12.20.98
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'Hey, Trader, Wanna Get Lucky?' was inspired by two incredibly dissimilar things: A man standing in the row ahead of me in church, and Baxter Black's wonderfully silly book, "Hey, Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?".

I was taken by the risqué title, particularly because it was lying on the coffee table in my grandparent's house. As I mentioned, I liked the story as well... And other than the bar setting (the bar in HTWGL being unlike any of the bars in BB's book), it has nothing else to do with my story.

The man standing in the row ahead of me at church... Ah. He happened to be wearing dark green denim pants, which isn't so strange. The shade of that particular pair -was- unusual, though, and so I took the opportunity to check on the brand name. I felt sort of strange about doing so, since it required scrutinizing his posterior -- something I don't normally do. However, I wasn't about to -ask- him (and particularly not during the service), so I bit the bullet and looked at the little tag on his right hip pocket. Lo and behold, they turned out to be Lucky™ brand jeans.

Lucky... Lucky. Oh! I had to bite back giggles, at that point, because not only would they spoil the Nicene Creed, I -really- did NOT want to explain the source of my amusement, which was remembering that Lucky jeans have a bit of red fabric sewn to the inside of the fly, and embroidered upon the fabric are the words "Lucky You". (Wanna see?) Needless to say, Saint Mary's Episcopal is not exactly a place that I wanted to be discussing the fact that I, unlike some people, often find double entendres rather entertaining.

So anyhow, I was thinking about the fly, and the jeans, and it occurred to me (or I was informed, I'm not quite sure) that Blackwater Jones probably happily owns at least one pair of that particular brand of pants. Then, of course, I got thoroughly distracted thinking something along the lines of "Neets would probably find that pretty funny... Now, how to get him into a position to discover that..." A few bits of the story filtered through, then a couple of nights later, the whole disgruntled-boyfriend dialogue just sort of materialized.

One of the points that I'm unclear on is the purpose of the play-acting, whether that was just something they -wanted- to do, or if there was a different reason... Oh, and I have No-Clue-Bob as to the beginning of The Duck anecdote. The only reason it's even there is it was too odd not to write down, and it's sort of a placeholder/scene-starter.