He rightly surmised
that I was fucking with him, though I was trying to don my “sincere” face.
“Aw, it ain’t
gotta be like dat.”
“No,
no, I’m serious. I just wanna know.
Does wearing your hat off to the side mean you’re in a gang?”
“I ain’t
no banger, G. It’s like I told ya.
Dis’ my style. Why ya gotta front?”
I could
tell his punk ass was getting nervous, so I completely backed off. Bullying guys
I outweigh by seventy pounds isn’t among my appetites, (despite what you might’ve read on this website, I actually
HATE bullies), and I cracked a few self-defecating jokes to lighten the mood.
What amazes me though,
in retrospect, is that I don’t think this Asheville-raised fledgling had any idea why he dressed the way he did, or
talked the way he did. No, he’d merely joined a “group”, he’d
merely adopted a pop culture persona, and I actually felt bad about messing with him in the first place.
If he’d
bowed up, or if he’d been bigger, I might’ve pushed it a little to see how deep his “thug love” went. Ah, but that’s not for someone like me to judge.
I mean, maybe he’s happy dressing like Eminem for Halloween 365 days out of the year. Maybe there’s a lot of hot chicks he can get that I can’t simply because, “he got dat
style.”
I will probably
never know, but his blond headed buddy was the one hooking up with MC, and Meat wasn’t wearing a crooked baseball cap.
Lesson here? Hmmm…
ANYWAY,
the next thing I remember, I was waking up in my own bed. I still had the same
clothes on, and they reeked of bar smoke and spilt liquor. After changing my
underwear, putting on a pair of khaki shorts and my black “[Super Asskicker] Martial Arts” T-shirt, I strapped
some Nike beach sandals on my smelly feet and ventured into the living room.
Marty and John were
laid out side by side on a Wal-Mart issue air mattress, their eyelids cracking sluggishly as I came to a halt above them.
“Well, well,
well… I guess incest is best, yeah?”
Profanity came from
Marty. Laughter came from John.
I won’t
bore you with the subsequent details, but suffice to say that we all washed up, brushed our teeth, and respectively unleashed
4.6 gallons of fecal destruction upon the toilet. The aftermath was terrible
to behold, even with Fabreze, and my next door neighbor has since moved to another state.
Food was the order
of the morning, so Marty, John, and I drove around for about an hour looking for a good place to eat. Because almost everything was closed, it seemed we would have to settle for Huddle House… that is
until a shining icon rose from the mountainous landscape as we cruised Tunnel Road.
The word “Hooters”
towered up from a flat topped building, the letters orange and large and full of a promise we dared not dream of.
“No!”
I gasped, covering my eyes, “It… It can’t be… It can’t be open!”
It wasn’t.
Cover her face. Mine eyes
dazzle. She died young…
Hooters didn’t
open until 12:00 noon, (so saideth the white letters on the cruelly shut double doors), but those of the clan Descado are
not known for being easily defeated, and the three of us went back to my apartment to fast until the blessed hour of Hooterdom
arrived. Said time was spent watching a movie called “Harold & Kumar
go to White Castle”, which might
as well have been an autobiographical account of our years in college.
“The secret ingredient is semen… ANIMAL semen!!!”
I’ll give
you a second to think about that…
Finished? Cool.
The digital clock
read 12:01 as Marty yanked the wheel and skidded his sedan to a halt in the parking
lot of “HOOTERS WINGS AND BREW.”
I’d never
been to this particular Hooters; in fact, I’d only been to Hooters once in my entire life, and that was years ago in
Memphis when I was having an affair with Susan.
As such,
I was totally unprepared for what awaited me on the other side of those double doors, the same that had been so cruelly closed
only hours before.
Marty,
John, and I crossed the threshold to find a new and fantastic world; a universe of light wood tables and strategically mounted
television sets… of air conditioned coolness and poultry-winged heat… of patron void and announcer plenty. And frolicking throughout, a nymphet herd of the most beautiful women I have ever
seen in one place.
Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights paled in comparison, the sheer barrage
of crushed breasts and protruding asses and tanned legs almost more than I could handle.
A petite goddess with golden hair and sky blue eyes scampered up as my cousins and I struggled to take it all in.
“Welcome to
Hooters!” she chimed, her startlingly white teeth brandished with practiced allure, “Can I get you guys a table?”
