If you see yourself amongst these people it might be time to change your beach going habits. (Thanks Mark & Bookfraud)
College Punk Throwing Football – Yeah, touchdown, asshole. Did you notice you just ran over my fucking beach towel? Or that you just kicked a cubic foot of fucking sand into my soda? Nice seventy dollar T-shirt. You like Abercrombe & Fitch? How about black & eye? That’s my own personal line and I’d be more than happy to introduce it to you one fist at a time. Sports are great but you don’t play golf on your grandmother’s bed do you? Yes…well, let me think of another analogy…no, fuck it. Just don’t throw a football anywhere near someone lying on the beach because the next person you hit with a football on the side of the head might not be an eighty year old lady with emphysema inhaling on an oxygen tank, it might be me and I won't just writhe around in the sand and spit phlegm and Polygrip up on you. I'll snap you in half like a chow mein noodle. So, if you cherish your future beer bong days you will take that fucking football to a vacant part of the beach now. Get it? Got it? Good.
Annoying Photographer – Did you just do an 8-ball of speed and drink a gallon of coffee? I swear to fucking God if you run by me one more time with those little plastic viewfinders jiggling and making that annoying clacking sound I’m going to strangle you with your camera strap. Would I like you to take a portrait of me and my friends? First of all I don’t have any friends. Second of all you already asked me three times and my answer is still no. Really, it’s only twenty dollars for a picture that’s as big as a postage stamp that I have to look at through a fucking ten cent piece of plastic to see? It would sound like a good deal to me if I were a fucking ant! Oh, that’s original fifteen high school kids stacked on top of each other in a pyramid. That’s a picture they’ll cherish threw their little viewfinders for the next week or two until it falls off their fucking key chains!
Sleazy Thong Guy – Sweet mother of Moses please tell me you’re not wearing a thong. For all that is holy I beg of you to wrap a towel around yourself. It looks like you have a dead rat and two Clementine tangerines stuffed in the front of that thing. What would possess you to wear something like that? You have bigger than average gut and nose hair that is so long a gerbil could swing on it like Tarzan. YOU ARE NOT SEXY! You are disgusting and so greasy I can almost hear the oil oozing from your pores. You have so much fucking cologne on that when you walked by my eyes watered like I had just diced a bag of onions. You need a full body waxing…except of course on your head which by the way is covered with what looks like something my neighbor’s cat barfed up. No! For God’s sake don’t bend over. Let the fat kid pick up his own Frisbee.
Red Fat Guy Drinking Beer and Fishing – Did you just walk out of the core of a nuclear reactor? You are by far the reddest mother fucker I’ve ever seen in my life. Have you ever heard of sunblock? Nice hat with lures all over it. Are you fishing in a swimming area? That’s not a marlin you’re reeling in; it’s a little fat kid. Have you ever heard a marlin cuss like that? See the blood pouring from the wound where the treble hook is lodged under his ribs? Maybe if you weren’t so fucking drunk you’d be able to tell the difference between a fish and a fat kid. Pabst Blue Ribbon? Why do I have the distinct feeling that this beer would never win a fucking blue ribbon in any contest? Maybe because it’s $8 a case and smells like cat urine. So pour out that beer and throw the fat kid back. Someone has to keep McDonald’s in business. And get rid of that bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I can hear your arteries wheezing above the din of the breaking waves.
Little Brats and Doting Mothers– Oh look, your sweet children are feeding those fucking filthy seagulls French fries and they are dive bombing me and shitting all over my fucking beach towel. Do you think you could get them to stop? No, not after you take some pictures. Now! Oh, look little Bobby just yanked down his pants and is pissing on the sand. Let me get the camera. No, don’t get the camera. I’ve got a better idea. Take the little bastard to a toilet on the boardwalk. The spray from your kid’s piss speckled the novel I was reading. Bobby is not a cat and the beach is not his personal litter box. And another thing, I’m really sorry little Janie didn’t get her twelfth Jello Pudding Pop but she is screaming so loud that the lenses of my sunglasses just shattered. It’s not child abuse if you smack her ass and tell her to shut the fuck up. I appreciate your sensitivity in child rearing but a timeout isn’t going to work. There is no fucking corner to send her to. YOU”RE ON THE FUCKING BEACH! If need be get out the leg irons and duct tape and make sure those little brats don’t say or do anything. No, of course they can’t swim with the leg irons on…that’s the point isn’t it?
Hot Chick with a Dork – I hope to God that dork you're with was one of the original founders of Microsoft because if he isn’t there is something seriously amiss. I’m not Brad Pitt but the guy rubbing oil on your back looks like a partially shaved Spider monkey with glasses. You are a vision clad in tight swatches of polyester, with legs that are as long and smooth as a southern politician’s inaugural address speech but your sidekick looks like Don Knott’s fat twin brother. Am I missing something here? Personality makes up for a lot? It doesn’t make up for that much. This mother fucker has a deficit in ugly that can’t be made up with personality currency. And another thing, take that fucking tent down. No one uses a tent on the beach…oh, that’s not a tent pole? He’s just lying under his beach towel? Now I understand. Carry on…circus freak.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Hunter and his Attorney
Hunter S. Thompson and his attorney Oscar Acosta. This photo was shown on the back cover of the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Observations in Miniature: A Day at the Beach (Thanks Dave)
If you see yourself amongst these people at the beach it might be time to change your beach going ways.
Redneck Dad – Nice tan lines in the outline of a wife beater tank top. Do you mind paying attention to something other than the Nascar race on your portable television? Junior is out in the ocean floating in a cooler. Yep, there he goes over the horizon. No, Budweiser is not a food group. You must have been born without taste buds because that stuff tastes like the sweat rung out of a swami’s turban. Are you a science experiment gone bad? Because if I’m not mistaken you’re pregnant. You’re sitting in a lawn chair using your gut as a table with that 36 inch ham sub spread out on it. Oops, you dropped an olive in your belly button. And I beg of you when you finally do work your way up out of that industrial strength lawn chair pull up your fucking cut off blue jean shorts. The last thing I want to see is the plumber’s crack of what is perhaps the flattest ass I’ve ever seen in my life.
Wrinkled Sun Queen - It’s good you talked because you’re skin is so brown and wrinkled I thought you were a piece of drift wood and almost threw you on my fire. I’m sure you were something back before you baked yours skin like the crust of a tuna noodle casserole but now you look like the stick my dog just retrieved so stop winking at me. Do you really need that tin foil tanning thing under your neck? A Seagull flying overhead just dropped a pile of liquid shit on it and it went up in a poof of smoke when it hit. What do you think that thing is doing to your face? That’s it, smoke up, have another Virginia Slim, if you don’t get skin cancer you can always try for lung cancer. Everyone needs goals. No, I won’t rub tanning accelerator on your back. You’re skin is as dry as a prehistoric toilet paper and an errant ash from your cigarette might set you ablaze. And for God’s sake please stop fiddling with your bathing suit top I just caught a glimpse of one of your shriveled up tits and to my chagrin it looked like an over microwaved sweet potato.
Foreign Guy – Do you think your wife and daughters might be getting a little warm in those wool burkas? It’s about 90 degrees on the beach. Is that smoke coming out from under your wife’s burka? Is she smoking herring under there or has she begun to spontaneously combust? You’re a sadistic bastard foreign guy. You sit there and leer at women in bikinis while the females in your family sweat like Rush Limbaugh in a pastry shop. If they happen to glance at a guy in a bathing suit you curse under your breath in some language that sounds like a wounded dolphin begging for squid. What just fell out of your scraggily beard? Is that a Playgirl magazine? Because over here men that treat women like shit we generally suspect of hating them and of having some self loathing complex because of their repressed homosexuality. I’ve got an idea. If you don’t like the idea of women having the same rights as you go back to the sand box from which you were sprung. Really, we won’t miss you or your body odor. If you want to stay then move your fucking towel. You’re blocking my view of the hot babe in the thong and here’s a stick of deodorant. Get it? Got it? Good.
Big Lady Little Bikini - Okay, back up slowly and drop the slices of pizza. That’s it one at a time. Slowly. Keep your hands away from you mouth. That’s it. How did you get past beach security mam? I’m going to have to insist you bury yourself up to your neck in the sand. Yes, it’s the law. You’re so big that when you lie on your beach towel it looks like a washcloth. Is that a hard pretzel stuck between your rolls? Where is that little kid that was near you when you sat down? Do you hear those muffled cries for help? Dear God I hope you didn’t sit on him. Did a hermit crab take up residents in the cave that is your belly button? Because if I’m not mistaken I just saw an eyeball staring up at me from down there. You might not want to roll in the sand like that, it’s going to get stuck in your creases, get compacted, and when your toweling down a few years from now glassware might fall out. The next time you come to the beach please wear something a bit more sensible like a muumuu or a horse blanket with a head hole cut in it. I respect your desire to frolic in the sand and sun but could you move out of the way? I’m trying to see the ocean.
Lady Thong - Thong a long a ding dong. Yes, you are defying gravity. Newton is up in heaven with a boner. No, I can’t get up off my stomach at the moment…I have a cramp in my back? I dropped my wallet could you pick it up? Damn, I dropped it again. And again. And again…Let’s skip the small talk. How much will it cost me to remove your thong with my tongue? Ouch. Yes, you do hit hard. Your swimsuit isn’t constructed of enough material to make an eye patch for a squirrel. No, I’m not complaining. In fact I might trim a little off the sides if I were you. Are those breasts real? Because if you remove the nipples they'd look like something you might buy at a Tupperware party. No, I’m not complaining in fact I have an extensive Tupperware collection at home…hmm, this makes me look at Tupperware in a whole new light. I respect your desire to frolic in the sand and sun now could you please move directly in front of me? I don’t give a shit about the ocean.
Bermuda Beach Geezer - Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, Panama hat, slip on canvas geezer shoes, oversized blinder sunglasses, zinc oxide on nose, and black socks. Are you afraid that the sun will play connect the dots with your liver spots and turn you the shade of tobacco spit? For God’s sake take some off that thrift shop attire. Whoa, wait a minute put that shirt back on. You look like a plucked chicken that tried to take up weightlifting. Could you put out that five cent dog turd you’re trying to pass off as a cigar? The smoke from that thing just made a flock of seagulls drop from the sky. What the fuck do you think you’re going to find with that thirty foot long metal detector? Land mines? Napoleon’s Rolex? The Holy Grail? For God’s sake put that thing away it makes you look desperate. You’re eighty years old, enjoy your final days. I’m quite sure that with your pension, social security, 401 k, and veterans benefits you will be able to play all the golf you want and hit all the all-you-can-eat buffets you want before you run out of money and time. That’s it, toss that metal detector into the ocean. Don’t worry I’m pretty sure it’s biodegradable.
Redneck Dad – Nice tan lines in the outline of a wife beater tank top. Do you mind paying attention to something other than the Nascar race on your portable television? Junior is out in the ocean floating in a cooler. Yep, there he goes over the horizon. No, Budweiser is not a food group. You must have been born without taste buds because that stuff tastes like the sweat rung out of a swami’s turban. Are you a science experiment gone bad? Because if I’m not mistaken you’re pregnant. You’re sitting in a lawn chair using your gut as a table with that 36 inch ham sub spread out on it. Oops, you dropped an olive in your belly button. And I beg of you when you finally do work your way up out of that industrial strength lawn chair pull up your fucking cut off blue jean shorts. The last thing I want to see is the plumber’s crack of what is perhaps the flattest ass I’ve ever seen in my life.
Wrinkled Sun Queen - It’s good you talked because you’re skin is so brown and wrinkled I thought you were a piece of drift wood and almost threw you on my fire. I’m sure you were something back before you baked yours skin like the crust of a tuna noodle casserole but now you look like the stick my dog just retrieved so stop winking at me. Do you really need that tin foil tanning thing under your neck? A Seagull flying overhead just dropped a pile of liquid shit on it and it went up in a poof of smoke when it hit. What do you think that thing is doing to your face? That’s it, smoke up, have another Virginia Slim, if you don’t get skin cancer you can always try for lung cancer. Everyone needs goals. No, I won’t rub tanning accelerator on your back. You’re skin is as dry as a prehistoric toilet paper and an errant ash from your cigarette might set you ablaze. And for God’s sake please stop fiddling with your bathing suit top I just caught a glimpse of one of your shriveled up tits and to my chagrin it looked like an over microwaved sweet potato.
Foreign Guy – Do you think your wife and daughters might be getting a little warm in those wool burkas? It’s about 90 degrees on the beach. Is that smoke coming out from under your wife’s burka? Is she smoking herring under there or has she begun to spontaneously combust? You’re a sadistic bastard foreign guy. You sit there and leer at women in bikinis while the females in your family sweat like Rush Limbaugh in a pastry shop. If they happen to glance at a guy in a bathing suit you curse under your breath in some language that sounds like a wounded dolphin begging for squid. What just fell out of your scraggily beard? Is that a Playgirl magazine? Because over here men that treat women like shit we generally suspect of hating them and of having some self loathing complex because of their repressed homosexuality. I’ve got an idea. If you don’t like the idea of women having the same rights as you go back to the sand box from which you were sprung. Really, we won’t miss you or your body odor. If you want to stay then move your fucking towel. You’re blocking my view of the hot babe in the thong and here’s a stick of deodorant. Get it? Got it? Good.
Big Lady Little Bikini - Okay, back up slowly and drop the slices of pizza. That’s it one at a time. Slowly. Keep your hands away from you mouth. That’s it. How did you get past beach security mam? I’m going to have to insist you bury yourself up to your neck in the sand. Yes, it’s the law. You’re so big that when you lie on your beach towel it looks like a washcloth. Is that a hard pretzel stuck between your rolls? Where is that little kid that was near you when you sat down? Do you hear those muffled cries for help? Dear God I hope you didn’t sit on him. Did a hermit crab take up residents in the cave that is your belly button? Because if I’m not mistaken I just saw an eyeball staring up at me from down there. You might not want to roll in the sand like that, it’s going to get stuck in your creases, get compacted, and when your toweling down a few years from now glassware might fall out. The next time you come to the beach please wear something a bit more sensible like a muumuu or a horse blanket with a head hole cut in it. I respect your desire to frolic in the sand and sun but could you move out of the way? I’m trying to see the ocean.
Lady Thong - Thong a long a ding dong. Yes, you are defying gravity. Newton is up in heaven with a boner. No, I can’t get up off my stomach at the moment…I have a cramp in my back? I dropped my wallet could you pick it up? Damn, I dropped it again. And again. And again…Let’s skip the small talk. How much will it cost me to remove your thong with my tongue? Ouch. Yes, you do hit hard. Your swimsuit isn’t constructed of enough material to make an eye patch for a squirrel. No, I’m not complaining. In fact I might trim a little off the sides if I were you. Are those breasts real? Because if you remove the nipples they'd look like something you might buy at a Tupperware party. No, I’m not complaining in fact I have an extensive Tupperware collection at home…hmm, this makes me look at Tupperware in a whole new light. I respect your desire to frolic in the sand and sun now could you please move directly in front of me? I don’t give a shit about the ocean.
Bermuda Beach Geezer - Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, Panama hat, slip on canvas geezer shoes, oversized blinder sunglasses, zinc oxide on nose, and black socks. Are you afraid that the sun will play connect the dots with your liver spots and turn you the shade of tobacco spit? For God’s sake take some off that thrift shop attire. Whoa, wait a minute put that shirt back on. You look like a plucked chicken that tried to take up weightlifting. Could you put out that five cent dog turd you’re trying to pass off as a cigar? The smoke from that thing just made a flock of seagulls drop from the sky. What the fuck do you think you’re going to find with that thirty foot long metal detector? Land mines? Napoleon’s Rolex? The Holy Grail? For God’s sake put that thing away it makes you look desperate. You’re eighty years old, enjoy your final days. I’m quite sure that with your pension, social security, 401 k, and veterans benefits you will be able to play all the golf you want and hit all the all-you-can-eat buffets you want before you run out of money and time. That’s it, toss that metal detector into the ocean. Don’t worry I’m pretty sure it’s biodegradable.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Goodbye Hunter RIP
Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself
According to the AP Hunter S. Thompson commited suicide last night in his Aspen home. Thompson was 67 years old.
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/celeb/article.adp?id=20050220234609990002
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/books/22appr.html?
According to the AP Hunter S. Thompson commited suicide last night in his Aspen home. Thompson was 67 years old.
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/celeb/article.adp?id=20050220234609990002
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/books/22appr.html?
Friday, February 18, 2005
Observations in Miniature: People in the Grocery Store II
If you see yourself amongst these people it might be time to change your shopping habits.
Foreign Guy - You still don’t get American grocery stores do you? What’s in you cart? Unfiltered Camels , Pepsi, some weird vegetable that looks like a shrub, frozen king crab legs? What the Hell are you going to do? Go home and feed your pet llama and walrus? You’re eating like you’re shopping in the bazaar in Iran for God’s sake. Food isn’t rationed here. Just look at all the fat people. Go back and load up on frozen pizzas and processed meats. And let me direct you to the shaving section so you can trim that five foot long mountain goat beard and while we‘re at it we‘ll drop by the deodorant aisle. You smell like you’re aging Blue Cheese under your armpits.
Pet Fanatic - Twelve pounds of cat litter. Check. Two ten pound bags of bird seed. Check. A twenty pound bag of peanuts for the squirrels. Check. Thirty-seven cans of Fancy Feast. Check. One six ounce cup of yogurt. Check. Wait a second where the Hell is the people food? What the fuck are you going to eat? Do you corral kittens into pet carriers and beef them up like veal then slaughter them and eat them in a tangy a yogurt sauce? This is what I am forced to deduce from the paltry amount of human food in your cart. And what the fuck is that on your shoulder? Is that macaw shit? That’s cool you carry your pet bird around on your shoulder but you’d better go hose down after you’re done. And do you purposely fill your purse with cat litter? Because it looks like one of your babies drop a kibble bomb on your organizer. It’s great that you love animals but what separates us from them is our ability to use soap and take showers. Get it? There’s enough cat hair on your sweater to knit a hat, scarf, and mittens for your niece. Please take a lint brush to yourself before you go out in public again.
The Weeble Family - Choo Choo. Look out here comes the Weeble family wobbling down the aisle with their train of overflowing carts. Are you even looking at what you’re throwing into your cart? Do you really need a ten gallon jar of pickle relish? Buying in bulk is acceptable when you’re preparing for a family reunion or if you run an orphanage but for God’s sake there’s only four people in your family and although their combined weight is equal to that of a mid-size SUV they will certainly survive without a gross of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks. And a request to all things holy please stay away from the snack cake aisle. I think your son just dove into a display of Little Debbie Snack Cakes. Yes, there he is I saw his chocolate covered face come up for a breath and then he dove back into a heap of Twinkies. Is he backstroking through a shelf full of moon pies? You’re family has a problem and it has nothing to do with their pituitary glands. You simply eat too fucking much. That’s why you’ve spent a third of your life at the grocery store, a third of your life eating, and a third of your life reading tabloid newspapers on your reinforced toilet. Put back the groceries in two of those carts and you’ll subsist quite well on the remaining cart for a month or two.
The Wanderer (thanks Lori)- Did you do the brown acid at Woodstock? I’m almost done with my shopping and I keep passing you going the wrong way and in addition to causing traffic jams, which you are largely oblivious to, you seem to be standing in front of every damn item I want to buy. You stand there with this perplexed look on your face reading every piece of fine print on a jar of spaghetti sauce. There’s nothing in there but tomatoes, some salt and garlic. You’re not reading the Odyssey for God’s sake. Keep moving. You’ve been here for two hours and how many things do you have in your cart? Two? Here’s an idea. It’s going to be radical and might takes some time to adjust to but why not make a FUCKING GROCERY LIST! That way you won’t be wandering around for hours. And fill your damn cart up so you don’t have to come back every day. Grocery shopping is not Chess, there is no complicated strategy, except to buy fucking groceries. Sound simple? It is. Carry on.
Angry Cashier - Hi, how are you? Nothing. Why were you talking to the lady in front of me but now you won’t even talk to me? Did you just punch a hole through my box of Nutrigrain? Your anger is misplaced. I’m not “the man.” In fact I never even met “the man,” so please don’t throw my eggs. In case you haven’t noticed they don’t bounce. No, I don’t mind bagging my own groceries. Do you mind if I go out in the parking lot and let the air out of your tires? I don’t care if you’re a bitch on your own time but you work in a service industry and are paid to pretend you like me so we can complete our transaction in peace. So unclench the fists, lose the frown. That’s it. Feel better? No? Well, then fucking pretend.
Foreign Guy - You still don’t get American grocery stores do you? What’s in you cart? Unfiltered Camels , Pepsi, some weird vegetable that looks like a shrub, frozen king crab legs? What the Hell are you going to do? Go home and feed your pet llama and walrus? You’re eating like you’re shopping in the bazaar in Iran for God’s sake. Food isn’t rationed here. Just look at all the fat people. Go back and load up on frozen pizzas and processed meats. And let me direct you to the shaving section so you can trim that five foot long mountain goat beard and while we‘re at it we‘ll drop by the deodorant aisle. You smell like you’re aging Blue Cheese under your armpits.
Pet Fanatic - Twelve pounds of cat litter. Check. Two ten pound bags of bird seed. Check. A twenty pound bag of peanuts for the squirrels. Check. Thirty-seven cans of Fancy Feast. Check. One six ounce cup of yogurt. Check. Wait a second where the Hell is the people food? What the fuck are you going to eat? Do you corral kittens into pet carriers and beef them up like veal then slaughter them and eat them in a tangy a yogurt sauce? This is what I am forced to deduce from the paltry amount of human food in your cart. And what the fuck is that on your shoulder? Is that macaw shit? That’s cool you carry your pet bird around on your shoulder but you’d better go hose down after you’re done. And do you purposely fill your purse with cat litter? Because it looks like one of your babies drop a kibble bomb on your organizer. It’s great that you love animals but what separates us from them is our ability to use soap and take showers. Get it? There’s enough cat hair on your sweater to knit a hat, scarf, and mittens for your niece. Please take a lint brush to yourself before you go out in public again.
