is one happy man! I has Pocket Pants to match my Pocket Cloak! I'll take a pic or so tomorrow and see if I can put one up. It's sooooo cool! They matches exac'ly!

Thanks Mom! You is the ever-loving Pockety Best!

Comments

[motherpockets.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad (and relieved!) they arrived safely! When I saw your cloak, I knew you had to have the pants! Did you notice that the pants have pockets, too?

Someday we must exchange stories about how we became "Pockets" people!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

I did notice! but... do the pockets go in front or back? Does it matter? Thank you, thank you! I think you deserve a double Pockets hug!

As for the story... Well, that belongs to Sherry(esme7777) to tell. She's the creator of the original Bags, Grizelda, and Pockets story. I just wrote it.

[motherpockets.livejournal.com]

However they are most comfortable! I wore them in front.
I will look forward to the double Pockets Hug!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

I think wearing them in the front is the wisest of choices! Oh, and the story you asked for became a three parter. I have no excuse. I'm a writer by nature.

[motherpockets.livejournal.com]

And if you wrote the story, even though Esme7777 created it, since I don't know her (yet), could you still tell the story???

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Here's the story of how Pockets, the little misfit genius came to be.

I have to take you back aways, to September, 23rd, 2004. That was the day my brother Jamie died of cancer. It was a long illness, though not as long as it might have been. He moved back to Oklahoma from Phoenix, Arizona to die. It took him almost three years, and in those three years he and I recreated our brotherhood, which had been shattered by ideology and philosophy.

He passed away early that morning, around 9:30 am or so. Sherry was with me when he passed, as was Jamie's wife. My last memory of him is me laying next to him with my head on his chest, while he was in the final stages of a pancreatic coma. Sherry had gotten some glucose tabs to put under his tongue to see if he could revive a bit, but his mouth was too dry. Still, some how, he roused enough to know I was there, and my most precious and painful memory is of him shedding a single tear, trying his hardest to say something, anything to me. He died 10 minutes later, while I was outside with Sherry, and Tina, his wife, was by his bedside. I saw his face in the sky, commented about it to Sherry, and then Tina called for us to come in. Jamie had moved on.

That story, sad though it may be, started me on one of my greatest adventures. Jamie's wish for me was to NOT stay in my apartment and become the hermit I was becoming. He wanted me to get out and LIVE.

Sherry, knowing that I was going to be having a very rough time of it... I had lost my father to cancer just three years earlier, and let's face it... the youngest sibling should not pass before the oldest... She knew that I was going to break down.

Now, Sherry and her husband, Ken, owned a small computer store about a block away from where Jamie's apartment was. Tina decided to spend the next month at her parents, back in Arizona, and had asked me to watch the apartment.

So I would walk from Jamie's apartment to the backdoor of Sherry's shop, knock on the door and Sherry and I would sit and talk and laugh about life. We cried a lot, too. Sherry had just lost her sister to the Big C as well.

Sherry and I go way, way back. We were friends for about 6 years before we became engaged in 1980 or 81. She wisely decided that I wasn't exactly the most stable person, and I wasn't back then, and married Ken instead. We remained friends and good friends at that. I'm a Cancer Native. I don't throw anything away.

Now, there's also Tim, who is my very best chum in all the world. He and I go back to my first failed attempt at College.

I was rooming with a gay gentleman in the Aggie dorm at NEO A&M in Miami, Oklahoma. I'm not gay, but I don't foster any homophobia, and people are people and nobody is normal, so it didn't matter to me. The other residents of the dorm, however, weren't quite as understanding or open minded. They assumed that I must be gay, based upon the lifestyle of my roommate, and were determined to remove us... which they did. A sofa crashing down two flights of stairs makes an interesting sculpture when it lands.

The dean gave the two of us, my gay roommate and I, special dispensation to move off campus.

I was studying theater, and I was approached by another student, Tom, who had heard of our dislocation, and offered to share his house with us... well, me, really. But the other guy didn't have a place to live, either.

So, I accepted his generous offer and went with Tom to see if I was acceptable to his other roommate.

It was a small house, two bedrooms, which is all right, because I don't take up much space. I've been known to sleep in closets, park benches and bathtubs if there wasn't any other place available.

Tom let me into the house and introduced me to his roommate, who was sitting on the sofa, reading a Fabulous Furry Freak Brother comic. Tom also introduced me to their cat, Mouth, who was sitting on the floor eating from a bag of potato chips.

By way of breaking the ice, I said to his roommate, "Did you know that your cat is eating your potato chips?"

