Remember when everyone asked you, ‘What’s your sign?’ This is then.

Publisher’s note: Over the past few days, several people have commented on how much they enjoyed reading some of the autobiographical pieces I’ve written recently. Thank you for all your kind words. I truly appreciate them, even though I must admit such praise embarrasses me a little. Having said that, as a writer, it’s always satisfying to please those who find your work worthy of their time. So — here’s a new lassennews.com feature for those folks who like to read this type of prose from me as I share stories from the times and the places I’ve been — welcome to Doin’ My Time.

As the newly hired publicist for the Fine and Performing Arts at Fresno City College, I found my way to a wine tasting fundraiser one spectacular fall evening at a glorious, flower-adorned, high-walled garden behind one of those gigantic two-story mansions on Van Ness Boulevard, the remains of Fresno’s prewar old money, not the sprawling modern estates one might find farther north on Van Ness Extension. This wine-tasting event had become an annual highlight offering patrons their choice of top-quality wines and impressive, tall-dollar hors d’oeuvres in exchange for their generous contributions to the arts.

A quartet of college-aged string players performed Haydn and Mozart on the deck, nearly drowned out by the ever-increasing gaiety, the ever-louder shrieks of wine-fueled voices and laughter loosed more and more freely on the wind as the evening aged.

All the mucky-mucks — the board of trustees, the college president, the administration, the faculty and the patrons — showed up in their finest attire. Come on — I mean, the wives even donned their jewelry!  They gathered in little cliques on the garden’s thick, green lawn, toasted their toasts, clinked their heavy crystal glasses, greedily washed down their chow and, from all appearances, totally enjoyed the cool, fall evening mingling with each other.

I felt out of place in my jeans, tennis shoes, blue work shirt and rock star hair (think mullet, but they called the style bi-level back then), so I found an isolated picnic table in a quiet, darkened corner of the garden near the kitchen’s French doors where I hoped no one important would notice me. I planned to just sit there and let the mucky-mucks mucky muck until I had an opportunity to thank the hosts, say good night and head back to my modest apartment on Maroa Avenue that one of my neighbors had dubbed “the eyesore” years before I moved in.

Suddenly one of the professors stumbled backwards out of his circle, a tall glass of red in his hand. He spied me hiding, leaned forward with a purpose and haphazardly advanced toward me across the lawn. Even from a distance, I could tell he had a rare intoxication going. Somehow his striped shirt and yellow tie had oddly twisted far to the left inside his crooked blue blazer, his dark-rimmed glasses dangling from a thin, tightly-braided cord around his neck tilted to roughly the same angle. He was, in the English sense of the word, perfectly pissed.

“Hello, Tom,” I said, as he plopped down onto the bench beside me.

“Thank, God,” he slurred. “Finally, somebody I can talk to.”

“Sup?”

“You know I’m divorced, and I’m single now, right?” he asked, crowding me a little.

Tom had made sure we all knew his wife had bailed on him a few months earlier, taking all the kids (except the crazy one) as well as the better half of his cash with her.

I slid down the bench to create some space between us and said, “Yeah, Tom. Everybody knows that.”

“I came here hoping to meet a woman,” he confessed. “I’m talking with them, and we seem to be hitting it off, so I ask them their sign, and they tell me. And then they ask me my sign, and when I tell them, they turn and walk away. I know I’m new to this dating thing, but how can I be incompatible with everyone’s sign?”

” Tom,” I said, “You can’t be incompatible with everyone’s sign. I never paid much attention to such things, but I believe there are some signs they say are good for you, some that are sort of iffy and some that are just plain bad news. I’m sure there must be at least of couple of signs with which you’re completely compatible.”

“I don’t know about that,” Tom said. “I’ve talked to many women tonight. They all rejected me as soon as I told them my sign.”

He took a long pull of his wine as I leaned back against the table, searching for some sense.

“So, what is your sign?” I finally asked.

“Feces,” he said.

“Oh, you mean Pisces, right?”

“Yeah, feces. That’s what I said.”

“Feces?”

“Yeah, feces.”

I lowered my head, rubbed my ear lobe and tried not to laugh too hard out loud at my friend.

But finally, my resolve succumbed. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Bingo, dude!”