Honea Express

Archive for the ‘Jerks’ Category

(cont. from previous post)

When I reached him he was cowering. I bent down to grab his collar and could hear the cries of the girl behind me and the heated accusations that D was now throwing at the drunk. I paused when I heard the voice of the bartender rise above the others, and suddenly I realized where I was and what I was doing. I didn’t care to test the limits of my visit.

I glanced up and my eyes met those of the man behind the bar.

“Hit him,” he said in a thick accent. He mimed his best uppercut. “That guy is an asshole!”

Apparently I was still within the good graces of the city. I decided to stay there. I pulled the man up to what would have been his height, if he had let his feet touch the ground, looked him in the eyes and whispered, “Fuck you,” before dropping him back to the floor. I walked up the stairs.

I turned to watch as the girl and D lingered. My best friend, D, standing at 5’7, next to the beautiful crying girl, who was 6′ easy, and the drunk, still on his ass with his hands waving in the air in front of his face.

D yelled a few more times, demanding an apology from the man. I don’t know if he got it. He was kicking him in the stomach when I turned and walked back into the sun.

M was nowhere to be seen, and I figured he had kept walking towards the flat, or was possibly in a doorway somewhere letting the friend finish what she started. I walked to the corner, where street meets bridge, and watched as D and the crying girl stumbled into the light.

They stopped. She was still in a bad way and D was still sensitive. I was drunk and tired. I started up the street and found M, alone, standing in the middle of an empty intersection, slowly turning the KFC map in his hands and looking at his surroundings with the blank stare of a man that had no clue.

Minutes passed. We hadn’t moved and D had not caught up. I mumbled to myself as I retraced my steps to retrieve him. He wasn’t there.

What the fuck? I looked around and decided they must have gone back in the bar. I had no intention of following and walked to the edge of the bridge to pass my time watching water and dreaming of sleep.

They were in the river. She was a good distance ahead of him and they were both swimming strongly towards the middle of the river and the heavy current of old world water that flowed there.

I yelled. D stopped and looked up at me, only the top of his head visible against the shadows of city.

“She’s killing herself!” he shouted, and turned to swim again.

My mind raced. This, I thought, is some crazy shit. I stripped down to my boxers and called for M, who came running around the corner and froze, tray liner in both hands. He was about forty feet away.

“Call 911!” I shouted.

He started to turn, then stopped, and waved the paper in front of him. “They don’t have 911!”

I couldn’t let someone die. I couldn’t go home without my best friend. I saw his mother’s face and me, stumbling, trying to explain how he had drown and I had stood there, arguing in my underwear in the middle of a slowly stirring city.

“Call somebody.” I said, and I dove in.

D had reached her and was swimming back towards me. I met them halfway. She was unconscious, and he was slipping repeatedly beneath her weight into the embracing arms of the river.

I took her and placed her arms around me, as they had been just hours ago. Only now there was no warmth. There was no tightness. She was cold and unresponsive.

It no longer mattered that someone had called her a whore. I no longer cared that she had chosen to spend the night crying instead of fucking. She grew heavy on my back as we treaded in the water and I never took my eyes off of D’s face.

If there was a way out of the river we couldn’t find it. It’s banks had centuries ago been grown over with bricks and cobblestones, and we found a patch against the wall beneath the street that we could place her on.

She had a pulse and the slightest of breaths. Water poured out of her mouth and ran back to the depths from which she snatched it. She was trembling with shock and cold. We removed everything but her undergarments and rubbed our hands across her body, trying desperately to alleviate the effects of the chill she battled.

Sirens grew from the distance. Eventually there were voices above us. Everyone from the bar was there, even the drunk. M was looking down at us with relief and amusement. Firemen and Police, all with mustaches and cigarettes, started calling to us in every language but one we understood.

Finally a gurney of sorts was lowered. We placed the girl that cried upon it and watched as she disappeared from our lives forever.

A rope ladder was thrown down and we climbed up to a hundred faces and more questions. I remember M handing me my clothes as I watched the drunk talk to the police. He kept pointing at me.

I woke up with my head lying on a heater. It was the old kind that looked like a radiator sticking out of the wall. It was on. I only moved my head enough to turn it over and warm the other side.

I was freezing and I was in jail. M and D were sitting beside me on a bench.

The drunk walked by us. “You,” he said to me, “you learn how to dive in the English Navy?”

I wasn’t sure if he had already forgotten that I was American, or if the fact that my dive was closer to a belly flop was some sort of crack against the English. I ignored him.

I had assumed, as I usually did when finding myself in a police station, that we were in some sort of trouble. Thankfully that wasn’t the case.

“You boys are heroes,” is what they told us. They had taken us to the station to speak with an interpreter, and sometime during my sleep the entire story had come out.

