Blog Archives

Checkered Badge

6/27/2011

The clean air stung his lungs. He waited for the attendant, impatiently, to produce a pack of cigarettes, and flung down his cash, not carrying about the change, to hurry outside. “Time to burn,” he thought, lighting a nail, and hammering a lung full. His eyes rolled in the sockets, a brief instant, before the matter at hand came back to his attention, and he wondered how much a bus would hurt if it plowed into… Banishing such thoughts, he checked his pocket for the cold copper of pennies he’d been collecting, a handful of Lucky-Heads-Up. And what luck. There were still days to filter through, straining for gems from the flotsam and jetsam, but the fact of the moment pertained simply: You’re not dead yet. He checked his bandage, checkered with blood, darkening black and red. The knife glanced off the rib cage leaving the jaw of his assailant open to payback. His knuckles still ached where he’d earned purple crowns breaking the boy’s face. “How many nights start and end the same?” he wondered, without want for an answer.

It wasn’t time for a miracle. Those Ages are over, and this new kind, yet to be dubbed, lingered too fresh and stinking for understanding. Better to simply put head down and plow forward hoping what passes for damnation can be redemption since no one really knows what lies at the end. Rocks glasses like artillery shells, spent in annihilation. His face morphed in the mirror behind the bar till he couldn’t recognize himself, save for the checkered bandage, which the bartender kept asking him to stop showing. “But I’m just making sure I’m me,” he tried to explain to no one listening.

1 Comment

Why I Quit: Bartending

6/6/2011

0 Comments

            Little coherent, she said, she whispered, she intimated. The myriad ways she spoke and none made sense. Her eyes: dinner plates on which she served tears. Skin like no other bronze, almost orange. She promised to stay, and no one knew who'd asked her to remain. The invitation she presumed caused her to stagger about the room, shouting garbled words. The few comprehensible syllables still followed little logic.

            "....pig tits.... fur shit house dick... mac.... principles...."

            She took drinks from any table she passed till her arms were filled with scavenged cocktails, an array of straws held in hot pink lips. Some wrong had been done to her, that was clear enough. So no one tried to stop her.

            Between the liquor babbling she sobbed like an infant, at times sucking breaths in desperate gasps,

            "blarrggg (sob) her hose loose... (sob sniffle) dip pickle.... uuuhhhhh (sob, sob)"

            I turned off the jukebox in the hopes it would quell the occasional guttural bellows she'd unpredictably unleash, "TEEERRRREEEEE!" Quiet did not stop her shouting. In fact, somehow it made her louder.

            In some way she managed to get a cigarette in her mouth and lit without dropping a glass, which drew attention to the fact she had two already smoldering in one of her tiny fleshy hands. The paper turned dark as her tears dampened the cigarette. Without warning, she dropped the load of glasses in order to ash and scratch her crotch.

            "It's a fucker," the first full sentence she managed. .. after the glasses shattered at her feet. I was about to come around from behind the bar at that point, when an equally orange gentleman entered the bar. Wearing no shirt for some reason, despite it being November -- he had the body of a Greek statue and the busted face of a car wreck victim -- he scanned the room. Seeing the sobbing girl he nodded and called in a slur to someone outside, "No prob G. She's in here. Terry. TERRY!" When she looked at him with a dim expression of recognition, he added, "Lets go! It's time to bounce."

As she ambled over, her feet crushing the broken glass to powder, I asked the man, "Is she all right?"

            "What's it to you bro?" he asked, spreading his arms wide in the A-typical posture of one daring another to cause trouble.

            "Nothing. She's just been crying."

            "What? You can't cry in here or something." He advanced towards the bar, towards me.

            "Yeah. I mean you can. I'm just concerned."

            "Don't. Maybe you should be more concerned about being a faggot than about her."

            Recognizing a fight no one could possibly win, I simply nodded. By the end of our exchange, Terry had waddled to the door, having collected a few more glasses on the way. Passing me, she smirked and wrinkled her nose, "Dis place is uh shit hole."

            "You know it," her male friend agreed, never taking his eyes off me. I considered telling her not to leave with drinks in hand, but thought it would be easier just to let the two go. He ushered her out the door with a hand clamped on her ass, following shortly after, but not before pointing at his eyes then pointing at me.

            I told Alan, the other bartender that night, to get a broom and clean up the broken glass.

            He asked, "Why me? Why don't you do it?"

            "Because I quit."

