I wake up on a snot-green cheap tile floor in a shallow warm puddle of piss. I don't start spitting til I realize it's not mine. At least mostly, anyway. How long have I been out? How many blurry-eyed stumbledrunks mistook my face for a urinal cake in their haste to get back to a money-sucking sex wish of a barstool whore? I manage to pull myself up to the sink and splash my face with water. I'm not bleeding and I don't have to puke. Could be worse.
I sniff my shirt. Smells like piss and bleach. I light a smoke to cover the stench, which has always been my strategy when it comes to cops, girls, and my editor. Spray-on deodorant and cigarette smoke. It probably makes me stink like a bowling alley bathroom janitor closet but nobody's ever complained.
The bathroom door is graffitied in bold marked letters "Abandon All Poop, Ye Who Enter Here." Someone responded "I Heart Dick." I can't let that slide so I add some letters to make it say "I Heart Charles Dickens." You know. For the kids.
I push through the door and wade through the thickmist plumes of stale smoke and high-pitched ladysqueals. The roar of distressed sports fans at the flat-screen LCD outside world. The droning beat of a top-20 techno-mess on the internet-based jukebox with 20,000 songs in its bank and only 3 on its playlist. The song's about treating women like subhuman sex property and it's got all the ladies dancing.
It takes me a few seconds of staring and swaying to figure out which shithouse boozehole I'm in. It's one of those places with the all-female waitstaff in the miniskirts and the tit-framing tank tops that say something like "Ask Me About My Throbbing Asshole" and that somehow relates to the chicken wings you're about to pay too much for. The smarter, less attractive ones work the bar. The rest smoke while they're pregnant.
I take a look around the bar, trying to find a spot that might have been mine before I blacked out under a toilet and a slobbering union worker pissed on my face.
Then I see Rickets. He's chatting up some guy in a stained wifebeater and NASCAR hat, hoping for the good kind of ass-pounding but likely to get the bad from this toughstuff redneck bruiser. His sort don't usually take kindly to being sexually confused but secretly whack their jumbles thinking about skinny blond boys. At least Rickets saved my seat.
He doesn't acknowledge me when I sit, so I guess I haven't been gone long. My beer's still a little cold.
I down it quick before it gets any worse and flag down the closest bartender.
She gives me a fake shiny smile and leans over the bar to make sure I get an eyeful of her tip jars. I order a beer and a shot of gin. She calls me "sweetie" and winks at me as she heads to the taps. That sort of thing makes me feel old and unattractive, but it seems to make the other old, unattractive men at this bar get an old, unattractive boner in their workslacks.
I take the gin fast and try not to stare at the bartender's low-cut, pushed-up intelligence. I don't want to give her the upper hand.
"You smell like a church locker room." Rickets eyes me over the rim of his martini glass. His NASCAR fuck fantasy seems to have hit the bricks.
"What happened to your friend?"
"Oh, he'll come around. Men like him? They just talk tough about football to hide their hard-on when they get a little attention from me. Then they go home, joylessly fuck their wives as though asking God for forgiveness, squeeze their junk when they vote Republican and then grease up their righteousness for a sinful trip into my tight little Gomorrah." He flags down the bartender for another martini. I can tell she doesn't like him. Gay dudes remind girls like her that they should have gone to college. I feel bad for her. I could pity all over her chest.
"I've got a meeting with Scribe magazine tomorrow. I'll be dazzled and appalled if they want your article on DXM. Why do you insist on writing such horseshit? It's starting to make me look bad."
"Just give the guy a knob slob and he'll forget what the hell he's writing the check for."
"Bleck! Magazine editor cum tastes like advertisements. You need a new angle. Trying to sell these people on 'postmodern minimalist journalism' is like trying to get kids psyched up about CSPAN. Besides, they think the work is shit. You have terrible issues with commas. At this point we're just banking on college interest in your drinking habits. The pseudo-intellectual art school crowd loves reading about people that justify their self-destructive behavior. Oh, and vampire porn. They love that, too. Have you ever considered branching out?"