The Weeble Family - Choo Choo. Look out here comes the Weeble family wobbling down the aisle with their train of overflowing carts. Are you even looking at what you’re throwing into your cart? Do you really need a ten gallon jar of pickle relish? Buying in bulk is acceptable when you’re preparing for a family reunion or if you run an orphanage but for God’s sake there’s only four people in your family and although their combined weight is equal to that of a mid-size SUV they will certainly survive without a gross of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks. And a request to all things holy please stay away from the snack cake aisle. I think your son just dove into a display of Little Debbie Snack Cakes. Yes, there he is I saw his chocolate covered face come up for a breath and then he dove back into a heap of Twinkies. Is he backstroking through a shelf full of moon pies? You’re family has a problem and it has nothing to do with their pituitary glands. You simply eat too fucking much. That’s why you’ve spent a third of your life at the grocery store, a third of your life eating, and a third of your life reading tabloid newspapers on your reinforced toilet. Put back the groceries in two of those carts and you’ll subsist quite well on the remaining cart for a month or two.
The Wanderer (thanks Lori)- Did you do the brown acid at Woodstock? I’m almost done with my shopping and I keep passing you going the wrong way and in addition to causing traffic jams, which you are largely oblivious to, you seem to be standing in front of every damn item I want to buy. You stand there with this perplexed look on your face reading every piece of fine print on a jar of spaghetti sauce. There’s nothing in there but tomatoes, some salt and garlic. You’re not reading the Odyssey for God’s sake. Keep moving. You’ve been here for two hours and how many things do you have in your cart? Two? Here’s an idea. It’s going to be radical and might takes some time to adjust to but why not make a FUCKING GROCERY LIST! That way you won’t be wandering around for hours. And fill your damn cart up so you don’t have to come back every day. Grocery shopping is not Chess, there is no complicated strategy, except to buy fucking groceries. Sound simple? It is. Carry on.
Angry Cashier - Hi, how are you? Nothing. Why were you talking to the lady in front of me but now you won’t even talk to me? Did you just punch a hole through my box of Nutrigrain? Your anger is misplaced. I’m not “the man.” In fact I never even met “the man,” so please don’t throw my eggs. In case you haven’t noticed they don’t bounce. No, I don’t mind bagging my own groceries. Do you mind if I go out in the parking lot and let the air out of your tires? I don’t care if you’re a bitch on your own time but you work in a service industry and are paid to pretend you like me so we can complete our transaction in peace. So unclench the fists, lose the frown. That’s it. Feel better? No? Well, then fucking pretend.
Drug Fiends and the Love of a Laptop
I stared into the bright orange Hell of the rising sun and sipped from my acidic cup of Seven Eleven French Roast. My eyelids were as heavy as the iron Gargoyle knockers on the doors of many medieval kings and my head felt like a flaming ball of gasoline soaked toilet paper.
This was no way to start off a day I told myself but it isn’t like me to listen to reason even if it is of my own design so I reached up on the luggage rack of my Cherokee to scrape off a purple piece of bird shit with a twig and a bolt of pain shot through my deltoid muscle. Evidently I’d tweaked something in the late night, some hinge like joint or tendon in my shoulder was dangerously out of place and would require surgery or at the very least several weeks worth of self-prescribed herbal infusions coupled with frequent visits to my well stocked medicine and liquor cabinets.
"Damn kids," I cried.
Yes, I cursed the lethargic youth of America, the way they mainlined television and video games, thus surpassing the brain and any hope of enlightenment. I blamed one young bastard in particular for the condition of my badly injured shoulder and swore on all that was rock and roll that I would tap dance on his teeth with my Burmese jungle boots if he was ever unlucky enough to pass my sordid path again. I wished it had all been a bad dream and it was, only I’d been awake and the hour had been late and there would be no turning back for turning back is never an option when the adrenalin kicks in.
* * *
I’d been in a deep Franziskaner induced sleep when my attack Chihuahua’s, Uma and Flea, began howling and clawing at my nightstand like their were porterhouses hidden in the drawers. I knew then that something was seriously amiss for these miniature beasts had been born from the purest Mexican bloodlines and trained in the ways of the nations top police dogs.
“What is it?” I asked.
Uma and Flea howled liked they’d never howled before and scurried out into the kitchen and ran in circles barking and hopping about as if there little toes were touching down on the hood of a Corvette that had been sitting in the hot summer sun.
I rolled out of bed, falling on the floor, and once I’d collected myself I wrapped myself in the tribal bathrobe my brother had brought back for me from Senegal and made my way out into the kitchen. To sate the Chihuahua brood I procured a fist full of desiccated liver treats and tossed them onto the floor. When the organ meat hit throw rug in the middle of my kitchen they ceased their crazed circling and yapping, devouring their late night meal with great gusto. This brief reprieve from this late night madness allowed me time to fetch a Franziskaner from the refrigerator.
I was opening my beer over the sink when I spied a Volkswagen Bug parked behind my house. From what I could make out under the haze of the flickering street light there were two people in the back seat and it appeared they were involved in some sort of tussle or perhaps it was the lustful wrestling of two oversexed speed freaks.
“Bastards,” I yelled and ran back into my bedroom.
Lately the alleyway behind my house had become a haven for reckless drug types that stove piped heinous substances into their systems and lay twitching on the periphery of my back yard like electrocuted cattle, something I would not tolerate in my neighborhood where, in addition to all the old folks I was pretty sure I’d see a little girl riding a tricycle several months earlier. And even in if there weren’t any children in my neighborhood there was my sanity to think about and the well being of my Chihuahuas who are apt to hyperventilate at the slightest of disturbances despite their vigorous and thorough training.
From underneath my mattress of my bed I took out my 12 gauge Autoloader 935 Mossberg. Yes, I sleep on my shotgun and if Hans Christian Andersen had any real sense he would have had his princess sleeping on a musket. What the Hell good is a pea even if you have a shooter? That‘s no way to fight evil.
The shotgun gun wasn’t loaded, never is, I merely use it for the intimidation factor. In my hands the 12 gauge gives the impression to those that I encounter of a madman hell bent on one type of destruction or another, and I figure if I am attacked I can always skull an intruder with the barrel and then run like Hell.
I won’t even consider using bullets, they are messy and cause bleeding and possible death and I cherish naked women, beer and drugs too much to be locked away in some god forsaken hillbilly jail for the rest of my days answering to sadistic guards that prune their yellow fingernails with garden sheers and spit them at you in your cell.
“Come on out you bastards,” I yelled, and flung open the back door.
I scanned the back yard with the barrel of the Mossberg on which I’d duct taped the largest sized Mag-Lite that a civilian can buy without some sort of permit. The real big flashlights, so I’m told, are sold only to law enforcement and mounted on one’s shoulder like a bazooka.
“Who’s in that bug,” I yelled and swiveled my head back and forth in an agitated manner so these drugged out freaks would know that no matter how much junk they stuffed up their noses, that no matter how far into the Technicolor forest of depravity they had ventured that I would not disappear with a blink of the eyes like so many of their hopped up hallucinations.
A vast triangle of yellow light given off by the Mag-Lite engulfed the Volkswagen Bug and I was disappointed to find nothing that would tip me off as to what kind of wickedness these drugged out sex fiends had indulged in inside the tiny car. I did however smell the tangy aroma of what I immediately recognized as cannabis and knew that where there was smoke there was most definitely a stoner with a bad case of paranoia coming down on him like an avalanche of moldy pizza boxes.
“Come on out. I‘m a trained tracker. With the help of my attack dogs I can follow your trail over seventy miles of macadam. There’s no use trying to run from me,” I said.
I scanned the woods across the alleyway with the Mossberg and heard rattling coming from under a dead Christmas tree I’d discarded there in January. I spun on the heels of my Burmese Jungle Boots and illuminated the tree.
“Who is that under my Christmas tree,” I yelled.
Slowly the tree lifted and I could see the oval face and almond eyes of an exotic beauty. She was wearing some sort of fluorescent lipstick that was smeared across her face like the war paint of a marauding 19th century hooker who had just been beating down the warpath of degenerative syphilis.
“Rise up slowly and don’t make any sudden moves,” I said, biting down on my cigar.
It was then that I spied her necking partner lying face down behind a pile of leaves, a slight, pock faced youth with black spiked hair. He was wearing a Sixers Jersey and baggy jeans and had the hollow eyes of an excessive masturbator and the slack lips of a county mental patient. Mixed with drugs and the build up of testosterone that I’d imagined he’d stockpiled during his little back seat love session I knew I’d have to keep my eye on him for these are the types that act quickly and irrationally, consequence be damned. There is only in their minds the notion of the old in and out and from there all else breaks down into mindless garble of too many video games and the fast food grease fusing to their underused synapses. These types are apt like starving weasels to go after the arteries in your ankles or wherever else you might be vulnerable to attack. They have no respect for what made this country great and flog relentlessly on the American dream like it was a fat schoolmate with an effeminate lisp.
“Hey man, everything’s cool,” the zit faced kid said, taking a step towards me.
“Drop the Elvis vernacular you pint-sized rodent. You’re not even a carbuncle on the bottom of the King’s yacht. So if you want everything to remain “cool” you won’t take another step towards me,” I said.
“What you need a gun to take me on tough guy? My parents are lawyers,” he said, the zits on his face pulsing like the taillights on a cement truck. “You’ll be in jail before you can say dips hit.”
“No, I don’t need a gun and thanks for telling me your parents were lawyers I hadn’t decided to beat on you until you told me that, dipshit.”
The girl screamed and the Chihuahuas went wild jumping up at the screen door and clawing it madly. I knew then that it was only a matter of time before the dizzying red lights of the borough police would be spinning in front of my eyes.
“You think that your parents being lawyers makes you a big shot?” I asked.
“I know it makes me a bigshot. They‘re rich and will sue the pants off of you if you even touch me,” he said, stepping towards me.
I imagined his parents were the same gutless fools that get high on grandiose notions of excessive wealth, who snub out the common folk so that they may live in filthy excess while the down trodden subsist on broken dreams and cheap liquor. And it’s true that the wealthy are the most perverted residents of this country and that’s simply because they can afford to be perverts. If some poor slob living in a trailer in Alabama has a Urophilia fetish and can’t find a willing partner to piss on his forehead he is SOL. The bastard has no outlet other than to go back stroking through one of those public trough like urinals but if the rich man can’t find a woman willing to urinate on him for free he need only to start flashing enough money around and soon enough fantasy will become reality. So, you see why I say that the really whacked shit is left for the wealthy who can afford to buy anonymity. I pity the poor bustards that just want someone to piss on them or for someone to wrap them in Saran Wrap and beat them with a garden hose but can’t afford the $300 dollars an hour that would make their dream come true. Yes, the American dream has officially been trampled.
“Your dad probably likes to hire hookers to piss on his hairy back,” I said, flipping the Mossberg up onto my shoulder.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” the zit faced kid said.
“Just let us go. We won’t come back here,” the girl said.
I didn’t realize it at the time but I was standing on the wall of rotting railroad ties that make up the landscaping on the backside of my property and when I went to step towards the girl one of the railroad ties gave and I went tumbling down the hill. I rolled over several garbage cans and stopped when my shoulder slammed up against the rear tire of my Cherokee which was at the end of the driveway.
“Come back you cowards,” I cried from the bottom of my driveway as the two neckers took off.
I heard the Volkswagen fire up and as I stood I saw it meandering off into the night like a baby humpback with a harpoon in its ribs. Hurt and angry I collected my Mossberg and headed into the house and cured my wounds with a dozen or so Fransikaners. I passed out in front of the fireplace with the Chihuahuas sleeping on my back.
* * *
And so I awoke the next morning despising today’s youth for their ignorance and insolence and drove to work under the influence of enough caffeine to jump start a dead mammoth.
When I sat down and plugged in my laptop at work it hissed at me like a gila monster with its tail clenched in the jaws of a bobcat. White sparks shot up in the air and looked like the spit flying out of an elderly auctioneers mouth and from the center of the keyboard there rose a giant mushroom cloud of smoke. I knew, as any fool would, that this was not a good addition to my already compromised day and should have straightaway headed for home but I didn‘t.
Quickly I unplugged the smoldering laptop and fanned it with a copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s Generation of Swine but I knew then that my actions were a futile attempt at reviving the burned out soul of what I had considered a dear and loyal friend. We’d shared many common interests including a strong affection for Internet porn, a mutual interest in word processing, and love for doctoring pictures of friends so they appeared in one strange setting or another and then E-mailing them to various political offices. It’s hard to find friends like that and I‘d miss that little red on/off light blikking at me but like many people in my life the my laptop too had let me down.
Jeff Barnard of the AP wrote in his piece: Alleged Suicide Party Planner Was Lonely, Transcript Says, that “A man who allegedly tried to organize a Valentine's Day sex and suicide party told a Canadian woman via Internet instant messaging that he wanted to die because he was lonely, women thought he was ugly and he had no one to hold but his dog.”
When my laptop blew I felt the same way as this suicide party organizer. I had no one to hold but my two attack Chihuahuas. The friend I’d spent countless hours with was spread out on my desk, her circuitry smoldering, her memories gone. I momentarily considered organizing a computer suicide pact where I would contact other laptop owners and on next Valentines day we would take sledge hammers to our computers but of course my computer was already dead so taking a sledge hammer to it would be redundant.
Having a piece due the next day for a senior citizens magazine I drove to Circuit City and made my way to the laptop computers. I didn’t see much that interested me until I caught a glint out of the corner of my eye. When I turned I saw her. She was sitting cockeyed on the display shelf, her display unabashedly picturing a cool blue tropical ocean with multicolored fishes swimming about.
“How are you doing baby?” I said.
She beeped at me and I picked her up and held her to my heart.
This was no way to start off a day I told myself but it isn’t like me to listen to reason even if it is of my own design so I reached up on the luggage rack of my Cherokee to scrape off a purple piece of bird shit with a twig and a bolt of pain shot through my deltoid muscle. Evidently I’d tweaked something in the late night, some hinge like joint or tendon in my shoulder was dangerously out of place and would require surgery or at the very least several weeks worth of self-prescribed herbal infusions coupled with frequent visits to my well stocked medicine and liquor cabinets.
"Damn kids," I cried.
Yes, I cursed the lethargic youth of America, the way they mainlined television and video games, thus surpassing the brain and any hope of enlightenment. I blamed one young bastard in particular for the condition of my badly injured shoulder and swore on all that was rock and roll that I would tap dance on his teeth with my Burmese jungle boots if he was ever unlucky enough to pass my sordid path again. I wished it had all been a bad dream and it was, only I’d been awake and the hour had been late and there would be no turning back for turning back is never an option when the adrenalin kicks in.
* * *
I’d been in a deep Franziskaner induced sleep when my attack Chihuahua’s, Uma and Flea, began howling and clawing at my nightstand like their were porterhouses hidden in the drawers. I knew then that something was seriously amiss for these miniature beasts had been born from the purest Mexican bloodlines and trained in the ways of the nations top police dogs.
“What is it?” I asked.
Uma and Flea howled liked they’d never howled before and scurried out into the kitchen and ran in circles barking and hopping about as if there little toes were touching down on the hood of a Corvette that had been sitting in the hot summer sun.
I rolled out of bed, falling on the floor, and once I’d collected myself I wrapped myself in the tribal bathrobe my brother had brought back for me from Senegal and made my way out into the kitchen. To sate the Chihuahua brood I procured a fist full of desiccated liver treats and tossed them onto the floor. When the organ meat hit throw rug in the middle of my kitchen they ceased their crazed circling and yapping, devouring their late night meal with great gusto. This brief reprieve from this late night madness allowed me time to fetch a Franziskaner from the refrigerator.
I was opening my beer over the sink when I spied a Volkswagen Bug parked behind my house. From what I could make out under the haze of the flickering street light there were two people in the back seat and it appeared they were involved in some sort of tussle or perhaps it was the lustful wrestling of two oversexed speed freaks.
“Bastards,” I yelled and ran back into my bedroom.
Lately the alleyway behind my house had become a haven for reckless drug types that stove piped heinous substances into their systems and lay twitching on the periphery of my back yard like electrocuted cattle, something I would not tolerate in my neighborhood where, in addition to all the old folks I was pretty sure I’d see a little girl riding a tricycle several months earlier. And even in if there weren’t any children in my neighborhood there was my sanity to think about and the well being of my Chihuahuas who are apt to hyperventilate at the slightest of disturbances despite their vigorous and thorough training.
From underneath my mattress of my bed I took out my 12 gauge Autoloader 935 Mossberg. Yes, I sleep on my shotgun and if Hans Christian Andersen had any real sense he would have had his princess sleeping on a musket. What the Hell good is a pea even if you have a shooter? That‘s no way to fight evil.
The shotgun gun wasn’t loaded, never is, I merely use it for the intimidation factor. In my hands the 12 gauge gives the impression to those that I encounter of a madman hell bent on one type of destruction or another, and I figure if I am attacked I can always skull an intruder with the barrel and then run like Hell.
I won’t even consider using bullets, they are messy and cause bleeding and possible death and I cherish naked women, beer and drugs too much to be locked away in some god forsaken hillbilly jail for the rest of my days answering to sadistic guards that prune their yellow fingernails with garden sheers and spit them at you in your cell.
“Come on out you bastards,” I yelled, and flung open the back door.
I scanned the back yard with the barrel of the Mossberg on which I’d duct taped the largest sized Mag-Lite that a civilian can buy without some sort of permit. The real big flashlights, so I’m told, are sold only to law enforcement and mounted on one’s shoulder like a bazooka.
“Who’s in that bug,” I yelled and swiveled my head back and forth in an agitated manner so these drugged out freaks would know that no matter how much junk they stuffed up their noses, that no matter how far into the Technicolor forest of depravity they had ventured that I would not disappear with a blink of the eyes like so many of their hopped up hallucinations.
A vast triangle of yellow light given off by the Mag-Lite engulfed the Volkswagen Bug and I was disappointed to find nothing that would tip me off as to what kind of wickedness these drugged out sex fiends had indulged in inside the tiny car. I did however smell the tangy aroma of what I immediately recognized as cannabis and knew that where there was smoke there was most definitely a stoner with a bad case of paranoia coming down on him like an avalanche of moldy pizza boxes.
“Come on out. I‘m a trained tracker. With the help of my attack dogs I can follow your trail over seventy miles of macadam. There’s no use trying to run from me,” I said.
I scanned the woods across the alleyway with the Mossberg and heard rattling coming from under a dead Christmas tree I’d discarded there in January. I spun on the heels of my Burmese Jungle Boots and illuminated the tree.
“Who is that under my Christmas tree,” I yelled.
Slowly the tree lifted and I could see the oval face and almond eyes of an exotic beauty. She was wearing some sort of fluorescent lipstick that was smeared across her face like the war paint of a marauding 19th century hooker who had just been beating down the warpath of degenerative syphilis.
“Rise up slowly and don’t make any sudden moves,” I said, biting down on my cigar.
It was then that I spied her necking partner lying face down behind a pile of leaves, a slight, pock faced youth with black spiked hair. He was wearing a Sixers Jersey and baggy jeans and had the hollow eyes of an excessive masturbator and the slack lips of a county mental patient. Mixed with drugs and the build up of testosterone that I’d imagined he’d stockpiled during his little back seat love session I knew I’d have to keep my eye on him for these are the types that act quickly and irrationally, consequence be damned. There is only in their minds the notion of the old in and out and from there all else breaks down into mindless garble of too many video games and the fast food grease fusing to their underused synapses. These types are apt like starving weasels to go after the arteries in your ankles or wherever else you might be vulnerable to attack. They have no respect for what made this country great and flog relentlessly on the American dream like it was a fat schoolmate with an effeminate lisp.
“Hey man, everything’s cool,” the zit faced kid said, taking a step towards me.
“Drop the Elvis vernacular you pint-sized rodent. You’re not even a carbuncle on the bottom of the King’s yacht. So if you want everything to remain “cool” you won’t take another step towards me,” I said.
“What you need a gun to take me on tough guy? My parents are lawyers,” he said, the zits on his face pulsing like the taillights on a cement truck. “You’ll be in jail before you can say dips hit.”
“No, I don’t need a gun and thanks for telling me your parents were lawyers I hadn’t decided to beat on you until you told me that, dipshit.”
The girl screamed and the Chihuahuas went wild jumping up at the screen door and clawing it madly. I knew then that it was only a matter of time before the dizzying red lights of the borough police would be spinning in front of my eyes.
“You think that your parents being lawyers makes you a big shot?” I asked.
“I know it makes me a bigshot. They‘re rich and will sue the pants off of you if you even touch me,” he said, stepping towards me.
I imagined his parents were the same gutless fools that get high on grandiose notions of excessive wealth, who snub out the common folk so that they may live in filthy excess while the down trodden subsist on broken dreams and cheap liquor. And it’s true that the wealthy are the most perverted residents of this country and that’s simply because they can afford to be perverts. If some poor slob living in a trailer in Alabama has a Urophilia fetish and can’t find a willing partner to piss on his forehead he is SOL. The bastard has no outlet other than to go back stroking through one of those public trough like urinals but if the rich man can’t find a woman willing to urinate on him for free he need only to start flashing enough money around and soon enough fantasy will become reality. So, you see why I say that the really whacked shit is left for the wealthy who can afford to buy anonymity. I pity the poor bustards that just want someone to piss on them or for someone to wrap them in Saran Wrap and beat them with a garden hose but can’t afford the $300 dollars an hour that would make their dream come true. Yes, the American dream has officially been trampled.
“Your dad probably likes to hire hookers to piss on his hairy back,” I said, flipping the Mossberg up onto my shoulder.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” the zit faced kid said.
“Just let us go. We won’t come back here,” the girl said.
I didn’t realize it at the time but I was standing on the wall of rotting railroad ties that make up the landscaping on the backside of my property and when I went to step towards the girl one of the railroad ties gave and I went tumbling down the hill. I rolled over several garbage cans and stopped when my shoulder slammed up against the rear tire of my Cherokee which was at the end of the driveway.
“Come back you cowards,” I cried from the bottom of my driveway as the two neckers took off.
I heard the Volkswagen fire up and as I stood I saw it meandering off into the night like a baby humpback with a harpoon in its ribs. Hurt and angry I collected my Mossberg and headed into the house and cured my wounds with a dozen or so Fransikaners. I passed out in front of the fireplace with the Chihuahuas sleeping on my back.
