Notes From a Dive Bar XXVIII

Love me tender...

"Do you think she will have sex with me?" asks Sammy, nodding at a lady in a booth, his style peppered with halitosis, B.O. and a couple of blow-up dolls at home.

"Sammy, I hate to tell you this, but she's a human being." He worked in a sex shop up the street until the building was demolished, bricks reduced to rubble, sperm and spunky splatters on those thick walls.

"I thought people who worked in sex shops would get laid all the time," I say.
"They're all eunuchs," is his response. I put two cherries in his whisky sour.

The old English dude, his arms have badly drawn tattoos on them, sailor type things, fading anchors, he sinks deep in his Guinness, and yells out, "You wanker!" at no one in particular. His poor face trampled by the alcoholic cavalry. Polite, please and thank you, the Queen's manners, and then the cursing begins, "You wanker!" He's not referring to me, maybe he means Sammy. On his third, "You wanker," I cut him off, too many wankers can stunt a man's growth, and I notice he is quite short in length. He says thank you and leaves, wobbling, trembling, dare I say it, throbbing with some kind of wanker's anger.

A beautiful woman drinks in this dive, twenties, fashion student, bored. She says, "I love you," and I say, OK. "No, I do," she says, and I say OK twice. She says she's been bad but all I can do is splash more soda, and less booze, in her drink. "You know I love you," she says, but there will be no elopement and wedding in a Las Vegas chapel.

Put Elvis on the jukebox, I tell her. Then, I leave the building, shift over.