Two policemen that could have passed for 14 if not for the mustaches picked us up out front. Their squad car was at least 10 years old. There was duct tape on the door joints and a handful of air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror, which was also covered in duct tape.

They both turned to look at us as we sat in the backseat, smiling through the smoke of their cigarettes.

“Hey,” said one. “You Americans, you like to swim, no?” They both laughed. M handed them the KFC sheet, with our location circled. They looked at it like it was the most natural thing in the world, started the car, turned on the siren, and cranked the techno. They drove us home smoking and laughing, and talking to us the entire time. I couldn’t hear a word they said.

continued from previous post…

The place echoed with a lifetime of screams and sweat. Only now, they were accompanied by a house beat and not the shadow of a looming noose. Hang the DJ. Chalk one up for progress.

By the time we got to Prague we had already spent time in Paris and Amsterdam, not to mention one confusing night in Germany, it wasn’t our first bar, and it wouldn’t be the last, however, it was the best.

Somehow we wound up sitting at a community table with an assortment of young men from all over Europe that were visibly interested in the girls that had entered with us. Your women, how much for the women? Someone bought beer, and it, as they say, was on.

The bonding must have happened sometime after midnight. My companions and I had long been traveling under the single purpose of not becoming a stereotype, the “ugly American,” which of course, has nothing to do with our appearance. One of the things that we had not mentioned throughout our trip was politics. Why would we?

That night, drunk in a dungeon, it was brought out for us. Young men from a handful of different countries went on… and on, about our military and our might. They wanted to know about California and the streets of gold. They were curious and excited about America, which frankly, was the last response we had been prepared for. It was before George W., and apparently, the world loved us. They did not, however, care for Germany.

If there was anything that ran as a common theme it was a united distrust and blatant dislike of all things German. We, as we thought was prudent, stayed quiet on the matter. At one point, someone started singing a song that was anti-Germany, and the whole bar finished it in unison. Apparently, having Europe’s strongest economy and the worst recent history did not make them popular neighbors. I sipped my beer and watched the girls on the dance floor.

They were topless in the European sense, meaning that breasts bared in public were not taboo, but accepted. I tended to fall along those lines. I still do.

The American girls, rather than drinking free beer and having their egos stroked, had long been swept away by men with dangerous accents and possible facial scars. We had plans to attend a show with them the next afternoon, Rage Against the Machine, and the last words I heard from them involved breakfast.

In the meantime, we had become celebrities of sorts, based on nothing else than perception and passports. I found myself the focus of attention by throngs of beautiful women. Either this was the greatest night ever or we were being set up for a huge rolling in the alley. We didn’t care.

At one point, the girl that I had been dancing with said that she wanted me to teach her how to two-step, which I knew to be some sort of cowboy dancing, and she knew to be undeniably American. I figured I could wing it. Hell, I would do the jitterbug if I thought it was foreplay.

The DJ was more than happy to oblige with a nod and a country music staple. I got ready to dazzle them with my boot-scoot boogie, and I may have. I honestly don’t recall if I danced or not. I was drunk and being seduced by a 6′ Czech beauty. I remember I was prepared, but when the music started, which set-off the second all bar sing-along of the night, I think I may have been too busy laughing to dance. It happens.

By the time the chorus came around I felt like I was in a Coors Light commercial. We all raised our beers, and we sang our hearts out:

It was awesome.

It was also 5 in the morning.

We didn’t have our guidebook with us. In fact, we had lost our map at some point and had been led around by the well-prepared girls from Florida. What we had was the tray liner from an earlier stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken. It showed the city and the various KFC locations, one of which was located a short walk from where we were staying. Everything was a short walk. Some longer than others.

Before the Colonel had a chance to guide us home we were being whisked away by the Czech girl and her friend. They had another bar they wanted to take us to. Who were we to argue?

If you’ve seen the movie Mission Impossible then you know the bridge that Jon Voight fell from, The Charles Bridge. That’s where the bar was, on our end of that bridge, cloaked as it was in fog and intrigue.

We went inside. M, as he was prone to do, somehow found himself sitting in a chair with a girl’s face in his lap. They had no shame. I was extremely jealous.

The girl that had singled me out had suddenly become a ball of emotion. She had man issues, and my resemblance to said man was the reason that she had attached herself to me. He sounded handsome.

I was too drunk to care. D, however, who had made his stake by being the understanding type, took an interest. I sat at the bar and drank whiskey. The sun started to shine on the deep, brown waters of the Vltava.

A man, that seemed old at the time, probably pushing 60, was talking to the girl at this point, and whatever he said, it pushed her buttons. She took upset to a whole new level, and as M and his new acquaintance were standing by the door, I suggested we get the hell out of there.

We were walking in the cool morning light, M, leading the way, following the trail of chicken, and the rest of us a few steps back. The girls were crying, D was soothing, and I was looking at the rapids of the river.

