Before I turn to my first meeting with Snarlson and Wolverine in Waynesville, let’s let a current event distract me.  Only last night, I was talking to mike about MP Neil Parish.  Despite his reputable, confidence-inspiring last name, Parish has made a scandal.   Several female backbenchers observed him—nobody has yet said for how long the women observed—as he sat enrapture by porn on his sneeze-stained laptop in chambers.  Immediately, I knew Parish had not attended Eton or Harrow.  Any Etonian, for example, would have the brains to minimize the chance of prying, unpaid, female eyes seeing porn with him.  An Etonian would retire to a toilet stall, a time-honored destination for the sexually desperate when away from home.  Parish, a dropout from an agriculture high school, lacked the brains and breed to seek a stall.  To his credit, Parish at 65 and still keen. His wife, in the best British tradition, pretended to be nonplused by it all. She quipped that if women started holding la porn habit against a husband, the English institution of marriage would lose all viability.

Anyway, mike asked me to find out more.  I knew this type of story is Wolverine meat as a journalist.  I rang him.  When he picked up, I asked, “Parish.  What do you know?”  You could hear Wolverine’s grin even across a transatlantic telephone line or whatever carried the signal.  “Ah, yes, the MP porn-gazer.”  I demanded details.  “What kind of porn?”  After many years on Fleet Street, Wolverine knew how to answer.  He harrumphed, “I cannot confirm that it was tranny porn nor can I deny it.”  I pressed him for what he was implying  Wolverine’s education at Eton and Balliol had immunized him against the perverted behavior of perverts.  Instead answering me, Wolverine began to talk about the decline of Parliament.  “What a gang of weak-wristed wankers are running this country.  A mere 60 or so years ago, you had Profumo chasing a nineteen-year-old model whose paramours included a soviet intelligence officer.  Back then, no self-respecting MP settled for photographs of naked anything.  They went out and got themselves the real deal.  Like Roman politicos, they adored a good rut at an orgy.  Now we have become a nation of wankers.  Parish is a mere symptom.”  He then mentioned that in the 60s there weren’t any women finks scurrying about the chamber playing gotcha with the likes of Parish.   Wolverine then did a brief riff from the blue on our friend Snarlson. Our masculinity-obsessed boy, Snarlson took a lot of vacations to Nana Plaza in Bangkok*, but that was before he discovered the new Red Light Therapy.  When I asked what he meant, Wolverine sighed.  “ It’s all a sign of the times.” He added, “Don’t you recall the first time you met him in Waynesville.” 

So, we are back to where I had planned to start.  How it came to pass that Wolverine Lawless, Tucker Snarlson, and I met for the first time in a Waynesville bar.

*Nobody knows if Snarlson ever vacationed in Thailand, let alone frequented, the ladyboy-dominated Nana Plaza.  Wolverine was not a journalist to let Truth interfere with a yummy story.  Besides, he told me this.  He was careful about what lies he put into print.