Roy wasn’t the kind of man who got “upset.”
He got activated.
He got litigious.
He got that particular shade of offended where your face goes calm, your pupils tighten, and somewhere in the distance a fax machine starts whirring like a demon clearing its throat.
It all began on a Tuesday night on the CB airwaves—prime time for Dick Bulger, Boston’s least-qualified broadcaster and full-time nuisance. Dick was in his rusty Buick, parked diagonally across two spaces like a man who’d never met a line he respected. He keyed up his mic, inhaled like he was about to drink the entire atmosphere, and addressed the public.
“Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine—this is Dick Bulger, reporting live from Revere Beach’s emotional district. And lemme tell ya folks, Roy out here acting like a whale with a clogged blowhole—just… stuck.”
There was a pause on the channel.
A long pause.
The kind that makes you wonder if your radio died, or if someone just spiritually body-slammed your signal.
Then Roy’s voice came through, very calm.
“Say again, Dick.”
Dick, who couldn’t recognize a trap if it had a neon sign and a security camera, doubled down immediately.
“You heard me, Roy! Blowhole energy. All blocked up. Like you got a shrimp boat in there doin’ a three-point turn!”
Roy didn’t yell. Roy didn’t curse. Roy didn’t even sputter.
Roy simply said, “Okay.”
And that “Okay” was so cold and polite it instantly lowered the temperature inside Dick’s Buick by ten degrees.
Dick laughed. “Aw c’mon, it’s just a little blowhole joke—”
Roy keyed up again. “I’m going to sue you.”
Dick laughed harder. “Sue me? For what, ocean crimes?”
Roy’s voice stayed calm. “Defamation. Emotional distress. Maritime humiliation. And punitive damages.”
Dick stopped laughing for half a second, then tried to recover with bravado. “Punitive damages? What is this, Judge Judy with a harpoon?”
Roy replied, “Ten billion dollars.”
Dick blinked. “Billion? With a ‘B’?”
“With a ‘B,’” Roy confirmed. “As in ‘Blowhole.’”
Then Roy unkeyed, leaving behind the kind of silence that has legal stationery.
Within twenty-four hours, Roy had done what Roy always did when life wronged him: he hired a lawyer with a name that sounded expensive.
James Sokolov.
A man whose business card probably weighed a pound and smelled faintly of mahogany.
Sokolov didn’t call Dick.
He sent Dick a letter so thick it could’ve been used as armor.
Dick tore it open right there in the Buick, reading it out loud into the mic as if that somehow helped.
“‘Dear Mr. Bulger…’ okay, rude… ‘Cease and desist…’ okay, theatrical… ‘You have caused irreparable harm to my client’s reputation by repeatedly comparing him to an obstructed cetacean respiratory opening…’ Hey! That’s scientific! That’s not a joke, that’s biology.”
Then Dick reached the number.
“Ten… billion… dollars.”
Dick’s voice went high and thin.
“Ten billion? Roy, you can’t just pick a number that looks like the national debt and call it your feelings!”
He flipped pages frantically. More legal words. More threats. More fonts that looked like they’d been chosen by a jury.
And then—there it was: the phrase that ended Dick’s night.
“Mr. Bulger is advised to seek counsel. If he cannot afford counsel, he may seek pro bono representation.”
Dick squinted at the words like they were ancient runes.
“Pro… boner,” he read aloud.
He paused.
The wheels in his head made a sound like a grocery cart with one bad caster.
“Pro-boner representation,” Dick repeated, quieter now, like he was tasting it. “So… a lawyer… that specializes in… pro-boners.”
He sat back, thinking, and then his face brightened with the confidence of a man who has never been correct and has never been stopped.
“Well, okay then,” Dick said, nodding. “I can work with that.”
Immediately, Dick began searching for legal help using the only research tool he trusted: yelling into the CB and hoping a stranger with a headset would solve his problems.
“Breaker one-nine, any pro-boner lawyers out there? I need a pro-boner lawyer. Urgent. Big case. Ten billion punitive—puny-tive—whatever damages. I need a pro-boner specialist.”
The responses came quickly.
One guy just wheezed laughter into his mic for thirty straight seconds.
Another asked, “Dick, are you trying to hire a lawyer or start a very weird fan club?”
Dick ignored them.
He called his one “professional contact,” a guy named Donny from Medford who once represented Dick in a dispute with an Olive Garden hostess.
“Donny,” Dick said, “I need a pro-boner attorney.”