Tim, the other roommate, looked up from his reading and smartly replied "He might as well, he drank all the beer."

That, as they say, was the beginning of a beautiful and long lived friendship.

Part 2 - the saving of my soul

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Now, all this was the setup for the type of friends I have, the two that I will claim as my greatest chums in the entire universe.

On the day that Jamie died, and I sat in the back of Sherry's store, laughing and crying, Tim walked in. We three had been friends for a very long time, but somehow my tragedy pulled us closer even still.

Sherry broke out the whiskey, Tim produced his beer and we all sat and had a wake for my brother.

I'm not a drinking man. The most I had ever drunk was at holidays, like New Years. No, that was the only time I had ever drunk. My mother is an alcoholic, and so I recognized that I might have the tendency. In fact, it wasn't until I was 22 that I got over the idea that anyone that drank, any one that went into a bar, tavern or pub, was a baaaad person.

Still... I drank that night. And the next. And the next.

On the fourth night, Tim suggested we get out of the crowded back room and go to a little place near his house. A place called PotBelly's. It was a pub, which is defined because they serve food as well. Not just chips and nachos, but real honest food.

And for the next 2 weeks I would stumble into bed not feeling anything except the incredible love that these two people had for me and the incredible emptiness that losing Jamie made.

Hawkeye Pierce was correct. Drinking isn't to make you feel better. It's to make you feel nothing.

Except, except, except.... the hole that was in my heart, and mark my words, it's still there, was filled, slowly and over time, by the tears, by the talk, by the jokes and laughter and by the love of my two very good angels, Tim and Sherry. I will tell anyone that will listen that those two saved, perhaps not my life, but my soul and my heart. Sherry says the same thing about Tim and me. And Tim, oddly, says the same about Sherry and me.

We created what is, in my mind, the only truly working polyamorous triad. There may not be any sex, but since when did sex have to do with love? We three have a bond that... well, I could wax poetica until I bored myself. It's sufficient to say I believe it is stronger than marriage. The three of us together are one entity.

We have been going to our weekly pub night ever since. Now, however there is more than just us three and there is more than one pub night. But it is still a place of Family, with a capital F, and a time of rejoicing of fellowship. Those who continue to join us at Pub Night are our family. Not chosen family, mind you. We sure didn't pick 'em and there's times when we three will sneak out to just be we three for a bit. But those that join and stay are our Real family - joined by soul, rather than blood.

Part Tre - The birth of Pockets, Bags, and Grizelda.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

I am a writer. Not an author, though perhaps someday... I have been writing stories of one form or another since I was very young. When I was in the hospital, having my tonsils removed at 16, I asked for my typewriter - non-electric, because it was that long ago.

Sherry always loved my stories, and she tells me that I used to spin yarns to her back when we were dating and engaged. Perhaps I did. That was another life ago. In all honesty, I write them all for her. She is and will always be my muse, and if I ever get stuck all I have to do is just talk with her and the words flow.

Tim will always be the one I call the worlds leading funny stuff-ologist. He has such a quick and witty mind that sometimes it just spins me around and around. He and I banter so well together that Susi just likes to listen to him and I talk about absolutely nothing. Abbott and Costello, with out that rancor. I enjoy it as well, or else I wouldn't do it.

Now... one day, at a Pub Night when it was just us three, years ago, Tim and I were having a mock argument about which was better; Bags or Pockets.

You see, Tim carries a bag with him where ever he goes. It almost always has some sort of utility knife, like a Swiss Army knife, in it, as well as any number of other things. His argument that a bag keeps all of his necessities in one place, easy to find.

I argued, and still will to this day, that pockets are the best, because that way you can separate and organize what you are carrying. If I need to find my money, I know where it is. If I need to find a receipt for a purchase I made a week ago, I know exactly where it is. I don't like T-shirts without pockets, because I almost always carry something in every pocket.

Sherry watched us toss our arguments back and forth for a few minutes, and then burst out laughing. "Mister Bags," she laughed, "meet Mister Pockets." Then she turned to me and said, "You should write a story about those two."

And so, after leaving the pub, I went home, sat at the computer and wrote the first four thousand words of The City of Tears, the very first Bags, Pockets and Grizelda story.

Grizelda came about because Sherry would adopt a gypsy character at some of the Halloween parties my wife and I used to host and tell fortunes. She gave Grizelda a bronx jewish sort of voice and demeanor. I gave Grizelda the wisdom of the ages.