Suddenly it became clear that I was now the object of anger. The girl was upset that I had not stuck up for her in the bar. I had no idea what she was talking about. Didn’t she know chivalry was dead in America?

It seems that the guy that had approached her had called her a whore. A fucking whore to be exact, because she was in the company of two Americans. He had offered her money and promised her a better time. Oddly, he had no words for her friend that was obviously the easy one.

“What did you want me to do?” I asked.

“Hit him,” she cried. “Defend me.”

I looked at the river and turned around. I walked into the bar with a beautiful crying woman on my arm, which was usually how I left them, and came face to face with the accused as he was preparing to leave.

“Did you call her a whore?” I asked.

He looked shocked. “N-n-no!” he said, waving his hands in front of me and backing down the stairs.

The girl was behind me, screaming things like “liar!” and “hit him!”

“Did you call her a fucking whore?” I continued.

“I called her what she is,” he laughed.

I punched him in the face and he fell over backwards, down a few more stairs and crashed into a table on the barroom floor. I kept walking towards him, stepping over chairs and feeling her arms grow tight around me.

(to be continued…)

I like to crack wise on the crazy. It’s a thing I do. Yet, like the guy in the closet that is always telling gay jokes, I began to have my doubts.

Do I mock the crazy because secretly I am them? Them being “the crazy.”

The idea made me a little nervous. I can’t even afford to be Mormon. How the hell would I get anywhere as a Scientologists? I doubt I could make it past Kirstie Alley level, and if it weren’t for all the money that she saved on free Jenny Craig food, she wouldn’t be as high as she is. It cost money to move up the spiritual ladder, people. Lots of it.

I started to worry, so I made a checklist to see if my beliefs were on par with the crazy:

Do I believe in aliens? Sure. Why not? The odds are in their favor, right?

1 for crazy.

Did I love Battlefield Earth? Um, no. I didn’t even see it. It looked really bad.

1 for not as crazy.

Do I believe in God? Not in the sense of any religion. I believe in something, but I’m not buying what any of our salesman are peddling.

1 for crazy (by default).

Do I have cool sunglasses that I am willing to wear at night? Are you kidding? Does Corey Hart shit in the woods?

1 for crazy. Not looking good, the score that is- I look freaking awesome.

Do I think that Autism and depression are fake (as are the meds that treat them)? In a word: no. That’s freaking crazy (see above links).

1 for fairly normal.

Do I think homosexuality can be “cured?” Does Travolta (see above links)?

Okay, we’re all tied up!

Would I ever be crazy enough to be that crazy? Not in a million years.

So there you are. I don’t make fun of Scientology because I really envy them. I make fun of them because it’s funny. And they’re crazy.

Tune in next week when I’ll fake fun of Chrystal Children!

Yes, that is Hemingway. Yes, I stole that idea from Darren. So what? I could have thought of it.

The thing is, Paris Hilton, who is apparently highly moveable, went 5 days without so much as a bowl of hummus. It was hell. HELL, I TELL YOU!

You know she didn’t not eat in jail, otherwise she would be invisible now. It’s not like Al Shaprton going on a hunger strike. He could starve for a month and still be the size of a small car. Paris is about as thin as two Nicole Richies taped together. That’s fucking tiny.

So now that I’m doing this celebrity gossip bit I spend a lot of time looking at porn reading about them. It seems that Paris has had a non-stop parade of food being delivered to her mansion. First of all, it’s all gifts from local fancy-pants eateries. Don’t give her free shit, she has money! Give the free stuff to the 80 homeless guys you walk around on your way down Santa Monica Blvd. Second, it’s all fatty stuff- cupcakes, chocolate, edible body paint, and the like. Does she actually eat this or is it catering for the paparazzi? I can’t imagine that she does eat it, but if she does she must chase it with a finger back and puke it up before it hits her stomach. There’s no way that girl is that skinny from high metabolism, or exercise.

I can’t believe I’ve written this much stuff on freaking Paris Hilton and I’m not even getting paid for it.

Enough.

I think I’ll go have a cupcake, and I’m keeping that shit down.

I had so much to do today, being my first day as a SAHD. By the way, don’t refer to us as Mr. Mom, even in jest. I did that and had the SAHD Mafia measuring my feet for cement shoes. We do not find humor in that, or anything Michael Keaton has done since.

So how did I spend my day? I basically took over the pages of FameCrawler to push my own anti-Lohan agenda, made a note about yellow submarines at The Disney Blog and talked about a duck’s dork over at DadCentric. Then of course I played with the boys.

The one blog I didn’t get to was this one, or A2Z for that matter, but I never get over there. This is the one site where people actually come to see me, not a collection of writers or a specific topic, but little ol’ me. You like me. You really like me.

I’m sorry if I let you down today. I’m sorry if there was an unexplainable void in your life, and a hole in your heart where my words usually lay. It’s unforgivable.

So, we’re good, right?