0 Comments

No One Does It Like Tom

6/3/2011

0 Comments

No one does it better than Tom Renolds. He wished on a star and got the power to make things according to his whim and will. That’s why there are dinosaurs on the street, a pimp for the pope, a golden moon, and the caramel ocean. He’s the reason some folks change color like mood rings, and no one needs school (we know it all to the extent Tom does), wars flare on nights Tom is bored and millions come and go, the cemetery is full of the living, cities rise only half complete. Tom Renolds gave us the constellation Middle Finger, the sky in changing shades (purple, red, yellow), some people turn to animals, all singers sound like Tom, and there’s no history. Computers can talk to men and ignore women. It’s always seventy, and the year feels nineteen-eighty. Pregnancy is optional at a thought, most aborting done on the street when a whim is complete, fired out at a doubt. Stacy Chambers is crucified on every street corner. Matt Barker is plagued by demons. But no body really knows who those people are. God visits on occasion but never says anything.

There are whispers of finding Tom and killing him, but he could be anyone... if he ever even leaves his castle in the sky.

The sun sets when Tom sleeps; and he’s awake for days. He boxes Gandhi because a movie star once wanted to, and meaningless graffiti pops up like the word Library, as if anyone ever heard of such a thing. No one ever loses a tooth, but there is a tooth fairy – she gets more frantic with each day trying to fulfill an instinct she doesn’t understand. Santa is a comet across the sky. All cars are Mustangs. There’s no need for work because we’re all rich to the point it’s pointless having cash; we can all afford everything (though China is starving). I saw a dodo the other day. We’ve all got southern accents and speak English with a tendency to lapse into Spanish. Sometimes it burns to pee and everyone smokes, the clouds blanket most neighborhoods. Littering is common, and the garbage vanishes when it starts to stink.

Someone said they were him and hated living, but I don’t know if I believe it.

My wife loves the sugar fox, one of a thousand new species one can pet and eat, but I have to fight Great Whites when I go outside. We had children, but they grew up in a day, and we don’t know what to think. At least there are no politicians.

Chuck Norris is the face on every cop. Robots serve our every need. There are ever more stereotypes on the street. People fall in love with ease and swap partners freely. No one is overweight. Most restaurants are fast food. Sometimes some of us can fly just by thinking, but we’ve all learned not to go too high - the ability is lost without warning. Motley Crue can be heard most hours of the day like a constant background soundtrack. Ghosts exist but not UFOs. The Loch Ness monster left the lake to wreck havoc throughout Scotland. Thank god Tom was near to slay the beast.

Sometimes the sky is a portrait of Tom, smiling down giving us all the thumbs up.

All theaters have been converted to grow weed. No one ages and the population is growing. Water tastes like Kool-Aid. Bars only serve whiskey and beer. There are no speed limits, and everyone has the best sense of direction. I have nightmares about the T-Rex that swallowed my cousin. For a while it rained grain alcohol, and some say there are still areas on fire from the storm, a bolt of lightning igniting the west coast. Some days all anyone can do is smile. I tried to kill myself but nothing happened.

No attractive woman is ever a lesbian, though bi- is prevalent. The only sports are football, and the season runs year round. Parts of the globe are blank spaces. Jesus stops by every house once a week to make sure we’ve been going to church. Air guitar makes actual sounds. Sometimes, without warning, we all feel wasted.

We all have guns. I like to shoot at the sky on Portrait Days. I shot my wife once, and she said thanks for trying. Tom’s zeppelin castle soars over our town every two months, leading to the speculation he’s from our area. Sometimes it drops bombs, but I’m more worried about his statue. It arrives causing earthquakes and carries people off to lord only knows where. Even Tom says it’s gotten a mind of its own, “What do you expect when you’re five miles tall? Cumprend-eh?” Why he won’t rein it in is a constant mystery.

Babies never cry. We’ve all been on TV at some point. Angels deliver food to your front door since there are no more groceries. I’ve been around the world eight times (“hypersonic” travel now being possible), and it all looks the same. Even Antarctica is a playground. The world was fun the first few years, but these last seventy are getting stale. Every night the entire population of the planet goes outside to look for shooting stars, assuming Tom’s tale is true, and we all make the Wish, in some variation or another, that this reality will be undone. No one’s ever seen one since Tom did.

0 Comments

Checkered Badge

Why I Quit: Bartending

No One Does It Like Tom

Author

Archives

Categories