To understand Bags, Pockets and Grizelda, all you have to do is think of Bing and Bob and Dorothy Lamour. Make Bing this rather large and strong weapons master, Bob this short, balding childlike genius, and Dorothy... well... she's pretty much the same. Grizelda is the binding and grounding force of reason. She's a healer and an Earth Mother.

In City of Tears, BP&G come across a city in the desert after running for their lives after Pockets innocently stole some jewelry. Well, as innocent as Pockets can be, anyway. The city is named Tears and the King is a sad little man named Jorge. Jorge doesn't really run the city. It's run by an evil Chancellor named Beegle and his band of henchmen. Our heroes get caught up in a plot to do away with the king and foil the evil Beegle's plans. Jorge, who finally comes to his right mind, abdicates the thrown, placing Bags in his place.... a prospect that Bags would rather not happen.

There have been three books written about them. City of Tears. Bangala. and umm... The Mad Wizard. The fourth is in progress and it will be the last of the series.

For some reason, BP&G has attained a very small, though loyal following. Susi refers to us at BP&G, and every so often I'm accused of having a Pockets moment. I rather like it.

The three of us, Tim, Sherry and me... Bags, Griz and me... have sat at a table in a pub when we get a moment to just be us three, alone. We'll chat for a bit, laugh for a bit, and there will be a toast somewhere in there. It's a toast that I think fits. One of us will raise a glass and propose, "To legends!"

I rather like that too.

And that is the story of how Pockets came to be.

Re: Part Tre - The birth of Pockets, Bags, and Grizelda.

[apocalypticbob.livejournal.com]

Even though I knew bits and pieces of this, it's wonderful to read it all laid out in one fell swoop!

Simply excellent.

Re: Part Tre - The birth of Pockets, Bags, and Grizelda.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Thanks, little one. It's a good story, it is, and shows what true family is, and what they can do. We are, all of us, simply magically excellent.

Re: Part Tre - The birth of Pockets, Bags, and Grizelda.

[mljm.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Beautiful. I never knew the full story and I'm very glad I do now. :)

Re: Part Tre - The birth of Pockets, Bags, and Grizelda.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness... the full story would take a book in and of itself. This is enough, though. I'm glad you liked it, mis-spellings and all. It's hard to edit a reply unless you have one of those pesky paid accounts, and I'm just too darn cheap!

Glad to hear from you Missy!

Re: Part Tre - The birth of Pockets, Bags, and Grizelda.

[motherpockets.livejournal.com]

This story touched me, and made me want to drive to Oklahoma just to see you folks again! Well, we should be there in May, at least! OKRF. This is a wonderful story! Where are these books available?
I think you would enjoy some of Wayne's (Seymoure's) books, too. They are on Amazon, if you search under C. Wayne Owens, you can read snippets. I don't think you even met him at Shawnee or at Whitehart. Next time I will introduce you!! And if she is around, please let me meet Sherry. I would like to know her. I only met Tim very briefly, and I'd like to get to know him, and you, better, as well!

Thank you for giving me this lovely glimpse of your world and its people.

Re: Part Tre - The birth of Pockets, Bags, and Grizelda.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Let's see... I think I have those books posted somewhere out on the Internet. I haven't even gone the route of Self-publishing with any of them because each of them is still in their rough draft stage. If you wish, I could send you them through the email as a soft copy, though.

Oh yeah! You can find them here on my rarely updated StoryTellers Keep site: http://members.cox.net/chesterbeebe/BPNG/BagsnPockets.htm

I have met Seymoure! I met him at WhiteHarte, and was immediately humbled. I am striving to find the right question to ask him that would actually be worthy of him. He has an incredible legend surrounding him that I don't even know. He just seems to wear it like a mantle. Someday I think I'll just sit next to him and see what it's like to be in his eclipse. Maybe something will fall from him to me.

And of course I shall introduce you to Sherry and Tim! They would think it very odd to see that Pockets actually has a mother. Pockets himself doesn't even remember his real mother, and stands a bit in awe of someone who goes by the name Mother Pockets.

[capi.livejournal.com]

.... and.... and.... and i can't WAIT to see the britches that go with the cloak!!! How cool is that!! Way to go, Mother Pockets!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, you'll get to see it all! Well... except the boots. I haven't made those yet. Just let me get a little rest, dearest of sisters.

[capi.livejournal.com]

I'll wait. You can even get a BIG rest! I want you to feel good, you bet! *grin* Love you love you LOVE YOU! *wheeeeeeeee*

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Love you too, dear one! Plus, I have 80+ pictures to sort through from the last Ren Faire we went to. There's a few there that might be keepers, and definitely some of Bags and Griz that you need to see.