Contributor: Robert E. Petras
- -
Guess you could pretty much say I look like a nerd with my greasy, cowlicked brown hair and my habit of picking my nose. Because one of my eyes is green, the other brown doesn’t help, either. The buttoned collar on my sports shirt and the masking tape encircling the bridge of my black glasses I put on for effect. I am especially strong for someone being a skinny 145 pounds.
I am an inventor. When I go out, I take some of my inventions with me, like my latest—alcohol power bars and the memory vacuum cleaner—inside a Kelly green backpack with white peace symbols dotting every side. So maybe I am a nerd, but I like to drink and can hold more alcohol than anyone I know, thanks to munching a power bar or two.
Already half-drunk, I was sitting at the end of this T-town bar called the Broken Mirror Café, mining my own boogers, when this hulk of a fellow wearing camouflaged sweats and a matching Caterpillar ball cap sidled next to me. He held a can of Bush in one hand and a Styrofoam spit cup in the other.
“I don’t like your looks,” he said to me.
“I don’t like your underpants,” I said to him.
“You can’t see my underpants,” he said.
“I can’t see them, but I can smell them.”
“Them’s fightin’ words where I come from.”
“You don’t want to mess with me,” I said. “You had better stand clear of this bar.”
But he didn’t.
So I squatted at the corner of the bar and bear-hugged it the best I could and then hoisted that heavy oaken bar—all thirty feet of it—overhead, canting it so that the table top at the far end touched the ceiling, the near end, nose-level with Camou-dude. Beer mugs, bottles, cans, margaritas, Jack and Cokes, wine goblets, brandy snifters—all came sliding down, conking Camou-dude right on the forehead, until the last, a fuzzy navel, knocked him out, right into a coma.
I couldn’t place the bar to its original setting because I had wrenched out floorboards and joists, leaving a three-by-30-foot hole in the floor. So people sitting at the table along the wall where they ate wings and other greasy fried bar foods scooted their chairs and tables away to make enough room for me to set the bar against the wall.
“How did you do such a stunt?” people were asking, all except Camou-dude, who remained unconscious despite the bartender’s pouring a full mug of draft beer on his face.
“The more I drink, the stronger I become,” I replied.
“How much have you drank so far?” they asked.
I held up a half-can of Yuengling. “About 16 and a half.”
“I want to be strong like you,” they all said.
I didn’t give them any alcohol power bars, but I toasted to their mental health.
So we drank and drank Yuengling Beer around a gaping hole in the floor, not saying much, just staring at a dark basement twelve feet below, only me becoming any stronger. Two big country boys did decide to test any new strength they might have gained by arm wrestling each other. One by one, all the patrons of the Broken Mirror and the bar tender passed out, including the arm wrestlers, slumped upon the table, their hands still clasped together.
I slid off my backpack and took out the memory vacuum cleaner. It could absorb any form of light, including abstract images, memories and even dreams. It looked like an ordinary handheld gray hairdryer, but this shape was only a deception because inside was a miniature particle accelerator that spun upon a platform that additionally spun 10,000 revolutions per minute, causing the memory eater device to create a light vacuum so strong not even the image of a black hole could escape, and then once drawn these forms of light could pass through skulls into the intake of the memory vacuum through the exhaust right into another person’s brain
So I took some memories, like the first time this middle-aged banker made love and the only home run this truck driver had hit in Little League. That car accident that killed this mean lady’s baby sister, I took, too. I shouldn’t have taken them. But I was drunk.
After the night of my stunt, I guess business at the Broken Mirror really picked up. The bar owner tossed Camou-dude down the hole into the cellar, and patrons spit snuff and tobacco juice on him. I heard they had some kind of contest in which everybody anted up ten dollars to see whose spit could awaken him from the coma, winner taking all. I learned the Broken Mirror sold as much snuff and chew as it did drinks.
I shouldn’t have done it, but I was already starting on my second case of beer, my brain filled with other peoples’ memories, when I strayed into this biker’s bar called Hog Heaven. Naturally, I’m not inside the bar more than five minutes, two-fisted with cans of Yuengling, when a big, bad biker fellow called the Defenestrater waddles over to me.
“You ain’t got the privilege to drink in this bar unless you pass the ritual,” the Denfenestrater said to me.
“And what might that be?” I asked.
“Me and the gang take you outside and piss on you.”
