Monday, June 8, 2015

     I was the only dude in the Mexican bar again. They would put Skynrd's "That Smell" on and that song really gets me going. Soon I am YEE-HAAA-ing and banging on the bar and singing YEAH YOU. There was one person there who I could communicate with. Several who would just nod at my terrible Spanish. Pantomiming works. The job gets done.
     This day was a day I stopped buying booze from the corner store guy who always had something to say about different foods that gave you a hard on. Or Huevos. He didn't mean eggs, but you just get thirsty sometimes. He was a block away from my house, the next closest was 6 blocks, and in this kind of heat?
I will take a bottle of Mezcal and yes I am aware, Maurice, that this liquid is reuted to have incredible libidinal powers. Yes, like rising from the dead, good one, zombies... hoo hoo hoo. No I am not interested in a side order of freash huevos grandes, thanks.
    So it is a handful of degrees over 100 and I had a more than one beer thirst. The fairy that sells booze had finally crossed the line when my friend roger came by for a couple cigarettes and the queen said something about "me esposa." He had an audience, a tender faced young boy whose company he enjoys. Nothing makes you feel more alive than a lover 30 years younger than you I guess. I had told him that he was never going to see a peso from me after that comment. Then I listed the other beer spots. Jorge sells cerveza too and he never talks about my balls. He is only a half block further. Axel and his wife and kid are always nice to me, never talk about foods that cause hard-ons andthey are only 2 blocks away. My money goes to polite people from now on.
   So my plan was to buy from Axel and walk back right by the aging queen, just to win, just because I am petty, just because I know the guy counts every peso. But it was too hot to walk all the way to Axel's. So I changed my mind and headed to a Cantina called Mala Santa.
     It was like a Clint Eastwood movie. Dusty street blowing sand, my straw bowboy hat pulled low so  it didn't blow off me. I felt the dudes eyes on me as I walked by his corner of booze. A sweaty old bandito, peaking through the blinds. Waiting for his alcoholic ambush. I kept walking and got to the bar and knew  I was staying until the sun went down. Heat stroke is no joke and my red face made me look like a boiled lobster. I was Harry Eastwood that afternoon. Clint's nephew. Yeah. I asked for  a pen and paper and they gave me a notebook and I figured I would leave them some kind of heiroglyphics. Something they could hang on the wall under a plaque that said Harry Eastwood drank here.
    I ordered another beer and was riffing in the bar book, chuckling to myself about how it was high noon in Mexico as the bandito hid from me in his Licoria. It was great stuff, He sold evil spirits and I was the Exorcist. He was preying on the community selling cheap cane liquor to the cheap pissy drunks who sleep on the streets all weekend. I was the cure. When my beer was delivered I asked the young kid behind the bar what the upside down crosses meant on their drink special board. He said his boss prays to the devil. That explains the name of the place I thought. Maybe I shouldn't have been dancing with his mom when she came out of the kitchen. I was doing "the fishing guy" casting my rod, reeling it in, jerking the line to fool the fish. The waitress was amused. The Dee jay loved it. Not the boss. It was one of many dance jawns I was doing, It's great to be out of the sun with a pocket full of cash and some fist pumping jams on the music machine.
   Anyway, I finally hooked his mom, she was at the other bar, and I jerked my imaginary pole like I had a whale on there and the waitress laughed again.
     A new kid comes over to talk to me. He had been reading the book, maybe knew some words and he's asking me weird questions. the he winks at me. I must be giving off some kind of vibe this weekend. Is the moon in an especially gay phase or something? The dude leaves when I deflect him by telling the new customer in the bar excitely that I buy the same toilet paper thats on tv right now. MAS EXCELLENTE PAPIER de la BANO....SI SI SI . I made an even bigger deal out of the next commercial in my fractured spanish. (I am a one man entertainment machine)
     I look over at the religious dude and he is demonstrating to his staff pantomiming pushing one of them in the chest with two hands, while telling showing another how to cut my legs from behind. Shit was getting real. But I played rugby, they are all half my size, and I started doing some math. Given one real man X, and four half men Y, what is the ratio of times that X is greater than or equal to 4Y (as a percent.) I was not liking the answers, but it was starting to feel like a rugby Saturday in there. I did my always hilarious Sumo movements. Planting both feet theatrically, one gigantic stomp after another. Hitting my thighs. (it could have been a dance move). I am a see what happens kind of drinker. I let the other guy figure out if I am being provocative and i can always say it was a bad joke, culturally misinterpreted.I told the kid one beer and my check and I am digging my legs into the floor in a strong wider base, dropping my hips and getting ready. The beer comes, I over tip as usual and I am out of there. There is pushing your luck and there is sheer stupidity. I try to stay on the right side of the line.Especailly when drinking in a country where people just disappear.