I order another beer. A girl dressed as a slutty referee comes by with a tray of test tubes full of different colored liquors. I grab a few and wonder how many credits she needed to get that Associate's Degree before she woke up from an all-night frat house bender, knocked-up, cancer-orange tanned, and addicted to menthol lights.
I let Rickets take a few Rumplemint science projects and say "I'm thinking about trying philosophy fiction."
Rickets laughs and nearly spills his martini. The laughter trails off and we just kinda sit there, staring at the lifeless corpse of my literary faux pas.
Right on cue, up saunters one of the waitresses, making her public relations rounds of sitting next to lonely, old, unattractive bar patrons to make them and their wallet feel wanted.
"Can I sit down?" I'm surprised she asked.
"It would be socially unacceptable for me to say no."
"Thanks!" She flops down in the stool next to me, situating her parts just right, like she practices in the mirror every morning. I wonder what the training videos for this place must be like...
"So how's your day going, sweetie?" I'm about to answer, but the mix of Goldschlager and Coconut Citrus Vodka interject their decidedly more descriptive response and I puke up hellfire on the poor girl's cancer-orange tanned tits...1
TO BE CONTINUED.
- A Writers Group group list • next in list
A contest entry
- Ich Hasse/Liebe Dich by Atticus Unanimous.
100 points, ended May 1, 7 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - What You Wouldn't Want Your Family to See by Zerstort.
100 points, ended May 31, 7 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - I do it for teh Lulz!!!11! by Mag the Chodja.
600 points, ended May 26, 13 entries
Honorable mention
• next story in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 25 of 25
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Oh, God. I related so much to some parts.
Amazing read and cheered me up, thank you : D
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wow! I am impressed, and I'm pretty much jaded these days, so that takes alot! I loved this, what more can i say? Totally unique wrting style and funny as hell. Some of the imagery is outstanding! ... "low-cut, pushed-up intelligence..." too much
bravo -
It was amazing.Simply amazing.I was reading it and I was thinking that you shouldnt put it in here,I mean this could be an awesome novel.Its like you dont value it enough.The read was funny,filthy,I like filthy with not so polite thoughts of the character.Cool dialogues.
Cant wait for the second.
Nice opening and nice ending.
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wow! bloody hell that was good! damn good!
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wow! bloody hell that was good! damn good!
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wow! bloody hell that was good! damn good!
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Drunken Lulz!
Noice. Funny as hell and quite observational. I like how you opened with the bathroom scene, as absurdly disgusting as it was. xD
Your comical observations are glorious, your characters are fairly down-to-Earth, aside from their obvious intellect, and I loved the suggestions for branching out in writing subjects.
"Abandon all poop, ye who enters here." xDDDDD
Just. Wow. xD Seriously. Awesome. I damn near want to spray paint that on my own bathroom door.
Suggestions:
p2 - "It probably makes me stink..."
There should be a comma before 'but'.
I'd point out more punctuational mistakes, but it litters the article. xD Not a bad thing, very common, nothing major. Though, I did like that line about being horrible with commas. Accents it well.
I'd also suggest spacing out the paragraphs, as well as breaking down a couple of paragraphs into multiple paragrahs. Cut it in half, or more. Long paragraphs tend to scare away possible readers. The content, at first glance, looks like a lot, so it overwhelms the senses and then the reader gets lazy and walks away.
Can't wait for more to show up - is there more?
Anyway, thanks for entering my contest, and good luck!
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Thanks for the awesome review, dude! I do have terrible issues with commas... Anyway, no, there's not more YET, but as soon as I get a damn second I'm definitely doing part 2. I'll befriend you and you will know the very second it gets done. Thanks for the trophy!
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rough, ugly, nasty, charming
My first impression, the comment from Thomas Hobbs: the life of the noble savage was dirty, brutal, and short.
My second impression is that no 24-year-old could possibly write this well. Come on admit it: your really 65 years old. And you have had much writing experience.
I really do wish I had written it!
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Waiting for more!