* * *
And so I awoke the next morning despising today’s youth for their ignorance and insolence and drove to work under the influence of enough caffeine to jump start a dead mammoth.
When I sat down and plugged in my laptop at work it hissed at me like a gila monster with its tail clenched in the jaws of a bobcat. White sparks shot up in the air and looked like the spit flying out of an elderly auctioneers mouth and from the center of the keyboard there rose a giant mushroom cloud of smoke. I knew, as any fool would, that this was not a good addition to my already compromised day and should have straightaway headed for home but I didn‘t.
Quickly I unplugged the smoldering laptop and fanned it with a copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s Generation of Swine but I knew then that my actions were a futile attempt at reviving the burned out soul of what I had considered a dear and loyal friend. We’d shared many common interests including a strong affection for Internet porn, a mutual interest in word processing, and love for doctoring pictures of friends so they appeared in one strange setting or another and then E-mailing them to various political offices. It’s hard to find friends like that and I‘d miss that little red on/off light blikking at me but like many people in my life the my laptop too had let me down.
Jeff Barnard of the AP wrote in his piece: Alleged Suicide Party Planner Was Lonely, Transcript Says, that “A man who allegedly tried to organize a Valentine's Day sex and suicide party told a Canadian woman via Internet instant messaging that he wanted to die because he was lonely, women thought he was ugly and he had no one to hold but his dog.”
When my laptop blew I felt the same way as this suicide party organizer. I had no one to hold but my two attack Chihuahuas. The friend I’d spent countless hours with was spread out on my desk, her circuitry smoldering, her memories gone. I momentarily considered organizing a computer suicide pact where I would contact other laptop owners and on next Valentines day we would take sledge hammers to our computers but of course my computer was already dead so taking a sledge hammer to it would be redundant.
Having a piece due the next day for a senior citizens magazine I drove to Circuit City and made my way to the laptop computers. I didn’t see much that interested me until I caught a glint out of the corner of my eye. When I turned I saw her. She was sitting cockeyed on the display shelf, her display unabashedly picturing a cool blue tropical ocean with multicolored fishes swimming about.
“How are you doing baby?” I said.
She beeped at me and I picked her up and held her to my heart.
Oh no W not again
"If you see a train wreck coming, you ought to be saying, what are you going to do about it, Mr. Congressman, or Madam Congressman?"
Actual George W. Bush quote, Detroit, February, 2005
From Rolling Stone
Actual George W. Bush quote, Detroit, February, 2005
From Rolling Stone
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Monday, February 14, 2005
Observations in Miniature: People in the Grocery Store
If you see yourself amongst these people it might be time to change your shopping habits.
Bachelor Shopper– Chunky Steak & Potato Soup, Quaker Made Sandwich Steaks, Oscar Mayer Bacon, Frank’s RedHot hot sauce, Cheese Whiz, Wonder Bread, Ball Park Franks, Cheetos, Jiff. Can you say heart attack? No wonder you’re skin is the shade of a dead dolphin. What are you going to do with that bunt cake have a personal tea party? Put that the fuck down and go get some fruit and vegetables. Have you ever heard of fiber? Are you trying to get prostate cancer? No, bacon is not a food group. Are you following Fat Albert’s recommended nutritional guidelines? No wonder men die younger than women. Here’s a clue. The reason your sweat smells like bologna, your BP is 190 over 210, and your depressed is because you’re ingesting enough chemicals, fat and sodium to fell a rhino. Respect yourself. Put down the king sized container of sour cream dip and pick up a container of yogurt. That’s it. Feel that strange sensation in your heart? That’s blood actually working its way through your arteries.
Frantic Snow Storm Shopper – Are you running a home for wayward boys? No? It’s just you, your husband and two children. Then why the fuck did you just buy seven loaves of bread, eight cartons of eggs, and five gallons of milk? Do you subsist solely on French Toast? No? In case you just rolled out of a time machine let me let you in on a little secret. No one in the United States has died of starvation in the last fifty years because they were snowed in. You’re being greedy. A snow storm is not a nuclear holocaust you will be able to emerge from your living room bunker within the next day or two. So, if you really need it buy one loaf of bread, one carton of eggs and one gallon of milk and leave some for other people like me. My grocery shopping day just happens to fall the day before the big ½ inch of projected snowfall and I really am out of groceries. Thank-you for being so courteous.
Coupon Cocksucker – What’s in that briefcase stacked on top of your overflowing cart of groceries? Oh dear God you have coupons wrapped like one hundred dollar bills and they are filling the entire briefcase. I’m trapped in line. There are two people lined up behind me. I’ll be here until the next Super Bowl. What? You say you’re thrifty. No, you’re just annoying. You bought 32 gallons of orange juice and saved fifty cents? I’m relieved you won’t be getting scurvy but if you buy the store brand you will save even more and I won’t have to wait for eons behind you in the checkout line. Let’s be logical and break this down. Coupons, for the most part, entice you to buy shit you wouldn’t have bought in the first place. It’s a marketing ploy. Oh, here’s a coupon for Grandma Remmy’s fried cow testicles. I’d never normally eat them but they’re on sale so I bought six jars. Do you get it? You’re not really saving money! You’re spending money on shit you don’t need because there is a coupon for it! So, have we learned our economic lesson for the day? Good, because since you opened your briefcase of coupons Haley’s Comet just flew by again.
Senior Shoppers – It’s nice to get out of the retirement village and shuffle around during the busiest store hours of the shopping day isn’t it? I have only one question for you. What the fuck were you doing all day long while I was at work! You can’t tell me that bingo and shuffle board took eight hours. Did you just stand and line at the deli for ten minutes hemming and hawing over buying one piece of fucking lunch meat? What are you going to do with that? Slice it up four ways and have a dinner party? Here’s a clue. Buy several pieces of lunch meat then you won’t have to come back to the grocery store every day and won’t be in my way every time I try to push my cart down an aisle. And to the old men specifically, stop fucking flirting with the checkout girls you’re wasting my time and theirs. I don’t give a fuck what Twilight Zone episode you live in you are not going to get to check your rejuvenated Viagra wood out on that eighteen year old checkout girl. Are we clear? Good. Now get in your cart. I’ll push you out to your fifty foot long Cadillac.
Oblivious Mother with Kid in Cart – Hello, earth to mother. Does little Satan want another box of Oreo Cookies dipped in chocolate? Is that what he’s whining about? I have an idea MOVE YOUR FUCKING CART! You don’t need to park sideways across the cracker and cookie aisle. There’s something going on outside that microcosm that is your world and it’s called me trying to get my cart past you so I can get done with my shopping. And another thing. After you get done pulling Hell child off the candy rack in the checkout line, which takes a good ten or fifteen minutes to wrench the Snickers bars and M&M’s from his fists, don’t write a fucking check. Wake up. No one uses checks anymore. Get a fucking check card because inevitably there will be a problem with your check and I will be waiting behind you as the beast that has sprung form your loins sticks his tongue out at me and screams like a cat with its tale caught in a garbage disposal. You’re right my hair is thinning but my patience are wearing even thinner so if you want to be around to see Beelzebub graduate from prison boot camp I suggest you use cash next time.
Sally Wheatgrass (AKA the Overdone Vegetarian lady) - No, don’t stand up in the back of your cart; your pencil thin legs might go right through the grating. Is there any meat in that cart underneath all that foliage? No, soy nuggets are not a mammal. If it didn’t have a tail it doesn’t qualify. You won’t eat anything with milk or eggs in it because it’s murder? Oh, right I forgot I watched an episode of Beasts on the Savannah last week and they showed a loaf of Wonder Bread running from a pack of hyenas. Okay, you’ve taken this hippie Hindu reincarnation shit too far and it’s abundantly clear from your anemic complexion and spindly limbs that you need the advice of a doctor. As an unlicensed physician I recommend ingesting 10 cc’s of lard, preferably hydrogenated beef fat, and to wrap yourself in ten pounds of cooked bacon and olive loaf overnight. Thos canines in your mouth are there for a reason and it is not to viciously tear at lettuce leaves. Your ancestors’ brains grew because they were able to gradually consume more protein, thus improving their hunting skills and their intellectual capacity for preparing meat in tangy sauces. Get it Sally Wheatgrass? Good. Now, join hands with Colonel Sanders and repeat after me: Protein is not my enemy. It is my friend. If the Hindus are right and I did just eat my dead uncle's soul in that bucket of KFC then so what? He tasted like chicken and will come back as something else very soon.
Bachelor Shopper– Chunky Steak & Potato Soup, Quaker Made Sandwich Steaks, Oscar Mayer Bacon, Frank’s RedHot hot sauce, Cheese Whiz, Wonder Bread, Ball Park Franks, Cheetos, Jiff. Can you say heart attack? No wonder you’re skin is the shade of a dead dolphin. What are you going to do with that bunt cake have a personal tea party? Put that the fuck down and go get some fruit and vegetables. Have you ever heard of fiber? Are you trying to get prostate cancer? No, bacon is not a food group. Are you following Fat Albert’s recommended nutritional guidelines? No wonder men die younger than women. Here’s a clue. The reason your sweat smells like bologna, your BP is 190 over 210, and your depressed is because you’re ingesting enough chemicals, fat and sodium to fell a rhino. Respect yourself. Put down the king sized container of sour cream dip and pick up a container of yogurt. That’s it. Feel that strange sensation in your heart? That’s blood actually working its way through your arteries.
Frantic Snow Storm Shopper – Are you running a home for wayward boys? No? It’s just you, your husband and two children. Then why the fuck did you just buy seven loaves of bread, eight cartons of eggs, and five gallons of milk? Do you subsist solely on French Toast? No? In case you just rolled out of a time machine let me let you in on a little secret. No one in the United States has died of starvation in the last fifty years because they were snowed in. You’re being greedy. A snow storm is not a nuclear holocaust you will be able to emerge from your living room bunker within the next day or two. So, if you really need it buy one loaf of bread, one carton of eggs and one gallon of milk and leave some for other people like me. My grocery shopping day just happens to fall the day before the big ½ inch of projected snowfall and I really am out of groceries. Thank-you for being so courteous.
Coupon Cocksucker – What’s in that briefcase stacked on top of your overflowing cart of groceries? Oh dear God you have coupons wrapped like one hundred dollar bills and they are filling the entire briefcase. I’m trapped in line. There are two people lined up behind me. I’ll be here until the next Super Bowl. What? You say you’re thrifty. No, you’re just annoying. You bought 32 gallons of orange juice and saved fifty cents? I’m relieved you won’t be getting scurvy but if you buy the store brand you will save even more and I won’t have to wait for eons behind you in the checkout line. Let’s be logical and break this down. Coupons, for the most part, entice you to buy shit you wouldn’t have bought in the first place. It’s a marketing ploy. Oh, here’s a coupon for Grandma Remmy’s fried cow testicles. I’d never normally eat them but they’re on sale so I bought six jars. Do you get it? You’re not really saving money! You’re spending money on shit you don’t need because there is a coupon for it! So, have we learned our economic lesson for the day? Good, because since you opened your briefcase of coupons Haley’s Comet just flew by again.
Senior Shoppers – It’s nice to get out of the retirement village and shuffle around during the busiest store hours of the shopping day isn’t it? I have only one question for you. What the fuck were you doing all day long while I was at work! You can’t tell me that bingo and shuffle board took eight hours. Did you just stand and line at the deli for ten minutes hemming and hawing over buying one piece of fucking lunch meat? What are you going to do with that? Slice it up four ways and have a dinner party? Here’s a clue. Buy several pieces of lunch meat then you won’t have to come back to the grocery store every day and won’t be in my way every time I try to push my cart down an aisle. And to the old men specifically, stop fucking flirting with the checkout girls you’re wasting my time and theirs. I don’t give a fuck what Twilight Zone episode you live in you are not going to get to check your rejuvenated Viagra wood out on that eighteen year old checkout girl. Are we clear? Good. Now get in your cart. I’ll push you out to your fifty foot long Cadillac.
Oblivious Mother with Kid in Cart – Hello, earth to mother. Does little Satan want another box of Oreo Cookies dipped in chocolate? Is that what he’s whining about? I have an idea MOVE YOUR FUCKING CART! You don’t need to park sideways across the cracker and cookie aisle. There’s something going on outside that microcosm that is your world and it’s called me trying to get my cart past you so I can get done with my shopping. And another thing. After you get done pulling Hell child off the candy rack in the checkout line, which takes a good ten or fifteen minutes to wrench the Snickers bars and M&M’s from his fists, don’t write a fucking check. Wake up. No one uses checks anymore. Get a fucking check card because inevitably there will be a problem with your check and I will be waiting behind you as the beast that has sprung form your loins sticks his tongue out at me and screams like a cat with its tale caught in a garbage disposal. You’re right my hair is thinning but my patience are wearing even thinner so if you want to be around to see Beelzebub graduate from prison boot camp I suggest you use cash next time.
Sally Wheatgrass (AKA the Overdone Vegetarian lady) - No, don’t stand up in the back of your cart; your pencil thin legs might go right through the grating. Is there any meat in that cart underneath all that foliage? No, soy nuggets are not a mammal. If it didn’t have a tail it doesn’t qualify. You won’t eat anything with milk or eggs in it because it’s murder? Oh, right I forgot I watched an episode of Beasts on the Savannah last week and they showed a loaf of Wonder Bread running from a pack of hyenas. Okay, you’ve taken this hippie Hindu reincarnation shit too far and it’s abundantly clear from your anemic complexion and spindly limbs that you need the advice of a doctor. As an unlicensed physician I recommend ingesting 10 cc’s of lard, preferably hydrogenated beef fat, and to wrap yourself in ten pounds of cooked bacon and olive loaf overnight. Thos canines in your mouth are there for a reason and it is not to viciously tear at lettuce leaves. Your ancestors’ brains grew because they were able to gradually consume more protein, thus improving their hunting skills and their intellectual capacity for preparing meat in tangy sauces. Get it Sally Wheatgrass? Good. Now, join hands with Colonel Sanders and repeat after me: Protein is not my enemy. It is my friend. If the Hindus are right and I did just eat my dead uncle's soul in that bucket of KFC then so what? He tasted like chicken and will come back as something else very soon.
Friday, February 11, 2005
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Grandpa’s Somnus Sonata
On the plasma television in Scott’s Bar and Grille, where I was imbibing a multiplicity of fermented liquids I watched on channel 21 News as they covered the morning’s most newsworthy event.
That great keystone ground beaver, known as Punxsutawney Phil, thrust its triangular head out of its living chamber--a man made cement den--at approximately 7:30 AM. The handler of said varmint claims he rises every morning at this time but unless the little bastard has an alarm clock I would bet my left walnut that they attach a hose on the muffler of Chevy Impala (pre 1997 emission standards) and drop the other end of the hose down the hole and smoke the little shadow watcher out.
“What’s wrong with him?” Rosy asked.
“I don’t know he looks weird,” I said and sipped from my Troegenator.
Some guy in a top hat and tails held Phil up in the air so all could bow to the buck toothed vermin and in doing so, inadvertently exposed his groundhog unit which looked like a baby carrot. (Was I the only one that saw this?) Did being in the limelight give Phil wood? The handler then placed Phil on an oak stump so that he could examine his shadow and this is a first time I got a good look at his glazed eyes.
“That little bastard’s head is as high up in the clouds as a German Dirigible,” I said.
“Punxsutawney Phil is stoned?” Rosy asked.
“It would appear so. Perhaps he’s not the agreeable little fellow that they portray him to be but needs to be sedated for the big show. I don’t blame him. Who the Hell would want to be roused from bed just to look at their shadow?”
“I don’t get it,” Rosy said. “He saw his shadow so there’s supposed to be six more weeks of winter?”
“It would appear that is the case,” I said.
I turned my attention to my stripper girlfriend, throttled the last of my beer and nuzzled her neck. I playfully batted at her beaded hair.
“Ewe, you have beer breath,” she said.
“You’re neck smells like the sweat rung out of Athena’s gym towel,” I said, trying to be romantic.
“That’s gross,” Rosy said.
“According to mythological tabloids her sweat smelled like select French toilet water.”
She giggled and kissed me on the cheek and I turned my attention to the jazz band positioned in the corner of the dance floor.
The leader of the jazz band dipped back with microphone in hand and the trumpet player’s cheeks blew out like the chewing gum bubble of a pretentious teeny bopper. The piano player’s fingers melded with the keys and grew like great fleshy roots up into the trunk of his soul and limbs of music spread out across the room and I was engulfed in the shade of it and I knew then that existence was a cruel unsubstantiated ruse, that I was a guinea pig in a universal experiment and I was not salivating like Pavlov’s dogs but reacting quite differently to the stimuli. Something unexpected was happening with this one and that great scientist in the laboratory of the heavens was left scratching his head, wondering where he’d gone wrong.
I shifted back and forth on my bar stool because my ass had fallen asleep from sitting too long.
“Are you dancing while you’re sitting?” Rosy asked.
“Yes, I learned this little number in Senegal, Africa from a relatively unknown horde of gypsy pygmies that were said to have introduced John Coltrane to jazz while he visited the country in the early forties. They took me to a place down below Kedougou along the Gambian border to a waterfall and beneath the waterfall in a cave was a weathered tenor saxophone surrounded by offerings to the God they called Coltrane. Amongst the artifacts scattered about were: frankincense, Bic Lighters, bottles of Coca-Cola, plastic spoons, and several G-strings. Unfortunately they wouldn’t allow me to take any photographs so I can’t substantiate this claim so you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“That sounds made up,” Rosy said.
“A lot of what I say will but don’t doubt me. You’ll only be fooling yourself.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Nonsense, drunk doesn’t start until the coordination leaves, when one starts walking into cigarette machines and jukeboxes and inadvertantly grabs fleshy female parts.”
“Whatever,” Rosy said, tossing her beaded hair back.
I was well on my way to intoxication for I had in me seven glasses of Troegenator and was feeling like the chest beating god of some polytheistic cult and needed only to wrap myself in a grass skirt, tape ram horns to my forehead, jump up on the bar and dance like some Parkinsons stricken tribal tap dancer for the illusion to be complete but alas, such displays are frowned upon in modern society and particularly so in establishments in which live performers are already being offered, so I refrained from acting out on such primitive urges.
“I’ve heard stories about you,” Rosy said, and sipped from her chocolate martini.
“That was a long time ago. You’ll have to take my word that I’m a changed man and besides I’ve heard stories about you. It seems you can’t stay in a relationship, that you’re scared of the commitment or something. Maybe you need a father figure for a lover. If that’s the case I’ll buy a pipe and a smoking jacket and berate you for not doing your homework.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” she said.
“It doesn’t involve PVC piping and hydraulics does it?” I asked.
“What?”
“Nothing, Peanut,” I said.
For some odd reason Rosy insisted that I come up with a nickname for her. She claimed she couldn’t begin to fall in love with me until I had personalized the relationship. Of course she asked me in the depths of a Friday night binge while I was sitting at a bar and happened to look down into the peanut bowl.
“How about Peanut?” I had said.
She had smiled and those brown eyes melted through me heart like two hot buttermilk biscuits tossed into a snowdrift. The possibility that Rosy was the ONE I had been searching for formed legs and ran across the great plain of my mind but as always that cock sucker doubt was waiting, stuck a leg out and tripped the beautiful notion leaving me wondering.
“This jazz band is really good,” Rosy said.
“Very,” I said.
I leaned back and wrapped my arm around her thin waist and while doing so my cell phone began to vibrate.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Rosy asked.
“Right,” I said, snatching the cell phone out of my pocket
I read the display. The number was one I didn’t recognize and fearing that it was another woman I’d given my phone number to before I met Rosy I figured I should answer the call somewhere else.
“Excuse me Peanut, I have to go answer this call and I won’t be able to hear at the bar,” I said.
“I’ll be waiting,” she said, and seductively licked the rim of her martini glass.
I flipped open my cell phone. “Hello,” I said, as I made my way back to the bathroom.
“This is Grandpa. I need someone to pick me up at the Hershey Hospital.”
“Hello…hello,” I said, but I had been cut off.
As I relieved myself in the bathroom I tried to call my Grandfather back at the number he’d called me from but no one answered. I then tried to contact family members to see why my Grandfather was in the hospital but no one answered. Family members are often weary of answering telephone calls from me at night for fear I am calling to ask them to bail me out of jail.
“Bastards,” I said under my breath as I zipped up my pants.
As I turned I looked into the mirror and with my brain bobbing in a night’s worth of booze I didn’t immediately recognize myself and as I drew closer I appeared grotesque and my features became distorted. It was like I’d dropped acid and been pushed in front of a funhouse mirror.
“Steady, old boy,” I said.
I leaned over the sink, turned on the cold water and began to splash it on my face while humming “Mansion on the Hill” by Neil Young. I then proceeded to towel my face and this is when I first noticed the tall guy with an Adam’s apple so big it looked like he was in the process of swallowing a janitor’s key chain.
“I have a slight case of vertigo. When I was a child I was struck in the temple by a clay pigeon” I said.
“Are you almost done?” he said.
“Define almost,” I said. “Is it that tiny sliver of perception lodged precariously between yes and no but leaning towards yes that cannot be accurately measured but is merely assumed by those conducting said task?”
“Listen, I have friends waiting for me are you done yet?” he said, his Adam’s apple frantically moving up and down his neck like a claustrophobic weasel trapped in a sleeping bag. I was momentarily hypnotized by the sight of it and only snapped out of it when he sighed loudly.
I stepped aside and gestured him towards the sink. I felt like taking his Jones of New York tie off and strangling him with it but had to get back to Peanut and tell her I had to go pick up my Grandfather.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, when returned to the bar.
“Where are we going next?” Rosy asked.
“How about the Hershey hospital? My Grandfather tells me they have great tapioca pudding.”
“Are you serious?”
“Never, but in this case I mean what I say. I have to go to the hospital and pick him up. I got a frantic call from him.”
“What’s he in the hospital for?” Peanut asked, and downed the rest of her chocolate martini.
“I have no idea and although I am his personal chauffer on a part-time basis I usually require some sort of notice to undertake driving responsibilities.”
“Well, okay, I guess we can go get him but I’ll drive. You’ve already had half dozen beers or so.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, onward and upward, my darling,” I said.
* * *
We lit out into the new night with Rosy piloting beneath the star studded and moon embroidered backdrop of the denim sky. She bore down on the suicide wheel of my Cherokee and took turns with a reckless abandon that Evil Knievel would have tipped his motorcycle helmet to.
