Aphros or Beer Head

In the clogged heart that is our nation’s capital, where the cannibalistic congressmen and women suck the marrow from the bones of hope, where George Washington’s wooden teeth lie cemented under the helicopter pad in the White House rose garden, I found myself and it was a self embalmed with several brands of high end beer. We sat stapled to the stuffed bar stools in Bangkok Joe’s as the bartender, a slight Vietnamese woman with NBA like dexterity, tossed beakers and bottles back in forth mixing strange alcoholic potions and topping them off with flowers, wedges of fruit, and pink umbrellas.

“I’d like an umbrella,” I said, holding my beer glass out over the bar.

The bartender covered her mouth but I could see the corners of her smile, like butterfly wings, sticking out on either side of her delicate hand. She daintily plucked an umbrella from a box, as if picking the funny bone from a game of Operation and placed it in my frothing beer.

“Gracias, buttercup,” I said.

My brother Sergeant sighed. He had seen my tactics before and I must say he seemed slightly less than impressed.

“What?” I asked.

Sergeant shook his head and went back to his beer, which looked way too low to me but then that’s the way all beers appeared to my alcohol soaked eyes. You see we’d been working all day hauling drywall and 2x4’s to his basement and assembling them in what was to be a basement bedroom in his newly purchased home in Georgetown. I was cheap labor, beer and cigars and burritos placing my going rate at one tenth of most union laborers. So, to sate the great beast that were my many vices he took me out at night and stuffed me full of all that I needed. The only vice he couldn’t take care of was my great lusting for women of all shapes and sizes. The burden of this vice was too great for even a man of many resources that my brother is, for I have the incredible knack for making a bad first impression and thus have ruined many possible encounters because of my overzealousness. Yes, when the subject matter of women arises I find myself salivating profusely not unlike one of Pavlov’s own.

“So are you from around here?” I asked the bartender.

“Not originally,” she said in a thick accent that made her tongue sound as if it were swimming through a river of pudding.

“Good because if you were I’d worry that the corruptness of this place might have penetrated your beauty and rotted your wholesome core.”

“You’re funny,” she said, pulling at her white collar.

“He’s not funny. He only thinks he is,” Sergeant said and grinned.

“What time do you get off?” I asked.

“Why don’t you just ask her to sleep with you,” Sergeant said.

“I was getting to that,” I said, standing, “now if you’ll excuse me I need to use the restroom.” Leaving on a slightly up beat was the best thing I could do before I really fucked everything up.

The bartender giggled, her dark eyes connecting with mine and locking in some wonderfully strange moment that I probably can’t adequately describe in words but will humbly try to do so, though this may be an insult to the gods who pieced her together, fiber by beautiful fiber. She was like a fine piece of sculpture honed to dimensions, the blue prints of which were most definitely stolen from Aphrodite. It is said that Aphrodite’s father Uranus had his unit cut off by his son Cronus and his package tossed into the ocean like a discarded fish head. Evidently there was great deal of frothing and churning and low and behold Aphrodite rose from this aphros (sea foam). I was quite sure only some divine event like this could have created such an exquisite beauty as the bartender in front of me. She smiled and my leg twitched like that of an excited dog.

Yes, I believed I was in, or at least I let myself believe I was in because I was inebriated and I need to believe it. Yes, I’ve been wrong before as previously stated but I had nothing to lose, well except for my beer, cigar and burrito privileges which Sergeant would surely yank if I made an ass out of myself in his favorite haunt. I hurried back to the restrooms.

Once I found the men’s toilet I locked myself inside and unloaded the six or seven beers I’d drunk in the last hour. After washing up I made to leave but to my horror the lock on the bathroom door seemed to be jammed.

“Mother fucker,” I said. “This isn’t good.”

I wrenched the doorknob left and then right. Nothing. The bastard wouldn’t budge. I hrust my shoulder into the door to see if I could dislodged it but to my chagrin it stayed firmly in place. It occurred to me that I might use my cell phone and get Sergeant to have management release me from my toilet tomb. I punched in Sergeant’s number.

“Sergeant, it’s your brother. I’m trapped in the shitter. Send in the troops.”

“Quit fucking around,” Sergeant said and hung up.

I tried to call him back but he’d turned off his phone. This wasn’t good. The booze was impairing my judgment. I panicked. Like an enraged bull I shuffled backwards scuffing the soles of my sneakers madly on the tiled floor and then with all the power that my legs possessed I shot forward. Evidently the force I exerted was beyond anything a reasonable person would have tried to use to open a door but remember we’re talking about me, an individual that takes on life at twice the velocity recommended by most physicians. There was also the matter of an elderly gentleman opening the door just as I shot forward. Well, when I didn’t hit the door I opened my eyes just before I smashed into a chef in the kitchen. He’d been holding a rather tantalizing looking entrée made with a white sauce and shrimp, which I was now wearing.

“What are you doing,” the chef said, picking himself up off the floor.

He had a little Charlie Chaplin mustache and strangely his shoes were very large and turned out to the sides just like the silent film star’s. A Vietnamese Charlie Chaplin?

“Someone locked me in the bathroom. I had to try to break the door down,” I said, jumping to my feet.

“You mad man. You going to jail. I call police,” the chef cried.

“Easy there my friend,” I said brushing a shrimp off his lapel.

“What are you doing?” Sergeant cried.

He was standing in the doorway with the bartender.

“The door, it was stuck. Then I ran and it wasn’t stuck. I flew into the kitchen.”

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute. Come on let’s get out of here.”

“I really am sorry about the entrée,” I said.

“Get out of my kitchen,” the chef cried, waving a whisk at me.

Out at the bar Sergeant settled our tab. I tried to make eye contact with the bartender again but she kept looking away.

“So what are you doing after work?” I finally asked.

I brushed at the sauce on my shirt and seeing a shrimp there popped it in my mouth.

“Hmm, not bad,” I said.

“I have to get up and get on an airplane in the morning,” she said.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to Vietnam.”

“Right,” I said.