Monday, June 10, 2013

empty can of natural ice
empty glass of jim beam
empty mug of champagne
bladder full
I may have to get up
your reporter on the edge of great discoveries
first things first
time to pee

2 beers left
and someone left the jim beam bottle on the counter
its a shame im gonna kill it
its a one drink serving
surely it has been left for me?

the great discovery tonight is that I prefer the blackness
I prefess unconsciousness to consciousness
I long for veil
the passport to a better world
a world where I am in a mall
racing down stairs at top speed
with an unidentifiable homie

who is this homie?
why are we racing thru a mall at top speed

the convo switches to arcade games
hockey
I prefer the bubble hockey
the one with the levers
he prefers a video version
and we are talking about a racing car game in the middle of the same thought

my toes are tickled and I may never see that movie I was racing to
dreams are a mystery
especially the stupid ones
perhaps I am the stupid one
perhaps I should analyze the dream to plot the course of whats left of my life
I don't have a long shelf life
I have an angry lesbian after me

by the time you read these words I may already be dead
she is no one to fuck with


 

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

trivia nite at the local bar
and its too hard for the locals
so the bartender
a schoolteacher
dumbs it down
and theres questions like
"name the hole in your body that poo comes out?"
and everyone is happier

its a dangerous bar to have an opinion in
people ask loaded questions
depending on who is there
trying to get you to make a statement that amounts to fighting words
in someones worldview
its like a local form of cable down there
so itsa lotta fun
whose fighint in the alley tonight?

you can call someone an asshole
thats fine
we are all assholes down here

but never question the decisions
never rise to the bait
speak in generalities
when someone seeks specisifities at the bar its prolly cuz they want to see some fireworks
you were talking about the dog killing quarterback on the local sports team
you are against it
and hate the team for it now
you will have a lot of free time on sundays thanks local sports geniuses!

you just said dogs should run and frolic in the sun
which is why you dont have a dog
(if you love dogs so much........)

then the specifics come out
what do you think of someone that keeps dogs in a cage all day?
here is where you just know someone two stools down has pitbulls in his back room or something like that
weapons with fur

gotta love the logical traps of the hard of thinking

gotta love trivia questions like what planetary body is in the air during night time?
during day time?
during an eclipse?

i brought ringers
cuz i likes to win
and my lesbian posse knows alot more about music and history than me
so im now the king of trivia
scourge of jersey girls who threaten to kung fu your ass if you don't stop accusing them of cheating
even tho the red in her hair matches the color of her hands after "the incident"

Friendly Tavern

The Friendly Tavern

I wanted to show some South Philly bar life to dude I work with. He drove me home from my shitty warehouse job. Moving heating and air conditioning units is thirsty wor. This job was turning my alkie-ometer to "raging". I thought I'd add flavor to his life and we stopped in to the Friendly Lounge, its going to be on some list in Esquire this month.
I think the list was of the top dive bars in the country or something. My usual local bar may just qualify, but we weren't heading there this week. The last time we went there on a Friday everyone in the place was staring at us and they stopped betting on the horses as soon as we came in. Thats 10-15 dudes who now have a probelm with us because they can't bet because my boss looks like a cop. I treat this guy like "a dude from work" but in realuty he thinks he's my boss. It's kinda funny, actually. I'd rather have my boss chauffeur me to happy hour that take two busses and a train, so I would pretend from time to time that the boss was a pal, in order to start drinking faster. Luckily for me, ths guy was in the hospitality business in the eighties and had the mind set where "we are just buddies, and we bust each others stones all the time" so me being honest with him about his suspected sexual deviancies and lack of morals was seen in this light by him.
A styling sixtiyish fellow was behind the stick andit was in the paper recently
was chatting about the places history with us talking about the recent and upcoming press about the place and seemed to be very interested in my friend. Was my joking about deviancies going to blossom right here on Washington Avenue in the heart of the Cambodian business block? Looking carefully around I noticed only dudes,
which is not uncommon at six on a Friday, but on third and fourth glance the owner seemed very well kept, as if he exfoliated,and he did say the only "special" in the place was him (I'm a frugal drunk).

"Youre looking at the special, sweetie'" he lisped provacatively.

His eyes had that "lively" look. He and my, I guess, date couldn't stop bantering about Southern Florida baseball players, and locations of rest stops in the Keys. Apparently theres a Hemingway themed rest stop that is known for it's "bears", whatever they are. I'm going to have to ask my go to guy for gayness, butchinbed. He will help me get to the bottom of things. He's an authority on these things.
Other men would have been jealous I guess, I was relieved to not have to pretend to be somebodies buddy for two beers until I could slip away to my local bar. I lokked around the bar some more and listed all of the tell tale clues that told me that I was in "one of those kind" of bars.
All male clientel.
The name of the bar is Friendly which is a similar word to happy, and happy is a synonym for the English term for a cigarette.
There was also bundle of sticks in a picture frame with a heart in the background above the bar in a spotlight.
I'm glad i made it clear which side of the boat i was onwhen the talk was of Florida, and the Manatee River. The bartender said the sailors used to have sex with them and mentioned "...anything thats soft and warm I guess",
"..after all that time at sea and all"
I could hear the Village People in the background on the jukebox singing songs about the seamen in the navy, in the navy.
Thats when I came out on the I'd bang a Manatee side of the equation with the proviso that it was a cute manatee and theat we were in a commited and loving relationship. After all I continued, I dated one for a while when I was a school teacher but it was just drunken sex for the sake of drunken sex and was empty and unfulfilling. The bar sat in stunned silence, then as one, the crowd squealed "EEEEEEEEW, sex with a girrrrrl...."
So we left.
And now I gotta work with a dude who thinks I took him into a gay bar and that's funnier than an afterschool special about Chlamydia for some reason.