“I, uh, bla,
table, um, er, boobs…”
Yeah,
that was pretty much my response verbatim.
Whether or not I
stammered it out loud is as irrelevant as it is unknown, because Marty immediately spoke up, (just as my brother Eric- which
Marty is soooo like- would’ve done).
“We’ll
just look around for a second,” he said without doubling over on account of the raging hardon’s John and I had
suddenly fallen victim to, “Which football games are where?”
“The screens
are labeled with sticky notes,” replied Aphrodite, “Sit wherever you want.”
Now, I might’ve
been hung over, but I was totally NOT drunk, and yet the next few minutes are a total blur for me. I sort of remember Marty leading us to various points in the restaurant, and I sort of remember debating
the merit of this table or that, but my next clear memory is sitting at an “island” bar at the back of the establishment,
a place where four television screens were in plain view.
“Yeah, we
can see the most games from here I think,” Marty decided, “The Minnesota/Pittsburgh pre-show should be starting
right about now.”
If you’ve
read my site, then you’ve probably ascertained that I don’t know DICK about professional football. I only quoted “Minnesota versus Pittsburgh”
because those were the first two teams that came to mind. Who was actually playing? I have no idea. If it doesn’t involve
two martial artists beating the fluids out of each other, I don’t follow it. Ah,
but John and Marty are big time fans, and they were all jazzed about the onslaught of games they could watch at one time.
Don’t be fooled,
my readers. My cousins were equally enthralled by the women. The only difference was, they had a believable excuse not to blurt out, “BOOBS!!! I CAN SEE BOOBS!!!”
Not that I did that.
No, I was as calm
as a Hindu cow on the surface. In my mind, however, I was in some state of reproductive
shock. It probably goes without saying that I’ve been to strip clubs before,
and I’ve certainly dated some insanely hot woman. Yet this was an assault
on my senses the likes of which I’d never encountered. It would’ve
actually been LESS overwhelming if all these scantily clad vixens had been running around topless, or even nude. At least THEN my pride would’ve kicked in, and I would’ve been all, “I’m not falling for this shit! I don’t have to pay to see
boobies! Fuck this place!”
Seriously. That’s the mindset I’ve gotten on those few occasions when I’ve
been dragged to strip clubs. The women become cheap to me in their nakedness,
they become objects, they lose worth.
Oh,
but how different this was! Yes, they
all wore white tank tops cut low enough to make an infant hungry. Yes, their
tight orange shorts where bunching up into their butt cracks. Yes, they were
selling sex. And yet, it wasn’t quite overt enough to elicit revulsion
from me. I was caught in that netherworld where I couldn’t indulge without
reservation nor dismiss without hypocrisy.
Thank you, Hooters.
The restaurant was
surprisingly empty as we settled in, which meant we had the full attention of the dozen or so waitresses. The first to break off from the herd was a lively female specimen named Carrie, and she would be our bartendress
for the afternoon.
“What’ll
it be guys?”
All three of us
exchanged hesitant glances as if it were a trick question.
“Okaaay,
why don’t I tell you about our specials?” Carrie tried again, scooting up right to the edge of the bar and blatantly
brandishing her boobs. It looked like a dead heat in a Hindenburg race.
I’m
not being a sexist pig here. No, she literally arched her back, stuck her breasts
out, and put them on the bar top. This was a practiced move, apparently, because
she also brandished one of those small, free standing menu plaques and held it in front of her chest. I say “practiced” on account of the fact that she simultaneously looked down and pointed to
various items, thus giving all three of us a safe opportunity to ogle her rack.
There’s no
way in FUCK that she didn’t know exactly what she was doing, and I pretended not to be interested out of sheer spite,
(that, and the fact that my dick popped up and hit me in the chin, knocking my head sideways).
Ah, but Carrie turned
out to be the coolest chick in the whole fucking bar! Though young, she’s
a single mom with a degree in Environmental Science of all things. It goes without
saying that she had a great set of Hooters, but literary protocol dictates that I give a visual. Her hair was shoulder length and brown, and I think her eyes were dark as well. Carrie wasn’t by any means “ethnic”, but her bare ass had probably seen the inside of
a tanning bed on numerous occasions.
