Aimee’s favorite hangout is Mr. Goodbar at the corner of Elmwood and Forrest, near Buffalo State College. The big red neon sign glows in the dark like a beacon for beer. A large patio reaches for the street from behind a black metal fence. It is raining harder now as they dart for the door, trying to run between the raindrops.
Aimee leads the pack up to the bar, shaking the water from her jacket, and splashing Sky in the face. “Sorry Sky. Didn’t mean to give you a shower. Hey, aren’t we a lucky bunch. Shanghai Pete is bartending tonight. Right on! How’s it going Pete?”
Pete is a huge hulk of a man with flaming orange hair to match his eyebrows. His bulky arms hang at his sides like two slabs of beef in a butcher’s window, covered in freckles and blond fuzz. He wipes his massive paws clean by tangling them in his whiskey stained apron. His rumbling voice is harsh and smoky as it travels across the bar.
“Pretty good Aim. Rum and Coke for you, and what’ll your friends have?” He slides a pint glass in front of Aimee. “No fucking Dixie cups for you. You’re a woman after my own heart. When are we getting married anyway?” He turns to face Charlie. “I’ve been asking her for at least a year. Talk some sense into her would ya? My big heart is breaking over here. What would you like?”
Charlie smiles at the broken hearted ox with a faint understanding of his plight. “Just a beer for me. Sky, Tabby, beer okay?”
Tabitha nods and smacks Sky in the arm. “Works for us. Bottles, please. I want it right in the brown glass from whence it came. Draft beer makes me pukey. Don’t want to be yaking on some old lady’s front porch. Been there, done that. Unfortunately, that old lady was my own dear grand mammy. Nothing like cleaning up the barfies with a super absorbent paper towel at three a.m. when your piss drunk. Wouldn’t want granny sailing down the steps when she came out to get the daily news. Ouch! Where do you peoples want to sit?”
The four of them form a parade and land in the back of the room near the pool tables. Aimee pulls out a chair to plop herself in it without spilling a drop of her drink. “This is my joint. I hang out here every weekend. There’s a good band here on Saturdays. Sorry you guys missed it. Last night kicked ass.”
“Let’s hear it for good music.” Tabitha holds up her bottle and salutes. “I’m in a band myself. Don’t look at me like that. There’s nothing wrong with being a music enthusiast. Music fuels life. Seriously, where would we be without it? Who wants a life full of silence, or talk radio?” Her body shivers at the thought of such a world. “No bands on Sunday you say? I should have brought my bass. I could have played a little for old Shanghai Pete over there. Coincidentally, why do they call Shanghai Pete Shanghai Pete? He looks like a nice strapping Irish boy to me. Not that I’m trying to be culturally insensitive, but isn’t Shanghai a port on the Huangpu near the Chang estuary in China? Population somewheres around twelve million? I could be wrong.”
Aimee leans on the table with one arm to address Tabby directly. “He is a nice Irish boy. They call him Shanghai Pete cause he’s a communist. Shhh, don’t look at him. It’s a secret.”
“Are you serious? I’ve been called a leftist, but I have a hard time believing that Petey boy over there is a communist. Do I look like I just blew in from Idiotville, population one? Wait, maybe I did just blow in from Idiotville. I just spilled brew on my pants. Great! Now it looks like I peed. I know how communists feel about religion, but how do they feel about pee jeans? Don’t want to get the big ‘ol carrot top communist all hostile.” Wiping at the puddle on her pants with the back of her hand. “Oh well, I’ll start a new trend when I return to my home planet, Nitwit Firma. It’s in the Simpleton galaxy, just past the cosmic dumb ass gas station.”
Aimee cannot control her laughter for one more second, it might just break her if she holds it back. “I’m not sure how communists feel about pee jeans, and I have no idea why they call Shanghai Pete Shanghai Pete. I guess it just sounds better than plain old Pete. Here have a shot. It’ll take your mind off the wet spot, or you could just pour this on your pants too.”
“That would make me all sticky too. Just call me sticky stuff! I like you Aimee. You’re almost as sarcastic as me. Cool beans.”
“Thanks Sticky Stuff. We need another round Pete. I want to know what this girl will say when she’s drunk.”
The gigantic chap lumbers over to the table with a tray full of drinks. “Here you go darling. I brought you a couple of rounds. By the way, they call me Shanghai Pete cause I was there once when I was in the Navy. I slipped on a puddle, and fell off of the pier. Go figure, I wasn’t even drinking. The name stuck for some reason. Pee jeans huh? Sucks to be you.”
Aimee throws some bills on the tray. “Thanks man. Sorry everybody, not many people out on a Sunday night. We can always visit the Buffalo Psychiatric center. It’s right across the street. That is a cool building, it’s very gothic and dark, gives me the creeps sometimes. I study psychology, and I know what the doctors used to do to those poor bastards back in the day. We’re talking house of horrors type shit. I know that medicine wasn’t quite what it is today, but they used to lock people up in small wooden boxes, or stand them against a cement wall and spray them relentlessly with fire hoses. These were supposed to be cures for mental illness? They gave women hysterectomies because they thought that female reproductive organs caused ‘hysteria’. That’s where the word hysterectomy came from. How fucking awful is that. Think about it for a minute. I’ll wait.”