Donny went silent.
Then: “Dick… say that again.”
“Pro-boner. I got sued. Roy. Ten billion. Blowhole situation.”
“Dick,” Donny said slowly, like he was speaking to a raccoon with a bottle cap stuck on its head, “it’s pro bono. Not pro-boner.”
Dick froze.
“Pro… bo-no.”
“Yes.”
Dick blinked hard, as if reality might change if he stared at it aggressively enough.
“So it’s not… a lawyer who’s… pro-boners.”
“No.”
“It’s not like… a legal Viagra?”
“No.”
“It’s not… a courtroom specialist in—”
“No, Dick.”
Dick looked down at the letter again, betrayed by his own literacy.
“So… what’s pro bono mean?”
“It means free,” Donny said.
Dick’s face lit up again.
“Oh! Free! That’s great. I love free.”
“Not because they’re desperate,” Donny added. “Because they donate their time.”
Dick nodded as if he understood the concept of altruism, which he didn’t.
“That’s fine,” he said. “I can donate my time too. I donate my time to the CB every night. That’s basically charity.”
Donny sighed. “Dick. Listen. Ten billion in punitive damages is… not a realistic outcome.”
“Donny,” Dick said, lowering his voice, “you don’t know Roy. That man can make a judge feel guilty for blinkin’.”
After hanging up, Dick did what any panicking man would do: he tried to solve the problem by rebranding it.
He started practicing statements into the mic.
“Your honor,” Dick said in his best courtroom voice, which sounded exactly like Dick doing an impression of a sheriff in a low-budget Western, “I did not defame Roy. I merely described him as a majestic aquatic mammal experiencing a temporary respiratory… inconvenience.”
He stopped and nodded.
“That’s pretty good,” he said to himself. “That’s respectful. That’s like National Geographic.”
Then he tried another angle.
“Also, your honor, if Roy is so upset, why does he keep hanging around the channel? That’s like—like going to a seafood restaurant and being shocked there’s fish.”
He sat back, satisfied.
And then he remembered: he still needed a lawyer.
So the next morning, Dick did the most Dick thing imaginable.
He walked into a law office downtown wearing his stained Revere Beach t-shirt and sunglasses indoors, carrying the legal letter like it was a cursed scroll. He approached the receptionist, who took one look at him and subtly shifted her coffee out of reach.
Dick placed the letter on the counter with a dramatic slap.
“I need legal representation,” Dick announced.
“Okay,” the receptionist said carefully. “Are you looking for an attorney?”
“Yes,” Dick replied. “Specifically… a pro-boner.”
The receptionist’s face did something complicated—like her brain was trying to exit through her ears.
“A… what.”
Dick tapped the letter triumphantly. “It says right here. Pro-boner.”
She read the line, then looked up at Dick with the exhausted compassion of someone who has seen too much humanity before 9 a.m.
“It’s pro bono,” she said gently.
Dick’s shoulders sagged.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I been told.”
A beat.
Then he brightened again, because Dick Bulger could recover from embarrassment like a rubber ball in a stairwell.
“Still,” he added, leaning in, “if you happen to have a pro-boner on staff… I mean… we got options.”
The receptionist stared at him, then slid a clipboard across the counter.
“Fill this out,” she said.
Dick picked up the clipboard, squinting at the form.
It asked for his name, his address, and—cruelly—his income.
He hesitated, then wrote under “Occupation”:
RADIO PERSONALITY / WHALE DEFENSE CONSULTANT
Under “Reason for legal assistance,” he wrote:
BLOWHOLE JOKE. BIG DAMAGES. NEED FREE LAWYER. ALSO NOT A PERVERT. MISUNDERSTANDING.
He handed it back.
The receptionist read it without changing her expression, which was impressive.
Then she smiled politely and said, “Have a seat.”
Dick sat down, crossing his legs like a man about to meet destiny.
Out on the street, somewhere in a clean office with expensive pens, James Sokolov was probably drafting paperwork with the calm precision of a man who loved the smell of fear in the morning.
And across the airwaves, Roy was undoubtedly practicing his victim statement in the mirror, trying out different facial expressions like he was auditioning for the role of “Wounded By Blowhole.”
Meanwhile, Dick Bulger, the human embodiment of a misread word, sat in a waiting room and whispered to himself like a prayer:
“Pro bono. Pro bono. Pro bono.”
Then, after a beat, he added, because he was Dick:
“…but just in case… pro-boner.”