What
struck me most about her, though, was her face. She was pretty, but not drop-dead-gorgeous…
and that’s a good thing. Carrie sported a “Girl Next Door”
persona, one where she was as approachable as she was genuine. Yeah, yeah, I
know it’s her job to make guys feel at home, and Carrie was certainly playing the “I love football too!”
card. But I didn’t sense that it was an act, and that made her unique among
her cohorts.
For the next FOUR
HOURS, my cousins and I sat at that island bar and gorged. Chicken bones were
stacked in graveyard mounds in front of us, pitchers of “on special” Coors Lite emptied almost faster than Carrie
could refill them. And all the while we laughed and joked and flirted with waitress
after waitress.
It was as close
to Heaven as I’ll ever get. Hell, even Marty was seduced by the power of
that place. Every once in a while he’d turn to me with this goofy smile
on his face and say, “This is great, cuz.” * sigh of whimsy * “Just… perfectly… great.”
Meanwhile, John
was laughing like Beavis and Butthead, “Uh, huh huh, huh huh huh… She
said, sauce… Huh, huh, huh huh
huh…”
Actually,
now that I think about it, John was spittin’ MAD game at our hostesses. He’s
always had a way with the ladies, and this day was no exception. As for me, well,
I was totally entranced by Carrie. Every word out of her mouth seemed a spoken
song, and I was doing everything in my power to hit on her without appearing to do so.
I used all the Descado
classics, which included saying funny stuff out loud to my cousins whenever Carrie was within earshot. See the strategy here? I wasn’t constantly directing
my quips AT HER, per say. No, I was pulling Marty and John into the act instead
so that it wasn’t so obvious. It makes me seem like a funny guy in general,
rather than a drunken asshole whose humor is solely a tool for getting laid.
For example, Marty
said he had dreamed that Pittsburgh was gonna win, to which I replied, “Oh
yeah? Well last night I dreamed I was Spiderman!”
I know
that doesn’t sound especially funny, but tone and delivery are everything.
Carrie laughed and
came over, then leaning into the bar once more.
“Spiderman,
huh? Did you have that tight little costume on?”
“No,”
I replied, “I was naked.”
“Well, I guess
I know where you were shooting the webs from.” (meaning, my dick)
BAM!!! Is that a comeback or what?!? Marty and
John cracked up, and I did one of those sly nods that say, “You damn right, sweetheart!”
As the beer flowed
and the wings disappeared, our conversations turned a little more serious, Marty and I debating boisterously about this issue
or that to make sure nobody thought we were dumb jock mouth-breathers.
“So Marty,
what do you think about F.E.M.A. having executive power to suspend the Constitution in times of national emergency?”
Stuff
like that.
Ironically, Marty
argued that the Federal Emergency Management Agency can’t suspend the Constitution no matter what… and he might
be right. The only reason I thought it could was because David Duchovny said
as much in the X-Files movie.
Man, films are bullshit! That’s the last time I base a political statement on something from Hollywood. FUCK!!!
Regardless,
I wasn’t kidding when I said we were there for FOUR HOURS, and it would’ve probably been longer had Marty and
John not had to go back to Tennessee. The tab was over a hundred dollars, which
included three platters of chicken wings and eleven pitchers of beer.
Carrie was tipped
admirably, but I was too drunk by that time to ask for her phone number without slurring.
Still, I’d told her I was a writer, and she asked for my website. Hopefully,
she’s reading this right now.
If so, Carrie, will
you marry me? I’d be a good husband to you!
Seriously! I wouldn’t cheat that often or nothing! And I’m great with kids. They love me, especially teenage
girls. You’ve got a daughter, right?
So we
get back to my place and talk to a few neighbors that were hanging around outside. One
was this really hot chick in a bikini that I had NO IDEA lived next to me.
Since Marty was
driving, he hadn’t drunk that much, but John and I leveled eleven pitchers of beer between the two of us, and saw no
reason to stop. I had some Miller Lite in the fridge for John, which left me
my beloved bourbon and diet coke.
Big mistake.
No sooner than I’d
finished my first cocktail, I realized I was dizzy.
“Well guys,”
I stammered to Marty and John, “It’s been fun… now, GO HOME!!!”
They left five minutes
later, and I retired to my bedroom to pass out. Sleep would not come, however,
and I felt like I was dying. It turns out that I was actually sick, and had been
all weekend. Nothing major, (since I rarely fall ill), just a sore throat. But this minor malady combined with poor alcohol judgment to create an abomination.