“What is the alternative?”
The Defenestrater thumbed over his shoulder toward the big picture window with blinking red neon Budweiser lights. “I throw you through that window.”
“I do not think so,” I said, emphasizing every word. Then I promptly punched the cheap wood-paneled wall behind him, pulverizing panels, plaster, two-by-fours, even wiring as though God’s wrecking ball had swung into it.
Exposed completely was the dressing room of the gentleman’s club next door. The strippers inside were fully clothed and demanded tips.
“How did you do that?” biker dudes and biker chicks asked me.
“Muscles in a can,” I replied.
I toasted their mental health and then we all sat around the biker bar, drinking Yuengling, staring at strippers parading in their street clothes, until one by one everybody except me passed out.
I vacuumed more memories, like a biker’s initiation into a motorcycle gang and a biker chick’s wedding dance. That biker’s molestation as a child by a priest, I took, too. I extracted this biker dude’s recurring nightmare of rattlesnakes biting him. I shouldn’t have taken them. But I was drunk.
Business at Hog Heaven, I heard, picked up after my wall-smashing incident. Bikers from all over came to watch strippers parade around in their street clothes. I guess bikers are good tippers.
I continued going to more bars in T-town and even a few down the road in B-ville. I began to notice my strength and beer consumption gradually fading until I was reduced to juggling full kegs of beer, then to hop scotching across spinning bar stools and finally to basic push-ups. Every time I vacuumed memories I shouldn’t have taken; nobody seemed to mind because business was so good.
Hearing the Broken Mirror’s business plummeted, I returned to see whether I could help. I was already half-drunk on two Yuenglings when I saw a revived Camou-dude sitting at his regular seat next to the hole where the bar once stood. He was even more camouflaged with all that dried brown tobacco juice splattered all over his face and neck. I guess his wife had spit the winner, a Prince Charming sort of thing in reverse, giving the happy couple 2,120 dollars of Bush and wings money.
Camou-dude sidled next to me. “I don’t like your looks,” he said.
“I don’t like your underpants,” I replied.
“ I ain’t wearin’ none,” he said and then beat me up, took my wallet and tossed me down the hole, backpack and all, fortunately my hands and knees breaking the fall.
I could tell business at the Broken Mirror had really picked up by all those beer bottles raining upon me twelve feet below the hole in the floor where a perfectly good three-by-30-foot oaken bar once stood. These bottles didn’t hurt much, not empties anyway. It was pretty good exercise dodging all those bottles and tobacco spit.
Every once in a while, I would become brave enough to stand in the middle of the hole just to glimpse who was having all that fun. There they were, hovering high above me, arms cocked and lips puckered: Camo-dude and the Mrs., the Defenestrater and all his biker friends, and all the strippers from the gentleman’s club, wearing Sunday clothes and bonnets yet, and a bunch of other folks, too.
I guess they had some kind of contest to see who could conk me on the noggin the hardest. But those empty beer bottles didn’t sting much more than tobacco spit to the eyes.
Then they started heaving Yuenglings, first half-full bottles and later full ones, and by the third day I had stored enough Yuengling to get good and drunk and consumed my last alcohol power bar and leaped up through that hole in the floor, onto the bar, right between two country boys arm wrestling.
“How did you do that?” a bunch of people asked.
“Muscles in a can,” I told them while grabbing a Yuengling from the bar.
Of course, they wanted muscles in a can, too. This time, I toasted to my mental health, and we drank and drank until they passed out one by one, including Camou-dude, who could really hold his Bush Beer. He crashed face first right into his foam spit cup full of tobacco juice.
I hoisted that three-by-30-foot oaken bar up again and slanted it over the hole in the floor so that it would not fall into the basement. Except for a couple of gaps in the floor at both ends of the bar and a few cracks in the wooden floor boards, you would never have known some skinny nerdy-looking guy had once ripped that bar completely from its moorings.
Then I took out my memory vacuum and returned their dreams and memories, like this biker’s fantasy to become to be president of Hell’s Angels, and this stripper’s fantasy to become a Rockette. Camou Dude’s fantasy of beating up his step daddy for all those belt whippings he absorbed as a boy—I took too. I couldn’t help myself; I was drunk.
- - -
Robert E. Petras is a previous contributor to Razor Dildo. His work has also appeared in State of the Imagination, Speech Bubble and Death Head Grin.
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