“It looks dead here,” Rosy said as we entered the hospital.
“What did you expect? This isn’t a disco,” I said.
“I know but it’s depressing,” Rosy said.
I put my arm around her waist as we waited for the elevator and gradually let it slide down to her butt and gave it a squeeze.
“Stop that,” she said, looking around. “Are you sure you got the right room number?”
“Yeah, the receptionist said it was the third floor. Don’t worry I’m not taking you to the mental ward.”
‘Good, because you’d probably be the one they locked up,” she said.
“You’ve got a point there,” I said.
The third floor was as dead as the rest of the hospital and we skirted the nursing staff stationed by making a b-line for the hallway that housed room numbers 310-320. My Grandfather’s room was 320 and located at the end of the hallway.
“I want to warn you,” I said before we entered, “my Grandfather is very fond of polyester. His entire wardrobe is highly flammable. In fact it’s so hazardous I heard he had to take out extra fire insurance to cover it. Just don’t be surprised if he’s lying in bed wearing a red leisure suit.”
“Okay,” Rosy, said.
We opened the door to the room and stepped into the vacuum created by my Grandfather’s snoring. As my Grandfather’s exhaled his cheeks, wrinkled and loose with age, rippled like a swimming pool cover in a hurricane. When he inhaled his lips disappeared within his toothless mouth and his nose vibrated like a loose muffler. The snore itself had a definite rhythm, a choppy sucking staccato solo that gave way to a descending scale of lippy high notes.
“I could strip to that snore,” Rosy said, “its your grandpa’s own somnus sonata.”
“That’s catchy,” I said. “somnus sonata.”
I looked at my Grandfather lying in the bed. He’d once been such a powerful man of immense bulk but now he was only a husk of his former self. I knew that it was unlikely that my constitution will allow for old age to gently cradle me, to rock me gently and to lull me into that last big nap as the grim reaper gently stroked my balding head. No, I wouldn’t go out like that. I will go out with my six lasers blazing, like some mad space cowboy in an inter-dimensional shoot out.
“Grandpa?” I said and his eye lids shot open like the spring loaded trapdoors revealing the core of his azure dreams. “Hey there how are you doing?”
“Everything sounds like I’m under water,” my Grandfather said, his gravely voice weaker than usual.
I noticed he didn’t have his hearing aides in. I pointed to the nightstand beside him and he retrieved them and as he tried to place them in his ears they squealed in protest. When his hearing aides were in place he zeroed in on Rosy.
“Jesus Christ, this one’s beautiful,” my Grandfather said, pushing himself up in the bed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said grabbing for her hand and kissing it. “Are you going to get smart and marry this one?”
“Don’t scare her off. I just met her,” I said.
To Rosie’s credit she didn't wipe her hand off which might have discouraged him. I believed this to be a very brave move because I knew my Grandfather was a geriatric Casanova and still flirted relentlessly when confronted with attractive or even not so attractive females and that deep in the recesses of his mind a little voice was whispering in his ear, "you just might have a chance." I also knew his pharmaceutical arsenal contained Viagra because I drove him to and from the pharmacy which made me even wearier of his intentions.
“Hello,” a whiney voice said.
I turned and a nurse with very wide hips was coming at me pushing a cart full of food. Her face was ashen and angry and appeared to be covered in a thin film of paraffin wax. Her pug nose was saddled by two thick cheeks and she wore black granny glasses but the most noticeable of her features was a mole the size of a goat turd on her left cheek.
“Buenos Dias,” I said, trying not to stare at her mole.
“We need to change your sheets and then you can eat,” the nurse said, unenthusiastically.
Her tone sounded as if she were talking to a baby, trying to coax it to eat a spoon fool of red beets. I felt like smacking her. I would dub her Nurse Mole.
She pushed her cart against the wall and then from the far wall wheeled over what I can only describe as a little crane. She pushed it over beside my Grandfather’s bed and then with some maneuvering positioned a thick blue strap under his stomach. She then cranked the machine and my grandfather rose up over the bed and hung there like a trophy fish. As he dangled above the bed I noticed that the smock he was wearing wasn’t big enough to cover his ass and quickly I looked away afraid that I might see something that would traumatize me for years to come.
“So what do you do Rosy?” my Grandfather asked.
“I’m a professional dancer,” Rosy said.
“She has cancer?” my Grandfather asked.
“No, no she’s a dancer.”
My Grandfather squinted and I could tell he still hadn’t heard me. He continued to spin in circles above the bed as the nurse hastily changed the sheets. I noticed he kept glancing at the nurse’s rather large rear end and this was another thing that I truly didn’t want to see.
“What are you in here for?” I asked.
“In for?…oh, they don’t know. They’re taking tests but they said it wasn’t a heart attack or stroke.”
“We think your Grandfather took too many sleeping pills,” Nurse Mole said.
“Did you do that on purpose?” I asked looking up at my Grandfather but he had spun all the way around and I was staring at his ass. “Oh, dear God.”
Rosy giggled.
“Could you stop spinning like that?” I asked.
My Mother had told me that as a youngster her family moved frequently because my Grandfather often became depressed and needed a change of scenery. I wondered if perhaps since he’d lost his powerful physique to old age and wasn’t nearly as active that he might have decided to pack it in.
“All done,” the nurse said, lowering my Grandfather back into bed.
“My grandson is going to take me home,” my Grandfather said, attempting to sit up.
“No, not now,” the nurse said in that Goddamn condescending voice that made me want to strangle her. “We have to wait and see when the doctor says you can leave.”
Nurse Mole hurried out of the room after depositing my Grandfather’s dinner beside him. I took three Troegs Hopbacks out of my leather jacket cracked them open and handed them out.
“I thought you said you were ready to go,” I said.
“I’m fine. These damn doctors want to keep me in here in case I die on the sidewalk on the way out. They’re afraid they’ll get sued. To be honest with you I’d rather die on the sidewalk than lie in here in this damn bed,” he said.
He put one wobbly leg on the ground and then the other and then pushed himself up. He didn’t look steady on his feet.
“Well, take you home if you want to go home,” Rosy said.
“Peanut, be sensible, I can’t help him break out of the hospital,” I said.
“He’s not breaking out. He just wants to go home.”
“I don’t know how long I have but I do know that I don’t want to spend any more of it in here. Help me if you want. If not get out of my way because I’m leaving,” my Grandfather said, tilting his beer.
I thought of my own mortality, of the race with the Grim Reaper, a race that can’t be won. Even if I run and run and run and am laps ahead of that cock sucker I know he will eventually catch up to me and hopefully it won’t be in a hospital but in a giant bed buried in a pile of naked playmates; a snorkel my only air source as the light dims.
“Right, this place gives me the creeps,” I said. “Get your polyester leisure suit on we’re taking you home.”
Before I had time to shield my eyes my Grandfather tore his smock off.
“Oh, God, why didn’t you warn me you were going to do that?” I said.
“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” he said, pulling on his tighty whities.
“No, I’ve never seen anything quite like that before,” I said.
Rosy came up from behind me and kissed me on the back of the neck. My Grandfather pulled on his white turtle neck, light blue leisure suit, and white loafers and we were ready to roll.
“All right we’ll go down the stairs,” I said, leading the way out the door. I looked both ways and seeing that the coast was clear beckoned my Grandfather with my outstretched hand.
He shuffled slowly, as if he were lugging gold bullion in his pant pockets. It was depressing as Hell to see that old bastard, once so physically impressive reduced to the bare skin and bone workings of a feeble old man. When I was child I remembered looking at his massive arms--his T-shirt sleeves rolled up--and wondered if I weighed as much as one of the damn things.
“I’d like to go out and get a bight to eat,” my Grandfather said, as we made our way down the hallway.
“If you promise to chew your food, watching Mom give you the Heimlich maneuver wasn’t a pretty sight,” I said.
“I had a cold,” he said.
“When you don’t chew your food I don’t think it matters if you have a cold or not,” I said.
He tapped at his hearing aid, pretending not to hear me.
I held my hand up to stop my Grandfather and Rosy and peered around the corner to the nurses’ station.
“Okay, Rosy, go open the door to the stairs and Grandpa when I go up to the nurses desk and distract the nurses you go over to the stairs. Okay?”
“Will do,” my Grandfather said.
“Okay,” I said and sauntered up to the nurses’ desk as Rosy ran to the stairway.
“Good evening, ladies,” I said.
The three nurses—Nurse Mole, a full-figured blond, and a thin redhead—were sitting at the station and looked up at me, each of their mouths turned down into disapproving frowns. I’m sure they could smell the booze on me because all three of had their noses in the air and were sniffing like bloodhounds at the bottom of a tree with a runaway inmate hiding in it.
“I was wondering if it was possible to arrange a late night visitation with my great grand uncle William Shraphappy,” I said.
“Who?” Nurse Mole asked.
Momentarily I was again hypnotized by the mole on her cheek. It beckoned me. I was under its power as if it were some strange tribal idol with soul possessing abilities. I fought to look away and finally I was able to jerk my head away.
“Grab hold of yourself,” I said.
“What?” Nurse Mole asked.
“Uh, Bill Shraphappy?” I said. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw my Grandfather drinking his beer as he shuffled across the floor.
“Bill Shraphappy?” Nurse Mole said, and looked down at a clipboard. “I’m sorry you must have the wrong floor.”
“Right,” I said.
Nurse Mole looked at me and then saw my Grandfather.
“Excuse me,” she said standing.
There was but one thing to do to save my Grandfather and so I cast all dignity aside and clutched my heart.
“Oh, my God, I think I’m having a heart attack,” I said.
“Are you all right?” Nurse Mole asked.
“No...I mean I have a condition. It feels like ferrets wearing tiny cleats are scampering about on the inside of my heart. Oh…the…pain…is…unbearable…”
“You smell like alcohol,” Nurse Mole said, coming out from behind her station. She kneeled by my side and eyed me suspiciously and through her thickly lensed granny glasses her eyes appeared immense and I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t scream out in horror.
“The beer is prescription…specially formulated to thin the blood and fortified with vitamins and minerals,” I said, making sure not to look straight into her mole.
“I’ve never heard of a doctor prescribing alcohol for a heart problem,” Nurse Mole said and looked to her co-workers for support. They both shook their heads from side to side.
“Well my doctor is on the cutting edge of medicine. Are you sure there isn’t at least a light beer here?” I said and then coughed and rolled over like an obedient dog.
“There’s no beer here,” the blond nurse said.
“No, matter,” I said, jumping to my feet. “It seems my heart has returned to its normal rhythm.”
“We have help coming,” the redheaded nurse said.
“Tell them thank-you but I already gave at the VFW,” I said.
“What?” Nurse Mole said but I was already throwing the door open and running down the stairs.
My Grandfather and Rosy were walking slowly through the lobby when I caught up to them. I grabbed a wheelchair from beside the main desk.
“Sit in here,” I said to my Grandfather.
As my Grandfather slowly sat I heard someone yell, “there they are.”
“Hurry up,” Rosy said, “they’re coming.”
“Let’s go,” my Grandfather cried, tossing his beer bottle into a nearby planter.
We burst out through the front doors into the night and I could hear the clamoring of hospital staff behind us.
“Rosy, go get the Cherokee and meet us by the main entrance to the hospital.”
“Okay,” she said, turning towards me. I tossed her the keys, leading her slightly and she ran underneath them and snagged them. I continued to watch her exquisite ass as she ran away and nearly ran my Grandfather into a cement bench but recovered just in time.
“Jesus Christ, what the Hell are you doing?” my Grandfather asked.
“We’re getting you out of here,” I said.
I pushed the wheelchair into the expansive yard in the front of the hospital, running through piles of snow, over rocks and up and down gullies.
“You can’t take him,” Nurse Mole yelled from behind us. “It’s against hospital policy.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a mad posse of hospital staff was pursuing us, blood in their eyes, and like the town elder leading a witch hunt Nurse Mole was leading them; her blue nurse’s cape flapping behind her.
“Screw you Nurse Mole,” I cried and pushed even harder.
We were really moving and in the distance I could see my idling Cherokee.
“Groundhog hole,” my Grandfather cried but it was too late.
There was a terrible jolt and he flew out of the wheel chair and soared through the air with his arms outstretched in front of him and his white hair plastered against his head. In his light blue polyester suit it occurred to me that he looked like a geriatric super hero. Super Geezer?
He landed in a pile of snow and I ran up to him with the wheelchair. It occurred to me that this might be Punxsutawney Phil’s revenge, that his baby carrot erection on the morn of his shadow watching was a signal to all groundhogs to attack mankind. I would have to report this to Homeland Security.
“Take me back,” my Grandfather screamed.
“Nonsense, we’ve made it this far. I’m not going to let Nurse Mole win. Look there’s the Cherokee,” I said pulling him up into the wheelchair.
The sounds of the unruly hospital staff were growing closer. I chanced another quick look over my shoulder and Nurse Mole was now within twenty yards of us and gaining. Despite her large hips and ass--which was as wide as a washing machine--she seemed to be rather quick and with me in my Burmese Jungle boots and pushing my 83 year old grandfather in a wheelchair she had a slight advantage.
I pushed him up over the pile of snow and the footsteps grew closer. I knew then that we were not going to make it, that we would be overrun by the crazed hospital staff. My lungs were burning and I felt like the beer was going to come back up and this is when I saw the most beautiful of sights, a pair of headlights heading straight for me. I would know those headlights anywhere. They were the headlights of my Cherokee.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” my Grandfather cried and I was worried he really would have a heart attack.
The Cherokee swerved just before it reached us and Rosy drove right at the hospital staff that was chasing us and slid the truck sideways in front of them cutting them off. She contained them by doing donuts around them which gave my Grandfather and I time to make it to the main road.
We stopped at the intersection and when I turned the Cherokee was pulling up beside us.
“Hurry up get in,” Rosy said, through her open window.
I helped my Grandfather up out of his chair and into the front street. The hospital staff had gained momentum again and as I shut the passenger’s side door they came up on the other side of the Cherokee. Nurse Mole tried to get in on the other side but the door was locked. I thumbed my nose at her as Rosy peeled out.
“Ha ha,” my Grandfather cried, his dentures slipping and falling out of his mouth, rolling down the front of his shirt and onto the floor.
“Let’s get a drink and celebrate,” my Grandfather said.
“Yeah,” Rosy, said as the Cherokee slid around a corner.
I took out my ceramic alligator bowl and lit it.
“What in the Hell is that?” my Grandfather asked.
I’d forgotten that I shouldn’t partake in front of him and was at a loss as to what to use as an excuse so I winged it.
“It’s for my glaucoma,” I said.
“Bullshit, you don’t have glaucoma,” he said.
“Right,” I said, “want to try some?”
His big blue eyes zeroed in on me and I thought another “bullshit” was going to come from his mouth but instead his face softened.
“I don’t suppose at my age that it would hurt,” he said, reaching out and taking the bowl.
“Peanut, please stop at the Seven Eleven I need gas,” I said.
Rosy pulled into the Seven Eleven at the gas pumps and she and I exited the Cherokee.
“Ah ha.”
It was Nurse Mole! Evidently she’d hopped on the running board of my Cherokee, held onto the door handle and had ridden down to the Seven Eleven with us.
“Your Grandfather is coming back to the hospital with me,” she said gasping for breath.
“Okay, swivel hips let’s not get our hair net in a bunch,” I said.
Nurse Mole didn’t notice but Rosy had sneaked up behind her and was doing something with her cape.
“Hospital policy is hospital policy. It cannot be broken no matter what,” Nurse Mole said still heaving.
Rosy hopped back into the Cherokee and started to pull away with my Grandfather inside. I started after them and Nurse Mole started after me but then there was a ripping sound and when I glanced over my shoulder she was standing there in black lace lingerie. Rosy had tied her cape to the gas pumps.
“Let’s celebrate,” my Grandfather cried as we pulled out onto the highway.
I leaned back over the seat, took out two beers and handed one to my Grandfather and sat back in my seat. As I sipped my beer I looked in the rearview mirror at my Grandfather looking for myself in his features. I momentarily caught glimpses of myself--the curve of an eye brow, the shape of the mouth—but could not hold them. Somewhere pieces of my likeness was shifting within him.
“Let’s go back downtown and get some drinks,” Rosy said.
“Sounds good. We can all go out to an all night diner then,” I said. “How does that sound Grandpa?”
There was no answer. I looked into the back seat and he was sound asleep, his beer clutched in his hand. He was snoring.
“Grandpa’s somnus sonata,” I said and Rosy laughed.
* * *
If you can fit all your dreams in your back pocket you’d better take out that unbreakable flex comb and make room for more possibility because there’s a whole world to tackle out there and no one is going to give a damn when your dead if you dreamed enough or not.
That great keystone ground beaver, known as Punxsutawney Phil, thrust its triangular head out of its living chamber--a man made cement den--at approximately 7:30 AM. The handler of said varmint claims he rises every morning at this time but unless the little bastard has an alarm clock I would bet my left walnut that they attach a hose on the muffler of Chevy Impala (pre 1997 emission standards) and drop the other end of the hose down the hole and smoke the little shadow watcher out.
“What’s wrong with him?” Rosy asked.
“I don’t know he looks weird,” I said and sipped from my Troegenator.
Some guy in a top hat and tails held Phil up in the air so all could bow to the buck toothed vermin and in doing so, inadvertently exposed his groundhog unit which looked like a baby carrot. (Was I the only one that saw this?) Did being in the limelight give Phil wood? The handler then placed Phil on an oak stump so that he could examine his shadow and this is a first time I got a good look at his glazed eyes.
“That little bastard’s head is as high up in the clouds as a German Dirigible,” I said.
“Punxsutawney Phil is stoned?” Rosy asked.
“It would appear so. Perhaps he’s not the agreeable little fellow that they portray him to be but needs to be sedated for the big show. I don’t blame him. Who the Hell would want to be roused from bed just to look at their shadow?”
“I don’t get it,” Rosy said. “He saw his shadow so there’s supposed to be six more weeks of winter?”
“It would appear that is the case,” I said.
I turned my attention to my stripper girlfriend, throttled the last of my beer and nuzzled her neck. I playfully batted at her beaded hair.
“Ewe, you have beer breath,” she said.
“You’re neck smells like the sweat rung out of Athena’s gym towel,” I said, trying to be romantic.
“That’s gross,” Rosy said.
“According to mythological tabloids her sweat smelled like select French toilet water.”
She giggled and kissed me on the cheek and I turned my attention to the jazz band positioned in the corner of the dance floor.
The leader of the jazz band dipped back with microphone in hand and the trumpet player’s cheeks blew out like the chewing gum bubble of a pretentious teeny bopper. The piano player’s fingers melded with the keys and grew like great fleshy roots up into the trunk of his soul and limbs of music spread out across the room and I was engulfed in the shade of it and I knew then that existence was a cruel unsubstantiated ruse, that I was a guinea pig in a universal experiment and I was not salivating like Pavlov’s dogs but reacting quite differently to the stimuli. Something unexpected was happening with this one and that great scientist in the laboratory of the heavens was left scratching his head, wondering where he’d gone wrong.
I shifted back and forth on my bar stool because my ass had fallen asleep from sitting too long.
“Are you dancing while you’re sitting?” Rosy asked.
“Yes, I learned this little number in Senegal, Africa from a relatively unknown horde of gypsy pygmies that were said to have introduced John Coltrane to jazz while he visited the country in the early forties. They took me to a place down below Kedougou along the Gambian border to a waterfall and beneath the waterfall in a cave was a weathered tenor saxophone surrounded by offerings to the God they called Coltrane. Amongst the artifacts scattered about were: frankincense, Bic Lighters, bottles of Coca-Cola, plastic spoons, and several G-strings. Unfortunately they wouldn’t allow me to take any photographs so I can’t substantiate this claim so you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“That sounds made up,” Rosy said.
“A lot of what I say will but don’t doubt me. You’ll only be fooling yourself.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Nonsense, drunk doesn’t start until the coordination leaves, when one starts walking into cigarette machines and jukeboxes and inadvertantly grabs fleshy female parts.”
“Whatever,” Rosy said, tossing her beaded hair back.
I was well on my way to intoxication for I had in me seven glasses of Troegenator and was feeling like the chest beating god of some polytheistic cult and needed only to wrap myself in a grass skirt, tape ram horns to my forehead, jump up on the bar and dance like some Parkinsons stricken tribal tap dancer for the illusion to be complete but alas, such displays are frowned upon in modern society and particularly so in establishments in which live performers are already being offered, so I refrained from acting out on such primitive urges.
“I’ve heard stories about you,” Rosy said, and sipped from her chocolate martini.
“That was a long time ago. You’ll have to take my word that I’m a changed man and besides I’ve heard stories about you. It seems you can’t stay in a relationship, that you’re scared of the commitment or something. Maybe you need a father figure for a lover. If that’s the case I’ll buy a pipe and a smoking jacket and berate you for not doing your homework.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” she said.
“It doesn’t involve PVC piping and hydraulics does it?” I asked.
“What?”
“Nothing, Peanut,” I said.
For some odd reason Rosy insisted that I come up with a nickname for her. She claimed she couldn’t begin to fall in love with me until I had personalized the relationship. Of course she asked me in the depths of a Friday night binge while I was sitting at a bar and happened to look down into the peanut bowl.
“How about Peanut?” I had said.
She had smiled and those brown eyes melted through me heart like two hot buttermilk biscuits tossed into a snowdrift. The possibility that Rosy was the ONE I had been searching for formed legs and ran across the great plain of my mind but as always that cock sucker doubt was waiting, stuck a leg out and tripped the beautiful notion leaving me wondering.
“This jazz band is really good,” Rosy said.
“Very,” I said.
I leaned back and wrapped my arm around her thin waist and while doing so my cell phone began to vibrate.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Rosy asked.
“Right,” I said, snatching the cell phone out of my pocket
I read the display. The number was one I didn’t recognize and fearing that it was another woman I’d given my phone number to before I met Rosy I figured I should answer the call somewhere else.
“Excuse me Peanut, I have to go answer this call and I won’t be able to hear at the bar,” I said.
“I’ll be waiting,” she said, and seductively licked the rim of her martini glass.
I flipped open my cell phone. “Hello,” I said, as I made my way back to the bathroom.
