Touch me. Touch me like you didn't touch me last night.

   God bless Constantine “Taki” Iatropoulos. He was a mad bastard, but we loved him.

    Taki had run a lot of eating establishments in his life, from a high-end establishment in New York that used to have people like Zoot Sims and Dean Martin as regular guests, to a Weenie Wagon on the streets of Champaign, Illinois.

    Sometimes Sara and I bought hot dogs and polish sausages from him when we walked past, never suspecting that I would spend two and a half insane years working for him.

    He opened his new restaurant in a “cursed” space. In six years, it had seen five restaurants come and go, sometimes for good reason. That didn’t deter Taki, though. Hanging the battered and worn painting that once belonged to Billie Holliday on his wall, hanging a whole bulb of garlic over one of the doorways (“it keeps away the evil eye”), and establishing that the whole joint was a smoking section, he set out to sell saganaki and 50 kinds of hamburgers, souvlaki and lemonade shake-ups, gyros and chocolate cake.

    After about 3 years and some change, a crazy life and two or three packs a day caught up with him. Taki got cancer that spread quickly, through his kidneys and liver. If his doctor hadn’t been negligent, maybe they would have caught it sooner, but maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. After all, he eschewed all treatment, demanding that he’d rather die of cancer than spend years alive but suffering through chemotherapy and radiation on something that couldn’t be cured.

( Anyway, here’s a true story. Only Joe Smith’s name was changed to protect him. Or, rather, ‘cause I can’t remember his real name. )