This Is the Best Bar

Once, early in the morning,

Beelzebub arose, 

With care his sweet person adorning,

He put on his Sunday clothes

- Percy Bysshe Shelley from The Devil's Walk

The guitarist strums his instrument with all the rhythm of a pornographic film bereft of the fucking and he smiles a toothless grin at me while I sip my bear and listen to the singer croak out a bastardized version of Margaritaville. She's a vivacious 350 and if I took all the fabric from her outfit I might be able to make a napkin. She loses the tune every time she takes a step to the left but she laughs and everything is okay again. 

I'm supposed to be telling you about the e-mail I got this morning. "We're sorry but your manuscript isn't what we're looking for," but that's the way that every story begins lately. A bar, a mostly naked woman, and beer. Self loathing is for people who have the time to waste on dreaming about what they were going to do with all that money they never had and I've been living on fictive mountains of gold for so long that I can't remember what it's like to have the real stuff. 

The next song's starting and she's laughing her way through the introduction. She fucked some man and he wrote this song just for her. It's all true, she swears. He climbed between her massive thighs and as he slid his glasses up in his hair he sang it for her. She laid her head back and listened to him singing inside of her and it reverberated up through her loins, up to her tits, and came tumbling out her mouth as she rolled her eyes back and dreamily thought of what it might be like to fuck a man who knew what his cock was for instead of these broke poets who only ever do anything with their tongues. She laughs, Ha, Ha! It's so funny she can barely contain herself as she slaps her belly. That damned poet loved her! Ha, ha! He loved her so much he climbed up inside her and now he lives deep between her legs and jealously stabs her lovers with his pen. 

The crowd listens to her while I write this and the laugh with her. It's a script they've been following for years. I'm too busy writing this down and trying to figure out if I've got enough in my pocket to pay for this beer or if I'm going to have to slip out the restroom window to notice that she's bent over and the little shred of cloth that held back her glory from the world has disappeared. She feigns embarrassment. Oh me, oh my. Can you believe what you're seeing?

I lay my money on the bar and walk out into the parking lot while some drunken redneck climbs up on stage with his pants down and starts chasing her around with his prick out screaming, I love you. Just let me put it in. In the parking lot the bikers are smoking cigars and trying hard to look intimidating so I give them a nod and walk over to the car. I can hear her laughing from inside. No, she feigns a moan, don't fuck me. 

Cheering and the bikers crowd the door. "Jesus," one of them shouts, "he's actually fucking her!"

I throw the keys I've been fumbling with down on the gravel and walk back over to the door. Sure enough he's got her bent over and slamming himself into her while she sing I Believe in a Thing Called Love and rolls her eyes. He's pumping away like mad while she leans down on her elbows and looks bored with all his efforts. "I can't believe she's letting him fuck her on stage," a biker with a skull tattoo says with a nudge. 

"Right," I say with a nod as the redneck grabs her hair and pulls back. She's singing better now than she ever did before. Every note is pitch perfect while the fat bastard pumping away turns red and begins to sweat. She looks back at him and blows a kiss. He grabs his chest, falls over, and the whole bar is up. 

"This is the best bar I've ever been too," the biker says to me. 

"I know, right?"