“This is Grandpa. I need someone to pick me up at the Hershey Hospital.”
“Hello…hello,” I said, but I had been cut off.
As I relieved myself in the bathroom I tried to call my Grandfather back at the number he’d called me from but no one answered. I then tried to contact family members to see why my Grandfather was in the hospital but no one answered. Family members are often weary of answering telephone calls from me at night for fear I am calling to ask them to bail me out of jail.
“Bastards,” I said under my breath as I zipped up my pants.
As I turned I looked into the mirror and with my brain bobbing in a night’s worth of booze I didn’t immediately recognize myself and as I drew closer I appeared grotesque and my features became distorted. It was like I’d dropped acid and been pushed in front of a funhouse mirror.
“Steady, old boy,” I said.
I leaned over the sink, turned on the cold water and began to splash it on my face while humming “Mansion on the Hill” by Neil Young. I then proceeded to towel my face and this is when I first noticed the tall guy with an Adam’s apple so big it looked like he was in the process of swallowing a janitor’s key chain.
“I have a slight case of vertigo. When I was a child I was struck in the temple by a clay pigeon” I said.
“Are you almost done?” he said.
“Define almost,” I said. “Is it that tiny sliver of perception lodged precariously between yes and no but leaning towards yes that cannot be accurately measured but is merely assumed by those conducting said task?”
“Listen, I have friends waiting for me are you done yet?” he said, his Adam’s apple frantically moving up and down his neck like a claustrophobic weasel trapped in a sleeping bag. I was momentarily hypnotized by the sight of it and only snapped out of it when he sighed loudly.
I stepped aside and gestured him towards the sink. I felt like taking his Jones of New York tie off and strangling him with it but had to get back to Peanut and tell her I had to go pick up my Grandfather.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, when returned to the bar.
“Where are we going next?” Rosy asked.
“How about the Hershey hospital? My Grandfather tells me they have great tapioca pudding.”
“Are you serious?”
“Never, but in this case I mean what I say. I have to go to the hospital and pick him up. I got a frantic call from him.”
“What’s he in the hospital for?” Peanut asked, and downed the rest of her chocolate martini.
“I have no idea and although I am his personal chauffer on a part-time basis I usually require some sort of notice to undertake driving responsibilities.”
“Well, okay, I guess we can go get him but I’ll drive. You’ve already had half dozen beers or so.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, onward and upward, my darling,” I said.
* * *
We lit out into the new night with Rosy piloting beneath the star studded and moon embroidered backdrop of the denim sky. She bore down on the suicide wheel of my Cherokee and took turns with a reckless abandon that Evil Knievel would have tipped his motorcycle helmet to.
“It looks dead here,” Rosy said as we entered the hospital.
“What did you expect? This isn’t a disco,” I said.
“I know but it’s depressing,” Rosy said.
I put my arm around her waist as we waited for the elevator and gradually let it slide down to her butt and gave it a squeeze.
“Stop that,” she said, looking around. “Are you sure you got the right room number?”
“Yeah, the receptionist said it was the third floor. Don’t worry I’m not taking you to the mental ward.”
‘Good, because you’d probably be the one they locked up,” she said.
“You’ve got a point there,” I said.
The third floor was as dead as the rest of the hospital and we skirted the nursing staff stationed by making a b-line for the hallway that housed room numbers 310-320. My Grandfather’s room was 320 and located at the end of the hallway.
“I want to warn you,” I said before we entered, “my Grandfather is very fond of polyester. His entire wardrobe is highly flammable. In fact it’s so hazardous I heard he had to take out extra fire insurance to cover it. Just don’t be surprised if he’s lying in bed wearing a red leisure suit.”
“Okay,” Rosy, said.
We opened the door to the room and stepped into the vacuum created by my Grandfather’s snoring. As my Grandfather’s exhaled his cheeks, wrinkled and loose with age, rippled like a swimming pool cover in a hurricane. When he inhaled his lips disappeared within his toothless mouth and his nose vibrated like a loose muffler. The snore itself had a definite rhythm, a choppy sucking staccato solo that gave way to a descending scale of lippy high notes.
“I could strip to that snore,” Rosy said, “its your grandpa’s own somnus sonata.”
“That’s catchy,” I said. “somnus sonata.”
I looked at my Grandfather lying in the bed. He’d once been such a powerful man of immense bulk but now he was only a husk of his former self. I knew that it was unlikely that my constitution will allow for old age to gently cradle me, to rock me gently and to lull me into that last big nap as the grim reaper gently stroked my balding head. No, I wouldn’t go out like that. I will go out with my six lasers blazing, like some mad space cowboy in an inter-dimensional shoot out.
“Grandpa?” I said and his eye lids shot open like the spring loaded trapdoors revealing the core of his azure dreams. “Hey there how are you doing?”
“Everything sounds like I’m under water,” my Grandfather said, his gravely voice weaker than usual.
I noticed he didn’t have his hearing aides in. I pointed to the nightstand beside him and he retrieved them and as he tried to place them in his ears they squealed in protest. When his hearing aides were in place he zeroed in on Rosy.
“Jesus Christ, this one’s beautiful,” my Grandfather said, pushing himself up in the bed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said grabbing for her hand and kissing it. “Are you going to get smart and marry this one?”
“Don’t scare her off. I just met her,” I said.
To Rosie’s credit she didn't wipe her hand off which might have discouraged him. I believed this to be a very brave move because I knew my Grandfather was a geriatric Casanova and still flirted relentlessly when confronted with attractive or even not so attractive females and that deep in the recesses of his mind a little voice was whispering in his ear, "you just might have a chance." I also knew his pharmaceutical arsenal contained Viagra because I drove him to and from the pharmacy which made me even wearier of his intentions.
“Hello,” a whiney voice said.
I turned and a nurse with very wide hips was coming at me pushing a cart full of food. Her face was ashen and angry and appeared to be covered in a thin film of paraffin wax. Her pug nose was saddled by two thick cheeks and she wore black granny glasses but the most noticeable of her features was a mole the size of a goat turd on her left cheek.
“Buenos Dias,” I said, trying not to stare at her mole.
“We need to change your sheets and then you can eat,” the nurse said, unenthusiastically.
Her tone sounded as if she were talking to a baby, trying to coax it to eat a spoon fool of red beets. I felt like smacking her. I would dub her Nurse Mole.
She pushed her cart against the wall and then from the far wall wheeled over what I can only describe as a little crane. She pushed it over beside my Grandfather’s bed and then with some maneuvering positioned a thick blue strap under his stomach. She then cranked the machine and my grandfather rose up over the bed and hung there like a trophy fish. As he dangled above the bed I noticed that the smock he was wearing wasn’t big enough to cover his ass and quickly I looked away afraid that I might see something that would traumatize me for years to come.
“So what do you do Rosy?” my Grandfather asked.
“I’m a professional dancer,” Rosy said.
“She has cancer?” my Grandfather asked.
“No, no she’s a dancer.”
My Grandfather squinted and I could tell he still hadn’t heard me. He continued to spin in circles above the bed as the nurse hastily changed the sheets. I noticed he kept glancing at the nurse’s rather large rear end and this was another thing that I truly didn’t want to see.
“What are you in here for?” I asked.
“In for?…oh, they don’t know. They’re taking tests but they said it wasn’t a heart attack or stroke.”
“We think your Grandfather took too many sleeping pills,” Nurse Mole said.
“Did you do that on purpose?” I asked looking up at my Grandfather but he had spun all the way around and I was staring at his ass. “Oh, dear God.”
Rosy giggled.
“Could you stop spinning like that?” I asked.
My Mother had told me that as a youngster her family moved frequently because my Grandfather often became depressed and needed a change of scenery. I wondered if perhaps since he’d lost his powerful physique to old age and wasn’t nearly as active that he might have decided to pack it in.
“All done,” the nurse said, lowering my Grandfather back into bed.
“My grandson is going to take me home,” my Grandfather said, attempting to sit up.
“No, not now,” the nurse said in that Goddamn condescending voice that made me want to strangle her. “We have to wait and see when the doctor says you can leave.”
Nurse Mole hurried out of the room after depositing my Grandfather’s dinner beside him. I took three Troegs Hopbacks out of my leather jacket cracked them open and handed them out.
“I thought you said you were ready to go,” I said.
“I’m fine. These damn doctors want to keep me in here in case I die on the sidewalk on the way out. They’re afraid they’ll get sued. To be honest with you I’d rather die on the sidewalk than lie in here in this damn bed,” he said.
He put one wobbly leg on the ground and then the other and then pushed himself up. He didn’t look steady on his feet.
“Well, take you home if you want to go home,” Rosy said.
“Peanut, be sensible, I can’t help him break out of the hospital,” I said.
“He’s not breaking out. He just wants to go home.”
“I don’t know how long I have but I do know that I don’t want to spend any more of it in here. Help me if you want. If not get out of my way because I’m leaving,” my Grandfather said, tilting his beer.
I thought of my own mortality, of the race with the Grim Reaper, a race that can’t be won. Even if I run and run and run and am laps ahead of that cock sucker I know he will eventually catch up to me and hopefully it won’t be in a hospital but in a giant bed buried in a pile of naked playmates; a snorkel my only air source as the light dims.
“Right, this place gives me the creeps,” I said. “Get your polyester leisure suit on we’re taking you home.”
Before I had time to shield my eyes my Grandfather tore his smock off.
“Oh, God, why didn’t you warn me you were going to do that?” I said.
“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” he said, pulling on his tighty whities.
“No, I’ve never seen anything quite like that before,” I said.
Rosy came up from behind me and kissed me on the back of the neck. My Grandfather pulled on his white turtle neck, light blue leisure suit, and white loafers and we were ready to roll.
“All right we’ll go down the stairs,” I said, leading the way out the door. I looked both ways and seeing that the coast was clear beckoned my Grandfather with my outstretched hand.
He shuffled slowly, as if he were lugging gold bullion in his pant pockets. It was depressing as Hell to see that old bastard, once so physically impressive reduced to the bare skin and bone workings of a feeble old man. When I was child I remembered looking at his massive arms--his T-shirt sleeves rolled up--and wondered if I weighed as much as one of the damn things.
“I’d like to go out and get a bight to eat,” my Grandfather said, as we made our way down the hallway.
“If you promise to chew your food, watching Mom give you the Heimlich maneuver wasn’t a pretty sight,” I said.
“I had a cold,” he said.
“When you don’t chew your food I don’t think it matters if you have a cold or not,” I said.
He tapped at his hearing aid, pretending not to hear me.
I held my hand up to stop my Grandfather and Rosy and peered around the corner to the nurses’ station.
“Okay, Rosy, go open the door to the stairs and Grandpa when I go up to the nurses desk and distract the nurses you go over to the stairs. Okay?”
“Will do,” my Grandfather said.
“Okay,” I said and sauntered up to the nurses’ desk as Rosy ran to the stairway.
“Good evening, ladies,” I said.
The three nurses—Nurse Mole, a full-figured blond, and a thin redhead—were sitting at the station and looked up at me, each of their mouths turned down into disapproving frowns. I’m sure they could smell the booze on me because all three of had their noses in the air and were sniffing like bloodhounds at the bottom of a tree with a runaway inmate hiding in it.
“I was wondering if it was possible to arrange a late night visitation with my great grand uncle William Shraphappy,” I said.
“Who?” Nurse Mole asked.
Momentarily I was again hypnotized by the mole on her cheek. It beckoned me. I was under its power as if it were some strange tribal idol with soul possessing abilities. I fought to look away and finally I was able to jerk my head away.
“Grab hold of yourself,” I said.
“What?” Nurse Mole asked.
“Uh, Bill Shraphappy?” I said. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw my Grandfather drinking his beer as he shuffled across the floor.
“Bill Shraphappy?” Nurse Mole said, and looked down at a clipboard. “I’m sorry you must have the wrong floor.”
“Right,” I said.
Nurse Mole looked at me and then saw my Grandfather.
“Excuse me,” she said standing.
There was but one thing to do to save my Grandfather and so I cast all dignity aside and clutched my heart.
“Oh, my God, I think I’m having a heart attack,” I said.
“Are you all right?” Nurse Mole asked.
“No...I mean I have a condition. It feels like ferrets wearing tiny cleats are scampering about on the inside of my heart. Oh…the…pain…is…unbearable…”
“You smell like alcohol,” Nurse Mole said, coming out from behind her station. She kneeled by my side and eyed me suspiciously and through her thickly lensed granny glasses her eyes appeared immense and I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t scream out in horror.
“The beer is prescription…specially formulated to thin the blood and fortified with vitamins and minerals,” I said, making sure not to look straight into her mole.
“I’ve never heard of a doctor prescribing alcohol for a heart problem,” Nurse Mole said and looked to her co-workers for support. They both shook their heads from side to side.
“Well my doctor is on the cutting edge of medicine. Are you sure there isn’t at least a light beer here?” I said and then coughed and rolled over like an obedient dog.
“There’s no beer here,” the blond nurse said.
“No, matter,” I said, jumping to my feet. “It seems my heart has returned to its normal rhythm.”
“We have help coming,” the redheaded nurse said.
“Tell them thank-you but I already gave at the VFW,” I said.
“What?” Nurse Mole said but I was already throwing the door open and running down the stairs.
My Grandfather and Rosy were walking slowly through the lobby when I caught up to them. I grabbed a wheelchair from beside the main desk.
“Sit in here,” I said to my Grandfather.
As my Grandfather slowly sat I heard someone yell, “there they are.”
“Hurry up,” Rosy said, “they’re coming.”
“Let’s go,” my Grandfather cried, tossing his beer bottle into a nearby planter.
We burst out through the front doors into the night and I could hear the clamoring of hospital staff behind us.
“Rosy, go get the Cherokee and meet us by the main entrance to the hospital.”
“Okay,” she said, turning towards me. I tossed her the keys, leading her slightly and she ran underneath them and snagged them. I continued to watch her exquisite ass as she ran away and nearly ran my Grandfather into a cement bench but recovered just in time.
“Jesus Christ, what the Hell are you doing?” my Grandfather asked.
“We’re getting you out of here,” I said.
I pushed the wheelchair into the expansive yard in the front of the hospital, running through piles of snow, over rocks and up and down gullies.
“You can’t take him,” Nurse Mole yelled from behind us. “It’s against hospital policy.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a mad posse of hospital staff was pursuing us, blood in their eyes, and like the town elder leading a witch hunt Nurse Mole was leading them; her blue nurse’s cape flapping behind her.
“Screw you Nurse Mole,” I cried and pushed even harder.
We were really moving and in the distance I could see my idling Cherokee.
“Groundhog hole,” my Grandfather cried but it was too late.
There was a terrible jolt and he flew out of the wheel chair and soared through the air with his arms outstretched in front of him and his white hair plastered against his head. In his light blue polyester suit it occurred to me that he looked like a geriatric super hero. Super Geezer?
He landed in a pile of snow and I ran up to him with the wheelchair. It occurred to me that this might be Punxsutawney Phil’s revenge, that his baby carrot erection on the morn of his shadow watching was a signal to all groundhogs to attack mankind. I would have to report this to Homeland Security.
“Take me back,” my Grandfather screamed.
“Nonsense, we’ve made it this far. I’m not going to let Nurse Mole win. Look there’s the Cherokee,” I said pulling him up into the wheelchair.
The sounds of the unruly hospital staff were growing closer. I chanced another quick look over my shoulder and Nurse Mole was now within twenty yards of us and gaining. Despite her large hips and ass--which was as wide as a washing machine--she seemed to be rather quick and with me in my Burmese Jungle boots and pushing my 83 year old grandfather in a wheelchair she had a slight advantage.
I pushed him up over the pile of snow and the footsteps grew closer. I knew then that we were not going to make it, that we would be overrun by the crazed hospital staff. My lungs were burning and I felt like the beer was going to come back up and this is when I saw the most beautiful of sights, a pair of headlights heading straight for me. I would know those headlights anywhere. They were the headlights of my Cherokee.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” my Grandfather cried and I was worried he really would have a heart attack.
The Cherokee swerved just before it reached us and Rosy drove right at the hospital staff that was chasing us and slid the truck sideways in front of them cutting them off. She contained them by doing donuts around them which gave my Grandfather and I time to make it to the main road.
We stopped at the intersection and when I turned the Cherokee was pulling up beside us.
“Hurry up get in,” Rosy said, through her open window.
I helped my Grandfather up out of his chair and into the front street. The hospital staff had gained momentum again and as I shut the passenger’s side door they came up on the other side of the Cherokee. Nurse Mole tried to get in on the other side but the door was locked. I thumbed my nose at her as Rosy peeled out.
“Ha ha,” my Grandfather cried, his dentures slipping and falling out of his mouth, rolling down the front of his shirt and onto the floor.
“Let’s get a drink and celebrate,” my Grandfather said.
“Yeah,” Rosy, said as the Cherokee slid around a corner.
I took out my ceramic alligator bowl and lit it.
“What in the Hell is that?” my Grandfather asked.
I’d forgotten that I shouldn’t partake in front of him and was at a loss as to what to use as an excuse so I winged it.
“It’s for my glaucoma,” I said.
“Bullshit, you don’t have glaucoma,” he said.
“Right,” I said, “want to try some?”
His big blue eyes zeroed in on me and I thought another “bullshit” was going to come from his mouth but instead his face softened.
“I don’t suppose at my age that it would hurt,” he said, reaching out and taking the bowl.
“Peanut, please stop at the Seven Eleven I need gas,” I said.
Rosy pulled into the Seven Eleven at the gas pumps and she and I exited the Cherokee.
“Ah ha.”
It was Nurse Mole! Evidently she’d hopped on the running board of my Cherokee, held onto the door handle and had ridden down to the Seven Eleven with us.
“Your Grandfather is coming back to the hospital with me,” she said gasping for breath.
“Okay, swivel hips let’s not get our hair net in a bunch,” I said.
Nurse Mole didn’t notice but Rosy had sneaked up behind her and was doing something with her cape.
“Hospital policy is hospital policy. It cannot be broken no matter what,” Nurse Mole said still heaving.
Rosy hopped back into the Cherokee and started to pull away with my Grandfather inside. I started after them and Nurse Mole started after me but then there was a ripping sound and when I glanced over my shoulder she was standing there in black lace lingerie. Rosy had tied her cape to the gas pumps.
“Let’s celebrate,” my Grandfather cried as we pulled out onto the highway.
I leaned back over the seat, took out two beers and handed one to my Grandfather and sat back in my seat. As I sipped my beer I looked in the rearview mirror at my Grandfather looking for myself in his features. I momentarily caught glimpses of myself--the curve of an eye brow, the shape of the mouth—but could not hold them. Somewhere pieces of my likeness was shifting within him.
“Let’s go back downtown and get some drinks,” Rosy said.
“Sounds good. We can all go out to an all night diner then,” I said. “How does that sound Grandpa?”
There was no answer. I looked into the back seat and he was sound asleep, his beer clutched in his hand. He was snoring.
“Grandpa’s somnus sonata,” I said and Rosy laughed.
* * *
If you can fit all your dreams in your back pocket you’d better take out that unbreakable flex comb and make room for more possibility because there’s a whole world to tackle out there and no one is going to give a damn when your dead if you dreamed enough or not.
Friday, February 04, 2005
A Dozen Internet Roses
I was deep into my second night without sleep for that demon insomnia had returned and perched itself like a fucking buzzard on the nightstand beside my bed. Every time I opened an eye it was staring deep into my pupils and licking its crooked beak. “Be gone you cocksucker,” I cried and threw my pillow at the nightstand but that bastard didn’t even flinch for as I would later realize the winged beast was nothing more than a hallucination.
Of course I tried the usual remedies to break the hideous cycle of insomnia that I had fallen back into but I am immune to the conventional and therefore my mind refuses to go down for the count when plied with such pedestrian sleep aides as chamomile tea or counting sheep…speaking of counting sheep, I laugh at the cock sucker that first counted sheep as a remedy for sleeplessness and I’m pretty damn sure it was some creepy shepherd way out in the middle of nowhere and that the mother fucker had an IQ of less then 75 because there is no way that anyone with an imagination can fool themselves into picturing sheep repeatedly jumping over a fence. Didn’t this guy’s mind wander out over the grassy plains, past the mountains, over the river to the Two Horse Inn where his friends were buying the object of his affections tall frothing mugs of mead? Did he wonder if perhaps the grass stains on said sweetie pie’s knickers were not from falling down when fetching milk from the goat as she had claimed but from the sexual friction created by a tryst with the town baker behind the privy? Perhaps he didn’t wonder. Perhaps he cuddled up to his sheep. Used one as a pillow and one as a foot rest and one as…
After tossing and turning like a sea bass thrown onto the hood of an idling Camaro I gave up on sleep, got out of bed, and fired up my laptop. Amongst all the beer bottles and half-full coffee cups on my desk I noticed a beer that was three fourths full and so locked my lips around the bottle and suckled at the nipple of Inebrious, winged god of Blotto, who I visited frequently in my quest for dulling of the sharp edges associated with reality.
“Uma, Flea,” I called to my trusty Chihuahuas who came bounding into my study.
I cinched the belt of my bathrobe tightly around my waist and then stuck Uma and Flea on either of my sides inside the bathrobe where they sat happily and drifted off to sleep.
I lit up a Gurkha Regent torpedo which my friend “Igor” from New Orleans had sent me a box of. Quickly my study filled with smoke and the smoke alarm outside my door began to yowl like a weasel with its fingers caught in a car door which sent my two Chihuahua’s, Uma and Flea, into a howling frenzy.
“Aha,” I screamed jumping to my feet and grabbing a thick volume of Shakespeare’s complete works from my bookshelf. I took the book and smashed the smoke alarm into a million pieces. “Take that you wailing bastard,” I screamed. I stomped on the pieces of plastic and wires and batteries and then fell exhausted to the floor. “Grab hold of yourself, man” I said. “You’re losing it. This sleeplessness is getting the best of you.”