Tabitha is completely enthralled with this conversation. “This place is right across the street huh? Think we can take a stroll later? I’m a fan of the twisted and morbid. Who isn’t?”
Sky looks up from her empty shot glass. “Tabby you are the twisted, but I never pegged you as a fan of the morbid. Actually, I can see that. Your sense of humor is kind of dark. Of course, that’s probably why I find you so funny and other people look at you like you just escaped from the psychiatric center. If we go over there, you better hope the men in white coats don’t throw a net over your head and take you to your rightful home. I shouldn’t talk. I was reading Edgar Allen Poe at ten. Talk about morbid. Hey, do you remember the time that woman in Manhattan was wearing a fur coat, and you walked by her and yelled, ‘I didn’t want to club that baby seal, but it looked at me funny after I killed its mother!’ I laughed for days, but that woman probably burned that fancy coat of hers!” She flares her arms out while she does an impression of the horrified woman in the fur coat. “Well I never!”
“Yup. That was pretty damn funny. I was being sarcastically serious in a way. You know how us eccentric vegetarians are. Sometimes you just have to point things out to people in terms they can understand. Leather is one thing, but fur is another. I don’t yell at people who wear leather. I wear it myself. I figure they’ve probably eaten enough juicy hamburgers to fill that jacket. I know I’ve eaten enough to fill mine. I wasn’t born a vegetarian you know, but I hear that humans are supposed to be omnivores. Rumors, huh. Cows are slain for meat anyway, you might as well use as much of the animal as possible. I can dig that Native American idea of honoring an animal if you kill it for food. That makes complete sense to me. People gotta eat. However, killing a mink or a seal just to skin it- that’s just plain atrocious. You’ll never see me wearing a tiger skin hat, or elephant tusk bracelet, and eating testicles as an aphrodisiac never crossed my mind. Won’t see me with a mouth full of rocky mountain oysters anytime soon, but you never know. Tomorrow I might get the urge to grease myself up in narwhal blubber, and go hunting for little baby bunnies with a sniper riffle. I hear night vision scopes are helpful when tracking those crafty sons ‘o bitches. If I use a machine gun I can blow them up into convenient bite sized pieces without having to cut them up later.”
“Okay Tabby, you win. You are a morbid shit, aren’t you?” Sky’s laughter surrounds the table, and it’s undeniably contagious. Aimee wasn’t quite sure how to take Tabitha’s sense of humor, but she catches on quickly.
Tabitha leaves no stone unturned. She has an audience. It’s go time. “I draw the line at any animal bigger than me. I’m a complete wuss. If I stared down a grizzly bear, I’d probably piss my pants and run away with my prick…I mean, my gun in my hand. Anyone up for some ferret pate, or field mouse butter? Spreads so nice on saltines. Mmmm. Now that’s good dinner conversation. Why didn’t I think of that while we were at Aimee’s house? By the way Aimee, are you sure that was deep fried chicken? Could have been endangered bald eagle. Nothing goes better with spinach than seared squab. Just kidding. I’m sure it was delicious. Your sister makes one hell of a mac & cheese by the way. Seriously, it was good.”
“Hey, no one wants to hear that tree hugger crap around here Tabby. Just join the Riffle Association and get it over with. You know you want to. Do it Tabby, do it.” Sky grabs Tabitha by the arm and shakes her lightly. “You’d make a great spokesperson. I can see you in camouflage and a prison orange vest. Hot, hot, hot. Even better than a jockey uniform, wouldn’t you say? You were right. Little hats are a nice accent to any outfit.”
“Yeah. I’ll get me an NRA pin and put it on my jacket. No one would have the pellets to mess with me then. Gun control, ha! I have perfect control when I’m toting a gun. We should start handing them out to school kids, that is if the new administration doesn’t allow them to buy gatts on their own. First they’ll learn the ABC’s, then math, and art. Wait, I almost forgot that we’re cutting art programs out of school curriculum. My mistake. Before you know it, sharp shooter city. We could make a super army of tiny tots, or even use clones. Yeah, that’s it, clones. They did it with a sheep. We can clone an army of soulless, angry people with no mommies. Hey, no ties to family would help. That way if they’re bad soldiers, we can always just harvest their innards. Great! A whole organ garden. Screw that stupid donor card! Why should I give up my kidney’s and eyeballs? Let’s just make people for spare parts, then hand them automatic weapons with no safety. No, better just stick with the cloned sheep. Now that’s a funny picture. A flock of baaaaad asses with little bandanna’s and grenades hanging from their little belts. Nice. No wonder most of the world’s people see Americans as cowboys. If I’ve offended anyone at the table…good. My goal in life is to offend people. Reminds me that I’m still alive, and hopefully, it reminds others that they’re alive too. I say keep it simple stupid. That’s a good rule to live by. I’m just playing anyway. Kids and guns don’t mix. That’s not even funny. Anyway, I probably shouldn’t drink. I get kind of…spirited when I shlub a few. Talk of politics and sociology have no place in civilized society. If I lived in a communist country with Pete over there I’d probably be killed for what I just said. Check me out, I’m a liberal, conservative, republican, democratic capitalist, and a hypocrite. All in one spicy little package. Isn’t America great? Let’s go check out that creepy building.”