Although I am content to wait for more inspiring stories that educate as well as intertain, I, to be brutality candid, I have little influence over my ilk, but what can you do with grade school dropouts. To be frank, I expect the worst: rebellion on a massive scale. Even now they plot in the cracks and crannies in which they live If you do not hear from me again, you will know I have been overcome by disgusting ilk! -
Wow, thanks, man. I am actually 24, but I've drank enough beers in my time to drown a small nation. I really appreciate your comment. I will do my best to continue to impress you and your ilk. What am I saying? Sorry, I'm drunk.
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I liked it, but I feel like it was almost too much at times. I think you let your narrator go on rants that were way too long. I didn't get enough of the story. You described your characters extremely well, but they aren't doing enough.
Don't get me wrong, I loved it. I just think maybe if you put more into the plot than the characters it would be phenomenal.
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I love it, this was great. It was one of those nasty, social commentary-like pieces that makes people laugh because they've all thought, done, and noticed the same things you're writing about, to some extent.
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Oh god I love your language here!!
(Please add an extra space between paragraphs for an easier reading experience. Without tabs, it gets confusing for me)
This is really cool. It has the sort of humor I like, one that's similar to my own, brutal, honest, better than the stuff that typically pours from the masses. And it seems as though you've got some great characters.
I'd also like to note your careful observations on the bar scene. You've got the people pretty much nailed. Great job. -
I enjoyed the start: "I wake up on a snot-green cheap tile floor in a shallow warm puddle of piss. I don't start spitting til I realize it's not mine. At least mostly, anyway. How long have I been out? How many blurry-eyed stumbledrunks mistook my face for a urinal cake in their haste to get back to a money-sucking sex wish of a barstool whore?"
And it gets even more charming. A most interesting mélange of corruption and vulgarity. Three stars and a suggestion for your next enema: try a 12 inch dildo.
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Excellent Dude!!!
Only what I would expect with the correct mixture of narrative and dialog and so real I expect this is a chapter in a beerstorecowboy's autobiography.
You either led a very interesting life so far or you are typing your stories on a penitentiary's computer.
Nice work.
JJ
beginning: 4, language: 4, plot: 4, ending: 3, dialog: 5, characters: 3.
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Hahaha well, I'm not gonna divulge what exactly is true or untrue about any of this... especially since my lawyer says it could be used as evidence by the prosecution.
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I retract my earlier dismissive review
This isn't really Bad Bukowski. It's just set in a bar and that's what set me off. Matt is correct in his comment when he compared it more to Gozo journalism. It reads like a free form misanthropic dissection of a kind of life that is not at all attractive.
I don't like the story (or more succinctly the characters portrayed within) but the writing has power and an quicksilver urgency that cannot be denied.
In future i should read stories, reflect then comment.
I'm not a HS Thompson fan but he made a bucket load of money writing this way, so what do i know?
I'd keep at it if i were you.
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Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. (And the deletion of the defaming story.) I figured you were just drunk. Nothin' wrong with that!
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Wake up
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u aint wrong
i messed up, sorry.
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Honestly, don’t fuel the fire of Austin Powers man-boy Rorschach. He never even writes his own stuff. Simply name drops bohemian writers from times forgone and uses them to belittle your work. He’s done it to me tens of times with counter-productive comments to try and counteract his writer’s block penis-envy.
Serious, I really like this piece. ‘Writing about it does not make you a writer?’ Fuck off Rorschach, nor does using this website solely to decry and deride other people’s efforts, and why is it you only seem to leave your 50 cents on pieces of work that attempt to show some sort of creativity, deviation from the mundane?? Jealousy is not a pretty thing…I think you’ll find THAT is ‘sad!’ The characters are characters, if a writer writes about a spaceman; it does not mean they are trying to embark on a career of space travel.
Any ways, I hope to see the next segment of this up and running in due course; it reminds me of the earlier works of early Hunter S Thompson, but not so much you simply seem like a fan-boy. There is plenty of space for more gonzo writers. Long live GONZO!!
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Thanks, dude! I'll try and get part two up as soon as possible. My computer died, so I only have access at work when no one's looking.
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Bukowski with no brain
Writing about it does not make you a writer.
SAD -
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Awesome! Finally someone that hates my writing as much as I do. For some reason they won't let me rate your comment, but I give it 6 stars. By the way, is that your chest hair in that picture?
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