As I sat in the hallway on the broken pieces of smoke alarm petting my Chihuahuas and my mind drifted to Janine. My heart still bore the tread marks of this ex-love interest who’d run over my affection, backed up, run over it in reverse, and then drove over it again until finally it was as flat as the seat cushion on a sumo wrestler’s rocking chair. I needed to erase her from the chalkboard of my mind, something that ingesting large amounts of drugs and alcohol would not accomplish on their own. I needed a complete change of scenery, to fill my head with new experiences and purge the past from my conscience and it just so happened that Chester Crenshaw had called me that very day around noon and offered me a proposition that would free me from the confines of Harrisburg. His brother Hoof (nickname) was to be hitched in the coming weeks and he wanted to know if I would accompany them on his brother’s last bachelor outing. Instantly I agreed to this quest for I knew it would do me good to view some anonymous booty, to become blissfully unconcerned with the relationship aspect of women and who knew perhaps my dream woman was a stripper with a saline boob job, false eye lashes, dyed blond hair, and a fake and bake tan.
It was of course sad to see the last of my bachelor friends hit the windshield of marriage like so many winged insects and then to fall bloodied to earth but I understood. I like my nomadic existence too much to marry for the fear of being alone and refuse to settle for someone that cannot accept all my eccentricities, so yes, I may be alone for ever unless I somehow manage to find my elusive dream woman but this is the price I pay for being me.
After some time, when the Chihuahuas were again asleep in my robe, I grabbed a six pack and made my way back to my desk and my laptop. I typed strip clubs Baltimore into the Google search engine and hit enter.
* * *
The next day after work I visited the Beer Zoo and bought two cases of Troegs Hopback, two cases of Yeungling, and two cases of Miller Light, and put them in a giant cooler in the back of my Cherokee. The Crenshaw brother’s could drink their bodyweight in beer and so what might be considered an excessive stockpile of hops laden beverages was in fact the minimum I dared take with me if I planned on maintaining a constant state of inebriation.
I parked my Cherokee on the sidewalk in front of Scott’s Bar and Grille in downtown Harrisburg because there were no parking spots and made my way inside to meet Hoof and Chester.
I was ten minutes early but found those bastards already seated at the bar, each of them taking up two bar stools, and with a half dozen empty pint glasses sitting around them. They also each had two full beers and a shot sitting in front of them.
“It’s only four-fifty are you bastards going to be able to last all night at this pace?” I asked.
Both Crenshaw brothers turned towards me at the same time. Hoof reached out and slapped me on the shoulder and I nearly lost my balance and fell to the ground.
“Easy there, Hoof, I need that arm for writing, golfing and self-manipulation. Did you ever try to masturbate with your weak hand? It’s not pretty and can lead to various abrasions and pulled muscles…so I hear.”
“How are you doing buddy?” Hoof said. He ran his hand through his thick black hair and I noticed he’d let his sideburns grow down to the bottom of his jaw and looked like a muscular Elvis impersonator. And as always he looked like he had spent a month in the Caribbean but then he always looked tan.
“Hey there crazy man what’s up,” Chester said. He tried to slap me on the shoulder too but I jumped out of the way before he could make contact.
“Not, much except for the dislocated shoulder your brother just gave me,” I said, rubbing my shoulder.
I noticed a lot of blond chest hair sticking out of the neck of his flannel shirt and thought for a moment of taking out my mini-Leatherman and cutting it off but knew that he prized his chest hair and might not think it the goodhearted practical joke that I would.
“Should I order a beer?” I asked.
“No, we can finish these up,” Chester said, adjusting his wire rimmed glasses.
Before I could object both brothers had thrown back there shots and chased it with one beer and I swear to God they didn’t take a breath until they moved to the second glass of beer and when I blinked those beers were gone too.
“Ready?” Hoof asked and let out a burp that shook the glasses on the bar.
Now, if anyone else would have burped like that there would have been looks of disdain and perhaps verbal reproach but with the presence of the Crenshaw brothers those that did dare to make any kind of a response smiled and laughed.
“If I burped like that I would have been back handed and knocked behind the bar,” I said.
“I never have that problem,” Chester said. “People always seem to think its funny when I do it.”
“Well, look at you for Christ’s sake you’re built like a mountain gorilla,” I said.
“I’m not quite that hairy,” Chester said.
“Come on let’s get this show on the road. I have an itinerary written out and if we leave now we’ll get make it to the first club when it opens at seven.”
“Since when did you plan anything?” Chester asked, as we walked outside.
“Since never, I just like to use words that make me sound like I’m organized.”
The Crenshaw brothers struggled to get into Hoof’s new black Hummer H3. I sat in the front seat with Hoof because the two brothers in the front seats wouldn’t fit. Shoulder to shoulder those two bastards would have trouble walking through a garage door. I was glad for their great bulk and near superhuman strength for it made me feel secure, like a joey in the pouch of a mother kangaroo. I could hide behind them in any social situation and throw sticks and stones and not having to worry about anything except paying for the damages those two left in their path which I was willing to do since I caused most confrontations. If anyone ever made it through that wall of human flesh that was the Crenshaw brothers, which I seriously doubted would ever happen, I’d be waiting with my brass knuckles belt buckle on the other side and I’d be swinging for the fences.
“Who’s this Janine that Hoof was telling me about?” Chester asked as we lit out onto Route 83.
“Well, apparently it isn’t going to work out with her, there’s the distance and the fact that I laugh to hard, I drink to hard, and I love too hard. Everything I do is too much for her,” I said.
“Buddy, you are a handful, everything you do is at one end of extreme or the other,” Hoof said.
“Thanks for stating the obvious my old friend. Perhaps I am too extreme, but you only get one chance with me, and Janine had her chance and has now been erased from the annals of my personal history,” I said, and crossed my arms defiantly over my chest.
“Okay, let’s not get dramatic. She was in your life and now she’s not,” Hoof said. He cranked up Too Tough to Die by the Ramones and the bass from the stereo vibrated up through my Burmese jungle boots and tickled the bottoms of my feet.
“I even sent her flowers,” I said. “A dozen roses.”
“You sent her a picture of roses over the Internet. It’s not the same thing,” Hoof said.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said.
I looked into the back seat and Chester had several slices of lunch meat lying on his thigh and he was cutting at them with an Exacto knife. It would appear that with his large hands that he would be somewhat clumsy but Chester is an artist; probably the most talented I’ve ever met and can pluck an image straight out of your dreams and give it legs. I’ve been trying for some time to collaborate with the bastard but the restraints of work and marriage have as of yet dissuaded such a coupling.
“What in the Hell are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m cutting the olives out of this Olive loaf,” Chester said.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just buy another lunch meat?” I asked.
“No, I like the taste of olive loaf. It’s a fine mixture of beef and pork with a very interesting texture. I just don’t like all the olives in it. ”
“That is definitely whacked,” I said.
He carefully worked around the edges of each olive with the Exacto knife as if he were performing a very delicate surgery. When a slice of olive was completely cut away he placed it in a stack on his left knee which looked like pile of tarnished quarters. After he had about eight pieces of olive loaf stacked up on his right knee he produced a giant baguette from under the seat and laid it across his crotch. From the pockets of his flannel shirt he removed four slices of cheese.
“You’re like a fucking walking deli,” I said. “Just don’t pull a jar of mustard out of your ass.”
“Do you want a sandwich?” Chester asked.
“I’ll pass. How about another beer?” I said.
He handed me a fresh beer and I cracked it open and took a long pull from the bottle. It was then that Hoof handed me a ceramic bowl stuffed with smoldering bud. I took a hit and held the smoke in my lungs and as the oxygen was depleted from my brain I looked into the back seat at Chester. He took the stack of olives slices he’d cut out of the olive loaf off his knee and tossed them into his mouth.
“What the Hell are you doing? I thought you didn’t like olives,” I said, exhaling.
“I like olives just not in my olive loaf,” he said.
He removed a dozen or so packs of mustard from another pocket and smeared them on his baguette. I hit the bowl again and handed it back to Hoof.
“There is no way I could make something like this up,” I said.
“Like what?” Chester asked, baguette falling out of his mouth.
“Like the way you just made that Goddamn sandwich,” I said.
I rolled the passengers window down a few inches and lit a Gurkha Regent torpedo. I followed the smoke as it billowed up to the roof of the H3 and out the window where I imagined it mixed with the air and car exhaust and then flew straight for the ozone layer and bit off a piece as big as a manhole cover. I wondered that since George Bush and Dick Cheney didn’t believe there was a problem with global warming if they wouldn’t mind moving up to the North Pole and living directly under the hole in the ozone layer.
Another Troegs followed another hit off Hoof’s bowl and this pattern continued as my eyes examined the scenery and my mind drifted to places unknown. Something was changing inside me and I couldn’t quite yank it down from the shelf of possibility but knew that it sat there just the same. Was I losing the momentum that had thus far driven me to act in ways that defied social norms? Had my day come and gone? Was searching out my dream woman an ultimately futile attempt at attaining the ever elusive concept of happiness? I took the staircase down into the basement of my mind and searched through rusty filing cabinet after rusty filing cabinet but could not find the documents I had been searching for and thus was still as lost as to the origins of this strange feeling as I was when I stared my mental quest, which fueled by drugs an booze had taken a very strange path indeed.
“We’re here,” Hoof said, and my mind burst from the bubble from which it had been encased.
I gazed up at the pink neon sign that read: Tit-A-Whir Gentleman’s Club, which was the first club on our schedule. I had pictured something more elaborate, something that looked less like a converted auto body shop but figured that even the ugliest trees sometimes bore the sweet fruit.
“What do you think fellas?” I said. “The Tit-A-Whir.”
“It looks like a converted auto body shop,” Chester said, a frown on his face
“Right, listen; when we get in here I want you two bastards to take it easy on the beer. No two fisting and no guzzling. I’d like to keep my buzz going for an hour or two,” I said.
“It’s a race to the finish my friend,” Hoof said. “May the best man win.”
“Damn you bastards would do that to me. You drink beer like a an out of control forest fire chews through a puddle of gasoline but do remember that I’m not far behind you two in consumption abilities and if pushed just might out drink both of you.”
They both snickered.
The club was BYOB so the Crenshaw brothers carried the six foot long cooler into the club. I considered sitting on the cooler and having them carry me in but nixed the idea when I thought that such a move would be too Roman in nature and although I am a man of great excess too I didn’t want to be compared to full grown men that paraded around in bed sheets and drank water that was funneled through lead pipes and which probably drove a good percentage of them mad.
As we entered the converted auto body shop that now housed Tit-A-Whir the smell of stale beer, cigarette smoke and coconut body spray drifted over me in one noxious wave.
“Ten bucks,” the bouncer collecting money said. He had a choppy looking Mohawk which looked like it had been cut with a pair of dull spoons and his physique looked like he lived on a diet consisting of Snickers bars and root beer. His gut hung over his belt and covered his crotch completely. I imagined when he urinated he needed a pole to prop this monstrous belly up with so both his hands would be free to try and locate his penis.
“It’s dark in here,” Hoof said, as he and Chester set the cooler down over by the coat rack.
“Those strobe lights are going to make me sick,” Chester said.
“Quit your whining boys we’re here to see naked women, which should be first and foremost on your minds. Come on,” I said.
As we rounded the corner to the stage I was greeted with the most glorious of sights…naked women. If I had the money I’d decorate my entire house with naked women. I’d have a naked woman for a coffee table and I’d set my beer on her ass…what the Hell was I talking about? Oh, yeah, on stage was a blond with full protruding lips, huge breasts, and long succulent legs. She was wearing white Go Go boots and an orange Day Glo bikini.
“That’s a glorious set of nestled porkers,” Hoof said.
“Her breasts look like giant construction cones in that orange bikini top,” I said.
Hoof was definitely a tit man as was Chester and I although I admire the female body in all its glorious forms I am largely indifferent to the size of a woman’s breasts, it is rather the completeness of the package that attracts me and as I consume more drugs and alcohol the wrapping of the package becomes less and less of a concern.
“Let’s sit here,” Chester, said sitting in a chair along the stage.
I sat beside Chester and Hoof sat on the other side of me. The stripper in the Day Glo bikini turned towards us and smacked her ass in a move that was really quite strange.
“Bravo,” I cried, and stood, throwing dollar bills at her.
“Sit down. You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Hoof said.
“Right,” I said.
I could smell Sterno and what smelled like tortillas and turned to see from where the odor was coming from. There was a long table behind us against the far wall at which several men were spooning food onto plates.
“Oh, that’s right they have a free Mexican buffet here,” I said.
Before I could turn around fully in my chair again the Crenshaw brothers were at the buffet table piling tacos and refried beans on their plates. It would be a long ride home if they insisted on eating so much fibrous food.
I kicked back and took the scene in; watching the slobbering fools throwing money at the naked women on stage. I noted one husky balding guy in particular across the stage from me. He was staring dreamily into the eyes of thin black woman in front of him and I could tell the bastard was smitten. He rolled dollar bills up one after another and stuck them in her garter so she wouldn’t leave the stage in front of him. Every time I had gone to a strip club I had seen these types, the ones that can’t discern fantasy from reality. They buy into the ruse, they forget that they are paying for a peak and confuse this transaction with love. It was a sad commentary on life and I had to get my mind out from around it less I sink into a melancholy state and ruin my whole night.
The Crenshaw brothers returned and devoured several plates of Mexican food but I abstained for I fear all the carbohydrate laden food would soak up the beer in my belly and render me sober.
The women continued to funnel onto the stage and I continued to drink more and toss more bills at there feet. With each passing naked women the sexual tension in me grew. It was torturous to see them naked and so close, yet so far away.
“I have to go to the pisser,” I said, rising and heading off in the direction of the bathroom.
“Did you try the tacos?” Chester asked.
On the way back from the bathroom I stopped by the DJ booth were I saw the bouncer with the Mohawk.
“I want to buy my friend a lap dance,” I said. “He’s getting married and—”
“Twenty bucks, which one do you want?” he said. He lifted his gut slightly and stuck the money in the front pocket of his jeans.
“The tall blond with the Day Glo orange bikini,” I said.
“Ten minutes,” he said, turned and walked away.
“I got you a lap dance,” I said to Hoof when I sat back down. “It’s with that blond you liked.”
“No, I told the fiancée no lap dances,” he said.
“Are you on crack man?” I said, standing.
“No, I won’t do it,” he said and Chester nodded in agreement.
“You two are more whipped than I ever thought possible. Fine, sit here and stuff your faces with Mexican food. I’ll go get the lap dance,” I said stomping off to find the bouncer and get my lap dance.
* * *
I was lead back into a series of rooms with thick black curtains as doors and deposited inside by a shorter bouncer with a shaved head and plastic discs in each of his ear lobes.
“Do those things hurt,” I asked, as he made to leave.
“Does a dick in your ear hurt?” he said, glaring at me.
“I’m not following but that’s okay, carry on,” I said.
“Drunk jackass,” he said, threw the curtain open and left.
I seated myself on the zebra skin couch and rested my feet on the bamboo coffee table, which I think was actually made of PVC pipes painted yellow. From the pocket of my leather jacket I removed a bottle of Troegs Hopback, opened it, and drank.
After five minutes or so I grew bored of waiting for the stripper and took out one of the Gurkha Regent torpedos “Igor” had given me and lit it with my Zippo. It smoked like a Savanna brush fire and smoke billowed up and collected at the ceiling.
Feeling quite relaxed I leaned back and I didn’t realize it but my cigar was touching a light curtain hanging from the ceiling and before I knew what was happening the curtain had burst into flames. It is not my nature to take these things lightly, to sit back and calmly weigh my options but to spring forth in a purely reactionary manner, to charge directly at the windmill, leading with my lance, to confront the beast when he is off guard and let fate determine the outcome as it would see fit. Inaction is a hobby for the dead.
I jumped to my feet and in the process broke the bamboo coffee table in half. “Damn,” I cried as I grabbed my Troegs Hopback and tried to put out the fire with it but had trouble getting the beer out of the bottle and onto the fire. And then I noticed a fire extinguisher by the entrance and grabbed it. I pulled the pin and squeezed the trigger and in no time the curtain was out but now the room was filled with smoke and I couldn’t see anything. I dropped to the ground and began to crawl towards the door. Just as I was about to pull open the curtain and crawl out the door I ran into a thick pair of ankles. I stood.
“What’s going on in here?” a woman said.
“I lit a cigar and it got out of control,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, and switched on a ceiling fan. Instantly the smoke dissipated. “I guess I’m here to give you a lap dance.”
“Uh, I thought it was with the blond,” I said, stepping back.
“No, you get me,” she said.
She was a big girl with breasts that were so large I suspected they weren’t breasts at all but two craftily constructed hollow compartments in which two midgets might have been stashed in order to sneak them across some border. She saw me looking at her breasts and unhinged her titanic bra. A whoosh of air blew into my face as they swung freely through the room like synchronized wrecking balls.
“You should warn someone when you’re going to do that,” I said, backing up.
“Does daddy want to play?” she said.
“No, offense but I ordered the tall blond with the Day Glo orange bikini.”
“What, I’m not good enough for you?” she said, her voice becoming angry.
“You’re plenty good,” I said, and knowing there was no easy way out of the situation I figured I might as well roll with it. “In fact you’re pretty cute.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said and suddenly sprinted at me and shoved me down on the couch and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to hurt me or be seductive but she played more like a linebacker than a Playboy Playmate. And then without notice she jumped on me and shoved her boobs in my face. She started grinding on my knee and making strange noises that sounded like a squeaky screen door.
“You’re hurting my knee,” I said.
She didn’t listen but ground her breasts into my face harder and put out my cigar. She didn’t scream so I figured the cherry must have fallen off to the side somewhere but couldn’t see it and prayed that it wouldn’t start another fire.
“You want me big guy,” she said.
“Want? You mean in the Biblical sense? Would that cost me extra?” I said.
Her blank stare told me she was getting my humor so I didn’t push on.
“I’ll dance for you all night long and it will only cost you $300 dollars,” she said still grinding.
If there was any spell, which would have been tenuous lusting at best, it was broken when she said $300 dollars.
“Right, well the thing is I’m supposed to get a lap dance from this other stripper.”
Immediately she jumped off my leg, reacting as if she’d been straddling a lawn chair with a nest of hornets underneath it. She landed some three feet away, her breasts swinging back and forth. She hurriedly put on her robe and without a word threw open the curtain and was gone.
“Interesting,” I said to myself.
I wasn’t exactly sure what had transpired but I was pretty sure it hadn’t been successful.
I made my way back to Hoof and Chester and they were still chewing on tacos and throwing dollar bills at strippers like it was confetti and they were at a parade.
“You might want to ease up on the money throwing my friends. We still have several other establishments to visit.”
“What they don’t have ATMs?” Hoof asked with a smile.
“Right,” I said.
“Didn’t you get a lap dance?” Chester asked with a smile.
“You bastards switched strippers on me. You sent me that milk maid which might not have been so bad but she was about as gentle as a grizzly bear in a peanut butter factory,” I said, sitting back down.
“I don’t know if we’re going to make to any other places. It’s getting late,” Hoof said, wiping taco sauce off his chin.
I commenced to down another beer or two as strippers passed in front of me and joined in viewing the flesh parade and I too threw dollar bills like confetti.
It was then, on the far corner of the stage, beneath a purple spotlight, dancing to the Prince’s Raspberry Beret, that I spied her. Immediately we made eye contact…okay, maybe only my eyes contacted her but it is of little importance for she was a vision tweaked from godly sketches of perfection. My chest tightened…no, wait that was heartburn from the beer. Her hair was twisted in corn rows and beaded braids which bounced off her back and looked like the tentacles of some fluorescent, deep sea creature. She was slender but shapely and moved with such grace that I supposed as a toddler she had not first walked but that her first step had been a sophisticated dance step and that her second step led into a pirouette. She winked at me and in my inebriated state I thought to myself that I was probably the only one she ever winked at. Maybe I didn’t really deep down believe that but maybe I told myself that because at that moment I needed to believe that.
“Do you see her?” I asked the Crenshaw brothers, “The young Puerto Rican girl on the other side of the stage.”
Neither brother spoke for both their mouths were filled with refried beans and beer but I could see by their expressions that they knew exactly what I was talking about.
Entranced by the sight of her I could do nothing but those perfunctory processes that allowed me to continue to live i.e., breathe and drink beer.
“Encore, encore,” I cried when she left the stage. Everyone was staring at me but I didn’t care.
“Why don’t you go get a lap dance,” Chester said.
“Right,” I said, standing and making my way to the DJ’s booth were she was putting on her bathrobe.
“Isn’t that a coincidence? I was putting on a bathrobe this morning too,” I said.
She looked at me like I was nuts, which was probably appropriate for the strange comment I had made.
“You are gorgeous and if you are available I’d like to get a lap dance,” I said.
She smiled and I felt the residue of love past come unclogged from my heart and once again it beat with the horsepower of a thousand lawn mowers.
“This way,” she said, taking my hand.
It was then that I thought that perhaps I’d been too hard on the chubby guy that seemed to be in love with the stripper on stage. Perhaps it was possible to fall in love with a naked woman and not know anything else about them except that they looked fabulous in their birthday suits.
The exotic beauty deposited me in one of rooms with curtains for doors and left for a moment. I took out my Binaca Breath spray and shot five mists into my mouth. I cursed myself for smoking the cigar for now my breath would be stale with smoke and beer despite my potent peppermint breath juice.
“You damn idiot,” I said cursing myself.
“Me?” my little love goddess said as she stepped back into the room
“No, not you, you’re not an idiot. Me, I’m the idiot,” I said, sitting up.
She smiled and took off her top and came over to me and sat on my knee. Music suddenly filled the room. I recognized the song as Muse’s Meglomania.
“Meglomania,” I said.
She nodded and placed her hands on my shoulders and slowly pushed her chest towards me. I drained the rest of my beer and put my hands on her hips and she didn’t protest and I knew it was against house rules but I was way too high and drunk to give a shit and besides I had the Crenshaw brothers to back me up if anyone dared to try and reprimand me.
Her deep brown eyes traveled the length of my body and I sucked my gut in but she didn’t seem to notice and stopped and focused on my left pectoral muscle. I figured I must have a ketchup stain on my shirt or perhaps a salsa stain from the Mexican food the Crenshaw brothers were eating.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
She was staring at my pen and notebook.
“I write a little,” I said.
“You’re a writer,” she asked.
“Some people say I am. I prefer to think of myself as a literary juggernaut but of course that’s just the drugs and alcohol talking. Tomorrow I’ll probably loathe myself until my hangover is gone."
“In Hindi you say JagannAth, which means lord of the world and is the title of Vishnu,” she said.