Ever hear that old
warning, “Beer then Liquor, never sicker”? Fuck me in the ass if
it isn’t true!!!
With pre-vomit drool
leaking from my mouth, I staggered into the bathroom and knelt before the porcelain chalice of crappery, my arms encircling
the cool white bowl, my nostrils filled with the acrid scent of bleach, (I’d cleaned the toilet the day before).
My body wanted to
heave, but my mind resisted furiously.
“I’m
Michael Descado of the clan Descado…” I told the bowl, “I’m the greatest drinker the world has ever
known.” * belch * “And I will not throw up… Such weakness is
for lesser mortals, my ivory temptress… You have no power over me…”
Anger came from
this little soliloquy, and my stomach settled. I even got cocky about it.
“Oh, you want me to vomit, don’t cha! You
want my chicken wings, you hungry little bitch! Well, you’re not gonna
get ‘em!!! They’re my
chicken wings, and you can starve with your clear water and your soothing aroma…
So, soothing… So pretty…”
The indifferent
white succubus replied only with her bubbling coo, thus beckoning me with the ice cool water.
“I wish I
could shrink down to GI Joe size… Yeah, then I could swim… I could drink... I’m so thirsty…”
I glanced up and
over at the nearby sink, but it was too far away. I had only the seductive gurgle
of the toilet to listen, to comfort, to accept.
“Just a small
sip… No one will know… And
I cleaned you yesterday… So clear…
So cold…”
The crystalline
surface drew near as my face descended into the bowl, frigid air rising up from the surface like an artic kiss.
“No one will
know… It’ll be our secret, my love…”
Cover her face. Mine eyes
dazzle. She died young…
My chin bumped the
edge of the rim at that moment, and the realization of what I was about to do hit like a sickening hammer.
“What the
fuck is wrong with me?!?”
That’s all
it took. The toilet bowl had tricked me, and my stomach unleashed with a fury
previously unknown in all my thirty two years on this planet.
* BLAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
*
“You…
fucking… whore-” * BLAAAAAAAAAA!!!! * “I’ll get you for this-” * cough * “I’ll rip
you out of the ground and buy an outhouse-” * BLAAAAAAAAAA!!!! * “It’s not over…” * gasp * spit
* “It’s not over…”
“You’re right about that,” the toilet whispered, mocking laughter echoing from the tiled walls, “My lesson hath not ended…”
* BLAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
*
This time, the explosive
release was shared by a second orifice, and I felt the back of my khaki shorts puff out like a mushroom. Yep, I crapped myself.
* BLAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
* BLAAAAAAAAAA!!!! * BLAAAAAAAAAA!!!! *
Oh how
terrible, this twin purging. Identical in violence and volume, I was been sucked
dry by the vampire toilet, my heart thudding with the repeated exertions, the back of my legs aflame from digested hot wing
sauce.
“ENOUGH!!!”
I screamed, “YOU WIN!!! YOU WIN!!!
FOR PITY’S SAKE, PORCELAIN MISTRESS, SPARE ME!!!”
And
then, all at once, it was over. My forehead sank to the hard but welcoming rim,
my breaths ragged and taxed. I wanted nothing more than to crumple up in the
fetal position and go to sleep, but I couldn’t do that in good conscious… not with a load in my pants.
Dragging
myself to my feet, I stripped butt naked and threw all my clothes into the nearby trashcan, (thank God it had a liner!), then
to turn on the shower and collapse upon the bottom of the bathtub.
For many minutes,
I lay there like an unstrung puppet; warm artificial rain washing away the remnants of my fight with Lady Deathshit. It was a cleansing of both body and soul, and soon I had the strength to stand, to
regroup, to employ both soap and loofa sponge.
I didn’t make
eye contact with the toilet bowl as I emerged from the steam and toweled off. My
defeat was too new to risk defiance again, and I went to work cleaning up the floor instead.
With a towel around my waste, and all evidence of the holocaust secured in a black Hefty trash bag, I opened the bathroom
door and took a deep breath. The air conditioning had been on “High”
all morning, and goosebumps prickled my damp forearms.
It wasn’t
until I took my first step into the hall, (my bare foot sinking into the softness of the carpet), that I dared to look back.
Indifferent as always,
the toilet bowl merely stood there and gurgled.
“You won this
day, my lady. But there will be others.”
“Indeed there will, Descado,” the water replied, “I’ll
be waiting…”