“That’s impressive. I thought juggernaut was old English for, “do you want a jug or not?” which through the centuries came to mean--”
“You really like to hear yourself talk don’t you?” she asked.
“This verbosity is a sickness. Please forgive me,” I said, taking her hand and kissing it.
“I’m Rosita,” she said, “my friends call me Rosy. I’m going to graduate school for journalism. I only work here to pay for tuition.”
“I can’t help but feel we’re doing this backwards. Shouldn’t we have introduced ourselves before I saw you naked?” I said, cracking open another Troegs. “Would you like one?”
“Sure,” she said, “climbing off my lap and sitting beside me. She put on her top which disappointed me but I thought what the Hell she seemed pretty interesting.
I opened a beer and handed it to her.
“So, you’re a writer,” she said, “what do you write?”
“Whatever happens, whatever doesn’t happen, whatever I feel like,” I said.
“It doesn’t sound very disciplined,” she said sipping from her beer.
“You would think so but from all that chaos comes some interesting moments,” I said.
“Do you have a girlfriend,” Rosy asked.
“No…I was interested in a young lass but it didn’t work out…let me ask you this if I sent you roses over the Internet would you think that was a nice gesture?”
“You mean you ordered them over the Internet?” she asked.
“No, not exactly, I sent her a picture of roses over the Internet,” I said.
I studied her for a reaction. Her full lips, painted with purple lipstick came together as if she was sucking on a watermelon Jolly Rancer.
“Yes, if you were thoughtful enough to think of me then it wouldn’t matter if it was a picture or not,” she said, and looked shyly away.
It could be that the seeds of love were planted in the fertile soil of my heart at that very moment.
The curtain parted and I was blinded by the light from the hallway. “Hey, what are you doing in here? You’re up on stage next,” the big fat bouncer with a Mohawk asked.
“Just finishing up,” Rosy said.
“Bastard,” I said, standing. I reached into my wallet and gave her a handful of bills.
“Thank-you,” she said, “look for me before you go.”
“Will, do,” I said.
Rosy stood and hustled out of the room and was gone. I went back to the Crenshaw brothers who were still sitting by the stage throwing dollar bills at the strippers but had thankfully finished with the Mexican buffet.
“Let me get in on the action,” I said. “I haven’t thrown away enough money tonight.”
I opened up my wallet and to my dismay it was empty.
“I’ve been swindled,” I said, frantically rooting through my wallet.
“Calm down,” Chester said. “You probably just spent it all and don’t remember.”
“How the Hell could I spend four hundred dollars and not remember it?” I said, still rooting through my wallet.
“You were throwing money all over the place,” Hoof said, tossing another bill onto the stage in front of a large breasted stripper.
I tried to recall the night and it was hazy at best but I was damn sure I hadn’t spent four hundred dollars.
“Hoof, I gave you some money because you are the man of the night,” I said. “I spent forty on lap dances. I went up and got ones…five times. I couldn’t have spent more than two hundred dollars.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Hoof said. “I’ll cover you.”
“That’s not the point. I can always go to the ATM. I think Rosy robbed me,” I said.
“Rosy?” Chester asked.
“Yes, the exquisite young lass I just got a lap dance from. She was good. I don’t even remember her touching me near my wallet.”
I was convinced that Rosy had set me up, that she’d pretended to be journalism major in order to take my attention away from her crafty little fingers. There would be no changing my mind on this matter for when I am in the throes of a drug and alcohol binge I have horse blinders on to all other possibilities despite how illogical my initial assertions might be.
“I’m going to speak to the management,” I said, standing and swaying.
“Don’t,” Chester said, but it was too late I was already heading to the front desk.
* * *
“I want to lodge a complaint,” I said, to the guy at the front desk, a scrawny character with a weeks worth of grey beard and puffy green eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, taking a drag on a cigarette.
“One of your girls ripped me off. She stole all my money,” I said.
“You drunk son-of-a-bitches always think the girls take your money. You probably spent it all,” he said.
He took a pile of bills out of the cash register and began to count. I stood there for a few moments but he didn’t look up.
“Seventy-five, seventy-six,” I said, trying to mess up his counting.
“Seventy-seven…God damn it you moron you made me lose count!” he said.
“I want my money back now,” I said, “or I’m going to call the police.”
“Hey, there all thieves what do you want me to do about it?” the bouncer with the Mohawk said, coming up behind me. He took a step towards me, which in my thickly iced mental state felt like a threat.
“Back you bastard,” I cried, taking the ready karate stance. “I rarely finish anything I don’t start. Hoof, Chester, come take care of my light work.”
When my two burly friends didn’t come right away I turned and to my dismay Hoof and Chester were nowhere to be seen. They’d vacated their seats by the stage. I gulped and knew then that my only chance for survival was to act like a madman which really wouldn’t be much of a stretch at all.
“Okay, you bastard,” I yelled. I tried to pull my brass knuckles belt buckle off but for some reason it was stuck. I figured I would fair well against one of the bouncers but several others, including the guy with plastic discs in his ears had gathered behind the guy with the Mohawk. I’d wished I’d never met my little Puerto Rican love Goddess.
I backed up towards the stage. They had surrounded me. I knew that no matter how this went down it wouldn’t be pretty. Suddenly I felt a hand come down on my shoulder. I turned quickly.
“What in the Hell are you doing?” Chester asked, grinning like a court jester. Hoof was standing beside and I heard him grunt.
“I was just telling these bastards that if they wanted to mess with me they’d have to go through you two first. Where were you guys?”
“Bathroom,” Hoof said, cracking his knuckles.
I could see the bouncer with the Mohawk was nervous at the site of the Crenshaw brothers and rightly so. If he was smart he would back down but I knew that he wasn’t smart.
Finally I got my brass knuckles belt buckle unhooked. I put it on my fist and jumped into the face of the Mohawk bouncer.
“What the Hell is he doing?” the Mohawk bouncer asked.
“Whatever he wants,” Hoof said.
The big bouncer with the Mohawk made for me and I readied to punch him with my brass knuckles but before I could Hoof shot between us and grabbed him by the neck and shoved him up against the wall with one arm.
“That’s what I was going to do,” I said.
The bouncer with the plastic discs in his ears made after Chester and then the smallest of the bouncers came after me. Despite the weight of my Burmese jungle boots I jumped up on the stage, turned and kicked the bouncer in the jaw…okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that. It went more like this.
“I don’t really feel like fighting,” I said, “how about a beer?”
“Sure,” the bouncer said. We sat down at a table and watched Chester and Hoof toss the other bouncers around like they were made of straw.
“There you are.” It was Rosy. “I went back in the room to get my shoes after I left. You must have dropped this.”
She handed me a wad of money.
“What’s going on here? Whose fighting?” she asked.
“Those two big brutes were attacking the bouncers,” I said. “Someone should do something about them.”
“You said she stole your money,” the bouncer said.
“No, you’re mistaken,” I said, winking at him.
“No, you said Rosy stole your money,” he insisted.
I knew that I had better think fast or I would get smacked in the face. Too late.
“Ouch, why did you smack me,” I said.
“I thought you were different,” she said, turned and walked away.
“I am different. Come back,” I said standing.
“Come on let’s get out of here,” Chester yelled.
Hoof came up from behind me and started ushering me towards the door.
“Wait, I want to get Rosy’s number,” I said.
“The cops are on there way. We have to go now,” Hoof said.
I took one last look back and Rosy was standing by the rear exit looking quite angry.
“I’ll E-mail you on the Tit-A-Whir website,” I yelled, as Hoof pushed me out the front door.
Chester wrapped one arm around the cooler and ran with it like a football out to the H3.
We peeled out of the parking lot and down the road a ways passed several cop cars on their way to the Tit-A-Whir.
“You almost got us arrested again,” Chester said.
“Almost only counts in the launching of nuclear weapons and running over the toes of a particularly inept president with your car. You two do know that the woman I met, Rosy, was an inspiring journalist. We have to go back,” I said, suddenly going into a panic.
“We will be with you until the end my friend but we’re not going out like that. If we go back there we’ll end up in jail,” Hoof said.
“I’m hungry,” Chester said.
“You’re always hungry,” I said.
“Let’s stop at this diner,” Hoof said, slamming on the brakes and pulling into the parking lot of the Oriole All Night Diner.
“This place is dirty,” I said once we were seated inside.
“The germs are cooked off the food,” Chester said.
“Weren’t you two eating Mexican food all night long?” I asked.
“Drinking makes me hungry,” Hoof said.
We were seated near the door and I heard the bells at the top of it ring and looked up. A group of attractive women entered and one of them was Rosy.
“It’s Rosy,” I said.
The Crenshaw brothers turned and looked.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Hoof said.
I took out my wallet and removed a folded up magazine page.
“What is that?” Chester asked.
“Nothing,” I said rising.
I walked over to where Rosy and her friends were seated and before she could tell me off I handed her the magazine page which held the picture of a dozen roses on it.
She looked at the picture and the anger on her face disappeared.
“Would you ladies like to join us for a late night snack?” I said.
Rosy smiled and I extended my hand to help her up out of the booth.
Loyalty is a great thing and I will be loyal to the Crenshaw brothers until the day I die but loyalty for the sake of loyalty is not in itself noble. Just look at the cock suckers that were loyal to Hitler, Pol Pot, or Idi Amin. What is noble is to be loyal to those that are worthy of loyalty, to trust in those that you know are good, to see beyond the superficial and to ignore those that consider you expendable. The bastards can only gain power and they can only suck the life from you if you give them attention. Pull away and watch them wither. Respect for your feelings is not an option to be cast aside when the cock suckers decide their own desires are more important than yours.
I’m am on a train traveling through the night and I don’t know where it’s going and I don’t really give a damn that it’s going too fast but I do know that when the train stops in some far away place that I will still be me and you will still be you and you will wonder why things have to be the way they are and I will say “because,” and I will step off the platform and walk away and never look back.
Of course I tried the usual remedies to break the hideous cycle of insomnia that I had fallen back into but I am immune to the conventional and therefore my mind refuses to go down for the count when plied with such pedestrian sleep aides as chamomile tea or counting sheep…speaking of counting sheep, I laugh at the cock sucker that first counted sheep as a remedy for sleeplessness and I’m pretty damn sure it was some creepy shepherd way out in the middle of nowhere and that the mother fucker had an IQ of less then 75 because there is no way that anyone with an imagination can fool themselves into picturing sheep repeatedly jumping over a fence. Didn’t this guy’s mind wander out over the grassy plains, past the mountains, over the river to the Two Horse Inn where his friends were buying the object of his affections tall frothing mugs of mead? Did he wonder if perhaps the grass stains on said sweetie pie’s knickers were not from falling down when fetching milk from the goat as she had claimed but from the sexual friction created by a tryst with the town baker behind the privy? Perhaps he didn’t wonder. Perhaps he cuddled up to his sheep. Used one as a pillow and one as a foot rest and one as…
After tossing and turning like a sea bass thrown onto the hood of an idling Camaro I gave up on sleep, got out of bed, and fired up my laptop. Amongst all the beer bottles and half-full coffee cups on my desk I noticed a beer that was three fourths full and so locked my lips around the bottle and suckled at the nipple of Inebrious, winged god of Blotto, who I visited frequently in my quest for dulling of the sharp edges associated with reality.
“Uma, Flea,” I called to my trusty Chihuahuas who came bounding into my study.
I cinched the belt of my bathrobe tightly around my waist and then stuck Uma and Flea on either of my sides inside the bathrobe where they sat happily and drifted off to sleep.
I lit up a Gurkha Regent torpedo which my friend “Igor” from New Orleans had sent me a box of. Quickly my study filled with smoke and the smoke alarm outside my door began to yowl like a weasel with its fingers caught in a car door which sent my two Chihuahua’s, Uma and Flea, into a howling frenzy.
“Aha,” I screamed jumping to my feet and grabbing a thick volume of Shakespeare’s complete works from my bookshelf. I took the book and smashed the smoke alarm into a million pieces. “Take that you wailing bastard,” I screamed. I stomped on the pieces of plastic and wires and batteries and then fell exhausted to the floor. “Grab hold of yourself, man” I said. “You’re losing it. This sleeplessness is getting the best of you.”
As I sat in the hallway on the broken pieces of smoke alarm petting my Chihuahuas and my mind drifted to Janine. My heart still bore the tread marks of this ex-love interest who’d run over my affection, backed up, run over it in reverse, and then drove over it again until finally it was as flat as the seat cushion on a sumo wrestler’s rocking chair. I needed to erase her from the chalkboard of my mind, something that ingesting large amounts of drugs and alcohol would not accomplish on their own. I needed a complete change of scenery, to fill my head with new experiences and purge the past from my conscience and it just so happened that Chester Crenshaw had called me that very day around noon and offered me a proposition that would free me from the confines of Harrisburg. His brother Hoof (nickname) was to be hitched in the coming weeks and he wanted to know if I would accompany them on his brother’s last bachelor outing. Instantly I agreed to this quest for I knew it would do me good to view some anonymous booty, to become blissfully unconcerned with the relationship aspect of women and who knew perhaps my dream woman was a stripper with a saline boob job, false eye lashes, dyed blond hair, and a fake and bake tan.
It was of course sad to see the last of my bachelor friends hit the windshield of marriage like so many winged insects and then to fall bloodied to earth but I understood. I like my nomadic existence too much to marry for the fear of being alone and refuse to settle for someone that cannot accept all my eccentricities, so yes, I may be alone for ever unless I somehow manage to find my elusive dream woman but this is the price I pay for being me.
After some time, when the Chihuahuas were again asleep in my robe, I grabbed a six pack and made my way back to my desk and my laptop. I typed strip clubs Baltimore into the Google search engine and hit enter.
* * *
The next day after work I visited the Beer Zoo and bought two cases of Troegs Hopback, two cases of Yeungling, and two cases of Miller Light, and put them in a giant cooler in the back of my Cherokee. The Crenshaw brother’s could drink their bodyweight in beer and so what might be considered an excessive stockpile of hops laden beverages was in fact the minimum I dared take with me if I planned on maintaining a constant state of inebriation.
I parked my Cherokee on the sidewalk in front of Scott’s Bar and Grille in downtown Harrisburg because there were no parking spots and made my way inside to meet Hoof and Chester.
I was ten minutes early but found those bastards already seated at the bar, each of them taking up two bar stools, and with a half dozen empty pint glasses sitting around them. They also each had two full beers and a shot sitting in front of them.
“It’s only four-fifty are you bastards going to be able to last all night at this pace?” I asked.
Both Crenshaw brothers turned towards me at the same time. Hoof reached out and slapped me on the shoulder and I nearly lost my balance and fell to the ground.
“Easy there, Hoof, I need that arm for writing, golfing and self-manipulation. Did you ever try to masturbate with your weak hand? It’s not pretty and can lead to various abrasions and pulled muscles…so I hear.”
“How are you doing buddy?” Hoof said. He ran his hand through his thick black hair and I noticed he’d let his sideburns grow down to the bottom of his jaw and looked like a muscular Elvis impersonator. And as always he looked like he had spent a month in the Caribbean but then he always looked tan.
“Hey there crazy man what’s up,” Chester said. He tried to slap me on the shoulder too but I jumped out of the way before he could make contact.
“Not, much except for the dislocated shoulder your brother just gave me,” I said, rubbing my shoulder.
I noticed a lot of blond chest hair sticking out of the neck of his flannel shirt and thought for a moment of taking out my mini-Leatherman and cutting it off but knew that he prized his chest hair and might not think it the goodhearted practical joke that I would.
“Should I order a beer?” I asked.
“No, we can finish these up,” Chester said, adjusting his wire rimmed glasses.
Before I could object both brothers had thrown back there shots and chased it with one beer and I swear to God they didn’t take a breath until they moved to the second glass of beer and when I blinked those beers were gone too.
“Ready?” Hoof asked and let out a burp that shook the glasses on the bar.
Now, if anyone else would have burped like that there would have been looks of disdain and perhaps verbal reproach but with the presence of the Crenshaw brothers those that did dare to make any kind of a response smiled and laughed.
“If I burped like that I would have been back handed and knocked behind the bar,” I said.
“I never have that problem,” Chester said. “People always seem to think its funny when I do it.”
“Well, look at you for Christ’s sake you’re built like a mountain gorilla,” I said.
“I’m not quite that hairy,” Chester said.
“Come on let’s get this show on the road. I have an itinerary written out and if we leave now we’ll get make it to the first club when it opens at seven.”
“Since when did you plan anything?” Chester asked, as we walked outside.
“Since never, I just like to use words that make me sound like I’m organized.”
The Crenshaw brothers struggled to get into Hoof’s new black Hummer H3. I sat in the front seat with Hoof because the two brothers in the front seats wouldn’t fit. Shoulder to shoulder those two bastards would have trouble walking through a garage door. I was glad for their great bulk and near superhuman strength for it made me feel secure, like a joey in the pouch of a mother kangaroo. I could hide behind them in any social situation and throw sticks and stones and not having to worry about anything except paying for the damages those two left in their path which I was willing to do since I caused most confrontations. If anyone ever made it through that wall of human flesh that was the Crenshaw brothers, which I seriously doubted would ever happen, I’d be waiting with my brass knuckles belt buckle on the other side and I’d be swinging for the fences.
“Who’s this Janine that Hoof was telling me about?” Chester asked as we lit out onto Route 83.
“Well, apparently it isn’t going to work out with her, there’s the distance and the fact that I laugh to hard, I drink to hard, and I love too hard. Everything I do is too much for her,” I said.
“Buddy, you are a handful, everything you do is at one end of extreme or the other,” Hoof said.
“Thanks for stating the obvious my old friend. Perhaps I am too extreme, but you only get one chance with me, and Janine had her chance and has now been erased from the annals of my personal history,” I said, and crossed my arms defiantly over my chest.
“Okay, let’s not get dramatic. She was in your life and now she’s not,” Hoof said. He cranked up Too Tough to Die by the Ramones and the bass from the stereo vibrated up through my Burmese jungle boots and tickled the bottoms of my feet.
“I even sent her flowers,” I said. “A dozen roses.”
“You sent her a picture of roses over the Internet. It’s not the same thing,” Hoof said.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said.
I looked into the back seat and Chester had several slices of lunch meat lying on his thigh and he was cutting at them with an Exacto knife. It would appear that with his large hands that he would be somewhat clumsy but Chester is an artist; probably the most talented I’ve ever met and can pluck an image straight out of your dreams and give it legs. I’ve been trying for some time to collaborate with the bastard but the restraints of work and marriage have as of yet dissuaded such a coupling.
“What in the Hell are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m cutting the olives out of this Olive loaf,” Chester said.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just buy another lunch meat?” I asked.
“No, I like the taste of olive loaf. It’s a fine mixture of beef and pork with a very interesting texture. I just don’t like all the olives in it. ”
“That is definitely whacked,” I said.
He carefully worked around the edges of each olive with the Exacto knife as if he were performing a very delicate surgery. When a slice of olive was completely cut away he placed it in a stack on his left knee which looked like pile of tarnished quarters. After he had about eight pieces of olive loaf stacked up on his right knee he produced a giant baguette from under the seat and laid it across his crotch. From the pockets of his flannel shirt he removed four slices of cheese.
“You’re like a fucking walking deli,” I said. “Just don’t pull a jar of mustard out of your ass.”
“Do you want a sandwich?” Chester asked.
“I’ll pass. How about another beer?” I said.
He handed me a fresh beer and I cracked it open and took a long pull from the bottle. It was then that Hoof handed me a ceramic bowl stuffed with smoldering bud. I took a hit and held the smoke in my lungs and as the oxygen was depleted from my brain I looked into the back seat at Chester. He took the stack of olives slices he’d cut out of the olive loaf off his knee and tossed them into his mouth.
“What the Hell are you doing? I thought you didn’t like olives,” I said, exhaling.
“I like olives just not in my olive loaf,” he said.
He removed a dozen or so packs of mustard from another pocket and smeared them on his baguette. I hit the bowl again and handed it back to Hoof.
“There is no way I could make something like this up,” I said.
“Like what?” Chester asked, baguette falling out of his mouth.
“Like the way you just made that Goddamn sandwich,” I said.
I rolled the passengers window down a few inches and lit a Gurkha Regent torpedo. I followed the smoke as it billowed up to the roof of the H3 and out the window where I imagined it mixed with the air and car exhaust and then flew straight for the ozone layer and bit off a piece as big as a manhole cover. I wondered that since George Bush and Dick Cheney didn’t believe there was a problem with global warming if they wouldn’t mind moving up to the North Pole and living directly under the hole in the ozone layer.
Another Troegs followed another hit off Hoof’s bowl and this pattern continued as my eyes examined the scenery and my mind drifted to places unknown. Something was changing inside me and I couldn’t quite yank it down from the shelf of possibility but knew that it sat there just the same. Was I losing the momentum that had thus far driven me to act in ways that defied social norms? Had my day come and gone? Was searching out my dream woman an ultimately futile attempt at attaining the ever elusive concept of happiness? I took the staircase down into the basement of my mind and searched through rusty filing cabinet after rusty filing cabinet but could not find the documents I had been searching for and thus was still as lost as to the origins of this strange feeling as I was when I stared my mental quest, which fueled by drugs an booze had taken a very strange path indeed.
“We’re here,” Hoof said, and my mind burst from the bubble from which it had been encased.
I gazed up at the pink neon sign that read: Tit-A-Whir Gentleman’s Club, which was the first club on our schedule. I had pictured something more elaborate, something that looked less like a converted auto body shop but figured that even the ugliest trees sometimes bore the sweet fruit.
“What do you think fellas?” I said. “The Tit-A-Whir.”
“It looks like a converted auto body shop,” Chester said, a frown on his face
“Right, listen; when we get in here I want you two bastards to take it easy on the beer. No two fisting and no guzzling. I’d like to keep my buzz going for an hour or two,” I said.
“It’s a race to the finish my friend,” Hoof said. “May the best man win.”
“Damn you bastards would do that to me. You drink beer like a an out of control forest fire chews through a puddle of gasoline but do remember that I’m not far behind you two in consumption abilities and if pushed just might out drink both of you.”
They both snickered.
The club was BYOB so the Crenshaw brothers carried the six foot long cooler into the club. I considered sitting on the cooler and having them carry me in but nixed the idea when I thought that such a move would be too Roman in nature and although I am a man of great excess too I didn’t want to be compared to full grown men that paraded around in bed sheets and drank water that was funneled through lead pipes and which probably drove a good percentage of them mad.
As we entered the converted auto body shop that now housed Tit-A-Whir the smell of stale beer, cigarette smoke and coconut body spray drifted over me in one noxious wave.
“Ten bucks,” the bouncer collecting money said. He had a choppy looking Mohawk which looked like it had been cut with a pair of dull spoons and his physique looked like he lived on a diet consisting of Snickers bars and root beer. His gut hung over his belt and covered his crotch completely. I imagined when he urinated he needed a pole to prop this monstrous belly up with so both his hands would be free to try and locate his penis.
“It’s dark in here,” Hoof said, as he and Chester set the cooler down over by the coat rack.
“Those strobe lights are going to make me sick,” Chester said.
“Quit your whining boys we’re here to see naked women, which should be first and foremost on your minds. Come on,” I said.
As we rounded the corner to the stage I was greeted with the most glorious of sights…naked women. If I had the money I’d decorate my entire house with naked women. I’d have a naked woman for a coffee table and I’d set my beer on her ass…what the Hell was I talking about? Oh, yeah, on stage was a blond with full protruding lips, huge breasts, and long succulent legs. She was wearing white Go Go boots and an orange Day Glo bikini.
“That’s a glorious set of nestled porkers,” Hoof said.
“Her breasts look like giant construction cones in that orange bikini top,” I said.
Hoof was definitely a tit man as was Chester and I although I admire the female body in all its glorious forms I am largely indifferent to the size of a woman’s breasts, it is rather the completeness of the package that attracts me and as I consume more drugs and alcohol the wrapping of the package becomes less and less of a concern.
“Let’s sit here,” Chester, said sitting in a chair along the stage.
I sat beside Chester and Hoof sat on the other side of me. The stripper in the Day Glo bikini turned towards us and smacked her ass in a move that was really quite strange.
“Bravo,” I cried, and stood, throwing dollar bills at her.
“Sit down. You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Hoof said.
“Right,” I said.
I could smell Sterno and what smelled like tortillas and turned to see from where the odor was coming from. There was a long table behind us against the far wall at which several men were spooning food onto plates.
“Oh, that’s right they have a free Mexican buffet here,” I said.
Before I could turn around fully in my chair again the Crenshaw brothers were at the buffet table piling tacos and refried beans on their plates. It would be a long ride home if they insisted on eating so much fibrous food.
I kicked back and took the scene in; watching the slobbering fools throwing money at the naked women on stage. I noted one husky balding guy in particular across the stage from me. He was staring dreamily into the eyes of thin black woman in front of him and I could tell the bastard was smitten. He rolled dollar bills up one after another and stuck them in her garter so she wouldn’t leave the stage in front of him. Every time I had gone to a strip club I had seen these types, the ones that can’t discern fantasy from reality. They buy into the ruse, they forget that they are paying for a peak and confuse this transaction with love. It was a sad commentary on life and I had to get my mind out from around it less I sink into a melancholy state and ruin my whole night.
The Crenshaw brothers returned and devoured several plates of Mexican food but I abstained for I fear all the carbohydrate laden food would soak up the beer in my belly and render me sober.
The women continued to funnel onto the stage and I continued to drink more and toss more bills at there feet. With each passing naked women the sexual tension in me grew. It was torturous to see them naked and so close, yet so far away.
“I have to go to the pisser,” I said, rising and heading off in the direction of the bathroom.
“Did you try the tacos?” Chester asked.
On the way back from the bathroom I stopped by the DJ booth were I saw the bouncer with the Mohawk.
“I want to buy my friend a lap dance,” I said. “He’s getting married and—”
“Twenty bucks, which one do you want?” he said. He lifted his gut slightly and stuck the money in the front pocket of his jeans.
“The tall blond with the Day Glo orange bikini,” I said.
“Ten minutes,” he said, turned and walked away.
“I got you a lap dance,” I said to Hoof when I sat back down. “It’s with that blond you liked.”
“No, I told the fiancée no lap dances,” he said.
“Are you on crack man?” I said, standing.
“No, I won’t do it,” he said and Chester nodded in agreement.
“You two are more whipped than I ever thought possible. Fine, sit here and stuff your faces with Mexican food. I’ll go get the lap dance,” I said stomping off to find the bouncer and get my lap dance.
* * *
I was lead back into a series of rooms with thick black curtains as doors and deposited inside by a shorter bouncer with a shaved head and plastic discs in each of his ear lobes.
“Do those things hurt,” I asked, as he made to leave.
“Does a dick in your ear hurt?” he said, glaring at me.
“I’m not following but that’s okay, carry on,” I said.
“Drunk jackass,” he said, threw the curtain open and left.
I seated myself on the zebra skin couch and rested my feet on the bamboo coffee table, which I think was actually made of PVC pipes painted yellow. From the pocket of my leather jacket I removed a bottle of Troegs Hopback, opened it, and drank.
After five minutes or so I grew bored of waiting for the stripper and took out one of the Gurkha Regent torpedos “Igor” had given me and lit it with my Zippo. It smoked like a Savanna brush fire and smoke billowed up and collected at the ceiling.
Feeling quite relaxed I leaned back and I didn’t realize it but my cigar was touching a light curtain hanging from the ceiling and before I knew what was happening the curtain had burst into flames. It is not my nature to take these things lightly, to sit back and calmly weigh my options but to spring forth in a purely reactionary manner, to charge directly at the windmill, leading with my lance, to confront the beast when he is off guard and let fate determine the outcome as it would see fit. Inaction is a hobby for the dead.
I jumped to my feet and in the process broke the bamboo coffee table in half. “Damn,” I cried as I grabbed my Troegs Hopback and tried to put out the fire with it but had trouble getting the beer out of the bottle and onto the fire. And then I noticed a fire extinguisher by the entrance and grabbed it. I pulled the pin and squeezed the trigger and in no time the curtain was out but now the room was filled with smoke and I couldn’t see anything. I dropped to the ground and began to crawl towards the door. Just as I was about to pull open the curtain and crawl out the door I ran into a thick pair of ankles. I stood.
“What’s going on in here?” a woman said.
“I lit a cigar and it got out of control,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, and switched on a ceiling fan. Instantly the smoke dissipated. “I guess I’m here to give you a lap dance.”
“Uh, I thought it was with the blond,” I said, stepping back.
“No, you get me,” she said.
She was a big girl with breasts that were so large I suspected they weren’t breasts at all but two craftily constructed hollow compartments in which two midgets might have been stashed in order to sneak them across some border. She saw me looking at her breasts and unhinged her titanic bra. A whoosh of air blew into my face as they swung freely through the room like synchronized wrecking balls.
“You should warn someone when you’re going to do that,” I said, backing up.
“Does daddy want to play?” she said.
“No, offense but I ordered the tall blond with the Day Glo orange bikini.”
“What, I’m not good enough for you?” she said, her voice becoming angry.
“You’re plenty good,” I said, and knowing there was no easy way out of the situation I figured I might as well roll with it. “In fact you’re pretty cute.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said and suddenly sprinted at me and shoved me down on the couch and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to hurt me or be seductive but she played more like a linebacker than a Playboy Playmate. And then without notice she jumped on me and shoved her boobs in my face. She started grinding on my knee and making strange noises that sounded like a squeaky screen door.
“You’re hurting my knee,” I said.
She didn’t listen but ground her breasts into my face harder and put out my cigar. She didn’t scream so I figured the cherry must have fallen off to the side somewhere but couldn’t see it and prayed that it wouldn’t start another fire.
“You want me big guy,” she said.
“Want? You mean in the Biblical sense? Would that cost me extra?” I said.
Her blank stare told me she was getting my humor so I didn’t push on.
“I’ll dance for you all night long and it will only cost you $300 dollars,” she said still grinding.
If there was any spell, which would have been tenuous lusting at best, it was broken when she said $300 dollars.
“Right, well the thing is I’m supposed to get a lap dance from this other stripper.”
Immediately she jumped off my leg, reacting as if she’d been straddling a lawn chair with a nest of hornets underneath it. She landed some three feet away, her breasts swinging back and forth. She hurriedly put on her robe and without a word threw open the curtain and was gone.
“Interesting,” I said to myself.
I wasn’t exactly sure what had transpired but I was pretty sure it hadn’t been successful.
I made my way back to Hoof and Chester and they were still chewing on tacos and throwing dollar bills at strippers like it was confetti and they were at a parade.
“You might want to ease up on the money throwing my friends. We still have several other establishments to visit.”
“What they don’t have ATMs?” Hoof asked with a smile.
“Right,” I said.
“Didn’t you get a lap dance?” Chester asked with a smile.
“You bastards switched strippers on me. You sent me that milk maid which might not have been so bad but she was about as gentle as a grizzly bear in a peanut butter factory,” I said, sitting back down.
“I don’t know if we’re going to make to any other places. It’s getting late,” Hoof said, wiping taco sauce off his chin.
I commenced to down another beer or two as strippers passed in front of me and joined in viewing the flesh parade and I too threw dollar bills like confetti.
It was then, on the far corner of the stage, beneath a purple spotlight, dancing to the Prince’s Raspberry Beret, that I spied her. Immediately we made eye contact…okay, maybe only my eyes contacted her but it is of little importance for she was a vision tweaked from godly sketches of perfection. My chest tightened…no, wait that was heartburn from the beer. Her hair was twisted in corn rows and beaded braids which bounced off her back and looked like the tentacles of some fluorescent, deep sea creature. She was slender but shapely and moved with such grace that I supposed as a toddler she had not first walked but that her first step had been a sophisticated dance step and that her second step led into a pirouette. She winked at me and in my inebriated state I thought to myself that I was probably the only one she ever winked at. Maybe I didn’t really deep down believe that but maybe I told myself that because at that moment I needed to believe that.
“Do you see her?” I asked the Crenshaw brothers, “The young Puerto Rican girl on the other side of the stage.”
Neither brother spoke for both their mouths were filled with refried beans and beer but I could see by their expressions that they knew exactly what I was talking about.
Entranced by the sight of her I could do nothing but those perfunctory processes that allowed me to continue to live i.e., breathe and drink beer.
“Encore, encore,” I cried when she left the stage. Everyone was staring at me but I didn’t care.
“Why don’t you go get a lap dance,” Chester said.
“Right,” I said, standing and making my way to the DJ’s booth were she was putting on her bathrobe.
“Isn’t that a coincidence? I was putting on a bathrobe this morning too,” I said.
She looked at me like I was nuts, which was probably appropriate for the strange comment I had made.
“You are gorgeous and if you are available I’d like to get a lap dance,” I said.
She smiled and I felt the residue of love past come unclogged from my heart and once again it beat with the horsepower of a thousand lawn mowers.
“This way,” she said, taking my hand.
It was then that I thought that perhaps I’d been too hard on the chubby guy that seemed to be in love with the stripper on stage. Perhaps it was possible to fall in love with a naked woman and not know anything else about them except that they looked fabulous in their birthday suits.
The exotic beauty deposited me in one of rooms with curtains for doors and left for a moment. I took out my Binaca Breath spray and shot five mists into my mouth. I cursed myself for smoking the cigar for now my breath would be stale with smoke and beer despite my potent peppermint breath juice.
“You damn idiot,” I said cursing myself.
“Me?” my little love goddess said as she stepped back into the room
“No, not you, you’re not an idiot. Me, I’m the idiot,” I said, sitting up.
She smiled and took off her top and came over to me and sat on my knee. Music suddenly filled the room. I recognized the song as Muse’s Meglomania.
“Meglomania,” I said.
She nodded and placed her hands on my shoulders and slowly pushed her chest towards me. I drained the rest of my beer and put my hands on her hips and she didn’t protest and I knew it was against house rules but I was way too high and drunk to give a shit and besides I had the Crenshaw brothers to back me up if anyone dared to try and reprimand me.
Her deep brown eyes traveled the length of my body and I sucked my gut in but she didn’t seem to notice and stopped and focused on my left pectoral muscle. I figured I must have a ketchup stain on my shirt or perhaps a salsa stain from the Mexican food the Crenshaw brothers were eating.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
She was staring at my pen and notebook.
“I write a little,” I said.
“You’re a writer,” she asked.
“Some people say I am. I prefer to think of myself as a literary juggernaut but of course that’s just the drugs and alcohol talking. Tomorrow I’ll probably loathe myself until my hangover is gone."
“In Hindi you say JagannAth, which means lord of the world and is the title of Vishnu,” she said.
“That’s impressive. I thought juggernaut was old English for, “do you want a jug or not?” which through the centuries came to mean--”
“You really like to hear yourself talk don’t you?” she asked.
“This verbosity is a sickness. Please forgive me,” I said, taking her hand and kissing it.
“I’m Rosita,” she said, “my friends call me Rosy. I’m going to graduate school for journalism. I only work here to pay for tuition.”
“I can’t help but feel we’re doing this backwards. Shouldn’t we have introduced ourselves before I saw you naked?” I said, cracking open another Troegs. “Would you like one?”
“Sure,” she said, “climbing off my lap and sitting beside me. She put on her top which disappointed me but I thought what the Hell she seemed pretty interesting.
I opened a beer and handed it to her.
“So, you’re a writer,” she said, “what do you write?”
“Whatever happens, whatever doesn’t happen, whatever I feel like,” I said.
“It doesn’t sound very disciplined,” she said sipping from her beer.
“You would think so but from all that chaos comes some interesting moments,” I said.
“Do you have a girlfriend,” Rosy asked.
“No…I was interested in a young lass but it didn’t work out…let me ask you this if I sent you roses over the Internet would you think that was a nice gesture?”
“You mean you ordered them over the Internet?” she asked.
“No, not exactly, I sent her a picture of roses over the Internet,” I said.
I studied her for a reaction. Her full lips, painted with purple lipstick came together as if she was sucking on a watermelon Jolly Rancer.
“Yes, if you were thoughtful enough to think of me then it wouldn’t matter if it was a picture or not,” she said, and looked shyly away.
It could be that the seeds of love were planted in the fertile soil of my heart at that very moment.
The curtain parted and I was blinded by the light from the hallway. “Hey, what are you doing in here? You’re up on stage next,” the big fat bouncer with a Mohawk asked.
“Just finishing up,” Rosy said.
“Bastard,” I said, standing. I reached into my wallet and gave her a handful of bills.
“Thank-you,” she said, “look for me before you go.”
“Will, do,” I said.
Rosy stood and hustled out of the room and was gone. I went back to the Crenshaw brothers who were still sitting by the stage throwing dollar bills at the strippers but had thankfully finished with the Mexican buffet.
“Let me get in on the action,” I said. “I haven’t thrown away enough money tonight.”
I opened up my wallet and to my dismay it was empty.
“I’ve been swindled,” I said, frantically rooting through my wallet.
“Calm down,” Chester said. “You probably just spent it all and don’t remember.”
“How the Hell could I spend four hundred dollars and not remember it?” I said, still rooting through my wallet.
“You were throwing money all over the place,” Hoof said, tossing another bill onto the stage in front of a large breasted stripper.
I tried to recall the night and it was hazy at best but I was damn sure I hadn’t spent four hundred dollars.
“Hoof, I gave you some money because you are the man of the night,” I said. “I spent forty on lap dances. I went up and got ones…five times. I couldn’t have spent more than two hundred dollars.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Hoof said. “I’ll cover you.”
“That’s not the point. I can always go to the ATM. I think Rosy robbed me,” I said.
“Rosy?” Chester asked.
“Yes, the exquisite young lass I just got a lap dance from. She was good. I don’t even remember her touching me near my wallet.”
I was convinced that Rosy had set me up, that she’d pretended to be journalism major in order to take my attention away from her crafty little fingers. There would be no changing my mind on this matter for when I am in the throes of a drug and alcohol binge I have horse blinders on to all other possibilities despite how illogical my initial assertions might be.
“I’m going to speak to the management,” I said, standing and swaying.
“Don’t,” Chester said, but it was too late I was already heading to the front desk.
* * *
“I want to lodge a complaint,” I said, to the guy at the front desk, a scrawny character with a weeks worth of grey beard and puffy green eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, taking a drag on a cigarette.
“One of your girls ripped me off. She stole all my money,” I said.
“You drunk son-of-a-bitches always think the girls take your money. You probably spent it all,” he said.
He took a pile of bills out of the cash register and began to count. I stood there for a few moments but he didn’t look up.
“Seventy-five, seventy-six,” I said, trying to mess up his counting.
“Seventy-seven…God damn it you moron you made me lose count!” he said.
“I want my money back now,” I said, “or I’m going to call the police.”
“Hey, there all thieves what do you want me to do about it?” the bouncer with the Mohawk said, coming up behind me. He took a step towards me, which in my thickly iced mental state felt like a threat.
“Back you bastard,” I cried, taking the ready karate stance. “I rarely finish anything I don’t start. Hoof, Chester, come take care of my light work.”
When my two burly friends didn’t come right away I turned and to my dismay Hoof and Chester were nowhere to be seen. They’d vacated their seats by the stage. I gulped and knew then that my only chance for survival was to act like a madman which really wouldn’t be much of a stretch at all.
“Okay, you bastard,” I yelled. I tried to pull my brass knuckles belt buckle off but for some reason it was stuck. I figured I would fair well against one of the bouncers but several others, including the guy with plastic discs in his ears had gathered behind the guy with the Mohawk. I’d wished I’d never met my little Puerto Rican love Goddess.
I backed up towards the stage. They had surrounded me. I knew that no matter how this went down it wouldn’t be pretty. Suddenly I felt a hand come down on my shoulder. I turned quickly.
“What in the Hell are you doing?” Chester asked, grinning like a court jester. Hoof was standing beside and I heard him grunt.
“I was just telling these bastards that if they wanted to mess with me they’d have to go through you two first. Where were you guys?”
“Bathroom,” Hoof said, cracking his knuckles.
I could see the bouncer with the Mohawk was nervous at the site of the Crenshaw brothers and rightly so. If he was smart he would back down but I knew that he wasn’t smart.
Finally I got my brass knuckles belt buckle unhooked. I put it on my fist and jumped into the face of the Mohawk bouncer.
“What the Hell is he doing?” the Mohawk bouncer asked.
“Whatever he wants,” Hoof said.
The big bouncer with the Mohawk made for me and I readied to punch him with my brass knuckles but before I could Hoof shot between us and grabbed him by the neck and shoved him up against the wall with one arm.
“That’s what I was going to do,” I said.
The bouncer with the plastic discs in his ears made after Chester and then the smallest of the bouncers came after me. Despite the weight of my Burmese jungle boots I jumped up on the stage, turned and kicked the bouncer in the jaw…okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that. It went more like this.
“I don’t really feel like fighting,” I said, “how about a beer?”
“Sure,” the bouncer said. We sat down at a table and watched Chester and Hoof toss the other bouncers around like they were made of straw.
“There you are.” It was Rosy. “I went back in the room to get my shoes after I left. You must have dropped this.”
She handed me a wad of money.
“What’s going on here? Whose fighting?” she asked.
“Those two big brutes were attacking the bouncers,” I said. “Someone should do something about them.”
“You said she stole your money,” the bouncer said.
“No, you’re mistaken,” I said, winking at him.
“No, you said Rosy stole your money,” he insisted.
I knew that I had better think fast or I would get smacked in the face. Too late.
“Ouch, why did you smack me,” I said.
“I thought you were different,” she said, turned and walked away.
“I am different. Come back,” I said standing.
“Come on let’s get out of here,” Chester yelled.
Hoof came up from behind me and started ushering me towards the door.
“Wait, I want to get Rosy’s number,” I said.
“The cops are on there way. We have to go now,” Hoof said.
I took one last look back and Rosy was standing by the rear exit looking quite angry.
“I’ll E-mail you on the Tit-A-Whir website,” I yelled, as Hoof pushed me out the front door.
Chester wrapped one arm around the cooler and ran with it like a football out to the H3.
We peeled out of the parking lot and down the road a ways passed several cop cars on their way to the Tit-A-Whir.
“You almost got us arrested again,” Chester said.
“Almost only counts in the launching of nuclear weapons and running over the toes of a particularly inept president with your car. You two do know that the woman I met, Rosy, was an inspiring journalist. We have to go back,” I said, suddenly going into a panic.
“We will be with you until the end my friend but we’re not going out like that. If we go back there we’ll end up in jail,” Hoof said.
“I’m hungry,” Chester said.
“You’re always hungry,” I said.
“Let’s stop at this diner,” Hoof said, slamming on the brakes and pulling into the parking lot of the Oriole All Night Diner.
“This place is dirty,” I said once we were seated inside.
“The germs are cooked off the food,” Chester said.
“Weren’t you two eating Mexican food all night long?” I asked.
“Drinking makes me hungry,” Hoof said.
We were seated near the door and I heard the bells at the top of it ring and looked up. A group of attractive women entered and one of them was Rosy.
“It’s Rosy,” I said.
The Crenshaw brothers turned and looked.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Hoof said.
I took out my wallet and removed a folded up magazine page.
“What is that?” Chester asked.
“Nothing,” I said rising.
I walked over to where Rosy and her friends were seated and before she could tell me off I handed her the magazine page which held the picture of a dozen roses on it.
She looked at the picture and the anger on her face disappeared.
“Would you ladies like to join us for a late night snack?” I said.
Rosy smiled and I extended my hand to help her up out of the booth.
* * *
Loyalty is a great thing and I will be loyal to the Crenshaw brothers until the day I die but loyalty for the sake of loyalty is not in itself noble. Just look at the cock suckers that were loyal to Hitler, Pol Pot, or Idi Amin. What is noble is to be loyal to those that are worthy of loyalty, to trust in those that you know are good, to see beyond the superficial and to ignore those that consider you expendable. The bastards can only gain power and they can only suck the life from you if you give them attention. Pull away and watch them wither. Respect for your feelings is not an option to be cast aside when the cock suckers decide their own desires are more important than yours.
I’m am on a train traveling through the night and I don’t know where it’s going and I don’t really give a damn that it’s going too fast but I do know that when the train stops in some far away place that I will still be me and you will still be you and you will wonder why things have to be the way they are and I will say “because,” and I will step off the platform and walk away and never look back.
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